Podcasts about Christmas

Galaxy Quest was one of the great summer movies of 1999. Except it was released, for some reason, at Christmas. Lovingly sending up television sci-fi of a certain era - and heavily grounded in Star Trek - Galaxy Quest was a modest success as 30th highest grossing movie of 1999 The second feature film, both overall and in as many years following the Vince Gilligan-penned Home Fries with Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson in 1998, from accomplished television director Dean Parisot, and witten by David Howard and Rob Gordon, Galaxy Quest stars Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Enrico Colantoni, Tony Shaloub, Sam Rockwell, Darryl Chill Mitchell, Robin Sachs, Patrick Breen, Missy Pyle, Jeb Rees, and Rain Wilson and Justin Long in their film debuts. Galaxy Quest has gone on to become one of the great cult films (and most enduring comedies) ever. So we invited culture writer Annie Berke to see how it holds up a quarter century later. Oh, and we basically write the sequel! Annie is on Bluesky @sayanniething  

  Thank you for tuning in to Episode 300 of the Down Cellar Studio Podcast. Full show notes with photos can be found on my website. This week's segments included:   Off the Needles, Hook or Bobbins On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins From the Armchair Crafty Adventures Knitting in Passing In my Travels KAL News Events On a Happy Note Quote of the Week   Thank you to this episode's sponsors: Stitched by Jessalu- See Jessalu's bags at the The Warm Ewe in Chatham, NY through July 5, 2025 & at  Fiber Revival in Newbury, MA on August 16th Yumi Yarns whose Coastal Bloom Wrap Skirt is now available   Off the Needles, Hook or Bobbins   Miles' Montessori Toy Pattern: Montessori Colour Sorter by Lexie Warren. Free crochet pattern available on Ravelry & on Crochet River) Hook: D (3.25 mm) Yarn: Big Twist Value Solids in Purple, Orange, Teal and Cyan. Knit Picks Brava in Canary, Rouge and White. Ravelry Project Page 7 balls and 7 cups. 6 to create hexagon and white in the center. Stash Dash: 234 meters SPP-116 grams- 2 entries   Boss A$$ B|tc# Socks Yarn: Woolens & Nosh Superwash Targhee Fingering in the Boss A$$ B|tc# Colorway (purposely not spelled out here, though it is on the label) Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) Ravelry Project Page 90g of yarn to start About the Yarn: Self striping with yellow, tan, peach, pink, light aqua, teal & navy Stash Dash- 280.5 meters (306.8 yards), SPP- 75 grams 9.5 inch leg, 9.25 inch foot   Let's Get Basted Socks Yarn: Hypnotic Yarn Plush Sock in the Let's Get Basted Colorway (Yarnable November 2024 colorway) Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) Ravelry Project Page About the colorway- cream with gray, purple, tan/brown and small blips or orange. Spiral pooling. Stash Dash: 256 meters 64 grams- 1 SPP Entry   Ball Band for Rachel #2- for Starbucks Venti Cup Pattern: Ball Band with a Twist by Jennifer Lassonde. $2 Crochet pattern available on Ravelry & LoveCrafts Hooks: F (3.75 mm) & G (4.25 mm) Yarn: Loops & Thread Classic Cotton in Pewter, Midnight Blue and Bubblegum Ravelry Project Page Midnight blue hdc through 3rd loop. 1 round of pink sc, body in pewter sc, one round of blue at top. 0.37 skeins = 40.3 meters (44.1 yards), 25 grams Stash Dash: 40.3 meters   Ball Band for Starbucks Venti Cup (Jen) Pattern: Ball Band with a Twist by Jennifer Lassonde. $2 Crochet pattern available on Ravelry & LoveCrafts Hooks: F (3.75 mm) & G (4.25 mm) Yarn: Loops & Thread Classic Cotton in Pewter and Bubblegum Project Page 0.57 skeins = 62.1 meters (67.9 yards), 39 grams   Adrift on an Inland Sea Socks Yarn: Woolens & Nosh SW Targhee Sock in the Adrift on an Inland Sea colorway Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) Ravelry Project Page About the yarn: 2 lighter/medium grays, cream, mustard and a thinner stripe of a charcoal bordering on black. Used the CC gray for cuff and will use for the toe. Finished on the ride to ME for camping. 0.8 skeins = 300.8 meters (329.0 yards), 80 grams 8.5 inch leg. 9.5 inch foot   Urth Yarn Hat 2 of 2 Pattern: Turn a Square by Jared Flood ($5 pattern available on Ravelry & Brooklyn Tweed website) Yarn: Urth Yarn Uneek Worsted Needles: US 5 (3.75 mm) for ribbing. US 7 (4.5 mm) for body. Ravelry Project Page Cast on 92 sts. Used 48g of this skein for hat for Christmas gift Stash Dash: 0.56 skeins = 112.6 meters (123.1 yards), SPP- 56 grams- 1 entry Had to do decreases faster because I was running out yarn. Ended up with maybe 1 yard Hat is 8.25 inches tall. Still a great size.   David... Fold in the cheese socks #2 Yarn: Legacy Fiber Artz in the David...Fold in the cheese!!!! colorway (with cream/gray mini skein) Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) Ravelry Project Page About the yarn- cream, pink and blue to match rose apron David wears in this episode of Schitt's Creek. Progress: started toe of first sock Cream/gray mini that came with it for cuff. purply/pink mini from LFA advent for heel and toe. Socks for Laura 0.58 skeins = 245.3 meters (268.3 yards), 58 grams 1 SPP for grams, 1 for Snack Shack LFA yarn, 1 for Snack Shack Sponsor- The Sensible Stitcher- cute butterfly bag.   Stash Dash Total for this episode: 2,541 meters   On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins   Four Leaf Clover Granny Square Blanket Pattern: Four Leaf Clover Granny Square by Apinya Roszko Hook: H (5.0 mm) Yarn: Knit Picks Brava 500 in colorway Mint & Loops and Threads Impeccable in Colorway 01808 Size:  6 inch squares. Planning 5x7 blanket (30x42”) before border. Modification- the pattern calls for attaching new yarn (at the end of the square) to make the stem for the clover. I just chain to get to the center, make the stem and cut the yarn. I find it easy to crochet the granny square around it in Mint. No issues and one less end to weave in. I am joining squares as I go. I used this YouTube tutorial to remind me how to do this. Progress: Last time I had 14 (of 35) squares done and seamed. Now I have 17 done. Baby due in September. Lots of time. Loving joining as I go but its less portable this way.   Let the Mystery Unravel 2023 Blanket of Calm Pattern: Blanket of Calm by Casapinka (free crochet pattern) Yarn: Woolen Women Fibers- Let the Mystery Unravel subscription + Cascade Heritage Sock yarn in the Forged Iron Colorway Hook: 3.25 mm (D) Ravelry Project Page You can find my Let the Mystery Unravel Unboxing Video on YouTube in this Playlist I dug this out while cleaning out my studio on one of the very hot days before we left for camping. I had 3 squares of 9 that were seamed up but that didn't have the 3 rounds of DC border on them that I'm doing in dark gray. I finished those over the course of the week's train rides, then got the rest out and found 1 more that needed the border. All of those are done now. The other 8 squares have already been steamed. Plan to steam the most recently finished 4 then start SCing the big squares together. Border- undecided. May do a few rounds of gray. May incorporate colors. Debating an iCord border. I can't decide. Before border- 44 inches long by 24 inches long 50g per square x 12 ~600g= 2,400 meters of sock yarn   716 Splash Pad Socks Yarn: 716 Knit Sock Set  in the 716sock base in the colorway: It needs to be ok with getting on a boat with Levar Burton and never coming back. Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) Ravelry Project Page About the yarn: stripe of black, stripe of bright poolside colors (orange, yellow, peach, greens & aquas . Cast on June 1 for SPP Kick off. Jenna of 716 also sent me the mini skein set which is part of her SPP Exclusives. What should I do with my minis?? Progress: Finished leg. Cuff and heel are in contrast aqua. love them.   Sum-Sum-Summertime socks Yarn: Woolens & Nosh SW Targhee Sock in the colorway Sum-Sum-Summertime Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) Ravelry Project Page About the Colorway- thinner stripes- 2 colors of aqua, lime green, pink and an orange/peachy yellow. CC mini in lime This is not a SPP colorway but its the perfect colorway for this year's SPP logo. Should have reminded Michele to sign up

Pastors Kent and Candy Christmas www.regenerationnashville.org #kentandcandychristmas #KCMInternational #KentChristmasMinistries #PreachPrayProphesy #birthingamovement #regenerationnashville #GodPortal

Welcome to the Christmas series! Joseph is given another dream - a warning. He must get Mary and Jesus to safety. He realizes that this is what he was called to all along - protect God's Son, even if it costs him his life.  Sign up for special devotionals at StoriesoftheMessiah.com. As we dive deeply into iconic Bible heroes' enthralling narratives, we find more than just stories of faith and miracles. We discover a recurrent theme, a spiritual undertone that connects each tale to the grandeur of the Gospel. They're not just standalone legends; they're threads in a divine tapestry, weaving a story that foreshadows Jesus Christ, the ultimate hero, the promised Messiah who brings light to the darkest corners of history. For more Bible stories download the Pray.com app.  To learn more about Rabbi Schneider visit https://discoveringthejewishjesus.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

HOLLYWOOD - Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom author Joel C. Scoberg is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest and was honored along with eleven other writers and eleven artists at the Taglyan Complex in Hollywood, California on April 10th. His story, "The Stench of Freedom," is published along with the other writers' and illustrators' stories and art in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41 which was officially released on April 22nd 2025. Joel C. Scoberg lives on the beautiful Gower Peninsula in Wales, United Kingdom, with his very supportive wife, two somewhat feral children, and a growing menagerie of animals. He predominantly writes science fiction and fantasy stories, usually at night after his children have gone to bed and before he collapses from exhaustion. His stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Gwyllion Science Fiction and Fantasy, 365tomorrows, and Every Day Fiction. Joel's love of science fiction and fantasy goes back further than his earliest memories. From watching The Never Ending Story so many times he wore out the video, to his family's Christmas tradition of watching the original Star Wars trilogy back-to-back, and discovering The Hobbit on a caravan holiday as a teenager and reading it, utterly mesmerised, in one sitting. He hopes to one day write a story that will equally enthrall a reader and make them fall in love with fantastical characters that, currently, only exist in his head. “The Stench of Freedom” was inspired by the transformational perspective that becoming a parent brings. Joel had long dreamt of becoming a writer, but pursuing a career in law and the long hours that entailed, as well as the fear of ridicule for putting something so personal as your own creation into the world, acted as excuses not to follow those dreams. Then, when his children were born, he realised he could hardly tell them to pursue their dreams if he hadn't done so himself. The Contest, one of the most prestigious writing and illustrating competitions in the world, is currently in its 42nd 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. HOLLYWOOD - Mesa, Arizona author Ian Keith is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest and was honored along with eleven other writers and eleven artists at the Taglyan Complex in Hollywood, California on April 10th. His story, "Blackbird Stone," is published along with the other writers' and illustrators' stories and art in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41 which will be officially released on April 22nd 2025. Ian Keith went to philosophy school to learn how to tell the truth, and to law school to learn how to tailor a story to suit any set of appearances. Both trainings have helped him to write fiction, about equally. He lives with his partner and their two children in the Phoenix area, where he works as a ghostwriter. “Blackbird Stone” is his first professional publication. “Blackbird Stone” started as an itch to write about the pigeons, lizards, and rocks that populate suburban backyards in the Southwest. It grew into a love story and a tribute to quirky families when a bachelorette with an addiction to time elbowed her way in at the conceptual stage. The pigeons became blackbirds, the lizards became telepathic, and the stones became eggs to accommodate her.

In that temple, you will find shelter and forgiveness...

Watch on Philo! - Philo.tv/DTHClaire and her parents, Jacob and Abbie, are in Italy to visit her grandfather Lawrence who owns a hotel. They normally come at Christmas but for some reason they're coming in August. But that's not gonna stop Claire from singing Christmas songs on the way. When they get there, Claire runs off to find her boyfriend Walter while Jacob and Abbie tell Lawrence that they're getting a divorce, and they're going to tell Claire here so that she's at her happy place and they ask Lawrence if he would break the news so that she can feel free to respond as she needs. But Claire's trip is already off to a bad start when she discovers that she's Walter's winter girlfriend. He's currently hanging out with his summer girlfriend. They drop the news, Claire is sad but not surprised. She decides to go hang out in the basement so she can be around the Christmas stuff. And she comes up with an idea - she wants one more Christmas as a family. Her parents are unsure but Lawrence is like WE'RE DOING IT! And we're flying Gams and Pop Pop out too! One problem arises and its that one of the hotel guests hates Christmas and he brings big money to the hotel so they have to make him happy. When Gams and Pop Pop show up, Pop Pop sees a women and immediately starts being weird. He opens up to Lawrence - he slept with this women 10 years ago and she's gonna be here all week. So Lawrence offers to cover for him as much as he can. And Lawrence keeps finding himself in people's mess when he discovers that on Jacob's camera, there's pictures from a camping trip and he seemed to be getting cozy with another women that's not Claire. Pop Pop decides to just stay in his room which leaves Gam to spend time by herself which leads to her actually hanging out with Claudia, the women her husband secretly had a one night stand with 10 years ago, which she opens up about how she's never quite gotten over this one night stand, not knowing she's talking about Gam's husband. We find out that Abbie had a little something with her boss. Basically everyone in this movie is a cheater. It finally basically all comes out right as it comes out that Claire's new puppy is missing. It's a whole thingClaire is sad and goes to be alone. She sneaks out and finds the puppy and comes back to find out that her parents are staying together. yay? 

Is Cohabitation Wise? The Data Might Surprise You. Is living together before marriage really setting couples up for success? Today, Scott Rae and I dive into a revealing sociological report from the Institute for Family Studies, unpacking why cohabitation often leads to less stability, not more. We'll explore the impact of cohabitation on marriage, children, and long-term trust, while offering a biblical and practical perspective on what leads to lasting relationships. Watch this video at- https://youtu.be/5Ta6FcBjdD4?si=Iy1U1SLb0BVHPTdc Sean McDowell 341K subscribers 17,195 views Premiered Jun 10, 2025 Sean McDowell Show *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell... Instagram:   / seanmcdowell   Website: https://seanmcdowell.org   --------------------------------------------------------------------  Check out our ACU Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/ACUPodcast   HELP ACU SPREAD THE WORD!  Please go to Apple Podcasts and give ACU a 5 star rating. Apple canceled us and now we are clawing our way back to the top. Don't let the Leftist win. Do it now! Thanks. Also Rate us on any platform you follow us on. It helps a lot. Forward this show to friends. Ways to subscribe to the American Conservative University Podcast Click here to subscribe via Apple Podcasts Click here to subscribe via RSS You can also subscribe via Stitcher FM Player Podcast Addict Tune-in Podcasts Pandora Look us up on Amazon Prime …And Many Other Podcast Aggregators and sites ACU on Twitter- https://twitter.com/AmerConU . Warning- Explicit and Violent video content.   Please help ACU by submitting your Show ideas. Email us at americanconservativeuniversity@americanconservativeuniversity.com   Endorsed Charities -------------------------------------------------------- Pre-Born! Saving babies and Souls. https://preborn.org/ OUR MISSION To glorify Jesus Christ by leading and equipping pregnancy clinics to save more babies and souls. WHAT WE DO Pre-Born! partners with life-affirming pregnancy clinics all across the nation. We are designed to strategically impact the abortion industry through the following initiatives:… -------------------------------------------------------- Help CSI Stamp Out Slavery In Sudan Join us in our effort to free over 350 slaves. Listeners to the Eric Metaxas Show will remember our annual effort to free Christians who have been enslaved for simply acknowledging Jesus Christ as their Savior. As we celebrate the birth of Christ this Christmas, join us in giving new life to brothers and sisters in Sudan who have enslaved as a result of their faith. https://csi-usa.org/metaxas   https://csi-usa.org/slavery/   Typical Aid for the Enslaved A ration of sorghum, a local nutrient-rich staple food A dairy goat A “Sack of Hope,” a survival kit containing essential items such as tarp for shelter, a cooking pan, a water canister, a mosquito net, a blanket, a handheld sickle, and fishing hooks. Release celebrations include prayer and gathering for a meal, and medical care for those in need. The CSI team provides comfort, encouragement, and a shoulder to lean on while they tell their stories and begin their new lives. Thank you for your compassion  Giving the Gift of Freedom and Hope to the Enslaved South Sudanese -------------------------------------------------------- Food For the Poor https://foodforthepoor.org/ Help us serve the poorest of the poor Food For The Poor began in 1982 in Jamaica. Today, our interdenominational Christian ministry serves the poor in primarily 17 countries throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Thanks to our faithful donors, we are able to provide food, housing, healthcare, education, fresh water, emergency relief, micro-enterprise solutions and much more. We are proud to have fed millions of people and provided more than 15.7 billion dollars in aid. Our faith inspires us to be an organization built on compassion, and motivated by love. Our mission is to bring relief to the poorest of the poor in the countries where we serve. We strive to reflect God's unconditional love. It's a sacrificial love that embraces all people regardless of race or religion. We believe that we can show His love by serving the “least of these” on this earth as Christ challenged us to do in Matthew 25. We pray that by God's grace, and with your support, we can continue to bring relief to the suffering and hope to the hopeless.   Report on Food For the Poor by Charity Navigator https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/592174510   -------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer from ACU. We try to bring to our students and alumni the World's best Conservative thinkers. All views expressed belong solely to the author and not necessarily to ACU. In all issues and relations, we hope to follow the admonitions of Jesus Christ. While striving to expose, warn and contend with evil, we extend the love of God to all of his children. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Every woman has a high libido. Every woman—once sensually switched on—is an endless well of insatiable desire and pleasure. I guarantee it.What does it take to switch her on and make her come alive? In today's episode we talk all things libido boosting.  I assert that once awakened, women are actually more sexual than men, with greater appetites and MUCH greater stamina. Well-F**ked All Star Teresa joins me and we talk: Living at an 8 or 9 sexual simmer as a woman's natural state The connection between libido and your life purpose “What do you want for Xmas? More orgasms”Using Meditate, Masturbate, Create to channel your sexual energy into your life, business and cash flow The source of a low libido is anything but physical. Meaning postpartum, menopause and any other physical condition are not the reason The hallmark of the well-f**ked woman: not giving a f**k Business opportunities falling into one's lap—because “the lap” is what attracts them From 20-minute sex sessions to 3-day sex dates The Well-F**ked Woman Salon is now open!  In this 10-week sensual mastery program for women, you'll learn: Self-pleausring 101 How to use Meditate, Masturbate, Create to channel your sexual energy into your life and projects How to boost your libido naturally How to have all the deeper vaginal orgasms: G-Spot, squirting and cervical How to use your feminine energy to achieve in the world How surrender is the most powerful tool you have for linking up with the cosmic and creative flow of the universe Natural birth control and hormone free solutions for difficult periods and menopause My full tutorials on cock whispering, including my oral and manual playbook Signup at www.kimanami.com/wet

