Podcast appearances and mentions of john mccollum

This is one of our most important ministry spotlight episodes. We are grateful that Sound of Freedom is increasing awareness of the evils that children are up against. It seems like an overwhelming moment. John McCollum unpacks what you should consider when looking to support orphans internationally and introduces you to the compelling model that is Asia's Hope. Pull up a chair and join us in the Giving Room to learn how you can best serve the world's most vulnerable children—we promise you'll be glad you did. Podcast Website: givingroompodcast.com Show Notes:  Learn more at asiashope.org. You can give to Asia's Hope at https://asiashope.org/give To learn more about River Radio ministries or to listen to 104.9 the River online, visit riverradio.com. To learn more about Giving Design, visit givingdesign.com.Some days, you might play The River for some nice background music. Some days, you'll play it so your kids don't hear anything inappropriate. But some days, you listen because life has knocked you down, and you need help getting back up. We're here for all of them. Our goal is to introduce as many people as possible to Jesus through music and service. You can listen and get connected at https://riverradio.com/

Not all heroes wear capes.  Some wear leather jackets with chains, long hair, and lots of eyeliner!  Today we look at three times heavy metal musicians said "We're not gonna take it" and defended the freedom of speech, but were they "Breaking the Law" and just "Howl(ing) at the Moon"? 0:42 Twisted Sister vs Congress 17:07 Reviews and news 19:58 Ozzy Osbourne's Suicide Solution 26:20 Judas Priest, Better Than You 28:28 Subliminal back-masking 1-star review shirt! and shirt raising money for Ukraine Red Cross at yourbrainonfacts.com/merch Links to all the research resources are on the website. Hang out with your fellow Brainiacs.  Reach out and touch Moxie on Facebook, Twitter,  or Instagram.  Become a patron of the podcast arts! Patreon or Ko-Fi.  Or buy the book and a shirt. Music: Kevin MacLeod, It's not unusual for the business side of the music business to include trips to the courthouse.  Usually, these are for copyright infringement, someone else ripping off your schtick.  In the halcyon days of 2005, the band Slipknot was moved to sue, of all people, Burger King for their commercial with a fake band, all in scary masks and costumes, called Cock Rock.   The best way to describe the 1980's would be to say, you had to see it to believe it.  Weird times, man.  If we weren't panicking about Russia, we were moral-panicking over Satanic things like heavy-metal music and Dungeons and Dragons, the things that make life worth living and were supposedly at the core of wildly rampant crises of child sex abuse and teen suicide.  In the red corner, the busy-body buzzkill today is Tipper Gore, then-wife of then-congressman Al, who had it in her head that rock music was a huge threat to the bedrock of society.  Feel free to picture Helen Lovejoy [sfx clip].  And in the blue corner, an unlikely hero in the form of Dee Snider, front man of oh so typical larger than life hair metal band Twisted Sister.     The trouble started when Tipper bought her 11-year-old daughter a copy of the album "Purple Rain," the smash-hit album from the *R-rated film, both courtesy of *Prince.  And Tipper was shocked, *shocked to hear inappropriate lyrics.  She clearly did not know his body of work.  "Darling Nikki" was a bridge too far, and if you know, you know.  With bra cups brimming with righteous indignation, Tipper gathered like-minded, and I'm assuming bored, wives of senators, cabinet members, and prominent businessmen to for the Parents Music Resource Council or PMRC.  But this wasn't censorship, the PMRC wanted everyone to know.  It was just about helping parents make informed decisions.  They wanted to see music rated like movies, with warnings for the R-rated stuff.   Critics pointed out that that was easier said than done.  The Motion Picture Association of America rated about 350 movies a year. By contrast the Recording Industry Association of America saw 25,000 songs a year being released in those days.  To focus their efforts, the PMRC threw down the gauntlet on the "Filthy Fifteen," a list of songs from the likes of Madonna and Sheena Easton to AC/DC and Judas Priest, that were part of what Gore called "the twisted tyranny of explicitness in the public domain." I did a Thundercats burlesque number to one of the songs.  Care to guess which one?    While the PMRC wasn't an official government anything, the record industry needed to stay on their good side.  They were lobbying for a tax on blank cassettes, absolutely besides themselves over the idea of losing money to tape dubbing.  Four members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation were all married to PMRC members.  This was enough for the RIAA to cross the street to get away from the principles of free expression in hopes of getting the blank-tape tax.   When the Senate committee called for hearings on this issue.  Arguing for totally'not'censorship, you guys, were PMRC members, child-health experts, and religious figures.  Standing up for their rights as musicians was an interesting trio – Twister Sister's Dee Snider, folk singer John Denver, and I would not insult him by trying to affix a label, gonzo rock god Frank Zappa.  