Podcasts about Italy

Episode 1860 - brought to you by our incredible sponsors: Lucy - Level up your nicotine routine with Lucy. Go to Lucy.co/HARDFACTOR and use promo code (HARDFACTOR) to get 20% off your first order. Lucy has a 30-day refund policy if you change your mind RIDGE - Take advantage of Ridge's Biggest Sale of the Year and GET UP TO 47% Off by going to ⁠https://www.Ridge.com/HARDFACTOR⁠ #Ridgepod DaftKings - Download the DraftKings Casino app, sign up with code HARDFACTOR, and spin your favorite slots! The Crown is Yours - Gambling problem? Call one eight hundred GAMBLER Timestamps: 00:00:00 Story teases 00:05:20 What happened in 1860 00:07:00 Archeologists discover the first ever case of daddy-daughter incest in the world, and its in Italy 00:23:05 Thanks to Zootopia 2, Chinese people are buying dangerous pit vipers to keep as pets TRENDZZZ 00:32:30 Trump's EO bonanza, including new holidays, marijuana, fentanyl & space superiority 00:39:10 Brown Univ shooter found dead in a storage unit, and the MIT professor murdered connection 00:40:10 Patriot games coming to America! 00:42:20 More Epstein photos released, including Noam Chomsky, Woody Allen, and Bill Gates 00:44:30 Puka Nacua apologizes for “covetous Jew” touchdown celebration 00:47:45 Jake Paul vs Anthony Joshua Thank you for listening!! Go to Patreon.com/hardfactor to join our community, get access to bonus pods, discord chat and much more - but Most Importantly: HADFD!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode No. 737 features curators Beverly Adams and Jamillah James. With Christophe Cherix, Adams is the co-curator of "Wilfredo Lam: When I Don't Sleep, I Dream" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition includes more than 130 works made between the 1920s and 1970s, making it the most extensive Lam retrospective presented in the United States. "When I Don't Sleep, I Dream" argues that Lam, a Cuban-born artist who spent much of his life in Spain, France, and Italy, was a prototypical transnational artist. It is on view in New York through April 11, 2026. The exhibition catalogue was published by MoMA; Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $60-70. Jamillah James has organized the presentation of "Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition is one of the most comprehensive presentations to date of the pioneering Fluxus artist, musician, and world peace activist. "Music of the Mind" includes over 200 works across a vast array of media, including performance footage, music and sound recording, film, photography, installation, and more. It is on view at the MCA through February 22, 2026. An exhibition catalogue was published in North America by Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $38-47. Air date: December 18, 2025.

What does it really mean to speak of "socialism with Chinese characteristics"? Is it simply a matter of policy and political economy, or does it require grappling with thousands of years of civilizational history, philosophy, and culture? In this episode, Breht is joined by Zhao, the mind behind Goods for the People and author of Chinese Characteristics of Socialism: Civilizational Factors in CPC Governance to explore a bold and provocative argument: that while class struggle and material conditions must remain primary, China's socialist path cannot be understood without its deep Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist inheritance. From Yu the Great's flood control and the origins of infrastructural legitimacy, to the Mandate of Heaven, Da Tong, and the tributary system, we examine how ancient ideas of harmony, moral legitimacy, and collective responsibility continue to shape contemporary Chinese governance and foreign policy. This is a wide-ranging conversation for Marxists, socialists, and anti-imperialists interested in China beyond caricature, reductionism, and Cold War myths -- one that asks how history, philosophy, and material struggle converge in the making of a socialist future, and what China's trajectory might mean for the global path toward communism. Other episodes mentioned in this episode: Check out our 7 hour episode on the last 250 years of Chinese History HERE Check out our episode on Italy's Years of Lead HERE Check out our episode on the German Revolution HERE Check out our episode on the Spanish Civil War HERE   ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio https://revleftradio.com/

Tristan Hughes visits his favourite ancient site in Italy; Paestum, an ancient site renowned for its impressive Greek temples dedicated to Poseidon, Athena and Hera. Tristan is guided through Paestum's tumultuous history from the city's Greek origins in 480 BC to its eventual takeover by the Romans, painting a vivid picture of the interactions between the Greeks, Lucan, and the ever-present Romans.MOREFall of the EtruscansListen on AppleListen on SpotifyRoman RoadsListen on AppleListen on SpotifyPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on USA Abroad, we break down Tyler Adams' tough MCL news ahead of Bournemouth's clash with Burnley. We also dive into Aaronson vs. Richards in Leeds, and Jedi Robinson's strong Carabao Cup showing ahead of Fulham vs Forest. In Italy, Pulisic and Milan aim to defend their Supercoppa crown in Saudi Arabia, while McKennie's Juventus host Roma in a key top-five battle. Gio Reyna faces his former club as Dortmund meet Gladbach, and Leipzig vs Leverkusen delivers a massive Bundesliga six-pointer. We wrap with full reaction to the 2025 FIFA Awards: Dembele crowned Best Men's Player (Yamal snub?), Luis Enrique and Sarina Wiegman take coaching honors, and we break down the Best XI. Use my code for $30 off your next order of World Cup Tickets on SeatGeek*:https://seatgeek.onelink.me/RrnK/SOTU Sponsored by SeatGeek. *Restrictions apply. Max $30discount, Min. $200 Purchase Intro (0:00)USA Abroad: Adams injury, Jedi Assist, Gio's return (5:51)FIFA Awards: Dembele wins again, Best XI's of the Past (18:26)#AskAlexi: FIFA Fan Purity Test & More (29:21)One For The Road: Alexi's Christmas with Arsenal (42:30) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The words High and Late Middle Ages conjures up images of fog rising up over a field where knights in shining armor are trading blows with double handed swords, mighty bishops overseeing the construction of monumental cathedrals and peasants toiling on the land as serfs. The reason we see it that way goes back to the chivalric literature that celebrated the aristocratic lifestyle where tournaments and poetry mattered more than the humdrum world of business.But let's just take a look back at the High Middle Ages, the time of Richard the Lionheart, Saint Louis and Frederick Barbarossa. Who controlled access to the great endeavor of the time, the conquest of the Holy Land? Who re-opened up the connections to the wider world, from Novgorod to India and China? Who were the most ferocious fighters who neither expected norgranted any quarter? Who had all the money?These were the great cities of Italy, of Flanders, of Picardie and Provence and of the Holy Roman Empire. Verona under the Della Scala in the 14th century generated tax revenues twice as high as those of England, Venice capacity was sixty percent of what France could generate. And these cities fielded armies that, as we know, defeated the Holy Roman Emperors, even the most capable ones like Barbarossa and Frederick II time and time again. Their absolute dedication to fight to the end was evidenced by their extremely heavy and slow war carts, the Carroccios and by the bravery of the Flemish Militia at the Battle of the Golden Spurs. And the first European since Roman times to make to India and China wasn't a Knight errant, but a Venetian merchant, nor were the vast lands on the Eastern side of the continent linked up by military force. The crusades, the grand project of the age was as much a venetian mercantile adventure as a religious pilgrimage, culminating in the sack of Constantinople in 1204. What happened? Where did all these city states go? And why?That is what we are going to discuss today, when we look at the showdown between Maximilian of Habsburg, widower of the last duchess of Burgundy and father of Philip, the universally recognised heir of the Low Countries and the Flemish cities, and specifically its largest, the city of Ghent.The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau under Common Creative Licence 3.0.As always:Homepage with maps, photos, transcripts and blog: www.historyofthegermans.comIf you wish to support the show go to: Support • History of the Germans PodcastFacebook: @HOTGPod Threads: @history_of_the_germans_podcastBluesky: @hotgpod.bsky.socialInstagram: history_of_the_germansTwitter: @germanshistoryTo make it easier for you to share the podcast, I have created separate playlists for some of the seasons that are set up as individual podcasts....

Zoe Saldaña first stepped into the role of Avatar's Neytiri when she was 24 years-old. Now, the 47 year-old is back for the third film of the James Cameron franchise Avatar: Fire and Ash. "This installment of Avatar [is about] how a family can be resilient and learn to smile and love again after experiencing great loss," Saldaña told Vogue's Deputy Editor Taylor Antrim and Global Director of Social Sam Sussman ahead of the film's release in US theatres on December 19. "I get really lost into the world of Pandora," says Saldaña about reprising her role. “I really care for the characters that I play. I create a solid backstory for them, so I live more in that reality.” It's been a big year for Saldaña. On top of Avatar, she is currently Vogue Mexico's December cover star, she won an Oscar for her role in Emilia Pérez, is currently in production for season 3 of Lioness and also met Pope Leo while in Italy with her three sons. "They were so hyper," reflects Saldaña. "They're like typical 10 and eight year olds and can't focus... And the moment comes and we're right in front of him –  you can see that picture, they're gleaming."Zoe Saldaña has the distinction for being the first actor to star in four films that grossed over $2 billion at the box office. She's taken part in some of the largest franchises such as the Avengers, Avatar, Star Trek and the Pirates of the Caribbean. But now more than ever, Saldaña told Vogue that immersing herself in her personal life is the biggest priority."For a long time, I was afraid to stop," she confessed to Ramón Barreto in her cover story . "I feared that if I did, something wouldn't be right. But now, I understand that pausing is also part of the movement."The Run-Through with Vogue is your go-to podcast where fashion meets culture. Hosted by Chloe Malle, Head of Editorial Content, Vogue U.S.; Chioma Nnadi, Head of British Vogue; and Nicole Phelps, Director of Vogue Runway, each episode features the latest fashion news and exclusive designer and celebrity interviews. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world. US bureau chief Jacob Magid joins host Amanda Borschel-Dan for today's episode. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in a video message that he has approved the largest energy deal in Israel’s history. The natural gas deal with Egypt is worth NIS 112 billion ($34.7 billion), of which NIS 58 billion ($18 billion) will go into public coffers. Magid gives insight into the slow rollout of this massive deal. Magid reported yesterday that the US has secured commitments from Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany to have their leaders join US President Donald Trump on the Board of Peace that will oversee the postwar management of Gaza. We review the significance of the names that are currently not on the list and the ambiguous mandate of the International Security Force -- including an apparent walk-back from forcing Hamas to disarm. On Sunday, hundreds of Palestinians attended protests across the West Bank against the Palestinian Authority’s new prisoner payment system. Does this public anger indicate that Ramallah is moving ahead with the Western-pushed welfare reform, or is it all smoke and mirrors, as Israel's Foreign Ministry alleges? In the annual Hanukkah party on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said that Congress “is becoming antisemitic,” as the “Jewish lobby” is no longer the strongest in Washington. Though he wasn't given a White House latke this year, Magid agrees to set the scene and delves into statements made at the celebration.Check out The Times of Israel's ongoing liveblog for more updates. For further reading: ‘Historic moment’: Netanyahu announces $34.7 billion natural gas deal with Egypt Six countries have committed to joining Trump’s Board of Peace, say officials ISF will not fight Hamas, say US officials, who still seek to deploy force next month Palestinians protest PA prisoner payment reform, in apparent sign of implementation At White House Hanukkah party, Trump laments ‘Jewish lobby’ no longer most powerful Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Podwaves. IMAGE: A view of the platform of the Leviathan natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea is pictured from the Israeli northern coastal beach of Nasholim, on August 29, 2022. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Send Travis a Text MessageToday I'm joined by an old college buddy from Indiana, Jarrod Smith. We tell a funny story from our trip to Italy in college, hear how Jarrod got started in hunting, and one of his most memorable hunts. 

Serendipity—“the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way”—is the perfect word for the whirlwind adventure Anaiz Garcia and Enrique Cepeda have taken to celebrate their union. On today's episode of Wedding Secrets Unveiled!, Anaiz and Enrique join Sara to unpack their journey from a courthouse “I do,” to an Italian elopement, to a full-on Happily Ever After celebration. Sara had the honor of photographing every step of the way. So settle in and enjoy this wild love story. And who knows, it might just spark ideas for your own wedding plans! Please rate, review and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening so you never miss an episode. Even better share it with a friend! It's a great way to show your support and let us know what you think. Thank you for listening. To get the full show notes head to _________________ For more information check out our website at www.sarazarrella.com/podcast Check us out on YouTube! Make sure to like and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/@SaraZarrella/podcasts Join our Monthly Newsletter for tips, tricks and Freebies! https://sarazarrella.com/newsletter Would love to be friends on the gram at https://www.instagram.com/sarazarrellaphotography/

After many requests, Dr. Carlos Eire shares a reading list with our listeners.Great classic introductions:Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A foundational, comprehensive survey of the mystical path. The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, edited by Amy Hollywood & Patricia Beckman): An excellent collection of essays Understanding Mysticism, ed. Richard Woods: Excellent essays of all the foundational scholarly interpreters of mysticism. Including the following: David Knowles, “What Is Mysticism?”Louis Bouyer, “Mysticism: An Essay on the History of the Word”Margaret Smith, “The Nature and Meaning of Mysticism"Evelyn Underhill, “The Essentials of Mysticism”Edward Howells: "Mysticism and the Mystical: The Current Debate" R. C. Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane: an Inquiry Into Some Varieties of Praeternatural Experience: A classicMore recent introductionsStephen Clarke, From Athens to Jerusalem: The Love of Wisdom and the Love of GodOlivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism John Macquarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian MysticismCarl McColman, The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: An Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality Great historical - analytical surveys:Louis Bouyer, et. al., A History of Christian Spirituality, 3 volumes: an older classic surveyVol. 1 The Spirituality of the New Testament and the FathersVol. 2 The Spirituality of the Middle AgesVol. 3 Orthodox Spirituality and Protestant and Anglican Spirituality Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism:A monumental multi-volume series that explores the development of mysticism across different historical periods and theological contexts. Vol. 1 The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth CenturyVol. 2 The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great Through the 12 CenturyVol. 3 The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism: 1200-1350Vol. 4 The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany: 1300-1500Vol. 5 The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism: 1350–1550Vol. 6.1 Mysticism in the Reformation: 1500-1650Vol. 6.2 Mysticism in the Golden Age of Spain: 1500-1650Vol. 6.3 The Persistence of Mysticism in Catholic Europe 1500-1675Vol. 7 The Crisis of Mysticism: Quietism in Seventeenth-Century Spain, Italy, and France Bernard McGinn, Modern Mystics: An Introduction (not part of the Presence of God series, but a an essential complement to all of its volumes)Short surveys Harvey Egan, Introduction to Christian MysticismSteven Fanning, Mystics of the Christian TraditionWilliam Harmless, MysticsRichard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics SeeFocus on the corporeal dimension of mysticism:Montague Summers, The Physical Phenomena of MysticismHerbert Thurston, The Physical Phenomena of MysticismFocus on Practice:The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence of the ResurrectionThomas Keating, Open Mind, Open HeartMartin Laird, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Practice of Contemplation An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and ContemplationThomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation Contemplative Prayer Anthologies of Christian mystical texts:The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, edited by Bernard McGinnChristian Spirituality: The Classics, edited by Arthur HolderLight from Light: An Anthology of Christian Mysticism, edited by Louis DupréSuggestions for approaching the subject graduallyFirst step: Read a brief modern guide like that of Harmless or Fanning to get context before diving into the mystical texts. Second step: Dive into short excerpts from mystical texts in an anthology such as those listed above Third step: Pair theoretical texts (like Underhill) with devotional texts (like Brother Lawrence or Merton) and entire mystical texts (like the Cloud of Unknowing or The Interior Castle). Fourth step: Dive into the great surveys (like McGinn), and explore mystical texts from different eras and traditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's Christmastime, so that means it's time for an episode better known as Hark, The Icelandic Angels Sing! Iceland's Christmas Covers of Pop Songs: Let Them Ring; The Bridge That Unites Italy and Iceland (Sweden Sometimes Too) Or, Laura Branigan Is The Grinch. We're joined by fellow MaxFun host Alex Schmidt of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating to investigate this certainly very curious phenomenon. Jeremy traces word origins, Dimitry cracks the whip at wind dance practice, Alex asks if a duo can be jazz, and Oscar defends an icon over accusations of theft.Listen to Jeremy & Dimitry on Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: https://maximumfun.org/episodes/secretly-incredibly-fascinating/secretly-incredibly-fascinating-euros/Listen to all of us on Arnie Niekamp's No Skip Christmas: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-no-skip-christmas-304938865/episode/eurovangelists-jeremy-bent-oscar-montoya-and-311688164/Watch the performances from this week's episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V-PeoYujmE&list=PLd2EbKTi9fyVhFOurbUpKsOTUl5XRvR-h&pp=gAQBThis week's companion playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/72QsDSkuYoZgBmE6N4boI6 The Eurovangelists are Jeremy Bent, Oscar Montoya and Dimitry Pompée.The theme was arranged and recorded by Cody McCorry and Faye Fadem, and the logo was designed by Tom Deja.Production support for this show was provided by the Maximum Fun network.The show is edited by Jeremy Bent with audio mixing help was courtesy of Shane O'Connell.Find Eurovangelists on social media as @eurovangelists on Instagram and @eurovangelists.com on Bluesky, or send us an email at eurovangelists@gmail.com. Head to https://maxfunstore.com/collections/eurovangelists for Eurovangelists merch. Also follow the Eurovangelists account on Spotify and check out our playlists of Eurovision hits, competitors in upcoming national finals, and companion playlists to every single episode, including this one!

