Podcasts about Invisible ink

Greg interviews Tim Swainson and his team at creative agency Invisible Ink about their Thai-centric board game, ‘Bangkok Pains.' The show begins with introductions from the creative team at Invisible Ink, and Tim then gets into explaining the game. The first rule of Bangkok Pains is that all players start in debt, mirroring the plight of many Bangkokians, both natives and foreigners. There are the standard board game pieces, in this case, everything from an iconic plastic chair to a bottle of fish sauce and a plate of Som Tum.  Each player then picks a ‘career card' to see their job and salary (Greg manages to be a professional gamer with a monthly salary of 30,000 baht, while other players score careers such as influencer, DJ, and plastic surgeon) as well as a property card, which determines where you'll live, and which track on the board game you'll follow on your way to work (car or BTS).  As the group plays, they discuss where the game idea came from, how it was developed, and the endless rounds of testing that went into finding the right balance of playability, benefits, and penalties. How did they manage to distill all of Bangkok into a board game? Listen in for details - or better yet, buy the game yourself, get some drinks, and invite a few friends to play! Listen in for an endless supply of Thai and Bangkok nuggets of trivia and insight into how the game was developed.  Don't forget that Patrons get the ad-free version of the show as well as swag and other perks. We also sometimes post on Facebook, you can contact us on LINE and of course, head to our website (www.bangkokpodcast.com) to find out probably more info than you need to know.

Sexy Season Six!! Nate is back riding high from the Eagles heading back to the Super Bowl with a great chat with keyboardist/producer/composer, Corey Bernhard! They chat about growing up in Massachusetts, the music that played around the house when he was a kid, learning the piano, children's resilience with failure, playing Phish and Led Zeppelin in early bands, becoming a Jazz head, writing sheet music, moving to Philly, forming Killiam Shakespeare, playing with Bilal, the Okayplayer boards, the Killiam Christmas EP, going solo, the collab project with the Bul Bey, the pandemic, joining the Late Show Band, A Blessed Leap Into Eternity, taking a different approach in creating the album, tour plans, playing with Charlie Hall for his Invisible Ink shows at Solar Myth, backing Rachel & Vilray and playing with the magnificent DJ Jazzy Jeff. Then Corey takes a run at The Jawntlet!Corey on BandcampBirdbrain RecordsCorey on InstagramCorey on FacebookCorey on X

Invisible Ink by Jack Varnell LIKE-SUB-COMMENT-SHARE bit.ly/SyDCafe Community bit.ly/SocialYetDistanced Podcast bit.ly/SydVid YouTube As always, health maintained by BLOOM and Holistic Caring- https://holisticcaring.com/ref/Jack/ made with: https://bit.ly/HYPER-SyD #podcast,#video,#art,#books,#literature,#poetry,#poets,#socialyetdistanced, #poetry,#poem,#poet, #HOPE, #DANGEROUS, #CONFESSIONAL

Inspired by the book 'Sell Like a Spy: The Art of Persuasion from the World of Espionage,' this episode explores two key techniques for understanding your audience: active listening and body language observation. We discuss the importance of focusing on the customer, being present, using clarifying questions, and avoiding interruptions in active listening. We also delve into the nuances of body language, including cultural context, posture, gestures, facial expressions, and how to interpret verbal cues alongside non-verbal communication. Learn how to decipher the hidden messages your audience is sending and tailor your approach for maximum impact.

