Podcasts about George Michael

Poet, Director and Artist Thee Rose talk about his short film "Artifice" about where the inspiration came from post pandemic and how he uses his poetry to narrate the film. "Artifice" is based on identity and labels that the artist has dealt with... Attending Newfest helped Thee realize he had a voice and a story to tell How poetry and spoken word are the forefront for them Discussion on where we are now and where are we from and how they can be conflicting... The film is meant to sit with the audience to confront their own issues with identity and more... "Artifice" will screen at Frameline's Trans New Weird Shorts on June 22 Frameline.org  Follow Thee Rose on IG @starveligmoon Hot Topic: Harvey Guillén on 'letting you in' versus 'coming out'...plus George Michael older tweet that has gone viral now Hot Topic: Why some gay bars in the Castro in SF have TSA-face like scanners.... Hot Topic: Mt. Sinai accused of sharing trans records... Advice: My boyfriend and I opened up our relationship and now he's sleeping with a woman... Thirst Trap: which adult performer took the hottest shot this week? Follow Steve V's new Substack features weekly articles: https://substack.com/@tagspodcast Follow Stevie on IG: @iam_stevev Follow Kodi on IG: @mistahmaurice Follow Teddy on IG: @teddyalexis Rate and Review us! Wanna drop a weekly or one time tip to TAGSPODCAST - Show your love for the show and support TAGS! Visit our website: tagspodcast.com Needs some advice for a sex or relationship conundrum? Ask TAGS! DM US ON IG or https://www.talkaboutgaysex.com/contact Follow Of a Certain Age on IG: @ofacertainagepod   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

June is PRIDE month so Dan throws down a PRIDE related ride. It's only songs with 'pride' in the title, lyrics and/or as artist, and a surprisingly good mix comes out of it all. Included: The Bicycles; The Black Crows (shhhhhhh.......it); Bamboo; Robert Palmer; Tessa Belifante; George Michael; Etta James; Charley Pride; The Ramones; The Answer; Burton Cummings; The Goo Goo Dolls with Elmo

George Michael managed to be both enigmatic and to share some of the most personal details about his life but superfan Sathnam Sanghera has looked a little closer to really appreciate the artistry and importance of one of pop's most enduring voices. We spoke with him about being a control freak, a defining era for music and why that voice is still so special to listen to.

durée : 00:55:04 - Very Good Trip - par : Michka Assayas - Ce soir, un seul musicien, un des plus populaires au monde, une fois n'est pas coutume. Et comme disait le regretté George Michael, écoutez sans préjugés. - réalisation : Stéphane Ronxin Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France

Music critic Barry Walters joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and Christian Barter to discuss his new book, Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music 1969-2000. Walters talks about how he chose the artists that he includes in his book and explains how musicians like David Bowie, Lou Reed, Grace Jones, and Sylvester saved his life. He explores how social repression shaped and complicated work from LGBTQ bands, how queer acts like Queen were pigeonholed by music critics, and how mainstream groups like Nirvana spoke to the LGBTQ experience. He talks about his personal connection to Madonna's work and reads from Mighty Real.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by Christian Barter and Whitney Terrell.Barry WaltersMighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music 1969-2000“George Michael's ‘Father Figure': When Love Meets Crime”|Billboard, Oct. 26, 2017“Madonna's ‘Erotica,' ‘Sex': Why Musical Masterpiece, Defiant Book Still Matter”| Rolling Stone, Oct. 19, 2017“As Much As I Can, As Black As I Am: The Queer History of Grace Jones”|Pitchfork, August 25, 2015“Sylvester: Staying Alive”|The Village Voice, Nov. 8, 1988OthersCity Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s by Edmund WhiteSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode Mark chats to 3rd Generation psychic medium Carmel Conway.Fascinating topics such as visitation dreams,guardian animals,souls,multiple past lives,fairy rings,demons,the late singer George Michael and the late Irish radio star Gerry Ryan are all in the mix.There's also the regular feature RANDON ANONYMOUS STRANGE BUT TRUE where many diverse voices relate paranormal happenings.Enjoy !Get in touch with SCARY EIRE paranormalireland@protonmail.com Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/paranormal-uk-radio-network--4541473/support.

Shakira, Maluma, Gracie Abrams y Malú estrenan sus nuevas canciones. Lo mejor del Concierto 60 Aniversario de LOS40 Classic por San Isidro. ‘Crazy in Love': la frase que Beyoncé pronunció frente al espejo y que la convirtió en una superestrella. The Weekend y Billie Eilish: los artistas favoritos de los españoles para escuchar durante el sexo. En LOS40 Classic: David Bowie, “un dios de otro mundo” que admiraba a su mayor fan: George Michael.

Dennis is joined by renowned British photographer Brian Aris to discuss his new book Celebrating George: Three Decades which showcases the many photographs Brian took of George Michael throughout his career. Brian talks about the first time he shot George, as part of Wham, at the end of a day that included earlier shoots with Billy Joel and Mick Jagger. He also talks about why George was one of his favorite subjects to shoot, the love he feels from the "George Michael Lovelies" who attend his book events and the intentionality that George brought to all his photo sessions. Other topics include: shooting the group photo at Band Aid, how Debbie Harry changed the trajectory of his career, where he likes to stand when he's shooting concert shots, the American rocker who defaced his favorite backdrop and his earliest memories of photography.

Así es la primera imagen de la malagueña en 'Furia' (HBO Max). Lady Gaga encuentra el lugar idóneo para 'Mayhem Requiem', el capítulo final de una era monumental. Madonna lleva 'Confessions II' al Festival de Tribeca con un proyecto visual. La realidad de Amaia Montero, tras sus dos primeros conciertos con La Oreja de Van Gogh. En LOS40 Classic: Treinta años de 'Older', el disco elegante y melancólico con el que George Michael sobrevivió a sí mismo.

“I'll be your father figure.” This week, we're diving deep into one of Taylor Swift's most underrated literary tools: alliteration. From the phonetic cadence of a teenage Taylor on Debut to the silky-smooth flow of reputation's Call It What You Want, to the hard-hitting, power-packed punch of Father Figure from The Life of a Showgirl, we trace how Taylor uses the repetition of consonant sounds to create rhythm, evoke emotion, and tell a story. Whether she's channeling JFK-level emphasis or crafting an earworm you can hit the notes on without music, alliteration is a tool Taylor reaches for selectively and with purpose. Join Maansi, Jennifer, and Jodi as they break down soft sounds, staccato slams, and everything in between.   Subscribe for free to get episode updates or upgrade to paid to get our After School premium content: aptaylorswift.substack.com/subscribe. After School subscribers get monthly bonus episodes, exclusive content, and early access to help shape future topics!   Stay up to date at aptaylorswift.com   Mentioned in this episode: “Our Song” – Taylor Swift (Debut, 2006) “Call It What You Want” – Taylor Swift (Reputation, 2017) “Father Figure” – Taylor Swift ft. George Michael interpolation (The Life of a Showgirl, 2025) “Pied Beauty” – Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Raven” – Edgar Allan Poe JFK Inaugural Address – John F. Kennedy (1961) Grammarly: What Is Alliteration?   Episode Highlights: [01:32] Defining alliteration: Initial rhymes, brand names, and types (symmetrical, unvoiced) [07:04] “Our Song” (Debut, 2006): Slamming screen doors and the phonetic cadence of baby Taylor [14:43] “Call It What You Want” (Reputation, 2017): Soft sounds, effortless love, and the R&B-adjacent flow [22:19] “Father Figure” (The Life of a Showgirl, 2025): Hard consonants, hard power, and the father figure persona   Follow AP Taylor Swift podcast on social! TikTok → tiktok.com/@APTaylorSwift Instagram → instagram.com/APTaylorSwift YouTube → youtube.com/@APTaylorSwift Link Tree → linktr.ee/aptaylorswift Bookshop.org → bookshop.org/shop/apts Libro.fm → tinyurl.com/aptslibro   Contact us at aptaylorswift@gmail.com   Affiliate Codes: Krowned Krystals – krownedkrystals.com — use code APTS at checkout for 10% off!   Libro.fm – Looking for an audiobook? Check out our Libro.fm playlist and use code APTS30 for 30% off books found here: tinyurl.com/aptslibro   This podcast is neither related to nor endorsed by Taylor Swift, her companies, or record labels. All opinions are our own. Intro music produced by Scott Zadig aka Scotty Z

Miss Heard celebrates Season 7, Episode 350 where we dive into the story behind “Careless Whisper”, the timeless hit that transformed George Michael from pop heartthrob to solo superstar. From writing the song at just 17 years old on a bus ride to obsessing over the now-iconic saxophone riff, we explore the perfectionism, heartbreak, and creative instincts that turned the track into one of the best-selling singles of all time. We also revisit the glamorous yet chaotic Miami music video shoot, the song's chart domination across the globe, and the lasting cultural legacy of a ballad that still seduces listeners four decades later. #missheardsonglyrics #missheardlyrics #misheardsonglyrics #GeorgeMichael #CarelessWhisper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izGwDsrQ1eQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_Whisper https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/herald/name/madeline-hodge-obituary?id=13066328 https://www.songfacts.com/facts/wham/careless-whisper

Berly and LA are sipping a tweaked Nerdy Tavern's Dean's Pink Satin Panties cocktail (more cranberry juice, highly recommended) while covering an episode that is, fittingly, very pink. Someone is getting misted out there in Idaho, and it's not rain.Cas has reinvented himself with a gas station job, a name tag, and what he thinks is a date. Dean has a case and absolutely no interest in 24 volumes of ancient languages research. Back at the bunker, Crowley has one phone call and a secret hobby that Sam really wasn't supposed to see. And roaming the streets of Rexford is an angel with a cross earring, good intentions, and a catastrophically loose definition of "mercy."Berly also drops a surprisingly deep lore dive on the biblical Ephraim, son of Joseph (yes, the coat, the brothers, the Egypt), and traces exactly how a figure built around healing and humility ends up here, pink-misting a teenager outside a school bus.It's a quieter episode with a lot of moving pieces, and the girls have thoughts on all of it, including Nora's bowling outfit choices and whether Misha Collins has an unusually flexible wrist.

Ce 11 mai, dans RTL2 Pop-Rock Station on ouvre le bal avec Led Zeppelin et "Immigrant Song". La sélection réunit Depeche Mode, Electric Light Orchestra, Justice, Iron Maiden, Matmatah, Grant Lee Buffalo, The Doors, Pink Floyd, The Knife, Blur, Cream ou encore David Bowie. L'animatrice célèbre par ailleurs le 85e anniversaire d'Eric Burdon en diffusant "Bury My Body" de The Animals. Au registre des nouveautés, Jack White s'illustre avec "G.O.D and the Broken Ribs". Les Vendéens de Dynamite Shakers dévoilent "Cinema", tandis que Saint Agnes fait résonner "The Ghost". Marjorie Hache salue le retour de Paul McCartney, épaulé par Ringo Starr, Chrissie Hynde et Sharleen Spiteri sur "Home To Us". La primeur du jour nous vient du groupe londonien Deary, qui offre de douces sonorités shoegaze ravivant le souvenir des Cocteau Twins avec le titre "Alfie". L'album de la semaine met à l'honneur la Suédoise Lykke Li et son sixième disque aux accents pop revancharde, "Afterparty", illustré aujourd'hui par le morceau "Lucky Again". Enfin, la reprise de la soirée rend un vibrant hommage à George Michael, disparu il y a tout juste dix ans : le groupe Gossip, brillamment mené par la voix de Beth Ditto, s'approprie avec intensité l'inoubliable hymne "Careless Whisper". Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song Jack White - G.O.D. And The Broken Ribs Animals - Bury My Body Arcade Fire - No Cars Go Justice - Neverender (Feat. Tame Impala) Iron Maiden - Run To The Hills Matmatah - Casi El Silencio Lykke Li - Lucky Again Electric Light Orchestra - Mr Blue Sky Grant Lee Buffalo - Fuzzy The Doors - L.A Woman Dynamite Shakers - Cinema Gossip - Careless Whisper Depeche Mode - Wrong Mesh - I Bleed Through You Pink Floyd - Have A Cigar Rammstein - Benzin Saint Agnes - The Ghost David Bowie - Rebel Rebel Paul McCartney & Ringo Starr - Home To Us Deary - Alfie Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face The Knife - Heartbeats Cream - White Room Blur - French SongHébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Išgirsime populiariausias, iki šiol prisimenamas, o ir rečiau atmenamas naujosios bangos dainas, kurios prieš keturiasdešimt metų radijo transliacijų dėka skleidėsi Jungtinėje Karalystėje bei Vakarų Europoje, išvien su pavasariu, ir pasiekė mūsų krantus. Grojaraštyje – Mezzoforte, Journey, Cliff Richard and The Young Ones, Mr. Mister, The Bangles, Level 42, Diana Ross, Falco, George Michael, Mike Oldfield su Jon Anderson.Ved. Lukas Devita

While films had been made to promote music dating back to at least the 1960s, the music video became a fixture of pop culture in the 1980s. Accelerated by the birth of MTV, MuchMusic, and VH1, music videos in the 80s experienced extraordinary growth in both popularity and artistic creativity. The decade would produce countless iconic music videos, giving renowned artists a second shot at relevancy, launching a whole new wave of aesthetically minded pop stars, and providing unlikely artists a shot at ubiquity with wild conceptual videos. So join the Great Pop Culture Debate as we attempt to name the Best 1980s Music Video!Videos discussed: “Take On Me” by A-HA!; “Thriller” by Michael Jackson; “Like a Prayer” by Madonna”; “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel; “Love Shack” by The B-52s; “Addicted to Love” by Robert Palmer; “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper; “You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon; “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits; “Hungry Like the Wolf” by Duran Duran; “When Doves Cry” by Prince; “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles; “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)” by Beastie Boys; “Faith” by George Michael; “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitey Houston; “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie TylerJoin host Eric Rezsnyak and panelists Derek Mekita, John Higgins, and Kate Racculia as they discuss and debate 16 of the most iconic music videos that defined 80s airwaves.For the warm-up to this episode, in which we discuss additional 1980s videos that didn't make the bracket, become a Patreon supporter of the podcast today. Looking for more reasons to become a Patreon supporter? Check out our Top 10 Patreon Perks.EPISODE CREDITSHost: Eric RezsnyakPanelists: Derek Mekita, John Higgins, Kate RacculiaProducer: Bob ErlenbackEditor: Bob ErlenbackIntro & Outro Music: "Dance to My Tune" by Marc TorchSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We started off with the best of intentions today, honoring an oft-forgotten population while also working in a reference to the George Michael song "I Want Your Sex."  Then, we moved on to my careless whispers about self-image, obesity or the lack thereof, designer babies, and more.

