Podcasts about MFA

Stephanie interviews Elise Tegegne, author of In Praise of House Flies. They discuss finding God's presence, grace, and growth in the ordinary and sometimes challenging moments of daily life. Spiritual growth is cultivated not by spectacular moments, but by surrender, humility, dependence, and wonder woven into the fabric of everyday life. As Elise's experience, book, and wisdom reveal, God meets us in the little things—if we will simply open our eyes and hearts to Him. Elise's story begins with her call to serve as a missionary teacher in Ethiopia—an experience that brought her, for the first time, into the depths of her own inadequacy. Far from home and outside her comfort zone, she quickly realized she could not succeed on her own. Failure and discomfort became a means by which she experienced true intimacy with God. When everything felt overwhelming, the only option was to get “on her knees,” literally and figuratively, praying for help. Elise discusses how being confronted with her own limits brought a new kind of freedom. Growing up as a high-performing student, she hadn't needed to rely on anyone but herself. But in Ethiopia, humility was forced upon her—and it led to spiritual liberation. Humility is the posture that opens us to God's grace. It's not natural or easy—especially for those of us wired for achievement or “Martha” types—but it's essential. Elise points out that praying for humility is scary, but necessary, and God has ways to gently answer that prayer. True humility is not self-deprecation but a realistic acknowledgment of need—opening the way for grace. God “gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5). Cultivating humility by embracing moments that challenge our sense of control, happens by asking Him for a gentle, transforming touch. Motherhood and daily life made Elise redefine prayer. No longer only reserved for a quiet hour, prayer became integrated into every moment: while nursing her baby, washing dishes, or shopping with her in-laws, who taught her to pray over even the smallest activities. Prayer can permeate our entire day. Turn every activity—however small—into a moment of connection and dependence on God. “In everything, by prayer and supplication, make your requests known to God.” The title of Elise's book, In Praise of House Flies, inspires us to look for God's presence even in the annoyances and the mundane: the “house fly” moments we'd rather swat away. Life is lived not just in the big events, but in myriad little acts of faithfulness, wonder, and surrender. Adopting a childlike wonder, Elise encourages us to practice gratitude, see the holy in the everyday, and recognize God's gifts everywhere. Resist waiting for the “next big thing.” Instead, let's train our attention on the daily opportunities God gives for transformation, gratitude, and worship. Like children, we marvel at the beauty and sacredness embedded in the ordinary. MORE ABOUT ELISE TEGEGNE AND HER BOOK, “IN PRAISE OF HOUSEFLIES” Through the lens of personal experience, Elise Tegegne reflects on the redemptive glimmers in ordinary challenges ranging from canceled flights to insomnia. In Praise of Houseflies gives readers an opportunity to listen for what their own everyday quandaries can teach and to delight in the abundant graces blossoming within them. It is an essential message of hope, joy, and redemption imparted through deep, nourishing reflection. Elise says of herself, “Living alone and young as a high school French teacher in Ethiopia, I found a world that beautifully upended mine. I found God with skin and bones. And I found the one my soul loves. After giving birth to my son, I left my teaching career to pursue the delights of motherhood and writing. Since then I've been listening for God's voice in the rhythms of everyday life, keeping my eyes open for abundant graces—and seeking to capture what I find in words. My first book In Praise of Houseflies: Meditations on the Gifts in Everyday Quandaries (Calla Press) is now available wherever books are sold. I received a BA in Creative Writing and French from Indiana University and hold an MFA from Seattle Pacific University. “ More at https://www.elisetegegne.com/  Support us on Gospel Spice, PayPal and Venmo!

Heather Sweeney joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about her quest to find out who she was apart from her life as a military wife, mining 20 years worth of journals, uncovering internal dynamics through writing, knowing where to begin a memoir, managing multiple settings with a chronological timeline, cutting redundancies, retitling a memoir late in the game, killing our darlings, writing about exes, coping strategies, reclaiming identity, being true to our own writing process, and her new memoir Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage.   Also in this episode: -writing when you can -the e-structure -brainstorming for titles Books mentioned in this episode: -Seven Drafts Allison K. Williams -Wild by Cheryl Strayed -On Writing by Stephen King -Bird by Bird by Anne Lammott -Big Magic by Elizabeth GIlbert -Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum -The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr -The Book Bible by Sue Shapiro -A Thousand Words by Jamie Attenberg   Heather Sweeney is the author of the memoir Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage. She writes about divorce, life as a military spouse, parenting, and women's health, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, HuffPost, TODAY.com, Newsweek, Business Insider, Good Housekeeping, Healthline, Grown and Flown, Military.com, and many others. She lives in Virginia with her boyfriend, two college-aged kids, and their geriatric Labrador retriever. Connect with Heather: Website: https://www.heatherlsweeney.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writersweeney  Threads: https://www.threads.net/@writersweeney  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@heathersweeneywrites  Substack: https://heathersweeney.substack.com/  Amazon: http://posthill.to/B0F316HJTD Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/camouflage-heather-sweeney/1147211233 Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/camouflage-how-i-emerged-from-the-shadows-of-a-military-marriage-heather-sweeney/22522585 Target: https://www.target.com/p/camouflage-by-heather-sweeney-paperback/-/A-1003183204   – Ronit's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer's Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories.  She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit's Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank   Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social   Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers

Suhaila Salimpour, of Sicilian-Greek and Kurdish-American heritage, is a second-generation belly dancer and a pioneering figure in the global dance community. A former house dancer at the legendary Byblos nightclub in Beverly Hills, she toured internationally for over a decade, performing across the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and North America. As the visionary creator of the first codified pedagogy and certification system in belly dance, she transformed both performance and teaching, building a worldwide network rooted in discipline, anatomy, and cultural respect. Now directing the Salimpour School of Dance, she continues her mother's legacy through global online education, choreography, and community leadership. A recipient of the Gerbode Foundation's 2024 dance award and the Isadora Duncan Special Award (2023/24), she also serves on multiple dance boards and is completing her MFA in Dance at Saint Mary's College of California.In this episode you will learn about:- Suhaila's decision to pursue an MFA in Dance after decades on stage- The need for Arab and immigrant voices in academia- Her research on how colonization codified cultural dance forms, and the idea of “outside and inside colonization”- The growth of the Salimpour School into a full online institute- Three generations of Salimpour women carrying the dance forward.Show Notes to this episode:Find Suhaila Salimpour on Instagram, FB, YouTube, TikTok, and website.Previous interview with Suhaila Salimpour: Ep 156. Suhaila Salimpour: Renegotiating Your Dance IdentityDetails and training materials for the BDE castings are available at www.JoinBDE.comFollow Iana on Instagram, FB, and Youtube . Check out her online classes and intensives at the Iana Dance Club.Find information on how you can support Ukraine and Ukrainian belly dancers HERE.Podcast: www.ianadance.com/podcast

What do poets and humorists have in common? For Caylin Capra-Thomas, whose writing is sure to make you laugh, both pay close attention to life's idiosyncrasies in the search for truth. In this episode, she also tells Jared about her experience getting a PhD in creative writing for an advantage in the academic job market (it worked: she's a professor!), conquering the comprehensive exam, and key differences between the PhD and the MFA.Caylin Capra-Thomas is the author of a poetry collection, Iguana Iguana, and her poetry and essays have appeared widely, including in Georgia Review, Pleiades, Longreads, 32 Poems, New England Review, and elsewhere. Her scholarship has appeared in the T.S. Eliot Studies Annual. The recipient of fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Sewanee Writers Conference, she earned an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from the University of Montana, and a PhD in English and creative writing (nonfiction) from the University of Missouri in Columbia. She now teaches English and creative writing at Stephens College. Find her at caylincaprathomas.com.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there's a program you'd like to learn more about, contact us and we'll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

Welcome to another episode of Las Platicas, a show hosted by Comadres y Comics, where we meet with creators and friends to talk about upcoming projects, events and all around awesome news in the comic community. Today we once again have the pleasure of speaking with guest Madeleine Holly-Rosing, a TV, feature film, comic book writer, and novelist. Madeleine holds an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA where she won numerous awards as well as the Sloan Fellowship. Madeleine has published a number of short stories, novellas, and a novel based on the BOSTON METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY universe. Today she joins us to discuss her current Kickstarter campaign for Boston Metaphysical Society: Mystery at Pikes Peak #1-4. Welcome Madeleine!@queenofmercia.com

JOHN-ANDREW MORRISON -Tony Award Nomination, Lucille Lortel Award, and OBIE for A Strange Loop. Currently stars on Broadway in Oh, Mary. Off Broadway: Blues for an Alabama Sky (KEEN Company, Outer Critics Circle Honoree), The Blacks - A Clown Show, Caligula and Malvolio (Classical Theater of Harlem), Medea of the Laundromat (La MaMa and Lucille Lortel Theater with The Experimentals — for George Ferencz). Regional: 3 Summers of Lincoln (La Jolla Playhouse). BA from Brandeis University and MFA from UC San Diego. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"I kinda hate it when people say writing is fun," says Jack Rodolico, author The Atavist original "The Blue Book Burglar."Today we feature Jack Rodolico, who is a bit of an audio maven, but he comes to us hot off the Atavist presses to talk about "The Blue Book Burglar: The Social Register was a who's who of America's rich and powerful— the heirs of robber barons, scions of political dynasties, and descendants of Mayflower passengers. It was also the perfect hit list for the country's hardest-working art thief."It's a fun, rollicking read, not too heavy, not really heavy at all, merely a great caper.Batting leadoff is lead editor Jonah Ogles, so we talk about his side of the table about what less experienced writers can learn about pitching the Atavist and how Jonah worked with Jack to fix the structure of the piece. As always, really rich stuff from the editing side of things.A bit more about Jack Rodolico, the dude's got it going on … His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, NPR, 99% Invisible, and NHPR … He's earning an MFA in fiction, and that's really helping him with his nonfiction writing, as you'll hear in a moment.You can learn more about Jack at his website journalistjack.com. In this conversation we talk about his Atavist piece, writing fiction, earning trust, why you can't pay sources for information, how he organizes his research and cites his work, beginnings and endings, and how he didn't necessarily want to be a journalist, rather he wanted to be a writer.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

If you thought your Halloween playlist peaked at "Monster Mash," get ready to level up with the Data Mash — a graveyard splash of spooky cybersecurity tales and ghastly good rhymes. In this special Halloween episode, we summon the spirits of password poltergeists, resurrect dusty old policies from the crypt, and stir up a bubbling MFA cauldron. It's cybersecurity with a spooky twist, and yes, there's even a ransomware reaper lurking around with backup regrets. Boo and boo-hoo for bad data hygiene! More info at HelpMeWithHIPAA.com/533

On this episode, we'll follow up on how Threat Prevention blades work without HTTPS Inspection enabled, more about the Public R82.10 Early Availability program, enabling MFA for administrators, and more Maestro discussions and best practices.What real protection do we get from Threat Prevention if HTTPS inspection is disabled?sk184185: Software Blade effectiveness with and without HTTPS InspectionSoftware Blade effectiveness with and without HTTPS Inspection - sk184185R82.10 Public EA Programsk183058: Check Point Early Availability (EA) ProgramsMFA for admin access for checkpoint firewall on Gaia and Smartconsolesk181854: Two-Factor Authentication for Gaia OS loginCreating an Administrator Account with SAML Authentication LoginMaestro Best Practices October 2025Maestro Connection Synchronization During a FailoverMaestro Flush and AckMaestro LicensingClusterXL vs ElasticXLElasticXL vs MaestroMaestro Dual-Site Active/Active

Holy MFA, Batman! This week, the guys discuss the sentencing of the individual behind the PowerSchool data breach, the recent AI weapons detection system that mistook a bag of chips for a gun and prompted police response, and Mark's Batman mask. Yes, it's Halloween time! The main segment is an interview with the tech team from Tahoe-Truckee Unified School District. They share their lessons learned from a highly ambitious project: rolling out multi-factor authentication (MFA) to every student. Learn how they tackled user experience and training to ensure stronger identity security for their entire K12 population. Our new Swag Store is OPEN - Buy some swag (tech dept gift boxes, shirts, hoodies...)!!! -------------------- ChromebookParts.com YouTube Channel Jurassic Parts with ChromebookParts.com Extreme Networks Fortinet Lightspeed Systems -------------------- Join the K12TechPro Community (exclusively for K12 Tech professionals) Buy some swag (tech dept gift boxes, shirts, hoodies...)!!! Email us at k12techtalk@gmail.com OR our "professional" email addy is info@k12techtalkpodcast.com Call us at 314-329-0363 X @k12techtalkpod Facebook Visit our LinkedIn Music by Colt Ball Disclaimer: The views and work done by Josh, Chris, and Mark are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions or positions of sponsors or any respective employers or organizations associated with the guys. K12 Tech Talk itself does not endorse or validate the ideas, views, or statements expressed by Josh, Chris, and Mark's individual views and opinions are not representative of K12 Tech Talk. Furthermore, any references or mention of products, services, organizations, or individuals on K12 Tech Talk should not be considered as endorsements related to any employer or organization associated with the guys.

Anne Myles reads her poem "The Woman Who Lives without Bread," and Jonathan Chibuike Ukah reads his poem "I Am Going Higher." Anne Myles is the author of Late Epistle (Headmistress Press, 2023), and her work has appeared in numerous journals. She is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Northern Iowa and holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Originally from New York, she now lives in Greensboro, NC. Learn more at annemyles.com.Jonathan Chibuike Ukah lives in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in Lucky Jefferson Literary Magazine, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets, and elsewhere. He won the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2023. He was the Editor's Choice Prize Winner of Unleash Lit in 2024, the Second Poetry Prize Winner at the Streetlights Poetry Prize in 2024, and Winner of the Poet of the Month December-January 2025 at the Literary Shark Poetry Contest. His chapbook, A is for Anfang, is forthcoming from Island of Wak Wak.

Aaron Henry is the Founder and Managing Director of Foundeast Asia, an award-winning integrated marketing communications agency bridging Southeast Asia and North America. With over two decades of experience in PR, branding, film production, and global marketing, Aaron has helped Fortune 100 companies and startups alike craft compelling stories that resonate across cultures.His career includes leadership roles at Warner Bros., where he helped expand Rotten Tomatoes, and co-founding two Los Angeles agencies before relocating to Southeast Asia. Drawing on his MFA from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and BA in Cultural Anthropology, Aaron blends creative vision with cultural insight to deliver campaigns that connect.⸻

professorjrod@gmail.comSecurity that actually holds under pressure starts long before passwords and antivirus. We pull back the rack door and walk through the parts that make a network resilient: switches that enforce port security, routers that block spoofed traffic, servers that stay patched and locked down, and load balancers that keep services steady when a node falls over. From a small bookstore's POS to a global bank's data center, the patterns repeat with higher stakes and tighter controls.We break down the real tools of infrastructure defense and why they matter. Policy‑based firewalls translate intent like “block social media for guests” into action, while next‑gen engines add deep inspection and URL filtering. Forward proxies protect outbound browsing and reverse proxies hide internal services. Deception tech—honeypots, honeynets, and sinkholes—turns attackers into sources of intel. IDS alerts, IPS blocks, and together they feed visibility into an XDR layer that correlates endpoint, server, cloud, and email signals to stop ransomware chains before they detonate.Good design contains failure. VLANs limit blast radius when a laptop is compromised. DMZs and jump servers separate public‑facing apps from sensitive systems. Zero trust reframes access with “never trust, always verify,” enforcing MFA, continuous checks, and least privilege across users and APIs. VPNs connect people and sites with SSL and IPsec, while NAC verifies device health and quarantines noncompliant endpoints—a must for any BYOD policy. We tie it all together with practical case studies, a quick quiz to test your instincts, and clear takeaways you can apply to classrooms, clinics, nonprofits, and clouds.If this deep dive helps you think more clearly about your network's weak points and how to shrink them, tap follow, share with a teammate, and leave a review so more builders can find it. What's the first segment you'll harden this week?Inspiring Tech Leaders - The Technology PodcastInterviews with Tech Leaders and insights on the latest emerging technology trends.Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the showArt By Sarah/DesmondMusic by Joakim KarudLittle chacha ProductionsJuan Rodriguez can be reached atTikTok @ProfessorJrodProfessorJRod@gmail.com@Prof_JRodInstagram ProfessorJRod