Send us a textIn this episode of Imperfect Marketing, I sit down with Aurora Winter—media coach, author, and neuroscience-driven marketing expert—to explore how the brain actually processes messages and why that matters for selling, storytelling, and authority-building. Aurora shares how a neuroscience-focused MBA in Italy shaped her work helping entrepreneurs craft clear, compelling messages that turn words into wealth. We discuss:The Neuroscience Behind MessagingThe brain's 3-part filter: croc brain (hook), midbrain (status/social proof), cerebral cortex (content) Why most marketers skip the midbrain step—and lose trust fast How attention is expensive, so your message needs to re-earn focus every few minutesProgress Over Perfection in MarketingWhy waiting until you're “ready” keeps you stuck How real market feedback beats imagined feedback every time The power of launching messy and refining as you goSkin in the Game MarketingWhy totally free offers often get ignored How even a small payment creates commitment and consistency Aurora's “free book + small shipping cost” test that generated $250K in 90 daysBooks as Business Growth ToolsWhy being an author instantly boosts perceived status The surprising truth: best-selling authors earn most revenue from back-end offers, not book sales How a book opens doors to speaking, consulting, coaching, and trainingStorytelling That Sticks (and Converts)Why humans are wired to learn and survive through stories Aurora's “Hell to Heaven” story blueprint for simple, high-impact marketing How stories help handle objections without pushing or over-explainingAurora's Biggest Marketing LessonWhy a strong YES requires a strong NO The importance of choosing ideal clients you can confidently help get a 10x return Letting go of energy-drainers and misaligned opportunities to protect your businessConnect with Aurora Winter:Gift for Your Audience - Includes your Turn Words-to-Wealth starter library and a video masterclass on how to attract capital, clients, and media coverage.: https://turnwordsintowealth.comAurora Winter Website: https://www.aurorawinter.comSame Page Publishing: https://www.samepagepublishing.comMarketing Fastrack: The Little Book That Launched a New Business by Aurora Winter- on Amazon: https://a.co/d/8xrIglKTurn Words Into Wealth: Blueprint for Your Business, Brand and Book by Aurora Winter - on Amazon: https://a.co/d/7RRkVYbMagic, Mystery, and the Multiverse Book 1 Amazon: https://a.co/d/5cmA6UmLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/AuroraWinterYouTube: https://www.y Looking to leverage AI? Want better results? Want to think about what you want to leverage?Check and see how I am using it for FREE on YouTube. From "Holy cow, it can do that?" to "Wait, how does this work again?" – I've got all your AI curiosities covered. It's the perfect after-podcast snack for your tech-hungry brain. Watch here

Ring out the year with a massive soccer marathon! Host Hector Flores is joined by the game's sharpest minds for a comprehensive, passionate wrap-up of world football as 2025 comes to a close. What's Inside: Ligue 1 Breakdown: Hector Flores welcomes Moussa Seck (Mo Futbol TV) for an expert's look at the French league—from PSG dominance to surprise contenders, youth development, and the storylines shaping the second half. Bundesliga & Serie A: Kelcey Coyne (High Low Sports) joins to dig into Germany and Italy's heated tables, transfer speculation, rising teams, and the ever-looming figure of Bayern Munich. La Liga & Premier League: [Jose Tellez] (Golz TV) sits down with Hector Flores for no-nonsense talk about Spanish and English football—the pressure on managers, star players, drama on and off the pitch, and who's really built for the long haul. 2025 La Liga Apertura Final Recap: Relive the intensity of Toluca's championship win, the drama of the final, and where Liga MX stands heading into the new year. 2025 Roosevelt Spencer Player of the Year Announcement: The podcast's yearly honor is revealed—who stood out above the rest in a year full of unforgettable performances? Packed with analysis, real stories from inside the game, transfer window predictions, and the debate you only get from Insert Name FC, this episode is a true celebration of “Forever Football.” Whether you savor all four hours or break it up during the holiday break, this is your go-to guide for everything that mattered—and everything still to come—in the world's favorite sport.   Listen now and get ready for even more in 2026, when the Insert Name FC Podcast returns January 15th.

Today's guest is a true family man. Or is it family band? You know what? It's both. Please welcome Lucas Ward of The Silver Snails to the show. He take a moment from traveling with his family to talk to me about his unusual musical path. It definitely hasn't been straightforward. But it's been incredibly fruitful. He discusses growing up and being friends with Elliot Smith, back when he was known and Steven. He talks about the album that flipped the musical switch in his mind. We also talk about mistaken credits, the vulnerability of singing, and starting The Silver Snails after moving to Italy with his family. After writing, recording, and releasing a “kitchen sink” debut album, there was a gap of over ten years until the sophomore release. He Lucas also talks about the unusual way the band got their name. Go check out Speed of Light, the sophomore release by The Silver Snails. Stream it or check out thesilversnails.com for ways to buy physical copies. Follow them on Instagram & Facebook for show dates and more. Follow us @PerformanceAnx. Grab merch at performanceanx.threadless.com. Send money to ko-fi.com/performanceanxiety. And I hope you enjoy Lucas Ward as much as I did on Performance Anxiety on the Pantheon Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Serena Conforte is a birder and guide based in Italy and Berlin. The book Serena recommended: The Wilding: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/book-of-wilding-9781526659309/.Learn more about European Nightjar.European Nightjar•1 ½ oz vodka•1 ½ oz milk•1 ½ oz chocolate bar•½ oz Fernet-Branca•IceInstructions1.Melt chocolate bar and heat with milk until it creates a smooth ganache (microwave for ease and cool before use)2.Combine vodka, ganache, and Fernet-Branca in a cocktail shaker with ice3.Shake shake shake4.Strain into a chilled martini glassSupport the showConnect with me at... IG: @HannahgoesbirdingFacebook: @HannahandErikGoBirdingEmail me at HannahandErikGoBirding@gmail.comWebsite: http://www.gobirdingpodcast.com

After 25 years the Mercosur deal is reaching crunch time. The trade deal which would permit free trade between the EU and the South American countries that make up the Mercosur bloc has a deadline of December 20th.It allows the EU to export more cars, wines and spirits to South America, with goods including meat coming the other way – and that's what worries Iris, but also French, farmers.There are hopes it will be signed off at this week's two-day EU summit in Brussels; hopes at least on the part of the European Commission and Germany.France and Italy are still holding out on signing up – urging a push-back to January on any decision – while Ireland appears stuck in the middle.Mercosur countries form the world's sixth largest economy with a total population of 270 million people. It's a vast market for EU producers.So how will the Mercosur talks play out this week and what pressure will Ireland be put under to sign up to a deal that Irish farmers say would greatly injure not just them, but the economy as a whole.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're looking back at the catalogue of videos that The B1M has produced in 2025 and picking our favourites. This episode is sponsored by Trimble. Learn more about Trimble's design and detailing solutions here

Doors sealed. Lights off. Silence pressing in from every direction. These are true lockdown horror stories—moments when being trapped wasn't just frightening… it was deadly. Fuel your nightmares with NoSleep Coffee — fresh, same-day roasted beans shipped right to your door. Use code NOSLEEP20 for 20% off your first order: https://nosleepcoffee.com TIMESTAMPS: Story 1: Zero Equals Infinity - 00:09 Actual Event: Cokeville Elementary Hostage Crisis, 1986 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_Cokeville_Elementary_School_hostage_crisis Story 2: House of Horrors - 20:55 Actual Event: 3 children rescued from house in Italy after years-long lockdown - https://people.com/3-children-rescued-from-house-of-horrors-locked-inside-since-covid-19-pandemic-11725566 Story 3: Code Silver - 45:48 Actual Event: Mercy Hospital Shooting, Nov, 2018 - https://abc7chicago.com/post/mercy-hospital-chicago-shooting-4-dead-including-officer-gunman/4720765/?utm Author: Matt Doggett Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/MatthewDoggettAuthor/ Website/Newsletter sign up: matthewdoggettauthor.com New Book Releases: https://www.amazon.com/Matthew-G-Doggett/e/B08FD5378Z * * * CONTENT DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains explicit content not limited to intense themes, strong language, and depictions of violence intended for adults. Parental guidance is strongly advised for children under the age of 18. Listener discretion is advised. #creepypasta #horrorstories #drnosleeppodcast #scarystories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Islamists set fire to a nativity scene at a Christmas market in Scandiano, Italy as the threats against Western civilizations reach a breaking point. Trump expands a travel ban to FIVE more countries after the National Guard shooting. Brown University REMOVES the profile of the possible shooter from their school's website as speculation flies following a press conference where even more questions were raised.  An EBT recipient goes viral for asking, “what's the point of food stamps if it's just for real food?”Mark Levin calls President Trump, the “first Jewish president”. Dana recaps her speech Tuesday speaking to Dallas Jewish Conservative and explains why her speech was necessary. Dana has questions about the sign language interpreter at the Rhode Island press conference.Tim Walz absolutely LOSES IT at a press conference, completely botching statistics about crime and firearm law. Dana reacts and fact-checks. Dana previews what Trump's primetime address could be about. Dana shares staggering numbers of r*pe and sexual assault throughout Europe.https://www.spreaker.com/episode/absurd-truth-liberal-podcaster-makes-most-heinous-charlie-kirk-take-yet--69082427Subscribe today and stay in the loop on all things news with The Dana Show. Follow us here for more daily clips, updates, and commentary:YoutubeFacebookInstagramXMore Info

Welcome, my dark souls! In this haunting chapter of Unholy December, we uncover the chilling possession outbreaks that swept through convents in France, Spain, and Italy during the 17th century. From violent public exorcisms to quiet nocturnal terrors, these cases reveal how fear, faith, and control shaped the lives of cloistered women across Europe. Drawing from diaries, trial records, and centuries of historical analysis, this episode exposes the obscure boundary between mysticism, trauma, and the supernatural. A deep, unsettling journey into the archives where some of history's darkest whispers have been waiting. *Listener Discretion is Advised*****************Sources & References:Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun (1952).Michel de Certeau, The Possession at Loudun (1970).Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (2003).Edward Peters, The Magician, the Witch, and the Law (1978).John D. Lyons, The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature (2019).Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (2007).Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (1976).Moshe Sluhovsky, “The Devil in the Convent,” American Historical Review 107, no. 5 (2002).Francine Masiello (ed. and trans.), The Diary of Santa Veronica Giuliani (selections).Michel Carmona, Urbain Grandier (2000).H. C. Lea, Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft (1939).Brian P. Levack, The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (2013).Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (1997).Jodi Bilinkoff, Related Lives: Confessors and Their Female Penitents, 1450–1750 (2005).Various 17th-century exorcism transcripts and ecclesiastical reports referenced in secondary scholarship above.****************Leave Us a 5* Rating, it really helps the show!Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beauty-unlocked-the-podcast/id1522636282Spotify Podcast:https://open.spotify.com/show/37MLxC8eRob1D0ZcgcCorA****************Follow Us on Social Media & Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!YouTube:@beautyunlockedspodcasthourTikTok:tiktok.com/@beautyunlockedthepod****************Music & SFX Attribution:Epidemic SoundFind the perfect track on Epidemic Sound for your content and take it to the next level! See what the hype is all about!

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Join me Jenny D. on a delicious journey as I sit down with Jason Capps and Kelly Rodavich about Jason's Journeys Tours to Italy.  Jason shares his passion for authentic Italian culture and cuisine through his unique travel experience.   In this episode, they explain how their small-group Italy tours work, the regions they visit (Tuscany, Amalfi Coast, Sardinia, and the new Puglia Project), and why food, local guides, and authentic experiences make their trips special. Tune in to hear about the Magic of Italy, the joy of connecting with local cultures, and the unforgettable experiences that Jason and Kelly offer. Listeners learn how to join, customize, or register for upcoming 2026 trips. Whether you're a food lover, a travel enthusiast, or simply dreaming of Italy, this episode is for you.  Sign up with the link below before the trips are sold out. https://jasonsjourneys.com/ All episodes are available on all the Major Audio Platforms as well as Jenny D's Youtube channel. Make sure to Subscribe and Follow. www.youtube.com/@Spillwithmejennyd If you would like to be a guest or sponsor on Spill with Me Jenny D. Show please fill out the disclaimer on Jenny D's website or send an email to spillwithmejennyd@gmail.com https://www.spillwithmejennyd.com/tell-your-story  

I just stepped out of the intoxicating, earthy air of the White Truffle Festival in Alba, Italy, and my entire perspective on this culinary unicorn has changed. What if everything you thought you knew about truffles—their flavor, their cost, even that bottle of truffle oil in your pantry—was missing the point? In this solo deep-dive, I'm pulling back the curtain on the world's most mysterious and fleeting luxury ingredient. We're moving beyond the hype to the heart of the matter: why truffles don't actually taste like anything, the shocking truth about most truffle products, and how a single shaving can teach us about patience, nature, and the art of savoring. I'll share exactly how to select, store, and savor real white truffles, what I learned from the legendary hunters and their dogs, and the surprising health benefits wrapped up in that earthy aroma. This is a conversation about reconnecting with the sensual, intentional joy of food. If you're ready to experience luxury in its most authentic form, join me at the chef's table.   0:00 – Introduction: The Intoxicating World of White Truffles 2:14 – The Sensory Experience: Why Truffles Are an Aroma, Not a Flavor 6:38 – The Hard Truth About Truffle Oil and Synthetic Products 11:25 – How to Select a Quality Truffle: Smell, Feel, and Look 15:10 – Understanding the Price: The Luxury of the Forest Floor 18:45 – The Art and Spirit of Truffle Foraging with Dogs 23:30 – Cooking For the Truffle: Pairings and Principles 27:15 – How to Store Truffles and Why Time is the Enemy 29:40 – The Surprising Health Benefits of White Truffles 31:20 – Final Reflections: Reverence for Nature and Seasonal Joy 32:50 – Closing Thoughts and Upcoming Culinary Adventures   Mentioned Resources Superfood Sprinkle (Chef Mareya's seasoning blend) - Available at ChefMareya.com with code REALDISH Free F.I.T. Guide (Fuel, Inspire, Thrive) - Available at ChefMareya.com Chef Mareya's Website: www.ChefMareya.com/therealdish Movie Reference: Pig

In April 1796, a 26-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte transformed a demoralized, ragged French army into a lightning-fast strike force that knocked the Kingdom of Sardinia out of the war in just over two weeks. By utilizing the strategy of the central position he successfully split the superior Austrian and Piedmontese forces, defeating them in rapid succession at battles like Montenotte and Mondovi - and proving in the process that a disciplined, mobile army could shatter traditional European alliances and permanently shift the balance of power in Italy.Clemens Bemmann is joined once again by Rick Schneid, our battlefield correspondent, and John Gill and Graeme Callister, our Austrian/Piedmontese and French army experts, for this continuation of our series on the battles of 1796.

