Podcasts about hays county

In the first hour of today's show, a Tren De Aragua member was arrested in Hays County, a Texas senate bill was introduced to stop SNAP junk food buying, a discussion on the reports that Musk will not leave DOGE, and more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week's newscast, host Ashley Waters and reporters, Emma Peters, Felicity Guajardo, and Joel Mendez discuss a measles case reported in Hays County, a protest against mandated housing for freshmen, and the public library keeping up with technology. Tune in on Fridays at 5 p.m. on 89.9 or on the KTSW 89.9 Soundcloud. We are the other side of news.

On this week's newscast, host Felicity Guajardo and reporters, Ashley Waters, Jissela Cabrera and Nala McKenzie discuss Bird Flu spreading across Central Texas, a new transportation director in Hays County and water conservation efforts in San Marcos. Tune in on Fridays at 5 p.m. on 89.9 or on the KTSW 89.9 Soundcloud. We are the other side of news.

Monologue:Fighter Jets and Flying SaucersAZ Property Tax RevoltBody Parts and TroubleReturns Are a Pain in the AssStop Saying "Good Luck"!Guest:Sydney Smith, born in South Carolina, raised in Tampa, and thriving in Dripping Springs, has become the Hill Country's go-to bartender and server. Known for her sassy wit and genuine servant's heart, she keeps spirits high both behind the bar and in the community. Off the clock, she trades mixing drinks for building LEGO masterpieces, proving her creativity knows no bounds. With Sydney, every shift feels like happy hour.Texas is one of the most friendly states in America and Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the state's most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Texas a destination for a vibrant mix of individuals—each with unique backgrounds, passions, and personalities. Learn why every year, thousands of people move to Texas. Based in Dripping Springs, every episode features a Texas resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical state. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders, venture capitalists to innovators that risk it all. New episodes weekly!Send us a textSupport the show Sponsor: The Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Real Estate Done Right! Call them at 512-627-7018. Sponsor: The Lending Pros at Capital Farm Credit. Lending in Texas for over 100 years. Call them at 512-892-4425. Sponsor: Nomic Power Solutions your trusted partner in Austin for turnkey generator installation, service, and maintenance. Backup generators for your home. Call Cody and Dillon at 512-387-4232 Thanks for listening! Please follow us & leave a review. TELL A FRIEND! Apple PodcastsSpotify PodcastsInstagramOur Website - Sign up for latest updates.mallettandmichelle@gmail.com for inquiries on advertising or guest spot.Send us your thoughts/feedback on the show and we'll give you a shout out!

In this episode of Texas County Voice, Hays County Elections Administrator Jennifer Doinoff discusses the meticulous preparations behind fair and secure elections. Don't miss this peek into the electoral process.

Send us a textMonologue:Dripping Springs Sports Club PreviewEarly VotingHappiness Seminar-Smelling CrayonsAmazon Changes The Game1500 Mile Cross Texas Trail (XTX) Coming SoonGuest:Morgan Hammer, a candidate for Hays County Commissioner in Precinct 3, co-owns a local business with her husband Derrik. Both are Texas State University graduates, with Morgan holding a degree in Marketing. With experience in real estate and finance, Morgan is active in the community, serving as Chairperson of San Marcos Young Professionals and participating in her church. Her campaign focuses on public infrastructure, resource management, and clean water access. She values transparent communication and community engagement. Endorsements include the Hays County Law Enforcement Association, Sheriff Gary Cutler, and local community leaders.Texas is one of the most friendly states in America and Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the state's most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Texas a destination for a vibrant mix of individuals—each with unique backgrounds, passions, and personalities. Learn why every year, thousands of people move to Texas. Based in Dripping Springs, every episode features a Texas resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical state. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders, venture capitalists to innovators that risk it all. New episodes weekly!Support the show Sponsor: The Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Real Estate Done Right! Call them at 512-627-7018. Sponsor: The Lending Pros at Capital Farm Credit. Lending in Texas for over 100 years. Call them at 512-892-4425. Sponsor: Nomic Power Solutions your trusted partner in Austin for turnkey generator installation, service, and maintenance. Backup generators for your home. Call Cody and Dillon at 512-387-4232 Thanks for listening! Please follow us & leave a review. TELL A FRIEND! Apple PodcastsSpotify PodcastsInstagramOur Website - Sign up for latest updates.mallettandmichelle@gmail.comSend us your thoughts/feedback on the show and we'll give you a shout out!

Send us a textMonologue:Hurricane MiltonUnder Insured IssuesMotorcycle Faux Pas Hardest Working StatesGuest:Anthony Hipolito, born in Austin, Texas, moved to Hays County in 1985 and graduated from Jack C. Hays High School in 1993. He joined the Austin Police Department in 1998, serving 23 years and retiring as a Sergeant in 2021. In 2004, he met his wife, Peggy, and they have two daughters who attend Dripping Springs High School. The family has lived in Kyle, Buda, and Dripping Springs. Anthony now works in the Community Outreach Division at the Hays County Sheriff's Office, continuing his 24-year law enforcement career.Texas is one of the most friendly states in America and Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the state's most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Texas a destination for a vibrant mix of individuals—each with unique backgrounds, passions, and personalities. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to Texas. Every episode features a Texas resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical state. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. New episodes weekly!Support the show Sponsor: The Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Real Estate Done Right! Call them at 512-627-7018. Sponsor: The Lending Pros at Capital Farm Credit. Lending in Texas for over 100 years. Call them at 512-892-4425. Sponsor: Nomic Power Solutions your trusted partner in Austin for turnkey generator installation, service, and maintenance. Backup generators for your home. Call Cody and Dillon at 512-387-4232 Thanks for listening! Please follow us & leave a review. TELL A FRIEND! Apple PodcastsSpotify PodcastsInstagramOur Website - Sign up for latest updates.mallettandmichelle@gmail.comSend us your thoughts/feedback on the show and we'll give you a shout out!

Send us a textMonologue:Barton Creek AC Comes ThroughWater Logged Cars Sold Across USAirplane GPS Hacking On The RiseLithium Battery FiresAI Takes On The PodcastGuest:Sheriff Gary Cutler was elected in November 2010 and has over 40 years of law enforcement experience, including roles at the Travis County and Williamson County Sheriff's Offices, and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. He has 11 years of management and executive experience, overseeing approximately 350 staff at the Hays County Sheriff's Office. A native Texan from Hutchins, Cutler graduated from Sam Houston State University in 1973 with a degree in Criminal Justice. His career began at the Travis County Sheriff's Office in 1974, rising to Captain. He later served in major crime divisions in Williamson County and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission before taking office in 2010.Dripping Springs is one of the most friendly towns in Texas and Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. New episodes weekly!Support the show Sponsor: The Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Real Estate Done Right! Call them at 512-627-7018. Sponsor: The Lending Pros at Capital Farm Credit. Lending in Texas for over 100 years. Call them at 512-892-4425. Sponsor: Nomic Power Solutions your trusted partner in Austin for turnkey generator installation, service, and maintenance. Backup generators for your home. Call Cody and Dillon at 512-387-4232 Thanks for listening! Please follow us & leave a review. TELL A FRIEND! Apple PodcastsOur Website - Sign up for latest updates.mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

Send us a textMonologue:Enchanted Rock ExpandsCelebrity Worship DiesBoss FlexWhat Day Of The Week Are You? Binge Watching PsychologyGuest:Judge Tanner Neidhardt brings fairness, efficiency, and a fresh perspective to Hays County's 483rd District Court. With over 150 jury trials under his belt, he's tackled criminal cases as a tough yet fair prosecutor and navigated civil cases from both sides. Beyond the courtroom, he's taught future legal minds at Texas State and UT Law, studied as a Fulbright Scholar in Colombia, and worked on justice reform across Latin America. He's not just a judge – he's a problem-solver who cares about everyone who steps into his courtroom. People all over Hays County are working hard to keep this dedicated, experienced, and fun public servant on the bench.Dripping Springs is one of the most friendly towns in Texas and Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. New episodes weekly!Support the show Sponsor: The Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Real Estate Done Right! Call them at 512-627-7018. Sponsor: The Lending Pros at Capital Farm Credit. Lending in Texas for over 100 years. Call them at 512-892-4425. Sponsor: M. Elliott Design. Tailored experience. Design as an investment. They can help you design for renovations, new construction or with the right furniture. Call Montana at 512-781-0224. Sponsor: Nomic Power Solutions your trusted partner in Austin for turnkey generator installation, service, and maintenance. Backup generators for your home. Call Cody and Dillon at 512-387-4232 Thanks for listening! Please follow us & leave a review. Apple PodcastsOur Website - Sign up for latest updates.mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

Send us a Text Message.Monologue:Cap Tex TriathlonQuiet VacationingSteve's Real Estate MinuteA Big Mac is $8.00???KOKE FM Big ChangesGuest:Bob Luddy has lived in the Dripping Springs area with his wife and children since 2015. Born in Southern California, Bob has made a career out of pre-hospital EMS and rescue. He has experience as a Field Training Officer, a Rescue Training Officer and member of the Honor Guard, and has held instructor certifications in CPR, Advanced Cardiac Life Support, Pediatric Advanced Life Support, Pre-hospital Trauma Life Support, Basic Trauma Life Support, and Advanced Trauma Life Support. Bob was a member of Texas Task Force 1 USAR team from 2001 to 2021 where he served as a Swift-water Rescue Specialist, Swift-water Boat Operator, Helicopter Search and Rescue Technician and Water Rescue Squad Leader.Meet your Neighbors! Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. New episodes weekly.Support the Show. Sponsor: The Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Real Estate Done Right! Call them at 512-627-7018. Sponsor: The Lending Pros at Capital Farm Credit. Lending in Texas for over 100 years. Call them at 512-892-4425. Sponsor: M. Elliott Design. Tailored experience. Design as an investment. They can help you design for renovations, new construction or with the right furniture. Call Montana at 512-781-0224. Sponsor: Nomic Power Solutions your trusted partner in Austin for turnkey generator installation, service, and maintenance. Backup generators for your home. Call Cody and Dillon at 512-387-4232 Thanks for listening! Please follow us & leave a review. Apple PodcastsOur Website - Sign up for latest updates.mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

Monologue:Madonna at Moody CenterWishbone Bridge on Town LakeThe Body Count Keeps Going UpProperty Tax Ending? Fox12 Truck and Dripping CrimeGuest:Peggy Hipolito is an Oregon transplant that loves Texas and Dripping Springs. Her husband, Anthony, is running for Sheriff for Hays County in the November 2024 Election. She is raising her family in Dripping Springs while managing a hard fought campaign and learning the tough side of local politics. She's learning to get thicker skin and and to not take the political attacks on her husband and family personally. It's a rough and tumble world. Peggy carries herself with grace and tries to always take the high road and keep her chin up through the ups and downs of campaigning. Meet your Neighbors! Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders, bee keepers to best sellers. New episodes weekly.Support the show Sponsor: The Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Real Estate Done Right! Call them at 512-627-7018. Sponsor: The Lending Pros at Capital Farm Credit. Lending in Texas for over 100 years. Call them at 512-892-4425. Sponsor: M. Elliott Design. Tailored experience. Design as an investment. They can help you design for renovations, new construction or with the right furniture. Call Montana at 512-781-0224. Sponsor: Nomic Power Solutions your trusted partner in Austin for turnkey generator installation, service, and maintenance. Backup generators for your home. Call Cody and Dillon at 512-387-4232 Thanks for listening! Please follow us & leave a review. Apple PodcastsOur Website - Sign up for latest updates.mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

We're excited to see how God will move with Miracle Offering 2023! The Miracle Offering is our annual opportunity to give as a church family towards missionaries and organizations walking and ministering to people in Hays County and around the world! Check out this video to hear from our 2023 partners and powerful testimonies from some of our staff. The Miracle Offering will be open until Dec 31st, so if you would like to give, you can go to Radicalchurch.life/give.

Monologue:Governor Abbot is a Bad AssMost searched Webster words in 2023AI Model makes $10K a monthAdopt a CopBeware when traveling in AustinPet Psychic or Scammer?Guest:Ben Gieselman's roots in Dripping Springs run deep. He grew up right here and he and his high school sweetheart started their family in Dripping Springs. Ben has always had a passion for service. This led him to join the Marines and serve four years before becoming a member of law enforcement. Ben says he will bring his expertise and integrity as Constable. He has served Hays County as a Patrol Deputy, Patrol Corporal, Criminal Investigations, Field Training Officer, Mobile Field Force Commander, Peer Support, and Firearms and General Training Instructor. Ben has the distinction of being the first law enforcement officer shot in the line of duty since 1879. Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. Join us every week for a new episode, where curiosity meets cutting-edge storytelling, and be inspired by the fascinating tales that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a beacon for the bold and the adventurous..Support the showThis show is brought to you by the Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Look them up when you are buying or selling real estate in the Dripping Springs or Austin area. Real Estate Done Right! Call them at 512-627-7018.This show is sponsored by the Lending Pros at Capital Farm Credit. Lending in Texas for over 100 years they can help you buy your dream ranch, ranchette or provide interim financing for construction for your land improvements. Call them at 512-892-4425.We are sponsored by M. Elliott Design. Tailored experience. Design as an investment. They can help you design for renovations, new construction or with the right furniture; each item is selected, tailored, and procured. Call Montana at 512-781-0224.Thanks for listening! Please follow us & leave a review. Apple PodcastsMallett and Michelle on InstagramOur Website - Sign up for latest updates. We love your feedback & comments. Email: mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

Monologue:Spirit AnimalTax Free Income!We Support IsraelGuest:Marshall Kuykendall is a true Texas original and a classic story teller. Marshall is an author and an amateur historian with a love of Texas history. A descendant of Austin's Old 300 Club, Marshall was born, raised and can still be found wandering around the Texas Hill Country. Hunting, history, range riding and whiskey required. Marshall grew up on the largest ranch in Hays County spanning over 11,000 acres. He shares his love of Texas and it's history through his story telling. Help us celebrate Marshall's 91st Birthday on the show. Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. New episodes weekly.Support the showThis show is brought to you by the Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Look them up when you are buying or selling real estate in the Dripping Springs or Austin area. Real Estate Done Right! Call them at 512-627-7018.This show is sponsored by the Lending Pros at Capital Farm Credit. Lending in Texas for over 100 years they can help you buy your dream ranch, ranchette or provide interim financing for construction for your land improvements. Call them at 512-892-4425.We are sponsored by M. Elliott Design. Tailored experience. Design as an investment. They can help you design for renovations, new construction or with the right furniture; each item is selected, tailored, and procured. Call Montana at 512-781-0224.Thanks for listening! Please follow us & leave a review. Apple PodcastsMallett and Michelle on InstagramOur Website - Sign up for latest updates. We love your feedback & comments. Email: mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

IT'S BEEN 32 DAYS SINCE HIS LAST LOSS!!!Booker's current record is 2144 wins with 142 losses, this morning all of Austin is rooting for Jacob in Hays County!!!  LET'S WELCOME HIM TO AUSTIN'S FAVORITE POP CULTURE TRIVIA GAME...CAN'T BEAT BOOKER!!!

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: The Paxton impeachment trial ends and the issue moved to senator-jurors today. Watch closing statements (beginning at 24:50) here: https://tlcsenate.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=35&clip_id=18357Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.Texas Employment Reached Historic Highs in August; click to see local numbers.Oil and gas drilling rig count rises for a second week.The UAW goes on strike showing just how baneful is the union. Members are already among the highest paid industrial workers on the planet and now they want a huge amount more and to work only 32 hours per week while getting paid for 40!Hays County district clerk files petition to remove District Attorney; a first test of newly implemented House Bill 17.Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Ken Paxton defense lead Tony Buzbee calls four friendly witnesses - all current Texas AG Office employees - before resting: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/state/2023/09/14/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-impeachment-trial-live-updates-coverage-day-eight/70836056007/ Donald Trump weighs in - while admitting he doesn't think President Biden is too old to server: https://www.axios.com/2023/09/14/trump-biden-age-2024-election Senator John Cornyn voices support for the Biden impeachment inquiry, contradicting his own prior views: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/14/john-cornyn-biden-impeachment-inquiry/ Near-hopeless Republican Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis will be in Midland on Wednesday: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-14/desantis-to-detail-energy-policy-during-texas-visit-next-week Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo will depart in-patient care for clinical depression and plans to return to duty on October 2: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/14/harris-county-lina-hidalgo-mental-health-leave/ Mitchell and Goliad Counties have implemented local ordinances that allow vigilantes to sue people they suspect of driving through those counties on their way to out-of-state abortion care: https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/texas-abortion-trafficking/285-31f15a6c-dcf1-4711-a02b-2686ce9f7552 Dallas ISD joins several other districts in a lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency over a new school rating system they say will artificially degrade scores: https://thehub.dallasisd.org/2023/09/14/dallas-isd-joins-other-texas-districts-in-tea-lawsuit/ In a Democrat vs. Democrat conflict, Hays County sees the first test of a new state law allowing for the removal of county DA's who refuse to prosecute select state laws: https://www.kxan.com/news/local/hays/hays-county-district-clerk-files-petition-to-remove-da-citing-new-texas-law/ Rosie Cuellar announces a run for the open House seat representing District 80, including Uvalde: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/14/henry-rosie-cuellar-texas-house-uvalde/ Coffee City, which made the news for its oversized police department largely staffed with officers who had been fired from other departments due to misconduct, fires its police chief and disbands its PD: https://www.kltv.com/2023/09/11/coffee-city-council-fires-police-chief-deactivates-police-department-wake-investigation/ And you're not exaggerating - Texas officially has the worst drivers in the country: https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2023/09/14/texas-has-worst-drivers-in-the-country-report-says/ Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our podcasts, we'd appreciate your support as we continue our membership drive - join the fun officially at https://progresstexas.org/donate.