We don't know how many musicians were invited, but they were the only ones who showed up.   Anyone else who was invited missed the chance for a lot of press – the hearing room was packed with reporters and tv cameras til the fourth estate were packed in like sardines.  PMRC husband Sen. Hollings played their hand right away, referring to the music in question as "porn rock," saying "If I could find some way to constitutionally do away with it, I would."  I bet he's fun at parties.  Sen. Paula Hawkins waved off concerns about artists' rights of free expression under the First Amendment as she waved away the idea of parental responsibility, and bemoaned rock music becoming much more explicit in the 30 years since Elvis.  A 2012 study by Elizabeth Langdon at Cleveland State University found that music has indeed grown more explicit in its sexual content, but "the sexual attitudes and behaviors (and related outcomes) of adolescents do not appear to be following suit at the national level."    When it came time to make their case before the government, Tipper Gore and Susan Baker, wife of then-Treasury Secretary James Baker, testified on behalf of the PMRC.  Album art, a much bigger part of the whole music buying and enjoying process.  Remember liner notes with all the lyics?  It was like Christmas!  Those albums that had Playboy, Boris Vallejo, or Saw vibes on their jacket were used as evidence.  A local pastor read salacious lyrics about bondage, incest, and "anal vapors"...to unrestrained tittering and laughter.  A child psychiatrist testified that David Berkowitz, the serial killer called "Son of Sam," was known to listen to Black Sabbath. sigh  You shouldn't be allowed to get a degree without understanding the difference between correlation and causation.     Then the defense took the stand.  Rally, lads!  Zappa was up first, looking as not Frank Zappa as I ever saw, with short hair and a suit.  "I've heard some conflicting reports on whether or not people on this committee want legislation. I understand that Senator Hollings does." Sen. James Exon butted in, saying he might support legislation that makes the music industry "voluntarily" clean up its act, which Zappa astutely pointed out is “hardly voluntary." [sfx clip]   "The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years, dealing with the interpretation and enforcement problems inherent in the proposal's design.  It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC's demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation."   He took dead aim at the inherent conflict of interest and said the whole issue was a facade for "trade-restraining legislation, whipped up like an instant pudding by the Wives of Big Brother."  Chef kiss.  The senators were less impressed.  Thankfully the next at-bat was Ivory soap clean, openly devout Christian John Denver, or as Dee Snider later described him, "mom-American-pie- John-Denver-Christmas-special- fresh-scrubbed guy."    Despite his broad appeal, Denver was no stranger to censorship, which he warned the PMRC was approaching.  "Rocky Mountain High," one of his biggest hits, was banned from some radio stations for drug references that weren't actually there.  "What assurance have I that any national panel to review my music would make any better judgment?" Denver asked the senators.  A "self-appointed moral watchdog," he argued, was antithetical to the ideals of a democratic society, the sort of thing you saw in Nazi Germany.  Denver then excused himself from the hearing because he had a meeting with NASA in hopes of becoming the first civilian in space.  Not a word of a lie.  Luckily, he didn't make the cut; the flight in question was the catastrophic last flight of the Challenger.   With the opening acts out of the way, it was time for the headliner, Dee Snider, who quite plausibly believes [1] “the PMRC — or the senators whose wives were in the PMRC — invited me to make a mockery out of me in front of the world."  When Snider walked in, they probably thought they'd gotten their wish.  He was wearing his “dirtbag couture” – jeans, a tank top, sunglasses, and voluminous bottle-blond hair.   But Dee Snider wasn't the airhead they were expecting.  He introduced himself as a married father, a Christian, and neither drinks nor does drugs.  He'd brought his Army and NYPD veteran father with him. (Zappa brought his kids, Moon Unit and Dweezil because they were Twisted Sister fans.)  He addressed Tipper personally for her misinterpretation and misrepresentation of his song "Under the Blade," which they claimed was about S&M and rape, citing the lyrics “Your hands are tied, your legs are strapped, a light shines in your eyes/You faintly see a razor's edge, you open your mouth to cry.”  Snider countered was about their bassist Eddie Ojeda having surgery, literally going under the knife.  "Ms. Gore was looking for sadomasochism and bondage and she found it," indicating the bondage was a metaphor for fear. Snider later wrote for the Huffington Post that he enjoyed the "raw hatred I saw in Al Gore's eyes when I said Tipper Gore had a dirty mind."    Snider highlighted another accusation from Tipper Gore, "You look at even the t-shirts that kids wear and you see Twisted Sister and a woman in handcuffs sort of spread-eagled."  This was a complete untruth.  