Ferdinand wanted to make cars for the people, but the Porsche brand we know is an empire of performance. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients, so here’s one of those. [ASAP Commercial Doors Ad] Dave Young: Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast. It’s the podcast where we talk about empires that were built, businesses, business empires. You know what we… If you’ve listened before, you know… Stephen Semple: Something like that. I get it. Businesses that have done pretty well over the years. Dave Young: They started small. Stephen Semple: They started small. Dave Young: They started small and then they got big. They got so big to the point that you could call them an empire. Stephen Semple: That’s it. That’s the idea. Dave Young: It’s a pretty simple premise. Stephen Semple: That’s it. Dave Young: So as we counted down, Steve told me the topic today and it’s Porsche. Stephen Semple: Yes, sir. Dave Young: Porsche. I’m assuming this is the car. Stephen Semple: The car, yes, the car. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: The car. Dave Young: And I’m trying to… I know some Porsche jokes, but I probably shouldn’t tell those on this show. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever actually been in a Porsche. Stephen Semple: Oh, well then you’ve got to come up and see me, Dave. Dave Young: You own one. I know you own one. Stephen Semple: Well, I have one. Bernier’s got two. I don’t know how many Steve has. Dave Young: I see how it is. I see how it is. Maybe I will tell my Porsche joke. So you guys that own them, do you call it Porscha? Because some of us just say Porsche. Stephen Semple: Well, if you actually take a look back, that’s the proper German pronunciation as Porsche. Dave Young: Porsche, okay. Stephen Semple: And it’s supposed to not be… It’s not Italian Porsche, right? So it’s Porsche. Dave Young: Porsche, Porsche. Okay, I’ll accept that. I’ll accept that. I’m guessing we’re- Stephen Semple: Well, look, you got to always call a dealership to double check. They’ll tell you. Dave Young: Now, if I had to guess where we’re headed to start this off sometime around the 40s, maybe earlier. Stephen Semple: A little earlier than that, actually. It was founded by Ferdinand Porsche in 1931 in Stuttgart, Germany. You’re not far off. But the interesting thing is where the growth really happened, even though that’s when it was founded, when things really started to happen, was actually post-World War II. Dave Young: That makes sense. Stephen Semple: You’re correct on that. Dave Young: So, it started in 31 and by the time you hit the late 30s and 40s, you’re part of the war machine. Stephen Semple: Yes. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: So it was founded in 1931, Stuttgart, Germany by Ferdinand. And when we take a look at the history of the business for a very long time, they were a part of the VW group, although they were recently spun off into their own separate business. And there’s a lot of shared history between VW and Porsche. A lot of people make fun of the fact that it’s basically a VW. There’s so much connection. Now here’s the other thing is, there’s a lot of connection in Nazi Germany here as well. And I mean- Dave Young: That’s what I was intimating but trying not to say, but yes, there was definitely. Stephen Semple: And not one of these ones of, “Oh, I’m a business and I got sucked up into the machine.” I mean, very early on. Very early on. Ferdinand was a member of the SS following the war, both he and his son were charged. Dave Young: No kidding. Stephen Semple: He served two years in jail. His son six months. So we’re not talking loose connections here. He was a buddy of Adolf. Let’s just put it out there. And if you remember, going back to episode 21, VW was founded by Nazi Germany. So episode 21 about The Beetle, and Ferdinand was the guy who designed the Beetle. Dave Young: Right, right. I remember you saying that, Ferdinand Porsche. Stephen Semple: And look, Porsche has not always had the success it has today. It’s become pretty big. They do 40 billion EU in sales. They have 40,000 employees. They make 300,000 cars. There was a time that they’re making cars in the hundreds and thousands. It wasn’t that long ago. But let’s go back to Germany to the early 1900s. And if we think about Germany at that time, pre-World War II, pre-World War I, there was lots of history of engineering and science in Germany. More Nobel Prizes in Science was awarded to Germany than anywhere else in the world at that time. Dave Young: Right. Stephen Semple: Germany was a real leader in science and engineering. And the first commercial automobile was made in Germany by Mercedes-Benz. So it’s 1906 and Daimler recruits Ferdinand because Ferdinand had been the winner of the Pottingham [inaudible 00:06:05] Prize, which is the automotive engineer of the year, which is given to new chief engineers and basically allows the person to have this designated doctor engineer honoris causa, Ferdinand Porsche. And he would go around calling himself all of that. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: And this is an honorary doctorate because he never actually finished college, but he had real engineering chops, Ferdinand. So he moves to Stuttgart, which at the time is a center of car making in Germany, including all the suppliers. And he works for Benz for 20 years. Okay. Now, it’s Germany in the 1930s and 2% of the population own a car in Germany as compared to the United States, which is 30%. Dave Young: In that time? Stephen Semple: In that time. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Ferdinand comes up with this idea of we should make an inexpensive car. We shouldn’t be making car for the wealthy. We should make an inexpensive car. The board rejects the idea. Ferdinand leaves in 1929. And in 1931… Kicks around for a few years, and then 1931 starts a consulting firm. Now, this dude knew how to name things. You’re ready for the name of the company? Dave Young: Of the consulting firm? Stephen Semple: Of the consulting firm. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: I have to read this to get it right. The Doctor Engineer Honoris Causa Ferdinand Porsche Construction and Consulting and Design Services for Motor Vehicles. Dave Young: Now, if I know anything about German, that was all one word that you just said, right? Stephen Semple: Well- Dave Young: No spaces in between any of those words. Stephen Semple: Translated, you’ll see it as Dr. in H period, C period, F period, Porsche, capital G, small M, small B, capital H. Dave Young: It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Stephen Semple: Now, here’s the crazy thing. Up until 2009, that remained the official name of the company. You actually can find, if you see Porsche’s older than that, that if you look for that, it’ll be stamped somewhere in the car that that’s the manufacturer. Dave Young: They changed it finally because it was just too expensive to- Stephen Semple: It cost too much- Dave Young: Put that many letters in a dye cast. Stephen Semple: Exactly, exactly. Dave Young: Holy cow. Stephen Semple: So it’s 1934 and they land a contract with Germany to design a small affordable car for the people called the Volkswagen. Dave Young: Volkswagen. Stephen Semple: Beetle. Right, there you go. Now, here’s the thing that’s weird. Post World War II, the allies are in trying to rebuild Germany and no one owns VW. VW was owned by the state. So now it’s in the hands of the British and the British and the allies want to create a strong economy in West Germany because it’s now the Cold War. So the big defense to defending against East Germany and the expansion of communism is to really get the economy going in Germany. And so the British government, as we know from episode 21 about the Beetle, approached Porsche who designed it and said, “Help us get this car built.” And this is where it gets just a little bit weird because the son goes in one direction. Ferdinand’s doing his own thing. They both got arrested for war crimes. Son gets out first because he did six months. And his son’s name’s Ferry and his dad is in jail for two years. So between this time where dad’s still in jail and son’s out, here’s one of the things they did towards the end of the war. We don’t know exactly how many, but it was probably about 20 of their best engineers and they moved them out into the farmland of Austria and basically had them working in a barn because they didn’t want to get them arrested or killed, quite frankly. So Ferry gets out and he goes to this barn in Austria and he’s looking around and he goes, “What the heck are we going to do to make some money? Let’s start fixing up cars.” Now, not a huge business fixing up cars. It’s post-war and there weren’t a lot of cars in Germany anyway, but they had to do something. Then the dad gets out of jail and he ends up doing this work with Volkswagen. Now, here’s what’s interesting. And this is where the really tight ties between Porsche and Volkswagen start. The deal that the German government gives Ferdinand, the deal that the allies give Ferdinand is this. Dave Young: Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this. [Using Stories to Sell Ad] Dave Young: Let’s pick up our story where we left off and trust me you haven’t missed a thing. Stephen Semple: The deal that the allies give Ferdinand is this. We want your help designing and distributing this car. We will give you a royalty for every VW Beetle sold worldwide. Dave Young: Wow, that’s pretty generous. Stephen Semple: Well, no one knew it was going to be such a huge success and basically go for 50 years that car was being built. Dave Young: Right, right. Stephen Semple: So for a long time, the biggest source of revenue for Porsche was royalties on VW Beetle sales. Dave Young: Wow, okay. So it really- Stephen Semple: Isn’t that crazy? Dave Young: It really wouldn’t exist if that deal hadn’t been made. Stephen Semple: May not have, may not have. Now, meanwhile, Ferry, who has design chops of his own and loves cars, started tinkering around with vehicles. And what he started to do was put big engines in small cars. There was all these Beetle parts lying around. He would build a car, this little car, and he’d put a big engine in it. And if you go back in the time, if you go back and take a look in the late 30s, early 40s, and you take a look at Ferraris and things like that, you take a look at the race cars at the time, they were two-thirds engines. They’re these massive engines. So he went the opposite direction. He said, “Well, let’s take a little car and put a big engine in it.” And he’s driving around and he goes, “This is fun.” Because he’s basing it on parts lying around, which is the VW stuff. It’s an engine in the back. This becomes the Porsche 356, which is basically Porsche’s first car. So they start making this car and they wanted to make it somewhat affordable. So the price was $3,750, which would be $42,000 today. And they also wanted to have it as being a daily driver because again, everybody else making performance cars were not daily drivers, had a trunk, bunch of things, daily driver. And this is an important part of Porsche’s DNA. We’re going to come back to this a little bit later, this idea of it being a daily driver. So coming out of World War II, sports cars, industry’s happening and everybody’s got one. MG and Jag in the UK, there’s Ferrari in Italy, you get the idea. Now, one thing I forgot to mention that’s interesting and still today, the government state of Lower Saxony, which is basically would be the state, they still own 20% of Volkswagen. Dave Young: Really? Okay. Stephen Semple: I forgot to mention that. Dave Young: Who are they now? Stephen Semple: Well, Volkswagen’s still around. Volkswagen’s still- Dave Young: No, who is the Saxony? Stephen Semple: Well, it’d be like saying the state of Texas. It’s a state. Dave Young: Okay, it’s just a part of Germany. Stephen Semple: Part of Germany and that government still owns 20% of the company. Dave Young: What a world. Stephen Semple: Now there’s all this stimulus going on in Germany to try to get the economy going. One of the things that they did, there was a really interesting tax rate. There was an interesting tax structure. There was a very high marginal tax rate. Now, ordinary people were taxed at 15%, but the marginal tax rate could go as high as 95%. And the reason why they wanted to do this was create this incentive for reinvestment. So there’s all this… As they’re making money, there’s this heavy reinvestment. And in the early 50s, racing is really exploding. Automobile racing is really exploding, but the lines between professional and amateur is blurry. If you remember, James Dean and Steve McQueen and other actors, Paul Newman, were all racing. Dave Young: Right. Stephen Semple: They’re all racing vehicles. And Jaguar and Porsche were trying to do the same thing in terms of creating this daily driver that you could race. Now in the end, Porsche won, and I think part of it is because quite frankly, they just built a better vehicle. There was a time where the joke with Jaguars was you had to own two because one would always be in the shop and one… And going back to the early DNA, Ferry Porsche was quoted as saying, “We have the only car that can go from an East African safari to race in the Le Mans to take out to theater and then drive on the streets in New York.” Dave Young: Wow, okay. Stephen Semple: And look, today, Porsche still heavily advertises that. They will advertise a Porsche driving through the snow with ski racks on it. And not their SUVs, the 911. This is very much part of it. And if you think about it, this parallels what Rolex did in the early days. You remember from episode 184 with Rolex. Rolex, the Submariner, the Explorer. Dave Young: Target by niche. Stephen Semple: Target by niche and make it tough and something that you could use and wear day to day. So it’s 1954 and Porsche’s selling 588 cars and about 40% of them is in the US. So really what’s making things hum with them is all those Beetle sales. And it’s the ’60s, the Ford Mustang comes out, the Jag E type comes out, the Austin-Healey comes out, and Porsche decides they need a new vehicle. And they were going to do a sedan, a four door sedan. But what they realized was they didn’t really want to compete with Mercedes and BMW. So they looked around at the other German car manufacturers and they said, “You know what? That’s probably not the place to go.” They had designed it up and that project failed. They had also been working on a six cylinder Boxter engine. So Boxter engine, the cylinders are opposed, so they’re like boxing. And the whole idea is that lowers the center of gravity of the weight of the engine. And they had a project that they were working on that that didn’t go ahead. So they stepped back and they went, “Maybe what we should do is just reduce the size of the sedan and put that engine in it.” That’s what they did. And that became the Porsche 901. Except there’s a problem. Peugeot had the copyright for zero in the middle of a bunch of numbers in France. They couldn’t call it the 901 because of that copyright. Dave Young: So they called it- Stephen Semple: So they called it the 911. And that’s now the iconic Porsche car. 1966, they sell 13,000 of these cars. Now, here’s the thing that I think is very interesting. And Porsche, as far as I could figure out, is the only car manufacturer that does this. First of all, they’ve maintained the 911 forever, but even on top of that, Porsche really understands design language. We can all recognize a Porsche. Dave Young: Right. Stephen Semple: We can recognize one from 2020. We can recognize one from 1999. We can recognize one from 1970. Even though they’ve upgraded the technology, they’ve changed the design of the car. They’ve now come out with the Cayman and the Macan and the Cayenne. They’re all recognizable as that vehicle. They’ve done a great job of doing that. I think that was a lost opportunity, frankly, when Tesla came out because they had a clean design slate. Tesla could have done that. But I think that’s really interesting how they’ve managed to maintain, even though they’ll modernize it. In our minds, we still will see one and go, “That’s a Porsche.” Dave Young: Sure. And the great car brands are able to do that. Stephen Semple: Yes. Dave Young: Audi is always going to be an Audi. Volvo is always going to look like a Volvo. And in the Portals class at Wizard Academy, one of the videos that I use to demonstrate that, there’s a language. If you combine specific shapes and specific lines, that all adds up to that brand of car. And so I’ve got an old video that I got when I was in the Motor Press Guild from Audi. It was just a video that was made for journalists with an Audi designer explaining all the lines on the car when they came out with the Q7 and how it still maintained the Audi design language. It was fascinating. Stephen Semple: It is. Dave Young: So Porsche could tell you that and the cool thing is those designers can tell you that. It’s hard for you and I to go, “Well, I can look at it and say, “That’s a Porsche.” But to be able to put it into words that describe it to someone else, is a gift. Stephen Semple: What’s really interesting, my nephew, Jeffrey, he loves Audi’s. That’s what he has. And he’ll even make the comment, he doesn’t like the Porsche’s because you feel like you’re in a bubble. Audis are very square. If you look at the back of an Audi and you look at the rear end of a Porsche, it has hips. But again, he’s even, “They’re great cars, but I like the squareness of the Audi.” So that’s interesting. Dave Young: Audi Audi has a fairly, not perpendicular, but an upright grill more so than a … And that’s part of their design language. Stephen Semple: So the whole DNA of Porsche came from this whole idea of a small car. Dave Young: Big engine. Stephen Semple: Big engine, daily driver, that was the whole idea is, it’s supposed to be a car that you can drive every day. That’s the core, core, core, core principle. That’s why they always have decent sized trunks. I remember when Gary bought his Boxter, one of the things he loved about it is you can actually put two sets of golf clubs in that car. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Right? Now, here’s what’s fun. There was a time where when they were really wanting to get things going, they did some great print advertisements. So they had ads like bug killer. Another one was calling it transportation is like calling sex reproduction. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Now, two of my favorites, one was not perfect. It would list 20 or 30 races that Porsche won. And if you actually read it, there was two that it didn’t. Dave Young: That they didn’t, “We didn’t win all the races.” Stephen Semple: So not perfect. Dave Young: That could have been driver error. Stephen Semple: That could have been. But Dave, you were going to make some jokes. Porsche’s able to laugh at itself. It actually had an ad that said, “Small penis? Have I got a car for you? If you’re going to overcompensate, then by all means, overcompensate.” Dave Young: I love it, I love it. Well, and that’s always the thing, the jokes are not about the car. Stephen Semple: But they actually ran that ad and I believe it ran in Car and Driver Magazine. I cannot imagine getting that ad approved. Dave Young: That’s amazing. Stephen Semple: And look, their own drivers are like, “Yeah, whatever.” Dave Young: Sure, compensating all I want. Absolutely. I love that story. Well, thank you, Stephen. I love the story of Porsche. Stephen Semple: There you go. Dave Young: And get out there and enjoy it or just buy me one and send it here. Thank you. Stephen Semple: All right, thanks, David. Dave Young: Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big fat, juicy five-star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute Empire Building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.

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Kimberly Bird joins to discuss the controversy surrounding the book "Abortion is Everything". Joan Lewis joins with the latest from the Vatican and Rome. Plus, hear how young people are evangelizing through classical music with Spencer Mcintosh, Jacob Beranek and Christa Dalmazio. Teresa also walks you through Italy in the Shrines and Wonders segment, and gives the Pope's tips for a great Advent!

Bear Woznick sits down with Bill Snyder to talk about his new documentary Mazzuchelli: Called for Great and Difficult Work, a film about Venerable Samuel Mazzuchelli—a 19th-century missionary priest who left Italy to bring the Gospel to the American frontier. Through grit, humility, and faith, Mazzuchelli built churches, learned Native languages, and transformed communities without fear of hardship.Bill also shares his own journey—balancing fatherhood, ministry, and new leadership roles in Catholic Charismatic Renewal—while reflecting on how God calls men to step into difficult work with courage and joy. The conversation reminds listeners that holiness is forged through hard things, and greatness begins when we say “yes” to the challenge._____________________Catch every season of Long Ride Home - https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detai...Discover Bear Woznick Deep Adventure Ministries: http://bit.ly/BearWoznickNEWEST BOOK "12 Rules for Manliness | Where Have All the Cowboys Gone" on Amazon or Bear's Online Store https://my-site-100622-104377.square....DONATE TO THE CAUSE: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_...

Ask Stephen Anything : send7.org/ask-me-anythingWorld news in 7 minutes. Wednesday 17th December 2025Today : Ukraine destroys submarine. Russia compensation commission. UK MI6 message. Erasmus OK. Australia hero. Mexico congress fight. Trump sues BBC. Sudan drone killing. DRC M23 Uvira. Italy metro museums.SEND7 is supported by our amazing listeners like you.Our supporters get access to the transcripts and vocabulary list written by us every day.Our supporters get access to an English worksheet made by us once per week.Our supporters get access to our weekly news quiz made by us once per week.We give 10% of our profit to Effective Altruism charities. You can become a supporter at send7.org/supportContact us at podcast@send7.org or send an audio message at speakpipe.com/send7Please leave a rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify.We don't use AI! Every word is written and recorded by us!Since 2020, SEND7 (Simple English News Daily in 7 minutes) has been telling the most important world news stories in intermediate English. Every day, listen to the most important stories from every part of the world in slow, clear English. Whether you are an intermediate learner trying to improve your advanced, technical and business English, or if you are a native speaker who just wants to hear a summary of world news as fast as possible, join Stephen Devincenzi, Juliet Martin and Niall Moore every morning. Transcripts, vocabulary lists, worksheets and our weekly world news quiz are available for our amazing supporters at send7.org. Simple English News Daily is the perfect way to start your day, by practising your listening skills and understanding complicated daily news in a simple way. It is also highly valuable for IELTS and TOEFL students. Students, teachers, TEFL teachers, and people with English as a second language, tell us that they use SEND7 because they can learn English through hard topics, but simple grammar. We believe that the best way to improve your spoken English is to immerse yourself in real-life content, such as what our podcast provides. SEND7 covers all news including politics, business, natural events and human rights. Whether it is happening in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas or Oceania, you will hear it on SEND7, and you will understand it.Get your daily news and improve your English listening in the time it takes to make a coffee.For more information visit send7.org/contact or send an email to podcast@send7.org

In today's mini-lesson, Francesca from the Coffee Break Italian team is here with a delicious espresso lesson all about Italy's favourite festive sweet treats!

#MentorshipPodcast #FinanceCareer #ConsultingJourney #BCG #Vision2030 #CareerGrowth #InternationalBusiness #leadershiplessons Claudio shares his incredible global journey — from starting in European finance and insurance, to working on Vision 2030 transformation projects in Saudi Arabia, and later joining BCG in management consulting. His story is a masterclass in adaptability, mentorship, and lifelong learning across borders.

Volodymyr Zelensky has been in Berlin discussing peace proposals with the US, and he says they will be ready to present to Russia ‘within days'.Today, he addressed European leaders The Netherlands' House of Representatives in The Hague.We also discuss why Italy has joined Belgium in its opposition to the EU's plan to send €210 billion of Russia's frozen state assets to Ukraine.Victoria and Vitaly are joined by BBC's international editor Jeremy Bowen to discuss why there is good reason to remain wary of an imminent robust peace deal.Today's episode is presented by Victoria Derbyshire and Vitaly ShevchenkoThe producers were Laurie Kalus and Julia Webster. The technical producer was Jonny Hall. The series producer is Chris Flynn. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast's Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord

(Rec: 13/6/24) Mouth-burn, existing in Italy, stickers, penalty drama, alternate lyrics, a pact, and childhood boys. Join the Iron Filings Society: https://www.patreon.com/topflighttimemachine and on Apple Podcast Subscriptions. Get a 7-day full access free trial and pay for 10 months up front for the price of 12 if you like a bargain. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 Join Sandy and Tricia on this festive episode of The Sandy Show as they dive into lottery fantasies, holiday chaos, and quirky news that'll have you laughing out loud! Sandy and Tricia dream big about post-win splurges—like hiring a daily glam squad for "flawless hair and makeup every single day" or leasing a private jet (while Sandy opts for buying out first class and handpicking passengers from "steerage" ). They share hilarious holiday stresses, from Tricia's dreaded Advent calendar hunt for "25 tiny prizes" that fit in those pesky pockets to her mom's legendary "trash" Chex Mix snack and warming wassail drink that makes the house smell like Christmas . Catch the buzz on Snoop Dogg becoming Team USA's honorary coach for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, where he'll "bring his voice, his heart, and maybe a little wisdom" to motivate athletes . Plus, clever Aussie kids outsmarting social media bans with face ID hacks , Navy's nail-biting win over Army , and rapid-fire Q&A revealing Tricia's dream car: a sleek Porsche Panamera . Don't miss memorable moments like Sandy's quip, "You can't win if you don't play," and their banter on brain rot from endless scrolling. Tune in for relatable vibes, big laughs, and holiday spirit that'll brighten your day! Subscribe now, drop a review to share your lotto dreams, and pass it on to your friends—your next feel-good listen awaits! 