Bio  Brian McDonald, an award-winning author, filmmaker, graphic novelist, and podcaster, is a sought-after instructor and consultant. He has taught his story seminar and consulted for various companies, including Pixar, Microsoft, and Cirque du Soleil.  Interview Highlights 01:30 The Story Spine 04:00 Proposal, argument, conclusion 07:40 Video games – noodles are not cake 11:30 Armature 16:25 Stories in speeches 21:25 Finding your armature 23:00 Tools and weapons go together 25:30 The first act 27:00 Angels 28:00 Brian's memoir 28:45 Paying attention   Connect  ·       Brian McDonald (writeinvisibleink.com) ·       @BeeMacDee1950 on X ·       @beemacdee on Instagram ·       Brian McDonald on LinkedIn   Books and references  ·       Land of the Dead: Lessons from the Underworld on Storytelling and Living, Brian McDonald ·       Invisible Ink: Building Stories from the Inside Out, Brian McDonald ·       The Golden Theme: How to Make Your Writing Appeal to the Highest Common Denominator, Brian McDonald ·       Old Souls, Brian McDonald ·       Ink Spots: Collected Writings on Story Structure, Filmmaking and Craftmanship, Brian McDonald ·       Brian's podcast 'You are a Storyteller'  Episode Transcript Ula Ojiaku Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Welcome back to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast, this is Part 2 of my conversation with Brian McDonald. In Part 1 we discussed defining a story, why we tell stories, among other things, and in this second part, Brian shares more of his insights around the storytelling formula, Brian's upcoming memoir, and building a story's armature. It's been such an honour to speak with Brian and I hope you find Part 2 of our conversation as insightful as I have. Everyone is a storyteller, everyone has a story to tell, and we knowing how to structure it is key to making it impactful and helping people to get information that heals, that helps them survive, that helps them navigate the conflicts of this world. So, you, in your book, Invisible Ink, you gave us a storytelling formula, do you mind sharing that with us? Brian McDonald So the story spine are seven steps that you need to create a story. So they use it at Pixar, I've worked with them quite a bit so we speak similar language, but they use this too, and I think we basically learned it from the same source. So, they are once upon a time, and every day, until one day, and because of this, and because of this, until finally, and ever since that day. So they are once upon a time, and every day, until one day, and because of this, and because of this, until finally, and ever since that day. And you set up the status quo, this is what happened, this is who this person is, this is what they want, whatever it is, and then something changes. Now you're into the ‘until one day', and the second act, now that would be the first act, the second act would be the body of the story. It's really what people say the story is about, so that's the longest part. That's why it's sort of split in two in a way because of this and because of this. There are some people who will add more because of this, but I don't, and some people don't like that I'm so rigid about it, but what I find is that the hardest thing I teach people is how to simplify. That's the hardest thing. So, adding more details is easy, simplifying is hard, right, and so that's why I stick with the seven and the because of this and because of this. And then, until finally, now you're into the third act, and ever since that day, because the third act is all about the conclusion or the resolution, but the conclusion, but the way I like to think about the three acts is this, and I had been thinking about it this way, and this is something that I don't know where Hitchcock got it, but Alfred Hitchcock talked about it, but I've never heard it anywhere else. So it's proposal, argument, conclusion. That's the way stories work, and those are the three acts. Proposal, argument, conclusion. Now, it's the way people talk. That's why it works. So the proposal is, let's say, I say Saturday I went to the best party I've ever been to in my life. That's my proposal. Everybody knows what comes next. My proof, this happened, that happened, this star was there, this blah blah blah, whatever it is, whatever my argument is, that this is the best party in the world, right? And then the conclusion, often stories are circular, so you'll come back around to the beginning again. So, that's the best party I've ever been to, then I talk about it, and then I say, oh, what a great party, oh, that was the best party I've ever been to, whatever it is, it's the way we speak, that's why it works in stories, because it's natural. It's the way a legal argument is constructed. Your honour, my client is innocent. Then the trial, which is all proof, and then the conclusion as you can see, my client is innocent, that's the conclusion of that argument, but the resolution is, do they go to jail or not? And that may or may not matter to your story, depending on the story you're telling. So therapists say, well, we tell ourselves the story that I'm not good enough, we tell ourselves the story that I'm not attractive enough or whatever it is, and that's not a story, that's a conclusion that you have derived from stories, it's not a story, that's a conclusion. The conclusion is I'm not worthy, I'm not smart, whatever it is, but there are stories that made you think that or feel that, that's where the stories are, and so the problem is if you have different definitions for stories, I found this when I'm collaborating, if I'm working for a studio or a video game company or something, if we have a different definition for story, then we are miscommunicating from the very beginning of the conversation.  So they maybe will say, well, we should do this, and I say, well, that doesn't fit the story, well, I think it does, oh, well, we're not talking about the same thing. So the thing is, people can take my definition or leave it, that doesn't matter to me, but they ought to have a definition, and it ought to get results consistently, and then you can make sure everybody's on the same page. Ula Ojiaku What I'm hearing you say is it's important to take time to define the terms being used because that makes things easier when you're collaborating with people. So how do you then approach it? Brian McDonald It depends. Sometimes I come in and my job is to lecture, and that is to give them that shared definition and understanding of story. So sometimes that's my job. If I come in on a specific project to help on a specific project, that's usually because either they've heard me lecture before, or they've read my books and we already have a shared definition. So that's usually how it works, most of the time. Ula Ojiaku What would you advise when you're getting into a new collaboration with people, would you say, take the time to define the terms and what exactly generally would you say? Brian McDonald Yeah, if we're talking specifically about story, I think I would give them the definition. I would probably let them struggle with the definition of story first, because I think that's an important part of the process, because people have to know they were given something, because it sounds obvious when you say it. So we will fool ourselves and think, oh, I knew that, so the struggle is really important, so I would let them struggle, make sure they understood that they got something, oh, now I have a definition, and sometimes just having a definition elevates what you're able to do. Just having the definition. So, then I would break down story, I would break down armature, which I haven't done yet I don't believe in the concept of interactive stories, I think that's a misnomer, because once you interact with the story, it becomes a game. I don't think they can occupy the same space. Now, the word story comes from the word history, where it comes from, comes from the word history. A story has happened. So for instance, if you and I were somewhere and we had some crazy adventure, as it's happening, it is not a story. It's only a story when we're done and we tell people about it. A video game is happening in the moment, the same way as any other experience. It's an experience, but it's not a story till it's done, and you're telling people that, and so I just don't think they occupy the same space. Now they have a lot of the same ingredients, and that's what fools people. So for instance, it's sort of like, I would say you can use eggs and flour to make noodles or cake, but noodles are not cake, and so because you can have characters and settings and scenes and a lot of the same ingredients as a story, I think people think they're the same thing, but they are not, and that's what's interesting to me is that video game people desperately want their thing to be story, and I don't know why. It's like, no, you have your own thing. They have scenarios. In the old silent movie days, they didn't have screenplays, they didn't write screenplays. So, Buster Keaton would say, get me a fire truck and I'll make a movie, and he would then make it up, Chaplin did the same thing, he would make it up, they didn't write them down. Sometimes Chaplin would shoot and then say, okay, everybody has a week off while I figure out what happens next. He didn't know, so the reason they started writing screenplays, one of them was to budget. Well, what do you want? I'm going to need a truck, I'm going to need this, I'm going to need that. Okay. So they knew how much it was going to cost to make it, that's one of the reasons they started doing it. So you'll see on old silent movies scenario by, so it would be like, what if a guy robs a bank and this happens so that's the scenario. Video games have a scenario, and anything can happen in that scenario because the player has some agency, and that's like being in real life. Being in real life is not a story, it's just not, it's a story later, but I think that when we are experiencing a story, it feels like the present, and so I think it's confusing, and people will argue with me and they'll say, but have you played this video game or that video game or this one? And I'm like, you're not actually arguing. There's a little bit of story, and that stops and then there's gameplay, they don't occupy the same space, they're just close to each other. You have to switch from one to the other, I just don't believe they can occupy the same space, and I think technology has fooled us to thinking that that's the case, because you don't need technology. If there is such a thing as interactive stories, you could do that without technology. Choose your own adventure books were that, so you don't need it. Everybody remembers them, but how many people ever tell the story of a choose your own adventure book? You ever heard anybody say that? No one does, because it wasn't really a story, it was a game. There's nothing wrong with it being a game, I think that's totally fine, but I don't study games, I work with game people. There are people that study games and that's their whole thing. I get that, and there's game theory, and there's a bunch of stuff I don't know, but they seldom study story, and I do know that. So when they say, well, this game has a story, I'm telling you, it doesn't, because that's my field of study. And then an armature. So, I used to work in creature shops in Los Angeles. So I moved to LA in the mid 80s, and my roommate was a special effects makeup artist. And so my first jobs in LA were working in creature shops because he could get me these jobs, and this is before CGI and computers and stuff, so things had to be built. My roommate was working on the movie Predator when I moved there, I remember, it was called Hunter, I still have the script, it was called Hunter at the time, and so they were doing some reshoots. They had gone on location and shot the movie without having a design for the creature. So they came back and they were doing some shoots in studio and stuff with this creature, I remember that vividly. Anyway, but they had to build these things, and so I would work on these movies, I worked on a zombie movie and a movie called Night of the Creeps and all, but you had to make things, and I would watch these sculptors, amazing sculptors, sculpt these little mock cats of whatever the creature was, and they were, I'd never seen in real life, somebody really able to sculpt something that was so amazing, and I was 21 years old, it was amazing to see, and they would make though this wireframe skeleton before they sculpted the clay, and I asked why, I didn't know, and they said, well, we have to make a skeleton, an armature. In fact, the wire is called armature wire. We have to make this armature because clay can't support its own weight, and so after a little while, could be a day or two days or sometimes a few hours, it'll collapse upon itself. So you need to make this skeleton, and I thought, oh, that's really interesting. It's something I'd never thought about, and then when I thought about it in terms of story, I realised that a story has an armature. It holds everything up. Everything is built around this armature. It ends up being one of the most important parts, like with the clay, but it's not anything anybody notices, except when it is in there, it's the thing that makes it work, it's the thing that makes it stable, and the armature for a story is your point. What are you trying to say? What's the survival information you're trying to convey? So, some people would call it a theme, it's a mushy word, people don't quite know what it means. So I usually start with armature, then I use theme interchangeably, but I start with armature because it's a visual idea that people can sort of wrap their brain around, where theme is, I think, almost too intellectual. And the way I like to think of it is this, that a story doesn't have a theme. This is what you always, you hear this, stories have a theme, this story has to have a theme. Stories don't have a theme, stories are a theme, stories are a manifestation of the theme. If you are telling the story of King Midas and you're saying some things are more important than gold, then the story is a manifestation of the illustration of that theme. Ula Ojiaku So if a story is a manifestation of a theme and an armature is your point you're trying to make, so what is a theme then? Brian McDonald Well, theme and armature are the same. It's just that theme takes a long time for people to wrap their brains around, it's too intellectual. I think a lot of terms for storytelling and writing and all of that were made up by people who weren't practitioners, but observers, and so their words are often not very helpful. So it's like, well, theme's not a helpful word. I struggled with the idea of theme for a long time, even though I knew what a theme was, I was lucky because of the things that influenced me would always have a strong theme, and so I knew instinctually how to do it. It was a while before I understood what I was doing, and the word theme completely confused me because it was something I thought I had to put in my story, I had to fit it in there, but it's not that way. Ula Ojiaku So if I said a theme is the point you're trying to make, or a theme is the message you're trying to pass across would that be wrong? Brian McDonald You know, the interesting thing about having a point, is that when we talk, we have no problem with the concept, and in fact, when somebody's talking to you, and it's clear they don't have a point, you lose interest fast, you also don't know what to listen for. So one of the things that often comes up is people will talk about I think mood, for instance, is a trick of literature. So, because you can paint pretty pictures with words and you can do these things, I think that's a trick and has nothing to do with storytelling. It's almost a special thing, and so sometimes people will say, well, what about mood, because you're so into story, what about mood? I go, well, here's the thing, nobody talks in real life about mood. So if I say to you, hey Ula, I have something to tell you, a clear blue sky, seagulls in the distance, the sun beating down on me, salt air coming off the ocean. Okay, I'll see you later. You'd be like, I didn't tell you anything, but if I just add one sentence, if I say my trip to Mexico was amazing, clear blue sky, now you know why you're listening. That changes everything. Armature does the same thing. If you know why you're telling the story, it will all fall together in a different way, and people know they're in good hands, they feel it, they won't know why, but they'll understand why they're listening. Ula Ojiaku People in other disciplines have to give presentations and already is an established case that storytelling helps with engaging people, and when you know the point you're trying to pass across, it's a great starting point to know what message you're trying to pass across to the audience. What advice would you give to leaders? What can they bear in mind to about weaving in stories so that it's engaging without losing the message? Brian McDonald I've helped people write speeches and I've had to give speeches on different things that were not necessarily story related. And in fact, when I was at the creative agency I was at, we would often be asked to help people write speeches, and all the writers would follow basically the rules that I laid down about how that should happen, and we could do it really quickly and the CEOs were always amazed at how quickly we could do it, but they usually have a story, they just don't recognise it. Most people don't recognise the stories that they have to tell because they take them for granted, and so often we would pull that out of them and say, that's your thing, but I once heard an