Podcasts about Guam

Value: After Hours is a podcast about value investing, Fintwit, and all things finance and investment by investors Tobias Carlisle, and Jake Taylor. Marcel Schwartz and Matthias X. Hanauer's paper published in the Journal of Portfolio Management: https://www.pm-research.com/content/iijpormgmt/51/6/28 (and the free SSRN version: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5043197)See our latest episodes at https://acquirersmultiple.com/podcastWe are live every Tuesday at 1.30pm E / 10.30am P.About Jake Jake's Twitter: https://twitter.com/farnamjake1Jake's book: The Rebel Allocator https://amzn.to/2sgip3lABOUT THE PODCASTHi, I'm Tobias Carlisle. I launched The Acquirers Podcast to discuss the process of finding undervalued stocks, deep value investing, hedge funds, activism, buyouts, and special situations.We uncover the tactics and strategies for finding good investments, managing risk, dealing with bad luck, and maximizing success.SEE LATEST EPISODEShttps://acquirersmultiple.com/podcast/SEE OUR FREE DEEP VALUE STOCK SCREENER https://acquirersmultiple.com/screener/FOLLOW TOBIASWebsite: https://acquirersmultiple.com/Firm: https://acquirersfunds.com/ Twitter: ttps://twitter.com/GreenbackdLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycarlisleFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/tobiascarlisleInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobias_carlisleABOUT TOBIAS CARLISLETobias Carlisle is the founder of The Acquirer's Multiple®, and Acquirers Funds®. He is best known as the author of the #1 new release in Amazon's Business and Finance The Acquirer's Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market, the Amazon best-sellers Deep Value: Why Activists Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (2014) (https://amzn.to/2VwvAGF), Quantitative Value: A Practitioner's Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors (2012) (https://amzn.to/2SDDxrN), and Concentrated Investing: Strategies of the World's Greatest Concentrated Value Investors (2016) (https://amzn.to/2SEEjVn). He has extensive experience in investment management, business valuation, public company corporate governance, and corporate law.Prior to founding the forerunner to Acquirers Funds in 2010, Tobias was an analyst at an activist hedge fund, general counsel of a company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and a corporate advisory lawyer. As a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions he has advised on transactions across a variety of industries in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Singapore, Bermuda, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Guam. He is a graduate of the University of Queensland in Australia with degrees in Law (2001) and Business (Management) (1999).

Episode 131: CalibisWhat's Good Famiglia?! How we doin out there?! Gemini season is in full effect and National Plug Day is right around the corner! Happy Memorial Day weekend and salute to all the soldiers that gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom! This week we have 2 special guests from Calibis, the homie AJ and Tomas came through the walk through their journey. Their story starts out on the island of Guam, where Life was very sweet and full of island adventures. They come from a very big family and a strong community who really hold each other down. Their way of life, as they explained it, was really beautiful in Guam and they express so much of their culture in their brand. Cannabis was always a part of their lives, even on their home island of Guam. They continued their career with the plant  when they moved to California and eventually formed Calibis. The rest was history! Y'all know what time it is… Roll em fat, torch your rigs, pack your bongs, bag up some work, water your plants, do what you gotta do because we're about to take this journey with my homies from Calibis! ✌

Ce mardi 27 mai, le départ d'environ 4 500 soldats sur les 28 500 actuellement déployés sur la péninsule sud-coréenne qui serait envisagé par Washington et leur repositionnement vers Guam, selon le Wall Street Journal, ont été abordés par Caroline Loyer dans sa chronique, dans l'émission Good Morning Business, présentée par Laure Closier, sur BFM Business. Retrouvez l'émission du lundi au vendredi et réécoutez la en podcast.

Yurika Watanabe grew up in Guam focused on her day-to-day and supporting her family. After a Buddhist family friend encouraged her to dream big, she started to envision a different future. Today, we discuss how setting goals and dreams help us accomplish things we hadn't imagined possible.Watch this episode on our YouTube channel.

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, we bring you an episode from Inheriting Season One. Inheriting is a show about Asian American and Pacific Islander families, which explores how one event in history can ripple through generations. Leialani Wihongi-Santos is CHamoru and was raised on the island of Guam with a distorted view of history. She was taught that the United States "saved” her island from occupation by Imperial Japan. As she’s gotten older, Leialani has learned that framing is not entirely true. In some ways, the U.S. military took advantage of the island and the people who live there, sometimes destroying culture and customs that had survived centuries of colonization. Leialani is now determined to understand more of this history from a CHamoru perspective, so she can preserve and teach it to others. In this episode, she turns to her grandpa, Joseph Aflleje-Santos, for answers. Stay connected with us! E-mail us at inheriting@laiststudios.com to share your questions, feelings, and even your story.

Value: After Hours is a podcast about value investing, Fintwit, and all things finance and investment by investors Tobias Carlisle, and Jake Taylor. Steven's paper "Owners vs. agents: A global examination of the behavior of owner operators": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521925002182See our latest episodes at https://acquirersmultiple.com/podcastWe are live every Tuesday at 1.30pm E / 10.30am P.About Jake Jake's Twitter: https://twitter.com/farnamjake1Jake's book: The Rebel Allocator https://amzn.to/2sgip3lABOUT THE PODCASTHi, I'm Tobias Carlisle. I launched The Acquirers Podcast to discuss the process of finding undervalued stocks, deep value investing, hedge funds, activism, buyouts, and special situations.We uncover the tactics and strategies for finding good investments, managing risk, dealing with bad luck, and maximizing success.SEE LATEST EPISODEShttps://acquirersmultiple.com/podcast/SEE OUR FREE DEEP VALUE STOCK SCREENER https://acquirersmultiple.com/screener/FOLLOW TOBIASWebsite: https://acquirersmultiple.com/Firm: https://acquirersfunds.com/ Twitter: ttps://twitter.com/GreenbackdLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycarlisleFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/tobiascarlisleInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobias_carlisleABOUT TOBIAS CARLISLETobias Carlisle is the founder of The Acquirer's Multiple®, and Acquirers Funds®. He is best known as the author of the #1 new release in Amazon's Business and Finance The Acquirer's Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market, the Amazon best-sellers Deep Value: Why Activists Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (2014) (https://amzn.to/2VwvAGF), Quantitative Value: A Practitioner's Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors (2012) (https://amzn.to/2SDDxrN), and Concentrated Investing: Strategies of the World's Greatest Concentrated Value Investors (2016) (https://amzn.to/2SEEjVn). He has extensive experience in investment management, business valuation, public company corporate governance, and corporate law.Prior to founding the forerunner to Acquirers Funds in 2010, Tobias was an analyst at an activist hedge fund, general counsel of a company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and a corporate advisory lawyer. As a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions he has advised on transactions across a variety of industries in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Singapore, Bermuda, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Guam. He is a graduate of the University of Queensland in Australia with degrees in Law (2001) and Business (Management) (1999).

Discover how Chris Blair transformed from a directionless small-town teenager into a successful hospital administrator through military service, healthcare experience, and exceptional leadership skills.Chris shares his pivotal moment of clarity when he realized he needed to make a profound choice to change his life trajectory, leading him to join the Navy as a Hospital Corpsman. His military experiences built the foundation for a healthcare career that spans from direct patient care to executive leadership.The conversation reveals how Chris's unique perspective—having worked at every level from patient care tech to hospital administrator—shapes his people-first leadership philosophy. "Culture eats strategy for breakfast," he explains, demonstrating how focusing on employee engagement turned struggling hospitals around during his career. When he transformed one facility's employee favorability rating from 3.2 to 4.1, the finances naturally improved too.What makes Chris's approach distinctive is his servant leadership mindset: "I am not in charge of anybody and no one works for me. I work for them." This perspective, combined with his "eat what you kill" entrepreneurial energy, created environments where healthcare teams flourish despite the industry's challenges. His candid insights about healthcare's thin 3% operating margins and the constant balance between quality care and financial sustainability offer rare glimpses into hospital administration realities.Beyond career insights, Chris discusses meeting his wife while stationed in Guam, earning his MBA with a 4.0 GPA while working through COVID, and his philosophy that failure isn't a person—it's just evidence you're trying. His journey exemplifies how military discipline, healthcare experience, and genuine care for people can create an extraordinary leadership approach. As Chris says, "All gas, no brakes."

Guam may be part of a larger territory, but there is so much happening in this one spot it warranted its own episode. The taotaomona are honestly giving us mixed signals here though. Like, do you hate kids/fetuses or not? We suppose they make that pretty clear when they decide to either help you, or be a headless, ailment inducing menace. Pretty cut and dry.   Check out our affiliates: Javvycoffee.com Use code ORSO77605 to get 15% off every order. Venomscent.com Use code ORSO28248 to get 10% off every order. Donate monthly here: https://www.patreon.com/orsotheysaypod Or a once off here: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=T22PHA8NAUTPN  And don't forget to swing by here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/orsotheysaypod/shop  

Value: After Hours is a podcast about value investing, Fintwit, and all things finance and investment by investors Tobias Carlisle, and Jake Taylor. See our latest episodes at https://acquirersmultiple.com/podcastWe are live every Tuesday at 1.30pm E / 10.30am P.About Jake Jake's Twitter: https://twitter.com/farnamjake1Jake's book: The Rebel Allocator https://amzn.to/2sgip3lABOUT THE PODCASTHi, I'm Tobias Carlisle. I launched The Acquirers Podcast to discuss the process of finding undervalued stocks, deep value investing, hedge funds, activism, buyouts, and special situations.We uncover the tactics and strategies for finding good investments, managing risk, dealing with bad luck, and maximizing success.SEE LATEST EPISODEShttps://acquirersmultiple.com/podcast/SEE OUR FREE DEEP VALUE STOCK SCREENER https://acquirersmultiple.com/screener/FOLLOW TOBIASWebsite: https://acquirersmultiple.com/Firm: https://acquirersfunds.com/ Twitter: ttps://twitter.com/GreenbackdLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycarlisleFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/tobiascarlisleInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobias_carlisleABOUT TOBIAS CARLISLETobias Carlisle is the founder of The Acquirer's Multiple®, and Acquirers Funds®. He is best known as the author of the #1 new release in Amazon's Business and Finance The Acquirer's Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market, the Amazon best-sellers Deep Value: Why Activists Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (2014) (https://amzn.to/2VwvAGF), Quantitative Value: A Practitioner's Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors (2012) (https://amzn.to/2SDDxrN), and Concentrated Investing: Strategies of the World's Greatest Concentrated Value Investors (2016) (https://amzn.to/2SEEjVn). He has extensive experience in investment management, business valuation, public company corporate governance, and corporate law.Prior to founding the forerunner to Acquirers Funds in 2010, Tobias was an analyst at an activist hedge fund, general counsel of a company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and a corporate advisory lawyer. As a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions he has advised on transactions across a variety of industries in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Singapore, Bermuda, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Guam. He is a graduate of the University of Queensland in Australia with degrees in Law (2001) and Business (Management) (1999).

Host Jeremy C. Park talks with Shelby Mounts, who reflects on his 25 years of service with the US Navy and highlights the leadership lessons learned and his journey to becoming Executive Director of NextOp Veterans, a nonprofit organization focused on connecting veterans and military members to career opportunities. NextOp recruits, develops, and places military members and veterans into industry careers. The organization works one-on-one with enlisted service members and veterans to help translate military training and experiences into valued qualifications in the business community, and the organization works with and supports companies to develop and execute their veteran hiring and retention strategies.During the interview, Shelby talks about growing up in a US Navy household and how stories of service inspired him in childhood. He shares how his family's move from Texas to California and then changing schools in San Diego were challenging at the time, but shaped his future and his ability to adapt, learn and grow, and make friends quickly. Shelby talks about some of the childhood lessons he carries with him today, and then discusses his transition into the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. He shares how he was encouraged and selected to attend US Navy Flight School, something he had always dreamed of, and how he progressed as a pilot and officer to lead a helicopter squadron. He talks about some of training and missions, and lessons learned while deployed, and how those experiences have shaped his ability to support and empower his team.Shelby then talks about his process of transitioning out of the military, which started when he was on a special assignment as a Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellow at Shell Oil in New Orleans, LA, and then on tours at the Pentagon, which allowed him to build and leverage his network of personal relationships that opened a door for a new corporate opportunity. He then talks about the important work that NextOp Veterans is doing to help military members and veterans, like himself, with that same transition into industry careers and opportunities. He shares some of this history and growth for the nonprofit organization, talks about some of their key strategies and recent successes, and how they are partnering with other organizations to create a system that benefits the veterans and military members, education institutions and training programs, companies, and our communities. He wraps up with how the community can help support their efforts, the power of hiring veterans and words of encouragement for companies looking to gain a competitive advantage with veterans on their team.Visit https://nextopvets.org to learn more about NextOp Veterans.About Shelby Mounts:Shelby Mounts brings more than 30 years of experience in Defense and Industry leadership roles to NextOp Veterans.His private industry roles include CEO of Riverside Consulting Services, LLC, a small, independent Government Consulting services company, Chief Commercial Officer and EVP of Sales for Vita Inclinata Technologies, and Director of Defense Aerospace and Maritime Business Development at Allegheny Technologies Inc (ATI). In each case, the focus was development of relationships, positive outcomes and growth.Shelby's Government experience included service in the US Navy for 25 years, where he retired as a Captain. After graduating from Annapolis with a Bachelor of Science degree, Shelby served four years as a Surface Warfare Officer, including deployed time in South America, the Caribbean, Europe and the Middle East, then was selected to attend US Navy Flight School.After earning his wings as a helicopter pilot, Shelby progressed as a pilot and officer, accumulating 2500 flight hours as an operator and two time instructor. This period included numerous deployments to the Middle East and Western Pacific Ocean supporting Navy and Marine Corps operations from San Diego,CA, Guam, and Japan, and a tour leading a helicopter squadron with 500 people and 19 helicopters in Norfolk, VA.His staff assignments included a joint assignment at US Special Operations Command in Tampa, FL, two tours at the Pentagon in a variety of Navy Staff resourcing and operations positions, and a special assignment as a Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellow at Shell Oil in New Orleans, LA. Shelby also completed a Master of Science through the University of San Diego Business School. The ChangeMakers Podcast is produced by cityCURRENT and powered by Higginbotham Insurance and Financial Services. Be inspired by more positive media by following cityCURRENT here: www.cityCURRENT.com

How does a snake climb a pole? It's not like they have a ladder... or arms.It turns out that snakes have some pretty crazy skills when it comes to climbing anything and everything.The Island of Guam had between two and four million brown tree snakes in the 1980s, leading to all sorts of issues for the birds and the environment.Guests:Dr Aaron Collins- Assistant State Director Guam/Western Pacific Theatre at USDA-APHIS-Wildlife ServicesProfessor Kristin Y. Pettersen- Centre for Autonomous Marine Operations and System at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)Stuart McKenzie - Director/Owner at The Snake Catcher Sunshine CoastProfessor Bruce C. Jayne- Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Cincinnati.Charlie and Olivia, Board game players.Production:Ann Jones, Presenter / Producer.Petria Ladgrove, Producer.Joel Werner, Script Editing.Additional mastering:  Hamish Camilleri.This episode of What the Duck?! was originally broadcast on the 5th of March 2022 and was produced on the land of the Wadawarrung and the Kaurna people. 

Send us a textMike Muña was active duty military serving in the US Coast Guard on Guam, when he began to experience discrimination and encountered bigotry against Chamorus that targeted his family and threatened to tear them apart.For this 2022 episode of Fanachu Mike and his wife Moanike'ala share their experiences challenging the systemic racism that they've encountered in the US military.This episode first premiered on November 22, 2022 and was hosted by Michael Lujan BevacquaThe audio for this episode is by Tåsi Chargualaf,Support the show

“Sicherheitshalber” ist der Podcast zur sicherheitspolitischen Lage in Deutschland, Europa und der Welt. In Folge 95 diskutieren Thomas Wiegold, Ulrike Franke, Frank Sauer und Carlo Masala zuerst über Geographie und Geopolitik. Haben wir in Deutschland das Denken in geopolitischen Kategorien zu lange vernachlässigt? Vier Beispiele (die Ostsee, die GIUK-Lücke, die Arktis und Guam) dienen in der Diskussion dazu, die Bedeutung von geographischen Gegebenheiten aufzuzeigen - aber auch zu verdeutlichen, dass Geopolitik sich trotzdem nicht unmittelbar aus der Landkarte erschließt. Im zweiten Teil wird es endlich mal wieder ein bisschen theoretisch. Die vier Podcaster fragen anlässlich einer Hörer-Email danach, auf welchen Analyseebenen die Ursachen von Krieg zu suchen sind. Ist es der Machthunger der Menschen? Ist es die Verfasstheit der Staaten? Oder liegen die Ursachen im internationalen System? Und warum klappt es trotz der Vereinten Nationen nicht mit dem Weltfrieden? Abschließend wie immer der “Sicherheitshinweis”, der kurze Fingerzeig auf aktuelle, sicherheitspolitisch einschlägige Themen und Entwicklungen - diesmal mit einer Venus-Sonde, Rüstungsausgaben, einer ukrainischen Überwasserdrohne und einem Memo des US-Verteidigungsministers. Geographie: 00:01:36 Ostsee: 00:13:49 GIUK: 00:22:32 Arktis: 00:31:00 Guam: 00:42:45 Theorieteil: 00:50:46 Fazit: 01:16:18 Sicherheitshinweise: 01:17:48 Mail: mail@sicherheitspod.de Web: https://sicherheitspod.de/ Shop: https://sicherheitshalbershop.myspreadshop.de/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sicherheitspod Bitte beachten! Neues Spendenkonto: Sicherheitshalber Podcast IBAN DE81 1001 8000 0995 7654 77 FNOMDEB2 Finom Komplette Shownotes unter: https://sicherheitspod.de/2025/05/06/folge-95-die-macht-der-geographie-der-theorieteil-warum-kriege-und-kein-weltfrieden/

Tinian — barely more than a point on the map — is moving back into the strategic spotlight: The Pacific island is to serve as an addition to the US spearhead Guam. The expansion of the historic airfield is a symbol of the muscle play of the superpowers in the Indo-Pacific, reports SBS-correspondent Barbara Barkhausen. - Tinian – kaum mehr als ein Punkt auf der Landkarte – rückt wieder ins strategische Rampenlicht: Die Pazifikinsel soll als Ergänzung zur US-Speerspitze Guam dienen. Der Ausbau des geschichtsträchtigen Flugfeldes ist Sinnbild für das Muskelspiel der Supermächte im Indopazifik, das berichtet SBS-Korrespondentin Barbara Barkhausen.

