Podcast appearances and mentions of mike kingston

Our guest this time is a prolific author, Kim Lengling. Kim is prolific as she has been the lead author on six book anthologies. I cannot say that she came by writing honestly. She grew up in a small Northern Pennsylvania town. After graduating from high school instead of going on to college Kim joined the military with great thoughts and ideas of leaving her small town upbringing and seeing the world. As she describes it, she did leave the small town world, but she only had military duty state side. After four years of service she left the military life and moved back to a “small town” in Pennsylvania.   Over time she began and pursued a career in sales and marketing. Along the way she married and had a daughter. She also took a keen interest in helping veterans and veteran organizations.   I asked Kim how she began her writing career. She will tell the story about how she was asked to give a speech to some 800 veterans. The story about her talk is remarkable and the unexpected turn her life made after her speech is worth hearing directly from Kim. Bottom line is that Kim was convinced to begin writing articles. Since 2020 she added writing and self publishing books to her repertoire of accomplishments.   As it turns out, Kim and I both experienced unexpected life changes due to public speaking. Both of us chose to take full advantage of the opportunities that came our way and we both are the better for it. I very much enjoyed my conversation with Kim and I hope you will as well.       About the Guest:   As a multi-published author, Kim shares her love of nature and animals, her life with PTSD, and her mission to toss out Nuggets of Hope through her writing and podcast. Kim is the lead author and coordinator of six anthologies: The When Grace Found Me Series (three books), When Hope Found Me, Paw Prints on the Couch, and Paw Prints on the Kitchen Floor. Her newest book, Nuggets of Hope, was released on November 15, 2024. In addition to writing, she hosts the podcast Let Fear Bounce, which spotlights people who have faced and overcome personal fear(s) to make a difference in their slice of the world through writing, coaching, film production, philanthropy, teaching, founding non-profits, public speaking, or simply being an amazing human being. You can regularly find Kim drinking coffee, reading, and talking with the critters in the woods while taking long walks with her dog, Dexter. Visit her website, www.kimlenglingauthor.com, to keep up with everything happening in her realm.   Ways to connect Kim:     Website:                                www.kimlenglingauthor.com   Amazon:                               https://www.amazon.com/author/kimlengling   Let Fear Bounce                 @Letfearbounce Apple:                                   https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/let-fear-bounce/id1541906455   Facebook:                            https://www.facebook.com/letfearbouncepodcast   LinkedIn:                              https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlylengling/   Instagram:                            https://www.instagram.com/lenglingauthor/   Twitter:                                  https://www.tiktok.com/@klengling?lang=en   TikTok:                                 ** https://www.tiktok.com/@klengling?lang=en   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 ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset. And today is kind of a fun one, because I get to talk to another author. One of the things that I participate in and have done for a little while are book fairs, including virtual book fairs, and our guest today, Kim Lengling and I, lengling and I were both on a virtual book fair just a couple of weeks ago talking about our books and this and that and all the other stuff. And I made it really clear that I'm always looking for a good podcast guests, and it just seemed like the right thing to do. And of course, then Kim said, well, not unless you're going to be on my podcast too. So we are going to reciprocate next week. So I actually had a a message, an email yesterday from someone who wanted me to come on their podcast to talk about disabilities. And then they, before I responded, they sent a second letter saying, You do understand, we don't pay for podcast guests or anything like that, which I never expected to to have to to deal with anyway. But I wrote back, and I said, Well, I'm sorry, I do charge. And the charges that you have to be on if you want me on your podcast, then you gotta be on my podcast too. So it's fun to tease, but anyway, Kim, welcome to unstoppable mindset. After all that.   Kim Lengling ** 02:44 Well, thank you. Thanks for having man, I think it's going to be fun doing a podcast swap. Oh   Michael Hingson ** 02:49 yeah, it's a lot of fun to do that, and it's and it's kind of neat, and we get to know each other better and all that. And next year, when we have the book fair, we can, we can always team up on other people, because we'll know each other better.   Kim Lengling ** 03:01 That's right. That is right. And I those book fairs. They're fun. I enjoy doing those. They are and   Michael Hingson ** 03:08 I think the video of it is now out, so it's pretty cool that it is there and is available so well, I want to again. Thank you for coming on and chatting. It's always fun. And as I explained, our podcasts, our conversation, so let's converse and go from there. I'd love to start by learning kind of, maybe, about the early Kim growing up and all that stuff. Early Kim, the early Kim a long time ago, and I guess, long, long, far away.   03:43 You know, like I get that song stuck in my head.   03:47 Oh, yeah,   Kim Lengling ** 03:50 okay, well, I grew up in a small country town, and I think my graduating class had 72 people total, and it was just, you know, I'm glad I grew up where I did and how I did in the country. I grew up playing outside, and I still play outside every day, 50 some years later. But yet, growing up in a small town, everybody knows each other, which is wonderful, and everybody knows each other, which can be kind of crappy, too, sometimes.   Michael Hingson ** 04:23 Well, there's the other song, everybody knows your name. Oh yeah. From cheers,   04:29 yeah. We're just going to keep on breaking.   Michael Hingson ** 04:33 We're doing great.   Kim Lengling ** 04:37 But yeah, I grew up in a small town, and I I'm very appreciative of the small town, I guess I don't know morals and ethics that I learned growing up, and I've tried very hard when raising my own daughter, who is now married and has her own daughter, I tried and worked hard to instill that those same type of values. Within her. And I think I did a pretty good job. But I did, I did. I liked how I grew up, and then I left my small town right after graduation and went into the military, and thinking, you know, oh yeah, I'm gonna go to this small town and I'm gonna see the world by Gully. And it's, you know, it's, it's a, it's an eye opener. I because I didn't go to college, so, you know, I don't know that. I don't have that experience. I went into the military, and that's an eye opener. It's just, wham, you are no longer small town camp. Yeah, you are now. You are now a spoke in the wheel, and we and you don't even have a name, and you're going to be rebuilt into something different. And I am truly thankful, actually, for my military experience. I feel everybody should have to be in it for at least 12 months. It teaches you so much about discipline, self awareness, leadership skills that we can all use as we grow and you know, yeah, that's kind of my younger self in a small nutshell.   Michael Hingson ** 06:10 How long were you in the military? Four years. Okay, now, the small town you grew up in was that in Pennsylvania? Yes. Okay, so, yep,   Kim Lengling ** 06:21 grew up surrounded by farm fields and cows and deer and everything else, all the critters and all that. I just, I love it, and I still live in the same type of area not far from my small town that I grew up in, and still get to enjoy all of the nature, you know, all of the critters that come through. And just I had a black bear come through the other day. Michael, ooh, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 06:41 And did you have a good conversation with the bear? No,   Kim Lengling ** 06:45 I didn't chat. Didn't want to do that, huh? No, it's I've seen that. I've seen I've lived where I'm at now for, gosh, just about just shy of 30 years, and I've seen bear tracks out there when I'm walking with my dog, but I've never actually come face to face with the actual bear. It was caught on a trail cam, and my neighbors sent it to me and said, Hey, this guy's going through your backyard at 430 this morning. And I'm like, Oh, boy.   Michael Hingson ** 07:16 I don't know whether you can ever make friends with a bear or not.   Kim Lengling ** 07:19 I you know, I'm not going to try. I don't think, yeah, they're kind   Michael Hingson ** 07:24 of big. They are kind of big. I suppose, if they make the initial Overture and they're friendly about it, that's one thing, but probably going the other way is a little bit more risky. Yeah,   Kim Lengling ** 07:36 yeah. I, you know, I would probably just not want to try. Yeah, just, you know, they're 700 and up pounds. That's, uh, that's, They're big. They're   Michael Hingson ** 07:46 big. Well, and then there's always a moose, which gets even bigger.   Kim Lengling ** 07:50 And see, we don't have moose where I'm at, yeah, yeah. And I've never seen one of those in person either. But I always thought, you know, well, you see online and stuff, just how big they are, they're so tall, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 08:04 and they're probably not the most friendly creatures. Oh,   Kim Lengling ** 08:07 they're not see, I don't know anything about moose, because we don't have them in my neck of the woods.   Michael Hingson ** 08:13 Yeah, I think it'd be fun to try to meet one, but I don't know whether that would be a good idea or not, so I don't either. If somebody else tells me that they have a moose that I could meet, I would believe them. But until that happens, I'm not going to worry   Kim Lengling ** 08:28 about it. Yeah, yeah, not something to worry about.   Michael Hingson ** 08:31 I don't Same, same with a bear. Now, on the other hand, I know your dog's name is Dexter, yeah, and I wonder what Dexter would think of a moose or a bear close up.   Kim Lengling ** 08:44 You know, I'm not sure, because he does his he's a he's pretty big dog. He's not huge, but he's a bigger dog. And there are certain times when we're out in the evening because it's pitch black. I mean, I'm out in the country. There's no lights out here, so it's pitch black out there. So I have a flashlight, and he has a collar on that lights up. And there are times when he will stop, and I call it his big boy stance, because he stops and his whole body just stiffens up, and he's staring at the woods. Now he can see stuff I can't Yeah, yeah, you know. And so I sit there, and I flash the flashlight back through there, because I carry a very powerful flashlight with me, so it lights up everything. And then when I see two yellow eyes staring at me from the woods, I'm never really sure what it might be. And I watch what Dexter's doing, yeah, and there are times where he where he will put himself in front of me, and then there's times where he comes and he will bump my leg with his head, and then turns and starts running back to the house, like, stay out here. Yeah, yeah. So it's been interesting to watch how he how he I follow his lead. When it's dark outside and we're outside, I. Follow   Michael Hingson ** 10:00 his lead. Smart move. What kind of dog is Dexter?   Kim Lengling ** 10:03 He is a Belgian Malwa Mastiff mix. Oh, so he's a big one, kinda, yeah, yeah, not huge. He's about 80 pounds, but he's a he's a good sized dog,   Michael Hingson ** 10:13 bigger than my black lab guide dog, Alamo, who's about 63 pounds.   Kim Lengling ** 10:18 Oh, okay. Labs are wonderful. Labs are awesome. But   Michael Hingson ** 10:22 again, it's all about trust. And I would trust Alamo's instincts any day and do and of course, yes, yeah, you know, but, but it isn't just the the normal guiding, but just in general, his behavior. I observe it pretty closely, and I think it's an important thing to do, because, as you said, they tend to see a whole lot of things that we don't necessarily see.   Kim Lengling ** 10:47 Right, right? No, yeah, even with my other dog, digger, prior to Dexter, digger was about 105 pounds. He was a pretty big dog, real tall and lean and long. He was very protective of me. Oh, and he would always have to be touching me or in front of me, and I took him everywhere with me. We were always out in public, and he was always if someone would approach, he would let them know I would follow his lead. He would never growl, but he would show his teeth like a scary smile, yeah. And I'd be like, Okay, we're not going any further. I'm not going to interact with this person. This person. And then other times he would just come and kind of nudge me, and his tail would start wagging. I'm like, Okay, this person's probably okay. Then it's very you know, dogs or animals period, are just amazing in their instincts. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 11:34 I've been pretty blessed that Alamo has not yet met a stranger. But also we haven't really encountered anyone that would be a really mean, nasty person, and I have seen some dogs who do sense that very well. My first guide dog was a golden retriever. He was 64 pounds, and when we were in college, and I wrote about it in my my new book, live like a guide dog in in college. On our first year we were at UC Irvine. It was a very open, somewhat rural campus, just in terms of what was around us in Orange County, which is not so rural anymore, but people would bring their dogs to campus, and they would just let the dogs roam while they went to class, and then they'd find them at the end and a bunch of dogs, just all congealed, if you will, into a pack. And they would, they would go around together. And one day, they decided that they were going to come after Squire and me. They were behind us, and as they got closer, they were growling, and Squire was doing his job of guiding, but all of a sudden he jerked, and actually jerked the harness out of my hand. I still held his leash, but he he completely jerked away, and literally, as it was described, because somebody else was watching it, he jerked, leaped up, turned around, and went down on all fours, facing these dogs, and started growling, and it just completely caught them off guard, and they just slunked away. But I've never seen a dog do that before, and I haven't seen a dog do that since, and Squire, of all dogs, a golden retriever, for heaven's sakes,   Kim Lengling ** 13:22 right? Yeah, they're usually just friendly, friendly, friendly, yeah, but   Michael Hingson ** 13:25 he, he knew what he was doing, and yeah, and he, he dealt with them.   Kim Lengling ** 13:32 That's awesome. Well, so I just love dogs.   Michael Hingson ** 13:35 Oh, yeah. Well, and we, and we have a cat here. So my wife passed away two years ago. So it's me, dog and cat,   13:43 and quite the trio you have going on.   Michael Hingson ** 13:46 Then we all, we all communicate very well, and they all, and they like each other. And I would not have it any other way. I would not want a guide dog that was in any way antagonistic toward cats. Now, now that wouldn't work well. Now Alamo doesn't Chase Stitch. Stitch has claws. I think Alamo is smart enough that he understands that, but, but they do rub noses and they play and they talk. So it works out all right, and every so often, stitch will steal Alamo's bed, and poor Alamo doesn't know what to do with himself, because he can't lay on his bed because the cat's there and he won't try to make her move. I think a couple times they both have been on the bed, but mostly not,   Kim Lengling ** 14:28 yeah, yeah. My my dog. Unfortunately, he's like, a single animal type dog, you know, it can only be him and and the neighbors cats. Sometimes, if they end up in my yard, he gets them up in a tree. So he's he's got a he's got a very big prey drive for anything smaller than him. We   Michael Hingson ** 14:53 had a we had a dachshund. Once it was a miniature dachshund. Oh, and he treated cat. One day before my brother and I went off to high school for the day, and this cat was up in the tree. We came home and Pee Wee was still barking at this cat up in the tree. The cat was up in the tree sound asleep, not worried about anything. This dog's dog didn't know when to shut up anyway. It was kind of funny.   Kim Lengling ** 15:25 Well, dogs are amazing. My dog, when he is he's treed raccoons, all kinds of stuff, anything smaller than him, he takes off after he has he does have quite the prey drive. And I think that's the Belgian mountain wall coming out in him. Yeah, you know, pretty sure that's that part. And I've not been able to get him to stop that. But I'm in the country and, you know, okay, it is, it is what it is. It is what it is.   Michael Hingson ** 15:53 Well, so did you see much of the world when you were in the military?   Kim Lengling ** 15:56 I was actually all stateside, interestingly enough, yeah. Well, you saw the country then I did. I saw some of the country. So, yeah, I'm it's, it's an experience that I'm glad that I I had. What did you do? I did Morse code, actually. Okay, yeah. And it's funny, years ago I ran into, because this is quite some time ago, quite some time ago, and it was years ago I ran into a couple of younger Navy guys at a gas station. They were filling up their car, and I, of course, went up and thanked them for their service. And I had just come from a funeral, so I was in a military funeral, and I was part of the honor guard at that time, so I was in my honor guard uniform, and they're like, well, thank you for your service. What branch were you? And we're just chit chatting, you know, like folks do. And they said, Well, what did you do? What was your MOS and I told them, and they looked at each other, and their cheeks got red, and I said, What's What's so funny? And they said, Oh, ma'am, we don't use Morse code anymore. And I went, Oh, well, my goodness, when did they stop using it? And the one, the one kid, and they were kids, they were like, probably 18 to me. Anyway, they were at the time, 1819, years old. And the one looked at the other, and they said, Well, wait a minute. No, no, we did use it that one time. I remember there in the Navy, and they were on deployment out in the ocean, sea, wherever. And they said, no, no, there. Remember that one time that that old guy, he did use Morse code. He had, we had to use it because some part of the electrical went out. And I and they were, I looked at them and I went, when you say old guy, what? What do you mean by that? And their faces turned so red. And the one kid, he goes, Oh Ma'am, he must have been at least, oh geez, 37 and at that time I was like, 41 I just started laughing. And I said, well, he wasn't really all that old, you guys, but So yeah, that was a and so   Michael Hingson ** 18:02 what do they use now that they don't use Morse code? I honestly   Kim Lengling ** 18:05 don't know. I think everything is more electronic. And yeah, I mean, yeah, it's been so long since I've been it's been a while. It's been, it's been a decade or few.   Michael Hingson ** 18:15 Well, I learned Morse code to get my ham radio license, and I still remember it and and it, and it still is a means of communications that can sometimes break through when voice and other things don't come through. Absolutely,   Kim Lengling ** 18:29 absolutely no, yeah, and I don't remember a lot of it, probably just because I was so sick of hearing it. I don't, I actually don't remember a lot of it, but if needed, I could, oh yeah, touch up on it.   Michael Hingson ** 18:47 So how fast were you able to receive code? Um,   Kim Lengling ** 18:51 we had to, in order. We had to pass a certain what was it? 2222 words a minute. Okay, I think, I think we had to get 20 I think it was 22 in training when we had, when we were in tech school in order to progress. I think it was 22 Yeah, yeah. And that's fast for people who don't realize when all you're listening to is, did audit, yep. I mean and going 22 words a minute. It's it just sounds like   Michael Hingson ** 19:18 I went a friend of mine, who was also a ham operator, and I were talking one day, and he was telling me about this kid that he had met on the air, and they were both doing code, and he decided that since this kid was a kid, that he would play a trick on him. And he slowly started speeding up how fast he was sending the code, and I don't know how fast he got to and then the kid said, Oh, you want to play that game. And he just started going at like, about 60 or 65 words a minute, which means he was probably using an electronic key or a bug, but I don't   19:56 know, right? Because how would you do that with your fingers? Really? It would   Michael Hingson ** 19:59 be hard. But anyway, this kid was doing it, and the guy went, Okay, you got me.   Kim Lengling ** 20:07 So, yeah, amazing. I mean, it truly is amazing. It's, it's amazing, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 20:13 and, and it's, it's still a very relevant thing to to have in the arsenal if you need it ever. Oh, I agree. I agree. Yeah. So, so what did you do when you came back from being in the military for four years?   Kim Lengling ** 20:27 I came back to my small hometown and didn't do much for a bit. I was kind of a weird it was, it was, wasn't so easy transitioning home from to, you know, being in the military, to coming back to the hometown, because nothing felt right anymore, right? Well, you were in a different world, right? And I was a different person, yeah. And so I didn't stick. I didn't stay there very long. I got a job, you know, got a job, and then it was couple years later, I ended up marrying my high school sweetheart, and we, you know, got married, had got a little place, little house in a different town, and had my daughter. And, you know, did that became a wife and mom and, you know, did the working and being a wife and a mom and all of that stuff? So,   Michael Hingson ** 21:27 yeah, so do you still do that?   Kim Lengling ** 21:31 No, I am divorced. My daughter is mid 30s and married and has her own daughter. So I'm I'm actually a brand new grandma. Oh, there you go. And I am just loving it. I'm loving every second of it, but you don't have the husband anymore. No, no, it's me and Dexter, and that's just fine. Yeah, it's just fine. And so well, and that it's I've, I have found out, you know, it's interesting when you're a wife, a mom, you work full time, and then your life completely changes, and you're an empty nester, completely empty nest, and it's just you and the dog. You have to find out who you are again, yeah, and it was very interesting for me, because I was like, oh my goodness, I forgot who Kim was. So it was an interesting journey to find that out and to find out, you know, what did I even like to do? Because I was always running here, running there, doing this, doing that, family, kids, stuff, you know, all of the things, doing all the things. And then I was, you know, now I had time to figure out, what do I like to do, geez, what did I like to do? You know? So it was interesting. Spent. It was interesting the first few years figuring out who I was again and what I liked to do and what makes me, you know, what fulfills me and and, you know, to reach a point where I'm thriving in that, you know, it was interesting.   Michael Hingson ** 23:02 And what did you decide that you like to do?   Kim Lengling ** 23:07 I like writing, and I love doing and I love doing my podcast and volunteering I volunteer for with my veteran post, been doing that for over 25 years now, helping veterans in need, those folks that might need a little bit of help here and there, and then also, it's a project support our troops, which is a monthly thing we've been doing every month for 24 years, sending care packages to those men and women who are deployed around the globe so, and it's all done by donations. So that's, that's a lot, it's a lot of my time, and a lot of where my heart is is helping those folks. So I've been able to really, you know, put a lot into that, which is very fulfilling.   Michael Hingson ** 23:56 What made you decide that you really liked writing?   Kim Lengling ** 24:00 You know, it was years ago. When was it? Oh, gosh, close to 20 years. Oh, my goodness, a long, long time ago. About almost 20 years ago, I was asked to give a speech at a local veteran event. And it was a large veteran event. There's about 800 people there. I had never spoken in public before, and I was asked to give a speech. And I my step grandfather, so my stepfather, his dad, was the last surviving World War One veteran in my area. Ooh, and he passed away in 1997 and I thought, you know, I'm gonna talk about him. So I spent quite a bit of time with my step dad, and we went through his dad's stuff that he had brought home, and I learned all kinds of stuff about him and his time in World War One, and he was, he was the last man of the last man's Club. Job, and that was formed in themes France on Armistice Day, and the mayor of this small village in France had a bottle of wine and came out to the boys of Company B, literally, they were the boys of Company B from my town, and gave them this bottle of wine in celebration, you know, of the signing of the armistice, and the guys all decided they weren't going to drink it. They were going to keep it. And as time went on, it would pass to the next comrade, and whoever was the last man standing would be the one that has that bottle of wine, and he would then open it toast his fallen comrades. So the the last man's club is what they called it. And my step grandfather was the last man of the last man's club, and he passed away at the age of 104 Wow. And so I shared his story and the story of the last man's club. That was my speech. And it was, it was about a 15 minute speech, and for someone who'd never spoken in public before, and you know this, 15 minutes is a long time, can be a long time to talk in front of a group of people, and there were television cameras there, and it was just, it was overwhelming. But I got up there the first two minutes, my voice was shaking because I was a little nervous, and then I just fell into the story, because it's just a beautiful story. And when I was done, it was, there was, and I'm there, was about 800 people there. It was total silence. I mean, you could hear a pin drop, and I thought, oh my goodness, I just blew it. But then there was one, one person started clapping, and then another. And then the place like this was an outdoor event, they interrupted. They just went crazy, and people were crying, and the local newspaper came up to me. The local newspaper editor came up to me and said, Would you consider writing an article, you know, about veterans for the for the paper? And I said, Oh, my goodness, I'm no writer. And he goes, Well, who wrote your speech? And I said, Well, I did. And he goes, well, then you're a writer. And that was the little spark that that lit something up in me. Somebody saw something in me that I had never even considered looking for in myself. And so that was the little spark that got me going so   Michael Hingson ** 27:34 you hadn't really contemplated, contemplated writing before then,   Kim Lengling ** 27:38 no, not at all. And and and never, really, it had never entered my mind. And I started doing these monthly articles, and I was interviewing veterans. And I'm very I'm very connected with my local veteran community, and being a veteran myself, the veterans were pretty comfortable talking to me, and I, you know, I spoke to numerous former prisoners of war. Most of, most of who I interviewed over the years were combat veterans. A lot of them were Vietnam vet combat veterans, and hearing their stories. And first off, it was very humbling that they would even share them with me, yeah, because a lot of them won't or don't want to, or can't, you know, can't, yeah. And so for 14 years, I did that each month, and there were, I started getting a following, you know, I, you know, I'd run into because they, they would post a picture with me and my article in the paper each month, and I'd run into people, and they'd be like, Oh my gosh, you just brought me to tears with that article. And I just so enjoy reading your monthly stuff. And that's when, you know, I just I didn't know what I was doing. And when I look back at some of those nights, I'm like, Oh my gosh, Kim, you were such an awful, awful writer. But as time went on, I could, I learned. And then I just started doing some stuff online, finding free courses, and, you know, doing what I could, teaching myself a lot of stuff about writing and just how to make it better. And so that's, that's kind of, I just kept, I rolled with it. I just kept rolling with it. And now that I, the last five years, I've had the opportunity to actually work from home full time now and put a lot more of my time into writing, and I'm still learning. We all learn something. We're still, you know, we're all learning, hopefully, we're all learning something. And so, yeah, hopefully so I can see how my my writing has changed, how my voice has changed, and I just hope, I just hope I'm better than I was yesterday. That's what I hope each day, I'm a little bit better of a writer than I was yesterday, because hopefully I learned something new.   Michael Hingson ** 29:48 And that's fair, we have somewhat similar starts in the whole process. So for me, of course, September 11 happened, and um. The media got the story and like, about a week and a half after September 11. I don't remember exactly what day it was. It must have been around the 20th or so of of September, but I got a call on the phone, and this guy said he was the pastor of a church, and he had heard about me, and asked if I would come and speak at a church service they were going to hold. And I said, Well, I guess tell me more about him. He said, Well, we want to hold a church service for all the people who were lost in the World Trade Center who were from New Jersey. I said, Okay, that seems like a would be a worthwhile thing to do. And so we agreed to do it. And then kind of the last thing I asked him before hanging up was, how many people are going to be at this service? And he said, Well, it's going to be an outdoor service, and there'll be something over 5000 people. Now it's not that I hadn't spoken in unusual situations before, because being in sales, you never know where you're going to be on any given day, from a board of directors of a Wall Street firm to IT people or whatever, but still 5000 people, and that's a lot. And when I got there, I also learned that Lisa beamer was there. Now Lisa's husband, Todd, was the guy on flight 93 who said, let's roll. Let's roll. Yeah. And Lisa was not an animal lover, but she and Roselle hit it off, and so she she really and Roselle was my guide dog in the World Trade Center. So they had a thing going, which was kind of cool, but the speech wasn't overly long. It was only supposed to be about six or seven minutes, and it was, and that is really what got me started down the road of doing public speaking. Then the next year, we were at an event where I met the publisher of the AKC Gazette, and George said, You should write a book. I said, I've never thought of writing a book, and it took eight years to get it done and get the right combination, including someone to collaborate with, because I wasn't really all that familiar with writing. But anyway, we wrote thunder dog, and it got published in 2011 became a New York Times bestseller. So that was pretty cool. But, you know, circumstances do offer us opportunities, and it's important to really take them when you can. And so we you and I have both done that in various ways, yeah,   Kim Lengling ** 32:35 and it's interesting when you look back to see how things unfold. Mm, hmm, you know, and you had mentioned that you were in sales, and that's my background, 25 years of sales and marketing. So it's and I've talked to I've talked Well, I'm sure you have too as well. Many, many authors, and a lot of them have some sort of sales or marketing in their background. Have you found that to be true as well? I   Michael Hingson ** 32:59 have, and especially today, you have to, because the publishers aren't doing nearly as much as they used to to promote books, and they want the authors to do a lot more. And I think that the publishers, some of the publishers, could do more than they're doing, but they because they rely on social media and so on. But there's a lot more to it than that. But unfortunately, that's not what they do. So, you know, you you cope with what you got. That's   Kim Lengling ** 33:26 right, that's right, you know. And I found that a lot of the the larger publishing houses, and even some of the mid sized ones, in order for them to even take you on, you have to have a certain number of followers, or whatever it is on your combined social media platforms, yeah, and so many authors don't, don't.   Michael Hingson ** 33:53 And you know, we're not   Kim Lengling ** 33:54 all out there being influencers, you know, yeah, but   Michael Hingson ** 33:57 you also have to make the commitment to promote, and so absolutely, so we do and it, and it's, it's part of what needs to be done. And I don't mind, and I understand the concept of an author has to be part of what promotes their book. They they shouldn't rely totally on the publisher, and that's fine, but I do think that publishers could do more than they do a lot of times to help today, that social media is the thing. Well, it's not the only thing, and you miss out on a lot, on a lot, by just dealing with social media,   34:34 right? That's where a good publicist comes in.   34:37 Yeah.   Kim Lengling ** 34:41 Yeah, yeah, that's, that's helpful, but no, yeah. And I, well, I enjoy doing the but it's so it's almost a full time job marketing. Just, it is, you know, it's, it's a lot of work. And, you know, I, I'm self published. I didn't go the, the traditional publishing route. I. And knowing, you know, regardless, I would still be doing the same amount of work that I'm doing if I went the traditional route, right? Because I'd still have to do a majority, or, if not, all, of my own promotion, which I don't mind. I enjoy doing that, because then I actually get to meet, yes, a lot of interesting people.   35:22 You know, people it   Kim Lengling ** 35:24 is, and the people that have been put in front of me, you know, like yourself, you know, we made a connection, and now I'm here a guest on your show, and you're going to be a guest on mine. I mean, how cool is that? So, you know, you get to meet people that might have nothing to do with your book. It's just, it's just cool to you know, humanity, to meet, to meet other good, decent people is a good thing.   Michael Hingson ** 35:49 It is by, by any standard, right? You primarily today write fiction. So what got you down the road of writing fiction or non actually, non fiction, non fiction, non fiction,   Kim Lengling ** 36:01 that it was. It was all of the interviewing that I did with the veterans, you know, keeping keep into the the personal stories. I really enjoyed that I I enjoy it, and being able to not only write the story, but pull that emotion from it too. And I found that at first it was somewhat intimidating, because I'm thinking, how can I, how can I get these in words on paper, where people are going to feel what I'm feeling right now listening to this gentleman, yeah, you know. And it just that that kind of fascinated me, and that's what made me want to keep on writing and learning how to do it better. And so I just stuck with it. So I, yeah, I've not written anything fiction   Michael Hingson ** 36:50 at all. One of the things that I I find is that what makes I think good, successful writers, l will deal with non fiction right now, but is to be yourself. So when you interviewing people, your personal self has to come through, not in in the in an opinion way, but just how you are able to portray the people who you're talking with. And interviewing it comes out so much better if you really can feel it, which is again, getting back to your, your being yourselves,   Kim Lengling ** 37:26 right? Yes, I think, yeah, being authentic, yeah, just, you know, I've had, I don't know if you've had folks on your show that I've had a few that I was the first podcast they were ever on, and they were quite nervous. And I said, Well, you know, before I even hit that record button, you know, I don't mind sitting here chit chatting for a bit, so, you know, you feel a little bit more at ease. And it just took without fail, my guests have said, you know, Kim, thank you for being such a welcoming host, and you made this fun. And, you know, there's no, because there's no pretense with me. You know, it's, it's, I'm come as I am. I'm not all, you know, I don't get all my hair is not done. I don't have a bunch of makeup on or anything like that. It's, you know, you can't. This is Kim. This is me. This is who I am every day. And, you know, hey, let's sit down and have a cup of coffee. That's that's how I try and, you know, get my guests at ease, you know. And I'm sure that you've had guests that have probably been kind of nervous, maybe it's their first time on a show or something. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 38:31 one of the things that I do, though, and I really have found that it works very well to do this, is before I have a guest on the actual podcast, I want to sit down with them and have a half hour conversation where we get to know each other. So I insist that anyone who wants to come on to unstoppable mindset has to spend some time with me ahead of time, and that way, when I find people who aren't familiar with podcasts, or, you know, they say, Well, I'd love to come on, but I don't know what to talk about. We can talk about it, and we can, we can get them to relax and recognize that they do have a story to tell, and what we want to do is to to hear their story, and they don't need to worry about being uptight, because there, there are no set rules that you have to do this or you fail. It's all about really enjoying what you do and just being willing to talk about it.   Kim Lengling ** 39:32 Yeah, and that's, that's an awesome idea. And I know a lot of podcast hosts do that. I have not I, and I don't know why. I've never really come up with a reason why I haven't had, you know, just that sit down chat 1520 minutes prior, you know, maybe a week before the show, or whatever. I've just, I've just not done that. I don't know. I we usually end up talking 10 to 15 minutes prior to me hitting record. Um, there's only, I really had one instance with one guest. And. Was a couple years ago where we did chit chat. And as we were chit chatting, it was that at that point I thought I should probably do pre screening, yeah, and I, I, we went through with the show, and I pre record everything, yeah, so I did cut it short, and I never published it. It was that was the one and only time that ever happened. This person never got back to me, never said, when's this going to be out? It was just such an uncomfortable chat. And I was thinking, wow, on paper, this person was a completely different person than when I'm actually talking, yeah, so, and it wasn't in line with anything of what we had discussed. So it was, it was, that was interesting. That's only in four years that's only happened one time, and that was one day when I thought I really should do pre screen.   Michael Hingson ** 40:59 Well, I've had, I've had two. One the we did the podcast, and this person just had no effect to their voice. And as much as I talked ahead of time about I want to hear your story and all that, he just couldn't tell a story. Oh, yeah. And so that one didn't get published, and then another one I did, and I thought it was a great podcast, but the person said, I absolutely do not want this published. I just decided that that I don't want to do it. And   Kim Lengling ** 41:35 I had one like that after we had recorded and everything, and I thought I too for and they it was like three days later, because I said, Well, it's going to be up and uploaded probably two to three weeks from now. It's like two or three days later. They said, You know, I've changed my mind. I don't want my story out there at all. Yeah, there was fear in theirs. There was fear involved. Yeah, there was, there was   Michael Hingson ** 41:55 clearly fear, um, with my person as well. Oh, yeah. And they got very, very nasty about it when I said, Look, it really is a good podcast. So, you know, I'm not going to, I don't want to have people and make people do things they don't want to do. I've had several people who have said, well, I want to hear the podcast before it goes out and and I'll say to that, no, it's a conversation, and I don't edit it. So the whole idea is that if there's any editing, it's just to deal with getting noise out of it and all that. But only that doesn't happen. But, you know, and people accept that, but again, it's fear. But the reality is that I believe everyone has a story to tell, and I believe that everyone, if they're willing to do it, should tell their story, because it will show other people that they're not any different, and we're all more unstoppable than we think we are. And that's the whole point of the podcast.   42:58 No, that's I agree. I agree 100%   Michael Hingson ** 43:02 Well, tell us. Tell me about some of the non fiction books that you've written. Tell me a little bit about what you've done and and so I just   Kim Lengling ** 43:08 had, I just had one released last week, actually called nuggets of hope. And that one has been in the works for a couple years, and it started with not me thinking about turning anything into a book. It was, it just started with the word hope. Showed up everywhere, everywhere, and I felt very strongly that I was supposed to be doing something with it. And I ended up getting polished stones with the word hope engraved on them, and carrying those with me. And I thought, Okay, I think I'm supposed to be giving nuggets of hope to people and but I wasn't sure how to do that, but I had this very strong nudge that I was meant to be doing this. And so that began a couple years ago. And I would just approach people who I would see, you know, I'm out running errands, doing my thing, and I would just someone would catch my eye, and I would feel very strongly nudged. Be like that person needs a nugget of hope. And I would just approach and say, Excuse me, ma'am, or sir, I would like to give you a nugget of hope today, and without fail, and I've been doing this for a couple years, so I've been handing out quite a few my little stones. And without fail, every single person I've approached has has put their hand out to accept that, and I get a hope and from a total stranger just coming up to them. You know, it's, it's amazing. And the reactions that I've had have just been, you know, there's been tears, there's been laughter, nervous laughter. There's been funny looks like, Who are you crazy woman approaching me? Um, I've had people hug me and I had one older gentleman yell at me in anger and swear at me in Walmart, and, you know, ask me very loudly, what the hell did he have to hope for? And but he took the nugget of hope and put it in his pocket. Yeah, and I knew in that moment with that, that particular gentleman had nothing to do with me and he was in his probably had to have been in his late 80s. So I don't know what was gone in his life, but I do firmly believe, even to this day, that I was meant to be in front of him at that moment in time and give him a nugget of hope, a nugget of hope. Yeah, I firmly believe that. And I don't know, you know, when our interaction was done, he was still an angry man, and that's okay, because I didn't let it land on me, because it wasn't supposed to. It wasn't directed at me. And I got in my car, and I actually did cry. I sat in my car with my head on my steering wheel, crying for that man, because my heart hurt for him. And I thought, you know, what? If he's what if he just lost his wife, and he has no idea. And because he was yelling at me about not knowing what dish soap to get, he couldn't find the kind that he needed. And I thought, maybe, you know, he just, he had just lost his wife, yeah, and she always used a particular soap, and he couldn't find it, and that was what put him over. Maybe he's a full time caregiver for a family member, you know, maybe a white, I don't know, Alzheimer's, what have you. Maybe he was just coming off of a very long illness, and he's on his own, a widower, whatever, because he was, he was late 80s, at least, and looked very, very, very tired. And my heart just hurt. My heart just hurt for him. And I thought, You know what, he might have been yelling and swearing at me, and that is perfectly okay, but I'm going to sit here and pray for him. I'm going to pray for peace and for grace to just envelope him, you know, just be covered in it, and maybe when he wakes up tomorrow and he goes to grab all that stuff from the hallway table and put back in his pocket, he'll look down and see that yeah, and maybe then it'll be like, oh, you know. Or maybe, maybe not. Maybe it would be a week, maybe a month, whatever. But I firmly believe in my heart that at some point he was going to see that, and it would   Michael Hingson ** 47:24 click, and you haven't seen him since, I assume, no, it's   Kim Lengling ** 47:27 total stranger. I don't know these people, you know. And there was one time I have these, I got little cards made too, because, well, these stones are pretty expensive, actually. So I got little cards made too, just tiny, little square cards, and it says, share a nugget of hope today. And on the back, it says, The world is a better place because you're in it. And I had some of those because I had forgotten to put stones in my pocket, and I had a couple of those cards in my purse. And I was in a store just picking, you know, doing errands, and I was walking by some sweaters, and I thought, I'm going to put one of these little cards in a pocket of that sweater and just put it in. Didn't think anything of it. Several days later, I got a message through Facebook from a young lady saying, I don't know if this is the person who left a card in a sweater, but if you are, I want to thank you for leaving this little nugget of hope in that sweater, because I've been struggling with my weight for a very long time, and I had an event to attend, and I was looking for a sweater that would help make me feel better. And she didn't notice that that little card that said, be a nugget of hope today, the world's a better place because you're in it. She didn't notice it until she was home putting the sweater on again to try it on in front of her mirror. And she said, if that was if the person that I'm reaching right now is the person who left that card, I want to thank you for doing that, and I also want to let you know I'm going to keep this card, and when I feel so LED. I'm going to tuck it into a pocket somewhere in a store too, and hopefully someone else will get it, and they will, they will receive it as as I received mine. And I was just like, Oh my goodness.   Michael Hingson ** 49:12 You know, ever since thunder dog was published, I get emails. They're they're sporadic somewhat, but I get emails from people who have said how this book inspired or how I learned so much. And you know, as far as I am concerned, I am better for all of the comments that I get. I learned from everyone who decides to reach out in one way or another, and I encounter people in very, very unusual circumstances. I was in Dallas Fort Worth airport one day, and this guy comes up to me, and he said, You're Mike Kingston. You just wrote thunder dog, and I want to shake your hand, and I want to take you to lunch. And I had time. So. Did go to lunch and I and I never had met the guy before, but he had read thunder dog, and it obviously made a difference to him. So I think, as I said, every time I hear from someone, I believe it makes me a better person. It teaches me that when we put out words or seeds in the field, or whatever you want to call it, that you never know where they're going to plant and thrive. But if that's what I'm supposed to do, then I'm glad I'm doing it.   Kim Lengling ** 50:36 I feel exactly the same, and I like how you said you were it you said each, each comment that you get makes, makes you a better person, and that that's so profound, and it's, it's humbling, isn't it? When you get comments like that, or people approach you and say something that, you know, it was inspiring, or that motivated me, or, you know, wow, that's something I really needed. I mean, it's, it's very for me anyway, it's very humbling. I had an older lady. I was helping her put her groceries in her car. It's just, I just randomly saw her, you know, struggling, and I had a nugget of hope in my hand too, of course. So I went up and I, you know, said, I'd like to give you a nugget of hope, and I'd also like to help you put your groceries in your car. And we got done doing that, and she looked down at the nugget of hope in her hand, and she got all teary eyed, and gave me a big hug, and she said, You are my absolute angel today. You have no idea how much I needed this. And I went, I'm so grateful that, that you're the one that's receiving this, and that you you know that, that you need it. She goes, but I said, but I am no angel. I am no angel. And she said, she's, you know, she just kind of chuckled, and, you know, said, No, you have, you just have no idea. You have no idea what this means to me today. And I didn't ask, because it's none of my business, yeah, you know, I just, I wished her a blessed day, and I went back to my car, and I sat there, and I sat there, and there was another time I actually cried. I was like, oh my goodness, this is what I think I'm, you know, I'm supposed to be doing this random stuff. And it's not random, obviously, but I don't know it's, it's profound, and it hits you, and I'm sure that that's, yeah, probably your book has probably done the same. Your book is a nugget of hope. You know, to many people, I'm sure,   Michael Hingson ** 52:22 I hope it is. I didn't, I didn't write it to do anything other than to try to encourage people and motivate people and teach people a little bit. And I guess it's done all of those things. So I can't complain.   Kim Lengling ** 52:34 No, it's awesome. It's great. And what a beautiful What a beautiful legacy, you know, because that's always going to be out there. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 52:43 Well, you wrote a New Britain or been the lead on a number of anthologies. And I think three of your books are in the series. When Grace found me, tell me about that series. Those   Kim Lengling ** 52:53 started that was in 2020, actually, when the world shut down. Yes, and I was online, and I found an online writers group. It was all women, and the majority of them were from England. And so I was like, the minority being the American. And I met a beautiful lady online, and she had just started up a faith based publishing company. And so her and I were like, hey, you know, let's chat afterwards. And so we set up a zoom and chatted afterwards for a while. And I said, you know, I've had this idea. I've got a few stories in my head, but I would love to get other people's stories. You know about, you know, when Grace found them, and we were just chatting about grace, and she said, Well, let's figure out how to make this work. And so her and I actually start to together. Started those when Grace found me series, and we asked a few people, and then it kind of snowballed, because it was just going to be one, just going to be one book, 20 people done, once it reached 20, and we're like, oh, this, you know, we've got enough for a book. They're 1500 words each. The stories, they're beautiful. Let's do it. But then word of mouth got out somehow, online, and people kept coming forward. Well, I would like to participate, and I have a story, and it turned in. It went from one book to three books, and 2020, co authors in each book. And we, we published all of those within 12 months. Wow. It was so much work, so much work. But those, those stories, oh, my goodness, the the comments that we got after they were out, you know? And she, she's just started her little, tiny, little publishing company, and it was just, it was just amazing. What an amazing experience. And then I, you know, two years ago, I and I truly enjoy bringing folks together to share their stories, and I enjoy, you know, collaborating and coordinating all of these. And. And so the the last two have been paw prints on the couch and paw prints on the kitchen floor. And those are anthologies all about pets. You know, people are sharing their their stories about their pets and how they've enriched their lives or changed their lives or saved their lives, you know? And it's, it's just rewarding to me, and it's also fun to give folks that maybe have never written before, that chance to say I'm published in a book, you know? Because that's pretty exciting stuff for folks. And some folks are like, I've never aspired to be a writer, and I don't want to be, but I do want to share my story in this book. Yeah, you know. So it's been fun, and oh my goodness, I learned, I learned how to publish. You know, like I said, I like to learn. So I've learned so much about publishing and formatting and how to corral all the people that are involved in the book.   Michael Hingson ** 55:57 Have you? Have you converted any of them to audiobooks,   Kim Lengling ** 56:00 no, and I need to do that. I just don't have the funds to do that at this time. That's that's not something that's cheap, and I'm not set up to do it myself. I don't have the right I have the equipment, but I don't think it would be the quality that I want it to be if I did it myself, and I just don't have the funds to do that, and I would, I would love to do it for the paw prints books, both of them, for sure. And I'm considering do, because everybody's going, you have to, when's the third one coming out? And I said I wasn't really planning on and they're going, you have two, you have to do at least three, and then make it a series. So I was actually talking to a couple people today about it, and they're encouraging me to do a third one. So I probably will, you know, so that would come out next year sometime. But I don't know. I would like to, I would like to get audio books of all of them. I just have to reach a point where I'm able to do that and make it what's professionally done.   Michael Hingson ** 57:03 Yeah, yeah. AI is getting better, but I'm not sure that it's really there yet for doing recording of audio books, unless you've got a whole lot of equipment and can do various   Kim Lengling ** 57:15 things. I've played around listening to some of the different voices and stuff, and the inflect, the inflection just isn't there, yeah, I know, yeah. Some of them sound pretty good, but you don't get the correct pauses. And you know, you know what I mean. It just, you can tell, it's like, oh, that sounds pretty good. And then you're like, Ah, no, right there, nope, that just blew it.   Michael Hingson ** 57:38 Yeah? I I agree, and I fully understand. Well, so you've written non fiction? Is there a fiction book in your future?   Kim Lengling ** 57:47 I have one in my head, and it's been in there for several years, and it's been getting louder so and I've talked to other fiction writers, and they're going, okay, when you've got characters in your head and they're getting louder. That means you are supposed to be writing this book. Yeah. So this year, and we're almost done with this year, it the characters, and it's kind of kind of fantasy, kind of ish, young adult ish. I don't even know what it is yet, but I've got the characters in my head. I know what they look like. I know what they sound like. And, you know, there's wood sprites are involved, you know, wood sprites and animals are involved, heavily involved. They are the main characters of the story. So, yeah, I every once in a while, I sit down and I'll write, you know, maybe four or 500 words of it, and then I walk away. But I want to, they're getting louder. The characters are getting louder, so I need to sit down and just go, Kim,   Michael Hingson ** 58:50 let's get going. No, that's not why it's going to work. What's I know you're going to sit down and they're going to say, Kim, we're writing this book, right? Most characters are going to write the book   Kim Lengling ** 58:59 right. They're going to tell me what they're doing and what they're saying, that's for sure. And   Michael Hingson ** 59:03 you're in, you're going to do it, or they're going to get even louder,   Kim Lengling ** 59:08 you know? And it's, it's so interesting because I remember the first time I was talking to a fiction author, and they said my characters got so loud in my head, I didn't quite grasp what they were saying, but I found it fascinating, and now I understand what they were saying, yeah,   59:26 yeah. And   Kim Lengling ** 59:27 I joking, you know, I laugh. It's not joking. I laugh about it because they're like, Well, what? What do you have one character that's louder than the others? I said, Yes, and it's a female, and she's Irish,   Michael Hingson ** 59:38 there you are. So she's   59:39 yelling in her Irish accent.   Michael Hingson ** 59:42 You better listen, I haven't had that happen to me yet, so I haven't done a fiction book, but I'm sure the time is going to come and and we'll, we'll have fun with it. But when   Kim Lengling ** 59:55 it's I did, I wasn't expecting it to happen. It just it's there. There it   Michael Hingson ** 59:59 is. It. Exactly right, and that's been the case with with everything that I've done, especially over the past 23 years. And you know, I think it will happen more. I never thought I was going to be doing a podcast, but when the pandemic occurred, I started to learn about it, and then began working with accessibe, which is a company that makes products that help make the internet more inclusive and accessible for people with a lot of disabilities, and they asked me to do a podcast because I said I was learning about podcasting, and suddenly I've been doing unstoppable mindset now for over three years, and it's a lot of fun.   Kim Lengling ** 1:00:33 But you know, that's how my podcast started. Was in 2020 Yeah, we have an awful lot in common. Michael, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:44 well, we should collaborate on books, then that'll be the next thing.   Kim Lengling ** 1:00:48 Absolutely, I am open for that works for me. Awesome. You tell me when and where, and we'll I'll sit down and chat. We can brainstorm about it.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:57 I'm ready any old time. Me too. And there you have it, friends, the beginning of a new relationship, and another book that will come out of it. And you heard it here first, on unstoppable mindset, that's right, it's now thrown out there. It is out there for the world to to see and hear. Well, I want to really thank you for being with us. We've been doing this an hour, and it's just has gone by, like priest lightning, and now we have next week on on your podcast, and that's going to be kind of fun.   1:01:27 Yeah, I'm looking forward to it really   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:31 me too, and, and I'm sure that Alamo is going to want to listen in over here. He's He's over here on his bed, and he if I close the door when I always close the door when I do the podcast, because otherwise the cat will invade and stitch wants attention when she wants attention. But if I close the door and Alamo is not in here, then he wants attention, or at least he wants in. So I always have to let Alamo in, but stitch doesn't need to be here. I've done one podcast where she sat on the top of my desk chair during the whole podcast,   Kim Lengling ** 1:02:07 I've had guests where their cat, they said, Do you mind? I said, No, I don't mind. I love animals. Their cat the entire time was walking across the desk in front of them the whole time. So the tail the entire time was just going back and forth. It was so comical. But then, you know, you're just like, We're just two people sitting at a kitchen table having coffee. That's how I like. That's   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:28 right. Well, stitch will come in occasionally, and if I let her, if I bring her in and I put her on the back of the desk chair, she'll stay there. And so she likes that. If she gets restless, then I've told her, You can't be too restless and you can't one out in the middle of a podcast. You're either here or you're not. Mostly she's agreeable. I want to thank you again for being here. This has been fun, and one of these days, we'll get out to Pennsylvania and visit. Or you can come out this way somehow. But I want to thank you for being here. If people want to reach out to you, how do they do that?   Speaker 1 ** 1:03:08 Easiest way is to just go to my website, which is my name, Kim Lengling, author.com, that's K, I M, L, E N, G, l, I N, G. Author.com, you can find out what I'm doing