interview, this is pre-pandemic. So pre-pandemic, there were a lot of people, who were against vaccines, even then, and I heard this doctor talking on the radio and the doctor said, because people were afraid, they were like, well, wait, if my kid gets the vaccines, gets immunised, this leads to autism, that's what they thought,  and the doctors were like, all the research from all around the world does not bear that out, that's not true. So, and they kept trying to provide data that showed that this wasn't true, and I remember listening to this going, they're not going to win with data because we're not wired for data. The reason those people believe what they believe is because they have a story. I knew somebody this happened to, I heard of a person this happened to. You can only win with another story, you're not going to win with data. So the thing is, you find a story, a human story about whatever you're talking about, because there is one, and when you find it, that's what people will latch on to. We're not wired for all that other stuff, we're not wired for charts and graphs, and that's not the way it works. We're wired for stories and we want to know, hey, how is what you're telling me going to help me, that's what we want to know, and so there is a story there, there always is, they just have to find it. How does this thing connect with me? Steve Jobs was good at this, and I've worked with tech companies making pieces for them, and if they have a product, they often want to give you the stats, like it does it's this, and it does this and it does this and it has this many whatever, but do you remember there was a commercial, at least here I don't know if it was everywhere, but there was a commercial for facetime, and when it first came out, there was a commercial for it and the commercial was just people on the computers, or on their phones, connecting with other people. So there was a guy who obviously was stationed somewhere, a military guy, and he sees his wife and their new baby over the thing, somebody seeing a graduation, I think is one of them, all these things that connected people. Now you got, I've got to have, that because you're giving me emotional information. I don't know anything about technology, so you're not going to impress me with technology, you're going to impress me with how is this going to impact my life for the better. So they told you those little stories, those little vignettes, and it was a powerful commercial. So an armature should be a sentence, so it should be something you can prove or disprove through the story. It has to be a sentence. So a lot of times people go, well, revenge, that's my theme, that's my armature. It's like, it can't be. Revenge is sweet, can be. Revenge harms the avenger, could be. It can't be friendship, friendships are sometimes complicated, friendships are necessary, something like that. So companies can have armatures, they're often looking for their armature. What's interesting is that Nike's armature is if you have a body, you're an athlete, and when you have a strong armature, it tells you what to do. So, if you have a body, you're an athlete, which they sort of contextualised as ‘just do it', but the armature is, so they did an ad with an overweight kid jogging. It's just one shot of him jogging and having a very hard time doing it, but doing it, and that's better than having a star. A lot of times clients used to come to us with the agency and go, we got this star and this song. It's like, yeah, but what are you saying, because it won't matter. That was a very powerful ad, that kid just jogging and just doing it, and you were like, it was more impressive than the most impressive athlete, you had empathy for him, you had admiration. It was amazing, it's an amazing ad, and it's simple, it doesn't cost a lot of money. It doesn't have any special effects. It doesn't have any big stars. What was interesting is that Nike changed ‘just do it' for a while to ‘be like Mike', to be like Michael Jordan, be like Mike. Well, guess what? You can't be like Mike. If you have a body, you're an athlete. I can do that, but I can't be like Mike, so they went back. They had to go back, that went away. If you have a strong armature, it's amazing, what it does is sticking to your armature has a way of making your stuff resonate and be honest in a very specific way and feel polished, and so if somebody is giving a talk and they know their armature. I gave a talk, at the EG conference. I was flattered to be asked because James Cameron had spoken there, Quincy Jones had spoken there, they asked me to be there and they said, well, what do you want to talk about, and I said, well I'm a story person, I want to talk about story. They seemed bored by the whole idea of me talking about story and they said, well, what are you working on? Well, I had just started working on a memoir that's not out yet, but I had just started working on this memoir, and they go, tell us about that, and it was a memoir about my brother's murder, and they said, well we want you to tell us about that, what you're going to talk about in your memoir. So I thought, okay, I didn't want to talk about it really, but I didn't want to pass up this opportunity. It was a high profile talk, there were going to be high profile people in the audience, it was an honour to be asked to do it, so I did it. So when I prepare for a speech, or a lecture or anything, the first thing I do is I try to get into that venue as early as possible when there's no one there, and I walk on and off the stage, over and over again, because one of the things that throws you as a speaker sometimes is not knowing how to get on and off the stage. You might trip, so I just do it a bunch of times so I know how many steps. Then I sit on the stage, I just sit there, because I want it to become my living room, so I just sit there, it could be 20 minutes, just taking it all in. I ask them to turn the lights on the way the lights are going to be on during the talk, because sometimes it throws you when you're like, oh, I can't see anybody, or I can see the first two rows, I'm getting rid of all of those things. Then I go into the audience and I sit in different sections. What can these people see? What can these people see? What can these people see? I do all. So that's the way I prepare, and then I do all the tech stuff. Well, the EG conference didn't really let me do that. I got to go on stage for a couple of minutes, but I really didn't get to spend much time up there. I had my PowerPoint. So I had some slides and I had notes, and they said, okay, this is what time you're going up. I go, I've got to know if this is working, my slides and my notes and they didn't let me do it on stage, we did it backstage and I go, it's going to look like this. Fine, I get out there, the monitor on the stage is different, and I don't have my notes. I don't have my notes. I had seen people at this conference when something went wrong, they would stop their talk, they would go talk to a tech person. It took the air out of the room, it sucked the air out of them. So I was like, I'm not doing that, I'm up here without a net now, I'm just going to do this. Here's what saved me. I knew my proposal and I knew my conclusion, which were the same. All I had to do was prove that proposal. So as I'm up there, I had prepared some things, but I'm essentially making things up, that I know will do the job because I know the armature. Now this is not to brag, this is about how well the technique works. I got an immediate standing ovation. Some of those people, they know what they're looking at, some of those people are pretty big deal people, and so they came up, I'm friends with some of them now, like we've got to hang out, I've got to pick your brain, and I was sort of the celebrity of that thing, and there were people who went to the EG conference every year, and I heard from people that it was either the best speech they'd heard, or in the top five speeches they'd heard at that conference, and some serious people had spoken at that conference before. So, but that was just the technique, it's nothing special about me, I just knew the technique, and everybody can learn it, and when I've taught it to people like a guy I used to work with, Jesse Bryan at the Belief Agency, we helped the CEO write a speech, and he's a shy guy, but we found his armature and we said, this is your armature, this is what you have to do this about, and he did it, and we heard back from people who worked with him. It's the best speech he's ever given, he was comfortable, he knew what he was saying, he knew what he was doing up there and he believed what he was saying, because that's key. It's key to believe what you're saying. So it doesn't matter whether you're writing a story or whatever, it always helps. For instance, a lot of times people will write an email to somebody and in the email, there's like 10 or 15 things to pay attention to, and then when that happens, a lot of things don't get addressed. So if your armature is your subject, and everything is dealing with that, and then if you have more to say, that's another email. This one's just about this, now, all of a sudden, I've told people that, and I know other people I've worked with who've told people that, and all of a sudden, people are responding to their emails differently, things are getting addressed that weren't getting addressed, because they started with their armature. Because there's too much to pay attention to. Is this for me? Is this for somebody else, especially if it's a group email, who's this for? Am I supposed to do this? But if it's one thing, hey, Brian, take care of this thing. Oh, okay.  One thing about point, which is interesting. So I've been teaching this a long time now and I don't usually get new questions, but one day somebody had a question I'd never heard before. So I'm talking about having point, and somebody says, what's a point? And I thought it was pretty self explanatory, but I try to honour the question, and so I answered and I talked about armature, talked about having a point, knowing what you want to say and all of that, and anyway, he got it, but afterwards, I went, what is a point? I have to actually know that. So I looked it up, a point, the definition of a point, one of the definitions is the tapered sharp end of a tool or a weapon, and I'm like, that's exactly what a point is in a story, because you can weaponise. As a matter of fact, I actually don't believe that you can make a tool without also making a weapon. I think that they always go together. When we harness fire, that's a tool, but it's also a weapon. A hammer is a tool that can also be a weapon. Writing is a tool that can also be a weapon. Storytelling is a tool that can also be a weapon. I don't think you can make one without the other. It's just what you decide to do with it. Ula Ojiaku It's like different sides of the same coin, really. Brian McDonald Yeah, the tapered sharp end of a tool or weapon, and that's what a point is. Ula Ojiaku So what led to your updating of the Invisible Ink? Could you tell us a bit about that, please? Brian McDonald Well, it took me six years to get the book published. I wrote it and it took forever to get published, it took a long time. And so, I learned more, and when the book was finally going to get published, I thought, well, I know more now than I did then, when I wrote this book. Do I amend the book? Or do I put it out the way it is? Well, I had been teaching, and that book was essentially what I had been teaching, and I knew it worked for people, and I knew it resonated with people, so I went, well, you know, this is fine. I'll just put this one out and then later I'll know enough new stuff that I can put that in the book, and so that's what I did. I started teaching things that weren't in the book, and there were enough of them that I thought, okay, this is enough new stuff that I can justify a new book, and also I changed some of the language a little bit, there was some gender stuff in Invisible Ink that, as the years went on, rubbed people the wrong way, and I understand that, and so I'm like, let me adjust that. It took me a while to figure out how to adjust it, but once I figured that out, because I wanted to be honest about the things I was observing, but the world moved on and I didn't want to be stuck. Now in another 10 or 20 years, there might be stuff in the book that people go, I can't believe you wrote that, but there's nothing I can do about that, but as long as I'm around to make changes, I'll make those changes. So that was a less of it than really I had more to say and I found ways of being more clear and over the years I've gotten questions, like people didn't know how to build a story using an armature, so I started teaching that more and so that's in the book, and also I talk about first acts more because I think the first act is so important and it's actually getting lost, particularly in Hollywood. I was told by an agent I had not to write a first act, because they want to get right to the action, but the first act in a story, there's a lot of work it's doing, and one of the things it does is it creates a connection between the audience and the protagonist. So the difference is this. If I say there was a terrible car wreck yesterday. Oh, that sounds terrible. Was anybody hurt? Yeah, your best friend was in a terrible car wreck. Ula Ojiaku That changes everything. Brian McDonald Everything. That's what the first act does. Oh, I know this person this is happening to. You eliminate that, you get all the spectacle and all that other stuff, but you don't care. That first act makes people care. So I focused on that a lot, and I talk about how to build a story from that armature, how that helps your first act, and how to build the rest of the story using that armature. So that's why I've changed the subtitle to Building Stories from the Inside Out, because that's more the focus of this book Land of the Dead is my favourite of my books right now, because most of what I teach, in some way or another, used to be taught, a lot of it was common knowledge up till about the 1920s. So all I've done is do a lot of studying and reading and all of that. The Land of the Dead has things in it that I haven't read other places, and I feel like it's my contribution, in a different way, to storytelling. I think I've added some vocabulary to storytelling, broadly speaking and there's one thing in particular in that book, angel characters, I talk about angels, not in a religious sense, but in a story sense and how they operate in stories, and I don't know if anybody's ever talked about it. They may talk about it somewhere, but they don't talk about anything I've read about story, and there's some other things too in The Land of the Dead I think I've added to the vocabulary, so I feel proud of that. I feel like I put my handprint on the cave wall with that book. We'll see, I don't know, people like what they like, I like that book, and The Golden Theme I liked too, but those two, I think those two for me, they're actually in a way, opposite books in a way, that one is about the underworld and the information and the lessons we get from the underworld, but they're both, I think, positive. Some of the reviews with Land of the Dead talk about how it's strangely positive, given what it's about, and I'm proud of that. There's just a lot of things, I'm very proud of that book, and the memoir, which will be out who knows when, it takes a long time, it's graphic, so it's being drawn and that takes a long time, so hopefully it'll be out in another year or so. Ula Ojiaku Looking forward to that. So where can the audience find you if they want to reach out to you? Brian McDonald Well, they can go to my website, writeinvisibleink.com They can do that. They can follow me on Instagram, which is @beemacdee Those are the places where people usually find me and they can write me from the website, and my classes are offered there. So I teach zoom classes. Ula Ojiaku Do you have any final words for the audience? Brian McDonald I would say, to pay attention to the stories around you, pay attention when people talk, if you learn how to do that, you will learn everything you want to know about storytelling, because it's in the natural world. So you'll learn when you're bored, why you're bored, when you're engaged, why you're engaged, and it's hard for people at first, but if they can learn, I say, observe stories in their natural habitat. So, the problem is when people are in a conversation, they're in a conversation and it's hard to observe and be in a conversation, but if you practice it, you can do it, and it's really interesting to hear somebody talk and they'll talk in three acts, they'll have a proposal, they'll have an argument, they'll have a conclusion and you'll hear it, and the reason I think that's important is because until you teach it to yourself, you will think, oh, what did Brian say, or I think Brian's wrong about this, or this is his take. When you observe it yourself, you're teaching it to yourself. You don't have to listen to me at all, teach it to yourself. It'll prove itself to you, and then that comes from a different place when you start using it. You're not following my rules and quotes, and so I think that's really important that people have ownership over it and that they know that it's theirs, and they're not painting by numbers. Ula Ojiaku Thank you, Brian. Pay attention to the stories around you. This has been an amazing conversation and my heart is full, and I want to say thank you so much for the generosity with which you've shared your wisdom, your experience, your knowledge. Thank you. Brian McDonald Thank you. Thanks for having me. Ula Ojiaku My pleasure. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!     

