Podcasts about Ghani

Os convidados do programa Pânico dessa segunda-feira (17) são Renata Barreto e Alan Ghani.Renata Barreto Empresária com 21 anos de carreira no mercado financeiro, especialista em investimentos internacionais, é sócia da Faz Group Holding que detém empresas do setor financeiro. Atualmente mora em Miami, nos EUA.Redes Sociais:Instagram: @renata.jbarretoX: @renatajbarretoAlan GhaniEconomista com PhD em Finanças pela USP, com parte do doutorado realizado na UTSA (University of Texas at San Antonio, EUA). É comentarista fixo de economia na Jovem Pan e apresentador de um programa de educação financeira na Rádio Jovem Pan. Também atua como professor de Economia e Finanças no MBA do Insper e já lecionou sobre investimentos nos EUA. É palestrante nas áreas de economia e finanças pessoais. Além disso, é economista-chefe da MSX Invest, estrategista para investimentos no exterior e colunista da Gazeta do Povo.Redes Sociais:Instagram: @alan_ghani

Os convidados do programa Pânico dessa segunda-feira (03) são Leonardo Siqueira e Alan Ghani. Leonardo Siqueira Siqueira é deputado estadual por São Paulo, ele também é economista formado pela Fundação Getúlio Vargas e mestre em Economia pela Barcelona School of Economics. Atualmente, está fazendo doutorado em Economia no Insper. Leonardo fundou o projeto Mais Educação, que ajuda pessoas sem condições financeiras a pagar por seus estudos.  Alan Ghani Ghani é economista com PhD em Finanças pela USP, com parte do doutorado realizado na UTSA (University of Texas at San Antonio, EUA). É comentarista fixo de economia na Jovem Pan e apresentador de um programa de educação financeira na Rádio Jovem Pan. Também atua como professor de Economia e Finanças no MBA do Insper e já lecionou sobre investimentos nos EUA. É palestrante nas áreas de economia e finanças pessoais. Além disso, é economista-chefe da MSX Invest, estrategista para investimentos no exterior e colunista da Gazeta do Povo.

The podcast discusses the integration of AI in healthcare across the Middle East, driven by initiatives like Saudi Vision 2030 and UAE AI Strategy. Yasir Ghani highlights the Emirati genome program, which uses AI for personalized and preventive healthcare. He emphasizes the challenges in implementing electronic health records, with 60% of healthcare organizations struggling. The conversation also covers the importance of cybersecurity, supply chain risks, and the need for robust risk management strategies. Additionally, Ghani discusses the evolving board composition in the UAE, with a focus on diversifying skills and expertise, and advises ACCA members to be strategic, proactive, and tech-savvy in their careers.

The podcast discusses the integration of AI in healthcare across the Middle East, driven by initiatives like Saudi Vision 2030 and UAE AI Strategy. Yasir Ghani highlights the Emirati genome program, which uses AI for personalized and preventive healthcare. He emphasizes the challenges in implementing electronic health records, with 60% of healthcare organizations struggling. The conversation also covers the importance of cybersecurity, supply chain risks, and the need for robust risk management strategies. Additionally, Ghani discusses the evolving board composition in the UAE, with a focus on diversifying skills and expertise, and advises ACCA members to be strategic, proactive, and tech-savvy in their careers.

O convidado do programa Pânico dessa quarta-feira (06) é Mauricio Galante. Ex-militar da Marinha no Brasil, há pouco mais de duas décadas, Mauricio Galante decidiu mudar de vida e de país. Com apenas U$ 100 dólares no bolso ao desembarcar nos Estados Unidos, Maurício chegou a viver por meses durante o inverno em uma barraca no gramado de um aeroporto, e fez todos os tipos de trabalho para fazer sua obstinada VISÃO se tornar uma realidade. Depois de muitos desafios em solo americano e muito trabalho, Galante comprou uma escola de paraquedas. Os anos se passaram e ele comprou uma escola de golfe no Texas. Sua trajetória de superação como imigrante foi contada em um livro, lançado no Brasil e nos Estados Unidos, em 2023 – “E se meu paraquedas não abrir?”. O livro teve um grande alcance em meio à comunidade brasileira no exterior, fazendo com que, no mesmo ano do lançamento, Galante recebesse duas importantes premiações, uma em Londres (Inglaterra) e outra em New York (EUA). Sempre muito antenado com a política no Brasil e nos Estados Unidos, no início de 2024 Galante, que já havia se tornado um “cidadão americano”, decidiu entrar na política dos Estados Unidos, candidatando-se ao cargo de City Council (que equivale ao carga do vereador no Brasil) pelo partido Republicano, na cidade de Arlington (Texas), onde reside com sua esposa e os dois filhos do casal. O empresário brasileiro foi eleito e tornou-se o primeiro brasileiro a ocupar esse cargo no Texas, trabalhando arduamente para o progresso social, juntamente com demais representantes do partido Republicano americano. Como comentarista, o programa traz Eliseu Caetano. Jornalista com mais de 20 anos de experiência em televisão como repórter, âncora e correspondente internacional, com especialização em política, geopolítica e economia.

On our mid-month check in for July 2024, we recap some of the latest Asian American publishing announcements, as well as get some updates on the latest Books & Boba pick to get picked up for TV and which books by Asian authors made it into the New York Time's best 100 books of the century!Upcoming books mentioned in our publishing news:Reasons We Break by Jesmeen Kaur DeoArctic Adventures: A Tundra Tale by Jyoti Rajan Gopal; illust by Alexandra Mims CookCactus Home by Vikram MadanThe First Girl on Stage: Tunga Dances the Yakshagana by Shruthi Rao; illust by Devika JoglekarTea Leaf Eggs by Karen E. HongHold by Randy Ribay; illust Zeke PeñaMiles Ahead by Minh Lê; illustrated by Lynnor BontigaoPassé It On by Dani ChuaticoHow to Fake a Love Story in 15 Days by Aashna AvachatBaba Palooza by A.D. Ghani; illust by Nadia AlamAmina Banana by Shifa Saltagi Safadi; illust by Aaliya JaleelThe Other Lata by Kirthana RamisettiNews stories covered on this episode:George R.R. Martin honors R.F. Kuang and Xiran Jay Zhao with 2024 Alfie AwardsXiran Jay Zhao wins The Astounding Award at the 2024 HugosBooks & Boba is a podcast dedicated to reading and featuring books by Asian and Asian American authorsSupport the Books & Boba Podcast by:Joining our Patreon to receive exclusive perksPurchasing books at our bookshopRocking our Books & Boba merchFollow our hosts:Reera Yoo (@reeraboo)Marvin Yueh (@marvinyueh)Follow us:InstagramTwitterGoodreadsFacebookThe Books & Boba August 2024 book club pick is Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam ZhangThis podcast is part of Potluck: An Asian American Podcast CollectiveMentioned in this episode:Listen to Inheriting from LAist & NPR"Inheriting" is a show about Asian American and Pacific Islander families, which explores how one event in history can ripple through generations. In doing so, the show seeks to break apart the AAPI monolith and tell a fuller story of these communities. In each episode, NPR's Emily Kwong sits down with one family and facilitates...

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Ghee The Oil Of The Ghani Of The House, Taste The Sweets, Give Courage To The Servants DhadrianwaleGhar Dee Ghaanee Daa Tel Ghiau, Matthiaaeean Daa Ttesatt, Sevaadaaraan Noo Hauansalaa | Dhadrianwale

Nachdem das georgische Parlament das Gesetz gegen ausländischen Einfluss verabschiedet hat, kommen aus dem Westen Drohungen mit Sanktionen und mit der Regierung nicht abgesprochene Besuche westlicher Politiker, die offenbar die Demonstranten weiter aufstacheln sollen.Ein Kommentar von Thomas Röper.Die ersten Reaktionen des Westens auf die Annahme des Gesetzes gegen ausländischen Einfluss in Georgien sind deutlich. Der Westen droht mit Sanktionen und einer Verschlechterung der Beziehungen zu Georgien. Außerdem feuert der Westen die Demonstranten nach Kräften an, was der Westen sich umgekehrt aus dem Ausland niemals gefallen lassen würde.Drohungen aus LondonDas Gesetz könnte den Plänen von Georgien, der NATO beizutreten, ein Ende setzen, warnte die stellvertretende britische Außenministerin Nusrat Ghani:„Die Bilder von dem, was in Georgien geschieht, sind schockierend, und als Freunde Georgiens rufen wir zu Ruhe und Zurückhaltung auf allen Seiten auf. Heute hat das georgische Parlament erneut für das Gesetz über die Transparenz ausländischer Einflussnahme gestimmt. Wie unsere Partner lehnt auch Großbritannien die Einführung dieses Gesetzes entschieden ab. Das Gesetz und die orchestrierten Einschüchterungsversuche gegen Demonstranten, die das begleiteten, sind unvereinbar mit den demokratischen Werten eines Landes, das die NATO-Mitgliedschaft anstrebt, und bergen die Gefahr, Georgiens transatlantischen Bestrebungen ein Ende zu setzen.“Ghani fügte hinzu, sie habe die Situation am 14. Mai mit dem georgischen Botschafter besprochen und ihm mitgeteilt, dass London die Entwicklungen „mit großer Sorge“ verfolge und sie forderte die georgische Regierung auf, ihren Kurs zu ändern und dieses Gesetz zurückzuziehen...... hier weiterlesen: https://apolut.net/maidan-2-0-der-westen-mobilisiert-gegen-georgien-von-thomas-roeper+++Dieser Beitrag erschien zuerst am 14. Mai 2024 auf anti-spiegel.ru.+++Bildquelle: Eva Pruchova / Shutterstock+++Ihnen gefällt unser Programm? Machen wir uns gemeinsam im Rahmen einer „digitalen finanziellen Selbstverteidigung" unabhängig vom Bankensystem und unterstützen Sie uns bitte mit Bitcoin: https://apolut.net/unterstuetzen#bitcoinzahlungInformationen zu weiteren Unterstützungsmöglichkeiten finden Sie hier: https://apolut.net/unterstuetzen/ +++Bitte empfehlen Sie uns weiter und teilen Sie gerne unsere Inhalte. Sie haben hiermit unser Einverständnis, unsere Beiträge in Ihren eigenen Kanälen auf Social-Media- und Video-Plattformen zu teilen bzw. hochzuladen und zu veröffentlichen.+++Apolut ist auch als kostenlose App für Android- und iOS-Geräte verfügbar! Über unsere Homepage kommen Sie zu den Stores von Apple, Google und Huawei. Hier der Link: https://apolut.net/app/ Die apolut-App steht auch zum Download (als sogenannte Standalone- oder APK-App) auf unserer Homepage zur Verfügung. Mit diesem Link können Sie die App auf Ihr Smartphone herunterladen: https://apolut.net/apolut_app.apk +++Abonnieren Sie jetzt den apolut-Newsletter: https://apolut.net/newsletter/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ghani was expelled from party for criticising Modi's Banswara speech. BJP functionaries say he was a dedicated party worker & one of party's trusted Muslim faces in Bikaner.  

Today we have a very special guest, Shariq Abdul Ghani! In this heartfelt conversation, Shariq delves into the richness of his faith traditions, sharing personal anecdotes and insights on how his beliefs have shaped his understanding of the world and humanity. We discuss the commonalities that exist between Islam and Christianity, emphasizing the shared values of love, compassion, and service to others. We highlight the importance of dialogue, empathy, and active listening in fostering mutual understanding and appreciation. By focusing on what unites us rather than what divides us, we demonstrate how we can build bridges of solidarity and cooperation within our communities.Shariq Abdul Ghani is the Executive Director of Minaret Foundation, an organization focused on bringing faith communities together through multi-faith and civic engagement. Apart from dialogue, dodgeball, and BBQs, Minaret Foundation works with faith communities to change the world through advocacy in food insecurity, child welfare, and religious freedom.You can learn more at MinaretFoundation.com or by emailing him at shariq@minaretfoundation.com.

