Podcasts about Lake Winnipesaukee

"Rehypothecation is cryptographically impossible." Martin Matejka joins the show to break down the rise of Bitcoin-native lending, Firefish's 3-of-3 multisig + DLC architecture, and why the February 6 stress test was the day Bitcoin-backed credit grew up. We discuss why rehypothecation can be engineered out rather than promised away, how Firefish thinks about LTV, margin-call cadence, and the three warnings before liquidation, and why $160 million in non-custodial loans across 27,000 users in 70 countries is the proof a Bitcoin-native lender can scale. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

This is the latest essay from our Untoxicated Blog. To read our hundreds of essays on drinking, emotional safety, and the underlying issues of addiction, please go to SoberAndUnashamed.com. We hope you get a lot out of: “Requisite” That's a picture of my bride from the summer we got married. Isn't she cute? It's a digital capture of a real photo taken with a camera that doesn't make or receive phone calls. The picture is printed on glossy paper, and you can see the date stamp on Sheri's tanned arm. Now, I know you don't know her as well as I do, but this picture is striking to me because of the genuine, authentic joy on Sheri's face. Based on her eyebrows, cheeks, and nose, and even through her sunglasses, I can see the trust in her eyes. Not only is she enjoying a sunny day on Lake Winnipesaukee, but she's enjoying the people she's with, including me, with a fully relaxed nervous system. Contrast that face with the one she's making… If you are ready to consider the impact of alcohol and a lack of emotional safety, on you and your family, as the drinker or the partner of a drinker, please take our brief survey at UntoxicatedSurvey.org so we can share resources, including a free ebook.

Matt Cole spent fifteen years at CalPERS — the largest public pension fund in the U.S. — running more than $70 billion in global fixed income, where his portfolios reportedly never underperformed their benchmark in a single year. Today he's Chairman & CEO of Strive (Nasdaq: ASST), the first publicly traded asset-management Bitcoin treasury company — and the man who just made a security pay a dividend every single business day, the first time that's ever happened in U.S. market history. This is the structured-finance mind behind "digital credit" — the idea that you can split a perpetual Bitcoin position into two instruments: a low-volatility, yield-bearing preferred (SATA, now paying daily) and the amplified Bitcoin common stock underneath it. Matt explains why he calls digital credit the biggest story in Bitcoin, how a zero-debt balance sheet survives Bitcoin going "to one penny tomorrow," and why he's laser-focused on a thirty-year digital gold rush. If you've ever wondered what happens when a Wall Street fixed-income operator goes all-in on Bitcoin — this is it. We discuss: The first security in U.S. market history to pay a dividend every business day — and why "the dividend event is no longer an event" Digital credit as the biggest story in Bitcoin — attacking a $300 trillion TAM, where 1% is larger than Bitcoin's entire market cap today Zero debt and 18 months of dividend reserves — why "Bitcoin could go to one penny tomorrow and we don't blow up" Why Michael Saylor called Strive's SATA the most interesting story in Bitcoin right now "Bitcoin is hope" — the line that closes the show Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Matt Hougan is the Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise Asset Management — one of eleven spot Bitcoin ETF issuers, managing over $10 billion. When family offices, RIAs, and pension consultants size their Bitcoin allocation, his is the analysis they read. This is the institutional case for Bitcoin in plain language: Bitcoin as two investments at once (digital gold plus a call option on becoming the world's apolitical currency), the math behind his $1.4 million by 2035 call, and why he thinks Bitcoin is about to repeat the supply shock that just took gold parabolic. If you've been trying to explain Bitcoin to the most sophisticated person in your life — send them this. We discuss: Bitcoin as two investments in one — store of value + call option on currency status The kinetic vs. monetary chaos lenses, and why both push Bitcoin up Why Harvard's endowment quietly went BTC + gold as their two largest 13F positions The $36 billion first-year ETF launch — 6× the previous all-time record Why Matt's personal price target is $1.4 million by 2035 The gold supply shock parallel — and why Matt thinks Bitcoin is next Quantum computing — manageable upgrade problem or existential threat? Three ways to pitch Bitcoin to three different kinds of institutional allocator Why generational change is the biggest underrated catalyst in the space Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Jeff Casler and Angelo Firenze don't run a Bitcoin conference. They run a Bitcoin camp. Jeff is a serial entrepreneur and MS survivor — co-founder of Camp Nakamoto and @btc_mass, with a thesis-forward "why this matters" voice. Angelo grew up on Sandy Island. He spent decades as director of the original family camp the property was built around — and now runs the Bitcoin version of the same idea. Every summer, the Bitcoin world boards another plane to another conference. And every summer, some of us come home wondering if we actually made a single real connection. This is the conversation about what happens when someone looks at that and decides to build the inverse — four days on a 66-acre private island in Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. Cabins. Campfires. All-inclusive meals including the Cattleman's Feast. A speaker series that doesn't feel like a speaker series because you're sitting with the speakers at dinner. June 18-21, 2026. I'm speaking there — and I said yes because I believe in what they're building. Their thesis is simple: the typical Bitcoin conference is great for introducing ideas. Camp Nakamoto is great for integrating them. You don't have five minutes after a keynote to ask your question — you have 72 hours. Larry Lapard, Tom Luongo, Efrat Fenigson, Joe Consorti aren't in a green room. They're at breakfast. Around the campfire at sunset. In the cornhole tournament. As Angelo puts it: the whole thing is the lobby. We also get the "last boat" moment — what Angelo realized after the first event in 2025, why he didn't believe it would work until the last ferry pulled away. The 2026 speaker lineup including Tom Luongo, Ben Justman, Efrat Fenigson, Joe Consorti, Seb Bunny, Luke Broyles, Anders Jensen, Matthew Lysiak, Kevin McKernan, Haley Lennon, Brandon Gentile, Beau Turner, Kyle Huber — plus Ainsley Costello playing live. The Cattleman's Feast partnership with Texas Slim's Beef Initiative. And the family case: why parents on the island let their kids run free in a way you don't see in modern society anymore. If you've ever wondered what the post-orange-pill phase actually looks like in person — not on Twitter, not in a conference hallway, but around a campfire with people who showed up for the same reason you did — this is the conversation. We discuss: Introduce vs. integrate — why ideas land differently when you have 72 hours with the speaker instead of five minutes after a keynote, and Angelo's design principle that "the whole thing is the lobby" The "last boat" moment — Angelo's emotional origin moment from the first event in 2025, why he didn't believe it would work until the last ferry pulled away, and what it taught him about the difference between selling tickets and building community The Cattleman's Feast — Texas Slim's Beef Initiative partnership, the grass-fed high-omega-3 steak that made attendees say "the best I've ever had," Peony Lane Bitcoin wine pairing, and why food became one of the strongest brand moments of the first event Kids running free — what happens to parenting when an island full of Bitcoiners decides to let their children explore, why it feels like 1950s parenting in the best possible way, and the case for bringing your family Why community in 2026 matters more than ever — Jeff and Angelo's "we need our peeps" thesis, the move from talking the talk to living the life, and what real-life Bitcoin community looks like after the orange pill metabolizes Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Bram Kanstein returns to The Bitcoin Matrix. He's spent over three thousand hours studying money. He hosts Bitcoin for Millennials — now expanding into Freedom for Millennials — and writes essays connecting fiat money to consciousness, attention, and the design of modern life. This conversation picks up where his first appearance left off. Once you've truly understood Bitcoin — what comes next? Bram's answer is that the orange pill is just the entry point. The real work is what happens after: noticing the bandwidth tax that costs you 13 IQ points before you've even started thinking, recognizing Bitcoin as "engineered truth" — the only economic anchor we can verify is the same in both our heads — and naming the spiritual crime of a money system designed to keep your attention off the things that actually matter. He's also organizing a Bitcoin-and-psychedelics gathering in Colorado, has just published Bitcoin for Millennials (his book, built from his first 100 episodes), and brings Michelangelo's Florence — 279 years under hard money — into the room as evidence for what humans build when the unit of account doesn't betray them. If you've ever wondered why everyone around you who saw the same chart didn't see the same world — this is the conversation to send them. We discuss: The bandwidth tax — Mullainathan & Shafir's research showing financial worry costs you ~13 IQ points before you've even started thinking, and how fiat is engineered to keep that tax running Bitcoin as an economic psychedelic (Yoni Appleberg's frame) — the dissolution of inherited financial assumptions and what comes back online once the orange pill metabolizes Bitcoin as engineered truth — the orange shirt thought experiment, the map-and-territory problem, and why a verifiable monetary anchor changes consciousness, not just portfolios Michelangelo, the Medici, and the Florin — what 279 years of hard money built, and what our era can't, in Bram's reading of why long-arc human work has collapsed into the bandwidth tax economy Subscribe so you never miss an episode. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Pius Sprenger has a PhD in mathematics and spent twenty-five years on Wall Street. He was hired to Deutsche Bank in 2004 and ended up on Greg Lippmann's derivatives desk — the desk Ryan Gosling's character runs in The Big Short. In February 2007 he co-built the ABX index with Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns. He held his short position for nearly three years while senior management told him he was wrong. He was right. He left Wall Street in 2020. Today he is a founding member of the Scientific Bitcoin Institute alongside Giovanni Santostasi and Steven Perino — peer-reviewed researchers applying the power law to Bitcoin's growth. Their math says $1M per Bitcoin in 8–9 years. $7–8M in 17 years. Falsifiable. Scientific. Not a guess. And he is sounding the alarm again. Wall Street is now packaging Bitcoin into structured products the way it packaged subprime in 2007. Pius has seen this movie. He has the receipts. If you've heard "$1M Bitcoin" and dismissed it as hyperbole — this is the conversation to send to whoever you're trying to convince. We discuss: The Bitcoin Power Law explained — adoption to the power of 3, network value to the power of 2 — and why the math gives you $1M in 8–9 years What it actually felt like to short subprime from inside Deutsche Bank for three years while conference rooms full of PhDs laughed him out The pattern Pius sees in Wall Street's Bitcoin entry — Strategy, STRC, the ETFs — and what negative price convexity means for the paper market One week in East Germany in 1985 — the Stasi, the whispering — and what a former Deutsche Bank trader recognizes in Western banking surveillance today Subscribe so you never miss an episode. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Paul Tarantino is the CEO of Byte Federal, one of the largest Bitcoin ATM networks in the country. Eighteen months ago on this show he told us Bitcoin wins by default. That Bitcoin is the last currency standing. That AI-generated fraud would break the credit-based payment system. He was right on all three. Now legislators across the country are coming for Bitcoin ATMs and framing it as consumer protection. Paul has spent three years building the most comprehensive data-driven defense of this industry anyone has produced. He's here to show you what's actually going on. If you use a Bitcoin ATM — or know someone who does — this is the conversation to send them. We discuss: Why the FCC has collected $6,790 of $208 million in VoIP fraud fines — and why Bitcoin ATMs are being scapegoated The regulatory asymmetry nobody is talking about — 98.8% of ATM transactions are legitimate Why banning Bitcoin ATMs is a wealth transfer from the 24.6 million unbanked Americans who use them The exit door Wall Street is trying to close before you walk through it Subscribe so you never miss an episode. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━

In this episode, we reconnect with Kevin from New Hampshire and Christopher from Ontario as they share unsettling new developments since their previous appearances on the show. Kevin, a lifelong hunter who knows the Ossipee Mountain Range near Lake Winnipesaukee like the back of his hand, describes an overpowering odor that stopped him mid-hunt, followed days later by massive human-shaped tracks stretching across remote bog systems. With decades of experience reading sign in the woods, Kevin walks us through what he found and why it refuses to make sense.We then travel north to Ontario, where Christopher recounts a series of remarkable encounters spanning remote wilderness properties and mineral-rich landscapes. From rocks thrown near camp and intricate forest structures to nighttime chatter along the shoreline and an unexpected roadside sighting near Sunridge, his experiences build layer upon layer. He also shares moments of attempted communication, unusual sky phenomena, and an encounter inside a cabin that left one witness shaken.These updates span rugged New England mountains and the deep forests of Canada, offering firsthand accounts from individuals who continue returning to the same locations year after year. Their stories raise compelling questions about presence, interaction, and what may be unfolding just beyond the edge of the treeline.Join us as we explore these powerful new testimonies and the expanding mystery surrounding Bigfoot in New Hampshire and Ontario.Resources – Hear Their Original AccountsKevin – Episode 868https://youtu.be/sacRnV32KnEChristopher – Episode 708https://youtu.be/_kTzMrSAZ8o

Welcome to New England Legends From the Vault – FtV Episode 148 –   Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger row out to a tiny island called Becky's Garden on Lake Winnipesaukee to explore the fairy tale legend behind this rock and little house. It's the smallest island on the lake, it's been on the map since 1885, and the story behind it sounds all too familiar. This episode first aired February 20, 2020 Listen ad-free plus get early access and bonus episodes at: https://www.patreon.com/NewEnglandLegends 

Send us a textIn this episode, we travel to Meredith, NH to visit an iconic character from my youth. Perhaps, you'll recognize him, too!