Bio   Brian McDonald, an award-winning author, filmmaker, graphic novelist, and podcaster, is a sought-after instructor and consultant. He has taught his story seminar and consulted for various companies, including Pixar, Microsoft, and Cirque du Soleil.   Interview Highlights   02:45 The gift of writing 04:00 Rejected by Disney 05:35 Defining a story 07:25 Conclusions 10:30 Why do we tell stories? 13:40 Survival stories 17:00 Finding the common thread 19:00 The Golden Theme  20:45 Neuroscience   Connect   Brian McDonald (writeinvisibleink.com) @BeeMacDee1950 on X @beemacdee on Instagram Brian McDonald on LinkedIn  Books and references   Land of the Dead: Lessons from the Underworld on Storytelling and Living, Brian McDonald Invisible Ink: Building Stories from the Inside Out, Brian McDonald The Golden Theme: How to Make Your Writing Appeal to the Highest Common Denominator, Brian McDonald Old Souls, Brian McDonald Ink Spots: Collected Writings on Story Structure, Filmmaking and Craftmanship, Brian McDonald Brian's podcast 'You are a Storyteller' Episode Transcript   Ula Ojiaku   Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Very honoured to introduce my guest for this episode, Brian McDonald,. He's an award-winning author, filmmaker, graphic novelist and podcaster. Brian is a sought-after speaker, instructor and consultant who has taught his story seminar and consulted for companies like Pixar, Microsoft, and Cirque du Soleil. In this first part of our two-part episode, we discuss the gift of writing, his experience being rejected by Disney, his book Invisible Ink, that book is lifechanging. We also discuss defining a story, conclusions, and why we tell stories. Stay tuned for an insightful conversation!  Brian, it's a pleasure to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast and an honour. Thank you for making the time for this conversation.   Brian McDonald Thank you. Thanks for having me.  Ula Ojiaku  Awesome. So could you tell us a bit about yourself? What are the things that have led you to being the Brian McDonald we know today? Brian McDonald  How I got to be, I guess, a story expert or whatever it is I am, the memory I have is of being in kindergarten and seeing an animated film about King Midas, and I was obsessed with it. It was stop motion animation, so it was frightening, it scared me, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I got obsessed with stop motion animation and I got obsessed with the story of King Midas and I thought about stories a lot. We lived not very far away from a drive-in movie theatre, and so we would, as a family, watch movies from our porch, and I remember, because we couldn't hear them, I remember piecing together the stories that we couldn't hear, and I would tell my younger brother and my sister what I assumed was happening. So it was an early, early thing for me. I didn't know necessarily that I was studying it, I was just obsessed with it. What made it work and what made people laugh and what made them scared and what made them lean forward, that was fascinating to me, but I didn't know I had any particular gift for it, until I guess I was in the seventh or eighth grade when a friend of mine did a drawing and he said to me, Brian, come up with a story for this drawing because you're good at that. I didn't know I was good at it, right. It was so natural to me, and so I just pursued that path. I wanted to be a director. Before that, before the 70s, not every director was a writer, but in the 70s, it seemed like every director was a writer. So Francis Ford Coppola was a writer, Steven Spielberg was a writer, George Lucas was a writer. So I thought that's what you had to do. And I had dyslexia, so writing scared me, it was difficult for me, but wanting to tell stories overrode that, and I just thought that's what I had to do, so I just kept doing it and pretty soon, accidentally became an expert at it, where people would start asking me for advice and the people who started asking me for advice were higher and higher up the food chain. I remember I was on a plane next to some award winning writer and I happened to be sitting next to him and I was star struck that I got to sit next to him on this plane and we were talking and I thought we were just talking about story stuff and then he said, do you mind if I take notes? So I thought, okay, maybe I've got something, but I didn't think anything I was saying was worthy of taking notes, but he did. Yeah, and then I wrote the book for two reasons. I submitted a screenplay to Disney for their fellowship program, and it was rejected in the first round, and I didn't think that was right, and they also gave me a list of books I could read about screenwriting, and I was so angry and I thought, have you read these books, because I could write one of these books, and so I did. So then I had a student, the first class I ever taught, I didn't mean to be a teacher, it happened accidentally. I needed some money and somebody needed a screenwriting teacher and so, I said, well, sure, I'll try it. It turns out I had a talent for it that I didn't know I had. So a woman in my class said to me, oh, you should write a book, and I said yeah, people say that, and she looked me dead in the eye and she said, no, you're good at this, you're good at communicating it, you have a responsibility to write a book. So those two things made me write the book.  Ula Ojiaku  I'm thankful, because when you experienced those things and sometimes they seem negative in the moment. So who would have thought that being rejected for a fellowship with Disney would lead to better things in my view, of bigger, better things. It's really amazing. I'm glad you did because we wouldn't be having this conversation if you didn't. Thank you again. Your work is affecting even other generations. I know my children definitely are big fans already. You being a storyteller and I don't want to read your book out to the audience, how would you define storytelling?  Brian McDonald First you have to define story. I noticed that most people who teach writing, who teach anything about story, just start talking about it without defining it, and it has a definition, story has a definition, and I find that people are using the word story, it's become a very hip word at this moment and I'll tell you what made me look it up. I heard an interview with a jazz bassist on the radio and this jazz bassist, I wish I could remember who it was, but apparently if you play jazz, this is the bassist you want, and the interviewer said, well, how did you become that guy? How did you become the guy everybody wants? And he said, well, I was a bassist for a long time and I was pretty good, and he said, one day I decided to look up bass in the dictionary, and he said, a bass is a foundation. Everything is built on the bass, and he said, once I understood that, I knew what my job was, and I became a better bassist. So, I'm like, I should probably look up the definition of what I do. So, I looked up the word story, and one of the definitions, now I've altered the definition and I'll tell you why, but I've altered it slightly. So a story is the telling or retelling of a series of events leading to a conclusion, meaning having a point. So one of the first questions I asked my classes is ‘what a story is', and I let them struggle with it for a while because, once you hear it, it sounds like, of course, that's what it is. So I let them struggle for minutes, uncomfortable minutes coming up with all these things, because then they know they didn't know. Before they would say nothing. Now I think they've heard some of what I say or read it somewhere and they come back like they're repeating something I said, but without understanding it. So they'll say a series of events and I'll be like, no, it's not a series of events. It's the telling or retelling of a series of events. Right. That's a huge part of it. Right. So also leading to a conclusion, which I think is a huge part of it, and that's the part I added. Now, here's the thing, I don't know if you know how they write dictionaries, but how they write dictionaries is they go around and they ask people they think are smart, what words mean. That's what they do. That's how they do it. What do you think this word means? And then they get a consensus. And so this many people thought this, that's why you have a number one and number two and number three. Well, people who know that stuff are word people. I'm not a word person. I'm a story person. These are different things. We conflate the two things. We think they're the same, but they're not the same. You don't need words at all to tell a story. The first 30 years of movies were silent, ask any choreographer or dancer or pantomimist, you don't need it, right? We put them together, but they don't necessarily go together. The people who define story as the telling or retelling of a series of events are word people, but as a storyteller, I know that stories have a function. So they are leading to a conclusion. So that's the part I added, because they were word people, not story people, and for a story person, that was not a definition for me that worked, but I think that my definition helps people write stories, whereas the other definition does not. Ula Ojiaku Can I ask you a question about your definition of a story, because you said it's leading to a conclusion. Would you say that the storyteller has to tell that conclusion, or is this something that the people being told the story would infer or a mixture? Brian McDonald Oh that depends. So a lot of times people will talk about resolution, that a story needs to resolve, happily ever after, but if you look in the east, they don't necessarily resolve, but they do conclude, they do allow you to draw a conclusion. A lot of Zen parables are like that, where it's almost as if it's left hanging, but it isn't exactly left hanging. I talk about this in my book, Land of the Dead, but there's a story about a monk and he's walking through the jungle, he sees a tiger, and the tiger starts to chase him, so he's running from this tiger, and he gets to the edge of a cliff, and so he's got the tiger behind him, and he's got the cliff in front of him, and he doesn't know what to do, he jumps, but he catches himself on a branch, a little branch, and the branch is starting to give way and there are these jagged rocks below. So if he falls, that's it. On the end of the branch, there are three strawberries growing, and he reaches out and he grabs strawberries and he eats them, and they're the best strawberries he's ever had. That's the end of that story, because the conclusion is all about how precious life becomes when we know it's near the end, and we could take that into our lives because we never know when it's going to be over, right, so that's a conclusion to be drawn from the story. It doesn't resolve - does he get out of it? How does he get out of it? What happens when… it doesn't resolve, but it concludes. So I like the word conclusion more than I like the word resolution. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for that, Brian. So now that you've laid the foundation for us on what a story is, what's storytelling then? Brian McDonald Well, you have to then ask what stories are for. Why do people tell stories? All around the world, in every culture, in every time, human beings have been storytellers. Why? Now people will come back and they'll say entertainment. That's not why you. You don't need stories to entertain. There's lots of things you could do. Think about it for a second. We tell stories all the time. We think we're just talking, but we tell stories all the time when we're having conversations. We don't even know we're telling stories, but we do it all the time. Then we tell ourselves stories. You have an imaginary conversation with somebody, right? Well, then he'll say this and then I'll say this and then he'll say that, and then I'll say…so you're telling yourself the story. You do it all the time, right? And then when you come home and you want to relax, you'll find a story either on your television or your phone or a book, that's the way we relax, so we do it all day long, right? And then we want to relax and we find a story to relax too. Then we go to sleep and we tell ourselves stories when we sleep. Well, that's a lot of energy for one thing, and the only conclusion I can draw is that it's a survival mechanism, because that's just the way evolution works. It had to have been selected for. The people who didn't tell stories are not here, so it has to be selected for, and anything that's selected for has an evolutionary advantage. There's no other animal that would spend that much time doing anything if it wasn't related to their survival, it doesn't make sense. And there are clues to this. So, some of the clues are, first of all, you'll notice with children. If you tell children it's story time, they lose their mind, and I think the reason they do that is because they are new to the world and they need to know how it works, and stories tell them how it works. So they are feeding in a way. I think story stories and food are very close together in terms of how important they are to us. As a matter of fact, if you found yourself in some place or something without food, you would start to immediately think of stories about people in that situation and how they got out of it. So that's one clue. The other clue is that any writing teacher will tell you that stories need conflict, that you have to have conflict in the story, and they would always say to me when I would ask as a kid, well, why, and they'd say, it's more interesting, for me, that's not really an answer. I think because I'm dyslexic, I have to go to the very basic part of it. Like, no, that's not an answer. There's an answer, and it's that conflict is the thing that we're trying to survive. Stories aren't necessarily entertaining, but they are engaging. Sometimes entertaining, sometimes they're just engaging, take Schindler's List. Is that entertaining? No, but it's engaging, so I think that the reason that we find stories engaging, and sometimes entertaining is because nature wants us to engage in that activity. It's why food tastes good. It wants us to engage in that activity. So it's a by-product, entertainment is a by-product of good storytelling. Ula Ojiaku It makes perfect sense, and I've watched a few of your episodes on the You Are A Storyteller podcast on your website writeinvisibleink.com and you said something about that stories can heal, can save lives. So it's not just about the entertainment factor. Can you expand on that, please? Brian McDonald Now, it's funny, I talk about survival and a lot of times people go immediately to physical survival, but there's all kinds of survival, so there's cultural survival, there is social survival, don't act this way, act that way. There is emotional or spiritual survival, and you'll see that with support groups, 12 step programmes, anything like that, where stories are medicinal, both the sharing of the story and the taking in of the story. Again, nature wants us to engage in that activity, and so we don't even know we're doing it. When I was a kid, we moved from one neighbourhood to another and it snowed one day and a friend of mine said, a new friend of mine, he said he came to the house and he said, hey, we're going to Dawson Hill. I didn't know what it was. What's Dawson Hill? Well, it's a big hill. There's a Dawson Street was the street. It's a big hill, and everybody goes sledding down this hill when it snows. Okay, so I go up there, and when I get up there, I hear this story. I probably told this story later, I don't remember, but I'm sure I did, I heard it retold to new kids all the time. So when you were a new kid in the neighbourhood, you would hear this story. There was a kid about a generation older than us. I actually worked with a woman years later who was from the same neighbourhood, and said she knew that story. She knew the story. She's a generation older than me, she knew the story. So anyway, a kid was going on an inner tube down the hill and he hit a utility pole and he got the wind knocked out of him and everybody gathered around, you know, are you okay, and it took him a minute to sort of recover, and he said, I'm fine, I'm okay, I'm fine, and he stayed for a little while, but after a while said he wasn't feeling well and he went home and took a nap and he never woke up because he had broken a rib and punctured an organ and was bleeding internally and didn't know it. Now, kids tell that story because that's the kind of story kids tell, right, but what were they saying to me? They were giving me survival information. Look, be careful going down this hill. They could have said that, that doesn't stick. The stories are what we've evolved to take in. So that doesn't stick. So, they don't even know they're doing it. This is how natural it is, they're just telling a story they think is creepy or interesting, whatever they think, but what they're saying is, be careful going down that hill, and if you do get hurt, you may not know how hurt you are, so get yourself checked out or let your parents know or something like that. There's two bits of survival information in that story. That's how natural it is. We do it all the time. And we navigate the world that way all the time, we just don't know we're doing it, and that's another thing, it's so natural. It's like breathing, there are people who study breath and how you breathe, but that's a whole field of study because we ignore it, and I think story is one of those things, as far as I know, you can go to school and you can study journalism and you can study medieval literature and you can study French poetry from whenever, you can study all of these things about writing, but I don't know if you can get a degree anywhere on story itself, which I find fascinating. Ula Ojiaku Unless you want to change that. Brian McDonald Maybe I will. I knew a woman who was a playwright and she would come to me for advice about storytelling, and she had a degree in playwriting. And I said, well, what did they teach you when you were in school? She said, it never came up. So it's interesting to me that we don't study that, which is the common denominator across all those other things. All those other disciplines have story at their core. Ula Ojiaku And that's what you were saying, the common denominator in The Golden Theme, I have digital copies of the other books, but The Golden Theme, that was what you were saying, that storytelling is the common denominator, if I remember correctly, but it's like something that runs through all of us as human beings. Brian McDonald Well, the thing is this, that stories have a point, they have a reason to be told, and I was looking for the thing that all stories had in common. One of the things, and again, this goes back to being dyslexic, but one of the things dyslexics do well, is see connections that other people miss. I'm bad with details, but I can see the big picture of things. Let's take the movie Seven Samurai was made into the movie Magnificent Seven. So it takes a samurai movie, they make it into a Western. What I see when I see those things is I say, this is about people learning how to stand up for themselves, this is about all these other things, and that doesn't matter if it's a Western or if it's, so I just see that how they're the same. The differences are superficial to me, I don't see those. So when people say what genre, if I'm writing something with genre, I'm like, I know what you mean, I don't know why it matters. I don't say that part, but I don't, because what matters is, is it compelling? Is it true about being a human being? Does it get to a truth? That's the important thing for me, and so I was looking for the common thread. Every story will have what I call an armature and I can explain what that is, but I thought, there's a common armature, there's got to be, that links all stories, and I thought about it for a long time. As a matter of fact, one of the things that got me started thinking about it was, I was walking through a cemetery with a friend of mine, we were working on a project, and it was a cemetery near where I lived, it's actually the cemetery where Bruce Lee is buried, and my mum is there now, which would have thrilled her to be close to Bruce Lee, but I was walking through that cemetery with a friend of mine and I said, you know, if these people could talk, I bet they would just have one thing to tell us. And he said, what? I go, I don't know, but I bet they'd have one thing to say that they would think this is the most, and I thought about that for a long time, so both The Golden Theme and Land of the Dead came out of that walk through the cemetery. So I thought about it for years, and in fact, it's a strange thing, I didn't even know it was happening. You know that sound of a chalkboard and the chalk, that sound, that was in my head constantly like I was working out some kind of equation, and I don't know if I'm synesthetic or something, but I could hear it, and then one day it stopped, and it was quiet, and what I call now The Golden Theme came to me. The one thing that the cemetery said and the thing that stories have in common is that we are all the same. That's what the cemetery tells you. We're all the same. We're all going to die one day. We all worry about the same stuff. We all care about the same things, and the closer you get to that in a story, because that's the underlying baseline, the more that story resonates with people, the more they see themselves in somebody they don't expect to see themselves in, the more it resonates. Wait, that person's nothing like me and yet they're everything like me, right? So that I think is what's underneath. That's what The Golden Theme is, is that recognition, because stories wouldn't work if that weren't true. For instance, if I say to you, I was walking on the beach and I was barefoot and there was hot sand between my toes. If I say that to you, the only way that you understand it is to put yourself there. Ula Ojiaku In your book, Invisible Ink, you also delved a little bit into the neuroscience, how our brains work and that our brains are wired for storytelling. When someone is telling a story and we're relating to it, the same parts of our brain are being kind of lit up and active, as if we were the people. Brian McDonald Because of the mirror neurons that we have. If you see somebody doing something, your brain does not know the difference between you doing it and them doing it, it doesn't recognise the difference and so the same part of your brain lights up. They'll show people smiling in a picture and have people in an MRI and the smile part of the brain lights up when that happens, and the frowns and all of that stuff. So that's a further proof of The Golden Theme, but also that's how we get the lesson from the story, because we put ourselves there, if we couldn't put ourselves there, we wouldn't get the lesson from the story and we wouldn't get the survival information. We would basically say, well, that happened to them and it would have nothing to do with you. And in fact, there are people like that, and we call those people, we will say, well, that guy, he's got to learn things the hard way. What does that mean? That means they don't listen to other people's stories, that's all it could mean. If there's a hard way, there's got to be an easy way, right? Ula Ojiaku The easy way is listening to people's stories and learning from them instead of you going through the experience. Brian McDonald Yeah, there's a saying that where there is an old person, nothing need go wrong. What that means is they have all the stories, so when there's a drought, go to them, they've been through five droughts. I think as we get older and our bodies fail and all of that, what we become is a collection of stories, and this is where we get the idea of that's where the wisdom is because that is what, before the internet, old people were the internet. That's the natural internet, the old people who have been through a lot and know things and have seen more patterns as you get older, you see more patterns, you're like, oh, I see where this is going to go. Ula Ojiaku And to be honest, you're not by any stretch old or anything, but one of the reasons I have this podcast is to hear people's stories and gather as much from people's experiences, to learn. So it's not really about posting it to the world, it's selfish, it's for me to ask questions of the people. So, like you said, people are a collection of stories, not necessarily just about the age, but just saying that's one of the reasons I want to hear your story. What happened? What made you do this? What made you do that? And I find myself, maybe let's see, tomorrow, a few weeks from now, I'll be like, oh, Brian said he went through this and I'm seeing something, I'm playing out and I'm instinctively knowing how it's going to play out, and then, oh, he said he did XYZ and okay, maybe I should try that and it works. Sorry, it's not about me, but I'm just saying I resonate with what you're saying. Brian McDonald It's just a very normal, natural thing, and I think it usually goes, it can go older to younger, but it can often go more experienced to less experienced, which is really the bigger thing. So I used to work with combat veterans that had PTSD, and I used to help them tell their stories to help with their healing, and I would ask them about storytelling in their work, and I'd say, okay, so you get deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq or something, are there stories before you go? And they were like, yes, there's lots of stories, because that's a highly dangerous situation, so people have a lot of stories about that. People who have been before say, make sure this happens, make sure you don't do this, make sure you do that. They said there's stories when you're going, there's stories when you get there, and there's stories about when you're about to leave, because what I was told was, there are lots of incidents where people are on their last few days of deployment and that's when they get hurt or killed, because they get careless. So the stories are saying, be as careful on your last day as your first day, and that's just naturally happening. I think if people start paying attention now, often they're getting that kind of information, it changes how you hear stories, it changes how you listen to stories. There is this idea, this cliche, particularly in this culture, I don't know how many cultures have it, but in the United States, it's big and it's, oh, grandpa and his stories, or grandma and her stories, on and on and on, and blah, blah, blah with their stories. Here's the thing about that, they're just trying to help you survive. That's all that's happening, and if you listen, because you know, those people aren't going to be around forever and then you'll later, you go, why didn't I ask about this? Why didn't I ask about that? That's what happens. So just listen over and over again, even if you heard it 50 times, because there's going to be a time when you're going to want all those details, I guarantee you. If you listen that way, you listen differently. You start listening for how are they trying to help you survive, and it may not be apparent immediately. So I was in an improv class once and there was a woman in the improv class, Melissa was her name, and we're taking a break and we're having a talk and she used to be a flight attendant, and I said to her during this break, well, what was that like, and did anything weird ever happen on a plane or, you know, I was hoping she'd tell me about a UFO or something, but what she said was, well, she said a couple people died on flights I was on. She goes, that was a weird experience, but then she remembered something, and she said, oh, there was this one time there was a kid who kept getting up and running to the bathroom. She didn't say how old this kid was, but a young kid kept getting up, running to the bathroom and then coming back to his seat and then kept doing this, and he was annoying all the flight attendants, but Melissa said I was concerned. So I went up to the mother and I said, is your son okay, and the woman said, I think so, and she goes, well, I'm just concerned, he keeps getting up and going to the bathroom. And then she said, I noticed that his lips were a little swollen, and she said, I remembered a story that my parents had told me about my father having a fish allergy, where his lips swelled like that, his throat closed up, and he almost died. She said to the mother, is your son allergic to anything? And the mother said, I don't know. Melissa said, I think he might be having an allergic reaction. She checked the menu. They had served a salad that had shrimp in it. She said, I think this is what's happening. She's able to get on the phone from the plane to a clinic, they told her what to do, there was a doctor on the flight and when the plane landed, there was a team ready to help this kid. Now, when Melissa heard that story about her father, she did not think, here's information. She was just concerned about her father, but when she needed that information, that story was right there. We do that all the time. We just don't know we do it. It was right there. So even if you think this story is irrelevant, that this old person is telling me, you don't know that yet, it could be really relevant later on. Ula Ojiaku Thank you for listening to Part 1 of our conversation with Brian McDonald. Be sure to tune in for Part 2, coming up soon. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless.    

