Podcasts about macmillan

Send us a text and chime in!In August of 2025, the Yavapai Baseball team took on a fresh look when Marc MacMillan was hired as the new head coach. After coaching stints with National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) schools such as Charleston Southern University and the University of Mississippi, Coach MacMillan admired and respected Yavapai College from afar– until now. A graduate of both the University of Mississippi and Canisius University, MacMillan became familiar with Yavapai College in 2009, specifically the many accomplishments of its baseball program, who had won three National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Baseball Championships up to that point. When he received...   For the written story, read here >> https://www.signalsaz.com/articles/yavapai-baseball-welcomes-marc-macmillan-as-new-coach/ Check out the CAST11.com Website at: https://CAST11.com Follow the CAST11 Podcast Network on Facebook at: https://Facebook.com/CAST11AZFollow Cast11 Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/cast11_podcast_network

Quentin Johnson reviews Ain't Nobody's Fool by Martha Ackmann, published by Macmillan.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss how, after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, sugar planters recruited workers from India to replace or compete with their formerly enslaved labourers. Over the next 90 years, more than a million people in India travelled under five year contracts of indenture across the empire from Guyana to Trinidad to Mauritius and Fiji and colonies in between. These indentured labourers were to share vivid accounts of deception and abuse, especially in the early decades. From the outset there were critics and opposition gained pace with Gandhi and others in South Africa arguing the system was close to slavery and calling for the Indian government to stop the practice, which was to happen in 1917 with the last shipments of people in the 1920s. Meanwhile, rather than return after their contracts, a section of indentured labourers stayed where they were for their own reasons, negotiating their new identities alongside formerly enslaved people and the planter culture in a new Indian diaspora.With Purba Hossain Lecturer in Modern History at the University of YorkNeha Hui Associate Professor in Economics at the University of ReadingAnd Clem Seecharan Emeritus Professor of History at London Metropolitan UniversityProduced by Simon TillotsonReading list:Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (Hurst and Co., 2013)Marina Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers: Indians in Mauritius, 1834-1874 (Oxford University Press, 1995)Marina Carter and Khal Torabully, Coolitude: An Anthology of the Indian Labour Diaspora (Anthem Press, 2002)Jonathan Connolly, Worthy of Freedom: Indenture and Free Labor in the Era of Emancipation (University of Chicago Press, 2024)Maria del Pilar Kaladeen and David Dabydeen (eds.), The Other Windrush: Legacies of Indenture in Britain's Caribbean Empire (Pluto Books, 2021)Neha Hui and Uma S. Kambhampati, ‘Between unfreedoms: The role of caste in decisions to repatriate among indentured workers' (The Economic History Review 75:2, 2022)Neha Hui and Uma Kambhampati, ‘The political economy of Indian indentured labor in the nineteenth century (Journal of the History of Economic Thought 47:2, 2025)Madhavi Kale, Fragments of Empire: Capital, Slavery, and Indian Indentured Labor Migration in the British Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998)Ashutosh Kumar, Coolies of the Empire: Indentured Indians in the Sugar Colonies, 1830–1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2017)Brij V. Lal, Girmitiyas: The Origins of the Fiji Indians (Fiji Institute of Applied Studies, 2004)Brij V. Lal, ‘Kunti's Cry: Indentured Women on Fiji Plantations' (Indian Economic & Social History Review 22:1, 1985)Andrea Major, ‘“Hill Coolies”: Indian Indentured Labour and the Colonial Imagination, 1836–38' (South Asian Studies 33:1, 2017)Basdeo Mangru, Indenture and Abolition: Sacrifice and Survival on the Guyanese Sugar Plantation (TSAR, 1993)Kalathmika Natarajan, Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy: Caste, Class and Indenture Abroad, 1914-67 (Oxford University Press, 2026)Clem Seecharan, 'Tiger in the Stars': The Anatomy of Indian Achievement in British Guiana, 1919-29 (Macmillan, 1997)Clem Seecharan, Finding Myself: Essays on Race, Politics and Culture (Peepal Tree Press, 2015)S. Sen, ‘Indentured labour from India in the age of empire' (Social Scientist, 44:1/2, 2016)Hugh Tinker, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830-1920 (Oxford University Press, 1974)In Our Time is a BBC Studios ProductionSpanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

This episode is a re-air of one of our most popular conversations, featuring insights worth revisiting. This week on The Data Stack Show, Brooks and John chat with Andy MacMillan, CEO of Alteryx. Andy discusses the evolving landscape of data and AI, focusing on empowering business users to solve complex problems. He explores the concept of "citizen developers" and how tools like Alteryx can bridge the gap between IT and business teams by democratizing data access. The conversation also emphasizes the importance of creating controlled environments where business users can leverage cloud data platforms and AI technologies to reimagine workflows, without bypassing governance. Key takeaways include the need for organizations to enable innovation through accessible data tools, the potential of AI-driven agents to transform business processes, the critical role of employees who understand their business functions in driving technological transformation, and so much more. Highlights from this week's conversation include: Andy's Background and Journey in Data (0:54) Early Web Development at General Motors (2:23) AI Challenges in the Enterprise (9:03) What is Alteryx and Its Value Proposition (11:25) The Importance of Empowering Business Users (16:10) Bridging the Gap Between Data Platforms and Business Users (20:04) Evolution from Desktop to Data Cloud (25:28) Access and Governance in the Cloud Era (27:57) The Return of Local Data Work and AI Governance (31:24) AI Data Clearinghouse and Governance (34:11) AI-Enabled Workflows and Business Impact (38:13) The Future: Agents, Data Platforms, and Business Logic (41:05) How to Get Started with Alteryx or Learn More (46:54) Product Management Lessons for Leadership and Parting Thoughts (47:56) The Data Stack Show is a weekly podcast powered by RudderStack, customer data infrastructure that enables you to deliver real-time customer event data everywhere it's needed to power smarter decisions and better customer experiences. Each week, we'll talk to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists about their experience around building and maintaining data infrastructure, delivering data and data products, and driving better outcomes across their businesses with data. RudderStack helps businesses make the most out of their customer data while ensuring data privacy and security. To learn more about RudderStack visit rudderstack.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gina Rogers reviews Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, published by Macmillan.

What can your first experiences with alcohol tell you about the relationship you'll have with it later in life? Are we fighting with our own biology when it comes to alcohol? Why is moderation impossible for some people? In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I'm chatting with Dr. Charles Knowles, author of Why We Drink Too Much: The New Science of Alcohol. You can find the wines we discussed at https://www.nataliemaclean.com/winepicks.   Giveaway Three of you are going to win a copy of Charles Knowles' new book, Why We Drink Too Much: The New Science of Alcohol. To qualify, all you have to do is email me at natalie@nataliemaclean.com and let me know that you've posted a review of the podcast. I'll choose three people randomly from those who contact me. Good luck!   Highlights How did Charles' initial attempt at a memoir expand to explore the science behind why we drink alcohol? Why did Charles feel it was essential to present alcohol research without oversimplifying? Why does he reject both anti-alcohol evangelism? What can early experiences with alcohol reveal about future risk of developing a problematic relationship with it? How does alcohol act as a social lubricant for some people? What's the connection between human evolution and alcohol as the world's oldest and most widely used drug? What was alcohol's role in early human societies? What distinguishes alcohol dependence from gray area drinking? Which aspects of drinking increase the risk of developing a problematic relationship with alcohol? Why does the brain's reward system prioritize alcohol over other needs? What is the default mode network, and why does alcohol's ability to quiet repetitive negative thinking make it so reinforcing?   About Charles Knowles Charles Knowles is Professor of Surgery at Queen Mary University of London and a colorectal surgeon. He is author of the book "Why We Drink Too Much: The New Science of Alcohol" which was published by Macmillan in the UK, Commonwealth, US and Canada in January 2026. The book entwines his own journey with an understanding of the effects of alcohol in the body and brain, and how this informs rational approaches to stopping or moderating consumption.         To learn more, visit https://www.nataliemaclean.com/389.

This Day in Legal History: Chinese Exclusion ActOn May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law. The law imposed a 10-year ban on the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States. It also made Chinese immigrants already in the country ineligible for naturalized citizenship, marking a major turn toward federal immigration restriction. The National Archives describes it as the first significant U.S. law restricting immigration and notes that it targeted an ethnic working group on the theory that it threatened public order.The law grew out of anti-Chinese racism and labor anxiety, especially in the American West, where Chinese workers were blamed for low wages and job competition. Although the Act formally applied to “Chinese laborers,” its enforcement burdened many Chinese people seeking entry, including those who claimed exempt status. The National Archives notes that the law helped create a broader framework for later race- and class-based exclusionary immigration policy.The Act was not temporary in practice. Congress extended it through the Geary Act of 1892, later made the exclusion regime permanent, and did not repeal the ban until 1943, during World War II, when the United States and China were allies.OpenAI president Greg Brockman testified in federal court that Elon Musk once supported changing OpenAI from a nonprofit into a for-profit company, but wanted full control of the organization as part of that shift. Brockman said Musk believed the nonprofit model could not raise enough money to build advanced AI systems. According to Brockman, Musk also said he needed an $80 billion stake to help fund a self-sustaining city on Mars. Brockman described a tense 2017 meeting where Musk allegedly rejected a proposed equity structure, became angry, took a painting made for him by Ilya Sutskever, and left while threatening to pause funding.Musk's lawsuit claims OpenAI and Sam Altman misled him into donating $38 million to a nonprofit that later abandoned its charitable mission in favor of profit. Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages for the nonprofit and wants Altman and Brockman removed from leadership. OpenAI argues that Musk is upset because he left before the company became highly successful and is now trying to gain control while also advancing his own AI company, xAI. Brockman also faced questions about his own financial interests, including testimony that his OpenAI stake is worth nearly $30 billion and evidence of an old diary entry about reaching $1 billion. OpenAI later created a for-profit unit controlled by the nonprofit, which helped it raise massive sums for computing power, hiring, and expansion.Musk wanted $80 billion to colonize Mars, OpenAI president testifies at trial | ReutersPublishers Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan, and McGraw Hill, along with author Scott Turow, sued Meta in federal court in Manhattan over its AI training practices. The lawsuit claims Meta used millions of copyrighted books and journal articles without permission to train its Llama large language models. The works allegedly included textbooks, scientific publications, and novels, such as books by N.K. Jemisin and Peter Brown. The publishers are seeking class-action status so they can represent a broader group of copyright owners. They are also asking for monetary damages.Meta responded that AI training can qualify as fair use and said it plans to fight the case. The publishers argue that using allegedly pirated copies of creative and scholarly works is not the same as lawful innovation. The case joins a growing wave of lawsuits by authors, news organizations, artists, and other creators against AI companies, including Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic. These lawsuits largely turn on whether using copyrighted works to train AI models is legally protected because the resulting systems create something new and transformative. Courts have not yet settled the issue, and early rulings have pointed in different directions. Anthropic previously resolved one major author lawsuit for $1.5 billion, showing how financially significant these disputes can become.Major publishers sue Meta for copyright infringement over AI training | ReutersThe U.S. Supreme Court allowed its recent Louisiana voting-rights ruling to take effect earlier than usual, clearing the way for political and legal consequences before the November midterm elections. The Court's April 29 decision had struck down a Louisiana congressional map that created a second Black-majority district. That ruling weakened a major part of the Voting Rights Act by limiting challenges to maps that allegedly dilute minority voting power. Normally, the Supreme Court waits 32 days before issuing its formal judgment, giving the losing side time to seek rehearing. Here, the Court agreed to speed up the process after a request from the voters who had won the case.The move helps Louisiana Republicans pursue a new congressional map and may weaken lawsuits challenging Governor Jeff Landry's decision to delay the state's May 16 congressional primaries. Some challengers had argued that Landry acted too soon because the Supreme Court's ruling had not formally taken effect yet. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, saying the Court's accelerated action had created disorder in Louisiana. The case is part of a broader national fight over redistricting, especially as both parties seek advantages in House races. The dispute began after Louisiana drew a second majority-Black district in 2024 to address a prior court ruling that the old map harmed Black voters under the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court later held that the replacement map relied too heavily on race, violating equal protection principles.US Supreme Court lets Voting Rights Act ruling take effect ahead of schedule | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

In this episode, we sit down with Madison Macmillan, the creator behind the viral account @enzothebluestaffordshire , to talk about how a few funny videos of her dog turned into a massive online following. With Enzo recently hitting 1 million followers on TikTok, Madison shares the story behind the account, the viral moments that helped it grow, and the running jokes that fans love—like the debate over what animal Enzo actually sounds like. We also dive into the behind-the-scenes reality of navigating brand deals, learning the business side of social media, and balancing a growing online presence while running her dog walking and training business! If you're looking to grow your social media account, this episode is for you.Follow Enzo on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enzothebluestaffordshire/Follow Enzo on Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@enzothebluestaffordshireYou can follow us on Instagram @businessmusclepodcast, @elisecaira and @dr.ariel.dpt.Get your FREE Business Starter Checklist: https://www.businessmusclepodcast.com/freechecklistFIXXED: https://www.fixxedstudios.com/Sweat Fixx: https://www.sweatfixx.com/

KCBS Radio's Foodie Chap Liam Mayclem joins Chef Beau MacMillan at a charity event for the V Foundation. They discuss the menu items Chef Beau MacMillan prepared and his love for Scottsdale, Arizona and the community he has built throughout his career.

#intelligence #trading #canadaIn this story, a brother's wisdom is overlooked by his two older brothers. They have their eyes on the prize, the chief's marriable daughter. Will they be smart enough?Source: Canadian Fairy Tales by Cyrus MacmillanNarrator: Dustin SteichmannMusic: The WHITE EARTH SONG in Ojibwe (Gaa-waabaabiganikaag) by BOOZHOO NANABOOZHOO Sound Effects: steady late night rain.WAV by mshahen -- https://freesound.org/s/242892/ -- License: Attribution 4.0Podcast Shoutout: The Vocal FriesListener Shoutout: Hoa Lư Vietnam

Sarah and Jane sit down with Dr. Linda Howe, widely considered the leading international expert on the Akashic Records. If you've heard the term and still gotten a blank stare when you mention it to someone, this episode is your answer.  Linda starts from the ground up, explaining the records as a vibrational archive of every soul and its journey as a human being. No robed figures, no mystical gatekeeping. Just a profound and surprisingly accessible energetic field that anyone with a sincere desire to know themselves can enter. Linda walks us through the origin story of the Pathway Prayer Process, channeled at her kitchen table in 2001, the Saturday before 9/11 — and what it felt like to receive it. She talks about writing her original book, How to Read the Akashic Records, getting rejected by Hay House, telling the universe somebody else was going to have to call her, and then getting the call from Sounds True a year and a half later. That book has now been in the publisher's top 15 bestsellers since 2009, and Linda has just released a fully revised and expanded edition through Macmillan; 100 new pages and a glossary of terms developed through decades of teaching around the world. The conversation looks at what the records can actually offer: emotional safety, honest self-reflection, and the radical idea that our ultimate soul purpose is learning to love ourselves,  imperfection and all. Linda also shares what the records have to say about the current moment in the world, and why she believes real collective change has to start with the individual turning inward. Jane shares the story of the orange book basically chasing her around a crystal shop until she put it in her basket. We believe her. Key Takeaways: You cannot be removed from the record, and neither can anyone else. Every soul is part of the Akashic field. This isn't just a spiritual nicety — it's the architecture of why the records carry no judgment and hold space for every version of who we've been. The pathway prayer works by creating emotional safety, and emotional safety is what makes honest self-reflection possible. Linda's point is simple and worth sitting with: without that safety, growth isn't really growth. The records create the conditions for the kind of honesty we can't manufacture on our own. Most of us don't have one soul purpose — we have many. And underneath all of them is the same fundamental question: how do I learn to love myself, even now, even imperfect, even mid-mistake? The records orient us toward that question whether we come in asking for it or not. Real change in the world has to start inside each person. Linda's reading of the current moment through the records is that every institution people have looked to for change — political, religious, economic — has limits, and that a soul-led life is both the path and the point. Following the path that's truly yours often looks like not following the plan. Linda didn't set out to be the world's foremost Akashic Records teacher. She kept going because every time she thought she was done, the field revealed more. That orientation — staying open to what keeps unfolding — is something the records model and also teach. If This Episode Resonated…Share it with a friend who's been feeling the shift too. Or send it to someone who needs the reminder: You're doing it perfectly! You are the LIGHT!✨ Direct Quotes: "The Akashic Record is a vibrational archive of every soul and its journey as human." "The change must come as a result of the transformation within each person. The more I am aware of who I am, of my soul — that can only bring us the change we seek." "The ultimate purpose for everyone is: how do I love myself? Even though I'm not perfect, even though I just made a mistake." "Anyone who wants to — anyone with a sincere desire to know their own soul more — can through the Akashic Record." Links Linda Howe Center for Akashic Studies: https://lindahowe.com/ How to Read the Akashic Records: Accessing the Archive of the Soul and Its Journey: Revised and Updated:  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781649634474/howtoreadtheakashicrecords/ Website: https://www.mediumcurious.com Explore the Intuition & Mediumship Course: https://www.mediumcurious.com Book a reading with Jane Morgan https://www.janemorganmedium.com/ Book a reading with Sarah Rathke https://www.sarahrathke.com/ Jane's Substack: https://janemorgan.substack.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mediumcuriouspod/

Kiran Dass reviews London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe, published by Macmillan.

Join Director of Research and Portfolio Manager Steve MacMillan as he shares his latest insights on U.S. small‑ and mid‑cap companies, how they can help diversify investor portfolios and where he's seeing compelling opportunities in today's market. Recorded on April 16, 2026. At Fidelity, our mission is to build a better future for Canadian investors and help them stay ahead. We offer investors and institutions a range of innovative and trusted investment portfolios to help them reach their financial and life goals. Fidelity mutual funds and ETFs are available by working with a financial advisor or through an online brokerage account. Visit fidelity.ca/howtobuy for more information. For a fifth year in a row, FidelityConnects by Fidelity Investments Canada was ranked #1 podcast by Canadian financial advisors in the 2025 Environics' Advisor Digital Experience Study.   --   Le directeur en chef de la recherche et gestionnaire de portefeuille Steve MacMillan partagera son opinion sur les sociétés américaines à petite et à moyenne capitalisation, expliquera comment elles peuvent aider à diversifier les portefeuilles du public investisseur et présentera les occasions intéressantes qu'il observe présentement sur le marché. Date : 16 avril 2026 Chez Fidelity, notre mission consiste à aider le public investisseur canadien à se bâtir un meilleur avenir et à rester à l'avant-garde. Nous offrons aux particuliers et aux institutions une gamme de portefeuilles de placement innovants et fiables pour les aider à atteindre leurs objectifs financiers et personnels. Les fonds communs de placement et les FNB de Fidelity sont offerts par l'intermédiaire des conseillers et conseillères en placements et de comptes de courtage en ligne. Pour de plus amples renseignements, visitez fidelity.ca/commentinvestir. Les baladodiffusions DialoguesFidelity se sont classées au premier rang pour une cinquième année consécutive lors du sondage 2025 d'Environics sur l'expérience numérique des conseillers et conseillères en placements au Canada.