Todd Drowlette, a commercial real estate broker with over $2 billion in closed deals, joins to discuss his upcoming A&E show, "The Real Estate Commission," which premieres October 12.  Todd emphasizes that commercial real estate is "a trillion dollar industry hiding in plain sight."  He points out that people interact with commercial real estate every day - when they go to a grocery store, coffee shop, gas station, or office building - without consciously thinking about it.  Commercial real estate loans are about to face a major challenge, with many 5-year loans needing refinancing at much higher interest rates, potentially creating significant market opportunities for investors. Check out the "The Real Estate Commission" show on A&E starting October 12th. Resources: Follow Todd Drowlette on Instagram at @bettertalktoTodd and check out Real Estate Commission Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/569 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:01   Welcome to GRE I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, why is that convenience store, gas station or coffee shop located on that exact corner that it's on? It's strategic, and how does a deal like that really get negotiated? We're discussing this and more with an A and E television and streaming star today on get rich education   Keith Weinhold  0:28   since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads in 188 world nations. He has a list show guests and key top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki, get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com   Speaker 1  1:14   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  1:30   Welcome to GRE from Sudbury, Ontario to Sudbury, Pennsylvania, and across 188 nations worldwide, you're listening to one of America's longest running and most listened to real estate investing shows this is Get Rich Education. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, how did that ever happen? Here I am more slack jaw than a patient in a dentist's chair. But back with you for the 569th consecutive week. Anyway, this is the time of year where many people have just gone back to school. Here at GRE you go forward to school as you learn about what's really going to make a difference and move the financial meter in your future. Now, the world's best known negotiators include Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela today, the former FBI agent Chris Voss is perhaps the world's best known negotiator. You'll recall that we've hosted Chris Voss on the show twice here and talked a good bit about real estate negotiation. Then, I mean, who can forget my mock negotiation with him over a four Plex building, which played out right here on air. It was obvious who won that debate, but Chris is an all around negotiator, not specific to real estate. I thought, wouldn't it be great to get sort of a Chris Voss, but specific to real estate here on the show for you, and that's what we're doing today. So you're really going to enjoy this week's guest. He's also the star of a real estate reality show on the A E Network that's going to make its big, flashy debut next month. Now I had a small negotiation, I suppose, over email with one of my property managers in Florida recently, yeah, I got an email from my manager saying that an air conditioning unit needed to be removed and replaced in one of my single family rental properties there in Florida. Attached was a quote that they obtained from a company for $6,350 and there's conveniently a button for me to hit to approve this charge. But I did not hit the Approve button on that 6350, price. I requested that they provide me with two more quotes. And yes, remember, you pay your property manager often eight to 10% of the monthly rent in management fees they are working for you. So what are they working on to earn that make them go to work and do this for you? All right, for substantial work items, it's a reasonable request for you to seek three quotes. And all right, while they were tracking down the two other quotes, I went to AI. I asked chat GPT, what should the cost be to remove and replace an air conditioner in a 1500 square foot home in Florida? Chat GPT answered, 5500 to $7,500. For a standard three ton system in a 1500 square foot home. All right, so the first number the manager gave me that was sort of right in the middle of that range. A few days later, the second quote came in at 6150, all right, 200 bucks less than. The first one, I replied to them that if the third one doesn't come in substantially lower, that I am going to go seek quotes myself. A couple days later, the third and final quote came in, and it was 4990, yes, so I accepted it. This is about $1,300 less than the first quote that they gave me just for returning a few emails, and it will make the tenant happy to have a new air conditioning system. Newer systems tend to be more efficient, so it's probably going to make the tenant's electricity bill lower as well, and it probably makes it easier for me to justify future rent increases too. That tenant's been there for quite a few years. I'm thinking six years, and today's low home buyer affordability is probably going to keep them renting for a while. And the other thing that could keep them there longer is a new air conditioning system, and that is the biggest rental property expense, or the most I even had to get involved in quite a while, because remember, at GRE marketplace, almost every property there is either brand new or completely renovated. Your cap x expenses should be small for years. Let's meet this week's featured guest.   Keith Weinhold  6:31   Have you ever wondered why that coffee shop is on that corner that they're on, or why your grocery store is located just where it is? And how do those deals get negotiated? That's what you'll see on an upcoming new series on A and E. It starts October 12. It's called The Real Estate Commission. There are no scripts. The show captures real life deals as they unfold, as they crumble and fall apart and maybe come back together again. The star of that show is with us today. He believes he will tell you that he's the most prolific commercial real estate broker in the nation, and he has the experience and the gravitas to back that up, because he brings over two decades as a broker, and he's the managing director at Titan commercial Realty Group in New York. He's closed more than 1700 deals. Yes, 1700 deals totaling over $2 billion across the commercial real estate sectors. He's represented everyone from local startups to national REITs. Hey, welcome to get rich education, Todd Drowlette   Todd Drowlette  7:36   thank you, and that was quite the introduction. I don't think I could pop up myself.   Keith Weinhold  7:40   You've got a full interview is worth the time here to live up to that. Todd, you know, more than 10 years ago, I started living this life where it seems like everything that I say gets recorded and uploaded to the internet, and now you're gone down that same road similar to that. Tell us about your forthcoming reality TV and streaming show that starts next month. What can viewers really expect to see?   Todd Drowlette  8:04   There's over 100 shows on national TV about slipping houses, renovating houses, residential brokers. Ours is the first show ever on television to feature commercial real estate and to be entirely about commercial real estate. So it's a docu series. It's an there's eight episodes in the season. It follows my team at Titan and I doing actual real deals, from helping a divorce attorney search for new office space to investors to selling multi family properties. So viewers will be able to kind of see behind the scenes and see actual documented deals as they happen, fall apart, come back together again. I'm hoping the viewers will take away the fact that, yes, you have to be sophisticated and understand what's going on, but it's something that the average person can be involved in. Commercial real estate is a trillion dollar industry hiding in plain sight. You know, people go to the grocery store, like you said, they go to the coffee shop, they go to the gas station, they go to their office building. People use and interact with commercial real estate every single day. It's just like the air. You're not consciously thinking about it, even though you're using it almost every moment of the day,   Keith Weinhold  9:10   right? It's something that we all need and interact with. It's almost non discretionary, whether we're buying something at a retail store or filling up at a gas station? Yeah, I think to some people, commercial real estate sounds unapproachable. And as you watch this series, you're thinking, Oh, that's the life that that somebody else lives. It's really not that unapproachable. Does this series really help break that down?   Todd Drowlette  9:36   It does, and we made a very conscious decision. So I represent some very large corporations, but the series follows like smaller business and entrepreneurs, and seeing kind of people from the beginning or in different transitions of their business, like I'm growing but you're seeing in real life, actual successful business people. You're seeing them to react to real situations and that kind of moment where there. Like, Man, I think I'm ready to grow and expand. But what if I'm wrong? What if the economy turns Am I doing the right thing? And you're kind of watching us guide them through that process. But you see, you know so much of the internet is reception and people going, Oh, look at this. Look how successful I am. This. You're seeing successful people, and knowing that there's no guarantee in life like the best you're ever going to make is a calculated decision. But there's no point where your life where you're so successful that it just doesn't matter if you lose. Like the deals get larger and the stakes get higher, and every decision you make is potentially a pitfall. So you're going to see real entrepreneurs and real business executives dealing with those decisions of, when do I move? Do I invest? Do I buy? You know, I have this property, I need to get rid of it, and what's that process look like? I love commercial real estate. I can go on, on about it. What I'll be really excited to see is if the everyday person finds commercial real estate interesting,   Keith Weinhold  10:54   doers don't wait for uncertainty to abate, or else they would never get anything done. Doers educate themselves and make strategic moves despite the uncertainty and Todd shortly, I do want to ask you more about negotiation and just how that coffee shop gets that prime corner spot, if you will. But first dropping back a bit more introspective, I know that some have called this the series that launched five new real estate careers already. So how transformative is this? Personally for you to do this show, besides making mom proud, it probably changes how others think of you and how you think of yourself.   Todd Drowlette  11:32   Well, my mom thought I was nuts to national television, but she's proud, but thinks I'm crazy and she's probably not wrong. How this whole thing came about was we had a show also called The Real Estate Commission, that was on Facebook watch that we averaged about 1.3 million views per episode. The premise of that show that was also called The Real Estate Commission, was, Can four successful real estate brokers take just anyone off the street and turn them into the next 100 million dollar real estate agent. It was two commercial brokers, two residential brokers. When covid happened, I said to Brandon in my office, who's part of the cast of the show, on a I was, you know, looking back now, we know how covid played out, but at the time, it was like they made the announcement, I'm somebody who works 80 hours a week, and I'm looking at potentially, could we be a year with not working and doing nothing. So I'm like, we really need to do something to market. I go, why don't we do a reality show about real estate? And he's like, What in the hell do you know about producing a TV show? I go, well, nothing, but the whole world stopped. There's got to be people. We must know, people in TV who might be sitting at home and might be willing to help produce the show. And he started laughing. He goes, Well, actually, one of my college roommates is high up at Viacom, so we called him, and we put together a whole production team of 50 people in the middle of covid, put out a casting call and filmed the show, and it did really well. And then we kind of went around to the networks and made a deal with a E, but with A and E, I really wanted to show off commercial real estate and kind of show it to the average person and show them, hey, here's this thing that people can participate and be a part of. And it's a super interesting industry because, like, when I was 22 I was the youngest exclusive Starbucks broker in the country. So have you said that coffee shop that ends up in the corner? I was the guy that, you know, Starbucks would run their software and say, you run traffic counts that are available on, you know, state, D, o, t websites. People don't realize when you're driving down the road and you see the rubber thing goes, that's actually either a traffic engineer or the state, and they're seeing how many cars a day, but they're also tracking to the hour on which side of the road. So like, why is McDonald's on the pm side of the road? Or why is Starbucks or Duncan or seven brew coffee? Why are they on the am side of the road? Because they know, looking at the traffic patterns, who's going where. So when we would negotiate a deal like that, they would say, Hey, here's the target markets we want to be in. I was the boots on the ground, so to speak. That says, Okay, let me look up the tax records and let me look up the tax maps. I know they need three quarters of an acre to an acre to fit on. They want to be at a traffic light. We need this many cars per day. Hey, it's great. If we're across the street from a university or a hospital or a major office park or a grocery anchored shopping center. Can we get out in the out parcel? There's a deal structure to it, and then you negotiate the rent and how much tenant improvement dollars, or what contributions the landlord is going to make to the deal. And that's kind of how we identify, you know, locations and negotiate. And as a broker, I get paid a percentage of that overall lease value or a sales transaction,   Keith Weinhold  14:36   well, talking about making decisions in the face of uncertainty. I mean, there it is. Case in point, you put together the architecture of a show like this during the pandemic, during the height of uncertainty. That was a really interesting thing that you said when you talk about how, for example, you probably do want to have a coffee shop located, I would imagine when you're in bound on the right. Side of the road there sort of for am traffic, 100%   Todd Drowlette  15:05   the same reason, like restaurants that are more dinner based business, businesses will be on the pm side the afternoon drive home. Or liquor stores typically like to be on the pm side of the road because people are going home, they pop in and just continue on their way home,   Keith Weinhold  15:20   right? That makes total sense to me. Todd, you do have this great command of real world negotiation tactics, helping to be sure that those prime locations, sort of like we just described, play out and happen from this $2 billion in closed deals, which is a remarkable figure. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with who you work with, who you're negotiating with. Trump was negotiating Manhattan real estate deals, and now that's pretty different, as he's trying to broker a ceasefire agreement among foreign nations. So you've got all these stories, from working with small business owners to multinational brands. So can you tell us about how who you work with changes your approach?   Todd Drowlette  16:04   You have to always know what your goal is, and the more research you know about who you're negotiating with, and the more you understand them, the better you're going to do right. Sometimes winning in negotiation is about winning. Sometimes winning in negotiation is just about not losing so sometimes I have clients that say, Get me that particular piece of real estate. I don't care what it costs me. Just get it under any circumstances. I don't care you have I have other clients like, I represent a clothing chain that's like, similar to a TJ Maxx or Marshalls. They've been around 40 years, called label shopper. They're in secondary and tertiary markets all over the country. They are very inexpensive, and they pay very low rent, and they're opportunistic. So the approach for every single deal is completely different on depending what the person's trying to do, but the tactics always the same. I always try to, as a broker, you're in the middle, so I'm always trying to figure out what are the actual deal breakers and what's motivating this side that side, and then you meet somewhere in the middle. And I try to do deals where nobody feels like you bend them over a barrel, you know, and they have a vendetta for 20 years, because it's a very small world in a very long life. So if you really stick it to somebody to the point where they hate you over it, you don't know what's that deal next week or 20 years from now that you really need and find out that person is the kid of the person you really stuck it to, and now, all of a sudden, that deal you need comes back to haunt you from the deal that you won 20 years ago. So I try to like, let people keep their pride intact, and there's a lot of like for just general negotiations. A lot of people negotiate against themselves without even realizing it. So most people fear silence, and I always say, whoever talks first loses. So if I throw out like a number, like if you were selling me something, and I said, I think my top number is $100,000 I will not speak until the other person speaks, because most people are afraid of silence. And if I throw that number out, I'm gonna go, Oh my God, he's not responding. That number is too low, and I'm instantly gonna go, well, maybe I could pay 120 or maybe I could pay 150 I've seen people do it a million times. So when I'm negotiating against people, whatever they say to me, I never respond until they talk a second time, because I wanna see how much line there is in that run before it gets to the end, and whatever number they stop at, that's where the negotiation starts. And so many people do that. They just negotiate against themselves, unintentionally   Keith Weinhold  18:31   get comfortable with silence. Oh, you just brought up so many good points there. Todd, such an important one in negotiating. You sort of touched on it is that successful negotiation is finding out what the other side wants. I might be willing to pay you full price if you give me my timeline, say you get me to the closing table in 30 days rather than 90. So terms often mean more than price. So can you speak more about how to find out what the other side wants and making sure they actually get it while still getting what you need.   Speaker 2  19:03   It depends on person. I mean, generally, this crazy and dumb of an answer as it sounds, is I just ask anyone who's blooming knows I'm a very direct person. If I won't ask you on Monday morning, how was your weekend, if I don't sincerely care how your weekend was, I'm very much a get to the point type of guy, and I find in negotiating, unless I know the person in advance, or I've done research, that there's somebody who likes to circle the wagons and go around I'm kind of a very direct right to the point kind of person. So I'll say, listen, here's things that are important to my client, what's important to you, and let me see if we can work something out that either we both can mutually agree upon and feel good about or if we can't get a deal done, I always say, I'll take a quick no over a long maybe any day. I find most people will tell you like it kind of throws people off, because most people are slick and sly, and they kind of like circle the wagons. I think people, if they like my personality, they'll find it refreshing, because whatever I say or mean is what really what I say or mean, I'm not hiding anything. So when I say, Listen, I have a client. This is what they want. Can we get this done? You'd be amazed when you're candid with people, how directly candid most people are, because it kind of throws them off, and they don't really have any choice but to be honest   Keith Weinhold  20:17   yeah, how weird this guy actually says what he means. It means what he says. A lot of people really aren't used to that type of approach. You're listening to get rich education. We're talking with the star of the upcoming A E show the real estate commission. Todd Drowlette, more, when we come back, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold    Keith Weinhold  20:35   the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your pre qual and even chat with President Chaley Ridge personally while it's on your mind, start at Ridge lendinggroup.com. That's Ridge lendinggroup.com. You know what's crazy?    Keith Weinhold  21:08   Your bank is getting rich off of you. The average savings account pays less than 1% it's like laughable. Meanwhile, if your money isn't making at least 4% you're losing to inflation. That's why I started putting my own money into the FFI liquidity fund. It's super simple. Your cash can pull in up to 8% returns and it compounds. It's not some high risk gamble like digital or AI stock trading. It's pretty low risk because they've got a 10 plus year track record of paying investors on time in full every time. I mean, I wouldn't be talking about it if I wasn't invested myself. You can invest as little as 25k and you keep earning until you decide you want your money back. No weird lockups or anything like that. So if you're like me and tired of your liquid funds, just sitting there doing nothing. Check it out. Text family. 266, 866, to learn about freedom family investments, liquidity fund again. Text family to 66 866,   Robert Helms  22:16   Hi everybody. It's Robert Ellens with the real estate guys radio program. So glad you found Keith Weinhold and get rich education. Don't play your Daydream.   Keith Weinhold  22:35   Welcome back to get rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. We're talking with the star of the upcoming A and E show, Todd Drowlette. He's not shy. He will also tell you that he is the most prolific commercial real estate broker in the entire nation, and it's great to have him here. Todd, I know that through all your dealings, again, 1700 deals, it's put you in between a lot of interesting situations. And it sure isn't always about the numbers. Sometimes it's about the story,   Todd Drowlette  23:06   a very interesting story. So I mentioned earlier that I have a client called label shopper, that's a off price clothing chain. I was doing a deal in Oxford Maine, which is a very small town, and, you know, Central Maine, and I called up this time when fashion bug had gone out of business, and we were taking over closed fashion bugs, and they said, You got to talk to Bob. I didn't know who Bob was. Bob gets on the phone. He was the biggest stone Buster you could ever imagine. I'm negotiating the deal with and talking to him, and I realized the guy kind of just wanted to fight, and he had multiple shopping centers that he wanted us to look at. And I'm like, Bob, we have enough time to get up there. And he's like, Oh no, no. I'll send my helicopter down to millionaire in Albany, New York, and I'll pick you guys up. I'll show you my three shopping centers. I'll have you back in the early afternoon. And the same guy, while he said that was literally arguing over a difference of $5,000 on my commission that I wanted for the deals. And like, I go, I'm like, Bob. So I googled the guy, and then I realized he was a billionaire, and he had founded the NASCAR track in Loudoun, New Hampshire. I said to him, I go, I'm going to say something to him, and I'm not going to speak until he speaks. And I literally go, Bob, give me the difference of the five grand on the fees. I go, stick your helicopter. I go, and I'll drive up. And I literally stared at the clock on my wall for 33 seconds. And then finally, he's like, well, well, all right, I'll give you the money. But if you don't like that, you can go to Plum hell. And I started laughing, and I said, Okay, I go. I'll call you on Monday. So I call him up on Monday. Okay, Bob, we're gonna take the deal. We're gonna we'll drive up. And he's like, No, you sob. He's like, I'm sending the helicopter anyway. It's gonna pick you up tomorrow at 9am we end up flying up to his huge estate in Lake Winnipesaukee. We land in this like, looks like Beverly Hills, manicured garden. This guy walks up to me with his son, gets in the helicopter. After he looks at my client, Peter and I, and goes, which one of you two is Jesse? I go, Jesse, I'm like, I'm Todd, and he's Peter. He goes, No, Jesse, James robbing me blind on the commission. We birthed out laughing, and then we were friends ever since, unfortunately, he died recently, but he was, like, the most fascinating, coolest guy I met him. He was in his mid 70s. He went into his 80s, but he was literally a self made guy that, you know, grew up in Connecticut on a tobacco farm. Parents had no money, you know, never went to college, and just the most fascinating guy he could decide on a deal on the back of a napkin with a pencil he always kept in his pocket. So you never know in the world, like who you meet and who you're going to become friends with, and that's just funny stories of really fascinating, interesting people I met in very unlikely places,   Keith Weinhold  25:51   amazing. You just don't know everyone's story when you first meet them. 100% Todd, a lot of your experience has given you insight on how to help develop some of the best real estate technology in order to make deals more efficient. For example, I know you developed a software platform that's soon launching that competes with costar and LoopNet. So tell us more about what you're doing in the real estate technology space and about trends there.   Speaker 2  26:18   So we have software that's the same name as the show the realestatecommission.com it's kind of a category killer. So very, very low monthly price. People can post properties. They can search commercial properties. There's blogs so you can follow up and learn you know about commercial real estate. You can find traffic counts that we referenced earlier. You can run demographic reports and say, Hey, in this particular block, or from this street over to this river, or in one mile or three miles or five miles, how much money does the average person have? What are median incomes? What race are they? What's their education levels? That's all information that exists in the public domain, but software companies charge a fortune for it, even though it's public information. Just to aggregate it, we've put all the information, and we want the information to be inexpensive and available to the average user. The other interesting thing about what's happening right now is the larger companies are kind of asleep at the wheel, where you can buy your way to the front of search results in Google and Bing, the amount of daily searches that are going to platforms like chatgpt and other AI search engines is astronomical, and you can't buy your way to the front of those search engines right now. So if you're up on your SEO search engine optimization game, it's like resetting the clock 20 years that you have another chance to bite at the apple to get customers and clients potentially directly in front of you to your platforms. So it's a really exciting time and software right now.    Keith Weinhold  27:46   That's interesting how consumers have shifted away from Google and some of the more conventional search engines, where deep pocketed people and companies can buy their way to the top. So tell us more about really the opportunity there, because that's really interesting.   Todd Drowlette  28:01   So essentially, if you understand so search engine optimization, SEO, if people don't know what that is, that's essentially you can do things to optimize your apps or your websites that allows people it's how the Internet finds you, so to speak. So there's basically ways that you can put in code that aren't complicated things, but you can also specifically submit those things to directly to chat, GPT and the other platforms, and then they go through and they index your site, and again, they're looking at it, going well, what's the most relevant so if you look at how people are searching and what the terms are, you can figure out those terms, and then you can make sure you come up at the top of those search results. And like I said, a lot of the bigger companies in different industries, from residential real estate to commercial real other things, those people rely heavily on just buying their way to the top of search results. And you can't do that right now. And I don't remember the last stat I saw was about 30 days ago, and it was something insane, like 180 million searches a day are being done on just chat. GPT, so that is a huge market that people can get their way to the top of, where you're not competing directly with a big boy, so to speak.   Keith Weinhold  29:11   Yeah, this is a way for you to get found for sure. Todd, dealing with commercial real estate, we know that that entire industry has been subject to these interest rate resets, where in the residential one to four fixed mortgage rate world, we really haven't been so I'd love to know from your perspective, and being this broker that does all this negotiating from your unique vantage point, how have higher interest rates changed things   Speaker 2  29:39    I'm often told To never make predictions, because you can be wrong. I'm somebody who's made calculated risks my entire life, and I'm not afraid of being wrong. The commercial real estate industry, I think, is about to have a coming to God moment that I think we're three to nine months away from, and the reason for that is, unlike residential loans that are 20 or 30 year. Or 15 year mortgages that are self amortizing. Commercial loans typically have a 20 or 25 year amortization, but only a five year term, or sometimes you're lucky, a 10 year term. And what happened was, when covid drove interest rates down, I have some clients that had interest rates that were 2.5 2.8% and the problem with that is interest rates are now over six so we're coming up on that five year period where you could have the same tenants, the same income, the same taxes, same expenses, if you have to refinance in the next three to six months, and those rates don't drop by at least a point, there's going to be blood in the streets like you've never seen. It's going to make the financial meltdown in 2008 2009 look like a walk in the park because you have so many loans. That's why Donald Trump, even though he's a president, that guy is, was and will always be a real estate guy. He isn't saying why he's doing it, but the reason he's pushing for the Fed so much to drop the rate is because commercial real estate is going to get murdered if the rates don't drop by at least three quarters of a point to a point in the next three to six months. That's why you're seeing the heavy pressure from Donald Trump to the Fed, because there's a lot of commercial real estate guys that have been playing musical chairs, and there's one chair for every 10 people when the music stops. So anyone listening who's only been in one to four in that unit, if you're sitting on cash, you're going to have the opportunity to buy small strip centers, you know, small office buildings, smaller properties where you can get your feet wet, where banks are going to be giving these things back, just trying to get out from underneath them. I'm willing to be wrong. I can be the guy who said it. If something drastically doesn't change the next three to six months, you're going to have major defaults. Another thing nobody's talking about is, for the last year, home loans and credit card default rates have been sky high through the roof, which means the economy is strong, as people are acting like the economy is. It's kind of like the emperor's new clothes or new robe. The economy is walking stark naked down the street, and everybody's pretending that it's wearing, you know, fine linens. And I think the rubber is about to hit the road if interest rates don't drop very quickly.   Keith Weinhold  32:04   Tell us how bad you think it will get. For example, nationally, we've seen apartment building values fall 25 to 30% or more, and some certainly not all, but some office buildings fall in value 80% tell us more. How bad will it get? Who will it be worst for?   Todd Drowlette  32:25   So the problem with a lot of commercial loans. So a lot of commercial loans, the banks are lending money to borrowers based on the credit of the leases of the tenants. Like when you own a residential portfolio, they're looking at your credit score, your assets and liabilities, deciding, okay, we're lending you the money and we have recourse. We're gonna come after you if this doesn't work out. There are a ton in commercial real estate of non recourse loans, meaning the only thing I'm risking as the owner is this property and my down payment. If this goes bad here bank, here's the key back. You can't come after me. Personally. You can't affect my more. This is non recourse. So as those large office tenants go bad, or the economy goes bad, and all of a sudden their credit ratings, of those things drop, you're going to have banks left holding the bag to the tune of hundreds of billions, if not a trillion dollars. It's going to be bad,   Keith Weinhold  33:15   and who knows if the banks will get bailed out. I don't really know if that's the right formula, if that's the right example to set there where we publicize losses and privatize gains.   Speaker 2  33:28   I mean, they might argue it worked in 2008 2009 but even if that's the case, you still have a lot of people commercial real estate's driven by ego. So before the the actual foreclosures that can take one to two to three years to finalize out with the court systems. You still will have people doing short sales. So there will be a big opportunity for people to make a leap into commercial real estate. And guys ahead of me that you know taught me the business always said you make money in real estate when you buy, not when you sell. Anytime you can buy $1 for 50 cents, you buy that dollar. So if the market drops, and you know, that's a great location of a great property that has a good roof, has good mechanicals, is in a great location. If that thing was trading for $4 million and you can buy it for 1.5 million today, that's when you buy and then you write it back up. And you know, there's guys like me, I negotiate and broker for a living, so I have an advantage that I can go out and get the tenants and find the tenants. But there's guys that do what I do, and women that do what I do, all over the country. So people can start aligning themselves with local commercial real estate experts. And maybe it's the time that they can say, You know what, maybe I'll buy a 10,000 square foot office building and give it a try. Maybe I'll buy a two or three unit strip center that has a nail salon or a beauty salon or things in it that Amazon isn't going to come along and knock out of business.    Keith Weinhold  34:52   What sectors are going to have the best opportunities?   Todd Drowlette  34:55   I'm heavy, heavy, heavy on office so I'm a big proponent of reading books that are out of college. Be right. So I love reading books that were written interviewing the robber barons, you know, the Rockefellers, the carnegies, but were written at the time they were still alive. And there's one thing, when you go back to like the panic of 1893 or 2001 you can go back and look at all these things that happen, and things are based on cycles. And one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is the people who don't panic in times of panic when everything drops and falls apart. They're the people that in the shortest window in a two to three year recovery period where that dollar dropped at 50 cents, and it's just coming back to $1 but they bought it at 50 cents. They're the guys in like every 10 or 15 or 20 years that ride a two or three year upscale when everybody else is panicking, that's when they buy the stocks, that's when they buy the real estate, when it's low, and then they ride it back just to normal. It doesn't have to get better, it just has to go back to sea level. And I think that's about to happen in commercial real estate. And I think office is a great market because it's been getting murdered in the headlines since covid, but in any headline, there's always an opportunity, because that scares a ton of people out and people will fire sale stuff because they think it's bad and there isn't bad real estate, there's bad deals. And if you overpay for something, they're the people who get hurt. If you underpay and buy something in a value, you can make deals other people can't, and you don't take the hits the way other people take the hits. People need to be conservative. So many real estate people are like, Oh, put as little cash into the deal. Borrow as much as you can. Highly leverage, leverage deals, leverage deals. And that's fine when it works, but when it doesn't work. You know, people who could have a $50 million net worth that become broke overnight because they never took the money off the table. To me keep some of that money in, pay down your debt and just increase your cash flow and work off the cash flow. That's always been my strategy. I have friends who make a fortune and they live that high life. I like calculated risks, and to me, I never want the bank to be my boss. I like being the boss's bank, and if you owe them too much money, and especially if people cross collateralize loans and say, this is a great property, but let me borrow against it to buy this property and this property, that can be the domino effect when it goes badly all of a sudden now you put all your assets at risk. I always strongly encourage people to not do that and to keep their loans and to keep their assets separate.   Keith Weinhold  37:18   Yeah, loan terms can certainly be more precarious on the commercial side than the residential side, much of it due to fixed versus variable. History doesn't repeat. It often rhymes, and sometimes in some sectors, you want to be that buyer, when the reaction to you buying is like, are you nuts? What are you doing? Maybe office is at that point. Todd, this has been a great chat about negotiation and industry trends and more. Again, the Real Estate Commission, the show on A E debuts October 12, Todd. Do you have any last thoughts, or maybe a call to action for our audience if they want to learn more about what you're up to?    Speaker 2  37:56   Yeah, if they want to visit the realestatecommission.com my instagram handle is at better talk to Todd and at the real estate commission, and the show begins airing on October 12, on a next day streaming. And I think people, if they have interest in real estate, will find this show fascinating, if not at me at better, talk to Todd and tell me what you think of the show,   Keith Weinhold  38:20   Todd. It's been an engaging chat. Good luck on the TV show. It's been great having you here.   Todd Drowlette  38:25   I would love to come back anytime, and thank you so much for having me. I always appreciate your time. And I love the podcast,   Keith Weinhold  38:31   yeah, and I appreciate that Todd is a GRE fan. It's always great to have celebrity listeners like him, but to me, it's just as special to have you as a listener. What a wide ranging conversation between Todd Drolet and I today. It just shows the breadth of his knowledge. And Drolet is spelled D, R, O, W, l, e, t, t, e. You know, these prominent negotiators, including when we had Chris Voss here, they don't have this disposition of some vicious pit bull. Instead, they come off as reasonable. It doesn't feel hard nosed like using well placed silence that Todd talked about today, he's a pragmatist, and even comes off as likable. See if you can feel that, and video helps here, the video of our chat today might be on our get rich education YouTube channel by now, when you drive around, have you wondered about that? Before? You know that was super interesting about how coffee shops are on the am side of the road, meaning, as you're inbound toward a city center, they'd be on the right side a liquor store on the pm side. You've got to think about how humans interact with real estate. For example, a car wash that's best placed on the. Pm side of the road. I mean, most commuters, they don't leave extra time during their morning commute to get their car washed. They don't want to feel rushed. People are more likely to wash their car after work. So it'll be on the right side outbound, which is the pm side. And let's keep in mind too, that the US and Canada, for better or worse, have car centric cultures. So these things matter here more than they would in, say, the Netherlands, the location of commercial real estate. I mean, it comes down to tax maps and traffic counts and income levels in this AMPM side, and some want to be at a traffic light, you're going to get more traffic if it's already stopped or slowed down, is it across from a university or a hospital or a grocery anchor shopping center that makes it more desirable for a location? So really some interesting demographic and economic considerations there. Todd likes office real estate as return to Office. Policies help somewhat with absorption there. It is not accurate to say that office real estate is dead, perhaps permanently contracted. Is more like it, yes, the scenes from another popular show, the office with Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Those scenes are diminished, but they are going to live on. Speaking of popular shows, check out our friend Todd Drolet in the real estate commission starting October 12 on A E, besides being entertained, it might make a daunting topic like commercial real estate feel somewhat more approachable for you. Big thanks to Todd Drolet. As far as listening to get rich education every week, what you've got to do on most platforms to ensure that you don't miss it is be sure to find the Follow button. Hitting follow will get it delivered until next week, I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.   Speaker 3  42:08   Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC exclusively.   Keith Weinhold  42:31   You know, whenever you want the best written real estate and finance info, oh, geez, today's experience limits your free articles access, and it's got paywalls and pop ups and push notifications and cookies disclaimers, it's not so great. So then it's vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that adds no hype value to your life. That's why this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor, and it's to the point because even the word abbreviation is too long, my letter usually takes less than three minutes to read. And when you start the letter, you also get my one hour fast real estate, video, course, it's all completely free. It's called the Don't quit your Daydream. Letter, it wires your mind for wealth, and it couldn't be easier for you to get it right now. Just text gre 266, 866, while it's on your mind, take a moment to do it right now. Text, gre 266, 866, you    Keith Weinhold  43:47   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, get richeducation.com   

In this conversation, Richard Case and Kathy Rocconi discuss their upcoming summer adventures at Lake Winnipesaukee, touching on the joys of boating and the beauty of the changing seasons. They then transition into a deeper discussion about handling conflict and differences in beliefs, particularly among believers. Richard emphasizes the importance of hearing God's voice and respecting others' beliefs while navigating personal convictions. The conversation highlights the balance between living out one's faith and maintaining harmony within a community, encouraging listeners to avoid putting stumbling blocks in front of others.We want to hear from YOU! If you would like to submit a question or comment for further discussion, please email us at: questions@abideministries.com.

