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SNUG owner Jim Arnoldt shares about the Irvington pub's annual showcase of Irish whiskey, as well as their premiere Brand Expo tasting event.Snug Whiskey FestBrand Expo ticketsWTTS In Conversation is sponsored by Mad Hatter Shows in Greenwood

Jesús Huerta de Soto traces the Austrian school's intellectual roots from the Spanish scholastics to Rothbard, making the case that anarcho-capitalism is the natural endpoint of the classical liberal tradition.The Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Yousif Almoayyed.The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition.Full Text version of the Lecture (Submitted by Prof. Huerta de Soto):Thank you very much to the Mises Institute and Joe Salerno for his kind introduction as well as for inviting me to deliver this “Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture” to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Murray N. Rothbard's birthday. It is the second time I visit the Mises Institute to deliver this most important lecture: The first one was almost thirty years ago, back in April 1997, when I delivered a lecture on “The Scholastic Roots of the Austrian School”. In this second opportunity I am very happy to have been able to accept Joe's invitation and to come with a very well represented retinue of ten of my colleagues and doctoral students. All of them are teaching as professors or making their research at our more than twenty-year-old Doctoral and Master Programs in Austrian Economics at King Juan Carlos University back in Madrid, and which is the only one officially approved and with full validity inside the whole European Union. You have already had the opportunity to hear from each one of them a detailed description of the so-called “Madrid Austrian Research Hub” and of all the activities we are developing every year, including the 54 Doctoral Theses on Austrian Economics that have been read up to now in our program. And here you have also copies of the English version of our main books published by Routledge, Edward Elgar, and by the Macmillan Austrian Series edited by my Madrid Colleagues, the German professor Philipp Bagus and the Canadian professor Dave Howden. And you will have the unique opportunity to buy these books that, as you know, have a hefty price of almost 100 pounds each one, at the almost “stolen property” and symbolic price of 5 dollars per copy, thanks to the most generous help of the Spanish Jesús Huerta de Soto Foundation that is helping to finance our participation in this important event.And now what I will do in the next forty minutes is to try to summarize not only my main contributions, but also “The Libertarian Vision of the Scientific and Moral Truth” as we see it from our Austrian School Hub in Madrid. And I will do it by focusing on a series of fundamental points.Precisely, the youngest of all sciences, Economics is the one that has provided Humanity with the most important scientific contributionThe first one is that Economics, being the last science to arrive, or as Mises said, "the youngest of all sciences," has nevertheless achieved the milestone of providing Humanity with the most important scientific contribution. For the first time, and thanks to Economic Science, human beings have discovered and understood that voluntary social cooperation, free from all institutional and systematic external coercion, generates a spontaneous order that cannot be designed nor organized by anyone, and that peacefully and without limits drives the prosperity and expansion of Humankind.This transcendental message of Economic Science, on the one hand, resolves the impossible antithesis of attempting to apply, within the realm of interactions carried out by human beings endowed with free will, the manipulative approach of external entities that human beings have no choice but to use, supported by technology and the natural sciences, in order to dominate the subject of the material world. And on the other hand, this is a radically revolutionary message: for the first time, it has been scientifically demonstrated that states, in any of their forms, are neither necessary nor viable; that Society, understood as a process of voluntary human interactions, does not need anyone to govern it, because it regulates and organizes itself spontaneously; and that the attempt to coordinate Society on the basis of social engineering and state coercive commands is impossible, doomed to failure, and gives rise to all kinds of distortions, social conflicts and violence, that continually hinder and block human progress.Economic science is generalized into a complete Theory of Liberty that makes it possible to reinterpret History and promote the expansion of civilizationThe second point is that Economics has been generalized into a whole Theory of Liberty, understood as the most essential attribute and requirement of human nature. Liberty means that all human actions are carried out voluntarily, based on the principle of non-aggression, and free of external coercion or violence imposed and organized from above by the always minority group of human beings who, under whatever title, exercise any kind of political power.Moreover, Economics dismantles and turns upside down the erroneous and biased account of Thomas Hobbes and his followers. Neither was the "state of nature" a terrifying situation, nor did a supposed "social contract" ever exist or was it necessary to create and maintain a State that would impose order and guarantee peace. What happened was precisely the opposite: natural evolution consisted, above all, in the spontaneous discovery of the great advantages provided by voluntary exchanges and peaceful trade. Systematic and generalized violence, war, and terror arose only with the appearance of States, as coercive institutions composed of the most antisocial and violent human beings, who wanted (and still want) to live at the expense of plundering those citizens who earn their living by working and trading peacefully with each other (Oppenheimer, 1926).Thus, Economics, demonstrates that what Étienne de La Boétie named "voluntary servitude", is an anti-human aberration to which human beings have been subjected for centuries. And that it is not necessary to continue with the resigned habit of obeying the State; nor do governments enjoy an aura of prestige (but are literally "stripped" of any attribute of intellectual or moral superiority); nor is the caste—or “praetorian guard”—of intellectuals, “experts”, and acolytes that surround states and rulers to be regarded as untouchable; nor should we allow ourselves to be seduced and deceived by subsidies or perks, whether supposed or real, with which they seek to purchase the will and secure the loyalty of exploited human beings, so that they will consent, voluntarily and permanently, to their exploitation and servitude (De la Boétie, 1975).Economics is the Science developed by the Austrian School of Economics, which should in fact be known as the Spanish School, as it has its origins in the thinking of our scholastics of the Spanish Golden AgeThe third point is that Economic Science has reached its highest level of development thanks to the Austrian School of Economics. As you know, our school is based on the realism of its analytical assumptions, in the dynamic approach based on the entrepreneurial, creative, and coordinating capacity of every human being, and in the study of the spontaneous and self-regulated order of the social process of voluntary human interactions (Huerta de Soto, 2008). The institutional and multidisciplinary approach of the Austrian School is also very relevant. As a result of the spontaneous social process important institutions emerge which, in turn, make it possible and drive it forward: Law and property rights rooted in human nature and discovered and developed spontaneously outside the state; the family, a basic and essential institution, on which the expansion of Humanity is made possible and consolidated; moral principles, which act as a true "automatic pilot" for liberty and which human beings internalize and transmit from generation to generation, thanks to the family and other community or religious institutions; economic institutions, and in particular, money, which also evolves spontaneously outside the State, and which can and should be considered the social institution par excellence, since by overcoming the problems of barter, it enables the exponential multiplication of voluntary exchanges and human interactions, within which the rest of the social, linguistic, moral, legal, economic, and religious institutions are discovered, shaped, and perfected.Our fourth point is that the first theorists of the spontaneous order emerged in the field of law, led by the great jurists of classical Rome. They were the first ones to understand the organic and evolutionary nature of the social process, and so they became, without being aware of it, the first economists. Their tradition was kept alive throughout the Middle Ages thanks to the Catholic Church and, through thinkers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Antoninus of Florence, and Saint Bernardino of Siena, eventually came to influence the Spanish scholastics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gathered around the University of Salamanca. As Rothbard demonstrated (Rothbard, 1976) these thinkers of the Spanish Golden Age should be considered the most immediate precedent of the Austrian School of Economics, which, precisely for this reason, should be called the Spanish School of Economics. And in fact, these Spanish scholastics were already able to articulate the following ten essential principles which constitute the theoretical foundation of the Austrian School:Firstly, the subjective theory of value developed by the Bishop of Segovia, Diego de Covarrubias, who as early as 1555 clearly explained that, although the objective nature of wheat is the same in Spain as in America, its price was higher in America because there human beings subjectively valued it much more highly; from this follows the correct relationship between prices and costs set out by Luis Sarabia de la Calle, in the sense that it is market prices that determine costs and not the other way around, as equilibrium theorists mistakenly believe; the Scholastics also realized that equilibrium models and prices lack realism and theoretical meaning because they presuppose a degree of knowledge “so complex that only God, and in no case human beings, could ever acquire it” (in latin “pretium iustum mathematicum licet soli Deo notum”), as already explained by the Jesuit cardinals Juan de Salas in 1617 and Juan de Lugo in 1643, more than three hundred years earlier than Hayek could conclude that “a science which assumes knowledge that can never be acquired is not a Science”; also the dynamic concept of competition is fundamental, understood as a process of rivalry among sellers based on the dynamic conception of market processes developed by Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla and Luis de Molina in 1589 and 1597, and that has nothing to do with the static model of "perfect competition" of equilibrium theorists; and also the important contributions of the Spanish Scholastics related with capital theory, business cycles, and the effects of fiduciary media generated by banks; so, particular emphasis should be placed on the rediscovery of the principle of time preference by Martín de Azpilcueta, following what Lessines had already stated in 1285; as well as on the fact that bankers commit mortal sin when they operate with fractional reserves, creating bank deposits as a form of virtual money (or chirographis pecuniarium, as Luis de Molina said in latin) that only exists in their accounting books and distorts the structure of relative prices, creating bubbles and deep economic crises that ultimately "bring everything crashing down," as Saravia de la Calle and Tomás de Mercado so vividly explained in the 16th Century; and in short, the Scholastic's idea that it is impossible to organize society through coercive commands due to lack of the information that would be required to give them coordinating content; as well as the discovery that inflation is a hidden and very harmful tax that arises from an act of tyranny, since it is neither known nor accepted by citizens, which would even justify the assassination of the King according to the theory of tyrannicide, a contribution originally made by the Castilian Comuneros eventually defeated by the tyrant King Charles V in 1521, and developed by Father Juan de Mariana almost a century later [in 1610].This entire line of proto-Austrian scholastic thought also spread throughout the Americas, especially in the newly founded universities of San Marcos in Lima and Mexico City in 1551 where brilliant disciples of these Scholastics, who had studied at the University of Salamanca itself, came to occupy prominent academic positions. Thus, for example, we should mention the cases of Bartolomé Frías de Albornoz in Mexico, and above all the great Juan de Matienzo, who became judge and president of the Royal Audiencia of Charcas and Lima from 1560 onwards (Popescu, 1997).Finally, the doctrine of our scholastics did spread even to North America two centuries later through the books of Juan de Mariana, who greatly influenced Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers of the United States.However, the southern part of the continent ultimately proved unable to neutralize the wave of growing statism and centralization that first came with the arrivals of the Habsburgs in Spain, and which was intensified even further after the arrival of the Bourbons with Philip V at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Martínez Marina, 1820). How different and much more prosperous and libertarian might the historical evolution of Spain and Latin America have been, had the statist centralism of the Habsburgs and the Bourbons not prevailed, and had the far more libertarian, local, and decentralized traditional representative institutions of the kingdoms of Castile instead remained predominant—institutions that were dismantled, together with Europe's first libertarian revolution, beginning with the defeat of the Castilian Comuneros at Villalar on April 23, 1521 (Leonard Liggio, 2025).The most important and far-reaching contributions of economic scienceLet us now turn, in greater detail, to the most important contributions of Economics, as developed by the Austrian School.First, human cooperation takes place spontaneously, without the need for anyone to organize it coercively from outside. This is so because human beings are endowed with an entrepreneurial and creative capacity that continually drives them to discover the multiple opportunities for profit that arise in their environment. Each of these opportunities embodies a previous discoordination in human behavior that remains latent until it is discovered and overcome by the corresponding entrepreneurial act. This entrepreneurial act always arises from a creative tension and interpretation of events of the outside world that is essentially subjective and, therefore, cannot be reproduced by any artificial intelligence algorithm; in other words, the same objective events can be interpreted in multiple ways, even contradictory ones, without it being possible to postulate which is correct until the corresponding entrepreneurial process is completed in the form of a subjective profit. In any case, every entrepreneurial act involves, firstly, the creation of information that did not exist before (regarding the profit opportunity that arose from the previous discoordination that had gone unnoticed); secondly, the transmission of that knowledge (directly to the parties involved in the entrepreneurial act and indirectly through a series of institutions and signals such as market prices); and third and finally, the coordination of the previous maladjustments takes place when the parties involved learn motu proprio, that is, voluntarily and for their own benefit, to discipline their behavior according to the needs of others (for example, when they discover that they achieve their ends more effectively by specializing and trading peacefully the mutual results of their efforts). The discovery of the essence of this pure entrepreneurial act, with its elements of creation and transmission of information and the spontaneous coordination of the previous maladjustments continually generated by human coexistence, constitutes the most important contribution that Economic Science has provided to Humanity, and explains why the spontaneous process of voluntary social cooperation that drives the multiplication of human beings and the expansion of civilization does not require any statist system of institutional coercion.Another essential contribution of Economics is the concept of Dynamic Efficiency, understood as the process of unlimited expansion of human creativity and entrepreneurial coordination that arises only within a specific institutional framework of moral and legal norms. This framework is the one grounded on the ethical principle according to which every human being has a natural right to appropriate the results of his entrepreneurial creativity; that is, a property right over what one has created and which did not previously exist, which is the most obvious and important human right. For this reason, (dynamic) Efficiency and Morality and Justice (properly understood) cannot be separated one from the other; or, as we might say, they are two sides of the same coin in the sense that only Justice and Morality induce and generate efficiency; and at the same time, what is dynamically efficient in economic terms cannot be neither unjust nor immoral. All of which, on the other hand, demonstrates the integrated order that exists in the social universe, and highlights the three levels of research (theoretical, ethical, and historical) that complement and reinforce with each other and are essential in our search for truth (Huerta de Soto, 2000).Finally, another key contribution of Economic Science is to have demonstrated the impossibility of socialism, or better, the impossibility of statism, in the sense that it is impossible for the State to achieve and coordinate what it promises for the following four reasons:First, because of the enormous volume of information required for such coordination, which the State cannot acquire because it is dispersed in the minds of the eight billion human beings who participate and interact in the social process every day. Second, given the tacit and inarticulate character of this information (and therefore its inability to be transmitted in an objective manner). Third, because the information that is generated is not "given," nor is it static, but instead changes continuously as a result of human creativity, making it impossible to transmit today information that will only be created tomorrow, and which is precisely the information that the organs of State intervention and the so-called “experts” would need today in order to direct society to achieve their objectives tomorrow. And fourth, and above all, because the coercive nature of State commands blocks the entrepreneurial activity of creating the very information which the State organization itself would need in order to give its commands a coordinating content. In sum, the State is always and everywhere violence and coercion; coercion blocks the entrepreneurial act of creation, discovery, and adjustment of discoordinated human behavior, while at the same time preventing the creation of the information and the emergence of free market prices that make economic calculation and social coordination possible. For this reason, statism is not only unnecessary but is also scientifically impossible.The impact of these essential contributions of Economics on the course of social evolution has so far been very limitedAll of these scientific contributions have so far achieved only a very partial, imperfect, and limited impact on the inertia of a social and political reality that has for centuries been characterized by the coercive power of States and rulers, and by the more or less resigned servitude of the citizens. And despite the very limited nature of this impact to date, which at best has materialized in a series of naïve and "liberal" revolutions aimed, with as much arrogance as lack of success, toward the impossible objective of trying to separate and limit the powers of states and rulers through political constitutions and "liberal democracies" (Rothbard, 2009); Humanity has been propelled as never before in those places and historical moments where it has managed, despite everything, to at least partially free itself from the State and open up some of the new channels of liberty shown by the teachings of Economics. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, which was but the first chapter of the never-completed "Revolution of Liberty" inspired by Economics. And although what has been achieved in terms of prosperity and standard of living by the now eight billion human beings seems relatively significant—and indeed it is—we cannot even conceive of the standard of living and population size that could be achieved if Humanity were able to take full advantage of and fully implement the teachings of Economic Science.We can be few and poor in a context of servitude and submission to the State, or many and wealthy in a context of liberty (Hayek, 1988, p. 133). The globe is practically empty of human beings (the Earth's current population would fit into an area equivalent to that of the state of Alaska, with a population density equal to that of Brussels). And we cannot even imagine the prosperity that could be achieved in a free market daily driven by eighty billion, or even eight hundred billion, human beings. Economics explains and demonstrates that the increasing prosperity of an ever-growing population of human beings never results from deliberate and coercive State plans, nor from the egalitarian income redistribution, nor from increases in public spending, nor from subsidies, debt, or inflation, but only arises from the free market of the capitalist system. This consists of the process of voluntary exchanges among all human beings who, endowed with an innate entrepreneurial and creative capacity, are able to detect and assess, through the system of free prices, the relative urgency and necessity of each good and service, overcoming the relative scarcity of each and satisfying, every day and in the best humanly possible way, the desires and needs of billions of consumers. Entrepreneurs who succeed in this never-ending process of profit-seeking accumulate significant resources, which, in turn, are saved and invested in capital goods and new technologies that make human beings increasingly productive, boosting their wages and standards of living; a virtuous process of continuously expanding prosperity and population growth that, if not coerced or hindered by the State, has no limits.Therefore, it is crucially important for the future of Humanity that it be able to take full and maximum advantage of the lessons and essential message in pursuit of human liberty that Economics provides. But this will only be possible if we are able to unmask and carefully analyze the powerful forces of the pseudoscientific and counterrevolutionary reaction that has been mobilized to prevent the advance of the theory of liberty derived from Economic Science. Despite their diverse origins, they all converge on the same objective: to attempt to justify and preserve State coercion at all costs under the appearance of scientific legitimacy. They are driven by the "fatal conceit" (Hayek, 1988) of many visionaries, thinkers, and supposed "experts" who believe themselves to be clever enough to correct the spontaneous market order, of course, using the violence and coercive power of the State. Together with a privileged caste of rulers, bureaucrats and acolytes, they continually manipulate a Humanity that is sadly accustomed to serving the State. For all of them, it is vital that statism be maintained and that the message of liberty provided by Economics never prevail.Next, we will list the main reactionary pseudoscientific currents that have infiltrated Economic Science like a lethal virus and constitute, in Hayek's terminology, "the counter-revolution of science" (Hayek, 1955).Pseudoscientific reactionary currents opposed to Economic Science. The role played as “useful innocents” by many libertarian economists of the counterrevolutionary mainstreamFirst, positivism and scientism as pseudoscience. By "scientism" we must understand the improper application of the methods of the natural sciences to the field of Economic Science. Thus, while the natural sciences study their object of research as something external, measurable, and quantifiable, Economics studies the implications of the voluntary actions of human beings. And given the essentially creative nature of human beings, the supposed empirical "evidence" has, at best, only a superficial, partial, and always historically contingent value. In Bastiat's words, of "what is seen" —or rather, what is believed to have been seen— but not "what is not seen" (Bastiat, 1995); and at worst, it always entails the assumption, that human beings are an object of research that can be manipulated as the matter of the external world studied by the natural sciences. This inevitably introduces the idea that to improve the world, the State and its rulers must use their coercive power to manipulate and change the things they believe they see in their historically contingent "empirical photos." But these "empirical photos" cannot capture the underlying dynamic essence of spontaneous social processes, let alone what is already happening spontaneously to solve and coordinate every problem. Therefore, it is not surprising that from the very first steps of Economic Science promoted by the Austrian School, its most violent opponents were the "socialists of the chair" gathered around the German Historical School, reinforced in France by the empiricists of the school of Saint-Simon, the insane Comte, and Durkheim, who sought to create a new and alternative pseudoscience of society. And their unhealthy positivist and ultra-empirical influence has persisted to the present day, first through American Institutionalism and later through the massive compilation of empirical data, for example, in the work of Wesley C. Mitchell or Henry Schultz, the latter, as shown by Professor Salerno, having gone on to exert a decisive influence on his assistant Milton Friedman and, through him, even on the Chicago School itself (Salerno, 2023).Secondly, the pseudoscience of neoclassical economics is characterized by its claim that only its own approach constitutes true “science,” that is, the approach based on the principles of equilibrium, maximization, and constancy. Moreover, in addition to the lack of realism of its assumptions, it adds the reductionism of a mathematical language that has developed in response to the needs and demands of the natural sciences, but which is alien to Economic Science because it does not allow for the subjective concept of time or entrepreneurial creativity. Neoclassical economists develop their pseudoscience based not on real human beings of flesh and blood, but on "ideal types" that are like "robotic penguins" who, even