What do comics, writing, and Pilates have in common? None other than this week's guest, Mel Hilario! In this episode, we talk about all kinds of things from intuition to creative expression to somatic practices and everything in between! Including what it's like to be a daughter of Filipino immigrants who don't understand what we do in our lives. Join us as we continue the celebration of Filipino American History month with this episode!We embody many different roles and I have likened this existence to that of our ancestral lands: an archipelago. Tune in to hear how we link up all of our multiple passions and identities into who we are being. And how that in and of itself is a form of resistance.Mel Hilario Book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Agent-Cupcake/Mel-Hilario/9781637158760Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3NmlshGX4ijHPXmFIgT1Nu Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spiritual-grit/id1497436520  ===============Today's poems/ Books mentioned:Tarot/Oracle Card: Queen of Cups“The Sorcery” =============== Courses / Exclusive Content / Book Mentioned:Subscribe to mailing list + community: suryagian.com/subscribe and get the 7-day meditation challenge, “Spark Joy in Chaos”Subscribe to “Adventures in Midlife” newsletter: leslieann.substack.comInstagram: @leslieannhobayan Email: leslieann@suryagian.comYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxAeQWRRsSo5E7PBJdZUeoEAYXnAtuyRyKundalini Yoga Classes: https://www.suryagian.com/anchor-amplify-kundaliniSpeak Your Truth: https://www.suryagian.com/speak-your-truth ===============About the Guest: Melanie “Mel” Hilario is a writer who empowers readers by helping them understand the world around them, blending genres and transforming traditional character archetypes into fully realized people, with their own quirks, language, and interior lives. Mel received her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, has been a recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation grant and residencies at VONA (Voices of our Nations Arts), Las Dos Brujas Writers Workshop, Writing by Writers, and Hedgebrook. She has developed characters for toy lines, masterminded educational workbooks, and written wrenching essays, most recently for the Kindred Souls anthology, Angry Women. Along with Lauren Davis and Katie Longua, Mel is part of the Eisner-nominated team, Triple Dream Comics. Together, they created the middle grade graphic novels, "Debian Perl, Digital Detective" and "Agent Cupcake." Their short story, "Traitor, Trickster, Dummy, Doll" appeared in The Nib and was nominated for the 2022 Eisner Award for Best Short Story.When she isn't writing fiction, nonfiction, and comic books, Mel is in martial arts or ballet class, teaching Pilates, or attempting to stay off social media and failing miserably. She lives in Oakland with two of the largest cats her friends have ever seen.

This episode is sponsored by HYPR. Visit hypr.com/idac to learn more.In this episode from Authenticate 2025, Jim McDonald and Jeff Steadman are joined by Bojan Simic, Co-Founder and CEO of HYPR, for a sponsored discussion on the evolving landscape of identity and security.Bojan shares his journey from software engineer to cybersecurity leader and dives into the core mission of HYPR: providing fast, consistent, and secure identity controls that complement existing investments. The conversation explores the major themes from the conference, including the push for passkey adoption at scale and the challenge of securely authenticating AI agents.A key focus of the discussion is the concept of "Know Your Employee" (KYE) in a continuous manner, a critical strategy for today's remote and hybrid workforces. Bojan explains how the old paradigm of one-time verification is failing, especially in the face of sophisticated, AI-powered social engineering attacks like those used by Scattered Spider. They discuss the issue of "identity sprawl" across multiple IDPs and why consolidation isn't always the answer. Instead, Bojan advocates for a flexible, best-of-breed approach that provides a consistent authentication experience and leverages existing security tools.Connect with Bojan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bojansimic/Learn more about HYPR: https://www.hypr.com/idacConnect with us on LinkedIn:Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/Visit the show on the web at idacpodcast.comChapter Timestamps:00:00 - Introduction at Authenticate 202500:23 - Sponsored Episode Welcome: Bojan Simic, CEO of HYPR01:11 - How Bojan Simic Got into Identity and Cybersecurity02:10 - The Elevator Pitch for HYPR04:03 - The Buzz at Authenticate 2025: Passkeys and Securing AI Agents05:29 - The Trend of Continuous "Know Your Employee" (KYE)07:33 - Is Your MFA Program Enough Anymore?09:44 - Hackers Don't Break In, They Log In: The Scattered Spider Threat11:19 - How AI is Scaling Social Engineering Attacks Globally13:08 - When a Breach Happens, Who's on the Hook? IT, Security, or HR?16:23 - What is the Right Solution for Identity Practitioners?17:05 - The Critical Role of Internal Marketing for Technology Adoption22:27 - The Problem with Identity Sprawl and the Fallacy of IDP Consolidation25:47 - When is it Time to Move On From Your Existing Identity Tools?28:16 - The Role of Document-Based Identity Verification in the Enterprise32:31 - What Makes HYPR's Approach Unique?35:33 - How Do You Measure the Success of an Identity Solution?36:39 - HYPR's Philosophy: Never Leave a User Stranded39:00 - Authentication as a Tier Zero, Always-On Capability40:05 - Is Identity Part of Your Disaster Recovery Plan?41:36 - From the Ring to the C-Suite: Bojan's Past as a Competitive Boxer47:03 - How to Learn More About HYPRKeywords:IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Bojan Simic, HYPR, Passkeys, Know Your Employee, KYE, Continuous Identity, Identity Verification, Authenticate 2025, Phishing Resistant, Social Engineering, Scattered Spider, AI Security, Identity Sprawl, Passwordless Authentication, FIDO, MFA, IDP Consolidation, Zero Trust, Cybersecurity, IAM, Identity and Access Management, Enterprise Security

Amy Hensen is a ceramic artist exploring figurative hand-built functional forms. Amy's concepts blend maternal feminism, pest animals, and fantastical beasts. A 2022 MFA graduate from UNT, Amy exhibits nationally, teaches in the Dallas area, and helps lead Garland Creates. Amy lives with her family and two cats in Garland, TX. https://ThePottersCast.com/1173

Kelly Foster Lundquist joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about falling in love with creative nonfiction, believing our story is worth sharing, contemplating how to tell it without hurting someone else, shifting from writing academically to personally, taking 20 years to complete a memoir, leaning into and trusting the particularity of our story, learning to stop explaining in our manuscripts, trying different structural approaches, the pattern hungry brain, incorporating culture, history, and research, when writing feels redemptive, liberating, and affirming, and her new memoir Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage.   Also in this episode: -gratitude -conversion therapy -when a story feels too sacred   Books mentioned in this episode: -The Argonauts by Maggie Nelston -The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr -Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Books by Allison K. Williams -Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salessas   Kelly Foster Lundquist teaches writing at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park, MN. Originally from Mississippi, Lundquist has taught writing all over the United States (Boston, Chicago, Mississippi, Seattle, California, etc), as well as in Slovakia and Scotland. Her poetry and nonfiction can be seen in many places, including Villain Era Lit, Last Syllable Lit, Whale Road Review, and Image Journal. Her work has been nominated for a 2024 Best of the Net Award as well as a Pushcart Prize. She is the recipient of grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board as well as the Central Minnesota Arts Board. Her book Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage (Eerdmans) will debut in October 2025. She lives in a little red house in Minnesota with her spouse and daughter.  Connect with Kelly: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellyfosterlundquist Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1EgWxeL94v/?mibextid=wwXIfr Website: https://www.kellyfosterlundquist.com/ Book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/beard-a-memoir-of-a-marriage-kelly-foster-lundquist/22424165?ean=9780802884732&next=t   – Ronit's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer's Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories.  She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit's Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank   Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social   Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers

How well do you really know your vendors? Are your cybersecurity defenses keeping up with modern freight threats? Listen to Ben Wilkens for Day 2 of the 2025 NMFTA Cybersecurity Conference as he talks about the growing overlap between cybersecurity, cargo theft, and vendor management in transportation! We cover why third-party vendors are often the weakest link, how simple steps like multi-factor authentication (MFA) can stop most attacks, and why using the NMFTA's vendor checklist should be a standard practice for every carrier and broker. Ben also breaks down how cybercriminals are blending digital scams with physical theft, using tactics like phishing and fake carrier setups to exploit gaps in vetting and process discipline, why technology alone can't fix broken operations, and how consistent vetting, digital hygiene, and collaboration across the industry are key to protecting freight! About Ben Wilkens Ben Wilkens, CISSP, CCSP, CISM, is a Cybersecurity Principal Engineer at the National Motor Freight Traffic Association, Inc. (NMFTA)™. In his role at NMFTA, Ben spearheads research initiatives and leads teams dedicated to developing cutting-edge cybersecurity technologies, methodologies, and strategies to safeguard information systems and networks. He collaborates extensively with academic institutions, industry partners, and government agencies to advance cybersecurity practices and knowledge. Ben provides expert insights and recommendations to organizations, enhancing their security posture and helping them navigate the constantly evolving landscape of cyber threats. Before joining NMFTA, Ben was a key executive at a third-generation family-owned trucking and logistics company. There, he focused on the strategic integration of technology to improve operational efficiency while ensuring adherence to cybersecurity best practices. With a rare combination of CISSP, CCSP, and CISM certifications alongside an active Class A CDL, Ben brings a unique perspective to the intersection of cybersecurity and transportation. In addition to his extensive experience as an over-the-road driver, he has held roles in dispatch operations, driver management, and brokerage sales. Ben later transitioned to IT and operations support, where he honed his expertise in cybersecurity.

Melissa Bank, who passed away in 2022, was a fabulous writer and an incredible person. We met a few times in person, out here in Southern California when we were both speakers at the Literary Guild, and in NYC when I traveled there for conferences. She came on the show a couple of times, for Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing and The Wonder Spot. Her output was modest though her books became bestsellers. She received an MFA from Cornell University and won the Nelson Algren Award for short fiction from the Chicago Tribune. I'll always remember when I asked her to talk about how to write a novel, she said, “I don't know how to write a novel.” What she knew how to do, she was, was write stories. Stories became chapters and chapters become a book. If you've never read these two books, check them out. My guess is you will become a fan. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It's stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you'll find an album's worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It's perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on October 7, 2007) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.) 

Episode description (120–180 words): Cybersecurity is no longer optional for tax and accounting firms. In this episode, hosts Mo Arbas and Paul Miller are joined by Steve Ferguson (Protection Plus) to break down what really keeps practices safe—and operating—when threats hit. They cover why small firms are prime targets, how phishing and AI‑driven scams fool even savvy teams, and why MFA alone isn't enough as zero trust becomes the new standard. Steve explains must‑have protections, including cyber insurance with breach response, plus the role of a written information security plan (WISP) required by FTC/IRS guidance. You'll hear real‑world stories—from kiosk‑seeded refund diversions to gift‑card cons—and practical steps for training staff, reducing liability, and responding fast to limit damage. If you handle client data, this conversation is your playbook for Cybersecurity Awareness Month and beyond.

Send us a textReyna Grande is a Mexican‑American novelist and memoirist whose work brings raw clarity to the immigrant experience, family separation, and the pursuit of belonging. Born in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico, and having crossed into the U.S. as an undocumented child, Grande earned her BA and MFA in creative writing, and is a recipient of multiple awards including the American Book Award, the International Latino Book Award and the El Premio Aztlán Literary Award.Grande's major works include:• Across a Hundred Mountains (2006) – a novel rooted in her own journey from Mexico to the U.S. as a child.• Dancing with Butterflies (2009) – a novel exploring identity, trauma, and cultural memory.• The Distance Between Us (2012) – a powerful memoir of her life before and after immigrating, which was also adapted into a young‑reader edition.• A Dream Called Home (2018) – the sequel memoir continuing her story of striving, belonging and returning.• A Ballad of Love and Glory (2022) – a sweeping historical novel set during the Mexican‑American War.Exploring themes of immigration, identity, language, and the power of storytelling, Grande's voice is profound and deeply human.Learn more at reynagrande.comSupport the showWe are thrilled about the global reach of this podcast; we currently have listeners in more than 650 cities across over 50 countries! We would be delighted to hear from our listeners, wherever you may be in the world. Send us a message on our dedicated Telegram channel: https://t.me/+23EKRv8eAWVlZDFh We are always looking for new guests to interview, so please pitch us your suggestions. If we end up interviewing them, we will recognize you on the show and send you some show swag. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a five-star rating and making a donation. Your generosity helps support our limited budget, enabling us to continue producing high-quality content. Click here to donate.