From a broken leg on Christmas to headlining comedy clubs in LA, comedian Sean Corner shares his wild journey of persistence and determination. Watch as he opens up about leaving his engineering career, surviving on a friend's couch, and building his name in the competitive LA comedy scene. Experience the raw honesty as Sean reveals how a drunken Naruto-inspired kick led to a broken leg that delayed - but couldn't stop - his dreams. Through hustle, heart, and humor, he transformed from performing at strip club basements to producing shows with some of comedy's biggest names.Sean gets real about the grind of being an up-and-coming comedian, from hosting open mics to building valuable connections. His story proves that sometimes life's biggest setbacks can lead to the greatest comebacks. Whether you're a comedy fan or someone chasing their dreams, this conversation will inspire you to keep pushing forward, no matter what obstacles come your way.Featuring candid stories about breaking into the LA comedy scene, learning tough lessons, and finding success on your own terms. Watch how determination, talent, and a broken leg changed everything for this rising comedy star.#affiliatemarketing #emailmarketing #leadgeneration #howtomakemoneyonline #growemaillist#standupcomedy #funnyvideo #chocolatesundaescomedy #comedyclub #comedyCHAPTERS:00:00 - Intro00:40 - Sean Conner04:50 - Getting into Comedy Journey09:33 - Comedy Career Beginnings17:06 - What's In This Drink17:40 - Diddy Parties Experience19:36 - Episode Differences: 1 vs 1 Million Downloads23:15 - Problems You Asked For Discussion25:05 - Moving to LA Insights31:15 - Breaking His Leg: Life Changes39:40 - Kenan Thompson Presents Opportunity Impact40:40 - Taking Small Bites vs Big Chunks43:10 - Banned from the Comedy Chateau Incident45:30 - Accidental Chaos Comedy Club Story47:20 - Reaction to Homie's Accident49:00 - First Show After Homie's Passing53:15 - TV Character Identification59:20 - Jimmy Kimmel Residency Journey1:02:40 - The Black House Residency Experience1:06:00 - Wild Party Story with Theo Von1:10:55 - Outro1:13:17 - Toast1:14:10 - Post-InterviewSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bar-talk-at-open-bar-podcast/exclusive-content

Send us a textSet sail with us as we join the cast of Hallmark's Christmas at Sea for a festive and fun-filled Q&A! Stars Erin Cahill, Taylor Cole, Benjamin Ayres, and Paul Campbell share behind-the-scenes stories from their time cruising with fans on this one-of-a-kind holiday experience.In this special crossover episode, we teamed up with fellow Hallmark podcasters (Dear Hallmark, Hallmarkies, Girls Gone Hallmark, Everything About Hallmark, and Suspenders Unbuttoned) to ask the questions Hallmark fans really want answered. From shipboard surprises to holiday hilarity, this episode brings all the cheer.Whether you're a Hallmark Christmas movie fanatic or just curious about the cruise that has the Hallmark fandom buzzing, this is one conversation you won't want to miss.Follow us on social media: Instagram and TikTok: @hallmarkmysteriesandmoreYoutubeOr visit our website. This podcast was created by fans for fans and is NOT affiliated with or sponsored by Hallmark or the Hallmark Channel.

Midwesterner editor Kyle Olson lit up the mic: Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson stone-walled lawmakers yet again—ducking a subpoena for the 2024 clerk “guidance” booklet while blaming everyone else for her botched election rules and broken transparency site—just as she eyes the governor's mansion. House committees also roasted Whitmer's DNR for undercover stings against hunters, with Uncle Ted Nugent branding the agency “the enemy of conservation” amid a deer-car-crash epidemic surpassing 58 thousand wrecks last year. And Michigan families? They're literally drying clothes on the line and skipping Christmas lights because DTE and Consumers keep hiking the nation's highest electric rates while service reliability tanks—chasing jobs and manufacturing out of the state. Read it all at TheMidwesterner.news.Get the stories from today's show in THE STACK: https://justinbarclay.comKirk Elliott PHD - FREE consultation on wealth conservation - http://GoldWithJustin.comJoin Justin in the MAHA revolution - http://HealthWithJustin.comTry Cue Streaming for just $2 / day and help support the good guys https://justinbarclay.com/cueUp to 80% OFF! Use promo code JUSTIN http://MyPillow.com/JustinPatriots are making the Switch! What if we could start voting with our dollars too? http://SwitchWithJustin.com

To live forever. That has been the goal of many a man throughout history...

Timed to the 25th anniversary of everyone's favorite Latina heroine, Nickelodeon introduces a new live-action full-length movie, Dora and the Search for Sol Dorado. The new family film introduces 16-year-old Samantha Lorraine as Dora who – along with her adventurous cousin Diego and sidekick monkey Boots – must trek through the perilous Amazonian jungle to find the ancient treasure of Sol Dorado and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. (See the trailer). The film comes from executive producer Adam Bonnett and director Alberto Belli. Adam helped bring some of the most famous children's properties to the screen including He-Man, Barbie and Monster High. He also oversaw original programming at Disney Channel where he helped launch some of the most iconic children's programs and the careers of its biggest stars including Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus); Wizards of Waverly Place (Selena Gomez) and Shake it Up (Zendaya). Alberto Belli was a computer science engineer from Guadalajara, Mexico, who transformed his passion for storytelling into a filmmaking career. He last directed Disney's The Naughty Nine, a Christmas action/adventure film that received three Emmy nominations.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.

Lauretta host today on a Friday in Father Anthony's absence.  Lauretta welcomes as her guest, Katie Newsham, friend of the founder of Misericordia: Sister Rosemary Connelly, RSM with the Sisters of Mercy.  Katie tells us about Sister Rosemary's work and dedication to children with disabilities.  She highlights how she started the organization and how it has grown since then-it is an amazing organization.  They have an annual Candy Day sale around the last week of April (adding online sales until July). Note that the Christmas Holiday offers them the greatest opportunity for fundraising from handmade gifts for purchase at their giftshop to their well-known famous Christmas Brunches (tickets sell out by September).  The Misericordia residents create and work and serve all aspects of these brunches.  Misericordia has a gift shop and a bakery with amazing treats which just added a drive through option (open 7 days a week) Check it out NOW!! And make a plan to get a ticket for their Christmas Brunches and shop here for your Christmas gifts. If you're interested in getting involved, please visit Misericordia.com for more information and hours of operation or call 773-973-6300. Let us honor Sister Rosemary Connelly and her legacy by supporting Misericordia. St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish

Timed to the 25th anniversary of everyone's favorite Latina heroine, Nickelodeon introduces a new live-action full-length movie, Dora and the Search for Sol Dorado. The new family film introduces 16-year-old Samantha Lorraine as Dora who – along with her adventurous cousin Diego and sidekick monkey Boots – must trek through the perilous Amazonian jungle to find the ancient treasure of Sol Dorado and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. (See the trailer). The film comes from executive producer Adam Bonnett and director Alberto Belli. Adam helped bring some of the most famous children's properties to the screen including He-Man, Barbie and Monster High. He also oversaw original programming at Disney Channel where he helped launch some of the most iconic children's programs and the careers of its biggest stars including Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus); Wizards of Waverly Place (Selena Gomez) and Shake it Up (Zendaya). Alberto Belli was a computer science engineer from Guadalajara, Mexico, who transformed his passion for storytelling into a filmmaking career. He last directed Disney's The Naughty Nine, a Christmas action/adventure film that received three Emmy nominations.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.

This week we're reliving the best DTH holiday moments from 'Season 7 Kick-Off' (October 18, 2024) through 'Engaged by Christmas' (December 31, 2024)Watch on Philo! - Philo.tv/DTH  

Every other week I'm republishing one of my most popular or impactful episodes and adding an update, new insight, or context that will help you benefit from it even more. This week I'm highlighting Episode 236, which highlights some key medical terms that you might not yet know. And, if you're like me, your confidence goes way up when you actually understand what people are talking about. Imagine that! When I was a student (and new nurse) I remember hearing medical terms all the time that would make me think, “I should probably know what that means, but I'm too embarrassed to ask.” And I hated how that made me feel… lost, incompetent, out of the loop, and unsure of myself. You can imagine what feeling this way did to my confidence level. Yep…pretty low sometimes. In this episode I'm diving into some common medical terms that students (and even experienced nurses) often feel a little unsure about…terms like: Sensitivity vs specificity Hypoxia vs hypoxemia Crystalloid vs colloid And let's not forget medical slang like “the gap,” “rainbows,” and “Christmas trees” After listening to this episode, you'll be absolutely fascinating at your next cocktail party and probably feel a lot more confident at the bedside, too! Full Transcript - Read the article and view references FREE CLASS - If all you've heard are nursing school horror stories, then you need this class! Join me in this on-demand session where I dispel all those nursing school myths and show you that YES...you can thrive in nursing school without it taking over your life! Crucial Concepts Bootcamp - Start nursing school ahead of the game, or reset after a difficult first semester with my nursing school prep course, Crucial Concepts Bootcamp. Learn key foundation concepts, organization and time management, dosage calculations, and so much more. Kali Dayton Interview: Learn about ICU delirium and the dangers of oversedation in this compelling interview. Purewick:  This is an external catheter that's gaining quickly in popularity (you know, if there were a popularity contest amongst urine collection devices). Episode 89: Explore oxygenation (especially if the concept of hypoxemia vs hypoxia is new to you!). Episode 64: Learn more about atelectasis (spoiler alert…it's so much more than “crackles!”)

This week we're diving into the hottest Etsy trends for summer, fall, and even what's expected for Christmas! From the fisherman aesthetic to island luxe, 90s vibes, and the newest inspo for coquette style, we're covering all the must-know trends that are shaping the marketplace right now. Tune in for a sneak peek at what's trending and how you can use these insights to boost your Etsy shop's success!  **“How to Sell Your Stuff on Etsy” is not affiliated with or endorsed by Etsy.com    STUFF I MENTIONED:  ➡️ Get Profittree for one flat fee of $67: https://lifetime.profittree.io/?via=lizzie87 *NEW FEATURES! Cancel your subscriptions because Profittree has everything you need! Profit tracking, Ads tool, Etsy Product Research – and more!   ➡️ Free Etsy Ads Training: https://www.howtosellyourstuff.com/request-etsy-ads-masterclass  

Dave Barry is one of the funniest people in all of history so I wanted to share with you his most recent appearance on the podcast from back in December. We talked Christmas gifts and his new memoir... then I almost talk him out of writing the memoir. That's what friends are for! He's older than me, looks about 20 years younger than me, and yet I'm still thrilled he's on the podcast!SHOW NOTESLet's Survive 2025 Together. With a cool new shirt and hat! Get yours here.Thanks to our sponsor, ABT Electronics. Get $25 off your next purchase of $150 or more by using the promo code COCHRAN2025 online or in person!Watch This Episode on our Live From My Office YouTube ChannelFollow me on Substack.With each new episode, the first three listeners that email me “SURVIVE 2025!” will be eligible to win a $25 ABT Giftcard as long as you include your mailing address and that phrase!Don't forget to subscribe to listen to “Live From My Office” wherever you get your podcasts, and e-mail the show with any questions, comments, or plugs for your favorite charity!

In this episode, I  sit down with Dr. Alison Fragale, organizational behavior expert at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve.  We dive deep into why status isn't just about ego—it's actually a fundamental human need that directly impacts your mental health and professional success. Alison breaks down her formula for being both assertive and warm, explaining how resources follow respect in the workplace and why most of us are playing "introduction dodgeball" instead of building meaningful connections. 00:00 Introduction to the Likable Badass 03:06 The Impact of Writing a Book 05:55 Navigating Social Dynamics in School 09:11 The Introduction Dodgeball Experience 11:50 Experiencing Disrespect and Mid-Career Invisibility 15:06 Sharing and Building Status 17:45 The Influence of McKinsey on Career Choices 20:59 Gender Dynamics and Professional Identity 24:02 Finding and Using Your Voice 26:52 Key Takeaways and Conclusion We explore how her time at McKinsey shaped her understanding of power dynamics, the difference between having power (controlling resources) and having status (earning respect), and why those throwaway moments like "How are you?" are actually goldmines for relationship building. Alison shares personal stories about her need to always be "correct," her unexpected expertise in cheese boards, and how Golden Girls wisdom applies to leadership.  As coffee-loving introverts who appreciate both Christmas music and strategic thinking, we discuss the art of making "small deposits" into professional relationships without burning yourself out through excessive kindness. This conversation is perfect for anyone who wants to command respect while staying approachable, understands that professional success requires both competence and connection, and believes you don't have to choose between being respected and being relatable. Website: alisonfragale.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alisonfragale Book: Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve If you enjoy the show, please leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating on Apple or a

On this episode of On That Note, I sit down with Atlanta native and rapper Idris French to talk about his powerful new album Truth Over Drums, a project that hits hard both lyrically and rhythmically. We dive into his musical influences, the relentless work ethic that's fueled his journey, and his deep dedication to his craft over the years. Idris also shares the pivotal moment when, at just 23 years old, he announced to his family during Christmas that he was going all-in on music. This is a conversation about passion, persistence, and the power of betting on yourself.https://www.instagram.com/therealidrisfrench/https://www.instagram.com/onthatnote_podcast/

Send us a textSet sail with us as we join the cast of Hallmark's Christmas at Sea for a festive and fun-filled Q&A! Stars Erin Cahill, Taylor Cole, Benjamin Ayres, and Paul Campbell share behind-the-scenes stories from their time cruising with fans on this one-of-a-kind holiday experience.In this special crossover episode, we teamed up with fellow Hallmark podcasters (Dear Hallmark, Hallmarkies, Girls Gone Hallmark, Everything About Hallmark, and Suspenders Unbuttoned) to ask the questions Hallmark fans really want answered. From shipboard surprises to holiday hilarity, this episode brings all the cheer.Whether you're a Hallmark Christmas movie fanatic or just curious about the cruise that has the Hallmark fandom buzzing, this is one conversation you won't want to miss.Follow us on social media: Instagram and TikTok: @hallmarkmysteriesandmoreYoutubeOr visit our website. This podcast was created by fans for fans and is NOT affiliated with or sponsored by Hallmark or the Hallmark Channel.

Season 9 starts off with the pilot episode, aka Episode Zero. This is a great place to start if you are a new listener to the podcast. Sit back and listen as Peter and Chris talk about FREEK SHOW, discuss Twiztid's timeline leading up to the release of their second album, talk about the Gathering of the Juggalos 2000, and tackle important topics like the greatest moments in time in juggalo history.!        TIME STAMPS! 0:00:00 (Start)    0:08:02 (Timeline of Freek Show)    0:31:50 (Freek Show Sampler)    0:38:20 (Touring)     0:45:25 (Physical Media & Iconography)     1:15:01 (Wrapping Up)      The LinkTree can be found at https://linktr.ee/juggalorwd. Otherwise here are all of our links -  Twitter/X: @JuggaloRWD  IG: @JuggaloRWD  Facebook: @JuggaloRWD  TikTok: @JuggaloRWD  Threads: @JuggaloRWD  BlueSky: @JuggaloRWD  The website is www.JuggaloRewind.com.  Join us on the ICPWWE Discord and talk to other listeners and podcast hosts about ICP, Twiztid and random juggalo nonsense.  Email us at juggalorwd@gmail.com or call/text us at (810) 666-1570.      Additional music provided by Steve O of the IRTD. Voiceover work provided by Christmas. The Rewind is forever powered by the 20x20 Apparel.   All music played is owned by the respective publishers and copywrite holders and is reproduced for review purposes only under fair use. #ForTheJuggaloCulture

We get a call about Christmas lights! Also some basketball talk.