in their most sophisticated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models are limited to moving and reacting to events and State coercion as if they were characters of a sort of economic video game ("videogame economics"). Yet neoclassical pseudoscience, despite its apparent and ever-increasing sophistication, is not capable of accounting for the immense complexity of the real world and rebels against the idea of spontaneous market order in two ways that are equally harmful to human liberty: on the one hand, by promoting the coercive "social engineering" of central banks, States, and governments to use "fine tuning" to force reality toward to the mathematical optimum of their models; and, on the other hand, by labeling as "market failures" everything they believe they observe in reality that does not coincide, in their empirical studies, with their ghostly models of “perfect” equilibrium and adjustment (Milei, 2023); failures that, according to them, refute the "benefits" of the spontaneous order of the market and human liberty, and justify their elimination as soon as possible by a coercive State authority. Note also how neoclassical pseudoscience needs, and feeds upon, the empirical work of the previous pseudoscience, positivism, in order to justify its conclusions against human liberty and in favor of State coercion, so that positivists and neoclassicists join hands and end up reinforcing each other in their reactionary agenda.Third, Keynesianism and macroeconomics as pseudoscience. The very “macro” approach already entails, inevitably, an obvious bias in favor of justifying State intervention, aggression, and coercion against the spontaneous order of the market and human liberty. As F. A. Hayek pointed out in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1974 (Hayek, 1978), macroeconomists ignore everything they cannot measure, specifically truly relevant economic processes and theories. At the same time, they believe that certain aggregate concepts—which lack genuine economic meaning—possess a “real” existence, that permits to collect empirical information or evidence that can be manipulated and statistically treated. Once again, macroeconomic pseudoscience goes hand in hand with positivist pseudoscience, and the two reinforce with each other in their counterrevolutionary reaction. Furthermore, Keynesianism is particularly harmful: not only does it flatly deny the coordinating capacity of creative entrepreneurship and the spontaneous market order, but it also builds as an alternative explanation a whole model—of course—of equilibrium with permanent unemployment, to justify the coercive intervention of the State in the lives of human beings in the form of all kinds of fiscal and monetary manipulations. Moreover, the macroeconomic and Keynesian pseudoscience feeds upon, and is reinforced by, the pseudoscientific approach of the Neoclassical School, to the point that, the so-called "neoclassical Keynesian synthesis" became, throughout the twentieth century, the main reactionary movement inside Economics. Keynesians and macroeconomists thus become the champions of that intoxication with statism, manipulation, and political power which constitutes the framework, orchestrated by governments and central banks, to which we have, regrettably, become accustomed and in which we are forced to live. This context repeatedly destabilizes the spontaneous market order, generates serious financial and economic crises and social conflicts, and continually hampers the prosperity and advance of civilization.We have left the quasi-religious mysticism of Marxist pseudoscience for last, because Marxism was scientifically dead even before it was born: in fact, it emerged with—and was theoretically demolished by—the subjectivist revolution led by the Austrian School of Economics. From the beginning, the Austrian School's development of time preference and capital theory revealed the contradictions and grave scientific errors of Marxism, while at the same time exposing its pronounced character as an intellectual fraud (Böhm-Bawerk, 1949). This intellectual fraud was historically illustrated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and of virtually all other communist countries, after many decades of unspeakable human suffering for a large part of the world's population, all of which was perfectly consistent with the theory on the impossibility of statism developed by the Austrian School beginning with the von Mises of 1920 (Mises, 1936), and which was the final nail that forever sealed the coffin of the corpse of Marxist pseudoscience (Huerta de Soto, 2010).Finally, in this context, we must mention the destructive role played by a number of distinguished economists who, although they defend liberty and the market economy, could be described as a kind of "useful innocents" in Mises' terminology (Mises, 1947). This is so because, even though they officially oppose rampant statism and defend liberty, by accepting—even if only partially—some of the postulates of the reactionary pseudoscientific currents we have described, they ultimately end up, often without intending to and much to their regret, providing additional impetus to the statist reaction within our discipline; for example, when they insist on advising States with proposals aimed at making them more efficient and at helping them do somewhat better things that they should not be doing at all. By way of illustration, we should include in this category of “useful innocents”, for example, thinkers as the Karl Popper of The Open Society and Its Enemies (Popper, 1966, p. 366), who came to admire the “scientific capacity” and even the “humanism” of Karl Marx, and who proposed a statist strategy of “piecemeal social engineering”; or George Stigler, when he claimed that only empirical evidence could determine which economic system, socialism or capitalism, might function (Stigler, 1975, pp. 1-13); and, more generally, the members of the Chicago School, led by Gary Becker and Milton Friedman. Becker when defending that only economics developed within the strict limits of equilibrium, constancy, and maximization, typical of the neoclassical pseudoscience, constitutes true "economic science." And even more serious could be considered the case of Milton Friedman, whose very sincere love of liberty and intense and popular media support for free markets stand in sharp contrast to his pseudoscientific approach based on the aggregate method of economics of Keynesian origin, on positivist empiricism, and on the full acceptance of the unrealism of assumptions. Only in this way it can be explained Friedman's litany of scientific errors which, much to his regret, have invariably ended up reinforcing statist interventionism, to the point that Hayek himself was forced to conclude that after Keynes's The General Theory, the book that has done the greatest harm to Economic Science has been Friedman's Essays in Positive Economics (Hayek, 1994, pp. 145).The failure of democracy and classical liberalism: the triumph of statismAs we see, many classical liberals and advocates of liberal democracy have also acted as "useful innocents." The fatal error of classical liberals lies in the failure to realize that their program is theoretically impossible, because it incorporates within itself the seeds of its own destruction, precisely to the extent that it considers necessary and accepts the existence of a State (even if it is "minimal") understood as the monopolistic agency of institutional coercion. Therefore, the great error of classical liberals is very basic: they believe in a program of political action and economic doctrine that aims to limit the power of the State, while at the same time accepting it and even considering state's existence necessary. However Economic Science has already shown that the State is unnecessary, that statism (even in its minimal form) is theoretically impossible, and that, given human nature, once the State exists, it is impossible to limit its power. On the other hand, liberal democracy is a concept as naïve as it is impossible. Mises already warned us that democracy could only function if all its participants accepted the classical liberal principles, which is impossible because democracy itself encourages and amplifies vote-buying and the partisan use of power. So, the inevitable conclusion is that "liberal democracy" is a contradiction in terms as absurd as speaking (following Anthony de Jasay) of a “square circle,” of “hot snow,” or of a “virgin prostitute” (A. de Jasay, 1990). And even Hayek considered democracy unworkable if it is understood as the exercise of absolute power by majorities (Kratos in classical Greek). It should therefore come as no surprise that democracy once and again tends to be a perverse system based on lying and buying votes with money stolen through taxation.The fact is that the State attracts like a magnet the worst passions and vices of human nature, for instance, when individuals try to obtain rents produced by others using the State's coercive power. Moreover, the combined effect of the privileged groups, the phenomena of governmental myopia and vote-buying, the megalomaniacal character of politicians, and the irresponsibility and blindness of bureaucracies generate a dangerous, unstable and explosive cocktail, continually shaken by social, economic, and political crises which, paradoxically, are always used by the political caste to justify further doses of intervention and statism that, instead of solving problems, further aggravate them. Statism therefore corrupts the entire social body and at the same time blocks the spontaneous and free market solutions of social and economic problems.In fact, the State has become the "idol" that almost everyone turns to and worships. Statolatry is the most serious and dangerous social disease of our time. We are educated to believe that all problems can and must be detected and solved by the State. Our destiny depends on the State, and the politicians who control it are expected to guarantee everything our well-being may require. Human beings remain immature and rebel against their own creative nature, which makes their future always uncertain. They demand a crystal ball that assures them not only knowing what will happen, but also that any problems that arise will be solved for them. This "infantilization" of the masses is encouraged by politicians, as it justifies their own existence and ensures their popularity, position of dominance, and capacity to control. In addition, a whole legion of intellectuals, so-called "experts," and social engineers join in this arrogant intoxication of power. Not even the Church and the most respectable religious denominations have been able to realize that statolatry today constitutes the principal threat to the free, moral, and responsible human being; that the State is a false idol of immense power, worshipped by all, and that does not allow Humanity to be free from its control or have moral or religious loyalties beyond those the state can dominate. Furthermore, it is kept hidden from the public that the state is the true source of social conflicts and evils, and "scapegoats" (such as "capitalism" or private property) are blamed for the problems, and they become the goal of the most serious condemnations, even from moral and religious leaders, almost none of whom have realized the deception or dared to denounce that statolatry is the main threat in the present century to religion, morality, and, therefore, to human civilization.Perhaps the main exception within the Church is included in the brilliant biography of Jesus of Nazareth written by Benedict XVI. That the State and political power constitute the institutional incarnation of the Antichrist should be obvious to anyone with a minimal knowledge of history who reads the former Pope's considerations on the most serious temptation that the Evil One can present to us (and I quote Ratzinger literally): "The tempter is not so crude as to propose to us directly the worship of the devil. He merely proposes that we opt for the rational solution, that we prefer a planned and organized world in which God may have a place as a private spiritual matter, but must not be allowed to interfere in our essential purposes. Soloviev attributes to the Antichrist a book entitled The Open Road to World Peace and Prosperity; it becomes the new Bible, and its core message is the worship of well-being and rational planning," by the state (Ratzinger, 2007). And so, we should not be surprised that, for example, the great author of The Lord of the Rings, J. R. Tolkien, whose Catholic anarchism I fully share, went so far as to say that he would arrest anyone for simply daring to pronounce the word "State." Because the State is, always and everywhere, a reality of violence and systematic coercion against the most intimate essence of the human being, which is his capacity to act freely, creatively, and spontaneously; and so, it is unavoidable to conclude that the State is essentially immoral and that statism constitutes the principal threat to humankind.A theological digression: the dismantling of statism as a logical necessity inseparable from the work of GodAnd almost without realizing it, we can go ahead with a theological digression on how dismantling the State is a logical and moral necessity inseparable from the work of God. I fully understand that referring to God in this conference may come as a shock to many of those present, but I would ask that even those who do not believe in God, at least for dialectical purposes, make an effort of imagination and, for the next few minutes, imagine that God does indeed exist.And what do we mean by God? We must understand God to be a Supreme Being, Creator out of love for all things. And the most important creature that God has created is precisely the human being: in His image and likeness. And if there is a point of connection between God and man, it is precisely in the creative entrepreneurial ability: the capacity to discover, to see, and to create new things, goals and actions. But now I am going to go one step further and attempt to demonstrate that God is not only the Supreme, loving Creator of all things, but that—moreover—God is libertarian.And what does it mean to say that God is libertarian? It means that God, the Lord of all the Universe, has absolute power over it, and yet He chooses not to use force, but always leaves his creatures free. To the point that He gives human beings the freedom to rebel against Him; even though, again and again, God forgives human beings and allows them to rise up and begin anew.God always lets the universe He has created, flow in a spontaneous manner ("laissez faire, laissez passer, le monde va de lui même" could be the motto of our libertarian God). And this despite the fact that human beings tempt God again and again and demand that He manifest His absolute power, that He give us clear and indisputable signs of His existence and supreme power in order for us to believe in Him. But of course, God does not accept our challenge. Why? Because love and liberty are inseparable, and a forced conversion, for example by an evident cataclysm, would be completely contrary to that liberty with which God has created human beings out of love.Moreover, the Kingdom of God is not of this world; Jesus himself says this to a fearful Roman state official, who was also in charge of judging him: "My kingdom is not of this world." Does this mean that there are two types of kingdoms? The kingdoms of this world or States, which would be legitimate at their own level (remember "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's"), and the Kingdom of God, of ("render unto God the things that are God's"). That is the standard interpretation that has prevailed until now, but I think is completely wrong. The Kingdom of God—which is the exact opposite of the kingdoms or States of this world—never makes systematic use of violence and coercion: it is a Kingdom that has already come to us and, moreover, has been given to us freely, in an act of immense mercy and love (Deus caritas est). And just as the hateful institution of slavery came to an end, the Kingdom of God will also dismantle the kingdoms of this world, the states of this world, or as St. Paul said, of every principality, power, and glory (Ephesians 1:21-23), because God is libertarian and man is made in the image and likeness of God.Ludwig von Mises, in his book Interventionism, introduced the term "destructionism" to refer to the economic and social effects of statism. If Evil (represented by statist destructionism in Mises' terminology) were to prevail, the human race and civilization would have disappeared long ago. The fact that, despite everything and the immense power of seduction of statism over humankind, the process of social cooperation continues to unfold and even prosper in certain historical periods and geographical areas, is a clear manifestation that God does not abandon the world nor leave libertarians alone in their struggle against the Evil; and that Good, represented by liberty, the principle of non-aggression, the spontaneous order of the market, entrepreneurial creativity and coordination, and above all, moral principles, always with God's help, prevails and is capable of overcoming Evil, represented by the fatal conceit of the statist ideal and the destruction that it produces.And now I will finish with some thoughts on anarcho-capitalism as the only possible system of social cooperation truly compatible with human natureAnd now I will finish with some thoughts on anarcho-capitalism as the only possible system of social cooperation truly compatible with human nature. The most important intellectual and moral event that is taking place nowadays is the full fusion between Christianity and anarcho-capitalism. Because anarcho-capitalism is the only possible system of social cooperation that is truly compatible with human nature. Anarcho-capitalism is the purest representation of the spontaneous market order in which all services, including law, justice, and public order, are provided through a voluntary process of social cooperation. In this system, no area is closed to the drive of human creativity and entrepreneurial coordination; efficiency and justice in the resolution of problems are simultaneously enhanced, while the conflicts, inefficiencies, and discoordinations generated by the State are eradicated at their root.The progressive abolition of States and their gradual replacement by a dynamic network of private agencies different legal systems, and providing all kinds of prevention and defense services, constitutes the most important social transformation that will take place in the twenty first century. Without forgetting that exactly what prevents us from knowing with precision what the future without the state will look like, the creative nature of entrepreneurship, is what gives us the peace of mind of knowing that any problem will tend to be resolved and overcome, once the entrepreneurial effort and creativity of Humanity are devoted to its solution (Kirzner, 1985).Therefore, the revolution against the “Old Régime” carried out in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the old classical liberals, today finds its natural continuation in the anarcho-capitalist revolution of the twenty-first century. The message of anarcho-capitalism is clearly revolutionary. Revolutionary in terms of its goal: the dismantling of the State and its replacement by a competitive market process consisting of a network of private agencies, associations, and organizations. And revolutionary in terms of its means, especially in the scientific, economic-social, and political fields:a) First, Scientific revolution, in the field of Economic Science, which becomes the general theory of spontaneous market order extended to all social areas. And by contrast and opposition, the theory and analysis of the effects of social discoordination generated by statism in any sphere in which it operates, as well as the study of the transition process from the State towards liberty.b) Second, an Economic and social revolution, as we cannot even imagine today the immense human achievements and discoveries that could be made in an entrepreneurial environment totally free from statism. Today, and despite continuous governmental harassment, an unknown civilization is already developing, with a degree of complexity that is beyond the reach and control of the state, and which will achieve unlimited expansion once it manages to completely rid itself of statism. And when human beings become more and more aware of the perverse nature of the State that restricts them, and of the immense possibilities that are frustrated each day when the State blocks the driving force of their entrepreneurial creativity, the social demand to reform and dismantle the State will multiply creating a future that is largely unknown to us but that will elevate human civilization to heights that we cannot even imagine today.c) And finally, a political revolution in which, although day-to-day political struggle is important, it should not be the top priority. It is true that the least interventionist alternatives must always be supported, in clear alliance with the efforts of classical liberals in their long term impossible democratic limitation of the State (including reforms such as those proposed by Hayek in the third volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty). But the anarcho-capitalist does not stop at this task, for he knows that he can and must do much more. He knows that the ultimate goal is the total dismantling of the State, and this goal leads all his imagination and political action in everyday life. And here we cannot fail to mention the unprecedented impact of our disciple and follower of our Master Program in Austrian Economics in Madrid, the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, who has done more than anyone else before to disseminate the principles of the Austrian School and the anarcho-capitalist ideal. Principles that he never ceases to quote and explain and defend once and again in all his public appearances, from the United Nations to the Davos Forum; and in all his meetings with other Heads of State, universities, and parliaments, to whom he even gives copies of the most important Austrian works by Mises, Hayek and even myself, as he did, for example, with the two popes, Francis and Leo XIV, with the French President Macron, the Italian Prime Minister Meloni, and even with Elon Musk. For us, it is a great honor that Milei has, to a large extent, emerged from the Austrian School of Madrid and that he continually keeps drawing inspiration from us. This is, without a doubt, much more important than incremental political steps in the right direction—which should of course be welcomed—and that should never fall into a political pragmatism that could betray the ultimate goal of achieving the end of the State (Huerta de Soto, 2010).And all this with tireless enthusiasm in the search for scientific and moral truth, an attitude that, inspired by the immortal work of Miguel de Cervantes, we could describe as follows: "It matters not whether they be giants or windmills, when the plume of our helm is stirred by the winds of tenacity and faith." And always creating a future that, although it may seem distant today, may at any moment witness giant steps that will surprise even the most optimistic among us. History has entered into an accelerated process of change which, although it will never stop, will open a whole new chapter when humankind finally succeeds in ridding itself definitively of the State, reducing it to no more than a dark historical relic of tragic memory.Thank you very much.REFERENCESBASTIAT, Frédéric: Selected Essays on Political Economy, Foundation for Economic Education, New York 1995.DE LA BOÉTIE, Étienne: The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Free Life Editions, Nueva York 1975.BÖHM-BAWERK, Eugen von: Karl Marx and the Close of His System, Augustus M. Kelley, Nueva York 1949."The Exploitation Theory," Capital and Interest, Vol. I: History and Critique of Interest Theories, Libertarian Press, South Holland 1959.HAYEK, Friedrich A. von: The Counter-Revolution of Science, Free Press, New York, 1955.Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue (eds. Stephen Kresge and Leif Wenar), University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994.Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. III: The Political Order of a Free People, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1979.The Fatal Conceit: the Errors of Socialism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1988."The Pretence of Knowledge," in New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1978.HUERTA DE SOTO, Jesús: Socialism, Economic Calculation and Entrepreneurship, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham y Northampton 2010."A Hayekian Strategy to Implement Free Market Reforms," in Theory of Dynamic Efficiency, Routledge, Oxfordshire, 2010.Proyecto Docente, Chapter I: "Ciencia y Economía," Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid 2000.The Austrian School: Market Order and Creative Entrepreneurship, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham y Northampton 2008.DE JASAY, Anthony: Market Socialism: A Scrutiny, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, Occasional Paper no. 84, 1990.KIRZNER, Israel: "The Perils of Regulation: A Market Process Approach" in Discovery and the Capitalist Process, University of Chicago Press, 1985.LIGGIO, Leonard: "The Hispanic tradition of Liberty," published in Procesos de Mercado: Revista Europea de Economía Política, vol. XXII, nº 1, Summer 2025, pp. 403-420.MARTÍNEZ MARINA, Francisco: Teoría de las cortes o grandes juntas nacionales de los reinos de León y Castilla, Collado, 1820.MILEI, Javier: Capitalism, Socialism, and the Neoclassical Trap, in The Emergence of a Tradition: Essays in Honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto, Volume II (editors Howden, D., Bagus, P.), Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023.MISES, Ludwig von: Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Jonathan Cape, London 1936.Planned Chaos, Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson 1947.OPPENHEIMER, Franz: The State, Vanguard Press, Nueva York 1926.POPESCU, Oreste: Studies in the History of Latin American Economic Thought, Routledge, London 1997.POPPER, Karl: The Open Society and its Enemies, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1966.RATZINGER, Joseph. Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration. Translated by Adrian J. Walker. Doubleday, New York, 2007.ROTHBARD, Murray N.: "New Light on the Prehistory of the Austrian School," in The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics (editor Edwin G. Dolan), Sheed and Ward, Kansas City 1976, pp. 52–74.Anatomy of the State, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn 2009.SALERNO, Joseph. "Milton Friedman's Views on Method and Money Reconsidered in Light of the Housing Bubble", in The Emergence of a Tradition: Essays in Honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto, Volume I, (editors Howden, D., Bagus, P.), Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023.STIGLER, George: The Citizen and the State, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1975, pp. 1-13.