BARD annotation Tell me who you are: a novel DB121783 Author: Luna, Louisa Reading Time: 10 hours, 49 minutes Read by: Stephanie Nemeth-Parker, Megan Tusing, Robb Moreira Subjects: Psychological Fiction, Suspense Fiction, Mystery and Detective Stories “The Silent Patient meets Gone Girl in this sharp psychological thriller about a psychiatrist with a shocking past and her dangerous new patient”– OCLC. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. [S.l.] : Macmillan, 2024. Bookshare This book can be found on Bookshare at the following link: https://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/6586522?returnPath=L3NlYXJjaD9tb2R1bGVOYW1lPXB1YmxpYyZrZXl3b3JkPVRlbGwlMkJtZSUyQndobyUyQnlvdSUyQmFyZSUyNTNBJTJCYSUyQm5vdmVsJTJC

Take a trip down Memory Lane, walk past Better Day Alley, swing a left by Wistful Road, then a right by Sentimentality Street, then arrive on Commentary Corner. You have reached your destination: here there be Mann and Motson and more. Get full access to The Pinch at www.thepinch.uk/subscribe

SERIES 7: Better With Age. It takes courage to reinvent yourself professionally, yet it becomes a necessity for many people over 50. Bestselling author Kathy Lette and publishing exec Jane Curry share their hilarious experiences of pushing through career blocks and tiresome ageing stereotypes. Brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA. Join Jean Kittson for the seventh season of DARE: The Time of Your Life (formerly Life’s Booming), called Better With Age. Australians are actually living longer, healthier lives, and reshaping what older looks like. So in this series, we are chatting with over 50s who are rewriting the ageing rule book, from career pivots to second acts. This episode celebrates the Reinvention Generation, and explores how we can continue to push through career blocks and debunk tiresome stereotypes as we age. Is it because that's just how we're wired? Or is it to prove that our best work is still ahead? Kathy Lette is an internationally bestselling author of more than 20 books, which have been translated into 20 languages. Her latest bestselling book, The Sisterhood Rules, takes readers on a rollercoaster ride that proves that from pain comes healing, from honesty comes forgiveness, and that nothing is more important than your sisters. Jane Curry is a highly experienced publishing executive, and managing director of Simon and Schuster, Australia and New Zealand. Jane is also the founder of Ventura Press, which she established to champion older female (and male) authors. Watch DARE: The Time of Your Life on YouTube Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Apple Podcasts Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency -- TRANSCRIPT Jean Kittson: Welcome to a new season of DARE: The Time of Your Life, formerly Life’s Booming, brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA. Hello I'm Jean Kittson, and this season is called Better With Age. We're flipping the script and showing how ageing is NOT a dirty word, rather it’s your time to live your life to its fullest. Australians are actually living longer, healthier lives, and reshaping what older looks like. So in this series, we are chatting with over 50s who are rewriting the ageing rule book, from career pivots to second acts. This episode celebrates the Reinvention Generation, and explores how we can continue to push through career blocks and debunk tiresome stereotypes as we age. Is it because that's just how we're wired? Or is it to prove that our best work is still ahead? To help us answer such questions is Jane Curry, a highly experienced publishing executive and newly-appointed managing director of Simon and Schuster, Australia and New Zealand. Jane is also the founder of Ventura Press, a company she started as a way of championing older female authors, many of whom only turned to writing later in life. And joining Jane is the fabulous author and beloved friend Kathy Lette. Her career has pushed boundaries from the get go, when she left school at 16 to write her debut novel, Puberty Blues. It had parents wringing their hands while teens lapped it up. And it was later turned into a movie and a TV series. She's gone on to pen more than 20 bestselling books, including her latest, the Sisterhood Rules, which has topped bestseller lists worldwide, and it's funny, fabulous and always empowering. Jane, Kathy, it's wonderful to have you both in the studio to speak about yourselves and your work. Kathy Lette: …and about you and your amazing work and your incredible life. Jean Kittson: Oh, do go on! Kathy Lette: My comic goddess right here before us, Jean. Jean's broken so many boundaries with her comedy. Jean Kittson: Oh Kathy, you’re amazing, and she's a long, long time beloved friend. And as you, in your words, you are my human wonder bra… Kathy Lette: …uplifting and supportive. I'd also say we are each other's big pair of knickers. We've got our asses covered. Jean Kittson: Mm-hmm. That's right. I can always, I mean, Kathy's the best friend you could possibly have. And don’t we all need… Kathy Lette: …Ditto. Jane Curry: …Don’t we all need female friendships, they keep us all going. Jean Kittson: You, Kathy. Kathy Lette: Yes. Jean Kittson: On a more serious note about, you have covered, you have written about all aspects of life from puberty to marriage, childbirth, menopause. Often based on your own experiences, you've inspired and entertained and soothed millions of readers, including your latest book, the Sisterhood Rules, which I absolutely love and should be a manual for any woman breaking up or any older woman wanting a bit of spice in her life, really. Kathy Lette: Haha, great, ha ha. Jean Kittson: But, um, when your previous publishers said to you. That nobody wants to read about middle-aged women. And they dropped you after 19 books in 17 languages. Kathy Lette: Yes. Jean Kittson: Bestsellers. Kathy Lette: Mm-hmm. Jean Kittson: And you went on to write the Revenge Club, another bestseller. I mean, how did you do that? Kathy Lette: I went to see my agent and said, I wanna write a book about four middle-aged women who take revenge on the men who've sidelined them and ruined their careers. And he was like, yeah, I dunno. Yeah, middle-aged women just aren't that sexy. And then I went to see my publisher at the time and my publisher was like, Hmm, middle-aged women. We know they exist, but nobody wants to go there. Jane Curry: Oh my goodness. Kathy Lette: And I looked at books written about women my age, like Anita Brooklyn novels, for example. And there was about sad, depressed, lonely women who wilt away and die in their flats and get eaten by their cats. Now I don't know any women like that. All my women friends are like Jean. They're swinging off a chandelier with a cocktail between their teeth. But when they, when they first said that to me, then my publisher dropped me. I thought, gosh, maybe I have passed my amuse-by date. And just for a moment, I did, I did have a real crisis of confidence. But then of course I'm an Aussie girl and we, Aussie girls are made of stern stuff Jane Curry: Dig deep. Kathy Lette: So I thought, nah, he's wrong. They're both wrong. So I got a new, I got a gay agent and I got a new publisher, Bloomsbury, and the book went to number-one on the bestseller list, which was the best revenge. It's called the Revenge Club – success! So yeah, it was so exciting. And also, I love writing about women this age because our hinterland is huge. You know, we've had the marriages, the divorces, the breakups, the promotions, the back stabs. We've raised the kids. We've looked after our aged parents as Jean did so, so devotedly. We've got so much to talk about and so much to share, and so much wisdom. Just at the time, society hands us the old invisibility cloak and puts us out to career pasture. It's not just me imagining that we, women my age, are given the cloak of invisibility. A few years ago, MI5 said they wanted to hire middle-aged women as spies because nobody sees us. Jean Kittson: Oh. Kathy Lette: Soak that up. And I remember the governor of the board of the Bank of England. He said, not long ago, that the economy was going through a menopausal phase. Sluggish. Jean Kittson: Oh. Kathy Lette: And I was like, tell that to Oprah Winfrey and Nicole Kidman, and Cate Blanchett… Jane Curry: Michelle Obama… Kathy Lette: …all the other people. Michelle Obama, all these other menopausal and postmenopausal women. So the sexism is sewn into our psyche. We really have to fight hard against that. And thanks to Jean and others of our generation. We've taken the stigma out of menopause. But the next big feminist hurdle for us is sexist ageism, because we get treated in a different way to men our age and, and we really have to rail against it. Because we're now prime, we're in the peak of our productivity. Jane Curry: But also we've all had to witness when the BAFTAs was on, every time we see these women who are completely transformed because they're not allowed to age in public. Kathy Lette: Mm. Jane Curry: So that's the standard. Yes. I mean, we are fortunate in where we're in the book business, so it's brain first in our business and always has been. Kathy Lette: Better to be witty than pretty. Jane Curry: Yeah, yeah – witty than pretty. And I remember a friend of mine who is actually a cosmetic surgeon, he said to me that it, you know, it's the women who are, have always been beautiful, that have had that sense of power when they walk into a room and they turn heads because of their beauty, they're the ones that find it harder to age. Kathy Lette: Well, it's a diminishing asset. Jane Curry: Yes. So whereas, you know, when you're in the book business as I've been, and Kathy, the entertainment book, um, you know, women of letters, we do have that our brain is our superpower. Kathy Lette: Yeah, yeah. Jane Curry: And then what we look like comes after that. Yes. Jean Kittson: It's hard to fight it though, isn't it? Kathy Lette: It is hard to fight it, Jean Kittson: …especially when you are performing and… Jane Curry: Oh yes. Well, in this new job I've just got, I got tapped on the shoulder to run Simon Schuster. So the first thing I found was all the, the settings on Zoom and teams. Because I’m reporting to the UK and I'm having meetings in the US all the time and sometimes I first thing in the morning, like 7.30 in the morning. So I'm like, where's the filter. Jean Kittson: Where’s the sparkle wand! Jane Curry: You know, we used to laugh when I worked at Macmillan. You know, we used, you know, there's fabulous filters that Jackie Collins had on all their photographs. Kathy Lette: Oh my gosh, yes. In fact, I've had lunch with Jackie Collins a few times with Joan Collins. Joan and Jackie, I mean, the double whammy. Jean Kittson: Yes. Jane Curry: Talk about sisterhood. Kathy Lette: Sensational broads. But, um, Joan Collins will move everybody around the table till she's got the right lighting. And isn't she clever? You know that when you do, when you're filming, they have that big silver thing that reflects the [light], why can't we have a dress made out of that? Jean Kittson: Well, why can't we! Kathy Lette: Or shoes? Jean Kittson: Because we don't care, Kathy. We don't care. Kathy Lette: We don't care. Jane Curry: Often we’re rushing from one thing to the next. Kathy Lette: Don't care. We don't care. But Jean, see, Jean and I don't do, don’t do any of that Botoxing stuff. Jane Curry: No. Nor do I. Kathy Lette: I think men should just read between my lines, the books, the babies, the hours of fun-loving flirtation. But it does get hard to resist it whenever all the other women… Jane Curry: …I think that's the thing when… Kathy Lette: …look much younger Jane Curry: that, right, what they call in the, you know, in data they call it benchmarking. So like any set of data figures in my world, you know, you benchmark against what was the bestseller. And so it's sort of benchmarking when you're talking about sales and all of that. But it's benchmarking with what we look like. So you sort of benchmark against, we, I think we're very critical of ourselves, because you look at another woman who's the same age and they've had the facelift and they've had everything done. And then look, I momentarily worry about it. And then honestly, you, I look at my to-do list and I think, no. Jean Kittson: Yeah, and I've got two daughters, so I don't want to be that role model. I've always said it's not what you look like, it's what you feel like, you know? Kathy Lette: Yes. Keep the lights low. Greatest beauty aid known to woman for all time. You know, what's happened in Hollywood, the pediatric, um, technicians there. The doctors noticed that the babies were not hitting their developmental milestones. And they were saying, is it because they're, they're having too much, um, carcinogens in their smoked salmon? I'm thinking, no, it's Botox. Because babies look at your face, like when you go, I love your little baby. The baby goes and you go, ah… If you've had Botox and you're going, ‘I love you’, and the baby's going, ‘uh’, you’re going, ‘uh’. They're not learning anything. Jean Kittson: Absolutely. Jean Kittson: You should write a research paper on that. They should do it. Kathy Lette: This is hysterical, isn't it? I know. Jean Kittson: I was told not to go, I mean. Not to go grey because I wouldn't, in the gig economy, I wouldn't get work. Apparently the research shows that if you, that men don't like actually working with women with grey hair. Kathy Lette: …Because it reminds them of their mothers, is it? Jean Kittson: …Maybe they feel that they… Kathy Lette: …it's ageing them… Jean Kittson: Have to defer or - No, not defer… Kathy Lette: …but they can have grey hair. Jean Kittson: They can have grey hair. So there are some interesting facts their. Kathy Lette: I was gonna say, part of the problem is that we never see women who look like us. 85% of people on British and Australian television over 50 are men. So the women just get immediately sidelined and put out to career pasture when they get one grey hair and one wrinkle. We should be saying, we wanna see ourselves reflected. Don't, don't disappear us. Jean Kittson: You know, Jane, you would see, um, this in the industry. You've seen this before. What happened to Kathy? Have you? Jane Curry: Oh, yes, because a lot of decisions are made on data. You know, they'll say, oh, and particularly I think people got very frightened when social media arrived. They got very frightened that they had to chase people with massive Instagram following. Oh, yes. And then there was this sort of Sally Rooney phenomena where everybody wanted a ‘Normal People’. And that was that emerging, you know, Kathy Lette: Irish writers… Jane Curry: …Irish and, and all that sort of coming of age story that, and we are, we are just, we move as a pack, the publishing industry. So once there's one Normal People, you can guarantee the next year there'll be 10 Normal People. And that's a book for people that haven't read it, that was published by Sally Rooney. It was a debut novel and you know, it was one of the zeitgeist novels. Kathy Lette: She became a publishing phenomenon. Jean Kittson: In terms of ageism in comedy, it's just a general feeling that I think women, first of all, women in comedy has been really hard from the start and you really have to push and it's a much more sort of natural environment for men because they're confident and some, some comedians can go on and and not even have thought about what they're going to say, they're just so confident. Kathy Lette: Yeah. Jean Kittson: When I was starting out in comedy, I would be starting out with other, the few women that were around in the 80s and we'd be in pubs and we'd go on stage and everyone would be drinking and eating their pizza, and no one would listen and the women would come off and going, oh my God, I'm just not funny. I haven't got good material. I stink. I can't do this. The men would go out there and they would get exactly the same reaction. People are just drinking and they'd come back and they'd go, that audience wouldn't know a joke if it was up them. They're just so freaking hopeless, and they'd just blame the audience and women would blame themselves, and I don't know where that comes from, but I think it can become more pronounced as you get older and there's slowly, more and more diminishing things that happen to you Like walking into a butcher and the butcher saying, hello, young lady, and you think I'm too, I'm too young to be called a young lady. You know, I not old enough. That's something that they would say to your grandmother, Hello, young lady, and expect you to like that. Expect it to be a compli–– Jane Curry: …A pat on the head. Jean Kittson: …Yeah, a pat. It's so patronising. Kathy Lette: Yeah. There's also this, it's an inbuilt prejudice against women that were not funny, and I, I was at a dinner party in London once and, and the hostess made a really good joke and the husband and men didn't pay any attention. The husband just went, oh, you know, embarrassing women can't tell jokes. And I was like, that's because we marry them. It made everybody laugh at him and that did take away his power. So just lean into that, that verbal ability that women have, you know, we’re more verbally dexterous. So use it like, develop what I call the black belt and tongue-fu! Quiplash, you know! Jean Kittson: Yeah, that's fantastic. Don't censor. Good comeback. Kathy Lette: Yes. Yeah. Good comeback. Jean Kittson: I know, I think we are getting stronger and we shouldn't, we shouldn't, um, suppress our strength as we probably have to keep peace, you know, with the family. That's right. With our work to balance everything. Yeah. You suppress a lot of who you are. Jane Curry: My eldest always says to me. Mum, you're overthinking. And that's the best mental health advice or whatever we do. We do overthink, Kathy Lette: But I think women should just or never go… You're underdressed if you go out at night without a couple of good one-liners tucked up your trouser leg. Jane Curry: That's really good advice. Kathy Lette: Because if, if you whack it back… Jane Curry: yes, Kathy Lette: …and make other people laugh at them, you completely take away their power. Jean Kittson: Well, you've got so many good one-liners, so you're like a one-liner factory. Jane Curry: I've got, I've gotta lift my game. Jean Kittson: Ah, yeah, exactly. So do I. So when your publishers said that ridiculous thing that nobody wants to read about middle aged women… Kathy Lette: …mm-hmm… Jean Kittson: Did you ever doubt yourself and think that I might have to reinvent myself in any way? Kathy Lette: I did. I, just for a moment, I lost confidence and I thought maybe I have passed my amuse-by-date. But then I looked around at my own female friends and I thought, they're so wonderful. They're all, you know, swinging off a chandelier with a toyboy between their teeth. I wanna write about these women. But I think as a writer, I'm always reinventing because I cannibalise my own life. My mother's a teacher and I think I've got a bit of her teacher gene that I always write the book I wish I'd had when I was going through something. So from, to the girls in Puberty Blues, you know, to teach them that they were more than a life support system to, to a pair of breasts, you know, to girls dating and, and then to motherhood and, and marriage and divorce and menopause, and raising an autistic child, raising a teenager, you know, now this post-menopausal second act. So I'm always reinventing because I'm, I'm changing. You know, women are used to change. We've got so much change going on in our lives. So, yeah, I think it comes naturally to women. So if you are reinventing yourself post menopause, you know, it's just, it's almost like situation normal. We're always constantly changing. And even divorce, I don't see divorce as a failure. I just see it as a change. Jean Kittson: Yes. Kathy Lette: You know, life is long from honeymoon to tomb to be like 80 years so, just if you need to reinvent, you know it's okay, and it comes more naturally to women. So don't be afraid of change. Change is good. But I would say women this age, this is a coming of age time. Jane Curry: Yes. Kathy Lette: Because we're the first generation who are economically independent. We've got the, the rock of fuel of HRT, we've got the chutzpah and the the courage to say what we are thinking. We are reinventing ourselves, having a sensational second act. Because I always say this time of your life, for women, is the best because post menopause, you know, you've, you've got no, you don't have to worry about period cramps or pregnancy scares. You've got all that tampon money to spend, you know… Jean Kittson: …and kids are grown up. You've got all that crystallised experience, as they call it. Kathy Lette: Yeah. I wanna know what you think of this, Jane. Because I accidentally invented – I hate the term – chick lit… Jane Curry: …I know what you're going to say… Kathy Lette: …I accidentally invented it in the 70s with Puberty Blues.. Jane Curry: Yes. Yes. Chook-lit. Kathy Lette: And then, then when I wrote Mad Cows and Fetal Attraction, I sort of invented Mummy-Lit. Jane Curry: Mm-hmm. Kathy Lette: And then when I wrote Nip and Tuck, that was nip-lit. And I'm like, I need a new genre for women our age. And I, and I thought, well, post 50, you get that fabulous, ‘Oh, feck it I'm 50’ gene, where you no longer care what people think about you. So I was thinking. What about, I-don't-give-a-s***-lit? Mm-hmm. Jane Curry: That's brilliant. Jean Kittson: Oh, good. You got the tick from a publisher! Kathy Lette: Wouldn't that be a good. And imagine we’re at Booker Prize and they go, ‘And now in the genre of I-don't-give-a -s***-lit. Yeah. Jane Curry: You know, in Hollywood, all the entertainment [industry] is catching. If you think of the Thursday murder club, that was Richard Osmond, of course, he's an older man, so he can get away with it. But you know, the adaptation with Helen Mirren and you know, those amazing actors. So Kathy Lette: Yes Jane Curry: So there is starting to be balanced… Kathy Lette: But that's even older. That's, that's when they're in the retirement home. I'm talking about this moment. Yeah, just postmenopausal, where we're the publishers are saying it's not sexy, it's not attractive. It's right when you're older, for some reason there's a jump to the Judi Dench. Jane Curry: It’s called the silver dollar then. Kathy Lette: Yeah. Jean Kittson: Oh yes. The silver dollar. Kathy Lette: Well, what about the postmenopausal dollar? Yes. You know who thinks reading books? It's women our age. Jane Curry: Well, actually, I always say to any publisher, go to a writer's festival. It's all women, of a certain age. Our age Jean Kittson: Over 50. Jane Curry: Over 50. Yeah, filling the audience. Jean Kittson: Yes, Kathy Lette: I'm on book tour right now for the sisterhood rules and I'm going around the country. It's been to Perth. I've been doing them in Sydney and Melbourne, and I'm about to go up, up to Queensland and I meet, I get to meet the readers, which is so fabulous. It's my favorite thing. Wonderful. And they're, they're women of a certain age. They bring me up little, little kind of anecdotal, doggy bags, a little story they've saved up for me about who their husband had an affair with or how they got revenge or whatever it is. And they're so funny and they sometimes they cry as well. Yeah. They'll have a cry and they'll tell me something very personal that's happened to them. And we have a hug and they're all so interesting. I wanna go out on a girl's night out with all of them all the time. Jane Curry: Yes, we be… Kathy Lette: …and yet they're written off. Jane Curry: Yeah, I was thinking a lot about it getting ready this morning and yeah, as, as you get older, you look back at how society's structured and it is so sort of primally structured around power and money and… Kathy Lette: …which has predominantly been male… Jane Curry: …which is predominantly male. So I've, so then I thought, so you've got, as a woman, you've got two ways of doing that. You can either become, marry into that and become the trophy wife and be terrified that they're going to leave you. So there's that way of attaching yourself to money or there's the other way of doing it, which is the way I did it, was to make it yourself. Kathy Lette: Yes, exactly. So always a better option. Jane Curry: So that was my option. So that's why I've sort of admired those other women from afar because I've never been part of their world. Even at university, I was never part of that world. I, we as, women, have to decide very early on, I think it's innate, I don’t know whether you make an actual decision, how you're gonna fit around that, those two binaries, power and money. But as women. It's not naturally given to us. So we have to decide. Even in the corporate world, that means we've got to constantly keep up with that. Kathy Lette: …Appearances. Jane Curry: …Appearances or… Kathy Lette: …Trophy mustn't be tarnished. Jean Kittson: Well, that's right. That's right. It's a big role to fill for the whole of your life. Trying to live up to that. Yeah. Sorry. There was a billboard saying, um, many years ago, which was a brilliant billboard saying, which I had a picture of a young woman, don't marry a millionaire. Become a millionaire. Kathy Lette: But when I, when I give talks in schools to girls, which I do often, I always say to them, choose your partner carefully. Because if you wanna be an alpha, alpha female in having a big career, if you choose an alpha man, guess who's gonna be the one who has to pull back when the child's sick or whatever. But if you choose a beta male, someone who'll adore you, not bore you and do all your chores for you, who wants to put you on a pedestal and will probably polish it while you're up there. You know, you've gotta have a much bigger and better and more satisfying career. So just, I've, I've been married to two Alphas whom I adore, but I've, I've now gotta beta boyfriend and beta’s, beta’s better. You know, like my fa— The women who are very successful in British television, for example, Sandy Toksvig, Sue Perkins, Claire Balding, are all gay. What do they have wives? Yeah, wives, and I've kind of got a male wife now and it, and it's fabulous. I highly recommend it. Jean Kittson: That's a really good, Jane Curry: That's funny because Kathy's just in from Perth. I'm just in from Brisbane. My overnight bike from Brisbane is just on the floor of my bedroom, just and so yeah, that's, we don't have wives. Kathy Lette: No, that's what need Jane Curry: We need, we need the backup. Jean Kittson: Yes. So what would you say to people or at who are already over 50 and who are confronting this ageism? I mean, how do, how do they manage it? What should, because the confidence… I'll tell you a quick story. A friend of mine's a teacher and she retired. She was a brilliant teacher, still is. She was doing some casual work and she, uh, went to the person organising the casual work at the, at the secondary college. She'd been working. At for 20 years and said, I'm really liking the casual work. You know, any casual work you can throw my way, that'd be good because I'm finding it hard to live on the pension. And he said, ‘Ah, I don't know. There's a lot of younger casual teachers around and they've got more longevity and productivity than you have.’ You don't need productivity and longevity to be a good teacher. Kathy Lette: No. Jean Kittson: For a developing mind. Kathy Lette: She needs to teach him that lesson. I hope she got up on the table and tap danced. Jean Kittson: You used to say, Kathy, in television, it doesn't matter what you, um, uh, what age you are, as long as it, you don't look at, that's what the producers used to say. Kathy Lette: Oh, yes. They're saying you've passed your use by date. Well, guess what? Tesco, a big supermarket chain in Britain, just took use-by dates off the food, because they said, make up your own mind. And I think the same should be done for women. Jean Kittson: Exactly. Kathy Lette: Take our use-by date off, judge us on our performance and our enthusiasm and our flexibility and our knowledge and our… Jean Kittson: Exactly. Kathy Lette: …sense of humor. And we're, we're individuals. You know,. what you have to do to survive the second act is go a lot of girls' nights out, a lot of laughter and, and sisterly camaraderie and um, strength in numbers, you know, and just boost each other up, give each other work. Like really put the, put your hand down and, and pull women up behind you. Jane Curry: Yeah. Kathy Lette: But in this, in the Sisterhood Rules, I've put lots of rules in the beginning about sisterly solidarity, like love and loyalty and sticking to each other like a nylon dress in a heat wave. And it also encouraging women to think big, like don't tell men you want their seats on the bus. You want their seats on the board. Like, think big. We're too, we don't have big enough ambitions for ourselves. Husbands come and go, but um, the sisterhood lasts forever. That's the most important rule I will share with you. Jean Kittson: I agree totally. It's really important to have people you can ring up when you're feeling really down and just have a chat with them and then they lift you up and that's so important. And I, I wonder if you'd want to talk about when you gave up publishing — I mean, when you left your job and opened your own publishing company, did you have a mentor then or, well, who was supporting you? Jane Curry: Amazing timing to ask me that. because I'm just about to go to the London book Fair and I got my first job in publishing in London and my boss, who must be now in her eighties, is still an absolute mover and shaker. Kathy Lette: What's her name? Jane Curry: Kit Van Tulleken. She's the mother of the Van Tulleken twins. Kathy Lette: Great name. Jane Curry: The Van Tulleken twins. Who are those… They're doctors that sell millions of copies of their books. Twins, identical twins. Jean Kittson: Oh, you've written about twins. Kathy Lette: Yeah. Jane Curry: Yeah. So they, she had the corner office when I was literally sitting in a corridor at about age 22 or 23, and there she was in the corner office and her two boys would come in after school. And I just looked up and thought she was my absolute role model. Kathy Lette: Oh, great. Jane Curry: And I'm seeing her in the London book fair. Kathy Lette: Nice. Jane Curry: And then I think it's important for other women who are, you know, working. I have a coach, I have a business coach, so I see her once a month and she sorts my head out – not a psychologist, but business wise. So where we have our natural weaknesses and we, you know, she'll always say you've – she's the ones that send, sends me those texts when I'm saying, I've got this difficult discussion, or I, you know, or different, you know, different emotions that you're taking to meetings just to take the emotion out of it and rely on the business. So I think that's important for people as who are working, because we are older, so we do have the capacity to sort of resource ourselves. So rather than have a cleaner, I'd rather have a business coach. Jean Kittson: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That's such a good… Kathy Lette: …To clean out your, your, your brain. Yes. We do a lot of mentoring in England to younger women through the Women of the World Festival. We mentor young girls at school. We go in the wheel, we go, you know, the, you know the millennial wheel? Jane Curry: Oh yes. Kathy Lette: And we're in different pods and we go around in a pod with a group of girls, and then the next time we get off and get in another pod. So it's, we make it fun, but it's also very helpful for them And it's good for me. I learn a lot from them as well. Jane Curry: Yeah. One of the things I've learned going back into corporate after about 10 years of running my own business is, you know, the young women that we employ, you know how they're much more in their power than I ever was at that age. Jean Kittson: Oh, definitely. Jane Curry: When I was getting divorced, my lawyer turned around and said, are you okay? And I said, yes. I think looking at the kangaroo and the emu on the coat of arms thinking, how on earth did I end up here? Um, but then I said afterwards, I said, how do you do that every day? And he said, take the emotion. There's no emotion in it for me, Jane. I take the emotion out of it. And I've always remembered that advice. So take the emotion out of things. Even the most difficult business transaction, you know, when you've, particularly in publishing, you're dealing with creative people, you know, but take the emotion out of it. Look at the bare bones of the business transaction. Put the emotion in at the beginning and the end. But when it comes to actually achieving an outcome that is to the satisfaction of both parties, take the emotion out of it. So, channeling my divorce lawyer! Kathy Lette: When I got divorced, I remember saying – I knew they charged by the hour – so I used to go in and say, no adjectives, no adverbs, no anecdotes. Just get straight to the facts! But getting back to the mental thing, I just like to say that I, I do wanna encourage all women to always help other women. And when I published, when I wrote Puberty Blues as a teenager, that was rejected by about 10 publishers. Then I saw Anne Summers had written a piece in the paper about, um, gang rapes in Queensland or something. I thought she'll get this surfy brutality that goes on, and I sent her some of the manuscript and she sent it to a small feminist publishing group called McPhee Gribble in Melbourne. And the rest is history. So that was an absolute perfect example of the sisterhood supporting each other. Jean Kittson: And getting it, understanding each other. Kathy Lette: Understanding each other. That's right. Jean Kittson: And what they're going through and the importance of talking about it. Kathy Lette: We just need more women in power. Why can't, why can't women just run the world just for a year? We say to the men, go play golf. Do whatever you like. Just go for a year, just let us take over. We can't do a worse job than you've done and see what we could achieve. Jane Curry: Well, fortunately COVID has given us flexible work conditions. We couldn't get it beforehand, but most of my staff now, we've got nearly a hundred people and it's fantastic. So we've got lots of young mothers on the payroll. Jean Kittson: Oh that's great Jane Curry: And they work, you know, it's great. I've re and I think it took COVID to allow the bosses… Kathy Lette: Yes. Jane Curry: …the patriarchy, to see that working from home is, it can work. Kathy Lette: Because that's another big sexist trope. You know, that society expects women to raise children as though we don't work as well. Jane Curry: That's why I started my own business. Yes. Because when I told my boss I was expecting. The very first thing he said to me was, well, you can't work part-time. That's what he said to me. And I was the managing director at the time, and I actually miscarried that baby. So it gave me a little window to get out from under. So that's when I went to Macmillan because Ross Gibb, who's just retired from publishing, he said over lunch at Machiavelli's – because publishing still has a few lunches – I told him the story and he said, Jane, you can work part-time for me. He's lovely any day. Kathy Lette: He lovely. He was my publisher for a while. Jane Curry: So that's why I went to Macmillan. Because people say, why did you go from being a managing director to being a publisher? And I did that because Ross said, you can work for me any day. He saw the value of female talent. Kathy Lette: Yeah. Yes. Jane Curry: So I had a fantastic year, few years. What about seven years at Macmillan whilst I had my two boys. I'm like, Kathy Lette: See, revenge, revenge! Fabulous. I think the reason women are drawn, I've them… Jean Kittson: …outlive them! Kathy Lette: I think the reason women are drawn to revenge is it's sweet, but totally non fattening – fabulous. Jane Curry: It is, it is. So Ross Gibbs – we do have our allies. Kathy Lette: We do, we do. And it's been important to say that… Jane Curry: …yes… Kathy Lette: …that of course there are great men who do support us and want the best for us. But we need more, we need more men, at the barricades. I've been saying the same feminist things – Jean and I have been saying the same thing through our comedy since we were teenagers, and we still don’t have equal pay. So we need men to get on the barricades with us and say, enough, you know, we, we need equality, we need it now. And I often say, some men challenge me when I'm on tour and they'll say, you know, you feminists are asking for too much. And I'm like, are we, are we really asking for too much equal pay? We'd like men to help us more around the house, which is in their interest. Is it scientifically proven? No woman ever shot a husband while he's vacuuming. We'd like them to do the odd sensitive thing with snow peas in the kitchen, because the weight to a woman's heart through her stomach. Not aiming too high. Jane Curry: Because I've got boys who are now in their 20s, so I've looked at it through that, you know, men's mental health, they don't want to always be the strong and the tough ones. Kathy Lette: No. Feminism works for men as well. Jane Curry: Yes. That's the thing. Exactly. They're allowed to have emotions… Kathy Lette: …and not have the pressure to be the breadwinner and all of that. Jane Curry: Yeah. So I see it, you know, having raised boys as a feminist, you know, to make sure that we can have open discussions. And, yeah, I'd like to think that they're well on the way to being good allies. But yeah, it is a brutal world out there. So I just think we do have to look out for each other and I'm really thrilled to be working with young women, again. Jean Kittson: To sum up this fantastic conversation, which could go on for hours, um, how would you, uh, what is the main message you like to say to people over 50 who are confronted by ageism or sexism, and how do they find it in them, the courage to stop that voice going, maybe I am too old. Kathy Lette: Well, I would say carpe diem, like there's no tomorrow. You know, tempus is fugiting – if not now, when, and you know. One of my mottoes is adventure before dementia. Not that I'm making light of that terrible disease, but you never know what's around the corner. So there's no time to waste. Be… have as much fun and frivolity. Be as outrageous as you can possibly be because you know, this is your last big hurrah. You know… Jean Kittson: Be assertive now! Kathy Lette: Yes, don't have any qualms. Just, you know, tap dance on that tabletop. Jane Curry: When I've had moments of self-doubt, I get moving. Not necessarily tap dancing, but get active, lift weights, go to the gym, run, walk the dog – dark clouds, gather. That's what I'd say if I was in that frame of mind and wondering how the world was going to greet me, I'd take the world on and get active, get those endorphins flowing. Because then you feel so much better. Kathy Lette: And also lean into the sisterly comradery. Jane Curry: Yes. Kathy Lette: Go out with your girlfriend as often. Which Jean and I do. Jean Kittson: Yes. Find beautiful women like yourselves and ring them up or have a glass of champagne. Kathy Lette: Yes. The human wonder bras uplifting, supportive, and make each other look bigger and better. Which is what Jean has done for us today. Thank you. Jean Kittson: Oh no, you two have, you've both been fantastic been great fun. Thank you so much. What a great conversation. Kathy Lette: Thank you Jean. Jean Kittson: Thanks. Kathy Lette: Sisterhood rules. ALL: Sisterhood Rules! Jean Kittson: Thank you to Kathy Lette and Jane Curry. You've been listening to DARE: The Time of Your Life, brought to you by Australian seniors. Please leave a review and share this show with someone you know. Visit seniors.com au/podcast for more episodes. I’m Jean Kittson. Thank you. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Louise O'Brien reviews Hope Rises by David Baldacci, published by Macmillan.