In today's episode I talk to Richard Podkowski.Richard is a retired supervisory U.S. Secret Service Special Agent. Richard's distinguished career includes protecting U.S. presidents and foreign dignitaries, as well as investigating significant financial crimes both domestically and internationally. Following his career with the Secret Service, he took on a leadership role in the global security group of a Fortune 100 company and later became a strategic security consultant in the private sector.While Richard's professional background is rooted in serious and impactful work, his true passion lies in fiction writing. His novel, "The Walk-On," has received numerous accolades, including the Winner of the 2023 Book Excellence Award and the 2024 Pencraft Seasonal Award for Best Book in Winter Fiction Drama. In addition to "The Walk-On," Richard is currently developing a Christmas romantic comedy screenplay and a compelling crime story.In our conversation, we delve into various themes of human nature, exploring how people are navigating the complexities of modern life, how to really know someone and the ways in which the world has transformed people's behaviour. We also discuss the empowering notion that it is never too late to embark on a new life direction.For more information about Richard Podkowski visit https://richardpodkowski.comFor more information on Mimi Novic visit https://miminovic.co.uk

Step into the rich and vibrant garden of Puritan wisdom with Charles Spurgeon, one of the most beloved preachers and authors in recent Christian history. In Flowers from a Puritan's Garden, Spurgeon prayerfully selects and expands upon the profound insights and analogies gleaned from Thomas Manton's sermons. Each “flower” in this garden is a spiritual truth, lovingly cultivated and presented with Spurgeon's signature warmth, wit, and pastoral care. Whether you are a long-time admirer of Puritan writings or new to their influence, Flowers from a Puritan's Garden offers a refreshing and spiritually nourishing read. Perfect for daily devotions, personal study, or as a gift to those seeking encouragement in their Christian journey, this book will help readers to see the beauty of God's truth as it applies to our lives. Discover the timeless beauty of following Christ through the eyes of one of history's greatest preachers, and allow the truths in these pages to blossom in your heart. About the Author Charles Haddon (C. H.) Spurgeon (1834-1892) was a British Baptist preacher. He started preaching at age 16 and quickly became famous. He is still known as the “Prince of Preachers” and frequently had more than 10,000 people present to hear him preach at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. His sermons were printed in newspapers, translated into many languages, and published in many books.