Adam had a fantastic meeting in New Jersey meeting a true Hardcore Legend and Joe is jealous. Then, in This Day in Wrestling History maybe the spray painting of the World Title wasn't as iconic as Joe first thought, Nitro vs. RAW from 25 years is still seeing WCW making some strange decisions and the […] The post At Odds with Wrestling episode 254 – Hays County appeared first on Longbox Heroes.

An Austin Police officer was shot Sunday night. The suspect involved is in custody. A wildfire continues to burn in Hays County. It's already destroyed one home. High heat and dry winds are fueling our wildfire concerns through the week. Wake up with KXAN's first newscast of the day. Monday-Friday from 4:30-5:00 a.m.

Austin ISD is asking some teachers for money. Email records show some teachers are being asked to pay back a $2,000 retention stipend. Hays County investigators are detailing how a fire started at an apartment complex in San Marcos in 2018. Five people died when the Iconic Village apartments went up in flames. Temperatures continue to climb this weekend. Wake up with KXAN's first newscast of the day. Monday-Friday from 4:30-5:00 a.m.

Monologue:Todd has Officially Put Up with Michelle for 30 Years! Life in 1993-What Was PopularAustin-Everything Old is New AgainKeeping Austin WeirdMemorial Weekend Facts Guest:Marshall E. Kuykendall is an author rancher broker and Texan. A descendant of Austin's Old 300 Club, Marshall was born, raised and can still be found wandering around the Texas Hill Country. Hunting, history, range riding and whiskey required. Marshall grew up on the largest ranch in Hays County spanning over 11,000 acres. Marshall is an author and historian and shares his love of Texas and it's history through his storytelling. Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. New episodes weekly.Support the showSupport the showThis show is brought to you by the Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Look them up when you are buying or selling real estate in the Dripping Springs or Austin area. Real Estate Done Right! Every time!Thanks for listening! Make sure to follow us & leave a review. Apple PodcastsMallett and Michelle on InstagramOur Website - Sign up for latest updates. We love your feedback & comments. Email: mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

Marshall carries us through time as we follow him through the journey his family took to arrive in Texas with Stephen F. Austin and the Old 300. The Old 300 were the first US settlers who populated Texas in the early 1800's. Marshall E. Kuykendall is an author rancher broker and Texan. A descendant of Austin's Old 300 Club, Marshall was born, raised and can still be found wandering around the Texas Hill Country. Hunting, history, range riding and whiskey required. Marshall grew up on the largest ranch in Hays County spanning over 11,000 acres. Marshall is an author and historian and shares his love of Texas and it's history through his storytelling. Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. New episodes weekly.Support the showThis show is brought to you by the Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Look them up when you are buying or selling real estate in the Dripping Springs or Austin area. Real Estate Done Right! Every time!Thanks for listening! Make sure to follow us & leave a review. Apple PodcastsMallett and Michelle on InstagramOur Website - Sign up for latest updates. We love your feedback & comments. Email: mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

Join LinkedGlenn onthis edition of BoomATX featuring areas Economic Development powerhouse Greater San Marcos Partnership's CEO Jason Giulietti!  Jason's focus of bringing economic growth to the area including and surrounding San Marcos, Texas and along the Innovation Corridor between Austin and San Antonio.From Amazon warehouses to recycling magnets to the world's largest Buc-ee's, this Hay's County area is poised to ride Austin's wave to even higher highs in the years to come.  The future is bright and Jason and GSMP are excited to help lead the way!BoomATX - Interesting Austinites Doing Interesting Things!

Monologue:Hays County Costco ComingHays County growing quicklyProperty Tax Break? Congress Talks RestrictChanging Priorities of AmericaGuest:Anthony Hipolito is running for Hays County Sheriff.  He has devoted the last 24 years to law enforcement in the Central Texas area.  His time at the Austin Police Department spanned 23 years and the past year of his career he has been at the Hays County Sheriff's Office where he is currently assigned to the Community Outreach Division. He has served in law enforcement in many capacities including Patrol, Bike Patrol/Walking Beat, Street Response, Mounted Patrol, Public Information Office, Executive Protection, Internal Affairs and Organized Crime. Find out why he is running to be the top Law Enforcement officer in Hays County.Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. New episodes weekly.Support the showThanks for listening! Make sure to follow us & leave a review. Apple PodcastsMallett and Michelle on InstagramOur Website - Sign up for latest updates. We love your feedback & comments. Email: mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

Drive with Dr. Peter Attia Podcast Notes Key Takeaways  The fentanyl crisis is a fallout of the opioid epidemic and has since taken it to an entirely new levelThe DEA started to notice an uptick in pain drugs starting in 2010; around the same time that the pain management doctors started recklessly prescribing oxycodone, Vicodin, and Percocets, according to Anthony HipolitoA person dies of an accidental overdose every five minutes in the United States, mostly from fentanyl Anthony Hipolito estimates that two-thirds of accidental overdoses are caused by fentanyl There are poisonings: people are taking a drug (for whatever reason) and do not know that fentanyl has been mixed into what they believe to be takingToxicology reports show street doses of fentanyl can be as high as 100x the lethal doseA decade ago, the most likely causes of death under the age of 40 were car accidents and suicides, but now accidental overdoses rank number one by orders of magnitudeThe cartels are making what the DEA calls “rainbow fentanyl”, which are drugs containing fentanyl designed to look like candyThe precursors to fentanyl are mostly shipped from China to Mexico, then the Mexican cartels synthetically manufacture the pure fentanyl before smuggling it across the border in the United States Border patrol intercepts about 5-10% of the narcotics that make it across the border America's youth mostly discover and come to possess fentanyl through social mediaEvery illicit recreational drug has a chance of being laced with fentanyl, including Adderall and marijuanaThe cartels and dealers are putting it into everything to make their drugs stronger and more addictiveRead the full notes @ podcastnotes.org View the Show Notes Page for This Episode Become a Member to Receive Exclusive Content Sign Up to Receive Peter's Weekly Newsletter Anthony Hipolito is a sheriff's deputy in Hays County, Texas with over 24 years of experience in law enforcement. In this episode, Anthony discusses his work to spread awareness about illicit fentanyl use and the drastic increase in accidental overdoses, especially in young people. Anthony explains the deadly nature of fentanyl, including how many counterfeit drugs are now being laced with deadly doses of fentanyl. He breaks down how fentanyl is being brought to the US and how younger and younger kids are being targeted. Additionally, Anthony discusses his goal of spreading awareness to our communities and provides important advice for what parents can do. We discuss: Anthony's life of service in law enforcement [5:30]; Fentanyl: medical use, recreational use, and the recent rise in prevalence [8:30]; The story of a teenager dying from an accidental overdose of fentanyl [16:30]; The scope of deaths being caused by accidental overdoses (the majority of which are from fentanyl) [23:00]; How young kids are being targeted, and how fentanyl makes it across our borders and gets distributed [28:30]; What happens to a person when they overdose [35:30]; Whether laws around drug possession are helping or hurting, and the need to focus on helping people that feel the need to take these counterfeit drugs [37:00]; How fentanyl is being added to all kinds of drugs that you wouldn't expect [42:45]; What can we do as parents? [47:15]; Narcan: a treatment for opioid overdoses [50:15]; Importance of awareness, having conversations with kids early in life, and other key takeaways for parents [56:30]; and More. Connect With Peter on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube

Drive with Dr. Peter Attia: Read the notes at at podcastnotes.org. Don't forget to subscribe for free to our newsletter, the top 10 ideas of the week, every Monday --------- View the Show Notes Page for This Episode Become a Member to Receive Exclusive Content Sign Up to Receive Peter's Weekly Newsletter Anthony Hipolito is a sheriff's deputy in Hays County, Texas with over 24 years of experience in law enforcement. In this episode, Anthony discusses his work to spread awareness about illicit fentanyl use and the drastic increase in accidental overdoses, especially in young people. Anthony explains the deadly nature of fentanyl, including how many counterfeit drugs are now being laced with deadly doses of fentanyl. He breaks down how fentanyl is being brought to the US and how younger and younger kids are being targeted. Additionally, Anthony discusses his goal of spreading awareness to our communities and provides important advice for what parents can do. We discuss: Anthony's life of service in law enforcement [5:30]; Fentanyl: medical use, recreational use, and the recent rise in prevalence [8:30]; The story of a teenager dying from an accidental overdose of fentanyl [16:30]; The scope of deaths being caused by accidental overdoses (the majority of which are from fentanyl) [23:00]; How young kids are being targeted, and how fentanyl makes it across our borders and gets distributed [28:30]; What happens to a person when they overdose [35:30]; Whether laws around drug possession are helping or hurting, and the need to focus on helping people that feel the need to take these counterfeit drugs [37:00]; How fentanyl is being added to all kinds of drugs that you wouldn't expect [42:45]; What can we do as parents? [47:15]; Narcan: a treatment for opioid overdoses [50:15]; Importance of awareness, having conversations with kids early in life, and other key takeaways for parents [56:30]; and More. Connect With Peter on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube

View the Show Notes Page for This Episode Become a Member to Receive Exclusive Content Sign Up to Receive Peter's Weekly Newsletter Anthony Hipolito is a sheriff's deputy in Hays County, Texas with over 24 years of experience in law enforcement. In this episode, Anthony discusses his work to spread awareness about illicit fentanyl use and the drastic increase in accidental overdoses, especially in young people. Anthony explains the deadly nature of fentanyl, including how many counterfeit drugs are now being laced with deadly doses of fentanyl. He breaks down how fentanyl is being brought to the US and how younger and younger kids are being targeted. Additionally, Anthony discusses his goal of spreading awareness to our communities and provides important advice for what parents can do. We discuss: Anthony's life of service in law enforcement [5:30]; Fentanyl: medical use, recreational use, and the recent rise in prevalence [8:30]; The story of a teenager dying from an accidental overdose of fentanyl [16:30]; The scope of deaths being caused by accidental overdoses (the majority of which are from fentanyl) [23:00]; How young kids are being targeted, and how fentanyl makes it across our borders and gets distributed [28:30]; What happens to a person when they overdose [35:30]; Whether laws around drug possession are helping or hurting, and the need to focus on helping people that feel the need to take these counterfeit drugs [37:00]; How fentanyl is being added to all kinds of drugs that you wouldn't expect [42:45]; What can we do as parents? [47:15]; Narcan: a treatment for opioid overdoses [50:15]; Importance of awareness, having conversations with kids early in life, and other key takeaways for parents [56:30]; and More. Connect With Peter on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube

Join The Center Square's Executive Editor Dan McCaleb and Reporter Brett Rowland as they discuss a U.S. House committee hearing made clear the total cost of fraud and waste in taxpayer-funded pandemic relief programs remains unknown. An oversight committee hearing Wednesday highlighted the cost of fraud in taxpayer-funded pandemic relief programs as federal agencies continue to tally losses. Hays County, Texas, resident Brandon Dunn lost his son to illicit fentanyl poisoning last year. His son and two other teenage boys from the same rural county died of fentanyl overdoses less than 60 days apart. --- Listen to Other ATN Productions: America's Talking: An interview podcast hosted by Austin Berg. Guests include professors, journalists, artists, business and nonprofit leaders, authors, and more. Everyday Economics: Join economist Dr. Orphe Divounguy and Chris Krug as they discuss global markets, inflation, and everything else that will help you understand the economic world around you. Future of Freedom: Future of Freedom is a bi-weekly podcast highlighting the work of the non-profits which are shaping the future of the freedom movement. Listeners will hear civil, intellectual conversations about why the organizations exist, what their mission is, and how they work to achieve it. Hosted by Scot Bertram. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/america-in-focus/support