There's officially six months 'til Christmas! Rikki Meece, KSL Traffic Reporter, join Greg and Holly to talk about all the big summer sales. 

The Candy Christmas Podcast www.regenerationnashville.org #candychristmas #ifnoonehastoldyoutoday #letmebethefirst #regenerationnashville #marvelouswoman #Psalm139:14 #KCMITV

Are you looking to save time, make money, and start winning with less risk? Then head to https://www.ovtlyr.com.If you've been riding the SCHD wave thinking it's the golden goose of dividend investing—this video is going to rock your portfolio strategy. We're reacting to Professor G's latest video “SCHD Is Killing Me – Is It Time to Pull the Plug?” and breaking down what's really going on with this ultra-popular dividend ETF.SCHD is often praised for its 3.5%–4% dividend yield, qualified tax treatment, and “defensive” stock mix—but here's the uncomfortable truth: it's down while the market is up. Year-to-date, SCHD is sitting at -2.51% while SPY is +2.38% and QQQ is cruising ahead at over +4%. We dig deep into the real numbers, compare performance side-by-side, and ask: is collecting dividends really worth watching your capital shrink?This isn't just about data—it's about perspective. In this video, we break down the illusion of safety in dividend investing, why chasing yield without trend confirmation is a mistake, and how the SCHD chart looks when you actually apply technical signals like the 10/20/50 moving average trend filters. Spoiler alert: it's not a bullish setup.We're also hitting key topics like:➡️ Why SCHD's latest rebalance timing was a disaster➡️ How increased energy sector exposure added volatility➡️ What rising Treasury yields are doing to dividend ETF demand➡️ And whether SCHD is really “defensive” or just dead weightYou'll hear comparisons between SCHD and other options like ESGV, SPYI, QYLD, and short-term T-bill funds that currently yield 4–5% with none of the downside risk tied to equity price drops.We also run SCHD through the Outlier 9 system—our framework for identifying bullish trends and high-probability setups. Let's just say, it's not lighting up like a Christmas tree. It's barely holding neutral.So if you're tired of watching your money sit flat or bleed out for a 3% “reward,” this video is a must-watch. We don't hold back. You'll get a mix of hard truths, actual data, and some much-needed clarity on what you should be doing with your money right now!Gain instant access to the AI-powered tools and behavioral insights top traders use to spot big moves before the crowd. Start trading smarter today

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The Trump is now considering imposing martial law to seize the voting machines in states he considers contested in the hopes of overturning the election. He is asking for Sidney Powell to be granted increased security clearance to lead the effort. We are now teetering on the edge of a full-on coup. Joining Michael to discuss these issues and more is Seth Abramson, the New York Times bestselling author of Proof of Corruption. Stay tuned for a wild week of unhinged conspiracy and madness as the President fights for his political life. Also, make sure to check out Mea Culpa: The Election Essays for the definitive political document of 2020. Fifteen chapters of raw and honest political writings on Donald Trump from the man who knows him best. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08M5VKQ6T/  For cool Mea Culpa gear, check out www.meaculpapodcast.com/merch To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy   Learn more about your ad cho... The Trump is now considering imposing martial law to seize the voting machines in states he considers contested in the hopes of overturning the election. He is asking for Sidney Powell to be granted increased security clearance to lead the effort. We are now teetering on the edge of a full-on coup. Joining Michael to discuss these issues and more is Seth Abramson, the New York Times bestselling author of Proof of Corruption. Stay tuned for a wild week of unhinged conspiracy and madness as the President fights for his political life. Also, make sure to check out Mea Culpa: The Election Essays for the definitive political document of 2020. Fifteen chapters of raw and honest political writings on Donald Trump from the man who knows him best. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08M5VKQ6T/  For cool Mea Culpa gear, check out www.meaculpapodcast.com/merch To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Christmas movie mogul, podcaster and of course a star one of our favorite TV shows growing up, Candace Cameron Bure joins the show to share some incredible stories.Thank you to our sponsorsWild Alaskan Co- Get $35 off your first box of wild-caught, sustainable seafood—delivered right to your door. Go to: https://www.wildalaskan.com/EXFILES. "HOW GREAT IS THEIR COD!"Graza- Head to Graza.co and use code EXFILES to get 10% off of the TRIO which includes Sizzle, Frizzle and Drizzle, and get to cookin' your next chef-quality meal!Need to hear miracle stories? Don't we all? Head to HeavenMeetsEarth.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As Christmas of 1995 drew near, many families in rural Ohio drew closer and felt themselves caught up in the joy and pagentry of the holiday season.  Unfortunately, for one family, the holiday would forever be associated with pain and grief, loss and doubt, a disappearance and the unknown.John and Shelly Markley were devoted and loving parents to their five children.  During a week already marked by a family tragedy, John and Shelly mysteriously vanished on the morning of Friday, December 15th.  The last sighting of the couple was made by a bank teller who waited on them at the drive up window.  In addition to John and Shelly, the woman saw a third individual, a man who has never been identified.Investigators found themselves caught up in a case with just one witness, almost no physical evidence and few in any clues.  As the case unfolded, detectives would learn a lot about John and Shelly and everyone else in their lives.  Within weeks an unknown caller began ringing the family home, demanding cash in exchange for the return of the missing couple and that would take the investigation in a completely different direction.Nearly thirty years later, what became of John and Shelly remains a mystery and while law enforcement is certain there are people locally who know much more than they have shared, the case continues growing cold.Use promo code "Trace" to save 10% on your ticket for CrimeCon DenverFollow Trace Evidence on Social MediaTwitter --- Instagram --- TikTok --- YouTube --- Like Facebook Page --- Join Facebook Group --- Threads --- Like MeWe Page --- Join MeWe Group --- BlueskySuppport Trace EvidencePatreon --- Paypal --- Cash App --- Buy Me A CoffeeTrace Evidence Merch ShopsTeePublic --- ShopTEPod --- SpreadshopAll Other LinksOfficial Trace Evidence Website --- LinkTreeMusic Courtesy of:"Lost Time"  Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/"Echoes of Time" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/"Galactic Rap" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/"Ghost in the Algorithm" Music from Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio#truecrimepodcast #unsolvedmysteries #coldcase #coldcaseinvestigation #murder #murdermystery #missingperson #missingpersons #truecrimecommunity #mysterypodcast #truecrime #coldcasefiles #truecrimestories #crimelovers #truecrimeaddict #truecrimejunkie #crimescene #justiceforall #missing #crimesquad #podcastcommunity #sleuthsunite #darkhistories #criminalmindset #detective #detectivediaries #forensics #forensicfiles #crimestories #crimepodcast #traceevidence #traceevidencepodcast #criminalinvestigation #justiceforvictims #detectivework #truecrimediscussion #podcastfamily #listenandsolve #crimefans #listentotraceevidence #uncoverthetruth #podcastrecommendations #podcastlove #podcastlife #truecrimeobsessed #followtheclues #cluefinders #podcastaddict #unsolvedmurders #unsolveddisappearances #detectiveatheart #jointheinvestigation #disappearance #vanishing #abduction #gonemissing #upandvanished #pacheco #stevenpacheco #podcasting #crimetalk #crimeanalysis #theories #realcrimes #disappeared #evidence #markley #johnmarkley #shellymarkley #trumbullcounty #OhioUnsolved #Ohiotrucrime #bristolville #farmington #warren #DurstBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/trace-evidence--3207798/support.

Glenn Beck Special- Iran War & US Riots: An Urgent WARNING About the ‘Death to America' Mob   Iran War & US Riots: An Urgent WARNING About the ‘Death to America' Mob | Glenn TV Is the world approaching its FINAL battle? From the anti-ICE rioters to Islamic governments like Iran, the message is the same: “Death to the West… death to America.” Glenn Beck gives an urgent warning about the radical ideologies threatening Western civilization and likens the chaos in American streets to Gotham. Asra Nomani, an expert on Islamic extremism, terrorism, and radicalization, joins Glenn to detail what she saw at a No Kings protest in Philadelphia. Nomani warns that “more blood will spill” due to the dangerous nexus between Democratic organizations, Islamic sympathizers, Marxists, communists, and socialists. “This is the tyranny that will come to your neighborhoods and streets unless we stop it.” Another issue dividing the country and President Trump's MAGA supporters is the war between Israel and Iran. Should the U.S. help destroy Iran's nuclear ambitions or let Israel go it alone? Iranian American journalist Nik Kowsar was arrested and threatened with death for his political cartoon critical of an Islamic cleric in 2003. He reveals the truth about the Islamic regime but tells Glenn why he believes bombs won't bring democracy to the oppressed people of Iran.    Watch this video at- https://youtu.be/v1GdLyjxPpE?si=Bmq_AQ0jXkWPCrXa Glenn Beck 1.48M subscribers 205,344 views Premiered Jun 18, 2025 #nokings #glennbeck #israel   ► Click HERE to subscribe to Glenn Beck on YouTube: https://bit.ly/2UVLqhL ► Click HERE to subscribe to BlazeTV: get.blazetv.com/glenn ► Click HERE to subscribe to BlazeTV YouTube:    / @blazetv   ► Click HERE to sign up to Glenn's newsletter: https://www.glennbeck.com/st/Morning_... Connect with Glenn on Social Media:   / glennbeck     / glennbeck     / glennbeck   #glennbeck #glenntv #iran #iranwar #nokings #warning #islam #israel #deathtoamerica   --------------------------------------------------------------------  Check out our ACU Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/ACUPodcast   HELP ACU SPREAD THE WORD!  Please go to Apple Podcasts and give ACU a 5 star rating. Apple canceled us and now we are clawing our way back to the top. Don't let the Leftist win. Do it now! Thanks. Also Rate us on any platform you follow us on. It helps a lot. Forward this show to friends. Ways to subscribe to the American Conservative University Podcast Click here to subscribe via Apple Podcasts Click here to subscribe via RSS You can also subscribe via Stitcher FM Player Podcast Addict Tune-in Podcasts Pandora Look us up on Amazon Prime …And Many Other Podcast Aggregators and sites ACU on Twitter- https://twitter.com/AmerConU . Warning- Explicit and Violent video content.   Please help ACU by submitting your Show ideas. Email us at americanconservativeuniversity@americanconservativeuniversity.com   Endorsed Charities -------------------------------------------------------- Pre-Born! Saving babies and Souls. https://preborn.org/ OUR MISSION To glorify Jesus Christ by leading and equipping pregnancy clinics to save more babies and souls. WHAT WE DO Pre-Born! partners with life-affirming pregnancy clinics all across the nation. We are designed to strategically impact the abortion industry through the following initiatives:… -------------------------------------------------------- Help CSI Stamp Out Slavery In Sudan Join us in our effort to free over 350 slaves. Listeners to the Eric Metaxas Show will remember our annual effort to free Christians who have been enslaved for simply acknowledging Jesus Christ as their Savior. As we celebrate the birth of Christ this Christmas, join us in giving new life to brothers and sisters in Sudan who have enslaved as a result of their faith. https://csi-usa.org/metaxas   https://csi-usa.org/slavery/   Typical Aid for the Enslaved A ration of sorghum, a local nutrient-rich staple food A dairy goat A “Sack of Hope,” a survival kit containing essential items such as tarp for shelter, a cooking pan, a water canister, a mosquito net, a blanket, a handheld sickle, and fishing hooks. Release celebrations include prayer and gathering for a meal, and medical care for those in need. The CSI team provides comfort, encouragement, and a shoulder to lean on while they tell their stories and begin their new lives. Thank you for your compassion  Giving the Gift of Freedom and Hope to the Enslaved South Sudanese -------------------------------------------------------- Food For the Poor https://foodforthepoor.org/ Help us serve the poorest of the poor Food For The Poor began in 1982 in Jamaica. Today, our interdenominational Christian ministry serves the poor in primarily 17 countries throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Thanks to our faithful donors, we are able to provide food, housing, healthcare, education, fresh water, emergency relief, micro-enterprise solutions and much more. We are proud to have fed millions of people and provided more than 15.7 billion dollars in aid. Our faith inspires us to be an organization built on compassion, and motivated by love. Our mission is to bring relief to the poorest of the poor in the countries where we serve. We strive to reflect God's unconditional love. It's a sacrificial love that embraces all people regardless of race or religion. We believe that we can show His love by serving the “least of these” on this earth as Christ challenged us to do in Matthew 25. We pray that by God's grace, and with your support, we can continue to bring relief to the suffering and hope to the hopeless.   Report on Food For the Poor by Charity Navigator https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/592174510   -------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer from ACU. We try to bring to our students and alumni the World's best Conservative thinkers. All views expressed belong solely to the author and not necessarily to ACU. In all issues and relations, we hope to follow the admonitions of Jesus Christ. While striving to expose, warn and contend with evil, we extend the love of God to all of his children. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

We're officially half way to Christmas!!!!Pre-Order the Revised & Updated Edition of Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas - https://preorder-movie-little-christmas.carrd.co/

On this episode, we're going to look at the surprisingly complex history of one Christmas' most popular plants, the poinsettia, aka the cuetlaxōchitl, aka Flor de Nochebuena. We'll also give you a tip to make your lawn more festive in the off season and we'll help you mentally beat the heat as we count down the top 5 Christmas songs that talk about cold weather. Download here! 00:00 – 02:31 Intro 02:31 – 03:50 We Need A Little Christmas Now 03:50 – 09:11 5 Golden Things – Cold Weather Christmas Songs 09:11 – 10:03 Santa Babb's Mail Bag 10:03 –…

23-year-old Abrielle Baldwin tried to break up a fight between her teenage brothers, 14-year-old Damarcus Coley and 15-year-old Darcus Coley, over Christmas presents, but the conflict got out of control. Damarcus opened fire, killing Abrielle, and was then shot and wounded by Darcus. — Abrielle Baldwin, de 23 años, intentó detener una pelea entre sus hermanos adolescentes, Damarcus Coley, de 14 años, y Darcus Coley, de 15, por regalos de Navidad, pero el conflicto se descontroló. Damarcus abrió fuego, matando a Abrielle, y luego Darcus le disparó y lo hirió. — Support Us: Donate $1 to the podcast (Patreon): https://patreon.com/CuentoCrimenPodcast?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink Shoutout to Our Patreons!!! Merily Diana Naveda Jackie R Chata IIce Latoya Jackelyn Cassandra Jaime Buy us a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/cuentocrimenpodcast — Follow us: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cuentocrimenpodcast/?hl=en Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cuentocrimenpodcast?lang=en Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb-xq8FGsgxqDOyT4CsCfHA Twitter: https://twitter.com/CuentoCrimenPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550192066426 — Email us a personal true crime encounter at: cuentocrimenpodcast@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Happy Wednesday, Christmas Fanatics! And Happy Leon Day! That's right! As of today, we are *officially* halfway to Christmas 2025!  To celebrate the occasion, Julia, Thom, and Anthony gather to discuss fifteen of their favorite Christmas commercials from the eighties! Done "Round Robin" style, allowing each elf to discuss the five that they picked, this is one festive and warm conversation filled with holiday cheer - and tons of eighties throwbacks! - that's sure to put you in the Christmas mood on this hot June day! So settle back, blast that air conditioning to simulate winter, and enjoy! And get excited because as of tomorrow, we are *officially* closer to this upcoming Christmas than we are last Christmas!  As always, thanks for your love and support, y'all!