Twisted Sister "never sold a shirt of this type; we have always taken great pains to steer clear of sexism in our merchandise, records, stage show, and personal lives. Furthermore, we have always promoted the belief that rock and roll should not be sexist, but should cater to males and females equally."  He challenged Tipper to produce any such shirt and when asked about it again by Senator Al Gore, Gore clarified for the record that "the word 't-shirts' was in plural, and one of them referred to Twisted Sister and the other referred to a woman in handcuffs." Snider stuck to his guns insisting Tipper was referring to Twisted Sister before Senator Gore changed the subject.   During Snider's testimony, Senator Ernest Hollings from South Carolina asked him about different perceptions of obscenity and vulgarity. He read part of a Supreme Court verdict in the Pacifica Case involving the Federal Communications Commission (famous for the role George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" played in it). In the case, the Supreme Court ruled that "Patently offensive, indecent material presented over the airwaves confronts the citizen not only in public, but also in the privacy of the home. The individual's right to be left alone, plainly outweighs the first amendment rights of an intruder."   They still hadn't figured out who they were dealing with.  Snider pointed out there was a difference between the airwaves”  as opposed to a person going with their money to purchase an album to play in their room, in their home, on their own time. The airwaves are something different."    Sen. Al Gore opened his questioning of Snider by asking what the initials of their fan club “S.M.F.” stood for.  [x] "It stands for the Sick Motherf------ Friends of Twisted Sister," Snider testified. "Is this also a Christian group?" Gore asked, to a smattering of laughter. "I don't believe profanity has anything to do with Christianity," Snider said.  I could watch replays of that hearing all day.   [y] "The beauty of literature, poetry, and music is that they leave room for the audience to put its own imagination, experience, and dreams into the words," Snider testified.  "There is no authority who has the right or the necessary insight to make these judgments. Not myself, not the federal government, not some recording industry committee, not the PTA, not the RIAA, and certainly not the PMRC," Snider said. [sfx clip?]   When it was said and done, it's unlikely that many minds were changed by the hearing. Although, despite the protestations to the contrary, quite a few senators and witnesses had explicitly argued in favor of government action.  No laws were passed, but they still got results.  The RIAA agreed to work with the PMRC on labeling objectionable content with a bold black and white sticker reading "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics."  So the rockers kinda lost, but they were awesome and I'm counting it as a moral victory.   That black and white sticker was worse than a Scarlet Letter.  Huge retailers like Walmart would not sell "labeled" records, period, cutting out a huge slice of the marketplace for "labeled" artists. Some smaller stores were threatened with eviction if they stocked "labeled" records.  The city of San Antonio barred "labeled" artists from performing.  Maryland and Pennsylvania debated requiring retailers to keep it in an "adults-only" area of the store.  Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra was prosecuted in California over "Distribution of Harmful Material to Minors."   But musicians would have the last laugh.  The explicit lyrics sticker very quickly went from mark to shame to selling point.  Retailers realized the money they were missing out on and began stocking the albums.  Teens and young adults would often buy albums *because they had the warning.  In fact, if you were hard-cord or counter-culture or punk in any way but didn't have a warning label, scoff!  There was also a shed load of reaction music, including Danzig's only mainstream hit. [sfx clip] Nowadays, not only have our buying habits changed, but our standards have too.     MIDROLL   CW: The following section is about news events subsequent to suicides, without going into too much detail about the suicides themselves.  If that's not where your head is today, no worries, we'll catch up next week.   In 1986, Sharon Osbourne called her management client and husband Ozzy Osbourne that he had to get on a plane as fast as possible and get to LA.  Like a phone call from a movie, she refused to tell him why, but demanded he go now.  Ozzy landed in LA into the loving embrace of a batallion of reporter's microphones and those stupidly bright news camera lights, asking him how he responded to the suicide.  What Sharon could have taken 10 seconds to explain to him was that the previous year, 19 year old John McCollum was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his California bedroom.  The album Blizzard of Oz which he'd allegedly been listening to for at least six hours straight, was still spinning on the stereo turntable.  McCollum's parents believed Osbourne was responsible, that his song “Suicide Solution” was a proximate cause of their son's death.  Okay, that was about 20 seconds, but I stand on my statement.   In their lawsuit, McCollum's parents claimed that there were hidden lyrics in the song that incited John to kill himself, with messages like “get the gun and try it, shoot, shoot, shoot.”  