Welcome to New England Legends From the Vault – FtV Episode 122 –  Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger stroll the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in Meredith, New Hampshire, searching for a mysterious stone unearthed back in 1872. This fist-sized, egg-shaped artifact has several images carved on it, including a face, corn, and other geometric shapes. It appears to be Native American in origin, but matches nothing seen by tribes local to this region. This rock raises so many questions that some have speculated it could be a Thunderstone–a rock forged in the sky by some deity and then dropped to the earth. The mystery stone has perplexed archaeologists ever since it was discovered. This episode first aired August 26, 2021   Listen ad-free plus get early access and bonus episodes at: https://www.patreon.com/NewEnglandLegends 

Final Road Show of the season live from Lake Winnipesaukee! // Scheim's officially out on the Sox unless they make a splash @ the deadline // Wiggy changes Coco's mind about Damian Lillard coming to the Celtics //

Final Road Show of the season live from Lake Winnipesaukee! // Scheim's officially out on the Sox unless they make a splash @ the deadline // Wiggy changes Coco's mind about Damian Lillard coming to the Celtics // Wiggy holds out playoff hope for the Sox IF they add at the deadline // They Said It: Washburn thinks the Celtics should get Lillard for '26-27 // Ken traverses the treacherous lake water to facilitate guest leads // The News With Courtney: Coco is fired up about the Kohberger case // Coco dies on her "they are bringing back dinosaurs" hill // Ken summons his inner Aquaman and gets fans for Fact or Fraudulent // Sam Kennedy talks trade deadline approach on the Front Office Report // Hill Notes takes on the corporate lawyers and Jackson's road show ban // We lost Wiggy as he fell in love with lake life! Happy 4th New Hampshire!!! //

The News With Courtney: Coco is fired up about the Kohberger case // Coco dies on her "they are bringing back dinosaurs" hill // Ken summons his inner Aquaman and gets fans for Fact or Fraudulent //

Scoops Coco says secret dinosaurs are soon to walk among us // Hill Notes takes on Jackson's house issues and road show reversal // See you at the Naswa in NH tonight! //

Temp is down, action is up and we are running as smooth as a power boat on Lake Winnipesaukee!

Another blazing day but camp doesn't meet a beat, especially on beautiful Lake Winnipesaukee!

Gov Healy breaks her silence on the Karen Read verdict // Greg shows his age when he says What's App is only for criminals // Wiggy won't parasail but will absolutely jet ski at Lake Winnipesaukee //

First full day at Camp Winaukee on beautiful Lake Winnipesaukee!

