Podcasts about Hubert Humphrey

Live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the U.S. Senate floor. It began 39 years ago -- June 2nd, 1986 – Day One of C-SPAN2. Here's one of the first things heard that first day of Senate TV: "Today begins the video history book. No longer will the great debates in this Chamber be lost forever. What a thrill it would be to watch Henry Clay, John Calhoun, or Daniel Webster in action. Of course, there were no cameras or tape recorders rolling when those congressional giants spoke. But sadly, the sights and sounds of great debates featuring such legends as Everett Dirksen, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Howard Baker, men who lived during the age of radio and television, were also lost forever. Now, future generations can have the opportunity to watch history in the making, thanks to videotape. So there are a number of good things about to happen." That was Republican Majority Leader Bob Dole. In a few days: the 39th anniversary of live, gavel-to-gavel television coverage of the U.S. Senate floor... Bob Dole listed several lions of the Senate ... In this week's episode of C-SPAN's podcast "The Weekly" — we hear from other lions of the Senate — lions of the Senate press corps ... three top Senate observers pick their favorite moments from 39 years of the Senate on TV. Our three special guests: • Carl Hulse of the New York Times • Paul Kane of the Washington Post • Chad Pergram of Fox News Which favorite moments did they pick – and why? And what big moments from Senate history before there was TV do they wish they could have witnessed? Find out in "The Weekly." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this bonus episode of CASCADE OF HISTORY, Feliks Banel speaks with Ted Van Dyk, who had a long career in politics and journalism, including working for Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and who grew up in Whatcom County. He also had breakfast one day back in the 1950s with Edward R. Murrow. CASCADE OF HISTORY is broadcast LIVE most Sunday nights at 8pm Pacific Time via SPACE 101.1 FM in Seattle and gallantly streams everywhere via space101fm.org. The radio station is located at historic Magnuson Park - formerly Sand Point Naval Air Station - on the shores of Lake Washington in Seattle. Subscribe to the CASCADE OF HISTORY podcast via most podcast platforms.

Sign-up for my free 20-day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com--Series: Five Mere ChristiansDevotional: 2 of 5Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. (Luke 6:27)Fannie Lou Hamer had just given birth, but the only cry in the room was her own. Twice now, she had watched her body grow along with her hope, only for her labor pains to usher in death rather than life. And then there were the miscarriages—losses that came so early she never even felt the joy of kicks in her womb.Those losses—coupled with her extreme poverty and slave-like work as a sharecropper in Mississippi in the early 1900s—ensured that Hamer moved through her days in a fog. Until a doctor gave her hope: With surgery, the doctor assured her, all of her infertility problems could go away. Hamer eagerly signed off on the procedure. But after the surgery, Hamer discovered the unthinkable: The doctor had removed her uterus in a complete hysterectomy done without her knowledge or consent. Hamer's dreams of having her own children were now utterly and truly dead.Believe it or not, this was arguably not the most tragic thing to happen to Fannie Lou Hamer who would go on to become one of the most significant civil rights activists in the 20th century, largely responsible for giving African Americans the right to vote. But here's what's remarkable: Whether it was the surgeon, the police who beat her in prison, or the politicians who threatened her life, Hamer is never recorded as speaking a single word of hate against her perpetrators. One time when U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey proposed an egregiously unjust compromise, Hamer replied, “Senator Humphrey, I'm gonna pray to Jesus for you.” And then she walked out the door as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. followed behind her.Jesus said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” Hamer shows us an example of what that looks like and reminds us that we mere Christians glorify God by doing justice without hating the unjust.The world often tells us that doing justice requires that we also publicly shame and “cancel” the unjust. But God calls his people to a different way (see Micah 6:8 and Matthew 5:43-44). So, how can you and I practically do justice without hating the unjust today? First, take a risk to speak out against injustice. As God's ambassador in your workplace, you are called to speak out against injustices respectfully (see Ephesians 5:11). Second, refuse to take revenge against the unjust knowing that vengeance is God's alone (see Romans 12:19).Finally, pray for the unjust per Jesus's example knowing that you, like Christ, will be glorifying your Father in heaven as you do (see Luke 23:34).

Send us a textPat Leahy is a giant of the US Senate...the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Vermont...the third longest serving Senator in US history...the Senate President Pro Tem...Chair of Appropriations, Agriculture, and Judiciary...and 8 terms in the US Senate. In this conversation, we talk his roots in small town Vermont, overcoming the state's deep Republican roots in a 1974 upset, entering the Senate in his mid 30s, and his favorite stories, lessons, and proudest moments from nearly 50 years in the US Senate.IN THIS EPISODEGrowing up in small-town Montpelier with a love of reading...How his service as District Attorney propelled his successful run for Senate in 1974 as the first Democrat to win a Vermont Senate seat...Early days in the US Senate in his mid 30s...How he won 8 terms in what was initially a very Republican state...The interesting story behind his 1998 re-election, his first true landslide...The most tense and high-stakes moments during his career in the Senate...Passing anti-land mine legislation...A day in the life of the Senate President Pro Tem...How trust among Senators one late night saved lives during a mid 80s Capitol bombing...Senator Leahy receives a tip he received from an "anonymous jogger" during the Iraq War debate...When Vice President Dick Cheney swore at Senator Leahy on the Senate floor...The Senator who gave the best Senate floor speeches...The most effective Majority Leader he saw...When his colleague Jim Jeffords switched parties and changed control of the Senate...His views on the rise of Bernie Sanders as a national figure...Why he didn't run for re-election in 2022...How he received the Order of the British Empire designation...His connection to the Batman character and appearing in several Batman films...His status as the Senate's leading Grateful Dead Head...The status of his wife Marcelle as his political secret weapon...AND anatomical impossibilities, Howard Baker, James Baker, Leonid Brezhnev, Dale Bumpers, George H.W. Bush, Robert Byrd, George Clooney, DC Comics, designated survivors, Charles Dickens, John Durkin, Jim Eastland, Jerry Ford, Jerry Garcia, John Glenn, holy water, Hubert Humphrey, John F. Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Heath Ledger, Mike Mansfield, Miranda Rights, Mitch McConnell, Bobby Muller, Christopher Nolan, Sam Nunn, Barack Obama, organic farming, Colin Powell, Quebec City, Hugh Scott, secret weapons, Alan Simpson, Bob Stafford, Ted Stevens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Fred Tuttle, Mark Twain, Vincent Van Gogh, Wayne Industries...& more!

Our ongoing series, The Forgotten Seconds, explores the lives and legacies of vice presidents who never reached the presidency. These individuals played crucial roles in shaping American history, yet their contributions are often overshadowed by those who held the highest office. Today, we continue with Hubert Humphrey, a man whose influence on civil rights, social policy, and American politics remains significant despite his near-miss at the presidency. Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr., the 38th vice president of the United States, left an indelible mark on American politics. He was a champion of civil rights, a key figure in the Democratic Party, and a man whose career was shaped by both triumph and controversy. His life, however, did not begin in the corridors of power but in the small town of Wallace, South Dakota, where his family had deep roots in the American Midwest..., Podcast Notes: https://ancestralfindings.com/hubert-humphrey-the-forgotten-seconds/  Genealogy Clips Podcast: https://ancestralfindings.com/podcast Free Genealogy Lookups: https://ancestralfindings.com/lookups Genealogy Giveaway: https://ancestralfindings.com/giveaway Genealogy eBooks: https://ancestralfindings.com/ebooks Follow Along: https://www.facebook.com/AncestralFindings https://www.instagram.com/ancestralfindings https://www.youtube.com/ancestralfindings Support Ancestral Findings: https://ancestralfindings.com/support https://ancestralfindings.com/paypal  #Genealogy #AncestralFindings #GenealogyClips

In this insightful episode of Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael, political economist Dr. Jack Rasmus joins J.G. to dissect the reasons behind Donald Trump's unexpected victory over Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The discussion is centered around Dr. Rasmus's article, "Why Trump Won—And Some Consequences," which explores the economic and political factors that led to Trump's victory in both the electoral college and the popular vote. Rasmus presents an in-depth analysis of the socio-economic discontent that propelled Trump's victory, offering a fresh perspective on the frustrations and disillusionment affecting American voters today. Dr. Rasmus argues that economic policies affecting the middle and working classes, alongside concerns over inflation, job stability, healthcare, and childcare costs played a pivotal role in the 2024 election. Dr. Rasmus addresses the now already common retort the economy could not have driven the outcome of the 2024 election due to the stock market booming, low unemployment rates, lowering of inflation, and a good GDP. He argues that media accounts of the economy have often cherry-picked statistics and do not necessarily deal with the economic well-being of average Americans. He offers statistic in support of his claims and makes the case for why many Americans felt their economic well-being was under siege. A key aspect of this discussion centers on why Kamala Harris lost, with Dr. Rasmus exploring what he terms “The Humphrey Effect.” Similar to Hubert Humphrey's inability to distance himself from Lyndon B. Johnson's policies during the 1968 election, Harris struggled to differentiate her platform from President Joe Biden's. Rasmus argues that voters saw Harris as an extension of Biden's policies rather than a fresh alternative, which weakened her appeal. Additionally, Dr. Rasmus contends that Harris's focus on issues like the January 6th insurrection and identity politics, though central to her campaign, did not resonate with a wide swath of voters. Many Americans, rightly or wrongly, felt these issues were disconnected from their immediate economic concerns. Instead, inflation, job instability, and healthcare affordability were front and center for voters struggling to make ends meet. According to Rasmus, Harris's perceived failure to address these economic pocketbook issues head-on left many working-class and middle-class voters disillusioned and created an opening for Trump to campaign on issues like no-taxes on tipping, etc. In a second Trump presidency, Dr. Rasmus expects sweeping economic and social policy changes that will impact Americans across various income brackets. Trump's approach will likely center on increased tariffs, which, while meant to protect American industries, may raise consumer prices, impacting the pocketbooks of average Americans—though not as severely as some Democrats predict. Rasmus argues that while consumer goods prices will increase under the tariff agenda, he is more immediately concerned about inflationary pressures in the service sector as well looming recession in said sector, which could have far-reaching economic consequences. Rasmus anticipates that Trump will implement further austerity measures, reducing social spending on programs. In this regard we discuss what to expect out of Trump when it comes to social security. Rasmus also discusses the likely tax cuts for the wealthy that can be expected under this second Trump administration. Additionally, we delve into what Trump's second term may entail for climate change, tensions with China, foreign policy in the Middle East, and much, much more.

The Democratic National Convention is in Chicago, and the incumbent president, Lyndon B. Johnson, has pulled out of the race. Anti-war protestors are flooding the streets of the city, and Johnson continues to press on with the war in Vietnam. Bobby Kennedy's assassination has turned the Democratic candidacy contest into a two-horse race between Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy. And while they're battling inside the convention for delegates, the real fight is taking place on the streets. Dope-smoking youth activists known as the “Yippies” have called for a protest against the Vietnam War, and their threats made in the name of the ‘politics of play' have been taken seriously by Chicago police, who react with brutal force. Flowers and poems meet truncheons and guns. As DNC votes are being counted, images of these confrontations are broadcasted on newsreels across the nation. Join Tom and Dominic to discuss a Democratic National Convention that saw Chicago descend into violence and chaos. Listen as they explore what led to one of the most anarchic political conventions, and how it impacted a divided America. _______ *The Rest Is History LIVE in the U.S.A.* If you live in the States, we've got some great news: Tom and Dominic will be performing throughout America in November, with shows in San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston and New York. Tickets on sale now at TheRestIsHistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It this special episode of the Rapid City Public Library Podcast, in honor of Election Day, Adrian Ludens revisits the Presidential campaign (and subsequent accomplishments) of South Dakota native George McGovern, and the political accomplishments and Vice Presidency of South Dakota native Hubert Humphrey.Recorded and edited by Adrian Ludens. Music from Arthur Pryor's Band (selections from A Day at West Point) in the public domain.

EI's Angus Reilly is joined by Luke A. Nichter, author of The Year that Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968, to discuss Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, and the battle for the future of America in a year that offers notable parallels to the election of 2024. Engelsberg Ideas is funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. EI Talks... is produced by Alastair Benn. The sound engineer is Gareth Jones. Image: Television presenter Frank Reynolds covering the 1968 election. Credit: Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo 

Ralph welcomes Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. They'll discuss the crucial role that the Postal Service plays in our democratic process, and how organized labor is impacting this year's elections. Then, Ralph is joined by journalist James Bamford to talk about his latest article in The Nation: "Israel Is Killing Whole Families in Gaza—With Weapons Made in America." Plus, how candidates' positions on Israel may win or lose them voters on Election Day. Mark Dimondstein is the President of the American Postal Workers Union. Since 2013 when Mr. Dimondstein was elected, he has turned the APWU into a fighting activist organization. Mr. Dimondstein advocates for the rights of postal workers as well as the right of the American people to a vibrant public Postal Service. The American Postal Workers Union supports Medicare for All and belongs to the Labor Campaign for Single Payer. The APWU believes in paying a living wage and providing benefits to all workers.We have about 200,000 members. And we definitely represent people throughout the entire political spectrum and throughout the whole country. So we represent people from right to left, left to right, everybody in between, and we represent people from the most rural outpost in the country to the urban centers. So first, the way we handle it is we don't try to tell people how they should think and how they should vote. We're all adults, we vote for what we think is in our best interest as workers, as family members, as community members, as citizens and so on. So we don't try to dictate to our members how to vote, but we do have a responsibility to lead…So I think leadership has a responsibility to educate our members, to activate our members, and to get our members to be involved in the political electoral process.Mark DimondsteinI'm a proud Jewish American. Jewish Americans should be the first to say “never again” when it comes to genocide, when it comes to ethnic cleansing, and when it comes to war crime. And we're not going to solve all the problems of the Middle East and the complicated history of the Middle East on this radio show. But let's at least be clear that the crimes committed against the Jewish people should never be allowed to be committed against anybody else—no matter who's doing it. Mark DimondsteinKamala Harris sent her two closest advisors to Wall Street about a month ago to get advice on her economic and tax policies and not connecting with the Citizens for Tax Justice, which has a progressive proposal. She doesn't connect with citizen groups. She goes around campaigning with Liz Cheney…It's quite amazing that the most popular incumbent elected politician in America today is Bernie Sanders…And she's ignoring Bernie Sanders and going into one state after another with people like Liz Cheney. Ralph NaderWhatever happens next Tuesday, our work isn't done. The divisions that have been created by white supremacy, by this anti-immigrant fervor out here—these things aren't going away. Issues that divide workers instead of unite workers—the growing bigotry, the attack on women's rights to reproductive freedom and health, the attacks on voting rights—these are issues that are going to be here with whoever wins the election. So the working people and the trade union movement have a lot of work to do, whatever the outcome.Mark DimondsteinJames Bamford is a best-selling author, Emmy-nominated filmmaker for PBS, award-winning investigative producer for ABC News, and winner of the National Magazine Award for Reporting for his writing in Rolling Stone on the war in Iraq. He is the author of several books, including Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence.The reason I wrote [my article] was because people read about the bombs blowing up schools and refugee camps and hospitals and killing scores and scores, hundreds, thousands of people… But few people realized that it's middle America, largely, that's building the bombs, sending the bombs, and the American taxpayers are paying for the bombs. All the Israelis are doing is dropping the bombs.James BamfordI think the only way is international pressure. I wrote about this in my last book, that the only thing that you can ever do to affect Israel is to have an international boycott sanction. We have to treat it like the worst country on earth. That's what happened with South Africa. That's what stopped apartheid—once they couldn't buy anything.James BamfordRECOGNIZING TIME-PRESSURED HEADLINE WRITERS' CONTRIBUTIONS TO READERSIn Case You Haven't Heard with Francesco DeSantisNews 10/30/241. A crisis is unfolding at the Washington Post following billionaire owner Jeff Bezos' decision to block the paper's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. In a statement signed by 21 opinion columnists at the Post, they write “The…decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake.” Signatories include Karen Attiah, E.J. Dionne, and Dana Milbank among many others. Since the publication of that statement, two opinion writers have resigned: David Hoffman, who has written for the Post since 1982 and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize just last week, as well as technology columnist Molly Roberts. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan also resigned his position at the paper. This from Semafor. Responding to the outcry, Bezos himself published an op-ed in the paper arguing that Americans see the news media as too politicized already and an official endorsement would merely make matters worse. As of October 29th, over 200,000 Washington Post readers, nearly 10% of the total readership, have canceled their subscriptions, per NPR.2. Like the Washington Post, the LA Times also opted not to endorse Kamala Harris. Similar backlash followed, with the New York Times reporting “Thousands of readers canceled subscriptions. Three members of the editorial board resigned. Nearly 200 staff members signed an open letter to management demanding an explanation, complaining that the decision this close to the election had undermined the news organization's trust with readers.” Nika Soon-Shiong, the activist daughter of LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, publicly stated “Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process…As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.” Per Vanity Fair however, her father disputes this narrative, saying “Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion…She does not have any role at The L.A. Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board, as has been made clear many times.” The murkiness of these circumstances has left readers with many questions that likely will not be answered until well after the election.3. According to Slate, “Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters that he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [last] Saturday…According to Trump, the Israeli leader said he disregarded President Joe Biden's warning to keep troops out of Rafah in southern Gaza.” In other words, Trump is conducting foreign policy independent of the sitting president, a flagrant violation of the Logan Act and the Constitution itself. This collusion between Trump and Netanyahu is reminiscent of the Nixon campaign's collusion with the South Vietnamese to prolong the Vietnam War and thereby undermine the Hubert Humphrey campaign and similarly, the Reagan campaign's collusion with Iran to prolong the hostage crisis. Yet again however, it seems unlikely that there will be any consequences to this open criminal activity.4. Reuters reports that on Monday, Israel formally banned the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency from operating inside Israel. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, who has worked extensively in Gaza since this campaign of slaughter began is quoted saying “If UNRWA is unable to operate, it'll likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza…So a decision such as this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children.” Reuters reports “over 13,300 children whose identities have been confirmed have been killed” in Gaza, while “Many more are believed to have died from diseases due to a collapsing medical system and food and water shortages.”5. The Muslim Mirror reports “In a landmark diplomatic move, Claudia Sheinbaum, the newly elected President of Mexico and the country's first Jewish head of state, officially recognized the State of Palestine.” Sheinbaum is quoted saying “Today, Mexico reaffirms its commitment to human rights and justice for all. Recognizing Palestine is a step toward peace and a signal to the international community that the Palestinian people deserve dignity, statehood, and the right to self-determination.” Neither the United States nor Canada recognize the State of Palestine.6. Over 20,000 workers have lost their lives working on Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman's Saudi Vision 2030 project, per the Hindustan Times. These workers, almost exclusively migrants, say they feel like “trapped slaves” and “beggars,” and allege widespread exploitation including “unpaid wages, illegal working hours and human rights abuses.” While rumors of the workers mistreatment has been circulating for years now, a new ITV documentary has brought more attention to the issue in recent days. The deeply suspect NEOM mega-city project alone, which is just one aspect of Saudi Vision 2030, is expected to cost at least $500 billion.7. BRICS, the loose multi-polar alliance of countries forming an alternative economic bloc to offset the United States, recently concluded their latest summit. Per Democracy Now!, the alliance voted to accept 13 more countries to the bloc, including Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. These were chosen from nearly three-dozen applicants. The outpouring of applications indicates a substantial appetite for an economic alternative to the United States throughout much of the world.8. On October 22nd, Congressman Ro Khanna re-introduced the Stop Wall Street Landlords Act, intended to curb the trend of private equity gobbling up housing stock across the country. The bill was first introduced in 2022, but the crisis has only grown since then. According to NOTUS, “In the first half of 2024, one in four ‘low-priced' homes were purchased by investors…In that same time, the percentage of Americans with a ‘high degree of concern' about housing costs rose to 69%.” If passed, this bill would raise taxes on home acquisitions by private equity firms that hold over $100 million in assets and “bar government-supported lenders from backing new mortgages for such purchases.” Both presidential campaigns have made housing a major issue on the trail, though only the Kamala Harris campaign has offered viable policy to address the crisis.9. E&E News reports Argus Insight, a conservative research firm is “collecting information that could be used to discredit officials involved in a multibillion-dollar climate lawsuit against fossil fuel companies.” The suit, filed last year in Oregon, accuses “Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, McKinsey…and hundreds of other defendants of being responsible for a dayslong heat wave in 2021 that killed 69 people. Multnomah County, home to Portland, is seeking more than $51 billion to pay for damages from the tragedy and to prepare for future disasters.” It is unknown why exactly Argus is seeking this information, but experts speculate that they are “using the same tactics that the tobacco industry deployed against its critics decades ago.” Benjamin Franta, an Oxford professor of climate litigation, is quoted saying “The strategy is to ‘try to figure out who is helping to inform these cases and…discredit them in some way…If someone loses on the facts, they try to shoot the messenger.'”10. Finally, the Popular Information Substack reports “On October 10…[Attorney General Merrick] Garland held a press conference and announced that TD Bank had illegally laundered over $670 million of drug money.” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo added “Time and again, unlike its peers, TD Bank prioritized growth and profit over complying with the law.” Surely such a clear, textbook case of corporate criminality would result in criminal charges…except Garland and the DOJ brought no charges, instead settling for a Deferred Prosecution Agreement and a fine of $3 billion. Only two low-level employees were hit with criminal charges, despite clear evidence showing the involvement of high-level executives. Senator Elizabeth Warren said of the deal “This settlement lets bad bank executives off the hook for allowing TD Bank to be used as a criminal slush fund.”This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Welcome to The Georgia Politics Podcast! On today's special episode, we are once again joined by two delegates from Georgia to the most famous party convention in American history. Parker Hudson and Taylor Branch, both graduates of Westminster Schools, were delegates from Georgia to the 1968 DNC supporting Sen. Eugene McCarthy because of his anti-Vietnam War position. The convention, held in Chicago, was a turning point in U.S. political history, marked by violent protests, police brutality, and deep divisions within the Democratic Party. The backdrop of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy fueled a highly charged atmosphere. Inside the convention, the Democratic Party was divided between establishment figures supporting Vice President Hubert Humphrey and more progressive, anti-war factions backing Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. Georgia played a distinct role in the convention as it represented the conservative, pro-segregation wing of the party. Governor Lester Maddox, a vocal segregationist, led the Georgia delegation. Maddox was known for his staunch opposition to the Civil Rights Movement and had famously closed his restaurant rather than comply with integration laws. He and other Southern Democrats, sometimes referred to as Dixiecrats, resisted the party's growing embrace of civil rights and its increasingly liberal stance on social issues. At the convention, the Georgia delegation stood with the conservative elements of the party, opposing the anti-war platform and pushing back against the civil rights advancements. Maddox and other Southern leaders were aligned with George Wallace's independent campaign, which sought to appeal to disaffected white voters in the South, capitalizing on fears of racial integration and opposition to federal intervention in state matters. This ideological split within the Democratic Party, exemplified by the clash between conservative Southern Democrats like Maddox and the more progressive northern and western factions, highlighted the fractures that would soon lead to a realignment in American politics. Georgia's role in the 1968 DNC represented the old guard of Southern Democrats, clinging to segregationist values in the face of a rapidly changing political landscape. You can connect with Parker Hudson online, here. You can buy We Asked, “Why Not?” online, here. You can connect with Taylor Branch online, here. You can buy the Pulitzer Prize winning Parting the Waters, here. Connect with The Georgia Politics Podcast on Twitter @gapoliticspod Preston Thompson on Twitter @pston3 Hans Appen on Twitter @hansappen Craig Kidd on Twitter @CraigKidd1 Proud member of the Appen Podcast Network. #gapol