I met Michael Bervell through a mutual acquaintance some two months ago. Since then he and I have talked a few times and found that we have many interests in common.   Michael grew up near Seattle where he stayed through high school. He then went across the country to study at Harvard. He received a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy. He then returned to Seattle and began working at Microsoft where he held some pretty intense and interesting jobs he will tell us about.   At a young age and then in college Michael's entrepreneurial spirit was present and flourished. His story about all that he has done as an entrepreneur is quite impressive. Today he is back at Harvard working toward getting his Master's degree in Business.   Michael has developed a keen interest in digital accessibility and inclusion. We spend time discussing internet access, the various options for making inclusive websites and how to help educate more people about the need for complete inclusion.       About the Guest:   Michael Bervell is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, and best-selling author. He is currently the founder of TestParty, an industry-leading and cutting edge digital accessibility platform.   In 2007, Bervell co-founded “Hugs for” an international, student-run non-profit organization focused on using grassroots strategies to develop countries around the world. To date, "Hugs for" has fundraised over $500,000 of material and monetary donations; impacted over 300,000 youth around the world; and expanded operations to 6 countries (Tanzania, Ghana, United States, Uganda, Kenya, and Sierra Leone). Because of his work, Bervell was awarded the National Caring Award in 2015 (alongside Pope Francis, Dikembe Mutombo, and 7 others).   Bervell is the youngest Elected Director of the Harvard Alumni Association and was the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle. He has helped to found and lead a variety of organizations including the WednesdAI Collective (a Harvard & MIT AI incubation lab), Enchiridion Corporation (a marketing consulting company), Sigma Squared (formerly the Kairos Society), and Billion Dollar Startup Ideas (a media and innovation company). He has experience working as a Chief of Staff at Databook, Venture Fellow at Harlem Capital, Portfolio Development Manager at Microsoft's Venture Fund, Program Manager at Microsoft, and Software Engineer at Twitter.   His various efforts have earned him recognition as a Samvid Scholar (2022), Warnick Fellow (2021), Jonathan Hart Prize Winner (2019), GE-Lloyd Trotter Scholar (2018), World Internet Conference Wuzhen Scholar (2017), Walter C. Klein Scholar (2017), United Health Foundation Scholar (2016), Deutsche Bank Rise Into Success Scholar (2016), Blacks at Microsoft Scholar (2016), Three Dot Dash Global Teen Leader (2015), Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholar (2015), National Achievement Scholar (2015), Coca-cola Scholar (2015), Elks Scholar (2015), AXA Achievement Community Scholar (2015), Build-a-bear Workshop Huggable Hero (2014), and more.   Ways to connect with Michael:   Personal Website: https://www.michaelbervell.com/ LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbervell/ Company Website: https://www.testparty.ai/ Company LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/testparty/     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, hello, everyone. I am Michael Hinkson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset. Our guest today is Michael Bervell, who is a Ghanaian American angel investor. He is a published author, and he is also an entrepreneur and a scholar by any standards. And if he wants to brag about all that and all the the different kinds of accolades and awards he's gotten, he's welcome to do that. And I will just take a nap. No, I won't. I won't take a nap. I'll listen to him. I've read it all, but I'll listen to it again. Michael, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Michael Bervell ** 01:58 Thanks so much for having me. It's a great name. You have too, both the podcast and your own name, another Mike.   Michael Hingson ** 02:04 You know, I think it's a great name. People have asked me, why I say Michael, and do I prefer Michael to Mike? And as I tell people, it took a master's degree in 10 years, a master's degree in physics in 10 years, to figure this out. But I used to always say Mike Kingston on the phone, and people always said Mr. Kingston. And I couldn't figure out, why are they saying Kingston when it's Kingston, and I introduced myself as Mike Kingston. And finally, one day, it hit me in the head. They're getting the mike the K part with the Kingston, and they're calling it Kingston. If I start saying Michael hingson, will that change it? I started saying Michael hingson, and immediately everybody got it right. They said Mr. Hingson or Michael, or whatever. I don't really care, Mike or Michael is fine, but the last name is hingson, so there.   Michael Bervell ** 02:50 It's so funny. Yeah, I'm glad no one's calling you Mr. Links and or something like, yeah, yell and adding it. They   Michael Hingson ** 02:55 do. They do. Sometimes do Hingston, which isn't right, yeah, which shows you sometimes how well people listen. But you know, what   03:03 do you do? Exactly, exactly? Tell   Michael Hingson ** 03:07 us a little bit, if you would, about the early Michael bervell Growing up in and where, and all that sort of stuff. And you know, then we can get into all sorts of fun stuff, because I know you've been very interested in accessibility and disabilities and all that, we'll get to that. But tell me about you growing up. Yeah. I mean,   Michael Bervell ** 03:24 for me home, home for me was in Seattle, and I actually lived and went to school in a place that was about 30 minutes apart. So my parents would drop me off at school in the morning. I go through the day, meet all my friends, and then come back home. They would pick me up, take me back home in the evening. So I had a lot of time in the day after school, you know, school ends at two, and my parents picked up a five to do all this other stuff. So I used to always be part of every student, student club. I did every sports team, you know, I was in high school, you know, on the captain of all these, all these teams and such. And of course, I would go home and my parents picked me up. And in that in that in between time, I spent a lot of time in the library, so I probably every day in middle and high school, spent three hours a day at the library, just in that in between time, waiting for your parents, waiting for my parents. So that for me, was a lot of time that I just used to incubate projects. I taught myself how to code and took some CS classes when I was, you know, in high school at the library, I became friends with all the librarians and joined the student library advisory board when I was in eighth grade at the library, and did a bunch of other things. But I think probably the most impactful library project that I had was actually a nonprofit that my family and I started, and it was memory of my grandmother, who born in Ghana. She used to always go back there in the winter times, because, you know, it's cold in Seattle, warm in West Africa in the winter   Michael Hingson ** 04:48 as well. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 04:49 yeah, it was super warm there. I mean, it's always, you know, 80 plus degrees, wow. Yeah, it's lovely. And so she would always go home. And whenever she went back to Ghana. She would, you know, come into our bedroom and tip doe at night and go into the bed and take a teddy bear or take some of her old school supplies. And whenever she visited, she would give that to kids in hospitals and schools and North pages. So, you know, when she, when we, when she passed away, we ended up going back to Ghana for her funeral. And, you know, all the burial ceremonies, and there were just so many people from the community there expressing their love for her and what she had done. And we realized that, you know, while it was small for us, you know, as a six year old or sixth grade kid, her taking a teddy bear had such a big impact, and it had these ripple effects that went far beyond her, so that that was, like one of my biggest projects I did at, you know, in sixth grade and beyond. It's an organization, a nonprofit called hugs for Ghana, which we've been running for the last 15 years, 15 plus years, and now is operating in six different countries. And we do the same thing. We get teddy bears and school supplies and all these things, and pick them up and hand deliver them to kids in developing countries. But that, for me, was one of my most fundamental parts of my childhood. When you ask me, you know, was it like as a child? I can't separate my growing up from, you know, those long drives to school, that time at the library and eventually the nonprofit made in honor of my grandmother,   Michael Hingson ** 06:10 and giving back,   Michael Bervell ** 06:13 yeah, and giving back exactly how   Michael Hingson ** 06:16 I talked fairly recently on this podcast to someone who formed. Her name is Wendy Steele. She formed an organization called Impact 100 and impact 100 is really primarily an organization of women, although in Australia, there are men who are part of it. But basically what Wendy realized along the way was that, in fact, people are always looking for, what can they do? And at the same time, they don't have a lot of time. So with impact 100 she said, and the way the organization works, the only thing that she requires that anyone who joins the organization must do is donate a check for $1,000 that's it. If you don't want to do any work, that's great. If you want to be part of it and all that. It's fine. If the organization is primarily composed of volunteers. I think they have now like 73 or 77 chapters in mostly in the United States, but they're also when Australia and a couple of other countries, and they have given out in the 20 years since the organization was formed, all told, close to $148 million what they do is they take the money that comes in, and they for every $100,000 that a Chapter raises, they give a $100,000 grant to someone no administrative costs, unless those are donated on top of the $1,000 so all the money goes back to the community. I think the first grant they ever gave was to a dental clinic to help with low income people and so on. But it's a fascinating organization, as I said, it's called Impact 100 and she started it because as a child, she was very much involved in giving back, and for a while she she didn't. And then it started again when her father passed away, and she realized how many people from the community supported her and the rest of her family because they didn't have the tools or the resources to do it all alone. Yeah, so I'm not surprised that you have the story of giving back and that you continue to do that, which is really pretty cool.   Michael Bervell ** 08:36 Well, I think I actually heard a statistic that I think they tried to track how early childhood development, or just early adulthood, affected later adulthood. I think one of the findings was that people who volunteered when they were in middle and high school or significantly more likely to volunteer later in life than those who never did. And so there is a certain level of kind of you know, how you experience the world in your early ages and your early days affects your potential to want to make a change, especially as it relates to giving back or giving time or money or whatever effort, whatever it might be, I think is a really interesting concept. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 09:14 it makes sort of perfect sense, because as you're growing up and you're forming your life, if you see that you're doing things like giving back or being involved in supporting other people, and that is a very positive thing, it makes sense that you would want to continue that in some way.   Michael Bervell ** 09:33 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it reminds me also of just like habits. You know, you build your habits over time, and it starts from super young ages not to say that you can't change habits. There's a bunch of research about the science of habit change and how to break a habit loop, and Charles Duhigg is a great author in that space, but it's also just really interesting just to think through that. But yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:54 and habits can be hard to break, or they can be easy if you're really committed. Into doing it. But I know a lot of people say it, it's fairly challenging to change or break a habit.   Michael Bervell ** 10:06 Exactly, yeah, exactly.   Michael Hingson ** 10:09 Unfortunately, sometimes it's all too easy to make a habit. But anyway, there you go. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 10:14 my one of my it's, it's funny, because after you know one of my habits I made when I was in high school that, to my mom's chagrin, was I used to always love just doing work on my bed. The positive thing about the habit was I was always comfortable. The negative thing is I would sometimes fall asleep. So many times I mid paper, you know, mid take home exam, fall asleep. I have to wake up and scramble to finish. But that doesn't show me a faster writer. If anything   Michael Hingson ** 10:41 I remember, when I was in graduate school at UC Irvine, I had an office of my own, and I was in it one day, and I was looking at some material. Fortunately, I was able to get most of the physics texts in Braille, so I was studying one, and the next thing I knew, I woke up and my finger was on the page, and I had just fallen asleep, and my finger for reading braille, was right where I left off. Always thought that was funny,   Michael Bervell ** 11:14 yeah, just a just a quick, just a quick pause. You just pause for a second, even   Michael Hingson ** 11:18 though it was about 45 minutes, but whatever. But my figure didn't move.   Michael Bervell ** 11:24 You really focused, you know, just That's it. That's it.   Michael Hingson ** 11:27 The advantage of Braille, exactly. But, you know, I do think that it's great to have those kinds of habits, and I really wish more people would learn the value of giving back and sharing, because it will come back to benefit you so many times over.   Michael Bervell ** 11:48 Yeah, yeah. I mean, what's even what influences me, like now and even throughout, you know, post high school, like when I went into college, I knew I wanted to be in some sort of service and giving back type of industry, but I didn't really know what that was, right, like, I didn't want to do want to do philanthropy full time, because I found it difficult, right? Like, I found it hard to have to go back to investors, and I found it difficult to sometimes sell the vision. And my question was, is there a way to make this more sustainable? And so I spent a lot of my time in school and college just learning about social impact, which, at the time was just coming up, like a lot of those impact investment funds, impact bonds, the idea that you can tie finance to impact, and you can have carbon offsets that people buy and sell, that has some sort of social good, that you can somehow transact. All these kind of new and interesting ideas were coming around, and it started, it just got me interested, right? It's, you know, can I make a habit of creating an impact, but also habits somehow work within, you know, this capitalist system that the world operates in. It's something I've been wrestling with, you know, even in all my my future business and kind of current business, work and practices.   Michael Hingson ** 12:58 What do you do when you propose an idea or have a thought, and you discuss with people and they object to it. How do you handle objections?   Michael Bervell ** 13:05 Yeah, I mean, I think, I think for me, I'm always interested in the root cause, right? I think I'm one who tries to understand first before trying to persuade. So I could give you an example, I think very early in my, very early my college career, I realized that my parents would be able to pay for college for me. That was the youngest of three. And, you know, they'd use a lot of their savings on my siblings, about the who ended up going to med school, which is very expensive, yeah, college, which was also very expensive. And being immigrants from Ghana, of course, they hadn't saved up an infinite amount of money. So my mom sat me down and told me, Hey, you have to pay your own tuition. And so, you know, the person I had to convince to kind of help me here was actually funny enough, restaurants are in Harvard Square, and the reason why is I decided to make a business that did restaurant consulting. So I went door to door, and I would ask people and like, hey, you know, do you need 20 Harvard students to come and help you understand how you can get more foot traffic in the door. You know, sell more pizzas or sell more burritos. I think I heard 20 or 30 knows. And finally, one woman said, Well, you know, if, if, if, if you think that you can do it, then, you know, show me. Show me the numbers, right? And that was, that was really interesting. And so I think it realized, you know, when I when she initially said, No, I said, Well, why not? She said, I just don't know if you can do it. And when I said, Oh, we can actually show you the proof, she's like, Okay, well, then if you can run a pilot and show me the proof, then I'll do it. And so understanding the why, I think, is more important than getting the rejection and, you know, getting the setback. But that's try to, that's how I try to deal with it.   Michael Hingson ** 14:38 One of the things that I learned fairly early on, when I was put in a position of starting to sell for a living, actually, in Cambridge, working for Kurzweil Computer Products and taking a Dale Carnegie sales course was stay away from asking closed ended or. Yes, no questions. And so most of the time, I wouldn't say, you know, can we do this? Or would you do this? I would say, I'd like to hear your thoughts about or we've got this idea, tell me what you think, and doing other things to get people to talk. And when I started using that in my career, it was easy to get people to talk because they they want to talk. Or, as I like to say, people love to teach, and most of the time, if you establish a relationship with people and they know you're listening, they're welcome, or they're willing to give you wisdom. And so there are so many examples I have of asking open ended questions like that, or I went into a sales meeting with one of my employees, and there were a bunch of people there, and I said, Tell me to the first person I talked with, tell me why we're here. And it totally caught him off guard. Of course. The other thing is that they didn't realize that the sales manager who was coming, that the the guy who had set up the appointment was was told to bring his manager, and they didn't realize that the sales manager was blind, which also was a great addition to help. But again, I didn't ask, so you want to take backup system, but rather tell me why we're here. Tell me what you're looking for. Why are you looking for that? What do you want it to be? And I actually realized by the time I went around the room that our product wasn't going to work, but we still did the PowerPoint presentation. And then I said, if case you haven't figured it out, our system won't work, and here's why, but here's what will work. And that eventually led to a much larger order, as it turns out, because they called back later and they said, We got another project, and we're not even putting it out for bid. Just tell us what we pay you, and we'll order it. And it's it's all about. The objections are really mostly, I think, from people who maybe have some concerns that you didn't learn about because you didn't ask an open ended up or the right question, which is something that only comes with time.   Michael Bervell ** 17:15 Yeah. I mean, I think it also sounds very similar to like, what journalists are are trained to do, like a great journalist. And I took a journalism class a few years ago, maybe five years ago, with Joe Abramson, who was one of the first female executive, executive editors of the New York Times. And this was kind of her exact lesson. Is that everyone has some story to teach, some wisdom to share, and the difficulty, or really the challenge on you as an interlocutor, as a journalist, as someone whose job it is to uncover the story, is to ask the right questions, yeah, to allow that person the space to teach.   Michael Hingson ** 17:51 And if you and if you don't know the right questions, you ask something open ended, enough that maybe you'll get to it.   Michael Bervell ** 17:57 Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then the flip side, right, because there's, of course, you can't put all the burden on the person, no, right? You have to be an active listener. You have to listen to know, and then you have to prod and even say something like, Tell me more. Yeah, exactly right. Questions like, Tell me more, her second favorite question was, and then what happened? Yeah, right. Those are two such simple things, you know? And then what? Yeah. And it's just such an opening to really evolve and to grow.   Michael Hingson ** 18:23 And if they really think you're listening and that you want to know and understand, people will talk to you exactly which is, which is really what it's about. Well, so you did all of your so you went to high school in Seattle, correct? Yeah. And, and then what did you do?   Michael Bervell ** 18:43 Yeah. So High School in Seattle Graduated, went off to Boston for college, where, you know, of course, had to figure out a way to pay for school. And that was my first, I guess, for profit business. Was this restaurant consulting company. And of course, like I said, everything I want to do in my in my life, was focused on social impact. So the impacts there was that we only hired students to work for us who needed to pay tuition. There was this program called federal work study where, if you get trade, you have to, you know, work as part of a federal mandate for some amount of hours per week, and that was the book study requirement. And for the most part, students would do on campus jobs that would pay 10, $15 an hour to do this work study. Well, I'd spent up this consulting business as a sophomore that I then ran for all three years, and on an hourly basis, we were making significantly more than that, right? So I was able to go find students who traditionally had been working their whole life, right? Harvard has such a, you know, vast background of individuals. I knew, people who were homeless, people who were billionaires and everyone in between, who ended up coming to the school and so to find people who you know had been working 40 hours a week since they were in middle school, and give them a job where they could work less and actually have more free time to invest in their community or invest back into developing new skills, was, for me, super, super impactful. On the surface, it was a restaurant. A consulting business, but behind the scenes, what we were doing with our staffing and with our culture was was around that social impact. So I stayed out in in Cambridge for for four years, studied philosophy. I got a minor in computer science, and eventually went off to Microsoft back in in Seattle, where I eventually then, you know, was product manager and was a venture capital investor, and met a bunch of really phenomenal and interesting people who were pushing technology forward.   Michael Hingson ** 20:27 Now, why Harvard, which is all the way across the country?   Michael Bervell ** 20:33 Yeah, I mean, well, I think I love traveling. I loved, I loved, you know, being out and about, and I think growing up as the youngest of three, and also as the child of African immigrants, they'd always told me, you know, we moved here for you, like we moved 3000 miles away to a country where you don't speak the language, where you don't know anybody for you. And what they meant for that is, you know, we want you to really thrive. And even you know, now I'm at the age when my parents had first moved right to the US, and I can't imagine moving to a country where I don't know the language, don't know the people, and don't know a soul for my potential future children. And their children, that's what they did, and they invested a lot of time and energy and effort into me. And they always told me, you want you to be really successful. And so I remember when I was when I was in middle school, my sister got into Harvard, which was unheard of, right? No one in our high school had gone to Harvard in the past, especially not for, you know, a black family in a primarily white neighborhood, for one of us to go to Harvard was was a big deal. And so I knew that, you know, at the very least, for my parents, for my sister, for my family, I wanted to kind of match up to that   Michael Hingson ** 21:43 well, and it certainly sounds like you've, you've done a lot of that. Oh, here's a an off the wall question, having been around Cambridge and worked in Cambridge and all that is cheapo records still in Harvard Square.   Michael Bervell ** 21:57 Oh, man. You know what's so funny, I got a record player. I got a record player last semester, and I don't remember if cheaper records, that's the one that's like, I think I've is that the one that's in like, the actual, like, it's by, like, Kendall, take by Kendall, Kendall Square.   Michael Hingson ** 22:15 No, I thought it was in Harvard Square. Okay,   Michael Bervell ** 22:19 I think, I think it still exists. If I'm not mistaken, I think it still exists. I think I got a lot, got a lot of records from cheapo over the years record stores in Cambridge. And because I got a record player as a gift, I've been, I've been collecting a lot more,   Michael Hingson ** 22:31 ah, yeah, um, I've gotten a lot of records from cheapo and over the years. And of course, not so much now, since I'm out here. But next time I get back to mass, I'll have to go check,   Michael Bervell ** 22:43 oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. We can do a cheapo records hanging how tactile It is, yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 22:52 There used to be one in New York that I would go to. They were more expensive as New York tends to be colony records, and they're not there anymore, which is sort of sad, but cheapo. Cheap just seemed to be one of those places that people liked. I don't want to say it was like a cult, although it sort of is all the dedicated people to to real vinyl, but I hope it's still   Michael Bervell ** 23:16 there. Is it? It's a chain of record stores, or is it just,   Michael Hingson ** 23:18 no, I think it's a one. Oh, yeah. If there's more than one, I'm not aware of it, I'd   Michael Bervell ** 23:23 probably say I'm 80% certain it still exists. Well there,   Michael Hingson ** 23:27 yeah, so have to come back to mass. And yeah, I'll have to go to cheaper records and Legal Seafood.   Michael Bervell ** 23:32 Oh yeah, Legal Seafood. That was, yeah, I love Legal Seafood musical all the time with my roommates from college. And, yeah, we used to order the crab cakes and eat lobster rolls. It's a great time.   Michael Hingson ** 23:44 Yeah, and then their little chocolate desserts, which are great yeah, and the chowder. Oh, well, yeah, yep, gotta, gotta get back to mass. Okay. Now whoever   Michael Bervell ** 23:53 you're listening is probably getting hungry. Well, you know,   Michael Hingson ** 23:57 as as they should, you know, you know why they call it Legal Seafood. I actually don't know nothing is frozen. It's all fresh. It's legal. Oh, I love that. I love that, at least that's what I was told. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Well, so you, you went to college and went then back to Seattle and worked for Microsoft and so on. So clearly, you're also interested in the whole idea of investing and the whole life of being an entrepreneur in various ways. And so you brought entrepreneurialism to everything that you did.   Michael Bervell ** 24:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that was my first job at Microsoft. I was, you know, managing what's called Windows IoT. So we were putting software on everything that wasn't a phone or a laptop. So think, you know, smart screens in airports, or screens in Times Square, or, you know, the type of software that your Amazon Echo, you know, maybe not Amazon in particular. But what that would run on that was working on IoT all these. They called it headless devices, yeah, devices with no screens. And that was my team for a little bit. I worked there for about year and a half. It was phenomenal. You know, we were managing multiple billions of dollars in revenue, and there was only, you know, 4050 people on my team. So you do the math, we're all managing hundreds, 10s to hundreds of millions of dollars in our products. And while I loved it, I realized that my my true passion was in was in meeting people, talking to people, and giving them the resources to succeed, versus giving them the actual technology itself. I loved being able to connect an engineer, you know, with the right supplier to work on a hard problem that could then be built for Microsoft to eventually get to a customer. And that sort of connection role, connector role is kind of the role of a venture capitalist. Yeah, right. You're connecting your limited partners who have invested in this fund to entrepreneurs who are trying to build some sort of idea from the ground up. And, you know, once you invest in the entrepreneur, then connecting the entrepreneur to mentors, to advisors, to potential employees, to potential customers. And so there's this value in being someone who's a listener, a journalist, right, like we had been talking about someone who has a habit of trying to make a broader impact. And it kind of all aligned with what I had been building up until that point. So I worked at M 12, it's Microsoft's venture capital fund, and invested in in a bunch of companies from Kahoot, which is like an education startup, to obviously open AI was a Microsoft investment as well, to other things like that. And so it was cool, because, you know, the fund was, was really, we had the mandate of just find cool companies, and because we were Microsoft, we could reach out to any founder and have a conversation. So it was, it really was a few years of just intense and deep learning and thoughtfulness that I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade for anything. What got   Michael Hingson ** 26:58 you started in the whole arena of thinking about and then being involved with digital accessibility, because we've talked about that a lot. I know that's a passion. So how did you get started down that road?   Michael Bervell ** 27:11 Yeah, I mean, it came partially through working at Microsoft, right? I mean, as I was at Microsoft, Satya Nadella, who was the CEO, he was making big, big investments into digital accessibility, primarily because his son, now, his late son, had cerebral palsy, and a lot of the technology at Microsoft, his son couldn't use, and so he had this kind of mission and vision to want to make more accessible technologies. But my first exposure to it even before then, like I said, in college, I had to work all these, all these jobs to pay tuition, and I built my own business, but one of the clients we consulted for was a large search engine. I'm sure you can imagine which one it was, and it wasn't Microsoft, and that were search engine. I helped them devise their ability strategy.   Michael Hingson ** 27:56 You mean the G word, something like that? Yeah.   Michael Bervell ** 28:00 Yeah. Duck, duck, go, yeah. No, that's it. Yeah, exactly. And so it was really cool to work with them and to see like at scale, at 200,000 employee scale, at 1000 product scale, how do you create systems and guardrails such that accessibility, in this case, digital accessibility, will be something that that actually ends up happening. Ends up happening. And so that was my first exposure to it. And then again at Microsoft. And then finally, a third time, while I was in business school, you know, working on various projects with friends. And one friend told me, you know, all I did at work this week was have to fix accessibility bugs because my company got sued. And that was and just all those moments combined with the idea that I wanted to impact the deep empathy that comes through learning and knowing and understanding people's backgrounds and histories, all of it came to a head with what I now work on at test party.   Michael Hingson ** 28:57 So now, how long has test party been around? And we'll get to that up. But, but how long have you had that?   Michael Bervell ** 29:03 Yeah, we started. We started about a year ago. Okay, so it's pretty recent,   Michael Hingson ** 29:07 so yeah, definitely want to get to that. But, so the whole issue of accessibility, of course, is a is a thing that most people don't tend to know a lot about. So so let's start this way. Why should people worry about making products and places like websites accessible? And I know websites, in a lot of ways, are a lot easier than going off and making physical products accessible, especially if they're already out, because redesign is a very expensive thing to do, and is not something that a lot of people are going to do, whereas, when you're dealing with websites, it's all about coding, and it's a lot easier. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 29:48 yeah. I mean, I think, I think fundamentally, it comes down to, you know, a set of core beliefs. And I think we could all agree, and I think we would all believe that, like everyone has the right to. You a decent, fulfilling and enjoyable life. I think regardless of where you fall on, you know, belief spectrums or anything, that's something that we all fundamentally believe. You know, you should live well. You should try to live a good life. It's what people talked about in writing for years. And I think when you think of the good life in today's terms, in the 21st century, it's almost inseparable from a life that also engages with technology, whether it's cell phones or computers or whatever it might be, technology has become so fundamental into how we live that it now has also become part of how we live well and how we live a good life. And I'll give you a clear example, right? Let's suppose you really believe that voting is part of living the good life. There is a time, 100 years ago, you know, you didn't need to really have a car. You could get a rehearsing buggy. Maybe you could even walk to a voting station and cast your vote in today's world, especially, let's suppose a COVID world, and even a post COVID world, computers, technology, websites, are fundamental in living that good life, if that's your belief system. And you can play this game with any belief that you have, and once you extrapolate into what does it take for you to do that thing in the best way possible? It almost inevitably, inevitably, you know, engages with technology. Yeah, so why do I think having accessible websites are important? Well, it's because pretty much 195 people has a disability of some sort, and so to live the good life, they have to engage technology. And if that technology is not working for them for whatever reason, then that needs to be fixed. That needs to be changed. And of course, there's the guardrails of laws, you know, ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, EAA European Accessibility Act and others that try to mandate this. And of course, there's the goodwill of companies who try to do this proactively. I think Apple is a really good example, and Microsoft as well. But fundamentally, the question is, you know, what is a good life? How do you enable people to live that? And I think through technology, people should be able to live a better life, and should not have any barriers to access.   Michael Hingson ** 32:02 The thing is, though, take apple, for example. For the longest time, Apple wouldn't do anything about making their products accessible. Steve Jobs, jobs basically told people to pound sand when they said, iTunes, you wasn't even accessible, much less the iPod and the iPhone and the Mac. And it wasn't until two things happened that they changed really. One was target.com target had been sued because they wouldn't make their website accessible, and eventually too many things went against target in the courtroom, where they finally said, Okay, we'll settle and make this work. When they settled, it cost them $8 million to settle, whereas if they had just fixed it up front, the estimate is that it would have been about $40,000 in time and person hours, but because of where the lawsuit was filed and so on, it was $8 million to settle the case. And so that was one thing, and the other was it had been made very clear that Apple was the next company on the target list because they weren't doing anything to make their product successful. Well, Apple suddenly said, Okay, we'll take care of it. We will deal with it. And I think they had already started, but they and so as not to get sued, they said, We will do it. Well, probably the first thing that happened was the iPhone 3g well, maybe it wasn't the three, it was earlier, but the iPhone became accessible. The iPod became accessible. Pretty much all of them, iTunes, you the Mac. So by 2009 last when I got my iPhone 3g Apple was well known for making their products accessible, and they did it in a very clever way. It was accessible right from the outset. You didn't have to buy other stuff to make their products work. No need to buy a new screen reader or any of those kinds of things. So they spread the cost over every product that they sold, whoever bought it, so anyone who buys an iPhone can invoke accessibility today, which, which was cool, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 34:09 yeah. And I think through Apple, I mean, I think the initial argument I made for why is it import to make websites accessible was an ethical argument, right? I think in Apple's case, they, they probably did the business case analysis and understood this actually does make economic sense. And I think what you see today is there is even more economic sense because of the expanding market size. Right? Think the aging population that will develop some sort of disability or impairment, right? That's really growing larger, right? Think about, you know, individuals who may have what people call temporary disabilities that are not permanent, but last for some period of time, whether it's, you know, nine months, 10 months, two years, three years, and those types of things. So I think there is, there's also a business case for it. I think that's what Apple as a case study has shown. What you bring up, though, is, does it matter? Does it really matter? Like, why companies start doing this, right? And I think that's a question, you know, to grapple with. You know, if Apple did it out of the goodness of their heart versus because they didn't want to get sued, but the downstream effects are the same, you know, does that matter? And, you know, question, Do the ends justify the means? In this case, the ends are good, at least just by the start, perhaps, but sure that interesting question so, but I do think that they have done really good work   Michael Hingson ** 35:27 well. And you and you brought up something which, you know we talked about, which is that you talked about one company that dealt with some of because they got sued. And litigation is all around us. Unfortunately, we're a very litigious society and in our world today. So so like with accessibe, that that I work with, and work for that company, and a lot of what I do, some people have said, well, accessibe shouldn't always use the idea that, well, if you don't make your website accessible, you're going to get sued. That's a bad marketing decision, and I think there are limits, but the reality is that there are lawyers who are out there who still haven't been muzzled yet, who will file 5060, 100 complaints just to and they get a blind person to sign off and say, Yeah, we support this, because they'll get paid something for it. But they're not looking to make the companies deal with accessibility. They just want to earn money, 10,015 $20,000 per company. But the reality is, part of the market is educating people that litigation is a possibility because of the fact that the internet is a place of business under the Americans with Disabilities Act.   Michael Bervell ** 36:54 Yeah, exactly. I think when you think of like, you know, what is the purpose of litigation? Again, I, as a philosophy guy, I always think back to first principles, and it really is a deterrent, right? Obviously, no one wants to get sued. And, of course, no one wants to pay damages, punitive or reparative. And so in this case, these are all examples of punitive damages that people are paying for not having done the right thing. Right? In in, in the best case, you do the right thing to begin with. But I think it's, you know, the consequence of not doing the right thing. I think, of course, there's the question of you described, kind of these lawyers, or what people call as kind of the trolls who are just kind of suing and, you know, reaping the benefits from this. And I think it's an unfortunate side effect. I do wish that there was a world where these trolls wouldn't even need to exist, because things are working perfectly, right, well,   Michael Hingson ** 37:45 and the reality is that it goes back far earlier than the internet. I mean, there are places, there are people who would drive around and make people in wheelchairs who might find the smallest by violation wasn't even necessarily a legitimate violation, and they would sue and so and so. It isn't anything new that is just with the internet. Yeah, it's been going on for years. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 38:11 those are the drive by lawsuits. I remember I heard about those, and I think it's, this is the digital equivalent of that,   Michael Hingson ** 38:16 right? Yeah, right. And it is an issue, and it is something that that needs to be dealt with, but you also talk about doing the right thing, and that's really the better reason for doing it. If you do, you really want to exclude up to 20% of your potential business by not making your website accessible. Or better yet, if you make your website inclusive for all, what is going to happen when somebody comes to your website looking for a product and then they buy it because they were able to are they going to come back to that website? Are they going to go looking elsewhere? And there are so many studies like Nielsen did studies, and others have done studies that show absolutely people appreciate brand loyalty, and when they feel that they're they're valued and included, they're going to stick with that company.   Michael Bervell ** 39:12 Yeah? But even with that said, right, there's so this conflict of we all logically know it's the right thing to do, there's business purpose for doing it, and yet people don't do it. Yeah, 97% of the internet is still not accessible, if you look at this correct right? And so our hypothesis release, what we take, and what I take as a business is that sometimes, if it's too hard to do the right thing, people won't do the right thing, but that's what they want to do. And so how do you make it easier to do the right thing? And that's hopefully what, what we're what we're hoping to change in the industry, is just making it easier and also letting people know that this is an issue. One   Michael Hingson ** 39:48 of the one of the criticisms, oh, go ahead. Go ahead. A lot of people   Michael Bervell ** 39:52 don't, don't do the right thing, because just don't know that there is a right thing to do. You know   Michael Hingson ** 39:56 right well. And one of the criticisms I've heard over the. Years, especially dealing with the products like accessibe is, well, the problem is, you just slap this AI thing on their site, you're not teaching them anything, and that's not a good thing. And with manual coders, they're going to teach people. Well, that's not true either, but, but this whole argument of, well, you just put it on there, and then you go away, which isn't true, but again, that's one of the criticisms that I've heard any number of times, and that you're not really educating people about accessibility. You're not really educating them much about it. And the answer is, look, the company that wants to do business came to you in the first place. So they obviously knew they had to do something.   Michael Bervell ** 40:44 Yeah, yeah. And I think when I think through it, it's like, how do you make sure that the downstream effects of whatever you do is just positive and beneficial, right? And the ideal, as we all agree, I think, would be just to build it right the first time. Whether it's physical buildings, build a building right the first time. Or, if it's websites, build the website correctly the first time. Whatever helps people to get to that stage and that level of thinking and habits I think are, are ideal   Michael Hingson ** 41:13 coming from your background and so on. You know now that there are two basic ways that people can work to make websites accessible. One is the traditional way where you have someone who goes in and codes in the access and puts it right on the website. And now, over the past several years, the other way that has come into existence is the whole concept of using as accessibe does AI and although AI won't necessarily do everything that needs to be done, it will do most of what needs to be done, and maybe everything, depending on how complex the website is. But what do you think about the whole fact that now AI has entered into the accessibility world and people are using it?   Michael Bervell ** 42:02 Yeah, I think AI is interesting. And I think AI is a tool. I think it's it's a tool that's been developed, obviously, over a long history, right? Like the first artificial intelligent computers were in the 60s and 70s, being able to predict things, and of course, you heard of AlphaGo and computers that could pay chess and all these different things. So I think we'll definitely be surprised by what AI can do as a tool, right? And the question is, it will be, you know, the panacea, the thing to cure it all. Well, we all love for that to be the case. Who knows? You know, if it'll be AI, maybe functionally, AI could do that. But in terms of compute power, you know, it won't be able to until we have quantum computing or something right, in which case maybe it'll leapfrog this whole type of technology, and maybe web page will be obsolete in a decade, and then this whole idea of even needing to use AI to fix web pages will be replaced something else, like, like Be My Eyes, or something like that. That's even more advanced. But I think, as I see it, it's a tool that can be used to make it easier. And whether it's ease of use in terms of physical effort, ease of cost, in terms of bringing down costs to you know, to make a website compliant or a digital asset compliant, or just ease of understanding, right? Someone can explain to you what these really complicated rules mean, and so you can actually think about it from day one. So I think AI as a tool can lead to ease, which can then furthermore lead to hopefully more accessible products.   Michael Hingson ** 43:30 Well, the first time I ran into real AI was working with Ray Kurzweil back in the late 70s. He developed a machine that would read print out loud to blind people. But one of the things that was unique about them, well, vinyl, whether it's totally unique, but certainly was unique for blind people and for most of us, was the fact that the more the machine read, the better the reading got. It actually learned, and it learned how to to understand and analyze its confidence. And so it would get better the more that it read. Chris. The only problem with that is, back in those days, the software was on a cassette that went into a player that was part of a Data General, Nova two. And so it had to learn all over again every time you rebooted the machine and loaded the program. But that's okay. It learned based on on what you were reading, but it really dramatically got better the more you read. And I think that today, the reality is that a lot of people really need to. And I would say this is true of manual coders. And I know a few who have adopted this, they'll use accessibe to do what it can do, and then they, in turn, then go and address the issues that access a B's widget doesn't do. And for me, my. My learning that lesson actually goes back to the mid 1980s when I couldn't get a job, and I started my own company selling computer aided design systems to architects. And a lot of architects would come in and say, well, we can't buy your system. Yeah, great. It works, but if we use it, we'll develop our drawings in a fraction of the time, and we can't charge what we did, because now we're not spending as much time, and I said you're missing the whole point. You change your model. You're not charging for your time. You're charging for your expertise. You don't need to charge less. And what you do is then you go off and you get more projects, but you can also do more for each individual customer that you bring in. We had access to a system that was a one of the early PC based three dimensional solid metal modeling CAD systems, so people could come into our office, or anybody who bought the product could could invite their customers in, and they could do actual walk throughs and fly throughs of buildings. They had light sources or Windows to look out. You could even see what was going on outside. It wasn't renderings. You actually saw everything right on the computer. Those are so many things that revolutionize the industry. Now, of course, CAD is everywhere as it should be, and the reality is that that I think that any manual programmer who is programming a website could use accessibe to do a lot of the work, and then an accessibe also has some tools using a product called Access flow, where they can analyze and even tell you exactly what you need to do with the things that aren't accessible, and then you can do it, but you can use accessibe to do most of the stuff, and it continuously monitors it's a scalability issue, and you don't get any scalability with manual coding at all. So again, it's the whole, as you point out, the whole tool of artificial intelligence really can make a big difference in what we're doing to create accessibility on in the internet and in so many other ways as we go forward.   Michael Bervell ** 47:06 Yeah, and already we're running right up on time with a minute or two left. But I think even fundamentally, what you're what you're describing, back to first principles is, is, if we make it easier, either in time or in effort or in understanding, to make things accessible. Will people do it right? Whether you're using, you know, an access to be or whether you're using another tool, there's this question, How will it help? And will it help? And I think in evaluating any tool, and really I can apply in so many cases, that's the core question task.   Michael Hingson ** 47:37 Since we started late, it's up to you, but time wise, we're fine. It's up to you, but I realize that we want to end fairly soon here, but I think you're right, and that gets back to the whole education issue. People really need to learn and understand the value of accessibility, why it's a good thing, and it's kind of hard to argue with losing 20% of your business because your website's not accessible. And accessible, and the reputation that you gain by not doing it can go beyond that 20% when people tell their own friends about the issues they're facing. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But it goes the other way. You make it accessible, and you get all sorts of accolades. That's going to help too. But it is a conversation that we need to have, and it's part of the whole big conversation about disabilities. In general, we don't really see disabilities as much in the conversation. When we hear about people talking and discussing diversity, they talk about race, gender, sexual orientation, so on, but they don't talk about disabilities, and disabilities tend to be left out of the conversation for the most part, which is extremely unfortunate. Why do you think that is?   Michael Bervell ** 48:46 Yeah, I think, I think it comes down to, I'm not, I'm not sure why it is. I'm not sure. But I think even though I'm not sure why it is, I do know what I hope. And I think what I hope is for, you know, a world where every, every part of society reflects what it's made up of, right? So you look and it's representative of of all the constituents, people with disabilities, people of different genders and races and and so on and so forth, so, so I think that's what I hope for. I think it's difficult, right? It's difficult based on the systems that have been made people's biases and more to get there, but I do think, I do think that's ultimately the hope. But I   Michael Hingson ** 49:30 think that a lot of it comes down to fear people. Fear people with disabilities. I think that the whole fear factor, and even with race or gender or sexual orientation, so on, some of the comments, if you listen to them, all they're doing is promoting fear which which doesn't help at all. But in the case of disabilities, oh my gosh, I could become blind or paralyzed in a second, and that fear is something that we really don't tend to you. Do nearly as much about as we should. Now I know you and I earlier talked about fear, and the reality is that that we can learn to control fear. I would never tell people don't be afraid. No such thing as not being afraid, but you can certainly learn to control fear so that you can use it again as a very powerful tool to guide you and help you, and that's what the best aspects of fear are all about. I think, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 50:26 I totally agree. I totally agree. Well, speaking of fear, I would be afraid of what might go I'm a president for Section G, which is one of the sections here, HBS, and we have to go select our Class Day speaker. So I'd be afraid if I, if I missed too much of the well, if they,   Michael Hingson ** 50:43 if they want to hire a speaker, I'm just saying I know Mike was, I was like, Man, I wish I had met you, like, back when you're doing our, our, like alumni and friend speakers. On the other hand, we can certainly talk about next year, and I would love to do that. Well, I want to really thank you for being here. I think we'll just have to have another discussion about all of this in the future. But I really appreciate you being here a lot and chatting very, very frequently, and you're going to go off and play drums later too, right? Oh, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 51:11 it's a busy I'm in my, you know, Shirley retirement era, you know, yeah, right. Go back into, back into the workforce.   Michael Hingson ** 51:19 So, real quick, though, you wrote a book. What's it called?   Michael Bervell ** 51:23 It's called unlocking unicorns. I'll send you a copy of the book, and so you can put in the show notes and everything else. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 51:29 that would be great. And if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that? Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 51:34 but just my name, Michael purvell, M, I, C, H, A, E, L, B, E, R, V, E, L, l.com, contact my website. Is there? My bio, and this podcast will be there eventually   Michael Hingson ** 51:46 as well it will, and you'll get all the info. Well, thanks very much, and I want to thank you all for listening. Really appreciate you listening to us today. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please email me at Michael, h, i, m, I, C, H, A, E, L, C, we spell our names the same. H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, www dot Michael hingson, H, I N, G, s, o, n.com/podcast, and would love to to hear your thoughts. Love it. If you would give us a five star review wherever you're listening. If you know anyone else who ought to be a guest, please introduce us. We're always looking for it. And I would also say if anybody needs a speaker, it is what I've been doing ever since September 11, and I'm always looking for speaking opportunities. So please reach out and let's see if we can chat and and one of these days, maybe we'll get Michael to bring us up to Harvard we can go visit the coupe. But thanks so much for listening, everyone. Thanks once more for thanks. Once more Michael, for being here. Thanks.   Michael Hingson ** 52:52 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Mark, Archie Comics writer Francis Bonnet, Senior Correspondent Charlie Saladino, and Hassan Godwin cover the news, Jennifer Elyse Feldman interviews Filmmakers Robbie Moffat*, and at NYCC, Mark interviews comic creator Mike Kingston *slight audio issues