I have known Skip Vaccarello for more than 12 years. When we first met both Skip and I lived in Northern California. Neither of us seem to remember the event at which we met, but we both discovered that we were people of faith. Over the years we lost touch until early January 2025 when I received a bulk email from Skip and reached out to see if we could get him to come on Unstoppable Mindset. He accepted and today's episode is the result.   Skip has over 40 years of experience leading Silicon Valley high tech companies. One of his first efforts was leading VisiCorp, the creator of the industry's first pc-based spreadsheet VisiCalc. What? You never heard of VisiCalc? Look it up. VisiCalc was one of those products that revolutionized so many endeavors.   In addition to leading and working with many Silicon Valley ventures Skip is a man of faith with a deep belief in Christianity. We talk about Skip's fait journey and why he believes faith makes a big difference in the lives of so many people especially in the high-tech world of Silicon Valley.   We talk a bit about Skip's retirement years and what he would advise anyone when they ask him about retirement. His answer may well surprise you, but his response is spot on and quite thought provoking.   I believe you will find Skip's insights fascinating and well worth the listen.       About the Guest:   Skip offers podcasts on faith and business topics at SkipVaccarello.com, and is a Partner with 1Flourish Capital, a venture firm investing in technology-based start-up companies led by entrepreneurs of character who understand that corporate culture is vital to success. He is also the author of Finding God in Silicon Valley:  Spiritual Journeys in a High-Tech World. From 2005 through 2021, Skip led  Connect Silicon Valley, a non-profit organization offering speaking events featuring high-profile leaders encouraging conversations about faith and life. In addition, he has served on corporate and non-profit boards and speaks at various organizations on leadership and organizational health.   Skip has over 40 years of experience in leadership positions for Silicon Valley technology companies, including VisiCorp, the provider of VisiCalc, the industry's first spreadsheet. In addition, he served as President and CEO of Applied Weather Technology, a global company providing software and services to the maritime industry. His other experience includes CEO of Communications Solutions, Inc., a communications software company; division general manager of 3Com, a networking product and solutions company; and co-founder and CEO of The Saratoga Group, an Internet-based training company. In addition, Skip has served as an executive coach, a merger and acquisition consultant, and for three years, taught a course on Principled Leadership and Ethics as an Adjunct Professor in the MBA program at William Jessup University.   He earned an A.B. with honors in economics from Harvard College and an MBA with honors from the Boston University School of Management. Skip has been married for over 44 years and has two daughters and six grandchildren. Skip and his wife reside in Bristol, NH and have a home in Chapel Hill, NC. Ways to connect Skip:   Website, Skip Vaccarello -- https://skipvaccarello.com/ Podcasts -- https://skipvaccarello.com/podcasts/ Podcasts on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@skipvaccarello Podcasts on Apple:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-do-you-want-to-become/id1737471615 LinkedIn -- https://www.linkedin.com/in/skip-vaccarello-50114/ Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/skipvaccarello Book (Amazon) -- https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Silicon-Valley-Spiritual-Journeys-High-Tech/dp/0996371923/ref=sr_1_1?crid=CYTLPJWTA4EA&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.XlOGN69ci4cxDNHGjoi-JuD6ISwr4bFCY65xSabhw59got9YrjbPWyBlSgWLjuFi6IlTA5ZOM3PI6YIg7LMkVFA3-yicQ-VXc1rBHHgDi3xyo7FeIiH80ZEm9FOEUglAwOtKx3OhnXkJc3uSq4YGINJzgGTpHsoyAA1-awAGK0-BdSo8l8c9KgO7rkwwqftSaRDi9H2bQjMrgMvEHYQcjq7cHTZn0cthcSjrexplqk4.IyefTEA2Au7cl-nPpjb6_CBqiRn5kgQnZ-eUCT4qJWE&dib_tag=se&keywords=finding+god+in+silicon+valley&qid=1737478219&sprefix=finding+God+in+sil%2Caps%2C104&sr=8-1   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Today is a fun day for me, because I get to talk with a gentleman who I met many years ago. His name is Skip, Vaccarello and Skip and I we were just trying to remember where we met. It was at some event in San Francisco, and I am now not remembering what it was, but anyway, we met and got to know each other pretty well, and we've talked over the years about faith in God and a variety of things like that. Skip wrote a book entitled finding God in Silicon Valley. We'll have to talk about that. Skip, because Ray Kurzweil keeps talking about the fact that at some point the singularity is going to hit and we're going to marry computer chips in people's brains. I'm not convinced about that. I'm not sure, but Skip, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here. Well,   Skip Vaccarello ** 02:16 Michael, it's such a pleasure to be with you, and I'm glad that we were able to make the acquaintance again after many years. Thank you. Thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 02:24 And now you're not in California anymore. You're back in New Hampshire.   Skip Vaccarello ** 02:28 No. Oh, well, I split my time between New Hampshire and North Carolina. Yeah, yeah. So I'm in North Carolina now. We were in I lived in Silicon Valley for 42 years, I think, is what it was, and but we moved grandchildren left, or my daughters and grandchildren left, one to the state of Washington and one to North Carolina. So we decided to go to go to North Carolina. So we live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and and a lake in New Hampshire. What lake? It's called newfound lake. It's close to Lake Winnipesaukee. It's less lesser known than some of those. Yeah, we've had a house there for many years, and love it.   Michael Hingson ** 03:06 I spent time in and around Lake wind and Pesach. That was a lot of fun.   Skip Vaccarello ** 03:10 Oh, yeah, yeah, the lakes are just beautiful, crystal clear water and and it's a real, real nice area. I had   Michael Hingson ** 03:17 a friend who had a summer home on an island out in the middle of Lake Winnipesaukee. And I remember that when we first went there, you had to go out to the to the home by boat. And it was so nice, because at night time there was absolutely no sound. It was so quiet. I loved it. Yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 03:35 yeah. In the sky was you probably could see all the stars in the sky too. I would imagine,   Michael Hingson ** 03:39 oh yeah, I'm sure, yeah.   Skip Vaccarello ** 03:43 But beautiful, beautiful place, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 03:46 I'd love to get back there. At some point, we'll have to do that and and go visit it. Well, tell us, tell us a little bit about the early skip, growing up and all that sort of stuff, if you would, sure.   Skip Vaccarello ** 03:57 Well, I grew up in the in the Boston area. You probably, people will probably detect a little bit of my Boston accents, a little bit. So I grew up there. I grew up, grew up just outside of Boston. And where did you grow up? I grew up in Waltham. Was the time in Waltham, okay, grew up in Waltham, and I went to school there. I went to undergraduate school at Harvard and graduate school at Boston University and, and you love, love the area. So that's, anyway, that's where I grew up. I was, we have family of there are four of us. I was the first boy, and pretty involved in sports and, you know, as a reasonable student. But enjoy the area. And it's, it's nice, you know, coming back when I have the chance, you know, going to New Hampshire, I still enjoy the city of Boston. It's a wonderful   Michael Hingson ** 04:42 city. Do you ever go by and visit the Harvard coop?   Skip Vaccarello ** 04:47 Oh yeah, oh yeah. And especially if I'm at a reunion, I'll go there and pick up some paraphernalia, that's for sure.   Michael Hingson ** 04:57 Well, I there was another place in. Are there that I like to go to, because I collect old records, cheapo records, and so I went there to got a lot of vinyl records and and things like that. I'm not sure if it's still around or not. I heard somewhere it wasn't, but then somebody else said it was still around.   Skip Vaccarello ** 05:13 Interesting. Your vinyl records? I mean, there are collectors item now,   Michael Hingson ** 05:16 oh yeah, well, I have a whole bunch here. So they're, they're fun.   Skip Vaccarello ** 05:23 Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I remember collecting some as a kid, but if you have some, you're probably worth a lot of money. Michael,   Michael Hingson ** 05:30 I do. I even have a few. I bought duplicates of and they're still sealed. So they're probably worth, they probably are. They're definitely worth something, absolutely well, so you went to Harvard and all that. And then what did you do?   Skip Vaccarello ** 05:44 Well for my career? Yeah, I went, I went to Harvard. I was there in the in the late 60s and early 70s. And your listeners may recall from history that was a time of real turmoil. Oh, yeah, yeah. The war in Vietnam was going on. 1968 was sort of a pivotal year that there was a war in Vietnam. There were racial riots in the city. There was the rise of feminism. You know, drugs were rampant on the college campuses, so I went to school in the midst of that, and I'll have to say it really was not a fun time to be in school, although I made good friends, and we've maintained the friendship for for quite a long time, but, but anyway, so I was there, and when I graduated, I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And it was, it was interesting, because there had been a study done of my class at Harvard, and many people, you know, didn't know what to do. Some immediately went on to medical school or law school or something. But then there were a group of us that were, you know, just kind of wandering around and did various things. But anyway, I finally got my my first job. Well, one thing I should say is that I always felt an inclination for business, but business and capitalism at that time was, was kind of on the outs. It was bad words, bad word, bad word. But I kind of I enjoyed business anyway, I took a job. My first job was in a nonprofit organization helping mentally handicapped adults, and I was doing the sort of the business activities. And so I was doing what I want and doing something that I felt was socially useful. And I ended up staying in that that area for around seven years one of them was with a sort of a bigger organization. I ended up being the Assistant Executive Director. Then I was asked to start one, and I refer to her as my very first startup. We had taken over an old school building and renovated it and and began a program for these for the mentally handicapped people. It was a lot of fun to do that. So I did that. And then what happened is we would get contract work to help employ people. And one of the pieces of work we got was from a software companies. This was in 1978 1979 and personal computers were just cut out then. I mean, there are games and nothing much very useful. But anyway, we got a little job to package some games. And some of your listeners may not, may not remember this. Michael, you probably do. But software then on personal computers came on audio cassettes. Hard to believe you'd have to load this cassette into the computer and run it so that. So we, we had the job of kind of packaging these with the manual. And the night is I got to know the founder of the company and one of the founders of the company. He showed something that was in the works, which was a spreadsheet that eventually became known as VisiCalc, the very first spreadsheet in the industry. And then he asked me to join him and the other co founder, who was from the Toronto area, and we moved to Silicon Valley. And during that time I was I was really ready to make a change. Wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I was fascinated with personal computers. So went to Silicon Valley, and it was an amazing place. During the whole personal computer revolution, small industry, traveled around the country, you know, giving out, you know, demonstrating what a spreadsheet could do. And people were fascinated with that we had, I remember one day we had this sort of nerdy kid came into the office. It was Bill Gates. We had about five employees, and the whole industry was really small then, so it's fun to be part of that. And then for from there is sort of the what happens in in Silicon Valley and technology business, visit Corp was a really hot commodity, and then competition came in. They made some mistakes. They bought a company that specialized in network and communications, and I went over as the as the CEO and president of that we eventually spun it out as visit Corp eventually went out of business, but this little company we had, and we were successful and grew it, and in fact, sold that three different times, and, you know, continue to grow the company. And then I left that to have what I'd call my second startup, and this was to do computer based training to try to teach people. Of technical subjects on a computer, and that ended up morphing into one of the first e learning companies. So we did that, and that was that was a lot of fun, eventually sold that I did a little bit of executive coaching and mentoring. And one of the CEOs that I was mentoring asked me to join his organization, which was called applied weather technology. And I should say, I knew, in most cases, I really knew very little about the domain that I was going into, but I think pretty good business sense. So in this case, the company had software and services for the maritime industry, so we would help captains have the safest, most fuel efficient route to take around the world. So it was, it was really an interesting business. So I did that. I said I'd do it for a year. We ended up doing it for four years, and it was exciting and fun to be part of that. And they had a chance to travel around the world. We had offices around the world. So enjoyed that experience. And then then I left and to write the book that you mentioned finding God in Silicon Valley and and so anyway, that's what I ended up leaving that eventually got involved to help start a venture capital firm, a faith based venture capital firm called one flourish capital. So anyway, so that's a little bit of the background. There's a lot more I could talk about that, but that but that kind of gives your audience a little bit of an overview. I hadn't   Michael Hingson ** 11:26 thought about it for a while, but you mentioned the software back in 1979 80 and so on, all being put on audio cassettes. I remember the original Kurzweil Reading Machine for the blind used a Data General Nova three, so a small micro computer, well, kind of more like a mini computer, but it had a cassette recorder in the front of it, and every time you turn the reading machine on, you had to run the cassette to reload the Software, because there was no disk storage or anything available yet, right? And, okay, continue. I'm just saying so it was, it was kind of fun. It didn't take too long, and it and it really did work. I think once or twice there was some sort of a load error, and you had to start it over again. But really that didn't happen very often. It was, it was pretty good. Yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 12:22 it was really interesting. I just threw one sort of funny story we had. Remember, we had a product that was returned to us and we couldn't figure out what was wrong. I forget what it was. Was probably one of the games we had, the best selling game, which was called micro chest anyway, decided to just put it into a an audio player. So he put the cassette in, and what we heard was a sermon by, I think it was a Baptist preacher, and so, and it was labeled, I think it was labeled micro chess. So anyway, the duplicator had, had messed it up. And so this, this pastor probably got our little beeps and beeps instead of his instead of his sermon. So it was kind of it was kind of   Michael Hingson ** 13:07 comical. I remember once I took one of the program cassettes and put it in my cassette recorder because I was really curious to to hear what it sounded like. And I had heard military teletypes and so on in the past. And when I heard this, I went, Ah, those teletypes are really slow compared to the code speed on these cassettes. But it was, it was a lot of fun,   Skip Vaccarello ** 13:31 yeah. Well, it's fun for me to be involved in all the changes. Their changes was so rapid in Silicon Valley. So I really appreciated my opportunity to be involved in all of that for the 40 some odd years that I was,   Michael Hingson ** 13:46 well, yeah, and, and it, and it certainly was rewarding. You were pretty successful at it, and it all worked really, really worked out well. And so, you know, can't complain about that. What, what got you into the whole idea of doing more faith based things? Was that going back to childhood? Or how did all that come? Yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 14:10 I'll give you maybe a little bit of my my faith and story. So I grew up in a Christian home. We were I was raised as a Catholic, and as I said, when I went to college, though, there was all sorts of turmoil, and many of us rejected all sorts of things, including in faith. So it became and I can't say that I rejected it, but it just didn't. Wasn't very meaningful to me. I didn't think about it, I didn't pray, I didn't read the Bible. But if you were to ask me, I would have called myself a Christian, but certainly wasn't, wasn't practicing any of that. And then I when I was, I'm, this is maybe so that was that went on for about 15 years, or then I remember there was, we had, then children, a couple of children. And I remember I was in a business trip. I was in Paris, and I called home and I asked. My wife, Jackie, I said, Well, what did you do for the weekend? And she said, Well, I went to church. I said, You did what? That wasn't even in our conversation, and I was just so surprised that that's what she did. She said, Yeah, and she found it really helpful. And so anyway, when I came back, I followed her along and went to church. And I also found the messages really, meaningful. And anyway, I started to go, and then I decided this, I have to figure out if this stuff is really true or not. So I spent a fair amount of time, you know, listening to the sermons, but also looking at the evidence for Christian faith. And I became convinced that that Jesus is who He says He is. And so that at that point, I committed my, you know, my life to Him, and it became the most important thing in my life. And really, God, put two things on my heart once I made that and this was mid 80s by 1985 1986 two things on my heart. One was to do the best job I could, to try to live out my faith in business. And the second thing was to help people know who Jesus is. I was convinced that was this sort of the key to life, and so I enjoyed getting involved in in one on one conversations. And anyway, that ended up leading to starting with a group of people, what we eventually called the Silicon Valley prayer breakfast, and now it's called Connect Silicon Valley, feeling that, especially in Silicon Valley, you know, people may not go to go to a church. They may for a variety of reasons, you know, not want to even consider faith. But if there were a speaking event in which there was some celebrity, especially celebrities from the computer industry talking about their business, but also about their faith that might attract people. So that was the sort of the premise with which we started the Silicon Valley prayer breakfast, specifically for people who not were not necessarily your faith, but maybe curious about it. So we had series of great, great speakers. And it grew from, I think our first event was about 150 people, and in the last event, which I and then I the pandemic came, and we had about 1000 people at the at the last event. So it really grew. In fact, the people at there was one, it was at the Santa Clara Convention Center. They said it was the biggest event that they had at that time of the morning would start the event at 730 in the morning. So anyway, that's that was really helpful. And we and we just did that help open up conversations about faith and and it was, is, I think it was pretty successful doing that. So anyway, that was a little bit of of my background. And maybe one thing I didn't say, but I had this sense, you know, as I grew up, my family, we didn't have very much money, and but as I began to achieve some success and some financial success, I realized that it seemed like there was something missing in my life, and and later on, I learned, and I didn't know this at the time, Blaise Pascal called that a God shaped vacuum, or void that's in each one of us, and most people try to fill it with success or money or whatever else. But as Pascal says, and I agree, the only thing that can adequately fill that void is God. And I didn't know it, but that was ended up being, being true for me. I felt that there was that there was something missing, and life wasn't all about, you know, success and finances and and anyway, I'm glad that I took that journey. I'm glad for the people that helped me along in that journey to become a follower of Jesus. I   Michael Hingson ** 18:39 hear you. I know for me, I've, I've always had, I think, a pretty strong faith. My father and I talked a lot about God and religion and so on as I was growing up, and he read things to me, so I was, was pretty used to the whole concept right from the outset and and one of the things that I learned along the way, and I think it fits in fits into what you just said, is, as you said, people try to fill that, that void with so many different things. And the thing we never do is we never listen. And the thing that frustrates me most about prayer is that people are so busy praying to God about what they want that they forget God already knows. The issue is, are we really willing and and are we? Are we ready to take the time to listen, to get the answers?   Skip Vaccarello ** 19:38 And that is such a good point. Michael, I absolutely no, that's the issue. Go ahead. No, as I say, I agree with you that, you know that a lot of us and I do this time to time, I just pray, okay, that's it, but taking the time to then listen, and then, if you really are aware of it, you know, you'll see various things along the way where God is is communicating. Creating with you, either through other people and things that your opportunities, you're presented with, and so on. So it's that whole idea, I think in the Bible, it talks about praying continually, and in my own myself, I kind of have an ongoing, just a dialog in my head. Well, God, what do I do in this situation or or thank him for something I see, or whatever, but, but, yeah, that whole idea of just being aware and listening is a very important one. Yes, very good point. Thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 20:29 Well, and one of the things that we talked a lot about as I was growing up was the fact that, yes, we believe in God, we believe in Jesus and so on. But there are other religions that really, when you analyze them, come essentially to the same place. They're peaceful, they're loving. And unfortunately, we have all too many people who say there's only one religion that works, and that just isn't so either. Well, I I think that there, there there are issues, but the fact is that there are a lot of people who believe in God, and come at it from a different point of view, but still believe in God.   Skip Vaccarello ** 21:10 When I agree, I think that there is there the lot of there's a lot of commonality among all the world religions, and there's a most of them all have a moral code to them. In fact, the Golden Rule, do unto others, as you would have them do unto you, is common to all religions, but at the same time, there are also some real differences. And you know, it's interesting where you know what you said, and many other people say that, that there are many different paths to God. But typically, if you were to ask anyone in any one of those religions, they would say, know that if it's a Muslim, I think that we have the path or Jewish person, right? You know, you know, and so on. And so I would encourage people to, I mean, you may not like this idea, but, you know, I would, I would, I believe that really, I mean, I'm covering this in an upcoming podcast, that that Jesus is, is, is the way. I mean, he's the only, the only one in a in any of these world religions, most, or most world religions, you know, say that, that we have to sort of earn our way. You know, to salvation. Am I a good enough person to earn eternal life? Whereas with Jesus, the other way around, he wants us. He's very, very inclusive and and offers his love and His forgiveness to everyone. And you know, he says, you know, in John 14 six, I am the I Am the Truth or way in the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. So it's a that is an exclusive statement, but it also Christian faith is inclusive anyone who wants to come. It's not, you know, is is ready to come. So we probably don't want to get into that too much. But, no,   Michael Hingson ** 23:01 I don't, not too much. But by the same token, I take it in a little bit different slant. Not I don't I agree with what you said, but I also know that I am goes beyond what we're talking about. God in in Exodus And Moses said, Who do I say? Is Sending me? Says I am, that I am, thou shalt say I am, has sent me to you. And I think we I think a lot of people miss that, and they miss the fact that I am is, is God,   Skip Vaccarello ** 23:33 yeah. However, where is your way? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 23:38 yeah. And I think that that's the thing, and I think that that was what Jesus was saying as well. Because Jesus also said, I am my father. Are One. And all the works that I do, greater works you can do as well. I think we, what we, what we really need to do is to recognize that, in fact, from a mindset standpoint, it's ultimately believing in God. And if you're an atheist, that's fine. Sorry if we're offending you, but that, that's a different story. But I but I do know that that in reality, we all need to recognize that if we listen, if we really work at it. We can be better people than than we probably think we are.   Skip Vaccarello ** 24:24 Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that that is the you know. The point of it is, is, you know, to be, you know, the, you know, the message of Jesus is one of love. I mean, he loves everyone, and we're called, you know, to love everyone. That that means not just fellow Christians, but no matter what faith you're part of, or whatever you know you may have done or do or whatever. Yeah, we're called to love everyone. You think how different the world would be if we all really acted that way?   Michael Hingson ** 24:53 Gee, wouldn't that be something, especially today, right? And it's absolutely, yeah. Yeah, absolutely crazy. So the prayer breakfast and so on, kind of, I assume, ended when the pandemic began. Well,   Skip Vaccarello ** 25:08 it did for a while, yeah, but there is a group that that's that's restarted it, and we, by the way, we changed the name from Silicon Valley prayer breakfast, and a few years ago, we changed to connect Silicon Valley, and we did that because we really wanted to be open to people. It's not an event just for Christians, but for anybody that was interested in in attending. So it is active, and in fact, it's, it's now had a I'm only minimally involved, and they've made me Chairman Emeritus, but, but there's, there's a new group that's running it, and they've had several different events. So it is, is going on, if any of your listeners are in and around Silicon Valley, it's called Connect Silicon Valley, and I'd encourage them to go. I think they have a speaker that we had earlier. It's coming up in March. I think it's promote. Hawk. Promote is a one of the top venture capitalists in the world. He's with Norwest ventures, and I think he's, he's a speaker at an event that's coming up in a few weeks.   Michael Hingson ** 26:10 I may end up being in San Francisco, but not till May. I'll have to find out when they meet and see if there's a way to get down there. Be kind of fun.   26:17 Yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 26:19 But it's, I think faith in and having beliefs as extremely important to do. And one of the things that I always quote when I am giving speeches is something Jimmy Carter once said, which is, we must adjust to changing times while holding to unwavering principles. And I think that all too often we we miss the principles part.   Skip Vaccarello ** 26:45 Yeah, that's right, I agree, Yep, yeah, absolutely.   Michael Hingson ** 26:51 It is something that we need to do. Well, I'm glad that connect Silicon Valley is is still continuing to function. That's really a pretty important thing to do. Well, when did your   Skip Vaccarello ** 27:04 I think it is especially in, you know, in Silicon Valley, which is a pretty secular place, yeah, you know. And I think it's a secular place because, you know, it's, it attracts a lot of people with Type A personalities, people that are feeling very self sufficient. And why do I need, why do I need God? But, but it's been interesting. I really feel that there's a movement of God going on in Silicon Valley, and it has been for a while. And you know, what's kind of motivated us, our vision with Connect Silicon Valley was that if Silicon Valley ever could be known as a place not just of technology and innovation and wealth creation, but a place of God, the world would take notice, and to me, there's lots of evidence that that's beginning to happen.   Michael Hingson ** 27:48 Yeah, well, I think that's true. And sometimes we're not necessarily hearing a loud voice, but the voice is still there, and more and more people are going to get drawn to it, I'm sure.   Skip Vaccarello ** 28:01 Well, I think so. I mean, ultimately, as we said earlier, I think each one of us has a sense of a need for something beyond ourselves, and people might call it a force or a god or whatever else, and, and so I think there is that need and and, and hopefully, I would encourage your listeners, you know, to explore the evidence for faith to, you know, take a risk. And, you know, people might have been turned off by religious people, and I can understand that. But, you know, take look at it. And I would specifically say, Look at what, what Jesus has to say. And take, take the time to look at the evidence, because there's plenty of evidence out there for Christian faith.   Michael Hingson ** 28:41 I participated in a number of programs. It's a Methodist program, but it's ecumenical, called the walk to Emmaus. And have you heard of that? No, I haven't. It's It's actually called a short course in Christianity. It's not intended to convince people what they should believe, but rather it's to develop leadership within the church. Whatever church it doesn't, it doesn't, although it was started by the Methodist. Actually, that's an outgrowth of a Catholic program called crusio, but it's the same thing. And when I was lay director of one of the walks to Emmaus, and we could talk about the history, but walk to Emmaus is basically based on after Jesus was crucified and Rose. That day, there were people walking to a town called Emmaus, and he joined them, and they didn't know who he was, and they talked, and they all went to to Emmaus, and they sat down and they had dinner. And it was a dinner that He revealed Himself to them, and then he disappeared. But the whole idea is, it's a way to bring a little bit more enlightenment to leaders. But one of the things that, as the lay director, I had to do was to give a talk on perseverance and so on. And of course. Thought that has always struck with me, and I think it goes beyond Christianity, Christianity, but Tolstoy once said The biggest problem with Christianity is a lot of people don't practice it. There's truth to that. And what you you know you said earlier that so many people and are not necessarily the best Christians, and there's so much of that we really need to go back to basics and everything that we do.   Skip Vaccarello ** 30:28 Yeah, I think that a lot of people get turned off to faith, or in Christian faith, because they look at the some of the behavior of people who claim to be Christians. And the fact is that every one of us is flawed in some ways, in one way or another. What I like to do is, is look at people who what was their life before they you know, they had Jesus in their life, and what's their life after that? And, and you can often see the difference. But people are we're all. We all make mistakes. We're all imperfect people, and, and, and in faith, the church is not for it's not for perfect people. It's for sinners, people that are imperfect. And that's that's really why, why? You know why Jesus came to us? So to why would you add encourage your listeners to try not to get turned off by some of the behavior of Christians, because some of it is, is certainly not good, but to really look at what Jesus says, and, you know, engage people who who are believers, and I think they admit that what's what's right and what's at fault and so on, the basic principles are the basic principles,   Michael Hingson ** 31:35 and they hold no matter where you come from and what you do. And it's important to really deal with that. Although I'm with Mark Twain, I wonder if God had written man because he was disappointed in the monkeys, but that's another story   31:49 I had heard that crook.   Michael Hingson ** 31:52 So, so you wrote the book finding God in Silicon Valley. When did you write that?   Skip Vaccarello ** 31:56 It was, it was published in 2015   Michael Hingson ** 32:00 Okay, and   Skip Vaccarello ** 32:02 it's been, yeah, it really was an outgrowth of some of the talks people gave at the Silicon Valley prayer breakfast. And I felt that it really the reason for writing. It was to encourage people to to consider faith, because in the book, they'd read about Silicon Valley leaders who in their faith story, how they came to faith, what they went through. Some, you know, some stories were a little bit like mine, where they found the evidence, but others, you know, went through personal tragedy and found faith that way. And then the stories are also about how they're trying to live out their faith, day to day, and whatever, whatever business they're involved with. So they're a variety of people. There are nonprofit leaders, companies, CEOs, venture capitalists and so on. And you know, it's, I think we all like to hear stories, and that was what was attractive about the Silicon Valley prayer breakfast. I know that sometimes when I'm sitting in church on a Sunday morning, and I may not quite remember what the pastor said, but I usually remember the stories that he tells. And so I think stories are an effective way to communicate things. In fact, I'd call Jesus the Greatest storyteller of all time. He told his stories often in parables. And those are things that we, you know, that we that we remember. So yeah, the the book was I what I enjoyed it. I just enjoyed is I just enjoyed sitting down with people and hearing their stories and interviewing them, and I did the best I could to compile those stories. There were 26 of them in the book, and yeah, it's it's available on on Amazon, so I encourage people to to pick it up and take a look. And you can go through with a person you know, or one story, or, you know, that seemed to attract your attention. So it was a, it was quite a, quite a project to undertake, but I'm glad that I did it. And let me just maybe the I'll tell you the way I got the idea is I went back to a Harvard reunion. This might have been in the mid 1990s and there was, they had a little sometimes at these reunions, they have little groups that get together. And there was one that I was as part of a Christian cohort, and even though I wasn't a Christian in college anyway, as part of this group. And we're all, we're given a book called Finding God at Harvard. And you know, although Harvard was founded as a, you know, as a, as a Christian college, it's certainly not thought of that these days. And so the writer Kelly Monroe, and she's now, her name is Kelly Monroe Kohlberg, had put together stories of Harvard graduates in how they came to faith and what they were doing. So I thought was a great book, and I so that's what planted the idea in my mind. I said, well, people don't think of Harvard as a place of of faith. They certainly don't think of Silicon Valley as that. So I had the idea, and this was in the mid 1990s but as I said, it wasn't published until 2015 because I found it was really difficult for me to work full time and write the book. So after I left my last full time position is when I had the time to write the book.   Michael Hingson ** 34:59 Well. Well, and I assume it's been pretty successful.   Skip Vaccarello ** 35:03 That's beyond, I think. So it's, I mean, I get some, you know, to me, successful is, if people have read it and they say, Yeah, you know, and you know, I'm considering faith. And to me, that's, that's the success of it. So it's, anyway, it was a, it was really quite an experience. And and happy to do it. And I'm still in the process. I'm looking at a couple of other books now, maybe following up with and writing.   Michael Hingson ** 35:30 Writing is fun, as you know, I've written, yeah, now three books, and I haven't figured out what to write next, but I'm sure something is going to come along. I haven't written fiction yet, and I haven't really come up with a a hot idea yet, but we'll see. It's kind of fun to think about,   Skip Vaccarello ** 35:50 sure, absolutely,   Michael Hingson ** 35:52 but, but, you know, we we we do what we can, and we keep moving forward, and that's what it's really about. But it is a lot of fun. And meanwhile, I do get to travel and speak, and I'm working with accessibe and helping to make internet websites more usable and inclusive. That's something that VisiCalc never did, was to make an accessible version of the product. But that's okay. That's okay. It took it took Excel and and other products a while before they became accessible, too. So not a problem. We, we, we all grow, which is what it's really about. But so what? What is your Well, let me ask it this way. So you wrote the book. You've retired and so on. What kind of projects do you have coming up, other than thinking about other books?   Skip Vaccarello ** 36:46 Well, a few things you know that I'm doing right now. As I mentioned, I was part of a startup venture capital coming company called one flourish capital, and I'm still a little bit involved, but not as involved as I was there on a second fund. And I was very involved in the first fund, so I spent a little bit of time with that, but I'm more engaged with things like, I love mentoring. I mentor some students, and mentor some entrepreneurs and and enjoy those those opportunities I've and as I said, I'm putting together a series of podcasts, not as active as you are in it, but I did a series last year, and I titled it, who do you want to become, encouraging people to put together a personal strategic plan. You know, when we're involved in business, is often the company does a strategic plan. Of you know, what's our vision, our mission, our values, our goals and so on. And something that I've practiced for many years is putting together a personal strategic plan. So some of that podcast series is just encouraging people to consider doing that, which again, give a clearer direction for where, where you want your life to go, where God wants your life life to go. So anyway, that was a podcast series, and right now I'm in the midst of of putting together series that I'm calling why I believe, exploring the critical questions about Christian faith. And so I'm going around interviewing experts on, you know, some of the tougher questions you know, you've we talked about one earlier, is Jesus the only way? Other questions, you know, what about what about heaven? How? Another question is, how could a loving God, you know, allow innocent people to suffer? So question, questions like that, that that are often stumbling blocks for people. And I know, question answering, questions like that was very helpful for me in my faith journey. So anyway, I'm in the process of of putting that podcast series, which I expect will be ready in April, and if your listeners are are interested, it'll be on, it's on skip, vacarello.com, so that's where you can find the first podcast series. The last name is V, A, C, C, A, R, E, L, L, O. So anyway, it's there. It's also it'll be on Spotify and Apple and YouTube. So anyway, so I'm involved in that, but I should also say that one of the important things that I do is we moved here to be close to her daughter and grandchildren. So I love spending the time, you know, with my grandchildren. And we just traveled out to Spokane, Washington to see the other family and and that's just, that's just so enjoyable. So while I'm actively involved in in doing things like that, I I, you know, love, you know, spending time with the grandchildren, and also I try to stay, you know, physically active. Still play some tennis and golf and pickleball, and, you know, it's so, you know it's and anyway, I'm involved in a lot of different things, and enjoy them. You   Michael Hingson ** 39:53 know, it's interesting. You were talking about the issue of, how could a loving God let any. And suffer. My reaction to that question, and I've heard it a lot, my reaction to that has always been, how could God not it's really an issue of we listen to God, and what did we miss along the way that would have prevented us from suffering, but God gave us free will and free choice.   Skip Vaccarello ** 40:18 That's exactly right. And so that is the crux of the issue. We have free choice. And you know, when some of those choices aren't good ones that we make, and grad doesn't force anything on any of us, and that was probably one of the things he gave us, was that we're free, free to choose, and we can choose bad or we can choose good,   Michael Hingson ** 40:37 yeah. And the question is, it's always the question, do we learn from mistakes that we made? And, you know, I have rejected the concept of failure. I think that failure is such a horrible thing to say. I think that there are things that don't work out. But did we fail that means we can't ever deal with it or do anything about it? Or can we take the time to analyze what didn't work right? And even when we did something and it worked out, could we do it better? That's one of the basic cruxes of live like a guide dog. My latest book, which is all about teaching people how to control fear, and the whole idea is that we don't take nearly enough time at the end of the day, or at some point in the day, to do more introspection and self analysis to understand why whatever happens to us happens to us, and what could we have done to make it have a better outcome, or even a or did we come up with The best outcome possible?   Skip Vaccarello ** 41:41 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I absolutely agree. What did we learn from it? I mean, you would see that time and time again. Some of the most successful people had many failures along the way, and you know, hopefully you're going to learn from that failure, and you're going to try something else, you're going to fail, and you're going to try something else and, and that's, I think that's just what goes on in life   Michael Hingson ** 42:02 well, and that's why I say that it isn't really a failure. It is a mistake, perhaps, right? We didn't intend for it to be a mistake, but, but if it, if it was a mistake, and we acknowledge that, why and what do we do about it? And I think that's one of the important things that so many of us could do a better job of thinking about was, why did this happen? What was I afraid of, or what could I have done differently? And the fact is that if we open our minds to those questions, we'll get the answers, yep, yep, I agree, which is, I think, really important.   Skip Vaccarello ** 42:41 I was listening to, I don't remember the I wish I could remember it, but I was watching something on television the other night, and there was a quote that kind of stuck with me, and it's in the quote we're doing something like this, is it was an encouragement of, I think it was a mother to a son. He said, Don't, don't think of what life has done to you. Think of what life has done for you. What we're talking about is you might have run into some difficulty, some okay, but maybe that's an opportunity to learn from it, and to go on and to do something else and and, you know, I think life, life is like that. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 43:15 you know, people talk to me a lot about the World Trade Center, and don't you have guilt of surviving while other people didn't, right? And and I tell people, no, I don't have any guilt about that, because the fact is, I did survive. Why others did not is is really, in part, possibly an issue of what choices they made. But the bottom line is, it isn't whether I feel guilty or not about surviving because I had no control over the World Trade Center happening. What I do have control over the though is how I deal with it and how I move forward, and that's the choice that I get to make.   Skip Vaccarello ** 43:56 Yeah, very good point,   Michael Hingson ** 43:59 which I think is really important. And someone asked me that just the other day, and then that was in this is the response that I gave, is, the reality is, it's we have no control over a lot of things that that may happen to us, but we do have total control over how we deal with it, no matter what it is, yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 44:19 and you think of it, the, you know, I'm sure, the lives that you've changed, you know, writing about that and talking about that with your speaking appearances, and it was such a tragedy that, you know, the 1000s of what was 1700 or 18, I don't remember the number, the number of people that died in that, and they're all 200 Yeah, 3200. Was all the people that were affected by it. You know, on the other hand, I mean stories like yours came out of that, and you've been an encouragement to many, many other people so that you know, you've, you know, taken advantage of that opportunity, and you've affected the lives of many, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 44:56 tell me more about what you're doing today with mentoring students and so on. More. How do you do that? Or how do they find you? How does that all work?   Skip Vaccarello ** 45:03 Well, I one of the things is I mentioned earlier that there's a whole bunch of things that have gone on in Silicon Valley where I where I really feel that that God is at work. And there was a guy that I got to know that I actually mentored him a little bit, and he founded an organization called scholars of finance. And it started in a and it's not a quote a Christian base, but it's a, it's sort of an ethics based organization. And his idea was to to go to college campuses and encourage people who were in finance, accounting, finance of some sort or another, to look at the ethical side of business. So he put together this thing called scholars of finance, and then they were started on maybe a couple of universities in the Bay Area. I think they now want maybe 70 campuses around the US and and he's so I've had the opportunity to speak at a number of those campuses, some in person, most of them virtually. And the idea is that they have people like me that come and speak and try to, you know, we tell stories, encourage people about, maybe the ethical issues that we ran across and, and how you can kind of navigate some of those issues and, and, and part of that whole program is, if you want to put yourself up to mentoring, you know you can have the opportunity to mentor some students. So I have, and I've had the opportunity, and I have the opportunity to mentor some students and and I really, I really love it. And what are the differences I find? I think that, you know, sometimes there are negative things that people say about college students these days, but one of the things that I find encouraging is that they're really open to to mentoring, to getting advice from an from an older generation. I remember when I was in school was what was the mantra that you don't trust anyone over 30, you know they don't know what they're talking about, but, but I find students these days are really looking for that for that advice and guidance and and so I enjoy when I have those opportunities to speak to people. And I would say also that a lot of these students are incredibly motivated and driven. And it's, it's just, it's interesting to see. It was, I think it was even different than than when I was in when I was in college. But anyway, that's that's kind of a fun thing to do. And then I also have entrepreneurs, people that either find me or, you know, that may be a company that we've invested in, that have an opportunity to help those, those entrepreneurs, with their business plans. And one of the, one of the areas I like to focus on is helping them develop the right culture. I think, to have a successful business, you have a successful business is you need a culture, you know, a positive culture that's encouraging to people. So, you know, I do that. I try to encourage them to start out and build the right culture. You know, in your organization, doesn't mean that business will succeed, you know, but that's one of the things I like to to help entrepreneurs consider as they're building a business. So it's not just about the product. Certainly, you need a product, and you need to market that product, and often you need technology to make a success. But ultimately, it's the people in that organization and how you deal with them, and how you deal with your customers, and how you deal with your vendors and so on that can can help make or break a business. So anyway, those are the the mentoring opportunities that I have, and as I say and do, enjoy   Michael Hingson ** 48:31 them. What are some of the typical questions that students ask that you find to be sort of common among a lot of students?   Skip Vaccarello ** 48:40 Well, they'll, they'll, you know, they'll sometimes ask me about, you know, ethical situations that I've come across. Often, they'll ask, since I've been involved in the in the venture capital business, is, you know, what is it? What is, what does a venture capitalist look like? You know, how can I get, get get funded? And that, that's sort of an ongoing topic of of conversation, and it's in that environment, you know, it certainly changes a lot over time, but that's a that's a common, a common side of it. You know, occasionally there'll be discussions on technology, and I'm not, even though I've been involved in Silicon Valley for a long time, not a technologist, and they're real, usually, typically very far advanced in that, in that side of things. But, you know, get questions on, you know, what's a go to market strategy? How do I, if I have this product, what do I, what do I do with it? And often, you know, just, you know, I get presented a business plan, what do you think about this, and you know, where can I make changes? And sometimes, you know, often they're very well done, but sometimes there might be some, some blind spots, things that they don't, that they don't see. And interestingly enough, and this is not, you know, something that that I push for, but some of the students then they, you know, they pick me up. Ask because they they've seen my bio, and I've had a number of students who were weren't brought up with any faith background, that asked me about faith and what was my story, and in what should I do to consider faith? So I, you know, I find that very interesting, and I'm very happy to answer any questions that they may have. So that's that's enjoyable when those opportunities come.   Michael Hingson ** 50:22 Yeah, it's kind of cool to be able to enter into those discussions and just talk a little bit about faith and what what they're looking for, and what you're looking for and so on. And getting a chance to in a in a non confrontive way, help people understand the value of faith, whatever that may end up being for them, I think is important to do, yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 50:50 and often, you know, I end up, well, I, well, I, you know, I'll offer things if they ask. But I usually what I like to do is just ask lots of questions to them. And I think it's very helpful, you know, where are they coming from? What are they considered? What are their experiences been? You know, especially if it's in the, in the faith environment. And I think it really helps open up conversations, when, when, when you end up not just being there as the, you know, as the advisor that knows everything, because certainly I don't, but it's very helpful, I think, as a method, as a mentor, is to ask lots of questions.   Michael Hingson ** 51:29 I love to have question time when I speak, because I find every so often I'll get a new question. It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but every so often, something new comes along and and or people ask questions in a different way. And what I really love about it is it helps me learn, because it makes me think, and I think that's as important as anything else. And as I tell people when I'm talking about speaking or doing these podcasts, if I'm not learning at least as much as anyone else on the podcast, or when I'm speaking, I'm not doing my job, right, right? Yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 52:05 I agree with you. Yeah. I think I learned more. You know, occasionally I'm asked to give a sermon at a church or a speak at a at a public place, and I think that I learned when you're I think I learned more than anything else when I'm when I'm gonna have to prepare for these, these opportunities, isn't it fun? Oh, it is. It certainly is.   Michael Hingson ** 52:26 Well, so you've been retired for a while. What kind of advice would you give to somebody who may be thinking about retiring?   Skip Vaccarello ** 52:34 Good question, you know, and it's funny sometimes people ask me that question, and I think that, well, I'm retired from making money, but I'm still pretty busy doing things. And that would be my encouragement to people, is to, you know, don't, don't just think you're going to go sit on a beach or or whatever else. I mean, I think that that can get boring pretty quickly. But, you know, and if I would say, continue to do what you're doing if you love it, you know. But consider what your maybe your spouse has to say, your children or grandchildren have to say, and and, you know, make sure you spend, spend time with with them. But my encouragement would be just is to keep busy, find activities. If it's in your case, or my case, has been doing some writing or podcasts, or, you know, whatever it is that you're passionate about, just just you have an opportunity now to do it, but also to take time for relationships. And one thing I didn't mention that is one thing I encouraged students to think about, it's really a question of life. Is life is about relationships. And you know, you want to hopefully along the way, people haven't sacrificed relationships. So you see that sometimes in business, where they sacrifice, you know, their family or other relationships for success in business. But you know, when you're retired is a time to eat, to deepen those those relationships, to really spend some time, you know, with with other people, so and and, as I say, to do things that you love. The other thing I'd say is, is to keep moving. You might I had a chance to visit my mom about a few weeks ago. She's in she's in Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, and she's 103 103 and a half. And three and a half and and people ask her, What's your key to longevity? And she says, Just keep moving. And although she's not physically as active, she tries to get up and keep moving. And she's also one that's and always keeps alert. She volunteered she's not, she hasn't, doesn't have the capacity to do that now, but up till about 9998 she was, she had volunteer activities going on. So, you know, stay engaged, keep keep moving, keep doing things and and anyway, that's my encouragement. Don't, you know, don't just think that it's going to be, you know, time at the beach, or certainly not time in front of the. Television, you know, keep moving, if you can, and keep keep mentally stimulated.   Michael Hingson ** 55:06 That's the real key. Is mental stimulation, I think is extremely important. Just I think retirement is, is overrated in terms of what it really or what people think it is. And I think mental stimulation is is an important thing. And when you're stopped working at a job full time, because it's time to not do that anymore, you should have more time to be able to develop the relationships stimulate your brain, keep your brain thinking, and maybe go off and look at doing things in a different direction. That always is a great challenge. Absolutely,   Skip Vaccarello ** 55:40 yeah, absolutely. It's a, it's a very, it's a neat time of life now. I mean, I enjoyed the time that I had while I was working, but, you know, when you retire, you have a little bit more freedom you had before. So, you know, but use it wisely. It's really true with anything we all, we all are given, you know, resources of various sorts, and time is one of the most valuable resources that we have. And you know, we're, you know, invested. Invest it wisely. Because, you know, life is life is short, and as I get older, realize how short life is, so invest that time wisely and and invest in relationships, as I say, is probably the most important   Michael Hingson ** 56:24 thing. Yeah, I think that's extremely crucial, and makes a lot of sense. And you'll meet people and find things that you never knew before, and you continue to learn, which is what it's all about. Yep, absolutely. Well, I want to thank you for spending an hour with us today, and in doing this, we'll have to do it again, and I think it'll be a lot of fun, but I really enjoy you being here and appreciate you taking the time   Skip Vaccarello ** 56:48 Well, Michael, thank you so much. I've enjoyed it. It's fun for us to to reappoint, yeah, yeah. And it's a it's a great conversation, and hopefully listeners will get some benefit from it, but I've enjoyed the time that I've that I've spent with you today again. Thanks. Thank you so much for having me.   Michael Hingson ** 57:06 Well, I hope all of you have enjoyed listening and watching us, and that you'll give us a five star rating wherever you're watching or hearing the podcast. We really appreciate five star ratings a lot. And just your thoughts. So if you have any thoughts about today's episode, please email me. I'm easy to reach. It's Michael H I M, I C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S i b, e.com, and if you want to subscribe to the podcast, do it wherever you're listening, or you can always go to Michael hingson, M, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, o n.com/podcast, and I, and I hope you'll do that, but also skip for you and all, all people out there who are encountering our episode today, if you know of someone, including yourself, who might want to be or you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, I'd love you to reach out to me. We're always looking for more people to have on and talk about various things, and like I said, for me, in part, I get to learn what we do that. So we really appreciate you finding other guests for us. So don't ever hesitate to reach out and let us know if people we ought to interact with. But again, skip. I just want to thank you for being here. This has been a lot of fun, and we really appreciate your time.   Skip Vaccarello ** 58:24 Michael, thank you again. Enjoy the rest of the day. Appreciate it.   Michael Hingson ** 58:32 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