Dr. Ravi Chaudhary, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Energy Installations and Environment, is a leader who has taught his team to, "Eat no for breakfast." He lives by a value he learned from his mother at an early age: "If you do your full duty, the rest will take care of itself."   SUMMARY In this edition of Long Blue Leadership, Dr. Chaudhary discusses his role in modernizing and reoptimizing Air Force installations to withstand kinetic, cyber, economic, and extreme weather threats. He emphasizes the importance of ruggedizing installations for the Great Power Competition. Dr. Chaudhary shares his background, including his upbringing in Minneapolis and his parents' immigrant journey, and highlights the values instilled in him. He also discusses his work on the implementation of microgrids and microreactors to enhance energy resilience at critical installations like Eielson Air Force Base.   5 QUOTES "If you do your full duty, the rest will take care of itself." - This quote from Dr. Chaudhary's mother reflects the importance of dedication and doing one's job well. "We eat no for breakfast." - This quote highlights Dr. Chaudhary's team's determination to not accept limitations and push boundaries. "Love what you do. Love our nation." - Dr. Chaudhary emphasizes the importance of passion and patriotism in leadership. "America is not about what goes on entirely in Washington. It's about neighbors. It's about what you do for your neighbors." - This quote reflects Dr. Chaudhary's belief in the power of community and service. "Get out of the way and let them in." - Dr. Chaudhary's advice on enabling the next generation of leaders to excel.   SHARE THIS EPISODE LINKEDIN  |  TWITTER  |  FACEBOOK   CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction to Dr. Ravi Chaudhary and His Role 03:07 The Importance of Air Force Installations 06:08 Dr. Chaudhary's Early Life and Family Background 09:03 Lessons from Family: Service and Community 11:52 Reflections on the Air Force Academy Experience 14:54 Leadership Lessons from Cadet Days 18:01 The Role of Innovation in the Air Force 20:48 Strategic Imperatives for Future Operations 23:59 Optimism for the Future of the Air Force Academy 25:07 A Lifelong Dream: Becoming a Pilot 27:31 Launching Innovations: The GPS Program 28:36 Inspiring the Next Generation of Pilots 30:14 Adapting to Modern Challenges in Aviation 32:40 Navigating Change: The Evolution of Standards 34:57 Learning from Failure: A Personal Journey 35:42 The Role of the Assistant Secretary 38:55 Preparing for Great Power Competition 41:09 Innovative Energy Solutions for the Future 44:58 Leadership Lessons and Final Thoughts   5 KEYS TO LEADERSHIP Embrace failures as opportunities for growth. Dr. Chaudhary shared how his failures, like failing a check ride, ultimately helped him grow as a leader. Keep moving forward, even in the face of adversity. Dr. Chaudhary emphasized the importance of keeping your "legs moving" and not giving up when faced with challenges. Leverage the bonds formed with your team. Dr. Chaudhary highlighted how the bonds he formed with his classmates at the Academy carried over into his missions, demonstrating the power of camaraderie. Empower and enable the next generation. Dr. Chaudhary expressed optimism about the capabilities of the current cadets and emphasized the need to get out of their way and let them excel. Maintain a service-oriented, patriotic mindset. Dr. Chaudhary's passion for serving his country and community was evident throughout the interview, underscoring the importance of this mindset in effective leadership.   ABOUT DR. CHAUDHARY '93 BIO Dr. Ravi I. Chaudhary is the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Energy, Installations, and Environment, Department of the Air Force, the Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia. Dr. Chaudhary is responsible for the formulation, review and execution of plans, policies, programs, and budgets to meet Air Force energy, installations, environment, safety, and occupational health objectives. Dr. Chaudhary most recently served as the acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy. Prior to this role, he served as the Director of Advanced Programs and Innovation, Office of Commercial Space Transportation, at the Federal Aviation Administration. He provided technical leadership and oversight for the commercial space industry, to include research and development activities to support Department of Transportation and White House National Space Council initiatives. Prior to this role, he served as Executive Director, Regions and Center Operations, at the FAA. In this role, he was responsible for leadership, integration and execution of aviation operations in nine regions nationwide. Dr. Chaudhary served as second in command to the Deputy Assistant Administrator and was responsible for providing Department of Transportation and FAA-wide services in the areas of operations, safety, policy, congressional outreach and emergency readiness for the National Aerospace System. Dr. Chaudhary commissioned in the Air Force in 1993 upon graduation from the United States Air Force Academy. He completed 21 years of service in a variety of command, flying, engineering and senior staff assignments in the Air Force. As a C-17 pilot, he conducted global flight operations, including numerous combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as a ground deployment as Director of the Personnel Recovery Center, Multi-National Corps, Iraq. As a flight test engineer, he was responsible for flight certification of military avionics and hardware for Air Force modernization programs supporting flight safety and mishap prevention. Earlier in his career, he supported space launch operations for the Global Positioning System and led third stage and flight safety activities to ensure full-operational capability of the first GPS constellation. As a systems engineer, he supported NASA's International Space Station protection activities to ensure the safety of NASA Astronauts. Dr. Chaudhary is a DoD Level III Acquisition Officer and has published numerous articles in future strategy, aircraft design, business transformation and space operations.  - Bio Copy Credit to AF.MIL   CONNECT WITH DR. CHAUDHARY LINKEDIN  |   INSTAGRAM  |  TWITTER     ABOUT LONG BLUE LEADERSHIP Long Blue Leadership drops every two weeks on Tuesdays and is available on Apple Podcasts, TuneIn + Alexa, Spotify and all your favorite podcast platforms. Search @AirForceGrads on your favorite social channels for Long Blue Leadership news and updates!          FULL TRANSCRIPT OUR SPEAKERS Guest, The Honorable Dr. Ravi I. Chaudhary '93  |  Host, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz '99   Naviere Walkewicz 00:00 My guest today is the assistant secretary of the Air Force for energy installations and environment, the Honorable Dr. Ravi Chaudhary USAFA, Class of '93. Against the backdrop of Great Power Competition, Dr. Chaudhry leads the modernization and reoptimization of the Air Force to ruggedize our installations across the globe against what he describes as kinetic threats, as well as non-kinetic cyber, economic and extreme weather threats. He has served as acting deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for energy; the director of advanced programs and innovation, Office of Commercial Space Transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration; and he has led in the commercial space industry research and development in the support of the Department of Transportation and the White House, National Space Council. We'll talk with Dr. Chaudhry about his life before, during and after the Academy. We'll discuss his role, modernizing and re-optimizing initiatives and strategies for the Air Force. We'll touch on leading through new and changing threats and making decisions with climate in mind, and we'll discuss Dr. Chaudhary's work with the secretary of the Air Force and leadership at the base, command and warfighter levels. Finally, we'll ask Dr. Chaudhary to share advice for developing and advanced leaders. Dr. Chaudhary, welcome to Long Blue Leadership. We're so glad to have you.   Dr. Chaudhary 01:18 Navier, thank you so much. Thank you for that way too kind of an introduction, and I only have one regret. On this weekend, did you have to mention that I was in the Navy for a little while? You just about blew me away. I know you've got some white clear liquid here. I'm just about ready to find out what the clear liquid is.   Naviere Walkewicz Cheers.   Dr. Chaudhary 01:40 Off we go, and we'll let our audience speculate, and depending on how it goes, we'll critique ourselves. Just an honor to be here, and congrats to you on your career of service in the Air Force.   Naviere Walkewicz Thank you so much. This is truly a pleasure. And I think what we love about Long Blue Leadership is it's really about our listeners getting to know you. And we have so many different listeners that are really excited. So let's start with the hat. I've noticed we've got a hat on right here. “Air Force Installations: Best in the World.” Let's talk about it.   Dr. Chaudhary Yeah, let's talk about that. Because we do have the best installations in the world. Our installations are power projection platforms. Every Air Force installation has a mission that begins and terminates with it. If you go all the way back in our history, Gen. Hap Arnold had this to say about our installations: “Air bases are the determining factor in air operations.” Think about that. Think about why we need to make sure that our installations are ready to go, and why we invest in them as an Air Force. It's because you can't get the jets out of town unless they have a good runway that works, unless they are hardened and ready to absorb the types of blows that have come to us in the past. And I'm telling you right now that we've got to be ready for this future, in a decade of consequence in Great Power Competition. We've got to focus on ruggedizing and ensuring that our installations are as survivable as they ever have been.   Naviere Walkewicz Absolutely. Well, I can say that that is certainly true, having been at bases where we've seen some challenges, it does halt and sometimes stop operations. So yeah, you're right. Yeah. So it's incredible the work you're doing, and we're going to talk about that today. But before we get there, can we rewind the clock a little bit?   Dr. Chaudhary Please don't rewind it too far, but I have a feeling you will.   Naviere Walkewicz Just a little bit. Just enough to kind of get to know who Ravi was as a young boy. What were you like growing up? Tell us about your family and where you grew up.   Dr. Chaudhary That's cool. So, I was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I grew up there all my life. My parents came from India in 1960s and they always dreamed to do the unusual, it was the American Dream that brought them to this country. And they had kids, you know, and growing up as a South Asian American, you know, people in community would be like, “Hey, you know, why are you going to join the military? Why are you going to, you know, once you just be a doctor or engineer or lawyer or something like that?” Kind of fit the stereotype. But I always thought about it this way: If my parents would give up everything they wanted in their life, their language, their culture, everything to pursue their dreams, wouldn't they want that for their children as well? And so off I went to the Air Force Academy, and the values that my parents instilled in me rang true just about every single day. In fact, when I grow up, my mom would always tell me this. She'd say, “You know, if you do your full duty, the rest will take care of itself.”   Naviere Walkewicz That sounds very familiar to me.   Dr. Chaudhary And she would say, in the Sanskrit word for that — and my faith tradition is Hinduism — the Sanskrit word for that is “dharm.” If you follow your dharm, everything will take care of itself. And lo and behold, I'm getting choked up a little bit, because when I showed up and opened that Contrails and saw that quote, I knew that Mom and Dad had prepared me, had prepared me for the challenges that would come, not just the Academy, but everything from 9/11 to deploying to Iraq to raising a family and making sure they have everything they need to prosper. So, all that brought me to an institution that honestly brought out the flavor and gave me in the same opportunity that this country gave my father. So, it's just been a pinch-me career, and it's just an honor to be here with you today and with the entire AOG team talking about this.   Naviere Walkewicz 05:36 That's amazing. I mean, I, thinking about what you just said, that your parents came and they pursued a dream. What was that like in your household? What did that look like?   Dr. Chaudhary 05:45 Here's what it looked like. My dad — he actually came to this country with about $165, $80 of which went to his tuition. He was at University of Missouri, and then he eventually went to University of Minnesota. The rest he used to get a house and fill the fridge. And so, when he was looking for an opportunity to serve, he wanted to be in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and serve as a fed and so he didn't get that chance. So, what he did, he literally drove, put me and my brother and my mom in a car and drove to Washington. When he drove to Washington, he dropped us off at the Lincoln Memorial and walked up the stairs of the Capitol. Two senators from Minnesota, one was walking out, Sen. Walter Mondale. He said hello to him. He didn't know him from Adam. And then he went to the office of Hubert Humphrey and he sat down with him, and he told his story to Hubert Humphrey and Hubert Humphrey said, “This is what America is all about.” And he was kind enough to give my dad a shot in Minneapolis. And he spent his entire career, 25 years, as a federal inspector in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.   Naviere Walkewicz My goodness.   Dr. Chaudhary It's an incredible story. But you know what? It all came together about a year and a half ago when I was confirmed and during my swearing, and it was honored to have Sec. Kendall swear me in, but to have my dad walk up the front steps of the Pentagon with my mom and I. We go up the stairs, and I said, “Dad, would you turn around for a second?” And he turned around. I said, “You know, you can see the Lincoln Memorial and you can see the Capitol.” And I said, “Look what you've done in one generation.” That is the embodiment of the American dream. And as he was kind of — I'm getting choked up — he wiped the tears from his eyes. He realized that that that what this country has given to us is something that we've got to always think about giving back and giving back, and that's really what my career has always been about, giving back to the country that has given my family everything.   Naviere Walkewicz 07:59 That is amazing. Wow. I mean, I'm almost without words, because I can see what your dad has instilled in you, made possible, but instilled in you as a servant leader as well. I'm just… that's pretty impressive. So, tell me about your mom, because it sounds like she also instilled some pretty incredible traits in you and some beliefs in how to treat people. What did that look like in, her leadership in your life?   Dr. Chaudhary 08:26 What can I say about my mom? She's a pillar of the community back in Minneapolis. She runs a nonprofit called Seva. In Hindi, seva means service, to serve, serve your fellow citizens, serve your nation. And again, I told you about her, her enduring quote, “If you do your full duty, the rest will take care of itself.” So, in that nonprofit, she is actually bringing cultural-specific services, health services, to the Asian American community. One thing she did during Covid was incredible. She pulled together a meal team, and she served somewhere around 20,000 seniors. And it wasn't just Asian Americans, anybody in the Minneapolis community that was struggling, that couldn't get food, that was having a tough time. And then, as you know, after the George Floyd tragedy occurred, the town, the city went through a tough time, and there was an area right around one of the police stations where the riots were going on and everybody was fleeing when. When the community was fleeing, she was mobilizing her team to go in. They were going in and they were rescuing people from shelters to get them to a safe place. And two days later, she brought a team into the community that was still smoldering and set up meal stations to just give people sandwiches, bread, whatever — to just make everybody feel good and move forward, and that's what America is about. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the times and differences, but we realize that America is more than just Washington. America is about neighbors and neighbors caring for each other. So, where did I learn that? I learned that from my mom, but the Air Force Academy brought it out, and I applied that every single day, whether it was a mission launching GPSs, doing engineering — tough engineering problems, or flying missions into the CENTCOM AOR, where we had to bring crews to bear to execute incredible missions. And so, reflecting on that — boy, you're really tearing me up today…   Naviere Walkewicz No, not at all…   Dr. Chaudhary …because you're bringing this all out of my heart, and it's just an honor to be here and humbling to tell the story. But I know that there are thousands and thousands of grads out there that have just as inspiring stories, and that's why I love to come to AOG. That's why I like to spend time with our cadets today, which was just as incredible. I went down to Jacks Valley and got to see the assault course as well. Luckily, I didn't have too many flashbacks.   Naviere Walkewicz I was going to say, did you have your rubber ducky with you?   Dr. Chaudhary Yeah, I did not. They didn't push me through it, but the demo was incredible. And I know our secretary was equally impressed with the cadets and the caliber of students that are here, the caliber of our cadets, and how I'm so optimistic for the future of our Air Force and Space Force.   Naviere Walkewicz 11:33 Absolutely. And I can share, based off of what you shared about your mom and dad, there's no reason why you're [not] able to take on a job that almost seems impossible with the scope and breadth of what you're responsible for. So, I can't wait to get into that as well. Can we go to when you're at the Academy? I want to know more about you as a cadet, because as interesting as you are as an adult, what were you like as a cadet?   Dr. Chaudhary 11:54 There's a lot that I really shouldn't disclose. Okay, so we've got to be really, really careful. So, me and my classmates, we have this thing called “mutually assured destruction.” You know stories about me, I know stories about you. Just leave it there. But let me tell you, the Academy was just the honor of a lifetime. But you know what — going through it with your classmates is something. I was just having lunch with our cadets today. I was a grad of Delta Tau Deuce, and to spend time with them and tell them stories, and hear about their stories, about what Deuce is like these days, was absolutely just, I was just blown away with it. But yep, I was primarily in Deuce. I had the just pleasure of beaing a squadron commander and having peers that really care for each other, peers that I keep in touch with. To this very day, I have them up on text.   Naviere Walkewicz Oh, wow.   Dr. Chaudhary And we share with each other. We have challenges. We go through it together, but I will tell you one story about why your cadet story matters, and you don't realize it until the balloon goes up. When I graduated from pilot training, I graduated essentially the day after 9/11 and I was actually in the planning room when 9/11 happened, and within a few weeks — I did my check ride that day — within a few weeks, I was at Charleston Air Force Base, and my squadron commander had me look out the window and said, “We don't have time to mission qual you. We don't have enough pilots. We're going to marry you up with a crew to go down range.” And you know what he did? He married me up with two people, one who was my classmate from the Class of 1993,   Naviere Walkewicz Really?   Dr. Chaudhary Two was a member of my squadron from Deuce, and he was a new aircraft commander. We had an experienced first pilot, and I didn't know nothing from nothing. I was a brand-new co-pilot. And so, getting ready for that, for those missions, a new environment for me, required something that our squadron commander knew that if I put three Academy graduates together, the bond that they've had in their years was going to carry them through toughest conditions, in unknown conditions. And sure enough, we clicked and did well. But to anybody who's a current cadet and listening in and wondering, “Hey, is this bonding — is what's going on now, the time that we have together here in the Academy going to amount to anything?” I'm here to tell you, it does and through my own life experiences, and quite honestly, in a number of missions, we fly working it together as a team. The bonds we create as cadets carry over for decades.   Naviere Walkewicz 14:54 So maybe you can share some of those bonding moments at the Academy. You said you were a squadron commander. What were some of the lessons you learned from a leadership aspect, in leading your peers, but also while still trying to bond with them?   Dr. Chaudhary 15:08 Yeah, when you look back, sometimes you're separated by age and rank, right? You got age and you got rank and your peer groups kind of set you that way. At the Academy, it's completely different because your peers, as a senior, you're all peers and colleagues, and to take on a leadership role is what I would say is the toughest challenge of all. To lead a team of peers and colleagues can be challenging. And there's challenges that really kind of come with everything like that, but to me, you can't do it without collaboration, without consulting folks and being inclusive in how you give people a voice. Now the jury is out — I'm not going to judge whether I was successful or not. Probably not, you know? But I will say we did one thing: It was gonna be we were gonna be the athletic squadron of the year. We were a beast. In fact, we decided that we were gonna go for one thing: We were the athletic squadron. And so, we did.   Naviere Walkewicz That's impressive!   Dr. Chaudhary We kicked some serious buttt. So, back in the day, you do what was called a sweep. So, if you swept all your sports and intramurals that day, you would, the next day, you would get Mitch's Mountains. And so, the lore of Mitch's Mountains was incredible. And today, interestingly enough, we had what I would call Mitch's Mountain version 2.0 — probably half the calories and twice the caffeine. I don't know what it is. But I actually whipped out a picture of an old Mitch's Mountain. And I show them, they're like, it was really funny, because to see the look in their eyes and to see an original Mitch's Mountain, it was like, oh, you know they looked at and they're like, “That's what a Mitch's…” And they're like, “There's an Oreo cookie on top!” I'm like, for us, “Ok, this is a nice 2.0” and everything, like you gotta go back to…   Naviere Walkewicz 17:05 So, how many of those did you get? If you were actually the athletic squadron, you must have swept multiple days.   Dr. Chaudhary 17:12 You see the love handles on me right now? That was the one challenge. Because, you know, [you‘ve] got to stay in shape. But we kicked some serious butt; we would sweep all the time. I was actually on the water polo team…   Naviere Walkewicz 17:25 …we share that. I did not enjoy it. It sounds like you might.   Dr. Chaudhary 17:30 I don't know. So, I'm a decent swimmer. I'm pretty good. Grew up in Minnesota, tons of lakes. I could say I'm a decent swimmer, but I can tell you I am not a water polo player. So, what they used me for in water polo…   Naviere Walkewicz Were you the buouy?   Dr. Chaudhary I was the anti-buoy, because whoever was the good player, they'd say, “Go and put your arms over that one and get them underwater,” so that our fellow water polo teammate could go in and score. And so, probably one of my most beloved plaques in my life is my water polo plaque because we were Wing champs.   Naviere Walkewicz Oh, my goodness!   Dr. Chaudhary We ran the tables and were Wing champs, and that plaque still sits on my desk. It's one of my most beloved things. You know, my wife, she's getting ready to toss it. I'm like, “No, no, not that!”   Naviere Walkewicz Not the water polo plaque!   Dr. Chaudhary She's like, “Oh, what about this graduation plaque from the Academy?” You can get rid of that, but don't get rid of my water polo plaque. That is beloved. So anyways, I was asking cadets today, “What's Deuce like?” I'm like, “So are you guys a training squadron?”   Naviere Walkewicz What are they like?   Dr. Chaudhary They're like, “We're the standards squadron.” And I'm like, “Wow, that's impressive.” I'm like, “What about Mach One? Are they the training?” So, they're like, “Mach One. Nah, not really.” They're like, “We're No. 1 in SAMIs. We're No. 1 is…? I'm like, “Oh, wow, they still have SAMIs and stuff like that.” Have fun. Yeah, that was a haze for me. Triple threats were always a haze, yes, so I never liked that, because well…   Naviere Walkewicz 18:49 Maybe the Deuce team does now.   Dr. Chaudhary 18:53 Mach One, they loved it. I've got friends from Mach One. They're gonna kill me, but yeah, they love it. They're all into it. Cleaning their rooms and Deuce would be on the corner going, “Would Mach One please go to bed?” So anyway, sorry. But yeah, it was an interesting time, you know, talking with some of our cadets.   Naviere Walkewicz 19:26 I love these stories. So, were you this happy as a cadet?   Dr. Chaudhary 19:31 No, I was not a happy cadet. I was a surviving kid. I was trying to get through the next day. And honestly, to me, it was always a wonder to be there, and I was always grateful for being there to serve. I was in a tough major, aero major, and honestly, it didn't come right away to me. And so I was not one of those sterling cadets that just rocks the house and everything. I was on the Comm List for a good portion of the time, but the academics took some time for me. I spent a lot of time in the aero lab. And, you know, the cool thing is, …  I did projects and drag reduction, and we we tested these winglets on the tips of wings, and we did flow visualization. I had this professor. His name was Tom Yechout, and I was talking to some aero majors today. They're like, “You know, Tom Yechout?” And I'm like…   Naviere Walkewicz He's still there.   Dr. Chaudhary “He teaches controls here” I go, “Well, he taught me flight controls as well.” But he supervised me, and one time, I think, maybe at the last reunion, he brought me to the cabinet, and he opened up the cabinet and he showed me the hardware that we used for our project.   Naviere Walkewicz 20:39 From your class?   Dr. Chaudhary 20:43 Yeah.   Naviere Walkewicz That's amazing!   Dr. Chaudhary And here's why I'm telling you that: When in my interview with Sec. Kendall, he sat me down and he was talking about, “Hey, in your in your team, we're doing some drag reduction activities.” And he's like, “What do you know about blended wing body aircraft?” And it turns out, not only had I done some research on that, I had done a project at Staff College and to me, you know, my message to cadets out there who are working on a project who are wondering, “Hey, is this going to amount to anything? Does this matter?” I'm here to tell you that it does, because the type of work that goes on at this Academy is literally out of this world. We got folks who are working with SpaceX. I went down and that we're actually doing a project called the blended wing aircraft, which is like a big flying manta ray. It's going to reduce fuel consumption by roughly 30% to reduce fuel for fuel consumption across our Air Force and extend our range.   Naviere Walkewicz How are we going to do that?   Dr. Chaudhary Well, we're going to build a prototype in 2027. One of my sections is operational energy, and we have a team dedicated to reducing drag on aircraft, finding efficiencies. Why is this important? Well, it's because in Great Power Competition, we know that our adversaries are going to come after our logistics and fuel — our resources. And as a logistician, you know that. Our adversaries are targeting our installations, they're going to target our fuel resources. So, what's the best thing we can do? We can be as efficient as we can with our fuel and flying C-17s, is one thing you get to know real quick that if you land at an austere location, you're going to drain that fuel bladder almost instantly. And what does that mean? That means less sorties. That's less fire missions if you're flying Apache's out of there. That means less fuel for generators if you lose power. That means less ability to get your CAPs in the air, and we've got to embody that as a department and be ready for what that challenge holds for us. So getting efficient with our field, to me, isn't something that we're going to do because we're nice. We're going to do it because it's going to be an imperative. It's going to be a strategic imperative, and we've got to be ready for that. And so, we've been working hard at those things. The blended wing body aircraft is a long-term thing that it's been out there for a long time, but we've got to proof it. And so, it's really cool…   Naviere Walkewicz It's almost full-circle for you.   Dr. Chaudhary Yeah, it's incredible. And we just were at this, at the plant for Jet Zero. We did a visit there to spend some time with them and look at look at their production facility. And what do I see when I walk in the conference room? Five cadets sitting on the end of the table, learning, taking notes, interacting with the top systems engineers. And interestingly enough, one of those cadets had come and visited me and spent the summer — actually, three of them. She was part of a team of three that came and visited my organization and worked on the impacts of strategic temperature changes and how it will affect payloads for tanker aircraft. And so, they did this research, presented me this paper, and now here I am seeing them at industry being on the leading edge. And to me — let me tell you that filled me with so much optimism and excitement for the future, and most importantly, what we're producing here at the Air Force Academy, a top-notch engineering school that is regarded across the industry. So, a little turn to academics there, but big shout out to what we're doing across our academic programs. I just think we're on the right track, and we need to keep up the momentum.   Naviere Walkewicz 24:30 No, that's huge. I was actually going to ask you, how are you leveraging some of our cadets in some of the things you're doing? But it sounds like they're already doing it.   Dr. Chaudhary 24:40 Check! Done. They're rocking the house. Just, just leading the way. It's awesome.   Naviere Walkewicz 24:43 That's amazing. Yeah. So, let's talk about — and I'm really curious — so, after you graduate the Academy, did you know you always wanted to be a pilot, by the way? Did you know you wanted to fly?   Dr. Chaudhary 24:50 I can't remember a day where I wasn't drawing airplanes. And you're asking me about when I was younger. You know, “What kind of kid were you?” I was a kid who was drawing airplanes. OK, I was the kid with the airplane books. I was a kid who was checking out every single airplane book and library and learning about them and trying to understand them and wanting to know more. And so naturally, it was just — I can't think of a day where I didn't want to be an aerospace engineer, be a pilot. And you know, sometimes the ebb and flow of demand for the Air Force —there was a time of reduction in pilots for the for the Academy, and I didn't get that opportunity then and it was a bummer. But you know, if you do your full duty, the rest will take care of itself. And so, I landed at Los Angeles Air Force Base where we launched this program. I got to launch rocket programs. And you may have heard of this particular payload: It's called GPS.   Naviere Walkewicz 25:44 I might have heard of that one, yes…   Dr. Chaudhary 25:47 …and it was the first time we were doing it. And we're young lieutenants, and we're at Los Angeles Air Force Base, and I was getting the responsibility for third-stage engines and ordnance systems and some of the avionics, and my boss said, “We don't have time. We're launching rockets every single month. I need you to go out to this corporation called Thiokol, and I want you to buy that rocket.” And by the way, he said it in a way that was like, “Don't screw this up,” right?   Naviere Walkewicz The undertone was there.   Dr. Chaudhary Yeah, we've had that don't-screw-it-up moment. And so that was one of them. And so, the one thing that I remember is that our Academy demands a lot, and it demands a lot for a reason. Because leaders will be demanding a lot of brand new officers. Now the jury's out as to how well I did, but we had three we had three successful missions, and we delivered full operational capabilities for our department. And to me, I look back on that. I, believe it or not, still keep in touch with the captain who welcomed me, who brought me on the team and, in 2018, I got the incredible opportunity to let the last Delta II rocket go. And I brought my wife and my daughter with me, and that kind of brought the whole band back together. And it was cool to have kind of the old space cowboys and in the room again going, “Well, let's, let's let this rocket go for one last time.”   Naviere Walkewicz That is really cool.   Dr. Chaudhary And the best part of it was, after that rocket went and you felt the rumble — the rumble of a rocket, there's nothing like it in the world. When you feel the rumble go into your stomach — I leaned over my daughter. I go, “What do you think?” She said, “I am doing that.”   Naviere Walkewicz 27:34 I was just going to ask you, did it bleed over into your daughter?   Dr. Chaudhary 27:38 Now, she's a cadet at Georgia Tech. She just finished field training, and of course, like every good Academy graduate should do, buck the system. So, she bucked the system with her dad and said, “I'm gonna do ROTC and go to Georgia Tech. So, good luck this weekend against Navy. I'll kind of vote for you, but just want to let you know the Academy is a lot easier than Georgia Tech.” So, she and I jaw back and forth, but watching her grow has been really cool. And I got a chance to take her up and fly and get her ready for her career. She wants to be a pilot. And let me tell you, we got nothing on this next generation. They are ready for technology. They are ready for the leading edge, and we've just got to enable them. Honestly, we've got to get the hell out of the way and let them in. There's one situation, we had new avionics on the aircraft. I won't bore you with the details, but it allows you to deconflict from traffic. It's a GPS-based instrument, and I was kind of flying with her one time a few years ago, and I said, “All right, well, this is what is so, you know that little piece, you know 2,000 below you, positive means 2,000 above you. It's closing it…” She's like, “Dad, Dad, Dad, stop, stop!”   Naviere Walkewicz 28:58 She knew…   Dr. Chaudhary 29:00 She knew how to interact with that technology, and honestly, I didn't. I was learning how to interact with that technology. So, we've got to really make sure that we're blazing a path for our next generation, but at the same time, make sure that that we're not getting in their way. And I think sometimes we do that as grads. We're like, “I was like this when I was there…” You know? I was at Mitchell Hall today, and I saw the 0-96 up there and it's memorialized. And I walked by that thing…   Naviere Walkewicz 29:32 Did you scan the QR code to fill one out?   Dr. Chaudhary 29:33 Yeah, I did not do the QR code. I was like, that's too much for me. But when you look at it, you know, I thought, I'm like, that's probably where that thing ought to be right now. It's a great remembrance of why it's important, why standards are important, and then the example of how it paid off in combat conditions and saved a life was pretty important. But I'll be honest with you, we find other ways today with this next generation. I can remember flying one mission and we lost SATCOMMS with a particular field, and we were roughly maybe six hours out for Iraq in the combat zone, and we didn't know the status of the field. And one of the things you need to do is make sure the field's not under attack. So, before we did that, we're like, “Hey, how do we get our 30-minute… You know, it just wasn't happening. But you know what we're doing. We had brevity codes. And all along the line, all the C-17s that were lined up miles after miles going all the way back to Azerbaijan at 30,000 feet. We're all on. We're communicating. … We're using brevity code, so, we're not giving anything away. We're using our brevity code, and we're saying this is the status of the field. And we're relaying, we're literally relaying a half world away. That's a testament to our pilot corps, testament to duty. And so it's really in the spirit of that 0-96 there that we've adopted. So, when people say, “Oh, that tradition is going to ruin us, you know, we're going to lose standards.” I could tell you that, even though we got rid of that thing, that we're still an effective force. And I think we have to understand that a little more and as we kind of move through a period of change at USAFA — I was talking to our cadets about, “Hey, what do you think about the changes?” and, “Yeah, well, restrictions, but I understand on the importance.” I'm going to hearken back to 1991 or so, when the first Gulf War kicked off, and we were cadets when that thing kicked off, and almost instantly we moved into BDUs. We started wearing those every day. We started creating the warfighter mindset. We sealed off to make sure that we had good security. We canceled a lot of passes, and you  know what we did? We moved from a fourth-class system to a four-class system. Sound familiar? Sound familiar? That was after the war kicked off. Think about that. After the war kicked off. Our superintendent is trying to do it before the war kicks off, to make sure that we're ready, ready to fight the fight and get into it. So, I have a lot of respect for our superintendent and taking this step. I do agree that we've got to get execution right. Sometimes you get some growing pains with those things, but I think we've got to step back in the grad community and digest a little bit and get behind some of the changes that have been going on. And I was talking to some cadets last night, I go, “What do you think of this?” And they're like, “We understand it. It hurts a little bit.” Because the expectations … the environment that we're in has now changed. And you know, honestly, I'll shoot straight from the hip and say that sometimes it feels like the goal post is being moved on you, because you meet one standard, and then they move again. Yeah, you know, things get tough, but we're a resilient institution, and when you get down to the brass tacks of who we are as grads, the core of what we do and execute our mission will never go away. And we've just got to blaze a path for our next generation to be successful.   Naviere Walkewicz 33:24 Absolutely. Well, speaking of blaze a path — and I think some of our listeners want to hear sometimes, you know they have times when they fail at things in leadership. How do you grow from that? Can you share a time when you experience failure and what it looked like, to help inspire them through that.   Dr. Chaudhary 33:42 Yep. Well, worst day of my life was when I failed a check-ride. I failed a simulator check-ride in the C-17. And it hurt. It hurt bad. I had aspirations in my career. I was like, “What's this gonna mean for me?” But you know some really smart folks, and that's when you turn to people who you really go to for advice, and it's like, you know, “Ravi, there are those who have and those who will.” So honestly, I just needed a smack in the head. They're like, “Get over it, man. You know, whatever you failed check-ride. Go out there, clean that thing up and those ups and downs in a flying career occur.” I'm being 100% honest with you, my failures are stacked up right next to my successes. And so, I think, to me, the failures were the things that helped me grow, grow through things and sometimes you think, “OK, well, that failure was unfair. I got, you know, I got a raw deal out of that.” Maybe I did, maybe I didn't, but you keep moving forward. Keep taking one step after another. Now I'm not a football guy. I love football. Watch about I never played football, but I do know what running back coaches say. I think, I'm not sure, they say, “Above all, always keep your legs moving. Don't ever up when you're running. Keep your legs moving.” And so, to me, I've always taken that advice. I've given that advice to other people too, especially when they come to me with challenges.   Naviere Walkewicz 35:09 That's great advice. So maybe we can talk about your role now a little bit. And so, can you actually explain what you do? It might actually be shorter to say what you don't do, because when I look at the description, it's quite a bit. We have listeners that are parents and that maybe don't have a lot of military background and really understand. So, I think it's wonderful to share with the full community.   Dr. Chaudhary 35:31 Yeah, let me talk about the position. So, the job is one of those long titles. It's the assistant secretary for energy, installations and the environment. First thing first. I'm not a military member. I am a presidential appointee, so my job is as an appointee, a Senate-confirmed appointee. That means that you go through a hearing like you see in TV, and you get voted on, right? You get the vote. I was lucky enough to have after a period of being held, I had a bipartisan vote. And so that was pretty neat to have that. But my role specifically is to ensure that our installations are ready for the fight, for the future fight, and for current conditions. Things that I lose sleep over: Right now we're in a decade of consequence that our secretary and chief regularly say that decade of consequence includes great power competition in which China and Russia seek to shape the world order in ways that that work to their advantage, in autocratic manner, and so we've got to be ready for that, and that includes establishing an important deterrence. So, my job is to make sure installations are strong and present an approach of deterrence, and when deterrence failed, be ready to win. So, what does that mean for us? That means ensuring that our installations have power capabilities, that have strong runways, that have strong hangars, strong facilities, and included in which — families live on installations as well — to ensure we have top-notch housing. So, you'll see me reaching across all those areas, but importantly enough, making sure that those installations have the right power is critical. Our adversaries have declared their intent and have the capacity to go after our critical infrastructure, and that's the one thing that keeps me up at night: making sure that we have critical redundancies and opportunities to if somebody comes after our infrastructure tries to cut our power, we have redundant capabilities, that our control systems are cyber hardened. And you mentioned earlier, both kinetic and cyber threats. So roughly in the past two decades, as China has modernized our CENTCOM theater has really shaped an environment in which CONUS installations are under threat a little bit, but not entirely. We could be relatively confident that Grand Forks would be generally safe from ISIS from a major attack. In Great Power Competition, all of that goes out the window. Our adversaries, to include Russia and China, know how to go after critical infrastructure. They know how to employ cyber capabilities, and that's why we've got to make sure that we are pursuing cyber hardened energy control systems that protect you from those threats, and the ability to island from the local grid when we need to. So, here's one thing we're doing. I'm on a march over the next five years to bring 20 or so micro grids across our most critical installations. A micro grid — it's kind of like a power bar. You plug it in the wall and you can plug in renewable energy, you plug in wind, geo, you know, all kinds of things into that — solar — to build critical redundancies. So ultimately, building those redundancies allows you to harden your capabilities at the installation and micro-reactors give you the ability to manage and distribute power where you need it. Now we can also put in battery storage. So, battery storage allows you to — when the balloon goes up, boom, put in a firewall with the local community and get the jets out of town. Keep your employed in-place mission moving and build critical redundancies. Then once the jets are out of town, plug back in and share that power with a local community, because we know that our adversaries are going to be driving civil disruption to affect the efficiency of our installations as well, too. So that dynamic is really complex.   Naviere Walkewicz Wow, and the time is compressed.   Dr. Chaudhary And the time is compressed, so we won't have time to react as quickly. So, we've got to prepare for an all-new environment in our installations. And it goes right back to the Hap Arnold quote. We've got to make sure that they're ready to ensure our operations are effective. And I was recently at Eielson Air Force Base, and what we're doing at Eielson is really novel. We're going to put in a small, modular micro-reactor, a small baby nuclear reactor.   Naviere Walkewicz Is there a small version of that?   Dr. Chaudhary Yeah, there is a small version, but it hadn't been developed yet, and we decided that we're going to push on with this new capability and bring it to Eielson Air Force Base. The key is to now — back in the day, we used to do something, proof it military-wise, and then see if it's viable in the in the commercial market, right? Not anymore. We're going to do it all concurrently. So, we're going to pursue a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license. We've been engaging the local community. They love it, including tribal nations, who know that power advantages are going to be important for sharing in the community. And so that will be the first micronuclear reactor in any installation. We're looking to award in the spring or sooner, and then get this thing up and running in 2027. Why is this important at Eielson? And you're like, “Whoa, it's way up in Alaska.” Eielson is a critical entry point for the INDOPACOM theater.   Naviere Walkewicz I was gonna say, where it's located…   Dr. Chaudhary It's where the one of the highest concentrations of our 5th-gen fighter force is at. It's where we do air defense, and it's where our mobility forces will be moving from Fort Wainwright all the way down range. So that's a critical node, and there's a few more of those that we've got to really, really stay focused on. So, energy and, by the way, a happy Energy Action Month as well. This month is Energy Action Month where we're looking at how we can improve power consumption across our Air Force and be more efficient. And bringing these micro-grids online is going to be a crucial, crucial aspect of that.   Naviere Walkewicz 42:07 Well, something I've learned about you is that you're not afraid to push the envelope, push the speed, but do it, like you said, concurrently and to find some solutions. And I don't know that there's anyone else that could do it just like are you're doing it.   Dr. Chaudhary 42:19 It's not me, it's my team. I have an incredible team of folks that refuse to accept anything [less] than excellence in our department. In fact, we have a saying in our organization that, “We eat no for breakfast.” So, I dare you to tell us no and that we can't do something. One of our coolest announcements recently that we were told “no” to for roughly three years, was a new apartment complex at Edwards Air Force Base. So, some folks may not know this, but Edwards Air Force Space is very isolated, and it's located in the desert, and so it takes roughly 45 minutes to get to the base once you get through the gate. And so, isolation of our military members, especially our junior enlisted, has been around for roughly four decades or more. And when we said, “Hey, let's do a venture-backed business model that allows us to bring state of the art departments not in MILCOM timeline like right now, timeline…” And so, we just announced an all-new venture commercial apartment complex that we just broke ground on, and we're going to start building, hopefully done by 2026 and these are timelines that allow us to move the Air Force forward aggressively. Another thing that we're doing is, I just announced a $1.1 billion investment in our dormitories and CDCs. As you know, quality of life is so critical. Back to this: If we're going to be, say that we're the number, have the number one installations in the world, we've got to live up to it, and that means our families need that too, as well. So, you've heard a lot about the GAO reports, everything from mold to decrepit housing. We're going to fix that, we're going to get ahead of it, and we're going to stay ahead of it. And so that's why our secretary, in our most recent president's budget, announced this. All we need is a budget now, yeah, and so, so our secretary is pressing hard for that, and we know that once that budget is approved, we can get working on these things and start changing quality of life and start upping our game in our installations.   Naviere Walkewicz 44:23 Well, I'm gonna take one of those leadership nuggets as “just eat no for breakfast,” but we're gonna learn more about your final takeaway lessons. Before we do that with you. Dr Chaudhary, I wanna thank you for listening to Long Blue Leadership. The podcast publishes Tuesdays in both video and audio, and it's available on all your favorite podcast platforms, watch or listen to all episodes of Long Blue Leadership at longblueleadership.org. Dr Chaudhary, this has been incredible. If you might leave our listeners with one thing, what would you like to share with them when it comes to leadership, or maybe just some lessons or anything about you that you'd like to share?   Dr. Chaudhary 44:57 Love what you do. Love our nation. I love my country because it's given me and my family everything. And I want everybody to believe that, you know, sometimes we get in these periods where we feel divided right across the spectrum, and it doesn't matter what your affiliation is, sometimes you just feel that. But I want folks to remember that America is not about what goes on entirely in Washington. It's about neighbors. It's about what you do for your neighbors. And to me, that's our biggest strength as a nation. You know, many years ago, our forefathers felt that the values of equality, fair treatment and self-determination would be enough to topple an empire, and it is. We should believe that too, and I want everybody to know that. So, it's an honor to be here. But before I go, I want to say thank you for just an intriguing hour. It's an honor to be here, and I want to give you my personal challenge coin…   Naviere Walkewicz Oh my goodness…   Dr. Chaudhary …and say thank you so much. It embodies a lot of what we do, military family housing, airfields, of course our beautiful 5th-gen fighter aircraft and our wind power and capabilities as a symbol of what we've got to do for installation school.   Naviere Walkewicz 46:16 That is an honor, sir. Thank you. Thank you so much. Oh my goodness, thank you.   Dr. Chaudhary 46:20 It was a great hour, and just a pleasure to spend time with…   Naviere Walkewicz 46:26 It was my pleasure. There's so much I wanted ask you and I know we're limited on time … Is there anything we can do for you?   Dr. Chaudhary 46:36 Just keep doing what you do. Keep making sure that our grads out there have a voice, have a say, and can contribute to all this institution has to offer our nation. And so, you're doing it, and I can't thank you enough for it.   Naviere Walkewicz 46:49 Thank you very much.     KEYWORDS Air Force, Dr. Ravi Chaudhary, leadership, installations, energy, community service, innovation, military, great power competition, sustainability, Air Force Academy, leadership, aviation, innovation, energy solutions, GPS, pilot training, military standards, personal growth, resilience     MORE FROM DR. CHAUDHARY ON THE FOR THE ZOOMIES PODCAST with C1C ANDREW CORMIER '25     The Long Blue Line Podcast Network is presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association and Foundation      