The media landscape is changing throughout the United States and across the globe. On this week's “Leaders and Legends” podcast, we interview Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ryan Martin (whose current gig is executive editor of the state's largest newspaper). We ask Ryan about his early interest in journalism, what's next for the Star, and spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about Irvington.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Also, "to go" cups possibly coming to Irvington, a former student who plotted a school shooting heads to prison and where Amazon plans to build a new data center in Indiana.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Irvington, New Jersey's own Corey Dillinger stops by to share his journey of becoming a professional wrestler. From starting the sport at a late age to navigating the highs and lows of the industry, Corey opens up about what inspired him, the grind behind the scenes, and how he continues to chase greatness inside the ring.

ALSO: Congress mulls stopgap paychecks... Pacers get set to tip off seasonSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Child Care Council of Westchester's Hall of Heroes was held on Friday, September 19th, at Mercy University, honoring extraordinary early child care and after-school professionals whose dedication shapes the future of children and families throughout the county. This inspiring evening highlighted the tireless efforts of educators and caregivers who provide guidance, learning, and love every single day. Westchester Talk Radio was on site to capture the celebration, where host Joan Franzino spoke with Susan Daly, Director of the Irvington Children's Center, about the profound impact these unsung heroes have on their communities. It was a night of recognition, gratitude, and well-deserved applause for those who nurture Westchester's youngest learners.

Join me for My Snug Chat with Jim Arnoldt. I met up with Jim at Belfast Whiskey Week 2025 in the popular food market, the Common Market, at the Cocktail Takeover event. We sat outside the packed event, on the roadside tables and I had a ball chatting to Jim. Jim is one of the founders of the fabulous Irish bar, The Snug, in Irvington, Indianapolis. At The Snug, the whole team strive to deliver an authentic Irish experience and they have over 120 Irish whiskeys behind the bar. Rumor has it, you'll get a savage pint of The Black Stuff aswell.... This episode of the podcast is sponsored by: www.boanndistillery.ie www.killowendistillery.com  Don't forget to sign up to my Patreon channel for early access episodes and more, for a few euros a month and help me deliver the best podcasts to you. https://www.patreon.com/whiskeychatspodcast I really hope you enjoy listening in to our chat. Laurie

Residents may soon travel over a historic Indianapolis bridge again. Indiana Democrats are criticizing Governor Mike Braun's appointment of Philip Clay as the new executive director of the state's Civil Rights Commission. An Irvington mother is demanding answers after a Marion County Sheriff's deputy briefly handcuffed her 13-year-old daughter Sunday. Funding for critical safety and infrastructure improvements in Indianapolis were approved by a finance committee this week. A historically Black neighborhood in Indianapolis on Wednesday presented a new five-year improvement plan.

Residents may soon travel over a historic Indianapolis bridge again. Indiana Democrats are criticizing Governor Mike Braun's appointment of Philip Clay as the new executive director of the state's Civil Rights Commission. An Irvington mother is demanding answers after a Marion County Sheriff's deputy briefly handcuffed her 13-year-old daughter Sunday. Funding for critical safety and infrastructure improvements in Indianapolis were approved by a finance committee this week. A historically Black neighborhood in Indianapolis on Wednesday presented a new five-year improvement plan. Want to go deeper on the stories you hear on WFYI News Now? Visit wfyi.org/news and follow us on social media to get comprehensive analysis and local news daily. Subscribe to WFYI News Now wherever you get your podcasts. WFYI News Now is produced by Zach Bundy and Abriana Herron, with support from News Director Sarah Neal-Estes.