https://slasrpodcast.com/      SLASRPodcast@gmail.com   Welcome to episode 192 of the sounds like a search and rescue podcast, this week I'm joined by cohost Andy Vilaine, who when he is not co-hosting here or out hiking is the TrainMaster at the Cog Railway. Andy will be giving us a detailed trip report of his recent solo winter hike to Mount Katahdin - we will break down everything you need to know about hiking in Baxter State park. Plus an update on Stomp, when will Ice Out on Lake Winnipesaukee be declared?, a hiking based film is coming to Lincoln this summer and they are putting a call out for actors, A recent rescue on one of Stomp's favorite mountains,  Mount Cardigan, news about weather apps, a serial killer in New England, Notable hikes and some national search and rescue stories.  This weeks Higher Summit Forecast SLASR 48 Peaks Alzheimers team - Join here!    About The Cog Cog Railway Website   Topics Welcome Andy Some Cog updates, spring schedule, getting ready for summer Cog helping out on rescues A longer update on Stomp and the future direction of SLASR (all good news) - Starts around the 22:30 mark Cannibalism on Boon Island, Maine White Mountains Visitors Center in N. Woodstock Appalachian Trail reroute - Great Gulf Ice Out On Winnipesaukee Hiking Movie is being filmed in Lincoln, NH this summer Rescue on Mount Cardigan UK SAR Data - Young People needing rescues are exploding Mountain Forecast is moving to a pay model, plus some reminders on better weather resources for the WMNF Drinks, SLASR 48 Peaks Team, Dad Jokes, Coffee, Recent Hikes, Notable Hikes  Andy's Solo Winter Hike on Mount Katahdin - info on hiking Baxter State Park Show Notes Apple Podcast link for 5 star reviews SLASR Merchandise SLASR LinkTree SLASR's BUYMEACOFFEE cannibalism on Boon Island, Maine White Mountains Visitors Center, N Woodstock. Exit 32 on Rt. 93  AT Reroute Announcement Ice Out is predicted to be April 19th for the lakes region. Movie filming in Lincoln, NH  Indigogo Page - synopsis Rescue on Mount Cardigan  Social media and map apps blamed for record rise in mountain rescue callouts https://archive.is/WdqtX  Mountain Forecast - moving to a pay model - Section Hiker weather guide  TrailsNH Forecast - Kimball Rexford (Ep. 154)  A New England Serial Killer?  Baxter State Park - Rules and Permits   Sponsors, Friends  and Partners Wild Raven Endurance Coaching CS Instant Coffee 2024 Longest Day - 48 Peaks Mount Washington Higher Summits Forecast Hiking Buddies  Vaucluse - Sweat less. Explore more. – Vaucluse Gear Fieldstone Kombucha

As a kid Chris Wolf went to Camp Lawrence on Lake Winnipesaukee, Stacy's first camp experience is as an adult on Lake Osoyoos. Chris sees himself as a hero whereas Stacy prefers to be the more interesting sidekick. Chris' spirit animal is a wolf, Stacy's is TBD. What they do have in common is a love to talk, creative thinking, and an appreciation of what a big impact small steps make. His approach to life, business, and education hinges on service and sustainability Tune in to hear them drop knowledge and maybe even a mic. To learn more or connect with Chris go to https://wolfandwolf.biz/. To learn more or connect with Stacy go to www.stacyconnects.com

From going to Lake Winnipesaukee to going to Salem, callers were up to plenty of things during the long weekend?

From going to Lake Winnipesaukee to going to Salem, callers were up to plenty of things during the long weekend?

Miss New Hampshire Volunteer Eliza Fisher made a return visit to the show on Wednesday. Eliza will be participating in the Miss Volunteer America Pageant next month in Tennessee. A sendoff fundraiser for Eliza will be held this Sunday on the MS Mount Washington on Lake Winnipesaukee at 1 PM. For ticket information go to eventbrite.com and search NH Volunteer Cruise Send-Off.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 15. It dropped for free subscribers on April 22. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoTom Day, President and General Manager of Gunstock, New HampshireRecorded onMarch 14, 2024About GunstockClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Belknap County, New HampshireLocated in: Gilford, New HampshireYear founded: 1937Pass affiliations: Unlimited access on New Hampshire College Pass (with Cannon, Cranmore, and Waterville Valley)Closest neighboring ski areas: Abenaki (:34), Red Hill Ski Club (:35), Veterans Memorial (:43), Tenney (:52), Campton (:52), Ragged (:54), Proctor (:56), Powderhouse Hill (:58), McIntyre (1:00)Base elevation: 904 feetSummit elevation: 2,244 feetVertical drop: 1,340 feetSkiable Acres: 227 Average annual snowfall: 120 inchesTrail count: 49 (2% double black, 31% black, 52% blue, 15% green)Lift count: 8 (1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 3 carpets - view Lift Blog's inventory of Gunstock's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himIn the roughly four-and-a-half years since I launched The Storm, I've written a lot more about some ski areas than others. I won't claim that there's no personal bias involved, because there are certain ski areas that, due to reputation, convenience, geography, or personal nostalgia, I'm drawn to. But Gunstock is not one of those ski areas. I was only vaguely aware of its existence when I launched this whole project. I'd been drawn, all of my East Coast life, to the larger ski areas in the state's north and next door in Vermont and Maine. Gunstock, awkwardly located from my New York City base, was one of those places that maybe I'd get to someday, even if I wasn't trying too hard to actually make that happen.And yet, I've written more about Gunstock than just about any ski area in the country. That's because, despite my affinity for certain ski areas, I try to follow the news around. And wow has there been news at this mid-sized New Hampshire bump. Nobody knew, going into the summer of 2022, that Gunstock would become the most talked-about ski area in America, until the lid blew off Mount Winnipesaukee in July of that year, when a shallow and ill-planned insurrection failed spectacularly at drawing the ski area into our idiotic and exhausting political wars.If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read more on the whole surreal episode in the Podcast Notes section below, or just listen to the podcast. But because of that weird summer, and because of an aspirational masterplan launched in 2021, I've given Gunstock outsized attention in this newsletter. And in the process, I've quite come to like the place, both as a ski area (where I've now actually skied), and as a community, and it has become, however improbably, a mountain I keep taking The Storm back to.What we talked aboutRetirement; “my theory is that 10 percent of people that come to a ski area can be a little bit of a problem”; Gunstock as a business in 2019 versus Gunstock today; skier visits surge; cash in the bank; the publicly owned ski area that is not publicly subsidized; Gunstock Nice; the last four years at Gunstock sure were an Asskicker, eh?; how the Gunstock Area Commission works and what went sideways in the summer of 2022; All-Summers Disease; preventing a GAC Meltdown repeat; the time bandits keep coming; should Gunstock be leased to a private operator?; qualities that the next general manager of Gunstock will need to run the place successfully; honesty, integrity, and respect; an updated look at the 2021 masterplan and what actually makes sense to build; could Gunstock ever have a hotel or summit lodge?; why a paved parking lot is a big deal in 2024; Maine skiing in the 1960s; 1970s lift lines; reflecting on the changes over 40-plus years of skiing; rear-wheel-drive Buicks as ski commuter car; competing against Epic and Ikon and why independent ski areas will always have a place in the market; will record skier-visit numbers persist?; a surprising stat about season passes; and how a payphone caused mass confusion in Park City.  Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewOn January 19, Gunstock Marketing Director Bonnie MacPherson (long of Okemo and Bretton Woods), shot me a press release announcing that Day would retire at the conclusion of the 2023-24 ski season.It was a little surprising. Day hadn't been at Gunstock long. He'd arrived just a couple months before the March 2020 Covid shutdowns, almost four years to the day before he announced retirement. He was widely liked and respected on the mountain and in the community, a sentiment reinforced during the attempted Kook Coup of summer 2022, when a pair of fundamentalist nutjobs got flung out of the county via catapult after attempting to seize Gunstock from Day and his team.But Gunstock was a bit of a passion project for Day, a skiing semi-lifer who'd spent three decades at Waterville Valley before fiddling with high-end odd-jobs of the consultancy and project-management sort for 10 years. In four years, he transformed county-owned Gunstock from a seasonal business that tapped bridge loans to survive each summer into a profitable year-round entertainment center with millions in the bank. And he did it all despite Covid, despite the arrival of vending-machine Epic and Ikon passes, despite a couple of imbeciles who'd never worked at a ski area thinking they could do a better job running a ski area than the person they paid $175,000 per year to run the ski area.  I still don't really get it. How it all worked out. How Gunstock has gotten better as everything about running a ski area has gotten harder and more expensive and more competitive. There's nothing really special about the place statistically or terrain-wise. It's not super snowy or extra tall or especially big. It has exactly one high-speed lift, a really nice lodge, and Awe Dag views of Lake Winnipesaukee. It's nice but not exceptional, just another good mid-sized ski area in a state full of good mid-sized ski areas.  And yet, Gunstock thrives. Day, like most ski area general managers, is allergic to credit, but I have to think he had a lot to do with the mountain's late resilience. He's an interesting guy, thoughtful and worldly and adventurous. Talking to him, I always get the sense that this is a person who's comfortable with who he is, content with his life, a hardcore skier whose interests extend far beyond it. He's colorful but also plainspoken, an optimist and a pragmatist, a bit of back-office executive and good ole' boy wrencher melded into your archetype of a ski area manager. Someone who, disposition baked by experience, is perfectly suited to the absurd task of operating a ski area in New Hampshire. It's too bad he's leaving, but I guess eventually we all do. The least I could do was get his story one more time before he bounced.Why you should ski GunstockSkiing Knife Fight, New Hampshire Edition, looks like this:That's 30 ski areas, the fifth-most of any state, in the fifth-smallest state in America. And oh by the way you're also right next door to all of this:And Vermont is barely bigger than New Hampshire. Together, the two states are approximately one-fifth the size of Colorado. “Fierce” as the kids (probably don't) say.So, what makes you choose Gunstock as your snowsportskiing destination when you have 56 other choices in a two-state region, plus another half-dozen large ski areas just east in Maine? Especially when you probably own an Indy, Epic, or Ikon pass, which, combined, deliver access to 28 upper New England ski areas, including most of the best ones?Maybe that's exactly why. We've been collectively enchanted by access, obsessed with driving down per-visit cost to beat inflated day-ticket prices that we simultaneously find absurd and delight in outsmarting. But boot up at any New England ski area with chairlifts, and you're going to find a capable operation. No one survived this long in this dogfight without crafting an experience worth skiing.It's telling that Gunstock has only gotten busier since the Epic and Ikon passes smashed into New England a half dozen years ago. There's something there, an extra thing worth pursuing. You don't have to give up your SuperUltimoWinterSki Pass to make Gunstock part of your winter, but maybe work it in there anyway?Podcast NotesOn Gunstock's masterplanGunstock's ambitious masterplan, rolled out in 2021, would have blown the ski area out on all sides, added a bunch of new lifts, and plopped a hotel and summit lodge on the property:Most of it seems improbable now, as Day details in the podcast.On the GAC conflictSomeone could write a book on the Gunstock Shenanigans of 2022. The best I can give you is a series of article I published as the whole ridiculous saga was unfolding:* Band of Nitwits Highjacks Gunstock, Ski Area's Future Uncertain - July 24, 2022* Walkouts, Resignations, Wild Accusations: A Timeline of Gunstock's Implosion - July 31, 2022* Gunstock GM Tom Day & Team Return, Commissioner Ousted – 3 Ways to Protect the Mountain's Future - Aug. 8, 2022If nothing else, just watch this remarkable video of Day and his senior staff resigning en masse:On the Caledonian Canal that “splits Scotland in half”I'd never heard of the Caledonian Canal, but Day mentions sailing it and that it “splits Scotland in half.” That's the sort of thing I go nuts for, so I looked it up. Per Wikipedia:The Caledonian Canal connects the Scottish east coast at Inverness with the west coast at Corpach near Fort William in Scotland. The canal was constructed in the early nineteenth century by Scottish engineer Thomas Telford.The canal runs some 60 miles (100 kilometres) from northeast to southwest and reaches 106 feet (32 metres) above sea level.[2] Only one third of the entire length is man-made, the rest being formed by Loch Dochfour, Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy.[3] These lochs are located in the Great Glen, on a geological fault in the Earth's crust. There are 29 locks (including eight at Neptune's Staircase, Banavie), four aqueducts and 10 bridges in the course of the canal.Here's its general location:More detail:On Day's first appearance on the podcastThis was Day's second appearance on the podcast. The first was way back in episode 34, recorded in January 2021:On Hurricane Mountain, MaineDay mentions skiing a long-gone ropetow bump named Hurricane Mountain, Maine as a child. While I couldn't find any trailmaps, New England Lost Ski Areas Project houses a nice history from the founder's daughter:I am Charlene Manchester now Barton. My Dad started Hurricane Ski Slope with Al Ervin. I was in the second grade, I remember, when I used to go skiing there with him. He and Al did almost everything--cranked the rope tow motor up to get it going, directed traffic, and were the ski patrol. As was noted in your report, accommodations were across road at the Norton farm where we could go to use the rest room or get a cup of hot chocolate and a hamburger. Summers I would go with him and Al to the hill and play while they cleared brush and tried to improve the hill, even opened one small trail to the right of the main slope. I was in the 5th grade when I tore a ligament in my knee skiing there. Naturally, the ski patrol quickly appeared and my Dad carried me down the slope in his arms. I was in contact with Glenn Parkinson  who came to interview my mother , who at 96 is a very good source of information although actually, she was not much of a skier. The time I am referring to must have been around 1945 because I clearly recall discussing skiing with my second grade teacher Miss Booth, who skied at Hurricane. This was at DW Lunt School in Falmouth where I grew up. I was in the 5th grade when I hurt my leg.My Dad, Charles Manchester , was one of the first skiers in the State, beginning on barrel staves in North Gorham where he grew up. He was a racer and skied the White Mountains . We have a picture of him at Tuckerman's when not many souls ventured up there to ski in the spring. As I understand it, the shortage of gas during WWII was a motivator as he had a passion for the sport, but no gas to get to the mountains in N.H. Two of his best ski buddies were Al Ervin, who started Hurricane with him, and Homer Haywood, who was in the ski troopers during WWII, I think. Another ski pal was Chase Thompson. These guys worked to ski--hiking up Cranmore when the lifts were closed due to the gas shortage caused by WWII. It finally got to be too much for my Dad to run Hurricane, as he was spending more time directing traffic for parking than skiing, which after all was why he and Al started the project.I think my Dad and his ski buddies should be remembered for their love of the sport and their willingness to do whatever it took to ski. Also, they were perfect gentlemen, wonderful manners on the slope, graceful and handsomely dressed, often in neckties. Those were the good old days!The ski area closed around 1973, according to NELSAP, in response to rising insurance rates.On old-school Sunday RiverI've documented the incredible evolution of Sunday River from anthill to Vesuvius many times. But here, to distill the drama of the transformation, is the now-titanic ski area's 1961 trailmap:This 60s-era Sunday River was a foundational playground for Day.On the Epic and Ikon New England timelineIt's easy to lose track of the fact that the Epic and Ikon Passes didn't exist in New England until very recently. A brief timeline:* 2017: Vail Resorts buys Stowe, its first New England property, and adds the mountain to the Epic Pass for the 2017-18 ski season.* 2018: Vail Resorts buys Triple Peaks, owners of Mount Sunapee and Okemo, and adds them to the Epic Pass for the 2018-19 ski season.* 2018: The Ikon Pass debuts with five or seven days at five New England destinations for the 2018-19 ski season: Killington/Pico, Sugarbush, and Boyne-owned Loon, Sunday River, and Sugarloaf. Alterra-owned Stratton is unlimited on the Ikon Pass and offers five days on the Ikon Base Pass.* 2019: Vail buys the 17-mountain Peak Resorts portfolio, which includes four more New England ski areas: Mount Snow in Vermont and Crotched, Wildcat, and Attitash in New Hampshire. All join the Epic Pass for the 2019-20 ski season, bumping the number of New England ski areas on the coalition up to seven.* 2019: Alterra buys Sugarbush. Amps up the mountain's Ikon Pass access to unlimited with blackouts on the Ikon Base and unlimited on the full Ikon for the 2020-21 ski season. Alterra also ramps up Stratton Ikon Base access from five days to unlimited with blackouts for the 2020-21 winter.* 2020: Vail introduces New England-specific Epic Passes. At just $599, the Northeast Value Pass delivers unlimited access to Vail's four New Hampshire mountains, holiday-restricted unlimited access to Mount Snow and Okemo, and 10 non-holiday days at Stowe. Vail also rolls out a midweek version for just $429.* 2021: Vail unexpectedly cuts the price of Epic Passes by 20 percent, reducing the cost of the Northeast Value Pass to just $479 and the midweek version to $359. The Epic Local Pass plummets to $583, and even the full Epic Pass is just $783.All of which is background to our conversation, in which I ask Day a pretty interesting question: how the hell have you grown Gunstock's business amidst this incredibly challenging competitive marketplace?The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 30/100 in 2024, and number 530 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Dinty Child, founding member of Session Americana, the beloved Boston roots music collective, who've accidentally been a band for twenty years, has just released his second solo album, Letting the Lions In. The new songs feature co-writing on all tracks between Dinty and Boston area songwriters like Mark Erelli, Kris Delmhorst and Dave Godowsky. A self-proclaimed slow-writer, the majority of these songs were written on the annual Sub Rosa songwriting retreat Dinty runs on Three Mile Island (no, not that Three Mile Island) on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Owned by the Appalachian Mountain Club, Dinty's family has been working at the island for over 100 years. Dinty currently serves at the off-season manager, putting his musician and carpenter skills to good use hosting songwriter friends at said retreat like Rose Cousins, Rose Polenzani, Rachael Price, Miss Tess and many more, as well as Miles of Music, a summer camp run by Dinty, Kristin Andreassen and Laura Cortese.Letting the Lions In was co-produced by Zachariah Hickman (Josh Ritter, Ray LaMontagne) and recorded at Great North Sound in Parsonsfield Maine over the course of three days in the spring of 2021. Dinty says: "I often trade construction work for studio time there." During our conversation, we dig into why these songs needed to be recorded. Our consensus is that legacy and spreading joy to his community are the top two reasons. Also, Dinty, who says an annoyingly large percentage of his songs start as dreams, talks about what kind of sleeper he is, what's with the lion and his thoughts on drinking thanks to the handful of alcohol songs on the new album. Dinty is a dear friend to the podcast and an important part of the New England musical landscape, we're thrilled to have him on the show!Follow Basic Folk on social media: https://basicfolk.bio.link/ Sign up for Basic Folk's newsletter: https://bit.ly/basicfolknews Help produce Basic Folk by contributing: https://basicfolk.com/donate/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Episode Overview: In this episode, we explore the multifaceted challenges and developments in deer populations and wildlife management across various regions. Topics Covered: TWRA Controversy: Unpacking the allegations against the Tennessee Wildlife and Resources Agency (TWRA) related to Chronic Wasting Disease. Urban Deer Overpopulation: Discussing the deer population challenges in urban areas, spotlighting Washington, DC, and Dartmouth. Hunting Season Updates: Highlighting the introduction of crossbows in Minnesota's archery deer season and Michigan's DNR's emphasis on antlerless deer hunting. Digital Transition in Hunting: Exploring the modern shift to digital kill registrations and its impact on the hunting community. Lake Winnipesaukee's Deer Hunting: A look at the decision to open all islands for deer hunting. Controversial Proposals: Navigating the deer baiting ban debate in Kansas and the legal challenges faced by Mill Creek MetroParks' deer management strategy.