It wasn't supposed to be close. Then new strategies, a speech and a surprising foreign policy event completely changed the election between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. Two vice presidents battled it out. One major poll said Nixon had a lead, the other said Humphrey. Both by only a couple of points. The candidates do their Telethons, and the nation votes. Who will win? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rocker Tommy James and comedian Pat Paulsen both had roles in the 1968 Presidential Election.  Richard Nixon won the election over Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace.  But here are two stories you may not have heard before, one from Tommy James, the other from Pat Paulsen.  More at  https://www.danmarkuswaxmuseum.com/ #TommyJamesandTheShondells #PatPaulsen #DanMarkusWaxMuseum #History #1968

This week, Jeremi and Zachary sit down with Samuel G. Freedman to talk about the often overlooked contributions of Hubert Humphrey to American history and civil rights. The discussion traces Humphrey’s rise from a small-town boy in South Dakota to a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement and U.S. politics. Despite not achieving the […]

Welcome to The Georgia Politics Podcast! On today's special episode, we are joined by two delegates from Georgia to the most famous party convention in American history. Parker Hudson and Taylor Branch, both graduates of Westminster Schools, were delegates from Georgia to the 1968 DNC supporting Sen. Eugene McCarthy because of his anti-Vietnam War position. The convention, held in Chicago, was a turning point in U.S. political history, marked by violent protests, police brutality, and deep divisions within the Democratic Party. The backdrop of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy fueled a highly charged atmosphere. Inside the convention, the Democratic Party was divided between establishment figures supporting Vice President Hubert Humphrey and more progressive, anti-war factions backing Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. Georgia played a distinct role in the convention as it represented the conservative, pro-segregation wing of the party. Governor Lester Maddox, a vocal segregationist, led the Georgia delegation. Maddox was known for his staunch opposition to the Civil Rights Movement and had famously closed his restaurant rather than comply with integration laws. He and other Southern Democrats, sometimes referred to as Dixiecrats, resisted the party's growing embrace of civil rights and its increasingly liberal stance on social issues. At the convention, the Georgia delegation stood with the conservative elements of the party, opposing the anti-war platform and pushing back against the civil rights advancements. Maddox and other Southern leaders were aligned with George Wallace's independent campaign, which sought to appeal to disaffected white voters in the South, capitalizing on fears of racial integration and opposition to federal intervention in state matters. This ideological split within the Democratic Party, exemplified by the clash between conservative Southern Democrats like Maddox and the more progressive northern and western factions, highlighted the fractures that would soon lead to a realignment in American politics. Georgia's role in the 1968 DNC represented the old guard of Southern Democrats, clinging to segregationist values in the face of a rapidly changing political landscape. You can connect with Parker Hudson online, here. You can buy We Asked, “Why Not?” online, here. You can connect with Taylor Branch online, here. You can buy the Pulitzer Prize winning Parting the Waters, here. Connect with The Georgia Politics Podcast on Twitter @gapoliticspod Preston Thompson on Twitter @pston3 Hans Appen on Twitter @hansappen Craig Kidd on Twitter @CraigKidd1 Proud member of the Appen Podcast Network. #gapol

September 16, 1968. Richard Nixon isn't exactly seen as a comedian. But tonight, he's trying to change that by appearing on Laugh-In, a TV show similar to Saturday Night Live. Nixon needs every vote he can get in the 1968 election, facing off against Hubert Humphrey, the vice president who became the Democratic nominee after Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the ticket. Nixon's Laugh-In appearance is a surprise, but soon, he'll pull off a move that no one would ever expect. How did back-channel dealings, unattended teleprompters, and Oval Office shouting matches turn this election into an all-time drama? And what do recently uncovered conversations reveal about how far Nixon was willing to go to secure victory? Special thanks to David Farber, professor of history at the University of Kansas and author of Chicago ‘68; Lawrence O'Donnell, host of The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC and author of Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics; and Luke Nichter, professor of history at Chapman University and author of The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968. To stay updated: historythisweekpodcast.com 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

Eric and Eliot host historian Luke Nichter in a special convention episode that looks back at the last time the Democrats hosted a national convention in Chicago: 1968. Nichter is the James H. Cavanaugh Chair in Presidential Studies and Professor of History at Chapman University and author of The Year that Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2023). The group discusses the dramatic circumstances of the 1968 election and the veracity of conventional wisdom about the consequential year. Additionally they cover the pall that the Vietnam War cast over the election and dissect the personal relationships between Johnson and Kennedy, Johnson and Eugene McCarthy, Johnson and his Vice President Hubert Humphrey and the wary, but respectful relationship between Nixon and Johnson. They cover the unique relationship that Billy Graham had with LBJ, Nixon, and Humphrey and probe the nuances of the Wallace phenomenon. They further discuss the difficulties that Humphrey had running as a sitting Vice President taking credit for the achievements of the Johnson Administration while at the same time distancing himself from an unpopular incumbent. The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968: https://a.co/d/9DO6moy Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

We're at the DNC Convention in Chicago this week, so it felt like the perfect moment to look back at the last time the convention was in Chicago - a truly historic year. There was no better person to discuss that with than James Traub, author of the biography of Hubert Humphrey that Sarah loved.Visit our website for complete show notes and episode resources. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Producer David Doll discusses the differences between this year's Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago and the contentious 1968 convention in the same city. Exceprts from Vice President Hubert Humphrey's acceptance speech show the stark difference between the Democratic Party of 1968 and the party of 2024. Listener call-in questions on the beginning and end of rights in America.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

James Traub, veteran journalist and the author of True Believer: Hubert Humphrey's Quest for a More Just America (Basic Books, 2024), talks about the legacy of Hubert Humphrey and the 1968 Democratic convention and election year versus this year's. 

In this week's episode of MissTrial, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Kathleen Rice, and Danya Perry bring their extensive female legal expertise to discuss the week's most pressing legal news. Kathleen, a former U.S. Representative attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, provides insights into the convention's proceedings, from nominations to party dynamics. She also draws a parallel between this upcoming DNC and the contested 1968 convention, where Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated. Danya then delves into Chapter 11 of Project 2025, examining how changes in education policy could impact support and funding for diverse students. Lastly, with multiple updates in the Trump Manhattan DA case, KFA breaks down all the motions, while Trump's primary strategy continues to be DELAY, DELAY, DELAY. OneSkin: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code MISSTRIAL at https://www.oneskin.co/ right now! #oneskinpod ZBiotics: Head to https://ZBiotics.com/MISSTRIAL and use the code MISSTRIAL at checkout for 15% off Step into the courtroom with MissTrial, a gripping new legal podcast where justice meets real-life drama, co-hosted by three accomplished women: Karen Friedman Agnifilo, the former Chief Assistant District Attorney at the Manhattan DA's office currently prosecuting Donald Trump; E. Danya Perry, former SDNY Federal Prosecutor and currently the formidable attorney representing Michael Cohen as he faced down Trump; and Kathleen Rice, the first ever woman elected as Nassau County District Attorney and former New York Congresswoman who was present during the January 6 Capitol attack. Together, they dissect high-profile cases, share behind-the-scenes insights, and bring their unparalleled experience to the most pressing legal issues of our time. Tune in for candid conversations, expert analysis, and a deep dive into the trials that shape our nation. Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coalition-of-the-sane/id1741663279

This episode is part of the ChicagoHamburg30 podcast series, celebrating the 30-Year Anniversary of the Chicago Hamburg Sister-City relationship. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago 1968 was one of the most important political events in the twentieth century. It was preceded by a number of earth-shaking crises, including the devastating Tet Offensive in Vietnam in January, President Lyndon B. Johnson's shocking announcement that he would not run for a second term in March, the assassination of beloved civil rights leader Martin Luther King in April, and then the assassination of popular presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in June. In the midst of this turmoil, all eyes turned to the DNC in Chicago in August. The cast of colorful characters includes the all-powerful Mayor of Chicago Richard J. Daley, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy, segregationist candidate Governor George Wallace, journalists Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, author Norman Mailer, activist leaders Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffmann, as well as hippies, yippies, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Mobe (the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam), the Poor People's Mule Train, and the Chicago Police. Our expert guests include Dr. Charlotte Lerg (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich) and Prof. emir. Gary Kissick, who attended the protests in Chicago in August of 1968.

Welcome to today's episode of our podcast, where we have the privilege of speaking with Sandy Cardin, a distinguished Jewish community leader and the founder and CEO of Global Jewry. Sandy's impressive journey is deeply rooted in a remarkable American Jewish heritage, marked by a family of influential leaders who have shaped both their community and the nation. Growing up in a household where prominent figures like Hubert Humphrey were frequent guests, Sandy's early exposure to leadership and advocacy laid the groundwork for his visionary work. Under his guidance, Global Jewry is becoming a powerful force dedicated to uniting Jewish organizations and voices across the globe. Join us as we delve into Sandy's inspiring story and explore his mission to foster greater unity and collaboration within the Jewish world.

This is the (lightly comedic) history podcast where we talk about the losers of presidential races. In this one, we're discussing ALL your favorite losers of the 6th period of American history (1968-2004), including:  Hubert HUMPHREY! George WALLACE! Robert F. KENNEDY! Eugene MCCARTHY! Nelson ROCKEFELLER! Charlene MITCHELL! George MCGOVERN! Shirley CHISHOLM! John SCHMITZ! Patsy MINK! Ed MUSKIE! Gerald FORD! Jerry BROWN! Jimmy CARTER! Teddy KENNEDY! John ANDERSON! Walter MONDALE! Gary HART! Jesse JACKSON! Michael DUKAKIS! George H.W. BUSH! Ross PEROT! Pat BUCHANAN! Bob DOLE! Al GORE! and Ralph NADER!!

In the second part of our episode, we take a look at LBJ's actions around the 1968 convention. While we can't answer the hypothetical of whether LBJ was willing to accept a draft at the convention, we can see that his actions clearly hurt Hubert Humphrey's chances of winning that fall, and suggest a stronger level of involvement. Trusted aides differ sharply on what LBJ was doing, and so do reporters and authors. Information came out in 2011 in the form of new tapes, but even that is subject to interpretation. One wild suggestion is to follow Robert Caro and something he said about Lyndon Johnson's family home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text MessageWhat if one election could forever change the landscape of American politics? Join us on this episode of Pivotal Tuesdays as we revisit the seismic 1968 U.S. presidential election, exploring a year fraught with turmoil and transformation. From the shocking assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy to the chaos at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, we dissect how these pivotal events shaped the narratives of candidates Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace. Nixon's call for law and order, Humphrey's struggle to break free from Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policies, and Wallace's segregationist stance all come under the microscope in our detailed analysis.This is our third installment of Pivotal Tuesdays Series.   We offer the conventional viewpoint which will be offered by Margaret O'Mara's Pivotal Tuesdays  book and the conservative and politically incorrect viewpoint will be offered from Steven Hayward's, Political Incorrect Guide to the Presidents, Part 2Don't miss this insightful episode packed with historical reflections and powerful moments.Key Points from the Episode:A complete run through of the turmoil of the whole year of 1968the results and legacy of the election itselfWe'll also reflect on the fractured state of the Democratic Party post-civil rights era, and how the Republicans capitalized on this division to pave the way for Ronald Reagan's 1980 landslide victory. A special highlight is our recounting of a poignant moment in the 1968 campaign when Bobby Kennedy delivered a heartfelt plea for unity to a shocked African-American audience in Indianapolis after learning of Martin Luther King's assassination. Through a balanced perspective, we shed light on why the 1968 election remains one of the most significant in American history and continues to influence our political landscape today. Other resources: Robert F. Kennedys speech in Indianapolis on the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Want to leave a review? Click here, and if we earned a five-star review from you **high five and knuckle bumps**, we appreciate it greatly, thank you so much!Because we care what you think about what we think and our website, please email David@teammojoacademy.com, or if you want to leave us a quick FREE, painless voicemail, we would appreciate it.