Ecoutez L'oeil de Philippe Caverivière du 05 mai 2026.Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Kelly and Sharon kick things off with their 90's Playlist Picks of the Week before diving into Kelly's frustration over Mariah Carey being left out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2026. Sharon offers some perspective by highlighting other legendary artists who didn't make it in during their early years of eligibility.   They then reflect on music legends like Michael Jackson and Prince, discussing their very different creative styles and what it might be like if they were still making music today. The conversation also includes a look back at icons like Whitney Houston and George Michael and the lasting impact they continue to have. In a lighter moment, the ladies share their thoughts on potato chips, from favourite flavours to Kelly's all-or-nothing approach.   They also preview the upcoming American Music Awards, including this year's nominees, Taylor Swift's potential wins and Queen Latifah hosting the ceremony live from Las Vegas. Plus, Madonna teams up with Sabrina Carpenter as anticipation builds for "Confessions on a Dancefloor: Part II" and Mel C embraces her “Sporty Spice” era with new music on the way.   The episode wraps up with Kelly's Trivia and Sharon's 1999 Rewind. Thanks for listening to 90's NOW!

Play The Mighty Challenge, Monday April 27 edition to see if you have the answer!

Music fan Brian Koppen chats with music critic Aug Stone as they discuss Hall of Fame artists: Mamas & the Papas' “Creeque Alley” vs. The Ramones' “Come On Now”Def Leppard's “Photograph” vs. Michael Jackson's “Scream”Ruth Brown's “This Little Girl's Gone Rockin” vs. Sly & The Family Stone's “Everyday People”Dusty Springfield's “Stay Awhile” vs. Elton John's “Bennie and the Jets”George Michael's “Freedom 90” vs. Solomon Burke's “Cry To Me”Van Halen's “Unchained” vs. Talking Heads' “This Must be the Place (Naïve Melody)”Little Richard's “Hurry Sundown” vs. Kate Bush's “Hounds Of Love” Check out Aug Stone at instagram.com/augxstone/, augstone.com, https://twitter.com/augstone, augstone.substack.com, https://linktr.ee/augstone, and augstone.bsky.social! Also check out https://hbird.bandcamp.com/album/operation-fascination! Intro music is from Jussy's Down Open Roads.  Check out Jussy at https://soundcloud.com/user-214048265/sets/jussy-demos-1!Support the show

Music fan Brian Koppen chats with music critic Lindsay Patton as they discuss Hall of Fame artists: Tom Waits' “What's He Building” vs. Whitney Houston's “How Will I Know”Grandmaster Flash's “It's Nasty” vs. White Stripes' “Jolene” (Official Music Video)Beatles' “She Loves You”u vs. David Bowie's “Cat People”Blondie's “Rapture” vs. Guns n' Roses' “It's So Easy”O'Jays' “Back Stabbers” vs. George Michael's “Careless Whisper” They also discuss David Bowie's “Fashion” and Grandmaster Flash's “The Message.” Check out Lindsay Patton at https://notafitforourpublication.substack.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/pattonlindsay/! Intro music is from Jussy's Down Open Roads.  Check out Jussy at https://soundcloud.com/user-214048265/sets/jussy-demos-1!Support the show

Our special guest on this episode is Peyton here to talk about a dance revival. We have more from the worlds of Madonna and Kylie; plus we hear from George Michael; oh, and can you believe it?! It's the start of the Pride season 2026. The show complete with music is available at mixcould.com/thisisndebz Also search for us on Apple & Spotify Podcasts Catch up with the latest via @T hisisNDebz on Instagram & X (Twitter). If you'd like to get in touch with the show you can email us via thisisNDebz@gmail.com.

Taylor Swift just gave us one of her boldest tracks yet, and we're breaking down every layered lyric, shocking moment, and hidden meaning in “Father Figure.” From the jaw-dropping first listen to the deeper themes of power, control, and betrayal, we unpack how this track connects to Taylor's real-life masters battle, her fight for ownership, and the industry dynamics she's been calling out for years.  We dive into the George Michael interpolation, the symbolism behind “brown liquor,” and why this song feels like a cinematic mafia story meets music industry revenge. Plus, we explore Taylor's surprising inspiration from Succession, the dual perspectives between mentor and protégé, and the chilling moment where the power dynamic flips. Who is the “father figure” really about—and when does Taylor take control? In this episode, we cover: The meaning behind the lyric change in the explicit and clean version Taylor's smartest lyrical metaphors and industry commentary The real-life parallels to Scott Borchetta and her masters fight The moment the protégé becomes the power player This is Taylor Swift at her sharpest, boldest, and most unapologetic—and we're unpacking it all. This is a paid advertisement from BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at http://BetterHelp.com/TAYLORSWIFTFAN. Stay Connected with 13: A Taylor Swift Fan Podcast Join the conversation in our exclusive Lobster Lounge: station.page/13 Contact the Podcast Voicemail: (689) 214-1313 Email: the13podcast@gmail.com Instagram: @the13podcast TikTok: @the13podcast Twitter/X: @the13TSpodcast YouTube: 13: A Taylor Swift Fan Podcast Follow the Hosts Ana – @anaszabo13 Lacey – @laceygee13 Amy – @amysnichols Nick – @heynickadams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A new week means new questions! Hope you have fun with these!Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, and Cindy Crawford were all featured in a music video for which George Michael song?What is the first name of Baby, Jennifer Gray's character in Dirty Dancing?Despite having over 20 years' worth of previous work, what novel did Leo Tolstoy say was "the first I have written"?What film, adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name, was the first feature-length film shown on a commercial airline?Thought to aid in darkness and for pouncing, foxes have whiskers not only on their faces, but where?What is the geographical term for a large hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcanic eruption?Glaciers cover roughly 10% of Earth's land surface, with nearly 90% found in the polar regions of Antarctica and Greenland. Outside the polar regions,Which Russian leader resigned on Dec. 31st, 1999?In a standard game of Gin Rummy, how many cards are each player dealt to begin the game?What texting staple is named after the Japanese words for "picture" and "character"?Who was the Greek god of sculpture?What two word hyphenated term has been used since the 1960s to describe inexpensive footwear consisting of a flat sole held loosely on the foot by a Y-shaped strap?Within 5 years, when was the first child born south of the 60th parallel south and the first to be born on the Antarctic mainland?Who sang "I'm a little bit country and I'm a little bit rock and roll" on their television variety show?Bjorn Borg won how many consecutive Wimbeldon singles titles?The type of beading from Ghana known as Aggry features beads made of what material?MusicHot Swing, Fast Talkin, Bass Walker, Dances and Dames, Ambush by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Don't forget to follow us on social media:Patreon – patreon.com/quizbang – Please consider supporting us on Patreon. Check out our fun extras for patrons and help us keep this podcast going. We appreciate any level of support!Website – quizbangpod.com Check out our website, it will have all the links for social media that you need and while you're there, why not go to the contact us page and submit a question!Facebook – @quizbangpodcast – we post episode links and silly lego pictures to go with our trivia questions. Enjoy the silly picture and give your best guess, we will respond to your answer the next day to give everyone a chance to guess.Instagram – Quiz Quiz Bang Bang (quizquizbangbang), we post silly lego pictures to go with our trivia questions. Enjoy the silly picture and give your best guess, we will respond to your answer the next day to give everyone a chance to guess.Twitter – @quizbangpod We want to start a fun community for our fellow trivia lovers. If you hear/think of a fun or challenging trivia question, post it to our twitter feed and we will repost it so everyone can take a stab it. Come for the trivia – stay for the trivia.Ko-Fi – ko-fi.com/quizbangpod – Keep that sweet caffeine running through our body with a Ko-Fi, power us through a late night of fact checking and editing!Quiz, trivia, games, pub+trivia, pub+quiz, competition, education, comedy

This week on The Metro, Rev. Jeff Ivins brings you some soft rock hits from the 1980s with the following artists: Styx, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Kim Carnes, The Police, Elton John, Berlin, Spandau Ballet, Olivia Newton-John, George Michael, Foreigner, Paul Young, and ending with U2.

In a Record Store Day exclusive, XTC are releasing Live Boots, a double-LP recording of their gig at Emerald City, New Jersey, on 17 April 1981 – exactly 45 years ago.Sitting behind the sound desk for that gig was Gary Bradshaw, this month's guest on What Do You Call That Noise? The XTC Podcast. In a revealing interview, Gary talks about graduating from guitar tech to sound engineer and onwards to some of the biggest bands in the world, including Alison Moyet, George Michael, Pink Floyd, ELO and Take That.He also talks about jumping aboard the Police's tour bus, the shock of seeing Andy Partridge collapse on stage and why he still rates XTC as among the finest bands there ever was.Record Store Day, 18 April 2026Music from Allan Knox and The Kettle ZoneWhat Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book available from www.xtclimelight.com  If you've enjoyed What Do You Call That Noise? The XTC Podcast, please show your support at https://www.patreon.com/markfisher Thanks to the Pink Things, Humble Daisies and Knights in Shining Karma who've done the same. What Do You Call That Noise? The XTC Podcast is sponsored by the online record shop, Burning Shed, which is the only place to get official XTC merchandise. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Matt Johnson's life story has been mapped out as one long Q&A conversation from meetings with old friend, fan and BFI director Jason Wood. ‘Cognitive Dissident' traces his trajectory from the East End to Soho to the beloved albums he made with a series of super-groups and his 2021 comeback. He looks back here at … … his earliest musical memories – Donovan, the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown … the old East End and the Two Puddings pub run by his parents, “full of ghosts”, Bobby Moore, Francis Bacon and the Krays … his Uncle Kenny promoting the Who, the Kinks and Jerry Lee Lewis … “Get yourself on a sunbed!” and other advice from George Michael ... what he learnt at De Wolfe Music, aged 15, in the red-light Soho of the late ‘70s … legendary manager Stevo signing the band's CBS contract at midnight in Trafalgar Square … “cigarettes, coffee, warm analogue equipment”: the Proustian scent of old studios … his NME ad recruiting The The members via the Residents, the Velvet Underground, Syd Barrett and Throbbing Gristle … being part of “the Long Mack Brigade” with Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, Wire and the Gang of Four … Leonard Cohen's premonition of the internet … the Albert Hall: “like a tennis player playing Wimbledon” … the genius of Hank Williams … and his 2018 comeback, “like reunion of old army buddies” Order ‘Cognitive Dissident' here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/cognitive-dissident?_pos=1&_psq=cognitive+dissi&_ss=e&_v=1.0Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matt Johnson's life story has been mapped out as one long Q&A conversation from meetings with old friend, fan and BFI director Jason Wood. ‘Cognitive Dissident' traces his trajectory from the East End to Soho to the beloved albums he made with a series of super-groups and his 2021 comeback. He looks back here at … … his earliest musical memories – Donovan, the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown … the old East End and the Two Puddings pub run by his parents, “full of ghosts”, Bobby Moore, Francis Bacon and the Krays … his Uncle Kenny promoting the Who, the Kinks and Jerry Lee Lewis … “Get yourself on a sunbed!” and other advice from George Michael ... what he learnt at De Wolfe Music, aged 15, in the red-light Soho of the late ‘70s … legendary manager Stevo signing the band's CBS contract at midnight in Trafalgar Square … “cigarettes, coffee, warm analogue equipment”: the Proustian scent of old studios … his NME ad recruiting The The members via the Residents, the Velvet Underground, Syd Barrett and Throbbing Gristle … being part of “the Long Mack Brigade” with Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, Wire and the Gang of Four … Leonard Cohen's premonition of the internet … the Albert Hall: “like a tennis player playing Wimbledon” … the genius of Hank Williams … and his 2018 comeback, “like reunion of old army buddies” Order ‘Cognitive Dissident' here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/cognitive-dissident?_pos=1&_psq=cognitive+dissi&_ss=e&_v=1.0Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matt Johnson's life story has been mapped out as one long Q&A conversation from meetings with old friend, fan and BFI director Jason Wood. ‘Cognitive Dissident' traces his trajectory from the East End to Soho to the beloved albums he made with a series of super-groups and his 2021 comeback. He looks back here at … … his earliest musical memories – Donovan, the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown … the old East End and the Two Puddings pub run by his parents, “full of ghosts”, Bobby Moore, Francis Bacon and the Krays … his Uncle Kenny promoting the Who, the Kinks and Jerry Lee Lewis … “Get yourself on a sunbed!” and other advice from George Michael ... what he learnt at De Wolfe Music, aged 15, in the red-light Soho of the late ‘70s … legendary manager Stevo signing the band's CBS contract at midnight in Trafalgar Square … “cigarettes, coffee, warm analogue equipment”: the Proustian scent of old studios … his NME ad recruiting The The members via the Residents, the Velvet Underground, Syd Barrett and Throbbing Gristle … being part of “the Long Mack Brigade” with Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, Wire and the Gang of Four … Leonard Cohen's premonition of the internet … the Albert Hall: “like a tennis player playing Wimbledon” … the genius of Hank Williams … and his 2018 comeback, “like reunion of old army buddies” Order ‘Cognitive Dissident' here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/cognitive-dissident?_pos=1&_psq=cognitive+dissi&_ss=e&_v=1.0Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emmanuel has a new show out, Big Lives, and we're excited to share a preview of it! Alongside acclaimed journalist Kai Wright, Emmanuel digs into the BBC archive to examine the sensational stories, messy feelings, and enlightening questions surrounding the icons who have shaped our culture. From musical trailblazers like David Bowie, Amy Winehouse and Tina Turner to stars of the screen like Richard Pryor, Meg Ryan and Jane Fonda, Emmanuel and Kai see these icons in a new light and learn how each legend set the stage for our contemporary cultural landscape. In this preview, they unspool the emotional arc behind George Michael, from teen heartthrob to grieving partner to gay icon. If you like what you hear, find Big Lives wherever you get podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the father of communism Karl Marx to pop icon George Michael, there are plenty of celebrated figures to pay your respects to here, including some well-known Australians. 