In this episode of The Illuminated Path podcast, Livia sits down with Harmony, a musician and creative soul, to reflect on her transformative Rise and Align journey. Harmony shares the behind-the-scenes creative process of putting on her very first concert, the lessons and growth she's experienced one year later, and how wellness practices became an essential part of her artistic evolution. They explore the deep connection between creativity and self-care, the importance of honoring your own rhythm, and the power of showing up for your dreams. Harmony also offers a glimpse into what's next in her music journey and the rituals that continue to fuel her creative expression.CONNECT WITH HARMONYHarmony Chea is a contemporary R&B to indie/pop Guam-based artist. She began songwriting at the age of 13 when she received her first guitar. Like many other aspiring artists, she released original music on Sound Cloud. Throughout her teens she would also post videos of her performing covers and originals across social media platforms.Harmony's growing momentum from her soulful lyrics and serene voice gave her the opportunity to open for Jhené Aiko's first live performance in 2018 on Guam. A few months later, Harmony opened for Kehlani, who also arrived to the island during her first Asia Tour. In 2021, she released her first EP titled, “Ceased,” and her debut album, “Guarded,” in April 2023. On the night of the Leo Full Moon in January 2024, Harmony headlined a live concert event, “Guarded: Phases of the Moon,” that included an opening act line-up of underground artists and opened a portal to Guam's community. This event she created was to not only highlight her music journey and her connection to the natural cycles of this world, but empower other independent artists with her storytelling in an inclusive, safe space.In May 2024, she traveled to play her first state-side show in Seattle to open for r&b artist, CLAY, on her North America Tour. Harmony is currently on Guam curating a new portal to take the form of an EP to be released Spring 2025.Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harmonyycheahttps://www.instagram.com/officialhcmusicWebsite: https://www.harmonychea.com/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6U98LrNjs2C32HWK7CNWQaSPECIAL THANKS TO SALT + LIGHT HOMEWebsite: https://thesaltandlighthome.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesaltandlighthomeCONNECT WITH INA WELLNESS COLLECTIVEWebsite: https://www.inawellnesscollective.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inawellnesscollectiveRise and Align Coaching - Join the waitlist now:https://www.inawellnesscollective.com/riseandalign

This week we talk about Jennifer Pardini, a young woman who moved back to her parent's house after a break up. She wakes up in the middle of the night to her ex boyfriend inside the house. It turns violent when he finds a hammer near by. We also talk about Greg Barnes, hiking at Pagat Cave in Guam with two friends. They watch the ocean waves crash against the cliff. One wave was large enough to sweep Greg out to sea within seconds. Listen to how they survived now! Drink of the Week: Tequila Sunrise Margarita 

Guam might look like a chill island paradise, but it's got a wild secret. This place got totally overrun by sneaky invaders — we're talking millions of tiny, creepy creatures. They slithered in, took over, and messed up the whole vibe. Ecologists? Yeah, they've been scrambling ever since, trying to fix the chaos. There was even this one time at a laid-back island cookout — whole pig roasting, good vibes all around — until the uninvited guests showed up. Let's just say, the party didn't end with dessert. CreditsCredit: Bugs_and_Biology / Reddit SciTech Daily / YouTube CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0: Todiramphus cinnamominus: By desmorider, snowmanradio, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19110739 Guam rail national aviary: By lwolfartist - https://flic.kr/p/2nX6os9, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=133495046 20040530-APHIS-LSC-0005: By U.S. Department of Agriculture, https://flic.kr/p/mHaAay GuamRail02: By Greg Hume, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15405194 CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0: Argyrodes: By Robert Webster / xpda, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67695922 Vadehavscentret: By Hjart, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=129405784 CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0: Brown tree snake: By Pavel Kirillov - https://flic.kr/p/dMbxtN, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46853510 Todirhamphus cinnamominus: By Ryan Somma - https://flic.kr/p/6sgSva, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6907398 Brown tree snake: By Pavel Kirillov - https://flic.kr/p/dMbvTy, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46853534 CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0: Boiga irregularis: By Noah Kirkland - https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/401995801, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=156712341 Argyrodes argyrodes: By Simon - https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/137849832, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=136685770 Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/ Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQT Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textWelcome to the May 2nd Daily Drop, where Jared breaks down the absolute fever dream that is today's Air Force memo—everything from piano-burning ceremonies to Space Force launching a special operations element (yes, you read that right). This episode's a rollercoaster through military bureaucracy, geopolitical chaos, and some straight-up “wait… what?” moments.We're talking about 8,000 troops at the southern border, the Air Force testing robo-wingmen, Japan mad about a B-1 bomber blocking their runway, and Guam getting overrun by 25,000 stray dogs (no, seriously). Also, shoutout to the Air Force for helping control said dogs… because readiness, I guess?Throw in canceled Iran nuclear talks, a new missile shield with a suspiciously biblical name (“Golden Dome”), and a nominee for Undersecretary getting roasted for telling the truth—and you've got an episode that proves the Pentagon never sleeps… but maybe should.

Michelle's journey from the cotton fields of West Texas to Navy Commander reveals a life defined by resilience through seemingly insurmountable challenges. Raised by a cotton farmer in a small Texas town where children chased rattlesnakes for fun, Michelle's childhood foundation of toughness would serve her well. When her parents divorced during her teenage years, both seemingly trying to relive their own adolescence, she navigated the tumult of small-town gossip and dangerous rebellious behavior without stable adult guidance.Facing financial reality after high school, Michelle pragmatically chose nursing because "it was going to be a way to pay my bills." Without family support for college, she joined the Navy's Bachelor Degree Completion Program, trading education for service commitment. This decision led her to Guam, where she met her husband Chris and faced an unexpected revelation – Chris had fathered a child during his military discharge process. Rather than continuing her planned career path, Michelle requested reassignment to be near his son, beginning a journey of blended family that transformed her priorities.Through financial ruin that once had them living in their restaurant, deployment to Germany treating wounded warriors, and two battles with breast cancer, Michelle's faith remained her cornerstone. "I've had that anger of 'why me?'... and I kind of came to 'why not me?'" she reflects. Her story powerfully demonstrates that resilience isn't about avoiding suffering but finding meaning within it.Have you faced unexpected challenges that seemed to derail your plans? Michelle's journey shows how our greatest difficulties often reveal our higher purpose and unexpected blessings. Subscribe to hear more stories of resilience and Living Life to the Max despite circumstances.