Ralph welcomes Jeff Cohen from the activist group “Roots Action,” whose “Step Aside Joe” campaign was years ahead of the curve urging Joe Biden – for many reasons – to keep his promise to be a one-term president. Plus, Harvey Rosenfield, founder of Consumer Watchdog, updates us on how the insurance industry in cahoots with governor Gavin Newsom wants to roll back the immensely successful Prop 103 that over the years has saved Californians billions of dollars in insurance premiums and why this struggle has implications for auto and homeowner insurance premiums across the country.Jeff Cohen is Co-Founder and Policy Director at RootsAction. He is a media critic, columnist, documentary filmmaker, and retired journalism professor who founded the media watch group FAIR—Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting— in 1986. For years, he was a regular pundit on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC discussing issues of media and politics, and he is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.Now, the challenge is reminiscent of Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Baines Johnson. And when Hubert Humphrey ran for President in 1968—he was LBJ's Vice President—he had to face the question, is he gonna stay loyal to Johnson's position on the Vietnam War…or is he going to be faithful to his own personal judgment, which was to find a way to get out of the Vietnam War. He chose the former, to be loyal—he didn't distance himself—and he lost the election.Ralph NaderYou have all of these constituencies that want a change in policy…The base of the party is for peace and social justice. Not for continual expansion of the military budget. People forget that the Democratic platform in 2020 called for a reduction in military spending, and Joe Biden has increased military spending every year.Jeff CohenWe've organized around that point that if we cut the military budget—which has grown year after year under Joe Biden—and we took that money and spent it on healthcare and housing and education, imagine what a society we would have. If we uplifted working-class people. And when I look at what Joe Biden ran in in 2020—and the promises that were made that have been broken—if he had kept even half of these promises the Democrats would be winning in a landslide.Jeff CohenHarvey Rosenfield is one of the nation's foremost consumer advocates and founder of the advocacy group, Consumer Watchdog. Among many other accomplishments, Mr. Rosenfield authored Proposition 103 that has saved consumers hundreds of millions of dollars in auto insurance premiums. He has also co-authored groundbreaking initiatives on HMO reform and utility rate deregulation and is the author of the book, Silent Violence, Silent Death: the Hidden Epidemic of Medical Malpractice.The insurance industry never stopped fighting [Prop 103]. Even though they lost at the ballot box, they constantly tried to relitigate that election. They couldn't believe that the voters would have the temerity to tell the insurance companies how to conduct business in the state of California.Harvey RosenfieldThis kind of economic blackmail—boycotting state after state in order to up their profits—has worked in the past for insurance companies and this is what they're doing now. And it's easy to predict that as their bottom line improves, as the stock market improves…they'll start coming back into these states with the promise of far higher rates, and things will calm down. But in the meantime, people will have been soaked for tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars nationwide.Harvey RosenfieldIn Case You Haven't Heard with Francesco DeSantis1. This week, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will address the United States Congress for an unprecedented fourth time. According to the Wall Street Journal, presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will skip Netanyahu's address, but will meet with the Prime Minister – who is wanted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court – and is expected to tell him that “it is time for the war to end” and to stop the “suffering of Palestinian civilians.” Harris is expected to take a new foreign policy approach, likely doing away with key Biden administration figures like Jake Sullivan, Anthony Blinken and Lloyd Austin. Jim Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, has stated that Harris has shown “far greater empathy for Palestinians than Biden.”2. With Harris taking center stage, the Intercept's Prem Thakker reports that Representative Rashida Tlaib has released a statement saying “I welcome the opportunity to engage Vice President Harris as my team and I work hard to inspire our Democratic base...They want to see a permanent ceasefire and an end to the funding of genocide in Gaza…They want us to fight against corporate greed that wants to eliminate unions and keep our families in the cycle of poverty. I am eager to speak to Vice President Harris about all of these issues and more.” Unlike other prominent progressive lawmakers – such as Bernie Sanders and AOC – Tlaib did not back Biden against the campaign to have him step aside as the Democratic nominee, and crucially, appears to be using whatever leverage she has to demand Harris push vigorously for a ceasefire in Gaza.3. The New York Times reports several major unions – including the The American Postal Workers Union, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, the Service Employees International Union, United Auto Workers, United Electrical Workers, and the National Education Association, the largest union in the U.S. – have sent a letter to the Biden Administration demanding they “halt all military aid to Israel.” This letter emphasizes that “it is clear that the Israeli government will continue …until it is forced to stop,” and that “Stopping US military aid to Israel is the quickest and most sure way to do so.” APWU President Mark Dimondstein said in a statement “Our unions are hearing the cries of humanity as this vicious war continues…Working people and our unions are horrified that our tax dollars are financing this ongoing tragedy.”4. Reuters reports that in talks hosted in China this week, “Palestinian rivals including Hamas and Fatah agreed to form a unity government.” Al Maydeen reports “The meetings saw the participation of 14 Palestinian factions, including Fatah, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” The so-called Beijing Declaration promises to “end the Palestinian national division [and] unify national efforts to confront…[Israeli] aggression and stop the genocide.” Implementation of this agreement will be monitored by Egypt, Algeria, China, and Russia.5. In the United Kingdom, “Five climate activists who planned a protest to cause gridlock and block traffic over four days on a major highway circling London were sentenced…to as much as five years in prison,” per ABC. Just Stop Oil, the group planning the protest, “called the prison terms ‘an obscene perversion of justice... for nothing more than attending a Zoom call.'” Protesting this decision, many prominent climate activists – ranging from Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn to Rowan Williams, Former Archbishop of Canterbury to musician Brian Eno – have signed a letter calling this “one of the greatest injustices in a British court in modern history…making a mockery of the right to a fair trial.” This letter also notes that these sentences are “higher than those given to many who commit serious sexual assault.” This letter also cites the United Nations special rapporteur on environmental defenders, who called this “a dark day for peaceful environmental protest, the protection of environmental defenders and indeed anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”6. In more climate related news, in New York City landlords are required to provide heat for tenants in the winter. Yet, there is no equivalent rule for landlords to provide air conditioning for tenants during the increasingly blistering summers. Now, Gothamist reports New York City Councilmember Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn plans to introduce a bill “requiring [landlords] to ensure tenants can cool their homes to at least 78 degrees when it is 82 degrees or warmer during the summer.” Restler is quoted saying “Heat is the number one climate or weather-related killer – not just nationally, but right here in New York City…We've already suffered three awful heat waves this summer. Can you imagine what it's like to try to manage it without air conditioning or any cooling device in your apartment?” This move comes amid other attempts to legislate heat protections as temperatures continue to rise.7. In an infuriating example of corporate greed, the Guardian reports that pharmaceutical giant Gilead is charging outrageous prices for a new drug described as “the closest we have ever been to an HIV vaccine.” According to this report, “Lenacapavir, sold as Sunlenca…currently costs $42,250 for the first year…[yet] In a study…experts calculated that the minimum price for mass production of a generic version…allowing for 30% profit, was $40 a year.” This report continues “Given by injection every six months, lenacapavir can prevent infection and suppress HIV in people who are already infected…In a trial, the drug offered 100% protection to more than 5,000 women in South Africa and Uganda.”8. In a welcome check against corporate greed, the Federal Communications Commission has “voted to end exorbitant phone and video call rates that have burdened incarcerated people and their families fordecades.” The new rules will cap the cost of a 15-minute phone call at 90 cents for large jails and $1.35 for small ones. As of now, a 15-minute phone call can cost as much as $11.35 in a large jail and over $12 in a small one. The new rules also bar added fees.9. In more positive regulatory news, the Federal Trade Commission has “issued orders to eight companies offering surveillance pricing products and services that incorporate data about consumers' characteristics and behavior. The orders seek information about the potential impact these practices have on privacy, competition, and consumer protection.” The companies in question include Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, and perennial corporate malefactor, McKinsey. Indicating the universality of this move, no more than 3 members of the FTC can be of the same party yet the Commission voted 5-0 to issue these orders.10. Finally, in some local news, NBC4 Washington reports that “Former President Donald Trump has threatened a federal takeover of Washington, D.C., if he wins a second term in November.” Leaving aside the ever-present bluster and bombast that accompany such Trump pronouncements, NBC4 makes the crucial point that because D.C. lacks statehood “The president can take over the police department and many of the powers the mayor and D.C. Council have.” In light of this credible threat, it is more critical than ever that Congress act on D.C. Statehood and end the unjust status quo of taxation without representation.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

In a seismic shift in American politics, Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election, following President Joe Biden's withdrawal. This unexpected turn of events has ignited both enthusiasm and apprehension among Democrats and political pundits alike.On today's episode of "Mid Atlantic," Roifield Brown navigates this political earthquake with an esteemed panel: Dave Smith from London, Logan Phillips from Washington DC, Zee Cohen Sanchez from Nevada, Mike Donaghue from Los Angeles, Corey Bernard from Manchester, and Denise Hamilton from Jamaica. The discussion spans Harris's impact on the Democratic campaign, her polling status, and strategic shifts needed by both parties.Polling Shifts and Historical Parallels Logan Phillips kicks off the conversation by analyzing polling data, noting that while Biden was trailing Trump by about two points, Harris's numbers mirror Biden's but lack historical reliability. Drawing a parallel to Hubert Humphrey's late surge in 1968, Phillips suggests the true impact of Harris's candidacy will become clearer in the coming weeks.Enthusiasm Among Key Demographics Denise Hamilton highlights Harris's traction among younger voters, people of color, and women. Hamilton, who was on a historic Zoom call with 40,000 women, shares the palpable excitement and organizational power rallying behind Harris. She emphasizes Harris's qualifications and the need for experienced leadership over personality-driven politics.Potential Republican Strategies Corey Bernard and others discuss the likely Republican pivot to focus on Harris's perceived weaknesses and a more aggressive campaign strategy, emphasizing issues like abortion and crime. However, the panel agrees that such attacks may backfire, especially given Harris's diverse support base and the fresh energy she brings compared to Biden.Foreign Policy and Progressive Stance Dave Smith and Zee Cohen Sanchez weigh in on Harris's foreign policy moves, such as skipping Netanyahu's address, which could appeal to younger, more progressive voters. They debate the balance Harris must strike between continuity and presenting a rejuvenated Democratic vision.Vice Presidential Choices The conversation rounds out with speculation on Harris's potential VP picks, with Mark Kelly and Josh Shapiro being top contenders. Both bring swing state appeal, but Shapiro's potential to avoid a Senate seat loss for Democrats makes him a particularly strategic choice.Quotes from the Episode:"Harris's polling mirrors Biden's, but we need to see where this race actually is in three weeks." – Logan Phillips"We have done the impossible and the incredible time and time again." – Denise Hamilton"The Democratic Party has made a stance, right? They need Jewish donors." – Zee Cohen Sanchez"I think they'll go heavy on portraying her as an uber-liberal, but it's a strategy that could easily backfire." – Corey Bernard"Skipping Netanyahu's address was the right move politically and morally." – Logan Phillips Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

L'economia cinese resta fragile, perfino il Terzo Plenum appena concluso sembra averlo ammesso, così una settimana dopo la Banca centrale ha deciso a sorpresa di tagliare di 10 punti base, al 3,35%, il Loan prime rate (Lpr) a un anno, tra i tassi preferenziali offerti dalle banche commerciali alla clientela migliore e un riferimento per quelli applicati agli altri prestiti. La mossa include un'analoga limatura al tasso primario sui prestiti a 5 anni al 3,85%, dopo il taglio di 25 punti base di febbraio: si tratta del benchmark dei mutui immobiliari, particolarmente seguito nel mezzo della grave crisi del settore che pesa sull'economia. Con l'obiettivo di stimolare i prestiti e rilanciare la crescita della Cina, la Banca centrale è scesa in cambo ancora con la leva monetaria. Nell'ultimo mese i dati sul Pil del secondo trimestre hanno segnalato una frenata e c è la zavorra della perdita del 25% degli acquisti di nuove case del settore immobiliare. Quest'ultima è tra le questioni più scottanti, a maggio è arrivato agli enti locali l ordine di comprare appartamenti da trasformare in edilizia residenziale per le fasce più povere della popolazione. Quel 5% di case a più a basso prezzo dovrebbe salire almeno al 20-30%, le famiglie devono poter spendere, Pechino ha messo sul piatto 69 milioni di dollari per sostenere questo processo che, tuttavia, non sarà semplice nè rapido da implementare. Il taglio dei tassi serve a rimettere in circolo il sistema. Intanto la Commissione europea imporrà dazi antidumping compresi tra il 12,8% e il 36,4% sul biodiesel importato dalla Cina, che entreranno in vigore ufficialmente il 16 agosto. Lo ha confermato all'ANSA un portavoce dell'esecutivo europeo, dopo che a fine 2023 Bruxelles aveva avviato un'indagine anti-dumping in risposta alla denuncia dei produttori di biodiesel dell'Ue secondo cui le importazioni da Pechino arrivano in Ue con prezzi artificialmente bassi. Terminata l'indagine, Bruxelles ha concluso che è necessario imporre dazi compensativi per proteggere le industrie. Le misure annunciate saranno dunque in vigore tra quattro settimane. Nel documento pubblicato dalla Commissione europea, viene indicata l'intenzione di imporre dazi del 12,8% per il gruppo EcoCeres, del 36,4% per il gruppo Jiaao, del 25,4% per il gruppo Zhuoyue. Altri produttori che hanno collaborato all'indagine saranno soggetti a un dazio del 23,7%, mentre tutte le altre società che non hanno collaborato del 36,4%. Approfondiamo il tema con Giuliano Noci, Professore ordinario in Ingegneria Economico-Gestionale, insegna Strategia & Marketing presso il Politecnico di Milano. Biden si ritira, Kamala Harris favorita per la nominationIl presidente statunitense Joe Biden ha ritirato la sua candidatura per le presidenziali di novembre e ha espresso il suo sostegno alla vice presidente Kamala Harris come candidata. Nella lettera in cui annuncia il ritiro, ha detto che rimarrà in carica fino al termine del proprio mandato a gennaio 2025 e che parlerà alla nazione questa settimana. La decisione è stata presa dopo crescenti pressioni all'interno del partito Democratico, intensificatesi a partire dal deludente dibattito televisivo del 27 giugno contro l'avversario repubblicano Donald Trump. L'ultimo a chiedere il ritiro è stato il senatore della Virginia Occidentale, Joe Manchin, che oggi ha espresso il proprio appoggio a Harris dopo alcune voci che sostenevano che stesse valutando di partecipare alla corsa presidenziale. Biden è il primo presidente in carica dopo Lyndon Johnson nel 1968 a ritirarsi da una possibile rielezione (aveva rinunciato alla rielezione viste le grandi contestazioni causate dalla guerra in Vietnam, i Democratici avevano vissuto una convention molto turbolenta caratterizzata anche da proteste e scontri per le strade, finendo per scegliere il vice Hubert Humphrey che poi avrebbe perso da Richard Nixon) e quello che ha abbandonato più tardi di tutti. Ora la convention del partito Democratico, che si terrà dal 19 al 22 agosto a Chicago, dovrà scegliere chi candidare attraverso i 4.700 eletti durante le primarie. Harris è la favorita e molti dem l'hanno appoggiata, inclusi Hillary e Bill Clinton (Nyt), ma vari importanti membri del partito, tra cui l'ex presidente Barack Obama e l'ex Speaker della Camera Nancy Pelosi, non si sono espressi ancora espressi. Harris, che ha ottenuto il sostegno anche di alcuni dei maggiori donatori democratici e ha raccolto nella notte circa 50 milioni di dollari, ha promesso di unire il partito e il Paese e ha già iniziato a chiamare i delegati per assicurarsi il loro supporto. Ne parliamo con Alessandro Plateroti, nuovo Direttore di NewsMondo.it.

Here's the Friday Short for July 19, 2024! Many Biden supporters argue that Democrats can't ask him to step aside, and they risk replaying the 1968 Democratic Convention, in which the eventual nominee, Hubert Humphrey, lost to Republican Richard Nixon. But I feel like we're forgetting the events leading to the '68 convention, and other reasons why it didn't help Democrats that year. However, it had nothing to do with Lyndon Johnson stepping aside. Please, subscribe to the podcast, download each episode, and give it a good review if you can! leftoflansing@gmail.com Left of Lansing is now on YouTube as well! leftoflansing.com

Stories we're following here at Progress Texas: Austin U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett has become the first House Democrat to publicly call for President Biden to drop out of the 2024 race: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/us/who-is-lloyd-doggett-biden.html ...Dallas U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett disagrees strongly: https://x.com/JasmineForUS/status/1808295266992128154?t=5YH20SnNuChhoWaGrzrgIw&s=03 ...As does Houston U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee: https://x.com/SJacksonLee/status/1808243082108063829?t=DQ_VZQ0ZX7_lkEd9dqdDMw&s=03 ...Doggett uses President Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal from the 1968 race as an example - that ended in Richard Nixon handily defeating Hubert Humphrey: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/02/lloyd-doggett-joe-biden-withdraw-election/ The Biden Administration has issued a rule allowing emergency medical providers to conduct abortions in situations where the mother's life is at risk: https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/biden-admin-directive-on-abortion-could-protect-texas-doctors-from-political-prosecution The Biden Administration has also proposed new rules protecting workers from excessive heat, following the lead of Austin U.S. Rep. Greg Casar: https://www.ksat.com/news/texas/2024/07/02/biden-administration-proposes-rule-to-protect-workers-from-extreme-heat/ Ken Paxton has lost that legal battle he picked with longstanding immigrant shelter non-profit Annunciation House: https://www.chron.com/culture/religion/article/ken-paxton-annunication-house-texas-catholics-19551657.php Amarillo voters will have a direct say in that city's proposed abortion ban, marking the closest Texas has seen to a direct referendum on reproductive rights: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/02/amarillo-texas-abortion-travel-ban/ Residents of Sutherland Springs are resisting plans for the 100 year old church that was the site of the 2017 mass shooting that took 26 lives and has been since been converted into a memorial: https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/sutherland-springs-church-raze-sanctuary-mass-19551486.php "Texas Is In Danger Of Becoming A Theocracy": https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/opinions/columns/article/texas-school-vouchers-19524200.php Thanks for listening! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work this election year at https://progresstexas.org/.

The last time an incumbent president withdrew from a reelection campaign was 1968. On March 31, under immense stress from the failure of his Vietnam War policy, President Lyndon Johnson told a national TV audience that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for another four years in the White House. Vice President Hubert Humphrey would win the nomination, as all hell broke loose on the Chicago streets outside the convention, during one of the most turbulent years in U.S. political history. By late October, as Humphrey gained ground in the polls against Republican Richard Nixon, LBJ learned that a woman by the name of Anna Chennault was interfering in his 11th hour bid to initiate peace talks with the North Vietnamese government in Paris. The person who orchestrated this dirty trick was Nixon himself. In this episode, University of Virginia historian and researcher Ken Hughes tells the story of the Chennault Affair. Recommended reading: "Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate" by Ken Hughes

Luke Nichter is the author of the new book entitled The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968. After LBJ decided not to seek another term, the election was wide open for the candidates Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace. Get full access to What Happens Next in 6 Minutes with Larry Bernstein at www.whathappensnextin6minutes.com/subscribe

B.J. Hollars discusses his book "Wisconsin for Kennedy: The Primary that Launched a President and Changed the Course of History." The book gives a careful account of the JFK's campaign in the 1960 Wisconsin presidential primary in which he eventually secured a narrow victory over Hubert Humphrey. The book includes portraits of some of the people who played very important roles in the campaign, including Jerry Bruno, a forklift operator from Kenosha (with a 9th grade education) who became one of the coordinators of the candidate's travel arrangements- and went on to serve a similar function in President Kennedy's administration. The book also examines the crucial role that Jackie Kennedy played in her husband's campaign.

Is there "another 1968" full of protests coming our way this year, with Democrats convening in Chicago this summer to nominate their candidate for president? Michael talks to Historian James Traub, who recounts Hubert Humphrey's role as a liberal hero of twentieth-century America in "True Believer: Hubert Humphrey's Quest for a More Just America." Original air date 6 May 2024. The book was published on 13 February 2024.

Will Saletan and (Hubert Humphrey alum) Bill Kristol join Tim Miller before a live audience in Philadelphia to discuss the uncanny parallels to 1968, the big 420 news, and the South now living back in pre-Roe days. Will there be a monster backlash?