Isaiah 11 - The Stump of Jesse - Neil MacMillan by Christ City Church Dublin

As Britain's 'special relationship' with the USA falters, we look back at a very relevant epislode from our archive. In this the author and journalist Philip Stephens takes us back to a crucial month in post-war British politics. December 1962, he explains, set Britain's relationship with the rest of the world for the next half century. Featuring in this episode is the elderly British prime minister, Harold Macmillan; the charismatic US president John F Kennedy; and the trenchant French statesman Charles de Gaulle. In this one month these three men would set out their contrasting visions of what kind of country Britain would be. The scenes, characters and storylines in this episode of Travels Through Time all feature in Philip Stephen's book, Britain Alone: the path from Suez to Brexit (Faber) Show Notes Scene One: 5 December 1962. Dean Acheson's speech to the cadets of the Military Academy at West Point, New York. Scene Two: 15 December. Macmillan's visit to Rambouillet to meet with Charles de Gaulle. Scene Three: 19 December 1962. Macmillan travels to the Bahamas to meet President John F Kennedy. Memento: The text for Dean Acheson's ‘West Point Speech.' People/Social Presenter: Peter Moore Guest: Philip Stephens Producers: Maria Nolan

cycles of time, Henry VIII, Church of England, Henry VIII's take over of the English church, Dissolution of the Monasteries, Glastonbury Abbey, Jeffrey Epstein, the 500 year cycle between the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Epstein scandal, the Royal family, Prince Andrew, Lord Mountbatten, King Charles, Jack the Ripper, the Ripper of the Royals, Prince Eddie, will Epstein bring down the Royal Family?, Profumo, the collapse the Macmillan government, the Hellfire Club, the Cleveland Street scandal, Stephen Ward, JFK, Kennedy's links to Ward's ring, the connection between Profumo and the JFK assassination, the Iran War, Jack ParsonsMusic by: Keith Allen Dennishttps://keithallendennis.bandcamp.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Fear Factor: House of Fear" winner Ethan Macmillan stopped by the Page Six Studio to chat with "Virtual Reali-Tea" host Danny Murphy. He revealed what it was like winning the inaugural season of the hit FOX show spinoff. He spilled all the details about facing the scariest and grossest challenges, including mouse traps and maggots. Check out the full interview now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wir springen in dieser Folge nach Algerien, wo im Jahr 1880 zwei fanzösische Expeditionen aufbrechen, um eines der ambitioniertesten Technologieprojekte des 19. Jahrhunderts vorzubereiten. Anfängliche Euphorie weicht aber bald der Erkenntnis, dass die Sahara weitaus gefährlicher und unwirtlicher ist, als in den Ministerien und Salons in Paris angenommen. Wir sprechen in dieser Folge über Paul Flatters und die nach ihm benannten Expeditionen durch die Sahara, die nicht nur in einer Katastrophe enden, sondern den Mann auch lange Zeit in Vergessenheit geraten lassen. // Erwähnte Folgen - GAG542: Eine Kaiserin der Franzosen - https://gadg.fm/542 - GAG408: Das kurze und tragische Leben des Évariste Galois - https://gadg.fm/408 - GAG496: Sophie Germain - https://gadg.fm/496 - GAG272: Am Ende der Welt - Napoleons letzte Jahre im Exil - https://gadg.fm/272 - GAG417: Auf der Suche nach den Quellen des Nils - https://gadg.fm/417 - GAG100: Der Fall der „Mignonette“ und seine Folgen - https://gadg.fm/100 - GAG525: HB04 – Tödliche Abkürzung & Die Seekuh, die kam und verschwand - https://gadg.fm/525 - GAG472: Die Antoninische Pest - https://gadg.fm/472 // Literatur - Bernard, Frédéric (1851-1927). Deuxième Mission Flatters : Historique et Rapport Rédigés Au Service Central Des Affaires Indigènes / Avec Documents à l'appui et Une Carte Dressée Par M. Bernard,… ; Gouvernement Général de l'Algérie. - Brower, Benjamin Claude. A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France's Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844–1902. Columbia University Press, 2011. - Douglas Porch. The Conquest of the Sahara. Macmillan, 2005. - „John Strachan, Murder in the Desert: Soldiers, Settlers and the Flatters Expedition in the Politics and Historical Memory of European Colonial Algeria, 1830-1881“. The George Rudé Society, 29. August 2017. https://h-france.net/rude/vol4/strachan4/. Das Episodenbild zeigt Flatters um 1880. //Aus unserer Werbung Du möchtest mehr über unsere Werbepartner erfahren? Hier findest du alle Infos & Rabatte: https://linktr.ee/GeschichtenausderGeschichte //Geschichten aus der Geschichte jetzt auch als Brettspiel! Werkelt mit uns am Flickerlteppich! Gibt es dort, wo es auch Becher, T-Shirts oder Hoodies zu kaufen gibt: https://geschichte.shop // Wir sind jetzt auch bei CampfireFM! Wer direkt in Folgen kommentieren will, Zusatzmaterial und Blicke hinter die Kulissen sehen will: einfach die App installieren und unserer Community beitreten: https://www.joincampfire.fm/podcasts/22 //Wir haben auch ein Buch geschrieben: Wer es erwerben will, es ist überall im Handel, aber auch direkt über den Verlag zu erwerben: https://www.piper.de/buecher/geschichten-aus-der-geschichte-isbn-978-3-492-06363-0 Wer unsere Folgen lieber ohne Werbung anhören will, kann das über eine kleine Unterstützung auf Steady oder ein Abo des GeschichteFM-Plus Kanals auf Apple Podcasts tun. Wir freuen uns, wenn ihr den Podcast bei Apple Podcasts oder wo auch immer dies möglich ist rezensiert oder bewertet. Wir freuen uns auch immer, wenn ihr euren Freundinnen und Freunden, Kolleginnen und Kollegen oder sogar Nachbarinnen und Nachbarn von uns erzählt! Du möchtest Werbung in diesem Podcast schalten? Dann erfahre hier mehr über die Werbemöglichkeiten bei Seven.One Audio: https://www.seven.one/portfolio/sevenone-audio

In this episode of Peace Matters, we take a closer look at Hungary's upcoming parliamentary elections and what they could mean for the country and Europe. After 16 years in power, Viktor Orbán faces a serious challenge from former ally Péter Magyar. But is the challenge that serious after all? We explore the possible election outcomes, the dominance of the right in Hungarian politics, and the weakness of the left. The episode also examines Fidesz's family and gender policies and how they shape voter behavior, particularly among women. Finally, we discuss why this election is so consequential for Europe as Hungary heads to the polls.Guest:Andrea Pető is a Professor at the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna, Austria, a Research Affiliate of the CEU Democracy Institute, Budapest, and a Doctor of Science at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Pető is an internationally sought-after public speaker, and her works on gender, illiberalism and politics have been translated into 25 languages. She has held guest professorships at universities in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Israel, Serbia, and Sweden.She received numerous awards for her contributions to public life, including the 2018 All European Academies (ALLEA) Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values and the 2022 University of Oslo Human Rights Award. She is a Doctor Honoris Causa of Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. Recent publications include The Women of the Arrow Cross Party: Invisible Hungarian Perpetrators in the Second World War, Palgrave, Macmillan, 2020, and Forgotten Massacre: Budapest 1944, DeGruyter, 2021.The highly contested category of gender is always central to her work as a researcher and teacher, as well as to her engagement as a feminist public intellectual. Accompanied by:Marylia Hushcha, Researcher and Project Manager at the IIP.The episode was recorded on 23 March 2026.