One hundred years ago, a bright new age for children was dawning in America. Child labor laws were being passed, public education was spreading, and more. But Adam Benforado says America stopped short in its revolution of children's rights. Today, more than eleven million American children live in poverty. We deny young people any political power, while we fail to act on the issues that matter most to them: racism, inequality, and climate change. That's why Adam is calling for a new revolution for kids. He joins us to discuss his book, A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All.   About the Guest Adam Benforado is a professor of law at the Drexel University Kline School of Law and the New York Times best-selling author of A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All and Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice. His research, teaching, and advocacy is focused on children's rights and criminal justice. A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, he served as a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and an attorney at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. He has published numerous scholarly articles. His popular writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Scientific American, Slate, and The Atlantic. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and children.   Transcript ADAM BENFORADO: If you're an architect, if you're a plumber, if you are a judge on an immigration court, I want you to think about what your job would look like if you put children first. The reason to do this is because this is good for all of us. It's not just good for kids. It's good for people who don't even like children at all. This is the best path forward as a society, because we all pay the costs of that inattention and those harms that come to kids. BLAIR HODGES: That's Adam Benforado and he's calling for a revolution in the way we all think about childhood. Which is gonna sound a little weird if you think kids today have it easier than ever. And it's true. I mean, they have some luxuries I couldn't even dream of as a kid—like I had to wait until Saturday morning to watch my favorite cartoons. Even then, I had to make the difficult choice between Muppet Babies or Ninja Turtles because they were on at the same time on a different channel. As a parent, Adam Benforado says he cheers for many improvements, but as a professor of law at Drexel University, he says the way children are treated by the courts in the US, economic limits they face, their lack of voting power, their poor access to health care, things like this make kids as vulnerable in America as they've been in 100 years. He wants that to change, not just because it would be better for kids. He says it would be better for everyone. But could the world's major challenges with health, climate change, and public safety really be easier to address by changing the way we treat kids? Adam Benforado says yes, that's why he wrote the book, A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All, and he's here to talk about it right now. There's no one right way to be a family and every kind of family has something we can learn from. I'm Blair Hodges, and this is Family Proclamations.   LIFELONG INTEREST IN CHILDREN'S RIGHTS (2:15)   BLAIR HODGES: Adam Benforado, welcome to Family Proclamations. ADAM BENFORADO: Great to be with you. BLAIR HODGES: We're talking about your book, A Minor Revolution. And this is about children's rights. I wondered what got you interested in focusing on the legal rights of children. Your background is in law. So talk a little bit about why the rights of children became your focus. ADAM BENFORADO: So I think for me this is really a lifelong project. I think the seeds of this really come from my own childhood. I was really lucky to be born into a family with two really loving, supportive parents who spent a lot of time encouraging me and helping me be independent. But I think all around me, throughout my childhood, I saw a lot of abuse and, honestly, subjugation of children. And it really bothered me, starting when I was in elementary school, seeing the way kids were treated as, you know, not second-class citizens but as just, like, non-entities, I mean, not even like human beings. I think I was also aware of broader forces. I think I was really aware of the impact of wealth. I had a 1,200 square foot house and in my early elementary years I felt like the rich kid. And then I went to a kind of wealthy neighborhood in fourth grade where one of my friend's fathers got a limousine for the fourth-grade birthday party. And suddenly, I was like, “Oh my gosh! Actually my parents have like a beat-up VW Beetle.” And I'm like, “I'm not wealthy, like, I'm actually kind of worried about what my friends might think of my wealth, my family's wealth.” I think I was someone who really thought that I should vote when I was like in sixth grade. I didn't understand, you know, maybe I don't know as much as this other person. But I did know about the world. I have things I care about. Why shouldn't I have a say? I have a say in a whole bunch of other areas of my life. My parents listened when we were discussing things like what we should have for dinner, or whatever. I think it was those interactions and observations which informed my sense of and desire to write about some of the injustices I saw. And I think that carried me to law school, and certainly informed the questions I was interested in looking into, and certainly the way I taught. And in terms of coming to children's rights, the type of legal scholars usually sort of fall into these two camps of either being like general human rights—people who kind of focus over time on children's rights—or they are like practitioners who are working in the child welfare system, and then they come in with this particular angle. And it's funny because honestly, I was writing about all these different topics—like I started out writing about the role of corporations in society, and I teach criminal law. And in each of these subjects I look at things through the lens of children. So I'm very interested in, you know, how corporations manipulate kids to use them as weapons against their parents. I'm very interested in criminal law on juvenile justice issues— BLAIR HODGES: Are you talking about breakfast cereal commercials and toy commercials? [laughter] ADAM BENFORADO: Yes, yes. [laughter] BLAIR HODGES: Like how stores put all the candy and toys right by the checkout so you have to pass through there with your kids. ADAM BENFORADO: Oh, yeah. And that's something now, as a father—I think the cool thing about this project is, the seeds of this project started when I was a kid, but now I'm seeing it from a different perspective. I have two kids and, I tell you, right before I was writing this book, I had this experience with my daughter in Whole Foods. It's one of these times when we've got to go to the grocery store, there's no food, and my daughter looks up in front of the egg aisle, and there's this giant giraffe that costs $100, you know? And my daughter just breaks down, like lying on the ground, sobbing. And I'm like, “What are you doing?” BLAIR HODGES: It's pretty genius really. ADAM BENFORADO: And here's the kicker, one of the Amazon shoppers passing through comes up, looks at me, and goes, “Spoiled.” She shakes her head. And I was like, “Oh my god, this is a set up! This is just like this giant trap.” And what's brilliant about it is that no parents are gonna buy the hundred-dollar giraffe. You're coming in for eggs. But you know, what you might do to stop the embarrassment is buy the ten-dollar little plushie, stuffed animal, just to get out of that awkward social situation. BLAIR HODGES: That's right. I wonder, do you remember an example—you mentioned when you were in elementary school you saw children being treated not even as citizens at all. Do you remember anything in particular that stood out to you? You said you wanted to vote in sixth grade, as an example. Is there anything else like, “Wow, why are we kids being treated like this?” ADAM BENFORADO: Yeah, I mean, I thought about it in many circumstances. In elementary school, learning that my good friend's father spanked him and being like, my friend is really, he's a really smart, really nice person. We're no different. And he messes up in little, tiny ways. But everyone messes up. Adults mess up all the time and no one hits them. And then moving on from that to becoming a law professor and being like, wow, not suddenly being like, “Oh, this all makes sense.” But actually, wait a second, it's criminal law that you can't hit a prisoner. Like someone who's a murderer or rapist, it's prohibited under the Constitution from formally beating people as a punishment. And yet the legal minds, the geniuses, who are on our courts have said, “It's actually okay, it's constitutionally permissible. Kids are different.” And I think the answer to that today is because we don't see kids the way we see adults. We don't see them as full citizens. And I think there were a lot of moments like that. I think the bullying that I saw in junior high school, you know, again, that's what kids do. But what was so frustrating to me was the treating of this by adults, you know. The gym teacher, the math teacher, who saw the same terrible abuse. Like the kids who face this must carry those scars to this day. And doing nothing. There were all these instances where kids end up protected from things they don't need protecting from, where they can actually be empowered. And then actually, on the flip side, exposed to real harms that we could do something about, you know? There were adults who could easily have done things and didn't. And I think that all of those little observations, I kind of filed them back in my mind. And moments of censorship. So, you know, I remember a moment from Junior year—I got into this Governor's School down in Virginia, went away for a month, and it was like, the first time in my life that I was feeling like getting treated as an adult. Like it was all independent. They had college professors teaching this stuff. And you know what? I did all the reading, I read all the poetry. I did all the history. I did it all because I was like, “This is interesting, and I want to be engaged in these conversations.” And I felt this whole month, treated as an adult. And then at the final little party thing—and over the course of the term, there were people at Governor's School who were musicians, and I played in rock bands. So I formed this little band called “Beans and Franks” and we wrote some songs. And I'm about to go up to perform. The band gets to perform at the last thing, and the head of Governor's School comes up to me and is like, “Okay, I'm gonna need to review the lyrics.” And I was like, “What?” Like, I'm 17 years old, like, I've been listening to—Everyone here has heard everything already. Like, you've been treating me like an adult for a month. And now you want to review the lyrics? What? And I thought through like, there aren't even any offensive lyrics. But okay, I'll go through this song that I've written. And there was one line, which I think it was something like—again, it's embarrassing to even say, it was just stupid—It was like, “Smooth like a rubber, bounce it back to your mother.” [laughter] And he's like, “No, no. You cannot do that.” And honestly, as a 17-year-old boy I wrote a few songs with more offensive lyrics. [laughter] BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, you were like, “We were going easy on y'all here.” ADAM BENFORADO: Yes! I was like, “Hey, I've actually cleaned this up for the Governor's School performance.” And it was like, you can't perform this. I just was like, how do you expect me to be prepared to be a member of society? I'm going off to college in a year, and it soured everything else. It was like all the other stuff. You want to control me. You're happy when I'm getting A's in my classes and doing what you say. But as soon as I show some real independence, that's when you're like, “No, you're nothing. I'm the decider.” And it's interesting, I teach this course called The Rights of Children, and actually have my students think back to moments from their childhood. And what I have observed, which is so interesting, is how fresh these incidents are. Like a student, who was now 27 years old, writing about that moment at the eighth-grade dance, where she was going into a strict Catholic school, and they had always had the same dress code. The girls got to wear off the shoulder dresses and the new principal changed it but she organized a petition and had all the teachers sign it, and the principal wouldn't even meet with them. Wouldn't even meet. And she's carried that to law school. She's writing about it just as if it happened yesterday. And I think it's these things that all of us carry, we sort of often kind of later justify it as a rite of passage that everyone should go through as opposed to, “No, that's wrong. And I'm going to change that for the next generation. I want them to experience something different than what I experienced.” As opposed to, “Yeah, it's just part of the experience. You're brutalized and then you get to brutalize when you're an adult, and so it's fair.”   AMERICA'S CHILD WELFARE MOVEMENT 100 YEARS AGO (12:39)   BLAIR HODGES: To get to this point where dress codes and things are the main concern, you actually take us back in time to talk about some of the reforms that happened a century ago. Your book starts back in 1906. There's this Spokane Press article. Here's a quote from it. It says, “When your children are swinging in the hammock, or playing at the park, stop and give a thought to the pale-faced factory boys and girls of the metropolis.” They're painting this picture of child labor and distinguishing between more privileged kids and kids that are basically laborers at this time. What was happening at the turn of the century, what was the child's rights movement like back then? ADAM BENFORADO: So I wanted to open the book with this broader historical context in part because this was this miraculous moment a little over a hundred years ago where, coming out of the horrors of the Industrial Revolution, Americans—and these are really everyday Americans, across the country—came together and said we need to do something about the plight of children. And we need to do something, not simply because this is unfair to kids, but because we are setting ourselves up for failure as a nation. So when we fail to invest in the education of, you know, five to 15-year-olds, that's setting us up to fail in the decades ahead. So people came together—reformers who were often kind of lumped together as this child saver progressive movement, came together to demand changes: building of better public schools, mandatory public education, pushing for health and even things like drug safety measures, building playgrounds, investing in and creating an entirely new juvenile justice system based on rehabilitation rather than punishment. I chose to go back and just pick up kind of a random paper from 1906 to show just how much this energy was pushing into every area of life. So this is a little four-page paper from Washington State. And literally every page has like three different articles about child-focused reforms. And I think what was miraculous was just how much was done. By 1912 President Taft had created the first federal agency focused on the whole child, this Children's Bureau. And the idea, I think, coming out of this was, certainly in the decades ahead, we are going to see this bright new age for children across the country. And unfortunately, I think what we have seen over the course of the 20th century and then into the last couple of decades, is not simply kind of slowing to a trudge, but in some cases, even backtracking on some things. So you started with this example of child labor, this excerpt from this article. Well, what have we seen over just the last couple of months? Exposés in the New York Times about young people working in terrible labor conditions. Working the overnight shifts, just as those kids were laboring in 1906. And the reasons that are given to justify it are just the same as were given in 1906: “It's an economic necessity, coming out of the pandemic, we've had changes in the job market. We actually need to roll back job protections in our state. Businesses can't compete unless we let 15-year-olds continue to work.” BLAIR HODGES: Or like “families need the money, like this is actually good for families.” Instead of looking at how when people aren't being paid living wages, “Oh, let's make their children work.” ADAM BENFORADO: It's something that I think, you know, we see a little bit in fiction even. I'm halfway through a new book called Demon Copperhead—really great if any listeners are looking for a new summer read—but it traces actually kind of the effects of the child welfare system, but also the fact that kids are picking tobacco in our fields. One of the historical examples that's in this 1906 newspaper is the plight of kids rolling cigarettes in factories in New York City. Okay, well, they may not be doing that in New York City anymore. But down in North Carolina, kids today are picking tobacco in a hundred-degree heat. And they're getting nicotine poisoning, just like kids did a hundred years ago. And often it's the most vulnerable kids. It's migrant kids. It's kids whose parents are desperate for cash. And we're turning our back on them. In a way, unfortunately, I think this is a real indictment of the status quo. I think we're turning our backs more than people did 120 years ago. I think the child labor movement was going in the right direction. There was a lot of work that they ultimately, you know— Some of these child labor laws from a hundred years ago, there were exemptions for farm workers. But they were making a lot of progress. Here? Look at the last couple of months. We're backtracking. In a lot of areas we're repealing labor protections, virtually. BLAIR HODGES: We'll talk about some of the reasons you think that's happening as we go. Just to set the table as we get into some of the rights you're arguing for, I want to point out that your book is not making philosophical arguments, you're arguing about pragmatic benefits. ADAM BENFORADO: Yeah, I think that's one of the things that probably sets this book, and I think my approach, apart from some other rights scholars and rights advocates is I'm not simply arguing that this is a good thing to do for kids, right? It's not “natural rights.” I think that's usually where people start is like, even if there were no benefit to the rest of us, this is the good thing to do. That's how we tend to think about rights. And I absolutely believe that is true for children. But I think that's never going to get us where we want to be. I think we need to make the strong case for why actually putting children first benefits all of us. And that's because so many social problems are best addressed if you focus on interventions, rehab, in childhood. Ultimately, as a society, you always have to pay for things like crime, underemployment, poor health. The question is simply: Are you going to pay pennies on those preventative early interventions? Or are you going to pay many dollars on the backend when problems have already metastasized and hardened? It's a choice. Again, do you want to pay for school lunches for all kids? Or do you want to have kids who can't pay attention in school and don't graduate, and then you have a labor force who is underperforming and underemployed? You're gonna have to pay for that triple bypass. There's no free option. And so really, this is also I think, an answer to those critics who are worried that somehow this is a zero-sum game—that if you invest in kids, somehow you harm older Americans. No! When you invest in kids, you have healthier old people, you have old people who actually have more in their retirement account so they can take care of themselves. So what is the best pathway for us as a society? Invest in kids. I think that's the core takeaway for the book.   ISOLATED PARENTING (20:09)   BLAIR HODGES: Right. And I want people to see that, because this isn't a book for parents, per se, this is a book for all people. And the other point is, everyone's been a child, whether you end up having kids later on, we've all been children, we've all experienced that. And the way children are raised in our society affects everybody, not just parents. And so this isn't a book about parenting. ADAM BENFORADO: That's a great point. And I think, unfortunately, kids and kid's issues and children's rights in this country, have been framed only as a parent's issue. And that's part of that story, that historical story of like, what happened to those early child savers, those early progressives? And one of the answers is over the course of the 20th century, we lost this vision of investing in and empowering kids as a societal endeavor and it shifted to this idea that, “No, raising up kids is solely the work of individual parents.” BLAIR HODGES: It's “Don't Tread on Me” parenting. ADAM BENFORADO: Yeah. It's atomized. So what has happened over the course of the 20th century, this was coming from popular culture. But I think it was also coming from our elite institutions. The Supreme Court is coming out with really these groundbreaking opinions, saying parents are ultimately in possession of a fundamental right to decide the destinies of their children in all of the important matters, whether that's religion, whether that's schooling, whether that's medical care. And one of the consequences of that is this incredible weight which is placed on all parents' shoulders. Now, it's entirely up to you whether your kid sinks or swims. You actually have to be the ultimate decider on everything. You're the one who's asked to decide, now, is my kid going to learn about race history? Not the school. The school isn't going to teach them about these defining historical moments, because they're scared, they don't want the protests and the pushback. And the textbooks are being removed, these references of well, “We've got to leave out the Holocaust. Slavery, let's take that out. We'll leave this, take that. We're not taking a position. It's just up to individual parents to make these decisions.” So suddenly, parents, you have to be a historian. Well, suddenly, you actually have to decide on medical care, too. Don't just take the vaccine schedule from the doctor. No, you do your own research. Oh, you want to protect your kid from, you know, lead and asbestos? Well, you do the research. I will tell you as a parent, it is exhausting. It explains one of the reasons why parent burnout and unhappiness is so high in this country, as opposed to some of the studies that have been done comparatively, parents who have nothing, who face incredible odds in Africa, are much, much, much happier as parents. Why? Because it's a collective endeavor. They don't have to do everything. They're not alone in these struggles. And unfortunately, I think that's the rub of the whole parents' rights movement is, okay, you get to decide, but being a parent, raising kids is so hard. You face so much.   THE EARLY YEARS: A RIGHT TO ATTACHMENT (23:34)   BLAIR HODGES: And there's less and less social support. We'll talk about this in a later part of the interview about early childhood and the “Right to Investment.” But let's start with “The Right to Attachment.” So in the book you've laid out these particular rights for kids, and you kind of rolled them out according to developmental stages of where children are at. You're following the best research on childhood development. In the first years, the “right to attachment” is what you highlight in here. And one of the things some of these earlier child advocates had wrong was the idea that parents shouldn't baby their babies, that they shouldn't coddle them, they should maintain a kind of detachment from them. And then there was this fascinating monkey experiment listeners might have heard of, I think I heard about it as an undergraduate, where they had these monkeys and they had a mother that was like, just this wire cage that would give them milk. And then also a monkey that was like covered in fabric and it was comfortable. And then the baby monkeys would go to the milk mom and eat, but then they would always go back to the comfortable mom, and that's who they would bond with. So the argument became secure bonds, warm bonds, loving experiences, more nurturing-type experiences are important. And you had a big scientific shift here away from this detached parenting style to close parenting, and you're arguing for more of that for kids. ADAM BENFORADO: Yeah, and I argue, hey, this research has continued and now is incredibly robust on the value of early attachment with a primary caregiver. It's actually been supplemented by work even showing intergenerational effects, in the context of these monkeys. If you engage in that early deprivation, it actually can have intergenerational effects on the future monkey offspring. Now, I think we look at the state of the research and then we look at what society has done in response. Well, what society has done in response is work in incredible ways, severing the bonds and failing to support bonds that I think we could really seriously strengthen. What are some examples of that? Well, we're the only wealthy, advanced nation who does not have paid mandatory supported care leave for the parents and adoptive parents of young kids. And again, as I said, that sets us up for failure as a nation. But so many parents go back to work after just a couple of days at home with their kids. And that doesn't make economic sense. More often the argument is, you know, “Economically we can't have businesses giving people six months off.” And everywhere else in the world, they say, “We can't not do that. It's economically stupid not to do that. We're going to just pay more money on the backend if we do that.” Now, I think we obviously can make a lot of progress by really simple guarantees to new parents in terms of care leave. But I think we also have to think about some of the ways we really sever bonds carelessly. One of the biggest ones, I think, is our criminal justice system. Millions of kids have or have had a parent locked up during their childhoods, and that has horrible repercussions downline. Often it's not locked up in prison, it's actually pretrial in jail. What happens to a mom accused of, you know, some theft or a drug crime, when she's waiting trial? Well, trials in the United States take a long time. Bail might be $1,000 or $2,000. For a poor parent, they may not have that. So what happens as a result of that? A single mom is taken out—those three kids are put into foster care. We all pay for that. We pay for locking up the mom pretrial. We pay for those kids going into the foster system. And we pay the lifelong costs of our non-functional child welfare system as well. So we do it there. We do it at the border. Obviously, there was a lot of controversy over the last few years about child separation policies. But we also do it with our child welfare system when it comes to poverty. So how do we deal with parental poverty? Do we help parents? No, what we do is, we take kids away from their parents. A police officer is called, a child welfare worker is called, goes into a house and finds no food in the refrigerator— BLAIR HODGES: An empty fridge, yeah. ADAM BENFORADO: Finds roaches, finds peeling lead paint. What do we do? Do we get that mother into good, stable housing? Do we give her money for food? Do we feed the kids at school? No, what we do is we say, “You're a bad mom, you failed. You're an abomination.” And we take the kids away and often put them in worse circumstances. And if we were guided by that research, that robust set of research on the value of attachment, we would make very, very different choices. We would say, “You know what? This isn't about the mom, ultimately.” And I say this to audiences when I talk, look, sometimes folks are filled with anger at parents who have, in their view, failed to meet their responsibilities. That's an area where I think I'm going to disagree with all the people in which I see these as situational constraints on parents, but let's actually set that to the side. If you want to hate that mom, and think that she's a bad person, go ahead and do that. Let's focus on the kids though. Because we need to do what's best for those kids. Right? And I will tell you, taking kids away from parents who love them, and are poor, is setting us up for failure as a nation. And I think that if we can get into that mindset whenever there's anger at the parents like, “Why should we pay for public school breakfasts and lunches? It's these parents, these deadbeat parents that we're incentivizing.” It's like, hey, there's a kid who is not eating lunch. Focus on the kid. Leave the parents aside. You want to vilify the parents? Okay. I think that's the wrong approach. But let's at least agree that the kid should eat a healthy meal every day.   EARLY CHILDHOOD: THE RIGHT TO INVESTMENT (29:46)   BLAIR HODGES: This is where it connects to the next chapter on early childhood, “The Right to Investment,” and you're arguing that children deserve a right to investment in good schools, in their quality of health care, in the housing they have available to them, in mentorship. You introduce us in this chapter to Harold, this is a Black man from Philadelphia, and what his story suggests about the right to investment. He's an interesting example because he's someone the system did sort of invest in. But as you know, they would put him in particular programs, help him get schooling and things, but as a Black man, he witnessed this and saw himself sort of, as he kind of won the lottery. ADAM BENFORADO: Yeah, he describes himself as a unicorn. BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, a ton of other Black kids didn't get these kinds of investments. And so he's like, wait a minute, the system is doing this on an individual level, a kind of band-aid solution, but not changing the overall system. Harold had mixed feelings about how he was invested in. ADAM BENFORADO: I think this was one of the most powerful interviews I did. It was just eye opening, in some ways for both of us in this conversation. But he remarked early on about this defining moment in his childhood where his parents, they'd just gotten kicked out of their house, and they were basically are homeless. And they're in downtown Philadelphia, where I currently live, standing on a street corner. He's six years old. He's just trying to figure out like, what are they going to do? Like, where are they gonna sleep, get food, all this stuff. They're on a street corner. And he said he just saw a white guy with his briefcase and like, everything about it was just so perfect. There's the Rolex and everything, that perfect suit and all this stuff. And he said, this was the first moment when he was like, “How is it that we're in the same city on the same day, and my family has nothing? And this person has everything? How is that?” I think there was this innocence and also profound insight in that moment of like, wait a sec, all of us walk by this all the time. We're the country with the most billionaires in the world. And we also have, like, one in six or seven kids living below the poverty line. Like that's like 11 million kids. We have, like 700 billionaires. And our Fortune 500 Companies made something like $16 trillion in revenue. We have like 11 million kids living in poverty. And again, that's not simply a moral abomination. That's setting us up for economic and social failure in the years ahead. And I think, as you point out, one of the really fascinating things about Harold's account of his life is that he was being held up as he moved through childhood as a success story, right? So the local news wanted to do a profile, and it's like, this is great. The kid from the ghetto has made it out against the odds. And he was like, “You are telling a story about your own failure, because there was me, but then there were all of my classmates, who you neglected.” He struggled with this, honestly. It's like, “Why me?” BLAIR HODGES: It's a survivor's guilt. ADAM BENFORADO: Yeah, it was. It was very much a sense of like, “Wait, why me, though?” Like, why is it that we only invest in the diamonds in the rough? And we even see this, I think, in some academic work on inequality, is this idea of like, we need to figure out the diamonds in the rough. And I think my argument, certainly Harold's insight is, no, we need to help all children, not just the ones who end up at Harvard, or Wharton, or who end up being inventors. All of these kids could benefit from our investment. But we see that both in early childhood and we see that at the end, even some of the debates about—you know, we can talk about this later—but student loan forgiveness and all that. We need to invest in kids also who do not go to college. And I think even liberals get really worked up about like, “Hey, we need to pay for college.” Well, some people aren't going to go to college. And we really heavily subsidize, even without any actions by Biden, we really heavily subsidize people going to college. We do virtually nothing for kids who aren't. And that sets us up, again, for failure as a nation.   