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with James Traub about Hubert Humphrey. They define liberalism, background and context of Humphrey and his internal motivations, how he governed as mayor in Minneapolis, and how he was a liberal and a progressive. They talk about his time as a U.S. Senator, a cold war liberal, and his relationship with Lyndon Johnson. They discuss Humphrey's foreign affairs work, his time as Vice President of the U.S., Senate years post-Vice Presidency, legacy of Humphrey, and many more topics. James Traub is a journalist and scholar specializing in international affairs. He is a columnist and contributor to the website foreignpolicy.com. He worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker from 1993 to 1998 and as a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine from 1998 to 2011. He has also written extensively about national politics, urban affairs, and education. He has written many books, including the most recent, True Believer: Hubert Humphrey's Quest For A More Just America. He teaches classes on American foreign policy and on the history of liberalism at NYU Abu Dhabi and at NYU. He is a fellow of the Center on International Cooperation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.Website: https://www.traubjames.com/Substack: Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

When Sandy Gordon retired at 70, from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, Rosemont, Illinois as Director of Public Relations, a colleague gave her a toast. It said in part: “Sandy has the kind of talent that startles people.  Really.  Her co-workers and colleagues often sit around wondering how she comes up with her ideas.  Ideas that seem to just sort of float out of her brain.  It's as though Sandy can produce life from a primordial soup that for everyone else is just a bowl full of amino acids.  Sandy has that magic.”Sandy began her career as a special education teacher and immediately became an advocate for people with disabilities. Learning that then President Hubert Humphrey's grandchild had Down Syndrome, she found a way to approach him and urged him to do something for ‘handicapped' people. He hired her on the spot to work as Executive Director of Friends of the Handicapped for the Humphrey/Muskie campaign."Getting recognition is less important than getting the job done" - Sandy GordonAll of Sandy's jobs have come about in similar fashion starting with the National Easter Seal Society. With no background in communication, public relations or HR, she uses her talents and skills to find her way. Her colleague goes on to say “It would be enough to comment on Sandy's talent and imagination, but that is actually the smaller part of her whole person.  The bigger part is her heart and her humor.  Sandy has the type of personality that makes everyone around her better.  Happier.  Funnier.  Brighter.  Smarter.  She just makes the day better.  Her energy and spirit is irrepressible.”   CONNECT WITH SANDY:Email: Sandy 601@gmail.com

This week on the Here's What We Know Podcast, join us as we delve into the tumultuous year of 1968, a pivotal moment in American and global history, with our special guest, an esteemed historian and professor, Dr. Luke A. Nichter. He is a New York Times bestselling author or editor of eight books, including, most recently, “The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968,” which was chosen as the Best Book of 2023 by the Wall Street Journal. As an expert on presidential history, Dr Luke brings a wealth of knowledge about the seismic shifts that occurred during this era. He also mentioned that there is talk about using AI for transcribing historical recordings which could revolutionize our understanding of past presidencies by providing deeper insights than ever before possible.This is such an enlightening episode filled with insights into one of America's most dynamic years while emphasizing the importance of preserving our country's rich history for future generations. Tune in now!In this Episode:Hear about the revolutionary nature of 1968, both domestically and internationally.Discover how media coverage brought the Vietnam War and political unrest into living rooms across America.Comparisons between past conflicts like Vietnam and more recent ones such as Iraq.Explore Lyndon B. Johnson's complex legacy as president during these transformative times.Hear insightful conversations about whether John F. Kennedy would have escalated or withdrawn from Vietnam had he not been assassinated. Discover why the treatment of vice presidents has been scrutinized throughout history.Listen to Dr. Luke as he shares personal stories and anecdotes while teaching history to college students.Discover the role technology could play in transcribing historical presidential tapes for greater public access.This episode is sponsored by:Habana Cuba (Be sure to use code "Gary20" to get 20% off your order!)A Flood of LoveBio:Dr. Luke A. Nichter is a Professor of History and James H. Cavanaugh Endowed Chair in Presidential Studies at Chapman University. His area of specialty is the Cold War, the modern presidency, and U.S. political and diplomatic history, with a focus on the "long 1960s" from John F. Kennedy through Watergate. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society, a Visiting Scholar at the University of Michigan's Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Rothermere American Institute, and a Hansard Research Scholar at the London School of Economics.He is a New York Times bestselling author and editor of eight books, including, most recently, The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968 (Yale University Press). It is the first rigorously researched historical account of the most controversial election in modern U.S. history to have cooperation from all four major sides – Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace. Luke interviewed approximately 85 family members and former staffers, in addition to extensive archival research and access to new evidence that dramatically changes our understanding of the election. This work was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.Website: http://lukenichter.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-a-nichter-1190877/www.GaryScottThomas.com