What does it take to write strong sentences? How do you keep writing when the world feels dark? How do you push past self-doubt, build a sustainable writing practice, and trust that your voice is enough? Anne Lamott and Neal Allen share decades of hard-won wisdom from their new book, Good Writing. In the intro, Hachette cancels allegedly AI-written book [The New Publishing Standard]; How Pangram works; Publishing industry insights from Macmillan's CEO [David Perell Podcast]; Photos from Notre Dame and Saint Chapelle; The Black Church; Bones of the Deep coming in April. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Neal Allen is a spiritual coach, former journalist, and author of non-fiction and flash fiction. Anne Lamott is the New York Times bestselling author of memoir, spiritual and creative non-fiction, and literary fiction, including Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life, which many authors, including me, count as one of the best books on writing out there. Neal and Anne are also married, and their first book together is Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why strong verbs are rule number one How Anne and Neal's contrasting styles created a unique call-and-response writing guide Practical advice on finding and trusting your authentic voice across genres Why award-winning novelists typically write for only 90 minutes a day — and what that means for your writing practice How to keep writing during dark and discouraging times without giving up The uncomfortable truth about publication, longevity, and why nobody cares if you write You can find Neal at ShapesOfTruth.com and Anne on Substack. Transcript of the interview with Neal Allen and Anne Lamott Neal Allen is a spiritual coach, former journalist, and author of non-fiction and flash fiction. Anne Lamott is the New York Times bestselling author of memoir, spiritual and creative non-fiction, and literary fiction, including Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life, which many authors, including me, count as one of the best books on writing out there. Neal and Anne are also married, and their first book together is Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences Jo: Welcome to the show, Neal and Anne. Anne: Thank you so much, Jo. We're happy to be here. Neal: Hi, Jo. Jo: Let us get straight into the book with rule one, which is use strong verbs. How can we implement that practically in our manuscripts when most of us don't start with the verb? We're thinking of story or we're thinking of message? Neal: Throughout the book, it's pointed out that these are rules for second drafts, right? So you've put it down. You've already got your story down, you've already got your piece down—your email, your text, it doesn't matter what. Then you stop, you pause, you go back to the beginning and you go sentence by sentence and look at them. Anne: I'd like to add that there's a lot in the book, usually on my end of the conversation, that has to do with really using these rules anywhere and everywhere. Whether you're writing a memoir or a grant proposal, I believe these rules apply to getting everything written at any time, in any phase of the work because, from Bird by Bird, I'm all about taking short assignments and writing really godawful first drafts. What is fun about writing is to have spewed out something on the page and then to get to go back right then and just start cleaning it up a bit, straightening it out, probably inevitably shortening it. One place to start is to notice how weak our verbs are. If I say “Jo walked towards us across the lawn,” it doesn't give the reader very much information. But if I say “Jo lurched towards us across the lawn,” or “Jo raced towards us across the lawn,” then right away you've improved the sentence with really two or three quick thoughts about what you actually meant with that verb and a better one. So it really applies to every level and stage of writing, but Neal's right—this is really about going back over your work sentence by sentence and seeing if you can make it stronger and cleaner and clearer. The reason it's rule one is to write strong verbs. Neal: A nice thing about strong verbs is that they often preclude the need for an adjective or an adverb, right? If I say “I trudged,” it's shorter than saying “I walked slowly and depressed.” Jo: Absolutely, and how you answered that question is kind of how the book works, right? Because Neal does an outline of the rule, and then Anne comes in and comments. Maybe you could talk a bit about that process. You are both strong characters, obviously you've been writing a long time. Talk a bit about how you made the book and how that worked as a couple as well. Neal: I'd had these rules collected for a number of years and I had them on my website. When I met Anne, she liked them and would hand them out when she was doing writing sessions. I was intrigued at some point a few years ago and looked around to see whether there was a list like mine out there. I noticed that all the other lists I saw were much shorter. Hemingway had his four rules for rewriting. Elmore Leonard, his eight, which are wonderful. Margaret Atwood has 10. The longest I saw was Martin Amis had, depending on what year it was, 14, 15 or 16—he'd go back and forth with a couple of them. I had 30-some and I wondered, well, 30-some might be enough for a book. I didn't want to write a scolding book like on grammar. I didn't want it to be academic or written like “I'm the expert, I know.” I'll just let my mind range. I'll explain the rule and then let my mind go where it went. Which, by the way, is one of the rules—show then tell. Not “show, don't tell.” It's show, then tell. Let your mind riff after you've explained something to the reader or shown something to the reader. So I wrote the book. It was too short to be published, and I showed it to Anne and I asked her, “What do I do with this?” Anne: I said, “Hey, I know something about writing, Bub,” and I asked if I could contribute my thoughts and retorts and examples and prompts to each of his rules. We were just off and running because his stuff was so solid. Mine is more maybe welcoming and giving encouragement and hope to writers because writing's hard. It's still hard for me. This is my 21st book and I'm only a third of it. Writing's hard, and what we hope is that our conversation can help people understand: a) it's hard for everybody, and b) it'll work if you just keep your butt in the chair and do the best you can, and then go back one day at a time and try to make it a little bit better. Neal: It turned out to be pretty serendipitous because just naturally I'm more of an explainer and Annie is more driving toward catharsis. So the call and response is always: I set out the rule, I explain the rule, and Annie drives it toward catharsis and usefulness. Jo: In some chapters you do disagree in some form. How did that work in the process of writing? Anne: Usually I disagree because Neal might be using words that are too big, or it might be a little bit elitist, I would think. Or of course I would point out that he's completely overeducated, whereas I'm a dropout and so I have a much plainer, more welcoming version of the rules. All of the rules are so strong, but I would feel that the way he explained it was beyond me. So I would come in and try to explain what Neal had been explaining. It was actually really funny and fun. We do come from really different directions. Neal is an explainer. He's like an ATM of information, and I am the class den mother who brings in treats and party favours on everybody's birthday. My message is always: you can really, really do this, I promise, trust me. But you start where you are, you get your butt in the chair, and then Neal comes along and says what has worked for him. He was a journalist forever, so he writes in a very different way than I write. It just turned out that the two of us together kind of make a whole. People have asked us if there were a lot of conflicts or if we really objected to the other person's take. I can tell you, Jo, there wasn't a day when we had only conflict. We were just laughing and we were excited because one of us would remember a great example from literature. We came to believe that these two very distinct voices would form one voice of encouragement for any writer. Jo: That brings us to rule number eight, which is trust your voice. I feel like this is easier when you've been writing a while. We're told to find our voice, but I remember as an early writer when I read Bird by Bird and other books and I was like, “How on earth do I find my voice?” Maybe you could talk about this more for early stage writer. How do you find and trust that voice? Neal: Boy, that is a halt for almost all of us. This follows from any intellectual pursuit that requires lots of practice and repetitions. Malcolm Gladwell's great statement, or discovery, or restatement from somebody else who discovered it, that the human brain requires 10,000 hours of repetitions before something can be allowed to just flow without thought. Flow as if intuitive rather than thinking. I don't think that's any different in writing than it is in basketball or football or anything else—sports, creative pursuits, everyday pursuits. There's just a lot of repetitions required. Some people have the experience that I did, where you're just going along getting better and better, doing it over and over again, learning this, learning that, adding in this, adding in that, moving toward a goal of virtuosity or whatever. And all of a sudden, bang, one day, it all works and your voice emerges. Other people don't have that experience, don't have that one day that it happened or that feeling that it suddenly happened. For some people it takes less than 10,000 hours, but for most people it is a hell of a lot of repetitions. Anne: I think for me, the most important aspect to finding your own voice is noticing how desperately you don't think your voice is good enough and that you want to write like somebody else. I always mention that when I was coming up, at about 20, I wanted to sound like Isabel Allende because I loved her work so much. Or Ann Beattie, who was writing those wonderful short stories in the New Yorker. Or Salinger, who I'd started reading probably at 10 years old. I had to come to the understanding that I can't tell my stories and my truth and my version of life—which is really what writing is—in somebody else's voice. Unless it's a kind of advanced writing exercise to write in the voice of an alcoholic billionaire in Spain. For most of us, it's about finding out that our voice is what people want to hear. It's hard to believe, but it is absolutely true. If you have a story to tell me, Jo, I just want you to tell me your story. I don't want you to try to sound like Virginia Woolf or Margaret Drabble. I want you to be Jo. If it's the written version you're sending me, I can probably go through and help you maintain your voice while making the writing stronger by following certain really basic rules. But spiritually and psychologically, this is just about the most important rule of all because that's why we're here. That's why we are on this side of eternity—to discover who we are and why we're here. Part of that is discovering who, deep down, when all the layers are peeled away, we are, and then how to communicate that to a reader. Without trying to sound more impressive or more brilliant or more ironic than we actually are, our voice is good enough. It's hard to believe. Our voice is what we want you to tell us your stories in. Neal: I distinctly remember the day I found my voice, for odd reasons. I just can remember it, and the first thing I did when this story felt like it had written itself to me was look at it and go, “Crap. That doesn't sound like Faulkner.” Jo: It sounded like you. Anne: Or bad Faulkner. Jo: Do you think we have to find our voice maybe multiple times, depending on genre? For example, I recognised that feeling with one of my novels. It was novel number five. I was like, “Oh, that's my voice.” But then it took me a lot longer to find that in memoir because, well, I think memoir is super hard. Do you think we have to go through these 10,000 hours in different genres? Neal: Not for me. I don't think any differently about how I'm entering into a business letter, a text, a novel, a self-help book, or any of the things that I do. I feel like I just have to turn this switch and let it go, and I can trust myself. So that's interesting. I can imagine you could develop a second voice. I haven't ever needed to. Anne: I would agree that I write my novels and my nonfiction really from a kind of central bus station deep inside of me. One of our rules is write the hard things—write about life and death and loss and grief and relationships and getting old and being here during these incredibly cold, dark times. Because the reader, i.e. me, is just desperate for truth and for real. I started out wanting to sound like John Updike or sound like a New York glitterati male writer, and I can't tell you what is really real in somebody else's voice. I disagree with Malcolm Gladwell. I think it's 10 hours—a little bit different there. But when I'm writing autobiographical spiritual pieces or my novels, I have to kind of settle myself down, like gentling a horse, and find that bus station inside of myself where I'm observing and I'm tugging on the sleeve of the person sitting next to me and saying, “I just saw something really interesting. Do you have a minute?” That's really what writing is. I just saw something or thought of something or imagined something or remembered something really interesting. Do you have a minute? If I'm talking to the person next to me, I'm not going to try to sound like Laurence Olivier or anybody else. I'm just going to tell them my story. The best four or five word great quote is from our screenwriter friend, Randy Mayem Singer, and she said: “Tell me a story. Make me care.” Those six words really transcend all genres. It's just: I can tell you a story my way if you're interested. Got a minute? Jo: You mentioned that, really interesting, you said, “I need to settle myself down,” particularly in these dark times. This is not a political show, and obviously we're all from different countries here and we all have different views of what difficult times are, but we all go through them. When big things in the world make us feel like perhaps what we are doing is not so important, how do we get through that? That “shouldn't I go do something more important than writing a story” feeling? Neal: Everybody is encouraged to be a political scientist nowadays, or to be an ethicist or to be a moralist as their job, and that's kind of ridiculous, right? We've been handed our role. By the time you're 30, you've been handed your role in the world, and that's your productive role. You have certain citizenship requirements, which might include voting or marching or watching the news every day. That's not the rest of your day unless you actually work in parliament as an aide or doing some kind of social policy work. I am not going to let the external world ruin my day. I'm going to keep that to a certain number of minutes of my day that is appropriate to my role in the world. I am perfectly productive in the world. I have lots of things that I do. I work hard. Everybody works hard. There are no lazy people in this world any more—civilisation's too difficult. You want lazy? Go back to 300,000 years of tribal life, where as soon as you had fulfilled your last need for calories for the day, you made it back to camp slowly so you didn't burn calories, and lulled from about 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. The rest of the day you reclined so you weren't burning calories and gossiped with your fellow tribespeople. None of us is like that now. I'm perfectly productive without having to say I should be more productive and more concerned about the foibles of the species. Anne: Neal does something with his clients, with whom he does this work on taming the inner critic. It's about having them make a list of what they do every day. Rain or shine or catastrophe or peace or war or whatever, you just do it. I wake up, I pray, I put my glasses on. I get a little bit of work done every day. I meditate for 15 minutes every day. I get outside every day because that is the most nourishing, spiritual reset button I can get to. I catch up with my friends. We have a grandson here. We hang out with him. I do certain things every day, and one of them is I get a little bit of work done. Of course what I'd rather do is just stay glued to CNN and have my tiny opinions on every single thing that is happening and how things would be better if they followed my always excellent advice. Instead, what I do is I will meditate for 50 minutes a day and it won't be really beautiful and inspiring—it'll be like a monkey at the mall who's over-caffeinated. I will also get outside. I don't know if I'll get a really good long walk with 10,000 steps in, but I will get outside and I will pay attention. I will breathe in fresh air. I will have moments of wonder. I will also sit down, and I will be doing it after we talk. I'm going to get my own writing done for the day. I really recommend that to writing students: write down what you do every day. And in it, figure out at least one pod—a 45-minute pod—where you can get a little bit of writing done. Something that may serve the writers in your audience is that I make long lists and I encourage all beginning writers to make long lists of every memory and thought and idea that they've had. But mostly memories, often starting very young. Thinking about early holidays and school are great prompts. Make a list of 25 memories you have that you've told people over the years that are meaningful to you. If you remember them, they're meaningful. You may think that they're meaningful because of this or that, but you sit down and you write about them for 45 minutes and you're going to discover that there was a kernel of insight, or even healing, in them that you hadn't known when you set out to write them. I taught writing forever at this bookstore called Book Passage in Marin. We would spend a part of every hour having the writers, the students, explain to me why they weren't getting any writing done, and they were excellent ideas. Any excuse your listeners have about why they're not getting any writing done—believe me, it's a good excuse and I've heard it 10 times. If you are committed to writing, you have to meet us halfway, and that means that you set aside 45 minutes or an hour and a half or whatever you can give me to get a little bit of writing done. Get one passage written—the first or eighth thing on the list of really important memories that you've carried in your pocket all these years. Neal: The typical amount of time that a Booker Prize winner, or a National Book Award winner here in America, spends writing—a novelist—is one to two hours in the morning, getting 45 minutes to an hour and a half of work done, a thousand to 1,500 words. And then they stop. The reason they stop is it's really brain-consuming. To do this is hard work, and it's intellectually vigorous. High-end programmers can work two and a half hours on average before they have to stop because they've used up their brain energy—the blood going to the brain and expending calories and whatever is going on in there. It's not a long time. It's just repetitive time. The Booker Prize winners, they typically work six days a week, not five days a week. An hour and a half a day is about the mean. About 1,200 words is about the mean. Jo: It's interesting because you mentioned what's stopping people from writing, and you also mentioned it's hard work. One of the things I've heard a lot recently is: “This is really hard. I thought writing was meant to be this romantic myth where I would sit down and things would stream into my brain and it would be easy. And if it's not easy and fun, then maybe it's wrong for me.” So maybe you could explain more about the hardness and why hard is still good. Hard doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Neal: The interesting thing about writers is that they are really interested in very complex thinking about sentences. A few things distinguish a writer from a subject matter expert or a plotter—who either writes plots and is interested in the movement of plots, or who is a subject matter expert in something and either novelises it or writes nonfiction. It's that a writer is first concerned about the puzzle of a sentence, second concerned about the flow of a paragraph really, and only thirdly concerned about the subject matter. I don't care what the subject matter is. What I want to concentrate on ultimately is the sentence. And getting a sentence to look right in context requires building sentences upon sentences upon sentences. It's more like painting than it is like writing in that sense. If you look at a painter, once they've put one brushstroke down—and usually it takes them a while to figure out what that brushstroke is, how big it is, how wide it is, how thick it is, how grainy it is—then the second brushstroke becomes a puzzle based on what they just did with the first brushstroke and the remaining canvas. A writer thinks that way about each sentence and realises that each sentence has layers of information in it—diction, colour, rhythm, harmony, melody, plot, all sorts of things are happening. How many of those are taken care of in that sentence? Well, that becomes the interest. It's hard in the sense that to be virtuosic at it, to be really good at it, requires a lot of study and a lot of mistakes. Most of the mistakes are getting rid of clichés and finding your way past them, and that's a long, long process. This isn't something that can be just picked up because you have a talent. You were told at a certain time you were a talented writer, so you can just pick it up. As soon as you get into it, you see that the sentences are demanding a heck of a lot of work. Anne: I would add that I don't find it all that fun and easy—I never find it fun and easy. I've been doing this professionally for 52 years now, since I was 20, when I worked at a magazine. I think that's an illusion. So much of becoming a writer is unlearning what you thought it meant and how it would go. That you would sit alone like Bartleby the Scrivener, hunched over working on your ledger. That was not true at all, because a lot of our book, Good Writing, has to do with the collaboration between you and a writing partner, a writing group or a writing collective, and eventually an editor. It's not about that lonely, hunched-over romantic, Wuthering Heights sense of seriousness. And it's also not giddy. It's not Walt Disney. It's just very real. It's one human sitting down at the desk with paper or at the keyboard, and it is just trying, one day at a time, to write what's on your heart, what's on your mind, what's on your scribbled notes, what you're trying to transcribe from this little bit of a flicker of an idea about something that you've always meant to tell on paper. And then writing it. Some parts of the day's work will be pulling teeth. The secret of writing—and I write about this a lot in Bird by Bird, I write a lot about it in Good Writing—is you just don't give up. Because you wanted to be a writer when you grew up. What that means is that you write a little bit every day and you read about writing. You read good books on writing. You read Stephen King. You read William Zinsser. You read all the Paris Review interviews of writers at work. You enter into the writing life because it's a calling, like a monk to a monastery. You've gotten into the water, it's a little cold at first, and you stay in it. And it starts to be something that is so fulfilling, if maybe not fun. It's fulfilling. You will feel this rare excitement that you're doing what you have put off for so long, or that you're re-entering it in a new way with a different sense of commitment and maybe a little bit more wisdom and probably a lot more stories to tell. Jo: I did want to ask Anne, because coming back to Bird by Bird, many writers listening will have read it. I've also read over the years about your son and your faith. These are really personal things that you have shared. It feels like we live in this age of judgement and cancellation, and writing what you call our truths can be very difficult. People are afraid. What would you say to them? And obviously also rule 33 is “write hard stuff”, so I guess that gets into it too. How do we do this? Anne: A lot of people don't have the calling to write personal stuff or autobiographical stuff or stuff about spiritual or emotional or psychological healing. They want to write about England in the 1300s. I've always told my writing students to write what they would love to come upon, because then they're creating it. If they love to read historical romances, or they love to read journals—I have to say, I read every single journal of Virginia Woolf's in my early twenties, and I read every single volume of her letters in my early twenties. It was thrilling to be in that intimate, umbilical connection to a writer that I loved so much, and into the world of Bloomsbury, and into the world of England between the wars. People may not want to write like I write, and I would assume they don't. My calling is that I love to write about real life and I use my immediate experiences of daily living and my family and my husband and our animals and my nation and my recovery and my church. All of that is the stuff that I love to come upon in other people's work, and so I write it. Neal writes differently. He is a journalist and a novelist, and he is writing a lot in a much more sociological way than I am. He is writing with this font of knowledge about socioeconomic and historical understanding of the world. Yet he's just raggedy old Neal Allen, but he loves to come upon different stuff than I love to come upon. Does that answer your question? Neal: I think one thing to notice is that the whole bully-victim cycle that we are promoting and living in now—and it's a cycle because if somebody claims that they have been bullied, then their only defence is to become a bully themselves. The victims become the bullies. It just gets worse and worse. It's the old revenge story. What I've noticed when I think about it is the authors who I respect the most tend to be humanists. Humanists tend not to be cancelled, and I've never felt a great danger. Of course, I watch my words in certain ways that are fashionable—you can't use this word any more, and all of that. But in terms of ideas, humanists embrace the world in a funny, different kind of way than people who chase after conflict, chase after separation of people from each other, tribalism, all of that. When I look back, my heroes were always humanists. Some of them might be cancelled now, but just for the weirdest reasons—like Henry Miller or Mark Twain might be cancelled for very strange reasons. These are absolute humanists who love everybody in the world in a certain kind of odd way. Virginia Woolf is the most incredible humanist in the world. She's not going to be cancelled. Jo: She cancelled herself. Neal: There we go. Jo: As we come towards the end, I do want to return to something—you've both talked about calling and you've been handed your role, and this sort of “we are writers now.” Both of you have had great longevity in the career, and I've been doing this now 20 years. I've noticed so many people who leave the writing life, so I wondered what tips you had on making it long term. How do we do this long term, assuming we are feeling a calling? People have to balance the money side, they're balancing book marketing, which is always a nightmare for all of us, and the writing. Any tips for longevity? Neal: I have no idea. I have lived outside of the writing life, just kind of using it as a secondary skill, for half of my life. I left journalism because it didn't pay well enough to support a family of six. I moved into the corporate world. I loved the corporate world. I didn't have any problem with it, but it wasn't the writing world. When I came out of the corporate world, I first went into “tame your inner critic” sessions with people—executive coaching, other kinds of coaching. Only lately, only in the last 10 years, have I really resumed my writing career. I think maintaining a writing career, like anything in the arts, is incredibly difficult financially. It just will be. Annie will tell you—you were, what, 15 years into your career before you had your first home office? Anne: Yes. Neal: Right. Anne: More than that. I was 20 years in before I had a door I could close to keep the Huns out—i.e. my child. Here's the thing: nobody cares if you write, if you hate it, or if you've given up. It might be that you would find your creative soul, your imaginative, creative life force at ecstatic dancing on Saturdays in the town park, which we offer here in our tiny town. It might be that you're a painter. My best friend started painting several years ago and she's incredible. If you want to write, the horrible thing is that you just have to keep setting aside a pod. I keep using the word pod because that's how I get any work done at all—an hour. Now, Neal and I can both tell you, and Neal alluded to this: you set aside an hour and that will give you maybe 40 minutes of actual writing. And we'll give the Booker Prize winners 40 minutes of actual writing. You have two hours and that gives you an hour and 15 minutes. That's how it works. If you care and if you long to be a writer, to immerse yourself in the writing life—I hate to sound like a Nike ad, and I don't know if you have this in England—but you just do it. One thing that gets in everybody's way is this fantasy of getting published and how if they get published, it will be like the world has stamped “validated” on their parking ticket and their self-esteem will now be much, much better and more consistently excellent than it ever was before. We can tell you: we've got this book that's out, brand new, and it makes you much more insecure and much more anxious than you were before it got published. Because how's it going to do? Is it going to get reviewed? There are very, very few places reviewing books any more. Carol Shields, who wrote an incredible book 30 years ago called The Stone Diaries. She was teaching large, large writing retreats, a thousand people at a time, and she would tell them that five to 10 of them will be published. Getting published means that you get your book out and you have one week to make it. You have one week in the bookstores for it to get noticed. And there are 180,000 hardback books published in America every year in general interest. So you write a novel that's about a small town. You have great dreams that it's going to be an Oprah book and that this is going to happen and it will lead to a second contract, and then you can start investing in diamonds or buy a set of fish forks. It doesn't happen. My first book that made any money at all for me was my fifth book. It was a journal of my son's first year called Operating Instructions, and it was the first time that I didn't have to have a second job. I was 38, and I had been writing—and writing full time—since I was 20 and publishing since I was 26. If the carrot that is enticing you to get any new work done is publication and finding an agent and getting published, it's not going to happen for you. I can just promise you that. If your dream is to become a writer and to become a member of the writing community and to write—and it will be discouraging—but if you want to write, you just keep pushing back your sleeves. You don't get up. You sit down and you keep your butt in the chair. If your work is really good, it may get published. If your work is excellent, it may not. But that can't be what gets you to commit to being a writer when you grow up. Jo: Fantastic. So where can people find Good Writing and all your books and everything you both do online? Neal: On March 17th the book comes out. You can get it online, anywhere online. It's published by Penguin Avery. March 17th, it gets released. Anne: As we said, it'll be in the bookstores for a while. Neal: It'll be in the bookstores in America. You might have to go online in Great Britain at first. Jo: Oh yes, it's definitely there. And what about your websites as well? Anne: I don't have a website. Neal: I have a modest website at ShapesOfTruth.com. That tells you about my other books also. Anne: I'm at Substack, Anne Lamott. I'm on Facebook, Anne Lamott. I'm kind of all over the place. But this is kind of terrifying: 80% of books bought in America are bought at Amazon on cell phones. Jo: Yes, absolutely. Actually, I was going to ask—have you recorded the audiobook as a pair? Anne: Yes, we have. It's available if you go—I hate to always be plugging Amazon, but it's so easy. If you go to Amazon, it'll give you a choice of hardback or audio or Kindle. Neal: And if you don't want to go to Amazon and want to find another place to buy it that you feel more comfortable with, go to Penguin Random House and just put in “Good Writing, Anne Lamott.” I think it'll take you to a splash page that gives you a choice of a half dozen online places to order it. Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much, both of you, for your time. This has been brilliant. Anne: Oh, Jo, thank you. Pleasure and an honour. Thank you for having us. Neal: Thank you, Jo. As you can see, we really get turned on talking about this! Anne: Yes, we do.The post Strong Verbs And Hard Truths. Good Writing With Anne Lamott and Neal Allen first appeared on The Creative Penn.