With the world getting worse and worse, the cause of labor remains the hope of the world. With that in mind, we start with headlines from workers on another general strike in Italy, the nationwide Starbucks strike, nurses and Amazon drivers unionizing with the Teamsters, id software workers joining the CWA, and many more. AI is once again exposed as relying on the labor of low paid, highly exploited workers, this time at surveillance company Flock. The New School is the latest institution in higher education being actively dismantled by its administration, we discuss the student-faculty fightback. In These Times this week has an update on the fight by worker organizer Willian Giménez González against ICE attacks. Portuguese workers were the latest to launch a general strike this week, and we discuss the tactics and strategy that would be needed to actually pull one off here in the US. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

423: Zatopek:10 2025 | Australian World XC Team announced | European XC Championships  This episode is powered by Shokz, the world leading open ear headphones pioneer. Big news——Shokz Christmas Sale is here, with up to 32% off sitewide! Visit: https://shokz.cc/irp15xmas  and use code IRP15 for your exclusive listener discount! Brad starts off looking good then has to hold it back. Julian adjusts to life with the twins. Brady begins to pick up the pace and a thing or two about trail running. RP Partner Offer: Saily have teamed up with Inside Running Podcast to offer an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! It's an eSIM service app that lets you choose from a huge range of affordable data plans in over 190 countries and 8 regions Visit: https://saily.com/insiderunning This week's running news is presented by Axil Coffee. Lauren Ryan went back to back, winning Zatopek:10 in 32:06.66, kicking home ahead of Georgie Grgec and Leanne Pompeani who had led much of the race. Seth O'Donnell dominated the field to win Zatopek:10 in 27:59.65, with only Stewy McSweyn going with Seth for much of it. Ed Marks placed second ahead of the defending Jack Rayner. Scarlett Robb kicked down to take the win in the Ondieki U20 3000m from Imogen Baker right at the line, with Eliza Lawton in third. Alexander Cameron-Smith won the de Castella U20 3000m in 8:04.77 ahead of Lucas Chis and Kieran Shepherd. Abbey Caldwell was dominant in the Open 3000m, winning in 9:14.47 ahead of Zoe Melhuish and Jaylah Hancock-Cameron. Aths Vic Results Hub Australian team announced for the World Cross Country Championships in Tallahassee, Florida on the 10th January. Womens Leanne Pompeani Holly Campbell Caitlin Adams Bronte Oates Lauren Ryan Maudie Skyring Mens Seth O'Donnell Morgan McDonald Haftu Strintzos Ky Robinson Isaac Heyne Ed Marks Mixed 4x2km Relay Oli Hoare Cameron Myers Jess Hull Linden Hall Australian Athletics Press Release   Sinclaire Johnson takes out the Kalakaua Merri Elite Mile in Hawaii in 4:21, while Josh Hoey continues his hot form to win in 3:55. Results Nadia Battocletti of Italy won the European Cross Country Championship held over a 7.5km course in Lagoa, Portugal ahead of Megan Keith and Yasmine Can. Belgium were the winning team ahead of the UK and France. Thierry Ndikumwenayo of Spain held off Jimmy Gressier to take the title in a sprint finish with Dominic Lobalu in third. Spain were the winning team ahead of Ireland and France. Official Results Grand Slam Track files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, unable to pay millions of dollars owed to competing athletes, such as Jess Hull. Nine Wide World of Sports Article   Hillary Kipchirchir Chepkwony of the NN Running Team in Kenya has been sanctioned by the Athletics Integrity Unit for biological passport violations. Athletics Illustrated   Enjoy 20% off your first Axil Coffee order! Use code IRP20 at checkout. Shop now at axilcoffee.com.au   Whispers allude to a high profile withdrawal from Zatopek, while Brady gives a training tip for the Christmas break.   This episode's Listener Q's/Training Talk segment is proudly brought to you by Precision Fuel & Hydration.   What running watches do you use/recommend? Visit precisionhydration.com for more info on hydration and fuelling products and research, and use the discount code given in the episode.  Patreon Link: https://www.patreon.com/insiderunningpodcast Opening and Closing Music is Undercover of my Skin by Benny Walker. www.bennywalkermusic.com Join the conversation at: https://www.facebook.com/insiderunningpodcast/

In this engaging episode of the "Reading with Your Kids" podcast, host Jed Doherty welcomes two inspiring guests: Sara Schroter, author of the children's book "Max the Gemstone Finder," and Daniel Harmon, creator and showrunner of the educational TV series "Tuttle Twins." Sara Schroter shares her family's remarkable journey relocating from Bermuda to Italy and how her son's fascination with rocks led to the creation of Max, a character encouraging children and parents alike to nurture childhood passions. Listeners learn how supporting kids' interests boosts confidence, fosters learning, and connects families—key themes for parents, caregivers, and families navigating big changes like relocation. The episode also features Daniel Harmon, whose Tuttle Twins animated series brings economic principles, freedom, and entrepreneurship to life for kids. Daniel explains the show's creative process, the importance of co-viewing for families, and how Angel Studios empowers audiences through crowdfunding and direct feedback. Both guests emphasize creativity, educational value, and the power of family connection. Packed with parenting insights, tips on managing screen time, and ideas for fostering curiosity, this episode is perfect for families, educators, and fans of children's books and educational TV. Discover "Max the Gemstone Finder" and "Tuttle Twins"—two resources to inspire lifelong learning, critical thinking, and joy in your family.

Welcome to a very special festive edition of The Travel Diaries. Today I'm joined by the legendary chef, restaurateur and writer, Rick Stein.Rick is returning to the podcast for the first time in five years, and I can't think of a better guest to bring a little culinary sparkle to our Christmas Special.This year, Rick is celebrating the release of his beautifully personal and utterly joyful new book, Rick Stein's Christmas - a treasure trove of festive recipes, stories, traditions, and reflections on what this time of year really means. In our conversation, we dive into his own Christmas rituals in both Cornwall and Australia, the dishes that embody comfort and nostalgia for him, the lessons he learned while cooking - and occasionally improvising - his way through last year's festivities, and the deeply human side of the season that he weaves into the book.We also travel far beyond the Christmas table, hearing about Rick's recent adventures filming in the Australian outback, the food gems he uncovered there, his newest favourite destinations, and the UK restaurants he's loving right now.So pour yourself something warm and cosy, settle in, and enjoy this festive journey with the wonderful Rick Stein.Destination Recap: ThailandAustraliaThe Niagara Café, Gundagai, NSW, AustraliaÎle de Ré, France, FranceRiva, Barnes, London, England Riley's Fish Shack, Tynemouth, EnglandPorto, PortugalDouro Valley, Portugal Laigueglia, Liguria, Italy, Italy Hotel Windsor, Laigueglia, Liguria, ItalyTrieste, Italy Tbilisi, GeorgiaArgentinaPeruBrazilLake Como, Italy If you'd like to explore more of Rick's stories, tips and recipes, his new book Rick Stein's Christmas is out now. II'll be back in a couple of weeks, on the 30th, with a very special guest to close out the year - actor and national treasure Richard E. Grant.Until then, have a cosy, joyful Christmas, and thank you so much for listening to The Travel Diaries.With thanks to...Citalia - If, like Rick, you're dreaming of your own Italian adventure, visit Citalia.com to start planning today.Naturhotel Forsthofgut – if, like many of our guests, you're dreaming of an alpine escape rooted in harmony with nature, visit forsthofgut.at to start planning today.Thanks so much for listening today. If you want to be the first to find out who is joining me on next week's episode come and follow me on Instagram I'm @hollyrubenstein, and you'll also find me on TikTok - I'd love to hear from you. And if you can't wait until then, remember there's the first 15 seasons to catch up on, that's over 160 episodes to keep you busy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Vogel was born in Auschwitz and liberated at age three, but she has no memories of being there and nobody to tell her the story of her birth or her mother. Becoming Sarah (Diane Botnick, She Writes Press 2025) grapples with identity, memory, belonging, and reinventing oneself. Sarah's trajectory is filled with both happiness and extreme loss, and she finds love, friendship, and home, but the lies she invented as a survivor follow her through her daughters and granddaughters, each of them survivors of something. Diane was born and raised in Akron, Ohio, but always knew she'd wind up in New York City. Her first night in Greenwich Village she went to a double feature of Godard's “Weekend” and Wiseman's “Titicut Follies,” and her romance with the city began. For the next 30 years, Diane worked around, starting out in Italy assisting people like Jerome Robbins and Ellen Stewart with their contributions to the Spoleto Festival, then back in the City for the Dia Art Foundation, Isamu Noguchi, Great Performances at WNET, and finally, Workman Publishing. Along the way, she returned to school in pursuit of a master's in creative writing at City College. Fulfilling all requirements but unable to pass the French exam (with a dictionary!), she was never awarded her diploma. However, the privilege of being mentored by Donald Barthelme and being appointed student editor of the literary magazine FICTION gave her far more than a diploma ever could. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

There are very few one-size-fits-all solutions in agriculture- most things depend on the weather, soil, pests, diseases and a host of other conditions for a particular farm. One of the most exciting trends in agriculture right now is the development of varieties that are suited to specific regional conditions. Common Wealth Seed Growers breeds open-pollinated vegetable varieties that are adapted to their region- in this case the southern USA.This week's guest Edmund Frost has managed seed production and research at Twin Oaks Seed Farm in Central Virginia since 2008. He also leads Common Wealth Seed Growers, a small, farm-based seed company with a commitment to regional production, adaptation and research based in Virginia. In this interview we discuss what traits they are breeding for in the Southeast, how they breed for resistance to the pests and diseases of the region, dehybridization, tropical pumpkins, new types of sweet corn that may have an advantage in the South, and more! Connect With Guest:Website: commonwealthseeds.comInstagram: @commonwealthseed Podcast Sponsors: Huge thanks to our podcast sponsors as they make this podcast FREE to everyone with their generous support: This episode is brought to you by Tend, the all-in-one, AI-powered farm management platform trusted by modern growers. Tend helps you cut through the busywork, so you can focus on growing and selling what matters. With Tend, you can plan your crops, assign and track tasks, manage inventory, and handle your sales and accounting, all in one smart, easy-to-use platform. Whether you run a 1-acre farm or manage a large operation, Tend adapts to your scale and style, supporting everything from manual labor to fully mechanized workflows. Try it for free at Tend.com, no credit card required. Tired of breakdowns and not knowing if your old Farmall or Allis G will start? Consider the Tilmor Super E - the electric cultivating tractor built for market growers. With up to 8 hours of runtime, the Super E uses a 48-volt electric system that's quiet, easy to operate, and dependable. No gas, no noise, no constant repairs and cheaper to operate than a gas tractor. It delivers reliable power that reduces manual labor and keeps your crew motivated. Learn more and see the Super E in action at Tilmor.com. Farmhand is the virtual assistant built for farmers—helping CSAs scale sales, run error-free fulfillment, and deliver 5-star service. Whether you're at 100 members or 1,000, Farmhand helps you grow without burning out. You've heard us—and our farmers—right here on the Growing for Market Podcast. Explore more stories and learn more at farmhand.partners/gfm. BCS two-wheel tractors are designed and built in Italy where small-scale farming has been a way of life for generations. Discover the beauty of BCS on your farm with PTO-driven implements for soil-working, shredding cover crops, spreading compost, mowing under fences, clearing snow, and more – all powered by a single, gear-driven machine that's tailored to the size and scale of your operation. To learn more, view sale pricing, or locate your nearest dealer, visit BCS America. Nifty Hoops builds complete gothic high tunnels that are easy to install and built to last.  Their bolt-together construction makes setup straightforward and efficient, whether it's a small backyard hoophouse, or a dozen large production-scale high tunnels- especially through their community build option, where professional builders work alongside your crew, family, or neighbors to build each structure -- usually in a single day. Visit niftyhoops.com to learn more. There are a lot of farm sales platforms out there, but there's only one that's cooperatively owned by farmers. That's GrownBy — your all-in-one solution to simplify farm sales. GrownBy makes online farm sales easy and affordable; setting up your shop is free, and you only pay when you sell. Join over 900 farms who have already signed up for GrownBy, at grownby.com. Subscribe To Our Magazine -all new subscriptions include a FREE 28-Day Trial