James Traub's latest book is titled "True Believer: Hubert Humphrey's Quest for a More Just America." In the introduction, Mr. Traub writes: "I return to Humphrey in order to explain what liberalism was at its ascendant moment, why it mattered so much to so may people, why it abruptly lost its appeal to the majority of Americans – and, perhaps, how it might rejuvenate itself." Hubert Humphrey served as mayor of Minneapolis, United States Senator, Vice President of the United States under Lyndon Johnson, and a candidate for President in several years, including 1968. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Traub's latest book is titled "True Believer: Hubert Humphrey's Quest for a More Just America." In the introduction, Mr. Traub writes: "I return to Humphrey in order to explain what liberalism was at its ascendant moment, why it mattered so much to so may people, why it abruptly lost its appeal to the majority of Americans – and, perhaps, how it might rejuvenate itself." Hubert Humphrey served as mayor of Minneapolis, United States Senator, Vice President of the United States under Lyndon Johnson, and a candidate for President in several years, including 1968. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luke Nichter, author of The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968, joins us to break down the 1968 presidential race and the contentious battle between vice president Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and former Alabama governor George Wallace.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/facepalm-america--5189985/support.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 130: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Bob Costas has been my friend for 40 years. He has been one of my closest professional friends for a quarter century. And now, bluntly, Bob Costas needs to shut the EFF up about Joe Biden. He has launched this extraordinary campaign - first on HBO with Bill Maher, now on CNN with that toad Michael Smerconish - demanding that Biden and his "hubris" be "shown the door" off the presidential ticket. Bob not only has no idea that such a thing is impossible and even if it were justifiable or smart or legal, it would result in a different candidate who would lose to Trump by ten points. Bob will hear none of this. I tried, behind the scenes, for two weeks. I failed. And I failed to make it clear to Bob that Trump is ALSO trying to get Biden off the ticket and so that all Bob is accomplishing is - he's doing Trump's work for him. It's heartbreaking, I'll lose his friendship, but Bob Costas needs to shut the EFF up about Joe Biden (and that goes for Jon Stewart, Ezra Klein, and all the others who like Bob don't realize that we have lots of historical evidence of what happens when the Democrats try to do a Julius Caesar on a sitting president. There are two results: you LBJ him and you get Richard Nixon; or you DON'T completely LBJ him and you only wound him - and you get Ronald Reagan). Bob. Shut the eff up. B-Block (29:42) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Oh, nothing, just Joe Biden and his hubris about to get a Gaza Cease Fire while eating ice cream; James Comer's favorite Russian plant will stay in jail so it's "Smirnov on Ice." Kenny The Cheese didn't tell the truth about his plot to overthrow democracy in Michigan; Trump underperformed the polling by EIGHT POINTS in South Carolina (36:52) IN SPORTS: A new explanation for baseball's uniform fiasco; Peter King retires; one of the unheralded heroes of baseball - Jim Hannan - passes away. (42:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It took FIVE NBC reporters to claim Trump is about to "pivot?" Van Jones speaks at CPAC; There's a price on Tucker Carlson's head and bluntly it's humiliatingly low. C-Block (49:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: From the vault, it's my Spring Training Preview - for the year 1978!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 171 looks at "Hey Jude", the White Album, and the career of the Beatles from August 1967 through November 1968. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifty-seven-minute bonus episode available, on "I Love You" by People!. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, 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/ Errata Not really an error, but at one point I refer to Ornette Coleman as a saxophonist. While he was, he plays trumpet on the track that is excerpted after that. Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of songs by the Beatles. I have read literally dozens of books on the Beatles, and used bits of information from many of them. All my Beatles episodes refer to: The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, All The Songs: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michel Guesdon, And The Band Begins To Play: The Definitive Guide To The Songs of The Beatles by Steve Lambley, The Beatles By Ear by Kevin Moore, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, and The Beatles Anthology. For this episode, I also referred to Last Interview by David Sheff, a longform interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono from shortly before Lennon's death; Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, an authorised biography of Paul McCartney; and Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey. This time I also used Steve Turner's The Beatles: The Stories Behind the Songs 1967-1970. I referred to Philip Norman's biographies of John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney, to Graeme Thomson's biography of George Harrison, Take a Sad Song by James Campion, Yoko Ono: An Artful Life by Donald Brackett, Those Were the Days 2.0 by Stephan Granados, and Sound Pictures by Kenneth Womack. Sadly the only way to get the single mix of “Hey Jude” is on this ludicrously-expensive out-of-print box set, but a remixed stereo mix is easily available on the new reissue of the 1967-70 compilation. The original mixes of the White Album are also, shockingly, out of print, but this 2018 remix is available for the moment. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, a quick note -- this episode deals, among other topics, with child abandonment, spousal neglect, suicide attempts, miscarriage, rape accusations, and heroin addiction. If any of those topics are likely to upset you, you might want to check the transcript rather than listening to this episode. It also, for once, contains a short excerpt of an expletive, but given that that expletive in that context has been regularly played on daytime radio without complaint for over fifty years, I suspect it can be excused. The use of mantra meditation is something that exists across religions, and which appears to have been independently invented multiple times, in multiple cultures. In the Western culture to which most of my listeners belong, it is now best known as an aspect of what is known as "mindfulness", a secularised version of Buddhism which aims to provide adherents with the benefits of the teachings of the Buddha but without the cosmology to which they are attached. But it turns up in almost every religious tradition I know of in one form or another. The idea of mantra meditation is a very simple one, and one that even has some basis in science. There is a mathematical principle in neurology and information science called the free energy principle which says our brains are wired to try to minimise how surprised we are --  our brain is constantly making predictions about the world, and then looking at the results from our senses to see if they match. If they do, that's great, and the brain will happily move on to its next prediction. If they don't, the brain has to update its model of the world to match the new information, make new predictions, and see if those new predictions are a better match. Every person has a different mental model of the world, and none of them match reality, but every brain tries to get as close as possible. This updating of the model to match the new information is called "thinking", and it uses up energy, and our bodies and brains have evolved to conserve energy as much as possible. This means that for many people, most of the time, thinking is unpleasant, and indeed much of the time that people have spent thinking, they've been thinking about how to stop themselves having to do it at all, and when they have managed to stop thinking, however briefly, they've experienced great bliss. Many more or less effective technologies have been created to bring about a more minimal-energy state, including alcohol, heroin, and barbituates, but many of these have unwanted side-effects, such as death, which people also tend to want to avoid, and so people have often turned to another technology. It turns out that for many people, they can avoid thinking by simply thinking about something that is utterly predictable. If they minimise the amount of sensory input, and concentrate on something that they can predict exactly, eventually they can turn off their mind, relax, and float downstream, without dying. One easy way to do this is to close your eyes, so you can't see anything, make your breath as regular as possible, and then concentrate on a sound that repeats over and over.  If you repeat a single phrase or word a few hundred times, that regular repetition eventually causes your mind to stop having to keep track of the world, and experience a peace that is, by all accounts, unlike any other experience. What word or phrase that is can depend very much on the tradition. In Transcendental Meditation, each person has their own individual phrase. In the Catholicism in which George Harrison and Paul McCartney were raised, popular phrases for this are "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" or "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." In some branches of Buddhism, a popular mantra is "_NAMU MYŌHŌ RENGE KYŌ_". In the Hinduism to which George Harrison later converted, you can use "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare", "Om Namo Bhagavate Vāsudevāya" or "Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha". Those last two start with the syllable "Om", and indeed some people prefer to just use that syllable, repeating a single syllable over and over again until they reach a state of transcendence. [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude" ("na na na na na na na")] We don't know much about how the Beatles first discovered Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, except that it was thanks to Pattie Boyd, George Harrison's then-wife. Unfortunately, her memory of how she first became involved in the Maharishi's Spiritual Regeneration Movement, as described in her autobiography, doesn't fully line up with other known facts. She talks about reading about the Maharishi in the paper with her friend Marie-Lise while George was away on tour, but she also places the date that this happened in February 1967, several months after the Beatles had stopped touring forever. We'll be seeing a lot more of these timing discrepancies as this story progresses, and people's memories increasingly don't match the events that happened to them. Either way, it's clear that Pattie became involved in the Spiritual Regeneration Movement a good length of time before her husband did. She got him to go along with her to one of the Maharishi's lectures, after she had already been converted to the practice of Transcendental Meditation, and they brought along John, Paul, and their partners (Ringo's wife Maureen had just given birth, so they didn't come). As we heard back in episode one hundred and fifty, that lecture was impressive enough that the group, plus their wives and girlfriends (with the exception of Maureen Starkey) and Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, all went on a meditation retreat with the Maharishi at a holiday camp in Bangor, and it was there that they learned that Brian Epstein had been found dead. The death of the man who had guided the group's career could not have come at a worse time for the band's stability.  The group had only recorded one song in the preceding two months -- Paul's "Your Mother Should Know" -- and had basically been running on fumes since completing recording of Sgt Pepper many months earlier. John's drug intake had increased to the point that he was barely functional -- although with the enthusiasm of the newly converted he had decided to swear off LSD at the Maharishi's urging -- and his marriage was falling apart. Similarly, Paul McCartney's relationship with Jane Asher was in a bad state, though both men were trying to repair their damaged relationships, while both George and Ringo were having doubts about the band that had made them famous. In George's case, he was feeling marginalised by John and Paul, his songs ignored or paid cursory attention, and there was less for him to do on the records as the group moved away from making guitar-based rock and roll music into the stranger areas of psychedelia. And Ringo, whose main memory of the recording of Sgt Pepper was of learning to play chess while the others went through the extensive overdubs that characterised that album, was starting to feel like his playing was deteriorating, and that as the only non-writer in the band he was on the outside to an extent. On top of that, the group were in the middle of a major plan to restructure their business. As part of their contract renegotiations with EMI at the beginning of 1967, it had been agreed that they would receive two million pounds -- roughly fifteen million pounds in today's money -- in unpaid royalties as a lump sum. If that had been paid to them as individuals, or through the company they owned, the Beatles Ltd, they would have had to pay the full top rate of tax on it, which as George had complained the previous year was over ninety-five percent. (In fact, he'd been slightly exaggerating the generosity of the UK tax system to the rich, as at that point the top rate of income tax was somewhere around ninety-seven and a half percent). But happily for them, a couple of years earlier the UK had restructured its tax laws and introduced a corporation tax, which meant that the profits of corporations were no longer taxed at the same high rate as income. So a new company had been set up, The Beatles & Co, and all the group's non-songwriting income was paid into the company. Each Beatle owned five percent of the company, and the other eighty percent was owned by a new partnership, a corporation that was soon renamed Apple Corps -- a name inspired by a painting that McCartney had liked by the artist Rene Magritte. In the early stages of Apple, it was very entangled with Nems, the company that was owned by Brian and Clive Epstein, and which was in the process of being sold to Robert Stigwood, though that sale fell through after Brian's death. The first part of Apple, Apple Publishing, had been set up in the summer of 1967, and was run by Terry Doran, a friend of Epstein's who ran a motor dealership -- most of the Apple divisions would be run by friends of the group rather than by people with experience in the industries in question. As Apple was set up during the point that Stigwood was getting involved with NEMS, Apple Publishing's initial offices were in the same building with, and shared staff with, two publishing companies that Stigwood owned, Dratleaf Music, who published Cream's songs, and Abigail Music, the Bee Gees' publishers. And indeed the first two songs published by Apple were copyrights that were gifted to the company by Stigwood -- "Listen to the Sky", a B-side by an obscure band called Sands: [Excerpt: Sands, "Listen to the Sky"] And "Outside Woman Blues", an arrangement by Eric Clapton of an old blues song by Blind Joe Reynolds, which Cream had copyrighted separately and released on Disraeli Gears: [Excerpt: Cream, "Outside Woman Blues"] But Apple soon started signing outside songwriters -- once Mike Berry, a member of Apple Publishing's staff, had sat McCartney down and explained to him what music publishing actually was, something he had never actually understood even though he'd been a songwriter for five years. Those songwriters, given that this was 1967, were often also performers, and as Apple Records had not yet been set up, Apple would try to arrange recording contracts for them with other labels. They started with a group called Focal Point, who got signed by badgering Paul McCartney to listen to their songs until he gave them Doran's phone number to shut them up: [Excerpt: Focal Point, "Sycamore Sid"] But the big early hope for Apple Publishing was a songwriter called George Alexander. Alexander's birth name had been Alexander Young, and he was the brother of George Young, who was a member of the Australian beat group The Easybeats, who'd had a hit with "Friday on My Mind": [Excerpt: The Easybeats, "Friday on My Mind"] His younger brothers Malcolm and Angus would go on to have a few hits themselves, but AC/DC wouldn't be formed for another five years. Terry Doran thought that Alexander should be a member of a band, because bands were more popular than solo artists at the time, and so he was placed with three former members of Tony Rivers and the Castaways, a Beach Boys soundalike group that had had some minor success. John Lennon suggested that the group be named Grapefruit, after a book he was reading by a conceptual artist of his acquaintance named Yoko Ono, and as Doran was making arrangements with Terry Melcher for a reciprocal publishing deal by which Melcher's American company would publish Apple songs in the US while Apple published songs from Melcher's company in the UK, it made sense for Melcher to also produce Grapefruit's first single, "Dear Delilah": [Excerpt: Grapefruit, "Dear Delilah"] That made number twenty-one in the UK when it came out in early 1968, on the back of publicity about Grapefruit's connection with the Beatles, but future singles by the band were much less successful, and like several other acts involved with Apple, they found that they were more hampered by the Beatles connection than helped. A few other people were signed to Apple Publishing early on, of whom the most notable was Jackie Lomax. Lomax had been a member of a minor Merseybeat group, the Undertakers, and after they had split up, he'd been signed by Brian Epstein with a new group, the Lomax Alliance, who had released one single, "Try as You May": [Excerpt: The Lomax Alliance, "Try As You May"] After Epstein's death, Lomax had plans to join another band, being formed by another Merseybeat musician, Chris Curtis, the former drummer of the Searchers. But after going to the Beatles to talk with them about them helping the new group financially, Lomax was persuaded by John Lennon to go solo instead. He may later have regretted that decision, as by early 1968 the people that Curtis had recruited for his new band had ditched him and were making a name for themselves as Deep Purple. Lomax recorded one solo single with funding from Stigwood, a cover version of a song by an obscure singer-songwriter, Jake Holmes, "Genuine Imitation Life": [Excerpt: Jackie Lomax, "Genuine Imitation Life"] But he was also signed to Apple Publishing as a songwriter. The Beatles had only just started laying out plans for Apple when Epstein died, and other than the publishing company one of the few things they'd agreed on was that they were going to have a film company, which was to be run by Denis O'Dell, who had been an associate producer on A Hard Day's Night and on How I Won The War, the Richard Lester film Lennon had recently starred in. A few days after Epstein's death, they had a meeting, in which they agreed that the band needed to move forward quickly if they were going to recover from Epstein's death. They had originally been planning on going to India with the Maharishi to study meditation, but they decided to put that off until the new year, and to press forward with a film project Paul had been talking about, to be titled Magical Mystery Tour. And so, on the fifth of September 1967, they went back into the recording studio and started work on a song of John's that was earmarked for the film, "I am the Walrus": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] Magical Mystery Tour, the film, has a mixed reputation which we will talk about shortly, but one defence that Paul McCartney has always made of it is that it's the only place where you can see the Beatles performing "I am the Walrus". While the song was eventually relegated to a B-side, it's possibly the finest B-side of the Beatles' career, and one of the best tracks the group ever made. As with many of Lennon's songs from this period, the song was a collage of many different elements pulled from his environment and surroundings, and turned into something that was rather more than the sum of its parts. For its musical inspiration, Lennon pulled from, of all things, a police siren going past his house. (For those who are unfamiliar with what old British police sirens sounded like, as opposed to the ones in use for most of my lifetime or in other countries, here's a recording of one): [Excerpt: British police siren ca 1968] That inspired Lennon to write a snatch of lyric to go with the sound of the siren, starting "Mister city policeman sitting pretty". He had two other song fragments, one about sitting in the garden, and one about sitting on a cornflake, and he told Hunter Davies, who was doing interviews for his authorised biography of the group, “I don't know how it will all end up. Perhaps they'll turn out to be different parts of the same song.” But the final element that made these three disparate sections into a song was a letter that came from Stephen Bayley, a pupil at Lennon's old school Quarry Bank, who told him that the teachers at the school -- who Lennon always thought of as having suppressed his creativity -- were now analysing Beatles lyrics in their lessons. Lennon decided to come up with some nonsense that they couldn't analyse -- though as nonsensical as the finished song is, there's an underlying anger to a lot of it that possibly comes from Lennon thinking of his school experiences. And so Lennon asked his old schoolfriend Pete Shotton to remind him of a disgusting playground chant that kids used to sing in schools in the North West of England (and which they still sang with very minor variations at my own school decades later -- childhood folklore has a remarkably long life). That rhyme went: Yellow matter custard, green snot pie All mixed up with a dead dog's eye Slap it on a butty, nice and thick, And drink it down with a cup of cold sick Lennon combined some parts of this with half-remembered fragments of Lewis Carrol's The Walrus and the Carpenter, and with some punning references to things that were going on in his own life and those of his friends -- though it's difficult to know exactly which of the stories attached to some of the more incomprehensible bits of the lyrics are accurate. The story that the line "I am the eggman" is about a sexual proclivity of Eric Burdon of the Animals seems plausible, while the contention by some that the phrase "semolina pilchard" is a reference to Sgt Pilcher, the corrupt policeman who had arrested three of the Rolling Stones, and would later arrest Lennon, on drugs charges, seems less likely. The track is a masterpiece of production, but the release of the basic take on Anthology 2 in 1996 showed that the underlying performance, before George Martin worked his magic with the overdubs, is still a remarkable piece of work: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus (Anthology 2 version)"] But Martin's arrangement and production turned the track from a merely very good track into a masterpiece. The string arrangement, very much in the same mould as that for "Strawberry Fields Forever" but giving a very different effect with its harsh cello glissandi, is the kind of thing one expects from Martin, but there's also the chanting of the Mike Sammes Singers, who were more normally booked for sessions like Englebert Humperdinck's "The Last Waltz": [Excerpt: Engelbert Humperdinck, "The Last Waltz"] But here were instead asked to imitate the sound of the strings, make grunting noises, and generally go very far out of their normal comfort zone: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] But the most fascinating piece of production in the entire track is an idea that seems to have been inspired by people like John Cage -- a live feed of a radio being tuned was played into the mono mix from about the halfway point, and whatever was on the radio at the time was captured: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] This is also why for many decades it was impossible to have a true stereo mix of the track -- the radio part was mixed directly into the mono mix, and it wasn't until the 1990s that someone thought to track down a copy of the original radio broadcasts and recreate the process. In one of those bits of synchronicity that happen more often than you would think when you're creating aleatory art, and which are why that kind of process can be so appealing, one bit of dialogue from the broadcast of King Lear that was on the radio as the mixing was happening was *perfectly* timed: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] After completing work on the basic track for "I am the Walrus", the group worked on two more songs for the film, George's "Blue Jay Way" and a group-composed twelve-bar blues instrumental called "Flying", before starting production. Magical Mystery Tour, as an idea, was inspired in equal parts by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, the collective of people we talked about in the episode on the Grateful Dead who travelled across the US extolling the virtues of psychedelic drugs, and by mystery tours, a British working-class tradition that has rather fallen out of fashion in the intervening decades. A mystery tour would generally be put on by a coach-hire company, and would be a day trip to an unannounced location -- though the location would in fact be very predictable, and would be a seaside town within a couple of hours' drive of its starting point. In the case of the ones the Beatles remembered from their own childhoods, this would be to a coastal town in Lancashire or Wales, like Blackpool, Rhyl, or Prestatyn. A coachload of people would pay to be driven to this random location, get very drunk and have a singsong on the bus, and spend a day wherever they were taken. McCartney's plan was simple -- they would gather a group of passengers and replicate this experience over the course of several days, and film whatever went on, but intersperse that with more planned out sketches and musical numbers. For this reason, along with the Beatles and their associates, the cast included some actors found through Spotlight and some of the group's favourite performers, like the comedian Nat Jackley (whose comedy sequence directed by John was cut from the final film) and the surrealist poet/singer/comedian Ivor Cutler: [Excerpt: Ivor Cutler, "I'm Going in a Field"] The film also featured an appearance by a new band who would go on to have great success over the next year, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. They had recorded their first single in Abbey Road at the same time as the Beatles were recording Revolver, but rather than being progressive psychedelic rock, it had been a remake of a 1920s novelty song: [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, "My Brother Makes the Noises For the Talkies"] Their performance in Magical Mystery Tour was very different though -- they played a fifties rock pastiche written by band leaders Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes while a stripper took off her clothes. While several other musical sequences were recorded for the film, including one by the band Traffic and one by Cutler, other than the Beatles tracks only the Bonzos' song made it into the finished film: [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, "Death Cab for Cutie"] That song, thirty years later, would give its name to a prominent American alternative rock band. Incidentally the same night that Magical Mystery Tour was first broadcast was also the night that the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band first appeared on a TV show, Do Not Adjust Your Set, which featured three future members of the Monty Python troupe -- Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones. Over the years the careers of the Bonzos, the Pythons, and the Beatles would become increasingly intertwined, with George Harrison in particular striking up strong friendships and working relationships with Bonzos Neil Innes and "Legs" Larry Smith. The filming of Magical Mystery Tour went about as well as one might expect from a film made by four directors, none of whom had any previous filmmaking experience, and none of whom had any business knowledge. The Beatles were used to just turning up and having things magically done for them by other people, and had no real idea of the infrastructure challenges that making a film, even a low-budget one, actually presents, and ended up causing a great deal of stress to almost everyone involved. The completed film was shown on TV on Boxing Day 1967 to general confusion and bemusement. It didn't help that it was originally broadcast in black and white, and so for example the scene showing shifting landscapes (outtake footage from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, tinted various psychedelic colours) over the "Flying" music, just looked like grey fuzz. But also, it just wasn't what people were expecting from a Beatles film. This was a ramshackle, plotless, thing more inspired by Andy Warhol's underground films than by the kind of thing the group had previously appeared in, and it was being presented as Christmas entertainment for all the family. And to be honest, it's not even a particularly good example of underground filmmaking -- though it looks like a masterpiece when placed next to something like the Bee Gees' similar effort, Cucumber Castle. But there are enough interesting sequences in there for the project not to be a complete failure -- and the deleted scenes on the DVD release, including the performances by Cutler and Traffic, and the fact that the film was edited down from ten hours to fifty-two minutes, makes one wonder if there's a better film that could be constructed from the original footage. Either way, the reaction to the film was so bad that McCartney actually appeared on David Frost's TV show the next day to defend it and, essentially, apologise. While they were editing the film, the group were also continuing to work in the studio, including on two new McCartney songs, "The Fool on the Hill", which was included in Magical Mystery Tour, and "Hello Goodbye", which wasn't included on the film's soundtrack but was released as the next single, with "I Am the Walrus" as the B-side: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"] Incidentally, in the UK the soundtrack to Magical Mystery Tour was released as a double-EP rather than as an album (in the US, the group's recent singles and B-sides were added to turn it into a full-length album, which is how it's now generally available). "I Am the Walrus" was on the double-EP as well as being on the single's B-side, and the double-EP got to number two on the singles charts, meaning "I am the Walrus" was on the records at number one and number two at the same time. Before it became obvious that the film, if not the soundtrack, was a disaster, the group held a launch party on the twenty-first of December, 1967. The band members went along in fancy dress, as did many of the cast and crew -- the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performed at the party. Mike Love and Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys also turned up at the party, and apparently at one point jammed with the Bonzos, and according to some, but not all, reports, a couple of the Beatles joined in as well. Love and Johnston had both just met the Maharishi for the first time a couple of days earlier, and Love had been as impressed as the Beatles were, and it may have been at this party that the group mentioned to Love that they would soon be going on a retreat in India with the guru -- a retreat that was normally meant for training TM instructors, but this time seemed to be more about getting celebrities involved. Love would also end up going with them. That party was also the first time that Cynthia Lennon had an inkling that John might not be as faithful to her as she previously supposed. John had always "joked" about being attracted to George Harrison's wife, Patti, but this time he got a little more blatant about his attraction than he ever had previously, to the point that he made Cynthia cry, and Cynthia's friend, the pop star Lulu, decided to give Lennon a very public dressing-down for his cruelty to his wife, a dressing-down that must have been a sight to behold, as Lennon was dressed as a Teddy boy while Lulu was in a Shirley Temple costume. It's a sign of how bad the Lennons' marriage was at this point that this was the second time in a two-month period where Cynthia had ended up crying because of John at a film launch party and been comforted by a female pop star. In October, Cilla Black had held a party to celebrate the belated release of John's film How I Won the War, and during the party Georgie Fame had come up to Black and said, confused, "Cynthia Lennon is hiding in your wardrobe". Black went and had a look, and Cynthia explained to her “I'm waiting to see how long it is before John misses me and comes looking for me.” Black's response had been “You'd better face it, kid—he's never gonna come.” Also at the Magical Mystery Tour party was Lennon's father, now known as Freddie Lennon, and his new nineteen-year-old fiancee. While Hunter Davis had been researching the Beatles' biography, he'd come across some evidence that the version of Freddie's attitude towards John that his mother's side of the family had always told him -- that Freddie had been a cruel and uncaring husband who had not actually wanted to be around his son -- might not be the whole of the truth, and that the mother who he had thought of as saintly might also have had