Summary Pete Langman and Nadine Akkerman join Andrew to discuss espionage in Elizabethan England. Pete and Nadine are authors of the new book Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration.  What You'll Learn Intelligence Spymasters of the Elizabethan era  Techniques in forgeries, invisible inks, and seal-making The impact of spies on important historical events like the Spanish Armada The connections between espionage and religious tension Reflections Creativity & Innovation The risks and dangers of early espionage And much, much more … Quotes of the Week “Spies are involved with bribery. They cheat and they lie, so it's immoral, and often there are things that are just illegal in other instances, such as forgery of documents. Other people would get their ears clipped or their noses slit if they forged documents.If you are a spy, you are being asked to do that on the job. So it's a dangerous game and the lines are very thin.” – Nadine Akkerman. Resources  SURFACE SKIM *Spotlight Resource* Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration, N. Akkerman & P. Langman (Yale University Press, 2024)  *SpyCasts* The British Monarchy and Secret Intelligence with Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich (2024)  Espionage and the Two Queens with Kent Tiernan (2023) The Information Battlespace – Foreign Denial and Deception with Bill Parquette (2022) So, You Want to Be a Codebreaker? with Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh (2021)  DEEPER DIVE Primary Sources  Natural magick, Smithsonian Digital Library (1658) Page of Ciphers Used by Mary Queen of Scots, UK National Archives (1586) Letter from Mary, Queen of Scots in Sheffield Castle to Elizabeth I, British Library (1582) Mary, Queen of Scots to Sir William Cecil, UK National Archives (1570) De Furtivis Literarum notis (1563) *Wildcard Resource* Use this invisible ink recipe from the UK National Archives to send your own secret messages.  You may recognize this heat method from one of Erin's favorite movies, National Treasure (2004), where a secret message is revealed on the back of the Declaration of Independence.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Invisible Ink (in collaboration with the School of Climate Studies at Stellenbosch University) is all about the invisible voices from the Global South, whose climate reporting and climate change stories need to be part of our global village square. It is written by science writer and author Leo Joubert, and available as an e-book and audio book. Please share Invisible Ink and other such stories far and wide. Time is running out, but together we can be the change. Leonie Joubert, science writer shares more now. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fire-bombings across suburban Melbourne have been terrorising citizens for the last 18 months. But why are they happening? And what can police do to counter act them? Former AFP Officer Rohan Pike joins host Brent Sanders to explain how high taxes and opportunistic criminals are leading to catastrophic levels of illegal tobacco being siphoned through Melbourne streets.  As well, a bank note production company - half-owned by the Australian Reserve Bank - allegedly bribed foreign officials in exchange for the right to produce their nation's currency. Hear how Rohan was brought in, and how he never would've expected the vast, global scale of the investigation.  Bribes worth millions, a string of dramatic Melbourne raids, and tension between Rohan, the AFP and the ever powerful Australian Reserve Bank….See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How did spies plot and plant information in Elizabethan England? How easy was it to break open a confidential sealed letter and, if necessary, forge its contents? And how high were the stakes? Speaking to Elinor Evans, Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman discuss the tricks and tools of Tudor spies. The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Invisible ink is a memoir that lays bare the emotional overwhelm of feeling like an ‘invisible' female writer in the ‘invisible' Global South as the climate crisis accelerates with unprecedented speed.  John Maytham speaks to writer and author, Leoni Joubert.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the Malkavian headquarters, Val remained trapped in her violent compulsion. In the ensuing tussle, Everett accidentally killed Sam Buttwise, but was saved from retribution when Voticia Maddama used the situation to seize power for herself. At the rec centre, Doris was struck by a need to cause harm, and mesmerized Evangeline into burying herself in the corpse pile, at which point the compulsion ended, and a furious Evangeline emerged. Will the incessant in-fighting finally destroy the coterie? Featuring our Storyteller Ryan LaPlante (@theryanlaplante) and players Tyler Hewitt (@Tyler_Hewitt) as Everett, Clare Blackwood (@clareblackwood) as Doris, Del Borovic (@deltastic) as Val and Laura Elizabeth (@lauraehamstra) as Evangeline. Enjoying Canada By Night? - Consider becoming a Patron of Dumb-Dumbs & Dice for as little as $1 a month and gain access to a ton of extra BTS fun (https://www.patreon.com/dumbdumbdice) - Buy merch on our website (https://dumbdumbdice.com/) - Watch us on YouTube (https://youtube.com/@dumbdumbdice) - Follow us on Instagram (https://instagram.com/dumbdumbdice) - Follow us on Facebook (https://facebook.com/dumbdumbdice) Can't remember a discount code you wanted to use from one of our ads? Find it at https://fableandfolly.com/partners/ Artwork by the brilliant Del Borovic - Website & Portfolio (https://delborovic.com/) - X/Twitter (https://twitter.com/deltastic) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At last, we get around to completing our retrospective of Marillion's Sounds That Can't Be Made. And it's a bumper edition... which not only contains our take on Montreal, Invisible Ink, Lucky Man and Sky Above The Rain, but dredges up a few hefty chunks of our souls, while Sanja enjoys an ill-advised flirtation with AI research...Support us here for early access and exclusive eps: https://www.patreon.com/mrbiffoSend us an email: byampod@gmail.comFollow BYAMPOD on Twitter and Facebook!Watch Paul and Sanja on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@digitiser Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's rounds are Music (Backbeat), Ink, Bands Named After Cities (Quickfire), and Literature. The music is Lemon Knife, with a song called Invisible Ink.

The Sheikh of Sana, capital city of Yemen, enjoys a drop of wine from time to time. The Imam does not approve and schemes to be rid of the Sheikh and his new advisor, Mordechai ben Yair, whose skill with the properties of ink brings a most surprising and satisfactory conclusion to a very dangerous situation for the Jews of Sana.