This traditional dessert has been around for centuries and is considered part of Japanese culture.  It has connections to Buddhism and now can be found all over the country.  You can get it any time of the year, but at Christmas there are special holiday themes and designs.  We're exploring the history and origins of wagashi. Website: https://www.seasonseatingspodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seasonseatingspodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seasonseatingspod Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/seasonseatpod.bsky.social Email: seasonseatingspodcast@gmail.com Youtube: https://youtube.com/@seasonseatings Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/seasonseatings

A look at church history shows that the date of December 25th came out of pagan traditions that had nothing to do with Christ. The birth of Christ was the fulfillment of a set time.  A study of the Old Testament shows there are no feasts or set times that occur in the month of December.  In order to fulfill the prophecy of God's set time, Christ had to be born in September.  A study of scripture, secular history and astronomical events provide evidence of a September birth and provide a window of time for the year it occurred.  VF-2485 Watch, Listen and Learn 24x7 at PastorMelissaScott.com Pastor Melissa Scott teaches from Faith Center in Glendale. Call 1-800-338-3030 24x7 to leave a message for Pastor Scott. You may make reservations to attend a live service, leave a prayer request or make a commitment. Pastor Scott appreciates messages and reads them often during live broadcasts. Follow @Pastor_Scott on Twitter and visit her official Facebook page @Pastor.M.Scott. Download Pastor Scott's "Understand the Bible" app for iPhone, iPad and iPod at the Apple App Store and for Android devices in the Google Store. Pastor Scott can also be seen 24x7 on Roku and Amazon Fire on the "Understand the Bible?" channel. ©2025 Pastor Melissa Scott, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved

What's up, dudes? 'Twas the night before Half-Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there! Yes, he's the magical gift bringer that makes  children all over the world happy. Jeff Loftin from Lost Christmas is with me to talk all about the International Santa Claus Collection!International Resources, LLC was established 1991 in Northbrook, IL. The company designs, contract manufactures, markets, and sells collectibles primarily during the Christmas season, under the trademarked names of “Liberty Falls” and “International Santas.” The figurines are hand painted resin and reflect gift bringers from traditions all over the world.In 1822, from the talented mind of Prof. Clement Clark Moore, came one of the most popular poems ever created, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas”. And thus the legend of St. Nicholas, spanning more than 1,700 years through every country in Europe, continued to flourish in the United States. Starting with Nicholas, the Turkish patron saint of children, who gave away bags of gold coins stuffed into stockings and shoes, through Russia, Holland and into England, Nicholas has evolved from many different appearances and an equally large number of names.Gwiazdor and Ded Moroz? Check. Belsnickle and Father Christmas? Got ‘em. Pancho Navidad? I don't remember him from my time in South Texas! So hop on over to Dillard's, get on the nice list, and pick up the International Santas Claus Collection! Oh, and listen to this episode! Ho, ho, ho!Lost Christmas PodcastFB: @LostChristmasPodcastTwitter: @LostChristmasP1IG: @lostchristmaspodcastGive us a buzz! Send a text, dudes!Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Totally Rad Christmas Mall & Arcade, Teepublic.com, or TotallyRadChristmas.com! Later, dudes!

Three intrepid Writers Guild of America East member Captains – Sarah Montana, Devin Delliquanti and Suzanne Weber – kick off the summer season of the WGAE's OnWriting podcast with a roundtable discussion of our Film and Television Captains Network: what is a Captain, how Captains further the Guild's ability to provide effective union representation for each and every member, the all-important WGA Captain hat and more.   The WGAE Captains Network is a group of dedicated and engaged WGAE members in the Guild's Film/TV/Streaming sector who connect other members in their workplace and networks to the union. They work to build community for members and to facilitate communication between their teams and union leadership and staff. Sarah Montana is a screenwriter who primarily writes romcoms, often involving a Santa or Christmas theme, for networks like Hallmark Channel, and is also a member of the WGAE Council. Devin Delliquanti is a writer who currently works at The Daily Show, and has written recently on the Grammy Awards and multiple Jordan Klepper specials. Suzanne Weber is a television writer and developer who was previously on the writing staff for Disney's Andi Mack and for the ill-fated Lizzie McGuire reboot, and is also a member of the WGAE Council. --- Before it was a podcast, OnWriting was a print publication. Check out OnWriting: The Print Archives. Read shownotes, transcripts, and other member interviews: www.onwriting.org/ Follow the Guild on social media: Twitter: @OnWritingWGAE | @WGAEast Facebook: /WGAEast Instagram: @WGAEast

Join Deanna & Sarah as they "cool" down the summer heat and chat about the holiday season.  On this episode they will chat about all the extras that make the holiday season the perfect time to travel to some of your favorite theme parks.  From weather, to crowds, to fun and excitement they cover it all!Deanna and Sarah are both moms and travel advisors who love sharing their travel stories and knowledge with others. With children ranging from teens to toddlers, they have traveled across the span of childhood with their children. We can wait for you to hop aboard and enjoy a listen of today's episode and more...to Disney and Beyond!Thanks so much for listening and don't forget to come back next week for another episode of fun!Visit us on:Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/1119361928792931/Instagram (@magical_moment_makers)

Episode 588: - Greatest Thing I've Ever Heard - Voices in my Head (the Rick Lee James Podcast) A Chaplain Story   ----more---- Rick Has A Book!   Get the Audiobook, Out of the Depths: A Songwriter's Journey Through the Psalms by your host, Rick Lee James, on Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/B0F45G6KWH?qid=1744142727&sr=1-1&ref_pageloadid=not_applicable&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=KEDVV78ASDMS52WQFD7W&plink=3YmaWg4y0HJ0Cjfc&pageLoadId=IaamycyuJR519uYD&creativeId=0d6f6720-f41c-457e-a42b-8c8dceb62f2c&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1%20     ----more----     Don't forget about our music sale on Bandcamp. Use the code “10off” on RickLeeJames.Bandcamp.com to get 10% off your purchase. Blessings, Rick Lee James Email: Rick@RickLeeJames.com Don't forget about our music sale on Bandcamp. Use the code “10off” on RickLeeJames.Bandcamp.com to get 10% off your purchase. Blessings, Rick Lee James   Email: Rick@RickLeeJames.com Blessings, Rick Lee James     Get the new song - Whatever You Do       VINYL SALE THUNDER by Rick Lee James ONLY $9.99. (Plus you get a free digital download of the album)   VINYL SALE - “KEEP WATCH, DEAR LORD” BY RICK LEE JAMES

Producer Josh solicits your opinions on Christmas lights, Connor's prolonged absence, video games and our state's reaction to them, and more!

This week, Thomas and Lydia from Where There's Woke join us for a review of the pro-child abuse Christmas movie, Summertime Christmas. And if you don't believe me, I get it. I'm just a blurb. But that's really what we watched. Hear more from Thomas and Lydia on Where There's Woke and Gavel Gavel Check out more from Thomas on Opening Arguments If you'd like to make a per episode donation and get monthly bonus episodes, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawful Check out our other shows, The Scathing Atheist, The Skepticrat, Citation Needed, and D&D Minus. Our theme music is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Giraffes on Mars. If you'd like to hear more, check out their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMars/ Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/

It was the day after Christmas and 10 year old Bobby Boyes went to visit some friends.  He never came home, and decades worth of investigative efforts still haven't been able to find the truth of what happened to him.If you have any information about the disappearance of Bobby Boyes, please contact the Maryland State Police Prince Frederick Barracks at 410-535-1400.Do you have any comments, or a case you'd like to suggest? You'll find a comment form and case submission link at LordanArts.com.Thank you WMAR 2 News Baltimore, WUSA9,  Maryland.gov, NAMUS, NCMEC The Charley Project, The Vanished Podcast, Facebook, Reddit, Websleuths and Wikipedia for information contributing to today's story.This episode written by The Certified Roarikle and John Lordan, produced by LordanArts.This is not intended to act as a means of proving or disproving anything related to the investigation.  It is a conversation about the current known facts and theories being discussed.  Everyone directly or indirectly referred to is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.LordanArts 2025