What does it take to keep your voice—and your purpose—strong through every season of life? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I sit down with my friend Bill Ratner, one of Hollywood's most recognized voice actors, best known as Flint from GI Joe. Bill's voice has carried him through radio, animation, and narration, but what stands out most is how he's used that same voice to serve others through storytelling, teaching, and grief counseling. Together, we explore the heart behind his work—from bringing animated heroes to life to standing on The Moth stage and helping people find healing through poetry. Bill shares lessons from his own journey, including losing both parents early, finding family in unexpected places, and discovering how creative expression can rebuild what life breaks down. We also reflect on 9/11, preparedness, and the quiet confidence that comes from trusting your training—whether you're a first responder, a performer, or just navigating the unknown. This conversation isn't just about performance; it's about presence. It's about using your story, your craft, and your compassion to keep moving forward—unstoppable, one voice at a time. Highlights: 00:31 – Hear the Flint voice and what it takes to bring animated characters to life. 06:57 – Learn why an uneven college path still led to a lifelong acting career. 11:50 – Understand how GI Joe became a team and a toy phenomenon that shaped culture. 15:58 – See how comics and cartoons boosted classroom literacy when used well. 17:06 – Pick up simple ways parents can spark reading through shared stories. 19:29 – Discover how early, honest conversations about death can model resilience. 24:09 – Learn to critique ads and media like a pro to sharpen your own performance. 36:19 – Follow the pivot from radio to voiceover and why specialization pays. 47:48 – Hear practical editing approaches and accessible tools that keep shows tight. 49:38 – Learn how The Moth builds storytelling chops through timed, judged practice. 55:21 – See how poetry—and poetry therapy—support grief work with students. 59:39 – Take notes on memoir writing, emotional management, and one-person shows. About the Guest: Bill Ratner is one of America's best known voice actors and author of poetry collections Lamenting While Doing Laps in the Lake (Slow Lightning Lit 2024,) Fear of Fish (Alien Buddha Press 2021,) To Decorate a Casket (Finishing Line Press 2021,) and the non-fiction book Parenting For The Digital Age: The Truth Behind Media's Effect On Children and What To Do About It (Familius Books 2014.) He is a 9-time winner of the Moth StorySLAM, 2-time winner of Best of The Hollywood Fringe Extension Award for Solo Performance, Best of the Net Poetry Nominee 2023 (Lascaux Review,) and New Millennium "America One Year From Now" Writing Award Finalist. His writing appears in Best Small Fictions 2021 (Sonder Press,) Missouri Review (audio,) Baltimore Review, Chiron Review, Feminine Collective, and other journals. He is the voice of "Flint" in the TV cartoon G.I. Joe, "Donnell Udina" in the computer game Mass Effect, the voice of Air Disasters on Smithsonian Channel, NewsNation, and network TV affiliates across the country. He is a committee chair for his union, SAG-AFTRA, teaches Voiceovers for SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Media Awareness for Los Angeles Unified School District, and is a trained grief counsellor. Member: Actors Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild-AFTRA, National Storytelling Network • https://billratner.com • @billratner Ways to connect with Bill: https://soundcloud.com/bill-ratner https://www.instagram.com/billratner/ https://twitter.com/billratner https://www.threads.net/@billratner https://billratner.tumblr.com https://www.youtube.com/@billratner/videos https://www.facebook.com/billratner.voiceover.author https://bsky.app/profile/bilorat.bsky.social About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well on a gracious hello to you, wherever you may be, I am your host. Mike hingson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset. Today, we get to have a voice actor, person, Bill Ratner, who you want to know who Bill Radnor is, go back and watch the old GI Joe cartoons and listen to the voice of Flint.   Bill Ratner ** 01:42 All right. Lady Jay, you better get your battle gear on, because Cobra is on their way. And I can't bring up the Lacher threat weapon system. We got to get out of here. Yo, Joe,   Michael Hingson ** 01:52 there you go. I rest my case Well, Bill, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Bill Ratner ** 02:00 We can't rest now. Michael, we've just begun. No, we've just begun.   Michael Hingson ** 02:04 We got to keep going here. Well, I'm really glad that you're here. Bill is another person who we inveigled to get on unstoppable mindset with the help of Walden Hughes. And so that means we can talk about Walden all we want today. Bill just saying, oh goodness. And I got a lot to say. Let me tell you perfect, perfect. Bring it on. So we are really grateful to Walden, although I hope he's not listening. We don't want to give him a big head. But no, seriously, we're really grateful. Ah, good point.   Bill Ratner ** 02:38 But his posture, oddly enough, is perfect.   Michael Hingson ** 02:40 Well, there you go. What do you do? He practiced. Well, anyway, we're glad you're here. Tell us about the early bill, growing up and all that stuff. It's always fun to start a good beginning.   Bill Ratner ** 02:54 Well, I was a very lucky little boy. I was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1947 to two lovely people, professionals, both with master's degree out at University of Chicago. My mother was a social worker. My father had an MBA in business. He was managing editor of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. So I had the joy of living in a better home and living in a garden.   Michael Hingson ** 03:21 My mother. How long were you in Des Moines?   Bill Ratner ** 03:24 Five and a half years left before my sixth birthday. My dad got a fancy job at an ad agency in Minneapolis, and had a big brother named Pete and big handsome, curly haired boy with green eyes. And moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was was brought up there.   Michael Hingson ** 03:45 Wow. So you went to school there and and chased the girls and all that stuff.   Bill Ratner ** 03:54 I went to school there at Blake School for Boys in Hopkins, Minnesota. Couldn't chase the girls day school, but the girls we are allowed to dance with certainly not chase. Michael was at woodhue dancing school, the Northrop girls from Northrop girls school and the Blake boys were put together in eighth grade and taught the Cha Cha Cha, the waltz, the Charleston, and we danced together, and the girls wore white gloves, and we sniffed their perfume, and we all learned how to be lovers when we were 45   Michael Hingson ** 04:37 There you are. Well, as long as you learned at some point, that's a good start.   Bill Ratner ** 04:44 It's a weird generation. Michael,   Michael Hingson ** 04:46 I've been to Des Moines before. I was born in Chicago, but moved out to California when I was five, but I did some work with the National Federation of the Blind in the mid 19. 1970s 1976 into 1978 so spent time at the Iowa Commission for the Blind in Des Moines, which became a top agency for the Blind in well, the late 50s into the to the 60s and so on. So   Bill Ratner ** 05:15 both my parents are from Chicago. My father from the south side of Chicago, 44th and Kenzie, which was a Irish, Polish, Italian, Jewish, Ukrainian neighborhood. And my mother from Glencoe, which was a middle class suburb above Northwestern University in Evanston.   Michael Hingson ** 05:34 I Where were you born? 57th and union, north, south side, no, South   Bill Ratner ** 05:42 57th union is that? Is that west of Kenzie?   Michael Hingson ** 05:46 You know, I don't remember the geography well enough to know, but I know that it was, I think, Mount Sinai Hospital where I was born. But it was, it's, it's, it's a pretty tough neighborhood today. So I understand,   Bill Ratner ** 06:00 yeah, yeah, my it was tough, then it's tough now,   Michael Hingson ** 06:03 yeah, I think it's tougher, supposedly, than it was. But we lived there for five years, and then we we moved to California, and I remember some things about Chicago. I remember walking down to the local candy store most days, and had no problem doing that. My parents were told they should shut me away at a home somewhere, because no blind child could ever grow up to amount to anything. And my parents said, You guys are you're totally wrong. And they brought me up with that attitude. So, you   Bill Ratner ** 06:32 know who said that the school says school so that   Michael Hingson ** 06:35 doctors doctors when they discovered I was blind with the   Bill Ratner ** 06:38 kid, goodness gracious, horrified.   Michael Hingson ** 06:44 Well, my parents said absolutely not, and they brought me up, and they actually worked with other parents of premature kids who became blind, and when kindergarten started in for us in in the age of four, they actually had a special kindergarten class for blind kids at the Perry School, which is where I went. And so I did that for a year, learn braille and some other things. Then we moved to California, but yeah, and I go back to Chicago every so often. And when I do nowadays, they I one of my favorite places to migrate in Chicago is Garrett Popcorn.   Bill Ratner ** 07:21 Ah, yes, with caramel corn, regular corn, the   Michael Hingson ** 07:25 Chicago blend, which is a mixture, yeah, the Chicago blend is cheese corn, well, as it is with caramel corn, and they put much other mozzarella on it as well. It's really good.   Bill Ratner ** 07:39 Yeah, so we're on the air. Michael, what do you call your what do you call your program? Here I am your new friend, and I can't even announce your program because I don't know   Michael Hingson ** 07:48 the name, unstoppable mindset. This   Bill Ratner ** 07:51 is unstoppable mindset.   Michael Hingson ** 07:56 We're back. Well, we're back already. We're fast. So you, you, you moved off elsewhere, out of Des Moines and all that. And where did you go to college?   Bill Ratner ** 08:09 Well, this is like, why did you this is, this is a bit like talking about the Vietnam War. Looking back on my college career is like looking back on the Vietnam War series, a series of delusions and defeats. By the time I the time i for college, by the time I was applying for college, I was an orphan, orphan, having been born to fabulous parents who died too young of natural causes. So my grades in high school were my mediocre. I couldn't get into the Ivy Leagues. I got into the big 10 schools. My stepmother said, you're going to Michigan State in East Lansing because your cousin Eddie became a successful realtor. And Michigan State was known as mu u it was the most successful, largest agriculture college and university in the country. Kids from South Asia, China, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, South America all over the world came to Michigan State to study agricultural sciences, children of rich farmers all over the world and middle class farmers all over the world, and a huge police science department. Part of the campus was fenced off, and the young cadets, 1819, 20 years old, would practice on the rest of the student body, uniformed with hats and all right, excuse me, young man, we're just going to get some pizza at eight o'clock on Friday night. Stand against your car. Hands in your car. I said, Are you guys practicing again? Shut up and spread your legs. So that was that was Michigan State, and even though both my parents had master's degrees, I just found all the diversions available in the 1960s to be too interesting, and was not invited. Return after my sophomore year, and in order to flunk out of a big 10 University, and they're fine universities, all of them, you have to be either really determined or not so smart, not really capable of doing that level of study in undergraduate school. And I'd like to think that I was determined. I used to show up for my exams with a little blue book, and the only thing I would write is due to lack of knowledge, I am unable to complete this exam, sign Bill ranter and get up early and hand it in and go off. And so what was, what was left for a young man like that was the theater I'd seen the great Zero Mostel when I was 14 years old and on stage live, he looked just like my father, and he was funny, and if I Were a rich man, and that's the grade zero must tell. Yeah, and it took about five, no, it took about six, seven years to percolate inside my bread and my brain. In high school, I didn't want to do theater. The cheerleaders and guys who I had didn't happen to be friends with or doing theater. I took my girlfriends to see plays, but when I was 21 I started acting, and I've been an actor ever since. I'm a committee chair on the screen actors guild in Hollywood and Screen Actors Guild AFTRA, and work as a voice actor and collect my pensions and God bless the union.   Michael Hingson ** 11:44 Well, hey, as long as it works and you're making progress, you know you're still with it, right?   Bill Ratner ** 11:53 That's the that's the point. There's no accounting for taste in my business. Michael, you work for a few different broadcast entities at my age. And it's, you know, it's younger people. It's 18 to 3418 years to 34 years old is the ideal demographic for advertisers, Ford, Motor Company, Dove soap, Betty, Crocker, cake mixes and cereals, every conceivable product that sold online or sold on television and radio. This is my this is my meat, and I don't work for religion. However, if a religious organization calls, I call and say, I I'm not, not qualified or not have my divinity degree in order to sell your church to the public?   Michael Hingson ** 12:46 Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I can understand that. But you, you obviously do a lot, and as we talked about, you were Flint and GI Joe, which is kind of cool.   Bill Ratner ** 13:01 Flynn GI Joe was very cool. Hasbro Corporation, which was based in Providence, Rhode Island, had a huge success with GI Joe, the figure. The figure was about 11 and a half inches tall, like a Barbie, and was at first, was introduced to the public after the Korean War. There is a comic book that was that was also published about GI Joe. He was an individual figure. He was a figure, a sort of mythic cartoon figure during World War Two, GI Joe, generic American soldier, fighting man and but the Vietnam war dragged on for a long time, and the American buying public or buying kids toys got tired of GI Joe, got tired of a military figure in their household and stopped buying. And when Nixon ended the Vietnam War, or allotted to finish in 1974 Hasbro was in the tank. It's got its stock was cheap, and executives are getting nervous. And then came the Great George Lucas in Star Wars, who shrank all these action figures down from 11 and a half inches to three and a half inches, and went to China and had Chinese game and toy makers make Star Wars toys, and began to earn billions and billions dollars. And so Hasbro said, let's turn GI Joe into into a team. And the team began with flint and Lady J and Scarlett and Duke and Destro and cover commander, and grew to 85 different characters, because Hasbro and the toy maker partners could create 85 different sets of toys and action figures. So I was actor in this show and had a good time, and also a purveyor of a billion dollar industry of American toys. And the good news about these toys is I was at a conference where we signed autographs the voice actors, and we have supper with fans and so on. And I was sitting next to a 30 year old kid and his parents. And this kid was so knowledgeable about pop culture and every conceivable children's show and animated show that had ever been on the screen or on television. I turned to his mother and sort of being a wise acre, said, So ma'am, how do you feel about your 30 year old still playing with GI Joe action figures? And she said, Well, he and I both teach English in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania school system, and last year, the literacy level of my ninth graders was 50% 50% of those kids could not read in ninth grade. So I asked the principal if I could borrow my son's GI Joe, action figures, comic books and VHS tapes, recordings of the shows from TV. And he said, Sure, whatever you want to try. And so she did, and she played the video tapes, and these kids were thrilled. They'd never seen a GI Joe cartoon in class before. Passed out the comic books, let him read comics. And then she said, Okay, you guys. And passed out notebooks and pens and pencils, and said, I want you guys to make up some some shows, some GI Joe shows. And so they said, Yeah, we're ready. All right, Cobra, you better get into the barber shop, because the barber bill is no longer there and the fire engines are in the way. And wait a minute, there's a dog in the street. And so they're making this up, using their imagination, doing their schoolwork, by coming up with scenarios, imaginary fam fan fiction for GI Joe and she raised the literacy level in her classroom by 50% that year, by the end of that year, so, so that was the only story that I've ever heard about the sort of the efficacy of GI Joe, other than, you know, kids play with them. Do they? Are they shooting each other all the time? I certainly hope not. I hope not. Are they using the action figures? Do they strip their guns off and put them in a little, you know, stub over by the side and and have them do physical battle with each other, or have them hump the woods, or have them climb the stairs, or have them search the trees. Who knows what kids do? Same with same with girls and and Barbies. Barbie has been a source of fun and creativity for lots of girls, and the source of of worry and bother to a lot of parents as   Michael Hingson ** 17:54 well. Well, at the same time, though, when kids start to react and relate to some of these things. It's, it's pretty cool. I mean, look what's happened with the whole Harry Potter movement and craze. Harry Potter has probably done more in the last 20 or 25 years to promote reading for kids than most anything else, and   Bill Ratner ** 18:17 that's because it's such a good series of books. I read them to my daughters, yeah. And the quality of writing. She was a brilliant writer, not only just the stories and the storytelling, which is fun to watch in the movies, and you know, it's great for a parent to read. If there are any parents listening, I don't care how old your kids are. I don't care if they're 15. Offer to read to them. The 15 year old might, of course, say mom, but anybody younger than that might say either, all right, fine, which is, which means you better do it or read, read a book. To me, sure, it's fun for the parent, fun for the kid, and it makes the child a completely different kind of thinker and worker and earner.   Michael Hingson ** 19:05 Well, also the people who they got to read the books for the recordings Stephen Fry and in the US here, Jim Dale did such an incredible job as well. I've, I've read the whole Harry Potter series more than once, because I just enjoy them, and I enjoy listening to the the voices. They do such a good job. Yeah. And of course, for me, one of the interesting stories that I know about Jim Dale reading Harry Potter was since it was published by Scholastic he was actually scheduled to do a reading from one of the Harry from the new Harry Potter book that was coming out in 2001 on September 11, he was going to be at Scholastic reading. And of course, that didn't happen because of of everything that did occur. So I don't know whether I'm. I'm assuming at some point a little bit later, he did, but still he was scheduled to be there and read. But it they are there. They've done so much to help promote reading, and a lot of those kinds of cartoons and so on. Have done some of that, which is, which is pretty good. So it's good to, you know, to see that continue to happen. Well, so you've written several books on poetry and so on, and I know that you you've mentioned more than once grief and loss. How come those words keep coming up?   Bill Ratner ** 20:40 Well, I had an unusual childhood. Again. I mentioned earlier how, what a lucky kid I was. My parents were happy, educated, good people, not abusers. You know, I don't have a I don't have horror stories to tell about my mother or my father, until my mother grew sick with breast cancer and and it took about a year and a half or two years to die when I was seven years old. The good news is, because she was a sensitive, educated social worker, as she was actually dying, she arranged a death counseling session with me and my older brother and the Unitarian minister who was also a death counselor, and whom she was seeing to talk about, you know, what it was like to be dying of breast cancer with two young kids. And at this session, which was sort of surprised me, I was second grade, came home from school. In the living room was my mother and my brother looking a little nervous, and Dr Carl storm from the Unitarian Church, and she said, you know, Dr storm from church, but he's also my therapist. And we talk about my illness and how I feel, and we talk about how much I love you boys, and talk about how I worry about Daddy. And this is what one does when one is in crisis. That was a moment that was not traumatic for me. It's a moment I recalled hundreds of times, and one that has been a guiding light through my life. My mother's death was very difficult for my older brother, who was 13 who grew up in World War Two without without my father, it was just him and my mother when he was off in the Pacific fighting in World War Two. And then I was born after the war. And the loss of a mother in a family is like the bottom dropping out of a family. But luckily, my dad met a woman he worked with a highly placed advertising executive, which was unusual for a female in the 1950s and she became our stepmother a year later, and we had some very lovely, warm family years with her extended family and our extended family and all of us together until my brother got sick, came down with kidney disease a couple of years before kidney dialysis was invented, and a couple of years before kidney transplants were done, died at 19. Had been the captain of the swimming team at our high school, but did a year in college out in California and died on Halloween of 1960 my father was 51 years old. His eldest son had died. He had lost his wife six years earlier. He was working too hard in the advertising industry, successful man and dropped out of a heart attack 14th birthday. Gosh, I found him unconscious on the floor of our master bathroom in our house. So my life changed. I My life has taught me many, many things. It's taught me how the defense system works in trauma. It's taught me the resilience of a child. It's taught me the kindness of strangers. It's taught me the sadness of loss.   Michael Hingson ** 24:09 Well, you, you seem to come through all of it pretty well. Well, thank you. A question behind that, just an observation, but, but you do seem to, you know, obviously, cope with all of it and do pretty well. So you, you've always liked to be involved in acting and so on. How did you actually end up deciding to be a voice actor?   Bill Ratner ** 24:39 Well, my dad, after he was managing editor of Better Homes and Gardens magazine in Des Moines for Meredith publishing, got offered a fancy job as executive vice president of the flower and mix division for Campbell within advertising and later at General Mills Corporation. From Betty Crocker brand, and would bring me to work all the time, and would sit with me, and we'd watch the wonderful old westerns that were on prime time television, rawhide and Gunsmoke and the Virginian and sure   Michael Hingson ** 25:15 and all those. Yeah, during   Bill Ratner ** 25:17 the commercials, my father would make fun of the commercials. Oh, look at that guy. And number one, son, that's lousy acting. Number two, listen to that copy. It's the dumbest ad copy I've ever seen. The jingles and and then he would say, No, that's a good commercial, right there. And he wasn't always negative. He would he was just a good critic of advertising. So at a very young age, starting, you know, when we watch television, I think the first television ever, he bought us when I was five years old, I was around one of the most educated, active, funny, animated television critics I could hope to have in my life as a 56789, 1011, 12 year old. And so when I was 12, I became one of the founding members of the Brotherhood of radio stations with my friends John Waterhouse and John Barstow and Steve gray and Bill Connors in South Minneapolis. I named my five watt night kit am transmitter after my sixth grade teacher, Bob close this is wclo stereo radio. And when I was in sixth grade, I built myself a switch box, and I had a turntable and I had an intercom, and I wired my house for sound, as did all the other boys in the in the B, O, R, S, and that's brotherhood of radio stations. And we were guests on each other's shows, and we were obsessed, and we would go to the shopping malls whenever a local DJ was making an appearance and torture him and ask him dumb questions and listen obsessively to American am radio. And at the time for am radio, not FM like today, or internet on your little radio tuner, all the big old grandma and grandpa radios, the wooden ones, were AM, for amplitude modulated. You could get stations at night, once the sun went down and the later it got, the ionosphere would lift and the am radio signals would bounce higher and farther. And in Minneapolis, at age six and seven, I was able to to listen to stations out of Mexico and Texas and Chicago, and was absolutely fascinated with with what was being put out. And I would, I would switch my brother when I was about eight years old, gave me a transistor radio, which I hid under my bed covers. And at night, would turn on and listen for, who knows, hours at a time, and just tuning the dial and tuning the dial from country to rock and roll to hit parade to news to commercials to to agric agriculture reports to cow crossings in Kansas and grain harvesting and cheese making in Wisconsin, and on and on and on that made up the great medium of radio that was handing its power and its business over to television, just as I was growing As a child. Fast, fascinating transition   Michael Hingson ** 28:18 and well, but as it was transitioning, how did that affect you?   Bill Ratner ** 28:26 It made television the romantic, exciting, dynamic medium. It made radio seem a little limited and antiquated, and although I listened for environment and wasn't able to drag a television set under my covers. Yeah, and television became memorable with with everything from actual world war two battle footage being shown because there wasn't enough programming to 1930s Warner Brothers gangster movies with James Cagney, Edward G   Michael Hingson ** 29:01 Robinson and yeah   Bill Ratner ** 29:02 to all the sitcoms, Leave It to Beaver and television cartoons and on and on and on. And the most memorable elements to me were the personalities, and some of whom were invisible. Five years old, I was watching a Kids program after school, after kindergarten. We'll be back with more funny puppets, marionettes after this message and the first words that came on from an invisible voice of this D baritone voice, this commercial message will be 60 seconds long, Chrysler Dodge for 1954 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I watched hypnotized, hypnotized as a 1953 dodge drove across the screen with a happy family of four waving out the window. And at the end of the commercial, I ran into the kitchen said, Mom, mom, I know what a minute. Is, and it was said, it had suddenly come into my brain in one of those very rare and memorable moments in a person's life where your brain actually speaks to you in its own private language and says, Here is something very new and very true, that 60 seconds is in fact a minute. When someone says, See you in five minutes, they mean five times that, five times as long as that. Chrysler commercial, five times 60. That's 300 seconds. And she said, Did you learn it that that on T in kindergarten? And I said, No, I learned it from kangaroo Bob on TV, his announcer, oh, kangaroo Bob, no, but this guy was invisible. And so at five years of age, I was aware of the existence of the practice of the sound, of the magic of the seemingly unlimited access to facts, figures, products, brand names that these voices had and would say on the air in This sort of majestic, patriarchal way,   Michael Hingson ** 31:21 and just think 20 years later, then you had James Earl Jones,   Bill Ratner ** 31:26 the great dame. James Earl Jones, father was a star on stage at that time the 1950s James Earl Jones came of age in the 60s and became Broadway and off Broadway star.   Michael Hingson ** 31:38 I got to see him in Othello. He was playing Othello. What a powerful performance. It was   Bill Ratner ** 31:43 wonderful performer. Yeah, yeah. I got to see him as Big Daddy in Canada, Hot Tin Roof, ah, live and in person, he got front row seats for me and my family.   Michael Hingson ** 31:53 Yeah, we weren't in the front row, but we saw it. We saw it on on Broadway,   Bill Ratner ** 31:58 the closest I ever got to James Earl Jones. He and I had the same voice over agent, woman named Rita vinari of southern Barth and benare company. And I came into the agency to audition for Doritos, and I hear this magnificent voice coming from behind a closed voiceover booth, saying, with a with a Spanish accent, Doritos. I thought that's James Earl Jones. Why is he saying burritos? And he came out, and he bowed to me, nodded and smiled, and I said, hello and and the agent probably in the booth and shut the door. And she said, I said, that was James Earl Jones. What a voice. What she said, Oh, he's such a nice man. And she said, but I couldn't. I was too embarrassed. I was too afraid to stop him from saying, Doritos. And it turns out he didn't get the gig. So it is some other voice actor got it because he didn't say, had he said Doritos with the agent froze it froze up. That was as close as I ever got to did you get the gig? Oh goodness no,   Michael Hingson ** 33:01 no, you didn't, huh? Oh, well, well, yeah. I mean, it was a very, it was, it was wonderful. It was James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer played Iago. Oh, goodness, oh, I know. What a what a combination. Well, so you, you did a lot of voiceover stuff. What did you do regarding radio moving forward? Or did you just go completely out of that and you were in TV? Or did you have any opportunity   Bill Ratner ** 33:33 for me to go back at age 15, my brother and father, who were big supporters of my radio. My dad would read my W, C, l, o, newsletter and need an initial, an excellent journalism son and my brother would bring his teenage friends up. He'd play the elderly brothers, man, you got an Elvis record, and I did. And you know, they were, they were big supporters for me as a 13 year old, but when I turned 14, and had lost my brother and my father, I lost my enthusiasm and put all of my radio equipment in a box intended to play with it later. Never, ever, ever did again. And when I was about 30 years old and I'd done years of acting in the theater, having a great time doing fun plays and small theaters in Minneapolis and South Dakota and and Oakland, California and San Francisco. I needed money, so I looked in the want ads and saw a job for telephone sales, and I thought, Well, I used to love the telephone. I used to make phony phone calls to people all the time. Used to call funeral homes. Hi Carson, funeral I help you. Yes, I'm calling to tell you that you have a you have a dark green slate tile. Roof, isn't that correct? Yes. Well, there's, there's a corpse on your roof. Lady for goodness sake, bring it down and we laugh and we record it and and so I thought, Well, gee, I used to have a lot of fun with the phone. And so I called the number of telephone sales and got hired to sell magazine subscriptions and dinner tickets to Union dinners and all kinds of things. And then I saw a new job at a radio station, suburban radio station out in Walnut Creek, California, a lovely Metro BART train ride. And so I got on the BART train, rode out there and walked in for the interview, and was told I was going to be selling small advertising packages on radio for the station on the phone. And so I called barber shops and beauty shops and gas stations in the area, and one guy picked up the phone and said, Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you on the radio right now? And I said, No, I'm just I'm in the sales room. Well, maybe you should be. And he slams the phone on me. He didn't want to talk to me anymore. It wasn't interested in buying advertising. I thought, gee. And I told somebody at the station, and they said, Well, you want to be in the radio? And he went, Yeah, I was on the radio when I was 13. And it just so happened that an older fellow was retiring from the 10am to 2pm slot. K I S King, kiss 99 and KD FM, Pittsburgh, California. And it was a beautiful music station. It was a music station. Remember, old enough will remember music that used to play in elevators that was like violin music, the Percy faith orchestra playing a Rolling Stone song here in the elevator. Yes, well, that's exactly what we played. And it would have been harder to get a job at the local rock stations because, you know, they were popular places. And so I applied for the job, and   Michael Hingson ** 37:06 could have lost your voice a lot sooner, and it would have been a lot harder if you had had to do Wolfman Jack. But that's another story.   Bill Ratner ** 37:13 Yeah, I used to listen to Wolf Man Jack. I worked in a studio in Hollywood. He became a studio. Yeah, big time.   Michael Hingson ** 37:22 Anyway, so you you got to work at the muzack station, got   Bill Ratner ** 37:27 to work at the muzack station, and I was moving to Los Angeles to go to a bigger market, to attempt to penetrate a bigger broadcast market. And one of the sales guys, a very nice guy named Ralph pizzella said, Well, when you get to La you should study with a friend of mine down to pie Troy, he teaches voiceovers. I said, What are voice overs? He said, You know that CVS Pharmacy commercial just carted up and did 75 tags, available in San Fernando, available in San Clemente, available in Los Angeles, available in Pasadena. And I said, Yeah. He said, Well, you didn't get paid any extra. You got paid your $165 a week. The guy who did that commercial for the ad agency got paid probably 300 bucks, plus extra for the tags, that's voiceovers. And I thought, why? There's an idea, what a concept. So he gave me the name and number of old friend acquaintance of his who he'd known in radio, named Don DiPietro, alias Johnny rabbit, who worked for the Dick Clark organization, had a big rock and roll station there. He'd come to LA was doing voiceovers and teaching voiceover classes in a little second story storefront out of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. So I signed up for his class, and he was an experienced guy, and he liked me, and we all had fun, and I realized I was beginning to study like an actor at 1818, who goes to New York or goes to Los Angeles or Chicago or Atlanta or St Louis to act in the big theaters, and starts acting classes and realizes, oh my goodness, these people are truly professionals. I don't know how to do what they do. And so for six years, I took voice over classes, probably 4050, nights a year, and from disc jockeys, from ex show hosts, from actors, from animated cartoon voices, and put enough time in to get a degree in neurology in medical school. And worked my way up in radio in Los Angeles and had a morning show, a lovely show with a wonderful news man named Phil Reed, and we talked about things and reviewed movies and and played a lot of music. And then I realized, wait a minute, I'm earning three times the money in voiceovers as I am on the radio, and I have to get up at 430 in the morning to be on the radio. Uh, and a wonderful guy who was Johnny Carson's staff announcer named Jack angel said, You're not still on radio, are you? And I said, Well, yeah, I'm working in the morning. And Ka big, get out of there. Man, quit. Quit. And I thought, well, how can I quit? I've always wanted to be a radio announcer. And then there was another wonderful guy on the old am station, kmpc, sweet Dick Whittington. Whittington, right? And he said at a seminar that I went to at a union voice over training class, when you wake up at four in the morning and you swing your legs over the bed and your shoes hit the floor, and you put your head in your hands, and you say to yourself, I don't want to do this anymore. That's when you quit radio. Well, that hadn't happened to me. I was just getting up early to write some comedy segments and on and on and on, and then I was driving around town all day doing auditions and rented an ex girlfriend's second bedroom so that I could nap by myself during the day, when I had an hour in and I would as I would fall asleep, I'd picture myself every single day I'm in a dark voiceover studio, a microphone Is before me, a music stand is before the microphone, and on it is a piece of paper with advertising copy on it. On the other side of the large piece of glass of the recording booth are three individuals, my employers, I begin to read, and somehow the text leaps off the page, streams into my eyes, letter for letter, word for word, into a part of my back brain that I don't understand and can't describe. It is processed in my semi conscious mind with the help of voice over training and hope and faith, and comes out my mouth, goes into the microphone, is recorded in the digital recorder, and those three men, like little monkeys, lean forward and say, Wow, how do you do that? That was my daily creative visualization. Michael, that was my daily fantasy. And I had learned that from from Dale Carnegie, and I had learned that from Olympic athletes on NBC TV in the 60s and 70s, when the announcer would say, this young man you're seeing practicing his high jump is actually standing there. He's standing stationary, and the bouncing of the head is he's actually rehearsing in his mind running and running and leaping over the seven feet two inch bar and falling into the sawdust. And now he's doing it again, and you could just barely see the man nodding his head on camera at the exact rhythm that he would be running the 25 yards toward the high bar and leaping, and he raised his head up during the imaginary lead that he was visualizing, and then he actually jumped the seven foot two inches. That's how I learned about creative visualization from NBC sports on TV.   Michael Hingson ** 43:23 Channel Four in Los Angeles. There you go. Well, so you you broke into voice over, and that's what you did.   Bill Ratner ** 43:38 That's what I did, darn it, I ain't stopping now, there's a wonderful old actor named Bill Irwin. There two Bill Irwin's one is a younger actor in his 50s or 60s, a brilliant actor from Broadway to film and TV. There's an older William Irwin. They also named Bill Irwin, who's probably in his 90s now. And I went to a premiere of a film, and he was always showing up in these films as The senile stock broker who answers the phone upside down, or the senile board member who always asks inappropriate questions. And I went up to him and I said, you know, I see you in everything, man. I'm 85 years old. Some friends and associates of mine tell me I should slow down. I only got cast in movies and TV when I was 65 I ain't slowing down. If I tried to slow down at 85 I'd have to stop That's my philosophy. My hero is the great Don Pardo, the late great   Michael Hingson ** 44:42 for Saturday Night Live and Jeopardy   Bill Ratner ** 44:45 lives starring Bill Murray, Gilder Radner, and   Michael Hingson ** 44:49 he died for Jeopardy before that,   Bill Ratner ** 44:52 yeah, died at 92 with I picture him, whether it probably not, with a microphone and. His hand in his in his soundproof booth, in his in his garage, and I believe he lived in Arizona, although the show was aired and taped in New York, New York, right where he worked for for decades as a successful announcer. So that's the story.   Michael Hingson ** 45:16 Michael. Well, you know, I miss, very frankly, some of the the the days of radio back in the 60s and 70s and so on. We had, in LA what you mentioned, Dick Whittington, Dick whittinghill on kmpc, Gary Owens, you know, so many people who were such wonderful announcers and doing some wonderful things, and radio just isn't the same anymore. It's gone. It's   Bill Ratner ** 45:47 gone to Tiktok and YouTube. And the truth is, I'm not gonna whine about Tiktok or YouTube, because some of the most creative moments on camera are being done on Tiktok and YouTube by young quote influencers who hire themselves out to advertisers, everything from lipstick. You know,   Speaker 1 ** 46:09 when I went to a party last night was just wild and but this makeup look, watch me apply this lip remover and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, no, I have no lip.   Bill Ratner ** 46:20 You know, these are the people with the voices. These are the new voices. And then, of course, the faces. And so I would really advise before, before people who, in fact, use the internet. If you use the internet, you can't complain if you use the internet, if you go to Facebook or Instagram, or you get collect your email or Google, this or that, which most of us do, it's handy. You can't complain about tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. You can't complain about tick tock or YouTube, because it's what the younger generation is using, and it's what the younger generation advertisers and advertising executives and creators and musicians and actors are using to parade before us, as Gary Owens did, as Marlon Brando did, as Sarah Bernhardt did in the 19 so as all as you do, Michael, you're a parader. You're the head of the parade. You've been in on your own float for years. I read your your bio. I don't even know why you want to waste a minute talking to me for goodness sakes.   Michael Hingson ** 47:26 You know, the one thing about podcasts that I like over radio, and I did radio at kuci for seven years when I was in school, what I really like about podcasts is they're not and this is also would be true for Tiktok and YouTube. Primarily Tiktok, I would would say it isn't as structured. So if we don't finish in 60 minutes, and we finish in 61 minutes, no one's gonna shoot us.   Bill Ratner ** 47:53 Well, I beg to differ with you. Now. I'm gonna start a fight with you. Michael, yeah, we need conflict in this script. Is that it The Tick Tock is very structured. Six. No,   Michael Hingson ** 48:03 no, I understand that. I'm talking about podcasts,   Bill Ratner ** 48:07 though, but there's a problem. We gotta Tone It Up. We gotta pick it up. We gotta there's a lot of and I listen to what are otherwise really bright, wonderful personalities on screen, celebrities who have podcasts and the car sucks, and then I had meatballs for dinner, haha. And you know what my wife said? Why? You know? And there's just too much of that. And,   Michael Hingson ** 48:32 oh, I understand, yeah. I mean, it's like, like anything, but I'm just saying that's one of the reasons I love podcasting. So it's my way of continuing what I used to do in radio and having a lot of fun doing it   Bill Ratner ** 48:43 all right, let me ask you. Let me ask you a technical and editorial question. Let me ask you an artistic question. An artist, can you edit this podcast? Yeah. Are you? Do you plan to Nope.   Michael Hingson ** 48:56 I think conversations are conversations, but there is a but, I mean,   Bill Ratner ** 49:01 there have been starts and stops and I answer a question, and there's a long pause, and then, yeah, we can do you edit that stuff   Michael Hingson ** 49:08 out. We do, we do, edit some of that out. And I have somebody that that that does a lot of it, because I'm doing more podcasts, and also I travel and speak, but I can edit. There's a program called Reaper, which is really a very sophisticated   Bill Ratner ** 49:26 close up spaces. You   Michael Hingson ** 49:28 can close up spaces with it, yes, but the neat thing about Reaper is that somebody has written scripts to make it incredibly accessible for blind people using screen readers.   Bill Ratner ** 49:40 What does it do? What does it do? Give me the elevator pitch.   Michael Hingson ** 49:46 You've seen some of the the programs that people use, like computer vision and other things to do editing of videos and so on. Yeah.   Bill Ratner ** 49:55 Yeah. Even Apple. Apple edit. What is it called? Apple? Garage Band. No, that's audio. What's that   Michael Hingson ** 50:03 audio? Oh,   Bill Ratner ** 50:06 quick time is quick   Michael Hingson ** 50:07 time. But whether it's video or audio, the point is that Reaper allows me to do all of that. I can edit audio. I can insert, I can remove pauses. I can do anything with Reaper that anyone else can do editing audio, because it's been made completely accessible.   Bill Ratner ** 50:27 That's great. That's good. That's nice. Oh, it is. It's cool.   Michael Hingson ** 50:31 So so if I want, I can edit this and just have my questions and then silence when you're talking.   Bill Ratner ** 50:38 That might be best. Ladies and gentlemen, here's Bill Ratner,   Michael Hingson ** 50:46 yep, exactly, exactly. Now you have won the moth stories. Slam, what? Tell me about my story. Slam, you've won it nine times.   Bill Ratner ** 51:00 The Moth was started by a writer, a novelist who had lived in the South and moved to New York City, successful novelist named George Dawes green. And the inception of the moth, which many people listening are familiar with from the Moth Radio Hour. It was, I believe, either late 90s or early 2000s when he'd been in New York for a while and was was publishing as a fiction writer, and threw a party, and decided, instead of going to one of these dumb, boring parties or the same drinks being served and same cigarettes being smoked out in the veranda and the same orders. I'm going to ask people to bring a five minute story, a personal story, nature, a true story. You don't have to have one to get into the party, but I encourage you to. And so you know, the 3040, 50 people showed up, many of whom had stories, and they had a few drinks, and they had hors d'oeuvres. And then he said, Okay, ladies and gentlemen, take your seats. It's time for and then I picked names out of a hat, and person after person after person stood up in a very unusual setting, which was almost never done at parties. You How often do you see that happen? Suddenly, the room falls silent, and someone with permission being having been asked by the host to tell a personal story, some funny, some tragic, some complex, some embarrassing, some racy, some wild, some action filled. And afterward, the feedback he got from his friends was, this is the most amazing experience I've ever had in my life. And someone said, you need to do this. And he said, Well, you people left a lot of cigarette butts and beer cans around my apartment. And they said, well, let's do it at a coffee shop. Let's do it at a church basement. So slowly but surely, the moth storytelling, story slams, which were designed after the old poetry slams in the 50s and 60s, where they were judged contests like, like a dance contest. Everybody's familiar with dance contests? Well, there were, then came poetry contests with people singing and, you know, and singing and really energetically, really reading. There then came storytelling contests with people standing on a stage before a silent audience, telling a hopefully interesting, riveting story, beginning middle, end in five minutes. And so a coffee house was found. A monthly calendar was set up. Then came the internet. Then it was so popular standing room only that they had to open yet another and another, and today, some 20 years later, 20 some years later, from Austin, Texas to San Francisco, California to Minneapolis, Minnesota to New York City to Los Angeles. There are moth story slams available on online for you to schedule yourself to go live and in person at the moth.org as in the moth with wings. Friend of mine, I was in New York. He said, You can't believe it. This writer guy, a writer friend of mine who I had read, kind of an avant garde, strange, funny writer was was hosting something called the moth in New York, and we were texting each other. He said, Well, I want to go. The theme was show business. I was going to talk to my Uncle Bobby, who was the bell boy. And I Love Lucy. I'll tell a story. And I texted him that day. He said, Oh man, I'm so sorry. I had the day wrong. It's next week. Next week, I'm going to be back home. And so he said, Well, I think there's a moth in Los Angeles. So about 15 years ago, I searched it down and what? Went to a small Korean barbecue that had a tiny little stage that originally was for Korean musicians, and it was now being used for everything from stand up comedy to evenings of rock and roll to now moth storytelling once a month. And I think the theme was first time. And so I got up and told a silly story and didn't win first prize. They have judges that volunteer judges a table of three judges scoring, you like, at a swim meet or a track beat or, you know, and our gymnastics meet. So this is all sort of familiar territory for everybody, except it's storytelling and not high jumping or pull ups. And I kept going back. I was addicted to it. I would write a story and I'd memorize it, and I'd show up and try to make it four minutes and 50 seconds and try to make it sound like I was really telling a story and not reading from a script. And wish I wasn't, because I would throw the script away, and I knew the stories well enough. And then they created a radio show. And then I began to win slams and compete in the grand slams. And then I started submitting these 750 word, you know, two and a half page stories. Literary magazines got a few published and found a whole new way to spend my time and not make much   Michael Hingson ** 56:25 money. Then you went into poetry.   Bill Ratner ** 56:29 Then I got so bored with my prose writing that I took a poetry course from a wonderful guy in LA called Jack grapes, who had been an actor and a football player and come to Hollywood and did some TV, episodics and and some some episodic TV, and taught poetry. It was a poet in the schools, and I took his class of adults and got a poem published. And thought, wait a minute, these aren't even 750 words. They're like 75 words. I mean, you could write a 10,000 word poem if you want, but some people have, yeah, and it was complex, and there was so much to read and so much to learn and so much that was interesting and odd. And a daughter of a friend of mine is a poet, said, Mommy, are you going to read me one of those little word movies before I go to sleep?   Michael Hingson ** 57:23 A little word movie, word movie out of the   Bill Ratner ** 57:27 mouths of babes. Yeah, and so, so and I perform. You know, last night, I was in Orange County at a organization called ugly mug Cafe, and a bunch of us poets read from an anthology that was published, and we sold our books, and heard other young poets who were absolutely marvelous and and it's, you know, it's not for everybody, but it's one of the things I do.   Michael Hingson ** 57:54 Well, you sent me pictures of book covers, so they're going to be in the show notes. And I hope people will will go out and get them   Bill Ratner ** 58:01 cool. One of the one of the things that I did with poetry, in addition to wanting to get published and wanting to read before people, is wanting to see if there is a way. Because poetry was, was very satisfying, emotionally to me, intellectually very challenging and satisfying at times. And emotionally challenging and very satisfying at times, writing about things personal, writing about nature, writing about friends, writing about stories that I received some training from the National Association for poetry therapy. Poetry therapy is being used like art therapy, right? And have conducted some sessions and and participated in many and ended up working with eighth graders of kids who had lost someone to death in the past year of their lives. This is before covid in the public schools in Los Angeles. And so there's a lot of that kind of work that is being done by constable people, by writers, by poets, by playwrights,   Michael Hingson ** 59:09 and you became a grief counselor,   Bill Ratner ** 59:13 yes, and don't do that full time, because I do voiceovers full time, right? Write poetry and a grand. Am an active grandparent, but I do the occasional poetry session around around grief poetry.   Michael Hingson ** 59:31 So you're a grandparent, so you've had kids and all that. Yes, sir, well, that's is your wife still with us? Yes?   Bill Ratner ** 59:40 Oh, great, yeah, she's an artist and an art educator. Well, that   Michael Hingson ** 59:46 so the two of you can criticize each other's works, then, just   Bill Ratner ** 59:52 saying, we're actually pretty kind to each other. I Yeah, we have a lot of we have a lot of outside criticism. Them. So, yeah, you don't need to do it internally. We don't rely on it. What do you think of this although, although, more than occasionally, each of us will say, What do you think of this poem, honey? Or what do you think of this painting, honey? And my the favorite, favorite thing that my wife says that always thrills me and makes me very happy to be with her is, I'll come down and she's beginning a new work of a new piece of art for an exhibition somewhere. I'll say, what? Tell me about what's, what's going on with that, and she'll go, you know, I have no idea, but it'll tell me what to do.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:33 Yeah, it's, it's like a lot of authors talk about the fact that their characters write the stories right, which, which makes a lot of sense. So with all that you've done, are you writing a memoir? By any chance, I   Bill Ratner ** 1:00:46 am writing a memoir, and writing has been interesting. I've been doing it for many years. I got it was my graduate thesis from University of California Riverside Palm Desert.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:57 My wife was a UC Riverside graduate. Oh, hi. Well, they   Bill Ratner ** 1:01:01 have a low residency program where you go for 10 days in January, 10 days in June. The rest of it's online, which a lot of universities are doing, low residency programs for people who work and I got an MFA in creative writing nonfiction, had a book called parenting for the digital age, the truth about media's effect on children. And was halfway through it, the publisher liked it, but they said you got to double the length. So I went back to school to try to figure out how to double the length. And was was able to do it, and decided to move on to personal memoir and personal storytelling, such as goes on at the moth but a little more personal than that. Some of the material that I was reading in the memoir section of a bookstore was very, very personal and was very helpful to read about people who've gone through particular issues in their childhood. Mine not being physical abuse or sexual abuse, mine being death and loss, which is different. And so that became a focus of my graduate thesis, and many people were urging me to write a memoir. Someone said, you need to do a one man show. So I entered the Hollywood fringe and did a one man show and got good reviews and had a good time and did another one man show the next year and and so on. So But writing memoir as anybody knows, and they're probably listeners who are either taking memoir courses online or who may be actively writing memoirs or short memoir pieces, as everybody knows it, can put you through moods from absolutely ecstatic, oh my gosh, I got this done. I got this story told, and someone liked it, to oh my gosh, I'm so depressed I don't understand why. Oh, wait a minute, I was writing about such and such today. Yeah. So that's the challenge for the memoir is for the personal storyteller, it's also, you know, and it's more of a challenge than it is for the reader, unless it's bad writing and the reader can't stand that. For me as a reader, I'm fascinated by people's difficult stories, if they're well   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:24 told well, I know that when in 2002 I was advised to write a book about the World Trade Center experiences and all, and it took eight years to kind of pull it all together. And then I met a woman who actually I collaborated with, Susie Florey, and we wrote thunder dog. And her agent became my agent, who loved the proposal that we sent and actually got a contract within a week. So thunder dog came out in 2011 was a New York Times bestseller, and very blessed by that, and we're working toward the day that it will become a movie still, but it'll happen. And then I wrote a children's version of it, well, not a children's version of the book, but a children's book about me growing up in Roselle, growing up the guide dog who was with me in the World Trade Center, and that's been on Amazon. We self published it. Then last year, we published a new book called Live like a guide dog, which is all about controlling fear and teaching people lessons that I learned prior to September 11. That helped me focus and remain calm.   Bill Ratner ** 1:04:23 What happened to you on September 11,   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:27 I was in the World Trade Center. I worked on the 78th floor of Tower One.   Bill Ratner ** 1:04:32 And what happened? I mean, what happened to you?   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:36 Um, nothing that day. I mean, well, I got out. How did you get out? Down the stairs? That was the only way to go. So, so the real story is not doing it, but why it worked. And the real issue is that I spent a lot of time when I first went into the World Trade Center, learning all I could about what to do in an emergency, talking to police, port authorities. Security people, emergency preparedness people, and also just walking around the world trade center and learning the whole place, because I ran an office for a company, and I wasn't going to rely on someone else to, like, lead me around if we're going to go to lunch somewhere and take people out before we negotiated contracts. So I needed to know all of that, and I learned all I could, also realizing that if there ever was an emergency, I might be the only one in the office, or we might be in an area where people couldn't read the signs to know what to do anyway. And so I had to take the responsibility of learning all that, which I did. And then when the planes hit 18 floors above us on the other side of the building, we get we had some guests in the office. Got them out, and then another colleague, who was in from our corporate office, and I and my guide dog, Roselle, went to the stairs, and we started down. And   Bill Ratner ** 1:05:54 so, so what floor did the plane strike?   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:58 It struck and the NOR and the North Tower, between floors 93 and 99 so I just say 96 okay, and you were 20 floors down, 78 floors 78 so we were 18 floors below, and   Bill Ratner ** 1:06:09 at the moment of impact, what did you think?   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:13 Had no idea we heard a muffled kind of explosion, because the plane hit on the other side of the building, 18 floors above us. There was no way to know what was going on. Did you feel? Did you feel? Oh, the building literally tipped, probably about 20 feet. It kept tipping. And then we actually said goodbye to each other, and then the building came back upright. And then we went,   Bill Ratner ** 1:06:34 really you so you thought you were going to die?   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:38 David, my colleague who was with me, as I said, he was from our California office, and he was there to help with some seminars we were going to be doing. We actually were saying goodbye to each other because we thought we were about to take a 78 floor plunge to the street, when the building stopped tipping and it came back. Designed to do that by the architect. It was designed to do that, which is the point, the point.   Bill Ratner ** 1:07:02 Goodness, gracious. And then did you know how to get to the stairway?   Michael Hingson ** 1:07:04 Oh, absolutely. And did you do it with your friend? Yeah, the first thing we did, the first thing we did is I got him to get we had some guests, and I said, get him to the stairs. Don't let him take the elevators, because I knew he had seen fire above us, but that's all we knew. And but I said, don't take the elevators. Don't let them take elevators. Get them to the stairs and then come back and we'll leave. So he did all that, and then he came back, and we went to the stairs and started down.   Bill Ratner ** 1:07:33 Wow. Could you smell anything?   Michael Hingson ** 1:07:36 We smelled burning jet fuel fumes on the way down. And that's how we figured out an airplane must have hit the building, but we had no idea what happened. We didn't know what happened until the until both towers had collapsed, and I actually talked to my wife, and she's the one who told us how to aircraft have been crashed into the towers, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth, at that time, was still missing over Pennsylvania. Wow. So you'll have to go pick up a copy of thunder dog. Goodness. Good. Thunder dog. The name of the book is Thunder dog, and the book I wrote last year is called Live like a guide dog. It's le