Send us a Text Message.What do you get by marrying wrestling and comics? Headlocked Comics of course! Mike Kingston is the man behind the indie publisher, which started in 2007 with barely enough funds to pay for printing. Mike and Headlocked have come a long way since then. Wrestlers themselves have contributed art and stories to the comics, and in 2017, the company raised $100K for their Kickstarter project! Headlocked is still going strong, and Mike tells us about all the ins and outs in today's interview.You can follow Mike's adventures with Headlocked Comics on X and Instagram @HeadlockedComic. And check out his site here: headlockedcomic.com._________________Check out a video version of this episode on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/dollarbinbandits.If you like this podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts. And if you really like this podcast, support what we do as a member of the Dollar Bin Boosters: buzzsprout.com/1817176/support.Looking for more ways to express your undying DBB love and devotion? Email us at dollarbinbandits@gmail.com. Follow us @dollarbinbandits on Facebook and Instagram, and @DBBandits on X._____________________Dollar Bin Bandits is the official podcast of TwoMorrows Publishing. Check out their fine publications at twomorrows.com.Past Present FeatureA filmmaker appreciation podcast hosted by Emmy-winning director...Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the Show.

Rich sits down with Mike Kingston - creator and writer of Headlocked ! He's been making the deadlocked comic since 2007 and this week he has a Kickstarter coming to a close for Headlocked: Tales From the Road - Volume 3 We chat comics, wrestling, and everything in between. You can help fund the project here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/headlockedcomic/headlocked-tales-from-the-road-volume-3 You can find Mike @HeadlockedComic on twitter You can find Rich @btcrich on twitter

The Dads are joined by the creator of Headlocked Comics, Mike Kingston as we discuss his unique niche in the world of professional wrestling.