(:00) Zo and Joe start the hour reacting to Craig Carton reporting that the Patriots put in an offer for Aaron Rodgers and Rodgers said he would retire before playing in New England… Even with Rodgers the Jets are still the Jets… the guys discuss tipping  (12:54) Big Joe picks Zo's brain about his career and how he thought Zo was going to be the guy…Milliken reminisces on his time as a DoorDash driver… Zo and Joe are very concerned about bears  (23:58) The guys move back to Pats talk and Breers comments that Trent Brown would already be gone if the Pats didn't have a depth issue. (35:52) Big Joes This Or That for today Cape Cod or Lake Winnipesaukee

Sitting on Route 2 or the Mass Pike in traffic is no one's idea of a good time. There's a new study underway to take a closer look at how Massachusetts could be connected by rail along the Northern Tier, between North Adams and Boston. State Senator Paul Mark joins Nichole to talk about why it's critical to beef up infrastructure in western Massachusetts, what constituents have to say about it, and what the rail system would have to offer those who want a different way to explore. PLUS: After two years of plunging virtually, it's time to get chilly in person to support Special Olympics NH! The Winni Dip and Penguin Plunge are back in-person this year on the shores of Hampton Beach and Lake Winnipesaukee. Mark Ericson has all the details if you want to take part to help a great cause.

Steve McCaughey is joined by Peter Christie, Slade Rosamond, and Carter Clay to discuss their lessons and experiences learned flying with Steve on a 5,000 mile seaplane cross country. The Super Cub's first stretch was flown by Slade from home base in Winter Haven, FL to 19-Mile Bay, NH in support of keeping the Lake Winnipesaukee bay open. After the public hearing in New Hampshire the plane was flown to Brunswick, Maine where the Super Cub sat for two months during Oshkosh. Carter flew the second leg from Maine to Minnesota in support of the Greenville International Seaplane Fly-in and the MSPA Safety Seminar at Maddens Resort in Brainerd, MN. The Super Cub sat again for two months this time at Wipaire's Factory in Minnesota. The last leg was flown with Peter to return the Super Cub back to home base in Winter Haven. Once all was said and done, the Super Cub logged 80 hours and crossed 25 states in this seaplane cross-country adventure.

Bill graduated from Pinkerton Academy in 1994 and continued his education at The University of New Hampshire in Durham, where he graduated with two degrees. With a passion for Real Estate, Bill got Licensed in New Hampshire & Massachusetts, specializing in residential real estate helping buyers and sellers. Boasting a 13-year career with Keller Williams Realty, Bill is an award-winning top agent in NH. Over his career, he was awarded the Double Golden Medallion Award, multiple times from Keller Williams for his stellar performance in sales volume. In 2021 Bill formed the BurkeLord Real Estate Team with partner Jennifer Lord. Bill was born in Chester, NH and has lived in a variety of NH towns including Hooksett, Londonderry, Manchester, and Nashua. He currently resides in his hometown of Chester. Outside of real estate, Bill enjoys spending his summers on Lake Winnipesaukee, skiing in the winter, playing golf when weather permits, and attending Patriots games at Foxboro. Membership Affiliations: Greater Manchester/Nashua Board of Realtors® (GMNBR) New Hampshire Association of Realtors® (NHAR) National Association of Realtors® (NAR) Northern New England Real Estate Network (NNEREN Member) MLS Pin (MA MLS Member) Career Highlights Keller Williams Realty Agent Leadership Council (ALC/Board of Directors) 2016 & 2017 Keller Williams Double Gold Medallion Recipient For Sales Volume & Units Closed Presented with The Keller Williams Emerging Leader Award Member of the Millionaire Club of KW Content: 00:00 - Show Intro 01:01 - Welcome Bill Burke 04:10 - Rebranding 07:24 - Bill before real estate 13:34 - Getting into real estate in 2008 16:48 - Set a schedule 19:11 - Activity produces results 22:00 - Staying ahead with the next thing 25:59 - Young blood in real estate 28:25 - Exposure on TikTok and Youtube 32:59 - Last years challenges in a sellers market 38:34 - Business & life partners 42:11 - New tech 44:00 - What's next for BurkeLord RE? 51:19 - Connect with Bill

It's possible to make great lagers with a single-infusion mash and cylindroconical fermenters—just ask former sportswriter turned brewer Randy Booth. At the taproom-focused Twin Barns (https://www.twinbarnsbrewing.com) brewery, on the shores of vacation destination Lake Winnipesaukee, he's used the quieter winter season for the time and tank space to hone their lager program. The result earlier this year was a blind-review panel score of 99 for the German-style Belknap Pils (https://beerandbrewing.com/review/twin-barn-brewing-company-belknap-pils-1644852559), which earned it a spot on our Best 20 Beers in 2022 (https://beerandbrewing.com/best-20-beers-in-2022/). In this episode, Booth shares his lager brewing process. It's nothing fancy or especially complex, but it focuses instead on coaxing the best from high-quality ingredients. Along the way, he discusses: rebalancing Saaz and Hallertauer in the boil and whirlpool to achieve the right aroma and flavor mashing low for dryness producing clear, high-quality wort through a longer vorlauf step splitting the hop additions between a mid-boil and whirlpool addition tasting, evaluating, and taking notes through the entire lifespan of the beer on draft, from the first kegs to the last differentiating pilsner styles taking beers from good to great working with craft malt telling a compelling story through beer And more. This episode is brought to you by: Accubrew (https://accubrew.io): AccuBrew is a revolutionary fermentation analysis tool unlike anything else on the market, giving brewers unprecedented insight into the fermentation process. AccuBrew helps brewers confirm consistency and avoid problems from batch to batch. From your smart device you can track and compare sugar conversion, temperature, and clarity, and use that information to continuously improve your process. AccuBrew goes beyond a simple measurement tool. With the AccuBrew system, managing your process and people has never been easier.Visit accubrew.io (https://accubrew.io) today, for a no obligation 90 day trial! BSG (https://bsgcraftbrewing.com) BSG invites you to get funky with Fermentis SafBrew™ BR-8, the first dry Brettanomyces bruxellensis culture available to brewers. BR-8 offers the distinctive flavor of Brett brux combined with the shelf stability and consistency of dry yeast. BR-8 delivers fruity notes early on but with aging the bass starts to slap as BR-8 brings the funk. Visit BSGCraftbrewing.com (https://bsgcraftbrewing.com) to learn more. Clarion (https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/trackclk/N510001.2032703CRAFTBEERANDBREWI/B28313912.342967708;dctrkaid=537328070;dctrkcid=177806075;dclat=;dcrdid=;tagforchilddirectedtreatment=;tfua=;ltd=). Balancing barley and hops is your expertise. Food-grade lubricants is ours. Clarion Food Grade Lubricants meet stringent standards of purity and performance for food and beverage processing, food packaging, cosmetic and pharmaceutical applications. All Clarion Lubricants are backed by the Clarion warranty, and we work with you to create an efficient lubrication program that helps protect your operation. To learn more, visit ClarionLubricants.com/foodgrade (https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/trackclk/N510001.2032703CRAFTBEERANDBREWI/B28313912.342967708;dc_trk_aid=537328070;dc_trk_cid=177806075;dc_lat=;dc_rdid=;tag_for_child_directed_treatment=;tfua=;ltd=). Clarion Lubricants. The expert that experts trust.

TR Wood from Epic Seaplane Adventures joins Steve to discuss the recent attempt to ban seaplanes from 19 Mile Bay on Lake Winnipesaukee, the largest lake in New Hampshire. The Seaplane Pilots Association with support from AOPA, RAF, the New Hampshire Pilots Association and Maine Aeronautics Association prevailed against a group of well intended but grossly misinformed residents that had been stirred into a anti-seaplane frenzy. We discuss the concerns, the realities and the outcome of the public hearing and the decision that followed.

On this episode of Bass Cast Radio we catch back up with Va Angler Justin Largen. We discuss the amazing 2022 season as well has his Hobie Win on Lake Winnipesaukee with a two day total length of 183 Inches. Congratulations to Justin on his successful 2022 season & he still has a lot more events left.

Lake Winnipesaukee put on a show over the weekend, in what turned out to be a largemouth vs smallmouth battle for the top two spots. The winner of the event Justin Largen, who is the current Bassmaster AOY leader, along with runner up Matthew Zapala join us LIVE! Kayak Bass Nation is the number one live kayak bass fishing podcast. Jeff and Ryan interview tournament winners, industry leaders, and a wide variety of other guests from around KB Nation! #kayakfishing #bassfishing Presented by: Dugout Bait and Tackle https://www.dugoutfishing.com/   Sponsored by: Revo Sunglasses and Western Son Vodka https://revo.com/ - USE CODE KBN25 to save 25% off your order! https://westernsondistillery.com/   Mondays at 7:30p CT on Facebook and Youtube   Find us on social media as well:   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KayakBassNation Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kayakbassnation/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KayakBassNation/featured   Jeffs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jmalottfishing/  Jeffs YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JeffMalott/   Ryans Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanparkerlambert/ Ryans YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHNMwHO6nRM9fV-mz0tkOcQ

Pastor Andy Davis unfolds an episode of Jesus' life that expands our comprehension of him as the Son of God and alerts us to not underestimate him. - Sermon TRANSCRIPT - Turn in your Bibles to Mark 4:35-41. We continue this incredible study in the Gospel of Mark. There's something deeply unsettling to most of us when it comes to the sea, a primordial fear of its power, and its unpredictability, and its mystery. We cannot see below the surface or beyond the horizon, and we can never know for sure what's coming at us. There is, of course, the simple fear of drowning that can seizes us all. The fact is, we cannot survive for long underwater, and death by drowning is a terrifying way to go. Beyond that is the fear of the weather, a sudden storm that can turn the once placid sea into a raging inferno of power, mighty white-capped breakers coming at us, and wave upon wave, utterly beyond our ability to withstand or subdue. Then there's the irrational terror of creatures of the deep. The summer of 1975, the summer that Jaws came out, I was in Lake Winnipesaukee. I was on an Astroturf-covered floating raft, unwilling to dive into the lake and swim back to shore for fear of a great white shark. Having no idea that that was a saltwater creature, and I was in fresh water, and there was zero chance of being eaten by a shark. That didn't matter, I was terrified. We read the accounts of the sailors that sailed with Columbus, and they were afraid of the terrifying monsters of the deep, of great whales with their immense size, and their powerful tails and their powerful mouths, or even a giant squid with their long undulating tentacles. All of these things are terrors. The sea represents the darkest side of man's terrors, and it can quickly reduce even the most courageous man to a trembling child. That's why this account of Jesus' effortless power over the wind and the waves is so compelling. It asks the fundamental question that's before us, when we read all four of the Gospels, “Who is this man?” The fundamental answer, that's so clear, only Almighty God can control the wind and the waves with the simple word of His command. This story adds more vital information to the quest of our faith, to understand the basic thesis of the Gospel of Mark, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. What does that mean? What does that mean that He's the Son of God? What does that mean for each of us individually, personally? Beyond this, this amazing account gives us a sense of the total control of Jesus over the hardest moments of our lives, and His ability to speak peace to our souls when we need it the most. That's what we're looking at today. "Only Almighty God can control the wind and the waves with the simple word of His command." I. The Setting for the Storm, and Its Sudden Severety Now, we need to set this storm, the setting of the storm and its sudden severity, and the personal setting, Jesus' ongoing, amazing ministry, his overwhelming ministry. Jesus had had a very long day of ministry just like every day. So in Mark 4:1-2, it says, “Jesus began to teach by the sea. The crowd that gathered around Him was so large that He got into a boat and sat in it out on the sea while all the people were along the shore at the water's edge. He taught them many things by parables.” Though Mark 4 doesn't mention any healings or demon possessed people being set free, that was of course the norm, the huge crowd that was there almost certainly were there to be healed as well as taught. So it was that same busy day, it was the end of a very overwhelming, busy day, in verse 35-36, “That day, when evening came, He said to His disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’ Leaving the crowd behind, they took Him along just as He was in the boat. There were also other boats with Him,” so it was absolutely exhausting, long day. The text says that they left the crowd and took Jesus along just as He was. What does that mean? He didn't have the chance to change his clothes or refresh himself in any way, it's just there it is. It's time to go to get into the boat and go across the lake, right on the heels of a very hard day. The boat that they were in seemed to have been powered by wind and sail, not by oar. These boats generally could hold about 15 people. So we would imagine, and the text confirms, a kind of a flotilla of boats, not just one, but a group of boats going across, carrying the twelve apostles and other disciples that were following Jesus. Now, we need to look at the physical setting, which is the Sea of Galilee. Mark 4:1 mentions the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is one of the most fascinating bodies of water in the world. It's a freshwater lake that is, at the lowest altitude of any such lake in the world, approximately 690 feet below sea level. It measures about 13 miles long, 7 miles wide, about 150 feet deep at its deepest point. It's fed partially by underwater springs, but mostly by the Jordan River, which flows north to south from Mount Hermon, which stands 9,200 feet above sea level. It's a marvelous source of fresh water, supplying, even today, much of the nation of Israel with drinking water. Over the centuries, it provided an amazingly, abundant supply of fish. Although fishing is now banned in the Sea of Galilee because the stocks got to a dangerously low level, but even in our lifetime, it still was a source of sardines that were caught there every year. The biggest issues with the Sea of Galilee are the geography and the weather. The lake is in the center of a deep geological rift that cuts a gash in the surface of the Earth, running 4,500 miles long down through Africa, as far south as Mozambique. I myself have been in that rift in the nation of Kenya, I was in the Rift Valley Academy, the same gash. It makes that area vulnerable to earthquakes, seismic activity. The rift causes steep hills and cliffs on each side of the Sea of Galilee, making it effectively sit down in a deep bowl. It is therefore vulnerable to high winds, which can cause staggeringly dramatic storms to rise up. The narrow confines of the lake multiply exponentially the effect of these winds and storms, making the Sea of Galilee, a very dangerous place in a storm. The record shows in March of 1992, one storm in the Sea of Galilee generated a 10-foot wave that overwhelmed and flooded the city of Tiberius. The storm comes up with sudden severity, look at verse 37, “A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped.” The suddenness of the storm is more clear from the Gospel of Matthew, as if the storm just came up out of nowhere, without any warning at all. Matthew 8:24 says, "And behold there are arose a great tempest in the sea.” The Greek word for the storm used here is also used for a hurricane, an overpowering wind of gale force, maybe as high as 80 miles an hour. The word is intensified by the additional Greek word “megale”, a mega storm, a great storm. This is a great hurricane. Matthew 8:24 uses the Greek word “seismos”, from which we get seismic, like a seismic event, an earthquake. Luke 8:24 says the waters were raging, dashing and pummeling the boat. The effect of this hurricane wind and these raging, thrashing waves was that the boat was quickly filling with water. These men, we need to understand are professional fishermen who grew up on the Sea of Galilee. In their professional opinion, their boat was about to go down — it was going down. Those conditions meant certain death for them all. II. Jesus' Perfect Humanity vs. the Disciples'Faithless Terror We see Jesus in this account, Jesus' perfect humanity contrasted with the disciples' faithless terror. Jesus' humanity is on display in that He was physically exhausted and asleep on a cushion, Jesus was fully man and fully God. This is the great mystery of theology, the mystery of the incarnation. His attributes as both fully human and fully God are on full display in this amazing account. First, we see the humanity of Jesus in His physical exhaustion. Verse 38, “Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.” Jesus' physical limitations are part of the mystery. He got tired, just like the rest of us. He got very little rest. The needs of the crowd were relentless, and so also was His compassion on the crowd, relentless. It's fascinating that Mark alone gives us the detail of the cushion, Jesus sleeping on a cushion. You may ask, why did Jesus sleep on a cushion, and I would answer because it's more comfortable. There's no great mystery here. What it shows is that Jesus is no ascetic, seeking out intentionally harsh treatment for his body. If there was a cushion around, He's going to use it and support his head, it's just more comfortable. So He's not an ascetic, but at the same time, He was willing to live a very difficult physical life. He said to one man who wanted to follow Him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head,” [Matthew 8:20], so He was used to a difficult life. But in this particular case, He found a place to lay His head on a cushion. He must have been extremely tired because the wind and the waves, and the boat filling with water don't wake Him. That's Jesus in His humanity. We know that Almighty God needs no rest at all, ever. It says in Psalm 121: 3-4, "He who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." Or again, Isaiah 40:28, it says, "God's power is limitless. The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, he will not grow tired or weary." But Jesus in His humanity did grow tired and did get weary. We also see Jesus' perfect humanity in His complete trust in His heavenly Father. Here, by his sleep in the storm, He is commending a life of faith to each one of us. He was perfectly at rest in His Father's hands. He knew there was literally no chance whatsoever He was going to die by drowning in the Sea of Galilee. Imagine the heavenly newspaper with the headline, "Son of God dies tragically in a boating accident. All of heaven, shocked prophecy's not fulfilled.” You know about piercing hands and feet and things like that, Psalm 22. Impossible. So Jesus thought it was a good chance for a nap. Jesus lived out every moment of His life in complete trust in His Father. Psalm 22, that same Psalm says, "You brought me out of the womb. You made me trust in you even at my mother's breast. From birth, I was cast upon you, from my mother's womb you have been my God." So He knew He could sleep, and God would watch over Him. I love Psalm 4:8 on this very matter, "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, oh Lord, make me dwell in safety." Wouldn't you love to live your life like that? In the midst of the deepest troubles of your life, just be able to go to sleep and know that God is going to take care of you, He's going to protect you. This is what the disciples had to learn to do, to so trust in their heavenly Father, that there's never any cause for mindless, unreasoning terror. So that's Jesus' humanity. "Jesus lived out every moment of His life in complete trust in His Father." We also see Jesus' infinite majesty as the incarnate Son of God. We have a combination, therefore, of normal weakness and infinite power. In one passage, we have Jesus' weakness and His weariness and His fatigue, but we also have Him give the display of, I would say arguably, the most physically powerful thing that any human being has ever done on Planet Earth. We have, by contrast, the disciples' faithless terror. Jesus gives us the plain example of a man completely trusting in His heavenly Father. But by contrast, the disciples are wild with terror, they're out of their minds. They wake him, verse 38, and say to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we perish?" Big picture is that Jesus came into the world because He cared that we were perishing, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” [John 3:16] So He cares. No one has cared more than Jesus. The disciples' faith needs to be strengthened so that they would not ever doubt Jesus' love or power, and they must also trust God's plan. They must lose their fear of dying, and Christ's resurrection will do that for them. Now, the question comes, why did they wake Jesus at all? What were they thinking when they woke Him? They certainly weren't expecting Him to do what He got up and did. They were stunned by it. Maybe they just thought it was good manners, "If we're going down, it'd be good that Jesus were awake when it happens." Or maybe they felt that He had, which He clearly did, a specific “in” with God, and that God would affect some kind of protection for them though they didn't know how. The Old Testament actually speaks much of God's protection in the midst of storms, perhaps the clearest is Psalm 107:23-29 which says, "Others went out on the sea in ships, they were merchants on the mighty waters. They saw the works of the Lord, His wonderful deeds in the deep. For He spoke and stirred up a tempest that lifted high the waves. They mounted up to the heavens, they went down to the depths. In their peril, their courage melted away, they reeled and staggered like drunken men. They were at their wits' end. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble and He brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper, the waves of the sea were hushed.” So God spoke and the storm came, and then God spoke and the storm went away. He brings it, then He ends it. So perhaps they thought, in waking Jesus up, that He would call on His Father and that God would deliver them in the same pattern. I don't know what they were thinking, they certainly didn't expect what was about to happen. Now, as I'm walking through the account, I also want to ask, what did the disciples do wrong? They're professional fishermen who are bred and raised on this very sea. They knew it like the back of their hands. They saw the magnitude of the wind, the size of the waves, the swamping of the boat, they were bailing, they were trying to save their lives. In their expert opinion, they're going down, they're all going to drown. They didn't wake Jesus immediately, but sought to use all of their skills to survive. At the last moment, they went to Jesus and woke Him up, and He rebuked them. So why did He rebuke them? What did they do wrong? We'll get to that at the end of the sermon. Hold on to that thought. III. Jesus’ Stunning Power Over Creation Now, I want to talk about Jesus' stunning power over creation. Now we know the wind is beyond all human control. No one can control the wind. As a matter of fact, scripture says it openly. Ecclesiastes 8:8, "No man has power over the wind to contain it." Or again, John 3:8, "The wind blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it's going." That's the wind. But Jesus, Jesus is the master of all creation. John 1:3, "Through Him, all things were made, and without Him, nothing was made that has been made." And again, Hebrews 1:3, "He is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful Word." He made it and He sustains it, that's Jesus. Again, He has effortless power over the wind and the waves, verse 39, "He got up, rebuked the wind, and said of the waves, 'Peace be still.'" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm, by the Word of the Lord alone. No striving, no effort, just sheer power, absolute authority. The power of the Word of Jesus. Now that's the miracle. It's a simple matter of cause and effect. There's nothing miraculous about a storm ending, all storms end, eventually, thank God. But the circumstances here directly link the end of the storm, the sudden end of the storm with Jesus' Word — cause and effect. It was because He said 'Peace be still' that everything was completely calm. That's the miracle. Note both aspects, the wind and the waves died down instantly. This is a miracle beyond all description. The wind instantly stopped this gale force, hurricane wind stops, a staggering amount of power ,just stopped in its tracks. In the text, there's not even a breeze or a gentle zephyr at the end, nothing, it's done. But for me, being more kind of mechanically engineering minded, the stilling of the waves is even more remarkable. How long would that take? The undulating white-capped waves crashing back and forth instantly leveled. Ordinarily, they would've undulated for hours, but it became as flat as a millpond on a still day, all of that at the Word of Jesus' power. Why the word “rebuke” in Matthew and Luke? Why does He rebuke the wind and the waves? Matthew 8:26, "He got up and rebuked the wind and the waves, and it was completely calm." Luke 8:24, "He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters, the storms subsided and always gone." Why this word “rebuke”? As if the wind and the waves were living beings who were doing something wrong rather than inanimate objects, air molecules or water molecules just doing what physics was telling them to do. There is a sense in which that storm, that devastating hurricane storm is part of this sin-cursed world. It's part of the cursing of nature, that's part of man's sin. And Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth, and He came, we're told in Ephesians 1, as the plan of God for the consummation of the ages to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. So they represent evil and curse, and He came to put it to an end. I think that's why it says “rebuke”. Unruly, wild nature will be subdued, brought into peaceful order in the New Heavens, in the New Earth — more on that at the very end of the sermon. I believe this is the most visually stunning miracle of Jesus' life. No other miracle is as spectacular as this. It's similar to the Red Sea crossing, it's just simply spectacular. Most of Jesus' miracles are quiet, subtle healings, they're not really much to look at. I do not say that the distilling of the storm is His most significant miracle, that's His own resurrection, far more significant than the distilling of the storm. But I'm just saying it was the most spectacular. The healings are just subtle. You think about the paralyzed man. There's nothing spectacular about a paralyzed man getting up off of His pallet and walking home. There's nothing spectacular about a blind man, a man born blind, washing mud off His eyes. Now, it's very significant for those who knew Him, or for those men themselves, it’s very significant, it's just not spectacular. This would've been spectacular, this is entirely different. If you had been there, the sheer spectacle would've taken your breath away. Then Jesus rebuked His disciples. He turns to them and rebukes them. He rebukes their lack of faith. He said to His disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?" I mean, this is the whole point of the miracle, and indeed of all miracles. It's the point of having the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit having Mark write this down. The lesson is that we, the readers, we who hear about this would have faith in Christ, that we would believe in Jesus as the Son of God. That's the reason for the miracle and the account. The rebuke of His disciples' lack of faith is sharp. He never coddled unbelief, He never said, "It's okay to not believe in me." Notice also the clear contrast in this account. We'll see it again with Jairus, and at other times, the clear contrast between faith and fear. Faith and fear often seem to be opposites in the Bible. Faith drives out fear. If there is this kind of fear, it's because there's a lack of faith. "Faith and fear often seem to be opposites in the Bible. Faith drives out fear. If there is this kind of fear, it's because there's a lack of faith." Now, after the rebuke, the disciples have another reaction, and what is it? Fear. But it's even greater now. They seem to be more afraid of Jesus in the boat than they were of the storm outside of the boat, and with good reason. This is the presence of Almighty God, the incarnate God in the boat with you. Look at verse 41, “They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind in the waves obey Him.’” Fear is the constant right reaction to the display of the omnipotent Holy God, to us as sinners, as creatures. For example, Elijah and his contest with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Elijah prayed a simple prayer and fire fell from heaven, and burned up the sacrifice and the alter and everything there. And when the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, "The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God." There's a fear that was filling them at that moment, and so it was with these disciples, fear of the Lord. IV. Two Lasting Questions The text ends with these two lasting questions that just kind of stand over, and they're timeless questions. Jesus, to His disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?" The questioning of Jesus to us and our faith, and then the disciples, to one another, and to the world, "Who is this man? Even the wind and the waves obey Him." So we take those questions and we translate this account into our lives. The point of the Gospel of Mark is to answer the question, “Who is this man?” He is the Son of God, He is your savior. That's who He is, He and no other. Along with that is the constant expansion of our comprehension of what that means. So what does it mean that Jesus is the Son of God? It means this, He can speak to the wind and the waves and they obey Him, that's what it means. He can drive out any demon and they're terrified of Him. He's not afraid of them, they're afraid of Him. There's no disease or sickness He cannot cure instantly with a Word or a touch. He can raise the dead, He can raise you from the dead. That's what it means that Jesus is the Son of God. He can look at you and tell you, based on your faith in Him, your sins are forgiven, and they are. That's who this is, that's who Jesus is. But even more is to apply that faith directly to our lives, and to drive out faithless fears, wherever they may be. Many people readily connect with this account, speaking metaphorically of the storms of our lives. I think that's right actually. All of us have challenges, deeply distressing issues that cause us to writhe and roll and churn like we're being tossed about in a storm. But when we have those storms, we can turn to Christ, the one who stilled the storm to quiet this storm around us, and even more importantly, inside of us. Many songs and hymns capture the sense of Christ's power over the storms of life. I like this one by Casting Crowns, Praise You In This Storm. The lyrics go like this, "I was sure by now, God, you would've reached down and wiped our tears away, stepped in and saved the day. And once again, I say, 'Amen,' and it's still raining. But as the thunder rolls, I barely hear your whisper through the rain, 'I'm with you.' And as your mercy falls, I'll raise my hands and praise the God who gives and takes away. And I'll praise you in this storm. And I will lift my hands, for you are who you are, no matter where I am. And every tear I've cried, you hold in your hand, you never left my side. And though my heart is torn, I will praise you in this storm." Or this one, It Is Well With My Soul. "When peace, like a river, attendeth my way. When sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul." Or one of my favorites, Be Still, My Soul. "Be still, my soul” [second stanza], "Thy God doth undertake to guide the future as He has the past, thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake. All now mysterious shall be bright at last. Be still, my soul, the waves and winds still know His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below." Oh, I could multiply these songs. What kind of storm are you going through? I don't know. Maybe you've been through some, or you're just getting ready for the one that's coming and you don't even know what's coming. I don't have a problem with this storms of life approach at all. In fact, it's normal biblical speech. The Bible often uses metaphors to speak of painful trials we endure, of the saving work that God has for His people. Isaiah 4:6 says this, "That saving work will be a shelter and a shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and a hiding place from the storm and rain." Of the trials we endure in life, the metaphor of passing through water, river, fire, Isaiah 43:1- 2 begins with the simple command, "Fear not. Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have summoned you by name, you are mine. And when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you." This seems to be a lasting image, this storms of life approach. Yes, Jesus' miracle was physical, absolutely. I believe that, the account says it. But His ability to bring a peaceful end to our trials is taught again and again, as well as His ability to give us peace in the middle of the storm. So the lasting lesson of this miracle is to trust Jesus and not give way to fear when you're going through a storm. So what are the storms of life? It's anything that buffets you and causes you pain, anything. Any trial that rocks your world, knocks you around, maybe even threatens your life itself. We think about the three trials we walk through with Job again and again, remember? Loss of possessions, loss of loved ones, loss of health, those three. To expand, it could be for you a chronic illness. And the treatment, it's just not responding to the treatment. It could be the loss of a child through death, it could be the long goodbye of Alzheimer's with a beloved parent or spouse. It could be a wayward, grown child that just will not submit to Christ. Any news that rocks your world and staggers you and brings you to your knees and brings tears to your eyes and causes you to cry out to God, "Why, Oh Lord?" And then all the more, if that news causes a significant change in the way you have to live your life from that point on, it’s permanent, that's a storm. This text tells us Jesus controls that storm. He wisely brings it, decides how long it's going to last and how severe it will be, and then He is able to bring it to an end. He's telling you, in the middle of that storm, He is with you. He's speaking to you in the midst of the storm, just like Job, “and God appearing in a whirlwind and speaking in the midst of the storm” to Job, saying, "I'm right in the middle of whatever storm is buffeting you." When He says, "Peace, be still," He's not first and foremost, speaking to your circumstances, He's speaking first and foremost to your soul. Philippians 4:6 and 7, "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." That's Him saying, "Peace, be still," to your soul. God has the power to bring supernatural peace to your heart in the midst of the worst storms of your life. Now, the question I want to ask you is, how are you displaying faithless fear in your life? Where is the faithless fear? I don't know where that is, you have to answer that yourself. Be honest with yourself, where am I displaying a faithless fear? The whole world just went through this COVID pandemic. I wonder if it's possible that there's some people that have been scarred by the experience, and have developed a faithless fear in the midst of it. I don't know, I'm not judging people, I just am asking for people to judge themselves. Where is there an inappropriate fear of death, or fear of disease, or fear of pain or loss that is gripping your soul? Jesus would say, "Why are you so afraid? Where is your faith?" And if that's not it, there are other places. We're susceptible to faithless fears everywhere. He wants us to use our faith to drive away our fear. Now, let's circle back on this question. How could the disciples have done better? I mean, it’s a little hard on these guys; the boat's filling with water, what did you want them to do? They didn't know what they're talking about. Yes, they did. They knew better than you, that boat's going down. So why does Jesus rebuke them? Should they have waited longer to wake Jesus? Was God pushing them right to the very brink? I mean, they'd done everything they could, the bailing, all of that. I don't know what they did, but no, God wasn't pushing them to the brink. First of all, they should not been afraid that God would let Jesus drown. I mean, that's not going to happen. By extension, he's not going to let His apostles drown either. Beyond that, they should not have been terrified of death at all, but that won't really come until He conquers death with His resurrection. From then on, they would be delivered a fear of death. But this is where I'm going to land on this one. I think they should have woken Jesus earlier. Why do I say that? They tried everything they knew to do, everything in their own strength, and at the last resort, they bring Jesus in. I think that's a bad model for the storm. What do you say? “I’ll do everything I can, and when all else fails, as my last resort, I'm going to bring Jesus in.” Don't do that. Get Him up immediately. "Looking like a storm's brewing, Lord, what do you think?” I think that's what they should have done. We're going to end with Jesus' final and eternal power over creation. This awesome miracle shows Jesus' power over all creation. By that power, He's going to bring in a new heaven and a new earth, and the turbulent world of evil will finally be subdued. I want you to contrast these two statements in Isaiah. Isaiah 17:12, "Oh the raging of many nations, they rage like the raging sea. Oh the uproar of the peoples, they roar like the roaring of great waters," along with Isaiah 57:20-21, "The wicked are like the tossing sea which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud. There is no peace says my God for the wicked." That, with Revelation 4:6, the vision of the throne of God, Almighty God, “Before the throne of God, there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.” A placid sea, there's no hurricanes, no storms in heaven. Jesus, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control will transform the universe and get rid of all storms. You can look forward to that. In the meantime, if He wills to bring you through a storm, He does it because He loves you and because He's wise, and He knows how long to make it last. Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to look at your Word. And we thank you for the power of your Word, and we thank you for your power over every storm. And now, Lord, as we turn to the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, we pray that you would bless us with your presence through the Holy Spirit. Lord, we pray, Lord, that you would minister in this room through this ordinance. We know that there's nothing special about the bread or the juice, but there's something powerful about the combination of these elements, and the Word of God, and the Spirit of God, and the people of God. So be in our midst now, as we observe this ordinance of the Lord's Supper, in Jesus name. Amen.