Lesley Logan talks with Kate Galli about the power of aligning your daily habits with your values to build a body and life you love. They explore Kate's evolution from being an angry vegan to a joyful, aligned advocate, her mindset around habit formation, and why joy and self-compassion are the real game changers. This episode will inspire you to show up for yourself with clarity and intention.If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co mailto:beit@lesleylogan.co. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/#follow-subscribe-free.In this episode you will learn about:What led Kate to shift from angry vegan activism to compassionate advocacy.How grief and reflection helped her redefine her purpose and message.Why aligning habits with values creates sustainable change.The steps of Kate's ABC method and how she uses it in real life.Ways to overcome all-or-nothing thinking and perfectionist patterns.How sharing joy and delicious food made her message more effective.Episode References/Links:Kate Galli's Website - strongbodygreenplanet.comKate Galli's Facebook - www.facebook.com/StrongBodyGreenPlanetKate Galli's Instagram - www.instagram.com/strongbodygreenplanetKate Galli's Twitter - twitter.com/strongbodygreenKate Galli's LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/kate-galli-0873332aPlant Positive Journal - beitpod.com/plantpositiveHealthification Podcast - beitpod.com/healthificationWhat The Health Documentary - www.whatthehealthfilm.comGuest Bio:Health Coach, Author and Podcast host Kate Galli. Kate is qualified as a Master Personal Trainer, Life Coach, NLP Practitioner and has also completed the eCornell Plant Based Nutrition Certificate program. Kate first got into fitness as a way to transform her body and confidence. She has spent 18 years helping 1,000's of individuals sculpt a body and life they love. On an actionable level Kate's intention is: to help you create the Mindset that makes your prioritising your health and happiness simple and sustainable. Via the Healthification podcast Kate has interviewed hundreds of passionate and compassionate authors, athletes, doctors and entrepreneurs. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. https://lovethepodcast.com/BITYSIDEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentCheck out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentBe in the know with all the workshops at OPC https://workshops.onlinepilatesclasses.com/lp-workshop-waitlistBe It Till You See It Podcast Survey https://pod.lesleylogan.co/be-it-podcasts-surveyBe a part of Lesley's Pilates Mentorship https://lesleylogan.co/elevate/FREE Ditching Busy Webinar https://ditchingbusy.com/ Resources:Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gLesley Logan website https://lesleylogan.co/Be It Till You See It Podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjogqXLnfyhS5VlU4rdzlnQProfitable Pilates https://profitablepilates.com/about/ Follow Us on Social Media:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lesley.logan/The Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gFacebook https://www.facebook.com/llogan.pilatesLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-logan/The OPC YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@OnlinePilatesClasses Episode Transcript:Kate Galli 0:00  As anyone who's lost the person they love most in the world knows, the shock and the sadness, you have no space for anything else in your world. And two things happened, not instantly, but over the course of the next year, I realized that the sadness at losing my mum is so overwhelming, I legitimately have no more energy to be angry and sad and frustrated at all the non-vegans in the world. I just don't have emotional capacity for that because I've lost my number one person.Lesley Logan 0:33  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.Lesley Logan 1:16  Hi, Be It babe. Okay, this, today's episode is really fun. I, first of all, like, this woman is just such like an angel when she just talks. She was just like, you just want to listen to her stories. But also I was really excited to chat with her, because I knew we were talking about aligning your purpose and your beliefs. And I was like, okay, yes, you guys all need that. And then her expertise happens to be in a different topic, and I got so interested, based on what she was saying, that I had to go into what she also does, which is not normally what we do here on the show. We don't normally talk about being a plant-based eater, but, actually, don't turn this off, I promise you, I promise you, as someone who is a vegan, who eats meat, I am as, you know, consciously and environmentally sound as I can be with that, I've been really interested in changing that over and so meeting someone like Kate has truly opened my eyes into something more positive and happy. And so whether or not you want that for yourself, I want you to listen to this interview, because her approach to how she wants to change the world had to change at some point in her life. And I think we all have been in a place where we believe something, and someone else we know does not believe that, and it just becomes this friction around us, and we get frustrated because we want things to happen faster. We want them to believe in it sooner. We want them to change everything sooner. And the truth is that there that's not necessarily the way that you get people to be on board with your journey. And so I really, really, I think you can insert any of the words she's using for your beliefs and see how you can use her experience to support you in your journey and what you want to do. Also, also, her Be It Action Items are amazing. She hit all that. She hit the bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted. So she's a winner. Here is Kate Galli. Lesley Logan 3:14  All right, Be It babe, I have a really fun guest. I was looking up all the things they're doing. I really enjoyed how they described a business from hell and still prioritizing themselves. I really, I was like, I was like, oh, someone can do that, then that is a Be It Till You See It podcast guest, if I ever saw one. So Kate Galli, can you tell everyone who you are and what you rock at?Kate Galli 3:35  Lesley, it is my pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. I am a health coach, author and fellow podcaster, and I help vegans and the plant-based curious to any degree prioritize their health and happiness and thrive with plants. Their happiness component is really core to what I do, and how I do that is I help people create the mindset that makes prioritizing their most effective, eating and exercising action, simple, sustainable and fun. Lesley, I will say everything I speak to is mindset-related, so it is applicable to anyone with a health goal, no matter what way you choose to eat. So everyone's welcome. A little bit about, I guess, how I got into what I do as a health coach. You know, I was a debilitatingly shy teenager, and I joined the gym and started lifting weights specifically to, yes, transform my body also to transform my confidence, and that is one of the things that I love most about what I do now, whether it's in the gym with clients or coaching clients online, is to see this transformation so far as confidence and the ability to back yourself. That is something that I am incredibly passionate about seeing in others.Lesley Logan 4:59  Yeah, I, I am, I agree. I think, like, sometimes people think, like, when you say confidence and working out, it's often like, it is the look of it, the aesthetics of it. But as someone who lives at the gym as well, the when I when I pick up a heavier set of dumbbells, like, there's something really powerful about that and like, so it's actually like, I think hopefully becoming more and more normalized that, like, when you can give yourself a pull up, even if it's assisted, when you can, like, when you can actually do 10 push ups, when before you had to take breaks, like you are building confidence in yourself, because you're showing yourself how much stronger you are. And I think, like we, you know, the strength of, the strength that we all have is something we can all work on, and we have to work on all the time. And so I love that you also highlighted happiness. And I think that's really important. Because I do think that when people go on any kind of health journey, at some point they start doing it as a form of punishment and not a form of pleasure. How did, like, was that your journey? Was you, were you always a happy workout person? Or like, did you have to find that along the way? Kate Galli 6:02  I was probably always a happy workout person. However, I certainly overdid it. I remember in my early 20s, when I was new to the gym and wasn't a personal trainer yet, I do an hour weights and an hour cardio six days a week, and I remember a trainer coming up to me and saying, the more you do with it, your exercise, the more you have to do, and the less you eat with your food, the less you have to eat. And it didn't really click at the time. But as you said, in hindsight, I was a bit about punishment, certainly with the cardio component. Never really liked that, and certainly about restriction with the food component too. There were so many foods that I was fearful of, whether it's fat because it made me fat or gave me pimples, you know, those were my misbeliefs, or whether I was fearful of carbohydrates, which I was that, like a decade, probably, definitely, those were some of the things that you know, made it less fun than it could be. And I think in recent years, even though I've had the fitness component so locked and loaded, I've, I lost the happiness a little bit because I'm so passionate about my mission. And I'm sure you can relate to this, or many listeners can relate to this. You know, we get this drive and this just focus and purpose and just go, go, go, and it's effective until it isn't, and it does get us results. However, the enjoying the journey and the prioritizing the happiness is something that I've really looked to focus on, honestly, just in the couple of, past couple of years. Lesley Logan 7:37  Yeah, I understand, I understand that too, like, I think I grew up going, well, I'll just work harder. Like, you know, if I just work harder, I get better grades. Like, if I work harder, I can make more, like, you know, if you just work extra hours, you get paid more. And then, like, you start your own business, because you're like, I have this impact I want to make. I have this vision I want to do. And because you're so driven for it, it's pretty easy to just keep going, but at some point you wake up and going, oh my God, what am I doing? Like I am my own worst boss. I'm so hard on myself. I'm not happy. I'm doing the thing I said would make me happy, and I'm not, and I'm not happy. And so there's some place where, like, the purpose you have on this planet, and you get misaligned. So you're doing the thing, but you're not enjoying the doing of the thing. And so I feel like we, I feel like we all have to kind of go through that to actually get on the right path, because I don't know. I mean, maybe it's possible just to enjoy the beyond purpose and enjoy it all at the same time. But I feel like for a lot of us, we have to go hold on, where did I make a wrong turn or why am I not doing this. How did you find that?Kate Galli 8:43  Oh, so much. Um, first, I just want to say also that approach doesn't sell the lifestyle. When I was the extreme personal trainer, people might be, they might kind of think, oh, that's slightly inspirational. However, that's too much for me to even try what she does with her food and exercise. Same go with the veganism right? When I was the angry vegan that is not selling anyone on the lifestyle. I'm not welcoming people on board, so I made the change in the hardest, harshest possible way. I don't know how it would have come about if life didn't jump in the way and slap me in the face, but I'll try not to be so long with this. It is a bit heavy. But when I was first vegan, I'd been vegan a couple of years, and I was very much an animal rights activist. This is maybe, I don't know, six years ago now, and I was coming home for Christmas, and my dear mom rang me and she said, Katie, I don't know what to do about Christmas, because you're the animal rights activist, and your dad's anti vegan, and it's all about food. And we always had conflict, Lesley, my dad and I had, we had conflict always, but more so when I gave up all animal products. And she said, unless you want to mastermind a vegan feast and sell the family on it. I'm like, done. I will mastermind that feast. Perhaps you could sell the family on it. We had an amazing Christmas. I made eight new dishes. The food was fantastic. Mum was so grateful. When I was about to fly home to Sydney after that holiday, she said, Katie, will you watch What the Health with me? Now that's a documentary I had been emotionally blackmailing her to try and watch ever since I became vegan, ineffective, surprisingly, and so after I'd made all that effort, she watched it with me. She said, I'll try this plant-based thing for a couple of weeks. Years later, she's still plant-based. She's becoming more animal rights activist like me, our relationship could not be stronger, not the best for her relationship with my father. Anyway, three and a half years ago now, I got the phone call from my father that I always thought I'd get from my mum. Dad's not the healthiest with the way he eats or thinks, and I always thought I'd get the phone call from Mum, Katie, it's your dad. And I got the phone call from dad. Kate, it's your mum. And Mum had died suddenly, and I'd spoken to her that morning, a Sunday morning, at 7 am as I walked along the beaches, like we spoke every single morning, and by 3 pm she was gone. And as anyone who's lost the person they love most in the world knows, the shock and the sadness, you have no space for anything else in your world. And two things happened, not instantly, but over the course of the next year, I realized that the sadness at losing my mum is so overwhelming, I legitimately have no more energy to be angry and sad and frustrated at all the non-vegans in the world. I just don't have emotional capacity for that because I've lost my number one person. I also realized that with Mum, I have no regrets. We both knew how much we loved and respected each other, 100% no regrets there. If that had been my father, I would have had regrets, because our relationship was not as it should be, and a huge component of that was the judgment I held towards him for his actions. And so bit by bit, I forced myself out of that angry vegan and you know, life was just all about spreading this message back then. Now it's all it was about animal rights, nothing else, no space for anything else, wasn't effective, I wasn't happy, and so that is what forced me out of it. And I don't know what else would have, sadly.Lesley Logan 12:40  I'm so sorry, but I really appreciate you sharing, because I think we could insert any word for vegan and anti-vegan. I think we can insert political parties. We could insert like, different war, all the different things, because it really is, it becomes this like thing in the middle. And when families get together, it's just like it's glaringly there, and it starts to feel personal, because they're personal to us, and we love them. We're like, how can, how can I love someone who is again, something I care about so much, so I just appreciate you sharing that, because I definitely think your story, I think anyone can listen to and even if you aren't going plant-based or that's not something you care about, there is someone in your life who doesn't care as much about one thing or cares differently than you do, and you can think about, like, okay, I'm gonna have regrets there. So what can I do about it? The other thing is, it's really, and this is kind of like a sad, funny, but like, I have, I'm not plant-based totally. Like, call me a vegan who eats meat because I'm like, very dairy-free. I am a lot of I'm not so grain-free anymore, but there's a lot of grains I just can't eat. They don't do well. I can't do oats. Oat milk was my favorite. That's not a thing I can do. Like, I'm out on that, but like, at any rate, I choose to eat some meats that I'm very particular about. Like, how are they farmed all the different things. But we're, because of that, we're very aware of other people's dietary needs. And so Brad or somebody, was like, oh, are they vegan? I'm like, oh, you would know. If they were vegan, we would already know. And it's because, and maybe not so more anymore, but like, back when you became a vegan, like, that was kind of a thing, like, you wore it on your shirt. You were telling everyone to do it and I think that what we have learned through so much of this is that whatever it is we care about, yelling at people about how wrong they are is never going to get them to want to join us, you know, that's just not the way to do it. You have to figure out, like, how, what is it that they care about, and how can what they care about align with what we care about, and we can, like, show, you know, they have to experience it. They have to have their time. So anyways, I think that's really beautiful. So how did so, so tell me what's next. So, like, then you, you still wanted to stay on your purpose and your path and your journey of being plant-based. But how did you align changing how you went about it to that purpose?Kate Galli 15:01  So it's a constant battle, right? It's a constant daily awareness. One thing that helps me is with my podcast, I've interviewed, like literally hundreds of the most passionate and compassionate activists or authors athletes around the world. And I look at the ones who seem effective and happy in what they do, and I will say I've got mad respect for any type of activist, even the most extreme ones. However, they're not the happiest, and I worry about their health, and I think they only survive because they live in their little vegan bubble, and they only associate with other vegans. If they had to integrate into the world and associate with all their non vegan friends and family all the time, which is the path I've chosen to, you know, all of my family now and friends basically, are non-vegan. You have to prioritize that happiness, and I actually made it a little bit actionable to help myself get there. I have an ABC and A is an awareness of how my life was going to look in three months, six months, 12 months, if I kept going down that same path, you know, my relationship with my father would be even worse, my relationship with my colleagues, my clients, just random strangers. There was a lot of pain about how it was going to happen if nothing changed. So then B is the brainstorm. I thought, what are some of the things I need to stop doing? I stopped sharing those brutal posts on social media, because to share them, you have to see them, and then you get hate comments. I stopped having those conversations, and everyone knows them, whether it's about politics, as you say, or religion or a war, whatever it is, you know that conversation that isn't going to end well, because either you and that other person had disagree or in some scenarios, especially with veganism, they're just up for the debate. They don't really care either way, they're just like, let's have a debate with this crazy vegan, right? I stopped those conversations, and what I started doing is I started sharing happy, good news stories. I actually created a whole email every week around the good news story. I started sharing delicious recipes. I started sharing delicious food, which, by the way, was my mom's very effective approach. So I'm modeling the love and compassion and deliciousness that she led with in the few years she was plant-based. So those are the things I started doing, and the C is for a commitment. This is why I so widely share I'm no longer an angry vegan, because you can get when little angry activist Kate makes an appearance, someone's going to call me on it, right? They're going to go, hey, aren't you now the vegan that leads with love and compassion and deliciousness? So it's kind of a form of accountability. So, you know, that's the way that I had to have a talk to myself as well. Because initially there was, I guess, an awareness that that was I letting the animals down by no longer flying the flag so aggressively? And I came to the decision, and I talk about this all the time with guests on my podcast, that it's not necessarily what feels right in our heart all the time, it's what is effective. Right? So you, if my big picture is what it is, then I need to take the most effective actions to get there. And they might not always be my natural instinct. You know, sometimes I just need to calm down, get clear on what my vision is, and then take that more effective action. Lesley Logan 18:27  I love this. I love this. Again, you can apply this to anything, but I think it's actually like an awareness of what you want, brainstorm all the different ways you're going to do that, and then commit to doing it like that's whatever it is. But I do think that what you want to, I want to highlight more, is like, I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be all or nothing people, that if we're not all in, then it's not going to work. And I understand, like, the people who talk about manifesting, you have to like, you have to