Bryan Bashin was born fully sighted, but over time he lost his eyesight. Like many such people, he tried to hide his blindness. Bryan was, in some senses, different than many. Because as he began to discover that other blind people were leading full and successful lives, he decided that he could do the same. He received training and then began to seek employment and attained a most successful career.   Bryan would tell you that he loves learning and advocating. He is an extremely inclusive individual although he clearly does do a powerful job of advocating for blind and low-vision persons. Oh yes, not vision impaired, but low vision. You will hear about this during our conversation.   For the past 13 years, Bryan Bashin has been the CEO of the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind. He has proven to be quite an innovator due to his philosophical orientation concerning blindness. You will hear of his accomplishments.   Bryan announced his retirement from the Lighthouse earlier this year. His future plans are typical of Bryan. Come along with us and hear Bryan's story and then please give us a 5-star rating wherever you listen to this podcast episode.     About the Guest: Bryan Bashin, CEO, reports to the Board of Directors and supervises the directors of Communications, Development, Operations, Programs and Enchanted Hills Camp and Retreat. Mr. Bashin has served in this position since 2010. Mr. Bashin's extensive professional experience includes Executive Editor for the Center for Science and Reporting, Assistant Regional Commissioner for the United States Department of Education: Rehabilitation Services, and Executive Director of Society for the Blind in Sacramento. Mr. Bashin has been blind since college and from that time has dedicated a substantial part of his career to advocating for equality, access, training and mentorship for individuals who are blind or low vision. He serves or has served on numerous committees and organizations, including California Blind Advisory Committee, VisionServe Alliance, San Francisco State University's Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability, World Blind Union, National Industries for the Blind, and California Agencies for the Blind and Visually Impaired.         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 also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   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 UM Intro/Outro  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 Welcome to unstoppable mindset. And I am really excited today to have an opportunity to talk with Bryan Bashin, the CEO of the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind. And you will see why as we go forward. Bryan is a very interesting and engaging guy. I've known him for quite a while. And I think we've both known each other we like each other, don't we, Bryan?   Bryan Bashin  01:44 Yeah, we have traveled in the same paths. And we have been on the same side of the barricades.   Michael Hingson  01:51 And that's always a good thing. So you're doing well.   Bryan Bashin  01:57 I'm doing great. This is a this is a good time for me and Lighthouse after 13 years, thinking about sort of a joyous conclusion to a number of projects before I move on.   Michael Hingson  02:10 Wow. Well, that's always a good thing. Well, tell me a little bit about you before the lighthouse growing up and stuff like that, so people get to know about you a bit.   Bryan Bashin  02:20 Sure. The short version I grew up as a sighted boy started becoming blind when I was 12 became legally blind when I was a sophomore at UC Berkeley. And like all newly blind, low vision people tried to hide it for as long as possible, and really failed. I didn't have role models, then, like my Kingson. I didn't really know what was possible in blindness. That pivot came later in my life. And so I just did what a lot of low vision people do. Hide, try to pass all of that. So I did that in my early 20s. I started my career in journalism. I my first job out of Berkeley was at the CBS television affiliate in San Francisco KPI X, API X. Yes, Gen five and the news department there. And I worked there for a couple of years that I wanted to move up in the world. And I joined the channel 10, the CBS Benli a CBS affiliate in Sacramento, and I was higher up on that journalism,   Michael Hingson  03:32 and wrong and you move and you moved from five to 10.   Bryan Bashin  03:35 I did. I doubled. See. After after a few years in local broadcast news, television news, I thought I'm a little more serious person that and I wanted to go deeper. And so I quit my job and I started writing for newspapers, and then magazines, and specialized in science and public policy. So I did lots of work and environment, Space Science, energy usage, epidemiology. You know, for kind of curious guy like me, journalism was a really good fit because it fed all the things I want to learn about him. And I was in my 20s. Somewhere along the way, as I had less than less vision, I knew that I needed to get solutions. And I didn't know where those would come from, but I knew it involves people. But short version is almost 30 years ago. In a quiet time in my life. I just picked up some copies of the Braille monitor and started reading them. And in it, I found all kinds of stories about blind people doing amazing things. Things that I didn't think I could do as a person like travel where I wanted when I want it or efficiently use Computers, all that. So I went into a boot camp. It was then the fourth NFB Training Center. Actually it was in Sacramento. Just that the year that I needed it. It only lasted one year. The Marcelino center run by the California affiliate of the NFB, anyway, long story short, I threw myself into training, got training, and then had the most successful period in journalism I've ever had. And that's the first half of my working career.   Michael Hingson  05:33 Did you ever know mozzie? Marcelino?   Bryan Bashin  05:35 No, I didn't. He passed before the Senator that was named after him. That's right. Yeah.   Michael Hingson  05:41 He was one of the very active early members of the National Federation of the Blind of California and managed a lot of the legislative activities of the Federation. In Sacramento, if you went with him into the Capitol, everyone knew Mazie. Which, which is important.   Bryan Bashin  06:02 Yeah. Yeah, I certainly was living in Sacramento in the 90s. And his memory was an active presence, then. Well, I finished up my immersion training at the Marcelino center. Four years later, I was running the Society for the blind there in Sacramento. Having gotten the confidence, and aspiration, that I could do stuff there, Executive Director, retired after 33 years, and I interviewed and got the job. That's when I got my first taste of real service in the blindness community. Chance to like, think of a project, think of a problem, get funds for it, hire cool staff for it and do it. And for me, you know, I might have written an article in a magazine and a million people would read it, but I wouldn't meet any of them. And I wouldn't have that thing that we all love that community. So when I started working at society for the blind, that community was right there. And it was deeply gratifying. And so I started working on many, many projects. And I did that in Sacramento for six years, had a wild time with it. And then I was asked to apply in the US Department of Education, to be one of the regional commissioners in region nine for the Rehab Services Administration. So that was, that was really bittersweet to leave the Society for the blind, but I wanted to learn more. And suddenly, I found myself responsible for half a billion dollars in federal spending across all disabilities, and learning like a fire hose about the public rehabilitation system. And I did that until all the regional offices were closed by the administration. And I found myself for the first time in my working life, not knowing what I was going to do for a living. So I, I did some expert witnessing in court, I worked with a startup, I did some other things regarding direction, mentoring of blind people looking for employment. And then after 20 years, the director of the Lighthouse for the Blind, took a new job. And it was the first job I was hired for that I actually knew what I was doing when I came in, because I'd run another org like that. And that was 13 years ago.   Michael Hingson  08:36 There you are. What who was the commissioner when the offices closed?   Bryan Bashin  08:42 Yeah, well, it was Joanne Wilson until it was Joanne Yeah, yeah, it was Joanne Wilson, then   Michael Hingson  08:48 no, no, she necessarily had a lot of choices. But   Bryan Bashin  08:51 well, that's a long story. She used everything in her power to oppose this. But it was it was at a higher level that was made. Yeah.   Michael Hingson  09:04 So you've been at the lighthouse 13 years. And tell me a little bit about what it was like when you started and why did you decide to go to the lighthouse?   Bryan Bashin  09:19 You know, one thing that I can say is that my predecessor, had been prudent with funds. And so this was an agency that had good amount of money in the bank, like $40 million. I came from society for the blind. When I got there. We had six weeks of revenue. And we grew that and made it more stable. But I was attracted to the lighthouse because it was a storied organization. It had been around for, you know, 100 years. It owned this amazing camp in Napa that I'll talk about. It had the bones of a really great Oregon As a nation, and I thought I could do something with it. And I came there and I first saw the headquarters building then across from the symphony. And I thought, there's not enough places here to teach. There's not enough public spaces down. I have things happen. It was just the lighthouse had outgrown its its place. And I thought, oh, here we go. Again, I done a capital campaign in Sacramento to get its new building. Now, I'm going to have to do this again in San Francisco. But we looked at that and we thought, it's got to be close to transit. It's got to be in San Francisco, got to have cool places for people to work to ennoble the workforce not to be a dark hole windowless, undistinguished former garage, which was the old, old building, we found a place in the end, after many different things, we found a place right on top on top of the civic center BART station. And through a partnership and some other things we were able, I was able to convince the board to take this leap. And they did. And five years ago, six years ago, now, we occupied our new headquarters, which really has made us a place where people want to come and work and convene and hold events. It really now has the feel of a center.   Michael Hingson  11:32 Chris, the other thing that happened for the for the lighthouse was you got a pretty significant capital infusion along the way.   Bryan Bashin  11:40 Yeah, a little bit. I would do want people to know that this idea for a new building, the search for the Board's agreeing to do it and agreeing to buy it happened all before the big request, right? So we did, we made all that happen. In December and January, January 2014. Five months later, out of the blue, we got the first letter, understanding that we were going to be receiving receiving a request, that turned out to be the largest request in the history of American blindness to an individual $130 million. It turned out. And that allowed so much of what happened after to be possible.   Michael Hingson  12:31 Right. And that was what I was thinking it wasn't so much the building, but then you could really put into practice the vision that you were creating. That's right. That's right. So how, how has the lighthouse changed in over, let's say the last eight years since 2014?   Bryan Bashin  12:52 Yeah, I think I think I could say, ambition and reach and kind of audaciousness some things are pretty well known. We launched the Holman prize for blind ambition, it's a world prize, we've had, it's getting close to 1000 applicants over the seven years we've had the homerun prize. Those applicants come from every continent, maybe I haven't aggregated all of them. But it wouldn't surprise me to say 40 countries or so have applied. And if you go on YouTube and go to home and price.org. And look, you're going to see what blind people are saying they their dreams are from all over the world. And you cannot think about blindness the same way when you see people in rural Nepal or Africa or an urban Europe, talk about what's important to them. There is no real public way to aggregate all these things other than what we've done thus far. And so that's the kind of audaciousness that has come up in the last eight years. But it's been across everything.   Michael Hingson  14:07 What is the homerun prize? Exactly.   Bryan Bashin  14:10 Prom homerun prize is an annual prize awarded to three people each year by independent jury of blind people that the lighthouse convenes none of those juries are Lighthouse employees. The purpose of the prize is to show great growth and ambition in anything. It's not necessarily a project to do good in the world for blind people or though it can be it could be personal growth, like rowing a boat across the Bosphorus or climbing a mountain or organizing something that was never organized before that kind of thing. We award 320 $5,000 awards, and the price has been amazingly popular with hundreds of 1000s of views about blind people on our website and on YouTube. I'm happy to say that our partner Waymo, is now sponsoring one of the prizes at $25,000.   Michael Hingson  15:11 That is pretty exciting. Yeah. And I've I've watched it through the years and it's it is absolutely amazing and wonderful to see the the different attitudes and philosophies and as you said, dreams that blind people have, because most of the time, we're not encouraged.   Bryan Bashin  15:31 Yeah, most of the time people settle. This is, this is really, beyond mere skills that any blind organization teaches. And I don't mean to derogate them, the skills are essential. We can't do anything without skills. But they're not enough. Somehow my you got the confidence to be a captain of your own ship, metaphorically speaking. That's what got you out of the World Trade Center. That's what got you into business in science and everything else. We want to we this is the this is the mission that any Blind Agency really needs to focus on. Beyond skills. How do you teach confidence? How do you teach what Jacobus tenBroek said that we have a right to live in the world to be at that table, that we are not an embarr and a barren sea in the human condition. We're part of the human condition. And so getting that deep knowledge, something that the late James avec said, not just knowing it in your head, but in your heart, that It's respectable to be blind. And all of that that's, that's the best agencies get at that as well.   Michael Hingson  16:49 We as as a class, need to be more in the conversation and it isn't going to happen unless we demand it. You know, it's it's interesting. We celebrated Global Accessibility Awareness Day last, what Thursday, and later in the year, we'll be celebrating some other events regarding disabilities. What amazes me is even with the visibility that's happened so far, it never seems to hit any of the mainstream television news. Casts or talk shows, the I don't see anyone celebrating Disability Employment Awareness Month, or anything relating to disability awareness, like we see African American history or LGBTQ pride, awareness and so on. Why is it that we're just not still included? Even though even though according to the CDC, up to 25%, of all Americans have some sort of a disability. And we'll of course leave out like dependents, which takes in everyone else, but nevertheless.   Bryan Bashin  18:06 Well, you know, we live in a different as a longtime journalist, we live in a different journalistic culture now. And so what triumphs is narrative, not policy. What triumphs is something that gets is clickbait. Something that gets you emotionally. And I won't say that there, there haven't been good stories. The lighthouses then, Board Chair Chris Downey, who you know, is, as one of only a handful of practicing blind architects got 15 minutes on 60 minutes, one of their most popular episodes been rebroadcast four or five times now. That is a powerful narrative. So we need more of them. I really do think that in any state, any blind organization has stories, just like Chris is just as powerful. You know, our job is to actually be out there relationally with journalists so that they can understand what the stories are. But it's not going to be from a press release, or some some kind of awareness month. It's going to have to be the personal connections that we have with journalists so that we can wind up pitching stories.   Michael Hingson  19:27 Well, it's the usual thing. What it really means is we need to tell the story.   Bryan Bashin  19:35 That's right. As soon as it becomes a story about them. We lose, huh? Yeah.   Michael Hingson  19:41 Yeah, we need we need to be out there and tell the story. And you're right. We need to tell it in a way that will click with people and interest people. But I think that that certainly is something that can be done and we We also collectively need to understand that we need to tell the story and not be shy about it.   Bryan Bashin  20:08 That's right. Yeah, that's right.   Michael Hingson  20:11 And I think all too often, we tend to be shy and we don't want to, to be out there talking about I remember early on after September 11, we got pretty visible in the news. And it was because really of me contacting Guide Dogs for the Blind, just to say, we got out because people from Guide Dogs had seen us in the world transip Trade Center, they've visited us. And I joined guide dogs in about a year afterward. And there was a lot of visibility interviews in the media. By that time, we had been on Larry King Live three times. And on one of the guide dog lists, somebody said, Well, he's just a meteor media whore. And a number of people fortunately reacted, I did not, but a number of people said, What are you talking about? He's out there telling the story. And that is, in reality, the case is that somebody needs to and we all should be out there telling the story saying we're better than people think.   Bryan Bashin  21:12 That's right. That is really true. You know, there's an inherent tension between this knee that you just said about, we need to tell the story because otherwise Hollywood is going to tell the story about us. And the need, you know what the most radical thing is, it's the average blind person doing their average job, unremarkably, and without fanfare and attention, that is the revolution. And so, you know, why should Why should every blind person feel obligated to write a book or do a story. And yet, we have a responsibility as a you have taken to say, This is my life experience, people will learn from it. And so I'll do the hard work to get it out there.   Michael Hingson  21:59 But the very fact that other people are just going to work, and trying to go to work, doing the job, and trying to even get better at doing the job is as much if not more of the story as anything else.   Bryan Bashin  22:14 That's the real revolution. And that's the world we want to help bring about.   Michael Hingson  22:20 So I am curious about something. I believe it's been attributed to you. Scary already. But but I've I've adopted it. People say that we're blind or visually impaired, and I object to the concept of visually impaired because I've always thought I looked the same. I don't like vision impaired because I think I got lots of vision, although as I love to say, but I don't see so good. But I can accept vision impaired. What do you think about that, that concept of the, the terminology like that? And where do words matter in what we do?   Bryan Bashin  23:00 words do matter. And every every generation needs to own and invent words that are relevant to them. And so although I work in a building that says Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, I've come to see that word visually impaired is actually ablest. It means that we are being defined by what we cannot do, we have impairment of vision, we are not a normal part of society. You know, I think the more neutral and non ablest way to construct it is just to talk about people who are blind, or have low vision. Yeah, so that's, that's a positive way. It's neutral way. All these other things over the years, skirting around the word blind, as if that was something we shouldn't be proud of, are talking about the proud people with low vision, instead of looking at them as just simply a characteristic they have, they have low vision. We look at them as impairment or other other ways in which they're, quote, not normal. So that's why words matter. And we in our publications at Lighthouse tried to use a modern language to talk about blindness.   Michael Hingson  24:19 And I do like the concept of low vision. If you talk to a person who is deaf, and you say hearing impaired, you're apt to be shot because that is absolutely unacceptable, deaf or hard of hearing, which is the same concept.   Bryan Bashin  24:34 Yeah. And of course, you always want to talk to the people ourselves, about how we want to be caught. Yeah.   Michael Hingson  24:43 Unfortunately, I think there's still all too many of us that have not really thought it through. But I think as people learn and recognize that we do have the same right to live in the world and are demanding it more, more and more people will wreck denies the value of something like blind or a person who happens to be low vision.   Bryan Bashin  25:05 There are agencies around the country who have steadily taken the word blind out of their name. I think it's a profound mistake, as if who we are needs to be euphemized or just lately swept under the rug. I am a proud blind person because I've been around other blind people who haven't want to euphemized who we are. But yet we have agencies around the country with hundreds of millions of dollars who think that they don't want the word blind in their name. I think the first step in proper rehabilitation is to say who you are.   Michael Hingson  25:46 And do it with pride. Yep. So well, and just to carry that on a little bit more, Dr. Ken Jernigan passed down the late Dr. Ken Jernigan, past president of the National Federation of the Blind, I think came up with the best definition of blindness of all, which is basically if you are eyesight is decreased to the point where you have to use alternatives to full eyesight to accomplish things, then you should consider yourself blind and there's nothing wrong with that.   Bryan Bashin  26:17 Yeah, we're all in this together. Just like, I can't speak for that community. But it's been 150 years since African Americans blacks would talk about various grades and gradations of, of their, their heritage. Just part of the movement now as it should be,   Michael Hingson  26:40 as it should be. And it's unfortunate that it takes some of the kinds of things that it has done to raise awareness for black lives, if you will. But hopefully we're making some progress, although the politicians tend to be the biggest obstructionist to a lot of that big surprise   Bryan Bashin  27:01 there, Mike.   Michael Hingson  27:05 Yeah, it is amazing. As I love to tell people I I try not to be political on this podcast. So I'm an equal opportunity abuser, you know, I'm, I'm with Mark Twain. Congress is that grand old benevolent asylum for the helpless and that's all there is to it. So we can we can abuse them all. It's it's a whole lot more fun. Well, so you have really made some evolutionary changes in the lighthouse. You mentioned enchanted Hills, which I first learned about when I was here in Southern California as a teenager, did not go to Enchanted hills. But I went to what that time, what was the foundation for the junior blinds camp camp Bloomfield, and but I've heard and kept up with enchanted Hills throughout the years and the camp had some challenges a few years ago with the fires and so on. That that took place up in Northern California, and you've been really working to address a lot of that. Tell us a little if you would about enchanted hills. Yeah. Where it was, where it came from, and and where it's going? Well,   Bryan Bashin  28:17 a blind woman rose Resnick founded it in 1950, because she wanted blind people, blind youth and adults to be active participants in nature. At the time, most blind folks went to schools for the blind, urban and restrictive. And Rose had a great experience growing up back east, with camps for the blind, it was a liberation for her. There were no camps when in outwest, for the blind, he founded the first one that we've had at Lighthouse for 72 years now. Why is it important? That mentorship to see cool blind people who are just a few years ahead of you who are owning their lives, you can't learn this in a classroom. You've got to hang out with people, it takes time. It's like that, that same mentorship, you'll see in a convention, a blank convention. The power of that is you got to week, well, you've got a summer at camp, and you've got a summer with people where you can actually have time to finish your conversations and to get lost and try to grow in different ways and fail and try again. And this is a huge and powerful part. What any camp for the blind is there are only a handful left in the United States. So in 2017, those Napa fires we watched as the fires got closer and closer to camp we evacuated and then watch for week as the fires crept closer, we didn't know if camp would survive. And when we finally were able to get back in camp, we found that half of the buildings had burned the old camp deep in the Redwood Forest. We have 311 acres there. It's an enormous P and valuable and beautiful piece of property. And soon after, first we were relieved that nobody was hurt. But after our team realized like this was the opportunity that had waited for three generations, how could we reimagine camp? What are the things now in 2022 that bind people wish they had that we didn't have before. So yes, of course, we have the same all all American camp.   Bryan Bashin  30:44 But we're rebuilding camp to be environmentally friendly, universally accessible, every building at camp every every building at El is will be wheelchair accessible. Every watt of power and use will not be through trucked in propane or hydro or fossil fuels, but be solar generated with our solar canopy over our park parking lot. Every building will be heated and insulated. So is changing from summer camp to a year round place where up to 220 people can stay and learn and form community, both informal things like classes, retreats, and all of that. But informally now, when we reopen, you'll be able to grow, go up to camp with a group of your friends and 20 people, family reunion, whatever you can cook for yourself, or you can take advantage of our full time kitchen staff and all of that. Imagine a blind Asilomar a conference center that is accessible, networked with everything from braille embossers, to the latest tech stuff. That's what camp is and every last part of it, please touch, please use our woodworking stuff, learn how to do ceramics, get to learn how to own and care for a horse. Get in that boat and Sue ads and, and row, go swim, go do arts, go do music and our wonderful new Redwood Grove theater, all of that stuff. So this was the inspiration when when the camp burned five years ago, we were able to get all these buildings on the master plan with a county, we found a contractor we're halfway through the rebuilding all of lower camp now you can see those buildings, the foundations are poured, the roofs are up we're putting in Windows this week. And when we were done, we'll have this amazing, beautiful village in the Redwoods where people can stroll and accessible paths, no guide ropes anymore, by the way, accessible paths. And as you go around camp, you'll be able to be just within hailing distance of other people, people you may not know but should know. So half of the program at camp and why it produces 40 50,000 hours each summer of people contacting people half that program is just that, not what we're talking at you about but people that you meet and form lifelong bonds.   Michael Hingson  33:31 And that's a whole different idea for a camp in general, but it is really creating community and people will leave with I would think lots of memories they never thought they would get.   Bryan Bashin  33:46 You know one of the key features that has been the hallmark of the last 13 years is that we usually have 20 counselors and another half dozen counselors in training. Three quarters or up to 90% of those counselors are now blind, or have low vision. No camp hardly in the country does that there are a lot of camps in which everybody in power. Every director and every assistant director and every counselor, they're all sighted. They're all very well meaning and giving. But where's the mentorship there? Where's the role modeling? So in Jannah Hills is different. The overwhelming majority of our counselors and counselors and training are blind. Our staff and area leaders are overwhelmingly blind as well. Because this is part of the purpose of camp to be able to meet people who are in charge of their own lives and a part of a community   Michael Hingson  34:45 and that's as good as it can possibly get. How does the the camp then it's it's a separate entity but it's part of the lighthouse. How did the the two connect what kind of value does Is the lighthouse itself bringing to the camp and vice versa?   Bryan Bashin  35:03 Yeah, we're all one organization. But increasingly, because of the new construction, we use camp as a retreat for people who want to go deep into their blindness. So for people who are newly blind, or for people who have been blind a while, and now have decided it's time to do something about it, we have an initial immersion called Changing vision changing lives, people go to camp. And there, they take their first steps, sometimes, first time they ever put a white cane in their hands, or their first introduction to what a computer could do. All these kinds of things. It's a deep dive and initial dive, immersion to whet people's appetites for the real hard work that comes after camp where they're going to put in time to learn skills of blindness. But before you start doing skills, you have to have the why, why are we doing that, and you have to have met a dozen or two dozen blind people who are just using those skills. So you're not learning that as an abstraction. Camp is wonderful that way. So the teachers who teach edtech and oh nm, and braille, and, you know, independent living and home repair, and all, these are the same people, whether they're at our headquarters in San Francisco, or they're in a special retreat in Napa. That's what we're going to be doing more and more of around the around the year. Same thing is true with our new program for little for blind infants and toddlers, lighthouse, little learners is an early intervention program. From across northern California, we have built camp in part to be a wonderful place for families of blind infants and toddlers to come together. Almost every family that has a newborn who's blind is utterly unprepared, and is so hungry for information. And of course, as you know, if you get it right, your child grows up and does anything that she or he wants. But those are key years. And so our family cabins now are built so that infants and toddlers, and then later on young kids will have time with their families before it's time for them to go off to camp individually, when they get into the middle years at a teens.   Michael Hingson  37:33 You mentioned the blindness conventions like the National Federation of the Blind convention, and it brought to mind something that I think about every time I go to a convention or know that a convention is coming up, especially with the NFB because of the the way that the organization has handled conventions, there is nothing like watching a five year old who suddenly has a cane put in their hand. And they're given a little bit of cane travel lessons over a very short period of time at the convention. And then they're dragging their parents all around the convention hotel, that the parents usually can't keep up and the kids are just going a mile a second.   Bryan Bashin  38:13 Yeah, that is, that's what we all want. We want that aha moment, like that. And parents are. So when they're new in the game, it's not just talking about the best ophthalmologist, although that's important and the best stimulation and the best this and that. They're also looking at those counselors and counselors in training and seeing their kids in 15 years. And they're just seeing competent blind people. Give them the sense about what's possible and why. And that that is another unspoken role of conventions, or in retreats like camp where you have the time to put into what is like the big change in life. Your blindness is not just something you do superficially, you got to dive in camp helps with that.   Michael Hingson  39:07 It's a characteristic blindness is simply a characteristic. It is something that we all have as part of our beings. And I think it's an enhancement because it allows us should we take advantage of it to have a significantly different perspective on part of life than most people have? And it gives us a broader and more open perspective, which is as good as it gets.   Bryan Bashin  39:38 Absolutely. You know, we're in an age which is supposedly celebrating diversity and all of that, well the diversity that we bring to the to the human experience is profound. And you know, we we will celebrate our intersectionalities with all the other human diversities. Are we are, we are good to live in an age, which doesn't sort of characterize and other, but works or at least seeks efficiently to include.   Michael Hingson  40:13 Sometimes it's a little more superficial than we probably would like. And there are things happening in our modern technological era that are a challenge. For example, one of the examples that I often give is nowadays, there are so many television commercials that are totally graphic pictorial, they may have music, but absolutely no verbiage to the commercial. So a number of us are left out of understanding them. And of course, graphics are so easy to produce. But what the people who produce those commercials, it seems to me don't realize is that by not having verbiage, and having meaningful and full content, verbally presented in the commercials, they're not just leaving out us, but they're leaving out anyone who gets up from their couch or chair, when the commercial comes on to go get a drink. They'll never know what the commercials were about, they're missing a true dimension of access to all it seems to me.   Bryan Bashin  41:19 Well, you put your finger on a key aspect of our culture, which is we live in an age of screens, great. Screens are ubiquitous and cheap. And so we're, we're in a in an age now where it's sort of post linguistic almost, that the ability to manipulate and to show successions of images, capture, you owe 90 some percent of people most of the time, but it does a great disservice to the abilities of human beings of all sorts to appreciate. And it kind of cheapens the subtlety and discourse, I think, you know, we this this ability, words are able to convey a universe of experiences in just a few syllables. Pictures, not so much, and not so standard.   Michael Hingson  42:19 Someone said, I don't recall who but I read it somewhere. Maybe a picture is worth 1000 words. But it takes up a whole lot more memory. I love that. It's an it's so true. Yeah. And we, we really need to recognize collectively the value of challenging and using all of our senses, it's so important to do that, and no scent should be left out. Now, we haven't figured out a way yet to transmit, smell and taste through the television system. And that may be a long ways away. But we certainly have other senses that we should be using. And that isn't, and shouldn't just be screens. But hopefully we can get that discourse to occur and get, get people to change, maybe a little bit about what they're thinking and see the value in that change again.   Bryan Bashin  43:21 Well, you've been a pioneer in this. And as things emerge, I know Mike Kingston is going to be part of it.   Michael Hingson  43:29 Well, it's been fun to to be involved with some of the technologies. You know, for me, it started with Ray Kurzweil. And then last decade was IRA, which has certainly been a product that has made a significant difference for a lot of people but other butter products along the way being involved in some of the refreshable braille displays and, and a lot of people don't realize how easy it is in some senses to produce Braille today because refreshable braille displays means I can take any file, any like ASCII file or a Word file, and put it in a medium that I can import into a Braille display and suddenly read that document. That's, that's pretty new.   Bryan Bashin  44:15 I think we are just now on the cusp of, of having critical mass in a refreshable Braille display that's got enough pixels to be useful as an image producer, and then ways to quickly and sort of economically produce those images. Yeah, Lighthouse has a unit MATLAB they have a group called touching the news. And here every week or two, there's a news graphic, the map of Ukraine during the war, the what is that helicopter on perseverance look like? Those kinds of things, the ephemera and the news of our society, the ability to get those quickly out. If you have a Braille display or a Braille embosser is going to really we're almost at the time when culture will pivot, and 61,000 Blind K through 12 errs in American schools will be able to get new and fresh material all the time, and compare it or look at the output of an oscilloscope in real time, and change and vary and act in a lab accordingly. So the efforts now to make real time expressible refreshable. screen displays are amazing and so important.   Michael Hingson  45:39 The other thing that I would hope as we get into more of a virtual real world virtual reality world, is that we would do more with sound binaural sound which is easy to produce, which truly with a set of headphones allows you to hear sound coming from any direction. And actually can help immerse all gamers in games rather than it just being from the screen. But if they do it right, it certainly would make a lot of games more accessible to us than are available today.   Bryan Bashin  46:12 If you've heard a good binaural recording of something, it can be terrifying. The lighthouse work with this group called The World According to sound to produce several dozen binaural shows about the rich experience that blind people have every day. And you can find those online. We worked with Chris and Sam, who just did splendid work for us about how we live how we how we go around what we notice the subtleties and richness in our lives. So there's there's importance for that. And then later, if you look ahead a few years, the metaverse and the idea of group connections, because what we're doing now Mike, on Zoom is not going to be just like a pandemic, Blip. This is the way people are going to interact. And we want this to be richer. I want to be in a room where I can hear who's on the left of the conference table and who's on the right. Right, I want to be able to face them in the three dimensional view on that screen. It's coming. It's coming quickly. And we need to be part of what MATA is doing as they may be the standard or other people may develop other standards. But this is around the corner.   Michael Hingson  47:33 And the technology is really here to do it. It's it is a matter of making it a priority and deciding to do it in such a way that will keep the costs down. And that isn't all that hard to do. Yeah. So for you, you are I think you have been appointed to the Ability One commission.   Bryan Bashin  47:58 That's right, President Biden appointed me last July. And it's been a wild ride ever since   Michael Hingson  48:04 tell us about the commission and what you're doing with it and so on.   Bryan Bashin  48:09 Well, this commission was set up during the FDR time in 1938. And it was designed originally to provide some way that blind people, and then later on, people with other significant disabilities could find work and an age where there was almost no work. The employment rate of blind people in 1938 was I don't know two or 3%, or something like that. So it was a groundbreaking bit of legislation in the 30s. But over the years, it became a place where blind people worked in non integrated settings. And some people call them sheltered workshops. There were many blind people who are earning less than minimum wage because of a loophole in the law there and all of that. This has been a fight for the last decades to eliminate the sub minimum wage, and also now to seek blind people not working in silos without the benefit of the wider world only working in a place with people with disabilities. But to integrate and find opportunities for that same federal contracting federal contracts federal government buys, what six or $700 billion worth of stuff every year. This ability one program uses about 4 billion of the 600 billion to provide employment, people will make things the lighthouse itself. We have a social enterprise we make environmentally sound cleaning compounds and disinfecting compounds using sort of state of the art Technology, we got an EPA Safer Choice Award for how benign our stuff is, instead of the other harsh ammonia and caustic chemicals. Anyway. So on this commission, the job is how much wiggle room do we have to provide integrated employment now, you know, if you're working in making airplane parts, only with blind people in a separate building, and meanwhile, Boeing has people doing the exact same job. along with everything else, and the glitz and glamour of working for international big company. Why shouldn't blind people be part of that, instead of the sort of set aside, it was a great idea in the 1930s and 40s, and 50s. Now it's time to change. So the first step of the change is our strategic plan. And we've rolled out the draft strategic plan, we have had eight or maybe more now community meetings about it. The public engagement with this change is 500%, more than we had in the past with the AbilityOne. Commission. We we have launched this strategic plan, I sure it'll be codified in upcoming weeks, when it is over five years, we're going to both look at ways that we can get competitive integrated employment experiences as much as we can. And that may require that we open up the Javits, Wagner eau de Act, the legislation in order to maybe change some possibilities to increase competitive integrated employment. Because in the 30s, it just said employment, that's our charge. The idea of competitive integrated employment for blind people, or people with significant that was science fiction, and FDR, Stein. Now it's something you and I have both lived. And why shouldn't the 45,000 people in the program right now have that opportunity? So that's my work in the AbilityOne. Commission, to bring the fruits of federal contracting to the hundreds of federal contractors, and let them benefit from a workforce that includes diversity of all kinds, including people who are blind,   Michael Hingson  52:28 is the tide turning so that we can see the day that the Javits Wagner, eau de Act, Section 14, see will actually go by the wayside, and we'll be able to truly address the issue of competitive employment.   Bryan Bashin  52:44 Yes, we have taken many steps along that line, the main step is that organizations that hold such certificates may not be allowed, in the very short term it very shortly to compete for new contracts. So the cost of paying subminimum h is going to be very expensive for people who wish to get more contracts. This is in process now. We are not going to, you know, pull the emergency cord and throw people out of work, who are now working under these programs, but new contracts, and new opportunities are going to be you know, bias towards competitive integrated employment. And, you know, on the blind side, there are no organizations in the blindness side of Ability One paying sub minimum wages Now, none. That's that's already ended on the significant disability sides. I think the number is around 3000. People still are working on legacy contracts like that. We expect that if I talk to you in a couple of years, Mike, that will be gone.   Michael Hingson  54:02 Well, and historically, I think when the act was originally established, it was done with good intentions. And maybe it wasn't as five sided as it could be. But as I understood the original Act, the non competitive employment centers were supposed to be training centers to get people prepared to and then out into the more competitive world of employment. But it morphed and evolved over the years to something different than that.   Bryan Bashin  54:33 It is and if legally, if you look, there's nothing in the ACT about training. It's just about employment. That's that was the mindset in 1938. Yeah. Now, of course, that's what we want. That's what we want to celebrate. We want to give the nonprofit agencies credit for training people and bringing them out into competitive employment. We think if we open up the act, we want to strike threat. So those agencies who are successful at getting people trained up and out, should be rewarded for that.   Michael Hingson  55:08 That makes perfect sense. What is the pandemic done to the whole rehabilitation system? And what do you see happening as we come out of it?   Bryan Bashin  55:19 This is not a happy topic.   Michael Hingson  55:22 Yeah, it is a challenge.   Bryan Bashin  55:25 The the number of people who are just enrolled in VR across the country has been slashed a third to a half those those people part of that is because VR with its three and a half billion dollars worth of funding, doesn't find, you know, the homemaker outcome, which is basically blind, independent living training, that's now no longer legal. So those people who went to VR thinking they could learn how to do certain things. But without a vocational goal, that is not not any, any more part of the public rehab system. So some people went away for that. But I think the larger question and it's kind of profound is that we've been through two years of a pandemic, after, after a century of saying to blind people get out there, learn to travel, be at everybody's table, take risks. And now we've had two years and more of stay in your place. It's a dangerous world. And our you know, my observation is all of our skills are rusty, are on him skills are rusty, our social skills are rusty. And everybody in the world will say, Oh, you're blind is easy to stay at home, look from look for work at home and all of this, but we lose if we're not in the room. And so the bottom line is that the pandemic has caused, I think a lot of us to take a giant step back in our social integration and just our horizons. Through the pandemic, I watched as my sighted friends could just get in the car and go where they wanted safely. Every time you and I want to go somewhere, Mike, we have to get into a conveyance with a person of unknown infectivity status. This is the nature code, we can't just Uber ourselves to a park without the sense like, okay, we're taking a controlled risk. This is why a future of autonomous vehicles is so great, no guide dog denials, no coughing driver, who may or may not be wearing a mask these days, technology can be our friend, if the technologists start considering our needs.   Michael Hingson  57:53 Well, and autonomous vehicles are, are definitely in our future and the whole concept of opposing them. Anyone who does we're, we're seeing someone who just doesn't have a lot of vision, because the reality is that they're, as you would say, right around the corner. I think some of the things that have happened with Tesla vehicles is unfortunate, especially when, in reality, they were probably not using the technology correctly. And that causes many accidents is anything. I have a friend who owns a Tesla, I actually drove it down the I 15 toward San Bernardino a few years ago. But I called him one day and he told me he had an accident with his Tesla. Now he had driven some race cars in the past and he said that there was a situation where a car was coming at him. He had the Tesla in copilot mode and was monitoring. But when this vehicle was coming at him as a racecar driver, he said my inclination is to speed up and get away from it. The car wanted to slow down and he said I overrode the copilot and we had an accident. I should have let the car do   Bryan Bashin  59:14 it. Your way there. I can't let that pass. Mike. You were in the driver's seat of a Tesla on Interstate 15.   Michael Hingson  59:24 Absolutely, why not? No, he was he was there of course. And but I had my hands on the wheel and we had it in copilot mode and I could feel it moving. It was a pretty straight run. But we did it for about 15 minutes. And then I said no, I don't think that the Highway Patrol would be happy with us if we kept that going.   Bryan Bashin  59:44 I don't think the statute of limitations quite expired on that one bike so   Michael Hingson  59:50 well, they gotta prove it now. I don't know it's been more than two years and nothing and nothing happened. I will wasn't in the car with the accident, we had a completely uneventful time, I just want to point out   Bryan Bashin  1:00:06 now, but these, these technologies, we must be pressing the companies for Level Five accessibility. That means from the time you walk down your friend steps to the car waiting there for the time you get to your destinations, front steps, you're in control the whole time. Yeah, it would be heartbreaking to have legislation that allows less than that. So that yeah, you have to like drive until you're on the freeway, and then you can do autonomous driving, that would lock us all out. That would mean this whole technology is useless for us.   Michael Hingson  1:00:44 And that would be useless legislation, it wouldn't solve the big problem that the autonomous vehicle can bring us. I'm a firm believer, and we got to get the concept of driving out of the hands of drivers. Because, as far as I'm concerned, using a Tesla or not the way most people drive on the road, I would certainly be able to do as well as they do.   Bryan Bashin  1:01:07 Absolutely. I wrote in, I wrote an autonomous vehicle in San Francisco last summer. And I felt it in control, confident, cautious, but it had a different sort of feel in that car and felt like I noticed like in San Francisco, if you want to make a left turn, a sighted driver would sort of drive into the intersection, start making the turn. And then once you're made the 90 degree turn, then accelerate the autonomous driver drives into the intersection and starts accelerating in the intersection intersection, knowing full well that it knows and has decided where it wants to go. So if it was more confidently powering into the term than a human one would do. I found that interesting.   Michael Hingson  1:02:05 It is, and I just am firmly convinced that we will make the road so much more safer if we take not the decision making but the whole concept of driving away from so many people who haven't learned to do it. Well, it does mean that we need to program the technology appropriately. And well. We're still on the cusp, but it's coming and it's going to be here sooner than we probably think.   Bryan Bashin  1:02:36 Yeah, well, the main thing is that all there may be 50 Different groups five, zero, looking at autonomous driving, it's turning out to be a much harder technical problem than people were saying just a few years back. But we need to be in those early design phases. You know, my car right now has a radio that I can't use. Yeah, because it needs a touchscreen. I mean, if they can't get that, right, what about the ability to change directions, at a stop on a whim, respond to a safety emergency, we need to let the folks know, all the ways that we need to be involved and not like was one set of the Mercury astronauts, we're not just spamming again.   Michael Hingson  1:03:25 Right? Well, and the the Tesla, for example, is so disappointing, because everything is really touchscreen driven. So I could deal with the wheel and deal with the car once someone else completely shut it up. And there is some ability to do voice activation, if you do the right things with the touchscreen first. And the bottom line is I couldn't work the radio, I couldn't do anything that a passenger should normally be able to do. Because it's all touchscreen driven. And it really takes away, it seems to me from the driving experience, even because I have to focus on the touchscreen. I can't be watching the road as well as a sighted driver.   Bryan Bashin  1:04:10 Yeah, this is not inherent to blindness. It's just smart design that's inclusive. And those are fun projects. And that's when you get blind people, engineers, by engineers, sighted engineers together on a problem that is a beautiful Association and it produces really great results.   Michael Hingson  1:04:31 I'm remember I remember some of the early discussions that we had when we were working on the pedestrian enhancement Safety Act and we worked with the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers and eventually got a law passed that said that quiet cars and so on needed to make a noise although we're still really waiting for a standard so that there is a sound that hybrid cars and totally quiet cars produce and it's taking way To long, unfortunately, but still working together, we were able to educate and get some people to really imagine a lot more than they thought that they would. And we're making progress, but it sometimes it just seems like it's very slow. Well, let me ask you one last thing, what are you going to do when you leave the lighthouse, you announced that you're, you're wanting to move on. And I know that there is now a search to find a, a person who will step into your shoes, which I think is going to be an impossibility. But what are you going to do?   Bryan Bashin  1:05:37 Well, I love I love the search, I love that lighthouse is going to have a long, open, transparent process to find that right person. So that will be wonderful to cheer them on when they show up. But for me, I am a guy who likes learning. And I've had 13 years of heavy responsibility running a large agency, I want to be in places where I have more of a beginner mind. That could be journalism, that could be advocacy, it will be advocacy. That will be in design, like we were just talking about autonomous vehicles or other interesting projects. I would like to be in those places, whether it be corporate boards, or design Charettes, or architecture, any of these things were blind people haven't been before, to sort of bring people together to make really exquisite designs, and beautiful human centered outcomes. So whether it's working with the Ability One Commission, or working on contract with companies that have a problem to design, whether it's it's talking truth to power, and making sure that our extended community has is protected and safe and supported in Congress in the state house. You'll find me in all those places.   Michael Hingson  1:07:04 Well, I hope that as you move on and do things that you will come back and talk with us and keep us posted and give us a chance to learn from you and and maybe give you things that you can use as well. So I hope that this won't be the only time we hear from you on this podcast.   Bryan Bashin  1:07:22 It's always a pleasure, Mike, it's in conversation with you. I learned so much. And I feel we are part of that same community.   Michael Hingson  1:07:30 How can people learn about you, the lighthouse, and so on?   Bryan Bashin  1:07:35 Well, our websites always a good place to start WWW dot Lighthouse dash s f.org.   Michael Hingson  1:07:44 And everything is there, there are so many different programs that the lighthouse offers. And there's so much that all of us can learn from the various adventures and programs that the Lighthouse has. So I hope that you'll all go visit WWW dot Lighthouse dash s s.org and peruse the pages. And if you're able to do so maybe consider volunteering or being involved in some way. And I hope that you'll make that happen. If people want to reach out to me, we are always available. As I tell people every week you can reach me via email at Michael H I at accessabe.com or through the podcast page which is www dot Michael hingson M I C H A E L H I N G S O N.com/podcast. And once you finish listening to this, please give us a five star rating. We love those five star ratings and, and Brian, hopefully you'll listen and give us a five star rating when this comes up.   Bryan Bashin  1:08:46 Oh, I'm already pre sold on this one. You're also welcome to leave my email address. I'll go folks on on the website or here. It's simply b Bastion b ba Shi n at Lighthouse stash fsf.org.   Michael Hingson  1:09:03 So reach out to Brian and I'm sure that discussions will be interesting. And as I said we want to hear of your adventures as you go forward. Thank you, Michael. Thanks very much for being here. And to all of you. We'll see you next week on unstoppable mindset.   UM Intro/Outro  1:09:23 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. 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James Malinchak is known to many as the “Big Money Speaker,” because of his success as a speaker, a motivator, and an inspiration to those who hear him. When I use the term “unstoppable” I refer, as regular listeners know, to a mindset that people adopt that helps them move forward even in the face of extreme adversity.   James discovered early in life that he would have to adopt his own unstoppable mindset if he wanted to survive and succeed first in the world of finance and then as a speaker who could coach and inspire others to raise their own sights.   Mr. Malinchak has been an extremely popular speaker in the college speaking circuit. Not only is he a quite sought-after speaker, but he does make money speaking at colleges and elsewhere. His secret is simple. “If you don't ask for what you are worth then you will never get it.”   James has appeared on the Television show, Secret Millionaire. He will tell you about his experiences and through them you will get to meet a man whose life philosophy is refreshing, positive and unstoppable.   I look forward to hearing your comments after you listen to James. Please email me at michaelhi@accessibe.com and tell me what you think of this interview. Some directories do not show full show notes. For the complete transcription please visit https://michaelhingson.com/podcast   About the Guest: James Malinchak is recognized as one of the most requested, in-demand business and motivational keynote speakers and marketing consultants in the world. He was featured on the Hit ABC TV Show, Secret Millionaire and was twice named National “College Speaker of the Year.” James has delivered over 3,000+ presentations for corporations, associations, business groups, colleges, universities and youth organizations worldwide. James can speak for groups ranging from 20-30,000+.   Giving back is a big part of James' life as he has raised over $1,000,000 for various charities and organizations and has donated thousands of dollars of his own money to help others.   As a speaker marketing coach and consultant, James is the behind-the-scenes, go-to marketing advisor for many top speakers, authors, thought leaders, business professionals, celebrities, sports coaches, athletes and entrepreneurs and is recognized as “The World's #1 Big Money Speaker  Trainer and Coach!”   For more information & FREE Training, visit: www.BigMoneySpeaker.com   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 also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   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 UM Intro/Outro  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  01:22 Well, hi, everyone. This is Mike Kingston, welcome you to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Glad you're here and hope you will enjoy the show. We have, I think a fun and exciting guest. Just listening to information about his company, big money speaker. Well, you can't get more exciting than that. Can you James?   James Malinchak  01:42 So it's it's better than little money speaker.   Michael Hingson  01:45 That is true. So everyone meet James Malin. Check and James were really pleased and gratified that you came on the podcast today.   James Malinchak  01:53 Thanks for having me, Mike. I appreciate it and hope to inspire some of your your great listeners.   Michael Hingson  01:59 Well, we're glad you're here. Well, let's let's start off and see what what we can learn. So you, you've been in the speaking business as well. But tell us about your last little bit. When you weren't obviously you were born like the rest of us. And where does it go from there?   James Malinchak  02:14 I was born in a van down by the river, right? And now what every motivational speaker says.   Michael Hingson  02:18 Either that or you were born in a log cabin. Yeah.   James Malinchak  02:22 Yeah. No, I grew up in a tiny steel town outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania population of about 6000. Great folks. We didn't have much grown up dad was a steel worker and mom was a lunch mother serving lunches to us kids at school. So I had some big dreams and goals. And one of them was the play college basketball. So I accepted a basketball scholarship to the University of Cincinnati, right out of high school. And then my coach had gotten relieved of his duties, which is a great way to say he was fired. So I ended up transferring and playing in Hawaii. And unfortunately, in an exhibition game, I caught a pass twisted my knee and ripped up my knees. I was I was done. And so I moved to Los Angeles. My career, dreams of playing pro basketball were done. And I moved to Los Angeles and started my career as a stockbroker. I worked for a major Wall Street investment firm, and won some awards. They're very early in my young years, my first year starting out opened up about 200 Some accounts. And so my phone rang one day. And it was a gentleman, he said, Hey, my son works with you there in the office. And he said, You just really smashed it did really well, I'd love to have you come and talk to my employees. And I said, I don't I don't really speak and do that kind of stuff. I'm just an advisor. And he said, Well, we only really need you to talk for about 40 minutes. And so I don't really speak or do any of that kind of stuff. You know, I don't even know what that means. And he said, and I'll pay $5,000. And I said I speak I speak. I speak.   Michael Hingson  04:01 Hallelujah.   James Malinchak  04:05 Mama didn't raise no for Mike. Yeah, somebody wants to pay you to show up and talk your yo, you're saying the same stuff anyway. And now they're going to pay you. I said, I mean, I don't know what this means, but I'll do it. Easy. Yes. So I went and did it. And on a scale of one to 10 I was probably in my mind that was a negative two. I mean, I thought I was so awful. You know, just a bad presenter. And he came up and he said that was great. And I'm like, Who were you watching? You're watching me because I was terrible. He said, Well, this first lesson I got he said you might not be a good orator presenter. But you're great at telling your story with your message that inspired my folks to want to be better. I'd like to actually have you come back and do it for a couple different divisions two more times and and would it be okay if I paid you the 5000 bucks each time and I was like Yeah, okay, like really? You thought I was good? He said, No, you weren't like good presenter, but your information was really good. And so I did. And, and I couldn't believe it. I was like, holy cow. I did three talks, and they paid me 15,000 bucks. So guess what I did, Mike. I did a really smart thing, buddy. I went quit my job.   Michael Hingson  05:23 And you learn how to be a better presenter, right?   James Malinchak  05:26 Well, let me tell you what I did learn. I learned that. Bookings like that don't fall out of the sky. No. And I was very blessed and lucky on those three, because I blew through my life savings. And I was so financially destitute and broke that I was forced to work in a video store Montrose video in Montrose, California, and I made seven bucks an hour. And I lived in an apartment that had bars on the windows, and it was $400 a month to rent the apartment in Los Angeles. Yeah. And so yeah, a Top Ramen noodles, a pasta diluted with pot with a spaghetti sauce diluted with water, because it would last longer. And I did that for three years. Because I didn't realize I was running a business, you know, and I thought magically cheques were just gonna fall out of the sky for me, and that never happened. So I was on the phone with a mentor. And he was worth about $500 million. And he knew me since I was a kid. And he said, Hey, you know, you can have the best most impactful message in the world, you can have the biggest heart and want to change lives and help people. But if you don't learn how to run this thing as a business, you're gonna be in for rough roads. And so if he told me to eat the pencil, and it would make me successful, I would do it because he pretty much everything he's told me has worked in my life. So I went on, I started learning the business, and how do I do this. And, you know, and that's why my logo today for big money speaker on my shirt is a coin. Because I always say there's two sides of the coin, in speaking or for any business, number one you have what you do to serve people and help people and make a difference, or your message or your information. But then there's a flip side of the coin, it's called the business of speaking. And so once I've mastered the business of speaking and didn't worry about whether I was a great presenter or anything, that's when I went from zero and then book 40 talks the next year, and then 100 talks, the paid talks, not free talks, paid talks the next year. And then never when I was doing full paid speaking that ever book less than 100 paid talks and my busiest year, as I did 157 locations, 157 locations in some locations, I got six checks, or five checks like Valencia Community College in Orlando, Florida has six campuses. So when I went to Orlando, one location, I spoke six times and got six checks. So that's how I did it. Now I've done over 3000, some paid presentations, and very blessed that I've met a lot of cool people and hopefully in some way help them.   Michael Hingson  08:06 And, you know, that is what it's all about. And the reality is a lot of people don't view speaking is a business. And a lot of people who speak don't use speaking as a business. I actually had a conversation with someone that's involved with authors. And we were we were talking about authors and speaking and she said, The problem is we book authors, but you got to understand they're not professional speakers. And I said, you're viewing you're booking authors to speak, of course, they're professional speakers. What am I missing here?   James Malinchak  08:44 Well, if someone got paid to show up and talk them their professional, not   Michael Hingson  08:49 exactly. That's what I would say. I remember the first speech I gave, I don't know how much you know of my story. I'm sure Michelle told you some. But we were in the World Trade Center on September 11. And came out and the media got the story. And a couple of weeks later, we got a call from a gentleman in New Jersey, and he said, I'm a pastor in a church. We're just holding an evening ecumenical service for all the people who were last in the World Trade Center, who are from New Jersey. And we'd like you to just come and take about five or six minutes and just briefly tell your story. And, you know, we can't pay or anything. By that time, I had actually started getting calls from people who said, We want to pay you to come and speak and of course, my belief was being in sales. Why do I want to sell computers when people want to pay me just to talk, you know, but but I said I would come in and speak to this group. And this happened before any of the paid presentations actually took place. But I made the mistake. I love to say it that way of asking him how many people are going to be at the service, probably 6000. So my first speech was a brief one, six minutes, but to 6000 people in an open air service in New Jersey, and it was fun. And hopefully we moved people and it kind of went from there. So I know exactly what you're saying.   James Malinchak  10:11 That's fantastic. Congratulations on that.   Michael Hingson  10:13 It was it was a lot of fun. And you know, it is in part about serving people, but it is a business as well. And it's great when you can, can put the two together.   James Malinchak  10:25 Absolutely. That's why I say there's two sides of the coin. Right, right. And by the way, not just for speaking, but for any entrepreneurial business out there, I've done 2000 2000 plus one on one consulting for business people. And it doesn't matter what they're in, whether they're a dentist, whether they are running a seminar company, whether they're opening a chain of restaurants, you know, there's the one side where you serve folks, and you help them and you make joy in their life with your restaurant with your food, your service, but don't flip side, there's this thing called the business of you got to figure out how to get people to come to your restaurant, how to get them to keep coming back how to get them to talk and refer others how to set your restaurant up to run on systems, you know how to hire retain great people. I mean, that's all business that has nothing to do with the first side of the coin that has everything to do with running a business.   Michael Hingson  11:18 So you learn a lot of that, I would assume and developing that mindset from the fact that you were in an investment firm for a while that that had to have an influence on all that. I would say   James Malinchak  11:30 yes, a little bit, but not really a lot, because that's not an entrepreneurial business. That's corporate America. Sure. Right. And so, you know, they're trained, I always say that, you know, they're trained a lot to do the same thing. And deliver, you know, you go from one office to the other, all the managers are saying the same thing, doing the same thing. So it's pretty much corporate run, coming down from the shareholders and the board and CEO, CFO C level execs. So when I ventured out, I'll tell you the big one of the big mistakes that I made with speaking when I've ventured out into speaking, I didn't realize it was an entrepreneurial business, I just thought, Oh, this is fun, I get to speak and talk to people and this guy paid me money. So this is pretty cool. And I never realized that this is no different than a flower shop and opening that or, you know, restaurant and opening that or a chiropractic office and opening that. You know, a lot of times folks get into speaking and don't realize that it is a actual real business, a real professional business. And that was my one of my big mistakes in the beginning is not grasping that I just thought this is the coolest thing in the world. I get to speak and get paid holy, wow. I never thought of it as a real business.   Michael Hingson  12:50 But nevertheless, with with the training, you had your your mind, internalize that. And you came to that realization that it was a business.   James Malinchak  12:59 Yeah, very quickly, I realized. And then the other thing I realized is like me and it's no one's fault. They've never been taught this. Most speakers, authors, trainers, coaches, if you will never actually run it as a business. It's a hobby. And they don't have systems in place. They don't have a prospecting tool. They don't have referral mechanisms in place. You know, they don't have upsells downsells cross sells, and I didn't either, and it's all because we're never taught that. I work with a lot. I coach a lot of celebrities now and a lot of pro athletes. I just met I was in. You mentioned trade centers. I was in San Diego speaking it was myself. Emmy award winning TV host Leeza Gibbons, good friend of mine that I've helped and Nick Lowry used to be the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs all time leading kicks kicker for the Chiefs all time leading scorer Hall of Fame. And I had a chance to have lunch with a guy that played for the Yankees and one four World Series. He knew I was speaking he saw me on social media, he asked if we could meet for lunch and coffee. And we talked and, you know, it was the the same sort of situation. He's like, you know, I played for the Yankees and won World Series play with Gary Jeter or Derek Jeter, and all these you know, talk Yankees, and Steinbrenner, you know, learned a lot. And I want to get into speaking and I said, Well, you do know you're running a business, right? And it's wonderful. You played for the Yankees and won all these World Series. But that doesn't mean you're going to get booked. What means you're going to get booked is when you actually reach out to the people who have the budgets and make decisions and actually get them to book you. And then get them to book you for four talks instead of one and then get them to book you for four talks plus consulting and coaching for their C level execs after and they said that's all business thing. You know, and so that's what I try to impart on people now is right out of the gate, because I told him I said you're gonna you're gonna have a good message about winning World Series and all the stuff you went through and the ups and downs. But if you don't learn this stuff, stuff, all that stuff is never going to be able to share be shared and impact people because you won't know how to get to decision makers, and you won't know what they're looking for, you won't know how to let set fees, then you won't know how to roll it into $100,000 Follow up consulting contracts, etc. And so that and that was that was something I was never taught. And that's something I don't think people are taught. We just get into it. Hey, you got a great message, go talk. Okay. So I really try to impart the entrepreneurial business knowledge that I've been blessed to gain over the years that has helped me go from working in a video store making seven bucks an hour to literally generating millions of dollars as a speaker.   Michael Hingson  15:42 Well, speaking of millions, you were on ABC Secret Millionaire, I remember that show. And I throw a blessing. I think I remember watching the one that you were on. But tell us about secret millionaire and it's not on anymore. That's too bad. But anyway,   James Malinchak  15:57 well, so there'll be touch on that the reason it's not on is because people started figuring it out. And see what happened is that you don't realize this unless, because all you see is me on television. And I'll get into the show piece in a second. But what you don't realize is that got 15 to 20 people around me, I have one guy who his whole job was to control the microphone. And like he would say, stop, stop, stop, we got to stop filming and be like why? So there's a plane, like, you look up and it was the plane like 30,000 feet and like nobody could see it or hear it. But he could pick it up, which meant it was going to be picked up on television. Right. So that was his whole job. We had people there, their job was to just carry the reflector boards to reflect the light to make sure that there were no shadows on my face as I was walking. I mean, so there were a lot of people around us doing this. So it's not like you could just show up in a town have 15 to 20 people around you with security police, you know, big lights, cameras, like on all angles of the street four cameras and, and not know something's going on.   Michael Hingson  17:09 What was your first clue?   James Malinchak  17:10 Yeah, exactly. So that's the reason why the ratings were fantastic. As a matter of fact, when I was on, we had over 10 million people that watched it that night that I appeared and to put it in perspective, Trump's apprentice Donald Trump's the apprentice was on that night and had 7 million. So we I had 10 million on mine, you know, which was so in other words, like the ratings weren't great. But they were people were starting to figure it out and trying to get on TV, because they knew that the you know, they would be awarded money if they were so it just it deflated the essence of the spirit of the show, which was. So for anyone listening, imagine if someone came and grabbed you by crane picked you up out of your current element and dropped you somewhere and said go ahead and live. And by the way, you're not allowed to have any credit cards, no watch, no cell phone, no outside connection, no internet access, no outside connection to the world. They want you to be fully present in the moment. And imagine if they then said, and for this entire eight days, while you're going to be here, we're going to give you a check to live on. And it's $44.66. Now go live. And we'll see you later. And that's what it was it was taken me out of my current entrepreneurial element, with no resources, dropping me in a place. I had no idea where I was going, which happened to be Gary, Indiana. Oh, boy. Yeah, if anybody knows anything about Gary, two things, number one, Michael Jackson and the Jacksons grew up there on 223 Jackson Street. And number two, at the time I went there, it was the number two murder place in the US. And I had no idea I thought I was going to Indiana to milk cows on a farm. That's all I that's what my perception of Indiana was. And so, and basically they put me there and my purpose was to go through their town. Look for amazing people working for organizations who were changing lives and making a difference. Friend them, start working for them in their, their charity, and then volunteering. And then at the end of my time, when I'm going to leave town I go to them. And I say, Mike, thanks so much for having me here and your charity, allowing me to come into your family and start helping folks and to work side by side. I really appreciate it. I have to head out of town now. But before I leave, there's something I haven't told you. And that's my whole acting. That's the only thing they told me I had to do. So that's my acting move. I had to say that and then pause so my acting move, but big debut of acting was I paused I'll do it again for anybody didn't hear. There's something I haven't told you boom, there we go. I had to pause for three seconds. Everything else was real, except they instructed me. I had to pause for three seconds after I said that, so, and then I rebuild my identity. And the reason for the pause is they wanted to get the cameras on people's faces to catch the what? Like, what? Oh, no, what's going on? Like, they want to catch that shock. And so then, then I just told him, I said, you know, I think what you're doing is amazing, you're impacting people's lives, you're making a difference. And I open up my checkbook, and I start writing them checks. To help further their mission, I wrote over $100,000 worth of checks to them. And hence the term secret billionaire. So that's the whole essence of this show. And Mike, I'll just say the last thing is this. One of the true blessings in my life, I met, not people I met angels, people are just serving and doing good to help the fellow man and fellow woman for no other reason than to help them true angels, Great Spirits of serving.   Michael Hingson  21:04 And that kind of thing is always wonderful and a blessing to encounter. And and define that there are people who are committed to doing that, and they do it very selflessly. And they get they get rewarded for it in various ways. And a lot of times, probably the investment world doesn't understand the rewards that they get.   James Malinchak  21:25 Well, so you're 100% right, my friend. When I was doing the media, I mean, I must have done five 600 media appearances to promote the show, maybe 1000. I don't know I did so many of them. I remember one one time we did. 300 was booked for 300 radio shows like satellite tours where I might I probably did 5080 shows in a day, you know, five minutes here, two minutes here, four minutes here. But that was on the Grammy red carpet. I mean, with all the celebrity Will Smith is right next to me, Justin Bieber, the Oak Ridge Boys, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. I mean, everybody's right there. And so when I would do these interviews, no matter where it was, or to who it was, people would always say, so what was it like to be on that show? And I said, Well, it's called Secret Millionaire. And I appreciate the fact that it's kind of labeled around someone like me, the entrepreneurial millionaire guy, but this show is not about me, this show was about these unsung heroes, who are finally going to get their due and be recognized for the amazing work they're doing in their community, like you said, Mike, that no one ever hears about. So I always say, you know, it was called Secret Millionaire, but it was really about all these people who were doing amazing work.   Michael Hingson  22:40 And continue to do it. It's, yeah, it's a lot of fun. I worked for a nonprofit for a while I worked up at Guide Dogs for the Blind in salt shell. Yeah, and you know, it is all about doing it because you want to, and doing it because you know, you're accomplishing good things. And for me, of course, it's a little bit different than a lot of people who who work there. And of course, using a guide dog. It's, it's different. Because I'm also involved in trying to relay the message, you know, the average individual thing. So it's a blind person who's got a dog, the dog leads them around, never recognizing that the dogs job is to make sure that we don't fall off a cliff, it's still my job to know where to go and how to get there. And that's no different than you needing, needing to know where to go and how to get there. You use different cues than I do. But I give the dog that commands. And so working up at the school, even a lot of people at the school didn't really understand that. So it was and today as I travel and speak, it is all about input, at least in part, helping to educate people to recognize blindness isn't the problem. It's your attitudes and your misconceptions about blindness. That is a real challenge that we face. And the fact of the matter is that we should be inclusive as a society.   