Osbourne countered that the song wasn't about a solution as in an answer, but a solution as in a liquid, specifically the one he was at the time slowly killing *himself with, and which has killed AC/DC's Bon Scott, alcohol.   [ozzy 1] "Suicide Solution wasn't written about, 'Oh that's the solution, suicide.' I was a heavy drinker and I was drinking myself to an early grave. It was suicide solution," Ozzy said later.  "Wine is fine but whiskey's quicker. Suicide is slow with liquor. That's what I was doing for a long while.”     The plaintiff's case was that the song Suicide Solution should be exempt from the first Amendment's freedom of speech.  In the US, you're free to express any viewpoint or feelings, up to a point – it is not legal to directly incite specific, imminent actions which cause harm to others.  That's hard to prove and virtually every attempt to hold an entertainer responsible for allegedly inciting action has failed.  One notable exception, and a replacement for the tired old ‘you can't yell fire in a crowded theater' example is that of radio disc jockey The Real Don Steele, who told listeners to hurry as quickly as they could to a certain Los Angeles address to win a prize.  This is 1970, only two years after seat belts became mandatory, and people were getting in crack-ups, and one motorist who had no idea what was happening was killed.  In a case still taught in law schools everywhere, his family sued and the California Supreme Court ruled in their favor.  I really could do a whole episode just on radio promotions going terribly, terribly wrong.  At issue in the McCollum case was not whether there actually were hidden lyrics, but whether such lyrics are protected speech or incitement to violence.  If successful, the McCollum lawsuit would have had sweeping consequences for artists in every medium, potentially holding them liable for the actions of those who watched, read or listened to what they'd created.  At the very least, it would have made Ozzy too big a liability for any record label or concert promoter to associate themselves with, and it's not hard to imagine that that pariah status would spread to other metal bands.   [ozzy 2]“I feel very sad for the boy, and I felt terribly sad for the parents. As a parent myself, I'd be pretty devastated if something like that happened. And I have thought about this, if the boot was on the other foot, I couldn't blame the artist."   The suit wasn't just about Suicide Solution; they also blamed the song Paranoid.  Data point of one, but I can disprove that one by sheer force of math; it's probably my most-listened-to Ozzy or Sabbath song, with the very Un-Sabbath Laguna Sunrise as a close second.   Plaintiff's counsel Tom Anderson claimed McCollum had been a normal, happy well-adjusted young man, who listened to ″Suicide Solution″ for hours before killing himself, and that a low-frequency hum on the record, only audible if you were using headphones as McCollum had been, had caused him to be more susceptible to the song's hidden message.  Attorneys for CBS, Ozzy's record label and party in the suit, argued that Osbourne was no more responsible for a listeners' actions than Shakespeare would be for Hamlet's soliloquy, Tolstoy for Anna Karenina throwing herself under the wheels of a train, or the producers of “M.A.S.H.” for choosing “Suicide Is Painless” for its theme tune.  When Judge John Cole dismissed the case, spoiler alert, he left room for the plaintiffs to appeal over the mysterious hum, which they did; the appellate judge upheld the dismissal.   This wasn't the last time a fan's suicide resulted in legal action.  The family of another young man brought a similar lawsuit against Osbourne in 1986. Their case was also unsuccessful.   5 years later, CBS was back in court, though this time it was Judas Priest who found themselves in the dock, but with a pseudoscience twist.  In December 1985, 20-year-old James Vance and 18-year-old Raymond Belknap of Nevada, concluded a day of drinking, drugs, and heavy metal with an alleged suicide pact by means of self-inflicted shotgun fire.  Belknap died instantly, while Vance survived for a further three years, though without the lower half of his face, before eventually succumbing to complications.   The two families subsequently alleged that Priest had placed subliminal messages throughout 1978's Stained Class album, inciting fans to kill themselves.  The worst offender on the album was Better By You, Better Than Me, where messages like ‘Let's be dead' and ‘Do it' were smuggled in by means of backmasking.  Let's hop out of the shallow end for a deep dive here.  Backwards-masking or backmasking an intentional recording in which a message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward.  It goes all the way back to the 70's, the 1870's, when Thomas Edison discovered the novelty of playing recorded music backwards.  The beat generation of the 50s started to purposely include reverse audio into their music and artists continued to play around with it for decades.  The Beatles deliberate [...].  This splashed fuel on the Paul-is-dead urban legend/conspiracy theory with supposed messages like “Paul is dead, miss him, miss him,” in “I'm So Tired” and “turn me on, dead man” in Revolution 9.  Audiophiles kept an ear out for it, but it didn't come to wide public knowledge until the 80's.  