On this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, we get to speak with Nick Bayard the executive Director of BirdNote. This organization is a nonprofit that provides sound-rich programs on over 200 radio stations that discuss the challenges faced by birds. The program includes the sounds of birds. It can be heard daily. You will get to learn more about BirdNote during our episode.   Nick holds a Master's degree in Public Administration and International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School and a bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies from Brown University. He served three years in the Peace Corps Paraguay and has held several social service policy decisions in the Northwest U.S.   Nick gives us much to think about, not only about birds and BirdNote, but also he helps us think more deeply about how we live our lives and how we can help make our whole planet a more friendly and good place to live.     About the Guest: Nick Bayard is the Executive Director of BirdNote. BirdNote is a public media nonprofit organization that tells vivid, sound-rich stories about birds and the challenges they face in order to inspire listeners to care about the natural world and take steps to protect it. BirdNote Daily is their beloved flagship show that has been in production since 2005. It is a one minute, 45 second daily radio show that broadcasts on over 250 radio stations across the US. You can listen to BirdNote Daily and other longform podcasts produced by BirdNote anytime, wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also learn what BirdNote is doing to contribute to more diverse and inclusive birding and environmental communities at www.birdnote.org.    Nick holds a master's degree in Public Administration and International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School and a bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies from Brown University. He served for three years in the environmental sector of Peace Corps Paraguay and has served in leadership roles in social services and racial equity in government policy in the Pacific Northwest. Nick is an Eagle Scout and also a musician, having released an award-winning children's album, Wishing Well, with his oldest son in 2014.    Nick and his wife Sedia live in Washington State with their three kids.   Ways to connect with Nick:   BirdNote website: www.birdnote.org  BirdNote daily podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/birdnote-daily/id79155128 BirdNote's Bring Birds Back podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bring-birds-back/id1566042634 BirdNote's Threatened podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/threatened/id1538065542 BirdNote en Español podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/birdnote-en-espa%C3%B1ol/id1643711928 Nick Bayard's LinkedIn page: www.linkedin.com/in/nickbayard Nick Bayard's Twitter page: https://twitter.com/NickBayard Wishing Well children's album: https://www.amazon.com/Wishing-Well-Nick-Bayard/dp/B00IHIEUYE/ref=tmm_acd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=       About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson  01:21 Welcome once again to unstoppable mindset. Hi, everyone. It's a nice fall day here in Southern California, supposed to get up to 96 degrees today. It is late September. So for those who remember, it is also the time of hurricane Ian in Florida. And our thoughts are with all the people and creatures down there. But today, we get to interview someone and talk about some of those creatures. Nick Bayard is a person who has been involved in dealing with natural resources and so on. He's the Executive Director of bird note. And we're going to get to that. And all things, Nick, as we go along. So Nick, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Nick Bayard  02:05 Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here.   Michael Hingson  02:07 Well, it's our pleasure, and we really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us. Let's start just kind of learning a little bit about you, can you kind of tell us where you came from and how you got where you   Nick Bayard  02:18 are a little bit? Sure, well, I grew up in Delaware, in kind of a little bubble, to be honest, and, you know, my educational career kind of took a winding path, because I didn't really see a career out there that looks like something I wanted to do forever. I just feel like there's there's too much to try to pack into one life to commit to sort of, you know, doctor, lawyer, you know, etc. And so, I think that was both a blessing and a curse, because it led me to follow a lot of different paths. And it led to a lot of frustration too, because our, I think our society is set up to reward sort of monotony and continue building, you know, of a career over a period of time. But I wouldn't trade it for anything, because it's it's given me a lot of unique experiences, serving in the Peace Corps in South America, getting to do racial equity work and in government. And now being executive director of a wonderful organization that I've loved for a long time, came a bit out of left field, because I had done so many things that kind of added up to what the burden of board members wanted in this role that all of a sudden, things kind of fell into place for something that I never could have predicted. So it's it's been a winding road, but I'm really thrilled to be where I am and happy to get the chance to talk about it with you.   Michael Hingson  03:56 Winding roads are always kind of fun, you know, you never know where you're gonna go next. Or maybe you do but at the same time, it's always the adventure of getting there. That's at least half the fun.   Nick Bayard  04:07 And you've had that experience too, right? Yes, quite a number of lifetimes packed into one right.   Michael Hingson  04:14 It has been a fun adventure. And it continues to be and I can't complain about that a single bit. It's, you know, it's all about choices. And but it is all about embracing the adventure of life to exactly.   Nick Bayard  04:28 So what you went to college, I went to Brown University in Rhode Island and studied environmental studies and really had a wonderful experience there. And then   Michael Hingson  04:41 what got you from there to the Peace Corps?   Nick Bayard  04:43 You know, I thought I was gonna go down the path of biologist scientists, ecologist, spent a year doing a residency in environmental education in the Grand Tetons, and we're realized after that year that actually maybe halfway into that year that I would be, I would feel kind of limited myself, I guess if I were to just sort of pick that path and run with it, although lots of people do that and love it, it just wasn't for me. What I recognized is that I just didn't have enough experience out in the world to be able to even say what I wanted to commit to for, you know, even for at least the next few years, so I thought that the Peace Corps was this opportunity to, to really throw myself into the unknown and experience something completely different. And hopefully learn about people learn more about people learn more about institutions learn more about how different cultures and communities operate. And it was like, throw myself in the deep end, I got even more than I bargained for, I'd say, How so, you know, the Peace Corps was hard in ways that I didn't expect, I, I think I was conditioned to think of it as a just really an opportunity to help make the world a better place. But there's a danger of that Savior mindset. If you go to a place thinking that you have the skills or the resources to be able to help or save in a way that you've maybe seen it on TV, and you realize you're, you're with people, and you're, you know, you're not any better or worse than the folks that you're going to live with. And as a Peace Corps volunteer, you are very much reliant on your community to take care of you and teach you and that was jarring. I think it's jarring for a lot of folks who go abroad for service work. They've, there's this idea that, you know, we go and we save, or we help. But really, going with a mindset of humility, and learning and growth, I think is much more important. And so I had to sort of adjust my worldview in a lot of ways and recognize that, you know, I had never really thought about, oh, gosh, you know, I'm gonna go help a community. In every community, there are people who are unkind, who lie, who, who cheat, who steal, etc. And I don't know why I think part of my my upbringing was thinking, well, if people are underprivileged, they're all nice all the time. And it's just a community like any other. So I thought that was really interesting to go and experience, you know, humanity in a different context. And recognize that a lot of the preconceptions I had about about other parts of the world were completely wrong. And so it was perfect learning and growth. For me, that's exactly what I needed.   Michael Hingson  07:52 Interesting kind of way to put it when you talk about underprivileged and so on. Do you think today that there is underprivileged other parts of the world as you thought they were, when you were first starting out in the Peace Corps,   Nick Bayard  08:06 I think the biggest blind spot I had was really on, it wasn't even so much about global issues, it was about American history. And as I've, as I've grown, you know, and, and gotten older, the extent of the, the blind spots I had around race and racism in America, have really driven sort of this last 10 years of my my life and my career, really, from a place of just, you know, feeling like I was robbed of an understanding of how formative racism was at the at the heart of how the country was born, and how it's evolved, and how it's progressed, and why certain communities experienced the conditions that they do. And so that's something that I've really worked hard at to understand, because it's not history that I got in school, it's not history that I heard about in my community, you know, as I came to find out, that's very much by design. And so I, I don't blame myself for it. But I recognize the responsibility I have to keep to always keep learning and growing. Yeah.   Michael Hingson  09:19 Well, I think that we do oftentimes find that there. Are there any number of people who think well, we're so much better off than than they are. And I think it depends on what you mean, by better off if you think about the world being more technologically advanced, we have access to more technologies and more creature comforts, in some ways. Anyway, there's probably some truth to that. But when you get down into community, you get down into family and you get to dealing with those concepts, and the closeness and the loyalty that that people have. That's a whole different animal and it's not necessarily at all clear that we're really any better off as, as well as some people, at least from what I've heard and learned?   Nick Bayard  10:05 Yeah, I think back to, you know, I developed some really important friendships in Paraguay and really got close to folks in a way that can't really compare it to some of the friendships I've had in America even just because the cross cultural cross language divide, bridging, that is a powerful thing. And I've, I think I laughed more in Paraguay than I, I ever have in a similar stretch of time and in America, because there's, there's a sense of humor and a lightness in the Paraguayan culture that I experienced that it's just delightful. And, you know, there's, I hosted a weekly radio show. And every week, folks would, would give me jokes to tell in the, in the native language, Guarani. And it was, you know, on the radio show, we talked about things like, you know, the environment and agriculture and green manures and things like that. But the thing that really stood out to people are the jokes, because they, there were things that people connected with, and sense of humor is just a really important part of the culture. So it was, it was just interesting to to experience that the joy of being there with folks who really, really did not have infrastructure around them. Shiny water, paved roads, things like that. Just just having a great time in life. That that was a good, a good lesson for me.   Michael Hingson  11:47 Yeah. And oftentimes, I think, here in this country, we don't slow down and stop and think about life. And that's something that I've been thinking about a lot. And we're actually going to talk about it in the new book that I'm writing, which tentatively is titled The Guide Dogs Guide to Being brave, but it's about taking time each day to stop and really think about what you did that day, what worked, what didn't and just thinking about life, we don't meditate nearly enough, do we?   Nick Bayard  12:17 And you can say that, again, I don't know if you have any, go two ways to remind yourself, that's something I struggle with is just actually committing to a pause until I feel like I really need it. I don't know if you if you have any insight,   Michael Hingson  12:36 you know, what we're what we're talking about in the book are several different techniques that can help. One thing that I find a lot of people use our vision boards and treasure mapping and visioning, where you put something up on a refrigerator, or somewhere to remind you of something like if you're going to take a vacation. And you want to really keep in the mindset of getting prepared for that you put a picture of like if you're going to go to Hawaii, you put a picture of Hawaii up well, you can do the same thing with with what we're talking about here, you can put up something around the house that says Don't forget to meditate at the end of the day, or when you when you get into bed before you turn off the light. If there's someplace that you normally look, put there a note, don't forget to take five minutes or 10 minutes to meditate. And you can put reminders up to do that. And what eventually happens, if you do it, and are consistent about it, you'll create a mindset that will cause you to automatically do it. And you'll be able to go more into a mode of of meditating. I took a course in transcendental meditation in college. And what they suggested was this make it a habit to get up 20 minutes early and meditate in the morning or and take and set up a time to do it at night. Nowadays, we have other ways to help with visioning. I, for example, put a lot of reminders in my little Amazon Echo device, I got to be careful of what I say or she's going to talk to me, but But I I put reminders in of things that I want to do not just about meetings on the calendar, but other things. And that's another way to vision it doesn't have to be from an eyesight standpoint. So you if you have an echo, you can tell it to remind you at 11 o'clock every night hey, go meditate for 10 minutes. I mean, there are a lot of ways to use technology and techniques to create a visioning environment to get you into the habit of doing something.   Nick Bayard  14:46 That's great. Yeah, I My My issue is I think I have to keep coming up with new ways to get my attention but get my own attention. Sort of like exactly how sometimes the sign word Some other times, I feel like I need up a sign that all kind of slapped me in the face. Because I'm not, I'm not willing to listen to what my my past self had reminded me to do. Well, that's   Michael Hingson  15:11 why I like the idea of the echo device. And I can tell it to we have several echo devices around the house. So I can have the reminder play on every echo device as well, so that it will remind me wherever I am in the house that you can't escape it. For me, I'm pretty much in the habit of doing it all the time. But still, having the reminder doesn't hurt. Right, right, right. So there are a lot of ways to give yourself a reminder to do something that will force you to at least for the second set, it's on to listen, and hopefully that will help you move forward and doing what it is you want to do. And taking time really to stop and or at least slow down and think a little bit is always an important thing to do.   Nick Bayard  16:03 Hmm. Yeah, I think one of the challenges of work from home is there's, there's folks that do that is less, less travel, less transition. And so it's easy for things to kind of pile up and go just back to back to back. And it's like, oh, let me actually go into the other room here and sit down for a minute and or take a walk outside. That's Those are good reminders.   Michael Hingson  16:29 Yeah. And those can be verbal with an echo device, you can send yourself a calendar invite that just remind you, every day, it's such and such a time, take the time to go off and do something and you know, you may not be able to do it right at that moment. But the reminder is still there. And by having something that forces you to at least think about it that is reminders in various formats and forms. That helps. All right, right. So we can take the time to do it. The problem that I think we mostly have is, oh, I just don't have time to do that. I've got to get this done or that done. Yeah, we do have time. Mental health is one of the most important thing, if not the most important thing that we can be doing for ourselves that we normally don't pay attention to. But in reality, we can make work for us.   Nick Bayard  17:22 For sure, for sure. I think that's that's originally actually what drew me in to burn out which is, which is the organization where I am. And it's a the flagship show that we run on radio stations, and our podcast is it's called burnout daily, that people probably know it as burnout. It's a minute, 45 seconds, and it's got a catchy theme song that invites you in and invites you to pay attention to the lives of burns for just Just a minute, 45 seconds. And that seems to be enough time that you can go deeply into something but not so much time that you you can't justify just sitting there and listening. Which is originally why you know why I came to love the program so much. Well,   Michael Hingson  18:15 how long were you in the Peace Corps?   Nick Bayard  18:17 I was there for I did a a two year volunteer service term. And then I stayed on for an additional year to be the coordinator of the environment sector.   Michael Hingson  18:28 Where the volunteers were was that. I'm sorry, where was that? Where did you do that?   Nick Bayard  18:34 In Paraguay? Okay, one of two landlocked countries in South America and the other?   Michael Hingson  18:40 Yeah. Right. Yeah, there's a lot of water around South America.   Nick Bayard  18:46 Yeah. You know, and, unfortunately, if Paraguay has not been, as that benefited from a lot of the natural resources on the continent, partly due to the, you know, the history of war, there was a major war that Paraguay found itself in against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, and it just turned into an actual massacre of genocide. It was, I think it was just after the US Civil War ended, or it was right around that time, and something like 80% of all boys and men are killed. And then the country shrunk. And then it was President Rutherford B. Hayes who brokered an agreement to give Paraguay back some of its land and so there's actually a county in Paraguay called President Hays County or it's been caught, but as they didn't they i Yes. And so I saw more busts and sort of recognitions of President Hayes in Paraguay than I ever expected to see anywhere. It's really interesting.   Michael Hingson  19:57 There's a historic fact I didn't know Cool. And that's, that's a good thing. And and we do have a Paraguay today. And so you spent time in the Peace Corps there, which is always a good thing.   Nick Bayard  20:10 Yeah. And it was, it was interesting to go and realize that Spanish wouldn't help me very much. I spoke a little bit of Spanish. I got there. But the Peace Corps trainer is quickly put me into a class to learn the language, quad knee, which is the language that most Paraguayan speak most of the time, and the class itself was taught in Spanish. And so I was just really having a hard time with that one, because I sort of it sort of felt like, you know, trying to use tweezers with oven mitts on it's like, I barely know what you're saying, I'm supposed to understand it enough to, to learn a whole new language, it ended up working out really well. But I ended up learning it very well, very, very, very fluently,   Michael Hingson  21:02 but but those first few months were pretty rough. Well, there's nothing like immersion to force you to learn something, which is going back to what we talked about, as far as giving yourself reminders to take time to think about life. You know, it's all about immersion.   Nick Bayard  21:18 Yeah, that the other really surprising thing that happened when I was first arriving in Paraguay was I was I was just starting to go bald. And I was dealing with all the emotions around that. And having a hard time with that, and, and some of the folks in my community where I was training, would ask me about it, and prod me about it, and even make fun of me about it. And so I, I realized, okay, if I'm gonna be able to have a snappy comeback or something, I've got a, I got to figure this out, because I just, I'm having a hard enough time with this already. And just to have people kind of prodding me in on something that I'm sensitive about, you know, I, I need to learn to communicate here.   Michael Hingson  22:03 Also a good way to maybe pick up some more jokes for a future radio program.   Nick Bayard  22:09 Yeah, exactly, exactly.   Michael Hingson  22:12 So what did you do after the Peace Corps?   Nick Bayard  22:15 Well, I came back to the US and wanted to be in DC, because that's where a lot of international development work was, was based, but actually ended up working for a nonprofit that develops high quality preschools in low income neighborhoods, called appletree. Institute, and help help them raise money and develop new schools. In areas where there hadn't traditionally been been very effective schools. And, you know, it was there that I really learned how to how to pitch an organization to funders. It was a, it was a fundraising role. And so that was really valuable for me, because I got to really understand how, you know what, what's compelling to people who might want to give and what is fundraising other than really giving somebody the opportunity to support something maybe they didn't know that they wanted to support. So I came to really enjoy fundraising and realize that if it's for something that I care about, it's it's a great opportunity for me and for the people that I connect with to to make the world a better place.   Michael Hingson  23:30 Yeah. How long did you do that?   Nick Bayard  23:33 I was there for two years. After about a year and a half, I felt like, Okay, I've kind of plateaued in this role, I'm going to apply to grad school, I got a very good score on my GRE and a friend of mine and her dad told her the score, and she said, you could go to Harvard. And I had not thought of that before she said it. And it sort of got the wheels turning, like maybe see what see what Harvard has gone on. And they had a master's program and Public Administration and International Development, which was really appealing because it was quantitative, heavy. It focused on economics, which everybody in international development just kept saying, you know, you got to have that foundation. And it ended up you know, being a program that the math was so advanced that it was sort of like being hit with a ton of bricks for the first year. You know, and then after the after that first year, I get into take more courses on, you know, things like public speaking and leadership and negotiation and writing, you know, the stuff that now feels a little bit more practical to my day to day, but it was actually that was where I met my wife and so I'm especially glad that that was worked out the way that it did because it completely. It completely, you know, formed every every moment since, you know, since I met Cydia, my wife. So that's probably the most valuable thing I got from Harvard.   Michael Hingson  25:18 Well that makes makes a lot of sense. So you got your master's degree was she in the same program,   Nick Bayard  25:23 she was in the School of Education getting she was getting her second master's degree. She had gotten a master's degree from the school for international training. And this master's degree was in learning and teaching at Harvard Graduate School of Education. And everybody at Harvard was just kind of blown away by her and what she knew about learning and teaching. Because she'd done it for so long understood it so well. And I think a lot of her classmates more and more from her than they did from some of the professors, to be honest. So she's she, she really understands how people learn better than anyone I've, I've met. And she's she's really helped me whenever I've given a training or had I sort of convey a concept to a group. Well just   Michael Hingson  26:16 give her permission to remind you every day to take some time to meditate and think about life. And I bet you'll have the habit in no time. I bet you're right. Wives, wives do that. And that's a blessing. So sure. So they're, and all that math. Well, everything needs math in one way or another. But I can appreciate the fact that once you survive the math, and sometimes I wonder when, when colleges and universities do those things that you don't expect, like in a program, like you're thinking of giving you so much math, or when I was at UC Irvine, the people who went into the bioscience program, before they got to the point of being able to take all of the regular bioscience courses other than introductory courses, they had to take a year of organic chemistry. And a lot of the people in the biocide program, we're gonna go into med so they were kind of pre med and all that. And what what happened is that people who enrolled in the biocide program at UC Irvine, I know the first year I was there, 1600 people enrolled. And there were 200 left by the end of their sophomore year, because organic chemistry and other courses like that weeded them out. And the bioscience department was very deliberate about insisting that you have to do all that before you can go on, even though and the reality is, of course, you would use that organic chemistry. But still, before you can get to the real practical stuff, you've got to be able to deal with the theory. So kind of wonder if they were doing that at Harvard, if that was part of the logic.   Nick Bayard  27:54 I wonder, you know, there's, you know, you wonder how sadistic some of these design these programs. One of the things that, you know, I feel like our program at Harvard does, you know, as it is it signals to folks who know about that degree, that you can do something very intense and difficult. Even if you don't end up using a lot of the hard skills, you know, that you you worked on there. So that's, that's been valuable for when folks know about that degree program. Anybody who's been through the Harvard Kennedy School will, I think set up a little straighter when you tell them that you have an NPA ID is that's that's the one that it's really the you know, the gut punch, especially in that first year.   Michael Hingson  28:45 Yeah, well, you survived it and you moved on, what did you do after you got that   Nick Bayard  28:50 degree? I actually spent a year working on music and recognize that like, there probably wouldn't be a time in a transition period when I'd have the opportunity to, to pursue music was something I've always loved and always done for, for, you know, just a full time thing for a while. And so when I when I met Cydia, she had been with our oldest son at the time, she'd come over as a single mom with her son, Wally, to Harvard, they kind of upgraded everything and came to Cambridge. And when I met Cydia, qualia was 10. And so we kind of became a family unit pretty quickly. And obviously when you know when to do it, and I got married, and so one of the things that came of that time we were living in DC was city I said, Why don't you write a children's album? And all of a sudden, all this music just started coming out of me, inspired by my conversation was with a query. And so it was really quite a fun time to, to be able to talk to him and understand his worldview and then write some music based on what I learned. And we, we ended up recording and producing this album together called wishing well. And it became pretty popular on the children's radio stations. And Wally and I were invited to be showcased performers at the world's only at the time Children's Music Conference. kindy calm, and at the time, we were the only act that had an actual kit, and you know, in the group, so that was quite a special time. And you know, we moved back out to cometa to put a trailer back in his his school he had been in, but we stayed on the East Coast for a year and did music and, you know, made some memories.   Michael Hingson  30:54 What good memories Wow, that's pretty amazing. I'm going to have to go look for the album.   Nick Bayard  31:00 Yeah, it was it was a surprise. To me, I had never thought of writing or recording children's music till Cydia suggested it. And I've, you know, I loved music as a kid Rafi has always been a hero of mine. And things kind of came full circle when I had a chance to take. Now our two youngest kids, we have four and a six year old to see Rafi alive. Just before the pandemic hit, we had a chance to meet him and give him a hug. And it just the you know, the the waterworks were turned on I it was more emotional than I expected it to be he so what did you do after music. That was we came out to Tacoma. And I was basically, you know, trying to figure out my place in this community and had a lot of meetings with folks and learned about an opening for the director of a social service organization that was working to support youth and young adults who were struggling with education and employment or housing, mental health, substance use disorders. And getting that job and really trying to build this thing into something that was, you know, trusted by young people and offered as many services as we can offer in one place. Because the young folks that have been burned by institutions are a lot less likely to trust institutions. And so we, as an institution could could help start to rebuild that trust a little bit by creating a space where people were, were welcomed and felt accepted, felt represented, and really could could be put on a path towards success, then we can make a big difference. And so it was a it was about as there for about five years, and we were able to increase mental health services on site, we were able to expand the the housing options for young people experiencing homelessness for our county. And we're able to really start the conversation around how institutional racism in the nonprofit sector is, is making our nonprofits not only in some cases, not effective, but in other cases, actually, the perpetuators of harm and so that's, that's something that I'm really pleased came out of that experience was was an opportunity to lead some of those conversations and be part of some of those efforts to to make it tough to make a change in the sector in terms of racial equity.   Michael Hingson  33:56 What made you go out to Tacoma in general,   Nick Bayard  34:00 well Cydia and equate my my wife and oldest son before I met them, they had been here my wife was born in eastern Washington and grew up in Tacoma. And so they had had they had a wife here before they went east to, to for city to get her second master's. And so we, you know, quaintly had his friends back here and I liked what I knew of Washington and so we decided to come out here and start a life together as a family. Less snow than the East Coast. Yes, sadly for me, but happily for much others in my family, who aren't as as big snow fans as I am,   Michael Hingson  34:47 but still get to snow.   Nick Bayard  34:49 We can. That's true. That's true. But it's a wonderful place to raise a family just because it's it is like you said you can get to almost anything Whether it's you know, the city, whether it is performing arts, venues, nature hikes, mountains, rivers, lakes, the ocean, you know, it's just, it's just great. And it's sort of like the home that I never knew I wanted.   Michael Hingson  35:20 And I'll bet being in Washington, you even know where Gonzaga University is where everyone else only knows once a year during basketball season.   Nick Bayard  35:28 That's right, we have some fierce, fiercely loyal folks, you know, in those, you know, in those in those fights, and I try to stay out of it. Yeah, the sports. The sports debates,   Michael Hingson  35:45 I had the honor of being invited to speak at Gonzaga several years ago, it was a lot of fun, and very much enjoyed being up there. So that's great. I've spent a lot of time around various places in Washington, which is always a good thing. We love Washington. Although we we love Victorville where we are we love it, especially because our house is very accessible, we built the house so that it's accessible for my wife. And so we can't complain. And then as you said, working at home, you know, you have all the things that you got to do. But we can create schedules and set it up to work, right. So it works out very well for us. So we're, we're pretty, we're pleased.   Nick Bayard  36:25 That's great. I'm curious if you, if you have any reflections on, you know, the people in Washington versus the folks where you are, one of the things I learned when I came out was that, that there's just sort of this, this norm of, it's okay to just start talking to somebody without even sort of an intro, sort of like you'd be at the supermarket and you can just, you can enter the middle of a conversation with somebody you've never met. I don't know if that was your experience when he came out here.   Michael Hingson  36:55 It was, and there are parts of California where you can do some of that. But I think the whole world is changing, we're getting to be such a polarized world, because of things that are happening in politics, that shouldn't happen, that people aren't talking to each other nearly as much as they used to, I don't know whether you're finding that out there. But we are seeing a lot more of it down here than we used to,   Nick Bayard  37:19 I find myself a lot more closed off. For a couple of reasons. One being, I still mask most places I go. And I also wear hearing aids. And so the combination of the mask and hearing loss, and, you know, just the mechanics of that, and then if somebody else is wearing a mask, it makes it really hard for me to, to hear what they're saying. Because I can't read their lips. And at the same time also, like, being a little bit wary of, you know, being around folks for too long and close environments. We've been lucky with COVID we haven't, haven't had it, but just, you know, I'm looking forward to, you know, science, figuring out more about how to how to prevent it, how to treat it, how to deal with long COVID, that kind of stuff. So yes, I've I've not been as gregarious as I think I always used to be. But I hope to get back to that at some point.   Michael Hingson  38:21 We have stayed pretty close to home, I've traveled a few times to speak, done a lot of virtual things, but we stay pretty close to home, just because it is safer. And you know, we can cope with that we we are pretty good at being flexible about things changing. And when people talk about getting back to normal. That just is never going to happen. And I first thought about that after September 11. Because people kept saying after September 11 With all the things that were going on and government being closed for a week and airports being closed and all that and just all the discussions and people started saying we got to get back to normal. And it was very frustrating to me. And I finally realized that it was frustrating, because normal will never be the same again.   Nick Bayard  39:09 Right. Right. And and what opportunities do we have to identify what what was bad about the old normal that we can we can change. One of the I think real blessings over the last few years has been people have been forced or and invited, I think to to examine how they're spending their time, what they give their time and effort to. And I see people being bolder about pursuing what they love and spending more time with their families. And I think that's a wonderful byproduct of what's been a really difficult couple of years.   Michael Hingson  39:53 Yeah. And I hope that that trend will continue in that path. People will recognize that, and that companies and bosses and leaders will recognize that there's value in letting people do that, because it'll be much better for their mental health. Absolutely. Well, you ended up going at least for a while into city government in Tacoma, right?   Nick Bayard  40:17 I did, I was the assistant chief equity officer in the Office of Equity and Human Rights, which is charged with supporting equitable representation in the workforce. Making sure that our community outreach is is, is really robust, making sure that policies and procedures are equitable, and, and that they recognize the harm that's been done over over decades, you know, against certain groups, and so it's, it's an office that I have a ton of respect for, and I was really happy to be able to serve for for a couple of years. And it was really, I think, it's really valuable to, to go back and forth between different sectors to, to be able to keep fresh eyes on things, one of the things I really appreciate being able to do was being able to come into the government role with lots of grassroots community development experience, and having relationships with a lot of folks that a lot of the city employees didn't have. And so I was able to kind of be a trusted liaison for a lot of those groups and for city staff, and, you know, everybody's got their own path. But for me, being able to, you know, take that experience, somewhere where it can be of good use is, is important. And that's that's also, you know, translated to coming back to the nonprofit sector and going into public media now, is that I've got, you know, that perspective of what it's like to be in government and, you know, as as an entity that reports to, to voters and to community members in a, you know, in the way that in the way that our elections are set up, and the way that our community engagement set up. So it was, it was a, it was quite a valuable experience,   Michael Hingson  42:19 did you in dealing with all of the various issues and aspects around equity? Of course, everybody talks about diversity and so on. But generally, when they do disabilities get left out of that, did you find that you were involved at all or very much in dealing with equity from the standpoint of dealing with persons with disabilities and making sure that they get into the, to the workforce, and that were treated fairly, and so on?   Nick Bayard  42:48 Yes, there actually, prior to my arrival, there had been a long standing Tacoma area commission on disabilities. And most of the members of that commission, if not all, experience, pretty significant disabilities, you know, carry those in their lives. And so our office was charged with being the liaison for that commission. And so whenever there was, the commission would bring a concern or a policy proposal to the city come through our office. One of the projects that was underway that we helped move forward while I was there, was around accessible taxis. And it, it's a good, it was a good window into just how complex is policy challenges can be. Because, you know, the the elected officials that would have to get put put this into place, you know, had to figure out, we had to figure out how much it costs, we had to figure out where folks would need to go, we had to figure out what it would mean to retrofit a taxi company's vehicles. And then how Uber and Lyft and others will be involved with that. And it was it's a multi year process that's still underway. But what we did was we commissioned a feasibility study, so that we could get a clearer and clearer sense of what the cost and scope would need to be so that the elected officials could make a good decision based on that. Something else that commission accomplished was I'm really proud of, but I didn't have any personal part of this is that they had the council pass an ordinance to require closed captioning in all places of business, restaurants and so on. So somebody that's hearing impaired or deaf, would be able to watch TV watch a sports game and know what's going on in a way that they hadn't before. So I think the the bigger issues to tackle had to do with accessible housing and accessible streets And, and that kind of thing. And those are those that's ongoing work. Of course,   Michael Hingson  45:03 other aspects of all that that still don't get addressed very well are things that deal with with eyesight and things like Braille menus in restaurants. So we're, now you've got many companies that we in one way or another are putting kiosks in their facilities and McDonald's and McDonald's is now starting to make those kiosks talk or even accessible voting machines, so that a person who happens to be blind or low vision can go in and use an accessible machine to be able to vote independently. And there are just a lot of challenges like that, that continue to get left out of a lot of the discussions, which is unfortunate.   Nick Bayard  45:47 Very unfortunate. So a question for me is always how do how do we elevate voices like yours and and others? Who? Who oftentimes, I think the, the discussion is it the, the the attention is ends up going on, you know, the, the group or the person that can shout the loudest? Yeah. And so that's not that shouldn't be the case, it should be, you know, we should take a look at intersecting issues of privilege and access and figure out, you know, if, if we can redesign our system so that those of us who you know, have the most barriers, or have have an easy time of it, I think we'll all have an easier time of it, boy struck by the universal design concepts that make things accessible for folks with disabilities, but also make them easier to access for folks without disabilities. It's hard to argue against a lot of investment and that kind of change, I think.   Michael Hingson  46:54 And therein lies one of the real keys that is that, in reality, a lot of the things that might make life more inclusive for us really would help other people as well. But so many people emphasize just one thing that it makes it more of a challenge, like eyesight, you know, so even and one of my favorite topics I've discussed a couple of times on this podcast are the Tesla vehicles were everything is really driven by a touchscreen. And to use not only voice input, what voice output is limited or non existent, there is some voice input to be able to do things. But I as a passenger in a Tesla can't even work the radio, because it's all touchscreen driven. That's really lovely. Except that whoever does it, and the case of a driver, a driver has to look at the screen. And yes, you do have some other capabilities of the Tesla helping with driving. But the reality is that with the state of technology today, people should be watching the road. And we've got the technologies to allow us to use other senses. And we don't do it nearly as much as we should. We have not and we have not embraced in inclusive mindset yet. And when we do, then a lot of the questions that people may have and the concerns that people may have will go away, because they'll realize that what affects some will really help everyone,   Nick Bayard  48:28 for sure. I think part of the part of the reason we get stuck on some of these things is that we tend to think about things in either or terms like either either you support blind people, or you support immigrants, or you support people of color or you support the LGBTQ community. And there's these like saying these soI completely separate projects is a recipe for complete failure to make anything change. And I think what we we need to recognize is that every group contains elements of every other group. Correct. And so helping helping one group fully is going to help other groups in different ways and thinking of ways that we can invest in those, you know, in the middle of those Venn diagrams, so that so that everybody benefits. Right.   Michael Hingson  49:30 Well, so you worked in government, and then how did you get to bird note from that?   Nick Bayard  49:35 Well, I've always loved birds and been fascinated by their behavior, their anatomy, their resilience, and had had taken some ornithology masters levels classes. I when I was out in Wyoming, and, you know, it hadn't been at the front of my mind. You know, since I started family hadn't been out bird watching too much. But then I saw that, you know, the executive director job at burnout had opened up. And it was interesting to me because I didn't realize that bird note itself was independent of radio stations. As a listener, I always thought the burden out was just part of our either part of our local radio station or part of NPR. But in fact, it's an independent nonprofit. And so it, it took me seeing the job opening to understand how the organization was set up. And all of a sudden, it I was just very excited about that opportunity. Because, you know, I'd had nonprofit leadership experience, I love birds, I love the burnt out daily show, and the long form podcasts that burned out, produces. And it it seemed to me that it was just a great next step, in terms of in terms of getting to know a new field of public media, in terms of being able to take some skills I've learned elsewhere and apply them. And it was, you know, it was it was a job where I didn't know anyone going into it. And so, you know, a lot of people and myself included, you know, get jobs through, you know, a personal connection, introduce you to somebody, and then you go through an application or interview process. With burnout, it was it was first time recently where I just applied and was invited to interview. And so in that way, it was, it was gratifying, just not that I, you know, not that there's anything wrong with, you know, having those connections, but, you know, it's It felt good to just apply and just on the nature of what they saw, have them give me a call and,   Michael Hingson  51:58 and asked me to, to interview. And the rest is sort of history.   Nick Bayard  52:05 That's right. That's right, as coming up on one year and November.   Michael Hingson  52:08 So tell us a little about bird note, I'd appreciate knowing more about what exactly the organization is, what it does, and so on.   Nick Bayard  52:17 Sure, we're an independent public media nonprofit organization that's been around since 2005. And it it started really, as a as a radio program under the auspices of Seattle Audubon. And eventually, after a few years it, it became its own nonprofit. And it started really with this vision that the founders vision was to produce a short, sound rich audio experience for radio listeners about birds. And it's just become a really beloved institution in the areas where it's broadcast. And it it's now we've got the flagship show is the minute 45 second show, copper note daily that broadcasts in about 250 public radio stations across the US. We've got long form podcasts, those are called threatened and bring birds back. And we do virtual events and things that most listeners know us for burning out daily. Because that's our biggest audience. We've got, we think around 5 million daily listeners to that show. And so what's really powerful about that, is that we're able to, I believe, create a mindset shift for all of those folks, in terms of inviting them to slow down, pay attention to nature, learn something amazing about birds, and hopefully get inspired to spend more time with nature, with birds, and to the point where we hope we inspire action. For conservation, whether that's something simple, like the way that you live your life, the way that you set up your bird feeders, the way that you turn off your lights during migration season, those kinds of things, all the way up to advocating for more federal legislation for conservation. You know, we hear from listeners that we we have changed their lives, which is really amazing to hear that we've inspired people to to pursue careers in ornithology bird science, that we have helped people with mental health. People say that the show calms them down. It's something that they look forward to every day. And I think the really, really big opportunity we have is to continue showcasing and diversifying people from every background on the show and stories that reflects different kinds of knowledge. folks that aren't, you know, this the the typical profile of somebody who's been centered a conservation over the last 100 years. white male, able bodied person recognize that every group is connected to burns and has a love of, of burning in the outdoors. And we have an opportunity to elevate those stories that haven't been elevated, you know, over over our country's history, which is, I think, very powerful.   Michael Hingson  55:20 So what is the typical one minute 45 second show, like what happens?   Nick Bayard  55:27 Well, sometimes we we start with our theme song, which I'm not going to attempt to recreate with my voice here on burnout.org. And hear that it's a it's a very short, little, just very catchy, you know, couple of seconds thing and then you'll hear the narrator say, this is bird note. And then you'll hear the sound of birds usually, and the narrator will talk you through what you're hearing. And well explained something about the birds behavior, something that we you know, we're learning about the birds something that scientists have just figured out, that kind of thing, then we'll take you back to the sounds of the birds, and then maybe one or two more pieces of information. And then from time to time, well, well let folks know what they can do to to learn more or to connect or to you know, to to make a difference for birds. This morning show was about the white Bennett storm petrel, which is a seabird lives off the coast of Chile and Peru. And it lives most of its life just over the water. And it took scientists eight years to figure out that this storm petrol actually nests about 50 miles inland and the desert and part of the continent that people describe as looking like the surface of bars. So anytime we can, we can drop in some surprising fun tidbits of information for our listeners, we love to do that too. So is bird node, a standard 501 C three nonprofit it is. And if you've got a burden on.org, you can learn more about how to get our email list, which gives you a sneak preview of all of our daily or weekly shows. You can support bird note, we, we we rely on the generosity of listeners to do what we do. And so, you know, unlike a radio station public radio station, which does a fun to drive every couple of years, or sorry, a couple times a year, we we are asking listeners over social media and have our email list to support us with gifts. And we're fortunate to have a lot of generous listeners who donate monthly and who give annually. And one of the services that we've created is something called Bird note plus, where you can subscribe at a different level of monthly giving to get ad free podcasts and get access to special events and get early access to shows and so if there any podcast fans or bird lovers out there that want to check out bird note plus, I would encourage them to do that.   Michael Hingson  58:19 I would as well. It it sounds like a lot of fun. I have not I guess either been up at the right time or whatever have not heard bird no daily here so I'm going to have to go set up a reminder to go listen on the website, I guess every   Nick Bayard  58:34 day. Please do. Yes, you can subscribe anywhere you can podcasts, you can subscribe to the sempurna daily, something that's really exciting as we just launched burnout en Espanol. So it's our first dual language production. So there's a new podcast feed for burnout and Espanyol where it's it's the same experience of the English burden on daily but in Spanish and speaking with folks in and in it throughout the Americas that are doing conservation work. In conversation in Spanish, it's, I think a really great opportunity for us to broaden our audience throughout the Americas. And then our our long form podcasts you can also find anywhere you get podcasts or bring birds back is is I think there's just a really special program that's hosted by a woman named Tanisha Hamilton who models her entry into birding and you just feel the enthusiasm and excitement as she gets into this and talks about things like what it's like to be a black woman birder what it's like to find your own community and birding. You know, how do people with disabilities? What are some of the technologies that they can use to get out and look at birds there and then there are different sort of species specific Two episodes, one of the really popular ones is about the purple Martin, which, which has an amazing history of interplay with with Native American communities and, and carried forward today where people will become what they call purple Martin landlords and create houses for them and just it's just a great story. Great, great program. And then our we have a field based long form podcast called threatened, which is hosted by already Daniel who's on NPR science desk now, and that's about going to the place they're doing in depth work to understand the conservation challenges birds are facing. And so that that podcast is coming out with new episodes in January, focused on Puerto Rico and island habitats. We just wrapped up the season on Hawaii, which was, which was really fascinating.   Michael Hingson  1:00:57 Well, I, I'm gonna go listen, I It will be fun to go do that. Well, if people want to reach out and learn more about you and burden on I assume they can go to bird node.org. But how can they contact you and learn more?   Nick Bayard  1:01:11 Sure they can. They can email me directly at Nick B. At bird note dot org. Always happy to chat. If it's a general bird note inquiry, you can email info at bird note.org We get a lot of people writing in with bird questions. You know, how do we get burned out on our local radio station, that kind of thing. We love to hear those kinds of questions because it helps us connect with new audiences and new radio stations. And, you know, I'm hopeful that we can grow the broadcasts range of Berto because right now we brought about 250 radio stations. But if if we were to, you know, get broadcasts on some of the bigger stations, we could double or triple our audience overnight, which would be, which would be amazing. And it's just a minute 45 seconds. So it's not exactly like a huge investment. I understand that, that time is a finite resource on radio, but I just I don't think there's any good reason why every radio station shouldn't play Burnin Up   Michael Hingson  1:02:18 is short Is it is it makes perfect sense to do. Well, I, I find it fascinating and I hope everyone listening to us today will find it fascinating as well. And that they will reach out to you I think it will be beneficial. And as I said, I'm gonna go make it a habit, I think I can easily do that minute and 45 seconds is just not that long. It's not a big ask just and it's such a such a joyful   Nick Bayard  1:02:47 show. You know, I came into this job as a huge fan, and just have become an even bigger fan, just, you know, getting under the hood and understanding everything that goes into developing creating and producing these shows. So I just feel really lucky to be doing what I do and lucky to have the chance to try to share it with as many people as I can and lucky to ask people to write us check some of sign up to God because that's that's what, that's what keeps us producing the stories and what what allows us to keep growing?   Michael Hingson  1:03:27 Well, I'm gonna go check out bird note.org. And a little bit more detail. Do you know if the website designer paid any attention to or spend any time making sure that it's accessible and put an accessibility kinds of elements to the site? And or do you know if they've done that?   Nick Bayard  1:03:42 We've done a, we our web developer ran an accessibility audit. I need to dig into the details around which aspects are good and which are bad. They told us we got a 91% score.   Michael Hingson  1:03:58 That's pretty good.   Nick Bayard  1:03:59 I think yeah, I think it's pretty good. That's you know, there's always, always room for improvement. One of the things that we were early early adopters of is the the transcripts of every episode on how to be really descriptive in those but I know that we've got got work to do and would welcome any, any feedback you have for sure when you when you go and check it out.   Michael Hingson  1:04:26 We'll do it. And I will definitely communicate either way. Well, Nick, thanks again for being with us. This has been fun and fascinating. I hope you've enjoyed it and and we really appreciate you coming on and we hope you'll be back and update us as burnout progresses.   Nick Bayard  1:04:44 Well, thanks so much, Michael. And I just want to say I'm really inspired by you and your story and I was just thrilled to hear from you and get the invitation to talk. So it's been just a really wonderful Expo. grandson a great honor to be able to chat with you today.   Michael Hingson  1:05:03 Well, my pleasure as well. And for all of you out there listening, please reach out to Nick, please learn more about bird note. And we hope that you'll give us a five star rating wherever you're listening to the podcast. We really appreciate you doing that. I'd love to hear your comments, please feel free to email me at Michaelhi at accessibe.com A C C E S S I B E, or go to our podcast page, Michael hingson.com/podcast. But either way, I would appreciate your five star review would appreciate your comments. And Nick, for you and for everyone listening if you know of anyone else who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset. We'd love to hear from you about that as well. So thanks for listening. And Nick once more. Thank you very much for being a part of us today and our podcast. Thanks so much.   Michael Hingson  1:05:55 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Monologue:* Daylight Savings Time Madness* 19 Year Old County Clerk with no experience* Buc-ee's largest store yet* Low Military and Law Enforcement recruitment/retentionGuest:The Dripping Springs ISD Board of Trustees recently unanimously approved the hiring of Sirenna Cumberland as the district's new Director of Safety. Cumberland is an accomplished law enforcement professional with 28 years of experience. During her career, she served as a patrol deputy and investigator – all in Hays County – and is no stranger to Dripping Springs Independent School District. She spent six years as a School Resource Officer with the district from 2013 to 2019.We discuss school safety in the age of parents worried about school shootings and a fentanyl crisis.  Learn what you can do help prevent your kids from making a life altering mistake.Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. New episodes weekly.Thanks for listening! Make sure to follow us & leave a review. Apple PodcastsMallett and Michelle on InstagramOur Website - Sign up for latest updates. We love your feedback & comments. Email: mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