Chef Kyle Perkins has found his culinary home at Salt & Meadow inside The Tides Inn in Irvington, Virginia, where the breathtaking waterfront views and local seafood inspire his cooking. "I came and I walked through the front door at the Tides Inn. I saw the view, and I said, 'Yep, sign me up,'" Perkins said. Before joining The Tides Inn as executive chef, Perkins worked at Twin Farms, a boutique resort in Vermont that he describes as "a true definition of escaping reality" with no phone service and a secluded woodland setting. The Vermont native's journey to The Tides Inn came after a stint in San Francisco during 2020, when the pandemic made city living unaffordable and limited opportunities. He returned to Vermont, briefly worked in landscaping, then joined Twin Farms under chef Nathan Rich, who provided "an excellent platform for me to excel and grow." When the opportunity at The Tides Inn presented itself through Tanzerra Resorts, the property's parent company, Perkins was immediately drawn to the unique coastal setting. The transition from Vermont to Virginia's Northern Neck brought significant changes to his culinary approach. At Twin Farms, Perkins served about 28 guests and could change menus at will. At The Tides Inn, he feeds up to 300 people daily and focuses on consistency. "Making sure that recipes are extremely consistent, because I don't have the ability every single day to change the menu," Perkins said. Being on the water has also influenced his menu, with seafood playing a prominent role. Perkins has even worked on an oyster farm to better understand the local industry. "I've worked out on an oyster farm for a couple of days, and they were 12-hour back-breaking days. It's no joke. I have a lot more respect for what they're doing out there on the water," Perkins said. To source local ingredients, Perkins explores the area and builds relationships with producers like Young Overholt in Gloucester, which raises cattle on seventh-generation family land. "He's pushing for quality. He's not pushing for quantity. And that's something that we want to promote," Perkins said. "As we kind of reverse back in time, and we go back to this farm to table, which used to be the norm, and we go back to buying things from your neighbor and not buying it from a supermarket." The Tides Inn offers guests a unique experience on a peninsula that feels secluded yet welcoming. The property features a boardwalk showcasing their living shoreline, a marina, croquet lawn, bocce court, and the more casual Fish Hawk bar. While the restaurant is "a little more upscale" with a dress code, Perkins aims to create an inviting atmosphere with elevated home-style cooking. "We want them to feel welcome. We want them to feel at home, but like whoa. This tastes like home-cooked food, but it doesn't look like it. It's a level up," Perkins said. The Tides Inn continues to add unique experiences for guests, including crab feasts on boat rides and, most recently, seaplane tours that depart directly from the property. Watch Chef Kyle prepare oysters on Virginia This Morning.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Irvington Pride is set to take place on Saturday, June 28, offering a vibrant celebration in the neighborhood of Irvington, Indianapolis.The event will feature a variety of activities across three main locations, including the Masonic Lodge and Bonnet Avenue, which will be closed to accommodate vendors, food stalls, and fun activities. A family area will be available in the library parking lot, and the event will introduce wrestling to its lineup this year.Irvington Pride will include live performances, with Kara Cole set to perform. The event will also feature an annual drag show at 8 p.m. and an after-party.The celebration honors Marsha P. Johnson with the Marsha P. Johnson Market on Bonnet Avenue, recognizing her pivotal role in the LGBTQ+ movement.The event is free and open to the public, with activities scheduled from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., followed by the drag show and after-party.Irvington Pride promises a day of celebration and community spirit, highlighting the contributions of local businesses and honoring LGBTQ+ history. With a diverse lineup of activities and performances, the event aims to bring together neighbors and visitors alike in a vibrant display of pride.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Much has been made of the hallucinatory qualities of OpenAI's ChatGPT product. But as the Wall Street Journal's resident authority on OpenAI, Keach Hagey notes, perhaps the most hallucinatory feature the $300 billion start-up co-founded by the deadly duo of Sam Altman and Elon Musk is its attempt to be simultaneously a for-profit and non-profit company. As Hagey notes, the double life of this double company reached a surreal climax this week when Altman announced that OpenAI was abandoning its promised for-profit conversion. So what, I asked Hagey, are the implications of this corporate volte-face for investors who have poured billions of real dollars into the non-profit in order to make a profit? Will they be Waiting For Godot to get their returns?As Hagey - whose excellent biography of Altman, The Optimist, is out in a couple of weeks - explains, this might be the story of the hubristic 2020's. She speaks of Altman's astonishingly (even for Silicon Valley) hubris in believing that he can get away with the alchemic conceit of inventing a multi trillion dollar for-profit non-profit company. Yes, you can be half-pregnant, Sam is promising us. But, as she warns, at some point this will be exposed as fantasy. The consequences might not exactly be another Enron or FTX, but it will have ramifications way beyond beyond Silicon Valley. What will happen, for example, if future investors aren't convinced by Altman's fantasy and OpenAI runs out of cash? Hagey suggests that the OpenAI story may ultimately become a political drama in which a MAGA President will be forced to bail out America's leading AI company. It's TikTok in reverse (imagine if Chinese investors try to acquire OpenAI). Rather than the conveniently devilish Elon Musk, my sense is that Sam Altman is auditioning to become the real Jay Gatsby of our roaring twenties. Last month, Keach Hagey told me that Altman's superpower is as a salesman. He can sell anything to anyone, she says. But selling a non-profit to for-profit venture capitalists might even be a bridge too far for Silicon Valley's most hallucinatory optimist. Five Key Takeaways * OpenAI has abandoned plans to convert from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure, with pressure coming from multiple sources including attorneys general of California and Delaware, and possibly influenced by Elon Musk's opposition.* This decision will likely make it more difficult for OpenAI to raise money, as investors typically want control over their investments. Despite this, Sam Altman claims SoftBank will still provide the second $30 billion chunk of funding that was previously contingent on the for-profit conversion.* The nonprofit structure creates inherent tensions within OpenAI's business model. As Hagey notes, "those contradictions are still there" after nearly destroying the company once before during Altman's brief firing.* OpenAI's leadership is trying to position this as a positive change, with plans to capitalize the nonprofit and launch new programs and initiatives. However, Hagey notes this is similar to what Altman did at Y Combinator, which eventually led to tensions there.* The decision is beneficial for competitors like XAI, Anthropic, and others with normal for-profit structures. Hagey suggests the most optimistic outcome would be OpenAI finding a way to IPO before "completely imploding," though how a nonprofit-controlled entity would do this remains unclear.Keach Hagey is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal's Media and Marketing Bureau in New York, where she focuses on the intersection of media and technology. Her stories often explore the relationships between tech platforms like Facebook and Google and the media. She was part of the team that broke the Facebook Files, a series that won a George Polk Award for Business Reporting, a Gerald Loeb Award for Beat Reporting and a Deadline Award for public service. Her investigation into the inner workings of Google's advertising-technology business won recognition from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (Sabew). Previously, she covered the television industry for the Journal, reporting on large media companies such as 21st Century Fox, Time Warner and Viacom. She led a team that won a Sabew award for coverage of the power struggle inside Viacom. She is the author of “The King of Content: Sumner Redstone's Battle for Viacom, CBS and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire,” published by HarperCollins. Before joining the Journal, Keach covered media for Politico, the National in Abu Dhabi, CBS News and the Village Voice. She has a bachelor's and a master's in English literature from Stanford University. She lives in Irvington, N.Y., with her husband, three daughters and dog.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It is May the 6th, a Tuesday, 2025. And the tech media is dominated today by OpenAI's plan to convert its for-profit business to a non-profit side. That's how the Financial Times is reporting it. New York Times says that OpenAI, and I'm quoting them, backtracks on plans to drop nonprofit control and the Wall Street Journal, always very authoritative on the tech front, leads with Open AI abandons planned for profit conversion. The Wall Street Journal piece is written by Keach Hagey, who is perhaps America's leading authority on OpenAI. She was on the show a couple of months ago talking about Sam Altman's superpower which is as a salesman. Keach is also the author of an upcoming book. It's out in a couple weeks, "The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI and the Race to Invent the Future." And I'm thrilled that Keach has been remarkably busy today, as you can imagine, found a few minutes to come onto the show. So, Keach, what is Sam selling here? You say he's a salesman. He's always selling something or other. What's the sell here?Keach Hagey: Well, the sell here is that this is not a big deal, right? The sell is that, this thing they've been trying to do for about a year, which is to make their company less weird, it's not gonna work. And as he was talking to the press yesterday, he was trying to suggest that they're still gonna be able to fundraise, that these folks that they promised that if you give us money, we're gonna convert to a for-profit and it's gonna be much more normal investment for you, but they're gonna get that money, which is you know, a pretty tough thing. So that's really, that's what he's selling is that this is not disruptive to the future of OpenAI.Andrew Keen: For people who are just listening, I'm looking at Keach's face, and I'm sensing that she's doing everything she can not to burst out laughing. Is that fair, Keach?Keach Hagey: Well, it'll remain to be seen, but I do think it will make it a lot harder for them to raise money. I mean, even Sam himself said as much during the talk yesterday that, you know, investors would like to be able to have some say over what happens to their money. And if you're controlled by a nonprofit organization, that's really tough. And what they were trying to do was convert to a new world where investors would have a seat at the table, because as we all remember, when Sam got briefly fired almost two years ago. The investors just helplessly sat on the sidelines and didn't have any say in the matter. Microsoft had absolutely no role to play other than kind of cajoling and offering him a job on the sidelines. So if you're gonna try to raise money, you really need to be able to promise some kind of control and that's become a lot harder.Andrew Keen: And the ramifications more broadly on this announcement will extend to Microsoft and Microsoft stock. I think their stock is down today. We'll come to that in a few minutes. Keach, there was an interesting piece in the week, this week on AI hallucinations are getting worse. Of course, OpenAI is the dominant AI company with their ChatGPT. But is this also kind of hallucination? What exactly is going on here? I have to admit, and I always thought, you know, I certainly know more about tech than I do about other subjects, which isn't always saying very much. But I mean, either you're a nonprofit or you're a for-profit, is there some sort of hallucinogenic process going on where Sam is trying to sell us on the idea that OpenAI is simultaneously a for profit and a nonprofit company?Keach Hagey: Well, that's kind of what it is right now. That's what it had sort of been since 2019 or when it spun up this strange structure where it had a for-profit underneath a nonprofit. And what we saw in the firing is that that doesn't hold. There's gonna come a moment when those two worlds are going to collide and it nearly destroyed the company. To be challenging going forward is that that basic destabilization that like unstable structure remains even though now everything is so much bigger there's so much more money coursing through and it's so important for the economy. It's a dangerous position.Andrew Keen: It's not so dangerous, you seem still faintly amused. I have to admit, I'm more than faintly amused, it's not too bothersome for us because we don't have any money in OpenAI. But for SoftBank and the other participants in the recent $40 billion round of investment in OpenAI, this must be, to say the least, rather disconcerting.Keach Hagey: That was one of the biggest surprises from the press conference yesterday. Sam Altman was asked point blank, is SoftBank still going to give you this sort of second chunk, this $30 billion second chunk that was contingent upon being able to convert to a for-profit, and he said, quite simply, yes. Who knows what goes on in behind the scenes? I think we're gonna find out probably a lot more about that. There are many unanswered questions, but it's not great, right? It's definitely not great for investors.Andrew Keen: Well, you have to guess at the very minimum, SoftBank would be demanding better terms. They're not just going to do the same thing. I mean, it suddenly it suddenly gives them an additional ace in their hand in terms of negotiation. I mean this is not some sort of little startup. This is 30 or 40 billion dollars. I mean it's astonishing number. And presumably the non-public conversations are very interesting. I'm sure, Keach, you would like to know what's being said.Keach Hagey: Don't know yet, but I think your analysis is pretty smart on this matter.Andrew Keen: So if you had to guess, Sam is the consummate salesman. What did he tell SoftBank before April to close the round? And what is he telling them now? I mean, how has the message changed?Keach Hagey: One of the things that we see a little bit about this from the messaging that he gave to the world yesterday, which is this is going to be a simpler structure. It is going to be slightly more normal structure. They are changing the structure a little bit. So although the non-profit is going to remain in charge, the thing underneath it, the for-profit, is going change its structure a little bit and become kind of a little more normal. It's not going to have this capped profit thing where, you know, the investors are capped at 100 times what they put in. So parts of it are gonna become more normal. For employees, it's probably gonna be easier for them to get equity and things like that. So I'm sure that that's part of what he's selling, that this new structure is gonna be a little bit better, but it's not gonna be as good as what they were trying to do.Andrew Keen: Can Sam? I mean, clearly he has sold it. I mean as we joked earlier when we talked, Sam could sell ice to the Laplanders or sand to the Saudis. But these people know Sam. It's no secret that he's a remarkable salesman. That means that sometimes you have to think carefully about what he's saying. What's the impact on him? To what extent is this decision one more chip on the Altman brand?Keach Hagey: It's a setback for sure, and it's kind of a win for Elon Musk, his rival.Andrew Keen: Right.Keach Hagey: Elon has been suing him, Elon has been trying to block this very conversion. And in the end, it seems like it was actually the attorneys general of California and Delaware that really put the nail in the coffin here. So there's still a lot to find out about exactly how it all shook out. There were actually huge campaigns as well, like in the streets, billboards, posters. Polls saying, trying to put pressure on the attorney general to block this thing. So it was a broad coalition, I think, that opposed the conversion, and you can even see that a little bit in their speech. But you got to admit that Elon probably looked at this and was happy.Andrew Keen: And I'm sure Elon used his own X platform to promote his own agenda. Is this an example, Keach, in a weird kind of way of the plebiscitary politics now of Silicon Valley is that titans like Altman and Musk are fighting out complex corporate economic battles in the naked public of social media.Keach Hagey: Yes, in the naked public of social media, but what we're also seeing here is that it's sort of, it's become through the apparatus of government. So we're seeing, you know, Elon is in the Doge office and this conversion is really happening in the state AG's houses. So that's what's sort interesting to me is these like private fights have now expanded to fill both state and federal government.Andrew Keen: Last time we talked, I couldn't find the photo, but there was a wonderful photo of, I think it was Larry Ellison and Sam Altman in the Oval Office with Trump. And Ellison looked very excited. He looked extremely old as well. And Altman looked very awkward. And it's surprising to see Altman look awkward because generally he doesn't. Has Trump played a role in this or is he keeping out of it?Keach Hagey: As far as my current reporting right now, we have no reporting that Trump himself was directly involved. I can't go further than that right now.Andrew Keen: Meaning that you know something that you're not willing to ignore.Keach Hagey: Just I hope you keep your subscription to the Wall Street Journal on what role the White House played, I would say. But as far as that awkwardness, I don't know if you noticed that there was a box that day for Masa Yoshison to see.Andrew Keen: Oh yeah, and Son was in the office too, right, that was the third person.Keach Hagey: So it was a box in the podium, which I think contributed to the awkwardness of the day, because he's not a tall man.Andrew Keen: Right. To put it politely. The way that OpenAI spun it, in classic Sam Altman terms, is new funding to build towards AGI. So it's their Altman-esque use of the public to vindicate this new investment, is this just more quote unquote, and this is my word. You don't have to agree with it. Just sales pitch or might even be dishonesty here. I mean, the reality is, is new funding to build towards AGI, which is, artificial general intelligence. It's not new funding, to build toward AGI. It's new funding to build towards OpenAI, there's no public benefit of any of this, is there?Keach Hagey: Well, what they're saying is that the nonprofit will be capitalized and will sort of be hiring up and doing a bunch more things that it wasn't really doing. We'll have programs and initiatives and all of that. Which really, as someone who studied Sam's life, this sounds really a lot like what he did at Y Combinator. When he was head of Y Combinator, he also spun up a nonprofit arm, which is actually what OpenAI grew out of. So I think in Sam's mind, a nonprofit there's a place to go. Sort of hash out your ideas, it's a place to kind of have pet projects grow. That's where he did things like his UBI study. So I can sort of see that once the AGs are like, this is not gonna happen, he's like, great, we'll just make a big nonprofit and I'll get to do all these projects I've always wanted to do.Andrew Keen: Didn't he get thrown out of Y Combinator by Paul Graham for that?Keach Hagey: Yes, a little bit. You know, I would say there's a general mutiny for too much of that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's true. People didn't love it, and they thought that he took his eye off the ball. A little bit because one of those projects became OpenAI, and he became kind of obsessed with it and stopped paying attention. So look, maybe OpenAI will spawn the next thing, right? And he'll get distracted by that and move on.Andrew Keen: No coincidence, of course, that Sam went on to become a CEO of OpenAI. What does it mean for the broader AI ecosystem? I noted earlier you brought up Microsoft. I mean, I think you've already written on this and lots of other people have written about the fact that the relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft has cooled dramatically. As well as between Nadella and Altman. What does this mean for Microsoft? Is it a big deal?Keach Hagey: They have been hashing this out for months. So it is a big deal in that it will change the structure of their most important partner. But even before this, Microsoft and OpenAI were sort of locked in negotiations over how large and how Microsoft's stake in this new OpenAI will be valued. And that still has to be determined, regardless of whether it's a non-profit or a for-profit in charge. And their interests are diverging. So those negotiations are not as warm as they maybe would have been a few years ago.Andrew Keen: It's a form of polyamory, isn't it? Like we have in Silicon Valley, everyone has sex with everybody else, to put it politely.Keach Hagey: Well, OpenAI does have a new partner in Oracle. And I would expect them to have many more in terms of cloud computing partners going forward. It's just too much risk for any one company to build these huge and expensive data centers, not knowing that OpenAI is going to exist in a certain number of years. So they have to diversify.Andrew Keen: Keach, you know, this is amusing and entertaining and Altman is a remarkable individual, able to sell anything to anyone. But at what point are we really on the Titanic here? And there is such a thing as an iceberg, a real thing, whatever Donald Trump or other manufacturers of ontologies might suggest. At some point, this thing is going to end in a massive disaster.Keach Hagey: Are you talking about the Existence Force?Andrew Keen: I'm not talking about the Titanic, I'm talking about OpenAI. I mean, Parmi Olson, who's the other great authority on OpenAI, who won the FT Book of the Year last year, she's been on the show a couple of times, she wrote in Bloomberg that OpenAI can't have its money both ways, and that's what Sam is trying to do. My point is that we can all point out, excuse me, the contradictions and the hypocrisy and all the rest of it. But there are laws of