Guest post by Cillian McCarthy, CEO, Paradyn More often than not, the weakest link in any organisation's defences is its people. Evolving social engineering tactics such as deepfakes, an ever-increasing volume of cyberattacks, and the growing sophistication of threats from would-be hackers combine to make a perfect cybersecurity storm which can confuse and overwhelm employees. A key reason for this is a lack of cybersecurity awareness, and that's why building a strong cybersecurity culture is paramount. Transforming employees into active defenders Cultivating a culture of cyber awareness is about transforming employees from potential vulnerabilities into active defenders. However, this doesn't happen overnight or during a single training session - it's a continuous process which must be evolved in line with changing risks. It also must start from the top down, and business leaders should set the example for the rest of the organisation and demonstrate their commitment by actively driving increased cyber awareness. Communication is key and when it comes to an organisation's security policies, it's crucial to explain the "why" behind the "what". Demonstrating the real-world impacts will help to cement the vital importance of adhering to security protocols. Knowledge is power This is where cybersecurity awareness training comes in. The threat landscape is constantly changing, and employees must be kept up to date on emerging threats and best practices. It's a good idea to run regular penetration tests - simulated phishing attacks - to assess vigilance and identify vulnerability gaps in your defences. Businesses should take the time to develop and enforce clear, concise cybersecurity policies that are based on their individual needs and easy to follow. The final step is to have an incident response plan in place and ensure that employees know what to do - and how fast they need to do it - in the event of a cyber incident. Perhaps most importantly, employees need to be encouraged to report potential breaches or suspicious activity without fear of repercussions. Malware can go undetected within systems for significant periods of time, so it's crucial to get out in front of any potential threats. Fostering a culture of shared responsibility will ensure that employees feel supported and empowered. Tools of the trade The right toolkit will enable an organisation to create a powerful line of defence against cyber threats. Solutions might even need to be tailored to different roles or departments, depending on the specific threats they are likely to face. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) makes it harder for malicious actors to gain access to your systems as it requires several steps to verify the user's identity. Password managers, meanwhile, can securely store login details for company accounts and even suggest strong, unique passwords. And, while it may seem simple, ensuring that all devices and software are regularly updated and patched will go a long way to protecting your business against emerging risks. In addition, compliance with new and changing cybersecurity regulations such as NIS2 is becoming necessary for a growing number of businesses. Non-compliance can not only leave your organisation vulnerable to cyber threats, but can also have financial ramifications and create lasting reputational damage. Effective cybersecurity goes beyond ensuring that systems are protected. It can also boost employee engagement, enhance customer trust, and increase productivity and efficiency within the business. Cybersecurity is constantly evolving and we will see a continuous flow of new threats to be grappled with - underscoring the importance of a security-first mindset for businesses. Ultimately, building a strong cybersecurity culture is all about the journey - not the destination. See more stories here.