We're celebrating a major milestone with the return of our very first guests: Kristen Mackey, Director of Arizona Combined, and Natasha Jerde, Director of Minnesota Blind. As Vocational Rehabilitation leaders navigate rising demands, shifting funding, and major structural change, Kristen and Natasha join us again to reflect on the post-pandemic landscape—and how it's testing directors like never before. From managing centralized services to sustaining staffing under fiscal strain, they share the real-world challenges that keep them up at night—and the strategies they're using to adapt. With transparency, persistence, and a mission-first mindset, these leaders dive into: ·       Navigating state and federal priorities ·       Responding to workforce volatility ·       Staying connected to data and purpose Their insights are a must-listen for anyone leading in today's VR environment. Tune in and be inspired to lead with clarity and resilience.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   Natasha: Our program income is significantly dropping. The inflation, the cost of services. We've had four and a half and 5.5% salary increases with no additional state appropriations. So all of these things together keep me up every single night.   Kristen: We want job placements, we want employment, we want independence. If somebody's saying increase your job placements, fine, we can do that. It's how do we then take what they're giving us and make it not be a distraction, and we can mold to the thing that they want, but still do it at the base level.   {Music} Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: Well, welcome to the manager minute. Joining me in the studio today is Kristen Mackey, director of Arizona Combined, and Natasha Jurdi, director of Minnesota Blinds. So how are things going in Minnesota, Natasha?   Natasha: I think the Minnesota word for today is going to be interesting. It's interesting. How about I leave it at that and I'll talk a little bit more as we dive into the questions.   Carol: Awesome. That is interesting. I want to know about that. How about you Kristen? How's it going in Arizona?   Kristen: You know what? I think I might steal Natasha's word. There's so much happening. We're trying to keep managing and keep abreast of all of the changes that come out on the news and everywhere, trying to keep centered and just keep doing what we do to get the work done. It's been a lot of fun.   Carol: Well, I couldn't think of two better people to bring on because this is super exciting. This is actually our 50th episode of The Manager Minute, and I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate the milestone than by bringing back my two incredible guests from episode number one in May four years ago. It's so crazy. And back then I just laughed. We were diving into the world of post-pandemic VR. What's it gonna look like? How are we going to navigate all these changes? You guys were working on things like electronic signatures and how you equipped your staff, you know, to work remotely and all of that. So a lot has changed since those early days, and I'm excited to catch up with you both to see how far that you've all come. So just reflecting back to my time as a director, I remember many a sleepless night and Natasha can attest to that. I remember coming to a meeting like, I don't sleep at night and I keep a pad of paper by my bed. And it was so funny. I heard a director tell me they did the same thing. This was a month or so ago. They were like, you know, I keep this pad of paper by my bed because, you know, we were worried about so many things. There was WIOA implementation back then, and we had a less than stellar monitoring report and a financial picture that was super tough and it just wasn't very pretty. And so I kept that notepad because in the middle of the night was always my best thinking I'd wake up, I'm like, oh, I gotta write this down. And so I can remember in the morning. So I know now, four years later, from talking to you all last on the podcast, the pendulum has certainly swung in a new direction, and I'm really eager to see how things have evolved for the both of you. You know, like what's changed, what's stayed the same, and what lessons have you learned? So let's dive in. So, Natasha, will you kick us off and just give our listeners a little snapshot about yourself and the agency that you lead?   Natasha: Sure. So I have worked at State services for the blind since I was a baby intern 2008. I have been a deaf blind counselor, a supervisor, the director of our policy and program administration, and I became the director in August 2019. Our agency, we have about 140 staff across the state. We have a Voc Rehab program, an older blind program, our Randolph-sheppard program. But we also have a communication center where we do braille audio transcription and have a radio reading service. So we have a little bit of everything at State Services for the blind. We've grown a bit since 2019. Yeah, there's a lot of fun.   Carol: It is a lot of fun. Blind agencies are always near and dear to my heart. And since I came from Minnesota blind, Natasha knows that I just love that whole variety and all of the work. It's so fun. Kristen, how about you give our listeners a little snapshot about yourself and the agency that you lead?   Kristen: Sure. Similar to Natasha, I started as a VR counselor in the field transition. That was my first job in first entrance into VR. I moved into policy manager policy and then became the director of the Arizona Combined Unit in 2016. Arizona is combined and we are also under a safety net agency. All of the VR, IL OIB, BEP is in a division. That division is in a department. So our DSA is really rather large and we are kind of shuffled 3 or 4 deep down. So we have enterprise services, shared services, which makes things a little bit more difficult to manage than it was when I started the job, when we didn't have some of those other items. So it's been a learning lesson and trying to figure out how do we get done what we need to get done with all these people involved now.   Carol: Yeah, your structure makes me nuts. I'm just saying, full disclosure, but having gone on site with you and your team several times, I'm like, what? You have to always explain. We had DIRs and we have this other thing and all these different levels. I'm like, oh my Lord, I just don't even know how you do it. So I know there's been a lot of big changes since we spoke last, so I'm going to kick it to you first. Natasha, what are some of the biggest changes you've seen in your program since we last spoke?   Natasha: I was actually talking to one of my outreach coordinators, Lisa Larges, and she's like, I think you brought some bad juju because the timing when I started and then everything that happened since I started has just been wild. So since we last met, I've experienced a global pandemic, a civil rights movement that essentially started literally down the street and around the corner from our headquarters. A roller coaster ride of funding at both the federal and state level. We went from having too much to now we don't have enough. We have a new federal administration with very different priorities than we have seen before. We have settled into this new hybrid work, which isn't new anymore. It's kind of our new normal. It's just been, I think you name it, it has changed or it's different or it feels different or it looks different. I think the biggest question right now that we're all faced with is, in light of all of these changes and challenges and opportunities, how do we maintain the integrity of the program, continue to provide high quality services that get people into competitive careers and retain the staff that we have worked so hard to get. While these past few years that's been a focus of a lot of our agencies is how do we recruit? And now with everything happening, is all of that recruitment efforts going to go to waste?   Carol: You know what's kind of funny when you talk about that? Because I look back to when I started at SSB, you know, and so in 2013 I become director. You go at the very end of the year, I was the interim and then made permanent in 14. And you just go, okay, I thought I brought bad juju with me to because WIOA went into play and then we had all this wacky stuff going on. We owed all this money for the case management system. So now, you know, just hearing you, it's like, well, maybe it's just the cycle of the program. Like there is no spot in time where everything is ever just copacetic and all smooth sailing. I think it just continues on.   Kristen: I think that I really feel like that's so good to remember because I think you can in this position, you can take a lot of things like, oh my gosh, am I not doing this right? What skills don't I have? How am I not doing this, that or the other. And it just is a constant. Like it just changes constant. And you have to constantly readjust your focus and your priorities and your strategy. And so it's helpful to remember that our environment is constantly changing at state and federal level. And we just have to be able to manage and navigate and not beat ourselves up over it.   Carol: Oh, that's a super good point. Natasha's going to laugh at this, but I'm actually going to hold up so our listeners won't see it. But I still have my Strengths Finder. So we used to always do strengths Finder at SSB. I still have my top five strengths. And staff used to ask me one of them is adaptability. So my fifth strength was adaptability because people would be like, how can you just roll with the flow? Like you need to just tell like Central Office, we're not going to do that thing that they want for the legislative session. And I'd be like, okay, we're going to pick our battles. That is not the battle we're going to pick right now. We're going to answer the question they need, because the sooner you do that, you get that off your back and then you get back to your business and do your things. And so for me, it's easier because in me is adaptability. I've always been able to kind of go with the flow, whether administration changes or, you know, any of that, where that is more difficult for other people when you want things to be very set and it's hard for you to pivot and make that move. So, Kristen, what are some of the biggest changes you've seen in your program in the last four years?   Kristen: Wow. Well, as I indicated, the state was kind of in that move and shift to centralized services, you know, some of those shared service models. So, you know, it started with our training department and, you know, but we got to keep our policy and we got to keep our contracts and procurement. And the next thing you know, like air moves out and then, oh, we're going to move out all of your facilities management. And so slowly, piece by piece, the staff that you had working with. You have been now pulled to a different reporting structure and a different requirements to do their job. And so when, you know, we used to have a staff of like 500 people that were fully dedicated on board, directly connected with me, I had direct relationships with them. I was able to really work with them. And over the last five years, I've seen that direct connection and relationship with people fade out because those folks are no longer in those positions. They've graduated or moved to other things. They didn't stay within the agency. So, you know, within our VR program, IOB program, BEP, those program staff super dedicated and want to really fulfill the mission of the work in serving individuals with disabilities. And then we have all of our shared service team dedicated to their job to don't necessarily have the same focus on the mission and the outcome of serving individuals with disabilities. It's been very difficult to try to figure out how to play nice with them, because they got to do stuff for you, right? I need you to manage my budgets. I need you to manage my contract. But I also, you know, don't quite like the way you're doing it or you're not doing it fast enough or you're not following my vision for how that would work. So it's just been a real challenge to see how to grow and manage the different structures that are in play now.   Carol: I think you hit the nail on the head on that with that centralization, because it's happening across the country. I mean, we see it everywhere. Every director like just struggling as your people move out from under you, whether it's the IT, the HR, the whoever you had. And now they're centralized, which Congress allows. It was written in the rehab Act, like you can structure that way. But they lose that connection to the mission and what you're trying to do. So when you're doing that work sort of in isolation of what's the end game and how you impact, you know, the staff person having their computer so they can do the work with the customer. You don't see that urgency in it. So it's like, yeah, so we get to you in two weeks, you know, really need your computer or whatever. It's just hard. It makes the job so much harder. So I know not only those changes have happened, the financial landscape is shifting drastically for the VR program. How has this impacted your ability to serve individuals? And Kristen, I'll send it your way first.   Kristen: We've been fortunate in that Arizona with the formula grant. You know, we still receive a little increases every year. So the not getting the cost of living this last year was not as impactful as it had been to some other agencies. So I do, you know, knock on wood for that a bit. Now if that continues we're going to have another, you know, constantly evolving story there. We have had to take a look at for our cases. How do we spend more money faster. And that's been again the challenge of working with shared service opportunities is, well, they don't have capacity to put these contracts in place that I need in order to be able to spend the money that we have, right? We have been successful in keeping it in the VR bucket, but now we need to spend it on our consumers and our clients. But I need a contract to do that and don't have the resources or the capacity from that team to be able to put that out the door. So it's super challenging to know that you're sitting on money that you could spend and do a lot of good things with, but there's then that external factor of not having the capacity to put all of that together to get that money spent.   Carol: So you're in actually a pretty lucky position. You know, other people listening to this podcast are going, What? Kristen Mackey, you've got all this, you've got all this money. Because almost all the calls I get on a daily basis with my list of people all going on the order of selection, I keep a little sticky note, you know, and everybody calling and just frantic. They are literally like tapped out. There is no money, but yet you're trying to spend your money and you don't have the resources to really help you get some of the plans in place.   Kristen: It is challenging, but I feel fortunate that I'm challenged on that end of the spectrum versus the end, where there's not enough money or capacity or staff resources. One of the other pieces, too, is, you know, in this current landscape, budget wise, can't bring on as many people as we would like to, you know. Can't do all of the support services that we or support staff that we would like to. So downsizing your footprint, right? All of that, those are our major expenditures. And we're asked to shrink that. It creates a really kind of a nightmare for projection and and budgets all of that.   Carol: Oh, 100%. How about you, Natasha? How's the finances looking at SSB?   Natasha: It's getting tight. It's getting tight. We were on the other side of that a few years ago. We had more money than we could spend, and we used that as an opportunity to do things that we've always wanted to do or needed to do, and we never had the funding to do it, but we always did things that we could course correct quickly on them or aren't forever. So we didn't make a lot of permanent decisions with that money because the writing was on the wall. We knew that once the pandemic shifted, we were going to see an influx in applications. Inflation was already on the wall that prices were increasing. So we made some, I think, pretty strategic and smart decisions with the money we had and how we spent it. However, it's still tight because we are getting an increase in applications. The cost of services is increasing. We ended our order of selection September 2021. I have no desire to go back there for me. I don't even want to speak it out loud. I know it's an option. I know I may need to use it one day. I can't say never, but I don't think that is the best direction for us because people need our services just as much as before, if not more. And for individuals who are blind or low vision or deaf blind, there really aren't any comparable options available, at least in Minnesota. And we're here for a very specific reason. And so I have always said it's my responsibility to ensure that we can continue doing what we are here for. That may mean that services are going to take a little bit longer to get started. We are increasing our supervisory oversight. We have a ton of financial reports, which I'll talk about in another question that have helped us get ahead of sudden spikes that we're seeing so we can do those course corrections. This also may mean that we're not backfilling or we're freezing some of those positions for a little bit that aren't essential. I'm using the term we're going to freeze, flick or fill, and every position that's our litmus test will freeze it, meaning we don't need it right now. It's not essential for service delivery. We'll revisit this. Flick means you know what? This position really isn't serving its purpose anymore. Let's figure out a different way of doing the work or fill. And we've prioritized counselors and VR techs and anyone doing direct service provision. But it's also all of this is going to force us and continues to force us to find new ways of doing things, which I don't think is a bad thing. One of the goals I've put in place this year is that all of the extra noise. You know, that can happen when you're working in a state government agency. Things that pretty much distract you from what you're supposed to be doing. My goal is we don't do those things if it doesn't stem back to our mission and actually help people get jobs or live independently, we're not going to do it. And I told that to the commissioner's office. You can ask me all day long to do all of this extra stuff, but it's not serving a purpose for us. I'm sorry. I'm not going to do it. And they've been okay with it so far.   Carol: That's awesome. Until you get a legislative request that they need you to answer in ten minutes and analyze.   Natasha: Yeah, I can't say no to those. Yeah, all these extra work groups and task forces and let's do this and that. We got other things we gotta do.   Carol: So what's the biggest thing, Natasha, that's keeping you up at night right now? Because I know there's always something, something is niggling somewhere. What would you say is the biggest thing keeping you up at night?   Natasha: Well, I have a few, but the biggest one is that. So we're not a combined agency. We have a separate general agency and that separate general agency is an incredibly tight budgetary situation. I would go so far as to say they're in a budgetary crisis, and because match maintenance of effort and carry forward determinations are at the state level, not agency, it is very possible that their constraints will impact our funding. And specifically I am very worried are Carryforward is in jeopardy. And we had a scare where we had a very high chance of losing all of our carryforward this last end of the federal fiscal year. Because of those budgetary constraints, the general agency is doing workforce reductions and doing layoffs, and they have the same type of staff classifications that we do. And we are a union state, which means bumping, which means my staff are in jeopardy. And so I'm up every night between 2 and 3 a.m. thinking of ways that we can help in any way possible. Our program income is significantly dropping. I think I've heard other states experience something similar. The inflation, the cost of services. We've had four and a half and 5.5% salary increases with no additional state appropriations. So all of these things together keep me up every single night trying to figure out how do we sustain.   Carol: Now they're going to keep me up at night, too, because of course, I worry about you all. And of course, I really worry about SSB. So I always hold that near and dear to my heart. But oh man, that is a lot. But I know you instituted some things, though, between you and the general agency, just to make sure you guys were communicating better about those financial reports and such, didn't you? Like, what did you do?   Natasha: We have an amazing relationship. We review our federal reports together. I sat closely with the VA's fiscal team, walking through what I know about the fiscal processes, the federal regulations. That's something that Carol taught me very well. I understand it quite well. So we worked hand in hand. We've been doing that since October.   Carol: That's good. Good stuff. How about you, Kristen? What's keeping you up at night?   Kristen: We had a recent monitoring that monitoring. We get through it, Right? And, you know, you haven't always have an inkling of things that need to be fixed and things that we should address, right? And sometimes those get shuffled because priority is whatever. So we had the monitoring very much highlighted certain areas that we need to address and take care of. And one of those was our fiscal management and continue as managed outside of my direct staff and even two and three layers above me. So it's one of those concerns of like, I wonder what's going to happen next. I never quite know what the fiscal situation is going to be. Emails flying around, you know, I'll get an email at the end of the day and it's I need more information. What is this about? How did you come to this conclusion? Who was involved in making this decision? It's kind of just a plethora of items that, you know, any given night, and mine is usually between 3 and 4. Like, oh, wake up and go like, oh, shoot, that sticky note fell off the roster somewhere. I need to go and send that email or this project. We started it, but now it's like kind of hanging, languishing. I need to poke somebody about getting that back on the roll again. I don't know that it's one specific thing, but it's just kind of just the size of the job is not a 40 hour a week job. It is a all encompassing. I dream about work. I it wakes me up at night, you know.   Carol: Well, my newest trick with not having my notepad beside my bed, but I actually been waking up more just because I've had so many more phone calls. Things have been really crazy lately with our fiscal team and people just reaching out. And so maybe end of the day or, you know, people's time change, you could get a call from Guam. You know, it's a way different time. So people are calling all the time. So now at night when I wake up, I text myself, you know, a note like, just so I remember, like remember to get back to so and so tomorrow. So now I just am picking up my phone. I don't have the pad there anymore, but I had two messages from last night for today that I didn't want to forget.   Kristen: I sent texts because I don't put my work phone by my side, but I have my personal. So my work cell phone is embedded in my personal and I just send text to myself.   Carol: Yeah, my work and my personal are all together, so it makes it a little challenging. So I know we're going through an administration change on the federal level right now. And a lot of state administration, you know, that changes every four years to with governors, sometimes you keep a governor twice in a row, but a lot of times not. And it will bring these shifts in priorities and just all of this change. How do you guys navigate and adapt to those changes, whether it's on the state level or federal level, when you're approaching your work? And I'm going to kick that to you, Natasha, first.   Natasha: I think the biggest thing, at least for us, has been a lot of communication and transparency, not only with our staff, but our customers, our community partners and stakeholders in the face of unknowns. People look to steadiness and information even if you don't have a lot to share. The absence of information often speaks very loudly, and people will fill in the blanks, sometimes not in a way you want them to. So we are communicating frequently, even if we don't have information. People look to me, am I panicked or am I calm? And know if I am panicked, it will not be good. People feed off of that and so I am always calm. I am always just. I can't guarantee or promise anything, but I can say we're in this together and I remind everyone why we're here. We have a mission. As Carol knows, the mission is on the wall. We look at it frequently and nothing has changed. No matter what happens federally or at the state level, that mission has not changed. We have proved that during a global pandemic. VR agencies are adaptable, creative for us in Minnesota, SSB was one of the first agencies, if not the first, allowed to go back into people's homes and provide services. That's because we know how to do things quickly and strategically to respond to whatever comes our way. We don't wait for people to tell us what to do or how to do it. We take charge and we lead the way. And I feel that is how VR is across the country. We tend to be leaders in faces of crisis and urgency. We tend to step up when others don't.   Carol: Yeah, good advice. That's all good advice. Kristen, how about you? Because you've had major shifts. I mean, you've already alluded to this, this whole like take away your people. And that's been all shifts in the structure within the state government and such. You know we've got the federal different priorities. So how do you navigate and adapt to those changes in your work and for yourself, even, like how are you taking care of yourself through all this.   Kristen: Being able to adapt the work that we do? Natasha says that we have a mission. We have a very clear outcome that we have whatever side, whoever's telling you what they want to do or how they want to do it. You need to be able to mold what that strategy looks like so you can speak to it. And I always talk about it. It's a spin. I don't like the terminology of spinning, you know, for the sake of trying to hoodwink anybody or not be transparent. But at the end of the day, we want job placements, we want employment, we want independence. So if somebody's saying increase your job placements, fine, that we can do that. It's how do we then take what they're giving us and make it not be a distraction and we can mold, you know, whatever we're measuring to the thing that they want, but still do what we are doing at the base level. And so I do feel like that's really part of our job as leaders is to and Natasha spoke to this earlier is take that noise and then see how we can like get it to stop with us and push it back in a way that still supports the work we're doing, whatever comes to us in terms of work group where you need to measure this, or we want some kind of change in X, Y, or Z. Okay. I can give you this back that will meet your needs. And it doesn't change or distract from what I'm doing in our department or in our programs. I think it's just being flexible in your thinking, being able to not have to have a certain way of approaching things, because you got to understand what that landscape is. You got to speak the words that they're speaking in order to get them to listen to you and kind of play with you so that we can all get to the same end goal.   Carol: One thing I've seen from you, Kristen, just working with you these past years in my TA capacity is I'm like, I love your persistence because you've had to navigate this really tough, internal, weird structure. It just is weird. And you are super persistent in messaging. Okay. Like you send a message to this person, oh, I'm not the person. Okay, then who is the person? Okay, I'm going to go to this person and you will not let it go till you find till the end the little trail of crumbs you get to and you're like, all right, I'm finally getting to the person because I have to get this thing answered. Some people just give up. They're like, oh, I don't know. And then staff ask and you're like, well, I don't know. We don't know who's doing what. Oh not you, you. You don't let that happen.   Kristen: That is one piece of advice I give to people when they come on. This is a state government, federal government, there are all sorts of red tape, barriers, hoops. Everything will get in your way if you let it. You're going to have to be persistent. Don't get jaded with it. Don't give up. Just know that you're going to have to be persistent with getting to the thing that you want to get done.   Carol: So switching a little bit. There's a lot of different structures in hiring VR agency leaders. I mean, you can be a political appointee. You can be more of a career professional where maybe you have some protections, maybe it's not a full blown union, but you got something. And we've had 14 new directors in the last less than ten months. Again, 14 new directors in VR. You know, people don't always realize like, how does that and each of you represents a different bucket here. How does that distinction, whether you're a political appointee or you have a little more protection influence your agency. Kind of how you approach the operations and your decision making. And I'll ask you first, Natasha.   Natasha: I am a career professional. I'm the highest level you can go before you start hitting the politically appointed positions. So that means I get the privilege of bringing some stability to the agency. Granted, that doesn't mean I can't get fired or laid off, but I am not politically appointed. So when the administration changes, I don't change with it. So that means staff can expect some consistency, and they don't have to wonder who's going to be coming in now to shake things up with their own ideas and views. They know what my priorities and goals are. They know how I work and they know what to expect. And so I have the luxury of time to create a culture that will sustain anything that comes our way. I have the time to develop that succession plan, offer professional development and mentorship opportunities. But when I was thinking of this, I can see the value of Having fresh new faces, coming in with different perspectives and experiences, and that they may have a better idea for how we do things. You know, we talk about people who have been in the position for 30, 40 years. Is there some value to having that new life coming into an agency? So I recognize that being a career professional could also be a limitation of mine, which means that I really need to surround myself with people who think differently from me, and I can't get stagnant.   Carol: Yeah, that's a really good point. Although there are very few 30 year or 40 year career leaders in the VR program anymore, I think we got Diane Delmas out in Vermont and Greg Trapp, those are the two I always think of. Otherwise, boy, people have been coming and going pretty fast, but that is good advice because you can get a little stuck. Now, Kristen, you're on the other end of the spectrum because you are a political appointee.   Kristen: I am not a political appointee, but I am an at will employee.   Carol: Oh, you're an at will though.   Kristen: Yeah,.   Carol: So it's very similar. So you're an at will person, does that impact you at all, like in decision making or as you go about doing your job?   Kristen: Well, certainly. You think, you know, is this decision going to make me the scapegoat for something that goes south, right? So, you know, it does impact my thinking. I don't let it impact whether it's right or wrong. To do that is just my base. You know, you just have to have that gut kind of commitment to. This is what I said. It's the truth. I don't have any qualms about how I do the work or the transparency that I have in the work that I do. So keeping it all above board, hope that that serves you in the end. Natasha, you had a very positive outlook on new people coming in. In my tenure, I've experienced a lot of changes in different people at different levels coming in and not having any idea about the rehabilitation programs that we run. And so it is a kind of a continuing education of individuals who are coming and going to have them see the value of the programs and the way that they need to operate.   Carol: Yeah, I appreciate that. So let's look a little bit at kind of leveraging both of you like this leveraging your data. And we're kind of skipping around a little bit here. But how do you guys like to leverage data to inform your financial and programmatic decisions? Now remember we've got a lot of new directors. We have listeners out there that are they don't know we I get this question all the time. You know, we talk about data informed decision making. People are like, yeah, we talk about it, but what does that mean? And how do you really do it in practicality? So Kristen, what would you say do you have like an example or how do you like to best leverage data when you're looking at making decisions, whether programmatically or financially?   Kristen: Just because I have a little bit more programmatic data that I have access to and ability to manipulate, we really look at that in terms of, you know, when we're setting our annual strategic goals, what is our five year goal? Take a look at what have the last three years look like. You know what the percentage of increase or decrease is? How are we adjusting those things? Use the data to understand where are the gaps, what's not working, and something we expected the needle to move and it didn't. What's not working in that process. And so you know, what lever do we pull to say this is going to be quote unquote a countermeasure for that thing, and then measure that data over the next three, six months. And if there's a change, then we can kind of understand then did that work or didn't it work? I think far too often in our workforce we say, well, this is a problem, but we don't really have any data around it. Should we gather a ton of data for the program to being able to use that data to help inform what decisions or what changes to processes should we be making and how should we make those. And then we can track it to see did it make a difference or what difference did it make? And is it something we should replicate? Is it something we should pull back. So I really like to use our data from our program, you know, participant program data to inform our strategy on what we're going to be doing in the next 1 to 5 years.   Carol: I know before you have presented at CSAVR and showed like you had some really cool ways you were able to look at data and you did a lot of it by your region so you could start narrowing in, because you can have this tendency to go, oh, you look at the data broadly and then you're like, oh, we must have this problem everywhere. Well, you realized you had regions, you know, in your state you're like, well, why am I like spanking everybody? What we write, we need to focus over here.   Kristen: Yeah, we have those metrics. And it's a metric per counselor, per rehab tech, per purchasing specialist. That unit of counselors rolls up to the supervisor. The supervisor rolls up to the program manager. So I can drill down from a state level perspective to a region perspective. Is it a supervisor office problem? Is it a person problem? And that has really helped us understand. Also, where do we need to direct the energies and efforts in terms of making changes.   Carol: Yeah, I really like that. That was really good stuff. How about you, Natasha? What are you doing with leveraging data? Because I know that's in your wheelhouse, too.   Natasha: We actually hired within, like, the last year or so, a data analyst who is skilled in data visualization and being able to take a bunch of raw numbers and tell a story. And we have been working with her to develop not only the programmatic data, which we now have a ton of that we can look at, but also our fiscal forecasting and what's happening on a budgetary level. It is because of those reports which I am getting weekly, monthly and quarterly reports, depending on the nature that we were able to suddenly see this huge, unexpected spike in case services authorizations. Within just a month of it happening, we were able to drill in. What exactly is going on? What are the bucket items that are the red flags we were able to look at by staff member by region, and we found that our interpreters have gone up over 300%, which then led us down to, okay, what's going on with that? What's the story behind the data? We also are every week meeting as a fiscal team. So the three fiscal staff that I have and myself, we meet every single week. I am intimately involved in our federal reporting. I look at every single report that they put together before we submit our 17. We walk through it. I know where we're at with match. I know where we're at with maintenance of effort. I know exactly where our 15% set aside is, and I can tell you that every single month how we're doing and what issues we're going to be facing. And that's because we have the data. If a director never looks at data and doesn't know what's happening in their programs, they're not going to be able to spot issues. You have to know whether you're doing good or you're not doing good. You need to be able to catch those things.   Carol: Yeah. And unfortunately, you have many colleagues across the country. And I will come in and they're being told by like the DSA fiscal staff, hey, don't worry about it. We got it. And so there have been directors of programs of 150 plus million dollars, have never seen a budget report. Zero idea. So literally anything they want to do. Hey, can we send a staff to training? They're asking this group of fiscal people sitting over here because they don't even know what's in the budget. It is the most insane thing I've ever seen. So you really hit the nail on the head. Like, you have to have access and it is required in the law, in the act, in setting up the agency org structure, you have the sole responsibility over the allocation and expenditure of your funds. And how can you have that sole responsibility and not have any data that goes with it? So I preach. Natasha: I will say, data is if you have a legislative ask and you are requesting more funding, the stories are important, but they also want to see the data behind it.   Carol: 100%. And it can't be data that's changing by the day. Oops, we forgot this because I've seen people get burned on that as well. And then the legislators are going, okay, well, this data now is suspect, and I think they need a legislative audit report and review because what are they doing over there?   Kristen: From a data reporting perspective, like having historical data to the same reports they pull, they cannot keep changing the reports that you're changing the methodology of that. That was a lesson learned for us is we had to understand what data we were pulling, how were we calculating the numbers we were calculating. And now we have data since 2018, and we can tell when we've made any changes. And so then we can see what are our trends. What does that look like. How can we use that to help us predict in the future. So that was a lesson learned for me. We came in and it wasn't much in terms of data. We built some reports and then it was like, oh, but now we need to kind of be able to track, oh, well, this thing happened. And that's why maybe that spiked or dipped or we did this thing and here's the change we saw. So we were able to speak to that year over year as well.   Carol: Well super cool. So what advice would you guys have for other leaders out there? All the lessons you all have learned. We can try to read the tea leaves, like where is VR heading in the next few years? But what do you all think? Like what do you think where's VR going? And what advice would you have for other leaders? And Kristen, I'll go to you.   Kristen: I just think remain committed to the mission and the purpose of the programs that we have. we're here to serve individuals with disabilities. We'd keep that at the forefront. And, you know, I heard Natasha say to you, the mission is on the wall, right? We all have our missions. We all have our visions. Just don't let that get buried in all of the craziness that is happening and continue to be persistent. Carol mentioned the persistence. I think that is key. You don't let it drag you down. Don't let it burn you out. Just be persistent and know that all of the work that you're doing is for a good reason, good outcomes.   Carol: Good stuff. Natasha, I'm going to give you the last word.   Natasha: Don't get comfortable with how things are going right now. Speaking to what Kristen said earlier? Things will change, and probably for reasons completely outside of your control. And also remember that easy decisions aren't always the best decisions, and the best decisions aren't always the popular ones.   Carol: Well said. Very true. Well, I appreciate you both. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to see what you all have done. You're two of my favorite directors. Don't tell the, don't tell the other directors that are listening.   Natasha: Yeah, cut that out, Jeff. Don't have that in there.   Carol: Thanks for joining me today. Sure appreciate it.   Kristen: Thank you.   Natasha: Bye.   {Music} Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Além de ter uma população de cobras invasoras tão vorazes que acabaram com os pássaros das florestas, Guam tem 40 vezes mais aranhas do que as ilhas vizinhas.