gravity when it comes to economics. And at a certain point, this thing is going to crash, isn't it? I mean, what's the metaphor? Is it Enron? Is it Sam Bankman-Fried? What kind of examples in history do we need to look at to try and figure out what really is going on here?Keach Hagey: That's certainly one possibility, and there are a good number of people who believe that.Andrew Keen: Believe what, Enron or Sam Bankman-Fried?Keach Hagey: Oh, well, the internal tensions cannot hold, right? I don't know if fraud is even necessary so much as just, we've seen it, we've already seen it happen once, right, the company almost completely collapsed one time and those contradictions are still there.Andrew Keen: And when you say it happened, is that when Sam got pushed out or was that another or something else?Keach Hagey: No, no, that's it, because Sam almost got pushed out and then all of the funders would go away. So Sam needs to be there for them to continue raising money in the way that they have been raising money. And that's really going to be the question. How long can that go on? He's a young man, could go on a very long time. But yeah, I think that really will determine whether it's a disaster or not.Andrew Keen: But how long can it go on? I mean, how long could Sam have it both ways? Well, there's a dream. I mean maybe he can close this last round. I mean he's going to need to raise more than $40 billion. This is such a competitive space. Tens of billions of dollars are being invested almost on a monthly basis. So this is not the end of the road, this $40-billion investment.Keach Hagey: Oh, no. And you know, there's talk of IPO at some point, maybe not even that far away. I don't even let me wrap my mind around what it would be for like a nonprofit to have a controlling share at a public company.Andrew Keen: More hallucinations economically, Keach.Keach Hagey: But I mean, IPO is the exit for investors, right? That's the model, that is the Silicon Valley model. So it's going to have to come to that one way or another.Andrew Keen: But how does it work internally? I mean, for the guys, the sales guys, the people who are actually doing the business at OpenAI, they've been pretty successful this year. The numbers are astonishing. But how is this gonna impact if it's a nonprofit? How does this impact the process of selling, of building product, of all the other internal mechanics of this high-priced startup?Keach Hagey: I don't think it will affect it enormously in the short term. It's really just a question of can they continue to raise money for the enormous amount of compute that they need. So so far, he's been able to do that, right? And if that slows up in any way, they're going to be in trouble. Because as Sam has said many times, AI has to be cheap to be actually useful. So in order to, you know, for it to be widespread, for to flow like water, all of those things, it's got to be cheap and that's going to require massive investment in data centers.Andrew Keen: But how, I mean, ultimately people are putting money in so that they get the money back. This is not a nonprofit endeavor to put 40 billion from SoftBank. SoftBank is not in the nonprofit business. So they're gonna need their money back and the only way they generally, in my understanding, getting money back is by going public, especially with these numbers. How can a nonprofit go public?Keach Hagey: It's a great question. That's what I'm just phrasing. I mean, this is, you know, you talk to folks, this is what's like off in the misty distance for them. It's an, it's a fascinating question and one that we're gonna try to answer this week.Andrew Keen: But you look amused. I'm no financial genius. Everyone must be asking the same question.Keach Hagey: Well, the way that they've said it is that the for-profit will be, will have a, the non-profit will control the for profit and be the largest shareholder in it, but the rest of the shares could be held by public markets theoretically. That's a great question though.Andrew Keen: And lawyers all over the world must be wrapping their hands. I mean, in the very best case, it's gonna be lawsuits on this, people suing them up the wazoo.Keach Hagey: It's absolutely true. You should see my inbox right now. It's just like layers, layers, layer.Andrew Keen: Yeah, my wife. My wife is the head of litigation. I don't know if I should be saying this publicly anyway, I am. She's the head of Litigation at Google. And she lost some of her senior people and they all went over to AI. I'm big, I'm betting that they regret going over there can't be much fun being a lawyer at OpenAI.Keach Hagey: I don't know, I think it'd be great fun. I think you'd have like enormous challenges and have lots of billable hours.Andrew Keen: Unless, of course, they're personally being sued.Keach Hagey: Hopefully not. I mean, look, it is a strange and unprecedented situation.Andrew Keen: To what extent is this, if not Shakespearean, could have been written by some Greek dramatist? To what extend is this symbolic of all the hype and salesmanship and dishonesty of Silicon Valley? And in a sense, maybe this is a final scene or a penultimate scene in the Silicon Valley story of doing good for the world. And yet, of course, reaping obscene profit.Keach Hagey: I think it's a little bit about trying to have your cake and eat it too, right? Trying to have the aura of altruism, but also make something and make a lot of money. And what it seems like today is that if you started as a nonprofit, it's like a black hole. You can never get out. There's no way to get out, and that idea was just like maybe one step too clever when they set it up in the beginning, right. It seemed like too good to be true because it was. And it might end up really limiting the growth of the company.Andrew Keen: Is Sam completely in charge here? I mean, a number of the founders have left. Musk, of course, when you and I talked a couple of months ago, OpenAI came out of conversations between Musk and Sam. Is he doing this on his own? Does he have lieutenants, people who he can rely on?Keach Hagey: Yeah, I mean, he does. He has a number of folks that have been there, you know, a long time.Andrew Keen: Who are they? I mean, do we know their names?Keach Hagey: Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, like Brad Lightcap and Jason Kwon and, you know, just they're they're Greg Brockman, of course, still there. So there are a core group of executives that have that have been there pretty much from the beginning, close to it, that he does trust. But if you're asking, like, is Sam really in control of this whole thing? I believe the answer is yes. Right. He is on the board of this nonprofit, and that nonprofit will choose the board of the for-profit. So as long as that's the case, he's in charge.Andrew Keen: How divided is OpenAI? I mean, one of the things that came out of the big crisis, what was it, 18 months ago when they tried to push him out, was it was clearly a profoundly divided company between those who believed in the nonprofit mission versus the for-profit mission. Are those divisions still as acute within the company itself? It must be growing. I don't know how many thousands of people work.Keach Hagey: It has grown very fast. It is not as acute in my experience. There was a time when it was really sort of a warring of tribes. And after the blip, as they call it, a lot of those more safety focused people, people that subscribe to effective altruism, left or were kind of pushed out. So Sam took over and kind of cleaned house.Andrew Keen: But then aren't those people also very concerned that it appears as if Sam's having his cake and eating it, having it both ways, talking about the company being a non-profit but behaving as if it is a for-profit?Keach Hagey: Oh, yeah, they're very concerned. In fact, a number of them have signed on to this open letter to the attorneys general that dropped, I don't know, a week and a half ago, something like that. You can see a number of former OpenAI employees, whistleblowers and others, saying this very thing, you know, that the AG should block this because it was supposed to be a charitable mission from the beginning. And no amount of fancy footwork is gonna make it okay to toss that overboard.Andrew Keen: And I mean, in the best possible case, can Sam, the one thing I think you and I talked about last time is Sam clearly does, he's not driven by money. There's something else. There's some other demonic force here. Could he theoretically reinvent the company so that it becomes a kind of AI overlord, a nonprofit AI overlord for our 21st century AI age?Keach Hagey: Wow, well I think he sometimes thinks of it as like an AI layer and you know, is this my overlord? Might be, you know.Andrew Keen: As long as it's not made in China, I hope it's made in India or maybe in Detroit or something.Keach Hagey: It's a very old one, so it's OK. But it's really my attention overlord, right? Yeah, so I don't know about the AI overlord part. Although it's interesting, Sam from the very beginning has wanted there to be a democratic process to control what decision, what kind of AI gets built and what are the guardrails for AGI. As long as he's there.Andrew Keen: As long as he's the one determining it, right?Keach Hagey: We talked about it a lot in the very beginning of the company when things were smaller and not so crazy. And what really strikes me is he doesn't really talk about that much anymore. But what we did just see is some advocacy organizations that kind of function in that exact way. They have voters all over the world and they all voted on, hey, we want you guys to go and try to that ended up having this like democratic structure for deciding the future of AI and used it to kind of block what he was trying to do.Andrew Keen: What are the implications for OpenAI's competitors? There's obviously Anthropic. Microsoft, we talked about a little bit, although it's a partner and a competitor simultaneously. And then of course there's Google. I assume this is all good news for the competition. And of course XAI.Keach Hagey: It is good news, especially for a company like XAI. I was just speaking to an XAI investor today who was crowing. Yeah, because those companies don't have this weird structure. Only OpenAI has this strange nonprofit structure. So if you are an investor who wants to have some exposure to AI, it might just not be worth the headache to deal with the uncertainty around the nonprofit, even though OpenAI is like the clear leader. It might be a better bet to invest in Anthropic or XAI or something else that has just a normal for-profit structure.Andrew Keen: Yeah. And it's hard to actually quote unquote out-Trump, Elon Musk on economic subterfuge. But Altman seems to have done that. I mean, Musk, what he folded X into XAI. It was a little bit of controversy, but he seems to got away with it. So there is a deep hostility between these two men, which I'm assuming is being compounded by this process.Keach Hagey: Absolutely. Again, this is a win for Elon. All these legal cases and Elon trying to buy OpenAI. I remember that bid a few months ago where he actually put a number on it. All that was about trying to block the for-profit conversion because he's trying to stop OpenAI and its tracks. He also claims they've abandoned their mission, but it's always important to note that it's coming from a competitor.Andrew Keen: Could that be a way out of this seeming box? Keach, a company like XAI or Microsoft or Google, or that probably wouldn't happen on the antitrust front, would buy OpenAI as maybe a nonprofit and then transform it into a for-profit company?Keach Hagey: Maybe you and Sam should get together and hash that out. That's the kind ofAndrew Keen: Well Sam, I'm available to be hired if you're watching. I'll probably charge less than your current consigliere. What's his name? Who's the consiglieri who's working with him on this?Keach Hagey: You mean Chris Lehane?Andrew Keen: Yes, Chris Lehane, the ego.Keach Hagey: Um,Andrew Keen: How's Lehane holding up in this? Do you think he's getting any sleep?Keach Hagey: Well, he's like a policy guy. I'm sure this has been challenging for everybody. But look, you are pointing to something that I think is real, which is there will probably be consolidation at some point down the line in AI.Andrew Keen: I mean, I know you're not an expert on the maybe sort of corporate legal stuff, but is it in theory possible to buy a nonprofit? I don't even know how you buy a non-profit and then turn it into a for-profit. I mean is that one way out of this, this cul-de-sac?Keach Hagey: I really don't know the answer to that question, to be honest with you. I can't think of another example of it happening. So I'm gonna go with no, but I don't now.Andrew Keen: There are no equivalents, sorry to interrupt, go on.Keach Hagey: No, so I was actually asking a little bit, are there precedents for this? And someone mentioned Blue Cross Blue Shield had gone from being a nonprofit to a for-profit successfully in the past.Andrew Keen: And we seem a little amused by that. I mean, anyone who uses US health care as a model, I think, might regret it. Your book, The Optimist, is out in a couple of weeks. When did you stop writing it?Keach Hagey: The end of December, end of last year, was pencils fully down.Andrew Keen: And I'm sure you told the publisher that that was far too long a window. Seven months on Silicon Valley is like seven centuries.Keach Hagey: It was actually a very, very tight timeline. They turned it around like incredibly fast. Usually it'sAndrew Keen: Remarkable, yeah, exactly. Publishing is such, such, they're such quick actors, aren't they?Keach Hagey: In this case, they actually were, so I'm grateful for that.Andrew Keen: Well, they always say that six months or seven months is fast, but it is actually possible to publish a book in probably a week or two, if you really choose to. But in all seriousness, back to this question, I mean, and I want everyone to read the book. It's a wonderful book and an important book. The best book on OpenAI out. What would you have written differently? Is there an extra chapter on this? I know you warned about a lot of this stuff in the book. So it must make you feel in some ways quite vindicated.Keach Hagey: I mean, you're asking if I'd had a longer deadline, what would I have liked to include? Well, if you're ready.Andrew Keen: Well, if you're writing it now with this news under your belt.Keach Hagey: Absolutely. So, I mean, the thing, two things, I guess, definitely this news about the for-profit conversion failing just shows the limits of Sam's power. So that's pretty interesting, because as the book was closing, we're not really sure what those limits are. And the other one is Trump. So Trump had happened, but we do not yet understand what Trump 2.0 really meant at the time that the book was closing. And at that point, it looked like Sam was in the cold, you know, he wasn't clear how he was going to get inside Trump's inner circle. And then lo and behold, he was there on day one of the Trump administration sharing a podium with him announcing that Stargate AI infrastructure investment. So I'm sad that that didn't make it into the book because it really just shows the kind of remarkable character he is.Andrew Keen: He's their Zelig, but then we all know what happened to Woody Allen in the end. In all seriousness, and it's hard to keep a straight face here, Keach, and you're trying although you're not doing a very good job, what's going to happen? I know it's an easy question to ask and a hard one to answer, but ultimately this thing has to end in catastrophe, doesn't it? I use the analogy of the Titanic. There are real icebergs out there.Keach Hagey: Look, there could be a data breach. I do think that.Andrew Keen: Well, there could be data breaches if it was a non-profit or for-profit, I mean, in terms of this whole issue of trying to have it both ways.Keach Hagey: Look, they might run out of money, right? I mean, that's one very real possibility. They might run outta money and have to be bought by someone, as you said. That is a totally real possibility right now.Andrew Keen: What would happen if they couldn't raise any more money. I mean, what was the last round, the $40 billion round? What was the overall valuation? About $350 billion.Keach Hagey: Yeah, mm-hmm.Andrew Keen: So let's say that they begin to, because they've got, what are their hard costs monthly burn rate? I mean, it's billions of just.Keach Hagey: Well, the issue is that they're spending more than they are making.Andrew Keen: Right, but you're right. So they, let's say in 18 months, they run out of runway. What would people be buying?Keach Hagey: Right, maybe some IP, some servers. And one of the big questions that is yet unanswered in AI is will it ever economically make sense, right? Right now we are all buying the possibility of in the future that the costs will eventually come down and it will kind of be useful, but that's still a promise. And it's possible that that won't ever happen. I mean, all these companies are this way, right. They are spending far, far more than they're making.Andrew Keen: And that's the best case scenario.Keach Hagey: Worst case scenario is the killer robots murder us all.Andrew Keen: No, what I meant in the best case scenario is that people are actually still without all the blow up. I mean, people are actual paying for AI. I mean on the one hand, the OpenAI product is, would you say it's successful, more or less successful than it was when you finished the book in December of last year?Keach Hagey: Oh, yes, much more successful. Vastly more users, and the product is vastly better. I mean, even in my experience, I don't know if you play with it every day.Andrew Keen: I use Anthropic.Keach Hagey: I use both Claude and ChatGPT, and I mean, they're both great. And I find them vastly more useful today than I did even when I was closing the book. So it's great. I don't know if it's really a great business that they're only charging me $20, right? That's great for me, but I don't think it's long term tenable.Andrew Keen: Well, Keach Hagey, your new book, The Optimist, your new old book, The Optimist: Sam Altman, Open AI and the Race to Invent the Future is out in a couple of weeks. I hope you're writing a sequel. Maybe you should make it The Pessimist.Keach Hagey: I think you might be the pessimist, Andrew.Andrew Keen: Well, you're just, you are as pessimistic as me. You just have a nice smile. I mean, in all reality, what's the most optimistic thing that can come out of this?Keach Hagey: The most optimistic is that this becomes a product that is actually useful, but doesn't vastly exacerbate inequality.Andrew Keen: No, I take the point on that, but in terms of this current story of this non-profit versus profit, what's the best case scenario?Keach Hagey: I guess the best case scenario is they find their way to an IPO before completely imploding.Andrew Keen: With the assumption that a non-profit can do an IPO.Keach Hagey: That they find the right lawyers from wherever they are and make it happen.Andrew Keen: Well, AI continues its hallucinations, and they're not in the product themselves. I think they're in their companies. One of the best, if not the best authority, our guide to all these hallucinations in a corporate level is Keach Hagey, her new book, The Optimist: Sam Altman, Open AI and the Race to Invent the Future is out in a couple of weeks. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Sam Altman as the consummate salesman. And I think one thing we can say for sure, Keach, is this is not the end of the story. Is that fair?Keach Hagey: Very fair. Not the end of the story. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Keach Hagey's upcoming new biography of OpenAI's Sam Altman is entitled The Optimist. But it could alternatively be called The Salesman. The Wall Street Journal reporter describes Altman as an exceptional salesman whose superpower is convincing (ie: selling) others of his vision. This was as true, she notes, in Altman's founding of OpenAI with Elon Musk, their eventual split, and the company's successful pivot to language models. Hagey details the dramatic firing and rehiring of Altman in 2023, attributing it to tensions between AI safety advocates and commercial interests. She reveals Altman's personal ownership of OpenAI's startup fund despite public claims to the contrary, and discusses his ongoing challenge of fixing the company's seemingly irresolvable nonprofit/for-profit structure. 5 Key Takeaways * Sam Altman's greatest skill is his persuasive ability - he can "sell ice to people in northern climates" and convince investors and talent to join his vision, which was crucial for OpenAI's success.* OpenAI was founded to counter AI risks but ironically accelerated AI development - starting an "arms race" after ChatGPT's release despite their charter explicitly stating they wanted to avoid such a race.* The 2023 firing of Altman involved tensions between the "effective altruism" safety-focused faction and Altman's more commercially-oriented approach, with the board believing they saw "a pattern of deliberate deception."* Altman personally owned OpenAI's startup fund despite publicly claiming he had no equity in OpenAI, which was a significant factor in the board's distrust leading to his firing.* Despite regaining his position, Altman still faces challenges converting OpenAI's unusual structure into a more traditional for-profit entity to secure investment, with negotiations proving difficult after the leadership crisis.Keach Hagey is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where she focuses on the intersection of media and technology. She was part of the team that broke the Facebook Files, a series that won a George Polk Award for Business Reporting, a Gerald Loeb Award for Beat Reporting and a Deadline Award for public service. Her investigation into the inner workings of Google's advertising-technology business won recognition from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (Sabew). Previously, she covered the television industry for the Journal, reporting on large media companies such as 21st Century Fox, Time Warner and Viacom. She led a team that won a Sabew award for coverage of the power struggle inside Viacom. She is the author of The King of Content: Sumner Redstone's Battle for Viacom, CBS and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire, published by HarperCollins, and The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI and the Race to Invent the Future, published by W.W. Norton & Company. Before joining the Journal, Keach covered media for Politico, The National in Abu Dhabi, CBS News and the Village Voice. She has a bachelor's and a master's in English literature from Stanford University. She lives in Irvington, N.Y., with her husband, three daughters and dog.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Public Health Careers podcast episode with Kimberly Pierre, MPH, CHES