What happens when a documentary storyteller steps into the heart of creative tech? In this episode, Alex talks with Meagan Keane, Director of Product Marketing at Adobe Pro Video, about the tools, trends, and tectonic shifts shaping the future of screen storytelling. From AI and generative workflows to the rise of mobile editing and creative AI agents, Meagan shares Adobe's vision for empowering a new generation of creators, while protecting the values of authenticity and artistry. In a conversation that explores the intersection of storytelling and technology in the fast changing media landscape, Meagan shares how her journey in film shapes her work today and shares powerful advice for anyone creating today. About Meagan Keane Meagan Keane is Director of Product Marketing for Adobe Professional Film & Video. She joined the Adobe Premiere Pro Management team in 2012 and has led business strategy across the Adobe video portfolio since 2019. While Meagan's leadership has guided Adobe video strategies for over a decade, her beginnings were in documentary film. She was a producer across numerous documentary features including High School 911 (2016), Defining Beauty (2011), We Live in Public (Sundance Grand Jury Winner, 2009) and Join Us (2007). Meagan is a thought leader in the film and video industry, recently speaking on behalf of Adobe at the IBC in Amsterdam, the ITVS independent filmmakers summit in San Francisco, “AI on the Lot” conference in Los Angeles, hosting numerous panels at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Keane has also recently been quoted in Variety, Hollywood Reporter and Forbes Magazine regarding the future of filmmaking, as well as the growing impact of AI in Hollywood. Meagan sits on the Board of Governors of the Advanced Imaging Society and was named one of PR Daily's Top Women in Marketing in 2023. She loves remaining connected to the film industry, while influencing future innovation in her field. Meagan lives with her family in Marin County, CA and has an MFA in film production from USC's School of Cinematic Arts.