These days, Easter eggs and hidden goodies are shared on social media and YT, but back then, it was conservatives ruining cassettes and vinyl records by playing them backwards in church, community meetings, local access television, whatever venue they could get.  They claimed that the backwards speech could subliminally influence the listener when listening to the music in the normal way.  They found backmasking in everything from Elvis to Led Zepplin.  Supposedly Stairway to Heaven contained Satanic commands like “here's to my sweet Satan,” “serve me,” and “there's no escaping it.”     Audio Engineer Evan Olcott claims that backmasking or finding phonetic reversals is purely coincidental in which the spoken or sung phonemes, a fancy word for individual speech sounds, seem to form words.  Our brains make sense of our environment, or they try, any road, and that can mean convincing themselves that garbled sounds are actually words.  There's a key to claims of backmasking and it's priming, telling the listener what they're going to hear.  [sfx example]     Backmasking is supposed to work subliminally, meaning literally below the threshold of sensation of consciousness.  In theory, subliminal messages deliver an idea that the conscious mind doesn't detect.  For those too young to remember Tyler Durden's projectionist hobby, the prime example of subliminal messages is a single frame of text slipped into a video, which *has been used on TV by both corporations and political candidates.  Whenever one of these comes to light, there is always much contention, yet thoroughly negligible results.  If you can find a properly organized scientific study that bears out claims that messages you don't know you saw can influence people's behavior, call us here in the studio.  Until then, I plant my banner on the hill of It's Utter Crap.   At the time, Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton said: “It's a fact that if you play speech backwards, some of it will seem to make sense. So I asked permission to go into a studio and find some perfectly innocent phonetic flukes. The lawyers didn't want to do it, but I insisted. We bought a copy of the Stained Class album in a local record shop, went into the studio, recorded it to tape, turned it over and played it backwards. Right away we found ‘Hey ma, my chair's broken' and ‘Give me a peppermint' and ‘Help me keep a job'.”   At one point, frontman Rob Halford was called upon to actually sing part of the song while on the stand, which he looks really uncomfortable doing without so much as a metronome to accompany him.  “It tore us up emotionally hearing someone say to the judge and the cameras that this is a band that creates music that kills young people. We accept that some people don't like heavy metal, but we can't let them convince us that it's negative and destructive. Heavy metal is a friend that gives people great pleasure and enjoyment and helps them through hard times.”   Eventually, the case against Judas Priest and their label was dismissed.  The judge did agree that you could hear words other than the printed lyrics, but these were “only discernible after their location had been identified and after the sounds were isolated and amplified. The sounds would not be consciously discernible to the ordinary listener under normal listening conditions”.   And that's… Slipknot filed a copyright infringement suit claiming Burger King misappropriated their images. The King fired back that Slipknot didn't invent masked rockers, the post-apocalyptic gas masks aesthetic, or white guys with dreadlocks and, therefore, had no copyrights to claim. Ultimately, I guess they all realized they had more important things to do and the case was dropped. Sources: https://johndenver.com/about/biography/#:~:text=He%20then%20became%20a%20leading,during%20take%2Doff%20in%201986. https://www.ranker.com/list/dee-snyder-speech-parents-music-resource-center/melissa-sartore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_(Danzig_song) https://ultimateclassicrock.com/dee-snider-pmrc-interview-2015/ https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/musicandsuicide/ https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/judas-priest-suicide-lawsuit-subliminal-messages/ https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-a-suicide-pact-was-almost-the-end-of-judas-priest https://pop.inquirer.net/106559/the-auditory-phenomenon-called-backmasking-unmasked https://ultimateclassicrock.com/backward-message-songs/ https://www.livescience.com/does-subliminal-messaging-work.html https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/an-ozzy-osbourne-fan-commits-suicide https://www.kerrang.com/ozzy-osbourne-the-suicide-solution-controversy-and-what-the-song-actually-means https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-12-20-mn-4460-story.html https://apnews.com/article/05b56baebdc9ceaff3433f50fc941298 https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-a-suicide-pact-was-almost-the-end-of-judas-priest https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1758714.html https://www.dreadcentral.com/news/287706/that-time-slipknot-sued-burger-king-over-coq-roq-chicken-fries-commercial https://loudwire.com/remember-when-slipknot-sued-burger-king/ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/backward-message-songs/