This week, Shannen and Abby recap their very athletic weekend getaway at Lake Winnipesaukee. The girls give updates on Justin Bieber's scary diagnosis, Post Malones big news, and the BTS hiatus. They also reflect on their trauma after Shannen thought it would be fun to weigh themselves over the weekend. With body image on their mind, they discuss the body positivity movement and whether the pressure to love your body at every stage can become toxic. Enjoy!

Now Luke's having TBTL-a-Thon stress dreams, and he's locked in Kafkaesque a battle with his internet provider. Meanwhile, Andrew shares some fond memories of winters on Lake Winnipesaukee.

Now Luke's having TBTL-a-Thon stress dreams, and he's locked in Kafkaesque a battle with his internet provider. Meanwhile, Andrew shares some fond memories of winters on Lake Winnipesaukee.

Now Luke's having TBTL-a-Thon stress dreams, and he's locked in Kafkaesque a battle with his internet provider. Meanwhile, Andrew shares some fond memories of winters on Lake Winnipesaukee.

In this week's episode of We Love Outdoors with Rich Davenport, your humble host extends a heart congratulations to the Buffalo Bills for a fine season, and to the Cincinnati Bengals who defeated the Chiefs in a bit of overtime karma. While winter is in full swing, its hard to think of our pollinator friends, but DEC has announced they will be adding regulatory oversight to Neonic pesticides to assure these are only used by trained commercial professionals. These insecticides work via attacking the nervous systems, and have terrible consequences for pollinators, and even songbirds. Rules won't take effect until January 1, 2023, to give retailers and makers time to adjust. And while winter activities like snowshoeing, snowmobiling, ice skating and skiing dominate - many small game seasons and opportunities remain available and open in NY through Feb 28, which is a great activity to take your youths and expose them to these other facets of hunting, which do not demand sitting still and making no sound, like big game hunting does. You can even hunt coyote in NY through March 26, so don't just rely upon deer hunting, as small game is really the place where kids learn how to hunt. However, speaking of deer, according to National Deer Association, 2020/ 2021 saw a record in both bucks and total deer harvested across the USA, disspelling the notion that hunting is a dying sport. 2022 has started off like 2021 left off, with yet another fishing record being broken, this time in New Hampshire with a 12 lb 8.53 oz cusk, which is related to the freshwater ling, or burbot, or eelpout. Gilmanton resident Ryan Scott Ashley caught the fish from Lake Winnipesaukee just a couple weeks ago. DEC is reminding folks you still have time to comment on the fishing regulation proposed changes, as comment period runs until Feb 6, 2022. And in Ohio, fisheries personnel discovered the longhead darter, not seen in Ohio since 1939, have been confirmed present in the Ohio River! On the ice fishing front, you can still enter the Chautauqua Lake Ice Derby until Feb 12, 2022. Most lakes and ponds are now covered with safe ice, but Lake Erie is freezing up fast, with now over 80% of the lake being ice covered as reported by NOAA. With the frigid temps coming up, we may be fishing the Big E by next week. Ice progress is well ahead of normal annual progression. Your humble host updates you to the many different upcoming events, including a golf outing planned by NYSCC and the Erie County Federation Awards banquet coming up on March 5, 2022. Day old chick cooperators also have until March 25 to submit applications to become a cooperating pheasant rearer. Finally, on the renewable energy front, the suppression and deceptions of massive support for these schemes is falling like leaves in November, as more people are standing and objecting to these schemes that gobble large amounts of land, forests and farmlands, while delivering very little usable electricity. Even thee deception games are being exposed for the manufactured deceptions that they have truly become. {ush back and stand for sound energy policy and principles, not death in the name of "saving the planet". --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rich-davenport/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rich-davenport/support

Today's episode I share about the clair senses and how uncovering my clair senses I have been able to trust my intuition more. Check out my IG post for the graphic I used to help explain some of the clair senses and see which one you think you have!I do not have it all figured out, I am always learning and uncovering and growing and I am so grateful to be doing it along with you!References in today's episode:Lake Winnipesaukee in New HampshireKelly Rich - Own Your Intuition Podcast or on IG as @kellyrichintuitive https://instagram.com/kellyrichintuitive?utm_medium=copy_linkFree Flow Friday submissions of poetry can be made by emailing: peaceandcalmlife@gmail.comTo follow the Peace and Calm Mom journey head on over to IG: https://www.instagram.com/peace.and.calm.mom/Support the show (https://buymeacoffee.com/peaceandcalmmom)

Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Job 25-27. Bildad asks how someone can be found righteous before God. Jesus' imputed righteousness is the answer. - SERMON TRANSCRIPT - This morning, we'll be looking at Job 25-27, and as we do, we come to a very challenging section of this book for the interpreters, for scholars, for preachers like me. It's a challenging section for a couple of reasons, and therefore, it's good for me to give you just some of the principles, or perhaps even remind you of some of the principles that I use as I approach the book of Job, as I approach all scripture. Really, it's beneficial for me to teach you how to read the book of Job for yourself. So that years later, when you're no longer listening to a sermon series in Job, and you may actually never hear an exegetical sermon series on the book of Job again in your lives; it's actually pretty unusual. And you may not ever hear again, expository sermon on Job 25-27 again. So how can we understand the book of Job? How can we understand this passage? It is with great reverence that we should come to the Scriptures. We should come to it realizing we're reading a document that has stood over and been involved in the lives of God's people for two and a half millennia or more. This book is going to be here long after any of us are dead, and so there's a respect and a reverence that we take to this. And also we're taught in 2 Timothy 3:16 that all Scripture is God breathed. And so we're reading the words of men. We're reading human words, but we are reading the Word of God. So the Holy Spirit is saying something to us as we read these chapters. And that's an awesome thought, isn't it? The idea that we can actually have God speak to us and talk to us, but it's not simple. It's not a simplistic thing. We have to interpret it because it's coming to us through the words of the actors, the players in this drama, through Zophar or Bildad or Eliphaz, through Job. And so we kind of filter what we're reading through them and through what we know about them and try to understand it, but we know that it's God-breathed. And so behind their human words, we have God speaking to us, and we want to try to understand that and to understand what God is doing in our lives. And so in order to do that, I think it's good to go one section before 2 Timothy 3, where we're told what the purpose of all Scripture is, and how Paul said that Timothy “from infancy had known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” So I believe the book of Job is for that purpose. It's able to make all of us wise. It's a wisdom book, but able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ. And not only that, the Scripture is given to equip us. “[So] all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” So I expect to get rebuked and corrected when I read Scripture. And I think that's going to happen for us today, and that rebuking and correcting will bring me, in some amazing way, to Christ. I expect to be brought to Christ by reading Job. And I expect, having been brought to Christ for salvation, for the forgiveness of my sins, I am brought to Christ by the Scripture for equipping and training and preparation so that I might be prepared to do good works. "So that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work," the text says 2 Timothy. So I expect that this book of Job, not only will it aid or point toward the salvation of my soul through faith in Christ, but it's able to equip me and prepare me to do good works for the rest of my life. But it does so in a unique kind of pattern here. It's a book about suffering. It's a book about a man who lived it a long time ago, we don't know when, who was blameless and upright, who was a godly man and who suffered overwhelming afflictions and trials, in his life; who lost overwhelming percentage of his wealth and his possessions; and whose 10 children died in a single day, all of them; and who subsequently then lost his health in an affliction that was just so overwhelming that his physical appearance was very different than usual. He was in agony, physical agony. So those three things, the dread of all of us who live in this world. Shouldn't be, we shouldn't be filled with dread, but we do naturally fear the loss of our possessions, our money, what might happen to our loved ones, our children, our loved ones, our spouses, and what might happen to our health, even to the point of death. These things stand over us and we are afraid of them. And along comes this man and he walks through this, and then he begins to talk and some friends, Eliphaz and Zophar and Bildad, come and they talk to him. And there's this cycle of discussions that go on that make up the bulk of the book of Job. And we're nearing—this is the end. I. Bildad’s Question: How Can a Man Be Righteous Before God? (Job 25) This is the final time that we'll hear from one of Job's friends, Bildad, his third speech. But here we come to some interpretive problems. I was thinking this, I don't know if this is helpful, but I'm going to go ahead and say it. Therefore, you shouldn't say it, but anyway, I'm going to say it. There was a woman that Jesus dealt with. It said of her that she had a problem of bleeding, she had suffered a problem of bleeding for 12 years. And it says in Mark's gospel, she had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and didn't get any better, but only got worse. Hence, this text, it has suffered a great deal under the care of many interpreters and didn't get any better, but only got worse. And I'm probably one of them, because I think it's quite possible that the second half of Job 27 isn't Job, but maybe is Bildad or one of his friends. And yet there's no scene telling me that. There's no, "Bildad answered," or any of that. So it's right in the Job section, but it's so contradicts stuff that Job said earlier that you're left scratching your head. So you're either saying, "Why did the account get kind of rearranged or shredded in some way?" Or you're like, "What is up with our friend Job that he says one thing in chapter 21 and something entirely different in chapter 27? How do we deal with that?" Either way, you've got a problem. So that's what I get to preach on today. Hence all kinds of introductory comments saying, "All right, what are we going to do with this text?" But here's the thing, I think in the end, I have to be honest, it doesn't matter who said these words. It doesn't matter if it's Job. It doesn't matter if it's Bildad or one of the other friends. It doesn't matter. We know that it's not God Almighty saying it. It's coming through a human. So we're going to have to do the same thing we always do: take the words you read and evaluate them by the rest of Scripture. And we're going to find some things that will be very true and helpful, no matter who said them, and we're going to be lifted up from the present text and the circumstances to a timeless meditation that I hope will lead to your salvation and to your fruitfulness in service to Christ. So that's what we're going to walk through today. And what we're finding in the book of Job, I said this to a woman at the back of the church last week, I find this every week, the book of Job raises some of the deepest, most profound questions there are in life. Questions about life and death and suffering and pain, and about resurrection, death, resurrection. Some of the deepest questions, and I find again and again, and again, the answer is Christ. The answer is Christ. And we're going to find that here right away with Bildad. Bildad asks a question here, in his section in Job 25. And this is part of the problem, Bildad's section is so short, six verses. It's like, “Is that it? You have nothing more to say? Job has worn you out, and you have nothing more to say?” Or did his section get transposed to somewhere else? We will never know, I think. So there's some brevity here, but he asked this profound question, verse 4, "How then can a man be righteous before God?" So we could just expand it and say, "How can wicked, sinful people like you and me actually stand righteous before such a majestic, holy God?" Do you not see how that question will lead you to Christ? How that question will be useful for your salvation? That's what we're going to look at today. So we're going to walk through this and try to understand what Bildad says and the exalted language he uses about Almighty God. And then I'm going to jump over to chapter 27 and read the second half, and then kind of continue as though that's still Bildad. That may be right or wrong, but no matter what you do with it, I think you're going to have to evaluate the words anyway and their statement. And then we're going to walk through Job's statement and apply it. So in verse 1-6 of 25, "Bildad the Shuhite replied: 'Dominion and awe belong to God; he establishes peace in the heights of heaven. Can his forces be numbered? Upon whom does his light not rise? How then can a man be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure? If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his eyes, how much less man, who is but a maggot—a son of man, who is only a worm!'" This is an excellent question. God is infinitely majestic, so how can a man be righteous before him? He says, "Dominion and awe belong to God." Dominion is God's sovereignty. His kingly rule over the universe. As Nebuchadnezzar said in Daniel 4:35 of God, "All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?'" That's dominion. He is king. He doesn't ask permission. He's not accountable to anyone for anything he does. Dominion belongs to God and awe belongs to Him. Dread, terror, the fear of the Lord that comes upon creatures who come into his presence. "Would not his majesty terrify you?" Job 13:11. Yes, it would. And so awe, even the holiest angels cover their faces when they come into the presence of such a holy God. And it says, "He establishes peace in the heights of heaven." This is the Hebrew word shalom, which is a deep, rich, full word, has to do with a peaceful orderliness, an arrangement in an orderliness. And God in the highest heavens establishes peace or tranquility, order. God is a God of peace. He is of tranquility of mind. The heavens, therefore, where he has his throne are in perfect order around Him. Almost, you get the picture in the book of Revelation of concentric circles, all around the throne of God. Everything's in order in heaven. All of the angels are gladly and instantly obedient to Him, and they worship him. More importantly, God has peace, shalom, within himself. God is at peace with himself. He is one with himself. What that means is He has not ever conflicted within his being about anything. He never has second thoughts or doubts. He's never conflicted. His attributes never fight each other so you get half of the attributes on one side and half of the other, and he's going back and forth on any decision. It's just not the case. God is one with Himself, and we Christians understand in the deep mystery of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, God, this one, God exists in three persons. And the three persons, the Father and the Son and the Spirit are perfectly at one with one another. They never disagree with each other, ever. And isn't it marvelous to think that we, God's children, will someday be as one with each other, every one of us, as one with each other, as the Father is with the Son. Perfect unity in heaven. There's that peacefulness the highest heavens represent the realm of God himself. He is above even the highest created order, and there God is at peace. But we human beings are not so. We are not so. We are deeply divided within ourselves. We are deeply conflicted within ourselves. We battle within ourselves as Isaiah 57:20-21 says, "The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and [muck]. 'There is no peace,' says my God, 'for the wicked.'" We have that churning mire and muck going on inside our minds and hearts. And because we, individually, are not at peace with ourselves, we're not at peace with each other, either just person A to person B or nation A to nation B, there's all this disharmony and disunity in the world because of our wickedness and our sin. Says an Isaiah, 17:12, "Oh, the raging of many nations—they rage like the raging sea! Oh, the uproars of the peoples—they roar like the roaring of great waters!" We see that every day on whatever news based websites you go to find out what's happening in the world. Disunity, disharmony, brokenness, strife, and conflict because individuals, sinners, are not at peace within themselves. And they're not at peace with God. But God—praise God! God brings order out of chaos. That's what's happening in our salvation. He's taking all of this churning wickedness. And in the end He will banish it. He will convert it, transform it, or destroy it. And the universe will be at peace with God and with one another. That's where we're heading. Reminds me of Jesus stealing the storm. Remember how he was asleep in the back of the boat, on the cushion, and the disciples were distressed to find their boat filling with water. And they went and woke Him saying, "Don't you care that we're about to drown?" The things they said to Jesus. "Don't you care that we're about to drown?" But you remember what Jesus did, “[He] got up, and [he stretched out his hands] and said to the wind and the waves, ‘Peace, be still.’" And instantly it became quiet. He has that power. He establishes peace. And Bildad says, "Look at the imensity of his army. He's got a very impressive army. Can his forces be numbered?" Well, we get some numbering of the forces of God's angelic army. He is the Lord of hosts, the Lord of army hosts, the angelic armies. And so in the book of Daniel, in Daniel 7, and also Revelation 5, we get 10,000 times 10,000. Some pastors will do the math and others won't, all right? So that's 100,000,000 angels, 100,000,000. See, you're looking at me. My kids never got over of the fact that I was in the math club. Say, "Dad, what is the math club? What did you do?" I'm sorry I said that. Let's move on. But actually, Bildad is implying His forces are beyond number. And it's incredible because, you know, we're told in that account about Sennacherib and the Assyrian army, that a single angel went out and killed 185,000 as Assyrian troops in one night. That's one angel, imagine 100,000,000 angels. And Bildad says, "His light illuminates the entire universe and every creature in it." Verse 3, "Upon whom does his light not rise?" That started on the first day of creation when “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” And then He delegated that job on the fourth day to the sun and the moon and the stars, but He didn't need them because in the new heaven, the new earth, they will not be needed. Revelation 21:23, it says, "The city [the new Jerusalem] does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp." So Bildad is saying that all light ultimately comes from God, and there's not a single creature that God's light does not illuminate. "As a matter of fact," says Bildad, "to God who is pure light, even the moon and the stars are dim by comparison." Look at verse 5. It says, "If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his eyes." "Bildad is saying that all light ultimately comes from God, and there's not a single creature that God's light does not illuminate. "As a matter of fact," says Bildad, "to God who is pure light, even the moon and the stars are dim by comparison."" Now what's the point of all this poetical, meditation on the greatness of God? Well, keep in mind, this is debate going back and forth between Job and his friends, Job and his friends, and their basic theology is God is a just holy God who gets involved in human affairs, who gets involved in human history, and brings justice against the wicked and great justice against those who are greatly wicked—judgments. And therefore, in their theology, Job must be a greatly wicked person because of the magnitude of the judgments God's brought on him. That's their theology. And yet, Job keeps claiming to be innocent. He keeps claiming to be righteous. And so Bildad says, "How can you, a human, be righteous before such a God?" Look at verses 4-6, "How then can a man be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure? If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his eyes, how much less man, who is but a maggot—the son of man who is only a worm!" Now, that kind of language, like "Amazing Grace," we sang earlier, "that saved a wretch like me." That's wretch language, maggot, worm is not popular with those who would like their preachers to tickle their ears and fluff up their self-esteem, but Jesus didn't come to do that. He didn't come to fluff up anybody's self-esteem. He came to heal us of a deadly contagion, which is sin. And he said, "[It is not the righteous. He has] not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” It's a great work of therapy that he's doing here. He's healing maggots and worms and rebels like us so that we'll be healthy, we'll be forgiven, pure, and holy. That's what he's come to do. And so the Scripture does this kind of leveling work in us, using very extreme language like maggots and worms, and then poets come along like John Newton and say, "Wretch, saved a wretch like me." So the central question he's asking here is how can such an evil corrupt being as I am, be righteous in the sight of such a majestic, holy, glorious, powerful God? Now, Bildad is asking this of Job. It's a tool in his arsenal against Job. That's what he's doing. "It's a great work of therapy that he's doing here. He's healing maggots and worms and rebels like us so that we'll be healthy, we'll be forgiven, pure, and holy. That's what he's come to do." Job has consistently said, "I'm innocent. I want to make my defense before God, and he will equip me." So Bildad is actually right to ask this of Job. It's a good thing for Job to feel the weight of that question: "How can a maggot like you, by comparison with a holy God, ever be righteous before such a God?" It's right, actually. And not only is it right for Bildad to ask that of Job, but it's right for all of us to ask that of ourselves. Are you feeling the of that question? You should. How can I, someone like me, stand before a God like this, forgiven of my sins and righteous in his sight? Bildad's problem is he doesn't seem to ask it of himself, doesn't seem to bother him—it's for Job to deal with. I can't help but think about Jesus' parable in Luke 18 of the Pharisee and the tax collector. “Two men went up to pray,” and the Pharisee prayed about himself. He was self-righteous and he said, "I thank you, God, that I'm this and I'm that," and he's so full of himself, self righteous. “But the tax collector beat his breast and would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but said, ‘Be merciful to me, oh God, a sinner.’ … ‘That man,’ [Jesus said,] ‘went home justified.’" So the answer to this question is Christ. That's the answer. I cannot go any further in this sermon without celebrating the answer. There is an answer. If there were no answer, we would, all of us, be condemned. God's perfect holiness would exclude us all. God's future world, the new heavens and the new earth, would exclude us all. As Revelation 21:27 says, "Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful." And so only in Christ can maggots and worms and wretches like us be made pure and holy, and be able to stand in His presence. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, concerning Christ, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." So look, just look with your eyes at whatever form of Scripture you have in front of you. Look at Bildad's question, Job 25:4, "How then can a man be righteous before God?" Just stop and ask yourself that question, "How can I be righteous before God?" And you will stand before God, so will I, so will Bildad, so will Job. We're all going to stand before Him. How can we survive? And the answer in the gospel, the good news is we survive by faith in Christ, alone by his gift of perfect righteousness, alone, and no other way. If you stand before God and you pray about yourself saying, "I thank you that I'm so awesome," and you're effectively saying, "I thank you. I don't need Jesus to save me," that's what you're saying, then you will not be justified. You'll be condemned. But if, on the other hand, you like that tax collector, in some way, you're beating your breast and you won't even look up to heaven to such a holy God is this, and you say, "Be merciful to me, oh God, the sinner." And you know that mercy is found in Christ, crucified and resurrected, then you will be forgiven. II. Bildad’s Final Warning to Job (Job 27:13-23) Well, if we jump ahead now to Job 27:13-23, again, I don't know if this is the right procedure. If you want to say, this is Job speaking here, fine, but you got to pay your money, make your choice at the fork and the road. So we're going to jump ahead, and let's think for a moment that this is one of Job's friends, or maybe Bildad finishing, or it may be Job contradicting himself. That's fine. Either way, you have to make some—but let's just walk through what he says. Now, what he is going to say in this section is the wicked are going to be overwhelmingly judged by God. That's what he's saying, but you've heard that before. The wicked are going to get it, they're going to get crushed. Look at verse 13, "Here is the fate God allots to the wicked, the heritage a ruthless man receives from the Almighty." And what does he say? Well, their children are going to get slaughtered by the sword or die of starvation or of the plague. Verse 14-15, Job 27:14-15, "However many his children, their fate is the sword; [their] offspring will never have enough to eat. The plague will bury those who survive him, and their widows will not weep for them." Now, the problem I have as an interpreter is this is a direct contradiction of what Job said in chapter 21. What did he say in chapter 21? He said, "The wicked actually seemed to do very well. Many of them die in their beds and their children sing and dance with tambourines." You remember that? So let me just read it again, Job 21:7-8, "Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power? They see their children established around them, their offspring before their eyes." So that's hard to harmonize those statements. There's not a single commentator that writes a commentary on this that says this is Job. And if you're going to say to me, "Well, how did they get disconnected?" Or "Where's the 'Then Job said,' or 'Then Bildad said'?" I'm going to say, "I don't know." But in any case, this is what this text is saying. So what Bildad is continuing—I think, his final case against Job, he's saying, and he lines these things up with what Job actually, what happened in his life. He suddenly lost his children. They died quickly. See that's what happened to you? He lost all of his wealth, instantly. See that's what happened to you. All the wealth of the wicked melts away. Other people are going to get their ill-gotten gains. Look at verse 16-17, "Though he heaps up silver like dust and clothes like piles of clay, what he lays up the righteous will wear, and the innocent will divide his silver." And the mighty mansions of the wicked will crumble though they build with marble pillars. And though they look like they're going to last forever, they won't. Verse 18, "The house he builds is like a moth's cocoon, like a hut made by a watchman." You're going to lose everything. The disasters will come on the wicked instantly. Verse 19, "He lies down wealthy, but will do so no more; when he opens his eyes, [everything's] gone." Doesn't that seem like that's something like one of the friends would say to Job? It seems that way. The judgements of God are overwhelming, like a man swept away by a mighty wind or a flood powerless to stand against the onslaught. Look verses 20-23, chapter 27, "Terrors overtake him like a flood; a tempest snatches him away in the night. The east wind carries him off, and he is gone; it sweeps him out of his place. It hurls itself against him without mercy as he flees headlong from its power. It claps its hands in derision and hisses him out of his place." Well, how do we hear all this? How do we read the second half of Job 27, no matter who says it? Well, in one sense, this is going to be true, ultimately, of all the wicked. They are going to face the overwhelming judgment of God. They will lose everything, all of them, in some ultimate sense. God's wrath cannot be escaped. It cannot be avoided. There is one and only one refuge for the coming wrath, and that is Christ. He's the only refuge. And so if those words cause a sinner to flee to Christ, then they will have done good. As it says in 1 Thessalonians 5:2-3, "The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, 'Peace and safety,' destruction will come on them suddenly." And so that is coming. Judgment day is coming. Your own death is coming. Everything will be lost and quickly. So as I said, the problem with this being Bildad is that he's saying it to Job, saying, "Look what happened to you? You are a wicked man, in a way the rest of us aren't. You're a significantly evil man. Look, what's happened to you. This is why it's happened. And secondly, I don't need to worry about this." Those are the problems with this being Bildad saying it. III. Job Praises God’s Majestic Power (Job 26) All right. So let's go now to chapter 26 and look at Job's statement. First of all, as always, he rejects Bildad's council. We start with—almost every Job's speech starts with some version of "You guys are losers, and why should I listen to you?" Something like that. Not exactly like that, but you know what I mean. Look at verses 1-4, "Then Job replied: 'How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved the arm that is feeble! What advice you have offered to one without wisdom! And what great insight you have displayed! Who has helped you to utter these words? And whose spirit spoke from your mouth?'" All right, that's sarcasm, friends. He's not like, "Boy, I'm so glad to have a friend like you." Not at all. So he’s just rejecting. Here's a man that was beaten and crushed and struck down by trials. His friends come, they sit with him, and he has got nothing but destroyed by them, so he swats them aside like annoying mosquitoes. Then Job has his own meditation on the majestic power of Almighty God. Again, let me say to you, we talked last week about transcendence and imminence. Transcendence is the sense of the infinite majesty of God. There are a few books in the Bible that speak with such transcendent language as the book of Job above God. So any drinking in of transcendence and majesty you can get, do it, because we all have a very lax, low view of God. We're very informal, casual people. And so whatever ways we can have a sense of God's majestic power, it will do us good. Look at verses 5-6 of chapter 26, "The dead are in deep anguish, those beneath the waters and all that live in them. Death is naked before God; destruction lies uncovered." God knows the living and the dead. He knows them completely. There's nothing hidden from Him. God is mighty over the heavens and its celestial bodies. Look at verse 7-11, "He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing. He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight. He covers the face of the full moon, spreading his clouds over it. He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters for a boundary between light and darkness. The pillars of the heavens quake, aghast at his rebuke." So Job here is touching on the mysteries of God's creation, especially of the heavens above of invisible physical forces that cannot be explained, how the earth itself hangs in space on nothing at all. Just like God created the universe itself out of nothing at all. So the earth just seems to hang suspended on nothing at all. And then Job ponders, the clouds they're made up of water, he knows, and they're heavy. And yet they just float in the air, again, suspended on nothing at all. And then those clouds, suspended on nothing, are massive enough to block the light of the moon and snuff it out entirely on some nights. He also ponders—Job ponders the mysteries of the horizon line. Have you ever watched the sunrise over the ocean? Have you ever gone where it's just pitch black and you're there throughout the whole pre-dawn, and then watch the sunrise? At some point, there's this line of light that separates night from day, and then it gets brighter and brighter. It's really quite spectacular. I think the astronauts had the clearest example of these kind of sunrises around the edge of the earth, or around the edge of the moon if they were that far. And you can see God putting a line of demarcation between night and day, light and darkness. He's talking about that. And he speaks of the pillars of the heavens, whatever they are. The heavens rest on them and do not come crashing down, yet God is able to shake those pillars, make them tremble, with his voice anytime he chooses. And he's mighty over the sea, verses 12-13, "By his power he churned up the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces. By his breath the skies became fair; his hand pierced the gliding serpent." So the sea is mysterious with its endless, powerful, undulating waves. Its breakers rolling on one after the other, frothy, foamy crashing, and it's God who stirs up the storms and controls them, and He sets a limit to the boundary of the mighty wave saying, "This far, you may go and no further." He has that power. And then he mentions Rahab, in Old Testament wisdom literature, this Rahab character shows up. Some scholars talk about some mythological dragon or serpent or something like that, that's part of the primordial creation order. It's very fascinating to me. I don't know really what the truth is, but the image here is of God, a mighty warrior, hacks Rahab to pieces and brings peace to the sea. And so the idea is God, a warrior for peace, is able to defeat wicked enemies, even one as powerful as Rahab the silent, hidden serpent. So you get the idea, part of the problem with the ocean is that it's monsters are invisible. They're below the surface. I will never forget the summer that Jaws came out, and I didn't know the difference between fresh water and salt water. We were in Lake Winnipesaukee, and I didn't want to go swimming because you can't see what's down below. You know what I'm saying? You just don't know what's down there. But what Job was saying is whatever is down there, God's sovereign and powerful over it, mighty over it. And He has the power to churn up the sea and then calm them. As we said, Jesus has that power. And His disciples looked at Him after the distilling of the storm and said, "What kind of man is this? Even the wind and the waves, obey Him." And Job says in all of that, in all this meditation we're doing, we're only touching the fringes of the edge of his garment concerning his power. This is just the absolute fringes. Verse 14, "These are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint is the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his power?" So as I was writing my book on heaven, this whole thing has expanded for me in ways I can't even begin to explain to you. When you die, in Christ, and go to heaven, you will begin in earnest your education in the greatness of God, and you'll spend eternity learning it. I really believe that. You're going to spend eternity finding out how infinitely majestic God really is. Isn't that exciting, to understand that you're going to be studying the glory of God? As Psalm 111:2-4 says, "Great are the works of the LORD; they are pondered," or studied, "by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are his deeds, and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wonders to be remembered," forever. And so we're going to study them forever. And we're going to find out just how great God was, is, and always will be. And that's exciting, isn't it? IV. Job’s Conscience Testifies That He Is Innocent (Job 27:1-12) Well, Job in 27:1-12 continues his testimony that he is innocent. And here's where he gets into trouble too. Fundamental is his claim that he is innocent, that God has, in some sense, wronged him. Look at verse 1-5, "Job continues discourse: 'As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice.'" Stop there. That is a problem. I hope by now, we've heard many of these sermons, whenever you see Job say these kinds of things, that's just not okay. "[God,] as surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made me taste bitterness of soul, as long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils, my lips will not speak wickedness, my tongue will utter no deceit. I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity." He cannot agree with his friends that he is secretly wicked, famously wicked though no one knows yet how wicked he is. He will never agree to that. This is just not true. And it's amazing how this same Job who just celebrated the infinite immeasurable majesty of God in chapter 26 says, "Yes, but He has denied me justice." And he even takes a Hebrew kind of vow on this, "As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice." We just need to understand when we suffer, when we hurt, when we ourselves have the cancer diagnosis or a loved one does, or we're walking through that, that trial can bring us to these points. It's never OK, but it can push us to the point where we can start saying these hard, wrong things about God. The book of Job is given to help you not do that, so that you can be fruitful and do good works in the midst of your suffering, and lead other sufferers to Christ rather than be bitter toward God, because it seems Job is very bitter toward God. And fundamental to his bitterness, it seems, is that he's accepted the same basic theology that his friends have, right? The same basic theological structure. The only possible explanation for all this suffering is I am a great wicked man. That's the only way we could understand this. And I'm not, therefore God has made a massive mistake concerning me. Like there's no other possible explanation for the sufferings that Job's going through. And this is the very blunder that God is going to rebuke him for at the end of the book. At Job 40:6-8, "The LORD spoke to Job out of the storm: 'Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?'" We should never do that, ever. Now, Job's greatest defense, he says, is a clear conscience. Verse 6, "My conscience will not reproach me as long as I live." What is conscience? Well, it's part of the original equipment of creation, inside the heart and mind of every human being that presses them to do the right and avoid the wrong, and then evaluates behavior after the fact to see whether you did right or wrong. That's what conscience is. Every human being has this as part of the original equipment. Now, conscience is only as good as two things. First of all, is it harnessed to a true system of morality, to a true understanding of right and wrong? And secondly, conscience is only as good as if you listen to it, because if you don't listen to conscience, its voice will get dimmer and dimmer and dimmer in your life. Those are the limitations of conscience. So people in false religious systems have a conscience about their religion. For example, a Muslim is taught by his religion to do the Ramadan fast, so a month of fasting during Ramadan. Well, you could imagine a Muslim secretly violating the fast, but looking like he's a righteous Muslim to all of his neighbors, and then his conscience will smite him for the falsehood. So his conscience is harnessed to a false religion, because I believe every non-Christian religion is ultimately demonic, taught doctrine of demons, Paul talks about, and so ultimately false. And yet he's conscience is smiting him because he snuck food or did something that violated the Ramadan fast. And then beyond that, for anyone, even if the conscience is tied to the Judeo-Christian system of morality, if you don't listen to the conscience, then the conscience will become what Paul calls seared, a seared conscience. 1 Timothy 4:2, it says, "Such teachings come from hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron." That means you don't feel anything anymore. The nerve endings are seared. You just don't feel anything. I read an account of an abortionist doctor who, when she performed the first abortion, went home and vomited and wept all night. Then she performed thousands of them. And after, you know, she didn't do any of that on the 1,000th or 2,000th. Her conscience was seared. Didn't bother her anymore. Now beautifully, when we come to Christ, the conscience gets healed. Our conscience gets tied to a biblical system of right and wrong, and we begin to feel things again. And I would say, it's very mysterious how Holy Spirit and the conscience work, but there is some kind of partnership there. And Paul gives us both sides of the healthy Christian conscience. He said in Acts 24:16, "I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man." Why? Because there's going to be a resurrection and a judgment day. I'm going to have to give Him an account for everything I've done in the body. So every day I try to keep my conscience clear, vertically before God, and horizontally before others to do nothing to violate my conscience. And so the author to Hebrews says, in Hebrews 13:18, "Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way." Isn't that a great statement? Wouldn't you love to be able to look someone in the eye and say that? "Pray for us. We're sure that we have a clear conscience and [we do] desire to live honorably in every way." But there is a limit, Paul says, to conscience. 1 Corinthians 4:4 he says, "My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me." So you can have a clear conscience and still be wrong. You can have a clear conscience and still you'll find out on judgment day, so it'd be good to be humble about your clear conscience. Paul was. Job had a clear conscience, and he was wrong. And he found out on a mini judgment day how wrong he was about God and about his own sense of righteousness. Job then gives some final words in verses 7-12. He says, "May my enemies be like the wicked, my adversaries like the unjust! For what hope has the godless when he is cut off, when God takes away his life? Does God listen to his cry when distress comes upon him? Will he find delight in the Almighty? Will he call upon God at all times?" So there's going to be judgment for his enemies. So you could think who are his enemies? Are his friends, his enemies? I don't think he's thinking necessarily about his friends here, but I think about the Chaldeans and the Sabeans who came and killed his servants and stole all his stuff, and then there's people in the community there that were mocking him and opposed to him, et cetera. But then he zeros in on his friends, verse 11-12, he says, "I will teach you about the power of God; the ways of the Almighty I will not conceal." Verse 12, "You have all seen this yourselves. [So] why then this meaningless talk?" V. Applications All right, applications, I've already given you the central application for this text, and I just want you to feel the weight of it. We will all appear before the judgment seat of Almighty God, and Christ will sit on that throne, and He will judge all of us. And He's going to separate everyone into two categories: the believers and the unbelievers. What about you? How can a sinner like you stand before such a holy God? You need to ask that question. What is your hope? What is your confidence? If your answer has something to do with your own righteousness and good works, you are lost. But if your answer is, "I am a great sinner, saved by a great Savior and his name is Jesus Christ," then you have eternal life. So feel the weight of Bildad's question. And isn't it beautiful that impure people like us can actually be purified by faith in Christ, purified. We are purified, perfectly pure positionally in God's sight the moment we come to faith in Christ. He sees us pure in Christ. "What about you? How can a sinner like you stand before such a holy God? You need to ask that question. What is your hope? What is your confidence? If your answer has something to do with your own righteousness and good works, you are lost." And then, as we live our lives, he then continues to purify us as we walk in the light. It says in 1 John 1:7-9, "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin." So you can be walking in the light, a Christian, and still need purification from every sin. Still need it. And how do you get that? First of all, don't deny it. Come to God honestly. "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." But "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins..." And what else? "... purify us from all unrighteousness." So did you come here today with a guilty conscience? Maybe you're able to hide it from others, but others are not the point. God is the point. He knows everything. As soon as you go home, as soon as you have time alone, confess your sins to God, call them by their biblical names, whatever it is you've done wrong. However your conscience is smiting you, confess it, and receive from 1 John 1:9 the forgiveness and the purification that God has the power to give. And then beyond that, if I can just urge you do what Paul does, "I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man." Do that. Don't do anything, ever, that would violate your conscience. And then thirdly, stand in awe of the majesty of God. Go back and find some of these great passages in Job, and read them and drink in the infinite majestic Person who God is. We are way too informal and casual with God. Let's fall down on our faces before him and tremble at his greatness and realize this great God loves us in Christ, and wants to spend eternity with us. Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for the time we've had to study today, these three chapters. So much in here, Lord. We thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit who enables us to walk through these difficult waters, to walk through these difficult words, and put some meaning to them. Father, I pray that you would help us to lift up these truths and press them to our hearts, so that we might find forgiveness through Christ and find the right way to live, that will be maximally fruitful for your glory. In Jesus name, Amen.

The exciting conclusion of the Legend to how Lake Winnipesaukee got its name. Will Chief Anhanton exact his revenge? Or will Ellacoya finally have a say in her future? --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Welcome to a new season of Local Legends: New England! I'm kicking off this season with The Legend Of Lake Winnipesaukee! A touching, native story about overcoming creed and tribal honor in the name of love. But is this a story of mourning, or happily ever after? Guess you'll have to listen and find out! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

The conclusion of the Halloween Special I ran for the group that plays in the weekly game of FATE. This is a one shot I didn't do any actual editing so it would be able...