James Malinchak  24:00 Hmm, no, I love that. And kudos to what you're doing to help educate all of us who don't understand and better maybe shift our paradigm because we have false beliefs or false misconceptions. But yeah, it's it's amazing. It's amazing that when you just you know, I say that the secret to living is giving and when you come from a servant's heart, and you just truly want to make a difference. My dad and mom used to always tell me when I would do something good, like win an award like basketball or something and I'd come home Hey, Mom, Hey, Dad, I got this and they say, Oh, we love you, son that so proud of you. But remember, you didn't come into this world with anything and you're not leaving with anything. The only thing you got son is the difference that you make while you're here the impact that you make, the lives you change and the legacy you leave. And every time every time I made an award like some sort of warm throughout my whole life. Oh, that's great, son. We love you. We're proud Have you but remember, let it go right back into it. So you're   Michael Hingson  25:04 gonna take, you're not going to take those plaques and trophies with you when you leave   James Malinchak  25:08 100%. I just gathered dust. The it's amazing. It's funny you say that because I have some of those plaques and trophies from basketball or from when I was a stock broker and they literally are in a box in a storage unit. Right? Literally, that's it had been there for years. Yeah, 20 years, some of them.   Michael Hingson  25:32 I, when I first relocated to the New York area, I was there about a year and then got recruited away by a company that I had worked with some and knew the owner of. And I worked there for about a year and a half before I got recruited by quantum to open an office for them in New York, which we did in the World Trade Center. But this company, my first year out, I was number one in sales. And since I hadn't worked for the company before, they gave me Rookie of the Year plaque, which was great. And that was on my wall in the World Trade Center. When the building was attacked, of course, everything was lost. Two weeks later, this guy calls our house and I was in the city, meeting with someone at the time, of course now after 911. And he didn't know whether he's alive or dead. He talked to my wife and finally got up the nerve to say why he was calling. And she said, Well, he's in the city meeting with someone right now. And she said, you could just hear the relief in his voice knowing that I was alive. Well, we met up and he gave me this plaque, this rookie of the year plaque he worked for 9x now part of a reason. He found that plaque in the pile grounds away, counted up. And it's just it is one of those things. So it's taken on a whole lot more meaning but it still is a plaque and it's it's really still what you accomplish.   James Malinchak  26:59 Wow. That's unbelievable that it survived that. You know, what a what a great Wow. I'm speechless, literally speechless.   Michael Hingson  27:09 I it was amazing. When he he found it, he cleaned it all up, it was still in great shape, it still is in great shape. And it's just kind of one of those memories that you have. And memories are good things to have. So it's okay.   James Malinchak  27:23 Oh, yeah, absolutely. But you know, it's the memory I don't I don't really care about the the tangible trophies and all that I have. You know, hopefully, by doing some of those accomplishments, I was able to make someone's life better that that's what really matters to me.   Michael Hingson  27:39 Sure. It's, it's about what you said, it's about what you do. The rewards and all that stuff are great. And the money is great. And we do need money. And that's the way the world is set up. But still, the bigger rewards are what we do to help people and and the things that we accomplish and can look back on and say, I made a difference. Well, what I?   James Malinchak  28:01 Yeah, what I tell folks all the time, I said look, and I asked a friend of mine and you may know him neato Cobain. Nieto used to be the past president of something called the National Speakers Association. And he's the president of High Point University in High Point North Carolina right now a great phenomenal, one of the best speakers ever. And they came to America with $50 in his pocket. And I asked him one time we were sitting in the back of a room, we're both speaking at a Dan Kennedy marketing event. And I asked him, I said, neato. I just Just curious, I've always wanted to ask you this. I said, you're amazing philanthropist you give you serve, you know, you're you're pretty much running this university and taking no payment just because you want to do it and help people help kids. And I said, I know money's not everything. But how would you frame it? He goes, Well, I put money right up there with oxygen. Yeah. So what do you mean? He said, Well, I mean, you gotta have it. Everything we require in life is money. And it's, it's ridiculous for people to think that like, it should be a focus. And then so I always tell my talks, like I said, look, the more money you make, and I tell speakers this all the time more money you make, the more you can give away. Yeah, there is that. The more money you make, the more you can feed people who are hungry. The more money you make, the more you can build roofs for churches, or you could build water wells, or like I have, and I don't ever really talk about my philanthropy, but I have, you know, schools I've built in Africa, for kids who were sitting on rocks to learn because they had no shelter. And I said, this, this is terrible, you know, we ought to be able to do something about it. And so I would give them a whole bunch of money. So we can build schools over there and get textbooks and get, you know, desks and so kids don't have to sit outside and the heat, but like think about it, it takes money to do that kind of stuff. All the pie in the sky. I hear what people talk about manifestation and the secret and all that I get it But at the end of the day, you got to write a check. And at the end of the day, you got to be able to buy tangible stuff. And if you don't have the money in your bank account, you can't build the school in Africa, all the wishing and hoping in the world and getting that school bill, that stroke in a check, to buy concrete to buy supplies to pay the workers to build get trucks to come over and help them build it that that takes money to do that. So I tell people all the time, make a lot of money in your profession, so that you can impact more people. Last thing I'll say is, you know, when I was helping to feed a lot of folks, you know, it was amazing because lunch meat, bread, Manet's drinks, that all takes money to buy it, you know, so that we could actually feed people, even if we made it, we had to hire workers and pay them to make the food so we could feed people. So anyone that thinks that money doesn't play into how big and well you serve, of course, you can serve with time, you can serve with talents, but at the end of the day, if you make some more money than you can help and serve and give back in a bigger way,   Michael Hingson  31:17 as you should,   James Malinchak  31:18 as we all should. Yeah, so I tell people make out gazillion dollars, don't keep any of that, give it away and help a lot of less fortunate folks.   Michael Hingson  31:25 Absolutely. So with things like secret millionaire, and so on, you have faced some pretty challenging things in your life. How do you do that? I think some people would say, without fear. And I know that that doesn't really make sense, because of course, there's fear. But how? How do you deal with challenges like that?   James Malinchak  31:47 Well, my sister Vicki, unexpectedly passed away years ago of a brain tumor. And when she was diagnosed with it, and it was about three months before she passed, I saw her in a hospital room and in a bed, you know, with medication and all these things happening, and never one time. Never once. Did I ever hear her complaint? Never once did I ever hear her say why me? Never once? Did I ever hear her, you know, say anything about that. And I thought that I watched my sister deteriorate and start to pass away. And I said, What the hell am I complaining about? This is a human being that lost her life. And there we know many people, everybody knows someone that lost a life. And so that really changed me and made me realize that why am I scared of things? She wasn't scared of transitioning out of this world into a different place. What I'm going to be scared because I haven't tried something. And by the way, psychologists tell us that human beings are born with two fears and two fears only the fear of falling. And the fear of boom, loud noises. No. So if you have any other fear in your life, that means you created it, and you manifested it. And basically, you know this, whether you think about something good or bad, it expands. So if you think about fear and nervousness, and oh my gosh, here's the thing I learned Mike, when when we say I'm scared of this, I'm worried about this, oh, my god, well, then isn't the focus on you. And so what I do, and all I do in my talks is try to share people with people what I do that works for me, and if it works for you, great, use it. If not, they've crumble up, throw it away. I'm not here to tell you that, like I have figured everything out, I just figured out a couple things for me, and maybe these will work for you. And so what I tell folks is, when you're fearful, either one you haven't practiced, you haven't honed it, you don't have your skills down. Number two, maybe it's brand new, and you haven't tried it before, right? Like first time we tried to ride a bike or something. We were fearful everything we're always first time we started a job, we were nervous. But the third thing to realize is, is if you weren't born with that, right? It's because there was two fears fear of falling and fear of loud noises. So it's Fe AR is, is you've heard this before false evidence. It's false evidence because you weren't born with it, it appears real, because you focus on it and blow it up in your mind. Right? And so then we start the fourth thing is to focus on what what if like, Oh, what if I screw up? What if this doesn't work? I'm scared because of and then you think of a negative but what if you turn that into positive energy? And said, I'm so excited about this? Because I get this opportunity to and then fill in the blank? Yeah. So change your languaging change the way you think about it change the way you act toward it. And the last thing the fifth thing I always say is this for myself. This is part of the process. Because everything I started that was brand new, I was always nervous about and fearful. That's just part of the process. Now, I'll get through this. And then I'll look back on it the same way I look back on learning to ride a bike or learning to drive a car. And I'll look back on this situation and say, What was I so nervous about that nonsense?   Michael Hingson  35:22 Well, and one of the things that that I have learned, especially over the last 20 years, and internalizing September 11, and so on is we do have fears they do happen. And some of those fears can be pretty overwhelming. But they're overwhelming, because we haven't developed a mindset that allows us to look at them, analyze them, which you can do in the blink of an eye, and be able to move forward with we've got this pandemic going on around us. And I submit that a lot of the people who choose not to get vaccinated not to wear masks who claim it's all a hoax, are really reacting out of fear, rather than recognizing there is something going on here. And we can be proud proactive in dealing with it. But mostly controlling our own mindset, so that we can move forward in the circumstances, and deal with them successfully. And with the World Trade Center. There are still people who I know who are afraid to fly because they saw the airplanes hit the towers, or they're afraid of other things, they won't go into tall buildings. And they developed these fears. And as you said, they they let them expand, rather than della developing a mindset to look at how to overcome them or use the fear because they're, there's a part of fear, that's a biological reaction. But use the fear to your advantage to allow you to be motivated to move forward.   James Malinchak  37:03 Right, and you can control your fear. People don't realize that but if you studied neuro linguistic programming and timeline therapy, you could step out of it. Look at it almost as a movie going by see it not actually being engaged and let your emotions be shifted by the situation. And you literally can control that. I'm not fearful, I'm looking at it. And I'm fearful because I'm in it. But if I step back and just look at it metaphorically, then what am I really fearful of it makes no sense. And I'm watching this go by instead of actually feeling it inside of me.   Michael Hingson  37:37 Exactly right. And using what's going on to heighten your senses. So traveling around the stairs at the World Trade Center was not a big deal for me. But I had developed a mindset, because I learned what to do. In the case of an emergency, I consulted with Port Authority, security people, I learned the complex and so on. And I did all that because I ran an office and I knew darn well that if there were ever an emergency, especially if we happen to be in an area that was smoke filled, all you light dependent sighted people are going to have a world of hurt trying to figure out how to get out because you can't see where you're going. And then would take us normal people to get you out. So I, I learned what I needed to know. But I was the leader of the office. So it was my responsibility to do it. But what I didn't realize until later was that was developing a mindset that says, okay, things are happening. You don't have control over some of the things that are happening, perhaps. But you can certainly use all the information that you have and all the knowledge that you've gained to work through it.   James Malinchak  38:41 Yeah, absolutely. 100%. And preparation, I think is a big thing, too. And then there's, there's something too, they teach at Harvard Business School that I always loved. And it's called Future Perfect planning. Right, you plan for the future. And that means good or bad. There's a great book one of my favorite books of all time, and I've read about 5000 Some books now, over the years and one of my favorite books of all time and includes listening to books on audio, I don't want you to think that I just read them. I actually listened to a lot I listened to read, if you will. But it's called the positive power of negative preparation. And it's all it's all about preparing for the negative, there's a positive force in preparing for potential negative situations because God forbid if something happens, as you know, not always are we fully prepared, but at least you have some sort of preparation, an idea of how to handle it as a situation. And so I remember reading that book about 20 Some years ago changed my life because I was like, Oh, I'm not as fearful as certain situations. If I'm preparing for them, there is a positive power in negative preparation, meaning preparing for the negative.   Michael Hingson  39:55 You're not going to be able to prepare them for everything that happens but it's really developing the tools that give you the ability to deal with whatever happens, correct? Yeah. Yeah. And it's an it's something that all too often we don't do do, but it is developing those tools, that's really the big issue that we have to deal with, and should deal with. And fortunately, I did that. Yeah, I'll give you   James Malinchak  40:21 an example. You know, you mentioned the terrible 911 tragedy, which, you know, God bless you that you were able to pull through that. And, man, just, it's an honor talking to you, and you're the first person. And I'll always cherish this first person that I've met in my life to actually survive that situation. So it is truly an honor to be able to know you a little bit and talk to you about it. It's a special bonus for me. But I've never flown the same way ever since. You know, I have a friend who's a when now he's retired, but former CIA agent, and I hired him to consult with me and share ideas on how you know, I'm a speaker, I'm out there, I'm traveling, like how do I protect myself with something I'm on planes all the time. And he gave me a tool or resource, if you will, like I carry what a lot of the CIA officers carry what's called Tactical ink pens, they're pens, but they're tactical, meaning that they have a steel core center, so that you can use them in any situations, and they make them through metal they you can make through, that's the only type of how do I want to say defending mechanism that you're leaning, it's really nice, and that you can actually get through metal detectors, the TSA, right. And all of all of the Secret Service people carry him all the CIA officers, and so I was able to get them through him. And so I carry those on flights in my belt. So literally, they're with me at all times. Now. The other thing is situational awareness, he taught me of knowing where the fire extinguishers are on the airplane, in case someone does do something, you can get to a fire extinguisher, blow that smoke in their face. And with your tactical pens, you'll be able to take them down, taught me techniques to take someone down and disabled people, if they have a knife or box cutters or any kind of object. Well, those are all tools, if you will, like you put it. And thank God and 20 some years, I've never ever had to do any of that. But I never get on a plane without knowing where the fire extinguishers were a matter of fact, I'll tell you this, when I booked my flight, I always took a seat near where the fire extinguishers are, in case, just in case that one time, I need to jump up and grab one of those fire extinguishers. I know where the tool is. And I was prepared by him on how to attempt to handle that situation.   Michael Hingson  42:51 That is most important, the mental tool that you draw in the knowledge and the mindset that you could put that mental tool to work and do whatever you needed to do. I mean, you can think of any number of people who could have those same physical tools, but would freeze up or not know what to do to really use them in an emergency.   James Malinchak  43:15 Sure, absolutely. Well, I'll tell you my mental. My mental motivation was taught by my father, I'll never forget he said I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by six. Yes. I'd trust me, I would have no problems going through that. I don't know how you want to call that. The techniques and the system he taught me? Because what's the adverse effect? Possibly not making it or having others harmed or children harmed for no reason? So that's my motivation. Is it to sit here or do something? Yeah. And if you know what to do and have the confidence to do it, that's really important. And I'll tell you if I didn't know what to do, I wouldn't probably have that confidence. Sure. I wouldn't. I'd probably be nervous and fearful and doubt but because I know step one, this step two is this step three is this got it? You know, here, I'll tell you some LC Tom, because I think it's really important step one, you grab the magazines in the seat, rest and you put them around your waist inside of your pants, because if someone has a box, cutter knife, etc, that's the first place they're going to try and stab you. So if you have padding there, then it doesn't work. You know, second thing is you have your tactical pin in your right hand and you have the fire extinguisher in your left and you blow the fire extinguisher and you step through the smoke because they're going to put their hands up and block their face. You step through the smoke and you go right for their midsection because that's the largest part of a human being. Right so my point is this not to say like this is a self defense podcast, but But it's he gave me step by step of stuff that logically made sense therefore, not as known. Nervous, not as fearful to possibly use those techniques and engage in the system, if you will, I didn't know that, oh, I would be completely fearful and nervous.   Michael Hingson  45:11 Sure. But you made a choice.   James Malinchak  45:15 Yes, 100%.   Michael Hingson  45:17 And that was to learn, which is what it's really all about. And by making the choice and by developing the mindset to deal with fear, and to deal with different situations, and understand as much as you could about different situations, you can live in those kinds of environments, and, and be more unstoppable to use the vernacular of the title of the podcast, but it is all about understanding what you can do and what you can I suppose there is something to be said for Harry Callahan and Magnum Force, A man's got to know his limitations, but you know, you got to really know them, and you know them best by learning them.   James Malinchak  45:53 Correct? Yeah, exactly. Mike, I just want to share with you, my friend, I got about two minutes. And then I've got to jump on the next podcast that someone has.   Michael Hingson  46:02 Real quick. Why is Why do you consider public speaking the highest paid profession? Well, because it's the   James Malinchak  46:11 only profession I know, where you don't have to have any college or high school, even education. You don't need a master's degree a PhD, you need no actual, I hate to say it this way. But real skills, in order to do it, all you have to have is some sort of life experience or, you know, some sort of thing that you figured out that you want to share with others that would help them some sort of steps to teach them. And anybody can do, it doesn't matter if you're tall or short, rich, or poor, young, or old, male or female, doesn't matter where you came from, doesn't matter where you're going, you know, it's the only profession I know, last thing I'll say is where the the more jacked up, you've been in your past, the actual law you're gonna make.   Michael Hingson  46:51 There you go. Well, this has really been an honor. And I am just as blessed to get the chance to talk with you. And I would like to find ways that we can work together and stay in touch definitely. I think it would be a lot of fun to do. And I hope that we can do it. And I think that you've offered a lot here. And you've demonstrated that you clearly are able to deal with a lot of different situations. So I appreciate you being here. How can people reach out to you or learn more about your get a hold of you?   James Malinchak  47:23 Thank you. First of all, it's an honor and a privilege. As I said earlier, you really put a special imprint on my heart, being able to meet someone who went through such a historical, devastating situation in our world. So thank you for allowing me to come on and share with some of your great listeners really easy. I'm on this mission to I took my four day big money speaker boot camp, and I actually have written it into a book. And it's over 250 pages. I'm giving it all away for free. It's how I can leave a legacy and the biggest, better best way. There's nothing to pay, you don't have to get a credit card. You just simply go and download it in a digital format. And please pass it around to anybody that you think it might help. It's www dot fri speaker book.com www dot fri speaker book.com?   Michael Hingson  48:19 Yes. Really cool. And people can find you that way. Is there an audio version?   James Malinchak  48:24 Yes, we actually have an audio version as well. And at some point, we'll also have a video version too. But right now it's the book and then the audio book as well.   Michael Hingson  48:35 Cool. So free speaker book.com Correct. Well, James Belichick Thank you very much for being here. It's been an honor. And for anyone who listens to this, please go. Wherever you get your podcasts and give us a five star rating. We would appreciate it. If you'd like to comment or reach out to us in any way you can reach me at Michael H I M i C H A E L H I at accessiBe A C C E S S I B E.com, who didn't get a chance to talk about accessiBe, but we should sometime it's a great way to make websites more usable and accessible. We got to look at your website and see if it's as accessible as it could be James.   James Malinchak  49:16 Well, thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, my friend for having me on.   Michael Hingson  49:20 Thank you. It's been an honor. It's my honor. You beat you to my friend.   UM Intro/Outro  49:31 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Michael Hingson, shares his Keynote speech created on October 3 2019 at an event sponsored by San Joaquin County Office of Education, CEDR Systems help in Monte Ray, CA. There were nearly 1,000 people in attendance at this keynote address delivered by Mr. Hingson to kick off the 2019 Inclusion Collaborative conference. In this presentation, Mike Hingson discussed his life experiences as a student who happened to be blind. He discussed some of the challenges he faced as well as how he prepared to overcome them. As a major part of this talk and our inaugural podcast episode, Mike tells his story of emergency preparation and how he was able to use his knowledge and his unstoppable mindset to survive the terrorist attack on Tower One of the World Trade Center. Some directories do not show full show notes. For the complete transcription please visit: https://michaelhingson.com/podcast 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 an 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 also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. 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 we're 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 01:19 I really am honored to be here. I am, I guess in a sense, a product of special education in California. Let me tell you a little bit about me. In all seriousness, I was born in 1950, February 24 1950. You can do the math. Yes, I'm 69. People say I don't sound it. So I'm very happy about that. And I hope that that continues for a long time. But I was born sighted. But I was born two months premature. And the result of that was that I was put in an incubator with a pure oxygen environment. You've probably heard something about what today is called retinopathy of prematurity, which back in the day, I don't where that expression came from, but it was called retro dentro fibro pleasure. It was something that was discovered and named by Dr. Arnold Patz at the Wilmer Eye Institute. I had the pleasure of meeting him a few years ago before he passed, and we discussed what was originally called rlf, which is now our LP, but the bottom line is, is I was put in an incubator, the retina malformed and I became blind after about two days. We didn't know that for a while. I certainly didn't know it, but my parents didn't know it. About four months after I was born, an aunt said to my mother, you know, he's not really reacting to sunlight. I wonder if there's something wrong with his eyes? Well, sure enough, we went to the hospital and the doctors eventually came out and said, PSC is blind, you can't see. And you should send him to a home because you shouldn't keep him with you. If you do, he will not be good for your family. He'll certainly make it harder for your older son who can see who was two years old, you should send him to home. My father had an eighth grade education. My mother had a high school diploma and they told the learning Medical Society in Chicago nuts, too, you were taking him home. The doctor said he'll never be able to contribute to society and they said sure he will. It doesn't matter if he's blind or not. What matters is what he learns. These people who certainly didn't have the the vast knowledge of the learned medical profession in Chicago, bucked the system, I did go home. I was born on the south side of Chicago. Michael Hingson 03:47 If we if we take geraldo rivera into account two blocks from Al Capone's private vault, but I was born in Chicago, I grew up there for five years, went to the candy store when I was old enough to do it with my brother and cousins, who lived next door every day and walked around the neighborhood and so on and did it just like anyone else. I never even thought about it because my parents didn't think about it. They were risk takers, although I'm sure they didn't think of it that way. But they were they let me go outside and be a part of the rest of the kids in the neighborhood and growing up. They although I didn't know it early on, were a part of a group of parents who fought for special education classes for blind kids see, there were a number of premature births. During the baby boomer era, it actually brought the average age of blind people down from 67 to 65. Because there were so many, but there were enough in Chicago, my parents fought with other parents for special education classes. Well, kindergarten starts at age of four in Chicago. And so at four years old, I went to Korea In the garden in a special class with a teacher who was going to teach me and a bunch of other blind kids something about school, I actually began to learn Braille in kindergarten. I remember I wish I still had it. I remember, she, in teaching me Braille said, the best way for you to learn Braille is to write something. I'm going to read you a story about nasturtiums. Anybody know how to spell illustrations, I don't remember. But I had to write the story down that was in what was called grade one or uncontracted Braille. I had learned grade two yet, but I learned the Braille alphabet in kindergarten, hello. And then my father was offered a job in Southern California and we moved to California, Palmdale, California. And the problem with moving to Palmdale, California was that there were no provisions at all for blind or any other kinds of kids with what we call today's disabilities, or special needs, or whatever you politically want to call it. I'm not really a great fan of political correctness. So let me be real blunt, I am blind, I'm not vision impaired, I don't have a visual handicap, I am blind. By the way, I am trying to help start a movement, what I am not is visually impaired. The last time I checked, being blind didn't have any effect on how you looked. So visually impaired really doesn't count. If you're going to do it, vision impaired is more accurate than visually impaired because I really probably would look the same. If I am blind or sighted. We'll deal with the glasses later. I normally don't wear glasses, but that's another story and we'll get to it. vision impaired I understand visually impaired really is ridiculous. But it's the term that people have used. So you need to help us change the habit. But in reality, I am blind. Let me define blind. A person is blind when they lose enough of their eyesight that they have to use. Let me rephrase that, that they will use alternative techniques to eyesight in order to accomplish tasks, whether it be reading or whatever, yes, you can get very thick lens glasses or CCTVs, and so on, to help a person use their eyesight to read, but they're blind by any standard of intelligence. If you think about it, they are blind, not that they don't have any eyesight, but they have to use alternative techniques. And they don't have to use eyesight. I have been in environments I've been involved in projects as an adult, where I've been in special education, schools where we've been discussing how to teach Braille reading and so on. And I've had teachers who would come up to me and talk about the fact that they have kids who are blind and kids who have some eyesight. They're legally blind, but not totally blind. Sally has some eyesight Johnny doesn't have any Sally gets to reprint Johnny has to read Braille. Michael Hingson 08:05 That attitude is so backward, or it should be considered backward. The problem is Sally may get to reprint, but she's going to have headaches, she's going to read very slow. And if Johnny gets to truly learn Braille, he's going to be reading at several 100 words a minute, while Sally is kind of poking along, and having headaches and not doing very well. I have no problem with children or adults using their eyes. If they have eyesight, I do have a problem with them not also having the opportunity to learn the techniques that blind people use. Because if they learn those techniques, then you they can use both worlds to live much more productive lives. And so for those of you who are special ed teachers, even if your children have some eyesight, and even if the parents resist, try to push back, they need to learn Braille. A lot of special education teachers have said to me well, but blind people don't need Braille anymore. It's passe. You can listen to books and so on. You've got recordings we've now got Of course, files and you can use synthetic speech to hear the books read. Yeah, listen to one of those books with synthetic speech and see how much you enjoy it. But But yes, it's available. But my question to any of those people is tell me why you still teach sighted kids to read print? My they could watch cartoons, they could watch TV? Why do they need to learn to read print? The bottom line is blindness isn't the problem that I face. The problem I face consists truly of the attitudes and misconceptions that people have about blindness and it still comes back down to the fact that in reality people think That blind people can't truly be as productive in society as people who can see. Ah, and I wanted to do something before we go on how many heroes special ed teachers? Let me just see. Alright, how many are HR people? All right, a few of you get it. So I'm going to stop right now and say for those of you who didn't clap, how many of you think it's bright when a lecturer asks you a question and they're blind that you raise your hands? And you prove my point. So the bottom line is blindness isn't the problem. There are so many people in the world who are blind who have accomplished every bit as much if not more than most people in society, because they've learned that eyesight isn't really the gating factor. The gating factor are our attitudes about blindness. Jacob Salatin was a cardiologist who didn't live a long life. I think he died at 36. He was in the early he lived in the early 1900s. He was blind. And he was one of the most famous heart doctors in the Chicago area. There's a book about him called the good doctor, you gotta try to find it and read it. It's fascinating read. There are so many others. Jacobus tenbroek, was the founder of the National Federation of the Blind. He was born in Canada, but lost his eyesight at the age of seven lived most of his life in the United States. Dr. Tim Brooke, was taught by Dr. Newell Perry in in Albany at the School for the Blind at that time, and learned that in fact, he could do whatever he chose to do blindness was the problem. Dr. Tim Brooke went through the standard education courses and eventually had I had taken lectureships in at the University of California at Berkeley, did his undergraduate work there, he wanted to go into law. But when he graduated, and expressed that interest, the school said, No, you can't because a blind person can't do that. You could get a degree in psychology, you can get your PhD in psychology. But you can't get a law degree because blind people can't do that way too much reading way too complicated. So Dr. Tim Britt bowed to the pressure and got his degree in psychology, and then was hired to teach at UC Berkeley. Michael Hingson 12:29 I don't remember the exact year but somewhere along the line, he was asked to chair the speech department at the University of California at Berkeley. Now Dr. Tim Brooke, who was by then married to his wife, Hazel was pretty bright guy and kind of guy. Dr. Hambrick, accepted the position and said to the entire university, I want faculty members to join my speech department. But if you're going to join this department, what you need to understand is that you have to undertake a discipline, different from your discipline of education. So if you're a physicist, for example, and you want to join my department, you got to do research on something other than physics, you can tie it back to physics, but you have to do something other than physics is your main effort of work in our department. Well, Dr. Turmeric was one of these guys who believed in practicing what he preached, what do you think that he decided to do his discipline on? Dr. temperate became one of the foremost constitutional law scholars of the 20th century. There are still many cases that use his treatise is on tort law. And many examples of his works on discrimination and so on, are used today. In 1940, he formed with others, the National Federation of the Blind, the largest organization of blind people, consumers in the United States. And we don't have time to go into a lot of his work. But the point is, it didn't matter that he was buying, he did get to law. And he did it in a roundabout way. But he did it in a way that the university had to accept. And they loved him for it, in fact that Dr. Tim Burke was one of the few people in California who has ever been asked by both political parties to run for the United States Senate. And that happened after senator Claire angle, had a stroke and and he obviously could not continue as a senator and passed away. Dr. Tamarack was asked by both parties to run and he refused. Because he was enjoying his work with the National Federation of the Blind. He was involved in forming the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley and so on and doing so much constitutional law work. He knew that's what he needed to do. blindness isn't the problem. And so the question that all of you need to consider is are you going to hold people back? Or are you going to truly embrace a positive philosophy That says bind people bind students can do whatever they choose. And we're going to challenge them just like we would challenge any other student. And we're going to challenge them to do the best that they can truly do. And we're going to help teach them what they need. And sometimes that's going to mean you need to do as much work to educate parents. Because parents are frightened. They don't know. They're victims. I won't say products. They're victims of the same society that has negative attitudes about blindness. And I know there's only so much you can do, but you can set the tone. All of you here, not just in special education, but all of you here can set the tone. To give you an example of the kinds of attitudes that I faced. We moved to Victorville California in 2014. Where do you live in Victorville? Where do you live? Okay, we live in Spring Valley lake. Yeah. Other side. We chose property and build a house on it. My wife happens to be in a wheelchair and it's been in a chair her whole life. So we, we knew that if you buy a house and modify it, it costs a lot of money. If you build a house, it doesn't cost anything to build in the accessibility. And we found a piece of property very close to the Victorville Spring Valley Lake Country Club. So we get to walk to breakfast, or to go to dinner when we want to go out to eat, which is great. Anyway, before we moved to Victorville, in 2013, my wife and I were in an IKEA store with a couple of other people. And this young 13 year old boy comes up to me and he says, I'm sorry. And I stood there for a second. I said, Well, what are you sorry about? Well, because you can't see. I didn't know this kid. But that was his attitude. And I probably didn't answer in the best way that I could. But I said, Well, I'm sorry that you can because you don't get what I get. Michael Hingson 17:05 And by that time, his mother saw that he was tying this blanket and called him away and told him that not bothered the blind man. But you know, the bottom line is, we're no different than anyone else. We don't have the disability that all of you house. You know, in the 1800s, Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb. Why did he do that? Because as we now understand, with the Americans with Disabilities Act, it was a reasonable accommodation for light dependent people who can't function in the dark. Michael Hingson 17:39 You light dependent people I know there are more of you than there are of me. But we're gonna get you in a dark alley one night, and we'll see if we can read. You know, again, it isn't. It isn't a blindness issue. I did go to college, I graduated I had several jobs that eventually led me to be in the World Trade Center on September 11 2001. I was there as the Mid Atlantic region sales manager for quantum Corporation, which was a fortune 500 computer company. I had been hired two years before to open an office for quantum in New York City. I was living back there because I had been transferred by another company from California to sell in New York City because I had been doing it by phone. And I made the case for the fact that we needed to do it on site. So I was asked to open an office because I had been recruited by quantum to do that. We opened the office on the 78th floor of tower one of the World Trade Center. The 78th floor is what's called a skylounge a sky lobby. That meant that elevators would go straight from floor one to 78 without stopping the World Trade Center. The way it was structured was that you could take elevators to go from floor one up to some number of floors but there were also direct elevators to floor 44 and floor 78. The 44th floor was where the cafeteria was the Port Authority cafeteria that everyone use 78 was the next jumping off point. You would then go to other elevators to go to other floors are you take the stairs, or in our case we were fortunate to have our office right on the 78th floor and on September 11 we were going to be holding some sales seminars to teach some of our resellers how to teach how to sell our products. I Arctic con they are excuse me quantum the company that worked for then artic con move me to the east coast but quantum work through a two tier distribution and sales model. So typically most of our products were sold to a few very large distributors and they in turn sign the smaller resellers and the major distributor we worked with Ingram micro wanted to make sure that their resellers knew how to sell our products. So they asked if we do the seminar and we set it up for of course September 11. By that time, I Had my fifth guide dog Roselle was that was a yellow lab. Roselle was also a dog with a great sense of humor, she loved to steal socks. She wouldn't eat them, she hid them. And I was warned by her puppy raisers that she'd like to do that. And she did. She stole my wife slippers once and hid them. And we had to find them. So in any case, we we in, Roselle and I were matched in 1999. And in 2001, she was very used to working in the World Trade Center with me, I had spent a lot of time when we started the office and started preparing to open the office, I had spent a great deal of time learning where everything in the World Trade Center was that I could possibly want to know about, I knew what was on most every floor, especially that would be a place where we might want to reach out and, and try to sell. I knew how to get around. I spent a lot of time studying emergency evacuation procedures. And almost every day when I went into the office, I remember thinking, if there's an emergency today, how am I going to get out? What am I going to do? And I made sure I knew the answers to those things. Because many times I would be in the office alone, nobody else would be there. Because I had a staff working for me great sales guys. And their job was to go out and sell and support their manager, right. So that was me. And my job was to be inside supporting them going on sales calls with them from time to time. But a lot of times I would be in the office alone, fielding their questions, helping them in any way that I could, working to make sure that I knew everything that they might need to know so that I could enhance them out in the field. In fact, every salesperson I ever hired, I said, Look, I know you're working for me. But I want you to understand that I view myself as a second person on your sales team. And what you and I need to do is to learn how we work together so I can add value to you and enhance what you do. My favorite example of that was with a guy named Kevin, who I hired. Michael Hingson 22:14 I really liked Kevin, because when we were doing the interview, I said to him like I did to everyone, tell me what you're going to be selling for us and how you're going to do it. Now the typical answer for most people was, well, you're selling tape drives, we're going to be selling the tape drives, I'm going to learn all about those. And I'm going to go off and tell people how to do it. And what what they need to know so that they can buy it. That's the typical answer. Kevin's answer was the only person who ever gave it and it was the answer I wanted to hear. The only thing I have to sell is me and my reputation. And I need your support. I won't do anything without telling you. But when we agree on something, I'm going to go sell me and through them will and through that we'll sell the products. But if they don't believe me, they're not going to be interested in our products. And I have to rely on you. What an answer. But it was the right answer truly. So one day Kevin comes into my office and he says, Hey, we have sales opportunity at Salomon Brothers. I said, Okay. He said, they want me to come out and talk about our products for a project they have, I'm not sure that our products will really be what they want. But they want us to come and talk about it. And they wanted me to bring my manager along a decision maker. I said, Okay, he said, so they don't know you. So I didn't tell him you're blind. Michael Hingson 23:51 So we got to the meeting. We entered the building right at 10 o'clock. We I wanted to arrive a minute or so late. I knew what Kevin meant. When he said I didn't tell him you're blind. Because we were going to hit him right between the eyes with that. So about 1001 we're walking down the hallway here, a bunch of people talking a few and we're going where are these quantum people in all that we walk in the door and the room goes totally silent. We stand there for a moment. And I turned to Kevin, I said, So where are we going to do this? He says all right up here in the front. So we went up to the front I had a laptop projector in hand on my laptop also opened up the cases took things out and says where do we plug this stuff in? And he says I'll take it and he plugs it in. And meanwhile, I'm standing there facing this audience. And so I turn to my left. And I said to the person sitting right in the front row on the corner who I heard as we walked by, I said, Hi my name is Mike Kingston, who are you? Nothing. Really, who are you? Nothing. So I kind of walk over near him and I'm looking straight at him. And I said I heard you when I walked by, who are you? So finally he said, Oh, my name is Joe. I said, Good, glad to meet you. And when I shook his hand, I said, you know, doesn't matter whether I'm blind beside, I know you're there. I don't know a lot about you yet, but I'm gonna learn about you. So tell me, Joe, why are you interested in our tape drives? I didn't ask if he was interested. I asked him why? Because I knew from my Dale Carnegie sales course you don't answer ask yes or no questions unless you really know the answer. But you don't ask yes or no questions. That doesn't give you a lot of information. So Joe, kind of hemmed and hawed and finally gave me an answer to that. And then I said, So tell me a little bit more about the project, if you will. And he did. And then I went to the next person, and I went around the room. And I talked to those people, learning a lot, including our product wasn't gonna do anything to help these people. But we were there. So we did the presentation. I did the presentation, I had a script, I did the PowerPoint show. And on my script was in incredible detail. And it said, everything that I needed to know including even on the screen, what picture appeared where so I could point over my shoulder and say, on the left side of your screen, you'll see the A TLP 3000, which holds 16 tape drives and 326 tape cartridges, we use a special technology called prism technology, our system is very modular, we can actually connect five of those drives together five of those libraries together, so that you could have a total of 80, tape drives, and 16 120. Tape cartridges, all in one big library. And on the right side of your screen, you can see the ATL p 1000, which is a small single drive library with 30, tape drives, and some things like that, and talk on and on and on. And we went off and we talked and all that, and we did the whole show. And then I said at the end, and as you can see our product won't do what you want. But I wanted you to know about it, because I want you to understand what different systems can do. Now let me tell you a little bit about who has a product that will help you. My bosses would shoot me if they heard me say that. But it's the ethical thing to do. And so we talked about that a little bit. And then we ended the day and people will come up to me and we chatted some and a couple came up and they said we're really angry at you. And I said Why? He said Well, usually when people come in, they do these presentations, we just kind of fall asleep and vege out, you know, because they just keep talking and talking. But you never looked away and looked at the screen. You kept looking at us, we forgot you were blind. We didn't dare fall asleep. And I said, Well, you could have fallen asleep. The dog was down here. You may think he's asleep, but he's taken notes. Anyway, we ended and we went out and Kevin said, How can you know so much about our products? And and you knew some of these later things that I don't know. And I said, Well, did you read the product bulletin that came out last week? Well, no, I really didn't have time. I said, there you go. message received and understood. But about two weeks later, the Solomon people called back and they said, We really do appreciate all that you did and coming out and talking with us. And we have something to tell you. And that is that there's another project. Because of everything that you taught us, we know that your product is perfect for it, we're not even putting it out for bid, just give us a price. That's the ethics of it. That's the way to sell. Michael Hingson 28:31 And that's what we did. So, in any case, I spent a lot of time learning what to do in the case of an emergency, so that I could get out when necessary, because I knew that people like Kevin and the rest of our sales and support staff would be out working a lot of times. And so I knew everything that I could possibly know about what to do in any kind of an unusual situation. On September 10, I went home as usual, I took my laptop, which is what I used in the office, I backed up my data at home. I'm a good Scout, I know how to be prepared, and sometimes I would work at home. So I always made sure I had my data backed up at home as well as on the job. By the way, speaking of scouts as long as I'm bragging, I happen to be an Eagle Scout with two palms and vigil in the order of the arrow. blindness isn't the issue. Michael Hingson 29:33 A lot of fun. I had some great scout leaders who accepted me for who I was and that made all the difference. In any case. I backed up my data later that night we went to bed and about 1230 Roselle started nudging me. Now Roselle was afraid of thunder. And of course we had rain storms in New Jersey. We lived in Westfield, great town. Again there we build our house that was a two story house. We put an elevator in So we could go to the two stories and the basement. So we had this nice elevator and nice house. But Roselle now was bugging me at 1230. And I knew that there must be a storm coming. She usually gave us about a half hour warning because she could sense it, as we know because the static charge would build up on her for as well as the fact that she probably heard the thunder before we do and so Rosa was shaking and shivering and panting and so I took Roselle Karen, my wife was awake by that time and we both agree there must be a storm coming. So we went downstairs to my basement to our basement. I put Roselle under my desk and I sat down and decided to try to do a little bit of work that I was going to do the next day before our sales seminars began. I turned on the stereos and had a pretty loud hopefully masking some of the thunder sounds. But God has a sense of humor. I guess. The storm literally came right over our house. It sounds like bombs going off outside and pours it Roselle was just shaking. At least she didn't see the lightning because she was under the desk. We were there until about two o'clock. Then the storm left. And so I went back up and we got three more hours asleep and then got up to go into the office. I didn't think it was a bad sign of things to come. Some people have said well, didn't you get the warning? No. So we got to the office at 740. And there was a guy there he just pulled up with a cart. He was from the Port Authority cafeteria, he was bringing the breakfast that we ordered for the early arrivals. And for the first group of seminar people we had 50 people scheduled during the day to come to one of four seminars. by eight o'clock. Some of our distribution people from Ingram micro arrived along with David Frank from our corporate office, David was in charge of the distribution sales, then he was there to help the Ingram micro people talk about pricing. I was there because of course I'm the technical contact the guy who would be on site in New York all the time. David was from New York, but he transplanted to California. And so so he was there and I was there we were the two quantum people, the Ingram micro people were there for about five Ingram micro people, six, actually, I guess. And then one of them decided about quarter after eight or 830, to go downstairs and to wait in the lobby, and a score our distribution people to where they needed to go. The last thing we needed to do before the seminars or to start was to create a list of all the people who would be attending that day, if you wanted to go to the World Trade Center and go up and see anyone at that time, because of the bombing in 1993, you either had to have your name on a previously prepared list that was created on stationery from the company where you were going. So they could check your name off after looking at your ID, or they would have to call us and say is so and so allowed to come up. We didn't want to have 50 phone calls. So it was easier to create the list. David and I finished the list and at 845 in the morning I was reaching for stationery to create the list and print it out when suddenly we felt a muffled thump. And the building sort of shuttered a little a minor kind of explosion not overly loud. And then the building began to tip. As I'm tipping my hand and it just kept tipping and tipping and tipping. We actually moved about 20 feet. Michael Hingson 33:37 The building kept tipping. David said What's going on? I said I don't know what do you think? I said do you think it was an explosion? You said it didn't sound like it? He said was it an earthquake? I said no. Because the building's not shaking from side to side or anything it's going in one direction. Now I knew that building the towers were made to buffet and winds although I wasn't really thinking about that at the time. But the building kept tipping and hey I grew up in Palmdale right building musco Santa doorway, so I went and stood in the doorway to my office. Yeah, a lot of good that's really going to do your 78 floors up but hey, there I was. David was just holding on to my desk. Roselle was asleep under my desk. And finally, David, I say goodbye to each other because we thought we were about to take a 78 floor punch to the street. Then the building slowed down and it stopped. And it came back the other way. And I remember as soon as the building started to move back, I let out my breath. I didn't even realize I was holding it. The building eventually got to be vertical again. As soon as it did, I went into my office and I met my guide dog Roselle coming out from under my desk. I took her leash and told her to heal, which meant to come around on my left side just like Alamo did good boy, he gets a reward for sitting and Roselle came and sat and was just wagging your tail And about that time, the building Straight down about six feet. Because as we know, the expansion joints went back to their normal configuration. We didn't really think about that at the time, but that's what they were doing. As soon as that occurred, David let go of the desk, turned around and looked around outside and said, Oh my god, Mike, there's fire and smoke above us. There are millions of pieces of burning paper falling outside the window. We got to get out of here right now. We can't stay here. I said. Are you sure? Yeah, I can see the fire above us. And there millions of pieces of burning paper falling outside our windows. I heard stuff, brushing the windows, but I didn't know what it was. Now I did. And our guests began to scream the ones that were in eating breakfast, waiting for the seminar to start, they started moving toward our exit and I kept saying slow down, David. No, we got to get out of here right now. The buildings on fire. Slow down. David will get out. Just be patient. No, we got to get out of here right now. We can't stay here. For me, emergency preparedness training kicked in. Because I, as you know, kept thinking What do I do? Emergency Well, here it was. Then David said the big line Mike, we got to get out of here. And I said slow down. He says no, you don't understand you can't see it. The problem wasn't what I wasn't seeing. The problem was what David wasn't seeing when I tell you about Rozelle with thunderstorms. She wasn't doing any of that she was wagging her tail and Jani and going, who woke me up. She wasn't giving any fear indication at all. And so I knew that whatever was occurring, we weren't imminently immediately threatened. So I finally got David to focus and say, get our guests to the stairs and start them down. And he did. While he was doing that, I called Karen, my wife and said, there's been an emergency and something happened. We're going to be evacuating, I'll let you know later What's going on? And she said, what's, what is what is going on? I said, Oh, no. The airplane hit 18 floors above us on the other side of the building. Afterward, when reporters started interviewing me. They said, Well, of course you didn't know what happened because you couldn't see it. I said, Wait a minute, helped me understand. The plane hit on the 96th floor roughly. On the other side of the building from us the last time I heard there really wasn't such a thing as x ray vision. None of us knew blindness had nothing to do with you can't justify that. None of us knew. And on the stairs, none of us knew. And we were with a whole bunch of people on the stairs. Anyway, David came back. I just disconnected with Karen. We swept the offices to make sure we didn't miss anyone. We tried to power down some equipment, didn't really have time to do a lot of that and we just left a went to the stairs and started down. Almost immediately I began smelling an odor and it took me a little while to recognize that what I was smelling was burning jet fuel. I traveled a lot through airports about 100,000 miles a year. So I knew that smell but I didn't associate it with the World Trade Center. Now suddenly, I smelled it and I recognize it finally after about four floors, and I observed it to others who said yeah, that's what it is. You're right. Michael Hingson 38:12 So we kept walking down the stairs. Got down about 10 floors and then from above us we heard Brian victim coming through move to the side let us by the stairs were wide enough that you could walk like two or three abreast but we moved to the outer wall stood facing in and a group of people passed us and David described how they were surrounding a woman who is very badly burned over the upper part of her body, probably from the little vapor droplets that can busted as she was standing in front of an elevator. We then started walking again and then we heard it again burned record coming through moving to the side, let us buy and another group pass us with someone who is burn. As David said even worse, we knew it had to be pretty bad above us. We kept walking down some conversation. We got to about the 50th floor David wasn't talking very much. And suddenly he said Mike we're gonna die. We're not going to make it out of here. And I just said stop it David if Roselle and I can go down the stairs. So can you see I took that secret teacher course that that all of you as teachers have never told anybody about because you're sworn to secrecy, right? voice 101 where you learn to yell at students, right? And so I literally very deliberately spoke very harshly to David. And he told me that that brought him out of his funk. But then David made a decision, which I think is still one of the most profound and incredible decisions and follow throughs that I experienced that day. David said, You know, I got to keep my mind on it on what's going on. But I don't I don't want to think about this. I want to think about something else. So I'm going to walk the floor below you and shout up to you everything that I see on the stairs, okay. And I said Sure, go ahead. Did I need David to do that? No. Right, you're going down the stairs, what can you do, but it was okay. And I'm glad to have more information. I love information. And so I thought it was fine. But the reason that I thought that what David did was so incredible will come up in a moment. So suddenly I'm on the 49th floor when I walked down the floor and David walked ahead of us and suddenly, Hey, Mike, I'm on the 48th floor, everything is good here going on down. I'm on 49 go into 48 get to 48 David 47th floor all clear. What David was doing, although he was shouting up to me, he was providing information that hundreds or 1000s of people on the stairwell could hear. He gave everyone a focus point. Anyone who could hear him knew that somewhere above them or below them on the stairs, someone was okay. And that it was clear and they could keep going. He gave everyone something to focus on. And I think that that was the one thing more than anything else. That had to keep more people from possibly panicking like he started to do on the stairs. We didn't have any other incidents that that after David started shouting 46 floor all clear. Hey, I'm on 45 everything is good here. 44th floor This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is not stopping going on down. Michael Hingson 41:31 And we continue down the stairs. We eventually got to the 30th floor. And when we did actually David did and I was at 31 he said I see I see firefighters coming up the stairs. We're going to have to let them by everybody moved to the side while I went down to where he was and they hadn't got there yet. I said what do you see? And he said, Well I just see him coming up the stairs they got heavy backpacks on and they're carrying shovels oxygen cylinders by our axes the first guy gets to us and he stops right in front of me and when let me bike goes hey buddy you okay? You know that's how you sound in New York right? Hey buddy. Yo, in New Jersey, it's yo and I said yeah I'm fine well that's really nice we're gonna send somebody down the stairs which should make sure you get out and I said you don't need to do that I'm good. What's really nice we're gonna send somebody which anyway I said Look, I just came down from the 78th floor here we are at 30 I came down 48 floors I'm really good. Wow, it's really nice. We're gonna send somebody down the stairs which I said Look, I got my guide dog Roselle here and and everything is good. We're doing fine. Now what a nice dog and he reaches out and he starts petting Roselle. It wasn't the time to give him a lecture don't pet a guide dog and harness. But I'll give you the lecture dump had a guide dog and harness, dog and harness do not come up Don't say name don't interact with even don't make eye contact dog in harness is working harness is symbol of work. Don't distract dog. If you do, I will first correct the dog before I deal with you. Because rose Alamo should know better. He is still a puppy though. And dogs love to interact. And so when you start trying to talk with them, they're going to talk to you, they're going to try and then I have to bring him back and focus him. I don't want to do that. So don't deal with a guide dog and harness. Now as I said before, when we're out selling books later harness will come off, and you're welcome to visit with him all you want. Of course, I'd love you to buy books too. And take business cards because if any of you know anyone who needs a public speaker, whether it's in your district or or their organizations, I would love you to to let me know or let them know, because this is what I do. And I really would love your help to do more of this to educate people. We can talk more about that later. Any case wasn't the time to give them that lecture and it wasn't the time to say to the fire person. blindness isn't the problem. It's your attitude, you know, so I finally just played the card. Look, I got my friend David over here David can see we're working together okay. And he turns to David here with him. David goes yeah, leave him alone. He's good. He says okay, and he goes, then he pets Roselle a few more times. She gives him a few more kisses. And he goes on up the stairs. Probably just having received the last unconditional love he ever gotten his life. Michael Hingson 44:21 And I remember that. Every time I say it. I don't know I never heard whether they survived or not. But don't know that he did. But he was gone. Other firefighters were coming up 50 men and women pastors going up the stairs to fight that fire. Several of us on one or more occasions said can we help you guys and they just said no Your job is to go down and get out ours is to go deal with this. We got it. David we assumed a scouting position and we kept going down the stairs. Finally David said well at about the 26th floor by the way Somebody started passing up water bottles. Roselle was panting I was getting pretty warm with all the the massive human bodies. So we we gave Roselle some water somebody passed up bottles and David brought one up and he took some drinks I took some drinks we gave Roselle some we made our hands into kind of cups and so everybody got some water and then we continued and finally he got to the first floor. I was on four second floor two and he said hey Mike, the water sprinklers are on here you're going to have to run through a curtain and water to get out of the stairwell. And the water was running to create a barrier so fire wouldn't get in or out depending on if it ever broke out. He was gone. I got to the first floor picked up the harness results forward hopper speed up, which is the command to give. we raced through this torrential downpour of water and came out the other end soaking. But we were in the lobby of tower one. Normally a very quiet building and quiet lobby office type environment. But now people were shouting dunk on that way. Don't go outside go this way. megaphones don't go over their gun this way. Go to the doors into the rain, main part of the complex don't go outside. They didn't want anyone going out because that would have put them right below where people were jumping. We didn't know that at the time. So this guy comes up to David and me. And he says, Hey, I'm with the FBI. I'll get you where you need to go. And I'm sitting there going the FBI. What did I do? I didn't do it. sighs I'm not talking to anybody about McGarrett from five Oh, I didn't think that. Anyway, I said What's going on? He said no time to tell you just come with us. So he ran us through the whole complex and out a door after going up an escalator by borders, books as far away from the towers as we could be. And we made it outside. And we were told to leave the area. But David looked around and said, Mike, I see fire in tower two. I said what? Yeah, there's fire in the second tower. Sure. Yeah. And I went, what's going on? We had no idea where that came from. We didn't feel thing in our building when we were going down the stairs. So we thought perhaps it was just fire that jumped across from our building when the building tipped it was mashing pointed toward tower to we didn't know. So we left the area we walked over to Broadway, we walk north on Broadway and eventually we got to Vesey street where we stopped because David says see the fire and tower to really well. We're only 100 yards away. I want to take pictures. So we stopped. He got out his camera. I got out my phone. I tried to call Karen. I couldn't get through the circuits were busy because as we now know everyone was everyone was saying goodbye to loved ones. But I couldn't get through to Karen. I had just put my phone away and David was putting his camera away when a police officer to get out of here it's coming down and we heard this rumble that quickly became this deafening roar I described the sound is kind of a combination of a freight train and a waterfall. You could hear glass tinkling and breaking metal clattering in is white noise sound as tower to collapse it pancake straight down. David turned and ran. He was gone. Everyone was running different directions. I bodily lifted, Roselle turned 180 degrees and started running back the way we came. Come on was I'll keep going good girl keep going. We ran got to Fulton Street, turned right onto Fulton Street. And now we're going west. At least we had a building between us and the towers. I ran about maybe 100 feet or so. And suddenly there was David. It turns out we had both run in the same direction. And then he realized that he had just left me he was going to come back and try to find me. But I found him first and he started apologizing. I said David, don't worry about the buildings coming down. Let's keep going and we started to run. And then we were engulfed in the dust cloud all the dirt and debris in the fine particles of tower two that were collapsing that we're that we're coming down. And so David and I were now engulfed in this cloud. He said he couldn't see his hand six inches in front of his face. I could feel with every breath I took stuff going through my mouth and through my nose into my throat and settling in my lungs. That's how thick it was. I could feel it settling in my lungs. Michael Hingson 49:19 So we kept running and we knew we had to get out of that. So I started telling Roselle right? Right with hand signals and voice I don't know whether she could hear me and because of the dust. I don't even know if she could see me. Right? Roselle right? But I was listening for an opening on my right and the first opening I heard I was gonna go into it. And obviously Roselle didn't know what I want because when that first opening appeared, I heard it but she immediately turned right she took one step and she stopped and she wouldn't move. Connor was I'll keep going, she wouldn't move. And I realized there must be a reason. So I stuck a handle on a wall and stuck out a foot and realized and discovered that we were at the top of a flight of stairs. She had done her job perfectly. We walked down two flights of stairs and found ourselves in little arcade, a lobby of a subway station. We continued to well, we just stayed there for a while. And then this guy comes up. He introduced himself as Lou, an employee of the subway system. And he took us down to the lower levels of the subway station to an employee locker room. And when we got to the locker room, there were benches there were about eight or nine of us who were in the lobby at that point, that little arcade, there were other people that he had already escorted down. So we were all in this employee locker room, there was a water fountain, there were benches, there was a fan. We were all hacking and trying to get rid of stuff from our lungs, and not saying much what the heck was going on. None of us knew. We were there for a few minutes. And then a police officer came and he said, the air is clear up above you're gonna have to, to leave and and go out of here right now. So we followed him up the stairs, he went to that little arcade lobby where we had been, and then he went on up the stairs. He said the air is a little bit better up there. And we just followed him. And finally we went outside after getting to the top. David looked around, and he said, Oh my god, Mike. There's no tower to anymore. And I said, What do you see? And he said, All I see are pillars of smoke where the tower was it's gone. Pretty sure. Yeah, it's gone. We stood there for a moment. And then we just turn and continue to walk west on Fulton Street. We walked for about maybe a quarter of a mile. And we were in this little Plaza area. Just still trying to figure out what was happening when suddenly we heard that freight train waterfall sound again, and we knew it was tower one collapsing, David looked back and saw it. And he saw a dust cloud coming toward us again, it was still pretty concentrated. So we kind of ran to the side to get out of most of it hunkered down behind a wall and just waited until everything passes by and the wind subsided, the noise stop. And then we stood up. Turn, David looked around and said, Oh my god, Mike. There's no World Trade Center anymore. I said what do you see? And he said, fingers of fire and flame hundreds of feet tall and pillars of smoke, the towers are gone. We're gone in three hours before less than three hours before just to do our job. But now in the blink of an eye, it was gone. No clue why we stood there for a moment. And then I decided I better try to call Karen and this time I got through. And after some tears on both sides of the phone, she told us how to aircraft had been crashed into the towers went into the Pentagon and a fourth was still missing over Pennsylvania. We walked up toward Midtown and eventually got near Midtown Manhattan to the subway station and the train station at 33rd and sixth and seventh Avenue. And David and I set parted and went different ways. I wanted to get back home to Westfield he wanted to get up to the Upper East Side to his sister's house, which is where he was staying when I was back in New York. And so we went our separate ways. Michael Hingson 53:42 And never, never thinking that that was the end. And a lot of ways. We did try to reopen the office elsewhere, but didn't get a lot of support from the company and decided that, for me, it was time to do something different. The reason I decided that was that the day after September 11, the 12th. Karen said you want to call the folks from Guide Dogs for the Blind. That's where you've gotten all your guide dogs got to let them know that you were in the trade center and got out because eventually they would remember it a number of them had visited us in our office, because it's such a cool view. I don't know how to tell you about the view so much other than to say we were so high up that on the Fourth of July, people would go to our office to look down on the fireworks displays. So I called them and talked to a number of people including their public information officer, Joanne Ritter, who wanted to do a story and I said sure, and she said, You know, you're probably going to get request to be on TV. What TV show Do you want to start with? So yeah, I'm not really thinking about that sort of stuff, right? kind of still in shock. So I just said Larry King Live. Two days later on the 14th. We had the first of five interviews with Larry King. And so we started doing that and eventually Guide Dogs asked me to come and be a public spoke serve their public spokesperson. And I was being asked by that time to travel and speak and tell my story. And people said, we want to hire you. Being a sales guy, I'm sitting there going, you want to hire me just to come and talk. That sounds a whole lot more fun than working for quantum. And we wanted to move back to California anyway. So I accepted Guide Dogs position, and I've been speaking ever since. Other things have happened along the way very quickly, including I was asked in 2015, by a startup company, AIRA, a IRA to join their advisory board and AIRA makes a product called a visual interpreter. It consists of an app on a smartphone. And it may also include smart glasses with a high resolution video camera. And what I wrote allows me to do is to contact an agent who has been hired and vetted and trained to describe whatever the camera sees, and whatever information I need so they can help with an accessible websites. They helped me put together products when the instructions were all visual pictures, the Chinese have learned from IKEA, and in so many other ways that literally now, any visual information becomes available with AIRA. I just really want to quickly show you like hierro and we can we can talk more about AIRA this afternoon in the the session at 345. I want you to see what AIRA does. So hopefully AIRA 56:37 connecting to agent Kenyon starting video we're gonna wait. Oh, Michael, thanks for calling. I read this is Kenyon. What would you like to do today? Michael Hingson 56:48 I'd like you to tell me what you see. AIRA 56:50 I see a very large crowd, right? Michael Hingson 56:54 Yeah, what else? AIRA 56:56 podium to mic. And it looks like a very large auditorium, see some doors toward the back exit signs, and very captive crowds. Michael Hingson 57:09 Here's the real question. Do they look like they're awake? AIRA 57:16 They are now. So we're good. Michael Hingson 57:21 So tell them what you do. AIRA 57:26 I assist those who are sight challenged with independence on a daily basis. We allow them to be more independent in their daily lives to get around with minimal help. And we basically help them to see Michael Hingson 57:41 how do you do that? What do you do? 57:44 We use descriptives we use, we call in as we did now. And we ask them, What would you like to do and we assist them with whatever their task may be for that day, whether it be for reading, navigation, calling an Ubers, travel, descriptives, you name it, we can do it. We do that through either, believe you're using the glasses right now. We have horizon glasses we use and then or through technology in the phones, we use remote cameras, to help them to see the world around them and describe it to them. And to help them navigate through Michael Hingson 58:17 it to real quick stories. One, one IRA agent helped someone once while they were on an African safari to describe what was going on. But my favorite IRA story is that a father once wanted to find out if his daughter was really doing her homework. So he activated IRA. And he went in with the agent and said, How are things going? And she said, Oh great. I'm almost done with my homework. And the Irish said Irish and said, No, she's playing a game on her iPhone. AIRA 58:48 Yes, we also bust children whenever we need to. Michael Hingson 58:54 Kenny, I appreciate your time. I'm going to go ahead and finish chatting with these folks. But appreciate you taking the time to chat today. AIRA 59:02 You bet. Thanks for calling AIRA. Michael, we'll talk to you again soon. Michael Hingson 59:04 Thank you, sir. Bye. And that's what and that's what I read is all about. The whole the whole point is that I get access to all the information I otherwise don't have access to. Because ironically, in our modern technological world, sometimes it's actually becoming harder for me to get access to information. Too many websites are inaccessible and shouldn't be too many books may be scanned, but they're not put in a textual form that I have access to. There have been lawsuits over that. But the bottom line is that IRA creates access, or I should say it creates inclusion it gives me access to the information that I otherwise wouldn't have access to. So be glad to show that to any of you What I'd like to do is to end this now, with some words from Dr. Tim Brooke, that the person I mentioned earlier, this is part of a speech that he gave at the 1956 convention of the National Federation of the Blind in San Francisco. So it is a convention of blind people. But what I'm reading to you now could just as easily apply to any group. And I'm sure that Dr. Tim Burke intended it that way. And this is what he wrote. In the 16th century, john Bradford made a famous remark, which has ever since been held up to us as a model of Christian humility, and correct charity, and which you saw reflected in the agency quotations I presented earlier, seeing a beggar in his rags creeping along a wall through a flash of lightning in a stormy night, Bradford said, but for the grace of God, there go I compassion was shown. Pity was shown, charity was shown. Humility was shown. There was even an acknowledgment that the relative positions of the two could and might have been switched. Yet, despite the compassion, despite the pity, despite the charity, despite the humility, how insufferably arrogant there was still an unbridgeable gulf between Bradford and the beggar. They were not one but two, whatever might have been, Bradford thought himself Bradford, and the beggar a beggar one high, the other low one Why's the other misguided, one strong, the other weak, one virtuous, the other depraved. We do not and cannot take the Bradford approach. It is not just that beggary is the badge of our past, and is still all too often the present symbol of social attitudes toward us, although that is at least a part of it. But in the broader sense, we are that bigger, and he is, each of us, we are made in the same image. And out of the same ingredients, we have the same weaknesses and strengths, the same feelings, emotions, and drives. And we are the product of the same social, economic and other environmental forces. How much more constant with the facts of individual and social life, how much more a part of a true humanity to say, instead, there within the grace of God, do go I. And I want to leave you with that, because I think that sums it up as well as I can possibly do. We're all on the same world together. And you have the awesome responsibility to help children. And perhaps their parents grow, and truly become more included in society. So this afternoon, I'll be talking about the concept of moving from diversity to inclusion, and I'll tell you why choose that title. And I'll tell you now, when you watch television, you hear all about diversity. How often do you ever hear disabilities mentioned? You don't? Hollywood doesn't mention us. The candidates aren't mentioning us in all the political debates. Michael Hingson 1:03:46 Even though 20% of the population has some sort of a disability, not concluding politicians who have their own disabilities, but we want to go we need to demand and we ask your help to create a true inclusive society. I challenge you to do that. I hope we get to chat later. Come to the presentation this afternoon and come and see us. We'll be selling Thunder dog books, and you can visit with Alamo. And also again, if you know anyone else who needs a speaker, it's what I do, as you can tell, did you all feel you'll learn something today? vendors and everyone like Thanks very much, and I hope we get to chat some more. Thank you. Michael Hingson 1:04:43 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