This episode is presented by Mercury, the banking platform that makes this show possible. I can't imagine trying to run my business without them. Learn more at https://mercury.com Do you ever wonder how the book publishing industry works? How does the CEO of a top-five publishing house even think? That's what this episode is all about. My guest is John Yaged. He runs Macmillan, which is one of the top five publishing houses. I asked him to talk to me like I'm a young writer who has never published a book before. And that's what he did. If you're interested in improving your writing, if you want to be a super successful writer and understand how this industry works, then you're going to like this episode. About the host Hey! I'm David Perell and I'm a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible. Follow me Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-write/id1700171470 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidPerellChannel Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2DjMSboniFAeGA8v9NpoPv X: https://x.com/david_perell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No one knew how Iran's new supreme leader survived the 30 bombs dropped on his father's compound. Until now. The Telegraph's foreign correspondent Akhtar Makoii has obtained exclusive audio from an IRGC meeting that explains how Mojtaba Khamenei escaped the deadly US-Israeli strikes that killed his father, wife, sister, and other relatives on the first day of the Iran war. It also sheds new light on why he was chosen as Ali Khamenei's successor. Plus: how do you reopen the Strait of Hormuz and what can the UK really do to help Donald Trump? Jack Watling, senior research fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, joins Roland Oliphant and Venetia Rainey to discuss the military options and why even they might not be enough. They also talk about how China might be looking to take advantage of this conflict and the impact of the Iran war on Indo-Pacific security. Watling's new book, Statecraft: The New Rules of Power in a Divided World, is out this week and is published by Macmillan. CONTRIBUTORS:Roland Oliphant, co-host and chief foreign affairs analyst @RolandOliphantVenetia Rainey, co-host @venetiaraineyAkhtar Makoii, foreign correspondent @akhtar_makoiiJack Watling, senior research fellow RUSI @Jack_WatlingCONTENT REFERENCED:Mojtaba Khamenei escaped death by seconds, leaked audio revealshttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/16/exclusive-mojtaba-khamenei-escaped-death-leaked-audio/Trump wants Britain to send a warship to the Gulf. Starmer has sent eight sailorshttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/15/trump-wants-starmer-warship-gulf-sent-eight-sailors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This spring, I'm going to try a small experiment: a live studio for writers actively building a novel, where I'll read your opening pages and we'll work on them together, live.____Atelier Skye: The Studio for Serious NovelistsHere's what this will look like:Twelve novelists. Six Saturdays. Live sessions. Direct developmental critique.No recordings. No passive consumption. A working studio.This studio is designed for writers who:* Are actively drafting a novel* Have 8–10 strong opening pages ready* Want developmental-level critique* Care about both craft and industry positioning* Take their work seriouslyThis is not an introductory writing class.It is a professional room.REGISTER here: https://buy.stripe.com/fZu5kCgtd5PY1nV1Fs8EM00Enrollment is first come, first served until the atelier reaches 12 writers.About the Studio Lead:I'm Evelyn Skye, a New York Times bestselling novelist and the author of eleven books, published by major houses including Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Disney, and translated into sixteen languages worldwide. I have also written for Netflix in a literary-film collaboration starring Millie Bobby Brown, Angela Bassett, and Robin Wright.My work has been featured in PEOPLE, Newsweek, The Hollywood Reporter, CBS New York, The Morning Blend on NBC, The Mirror, Woman's World Magazine, South China Morning Post, Book Riot, PopSugar, Bustle, Psychology Today, Mochi Magazine, and more.I've been a featured speaker and guest of honor around the world—at the Festival du Livre de Paris, the Danish Fantasy Festival, San Diego Comic Con, Emerald City Comic Con, and more. I have a Bachelor's degree in Russian literature from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.Over the past decade, I've developed a deep understanding of what makes a manuscript not only compelling on the page, but viable in the marketplace.In this studio, I bring that experience directly to your opening pages.More details about the studio at:https://www.creativeinspiredalive.com/p/the-studio-for-serious-novelists-writing-workshop This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.creativeinspiredalive.com/subscribe

This week on the Boxoffice podcast, co-hosts Daniel Loria, Rebecca Pahle, and Chad Kennerk discuss the opening weekend of Disney's Hoppers and Warner Bros.' The Bride!, as well as preview A24's indie horror Undertone and the next Colleen Hoover adaptation, Reminders of Him. Then in the feature segment, Rebecca discusses programmatic advertising with Doug Woodard, the founder of MediaKoi, and Malcolm MacMillan, the managing director (UK) and executive vice president of exhibitor relations, Boost products and services at The Boxoffice Company. Give us your feedback on our podcast by accessing this survey: https://forms.gle/CcuvaXCEpgPLQ6d18 

Ahead of the World Premiere of THE SNAKE at SXSW 2026, we sit down with director Jenna MacMillan to talk about bringing the film to life. Written by and starring Susan Kent, this dark comedy follows a self-destructive 40-something searching for “home.”In this episode of Filmmaker Mixer, Jenna discusses how the project came together—from balancing sharp humor with emotional truth to shaping performances and preparing the film for its festival debut.Also starring comedy icon Robin Duke, THE SNAKE explores venomous family dynamics while staying grounded in heartfelt storytelling.

Why Female Physiology Still Needs Greater Attention in Sport with Dr Candice Macmillan This week on the Science for Sport Podcast, host Richard Graves welcomes Dr Candice Macmillan, Assistant Director of Sports Performance at Marquette University, for an important and often under-discussed conversation around female athlete health and hormonal contraception. As women's sport continues to grow professionally around the world, understanding the unique physiological considerations of female athletes has never been more important. Yet many practitioners still feel underprepared when supporting athletes through topics such as the menstrual cycle, hormonal contraceptives, and their potential implications for performance, wellbeing, and decision-making. Drawing on her background as a sports physiotherapist, researcher, and academic, Dr Macmillan explores how practitioners can better support female athletes through education, communication, and evidence-based decision making. The conversation covers the complexity of hormonal contraceptives, how different types influence physiology and behaviour, and why awareness of factors such as testosterone suppression and symptom tracking may be crucial for athletes and support staff alike. Perhaps most importantly, Dr Macmillan explains why empowering athletes to ask the right questions about their own health may be one of the most powerful tools practitioners can provide. This episode offers valuable insights for sports scientists, strength and conditioning coaches, physiotherapists, and performance staff working across elite sport — while also opening up a conversation that continues to shape the future of female athlete support systems. In This Episode You Will Learn Why female athlete health remains one of the most misunderstood areas in elite sport The difference between hormonal and non-hormonal contraceptives Why the contraceptive pill is not a single solution and varies widely in composition How hormonal contraceptives can influence testosterone levels and athlete behaviour Why symptoms may impact performance more than hormone levels themselves The importance of tracking menstrual symptoms for informed medical decisions Why practitioners must help athletes learn the language to describe how they feel The role communication plays between athletes, coaches and medical staff How policy and education are shaping the future of female athlete support in sport About Dr Candice Macmillan Dr Candice Macmillan is the Assistant Director of Sports Performance at Marquette University and a sports physiotherapist with a PhD in Sports Physiotherapy. Her work focuses on injury prevention, athlete health, and female athlete performance. Dr Macmillan's research explores the intersection of biomechanics, hormonal influences, and performance outcomes in women's sport. She leads research initiatives investigating female athlete physiology and is actively involved in advancing education and awareness around female athlete health. Her work aims to bridge the gap between research and applied practice so practitioners can better support athletes in real-world performance environments.

Louise Ward of Wardini Books reviews Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven, published by Macmillan.

Welcome to this special season of The Publisher Podcast, bringing you the best sessions from the Definitive AI Forum for Media, Information and Events, which we held with Flashes & Flames in London. This week features an interview with Mumsnet CEO Sue Macmillan speaking about how the 25-year old parenting forum is harnessing AI to power stronger pitches, deliver more actionable insights to brand partners and tighten internal management procedures. Sue described how she has made her own custom GPTs, why she feels that for managers to understand AI they have to use it themselves, and how we need to see it more as an electric bike than a self-driving car.  Read the key takeaways from this session, find our weekly newsletter and more on voices.media

Reunited on the Parkland Walk, Rob and Paul take it easy after Paul's boozy journey home from his tour. Featuring treadmills in Dubai, gig report, what the youngest progeny are up to, the late Philippe Gaulier, a couple of parkruns and a long one, running with John Robins and Esther Manito, Rob squeaking in, a glimpse of Paul's wife, and some sunglasses-related science.Sponsor Rob's Daughter's Cambridge Half for Macmillan here: https://www.justgiving.com/page/daisy-deering-1?utm_medium=FR&utm_source=CL&utm_campaign=020 SUBSCRIBE at ⁠https://runcompod.supercast.com/⁠ for early access, bonus episodes, ad-free listening and more...BUY OUR BOOKS; you can get Rob's book Running Tracks here - ⁠https://www.waterstones.com/book/running-tracks/rob-deering/9781800180444⁠ - you can get Paul's book 26.2 Miles to Happiness here: ⁠https://www.waterstones.com/book/26-2-miles-to-happiness/paul-tonkinson/9781472975270⁠ - and you can pre-order his NEW BOOK here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/running-through-sand/paul-tonkinson/9781399404013Thanks for listening, supporting, and sharing your adventures with us. Happy running. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode features a discussion focused on equipping behavior analysts with practical strategies for communicating effectively with parents about core behavioral principles. Rick and Doug examine common parent concerns, including misconceptions about reinforcement versus bribery, objections to "rewarding" children for expected behavior, and the short- and long-term effects of yelling and punishment. The conversation explores coercive cycles, habituation to punishment, escalation patterns, and counter control. Rick and Doug also address adolescent behavior through the lens of reinforcement history and motivating operations, emphasizing that teenagers are shaped by contingencies rather than being "broken." Practical communication strategies are provided, including using lay terminology, modeling empathy, setting clear contingencies, and teaching parents replacement strategies for coercive interactions. The content is applied and practice-oriented, supporting behavior analysts in improving parent training and consultation outcomes.    To earn CEUs for listening, click here, log in or sign up, pay the CEU fee, + take the attendance verification to generate your certificate! Don't forget to subscribe and follow and leave us a rating and review.   Show Notes: Azrin, N. H., & Holz, W. C. (1966). Punishment. In W. K. Honig (Ed.), Operant behavior: Areas of research and application (pp. 380–447). Appleton-Century-Crofts.  Patterson, G. R. (1982). Coercive family process. Castalia Publishing Company.  Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. Macmillan

Elisabeth Easther reviews My Husband's Wife by Alice Feeney, published by Macmillan.

A decade of viticulture education is right at your fingertips. Executive Director Beth Vukmanic interviews longtime host Craig MacMillan to celebrate ten years and 300 episodes of the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Together, they reflect on some of Craig's most memorable interviews—from new discoveries in sour rot and space-to-farm technology, to using storytelling to sell more wine and tackling leadership transitions.  Resources:   17: New Discoveries about Sour Rot  129: The Efficient Vineyard Project  161: Use Storytelling to Sell More Wine  233: The Gap Between Space and Farm: Ground Truthing Satellite Data Models  239: Ford Pro Pilot – Trialing Electric Trucks in the Field  249: Making it Easier to Use Satellite Data in Agriculture  257: Understanding Winery Visitors – Increase Sales with your Messaging  268: How to Tackle Leadership Transitions Successfully  286: To Till or Not to Till: Impacts on Soil, Vines, and Vineyard Budgets  Craig Macmillan  Support the Podcast:  Make a Donation  Vineyard Team Programs:  Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Help students from vineyard families pursue higher education  Online Courses - Earn DPR and CCA hours with expert-led sustainability trainings  SIP Certified - A trusted third-party certification proving your sustainable practices with science-backed standards  Sustainable Ag Expo - Join top experts at the premier winegrowing event of the year  Vineyard Team Membership - Connect with a community advancing sustainable winegrowing 

Kimberly Meredith is a world-renowned celebrity psychic, medical intuitive, medium, healer, keynote speaker with AAE Speakers, global influencer, leading spiritual teacher, successful life coach, and an acclaimed bestselling author at Penguin Random House. Her bestselling book, Awakening to the Fifth Dimension: Discovering the Soul's Path to Healing, has changed countless lives. Blessed with a unique array of extraordinary healing and psychic abilities, Kimberly has helped thousands of people from around the world improve from all manner of significant illnesses and emotional conditions through the Holy Spirit. She also connects with those who have crossed over to bring messages to the living. Kimberly is often compared to Edgar Cayce, the father of holistic medicine, himself a medical medium, and the most documented psychic of the 20th Century. Kimberly received her miraculous gifts of healing and mediumship from the Holy Spirit following two Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), from which she returned with a mission to bring healing to the world. She channels messages through her eyes' blinking codes as a tool of communication from God. Kimberly's healing abilities have been tested by the famed IONS, Institute of Noetic Sciences, the research organization founded by astronaut Edgar Mitchell, as well as by many other scientific organizations. Her abilities have exceeded those of other medical mediums tested, revealed through her healing mediumship and code-blinking eyes. Her abilities have also been validated by the PSYtek Subtle Energy Laboratory and Dr. Norm Shealy, neurosurgeon, founder of the Shealy Sorin Wellness Institute, and a leading founder of holistic medicine. Kimberly's bestselling book, Awakening to the Fifth Dimension: Discovering the Soul's Path to Healing, is published by Macmillan, St. Martin's Press, and Hay House UK, with a personally narrated audiobook edition published by Penguin Random House, also on Kindle, with a foreword by neurosurgeon C. Norman Shealy, MD, PhD. Kimberly hosts The Medical Intuitive Miracle Show, a #1 syndicated hit show broadcasting worldwide on Mind Body Spirit FM, BBS Radio TV, iHeartRadio, Spotify, and all major podcasting platforms. Kimberly is also a frequent guest on numerous nationally syndicated radio shows and podcasts, including several popular recurring appearances on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, the number-one rated overnight radio show. She's also been a guest on KATU ABC TV – Portland, Oregon; Wake Up With Marci – WLNY CBS TV; The Donna Drake Show – Syndicated; Carlos & Lisa Show – BEONDTV; GAIA TV; The Aware Show; Melissa Billie Clark Show, New Realities with Alan Steinfeld, Front & Center with Jacquie Jordan, Deborah Zara Kobylt Live, and the Fox 11 adoption program Wednesday's Child. She has appeared at Red Carpet events for the Oscars, Daytime Emmy Awards, and Golden Globes. Kimberly has been a keynote speaker at the Los Angeles Conscious Life Expo, the New Living Expo, and the New Life Expo and at venues such as the Omega Institute, New York's OPEN Center, The Life Center of Connecticut, and the RA MA Institute. She is a recurring speaker at Jack Canfield seminars and Heaven and Earth Oasis, a non-profit organization serving the Veterans Administration. Kimberly has been prominently featured on the covers of and within numerous major publications, including Harper's Bazaar Vietnam, Éclair Magazine, Women Fitness, Preferred Health Magazine, MUPO Entertainment Magazine, Awareness Magazine, The Life Connection Magazine, Thrive Global, LA Yoga Magazine, The New York Daily News, The Edge Magazine, The Eden Magazine, and Medium. A healer like no other, Kimberly Meredith bridges the gap between God and science. ---- SOCIAL MEDIA: Instagram: @Meredith.Kimberly Facebook Public Figure Page: @kimberlymeredith11 TikTok: @kimberlymeredith11 X/Twitter: @HealingTrilogy YouTube: Kimberly Meredith Channels the Holy Spirit Threads: @Meredith.Kimberly IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0580606/ Podcast: The Medical Intuitive Miracle Show (#1 rated radio show, on air since 2018, widely syndicated, MindBodySpirit.fm, BBS Radio TV, iHeartRadio, Spotify, and many more)  Upcoming Appearances: Kimberly's Full Event Schedule: https://www.thehealingtrilogy.com/events-2/ Press & Bookings Only: Kimberly Meredith Press & Media Inquiries Turk Entertainment Public Relations for Press and Bookings 358 South Cochran, Suite 103 Los Angeles, CA 90036 info@turkentertainmentpr.com 323-934-2727  AAE Speakers 1-866-310-0817     

NAEA President Jennifer MacMillan joins Roger and Annie to talk about what she's hearing from enrolled agents on the front lines this tax season — including an IRS that's putting undertrained staff on the phones, backlogs that aren't getting resolved, and one practitioner who made 25 calls on a single issue without ever getting an answer. They also dig into the bipartisan push for minimum preparer standards, NAEA's win on Oregon licensing, and why Jennifer thinks managing client expectations around social security, tips, and overtime is going to be one of the biggest challenges of the season.SponsorsPadgett -  Contact Padgett or Email Jeff PhillipsGet NASBA Approved CPE or IRS Approved CELaunch the course on EarmarkCPE to get free CPE/CE for listening to this episode.Links mentioned in this episodeChapters(00:00) - Welcome to Federal Tax Updates (03:55) - Jennifer's Journey (05:55) - Selling a Tax Practice the Smart Way: Timing, Systems, and Profitability (08:36) - What NAEA Offers: Community Support, Web Board, and Member Resources (09:54) - IRS Service Breakdown: Phone Lines, Staffing Losses, and Backlog Reality (12:43) - Real-World IRS Call Horror Stories: POA Issues, Callbacks, and TAS Limits (15:09) - Returns & Refunds: E-File Works—But Humans and Paper Still Slow Everything (16:34) - Managing Client Expectations in a Misinformation Tax Year (20:32) - Pricing Your Expertise: Value Billing, Fee Schedules, and Getting Paid for Knowledge (26:30) - Why Community Matters + The Accounting Today Webinar Recap (28:43) - Tax season prep: new laws, IRS notices & online accounts (30:59) - DC advocacy + NAEA Fly-In (May 5–6): what to expect (32:05) - Minimum standards for paid preparers: the bipartisan push (34:50) - Why regulation matters: tax gap, weak enforcement & bad actors (41:18) - State battles: Oregon licensing surprise + Minnesota win (48:09) - Join NAEA: member benefits, volunteering & community (51:07) - Wrap-up: upcoming topics and tax-season sendoff Follow the Federal Tax Updates Podcast on Social Mediatwitter.com/FedTaxPodfacebook.com/FedTaxPodlinkedin.com/showcase/fedtaxpodConnect with the Hosts on LinkedInRoger HarrisAnnie SchwabReviewLeave a review on Apple Podcasts or PodchaserSubscribeSubscribe to the Federal Tax Updates podcast in your favorite podcast app!This podcast is a production of Earmark MediaThe full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this pageAll content from this podcast by SmallBizPros, Inc. DBA PADGETT BUSINESS SERVICES is intended for informational purposes only.

In this episode, we talk with Mike Whitenton, Director of Academic Initiatives at Interfaith America (IA). Mike works at the intersection of rhetoric, religious narrative, and cognitive science to help educators create classroom spaces where students can engage meaningfully across differences.Our conversation explores what pluralism means in practice and how it intersects with existing research and practice to foster inclusivity and belonging in the classroom. Mike introduces listeners to the three core principles of pluralism: Respect for diverse identities (even those that make us uncomfortable); Relate to those around us in a way that is genuine and mutually enriching; and Cooperate together in the service of the common good. Rather than avoiding disagreement, pluralism asks us to lean into it intentionally. In an educational environment, this means giving students structured opportunities to develop empathy, practice perspective-taking, and build bridges before they encounter real-world conflicts. By creating low-stakes opportunities for students to engage with divergent perspectives, we help them develop the skills they'll need long after they leave our classrooms.Learn more about Interfaith America: https://www.interfaithamerica.org/ Other materials referenced in this episode: Eck, D. L. (n.d.). The Pluralism Project. Harvard University. https://pluralism.org/Ed Up Experience Podcast [Audio podcast]. https://www.edupexperience.com/Interfaith America. (n.d.). Pedagogies for pluralism. https://www.interfaithamerica.org/resources/pedagogies-for-pluralism/Interfaith America. (n.d.). Pluralism Texts Bibliography. https://www.interfaithamerica.org/resources/pluralism-texts-bibliography/ Interfaith America. (n.d.). Teaching & Learning Pluralism Cohort. https://www.interfaithamerica.org/grants/teaching-learning-pluralism-cohort/ Zangwill, I. (1909). The melting-pot: Drama in four acts. Macmillan.

Have you ever wondered how introverts can thrive at marketing without feeling overwhelmed or inauthentic? In this episode of the Quiet and Strong Podcast, host David Hall welcomes marketing mentor Kaye King for an open conversation about creating authentic marketing strategies that actually feel comfortable for introverts.Listeners will learn how to reframe marketing from "shouty" and spammy to a process of genuine connection and conversation. Kaye King shares how focusing on strengths like observation and deep listening can transform your approach. Discover practical ways to build relationships on social media, craft emails that provide value, find the right rhythm for your marketing efforts, and even explore networking and podcast guesting as enjoyable strategies.Tune in to hear how marketing can be a joyful, authentic experience—no matter your personality. Get actionable ideas, encouragement, and permission to do things your way. Listen, connect, and be strong.Episode Link: QuietandStrong.com/262Kaye King has spent over 30 years in marketing agencies, working with brands like Kenco, Hilton, and Macmillan. But it was after she set up her consultancy business in 2016 that Kaye found her real passion: to make marketing feel less icky and more human for people doing meaningful work.Away from the agency world, Kaye discovered a network of solo business owners who were either wasting time and energy on marketing that didn't work, or they were avoiding it altogether because it felt pushy or fake.Connect with Kaye: Website | LinkedIn | Newsletter |  CommunitySend us a textSupport the show- - -Contact the Host of the Quiet and Strong Podcast:David Hall Author, Speaker, Educator, Podcaster quietandstrong.comGobio.link/quietandstrongdavid [at] quietandstrong.com NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links. I may earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you. Take the FREE Personality Assessment: Typefinder Personality Assessment Follow David on your favorite social platform:Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Youtube Get David's book:Minding Your Time: Time Management, Productivity, and Success, Especially for Introverts Get Quiet & Strong Merchandise

This week our guest is author Tom Macmillan. In "The Year That Made America," author Tom Macmillan examines the critical eight months leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. For more information visit www.allthingsliberty.com. 