A conversation about George Michaels getting arrested leads to a sexy discovery. Christine found a website that maps all the gay meet-up spots in the area. The guys are surprised to learn that they are everywhere. The obvious places are listed such as rest stops and bars but office buildings, fitness centers, and hotels are destinations in plain site. Jay plans to send Jacob to one such joint in his neighborhood so he can see what the fuss is all about. *To hear the full show to go www.siriusxm.com/bonfire to learn more! FOLLOW THE CREW ON SOCIAL MEDIA: @thebonfiresxm @louisjohnson @christinemevans @bigjayoakerson @robertkellylive @louwitzkee @jjbwolf Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of The Bonfire ad-free and a whole week early.  Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kelly and Sharon kick things off by appreciating the simple luxury of electricity after a major wind storm left Kelly without power for nearly 28 hours. Needless to say, Kelly's a little tired, slightly delusional and still warming up, which makes for a fun start to the show!   They then dive into their 90's Playlist Pick of the Week with Kelly throwing it back to Kris Kross while Sharon highlights a standout track from George Michael. They also bring you an update on the long-awaited solo album from R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, including what's been causing the delay and what fans can expect.   Brandy is set to release her new memoir "Phases" on March 31st and early reviews are already generating strong buzz. Kelly and Sharon discuss the book's focus on both the highs and lows of her life and why her story resonates with fans around the world. They also react to Brandy's recent boxing training videos, which sparks a hilarious conversation about their own experiences recovering from broken ribs. Plus, a shoutout to Metallica's James Hetfield, who recently got engaged in a unique and memorable way - involving snorkels!   The episode wraps up with Kelly's Trivia and Sharon's 1990 Rewind, taking you back to the start of the decade. Thanks for listening to 90's NOW!

Swing it, shake it, move it, make it!…is exactly what the nation was doing in 1997. Yes, that's right, Channel 5 was here and fiddling with that aerial to try and get a reception to see The Jack Docherty Show was what we were all up to. Robbie Williams even changed the lyrics to his breakout hit ‘Old Before I Die' in honour of this revolutionary fifth channel twiddlesome pastime. But of course this was but a fuzzy, interference-driven distraction compared to what was going on in, what the kids were still calling, ‘The Charts'. And OF COURSE the aforementioned lyrics were from the FOURTH NO1 in a row from those Spice Girls (AND it was a double A-Side, Mama!). That's right we were gripped by Geri's Brit Awards conquering Union Jack dress (for the correct reasons, flag waving nonces), but the girls were proving to be more popular than Swampy's tenancy under the A30 (another one for there kids) with En Vogue, Eternal, Ultra Naté, Gwen Stefani and a host of others reigning supreme in the hit parade. And there was so much more. As we see as we take out our CDs (possibly trapped in a broken 90s case) from summer 97's NOW 37!!Pop was back, Back, BACKSTREET! (Really?!? - Ed)Everyone's favourite sunshine trio Hanson were MMMBop-ping (!), Backstreet Boys were taking their shirts off (!!) No Mercy were taking a break from their restaurant shifts (possibly) and George Michael was, as always, just being incredible.However, HOWEVER…Over on CD2, there was - an identity. Britpop was either clinging on by its bitten and possibly chipped fingernails, recycling some flat champagne from their first album, staring at the sun (checks notes, avoids further U2 puns) or - more interestingly - evolving. And, boy, there were quite the classic run of tracks as The Verve, Supergrass, blur, The Seahorses and Radiohead provided some iconic memories. No Gallagher brothers on NOW37? No fear!(Actually, I think you'll find they were gearing up for the autumn release of Be Here Now, but the less said etc…)And joining me on this golden revisit of the pop landscape of NOW37 and providing more memories than a hungover Labour MP on the 2nd of May is writer, comic and all round 90s pop kid Marc Burrows.As his (quite wonderful) Britpop stand up show tours the nation, discover which compilation started Marc's musical journey, marvel at how a power chord changed his life, ruminate at what ‘indie through the sausage machine' sounds like, consider why we're picturing The Outhere Brothers and The Vengaboys on the A52 somewhere near Mablethorpe, revel in the NME review of Paranoid Android (it's worth waiting for) and nod your head knowingly as we explore why the Britpop party ending maybe wasn't such a bad thing.No, turn the aerial the other way - I think I can start to see something that may be Family Affairs. Or is it Milkshake Monkey..? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Í þættinum um Wham!/George Michael bærðust vangaveltur um það hvort að eina sólóplata hins helmings dúettsins, Andrew Ridgeley (Son of Albert, 1990), væri mögulega það besta sem hafi komið frá Wham! meðlimi í sólóefnum. Ákveðið var, þá og þar, að gera rannsókn á málinu og hún skilaði sér í þessum þætti. Varúð: Farið inn á eigin ábyrgð.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor knows how to fill a dancefloor. Across 8 albums, and a double indemnity hit in "Murder on the Dancefloor", she's made a name for herself as a pop-disco queen. When she's not on stage or in a recording studio, Sophie is throwing a kitchen disco, hosting her Spinning Plates podcast, and publishing books.Sophie's latest album Perimenopop takes stock of where she is today. The lessons learned, the way love evolves, and the place she finds herself. It's through-line is liberation, so I asked her to choose her favourite songs of freedom.Sophie Ellis-Bextor's song choices:Sylvester — 'You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)'Madonna — 'Express Yourself'George Michael — 'Freedom 90'Sigrid — 'Mine Right Now'Prince & the Revolution — 'Let's Go Crazy'00:34 Sophie Ellis-Bextor's Musical Journey02:15 Making new music 25 years after debut04:55 Disco escapism and the queer community support09:23 Sylvester – 'You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)'06:23 Indie rock beginnings and Groovejet 15:40 Obsession with Madonna and pleasure13:39 Madonna – 'Express Yourself'19:08 Is it better for women in pop music now?22:37 Loving completely and opening for George Michael 26:32 George Michael – 'Freedom! '90'27:18 Writing new album and mid life29:09 Sigrid – 'Mine Right Now'29:50 Going through Murder on the Dancefloor resurgence 34:06 The drama of Prince 35:25 Prince & the Revolution – 'Let's Go Crazy'38:11 Conclusion, Susan Rogers Prince story + next week's guest!Show NotesCheck out the Take 5 episode with Prince's sound engineer Susan Rogers!

Cindy Pearlman Gaber, senior writer for the New York Times and entertainment columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, joins Bob Sirott to talk about new tour footage and songs from George Michael and an upcoming album from Charlie Puth. She also shares details about a movie that stars Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas as well […]

Timothée Chalamet vs Opera and Ballet, Dak Prescott breakup theories, Liza Minnelli is out of it, Richie Sambora needs help, Jack White attack by Swifties, Alexander brothers guilty of rape, and Teen Takeovers. Rock & Brews is getting ready to open up in Royal Oak. Check out their upcoming concerts. Nino Brown Sports breaks down the separation of Dak Prescott and Sarah Jane Ramos. The NY Post has their own theory. Timothée Chalamet hates ballet and opera. He correctly calls them dying arts. Some people are cracking down on him, but Drew believes it's an Oscar smear campaign. Marc really wants the rest of the show to watch War Machine. Liza Minnelli looks great on her book tour. Totally lucid too. Music: Jack White popped off on the Taylor Swift method. Gene Simmons is sick and tired of celebrities lecturing the public. Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys suffered a stroke. Long-lost George Michael film and album are set to be released. “Daryl Hall needs to retire.” We check out Richie Sambora on The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan. The girl who shot up Rihanna's house is crazy. Rihanna has a five-head. Clavicular (Braden Peters) is the king of looksmaxxing. Gen Z men want submissive women. The creepy Alexander brothers have been found GUILTY of sex trafficking and rape. Criss Angel is being sued by an audience member who just wanted to text his mom. The Red Wings' Dylan Larkin is hurt. Love Story remains a must-watch. JFK Jr. once saved Daryl Hannah from Jackson Browne… and then nailed her. ‘Teen Takeovers' are running amok. Murderer Chris Watts was over the moon for Nichol Kessinger and her smoking hot body. Drew is upset with the loss of the penny and the practice of 'rounding-up'. Britney Spears' mugshot is too important for you to see. She is still fuming at her father. NYC IEDs: NYPD Chief Aaron Edwards has entered meme-level fame. The perpetrators are incredibly young. Jeffrey Epstein's ranch is FINALLY searched. Slow down. Jim's Picks will be bright tomorrow. Merch is still available. Buy it before it's gone. If you'd like to help support the show… consider subscribing to our YouTube Channel, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (Drew Lane, Marc Fellhauer, Trudi Daniels, Jim Bentley and BranDon)