In this episode, Jim McDonald and Jeff Steadman are joined by Steve Rennick, Senior Leader for IAM Architecture at Ciena, for a wide-ranging discussion on the most pressing topics in identity today.The conversation kicks off with a practical look at vendor demos, sharing best practices for cutting through the slideware and getting to the heart of a product's capabilities. From there, they dive deep into the complex world of Non-Human Identities (NHI). Steve shares his practitioner's perspective on why NHIs are such a hot topic, the challenges of managing them, and the risks they pose when left unchecked.The discussion covers:Why traditional IAM approaches fail for non-human identities.The importance of visibility and creating a standardized process for NHI creation.The debate around terminology: NHI vs. machine identity vs. service accounts.The reasons for NHI's current prominence, including threat actors shifting focus away from MFA-protected human accounts.Practical, actionable advice for getting a handle on legacy service accounts.The emerging challenge of IAM for AI and the complexities of managing agentic AI.The critical role of authorization and the future of policy-based access control.Whether you're struggling with service account sprawl, preparing for an AI-driven future, or just want to run more effective vendor demos, this episode is packed with valuable insights.Connect with Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-rennick/ARIA (Agent Relationship-Based Identity & Authorization) LinkedIn Post from Patrick Parker: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/patrickparker_ai-agent-authorization-activity-7335265428774031360-braE/Connect with us on LinkedIn:Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.comCHAPTER TIMESTAMPS:00:00:10 - Introduction & The Art of the Vendor Demo00:08:02 - Steve Rennick's Take on Vendor Demos00:12:39 - Formal Introduction: Steve Rennick00:14:45 - Recapping the Identiverse Squabble Game Show00:17:22 - The Hot Topic of Non-Human Identities (NHI)00:22:22 - Is NHI a Joke or a Serious Framework?00:26:41 - The Controversy Around the Term "NHI"00:30:24 - How to Simplify NHI for Practitioners00:34:06 - First Steps for Getting a Handle on NHI00:37:20 - Can Active Directory Be a System of Record for NHI?00:45:08 - Why is NHI a Hot Topic Right Now?00:51:19 - The Challenge of Cleaning Up Legacy NHIs00:58:00 - IAM for AI: Managing a New Breed of Identity01:03:33 - The Future is Authorization01:06:22 - The Zero Standing Privilege Debate01:10:39 - Favorite Dinosaurs and OutroKEYWORDS:NHI, Non-Human Identity, Machine Identity, Service Accounts, Vendor Demos, IAM for AI, Agentic AI, Authorization, Zero Trust, Zero Standing Privilege, Secrets Management, IAM Strategy, Cybersecurity, Identity and Access Management, Steve Rennick, Ciena, IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald

On “Healthy Mind, Healthy Life,” host Avik speaks with author and artist-healer Deborah Lucas about transforming pain into presence. From a life-changing horse fall to learning Hellerwork (structural integration), Deborah explains how breath, body awareness, and attunement with horses dissolve long-held tension and grief. We cover myofascial release, nervous system grounding, reading equine signals, and building a daily practice that's practical, somatic, and sustainable. If you're navigating loss, chronic stress, or creative blocks, this episode breaks the process down with direct, usable steps.   About the guest: Deborah Lucas is the author of “Dance While the Fire Burns: Identity, Family, and Dreams.” Trained as an MFA ceramic artist (UCLA), she later became a Hellerwork practitioner, applying myofascial release and breath-led awareness to both humans and horses. She lives on rural acreage with two rescue horses and teaches simple, grounded ways to reconnect to the body.   Key takeaways: Breath is the fastest reset: slow nasal inhales and longer exhales downshift the nervous system and make space for healing and creative flow. Hellerwork helps unwind layered tension: slow, client-led myofascial release allows emotions stored in connective tissue to surface and resolve without overwhelm. Horses mirror you: equine cues (ears, lips, leaning, softening) reflect your internal state; calm presence and steady breathing invite trust and co-regulation. Practical ritual beats theory: simple acts—standing quietly, breathing with a horse, soaking a hoof, mindful hand-washing to “reset” energy—create reliable safety signals for the body. Nature regulates: daily contact with trees, gardens, and animals increases grounding; creativity returns when the environment is quiet and spacious. Art as somatic practice: watercolor's layering and clay's fire-to-form process model healing—release occurs in layers, outcomes are emergent, acceptance matters. Grief can transform: honoring loss (including end-of-life moments) deepens joy capacity and fuels honest, meaningful expression. Start today: one small act—intentional breathing plus a brief nature check-in—begins momentum without needing perfect circumstances.   Connect with the guest   Website: https://www.deborahannlucas.com/   Want to be a guest on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life? DM on PM - Send me a message on PodMatchDM Me Here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/avik   Disclaimer: This video is for educational and informational purposes only. The views expressed are the personal opinions of the guest and do not reflect the views of the host or Healthy Mind By Avik™️. We do not intend to harm, defame, or discredit any person, organization, brand, product, country, or profession mentioned. All third-party media used remain the property of their respective owners and are used under fair use for informational purposes. By watching, you acknowledge and accept this disclaimer.   Healthy Mind By Avik™️ is a global platform redefining mental health as a necessity, not a luxury. Born during the pandemic, it's become a sanctuary for healing, growth, and mindful living. Hosted by Avik Chakraborty—storyteller, survivor, wellness advocate—this channel shares powerful podcasts and soul-nurturing conversations on:• Mental Health & Emotional Well-being• Mindfulness & Spiritual Growth• Holistic Healing & Conscious Living• Trauma Recovery & Self-Empowerment With over 4,400+ episodes and 168.4K+ global listeners, join us as we unite voices, break stigma, and build a world where every story matters. Subscribe and be part of this healing journey. ContactBrand: Healthy Mind By Avik™Email: join@healthymindbyavik.com | podcast@healthymindbyavik.comWebsite: www.healthymindbyavik.comBased in: India & USA Open to collaborations, guest appearances, coaching, and strategic partnerships. Let's connect to create a ripple effect of positivity. CHECK PODCAST SHOWS & BE A GUEST:Listen our 17 Podcast Shows Here: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-network/healthymindbyavikBe a guest on our other shows: https://www.healthymindbyavik.com/beaguestVideo Testimonial: https://www.healthymindbyavik.com/testimonialsJoin Our Guest & Listener Community: https://nas.io/healthymindSubscribe To Newsletter: https://healthymindbyavik.substack.com/ OUR SERVICESBusiness Podcast Management - https://ourofferings.healthymindbyavik.com/corporatepodcasting/Individual Podcast Management - https://ourofferings.healthymindbyavik.com/Podcasting/Share Your Story With World - https://ourofferings.healthymindbyavik.com/shareyourstory STAY TUNED AND FOLLOW US!Medium - https://medium.com/@contentbyavikYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@healthymindbyavikInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/healthyminds.pod/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/podcast.healthymindLinkedin Page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/healthymindbyavikLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/avikchakrabortypodcaster/Twitter - https://twitter.com/podhealthclubPinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/Avikpodhealth/ SHARE YOUR REVIEWShare your Google Review - https://www.podpage.com/bizblend/reviews/new/Share a video Testimonial and it will be displayed on our website - https://famewall.healthymindbyavik.com/   Because every story matters and yours could be the one that lights the way!   #podmatch #healthymind #healthymindbyavik #wellness #HealthyMindByAvik #MentalHealthAwareness#comedypodcast #truecrimepodcast #historypodcast #startupspodcast #podcasthost #podcasttips #podcaststudio #podcastseries #podcastformentalhealth #podcastforentrepreneurs #podcastformoms #femalepodcasters #podcastcommunity #podcastgoals #podcastrecommendations #bestpodcast #podcastlovers #podcastersofinstagram #newpodcastalert #podcast #podcasting #podcastlife #podcasts #spotifypodcast #applepodcasts #podbean #podcastcommunity #podcastgoals #bestpodcast #podcastlovers #podcasthost #podcastseries #podcastforspeakers#StorytellingAsMedicine #PodcastLife #PersonalDevelopment #ConsciousLiving #GrowthMindset #MindfulnessMatters #VoicesOfUnity #InspirationDaily #podcast #podcasting #podcaster #podcastlife #podcastlove #podcastshow #podcastcommunity #newpodcast #podcastaddict #podcasthost #podcastepisode #podcastinglife #podrecommendation #wellnesspodcast #healthpodcast #mentalhealthpodcast #wellbeing #selfcare #mentalhealth #mindfulness #healthandwellness #wellnessjourney #mentalhealthmatters #mentalhealthawareness #healthandwellnesspodcast #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #viral #trending #tiktok #tiktokviral #explore #trendingvideo #youtube #motivation #inspiration #positivity #mindset #selflove #success  

INE desmiente hackeo y confirma que incidente fue contenido en 2024  Inicia entrega de apoyos económicos a familias afectadas por lluvias en HidalgoMás información en nuestro Podcast

Alice Sandahl is an Indie musician. She's been a professional musician for over 20 years and for 10 years she was a founder and keyboard player with the all-girl band La Luz. She has since developed a solo career and she also obtained an MFA in music. And she now helps other artists accomplish their songwriting dreams and artistic goals.My featured song is “Cakewalk For Debra” from the album Miles Behind. Spotify link.------------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!Click here for All Episodes Click here for Guest List Click here for Guest Groupings Click here for Guest TestimonialsClick here to Subscribe Click here to receive our Email UpdatesClick here to Rate and Review the podcast—----------------------------------------CONNECT WITH ALICE:www.alicesandahl.com—----------------------------------------ROBERT'S NEW SINGLE:“MI CACHIMBER” is Robert's new single. It's Robert's tribute to his father who played the trumpet and loved Latin music.. Featuring World Class guest artists Benny Benack III and Dave Smith on flugelhornCLICK HERE FOR OFFICIAL VIDEOCLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS—--------------------------------------ROBERT'S RECENT SINGLE:“SUNDAY SLIDE” is Robert's recent single. It's been called “A fun, upbeat, you-gotta-move song”. Featuring 3 World Class guest artists: Laurence Juber on guitar (Wings with Paul McCartney), Paul Hanson on bassoon (Bela Fleck), and Eamon McLoughlin on violin (Grand Ole Opry band).CLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKSCLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL VIDEO—-------------------------------------------ROBERT'S LATEST ALBUM:“WHAT'S UP!” is Robert's latest compilation album. Featuring 10 of his recent singles including all the ones listed below. Instrumentals and vocals. Jazz, Rock, Pop and Fusion. “My best work so far. (Robert)”CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL VIDEOCLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS—----------------------------------------Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com  

My guest today on the Online for Authors podcast is Maureen Sherbondy, author of the book The Body Remembers. Maureen Sherbondy's poems have appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Feminist Studies, Calyx, and other journals. The Body Remembers will be published in October by Unsolicited Press. Maureen has won both fiction and poetry prizes. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. In addition to 11 poetry books, Maureen has also published a short story collection and a novel.   In my book review, I stated The Body Remembers is a book of poetry that looks at the life of women through the eyes of their bodies. I enjoyed several of these poems and saw my own life in the words.   I do want to say that I am not typically a reader of poetry and do not feel that I am qualified to review and rate a book of poetry. I know nothing of poetry elements like structure, sound devices, or poetic techniques. I don't know if the imagery met some level of standard or if the meter was right.   However, I do know that I felt the body's response to having a caesarean section, and later to having a hysterectomy. I felt fear, longing, hope, despair, love - all the emotions that live inside my own body and throughout my own life. I felt that Maureen understood me in ways that often go unnoticed. And if this was her goal, then she succeeded.   Even if, like me, poetry is not your go-to genre, I recommend this volume.   Subscribe to Online for Authors to learn about more great books! https://www.youtube.com/@onlineforauthors?sub_confirmation=1   Join the Novels N Latte Book Club community to discuss this and other books with like-minded readers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3576519880426290   You can follow Author Maureen Sherbondy Website: www.maureensherbondy.com IG: @sherbondy.maureen Instagram: sherbondy.maureen FB: @maureen.sherbondy X: @msherbondy   Purchase The Body Remembers on Amazon: Paperback: https://amzn.to/47wmthK   Teri M Brown, Author and Podcast Host: https://www.terimbrown.com FB: @TeriMBrownAuthor IG: @terimbrown_author X: @terimbrown1   Want to be a guest on Online for Authors? Send Teri M Brown a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/member/onlineforauthors   #maureensherbondy #thebodyremembers #poetry #memoir #terimbrownauthor #authorpodcast #onlineforauthors #characterdriven #researchjunkie #awardwinningauthor #podcasthost #podcast #readerpodcast #bookpodcast #writerpodcast #author #books #goodreads #bookclub #fiction #writer #bookreview *As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

National Book Award Finalist Amber McBride, spoke with me about finding her authentic voice, getting yelled at by kids, near-death experiences and the story behind her latest novel-in-verse THE LEAVING ROOM. Amber McBride is an award-winning author, poet, and former assistant professor of poetry, writing, and protest literature. Her debut young adult novel, Me (Moth) was a finalist for the National Book Award, 2021 and won the 2022 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent, among many other accolades. Her latest YA novel-in-verse is The Leaving Room, also a 2025 National Book Awards Finalist. “Told from the perspective of a girl hovering between life and death, The Leaving Room is a poignant story about connection, grief, love, and the power of memories.” Amber McBride's middle-grade debut, Gone Wolf, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She holds an MFA in poetry from Emerson College, and her poetry has been published in Ploughshares, The Rumpus, DecomP Magazine, Provincetown Arts, and more. [Discover ⁠⁠⁠⁠The Writer Files Extra⁠⁠⁠⁠: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at ⁠⁠⁠⁠writerfiles.fm⁠⁠⁠⁠] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please ⁠⁠⁠⁠click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews⁠⁠⁠⁠. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Amber McBride and I discussed: Overcoming hundreds of rejections early on Finally quitting her assistant professorship to write full time How the loss of her grandfather changed her writing Why anything beyond publishing is icing on the cake How she creates an entire world with a quarter of the words Writing while the world sleeps And a lot more! Show Notes: amber-mcbride.com  76th National Book Awards - Young People's Literature - Finalists The Leaving Room by Amber McBride (Amazon) Amber McBride Amazon Author Page Amber McBride on Threads Amber McBride on TikTok Amber McBride on Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of Talos Takes, Hazel welcomes Cisco Duo experts Steven Leung and Tess Mishoe to bust the most common myths around passwordless security and multi-factor authentication (MFA). Discover why not all MFA is created equal, why passwordless doesn't mean less security, and the most seamless way to adopt passwordless solutions. Plus, learn the truth about how passwordless may affect compliance and audits, and whether passwordless really is more vulnerable to phishing. 

Christian Balmer, an anesthesiologist and critical care doctor from Switzerland, joins us to look at the readiness of surgical teams in his organization to recognize and deal with cases that have gone beyond the capacity of the peripheral center to handle. Far from being a readiness plan around technical skills, the team discovers that it is the gray areas between intersecting teams and intersection institutions where the process of caring for the patient breaks down. Do the ICU teams at both hospitals agree about when is the right time to transfer the patient? Do the surgeons have training on stepping back and declaring that there is a crisis that needs to be managed via transport? Are there communication plans in place to make sure that the ICU has available beds, and to help the main hospital trust that when the peripheral group sends a patient, that patient has a real need for the ICU bed? Finally, we discuss aligning training programs from healthcare schools all the way to the hospital—if health systems are looking for teams that can talk to one another, work with patients, and provide care in a particular way, how can we make sure that the schools that are training future healthcare workers are in communication and prioritizing the skills and ability to learn that they will need to be ready for the job? -------------- Host & Co-Producer: Chris Roussin, PhD, Senior Director, CMS-ALPS (https://harvardmedsim.org/chris-roussin/) Producer: James Lipshaw, MFA, EdM, Assistant Director, Media (https://harvardmedsim.org/james-lipshaw/) Consulting and readiness with CMS-ALPS: https://harvardmedsim.org/alps-applied-learning-for-performance-and-safety Readiness Planning in Advances in Simulation: https://advancesinsimulation.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41077-024-00317-z Dare to Be Ready on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP Dare to Be Ready on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822

Doug Jeppesen earned a BA in Art History and a BFA in Art with an emphasis in ceramics from the University of Tulsa, and MFA from Northern Illinois University. Specializing in wood firing, Doug's work has appeared in numerous national juried and invitational exhibitions across the United States and he was a panel member during the International Wood Firing Conference hosted by Northern Arizona University, and at the 2nd European Wood Fire Conference hosted by Guladagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skaelskor Denmark. https://ThePottersCast.com/1172

Welcome to this Inwood Art Works On Air podcast artist spotlight episode featuring local actor and filmmaker, Rachel Kerry. Rachel Kerry is an award-winning filmmaker & theatre director who specializes in horror comedy, musical theatre, and interactive storytelling. Her work has been hailed as "unabashed extravagance" by Time Out, "triumphantly weird" by io9, and "uncompromising parody" by The Scotsman. She received her MFA in directing from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art and graduated Cum Laude from the University of Southern California. www.rachelkerry.com

professorjrod@gmail.comWhat's the weakest link in your world—an old router, a forgotten Windows box, or that “anyone with the link” setting you meant to change? We unpack the real vulnerabilities hiding in small businesses, nonprofits, and home networks, then share a clear playbook to find them early and fix them fast without enterprise budgets.We start with the quiet culprits: end‑of‑life operating systems, abandoned firmware, and default passwords that ship on printers, cameras, and routers. You'll hear why isolation, segmentation, and least privilege are lifesavers when replacement isn't an option. From ransomware on aging desktops to misconfigured cloud shares that leak donor lists, we connect everyday scenarios to practical countermeasures like MFA, strong crypto, key rotation, and simple access reviews.Then we go deeper into application and web risks—SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, race conditions, buffer overflows—and how attackers exploit timing and input validation gaps. We break down supply chain threats, where a compromised plugin server can Trojanize an entire customer base, and show how to vet vendors with a software bill of materials and clear service level terms. You'll also get a workable monitoring routine: weekly vulnerability scans (credentialed and non‑credentialed), reputable threat feeds like IBM X‑Force and Abuse.ch, and dark web awareness for leaked credentials.To round it out, we map a no‑nonsense remediation loop: discover, analyze, fix, verify, repeat. Learn to use CVE identifiers and CVSS scores to prioritize by risk and business impact, spot false positives and negatives, and handle patches that break production with rollbacks and compensating controls. Along the way, we share a memorable bug bounty story that proves anyone—even a kid—can help make the internet safer. Subscribe for more practical cybersecurity, share this with someone running on “set it and forget it,” and leave a review telling us the one update you're making today.Inspiring Tech Leaders - The Technology PodcastInterviews with Tech Leaders and insights on the latest emerging technology trends.Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the showArt By Sarah/DesmondMusic by Joakim KarudLittle chacha ProductionsJuan Rodriguez can be reached atTikTok @ProfessorJrodProfessorJRod@gmail.com@Prof_JRodInstagram ProfessorJRod

Paul Selig is considered to be one of the foremost spiritual channelers today. In His breakthrough works of channeled literature, including I Am the Word, Beyond the Known: Realization, and Alchemy (August 2020) He has recorded an extraordinary program for personal and planetary evolution as humankind awakens to its own divine nature. Paul was born in NYC, received his master's degree from Yale, a spiritual experience back in 1987 left him as a clairvoyant … He is described as a medium for the living, he has an extraordinary ability to step into people, and he often takes on their personalities and personal characteristics for the readings and teachings. In our show today, we will be discussing Paul's book, Resurrection, is the first book in the groundbreaking new Manifestation Trilogy from renowned channel Paul Selig. Selig's unique gift is to channel the voice of the Guides, otherworldly beings of great wisdom and tremendous spiritual insight. Resurrection is composed of their raw, unedited words, as spoken by Paul. In it, he shares the new manifestation of humanity, a vision of alteration and elevation that will shift how we think and move through the world.Building on the success of his Beyond the Known series, this new trilogy will give readers a glimpse into the spiritual underpinnings that govern the world we live in. Resurrection is an astonishing invitation to rethink, reconstruct, and rebirth our world view in a transcendent way.Paul's work has been featured on ABC News Nightline, Fox News, the Biography Channel series The UneXplained and elsewhere. Paul offers channeled workshops internationally. A noted educator, he served on the faculty of New York University for over 25 years and is the former director of the MFA in Writing Program at Goddard College, where he now serves on the Board of Trustees. He lives in New York City where he maintains a private practice as an intuitive and conducts frequent live-stream seminars. Find out more about Paul Selig at https://paulselig.com/ (Original Air Date 11-24-22)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is part of a new series, Jung in the World B-Sides, where we go off-road to explore the rugged psychological terrain of our current culture. This episode is part 2 of our interview with Hilde Lynn Helphenstein. Part 1 "Know thyself"—from Socrates to Shakespeare, this wisdom echoed across centuries. But the digital age is turning it inside out. As online influencers rise to fame, persona is overtaking the self. The obsession with self-representation has eclipsed the drive to be true to oneself. What does it mean to live your life as someone else? In this two-part interview, host Patricia Martin talks with the infamous Jerry Gogosian—real name Hilde Helphenstein—about the hidden psychological costs of her seven-year experiment living as her persona and how she clawed her identity back. Watch the video of this interview: https://youtu.be/_EQMW6FI_Sw Hilde Lynn Helphenstein is a visual artist, digital storyteller, and the creative mind behind @jerrygogosian, a popular satirical Instagram meme account that critiques and comments on the global art world through viral images, videos and text pieces. It has since transformed into a community and platform. Patricia Martin, MFA, is the host of Jung in the World. A noted cultural analyst, she applies Jungian theory to her work as a researcher and writer. Author of three books, her work has been featured in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Huffington Post, and USA Today. She holds an MFA in writing and literature from Bennington College and an MA in cultural studies at the University College, Dublin (honors). In 2018, she completed the Jungian Studies Program at the C. G. Jung Institute Chicago where she is a professional affiliate. A scholar in residence at the Chicago Public Library, for the last decade she's been studying the digital culture and its impact on the individuation process. Patricia travels the world giving talks and workshops based on her findings, and has a private consulting practice in Chicago. Be informed of new programs and content by joining our mailing list! Support this free podcast by making a donation, becoming a member of the Institute, or making a purchase in our online store! Your support enables us to provide free and low-cost educational resources to all. This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may share it, but please do not change it, sell it, or transcribe it.Executive Producer: Ben LawHosts: Patricia Martin, Judith Cooper, Daniel Ross, Adina Davidson, and Raisa Cabrera2025-2026 Season Intern: Zoe KalawMusic: Peter Demuth

Patricia Lynn is a playwright/actor who has worked extensively in NYC independent theatre. As a writer, Patricia fancies herself to be a gothic feminist; she loves to subvert the classic genre by creating provocative plays inspired by traditional gothic stereotypes. Her plays have been developed at Triad Stage, New Perspectives Theatre Company, The Secret Theatre, Rogue Theater Festival, and Phillips' Mill Community Association. As an actor, Patricia has worked at TheatreWorksUSA, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Soho Playhouse, Capital Fringe, NYC Fringe Festival, and many more. MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University; MFA in Acting from Brown University/Trinity Repertory. In this episode we talk about her new play The Truth about Transylvania debuting during Halloween week October 24, 2025.

Join host Joanne Carey as she chats with Special Guest: Dante Puleio, Artistic Director of Limón Dance CompanyIn this episode of "Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey welcomes back Dante Puleio, the artistic director of the Limón Dance Company. They discuss the upcoming season, which celebrates the 80th anniversary of the company, and explore themes of masculinity, queerness, and the legacy of José Limón. Dante shares insights into his journey from dancer to artistic director, the importance of restaging classic works, and the challenges of funding the arts. The conversation highlights the collaborative nature of the rehearsal process and the significance of bridging generations in dance.Dante Puleio is the Artistic Director​ of the Jose Limón Dance Company. A widely respected former member of the Limón Dance Company for more than a decade, Puleio is the sixth Artistic Director in the Company's 75-year history, a position that originated with Doris Humphrey. After a diverse performing career with the Limón Dance Company, touring national and international musical theatre productions, television and film, he received his MFA from University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on contextualizing mid 20th century dance for the contemporary artist and audience. He is committed to implementing that research by celebrating José Limón's historical legacy and reimagining his intention and vision to reflect the rapidly shifting 21st century landscape.You can find information on the Limón Dance Company and all the performances and programs offered on their websitehttps://www.limon.nyc/Instagram @limondance“Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey "Where the Dance World Connects, the Conversations Inspire, and Where We Are Keeping Them Real."⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dancetalkwithjoannecarey.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Joanne Carey on Instagram @westfieldschoolofdanceTune in. Follow. Like us. And SHARE!Please leave us review about our podcast! 

From Top Chef to magical cooking school: Food Network personality and chef Marisa Churchill chats about her upcoming YA novel, Secrets, Spells, and Chocolate! Find out how she pivoted from cookbook to novel writing inspired by her years of culinary experience. Plus, tips on book marketing, fantasy world-building, and school visits.Want to win some of Marisa's chocolates? From 10/22-11/5 you can preorder her book and send a screenshot of the order to marisa@marisachurchill.com with the subject heading Good Story. Three lucky winners will receive a media kit.Marisa ChurchillWebsite: https://www.marisachurchill.com/Social: @chef_marisachurchillGood Story Company: If you have a story in your head, we're here to help you get it out into the world. We help writers of all skill sets, all genres, and all categories, at all stages of the writing process. Need a hand with brainstorming? Want to find a critique partner? Looking for an editor to help polish up your pitch, your idea, or your entire manuscript? We have all of it and more in our community. If you're ready to take the next step (or the first step) on your writing journey, we're here to help you.Website: https://www.goodstorycompany.comMembership: https://www.goodstorycompany.com/membershipWriting Workshop: https://www.storymastermind.comMary Kole: Former literary agent Mary Kole founded Good Story Company as an educational, editorial, and community resource for writers. She provides consulting and developmental editing services to writers of all categories and genres, working on children's book projects from picture book to young adult, and all kinds of trade market literature, including fantasy, sci-fi, romance, and memoir. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and has worked at Chronicle Books, the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, and Movable Type Management. She has been blogging at Kidlit.com since 2009. Her book, Writing Irresistible Kidlit, a writing reference guide for middle grade and young adult writers, is available from Writer's Digest Books.Manuscript Submission Blueprint: https://bit.ly/kolesubWriting Irresistible Kidlit: http://bit.ly/kolekidlitIrresistible Query Letters: https://amzn.to/3yg511KWriting Irresistible Picture Books: https://amzn.to/3SrApRUHow to Write a Book Now: https://BookHip.com/ZHXAAKQWriting Interiority: Crafting Irresistible Characters: https://amzn.to/4evsX0BWriting Irresistible First Pages: https://amzn.to/4gxgslqNEW! Show and Tell: https://amzn.to/4kCc4noFollow us on social:YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/goodstoryBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodstory.bsky.socialInstagram: https://instagram.com/goodstorycompanyTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@goodstorycoFacebook: https://facebook.com/goodstorycoSubstack: https://goodstoryco.substack.com/

Have you ever felt the quiet pull to change everything you thought you were building? For Marty Ross-Dolen, that moment came on September 11, 2001. She had devoted her entire life to psychiatry, but as she watched the towers fall with her children nearby, something in her said it was time to let go. That decision set her on a new course — one that led to motherhood, teaching, and eventually a memoir that uncovered the silence of multi-generational grief. In this conversation, Marty shares what it means to step away from a lifelong identity and find a new one through writing and reflection. Why listening to the voice inside matters more than the expectations you were raised to follow How unspoken grief can ripple through generations and quietly shape a family’s story What happens when you allow yourself to change your mind, even after decades of commitment Marty’s journey is both personal and universal, a reminder that it’s never too late to begin again.