Hey before I begin I just want to thank all of you who have joined the patreon, you guys are awesome. Please let me know what other figures, events or other things you want to hear about in the future and I will try to make it happen.   If you are a long time listener to the Pacific War week by week podcast over at KNG or viewer of my youtube channel you have probably heard me talk about Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya quite often. It goes without saying when it comes to Japanese generals of WW2 he stands out. Not just to me, from the offset of the war he made a large impression on westerners, he achieved incredible feats early on in the war. Now if you look up books about him, you will pretty much only find information in regards to his infamous war crimes trial. Hell it was so infamous the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes, whereby a commanding officer is legally responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his subordinates, was created. This is known as the command responsibility or “the Yamashita standard”. His court case was very controversial, he remains a controversial figure, certainly to the people of territories he campaigned in, but I think what can be said of him the most is he was special amongst the Japanese generals. Anyways lets get the show on the road as they say.   So who was Yamashita? When he was 59 years old commanding forces in the Philippines against General Douglas MacArthur, he weighed 220 ls and stood 5 feet 9 inches. His girth pressed out against his green army uniform. He had an egg shaped head, balding, wide spaced eyes and a flat nose. He wore a short mustache, sort of like Hitlers, until it grayed then he shaved it off. He was not a very attractive man, Filipinos referred to him as “old potato face” while Americans called him “a florid, pig faced man”.   Tomobumi Yamashita was born in 1885, he was the second son of Dr. Sakichi Yamashita and Yuu Yamashita in Osugi village, on Shikoku island. Like most males of his day he was indoctrinated into military preparatory school from a young age. Yamashita had no chosen the army as a career, in his words ‘my father suggested the idea, because I was big and healthy, and my mother did not seriously object because she believed, bless her soul, that I would never pass the highly competitive entrance examination. If I had only been cleverer or had worked harder, I would have been a doctor like my brother”Yamashita would graduate from the 18th class of the IJA academy in november of 1905, ranked 16th out of 920 cadets.    In 1908 he was promoted to the rank of Lt and during WW1 he fought against Imperial German and Austro-Hungarian forces in the famous siege of Qingdao, which if you are interested I did an episode over on my Youtube channel about this battle. Its a very overlooked battle, but many histories firsts occurred at it like the first carrier attack. In 1916 he was promoted to captain and attended the 28th class of the Army War college to graduate sixth in his class that year. He also married Hisako Nagayama in 1916, she was the daughter of the retired General Nagayama.    It seems Yamashita's brush against the Germans in 1914 had a huge influence on him, because he became fascinated with Germany and would serve as assistant military attache at Bern and Berlin from 1919-1922. He spent his time in Germany alongside Captain Hideki Tojo, both men would run into each other countless times and become bitter rivals. Both men toured the western front, visiting Hamburg and witnessed first hand the crippling inflation and food prices that came from Germany's defeat. Yamashita said to Tojo then “If Japan ever has to fight any nation, she must never surrender and get herself in a state like this.” He returned to Japan in 1922, was promoted to major and served a few different posts in the Imperial Headquarters and Staff College. Yamashita became a leading member of the Kodoha faction, while Tojo became a leading member of the rival Toseiha faction. In 1927 Yamashita was sent again to Europe, this time to Vienna as a military attache. Just prior to departing he had invested in a business selling thermometers starting by one of his wife's relatives, the business failed horribly and Yamashita was tossed into debt, bailiffs literally came to seize his house. As told to us by his biographer “For a regular officer to have contracted such a debt, however innocently, was a disgrace. He felt he should resign his commission.” Yamashita's brother refused to allow him to quit, instructing him to leave for Vienna, while he resolved his debts. His days in Vienna were the best of his life, professed Yamashita. He studied economics at Vienna university and made friends with a Japanese widow, who introduced him to a German woman named Kitty and they had an affair. This would spring forward his reputation as an eccentric officer. Yamashita was obsessed over hygiene,and refused to eat fruit unless it was thoroughly washed. He avoided ice water, hated dancing and never learnt how to drive a car. One of his most notable quirks was his habit of falling asleep often during meetings where he legendarily would snore. Like I may have said in previous podcast and youtube episodes, this guy was quite a character, often described as a big bear.    Now this is not a full biography on Yamashita so I cant devolve to far into things, such as his first fall from grace. During the February 26th coup incident of 1936, Yamashita was a leading member of the Kodoha faction and helped mediate a peaceful end to the standoff, however in truth he was backing the coup. He simply managed to not get caught red handed at the time doing too much for the mutineers, regardless he lost favor with the outraged Emperor and many young captains whom he loved like sons killed themselves in disgrace. If you want to know more about the February coup of 1936, check out my series on Emperor Hirohito or General Ishawara, they both talk about it in depth and touch upon Yamashita's role a bit.    The coup led to the dissolvement of the Kodoha faction and the dominance of the Toseiha, led by Tojo. Yamashita tried to resign from the IJA, but his superiors dissuade him. He was relegated to a post in Korea, which honestly was a punishment. Yamashita would say “When I was posted to Korea, I felt I had been given a tactful promotion but that in fact my career was over. Even when I was given my first fighting company in North China, I still felt I had no future in the Army, so I was always on the front line, where the bullets flew the thickest. I sought only a place to die.”  He had some time to reflect upon his conduct while in Korea, he began to study Zen Buddhism. He was promoted to Lt General in November of 1937 and when the China war broke out he was one of those speaking out that the incident needed to end swiftly and that peaceful relations must be made with the UK and US. He received a unimportant post in the Kwantung army and in 1938 was assigned command of the IJA 4th division. He led the forces during in northern china against insurgents until he returned to Tokyo in July of 1940. His fellow officers lauded him as Japan's finest general. Meanwhile Tojo had ascended to war minister and one of his first moves was to send a delegation to Germany. Tojo considered Yamashita a ruthless and forceful commander and feared he would become a powerful rival against him one day. Yamashita would go on the record to say then “I have nothing against Tojo, but he apparently has something against me.” You see, Yamashita had no political ambitions, unlike Tojo who was by nature a political monster. “My life, is that of a soldier; I do not seek any other life unless our Emperor calls me.” In late 1940, Tojo asked Yamashita to lead a team of 40 experts on a 6 month train tour of Germany and Italy, a move that kept him out of Tokyo, because Tojo was trying to solidify his political ambitions. This is going to become a looming theme between the two men.   He was presented to Adolf Hitler in January of 1941, passing along messages from Tojo and publicly praising the Fuhrer, though privately he was very unimpressed by the man  “He may be a great orator on a platform, with his gestures and flamboyant way of speaking. But standing behind his desk listening he seems much more like a clerk.” Hitler pressed upon him to push Japan to declare war on Britain and the US. At the time of course Japan was facing China and had two major conflicts with the USSR, thus this was absolutely not in her interest. “My country is still fighting in China, and we must finish that war as soon as possible. We are also afraid that Russia may attack us in Manchuria. This is no time for us to declare war on other countries.” Yamashita hoped to inspect Germany's military techniques and technology to help Japan. Hitler promised open exchanges of information stating “All our secrets are open to you,”, but this would prove to be a lie. “There were several pieces of equipment the Germans did not want us to see. Whenever I tried to persuade the German General Staff to show us things like radar—about which we had a rudimentary knowledge—the conversation always turned to something else.”   Yamashita met with field Marshal Hermann Goring who gave him an overview of the war in europe. Goring would complain about Yamashita falling asleep during lectures and meetings and he believed the man was drunk often. Yamashita met Benito Mussolini in June of 1941 receiving a similar rundown to what he got in Germany. Yamashita visited Kitty in Vienna for a quick fling, but overall the trip deeply impacted Yamashita's resolve that Japan should stay out of the Europeans war and that Germany made a grievous error invading the USSR in June of 1941. This is what he said the members of the commission “You know the results of our inspection as well as I do. I must ask you not to express opinion in favor of expanding the alliance between Japan, Germany and Italy. Never suggest in your report that Japan should declare war on Great Britain and the United States. We must not and cannot rely upon the power of other nations. Japan needs more time, particularly as there may be aggression against us from Russia. We must have time to rebuild our defense system and adjust the whole Japanese war machine. I cannot repeat this to you often enough.” His report was similar, and it really pissed off Tojo who was trying to develop plans for a war against America. Yamashita would then get exiled to Manchuria in July of 1941, but Tojo's resentment towards him could only go so far, because Yamashita was one of their best generals and in his planned war against Britain and America, he would need such a man.   Yamashita's time in Europe reshaped his views on how to conduct war. He saw first hand blitzkrieg warfare, it seems it fascinated him. He consistently urged the implementation of new proposals calling for the streamlining of air arms; to mechanize the Army; to integrate control of the armed forces in a defense ministry coordinated by a chairman of Joint Chiefs of staff; to create a paratroop corps and to employ effective propaganda. Basically he saw what was working for the Germans against the allies and wanted Japan to replicate it. Tojo did not like many of the proposal, hated the fact they were coming from Yamashita, so he obviously was not keen on making them happen. Luckily for Yamashita he would be given a chance to implement some of his ideas in a big way.   On November 6th of 1941, Lt General Yamashita was appointed commander of the 25th Japanese army. His orders were to seize the Malay Peninsula and then the British naval base at Singapore. The Malaya Peninsula snakes 700 miles south of Thailand, a rugged sliver of land that constricts at its narrowest point to about 60 miles wide. It hold mountains that split the peninsula in half, some going as high as 7000 feet. During this time Malaya produced around 40% of the worlds rubber, 60% of its tin, two resources vital for war. At its very southern tip lies Singapore, a diamond shaped island connected to the mainland by a 1115 stone causeway. Singapore's largest asset was its naval base guarding the passage from the Pacific and Indian oceans. Together Malay and Singapore represented the key to controlling what Japan called the Southern Resource Area.   Singapore was known as the gibraltar of the east for good reason. It was a massively fortified naval base. The base had been developed between 1923-1938 and cost 60 million pounds, around 2 billion pounds today. It was 21 square miles, had the largest dry dock in the world, the 3rd largest floating dock and enough fuel tanks to support the entire royal navy for 6 months. She was defended by 15 inch naval guns stationed at the Johre battery, Changi and Buona vista battery. And despite the infamous myth some of you may have heard, these guns were fully capable of turning in all directions including the mainland. For those unaware a myth perpetuated after the fall of Singapore that her large 15 inch guns could not turn to the mainland and that this spelt her doom, no it was not that, it was the fact they mostly had armor piercing shells which are using to hit ships and not land targets. Basically if you fire an armor piercing shell at land it imbeds itself then explodes, while HE shells would have torn any Japanese army to pieces. Alongside the 15 inch monsters, there were countless other artillery pieces such as 9.2 inch guns. By December of 1941 Malaya and Singapore held 164 first line aircraft out of a total of 253 aircraft, but many of the fighters were the obsolete Brewster F2A Buffalo, a pretty slow, fat little beast that could take a licking as it was armored, but against the Zero fighter it was unbelievably outmatched in speed and maneuverability.    The Japanese acquired a major gift prior to the outbreak of war. On november 11th, 1940, the SS Automedon, a German raider attacked the HMS Atlantis which was carrying documents intended for the British far east command. The documents indicated the British fleet was not going to help Singapore; that Britain would not declare war if Thailand was invaded and that Hong Kong was expendable. The Germans gave the documents to the Japanese who were very excited by the information.    Starting in January of 1941, Colonel Masanobu Tsuji led the Taiwan Army Research section based on Formosa to investigate how a campaign could be waged in Malay and Singapore. His findings on the defenses of Malay and Singapore were summed up in these 3 points: 1. Singapore Fortress was solid and strong facing the sea, but vulnerable on the peninsular side facing the Johore Strait;  Newspaper reports of a strong Royal Air Force (RAF) presence were propaganda;  Although British forces in Malaya numbered from five to six divisions (well over 80,000 men), less than half were Europeans.    Now just a little bit about Tsuji as he was to become the chief of staff operations and planning under Yamashita. Tsuji was extremely insubordinate and a political schemer. He was a Toseiha faction fanatic, loyal to Tojo and thus definitely an enemy to Yamashita. Yamashita wrote of Tsuji in his war diary “is egotistical and wily. He is a sly dog and unworthy to serve the country. He is a manipulator to be carefully watched.” Tsuji would go on to have a infamous reputation for ordering atrocities in the name of his superiors, often without them knowing and this would be very much the case under Yamashita. Now using Tsuji's intelligence Yamashita began plans at his HQ at Samah, a port on Hainan island, starting in November of 1941 on how to launch the campaign. He was initially offered 5 divisions for the invasion, but he felt he could accomplish the objective with only three. There are a few reasons why he believed this; first, Tsuji's research suggested the peninsula roads would be the center of the battlefront and that the flanks would extend no more than a km or so to the left or right due to the dense jungle terrain (in fact Yamashita was planning to assault from the jungle specifically); 2nd intelligence indicated the defending troops were not of the highest caliber (the British were busy in Europe thus many of the troops in southeast asia were poorly trained, half were british regulars the rest were Australian, Indian and Malayan); 3rd Yamashita was aware “the Japanese army were in the habit of flinging more troops into the battle than could possibly be maintained” boy oh boy tell that one to the future boys on Guadalcanal. Thus he calculated 3 divisions was the maximum to be fed, equipped and supplied. Based on his recommendations the 25th army was created with 3 divisions; the 5th under Lt General Takuma Matsui; 18th under Lt General Renya Mutaguchi and the Imperial guards division of Lt General Takuma Nishimura. Supporting these would be two regiment of heavy field artillery and the 3rd tank brigade. Something that made Yamashita's campaign quite interesting was the usage and amount of tanks. He was invading with around 200 or so tanks consisting of the Type 95 Ha-Go light tank, type 97 Chi-Ha and Type 89 I-Go medium tanks and Type 97 Te-Ke tankettes. For aircraft he had the 3rd Air division, 459 aircraft strong with an additional 159 aircraft from the IJN to support them. The 3rd air division had a variety of aircraft such as Nakajima Ki-27 Nate's, Nakajima ki-43 Oscars, Kitsubishi ki-51 Sonia's, Kawasaki ki-48 Lily's, Mitsubishi ki-21 sally's, Mitsubishi ki-30 Ann's, Mitsubishi ki-15 babs and Mitsubishi ki-46 dinahs. For the IJN it was the 22nd air flotilla using Mitsubishi G3M1 Nell's, Mitsubishi A5M4 Claudes and some A6M Zeros. To say it was a lot of firepower at his disposal is an understatement, Yamashita was packing heat, heat he could use in a blitzkrieg fashion.   His staff at Samah identified 5 operational objectives: 1 Simultaneous capture of Singora and Patani, Thailand and Kota Bharu, Malaya.  2 Capture of all enemy airfields in southern Thailand and Malaya.  3 Occupation of Kuala Lumpur, Malaya.  4 Occupation of Johore Bahru, and control of Johore Strait.  5 Conquest of Singapore.    Colonel Tsuji, appointed Chief of Operations and Planning for the 25th Army, proposed the following plan which was readily approved:  Land the main strength of the 5th Division simultaneously and without warning at Singora and Patani, and at the same time land a powerful section of the 18th Division to attack Kota Bharu.  The troops disembarked at Singora and Patani to press forward immediately to attack the line of the Perak River Hand capture its bridge and the Alor Star aerodrome.  The troops landed at Kota Bharu to press forward along the eastern coast as far as Kuantan.    The landing at Kota Bharu, the only one in Malaya was expected to be opposed and quite risky. But if it was successful, it would create a useful diversion away from the main force landings in Thailand.   The landings took place around 2:15am local time on December 8th, about an hour and 20 minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The landings went largely unopposed, except at Kota Bahru where the Japanese saw heavy resistance. The British had anticipated this landing point and created operation Matador, a plan to pre-emptively invade southern thailand to secure defensive lines against the Japanese, however this plan was never accepted by British high command for obvious political reasons. But on December 5th, with a Japanese invasion looking certain, suddenly London gave permission to the Far east commanders to decide if Operation matador should be activated or not. The commander in Malaya, General Arthur Percival recommended forestalling it, fearing to violate Thai sovereignty, which ultimately would be the doom of a defense for Malaya.   At the battle of Kota Bharu, the 9th infantry division of Major General Barstow attempted holding off the Japanese from taking the important Kota Bharu airfield. The 8th brigade of Billy Key had fortified the beaches with pillboxes, barbed wire and land mines. The Japanese took heavy losses, but they were able to find gaps and fill them up until Brigadier Key had to ask permission to pull out. The royal air force at Kota Bharu tossed Hudson bombers to hit the troop transports, but it was a suicide mission to do so. Meanwhile the IJA 5th division landed at Pattani and Songkhla in Thailand while the Imperial guards division marched over the border from French Indochina. The Japanese encountered very little resistance, the leader of Thailand Plaek Pibulsonggram had been trying to get assurances from the allies and Japanese all the way up until the invasion, once the Japanese landed he knew his best option was to play nice and sign an armistice. This basically spelt doom for malaya as the Japanese were given access to Thailand's airfields which they used to smash the forward airfields in Malaya.   The first day of aerial encounters were a catastrophe for the British. General Percival would comment “The rapidity with which the Japanese got their air attacks going against our aerodromes was quite remarkable. Practically all the aerodromes in Kelantan, Kedah, Province Wellesley, and Penang, were attacked, and in most cases fighters escorted the bombers. The performance of Japanese aircraft of all types, and the accuracy of their bombing, came as an unpleasant surprise. By the evening our own air force had already been seriously weakened.” Brigadier Key withdrew after causing an estimated 800 casualties upon the Japanese while taking roughly 465. While Kota Bharu was being fought over, Percival unleashed Operation Krohcol, a 2.0 of Matador seeing British forces cross into Thailand to intercept the incoming enemy. It was an absolute disaster, the British attackers were defeated not only by the Japanese 5th division, but some Royal Thai police also defended their territory. The operation had basically become a race to who could seize the important focal point first and the Japanese took it first thus winning decisively. To add to that misery, force Z, consisting of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales,, battlecruiser Repulse and 4 destroyers tried to intercept the Japanese invasion fleet only to be utterly destroyed by overwhelming Japanese airforces.   Within 4 days of the landings, the 5th division advanced from Singora through the town of Jitra to capture the RAF airfield at Alor star, around 100 miles away. Yamashita managed this using flanking techniques that saw his army take town after town and airfield after airfield. There were numerous natural obstacles to the advance such as dense jungles, very long supply lines, torrential rain and heat, but he had a secret weapon, bicycles. At Jitra Percival made his first major stand. Holding Jitra would safeguard the northern airfields of Malaya, but it was a folly to do so as the airfields in question were not provided adequate aircraft and the British lacked something extremely important to be able to defend themselves, tanks. Colonel Tsuji saw the fighting at Jitra first hand and reported “Our tanks were ready on the road, and the twenty or so enemy armored cars ahead were literally trampled underfoot … The enemy armored cars could not escape by running away, and were sandwiched between our medium tanks … It was speed and weight of armor that decided the issue.” The British had spread themselves far too thinly across a 14 mile front with jungle on their right flank and rubber plantations and mangrove swamps to their left. Yamashita used a innovative blitzkrieg like tactic, he combined his air, artillery, tanks and bicycle infantry to punch holes in concentrated attacks forcing allied defenders to withdraw. As Percival would write later in his memoirs “This withdrawal would have been difficult under the most favorable conditions. With the troops tired, units mixed as the result of the fighting, communications broken and the night dark, it was inevitable that orders should be delayed and that in some cases they should never reach the addressees. This is what in fact occurred … the withdrawal, necessary as it may have been, was too fast and too complicated for disorganized and exhausted troops, whose disorganization and exhaustion it only increased”    Yamashita had ingeniously thought of employing large numbers of bicycles for his infantry so they could keep up momentum and speed with his mechanized forces. Oh and he didn't bring thousands of bicycles over to Malaya, the real genius was that they were there ready for him. His intelligence prior to the invasion indicated nearly all civilians in malaya had bicycles, so when the Japanese came over they simply stole them. Half of Yamashitas troops moved in motor vehicles while the rest road on 18,000 bicycles. As noted by Tsuji “With the infantry on bicycles, there was no traffic congestion or delay. Wherever bridges were destroyed the infantry continued their advance, wading across the rivers carrying their bicycles on their shoulders, or crossing on log bridges held up on the shoulders of engineers standing in the stream.” They Japanese overwhelmed the defenders who were forced to fight, flee into the jungles or flee along the roads where they were simply outsped by the faster Japanese. The defenders left numerous stores of food, abandoned vehicles, and supplies that Yamashita's men would dub “churchill's allowance”. British Lt Colonel Spencer Chapmanwas forced to hide on the sides of roads watching Japanese pedal past remarking “The majority were on bicycles in parties of forty or fifty, riding three or four abreast and talking and laughing just as if they were going to a football match.” The Japanese had the ability to carry their gear on the bicycles, giving them an enormous advantage over the allies fleeing on foot. The Japanese could travel faster, further and less fatigued. When the British destroyed 250 bridges during their flight, “the Japanese infantry (to continue) their advance, wading across the rivers carrying their bicycles on their shoulders, or crossing on log bridges held up on the shoulders of engineers standing in the stream”. The British could not escape the bicycle blitzkrieg as it became known, countless were forced to surrender under constant pressure and relentless pursuit.    Alongside the bicycle warfare, whenever Yamashita faced terrain unsuitable for his tanks, he ordered amphibious landings further south to outflank the enemy's  rear.   Meanwhile the war in the air went equally terrible for the allies. The RAF had pulled back its best pilots and aircraft to deal with the war for Britain against the Luftwaffe. 21 airfields were in Malaya and Singapore, few of them had modern facilities, only 15 concrete runways. The heavy rain made the grass airstrips unusable. All the airfields were allocated around 8 heavy and 8 light anti aircraft guns. Quality radar units were completely inadequate. The Super Spitfires and Hyper Hurricanes were mostly in Britain fighting the Germans, while Buffaloes were allocated to Malaya. The Japanese airforces easily overcame the allied opposition and established air superiority quickly. Launching from airfields in Vietnam, they bombed all the airfields into submission and continuously applied pressure to Singapore. . The aerial dominance of the Zero and ‘Oscar' fighters served to undermine the morale of the British infantryman on the ground. As historian H. P. Wilmot has observed, “in the opening phase of the war the Zero-sen was just what the Japanese needed, and the Allies were devastated by the appearance of a ‘super fighter.' To add insult to injury, every airfield taken starting at the most northern going further and further south towards Singapore offered the Japanese new launching points to make for faster attack.   Yamashita's forces reached the southern tip of the peninsula in just 8 weeks, his men had covered some 700 miles, about 12 miles a day on average. They fought 95 large and smaller battles doing so. Multiple lines of defense were erected one after another to try and halt the Japanese advance, to kill their momentum. Starting at the beach landings, to Jitra, then to Kampar, over the Slim river, then Johor. The British failed to employ “leave behind forces” to provide guerilla warfare in lost territories leading not only the Japanese to easily consolidate their gains, the Thai's also came down and grabbed some territory. At the battle of Muar Major General Gordon Bennet deployed the allied defenders south of the Muar River and it was widely believed here they would finally halt the Japanese. Then the Imperial Guards division outflanked them performing an amphibious landing and advancing down the coastal route. The 5th Japanese division followed a parallel route through the center and the 18th division landed near Endau. The allies were thus surrounded and took heavy casualties, countless were forced to flee through swamps and thick jungle abandoned their stuff. Gordons 45th brigade were absolutely shattered, effectively disbanded and left north of the Muar river as the rest of the allies fled south. The defeat at Muar broke the British belief they could hold even a toehold on Malay. Percivals strategy to fight delaying actions until the arrival of reinforcements to Singapore had fatally undermined his troops ability to hold onto defensive positions. As the British governor of the Johore straits settlement, Sir Shenton Thomas would say on January 6th ‘“We … have gone in for mechanized transport to the nth degree. It is a fearsomely cumbersome method. We have pinned our faith to the few roads but the enemy used tracks and paths, and gets round to our rear very much as he likes.”” Yet alongside the conquest came a series of atrocities.    At the Parit Sulong Bridge south of the Muar, Captain Rewi Snelling was left behind with 150 wounded Australian and Indian soldiers not able to trek south. The Imperial guards division herded them into buildings, denied them medical treatment, many of the Indians were beheaded, others shot. This become known as the parit sulong massacre. Its hard to saw what Yamashita would have known about this incident, it technically was under the command of Takuma nishimura. On January 22nd, Nishimura gave the orders for prisoners to be forced outside, doused with petrol and set on fire. Nishimura would be sentenced to life in prison by a Singapore court, but on a flight back to Japan he was hijacked by Australian military police in Hong Kong who grabbed him and held a trial for the Parit Sulong massacre, finding him guilty and hanging him on june 11th of 1951.    When the Japanese reached the straits of Johore, Yamashita took several days to perform reconnaissance, allowing his forces to regroup and prepare to attack the massive fortress. His plan for the invasion would see the Imperial guards perform a feint attack on the northeast side of Singapore, landing on the nearby Palau Ubin island on february 7th. The 5th and 18th division would remain concealed in the jungle until the night of the night of the 8th when they would cross the Johore and hit the northwest side of Singapore. The causeway to Singapore had been blown up by the retreating British, but the ability for Singapore to defend itself from a northern attack was lackluster. When Churchill was told by Wavell the Japanese sat on the other side of the Johore strait ready to attack the fortress he said ““I must confess to being staggered by Wavell's telegram. It never occurred to me for a moment that … Singapore … was not entirely fortified against an attack from the Northwards …””   With barely enough supplies or logistical support for his campaign, Yamashita's rapid advance down the Malay peninsula walked a tightrope of what was possible. His 70,000 men of which 30,000 were frontline troops had overcome a British force double their number. In Japan he garnered the epithet “Tiger of Malaya”, which ironically he was not too happy about. Later on in the war he would bark at a German attache “I am not a tiger. The tiger attacks its prey in stealth but I attack the enemy in a fair play”.   By this point Singapore had swollen from a population of 550,000to nearly a million. Percival had a total of 70,000 infantry of mixed experience plus 15,000 clerks and support staff to man lines if necessary. 38 battalions, 17 Indian, 13 British, 6 Australian and 2 Malayan. He placed his weakest troops west of the causeway, near the abandoned naval base rather than nearby the airfield which he considered was going to be Yamashita's thrust. He placed his best forces over there, which would prove fatally wrong as Yamashita hit west of the causeway. Yamashita meanwhile could only muster 30,000 troops, he was outnumbered 2:1 and amphibious assaults called for the attacker to hold a 2:1 advantage for success. Yamashita's men were exhausted, they had suffered 4565 casualties, roughly 1793 deaths in their 55 day advance south. Worse yet, Yamashita had a critical supply issue. He had greatly exceeded his supply lines and had been surviving on the abandoned churchill stores along the way. His ammunition was critical low, it is said he was down to 18 functional tanks, allowing his men to fire 100 rounds per day, the fuel ran out, and as Yamashita put it “My attack on Singapore was a bluff—a bluff that worked. I had 30,000 men and was outnumbered more than three to one. I knew that if I had to fight for long for Singapore, I would be beaten. That is why the surrender had to be at once. I was very frightened all the time that the British would discover our numerical weakness and lack of supplies and force me into disastrous street fighting.” He told his men of the 5th and 18th division not to build any cooking fires so they could conceal their positions in the jungle as he gathered hundreds of collapsible boats and other crafts to ford the strait. He gathered 40 divisional commanders and senior officers to a rubber plantation and with a flushed red face read out his attack orders while pouring them Kikumasamune (ceremonial wine). He made a traditional toast and said “It is a good place to die; surely we shall conquer”. He had to get the British to surrender quickly, he had to essentially ‘bluff” his enemy. He had to make the British think he was fully armed and supplied for a prolonged siege, how could he do so? He fired his artillery like a mad man, knowing full well they would run out of shells.   Starting on February 3rd,  Yamashita's artillery supported by aerial bombings hit Singapore for 5 days. On the night of the 7th, 400 Imperial Guards crossed to the Ibin island performing their feint attack. Percivals attention was grabbed to the east successfully, while on the night of the 8th the 5th and 18th divisions assembled carefully at the water's edge. At 8:30pm the first wave of 4000 Japanese troops crossed the Johore strait aboard 150 small vessels. The noise of their engines was drowned out by artillery. The thinly spread Australian lines, 3000 or so men led by Major General Bennet were breached fast leading to pockets of surrounded australian troops. As Lewis Gunner cliff olsen recalled “We were horribly spread out and it was pitch black and they [Japanese troops] were very hard to see. They walked through us half the time.” A beachhead was formed, a soon 14,000 Japanese had crossed by dawn.    Communications broke down for the allies, Percival unwilling to believe the Japanese's main thrust was in the west declined to send reinforcements there. When he did finally realize the main thrust was in the west he began to withdraw troops from quiet sectors and built up a reserve. The Japanese held air supremacy and their artillery was fierce. The big 15 inch guns of singapore held mostly armor piercing shells designed to hit ships, there were few HE shells available. When they fired upon the Japanese the shells would hit the ground they would embed deeply before exploding doing little damage. The defenders had no tanks, basically no more aircraft. The last departing ships fled the scene as everything was burning chaos around them. Morale was breaking for the defenders. By the 9th, Japanese bombers were raining bombs on allied positions unopposed. Bennet was forced to pull men back to a new line of defense from the east of the Tengah airfield to the north of Jurong. Poor communications hampered the northern sector of Brigadier Duncan Maxwell whose troops actually battered the hell out of the Imperial Guards who had landed at 10pm on the 9th. The Imperial guards gradually managed a foothold on a beach, but Maxwell feared encirclement and withdrew his men against direct orders of Bennet. The retreat opened up the flank of the 11th indian division who were overrun. All of the beaches west of the causeway fell to the enemy, when they did Yamashita brought over his tanks to smash the new Jurong line. The Japanese could have potentially stormed the city center at this point, but they held back, because in reality, Percival had created a formidable reserve in the middle. The Australian 22nd brigade took the brunt of the fighting.    Yamashita was running out of reserves and his attacks were reaching their limit, but he needed the battle to end swiftly. Yamashita was shocked and shaken when he received a report that the British troop strength within the city was twice what they believed. With covert desperation, Yamashita ordered his artillery to fire until their last rounds and sent Percival a demand for surrender. “In the spirit of chivalry we have the honour of advising your surrender. Your army, founded on the traditional spirit of Great Britain, is defending Singapore, which is completely isolated, and raising the fame of Great Britain by the ut¬ most exertions and heroic feelings. . . . From now on resistance is futile and merely increases the danger to the million civilian inhabitants without good reason, exposing them to infliction of pain by fire and sword. But the development of the general war situation has already sealed the fate of Singapore, and the continuation of futile resistance would only serve to inflict direct harm and in¬ juries to thousands of non-combatants living in the city, throwing them into further miseries and horrors of war. Furthermore we do not feel you will in¬ crease the fame of the British Army by further resistance.”   Singapore had received another order prior to this from Churchill “It is certain that our troops on Singapore Island greatly outnumber any Japanese that have crossed the Straits. We must defeat them. Our whole fighting reputation is at stake and the honour of the British Empire. The Americans have held out on the Bataan Peninsula against far greater odds, the Russians are turning back the picked strength of the Germans, the Chinese with almost complete lack of mod¬ ern equipment have held the Japanese for AVi years. It will be disgraceful if we yield our boasted fortress of Singapore to inferior enemy forces. There must be no thought ofsparing troops or the civil population and no mercy must be shown to weakness in any shape or form. Commanders and senior officers must lead their troops and if necessary die with them. There must be no question or thought of surrender. Every unit must fight it out to the end and in close contact with the enemy. ... I look to you and your men to fight to the end to prove that the fighting spirit that won our Empire still exists to enable us to defend it.”   What was Percival to do? The Japanese had seized control over Singapore water reservoirs, the population would die of thirst within 2-3 days. Japanese shells were causing fires and death everywhere. People were panicking, trying to get on the very last boats leaving the port, even though that surely meant death to the IJN. An American sailor recalled “There was a lot of chaos and people killed on the docks during these bombardments. Everywhere you looked there was death. Even in the water there were dead sharks and people floating all around.” Defeatism was endemic. Australian troops were overheard saying “Chum, to hell with Malaya and Singapore. Navy let us down, air force let us down. If the bungs [natives] won't fight for their bloody country, why pick on me?” Sensing a complete collapse Percival formed a tight defense arc in front of the city, and by the 13th his commanders were telling him they believed Singapore was already doomed. Wavell was asked for approval for surrender, but he replied  “to continue to inflict maximum damage on enemy for as long as possible by house-to-house fighting if necessary.” Percival then told him the water reservoirs were taken, so Wavell sent back “YOUR GALLANT STAND IS SERVING A PURPOSE AND MUST BE CONTINUED TO THE LIMIT OF ENDURANCE”   On the 15th, Percival held a morning conference reported there was no more fuel, field gun nor bofor ammunition. In 24 hours their water would be done. He told them he would ask for a ceasefire at 4pm, by the end of the day Wavell gave him permission to surrender. Over at his HQ on the Bukit Timah heights, Yamashita was staring at a Union Jack fluttering over Fort Canning. Then a field phone rang, and a frontline commander reported the British were sending out a flag of truce.   Meanwhile back on February the 14th, Japanese forces reached the Alexandra Barracks hospital at 1pm. At 1:40pm a British Lt greeting them waving a white flag and was bayoneted on the spot. The Japanese stormed the hospital and murdered the staff and patients. 200 male staff and patients, badly wounded were bound over night and marched to an industrial estate half a mile away. Anyone who collapsed was bayoneted. The survivors of the march were formed into small groups and hacked to death or bayoneted. For a few days over 320 men and women were massacred. Only 5 survivors would give recounts of the event. It is suspected by historians that Tsuji was the architect of the Alexandra hospital massacre. This is because he was the instigator of countless atrocities he ordered unbeknownst to his superior commanders such as Yamashita.    Percival was ordered to go to the Ford motor factory to where he met with Yamashita. Yamashita was hiding his surprise that the surrender party came and as he glanced at the surrender terms he said through his interpreter “The Japanese Army will consider nothing but surrender,” Yamashita knew his forces were on the verge of running out of ammunition and he still held half troops Percival did, he was anxious Percival would figure it out. Percival replied “I fear that we shall not be able to submit our final reply before ten-thirty p.m.,” Percival had no intention of fighting on he simply wanted to work out specific details before signing the surrender. Yamashita was sure Percival was stalling. “Reply to us only whether our terms are acceptable or not. Things must be settled swiftly. We are prepared to resume firing.Unless you do surrender, we will have to carry out our night attack as scheduled.”” Percival replied ““Cannot the Japanese Army remain in its present position? We can resume negotiations again tomorrow at five-thirty A.M”. Yamashita screamed “Nani! I want the hostilities to cease tonight and I want to remind you there can be no arguments.” Percival replied ““We shall discontinue firing by eight-thirty p.m. Had we better remain in our present positions tonight?” Yamashita said yes and that firing would cease at 8:30pm and that 1000 allied men could keep arms to maintain order within the city. Yamashita stated “You have agreed to the terms but you have not yet made yourself clear as to whether you agree to surrender or not.” Percival cleared his throat and gave a simple nod. Yamashita looked at his interpreter “There's no need for all this talk. It is a simple question and I want a simple answer.” He turned to Percival and shouted, “We want to hear ‘Yes' or ‘No' from you! Surrender or fight!” Percival finally blurted out  “Yes, I agree. I have a request to make. Will the Imperial Army protect the women and children and British civilians?”Yamashita replied  “We shall see to it. Please sign this truce agreement”. At 7:50 the surrender was signed off, 40 minutes later Singapore was in the hands of the Japanese. In 70 days Yamashita took at the cost of 9824 casualties, had seized Malaya and Singapore, nearly 120,000 British surrendered. It was the greatest land victory in Japanese history.   Churchill called the fall of Singapore to the Japanese "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history" Churchills physician Lord Moran wrote The fall of Singapore on February 15 stupefied the Prime Minister. How came 100,000 men (half of them of our own race) to hold up their hands to inferior numbers of Japanese? Though his mind had been gradually prepared for its fall, the surrender of the fortress stunned him. He felt it was a disgrace. It left a scar on his mind. One evening, months later, when he was sitting in his bathroom enveloped in a towel, he stopped drying himself and gloomily surveyed the floor: 'I cannot get over Singapore', he said sadly   With the fall of singapore came another atrocity, the Sook Ching massacre. After February 18th, the Japanese military began mass killings of what they deemed undesirables, mostly ethnic Chinese. It was overseen by the Kempeitai and did not stop in Singapore, but spread to Malaya. It seems the aim of the purge was to intimidate the Chinese community from performing any resistance. According to postwar testimony taken from a war correspondent embedded with the 25th army, Colonel Hishakari Takafumi, he stated an order went out to kill 50,000 Chinese, of which 20 percent of the total was issued by senior officials on Yamashita's operations staff, most likely Tsuji. It is certain at the behest of Tsuji the orders were extended to Malay. The death toll is a tricky one, the Japanese went on the record to admit to 6000 murders, the Singaporean Chinese community and the Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew allege 70,000-100,000. Historians analyzing the scale of discovered mass graves after some decades think around 25,000-50,000. How much Yamashita knew of the massacre is debatable, the orders came from his office after all, but it seems Tsuji had orchestrated it. Many of Japan's generals wanted Yamashita to be appointed war minister, a move that obviously threatened then Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who feared his rival. Tojo retaliated, ordering Japan's new war hero back to Manchuria. On the surface, the assignment appeared worthy as Yamashita would serve as the first line of defense against a possible Soviet invasion. But since the two nations had signed a neutrality pact in April 1941, and Soviets were bogged down fighting the Germans, immediate war appeared unlikely. In reality, Tojo had parked Yamashita on the war's sidelines. Tojo went even further, he barred Yamashita any leave in Tokyo, preventing him from visiting his wife as well as from delivering a speech he had written for the emperor. No worries though, an aide of Yamashita's sent him three geishas. Allegedly he said this “I know they want to please me with these girls. But send them back—and don't forget to tip them.” The Tiger of Malaya would maintain a low profile in Manchuria where he received a promotion to full General. As months fell to years Yamashita sat on the sidelines helpless to aid the Japanese forces. His exile would come to an end in 1944 when Tojo was outed and the Tiger was required to try and save the Philippines from General Douglas MacArthur.