GOP candidate for (SC-6) John McCollum running against incumbent Jim Clyburn joins us for a chat. Support the show: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=Q2PZ6NSMG7X7N&source=url See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John McCollum is the Republican Nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives for South Carolina District 6. He served his country in the US Navy; and now he and his family continue in their hearts of service as they embark in this new journey. https://www.johnforsc.com

In this episode, we interview John McCollum, Republican candidate for South Carolina's 6th U.S. Congressional District. Incumbent Democrat, Jim Clyburn, has held that seat since 1993.  For more information on John McCollum, visit his campaign website at https://www.johnforsc.com/ John McCollum's Facebook John McCollum's Instagram   

“John Asia Hope”. The post Serve Day Speaker: John McCollum appeared first on First City Church.

John McCollum, Exec Dir of Asia's Hope, shares his heart for survivors and how Christian leaders should respond to sexual abuse. 

Listen as Jay Scott talks with John McCollum of Eden Ridge Outfitters about Oregon Big Game Applications Breakdown. More on John McCollum https://www.edenridgeoutfitters.com/ Sponsors of the JSO Podcast goHUNT.com/Insider Sign UP for goHUNT INSIDER www.goHunt.com/JayScott Use Promo Code "Jay Scott" Get $50 goHUNT Gear Shop Gift Card http://www.kuiu.com/ or http://www.kuiu.com/blog/ http://www.phoneskope.com/ Use "jayscott16" promo code to get 10% off all products  http://outdoorsmans.com/ Use "jayscott" promo code to get 10% off all Outdoorsmans Products More on host Jay Scott www.JayScottOutdoors.com Instagram @JayScottOutdoors http://gouldsturkeyhunt.com/ http://www.colburnandscottoutfitters.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZbc2dA3sjOzWKdSxnyuz9g https://www.facebook.com/JayScottOutdoorsPodcast/  

On this episode of the Red X Podcast, Nicole reports on a case of domestic labor trafficking in Fayetteville, NC involving children working for a fish market, and Nicole and Lance interview Sargent Michael Hardin about his experience leading the only Human Trafficking Police Unit in the state of North Carolina. Nicole shares about her abhorrence for snow. Lance celebrates his fifty-fourth birthday by adding to his converse shoe collection with wife Cheryl’s birthday gift. The only color he is lacking is green! Nicole also reports on her family’s adventures in mountain climbing in their family formed club, the Mountain of the Month Club, and their hike up Occoneechee mountain in Hillsborough. Lance asks the icebreaker—what animal attribute would you most like to possess? Nicole claims the speed of a deer, while Lance wants some canine teeth for a lion smile. In the news: John McCollum calls himself “Chief apostle”. Almost a year ago, two former members of his religious organization reported that McCollum was forcing children to work in his fish markets in a religious compound he was leading. Deputies had previously investigated it after abuse and neglect were alleged. During that time no one was willing to disclose and so no charges were filed. But after months of staking out the fish market and religious compound, enough evidence was obtained for police to take action.          Arrest warrants included that 16 children and young adults as victims, although there could be more over the years of the operation. The compound also contained a licensed home school. Although many of the children had difficulty reading and writing, McCollum fabricated high school transcripts to enroll the children in online college classes. Over the years, the US department of education estimates that McCollum’s organization received a half million dollars in financial aid. McCollum operated multiple fish markets and owned a small trucking company. His church created a nonprofit to feed children. During tent revivals in not just other states, but also other countries, McCollum recruited vulnerable people to live at his compound. There may have been 120 people who lived at the ranch over the years. A 15 year old boy who ran away from the compound said that he and his 13 year old brother were forced to work more than 40 hours a week at the fish market. The children’s jobs included cutting, cleaning and icing the fish. Nicole introduced Sargent Michael Hardin from the Fayetteville Human Trafficking Unit which began around 2015. Previously, the sergeant had served the homicide unit. He then moved to street prostitution cases. Due to the large volume of trafficking cases, the department saw the need to increase their resources to meet the needs of victims. The Fayetteville Police Department now has the only Human Trafficking Unit in the state with five designated detectives. These detectives have a separate building from the police department to make it a less intimidating location for trafficking victims to meet. They also owe their success to their close partnership with NGO, Five Sparrows who is able to help meet the tangible needs of survivors and walk alongside them during their restoration. Sargent Hardin says that tips to the police are invaluable. The more general public is aware of the signs of trafficking, the more they are able to empower the police with tips. Hardin suggests contacting Crimestoppers if a citizen wishes to report a tip but remain anonymous. One of the main indicators of a potential trafficking relationship is to see a much older male with a younger female. This might be a case of the a victim with her trafficker, especially if the older male is speaking for the younger woman who defers to him. For instance, a trafficker might be making decisions for the young woman on exactly how she is to be getting her hair and nails done at a salon. Sargent Hardin also says that the trafficker is not always male; females are also traffickers. Many of these cases are so complicated that they may take as long as a murder case to investigate and prosecute. Hardin says that it’s important to work from a victim-centered perspective. Often, traffickers will take their victims’ identification as a form of power over them. A lot of the ladies have a quota that they have to fill each night and can be as much as $1,000 a night per girl. The trafficker will use all ways necessary to retain his victim, including fear and violence. Nicole says she saw a strange dynamic at the roller-skating rink with an older man and much younger woman and asked the sargent if it would be typical for a buyer to be in such a public place with a victim. Although it is not impossible, Hardin says that it would be unusual. Typically, it would be more likely to see a victim with her trafficker in public than the buyer. Buyers prefer to remain out of the public eye as much as possible and are more likely to be seen in a location where the transaction takes place, such as in a motel. Sargent Hardin has vast experience with covert operations and says they are delicate and inherently dangerous. Just as dealing with narcotics, trafficking involves exchanges of large amounts of money and buyers and traffickers both may possess guns at the time of a sting. He says that pimps spend a large amount of their money to project a certain image of wealth; they dress “flashy” and drive expensive cars. A trafficking transaction might be happening in million dollar homes or five star hotels. Sargent Hardin says that his biggest pet peeve is when people say that trafficking isn’t happening in their town as the reality is that it happens in almost every town. Lance suggests that people who want to know more about the trafficking in their own municipality reach out to their local PD. Nicole asks Sargent Hardin’s personal opinion on how to prevent trafficking. Although, Hardin says he is speaking for himself and not necessarily representing the views of Fayetteville PD, he believes that trafficking occurs because of a lack of family values and a belief that women can be treated as objects. He says that we can’t wait until young people are in high school to start educating youth on values, but that it must start in early childhood. Nicole and Lance discuss what they learned. Nicole was surprised to hear just how lucrative trafficking is for a trafficker as pimps can bring in more than a million dollars a year. Lance proposes that a small amount of money may be used to make purchases for the victims but that a large amount is spent in the consumption world for expensive items, drugs, bribes, hotel rooms, and guns. Given how much money this illegal business brings in, it is no wonder why traffickers often lead a life on the road, transporting their victims to new cities so that their activity is not detected by police.  