Step into Episode 197 of On The Delo as Delo sits down with chef Beau MacMillan for an unflinching conversation about what happens when 30 years of grinding finally collide with reality.Beau has lived the highlights—celebrity chef status, Iron Chef wins, cooking for Steven Tyler, Jerry Bruckheimer, Adam Sandler, and building Sanctuary into a 23-year Arizona institution. What often goes untold is what happens when validation, recognition, and performance stop being enough.Now over 50, Beau describes feeling mentally 19 and physically 76. Decades of 14-hour days, seven-day weeks, and constant pressure caught up to him. The shift began when his wife, after prioritizing her own health, told him plainly: “We've got all these kids, and they need us. I want you to be around.This episode doesn't start with résumés or origin stories. It starts with reckoning.Beau opens up about quitting smoking after a lifetime of loving cigarettes, going alcohol-free in an industry built around booze, and rebuilding his health incrementally so he can actually be present for his wife and five kids. The yacht chapter—cooking in the Caribbean, losing 75–80 pounds, fasting, and learning to eat for fuel instead of numbing—became the baseline he's been trying to return to ever since.But this conversation goes beyond personal health. It confronts the brutal reality of hospitality: stress is the root cause, and substances, food, and dopamine become coping mechanisms when the pressure never stops. Beau reflects on thriving in chaos, the rush of 350-cover nights, and how the same wiring that made him great also made him numb.Leadership and legacy take center stage as Beau challenges industry norms—calling for clean, organized, desirable kitchens, real mentorship, and cultures where people stay because they know they matter. Success, for him, was never titles or money, but “beautiful people, beautiful places, beautiful food.Chapter Guide (Timestamps)(0:00 – 2:40) Introduction: Skipping the Origin Story and Starting in the Present(2:41 – 8:40) Turning 50: Health Wake-Up, Family Priorities, Quitting Smoking and Alcohol(8:41 – 15:20) The Yacht Chapter: Solitude, Weight Loss, Fasting, and Food as Fuel(15:21 – 23:35) Food, Addiction, and Incremental Change: Nourishment Over Numbing(23:36 – 31:15) The Invisible Weight of the Grind: 7-Day Weeks and Dopamine Highs(31:16 – 40:00) Kitchens, Culture, and Retention: Why Young Chefs Are Leaving(40:01 – 46:30) Stress as the Root Cause: Healing Hospitality and Managing Pressure(46:31 – 55:30) Sanctuary Legacy: Mentorship, Relationships, and Redefining Success(55:31 – 1:04:00) Early Career and Recognition: Celebrity Diners, TV, and Iron Chef(1:04:01 – 1:12:30) The Handwritten Letter: Top Chef, Timing, and Full-Circle Moments(1:12:31 – 1:20:00) Arizona as Home: Community, Gratitude, and What's Simmering(1:20:01 – 1:27:30) Resting, Consulting, and Manifesting the Next Chapter(1:27:31 – End) Quiet Heroes, True Impact, and Final ReflectionsThis isn't a redemption story. It's a recalibration. A hard look at ambition, sacrifice, and deciding—finally—that the game you've been playing isn't the one you want to win anymore.If you're caught in the grind, leading burned-out teams, or questioning the metrics you've been chasing, this episode is a gut check worth hearing.Drop a comment with what landed for you—was it the stress vs. substance framework? The mentoring legacy? The reframe on what success means? Let's keep this conversation going in the community.Follow Beau's Next Chapter: https://www.instagram.com/chefbeaumac

#canada #spiderman #heavenIn this story, we learn about a weaver that gets tired of weaving. Source: Canadian Fairy Tales by Cyrus MacMillanNarrator: Dustin SteichmannMusic: Are you from Bevan An old BC folk song performed by Daniel von SchulmannSound Effects: Amazon Forest - only crickets and cicadas by ricardoemfield -- https://freesound.org/s/737938/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0Podcast Shoutout: Just The Zoo Of UsListener Shoutout: Christchurch New Zealand

Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan talks about what's at stake when power rules. As the US intervenes in foreign states, and starts alienating long-trusted allies, what message does it send about what could happen in Ukraine, Taiwan and Greenland. MacMillan says warnings from history show we may be on the cusp of a new world order.

What does 2026 hold for indie authors and the publishing industry? I give my thoughts on trends and predictions for the year ahead. In the intro, Quitting the right stuff; how to edit your author business in 2026; Is SubStack Good for Indie Authors?; Business for Authors webinars. If you'd like to join my community and support the show every month, you'll get access to my growing list of Patron videos and audio on all aspects of the author business — for the price of a black coffee (or two) a month. Join us at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She's also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. (1) More indie authors will sell direct through Shopify, Kickstarter, and local in-person events (2) AI-powered search will start to shift elements of book discoverability (3) The start of Agentic Commerce (4) AI-assisted audiobook narration will go mainstream (5) AI-assisted translation will start to take off beyond the early adopters (6) AI video becomes ubiquitous. ‘Live selling' becomes the next trend in social sales. (7) AI will create, run, and optimise ads without the need for human intervention (8) 1000 True Fans becomes more important than ever You can find all my books as J.F. Penn and Joanna Penn on your favourite online store in all the usual formats, or order from your local library or bookstore. You can also buy direct from me at CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com. I'm not really active on social media, but you can always see my photos at Instagram @jfpennauthor. 2026 Trends and Predictions for Indie Authors and Book Publishing (1) More indie authors will sell direct through Shopify, Kickstarter, and local in-person events — and more companies like BookVault will offer even more beautiful physical books and products to support this. This trend will not be a surprise to most of you! Selling direct has been a trend for the last few years, but in 2026, it will continue to grow as a way that independent authors become even more independent. The recent Written Word Media survey from Dec 2025 noted that 30% of authors surveyed are selling direct already and 30% say they plan to start in 2026. Among authors earning over $10,000 per month, roughly half sell direct. In my opinion, selling direct is an advanced author strategy, meaning that you have multiple books and you understand book marketing and have an email list already or some guaranteed way to reach readers. In fact, Kindlepreneur reports that 66% of authors selling direct have more than 5 books, and 46% have more than 10 books. Of course, you can start with the something small, like a table at a local event with a limited number of books for sale, but if you want to consistently sell direct for years to come, you need to consider all the business aspects. Selling direct is not a silver bullet. It's much harder work to sell direct than it is to just upload an ebook to Amazon, whether you choose a Kickstarter campaign, or Shopify/Payhip or other online stores, or regular in-person sales at events/conferences/fairs. You need a business mindset and business practices, for example, you need to pay upfront for setup as well as ongoing management, and bulk printing in some cases. You need to manage taxes and cashflow. You need to be a lot more proactive about marketing, as you won't sell anything if you don't bring readers to your books/products. But selling direct also brings advantages. It sets you apart from the bulk of digital only authors who still only upload ebooks to Amazon, or maybe add a print on demand book, and in an era of AI rapid creation, that number is growing all the time. If you sell direct, you get your customer data and you can reach those customers next time, through your email list. If you don't know who bought your books and don't have a guaranteed way to reach them, you will more easily be disrupted when things change — and they always change eventually. Kindlepreneur notes that “45% of the successful direct selling authors had over 1,000 subscribers on their email lists,” with “a clear, positive correlation between email list size and monthly direct sales income — with authors having an email list of over 15,000 subscribers earning 20X more than authors with email lists under 100 subscribers.” Selling direct means faster money, sometimes the same day or the same week in many cases, or a few weeks after a campaign finishes, as with Kickstarter. And remember, you don't have to sell all your formats directly. You can keep your ebooks in KU, do whatever you like with audiobooks, and just have premium print products direct, or start with a very basic Kickstarter campaign, or a table at a local fair. Lots more tips for Shopify and Kickstarter at https://www.thecreativepenn.com/selldirectresources/ I also recommend the Novel Marketing Podcast on The Shopify Trap: Why authors keep losing money as it is a great counterpoint to my positive endorsement of selling direct on Shopify! Among other things, Thomas notes that a fixed monthly fee for a store doesn't match how most authors make money from books which is more in spikes, the complexity and hassle eats time and can cost more money if you pay for help, and it can reduce sales on Amazon and weaken your ranking. Basically, if you haven't figured out marketing direct to your store, it can hurt you.All true for some authors, for some genres, and for some people's lifestyle. But for authors who don't want to be on the hamster wheel of the Amazon algorithm and who want more diversity and control in income, as well as the incredible creative benefits of what you can do selling direct, then I would say, consider your options in 2025, even if that is trying out a low-financial-goal Kickstarter campaign, or selling some print books at a local fair. Interestingly, traditional publishers are also experimenting with direct sales. Kate Elton, the new CEO of Harper Collins notes in The Bookseller's 2026 trend article, “we are seeing global success with responsive, reader-driven publishing, subscription boxes and TikTok Shop and – crucially – developing strategies that are founded on a comprehensive understanding of the reader.” She also notes, “AI enables us to dramatically change the way we interact with and grow audiences. The opportunities are genuinely exciting – finding new ways to help readers discover books they will love, innovating in the ways we market and reach audiences, building new channels and adapting to new methods of consuming content.” (2) AI-powered search will start to shift elements of book discoverability From LinkedIn's 2026 Big Ideas: “Generative engine optimization (GEO) is set to replace search engine optimization (SEO) as the way brands get discovered in the year ahead. As consumers turn to AI chatbots, agentic workflows and answer engines, appearing prominently in generative outputs will matter more than ranking in search engines.” Google has been rolling out AI Mode with its AI Overviews and is beginning to push it within Google.com itself in some countries, which means the start of a fundamental change in how people discover content online. I first posted about GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) in 2023, and it's going to change how readers find books. For years, we've talked about the long tail of search. Now, with AI-powered search, that tail is getting even longer and more nuanced. AI can understand complex, conversational queries that traditional search engines struggled with. Someone might ask, “What's a good thriller set in a small town with a female protagonist who's a journalist investigating a cold case?” and get highly specific recommendations. This means your book metadata, your website content, and your online presence need to be more detailed and conversational. AI search engines understand context in ways that go far beyond simple keywords. The authors who win in this new landscape will be those who create rich, authentic content about their books and themselves, not just promotional copy. As economist Tyler Cowen has said, “Consider the AIs as part of your audience. Because they are already reading your words and listening to your voice.” We're in the ‘organic' traffic phase right now, where these AI engines are surfacing content for ‘free,' but paid ads are inevitably on the way, and even rumoured to be coming this year to ChatGPT. By the end of 2026, I expect some authors and publishers to be paying for AI traffic, rather than blocking and protesting them. For now, I recommend checking that your author name/s and your books are surfaced when you search on ChatGPT.com as well as Google.com AI Mode (powered by Gemini). You want to make sure your work comes up in some way. I found that Joanna Penn and J.F. Penn searches brought up my Shopify stores, my website, podcast, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even my Patreon page, but did not bring up links to Amazon. If you only have an author presence on Amazon, does it appear in AI search at all? Do you need to improve anything about what the AI search brings up? Traditional publishers are also looking at this, with PublishersWeekly doing webinars on various aspects of AI in early 2026, including sessions on GEO and how book sales are changing, AI agents, and book marketing. In a 2026 predictions article on The Bookseller, the CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing noted, “The boundaries of artificial intelligence will become clearer, enabling publishers to harness its benefits while seeking to safeguard the intellectual property rights of authors, illustrators and publishers.” “AI will be deeply embedded in our workflows, automating tasks such as metadata tagging, freeing teams to focus on creativity and strategy. Challenges will persist. Generative AI threatens traditional web traffic and ad revenue models, making metadata optimisation and SEO critical for visibility as we adjust to this new reality online.” (3) The start of Agentic Commerce AI researches what you want to buy and may even buy on your behalf. Plus, I predict that Amazon does a commerce deal with OpenAI for shopping within ChatGPT by the end of 2026. In September 2025, ChatGPT launched Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which will enable bots to buy on websites in the background if authorised by the human with the credit card. VISA is getting on board with this, so is PayPal, with no doubt more payment options to come. In the USA, ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users can now buy directly from US Etsy sellers inside the chat interface, with over a million Shopify merchants coming soon. Shopify and OpenAI have also announced a partnership to bring commerce to ChatGPT. I am insanely excited about this as it could represent the first time we have been able to more easily find and surface books in a much more nuanced way than the 7 keywords and 3 categories we have relied on for so long! I've been using ChatGPT for at least the last year to find fiction and non-fiction books as I find the Amazon interface is ‘polluted' by ads. I've discovered fascinating books from authors I've never heard of, most in very long tail areas. For example, Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby, recommended by ChatGPT as I am interested in medical anatomy and anatomical Venuses, and The Macabre by Kosoko Jackson, recommended as I like art history and the supernatural. I don't think I would have found either of these within a nuanced discussion with ChatGPT. Even without these direct purchase integrations, ChatGPT now has Shopping Research, which I have found links directly to my Shopify store when I search for my books specifically. Walmart has partnered with OpenAI to create AI-first shopping experiences, and you have to wonder what Amazon might be doing? In Nov 2025, Amazon signed a “strategic partnership” with OpenAI, and even though it's focused on the technical side of AI, those two companies in a room together might also be working on other plans … I'm calling it for 2026. I think Amazon will sign a commerce agreement with OpenAI sometime before the end of the year. This will enable at least recommendation and shopping links into Amazon stores (presumably using an OpenAI affiliate link), or perhaps even Instant Checkout with ChatGPT for Amazon. It will also enable a new marketing angle, especially if paid ads arrive in ChatGPT, perhaps even integrating with Amazon Ads in some way as part of any possible agreement, since ads are such a good revenue stream for Amazon anyway. The line between discovery, engagement, and purchase is collapsing. Someone could be having a conversation with an AI about what to read next, and within that same conversation, purchase a bookwithout ever leaving the chat interface. This already happens within TikTok and social commerce clearly works for many authors. It's possible that the next development for book discoverability and sales might be within AI chats. This will likely stratify the already fragmented book eco-system even more. Some readers will continue to live only within the Amazon ecosystem and (maybe) use their Rufus chatbot to buy, and others will be much wider in their exploration of how to find and discover books (and other products and services). If you haven't tried it yet, try ChatGPT.com Shopping Research for a book. You can do this on the free tier. Use the drop down in the main chat box and select Shopping Research. It doesn't have to be for your book. It can be any book or product, for example, our microwave died just before Christmas so I used it to find a new one. But do a really nuanced search with multiple requirements. Go far beyond what you would search for on Amazon. In the results, notice that (at the time of writing) it does not generally link to Amazon, but to independent sites and stores. As above, I think this will change by the end of 2026, as some kind of commerce deal with Amazon seems inevitable. (4) AI-assisted audiobook narration will go mainstream I've been talking about AI narration of audiobooks since 2019, and over the years, I've tried various different options. In 2025, the technology reached a level of emotional nuance that made it much easier to create satisfying fiction audio as well as non-fiction. It also super-charges accessibility, making audio available in more languages and more accents than ever before. Of course, human narration remains the gold standard, but the cost makes it prohibitive for many authors, and indeed many small traditional publishers, for all books. If it costs $2000 – $10,000 to create an audiobook, you have to sell a lot to make a profit, and the dominance of subscription models have made it harder to recoup the costs. Famous narrators and voice artists who have an audience may still be worth investing in, as well as premium production, but require an even higher upfront cost and therefore higher sales and streams in return. AI voice/audio models are continuing to improve, and even as this goes out, there are rumours on TechCrunch that OpenAI's new device, designed by Jony Ive who designed the iPhone, will be audio first and OpenAI are improving their voice models even more in preparation for that launch. In 2026, I think AI-narrated audio will go mainstream with far-reaching adoption across publishing and the indie author world in many different languages and accents. This will mean a further stratification of audiobooks, with high quality, high production, high cost human narrated audio for a small percentage of books, and then mass market, affordable AI-narrated audio for the rest. AI-narrated audiobooks will make audio ubiquitous, and just as (almost) every print book has an ebook format, in 2026, they will also have an audio format. I straddle both these worlds, as I am still a human audiobook narrator for my own work. I human-narrated Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition (free audiobook) and The Buried and the Drowned, my short story collection. I also use AI narration for some books. ElevenLabs remains my preferred service and in 2025, I used my J.F. Penn voice clone for Death Valley and also Blood Vintage, while using a male voice for Catacomb. I clearly label my AI-narration in the sales description and also on the cover, which I think is important, although it is not always required by the various services. You can distribute ElevenLabs narrated audiobooks on Spotify, Kobo Writing Life, YouTube, ElevenReader, and of course your own store if you use Shopify with Bookfunnel. There are many other services springing up all the time, so make sure you check the rights you have over the finished audio, as well as where you can sell and distribute the final files. If they are just using ElevenLabs models in the back-end, then why not just do that directly? (Most services will be using someone's model in the back-end, since most companies do not train their own models.) Of course, you can use Amazon's own narration. While Amazon originally launched Audible audiobooks with Virtual Voice (AVV) in November 2023, it was rolled out to more authors and territories in 2025. If your book is eligible, the option to create an audiobook will appear on your KDP dashboard. With just a few clicks, you can create an audiobook from a range of voices and accents, and publish it on Amazon and Audible. However, the files are not yours. They are exclusive to Amazon and you cannot use them on other platforms or sell them direct yourself. But they are also free, so of course, many authors, especially those in KU, will use this option. I have done some for my mum's sweet romance books as Penny Appleton and I will likely use them for my books in translation when the option becomes available. Traditional publishers are experimenting with AI-assisted audiobook narration as well. MacMillan is selling digital audiobooks read by AI directly on their store. PublishersWeekly reports that PRH Audio “has experimented with artificial voice in specific instances, such as entrepreneur Ely Callaway's posthumous memoir The Unconquerable Game,” when an “authorized voice replica” was created for the audiobook. The article also notes that PRH Audio “embrace artificial intelligence across business operations—my entire department [PRH Audio] is using AI for business applications.” And while indie authors can't use AI voices on ACX right now, Audible have over 100 voices available to selected publishing partnerships, as reported by The Guardian with “two options for publishers wishing to make use of the technology: “Audible-managed” production, or “self-service” whereby publishers produce their own audiobooks with the help of Audible's AI technology.” In 2026, it's likely that more traditional publishers — as well as indie authors — will get their backlist into audio with AI narration. (5) AI-assisted translation will start to take off beyond the early adopters Over the years, I've done translation deals with traditional publishers in different languages (German, French, Spanish, Korean, Italian) for some fiction and non-fiction books. But of course, to get these kinds of deals, you have to be proactive about pitching, or work with an agent for foreign rights only, and those are few and far between! There are also lots of languages and territories worldwide, and most deals are for the bigger markets, leaving a LOT of blue water for books in translation, even if you have licensed some of the bigger markets. I did my first partially AI-translated books in 2019 when I used Deepl.com for the first draft and then worked with a German editor to do 3 non-fiction books in German. While the first draft was cheap, the editing was pretty expensive, so I stopped after only doing a couple. I have made the money back now, but it took years. In 2025, AI Translation began to take off with ScribeShadow, GlobeScribe.ai, and more recently, in November 2025, Kindle Translate boosting the number of translated books available. Kindle Translate is (currently) only available to US authors for English into Spanish and also German into English, but in 2026, this will likely roll out to more languages and more authors, making it easier than ever to produce translations for free. Of course, once again, the gold standard is human translation, or at least human-edited translations, but the cost is prohibitive even just for proof-reading, and if there is a cheap or even free option, like Kindle Translate, then of course, authors are going to try it. If the translation gets bad reviews, they can just un-publish. There are many anecdotal stories of indie success in 2025 with AI-translated genre fiction sales (in series) in under-served markets like Italian, French, and Spanish, as well as more mainstream adoption in German. I was around in the Kindle gold-rush days of 2009-2012 and the AI-translation energy right now feels like that. There are hardly any Kindle ebooks in many of these languages compared to how many there are in English, so inevitably, the rush is on to fill the void, especially in genres that are under-served by traditional publishers in those markets. Yes, some of these AI translated books will be ‘AI-slop,' but readers are not stupid. Those books will get bad reviews and thus will sink to the bottom of the store, never to be seen again. The AI translation models are also improving rapidly, and Amazon's Kindle Translate may improve faster than most, for books specifically, since they will be able to get feedback in terms of page reads. Amazon is also a major investor in Anthropic, which makes Claude.ai, widely considered the best quality for creative writing and translation, so it's likely that is used somewhere in the mix. Some traditional publishers are also experimenting with AI-assisted translation, with Harlequin France reportedly using AI translation and human proofreaders, as reported by the European Council of Literary Translators' Associations in December 2025. Academic publisher Taylor and Francis is also using AI for book translation, noting: “Following a program of rigorous testing, Taylor & Francis has announced plans to use AI translation tools to publish books that would otherwise be unavailable to English-language readers, bringing the latest knowledge to a vastly expanded readership.” “Until now, the time and resources required to translate books has meant that the majority remained accessible only to those who could read them in the original language. Books that were translated often only became available after a significant delay. Today, with the development of sophisticated AI translation tools, it has become possible to make these important texts available to a broad readership at speed, without compromising on accuracy.” (6) AI video becomes ubiquitous. ‘Live selling' becomes the next trend in social sales. In 2025, short form AI-generated video became very high quality. OpenAI released Sora 2, and YouTube announced new Shorts creation tools with Veo 3, which you can also use directly within Gemini. There are tons of different AI video apps now, including those within the social media sites themselves. There is more video than ever and it's much easier to create. I am not a fan of short form video! I don't make it and I don't consume it, but I do love making book trailers for my Kickstarter campaigns and for adding to my book pages and using on social media. I made a trailer for The Buried and the Drowned using Midjourney for images and then animation of those images, and Canva to put them together along with ElevenLabs to generate the music. But despite the AI tools getting so much easier to use, you still have to prompt them with exactly what you want. I can't just upload my book and say, “Make a book trailer,” or “Make a short film.” This may change with generative video ads, which are likely to become more common in 2026, as video turns specifically commercial. Video ads may even be generated specifically for the user, with an audience of one, maybe even holding your book in their hands (using something like Cameos on Sora), in the same way that some AI-powered clothing stores do virtual try-ons. This might also up-end the way we discover and buy things, as the AI for eCommerce and Amazon Sellers newsletter says about OpenAI's Sora app, “OpenAI isn't just trying to build a TikTok competitor. They're building a complete reimagining of how we discover and buy things …” “The combination of ChatGPT's research capabilities and Sora's potential for emotional manipulation—I mean, “engagement”—could create something we've never seen before: an AI ecosystem that might eventually guide you through every type of purchase, from the most considered to the most impulsive.” In 2026, there will be A LOT more AI-generated video, but that also leads to the human trend of more live video. While you can use an AI avatar that looks and sounds like you using tools like HeyGen or Synthesia, live video has all the imperfect human elements that make it stand-out, plus the scarcity element which leads to the purchase decision within a countdown period. Live video is nothing new in terms of brand building and content in general, but it seems that live events primarily for direct sales might be a thing in 2026. Kim Kardashian hosted Kimsmas Live in December 2025 with a 45 minute live shopping event with special guests, described as entertainment but designed to be a sales extravaganza. Indie authors are doing a similar thing on TikTok with their books, so this is a trend to watch in 2026, especially if you feel that live selling might fit with your personality and author business goals. It's certainly not for everyone, but I suspect it will suit a different kind of creator to those who prefer ‘no face' video, or no video at all! On other aspects of the human side of social media, Adam Mosseri the CEO of Instagram put a post on Threads called Authenticity after Abundance. He said, “Everything that made creators matter—the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn't be faked—is now suddenly accessible to anyone with the right tools.” “Deepfakes are getting better and better. AI is generating photographs and videos indistinguishable from captured media. The feeds are starting to fill up with synthetic everything. And in that world, here's what I think happens.Creators matter more.” It's a long article so just to pick a few things from it: “We like to talk about “AI slop,” but there is a lot of amazing AI content … we are going to start to see more and more realistic AI content.” I've talked to my Patreon Community about this ‘tsunami of excellence' as these tools are just getting better and better and the word ‘slop' can also be applied to purely human output, too. If you think that AI content is ‘worse' than wholly human content, in 2026, you are wrong. It is now very very good, especially in the hands of people who can drive the AI tools. Back to Adam's post: “Authenticity is fast becoming a scarce resource, …The creators who succeed will be those who figure out how to maintain their authenticity [even when it can be simulated] …” “The bar is going to shift from “can you create?” to “can you make something that only you could create?” He talks about how the personal content on Instagram now is: “unpolished; it's blurry photos and shaky videos of people's daily experiences … flattering imagery is cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real… Savvy creators are going to lean into explicitly unproduced and unflattering images of themselves. In a world where everything can be perfected, imperfection becomes a signal. Rawness isn't just aesthetic preference anymore—it's proof. It's defensive. A way of saying: this is real because it's imperfect.” While I partially love this, and I really hope it's true, as in I hope we don't need to look good for the camera anymore I would also challenge Adam on this, because pretty much every woman I know on social media has been sent sexual messages, and/or told they are ugly and/or fat when posting anything unflattering. I've certainly had both even for the same content, but I don't expect Adam has been the target for such posting! But I get his point. He goes on:“Labeling content as authentic or AI-generated is only part of the solution though. We, as an industry, are going to need to surface much more context about not only the media on our platforms, but the accounts that are sharing it in order for people to be able to make informed decisions about what to believe. Where is the account? When was it created? What else have they posted?” This is exactly what I've been saying for a while under my double down on being human focus. I use my Instagram @jfpennauthor as evidence of humanity, not as a sales channel. You can do both of course, but increasingly, you need to make sure your accounts at places have longevity and trust, even by the platforms themselves. Adam finishes: “In a world of infinite abundance and infinite doubt, the creators who can maintain trust and signal authenticity—by being real, transparent, and consistent—will stand out.” For other marketing trends for 2026, I recommend publicist Kathleen Schmidt's SubStack which is mostly focused on traditional publishing but still interesting for indies. In her 2026 article, she notes: “We have reached a social media saturation point where going viral can be meaningless and should not be the goal; authenticity and creativity should. She also says, “In-person events are important again,” and, “Social media marketing takes a nosedive… we have reached a saturation point … What publishers must figure out is how to make their social media campaigns stand out. If they remain somewhat uninspired, the money spent on social ads won't convert into book sales.” I think this is part of the rise of live selling as above, which can stand out above more ‘produced' videos. Kathleen also talks about AI usage. “AI can help lighten the burden of publicity and marketing.” “A lot of AI tools are coming to market to lessen the load: they can write pitches, create media lists for you, send pitches for you, and more. I know the industry is grappling with all things AI, but some of these tools are huge time savers and may help a book more than hurt it.” On that note … (7) AI will create, run, and optimise ads without the need for human intervention Many authors will be very happy about this as marketing is often the bane of our author business lives! As I noted in my 2026 goals, I would love to outsource more marketing tasks to AI. I want an “AI book marketing assistant” where I can upload a book and specify a budget and say, ‘Go market this,' then the AI will action the marketing, without me having to cobble together workflows between systems. Of course, it will present plans for me to approve but it will do the work itself on the various platforms and monitor and optimize things for me. I really hope 2026 is the year this becomes possible, because we are on the edge of it already in some areas. Amazon Ads launched a new agentic AI tool in September 2025 that creates professional-quality ads. I've also been working with Claude in Chrome browser to help me analyse my Amazon Ad data and suggest which keywords/products to turn off and what to put more budget into. I'll do a Patreon video on that soon. Meta announced it will enable AI ad creation by the end of 2026 for Facebook and Instagram. For authors who find ad creation overwhelming or time-consuming, this could be a game-changer. Of course, you will still need a budget! (8) 1000 True Fans becomes more important than ever Lots of authors and publishers are moaning about the difficulty of reaching readers in an era of ‘AI slop' but there is no shortage of excellent content created by humans, or humans using AI tools. As ever, our competition is less about other authors, or even authors using AI-assisted creation, we're competing against everything else that jostles for people's attention, and the volume of that is also growing exponentially. I've never been a fan of rapid release, and have said for years that you can't keep up with the pace of the machines. So play a different game. As Kevin Kelly wrote in 2008, If you have 1000 true fans, (also known as super fans), “you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.” [Kevin Kelly was on this show in 2023 talking about Excellent Advice for Living.] Many authors and the publishing industry are stuck in the old model of aiming to sell huge volumes of books at a low profit margin to a massive number of readers, many of them releasing ever faster to try and keep the algorithms moving. But the maths can work for the smaller audience of more invested readers and fans. If you only make $2 profit on an ebook, you need to sell 500 ebooks to make $1000, and then do it again next month. Or you can have a small community like my patreon.com/thecreativepenn where people pay $2 (or more) a month, so even a small revenue per person results in a better outcome over the year, as it is consistent monthly income with no advertising. But what if you could make $20 profit per book? That is entirely possible if you're producing high quality hardbacks on Kickstarter, or bundle deals of audiobooks, or whole series of ebooks. You would only need to sell to 50 people to make $1000. What about $100 profit per sale, which you can do with a small course or live event? You only need 10 people to make $1000, and this in-person focus also amplifies trust and fosters human connection. I've found the intimacy of my live Patreon Office Hours and also my webinars have been rewarding personally, but also financially, and are far more memorable — and potentially transformative — than a pre-recorded video or even another book. From the LinkedIn 2026 Big Ideas article: “In an AI-optimized world, intentional human connection will become the ultimate luxury.” The 1000 True Fans model is about serving a smaller, more personal audience with higher value products (and maybe services if that's your thing). As ever, its about niche and where you fit in the long long long long long tail. It's also about trust. Because there is definitely a shortage of that in so many areas, and as Adam Mosseri of Instagram has said, trust will be increasingly important. Trust takes time to build, but if you focus on serving your audience consistently, and delivering a high quality, and being authentic, this emerges as part of being human. In an echo of what happened when online commerce first took off, we are back to talking about trust. Back in 2010, I read Trust Agents: by Julien Smith and Chris Brogan, which clearly needs a comeback. There was a 10th anniversary edition published in 2020, so that's worth a read/listen. Chris Brogan was also on this show in 2017 when we talked about finding and serving your niche for the long term. That interview is still relevant, here's a quick excerpt, where I have (lightly edited) his response to my question on this topic back in 2017: Jo: The principle of know, like, and trust, why is that still important or perhaps even more important these days? Chris: There are a few things that at play there, Joanna. One is that the same tools that make it so easy for any of us to start and run a business also allow certain elements to decide whether or not they want to do something dubious. And with all new technologies that come, you know, there's nothing unique about these new technologies. In the 1800s, anyone could put anything in a bottle and sell it to you and say, this is gonna cure everything. Cancer — gone. And the bottle could have nothing in. You know, it could be Kool-Aid. And so, the idea of trying to understand what's behind the business though, one beautiful thing that's come is that we can see in much more dimensions who we're dealing with. We can understand better who's the face behind the brand. I really want people to try their best to be a lot clearer on what they stand for or what they say. And I don't really mean a tagline. I mean, humans don't really talk like that. They don't throw some sentence out as often as they can that you remember them for that phrase. But I would say that, we have so many media available to us — the plural of mediums — where we can be more of ourselves. And I think that there's a great opportunity to share the ‘you' behind the scenes, and some people get immediately terrified about this, ‘Ah, the last thing I want is for people to know more about me,' but I think we have such an opportunity. We have such an opportunity to voice our thoughts on something, to talk about the story that goes behind the product. We were all raised on overly produced material, but I think we don't want that anymore. We really want clarity, brevity, simplicity. We want the ability for what we feel is connection and then access. And so I think it's vital that we connect and show people our accessibility, not so that they can pester us with strange questions, but more so that you can say, this person stands with their product and their service and this person believes these things, and I feel something when I hear them and I wanna be part of that.” That's from Chris Brogan's interview here in 2017, and he is still blogging and speaking at writing at ChrisBrogan.com and I'm going to re-listen to the audiobook of Trust Agents again myself as I think it's more relevant than ever. The original quote comes from Bob Burg in his 1994 book, Endless Referrals, “All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.” That still applies, and absolutely fits with the 1000 True Fans model of aiming to serve a smaller audience. As Kevin Kelly says in 1000 True Fans, “Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum bestseller hits, blockbusters, and celebrity status, you can aim for direct connection with a thousand true fans.” “On your way, no matter how many fans you actually succeed in gaining, you'll be surrounded not by faddish infatuation, but by genuine and true appreciation. It's a much saner destiny to hope for. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there.” In 2026, I hope that more authors (including me!) let go of ego goals and vanity metrics like ranking, gross sales (income before you take away costs), subscribers, followers, and likes, and consider important business numbers like profit (which is the money you have after costs like marketing are taken out), as well as number of true fans — and also lifestyle elements like number of weekends off, or days spent enjoying life and not just working! OK, that's my list of trends and predictions for 2026. Let me know what you think in the comments. Do you agree? Am I wrong? What have I missed? The post 2026 Trends And Predictions For Indie Authors And The Book Publishing Industry with Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