Eat It, Virginia hit the road to Scott’s Addition in Richmond for a trip to Pinky’s, a Mediterranean‑inspired tapas spot with big personality, unforgettable flavors, and a whole lotta heart.

Keywordsslow tourism, Italy, travel, slow food, cultural experiences, regional specialties, culinary traditions, meaningful travel, hidden gems, authentic experiencesSummaryIn this episode of the Bella Italy podcast, Brian and Anthony explore the concept of slow tourism in Italy, emphasizing the importance of taking time to appreciate the culture, food, and experiences that the country has to offer. They discuss the slow food movement, regional specialties, and the significance of slowing down to truly enjoy the Italian way of life. The conversation highlights the need for travelers to connect with locals and understand the cultural nuances that make Italy unique, encouraging listeners to seek out authentic experiences rather than rushing through their travels.TakeawaysTraveling slow is traveling Italian style.Most people only experience a small fraction of Italy.Choosing wisely in travel can enhance the experience.The best part of Italy is when you slow down.Good, clean, fair food is the motto of the slow food movement.Connecting with locals enriches the travel experience.Every town in Italy has its own culinary specialties.Food is a reflection of culture and history.Understanding the local cadence of life is essential.This is not your typical tourist experience. Enjoy the journey.S05E04 Slow Italy: Seeking Out Savorable Experienceshttps://italywithbella.com