Hundreds of abandoned kids in Cambodia, Thailand and India live in local orphanages styled like real homes where Christian workers call them all sons and daughters. K-LOVE's George Rath talks with Asia's Hope founder John McCollum about the success of fam

Hundreds of abandoned kids in Cambodia, Thailand and India live in local orphanages styled like real homes where Christian workers call them all sons and daughters. K-LOVE's George Rath talks with Asia's Hope founder John McCollum about the success of fam

Hundreds of abandoned kids in Cambodia, Thailand and India live in local orphanages styled like real homes where Christian workers call them all sons and daughters. K-LOVE's George Rath talks with Asia's Hope founder John McCollum about the success of family-style orphan care.

Hundreds of abandoned kids in Cambodia, Thailand and India live in local orphanages styled like real homes where Christian workers call them all sons and daughters. Air1's George Rath talks with Asia's Hope founder John McCollum about the success of family-style orphan care.

In a world where there are thousands of orphaned and at-risk children, it can sometimes seem that institutional orphan care is the only practical solution available in less wealthy nations, but for John McCollum, there seemed to be a better way. Somewhere on the journey of adoption (they adopted their first child from Vietnam) and

Some of our episodes talk about a conductor’s journey as a musician, or their philosophical understanding of the nature of choral music. Some episodes are pure toolkits: here’s what you need to solve your problems. This episode has the rare distinction of being both. Dr. Kronauer and Ryan cover the “hows” of directing teenage male voices, as well as the “whys” behind them. You’re going to want to listen to this one twice. Listen: Highlight to Tweet: “Living rigidly is not the game. The game is finding elasticity.” - Steven Kronauer Show Notes: Try thinking less in terms of “blend,” and more in terms of “agreement.” For the teenage male singer, it’s important to reassure them that change is a part of life. Whatever they are working with (or through) will be fine. When dealing with limited range, you need to offer patience and guidance. Provide a model. Avoiding “compensation,” or reaching for a pitch. (“that giraffe thing” - Ryan Guth) Posture and alignment are always important, but especially so for teenage boys. Accept and love this period of life where you’re going through change! Falsetto is huge. HUGE. Sing into a straw in a cup of water, so that the sound is focused at the front of the bubbles. It helps practice constant airflow. Hum with the tongue between the lips, concentrating on the vibration of the vocal folds while letting go of tensions. “You learn to sing by singing.” Place your singers according to what will be healthy for them. Bio: DR. STEVEN KRONAUER, a highly experienced voice teacher, tenor, and conductor, is the conductor of Los Angeles Children’s Chorus’ Young Men’s Ensemble, comprised of young men with changing voices. After completing two Master’s degrees at the University of Michigan, one in Voice Performance and the other in Choral Conducting, Dr. Kronauer began his professional career in the chorus of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Germany, as its youngest member ever.  During his ten-year engagement, he had the privilege of meeting and studying with many noted singers of the highest echelon, including world famous Verdi tenor Dennis O’Neill and Wagnerian baritone Donald MacIntyre.  Dr. Kronauer was employed as a soloist with the Bavarian State Opera for television broadcasts, CD recordings, and live radio performances, appearing with Renee Fleming, Kurt Moll, and many others, in secondary tenor roles.  Dr. Kronauer performed the role of Smy in a world premiere of the German opera Peter Pan, by Willfried Hiller, directed by the world famous stage director August Everding.  This performance was recorded at the Prinz-Regenten Theatre in Munich, Germany, and distributed by Deutche Gramaphone. Dr. Kronauer has studied oratorio with the finest of the field, including Ernst Haefliger and Peter Schreier, in Germany (while being a guest observer as a conductor at the Deutche Stats Oper in Berlin, Germany). He also studied with tenor John McCollum in the United States. Since then, he established a career in Europe singing oratorio under such noted conductors as Karl Anton Richenbacher and Peter Schneider.  Additionally, Dr. Kronauer has sung as a soloist at the Cologne Philharmonic, and with the Munich Philharmonic in Germany. He has sung more than 100 performances of Carmina Burana, internationally.  