We continue to talk about the Biden administration's "Thanksgiving talking points" for supporters and a 19-year-old high school graduate won a county election in Hays County defeating the incumbent Republican candidate. All that and more! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Attention Mentions: Michelle: House of the Dragon on HBO Claire: she co-signs the House of the Dragon recommendation! Nichole: Hoard House Flippers on Hulu Dr. Michelle Gutierrez Cohen shares her experience growing up in Hays County, Texas, and her deep family ties to her community. We learn about her decision to pursue secondary education after the age of forty and how she completed her Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate degrees. Her dissertation inspired her to commit to running for office, starting a leadership organization, and sharing everything she's learned. True to her commitment, she is on the November 2022 ballot for County Commissioner for Precinct 2 in Hays County, Texas. She shares her pandemic experience of seeing a problem with health outcomes in communities of color in Hays County, and she immediately got to work to solve those inequities. The result of that problem-solving was the creation of Hays Latinos United. Dr. Michelle Gutierrez Cohen educates us on the role of County Commissioners and the structure of the Commissioners Court. We were reminded of the undeniable importance of Texas local races and the impact they have on our daily lives.

Wee-woo wee-woo wee-woo! Ever wanted to solve a case? Go undercover? Save a life? Maybe even receive a cash prize in return? Now is your chance! In this episode, Melynn interviews our campus SRO Officer Lozano along with a special guest from the Hays County Police Department, Officer Jordan. They discuss how eager they are to help the community, and allow the community to help with safety as well. Campus Crime Stoppers is a non-profit organization which allows any caller to give information through a positive, anonymous system without the fear of judgement. This program has been incorporated at Hays High School, San Marcos High School, and now Johnson Highschool! Links are provided below. https://www.callcrimestoppers.com/campus-crime-stoppers Hays County Crime Stoppers, Inc. 1-800-324-TIPS ​ Download the app : P3Tips --------=-------------=----------------=--------------=--------------=--------- If you enjoyed this episode or want to show your love for the podcast, make sure to share, follow & leave a review! FOLLOW on INSTA: @jaguarhourpodcast to stay updated on upcoming episodes! FOLLOW & SHARE the PODCAST on SPOTIFY! FOLLOW & SHARE the PODCAST on APPLEPODCASTS! HAVE a SUGGESTION or ANY QUESTIONS? EMAIL JAGUARHOURPODCAST@GMAIL.COM

Elaine Brown believes that judges have an important role to play in our society. As an attorney, she has a broad range of experiences that uniquely qualify her for this position. Her education and experience provide her with the skills necessary to analyze the facts and to apply the law fairly. She feels it is important to uphold the law, while also balancing the needs of our society. Many people will be affected by this court, whether it is through a probate matter, a criminal matter or a civil suit. Elaine is running Hays CountySteve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, anddiscover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a HillCountry oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to thissmall town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a localresident who's talent and past will make you want to know more aboutwhat draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchersto engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. Newepisodes weekly.Sponsored by: The Mallett Integrity Team Real Estate CompanyMallett Integrity Teamwww.mallettandmichelleonds.comThanks for listening! Make sure to follow us & leave a review. Apple PodcastsMallett and Michelle on InstagramOur Website - Sign up for latest updates. We love your feedback & comments. Email: mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

Lonestar News for Monday, September 26, 2022 (7:30 PM) Texas news and current events. In a world overwrought with fake news and propaganda by a biased media monopolized by six media corporations, The C Report emerges as an America First news show sifting through the aggregate to bring people around America and the world a different view that is independent, fair and patriotic. Join Mr. C weekdays for The C Report on Rumble, Clouthub, Foxhole, Pilled, or Twitch. === === === === === === SIGN UP FOR THE E-MAIL LIST: https://www.TheCReport.com === === === === === === SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE TO THE PODCAST: https://www.anchor.fm/thecreport === === === === === === SUPPORT: https://cash.app/$MacX5x5 https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/macx99336 https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mrctv === === === === === === SHOP: https://shop-mr-ctv.creator-spring.com/ === === === === === === MUSIC: "To the Top" by Sioux --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thecreport/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thecreport/support

El Camino Real de los Tejas is a National Historic Trail that traces back to before the start of Texas. The 2,600 miles stretch all the way from the Texas border to Natchitoches, Louisiana. Part of the historic trail runs right through San Marcos.

Walt Smith moved to Dripping Springs in 2012 and fell in love with the community.  He wanted to serve the community and 4 years ago was elected at the County Commissioner for Precinct 4 in Hays County.  He grew up on a small ranch in Hillsboro and still loves the ranching and outdoor lifestyle.  He had a stint in Washington DC before coming home to Texas.  He discusses taxes, road, budgets and all the complexities of running one of the fastest growing counties in the country.  Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. New episodes weekly. Sponsored by: The Mallett Integrity Team Real Estate CompanyMallett Integrity Teamwww.mallettandmichelleonds.com 

This week, Drewby and Yergy travel down to Kyle, Texas - a town just outside of the state capital of Austin, to discuss the case of Krystle Villanueva - a young mother whose paranoid delusions caused her to do the unthinkable - to kill and dismember her 5 year old daughter, Giovanna. And why did she do this? Because the little girl asked for cereal.  Check out Hollie's masks here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/HollsNDolls Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://casetext.com/case/villanueva-v-state-157 https://writeaprisoner.com/inmates/krystle-villanueva-02315465/penpal https://inmate.tdcj.texas.gov/InmateSearch/viewDetail.action?sid=07766747 https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/unit_directory/gv.html https://hayscountytx.com/2020/03/06/krystle-villanueva-convicted-of-capital-murder/ https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Hays-County-woman-gets-life-in-prison-for-15110469.php https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-news/woman-gets-life-in-prison-in-stabbing-beheading-of-5-ydaughter/2325909/ https://people.com/crime/texas-mom-gets-life-in-prison-for-beheading-daughter-5-because-girl-asked-for-cereal/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK570557/#:~:text=Capgras%20syndrome%20(CS)%2C%20or,someone%20significant%20to%20the%20patient. https://www.instagram.com/mizzkrystle/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/refugio_jr86/?hl=en https://expressdigest.com/texas-mom-sentenced-to-life-for-killing-and-decapitating-daughter-5-because-she-asked-for-cereal/ https://www.gofundme.com/f/Giovanna-Hernandez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26SGuYBcM4&ab_channel=KXAN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIrzKrW1ll8&ab_channel=KXAN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBmOa6NcKYY&ab_channel=KXAN

Today's episode (158) features City of Kyle Council Member Dex Ellison. He and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss the growth and associated challenges with one the fastest growing cities in Texas. According to the U.S. Census, the city grew from a populations of 5,000 in 2000, to just over 52,300 (and growing) in 2020. First elected to Kyle City Council in November 2019, Council Member Ellison was re-elected in November 2019. Located just 30 minutes south of Austin on the booming I-35 corridor, Kyle also sits in Hays County, one of the fastest growing counties in the nation. LINKS: Council Member Dex Ellison on Facebook -> https://www.facebook.com/Citizensfordexellison/ City of Kyle Council Page -> https://www.cityofkyle.com/council/council-member-district-1-dex-ellison ABOUT THE BINGHAM GROUP, LLC The Bingham Group, LLC is a Austin lobbying firm serving businesses, nonprofits and trade associations. Austin and Austin Metro lobbying and advocacy, along with and Texas lobbying and advocacy are our largest service areas, covering municipal governments and the legislative and executive branches of Texas government. We are a HUB/MBE-certified Austin lobbying firm. Follow us on LinkedIn for content updates and the BG Reads: www.linkedin.com/company/binghamgp CONTACT US at: info@binghamgp.com FOLLOW US: Facebook -> www.facebook.com/binghamgp Instagram -> www.instagram.com/binghamgroup Twitter -> twitter.com/binghamgp THE BG PODCAST IS PART OFTHE BG MEDIA NETWORK An Austin-based digital content network focused on emerging creators. From concept to execution, and on, we help you tell your story. Released by: BG Media Group for The Bingham Group, LLC (www.binghamgp.com)

Austin's annual day of giving, Amplify Austin Day, is on right now until 6pm tonight - the list of non-profits and charities taking part is long and varied, and you're certain to find a cause that aligns with your interest. Local COVID statistics continue dropping dramatically - just one day after our local pandemic precaution level was reduced officially from Stage 4 to Stage 3, our weekly hospital admission rate dropped below 15 and thus into Stage 2 range. Austin ISD has decided amidst declining numbers to shift to a mask optional policy on its campuses beginning on Monday. Hays County officials differ with a new COVID risk map from the CDC that has shown since its debut a High risk of the disease in the county south of Austin. This week's mid-term primary ended up with typically low turnout, but not as low as early voting indicated - 18% of Travis County voters cast ballots. A discussion of the ongoing war in Ukraine by experts at UT concludes that there's a potential for the reshaping of global politics, calling the invasion by Russia a very serious international crime. Texas State Comptroller Glenn Hegar has announced efforts by the state of Texas to divest itself from any investments in Russia or Russian-owned companies. A Travis County judge has blocked the child abuse investigation of a family for providing their transgender child with gender-affirming care, spurred by new orders by Governor Greg Abbott. A rally was held at the Capitol in support of families of transgender kids on Wednesday, at least one violent arrest by Texas State Troopers was caught on video. Austin-based Indeed is set to launch a new 10 million dollar program to help Americans who are struggling to find jobs. The Hole In The Wall had a scare yesterday, but is apparently not in the way of a planned extension of Dean Keeton Street. Central Texas is apparently ridden with obsolete bridges. Austin Pets Alive is in need of cat carriers as a large number of stray cats are brought under their care. SXSW has announced they'll still require either a recent negative COVID test or proof of current vaccination of participants, while free public shows during South By will feature Sammy Hagar, Mt. Joy and Trail of Dead. Willie Nelson has added three shows at his Luck, Texas property during SXSW, tickets go on sale tomorrow.

Austin area COVID-related hospitalizations continued dropping throughout the weekend and are now halfway thru Stage 3 range at 19.9, less than 5 points from Stage 2 - that new county map from the CDC shows Travis and Williamson Counties under low COVID risk, but Hays County under high risk. Today is election day in the mid-term primary. Only about ten percent of registered voters in Travis County voted early, which doesn't bode well for turnout today. A slew of statewide offices and all of our U.S. House seats are in play - polls will be open today from 7am to 7pm and remember, the margin to win outright is 50% plus one vote - any candidate falling short of that will face their runner-up in a runoff election in late May - Governor Greg Abbott would like to avoid a runoff with any of his challengers and seems on track to do so. Today is also Fat Tuesday - Cajun joints throughout town including Evangeline Cafe, Shoal Creek Saloon, Cypress Grill, and many more expect big business tonight. Austin ISD officials will hold a special meeting tomorrow to discuss future plans for district masking policies. The Texas men's basketball team played their last game ever on the court of the Frank Erwin Center last night, a 68-61 loss to Baylor. Women's hoops will close out at Frank Erwin on Saturday vs Oklahoma State, and the Harlem Globetrotters will close that court out officially on April 2. There's also Monster Jam monster truck event scheduled at the Frank Erwin Center on March 12 - the building is set to be demolished sometime in April. High school football phenom and Louisiana legacy QB Arch Manning is set to meet again with Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian later this month - could he be on his way to Austin?Austin based Juiceland is set to resume its expansion plans after holding back during the pandemic with openings coming in the suburbs of San Antonio and Dallas. The Chicks announce a U.S. tour - with a conspicuous lack of Texas dates. The Alamo has been named one of the ten most beautiful monuments in the U.S. - remember to take a drive down to visit if you haven't lately. Congrats to the members of the Williamson County Go Texan BBQ team, who won the 2022 World Championship BBQ competition at the Houston Rodeo on Saturday, dominating a field of 250 teams. Keep an eye out for American Idol episodes airing on Sundays this month on Fox for glimpses of home - the show shot auditions at Lakeway Resort's Vista Ballroom last fall. And, don't forget Amplify Austin Day for this year - it starts at 6pm tomorrow night and runs through the same time Wednesday.

Join Chris and Courtney of The Poetry Question in a sit down with Mx. Faylita Hicks, author of Hoodwitch (Acre Books) and EiC of Black Femme Collective, about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! FAYLITA HICKS (she/they) is the author of HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, the 2019 Balcones Poetry Prize, and the 2019 Julie Suk Award. The Editor-in-Chief of Black Femme Collective, they currently serve as the 2022 Writer-in-Residence for the Texas After Violence Project. In June 2021, they became a voting member of the Recording Academy/Grammys as a spoken word artist. Hicks is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Black Mountain Institute, Broadway Advocacy Coalition, Civil Rights Corps, The Dots Between, Jack Jones Literary Arts, Lambda Literary, Tin House, and the Right of Return USA. Their work has been featured in or is forthcoming in Adroit, American Poetry Review, the Cincinnati Review, Ecotone, Kenyon Review, Longreads, Poetry Magazine, The Rumpus, Slate, Texas Observer, Yale Review, amongst others. Their poetry is anthologized in The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, What Tells You Ripeness: Black Writing on Nature, and When There Are Nine (Pangyrus, 2021). Their personal account of their time in pretrial incarceration in Hays County is featured in the ITVS Independent Lens 2019 documentary, “45 Days in a Texas Jail,” and the Brave New Films 2021 documentary narrated by Mahershala Ali, “Racially Charged: America's Misdemeanor Problem.” Hicks received a BA in English from Texas State University-San Marcos and an MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada University. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

BG PODCAST EPISODE 149 Today's episode features Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra (D). First elected in 2018, Judge Becerra announced he will be seeking a second term in office in November 2022. However, he must first secure the Democratic nomination in tomorrow's primary. The Bingham Group CEO A.J. and Judge Becerra discuss his first term, and what he hopes to achieve if re-elected. Per the 2020 U.S. Census, Hays was fastest growing Texas county from 2010 to 2020. Learn more about Judge Becerra's campaign here -> https://www.judgebecerra.org/ CONTACT US Follow us for weekly episode updates and more on: Facebook -> www.facebook.com/binghamgp Instagram -> www.instagram.com/binghamgroup LinkedIn -> www.linkedin.com/company/binghamgp Twitter -> twitter.com/binghamgp Interested in our services or have an episode suggestion? Email us at: info@binghamgp.com ABOUT THE BINGHAM GROUP, LLC The Bingham Group, LLC is minority-owned full service lobbying firm representing and advising clients on government affairs, public affairs, and procurement matters in the Austin metro and throughout Central Texas. PART OFTHE BG MEDIA NETWORK An Austin-based digital content network focused on emerging creators.From concept to execution, and on, we help you tell your story. Released by: BG Media Group Release date: 28 February 2022

Community Impact Newspaper's Austin City Hall reporter Ben Thompson discusses early voting turnout in Austin's special election for city council District 4 and looks ahead to more local elections this year.  The CI Morning Breakdown is a production of Community Impact Newspaper. It is produced by Olivia Aldridge with editing by Marie Leonard.   Learn more at www.communityimpact.com/podcast/morning-breakdown.

Austin's COVID numbers have been in Stage 2 for 11 days now - why is the city still officially at Stage 3? Austin parents finding it hard to pin down a vaccine appointment for their kids are set for relief from their schools. Still more anti-Semitic activity, this time in San Marcos and Hays County. Austin City Council Member Greg Casar announces a run for the 35th District seat of the U.S. House of Representatives. City and county officials have released a post-mortem on Winter Storm Uri, complete with recommendations for this winter. Elon Musk's SpaceX facility at Boca Chica has run afoul of wildlife advocates. Former UT QB Sam Ehlinger makes his regular season NFL debut in a brief appearance in the 45-30 win by his Indianapolis Colts over the New York Jets. Crowdsourced data site Numbio finds Austin sixth in the entire world for quality of life. Austin, New Braunfels and Round Rock make SmartAsset's list of America's Top 50 Boomtowns. Nine Austin businesses make Inc. Magazine's list of the best-run in the country, led by Bumble who are tops for both Austin and Texas. The original Catfish Parlour on 183 will close as of this weekend after 48 years in business, while Mickelthwaite Craft Meats expands with a new food market and beer garden. The Austin Police Department is seeking volunteers for this year's Operation Blue Santa effort. And a gorgeous fall weekend is afoot - enjoy!