some part to play in their marriage breaking down and Freddie not seeing his son for twenty years. The two had made some tentative attempts at reconciliation, and indeed Freddie would even come and live with John for a while, though within a couple of years the younger Lennon's heart would fully harden against his father again. Of course, the things that John always resented his father for were pretty much exactly the kind of things that Lennon himself was about to do. It was around this time as well that Derek Taylor gave the Beatles copies of the debut album by a young singer/songwriter named Harry Nilsson. Nilsson will be getting his own episode down the line, but not for a couple of years at my current rates, so it's worth bringing that up here, because that album became a favourite of all the Beatles, and would have a huge influence on their songwriting for the next couple of years, and because one song on the album, "1941", must have resonated particularly deeply with Lennon right at this moment -- an autobiographical song by Nilsson about how his father had left him and his mother when he was a small boy, and about his own fear that, as his first marriage broke down, he was repeating the pattern with his stepson Scott: [Excerpt: Nilsson, "1941"] The other major event of December 1967, rather overshadowed by the Magical Mystery Tour disaster the next day, was that on Christmas Day Paul McCartney and Jane Asher announced their engagement. A few days later, George Harrison flew to India. After John and Paul had had their outside film projects -- John starring in How I Won The War and Paul doing the soundtrack for The Family Way -- the other two Beatles more or less simultaneously did their own side project films, and again one acted while the other did a soundtrack. Both of these projects were in the rather odd subgenre of psychedelic shambolic comedy film that sprang up in the mid sixties, a subgenre that produced a lot of fascinating films, though rather fewer good ones. Indeed, both of them were in the subsubgenre of shambolic psychedelic *sex* comedies. In Ringo's case, he had a small role in the film Candy, which was based on the novel we mentioned in the last episode, co-written by Terry Southern, which was in itself a loose modern rewriting of Voltaire's Candide. Unfortunately, like such other classics of this subgenre as Anthony Newley's Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, Candy has dated *extremely* badly, and unless you find repeated scenes of sexual assault and rape, ethnic stereotypes, and jokes about deformity and disfigurement to be an absolute laugh riot, it's not a film that's worth seeking out, and Starr's part in it is not a major one. Harrison's film was of the same basic genre -- a film called Wonderwall about a mad scientist who discovers a way to see through the walls of his apartment, and gets to see a photographer taking sexy photographs of a young woman named Penny Lane, played by Jane Birkin: [Excerpt: Some Wonderwall film dialogue ripped from the Blu-Ray] Wonderwall would, of course, later inspire the title of a song by Oasis, and that's what the film is now best known for, but it's a less-unwatchable film than Candy, and while still problematic it's less so. Which is something. Harrison had been the Beatle with least involvement in Magical Mystery Tour -- McCartney had been the de facto director, Starr had been the lead character and the only one with much in the way of any acting to do, and Lennon had written the film's standout scene and its best song, and had done a little voiceover narration. Harrison, by contrast, barely has anything to do in the film apart from the one song he contributed, "Blue Jay Way", and he said of the project “I had no idea what was happening and maybe I didn't pay enough attention because my problem, basically, was that I was in another world, I didn't really belong; I was just an appendage.” He'd expressed his discomfort to his friend Joe Massot, who was about to make his first feature film. Massot had got to know Harrison during the making of his previous film, Reflections on Love, a mostly-silent short which had starred Harrison's sister-in-law Jenny Boyd, and which had been photographed by Robert Freeman, who had been the photographer for the Beatles' album covers from With the Beatles through Rubber Soul, and who had taken most of the photos that Klaus Voorman incorporated into the cover of Revolver (and whose professional association with the Beatles seemed to come to an end around the same time he discovered that Lennon had been having an affair with his wife). Massot asked Harrison to write the music for the film, and told Harrison he would have complete free rein to make whatever music he wanted, so long as it fit the timing of the film, and so Harrison decided to create a mixture of Western rock music and the Indian music he loved. Harrison started recording the music at the tail end of 1967, with sessions with several London-based Indian musicians and John Barham, an orchestrator who had worked with Ravi Shankar on Shankar's collaborations with Western musicians, including the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack we talked about in the "All You Need is Love" episode. For the Western music, he used the Remo Four, a Merseybeat group who had been on the scene even before the Beatles, and which contained a couple of classmates of Paul McCartney, but who had mostly acted as backing musicians for other artists. They'd backed Johnny Sandon, the former singer with the Searchers, on a couple of singles, before becoming the backing band for Tommy Quickly, a NEMS artist who was unsuccessful despite starting his career with a Lennon/McCartney song, "Tip of My Tongue": [Excerpt: Tommy Quickly, "Tip of My Tongue"] The Remo Four would later, after a lineup change, become Ashton, Gardner and Dyke, who would become one-hit wonders in the seventies, and during the Wonderwall sessions they recorded a song that went unreleased at the time, and which would later go on to be rerecorded by Ashton, Gardner, and Dyke. "In the First Place" also features Harrison on backing vocals and possibly guitar, and was not submitted for the film because Harrison didn't believe that Massot wanted any vocal tracks, but the recording was later discovered and used in a revised director's cut of the film in the nineties: [Excerpt: The Remo Four, "In the First Place"] But for the most part the Remo Four were performing instrumentals written by Harrison. They weren't the only Western musicians performing on the sessions though -- Peter Tork of the Monkees dropped by these sessions and recorded several short banjo solos, which were used in the film soundtrack but not in the soundtrack album (presumably because Tork was contracted to another label): [Excerpt: Peter Tork, "Wonderwall banjo solo"] Another musician who was under contract to another label was Eric Clapton, who at the time was playing with The Cream, and who vaguely knew Harrison and so joined in for the track "Ski-ing", playing lead guitar under the cunning, impenetrable, pseudonym "Eddie Clayton", with Harrison on sitar, Starr on drums, and session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan on bass: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "Ski-ing"] But the bulk of the album was recorded in EMI's studios in the city that is now known as Mumbai but at the time was called Bombay. The studio facilities in India had up to that point only had a mono tape recorder, and Bhaskar Menon, one of the top executives at EMI's Indian division and later the head of EMI music worldwide, personally brought the first stereo tape recorder to the studio to aid in Harrison's recording. The music was all composed by Harrison and performed by the Indian musicians, and while Harrison was composing in an Indian mode, the musicians were apparently fascinated by how Western it sounded to them: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "Microbes"] While he was there, Harrison also got the instrumentalists to record another instrumental track, which wasn't to be used for the film: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "The Inner Light (instrumental)"] That track would, instead, become part of what was to be Harrison's first composition to make a side of a Beatles single. After John and George had appeared on the David Frost show talking about the Maharishi, in September 1967, George had met a lecturer in Sanskrit named Juan Mascaró, who wrote to Harrison enclosing a book he'd compiled of translations of religious texts, telling him he'd admired "Within You Without You" and thought it would be interesting if Harrison set something from the Tao Te Ching to music. He suggested a text that, in his translation, read: "Without going out of my door I can know all things on Earth Without looking out of my window I can know the ways of heaven For the farther one travels, the less one knows The sage, therefore Arrives without travelling Sees all without looking Does all without doing" Harrison took that text almost verbatim, though he created a second verse by repeating the first few lines with "you" replacing "I" -- concerned that listeners might think he was just talking about himself, and wouldn't realise it was a more general statement -- and he removed the "the sage, therefore" and turned the last few lines into imperative commands rather than declarative statements: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "The Inner Light"] The song has come in for some criticism over the years as being a little Orientalist, because in critics' eyes it combines Chinese philosophy with Indian music, as if all these things are equally "Eastern" and so all the same really. On the other hand there's a good argument that an English songwriter taking a piece of writing written in Chinese and translated into English by a Spanish man and setting it to music inspired by Indian musical modes is a wonderful example of cultural cross-pollination. As someone who's neither Chinese nor Indian I wouldn't want to take a stance on it, but clearly the other Beatles were impressed by it -- they put it out as the B-side to their next single, even though the only Beatles on it are Harrison and McCartney, with the latter adding a small amount of harmony vocal: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "The Inner Light"] And it wasn't because the group were out of material. They were planning on going to Rishikesh to study with the Maharishi, and wanted to get a single out for release while they were away, and so in one week they completed the vocal overdubs on "The Inner Light" and recorded three other songs, two by John and one by Paul. All three of the group's songwriters brought in songs that were among their best. John's first contribution was a song whose lyrics he later described as possibly the best he ever wrote, "Across the Universe". He said the lyrics were “purely inspirational and were given to me as boom! I don't own it, you know; it came through like that … Such an extraordinary meter and I can never repeat it! It's not a matter of craftsmanship, it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed. I didn't want to write it … It's like being possessed, like a psychic or a medium.” But while Lennon liked the song, he was never happy with the recording of it. They tried all sorts of things to get the sound he heard in his head, including bringing in some fans who were hanging around outside to sing backing vocals. He said of the track "I was singing out of tune and instead of getting a decent choir, we got fans from outside, Apple Scruffs or whatever you call them. They came in and were singing all off-key. Nobody was interested in doing the tune originally.” [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Across the Universe"] The "jai guru deva" chorus there is the first reference to the teachings of the Maharishi in one of the Beatles' records -- Guru Dev was the Maharishi's teacher, and the phrase "Jai guru dev" is a Sanskrit one which I've seen variously translated as "victory to the great teacher", and "hail to the greatness within you". Lennon would say shortly before his death “The Beatles didn't make a good record out of it. I think subconsciously sometimes we – I say ‘we' though I think Paul did it more than the rest of us – Paul would sort of subconsciously try and destroy a great song … Usually we'd spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul's songs, when it came to mine, especially if it was a great song like ‘Strawberry Fields' or ‘Across The Universe', somehow this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in … It was a _lousy_ track of a great song and I was so disappointed by it …The guitars are out of tune and I'm singing out of tune because I'm psychologically destroyed and nobody's supporting me or helping me with it, and the song was never done properly.” Of course, this is only Lennon's perception, and it's one that the other participants would disagree with. George Martin, in particular, was always rather hurt by the implication that Lennon's songs had less attention paid to them, and he would always say that the problem was that Lennon in the studio would always say "yes, that's great", and only later complain that it hadn't been what he wanted. No doubt McCartney did put in more effort on his own songs than on Lennon's -- everyone has a bias towards their own work, and McCartney's only human -- but personally I suspect that a lot of the problem comes down to the two men having very different personalities. McCartney had very strong ideas about his own work and would drive the others insane with his nitpicky attention to detail. Lennon had similarly strong ideas, but didn't have the attention span to put the time and effort in to force his vision on others, and didn't have the technical knowledge to express his ideas in words they'd understand. He expected Martin and the other Beatles to work miracles, and they did -- but not the miracles he would have worked. That track was, rather than being chosen for the next single, given to Spike Milligan, who happened to be visiting the studio and was putting together an album for the environmental charity the World Wildlife Fund. The album was titled "No One's Gonna Change Our World": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Across the Universe"] That track is historic in another way -- it would be the last time that George Harrison would play sitar on a Beatles record, and it effectively marks the end of the period of psychedelia and Indian influence that had started with "Norwegian Wood" three years earlier, and which many fans consider their most creative period. Indeed, shortly after the recording, Harrison would give up the sitar altogether and stop playing it. He loved sitar music as much as he ever had, and he still thought that Indian classical music spoke to him in ways he couldn't express, and he continued to be friends with Ravi Shankar for the rest of his life, and would only become more interested in Indian religious thought. But as he spent time with Shankar he realised he would never be as good on the sitar as he hoped. He said later "I thought, 'Well, maybe I'm better off being a pop singer-guitar-player-songwriter – whatever-I'm-supposed-to-be' because I've seen a thousand sitar-players in India who are twice as better as I'll ever be. And only one of them Ravi thought was going to be a good player." We don't have a precise date for when it happened -- I suspect it was in June 1968, so a few months after the "Across the Universe" recording -- but Shankar told Harrison that rather than try to become a master of a music that he hadn't encountered until his twenties, perhaps he should be making the music that was his own background. And as Harrison put it "I realised that was riding my bike down a street in Liverpool and hearing 'Heartbreak Hotel' coming out of someone's house.": [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel"] In early 1968 a lot of people seemed to be thinking along the same lines, as if Christmas 1967 had been the flick of a switch and instead of whimsy and ornamentation, the thing to do was to make music that was influenced by early rock and roll. In the US the Band and Bob Dylan were making music that was consciously shorn of all studio experimentation, while in the UK there was a revival of fifties rock and roll. In April 1968 both "Peggy Sue" and "Rock Around the Clock" reentered the top forty in the UK, and the Who were regularly including "Summertime Blues" in their sets. Fifties nostalgia, which would make occasional comebacks for at least the next forty years, was in its first height, and so it's not surprising that Paul McCartney's song, "Lady Madonna", which became the A-side of the next single, has more than a little of the fifties about it. Of course, the track isn't *completely* fifties in its origins -- one of the inspirations for the track seems to have been the Rolling Stones' then-recent hit "Let's Spend The Night Together": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Let's Spend the Night Together"] But the main source for the song's music -- and for the sound of the finished record -- seems to have been Johnny Parker's piano part on Humphrey Lyttleton's "Bad Penny Blues", a hit single engineered by Joe Meek in the fifties: [Excerpt: Humphrey Lyttleton, "Bad Penny Blues"] That song seems to have been on the group's mind for a while, as a working title for "With a Little Help From My Friends" had at one point been "Bad Finger Blues" -- a title that would later give the name to a band on Apple. McCartney took Parker's piano part as his inspiration, and as he later put it “‘Lady Madonna' was me sitting down at the piano trying to write a bluesy boogie-woogie thing. I got my left hand doing an arpeggio thing with the chord, an ascending boogie-woogie left hand, then a descending right hand. I always liked that, the  juxtaposition of a line going down meeting a line going up." [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"] That idea, incidentally, is an interesting reversal of what McCartney had done on "Hello, Goodbye", where the bass line goes down while the guitar moves up -- the two lines moving away from each other: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"] Though that isn't to say there's no descending bass in "Lady Madonna" -- the bridge has a wonderful sequence where the bass just *keeps* *descending*: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"] Lyrically, McCartney was inspired by a photo in National Geographic of a woman in Malaysia, captioned “Mountain Madonna: with one child at her breast and another laughing into her face, sees her quality of life threatened.” But as he put it “The people I was brought up amongst were often Catholic; there are lots of Catholics in Liverpool because of the Irish connection and they are often religious. When they have a baby I think they see a big connection between themselves and the Virgin Mary with her baby. So the original concept was the Virgin Mary but it quickly became symbolic of every woman; the Madonna image but as applied to ordinary working class woman. It's really a tribute to the mother figure, it's a tribute to women.” Musically though, the song was more a tribute to the fifties -- while the inspiration had been a skiffle hit by Humphrey Lyttleton, as soon as McCartney started playing it he'd thought of Fats Domino, and the lyric reflects that to an extent -- just as Domino's "Blue Monday" details the days of the week for a weary working man who only gets to enjoy himself on Saturday night, "Lady Madonna"'s lyrics similarly look at the work a mother has to do every day -- though as McCartney later noted  "I was writing the words out to learn it for an American TV show and I realised I missed out Saturday ... So I figured it must have been a real night out." The vocal was very much McCartney doing a Domino impression -- something that wasn't lost on Fats, who cut his own version of the track later that year: [Excerpt: Fats Domino, "Lady Madonna"] The group were so productive at this point, right before the journey to India, that they actually cut another song *while they were making a video for "Lady Madonna"*. They were booked into Abbey Road to film themselves performing the song so it could be played on Top of the Pops while they were away, but instead they decided to use the time to cut a new song -- John had a partially-written song, "Hey Bullfrog", which was roughly the same tempo as "Lady Madonna", so they could finish that up and then re-edit the footage to match the record. The song was quickly finished and became "Hey Bulldog": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Bulldog"] One of Lennon's best songs from this period, "Hey Bulldog" was oddly chosen only to go on the soundtrack of Yellow Submarine. Either the band didn't think much of it because it had come so easily, or it was just assigned to the film because they were planning on being away for several months and didn't have any other projects they were working on. The extent of the group's contribution to the film was minimal – they were not very hands-on, and the film, which was mostly done as an attempt to provide a third feature film for their United Artists contract without them having to do any work, was made by the team that had done the Beatles cartoon on American TV. There's some evidence that they had a small amount of input in the early story stages, but in general they saw the cartoon as an irrelevance to them -- the only things they contributed were the four songs "All Together Now", "It's All Too Much", "Hey Bulldog" and "Only a Northern Song", and a brief filmed appearance for the very end of the film, recorded in January: [Excerpt: Yellow Submarine film end] McCartney also took part in yet another session in early February 1968, one produced by Peter Asher, his fiancee's brother, and former singer with Peter and Gordon. Asher had given up on being a pop star and was trying to get into the business side of music, and he was starting out as a producer, producing a single by Paul Jones, the former lead singer of Manfred Mann. The A-side of the single, "And the Sun Will Shine", was written by the Bee Gees, the band that Robert Stigwood was managing: [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "And the Sun Will Shine"] While the B-side was an original by Jones, "The Dog Presides": [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "The Dog Presides"] Those tracks featured two former members of the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck and Paul Samwell-Smith, on guitar and bass, and Nicky Hopkins on piano. Asher asked McCartney to play drums on both sides of the single, saying later "I always thought he was a great, underrated drummer." McCartney was impressed by Asher's production, and asked him to get involved with the new Apple Records label that would be set up when the group returned from India. Asher eventually became head of A&R for the label. And even before "Lady Madonna" was mixed, the Beatles were off to India. Mal Evans, their roadie, went ahead with all their luggage on the fourteenth of February, so he could sort out transport for them on the other end, and then John and George followed on the fifteenth, with their wives Pattie and Cynthia and Pattie's sister Jenny (John and Cynthia's son Julian had been left with his grandmother while they went -- normally Cynthia wouldn't abandon Julian for an extended period of time, but she saw the trip as a way to repair their strained marriage). Paul and Ringo followed four days later, with Ringo's wife Maureen and Paul's fiancee Jane Asher. The retreat in Rishikesh was to become something of a celebrity affair. Along with the Beatles came their friend the singer-songwriter Donovan, and Donovan's friend and songwriting partner, whose name I'm not going to say here because it's a slur for Romani people, but will be known to any Donovan fans. Donovan at this point was also going through changes. Like the Beatles, he was largely turning away from drug use and towards meditation, and had recently written his hit single "There is a Mountain" based around a saying from Zen Buddhism: [Excerpt: Donovan, "There is a Mountain"] That was from his double-album A Gift From a Flower to a Garden, which had come out in December 1967. But also like John and Paul he was in the middle of the breakdown of a long-term relationship, and while he would remain with his then-partner until 1970, and even have another child with her, he was secretly in love with another woman. In fact he was secretly in love with two other women. One of them, Brian Jones' ex-girlfriend Linda, had moved to LA, become the partner of the singer Gram Parsons, and had appeared in the documentary You Are What You Eat with the Band and Tiny Tim. She had fallen out of touch with Donovan, though she would later become his wife. Incidentally, she had a son to Brian Jones who had been abandoned by his rock-star father -- the son's name is Julian. The other woman with whom Donovan was in love was Jenny Boyd, the sister of George Harrison's wife Pattie.  Jenny at the time was in a relationship with Alexis Mardas, a TV repairman and huckster who presented himself as an electronics genius to the Beatles, who nicknamed him Magic Alex, and so she was unavailable, but Donovan had written a song about her, released as a single just before they all went to Rishikesh: [Excerpt: Donovan, "Jennifer Juniper"] Donovan considered himself and George Harrison to be on similar spiritual paths and called Harrison his "spirit-brother", though Donovan was more interested in Buddhism, which Harrison considered a corruption of the more ancient Hinduism, and Harrison encouraged Donovan to read Autobiography of a Yogi. It's perhaps worth noting that Donovan's father had a different take on the subject though, saying "You're not going to study meditation in India, son, you're following that wee lassie Jenny" Donovan and his friend weren't the only other celebrities to come to Rishikesh. The actor Mia Farrow, who had just been through a painful divorce from Frank Sinatra, and had just made Rosemary's Baby, a horror film directed by Roman Polanski with exteriors shot at the Dakota building in New York, arrived with her sister Prudence. Also on the trip was Paul Horn, a jazz saxophonist who had played with many of the greats of jazz, not least of them Duke Ellington, whose Sweet Thursday Horn had played alto sax on: [Excerpt: Duke Ellington, "Zweet Zursday"] Horn was another musician who had been inspired to investigate Indian spirituality and music simultaneously, and the previous year he had recorded an album, "In India," of adaptations of ragas, with Ravi Shankar and Alauddin Khan: [Excerpt: Paul Horn, "Raga Vibhas"] Horn would go on to become one of the pioneers of what would later be termed "New Age" music, combining jazz with music from various non-Western traditions. Horn had also worked as a session musician, and one of the tracks he'd played on was "I Know There's an Answer" from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Know There's an Answer"] Mike Love, who co-wrote that track and is one of the lead singers on it, was also in Rishikesh. While as we'll see not all of the celebrities on the trip would remain practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, Love would be profoundly affected by the trip, and remains a vocal proponent of TM to this day. Indeed, his whole band at the time were heavily into TM. While Love was in India, the other Beach Boys were working on the Friends album without him -- Love only appears on four tracks on that album -- and one of the tracks they recorded in his absence was titled "Transcendental Meditation": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Transcendental Meditation"] But the trip would affect Love's songwriting, as it would affect all of the musicians there. One of the few songs on the Friends album on which Love appears is "Anna Lee, the Healer", a song which is lyrically inspired by the trip in the most literal sense, as it's about a masseuse Love met in Rishikesh: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Anna Lee, the Healer"] The musicians in the group all influenced and inspired each other as is likely to happen in such circumstances. Sometimes, it would be a matter of trivial joking, as when the Beatles decided to perform an off-the-cuff song about Guru Dev, and did it in the Beach Boys style: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Spiritual Regeneration"] And that turned partway through into a celebration of Love for his birthday: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Spiritual Regeneration"] Decades later, Love would return the favour, writing a song about Harrison and their time together in Rishikesh. Like Donovan, Love seems to have considered Harrison his "spiritual brother", and he titled the song "Pisces Brothers": [Excerpt: Mike Love, "Pisces Brothers"] The musicians on the trip were also often making suggestions to each other about songs that would become famous for them. The musicians had all brought acoustic guitars, apart obviously from Ringo, who got a set of tabla drums when George ordered some Indian instruments to be delivered. George got a sitar, as at this point he hadn't quite given up on the instrument, and he gave Donovan a tamboura. Donovan started playing a melody on the tamboura, which is normally a drone instrument, inspired by the Scottish folk music he had grown up with, and that became his "Hurdy-Gurdy Man": [Excerpt: Donovan, "Hurdy Gurdy Man"] Harrison actually helped him with the song, writing a final verse inspired by the Maharishi's teachings, but in the studio Donovan's producer Mickie Most told him to cut the verse because the song was overlong, which apparently annoyed Harrison. Donovan includes that verse in his live performances of the song though -- usually while doing a fairly terrible impersonation of Harrison: [Excerpt: Donovan, "Hurdy Gurdy Man (live)"] And similarly, while McCartney was working on a song pastiching Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys, but singing about the USSR rather than the USA, Love suggested to him that for a middle-eight he might want to sing about the girls in the various Soviet regions: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Back in the USSR"] As all the guitarists on the retreat only had acoustic instruments, they were very keen to improve their acoustic playing, and they turned to Donovan, who unlike the rest of them was primarily an acoustic player, and one from a folk background. Donovan taught them the rudiments of Travis picking, the guitar style we talked about way back in the episodes on the Everly Brothers, as well as some of the tunings that had been introduced to British folk music by Davey Graham, giving them a basic grounding in the principles of English folk-baroque guitar, a style that had developed over the previous few years. Donovan has said in his autobiography that Lennon picked the technique up quickly (and that Harrison had already learned Travis picking from Chet Atkins records) but that McCartney didn't have the application to learn the style, though he picked up bits. That seems very unlike anything else I've read anywhere about Lennon and McCartney -- no-one has ever accused Lennon of having a surfeit of application -- and reading Donovan's book he seems to dislike McCartney and like Lennon and Harrison, so possibly that enters into it. But also, it may just be that Lennon was more receptive to Donovan's style at the time. According to McCartney, even before going to Rishikesh Lennon had been in a vaguely folk-music and country mode, and the small number of tapes he'd brought with him to Rishikesh included Buddy Holly, Dylan, and the progressive folk band The Incredible String Band, whose music would be a big influence on both Lennon and McCartney for the next year: [Excerpt: The Incredible String Band, "First Girl I Loved"] According to McCartney Lennon also brought "a tape the singer Jake Thackray had done for him... He was one of the people we bumped into at Abbey Road. John liked his stuff, which he'd heard on television. Lots of wordplay and very suggestive, so very much up John's alley. I was fascinated by his unusual guitar style. John did ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun' as a Jake Thackray thing at one point, as I recall.” Thackray was a British chansonnier, who sang sweetly poignant but also often filthy songs about Yorkshire life, and his humour in particular will have appealed to Lennon. There's a story of Lennon meeting Thackray in Abbey Road and singing the whole of Thackray's song "The Statues", about two drunk men fighting a male statue to defend the honour of a female statue, to him: [Excerpt: Jake Thackray, "The Statues"] Given this was the music that Lennon was listening to, it's unsurprising that he was more receptive to Donovan's lessons, and the new guitar style he learned allowed him to expand his songwriting, at precisely the same time he was largely clean of drugs for the first time in several years, and he started writing some of the best songs he would ever write, often using these new styles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Julia"] That song is about Lennon's dead mother -- the first time he ever addressed her directly in a song, though  it would be far from the last -- but it's also about someone else. That phrase "Ocean child" is a direct translation of the Japanese name "Yoko". We've talked about Yoko Ono a bit in recent episodes, and even briefly in a previous Beatles episode, but it's here that she really enters the story of the Beatles. Unfortunately, exactly *how* her relationship with John Lennon, which was to become one of the great legendary love stories in rock and roll history, actually started is the subject of some debate. Both of them were married when they first got together, and there have also been suggestions that Ono was more interested in McCartney than in Lennon at first -- suggestions which everyone involved has denied, and those denials have the ring of truth about them, but if that was the case it would also explain some of Lennon's more perplexing behaviour over the next year. By all accounts there was a certain amount of finessing of the story th