This episode is part two(of two) on the life and times of the German battleship Tirpitz. *This is also the final episode of Season 5 - thanks for listening and we will be back with a new season soon!The Sameer Project Gaza FundsSources:Hansen, Kenneth P. “Raeder Versus Wegener: Conflict in German Naval Strategy.” The Naval War College Review, vol. 58, no. 4, Autumn 2005. Knowles, Daniel.Tirpitz: The Life and Death of Germany's Last Great Battleship. Fonthill Media, 2018. Steinberg, Jonathan. Yesterday's Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet. Macmillan, 1965. Symonds, Craig L. World War II at Sea: A Global History. Oxford University Press, 2018. Zetterling, Niklas and Michael Tamelander. Tirpitz: The Life and Death of Germany's Last Super Battleship. Casemate, 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20190219133255/https://www.tirpitz-museum.no/#homehttps://www.tracesofwar.com/sights/18149/Tirpitz-Museum.htmSupport the show

The cranberries we typically eat are native to North America, though they are also grown in other places. How did they become a standard part of the holiday table? Research: Albanese, Ellen. “A brief history of the cranberry—Cape Cod’s most important fruit.” Cape Cod Life. 2016 Annual. https://capecodlife.com/a-brief-history-of-the-cranberry-cape-cods-most-important-fruit/ Banks, Sir Joseph, and Sir Joseph D. Hooker, ed. “Journal of the Right Hon., Sir Joseph Banks, BART., K.B., P.R.S., During Captain Cook’s First Voyage in M.S. Endeavour in 1768-71 To Terra Del Fuego [sic], Otahite, new Zealand, Australia, the Dutch East indies, Etc.” ” London. Macmillan and Co., LTD. 1896. https://library.dbca.wa.gov.au/FullTextFiles/926449.pdf Berman-Vaporis, Irene, et al. “The U.S. cranberry harvest explained in four charts.” National Geographic. Nov. 27, 2019. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/united-states-cranberry-harvest-explained-charts?loggedin=true&rnd=1764767841856 Blakemore, Erin. “A Brief History of Cranberries.” Smithsonian. Nov. 25, 2015. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-cranberries-180957399/ Borunda, Alejandro. “Climate change is coming for New England's cranberries.” National geographic. Nov. 25, 2020. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/climate-change-affecting-massachusetts-cranberries Chen, Angus. “We Tried A Futuristic Cranberry. It Was Fresh And Naturally Sweet.” NPR. Nov. 24, 2015. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/24/457247226/cranberry-you-could-eat-without-sugar “DDT - A Brief History and Status.” Environmental Protection Agency. https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/ddt-brief-history-and-status Eastwood, B. “Complete Manual for the Cultivation of the Cranberry: With a Description of the Best Varieties.” A.O. Moore. 1859. https://archive.org/details/completemanualf00eastgoog/page/n4/mode/2up Henshaw, Tom. “Cranberry Industry Seen Hurt for Years by Weed Killer Scare.” Courir-Post. Nov. 26, 1959. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/180597557/?match=1&terms=Marcus%20Urann “Historical Timeline of Cranberries.” Massachusetts Cranberries. https://www.cranberries.org/history Josselyn, John. “New-England's rarities discovered in birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, and plants of that country.” Boston. William Veazie. 1865. https://archive.org/details/newenglandsrarit00joss/page/n7/mode/2up “Marcus Urann Scholarship.” Bank of America. https://www.gnbvt.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Marcus-Urann-Scholarship-.pdf “M. Urann Rites Are Tomorrow.” The Standard-Times. April 5, 1963. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/1260416770/?match=1&terms=Marcus%20Urann “Our History.” CoBank. https://www.cobank.com/corporate/history Readal, Maryann. “Cranberry – Herb for the Holidays.” The HerbSociety of America Blog. Nov. 7, 2022. https://herbsocietyblog.wordpress.com/tag/elizabeth-lee-ocean-spray/ Smith, K. Annabelle. “How Marcus Urann’s idea revolutionized the cranberry industry.” Smithsonian. Nov. 27, 2013. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/this-man-made-the-first-canned-cranberry-sauce-180947862/ Tennenbaum, David, and Lee Sensenbrenner. “Sprouting a new future for Wisconsin’s red and white.” University of Madison-Wisconsin News. Oct. 29, 2015. https://news.wisc.edu/sprouting-a-new-future-for-wisconsins-red-and-white/ Theobald, Mary Miley. “Bogged Down in Cranberries.” Colonial Williamsburg. https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/Foundation/journal/Holiday06/cran.cfm See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How can you write science-based fiction without info-dumping your research? How can you use AI tools in a creative way, while still focusing on a human-first approach? Why is adapting to the fast pace of change so difficult and how can we make the most of this time? Jamie Metzl talks about Superconvergence and more. In the intro, How to avoid author scams [Written Word Media]; Spotify vs Audible audiobook strategy [The New Publishing Standard]; Thoughts on Author Nation and why constraints are important in your author life [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; Alchemical History And Beautiful Architecture: Prague with Lisa M Lilly on my Books and Travel Podcast. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Jamie Metzl is a technology futurist, professional speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of sci-fi thrillers and futurist nonfiction books, including the revised and updated edition of Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How personal history shaped Jamie's fiction writing Writing science-based fiction without info-dumping The super convergence of three revolutions (genetics, biotech, AI) and why we need to understand them holistically Using fiction to explore the human side of genetic engineering, life extension, and robotics Collaborating with GPT-5 as a named co-author How to be a first-rate human rather than a second-rate machine You can find Jamie at JamieMetzl.com. Transcript of interview with Jamie Metzl Jo: Jamie Metzl is a technology futurist, professional speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of sci-fi thrillers and futurist nonfiction books, including the revised and updated edition of Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World. So welcome, Jamie. Jamie: Thank you so much, Jo. Very happy to be here with you. Jo: There is so much we could talk about, but let's start with you telling us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. From History PhD to First Novel Jamie: Well, I think like a lot of writers, I didn't know I was a writer. I was just a kid who loved writing. Actually, just last week I was going through a bunch of boxes from my parents' house and I found my autobiography, which I wrote when I was nine years old. So I've been writing my whole life and loving it. It was always something that was very important to me. When I finished my DPhil, my PhD at Oxford, and my dissertation came out, it just got scooped up by Macmillan in like two minutes. And I thought, “God, that was easy.” That got me started thinking about writing books. I wanted to write a novel based on the same historical period – my PhD was in Southeast Asian history – and I wanted to write a historical novel set in the same period as my dissertation, because I felt like the dissertation had missed the human element of the story I was telling, which was related to the Cambodian genocide and its aftermath. So I wrote what became my first novel, and I thought, “Wow, now I'm a writer.” I thought, “All right, I've already published one book. I'm gonna get this other book out into the world.” And then I ran into the brick wall of: it's really hard to be a writer. It's almost easier to write something than to get it published. I had to learn a ton, and it took nine years from when I started writing that first novel, The Depths of the Sea, to when it finally came out. But it was such a positive experience, especially to have something so personal to me as that story. I'd lived in Cambodia for two years, I'd worked on the Thai-Cambodian border, and I'm the child of a Holocaust survivor. So there was a whole lot that was very emotional for me. That set a pattern for the rest of my life as a writer, at least where, in my nonfiction books, I'm thinking about whatever the issues are that are most important to me. Whether it was that historical book, which was my first book, or Hacking Darwin on the future of human genetic engineering, which was my last book, or Superconvergence, which, as you mentioned in the intro, is my current book. But in every one of those stories, the human element is so deep and so profound. You can get at some of that in nonfiction, but I've also loved exploring those issues in deeper ways in my fiction. So in my more recent novels, Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata, I've looked at the human side of the story of genetic engineering and human life extension. And now my agent has just submitted my new novel, Virtuoso, about the intersection of AI, robotics, and classical music. With all of this, who knows what's the real difference between fiction and nonfiction? We're all humans trying to figure things out on many different levels. Shifting from History to Future Tech Jo: I knew that you were a polymath, someone who's interested in so many things, but the music angle with robotics and AI is fascinating. I do just want to ask you, because I was also at Oxford – what college were you at? Jamie: I was in St. Antony's. Jo: I was at Mansfield, so we were in that slightly smaller, less famous college group, if people don't know. Jamie: You know, but we're small but proud. Jo: Exactly. That's fantastic. You mentioned that you were on the historical side of things at the beginning and now you've moved into technology and also science, because this book Superconvergence has a lot of science. So how did you go from history and the past into science and the future? Biology and Seeing the Future Coming Jamie: It's a great question. I'll start at the end and then back up. A few years ago I was speaking at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is one of the big scientific labs here in the United States. I was a guest of the director and I was speaking to their 300 top scientists. I said to them, “I'm here to speak with you about the future of biology at the invitation of your director, and I'm really excited. But if you hear something wrong, please raise your hand and let me know, because I'm entirely self-taught. The last biology course I took was in 11th grade of high school in Kansas City.” Of course I wouldn't say that if I didn't have a lot of confidence in my process. But in many ways I'm self-taught in the sciences. As you know, Jo, and as all of your listeners know, the foundation of everything is curiosity and then a disciplined process for learning. Even our greatest super-specialists in the world now – whatever their background – the world is changing so fast that if anyone says, “Oh, I have a PhD in physics/chemistry/biology from 30 years ago,” the exact topic they learned 30 years ago is less significant than their process for continuous learning. More specifically, in the 1990s I was working on the National Security Council for President Clinton, which is the president's foreign policy staff. My then boss and now close friend, Richard Clarke – who became famous as the guy who had tragically predicted 9/11 – used to say that the key to efficacy in Washington and in life is to try to solve problems that other people can't see. For me, almost 30 years ago, I felt to my bones that this intersection of what we now call AI and the nascent genetics revolution and the nascent biotechnology revolution was going to have profound implications for humanity. So I just started obsessively educating myself. When I was ready, I started writing obscure national security articles. Those got a decent amount of attention, so I was invited to testify before the United States Congress. I was speaking out a lot, saying, “Hey, this is a really important story. A lot of people are missing it. Here are the things we should be thinking about for the future.” I wasn't getting the kind of traction that I wanted. I mentioned before that my first book had been this dry Oxford PhD dissertation, and that had led to my first novel. So I thought, why don't I try the same approach again – writing novels to tell this story about the genetics, biotech, and what later became known popularly as the AI revolution? That led to my two near-term sci-fi novels, Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata. On my book tours for those novels, when I explained the underlying science to people in my way, as someone who taught myself, I could see in their eyes that they were recognizing not just that something big was happening, but that they could understand it and feel like they were part of that story. That's what led me to write Hacking Darwin, as I mentioned. That book really unlocked a lot of things. I had essentially predicted the CRISPR babies that were born in China before it happened – down to the specific gene I thought would be targeted, which in fact was the case. After that book was published, Dr. Tedros, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, invited me to join the WHO Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing, which I did. It was a really great experience and got me thinking a lot about the upside of this revolution and the downside. The Birth of Superconvergence Jamie: I get a lot of wonderful invitations to speak, and I have two basic rules for speaking: Never use notes. Never ever. Never stand behind a podium. Never ever. Because of that, when I speak, my talks tend to migrate. I'd be speaking with people about the genetics revolution as it applied to humans, and I'd say, “Well, this is just a little piece of a much bigger story.” The bigger story is that after nearly four billion years of life on Earth, our one species has the increasing ability to engineer novel intelligence and re-engineer life. The big question for us, and frankly for the world, is whether we're going to be able to use that almost godlike superpower wisely. As that idea got bigger and bigger, it became this inevitable force. You write so many books, Jo, that I think it's second nature for you. Every time I finish a book, I think, “Wow, that was really hard. I'm never doing that again.” And then the books creep up on you. They call to you. At some point you say, “All right, now I'm going to do it.” So that was my current book, Superconvergence. Like everything, every journey you take a step, and that step inspires another step and another. That's why writing and living creatively is such a wonderfully exciting thing – there's always more to learn and always great opportunities to push ourselves in new ways. Balancing Deep Research with Good Storytelling Jo: Yeah, absolutely. I love that you've followed your curiosity and then done this disciplined process for learning. I completely understand that. But one of the big issues with people like us who love the research – and having read your Superconvergence, I know how deeply you go into this and how deeply you care that it's correct – is that with fiction, one of the big problems with too much research is the danger of brain-dumping. Readers go to fiction for escapism. They want the interesting side of it, but they want a story first. What are your tips for authors who might feel like, “Where's the line between putting in my research so that it's interesting for readers, but not going too far and turning it into a textbook?” How do you find that balance? Jamie: It's such a great question. I live in New York now, but I used to live in Washington when I was working for the U.S. government, and there were a number of people I served with who later wrote novels. Some of those novels felt like policy memos with a few sex scenes – and that's not what to do. To write something that's informed by science or really by anything, everything needs to be subservient to the story and the characters. The question is: what is the essential piece of information that can convey something that's both important to your story and your character development, and is also an accurate representation of the world as you want it to be? I certainly write novels that are set in the future – although some of them were a future that's now already happened because I wrote them a long time ago. You can make stuff up, but as an author you have to decide what your connection to existing science and existing technology and the existing world is going to be. I come at it from two angles. One: I read a huge number of scientific papers and think, “What does this mean for now, and if you extrapolate into the future, where might that go?” Two: I think about how to condense things. We've all read books where you're humming along because people read fiction for story and emotional connection, and then you hit a bit like: “I sat down in front of the president, and the president said, ‘Tell me what I need to know about the nuclear threat.'” And then it's like: insert memo. That's a deal-killer. It's like all things – how do you have a meaningful relationship with another person? It's not by just telling them your story. Even when you're telling them something about you, you need to be imagining yourself sitting in their shoes, hearing you. These are very different disciplines, fiction and nonfiction. But for the speculative nonfiction I write – “here's where things are now, and here's where the world is heading” – there's a lot of imagination that goes into that too. It feels in many ways like we're living in a sci-fi world because the rate of technological change has been accelerating continuously, certainly for the last 12,000 years since the dawn of agriculture. It's a balance. For me, I feel like I'm a better fiction writer because I write nonfiction, and I'm a better nonfiction writer because I write fiction. When I'm writing nonfiction, I don't want it to be boring either – I want people to feel like there's a story and characters and that they can feel themselves inside that story. Jo: Yeah, definitely. I think having some distance helps as well. If you're really deep into your topics, as you are, you have to leave that manuscript a little bit so you can go back with the eyes of the reader as opposed to your eyes as the expert. Then you can get their experience, which is great. Looking Beyond Author-Focused AI Fears Jo: I want to come to your technical knowledge, because AI is a big thing in the author and creative community, like everywhere else. One of the issues is that creators are focusing on just this tiny part of the impact of AI, and there's a much bigger picture. For example, in 2024, Demis Hassabis from Google DeepMind and his collaborative partner John Jumper won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with AlphaFold. It feels to me like there's this massive world of what's happening with AI in health, climate, and other areas, and yet we are so focused on a lot of the negative stuff. Maybe you could give us a couple of things about what there is to be excited and optimistic about in terms of AI-powered science? Jamie: Sure. I'm so excited about all of the new opportunities that AI creates. But I also think there's a reason why evolution has preserved this very human feeling of anxiety: because there are real dangers. Anybody who's Pollyanna-ish and says, “Oh, the AI story is inevitably positive,” I'd be distrustful. And anyone who says, “We're absolutely doomed, this is the end of humanity,” I'd also be distrustful. So let me tell you the positives and the negatives, and maybe some thoughts about how we navigate toward the former and away from the latter. AI as the New Electricity Jamie: When people think of AI right now, they're thinking very narrowly about these AI tools and ChatGPT. But we don't think of electricity that way. Nobody says, “I know electricity – electricity is what happens at the power station.” We've internalised the idea that electricity is woven into not just our communication systems or our houses, but into our clothes, our glasses – it's woven into everything and has super-empowered almost everything in our modern lives. That's what AI is. In Superconvergence, the majority of the book is about positive opportunities: In healthcare, moving from generalised healthcare based on population averages to personalised or precision healthcare based on a molecular understanding of each person's individual biology. As we build these massive datasets like the UK Biobank, we can take a next jump toward predictive and preventive healthcare, where we're able to address health issues far earlier in the process, when interventions can be far more benign. I'm really excited about that, not to mention the incredible new kinds of treatments – gene therapies, or pharmaceuticals based on genetics and systems-biology analyses of patients. Then there's agriculture. Over the last hundred years, because of the technologies of the Green Revolution and synthetic fertilisers, we've had an incredible increase in agricultural productivity. That's what's allowed us to quadruple the global population. But if we just continue agriculture as it is, as we get towards ten billion wealthier, more empowered people wanting to eat like we eat, we're going to have to wipe out all the wild spaces on Earth to feed them. These technologies help provide different paths toward increasing agricultural productivity with fewer inputs of land, water, fertiliser, insecticides, and pesticides. That's really positive. I could go on and on about these positives – and I do – but there are very real negatives. I was a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing after the first CRISPR babies were very unethically created in China. I'm extremely aware that these same capabilities have potentially incredible upsides and very real downsides. That's the same as every technology in the past, but this is happening so quickly that it's triggering a lot of anxieties. Governance, Responsibility, and Why Everyone Has a Role Jamie: The question now is: how do we optimise the benefits and minimise the harms? The short, unsexy word for that is governance. Governance is not just what governments do; it's what all of us do. That's why I try to write books, both fiction and nonfiction, to bring people into this story. If people “other” this story – if they say, “There's a technology revolution, it has nothing to do with me, I'm going to keep my head down” – I think that's dangerous. The