Lawmakers in Austin are in a special legislative session tackling redistricting. They're redrawing the political boundaries for Texas districts in the U.S. House, along with the Texas House, Texas Senate, and State Board of Education. Growth in Texas the last decade was greatest in urban centers and suburbs. The state's five largest counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar, and Travis — experienced 44 percent of the state's growth. All 10 of the state's fastest-growing counties in the last decade were suburban. Hays County, between Austin and San Antonio, experienced the most growth, doubling its population. The challenge of redistricting is...Article Link

A continued fifth day of decline in our new COVID hospitalization average is a sliver of hope as AISD students are due back on campus today. Austin and several other districts are holding fast to their mask mandates to Governor Greg Abbott's chagrin, while several others remain mask optional - here's a list of local ISD's and their policies. Some AISD classrooms are not only mask-required, but are also lacking proper air conditioning as the school year begins. Meanwhile several smaller, sparsely-vaccinated and mask-averse school districts across Texas have already shut down with breakouts. Health experts are expected to announce boosters for the vaccinated at eight months soon. Hays County is officially the fastest-growing county in Texas according to new U.S. Census data. Gary Clark Jr. breaks in the brand new stage at Waterloo Park this weekend. And, we're likely as not to see more rain today and tomorrow.

Suspect who led HPD on car chase was free on a PR bond for murder from Hays County; woman called a “serial stowaway” is arrested again at the airport; the media pushing the narrative that Asians under attack in America; woman arrested again for refusing to wear maskGuest: Sen Ted Cruz, on the border & HR 1More on H.R. 1Guest: Raymond Arroyo, on his latest book, ‘The Thief Who Stole Heaven’Challenging lockdowns; Singer Travis Tritt makes a great point on social distancing and masks; Vaccine testing on babies; Plus, vaccine deaths happening?

Episode 20: Standard Reunification MethodJohn-Michael Keyes Interview - Part 1Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to our next podcast. Today we've got a surprise for you. Our guest today is John Michael Keyes from the I Love You Guys Foundation. John Michael, thanks for being here today.John-Michael:Oh Bill, thanks for having me.Bill Godfrey:I'm so excited to be able to do this. You're our first official guest on the podcast, and I really couldn't think of anybody else I'd rather have to kind of kick this off in introducing our audience to more speakers on the podcast than just the instructors and the team. So I really appreciate you squeezing in the time to do it. I'd actually be surprised if any of our listeners didn't already know who you were or what the I Love You Guys Foundation was all about, but do you mind just for those that may not know, give us a quick, brief history into how the I Love You Guys Foundation came to be and what you do?John-Michael:Absolutely, Bill. I'm the executive director of the I Love You Guys Foundation, and the foundation has been in existence now for 13 years. We started it 13 years ago in the face of tragedy. A gunman had entered Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado and held seven girls hostage. Among those girls was my daughter, Emily. Over the course of the afternoon, our stranger let some of the girls go, and while she was held hostage, Emily was able to send a text message, I love you guys. Ultimately the gunman shot and killed Emily, and the Jefferson County Regional SWAT team shot him. But based on that message, we started the I Love You Guys Foundation, and initially worked with other organizations in supportive of a mission. And it wasn't until 2009 when we started diving deep into school safety. And what we saw was there wasn't a common language between students, staff, and first responders in a crisis.And, we found a handful of districts around the country that were using some very specific language, and based on that, we created the standard response protocol. And, at the time it was based on four actions, lockout, lockdown, evacuate, and shelter. Since 2015 we've had an optional fifth faction, hold in your classroom. And, it just started taking off, and we developed materials and training around the standard response protocol, and the foundation offered the programs and all of the materials at no cost on our website. And from modest beginnings in 2009, today our estimate is almost 30,000 schools, districts, agencies and organizations are using our programs.Bill Godfrey:That's just phenomenal. That's just phenomenal.John-Michael:It's humbling sometimes, Bill, in all honesty. But the foundation's made a commitment, and what we found is that in some very specific lanes we can do things. And, in 2012 we introduced the standard reunification method, and that's another whole in schools crisis planning. And again, working with districts who had cracked that nut, we packaged the materials up and offer the program at no cost on the website. And, it's been remarkable. The partnership we've had with you in evolving that program has been spectacular.Bill Godfrey:It's a fabulous mission, and the work you guys do, it's just beyond phenomenal. And I don't really know how you ever measure the impact. I mean, we can measure the data and we can measure the numbers and the implementations, but the impact and the emotional value, just I don't think there's any way to understate it. John Michael, I'm going to take you back for just a second. So you gave a great overview of the standard response protocol, and I think everybody, at least in our audience listening, certainly understands what we mean by evacuate or shelter in place. Can you elaborate a little bit more on lockout versus lockdown? Because that was a terminology that you introduced to us, I don't know how many years ago it was, but it was something that we hadn't heard before, and I thought that was really, really a big element for emergency responders to understand.John-Michael:Well, FEMA has given us guidance saying lockdown for ages and ages, but they haven't given us great guidance on what that really means and what to do. And, so we saw schools and districts and agencies doing things like soft lockdowns, and hard lockdowns, and code red, and code yellow and code whatever. And, FEMA has also given us guidance that codes don't work in a crisis. And so, when we first started going down this path, some of those districts were using the term lockout. And, in a lockout we're going to bring everyone inside, lock the outside doors, and as much as possible do business as usual. Just because 7/11 is getting robbed down the street doesn't mean we need to shut down what's happening inside the building. And so that differentiation allowed us then to clarify a lockdown.And in our world, a lockdown is a lockdown, is a lock down. It's locks, lights, out of sight. Get that door locked and get behind that locked door, try to get out of sight. And what we've seen in our data is that a locked classroom door is a proven time barrier. In looking at events, we have found only a handful where a gunman has harmed people who are behind a locked classroom door. And in none of those cases was that door breached. Recently in the Parkland event, our perpetrator there shot into classrooms when he could see occupants. Red Lake, Minnesota, our perpetrator there actually shot the lock and didn't defeat it, but gained entry into the classroom through the side panel window. The only other time we lost somebody who was behind a locked classroom door was Platte Canyon High School, and the perpetrator was already in the room and it took 1100 grains of explosives for the SWAT team to breach that door. And so, what we know is a locked classroom door is a proven barrier. And so, that's our focus. Let's get that door locked and let's get out of sight.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. It's interesting. So the distinction, and I kind of want to highlight this for our listeners, the distinction between the lockout versus lockdown is where is the threat? If the threat is off campus, away from the school, then the idea is the lockout to keep the threat from being able to get into the school. So keep the perimeter of the school locked and safe and secure, but continue doing business inside the school. Is that a fair summary?John-Michael:Absolutely. And, starting this year with 2020 we're adding some evolution to it. And as we know, these things evolve over time, and over time that lockout where no one in or out may be loosened a little bit so that we will do a monitored entry or a controlled release. And, an example is if mom needs to pick up their daughter for a dentist appointment, we aren't going to make her wait in the parking lot. But certainly that's going to be an evolution over time and we're going to be very attentive to it.Bill Godfrey:Of course. And you work with a lot more schools than we do. But I will say my experience with the schools by and large has been, lock down is a familiar terminology. As you mentioned, it kind of means a whole bunch of different things to schools. But when you introduce the concept of lockout and get them to kind of look at the thread, it's like the light bulb goes on and there's this sort of aha moment of, wow, there really is something in between. Is that continuing to be your experience as you're traveling the country and teaching new schools about the Standard Response Protocol (SRP) process?John-Michael:Absolutely. And there's one more action that's still kind of in the middle of both of those, and that's hold in your classroom or area.Bill Godfrey:I was going to ask you about that one, because you mentioned you added that. Tell us a little bit about why you added the hold and what that means?John-Michael:When we initially developed the Standard Response Protocol (SRP), it was about sharing a common language between students, staff, and first responders. But there's this one more action, hold in your classroom, where we may need to keep the hallways clear even if the bell rings. Maybe it's a medical emergency, maybe a student spooled up. The whole point is we're going to keep those halls clear until whatever's in the hallways can be resolved. And, in 2012 we introduced it into our training materials as an optional fifth action. And I'm sorry, it wasn't 2012, it was 2015. 2015 we introduced that, and we started getting requests for all five actions on our materials.Bill Godfrey:Of course, it makes complete sense.John-Michael:And for the last several years we've had materials with all five actions on it, and we made the commitment this year that with SRP 2020 we will include all five actions as the baseline for the standard response protocol.Bill Godfrey:So, standard response protocol, the new version 2020 coming out has got the five actions, lockout, lockdown, shelter in place, evacuate and hold in classroom, as well as I'm sure you've got some other new stuff that you've incorporated in the 2020 release as well.John-Michael:One of the things that's new for us, and we're calling them distributed campuses, and the notion really hit home when I was in Kern County, California. And some of the schools in Bakersfield, remember I'm from Colorado, it's chilly out today and there's snow on the ground.Bill Godfrey:I don't want to tell you what the weather here is in Florida.John-Michael:But, they pointed to what they called an open corridor. And what I saw was a sidewalk with an awning on it. And so we've got individual buildings that have open corridors linking them together, and often there's a secured fence around the perimeter of the campus. And so, we're looking at that distributed campus and modifying some of our lock out instructions based on that environmental aspect of what they've got going on.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great addition. My youngest daughter, her high school that she attends, which you've seen before, has that very kind of environment. It's a campus of multiple buildings connected by various corridors and walkways. And so, I think that's a great addition.John-Michael:Yeah, we're excited about that. The evolution of drill practices is another conversation that we're having in as well. The recent media attention on drills causing trauma. And once again, we looked at the language and the specificity of it, and once again, there's a little fuzziness coming from our federal friends. And our approach is that we conduct a drill to create muscle memory, we conduct an exercise to test capacity. And I think during an exercise we might be simulating events. During a drill we don't need to. We just want to create the muscle memory. And so, I think some of the media attention with drills causing trauma, we're really looking at exercises gone awry.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. There's certainly too many of those that more than we would like to see, where there's just been some poor decision making and poor choices that is just, it harms everybody.John-Michael:And again, some of the book isn't written yet. And so as we're all going down this path, if somebody stubs their toe, let's not point the harsh finger of accusation, let's help them up again and keep going down the path.Bill Godfrey:Amen. Amen. So, we talked about standard response protocol. You led us through where you were, what's coming new in 2020. Talk a little bit about the standard reunification method and how that came in and where it's going. Because you've got a new version of that coming out as well.John-Michael:Yeah. We're pretty excited, and I actually have been heads down in the software side of the world. We introduced it in 2012 based primarily on a method that was developed in Adams 12 five star schools here in Colorado. And, the director of security at the time, he's now the chief operating officer, he had 13 reunifications in seven years. And it's a remarkable number.Bill Godfrey:That's a lot.John-Michael:He freely admitted that his first half dozen were horrible because he didn't have a plan, and winging it isn't a plan. And so, he did some homework, and got some stuff and developed this method. He shared it with us. We worked with some other districts and released the standard reunification method in 2012. And that's one where we're learning all the time. And so, it was, again, I think 2015 or 16 version two came out, maybe a little later than that, and we're in production right now with version three. And a couple of the things that we've seen is that people think reunification, they think about, oh my gosh, it's that act of violence event. And the reality is that things happen at schools all the time where you need to bring your parents together back with your kids. And so, we're actually taking the core of that and generating with software a few different types of reunification operation kits.So, if we're reunifying a subset of the population because of a threat that's outside of the building and we don't want kids walking in the neighborhood, that's a very different reunification than a hazmat incident where we're evacuating the entire school. And even that incident is a very different reunification from an act of violence incident. And so in all of this, we're putting together different layers of response. And, that's one of the goals is to fine tune that to make it accessible so that when that little evacuation comes up, we use the standard reunification method, even if it seems like overkill. And that's an ideal opportunity to train our students, train our parents, and train our staff on how it works.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. For the benefit of our, of our listeners, you and I met, I don't know how many years ago it was at one of the conferences, and got to talking, and I became aware of a lot of the work the foundation's done in the reunification. And as I began looking at that from a responder point of view, because we had routinely run into schools who either had no reunification plan or their reunification plan was, yeah, we're going to use our cafeteria, or we're going to use our gym on the same campus where this event would have theoretically just taken place. And of course as responders you're like, that's not going to work. The whole campus is basically going to be shut down and a crime scene, and that's not where we want parents coming and going and all that kind of stuff. So we've got to move the kids off campus.And when we began looking at what was out there, the stuff that you'd put together, it wasn't just the best, it was so far ahead of everybody else. It's very difficult to compare. It's like comparing a bicycle to the Star Trek enterprise that could move at warp speed. It was your stuff was that far ahead, and you were so gracious with your materials that we began incorporating it into our active shooter incident management course, both our intermediate and advanced course, because we felt like it was important for responders to not only understand that this is a difficult task, here's a plan that's out there if you don't have one, but, oh by the way, here's some of the challenges that go with this stuff. And kind of the interesting evolution for us was as we were teaching it for, I would say probably a couple of years I guess, but only in a fairly overview superficial way, because there wasn't a lot of time to focus on it in the class that we were doing.And recently about a year ago, so I guess, I think that's about right, about a year ago or so, we began realigning it, maybe close to two years ago now, now that I think about that, we began realigning what we were doing and said, this is more important. And we dedicated a little more time to it and actually built it into one of the hands on exercises we do in the advanced class. And almost as soon as we began doing that, we recognized that there were some things that we didn't understand as well as we thought we did. And I don't know if you remember back those days, but it seemed like I was calling you twice a week asking you questions about, well, how is this supposed to work? And we ran into a problem, and have you seen this before? Do you remember those flurried phone calls that went on for several months?John-Michael:Absolutely. And I put your ring tone on lifeline on my phone.Bill Godfrey:Well, I really appreciate that you did that. But some of that stuff we ran into led to you and I talking a little more deeply about some places where some of the things that we came upon you'd already had happened before and you had good answers for. Some of the things that came up were things that hadn't arisen before and led to some deep conversation. And on the integration with the responders, we thought we saw some opportunities to kind of simplify things a little bit. And I just love how open, and gracious and willing you were to have those conversations with us and talk about that, which is led to obviously the formal partnership that we've got now between C3 and the foundation to move forward on both fronts, not only on the school side but on the responder side. But with that as a foundation, can you talk through from your side some of what were the things that jumped up and got your attention about some of the things that we ran into, and what struck you that that led to the new version of SRM that you're getting ready to put you out? By the way, are you calling that SRM 2020 or is that got a different name?John-Michael:Oh man.Bill Godfrey:Or have you given it a name yet?John-Michael:I think we're probably going to go with SRM 2020, and part of that is to reinforce that we're doing a biennial, every two years we're going to be updating this stuff. And, I think that's part of the commitment of the foundation is to constantly evaluate and evolve the materials. And, one of the things that has been really impressive is your giving back to us some of the evolution that you have learned in your hands on training, and we've been incorporating that into SRM 2020. And it's a statement to the power of partnerships in that it works better when the commercial sector and nonprofit sector can work together in an arena with shared goals.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I absolutely agree. I'm very excited about it. So, tell the audience what's new in the version and SRM that's coming forward?John-Michael:Well, there's been some simplification. I thought when we had released the second version of the standard reunification method, we had worked with Hays County in Texas, and very strong, incident command background young Marshall there, Will Schwall, had done a tremendous amount of work to assemble what we based the version two on, and job action sheets and org charts. And what we've done with that is leveraged some of your work in simplifying it. And, we realized that it was coming from a heavy incident command perspective, and some of that was a little much for some of the schools. And so, that simplification has been part of our goal with this, but it's also resulted in a couple of additions. And here's a surprise, new role, person with disabilities director.Bill Godfrey:Oh, interesting.John-Michael:And, what we've seen is that often schools have individual education plans for students with disabilities. We're asking them to put together individual evacuation plans, individual lockdown plans, effectively an individual Standard Response Protocol (SRP) plan so that when you do a reunification, there's a plan in place for some of the students and staff with disabilities.Bill Godfrey:That's really interesting John Michael. And I know you and I talked about this after we did it, because we said, well, that was some interesting feedback and outcome. But in one of our courses where we were doing the reunification exercise, the scenario, we told the responders, so you've got these kids here, these kids here, these kids here, and oh, by the way, in this class you've got 20 kids and they're all special needs kids that range from very simple stuff, to wheelchair, to autistic, to can be very combative if they get out of their normal element. So by the way, you've got to factor that into what you're going to do. And it was a like silence in the room. You could hear a pin drop for what seemed like an eternity.It probably was only about 30 or 60 seconds, but it seemed like an eternity as we all just kind of stared at each other. And you could almost hear the crickets as in, well, nobody in the room had thought of that, and it raised some really interesting questions. But the discussion that came from that one little thing was really fantastic in terms of talking about, how would they manage that? How would they work with the staff? What would the additional effort be needed? How do you need additional personnel? Were there special transport vehicles that were going to be needed? All of those kinds of questions came up and it was a wonderful, wonderful dialogue.John-Michael:Absolutely is. And that's a conversation that we're extending in our trainings as well, because it's one of the things that typically doesn't get talked about in crisis response planning.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. It's hard to imagine, even all my years on the job in the fire service and emergency management, and all of the emergency plans that I've reviewed and been part of over the years, I can't honestly tell you that I can remember an emergency plan that had an annex for people with disabilities and special needs. And it's hard to imagine how we didn't see that back then, because it seems very obvious to me now, but I can't remember any of them from when I was active duty.John-Michael:It's another one of those voids, it's one of the things that is also in production right now. Ellen is very deep in it, and it's based on materials that we found out of Marin County, California. And we had contacted them to see if we could use that as a base to develop precisely that annex. And we are really optimistic that that's coming out first quarter as well this year.Bill Godfrey:That's fantastic. So, we're in the new version of School Reunification Method (SRM). There's some stuff for folks that have disabilities or specialty needs. You've got some simplification on the Incident Command System (ICS) that's coming forward. What else is new?John-Michael:So, one of the things we've been looking at is moving back in time, and certainly we're in that crisis response side of the spectrum. One of the things that we've seen with the standard response protocol is it's kind of like a Trojan horse. And once it gets into the building, then our safety teams begin saying, well, what about going for that tip line or a threat assessment, threat management process? Are there things we can do with climate and culture? And, we worked with the Center for the Study of Prevention of Violence and NASRO, the National Association School Resource Officers, in formulating a grants. It was a cop's grant, and it awarded to National Association School Resource Officers (NASRO). And so we're in the mix there in developing materials for law enforcement and schools to start to build out, how do we get ahead of the bang? And it's an ambitious project. It's not a huge grant, but it's a strong commitment with NASRO, the Center for the Study of Prevention of Violence, the I Love You Guys Foundation, Safe and Sound Schools is in the mix, and was in Dallas just last week with our initial launch meeting. Mo Kennedy, Beverly Kingston with the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV), and actually had the ramp manager kind of evaluating how we were getting things started from the cops office. So, it was a fabulous meeting and I'm really looking forward to that project. I just need to clear some decks before I get to that one.Bill Godfrey:That's fantastic. That all sounds pretty exciting. Well, I'll tell you one of the things that I'm very excited about in the new version of School Reunification Method (SRM) is how tightly we've been able to integrate it with the Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) checklist process, the active shooter incident management checklist process, and that organizational structure so that when there is a hostile event that's involving emergency services, involves law enforcement, fire, EMS, that there's a structure already in place for the entire SRM branch to drop into and be able to work with incident command. That there's the role for the school to play to manage that, but still keeps them very integrated with the incident command structure of the incident at the effected site, and kind of ties it all in as one piece, ties it in together.Which of course, by the same token, if it's not a violent event and it's a reunification that's being done for some other purpose, then the emergency services aren't really involved or law enforcement may be a little tangentially involved to provide some traffic control and things like that. But it's predominantly a school led, but the structure is still the same. And so it becomes this one training package that we can share with everybody. Emergency responders, school officials, church officials, any groups, community colleges, any groups that have large numbers of people that may have a need for reunification to be able to use that same structure, that one process. I'm really, really excited that we've managed to get that tied in so tightly between our two groups.John-Michael:Well, it was fascinating to see the Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) checklist evolve, and the conversation, it went from 8 1/2 by 11 to 8 1/2 by 14.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, we did run out of space. We had to go to a bigger list.John-Michael:But that reunification branch is then the core starting point for School Reunification Method (SRM) 2020. And it was really important to us organizationally to be able to plug into the Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) structure and you gave us that simplification that allowed us to do it. And that's one of the integrations that I think is going to be absolutely essential moving forward. It just gives us a framework to drop into that's just a little less fat.Bill Godfrey:And I'm excited to hear your feedback once you get the new version released of how it's going in the schools. As I've shared with you offline, we've had just some fabulous, fabulous feedback from the responders in the classes that we've been doing, both the hands on and where we're just teaching the theory. It really resonates with them and make sense. We haven't seen any pushback from the responders on saying, yeah, the school should formally be part of the command structure. I mean, it's been really exciting to see, so I'm anxious to hear that feedback when you guys began doing that with schools.John-Michael:Well, often in our audiences we'll have law enforcement, and more and more so specially around reunification fires in the room. And, if we look back historically, we're pretty convinced that the SRP was a vector into building the relationship between schools and law enforcement. And, we are absolutely committed to the notion that all of this stuff works better when there's that strong partnership. But in all honesty, getting fire into the room was a challenge. And what we're seeing with reunification is that fire's coming to the table, that they're bringing that component that only fire can bring, and it's a welcome addition in that reunification package.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And interesting, we've seen that in the classroom and in our training sessions as well. When it comes down to doing the work, when we're running the exercises and it comes down to doing the work, there's an awful lot of work for law enforcement, and we actually need a lot of the fire and EMS personnel to plug into some of those, what I'll call nonstandard roles, to help manage the process, which of course fire has a long history of using the incident command system. And so, it kind of makes sense to them. And we haven't had any pushback at all. I'm not sure it's something that people would have naturally seen or would have naturally gotten to that point. Maybe they would have, maybe they wouldn't have. But it's been very, very warming to see that when we're doing this and we say to the fire and EMS folks, look, there's not enough law enforcement to do all of these roles. We need you to step in and do this and do this, and some of these reunification roles, really manage them. And there's no hesitation, they jumped right in. And that's very exciting.John-Michael:Well, and I think that they're coming to the table maybe influenced by our city and county emergency managers. In the last few years, we've seen a growing increase in awareness and motivation to work on family reunification plans. What if something happens at the mall or the church? And consequently we're seeing in our audiences, and it might be a little more palatable for fire to show up to a training when the emergency manager makes that call.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I think you're right on the money. We need everybody at the table, from emergency management, to fire, EMS, law enforcement, the schools, the districts. Everybody needs to be at the table. Private schools. I mean, you and I have had a lot of conversations about the tendency for private schools and church based schools to have been left out of the mix. And I think everybody needs to be at the table. And emergency management is kind of that common group that can put their arms around everybody and say, hey, we all need to do this together.John-Michael:Absolutely. And sometimes they're given the mandate to do it.Bill Godfrey:Indeed. Indeed.John-Michael:I know more than one sheriff whose stamped a foot.