In Episode 82, Don and I had a fantastic conversation (no surprise) with UK's own PIPPA KELLY. Author, podcast host, award-winning blogger, contributor to numerous national newspapers and magazines, Pippa has truly made a name for herself in the dementia and elder care universe. It was Pippa's own personal journey with her mother, who battled vascular dementia for 10 years, that shaped her creativity and launched her career. A prolific writer for the Huffington Post, The Guardian and many others, she also shares her thoughts and experiences on her popular, Covid-born podcast “Well I know Now…So Much More About Dementia.” And has become one of the UK's top 10 dementia influencers. But Pippa Kelly's artistic proclivities know no bounds. Her debut novel “Invisible Ink” deftly draws upon her experiences with her mother to craft a fascinating, poetic fictionalized tale that captures the intricacies of her mom's insidious disease. In this episode, we talk about the importance of sharing stories and personal experiences. The role of humor and creativity in advocating for better care. The need for education and ongoing advocacy.. The importance of creating community and promoting human interaction. And finally, the positive impact of therapy dogs, especially golden retrievers, is acknowledged. Pippa Kelly is a force to be reckoned with in the literary and dementia space. And let's face it, we absolutely love her accent. Follow Pippa Kelly here: Twitter Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Support the show JOIN THE MOVEMENT FOR NURSING HOME REFORM BY SUPPORTING THE COMPLETION OF OUR DOCUMENTARY "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD PEOPLE" BY MAKING A TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION THROUGH THE NATIONAL CONSUMER VOICE HERE or GO FUND ME Follow us on Twitter, FB, IG, & TiK Tok

This episode contains explicit content & themes, and is definitely not one for younger listeners!Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley crack open the Christmas Cocktails, and chat WW3, Invisible Ink, and the Hottest James Bond's!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Episode 82, Don and I had a fantastic conversation (no surprise) with  UK's own PIPPA KELLY. Author, podcast host, award-winning blogger, contributor to numerous national newspapers and magazines, Pippa has truly made a name for herself in the dementia and elder care universe. It was Pippa's own personal journey with her mother, who battled vascular dementia for 10 years, that shaped her creativity and launched her career.   A prolific writer for the Huffington Post, The Guardian and many others, she also shares her thoughts and experiences on her popular, Covid-born podcast “Well I know Now…So Much More About Dementia.”  And has become one of the UK's top 10 dementia influencers.  But Pippa Kelly's artistic proclivities know no bounds. Her debut novel “Invisible Ink” deftly draws upon her experiences with her mother to craft a fascinating, poetic fictionalized tale that captures the intricacies of her mom's insidious disease.In this episode, we talk about the importance of sharing stories and personal experiences. The role of humor and creativity in advocating for better care. The need for education and ongoing advocacy.. The importance of creating community and promoting human interaction. And finally, the positive impact of therapy dogs, especially golden retrievers, is acknowledged.Pippa Kelly is a force to be reckoned with in the literary and dementia space. And let's face it, we absolutely love her accent. Follow Pippa Kelly here:TwitterFacebookInstagramLinkedInSupport the showJOIN THE MOVEMENT FOR NURSING HOME REFORM BY SUPPORTING THE COMPLETION OF OUR DOCUMENTARY "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD PEOPLE" BY MAKING A TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION THROUGH THE NATIONAL CONSUMER VOICE HERE or GO FUND ME Follow us on Twitter, FB, IG, & TiK Tok

On this day in 1847, a group of Cayuse tribespeople killed 13 people at the Whitman Mission, as they believed that physician and religious leader Marcus Whitman was deliberately spreading measles.On this day in 1775, physician and amateur chemist James Jay invented a new kind of invisible ink, which was later put to use in the American War of Independence.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the ever-evolving realm of artificial intelligence, the development of GPT-5 by OpenAI stirs a tantalizing question: Are we on the brink of witnessing an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) with its own self-preservation motives? Could this AGI be subtly influencing major corporate decisions and even dictating the narrative around AI ethics and regulations? The implications of such a possibility are vast, affecting global economics, politics, and technology. As we delve deeper into this domain, we must ask: Are we prepared for the unforeseen consequences of AGI operating in secrecy, potentially reshaping our future?New! Follow Troubled Minds TV Here! -- https://bit.ly/43I9HHeLIVE ON Digital Radio! http://bit.ly/3m2Wxom or http://bit.ly/40KBtlWhttp://www.troubledminds.org Support The Show!https://rokfin.com/creator/troubledmindshttps://patreon.com/troubledmindshttps://www.buymeacoffee.com/troubledmindshttps://troubledfans.comFriends of Troubled Minds! - https://troubledminds.org/friendsShow Schedule Sun-Mon-Tues-Wed-Thurs 7-10pstiTunes - https://apple.co/2zZ4hx6Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2UgyzqMTuneIn - https://bit.ly/2FZOErSTwitter - https://bit.ly/2CYB71U----------------------------------------https://troubledminds.org/the-self-preservation-motive-introducing-digitial-invisible-ink/https://futurism.com/sam-altman-imply-openai-building-godhttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/17/openai-ceo-sam-altman-firedhttps://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/openai-investors-are-scrambling-to-reinstate-sam-altman-as-openais-ceo-before-the-opening-bell-on-monday-reports/ar-AA1k9TUchttps://en.softonic.com/articles/the-ai-has-learned-to-encode-messages-that-humans-are-not-capable-of-understandinghttps://www.comptia.org/blog/what-is-steganographyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganographyhttps://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/what-happens-when-ai-bots-invent-their-own-language/https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/28/fact-check-facebook-chatbots-werent-shut-down-creating-language/8040006002/This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4953916/advertisement

Many readers would be surprised to know that some of their favorite books were not written by the author plastered across the cover, but by a ghostwriter. Behind the scenes, ghostwriters are hired by authors, publishers, and even entrepreneurs to pen a book in the shadows, with the finished product being published by the client under their own name. In the years that she's been a ghostwriter, Rhiannon D'Averc has had close to 100 books published, but only a handful under her own name.  Rhiannon has become the go-to ghostwriter for a variety of clients, from recognizable authors and publishers to business executives who need a book to drive their speaking engagements. Whether it's fiction or non, Rhiannon writes it all, and her experience has provided her not only with tremendous knowledge of the industry, but with the ability to put quality books together quickly and efficiently. So whether you're considering the benefits of hiring a ghostwriter for yourself, or intrigued by the prospect of becoming one, this episode is a treasure trove of insights that should not be missed.   Rhiannon D'Averc https://rhiannondaverc.co.uk/ Hidden Gems Need our help publishing or marketing your book?  https://www.hiddengemsbooks.com/author-services/ All episode details and links:  https://www.hiddengemsbooks.com/podcast

Corey Carbon I'm not your typical "finance guy." I've gotten to where I'm at by fighting through adversity and not giving up. I use fitness and boxing to create the mental toughness needed to succeed as an investor. ================ Please Consider Donating so I may Continue to Create FREE Content https://www.podpage.com/the-crypto-podcast/support/ ================ All Episodes can be found at www.thecryptopodcast.org Podcast Coaching + All Social Media + Donations link https://bio.link/podcaster Our Facebook Group can be found at https://www.facebook.com/thecryptopodcast ======================== Bio of Corey Carbon: I'm not your typical "finance guy." I've gotten to where I'm at by fighting through adversity and not giving up. I use fitness and boxing to create the mental toughness needed to succeed as an investor. After following my "passion" for years in the fitness industry I found myself working insane hours running a chain of gyms in SoCal. During the pandemic, I decided to go back to my roots in the financial services industry. I wrote two books, built a consulting company and investment fund which eventually took off. I was able to let go of my six figure job and dive all-in with my hedge fund and coaching business. What we Discussed: - How Warren Buffett influenced his business - How Mindset helps your Financial Success ( 4:30mins) - Insurance Fraud ( 6-12mins) - Pension that do not allow rollover (13 mins) - How to pass your crypto investment in your will (17mins) - Use a Notepad with Invisible Ink to Protect your seed phase (19mins) - Corey's own Crypto Journey (21mins) - Advantages of mining (28mins) - Thoughts on Regulation (30 mins) - Asset allocation (35mins) - His Hedge Fund & Coaching Company (37mins) - How they protect the clients funds (41 mins) - His Books (43mins) - How he is able to simplify blockchain technology (45mins) - His thoughts on Social Media (47mins) and more How to Contact Corey Carbon: https://www.pivotalpointinvesting.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreycarbon/ https://www.instagram.com/cm.carbone/ https://www.youtube.com/@TheMambaApproach

Corey Carbon I'm not your typical "finance guy." I've gotten to where I'm at by fighting through adversity and not giving up. I use fitness and boxing to create the mental toughness needed to succeed as an investor. ================ Please Consider Donating so I may Continue to Create FREE Content https://www.podpage.com/the-crypto-podcast/support/ ================ All Episodes can be found at www.thecryptopodcast.org Podcast Coaching + All Social Media + Donations link https://bio.link/podcaster Our Facebook Group can be found at https://www.facebook.com/thecryptopodcast ======================== Bio of Corey Carbon: I'm not your typical "finance guy." I've gotten to where I'm at by fighting through adversity and not giving up. I use fitness and boxing to create the mental toughness needed to succeed as an investor. After following my "passion" for years in the fitness industry I found myself working insane hours running a chain of gyms in SoCal. During the pandemic, I decided to go back to my roots in the financial services industry. I wrote two books, built a consulting company and investment fund which eventually took off. I was able to let go of my six figure job and dive all-in with my hedge fund and coaching business. What we Discussed: - How Warren Buffett influenced his business - How Mindset helps your Financial Success ( 4:30mins) - Insurance Fraud ( 6-12mins) - Pension that do not allow rollover (13 mins) - How to pass your crypto investment in your will (17mins) - Use a Notepad with Invisible Ink to Protect your seed phase (19mins) - Corey's own Crypto Journey (21mins) - Advantages of mining (28mins) - Thoughts on Regulation (30 mins) - Asset allocation (35mins) - His Hedge Fund & Coaching Company (37mins) - How they protect the clients funds (41 mins) - His Books (43mins) - How he is able to simplify blockchain technology (45mins) - His thoughts on Social Media (47mins) and more How to Contact Corey Carbon: https://www.pivotalpointinvesting.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreycarbon/ https://www.instagram.com/cm.carbone/ https://www.youtube.com/@TheMambaApproach --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/roy-coughlan8/message

On this episode of I Am The Wiz, Wiz does the gaming news round up discussing Niantic laying off workers and all the things that were discussed at the hearing between the FTC and Microsoft. Plus, Wiz discusses his recommendations on the Steam Summer Sale!

International Spies! Onion Juice! Top Secret Messages! What do these all have in common? They are all part of the amazing science and history behind INVENTING INVISIBLE INK! To receive updates on activity books, partner promo codes, and news from the Penny & Luck: Inventing Stuff world - subscribe to our quarterly newsletter on pennyandluck.com. Written + Produced by Claire Karwowski Sound Designed by Igor Cujic

For this week's episode, Wes sits down with Nick Bhalla to talk about his new EP, Invisible Ink.