like, do all the things, but that's so much pressure, and it's not always attracting people on the journey. So I love that you, like, made really good, just shared really good recipes with people. I think, like, when people don't realize that, like, it can taste really good, you know what I mean? Like, you can actually make things taste good with it. You can sneak 'em in as like, oh, like, I had, one of my girlfriends was a happy herbivore, and she wrote all the books about the happy herbivore, and she made a cheese ball that was, like, insane. And I would just be like, I'll just, how do I make this cheese ball at home? Like it's the most amazing thing, because I miss I have, I can't do dairy. I miss it. I miss cheese. I want a cheese ball. I want to be with the people they're having cheese at the Super Bowl. I want to have it. And she, like, showed me, and then all of a sudden, it's like, you just put it out. You don't have to tell them what it is. And they dip in, like, this is amazing. It's like, you know, so, like, sometimes it's like, you have to, you get more, you know, bees with honey, right? Like, that's really what it is. So, and I apologize to the vegans listening, if you are against the honey part, I know. Some people like it. Some people don't. You know, there's a whole thing. So anyways, but I think it's really it is that what is the most effective approach to get people to understand what you're wanting them to do? And in any vision, you have to paint the picture of something beautiful that people want to be part of. And sometimes, if we're shouting from the rooftops too loud about all the bad things, it makes people feel almost paralyzed, and they're like, I don't even know what to do next. I like so I'm just, I'm just gonna, I'm actually gonna stand firm in what I'm doing, because I don't, you know. So what an what an amazing thing you did. And also, I like that you use the public accountability to help you stay, stay on because, yeah, we all have instincts. It's like, I'm just gonna yell at that person, because that's what I want to do, because that's gonna, that's gonna make me feel good, but it's not necessarily gonna get you what you want. Kate Galli 20:50  No, agreed, 100%. Lesley Logan 20:52  So, okay, you, we haven't ever really talked about plant-based and I kind of want to get into it, just because I know that you have such a wonderful approach to it. How, how, like, how easy it is to be a plant-based eater. Because I think some people get overwhelmed with, like, if, where am I gonna get my protein, where am I gonna get all these things, and so it's hard to feel like, how do I change over? Do you, is this something that you do in a step by step approach? Is this something like, you, like, try to switch people over all the way, what's, what's the form of action that's easy for people? Kate Galli 21:26  For sure. A little background, you know, I made it harder than I needed to initially, for myself. Before I became vegan, nine years ago, I'd been vegetarian for 23 years, so no meat for 23 years. By that point in time, I'd been a personal trainer, so a low carb, high protein, vegetarian personal trainer for a decade. I decided I needed to be vegan. I walked into the gym and announced to all the other trainers in this gym, bro-type of the gym, that I was going vegan. One of them said, well, goodbye, lean muscle mass. And I realized that if this didn't work for me, it would reflect really badly on the lifestyle. So I put a lot of pressure into basically calculating, not just the macronutrients, they're actually quite easy, but all the micronutrients that I needed to hit in every single meal. So my meals just were a lot of effort and not so much deliciousness early days, I made it really hard because I had that point to prove, you know, cut to the chase nothing changed, right? I didn't gain any fat, I didn't lose any muscle or strength. I gained some energy. It was all good, but I made it hard. So now I look to make it easier for other people. I have a coaching program where I focus on clarity, confidence and consistency. I think they're really important with any health goal. And the clarity is actually where we look into building huge emotional intensity around your why, and we also align that why, or more so the actions you need to take to achieve that why with your most important values and beliefs. So that's getting really clear on your vision and the huge emotional intensity and how it's aligned with those emotional states that you're most drawn to. That clarity will pull you through those struggle straight days that we all get with any health goal, the confidence that's where the food comes in. Also, we're handling relationships with non-vegan loved ones, or whatever it may, might be. So yeah, in the confidence component I am all about, hey, this is the anatomy of a healthy plant-based meal. This is what it looks like. If your goal is muscle gain, you can obviously gain muscle, but you've got to be really aware, not just plant protein. That's pretty easy. You've got to be aware of caloric density often, for example, a big guy with lots of muscle. Not to stereotype, but say, there's the guy that's already happy with his physique. He might try plant-based, for the environment, for his health, whatever it may be. And he might lose a lot of weight just because he's, you know, he's swapped steak for spinach or something. That's not gonna work. It needs to be swapped for sweet potato and black beans, you know, with more caloric density, stuff like that. So that's the confidence. And then consistency is helping people stay on track.Lesley Logan 24:17  Yeah, I think I appreciate you talking about there's, like, different ways to do it, and like, what are your, what are your actual health goals for it? Because it is true. I think people think I'm gonna subs, I'm gonna, I think we're past the point people thinking it won't taste good. I mean, every vegan restaurant I've ever been to makes you realize that you can have vegan comfort food, and it is amazing. You know, like, you can have, you can have all of that, but it is the Can I also lift the way I want to lift. Can I do the things that the hobbies that I want to have, and I think like having joy in our lives is really important, and I hate and I think having joy outside of what we eat, but like in the things we do, but how we eat and how we fuel ourselves affects the things that we do. So I appreciate that you, you share that I am, I mean, I will just say, like, here in the States, we have, in the moment that we're recording, we have a massive bird flu problem, which is why, and it's been going on for a long time, and so eggs have been creeping up and all that. I live in a state where the eggs must be cage-free. So I was actually like, well, that works. I think that that's great. They have to be cage-free. I think they can't be bad. But what does that mean? It means our eggs are $20 for 12 pack. So I was just like, all right, so we're gonna have to think about, you know, maybe, maybe we're going even more plant-based than we were before. And like, how do I as a 42-year-old woman who wants to stay strong, who wants to have the energy to do the business that I do, like, I have to film workouts for Pilates and stuff like that. How do I reduce animal protein? Put it to plant protein and and also, like, you know, keep up what I've got, continue to remain strong, and then hopefully it's cheaper than the $20 eggs. Like, that would be great. Kate Galli 26:03  I've got you it is cheaper. Two things. First off, you know you need to look at tofu scramble to replace those eggs. My dear mom, when she first went plant-based, hated tofu. I won her over with tofu scramble over crispy, baked, smashed potatoes. Loved it. So there are so many delicious recipes out there that you can make on mass. I would also say I also have a 5S strategy for plant-based protein, for just inserting it into your meals and I can run through that strategy. Lesley Logan 26:34  I want to hear it if you don't mind, because all of my ladies are over 40, they have heard from all the different health people we have to have protein with perimenopause and menopause like make sure you're doing your protein. Don't overdo the cardio. So we're all on base with you. So what's, what's the 5S?Kate Galli 26:48  Awesome. So the first S is for the star. So that's when the plant-based protein is the star of the meal. And that's what you used to think of your protein like, right? So it's the steak was the old way. The star might now be the lentils and a curry, right? Or the marinated tofu. It's one kind of hardcore, decent serve of the plant-based protein. The next S is for scatter over you've got your regular meal, maybe your oats, not for you Lesley, but for someone else, who can have oats and you scatter over your hemp seeds, more protein per gram than beef, your pumpkin seeds, whatever it might be. The third S is for a stir through. Again, you've got your meal. It's delicious. Maybe it's a little bit lacking in the protein. And so you stir through your plant-based protein powder into your cereal, or your whatever it may be into your soups, you're just stirring through that additional plant protein. Next up is one of my favorites. It's the side. So maybe I just want that meal, that salad that I've made for everyone else to go with their meal, and it is delicious and abundant. It's just lacking in plant-based protein. So I have a side of a cup of edamame or crispy chickpeas or whatever it may be. The fifth sneaky one is the sauce. You know, early days, PT, personal trainer, a lot of sources were like high caloric density and low nutritional value and just made of processed oils and all of this rubbish. A lot of the plant-based sources are amazingly full of sneaky protein, like a silken tofu in a tofu ricotta type of a sauce, or an edamame guac. So guacamole that's chock full of edamame or whatever it may be. So yeah, they're the 5S and I use a combination of them every single day. I could make it six and make it a snack as well. So, yeah, there's lots. Lesley Logan 28:43  I love that. I love that there's a there's a snack that we, I love when my husband makes me it's this popcorn with spirulina, Oh, little bit of nutritional yeast, salt, and I believe there is some a little bit of garlic, or maybe it's kind there's a tiny bit of something that just gives a little bit little bit of spice. And so yes, your fingers turn like, green or black. So he's like, he eats it with chopsticks. I'm not so good, so I just, I'm like, well, we'll just eat and then we'll wash our hands. But I love that snack, because also, with all that stuff added, you actually end up with protein on your popcorn. Like, it's like, see if there's a way to find these different things and also get all the nutrition from that. Brilliant. So I don't know, Kate, I didn't, I didn't expect to go into thinking maybe I'm gonna be more plant based after this. But I think, I think, I think I am just because, I mean, we already, my husband and I, are already very big on the environment. We're very conscious of, like, if we're gonna eat animal protein, like, how are we getting it? Where is it where is it coming from? We really try to make sure we're really good about that as best we can. But at this point, some point, you go, okay, now it's just becoming more expensive to even do that. Yeah, and it's and that, and that's not, you know, we're not attached to that. We're not attached to it. So I think this is really cool, but also I really love the idea of, like, kind of figuring out which s I want it to be, how, like, how I want to do it, and then, and then be kind to ourselves about trying to add it in, because it can be overwhelming, and we can't do all or nothing. So we have to be able to start to maybe it's like one meal a day that we, you know, change, and then go from there. Kate Galli 30:19  100% and you mentioned, like cost of living, all of that. You know, when I used to be a planner of meal prep, and was very exacting with that, but now I just do food prep, where I prep individual components on the weekend, and I can make a variety of meals. And you know, when I prep my dried chickpeas, which takes no time, or my dried lentils, that is just a colossal amount of very cost-effective plant protein that I can just use in almost a limitless number of meals. And my dried chickpeas and lentils really aren't going up in price. They're incredibly cheap.Lesley Logan 30:57  Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's, I mean, we got so much from you today. We got being it until we see it, and being happy, and are checking our approach to our purpose on this planet. And then we got some just tips to like, adjust our life. Because I do think that no matter what you want to do in this world, what we forget is that our food is fuel. And if your food is not fueling you in a way that actually allows you to show up confidently with energy and stamina and things like that. Then you, you are distracted from the purpose that you have on this planet.Kate Galli 31:30  100% yeah, and whatever your huge purpose is, it is, sadly, going to take longer than you would most love, so you better be fueling your body well and looking after yourself in all the other ways to have, as you said, the sustainability to be in it long term, because it is going to take a while.Lesley Logan 31:47  Yeah, I know. Sorry, folks. You heard it here from Kate. In case you haven't heard it from my mouth, Kate's telling you like it just takes, everything just takes longer than we want. And it's not because you're not great at it. It's not because you don't, aren't, aren't deserving of it. It's not because you like you shouldn't you, in hindsight, your relationship went left when you went right. It's because you becoming the person you have to be who can do the thing, has to get there you have to, you, yourself are a muscle that has to be trained and cultivated and strengthened and challenged to get to the place you want to go. Kate Galli 32:20  Completely agree. Lesley Logan 32:22  Kate, I think you're amazing. I could talk to you forever. We're gonna take a brief break and then find out where people can find you, follow you, work with you. Lesley Logan 32:29  All right, Kate, where do you like to hang out? Where can people connect more if they want to nerd out and just get to know you and work with you more?Kate Galli 32:38  The best place is the main website. So that's strongbodygreenplanet.com. Via the site, you'll find my Plant Positive Journal dedicated to my dear mom, my Healthification Podcast, and basically everything else that I do online. So, strongbodygreenplanet.com. Lesley Logan 32:56  Oh, love it. We'll have all that link below before we let you go. I know you've given us a lot of great things to think about. But for our people who are like, okay, I'm really drawn to Kate. I really love what she's talking about. What are some bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted steps they can take to be it till they see it? Kate Galli 33:13  I've got to say my number one go-to is to elicit your own personal values if you haven't yet. So your values are those emotional states that you are naturally drawn to. Think of where you spend your time, your energy, your money. My top two are freedom and integrity. But there's no right or wrong. Yours might be love, connection, truth, whatever they are, elicit those values and align them with your most important goal or vision. More so, align them with the actions you need to take to achieve that goal or vision that's going to be bold, because when you, when you have this big, powerful vision that's about more than just you, you're going to be more inclined to stick to it and take those bold actions. It's going to be executable because you have alignment. That is everything. Alignment between what you're looking to achieve and the daily actions you're taking is so much more powerful. It's intrinsic, because what you're looking to do is aligned with your heart. Now you're not stopping yourself, you're not fighting yourself. I call this the stop fighting yourself part of the process. And finally, it's targeted, because, again, you had absolute clarity on where you're looking to go and what you're looking to achieve.Lesley Logan 34:29  You're so great. We are so I, like, lucky to have gotten to know you today. I feel just so honored to have met you, inspired. I'm really excited to to hear how our Be It Pod listeners apply this, what they take out of this, what their favorite part is. So you all make sure that you tag the Be It Pod, tag Kate, and make sure that she hears what your takeaways are. Reach out to her at strong body, strongbodygreenplanet, right? I just think it's really amazing. And I think, your approach can, is something, again, I'll say it one more time for everyone, you can apply this to anything that you care about, and it's going to make life more fun, because it certainly isn't fun to be around the dinner table with people who are like, you know, you know that there's just going to be they're going to say the one thing, and they're going to do it just to piss you off, to see if you can get there and like, if you can just remember what's the purpose, and how can we attract them and what can we lovingly educate, as opposed to yelling? I think it's a wonderful way for us all to be it till we see it. So Kate, thank you so much. Everyone, you know what to do. Until next time. Be It Till You See It. Lesley Logan 35:40  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.Brad Crowell 36:22  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 36:27  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.Brad Crowell 36:32  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.Lesley Logan 36:39  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.Brad Crowell 36:42  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.Transcribed by https://otter.aiSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On The Other Side of Midnight, Lionel asks where you would take someone in the U.S. to convey the essence of the country. He later discusses the wonders of Christmas, Florida and the ridiculousness of weather advisories. Lionel moves on to talk about the signs of getting old, surviving life without the internet and people who spend their whole day on Facebook. Lionel starts the third hour discussing how people perceive evil. He also gets into ignorance across America, entropy, our fraudulent government with lack of true role models and much more. Lionel wraps up the show talking about the incoming heat, caffeine and his campaign promises if he was running for mayor of New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if your most profitable campaign window isn't Black Friday or Cyber Monday… but after the holidays, when everyone else is quiet? While most marketers are winding down, savvy brands are doubling down—tapping into the “Q5” period between Christmas and early January, when ad prices drop, engagement spikes, and consumers are laser-focused on their New Year goals. Today we're digging into how AI is revolutionizing brand partnerships, why micro-influencers might be your secret Q5 weapon, and what smart marketers are doing to turn a slow season into a sales surge.To discuss this, I'd like to welcome Xavier de Baillenx, CEO of Ramdam, an AI-powered creator platform working with over 50,000 influencers globally. About Xavier de Baillenx Xavier de Baillenx is a serial entrepreneur and the Co-founder and CEO of Ramdam, an AI-powered platform that streamlines user-generated content (UGC) production for brands, optimizing every step of the creative process. Launched in 2023 by the same team known for their previous venture, Pretty Fun Therapy, acquired by Match Group (the company behind Tinder and Hinge), Ramdam empowers advertisers to connect with the right creators, delivering high-performing ads that elevate social media campaigns and eliminate the guesswork of the creative lottery. The platform quickly gained recognition, with brands like Allianz, Voodoo, and Colgate-Palmolive leveraging Ramdam to achieve up to an 80% improvement in performance compared to traditional UGC marketplaces. Ramdam's rapid success also led to securing $3.15 million in funding in October 2024 to accelerate its global expansion. Xavier's entrepreneurial journey began in 2013 when he co-founded Pretty Fun Therapy with his current team, a venture that was acquired by Match Group, the company behind Tinder and Hinge, in 2016. At Match Group, he led AI innovation, pioneering some of the industry's first consumer brand chatbots that engaged millions of users. With a background in digital development from his time at Universal Music, Xavier brings extensive experience in combining technology and creativity. He holds an engineering degree from CentraleSupélec. Resources Ramdam: https://www.ramd.am/ https://www.ramd.am/ The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow Catch the future of e-commerce at eTail Boston, August 11-14, 2025. Register now: https://bit.ly/etailboston and use code PARTNER20 for 20% off for retailers and brands Don't Miss MAICON 2025, October 14-16 in Cleveland - the event bringing together the brights minds and leading voices in AI. Use Code AGILE150 for $150 off registration. Go here to register: https://bit.ly/agile150 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.show Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