Is King Charles a SECRET MUSLIM? Royal Insider EXPOSES All Go to https://andrewgoldheretics.com  to get exclusive content and the bonus questions. Make sure to follow  @Laurentheinsider here! www.youtube.com/@Laurentheinsider  SPONSORS: Organise your life: https://akiflow.pro/Heretics  Earn up to 4 per cent on gold, paid in gold: https://www.monetary-metals.com/heretics/  Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at https://mintmobile.com/heretics  Lauren the Insider, a former PR guru and goddaughter of George Michael, joins us to expose the darkest secrets of the British establishment. In this explosive interview, she reveals what she claims is the hidden truth about the Royal Family, the media, and the political elite. Has King Charles secretly converted to Islam? Lauren presents shocking evidence of his deep ties to Islamic centers, his allergy to the word "Christian," and how he may have sold out the country for a globalist agenda. She details a shocking incident involving £1 MILLION in cash being delivered to the Palace in a Fortnum & Mason bag from Qatari royals. We also dive into the media's complicity in burying major scandals. Learn how Keir Starmer allegedly uses "D-Notices" to suppress stories about the migrant crisis, and why Meghan Markle's name appearing in the Epstein flight logs was completely ignored by the mainstream press. Lauren, who has worked with the biggest names in media, explains the toxic, co-dependent relationship between the Palace and the press, and how they collude to control the narrative. This is a conversation the establishment does NOT want you to hear.  #KingCharles #RoyalFamily #LaurenTheInsider #Epstein #Heretics #Podcast Join the 30k heretics on my mailing list: https://andrewgoldheretics.com  Check out my new documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@andrewgoldinvestigates  Andrew on X: https://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok   Insta: https://www.instagram.com/andrewgold_ok Heretics YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@andrewgoldheretics Chapters: 0:00 - King Charles a Muslim Intro 01:35 - The Insider Who Knows All Their Secrets 03:47 - How The Media Uses "Mental Health" To Bury Scandals 06:50 - The D-Notice: How The Government Censors The News 09:55 - How The Establishment Silences Whistleblowers 13:58 - Ghislaine Maxwell's Friends STILL Edit UK Newspapers 16:47 - The Royals' Toxic Relationship With The Media 21:16 - Meghan Markle NAMED In Epstein Docs & Media Stayed Silent 23:23 - Prince Harry's Secret Deal With Keir Starmer 25:47 - Is King Charles A SECRET MUSLIM? The Shocking Evidence 29:19 - £1 MILLION in CASH Delivered to the Palace in a Fortnum & Mason Bag 30:58 - King Charles "Sold Out" Christians For A Globalist Agenda 33:55 - The Truth About The Tommy Robinson Rallies 36:01 - Why Atheists Are Now Defending Christianity 41:17 - The Dark Side of Celebrity PR: Weaponized Money & Power 45:51 - My Godfather George Michael: Life Inside the Elite Bubble 49:22 - The Phone Hacking Scandal Is BIGGER Than You Think 52:04 - Keir Starmer Is Using D-Notices To Hide The Migrant Crisis 55:08 - The Media's Demonization of Tommy Robinson 59:16 - Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate & Controlled Opposition Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pop music in 1990 was a wild experience. New queens of pop like Paula Abdul, Taylor Dayne, and Mariah Carey stood shoulder pad to bustier with 80s ladies Madonna and Janet Jackson. Hip-hop broke into the mainstream in a big way with M.C. Hammer and Vanilla Ice. The last gasps of hair metal still clung to the airwaves like so much AquaNet residue. Club music somehow how found its way onto Top 40 radio stations. And the totally unsubtle vocal stylings of Michael Bolton, Wilson Phillips, and others gave sad white people the confidence they needed to rock high-waisted jeans and pleated khakis. What a time to be alive! So join us as the Great Pop Culture Debate goes back to the beginning of the end of the 20th Century as we name the Best Song of 1990.Songs discussed: “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice; “There She Goes” by The La's; “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode; “Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles; “Groove is in the Heart” by Deee-Lite; “I'm Your Baby Tonight” by Whitney Houston; “We Didn't Start the Fire” by Billy Joel; “Vogue” by Madonna; “U Can't Touch This” by MC Hammer; “Poison” by Bell Biv Devoe; “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinead O'Connor; “Freedom ‘90” by George Michael; “Love Shack” by The B-52s; “Rhythm Nation” by Janet Jackson; “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic; “Hold On” by Wilson PhillipsJoin host Eric Rezsnyak, Derek Mekita, Jim Czadzeck, and Jonny Minogue as they discuss and debate 16 of the most iconic songs from the year of the final decade of the 20th Century.For the warm-up to this episode, in which we discuss additional 1990 songs that didn't make the bracket, become a Patreon supporter of the podcast today. EPISODE CREDITSHost: Eric RezsnyakPanelists: Derek Mekita, Jim Czadzeck, Jonny MinogueProducer: Bob ErlenbackEditor: Bob ErlenbackIntro/Outro Song: "Dance to My Tune" by Marc Torch#1990 #90s #90smusic #songsof1990 #vanillaice #mchammer #wilsonphillips #janetjackson #madonna #billyjoel #depechemode #whitneyhouston #dancemusic #pumpupthejam #technotronic #georgemichael #bellbivdevoe #b52s #loveshack #popmusicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How can trauma become a catalyst for creative transformation? What lessons can indie authors learn from the music industry's turbulent journey through technological disruption? With Jack Williamson. In the intro, Why recipes for publishing success don't work and what to do instead [Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast]; Why your book isn't selling: metadata [Novel Marketing Podcast]; Creating a successful author business [Fantasy Writers Toolshed Podcast]; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Jack Williamson is a psychotherapist, coach, and bestselling author who spent nearly two decades as a music industry executive. He's the founder of Music & You, his latest nonfiction book is Maybe You're The Problem, and he also writes romance under A.B. Jackson. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Finding post-traumatic growth and meaning after bereavement, and using tragedy as a catalyst for creative transformation Why your superpower can also be your Achilles heel, and how indie authors can overcome shiny object syndrome Three key lessons from the music industry: embracing change, thinking creatively about marketing, and managing pressure for better creativity The A, B, C technique for PR interviews and why marketing is storytelling through different mediums How to deal with judgment and shame around AI in the author community by understanding where people sit on the opinion-belief-conviction continuum Three AI developments coming from music to publishing: training clauses in contracts, one-click genre adaptation, and licensed AI-generated video adaptations You can find Jack at JackWilliamson.co.uk and his fiction work at ABJackson.com. Transcript of the interview with Jack Williamson Jo: Jack Williamson is a psychotherapist, coach, and bestselling author who spent nearly two decades as a music industry executive. He's the founder of Music & You, his latest nonfiction book is Maybe You're The Problem, and he also writes romance under A.B. Jackson. Welcome to the show. Jack: Thank you so much for having me, Jo. It's a real honour to be on your podcast after listening all of these years. Jo: I'm excited to talk to you. We have a lot to get into, but first up— Tell us a bit more about you and why get into writing books after years of working in music. Jack: I began my career at the turn of the millennium, basically, and I worked for George Michael and Mariah Carey's publicist, which I'm sure you can imagine was quite the introduction to the corporate world. From there I went on to do domestic and international marketing for a load of massive artists at Universal, so the equivalent of the top five publishers in the publishing world that we all work in. Then from there I had a bit of a challenge. In December 2015, I lost my brother, unfortunately to suicide. For any listener or any person that's gone through a traumatic event, it can really make you reassess everything, make you question life, make you question your purpose. When I went through that, I was thinking, well, what do I want to do? What do I want out of life? So I went on this journey for practically the next ten years. I retrained to be a psychotherapist. I created a bucket list—a list of all the things that I thought maybe my brother would've wanted to do but didn't do. One of the things was scatter his ashes at the Seven Wonders of the world. Then one of the items on my bucket list was to write a book. The pandemic hit. It was a challenge for all of us, as you've spoken about so much on this wonderful podcast. I thought, well, why not? Why not write this book that I've wanted to write? I didn't know when I was going to do it because I was always so busy, and then the pandemic happened and so I wrote a book. From there, listening to your wonderful podcast, I've learned so much and been to so many conferences and learned along the way. So now I've written five books and released three. Jo: That's fantastic. I mean, regular listeners to the show know that I talk about death and grief and all of this kind of thing, and it's interesting that you took your brother's ashes to the Seven Wonders of the world. Death can obviously be a very bad, negative thing for those left behind, but it seems like you were able to reframe your brother's experience and turn that into something more positive for your life rather than spiralling into something bad. So if people listening are feeling like something happens, whether it's that or other things— How can we reframe these seemingly life-ending situations in a more positive way? Jack: It is very hard and there's no one way to do it. I think as you always say, I never want to tell people what to do or what to think. I want to show them how to think and how they can approach things differently or from a different perspective. I can only speak from my journey, but we call it in therapeutic language, post-traumatic growth. It is, how do you define it so it doesn't define you? Because often when you have a bereavement of a loved one, a family member, it can be very traumatic, but how can you take meaning and find meaning in it? There's a beautiful book called Man's Search for Meaning, and the name of the author escapes me right now, but he says— Jo: Viktor Frankl. Jack: Yes. Everyone quotes it as one of their favourite books, and one of my favourite lines is, “Man can take everything away from you, apart from the ability to choose one thought over the other.” I think it's so true because we can make that choice to choose what to think. So in those moments when we are feeling bad, when we're feeling down, we want to honour our feelings, but we don't necessarily want to become them. We want to process that, work through, get the support system that we need. But again, try to find meaning, try to find purpose, try to understand what is going on, and then pay it forward. Irrespective of your belief system, we all yearn for purpose. We all yearn for being connected to something bigger than ourselves. If we can find that through bereavement maybe, or through a traumatic incident, then hopefully we can come through the other side and have that post-traumatic growth. Jo: I love that phrase, post-traumatic growth. That's so good. Obviously people think about post-traumatic anything as like PTSD—people immediately think a sort of stress disorder, like it's something that makes things even worse. I like that you reframed it in that way. Obviously I think the other thing is you took specific action. You didn't just think about it. You travelled, you retrained, you wrote books. So I think also it's not just thinking. In fact, thinking about things can sometimes make it worse if you think for too long, whereas taking an action I think can be very strong as well. Jack: Ultimately we are human beings as opposed to human doings, but actually being a human doing from time to time can be really helpful. Actually taking steps forward, doing things differently, using it as a platform to move forward and to do things that maybe you didn't before. When you are confronted with death, it can actually make you question your own mortality and actually question, am I just coasting along? Am I stuck in a rut? Could I be doing something differently? One of the things that bereavement, does is it holds a mirror up to ourselves and it makes us question, well, what do we want from our life? Are we here to procreate? Are we here to make a difference? Some of us can't procreate, or some of us choose not to procreate, but we can all make a difference. And it's, how do we do that? Where do we do that? When do we do that? Jo: That's interesting. I was thinking today about service and gratitude. I'm doing this Master's and I was reading some theology stuff today, and service and gratitude, I think if you are within a religious tradition, are a normal part of that kind of religious life. Whether it's service to God and gratitude to God, or service and gratitude to others. I was thinking that these two things, service and gratitude, can actually really help reframe things as well. Who can we serve? As authors, we're serving our readers and our community. What can we be grateful about? That's often our readers and our community as well. So I don't know, that helped me today—thinking about how we can reframe things, especially in the world we're in now where there's a lot of anger and grief and all kinds of things. Jack: That's what we've got to look at. We are here to serve. Again, that can take different shapes, different forms. Some of us work in the service industry. I provide a service as a psychotherapist, you serve your listeners with knowledge and information that you gather and dispense through the research you do or the guests you have on. We serve readers of the different genres that we write in. It's what ways can we serve, how can we serve? Again, I think we all, if we can and when we can, should pay it forward. Someone said this to me once in the music industry: be careful who you meet on the way up and how you treat them on the way up, because invariably you'll meet them on the way down. So if you can pay forward that kindness, if you can be kind, considerate, and treat people how you want to be treated, that is going to pay dividends in the long run. It may not come off straight away, but invariably it will come back to you in some way, shape, or form in a different way. Jo: I've often talked about social karma and karma in the Hindu sense—the things that you do come back to you in some other form. Possibly in another life, which I don't believe. In terms of, I guess, you didn't know what was going to happen to your brother, and so you make the most of the life that we have at the moment because things change and you just don't know how things are going to change. You talk about this in your book, Maybe You're The Problem, which is quite a confronting title. So just talk about your book, Maybe You're The Problem, and why you wrote that. Put it into context with the author community and why that might be useful. Jack: Thank you for flagging my book. I intentionally crossed out “maybe” on the merchandise I did as well, because in essence, we are our own problem. We can get in the way, and it's what happened to us when we grew up wasn't our fault, but what we do with it is our responsibility. We may have grown up in a certain period or a climate. We didn't necessarily choose to do that, but what we do with that as a result is up to us. So we can stay in our victimhood and we can blame our parents, or we can blame the generation we are in, or we can blame the city, the location—however, that is relinquishing your power. That is staying in a victim mindset rather than a survivor or a thriver mindset. So it's about how can we look at the different areas in our life. Whether that is conflict, whether that is imposter syndrome, whether that is the generation we're born into. We try to understand how that has shaped us and how we may be getting in our own way to stop us from growing, to stop us from expanding, and to see where our blind spots are, our limitations are, and how that may impact us. There's so much going on in the moment in the world, whether that is in the digital realm, whether that is in the geo-climate that we're in at the moment. Again, that's going to bring up a lot for us. How can we find solutions to those problems for us so that we continue to move forward rather than be restricted and hindered by them? Jo: Alright. Well let's get into some more specifics. You have been in the author community now for a while. You go to conferences and you are in the podcast community and all this kind of thing. What specific issues have you seen in the author community? Maybe around some of the things you've mentioned, or other things? How might we be able to deal with those? Jack: With authors, I think it is such a wonderful and unique industry that I have an honour and privilege of being a part of now. One of the main things I've learned is just how creative people are. Coming from a creative industry like the music industry, there is a lot of neurodivergence in the creative industries and in the author community. Whether that is autism, whether that is ADHD—that is a real asset to have as a superpower, but it can be an Achilles heel. So it's understanding—and I know that there is an overexposure of people labelling themselves as ADHD—but on the flip side to that, it's how can we look at what's going on for us? For ADHD, for example, there's a thing called shiny object syndrome. You've talked about this in the past, Joanna, where it's like a new thing comes along, be it TikTok, be it Substack, be it bespoke books, be it Shopify, et cetera. We can rush and quickly be like, “oh, let me do this, let me do that,” before we actually take the time to realise, is this right for me? Does this fit my author business? Does this fit where I'm at in my author journey? I think sometimes as authors, we need to not cave in to that shiny object syndrome and take a step back and think to ourselves, how does this serve me? How does this serve my career? How does this work for me if I'm looking at this as a career? If you're looking at it as a hobby, obviously it's a different lens to look through, but that's something that I would often make sure that we look at. One of the other things that really comes up is that in order for any of us to address our fears and anxieties, we need to make sure that we feel psychologically safe and to put ourselves in spaces and places where we feel seen, heard, and understood, which can help address some of the issues that I've just mentioned. Being in that emotionally regulated state when we are with someone we know and trust—so taking someone to a conference, taking someone to a space or a place where you feel that you can be seen, heard, and understood—can help us and allow us to embrace things that we perceive to be scary. That may be finding an author group, finding an online space where you can actually air and share your thoughts, your feelings, where you don't feel that you are being judged. Often it can be quite a judgmental space and place in the online world. So it's just finding your tribe and finding places where you can actually lean into that. So there'd be two things. Jo: I like the idea of the superpower and the Achilles heel because I also feel this when we are writing fiction. Our characters have strengths, but your fatal flaw is often related to your strength. Jack: Yes. Jo: For example, I know I am independent. One of the reasons I'm an independent author is because I'm super independent. But one of my greatest fears is being dependent. So I do lots of things to avoid being dependent on other people, which can lead me to almost damage myself by not asking for help or by trying to make sure that I control everything so I never have to ask anyone else to do something. I'm coming to terms with this as I get older. I feel like this is something we start to hit—I mean, as a woman after menopause—is this feeling of I might have to be dependent on people when I'm older. It's so interesting thinking about this and thinking— My independence is my strength. How can it also be my weakness? So what do you think about that? You're going to psychotherapist me now. Jack: I definitely won't, but it's interesting. Just talking about that, we all have wounds and we all have the shadow, as you've even written about in one of your books. And it's how that can come from a childhood wound where it's like we seek help and it's not given to us. So we create a belief system where I have to do everything myself because no one will help me. Or we may have rejection sensitivity, so we reject ourselves before others can reject us. So it's actually about trying, where we can, to honour our truths, honour that we may want to be independent, for example, but then realising that success leaves clues. I always say that if you are independent—and I definitely align a hundred percent with you, Joanna—I've had to work really hard myself in personal therapy and in business and life to realise that no human is an island and we can't all do this on our own. Yes, it's amazing with the AI agents now that can help us in a business capacity, but having those relationships that we can tap into—like you mentioned all of the people that you tap into—it's so important to have those. I always say that it's important to have three mentors: one person that's ahead of you (for me, that would be Katie Cross because she's someone that I find is an amazing author and we speak at least once a month); people that are at the same level as you that you can go on the journey together with (and I have an author group for that); and then someone that is perceived to be behind you or in a younger generation than you, because you can learn as much from them as they can learn from you. If you can actually tap into those people whilst honouring your independence, then it feels like you can still go on your own journey, but you can tap in and tap out as and when needed. Sacha Black will give you amazing insights, other people like Honor will give you amazing insights, but you can also provide that for them. So there's that safety of being able to do it on your own. But on the flip side, you still have those people that you can tap into as and when necessary as a sounding board, as information on how they were successful, and go from there. Jo: No, I like that. If you're new to the show, Sacha Black and Honor Raconteur have been on the show and they are indeed some of my best friends. So I appreciate that. I really like the idea of the three mentor idea. I just want to add to that because I do think people misunderstand the word mentor sometimes. You mentioned you speak to Katie Cross, but I've found that a lot of the mentors that I've had who are ahead of me have often been books. We mentioned the Viktor Frankl book, and if people don't know, he was Jewish and in the concentration camps and survived that. So it's a real survivor story. But to me, books have been mostly my mentors in terms of people who are ahead of me. We don't always need to speak to or be friends with our mentors. I think that's important too, right? Because I just get emails a lot that say, “Will you be my mentor?” And I don't think that's the point. Jack: Oh, I a hundred percent agree with you. If you don't have access to those mentors—like Oprah Winfrey is one of the people that I perceive as a mentor—I listen to podcasts, I read her books, I watch interviews. There is a way to absorb and acquire that information, and it doesn't have to be a direct relationship with them. It is someone that you can gain the knowledge and wisdom that they've imparted in whatever form you may consume it. Which is why I think it is important to have those three levels: that one that is above you that may be out of reach in terms of a human connection, but you can still access; then the people at the same level as you that you can have those relationships and grow with; and again, that one behind that you can help pave the way for them, but also learn from them as well. So a hundred percent agree that that mentor that you are looking for that may be ahead of you doesn't necessarily need to be someone that is in a real-world relationship. Jo: So let's just circle back to your music industry experience. You mentioned being on the sort of marketing team for some really big names in music, and I mean, it's kind of a sexy job really. It just sounds pretty cool, but of course the music industry has just as many challenges as publishing. What did you learn from working in the music industry that you think might be particularly useful for authors? Jack: The perception of reality was definitely a lot different. It does look sexy and glamorous, but the reality is similar to going to conferences. It's pretty much flight, hotel, and dark rooms with terrible air conditioning that you spend a lot of time in. So sorry to burst the illusion. But I mean, it does have its moments as well. There is so much I've learned over the years and there's probably three things that stand out the most. The first one was I entered the industry right at the height of the music industry. In 2000, 2001. That was when Napster really exploded and it decimated the music industry. It wiped half the value in the space of four years. Then the music industry was trying to shut it down, throwing legal, throwing everything at it, but it was like whack-a-mole. As soon as one went down such as Napster, ten others popped up like Kazaa. So you saw that the old guard wasn't willing to embrace change. They weren't willing to adapt. They assumed that people wanted the formats of CDs, vinyls, cassettes, and they were wrong. Yes, people wanted music, but they actually wanted the music. They didn't care about the format, they just wanted the access. So that was one of the really interesting things that I learned, because I was like, you have to embrace change. You can't ignore it. You can't push it away, push it aside, because it's coming whether you like it or not. I think thankfully the music industry has learned as AI's coming, because now you have to embrace it. There's a lot of legal issues that have been going on at the moment with rights, which you've covered about the Anthropic case and so on. It's such a challenge, and I just think that's the first one. The second one I learned was back in 2018. There was an artist I worked on called Freya Ridings. At that time I was working at an independent record label rather than one of the big three major record labels. She had great songs and we were up against one of the biggest periods of the year and trying to make noise. At the time, Love Island was the