Hey BillOReilly.com Premium and Concierge Members, welcome to the No Spin News for Monday, August 28, 2023. Stand Up for Your Country. Tonight's rundown: Talking Points Memo: Merrick Garland stonewalling the investigation into Joe Biden's handling of classified documents.  Busy day for Joe! Biden welcomes D.C. students back to school and speaks at civil rights reception. The Biden administration's food stamp expansion is responsible for yet another jump in grocery prices. Donald Trump to stand trial in DC just one day before Super Tuesday.  Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer joins the No Spin News to opine on the Republican presidential candidates.  Smart Life: Binge drinking on the rise among middle-aged adults. This Day in History: Anti-war protestors and police collide after the DNC nominates Hubert Humphrey for president.  Final Thought: Americans on vacation In Case You Missed It: Get tickets to Bill and Sid Rosenberg's live show this October: "A New York State of Mind," at The Paramount in Huntington, NY. They are on sale NOW! Read Bill's latest column, "Reality Check”. LAST CHANCE! Get the Summer Reading Special bundle before it's gone! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Sharon sits down with author, journalist, and educator, Samuel Freedman, to discuss a man who has arguably gotten too little credit in the Civil Rights Movement: former VP Hubert Humphrey. There would be no Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s without the groundwork that was laid in the 1940s. The battles Humphrey faced overlap with many of the same battles being fought now: Against white supremacy, “America First” policies, and Christian Nationalism. What inspired a very “vanilla guy” to care so deeply about these issues in the early 1900s, when it was not politically popular? What planted the seeds of his deep interior life and shaped the value system he had since childhood? In his book, “Into the Bright Sunshine,” Freedman shares unknown stories of what influenced Humphrey as an adolescent, and makes the case that Humphrey's impact in the Civil Rights movement was pivotal in American history. Special thanks to our guest, Samuel Freedman, for joining us today.Host/Executive Producer: Sharon McMahonGuest: Samuel G. FreedmanAudio Producer: Jenny Snyder Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you have any impression of LBJ Vice President Hubert Humphrey, it might be that of an establishment politician who defended an unpopular war in Vietnam and led the Democratic Party to defeat in 1968. But writer Samuel Freedman says the young Hubert Humphrey was a man of true principle and rare talent, fighting bigotry as mayor of Minneapolis, and waging a courageous battle to get the party to embrace civil rights. Freedman's book is Into the Bright Sunshine.John Powers reviews the new season of the Navajo police drama Dark Winds.

We live in dangerous times. Zealots on the extreme right are working to ban books which actively teach our history, particularly around civil rights and racial justice. That's why it's so important to remember and share our history on these issues. Our guest today is Samuel Freedman. Samuel is a journalist, author, and Pulitzer-prize finalist. His new book, Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights, is now available. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alyssa-milano-sorry-not-sorry/message

Republicans claim the election was stolen. They use those claims to justify suppressing people's right to vote. All of it happening amid a national reckoning on race. Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson tell the story of a time uncannily similar to our own – in the early 1960s. And how it's both a parallel to our present moment and the origin of conflicts playing out today.Featuring Guests:Rick Perlstein, historian, author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American ConsensusSherrilyn Ifill, Vernon Jordan Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University and former President and Director-Counsel of LDF.Jim Brosnahan, lawyer and author of Justice At Trial: Courtroom Battles and Groundbreaking Cases