For those who haven't heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a two-episode look at the song “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, and the intertwining careers of Joe Boyd, Sandy Denny, and Richard Thompson. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-one-minute bonus episode available, on Judy Collins’ version of this song. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by editing, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum For about an hour this was uploaded with the wrong Elton John clip in place of “Saturday Sun”. This has now been fixed. Resources Because of the increasing problems with Mixcloud’s restrictions, I have decided to start sharing streaming playlists of the songs used in episodes instead of Mixcloud ones. This Tunemymusic link will let you listen to the playlist I created on your streaming platform of choice — however please note that not all the songs excerpted are currently available on streaming. The songs missing from the Tidal version are “Shanten Bells” by the Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” by A.L. Lloyd, two by Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, three by Elton John & Linda Peters, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow” by Sandy Denny and “You Never Know” by Charlie Drake, but the other fifty-nine are there. Other songs may be missing from other services. The main books I used on Fairport Convention as a whole were Patrick Humphries' Meet On The Ledge, Clinton Heylin's What We Did Instead of Holidays, and Kevan Furbank's Fairport Convention on Track. Rob Young's Electric Eden is the most important book on the British folk-rock movement. Information on Richard Thompson comes from Patrick Humphries' Richard Thompson: Strange Affair and Thompson's own autobiography Beeswing.  Information on Sandy Denny comes from Clinton Heylin's No More Sad Refrains and Mick Houghton's I've Always Kept a Unicorn. I also used Joe Boyd's autobiography White Bicycles and Chris Blackwell's The Islander.  And this three-CD set is the best introduction to Fairport's music currently in print. Transcript Before we begin, this episode contains reference to alcohol and cocaine abuse and medical neglect leading to death. It also starts with some discussion of the fatal car accident that ended last episode. There’s also some mention of child neglect and spousal violence. If that’s likely to upset you, you might want to skip this episode or read the transcript. One of the inspirations for this podcast when I started it back in 2018 was a project by Richard Thompson, which appears (like many things in Thompson’s life) to have started out of sheer bloody-mindedness. In 1999 Playboy magazine asked various people to list their “songs of the Millennium”, and most of them, understanding the brief, chose a handful of songs from the latter half of the twentieth century. But Thompson determined that he was going to list his favourite songs *of the millennium*. He didn’t quite manage that, but he did cover seven hundred and forty years, and when Playboy chose not to publish it, he decided to turn it into a touring show, in which he covered all his favourite songs from “Sumer Is Icumen In” from 1260: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Sumer is Icumen In”] Through numerous traditional folk songs, union songs like “Blackleg Miner”, pieces by early-modern composers, Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs, and songs by the Beatles, the Ink Spots, the Kinks, and the Who, all the way to “Oops! I Did It Again”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Oops! I Did it Again”] And to finish the show, and to show how all this music actually ties together, he would play what he described as a “medieval tune from Brittany”, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”] We have said many times in this podcast that there is no first anything, but there’s a reason that Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention’s third album of 1969, and the album other than Unhalfbricking on which their reputation largely rests, was advertised with the slogan “The first (literally) British folk rock album ever”. Folk-rock, as the term had come to be known, and as it is still usually used today, had very little to do with traditional folk music. Rather, the records of bands like The Byrds or Simon and Garfunkel were essentially taking the sounds of British beat groups of the early sixties, particularly the Searchers, and applying those sounds to material by contemporary singer-songwriters. People like Paul Simon and Bob Dylan had come up through folk clubs, and their songs were called folk music because of that, but they weren’t what folk music had meant up to that point — songs that had been collected after being handed down through the folk process, changed by each individual singer, with no single identifiable author. They were authored songs by very idiosyncratic writers. But over their last few albums, Fairport Convention had done one or two tracks per album that weren’t like that, that were instead recordings of traditional folk songs, but arranged with rock instrumentation. They were not necessarily the first band to try traditional folk music with electric instruments — around the same time that Fairport started experimenting with the idea, so did an Irish band named Sweeney’s Men, who brought in a young electric guitarist named Henry McCullough briefly. But they do seem to have been the first to have fully embraced the idea. They had done so to an extent with “A Sailor’s Life” on Unhalfbricking, but now they were going to go much further: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves” (from about 4:30)] There had been some doubt as to whether Fairport Convention would even continue to exist — by the time Unhalfbricking, their second album of the year, was released, they had been through the terrible car accident that had killed Martin Lamble, the band’s drummer, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson’s girlfriend. Most of the rest of the band had been seriously injured, and they had made a conscious decision not to discuss the future of the band until they were all out of hospital. Ashley Hutchings was hospitalised the longest, and Simon Nicol, Richard Thompson, and Sandy Denny, the other three surviving members of the band, flew over to LA with their producer and manager, Joe Boyd, to recuperate there and get to know the American music scene. When they came back, the group all met up in the flat belonging to Denny’s boyfriend Trevor Lucas, and decided that they were going to continue the band. They made a few decisions then — they needed a new drummer, and as well as a drummer they wanted to get in Dave Swarbrick. Swarbrick had played violin on several tracks on Unhalfbricking as a session player, and they had all been thrilled to work with him. Swarbrick was one of the most experienced musicians on the British folk circuit. He had started out in the fifties playing guitar with Beryl Marriott’s Ceilidh Band before switching to fiddle, and in 1963, long before Fairport had formed, he had already appeared on TV with the Ian Campbell Folk Group, led by Ian Campbell, the father of Ali and Robin Campbell, later of UB40: [Excerpt: The Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Shanten Bells (medley on Hullaballoo!)”] He’d sung with Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd: [Excerpt: A.L. Lloyd, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” ] And he’d formed his hugely successful duo with Martin Carthy, releasing records like “Byker Hill” which are often considered among the best British folk music of all time: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, “Byker Hill”] By the time Fairport had invited him to play on Unhalfbricking, Swarbrick had already performed on twenty albums as a core band member, plus dozens more EPs, singles, and odd tracks on compilations. They had no reason to think they could actually get him to join their band. But they had three advantages. The first was that Swarbrick was sick of the traditional folk scene at the time, saying later “I didn’t like seven-eighths of the people involved in it, and it was extremely opportune to leave. I was suddenly presented with the possibilities of exploring the dramatic content of the songs to the full.” The second was that he was hugely excited to be playing with Richard Thompson, who was one of the most innovative guitarists of his generation, and Martin Carthy remembers him raving about Thompson after their initial sessions. (Carthy himself was and is no slouch on the guitar of course, and there was even talk of getting him to join the band at this point, though they decided against it — much to the relief of rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol, who is a perfectly fine player himself but didn’t want to be outclassed by *two* of the best guitarists in Britain at the same time). And the third was that Joe Boyd told him that Fairport were doing so well — they had a single just about to hit the charts with “Si Tu Dois Partir” — that he would only have to play a dozen gigs with Fairport in order to retire. As it turned out, Swarbrick would play with the group for a decade, and would never retire — I saw him on his last tour in 2015, only eight months before he died. The drummer the group picked was also a far more experienced musician than any of the rest, though in a very different genre. Dave Mattacks had no knowledge at all of the kind of music they played, having previously been a player in dance bands. When asked by Hutchings if he wanted to join the band, Mattacks’ response was “I don’t know anything about the music. I don’t understand it… I can’t tell one tune from another, they all sound the same… but if you want me to join the group, fine, because I really like it. I’m enjoying myself musically.” Mattacks brought a new level of professionalism to the band, thanks to his different background. Nicol said of him later “He was dilligent, clean, used to taking three white shirts to a gig… The application he could bring to his playing was amazing. With us, you only played well when you were feeling well.” This distinction applied to his playing as well. Nicol would later describe the difference between Mattacks’ drumming and Lamble’s by saying “Martin’s strength was as an imaginative drummer. DM came in with a strongly developed sense of rhythm, through keeping a big band of drunken saxophone players in order. A great time-keeper.” With this new line-up and a new sense of purpose, the group did as many of their contemporaries were doing and “got their heads together in the country”. Joe Boyd rented the group a mansion, Farley House, in Farley Chamberlayne, Hampshire, and they stayed there together for three months. At the start, the group seem to have thought that they were going to make another record like Unhalfbricking, with some originals, some songs by American songwriters, and a few traditional songs. Even after their stay in Farley Chamberlayne, in fact, they recorded a few of the American songs they’d rehearsed at the start of the process, Richard Farina’s “Quiet Joys of Brotherhood” and Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn’s “Ballad of Easy Rider”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Ballad of Easy Rider”] Indeed, the whole idea of “getting our heads together in the country” (as the cliche quickly became in the late sixties as half of the bands in Britain went through much the same kind of process as Fairport were doing — but usually for reasons more to do with drug burnout or trend following than recovering from serious life-changing trauma) seems to have been inspired by Bob Dylan and the Band getting together in Big Pink. But very quickly they decided to follow the lead of Ashley Hutchings, who had had something of a Damascene conversion to the cause of traditional English folk music. They were listening mostly to Music From Big Pink by the Band, and to the first album by Sweeney’s Men: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “The Handsome Cabin Boy”] And they decided that they were going to make something that was as English as those records were North American and Irish (though in the event there were also a few Scottish songs included on the record). Hutchings in particular was becoming something of a scholar of traditional music, regularly visiting Cecil Sharp House and having long conversations with A.L. Lloyd, discovering versions of different traditional songs he’d never encountered before. This was both amusing and bemusing Sandy Denny, who had joined a rock group in part to get away from traditional music; but she was comfortable singing the material, and knew a lot of it and could make a lot of suggestions herself. Swarbrick obviously knew the repertoire intimately, and Nicol was amenable, while Mattacks was utterly clueless about the folk tradition at this point but knew this was the music he wanted to make. Thompson knew very little about traditional music, and of all the band members except Denny he was the one who has shown the least interest in the genre in his subsequent career — but as we heard at the beginning, showing the least interest in the genre is a relative thing, and while Thompson was not hugely familiar with the genre, he *was* able to work with it, and was also more than capable of writing songs that fit in with the genre. Of the eleven songs on the album, which was titled Liege and Lief (which means, roughly, Lord and Loyalty), there were no cover versions of singer-songwriters. Eight were traditional songs, and three were originals, all written in the style of traditional songs. The album opened with “Come All Ye”, an introduction written by Denny and Hutchings (the only time the two would ever write together): [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Come All Ye”] The other two originals were songs where Thompson had written new lyrics to traditional melodies. On “Crazy Man Michael”, Swarbrick had said to Thompson that the tune to which he had set his new words was weaker than the lyrics, to which Thompson had replied that if Swarbrick felt that way he should feel free to write a new melody. He did, and it became the first of the small number of Thompson/Swarbrick collaborations: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Crazy Man Michael”] Thompson and Swarbrick would become a brief songwriting team, but as much as anything else it was down to proximity — the two respected each other as musicians, but never got on very well. In 1981 Swarbrick would say “Richard and I never got on in the early days of FC… we thought we did, but we never did. We composed some bloody good songs together, but it was purely on a basis of “you write that and I’ll write this, and we’ll put it together.” But we never sat down and had real good chats.” The third original on the album, and by far the most affecting, is another song where Thompson put lyrics to a traditional tune. In this case he thought he was putting the lyrics to the tune of “Willie O'Winsbury”, but he was basing it on a recording by Sweeney’s Men. The problem was that Sweeney’s Men had accidentally sung the lyrics of “Willie O'Winsbury'” to the tune of a totally different song, “Fause Foodrage”: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “Willie O’Winsbury”] Thompson took that melody, and set to it lyrics about loss and separation. Thompson has never been one to discuss the meanings of his lyrics in any great detail, and in the case of this one has said “I really don't know what it means. This song came out of a dream, and I pretty much wrote it as I dreamt it (it was the sixties), and didn't spend very long analyzing it. So interpret as you wish – or replace with your own lines.” But in the context of the traffic accident that had killed his tailor girlfriend and a bandmate, and injured most of his other bandmates, the lyrics about lonely travellers, the winding road, bruised and beaten sons, saying goodbye, and never cutting cloth, seem fairly self-explanatory: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Farewell, Farewell”] The rest of the album, though, was taken up by traditional tunes. There was a long medley of four different fiddle reels; a version of “Reynardine” (a song about a seductive man — or is he a fox? Or perhaps both — which had been recorded by Swarbrick and Carthy on their most recent album); a 19th century song about a deserter saved from the firing squad by Prince Albert; and a long take on “Tam Lin”, one of the most famous pieces in the Scottish folk music canon, a song that has been adapted in different ways by everyone from the experimental noise band Current 93 to the dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah to the comics writer Grant Morrison: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Tam Lin”] And “Matty Groves”, a song about a man killing his cheating wife and her lover, which actually has a surprisingly similar story to that of “1921” from another great concept album from that year, the Who’s Tommy. “Matty Groves” became an excuse for long solos and shows of instrumental virtuosity: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves”] The album was recorded in September 1969, after their return from their break in the country and a triumphal performance at the Royal Festival Hall, headlining over fellow Witchseason artists John and Beverly Martyn and Nick Drake. It became a classic of the traditional folk genre — arguably *the* classic of the traditional folk genre. In 2007 BBC Radio 2’s Folk Music Awards gave it an award for most influential folk album of all time, and while such things are hard to measure, I doubt there’s anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of British folk and folk-rock music who would not at least consider that a reasonable claim. But once again, by the time the album came out in November, the band had changed lineups yet again. There was a fundamental split in the band – on one side were Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson, whose stance was, roughly, that Liege and Lief was a great experiment and a fun thing to do once, but really the band had two first-rate songwriters in themselves, and that they should be concentrating on their own new material, not doing these old songs, good as they were. They wanted to take the form of the traditional songs and use that form for new material — they wanted to make British folk-rock, but with the emphasis on the rock side of things. Hutchings, on the other hand, was equally sure that he wanted to make traditional music and go further down the rabbit hole of antiquity. With the zeal of the convert he had gone in a couple of years from being the leader of a band who were labelled “the British Jefferson Airplane” to becoming a serious scholar of traditional folk music. Denny was tired of touring, as well — she wanted to spend more time at home with Trevor Lucas, who was sleeping with other women when she was away and making her insecure. When the time came for the group to go on a tour of Denmark, Denny decided she couldn’t make it, and Hutchings was jubilant — he decided he was going to get A.L. Lloyd into the band in her place and become a *real* folk group. Then Denny reconsidered, and Hutchings was crushed. He realised that while he had always been the leader, he wasn’t going to be able to lead the band any further in the traditionalist direction, and quit the group — but not before he was delegated by the other band members to fire Denny. Until the publication of Richard Thompson’s autobiography in 2022, every book on the group or its members said that Denny quit the band again, which was presumably a polite fiction that the band agreed, but according to Thompson “Before we flew home, we decided to fire Sandy. I don't remember who asked her to leave – it was probably Ashley, who usually did the dirty work. She was reportedly shocked that we would take that step. She may have been fragile beneath the confident facade, but she still knew her worth.” Thompson goes on to explain that the reasons for kicking her out were that “I suppose we felt that in her mind she had already left” and that “We were probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, though there wasn't a name for it back then.” They had considered inviting Trevor Lucas to join the band to make Denny more comfortable, but came to the (probably correct) conclusion that while he was someone they got on well with personally, he would be another big ego in a band that already had several, and that being around Denny and Lucas’ volatile relationship would, in Thompson’s phrasing, “have not always given one a feeling of peace and stability.” Hutchings originally decided he was going to join Sweeney’s Men, but that group were falling apart, and their first rehearsal with Hutchings would also be their last as a group, with only Hutchings and guitarist and mandolin player Terry Woods left in the band. They added Woods’ wife Gay, and another couple, Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, and formed a group called Steeleye Span, a name given them by Martin Carthy. That group, like Fairport, went to “get their heads together in the country” for three months and recorded an album of electric versions of traditional songs, Hark the Village Wait, on which Mattacks and another drummer, Gerry Conway, guested as Steeleye Span didn’t at the time have their own drummer: [Excerpt: Steeleye Span, “Blackleg Miner”] Steeleye Span would go on to have a moderately successful chart career in the seventies, but by that time most of the original lineup, including Hutchings, had left — Hutchings stayed with them for a few albums, then went on to form the first of a series of bands, all called the Albion Band or variations on that name, which continue to this day. And this is something that needs to be pointed out at this point — it is impossible to follow every single individual in this narrative as they move between bands. There is enough material in the history of the British folk-rock scene that someone could do a 500 Songs-style podcast just on that, and every time someone left Fairport, or Steeleye Span, or the Albion Band, or Matthews’ Southern Comfort, or any of the other bands we have mentioned or will mention, they would go off and form another band which would then fission, and some of its members would often join one of those other bands. There was a point in the mid-1970s where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport Convention while Fairport Convention had none. So just in order to keep the narrative anything like wieldy, I’m going to keep the narrative concentrated on the two figures from Fairport — Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson — whose work outside the group has had the most influence on the wider world of rock music more broadly, and only deal with the other members when, as they often did, their careers intersected with those two. That doesn’t mean the other members are not themselves hugely important musicians, just that their importance has been primarily to the folk side of the folk-rock genre, and so somewhat outside the scope of this podcast. While Hutchings decided to form a band that would allow him to go deeper and deeper into traditional folk music, Sandy Denny’s next venture was rather different. For a long time she had been writing far more songs than she had ever played for her bandmates, like “Nothing More”, a song that many have suggested is about Thompson: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Nothing More”] When Joe Boyd heard that Denny was leaving Fairport Convention, he was at first elated. Fairport’s records were being distributed by A&M in the US at that point, but Island Records was in the process of opening up a new US subsidiary which would then release all future Fairport product — *but*, as far as A&M were concerned, Sandy Denny *was* Fairport Convention. They were only interested in her. Boyd, on the other hand, loved Denny’s work intensely, but from his point of view *Richard Thompson* was Fairport Convention. If he could get Denny signed directly to A&M as a solo artist before Island started its US operations, Witchseason could get a huge advance on her first solo record, while Fairport could continue making records for Island — he’d have two lucrative acts, on different labels. Boyd went over and spoke to A&M and got an agreement in principle that they would give Denny a forty-thousand-dollar advance on her first solo album — twice what they were paying for Fairport albums. The problem was that Denny didn’t want to be a solo act. She wanted to be the lead singer of a band. She gave many reasons for this — the one she gave to many journalists was that she had seen a Judy Collins show and been impressed, but noticed that Collins’ band were definitely a “backing group”, and as she put it “But that's all they were – a backing group. I suddenly thought, If you're playing together on a stage you might as well be TOGETHER.” Most other people in her life, though, say that the main reason for her wanting to be in a band was her desire to be with her boyfriend, Trevor Lucas. Partly this was due to a genuine desire to spend more time with someone with whom she was very much in love, partly it was a fear that he would cheat on her if she was away from him for long periods of time, and part of it seems to have been Lucas’ dislike of being *too* overshadowed by his talented girlfriend — he didn’t mind acknowledging that she was a major talent, but he wanted to be thought of as at least a minor one. So instead of going solo, Denny formed Fotheringay, named after the song she had written for Fairport. This new band consisted at first of Denny on vocals and occasional piano, Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Lucas’ old Eclection bandmate Gerry Conway on drums. For a lead guitarist, they asked Richard Thompson who the best guitarist in Britain was, and he told them Albert Lee. Lee in turn brought in bass player Pat Donaldson, but this lineup of the band barely survived a fortnight. Lee *was* arguably the best guitarist in Britain, certainly a reasonable candidate if you could ever have a singular best (as indeed was Thompson himself), but he was the best *country* guitarist in Britain, and his style simply didn’t fit with Fotheringay’s folk-influenced songs. He was replaced by American guitarist Jerry Donahue, who was not anything like as proficient as Lee, but who was still very good, and fit the band’s style much better. The new group rehearsed together for a few weeks, did a quick tour, and then went into the recording studio to record their debut, self-titled, album. Joe Boyd produced the album, but admitted himself that he only paid attention to those songs he considered worthwhile — the album contained one song by Lucas, “The Ballad of Ned Kelly”, and two cover versions of American singer-songwriter material with Lucas singing lead. But everyone knew that the songs that actually *mattered* were Sandy Denny’s, and Boyd was far more interested in them, particularly the songs “The Sea” and “The Pond and the Stream”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “The Pond and the Stream”] Fotheringay almost immediately hit financial problems, though. While other Witchseason acts were used to touring on the cheap, all packed together in the back of a Transit van with inexpensive equipment, Trevor Lucas had ambitions of being a rock star and wanted to put together a touring production to match, with expensive transport and equipment, including a speaker system that got nicknamed “Stonehenge” — but at the same time, Denny was unhappy being on the road, and didn’t play many gigs. As well as the band itself, the Fotheringay album also featured backing vocals from a couple of other people, including Denny’s friend Linda Peters. Peters was another singer from the folk clubs, and a good one, though less well-known than Denny — at this point she had only released a couple of singles, and those singles seemed to have been as much as anything else released as a novelty. The first of those, a version of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” had been released as by “Paul McNeill and Linda Peters”: [Excerpt: Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”] But their second single, a version of John D. Loudermilk’s “You’re Taking My Bag”, was released on the tiny Page One label, owned by Larry Page, and was released under the name “Paul and Linda”, clearly with the intent of confusing particularly gullible members of the record-buying public into thinking this was the McCartneys: [Excerpt: Paul and Linda, “You’re Taking My Bag”] Peters was though more financially successful than almost anyone else in this story, as she was making a great deal of money as a session singer. She actually did another session involving most of Fotheringay around this time. Witchseason had a number of excellent songwriters on its roster, and had had some success getting covers by people like Judy Collins, but Joe Boyd thought that they might possibly do better at getting cover versions if they were performed in less idiosyncratic arrangements. Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway went into the studio to record backing tracks, and vocals were added by Peters and another session singer, who according to some sources also provided piano. They cut songs by Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “You Get Brighter”] Ed Carter, formerly of The New Nadir but by this time firmly ensconced in the Beach Boys’ touring band where he would remain for the next quarter-century: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “I Don’t Mind”] John and Beverly Martyn, and Nick Drake: [Excerpt: Elton John, “Saturday Sun”] There are different lineups of musicians credited for those sessions in different sources, but I tend to believe that it’s mostly Fotheringay for the simple reason that Donahue says it was him, Donaldson and Conway who talked Lucas and Denny into the mistake that destroyed Fotheringay because of these sessions. Fotheringay were in financial trouble already, spending far more money than they were bringing in, but their album made the top twenty and they were getting respect both from critics and from the public — in September, Sandy Denny was voted best British female singer by the readers of Melody Maker in their annual poll, which led to shocked headlines in the tabloids about how this “unknown” could have beaten such big names as Dusty Springfield and Cilla Black. Only a couple of weeks after that, they were due to headline at the Albert Hall. It should have been a triumph. But Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway had asked that singing pianist to be their support act. As Donahue said later “That was a terrible miscast. It was our fault. He asked if [he] could do it. Actually Pat, Gerry and I had to talk Sandy and Trevor into [it]… We'd done these demos and the way he was playing – he was a wonderful piano player – he was sensitive enough. We knew very little about his stage-show. We thought he'd be a really good opener for us.” Unfortunately, Elton John was rather *too* good. As Donahue continued “we had no idea what he had in mind, that he was going to do the most incredible rock & roll show ever. He pretty much blew us off the stage before we even got on the stage.” To make matters worse, Fotheringay’s set, which was mostly comprised of new material, was underrehearsed and sloppy, and from that point on no matter what they did people were counting the hours until the band split up. They struggled along for a while though, and started working on a second record, with Boyd again producing, though as Boyd later said “I probably shouldn't have been producing the record. My lack of respect for the group was clear, and couldn't have helped the atmosphere. We'd put out a record that had sold disappointingly, A&M was unhappy. Sandy's tracks on the first record are among the best things she ever did – the rest of it, who cares? And the artwork, Trevor's sister, was terrible. It would have been one thing if I'd been unhappy with it and it sold, and the group was working all the time, making money, but that wasn't the case … I knew what Sandy was capable of, and it was very upsetting to me.” The record would not be released for thirty-eight years: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Wild Mountain Thyme”] Witchseason was going badly into debt. Given all the fissioning of bands that we’ve already been talking about, Boyd had been stretched thin — he produced sixteen albums in 1970, and almost all of them lost money for the company. And he was getting more and more disillusioned with the people he was producing. He loved Beverly Martyn’s work, but had little time for her abusive husband John, who was dominating her recording and life more and more and would soon become a solo artist while making her stay at home (and stealing her ideas without giving her songwriting credit). The Incredible String Band were great, but they had recently converted to Scientology, which Boyd found annoying, and while he was working with all sorts of exciting artists like Vashti Bunyan and Nico, he was finding himself less and less important to the artists he mentored. Fairport Convention were a good example of this. After Denny and Hutchings had left the group, they’d decided to carry on as an electric folk group, performing an equal mix of originals by the Swarbrick and Thompson songwriting team and arrangements of traditional songs. The group were now far enough away from the “British Jefferson Airplane” label that they decided they didn’t need a female vocalist — and more realistically, while they’d been able to replace Judy Dyble, nobody was going to replace Sandy Denny. Though it’s rather surprising when one considers Thompson’s subsequent career that nobody seems to have thought of bringing in Denny’s friend Linda Peters, who was dating Joe Boyd at the time (as Denny had been before she met Lucas) as Denny’s replacement. Instead, they decided that Swarbrick and Thompson were going to share the vocals between them. They did, though, need a bass player to replace Hutchings. Swarbrick wanted to bring in Dave Pegg, with whom he had played in the Ian Campbell Folk Group, but the other band members initially thought the idea was a bad one. At the time, while they respected Swarbrick as a musician, they didn’t think he fully understood rock and roll yet, and they thought the idea of getting in a folkie who had played double bass rather than an electric rock bassist ridiculous. But they auditioned him to mollify Swarbrick, and found that he was exactly what they needed. As Joe Boyd later said “All those bass lines were great, Ashley invented them all, but he never could play them that well. He thought of them, but he was technically not a terrific bass player. He was a very inventive, melodic, bass player, but not a very powerful one technically. But having had the part explained to him once, Pegg was playing it better than Ashley had ever played it… In some rock bands, I think, ultimately, the bands that sound great, you can generally trace it to the bass player… it was at that point they became a great band, when they had Pegg.” The new lineup of Fairport decided to move in together, and found a former pub called the Angel, into which all the band members moved, along with their partners and children (Thompson was the only one who was single at this point) and their roadies. The group lived together quite happily, and one gets the impression that this was the period when they were most comfortable with each other, even though by this point they were a disparate group with disparate tastes, in music as in everything else. Several people have said that the only music all the band members could agree they liked at this point was the first two albums by The Band. With the departure of Hutchings from the band, Swarbrick and Thompson, as the strongest personalities and soloists, became in effect the joint leaders of the group, and they became collaborators as songwriters, trying to write new songs that were inspired by traditional music. Thompson described the process as “let’s take one line of this reel and slow it down and move it up a minor third and see what that does to it; let’s take one line of this ballad and make a whole song out of it. Chopping up the tradition to find new things to do… like a collage.” Generally speaking, Swarbrick and Thompson would sit by the fire and Swarbrick would play a melody he’d been working on, the two would work on it for a while, and Thompson would then go away and write the lyrics. This is how the two came up with songs like the nine-minute “Sloth”, a highlight of the next album, Full House, and one that would remain in Fairport’s live set for much of their career: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth”] “Sloth” was titled that way because Thompson and Swarbrick were working on two tunes, a slow one and a fast one, and they jokingly named them “Sloth” and “Fasth”, but the latter got renamed to “Walk Awhile”, while “Sloth” kept its working title. But by this point, Boyd and Thompson were having a lot of conflict in the studio. Boyd was never the most technical of producers — he was one of those producers whose job is to gently guide the artists in the studio and create a space for the music to flourish, rather than the Joe Meek type with an intimate technical knowledge of the studio — and as the artists he was working with gained confidence in their own work they felt they had less and less need of him. During the making of the Full House album, Thompson and Boyd, according to Boyd, clashed on everything — every time Boyd thought Thompson had done a good solo, Thompson would say to erase it and let him have another go, while every time Boyd thought Thompson could do better, Thompson would say that was the take to keep. One of their biggest clashes was over Thompson’s song “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”, which was originally intended for release on the album, and is included in current reissues of it: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”] Thompson had written that song inspired by what he thought was the unjust treatment of Alex Bramham, the driver in Fairport’s fatal car crash, by the courts — Bramham had been given a prison sentence of a few months for dangerous driving, while the group members thought he had not been at fault. Boyd thought it was one of the best things recorded for the album, but Thompson wasn’t happy with his vocal — there was one note at the top of the melody that he couldn’t quite hit — and insisted it be kept off the record, even though that meant it would be a shorter album than normal. He did this at such a late stage that early copies of the album actually had the title printed on the sleeve, but then blacked out. He now says in his autobiography “I could have persevered, double-tracked the voice, warmed up for longer – anything. It was a good track, and the record was lacking without it. When the album was re-released, the track was restored with a more confident vocal, and it has stayed there ever since.” During the sessions for Full House the group also recorded one non-album single, Thompson and Swarbrick’s “Now Be Thankful”: [Excerpt, Fairport Convention, “Now Be Thankful”] The B-side to that was a medley of two traditional tunes plus a Swarbrick original, but was given the deliberately ridiculous title “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”] The B. McKenzie in the title was a reference to the comic-strip character Barry McKenzie, a stereotype drunk Australian created for Private Eye magazine by the comedian Barry Humphries (later to become better known for his Dame Edna Everage character) but the title was chosen for one reason only — to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the song with the longest title. Which they did, though they were later displaced by the industrial band Test Dept, and their song “Long Live British Democracy Which Flourishes and Is Constantly Perfected Under the Immaculate Guidance of the Great, Honourable, Generous and Correct Margaret Hilda Thatcher. She Is the Blue Sky in the Hearts of All Nations. Our People Pay Homage and Bow in Deep Respect and Gratitude to Her. The Milk of Human Kindness”. Full House got excellent reviews in the music press, with Rolling Stone saying “The music shows that England has finally gotten her own equivalent to The Band… By calling Fairport an English equivalent of the Band, I meant that they have soaked up enough of the tradition of their countryfolk that it begins to show all over, while they maintain their roots in rock.” Off the back of this, the group went on their first US tour, culminating in a series of shows at the Troubadour in LA, on the same bill as Rick Nelson, which were recorded and later released as a live album: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth (live)”] The Troubadour was one of the hippest venues at the time, and over their residency there the group got seen by many celebrities, some of whom joined them on stage. The first was Linda Ronstadt, who initially demurred, saying she didn’t know any of their songs. On being told they knew all of hers, she joined in with a rendition of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”. Thompson was later asked to join Ronstadt’s backing band, who would go on to become the Eagles, but he said later of this offer “I would have hated it. I’d have hated being on the road with four or five miserable Americans — they always seem miserable. And if you see them now, they still look miserable on stage — like they don’t want to be there and they don’t like each other.” The group were also joined on stage at the Troubadour on one memorable night by some former bandmates of Pegg’s. Before joining the Ian Campbell Folk Group, Pegg had played around the Birmingham beat scene, and had been in bands with John Bonham and Robert Plant, who turned up to the Troubadour with their Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page (reports differ on whether the fourth member of Zeppelin, John Paul Jones, also came along). They all got up on stage together and jammed on songs like “Hey Joe”, “Louie Louie”, and various old Elvis tunes. The show was recorded, and the tapes are apparently still in the possession of Joe Boyd, who has said he refuses to release them in case he is murdered by the ghost of Peter Grant. According to Thompson, that night ended in a three-way drinking contest between Pegg, Bonham, and Janis Joplin, and it’s testament to how strong the drinking culture is around Fairport and the British folk scene in general that Pegg outdrank both of them. According to Thompson, Bonham was found naked by a swimming pool two days later, having missed two gigs. For all their hard rock image, Led Zeppelin were admirers of a lot of the British folk and folk-rock scene, and a few months later Sandy Denny would become the only outside vocalist ever to appear on a Led Zeppelin record when she duetted with Plant on “The Battle of Evermore” on the group’s fourth album: [Excerpt: Led Zeppelin, “The Battle of Evermore”] Denny would never actually get paid for her appearance on one of the best-selling albums of all time. That was, incidentally, not the only session that Denny was involved in around this time — she also sang on the soundtrack to a soft porn film titled Swedish Fly Girls, whose soundtrack was produced by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow?”] Shortly after Fairport’s trip to America, Joe Boyd decided he was giving up on Witchseason. The company was now losing money, and he was finding himself having to produce work for more and more acts as the various bands fissioned. The only ones he really cared about were Richard Thompson, who he was finding it more and more difficult to work with, Nick Drake, who wanted to do his next album with just an acoustic guitar anyway, Sandy Denny, who he felt was wasting her talents in Fotheringay, and Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band, who was more distant since his conversion to Scientology. Boyd did make some attempts to keep the company going. On a trip to Sweden, he negotiated an agreement with the manager and publisher of a Swedish band whose songs he’d found intriguing, the Hep Stars. Boyd was going to publish their songs in the UK, and in return that publisher, Stig Anderson, would get the rights to Witchseason’s catalogue in Scandinavia — a straight swap, with no money changing hands. But before Boyd could get round to signing the paperwork, he got a better offer from Mo Ostin of Warners — Ostin wanted Boyd to come over to LA and head up Warners’ new film music department. Boyd sold Witchseason to Island Records and moved to LA with his fiancee Linda Peters, spending the next few years working on music for films like Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange, as well as making his own documentary about Jimi Hendrix, and thus missed out on getting the UK publishing rights for ABBA, and all the income that would have brought him, for no money. And it was that decision that led to the breakup of Fotheringay. Just before Christmas 1970, Fotheringay were having a difficult session, recording the track “John the Gun”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “John the Gun”] Boyd got frustrated and kicked everyone out of the session, and went for a meal and several drinks with Denny. He kept insisting that she should dump the band and just go solo, and then something happened that the two of them would always describe differently. She asked him if he would continue to produce her records if she went solo, and he said he would. According to Boyd’s recollection of the events, he meant that he would fly back from California at some point to produce her records. According to Denny, he told her that if she went solo he would stay in Britain and not take the job in LA. This miscommunication was only discovered after Denny told the rest of Fotheringay after the Christmas break that she was splitting the band. Jerry Donahue has described that as the worst moment of his life, and Denny felt very guilty about breaking up a band with some of her closest friends in — and then when Boyd went over to the US anyway she felt a profound betrayal. Two days before Fotheringay’s final concert, in January 1971, Sandy Denny signed a solo deal with Island records, but her first solo album would not end up produced by Joe Boyd. Instead, The North Star Grassman and the Ravens was co-produced by Denny, John Wood — the engineer who had worked with Boyd on pretty much everything he’d produced, and Richard Thompson, who had just quit Fairport Convention, though he continued living with them at the Angel, at least until a truck crashed into the building in February 1971, destroying its entire front wall and forcing them to relocate. The songs chosen for The North Star Grassman and the Ravens reflected the kind of choices Denny would make on her future albums, and her eclectic taste in music. There was, of course, the obligatory Dylan cover, and the traditional folk ballad “Blackwaterside”, but there was also a cover version of Brenda Lee’s “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”] Most of the album, though, was made up of originals about various people in Denny’s life, like “Next Time Around”, about her ex-boyfriend Jackson C Frank: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Next Time Around”] The album made the top forty in the UK — Denny’s only solo album to do so — and led to her once again winning the “best female singer” award in Melody Maker’s readers’ poll that year — the male singer award was won by Rod Stewart. Both Stewart and Denny appeared the next year on the London Symphony Orchestra’s all-star version of The Who’s Tommy, which had originally been intended as a vehicle for Stewart before Roger Daltrey got involved. Stewart’s role was reduced to a single song, “Pinball Wizard”, while Denny sang on “It’s a Boy”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “It’s a Boy”] While Fotheringay had split up, all the band members play on The North Star Grassman and the Ravens. Guitarists Donahue and Lucas only play on a couple of the tracks, with Richard Thompson playing most of the guitar on the record. But Fotheringay’s rhythm section of Pat Donaldson and Gerry Conway play on almost every track. Another musician on the album, Ian Whiteman, would possibly have a profound effect on the future direction of Richard Thompson’s career and life. Whiteman was the former keyboard player for the mod band The Action, having joined them just before they became the blues-rock band Mighty Baby. But Mighty Baby had split up when all of the band except the lead singer had converted to Islam. Richard Thompson was on his own spiritual journey at this point, and became a Sufi – the same branch of Islam as Whiteman – soon after the session, though Thompson has said that his conversion was independent of Whiteman’s. The two did become very close and work together a lot in the mid-seventies though. Thompson had supposedly left Fairport because he was writing material that wasn’t suited to the band, but he spent more than a year after quitting the group working on sessions rather than doing anything with his own material, and these sessions tended to involve the same core group of musicians. One of the more unusual was a folk-rock supergroup called The Bunch, put together by Trevor Lucas. Richard Branson had recently bought a recording studio, and wanted a band to test it out before opening it up for commercial customers, so with this free studio time Lucas decided to record a set of fifties rock and roll covers. He gathered together Thompson, Denny, Whiteman, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Pat Donaldson, Gerry Conway, pianist Tony Cox, the horn section that would later form the core of the Average White Band, and Linda Peters, who had now split up with Joe Boyd and returned to the UK, and who had started dating Thompson. They recorded an album of covers of songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Otis and others: [Excerpt: The Bunch, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The early seventies was a hugely productive time for this group of musicians, as they all continued playing on each other’s projects. One notable album was No Roses by Shirley Collins, which featured Thompson, Mattacks, Whiteman, Simon Nicol, Lal and Mike Waterson, and Ashley Hutchings, who was at that point married to Collins, as well as some more unusual musicians like the free jazz saxophonist Lol Coxhill: [Excerpt: Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band, “Claudy Banks”] Collins was at the time the most respected female singer in British traditional music, and already had a substantial career including a series of important records made with her sister Dolly, work with guitarists like Davey Graham, and time spent in the 1950s collecting folk songs in the Southern US with her then partner Alan Lomax – according to Collins she did much of the actual work, but Lomax only mentioned her in a single sentence in his book on this work. Some of the same group of musicians went on to work on an album of traditional Morris dancing tunes, titled Morris On, credited to “Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield”, with Collins singing lead on two tracks: [Excerpt: Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield with Shirley Collins, “The Willow Tree”] Thompson thought that that album was the best of the various side projects he was involved in at the time, comparing it favourably to Rock On, which he thought was rather slight, saying later “Conceptually, Fairport, Ashley and myself and Sandy were developing a more fragile style of music that nobody else was particularly interested in, a British Folk Rock idea that had a logical development to it, although we all presented it our own way. Morris On was rather more true to what we were doing. Rock On was rather a retro step. I'm not sure it was lasting enough as a record but Sandy did sing really well on the Buddy Holly songs.” Hutchings used the musicians on No Roses and Morris On as the basis for his band the Albion Band, which continues to this day. Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks both quit Fairport to join the Albion Band, though Mattacks soon returned. Nicol would not return to Fairport for several years, though, and for a long period in the mid-seventies Fairport Convention had no original members. Unfortunately, while Collins was involved in the Albion Band early on, she and Hutchings ended up divorcing, and the stress from the divorce led to Collins developing spasmodic dysphonia, a stress-related illness which makes it impossible for the sufferer to sing. She did eventually regain her vocal ability, but between 1978 and 2016 she was unable to perform at all, and lost decades of her career. Richard Thompson occasionally performed with the Albion Band early on, but he was getting stretched a little thin with all these sessions. Linda Peters said later of him “When I came back from America, he was working in Sandy’s band, and doing sessions by the score. Always with Pat Donaldson and Dave Mattacks. Richard would turn up with his guitar, one day he went along to do a session with one of those folkie lady singers — and there were Pat and DM. They all cracked. Richard smashed his amp and said “Right! No more sessions!” In 1972 he got round to releasing his first solo album, Henry the Human Fly, which featured guest appearances by Linda Peters and Sandy Denny among others: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “The Angels Took My Racehorse Away”] Unfortunately, while that album has later become regarded as one of the classics of its genre, at the time it was absolutely slated by the music press. The review in Melody Maker, for example, read in part “Some of Richard Thompson’s ideas sound great – which is really the saving grace of this album, because most of the music doesn’t. The tragedy is that Thompson’s “British rock music” is such an unconvincing concoction… Even the songs that do integrate rock and traditional styles of electric guitar rhythms and accordion and fiddle decoration – and also include explicit, meaningful lyrics are marred by bottle-up vocals, uninspiring guitar phrases and a general lack of conviction in performance.” Henry the Human Fly was released in the US by Warners, who had a reciprocal licensing deal with Island (and for whom Joe Boyd was working at the time, which may have had something to do with that) but according to Thompson it became the lowest-selling record that Warners ever put out (though I’ve also seen that claim made about Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, another album that has later been rediscovered). Thompson was hugely depressed by this reaction, and blamed his own singing. Happily, though, by this point he and Linda had become a couple — they would marry in 1972 — and they started playing folk clubs as a duo, or sometimes in a trio with Simon Nicol. Thompson was also playing with Sandy Denny’s backing band at this point, and played on every track on her second solo album, Sandy. This album was meant to be her big commercial breakthrough, with a glamorous cover photo by David Bailey, and with a more American sound, including steel guitar by Sneaky Pete Kleinow of the Flying Burrito Brothers (whose overdubs were supervised in LA by Joe Boyd): [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Tomorrow is a Long Time”] The album was given a big marketing push by Island, and “Listen, Listen” was made single of the week on the Radio 1 Breakfast show: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Listen, Listen”] But it did even worse than the previous album, sending her into something of a depression. Linda Thompson (as the former Linda Peters now was) said of this period “After the Sandy album, it got her down that her popularity didn't suddenly increase in leaps and bounds, and that was the start of her really fretting about the way her career was going. Things only escalated after that. People like me or Martin Carthy or Norma Waterson would think, ‘What are you on about? This is folk music.'” After Sandy’s release, Denny realised she could no longer afford to tour with a band, and so went back to performing just acoustically or on piano. The only new music to be released by either of these ex-members of Fairport Convention in 1973 was, oddly, on an album by the band they were no longer members of. After Thompson had left Fairport, the group had managed to release two whole albums with the same lineup — Swarbrick, Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks. But then Nicol and Mattacks had both quit the band to join the Albion Band with their former bandmate Ashley Hutchings, leading to a situation where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport plus their longtime drummer while Fairport Convention itself had no original members and was down to just Swarbrick and Pegg. Needing to fulfil their contracts, they then recruited three former members of Fotheringay — Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, Donahue on lead guitar, and Conway on drums. Conway was only a session player at the time, and Mattacks soon returned to the band, but Lucas and Donahue became full-time members. This new lineup of Fairport Convention released two albums in 1973, widely regarded as the group’s most inconsistent records, and on the title track of the first, “Rosie”, Richard Thompson guested on guitar, with Sandy Denny and Linda Thompson on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Rosie”] Neither Sandy Denny nor Richard Thompson released a record themselves in 1973, but in neither case was this through the artists’ choice. The record industry was changing in the early 1970s, as we’ll see in later episodes, and was less inclined to throw good money after bad in the pursuit of art. Island Records prided itself on being a home for great artists, but it was still a business, and needed to make money. We’ll talk about the OPEC oil crisis and its effect on the music industry much more when the podcast gets to 1973, but in brief, the production of oil by the US peaked in 1970 and started to decrease, leading to them importing more and more oil from the Middle East. As a result of this, oil prices rose slowly between 1971 and 1973, then very quickly towards the end of 1973 as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict that year. As vinyl is made of oil, suddenly producing records became much more expensive, and in this period a lot of labels decided not to release already-completed albums, until what they hoped would be a brief period of shortages passed. Both Denny and Thompson recorded albums at this point that got put to one side by Island. In the case of Thompson, it was the first album by Richard and Linda as a duo, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Today, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, and as one of the two masterpieces that bookended Richard and Linda’s career as a duo and their marriage. But when they recorded the album, full of Richard’s dark songs, it was the opposite of commercial. Even a song that’s more or less a boy-girl song, like “Has He Got a Friend for Me?” has lyrics like “He wouldn’t notice me passing by/I could be in the gutter, or dangling down from a tree” [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “Has He got a Friend For Me?”] While something like “The Calvary Cross” is oblique and haunted, and seems to cast a pall over the entire album: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “The Calvary Cross”] The album itself had been cheap to make — it had been recorded in only a week, with Thompson bringing in musicians he knew well and had worked with a lot previously to cut the tracks as-live in only a handful of takes — but Island didn’t think it was worth releasing. The record stayed on the shelf for nearly a year after recording, until Island got a new head of A&R, Richard Williams. Williams said of the album’s release “Muff Winwood had been doing A&R, but he was more interested in production… I had a conversation with Muff as soon as I got there, and he said there are a few hangovers, some outstanding problems. And one of them was Richard Thompson. He said there’s this album we gave him the money to make — which was I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight — and nobody’s very interested in it. Henry the Human Fly had been a bit of a commercial disappointment, and although Island was altruistic and independent and known for only recording good stuff, success was important… Either a record had to do well or somebody had to believe in it a lot. And it seemed as if neither of those things were true at that point of Richard.” Williams, though, was hugely impressed when he listened to the album. He compared Richard Thompson’s guitar playing to John Coltrane’s sax, and called Thompson “the folk poet of the rainy streets”, but also said “Linda brightened it, made it more commercial. and I thought that “Bright Lights” itself seemed a really commercial song.” The rest of the management at Island got caught up in Williams’ enthusiasm, and even decided to release the title track as a single: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Neither single nor album charted — indeed it would not be until 1991 that Richard Thompson would make a record that made the top forty in the UK — but the album got enough critical respect that Richard and Linda released two albums the year after. The first of these, Hokey Pokey, is a much more upbeat record than their previous one — Richard Thompson has called it “quite a music-hall influenced record” and cited the influence of George Formby and Harry Lauder. For once, the claim of music hall influence is audible in the music. Usually when a British musician is claimed to have a music ha