What happens when your voice is built through visuals, not volume? In this Unstoppable Mindset episode, I talk with photographer and storyteller Mobeen Ansari about growing up with hearing loss, learning speech with support from his family and the John Tracy Center, and using technology to stay connected in real time. We also explore how his art became a bridge across culture and faith, from documenting religious minorities in Pakistan to chronicling everyday heroes, and why he feels urgency to photograph climate change before more communities, heritage sites, and ways of life are lost. You'll hear how purpose grows when you share your story in a way that helps others feel less alone, and why Mobeen believes one story can become a blueprint for someone else to navigate their own challenge. Highlights: 00:03:54 - Learn how early family support can shape confidence, communication, and independence for life. 00:08:31 - Discover how deciding when to capture a moment can define your values as a storyteller. 00:15:14 - Learn practical ways to stay fully present in conversations when hearing is a daily challenge. 00:23:24 - See how unexpected role models can redefine what living fully looks like at any stage of life. 00:39:15 - Understand how visual storytelling can cross cultural and faith boundaries without words. 00:46:38 - Learn why documenting climate change now matters before stories, places, and communities disappear. About the Guest: Mobeen Ansari is a photographer, filmmaker and artist from Islamabad, Pakistan. Having a background in fine arts, he picked up the camera during high school and photographed his surroundings and friends- a path that motivated him to be a pictorial historian. His journey as a photographer and artist is deeply linked to a challenge that he had faced since after his birth.  Three weeks after he was born, Mobeen was diagnosed with hearing loss due to meningitis, and this challenge has inspired him to observe people more visually, which eventually led him to being an artist. He does advocacy for people with hearing loss.  Mobeen's work focuses on his home country of Pakistan and its people, promoting a diverse & poetic image of his country through his photos & films. As a photojournalist he focuses on human interest stories and has extensively worked on topics of climate change, global health and migration. Mobeen has published three photography books. His first one, ‘Dharkan: The Heartbeat of a Nation', features portraits of iconic people of Pakistan from all walks of life. His second book, called ‘White in the Flag' is based on the lives & festivities of religious minorities in Pakistan. Both these books have had two volumes published over the years. His third book is called ‘Miraas' which is also about iconic people of Pakistan and follows ‘Dharkan' as a sequel. Mobeen has also made two silent movies; 'Hellhole' is a black and white short film, based on the life of a sanitation worker, and ‘Lady of the Emerald Scarf' is based on the life of Aziza, a carpet maker in Guilmit in Northern Pakistan. He has exhibited in Pakistan & around the world, namely in UK, Italy, China Iraq, & across the US and UAE. His photographs have been displayed in many famous places as well, including Times Square in New York City. Mobeen is also a recipient of the Swedish Red Cross Journalism prize for his photography on the story of FIFA World Cup football manufacture in Sialkot. Ways to connect with Mobeen**:** www.mobeenansari.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/mobeenart  Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mobeenansari/ Instagram: @mobeenansariphoto X: @Mobeen_Ansari About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson  01:20 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. I am your host. Michael Hingson, we're really glad that you are here, and today we are going to talk to Mobeen Ansari, and Mobeen is in Islamabad. I believe you're still in Islamabad, aren't you? There we go. I am, yeah. And so, so he is 12 hours ahead of where we are. So it is four in the afternoon here, and I can't believe it, but he's up at four in the morning where he is actually I get up around the same time most mornings, but I go to bed earlier than he does. Anyway. We're really glad that he is here. He is a photographer, he speaks he's a journalist in so many ways, and we're going to talk about all of that as we go forward. Mobin also is profoundly hard of hearing. Uses hearing aids. He was diagnosed as being hard of hearing when he was three weeks old. So I'm sure we're going to talk about that a little bit near the beginning, so we'll go ahead and start. So mo bean, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad that you're here. Mobeen Ansari  02:32 It's a pleasure to be here, and I'm honored to plan your show. Thank you so much. Michael Hingson  02:37 Well, thank you very much, and I'm glad that we're able to make this work, and I should explain that he is able to read what is going on the screen. I use a program called otter to transcribe when necessary, whatever I and other people in a meeting, or in this case, in a podcast, are saying, and well being is able to read all of that. So that's one of the ways, and one of the reasons that we get to do this in real time. So it's really kind of cool, and I'm really excited by that. Well, let's go ahead and move forward. Why don't you tell us a little about the early Beau beam growing up? And obviously that starts, that's where your adventure starts in a lot of ways. So why don't you tell us about you growing up and all that. Mobeen Ansari  03:22 So I'm glad you mentioned the captions part, because, you know, that has been really, really revolutionary. That has been quite a lifesaver, be it, you know, Netflix, be it anywhere I go into your life, I read captions like there's an app on my phone that I use for real life competitions, and that's where I, you know, get everything. That's where technology is pretty cool. So I do that because of my hearing does, as you mentioned, when I was three weeks old, I had severe meningitis due to it, had lost hearing in both my ear and so when my hearing loss were diagnosed, it was, you know, around the time we didn't have resources, the technology that we do today. Michael Hingson  04:15 When was that? What year was that about? Mobeen Ansari  04:19 1986 okay, sorry, 1987 so yeah, so they figured that I had locked my hearing at three weeks of age, but didn't properly diagnose it until I think I was three months old. So yeah, then January was my diagnosis, okay. Michael Hingson  04:44 And so how did you how did you function, how did you do things when you were, when you were a young child? Because at that point was kind of well, much before you could use a hearing aid and learn to speak and so on. So what? Mobeen Ansari  05:00 You do. So my parents would have a better memory of that than I would, but I would say that they were, you know, extra hard. They went an extra mile. I mean, I would say, you know, 100 extra mile. My mother learned to be a peace therapist, and my father. He learned to be he learned how to read audiogram, to learn the audiology, familiarize himself with hearing a technology with an engineer support. My parents work around me. David went to a lot of doctors, obviously, I was a very difficult child, but I think that actually laid the foundation in me becoming an artist. Because, you know, today, the hearing is it fits right into my ear so you cannot see it, basically because my hair is longer. But back then, hearing aids used to be almost like on a harness, and you to be full of quiet, so you would actually stick out like a sore thumb. So, you know, obviously you stand out in a crowd. So I would be very conscious, and I would often, you know, get asked what this is. So I would say, this is a radio but for most part of my childhood, I was very introverted, but I absolutely love art. My grandmother's for the painter, and she was also photographer, as well as my grandfather, the hobbyist photographer, and you know, seeing them create all of the visuals in different ways, I was inspired, and I would tell my stories in form of sketching or making modified action figures. And photography was something I picked up way later on in high school, when the first digital camera had just come out, and I finally started in a really interacting with the world. Michael Hingson  07:13 So early on you you drew because you didn't really use the camera yet. And I think it's very interesting how much your parents worked to make sure they could really help you. As you said, Your mother was a speech you became a speech therapist, and your father learned about the technologies and so on. So when did you start using hearing aids? That's Mobeen Ansari  07:42 a good question. I think I probably started using it when I was two years old. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's gonna start using it, but then, you know, I think I'll probably have to ask my parents capacity, but a moment, Mobeen Ansari  08:08 you know, go ahead, I think they worked around me. They really improvised on the situation. They learned at the went along, and I think I learned speech gradually. Did a lot of, you know, technical know, how about this? But I would also have to credit John Troy clinic in Los Angeles, because, you know, back then, there was no mobile phone, there were no emails, but my mother would put in touch with John Troy center in LA and they would send a lot of material back and forth for many years, and they would provide a guidance. They would provide her a lot of articles, a lot of details on how to help me learn speech. A lot of visuals were involved. And because of the emphasis on visuals, I think that kind of pushed me further to become an artist, because I would speak more, but with just so to Michael Hingson  09:25 say so, it was sort of a natural progression for you, at least it seemed that way to you, to start using art as a way to communicate, as opposed as opposed to talking. Mobeen Ansari  09:39 Yeah, absolutely, you know, so I would like pass forward a little bit to my high school. You know, I was always a very shy child up until, you know, my early teens, and the first camera had just come out, this was like 2001 2002 at. It. That's when my dad got one, and I would take that to school today. You know, everyone has a smartphone back then, if you had a camera, you're pretty cool. And that is what. I started taking pictures of my friends. I started taking pictures of my teachers, of landscapes around me. And I would even capture, you know, funniest of things, like my friend getting late for school, and one day, a friend of mine got into a fight because somebody stole his girlfriend, or something like that happened, you know, that was a long time ago, and he lost the fight, and he turned off into the world court to cry, and he was just sort of, you're trying to hide all his vulnerability. I happened to be in the same place as him, and I had my camera, and I was like, should I capture this moment, or should I let this permit go? And well, I decided to capture it, and that is when human emotion truly started to fascinate me. So I was born in a very old city. I live in the capital of Islamabad right now, but I was born in the city of travel to be and that is home to lots of old, you know, heritage sites, lots of old places, lots of old, interesting scenes. And you know, that always inspired you, that always makes you feel alive. And I guess all of these things came together. And, you know, I really got into the art of picture storytelling. And by the end of my high school graduation, everybody was given an award. The certificate that I was given was, it was called pictorial historian, and that is what inspired me to really document everything. Document my country. Document is people, document landscape. In fact, that award it actually has in my studio right now been there for, you know, over 21 years, but it inspired me luck to this day. Michael Hingson  12:20 So going back to the story you just told, did you tell your friend that you took pictures of him when he was crying? Mobeen Ansari  12:32 Eventually, yes, I would not talk. You're familiar with the content back then, but the Catholic friend, I know so I mean, you know everyone, you're all kids, so yeah, very, yeah, that was a very normal circumstance. But yeah, you know, Michael Hingson  12:52 how did he react when you told him, Mobeen Ansari  12:56 Oh, he was fine. It's pretty cool about it, okay, but I should probably touch base with him. I haven't spoken to him for many years that Yeah, Michael Hingson  13:08 well, but as long as Yeah, but obviously you were, you were good friends, and you were able to continue that. So that's, that's pretty cool. So you, your hearing aids were also probably pretty large and pretty clunky as well, weren't they? Mobeen Ansari  13:26 Yeah, they were. But you know, with time my hearing aid became smaller. Oh sure. So hearing aid model that I'm wearing right now that kind of started coming in place from 1995 1995 96 onwards. But you know, like, even today, it's called like BDE behind the ear, hearing it even today, I still wear the large format because my hearing loss is more it's on the profound side, right? Just like if I take my hearing, it off. I cannot hear but that's a great thing, because if I don't want to listen to anybody, right, and I can sleep peacefully at night. Michael Hingson  14:21 Have you ever used bone conduction headphones or earphones? Mobeen Ansari  14:30 But I have actually used something I forgot what is called, but these are very specific kind of ear bone that get plugged into your hearing it. So once you plug into that, you cannot hear anything else. But it discontinued that. So now they use Bluetooth. Michael Hingson  14:49 Well, bone conduction headphones are, are, are devices that, rather than projecting the audio into your ear, they actually. Be projected straight into the bone and bypassing most of the ear. And I know a number of people have found them to be useful, like, if you want to listen to music and so on, or listen to audio, you can connect them. There are Bluetooth versions, and then there are cable versions, but the sound doesn't go into your ear. It goes into the bone, which is why they call it bone conduction. Mobeen Ansari  15:26 Okay, that's interesting, I think. Michael Hingson  15:29 And some of them do work with hearing aids as well. Mobeen Ansari  15:34 Okay, yeah, I think I've experienced that when they do the audio can test they put, like at the back of your head or something? Michael Hingson  15:43 Yeah, the the most common one, at least in the United States, and I suspect most places, is made by a company called aftershocks. I think it's spelled A, F, T, E, R, S, H, O, k, s, but something to think about. Anyway. So you went through high school mostly were, were your student colleagues and friends, and maybe not always friends? Were they pretty tolerant of the fact that you were a little bit different than they were. Did you ever have major problems with people? Mobeen Ansari  16:22 You know, I've actually had a great support system, and for most part, I actually had a lot of amazing friends from college who are still my, you know, friend to the dead, sorry, from school. I'm actually closer to my friend from school than I am two friends of college difficulties. You know, if you're different, you'll always be prone to people who sort of are not sure how to navigate that, or just want, you know, sort of test things out. So to say, so it wasn't without his problems, but for most part of it's surprisingly, surprisingly, I've had a great support system, but, you know, the biggest challenge was actually not being able to understand conversation. So I'm going to go a bit back and forth on the timeline here. You know, if so, in 2021, I had something known as menus disease. Menier disease is something, it's an irregular infection that arises from stress, and what happens is that you're hearing it drops and it is replaced by drinking and bathing and all sorts of real according to my experience, it affects those with hearing loss much more than it affects those with regular, normal hearing. It's almost like tinnitus on steroids. That is how I would type it. And I've had about three occurrences of that, either going to stress or being around loud situations and noises, and that is where it became so challenging that it became difficult to hear, even with hearing it or lip reading. So that is why I use a transcriber app wherever I go, and that been a lifesaver, you know. So I believe that every time I have evolved to life, every time I have grown up, I've been able to better understand people to like at the last, you know, four years I've been using this application to now, I think I'm catching up on all the nuances of conversation that I've missed. Right if I would talk to you five years ago, I would probably understand 40% of what you're saying. I would understand it by reading your lips or your body language or ask you to write or take something for me, but now with this app, I'm able to actually get to 99% of the conversation. So I think with time, people have actually become more tired and more accepting, and now there is more awareness. I think, awareness, right? Michael Hingson  19:24 Well, yeah, I was gonna say it's been an only like the last four years or so, that a lot of this has become very doable in real time, and I think also AI has helped the process. But do you find that the apps and the other technologies, like what we use here, do you find that occasionally it does make mistakes, or do you not even see that very much at all? Mobeen Ansari  19:55 You know it does make mistakes, and the biggest problem is when there is no data, when there is no. Wide network, or if it runs out of battery, you know, because now I kind of almost 24/7 so my battery just integrate that very fast. And also because, you know, if I travel in remote regions of Pakistan, because I'm a photographer, my job to travel to all of these places, all of these hidden corners. So I need to have conversation, especially in those places. And if that ad didn't work there, then we have a problem. Yeah, that is when it's problem. Sometimes, depending on accidents, it doesn't pick up everything. So, you know, sometimes that happens, but I think technology is improving. Michael Hingson  20:50 Let me ask the question. Let me ask the question this way. Certainly we're speaking essentially from two different parts of the world. When you hear, when you hear or see me speak, because you're you're able to read the transcriptions. I'm assuming it's pretty accurate. What is it like when you're speaking? Does the system that we're using here understand you well as in addition to understanding me? Mobeen Ansari  21:18 Well, yes, I think it does so like, you know, I just occasionally look down to see if it's catching up on everything. Yeah, on that note, I ought to try and improve my speech over time. I used to speak very fast. I used to mumble a lot, and so now I become more mindful of it, hopefully during covid. You know, during covid, a lot of podcasts started coming out, and I had my own actually, so I would, like brought myself back. I would look at this recording, and I would see what kind of mistakes I'm making. So I'm not sure if transcription pick up everything I'm saying, but I do try and improve myself, just like the next chapter of my life where I'm trying to improve my speech, my enunciation Michael Hingson  22:16 Well, and that's why I was was asking, it must be a great help to you to be able to look at your speaking through the eyes of the Translate. Well, not translation, but through the eyes of the speech program, so you're able to see what it's doing. And as you said, you can use it to practice. You can use it to improve your speech. Probably it is true that slowing down speech helps the system understand it better as well. Yeah, yeah. So that makes sense. Well, when you were growing up, your parents clearly were very supportive. Did they really encourage you to do whatever you wanted to do? Do they have any preconceived notions of what kind of work you should do when you grew up? Or do they really leave it to you and and say we're going to support you with whatever you do? Mobeen Ansari  23:21 Oh, they were supportive. And whatever I wanted to do, they were very supportive in what my brother had gone to do I had to enter brothers. So they were engineers. And you know what my my parents were always, always, you know, very encouraging of whatever period we wanted to follow. So I get the a lot of credit goes to my my parents, also, because they even put their very distinct fields. They actually had a great understanding of arts and photography, especially my dad, and that really helped me have conversations. You know, when I was younger to have a better understanding of art. You know, because my grandmother used to paint a lot, and because she did photography. When she migrated from India to Pakistan in 1947 she took, like, really, really powerful pictures. And I think that instilled a lot of this in me as well. I've had a great support that way. Michael Hingson  24:26 Yeah, so your grandmother helps as well. Mobeen Ansari  24:32 Oh yeah, oh yeah. She did very, very ahead of her time. She's very cool, and she made really large scale painting. So she was an example of always making the best of life, no matter where you are, no matter how old you are. She actually practiced a Kibana in the 80s. So that was pretty cool. So, you know. Yeah, she played a major part in my life. Michael Hingson  25:05 When did you start learning English? Because that I won't say it was a harder challenge for you. Was a different challenge, but clearly, I assume you learned originally Pakistani and so on. But how did you go about learning English? Mobeen Ansari  25:23 Oh, so I learned about the languages when I started speech. So I mean to be split the languages of Urdu. You are, be you. So I started learning about my mother tongue and English at the same time. You know, basically both languages at work to both ran in parallel, but other today, I have to speak a bit of Italian and a few other regional languages of Pakistan so and in my school. I don't know why, but we had French as a subject, but now I've completely forgotten French at Yeah, this kind of, it kind of helped a lot. It's pretty cool, very interesting. But yeah, I mean, I love to speak English. Just when I learned speech, what Michael Hingson  26:19 did you major in when you went to college? Mobeen Ansari  26:24 So I majored in painting. I went to National College of Arts, and I did my bachelor's in fine arts, and I did my majors in painting, and I did my minor in printmaking and sculpture. So my background was always rooted in fine arts. Photography was something that ran in parallel until I decided that photography was the ultimate medium that I absolutely love doing that became kind of the voice of my heart or a medium of oppression and tougher and bone today for Michael Hingson  27:11 did they even have a major in photography when you went to college? Mobeen Ansari  27:17 No, photography was something that I learned, you know, as a hobby, because I learned that during school, and I was self taught. One of my uncles is a globally renowned photographer. So he also taught me, you know, the art of lighting. He also taught me on how to interact with people, on how to set up appointments. He taught me so many things. So you could say that being a painter helped me become a better photographer. Being a photographer helped me become a better painter. So both went hand in hand report co existed. Yeah, so photography is something that I don't exactly have a degree in, but something that I learned because I'm more of an art photographer. I'm more of an artist than I am a photographer, Michael Hingson  28:17 okay, but you're using photography as kind of the main vehicle to display or project your art, absolutely. Mobeen Ansari  28:30 So what I try to do is I still try to incorporate painting into my photography, meaning I try to use the kind of lighting that you see in painting all of these subtle colors that Rembrandt of Caravaggio use, so I tried to sort of incorporate that. And anytime I press my photograph, I don't print it on paper, I print it on canvas. There's a paint really element to it, so so that my photo don't come up as a challenge, or just photos bottles or commercial in nature, but that they look like painting. And I think I have probably achieved that to a degree, because a lot of people asked me, Do you know, like, Okay, how much I did painting for and create painting. So I think you know, whatever my objective was, I think I'm probably just, you know, I'm getting there. Probably that's what my aim is. So you have a photography my main objective with the main voice that I use, and it has helped me tell stories of my homeland. It has helped me to tell stories of my life. It has helped me tell stories of people around Michael Hingson  29:49 me, but you're but what you do is as I understand you, you're, you may take pictures. You may capture the images. With a camera, but then you put them on canvas. Mobeen Ansari  30:05 Yeah, I just every time I have an exhibition or a display pictures which are present in my room right now, I always print them on Canvas, because when you print them on Canvas, the colors become more richer, right, Michael Hingson  30:22 more mentally. But what? But what you're doing, but what you're putting on Canvas are the pictures that you've taken with your camera. Mobeen Ansari  30:31 Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. But occasionally, occasionally, I tried to do something like I would print my photos on Canvas, and then I would try to paint on them. It's something that I've been experimenting with, but I'm not directly quite there yet. Conceptually, let's see in the future when these two things make properly. But now photographs? Michael Hingson  31:02 Yeah, it's a big challenge. I i can imagine that it would be a challenge to try to be able to print them on cameras and then canvas, and then do some painting, because it is two different media, but in a sense, but it will be interesting to see if you're able to be successful with that in the future. What would you say? It's easier today, though, to to print your pictures on Canvas, because you're able to do it from digital photographs, as opposed to what you must have needed to do, oh, 20 years ago and so on, where you had film and you had negatives and so on, and printing them like you do today was a whole different thing to do. Mobeen Ansari  31:50 Oh yeah, it's same to think good yesterday, somebody asked me if I do photography on an analog camera, and I have a lot of them, like lots and lots of them, I still have a lot of black and white film, but the problem is, nobody could develop them. I don't have that room. So otherwise I would do that very often. Otherwise I have a few functional cameras that tend to it. I'm consciously just thinking of reviving that. Let's see what happens to it. So I think it's become very difficult. You know also, because Pakistan has a small community of photographers, so the last person who everybody would go to for developing the film or making sure that the analog cameras became functional. He unfortunately passed away a few years ago, so I'm sort of trying to find somebody who can help me do this. It's a very fascinating process, but I haven't done any analog film camera photography for the last 15 years now, definitely a different ball game with, you know, typical cameras, yeah, the pattern, you could just take 36 pictures, and today you can just, you know, take 300 and do all sorts of trial and error. But I tried, you know, I think I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to photography, so I kind of try and make sure that I get the shots at the very first photograph, you know, because that's how my dad trained me on analog cameras, because back then, you couldn't see how the pictures are going to turn out until you printed them. So every time my dad took a picture, he would spend maybe two or three minutes on the setting, and he would really make the person in front of him wait a long time. And then you need to work on shutter speed or the aperture or the ISO, and once you would take that picture is perfect, no need to anything to it, Michael Hingson  34:09 but, but transposing it, but, but transferring it to from an analog picture back then to Canvas must have been a lot more of a challenge than it is today. Mobeen Ansari  34:24 No back then, working canvas printing. Canvas printing was something that I guess I just started discovering from 2014 onwards. So it would like during that this is laid up, Michael Hingson  34:38 but you were still able to do it because you just substituted Canvas for the the typical photographic paper that you normally would use is what I hear you say, Mobeen Ansari  34:50 Oh yeah, Canvas printing was something that I figured out much later on, right? Michael Hingson  34:59 Um. But you were still able to do it with some analog pictures until digital cameras really came into existence. Or did you always use it with a digital camera? Mobeen Ansari  35:11 So I basically, when I started off, I started with the handle camera. And obviously, you know, back in the 90s, if somebody asked you to take a picture, or we have to take a picture of something, you just had the analog camera at hand. Yeah. And my grandparents, my dad, they all had, you know, analog cameras. Some of it, I still have it Michael Hingson  35:36 with me, but were you able to do canvas painting from the analog cameras? No, yeah, that's what I was wondering. Mobeen Ansari  35:43 No, I haven't tried, yeah, but I think must have been possible, but I've only tried Canvas printing in the digital real. Michael Hingson  35:53 Do you are you finding other people do the same thing? Are there? Are there a number of people that do canvas painting? Mobeen Ansari  36:02 I lot of them do. I think it's not very common because it's very expensive to print it on canvas. Yeah, because you know, once you once you test again, but you don't know how it's going to turn out. A lot of images, they turn out very rough. The pictures trade, and if can, with print, expose to the camera, sometimes, sorry, the canvas print exposed to the sun, then there's the risk of a lot of fading that can happen. So there's a lot of risk involved. Obviously, printing is a lot better now. It can withstand exposure to heat and sun, but Canvas printing is not as common as you know, matte paper printing, non reflective, matte paper. Some photographers do. It depends on what kind of images you want to get out? Yeah, what's your budget is, and what kind of field you're hoping to get out of it. My aim is very specific, because I aim to make it very Painterly. That's my objective with the canvas. Michael Hingson  37:17 Yeah, you want them to look like paintings? Mobeen Ansari  37:21 Yeah? Yeah, absolutely, Michael Hingson  37:23 which, which? I understand it's, it is a fascinating thing. I hadn't really heard of the whole idea of canvas painting with photograph or photography before, but it sounds really fascinating to to have that Yeah, and it makes you a unique kind of person when you do that, but if it works, and you're able to make it work, that's really a pretty cool thing to do. So you have you you've done both painting and photography and well, and sculpting as well. What made you really decide, what was the turning point that made you decide to to go to photography is kind of your main way of capturing images. Mobeen Ansari  38:12 So it was with high school, because I was still studying, you know, art as a subject back then, but I was still consistently doing that. And then, like earlier, I mentioned to you that my school gave me an award called pictorial historian. That is what inspired me to follow this girl. That is what set me on this path. That is what made me find this whole purpose of capturing history. You know, Pakistan is home to a lot of rich cultures, rich landscapes, incredible heritage sites. And I think that's when I became fascinated. Because, you know, so many Pakistanis have these incredible stories of resilience entrepreneurship, and they have incredible faces, and, you know, so I guess that what made me want to capture it really. So I think, yeah, it was in high school, and then eventually in college, because, you know, port and school and college, I would be asked to take pictures of events. I'll be asked to take pictures of things around me. Where I went to college, it was surrounded by all kinds of, you know, old temples and churches and old houses and very old streets. So that, really, you know, always kept me inspired. So I get over time. I think it's just always been there in my heart. I decided to really, really go for it during college. Well. Michael Hingson  40:00 But you've, you've done pretty well with it. Needless to say, which is, which is really exciting and which is certainly very rewarding. Have you? Have you done any pictures that have really been famous, that that people regard as exceptionally well done? Mobeen Ansari  40:22 I Yes, obviously, that's it for the audience to decide. But right, I understand, yeah, I mean, but judging from my path exhibitions, and judging from system media, there have been quite a few, including the monitor out of just last week, I went to this abandoned railway station, which was on a British colonial time, abandoned now, but that became a very, very successful photograph. I was pretty surprised to see the feedback. But yes, in my career, they have been about, maybe about 10 to 15 picture that really, really stood out or transcended barriers. Because coming out is about transcending barriers. Art is about transcending barriers, whether it is cultural or political, anything right if a person entered a part of the world views a portrait that I've taken in Pakistan, and define the connection with the subject. My mission is accomplished, because that's what I would love to do through art, to connect the world through art, through art and in the absence of verbal communication. I would like for this to be a visual communication to show where I'm coming from, or the very interesting people that I beat. And that is that sort of what I do. So I guess you know, there have been some portraits. I've taken some landscapes or some heritage sites, and including the subjects that I have photography of my book that acting have probably stood out in mind of people. Michael Hingson  42:14 So you have published three books so far, right? Yes, but tell me about your books, if you would. Mobeen Ansari  42:24 So my first book is called Harkin. I will just hold it up for the camera. It is my first book, and what is it called? It is called turken, and the book is about iconic people of Pakistan who have impacted this history, be it philanthropist, be it sports people, be it people in music or in performing arts, or be it Even people who are sanitation workers or electricians to it's about people who who have impacted the country, whether they are famous or not, but who I consider to be icons. Some of them are really, really, really famous, very well known people around the world, you know, obviously based in Pakistan. So my book is about chronicling them. It's about documenting them. It's about celebrating them. My second book without, okay, most Michael Hingson  43:29 people are going to listen to the podcast anyway, but go ahead. Yeah. Mobeen Ansari  43:35 So basically it's writing the flag is about the religious minorities of Pakistan, because, you know, Pakistan is largely a Muslim country. But when people around the world, they look at Pakistan, they don't realize that it's a multicultural society. There's so many religions. Pakistan is home to a lot of ancient civilizations, a lot of religions that are there. And so this book document life and festivities of religious minorities of Pakistan. You know, like I in my childhood, have actually attended Easter mass, Christmas and all of these festivities, because my father's best friend was a Christian. So we had that exposure to, you know, different faiths, how people practice them. So I wanted to document that. That's my second book. Michael Hingson  44:39 It's wonderful that you had, it's wonderful that you had parents that were willing to not only experience but share experiences with you about different cultures, different people, so that it gave you a broader view of society, which is really cool. Mobeen Ansari  44:58 Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. So your third book? So my third book is a sequel to my first one, same topic, people who have impacted the country. And you know, with the Pakistan has a huge, huge population, it had no shortage of heroes and heroines and people who have created history in the country. So my first book has 98 people, obviously, which is not enough to feature everybody. So my second book, it features 115 people. So it features people who are not in the first book. Michael Hingson  45:41 Your third book? Yeah, okay, yeah. Well, there's, you know, I appreciate that there's a very rich culture, and I'm really glad that you're, you're making Chronicles or or records of all of that. Is there a fourth book coming? Have you started working on a fourth book yet? Mobeen Ansari  46:05 You know in fact, yes, there is. Whenever people hear about my book, they assume that there's going to be landscape or portraits or street photography or something that is more anthropological in nature. That's the photography I truly enjoy doing. These are the photographs that are displayed in my studio right now. So, but I would never really study for it, because Pakistan had, you know, we have poor provinces. And when I started these books, I hadn't really documented everything. You know, I come from the urban city, and, you know, I just, just only take taking pictures in main cities at that time. But now I have taken pictures everywhere. I've been literally to every nook and cranny in the country. So now I have a better understanding, a better visual representation. So a fourth book, it may be down the line, maybe five years, 10 years, I don't know yet. Michael Hingson  47:13 Well, one thing that I know you're interested in, that you've, you've at least thought about, is the whole idea behind climate change and the environment. And I know you've done some work to travel and document climate change and the environment and so on. Tell us, tell us more about that and where that might be going. Mobeen Ansari  47:36 So on tape, note, Michael, you know there's a lot of flooding going on in Pakistan. You know, in just one day, almost 314 people died, but many others you had missing. You had some of the worst flooding test time round. And to be reeling from that, and we had some major flooding some teachers back in. Well, climate change is no longer a wake up call. We had to take action years ago, if not, you know, yesterday and till right now, we are seeing effects of it. And you know, Pakistan has a lot of high mountain peaks. It has, it is home to the second highest mountain in the world, Ketu, and it has a lot of glaciers. You know, people talk about melting polar ice caps. People talk about effects of climate change around the world, but I think it had to be seen everywhere. So in Pakistan, especially, climate change is really, really rearing space. So I have traveled to the north to capture melting glacier, to capture stories of how it affects different communities, the water supply and the agriculture. So that is what I'm trying to do. And if I take pictures of a desert down south where a sand dune is spreading over agricultural land that it wasn't doing up until seven months ago. So you know climate change is it's everywhere. Right now, we are experiencing rains every day. It's been the longest monsoon. So it has also affected the way of life. It has also affected ancient heritage sites. Some of these heritage sites, which are over 3000 years old, and they have bestowed, you know, so much, but they are not able to withstand what we are facing right now. Um, and unfortunately, you know, with unregulated construction, with carbon emissions here and around the world, where deforestation, I felt that there was a strong need to document these places, to bring awareness of what is happening to bring awareness to what we would lose if we don't look after mother nature, that the work I have been doing on climate change, as well as topics of global health and migration, so those two topics are also very close To My Heart. Michael Hingson  50:40 Have you done any traveling outside Pakistan? Mobeen Ansari  50:45 Oh, yeah. I mean, I've been traveling abroad since I was very little. I have exhibited in Italy, in the United States. I was just in the US debris. My brother lives in Dallas, so, yeah, I keep traveling because, because my workshop, because of my book events, or my exhibition, usually here and around the world. Michael Hingson  51:14 Have you done any photography work here in the United States? Mobeen Ansari  51:19 Yeah, I have, I mean, in the US, I just don't directly do photography, but I do workshop, because whatever tool that I captured from Pakistan, I do it there. Okay, funny thing is, a funny thing is that, you know, when you take so many pictures in Pakistan, you become so used to rustic beauty and a very specific kind of beauty that you have a hard time capturing what's outside. But I've always, always just enjoyed taking pictures in in Mexico and Netherlands, in Italy, in India, because they that rustic beauty. But for the first time, you know, I actually spent some time on photography. This year, I went to Chicago, and I was able to take pictures of Chicago landscape, Chicago cityscape, completely. You know, Snowden, that was a pretty cool kind of palette to work with. Got to take some night pictures with everything Snowden, traveling Chicago, downtown. So yeah, sometimes I do photography in the US, but I'm mostly there to do workshops or exhibitions or meet my brothers. Michael Hingson  52:34 What is your your work process? In other words, how do you decide what ideas for you are worthwhile pursuing and and recording and chronicling. Mobeen Ansari  52:46 So I think it depends on where their story, where there is a lot of uniqueness, that is what stands out to me, and obviously beauty there. But they have to be there. They have to be some uniqueness, you know, like, if you look at one of the pictures behind me, this is a person who used to run a library that had been there since 1933 his father, he had this really, really cool library. And you know, to that guy would always maintain it, that library would have, you know, three old books, you know, a philosophy of religion, of theology, and there was even a handwritten, 600 years old copy of the Quran with his religious book for Muslims. So, you know, I found these stories very interesting. So I found it interesting because he was so passionate about literature, and his library was pretty cool. So that's something that you don't get to see. So I love seeing where there is a soul, where there is a connection. I love taking pictures of indigenous communities, and obviously, you know, landscapes as well. Okay? Also, you know, when it comes to climate change, when it comes to migration, when it comes to global health, that's what I take picture to raise awareness. Michael Hingson  54:33 Yeah, and your job is to raise awareness. Mobeen Ansari  54:41 So that's what I try to do, if I'm well informed about it, or if I feel that is something that needed a light to be shown on it, that's what I do. Took my photograph, and also, you know. Whatever had this appeal, whatever has a beauty, whatever has a story that's in spur of the moment. Sometimes it determined beforehand, like this year, particularly, it particularly helped me understand how to pick my subject. Even though I've been doing this for 22 years, this year, I did not do as much photography as I normally do, and I'm very, very picky about it. Like last week I went to this abandoned railway station. I decided to capture it because it's very fascinating. It's no longer used, but the local residents of that area, they still use it. And if you look at it, it kind of almost looks like it's almost science fiction film. So, you know, I'm a big star. Was that Big Star Trek fan? So, yes, I'm in port the camps. So I also like something that had these elements of fantasy to it. So my work, it can be all over the place, sometimes, Michael Hingson  56:09 well, as a as a speaker, it's, it's clearly very important to you to share your own personal journey and your own experiences. Why is that? Why do you want to share what you do with others? Mobeen Ansari  56:28 So earlier, I mentioned to you that John Tracy center played a major, major role in my life. He helped my mother. They provided all the materials. You know, in late 80s, early 90s, and so I will tell you what happened. So my aunt, my mom's sister, she used to live in the US, and when my hearing loss were diagnosed, my mother jumped right into action. I mean, both my parents did. So my mother, she landed in New York, and to my aunt would live in New Jersey. So every day she would go to New York, and she landed in New York League of hard of hearing. And a lady over there asked my mom, do you want your child to speak, or do you want him to learn? Frank Lacher and my mother, without any hesitation, she said, I want my child to speak and to see what put in touch with John Troy center and rest with history, and they provided with everything that needed. So I am affiliated with the center as an alumni. And whenever I'm with the US, whenever I'm in LA, I visit the center to see how I can support parents of those with hearing loss, and I remember when I went in 2016 2018 I gave a little talk to the parents of those with hair in glass. And I got to two other place as well, where I spent my childhood joint. Every time I went there, I saw the same fears. I saw the same determination in parents of those with hearing loss, as I saw in my parents eyes. And by the end of my talk, they came up to me, and they would tell me, you know, that sharing my experiences helped them. It motivated them. It helped them not be discouraged, because having a child hearing loss is not easy. And you know, like there was this lady from Ecuador, and you know, she spoke in Spanish, and she see other translators, you know, tell me this, so to be able to reach out with those stories, to be able to provide encouragement and any little guidance, or whatever little knowledge I have from my experience, it gave me this purpose. And a lot of people, I think, you know, you feel less lonely in this you feel hurt, you feel seen. And when you share experiences, then you have sort of a blueprint how you want to navigate in one small thing can help the other person. That's fantastic. That's why I share my personal experiences, not just to help those with hearing loss, but with any challenge. Because you know when you. Have a challenge when you have, you know, when a person is differently able, so it's a whole community in itself. You know, we lift each other up, and if one story can help do that, because, you know, like for me, my parents told me, never let your hearing loss be seen as a disability. Never let it be seen as a weakness, but let it be seen as a challenge that makes you stronger and that will aspire to do be it when I get it lost all of my life, be it when I had the latest or many years, or anything. So I want to be able to become stronger from to share my experiences with it. And that is why I feel it's important to share the story. Michael Hingson  1:00:56 And I think that's absolutely appropriate, and that's absolutely right. Do you have a family of your own? Are you married? Do you have any children or anything? Not yet. Not yet. You're still working on that, huh? Mobeen Ansari  1:01:10 Well, so to say, Yeah, I've just been married to my work for way too long. Michael Hingson  1:01:16 Oh, there you are. There's nothing wrong with that. You've got something that you Mobeen Ansari  1:01:22 kind of get batting after a while, yeah. Michael Hingson  1:01:26 Well, if the time, if the right person comes along, then it, then that will happen. But meanwhile, you're, you're doing a lot of good work, and I really appreciate it. And I hope everyone who listens and watches this podcast appreciates it as well. If people want to reach out to you, how do they do that? Mobeen Ansari  1:01:45 They can send me an email, which is out there for everybody on my website. I'm on all my social media as well. My email is being.ansarima.com Michael Hingson  1:01:57 so can you spell that? Can you Yeah, M, o b e n, dot a do it once more, M O B, E N, Mobeen Ansari  1:02:07 M O B, double, e n, dot, a n, S, A R, i@gmail.com Michael Hingson  1:02:17 at gmail.com, okay, and your website is.com Mobeen Ansari  1:02:26 same as my name. Michael Hingson  1:02:27 So, okay, so it's mo bean.ansari@our.www.mo Michael Hingson  1:02:35 bean dot Ansari, or just mo Bean on, sorry, Mobeen Ansari  1:02:41 just moving on, sorry. We com, no.no. Michael Hingson  1:02:44 Dot between mobien and Ansari, okay, so it's www, dot mobile being on sorry, yeah, so it's www, dot, M, O, B, E, N, A, N, S, A, R, i.com Yes. Well, great. I have absolutely enjoyed you being with us today. I really appreciate your time and your insights, and I value a lot what you do. I think you represent so many things so well. So thank you for being here with us, and I want to thank all of you who are out there listening and watching the podcast today, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please email me at Michael H, i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and we appreciate it if you would give us a five star rating wherever you are observing the podcast. Please do that. We value that a great deal. And if you know anyone else who ought to be a guest, please let me know. We're always looking for people and mobeen you as well. If you know anyone else who you think ought to be a guest on the podcast, I would appreciate it if you would introduce us. But for now, I just want to thank you one more time for being here. This has been absolutely wonderful. Thank you for being on the podcast with us today. Mobeen Ansari  1:04:08 Thank you so much. It's been wonderful, and thank you for giving me the platform to share my stories. And I hope that it helps whoever watching this. Up to date. Michael Hingson  1:04:26 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. 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Rev. Dana Takagi reflects on the significance of Abbot Yuko Yamada being the first woman teacher at the founding temple of Soto Zen, Eiheiji. Dana also highlights Yamada's teaching of the Denkōroku, a text written by the ancestor Keizan who emphasized making Buddhism accessible to the masses and not just monastic residential practitioners. Dana emphasizes Abbot Yamada's ongoing contributions to moving Buddhism forward into a more inclusive and accessible future, both in Japan and globally. This is a supplementary episode to the full interview with Abbot Yamada. Listen first if you haven't already!GUESTYUKO WAKAYAMA YAMADA is the abbot of Shogakuji in Tokyo. She currently teaches at the International department of Eiheiji. She is the first nun to teach at Eiheiji, the head monastery of Soto Zen founded by Dogen Zenji. She trained at Aichi Senmon Niso-do, a training temple for female Soto Zen priests, where she also currently teaches. She was ordained in 1999 by the highly respected Rev. Shundo Aoyama-roshi. She was sent to Mt. Equity Zendo in United States for 2.5 years and has also practiced in Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain and Italy. After returning from Europe and finishing 2 more years at the Niso-do she studied at the graduate school of Komazawa University specializing in Chinese Zen History. Prior to becoming a Zen Buddhist nun, Yuko Yamada was a catholic nun in a convent for 3 years.HOSTREVEREND DANA TAKAGI (she/her) is a retired professor of Sociology and zen priest, practicing zen since 1998. She spent 33 years teaching sociology and Asian American history at UC Santa Cruz, and she is a past president of the Association for Asian American Studies. 

Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent Saint of the Day: St. Adelaide, 931-999; married Lothair of Italy, and when he died, his successor and usurper, Berengar of Ivrea, tried to force her to marry his son; she escaped to Canossa, and sought the help of Otto of Germany; Otto conquered Italy, married Adelaide, and Pope John XII proclaimed the couple rulers of the Holy Roman Empire; she established many monasteries, and became interested in evangelism; she became regent for her grandson, Otto III, and died at the convent at Seltz, which she had founded Office of Readings and Morning Prayer for 12/16/25 Gospel: Matthew 21:28-32

As Australians reel from a deadly shooting at a Hanukkah celebration, some are questioning whether the government did enough to prevent antisemitic violence. Also: Chile has elected the right-wing candidate, José Antonio Kast, as its next president. The family of film director Rob Reiner say he and his wife are dead, as Los Angeles police conduct an investigation at their home. The Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai is found guilty of sedition and colluding with foreign forces, in a verdict that he says is politically motivated. And we speak to the British actor Dame Helen Mirren about her mission to save olive trees in Italy. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight.Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment.Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk

It's winter, and the SciFri team is already dreaming of warmer weather. How about a mind vacation to one of the hottest places on earth, an erupting volcano? Tamsin Mather has trekked to volcanoes in Chile, Guatemala, Italy, and beyond to learn their secrets. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to field your burning volcano questions, like what's the deal with glass shards that look like hairballs? Guest: Dr. Tamsin Mather is a professor of Earth sciences at the University of Oxford in the UK.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.