This episode we're joined by Mike Kingston, founder of Headlocked Comics. Mike talks to us about his comic series, experiences meeting some of his childhood favorites in the wrestling community, and his Kickstarter for his new Headlocked anthology series- Tales From the Road. Two days left in his campaign, check it out and donate if you can! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/headlockedcomic/headlocked-tales-from-the-road

This week Mat and Chris welcome Mike Kingston, creator of the Headlocked Comics series. Mike discusses his newest comic, Tales from the Road, in which he's collaborated with a bunch of wrestlers, including noted vampire warrior professional wrestler Gangrel. Headlocked: Tales from the Road is being crowdfunded on Kickstarter now. We also dive deep into WWE's official cookbook with Chef Mat, while Chris obsessed over WWE's Mattel action figures that are only available at San Diego Comic-Con. Support Headlocked: Tales from the Road on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/headlockedcomic/headlocked-tales-from-the-road Follow Mike Kingston: https://twitter.com/headlockedcomic Follow Wrestle Buddies: http://www.twitter.com/wrestlebuddies http://www.instagram.com/wrestlebuddies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About The Sports Courier Podcast Episode 3: TSC News host Fred Richani presents our New York Comic 2019 recap and review featuring the Headlocked Comic panel with WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley, wrestling legend Gangrel, author Michael Kingston, and legendary artist Jill Thompson! Plus: Interviews with cosplayers and one of the Com2uS directors behind popular esports and app game Summoners War! Time Stamps: 00:19 Headlocked Comic author Mike Kingston 07:45 Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins Broski Cosplay 11:17 Summoners War 15:16 Travel Channel's Ghost Nation hosts Dave Tango, Steve Gonsalves, and Jason Hawes 15:36 Headlocked Comic Panel with PWInsider's Mike Johnson, Mike Kingston, Mick Foley, Gangrel, Doug Hills, and Jill Thompson Follow TSC: https://www.facebook.com/TheSportsCourier https://twitter.com/SportsCourier http://www.youtube.com/TheSportsCourier http://instagram.com/tscnews