A group called New Yorkers United for Child Care is advocating for free universal child care across New York State. Meanwhile, WNYC's Mike Hayes follows Nana Duncan, a young developer transforming vacant lots into housing in Irvington, New Jersey. Finally, President-elect Donald Trump is pledging to carry out the largest mass deportation program in U.S. history. WNYC's Michael Hill speaks with Manuel Castro, Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, about how this could impact New York City.

Jen's favorite day of the year is here… It's Halloween! In this extra special episode, Jen talks with Brian J. Cano, paranormal researcher and ambassador for the Haunted History Trail of New York State, about ghostly and ghoulish happenings up and down the Hudson. Our Valley Girl correspondents are scaring up some spooky fun for us. Rebecca regales us with a tale of a Cohoes showgirl for whom the show must go on… though she's been dead for 76 years, and Danielle gives us the insider's perspective on how to navigate the biggest night of the year in Sleepy Hollow, the Halloween capital of New York. For more information on Danielle's restaurant recs, go to: Lombardos, Dobbs Ferry: www.orderlombardospizza.com/, The Parlor, Dobbs Ferry: www.theparlordf.com, Club Car Grille, Irvington: https://clubcargrille.com/. And you are in for a real treat as this episode features special theme music perfectly fit for this episode. We have the pleasure and honor of spotlighting a song by local Hudson Valley musician Jonathan Joel, entitled “Sinister”. Jen also sat down with Jonathan and chatted about his music, including the song you'll hear in this episode. Watch the interview on the Valley Girls Podcast YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrGJ5AuvYIc&t=6s and find Jonathan's music on Instagram at @jonathanjoelmusic and on YouTube www.youtube.com/@jonathanjoelmusic. And here's a link to watch Jonathan perform “Sinister” ~ www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwds82XD0xw Thanks for listening! To help support The Valley Girls, please follow our podcast from our show page, leave a rating and review, and please spread the word and share our podcast with others. We really appreciate your support! To stay up to date and for more content you can find us at valleygirlspodcast.com, at instagram.com/ValleyGirlsPodNY, at YouTube.com/@ValleyGirlsPodcast, and starting this season check out the Newsletter and Pod Squad tab on our website to sign up for our e-mail newsletter and join our new Facebook Group so you never miss a thing! All links can also be found in our Instagram bio.

In 2022, Portland residents voted to drastically change the city’s form of government. That includes using ranked choice voting to expand the city council from five seats to 12. Another change is the creation of four geographic districts, with voters in each district electing three candidates to represent them on the new council. District 2 covers most of North and Northeast Portland, including neighborhoods such as Irvington, St. John’s, Kenton and Cully. On Oct. 17, “Think Out Loud” convened a District 2 candidates forum at Oakshire Beer Hall. Candidates were invited to participate based on the number of individual donors that contributed to their campaign. They include: Marnie Glickman, Mariah Hudson, Sameer Kanal, Debbie Kitchin, Mike Marshall, Tiffani Penson, Elana Pirtle-Guiney, Dan Ryan, Jonathan Tasini, Nat West and Nabil Zaghloul. 

Tonight on NJ Spotlight News: Governor Murphy signs a new law setting harsher punishments for home invasions and burglaries; The National Weather Service warns of wildfire conditions as the state issues a drought watch; School layoff plans rock East Orange as the district grapples with a major budget crunch; Terminally-ill patients from out-of-state are fighting to access New Jersey's medical-aid-in-dying law; A new development in Irvington seeks to combine affordable housing with critical social services; A new documentary by the daughter of longtime State Senator Loretta Weinberg examines the trailblazing career of the former New Jersey lawmaker.

In this episode, we chat with Lara Hope and Jesse Scherer about the O+ Festival, coming up October 11-13 in Kingston, where their mission is to exchange the art of medicine for the medicine of art. Hear all about the origin story of O+ (which also sounds like the beginning of a joke), their unique model to provide healthcare for all, and their incredible initiative to expand services beyond the festival with a year-round clinic. Find out more, get involved, and get details about the festival at www.opositivefestival.org. They can also be found on Instagram and Facebook.  Our Westchester Valley Girl, Danielle, gives us the lowdown on block party season in the Rivertowns on our 411 of Westchester segment. Check out the Sleepy Hollow Street Fair and the Ferry Festa in Dobbs Ferry, both on Saturday, October 5th, and the Rivertowns Chamber of Commerce Halloween Block Party on Friday, October 18th in Irvington. Our Capital District Valley Girl, Rebecca, will make your mouth water describing the stick-to-your-ribs and other authentic New York deli fare from Gershon's Deli & Catering in Schenectady. Thanks for listening! To help support The Valley Girls, please follow our podcast from our show page, leave a rating and review, and please spread the word and share our podcast with others. We really appreciate your support! To stay up to date and for more content you can find us at valleygirlspodcast.com, at instagram.com/ValleyGirlsPodNY, at YouTube.com/@ValleyGirlsPodcast, and starting this season check out the Newsletter and Pod Squad tab on our website to sign up for our e-mail newsletter and join our new Facebook Group so you never miss a thing! All links can also be found in our Instagram bio. Episode music by Robert Burke Warren entitled Painting a Vast Blue Sky can be found at robertburkewarren.bandcamp.com/track/painting-a-vast-blue-sky.

New information continues to emerge about a woman whose deathbed testimony in 1925 helped end the stranglehold of the notorious Ku Klux Klan in Indiana. And there are multiple, new efforts underway to spotlight the legacy of Madge Oberholtzer, the victim of a lurid crime by KKK leader, D.C. Stephenson, her neighbor in the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis. So Hoosier History Live will follow up a show from 2021 with Charlotte Ottinger, the author of a trail-blazing biography titled Madge: The Life and Times of Madge Oberholtzer published by the Irvington Historical Society. A registered nurse who also lives in Irvington, Charlotte will return as Nelson's guest to share more insights about Madge, who was brutally raped by Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the KKK, during a train trip to Chicago with him and one of his associates. After being brought back to her family's home, Madge courageously recounted details of Stephenson's physical and sexual assault. Her statements resulted in his eventual conviction of second-degree murder in a sensational trial that helped end the clout of Stephenson, who had intimidated Indiana political and civic leaders.

ALSO: A suspect is in critical condition after stand-off with police... 4th of July safety tips from a local doctor... PLUS... A preview of Irvington's First Friday Art Event. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Send us a Text Message.Thank you, Bill and Sharon. Check out Own It Fitness for your professional fitness solutions. You can find their website here. Connect with them on Instagram here. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. Fremont Bank has been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

Send us a Text Message.What happens when South Asian couples migrate to the United States post-marriage? In this episode, we talk with Shalini and Chet Dayal about their unique experiences of isolation, cultural adjustment, and familial pressures. Shalini, a seasoned marriage and family therapist, shares her journey from an arranged marriage to a thriving career, offering valuable insights into the challenges couples face. We talk about the impact of extended family expectations and cultural integration on relationships, and hear firsthand how Shalini's expertise helps couples navigate through these complexities.We broaden our lens to examine South Asian arranged marriages within the context of gender roles, cultural differences, and evolving family dynamics. From the generational gap in family expectations to the pressures of maintaining traditional values while adapting to Western life, we uncover the intricacies that shape these relationships. Through engaging conversations and professional insights, we present a nuanced view of how immigrant families can foster better understanding and navigate the challenges of cultural assimilation.To find out more about what Shalini and Chet do in our community, check out their website here. Check out Own It Fitness for your professional fitness solutions. You can find their website here. Connect with them on Instagram here. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. Fremont Bank has been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

Send us a Text Message.In this episode, we chat with Coco and Jessica at Enriquez Creations in Niles, where we learn how a hobby blossomed into a thriving family business. Including the name "El Puesto" in honor of Coco's grandfather, the shop's journey is a testament to the importance of adapting to community needs. From adjusting store hours to meet local business trends to sharing stories of cultural connections, Coco and Jessica's testament paints a vivid picture of personal passion and community enrichment.We hear from them of their imports from Mexico, emphasizing the personal connections and cultural significance of handmade goods. Hear touching stories of supporting street vendors and the meaningful traditions behind items like Oaxaca's alebrijes. Alongside tales of navigating the balance between storefront operations and local fairs, this episode celebrates the joy of cultural appreciation and the resilient spirit of family-run businesses.Ohlone College Flea Market takes place this month on June 8. Do not miss it. For more info, check out their website here. Cars, coffee and cookies, Oh My!!!Check out Own It Fitness for your professional fitness solutions. You can find their website here. Connect with them on Instagram here. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. Fremont Bank has been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

Can practical skills and customer service knowledge set high school students on a path to career success? Our guest, Kathy Laidlaw, believes they can. In today's episode, we sit down with Kathy to hear her story that started with teaching customer service to high school juniors and seniors. Drawing from her background in conducting customer satisfaction surveys, Kathy developed a nonprofit organization aimed at aligning students' strengths and interests with potential careers. Her journey emphasizes the vital role of equipping teens with practical skills and understanding customer expectations to better prepare them for the job market.Recognizing the limitations of her network, she founded a nonprofit and launched a website filled with video interviews from various professionals. By becoming a certified Gallup Strengths Coach and integrating the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment, she empowered students to identify their natural talents and apply this self-awareness in their career choices. Listen to the inspiring story of a student who turned a perceived weakness into a strength, showcasing the power of personalized assessments in guiding career development.Join us for a compelling conversation on navigating today's educational landscape and empowering teens to achieve meaningful, fulfilling careers.For more information about the work that Kathy does, check out her website here. You can find Kathy on LinkedIn as well here. Ohlone College Flea Market takes place this month on June 8. Do not miss it. For more info, check out their website here. Cars, coffee and cookies, Oh My!!!Check out Own It Fitness for your professional fitness solutions. You can find their website here. Connect with them on Instagram here. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. Fremont Bank has been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

In this episode, we chat with Jasmine Basrai, the owner of Haller's Pharmacy. We hear a little of her story and how her family became influential in the establishing of Fremont's first Sikh Gurdwara and in taking over the ownership of local shops and pharmacies including Haller's.  Her tales are a testament to the city's diversity and inclusivity, inviting listeners to catch a glimpse of life connected to the community by  Sikh traditions.As we talk about Fremont's cultural landscape, we discuss how the Sikh community's ethos of 'seva'—selfless service—has become an integral thread in the city's social fabric. From their philanthropic water distribution during the 4th of July parade to offering shelter and meals to those in crisis, the Sikhs' impact on Fremont is profound and multifaceted. And it's not only about the past; the episode continues to explore how Fremont has rallied around its local businesses and services.Embracing change with resilience, we hear the transformative journey of a family-owned pharmacy—from navigating the intricacies of pandemic management to establishing a drive-through vaccination clinic. This conversation is not only about survival but about thriving through innovation and community support. By engaging in local organizations and initiatives, such as addressing the pressing issue of fentanyl and opioid use, we're sowing seeds for a happier, healthier future in Fremont. Listen in as we explore these stories and more, painting a picture of a community that embraces its legacy while boldly marching towards tomorrow.For more information about Haller's check out their website here. Check out Own It Fitness for your professional fitness solutions. You can find their website here. Connect with them on Instagram here. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. Fremont Bank has been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

In this episode, we explore the evolution of Radio Zindagi, an AM radio station as the vibrant heart of the Bay Area's Indian community. In the control room  of the Fremont Boulevard studio, we uncover a story of skepticism, ambition, and ultimate triumph. Our guests recount the early days of skepticism from brokers, the strategic cultivation of a multi-lingual audience, and the transformation of their platform into a beacon of entertainment, education, and information for immigrants and their families—an auditory bridge between cultures.We delve into the multicultural make up of the audience, and we tackle the challenge of crafting content that resonates across various South Asian dialects and traditions. With stories of technological innovation—visual radio, multi-channel apps—and a spirit of inclusion, we reveal the secrets to their close-knit connection with listeners. Personal tales weave through the narrative, showcasing how the Bay Area's embracing community has found a home on the AM radio airwaves. In the heart of it all, Radio Zindagi emerges as more than just a station—it's a lifeline. It's clear that the power of radio extends well beyond the microphone, fostering unity, empathy, and change—one story at a time.For more, tune in to 1550AM in the Bay Area or find them on their website here. Check out Own It Fitness for your professional fitness solutions. You can find their website here. Connect with them on Instagram here. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. Fremont Bank has been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