Value: After Hours is a podcast about value investing, Fintwit, and all things finance and investment by investors Tobias Carlisle, and Jake Taylor. See our latest episodes at https://acquirersmultiple.com/podcastWe are live every Tuesday at 1.30pm E / 10.30am P.About Jake Jake's Twitter: https://twitter.com/farnamjake1Jake's book: The Rebel Allocator https://amzn.to/2sgip3lABOUT THE PODCASTHi, I'm Tobias Carlisle. I launched The Acquirers Podcast to discuss the process of finding undervalued stocks, deep value investing, hedge funds, activism, buyouts, and special situations.We uncover the tactics and strategies for finding good investments, managing risk, dealing with bad luck, and maximizing success.SEE LATEST EPISODEShttps://acquirersmultiple.com/podcast/SEE OUR FREE DEEP VALUE STOCK SCREENER https://acquirersmultiple.com/screener/FOLLOW TOBIASWebsite: https://acquirersmultiple.com/Firm: https://acquirersfunds.com/ Twitter: ttps://twitter.com/GreenbackdLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycarlisleFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/tobiascarlisleInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobias_carlisleABOUT TOBIAS CARLISLETobias Carlisle is the founder of The Acquirer's Multiple®, and Acquirers Funds®. He is best known as the author of the #1 new release in Amazon's Business and Finance The Acquirer's Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market, the Amazon best-sellers Deep Value: Why Activists Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (2014) (https://amzn.to/2VwvAGF), Quantitative Value: A Practitioner's Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors (2012) (https://amzn.to/2SDDxrN), and Concentrated Investing: Strategies of the World's Greatest Concentrated Value Investors (2016) (https://amzn.to/2SEEjVn). He has extensive experience in investment management, business valuation, public company corporate governance, and corporate law.Prior to founding the forerunner to Acquirers Funds in 2010, Tobias was an analyst at an activist hedge fund, general counsel of a company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and a corporate advisory lawyer. As a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions he has advised on transactions across a variety of industries in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Singapore, Bermuda, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Guam. He is a graduate of the University of Queensland in Australia with degrees in Law (2001) and Business (Management) (1999).

Fast 10.000 Kilometer von der amerikanischen Pazifikküste entfernt gibt es ein Schlupfloch für chinesische Einwanderer in die USA. Die US-Küstenwache ist zwischen den amerikanischen Außengebieten Guam und den Nördlichen Marianen im Dauereinsatz. Im Fokus der Behörden auf den pazifischen Inseln stehen schwangere Frauen und mutmaßliche Spione der Volksrepublik.Moderation? Kevin SchulteSie haben Fragen? Schreiben Sie eine E-Mail an podcasts@ntv.deSie möchten "Wieder was gelernt" unterstützen? Dann bewerten Sie den Podcast gerne bei Apple Podcasts oder Spotify.Alle Rabattcodes und Infos zu unseren Werbepartnern finden Sie hier: https://linktr.ee/wiederwasgelerntUnsere allgemeinen Datenschutzrichtlinien finden Sie unter https://datenschutz.ad-alliance.de/podcast.htmlWir verarbeiten im Zusammenhang mit dem Angebot unserer Podcasts Daten. Wenn Sie der automatischen Übermittlung der Daten widersprechen wollen, klicken Sie hier: https://datenschutz.ad-alliance.de/podcast.htmlUnsere allgemeinen Datenschutzrichtlinien finden Sie unter https://art19.com/privacy. Die Datenschutzrichtlinien für Kalifornien sind unter https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info abrufbar.

In episode 751: Soul Under Siege, Tony is joined by Will, an Air Force veteran whose journey from homeschooled innocence to spiritual warfare in Guam is nothing short of chilling. What begins as a standard deployment turns into a battle with unseen forces—entities that invade dreams, drain energy, and whisper lies in the dead of night. From haunted dorm rooms to poltergeist-infested barracks, Will recounts moments where anxiety turned to terror, and normality gave way to the paranormal. But it gets darker. Will details a horrifying night where something—possibly demonic, possibly technological—attempted to rip his very soul from his body, as if yanking him through a swirling black vortex. Add in a suspiciously haunted mountain hike, a shamanic “good luck” warning, military near-misses with North Korea, and a full-blown spiritual confrontation with a thousand whispering voices—and you've got an episode that rips back the veil and stares straight into the abyss. When entities try to override your body and invade your mind, there's only one name that drives them out. Because when the spiritual battlefield is your own body—Jesus is your only defense Become a member for ad-free listening, extra shows, and exclusive access to our social media app: theconfessionalspodcast.com/join The Confessionals Social Network App: Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrh Google Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZ My New YouTube Channel Merkel IRL: @merkelIRL My First Sermon: Unseen Battles Sasquatch and The Missing Man: merkelfilms.com Merkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.com SPONSORS SIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionals CONNECT WITH US Website: www.theconfessionalspodcast.com Email: contact@theconfessionalspodcast.com MAILING ADDRESS: Merkel Media 257 N. Calderwood St., #301 Alcoa, TN 37701 SOCIAL MEDIA Subscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaI Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/ Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7h Show Instagram: theconfessionalspodcast Tony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficial Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcas Twitter: @TConfessionals Tony's Twitter: @tony_merkel Produced by: @jack_theproducer OUTRO MUSIC Joel Thomas - Hypnotica YouTube | Apple | Spotify

Supposedly true tales this week from Dan include a story about  an elderly widow living alone in the early 1980s and her visitors. Then, we'll bounce around the world to a number of so-called “phantom islands.” Can an island discovered by numerous explorers inexplicably just disappear? And, if so, what does that mean? Then, Lynze brings us three tales in a death sandwich of stories, if you will. Her first is sweet and sad and gives us hope for a connection to our deceased loved ones. Then, a home is not haunted until it is- did a fire wake up a ghost? Lastly, the grim reaper or the man in black comes for an old man. Monthly Patreon Donation: This month we are donating $11,620 to Farm Rescue, which is the only nonprofit organization of its kind providing farm and ranch families with the operational support they need in times of crisis. Farm Rescue sees a world where family farms and ranches thrive for generations to come. Big thanks to fan, Michaela for sharing this with us. While neither of us come directly from ranch or farm families, we do have extended family that currently or previously were members of this community. regardless of that connection, we love to be able support any organization that offers those in need help. I don't know what it takes to put food on my table but I sure know how grateful I am for those who do. Learn more by visiting https://farmrescue.org. We will also be adding $1290 to the scholarship fund! LIVE EXPERIENCES If you'd like to see us perform live this year, visit badmagicproductions.com for our annual summer camp or crimewaveatsea.com/scared for a spoopy cruise this fall! Thank you for continuing to send in your stories, Creeps and Peepers!Please keep doing so!!Send them to mystory@scaredtodeathpodcast.comSend everything else to info@scaredtodeathpodcast.comWant to be a Patron? Get episodes AD-FREE, listen and watch before they are released to anyone else, bonus episodes, a 20% merch discount, additional content, and more! Learn more by visiting: https://www.patreon.com/scaredtodeathpodcast.Please rate, review, and subscribe anywhere you listen.Thank you for listening!Follow the show on social media: @scaredtodeathpodcast on Facebook and IG and TTWebsite: https://www.badmagicproductions.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scaredtodeathpodcastInstagram: https://bit.ly/2miPLf5Mailing Address:Scared to Deathc/o Timesuck PodcastPO Box 3891Coeur d'Alene, ID 83816Opening Sumerian protection spell (adapted):"Whether thou art a ghost that hath come from the earth, or a phantom of night that hath no home… or one that lieth dead in the desert… or a ghost unburied… or a demon or a ghoul… Whatever thou be until thou art removed… thou shalt find here no water to drink… Thou shalt not stretch forth thy hand to our own… Into our house enter thou not. Through our fence, breakthrough thou not… we are protected though we may be frightened. Our life you may not steal, though we may feel SCARED TO DEATH."

Send us a textGrief touches us all, yet we rarely understand its full complexity until we drown in it. Beyond the passing of loved ones, grief emerges when we lose jobs, places, relationships, and even versions of ourselves we've outgrown. When was the last time you allowed yourself to fully feel a loss instead of pushing forward?In this deeply personal episode, I share my journey of avoiding grief for decades and the surprising breakthrough that came in my fifties. After rushing past denial, anger, bargaining, and depression to reach acceptance throughout my life, my brother's passing changed everything. For the first time, I allowed myself to experience the full weight of loss without shutting down. This newfound emotional connection transformed not just how I processed his death but how I experienced a later move from Guam—marking the first time I genuinely missed a place I'd left behind.The truth about grief is stunningly simple yet profoundly difficult to embrace: we are all born sensitive beings meant to experience the full spectrum of human emotion. When we shut down grief, we also inadvertently close ourselves to joy. Through practical approaches like writing memory-focused letters, seeking professional support, and practicing presence within each stage of grief, we can honor our losses while still finding moments of light.Whether you're personally navigating grief or supporting someone through it, remember that grief follows no timeline. Loneliness often hits hardest about six weeks after loss, when most support has faded. Your presence then—a simple "how can I help?" rather than "let me know if you need anything"—could be exactly what someone needs to feel less alone in their ocean of grief.Ready to bring more mindfulness to your grief process? Download my free guide "Five Ways to Practice Presence" and start finding moments of peace even amid loss.It's time to rediscover YOU. Join the Reignite Your Flame Facebook group—a supportive community where women like you find peace, joy, and purpose. Together, we'll nurture your mind, body, and spirit so you can shine again. Don't wait to start your journey back to yourself. Join Reignite Your Flame HERESupport the showAre you a woman over 40 who is on the verge of a mental or physical breakdown? Are you ready to invite peace, joy, and excitement into your life again? Download 5 Tips to Feel Joy Again in Under 20-Mintues AND Join the Reignite Your Flame Group on Facebook where women, just like you, come together to support, encourage, and connect. Music by Adipsia

The United States military is ramping up its presence in Japan, Guam and Hawaii as tensions with China grow over Taiwan. A new documentary reveals how this buildup is affecting local communities. In a region that is also a staging ground for potential conflict, how are some residents pushing back? In this episode: Dan Ming (@DanMing), Evident Media correspondent Episode credits: This episode was produced by Ashish Malhotra, Sonia Bhagat, and Sarí el-Khalili, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Marcos Bartolome, Marina Navarrete, and our guest host, Natasha del Toro. It was edited by Noor Wazwaz. The Take production team is Marcos Bartolomé, Sonia Bhagat, Sarí el-Khalili, Tamara Khandaker, Phillip Lanos, Chloe K. Li, Ashish Malhotra, Khaled Soltan, Amy Walters, and Noor Wazwaz. Our editorial interns are Remas Alhawari, Kisaa Zehra, and Mariana Navarrete. Our guest host is Natasha Del Toro. Our engagement producers are Adam Abou-Gad and Vienna Maglio. Aya Elmileik is lead of audience engagement. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio. Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Instagram, X, Facebook, Threads and YouTube

Value: After Hours is a podcast about value investing, Fintwit, and all things finance and investment by investors Tobias Carlisle, and Jake Taylor. See our latest episodes at https://acquirersmultiple.com/podcastWe are live every Tuesday at 1.30pm E / 10.30am P.About Jake Jake's Twitter: https://twitter.com/farnamjake1Jake's book: The Rebel Allocator https://amzn.to/2sgip3lABOUT THE PODCASTHi, I'm Tobias Carlisle. I launched The Acquirers Podcast to discuss the process of finding undervalued stocks, deep value investing, hedge funds, activism, buyouts, and special situations.We uncover the tactics and strategies for finding good investments, managing risk, dealing with bad luck, and maximizing success.SEE LATEST EPISODEShttps://acquirersmultiple.com/podcast/SEE OUR FREE DEEP VALUE STOCK SCREENERhttps://acquirersmultiple.com/screener/FOLLOW TOBIASWebsite: https://acquirersmultiple.com/Firm: https://acquirersfunds.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/GreenbackdLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycarlisleFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/tobiascarlisleInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobias_carlisleABOUT TOBIAS CARLISLETobias Carlisle is the founder of The Acquirer's Multiple®, and Acquirers Funds®.He is best known as the author of the #1 new release in Amazon's Business and Finance The Acquirer's Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market, the Amazon best-sellers Deep Value: Why Activists Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (2014) (https://amzn.to/2VwvAGF), Quantitative Value: A Practitioner's Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors (2012) (https://amzn.to/2SDDxrN), and Concentrated Investing: Strategies of the World's Greatest Concentrated Value Investors (2016) (https://amzn.to/2SEEjVn). He has extensive experience in investment management, business valuation, public company corporate governance, and corporate law.Prior to founding the forerunner to Acquirers Funds in 2010, Tobias was an analyst at an activist hedge fund, general counsel of a company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and a corporate advisory lawyer. As a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions he has advised on transactions across a variety of industries in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Singapore, Bermuda, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Guam. He is a graduate of the University of Queensland in Australia with degrees in Law (2001) and Business (Management) (1999).