While attending NYCC this year the boys were honored to interview the creator of the best wrestling comics around, Mike Kingston. Mike, who created Headlocked Comics, has built his entire comics brand himself through a pure passion for wrestling and the comic world.  We ask Mike how he managed to create and promote his brand as well as what wrestlers and matches influenced him the most. Mike also goes a bit into some of his writing and creative techniques that accelerated his brand along with some advice for those who are chasing their own dreams. 

This week on Geekodrome, we are joined by writer Mike KKingston to talk about Headlocked Comic, his wrestling based comic book series. Plus we talk all about comic books, wrestling, and how they intertwine. Music for Geekodrome is by Lemon Yellow Hayes. Our opening song is Mr Weatherbee and our closing song is The Legend of E.T. Twitter - bit.ly/GeekodromeTwitter Facebook - bit.ly/GeekodromeFacebook Soundcloud - bit.ly/GeekodromeSoundcloud iTunes - bit.ly/iTunesGeekodrome

Liz got to interview Mike Kingston of Headlocked Comics about his comic and other projects, as well as the state of wrestling as a whole. There's a lot of overlap between comic book fandom and wrestling fandom, which makes sense if you look at the storytelling techniques of both forms of entertainment. The interview starts at 31:00, and it's a good conversation even if you aren't into wrestling. And who knows, maybe you'll listen to it and decide to give sports entertainment a shot! Before the interview, the Fanpals start talking about the kind of stories they wish were being told, which kind of devolves into talking shit about jobs and family ... not that this show is known for tangents or anything.

Sonny Sofrito (@SonnySofrito on ALL social media) interviews Mike Kingston, creator of Headlocked Comic, after a long day at NYCC 2018. They discuss his creation of Headlocked, the wrestlers he's worked with, bridging the divide between comics and wrestling, and the big plans he has for the future. You can check out Headlocked Comic on his website & Social Media: Facebook: facebook.com/headlockedcomic Twitter: twitter.com/headlockedcomic Instagram: instagram.com/headlockedcomic YouTube: youtube.com/headlockedcomic Website: www.headlockedcomic.com . Please like, comment, share, and subscribe to our channels: Audio Version: Search "Yep I Like Wrestling" on all podcast platforms Video Version: YouTube.com/yepilw You can also find us at the links below... WEBSITE * yepilw.com EVENTS * Yepilw.EventBrite.com T-SHIRT STORE * ProWrestlingTees.com/yepilw SOCIAL MEDIA * Facebook.com/yepilw * Instagram.com/yepilw * Twitter.com/yepilw

Jason Powell hosts the Prowrestling.net Daily All Access Podcast and interviews Michael Kingston of the Headlocked Comic on the big names working on his latest book and much more (30:57)...

The Total Tutor Neil Haley will interview The Co Anchor of Entertainment Tonight Cameron Mathison. He will discuss his role as Mike Kingston in the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries “Murder, She Baked” series alongside co-star Alison Sweeney. MURDER SHE BAKED: A DEADLY RECIPE Premieres Sunday, June 19 (9pm ET/PT, 8C) Bakery owner Hannah Swensen (Sweeney) just can't keep her hands out of the batter when murder stirs things up in Lake Eden, Minnesota, leaving the sheriff dead, a deputy accused, and a killer on the loose. For Hannah, life seems to be lacking a certain flavor lately. Maybe it's the local sheriff's election that's got her down. For years, Sheriff Grant's been the iron hand in town. But now, Hannah's brother-in-law Bill is giving the old blowhard the fight of his long, dubious career - and Grant's not taking it well, especially once the polls show Bill pulling ahead. But before anyone can taste victory, things go sour. While Hannah's emptying the trash, she makes a very unappetizing discovery: Sheriff Grant's body in the Dumpster behind the high school where she's teaching her cooking class. And as if that weren't bad enough, the poor man still has fudge frosting on his shirt from one of her cupcakes. The number one - and only - suspect is Bill, but Hannah's not swallowing it. Plenty of people had reason to hate Sheriff Grant. Soon, Hannah's dishing up scandalous secrets, steaming hot betrayals, and enough intrigue to keep the gossip mill at The Cookie Jar going through several pots of decaf. And the closer Hannah gets to the truth, the closer she gets to finding the murderer with a calorie-laden, nasty recipe for silencing people.

The Headlocked Comic panel at the 2016 C2E2 event in Chicago. Mick Foley, Ken Anderson, Jill Thompson, Mike Kingston and I discuss the marriage between comics and professional wrestling. WARNING This episode is AWESOME

In this episode I talk with Mike Kingston about Headlocked Comics; Wrestling and comics is crossover that just makes sense. I talk with the head of Headlocked comics, Mike Kingston about the origin of Headlocked comics and where you can … Continued The post SDCC 2015 San Diego Sound Bytes; Headlocked Comics appeared first on The Comic Source Blog.

NO COPYRIGHT INTENDED OR EXPRESSED WITH ANY IMAGES OR MUSIC.Show NotesRich is back in action this week after a busy week at the Photo Plus Expo. Rich opened the show congratulating Mike Kingston the creator of Headlocked for getting volume 2 of the series fully funded on Kickstarter.  Learn more about Headlocked by heading to http://www.headlockedcomic.com/ MMA-Powered by MMA Warehouse·00:08:06 – Audio·Chael Sonnen's WWE offer·Rousey vs. Zingano moved?·Shogun gets a new opponent·Anderson Silva to coach TUF Brazil season 4·Benson Henderson vs. Eddie Alvarez is happening sooner rather than later·Bellator 31 fight card finalized·Suspensions galore at Bellator·Cyborg on the shelf and removed from the Invicta FC10 card·Anderson Silva hospitalized  Wrestling-Powered by WWE Shop·00:36:10 – Audio·RAW break down·RAW viewership rises·Kevin Steen has a new name and a possible debut date·WWE Financial call fallout·Macho Man finally heading the Hall of Fame?·Alberto Del Rio update·Hogan shares thoughts on John Cena heel turn·JR views Rusev differently and you should too!  Announcements·A large majority of our writers have returned to school so as usual we are looking for talented and opinionated individuals to add to our team.We have openings in all categories and have a minimum requirement of four articles a month and some good writing skills. Wordpress and Windows Live Writer experience are a plus. Writers get access to comics, hardware and software when available.This is not a paid gig but if you are looking to get your work out there you're more than welcome to join us and get your work seen. Guest LinksNo guests during this broadcast T-shirtsNo sponsor tees this week Sponsor LinksNo promo code this week. Visit MyTakeRadio.com or RAGEWorks.net to see our advertisers and sponsors. Every purchase helps RAGE Works/My Take Radio MusicIntro: MTR IntroOutro: Street Alpha 2-The StrongestArtist: That Andy GuyAlbum: N/ASite: OCRemix.org Listener InfoSupport My Take Radio on Patreon. Patreon.com/MyTakeRadioPlease take a moment and rate the show and/or app on iTunes.Follow My Take Radio on Twitter-@MyTakeRadioBecome a fan of My Take Radio on Facebook-Facebook.com/MyTakeRadioAdd My Take Radio to your circle on Google+Follow our boards on PinterestFollow Rich on Instagram: MyTakeRadio_RichIf you have any feedback or questions you can now call the MTR Feedback line 347-815-0687.Guest inquiries can be forwarded to MTRHost@MyTakeRadio.comShow your support by picking up an MTR T-Shirt or by shopping from our Amazon store.   

NO COPYRIGHT INTENDED OR EXPRESSED WITH ANY IMAGES OR MUSIC.Show NotesRich is back in action this week after a busy week at the Photo Plus Expo. Rich opened the show congratulating Mike Kingston the creator of Headlocked for getting volume 2 of the series fully funded on Kickstarter.  Learn more about Headlocked by heading to http://www.headlockedcomic.com/ MMA-Powered by MMA Warehouse·00:08:06 – Audio·Chael Sonnen’s WWE offer·Rousey vs. Zingano moved?·Shogun gets a new opponent·Anderson Silva to coach TUF Brazil season 4·Benson Henderson vs. Eddie Alvarez is happening sooner rather than later·Bellator 31 fight card finalized·Suspensions galore at Bellator·Cyborg on the shelf and removed from the Invicta FC10 card·Anderson Silva hospitalized  Wrestling-Powered by WWE Shop·00:36:10 – Audio·RAW break down·RAW viewership rises·Kevin Steen has a new name and a possible debut date·WWE Financial call fallout·Macho Man finally heading the Hall of Fame?·Alberto Del Rio update·Hogan shares thoughts on John Cena heel turn·JR views Rusev differently and you should too!  Announcements·A large majority of our writers have returned to school so as usual we are looking for talented and opinionated individuals to add to our team.We have openings in all categories and have a minimum requirement of four articles a month and some good writing skills. Wordpress and Windows Live Writer experience are a plus. Writers get access to comics, hardware and software when available.This is not a paid gig but if you are looking to get your work out there you're more than welcome to join us and get your work seen. Guest LinksNo guests during this broadcast T-shirtsNo sponsor tees this week Sponsor LinksNo promo code this week. Visit MyTakeRadio.com or RAGEWorks.net to see our advertisers and sponsors. Every purchase helps RAGE Works/My Take Radio MusicIntro: MTR IntroOutro: Street Alpha 2-The StrongestArtist: That Andy GuyAlbum: N/ASite: OCRemix.org Listener InfoSupport My Take Radio on Patreon. Patreon.com/MyTakeRadioPlease take a moment and rate the show and/or app on iTunes.Follow My Take Radio on Twitter-@MyTakeRadioBecome a fan of My Take Radio on Facebook-Facebook.com/MyTakeRadioAdd My Take Radio to your circle on Google+Follow our boards on PinterestFollow Rich on Instagram: MyTakeRadio_RichIf you have any feedback or questions you can now call the MTR Feedback line 347-815-0687.Guest inquiries can be forwarded to MTRHost@MyTakeRadio.comShow your support by picking up an MTR T-Shirt or by shopping from our Amazon store.   