Defeating the forces of authoritarianism is the political combat task of our age, and we must take it up with the certitude and boldness that our eminent forebears did. Rebuilding the Democrats' appeal by reestablishing reputations for superior strength and patriotism is a challenge. But the fact that democracy's plight is due to flaws in liberals' leadership and messaging rather than economic crises, popular prejudices, or a faulty Constitution is good news. It means that the Democrats can turn the tables on Trumpism now. – Introduction to Comeback (2024) The fate of American democracy now hinges on the Democrats' ability to defeat the Republicans for the foreseeable future. But for the Democrats to win consistently, they must reestablish their credentials as fearless leaders, tough fighters, and fierce patriots. Comeback delivers a bold new take on democracy's crisis. Many liberals think that escalating economic anxieties and cultural backlash drove voters to Trump. But a crush of data shows this thinking to be deeply flawed. It also strikes working-class voters as condescending and repellent. And while the Democrats stick to "kitchen table" issues and showing how much they care, voters care more about strength and commitment to principle than prescription drug prices. Politics is a dominance game and a contest to capture the flag. Politicians who seem to be the strongest leaders and most passionate patriots hold the advantage. The Republicans get it. The Democrats don't. Republicans have a high-dominance political style. They take risks, savor conflict, and use provocative language. Democrats have a low-dominance style. They're risk-averse, afraid to engage on cultural issues-and more than a little boring. Republicans hammer away at their patriotism, even as they betray the nation and shred American values. Democrats are loyal to American values but have grown squeamish about patriotism and have no national story. Ordinary people often don't recognize themselves in the stories liberal politicians tell about them, while the authoritarians speak a language of dominance and national greatness that connects. The Democrats need a new approach to messaging. Comeback spells it out and provides a roadmap for trouncing Trumpism. Steven Fish is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a comparative political scientist specializing in democracy and authoritarianism, religion and politics, constitutional systems, and national legislatures. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and universities in Russia, Poland, China, and Indonesia. His previous books include: Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (1995); Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy, co-authored (2001); Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (2005); The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey (2009); and Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence (2011). His latest book and the focus of the interview – Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy's Edge was published by Rivertowns Books, Irvington, N.Y. in 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Defeating the forces of authoritarianism is the political combat task of our age, and we must take it up with the certitude and boldness that our eminent forebears did. Rebuilding the Democrats' appeal by reestablishing reputations for superior strength and patriotism is a challenge. But the fact that democracy's plight is due to flaws in liberals' leadership and messaging rather than economic crises, popular prejudices, or a faulty Constitution is good news. It means that the Democrats can turn the tables on Trumpism now. – Introduction to Comeback (2024) The fate of American democracy now hinges on the Democrats' ability to defeat the Republicans for the foreseeable future. But for the Democrats to win consistently, they must reestablish their credentials as fearless leaders, tough fighters, and fierce patriots. Comeback delivers a bold new take on democracy's crisis. Many liberals think that escalating economic anxieties and cultural backlash drove voters to Trump. But a crush of data shows this thinking to be deeply flawed. It also strikes working-class voters as condescending and repellent. And while the Democrats stick to "kitchen table" issues and showing how much they care, voters care more about strength and commitment to principle than prescription drug prices. Politics is a dominance game and a contest to capture the flag. Politicians who seem to be the strongest leaders and most passionate patriots hold the advantage. The Republicans get it. The Democrats don't. Republicans have a high-dominance political style. They take risks, savor conflict, and use provocative language. Democrats have a low-dominance style. They're risk-averse, afraid to engage on cultural issues-and more than a little boring. Republicans hammer away at their patriotism, even as they betray the nation and shred American values. Democrats are loyal to American values but have grown squeamish about patriotism and have no national story. Ordinary people often don't recognize themselves in the stories liberal politicians tell about them, while the authoritarians speak a language of dominance and national greatness that connects. The Democrats need a new approach to messaging. Comeback spells it out and provides a roadmap for trouncing Trumpism. Steven Fish is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a comparative political scientist specializing in democracy and authoritarianism, religion and politics, constitutional systems, and national legislatures. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and universities in Russia, Poland, China, and Indonesia. His previous books include: Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (1995); Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy, co-authored (2001); Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (2005); The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey (2009); and Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence (2011). His latest book and the focus of the interview – Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy's Edge was published by Rivertowns Books, Irvington, N.Y. in 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Defeating the forces of authoritarianism is the political combat task of our age, and we must take it up with the certitude and boldness that our eminent forebears did. Rebuilding the Democrats' appeal by reestablishing reputations for superior strength and patriotism is a challenge. But the fact that democracy's plight is due to flaws in liberals' leadership and messaging rather than economic crises, popular prejudices, or a faulty Constitution is good news. It means that the Democrats can turn the tables on Trumpism now. – Introduction to Comeback (2024) The fate of American democracy now hinges on the Democrats' ability to defeat the Republicans for the foreseeable future. But for the Democrats to win consistently, they must reestablish their credentials as fearless leaders, tough fighters, and fierce patriots. Comeback delivers a bold new take on democracy's crisis. Many liberals think that escalating economic anxieties and cultural backlash drove voters to Trump. But a crush of data shows this thinking to be deeply flawed. It also strikes working-class voters as condescending and repellent. And while the Democrats stick to "kitchen table" issues and showing how much they care, voters care more about strength and commitment to principle than prescription drug prices. Politics is a dominance game and a contest to capture the flag. Politicians who seem to be the strongest leaders and most passionate patriots hold the advantage. The Republicans get it. The Democrats don't. Republicans have a high-dominance political style. They take risks, savor conflict, and use provocative language. Democrats have a low-dominance style. They're risk-averse, afraid to engage on cultural issues-and more than a little boring. Republicans hammer away at their patriotism, even as they betray the nation and shred American values. Democrats are loyal to American values but have grown squeamish about patriotism and have no national story. Ordinary people often don't recognize themselves in the stories liberal politicians tell about them, while the authoritarians speak a language of dominance and national greatness that connects. The Democrats need a new approach to messaging. Comeback spells it out and provides a roadmap for trouncing Trumpism. Steven Fish is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a comparative political scientist specializing in democracy and authoritarianism, religion and politics, constitutional systems, and national legislatures. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and universities in Russia, Poland, China, and Indonesia. His previous books include: Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (1995); Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy, co-authored (2001); Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (2005); The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey (2009); and Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence (2011). His latest book and the focus of the interview – Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy's Edge was published by Rivertowns Books, Irvington, N.Y. in 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Remember the freedom of your first bike ride? Our latest episode takes that youthful joy and rides with it into an in-depth exploration of cycling's transformative power in the bustling city of Fremont. We're joined by Daniel Karpolevich, whose early 200-mile pedal from Fremont to Lake Tahoe sparked a lifelong passion, leading him to the local Mobility Commission, where he advocates for a bike-friendly cityscape. We share stories of self-powered commutes, the ins and outs of law enforcement along our trails, and the profound personal growth found on two wheels.As we pedal further into the conversation, we unpack the broader implications of a bikeable and walkable city. Fremont's Niles district serves as a microcosm of potential, illustrating how community-centric urban planning can foster safer, more lively neighborhoods. We tackle the challenges of non-vehicle friendly infrastructures like railroad underpasses, gleaning insights from local advocacy groups. It's not just about the bike lanes; it's about reimagining our streets as conduits of connection and community well-being.Whether you're intrigued by the intersection of urban life and outdoor escapades or contemplating a tech career amid Silicon Valley's backdrop, this episode gears up to take you on a memorable journey. Join us as we navigate the landscapes of cycling, community, and the choices that steer our lives in Fremont.For more information about the biking routes and trails check out our city website. For bike Fremont information, check out the Facebook page here. Check out Own It Fitness for your professional fitness solutions. You can find their website here. Connect with them on Instagram here. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. The Ohlone College Flea Market takes place this month on May 11. Don't miss it. Fremont Bank is our newest sponsor. They have been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

Navigating the digital landscape, we often find ourselves at the crossroads of technology and mental health. Our conversation with Holly LaBarbera, a seasoned therapist deeply rooted in Fremont, offers a tapestry of insights into the psychological impacts of our online personas. Holly brings her experience of therapeutic wisdom to the table, shining a light on the complexities of our digital engagement, from the resurgence of literature thanks to social media influencers to the confusion and consequences of public spaces in our lives.This episode explores human connections and the art of storytelling. Holly shares a little of her story and the lessons learned from personal interactions in the banking sector. Our conversation weaves through the contrasting realities of social media's curated lives and the authentic encounters we experience. All of this lays the ground work for a discussion about her latest book. In Holly's book we find a love story interlaced with the struggles of Kai and Josh, reminding us all of the intricate dance of relationships in our own lives.To learn more about Holly, check out this page on her website. To find out more about her book, check out her author and book website here. Check out Own It Fitness for your professional fitness solutions. You can find their website here. Connect with them on Instagram here. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. The Ohlone College Flea Market takes place this month on May 11. Don't miss it. Fremont Bank is our newest sponsor. They have been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

Taking a look at Ohlone College athletics, where the energy pulsates both on the field and in the stands, we take you behind the scenes with Chris Warden, the dean of kinesiology, athletics, and performing arts. Consider what it takes to create a captivating fan experience that keeps the community coming back, game after game. From the echo of basketballs on the hardwood to the sharp crack of baseball bats, we've wrapped up the essence of local sports in a way that will resonate with enthusiasts and newcomers alike.Chris walks us through the ebb and flow of college sports and shares insight into his daily life and the secrets to managing a department as varied as the sports they oversee. From his transformation of an athletic trainer to a masterful administrator, his story unfolds, offering a playbook on how to juggle responsibilities across music, theater, dance, esports, and broadcasting. It's a peek into the personal triumphs and hurdles that shape the vibrant spirit of Ohlone College's athletics.As we rally around the college's teams, the episode throws a spotlight on the student-athletes who are as tenacious in their studies as they are on the court. We share anecdotes that illustrate the lengths to which educators go to support their passion, and we paint a picture of the community's involvement that transcends mere spectatorship. It's more than just a game at Ohlone College; it's a celebration of camaraderie, perseverance, and the pursuit of excellence. Join us for an episode that scores on all fronts, leaving you with a deeper appreciation for the heart and hustle of community college sports.For more information about Ohlone Athletics go here.Fremont Bank has been serving our community for over 60 year. Find out more about them in Episode 104 or on their website here. Get 20% off on your first order at Minuteman Press in Fremont. Let them know you heard about them on the podcast.Don't miss the Ohlone College Flea Market each month on the 2nd Saturday. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. The Ohlone College Flea Market takes place this month on April 13th. Don't miss it. Fremont Bank is our newest sponsor. They have been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast....

Each year, Leadership Fremont chooses individuals in the community to coach and equip for greater leadership. This group of leaders choose a non-profit to focus on and support. This class of leaders chose AEA (Afghan Elderly Association) as their organization. This is our conversation with member of Leadership Fremont.Refugees from Afghanistan are struggling once they relocate to California. To find out more read: This SF Chronicle article. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Afghan-refugees-17401496.php This CNN article. https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/18/us/afghan-evacuees-one-year-later/index.html This article from Time. https://time.com/6180724/afghan-refugees-housing-crisis/ A snippet of a news report from VOA Ashan TV about Fremont's AEA was used at the end of this episode. That report can be watched in full here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vk_2aJNp2I&ab_channel=VOADariFremont Bank has been serving our community for over 60 year. Find out more about them in Episode 104 or on their website here. Get 20% off on your first order at Minuteman Press in Fremont. Let them know you heard about them on the podcast.Don't miss the Ohlone College Flea Market each month on the 2nd Saturday. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. The Ohlone College Flea Market takes place this month on April 13th. Don't miss it. Fremont Bank is our newest sponsor. They have been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast....

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! On today's episode, we talk with Francis O'Shea, Conservation Project Manager at Trust for Public Land about Project Management, the Appalachian Trail, and the Trust for Public Land.  Read his full bio below.Help us continue to create great content! If you'd like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form Showtimes: 2:18  Nic & Laura discuss the Appalachian Trail9:22  Interview with Francis O'Shea starts14:05  Trust for Public Lands21:17   Project Management27:00   Appalachian Trail34:18   Field NotesPlease be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review. This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.Guest Bio:Francis O'Shea is a Conservation Project Manager at Trust for Public Land. Born and raised in New York, Fran graduated from Skidmore College in 2005. After a decade in a variety of real estate related roles, Francis joined TPL in 2018 and has been working to protect land for people since. TPL is a national non profit that works to connect everyone to the benefits and joys of the outdoors. Since 1972 TPL has protected more than 4 million acres of public land, created more than 5,364 parks, trails, schoolyards, and iconic outdoor places, and raised over $94 billion in public funding for parks and public land. In New York we've created more than 500 schoolyards, parks and green spaces across the state, ensuring healthy, livable communities for generations to come. Francis lives in Irvington, NY just outside NYC with his wife Erika, two daughters Margaret (9) and Edith (6) and their dog Molly.Music CreditsIntro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace MesaOutro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs MullerSupport the showThanks for listening! A new episode drops every Friday. Like, share, subscribe, and/or sponsor to help support the continuation of the show. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and all your favorite podcast players.

On today's show, Ryan Walters discusses Education Czar OK Superintendent Ryan Walters speaking at a town hall event hosted by Turning Point USA students at Oklahoma State University (OSU) in Stillwater. GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Marty Dolan is an experienced strategist, investor, and financial advisor who, over the past 40 years, has helped solve complex problems internationally in the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and domestically across the USA. Marty was one of nine children who grew up on Main Street in historic Irvington, one of Westchester's smallest villages. His Argentinian immigrant father had a family medical practice there for 50 years. Marty studied economics and the bankruptcy of NYC at Union College and then earned an MBA at Harvard Business School. He has worked extensively in the global risk insurance sector, particularly in helping recover from the global liability crisis, the WTC attack, Hurricane Katrina, and the global financial crisis. Marty has three grown children, two grandchildren, and many family members living throughout NYC. In his spare time, Marty studies history, is an avid competitive golfer, film writer, restorer of old homes, and a lifelong baseball and Grateful Dead fan! GUEST 3 OVERVIEW: Facebook group called… Flyover Conservatives. This group continued to grow and grow by the hundreds and then by the thousands. Throughout the 2020 election cycle, it became increasingly apparent that big tech was no longer disguising their disdain for conservatives and began to censor any right-leaning content.

When Jacintha stepped behind the camera, she confronted her deepest fears of cultural ostracism only to be met with an outpouring of support that surprised even her. Her story, rooted in the rich tapestry of Singapore and Indian cinema, is a testament to the transformative power of film in bridging communities and giving voice to the silent struggles within them. This episode unfolds Jacintha's courageous journey from actress to filmmaker, revealing the tenacity it takes to challenge stereotypes and the unexpected embrace of narratives that resonate deeply with women, survivors, and the youth.The book: No Visible Bruises is by Rachel Louise Snyder Consider ordering the book from Banter Bookshop if you are interested: 510-565-1004 or contactus@banterbookshop.com NARIKA is the organization mentioned by our guest in this episode that helps with domestic violence. https://www.narika.org/ SAVE (Safe Alternatives to Violent Environments) is a Fremont-based organization that also helps with domestic violence. https://save-dv.org/ The Fremont chapter of Room Redux supports children who have been through abusive situations. https://bayareacali.roomredux.org/ An article about all the recent independent films that are coming out of Fremont can be read here. https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/didi-sundance-fremont-movie-18635639.php The very fun and silly 1996 film Army Daze is available in full on YouTube.Fremont Bank has been serving our community for over 60 year. Find out more about them in Episode 104 or on their website here. Get 20% off on your first order at Minuteman Press in Fremont. Let them know you heard about them on the podcast.Don't miss the Ohlone College Flea Market each month on the 2nd Saturday. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. The Ohlone College Flea Market takes place this month on April 13th. Don't miss it. Fremont Bank is our newest sponsor. They have been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast....

Join us on a reflective stroll around the grounds of the local Thai Temple in Niles. We talk about the deep cultural roots and the art of meditation that unite a diverse community. We'll peek into the lives of Buddhist monks, gain insights into their spiritual routines, and celebrate the heartwarming tradition of community members offering food—each morsel a symbol of shared respect and faith.Step into a world where the Thai community vibrantly thrives through language, music, and dance. We chat with a new monk who encapsulates the essence of dedication, from tending gardens to imparting the wisdom of Buddhism to inquisitive visitors. Together, we'll traverse the crossroads of cultural exchange, where traditional Thai puppet shows captivate audiences, weaving tales that have echoed through generations. This episode reveals interconnectedness and experiences highlighting the strength and beauty of communal bonds shared at Wat Buddhanusorn. Tune in to celebrate the diversity of our bonds and the heritage that enriches the Bay Area's multiracial tapestry.Fremont Bank has been serving our community for over 60 year. Find out more about them in Episode 104 or on their website here. Get 20% off on your first order at Minuteman Press in Fremont. Let them know you heard about them on the podcast.Don't miss the Ohlone College Flea Market each month on the 2nd Saturday. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. The Ohlone College Flea Market takes place this month on April 13th. Don't miss it. Fremont Bank is our newest sponsor. They have been partnering with and supporting people and small businesses for over six decades. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast....

Don't miss this enlivening and inspiring episode of the Hive Poetry Collective on KSQD. Join host Julie Murphy as she chats with spoken word poets Tara Bracco and Suzen Baraka. They read work newly published in the debut anthology, Poetic People Power and talk about their motto-- Art + Action= Change. This anthology draws from twenty years of live performances of Poetic People Power, poetry for social good. Their work explores social and political topics as well as their personal journeys. Tara Bracco is founder and producing artistic director of Poetic People Power. She's created, produced, and performed in 20 spoken word shows about the social and political issues of our time. She is a recognized leader in the field of art and social change and has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, Time Out New York, Brooklyn Rail, and HuffPost for her visionary leadership of Poetic People Power. She has spoken about art and activism at colleges, festivals, and theaters, and she is the recipient of 20 competitive grant awards. She is also the recipient of the 2015 Images and Voices of Hope Award. Her work as a journalist has been published by Cosmopolitan, American Theatre, Condé Nast Traveler, BUST, and Clamor. In 2009, she cofounded the international nonprofit The Project Solution, which serves 30,000 people in 14 countries. You can find Tara on Instagram and Facebook.       Suzen Baraka is a two-time Emmy Award-winning poet and SAG-AFTRA actor. With a passion for performance ignited over 17 years ago, Suzen has graced stages nationwide, captivating audiences with her magnetic presence and powerful spoken word.  A true advocate for the transformative power of the arts, Suzen served as an artist in residence at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, using poetry and performance to inspire and uplift underprivileged youth in Irvington and Newark. Her commitment to social justice extends beyond the stage, as evidenced by her role as the writer and face of Theraflu's Right to Recover Campaign, championing women's access to paid sick leave. Her work has been recognized with two regional Emmy Awards for her PSAs, titled: VOTE 2020 and My Asian. As an American actress, poet, and proud woman of Black and Korean descent, Suzen Baraka seeks to build bridges, spark conversations, challenge norms, and pave the way for a future where art and activism converge in powerful harmony.  You can contact Suzen on her website, Instagram, and Two Stop by David Johann Kim by the Ensemble Studio Theater at Atwater Village.