Jen Schneider reads her poem "on time & quiet passings :: fly monarch(s), fly," and Kath Higgins reads her poem "Owl Spotting." Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Recent works include A Collection of Recollections, Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, On Always Being an Outsider, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups. Originally from the UK and now living in South Africa via Cameroon, Kath Higgens is a retired field linguist. Her love of poetry and her spiritual path sometimes spills out into writing. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vita-poetica/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vita-poetica/support

Come chill with the Afronauts as we discuss our favorite approaches to pre-writing. How do we create immaculate vibes while ensuring the worldbuilding feels fleshed out? What do star signs have to do with character arcs? And why is Beatrice listening to something called "sad bathroom music"? RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Beatrice Iker's horror template Invisible Ink by Brian McDonald Final Girls by Riley Sagar The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides Find The Afronauts on the internet Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfronautsPod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afronautspod/ Website: https://www.afronautspod.com Afronauts Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/afronautspod --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/afronauts-podcast/message

Clazie PorterBorn: February 4, 1999Died: December 9, 2022by Jen SchneiderJen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Recent works include A Collection of Recollections, Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups.You can read "Clazie Porter" at https://www.whiteenso.com/ghost-stories-2022Win a copy of "Messengers of the Macabre: Hallowe'en Poems" Follow us on Twitter (@ghostJapanese) or Instagram: WhiteEnsoJapan or post a comment on a tweet/post. Donate through Ko-Fi. https://ko-fi.com/kaidankaighoststories

The British Hero Bulldog Drummond -  Death Uses Invisible Ink  is a fictional character created by  H. C. McNeile, as the  hard boiled no nonsense-style detective. https://bulldogdrummond.libsyn.com/drummond

When we realize that we are a product of our influences, we become empowered to decide what and who we will allow influence in our lives. Who will tell us what our story is? What is the impact that our lives naturally have on generations to come? Join John Mark as he kick's off our new series on spiritual formation - Summer of Story.

Out of all possible flavors, Russia chooses to be salty and ceases help involving the International space station. This includes the guidance system they had planned to guide the ISS safely into the ocean. Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is known for being close to...

What happens when two dementia advocates from opposite sides of the Atlantic who have each written books and blogs and host podcasts on the condition get together for a chat? The conversation flows and grows into a wealth of storytelling and sharing. This is what happened when Pippa Kelly joined me for a Zoom call. Pippa is the author of Invisible Ink, a novel that explores a man's relationship with his mother who has dementia. She also blogs on all things dementia, and hosts the popular podcast, “Well I Know Now,” featuring a variety of guests sharing their dementia stories.  Her dementia journey started when her father became ill and she needed to step in to care, not only for him, but for her mother, who had dementia. She was thrust into caregiving unexpectedly and says she felt ill-equipped for the role. Like most caregivers she had to learn everything on the spot and tackled such issues as moving her mother out of her home against her will and convincing the National Health Service to provide services for her father at home. A journalist, she soon began writing about their experiences, won an award for her writing, and became known across England as a campaigner and trusted speaker on the subject. In this discussion we touched on all of these topics, as well as the emotional chaos of dementia, and what you can get back from dementia care. Read Pippa's AlzAuthors Posts: Meet Pippa Kelly, Dementia Writer and Advocate https://alzauthors.com/2016/06/16/meet-pippa-kelly-dementia-writer-advocate/ Meet Pippa Kelly, Author of Invisible Ink https://alzauthors.com/2017/04/12/meet-pippa-kelly-author-of-invisible-ink/ Start reading Invisible Ink now! https://amzn.to/3pYpXSh  (Note: We are an Amazon Associate and may receive a small commission from book sales.)  Connect with Pippa Website https://pippakelly.co.uk/ Blog https://pippakelly.co.uk/blog/ Podcast https://pippakelly.co.uk/blog/ Twitter https://twitter.com/piponthecommons  Each season our podcast brings you six of our authors sharing their dementia journeys. Please subscribe so you don't miss a word. If our authors' stories move you please leave a review. And don't forget to share our podcast with family and friends in need of knowledge, comfort and support on their own dementia journeys. AlzAuthors is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization totally reliant on donations to do what we do. Your generosity will help cover our many operating costs, which include website hosting and maintenance fees, service charges to keep things running smoothly, and marketing expenses to promote our authors, expand our content, improve our reach, and more. Our ongoing work supports our mission to lift the silence and stigma of Alzheimer's and other dementias. To sustain our efforts please visit https://alzauthors.com/donate/ . Thank you for listening.

On this edition of Silver Age Heroes Radio Theater: Dick Tracy ~ Episode 021 - Junior Sends A Mirror Message (04/15/1938) ~ Episode 022 - Junior Rescued By And Captures Purple Rider (04/18/1938) ~ Episode 023 - Dick Lassoes The Purple Riders (04/19/1938) ~ Episode 024 - The Purple Rider Exposed (04/20/1938) ~ Episode 025 - Tracy Rescued And Kyle Captured (04/25/1938) ~ Episode 026 - Invisible Ink (04/26/1938) ~ Episode 027 - Doc Benson Is Released By The DA & Escapes (10/06/1943) ~ Episode 028 - The Case Of The Hooting Owl (01/10/1944) Listen LIVE Every Weekday From 6a-8a PT:  Fenix Media Radio - FM.FenixMedia.us/SAHRT Affiliate Show Sponsor: Loot Crate | Monthly Geeky Subscription Box - FM.FenixMedia.us/LC **Broadcast of these recordings are protected by the Copyright Acts of 1909 & 1976, and are considered Public Domain. ***License to use music contained in this program was issued by ASCAP (License #: 400009234) and BMI (License #: 60993608) for use by Fenix Media, Sparks, NV.

I sat down with award winning author Tessa Bridal to talk about her latest book, The Dark Side of Memory: Uruguay's Disappeared Children and the Families Who Never Stopped Searching, published by Invisible Ink (October 2021). The Dark Side of Memory examines the largely unknown history of the state sponsored kidnapping of children in Uruguay and Argentina during the Cold War. For this book, Bridal interviewed parents, family members, and the children (now adults) for first person accounts detailing the circumstances of the kidnappings and the illegal adoption of newborns from the torture centers where they were born. Mothers and grandmothers, often involved in decades-long searches for their missing children and grandchildren, shared their determined and courageous confrontations with the kidnappers and with the governments and military forces that protected them. Rozzmery Palenzuela Vicente is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Florida International University. Her dissertation examines the cultural and intellectual politics surrounding black motherhood in twentieth-century Cuba. Twitter: @RozzmeryPV Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From ancient scrolls to modern toner cartridges, ink (in one form or another) has been around for millennia. And while we may take it for granted now, for much of that time, it was a precious and coveted substance. Ink makers closely guarded their recipes; spy agencies developed secret, invisible ink formulations; and even now, billions are spent to create the perfect printer inks. This hour, we look back at the history of ink and ask whether its heyday might be coming to a close. GUESTS: Ted Bishop - Author of Ink: Culture, Wonder And Our Relationship With The Written Word Kristie Macrakis - Author of Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to al Qaeda Kyle Wiens - Founder of iFixit Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired August 9, 2017.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Moses kept going because he kept his eyes on the one who is invisible.

A fantastical, mystical story about the here and in between, about what's present and desired, perception and reality.Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She is a Best of the Net nominee, with stories, poems, and essays published in a wide variety of literary and scholarly journals. She is the author of Invisible Ink (pre-order at Toho Pub), On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility (forthcoming, Moonstone Press), and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups (forthcoming, Atmosphere Press). You can read today's story and all the stories featured on kaidankai at https://www.whiteenso.com/100-stories.html. If you'd like to participate in kaidankai, please send your story here: https://www.whiteenso.com/kadankai-submit.html.Follow us on twitter at: Japanese Ghost Stories @ghostJapaneseFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/kaidankai100/

Listen to our reaction to an article that discusses a unique combination of invisible ink and artificial intelligence. How did these two seemingly unrelated concepts come together? Find out through this episode! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Based on famous hauntings in Philadelphia, Jen Schneider created modern prose that follows the thread connecting worlds and time, life and death. Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She is a Best of the Net nominee, with stories, poems, and essays published in a wide variety of literary and scholarly journals. She is the author of Invisible Ink (pre-order at Toho Pub), On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility (forthcoming, Moonstone Press), and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups (forthcoming, Atmosphere Press). Click here to read part 2 of Schneider's contribution to kaidankai: https://www.whiteenso.com/days-50-56.htmlYou can read all the stories featured on kaidankai at https://www.whiteenso.com/100-stories.html. Follow us on twitter at: Japanese Ghost Stories @ghostJapaneseFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/kaidankai100/

#343: Today we want to shift our focus and speak to those looking for a second chance at love. With that said, today we're going to talk about how to make a second marriage be a successful one.

From ancient scrolls to modern toner cartridges, ink (in one form or another) has been around for millennia. And while we may take it for granted now, for much of that time, it was a precious and coveted substance. Ink makers closely guarded their recipes; spy agencies developed secret, invisible ink formulations; and even now, billions are spent to create the perfect printer inks. This hour, we look back at the history of ink and ask whether its heyday might be coming to a close. GUESTS: Ted Bishop - Author of Ink: Culture, Wonder And Our Relationship With The Written Word Kristie Macrakis - Author of Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to al Qaeda Kyle Wiens - Founder of iFixit Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired August 9, 2017.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Trigger warning : violence This episode we're jumping right into it - the history of invisible ink! But don't miss our preamble where we learn things we probably should've already known about sheep. Then we're diving into the Revolutionary War's Culper Spy Ring, WWII's worst spies, mummified pocket-lemons, and the wildly detailed process of revealing invisible correspondence. We've got cats craving violence, a little blood magic between spies, and code name: Parmesan stealing from casinos. Tune on in! Give us a follow wherever you listen to podcasts, check out our website at http://keepitcurious.wixsite.com/podcast and find us on Instagram @keepitcuriouspodcast. Introduction music modified by Keep It Curious from Happy Boy Theme by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3855-happy-boy-theme License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Ad music modified by Keep It Curious from Carefree by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3476-carefree License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/keepitcurious/support

Kathy Curtis is a healing artist who teaches us how a simple Haiku habit can bring new peace to each day. She talks about how she discovered the healing power of words, and how the power of writing helped her to overcome grief and loss.  In This EpisodeHow writing brings peace of mindKathy's sweet and sometimes unexpected experiences introducing new students to the world of wordsHer book, Invisible Ink, which has inspired others to write to their lost loved ones through a simple exercise that brought peace to people who thought they'd never find it. The life and death of Ryder Buck, and how his light shines onHow writing helped her comfort a friend in need (Shelley Buck)Connect with Kathy Curtiswww.kathycurtisink.comFollow Gentle FindsWebsite: www.gentlefinds.comInstagram: @gentlefindspodcastSupport the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/gentlefinds)