biggest TV show on, and everyone wanted to be on it in terms of getting their music synced in the scenes. We were just like, we are never going to compete. So we thought, we need to be clever here. We need to think differently. What we did is we found out what island the show was being recorded on, and we geo-targeted our ads just to that island because we knew the sync team were going to be on there. So we just went hard as nails, advertised relentlessly, and we knew that the sync people would then see the adverts. As a result of that, Freya got the sync. It became the biggest song that season on Love Island, back when it was popular. As a result of that, we built from there. We were like, right, we can't compete with the majors. We have to think differently. We need to do things differently. We need to be creative. It wasn't an easy pathway. That year there were only two other songs that were independent that reached the top 10. So we ended up becoming a third and the biggest song that year. The reason I'm saying that is we can't compete with the major publishers. But the beauty of the independent author community is because we have smaller budgets—most of us, not all of us, but most of us—we have to think differently. We have to make our bang for our buck go a lot further. So it's actually— How can we stay creative? How can we think differently? What can we do differently? So that would be the second thing. Then the third main lesson that I learned, and this is more on the creative side, is that pressure can often work against you, both in a business sense, but especially creativity. I've seen so many artists over the years have imposed deadlines on them to hand in their albums, and it's impacted the quality of their output. Once it's handed in, the stress and the pressure is off, and then you realise that actually those artists end up creating the best material that they have, and then they rush to put it on. Whether that's Mariah Carey's “We Belong Together,” Adele with her song “Hello,” Taylor Swift did the same with “Shake It Off”—they're just three examples. The reason is that pressure keeps us in our beta brainwave state, which is our rational, logical mind. For those of us that are authors that are writing fiction, or even if we are creating stories in our nonfiction work to deliver a point, we need to be in that creative mindset. So we need to be in the alpha and the gamma brain state. Because our body works on 90-minute cycles known as our ultradian rhythm, we need to make sure that we honour our cycle and work with that. If we go past that, our creativity and our productivity is going to go down between 60% and 40% respectively. So as authors, it's important—one, to apply the right amount of pressure; two, to work in breaks; and three, to know what kind of perspective we're looking at. Do we need to be rational and logical, or do we need to be creative? And then adjust the sails accordingly. Jo: That's all fantastic. I want to come back on the marketing thing first—around what you did with the strategic marketing there and the targeted ads to that island. That's just genius. I feel like a lot of us, myself included, we struggle to think creatively about marketing because it's not our natural state. Of course, you've done a lot of marketing, so maybe it comes more naturally to you. I think half the time we don't even use the word creative around marketing, when you're not a marketeer. What are some ways that we can break through our blocks around marketing and try to be more creative around that? Jack: I would challenge a lot of authors on that presumption, because as authors we're in essence storytellers, and to tell a story is creative. There's a great quote: “One death is a tragedy. A thousand deaths is a statistic.” If you can create a story, a compelling narrative about a death in the news, it's going to pull at the heartstrings of people. It's going to really resonate and get with them. Whereas if you are just quoting statistics, most people switch off because they become desensitised to it. So I think because we can tell stories, and that's the essence of what we do, it's how can we tell our story through the medium of social media? How can we tell a story through our creative ads that we then put out onto Facebook or TikTok or whatever platform that we're putting them out—BookBub, et cetera? How can we create a narrative that garners the attention? If we are looking at local media or traditional media, how can we do that? How can we get people to buy in to what we're selling? So it's about having different angles. For me with my new romance book, Stolen Moments, one of the stories I had that really has helped me get some coverage and PR is we recorded the songs next door to the Rolling Stones. Now that was very fortunate timing, very fortunate. But everyone's like, “Oh my God, you recorded next door to the Rolling Stones?” So it's like, well, how can you bring in these creative nuggets that help you to find a story? Again, marketing is in essence telling a story, albeit through different mediums and forms. So it's just how can you package that into a marketable product depending on the platform in which you're putting it out on. Jo: I think that's actually hilarious, by the way, because what you hit on there, as someone with a background in marketing, your story about “we recorded an album for the book next door to the Rolling Stones”—it's got nothing to do with the romance. Jack: Oh, the romance is that the pop star in the book writes and records songs. Jo: Yes, I realised that. But the fact is— For doing things like PR, it's the story behind the story. They don't care that you've written a romance. Jack: Yes. Jo: They're far more interested in you, the author, and other things. So I think what you just described there was a kind of PR hook that most of us don't even think about. Jack: I'm sure a lot of authors already know this, so it's a good reminder, and if you don't, it's great. It's called the A, B, C technique. When you get asked a question, you Answer the question. So that's A. You Build a bridge, and then you go to C, which is Covering one of your points. So whenever you get asked a question, have a list of things you want to get across in an interview. Then just make sure that you find that bridge between whatever the question is to cover off one of your points, and that's how you can do it. Because yes, you may be selling a story, like I said, about writing the songs, but then you can bridge it into actually covering and promoting whatever it is you're promoting. So I think that's always quite helpful to remember. Jo: Well, that's a good tip for things like coming on podcasts as well. I've had people on who don't do what you just mentioned and will just try and shoehorn things in in a more deliberate fashion, whereas other people, as you have just done with your romance there, bring it in while answering a question that actually helps other people. So I think that's the kind of thing we need to think about in marketing. Okay, so then let's come back to the embracing change, and as you mentioned, the AI stuff that's going on. I feel like there's so many “stories” around AI right now. There's a lot of stories being told on both sides—on the positive side, on the negative side—that people believe and buy into and may or may not be true. There's obviously a lot of anger. There's, I think, grief—a big thing that people might not even realise that they have. Can you talk about how authors might deal with what's coming up around the technological change around AI, and any of your personal thoughts as well? Jack: I was thinking about this a lot recently. I mean, I guess everyone is in their own ways and forms. One of the things that came up for me is we have genre expectations and we have generation expectations. When we look at genres, you will have different expectations from different genres. For romance, they want a happily ever after or a happy for now. For cosy mysteries, they expect the crime to be solved. So we as authors make sure we endeavour to meet those expectations. The challenge is that if we are looking at AI, we are all in our own generations. We might be in slightly different generations, but there are going to be different generation expectations from the Alpha generation that's coming up and the Beta generation that's just about to start this year or next year because they're going to come into the world where they don't know any different to AI. So they will have a different expectation than us. It will just be normal that there will be AI agents. It will just be normal that there are AI narrators. It will be normalised that AI will assist authors or assist everyone in doing their jobs. So again, it is a grieving period because we can long for what was, we can yearn for things that worked for us that no longer work for us—whether it's Facebook groups, whether it's the Kindle Rush. We can mourn the loss of that, but that's not coming back. I mean, sometimes there may be a resurgence, but essentially, we've got to embrace the change. We've got to understand that it's coming and it's going to bring up a lot of different emotions because you may have been beholden to one thing and you may be like, yes, I've now got my TikTok lives, and then all of a sudden TikTok goes away. I know Adam, when he was talking about it, he'll just find another platform. But there'll be a lot of people that are beholden to it and then they're like, what do I do now? So again, it's never survival of the fittest—it's survival of the most adaptable. I always use this metaphor where there are three people on three different boats. A storm comes. And the first, the optimist, is like, “Oh, it'll pass,” and does nothing. The pessimist complains about the storm and does nothing. But the realist will adjust the sails and use the storm to find its way to the other side, to get through. It's not going to be easy, but they're actually taking change and making change to get to where they need to go, rather than just expecting or complaining. I get it. We are not, and I hate the expression, “we're all in the same boat.” I call bleep on that. I'm not going to swear. We're not all in the same boat. We're all in the same storm, but different people are going through different things. For some, they can adjust and adapt really quickly like a speedboat. For others, they may be like Jack and Rose in the Titanic on that terrible prop where they're clinging to dear life and trying to get through the storm. So it's about how do I navigate this upcoming storm? What can I do within my control to get through the storm? For some it may be easier because they have the resources, or for some of us that love learning, it's easy to embrace change. For others that have a fear mindset and it's like, “Oh, something new, it's scary, I don't want to embrace it”—you are going to take longer. So you may not be the speedboat, but at some point we are going to have to embrace that change. Otherwise we're going to get left behind. So you need to look at that. Jo: The storm metaphor is interesting, and being in different boats. I feel I do struggle. I struggle with people who suddenly seem to be discovering the storm. I've been talking about AI now since 2016. That's a decade. Jack: Yes. Jo: Even ChatGPT has been around more than three years, and people come to me now and they're talking about stories that they've seen in the media that are just old now. Things have moved on so much. I feel like maybe I was on my boat and I looked through my telescope and I saw the storm. I've been talking about the storm and I've had my own moments of being in the middle of the storm. Now I definitely do struggle with people who just seem to have arrived without any knowledge of it before. I oscillate between being an optimist and a realist. I think I'm somewhere between the two, probably. But I think what is driving me a little crazy in the author community right now is judgment and shame. There are people who are judging other people, and there's shame felt by AI-curious or AI-positive people. So I want to help the people who feel shame in some way for trying new technology, but they still feel attacked. Then those people judge other authors for their choices to use technology. So how do you think we can deal with judgment and shame in the community? Which is a form of conflict, I guess. Jack: Of course. I think with that, there's another great PR quote: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Especially in this digital age, there's a lot of clickbait. So the more polarising, the more emotion-evoking the headline, the more likely you are to engage with that content—whether that is reading it or whether that's posting or retweeting, or whatever format you are consuming it on. So unfortunately, media has now become so much more polarising. It's dividing us rather than uniting us. So people are going to have stronger positions. There's so much even within this to look at. One is, you have to work out where people are on the continuum. Do they have an opinion on AI? Do they have a belief? Or do they have a conviction? Now you're not going to move someone that has a conviction about something, so it's not worth even engaging with them because they're immovable. Like they say, you shouldn't talk about sports, politics, and religion. There are certain subjects that may not be worth talking about, especially if they have a conviction. Because they may not even be able to agree to disagree. They may not be willing or able to hear you. So first and foremost, it's about understanding, well, where are those people sitting on the continuum of AI? Are they curious? Do they have an opinion, but they're open to hearing other opinions? Do they have a belief that could be changed or evolved if they find more information? That's where I think it is. It's not necessarily our jobs—even though you do an amazing job of it, Joanna—but a lot of people are undereducated on these issues or these new technologies. So in some cases it's just a case of a lack of education or them being undereducated. Hopefully in time they will become more and more educated. But again, it's how long is a piece of string? Will people catch up? Will they stay behind? Are they fearful? I guess because of social media, because of the media, as they say, if you can evoke fear in people, you can control them. You can control their perspectives. You can control their minds. So that's where we see it—a lot of people are operating from a fear mindset. So then that's when they project their vitriol in certain cases. If people want to believe a certain thing, that's their choice. I'm not here to tell people what to think. Like I said earlier, it's more about how to think. But I would just encourage people to find people that align with you. Do a sense test, like a litmus test, to find where they sit on the continuum and engage with those people that are open and have opinions or beliefs. But shy away or just avoid people that have convictions that maybe are the polar opposite of yours. Jo: It's funny, isn't it? We seem to be in a phase of history when I feel like you should be able to disagree with people and still be friends. Although, as you mentioned, there's certain members of my family where we just stay on topics of TV shows and movies or music, or what books are you reading? Like, we don't go anywhere near politics. So I do think that might be a rule also with the AI stuff. As you said, find a community, and there are plenty of AI-positive spaces now for people who do want to talk about this kind of stuff. I also think that, I don't know whether this is a tipping point this year, but certainly— I know people who are in bigger corporates where the message is now, “You need to embrace this stuff. It is now part of your job to learn how to use these AI tools.” So if that starts coming into people's day jobs, and also people who have, I don't know, kids at school or people at university who are embracing this more—I mean, maybe it is a generational thing. Jack: Yes. Look, there were so many people that were resistant to working from home, or corporations that were, and then the pandemic forced it. Now everyone's embraced it in some way, shape, or form. I mean, there are people that don't, but the majority of people—when something's forced on you, you have to adapt. So again, if those things are implemented in corporations, then you're going to see it. I'm seeing so many amazing new things in AI that have been implemented in the music industry that we'll see in the publishing industry coming down the road. That will scare a lot of people, but again, we have to embrace those things because they're coming and there's going to be an expectation—especially from the younger generations—that these things are available. So again, it's not first past the post, but if you can be ahead of the wave or at least on the wave, then you are going to reap the rewards. If you are behind the wave, you're going to get left behind. So that's my opinion. I'm not trying to encourage anyone to see from my lens, but at the same time, I do think that we need to be thinking differently. We need to always embrace change where we can, as we can, at the pace that we can. Jo: You mentioned there AI things coming down the road in the music industry. And now everyone's going, wait, what is coming? So tell us— What do you see ahead that you think might also shift into the author world? Jack: There are three things that I've seen. Two that have been implemented and one that's been talked about and worked on at the moment. The first, and this will be quite scary for people, is that major record labels—so think the major publishers on our side—they're all now putting clauses in their contracts that require the artists that sign with them to allow their works to be trained by their own AI models. So that is something that is now actually happening in record labels. I wouldn't be surprised, although I don't have insight into it, if Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, et cetera, are potentially doing the same with authors that sign to them. So that's going to become more standardised. So that is on the major side. But then on the creative side, there are two things that really excite me. The music AI platforms that we're hearing about, the stories that we've seen in the press, and it's the fact that with a click of a button, you can recreate a song into a different genre. I find it so fascinating because if you think about that—turning a pop song into a country song or a rap song into a dance song—the possibilities that we have as authors with our books, if we wish to do so, are amazing. I just think, for example, with your ARKANE series, Joanna, imagine clicking a button and just with one click you can take Morgan Sierra and turn her into a romantic lead in a romance book. Jo: See, it's so funny because I personally just can't imagine that because it's not something I would write. But I guess one example in the romance genre itself is I know plenty of romance authors who write a clean and a spicy version of the same story, right? It is already happening in that way. It's just not a one-click. Jack: Well, I think you can also look at it another way. I think one of the most famous examples is Twilight. With Twilight and Stephenie Meyer, if she had the foresight—and I'm not saying she didn't, just to clarify—but fan fiction is such a massive sub-genre of works. And obviously from Twilight came 50 Shades of Gray. Imagine if she had the licensing rights like the NFTs, where she could have made money off of every sale. So that you could then, through works that you create and give licence, earn a percentage of every release, every sale, every consumption unit of your works. There are just so many possibilities where you can create, adapt, have spinoffs that can then build out your world. Obviously, there may need to be an approval process in there for continuity and quality control because you want to make sure you're doing that, but I think that has such massive potential in publishing if we wish to do so. Or like I said, change characters. Like Robert Langdon's character in Dan Brown's books—no longer being the kind of thriller, but maybe being a killer instead. There's so many possibilities. It's just, again, how to think, not what to think—how to think differently and how we can use that. So that's the second of three. Jo: Oh, before you move on, you did mention NFTs and I've actually been reading about this again. So I'm usually five years early. That's the general rule. I started talking about NFTs in mid-2021, and obviously there was a crypto crash, it goes up and down, blah, blah, blah. But forget the crypto side—on the blockchain side, digital originality, and exactly what you said about saying like, where did this originate? This is now coming back in the AI world. It could be that I really was five years early. So amusingly—and I'm going to link to it in the notes because I did a “Why NFTs Are Exciting for Authors” solo episode, I think in 2022—it may be that the resurgence will happen in the next year, and all those people who said I was completely wrong, that this may be coming back. Digital originality I think is what we're talking about there. But so, okay, so what was the other thing? Jack: So the third one is the one that I'm most excited about, but I think will be the most scary for people. Obviously consumption changes and formats change. Like I said, in music I've seen it all the time—whether it's vinyl to cassettes, to CDs, to downloads, to streaming. Again, there's different consumption of the same format, and we see that with books as well, obviously—hardbacks, paperbacks, eBooks, audiobooks. Now with the rise of AI, AI narration has made audiobooks so much more accessible for people. I know that there are issues with certain people not wanting to do it, or certain platforms not allowing AI narration to be uploaded unless it's their own. The next step is what I'm most excited about. What I'm seeing now in the music industry is people licensing their image to then recreate that as music videos because music videos are so expensive. One of my friends just shot a music video for two million pounds. I don't think many authors would ever wish to spend that. If you can license your image and use AI to create a three-minute music video that looks epic and just as real as humanly possible, imagine if those artists—or if we go a step further, those actors—license their image to then be used to adapt our books into a TV series or a film. So that then we are in a position where that is another format of consumption alongside an audiobook, a paperback, an eBook, hardcover, special edition, and so on and so forth. It potentially has the opportunity to open us up to a whole new world. Because yes, there are adaptations of books that we're seeing at the moment, but for those of us that are trying to get our content into different formats, this can be a new pathway. I'm going to make a prediction here myself, Joanna. Jo: Mm-hmm. Jack: I would say in the next five to ten years, there will be a platform akin to a Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, Apple Plus, where you can license the rights to an image of an actor or an actress. Then with the technology—and you may need people to help you adapt your book into a TV series or a film—that can then be consumed. I just think the possibilities are endless. I mean, again, I think of your character and I'm like, oh, what would it be if Angelina Jolie licensed her image and you could have her play the lead character in your ARKANE series? I mean, again, the possibilities potentially are endless here. Jo: Well, and on that, if people think this won't happen—1776, I don't know if you've seen this, it's just being teased at the moment. Darren Aronofsky has made an American revolutionary story all with AI. So this is being talked about at the moment. It's on YouTube at the moment. The AI video is just extraordinary already, so I totally agree with you. I think things are going to be quite weird for a while, and it will take a while to get used to. You mentioned coming into the music industry in 2000, 2001—I started my work before the internet, and then the internet came along and lots of things changed. I mean, anyone who's older than 40, 45-ish can remember what work was like without the internet. Now we are moving into a time where it'll be like, what was it like before AI? And I think we'll look back and go like, why the hell did we do that kind of thing? So it is a changing world, but yes, exciting times, right? I think the other thing that's happening right now, even to me, is that things are moving so fast. You can almost feel like a kind of whiplash with how much is changing. How do we deal with the fast pace of change while still trying to anchor ourselves in our writing practice and not going crazy? Jack: Again, it's that everything everywhere all at once—you can get lost and discombobulated. I always say be the tortoise, not the hare—because you don't want to fly and die. You want pace and grace. Everyone will have a different pace. For some marathon runners, they can run a five-minute mile, some can run an eight-minute mile, some can run a twelve-minute mile. It's about finding the pace that works for you. Every one of us have different commitments. Every one of us have different ways we view the industry—some as a hobby, some as a business. So it's about honouring your needs, your commitment. Some of us, as you've had people on the podcast, some people are carers. They have to care. Some people are parents. Some people don't have those commitments and so can devote more time and then actually learn more, change more as a result. So again, it's about finding your groove, finding your rhythm, honouring that, and again, showing up consistently. Because motivation may get you started, but it's habit and discipline that sees you through. Keep that discipline, keep that pace and grace. Be consistent in what you can do. And know where you're at. Don't compare and despair, because again, if you look at someone else, they may be ahead of you, but the race is only with yourself in the end. So you've got to just focus on where you are at and am I in a better place than I was yesterday? Am I working on my business as well as in my business? How am I doing that? When am I doing that? And what am I doing that for? If you can be asking yourself those questions and making sure you're staying true to yourself and not burning out, making sure that you are honouring your other commitments, then I think you are going at the pace that feels right for you. Jo: Brilliant. Jo: Where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Jack: Thank you so much for having me on, Joanna, today. You can find me on JackWilliamson.co.uk for all my nonfiction books and therapy work. Then for my fiction work, it is ABJackson.com, or ABJacksonAuthor on Instagram and TikTok. Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Jack. That was great. Jack: Thank you so much. The post Post-Traumatic Growth, Creative Marketing, And Dealing With Change with Jack Williamson first appeared on The Creative Penn.

February 20, 2026 Today we look at the top songs debuting on the Billboard chart this week back in 1986, 1996, 2006, & 2016. Dustin, Jason, & Tyler welcome back our buddy Haney. We discuss 13 songs from this week in music history, including 8 Top 10s & 4 #1s! Unreal. We have new songs from Janet Jackson, George Michael, Coldplay, Rihanna, and more. Want to be cool like us and watch the music videos for all the songs? Then here's a convenient playlist that has them all in order of discussion.

Most musicians dream of stability. Johnny Thirkell built a 50-year career with David Bowie, Paul McCartney, George Michael, and The Who - starting from colliery bands and working men's clubs in the North East. This isn't about talent. It's about the business systems that keep session musicians working for decades while others struggle after a few years. Johnny shares the relationship-building frameworks that get you in the room with major artists, the professional standards that ensure callbacks, and the economic strategies that survive massive industry changes - from the 1970s studio system to today's remote recording reality. Whether you're building a session career or any sustainable music business, the principles are the same: systematic relationship management, clear professional standards, and strategic adaptation to industry shifts. Topics covered: How session musicians actually get hired by major artists The relationship maintenance framework that creates repeat clients over decades Pricing strategies for session work Professional studio standards that ensure callbacks Adapting to 50 years of technology and industry changes Why "Blown It!!" became a book instead of staying as stories Career longevity principles that transfer to independent artists Show Notes Support the Unstarving Musician The Unstarving Musician exists solely through the generosity of its listeners, readers, and viewers. Learn how you can offer your support at UnstarvingMusician.com/CrowdSponsor This episode was brought to you by Podcast Startup. Ready to launch your podcast or take it to the next level? Podcast Startup gives you the frameworks, systems, and insider knowledge to build a show that actually grows your audience and serves your goals. Whether you're just getting started or looking to improve your existing podcast, you'll get actionable strategies on equipment selection, content planning, audience building, and sustainable production workflows—without the overwhelm. Learn more at UnstarvingMusician.com/PodcastStartup. Join podcasters who are building shows that last. Resources The Unstarving Musician's Guide to Getting Paid Gigs, by Robonzo Dreamhost – See the latest deals from Dreamhost, save money and support the UM in the process. More Resources for musicians Pardon the Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means I make a small commission, at no extra charge to you, if you purchase using those links. Thanks for your support! Stay in touch! @RobonzoDrummer on  Instagram @UnstarvingMusician on Facebook  and  YouTube   

George Michael, U2, los Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Buddy Holly, Bo Diddley tienen algo en común: su gusto por el ritmo.

Even though he messes up the numbering in audio, on episode 30 of Territorial, Shawn takes us on the journey of George Michael and The Sports Machine. An early pioneer of Sports recap television before the boom of ESPN, Shawn discusses George's influence on the local DC market in sports, the evolution of his Sports Machine TV show, his partnership and friendship with fellow anchor Jim Vance and his love of pro wrestling that was part of what made George one of the best Sportscasters to ever do it. Bob Backlund, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Captain Lou, The Road Warriors, Ric Flair and more join George as well as some amazing audio of his recaps. Tune in for this one as it has it all if you love 80's wrestling!

We are kicking off another Foreign Film February, or "FFF", which has become a colloquialism at Haus der New World Pictures Podcast.  Is that not the case in your home?  If it isn't, it's time to start.  To kick off the 2026 #FFF, we are talking about 1987's SUBWAY TO THE STARS, a Brazilian drama that, if you looked at the poster, is nowhere close to what you would expect.  SUBWAY TO THE STARS explores a talented saxophonist (Vini) who's girlfriend (Nicinha) disappears after they have sex in an automobile junk yard.  It should be pointed out, they didn't have sex in one of the cars in the junk yard.  They do the nasty on the dirty ground full of oil, antifreeze, and transmission fluid. Given that, it should come as no surprise that Vini goes on a vision quest to find his missing girlfriend.  Unfortunately, because he's a young, attractive musician, he does a pretty shit job of looking for her.  Instead, he finds a menagerie of people to do the searching for him.  Does he find her?  If he does, does she stay with him?  We don't cover this part in the episode, but that's part of our charmIn addition to talking about SUBWAY TO THE STARS, we revisit our pre-production of Steamin' (the remake of 1985's Steaming) and whether it could be considered for Cannes.  We wonder whether Ska is ready to make a musical comeback.  Erica champions the need for more horns (saxophones in particular) in movies and music. Marc makes a claim that there is too much saxophone in George Michael's Careless Whispers.  Ryan talks about a great time at a Thom Yorke concert.  We also talk about SUBWAY TO THE STARS.

(00:00-17:02) Well, you know, whatever. Always good to hear from George Michael. Twilight rates at Old Warson. Denim and push carts. Plowsy needed an ATM at Bellerive to pay his caddy. Is Doug's body beach ready? Chairman's mock up didn't do Jackson any favors. Anybody run into Jane Under The Deck. Perfect Strangers.(17:10-26:15) Design Aire Heating & Cooling EMOTD(26:25-30:23) The response to the AI generated pic has been.....good. Jackson looks like he could be Doug's son. Women wanted to be like him, and guys wanted to be with him. Something that might make Doug feel good.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Czabe welcomes ANDY POLLIN and Washington Post beat reporter GENE WANG to discuss the dark days facing the Post and their sports department. Czabe explains how critical it was for guys like Gene and others to "flush out" the stories, quotes, and details of the players, coaches and teams we follow, to then blow them out of the sky like ducks who had been flushed. The legend of "The King" George Michael at NBC4, what it means to be a good dad in today's sports age. Plus the most electrifying 60 second or less bursts of mayhem in sports history. Hagler-Hears 1985. Franz Klammer in '76 Olympic Downhill. Virginia's OT miracle vs. Purdue. MORE....Our Sponsors:* Cheesesteaks from Philly? Deep dish from Chicago? Go to Goldbelly and use my code CZABE for a great deal: https://www.goldbelly.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Our Goals for 2026: Jess is gonna finish a novel.Sarina is going to figure out what she wants a long haul writer career to looks like.KJ is going to write this book as hard as she can and for as long as it takes.Jennie is going to claim her authority in the writing space.Our Words of the Year are …Meanwhile: Fan of Heated Rivalry? You'll want to read these books by Sarina Bowen!Ready to talk about your own goals and words? COME ON IN. We are here for that!Hey - if you've been curious about becoming a book coach, Jennie'd like to invite you to a live training she's doing on February 4th, at 5pm PST / 8pm EST. She's going to be talking about how to become the kind of book coach writers love to pay. You can sign up at bookcoaches.com/liveWOTYs … in the episode! If you want to know what was so funny, you'll have to listen.Transcript Below!If you love us enough that you got this far…SPONSORSHIP MESSAGEHey, it's Jennie Nash, and if you've been curious about becoming a book coach, I'd like to invite you to a live training I'm going to be doing on February 4th, at 5pm PST, which is 8pm EST, and I'm going to be talking about how to become the kind of book coach writers love to pay. You can sign up for that at bookcoaches.com/live. That's bookcoaches.com/live. (bookcoaches.com/live) I'd love to see you there.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTJennie NashHey everyone, it's Jennie, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters. All four of us are here today to talk about our Word of the Year for 2026 and our goals. This is one of our favorite episodes to do, and we've all been kicking our words around, and we're ready to share them with you. So Sarina, do you want to go first?Sarina BowenOkay!Jennie NashI just know you are kind of ready.KJ Dell'AntoniaRight off the diving board. No throat clearing, no chit chat. Yeah, we're just alrighty.Sarina BowenAll right, so I'm Sarina, and I write novels, and pretty much that is all I write. So my goals tend to look kind of the same from year to year, but my, but how I feel about them, changes. So in 2026 I plan to write two to three books, and when I do, I will be rolling off of two contracts with two different publishers. So that means that the other part of my 2026 is really asking myself what I want to do next. Because, you know, finishing energy is a really hard thing, but I'll be like extra super finishing energy here, because I'm finishing a commitment. And, you know, I used to have goals, like, I'm going to write more books. I'm going to write all the books. And I don't anymore, because there were, there was a while there where I only wrote books, and then last year, I did a really nice job of meeting my goals that I would also go and have more fun and take more vacations. And it worked. I did that. It turns out that planning fun takes a lot of energy and time. Oh my goodness, it was I, you know, I so I was either off having a wild time, or I was like, you know, nailed to my desk, and, yeah, so I need to do a slightly better job of that this year. Although looking at the schedule, it's a little hard to see how, because I'm spending a big chunk of March and part of April in Australia and Hong Kong, and then...Jennie NashWait you can't just throw that in and not say why. [laughing]Sarina BowenOh, well, I'm, I'm visiting. I'm doing four reader events in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.Jennie NashIt's so exciting, so exciting.Sarina BowenAnd you know, time will tell if accepting this invitation was, in fact, a good idea. When I get home, I will be—it'll be June, and I will be launching my second book of 2026, which is a romance and so, but, but then, you know, I will have turned in half of what I'm turning in this year, and I will be able to have big thoughts about what I do next. And that is the thing that is going to be hard about this year, not turning in files, but, you know, deciding what does it mean to me? And also a thing that I realized last year, while balancing my busy life is that in this job, there is no summit. It's not like you climb that big hill and then you stand there and you hear an angel choir, and then you know that the only thing that greets you after writing a big novel is that you will pretty soon, eventually write another one. So you have to enjoy the hike itself. And I am really working on that.Jess LaheyI actually have just—I have just to address what you just mentioned Sarina, I have put in my calendar in June. Since we love to—I happen to love the mid-year check-ins on goals. I put a little note to self, to future Jess to revisit Sarina's goals at mid-year so that we can talk about maybe what that second half of the year, what comes next, stuff is going to look like. So, expect that to come back around.Sarina BowenOkay, I hope there's some clarity by then, so I'll get right on that.Jess LaheyWell, and I would also like to mention that you mentioned, you know, all the work you're doing and doing fun and stuff like that. You also went back to skating this year, and you, I have loved watching you learn, relearn something fairly new, and gain skills and get determined to like, be able to do that. What's it called, when you change the side of the blade you're on? When you turn?Sarina BowenYeah, all that edge work...Jess LaheyIt's very exciting.Sarina BowenAnd those three turns. Yeah. So that is part of my leave the house and have fun plan, and that has worked out really well. It—when you do something that's so outside of your usual, like, we could just stipulate by now that I'm pretty good at writing a novel, because I have turned in a number of them and sold a number of them, but I am really not good at skating. So when you take yourself so far out of your element, and you do something that is so foreign to you, you learn, relearn all those weird little tricks about how you learned anything, and the fact that last year I could not do a three turn to save my life, which is where you turn around on one foot. And I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried to trick myself into it. And I'm like, okay, I'll take off on two feet, but land on one. I just every single thing didn't work. And then this year, now I can do it. And also, I woke up at four in the morning once and thought I could do a waltz jump tomorrow, and then the next day I did, in fact, just do a waltz jump. And I hadn't even been thinking about it. It wasn't even on my list of things I was going to try that week. So learning something really, really new is really just great for your brain and your attitude. And I don't know what the next thing that I do like that will be, but, yeah, I'm a fan.Jennie NashBut I must reflect back to you that a few years ago, you were, I think the goals had to you were working so hard and just, you know, book to book to book to book and, like, look at you now .You're going on all these trips, and you're learning to ice skate, and I know you and KJ are learning Mahjong.KJ Dell'AntoniaMahjong, yes.Jennie NashAnd you write in coffee shops like, you've kind of really changed that, that vibe. It's cool.Sarina BowenI have! I did it right? Like I said, I'm going to have more fun. I'm going to learn to write out of the house. Like I sat in a room and said to you that this was going to happen. And I did, right? But the, but then, but then, writing the actual books, it magically did not get easier. So I am having more fun, but it's still hard, and that's how I'm coming to this new realization that, like you know, I need to stop being surprised that the actual job is hard, but it's just like a piece of the fun that I'm having, and if and I can only write books that I'm probably going to enjoy, because it's still hard and it still takes a lot of hours.Jennie NashThat's amazing. I feel compelled to ask you, what are you most enjoying about what you're writing right now?Sarina BowenWell we are at maximum finishing energy, because I am finishing a revision, which is scary, right? Because then you're sending it off into the world of telling yourself that it's done. And I have to say, I have not enjoyed it all that much. This has been one of the more one of the more stressful weeks. But, yeah, I—but there are moments as I look through this manuscript, because I've just reached that point where you hate every living word of it, right? Where I read a line and I laugh, and then that's just a good sign.Jennie NashLike I'm so clever, look at me.Multiple Speakers[all laughing]Jess LaheyI actually just, just for fun. I just dropped—I got to go—I traveled an hour and a half to go so that I could go sit in a coffee shop and work with these guys, because I miss them so much. And I took two pictures of Sarina while she was working there, and in one, she had this look on her face... I just dropped it in our group text just now, where she's got this look on her face like this is the hardest, worst thing I've ever done. And then I also took one of her smiling and looking like her usual happy self. But it was—I love having those two pictures together on my phone, because it's so representative of the slog. How there are these moments of really having fun and engaging with the book and loving it, and then there's those moments of editing where you're trying to just finish it and get all the words in the right order.Sarina BowenYep, it's, it's, you know that the push and pull and the trick to liking this job is that when you're in that trench of I have to be finished with this. I have to love it, and I have to set it free. You have to remember that the other side is out there. That like the drafting happy, I haven't made any big mistakes yet, I haven't sealed off all the x's yet, like that's waiting for you on the other side of it. You know, if you get too deep in one place or the other, so that you can't remember, the other one is out there for you. Then, then that's a trap. It makes the job harder.Jennie NashWell, thank you for that. Jess, do you want to go next?Jess LaheySure! Yeah, so last year, last year was weird. Last year, my, my, I'm going a little bit into what my word was last year; it was ‘amplified' because it led, it sort of guided a lot of my goals last year, which had to do with just reaching more people, but during the year, during the course of the year, reaching and educating more people on the topics that I feel really strongly about, like mental health wellness, the specifically substance use prevention, as it relates to things like self-efficacy in kids and feelings of competence in kids. I realized sort of part way through the year how much more I was enjoying and feeling engaged when I was talking to the kids, and how much more impactful I felt when I was talking to the kids, and that shouldn't be surprising. But, if you're not a speaker, and if you don't spend your time speaking to adults and kids and especially teens, you should know it takes, you know, maybe three to four times as much energy to talk to the kids as it does to the adults. In fact, yesterday, I was trying to explain to someone why a virtual event to a lot of kids, doesn't work. I can't project that much energy through a screen to captivate a big room of kids. It's just it's really hard to do. And anyway, so I realized about halfway through the year that I really wanted when I when I thought about the word amplify and expanding on the number of kids that I reach per year, and the depth to which I am able to reach some kids in particular, it comes it comes down to not just people, but just kids specifically. So I talked with my agents, and we've agreed that I'm going to try to incorporate more kids this year. That even if it's more exhausting for me, it's more fulfilling, and so that's one of my big goals for this year, is to figure out how—yes, I still have to talk to adults, and I have to help them understand how to talk to their kids about substance use and mental health and how to see, know, love, support the kids you have, and not the kids you wish you had and all that stuff. But when it comes down to it, I have to figure out ways to get in the room with kids more and...KJ Dell'AntoniaYou're a kid-travert!Jess Lahey[laughing] Apparently.KJ Dell'AntoniaWhich some people get their energy from being with people, and some people get, you know, it takes—that's extroverts and introverts. So you're a kid-travert, you get your energy from talking to kids. That's delightful!Jess LaheyIt's in the moment. In the moment, it's much more exhausting. But there was a—I spoke at a school in Los Angeles. It was one of the best days I had in front of kids. And the number of emails I got afterwards explaining why it was meaningful to them. You know, I love when the kids, anytime a kid reaches out, it's this huge honor, because, you know, I'm, who am I? I'm some adult that comes into their school because their teachers say that, and now their teachers say they have to listen to this bozo. They don't know who this person is. But over time, I've figured out ways to help them trust me a little bit more, even before I get there. Like creating these videos where I introduce myself ahead of time. So I'm trying to figure out all the ways in to getting being a trusted adult, becoming a trusted adult to more and more kids, is something that's incredibly important to me, because that's where the great education stuff lies. So that amplify word changed for me over last year, and it's reflected in this year's goals as well, which is, get in front of more kids. I track those numbers really carefully. Last year, I was in front of just shy of 10,000 people generally, and a couple of 1000 kids. And I just want to change that ratio a little bit so that it's have more heavily in the kid direction and less heavily in the adult direction. Just because it's fun and really interesting and challenging. That's the other thing is, when you've been doing something for a long time, there are some talks I can do in my sleep, because I've done them so many times, and I don't want to do that, like, why would you want to come and spend time with someone who's asleep in front of you? But you know, they look good and it sounds good, but they're not totally invested. And I think everybody can feel that. So I've had to find ways to change things up, to reevaluate my content from other angles, so that I'm not getting sick of myself, and so that I can be fresh and new and useful to people. So, and then, like, I have small goals, you know, Sarina was just talking about her skating and looking, you know, trying to do something completely new that makes you a little nervous. You know, the beekeeping thing still makes me super nervous. And as I mentioned in another episode, I think Tim saw me emotionally preparing to do something I needed to do with the bees and he said I have never seen you so nervous and so doubting yourself about your ability to do something, and I realized how good that is for me. And so we will see at the end of this winter if my bees actually made it through the winter, and if they did, I'll have a hive of bees to deal with, and if they don't, I'll have to get a new hive. But that's been really, really good for me. Sarina, did you want to add something?Sarina BowenI have a question.Jess LaheyYes, ma'am.Sarina BowenDo we have a writing goal for this year?Jess LaheyYes, we do. And that's actually at the bottom of my list, because it's new. So I've been attending this weekly, really interesting virtual Blueprint for a Book Fast Track. What is it? Jumpstart you guys? With Jennie Nash, this really great book coach and founder of Author Accelerator, and KJ Dell'Antonia and I have been actually writing—working on this novel that I've been working on for ages and ages and ages and thinking about at a minimum once a week, and I'm going to finish it this year. 100% I'm going to finish it this year. And I'm really grateful to Jennie and KJ, because being in that, in—being in there, is forcing me to ask me all kinds of questions about, why am I even bothering to stick with this thing that has stymied me for over a decade? Like, why bother if it's been that hard and I haven't ever gotten it done, why am I even doing it? And I love asking myself those questions. It's been really fun. Plus, there's like 100 other people in that virtual session asking themselves the same questions and coming up with really cool answers for why they're even writing something in the first place. And it gets at all these fundamental questions of why we do what we do. So yes, I will be, I'm researching a nonfiction thing still. I have a—I'm looking at a stack of books behind me, and but I'm going to finish this YA novel this year period, full stop, it's going to happen..Multiple Speakers[Unintelligible] [several speaking at once]Jennie NashWell what's cool is, is, I mean, YA is not children, but it's young people. So that's kind of cool. It goes with your other thing.KJ Dell'AntoniaThere's a trend there.Jess LaheyYeah. And it was funny, because when you were asking the why the other night, and one of my things was, oh, because these characters speak to me, blah, blah, blah. And KJ mentioned, oh, I do know what Jess is talking about. And maybe it's, you know, she wants to write a coming of age story, and that's 100% it. I think I have, I have. I very much love that coming of age space and the struggles that middle school and high school kids go through in that coming of age space. And I think I have an interesting insight into it, and an ability to, an ability to make it come alive on the page. And I, for me, really want to do that. I really want to see it on the page, and I'm really excited about it.Jennie NashYou do have such a compassion for that age and what people are going through and how hard it is and it's...Jess LaheyAnd I love these characters. And I said I love these characters, and I want to do right by them. And that's true too. I do love these characters, and I can't stop thinking about them.Sarina BowenThat is the best reason to finish any piece of fiction. You know?Jess LaheyYeah, no, I really it's like they're stuck until I help them get to the other side. And I would hate to leave them there. I would it would make me feel really bad.Jennie NashI love it. Well you know, committing to something that you've been working on for that long, that's a that's a big deal.Jess LaheyYeah, it's also one of those. I know it's going to feel really, really good when I finish it. It'll be like, oh my gosh, I've been harping on that for whatever it is now 12 or 13 years, and I finally finished it. So I know it's going to be one of those. I'm going to be very, very glad I did it when it's done. And is it super hard? Yes, I've, you know, bitched and moaned about this in the past, that fiction is really hard for me and dialog is so hard for me, but that's what I'm writing right now.Jennie NashThat's another, another learning edge, right?Jess LaheyYep. Yep.Jennie NashAwesome. KJ, what about you?KJ Dell'AntoniaMy only goal this year with respect to writing is to write this book as hard as I can for as long as it takes. That's all I got. I got a couple other goals. I'd like to get my Christmas tree down at some point during the year. It seems like a plan. I was pretty excited about the Valentine's Day concept a few years ago, but I don't know, people have been really negging on it. Easter also, apparently not tree material. I mean, come on the fourth? I'm seeing it. No one else is. So there's that. No, my and my big life goal is to leave more white space for myself in my day and in my calendar, to do things, to not do things, and for the unexpected things, both good and bad things. I have a real tendency to be like from 11:30 to one I'm doing this, and from 1:30 to 2:30 there's this, and hey, at three there's this. And that is, in fact, an excellent description of my day. And sometimes I like it, but I just do it to myself constantly, and I need to stop.Multiple Speakers[all laughing]Jennie NashThat's all? Okay. Mic drop. I'm just thinking about that white space. What? What happens when you have white space?Sarina BowenYou know what happens to me when I have white space, because I'm actually pretty good at keeping it in my calendar, is that I get an email that's like, and today, we will be choosing among these eight narrator auditions. And then you will decide who is the narrator for this book that you haven't been thinking about for four months since you last did the copy edits, and then my whole day just explodes in a little puff of admin, like trying to get out of my own inbox is killing me. So, yeah, I don't, I don't. It's not even that I planned it. Other people are making this my, my problem, and I wish I had a 2026, goal for how to fix it.KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah, there's that. I mean, to some extent, I think that's my point. Is that I would like to stop doing it to myself, because I mean it through exactly the thing it is was not my was not my idea, nor was the thing, the unexpected event at eight o'clock this this morning, or the one when I walked in from the expected thing from nine to 10. I need to do a little less of it for myself, to allow for the fact that the other things in my life, I think, and I did this to some extent last year too. My final kids have actually all left for college this year, which is great, but there's still a lot of trouble. And also I have a lot of pets, and also just, there's a lot going on. So I sort of thought, and I really made this mistake in the Fall pretty hard. I thought, oh, I should probably fill like I should put some things on the calendar because I might feel sad. A, I still felt sad, and that was okay. And B, I put way too much on the calendar, given the number, amount of time I had to spend on... I'm just yeah, and here I am thinking I didn't do it in the spring, and I didn't, but I sort of am doing it on a daily basis, like, oh, look. And some of that is just that this was, what am I wrong? Was this the longest holiday season ever in the history of holiday season? Like it was still Christmas on January 17, I swear to God. And so a lot of it, I think, is I'm feeling a little dejected, because my days are really packed, because I had the sense not to put everything in the week of January 6, but I put a lot of things this week and last week. So hopefully I'll, but, but having done that, and now feeling it, I think, I hope, will inspire me to block off more time that, no doubt, will get filled with things. But that's better than it getting filled with things and my having already filled it.Jennie NashYep.KJ Dell'AntoniaIt's not going so great.Jennie NashI get that. Okay, so, so for me, I made some really big moves in my business in 2025 and they worked, and that was great. And I made a decision toward the end of the year to make even bigger moves, and did some thinking about, I wouldn't say, an exit strategy or a succession plan, but I'm 62 this year, and I'm working really, really, really hard in my business day to day, running, you know, pretty big small business, and I really want more time to create. To create curriculum, to, I just like making things. You know, to work on the podcast, to work on my own book, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And so I made a training plan to teach my team to take over the things that they are fully capable of taking over, if I just get it out of my head and onto a page to teach them how to do it. So it's a really big move for me, and kind of a terrifying move. It means trusting people. It means handing over some things. It means there's some ego-y things involved in that, the idea that nobody can do it as well as I can. And so, yeah, that's, that's big. It's big mindset. It's big actual shifting of duties. It's, it's kind of the white space idea writ large. What, what would it look like for me to have more white space? And it is, it is not retiring, it's not stopping. It's just, can I do more of what I want to do and less of the—of the day to day of this business? I am constantly surprised by the thing I have made. Author Accelerator has more than 375 certified book coaches now, and it's this huge community, and they're having a huge impact. And a lot of my coaches are becoming huge their own selves and doing really well, and just we're becoming known. And all of that takes time to manage, like the, I don't know, I wouldn't call it the brand, it's, it's the community. It just takes a lot of time to manage and the kinds of inquiries that we get and that sort of thing. And I, it's a thing that needs care, and I'm the one to give it that care. So just meeting the moment, I guess, is what my goal is for the year, and as part of that, the Write Big Sessions that I've been doing here at the podcast are my stepping into that space of thought leadership and creation, content creation in a different way. And haven't talked about this a lot, but I am writing a Write Big book, and I went out and found myself a brand new agent. I did my search from scratch. I did it cold. I tried to find the perfect agent for this book, rather than somebody that I knew, because I know a lot of agents, and I don't want to, I don't want to talk about a lot of specifics at the moment about who that person is, or what's happening really, but I will say that it's taken a little minute to get it together, because that's how it happens sometimes. But the book is out on submission, even as we speak, and I was telling KJ, this agent does something that I've never heard of and never seen, and I love it so much, which is that she shares a spreadsheet of the submissions and puts the responses right in there so I can log in, you know, 10, 12, 25 times a day and...Multiple Speakers[all laughing]KJ Dell'AntoniaJust normal, healthy behavior, right?Jennie NashWhich is so fantastic. Rather than, like, why isn't she telling me, or how come we haven't heard or whatever? But it's very, very early days, and so all that's coming in are the no's, because that's, that's what happens. But the no's are so great. I love them so much. They're totally boosting me up. Because, like, people know me. They know my work. They like my work. Like I, I don't know. I'm just so delighted by the nature and quality of the no's, which is just a funny place to be, but that is, that is where I am so...Sarina BowenJennie, it's a fantastic place to be. Like I have never heard another author say the no's make me happy. Like that is not a sentence I have heard in my life. And I know a lot of authors, so the fact that you know that that's, I just have good, good feelings and good thoughts about this project, and you are amazing.Jennie NashWell, thank you. And that is not by accident. That's what Writing Big means, right? It's like I own this idea. I'm not waiting to be picked; I'm not waiting to be anointed. I'm not waiting for somebody to say, you know, good job. But, when they do, and you know, these no's are just indications, like I self-published the Blueprint Books and I sort of think of them as this little thing that I made. I made them for my coaches to use in their coaching, and I made them to, it's a model that I teach. I didn't ever think of it as a thing, but I've sold more than 20,000 copies of the Blueprint Books my own self, and, but I just didn't think like editors would know what they are. They would use them with their own authors. They would know my company. They would know my coaches, and that's what all the no's are showing me. And that I'm just, I'm just like, when do you get a mirror into your impact? It feels like the no's a mirror into my impact, and I feel, I feel like there's no doubt that something great is going to happen with this book. I have no doubt. So bring on the no's and have them be awesome, because I know good things, great things are coming, and whether, who knows what path that is going to be, but that, that is where I am, and that sharing of the spreadsheet that this agent has done is just feeding right into, I mean, for other people, it might be the biggest disaster in the world, but for me, I'm like, this is so fun. I love it. My goal is for the year to lean into this bigger vision of what I can be.KJ Dell'AntoniaThat's a good goal.Jennie NashThank you. Well, I'm going to share my word first, because it just goes so well with what I've just been saying, and it's so obvious, and it's so great. And my word of the year is ‘play big'. Play big.KJ Dell'AntoniaThat's two words.Jess LaheyThat's two words.Sarina BowenI get two words.KJ Dell'AntoniaShe's allowed to have two words because she's playing big.Multiple Speakers[all laughing]Jennie NashAll right, we have to go in reverse order then so KJ, what's your, what's your word?KJ Dell'AntoniaOh, my word of the year is, is ‘alive'.Jess LaheyOh, dear. Okay, that's a... quite a goal you got there missy.KJ Dell'AntoniaIt's a good word... laughingJennie NashCan you explain?!Sarina BowenShe can't, because she's laughing really hard right now.KJ Dell'AntoniaUm, it was going to be enthusiast, because I wanted to be sort of a welcoming both the challenges and the excitements of my life. But I really just feel like, and then it was going to be relish, but, but that's pickles, and I hate them. And then I'm just, I just feel really good about just letting it all come and, and being a part of it.Jennie NashOkay, good word.Jess LaheyOh, Sarina?Sarina BowenI've used a lot of the words.Jess LaheyOh, not yet. Sorry.KJ Dell'AntoniaShe said, reverse order.Jennie NashI'm laughing so hard that I'm crying.Jess LaheyOh, she said, reverse order. That's right.Sarina BowenWe have done this so many times, and we have never laughed all the way through it. Okay, okay.Jess LaheyKJ is right though we have used all of the words, I actually considered reusing one of my words this year, but then I thought maybe that was a cop out. So I did come up with a new word.Sarina BowenI considered it, and then I was too lazy to go look them up.Jess LaheyThat's quite a statement there, Bowen.Sarina BowenI know!Multiple Speakers[all laughing uncontrollably]KJ Dell'AntoniaI know I had savor before, that was kind of where I was going, but...Jennie NashI can't stop laughing.KJ Dell'AntoniaI don't know I feel very gritty about my... [unintelligible]Jennie NashI'm like snort laughing over here at the idea of I'm never going to not hear relish and pickles. [laughing uncontrollably]Jess LaheyI know, I know, I like it so much. I love it.Sarina BowenWell, she really doesn't like pickles. KJ is that friend where if she is served a pickle with her lunch, you can take it.Jess LaheyYeah. Absolutely.KJ Dell'AntoniaAnd the bit of bread that it touched.Sarina BowenOkay Jess? Jess, I don't know how you're going to follow this, but do you have a word?Jess LaheyI do have a word, and I'm really excited about this word, because years ago, when I did a really cool conference in Abu Dhabi, I met this woman that I was shocked I hadn't met before. But her name is Elke Govertsen, Elke, and she has a Substack. Her Substack is just, it's @ Elke, is her. She managed to snag @ Elke. She has a newsletter. She has something called Open Nesting. She's got older kids. Anyway, I subscribed to her Substack. I love it. She's one of those people that when she walked down on stage to give her talk, she just glowed from inside, like she was one of those people that you just, I felt really drawn to. So I started following her and her year, her word for this year I really liked, although I thought about it in a different way than she did. Her word for the year is ‘allow'—a, l, l, o, w—and so that is my word for the year, to allow myself to do some things. For example, finishing this book, and just realizing, allowing myself to be really bad at it and hoping that I can pull it off, allowing myself to look really dumb doing stuff like the beekeeping, allowing myself some grace about the fact that I'm probably killed my bees this winter because they're not insulated enough, all of the things. But I just really liked her word allow. So that's where I am. That's my word. I was going to redo evaluate, because I really did like that one, because that the emphasis there was, like, figure out what's valuable to you, but whatever, I've used that one before, so I'm going to give credit out to Elke and go with allow.Jennie NashOkay, Sarina, what about you?Sarina BowenWell, you know, I picked a word, and I usually really struggle with this, and I never feel quite comfortable with it, but I pick something, or it just picked me one day, and that word is ‘esteem'. And my little job, my little job is having a strange little moment of esteem, because there's this show that's at the tippy top of HBO right now called Heated Rivalry. And Heated Rivalry is a book that is a queer hockey romance, which is something that I have also written since 2014, and it has; strangely, some of my best performing books ever over the last decade fall into what I thought was a niche. So I write this niche thing, and people read it and they love it, but you know, it has always stayed in its corner until now. And Rachel Reid is the author of the book called Heated Rivalry, from which this TV show was made very faithfully. And Heated Rivalry is a fantastic novel, by the way. Fantastic conflict, and an interesting story structure. So it has been quite a revelation to watch her book and story reach an audience that I did not feel it was capable of. And there is something about that, that really spoke to all the parts about my, of my business, where, for example, sometimes I have to do research. And early on, I almost felt apologetic about asking an orthopedic surgeon to talk to me about something for a romance novel, because I just assumed that they would roll their eyes. I did it anyway. Thank you, Mark, Dr. Mark, for explaining knee surgery to me. But um, so esteem is a couple of different things. It is choosing projects that I esteem and that I care about, not because I think they'll sell, but because I love them, and also just realizing that the esteem that comes to various things that we do is not always predictable or measurable or something to rely upon. So I have to esteem it all on my own before I commit the time to do that. And that is how I ended up picking this word that I that I really like. It's kind of a quiet word. It doesn't, it isn't sexy, I guess is, is a word I would describe it, not really, but, um, but it is a, it's like asks you to pause and measure how we feel about something before we commit. And that is how I ended up there.Jess LaheyI love that meaning to the word. I love it.Jennie NashSomething that also occurs to me is you spoke with such esteem about this other author and the work that that she's done, and that's something that you often do, and you lift up all the writers in lots of different ways. And that esteem you have for the process of writing and the publishing business and the hard work of it comes across as well. So I like that meaning too.Sarina BowenWell thank you. I had an interesting conversation with my 22 year old son, who is quite a reader. Right now he's trying to get to the end of Crime and Punishment before his semester really kicks in. And he asked me over drinks, on a trip to Boston that I was making time for, so go me, if I could write like anyone, like if I could suddenly have the skills of any author, dead or alive, who would I pick? And I instantly gave him a couple of names in contemporary fiction that he has never read and never will, because there are people who write books that are not for 22 year old nerds. And, um, and he, he sort of blanked and he's like, no mama, like you could have, you could be Tolstoy, you know, like you could pick anything. And I'm like, no, I'm serious. I have esteem for the things these people are doing in contemporary fiction. And it's like that, um, that George Michael quote, like, when are you going to make some serious music? And he says, you don't understand, I'm very serious about pop music. And you know, it's my right to esteem whatever I choose. And I really do choose this. It's not; it's not a runner up thing for me. This is my interest, and I'm going to value it.Jess LaheyHell yeah,Sarina BowenYeah. Woohoo!Jennie NashI feel like we should end on that.Jess LaheyYeah. I think that's a good place to stop.Jennie NashThat was some power, power language there. We would love our listeners to share in the chat your goals for the year, your words for the year, how you feel about pickles and their touching a bread. [laughing] We would love to hear all the things from you, and until next time, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.NarratorThe Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled, Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for the This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Every December, the same two songs return — playing in stores, homes, airports, and holiday parties around the world. Do They Know It's Christmas? and Last Christmas have become so deeply embedded in our global celebration of the season that it feels like they've always been there. But they haven't. In this episode, Kate takes a deep dive into the remarkable back stories behind two of the most iconic Christmas songs ever recorded, both released within days of each other in December 1984 — and both created under dramatically different circumstances. Reality Life with Kate Casey What to Watch List: https://katecasey.substack.com Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/katecasey Twitter: https://twitter.com/katecasey Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/katecaseyca Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itskatecasey?lang=en Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/113157919338245 Amazon List: https://www.amazon.com/shop/katecasey Like it to Know It: https://www.shopltk.com/explore/katecaseySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.