way we're going to handle this as responsibly as possible is if everybody says, “I have some role. Maybe it's small, maybe it's big. The first step is I need to educate myself. Then I need to have conversations with people around me. I need to express my desires, wishes, and thoughts – with political leaders, organisations I'm part of, businesses.” That has to happen at every level. You're in the UK – you know the anti-slavery movement started with a handful of people in Cambridge and grew into a global movement. I really believe in the power of ideas, but ideas don't spread on their own. These are very human networks, and that's why writing, speaking, communicating – probably for every single person listening to this podcast – is so important. Jo: Mm, yeah. Fiction Like AI 2041 and Thinking Through the Issues Jo: Have you read AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan? Jamie: No. I heard a bunch of their interviews when the book came out, but I haven't read it. Jo: I think that's another good one because it's fiction – a whole load of short stories. It came out a few years ago now, but the issues they cover in the stories, about different people in different countries – I remember one about deepfakes – make you think more about the topics and help you figure out where you stand. I think that's the issue right now: it's so complex, there are so many things. I'm generally positive about AI, but of course I don't want autonomous drone weapons, you know? The Messy Reality of “Bad” Technologies Jamie: Can I ask you about that? Because this is why it's so complicated. Like you, I think nobody wants autonomous killer drones anywhere in the world. But if you right now were the defence minister of Ukraine, and your children are being kidnapped, your country is being destroyed, you're fighting for your survival, you're getting attacked every night – and you're getting attacked by the Russians, who are investing more and more in autonomous killer robots – you kind of have two choices. You can say, “I'm going to surrender,” or, “I'm going to use what technology I have available to defend myself, and hopefully fight to either victory or some kind of stand-off.” That's what our societies did with nuclear weapons. Maybe not every American recognises that Churchill gave Britain's nuclear secrets to America as a way of greasing the wheels of the Anglo-American alliance during the Second World War – but that was our programme: we couldn't afford to lose that war, and we couldn't afford to let the Nazis get nuclear weapons before we did. So there's the abstract feeling of, “I'm against all war in the abstract. I'm against autonomous killer robots in the abstract.” But if I were the defence minister of Ukraine, I would say, “What will it take for us to build the weapons we can use to defend ourselves?” That's why all this stuff gets so complicated. And frankly, it's why the relationship between fiction and nonfiction is so important. If every novel had a situation where every character said, “Oh, I know exactly the right answer,” and then they just did the right answer and it was obviously right, it wouldn't make for great fiction. We're dealing with really complex humans. We have conflicting impulses. We're not perfect. Maybe there are no perfect answers – but how do we strive toward better rather than worse? That's the question. Jo: Absolutely. I don't want to get too political on things. How AI Is Changing the Writing Life Jo: Let's come back to authors. In terms of the creative process, the writing process, the research process, and the business of being an author – what are some of the ways that you already use AI tools, and some of the ways, given your futurist brain, that you think things are going to change for us? Jamie: Great question. I'll start with a little middle piece. I found you, Jo, through GPT-5. I asked ChatGPT, “I'm coming out with this book and I want to connect with podcasters who are a little different from the ones I've done in the past. I've been a guest on Joe Rogan twice and some of the bigger podcasts. Make me a list of really interesting people I can have great conversations with.” That's how I found you. So this is one reward of that process. Let me say that in the last year I've worked on three books, and I'll explain how my relationship with AI has changed over those books. Cleaning Up Citations (and Getting Burned) Jamie: First is the highly revised paperback edition of Superconvergence. When the hardback came out, I had – I don't normally work with research assistants because I like to dig into everything myself – but the one thing I do use a research assistant for is that I can't be bothered, when I'm writing something, to do the full Chicago-style footnote if I'm already referencing an academic paper. So I'd just put the URL as the footnote and then hire a research assistant and say, “Go to this URL and change it into a Chicago-style citation. That's it.” Unfortunately, my research assistant on the hardback used early-days ChatGPT for that work. He did the whole thing, came back, everything looked perfect. I said, “Wow, amazing job.” It was only later, as I was going through them, that I realised something like 50% of them were invented footnotes. It was very painful to go back and fix, and it took ten times more time. With the paperback edition, I didn't use AI that much, but I did say things like, “Here's all the information – generate a Chicago-style citation.” That was better. I noticed there were a few things where I stopped using the thesaurus function on Microsoft Word because I'd just put the whole paragraph into the AI and say, “Give me ten other options for this one word,” and it would be like a contextual thesaurus. That was pretty good. Talking to a Robot Pianist Character Jamie: Then, for my new novel Virtuoso, I was writing a character who is a futurist robot that plays the piano very beautifully – not just humanly, but almost finding new things in the music we've written and composing music that resonates with us. I described the actions of that robot in the novel, but I didn't describe the inner workings of the robot's mind. In thinking about that character, I realised I was the first science-fiction writer in history who could interrogate a machine about what it was “thinking” in a particular context. I had the most beautiful conversations with ChatGPT, where I would give scenarios and ask, “What are you thinking? What are you feeling in this context?” It was all background for that character, but it was truly profound. Co-Authoring The AI Ten Commandments with GPT-5 Jamie: Third, I have another book coming out in May in the United States. I gave a talk this summer at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York about AI and spirituality. I talked about the history of our human relationship with our technology, about how all our religious and spiritual traditions have deep technological underpinnings – certainly our Abrahamic religions are deeply connected to farming, and Protestantism to the printing press. Then I had a section about the role of AI in generating moral codes that would resonate with humans. Everybody went nuts for this talk, and I thought, “I think I'm going to write a book.” I decided to write it differently, with GPT-5 as my named co-author. The first thing I did was outline the entire book based on the talk, which I'd already spent a huge amount of time thinking about and organising. Then I did a full outline of the arguments and structures. Then I trained GPT-5 on my writing style. The way I did it – which I fully describe in the introduction to the book – was that I'd handle all the framing: the full introduction, the argument, the structure. But if there was a section where, for a few paragraphs, I was summarising a huge field of data, even something I knew well, I'd give GPT-5 the intro sentence and say, “In my writing style, prepare four paragraphs on this.” For example, I might write: “AI has the potential to see us humans like we humans see ant colonies.” Then I'd say, “Give me four paragraphs on the relationship between the individual and the collective in ant colonies.” I could have written those four paragraphs myself, but it would've taken a month to read the life's work of E.O. Wilson and then write them. GPT-5 wrote them in seconds or minutes, in its thinking mode. I'd then say, “It's not quite right – change this, change that,” and we'd go back and forth three or four times. Then I'd edit the whole thing and put it into the text. So this book that I could have written on my own in a year, I wrote a first draft of with GPT-5 as my named co-author in two days. The whole project will take about six months from start to finish, and I'm having massive human editing – multiple edits from me, plus a professional editor. It's not a magic AI button. But I feel strongly about listing GPT-5 as a co-author because I've written it differently than previous books. I'm a huge believer in the old-fashioned lone author struggling and suffering – that's in my novels, and in Virtuoso I explore that. But other forms are going to emerge, just like video games are a creative, artistic form deeply connected to technology. The novel hasn't been around forever – the current format is only a few centuries old – and forms are always changing. There are real opportunities for authors, and there will be so much crap flooding the market because everybody can write something and put it up on Amazon. But I think there will be a very special place for thoughtful human authors who have an idea of what humans do at our best, and who translate that into content other humans can enjoy. Traditional vs Indie: Why This Book Will Be Self-Published Jo: I'm interested – you mentioned that it's your named co-author. Is this book going through a traditional publisher, and what do they think about that? Or are you going to publish it yourself? Jamie: It's such a smart question. What I found quickly is that when you get to be an author later in your career, you have all the infrastructure – a track record, a fantastic agent, all of that. But there were two things that were really important to me here: I wanted to get this book out really fast – six months instead of a year and a half. It was essential to me to have GPT-5 listed as my co-author, because if it were just my name, I feel like it would be dishonest. Readers who are used to reading my books – I didn't want to present something different than what it was. I spoke with my agent, who I absolutely love, and she said that for this particular project it was going to be really hard in traditional publishing. So I did a huge amount of research, because I'd never done anything in the self-publishing world before. I looked at different models. There was one hybrid model that's basically the same as traditional, but you pay for the things the publisher would normally pay for. I ended up not doing that. Instead, I decided on a self-publishing route where I disaggregated the publishing process. I found three teams: one for producing the book, one for getting the book out into the world, and a smaller one for the audiobook. I still believe in traditional publishing – there's a lot of wonderful human value-add. But some works just don't lend themselves to traditional publishing. For this book, which is called The AI Ten Commandments, that's the path I've chosen. Jo: And when's that out? I think people will be interested. Jamie: April 26th. Those of us used to traditional publishing think, “I've finished the book, sold the proposal, it'll be out any day now,” and then it can be a year and a half. It's frustrating. With this, the process can be much faster because it's possible to control more of the variables. But the key – as I was saying – is to make sure it's as good a book as everything else you've written. It's great to speed up, but you don't want to compromise on quality. The Coming Flood of Excellent AI-Generated Work Jo: Yeah, absolutely. We're almost out of time, but I want to come back to your “flood of crap” and the “AI slop” idea that's going around. Because you are working with GPT-5 – and I do as well, and I work with Claude and Gemini – and right now there are still issues. Like you said about referencing, there are still hallucinations, though fewer. But fast-forward two, five years: it's not a flood of crap. It's a flood of excellent. It's a flood of stuff that's better than us. Jamie: We're humans. It's better than us in certain ways. If you have farm machinery, it's better than us at certain aspects of farming. I'm a true humanist. I think there will be lots of things machines do better than us, but there will be tons of things we do better than them. There's a reason humans still care about chess, even though machines can beat humans at chess. Some people are saying things I fully disagree with, like this concept of AGI – artificial general intelligence – where machines do everything better than humans. I've summarised my position in seven letters: “AGI is BS.” The only way you can believe in AGI in that sense is if your concept of what a human is and what a human mind is is so narrow that you think it's just a narrow range of analytical skills. We are so much more than that. Humans represent almost four billion years of embodied evolution. There's so much about ourselves that we don't know. As incredible as these machines are and will become, there will always be wonderful things humans can do that are different from machines. What I always tell people is: whatever you're doing, don't be a second-rate machine. Be a first-rate human. If you're doing something and a machine is doing that thing much better than you, then shift to something where your unique capacities as a human give you the opportunity to do something better. So yes, I totally agree that the quality of AI-generated stuff will get better. But I think the most creative and successful humans will be the ones who say, “I recognise that this is creating new opportunities, and I'm going to insert my core humanity to do something magical and new.” People are “othering” these technologies, but the technologies themselves are magnificent human-generated artefacts. They're not alien UFOs that landed here. It's a scary moment for creatives, no doubt, because there are things all of us did in the past that machines can now do really well. But this is the moment where the most creative people ask themselves, “What does it mean for me to be a great human?” The pat answers won't apply. In my Virtuoso novel I explore that a lot. The idea that “machines don't do creativity” – they will do incredible creativity; it just won't be exactly human creativity. We will be potentially huge beneficiaries of these capabilities, but we really have to believe in and invest in the magic of our core humanity. Where to Find Jamie and His Books Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and your books online? Jamie: Thank you so much for asking. My website is jamiemetzl.com – and my books are available everywhere. Jo: Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time, Jamie. That was great. Jamie: Thank you, Joanna.The post Writing The Future, And Being More Human In An Age of AI With Jamie Metzl first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the dance which, from when it reached Britain in the early nineteenth century, revolutionised the relationship between music, literature and people here for the next hundred years. While it may seem formal now, it was the informality and daring that drove its popularity, with couples holding each other as they spun round a room to new lighter music popularised by Johann Strauss, father and son, such as The Blue Danube. Soon the Waltz expanded the creative world in poetry, ballet, novellas and music, from the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev to Moon River and Are You Lonesome Tonight. With Susan Jones Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford Derek B. Scott Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Leeds And Theresa Buckland Emeritus Professor of Dance History and Ethnography at the University of Roehampton Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Egil Bakka, Theresa Jill Buckland, Helena Saarikoski, and Anne von Bibra Wharton (eds.), Waltzing Through Europe: Attitudes towards Couple Dances in the Long Nineteenth Century, (Open Book Publishers, 2020) Theresa Jill Buckland, ‘How the Waltz was Won: Transmutations and the Acquisition of Style in Early English Modern Ballroom Dancing. Part One: Waltzing Under Attack' (Dance Research, 36/1, 2018); ‘Part Two: The Waltz Regained' (Dance Research, 36/2, 2018) Theresa Jill Buckland, Society Dancing: Fashionable Bodies in England, 1870-1920 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) Erica Buurman, The Viennese Ballroom in the Age of Beethoven (Cambridge University Press, 2022) Paul Cooper, ‘The Waltz in England, c. 1790-1820' (Paper presented at Early Dance Circle conference, 2018) Sherril Dodds and Susan Cook (eds.), Bodies of Sound: Studies Across Popular Dance and Music (Ashgate, 2013), especially ‘Dancing Out of Time: The Forgotten Boston of Edwardian England' by Theresa Jill Buckland Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz (first published 1932; Vintage Classics, 2001) Hilary French, Ballroom: A People's History of Dancing (Reaktion Books, 2022) Susan Jones, Literature, Modernism, and Dance (Oxford University Press, 2013) Mark Knowles, The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances: Outrage at Couple Dancing in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (McFarland, 2009) Rosamond Lehmann, Invitation to the Waltz (first published 1932; Virago, 2006) Eric McKee, Decorum of the Minuet, Delirium of the Waltz: A Study of Dance-Music Relations in 3/4 Time (Indiana University Press, 2012) Eduard Reeser, The History of the Walz (Continental Book Co., 1949) Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 27 (Macmillan, 2nd ed., 2000), especially ‘Waltz' by Andrew Lamb Derek B. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris and Vienna (Oxford University Press, 2008), especially the chapter ‘A Revolution on the Dance Floor, a Revolution in Musical Style: The Viennese Waltz' Joseph Wechsberg, The Waltz Emperors: The Life and Times and Music of the Strauss Family (Putnam, 1973) Cheryl A. Wilson, Literature and Dance in Nineteenth-century Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2009) Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (first published 1915; William Collins, 2013) Virginia Woolf, The Years (first published 1937; Vintage Classics, 2016) David Wyn Jones, The Strauss Dynasty and Habsburg Vienna (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Sevin H. Yaraman, Revolving Embrace: The Waltz as Sex, Steps, and Sound (Pendragon Press, 2002) Rishona Zimring, Social Dance and the Modernist Imagination in Interwar Britain (Ashgate Press, 2013)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the dance which, from when it reached Britain in the early nineteenth century, revolutionised the relationship between music, literature and people here for the next hundred years. While it may seem formal now, it was the informality and daring that drove its popularity, with couples holding each other as they spun round a room to new lighter music popularised by Johann Strauss, father and son, such as The Blue Danube. Soon the Waltz expanded the creative world in poetry, ballet, novellas and music, from the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev to Moon River and Are You Lonesome Tonight. With Susan Jones Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford Derek B. Scott Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Leeds And Theresa Buckland Emeritus Professor of Dance History and Ethnography at the University of Roehampton Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Egil Bakka, Theresa Jill Buckland, Helena Saarikoski, and Anne von Bibra Wharton (eds.), Waltzing Through Europe: Attitudes towards Couple Dances in the Long Nineteenth Century, (Open Book Publishers, 2020) Theresa Jill Buckland, ‘How the Waltz was Won: Transmutations and the Acquisition of Style in Early English Modern Ballroom Dancing. Part One: Waltzing Under Attack' (Dance Research, 36/1, 2018); ‘Part Two: The Waltz Regained' (Dance Research, 36/2, 2018) Theresa Jill Buckland, Society Dancing: Fashionable Bodies in England, 1870-1920 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) Erica Buurman, The Viennese Ballroom in the Age of Beethoven (Cambridge University Press, 2022) Paul Cooper, ‘The Waltz in England, c. 1790-1820' (Paper presented at Early Dance Circle conference, 2018) Sherril Dodds and Susan Cook (eds.), Bodies of Sound: Studies Across Popular Dance and Music (Ashgate, 2013), especially ‘Dancing Out of Time: The Forgotten Boston of Edwardian England' by Theresa Jill Buckland Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz (first published 1932; Vintage Classics, 2001) Hilary French, Ballroom: A People's History of Dancing (Reaktion Books, 2022) Susan Jones, Literature, Modernism, and Dance (Oxford University Press, 2013) Mark Knowles, The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances: Outrage at Couple Dancing in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (McFarland, 2009) Rosamond Lehmann, Invitation to the Waltz (first published 1932; Virago, 2006) Eric McKee, Decorum of the Minuet, Delirium of the Waltz: A Study of Dance-Music Relations in 3/4 Time (Indiana University Press, 2012) Eduard Reeser, The History of the Walz (Continental Book Co., 1949) Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 27 (Macmillan, 2nd ed., 2000), especially ‘Waltz' by Andrew Lamb Derek B. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris and Vienna (Oxford University Press, 2008), especially the chapter ‘A Revolution on the Dance Floor, a Revolution in Musical Style: The Viennese Waltz' Joseph Wechsberg, The Waltz Emperors: The Life and Times and Music of the Strauss Family (Putnam, 1973) Cheryl A. Wilson, Literature and Dance in Nineteenth-century Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2009) Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (first published 1915; William Collins, 2013) Virginia Woolf, The Years (first published 1937; Vintage Classics, 2016) David Wyn Jones, The Strauss Dynasty and Habsburg Vienna (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Sevin H. Yaraman, Revolving Embrace: The Waltz as Sex, Steps, and Sound (Pendragon Press, 2002) Rishona Zimring, Social Dance and the Modernist Imagination in Interwar Britain (Ashgate Press, 2013) Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.