Jacob's Well is a spring which is located in Hays County, Texas. Listen this Podcast to know the interesting facts... Credits Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Hays County Food Bank by BACC TALK

Hays County decides they will open bars to 50% starting tomorrow, Austin Board of Realtors hosts a virtual debate on Prop A, and Microsoft foils a hacking operation that could have indirectly affected the election. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 19 - As part of a county-wide collaboration, Hays County is establishing the Emergency Cash Assistance Program (ECAP) grant fund, which will disperse $600,000 to local businesses. The ECAP Fund is designed for those small businesses located in Hays County that are struggling to sustain operations due to the COVID-19 health crisis and were unable to secure assistance via the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loan through the CARES Act or the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program through the US Small Business Administration.

In this bonus episode of the Connect podcast, Cole Phillips shares 10 reasons why Celebrate Recovery ministry is so vital in helping to heal from your hurts, habits, and hangups. This talk was given at the one-year birthday party of the relaunch of Celebrate Recovery at The Connection Church. To find out more about Celebrate Recovery in Hays County, Texas, visit: https://theconnectionchurch.org/ministries/recovery/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/cole-phillips2/support

Mandatory masking ordered in counties across Texas. Plus, a call to end arrests for minor crimes in Hays County. And some of the primary runoff races you’ll find on the ballot during early voting. Those stories and more in this edition of KUT Weekend! Subscribe at https://weekend.kut.org

Mandatory masking ordered in counties across Texas. Plus, a call to end arrests for minor crimes in Hays County. And some of the primary runoff races you’ll find on the ballot during early voting. Those stories and more in this edition of KUT Weekend! Subscribe at http://weekend.kut.org

Mandatory masking ordered in counties across Texas. Plus, a call to end arrests for minor crimes in Hays County. And some of the primary runoff races you’ll find on the ballot during early voting. Those stories and more in this edition of KUT Weekend! Subscribe at https://weekend.kut.org

Every Friday, we take a look at the week in numbers and offer our recs for what to read, listen to and watch to stay grounded during this unsettling time.To help us understand the numbers for the week we turn to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, as well as this Texas Tribune piece on record hospitalizations in Texas. (One correction: when discussing Hays County numbers of late, Lucas meant to say that the GOP has touted that no one under sixty has died, not over).Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has announced students will return to school in the fall without any masking or testing requirements, to which teacher associations in Texas are saying "hell no." For more on the governor's, er, not-exactly-straightforward proclamations, Antoinette recs this Christopher Hooks piece in Texas Monthly. We also follow-up on Wednesday's Down-ballot Frenzy with some info on the local race for County Attorney.Meanwhile, Antoinette and her family have been doing the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge. She updates us on how it's going.Weekend recs?After devouring "Bluebird, Bluebird" a year ago, Lucas is reading "Heaven, My Home," the next in Attica Locke's highly addictive Highway 59 series.Antoinette recommends Yvonne Orji's new HBO comedy special, "Momma, I Made It!" and puts in a plug for online classes.Have a good weekend and stay safe, everyone!This episode was recorded on Friday, June 19, 2020.

In a recent Facebook post about race, an account belonging to the mayor of Woodcreek, Texas, in Hays County said the Black Lives Matter movement is a “threat to our lives”, the New York Police Benevolent Association (PBA) railed against state legislators and the press for “vilifying” law enforcement officers amid the nationwide demonstrations, and in business news, it’s projected over 25,000 retail stores will close their doors for good this year.

Welcome The BG Podcast! Conversations at the intersection of business, community, and public policy, from the Austin metro and around Texas. Today's episode features a discussion with Jason Giulietti is the President of the Greater San Marcos Partnership (GSMP), a regional economic development organization working for the City of San Marcos, Hays and Caldwell Counties, established to encourage and nurture economic growth in the heart of the Austin-San Antonio corridor. Located south of Austin along the I-35 corridor, Hays County and the City of San Marcos have ranked in the top 10 fastest growing municipalities this decade. Jason and A.J. discuss the regions growth, GSMP's strategic vision, and more. ABOUT JASON Jason Giulietti is the President of the Greater San Marcos Partnership, a regional economic development organization working for the City of San Marcos, Hays and Caldwell Counties, established to encourage and nurture economic growth in the heart of the Austin-San Antonio corridor. With more than 15 years of leadership experience in economic development and marketing at the state and regional level, he leads the organization's efforts to diversify and strengthen the region's economy through high quality jobs and investment by implementing a comprehensive multi-year economic development strategic plan. As part of this plan, he promotes the region across the U.S. and abroad. Learn More at Greater San Marcos Partnership (Website) LINKS: Twitter: @GreaterSMTX LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-j-giulietti-818b503/ This is episode was recorded on March 24, 2020.

Central Texas Small Business Spotlight Season 2 – Episode 1 In this episode, Chris Doelle sits down with Nicole Laird of Hays County Physical Therapy. Available on these fine podcast sources and more!      We would like to thank the following supporters whose donations make this show possible: Milt’s Pit BBQ Browning Family Chiropractic... The post Nicole Laird – Hays County Physical Therapy appeared first on Lone Star Podcast Network.

News General - Hays County Polling Program by

This is a very special edition of the Left in Texas Podcast from ground zero of eh hem...battleground Texas. It was a packed house in Kyle, Hays County, TX.  Seriously just a few cycles ago no one would have thought there were Democrats in these parts let alone that they would turn this rural turned suburban county blue, but alas here we are. Democratic Constables, County Commissioners, a Democratic State Representative and a top tier candidate for congress. We caught of with Senator Wendy Davis who is now a candidate for US House District 21, Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa and State Representative Erin Zwiener. They each gave their insight into their efforts to extend the Hays County effect to other parts of the state and their optimism for Democrats' chances in 2020.  Have a listen and please share!  

Trigger warning: In this episode, we discuss some personal experiences with attempted suicide during our FMK segment. If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please PLEASE please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention hotline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ Plus, shero Gina Ortiz Jones throws shade at Will Hurd for not showing up for the kids at the border. We also learn about why a whole bunch of Texas counties aren't prosecuting possession of "the Devil's lettuce" right now (except Hays County... which maybe needs a new District Attorney?) as well as ways to save the census, flip the Texas House, and show up for the kids in abysmal detention facilities. SUPPORT ROUSER'S NEW PATREON PAGE! Want to make sure The Rabble pod keeps coming? Help us pay for it! (We are making zero dollars on the pod and need your help to keep going.) ALSO, you get super fun perks when you pitch in to help us cover our costs (secret parties, GIF chats, even a prayer candle with your face on it!). Go to https://www.patreon.com/rousertx NOW NOW NOW NOW! Also, spread the joy of Ann Richards and The Rabble all across Texas on T-shirts, stickers, mugs, or whatevs: https://rouser.threadless.com/ PRESENTING SPONSOR: Today's episode of The Rabble is brought to you by the Austin Chapter of Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association and its event "Save the Census, a training for central Texans" on Saturday, July 13 from 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. https://www.facebook.com/events/2302427519806778/ The Trump admin is using racism to scare people, esp communities of color, out of answering the census. The 2020 Census is a big deal, y'all. A really big deal. It decides the number of representatives Texas has in the U.S. Congress, electoral votes in presidential elections, federal dollars we receive for transportation, education, and social services. Even a 1% undercount in 2020 could cost Texas $300 million in federal funding. Plus, businesses use census data to determine whether to invest in Texas. So, are you ready to help us Save the Census? Join us July 13 at the Central TX Census Training with APAPA Texas Chapter to ensure we all count! Texas is counting on us. THIS WEEK'S GUEST: Gina Ortiz Jones, candidate for Texas's 23rd U.S. Congressional district and a total badass https://ginaortizjones.com/ https://www.facebook.com/GinaOrtizJones/ https://twitter.com/ginaortizjones Also, our GUEST HOST: Jen Ramos, Texas's #1 young Democrat (as declared by Rouser). Jen is running to be VP of the national Young Democrats organization -- let's kick her a few bucks and get a kick-ass Texas lady guiding the young dems nationwide! https://twitter.com/itsJenRamos https://www.ydapromise.com/ SH*T TO DO: Lights for Liberty Vigil this Friday, July 12. https://www.lightsforliberty.org/localevents More background info on why we need to #defundhate: https://indivisible.org/resource/tell-your-representative-defund-hate Indivisible Script to call your rep: https://act.indivisible.org/call/defund-hate Find your reps: https://www.commoncause.org/find-your-representative/addr/ Use resistbot to email, fax or mail your reps (or text “resist” to 50409) https://resist.bot/ FOLLOW ROUSER: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RouserTX Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rousertx/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/RouserTX?lang=en Subscribe to our Friday newsletter, T-GIF: https://www.rousertx.com/tgif/ LINKS WE MENTIONED: Our video for the Blue Action Dems "flip challenge": https://www.facebook.com/RouserTX/videos/2841505595921064/ Get a ticket for the Blue Action Dems FLIPPING AWesOME FUNDRAISER! https://secure.actblue.com/donate/flippingawesomefundraiser About Blue Action Dems: https://www.blueactiondems.com/ UT offering free tuition for students from families who make less than $65,000: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/10/740387601/university-of-texas-austin-promises-free-tuition-for-low-income-students-in-2020 Pot not being prosecuted in a bunch of counties in Texas: https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2019-07-03/travis-county-to-reject-marijuana-prosecutions/ https://www.statesman.com/news/20190704/did-texas-hemp-law-legalize-pot-no-but-marijuana-cases-harder-to-prosecute-officials-say Except Hays County: https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/hays-county/hays-county-da-to-continue-to-accept-marijuana-cases-under-new-hemp-law-change/269-984742e2-b1ac-4c0d-ac87-fdb87f52d915 Women moving mental health solutions forward: https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2019-07-05/the-austin-women-dispelling-stigma-and-moving-mental-health-issues-forward/ Texas is going to court to end Obamacare. It hasn't produced a plan to replace it. https://www.texastribune.org/2019/07/08/texas-kill-obamacare-no-plan-replacement-5th-circuit-ken-paxton/ As Texas Seeks To Overturn Obamacare, Attention Focuses On Potential Swing Judge https://www.kut.org/post/texas-seeks-overturn-obamacare-attention-focuses-potential-swing-judge Fight for better healthcare in Texas! https://covertexasnow.org/posts/2019/4/16/join-texas-healthcare-activist-leadership-network Texas 23: https://www.texastribune.org/directory/districts/us-house/23/ https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/15/federal-court-invalidates-part-texas-congressional-map/

Despite an overpopulated jail that is costing the county millions to outsource prisoners, Hays County District Attorney Wes Mau said the county will continue to prosecute possession of marijuana. But does Texas need to take a different approach in regards to how we prosecute minor offenders? And what does the DA's statement mean for the rest of the criminal justice system? In 2017, county records indicate marijuana possession was the leading charge with over 800 arrests. Critics point to these numbers as hard evidence that taking a different approach to marijuana possession may relieve some of the pressures on the jail and court system. Joining Exsar on the San Marcos Scoop was Karen Munoz and Joe Ptak. Munoz is the co-founder of Mano Amiga, criminal justice and immigration rights activists group and Ptak is a local expert in the criminal justice system. Together, the trio discussed how changing the paradigm on marijuana offenders could help save the taxpayers millions while potentially saving the lives of thousands of people. Support the show: Patreon.com/SanMarcosScoop Links: http://www.fox7austin.com/news/local-news/hays-county-will-continue-prosecuting-marijuana-cases-despite-new-hemp-law-1 https://www.facebook.com/ManoAmigaSM/

On Tuesday, a Travis County Judge dismissed a lawsuit by Hays County in the fight against Kinder Morgan's 420-mile natural gas pipeline. But is the fight just beginning, or will Kinder Morgan build their pipeline straight through Hays County? On this week's episode of the San Marcos Scoop, Hays County Commissioner Lon Shell gave an update on the situation with Kinder Morgan. Support the show: Patreon.com/SanMarcosScoop

Happy Monday San Martians and welcome to another episode of the Inside Scoop. This week, Exsar and Scott kept the show short but discussed some key topics in San Marcos. Here is the agenda below: -The Mural Arts Program Committee does not exist after city council decision. -Will the city council approve the student development that was denied by the Planning & Zoning Commission last week? -Hybrid voting machines, which keep a physical and electronic tab of your vote, may soon make a splash in the next election. -Former Gubernatorial candidate and state senator Wendy Davis may run for a congressional seat representing Hays County. -Rep. Erin Zwiener filed over 50 bills during her first session in office. Wow! Thanks for tuning in! We'll see you next week.