Guest: George Noory - Host of the nationally syndicated program, Coast to Coast AM, says if he weren't a national radio talk show host he'd be in politics. Heard by millions of listeners, Coast to Coast AM airs on nearly 620 stations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Guam. // News Whip- Real ID deadlines, FIDO-Alert (Amber alert for dogs) //Bus Stop Triple Shooting out in L.A. + Family-owned jewelry store -$20 million in jewels stolen // Santa Monica man arrested after alleged threat to bomb Coachella + Coachella concertgoers face traffic jams, high concession prices 

Value: After Hours is a podcast about value investing, Fintwit, and all things finance and investment by investors Tobias Carlisle, and Jake Taylor. See our latest episodes at https://acquirersmultiple.com/podcastWe are live every Tuesday at 1.30pm E / 10.30am P.About Jake Jake's Twitter: https://twitter.com/farnamjake1Jake's book: The Rebel Allocator https://amzn.to/2sgip3lABOUT THE PODCASTHi, I'm Tobias Carlisle. I launched The Acquirers Podcast to discuss the process of finding undervalued stocks, deep value investing, hedge funds, activism, buyouts, and special situations.We uncover the tactics and strategies for finding good investments, managing risk, dealing with bad luck, and maximizing success.SEE LATEST EPISODEShttps://acquirersmultiple.com/podcast/SEE OUR FREE DEEP VALUE STOCK SCREENERhttps://acquirersmultiple.com/screener/FOLLOW TOBIASWebsite: https://acquirersmultiple.com/Firm: https://acquirersfunds.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/GreenbackdLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycarlisleFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/tobiascarlisleInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobias_carlisleABOUT TOBIAS CARLISLETobias Carlisle is the founder of The Acquirer's Multiple®, and Acquirers Funds®.He is best known as the author of the #1 new release in Amazon's Business and Finance The Acquirer's Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market, the Amazon best-sellers Deep Value: Why Activists Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (2014) (https://amzn.to/2VwvAGF), Quantitative Value: A Practitioner's Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors (2012) (https://amzn.to/2SDDxrN), and Concentrated Investing: Strategies of the World's Greatest Concentrated Value Investors (2016) (https://amzn.to/2SEEjVn). He has extensive experience in investment management, business valuation, public company corporate governance, and corporate law.Prior to founding the forerunner to Acquirers Funds in 2010, Tobias was an analyst at an activist hedge fund, general counsel of a company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and a corporate advisory lawyer. As a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions he has advised on transactions across a variety of industries in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Singapore, Bermuda, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Guam. He is a graduate of the University of Queensland in Australia with degrees in Law (2001) and Business (Management) (1999).

Is the battle over deportations causing the U.S to slip towards a constitutional crisis? Thousands of U.S veterans call the island of territory of Guam their home: so why are they struggling to get the proper care they need? And, Steve Hartman goes back on the road to reconnect with a woman who actually enjoyed paying her bills. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The ENA Podcast Blast returns with another fast-paced look at some of the best stories in emergency nursing. This week, the Blast heads to Guam where TNCC is helping ED nurses with their trauma education; you'll hear about the life-changing moment in the ED for a nurse who is also a licensed foster parent; and then there's the ED nurses-turned-detective who reunited a missing man with his family. Guam Nurses Take TNCC: bit.ly/3RQMVt3 ED Nurse Fostering Love: bit.ly/4lw6AfO Nurse's Detective Skills Help Patient: bit.ly/42sEXLE

Uri and Trish spent many years in ministry at Harvest and have recently returned. Pastor Walton spoke with them Guam, their time away, and their priorities. 

Dive into an inspiring episode, as host Marina Franklin talks with Mayor Randall Woodfin and Roy Wood Jr. on Friends Like Us! From community empowerment to leadership and Randall Woodfin's new memoir, "Sons of Birmingham,". Hear how these sons of Birmingham are making waves.  Randall Woodfin was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and after four years in Atlanta earning his degree from Morehouse College, has lived in Birmingham ever since. He worked at City Hall (in jobs for both the Mayor and the City Council) and for the Jefferson County Committee on Economic Opportunity, attended Cumberland School of Law at Samford University and, after obtaining his law degree, accepted a job in the City of Birmingham Law Department. As an assistant city attorney, he also became an organizer, working on campaigns at the local, state, and federal level. After serving on the Birmingham Board of Education, he ran for mayor in 2016 with endorsements from President Joe Biden, Senators Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker, and Stacey Abrams. Woodfin won an upset victory in a runoff in 2017 and earned a featured speaker role at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. He is seeking his third term in 2025. Buy his new memoir: "Sons Of Birmingham". ROY WOOD JR. is a comedian, an Emmy-nominated documentary producer for the PBS documentary The Neutral Ground, a correspondent on Comedy Central's Emmy-nominated The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and host of Comedy Central's award-winning podcast, The Daily Show: Beyond the Scenes. Spring of 2023, Wood guest hosted The Daily Show and headlined the White House Correspondents' Dinner to its highest ratings since 2017. Wood co-starred alongside Jon Hamm in Paramount Pictures' long-awaited Fletch remake, Confess, Fletch (2022), and has guest appearances in ‘Only Murders in the Building', ‘Better Call Saul', ‘The Last O.G.' & ‘Space Force.' As a writer and executive producer, his development deals have included a first-look deal with Comedy Central for ‘Jefferson County: Probation,' an HBO Max project, ‘1% Happy,' an untitled medical field comedy for NBC, and an untitled single-camera comedy about the National Guard for FOX. Wood's first Comedy Central one-hour stand-up special, Roy Wood Jr.: Father Figure, debuted in 2017, the same year he was named the new host of Comedy Central's storytelling series, This is Not Happening. Debuting in 2019, his second Comedy Central special, Roy Wood Jr.: No One Loves You, remains the network's highest-rated original stand-up premiere. In 2021, his third Comedy Central special, Roy Wood Jr.: Imperfect Messenger, aired hyper-recent material just two weeks after taping. Forbes declared he is “One of comedy's best journalists,” Entertainment Weekly has described his thought-provoking comedy as “. . . charismatic crankiness. . .” and Variety Magazine named him “One of 10 Comics to Watch in 2016.” Wood began his comedy career in 1998 at 19 while attending Florida A&M University. In 2006, he debuted on network television on The Late Show with David Letterman. In 2008, he appeared on HBO's historic Def Comedy Jam and was selected by America as one of the top three finalists on Last Comic Standing on NBC. He has appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyer, Conan, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.  He also performed on numerous USO Tours for our Troops stationed everywhere from Guam to Iraq to the Philippines.  At the height of the pandemic, Roy raised money for the displaced staff of comedy clubs through tipyourwaitstaff.com and Laugh Aid. In his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, his philanthropic endeavors include supporting Workshops, Inc., which enriches lives by helping people with disabilities and other employment barriers achieve their vocational potential. The DUBS Baseball Academy is an investment in sports to change lives. STAIR of Birmingham, where tutoring empowers students to read better and dream bigger. Also, I See Me, Inc., where the mission is to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline by increasing the literacy rates in children of color by engaging them in literature that reflects their culture and image. Always hosted by Marina Franklin - One Hour Comedy Special: Single Black Female ( Amazon Prime, CW Network), TBS's The Last O.G, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Hysterical on FX, The Movie Trainwreck, Louie Season V, The Jim Gaffigan Show, Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert, HBO's Crashing, and The Breaks with Michelle Wolf. Writer for HBO's 'Divorce' and the new Tracy Morgan show on Paramount Plus: 'Crutch'.       

As an Indigenous human rights lawyer and writer from Guam, Julian Aguon's book 'No Country for Eight Spot Butterflies' memorizes grief from family to country and into one of the most difficult, intangible feelings of our time: climate grief. Drawing on his experience with the law and litigation against nuclear-powered countries, Aguon reminds us that no love is ever wasted, and grief is so often an expression of that love. Part of that love begs us to question, what does a better world look like? How do we imagine justice for generations upon generations? Where do we go from here?