Shigeko Ito joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about the lasting impact of childhood emotional neglect, how invisible trauma can manifest in adult life, fragmented memories, facing a fierce inner critic, accepting limits, growing as a person and as a writer, when the back story feels as important and relevant as the front story, the often chaotic experience of managing lots of material, becoming more compassionate, the healing power of storytelling, the generational trauma we inherit, using our experience to help others, and her new memoir The Pond Beyond the Forest: Reflections on Childhood Trauma and Motherhood.   Also in this episode: -not giving up -our authentic selves -viewing our work from a larger picture   Books mentioned in this episode: -Writing Without a Parachute:The Art of Freefall by Barbara Turner-Vesselago  -Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg -The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr -Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg -Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer -Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling by Michelle Barker   Shigeko Ito is an author, educator, and mental health advocate in Seattle who  grew up in Japan and immigrated to the United States in her early twenties to pursue higher education. She holds an MEd in early childhood education with an integrated Montessori teaching credential from the College of Notre Dame in Belmont, California, and a PhD in Education from Stanford University.  Her articles have appeared on the CPTSD Foundation's blog and on the ADAA (Anxiety and Depression Association of America) website. She has spent many years teaching at a Montessori preschool in Seattle, where she lives with her husband of thirty years.  Her new memoir is The Pond Beyond the Forest: Reflections on Childhood Trauma and Motherhood.   Connect with Shigeko: Website: shigekoito.com Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/shigekoitomemoir Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/shigekochakoito LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shigekoito-memoir Twitter/X: x.com/ShigekoChakoIto Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/shigekoito.bsky.social The Pond Beyond the Forest: Reflections on Childhood Trauma and Motherhood is available at major retailers such as Amazon, Barnes &; Noble, and Apple Books. However, the official purchase link is: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Pond-Beyond-the-Forest/Shigeko-Ito/9781647429805   – Ronit's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer's Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories.  She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit's Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank   Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social   Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers

What role can poetry play in public health? Henneh Kyereh Kwaku joins Jared to explore how his MFA in Creative Writing intersects with his academic background in public health and disease control. Together, they discuss how Henneh uses a poetic lens to examine issues like vaccine hesitancy. He also reflects on writing about his home country of Ghana while living in the US, drawing from non-fiction and audio storytelling through cross-genre courses, and finding lasting support from MFA faculty even after his graduation.Winner of Poetry Magazine's J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize, Henneh Kyereh Kwaku was born in Gonasua and raised in Drobo in the Bono Region of Ghana. He has received fellowships from the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (LOATAD), Chapman University, and the Carolyn Moore Writing Residency. He is an interdisciplinary scholar with a Bachelor of Public Health (Disease Control), an MA in Health Education, an MFA in Creative Writing, and is pursuing a PhD with an emphasis in Health and Culture. His (public) health communication scholarship explores art-based approaches to addressing medical mistrust and vaccine hesitancy in Black populations. He's the author of Revolution of the Scavengers (African Poetry Book Fund/Akashic Books, 2020) and the founder/host of the Church of Poetry. His poems/essays have appeared or are forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets' A-Poem-A-Day, Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, World Literature Today, Air/Light Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Poetry Society of America, Lolwe, Agbowó, CGWS, Olongo Africa, 20:35 Africa, and elsewhere. He shares memes on Twitter/Instagram at @kwaku_kyereh.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there's a program you'd like to learn more about, contact us and we'll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

In this episode I am welcomed by visual artist Terra Keck. Together we explored her initial interests in occult spirituality and how that began to evolve in her life and especially its influence over her art practice.  We discuss the nature of awareness and the importance of cultivating a space (both physical and mental) that allows for channeling and transmission to come through the creative process.  ———————————Terra Keck is an artist, curator, and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and her BFA from Ball State University. She is a partner at Field Projects Gallery in the Chelsea Arts District of Manhattan and cohosts the comedy-educational podcast “Witch, Yes!” Her work has been published in Hyperallergic, The Art Newspaper, and Oxford American Arts and can be found in permanent institutional collections in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and California. She is a regular contributing writer to Artspiel, Impulse Magazine, and Artefuse. www.terrakeck.com  Field Projects Gallery https://www.fieldprojectsgallery.com/ Terra's Podcast: Witch, Yes! https://open.spotify.com/show/1kWQXQEAkBUhLRFpvqP0EJ Follow Martin Benson for more insights:*To stay updated on the podcast and related content, check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠*To support the show and access exclusive content, consider subscribing for $0.99/month on Instagram (link above).Credits: Special thanks to Matthew Blankenship of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Sometimes Island⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for our podcast theme music!Support this podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/martin-l-benson/support

Today on the show, I get to chat with Marielena Ferrer and Viktorsha Uliyanova, a multidisciplinary artist and educator working with alternative photography, installation, video, and fiber art. Her work explores impermanence, the notions of home, and cultural identity narrated through the prism of memory. Her practice is informed by her upbringing in the Soviet Union, political repression, and the immigrant experience. In her research, Uliyanova explores neglected and overlooked histories, often using archives as a catalyst for her work. She received her BA in English Literature, Language, and Criticism from Hunter College and an MFA in Photography and Related Media at State University of New York at New Paltz. Her work has been exhibited at Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, Baxter St., MOMA PS1, Participant Inc, Collarworks, among others. She is the recipient of New York State Council on the Arts Grant, Arts Mid-Hudson Culture Grant, Traverso Photography Award, Women's Studio Workshop SAI Grant, Sojourner Truth Diversity Fellowship, and Research for Creative Projects Grant. Recently, she completed a residency at Vermont Studio Center. She lives in the Hudson Valley and teaches photography at SUNY New Paltz.Viktorsha's upcoming solo exhibit “Quieter than Water, Lower than Grass” is a multimedia installation that examines the fragility of memory and its impact on history, immigrant narratives ,and cultural identity. This work explores themes of migration, belonging, and domesticity. The opening is November 8 at Roundabouts Now Gallery in Kingston, with a panel discussion on November 16 featuring Marielena, Viktorsha, and two additional women artists whose work addresses these same themes.Today, we talk about the meaning of the show title, and how this Russian idiom permeated culture and played a role in repression and control. Viktorsha shares about the layers of her creative process and how this show came to be. We discuss some of the pieces, their meaning, the process in creating them, and the meaning behind that process. One of the main pieces in the exhibition is an installation of suspended large scale cyanotypes of "Brezhnevka"s, prefabricated  panel buildings that were built in the Soviet Union from 1964-1980. They were built fast and cheap and can still be found and seen throughout former Soviet states. Our conversation weaves through themes of assimilation, (uniform)ity, culture, healing, memory, domestication, femininity, the multidimensionality of softness, and belonging.Viktorsha's Project Statement: “Quieter Than Water, Lower than Grass'” is a multimedia project that explores the intersection between history, memory, and photographic evidence. The work employs analogue photographic processes , fabric, and video to explore remembrance, storytelling, and ancestral healing. Drawing from family albums, oral histories, and archival images, I construct narrativesthat have been hidden by the Soviet regime and are often invisible within the dominant historical discourse. The project takes its name from an old Soviet proverb which instills a behavior of keeping a low profile, avoiding any attention from the self, and acting in a way that does notgenerate conflict. The phrase has been used as a deliberate linguistic tool to disseminate imperialist ideologies, generate fear, and maintain repressive socio-political tactics throughout the USSR. This project outlines the importance of critically engaging with mainstream narrativesin order to unlearn them and see their limitations and biases.Quilts are powerful conveyors of the human experience. They are valuable historical documents and memory transmitters that honor storytelling and intergenerational knowledge. Using bed sheets , I hand-sew patchwork of imagery into quilt forms preserving not only my personal memories but also those obscured within the larger cultural and geo-political discourse.Each fabric piece will source from historical documents, family albums, and collected objects to explore, visualize, and underscore the complexity of post-Soviet trauma and immigrant experience. Blue is a color of peace, a color found in our dreams, our hopes, and our memories. It is the color of the sky, water, and our planet, Earth. The cyanotype process uses the natural elements of sun and water to register a photograph. While it is stable, the final result is prone to changing over time. Using this photographic technique allows me to address all of the themes that show up in my work such as identity, history, and memory, all of which are fragmented, mutating, and ever-changing.The project combines a collection of materials and techniques that reference matrilineage, ancestry, and transgenerational trauma. Through layering of fabrics and utilizing the deep blue hues of the cyanotype process, the work visualizes histories that have been hidden, obscured, and lost. The project examines the selective nature of memory, challenging historical biases and emphasizing the importance of community knowledge and healing. The final project will be presented to the public in an exhibition fostering cultural exchange, community dialogue, andbridging the gap between the personal and collective memories.Here's your New Moon Astrology!Today's show was engineered by Ian Seda from Radiokingston.org.Our show music is from Shana Falana!Feel free to email me, say hello: she@iwantwhatshehas.org** Please: SUBSCRIBE to the pod and leave a REVIEW wherever you are listening, it helps other users FIND IThttp://iwantwhatshehas.org/podcastITUNES | SPOTIFYITUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/i-want-what-she-has/id1451648361?mt=2SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/77pmJwS2q9vTywz7Uhiyff?si=G2eYCjLjT3KltgdfA6XXCAFollow:INSTAGRAM * https://www.instagram.com/iwantwhatshehaspodcast/FACEBOOK * https://www.facebook.com/iwantwhatshehaspodcast

Some documentaries are too urgent to wait for normal distribution. BIG ROCK BURNING (2025), David Goldblum's directorial debut, certainly qualifies. The film covers the aftermath of the California wildfires this year in Big Rock from a man who lost his home in the fires.The film is still embarking on a festival run but because of the immediacy of the story, it is now available for streaming on Vimeo. Alongside this film, David has tackled some of the most pressing topics facing our country today, and he's been able to do it by making the title executive producer into something more than just a famous wallet. How did he do all this, especially after losing his home? What a story writer, director, and producer David Goldblum has to tell. In this episode, David and I discuss:How bittersweet it must be to talk about a film that is at once your directorial debut and also about people losing their homes, including my guest;The festivals' reaction to releasing the film for streaming during its festival run;How he got started in filmmaking (be nice to your college roommate);His resume — MFA from UCLA, Telluride Lab Fellow — was it one of these that got him where he is or just the culmination?How common the experience of somebody like Paula Wagner looking out for the people who work for her in Hollywood;The double edge sword of having well-known executive producers and how he uses the role to his advantage;BIG ROCK BURNING as his directorial debut — when did he know the subject was a film? And he'd direct it?The political tone of the film and what tone he wanted to set for such a viscerally important topic;Why a 30 minute run time?The decision to release it for on-demand now rather than waiting for formal distribution;Pushing the boundaries for documentaries while also finding funding;When he chooses to do a doc v. narrative films;What job he prefers — writing, producing, directing?What's next for the film and for David — and what could have been with Village Roadshow.David's Indie Film Highlight: ALL THE EMPTY ROOMS (2025) dir. by Joshua SeftelMemorable Quotes:“I think it's all kind of learning how to leverage, so you leverage the thing that you have to get the next thing.”“When you look at the credits of a film, I think executive producer is the one that you never know what they really did.” “I had to sneak my camera guys in my trunk every day.”“Everbody was pointing fingers and I wanted to show that everybody's to blame in this.”“ I've seen enough stories that people make long form documentaries about a very important issue. And then by the time it comes out, it's five years later and it's like the next big school shooting has happened or the next big whatever, like we've just become so desensitized.“I try to look at who cares about these issues that I'm exploring, whether it's incarceration or the sex industry or fires or whatever And then I look for those types of funders so the funders are really aligned with the topic already.”“I love producing writing because originally I'm a writer; I think more than anything I'm actually a writer.” “So they gave me a three movie producer deal, but I didn't get to choose my movies.”Links:Follow David On InstagramWatch BIG ROCK BURNING NowSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/first-time-go/exclusive-content

As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit—especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard apples that lined supermarket shelves in the United States. Yet on a small patch of woods near her home in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree—and the seeds of an odyssey were planted. Could the taste of a feral apple offer a doorway to the wild? In The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit, Kumar takes us on a dazzling and transformative journey to rediscover apples, unearthing a rich and complex history while illuminating how we can reimagine our relationship with nature.Apples are popular, but in our everyday lives we rarely encounter more than a handful of varieties: of the sixteen thousand apple varieties once celebrated in America, scarcely a fifth remain accessible. Kumar reveals the richness of a hidden world, bringing readers to the vibrant forests and orchards where historic trees still survive. These mature and wild orchards offer more than just fruit: they are havens for creatures from hummingbirds to bears and a living connection to generations past. She brilliantly weaves together science and childhood memories with the apple's storied history, from its roots in Kazakhstan to Spanish orchards in the Southwest and Thomas Jefferson's beloved Monticello fruitery. Kumar shows how—if we follow untamed paths—the tang and texture of an apple can lead us back to the wild. Our guest is: Priyanka Kumar, who is the author of Conversations with Birds, and The Light Between Apple Trees. Her essays appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Orion, and Sierra magazine. She holds an MFA, and has taught at the University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Southern California. Her feature documentary, The Song of the Little Road, is in the permanent collection of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and her awards include an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, a New Mexico/New Visions Governor's Award, an International Center for Jefferson Studies Fellowship, and an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Fellowship. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a writing coach and freelance editor. She is the producer of the Academic Life podcast, and writes the show's newsletter. Playlist for listeners: Big Box USA In The Garden Behind the Moon Disabled Ecologies Endless Forms The Well-Gardened Mind Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 275+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Pick up a copy of Dr. Boedy's book: https://amzn.to/3JjnqQAMatthew Boedy was targeted by Turning Point USA in 2016 and listed on its “professor watchlist” after speaking up against allowing concealed guns on college campuses. As one of the foremost experts on Turning Point USA and its founder and CEO Charlie Kirk, Boedy exposes their role in perpetuating Christian nationalism in the United States and the threat to democracy they pose. With a background in journalism, an MFA in creative writing, and a PhD in rhetoric, he is a dynamic and experienced scholar whose first book, Speaking of Evil, explored the evolving rhetoric surrounding evil. Boedy currently teaches rhetoric and composition courses at the University of North Georgia and lives in Gainesville, Georgia, with his wife and two daughters.About his book, The Seven Mountains Mandate: Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy:“A sobering assessment of the evolution of Christian nationalism.” –Publishers WeeklyExposing the decades-long plan to radically transform America, from Bill Bright and Loren Cunningham's 1975 “seven mountains” vision to Charlie Kirk's 2020 praise of Donald Trump for embracing it, The Seven Mountains Mandate reveals how prosperity preachers and political operatives are destroying democracy under Trump's second administration.The movement to install a populist strongman in the White House with a game plan for enforcing right-wing policies and catering to evangelical Christians started well before Donald Trump's first candidacy. For decades, a well-funded network of religious and political operatives has been quietly working to dismantle democracy and replace it with Christian theocracy. Their strategy? The seven mountains mandate—a plan to seize control of seven key pillars of American society and reshape the nation.Scholar Matthew Boedy exposes how this movement—driven by prosperity preachers, extremist politicians, and right-wing power brokers—laid the groundwork for Trump's presidency and is now advancing its agenda under his second administration. From local school board elections to billion-dollar megachurches, this multipronged effort is reshaping the country in ways most Americans don't even realize. Discover what has motivated the key players in this movement, how they've operated, and what is the unprecedented role of millennial “kingmaker” Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and the new face of Christian nationalism and the seven mountains movement, who believes that “we finally have a president who understands the seven mountains of cultural influence.”Today's news is so much more than the scattershot orders of an extreme administration. With Project 2025 policies in motion, the seven mountains movement is closer than ever to its goal of turning America into a Christian nationalist state. Leaders of this movement have been playing a long game, undermining democracy to establish a theocracy, but it's not too late to halt their progress and reverse the tide. This book reveals what's happening behind the scenes—and what you can do to stop it.(As an Amazon associate, I receive a small commission from purchases made through links on this site.)✖️✖️✖️Support the Show: Patreon.com/PreacherBoys✖️✖️✖️If you or someone you know has experienced abuse, visit courage365.org/need-help✖️✖️✖️CONNECT WITH THE SHOW:preacherboyspodcast.comhttps://www.youtube.com/@PreacherBoyshttps://www.facebook.com/preacherboysdoc/https://twitter.com/preacherboysdochttps://www.instagram.com/preacherboyspodhttps://www.tiktok.com/@preacherboyspodTo connect with a community that shares the Preacher Boys Podcast's mission to expose abuse in the IFB, join the OFFICIAL Preacher Boys Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1403898676438188/✖️✖️✖️The content presented in this video is for informational and educational purposes only. All individuals and entities discussed are presumed innocent until proven guilty through due legal process. The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers.✖️✖️✖️Music by Lou Ridley — “Bible Belt” | Used with permission under license.This episode is sponsored by/brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/PreacherBoys and get on your way to being your best self.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/preacher-boys-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

How do you keep creating when life tries to get in the way? Author and creative coach Deborah Ann Lucas shares her powerful journey of determination, from clay artist to memoirist, and how to navigate the vulnerability of telling your story. Discover how to engage your whole creative self, find your flow, and turn your personal experiences into a source of empowerment and purpose.

Welcome to our second episode with women and non-binary firefighters who have written books about their experiences working both in fire and on hotshot crews more specifically. Our guest for this episode is HOTSHOT author River Selby (they/them), who spent seven years as a wildland firefighter—four of which were as a hotshot—from 2000 to 2010. They've since gotten their undergrad and MFA (in fiction) at Syracuse, and are currently working towards a PhD in Nonfiction with an emphasis in postcolonial histories, North American colonization, and postmodern literature and culture. This unique background allowed River to create a phenomenally in-depth book that covers not only their own experiences of working on crews and personal vignettes of life on and off the fireline, but it also paints a rich history of different fire ecologies across the American West (and world), and how colonization and fire suppression in the Western US (and elsewhere!) have set the stage for our modern relationship with fire. In our conversation, River and I talked about how firefighting allowed them to heal and grow, in a way, from the addiction, homelessness and violence that they had experienced in their youth. We spoke about some of the more academic themes of the book, including how colonization really informed our modern culture of fire suppression and—by extent—the culture of hotshotting. We spoke about the importance of Indigenous practices and land stewardship in righting this ship, as it were, and chatted a bit about our own experiences with hotshot culture and how it framed our experiences on fire crews. Click here to buy River's book HOTSHOT: A Life on Fire!Click here to read an excerpt of HOTSHOT, which was published in High Country News in August.Click here for River's book tour dates over the next few weeks. Click here to support Life with Fire's Patreon, which is helping keep this ship afloat while Amanda is in grad school.