Revolving door policies, which are popular in large municipalities, states and the federal government, bar previous elected officials and staff from conducting business with the former employer. In fact, here in Hays County, San Marcos and Kyle both have revolving door policies. But what would be the implications of a revolving door policy for the county government? Discussion on a revolving door policy in Hays County was an idea brought forward to the Commissioners Court by County Judge Ruben Becerra and his Chief of Staff Alex Villalobos. However, at the April 16 Commissioners Court workshop, the proposal was met with some scrutiny. This week on the San Marcos Scoop, Exsar sat down with Hays County Commissioner Lon Shell, to discuss how the county would tackle implementing a revolving door policy, or lack thereof. ~~ Support the show: www.patreon.com/SanMarcosScoop Subscribe so you are notified when episodes are released every Friday. Music by Lee Rosevere

This week on The Inside Scoop, Exsar and Scott recapped some of the biggest news here in San Marcos. On today's show: -San Marcos City Council workshop discussion: will the city freeze property tax rate for those over the age of 65? -Small Area Plan/Neighborhood Character Studies in San Marcos discussion -Hays County Commissioners Court approved a resolution opposing the Kinder Morgan natural gas pipeline. -Hays County Commissioners Court approved a resolution in support of allowing citizens to vote at any polling locating, regardless of precinct. The county is now pending approval from the State of Texas. -Rep. Erin Zwiener (D-Driftwood) files a bill requiring an environmental assessment from any company building a natural gas pipeline. You can listen to The Inside Scoop, every Monday, on the San Marcos Scoop Podcast network. Search "San Marcos Scoop" on any app you listen to podcasts. Music by LAKEY INSPIRED

This week on the Inside Scoop, Exsar and Scott recapped some of the biggest stories in San Marcos last week and discussed some big stories on the horizon. Talking points for the show: -When will council vote on Paid Parking?: 2:20 -SMART terminal is coming back to the city council: 9:45 -Planning & Zoning meeting is canceled: 17:20 -SMCISD votes 4-3 to keep elections in May, but why? 17:39 -Hays County looks to pass a resolution against the Kinder Morgan Permian Highway Pipeline: 22:59 -Discussion relating to the Hays County inmate population will now be a standing agenda item: 27:45 -Rep. Erin Zwiener (D-Driftwood) has filed a bill that would allow Texas public university students to vote with their student ID: 36:15

Outsourcing inmates to other jails cost Hays County $61,507 in one week... On this episode of the San Marcos Scoop, Exsar was joined by Hays County Commissioner Lon Shell and Samantha Jones, two individuals working to understand the dilemma at the county jail. The overpopulation of the county jail cost the county millions of dollars last year, prompting an investigation on the jail's population. Sam is working with the county to understand who these inmates are, why they are in the jail and what reforms can come from her data, to hopefully relieve the pressure of the jail's population. Music by Lee Rosevere

Happy Monday San Marcos, Texas! This week on the Inside Scoop, Exsar and Scott recapped some of the biggest stories in San Marcos last week and discussed what to watch out for at City Council this week. Talking points for the show: -Hays County will leave the 911 Emergency Center on Stagecoach -The Kinder Morgan pipeline is causing some controversy throughout the County. -The San Marcos City Council will discuss the Charter at this weeks meeting -HB 1100 looks to end the Sunday ban of selling alcohol, a law that has been in the books since 1935. Can Texas finally make this happen?

In our first podcast, From The Center is joined by Heather Fazio, the Coalition Coordinator of Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy. Libertarian Party of Hays County Chair Chelsea Meckel sat down with Heather to discuss the organization, what their proposals are and were we are in the struggle for more responsible Cannabis policy in the state of Texas. They also discuss Cannabis Lobby Day on February 7th when a broad group will be lobbing the Texas Legislature for better laws.Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy can be found at www.texasmarijuanspolicy.org. You can find more information about The Libertarian Party of Hays County at lphays.org

In our first podcast, From The Center is joined by Heather Fazio, the Coalition Coordinator of Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy. Libertarian Party of Hays County Chair Chelsea Meckel sat down with Heather to discuss the organization, what their proposals are and were we are in the struggle for more responsible Cannabis policy in the state of Texas. They also discuss Cannabis Lobby Day on February 7th when a broad group will be lobbing the Texas Legislature for better laws.Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy can be found at www.texasmarijuanspolicy.org. You can find more information about The Libertarian Party of Hays County at lphays.org

Kinder Morgan, a multi-billion dollar energy infrastructure company is looking to build a 430-mile natural gas pipeline that will cut through Hays County. The pipeline will carry around 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day to west Texas, making this project one of the company's most ambitious to date. But how can Kinder Morgan run a pipe through the state? Well, it gets a little tricky, and yes, eminent domain is involved... Joining Exsar on the San Marcos Scoop is Hays County Commissioner Lon Shell, who shared insight on the logistics of the pipeline and what residents can do to prepare for Kinder Morgan.

The Hays County Jail's overpopulation crisis has left county officials to outsource prisoners to neighboring counties, costing millions of dollars a year. And even with the multimillion dollar bond renovation project set to be complete in 2020, the jail is still projected to be overpopulated. The system, according to activists and local politicians, needs to be reformed. But how do you reform the criminal justice system that will benefit those who have not yet been convicted of a crime? Welcome to another episode of the San Marcos Scoop. This week, Exsar interviewed Eric Martinez with activist organization Mano Amiga and Faylita Hicks, a poet and author, to discuss the issues at the jail and potential solutions to solve the crisis. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas/article/Lazy-judges-Newcomers-Career-criminals-Hays-13483929.php Music by Lee Rosevere and Daniel Birch

This week on the San Marcos Scoop, Exsar recapped some of the biggest headlines in 2018, including some of the biggest results from the midterm elections, water issues throughout the county, parking in San Marcos and the deportation of a Hays County resident in December. Additionally, Exsar spoke about big stories to look out for in 2019 and the addition of two shows coming soon on the San Marcos Scoop. The San Marcos Scoop has big plans for 2019, and we hope you are here for the ride! Thanks for the time and support, and we'll see you next week.

Hays County Barbeque The BBQ flame was ignited in Michael Hernandez after a memorable trip to Lockhart. Shortly thereafter, armed with a steadfast belief in their dream, Michael and Asenette Hernandez pushed all of their chips to the middle of the table and went headfirst into the barbecue business. In eleven years they've gone from owning a small place purchased from a former owner, then to their own small space, and have now opened a huge BBQ complex in San Marcos dedicated to providing a great and unique customer experience. Hays County Bar-B-Que is located right off the freeway in San Marcos and is open seven days a week to serve its community's barbecue needs. With a newly opened full bar in a building behind the restaurant that can accommodate large parties and will showcase live music on weekends, Hays County is one of Texas' premier barbecue destinations for an affordable good meal in a laid back atmosphere.   Michael's dedication to preserving Central Texas traditions can be felt in the food itself and the pits the meat is cooked on. With a unique octagonal shape and flat top lids, the steel smokers are reminiscent of the famous Lockhart brick pits and all of the pitmasters at Hays are taught to cook by feel without the aid of temperature gauges on any of the flat top pits.   Every square foot of the place has personal meaning to the Hernandez family who built the space almost entirely themselves and have worked tirelessly to achieve their dream. From the classic car memorabilia that line the walls to the sturdy wood bar Michael built himself, the space is filled with personal touches.   Hays County is open seven days a week, and open for dinner service as well. The bar is open into the later evening on weekends and expect to see the return of live music soon. Say hello to Michael, Asenette, and Aaron Hernandez as well as Jessie, Omar, Zach, and the crew when you visit! 1612 South IH-35San Marcos, Texas 78666www.hayscobbq.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hayscobbq   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HaysCoBBQ/   Hours of Operation:Monday 11am - 9pmTuesday 11am - 9pmWednesday 11am - 9pmThursday 11am - 9pmFriday 11am - 10pmSaturday 11am - 10pmSunday 11am - 4pm or till sold out

San Marcos has the highest average rent prices in all of Hays County, leaving families to spend precious dollars on housing expenses which can keep food off the table. According to the Hays County Food Bank, 1 in 7 residents in Hays County is food insecure. Additionally, 68.5% of students at San Marcos CISD quality for free or reduced meals. Welcome to Episode 11 of the San Marcos Scoop. This week, we are joined by Mallory Best, Communications Coordinator for the Hays County Food Bank to discuss food insecurity and the role of the food bank in providing a vital resource for the San Marcos community.

This week, we sat down with Hays County Commissioner Lon Shell, to discuss Electro Purification's plan to pump nearly one billion gallons a year from the Trinity Aquifer. Join us as we discuss the history of EP in Hays County and potential harm this amount of pumping would cause to the aquifer. Music by: Lee Rosevere

Education of incarcerated populations have shown to decrease recidivism rate and opens opportunities for those released from prison. Dr. Adam Key, Johnathan Lollar and Cesar Bernal dive into a discussion with Dr. Rebecca Farinas and Kimberly Clay on ways that education changes prison communities and the role of empathy as a teaching tool. For more ways to get involved, join Johnathan and Cesar with Texas State’s Philosophy Youth Initiative Program which works with at-risk youth and juvenile offenders in the Hays County area. You can also reach out to Lee College Hunstville Center for volunteer opportunities. KTSW is also working alongside the Inside Books Project this year and is accepting book donations for prisoners in Texas.

Matt Dotray sits down to talk with Phillip Hays a candidate for the Lubbock County Court at Law #3.

Today we’ll give you a couple quick predictions about the 2018 market to come, as well as a great tip that can save you money on your tax bill. Want to sell your home? Find out what your home is worth.  Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.We hope your 2018 is off to a good start! Here at the Lancashire Group, we have a very positive outlook for what’s to come this year. Today, we’re going to give you a quick rundown of our predictions for the 2018 market, as well as a good tip for how you can save money on your property taxes.Based on what we’ve seen so far, demand remains incredibly strong this year. Interest rates remain at historic lows, although we have been told that they will be going up as we get closer to the springtime. Given the demand, it’s a great time to sell your home, and because of the rates right now, it’s also a great time to buy. Take advantage of the low interest rates before they begin to rise.Those that qualify for the homestead tax exemption can save up to 20% on their tax bill. If you were lucky enough to have purchased your home last year, we have a great little tip for you. The following are the links to print and fill out a homestead tax exemption form, which you can then mail to the address listed at the top of the form: Travis County, Williamson County, Hays County and Bastrop County. As a reminder, those that qualify for the homestead tax exemption can save lots of money—up to 20%—on their tax bill.If you have any more questions about the homestead tax exemption form, buying, or selling in the Greater Austin area, feel free to reach out to us. We’d love to be your real estate choice this year.

ABOUT DAN Dan and Kelly Matlock grew up in the Midwest but fell in love with Texas when they moved there in 2003. In 2011 they felt called to start a church in Hays County. Dan loves spending time with his family, being outdoors, playing sports, and driving his motorcycle. He's an avid football fan in general but a diehard fan of the Green Bay Packers and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. BE THE CHURCH Be The Church: Build an awesome team around you. Before you “have” church, you have to BE the church. When you look at the life of Jesus, he was not surrounded by “Christians” all the time. How can we get in people's worlds and be the church outside the walls of a church? Get involved in the community. The church is here to serve people. The church exists to show the community what God is like. Serving the community with no strings attached will open doors for relationships later on. Be intentionally close to others churches. When the church wins, the kingdom wins. “

Have lake property values gone up now that Lake Travis is back to full pool? We’ll break down the numbers today. Thank you for sending us your questions. Today, we’ll answer Rebecca, who asked, “Have lake property values accelerated now that Lake Travis is full?” Lake Travis dropped to its lowest point in 2011 thanks to the drought. In May of 2015, the rains came, and the lake went back to full pool in about a month. Home values did slide in 2011, when the lake was at its lowest point. Then, home values proceeded to bottom out in 2014. That year, the median price for a Lake Travis waterfront property was $565,000. In 2015, the rains came and the median price rose to $675,000. At the end of 2016, home values made a full recovery with a median price of $774,000. The water levels in Lake Travis also impacted the number of home sales. In 2014, Lake Travis only had 63 closed transactions. That number went up to 93 home sales in 2015, and in 2016, 157 lakefront properties sold. So, lakefront properties are now back to pre-drought values. However, just because Lake Travis has seen an increase in home values doesn’t mean that your home has seen the same rate of appreciation. Lakefront home values have made a full recovery. Home values vary from property to property and from area to area. The Austin area Board of Realtors says that from November 2015 to November 2016, home values in Austin grew by 7%. If you break that down, though, you’ll see that Williamson County appreciated by 12%, Travis County appreciated by 1%, and Hays County appreciated by 8%.  If you have any other questions you would like us to answer or if you want to know what your home is worth in today’s market, just give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

-Originally aired on 10/03/2015- Episode 35 of "In The Oil Patch" This week on "In The Oil Patch": host Kym Bolado and her co-hosts Alvin Bailey and Roy Holley have Texas House Member Jason Isaac and Senator Carlos Uresti in the studio today! From Representative Isaac's website: "Rep. Jason Isaac is a fourth generation Texan who resides in Hays County with his wife, Carrie, and their two boys. "Since his election in 2010, Rep. Isaac has proven to be a knowledgeable and effective legislator. He has passed legislation to assist veterans, protect Second Amendment rights, and strengthen election integrity. He’s dedicated to providing Texans with great schools, an efficient transportation system, and reliable water infrastructure. As a father of two children who attend public school in Dripping Springs and an advocate for Texas State University, Rep. Isaac is committed to helping our education system operate more efficiently and effectively. With nearly two decades of experience in the trucking industry, he knows that transportation is an essential part of a successful economy. "He is unwavering in his commitment to promote responsible spending through lower taxes and has made good on his promise to work to limit the size and scope of government. He understands that a smaller government increases individual freedom, and the Texas Conservative Coalition has named him a “Courageous Conservative” for both sessions that he has served in the Legislature. He also founded the Hill Country Caucus, an organization made up of legislators who are dedicated to promoting and preserving the unique features and resources of the Hill Country. Rep. Isaac is honored to work for the residents of Hays and Blanco counties." Learn more about Representative Isaac: Isaac For Texas From Senator Uresti's "Turning Point Strategies" website: "Turning Point Strategies is for those startup companies or companies that have been doing very well but maybe want to move to the next level, or are at a turning point. They're looking to think outside the box, and that's where we come in. We provide those different strategies to help them turn the corner at that point where they need consulting services. So, that's what we do and have done for several years. We've been very successful and helped a lot of different companies at many different levels succeed." Learn more about Senator Uresti's "Turning Point Strategies": Turning Point Strategies Connect with Shale Oil & Gas Business Magazine and "In The Oil Patch" Share, follow and like us on Soundcloud, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn! "In The Oil Patch" is brought to you by SHALE Oil & Gas Business Magazine and proudly sponsored by the South Texas Energy & Economic Roundtable (STEER) and the Kahlig Auto Group. Stay tuned for more great episodes every weekend! For our full schedule, please visit our Radio Show Schedule page and if you have any questions for our experts, please email them to radio@shalemag.com. Photo Credit: http://www.house.state.tx.us

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said that Iraqi forces had demonstrated “no will to fight” against ISIS, saying their retreat enabled ISIS's capture of the Iraqi city of Ramadi. http://www.infobitt.com/b/12438 Two people were killed in storms and flash flooding in Texas and Oklahoma that forced evacuations, with over 1,000 people rescued in Hays County, Texas, alone. http://www.infobitt.com/b/12437 Saudi Arabia's king vowed to punish those responsible for a suicide bombing that killed 21 people at a Shiite mosque in the country's east. http://www.infobitt.com/b/12435 Mathematician John Nash, 86, famous for the Nash equilibrium—a major advance in game theory—a Nobel Prize, and portrayal in "A Beautiful Mind," died in a car crash along with his wife, Alicia, 82. http://www.infobitt.com/b/12433 Exoskeletons, once science fiction, are now a commercial reality. http://www.infobitt.com/b/12427 The FBI has admitted that they did not break even a single terrorist plot using the powers granted by the Patriot Act. http://www.infobitt.com/b/12428 Josh Duggar, one of the stars of the reality TV show about America’s most-famous large family, has acknowledged molesting underage girls as a teenager. http://www.infobitt.com/b/12436 Uber has tested its first autonomous car. http://www.infobitt.com/b/12430 Famous feminist Gloria Steinem led a group of women's activists on a very rare crossing from North Korea into South Korea. http://www.infobitt.com/b/12434 After vigorous debate and intense last-minute pressure by Republican leaders, the U.S. Senate on Saturday rejected legislation that would curb the government’s bulk collection of phone records. http://www.infobitt.com/b/12421 http://infobitt.com http://www.facebook.com/groups/infobitt http://twitter.com/infobitt

This is a short Episode. In this episode of the Austin Legal Podcast, Joseph Aragon of the Aragon Law Firm talks about the kinds of questions you SHOULD be asking the criminal defense attorney you end up hiring.  Joseph Aragon is an Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer, Austin DWI Lawyer, fighting for those charged with crimes in Austin, Travis, Williamson County, and Hays County.   Links to news mentioned in this Episode. http://www.statesman.com/news/news/police-man-bit-store-clerks-thumb-off/nYSJQ/ http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/man-charged-with-improper-photography-of-woman/nYJjN/ http://www.statesman.com/news/news/opinion/perrys-unseemly-move-to-force-lehmberg-to-resign/nYH2q/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/21/opinion/grenier-drug-war/index.html?hpt=ju_t3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZg_ALxEz0 The post EP 003: Questions you SHOULD be asking your lawyer appeared first on AUSTIN LEGAL PODCAST.