Luis Manuel Tumialán is a Professor of Neurosurgery at the Barrow Neurological Institute specializing in minimally invasive spinal surgery. He graduated from Georgetown University School of Medicine, completed his internship at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego. Dr. Tumialán completed additional training in undersea medicine in Groton Connecticut and Navy Dive School in Panama City, Florida. Upon completion of his operational training, he served as the Diving Medical Officer assigned to Naval Special Warfare Unit One in Guam during the Global War on Terror in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001. He received a Naval and Marine Corps Commendation Medal for service in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Southeast Asia and a Navy Humanitarian Medal for the search and maritime rescue of a foreign national.Once he returned to the mainland, Dr. Tumialán completed his neurosurgery training at Emory University School of Medicine and returned to the Naval Medical Center in San Diego. He joined Barrow Brain and Spine in 2010 where he serves as the director of minimally invasive spine surgery. Dr. Tumialán's main interests are in minimally invasive spinal surgery and motion preservation surgery as well as developing techniques for the next generation of spinal surgery.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight on APEX Express join host Miko Lee as she talks with Asian American theatre artists with works coming up soon. Miko talks with Sunhui Chang and Joan Osato about their world premiere at the Magic Theatre. She speaks with Ethnotech's Nancy Wang and Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo and finally we hear from playwright Jiehae Park on the world premiere of the Aves at Berkeley Rep. Though we may be immersed in a complicated, challenging and very disturbing world, as Grace Lee Boggs said, “A people exercising their creativity in the face of devastation is one of the greatest contributions to humankind.”     Our Guests discussed: April 2-20, 2025 Magic Theatre The Boiling, a tale of american nihilism tickets, wheelchair accessible Joan Osato SFFILM Cedar Road Iyagi Grant Applications:  sffilm.org/artist-development Ethnohtec May 22 Ethnohtec https://sfpl.org/events/2025/05/22/panel-strong-bamboo-3-part-1 Strong Like Bamboo SF Library Koret Auditorium Free https://sfpl.org/events/2025/05/25/performance-strong-bamboo-3-part-2   Coming Up Next Transcript   Opening: [00:00:00] Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express.   Ayame Keane-Lee: [00:00:34] Tonight on APEX Express join host Miko Lee as she talks with Asian American theatre artists with works coming up soon. Miko talks with Sunhui Chang and Joan Osato about their world premiere of the boiling at the Magic Theatre. She speaks with Eth-Noh-Tec's Nancy Wang and Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo and finally we hear from playwright Jiehae Park on the world premiere of the aves at Berkeley Rep. Though we may be immersed in a complicated, challenging and very disturbing world, as Grace Lee Boggs said, “A people exercising their creativity in the face of devastation is one of the greatest contributions to humankind.” So join us on APEX Express as we join some creative conversations.   Miko Lee: [00:01:17] Tonight on Apex Express, we have the collaborators behind Magic Theater and Campo Santo's, world Premier of the boiling: a tale of American nihilism. Welcome playwright Sunhui Chang and video artist Joan Osato.    Joan Osato: [00:01:30] Thank you for having us on, Miko.    Miko Lee: [00:01:33] Yes. First I'm gonna start for each of you with a personal question, which is an adaptation from the amazing Chinaka Hodges. And my question for each of you, and let's start with Joan first, is who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?    Joan Osato: [00:01:49] I consider myself a child of immigrants in this country. My lineage Japanese, Japanese American by way of Hawai'i a lot of my lineage is carried by that diaspora, but also by my history at Youth Speaks for a couple of decades. And so I consider that my family also and Camp Santo.    Miko Lee: [00:02:12] Yay. Love that. And then Joan, what legacy do you carry with you?   Joan Osato: [00:02:17] A legacy of resilience and I know how to farm. I like to think of myself as a gardener and a great farmer. so that's the legacy I carry with me.    Miko Lee: [00:02:29] Thank you so much, Joan. Sunhui, what about you? Who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?    Sunhui Chang: [00:02:36] Well, I'm part of the diaspora, the Korean American diaspora that happened in the seventies. My family immigrated to the island of Guam in 1976, as part of developing the island of Guam. As, you know, the Korean diaspora at that time in the seventies, we were kind of shipped around the world a little bit, for our labor. There's a huge Korean population of workers that also went to West Germany and other places, Guam is not as well known, but it was definitely part of that. So in 76, our family landed on the island of Guam.    Miko Lee: [00:03:11] Wow, that's so interesting. And then what about what legacy you carry with you?    Sunhui Chang: [00:03:16] I think my legacy I have to say is that definitely of the immigrant working class, you know, as with a Korean diaspora, there's some things of, like the East Coast Koreans, as you may know, have a different history of being much more educated whereas kind of the west coast and the Korean diaspora during the seventies towards islands like Guam, we were much more working class. So that is my legacy. I have working class roots that, I never seem to be able to get away from and I don't want to.   Joan Osato: [00:03:47] Shoot. That's the same for me too, my working class roots.   Miko Lee: [00:03:51] So it sounds like you two have some commonalities there and that seem to have flowed over into the creation of this play. Sunhui can you talk about an overview of this brand New World premier, the boiling.    Sunhui Chang: [00:04:05] Simply put, it's a story of a tracker and a tracer, a government team that was formed to track and trace down carriers of the virus called the Boiling. and it actually. starts out as a chase, but what we really dig into is more about, identity, home, what it means to be, what is home and what it means to be, at home, and also, about redemption, you know, through our lives, you know? So it's multi-layered, so it's hard to kind of explain in a log line. but it's a chase story that kind of delves into the characters.    Miko Lee: [00:04:40] And I understand this was inspired by a real news story. Can you tell us about that real news story?    Sunhui Chang: [00:04:46] Oh, yeah. the genesis of this we have to kind of go back to the beginning of the pandemic back to December, 2019. I had just finished a gallery installation in San Francisco and then at the end of that I flew back to Seattle. Now at that period of time, there was this talk that there's this virus that's in China. That might affect us, we're not quite certain, but it could be something that could lead to a global pandemic, but we didn't quite know at that time. But then when I landed in Seattle, March 17th, 2020 was the date that Governor j Insley shut down the state of Washington. So that is a big take 'cause, As you know, we all hunkered down at that point. And then in one of the hunkering down is of course, I was watching the news and one of the news story, happened to come across where they were talking about a Econo Lodge motel that the state of Washington had purchased to turn into a quarantine motel, a voluntary quarantine motel where people who, felt that they were infected could check themselves in, to be evaluated. So the story goes that two people had actually checked into this motel totally voluntarily, but one of them the morning after. And this is captured, with a surveillance video. We actually see this one person walking out of their room at the motel. We see them walk across the street to a gas station with a market. Now the surveillance actually then switches over to the gas station surveillance, which shows him walking to the gas mart, walking inside, making a purchase, and then actually walking out. And then we see another footage of the surveillance that's going from the outside surveillance of the store. We actually see him, walk towards the bus stop, get on a bus. And then just the bus leaves and that is it. And the news story ends with that. They had no idea where this person drifted off to. and for me it just, it had this weird, eerie fascination that just grabbed me. and remember at that time, Seattle was such a hotbed for Covid. It was where the nursing home happened, where so many of the elderly had passed on, and we didn't even wanna secondhand touch a surface, so there was a real heightened sense of alarm that was happening. So seeing this story of this potential infected person just drifting off. And then what made it eerie was that I wanted to see what followed up. So for days after I kept watching the news, what is the follow up? What happened? It was never brought on again. Never. Another mention I. and for me that actually made it even more eerie. So it really sat with me, to the point where I had to actually just write down the first words of my, the first line of my story, the boiling. And the first line was, “Carrier X stepped out of the tightness of his room and breathed deeply the soft drizzle of the Pacific Northwest to cool his body from the growing fever.” So those were the first words that I wrote. and then it was just kind of off to the races 'cause the way I write Miko is that I'm very much organic. I kind of set a story and then I become a vessel of the story. I don't come to the story with agendas or anything of that nature. After the first sentence, it just kind of took a life of its own. So that's it.    Miko Lee: [00:08:18] That is amazing. I did not hear that story. and the real news story. That is wild. That would've sat with me too. Joan, had you heard of that story before being brought onto this project?    Joan Osato: [00:08:29] Well, when we did a reading during the pandemic. I did hear parts of that story, but I think it's also a story that a lot of us can relate to, because like here in the Bay Area, of course, we also experienced severe lockdown. Whereas in other parts of the country, I think that the type of lockdown, although being, you know, trying to be really safe for people also induces this sense of isolation and paranoia. And so wanting to get information about who's getting affected and like, where's it happening? I think that was all like kind of a mini obsession of like. Everyone who experienced the pandemic, you know what I mean?    Miko Lee: [00:09:10] How do you think that pandemic has had an impact on theater and on audiences?    Joan Osato: [00:09:16] Well on the most basic levels, you know, like what theaters are grappling with, just in terms of coming out of and recovering from pandemic, I think everybody understands that, you know, theater in general is struggling because of the changes that happened in terms of, Perhaps what people place importance on the isolation that we went through, the kind of, paranoia about being in groups of people and in space and in community together. And so, that affects, you know, theaters and you can, you can see that since the pandemic some have closed. But I also think that, the effects are also that, groups like The Magic or Campo Santo during the Pandemic, we never stopped working and we just figured out innovative ways to, you know, support artists, do radio plays, do, amalgamations of like filming. And so a lot of us became like very, very adept at different types of media that are theatrically based, like Sunhui's play, but that we had to carry out, like online or, you know, through other types of media.    Sunhui Chang: [00:10:30] I just wanted to add on that is that, the pandemic, you know, there there was definitely things that really affected us as humans in such a negative way, but what I also found admiring was, with Joan and Camp Santo and the artists and trying to find creative ways of, still letting, having an outlet. it really was that the story of the boiling would not have taken place if artists such as Joan and Camp Santo. If they didn't, if they weren't able to pivot and make these kind of online transitions at the moment, such as doing readings and such, cause that's how the story was first brought about. So, in many ways it was hard. But also I do appreciate these artists who have been able to kind of keep going and didn't shut down and kept letting the creative creativity somehow flow. I so appreciated that.    Joan Osato: [00:11:20] Yeah, it was definitely a beautiful thing. And then, you know, Miko, throughout the pandemic, you know, we would have like online viewings of our archives or we would sit with audience members, who were joining us and basically hang out for like three, four hours online. So trying to create the space not only to kind of generate support for artists who are. Completely outta work, but also to, just connect us even though we were. You know, obviously under these conditions where we couldn't see each other in person and it wouldn't have been advisable for us to even try to gather, you know, because, I consider us, you know, in-inside of our community extremely vulnerable. So, you know, just grappling with that tension, was really hard.    Miko Lee: [00:12:09] Yeah. And I kind of hear both of you saying that in those really tough times, there was this push to get more creative, to find more ways of reaching people and, and to look at ways that we can, um, innovate given that, and I'm wondering, given our current political climate where things are changing every hour now. I mean, the first Trump administration, it was kind of every week and now it feels like every hour a new kind of devastating thing is happening. I'm wondering how you both think theater can be used as a tool for social change.    Sunhui Chang: [00:12:41] For me Theater and, and really the arts, what I do love about it, is this really, and I kind of touch upon it with the story and such, and it really hit me during, COVID, during the pandemic, is that it's really for me, what it does is listening.  I know as artists, we love telling our story. We love telling what we see, our interpretations and things like that. but I think what I have really come about with the arts is the fact that I like the other side of it is the listening part, for me with my collaborators, that I have to listen. You know, it's not about just me talking, but just listening. So for me, the theater aspect of it and the art aspect of it is that I hope that, as we go through these tough times, what it really has us doing is listening to each other more. One of the things that I really feel in that way and appreciative of listening is the fact that without listeners, there's no storytelling. Listening is really the foundation of our humanity. You know, I mean, just talking really gets us nowhere. What really makes us move forward collectively is listening.   Joan Osato: [00:13:50] Mm, Sunhui heard that. Yes, I heard that. [laughs] As far as theater and kind of responding to the moment. I think, you know, the type of theater that we embody is always speaking to politics is always speaking to, you know, the culture of the moment and especially it's speaking, because a lot of Campo and the Magic's work is like based inside of, theater companies that live, work, breathe, are about by and for the communities, like in the Bay Area right. So there's just no way of separating the kind of politics from what happens like inside of these plays. For the boiling in particular though, I think there's a lot of stuff that, that people can think about and here inside the play that will resonate with them. One, we're, we're talking about a hypothetical, but it's not really a hypothetical situation about a pandemic, a very, harmful, very urgent, current conditions. You know, when there's no CDC to have, get your information from when there's no public health that's functioning in this country, we can, we can see what happened during the last pandemic and just make that comparison and draw those comparisons, you know, what would happen in the next one. Right. also that, you know, to me and Sunhui, you can totally. speak to this, but to me, Carrier X, the person that represents is this kind of violence and nihilism that exists inside of the, you know, the current, you know, psyche or administration right at this moment. this real like. It's definitely violent to the point of not caring whether people live or die and so I, you know, I think that's very striking about the play and it happening right now as premiering it right now, because I think people can draw a lot of parallels between. Like this personality, this complete disorder that seems to be going on, like not only in American politic, but amongst the large population in America itself. You know what I mean? That kind of disregard.    Miko Lee: [00:16:18] Joan, that is so interesting. I wonder if you both can talk a little bit more about Patient X as this kind of figure of narcissism and selfishness that we're seeing that's happening in our broader politics right now.   Sunhui Chang: [00:16:31] Yeah, Carrier X, he does, you know, he does kind of represent this nihilism of American nihilism, which to me it's really historical and cultural. we could go all the way back to the nihilism of manifest destiny, feeling like we have something to do that it was even, maybe. God's order, you know, a higher order that was given to us. And we have to take on this task and finish the task at no matter what cost, right? By any means necessary in a way. and that nihilism for me, I. historical, but when I see it currently that happens now, is that I see nihilism in the fact that people want to cut off Medicaid, Medicare, these social programs that are not just help people actually are crucial and it's really, it's a survival. So for me, when I see that kind of disregard, yes, it's not this overt violent nihilism, but I do find it to be so nihilistic in the damage that it does to all of us, you know? And I do find That this nihilistic violence, there's two flip side to it. The people who are directly affected, and harmed by it, but also the people who carry it are out, who carry out these acts of nihilism they do get damaged as well. So for me, so yeah, the nihilism, it's taken on a different life, but. It's a part of America and it seems to continuously carry forward through our days.    Miko Lee: [00:18:00] And Sunhui with the intentional characters, the lead being Korean American adoptee, and, the detective being a black woman, and then carrier X being white. Share with me a little bit about the racial element and your intention behind making those characters of those, ethnic backgrounds.    Sunhui Chang: [00:18:20] You know, there was no intention, as I said, I just write very organically. So there was never this thought of, oh, here's the three characters. One's gonna be a Korean adoptee, one's gonna be a black homicide detective, and another's gonna be a white carrier. It was never that I. It's hard for me to explain the process, but those were the characters that just kind of naturally came out. for me, it just felt fitting to it. So, I don't have agendas as I write, as I said, so there was none of that. It was just for me, as a vessel of the story, as a story was coming out, it was just. Oh yeah, this character is this, this character is that, and this one is this. so no intention. But, once those things came alive, then the story kind of, evolves around what's, organically happening. So yeah, there wasn't intent, but at the end of it all, of course, I go, oh, I see what has come about and how the story is so, In hindsight now going, oh yeah, I did this. for me, it feels right in the, in the fact that for me, this is America Miko. To me, I, I don't write with an Asian American kind of pen, or, or a brown person pen for me, I actually first and foremost say I'm an American. There's no way around it. and it's simply put too, is that. I am an American. so for me, these characters are just. Natural. And when I know about me being American and knowing about American history, these characters just naturally fit in, you know?    Miko Lee: [00:19:50] Yep. Thank you so much. I've read that you talk about new Americana theater. Mm-hmm. And also Joan, you were talking about how during the pandemic, you know, everybody's learning new techniques, new ways of storytelling, just because everybody was forced to with the lockdown. Sunhui, can you talk more about what you believe New America Theater is all about?    Sunhui Chang: [00:20:12] For me, the reason why I kind of see it as new Americana theater, first off, 'cause it's, it's American, the stories that come out of me is very American. you know, and I recognize it. And for me, I, it is, this is part of the American fabric, so that's why it's called Americana. And for me, I say it's new. 'cause what's new is the perspective that it's coming out from. perspective, which brings on different characters, a different storyline, you know, different message. So yeah, that's, that's it for me when I refer to it as New America in the theater. It's just that, that it's, it's an American tale that now we've been able to incorporate new voices into.   Miko Lee: [00:20:54] I noticed there's a really large list of collaborators. Of course the two of you, but then there's a lot of other people as well. Can you talk about that creative process, how you all were able to work together, how you made decisions about, oh, this is the part we're gonna use film, this is the part we're gonna use, movement.   Sunhui Chang: [00:21:11] Like I said, it's very much organic. Our third major collaborator is Ellen Sebastian Chang. she is the director of the show, and when me, Joan and her, we first started delving into it, we did. It was just sitting down and talking a lot. Going through the scripts, the different skill sets that we bring in. And really it was through the dialogue miko and of us talking with each other, but also listening to each other. and that was a big part is that as we started listening to ourselves, we came out with this direction.    Miko Lee: [00:21:47] And what would you both like the audience to walk away with after seeing the boiling?   Joan Osato: [00:21:52] I think, you know, as Sunhui talked about this, ritual of deep listening and so, the play doesn't guide anyone towards some natural conclusion that they should have about, you know, it's, it's not saying you, you must believe this, it's really leaving it up to the viewer, the listener, to draw their own conclusions. And, I think that, that people who come to this will be incredibly moved. I think that they will see a lot of parallels with what we're going through now and what we've gone through. And examine there is a kind of shameful history that we all need to grapple with, whether we own it or not. You know, Sunhui had talked about manifest destiny and that being like one of the founding, you know, kind kinds of principles that this country is founded upon. And there are many, many others That I think the play touches on which give pause and, and give the people who are engaging with this, room to think and reexamine their own actions in the world and how they approach it.   Sunhui Chang: [00:23:02] I'll just mention as an aside, you know, some of the things that we're looking at is. Our disconnect from the natural world and how that has impacted the natural world. Right.  I think Joan is spot on in, in that about, yeah, first and foremost, I do find this so important once again to say about listening. I do. I, that is the big thing that I would love is that for us to, if we really wanna truly have dialogues, and especially with people who we disagree with, and there is a lot of disagreement in this world right now. and for me, yeah, to, Get us back to a place where we could really listen to each other and not be in such a place where all we wanted to do is kind of say what we have to say. It's almost this thing of, oh, you know, the other has to listen, the other has to listen. And I really would like it that it becomes kind of more inward that we all say, Hey, it is time for me to listen. And then of course just the fact that when, as we listen to each other, what I do find and what I hope that others find as well, is that we're much more connected and we have so many things that tie us together than separate.   Miko Lee: [00:24:19] Well, thank both of you so much for joining us on Apex Express. Is there anything else you wanna add?   Sunhui Chang: [00:24:24] Just one thing, Miko, one of the elements of this play, is this natural world with birding and I would love to just, one of the big inspiration is that it's just a quote from Emily Dickinson and the quote is, “hope is the thing with feathers.” For me, I would love for people to kind of sit with that and think about that and what that means for us as human beings in relationship to the natural world, you know, and the importance of that.   Miko Lee: [00:24:52] Oh, that's such a beautiful visual image. Thank you so much for sharing that. I appreciate both of you for sharing your time with me.    Joan Osato: [00:24:59] Thank you, Miko.    Sunhui Chang: [00:25:00] Thank you Miko    Miko Lee: [00:25:01] The Boiling is a brand new play, and it's a story of a Korean American adoptee Brian, who's a virologist from the Midwest, and a former homicide Detective v, a black woman who lives in the Pacific Northwest, and they're partnered to do this trace and track from north to south. They're following David, a white nihilistic carrier of a feverish virus called the Boiling. This world Premier Show opens to the magic theater and runs from April 2nd through April 20th. You can get more information about this show, including links to buy tickets at our show notes on kpfa.org/programs/apexexpress.   Ayame Keane-Lee: [00:25:42] Next we'll listen to an excerpt from The Camp, the first opera on the Japanese American Concentration camps during World War II. The camp premiered from February 22nd to March 2nd, 2025 at the JACCC Aratani Theater in Los Angeles. Composed by Daniel Kessner, who combines modern classical with Japanese instruments, A libretto by Lionelle Hamanaka, directed by Diana Wyenn, with Associate Director John Miyasaki, 11 singers and a 22 piece orchestra conducted by Steve Hofer. The incidents in The Camp Opera were drawn from different camps where over 126,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned to see the many Japanese American groups that supported this project, including JANM, DENSHO and Raf Shimpo see the camp opera.com and if you know a place where The Camp can be performed near you, please contact the campopera.com/support.    MUSIC   Miko Lee: [00:27:53] Welcome to Apex Express. I'm so glad to have Eth-Noh-Tec once again, we get Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo and Nancy Wang.   Nancy Wang: [00:28:03] Yay. Yes. Hi. Hello. So glad to be here with you Miko.   Miko Lee: [00:28:07] We have been friends and colleagues for, it feels like a hundred billion years. The times that we're in are so complicated right now. But I just wanna first start with the question I often ask people, which is for each of you to tell me who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Nancy Wang: [00:28:27] Well, I am Chinese American, and I am fifth generation on my mother's side. And. So we go all the way back to 1850 when our family first came on a junk boat and started the fishing industry in the Monterey Bay area.    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:28:45] And I am, half Japanese, half Filipino, born in San Francisco, raised in Concord, California, and living in the Bay Area for all my life.   Miko Lee: [00:28:50] And what legacy do you carry with you?    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:28:58] Well, I guess the identity I have as an Asian American, Japanese, and Filipino, um, I embrace all of that. The legacy is, as an artist, a performer. I've dedicated my life to creating works that reflect an Asian American consciousness, social, political, cultural. Both traditional works as well as new modern stories and music as well.    Nancy Wang: [00:29:25] And I was also a psychotherapist, so my work in the arts, whether it's dance, which I started out being a dancer and then a playwright, and then storytelling. I always weave in the healing aspect of what we all need to do in our communities. And so I use my art to also bring solace and bring celebration and bring, Depth and and the breadth of who we are as Asian Americans, as human beings, as part of this world, this country, then this city, so that we can celebrate who we are together.   Miko Lee: [00:30:04] Thank you for that. I hear you talking about activism, Asian American history, who we are and healing. I'm wondering if you could give me an update about what you're working on right now.   Nancy Wang: [00:30:14] Well, we have several things in the pipeline. I, for one, just finished writing and has now published Red Altar, which is the story of my ancestors. Three generations are followed in this book, about how they established the fishing industry in the Monterey Bay area. All the ways they had to reinvent themselves as laws were passed against them. The people try to get rid of them. And it's really a story of courage and determination and persistence, ingenuity and obviously success. Because I'm here. So I'm gonna be doing some more readings and that can be found on our webpage. Right. And Robert,    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:30:55] I am focusing on archiving our work and after working with Nancy and creating Eth-Noh-Tec for the last 43 plus years, we have developed over 200 stories, and we put them on stage. We've written them, some of them are now being written as a compendium of stories. These are Neo-traditional folk tales and myths from Asia. And, people don't know much of this, but I am also an artist, so I'm creating illustrations that depict these stories. That's one project.   Nancy Wang: [00:31:23] Yeah, that's our next book. but what we're really excited about is our second Strong Like Bamboo, stories of resilience in the era of Asian American hate, but it's really broadened beyond Asian American because this year on May 22nd, will be a gathering of Latino and Asian artists and musicians, storytellers, and activists to just sit around and really share our stories, share our music, share our concerns, and to build bridges with each other because it, we will need to increase, our coalitions during this era. It's gotten worse, so we really need to come together.   Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:32:08] and we titled it strong like bamboo because of the Asian anecdote about, you know, one bamboo can snap, but together binding many bamboo together we're much stronger. So it's a call out to the community to bring all of our constituents and broaden that so that we are strong, as people of color.    Nancy Wang: [00:32:25] And of course we're gonna have food, which always brings us all together. But also bamboo can bend. Without breaking, so that's on a Thursday, May 22nd. But on May 25th, I have curated four other storytellers to tell their stories of their racist experiences and how they came through it to a healing place.    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:32:48] There's a gathering of Asian American storytellers, both from the Chicago area and also from the west coast.    Nancy Wang: [00:32:53] And there'll be a panel so they can ask questions and we can have discussions. But after that, the people in the audience will have the opportunity to break up into small groups of three in which they get to share their own stories, their own concerns, and that's really the whole thing is about inspiring people to come through what they're going through and coming out, on the other side with some hope and healing. Because when we share our stories, we lift that particular burden of, say our story about our racist experience. We lifted off our own shoulders and we get to share it. With someone who's listening with compassion and we don't feel alone anymore. It's really a powerful, powerful way to find community connection, relation, and strength.   Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:33:45] And we'll have also in both of those events, resources in earlier years, I was an Asian American songwriter and did a lot of songs of not just identity, but of unity. I'm also gonna be singing a theme song called Bamboo, which is part of the title and also, a work by Chris Jim, famous of the Chris and Joe Asian American Duet from years ago. the one song we're still here, though it was written 30, 40 years ago. It's still pertinent to what's going on now, especially declaring that America is a multiracial, multiethnic, texture of society.   Nancy Wang: [00:34:20] and, in 2026 we're gonna bring on, African-American and Euro-American, storytellers also, so that we really have a multicultural representation of all who we are and how we still will need to come together. I hope things will be better by 2026, but who knows?    Miko Lee: [00:34:39] Thank you so much for sharing about how storytelling can really be a tool for social change. Is there anything else you wanna share with our audience?   Nancy Wang: [00:34:47] Yeah. please come to our strong like Bamboo on May 22nd and 25th is gonna be at the San Francisco Public Library Main Library, both are free to the public May 22nd the Thursday at May 22nd, it's gonna be in Hispanic room,    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:35:05] and what time?   Nancy Wang: [00:35:06] Six to seven-thirty. And on Sunday it'll be in the presentations, the performances in the panel will be in the Koret auditorium, and then small groups will convene in the Hispanic room, which is right next door, and it's got elevators. So no problem, in getting there. Plus Bart and the bus is, it's easy to get there. And so that's what we wanted so that people could feel welcome.    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:35:35] And that second show on Sunday Strong like Bamboo will feature our guest artist storytellers, professional storytellers. One of them being a local Eleanor Clement Glass who's half African American and Filipino, talking about her experiences. And then also, two guest artists from Chicago, one of them being Lillian Ji, who is a Japanese American hapa. Then third is, Archie Jun, who is a Thai American gay comedian storyteller who is a total riot. we are really wanting to blend many of our communities together to hear this talent Yes. And to deal with the topics.    Nancy Wang: [00:36:10] So we would love for the LGBTQ plus community to come out as well and support him and feel proud because all of the stories will, will really showcase our strength and our ability to deal with these things and come out the other side. So we are hoping that in the process of telling our pain, but coming out, on the other side, that it will be an inspiration for everyone to keep going during this difficult, very difficult time.    Miko Lee: [00:36:41] Thank you so much for joining me today.    Nancy Wang: [00:36:44] You're welcome. Thank you   Ayame Keane-Lee: [00:36:46] You are listening to 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley, 88.1 KFCF in Fresno, and online worldwide at kpfa.org.   Miko Lee: [00:37:05] Welcome Jiehae Park to Apex Express. I am so excited to talk to you about the world premier of the aves opening at Berkeley Repertory Theater, May 2nd through June 8th. Welcome to Apex Express.    Jiehae Park: [00:37:19] Hi, Miko. It's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me.    Miko Lee: [00:37:22] I wanna just first start with a personal question, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Jiehae Park: [00:37:31] Hmm. I love the phrasing of that question. I was born in Korea and I came to the states when I was three years old with my parents who came to go to graduate school. And my father's family fled the north during the war. And my mother's family had always been in the south. And I definitely think that who they are and where they came from is a big part of who I am and the questions that I think of. And in a lot of ways, not just, racially and culturally, but also in terms of their interests. They're both scientists. This play deals, I hope thoughtfully with questions of identity and consciousness, that I've always been interested in.    Miko Lee: [00:38:18] And what legacy do you feel like you carry with you from them?   Jiehae Park: [00:38:22] Hmm. I mean, I write a lot about immigrants. This play isn't specifically about that, but in a lot of my previous work, I, I have. have written a lot about immigrants and I feel like my parents, you know, they came to this country when they were in their twenties. They didn't speak the language. They came from a generation of folks and at that time in the country where they were really, they had to be a certain way to survive. And I think that, intensity of work ethic, and the things that you also have to give up in order to get to where you think you wanna be, that question is, is part of their legacy to me. It's a, it's a gift and also something that, like a lot of other immigrants, I think I'm always sort of turning over in my mind and, and trying to look at from other angles.    Miko Lee: [00:39:12] Thank you for sharing. I'm wondering if you can talk to us about, first this title of your, world Premier, the aves. Where did this title come from? What is it about?    Jiehae Park: [00:39:23] So the title is the Latin word for Birds. And, the play there's a mystery that sort of unspools early on. So without, without giving too much away we see this old couple on a bench, on a park bench, and they have clearly been together for a long time and they are having a conversation that seems like a very ordinary conversation. And over the course of the first scene, we soon learn that they are discussing, doing something that will have ramifications throughout the rest of the play. And the aves is a word that I loved because of the association with birds. There, there are birds that make an appearance in this play, in both pedestrian and unexpected ways, in mysterious ways, and hopefully humorous ways. and then the connotation also of Ave Maria and this, this feeling of the sacred, which also infuses the play, which has a lot of humor, but also when I was writing it, I was thinking a lot about nature and the passage of time and this feeling of awe that I get when engage with nature. And I think that word also has those connotations for me.    Miko Lee: [00:40:46] And that sounds like a mystery that people need to come to find out more about. Can you tell us what inspired this work?    Jiehae Park: [00:40:54] I used to live on the northside of Central Park in Harlem, and I had this tiny, tiny little window that looked out, onto the north side of the park. And every day I would sit down to write and through my tiny window, I would see the same man sitting on this bench every day. And as the seasons changed and the leaves changed and the light changed, but still every morning there was the consistency of seeing the same person. And I think I I was thinking a lot about the passage of time and of nature shifting And I think subconsciously I was thinking about getting older myself. This was a time before I had children, but I was starting to become aware of my parents aging and generationally My peers, also our parents were aging and, and starting to have, you know, the complications and the beautiful things that can come with that. So I think all of that was a big soup in my subconscious. and I sat down and I wrote the first scene very quickly and then. I didn't know exactly what the rest of the play was gonna be, but I knew structurally that the first scene would be this old couple and that the second scene would be, a slightly different configuration of, of bodies. But that was hard to be so mysterious, um, and that the nex scene would be a different specific configuration of body. So I was thinking about the age of the bodies that you're watching and the story evolved from that. And I guess I should say that the play is set in a moment sort of best after now. So it's not the present, but it's not the distant future. It's certainly not like hard sci-fi by any means, but I think it uses some tools of speculative fiction. To ask questions that hopefully are illuminating about ourselves now.    Miko Lee: [00:42:59] Interesting. Did you ever talk with the man in the park that inspired this piece?   Jiehae Park: [00:43:05] You know, it's so funny. After the first couple of weeks of watching him, I realized he lived in my building and I hadn't noticed him before.    Miko Lee: [00:43:18] Wow. That's amazing.    Jiehae Park: [00:43:20] And I think that that's also something that. I had been thinking a lot about at the time this question of presence and attention, especially in New York, which is a city that is so loud. I mean, I love, I love New York and there's so many things that I love about New York, but it is such a loud city and it is hard to hear yourself think and, and the quality of attention in any. I was gonna say in any city, but in like any moment in our extremely chaotic world, I mean, especially now, that sort of quiet present quality of attention that I think is so beautiful and so rare, and I associate with, I'm not religious, but, but when I was a kid, I was, and this, this quality of, of sacred space, I think I was, I was really curious about that. And at the time, I think I had also that year gone on a silent meditation retreat. so trying to bring that quality of attention to my ordinary life as a urban citizen, I think was also part of the experience of writing the play. But yeah, he lived in my building and I hadn't noticed him before. And so this question of what do we notice and what do we need to shift in ourselves to notice what's in front of us and has been in front of us.    Miko Lee: [00:44:44] I am hearing you talk about a sense of presence and, and time passing. I'm wondering if that is what you want the audience to walk away with or are there other things that you're interested in provoking with this piece?    Jiehae Park: [00:44:57] As an audience member, when I go to any play, I always hope to leave a little bit different than how I entered and. That shift can be really subtle. In fact, for me as an audience member, sometimes it feels more profound when it is subtle. So on, on like at like a really baseline level. We've been having a lot of conversations with the design team about how to create this. Quality of space that feels different from the mundane so that when we enter the space of the theater, so for our body chemistry changes and that we are being asked by the play to lean in and pay attention perhaps in a way that we're not asked to pay attention, in, in the world outside of that room. And to be able to request that of an audience and share that with an audience. Together, I think is such a beautiful thing. And, and one of my favorite things about any collective experience when, when it all feels like we're breathing together. And my hope is that that's something that we can create, at a, like a biochemical level in our bodies, on a sort of more. Intellectual, emotional, philosophical level. I think there are questions that the play is asking about, what makes us, us and memory and the ability of a person and a relationship to change over a long period of time. And over the course of events that. May require forgiveness. those were certainly things that I was thinking about while I was writing it. So there's also that, that more character relational level of questioning that, that I think, will resonate with people, in different ways depending on where they are in their lives. And then I think especially because, you know, there's a lot of conversation about sandwich generation now, like folks, I. Who have dealt with aging themselves or aging parents and, the complexities and possibilities that can create. I think that there's another layer of the play that stirs up some of those questions as well.   Miko Lee: [00:47:04] Speaking of complexities and possibilities, I understand that you studied music and that you're also an actor and then you also write for Marvel's Runaways. Can you share a little bit about how these different elements impact you as a writer, as a creator?    Jiehae Park: [00:47:20] Yeah, so I started as an actor, which I think a lot of people do, mostly because it's the most accessible thing. Like you can audition for a play. You can't sort of audition to write a play. you can just write a play. But that, I think, came later for me. I don't really perform a ton anymore, although I did love it. and then the shift to television happened eight or so years ago. There's a big movement of playwrights moving into television, during peak tv. And they're very different. there is some shared similarity in storytelling instincts and craft. but the mediums are just really different, so I feel like I get very different things from, from all of them. I feel like I learned being a performer for a long time. As an artist, it's just getting to bump up against people who you think are fascinating and learn from them what you like and what you don't like, and who you wanna be and who you don't wanna be. and from tv I think I learned, To not be so precious. It takes a really long time for me to write a play. and I used to think, oh, I have to go into the woods and like be silent for a month and then like a play will emerge. And like sometimes it happens and it, that feels like a blessing when it does. But in TV, because there's so much money at stake and so much time pressure that you know, when something's due, it's just due and you turn it in. And if it's not perfect, you just deal with it and you make it as good as you can. And I think that there's a certain amount of shedding of perfectionism, which has been really healthy for me. but I do. Love the theater for the ability to spend a long period of time contemplating something and, and making it with a group of people who feel inspiring and we're all moving towards the same thing. and I think there's a little bit more space or a lot more space in the theater for things that may feel. mysterious or more open. whereas in television especially these days with the sort of decline of peak TV, there's an expectation of propulsion. Like overt propulsion, if that makes sense. That is not a criticism like, you know, I also love TV. but it is, it's like the pace of it is different and the ask of it is different than the ask of a play and and the baseline thing of just, you're not in the same room with the people experiencing it that is so special in theatre.    Miko Lee: [00:49:45] How do you go about shifting that mindset for that kind of speed of TV that you're describing versus the kind of longer meditative state of creating theater?    Jiehae Park: [00:49:55] Yeah, I mean, I think there's hopefully a two-way exchange. Because I also think that bringing some of those qualities of thoughtfulness and deliberation to the world of TV within the container, within the boundaries of it, can be incredibly useful. And ultimately a lot of the things that delight people, delight people regardless of the format. So that, like, that feeling of inevitable but surprising, like that's something that is of tremendous value in all mediums, right? I think for me personally, when I write a play. I try to make a space in my life that is a little more still. and I have a toddler now, so that's challenging. But in a way, working in television has been really helpful for that because, you know, I don't have five hours in the middle of the day to, you know, be with myself and listen to the trees. I maybe have like 30 minutes, but to try to drop into that as. quickly and without angst, without like working myself up about it. 'cause that's a waste of time. That's been a useful lesson to learn. Whereas working in television can feel a lot less lonely also than playwriting because in a writer's room, most shows in the states are written in the writer's room, there are few exceptions, and you're with a group of people. And so there's a sort of energetic exchange happening there that in a play only happens much, much later when you're in rehearsal and ideally in production. there's a sort of joyful energy and exchange that can happen in a writer's room, both when you're breaking the story and then ultimately when you're in production. And there's like many, many more people involved. And there's the crew and the cast and you know, all of the technical departments and producers. I feel like you mentioned, Code switching earlier. And, humans are so adaptable and I think we automatically sort of shift our brain chemistry and our body chemistry in response to the environment around us. sometimes very consciously, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes both. so I think a certain amount of that is just, okay, these are the given circumstances. And then, you become who you need to be in that space.   Miko Lee: [00:51:54] Thank you for sharing. Okay. I have one last TV question, which is that given that everybody's in this writing room together and you're, there's kind of a speed that's attached to it, do you feel like things get thrown out more quickly and with less kind of emotion attached to it than in theater?    Jiehae Park: [00:52:10] It's possible. I think it depends on the person. So I just worked on season four of the morning show last year. And there is a real need on that show because it deals with the news to be absorbing what's happening in the world and shifting the story based on that. And so that there has to be a sort of lightness around that. So in that kind of environment, absolutely. but I've also been in other rooms where someone got really attached to an idea, and maybe it was clear that that idea wasn't gonna work out, but there was, there was still like something, in it that wanted to be held onto and, and it may be hung on for a long time. And that process. Also could have happened, like that exact parallel process could have happened in a play. And actually in neither of the situation, is that necessarily a bad thing? Like is there something about that idea that maybe is not the idea itself, like the emotional core underneath it or the deep, deep idea underneath it that is useful? That even if the manifestation of the thing doesn't continue, if the manifestation gets thrown out, but like the real thing that was underneath it was important gets folded in in some unexpected way. I don't think it's a bad thing either way. It just is the peculiarities of any particular process.   Miko Lee: [00:53:22] And it sounds like it's about the people too, right?    Jiehae Park: [00:53:25] Yes, definitely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I've certainly been in that book where I'm like, oh, I really think it's like this. It's gotta be this, it's gotta be this. And then, you know, two years later, I look at the draft, I'm like, oh, no, no, no. It, it is definitely not that. Like let me take that entire thing out. and it just was in that particular moment, I wasn't ready for whatever reason to let go of that idea. And that's okay. I am now, and then it moves on.    Miko Lee: [00:53:48] We're circling back to the beginning of the conversation about the aves, which is about presence and being in that moment. And where you are in that moment might be, no, this isn't right. And then years later you say, oh yeah, that wasn't right. Or that was right.   Jiehae Park: [00:54:03] Yeah, exactly, exactly. To listen to yourself is a, you know, I, I am, I've been doing this for a long time now and, that is still something that I feel like I always have to learn, that I think just is a human.   Miko Lee: [00:54:15] Yes. The perennial lesson of Yes, intuition. I'm wondering if you could tell our audience why they should go see the aves.    Jiehae Park: [00:54:24] My hope is that if you are curious about a certain kind of experience and attention in the theater, that you'll accept our invitation to this play, which is an unusual play. I don't think that everyone should see this play, just like, I don't think everyone should see any particular work of art, but if the things that we've been discussing, if the sort of vibe that you're getting from this conversation resonates with you, then the experience of seeing this play with a group of people who are also curious about that kind of experience may be something. That is enjoyable for you and would probably therefore also be enjoyable for that audience to be together with you and for the play to be together with you in that space.    Miko Lee: [00:55:17] Thank you so much for spending time chatting with us. Folks can see the aves at Berkeley rep May 2nd through June 8th. Thank you so much, Jiehae.   Ayame Keane-Lee: [00:55:26] For you Asian American film makers out there: SFFILM announced a new annual filmmaking grant in partnership with Cedar Road. The SFFILM Cedar Road Iyagi Grant is dedicated to fostering bold, original feature film projects that amplify Asian and Asian American perspectives on screen. In Korean, iyagi means “story”—a word that embodies the heart of this grant's mission: to champion storytelling as a powerful bridge connecting people across cultures and perspectives. A link to the grant application will be available in our show notes.    Miko Lee: [00:55:58] Please check out our website, kpfa.org to find out more about our show tonight. We think all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important.    APEX Express is created by Miko Lee, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar, Anuj Vaidya, Swati Rayasam, Aisa Villarosa, Estella Owoimaha-Church, Gabriel Tangloao, Cheryl Truong and Ayame Keane-Lee.  The post APEX Express – 4. 3.25 – Coming Up Next appeared first on KPFA.