In this bonus episode of The Fremont Podcast, our editor, Andrew talks with Ishan Gohel, an Eagle Scout in Fremont. His Eagle Scout project is an audio tour for the Sabercat Historical Park located in the Mission San Jose district of Fremont.  Gohel researched and recorded the tour himself and then produced the audio with the help of his brother. He worked with Fremont city officials, his troop leaders, officials at PG&E and the local community to create the necessary infrastructure for the audio tour. QR codes are set up on sign posts along the Sabercat Historic Creek Trail. You can listen to the audio tour files here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Pe4lS-XCJoHc8pgizaU0katjEN5ym_gM The four main entrances to the Sabercat Historical Park can be found on: Via Orinda Quema Drive Gallegos Ave. and Becado Place. **Although there are other, smaller, neighborhood entrances without parking. If you would like to learn more about the city's ongoing creek restoration efforts and how to volunteer your time to clean up the creek, please contact: Sabrina Siebert at SSiebert@fremont.govor by phone at 510-552-3675.Discover special deals from our sponsors when you listen to this episode of the Fremont Podcast. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. Check out our new podcast focused on Niles CA called the Cast of Niles. You can find episodes on almost any podcast platform. You can also find it here. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

Here in Fremont, California the California School for the Deaf stands as a beacon of hope, education, and empowerment for the Deaf community. Joined by interpreter Amber Hodson, we traverse the touching narratives of students and families who've found a sanctuary within these walls. From the dedicated students traveling vast distances for a proper education to the tireless efforts of families learning ASL to connect with their loved ones, we uncover the profound sacrifices made for the love of learning and culture.With Trina, an outreach specialist, we witness the intricate web of support and challenges that weave the fabric of the deaf educational experience across 47 counties. Trina's own story, a testament to resilience and advocacy, mirrors the myriad of paths that lead to and from the California School for the Deaf. The episode sheds light on the community integration, from families making the leap from Korean Sign Language to ASL, to the critical work of Deaf Hope in navigating the criminal justice system for deaf survivors of violence. Each narrative is a thread in the rich tapestry of Deaf culture, revealing the essential role of accessible services and the power of community.A part of our conversation offers a window into the subtleties of Deaf etiquette and the importance of terminology that respects the individual. We talk about the contrasts between Deaf and hearing cultures, punctuated with personal journeys that span educational landscapes and professional realms. By the episode's end, you'll be immersed in the celebration of diversity and the call for inclusivity, as we highlight the unwavering spirit of the Deaf community and the educators, interpreters, and advocates who champion their cause.Discover special deals from our sponsors when you listen to this episode of the Fremont Podcast. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. Check out our new podcast focused on Niles CA called the Cast of Niles. You can find episodes on almost any podcast platform. You can also find it here. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. If you are in need of services for design or printing, check out Minutemen Press in Irvington. They have been serving the community for over 20 years, and they stand strong by their work and service. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

Discover the story and heart of Fremont Creates with Julie Gibson and Susan Longini. They illuminate the city's journey toward establishing a robust cultural identity, underscored by the inherent challenges of building a performing arts center and cultivating a vibrant arts community. Our conversation navigates Fremont's historical context, the economic implications of arts funding, and the pivotal role local leadership plays in nurturing the arts within education, painting a compelling portrait of a city on the cusp of a cultural renaissance during Arts, Culture, and Creativity Month and beyond.Feel the pulse of Fremont's diverse artistic heartbeat through the insights shared by our guests. We celebrate the city's unique place in the Bay Area's cultural landscape, with an emphasis on arts that echo the voices of its Middle Eastern and Asian communities. The excitement crescendos with the anticipation of the Downtown Event Center's event on April 27th while showcasing Fremont Creates' tireless support for local arts events and cultural organizations. The Fremont Cultural Arts Council's contribution, alongside the city's proactive grants and professional arts management, are lauded as instrumental in elevating the scene to new heights.Hear the stories about glassmaking and its communal impact, and  programs like Box Art and the Athena project. Fremont Creates serves to facilitate collaboration and community involvement, essential in weaving the arts into Fremont's daily narrative. Julie and Susan from Fremont Creates share their vision for the future - murals, a performing arts space, and an indelible integration of arts in the local businesses - ensuring that the vibrancy of Fremont's cultural fabric continues to enrich and engage its residents and visitors alike.Check out Minuteman Press in Irvington for all your Design and Printing needs. They have a five star rating and are wonderful to work with. Find out more about them here. If you are looking to buy or sell a home, check out Petrocelli Homes in Niles. There is not a better place to find a book in Fremont than Banter Bookshop. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. Check out our new podcast focused on Niles CA called the Cast of Niles. You can find episodes on almost any podcast platform. You can also find it here. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

When life throws curveballs, some catch them with grace and transform them into a dance with destiny. That's certainly true for Junichi Kakutani, the remarkable librarian from Fremont's own Elementary School living with Spinal Cerebellar Ataxia. His story is represented in this episode, where he shares the early whispers of his rare condition and his undying passion for storytelling. The challenges to his mobility and speech have done little to deter Junichi's indomitable spirit. From conquering a Hawaiian marathon to his plans to ascend Mount Fuji, his resilience and proactive approach to life are the embodiment of inspiration.Our conversation then transitions to an insider from the San Francisco film industry, whose journey from mastering English to refining their craft at the Academy of Art University exemplifies the power of perseverance. Junichi opens up about his personal battles, the dedication to the art of Kendo, and the communal love for Fremont and the echoes of silent films from yesteryear. The shared nostalgia for the cinematic arts binds our story threads together, painting a portrait of purpose and the relentless pursuit of dreams, even as life presents its unique challenges. Join us for these profound narratives that not only warm the heart but invigorate the soul in our quest for meaning amidst the ebbs and flows of existence.Check out Minuteman Press in Irvington for all your Design and Printing needs. They have a five star rating and are wonderful to work with. Find out more about them here. If you are looking to buy or sell a home, check out Petrocelli Homes in Niles. There is not a better place to find a book in Fremont than Banter Bookshop. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. Check out our new podcast focused on Niles CA called the Cast of Niles. You can find episodes on almost any podcast platform. You can also find it here. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

In this episode, we chat with Diane Shaw, president of the Ohlone Humane Society. She shares the vivid patchwork of her life, stitched together with stories of post-college adventures, a fulfilling career, and a retirement that's anything but idle. Diane's story is a testament to the beauty of civic involvement, revealing a journey where even the smallest acts of volunteerism blossom into a richer experience of community connection.As we spotlight the lifeline forged between humans and their cherished pets, our conversation illuminates the network of care that the Ohlone Humane Society extends to our feline friends through their innovative Trap Neuter Return program. Without a traditional shelter, their approach is as unique as the wildlife they protect, including a wildlife rehabilitation center tucked away in Newark. It's a heartening look into how dedicated fosters, volunteers, and the TNR team are pivotal in responsibly managing community cat populations and preserving our local ecosystem, weaving a narrative that intertwines with Fremont's own rich history.Join us for an exploration of how engaging in the community can reshape not only the lives of countless animals but also our own. We talked about Diane's commitment to the Ohlone Humane Society and her multifaceted path to leadership. It's a conversation that champions the ripple effect of volunteering — how a single act can inspire continuous involvement, shaping both individual lives and the wider community. Discover the power of collective effort and the unexpected joys of uncovering hidden community gems with us.Check out Minuteman Press in Irvington for all your Design and Printing needs. They have a five star rating and are wonderful to work with. Find out more about them here. If you are looking to buy or sell a home, check out Petrocelli Homes in Niles. There is not a better place to find a book in Fremont than Banter Bookshop. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, please reach out to us at thefremontpodcast@gmail.com, or you can contact us here. Check out our new podcast focused on Niles CA called the Cast of Niles. You can find episodes on almost any podcast platform. You can also find it here. Also, Petrocelli Homes has been a key sponsor for the Fremont Podcast almost from the beginning. If you are looking for help or advice about buying or selling a home, or if you are looking for a realtor, get in touch with Petrocelli Homes on Niles Blvd in Niles. Additionally, Banter Bookshop is the best little bookshop in Fremont. They are a sponsor of that podcast. And we are excited to have them as a partner. Intro and Outro voiceovers made by Gary Williams. Check out garywilliams.org.This episode was edited by Andrew C. Scheduling and background was done by Sara S. This is a Muggins Media Podcast.

It was a snow day so we had a girls day. We're joined by Founder/CEO of @Experiencethelegacy (ETL), and #Irvington's own Eleise Richards as she tells ETL's origin story and what lead her to visit almost every HBCU! If you'd like to learn more about @experiencethelegacy make sure you follow them on IG/FB or via the website: https://www.experiencethelegacy.org/ Like us and rate us on Apple Podcast, Soundcloud, and Spotify. Got feedback? We love that? Got questions? We love those too! Email us your Questions! Comments! & Topics to thestopatcentralandhalsey@gmail.com‼️ Follow us Instagram: @thestopatcentralandhalseyFB: thestopatCH #thestopatCH #thestopatcentralandhalsey #tsach #LiyahD #TayTay #podcasts #podcastingwhileblack #blackgirlmagic #newark #brickcity #Jersey #applepodcasts #soundcloud #spotifypodcast #iheartradio #nofilter #raw #quarantine #TSACHEpisode18 #advil #twitter  #SexualEssentials #MelaninandMentalHealth #TooBlessedtobestressed  Hosted by: @arainey88 & @tayshouseofvinyl Music by: @cheakaity Guest: @eleiseellecapo

A tangible remnant is a historic building that left a mark on the built environment and tells the story of people who came before us. This episode explores the tangible remnant that is Villa Lewaro in Irvington, NY. Listen to learn about the building, architect, historical figure that commissioned the building, and how the building is being used today. Links:Villa Lewaro overview by NTHP Deeper Dive into Villa Lewaro Netflix Show Self MadeBook: 'On her own ground' by A'Leila BundlesNational Register nomination for Villa LewaroTangible Remnants on InstagramTangible Remnants WebsiteLinkedTr.ee for resourcesEarn CEUs for listening to this podcastSignup for Ask Me Anything w/ Nakita ReedGabl Media NetworkSarah Gilberg's MusicBio: Synopsis from the biography on Madame C.J. Walker that was written by her great-great granddaughter, A'Leila Bundles, in the book: "On Her Own Ground": "The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Sarah Breedlove—who would become known as Madam C. J. Walker—was orphaned at seven, married at fourteen, and widowed at twenty. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then—with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for black women—everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: building a storied beauty empire from the ground up, amassing wealth unprecedented among black women, and devoting her life to philanthropy and social activism. Along the way, she formed friendships with great early-twentieth-century political figures such as Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington." **Some of the links above maybe Amazon affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.**

Rand Hooper and Graham McCormick are both from Richmond area. McCormick moved to Atlanta for a job, but took time to return to Irvington to visit his friend, staying with him at his home. The next day, Sallie Graham gets a text from Hooper asking if she's heard from her son, if not, then he is missing.  Graham says her son was known for his responsibility, as signified by his fraternity nickname... Grahampa, a reference to maturity.  Graham asks about a search to find McCormick, searching the water, checking with neighbors,  in town and more. The answers  .. He's not there.    McCormick's mother, father and brother drive from their home as they learn McCormick was missing.  Graham checks by the dock, where her son was last known to be, using an oar to poke and prod at the water.  From there, Graham knocks on neighbors' doors, then returns to the Hoopers. Soon,  a neighbor tells Sallie Graham,  a body had been found.  Graham McCormick's body is found floating in Carter Creek off the Rappahannock River around 11:30 that morning. That's about 2 miles north of the Hooper's home. The state medical examiner ruled that McCormick died from drowning,  blunt-force trauma a contributing factor in the death.  Three days after the initial visit to the home,  Lancaster sheriff's detectives spot damage to the Hooper family  boat. The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries reconstruct a crash and determined the boat had been involved in an accident near where McCormick's body was found. The investigation reveals that McCormick and Hooper spent the evening drinking, then had taken Hooper's 1999 Boston Whale boat out.  The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries concluded that the vessel struck a bulkhead jutting out of the water near where McCormick was found. Investigators believe McCormick was ejected from the boat. Police say it appeared that it had been slammed against the rocks, over and over again. McCormick had lacerations on his left side of his head and the back of his body, and blunt-force trauma. The medical examiner concluded that the injuries alone would not have killed the 31-year-old McCormick. Those injuries should have been survivable, she said.  However, McCormick's blood alcohol level was 186.  It would be three years before Rand Hooper would face additional charges in Graham McCormick's death. Initially, Hooper was charged with a misdemeanor count of failing to make a timely report of the boat accident.  Those charges were upgraded to involuntary manslaughter with a proposed deal of just one year in prison, but a special prosecutor determined that more charges were appropriate as Hooper was accused of operating his boat while intoxicated, leading to a crash that killed McCormick. Hooper was arrested and charged with felony murder, involuntary manslaughter while under the influence operating a watercraft and failure to stop and assist with serious injury or death.  Joining Nancy Grace Today: Burke McCormick- Graham's father, Attorney  Gordon McCormick – Graham's brother-Twitter: @GhostofBPH  Catherine McCormick- Graham's sister  Dale Carson -  Criminal Defense Attorney, Former FBI Agent, Former Police Officer, Author: "Arrest-Proof Yourself”, DaleCarsonLaw.com, Twitter: @DaleCarsonLaw  Dr. Jorey L. Krawczyn -  Psychologist, fmr law enforcement, Faculty Saint Leo University; Consultant Blue Wall Institute, www.bw-institute.com, Author: Operation S.O.S., www.drjorey.com   Capt. Tim Self- Lancaster Sheriff's office in Virginia  Dr. Jan Gorniak - Board Certified Forensic Pathologist, fmr. medical examiner for Clark County  Melissa Hipolit- Investigative Reporter for WTVR CBS 6. wtvr.com, Twitter: @MelissaCBS6  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meet Rackeda Roper, the Jamaican-born 27-year-old serial entrepreneur, Army veteran and visionary force behind Exquisite Enterprise - event staffing, event spaces and event rentals. Rackeda aka "Keda" shares her life journey from Jamaica to America and how an early knack for hustling and sales led her onto the entrepreneurial path within the events industry that has been filled with wins, losses, roadblocks, pivots , revelations and more. Rackeda opens up about the reality of taking risks and "learning as you go" and why she hasn't let the major business hurdles she's faced this year stop her belief in herself or her dreams. All lessons. No regrets. Some of the things we discuss in this episode include: What it was like growing up in Jamaica Moving to Irvington, NJ as a teenager Early lessons about hustling Why she joined the Army National Guard Graduating college but never using her degree Leadership lessons learned during entrepreneurship The ups and down of acquiring her own commercial events space...and the wild year, business losses, and major that came next Getting arrested because of one of her events Future business endeavors...and more! SHOP THE DREAMS IN DRIVE STORE: https://www.dreamsindrive.com/shop SUPPORT DREAMS IN DRIVE: https://www.dreamsindrive.com/donate BROWSE THE BOOKSTORE:https://www.dreamsindrive.com/bookstore SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER – THE KEYS: https://www.dreamsindrive.com/join FIND RACKEDA ON: Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/1jamaicanjawn FIND RANA ON SOCIAL: Instagram: http://instagram.com/rainshineluv Twitter: http://twitter.com/rainshineluv FIND DREAMS IN DRIVE ON:Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/dreamsindrive Twitter: http://twitter.com/dreamsindrive Web: https://www.dreamsindrive.com

Change is always a challenge, and for long-established corporations, the stakes are often incredibly high. Staying true to one's values while navigating a constantly-changing business landscape requires adaptability, but also a concrete sense of your company's authenticity and “true north”. Linda Boff is Global Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at General Electric, a world energy, aerospace, and healthcare leader.. In this episode, she explains how a global leader reimagines itself as three separate public companies, while still being an authentic expression of its long standing purpose and impact. And how from a communications point of view, you navigate such dynamic transformation in ways that infuse the company with new life and growth. Linda Boff:  Linda Boff is a builder of global brands and businesses with expertise across the full range of integrated marketing communications, as well as culture and leadership development. As CMO of GE, Linda is accountable for global marketing, advertising, brand, content, digital, sponsorships, as well as corporate communications, crisis communications, media relations, public affairs, and financial communication. Additionally, Linda runs GE's Corporate Learning P&L, leads the GE Foundation, and co-leads GE's Women's Network. A member of the Forbes CMO Hall of Fame, Linda earned a BA in Political Science and Psychology from Union College. She and her husband live in Irvington, NY and have two grown children. Resources: Learn more about General Electric at: https://www.ge.com/about-us Connect with Linda on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindaboff/ Visit leadwithwe.com to learn more about Simon's new book or search for "Lead With We" on Amazon, Google Books, or Barnes & Noble.  Lead With We is Produced by Goal 17 Media - https://goal17media.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices