Podcasts about houses

Ice shooting in Portland, OR. Friday Sound Salad. Jim Kennedy, Kennedy Institute for Public Policy Research, talks news of the week. CES Day 4 highlights. Huge anti-government protests in Tehran and other Iranian cities. Houses passes ACA subsidies; fate of bill murky in Senate. Is the American Dream dead? People regaining weight after stopping GLP-1's. Latest jobs report.

Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, we have a re-air of the first episode of Live Like the World is Dying, an interview with Kitty Stryker about Anarchist Prepping. Kitty Stryker can be found on twitter at @kittystryker and at http://kittystryker.com/ Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at @magpiekilljoy and at http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/ Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness and Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness Transcript The following transcript was provided by a comrade who wants to help us make this show more accessible: S01E01 Kitty Stryker on Anarchist Prepping Live Like The World Is Dying #0:00:00.0# (Introductory music) #0:00:15.1# Margaret Killjoy: Hello and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying; a podcast that explores life when it feels like the end times. I say "when it feels like the end times", and I'm gonna get into this more throughout various episodes of the podcast, because of course, the world is always ending. It's always changing the status quo. Always shakes and changes, collapses, rebuilds, all of these things. So sometimes people roll their eyes when you talk about the world ending. And sometimes that makes sense, the world has ended in a lot of different ways. But... It sure feels like the world is ending right now to me and to... Maybe to you and maybe it will, maybe it won't. Obviously what it means for the world to end is a subjective thing. But it's a... It's a stress factor to say the least, on a lot of people's lives right now. Thinking about climate change and thinking about the... The rise of global fascism. So this is a podcast that's gonna explore... Well, how we can live while we feel like the world is dying. For myself and for this podcast I've found that I focus on four different priorities. I focus on living like the world is going to end and that I might not survive, living like the world is going to end and I can try to survive, living like we can prevent the end of the world, and of course, living like maybe the world isn't ending after all. So basically hedonism, prepping, revolution, and not burning all your bridges because... Who knows, the status quo might linger on after all. With this podcast I'm probably going to focus on the middle two of these priorities. I'm gonna focus on prepping and revolution. And I'm going to do that because... Well, I've always sort of wanted there to be more information and more... More going on about anarchist and leftist prepping. Because most of the prepping world is of course steeped in... Not just like right-wing politics, but also right-wing values and individualistic values and of course as an anarchist I believe in the balance between the individual and the community and because of that I don't believe in individualistic survival. I don't believe that the bunker mentality, which we're going to talk a lot of shit on in this podcast over the next couple episodes, is appropriate to most... To most threat models. So I'll be your host, but for the most part I'm going to interview people who know a lot more about a lot of this stuff than me. As for me, I am a prepper I suppose on some level. I keep a small stockpile food. Dried food in 5 gallon buckets in case there's an interruption in... Well, food supplies. I make sure I know where water filtration is. I also keep a to-go bag and... At my house. And I keep another one in my car that's much smaller. Neither of these are a particularly elaborate. They're... They're fairly simple things I put together. And that's... That's more for my own mental welfare than it is like any immediate expectation of crisis. And I also... I live off grid. Which is not something that I'm gonna specifically advocate that anyone else do. I actually live off grid because it just sort of meets my needs here and now in terms of how I like to live. I live about half an hour away from a small city in a cabin I built myself in the woods because I like doing that. I like living that way. I'm an anarchist and that's going to certainly bleed over into the content of this show. I believe in a world without course of hierarchies like the state or capitalism or white supremacy or heteronormativity or... Or any of the intersecting oppressions and hierarchies that rule the world that shouldn't. And so of course, a lot of my... I tell you this because I want you to know my biases because I want you to come to your own conclusions. I have a bias against state and federal aid. I tend to find it to be wildly inefficient. I'm far more interested in creating a society based on mutual aid. And so... And I find agency to be wildly important. I find it very important for us to encourage each other to have agency and so I'm interested in disaster relief or crisis preparation or whatever, that maximizes individual agency, that maximize community agency and... Yeah, that's what's interesting to me so that's what I'm going to be focusing on more. This first episode, our guest is Kitty Stryker who I can let introduce herself. Thanks so much for listening. #0:05:01.9# (Musical transition) #0:05:06.5# Margaret: So today our guest is Kitty Stryker. Well actually, do you want to introduce yourself with your name and pronouns and kind of any political or organizational affiliation you feel like shouting out. #0:05:21.4# Kitty Stryker: Sure. I'm Kitty Stryker, I use she/her pronouns. I'm a... I identify myself as a leftist doomsday prepper. But I'm more of a like... Emergency prepper, street medic. I work with Struggle Of Circus, which is a of bunches of leftists and other sort of radical political groups and a bunch of juggalos coming together to help out at protests and usually do medic related stuff but also be kind of a meat wall around marginalized communities. I identify as an anarchist and... Yeah, I guess I just found it really interesting that when I was looking for communities of leftist to talk to about prepping, there wasn't anything there. #0:06:15.5# Margaret: Yeah that was... I think we ended up kind of finding each other through a similar... I don't actually remember how we first ended up talking about it. Maybe you do. But we've been, for anyone who's listening, Kitty and I have been talking vaguely about how we needed to do something about this... This lack of... #0:06:34.2# Kitty: Lack of information, yeah. #0:06:35.9# Margaret: Yeah. Because so much of the information that's out there about prepping is not really applicable, well, to anyone realistically. But certainly not necessarily applicable to people whose ideology isn't "fuck you, I've got mine", you know? So... #0:06:53.5# Kitty: Right and I think... And it could be actively hostile in forums and stuff. Like places that you wanna go to ask for information and ask for advice become really hostile when people are talking about how much they want to kill antifa or of like... "I can't wait til the race war". It's not really a very comfortable place to ask questions about fortifications. #0:07:19.5# Margaret: Yeah. That makes sense. So why don't we start by kind of talking about the general conception of preparedness and kind of what is leftist or anarchist prepping or preparedness. As... At least as you can conceive it. #0:07:37.7# Kitty: Sure, well, so for me I grew up with parents who are sort of like... Suburban homesteader types, with a mixture of prepping. But are also hoarders so while they have everything you would need in an apocalypse you also wouldn't necessarily be able to find it. So I kinda grew up with the hoarding tendency that they think comes with a lot of prepping. You wanna have lots of things that seemed very important. But also this desire to try to make it organized and make it easily accessible. I realized fairly quickly that while I'm more of a stay-in-place kind of prepper and sort of emergency preparedness person, I also will potentially need to be able to put what I need a backpack and carry it with me. At least for a mile or two depending on the emergency and if I have so much stuff that I can't practically do that without a car, it's not really going to be that useful. I live in earthquake country so I just have to anticipate the roads are going to be kind of a mess. So that was sort of where I came from, was this not very political, camping and also very pagan, getting in touch with earth kind of thing. Like my parents beehives that drives all of their neighbors off the wall. They hate it. #0:09:12.7# Margaret: That's interesting. I've only a couple times been around this, yeah, suburban homesteading idea where you have access to a little bit of land. Not necessarily so much privacy, not so much... Place where you can keep your bees. #0:09:24.5# Kitty: Nope, no privacy. Everyone in my neighborhood is like, "That's the witch house. You can tell because there's thirteen sacred trees in the front lawn. And her dad goes outside and scythes the lawn." #0:09:38.1# Margaret: Wow. #0:09:39.7# Kitty: I don't think he's actually even done that in years so I think it's just an overgrown tangle at this point. #0:09:45.9# Margaret: Well that's even more fun. #0:09:46.7# Kitty: But we have like... We have a pond in there. There's a little herb garden, a veggie garden. We have a crow feeder. It's... It's elaborate. #0:09:56.8# Margaret: I'm imagining this on like a quarter acre, half acre. Is that..? #0:10:00.5# Kitty: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. With manicured lawns right next to us on either side. #0:10:08.5# Margaret: Well, that's a... #0:10:09.1# Kitty: Really... That's where I was raised. I think that explains a lot. #0:10:13.7# Margaret: Okay. It's an interesting metaphor for being the one person who's... You know, either prepping or being a hoarder. #0:10:22.4# Kitty: I've been the one person for a while. Yeah. But I think that that's in such staunch contrast to doomsday preppers which is what most people think of when they think of prepping. They think of like, "Oh, that's those rednecks in the middle of the really rural areas with their bunker and their nine million guns and their giant water containers." And they're, you know, being completely convinced that there's going to a nuclear war or there's going to be... I don't know. What are some of the other disasters that they're always prepared for? Well, I mean like, definitely race wars. Definitely one of the things. #0:11:09.1# Margaret: Yeah, I mean and that's kind of the... I feel like that's the tell between whether you're talking to a racist prepper or a... Well, obviously if someone's talking about a race war they're clearly racist. But... You know, there's a tell of whether or not they're obsessed with like the... The boogaloo or if they're obsessed with... You know, the possibility of invasion or... System collapse in general. #0:11:32.3# Kitty: Right, right. And like what system collapse looks like. Like what are they actually afraid of, I think is very telling. A lot of times you'll see people say, "Oh, I'm afraid that people are going to come and murder my family for my resources because my resources are so awesome that everyone for miles around is going want to come and murder me." Which, first of all, if that was true I would not be saying it on the internet. That just seems like a bad idea. That's... My boyfriend and I watch doomsday preppers and talk about how we would raid their bunkers because they show us everything. And that just seems very shortsighted, if that is indeed what you are worried about. #0:12:22.2# Margaret: Right, as compared to just kind of showing off and being excited about... Like kind of nerding out about gear... #0:12:27.6# Kitty: I think it's like... Yeah, it's like nerding out and they think it's more of a threat than it is. I don't know. I think... I think it speaks to a desire for conflict that I don't personally have. I don't want to have to use my apartment complex to snipe people. I just don't want to do that. I just wanna be able to grow a garden using a discarded... Shoe organizer from the broken down Ross down the street. That's my type of prepping, rather than preparing for endless violence. #0:13:10.4# Margaret: Yeah, there's kind of a... I feel like one of the main myths or concepts that I'm trying to get across with this podcast... Not a myth I'm trying to get across this, prove that something is a myth, is the bunker mentality is the "I've got mine, fuck you" mentality, that is so common in prepping circles and it's... It's really off-putting because... I mean, even... Even from a pure self-interest point of view it just seems so dumb. So you hole up with your five closest friends in the middle of the woods during the apocalypse, and that's like all fine and good until your appendix bursts and you forget that you're not a surgeon and that your brother isn't a surgeon, you know? And... #0:13:56.0# Kitty: Well you just need more useful friends. #0:13:57.9# Margaret: Well, sure but... #0:13:58.7# Kitty: That's what I did. #0:13:59.2# Margaret: But what if you are the surgeon, right? And then your appendix bursts. #0:14:02.4# Kitty: Well, yeah. Then... Yeah. Then... Then... Well, then you just die. I mean, that's the thing. I think that they... They're so afraid of violence coming from other people that they don't... A, think of the violence that could happen amongst themselves which is kind of inevitable if you're locked in a bunker together. And there's... Especially if there's power dynamics in place and stress, then I feel like there's gonna be some abusive dynamics that come out of that. So if you're not prepared for that, it doesn't really matter how good your resources are. And there's... So that's just even within your unit, and then never mind if you're then expanding out to like... Do you know how to do literally everything in the world? Because you're probably going to help. It's the same as the idea about currency. Everyone's so keen on like... Oh yeah, make sure that you have currency. Make sure you silver buried in your yard. Like... What are you going to do with that, really? Like... I mean... It's cool, I guess. But unless you're going to use that as a brick... I don't understand. #0:15:12.3# Margaret: Well I guess it gets into... In some ways, I think the apocalypse... People who think too much about the apocalypse, whether on they're on the left or on the right, or just bored centrists or moderates or whatever, I think that people are thinking about and imagining clean slates and imagining about how they would like to act and what kind of societies they would like to create, what kind of dynamics they'd like to create. So it's really easy for someone who, say of a libertarian mindset, to be like "Well, of course gold is what matters because we're all going to trade resources. There's definitely going to be market economics after the apocalypse because we're going to institute market... Economics. And then maybe like... Those of us that are like, "Wow, the market's a dumb thing and isn't really particularly interesting to me at all." Like, yeah I have a really hard time imagining that I'm going to be doing much... Even bartering after the apocalypse. Like, I'm... I'm either like rolling with people and sharing shit or I'm keeping shit to myself but like... I'm not gonna be like, "Well, these three bullets are worth that tourniquet," or whatever, you know? At least that's my conception of it. That's when... When I like to imagine the end of the world, which is not actually something I like imagining anymore, but I'm imagining something that is closer to the ideological interest that I have. Which is maybe a fault of mine, maybe that's a blind spot of mine. #0:16:39.5# Kitty: Well, I don't think that's... I don't think it's necessarily a fault. I mean, like one thing that I think when... You know, I have a group friends that we talk about this stuff a lot amongst ourselves. Especially because we're within bicycling distance from each other, so we're sort of like, "Okay, if there is an emergency, we're pretty sure that we could get to each other." But we all have... Slightly different ideas of what we would like to see happen which means we also have a different... Like different ideals and different areas of expertise. And I think that that is actually super helpful. I don't know that I would want to be in a group that everybody thinks the same way, as long as you think cooperatively versus competitively. And for me that's what's important. I don't really care how we get to cooperative instead of competitive, but that's what I want. #0:17:33.5# Margaret: Yeah, that makes sense. So, look, I want to talk more about... Okay, one of the things I really like about prepping in general is that it can be very practical. It's not, it's... Obviously a lot of it is not practical at all. But like... But to take this conversation practically for a minute... Like, what you do... Not necessarily... Both in terms of things that you keep around, but also what are your plans? You talked about bicycling to meet up with your friends. What is... What kind of preparedness do you personally practice? #0:18:05.4# Kitty: So my boyfriend and I talk a lot about what our plans are. Pretty much every three months or so. And we're mostly... And ust to give some context, we're mostly prepping for an earthquake, for a big earthquake, because that's the most likely thing to happen here. I guess there's some possibilities that will end up having a bunch of neo-nazis coming and terrorizing us but I think they've gotten tired of Berkeley and have moved to Portland instead so... We're probably fine for now. So we talk a little bit about what are the risks that are current, what are the resources that are currently around? Maybe... We've been talking about creating a map, like actually getting a map and write, marking down important things that we might want to know where they are when you don't have Google Maps for example. So stuff like that is really important. Like the sort of... Preparing... For immediate needs and also for where you are going to be able to get resources. What area is around that could conceivably be turned into a garden if need be. Which we're actually lucky, we have a park really close by. And we also make a point to know our neighbors. Both our housed and houseless neighbors. So having good relationships with them is really helpful and like giving them ideas of how to be prepared so that we're not overwhelming ourselves trying to take care of them as well as ourselves. So you're trying to match up add the younger folks with older folks or able-bodied folks with people with disabilities so that way there's... It's easier for people to mobilize and so that we know who in our area is going to need help. So that's some of the community planning stuff that's not even focused on my group of hyper-focused friends but just making my environment less chaotic. And so that's sort of like... And again, like a garden, it takes some pruning and some cultivating and a little bit of upkeep but I feel reasonably confident that my neighbors are going to be able to handle themselves. Which is my first big concern because then I can start worrying about things like, what do I personally actually need? One thing that is kind of difficult, I live in an apartment and we don't have a huge amount of space. So I can't have buckets and buckets of freeze-dried food. We do tend to have a lot of canned food, we do tend to have a lot of nuts and dried fruit and stuff like that around so that helps a little bit. It makes it easier for us to find stuff in rubble that we can eat. We also have a... A dresser that we put our prepper stuff in and it's sorted with medic supplies in the first two drawers because that's sort of my specialty... That's my area focus. And then we have sort of more general supplies, so that's where we have LifeStraws and we have bandanas and we have masks for filtering out smoke or disease. We have lots and lots of gloves, we have... Water filtering tablets, we have a bunch different kinds of fire starters. So we sort of put together a compendium of things that we felt would be useful. And then what's probably the least practical thing is my... In the main living room I have a hatchet, I have a walking stick, I have my camping stuff. So it's not all condensed in one place but I have... I do have a spare tent at my partner's house and I have a medic bag. A fully packed medic go-bag that I take to protests in the trunk of my car. So that way I can... I have one medic bag in the house, I have one in the car, and I usually have one at my partner's house. Sometimes I have one at my local bar too but that's the one that usually get used if I go to a protest 'cause that's near downtown. But just having pockets stuff... And then I have a storage unit downtown as well. So I figured it might be more difficult to get into my storage unit but at least it's underground and that would be not a bad place to have some stuff that I don't need immediately but might want down the line, yeah. So... But it's sort of a pack rat... Pack ratty, squirrel type prepping. Of burying little caches... #0:23:27.8# Margaret: I'm impressed because you're... Yeah, you're managing to successfully do in an urban environment what... Well... Something I associate more with the rural environments of... You know, one of the things that I was realizing... #0:23:41.1# Kitty: It's harder. It's harder, but it's only harder if you care about being the only person who can get to it. And I don't really care so much about that. I just wanna have access to it. I'm... Because, for me, I'm someone who... I saw a guy on a scooter get hit by car. I was so glad I had that medic kit on me so that I could actually help him out. And immediately help him out. I'm so glad I had that expertise. So... And actually that's one thing that I also have is a first aid book because, again, I don't know how to do everything. But if I have a book, I can probably figure out how to do most things safely. So... #0:24:26.7# Margaret: What's the book? #0:24:29.4# Kitty: It's an old field manual medic guide, I forget what era. But I prefer to try to go for stuff that's military because... Or serious environmental wilderness strategy guides because then they're not focused on you having access to a full hospital. It's not ideal conditions. Sometimes first aid advice is like, "Oh well just call an ambulance" and it's like well that's not really practical in the sort of situations I'm preparing for so I prefer to look at older stuff. And then take newer knowledge and pack that on top. But knowing how to do some of these things when you don't have electricity, a lot of modern medicine depends on electricity, depends on you having access to different kinds of medications and solutions that might not have. So I think it's kind of... I don't... Until I have to do it in practice I don't know how useful it actually will be. But I'm interested in learning how have people prevented disease... In wartime, in... A forest in the middle of nowhere versus what you you would get trained necessarily if you're getting CPR training for your work. #0:26:08.8# Margaret: Have you taken the wilderness first responder course or anything like that? #0:26:12.4# Kitty: I want to so badly. I'm hoping that I can save up for it or have somebody gift it to me. But that is on my list of, oh my god I would... That be so dreamy. But... I really... I just also am just also am obsessed with medical stuff. I guess that's... That's one thing I would really recommend for people curious about prepping. I would say while it is nice to be able to have information about a bunch of different areas, find the thing that you're really interested and nerd out on that. One of my friends is really, really into finding plants and urban foraging. So that's her area of expertise. It's like, oh, she can tell you every plant you can eat within two miles of your house. And that would be really useful, it's not necessarily something that my brain can hold onto... As easily as medicine stuff. My partner is really good with weapons and... Building shelters. It's not really my area so it's nice to have somebody who can teach me just enough but also has a lot more expertise. #0:27:29.4# Margaret: Yeah, that's something that I... I think about a lot in terms of even just the world I wanna live in. I'm really excited about the idea where we... Instead of having a generalism versus specialization kind of argument, it's another bullshit false dichotomy, probably we should all as much as we can generalize as broadly as we can and then pick the things that stand out to us to specialize in. Like, I don't need to know how to do surgery but I should probably know first... Literal first aid. Like first response... Like there have been a number times in my life where I've... I'm incredibly squeamish, I hate medical things, I hate thinking about it the way that like... Like someone showed me how to use a tourniquet and... You know, I disassociated in order to learn. Because the concept of thinking about like... Arterial bleeding doesn't work for me. But I know that I need to know how to do that so I learn pretty much by disassociating and then kind of when things happen I like disassociate again and then deal with it. #0:28:34.6# Kitty: Yeah, I mean there's some practicality to that. When I was doing medical work at protests I really underestimated how traumatized I was until months later... When I was like, "Wow, I just didn't have feelings for a while." It's a lot and I'm... I love... See, I'm not squeamish at all about that stuff but I'm impatient so like building structures is not my thing. It's like, I could learn how to do it but I don't even put up the tent when I go camping if I can avoid it. So... Knowing that I have a good solid group of people around me who are really excited to do that stuff allows us to do the thing we're excited about but also in case something happens to that person, we know how to do it we just don't like it. #0:29:26.1# Margaret: Yeah. Or at least have a... Can do a rougher version of it, you know? Can do a... I had a... I was just talking to a friend about all of this. I actually don't remember if it's... I'm recordings these interviews out of order from how they're going to play. So I was talking to a friend of mine who's a... A medical professional and he was talking about how in a crisis situation if you have two people, maybe what you want is a nurse and a world class generalist, you know? As like the two people that you need. #0:29:58.8# Kitty: Pretty much. I think having a medic... Like I think everyone should have basic medical training, just basic shit, because that way anybody can do an emergency... Like, okay, "I can put gauze on this and stop the bleeding." That's what I need from people. And every time I go to a protest, people are asking what they could do to help and I'm like, "Just do that. Just do that, only." And help people with sprained ankles and keep them hydrated. 'Cause if you can do all of that then I can focus on stitching someone's head together. That's what I need to be able to be focused on because I'm not the squeamish one. So... Yeah, I think that helps a lot. Also coming up with things for you to do, that gets ignored a lot on prepper forums. At least the ones I've been on. They talk a lot about like, you know, "Okay, you've gotta have all of this foraging skills and you gotta have shelter building and you gotta have all these supplies in order to make all of this stuff," but there are no downtime options. And you're gonna have downtime sometimes. Like you're gonna get sick eventually, if nothing else. So make sure you have stuff to keep your mind busy during those times. 'Cause watching "Alone" for example, I don't know if you've ever seen that one but they put these people by themselves in the middle of the... Was it Canadian wilderness I think for at least the first couple of seasons? And they have to do everything from scratch. They have some supplies on them and a good supply list. But they have to pick like... 1 of 10 items, or 10 different items out of a list of like... pre-approved 50 different things they can have. So have to do a lot of stuff by themselves. And almost every single time the thing that gets to them is just a lack of food and boredom. And if they can keep themselves busy, somehow, like making music or making art or building... Like adding decorations to their shelter, then the fact that they're hungry doesn't bother them so much. But if they don't have anything like that, they're not creative in any way, then the fact that they're hungry literally gnaws away at their brain. So I just think that's a really interesting aspect... Like thinking a lot about mental health in an emergency scenario because I think that gets ignored with a lot of right-wing prepping forums and stuff like that. #0:32:53.6# Margaret: Yeah. Yeah I wonder what... I feel like there's just the deck of card, is what's written about in all the things. #0:33:03.3# Kitty: Yeah, it's always recommended. Always have a deck of cards. #0:33:05.8# Margaret: Which is like... You can tell that they wrote that in the 50's or whatever, you know? #0:33:10.1# Kitty: Right, in that... Part of it's gonna be like, "Oh, like for gambling in order to entertain yourself if... Gambling with the no money that you have. I don't know. It's just... I would much prefer to have... I don't know, Codenames or something. Endless replayability. #0:33:31.2# Margaret: Yeah, I feel like there's a... #0:33:32.1# Kitty: I mean, but... #0:33:32.8# Margaret: Go ahead. #0:33:32.8# Kitty: Let's be honest, I'd be playing Dungeons & Dragons. In my tracker tent as an actual ranger. Playing Dungeons & Dragons. #0:33:45.2# Margaret: You wouldn't play... What's the opposite of it? The dragons play, they play... Humans and Houses? #0:33:51.3# Kitty: Oh, yeah, maybe that too. I don't know, mix them up. Mix them together. #0:33:56.3# Margaret: You'd have roleplaying about what would you do if apartments still existed or whatever? #0:34:00.4# Kitty: Yeah. #0:34:02.7# Margaret: I think that... #0:34:03.3# Kitty: I mean, I guess I don't... I'm not that scared of that. It would be uncomfortable and I'd probably hate it a lot. I'm a house cat. But, you know, I'm not that worried about it either. And I think part of it is because I just made being prepared, knowing where my go-bag is at all times just part of my day-to-day existence. So it's just muscle memory at this point. #0:34:32.8# Margaret: Yeah. Earlier in our pre-conversation, when we talked about what we might talk about, one of the things you brought up is the ableism that exists in a lot of prepping conversations and I was wondering if you wanted to talk more about that. #0:34:46.0# Kitty: Yeah, so I noticed that a lot of discussions on what your go-plan is involves being able to walk long distances. Presumably because they figure walking a long enough distance would get you to area of wilderness, that they feel would be more suitable. I... That is really impractical for a large number of people. People with small children are going to struggle with that. Elderly people are going to struggle with that. People with disabilities are going to struggle with that. Some people with disabilities aren't going to be able to do that. It won't even be just a struggle, it's just impossible. So I think the... We need more diverse resources and we need to talk seriously about how to make this accessible for people who aren't in their... Super hyper fit, in their 30's, ready to charge over a mountain. And in the bay area you could you could walk for eight hours and I don't know that you would find a bit of wilderness... So I don't think that's necessarily the most practical option for all people. #0:36:08.7# Margaret: it's funny to me that all this stuff about going to the wilderness because I live in... Not the wilderness but I very rurally. I live in a house that I built at the end of a... Beyond the end of a gravel road like every stupid stick of my fucking cabin I had to carry up a hill on my back. I actually started building it with a chronic injury and then managed to... Physical therapy my way... This isn't a... Statement about ableism, just the weird stupid shit of building this fucking cabin I live in. #0:36:40.6# Kitty: But looks really cool. #0:36:43.0# Margaret: But there's... Thanks, yeah, no I'm really proud of it and it's funny because actually it's a brilliant place to live during civilization. But if there were some kind of crisis, I would probably get my to-go bag or my car presumably but let's pretend like that's not an option for whatever reason, and I would walk to the city. Because the city is where people are and that is where we can keep each other safe. I think people have this conception of... That people are a danger and that's true, people are dangerous, right? But the wilderness is really fucking dangerous too. And... #0:37:23.7# Kitty: People really underestimate how dangerous the wilderness is. They underestimate how cold it is. The cold will kill you, the wet will kill you. #0:37:34.4# Margaret: Yeah and so getting to... I don't know for certain, it would really depend on the threat, but I would presumably go to a place of higher population so that we collectively can figure out what the fuck to do. And maybe the fact that I have access to certain resources by living on land can become useful to people. And that would be my hope. I could easily imagine a situation where you have, as part of your prepping, you would have... The rural... With rural living access to space. You don't necessarily have access to anything else but you often have access to space and... So you can store tractors and you can store strange devices... Like devices that have very odd and specialized purposes for building or something like that. But then again, the thing I'm slowly learning is that cities have all of those things too. It's just that not necessarily each individual is going to own them. Because not everyone lives on a farm. #0:38:36.4# Kitty: Right. The city owns it or the government owns it. But yeah, there's plenty of parking lots. #0:38:42.5# Margaret: Yeah, that's true. #0:38:45.8# Kitty: So... Yeah. I mean, like... Oh, god. I'm trying to remember what the name of the show was. So I... I watch a lot of prepping and wilderness survival based shows. Somewhat to remind myself that nature is dangerous and also because I find them very amusing. And there was one that was... It wasn't entirely clear if it was a reality show or if it was scripted or both. Pretty sure it was both, but they were in LA. And I forget what they had decided ... The LA one I don't think it was a disease. They had a different calamity happen each season. And in the first season they had a good variety of people. They had several mechanics, they had a couple of nurses and doctors. They had martial arts teachers. So they had a good cross-section of people. And they did decently well surviving in a big warehouse in LA and came up with some incredibly inventive weapons and things. I remember they created a flame thrower out of bits of an old car which was stunning to watch. But then the second season they were in New Orleans, in some of the areas that have been devastated by Katrina. And they had underestimated how swampy it was and how hard it was going to be to get food and how there were tons of snakes and alligators that we're going to kill you. And also that one had a disease element so every once in a while someone would get claimed by a contagious disease and they would just start disappearing. But the thing that really got to them I think is that they didn't have a very diverse group of people. They had a lot of schoolteachers and artists and that's great, that's important stuff, but if they don't have any trade skills as well, they're gonna drop like flies. So it's really important to take your creative energies and learn how to do something that can embrace that but also has a living purpose. #0:41:12.1# Margaret: Yeah. Yeah, as a generalist I think about that where most of my skills are graphic design and audio which is great when you want to start a podcast, if you have been doing electronic music for twenty years or whatever, you know? But I think I've really consciously been working on developing my skills that are not only on a computer, you know? For kind of this purpose. #0:41:39.1# Kitty: Well, hey. Electronic music and audio says to me, making ham radios. Practical and useful. There's always something there, it's just like finding what those things are. Though I will say this, the first season in the warehouse in LA they had a big issue with masculinity. #0:42:04.7# Margaret: I only watched the second season. #0:42:05.4# Kitty: Everybody was... #0:42:06.9# Margaret: I watched the one where they all... #0:42:07.5# Kitty: The first one is great. It's like all these male mechanics shouting at each other about how to fix something better and then this female mechanic just goes and does it. #0:42:16.8# Margaret: Yeah, that sounds like a perfect metaphor. #0:42:19.1# Kitty: And then they when they all brag about how proud that they came up with this idea and she just rolls her eyes and you're just like, "Yup, that's how it would be pretty much." And that said to me a lot about mediation. Knowing how to mediate, knowing your own triggers. Like knowing your own mental health stuff so that you can then navigate other people's mental health stuff. That's also super important. And easy for anybody to do. #0:42:44.9# Margaret: Yeah, yeah I think knowing different organization models. Like I think knowledge and facilitation is a really important skill. I think people basically pick whichever organizational model seems to be practical when the existing larger structure goes away. And I've been in spaces where we haven't been sure how we're going to organize ourselves and I'm surrounded by a bunch of non-anarchists and then I'm like, "Well here's this model where we're all equals but we still actually figure things out." And it just works as compared to I'm pretty sure if someone had been like, "Here's the model, I'm pretty much in charge." And maybe it'll be like some veneer of democracy where he'll be like, and I'm just going to use 'he' for this imaginary patriarch... #0:43:28.5# Kitty: I wonder why. #0:43:29.7# Margaret: He'll be like, "I'm in charge and the we can have a little vote about that if we wanna prove that I'm in charge," you know? And everyone will be like, "Well, he's the one who is offering to get shit done." And what... Of course what people fail to realize is that's like... We get shit done, collectively. Whether it's collectively we do it and someone is taking the credit by being up top, you know? Or whether we do it... So that's one of the things that I think about with prepping. How to... And I think that's maybe one of the things that right-wing preppers are afraid of is they're like... They don't have... The only people skills that they know is this hierarchical system. Well, I guess there's plenty of leftists who also only seem to know hierarchical systems. But... #0:44:13.2# Kitty: I mean it's a pretty... It's a pretty common system. That's why... That's why I kind of enjoy the, everybody gets to be an expert in their own thing so that nobody is super... Nobody can be too pleased with themselves. Keeps everybody humble, I think. #0:44:34.3# Margaret: Yeah. So the one other main question that I... Or thing that I kinda wanna hash out with you for this which is probably gonna be the first episode, everyone who's listening will know whether or not it's the first episode. It will be very embarrassing if this is the seventeenth episode, but... Maybe talk about different threat models. That's... How we we determine what we need, of course, is dependent on what we think is likely to happen and as there's no one-size-fits all. And so you say the primary threat model that you're working with is a natural disaster. Do you want to talk about that or do you want to talk about other threat models or... #0:45:12.8# Kitty: Sure. Well, I think... Okay, a great example is the things that I want for a earthquake is not necessarily what I would want in a tsunami, right? Those are very different natural disasters. As somebody who grew up in hurricane country-ish, you know, it was just really really wet. And having a dust mask would not have helped me in any way. But I would be at much more risk of getting trench foot so that would be like, waterpreoof boots would be way more important. So some of it's knowing your environment and being aware of what your environmental concerns ar. Like living in a city, asbestos is a big fundamental concern. So having dust masks is really important. I feel like I read once that most deaths aren't... In an earthquake, come from inhaling the debris. And that... That causes some of the worst injuries because there's just all of this dust everywhere and... I know that was definitely true with the fires. A lot of people have... Still have some... Some still have breathing problems now from the various fires that were going on in Northern California. So knowing what you need to be concerned about. Like with earthquakes, knowing that the roads might not be super useful to drive on. So having alternative plans for that knowing where your bike paths are. Knowing... If you have a wheelchair for example, maybe thinking of a way to add some tread on your wheelchair might be a practical option. I have a beach cruiser. It's not a racing bike by any means but it's heavy and it's easy to find the parts. And it's really easy to fix myself, that's why I chose that. So thinking about what you can actually do, I think is helpful in figuring out your... Your strategy. I know that I don't know enough about my car to be able to completely dismantle it. However, I do know somebody who does know enough about my car to do that. So I can bike to him and then have him do that. So coming up with those kind of like, "Okay, if this then this, if this then this" strategies helps me at least, I have a very ADHD brain. It helps me have a... A process to go through. Now in California, earthquakes are a big concern especially in this area but fire is also a big concern. And the way I would prepare for a fire versus an earthquake, I would be more concerned about my paperwork disappearing in a fire than an earthquake. Though to be completely honest I'm not that fussed about my paperwork in general. I don't think getting rid of paperwork is the worst plan. But that's not what the government wants to hear from me. So I have... I have some paperwork in a folder that's easy to access if I need to grab something go because my apartment is burning but I wouldn't be as... I wouldn't care much about that if it was an earthquake because in my consideration there would will be enough of a drastic interruption in services for an earthquake that I don't think that that would be an immediate need. #0:49:16.3# Margaret: Yeah and you wouldn't certainly be the only one who has lost their paperwork. 
#0:49:20.4# Kitty: Right, exactly. Exactly. And again, I think that we use paperwork as a penalty for so many people that... Maybe mucking up that system a little bit is a convenient little thing I can do on the side. So I... Yeah, I guess... And all of that is completely separate from thinking of having invaders come and try to take my apartment away from me or something. That... I usually strategise for that by thinking about what my plan are if the cops get even more out of control. #0:50:02.9# Margaret: Right. Like fascist takeovers is on my... On my threat model list, you know? #0:50:08.9# Kitty: Yeah, yeah, totally. And you know... The cops have been pretty shitty around here for quite a while, so... You know, it's been a slowly increasing... Plan. But I mean... For me, I'm not interested in trying to shoot my way through the cops. I have no problem with people who that is their plan, I think it's great that there are people who are inclined that way, but I'm gonna go full rogue. I'm sneaky. I'm going to go to the sewers. I'm not as... I'm not as interested in that kind of direct conflict. So my model for that... Or like my managements for that would be really, really different from natural disasters. And I kind of feel like that are all the things that might actually happen. I mean, I guess a meteor could hit but... Eh. The prepping I do for every other disaster would be fine for that probably. Or I'd be dead. And wouldn't care. So... How about you? What are your... What's your threat model? #0:51:23.0# Margaret: So I live on a floodplain. It's not supposed to be a floodplain but global warming has made it a floodplain. And the mountains... When I first moved to the mountains, I grew up in the foothills, and when I moved into the mountains it... It kind of blew my mind that flooding is a problem because in my mind I'm like, "Well, everything is high up" and actually flooding is at least as much of a problem in... Well, the flooding is a problem in a lot different places, you know hurricanes cause floods, but flash floods in the mountains are very real especially in an era of mountaintop removal mining. which is not immediate thing immediately around me but it certainly affects places within a couple hours of where I live in Appalachia. But, you know, storms... Like the weather patterns are just changing dramatically and by living in rurally I'm not as defended against that in some ways because there's not a large crew of people working to try and figure out how to make sure that the little place that I live is... Is safe. And so we have to do it to whatever... Because you're not supposed to mess with of waterways, we have to do it through the state and all that, but in the meantime our land floods. And so... It flooded a couple days ago and I had to go out and try and prevent it from getting worse through whatever means. And... And I actually had this moment, you're talking about paperwork, I started walking into this flood with my wallet in my pocket. And then eventually realized that that was a bad idea. My wallet does not need to be in my pocket. I'm not going to get asked for my papers or need to purchase anything while I'm walking into this flood and... And so it's a... So natural disaster is like the top... Climate change affecting everything is my top threat model where I live. But fascist takeover is on there and fascist takeover... Is a really different set of problems. #0:53:42.9# Kitty: Yeah. And it's different kind of... #0:53:43.8# Margaret: And a lot of it still comes down to knowing your neighbors. #0:53:46.1# Kitty: It's a different set of prepping as well. It's a totally different set skills. #0:53:50.8# Margaret: Yeah. And I mean there's... And one of the things I was thinking about is... The thing I was really... That I realized, a lot of my... I've spent a lot of my life living outdoors. I was a traveling anarchist living out of a backpack, and I was a forest defender and was a squatter and I lived in a van, and now I live in a cabin. Almost half my life I've lived out... Off grid, essentially. And I was thinking how when in February I'm waist and sometimes chest deep in water, I was thinking how glad I am that just kind of by default prefer certain types of practical clothes. It's funny 'cause I... Most of the time... I built my house wearing a dress. But when I'm like, "Okay it's rainy," and I put my puffy vest and my waders, my muck boots, and wool socks. And I wasn't nearly as concerned about hypothermia, which is a major problem in floods especially in February, just because I wasn't wearing much cotton. And it's funny like because I never think about my outdoors skills. Like how to start a fire with tinder and flint and steel and all that. That's not... I don't really see a version of the world where I'm living in the woods alone and hunting squirrels and whatever the fuck, you know? But there are gonna be moments where I might be like... Needing to not get hypothermia while I'm trying to clear up a dam that's forming or whatever. #0:55:26.9# Kitty: Yeah, yeah. Two pairs of wool socks should be on everyone's list in their go bag for sure. #0:55:34.3# Margaret: Yeah, I keep a second vest... #0:55:35.7# Kitty: And the more wool clothing you have the better. #0:55:39.4# Margaret: But what's funny is than I was thinking that through when you're talking about fires, I was thinking about California, I was like... Well, actually the same clothes that are really good in flood and maybe a tsunami are not good in fire. You don't want to wear synthetic in a fire situation. So... But over all... #0:56:00.1# Kitty: But you actually do wanna wear cotton. #0:56:02.6# Margaret: Yeah. Yeah... #0:56:05.0# Kitty: I remember I used to... I used to blacksmith with my dad and he would be like, "What are you wearing? That's really impractical for this." I'm like, "It's fine. It's cotton, it'll just roll right off. You can't catch fire in cotton." He was like, "That's not really true... But it's more true, I guess." #0:56:22.2# Margaret: It's better than polyester. #0:56:24.0# Kitty: Yes, certainly, yes. #0:56:25.3# Margaret: It's not going to melt into your skin. #0:56:27.9# Kitty: I have melted through so many skirts with some prep butts for sure. And I'm sort of learning at this point that that's... That's a concern. But yeah, I mean that's definitely an area of my prepping that I need to be better about. Is just having practical clothes. I don't have that much in the way of practical clothes that can fold up really small and actually keep me warm or keep me cool. #0:56:59.3# Margaret: Yeah. But sometimes people over... Overestimate the importance of this. I've definitely gone hiking in maxi skirts all time. And every time I go hiking with someone new in a maxi skirt they're like, "Margaret, do you wanna wear that?" And I'm like, "Are you fucking kidding me, I've been hiking in these skirts for the past fifteen years I know what the fuck I'm doing." Yeah, they might get caught and rip on things but whatever, you know? So there's a... There's a... I'm suddenly defensive about like, "Oh no, you don't need practical clothes." I don't know, maybe... Maybe we all need practical clothes. But maybe sometimes... #0:57:31.7# Kitty: You definitely need socks and I would recommend more than one pair of underwear. Probably cotton just for... #0:57:38.9# Margaret: But that's, yeah... #0:57:39.2# Kitty: Keeping your genitals fresh. But other then that... You can figure it out. I mean... But also clothes are not exactly in short supply either. There's a lot of trash fashion that we can pad up to make something acceptable. #0:58:01.8# Margaret: Well, in a lot of disaster areas people gather clothes to bring there and all the people there are like, "Why did you bring us fucking clothes. Bring us fucking clean water. What you doing?" #0:58:12.6# Kitty: Well they're bringing clothes because you can't burn them in India or China anymore, right? So it's like, "Oh, we'll give it to poor people." #0:58:22.1# Margaret: That way we get to feel better and clean out our closet, yeah #0:58:25.7# Kitty: Yup. I mean it's just... I guess that's another... That another threat, is just being buried under stuff. Just trash. Just being slowly buried alive under trash. #0:58:39.4# Margaret: Well that's the... That's the status quo problem, right? There's... If the world doesn't end and it keeps going the way it goes that's also kind of horrible. #0:58:49.7# Kitty: Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess actually another threat model that I think a lot about is disease. Disease is definitely a big concern. We... I live in a city where everyone is on top each other. So... A disease can spread incredibly quickly. I remembered there was a person who went to Berkeley Bowl who had the measles or something and they just quarantined Berkeley bowl. And I was like, "I'm not leaving the house for two weeks, just in case, who knows?" And that's even with having a vaccine. It's just... Knowing that when the electricity fails a lot of things like vaccines are going to become a lot more difficult, if not impossible... #0:59:43.0# Margaret: To acquire or whatever? #0:59:45.1# Kitty: And then... And then it's... Yeah, to acquire, keep them cold. To refrigerate medications, that's not going to be possible. So figuring out that is also something I try to be somewhat aware of. Having alternatives to medication, having alternatives to street drugs also. So knowing about... Knowing how to use Narcan. Knowing a little about... I don't even know how to pronounce that, I've only seen it read... Kratom? #1:00:23.5# Margaret: Kratom I think. #1:00:25.6# Kitty: Yeah, so that has been used by a bunch of my friends when they've been withdrawing from opiates. So having stuff that could work as an alternate... I've always packed some pot in my medic bag even though I don't smoke pot. Because it's so useful for so many different things... That it's worth just having it in there. And that's something that could be a real problem. A bunch of people withdrawing at once... Is a huge problem. A bunch of people getting sick at once is a huge problem. So having alternatives for that stuff is something that I'm looking a lot more into. #1:01:13.4# Margaret: Yeah, that's interesting that... I haven't thought about that. #1:01:16.3# Kitty: And that's what... #1:01:16.3# Margaret: The... Specifically withdrawing. #1:01:18.6# Kitty: That's just really something right-wing people don't think about that. I've noticed this. They're afraid of... Sorry, I forget the actual terminology, again ADHD brain, and I tend to call things... Like I called bars alcohol restaurants, that's just... How my brain works. But there's some doomsday thing that a lot of people are hype on... #1:01:39.4# Margaret: Coronavirus? #1:01:41.8# Kitty: About... No, no, no. I wish it was that, that would make much sense but no. They're just being racist and frantic about that while not thinking about the flu which kills a lot more people. But anyway... No. It's the... It's like a solar flare is going to knock out all of our electricity? #1:02:02.9# Margaret: Oh, 'cause then it'll EMP us or whatever? #1:02:05.4# Kitty: That's the one, yes. There's so many of them who are so focused on that but then they don't think about disease at all. And that just blows my mind because disease is way more likely. #1:02:19.9# Margaret: Yeah, people are bad at threat modeling. #1:02:21.0# Kitty: Within our lifetime we've seen multiple plagues. #1:02:25.0# Margaret: Yeah. I mean it's... #1:02:27.7# Kitty: It's just really surprising. #1:02:29.7# Margaret: I think some of it is about... I mean most of it's that people are bad at threat modeling. But I think some of it is like people... Enjoy certain types of threats. Like preparing for certain types of threats more than others. And also probably enjoy preparing like... For something that makes them feel like they have more agency instead of less agency, you know? If you're someone who... All of your skills are about non-electric things you can be really excited about the power grid going down. But I don't know. #1:03:02.8# Kitty: But I mean... That is... That is another area to think about when it comes to ableism, for example. A lot of diabetics aren't going to be able to get access to their medication. So figuring out how do you deal with that. And I don't think there... I don't know that I have answer to that, I don't know that anybody does. While that's for certain something that I would want to... Know more about. #1:03:28.0# Margaret: I think that's why we have to not... It's why the end of the world is bad. Like disaster is actually a really bad thing. Like people clearly get kind of hooked on it, right, because they suddenly have agency in their lives and they... You know, and... Everything I've ever read or talk to people about, like suicide goes down, like psychotic breaks go down, things like that during crisis. And it's... But it's still, at the end of the day, something that if we can avert it we should. And that's actually why... As much as climate change is going to affect things, there are going to be disasters, there's going to be interruptions in our society, if there's ways we can find to make sure that that doesn't kill so many people or ruin so many lives... Even if it ruins economic systems, maybe, you know... And of course as an anarchist I say this, maybe the solution is to ruin the existing economic system. Although ideally by transferring it over to a system that... You know... So that we still have access to the... The things we need in the meantime. Which is actually, it gets... I'm almost done with this rant. The whole... There's a threat that the whole like... There's a Durruti quote where during the Spanish Civil War... Someone asks him, "Well, what about all the destruction of this revolution?" And he's like, "Well, we're workers, we're not afraid of ruins. Why would we be afraid of ruins, we're the ones who built this city, we can build again." And I think about... Often people are like, well, and this is a tangent 'cause now I'm talking about anarchist society, people are like, "In an anarchist society, how would you have antibiotics?" I'd be like "Well, I don't know, how do we fucking have them now? We'll do that. Or maybe a different way, I don't know." And there's still people in the apocalypse, right? There's still a ton of people in disaster and we all know how to do stuff. And so even if like the electrical grid dies, that doesn't mean there's no power. It doesn't mean there's no hospital, even, you know? There's... Like even... We can... Fix these things and do these things and some of those are already prepared for that. #1:05:43.8# Kitty: Yeah. And I mean... And I think... I guess I would say that while it's good to be prepared, I also think it's important not to psyche yourself out. I think it's important to... Not get too excited about it. Because the fact is a lot of people, a lot of black and brown people especially, disabled people especially, will die. In any kind of disaster that you would want to prep for. That's just... That's how we structured our society and that is going to happen. So I think that that is something to be aware of before getting too thrilled about... The end of the world, right? So that you're kinda saying some really fucked up stuff at the same time. And frankly I don't know that I would survive a disaster like that. But I do know that I don't think I could do it by myself. I do think I could do it with community. And I think that that's why I'm so focus on community and mutual aid. I read A Paradise Built In Hell and it's this really interesting book that looks at different disasters and kind of has that... Isn't it interesting how a disaster happens and people come together and help each other even when everything has gone shit. And how... I think this was kinda the intention of the author of this book but she does seem to point out a lot... Isn't it also interesting how often the government steps in and tells them to stop doing that? So no, that is not okay. And will actually murder people to prevent them from helping each other. And I think that... That's something I'd consider as sort of a secondary threat model is... The government trying to prevent people from actually doing okay without them. It's like an ultimate abusive relationship. And figuring out how to deal with that... When you're being funneled into resources that are not ready to handle them. Yeah, so I mean, you know, it's a lot. #1:08:25.9# Margaret: Well this is a... This is a really good... This is going to be the first episode and... So I think we've covered a lot of... Thanks for helping me kind of... Almost like set up what this show will hopefully drill down more about and yeah, thanks so much for... Talking to me about all this stuff today. #1:08:46.8# Kitty: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm glad we could kind of work out... Sort of, here's all of the issues for... Here's a selection of all of the issues. But wait, there's more. #1:08:58.8# Margaret: Yeah, no, exactly. #1:08:59.1# Kitty: I'm looking forward to seeing the series. It should be pretty cool. #1:09:03.7# Margaret: Cool. Alright, well... Thank you so much. #1:09:06.5# Kitty: Thank you. #1:09:08.0# (Musical transition) #1:09:11.7# Margaret: Thanks for listening to the first ever episode of Live Like The World Is Dying. If you enjoyed the podcast, please tell your friends. Tell iTunes, tell Apple podcasts, tell whatever platform you get your podcasts on that you liked the podcast by subscribing, by reviewing it, by rating it and all of those things. It actually makes a huge difference and I think it'll especially a huge difference for the first couple episodes of a podcast. If you'd like to see this podcast continue, you can support me on Patreon. I... I make most of my living through my Patreon which allows me to spend my time creating content and I'm wildly, wildly grateful that that's something that I get to do with my life. In particular, I would like to thank Chris and Nora and Hoss the dog, Willow, Kirk, Natalie, and Sam. Y'all really make this possible and I can't thank you enough. Alright, thanks so much. And join us next time. #1:10:10.0# (Outroductory music) This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.

Donate (no account necessary) | Subscribe (account required) Join Bryan Dean Wright, former CIA Operations Officer, as he dives into today's top stories shaping America and the world. In this episode of The Wright Report, Bryan explains why Minnesota's governor is openly escalating toward a constitutional crisis, how a deadly ICE confrontation is being weaponized politically, and why Democrats may be preparing nationwide unrest to distract from a massive fraud reckoning. He then covers major White House moves on housing, defense contractors, Venezuela, China, Russia, and Greenland, showing how Trump's strategy is reshaping global power. Tim Walz Declares a De Facto War on the Federal Government: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced that his state is "in a state of war" with the federal government after an ICE officer shot and killed protester Renee Good during an immigration raid in Minneapolis. Video shows Good used her vehicle as a weapon against the officer, who fired in self-defense after being struck. Walz ordered the National Guard to prepare for deployment and called on activists nationwide to rise up, prompting warnings that his rhetoric may meet the legal definition of insurrection. A Manufactured Crisis and the Somali Fraud Reckoning: Bryan explains why the timing of Walz's escalation matters. Attorney General Pam Bondi just surged federal investigators into Minnesota to probe billion-dollar Somali fraud rings tied to Medicaid, daycare centers, and migrant nonprofits, many of which donated to Democratic campaigns. Federal funds to Minnesota and other blue states have been frozen or cut, and the White House is preparing a nationwide fraud announcement. Bryan warns that the death of an activist is being exploited to distract from what could become one of the largest corruption scandals in U.S. history. White House Targets Defense Contractors and Housing Costs: President Trump issued an executive order blocking major defense contractors from paying dividends or buying back stock until weapons production accelerates. CEO compensation is capped at five million dollars annually. Trump also moved to ban large institutional investors from buying additional single-family homes, arguing corporate buyers are pricing Americans out of the housing market. Senate Republicans are already drafting legislation to codify the policy. Trump Confronts Socialist Housing Policy in New York City: The Justice Department is reviewing whether New York City's new socialist mayor and his housing director violated anti-discrimination laws. The housing director has publicly called homeownership a tool of white supremacy and advocated seizing private property, with the mayor openly endorsing her views. DOJ officials say racial targeting in housing policy is unlawful and will be challenged. Global Shockwaves from Venezuela and the Ghost Fleet: Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed a three-phase U.S. plan for Venezuela, beginning with stability under remnants of the Maduro regime, followed by economic recovery and eventual democratic transition. The United States will act as Venezuela's sole oil dealer while seizing ghost-fleet tankers moving Iranian and Russian oil. Trump authorized U.S. forces to seize ships even after they reflagged as Russian, directly squeezing Moscow's war finances and Beijing's energy supply. Greenland and Europe's Energy Reality Check: Denmark warned it would use lethal force if U.S. troops attempt to seize Greenland, even as Chinese submarines map Arctic waters near U.S. defenses. Bryan contrasts Europe's military posturing with its fragile energy reality, as winter cold, snow-covered solar panels, and weak wind output drive electricity shortages and price spikes across Germany and Northern Europe "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32     Keywords: January 8 2026 Wright Report, Tim Walz ICE shooting Minneapolis, Renee Good protest death, Minnesota National Guard insurrection rhetoric, Somali fraud Medicaid daycare nonprofits, Pam Bondi investigation surge, defense contractor dividend ban Trump, institutional investors single family homes, Zohran Mamdani housing discrimination DOJ, Venezuela stability first strategy Rubio, ghost fleet tanker seizures Russia Iran, Greenland Denmark threat U.S. troops, China Arctic submarine mapping, Europe winter energy crisis

Paula McLain's Skylark is the GMA book club pick this month and we are so pleased she sat down with us too. This book is a beautifully written, touching and suspenseful story centered around the meaning of freedom, and the prices we pay to attain it.  Paralleling two stories in Paris, one in the 17th century, the other on the dawn of WWII, each story takes us into the depths of the Paris underground, exploring hidden tunnels, abandoned quarries and secret rivers.  There is a second Paris that is hidden under the streets that tourists know and love.  And this story explores the lost depths of the city while handing readers unforgettable characters with page turning action. McLain herself is an amazing woman who has taken her challenging life and turned it into a gift for the written word.  She shares her experience and how it shaped her writing.  Join us for an unforgettable conversation with a terrific writer. Find books mentioned on The Book Case: ⁠https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/shop/story/book-case-podcast-reading-list-118433302 Books mentioned on this week's episode: Skylark by Paula McLain The Paris Wife by Paula McLain Love and Ruin by Paula McLain LIke Family: Growing up in Other People's Houses by Paula McLain A Ticket to Ride by Paula McLain Circling the Sun by Paula McLain When the Stars go Dark by Paula McLain Martyr by Kaveh Akbar Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Desiree from Connecticut never got the answers she wanted—only the silence that follows a loss you can't put into words. Pregnant with twins, she miscarried before she could learn who they were… and as the one-year anniversary closed in, the grief came back sharp.Then she had a dream. A quiet street. Houses for sale. And across from it… a baseball field that pulled her attention like a magnet. She sat alone on the bleachers watching teenagers warm up—until a boy and a girl drifted toward her like they already knew her. The boy ran to the game. The girl stayed close… watching her, studying her, asking how she was doing.And then the moment shifted. The two teens hugged her tightly—too familiar, too real—and told her they loved her… that they missed her… that they were okay.So what was that dream… a grieving mind… or a visit?#TrueGhostStory #VisitationDream #AfterlifeSigns #ParanormalEncounter #SpiritualMessage #GriefAndHealing #UnexplainedMysteries #RealGhostStories #HauntingTruth #DreamVisit #ParanormalPodcast Love real ghost stories? Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:

Today on LAist: Interview with Mayor Karen Bass (0:15) Palisades Community Recovery (16:34) How are survivors of the Palisades and Eaton fires recovering? (39:45) Interview with California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara (52:25) Altadena Community and Recovery (1:08:52) LA County supervisor Lindsey Horvath ((1:17:48) Altadena Community and Recovery continued (1:23:54) LA County supervisor Kathryn Barger (1:32:51) Houses of worship find new homes (1:46:00) Nature's comeback in the burn zones (2:10:04) LAist staffers share their recovery stories (2:16:51) Visit www.preppi.com/LAist to receive a FREE Preppi Emergency Kit (with any purchase over $100) and be prepared for the next wildfire, earthquake or emergency

Want to quit your job and build a real land investing business? ⁠Land Portal⁠ gives you access to the fastest-growing land software plus ⁠Land Portal University⁠, where we walk you step-by-step through getting your first land deal. Looking for 1-on-1 Land Flipping or Subdividing coaching?  Schedule a ⁠FREE strategy call⁠ here.================================In this episode, Ron Apke sits down with veteran land investor, Travis King, to reveal how he scaled from flipping $500 lots from Ebay to closing 6-figure land deals through private capital, smarter marketing, and value-adding strategies. Travis breaks down what's actually working in today's land investing market, from new strategies targeting landlocked properties and subdivisions to standing out with segmented direct-to-seller marketing.If you want to build a scalable land investing business, replace your W-2 income, and make fewer deals for bigger profits, this episode is a must-watch!

Send us a textWelcome to Guilders-Ford Radio, a Necromunda podcast broadcasting from the East Gate Docks of Hive Primus (via Guildford Games Club, Surrey, UK).Happy New Year, Merry Saturnalia, Newtonmass Well-Wishes and other seasonally-appropriate greetings!Fashionably late as usual, in Episode 38 Team GFR do a deep dive into the latest Aranthian Succession title, ‘Spire of Primus'. The team discuss their personal highlights, where the book leaves the ongoing Necromunda narrative and what it may hold for the future…The latest ‘munda FAQ is also out, and we pick out those errata we think will have the greatest impact on the game.  As is now tradition, we do our hobby roundup for the holiday period - and Leigh has actually managed to paint something! We also discuss our 'hobby resolutions' for 2026... lets see how those pan out.We'd like to take the opportunity to thank all our listeners who have chosen to support us on Patreon & Buzzsprout - your contributions help us make a better show!• Flow • Denny Wright • Stefan Sahlin  • Matt Miler  • Matti Puh  • Nick McVett  •Warhammer in the Dark  •From_Somewhere • Alfonso  • The Traitor • Johnny DeVille • Stephan B • Jeff Nelson • Lankydiceroller • Morskul • Beau  • Justin Clark • Dr.Toe • Mikael Livas • Josh Reynolds • StandStab • ChestDrain • Scott Spieker • Tucker Steel • Shaughn • Stewart Young • Goatincoat  • Jason • Joseph Serrani • Billy  • Phil • Stephen Griffiths  • Søren D • Spruewhisperer • Kevin Fowler • Scott Spieker • Andy Tabor  • TheMichaelNimmo • Tucker Steel  • Dave Shearman  • Shaughn  • Stewart Young •Damien Davis • Wayne Jeffrey   •  Frawgenstein • Matthey Mulcahy   • William Payne •Thomas Laycock • Stephen Livingston • Tyler Anderson • McGobbo • Jed Tearle • Gene Archibald • James Marsden • John Haynes • Ryan Taylor • Yuki van Elzelingen  • Dick Linehan • Rhinoxrifter • Shawn Hall  • Eric McKenzie  • Paul Shaw  • Jenifer • Drew Williams  • Greg Miller • Andy Farrell  • Nate Combrink •  Don Johnson • Michael Yule • Joe Roberts • TheRedWolf • Lukasz Jainski • Aaron Vissers • One Punch Orlock (Tom) • Matt Price • ShnubutsSupport the showHelp us make better content, and download free community resources!www.patreon.com/guildersfordradioAny comments, questions or corrections? We'd love to hear from you! Join the Guilders-Ford Radio community over at;https://linktr.ee/guildersfordradiowww.instagram.com/guildersfordradiowww.facebook.com/guildersfordradioGuildersFordRadio@Gmail.com ** Musical Attribution - Socket Rocker by (Freesound - BaDoink) **

Some places feel wrong the moment you arrive—like time slowed down there for a reason. Streets too quiet. Houses that don't feel lived in so much as occupied. In this episode, we follow one listener's journey into a town that seems frozen in place, where unsettling behavior hides behind drawn curtains and locked doors. What begins as an uneasy visit quickly spirals into something far more disturbing: whispered rituals, a house that feels more like a cage than a home, and a growing sense that whatever lives there doesn't want witnesses. As night falls, the fear stops being subtle. Something begins testing boundaries—pounding, forcing, trying to get inside. But just when escape feels impossible, help appears in the most unexpected form. A man who shouldn't have been able to stand… let alone intervene. A presence that raises more questions than answers. #RealGhostStories #TrueParanormal #HauntedTowns #GuardianSpirit #NightTerror #UnexplainedEncounters #TrueHaunting #ParanormalPodcast #SupernaturalStories #GhostlyWarnings  Love real ghost stories? Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:

OUR FAMILY MUSIC ACADEMY: Affordable and effective online weekly music lessons designed for families. https://www.voetbergmusicacademy.com Use coupon code: PODCASTVMA for 10% off each month - Jeremy met his wife April in Jerusalem in 1997 when they were students. They've spent the last 25 years building Team Pryor together. The Pryors have five kids: Kelsey, Jackson, Sydney, Elisa and Kaira. They live in a multigenerational house with Jeremy parents and other extended family members in Fort Thomas, KY just a few miles from Cincinnati, Ohio. They've founded several businesses and nonprofits including Epipheo (a video production agency) Just Sew (a quilt shop), FamilyTeams.com (training content for families) 1000 Houses (equipping disciple-making households) and The Story-Formed Life (a discipleship training resource). Website - https://familyteams.com/ Free Guide - The Family Freedom Blueprint - 5 Steps to Start a Business and Become a Family Team on Mission - http://www.familyteams.com/blueprint “Family Revision” by Jeremy Pryor - https://amzn.to/49ljaJu “The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It―A Guide to Starting a Business in a Productive and Successful Way” by Michael E. Gerber - https://amzn.to/4qp5dRE

On your Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Family Realty Podcast, realty expert, Katlyn Soli is talking about if houses had personalities what would they talk about? Show is recorded at Grand Forks Best Source. For studio information, visit www.gfbestsource.com Or message us at bit.ly/44meos1 #grandforksnd @grandforksnd @THECHAMBERGFEGF #realestate #market #equity #grandforksbestsource #grandcities @homesgrandforks #berkshirehathaway

Send us a textErnest Hemingway's life was a testament to his belief in living authentically and drawing from rich, personal experience for his writing. His three primary homes in Key West,  Havana, and Ketchum were more than just residences; they were essential backdrops and sources of inspiration for his work, each intrinsically linked to his lifestyle and creativity. Unifying these locales, and a symbol of his deep connection to the sea, was his beloved fishing boat, the Pilar.In Key West, Florida (his home during the 1930s), Hemingway found a laid-back, "bohemian" atmosphere that fostered a disciplined writing routine in the mornings and deep-sea fishing adventures in the afternoons with local friends, later dubbed the "Key West Mob". The house on Whitehead Street, a National Historic Landmark, provided a stable base where he wrote works like To Have and Have Not and numerous short stories.His time in Key West served as a gateway to Havana, Cuba, where he eventually moved and lived for over two decades, longer than anywhere else. His home there,  Finca Vigía (Lookout Farm), offered the quiet and space where he wrote some of his most celebrated work, including For Whom the Bell Tolls and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Old Man and the Sea. It was from the nearby village of Cojimar that he and his captain, Gregorio Fuentes, would set out on the Pilar.The 38-foot custom Wheeler yacht, the Pilar, was a constant companion for 27 years, serving as an escape from the pressures of fame and the setting for big-game fishing exploits that earned him a reputation as a founder of sportfishing. The boat was a personal and literary anchor, its name a nickname for his second wife Pauline and a character in For Whom the Bell Tolls. It became a literal and figurative vessel that carried him to the experiences he translated into raw, real stories.Finally, Ketchum, Idaho, became his autumn retreat and final home in the late 1950s, after planning to leave Cuba amidst political tensions. In the rugged landscape of Idaho, he hunted and fished the rivers and plains, finding a different kind of solace. It was here, struggling with deteriorating health and depression, that he ultimately ended his life in 1961, leaving behind a legacy deeply tied to the physical locations that shaped his life and literature. Questions or comments at , Randalrgw1@aol.com , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcastsThanks for listening!!

Join Attractions Magazine contributing writers and correspondents as they bring you news and discussion about all things themed entertainment and parks, including Disney, Universal Studios and beyond on The Attractions Podcast. Topics of conversation on this week's episode of The Attractions Podcast: New ‘Harry Potter' theme park land announced — and not where you'd expect Busch Gardens Tampa Bay animal habitat expansion coming in 2026: Lion & Hyena Ridge Universal ‘holding back' on operating Epic Universe at full capacity Sloth World opening in Orlando in 2026 Taylor Swift ‘Eras Tour' surprise opens at Disney World Harry Potter Krispy Kreme doughnuts launching nationwide with ‘Houses of Hogwarts Day' New theme park announced: RetroEscapes, ‘world's first nostalgia park' in Las Vegas Disney theme park to be renamed in 2026 — and with it, redefine its purpose All 11 Epic Universe rides, ranked Six Flags America permanently closing after 2025 season The Attractions Podcast is brought to you by MEI-Travel and Mouse Fan Travel. They provide premium service and expert advice to get the most for your vacation time and dollars. Visit them at mei-travel.com. We welcome your suggestions and want you to be a part of the discussion. Please send your comments to info@attractionsmagazine.com with the subject line “The Attractions Podcast.” Statements or opinions herein are those of the hosts and advertisers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the producers, Dream Together Media LLC, or staff.

On this podcast, learn how Tamera did her first 4 deals at once, all from 1 agent!With over 500,000 subscribers, this is the #1 channel on YouTube for all things wholesaling and flipping. SUBSCRIBE NOW! https://www.youtube.com/@FlippingMastery Podcast fan? Listen to your favorite Flipping Mastery TV videos on your favorite podcast platform! http://FlippingMasteryPodcast.com Jerry Norton went from digging holes for minimum wage in his mid 20's to becoming a millionaire by the age of 30. Today he's the nation's leading expert on flipping houses and has taught thousands of people how to live their dream lifestyle through real estate. **NOTE: To Download any of Jerry's FREE training, tools, or resources… Click on the link provided and enter your email. The download is automatically emailed to you. If you don't see it, check your junk/spam folder, in case your email provider put it there. If you still don't see it, contact our support at: support@flippingmastery.com or 888) 958-3028.Get Access to Unlimited Free Property Searches and Downloads: https://flippingmastery.com/propwireWholesaling & House Flipping Software: https://flippingmastery.com/flipsterpodMake $10,000 Finding Deals: https://flippingmastery.com/10kpodGet 100% funding for your deals: https://flippingmastery.com/fspodMentoring Program: https://flippingmastery.com/ftpodFREE 8 Week Training Program: https://flippingmastery.com/8wpodGet Paid $8700 To Find Vacant Lots For Jerry: https://flippingmastery.com/lfpodFREE 30 Day Quickstart Kit https://flippingmastery.com/qkpodFREE Virtual Wholesaling Kit: https://flippingmastery.com/vfpodFREE On-Market Deal Finder Tool: https://flippingmastery.com/dcpodFREE Wholesaler Contracts: https://flippingmastery.com/wcpodFREE Comp Tool: https://flippingmastery.com/compodFREE Funding Kit: https://flippingmastery.com/fkpodFREE Agent Offer Sheet & Scripts: https://flippingmastery.com/aspodFREE Cash Buyer Scripts: https://flippingmastery.com/cbspodFREE Best Selling Wholesaling Ebook: https://flippingmastery.com/ebookpodFREE Best Selling Fix and Flip Ebook: https://flippingmastery.com/ebpodFREE Rehab Checklist: https://flippingmastery.com/rehabpod LET'S CONNECT! FACEBOOK http://www.Facebook.com/flippingmastery INSTAGRAM http://www.instagram.com/flippingmastery

There are so many gnarly horror movie houses and this week, we are talking about a few of our favorites. This is our final episode of 2025, so we hope you enjoy it, and be sure to follow us into the new year!  If you have enjoyed listening to our show, then give us a 5-star rating. We'd greatly appreciate it!    Check out our sponsor DARKSIDE COLLECTIBLES:Website: https://darksidecollectibles.net/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darkside_collectibles_/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565363086549TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@darksidecollectiblespgh?lang=en  Be sure to follow, Like, and Subscribe to us on all our social media sites: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@houseofghoulsMerch Store: https://goreclown.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HouseofGhoulsPodcast/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/houseofghoulspodcast/    You can find Crystal on social media here:TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@horrornightsinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/crystal_hni/YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/HorrorNightsIn    You can find Ian on social media here: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ian.vanghoulInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ianvanghoul/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IanVanGhoulLetterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/ianVanGhoul/  You can find Colby on social media here: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@colby_does_horrorInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/colby.does.horror/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Colby.Does.HorrorLetterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/colbydoeshorror/  House of Ghouls ThemeWritten by Ian VanGhoulProduced, Recorded, and Performed by Jimmy Mowery  Check out Jimmy's music and socials here:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimmymowery/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/58e8QpVKO4GflSPwWIMhmw?si=ONJ2snr-Qr6ep_Gi2R2_UwYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jimmymowerymusic  MK Ultra (Used with permission from Victor Gabriel and Tate Labianca)Music written and performed by: Tate LabiancaMusic engineered by: Vincent Peters (Sumo Audio)Shot and edited by: Vincent Peters (Sumo Audio)Directed by: Victor GabrielCheck out the music video here:https://youtu.be/LhDikR8Dn2Q?si=vLqtQJAiBRmyHFV0  Thanks for listening. Have a great week and stay safe out there!!

KATIE CROSS - BIOGRAPHY Katie Cross is ALL ABOUT writing epic magic and wild places. Creating new fantasy worlds is her jam. When she's not hiking or chasing her two littles through the Montana mountains, you can find her curled up reading a book or arguing with her husband over the best kind of sushi. Visit her at www.KatieCrossBooks.com for free short stories, extra savings on all her books (and some you can't buy on the retailers), and so much more. Mark McWaters has long been a fan of all things that go bump in the night, scratch at the door, or blow cold air on the back of your neck. From a very young age, he carried a pad and pencil around with him, composing poems to give to girls. He devoured all the Hardy Boys and Doc Savage books he could get his hands on and expanded his reading horizons from there. Robert Heinlein, Asimov, and Bradbury, whetted his appetite for Sci-Fi. Ann Rice's Interview With The Vampire blew his mind. A scene from Stephen King's Salem's Lot haunts him to this day. And Watcher by Dean Koontz made him a lifelong fan. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Became an award-winning advertising copywriter and creative director and earned enough Clios, Addys, and Communication Arts awards for bragging rights. As a writer, Mark discovered the Florida Writers Association, critique groups and writing competitions. He's won a steady stream of FWA Royal Palm Literary awards for his unpublished short stories and novels. The inspiration behind “Ghost Dog” came while reading entry rules for a magazine looking for unusual spins on traditional horror. Houses, people, dolls, even cars get haunted. So, he thought, why not dogs? Bentley, a West Highland White Terrier who sleeps under Mark's desk while he writes, agreed. The Contest, one of the most prestigious writing and illustrating competitions in the world, is currently in its 43rd year and is judged by some of the premier names in speculative fiction. The Writers of the Future Contest judges include, Tim Powers (author of On Stranger Tides), Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert (Dune prequel series), Robert J. Sawyer (The Oppenheimer Alternative), Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn series, The Stormlight Archive), Larry Niven (Ringworld), Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game), Nnedi Okorafor (Who Fears Death), Hugh Howey (Wool), and Katherine Kurtz (Deryni series) to name a few. The Illustrators of the Future Contest judges include, Bob Eggleton (11 Chesley Awards and 9 Hugo Awards), Larry Elmore (Dungeons & Dragons book covers), Echo Chernik (graphic designs for major corporations including Celestial Seasonings tea packaging), Rob Prior (art for Spawn, Heavy Metal comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Ciruelo (Eragon Coloring Book).

Clarence Chuah Makes Passive Income While He Sleeps.

This holiday week, we're bringing you two joyful stories from 2025.  Reena Esmail's childhood in Los Angeles had two soundtracks: the Western classical music her parents loved, and the old, scratchy Bollywood tapes her paternal grandparents would play over and over. Those multicultural influences shaped what would become the driving question of her work: how do you invite people from different cultures onto the same stage to build a relationship and create music together? Composing is how Esmail has made her mark — by putting Western classical musicians in conversation with Indian artists, building bridges between violinists and sitar players, tabla drummers and western singers. She has also composed with unhoused singers from Skid Row, and her music has been performed by major orchestras and choirs all over the world. In May, as part of our series on California composers, host Sasha Khokha brought us this profile of Esmail. Artists are often the people in our communities who bring people together in ways that are creative, spontaneous, and surprising. That's true in the East Bay neighborhood of Point Richmond, where a local artist has created dozens of miniature fairy houses brimming with the personality of their imaginary inhabitants. In this story from April, Pauline Bartolone set out to explore these hidden treasures, and meet the person who created them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Click Here for the Show Notes In this episode, Marco responds to a thoughtful question from Chris, a 23-year-old mechanical engineer eager to begin his real estate investing journey with an eye toward long-term time freedom. With $30,000 saved and an interest in low-cost, cash-flowing rental properties, Chris asks what approach makes the most sense for a first investment and which markets to focus on. Marco breaks down the important distinction between “cheap” and “low-cost” properties, explains how neighborhood classes impact tenant stability and returns, and explores the trade-offs between cash-on-cash returns, net cash flow, and long-term appreciation. Using real-world property examples across multiple markets, he walks through how investors should compare deals beyond price alone and think strategically about risk, returns, and goals. This episode offers practical, high-level guidance for new investors looking to make smart, informed decisions as they get started. -------------------------------- Throwback Thursday Episode (The episode originally took place in the year 2020) This episode is part of our Throwback Series and may include references to older content such as web classes, events, promotions, or links that are no longer active or available. While the conversation and insights still hold value, please note that some information may be outdated. -------------------------------- If you missed our last episode, be sure to listen to TBT: Ask Marco - How Important is it to Invest Locally? Download your FREE copy of:  The Ultimate Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing. See our available Turnkey Cash-Flow Rental Properties. Our team of Investment Counselors has much more inventory available than what you see on our website.  Contact us today for more deals.

Historically, it has been very poor manners in Washington to admit that keeping home prices high is a deliberate policy. High prices are not the "unintended consequence" of good intentions. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-are-houses-so-expensive-its-deliberate-government-policy

Historically, it has been very poor manners in Washington to admit that keeping home prices high is a deliberate policy. High prices are not the "unintended consequence" of good intentions. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-are-houses-so-expensive-its-deliberate-government-policy

Maison Louis Marie is rooted in a rich family legacy of botanical exploration and fragrance, beginning with Louis Marie Aubert du Petit Thouars, a pioneering figure in French botanical history. Exiled during the French Revolution to Madagascar, La Réunion, and the Mauritius islands, he spent a decade studying and collecting over 2,000 plant specimens. Upon his return to France, his work earned him election to the prestigious Académie des Sciences. That spirit of curiosity and reverence for nature lives on through the brand today. Founded by Marie and grown in collaboration with her husband, Matthew Berkson, Maison Louis Marie blends heritage with modern sensibility. Together, they are deeply committed to clean beauty and non-toxic fragrance creation. Each scent is thoughtfully composed to be distinctive and memorable, without the use of toxic or environmentally harmful ingredients. All products are cruelty-free, vegan, and crafted with integrity honoring both the past and the planet.In this episode, Marie also discusses:Drawing on her fashion and design background, setting out to make luxury scents, originally candles, more accessible Their viral sensation–No.4 Bois de Balincourt, my personal favoriteWhy their fragrances use a thoughtful balance of both natural essential oils and safe, carefully chosen syntheticsWhy “clean” means creating scents that are both safe and sustainable, without unnecessary irritants, and with complete transparency about what goes into themThe importance of sustainability and their recycling programTheir strong retail partnerships and their own retail store in Los AngelesWe hope you enjoy this episode and gain valuable insights into Marie's journey and the growth of Maison Louis Marie. Don't forget to subscribe to the Glam & Grow podcast for more in-depth conversations with the most incredible brands, founders, and more.Be sure to check out Maison Louis Marie at www.maisonlouismarie.com and on Instagram at @maisonlouismarieRated #1 Best Beauty Business Podcast on FeedPostThis episode is brought to you by WavebreakLeading direct-to-consumer brands hire Wavebreak to turn email marketing into a top revenue driver.Most eCommerce brands don't email right... and it costs them. At Wavebreak, our eCommerce email marketing agency helps qualified brands recapture 7+ figures of lost revenue each year.From abandoned cart emails to Black Friday campaigns, our best-in-class team manage the entire process: strategy, design, copywriting, coding, and testing. All aimed at driving growth, profit, brand recognition, and most importantly, ROI.Curious if Wavebreak is right for you? Reach out at Wavebreak.co

Text a Message to the ShowThis is our Christmas Bonus Episode for 2025! Today's guest is police chaplain Mark Femmel from St Louis. We're talking about the goodness of police officers, ride alongs, Christmas services at church, and Mark has a special Christmas message for you.Music is by Audionautix and by Kevin MacLeodHey Chaplain Bonus Episode 47Tags: Christmas, Chaplains, Church, Holidays, Ministers, Morale, Police, Kansas City, St Louis, Kansas, MissouriSupport the showThanks for Listening! And, as always, pray for peace in our city.Subscribe/Follow here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hey-chaplain/id1570155168 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CGK9A3BmbFEUEnx3fYZOY Email us at: heychaplain44@gmail.comYou can help keep the show ad-free by buying me a virtual coffee!https://www.buymeacoffee.com/heychaplain

The headlines of the day by The Indian Express

Hour 3 of the Chris Hand Show | Monday 12-22-25See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We discuss the best and worst songs from ”Houses of the Holy" by Led Zeppelin. Tell us your thoughts about these songs and follow us on Facebook and X.  Please support Led Zeppelin by purchasing and streaming this album wherever you pay for music! 

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger PictureAll [CB] are now dropping rates because the US is dropping rates, we saw this during Trump first term. Initial jobless claims show the labor market is not weakening. Trump gives a speech on the state of the economy and the next inflation is almost inline with what the Fed wants. Trump has destroyed the Fed narrative, next phase coming. Trump is now in the process of setting everything up preparing for the midterms and stopping the [DS] form doing us harm. The seditious 6 sent the message, Trump just countered it with a 1776 bonus to the military. The patriots are in the process of bringing down the entire corrupt system. It’s being exposed and dismantled. Panic in DC. Economy https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2001625195526971703?s=20 (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); https://twitter.com/profstonge/status/2001646305320546453?s=20 Initial Jobless Claims Show No Signs Of Labor Market Distress  After the Thanksgiving Week debacle, the number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time remains back in the same – very low – range it has been in for the last four years at 224k…  So despite the uptick in the BLS-derived unemployment rate, jobless claims data show no signs of acute distress anywhere. Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/2001662433983696966?s=20 https://twitter.com/Geiger_Capital/status/2001647313157263628?s=20 https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/2001656024097272170?s=20 No, Inflation Did Not “Cool Unexpectedly”, It Slowed Because Trump Policies are Working    While the media proclaim, “inflation cooled unexpectedly,” the reality is that it's not unexpected.  The results of a slowing of price increase are not accidental; they are the result of Trump's domestic economic policies working. [Non-Paywall Source and Media Spin] President Trump has been cutting waste, fraud and abuse in runaway government spending; slashing costly regulations across all sectors of the economy and ending Green New Scam energy policy in favor of drill, baby, drill.  As noted by NEC Chairman Kevin Hasset, Trump has reduced deficit spending overall. There's still a long way to go, but significant MAGAnomic progress is being made.  Oh, and that skyrocketing “tariff inflation” the same shocked pundits proclaimed was sure to happen this time, well, that has not surfaced either.  Just like it didn't surface in 2018 or 2019 when the tariffs were applied the first time. NEW YORK –  Source: theconservativetreehouse.com Trump is winning against the CB system. https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2001649080762872069?s=20 https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2001477403961626755?s=20  he took office–tariffs to create fair trade, reduced income tax, gutting the Green Energy Scam, promoting investment in American manufacturing, reducing the federal bureaucracy and eliminating crippling regulations, deporting illegal aliens and eliminating the “free stuff” we taxpayers give them, getting the Fed onboard, etc. But that plan needed time. Time enough to make the economy shine come the mid-terms. Now we will start to see the fruits of that plan, and Trump’s speech tonight is to announce that. Is he right? One thing I’ve learned is to never bet against Trump. Maybe he is wrong. Maybe I’m wrong. But I still have trust. Political/Rights Nolte: Failing Oscars Demoted to YouTube Starting in 2029, the irrelevant Oscars will have its annual irrelevant Academy Awards show broadcast on — lol — YouTube. To dwindling ratings and cultural relevance, the Oscars have been broadcast on ABC since 1976. The final broadcast will occur in 2028, which also happens to be the 100th anniversary of the award ceremony. So now the Oscars will stream on YouTube, where anyone who wants to can watch them for free online, at least through the end of the deal in 2033. Source: breitbart.com https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2001675341828342074?s=20  Another didn't even know what building they were at. Meanwhile, no one had info on the shooter, and no one was rushing in. The suspect eventually slipped away. 10 were shot. 2 died. Brown University and the police failed, and now families are furious. And rightfully so! It wasn't just chaos. It was incompetence with a badge, and the price was paid in blood. Source: @Rightanglenews https://twitter.com/C_3C_3/status/2001369540119392433?s=20 https://twitter.com/DataRepublican/status/2001714347605922149?s=20  student. Chatman resigned from Utah after attempting to reform the university's police department and later took his position at Brown. His efforts coincided with student-led campaigns, including those supported by Fanaeian, to reduce campus policing in the wake of Lauren McCluskey's murder. At Brown University, Chatman recently faced an unanimous vote of no confidence back in October for the charge of having “directly contributed to an all-time low in morale and has strained the department's ability to effectively serve the Brown University community.” At the University of Utah, the student campaign to scale back policing was led by Emirya Fanaeian, the same leader of SLC Armed Queers. Fanaeian deleted the group’s social media in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. She led a student research effort into campus policing while Chatman was employed there. Credit: @SKDoubleDub33 + @iamlisalogan … Developing. https://twitter.com/DataRepublican/status/2001340901537517902?s=20  appeared to contradict what was visible in the videos. We learned witnesses had actively coordinated to prevent one of their own from being charged. This is the same group that deleted its social media posts on the day of Charlie Kirk's assassination and is alleged to have had advance knowledge along with multiple trans groups. Then the police officer yesterday refused to comment on what the shooter shouted although multiple media reports had already said it wash “Allah Akbar.” Between that plus the mainstream celebrations of Kirk’s death and Jay Jones’s election, we cannot just yet write off the possibility that this country has fallen so far off the end that students and professors automatically are covering for the shooter even though they saw someone get shot point blank in the face. https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/2001748138324038022?s=20  home is about 50 miles from Providence, Rhode Island, where the Brown shooting took place. “Senior law enforcement officials tell Target 12 that federal, state and local authorities are now examining possible ties between the two crimes,” WPRI reported. “Multiple people familiar with the investigation said they have discovered evidence showing the two may be linked.” Loureiro was shot and killed in his home. The suspect remains at large. Loureiro was named head of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT last year. Speculation in media and online discussions has included possible ballistic matches (e.g., 9mm casings recovered at Brown) or similar vehicles spotted at both scenes (e.g., unverified mentions of Nissan Sentras), but these remain unsubstantiated and are not confirmed as the linking evidence.  Some online commentary has also suggested motives tied to international actors, like Iran, based on celebratory posts in certain Telegram channels, but this is purely speculative and unconfirmed. https://twitter.com/EWess92/status/2001718099972886750?s=20 DOGE Geopolitical https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2001502910677397573?s=20 ‘German' Globalist Authoritarianism: Berlin Migrant Housing Costs Skyrocket to Nearly €1 Billion, Tripling Since 2020    Newly released government figures have revealed the capital spent nearly €900 million ($9.8 million) in 2024 alone to house migrants, many of which do not have any kind of status in the country, almost triple the cost from just four years earlier, Die Welt reports. Internal Senate data confirms that accommodation expenses for foreign nationals reached €883 million last year, compared with €312 million in 2020, an increase of 183%. The numbers expose the real cost of mass migration policies pushed by Berlin's left-liberal globalist political class.  Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2001674979348484469?s=20 https://twitter.com/RadioGenoa/status/2001634609424220333?s=20 https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/2001462937920184556?s=20 War/Peace FBI Agents Thought Clinton’s Uranium One Deal Might Be Criminal – But McCabe, Yates Stonewalled Investigation: Report Remember Uranium One? The massive 2010 sale of US uranium deposits to Russia approved by Hillary Clinton and rubber-stamped by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) – after figures linked to the deal donated to the Clinton Foundation? Turns out rank-and-file FBI investigators thought there was enough smoke to launch a criminal investigation, but internal delays and disagreements within the DOJ and FBI ultimately caused the inquiry to lapse, newly released records reveal.   The Uranium One transaction – involving the sale of a Canadian mining company with substantial U.S. uranium assets to Russia's state-owned nuclear firm Rosatom – became a flashpoint during Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Critics argued that then-Secretary of State Clinton, a member of CFIUS, helped approve the deal while donors connected to Uranium One made large contributions to the Clinton Foundation.  The newly released documents suggest that the circumstances surrounding Uranium One were never fully investigated, leaving unresolved questions about how a strategic U.S. asset came under Russian control – and whether potential criminal conduct went unexamined due to internal delays and legal disputes. Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/JoeLang51440671/status/2001445235759436036?s=20 https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/2001673497563607325?s=20 https://twitter.com/Dmytruk__Artem/status/2001657781443596657?s=20  Everything in our life is ‘for now.' The position may change in the future. Politicians change, some live, some die.” This statement cannot be interpreted in any other way. It refers specifically to Donald Trump and his team, who have consistently and reasonably opposed Ukraine's accession to NATO and the continuation of the war. Zelensky is effectively speaking about the physical elimination of political opponents. I have said this many times before. Zelensky has done and will continue to do everything to destroy Trump and everything associated with him — politically, informationally, and beyond. I have also stated that Zelensky is connected to assassination attempts on Trump and is also involved in the killing of Charlie Kirk. Today, the militant faction of the West reacts painfully to the truth, because this truth destroys their convenient narrative and shows that they are accomplices of a terrorist regime that is prepared to wait for people to die in order to retain power and prolong the war. Medical/False Flags https://twitter.com/robbystarbuck/status/2001468009248960833?s=20 https://twitter.com/HHSResponse/status/2001691600083091515?s=20 HHS, RFK Jr moves to STOP funds for hospitals that perform child sex changes [DS] Agenda https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2001676158140563662?s=20  case in US history is still billing Minnesota taxpayers. Feeding Our Future defendant Gandi Yusuf Mohamed, who changed his name before indictment, operates assisted living homes paid through Medicaid. Rep Kristin Robbins says the state paid him $49M over five years, including $132,000 this year alone. Despite red flags, Gov Tim Walz's administration approved licenses and kept payments flowing https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/2001623482342224289?s=20   at 2 locations “Less than 150 square feet in size, smaller than some bathrooms — stores had one register, no carriages, no hand baskets” “One legitimate supermarket in the same area as these stores redeems approximately $80,000 in and SNAP benefits per month. Over the last 20 months, the Juswala variety store was redeeming between 3-6x that amount monthly” The 2 fake convenient store owners caught were both from Haiti https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2001342827804909728?s=20 President Trump's Plan https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2001437584468082999?s=20  cases like the pipe bomb investigation. And that's only a small part of the work he went about every single day delivering for America. He not only completed his mission – he far exceeded it. We will miss him but I'm thankful he accepted the call to serve. Our country is better and safer for it. https://twitter.com/TonySeruga/status/2001666110945661112?s=20 these 4 walls all day separated from my wife in DC.” https://twitter.com/ThePatriotOasis/status/2001662279184466380?s=20  to receive this check right before Christmas—We love you and your families, and we wish you a very Merry Christmas.” https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2001484437091959133?s=20  in US cities nationwide and Trump has been threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act for months. Trump said this warrior dividend will be delivered before Christmas, and the $1,776 is meant to honor the founding of our nation. Christmas and 1776? Kind of reminds me of one very special painting. https://twitter.com/StephenM/status/2001421552496087246?s=20   No more. America's might will secure America's rights. America's military will defend America's destiny. For Americans, first and always. https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/2001013033447952648?s=20 President Trump wasn’t playing “5D Chess” yesterday. There was no “OP” to leak information to retards like Tucker Carlson about war. None of that happened. The Whitehouse has been telling people for 2 days the speech was about the economy. Get a grip. https://twitter.com/MJTruthUltra/status/2001412804864094502?s=20  History. As President, he passed the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable’ Care Act, resulting in his party losing control of both Houses of Congress, and the Election of the largest House Republican majority since 1946. He presided over a stagnant Economy, approved the one-sided Iran Nuclear Deal, and signed the one-sided Paris Climate Accords, both of which were later terminated by President Donald J. Trump.” “Under Obama, the ISIS Caliphate spread across the Middle East, Libya collapsed into chaos, and Russia invaded and took Crimea. In Ukraine. He crippled small businesses with crushing regulation and environmental red tape, devastated American coal miners, and weaponized the IRS and Federal bureaucracies against his political opponents. Obama also spied over the 2016 Presidential Campaign of Donald J. Trump, and presided over the creation of the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, the worst political scandal in American History. His handpicked successor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, would then lose the Presidency to Donald J. Trump.”  JOE BIDEN “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History. Taking office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction. His policies caused the highest Inflation ever recorded, leading the U.S. Dollar to lose more than 20% of its value in 4 years. His Green New Scam surrendered American Energy Dominance and, by abolishing the Southern Border, Biden let 21 million people from all over the World pour into the United States, including from prisons, jails, mental institutions, and insane asylums. His Afghan Disaster was among the most humiliating events in American History, and resulted in the murder of 13 brave American Servicemembers, with many others gravely wounded. Seeing Biden’s devastation, the heinous Russia invaded Ukraine, and Hamas terrorists launched the October 7th attack on Israel.” https://twitter.com/DanScavino/status/2001516571106083001?s=20 (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

Welcome to the Wholesale Hotline Podcast (Flipping Mastery Edition), where Jerry teaches how to master the art of house flipping, wholesaling, and new construction development.Show notes -- in this episode we'll cover:Straightforward, step-by-step training on making six and seven figures from real estate deals.Insider tactics for finding motivated sellers, analyzing deals, and raising private money.Learn how to flip houses virtually from anywhere—even with zero experience.Whether you're a beginner or scaling up, Jerry gives you the blueprint to build real wealth through real estate.  Please give us a rating and let us know how we are doing!➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ ☎️ Welcome to Wholesale Hotline & Flipping Mastery Breakout! ☎️Jerry Norton went from digging holes for minimum wage in his mid 20's to becoming a millionaire by the age of 30. Today he's the nation's leading expert on flipping houses and has taught thousands of people how to live their dream lifestyle through real estate. **NOTE: To Download any of Jerry's FREE training, tools, or resources…Click on the link provided and enter your email. The download is automatically emailed to you. If you don't see it, check your junk/spam folder, in case your email provider put it there. If you still don't see it, contact our support at: support@flippingmastery.com or 888) 958-3028. ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ 

In this conversation, Britten welcomes back astrologer Erin Kelley for her third solo appearance on Moon to Moon. They explore what Living Emergence means through the lens of devotion, acceptance, and being approachable to what's already present. Erin shares how emergence, for her, is about acknowledging and accepting what's here - whether that's an emotion, a truth, or a realization - and saying hello to it, no matter how she feels about it. The conversation weaves through themes of devotional practice, the relationship between divination and emergence, and how astrology can help us name and court the moment.   Topics They Cover: How emergence means acknowledging what's present and becoming approachable to what's already here, rather than constantly seeking potential elsewhere Devotion as a practice of showing up consistently, tending to what emerges, and building real relationship with the cosmos over time rather than love-bombing and burning out Erin's Jupiter in Taurus and Venus in Sagittarius in mutual reception as her devotional signature, bridging heaven and earth through optimism and embodied presence The Uranus transit to her chart ruler Jupiter and realizing not everyone needs liberation from hierarchical systems - her overflow of passion needed a different container Why acceptance and surrender are skills that create space for co-creation with mystery, allowing something more magical than we could plan alone How astrology and tarot reveal their secrets through sustained relationship, and why 5-10 minutes daily can create profound transformation over six months to a year   Erin emphasizes that devotion is about being in relationship with the world around us, and that astrology helps us give language to what's emergent and sing to the moment through naming it. She encourages listeners to start small with devotional practices, reminding them that time passes either way, and building real connection with the cosmos is more powerful than love-bombing a practice only to burn out and disappear.   Learn More:  Erin Kelley is a writer, devotional astrologer, and esoteric strategist with a feral heart. Her intuitive gift for right timing is at the core of her work, affectionately known as Slow Magick. Erin believes desire is holy, change happens when it is time, and that Eros is the driving impulse connecting this moment to the next. She finds much joy and satisfaction in sharing her love of the divinatory arts, helping others reconnect with the magick within and re-enchant their lives. Before leaping into her second act, Erin spent over a decade creating award-winning go-to-market strategies. She now uses her instinctual abilities with her well-honed analytical skills to craft practical, effective recommendations for engaging with the subtle realm in everyday life. Erin offers astrological consultations, private mentorship, and is the steward and facilitator of several charmed offerings—including SACRED SHAPES: Storying the astrology of your personal lore to transform the past, engage the present, and enchant the future, now open for registration. You can find Erin @slow.magick on Instagram and on Substack at The Nature of Invisible Things.   +++   Britten's course Unshaming Your Chart begins December 17th inside Living Emergence. The class includes a two-hour initiation, access to the pre-recorded library of Unshaming the Signs, Unshaming the Houses, and Unshaming the Planets, and meetups in January and February with breakout groups for deep community processing. Doors are now open. You can join as a Living Emergence member for $95/month to access Unshaming Your Chart plus the entire ecosystem, or purchase Unshaming Your Chart as a standalone class for $400.   +++ E M E R G E N C E  A S T R O L O G Y ⁠⁠https://brittenlarue.com/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@brittenlarue Order Living Astrology Join my newsletter here Check out my new podcast CRYSTAL BALLERS on Spotify, Podbean, and Apple. +++ Podcast art: Angela George. Podcast music: Jonathan Koe.

A winter wish, a juniper tree, and a song that won't be silenced. We read and unpack The Juniper Tree through the lens of myth and astrology, following a stark arc from dismemberment to remembrance, from underworld descent to the ninth house return of voice. The tale's violent turn isn't spectacle—it's symbolic. A sister gathers bones and lays them at the roots; a bird rises from fire, sings what happened, and earns a golden chain, red shoes, and a millstone. Each gift answers a wound: the chain restores the severed link, the shoes return movement and joy, and the stone delivers the kind of Saturnian justice that ends what cannot be integrated.Along the way we explore why juniper is a liminal, funerary, protective tree and why solstice is the perfect time for a story about death and the slow return of light. We trace resonances with Snow White, the Raven, Medusa, Osiris and Isis, and even the Christian ritual of remembrance that turns body and blood into bread and wine. The ninth house shines through as the realm where hard-won wisdom gets sung aloud, where fair exchange dignifies art, and where truth becomes beautiful enough for others to bear. This is not a call to bypass grief; it's a ritual map for metabolizing it.If you've ever felt your voice frozen in the underworld, this story offers a path: gather the bones, honor the roots, set a boundary around your song, and let the wings come back. As the year turns, join us for a solstice myth that holds both the darkest night and the first hint of dawn. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves deep stories, and leave a review to help others find the show.*the above blurb was generated by Buzzsprout's AIPodcast Artwork: Warwick Goble - Out of the fire flew a beautiful bird.The Juniper Tree from the Grimm Collection.Join the Newsletter! Podcast Musician: Marlia CoeurPlease consider becoming a Patron to support the show!Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.

SpaceX IPO coming – huge increase in valuation over past 3 months Happy Hanukah – Eight Crazy Nights Now Kevin AND Kevin PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts! Click HERE for Show Notes and Links DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter Warm-Up - Last Chance for CTP Cup 2025 participants - Happy Hanukah - Eight Crazy Nights - Sad News - Rob Reiner - Fed decision is out.... - Overdue eco reports coming this week Markets - Oracle still problematic - SpaceX IPO coming - huge increase in valuation over past 3 months - Another Bankruptcy - cleaning up is not good business - Oh my - Now Kevin AND Kevin - Weight loss game continues - One thing saved for last - a doozie... Tesla -  - All time High - Prospect of Robotaxi - Even though sales hitting multi-year lows Wall Street Never Sleeps? - Nasdaq files to extend trading to 23 hours on weekdays - Banks concerned about investor protections, costs, liquidity, volatility risks of nonstop trading - Proponents argue round-the-clock trading benefits global investors - That may create some additional volatility potential SpaceX - SpaceX aims for a potential $1.5 trillion market cap with an Initial Public Offering in 2026, which could become the largest IPO in history - July 2025 tender valuation was $400B - Dec 14th (4 months later) $800B - Starlink is the primary money winner of this deal - Tesla shares climbing even with nothing behind it - seemingly in sympathy for this IPO ---- TESLA does not have ownership of SpaceX - OH - this could be the reason....U.S. deliveries dropped significantly in November—the lowest since early 2022—but this weakness has been overshadowed by the enthusiasm for autonomy. Rob Reiner - A son of legendary Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife, producer Michele Singer Reiner, Nick Reiner, is being held on suspicion of murder following their deaths, according to Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell. He's being held on $4 million bail. - Citing law enforcement sources and family friends, ABC News reported on Monday that Nick Reiner had recently returned to live at his parents' South Chadbourne Avenue home. The move was described as a temporary arrangement intended to help him stabilize. - Not going to discuss the Truth Social post about this tragedy HEADLINE ALERT - "Copper could hit ‘stratospheric new highs' as hoarding of the metal in U.S. continues" - Copper has gone from 5.77 to 5.30 (July to today) - 6 Tops at this price since 2011 - Not seeing this as per the headline - seems like a Hunt Brothers special from the 1980s - CORNERING THE MARKET ---1980 - Silver went from $11 to $50 then crashed, bankrupting the Hunt Bros - after COMEX changed rules forcing them to cover positions Bankruptcy - After 35 years, the maker of the Roomba robot vacuum filed for bankruptcy protection late Sunday night. Following warnings issued earlier this year that it was fast running out of options, iRobot says it is entering Chapter 11 protection and will be acquired by its contract manufacturer, China-based Picea Robotics. - The company says it will continue to operate “with no anticipated disruption to its app functionality, customer programs, global partners, supply chain relationships, or ongoing product support.” - Remember that Amazon  - The Amazon buyout of iRobot, maker of Roomba, was announced in 2022 for $1.7 billion but ultimately failed in January 2024 due to significant regulatory pushback, primarily from the EU, over anti-competitive concerns. -- Amazon walked away with a $94 million termination fee Fed Pick - President Donald Trump said Friday that Kevin Warsh has moved to the top of his list as the next Federal Reserve chair, though Kevin Hassett also remains in contention, according to the Wall Street Journal. - Interesting that this comes days after Hassett said that we would not let outside suggestions influence his voting - ---In addition to putting heavier weight on Warsh getting the job, Trump repeated an assertion he has made in the past that the Fed chair ought to consult the president about interest rate decisions. - Also of interest, prediction markets had Hassett at 95% probability - now it moved to 50% - big payday for people in the know. Housing Prices - Average home price is DOWN on  year-over-year basis - First time on national level since 2024 - Active listings in November were nearly 13% higher than November 2024, but new listings were just 1.7% higher --- Houses are on market longer - - Prices in Austin, Texas, are down 10% from last year; in Denver, they're down 5%, according to Parcl Labs. Tampa, Florida, and Houston both saw prices fall 4%, and Atlanta and Phoenix saw price decreases of 3%. More Hosing Related -  Zillow shares plunged more than 9% on Monday on worries that the online real estate platform could have a big new competitor: Google Search. - Google appears to be running tests on putting real estate sale listings into its search results. Overdue Eco  - Black Hole - The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday releases its long-awaited combined employment reports for October and November, but a number of key details will be missing after the government shutdown prevented data collection, including October's unemployment rate, resulting in the first-ever gap in that critical data series since inception in 1948. - NICE JOB GANG! - Some of the data will be estimated. - It said it would not publish the headline CPI number or the so-called core CPI, which strips out the volatile food and energy components, for October. "BLS cannot provide specific guidance to data users for navigating the missing October observations," the agency said. Some Updates - Some info coming in are estimates - some delayed - Unemployment at 4.6% - Latest report shows +64,000 added - ISM Manufacturing and Non-manufacturing - both slowed over the last month The Fed - Meanwhile the Fed cuts rates.... - A Federal Reserve split over where its priorities should lie cut its key interest rate Wednesday in a 9-3 vote, but signaled a tougher road ahead for further reductions. - The FOMC's “dot plot” indicated just one more reduction in 2026 and another in 2027, amid considerable disagreement from members about where rates should head. - In addition to the rate decision, the Fed also announced it will resume buying Treasury securities. The central bank will start by buying $40 billion in Treasury bills, beginning Friday. - Markets were all over the place on this as it was a little confusing at first - then it seemed that everyone loved (for one day) - Why is the Fed moving up Treasury purchases to "immediately" from a few months from now? - AND - dissension ! A larger group  that usual of regional Fed bank presidents signaled they opposed the cut, and six policymakers said the benchmark federal funds rate should end 2025 in a range of 3.75% to 4%, suggesting they opposed the move. - Long bonds have not moved at all on this news. Costco Earnings - Costco beat Wall Street's fiscal first-quarter sales and revenue expectations. - Sales rose 8.2% and digital sales jumped 20.5% compared with the year-ago quarter. - Costco surpassed Wall Street's quarterly expectations and posted year-over-year sales growth of 8.2% as the retailer attracted more digital sales and opened new locations. - Earnings per share: $4.50 vs. $4.27 expected - Revenue: $67.31 billion vs. $67.14 billion expected - Costco does not provide year ahead guidance - Shares down from a recent high of $855 Costco Fun Facts - About 4.5 million pies were sold in the three days before Thanksgiving, which is equivalent to roughly 7,000 pies per warehouse. -  These were bakery pies (e.g., pumpkin, apple), - Costco had more than $250 million in non-food online orders on Black Friday, a record for Costco's U.S. e-commerce business. - Approximately 358,000 whole pizzas were served at Costco's U.S. food courts, a 31% jump from last year. (500 pizza's per store) Fat No More - Retatrutide - Eli Lilly said its next-generation obesity drug delivered what appears to be the highest weight loss seen so far in a late-stage trial and reduced knee arthritis pain, clearing the first of several upcoming studies on the weekly injection. - In a 48-week Phase 2 study, participants on the highest dose lost an average of 24% of their body weight. - Recent Phase 3 results showed patients on the highest dose lost an average of 28.7% of their body weight after 68 weeks. - The trials also showed improvements in related health conditions, including knee osteoarthritis pain, blood pressure, and liver fat - This triple action is what makes retatrutide potentially more effective for weight loss than existing medications like Zepbound (tirzepatide), which targets two receptors, or Wegovy (semaglutide), which targets only one. Paypal - PayPal Holdings Inc. applied to become a bank in the US, looking to take advantage of the Trump administration's openness to financial-technology companies entering the banking system. - The payments-focused firm submitted applications to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions to form a Utah-chartered industrial loan company, PayPal said in a statement Monday. - If approved, PayPal Bank would help the firm bolster its small-business lending capabilities, according to the statement, which said the company has provided access to more than $30 billion in loans and capital since 2013. Ford - Management Confused - Instead of planning to make enough electric vehicles to account for 40 percent of global sales by 2030—as it pledged just four years ago—Ford says it will focus on a broader range of hybrids, extended-range electrics, and battery-electric models, which executives now say will account for 50 percent of sales by the end of the decade. - The automaker will make hybrid versions of almost every vehicle in its lineup, the company says. - All in on EVS cost them -  Ford expects to record about $19.5 billion in special items, mostly during the fourth quarter. ---- The charges are related to a restructuring of its business priorities and a pullback in its all-electric vehicle investments. Australia - Australia has implemented a groundbreaking ban preventing children under 16 from accessing major social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, effective December 2025, to protect them from harm, with significant fines for companies failing to enforce it, though messaging apps and gaming platforms are currently exempt. - Reddit is suing - Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X (Twitter), YouTube, Reddit, Kick, and Twitch are all banned for kids under 16. - Thoughts on this? Saved For Last - Of all the eye-popping numbers that Oracle Corp. published last week on the costs of its artificial-intelligence data center buildout, the most striking didn't appear until the day after its earnings press release and analyst call. - The more comprehensive 10-Q earnings report that appeared on Thursday detailed $248 billion of lease-payment commitments, “substantially all” related to data centers and cloud capacity arrangements, the business-software firm said. These are due to commence between now and its 2028 financial year but they're not yet included on its balance sheet. - That's almost $150 billion more than was disclosed in the footnotes of September's earnings update. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? The Winner for iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) Winners will be getting great stuff like the new "OFFICIAL" DHUnplugged Shirt! CTP CUP 2025 Participants: Jim Beaver Mike Kazmierczak Joe Metzger Ken Degel David Martin Dean Wormell Neil Larion Mary Lou Schwarzer Eric Harvey (2024 Winner) FED AND CRYPTO LIMERICKS See this week's stock picks HERE Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter

Chanukah Minutes 5786 Night 4: "Houses of Shamai and Hillel: Two Aspects of Torah Mastery" by Congregation Beth Jacob

In this Dark Moon download, Britten offers a collective tarot reading under the Dark Scorpio Moon, reflecting on the lunar cycle that began on November 20th at 28 degrees of Scorpio. She explores the themes that have been alive during this cycle: navigating dichotomies, polarities, and paradoxes in the human experience.  Britten shares how this lunar cycle has brought up the tension between abundance and scarcity, feasting and fasting, expansion and contraction, and the challenge of holding these oppositions without becoming paralyzed by confusion. She emphasizes that one of the gifts of this time is learning to hold ourselves through uncertainty and to trust the process, even when we don't have all the answers. Learn More: Britten invites listeners to join Unshaming Your Chart, which begins December 17th (Wednesday) with a two-hour initiation. After a three-week break for the holidays, the course continues in January with meetups and deep community processing. The class includes access to pre-recorded teachings on Unshaming the Signs, Unshaming the Houses, and Unshaming the Planets.  It is a life-changing course that offers tools and skills to see surrender as part of your magic, where it doesn't have to feel like failure, loss, or lack. While the topic is shame, the experience is healing, opening, and unfolding—offering life skills to navigate into more spaciousness, lightness, and empowerment with your chart as your partner. +++ Britten's course Unshaming Your Chart begins December 17th inside Living Emergence. The class includes a two-hour initiation, access to the pre-recorded library of Unshaming the Signs, Unshaming the Houses, and Unshaming the Planets, and meetups in January and February with breakout groups for deep community processing. Doors are now open.   You can join as a Living Emergence member for $95/month to access Unshaming Your Chart plus the entire ecosystem, or purchase Unshaming Your Chart as a standalone class for $400.   +++ E M E R G E N C E  A S T R O L O G Y ⁠⁠https://brittenlarue.com/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@brittenlarue Order Living Astrology Join my newsletter here Check out my new podcast CRYSTAL BALLERS on Spotify, Podbean, and Apple. +++ Podcast art: Angela George. Podcast music: Jonathan Koe.  

A whiteboard hijacks our Zoom, but it can't derail the mission. We gather, pray, and then dive straight into a hard question: how do we keep preaching when culture tells us to quiet down? With reports of baptisms, healings, and students receiving the Holy Ghost, we zoom out to a bigger story—truth under assault and a church called to invest, not retreat.Pastor Hammond takes us into Jeremiah 32 where God tells a prophet to buy a field while Babylon lays siege. It sounds crazy until you realize the point: investment in people during chaos is the seed of future harvest. We connect that sign to “treasure in earthen vessels,” unpack how pressure exposes power that is of God and not of us, and call out the modern trap of half-truths. Spirit without doctrine leaves converts unanchored. Doctrine without Spirit leaves hearts untouched. We walk through the apostolic pattern—repentance, water baptism in the name of Jesus, and the infilling of the Holy Ghost—and why this new birth isn't a cultural option but the foundation for real transformation.Along the way, we tackle digital distraction, the anxiety of public ministry, and the subtle push to sell conviction for approval. The refrain returns like steel in the spine: buy the truth and sell it not. If you're discipling teens in a screen-saturated world, planting a church under pressure, or simply trying to stand steady at work, you'll find practical courage here—keep teaching, keep preaching, keep investing in people. Vineyards return. Houses are possessed again. The harvest belongs to those who sow in faith.If this word strengthens you, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs boldness, and leave a review so others can find it. Then tell us: what truth are you choosing to never sell?We love to hear from our listeners! Thank you! https://www.amazon.com/dp/1639030158?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_VZBSV9T4GT4AMRWEWXJE&skipTwisterOG=1 Support the show https://www.youtube.com/@charlesgrobinette https://www.instagram.com/charles.g.robinette/ https://author.amazon.com/books https://charlesgrobinette.com/

For this special episode of Howie Severino Presents, the team travels to the northernmost province of the archipelago to look for the last traditional stone houses, a distinctive feature of Batanes that is rapidly disappearing. Some of these houses have been standing for more than a hundred years, a symbol of Batanes' rugged ingenuity. But recent restrictions on harvesting local wood and other native materials have hampered their repair. Home owners are shifting to cement and more common shelter designs, erasing a unique cultural treasure. Racing against time, a collaborative effort by university-based engineers and architects, the DOST, and indigenous builders has created a prototype of a reinforced traditional house. Is this the solution to a vanishing heritage? Severino and his team journey to a sea-swept corner of Batanes to find out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Physical Graffiti es el sexto álbum de estudio de la banda británica Led Zeppelin, publicado el 24 de febrero de 1975, siendo la primera publicación del grupo con su propio sello Swan Song Records. Con 15 millones de copias vendidas, es el séptimo álbum de rock con más ventas de los años 1970. Salió al mercado casi dos años después de Houses of the Holy, y fue grabado en 1974, con material adicional inédito grabado en años anteriores.

The Junto and Puritan Influence in Parliament: Colleague Jonathan Healey describes the political geography of London, introducing the "Junto," a reformist party coordinating between Parliament's houses, analyzing the influence of Puritans and key opposition figures like John Pym and Mandeville who strategically challenged Charles I's authority regarding church reform and arbitrary taxation. 1649

My guest today has created some of the most beautiful houses in America. Perhaps I am biased, because if I ever build my own house, I know that Tom Kundig will design it. If he agrees Over the course of his four-decade career, he has built museums, wineries, universities, foundations, retail andcommercial buildings. But the touchstone of his work, and for what he became known, is the single-family house. His houses reflect his passion for the mountains, for the natural world, and for fine art. The private house to him, reflectthe sense of humanity in architecture.If to Le Corbusier the house was a machine to live in, toTom Kundig the house is a sculpture to live in and a place to experiment. His houses are also strongly connected to the landscape and to the surrounding nature in the most organic way, whether it is in an urban fabric or a house in the countryside. Urban or rural, his houses are a reflection of their place.Now that his new and comprehensive monograph—the definitive collection of his 462 residential works —has been published, it is time to explore what makes Tom Kundig's houses so magical, memorable, and beautiful.

Maddy, Michelle, and Kenneth say their final goodbyes to HHN 34 with the ranking and discussion of the houses!! Enjoy!

Michael Dente went from small land deals to a full-scale single-family operation with more than 100 closings. In this episode, he breaks down why land was the perfect entry point, what pushed him to pivot, how novations now make up most of his business, and how PPC and cold callers keep his cost per deal surprisingly low. He also shares how he discovered a company was stealing his PPC leads, how he rebuilt his systems, and how he now uses DealMachine data to target 80,000+ optimized records each month. KEY TALKING POINTS:0:00 - Intro0:35 - How Michael Dente Got Started In Real Estate2:40 - Infill Lots vs. Larger Tracts & Finding Buyers6:32 - How Investing Changed His Life After Being An Agent9:03 - What He Did After Land Flipping11:08 - How He's Generating Leads Now & Moving To SFH14:27 - How He Picked His Markets16:39 - How Many Deals He's Done & Novation Deals20:29 - What His Team Looks Like21:59 - His Biggest Challenge & Hiring VAs28:12 - His Feedback For DealMachine32:50 - Closing Thoughts33:20 - Outro LINKS:Instagram: Michael Dentehttps://www.instagram.com/only1_michaeldente/ Website: Michael Dentehttps://michaeldente.exprealty.com Instagram: David Leckohttps://www.instagram.com/dlecko Website: DealMachinehttps://www.dealmachine.com/pod Instagram: Ryan Haywoodhttps://www.instagram.com/heritage_home_investments Website: Heritage Home Investmentshttps://www.heritagehomeinvestments.com/

You Can't Make This Stuff Up…

Azna Parveen is a PhD scholar in Architecture at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research explores the socio-cultural translations of Islam in the built environment through the perspective of oceanic trade along the Indian Ocean littorals, focussing on Malabar Coast of Kerala, India. Trained in architecture with a specialisation in Urban Design, she has previously worked as an architect and an academician. She was also part of a multidisciplinary team awarded a grant by India Foundation for Art to study the spatial and sensorial landscape of Kayalpattinam. Beyond academia, she is a published illustrator and storyteller, leading heritage walks independently and with organisations (past collaborators include Kochi-Muziris Biennale) to encourage inclusive and interdisciplinary conversations about architectural and urban histories and sustainable futures for heritage. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-august  

In this solo episode, Britten continues her "Chapters of My Career" series, sharing the pivotal year when shame became central to her work and the word "unshaming" emerged as the name for what she'd been doing all along. This installment explores the period from Spring 2022 through early 2023, a time of deep personal transformation, relationship repair, and the crystallization of her signature teaching approach. She explains that one of shame's most powerful spells is that we don't recognize it as such - we think it's just who we are, rather than something that came from outside and isn't native to our being.   Topics She Explores: The seven-year Saturn cycle in her business and how her 3-5 Human Design profile shapes her experiential learning and teaching voice A transformative mushroom journey that revealed codependency patterns, the teaching that everyone is on their own trip, and that she's resisting being special because she doesn't want people to be sad Learning to navigate shame spirals in her relationship and discovering how shame was showing up in her parenting Taking The Shame Clinic with Simone Seol and David Bedrick in Fall 2022, where she first encountered the word "unshaming" The disappointment when Astrology as Praxis enrollment was lower than expected, and how that contraction taught her to return to why she truly wants to create Leading her first Unshaming the Signs workshop in February 2023 with her astrology students, and the birth of what would become Unshaming Your Chart   Britten closes by inviting listeners to join Unshaming Your Chart, which returns December 17th as a two-month offering inside Living Emergence. The class includes a face-melting initiation, a bank of pre-recorded teachings on Unshaming the Signs, Houses, and Planets, and meetups in January and February. She emphasizes that while the topic is shame, the experience is playful and fun - because laughter alchemizes and helps us stay real, vulnerable, and spacious as humans learning to be here.   +++   Britten's course Unshaming Your Chart begins December 17th inside Living Emergence. The class includes a two-hour initiation, access to the pre-recorded library of Unshaming the Signs, Unshaming the Houses, and Unshaming the Planets, and meetups in January and February with breakout groups for deep community processing. Doors open on December 12th.   You can join as a Living Emergence member for $95/month to access Unshaming Your Chart plus the entire ecosystem, or purchase Unshaming Your Chart as a standalone class for $400.   +++ E M E R G E N C E  A S T R O L O G Y ⁠⁠https://brittenlarue.com/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@brittenlarue Order Living Astrology Join my newsletter here Check out my new podcast CRYSTAL BALLERS on Spotify, Podbean, and Apple. +++ Podcast art: Angela George. Podcast music: Jonathan Koe.  

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger PictureThe [CB][DS] are trying to convince the world high electricity costs are coming from AI and Crypto mining, it is not, its coming from the green new scam. Gas prices are coming way down. The new system Trump is building is getting stronger and stronger. The [CB] will fight back against Trump’s tariff system. The [DS] is pushing back, they want war and they do not want the peace deal. Corruption is being exposed in Ukraine which is putting a lot of pressure on Zelensky, the EU is now funding Ukraine. Soon he will be pushed out or he will sign the peace deal. Trump says its time for election in Ukraine. The [DS] criminal syndicate that they setup in DC under threat by the SC. They will rule that Trump as the right to remove the agencies and people, they are not independent of the Executive Branch, game over. Economy https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1997946755116359938?s=20 thanks to bad energy policy, not data centers. He slammed subsidies for unreliable sources like offshore wind, saying some projects cost $11B for 1GW of intermittent power, versus $1–2B for 24/7 reliable supply. Burgum laid into what he called “climate extremists,” accusing them of prioritizing flashy green experiments over building energy systems that actually work. The result is sky-high bills for electricity that cuts out when the weather does, while lawmakers pat themselves on the back for feel-good “net zero” policies that don't add up. Burgum: “A lot of the higher prices that you’re seeing are not related to the AI data centers. The policy choices of the last 5 years, driven by sometimes climate extremists, were the ones that are driving up the prices you’re seeing.” (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");   That is why I have authorized documentation to impose a 5% Tariff on Mexico if this water isn't released, IMMEDIATELY. The longer Mexico takes to release the water, the more our Farmers are hurt. Mexico has an obligation to FIX THIS NOW. Thank you for your attention to this matter! Gas Prices Drop To Lowest Level In Nearly 5 Years Across US Gasoline prices have dropped to their lowest levels in nearly five years and stand at around $2.90 per gallon on average as of Monday, according to data from GasBuddy, a company that tracks gas prices. “The national average has just slipped below $2.90 per gallon for the first time since May 2, 2021,” GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan wrote in a Sunday post on X.   Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1998037849539846303?s=20 ADP Weekly Employment Report Signals Rebound In Labor Market  the US labor market turned up for the four weeks ending Nov. 22, 2025, private employers added an average of 4,750 jobs a week., according to ADP’s new weekly employment data This week's positive number hints at an upswing in the labor market after four straight weeks of negative pulse estimates, after four straight weeks of losing jobs. This follows the almost unprecedented decline in initial jobless claims last week (which some have argued was impacted by Thanksgiving Week irregularities). Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/profstonge/status/1998369537851346975?s=20   “degraded” products that nobody wanted, a terrible idea that slowed Innovation, and hurt the American Worker. That Era is OVER! We will protect National Security, create American Jobs, and keep America's lead in AI. NVIDIA's U.S. Customers are already moving forward with their incredible, highly advanced Blackwell chips, and soon, Rubin, neither of which are part of this deal. My Administration will always put America FIRST. The Department of Commerce is finalizing the details, and the same approach will apply to AMD, Intel, and other GREAT American Companies. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!  Political/Rights https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/1998069235734520159?s=20  putting American lives at risk. There are another 4,015 aliens in the custody of an Illinois jurisdiction that ICE is seeking to arrest. Criminal illegal aliens should not be released back onto our streets to terrorize more innocent Americans. https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1998407499884511706?s=20 https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1998416601050161442?s=20 https://twitter.com/FBIDDBongino/status/1998135848546746381?s=20  daily to dismantle the network and all those criminal actors associated with it. https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1998400657217257829?s=20 DOGE https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1998127452195852468?s=20   don’t see how they can do that!” “I’ll speak about it later. I’ll get a FULL report on it.” “Europe has to be VERY careful…Europe is going in some BAD directions.” @ElonMusk will win this! Geopolitical https://twitter.com/PM_ViktorOrban/status/1998044051203928212?s=20  Hungary will not implement the measures of the Migration Pact. The rebellion begins! War/Peace https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1998163342465306883?s=20 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1998082649425125715?s=20  amid uncertainty about future U.S. involvement. Zelensky met with Macron, Merz, and Starmer to align Europe's position on Ukraine peace talks. The message? If the U.S. steps back, Europe is ready to step up. Macron spoke of “convergence” between Europe, Ukraine, and the U.S., code for: we're not waiting for Trump. Starmer promised “a just and lasting settlement.” Merz framed Ukraine's future as “the destiny of Europe.” This isn't just about Ukraine anymore, it's about Europe's ability to act without Washington.aa the subtext is clear: Europe knows Trump may walk away, and they're preparing for it. Ukraine is only part of the equation, the real test is whether Europe can act without Washington. For the first time since 2022, the center of gravity on Ukraine is shifting eastward, to Paris, Berlin, and London. If Trump wins, the burden of leadership falls on Europe. Today may have been the first test of whether it’s ready https://twitter.com/BRICSinfo/status/1998299398456131611?s=20 What’s The Likelihood Of A NATO-Russian Non-Aggression Pact? Putin recently proposed providing Europe, the majority of whose countries are part of NATO, with formal guarantees that it won't attack. In connection with this, he also assessed that those who fearmonger about Russia are serving the interests of the military-industrial complex and/or trying to bolster their domestic image, which exposed their ulterior motives. In any case, his proposal could hypothetically lead to a NATO-Russian Non-Aggression Pact (NRNAP), but only if the political will exists on both sides Source: zerohedge.com  https://twitter.com/TheOtherSideRu/status/1998356606119981155?s=20   it's not a democracy anymore” https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1998356214384611652?s=20   hold an election, but I would think the Ukrainian people should have that choice. And maybe Zelensky would win. But they haven't had an election in a long time. They talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it's not a democracy anymore,” Donald Trump said. As of December 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s approval (or trust) rating in Ukraine has reportedly plummeted due to a major corruption scandal involving leaked “Mindich tapes” tied to his inner circle and energy sector graft. Multiple sources, including Ukrainian media and lawmakers, indicate the rating has dropped by about 40 percentage points in a single week, now sitting at or below 20-25%. Medical/False Flags [DS] Agenda https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1998187351026348280?s=20 WATCH: Crockett Launches Senate Campaign By Posting Bizarre Compilation of Trump Repeatedly Calling Her ‘Low IQ' FBI Agents Sue Kash Patel After Being Fired Over BLM Support — Claim Kneeling ‘Saved American Lives'   The FBI agents who kneeled during the George Floyd BLM riots were fired on Friday by the FBI. A group of former FBI agents has filed a lawsuit against Director Kash Patel and the federal government after being fired for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. The dozen agents complained that almost immediately upon becoming director of the bureau, Patel began working to terminate all agents who had kneeled in support of the movement. The lawsuit also claims the agents would not have been fired had they had the same perceived political affiliations as those involved in the January 6th protests. Source: thegatewaypundit.com The FBI, as a U.S. federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Justice (DOJ), is required to maintain political neutrality and impartiality in its operations and public actions. It does not take official political stands or engage in activism, as its mission focuses on enforcing federal laws without partisan bias. Individual FBI employees (including agents) are subject to strict restrictions under the Hatch Act, which prohibits most forms of partisan political activity to ensure a neutral federal workforce. FBI personnel are classified as “further restricted” employees, meaning they face additional limitations compared to most other federal workers. Key Prohibitions for FBI EmployeesThese apply at all times (on or off duty) unless otherwise noted, with the goal of preventing any appearance of political influence or coercion: Taking a partisan political stand: They may not endorse or oppose candidates for partisan office or political parties in advertisements, broadcasts, campaign literature, speeches at partisan events, or similar materials if done in coordination with a candidate, party, or partisan group.     Pushing partisan activism: Active participation in partisan political management or campaigns is banned, including organizing rallies/caucuses, promoting/selling tickets to fundraising events, addressing partisan gatherings in support of/opposition to candidates, or driving voters to polls in coordination with partisan entities. They cannot use their official authority to interfere with elections or solicit/discourage political activity from individuals with business before the DOJ/FBI. Permitted Activities for FBI EmployeesWhile heavily restricted, some non-active or non-partisan actions are allowed, primarily off-duty: . https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1998131089542713808?s=20   million in fees from Fani Willis's office after she was disqualified for an improper relationship with a special prosecutor. The Georgia Supreme Court removed her permanently in September, opening the door for all 19 defendants to file similar reimbursement claims. The total cost could dwarf Trump's alone and stands as a humiliating rebuke of Willis's partisan prosecution. The blowback is now financial as well as legal. https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1998354564790284308?s=20 notice. 18 of them are still actively covered. September 2025. Monthly payout: over $10,000. GAO’s just…monitoring them. Because apparently nobody at HHS has. No SSN? Fine. No proof of citizenship? Whatever. No income documentation? Come on in. GAO literally wrote in their report: “[We] did not provide documentation yet received coverage.” They’re not even hiding it – they got benefits with nothing. The system just said yes. Now check the real-world damage. In 2023, 29,000 Social Security numbers somehow got used for multiple full-year coverage plans. By 2024? That jumped to 68,000. Someone’s running the same number through the machine twice, three times, however many times it takes, and the alarms aren’t going off. Then there’s the $94 million that went to dead people in 2023. Not “accounts tied to people who died recently and the paperwork hasn’t caught up” – straight up deceased recipients. Death certificates filed, funerals held, checks still clearing. But here’s the really wild part: GAO tried to track $21 billion in subsidies from 2023 back to actual Social Security numbers. Couldn’t do it. 21 billion dollars just floating out there with no clear connection to who’s supposed to be getting it. The system allows multiple enrollments per SSN “to help ensure actual SSN-holder can enroll in cases of identity theft or data entry errors.” In other words: we built in workarounds so generous that fraud looks identical to legitimate use. Now Congress is fighting over whether to extend these enhanced COVID subsidies past December 31. Cost to keep them? $30 billion annually. 24 million people enrolled, over 90% getting subsidies. Without extension, premiums spike overnight and 22 million people might lose coverage. Republicans looking at GAO’s findings saying: this is exactly why we shouldn’t pour another $30B into a system that can’t tell fake accounts from real ones. Democrats saying: you’re going to kick 22 million people off insurance because less than 1% is fraud? Both sides kinda have a point. Yeah, the fraud’s under 1% of total enrollees. But when you’re burning $30B yearly and literally cannot verify where $21B went, “less than 1%” stops sounding so minor. Senate vote coming this week. Expected to fail. Which means scramble for short-term extension, fight continues into 2026 budget battles, and absolutely nothing changes about fraud controls. Because here’s what nobody wants to say out loud: the system isn’t designed to catch fraud. It’s designed to maximize enrollment. When your mandate is “get people covered,” asking too many questions becomes the enemy. Verification slows things down. Documentation creates barriers. Better to let a few fake accounts slip through than risk denying real people who need coverage. So GAO’s 18 fictional enrollees will keep collecting their $10K monthly until someone at HHS manually shuts them down. Which requires someone at HHS to actually read GAO reports. Which requires someone at HHS to care more about fraud than enrollment numbers. Don’t hold your breath. By next year, GAO will run the same test. Find the same results. Write the same warnings. And Congress will have the same fight about whether feeding money into a system that can’t track where it goes is compassionate policy or expensive theater. Meanwhile, somewhere in America, a completely imaginary person just got their subsidized premium renewed for 2026. https://twitter.com/chad_mizelle/status/1998194850324222006?s=20  clown show. Ignore him. In the meantime, Congress needs to start acting like a co-equal branch and initiate its own inquiry into Boasberg. President Trump's Plan Alina Habba Resigns as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey After Courts Rule Against Her Appointment Alina Habba, President Donald Trump's pick to serve as U.S. attorney for New Jersey, has resigned from her role following a federal court's ruling to uphold a lower court's decision that she was not “lawfully” appointed to the office. The news was announced Monday by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said she was “saddened to accept Alina's resignation”: https://twitter.com/AGPamBondi/status/1998102734680318084?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1998102734680318084%7Ctwgr%5E61a3e334e8e6099ea26f7cf5005134be5bf746cd%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Ft%2Fassets%2Fhtml%2Ftweet-5.html1998102734680318084 Habba intends to return to the U.S. attorney's office if that occurs, Bondi added, noting that she will be continuing with the DOJ as a senior advisor. Source: breitbart.com Do Not Mistake Compliance For Surrender” – Alina Habba Steps Down As Acting US Attorney For New Jersey    Habba's statement Monday said “do not mistake compliance for surrender”. https://twitter.com/AlinaHabba/status/1998101999024550125?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1998101999024550125%7Ctwgr%5Ec3b83e0f57525961eabb9975a6e4dab69d0d73c0%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fdo-not-mistake-compliance-surrender-alina-habba-steps-down-acting-us-attorney-new-jersey Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/JoeLang51440671/status/1998202248636072142?s=20  Ketanji Brown Jackson claimed the president should have no power to fire expert bureaucrats. She said economists, PhDs, scientists, & transportation officials should operate beyond presidential reach. Such a view would carve the heart out of Article II & cement rule by permanent insiders rather than elected leadership. Jackson's theory elevates the deep state over the voters who choose a president. That is a constitutional revolution in plain sight. https://twitter.com/AwakenedOutlaw/status/1998116399190036973?s=20   Furthermore, the same logic would apply to the Federal Reserve, IMO. In fact, that’s almost certainly where this is going. Justice Kavanaugh: “I want to give you a chance to deal with the hard hypothetical. When both Houses of Congress and the President are controlled by the same party, they create a lot of these independent agencies or extend some of the current independent agencies into these kinds of situations so as to thwart future Presidents of the opposite party https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1894547479367938142?s=20 https://twitter.com/Rothbard1776/status/1998162884455522528?s=20 https://twitter.com/MJTruthUltra/status/1998149963835191541?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1998129151857848575?s=20   where you have Dem Senators, they won’t approve him! This gentlemen’s agreement [blue slip] has lasted TOO LONG. It means you can’t appoint a GOP US Attorney!” “In VA, NJ, CA, a US Attorney or judge…the only people you can get by are Democrats because they put a HOLD ON IT!” “It only takes one senator! If they are Democrat, they won’t approve it.” “All because GRASSLEY with his BLUE SLIP stuff won’t let anybody go by! And by the way, Democrats have violated blue slip!” Susie Wiles: Trump Will Campaign for 2026 Midterms ‘Like It's 2024 Again' White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles revealed that President Donald Trump will get out and “campaign like it's 2024 again” for the 2026 midterm elections. Wiles went on to explain that “in the midterms, it's not about who's sitting at the White House,” but about localizing the election and keeping “the federal officials out of it.” “We're actually going to turn that on its head,” Wiles shared. “And, put him on the ballot because so many of those low propensity voters are Trump voters. And, we saw, a week ago Tuesday, what happens when he's not on the ballot and not active. So, I haven't quite broken it to him yet, but he's going to campaign like it's 2024 again.” Source: breitbart.com (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

On this episode of Inside the Firm, an Ai review, then why are houses so expensive, and finally, we're repealing sprinkler requirements, really?! Join us as we go back Inside the Firm!

Question-asker Manny recently got out of prison. He wants to learn about his options for transitional housing — a place where he could stay sober while readjusting to life outside a prison cell. It turns out, those options look very different today than they would have even a few years ago.To see photos from our reporting, check out the web version of this story here. This episode was reported by Carly Berlin and produced by Burgess Brown. Editing and additional production from the rest of the BLS team: Sabine Poux and Josh Crane. Our intern is Camila Van Order González. Our executive producer is Angela Evancie. Theme music by Ty Gibbons; other music by Blue Dot Sessions.Special thanks to Phil Edfors, Liam Elder-Connors, April McCullum, Susan Pullium, Glenn Russell, Paul Dragon, Tiffany Rich, Brenna Bedard, Jeff Moreau, Mary Verner, Jess Kirby, Jim Curran, and all the residents of the Burlington Dismas House.As always, our journalism is better when you're a part of it: Ask a question about Vermont Sign up for the BLS newsletter Say hi onInstagram and Reddit @bravestatevt Drop us an email: hello@bravelittlestate.org Make a gift to support people-powered journalism Tell your friends about the show! Brave Little State is a production of Vermont Public and a proud member of the NPR Network.

We're off for Thanksgiving, but here's a look at the fun you can experience in Bonus MuggleCast on our Patreon! To celebrate Back to Hogwarts month, the MuggleCasters are creating their own Hogwarts Houses from scratch! We share the name of each of our Houses, the sigil, how to get into the Common Room, what each of these new Houses stands for, and so much more! Which of these Houses would you join? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rebecca Gardner, the founder of Houses and Parties, grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, which she remembers as vibrant, colorful, and filled with family trips across the border into Mexico – back when that was much easier to do. But she also traveled quite a bit to visit family in the Mississippi Delta, where she was inspired by her grandmother, known as Neeny, who loved to entertain. After some fun-filled years at Ole Miss, Rebecca became friends with the legendary Delta writer, Julia Reed, who believed that a Southern party should always have something good to eat—and it should never be boring. In her beautiful new book, A Screaming Blast: Exceptional Entertaining, Rebecca is anything but boring. Every page is an example of her relentless creativity, her wild imagination, and her belief that celebrating with friends and family is one of the great joys of life. She also talks about how it doesn't have to be that hard or expensive to entertain friends, especially when you know the right short cuts. Sid talks to Rebecca about the upcoming Bourbon Party they're co-hosting at the Nashville Antiques & Garden Show in January, how to survive the holidays, and why every party needs a Pied Piper. For more info visit: southernliving.com/biscuitsandjam Sid Evans - Editor-in-Chief, Southern Living Krissy Tiglias - GM, Southern Living Lottie Leymarie - Executive Producer Michael Onufrak - Audio Engineer & Editor/Producer Jeremiah Lee McVay - Producer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's opening story is 'The Group Home Massacre' by the wonderfully talented Jrubas, kindly shared with me via my subreddit for the express purpose of having me narrate it here for you all: https://www.reddit.com/user/Jrubas/ Tonight's second fabulous story is the prequel to the brilliant series ‘I Have the Ability to Sense the Demonic', an original work by the wonderfully talented Dark Adalia, kindly shared with me via Dr. Creepen's Vault so that I could narrate it here for you all, with the author's express permission. https://www.reddit.com/user/DarkAdalia/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DrCreepensVault/comments/qu385s/the_lockwood_house/ Tonight's final tale is ‘Vermin's Nest' by the wonderfully talented Corpse Child, kindly shared directly with me for the express purpose of having me narrate it here for you all: https://www.reddit.com/u/Corpse_Child/