Dr. Kronauer’s interest in opera conducting was enhanced upon becoming acquainted with Zubin Mehta and Wolfgang Sawalisch at the Munich Opera.  Dr. Kronauer is a soloist with many organizations since his return from Europe, including a frequent guest with the Angeles Chorale and the National Children’s Chorus, here in Los Angeles. Dr. Kronauer completed his doctorate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles in choral conducting and operatic conducting under the direction of Donald Neuen and William Vendice, respectively.  He has worked with Donald Neuen as an assistant conductor with the UCLA Chorale and with Maestro Vendice as the assistant conductor of the UCLA Opera. Previously, The University of Michigan offered Dr. Kronauer the opportunity of completing two Masters Degrees in Vocal Performance (under Lorna Haywood and John McCollum) and Choral Conducting (under Theodore Morrison).  There, he was the Assistant Conductor for Jerry Blackstone and the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club.   He has also led a choral workshop at the University of Munich.  Dr. Kronauer’s expertise focused on performance practice of American and British chorale music.  While in Munich he formed The Munich Opera Chamber Chorus, which sang some of the great chamber music of the Germanic tradition, including the complete Liebeslieder waltzes. Dr. Kronauer has taught on the voice faculty of the Interlochen Arts Camp and at the University of California, Irvine.  He also had the honor of presenting a lecture to the National Association of Teacher’s of Singing on the “Dos and Don’ts of Starting a Singing Career in Germany.” Dr. Kronauer taught for three years as a member of the voice faculty, and the music director of the opera program at California State University, Los Angeles, conducting fully staged performances of Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck and L’incornatione di Poppea, by Monteverdi.  Dr. Kronauer was the Acting Chair of the voice department of the University of California, Santa Barbara for two years and the director of opera activities producing. Currently Dr. Kronauer has a busy private voice studio and is on the faculty of California State University, Long Beach at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music teaching voice and German diction. Resources/links Mentioned: LA Children’s Chorus Vocal Wisdom Choir Nation group on Facebook Patreon - Support the podcast! Sponsored by: Sight Reading Factory (Use promo code “NINJA” at checkout for 10 free student accounts!) My Music Folders (Use promo code “NINJA” at checkout for “last column” or best pricing - usually reserved for bulk purchases only!)

John McCollum lives in Columbus, OH with his wife, Kori, and three adopted children, all of whom have been adopted from Asia. Asia's Hope is a Christian non-profit organization that provides long-term, family-style residential care for orphaned children at high risk of sexual and economic exploitation in Cambodia, Thailand and India. Asia’s Hope has 150 employees in 4 countries. ✅ Started out working in a bar, discovered a love of marketing. ✅ Worked for an agency ✅ Started his own company ✅ Got married and adopted their first child and now have adopted three ✅ Growing awareness of needs in Asia ✅ Leveraged his marketing & business skills ✅ Chose to shut down his company ✅ Asia’s Hope runs 30+ orphanages in Cambodia, Thailand, and India   For more information, visit the show notes at http://rickcoplin/how-one-determined-person-can-change-the-world-sts-037  

John will jokingly refer to his decision to close down his design agency to take on the leadership role for a nonprofit organization that helps orphaned kids in Asia as taking the down escalator in terms of wealth, influence and success in business. Admittedly, it's not a conscious decision that many of us would choose to make — John included. But what John discovered, first through adoption, and then by recognizing those who would never have that chance, led him on journey half-way around the world to bring hope to some of the world's most vulnerable children at risk of sexual and economic exploitation. John's story is about listening, feeling, and acknowledging the call on his life — and then having the faith to step out and actually do something about it. www.asiashope.org

Do you see the will of God as a GPS or a Compass?

Tim Armstrong talks with the Cambodia Director for Asia's Hope, Savorn Ou, as well as the Executive Director for Asia's Hope, John McCollum.

Tim Armstrong talks with the Cambodia Director for Asia's Hope, Savorn Ou, as well as the Executive Director for Asia's Hope, John McCollum.