LATE CHILDHOOD: A RIGHT TO COMMUNITY (34:15)   BLAIR HODGES: It's a rising tide lifts all boats kind of approach, right? So again, in this chapter, “Right to Investment,” you're looking at ways early education can be better invested in, health care opportunities, housing, as I mentioned. So those are just some of the areas you talk about in “Right to Investment.” Let's look at the next chapter on late childhood. And this is where you talk about “A Right to Community.” We've touched on this a little bit already. This is where you really emphasize the parental rights movement and what that's done. You introduce us to an extreme example here of how dedication to parental rights can lead to trauma and abuse. This is an Amish family who basically gifted their children to this predatory abuser. And as parents, they could just make these kinds of decisions that put their children at extreme risk. You talk about how this is similar to, or connected to homeschooling—not that you're condemning homeschooling. But you're connecting it to these other issues where parents have control over their children's relationships, over how their education is, how their healthcare and medical care is. And parents get the final say in a lot of these things. Tell us about how that connects to this “Right to Community.” ADAM BENFORADO: I chose this example, ready to acknowledge it's an extreme example, of literally gifting your daughters to a predator and thinking that was actually a completely legitimate thing to do. And I argue that comes from our culture, which really treats children as property. And in some ways—again I like to trace history here, if you go back to ancient Roman republic, coming across into the early modern period in England, and then being brought over to the colonies, this consistent idea of kids belonging to their parents, and their labor belongs to their parents, and their bodies belong to their parents, and then tracing the effects of that. BLAIR HODGES: I was shocked by the custody thing. You point out that the word “custody” is used for prisoners who are in custody, property as in custody, and custody of children. It's a property thing. ADAM BENFORADO: Yeah. And I think it's something that works out just fine for a lot of kids whose parents make good decisions and you know, it's fine, they often love you very much, they try to make good decisions. The problem is if you don't have those good parents under the law in the United States, you honestly can be completely isolated from all of the advances in medical care, from all of the knowledge we have accrued over thousands of years, from all of the valuable social connections. Your parents really can keep you locked on their compound with no access to education, with no access to medicine, with no access to human contact, legally, in the United States. And so the extreme example is to say, wait a second, those kids don't simply have rights as human beings, but we all will pay the consequences when those kids grow up with those depravations. We will pay the moral consequences; we will pay the economic and social consequences of that. I argue we need to stop thinking about kids as belonging to their parents and more think about ways we can cultivate this sense of belonging. And that's not to say that parents don't have a role as, not gatekeepers, but sort of facilitators of these exchanges. I certainly do that a lot with my kids, talking to them about the information that they're receiving, protecting them from certain things, and certainly facilitating access to relationships and medical care. But I think the idea that this is all on parents' shoulders is really bad for kids who face these depravations. And it's bad for all of us. I think when kids don't learn about the history of this country, I think that's bad for all of us.   PARENTAL RIGHTS AND CHILDREN'S VOICES (38:25)   BLAIR HODGES: You talk about how this cuts across into medical care—when it comes to COVID, for example, vaccines. Some parents want to have the right to refuse vaccines for their children. And how that can be a health risk, or the right to refuse medical care for children is a big issue. ADAM BENFORADO: I mean, I think one of the things that really surprises even some criminal law students is some of the legal regimes which have been instituted across the United States which actually protect parents who choose prayer over adopting the most basic medical care to treat preventable conditions. And the fact that actually, you know, in a number of states—I look at Idaho in particular. I mean, there are kids who are dying of things that we have known how to treat for decades, because their parents don't believe in it. And again, we could have conversations about, you know, what if a 16-year-old kid wants to refuse medical care for a genuinely held religious belief? But that's not really the question. I mean, this is really when a 12-year-old is desperate to go to the doctor because she has a ruptured esophagus and her parents say no. Or a kid who has a broken arm and the bone's poking out and the family doesn't take them to the emergency room to treat these easily addressed medical conditions. And again, I think we have a reason to intervene for those kids, but I think we have a reason to intervene on behalf of all of us. It's not good for any of us when kids are suffering and carry the weight of these treatable childhood conditions later in life. BLAIR HODGES: It's tricky, this chapter, because I think parental rights, as you point out, are sacrosanct across the political spectrum. This is an issue that conservatives and liberals and everybody in between is kind of united on, this idea that parents should make the choice and sort of be in charge of all these things. ADAM BENFORADO: It's really interesting. I think the Republican party has decided that parents' rights may be their pathway back to the White House and capturing State Houses. There was certainly success with both in Virginia and in Florida with politicizing parents' rights, and the response of a number of leading progressives, including political folks has been, “Okay, we need a matching liberal parents' rights movement.” So if Republicans are saying parents have a right to know every single school book and read every sentence of every lesson plan and to protect their kids from learning about gay people or whatever, then liberals step up like, “No, I have a right to allow my kid to read this book. I have a right as a parent to have my kid learn in school that gay people exist or have a bathroom that anyone can use.” And personally, I'm like, wait a second, progressives. As a parent, I share the concern when I learned about censorship in my school library, and I get upset too. But let's talk about kids' rights. Like I want to talk about it and frame it around, hey, high school students, maybe they should have a say about what they're learning about the history of race in the United States. I want to stop using kids as props, like you know when DeSantis comes out and signs a bill. That's the only time we actually see kids. And guess what? I want to hear from them. And I think that's the path forward for liberals is, like, let's actually involve kids in these questions. You brought up one of the examples of the vaccines. And again, I think parents have a lot to weigh in here. What is frustrating though, the story I give is of this teenager who this is in the earlier days of the pandemic, who wants to get vaccinated because she just wants to be with her friends. She wants to be allowed to engage with this public life. And she's like, “Hey Mom, this is what I want.” And her mom's just like, “No.” It's like a 16-year-old kid who wants medical care. That, to me, it's like crazy that the kid has no voice in that situation. And the same thing of like, why is it that a 17-year-old should have no say in the books they're reading in English class? That's not preparing them to be successful citizens. And none of this is to say that parents shouldn't have rights. I think parents absolutely should have rights. It's just the kid should have rights too. And I think the conversation would be a lot more enriched; I think we'd make better decisions on a lot of these things about a lot of these things. It's not to say that there aren't dangerous things or there's not inappropriate material. I think there are inappropriate things. I think there are things that are really harmful to kids, and upsetting. I certainly was upset by some of the books and things that I read. But I think an approach that says the only people who have a valid opinion here are adults, is just the wrong approach.   BLAIR HODGES: So that's what you're trying to get readers to do is like think about how younger folks can be involved in this decision making and their voices can be heard.   ADAM BENFORADO: Right, be part of the community.   EARLY ADOLESCENCE: THE RIGHT TO BE A KID (43:45)   BLAIR HODGES: Let's talk about the next chapter: “The Right to Be a Kid.” This is framed around early adolescence. And this really zooms in on the criminal justice system, a passion of yours, and the ways childhood can be erased there. You include the story of a man who was convicted of murder when he was a teenager, and how he was tried as an adult even though he was a teenager, despite what we know about brain development, about the ability of him to make decisions, or what it was like to be an adolescent and make that kind of decision. What did that story do for you in this chapter? ADAM BENFORADO: My last book, Unfair, was about injustice in our criminal justice system and it focused on different biases and things that come into every stage of the normal criminal case. I was very familiar with wrongful convictions and sort of the injustice that can come from that. And this conversation I had with this now middle-aged man, I talked to him when he was in his forties, reflecting back. I think it really reveals a different type of injustice. So this man, Ghani, is very forthright about the fact that he did the crime. He killed another boy when he was an adolescent. And yet I think the justice story doesn't stop there. What was so profoundly unjust about this was failing to understand what brought this young man to commit this atrocious act. And he readily acknowledges the harm that came from that and the failure to understand that people change. That, yeah, the person who is fifteen is not the same person as the person who is 45. And the harshness of giving up on someone and condemning someone for what they do, anything that they do, when they're fifteen. This young man was given, in Pennsylvania, life without the possibility of parole. He was basically condemned—“You are going to live in a box until you die”—at age fifteen or sixteen. We are a country that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. It's right there in the eighth amendment. And yet, we said to this young man—who basically was a prisoner of a drug gang locked in a crack house, dealing crack through the mail slot—“We've given up and we're gonna put you in a box, nine-by-seven box, until you die decades in the future.” And it was only because the Supreme Court changed the legal landscape that he was eventually released, when the Supreme Court said actually someone who commits a crime before age eighteen cannot get a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole. He was released decades later. And what I want us to realize in this chapter is that children have a right to remain a kid, to enjoy that halo of childhood, even when they make terrible mistakes. And that's hard for us. But I think if you look at the data from what comes out of psychology and neuroscience, you start to see what adolescence is. It's a necessary step. But it's a challenging one. It's one where our brains are developed in certain ways, but not in others. And so we can make mistakes. And what we need to do as a society is try to allow for those mistakes, that's part of growing up, in ways that are less devastating, to prevent young men from joining drug gangs and killing people, but also that mitigate the harm of treating one mistake—again, a very bad mistake—as a reason to condemn an individual for the rest of their life. And I go back to some of the mistakes I made, that luckily did not have life or death consequences.   CHILDHOOD AND RACISM (47:44)   BLAIR HODGES: Same. But you and me are both white guys, too. You talk about how that makes a difference—how racist this system often is, people being prosecuted as adults. ADAM BENFORADO: I mean, I think about one of the smartest guys I know, I met him my first day at Harvard Law School, he grew up in Pennsylvania. And we were talking early in the first semester of law school about an experience he had. And, again, he was just the most charming, brilliant guy, went to Harvard undergrad. And he was coming home, I think it was Pottstown, one day from football practice, and he had all his football gear in a bag over his shoulder. And I think he'd already gotten in early at Harvard. He's running home because he's late. And he's the nicest guy. He's probably running home to get home early for, you know, dinner or something. Cops pull up, chase him down, throw him up against the chain link, because there's been a burglary. And in that moment, that could have been it. That could have been it. That experience never, ever happened to me as a kid, and the simple answer is, I have white skin. Did I run with bags? Was I wearing hoodies? Yes, all of those things were true of me. We could go back to my poor fashion choices as a teenager. All those things are true, but that never happened to me. And that aligns with the research that shows how young Black kids do not enjoy that halo of childhood. They are “adultified” very early on, and that has consequences where, you know, misbehaving at school. White kids— BLAIR HODGES: Are more likely to be suspended. More likely to have repercussions. ADAM BENFORADO: Yeah, and then if it's a more serious thing, intervention of the police. And once you're into the police system, you get a lot harsher treatment. And this is true of girls too, right? So we see, actually, it can be a real problem with girls who have been sexually trafficked. A white girl is treated as a victim. Black girls? Well, you're a prostitute. And that means how the police treat you, that means how even courts will treat you, and I think we need to really think hard about ways we can ensure all children are treated as kids. BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, you talk about like these juvenile courts where kids are involved in the process. ADAM BENFORADO: To me, that's one of the ways that we can move forward, is getting back to that early 20th century idea that, hey, kids are different, and we should really focus on rehabilitation and on diverting kids to a different system that's focused on kids are changeable, they make mistakes, they may need to have changes in their lives. And we can do that because kids are really malleable in this period. And I think that's one of the reasons I throw my support behind diversion programs and some of the cool new ideas to try to make interventions on kids whose lives are starting to go down paths that can lead to very serious consequences.   LATE ADOLESCENCE: THE RIGHT TO BE HEARD (50:43)   BLAIR HODGES: In your “Right to Be Heard” chapter you talk about actual court systems where juveniles get to be part of the process, judging their peers. It's a real jury of their peers. ADAM BENFORADO: In this next chapter the focus here—If the previous chapter was on ways that I think we “adultify” kids in circumstances and treat them as adults in circumstances where they're ill-prepared for that and we really need to protect them, this is a chapter about other ways in which we infantilize kids when they actually really have the ability to do a lot more than we give them credit. And again, I am driven by the psychology neuroscience literature here. I think there's this really interesting thing. We tend to think about the brain as this balloon that kind of just gets bigger and bigger and bigger over the course of development. But what we now know is different areas of the brain mature at different rates. And that, actually, areas of the brain that focus more on the  old cognition moments develop much faster than those that are involved in that kind of control of impulses— BLAIR HODGES: Assessing risk— ADAM BENFORADO: Yes, risk, and dealing with peer pressure. Yeah, those are later developing things really into people's 20s. There's a really strong argument that we actually need to figure out ways to empower kids much earlier. So I focus, yes, on the ability of kids to serve as jurors, but I also focus on extending the right to vote to young people and allowing young people to run for office, serve on school boards. And I think this is supported, certainly, by the mind sciences research. But I also think it's likely to lead to much better outcomes for us as a society. Sometimes when I talk to audiences about this, I have someone raise their hand and it's like, “Oh, well, this is going to distort the system, you're taking power away from adults.” And I'm like, the current system is biased. We are making decisions which are too old-focus and too conservative. One of the things we know from the psychology of literature, is that sometimes as people get older, they make much more conservative decisions on things, they're too risk averse. And while risk aversion can be beneficial, under certain circumstances, it actually can be the most dangerous thing you can do, particularly when things are rapidly changing and you have new problems. I often get the pushback when I talk about this, “Well, okay, maybe that's true that kids actually do have the capacity to deal with these things, but they don't have the life experience.” And I'm like, “What do you think are the most pressing issues today?” Okay, well, it's like, you know, how to regulate social media, and trans rights, and racial justice, and climate change. I stop them like, okay, hold that thought. Let's think about the average 15-year-old. Okay, so social media. They are on TikTok. They know so much more than my octogenarian father-in-law. Trans rights: my octogenarian father-in-law, he doesn't have any trans friends or gay friends. Racial justice: the youngest generation is the most diverse multicultural generation America has ever seen. Let's talk about climate change. Well, that 85-year-old is going to be long dead as the worst effects of climate change ravage the United States. That 15-year-old is going to be living through those floods and forest fires, and the civil unrest around the world that is coming down the pipeline and has no ability to choose the leaders who will make decisions today that will affect them for the rest of their life. And I think, again, that's not democracy. Democracy is about people who have a stake in the decisions, political decisions, having a say in those decisions. BLAIR HODGES: Right. And so you talk about extending the franchise to young people, like at least local elections or school boards. And I don't find you to be an absolutist in the sense of saying, like, here's this fundamental right, they need to just have every, you know—You seem to be willing to negotiate and willing to talk about how this unfolds. ADAM BENFORADO: I think there are many different pathways here. One of the things we're seeing around the world is lowering the voting age to sixteen. Over the last several decades we've had more and more countries— BLAIR HODGES: It's been proposed here, hasn't it? Didn't you say someone's proposed it in the US? ADAM BENFORADO: It's been voted on in the House. We are seeing more municipalities, we have a handful now of municipalities where 16-year-olds can vote. But we have a number of countries—and these are like, you know, it's like Austria and Brazil. I mean, these are big countries. BLAIR HODGES: I didn't know any of this until I read your book. I don't understand how I missed it. I listen to NPR. I'm an avid news reader. I don't know how I missed it. ADAM BENFORADO: It's a really interesting phenomenon. And I think what we've seen is all the horrors, the fears of like, this is going to destroy society, don't happen. And I think what we will see, in my opinion, as we extend this right, we're gonna see a lot more engagement. And I think this, in some ways, a solution out of some of the gridlock. I think bringing in new voices and new voters is a great way to actually move forward on some of these intractable problems we have. I think young people can actually help us move away from this period of political polarization, in part because I think young people are more changeable and are less doctrinaire on a lot of these issues. I interviewed this young man who, because of a loophole in the law, ran for governor in Kansas. And what I think was just fascinating about talking to him was, he was running as a Republican. But one of the issues where he was just different was gun control. And that's because he was like, “Hey, I go to a public school. And this is something I'm really worried about, school shootings.” BLAIR HODGES: And he's been through drills. Getting under his desk and stuff. ADAM BENFORADO: He's like, “I'm in favor of sensible gun control.” One of the people who interviewed him on TV was like, well, that doesn't align with the party. And he was like, “Yeah, I'm proud of that.” Old people running for office on the Republican platform would never say that. He would say that because he actually believes it. And I think that's on the liberal side, too. I think there are issues where some young new Democrats may not toe the party line on something. And you know what? I personally am comfortable with that. I think we need to break out. BLAIR HODGES: I think that's why it won't happen, though. [laughs] Because the people that get to make the decision about letting it happen are gonna do the calculus of, will this help me politically, yes or no? And that's the question they'll ask in order to make it legal. ADAM BENFORADO: I think young people have got to stop asking and start demanding. I wrote a piece in Rolling Stone a couple of weeks ago, where I said, it was after the latest gun shooting, and I was like, you know, it's great. The March for Lives folks, and all these folks out being politically active. But my argument is: stop marching to try to get adults to act on gun control or act on climate change and get out there marching for the right to vote. The adults are not going to save you. You need to exercise that protest power to demand power. Because until you have power, those in power are not going to listen to you. And so, again, I think this is something—I'm optimistic. I think this is something where we're going to see a lot of changes in my lifetime. This is one of the areas I'm most excited about is lowering the voting age. BLAIR HODGES: Well, you have my hope. And, you know, I'd love to see it. But time will tell. ADAM BENFORADO: We can talk more on the show in twenty years. [laughter]   ON THE CUSP OF ADULTHOOD: THE RIGHT TO START FRESH (58:36)   BLAIR HODGES:  Wow. Cool. All right. We're talking with Adam Benforado about the book, A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All. And Adam also mentioned the book Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice. That's also a great one. Adam is a professor of law at the Drexel University Klein School of Law. All right, let's talk about on the cusp of adulthood, this is “The Right to Start Fresh.” This chapter has a lot to say about how economic conditions are harder for younger folks today than they were even just a few decades ago. People are economically less well-off right now. The economy is looking harder, wages are stagnating, inflation is happening, college debt is ballooning. But back in the 50s, or 60s, there might be a guy who could marry his partner and be the sole breadwinner and have kids and buy a house really early and do all these things. These opportunities aren't on the table anymore. So this chapter talks about trying to get younger people off on the right foot at this cusp of adulthood when it comes to job choice, when it comes to mobility, when it comes to inheritance. ADAM BENFORADO: I think this really focuses on the popular perception that childhood maybe is tough because you belong to someone else, but once you become an adult suddenly the shackles are off, and you're free. The world is your oyster, and especially in America, you are the freest of the free. BLAIR HODGES: You've got bootstraps, you can pull ‘em. ADAM BENFORADO: Yep. Live where you want, control your destiny, do what you want, marry who you want. And what I look at is all of the ways we actually have locked young people in. We've already determined the trajectory of their life before they even get to that. And so I look at the ways how we capitalize, or fail to capitalize, people's professional development. We could make a decision as a society that, hey, you're a future worker in the United States of America and so we will pay for your training and your education until you are finished and you're ready to work. That's the bargain that we make. But instead, we say, no, no, no, no, you who have no money will self-finance your education, to the tune of $100,000, $150,000 and you will pay that off for the rest of your life. Maybe actually, you'll do it by joining the military and paying it off that way. But somehow, you're gonna start life in the red. And actually, I had this moment, I think I cut it out of the book, but it was actually right before I went to law school. I finished undergrad, I got into law school, and I wasn't quite ready to go and I took a deferment for a year and I went over—my then girlfriend, her parents had bought this 16th century farmhouse outside of London. And I was like, “I'm gonna go and kind of work renovating this house.” And there were some professional builders who were also doing things that year. And I remember being out and I was cleaning off bricks to fix up this like rental with this guy. And we started talking. It's like, hey, so you're going to law school? Oh, you're going to Harvard? And he was like, “So how much is that going to cost?” And I was like, “I don't even really know. I think it's like, you know, $50,000 or $60,000 a year.” And he suddenly was like, “Adam, you cannot do this. Let me tell you, I'm 50 years old. Like, there's so many things that come up in life. People get sick, you know, you get someone pregnant. You can't start life in the red. That's madness.” Honestly, I had gotten into law school. Everyone up to that moment had just been like, “This is the best thing. Everything's great. Of course, everyone goes into debt.” And that was the only person who was like, this is crazy, what a stupid system, because of the things life throws at you. And the truth is, he was speaking the truth. It is mad to put people down, you know, to have the weight of hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to start out life. And it's particularly unfair, as I point out to do this, based on sort of the different economic situations people find themselves in. One of the areas I focus on is not simply how we lock people in with that, but also how we lock them in geographically. Because coming out of college, you cannot take that job in San Francisco unless you already have existing family wealth. Why? Think about how much money you need. You need the money for the first and last month's rent and the security deposit. And that means you need like $8,000 starting out. A lot of young people who are from poor families, they can get the job, they went to the good college and can get the job, but they cannot move there. And that's really different, I think from previous generations. It wasn't just a myth, the idea that you move where the opportunity was, that was a reality in America, right? You move where the jobs are. “Go West, young man.” People really did do that. But they cannot do that now. And again, that's bad for America. We need workers where the jobs are. We don't need workers stagnating in areas of the country where there are no jobs. We need them moving out to the Bay Area where the jobs are, that increases our GDP. But they cannot do that, based on the choices, and a lot of those choices are things that seem to have nothing to do with young people. They seem to be things like zoning laws. Like okay, it makes sense that any new construction in the city needs to have parking. Well, what does that do that limits housing for those young people, and that means that they do not move there? And that keeps those houses for those older people, skyrocketing property values. But you think about, you know, some of the rules about licensing. So many jobs now, you know, it's like, farmer, hairdresser, you have to have special licenses. And again, that also prevents— BLAIR HODGES: Which are state-dependent too, right? ADAM BENFORADO: Yes. And geographic mobility, even things like, traditionally, law licenses. What is the main reason we have these state bars, I am very skeptical that it's to protect the public. I think it's to protect the monopoly lawyers have in each of these states to prevent new entrants into the market. And I think that hurts all of us. And so I want to focus on ways we can make young people freer at the start of life. Let's stop with different legal regimes that lock in things for old people and think more about ways we can free up young people, because that's going to be best for us as a country. BLAIR HODGES: You talked about inheritance and dead hand laws when it comes to that as well, the right of older folks to be able to lock in wealth in particular ways. ADAM BENFORADO: So I give this example—I really love art and I'm lucky enough to live really near one of the most amazing art collections in the world, which is housed at the Barnes Foundation in downtown Philadelphia. It has an amazing post-Impressionist collection. And one of the funniest things is, or the amazing thing is, thousands of people now visit every year, and that might never have come to be had the law originally been followed. So this guy Barnes, who made basically trillions of dollars in gonorrhea treatments around the turn of the century and bought up all this art, he stipulated in his will that this collection of art was going to be housed in his house out in Lower Merion. And that, you know, only a certain number of people could visit every week and all these rules. And that's how it would have been for all eternity if he had left enough money to preserve it in that way. But the fact of the matter is, he didn't. He didn't leave enough money. And so to the court system, this amazing collection was moved to downtown Philadelphia. It was placed in this, in my opinion, much better space. And now thousands and thousands more Americans and people around the world get to see this groundbreaking work. I think this is an area where we need to focus more on the benefits to living than the rights of the dead. And this is actually not a new notion. I have this wonderful quote from Thomas Jefferson in the book in which he said the same thing. And he was fighting down in

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Step into a timely episode where Shariq Abdul Ghani, founder of the Minaret Foundation, shares his inspiring journey from a struggling immigrant in a conservative Texas suburb to a beacon of hope bridging societal divides. Discover how faith communities, according to Shariq, can be the foundation for change. Join the conversation as he discusses childhood experiences, impactful policy changes, and the transformative moments that led to the creation of Minaret Foundation. Dive into a narrative that explores building meaningful connections, fostering diversity, and navigating the complexities of the Palestine-Israel conflict. This is a testament to the idea that even in divided times, common ground can be found. Let's dive in and learn from Shariq's insights and leadership lessons.

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Before the summer break, I reconnected with old colleague Samreen Ghani to talk about her journey and her role as President of Moonbug Studios. It had been a long time since our M&A times together! And we end up finding ourselves in a similar life reflection on "how you measure your life"!   The Early Days Samreen did not follow the expected path. Her earliest memory from childhood was spelling the word "doctor", which was exciting for her parents as she grew up. In Pakistan, her expected paths would have been doctor, engineer, lawyer or banker if she wanted to define herself as successful. So as she finished her degree, she joined investment banking, which she sees today as a great grounding experience to give you the technical skills, but also the discipline and work ethic you need later in life. From there, Samreen started moving along her "5-Year-Plans".   Career Transition As she evaluated the next 5-year period, Samreen realized she did not want to stay in M&A and started looking at the industry she enjoyed and the type of transferable skills she had. With that, Samreen moved to entertainment but stayed in Finance. Whilst she gained the work-life balance, she did not feel she had a fit with the corporate culture. She found herself only halfway through her 5-year plan but not happy with where she was going. That is when she really started exploring what she wanted to do and in which type of corporation.  She felt the clock ticking on her as she engaged in her career break (I can see where she is coming from) and really gave herself time to reflect. For her, what worked was to talk to different people and be open about what the future would be. She was talking to people across industries and different types of small to large corporations. More importantly, she was open to herself about what worked and did not work for her.   "Sometimes there is so much noise around us that we forget who we are and what makes us happy!"   Listening to your inner self You may not always want to listen to it, as sometimes it tells you things you don't want to hear. But it is when you hear yourself that things may work out better, so talking to people is a part of the process but can't be the main driver. Amongst one of the many conversations, an opportunity came up to participate in a project that then became a role. Samreen stayed close to the finance space and used her early career skills along the way. Further along the way, as her 5-year plan included building a family, she also had the opportunity to join Moonbug as CFO and later President, while doing multiple acquisitions and funding rounds. This experience tested her in ways like never before.   Prioritizing and Focusing There is enough work to fill any hour of the day, so you need to focus on the big things you want to achieve. Samreen runs a to-do list across work and family, but she reminds us that you also need to create the right level of infrastructure and autonomy so that people can help you and you are not the bottleneck. On top of it, it is important to keep an eye on the end goal, to ensure you are prioritizing accordingly and ensuring you are taking small steps towards the longer-term goal.   A non-linear path Samreen describes herself as very organized. But when you are figuring out your path you can't always expect it to be very linear. Staying nimble and going out of her comfort zone has been key for her, however if she were to look at the chart of her career throughout time, it would still be on a positive trajectory towards her goals. It just does not have to mean the same path to everyone. It is important to remember that you could do things differently, but they may not have been better or worse than your current choices.   "Don't be afraid to be not liked" As a leader, you can't always be liked. That is a defining characteristic of Samreen. You need to make difficult decisions, but they are not always going to be popular. You can make difficult choices, but you can do them with empathy and kindness. In running a business, there is a big people element in it, with a lot of grey areas that need to be managed.   Samreen reminds me that the need the small kids have goes away very quickly and there is a short amount of time to make the most of it. That helps her keep perspective with her priorities and the demands on her time coming from everywhere.     Samreen's List Advice: There is a lot to be said about listening to yourself. So try to get to know yourself better Book: The Alchemist Quote: Fail Fast Word of the Year: Soul-searching   Stay connected Meet Samreen on Linkedin Join the Make Space for Growth newsletter and newly launched Linkedin Group Follow me on Linkedin, Instagram or Twitter

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Explore the mystical world of Sufi poetry with Ibn al-Farid, one of the greatest poets of the genre. In this episode, we delve into the life and works of this revered 13th-century poet, examining the spiritual and philosophical themes that make his poetry so enduring. From his famous ode "The Wine Ode" to the magnificent "Poem of the Sufi Way", as well as his spiritual musings on the path to divine union.Sources/Recomended Reading:Akkach, Samer (2007). "'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi: Islam and the Enlightenment". Oneworld Academic.Homerin, Emil (2001). "From Arab Poet to Sufi Saint: Ibn Al-Farid, His Verse and His Shrine". The American University in Cairo Press.Homerin, Emil (Translated by) (2001). "'Umar Ibn al-Farid: Sufi Verse, Saintly Life". Classics of Western Spirituality. Paulist Press.Homerin, Emil (Translated by) (2005). "The Wine of Love and Life: Ibn al-Farid's Khamriyya and al-Qaysari's Quest for meaning". University of Chicago.Homerin, Emil (2012). "Passion Before Me, My Fate Behind: Ibn Al-Farid and the Poetry of Recollection". SUNY Press.Scattolin, Giuseppe (1993). al-Farghānī commentary on Ibn al-Fāriḍ's mystical poem "al-Tāʾiyyat al-kubrā". Mélanges de l'Institut dominicain d'études orientales du Caire. Volume 21.Sirriyeh, Elizabeth (2005). "Sufi Visionary of Ottoman Damascus: 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, 1641-1731". Routledge.Todd, Richard (2014). "The Sufi Doctrine of Man: Ṣadr Al-Dīn Al-Qūnawī's Metaphysical Anthropology". Brill.#sufism #mysticism #poetry Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christina Ghani-Smith, Director of Sports Sales at Visit Baltimore, discusses Baltimore's rich history of hosting large sporting events and the benefits this can provide meeting and event planners looking to find their next destination. The conversation covers Baltimore's culture as a sporting city; the sporting venues and arenas that can create a unique attendee experience; what the future may hold, including challenges to consider; how a sporting background can help create leadership skills. This episode is sponsored by Visit Baltimore. Skift Meetings is defining the future of business events. Visit our website for the latest news, reports, reviews, and events.

Join Sue for an upcoming Live Virtual Workshop where you will learn from Sue practical tips & strategies to make a difference. In this episode, we will discuss: ✅ Book now targets broader Autism Spectrum ✅ Revised "Red Beast" metaphor to reduce distress ✅ Updated illustrations for enhanced inclusivity ✅ Character names changed for gender neutrality ✅ Incorporated children's viewpoints from school visits ✅ Adjusted imagery to depict gentler adult handling Read more about this podcast in the show notes found via the link below suelarkey.com.au/holiday-listening-red-beast/ Join the Facebook group specifically for this podcast www.facebook.com/groups/suelarkeypodcastcommunity/ Join my Neurodiversity Network suelarkey.com.au/neurodiversity-network/ Follow my Instagram account for regular tips www.instagram.com/sue.larkey/ To learn more about teaching or understanding ASD, please visit my website below. elearning.suelarkey.com.au

The CE experience for this Podcast is powered by CMEfy - click here to reflect and earn credits: https://earnc.me/oVxIn0   Maz Ghani was born in 1969 and moved to the US in 1995 after living in Australia and Canada. A Radiologist by training, Maz gained an interest in botanical photography several years ago while exploring his wife's colorful gardens. He uses a combination of photography and scanography to compose the botanical layouts and is inspired by nature's diversity. His works have been published in Travel and Leisure Magazine, Black and White Magazine along with an article “Art from the Garden” in Berkshire Magazine. His photos have been included in the SLO Museum of Art Juried Exhibition, Proud+ 2021 Juried Exhibition, the iMotif Juried Exhibition and the Contemporary Online Art Gallery. Today's Episode is brought to you by Doc2Doc Lending. Doc2Doc provides Match Day loans of up to $25,000 to fourth-year medical students and current residents. These loans are designed to help students cover personal expenses, such as moving costs, housing down payments, and living expenses before and during residency. With fixed interest rates, flexible repayment terms, and no prepayment penalties, Doc2Doc Match Day loans provide financial flexibility and allow students to focus on their exciting journey towards becoming a physician. Doc2Doc was founded for doctors, by doctors. They understand the challenges and hard work involved in becoming a doctor, and they support doctors throughout their careers. Using their in-house lending platform, Doc2Doc considers the unique financial considerations of doctors that are not typically considered by traditional financial institutions. So, Don't let financial stress hold you back from achieving your goals - Doc2Doc lending has you covered. Visit www.doc2doclending.com/mdcoaches to Learn more.      Join the Conversation! We want to hear from you! Do you have additional thoughts about today's topic? Do you have your own Prescription for Success? Record a message on Speakpipe     Unlock Bonus content and get the shows early on our Patreon Follow us or Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Amazon  | Spotify --- Show notes at https://rxforsuccesspodcast.com/154 Report-out with comments or feedback at https://rxforsuccesspodcast.com/report Music by Ryan Jones. Find Ryan on Instagram at _ryjones_, Contact Ryan at ryjonesofficial@gmail.com Production assistance by Clawson Solutions Group, find them on the web at csolgroup.com    

Eruch Jessawalla - Aug 6, 1987

Abdul Sunni GhaniBorn Edward Lee Williams in Atlanta Georgia, he later embraced Islam and changed his name to Abdul Sunni Ghani. Poetry and lyrical words came easily for Abdul, having a passion and gift for the expression of his feelings and beliefs. During the early 70's, Abdul was able to get over a dozen of his poems published in various books. These poems were written over a span of fifty years beginning in 1972 to present. He is a graduate of Akron University with a BA degree in Technical Education. After working thirty-seven years at the Ford Motor Company, he retired in 1997 to live out his dream as a poet. Today he resides in Cleveland, Ohio with his lovely wife, Diane.About the BookWalking through a Maze will take you on an edifying journey of life, lessons learned and realizing how these experiences will prepare and cultivate you into being the best version of yourself. It is only then, that you can embrace hope, love and understanding life and commitment. It's like a puzzle, where all the pieces finally come together.Get It Here: https://www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/843267-walking-through-a-maze-of-lifehttps://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/walking-through-a-maze-of-life-abdul-sunni-ghani/1142487410

In December 2001, Afghan delegates convened in Bonn, Germany, by the United Nations selected Hamid Karzai to serve as head of an interim national government, marking the beginning of post-Taliban governance. Nine years later, in late 2010, secret negotiations began between a Taliban representative and some U.S. officials. The talks centered largely on confidence-building measures, specifically the issues of a prisoner exchange and the opening of a Taliban political office in Doha, Qatar. In mid-2018, President Trump was reportedly frustrated with the lack of military progress against the Taliban, and he ordered formal and direct U.S.-Taliban talks without Afghan government participation. On April 14, 2021, President Biden announced that the United States would begin a “final withdrawal” on May 1, to be completed by September 11, 2021

I found talking two Afghan social activist and human rights advocate Crystal Bayat incredibly cathartic - I think during the interview I even called it “medicinal.” I was thinking about why I chose to put it that way, and the best I can articulate it is that for many veterans of Afghanistan and many Afghans themselves, I think there a sort of “trauma bond” has formed - a very intimate relationship forged in the wake of a withdrawal that has been forgotten as quickly as it chaotically occurred. Talking with Crystal was, in some ways, like returning to the scene of the crime. While I was listening to her, it struck me how rarely we hear Americans speak as passionately, sincerely and fervently about freedom and democracy. Crystal truly represents the pro-American, young, educated Afghan that understands and appreciates American efforts – and has been betrayed even more by our withdrawl.Crystal herself is a beneficiary of our war effort. Born in 1997, she spent her life coming of age while American troops were on the ground. To hear her talk about the freedom - personal social and political - that she experienced because of our war in Afghanistan is a necessary reminder that in 20 years of war America enabled a generation of Afghans to come of age with possibilities and optimism unknown to previous generations. Crystal is clear eyed and resolute about the threats still present in Afghanistan. Crystal is forthcoming about everything from the Taliban's assassination attempt of her to an analysis of the multiple foreign influences still gestating, fomenting and developing new threats inside Afghanistan. It is a conversation, I think, that that every American should listen to. Crystal pulls no punches and identifying the culprits responsible for Afghanistan's collapse. As a member of the Loy Jerga, Crystal was present at the Doha peace talks - she is an activist but not an outsider. She has intimate knowledge and first-hand experience of the inner workings of the Ghani government which makes for an incredibly compelling insightful conversation. I think any one who cares about Afghanistan will deeply appreciate this episode. And anyone who wants to know why they should care about Afghanistan deserves the answers Crystal offers.Learn more about Crystal here.

Join Sue for an upcoming Live Virtual Workshop where you will learn from Sue practical tips & strategies to make a difference. Buy the latest version of The Red Beast here. ✅ It is more inclusive – The original book was written for children with Asperger Syndrome, the new addition aims to reach most children on the Autism Spectrum. ✅ The new illustrations are more inclusive of typical children – so the child has a chance to see the behaviour of the angry boy in the playground from the perspective of their peers. ✅ Character names have been changed to be gender neutral and therefore more inclusive; so it's now Danni & Charlie instead of Rufus and John. ✅ It has taken into account pupil's perspectives. After going into schools, Kay learnt that many children disliked the picture of the Red Beast being caught in a net as it made the adults seems aggressive and uncaring. This has now been updated so the teachers are using gentle handling instead . Read more about this podcast in the show notes found via the link below https://suelarkey.com.au/updating-the-red-beast/ Join the Facebook group specifically for this podcast https://www.facebook.com/groups/suelarkeypodcastcommunity/ Follow my Instagram account for regular tips https://www.instagram.com/sue.larkey/ To learn more about teaching or understanding ASD, please visit my website below. https://elearning.suelarkey.com.au

Abdul Ghani and his extended family fled to the roof of a nearby girls' school in August when the floodwaters came to his town in southern Pakistan's Sindh province. His family was still there two weeks later, without tents or any other shelter, when waves whipped up in the floodwaters destroyed their house.“Our hearts sank,” Ghani said from the sun-scorched school roof, where the one remaining room of his home is still visible and surrounded by water. “The house that was our shelter, our children's home, was destroyed.”Ghani, a mason, built the nine-room home in a small farming town in the Dadu district himself. He lived there with his wife and three kids, along with his seven brothers and their families. Heer Mallah with her children Zulgar Non, 5, Zakia, 3, and Aurong Zeb, 1. Credit: Carolyn Beeler/The World Unprecedented rains in Pakistan that began in mid-June led to flooding that impacted 33 million people and killed more than 1,700 others, causing an estimated $30 million in damages and economic losses.Some two months after the rains stopped, 7,000 square miles of land in Sindh are still submerged under water.Five million of the 8 million people displaced by the floods are still unable to return home.Paying for damagesThe question of who should pay for damages like these wrought by climate-fueled disasters has been one of the most contentious issues at the UN climate summit this month in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with Pakistan's floods a focal point of discussions.“We are paying the price for other people's carbon usage,” said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan's climate minister, who is at the summit. In recent months, she's often cited the statistic that Pakistan has contributed far less than 1% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, even though it's among those bearing the brunt of the consequences.Pakistan is leading a negotiating bloc of 134 developing countries in calling for a dedicated pot of money to be established for “loss and damage” funding.“Countries on the frontline of the climate crisis are facing accelerated catastrophes, and are not getting the relief and rehabilitation funding they need,” Rehman said.For decades, developed countries have resisted calls for direct climate aid, partially out of fear of exposing themselves to claims of financial or legal liability, not to mention the complexities of defining which damages should be included.In the floods in Pakistan, for example, it's difficult to tease out how much climate change contributed to the estimated $30 million in damages and economic losses. What used to be a road in Pakistan's Sindh province before it was inundated by floodwaters. Credit: Carolyn Beeler/The World Warming contributed to the torrential rains that triggered these floods. An attribution study published by an international group of scientists in September found that rainfall in Sindh and neighboring Balochistan is 50% more intense now than it would have been without climate change.But the researchers say that other factors also drove the damages, including development on flood plains, inadequate infrastructure, an outdated river management system, high poverty rates and a lack of adequate early warning systems.Early momentum at COP27For the first time, this year, countries have started to volunteer funds specifically for losses and damages. Several European countries, along with New Zealand, announced tens of millions of dollars in aid in the first week of the summit. Also for the first time, negotiators at the climate summit have a mandate to discuss an official mechanism for loss and damage funding through the UN, “with a view to adopting a conclusive decision no later than 2024.It's not yet clear what shape any funding will take.Developed countries want to discuss options for funding at COP27 and decide on a solution by 2024. Developing countries want to agree to a loss and damage fund this year, and hammer out the operational details until 2024, when it would then go into effect.US climate envoy John Kerry said “not a lot of people want to sign off on something that is not yet fully defined.”“The well-known fact is that the United States and many other countries will not establish some sort of legal structure that is tied to compensation or liability,” Kerry added.The European Union's head of delegation, Jake Werksman, said last week that the negotiations aim to start a broad conversation, not focus on a single solution like a fund for losses and damages. The US and EU also favor funding to flow through existing programs and institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund or the Green Climate Fund.Insurance and disaster protectionThe G-7, meanwhile, spearheaded by Germany with a $173 million commitment, launched a “Global Shield” program on Monday, based on insurance and disaster protection for vulnerable countries.But developing countries insist that a loss and damage fund — not just insurance or loans, which would trap them in further debt — is essential, and must be agreed to this year.Proponents of such a fund argue that post-disaster aid, which currently seeks to address events like Pakistan's floods, comes at the whim of donors.So far, a UN appeal for Pakistan has brought in only a third of its goal, and that itself is only a fraction of the $16 billion the government estimates it will take to rebuild.“International aid is given for charity. Rich people feel bad that this event is happening in poor countries, and they give money,” said Saleemul Huq, a Bangladeshi scientist who's attended every UN climate summit and is a longtime adviser to the Least Developed Countries coalition.“Loss and damage is not that,” Huq added. “It is polluters taking responsibility for having caused the problem, recognizing that there are victims of the problem who they have the responsibility to help.”Meanwhile, aid that does follow disasters can be slow to arrive, exacerbating health and economic problems.Water-born illnesses spiked in Pakistan with the floods. Officials fear widespread increases of malnutrition — which impacted nearly 1 in 2 Pakistani children even before the floods — and upticks in child marriage rates.Back at the girls' school where Abdul Ghani now lives with five of his brothers and their families, it's hard to keep the kids out of the floodwaters.“We try to stop them, but they won't listen,” Heer Mallah, Ghani's wife, said while cooking stewed spinach and potatoes in the hallway of the school. Children from Abdul Ghani's own family and extended family play together in a courtyard in Pakistan. Credit: Carolyn Beeler/The World “The children are not healthy here,” she said. “But what can we do? We're helpless until we return home.”Her 5-year-old son has a persistent cough. He and his 3-year-old sister have malaria, with fevers that broke after more than a week.“We dream that our kids will get educated and become doctors. But how are they going to do that if they can't go to school?”Heer Mallah, Pakistani mother“We dream that our kids will get educated and become doctors,” Mallah said with a smile. “But how are they going to do that if they can't go to school?” Fatima Mullah, 12, shelters with her family in a classroom just a few doors down from where she used to study as a student. Credit: Carolyn Beeler/The World  Ghani's niece, 12-year-old Fatima Mallah, now sleeps in a classroom a few doors down from where she used to be in second grade. She likes playing with her cousins there, including gleeful games of tag in the school's courtyard, but she misses school.   “She cries and says, 'bring back my books,' but we can't, because we don't have money,” said her mother, Shaahzadi Mallah, sitting on a traditional wood and woven rope bed in the courtyard. “We can't even eat three meals, how can we buy books?”The family is down to two meals a day. The cow whose milk they used to sell is tied up in the school's courtyard, under a line of drying laundry. The cow's grazing land is flooded, so she's not producing enough milk for the family to sell.Most of the places where Abdul Ghani used to work as a mason are flooded, too. He recently bought nets to start fishing the floodwaters.Farmers are perhaps even worse off, as flooding ruined their rice crop for the year and, in many places, will prevent them from sowing wheat this month.In affected areas, pumps powered by tractor engines are working to “de-water” towns, which often means moving water to agriculture fields or other less populated areas. Pumps powered by tractor engines work to “de-water” flooded towns in Pakistan. Credit: Carolyn Beeler/The World Government and military officials are going door-to-door conducting damage assessments. Sindh's information minister Sharjeel Inam Memon said only when that's complete will money be distributed to help people rebuild.“Once the assessment figures come, then the rehabilitation work will start,” Memon said.Related: Loss and damage: Who is responsible when climate change harms the world's poorest countries?

Today's interview is with Othman Ghani, a young Sneaker Reseller and FBA Seller.  Othman talks about the realities of competiting in the sneaker flipping world and the hardships that no one else wants to go over.He's also actively working on a second career through FBA now that his sneaker flipping is more automated and he dives deep on how to do that and how he's juggling multiple paths at once.To get in touch with Othman: https://www.youtube.com/c/itsothmanhttps://www.tiktok.com/@itsothmanhttps://www.instagram.com/iamothmann/

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.americanprestigepod.comIn the second and final part of the two-hour finale to our History of Afghanistan series, Tim Nunan, lecturer in global history at the Free University of Berlin, moderates a panel discussion where he, Danny, and Derek are joined by Pashtana Durrani, founder of LEARN Afghan, and Haroun Rahimi, lawyer and visiting professor at Università Bocconi. Pashtana and Haroun share more personal experiences from Afghanistan during the war, including the media important to them in this time, the nuances of intra-Afghan cultures, life in Herat and Kandahar, the presidency of Ghani, Afghan women's rights initiatives, , and more.

I love interviewing other authors because every time I get to speak to one on Unstoppable Mindset I learn new concepts I hope I can use. I hope you feel the same way.   Our guest on this episode is Natasha Deen. She is an author of over 40 books written for youth, adults and everyone else in between. She made an interesting observation I love and which led to this episode's title. She observed that there are no great writers. There are only great rewriters. Listen to this episode to hear why she thinks this is so. I won't give it away.   About the Guest:   Guyanese-Canadian author, Natasha Deen has published over forty works for kids, teens, and adults, in a variety of genres, and for a variety of readerships. Her works include the JLG Standard Selection Thicker than Water, Guardian which was a Sunburst Award nominee, _and the Alberta Readers Choice nominated _Gatekeeper. Her YA novel, In the Key of Nira Ghani, won the 2020 Amy Mathers Teen Book Award and her upcoming novel, The Signs and Wonders of Tuna Rashad, is a CBC Top 14 Canadian YA books to watch for in spring 2022 and a JLG Gold Standard Selection. When she's not writing, she teaches Introduction to Children's Writing with the University of Toronto SCS and spends an inordinate amount of time trying to convince her pets that she's the boss of the house.   Social media links:   Visit Natasha at www.natashadeen.com and on Twitter/Instagram, @natasha_deen.   About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is an Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson  01:20 Well, hi, and I am glad that you're with us again on an unstoppable mindset podcast episode. Today, our guest is Natasha Deen, except that she said to introduce her as she who would follow you home for cupcakes I buy into that. So true. Hey, listen, there's nothing wrong with a good cupcake. Or good muffins. Well, Natasha is an author, she's written over 40 books of various genres, and so on, we're going to talk about that. And she has all sorts of adventures and stories to tell. And so I think we will have a lot of fun on this podcast. So thanks for joining us. And Natasha, thank you for joining us today.   Natasha Deen  02:05 Thank you. And yes, thank you for joining my clan, I'm very excited to be here.   Michael Hingson  02:10 Well, tell me a little bit about you, you sort of the the early Natasha years and so on, and what you did how you got to the point of writing and anything else that you want to say,   Natasha Deen  02:20 Oh, well, I have an interesting, you know, that's gonna say like, I have a kind of an interesting origin story because I was born in Canada. But when I was three weeks old, my family moved back home to Guyana, South America, lived there, and then came back to Canada. So I'm a born Canadian, but my experience with Canada is an immigrant experience. Because the first country I knew was, you know, a country of, of coconuts and vampire bats. And you know, peacocks. And it was it was amazing, we lived No, we were just talking about previous residences. And the house we lived at, there was a stream in front of the house. And then there was a bridge that would connect you like you know, into the town. And I have, I can remember that we would get these huge rainstorms. And it would wash out the bridge. And then you'd either be well basically, as a kid, you were you were stuck, because you have to wait for the men to go find the bridge and bring it back and reattach because it just like a wooden bridge, or they'd have to rebuild it. And it was the same thing at school, like when the rains would hit, the teachers would just show off all the lights, and then we'd make paper boats, and we'd sail them down these like little these little rivers. And when I moved to Canada, the first time it rained, you know, I'm in school, and it starts pouring. And I'm so excited because I think for sure the teachers are going to turn off the lights and we're all gonna go sail paper boats. But it was like a loop was not to be as close the window and told me to pay attention. I'm like, but but but but no, I you know? And to answer your question about any desires to be a writer I did when I was a kid, I thought it would have been very cool to have a book on a shelf. But when I went to the teacher's library and the elders, parents, nobody knew nobody knew how to how to do it. And so I figured it was sort of like, you know, winning a lottery, or perhaps I don't know, some sort of happy, happy meeting, you have to sit down next to some editor on a train. And you mentioned that you really liked writing and they handed the contract right there. So I moved on to other other things. And it was after I graduated with my BA in psychology that I thought I'm just gonna give this writing thing at shot. And luckily for me, and you know, sort of all the writers who are up and coming like, we have the internet so we can, we can talk to the Google and the Google will tell us how how we navigate getting published and Contact, it's an editor's. So first sort of a snapshot.   Michael Hingson  05:04 So did you do anything with psychology? Or did you go straight into writing?   Natasha Deen  05:09 I so like dark secret, I was doing a couple of classes over the summer and preparation I had applied for my masters. And I was sitting there, and it was this really odd textbook that was telling you about, you know, counseling. And one of the techniques they had, they would repeat back to you what, you you know what the patient would say you repeat it back them, because the thinking of the time was, you know, hearing it, hearing it echo back would open up places. And I just, you know, what I remember, we had to do like a whole thing where we were practicing, you know, and it was the most, I realized I did not have the personality for it. Because if I was on the other side of the chair, and I'm saying to someone, I've had a really bad day, and they say back to me. So it sounds like you've had a really bad day. Yeah, yeah, my boss, my boss yelled at me. The boss yelled at you, I would have been like, No, I'm out. I'm gonna go find someone else to talk to you. Cool, actually, you know, talk back to me, instead of giving me a repeat of what I've like, I know what I just said, man. I just said it, you know? So. So that was about that. And I was also you know, so I thought, oh, I'll just, I'll just do a little bit of writing. And then, you know, I'll come back maybe what it is, I'm just tired, because I did school for, you know, 100 billionaires. And there's a danger, there's a danger of taking a break from from school, because then for people like me, we realize now we don't ever want to go back. Thank you very much. Well, we go do something else that someone else can have our desk. Okay, bye.   Michael Hingson  06:47 I remember when I was at UC Irvine, and working in physics and doing a lot with the computers, and there was a mainframe computer on campus. They had a psychology program, and it called Elijah. And it sort of worked like that. It would, if you type something in it would sort of repeat it back. But it was smart enough to deviate. And it could actually get you off in all sorts of unusual twists and turns. It was all about also psychoanalyzing you or, or creating conversations with you to try to figure you out, it was kind of fun. You could you could get absorbed with it for hours.   Natasha Deen  07:29 Well, that's amazing. They have I know that they have a digital version of rat training, mice mouse training. So you would you would train a mouse to like do a maze, but it was a digital mouse, which I appreciate it. I feel like mice have other things to do with their time than to run a maze forming.   Michael Hingson  07:48 Hey, I've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I know about mice. They're they're in. They're in control of the universe. Go read the book.   Natasha Deen  07:56 I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't doubt that. That sounds that sounds feasible to me.   Michael Hingson  08:00 So something to work on. Well, so how did you end up getting to the point where your first book was published?   Natasha Deen  08:08 Oh, yeah, that's a great, like, I so I, you know, I was I was writing and I was sending out and I think for a lot of writers, you know, we know this feeling, right? You're sending out to editors, you're sending out to agents, and nobody wants you. Right? And sometimes, as soon as you get the really nice rejection letters, like, dear Natasha, thank you so much. I really enjoyed the work, but it just didn't reach me in the way it should. And I'm just not as passionate. You know, I wish you luck. And those ones I didn't mind the ones that that used to irritate me were the ones that would say, Dear author, yeah. Yeah, no, thank you. And it was, like, they didn't capitalize their sentences. And it would just irritate me so much. But I think it was a day and I just spent like, two hours researching you, making sure I spelled your name, making sure I was professional in my letter, the least you could do is capitalized, you know, I, I don't want this, you know, give it to them or whatever. But it was just so I happened upon a small e publisher. And I'd heard really, really good things about them. I'm not sure if they're around anymore. But I've heard really great things about them. And a few friends who had published them said, they're really great because they don't send generic rejection letters. If they don't want your work. They will tell you, and I thought okay, I this is this is perfect for me, because then I can send it out and really someone will tell me if I'm doing something wrong, like what what is it that I'm doing so wrong with with, you know, my books? So I sent it out. And about a month later, I got an email saying, Hey, we really liked this. We'd love to publish it. Can we send you a contract? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, I think I think that's kind of the thing with the industry sometimes, like, you know, we get enough kicks in the hand at art, we start wondering if we're in the right industry, we start wondering, do we have any kind of talent? Do we have any kind of skill? Are we just kidding ourselves? And so, you know, when I sent it out, I really, I was still thinking, Okay, I just don't think I'm a great writer, I don't think I have what it takes. And so it was a really good lesson about how subjective the industry can be, you know, and that that frustrating, heartbreaking thing, which is persevering. And you just have to keep going, because what else are you gonna do? You know, if you're built to be a writer, you're built to be a writer.   Michael Hingson  10:42 So you got a contract? And you published your first book? Did they do any editing or work with you on making any improvements before it was actually published?   Natasha Deen  10:53 Oh, yeah, yeah, I had to do a quitter, I think three, three rounds of edits. And then they were really great. I mean, they were, they were teeny tiny, small, small budget. But I really love that they did the very best they could for like, publicity and marketing, for their authors. And they, they would bring, like different opportunities, if you wanted to do it yourself. You could also like, expand out. And I think it's something for authors to think about, you know, that quite often we dream of, you know, the big, I don't know how many publishers, I think it's a big five now maybe even just sort of a big for publishers. But sometimes there's something to be said for for the small and plucky publisher, you know, you may not have necessarily the bragging rights, where everyone knows that publisher, they know who you're talking about. But in terms of that sort of one on one interaction with your editor, the responsiveness of your editor, and just the care they'll take with your work. And I really enjoyed my time with them.   Michael Hingson  12:01 So when was the first book published? Or when did you start working with this first publisher?   Natasha Deen  12:06 Oh, so 2007 It was actually it. So the first thing I'd sent them was a short story. And that was 2007. And then my first novel would then came out in 2009. And then in 2012, and those were all adult romances. And then, in 2012, I went into writing for ya. And I was, that's that was in The Guardian series. And the first book in that series is conveniently titled with enough guardian, which is, which is all about Maggie who sees the dead, and is currently being haunted by the ghost of the kid who bullied her. So that was that was in 2012. Ah,   Michael Hingson  12:49 so the bullies haunting her, and what does she do about that?   Natasha Deen  12:53 Well, that's, that's kind of the whole thing, right? Because it's like, do you? Do you stay quiet? Because he's, you know, he doesn't know she could see him? So does she stay quiet? And just sort of leave him in this limbo? You know, sort of till the end of time as justice for what he's done to her? Or does she actually just say to him, Look, I can see you and here we go. And so the story, the story explores, you know, that side of it, but also it's sort of exploring the idea of, you know, the way that our painful memories can can haunt us. And what do we do? Do we do we face them? Do we acknowledge them? Or do we just sort of push them down and pretend like they don't exist?   Michael Hingson  13:39 So how many books have you written in that series? Which is I guess about Maggie?   Natasha Deen  13:43 Yes. So there's, it's a trilogy. So there's three books in that series?   Michael Hingson  13:47 Okay. Are they all with the same ghosts are different ghosts,   Natasha Deen  13:51 the ghosts, there are one to two supernatural creatures who are there throughout the whole trilogy. But each each book it was it's it's it's kind of an interesting, it's it's fantasy mixed with horror mixed with supernatural mixed with a mystery. So in each book, she's dealing with a ghost who is dead. A ghost story? I guess it goes, who doesn't know that they're dead? And is trying to sort you know, why? What has happened to them? And usually someone has murdered them. And so it's all about trying to figure out who who, who done them in like, well, who did it and then they can move on?   Michael Hingson  14:36 Sounds like a fun series. Have any of the books been converted to audio at all?   Natasha Deen  14:41 Oh, I don't know. Like I know, in the key of near Ghani, I know she's, she's audio. And I think one or two books in the large series is but I'm not sure about the Guardian series. I don't think so. I don't think I don't not yet. I don't think   Michael Hingson  14:58 well If we can find electronic copies, and then we can, can do them in Braille, which is also fine.   Natasha Deen  15:07 Oh, that's wild. That's interesting.   Michael Hingson  15:10 It's not magically overly hard to do. So, you started with this one publisher? I gather you didn't continue with them. Because you said you're not sure if they're around anymore, did you go elsewhere? Or what happened?   Natasha Deen  15:25 I get? Well, they were they were strictly for adults. And I realized with Guardian that it was, it wasn't aimed for adults, it was aimed for teens. And then once I started writing for kids and teens, it just, it's a very different kind of experience writing for for people who are under 18. Because when you think about it, like an adult reader, it's a very sort of, I feel like it's a very direct connection, right? I'm going to write the story. And here you go. And you as an adult reader, you the only thing you're going to think about is, is this the genre that I love to read. And with kids, there's no such like, with with Kid readers, what you're looking at is you're going to write the book, but then there's going to be an adult in that child's life, who buys that book or boards a book for the child. And it's more than just a question of, oh, this is these are the kinds of stories I like, it's questions of how old is this kid because how old that child is determines the kind of story you're going to tell? And how you tell that story? You know, are they? Are they someone who is an add grade reader? Or are they someone who is striving or what we call a reluctant reader? So they're in grade five, reading at a grade three level? And so you don't there's there's all of these things? So things like, how big is the sentence? Like how long is the sentence? What is the vocabulary? Are the words, am I using words that are easy to pronounce, and easy to sound out? And, and it's just a very like, from a writer's perspective, it's a very, very fun exercise. Because how I'm gonna write a story for someone who is seven, is going to be wildly different than how I write a story for someone who is 17. And, you know, I love it. Because, you know, we talked about the idea that simple doesn't always mean easy. And certainly when you're writing for kids, you're, you're really getting down and asking those questions about where are they, in terms of their literacy rates? Where are they in terms of how passionate they are about reading, you know, and I think about that now, in a really different light. And I'm really grateful to all of the kid authors who around when I was growing up, because their care and attention and love of like, kids everywhere, really ignited a passion for for reading that I now because of them. I am not just an adult reader. I'm an out writer. And so yeah, I'm very thankful to them for for all that they did when I was a little kid and making sure that those stories were accessible to me and made me feel lifted up because I could read it myself.   Michael Hingson  18:16 What do you come up with some of the ideas like for The Guardian series, and that's pretty, pretty creative, and a lot of twists and whatnot, twists and turns, but just a lot of parts to it? How do you come up with an idea like writing about a creature who is dead who may not know they're dead, and certainly don't know that someone can see them? Someone who can see them? And going through all the different gyrations of that,   Natasha Deen  18:41 you know, it was really, it actually started off as an adult story. And I was aiming for a mystery like it just a straight, cozy mystery with a librarian who finds who finds a body in the trunk of her car. And it turns out that it is, in fact, her ex husband her near her, you know, what do you call that it and near do well? Well, ex husband. And of course, obviously suspicion starts to her. And I was really struggling with it. And it was just a thought one day that I had about wouldn't it be interesting if it was a girl like a teenager? And instead of an ex husband? What if she found the body of her bully in the back of the car? And then where would we go? And I and then I started thinking though, then wonder where we go and how can I make this more interesting? And then I thought, well, what if she could actually see the dad and at first it's like, you know, are people gonna think I did it. And then of course now it gets super complicated because oh, he's he's there. I have not heard of this terrible person. So sometimes it's just a story where you're thinking about how can I make it more interesting for the reader? And then sometimes it's so Well, I, you know, I was talking to, to a relative, and we were sort of joking around because they had a younger relative in their life, who loved them a lot and worried about them. But the the love and the worry meant that this younger relative could be quite overbearing with this person I was speaking to, you know, and they were like, I'm not that old, I could take care of myself. And I thought, you know, like, it was such an interesting idea for a story about what do you what do you do? What do you do when someone loves you, but they're just, they, you know, they just they're so caught up and knowing in their mind what is right for you, that your your own wants and needs are getting tossed to the side. And that was the start of the signs and wonders of Tish odd because I have tuna, and then there's her brother, Robbie and Robbie is he's loving, and he's a great brother, and he's a great son. But he's just convinced he knows what's good for everyone. And, you know, and adding to that complicate, like, complicating it is the idea is that his his husband has just died. And so He's grieving. And now this is how, you know, one part of his grief is manifesting is that tuna can't breathe. And she just really needs Robbie to like, get a life or at least get out of her life and give her give her some room. And when I was writing it, I knew I wanted her to be an aspiring screenwriter, I thought there would be lots of room for for funny if I could do it like that. And I was struggling with it. And then I went back and I was thinking about the beats of a screen a screenplay. Right? And so how does it like when do you when does the a story break into the B story and, you know, what are the fun and games and, and, and then I got the idea that every chapter heading would mirror a story beat. And that's that's how to knows. That's how to news personality would would show itself. And so So yeah, sometimes it's, it's you're trying to solve a some writer's block, and then you realize that you're the wrong genre, the wrong age group. And other time too. You've got your genre, and you've got your age group. But now you're just trying to sort through, how do you make it? How do you make it funnier, and, and, and I love I really love the chapter headings because it meant that for any kid who relatable anyone who reads the story, who also has to write, not only do you have the story, but now you have a very with the chapter headings now you know exactly where your story needs to go, because they're all your story beats right there for you.   Michael Hingson  22:39 When you're writing a book, and this is something I've always been curious about, especially if in dealing with fiction, some but when you're writing a book, is each chapter somewhat like a story and then you you transition and do things to make them all combined together? Or how do you deal with deciding what's a chapter and what's not a chapter?   Natasha Deen  23:02 Oh, yeah, that's a great question. Um, I think for me, you know, what we think about or what I think about is, what's the story problem. So with tuna, the story problem is that Robbie is just overbearing, and and she needs to, you know, get some space from him. And so that's, you know, that's one plot of the story. And then, you know, from there I go, Okay, well, how do I, how do I make this problem? More complicated, right? Or how do I make this problem? Like, how do I start giving this problem texture? And I thought, well, it would be really funny if two has a crush on a guy trusted, and like, what, what sibling wouldn't interfere? So and I thought, yep, that's perfect. So once I had those, then it's just like, here's my big problem. How do I make them? Little tiny problems? Right? And so what is the what's the saying about? How do you how do you eat an elephant like one one bite at a time? And that's sort of it like, here's my big problem. Now, how do I make it smaller? So, you know, the opening chapter tonight is gonna go and estrus now it's summer, she's got, you know, 60 days to finally tell this guy students, she really cares for him. So she's going to tell him and she just, she gets shy, you know, and then she she trips up over herself over it. And so the problem in that chapter, which is I really want to tell this person I care for them does not get solved. And the her now having to resort, okay, that didn't work. How do I ask him about it now? Like, what's my next step? Now that jumps me to my next chapter that jumps and hopefully that jumps the reader because there's there's a chapter question, okay, what is she going to do now? And we we go on. And so one of the things to think about with bigger stories that are like the, you know, 5060 80,000 word count is, there's probably going to be more than one problem that your character is trying to solve. And you're gonna have like that big external prominent character needs a job, your character needs to rob a bank, and then you're gonna have another story that will probably tie into that bigger one, right? So my character needs to draw a bank, but really, the robbing the bank, because they have a sick child, and if they robbed the bank, they can get the money, and they're gonna be able to, you know, pay for some private operation and save the life of their child, then that's how that's how we twine it together.   Michael Hingson  25:50 So you, you do kind of have different things in in different chapters. But by the same token, things can get away from you, or things can go off in different directions, which is what makes writing fun. And part of the adventure for you.   Natasha Deen  26:08 Yeah, yeah. And you're right, because you know, you're asking about the containment of the chapters, and every chapter is going to have a beginning middle end to it, it's just that in those chapters, there is no like Final the end, there's just an end to that particular scene, or an end to that particular moment, that's going to bump you into the next moment. And the next seat. Well,   Michael Hingson  26:31 so you going back to your story, you decided to write full time I gather, and that's what you do now.   Natasha Deen  26:40 I do, I did I write full time, and I also teach with the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, I teach their introduction to children's writing, and I visit schools, and I tell kids funny stories about growing up and being the weird kid in class. And, and I also, you know, teach at libraries and, you know, attend festivals and that kind of thing. And, and I still, you know, and I think as writers, we know this, right, that sometimes this job can be such a grind, because you're, you're alone in a room with just your thoughts, and the voices in your head, and you're trying to sort it. And sometimes it can feel like why, why did I choose this job, but he was just refreshing, there's got to be some better way to make money, but the roof over my head, but you know, like, I just, it's so much fun that more More times than not, I'm kind of waking up, as I'm thinking to myself like that, that eight year old nine year old 10 year old me would be so jazzed to know that we grew up to be an actual writer with books on the shelves, and, you know, award stickers on on the covers of our books. Like, how cool is that? You know? So?   Michael Hingson  27:58 Yeah, that's, that's pretty cool. By any standard? Well, tell me, do you, you must have support and help? Do you have someone who represents you? Do you have people that you work with in that regard? Or how does all that work that you now get to publishers? Or you get help doing the other things that you do? Yeah, that's   Natasha Deen  28:19 a great question. And I'm, I'm really lucky because in Canada, our publishers don't, you don't need to have an agent to be published in Canada. And America, it's a little bit different, right? Like you have some publishers where I can contact a publisher directly and saying, Hey, I've got this, this story. And I think, I really think it will fit your catalog. But a lot of the pressures are going to be, hey, my agent has my story. And they think it's, it's, you know, just jazzy. So go ahead and take a look. And then, you know, see your agent is going to work on on your behalf. So early on in my career, I it was just me, right, it was just me all by myself submitting to publishers, and I'm saying I really hope you like my story. And then in 2016, I signed with Amy Tompkins from the transatlantic literary agency. And so now she represents me. So instead of me sending out my work directly to the publishers, I send them to Amy and then Amy sends out on on my behalf. So for those upcoming writers who are listening to our podcast, there's there's many ways there's many ways to get your, your book on the shelf. You can you can absolutely talk to the publishers yourself. You can go through an agent or you know, you can you can self publish, right, you can be an independent author, as well. And there's pros and cons to both sides of that, oh, it's what fits you.   Michael Hingson  29:51 How important is then having someone to represent you're having representation in what you do.   Natasha Deen  29:59 Well and Mike Ace, I would like I love my agent. I think she's, she's the bee's knees. I just think she's amazing. So I really enjoy writing, like, like I enjoy, because like, I love being able to send her work and talk to her about the industry and all these kinds of things. And I do think and I, and again, I think it's going to come down to what is your goal as a writer, what is your you know, do you want to make a career out of it, like a full time career, in which case, an agent is going to be really helpful to that, because they can get you into it and get you into the bigger markets, so they can get you into the bigger publishers, right. If you want to be part time writer, then you know, it all depends. But I will say for for anyone who is looking for an agent, you know, do be aware that your agent is is going to be doing lots of work on your behalf, but they're not, they're not magic genie is you're not going to rub a lamp and all of a sudden, here's all the things that are going to happen. What your agent gives you the opportunity to do is knock on more doors, but there's still no guarantee about being contracted or any of those things. So it's really good to have a realistic idea of, of what you're what the job of an agent is. So it's good to go and make sure you do your research about what they do. They're very, you know, they're they're like, they're vital when it comes to things like reading over your contracts, making sure that your artistic well being is being protected. But having said that, you know, you can also hire an entertainment lawyer who will do the same thing for you. So, again, you know, the frustrating, and yet the very amazing thing about this industry is that it always comes down to you as the individual, what is it that you want? How do you see this journey. And once you know those things, then you can build your plan for creating, sort of creating the career of your dreams.   Michael Hingson  32:09 What are some of the mistakes up and coming or new writers tend to make in your experience,   Natasha Deen  32:17 in my experience, they set or their work far too soon. It's great if you've written your story, but it's not ready yet, as and that can be a hard thing to hear if you've been working on this story for like three or four years, but it's not ready yet, you finish your story. And you start working on something else. Like you've got to give yourself a month, six weeks, two months, where you're not looking at that story that you finished at all, Project eight, don't look at Project day. And then after that, four to eight weeks, go back and take a look at it. Because now what you've done is you've decoupled you're not as close to that story anymore. And you're going to be a lot more objective. So you know, it's important to like, edit, and revise your work. You know, I don't know, I was saying to a class at one of my school visits, there are no great writers, there are just really, really great rewriters and the professional writers, this is what we know that you're going to do it. And then you're going to do it again. And again. And again. And again, until it's finally in a place where it's readable for more than just yourself. So it's really important to edit, it's to have beta readers. And there are people who are going to read your work and offer you feedback on your work, what's working, what's not working. And they're, they're also really important because, you know, when we're working on our projects in in the quiet, we're telling the stories to ourselves. And that's great. But to be an author is to be able to tell a story to a wide variety of people who you will probably never meet in your whole entire life. So you need to get other brains and other you know, viewpoints on on your work. And so, you know, it's all those things. And then once you're ready, you know, do your research, look and buy do your research. I mean, go look up these publishers, and find out if they're reputable, and look at their submission guidelines. Agents are the same thing. Look at the submission guidelines. How do they want you to submit the work? What kind of work are they taking? If you can do that, you're probably about 95% ahead of a lot of the writers out there who will just gonna do you know, they're just gonna throw in that and they're just gonna submit to everybody. And, you know, it can be a really frustrating thing for editors and agents because they're only representing nonfiction. And here's this manuscript they've got to deal with or this email they've got to deal with with someone who's who wants to, you know them to represent their picture book or their, you know, suspense thriller for adults, and it's like, no, you need to, you need to have enough respect for your work and for your emerging career, to take the time and do the research. And it is going to take time, and it is going to be frustrating, because you're looking at their, you know, Twitter feeds, and their social media and the blogs and all these kinds of things. But in the long term, and in the long run, it will, it will only do good.   Michael Hingson  35:33 One of the things that seems to me when you're talking about great writers is either they have a real sense of what it is, that would make someone want to read their book or their story, or they know how to get that information and then will will put it to use, which may not mean that that makes them a great writer, but it certainly makes them a much better marketer. Yeah.   Natasha Deen  36:03 No, it's well, and you know, this is? Yeah, you know, like, the, the great thing is that there's lots of different readers out there. And there's lots of different writers out there. And I think it's really important for us as readers to understand that just because we don't like a book, doesn't mean the book is bad. It can just mean that we're not the reader for that book. And I like, you know, I'm the person, like, if you're gonna give me a book, and there's, there's animal characters in that book, those animal characters better survived through the book, because if not surviving through the book, I am not reading it, you know, and it is like, and I will give you full credit that it's an amazing book, it's probably beautifully written. But no, if there's dog on page one, that dog still needs to be there on page, the end and happy. I want I want my dogs if they've gone through what they've gone through, but it's all okay. So so things like that, you know, and I'm very careful about women in peril kind of books, right? I'm I, some of them, I can read some of them. I can't. And again, it doesn't mean that they're not great writers. And those aren't great stories. It just means that I'm not the reader for them.   Michael Hingson  37:19 Yeah, Old Yeller is is a fine book. Except,   Natasha Deen  37:23 right. Hey, I tell you what, Michael, I mean, I get teased a lot because I'm the person who reads the ending before I read the rest of the book. But I blame that on Where the Red Fern Grows, because that book took out my heart. And I'm still not over it. I was when I read it. I'm still not over that book. And yeah, you know, and, and for me, it's like, Listen, if you're gonna ask me to spend however many hours, I need to know, it's gonna be worth my time, I need to know that these characters are gonna like, there's gonna be some kind of like, hopeful sort of note. The only time they don't do that as if it's a murder mystery. Because I want to I want to play along and see if I can find who the bad guy is before the detective does.   Michael Hingson  38:08 So dealing with animal books, of course, I mean, maybe it's the exception to a degree but then you have a book like Cujo, you know, from Stephen King, and, you know, do you really want I'm gonna I would love to have the dog not to have gotten rabies in the first place. But you know, that's the whole story.   Natasha Deen  38:25 I never I never rented the idea of a bad dog was just like no, no, I can't   Michael Hingson  38:31 start out a bad dog. That was the thing of course.   Natasha Deen  38:34 Oh, I know. I know what it is. No cuz you know there's only one ending for this poor dog. Yeah, right. Yeah. So so there is a dog in in tuna story and I want to sure all three out there that don't worry Everything Everything will be fine with magic.   Michael Hingson  38:57 Well, I appreciate that. I like books where were the animals survive? Of course I wrote thunder dog and Roselle survived in Thunder dog but they all they all do pass and but that's another that's another story.   Natasha Deen  39:12 Yes. That's it. And that's that's different. That's different. That's a   Michael Hingson  39:17 whole different you know? Yeah. And Roselle is somewhere waiting and watching and and monitoring and and occasionally probably yelling at us but you know, that's her.   Natasha Deen  39:29 That is yelling just just can't the ducks the doughnuts, man. Nothing.   Michael Hingson  39:36 What do you mean? Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. Roselle was also out there saying don't give them the donut. I want the donut. What do you do to those dumb ducks?   Natasha Deen  39:49 I feel like she would know that her bread will come later. Right?   Michael Hingson  39:54 Oh, well, maybe now but not then. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, no, thank you. is a lab What can I say?   Natasha Deen  40:02 No, I listened. We've got a husky mix. And I was joking around about how you definitely don't have to share DNA to the family because the look on her face when there's food. And just just the way she'll just look at you like, you're gonna share that right. And the long conversations I have with her room, like, I cannot share this. This is not appropriate. This is gonna make you really sick. You know, but I was thinking my husband one day I was like, as like, you know, I am pretty sure I get that same look on my face whenever I see through to just like, Oh, dang, is that? Oh, is that? Is that bread? Oh, man. Is that cheesecake? Hey, how you doing? Are you? Do you need some help on that? I can I   Michael Hingson  40:41 can totally help me. Make sure that that's really safe for you to eat.   Natasha Deen  40:45 Let me let me just make sure I Is that is that good. Let me let me tell you that bullet. Right. Let me take this for you.   Michael Hingson  40:52 You have you have children?   Natasha Deen  40:54 Yes. Yes, they're full grown boat. So they have kids of their own now.   Michael Hingson  40:58 So okay, so you have grandchildren? And and do we? Do we have any of them in your beta reader groups?   Natasha Deen  41:06 No, no. Because they Well, because they're they're still little adults, adult's? Oh, you know, I actually they'll read it afterwards. Because their schedules are pretty, their schedules are pretty intense. So   Michael Hingson  41:24 part of the evaluation process? Well, I   Natasha Deen  41:27 just feel bad, you know, looking them being Hey, hey, I know you're juggling, like 10 Different things now. But can I throw one more ball at you. And then also, like, I appreciate, like I use I use writer BETA readers, as opposed to just the quote unquote, regular folk, just because I usually by the time I'm done, I've got very specific questions about story structure, how the acts are transitioning? Can you can you see the a story B story? Where can you see the external? And so there needs to be a certain level of, I guess, like literary mechanical engineering? Do you know what I mean? Where I think to that? I think I think I think my family would be like, I love you. But stop asking me about the grammar. There's only so many times you can be like, okay, within what about, you know, when I when we're doing this metaphor, and it's, you know, like, just let me read it. Okay, so read it. So   Michael Hingson  42:29 how about today? Reading, I don't know, I'm trying to figure out what's happening to reading we've, we've changed a lot. Reading is now not just getting something on paper, we have electronic books, and so on. And I hear a lot of people say, Yeah, I read the books, it's not quite the same as reading a book. That's a full paper book, but I enjoy reading them as well. And of course, then there are a lot of people who just don't get into reading at all. But reading is so valuable, because it seems to me that one of the great advantages of reading is it gets you to sit and relax and take time away from everything else that probably we really don't need to be doing anyway. But we do it. But the reading gives you the opportunity to just sit down and let your mind wander. And it develops a lot of imagination. How do we get more people to do that?   Natasha Deen  43:30 That's a great question. And I'm not sure that I have a feasible? I'm not sure I have the answer. You know, but I think one of the things you said in the beginning was I think very well said that there is more than one way to access stories now. And I think that's really important. Right? If you are if you are someone who loves paper books, that's wonderful. But you know, for some of us, we're going to come to story differently. We want the story told to us, you know, or we want the story in some kind of a different, you know, when you're thinking about sometimes, like, finger dexterity and coordinate, you know, a screen is much easier to navigate. Than, then sometimes a book can be, and depending on the device you're using, it's going to be lighter. So if you have issues holding books, paper books, I mean, you know, this, these are like, these are the kindnesses that I think technology affords us, and that, you know, and if you're if you're busy, you can pop in that audiobook when you're sitting in the middle of rush hour and you can get to story that way. But I think a lot of it is is getting to folks when they're young and understanding that, again, not everybody comes to story the same way. And the thing that I think is magical about being a writer is that I can write I can write this Signs of wonders of tuna or Shawn, and I can give 30 people a copy of that book. And everyone will have the same book, not everyone is going to read the same story. Because at the moment time we start reading, we're going to bring our hopes, our dreams, our past experiences, our, you know, future or future hopes for us. Like we bring all of these things in how you know, do we have great relationships with our parents? Do we not, you know, how do we view the world? All of these things, like infuse the stories that we read, and they changed right there, they become another creature. So someone reads the book, and they say, Oh, yes, I read this. And this book is a cat. And someone say, no, no, no, it's not a cat. It was a chameleon. And someone else will say, No, it's a phoenix. And each of those people are correct, because that is how they interpret the story. And that's how they interpreted the book. And so you know, when we're talking about getting people, folks to love reading, it's getting them I think, a lot of times getting them young, understanding what are their what are the things that they love to read? What are the things that they love about the world? Let's, let's start there, and give them those kinds of stories. Like, you know, the idea that oh, I love this book, therefore, you must love this book is a really unkind to do to people. Because it says because I think of this like this, you must also think of this, like this, and and people are individuals, right? My mom's favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird. I think I think it's a well written book. I can't stand the book. It sets my hair on fire every single time. You know, I have friends who really love the Great Gatsby, I'm not that person. Right? It doesn't mean that those people are wrong. I love the fact that my mom loves To Kill a Mockingbird, you know, and I love that my mom understands that's never going to be my favorite book. And she respects that. And so when, you know, when we were growing up, it was like, go to the library, even if she was like, Oh, that's okay. You know, she would give us space, if that's what you love. That's what you love. And I think we need to stop. Also, what's the word I'm thinking of? You know, I hear people a lot of times, especially with young readers, where they say things like, oh, but it's a graphic novel. There's not a lot of text in there. And, you know, how are they are they going to become readers? And it's like, be okay, granted, but when you look at a graphic novel, there's, there's images and who's looking at this book and reading through it has to be able to make intuitive leaps about you know, what's happening in this box versus what's happening in this box. And, you know, so it's still teaching, it's teaching life skills is teaching like human skills. And I think if we can leave, we can go from the point of taking the spotlight and putting like taking the spotlight and putting it on to the person who we want to get reading and having an open conversation where we respect where they're coming from. I think that can be really helpful.   Michael Hingson  48:11 Yeah, book like To Kill a Mockingbird is is an interesting book, I'm, I'd be curious to know what it is that the you've read, really find a problem with the book, but I can see that different people would certainly read that and deal with it in different ways. Oh, for me,   Natasha Deen  48:29 it was it was just this as you know, I'm a person of color in my everyday life, I've got to deal with micro aggressions and, and so in my, in my relaxed life, in in my fictional world, I don't want to have to I want space from that. I just want to be able to read something fun and something, you know, enjoyable. I don't want to have to read about the things that I'm trying to deal with in the real world, but at the same time, people really love it.   Michael Hingson  49:00 One of my favorite books is one that I'm sure today is not a favorite book for a lot of people. It's a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court by Mark Twain. And I love the plot. I love all the things that happened in it. It's just one of those books that has really stuck with me, and that I absolutely thoroughly enjoy. I guess also, I do have to say that I originally read it as a recording. It was a talking book produced by the Library of Congress. And the guy who read it was perfect. But it has always been one of my favorite books. I think it's just an incredibly creative book. And I admire that.   Natasha Deen  49:43 Yes, yeah. Well, I you know, it's easy because I really liked calm Sawyer and Hawk you know, I thought I mean different books. But yeah, they were fun characters, and I thought Twain had a very excellent storytelling style. I guess that's it. You're right. Yeah.   Michael Hingson  50:01 Well and, and different kinds of stories. I'm an okay Yankee Yankee in King Arthur's Court is hard. I like Tom Sawyer.   Natasha Deen  50:08 Well, did you did you know that he when he died, and like fact check me on this because I remember reading this years ago, but that his diary, he made sure as well that the diary could never be published for something like 100 years, because of the he was talking smack about so many people. He was like, they cannot be alive. But like,   Michael Hingson  50:33 yeah, I remember that. And it wasn't. So, of course, he knew we knew what he was going to die. He was born in 1835. And he said, I came in with Halley's comet, and I'll go out with it. And he did.   Natasha Deen  50:45 That's amazing. Hey,   Michael Hingson  50:48 it's just one of those things. Well, you know, before we wrap all this up, what's next for you? Where are you headed? What? What kind of projects do you have coming up?   Natasha Deen  50:58 Well, so yes, the tuna releases on June 7. I'm very, very excited about that. And then I'm just finalizing the book in the spooky SLIS series. And that's for early. That's for ages like 79 That's with Penguin Random House. And I'm very excited about that. That's, that's awesome. And Rockstar who live on in Lions Gate, and spooky creepy things happen. And awesome is convinced that there are supernatural creatures roaming the town. And rock star is convinced that because there is a science lab, it's probably just science running wild. And so the books, the book one opens up with a tree. That seems to be housing, a very evil spirit. But what will happen next?   Michael Hingson  51:48 Oh, you have to read the book to find out.   Natasha Deen  51:51 That's right.   Michael Hingson  51:54 Have you ever read books by David Baldacci?   Natasha Deen  51:56 Yes. Yeah, I just started reading him. Memory Man, I just I just started.   Michael Hingson  52:01 So and that's a that's a good one. But he also wrote, I think it's more for youth if I recall, but he wrote a series of four books. It's the Vega chain series. And if you ever get a chance to read those, it's a totally different Baldacci, then all of his mysteries, their fantasies, and it's a fantasy world, sort of, I don't want to give it away. But they're, they're well worth reading. I accidentally discovered them. I was looking to see if there was anything new by Baldacci out on Audible. And I found one of these and I read it on a on a plane flight and got hooked and so then could hardly wait for the next one to come out. So it's Vega, Jain V, GA and then chain.   Natasha Deen  52:48 Okay, yeah, thank you.   Michael Hingson  52:51 I think they fit into a lot of the things that you have been writing about. So they're, they're they're definitely worth reading. But there's nothing like reading conversations are great with people. But you get to meet so many more people in a book. And as I said, it seems to me that the most important thing about reading is sitting down and reading to let your imagination go. And you're right. The way you imagine is different than the way that I imagined. And we're all different. And that's the way it should be.   Natasha Deen  53:23 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you, Michael. This was a lot of fun.   Michael Hingson  53:28 This was fun. I very much enjoyed it. And we need to do it again in the future. Yes, sir. So no tuna books are out yet. No, not yet. Next. So tunas tuna is new. It's coming out next Tuesday.   Natasha Deen  53:45 The signs and wonders of tuna are shot.   53:47 Wow. So that'll be fun. Well, we'll have to kind of watch for   53:51 it. Okay, sounds good.   53:55 If people want to learn more about you, and maybe reach out to you and talk to you about writing or any of those things, how can they do that?   54:04 Oh, on my website, www dot Natashadeen.com. And Natasha Deen is spelt D E E N. And Natasha is N A T A S H A.   54:18 So N A T A S H A D E E N.com. And they can contact they can contact you there and so on. And I assume you have links so that they can go buy books.   Natasha Deen  54:32 Yes, yes. Yes. It wouldn't be a website without it.   Michael Hingson  54:35 No, not an author's website. It would not be Well, this has been great. I really appreciate you coming on we will have to stay in touch. And we'll have to catch up to see how all the book sales go and how the the awards go once the new series are out. Thank you.   Natasha Deen  54:54 Yeah, sounds well make it a date, sir. They'll be perfect.   54:58 Absolutely. Well, Natasha, thanks for being here. And I want to thank all of you for listening and being with us today. This has been absolutely enjoyable. I hope you found it. So reach out to Natasha at her website, Natasha deen.com. And of course, I want to hear from you. So if you would like to reach out, please email me at Michaelhi at accessibe.com M I C H A E L H I at A C C E S S I B E.com. Or go to our podcast page, Michael hingson.com. hingson is h i n g s o n.com/podcast. And of course, we sure would appreciate it if you'd give us a five star rating after listening and, and come back and subscribe and listen to more unstoppable mindsets. We have all sorts of adventures coming up. And we would love you to be part of it. So if you'd like to be a guest, let us know if you know of someone who you think would make a good guest. Let us know that too. So again, thanks for being here. And Natasha, thank you once more for coming on unstoppable mindset.   Natasha Deen  56:03 Thank you, Michael. And thank you to all the listeners. I loved it. Thank you for spending time with us.   Michael Hingson  56:12 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Author of Map Your Freedom book Weekly activity checklistMoney making activities1 Connection with people2 Conversation3 Finding a problem and giving a solutionOne person a day5 days a weekTreat it like a business decisionFollow up, breakfast of the championHow much time can you give per weekBe a product of the productAccountabilityWeekly assignmentsBasic product knowledgeDon't talk to people until they understandIt's about them, not the product, service or businessLooking for strengthsLooking for where to improveBook recommendationsAtomic HabitsBig Al Books Think and Grow RichHow to Win Friends and Influence PeopleFree Magic Words for Prospecting audiosOne-on-One Coaching+ session (retail $297) only $97 donation to the Snowdrop Foundation 501(c)(3) **expires 9/30/22Includes:Pre-coaching questionnaire (Skill and/or mindset questions to customize your coaching).30 minute personal coaching via Zoom.Action list sent after your call to get results!Full details send a message/call https://bigalbooks.com/contactus/

 Kempis Songster, aKa Ghani, is a founding member of Right To Redemption Committee and the Coalition to abolish Death By Incarceration.  He is also co-founder and director of Ubuntu Philadelphia. Since his release in 2017 after 30 years in prison, starting when he was 15 years Old, Ghani has emerged as a leader in Philadelphia's movement to end mass incarceration and to create restorative responses to harm and violence. He has his own podcast called “Move It Forward Show.  Terrell Carter was born and raised in West Philadelphia. He is one of 10 siblings. He served over three decades of a Life Without Parole sentence and was released in July 2022. After having his sentence commuted by Governor Tom Wolf. While he was incarcerated, he was a hospice volunteer, authored three novels, short stories, and poems, facilitated workshops, graduated from Villanova and is currently pursuing a Masters in creative writing. He has dedicated his life towards bringing an end to the inhumane practice of condemning men, women, and children to die in prison and to restore hope in those who have had it stripped away. Terrell will share his personal story and his advocacy work.

 Kempis Songster, aKa Ghani, is a founding member of Right To Redemption Committee and the Coalition to abolish Death By Incarceration.  He is also co-founder and director of Ubuntu Philadelphia. Since his release in 2017 after 30 years in prison, starting when he was 15 years Old, Ghani has emerged as a leader in Philadelphia's movement to end mass incarceration and to create restorative responses to harm and violence.He has his own podcast called “Move It Forward”. 

In this episode, Shruti speaks with Jennifer Murtazashvili about the problems with imposing liberal democracy in Afghanistan, building state capacity, education, the role of the U.S. in the Ghani government's collapse and much more. Murtazashvili is the founding director of the Center for Governance and Markets and an associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on issues of self-governance, security, political economy and public-sector reform in the developing world. She is also a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is the author of “Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan” and the co-author (with Ilia Murtazashvili) of “Land, the State, and War: Property Institutions and Political Order in Afghanistan.” Recorded July 20th, 2022 Read a full transcript of this episode enhanced with helpful links. Follow us on Twitter Follow Shruti on Twitter Follow Jen on Twitter Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox.

Season Three of Let's Get Weirding comes to a close as we wrap up the wild, weird ride that is Children of Dune. As Leto officially takes the Lion Throne, he and Ghani lay down some new truths, Jessica is...just kind of there, and Farad'n gets a shiny new name. Will Megan ever manage to convince Beau that there is a primo cask of Amontillado down in the basement, or will her lack of masonry know-how get the better of her? Find out here! 

Photo: No known restrictions on publication . #Classic#AfterAfghanistan: There was no government, just State clients: #AfterAfghanistan:   Ghani laments. @BillRoggio @ThomasJoscelyn @LongWarJournal (Originally posted January 3, 2022). https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/20/asia/afghanistan-ashraf-ghani-taliban-intl/index.html

What is at the root of violence in the United States? In this episode, we speak to people with close connections to gun violence about what they think causes it and talk about the impact of seeing great wealth while living in poverty. The richest 1% in the US controls about 40% of the nation's wealth. Could this be why the U.S. has more murders than other wealthy nations? We spoke to people from neighborhoods impacted by violence - some who have committed violent acts in the past - and people who are trying to disrupt the cycle about how we got here. Guests include Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, Kendra Van de Water and Yané of YEAH Philly, Kempis 'Ghani' Songster and William Bentley of Youth Art & Self-empowerment Project (YASP) and more!

The actor Sally Phillips on her latest film on Sky Cinema 'How to Please a Woman. Set in Western Australia, Sally plays fifty-something Gina who, having just lost her job, feels invisible and stuck in a sexless marriage, and sets up an all-male house cleaning service that also offers sexual services. Photo © SUCH FEISTY DAMES PTY LTD As Boris Johnson prepares to step down we hear from Nusrat Ghani the Conservative MP for Wealden and vice-chair of The 1922 committee that represents backbench conservative MPs. The members of the 1922 Committee wield a lot of power in the Conservative Party and runs the selection process for new leaders. Charlotte Carew Pole the Director of Women2Win, an organisation which aims to increase the number of Conservative women in Parliament. The rise in women being prescribed anti depressants. Dr Nighat Arif a GP who specialises in women's health explains. The American soul singer PP Arnold found fame in the 1960s as an Ikette with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue . Her autobiography is called Soul Survivor, As the Women's Euros get under way, veteran players share their stories. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Dianne McGregor

As Boris Johnson prepares to step down we hear from Nusrat Ghani the Conservative MP for Wealden and vice-chair of The 1922 committee that represents backbench conservative MPs. Dubbed "the men in grey suits", the members of the 1922 Committee wield a lot of power in the Conservative Party and runs the selection process for new leaders. Also joining Emma is Katie Perrior who worked as a political advisor at 10 Downing Street under Theresa May and previously for Boris Johnson and David Davis. She is now chair of INHouse Communications Charlotte Carew Pole the Director of Women2Win, an organisation which aims to increase the number of Conservative women in Parliament. Journalist Sonia Purnell and author of Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition Plus the latest from Westminster from BBC political Correspondent Ione Wells Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Emma Harth

The American Dream, does it still exist? First generation Palestinian American and award winning photographer, director and videographer Samer Ghani joins this episode to talk about the trials, tribulations and tears that goes into chasing your dreams.

This week Megan & Beau return to talk worm boys, fanfic, inappropriate gifts from the In-Laws, and Colin Firth's career turn as an eater of peaches as they cover chapters 57 & 58 of Children of Dune. As Alia & Co try to process the news of Duncan's demise, Ghani gets sent to time out for throwing some serious shade at Harah. Grab your hooks and mount your worm, we're going to spice world! 

Reading Geraldine Brooks' Horse, Leila Mottley's Nightcrawling and Zaheda Ghani's Pomegranate and Fig with journalist, music writer and memoirist Mawunyo Gbogbo (Hip Hop and Hymns) and CEO of the Australian Muslim Women's Centre for Human Rights, Diana Sayed

Photo:  Houses along the Kabul River  #AfterAfghanistan: The abandoned Ghani government. Bill Roggio, FDD.  Husain Haqqani @husainhaqqani, former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States; Director, South & Central Asia, Hudson Institute  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-watchdog-details-collapse-of-afghan-security-forces/ar-AAXoW65

We recognize that war, conflict, and occupation often bring destruction not only to physical bodies but to the histories, archives, and cultural identities of the people impacted. During this conversation, I spoke with artist, writer, filmmaker, and teacher Mariam Ghani about her latest project What We Left Unfinished which is executive produced by Alysa Nahamis. We discussed the necessity and importance of rediscovering history that was previously thought to be lost as well as the unique ways those subjected to occupation and conflict whether that be through war or political structures can hold on to their stories.

Parvez and Omar are joined by Dr. Sofia Ghani to discuss health and wellness in this holy month of Ramadan. Dr. Sofia Ghani started her career as a clinical pharmacist managing patients' drug therapy at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas. Being around very sick people on a laundry list of medications was an everyday norm for her. It never failed to surprise her how many medications one human can be on at the same time. In 2010 something shifted. It started with an idea of her doing a weight loss challenge with a couple of friends. By the time her friends asked some of their friends, word spread and 35 women joined this challenge! 12 weeks later, 35 lives were changed for the better and this was the start of Sofia's journey in health and wellness. Her passion was and still is helping women get healthier, stronger and more confident in their body. Since then Sofia has worked with 100s of women individually and in group settings. She now practices as a Health & Wellness Coach, is a NASM (Nat'l Assoc. of Sports Med personal trainer and is on her way to becoming a certified Jay Shetty Life Coach. She is passionate about helping women get healthy and strong at any age. “The best part of my job is seeing women start believing in themself, radiating confidence, loving themself and knowing that they CAN get healthy and lead a well-balanced life”.

In this final episode, we'll take the long view. The discussion will consider what a future that belongs to cities might mean to our humanity. We will explore how the decisions we make today may shape the future. We'll end with understanding how the lessons of the past can inform a better future.HostsDr. Jonathan Reichental | https://www.itspmagazine.com/the-other-society-hosts-and-panelists/dr-jonathan-reichentalMarco Ciappelli | https://www.itspmagazine.com/the-other-society-hosts-and-panelists/marco-ciappelliPanelistsAYA Nuray Gokalp | https://www.itspmagazine.com/the-other-society-hosts-and-panelists/aya-nuray-gokalpSaker Ghani | https://www.itspmagazine.com/the-other-society-hosts-and-panelists/saker-ghaniTia Kansara | https://www.itspmagazine.com/the-other-society-hosts-and-panelists/tia-kansara____________________________Ways to watch the on-demand live streamYouTube | https://itsp.ac/smart-cities-ep3-youtube-liveFacebook | https://itsp.ac/smart-cities-ep3-facebook-liveTwitter | https://itsp.ac/smart-cities-ep3-twitter-live____________________________This Episode's SponsorsTHIS EPISODE AND SERIES CAN BE SPONSORED -- LEARN MORE

We discuss the failed withdrawal from Afghan. Our guests are: Cpt. Maureen Bannon, Liz Harrington, Mel Ghani, Mike AMC Marine Stay ahead of the censors - Join us warroom.org/join Aired On: 08/17/2021 Watch: On the Web: http://www.warroom.org On Podcast: http://warroom.ctcin.bio On TV: PlutoTV Channel 240, Dish Channel 219, Roku, Apple TV, FireTV or on https://AmericasVoice.news. #news #politics #realnews