Sa episode na ito, tatalakayin natin ang buhay ni San Pedro Calungsod, isang batang misyonaryo na nagbigay ng kanyang buhay para sa pananampalataya. Mula sa kanyang pagsisimula bilang isang batang catechist sa Pilipinas, hanggang sa kanyang paglalakbay kasama si Fr. Diego Luis de San Vitores sa Guam, ipapakita natin ang mga makasaysayang sandali na naghubog sa kanyang pagiging martir. Makikita rin natin kung paano nagbukas ng bagong kabanata sa kanyang buhay ang mga pagsubok, lalo na mula sa mga kalaban sa pananampalataya. Ang kanyang sakripisyo sa pagprotekta kay Fr. Diego laban sa mga atake, at ang kanilang hindi malilimutang pagkamatay sa Tumon Bay, ay magsisilbing patotoo kung bakit siya naging santo. Sama-sama nating alalahanin at ipagdiwang ang buhay ni San Pedro Calungsod, ang batang martir na naging inspirasyon sa milyun-milyong tao sa buong mundo. Huwag kalimutang mag-subscribe, mag-like, at mag-iwan ng komento sa ibaba para magpatuloy ang ating pagtalakay sa mga kwento ng mga santo at martir ng Simbahan! #SanPedroCalungsod #FeastDay #history Alam mo ba ang Kwento ni SAN PEDRO CALUNSOD?Join Filipino podcaster and vlogger, Jay Aruga host of The Jay Aruga Show, the first conservative podcast and vlog in the Philippines.SUPPORT The Jay Aruga Show through the Shopee – Arugaan Online Shop: Jay Aruga's Book "Conservative Ka Ba? A 3-Step Approach to Protecting the Family from Woke Ideology" is NOW Available in Shopee:https://shopee.ph/product/274489164/25685460706/Fight this toxic culture in style! Order your THE JAY ARUGA SHOW podcast T-shirt now: https://shopee.ph/product/274489164/24822983311/ Buying me a coffee thru: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thejayarugashow Hallow - Try Hallow's Premium contents for FREE: https://hallow.com/jayaruga Follow The Sentinel Ph Facebook Page and watch our live streams with AJ Perez every Saturdays at 9PM: https://www.facebook.com/TheSentinelPh LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for new videos. https://www.youtube.com/@JayAruga?sub_confirmation=1Listen and learn from previous episodes of The Jay Aruga Show podcast here https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thejayarugashow Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jagaruga Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jay.aruga Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheJayArugaShow Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JayAruga?sub_confirmation=1

//The Wire//2300Z March 31, 2025////ROUTINE////BLUF: STRATEGIC BOMBER BUILDUP AT DEIGO GARCIA CONTINUES, USA-IRAN RHETORIC INCREASES. CHINA DELAYS BLACKROCK DEAL TO BUY PANAMA CANAL.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE------International Events-Panama: The recently announced sale of Panama Canal Ports has been blocked by the Chinese government at the eleventh hour. As announced a few weeks ago, the majority of port facilities pertaining to the Panama Canal were scheduled to be sold to a consortium ultimately owned by Blackrock. This deal has been halted/delayed by China at the last minute.AC: The general theory behind this sale was for a critical maritime asset like the Panama Canal to be under American control as announced by the White House several weeks ago. After this initial interest was expressed, the deal became not necessarily American government control over the Canal, but rather for an American company to own these port facilities. Ultimately, the Chinese government halting the deal complicates the situation somewhat, especially since the reasons for the allegedly-temporary halt are not entirely clear. In any case, this indicates that the White House is not out of the woods yet when it comes to developments in Panama.Middle East: American rhetoric regarding a potential war with Iran has continued to escalate, with President Trump stating that "if we don't make a deal, there will be bombing". This comes on the heels of contradictory statements by DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who stated on Thursday that the intelligence community "continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003". Regardless of this assessment, American war plans continue.Meanwhile, a major surge of American military logistical resources is underway throughout the region. Satellite imagery from this morning confirms the presence of at least 5x B2 Spirit bombers at the airfield on Diego Garcia, along with an assortment of the standard tanker aircraft.AC: At least two KC-135 Stratotankers were observed moving from Guam to Diego Garcia early last week, which is a rare logistical movement and indicative of efforts to pull resources from multiple Areas of Responsibility (AORs) to provide logistical support for whatever is planned. A handful of C-17 cargo planes also landed at Diego Garcia over the weekend, adding to the sharp increase in aviation traffic at the remote island over the past week. Substantially increased C-17 cargo flights into Al Udeid Airbase have continued over the past few days as well. An additional B2 Spirit (likely intended for deployment to the Indian Ocean with the others) was located in Honolulu, possibly due to maintenance reasons.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments:When a man threatens to bomb a foreign nation, and then begins staging large numbers of strategic bombers near that nation, one might be inclined to think that man is serious.At the risk of speculating too wildly, it's possible that the White House intends go to war with Iran in any case, regardless of any sort of agreement. This is a classic tactic in Middle East diplomacy...engage in peace talks then at the last second claim the other side violated some term of the agreement, and the war is on. Considering the extremely significant numbers of military logistics pouring into the region, this could be a possibility...offering the olive branch openly on one hand, to distract from readying the arrows with the other.Conversely, all of this could be a giant pile of nothing. This could be an undisclosed drill, or some kind of shell game with resources, or any other number of theories that point to some innocent shuffling of bombers. This could be more of a deterrent than a legitimate preparation for a large scale military campaign. However, if

Amber Willingham writes novels (under the name AL Willingham) focused on the nature of personality, memory, communication, and the illusion of utopia. Her first book, Bliss Creek, tells the story of an amnesiac young women piecing together her life, solving the mystery of who she is. Her latest work, The Petroleum Wars, tells a greater societal story within the same world, looking at how desperation and fighting for resources can bring out problematic choices on a personal and macro level.  Follow her work at www.alwillingham.com.  Remember to check out this month's focus charity, at www.baketheirday.org, a nonprofit bakery in Guam, where they bake birthday cakes for youth in custody. 

Doug Nielsen is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Author, Therapist, Motivational Speaker, and Coach. He is also a good friend, one that I've been meaning to have on the show for a long time. With such an array of roles, Doug tells us how a mental health clinician approaches speaking and coaching, which are related to counseling but have important differences.  Follow Doug's work at www.dougspeaks.com, and check out his book "Take Life By The Helm."  Follow the highlighted charity for March by going to www.baketheirday.org, the website for Bake Their Day, the nonprofit bakery that makes birthday cakes for youth in custody in Guam.

What happens to your trash and recycling after it leaves the curb? How can associations rebuild trust with members, sponsors, and stakeholders? And what does it take to launch a brand-new conference?In this episode of Associations Thrive, host Joanna Pineda interviews Amy Lestition Burke, CEO of the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA). Amy discusses:SWANA's mission to advance from waste management to resource management and how the organization represents municipalities, private haulers, engineers, and industry professionals across North America, the Caribbean, and Guam.The complex logistics of waste and recycling management, including collection, sorting, composting, anaerobic digestion, and waste-to-energy solutions.Her transition to the CEO role as the first woman and first leader not from the waste industry, and how she immersed herself in the field through 30+ site visits and chapter meetings.How SWANA updated its strategic goals to prioritize safety, improve industry-wide collaboration, and position itself as a leader in resource management.The critical role SWANA plays in educating the public and government officials on hazardous waste, lithium-ion battery disposal, and the impact of improperly discarded materials.SWANA's membership growth and efforts to better support and engage its 47 chapters.How Amy and her team have worked to rebuild trust with members, sponsors, and exhibitors through active listening, consistent communication, and results-driven changes.The decision to sunset SWANA's existing conferences, SOAR and WasteCon, and replace them with a brand-new, rebranded event: RCon.The process of renaming and redesigning RCon, including crowdsourcing the name and focusing on an experience-driven event model that reflects SWANA's mission.How she is helping staff, leadership, and members embrace change and view it as an opportunity for growth and innovation.References:SWANA WebsiteRCon™ 2025

Preview: Colleague Cleo Paskal reports that increasing incidents of Chinese nationals attempting to enter security perimeters in Guam. More later. 1944 US LANDING ON JAPANESE HELD GUAM

Value: After Hours is a podcast about value investing, Fintwit, and all things finance and investment by investors Tobias Carlisle, and Jake Taylor. See our latest episodes at https://acquirersmultiple.com/podcastWe are live every Tuesday at 1.30pm E / 10.30am P.About Jake Jake's Twitter: https://twitter.com/farnamjake1Jake's book: The Rebel Allocator https://amzn.to/2sgip3lABOUT THE PODCASTHi, I'm Tobias Carlisle. I launched The Acquirers Podcast to discuss the process of finding undervalued stocks, deep value investing, hedge funds, activism, buyouts, and special situations.We uncover the tactics and strategies for finding good investments, managing risk, dealing with bad luck, and maximizing success.SEE LATEST EPISODEShttps://acquirersmultiple.com/podcast/SEE OUR FREE DEEP VALUE STOCK SCREENERhttps://acquirersmultiple.com/screener/FOLLOW TOBIASWebsite: https://acquirersmultiple.com/Firm: https://acquirersfunds.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/GreenbackdLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycarlisleFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/tobiascarlisleInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobias_carlisleABOUT TOBIAS CARLISLETobias Carlisle is the founder of The Acquirer's Multiple®, and Acquirers Funds®.He is best known as the author of the #1 new release in Amazon's Business and Finance The Acquirer's Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market, the Amazon best-sellers Deep Value: Why Activists Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (2014) (https://amzn.to/2VwvAGF), Quantitative Value: A Practitioner's Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors (2012) (https://amzn.to/2SDDxrN), and Concentrated Investing: Strategies of the World's Greatest Concentrated Value Investors (2016) (https://amzn.to/2SEEjVn). He has extensive experience in investment management, business valuation, public company corporate governance, and corporate law.Prior to founding the forerunner to Acquirers Funds in 2010, Tobias was an analyst at an activist hedge fund, general counsel of a company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and a corporate advisory lawyer. As a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions he has advised on transactions across a variety of industries in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Singapore, Bermuda, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Guam. He is a graduate of the University of Queensland in Australia with degrees in Law (2001) and Business (Management) (1999).

Value: After Hours is a podcast about value investing, Fintwit, and all things finance and investment by investors Tobias Carlisle, and Jake Taylor. See our latest episodes at https://acquirersmultiple.com/podcastWe are live every Tuesday at 1.30pm E / 10.30am P.About Jake Jake's Twitter: https://twitter.com/farnamjake1Jake's book: The Rebel Allocator https://amzn.to/2sgip3lABOUT THE PODCASTHi, I'm Tobias Carlisle. I launched The Acquirers Podcast to discuss the process of finding undervalued stocks, deep value investing, hedge funds, activism, buyouts, and special situations.We uncover the tactics and strategies for finding good investments, managing risk, dealing with bad luck, and maximizing success.SEE LATEST EPISODEShttps://acquirersmultiple.com/podcast/SEE OUR FREE DEEP VALUE STOCK SCREENERhttps://acquirersmultiple.com/screener/FOLLOW TOBIASWebsite: https://acquirersmultiple.com/Firm: https://acquirersfunds.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/GreenbackdLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycarlisleFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/tobiascarlisleInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobias_carlisleABOUT TOBIAS CARLISLETobias Carlisle is the founder of The Acquirer's Multiple®, and Acquirers Funds®.He is best known as the author of the #1 new release in Amazon's Business and Finance The Acquirer's Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market, the Amazon best-sellers Deep Value: Why Activists Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (2014) (https://amzn.to/2VwvAGF), Quantitative Value: A Practitioner's Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors (2012) (https://amzn.to/2SDDxrN), and Concentrated Investing: Strategies of the World's Greatest Concentrated Value Investors (2016) (https://amzn.to/2SEEjVn). He has extensive experience in investment management, business valuation, public company corporate governance, and corporate law.Prior to founding the forerunner to Acquirers Funds in 2010, Tobias was an analyst at an activist hedge fund, general counsel of a company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and a corporate advisory lawyer. As a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions he has advised on transactions across a variety of industries in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Singapore, Bermuda, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Guam. He is a graduate of the University of Queensland in Australia with degrees in Law (2001) and Business (Management) (1999).

"Good Evening: The show begins with Salena Zito in Butler County, PA, where small businesses are looking forward to a successful year." 1913 Gettysburg CBS EYE ON THE WORLD WITH JOHN BATCHELOR FIRST HOUR 9:00-9:15: KEYSTONEREPORT: POSITIVE SMALL BIZ IN BUTLER COUNTY Guest: Salena Zito (Middle of Somewhere, @DCExaminer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, New York Post) 9:15-9:30: PACIFICWATCH/VEGASREPORT: HOLLYWOOD 2.0; ARMADILLO MLB STADIUM Guest: @JCBliss 9:30-9:45: SMALLBUSINESSAMERICA: ORDER BOOKS LOOK GOOD Guest: @GeneMarks (@Guardian @PhillyInquirer) 9:45-10:00: SMALLBUSINESSAMERICA: DOGE APPROVED Guest: @GeneMarks (@Guardian @PhillyInquirer) SECOND HOUR 10:00-10:15: OCEANIA: AMERICAN SAMOA, GUAM, NORTHERN MARIANAS AT RISK (Part 1/2) Guest: Cleo Paskal, FDD 10:15-10:30: OCEANIA: AMERICAN SAMOA, GUAM, NORTHERN MARIANAS AT RISK (Part 2/2) Guest: Cleo Paskal, FDD 10:30-10:45: UKRAINE: SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS AND WAR-STAGING Guest: [Guest name not provided] 10:45-11:00: NATO: BUYING US NUKES FOR GERMANY Guest: Henry Sokolski, NPEC THIRD HOUR Book Discussion: "The Noble State: Governance Options in an Ignoble Era" by Gregory R. Copley 11:00-11:15: Part 1/4 11:15-11:30: Part 2/4 11:30-11:45: Part 3/4 11:45-12:00: Part 4/4 FOURTH HOUR 12:00-12:15: LANCASTER REPORT: SLOWER, EMPTY STOREFRONTS Guest: Jim McTague (Former Washington Editor, Barrons, @McTagueJ) Author of "The Martin and Twyla Boundary Series" 12:15-12:30: ITALY: NO TROOPS FOR DEPLOYMENT Guest: Lorenzo Fiori, Milan 12:30-12:45: SPACEX: FIRST STAGE CAPTURED, SECOND STAGE RUD Guest: Bob Zimmerman (BehindTheBlack.com) 12:45-1:00 AM: VOYAGER SLOWLY SHUTTING DOWN Guest: Bob Zimmerman (BehindTheBlack.com)

1/2: /#OCEANIA: AMERICAN SAMOA, GUAM, NORTHERN MARIANAS AT RISK. CLEO PASKAL, FDD. https://www.fdd.org/analysis/testimonies/2025/03/05/examining-the-office-of-insular-affairs-role-in-fostering-prosperity-in-the-pacific-territories-and-addressing-external-threats-to-peace-and-security/ 1810 COOK DEATH

2/2: OCEANIA: AMERICAN SAMOA, GUAM, NORTHERN MARIANAS AT RISK. CLEO PASKAL, FDD. 1909

The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 3: 5:05pm According to a new study, President Donald Trump has taken 1,009 questions from the press since being sworn in on January 25th. In Barack Obama's first month in office, he took 161 questions—while Joe Biden took 141 in his first month as president. 5:10pm- President Donald Trump announced the creation of a “Gold Card” which will replace the EB-5 immigration program. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the card will cost $5 million dollars and will encourage non-citizens to bring their successful businesses to the United States. Lutnick noted that if the U.S. sells 200,000 cards, it will amount to $1 trillion which the administration can then use to pay down the national debt. 5:25pm- Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)—the Congressman who has fought for “helium equity,” expressed concern about Guam “capsizing,” and called the Tooth Fairy anti-Christian—is back! Plus, Rich tells the audience how to survive a bear attack…but none of his advice sounds right. 5:40pm- The Trump Administration is planning to completely overhaul the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—and Elizabeth Warren is furious! The Wall Street Journal notes that the CFPB's regulations are overly burdensome or redundant—primarily slowing free market exchanges and almost never protecting consumers. 5:50pm- Upon realizing neither was human, two A.I. bots engaged in conversation ceased their English communication and switched to a robotic language known as gibber link—which can't be easily understood by humans. No need to worry though. The language is 80% more efficient than English, providing an innocent explanation for why the A.I. bots adopted the cryptic language unprompted…hopefully…

The Rich Zeoli Show- Full Episode (02/26/2025): 3:05pm- On Wednesday, President Donald Trump held his first White House meeting with all appointed cabinet officials. During the meeting, Elon Musk—the head of the Department of Government Efficiency—stated “this is an incredible group of people. I don't think such a talented team has ever been assembled,” calling it “the best cabinet ever.” 3:15pm- While appearing on Fox News, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said she would remove intelligence officials who engaged in vulgar, sexually explicit conversations in government chatrooms. Gabbard explained: “I put out a directive today that they all will be terminated, and their security clearances will be revoked.” 3:20pm- CNN anchor Jake Tapper announced the release of his latest book, “Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” But Rich notes Tapper is a hypocrite. During an interview with Lara Trump, Tapper vociferously denied Joe Biden was experiencing any sort of cognitive decline and suggested that people were merely picking on the then-president for suffering from a life-long stutter. 3:40pm- Is the blooming onion at Outback Steakhouse the best appetizer? Rich argues it's thanks to the restaurant chain's use of beef tallow instead of seed oils. Interestingly, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has argued seed oils are less healthy than beef tallow. So, are more restaurants going to start using beef tallow again? 4:05pm- Jeffrey Tucker—Founder, Author, and President at Brownstone Institute—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss his latest op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, “America's Future Depends on DOGE: If Trump and Musk don't succeed in showing the bureaucracy who's boss, it's likely no one ever will.” You can read the full article here: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/americas-future-depends-on-doge-efficiency-overhaul-system-b2875bcd. 4:30pm- On Wednesday, President Donald Trump held his first White House meeting with all appointed cabinet officials. During the meeting, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth notably pledged to hold people accountable for the U.S. military's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addressed a measles outbreak which has resulted in two deaths—but insisted there is no need for a nationwide panic. 4:40pm- Jeff Bezos announced that The Washington Post opinion page will emphasize “personal liberties” and “free markets” in all of its stories moving forward. Bezos offered the paper's opinion editor David Shipley the opportunity to retain his position—however, Shipley declined. Rich wonders, what is so controversial about promoting individual liberty? 4:45pm- Hollywood executive Kathleen Kennedy will be retiring from her position as president of Lucasfilm. Kennedy is, of course, largely responsible for destroying the Star Wars franchise. But is it too late to be saved? 4:55pm- In a post to social media, progressive California Governor Gavin Newsom announced he's starting a new podcast! 5:05pm According to a new study, President Donald Trump has taken 1,009 questions from the press since being sworn in on January 25th. In Barack Obama's first month in office, he took 161 questions—while Joe Biden took 141 in his first month as president. 5:10pm- President Donald Trump announced the creation of a “Gold Card” which will replace the EB-5 immigration program. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the card will cost $5 million dollars and will encourage non-citizens to bring their successful businesses to the United States. Lutnick noted that if the U.S. sells 200,000 cards, it will amount to $1 trillion which the administration can then use to pay down the national debt. 5:25pm- Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)—the Congressman who has fought for “helium equity,” expressed concern about Guam “capsizing,” and called the Tooth Fairy anti-Christian—is back! P ...