Part 1 of the Heroes Expo recordings! Including Interviews with Mike Kingston, Mike Borkowski, Sal Otero and Mike Raicht. Meet our contest winner Jack Corbett and Paul has a disease?

Shane "Hurricane" Helms discusses fighting for respect, studying Lucha Libre and Japanese wrestling, OMEGA, meeting Matt and Jeff Hardy, Jimmy Hart, 3 Count, Bloodymania, The Gathering Of The Juggalos, working with The Rock, being David Arquette's stunt double, his love for Toronto, Headlocked Comic series, his Comic Con adventures and introducing.. BGP! Plus series creator Mike Kingston weighs in on the inspiration for the series, making dreams a reality, Kickstarter, Booker T, AJ Styles, John Morrison, Frankie Kazarian, Jerry The King Lawler, and more!   Check our back catalog of dope interviews!    Kevin Gill Show #1 Andrew WK (Party!) Kevin Gill Show #2 Zach Gowen Kevin Gill Show # 3 John Joseph(Cro-Mags) Kevin Gill Show #4 Rhino Kevin Gill Show # 5 With RHINO (PART TWO!)   Kevin Gill Show #6 Craig Ahead (Sick Of It All) Kevin Gill Show #7 Drake Younger Kevin Gill Show #8 Freddy Madball (Madball) Kevin Gill Show #9 Matt Striker Kevin Gill Show #10 Lars Frederiksen (Rancid, The Old Firm Casuals)   Kevin Gill Show #11 Bad Influence (Daniels And Kazarian) Kevin Gill Show Ep #12 Toby Morse from H2O & One Life One Chance Kevin Gill Show #13 Kevin Steen(PWG, WWE) Kevin Gill Show # 14 Lenny Bednarz (Fahrenheit 451)   Kevin Gill Show #15 Violent J (Insane Clown Posse) Kevin Gill Show #16 Rikishi Kevin Gill Show #17 Zach Lowery (Saints Row) Kevin Gill Show # 18 - 2 Tuff Tony   Kevin Gill Show #19 Chris Hero Kevin Gill Show #20 Chris Hero PART TWO! Kevin Gill Show #21 Axe Murder Boyz Kevin Gill Show #22 Colt Cabana   Kevin Gill Show #23 Hacksaw Jim Duggan! Kevin Gill Show # 24 Adam Harrington(Wolf Among Us, Walking Dead) Kevin Gill Show #25 Brian Kendrick    Kevin Gill Show #26 Tim Williams (Vision Of Disorder) Kevin Gill Show #27 Scott D'Amore Kevin Gill Show #28 Kung Fu Vampire (Rapper)   Kevin Gill Show #29 Shelly Martinez Kevin Gill Show #30 Shelly Martinez (Part Two)  

NO COPYRIGHT INTENDED OR EXPRESSED WITH ANY IMAGES OR MUSIC.Show NotesMy Take Radio was loaded with gaming and entertainment news for the week. Rich shared his thoughts on the Gamer Gate scandal in his opening monologue and Video Games·00:20:01 – Audio·Ultra SFIV gets Omega mode·Assassin's Creed Unity gets a season pass? Shocker!·NXT superstars head to WWE 2K15·E-Sports gets a stadium?·Female Saiyans in DBZ Xenoverse   Entertainment-Powered by Superhero Stuff·00:49:30– Audio·Supergirl heads to CBS·Orci off of Power Rangers reboot·Maze Runner owns the box office·Farrell and Vaughn are True Detectives·Deadpool PG-13?·Man of Steel Aquaman Easter egg?·Batista gets another film role·Real Genius gets adapted for the small screen·Godzilla owns Blu-ray·Vizio makes a $1000 4K TV   Announcements·         The spouse of one of our listeners is working on something very cool for her husband and considering how touching their story is you may be inclined to help them out and see their goal realized.  Get all the details by heading here: http://www.gofundme.com/dx3544·A large majority of our writers have returned to school so as usual we are looking for talented and opinionated individuals to add to our team.We have openings in all categories and have a minimum requirement of four articles a month and some good writing skills. Wordpress and Windows Live Writer experience are a plus. Writers get access to comics, hardware and software when available.This is not a paid gig but if you are looking to get your work out there you're more than welcome to join us and get your work seen.·Check out interview with Mike Kingston in the latest episode of MTR Beyond The Mic.Guest LinksNo guests this week T-shirtsNo sponsor tees this week Sponsor LinksNo promo code this week. Visit MyTakeRadio.com or RAGEWorks.net to see our advertisers and sponsors. Every purchase helps RAGE Works/My Take Radio MusicIntro: MTR IntroOutro: Tetris Crimea RiverArtist: Sir_NutSAlbum: N/ASite: OCRemix.org Listener InfoSupport My Take Radio on Patreon. Patreon.com/MyTakeRadioPlease take a moment and rate the show and/or app on iTunes.Follow My Take Radio on Twitter-@MyTakeRadioBecome a fan of My Take Radio on Facebook-Facebook.com/MyTakeRadioAdd My Take Radio to your circle on Google+Follow our boards on PinterestFollow Rich on Instagram: MyTakeRadio_RichIf you have any feedback or questions you can now call the MTR Feedback line 347-815-0687.Guest inquiries can be forwarded to MTRHost@MyTakeRadio.comShow your support by picking up an MTR T-Shirt or by shopping from our Amazon store.    

NO COPYRIGHT INTENDED OR EXPRESSED WITH ANY IMAGES OR MUSIC.Show NotesMy Take Radio was loaded with gaming and entertainment news for the week. Rich shared his thoughts on the Gamer Gate scandal in his opening monologue and Video Games·00:20:01 – Audio·Ultra SFIV gets Omega mode·Assassin’s Creed Unity gets a season pass? Shocker!·NXT superstars head to WWE 2K15·E-Sports gets a stadium?·Female Saiyans in DBZ Xenoverse   Entertainment-Powered by Superhero Stuff·00:49:30– Audio·Supergirl heads to CBS·Orci off of Power Rangers reboot·Maze Runner owns the box office·Farrell and Vaughn are True Detectives·Deadpool PG-13?·Man of Steel Aquaman Easter egg?·Batista gets another film role·Real Genius gets adapted for the small screen·Godzilla owns Blu-ray·Vizio makes a $1000 4K TV   Announcements·         The spouse of one of our listeners is working on something very cool for her husband and considering how touching their story is you may be inclined to help them out and see their goal realized.  Get all the details by heading here: http://www.gofundme.com/dx3544·A large majority of our writers have returned to school so as usual we are looking for talented and opinionated individuals to add to our team.We have openings in all categories and have a minimum requirement of four articles a month and some good writing skills. Wordpress and Windows Live Writer experience are a plus. Writers get access to comics, hardware and software when available.This is not a paid gig but if you are looking to get your work out there you're more than welcome to join us and get your work seen.·Check out interview with Mike Kingston in the latest episode of MTR Beyond The Mic.Guest LinksNo guests this week T-shirtsNo sponsor tees this week Sponsor LinksNo promo code this week. Visit MyTakeRadio.com or RAGEWorks.net to see our advertisers and sponsors. Every purchase helps RAGE Works/My Take Radio MusicIntro: MTR IntroOutro: Tetris Crimea RiverArtist: Sir_NutSAlbum: N/ASite: OCRemix.org Listener InfoSupport My Take Radio on Patreon. Patreon.com/MyTakeRadioPlease take a moment and rate the show and/or app on iTunes.Follow My Take Radio on Twitter-@MyTakeRadioBecome a fan of My Take Radio on Facebook-Facebook.com/MyTakeRadioAdd My Take Radio to your circle on Google+Follow our boards on PinterestFollow Rich on Instagram: MyTakeRadio_RichIf you have any feedback or questions you can now call the MTR Feedback line 347-815-0687.Guest inquiries can be forwarded to MTRHost@MyTakeRadio.comShow your support by picking up an MTR T-Shirt or by shopping from our Amazon store.    

Interview NotesMike Kingston returns to MTR Beyond The Mic to talk about Headlocked Vol. 2 which is currently live on Kickstarter. Mike breaks down the creative process and some of the changes he implemented for promotion and overall workflow. A ton of new creative talent is involved for volume 2 and if you are a comic and/or wrestling fan we definitely recommend you check it out and get in on some of the awesome perks Mike is giving fans.Please remember that Kickstarter pledges are not taken until the project is fully funded. LinksFacebook: facebook.com/headlockedcomicTwitter: https://twitter.com/HeadlockedComicOfficial Site: http://www.headlockedcomic.com/Tumblr: http://tumblr.com/blog/headlockedcomicbookKickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/180977151/headlocked-the-last-territory-vol-2 Listener InfoPlease take a moment and rate the show and/or app on iTunes.Follow My Take Radio on Twitter-@MyTakeRadioBecome a fan of My Take Radio on Facebook-Facebook.com/MyTakeRadioAdd My Take Radio to your circle on Google+Follow MTR on PinterestCheck out MyTakeRadioTV on YoutubeIf you have any feedback or questions you can now call the MTR Feedback line 347-815-0687.Guest inquiries can be forwarded to MTRHost@MyTakeRadio.com Show your support by picking up an MTR T-Shirt or by shopping from our Amazon store. 

This week, we talk with Mike Kingston of the amazing Headlocked comic book. He's launching another Kickstarter for Vol2 of Headlocked: The Last Territory and needs your help! Michael Sorg @sorgatron) and Eamon Paton (@eamon2please) are also joined by Erin West (@hotwheelzRWA) to talk about the odd happenings, and a scary moment, at the weekend's RWA Fall Free For All 6. We also look forward to Chikara King of trios, and shows from International Wrestling Cartel and Smash Wrestling!

This week, we talk with Mike Kingston of the amazing Headlocked comic book. He's launching another Kickstarter for Vol2 of Headlocked: The Last Territory and needs your help! Michael Sorg @sorgatron) and Eamon Paton (@eamon2please) are also joined by Erin West (@hotwheelzRWA) to talk about the odd happenings, and a scary moment, at the weekend's RWA Fall Free For All 6. We also look forward to Chikara King of trios, and shows from International Wrestling Cartel and Smash Wrestling!

This week, we talk with Mike Kingston of the amazing Headlocked comic book. He's launching another Kickstarter for Vol2 of Headlocked: The Last Territory and needs your help! Michael Sorg @sorgatron) and Eamon Paton (@eamon2please) are also joined by Erin West (@hotwheelzRWA) to talk about the odd happenings, and a scary moment, at the weekend's RWA Fall Free For All 6. We also look forward to Chikara King of trios, and shows from International Wrestling Cartel and Smash Wrestling!

This week, we talk with Mike Kingston of the amazing Headlocked comic book. He's launching another Kickstarter for Vol2 of Headlocked: The Last Territory and needs your help! Michael Sorg @sorgatron) and Eamon Paton (@eamon2please) are also joined by Erin West (@hotwheelzRWA) to talk about the odd happenings, and a scary moment, at the weekend's RWA Fall Free For All 6. We also look forward to Chikara King of trios, and shows from International Wrestling Cartel and Smash Wrestling!

This week, we talk with Mike Kingston of the amazing Headlocked comic book. He's launching another Kickstarter for Vol2 of Headlocked: The Last Territory and needs your help! Michael Sorg @sorgatron) and Eamon Paton (@eamon2please) are also joined by Erin West (@hotwheelzRWA) to talk about the odd happenings, and a scary moment, at the weekend's RWA Fall Free For All 6. We also look forward to Chikara King of trios, and shows from International Wrestling Cartel and Smash Wrestling!

On episode 383 of the Wrestling Mayhem Show, we have our fantastic panel featuring @DJ Lunchbox (@djlunchbox), Eamon (@eamon2please), straw poll winner Rizz (@theerizz) and Mike Sorg (@sorgatron). What did everyone think of the finish to SummerSlam? Another poem is read by Eamon. It looks like RVD will be next in line for the heavyweight championship. What is next for the Wyatts? Will Kane join them? Will Daniel Bryan face Randy Orton next? The cast discusses. Join our mailing list on sorgatronmedia.com, you can win a wrestling DVD! Check out our interview with Mike Kingston of Headlocked! Donate to his campaign! In the indy minute this week, Eamon talks about several events happening soon. A new Shine event will be taking place shortly, also a few IPPVs are coming up with Wrestling is Fun (August 24th) and Wrestling is Cool (August 25th). $5 Dollar Wrestling will be having a show soon. Inspire Pro will be having their show September 1st and IWC will be around the Pittsburgh and West Virginia areas doing some shows. Remember When? We take a look back at our favorite Corporation or Evolution moments. Sorg remembered enjoying when Vince McMahon helped form the Corporate Ministry./ Eamon remembered liking Evolution's Triple H and his feud with Eugene, as well as Randy Orton's ascension in Evolution./ Rizz had fond memories of Gerald Brisco and Pat Patterson as the corporate stooges, as well as DX imitating the corporation./ DJ Lunchbox's favorite memory is when Batista broke away from Evolution. Mad Mike has a minute of mayhem! Check out what he is ranting about. We talk about the internet wrestling community and what we think it actually is. Eamon and Rizz join forces to cover WWE14's Wrestlemania roster reveal! What did they think of it? Find out! See even more on insertcointobegin.com ! The crew talks about Ric Flair's recent drunk moment. Darren Young came out recently. Will this change his career's direction at all? The cast talks about social issues being placed into wrestling storylines. What did we learn from wrestling this week? Make sure to check us out live at 9 PM on live.sorgatronmedia.com and follow us on Twitter @mayhemshow ! Buy our shirts at prowrestlingtees.com and get our app! It is only $1.99 you will not regret it! E-mail the show with your thoughts goodtimes@wrestlingmayhemshow.com Summerslam reactions from the entire Mayhem Nation We chat with Headlockeds Mike Kingston We talk about The Evolution of The Corperation and The Vodka Boy Ric Flair

On episode 383 of the Wrestling Mayhem Show, we have our fantastic panel featuring @DJ Lunchbox (@djlunchbox), Eamon (@eamon2please), straw poll winner Rizz (@theerizz) and Mike Sorg (@sorgatron). What did everyone think of the finish to SummerSlam? Another poem is read by Eamon. It looks like RVD will be next in line for the heavyweight championship. What is next for the Wyatts? Will Kane join them? Will Daniel Bryan face Randy Orton next? The cast discusses. Join our mailing list on sorgatronmedia.com, you can win a wrestling DVD! Check out our interview with Mike Kingston of Headlocked! Donate to his campaign! In the indy minute this week, Eamon talks about several events happening soon. A new Shine event will be taking place shortly, also a few IPPVs are coming up with Wrestling is Fun (August 24th) and Wrestling is Cool (August 25th). $5 Dollar Wrestling will be having a show soon. Inspire Pro will be having their show September 1st and IWC will be around the Pittsburgh and West Virginia areas doing some shows. Remember When? We take a look back at our favorite Corporation or Evolution moments. Sorg remembered enjoying when Vince McMahon helped form the Corporate Ministry./ Eamon remembered liking Evolution's Triple H and his feud with Eugene, as well as Randy Orton's ascension in Evolution./ Rizz had fond memories of Gerald Brisco and Pat Patterson as the corporate stooges, as well as DX imitating the corporation./ DJ Lunchbox's favorite memory is when Batista broke away from Evolution. Mad Mike has a minute of mayhem! Check out what he is ranting about. We talk about the internet wrestling community and what we think it actually is. Eamon and Rizz join forces to cover WWE14's Wrestlemania roster reveal! What did they think of it? Find out! See even more on insertcointobegin.com ! The crew talks about Ric Flair's recent drunk moment. Darren Young came out recently. Will this change his career's direction at all? The cast talks about social issues being placed into wrestling storylines. What did we learn from wrestling this week? Make sure to check us out live at 9 PM on live.sorgatronmedia.com and follow us on Twitter @mayhemshow ! Buy our shirts at prowrestlingtees.com and get our app! It is only $1.99 you will not regret it! E-mail the show with your thoughts goodtimes@wrestlingmayhemshow.com Summerslam reactions from the entire Mayhem Nation We chat with Headlockeds Mike Kingston We talk about The Evolution of The Corperation and The Vodka Boy Ric Flair

On episode 383 of the Wrestling Mayhem Show, we have our fantastic panel featuring @DJ Lunchbox (@djlunchbox), Eamon (@eamon2please), straw poll winner Rizz (@theerizz) and Mike Sorg (@sorgatron). What did everyone think of the finish to SummerSlam? Another poem is read by Eamon. It looks like RVD will be next in line for the heavyweight championship. What is next for the Wyatts? Will Kane join them? Will Daniel Bryan face Randy Orton next? The cast discusses. Join our mailing list on sorgatronmedia.com, you can win a wrestling DVD! Check out our interview with Mike Kingston of Headlocked! Donate to his campaign! In the indy minute this week, Eamon talks about several events happening soon. A new Shine event will be taking place shortly, also a few IPPVs are coming up with Wrestling is Fun (August 24th) and Wrestling is Cool (August 25th). $5 Dollar Wrestling will be having a show soon. Inspire Pro will be having their show September 1st and IWC will be around the Pittsburgh and West Virginia areas doing some shows. Remember When? We take a look back at our favorite Corporation or Evolution moments. Sorg remembered enjoying when Vince McMahon helped form the Corporate Ministry./ Eamon remembered liking Evolution's Triple H and his feud with Eugene, as well as Randy Orton's ascension in Evolution./ Rizz had fond memories of Gerald Brisco and Pat Patterson as the corporate stooges, as well as DX imitating the corporation./ DJ Lunchbox's favorite memory is when Batista broke away from Evolution. Mad Mike has a minute of mayhem! Check out what he is ranting about. We talk about the internet wrestling community and what we think it actually is. Eamon and Rizz join forces to cover WWE14's Wrestlemania roster reveal! What did they think of it? Find out! See even more on insertcointobegin.com ! The crew talks about Ric Flair's recent drunk moment. Darren Young came out recently. Will this change his career's direction at all? The cast talks about social issues being placed into wrestling storylines. What did we learn from wrestling this week? Make sure to check us out live at 9 PM on live.sorgatronmedia.com and follow us on Twitter @mayhemshow ! Buy our shirts at prowrestlingtees.com and get our app! It is only $1.99 you will not regret it! E-mail the show with your thoughts goodtimes@wrestlingmayhemshow.com Summerslam reactions from the entire Mayhem Nation We chat with Headlockeds Mike Kingston We talk about The Evolution of The Corperation and The Vodka Boy Ric Flair

Show NotesMTR is five episodes away from the big MTR 200 and there was a ton of stuff to discuss this week. Jay Santy called in to share his Summerslam predictions and also discuss the other news from the world of wrestling this week.00:13:55– MMA ·         Cat Zingano is on the mend·         The Pitbull replaces Rumble for WSOF 5·         Mayhem Miller is in trouble ·         Eddie Alvarez and Bellator squash their beef with Eddie heading to Bellator's 1st PPV·         King Mo and Emmanuel Newton will square off once more·         Bellator shelves their women's division·         Nick Diaz vs. Lyoto Machida? It could happen at 185lbs.·         Dana scouting Ben Askren?00:45:48 – Wrestling ·         RAW was……·         Jay Santy shares his Summerslam predictions and has a few laughs at expense of Total Divas·         Money in the Bank is getting an anthology·         Will Summerslam be Lesnar's last match till Mania?·         Jay and Rich discuss the news surrounding Darren Young and the repercussions that may occur.02:57:03 – Video Games ·         Xbox 360 will live on alongside Xbox One·         Kinect no longer mandatory for Xbox One·         Injustice cranks out more DLC·         Batman: Arkham Origins US special edition gets announced 03:12:32 – Movies/TV                   ·         Now You See Me is getting a sequel?·         Gibson and Banderas are Expendable!·         Elysium owns the box office.·         World War Z breaks records                                                                                   AnnouncementsCheck out the latest episode of MTR Beyond the Mic with Headlocked creator Mike Kingston as we discuss the latest chapter of Headlocked that is currently being funded on Kickstarter.Guest LinksNo guests this week but make sure to follow our staff on twitterAndrea: @Andrea_MTRSlick: @MTRSlickQuark: @QuarkMTRBen: @Blaqout89John Blade: JohnUButlerJay Santy: @JaySantyPSWMortis: @JsnGrimm Sponsor LinksMTR is always looking for great brands to partner up with. If you are interested in advertising with us please make sure to email us and we will forward our advertising package and rates. MusicIntro: MTR Intro               Outro: Pixietricks & ZirconWebsite: OCRemix.orgFB: N/AYouTube: N/AListener InfoPlease take a moment and rate the show and/or app on iTunes.Follow My Take Radio on Twitter-@MyTakeRadioBecome a fan of My Take Radio on Facebook-Facebook.com/MyTakeRadioAdd My Take Radio to your circle on Google+Follow our boards on PinterestIf you have any feedback or questions you can now call the MTR Feedback line 347-815-0687.Guest inquiries can be forwarded to MTRHost@MyTakeRadio.comShow your support by picking up an MTR T-Shirt or by shopping from our Amazon store. 

Show NotesMTR is five episodes away from the big MTR 200 and there was a ton of stuff to discuss this week. Jay Santy called in to share his Summerslam predictions and also discuss the other news from the world of wrestling this week.00:13:55– MMA ·         Cat Zingano is on the mend·         The Pitbull replaces Rumble for WSOF 5·         Mayhem Miller is in trouble ·         Eddie Alvarez and Bellator squash their beef with Eddie heading to Bellator’s 1st PPV·         King Mo and Emmanuel Newton will square off once more·         Bellator shelves their women’s division·         Nick Diaz vs. Lyoto Machida? It could happen at 185lbs.·         Dana scouting Ben Askren?00:45:48 – Wrestling ·         RAW was……·         Jay Santy shares his Summerslam predictions and has a few laughs at expense of Total Divas·         Money in the Bank is getting an anthology·         Will Summerslam be Lesnar’s last match till Mania?·         Jay and Rich discuss the news surrounding Darren Young and the repercussions that may occur.02:57:03 – Video Games ·         Xbox 360 will live on alongside Xbox One·         Kinect no longer mandatory for Xbox One·         Injustice cranks out more DLC·         Batman: Arkham Origins US special edition gets announced 03:12:32 – Movies/TV                   ·         Now You See Me is getting a sequel?·         Gibson and Banderas are Expendable!·         Elysium owns the box office.·         World War Z breaks records                                                                                   AnnouncementsCheck out the latest episode of MTR Beyond the Mic with Headlocked creator Mike Kingston as we discuss the latest chapter of Headlocked that is currently being funded on Kickstarter.Guest LinksNo guests this week but make sure to follow our staff on twitterAndrea: @Andrea_MTRSlick: @MTRSlickQuark: @QuarkMTRBen: @Blaqout89John Blade: JohnUButlerJay Santy: @JaySantyPSWMortis: @JsnGrimm Sponsor LinksMTR is always looking for great brands to partner up with. If you are interested in advertising with us please make sure to email us and we will forward our advertising package and rates. MusicIntro: MTR Intro               Outro: Pixietricks & ZirconWebsite: OCRemix.orgFB: N/AYouTube: N/AListener InfoPlease take a moment and rate the show and/or app on iTunes.Follow My Take Radio on Twitter-@MyTakeRadioBecome a fan of My Take Radio on Facebook-Facebook.com/MyTakeRadioAdd My Take Radio to your circle on Google+Follow our boards on PinterestIf you have any feedback or questions you can now call the MTR Feedback line 347-815-0687.Guest inquiries can be forwarded to MTRHost@MyTakeRadio.comShow your support by picking up an MTR T-Shirt or by shopping from our Amazon store. 

Interview NotesMike Kingston returns to MTR Beyond The Mic to talk about the latest chapter in the Headlocked series and the Kickstarter campaign being used to get this next chapter released. Headlocked tells the story of professional wrestler Mike Hartmann. Here is a far better description from Mike via Headlocked’s Kickstarter page.What is Headlocked?In one sentence, it's a wrestling cable drama in a comic book!Headlocked is a coming-of-age story chronicling a college theater major's quest to become a professional wrestler. It begins from the moment he unexpectedly falls in love with wrestling and follows his journey through the insanity of the wrestling business as he chases his dream of making it to the bright lights and the big stage of the WFW.On a deeper level, Headlocked is an examination of wrestling as an art form. Our main character, Mike Hartmann, is a college theater major that drops out of school to try and break into the wrestling business. So the reader will learn more about the craft of wrestling through the eyes of a performance artist.Mike needs our help to get the next chapter made. Donations can be a little as a dollar and there are some awesome perks and extras that fans will enjoy. We already pledged and support Mike and HeadlockedLinksFacebook: http://facebook.com/headlockedcomicTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/HeadlockedComicKickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/180977151/headlocked-the-last-territoryTumblr: http://tumblr.com/blog/headlockedcomicbookOfficial Site: http://headlockedcomic.com/Listener InfoPlease take a moment and rate the show and/or app on iTunes.Follow My Take Radio on Twitter-@MyTakeRadioBecome a fan of My Take Radio on Facebook-Facebook.com/MyTakeRadioAdd My Take Radio to your circle on Google+Follow MTR on Pinterest

Show NotesThe march to MTR 200 rages on. Rich sounds off in his opening monologue on some plagiarism he had to deal with this week as well as a news story regarding a shooting here in NYC that has everyone talking.  00:23:36 – MMA ·         UFC  163 musings·         Possible new contenders for the winner of Jones/Gustafsson·         Bruce Leroy returns to action at UFC 165·         Paul Daley has a new home to unleash knockouts·         Mousasi wants Belfort by any means necessary.00:37:13 – Wrestling ·         RAW was……·         Kurt Angle gets arrested again! ·         A Goldberg comeback? It could happen even at age 46·         Kane becomes Jacob Goodnight as a second See No Evil is green lit·         Sheamus out 4-6 months01:25:27 – Video Games ·         Get all the Elder Scrolls you want this September·         The Inauguration Station is live for Saints Row 4·         Xbox One features need XBL gold? Big Shocker!·         Nintendo gets the cold shoulder from Bethesda·         Nintendo takes the fight to pirates02:05:44 – Movies/TV                   ·         Ronda Rousey rumored for Fast 7·         Fargo heads to the small screen·         The Bourne Legacy is getting a sequel·         Batman casting rumors place Gosling or Brolin in the lead·         MI5 is a go ·         Rambo and John McClane have beef and Han Solo benefits? ·         Sharknado 2 is a go·         Pacific Rim racks up the $$ internationally                                                                                   AnnouncementsCheck out the latest episode of MTR Beyond the Mic with Headlocked creator Mike Kingston as we discuss the latest chapter of Headlocked that is currently being funded on Kickstarter.Guest LinksNo guests this week but make sure to follow our staff on twitterAndrea: @Andrea_MTRSlick: @MTRSlickQuark: @QuarkMTRBen: @Blaqout89John Blade: JohnUButlerJay Santy: @JaySantyPSWMortis: @JsnGrimm Sponsor LinksMTR is always looking for great brands to partner up with. If you are interested in advertising with us please make sure to email us and we will forward our advertising package and rates. MusicIntro: MTR Intro               Outro: Contra ForceArtist: Nick PerrinWebsite: OCRemix.orgFB: N/AYouTube: N/AListener InfoPlease take a moment and rate the show and/or app on iTunes.Follow My Take Radio on Twitter-@MyTakeRadioBecome a fan of My Take Radio on Facebook-Facebook.com/MyTakeRadioAdd My Take Radio to your circle on Google+Follow our boards on PinterestIf you have any feedback or questions you can now call the MTR Feedback line 347-815-0687.Guest inquiries can be forwarded to MTRHost@MyTakeRadio.comShow your support by picking up an MTR T-Shirt or by shopping from our Amazon store. 

Show NotesThe march to MTR 200 rages on. Rich sounds off in his opening monologue on some plagiarism he had to deal with this week as well as a news story regarding a shooting here in NYC that has everyone talking.  00:23:36 – MMA ·         UFC  163 musings·         Possible new contenders for the winner of Jones/Gustafsson·         Bruce Leroy returns to action at UFC 165·         Paul Daley has a new home to unleash knockouts·         Mousasi wants Belfort by any means necessary.00:37:13 – Wrestling ·         RAW was……·         Kurt Angle gets arrested again! ·         A Goldberg comeback? It could happen even at age 46·         Kane becomes Jacob Goodnight as a second See No Evil is green lit·         Sheamus out 4-6 months01:25:27 – Video Games ·         Get all the Elder Scrolls you want this September·         The Inauguration Station is live for Saints Row 4·         Xbox One features need XBL gold? Big Shocker!·         Nintendo gets the cold shoulder from Bethesda·         Nintendo takes the fight to pirates02:05:44 – Movies/TV                   ·         Ronda Rousey rumored for Fast 7·         Fargo heads to the small screen·         The Bourne Legacy is getting a sequel·         Batman casting rumors place Gosling or Brolin in the lead·         MI5 is a go ·         Rambo and John McClane have beef and Han Solo benefits? ·         Sharknado 2 is a go·         Pacific Rim racks up the $$ internationally                                                                                   AnnouncementsCheck out the latest episode of MTR Beyond the Mic with Headlocked creator Mike Kingston as we discuss the latest chapter of Headlocked that is currently being funded on Kickstarter.Guest LinksNo guests this week but make sure to follow our staff on twitterAndrea: @Andrea_MTRSlick: @MTRSlickQuark: @QuarkMTRBen: @Blaqout89John Blade: JohnUButlerJay Santy: @JaySantyPSWMortis: @JsnGrimm Sponsor LinksMTR is always looking for great brands to partner up with. If you are interested in advertising with us please make sure to email us and we will forward our advertising package and rates. MusicIntro: MTR Intro               Outro: Contra ForceArtist: Nick PerrinWebsite: OCRemix.orgFB: N/AYouTube: N/AListener InfoPlease take a moment and rate the show and/or app on iTunes.Follow My Take Radio on Twitter-@MyTakeRadioBecome a fan of My Take Radio on Facebook-Facebook.com/MyTakeRadioAdd My Take Radio to your circle on Google+Follow our boards on PinterestIf you have any feedback or questions you can now call the MTR Feedback line 347-815-0687.Guest inquiries can be forwarded to MTRHost@MyTakeRadio.comShow your support by picking up an MTR T-Shirt or by shopping from our Amazon store. 

DJLunchbox, The WrestleFan and Sorg are learning new terms from CM Punk, excited by Destination X, and more! In part 2 of our wrestling comics series, we are joined this week by Mike Kingston of Headlocked as we catch up with him since the last time he was on, and talk wrestling storytelling, his experience on the Cons, and what's coming up for Headlocked. This is Episode 277 for Tuesday, July 5, 2011. You can get the episode here on Talkshoe, Blip.tv subscribe to the audio or video versions on iTunes, look us up on Youtube, Roku, or Boxee, and as always, stay tuned to www.wrestlingmayhemshow.com for the latest! The Wrestling Mayhem Show is recorded live and can be heard/viewed from 8 PM to 10 PM Eastern on live.sorgatronmedia.com. Let us know what you think of the show, and your thoughts on the wrestling world by emailing us at goodtimes@wrestlingmayhemshow.com!

DJLunchbox, The WrestleFan and Sorg are learning new terms from CM Punk, excited by Destination X, and more! In part 2 of our wrestling comics series, we are joined this week by Mike Kingston of Headlocked as we catch up with him since the last time he was on, and talk wrestling storytelling, his experience on the Cons, and what's coming up for Headlocked. This is Episode 277 for Tuesday, July 5, 2011. You can get the episode here on Talkshoe, Blip.tv subscribe to the audio or video versions on iTunes, look us up on Youtube, Roku, or Boxee, and as always, stay tuned to www.wrestlingmayhemshow.com for the latest! The Wrestling Mayhem Show is recorded live and can be heard/viewed from 8 PM to 10 PM Eastern on live.sorgatronmedia.com. Let us know what you think of the show, and your thoughts on the wrestling world by emailing us at goodtimes@wrestlingmayhemshow.com!

DJLunchbox, The WrestleFan and Sorg are learning new terms from CM Punk, excited by Destination X, and more! In part 2 of our wrestling comics series, we are joined this week by Mike Kingston of Headlocked as we catch up with him since the last time he was on, and talk wrestling storytelling, his experience on the Cons, and what's coming up for Headlocked. This is Episode 277 for Tuesday, July 5, 2011. You can get the episode here on Talkshoe, Blip.tv subscribe to the audio or video versions on iTunes, look us up on Youtube, Roku, or Boxee, and as always, stay tuned to www.wrestlingmayhemshow.com for the latest! The Wrestling Mayhem Show is recorded live and can be heard/viewed from 8 PM to 10 PM Eastern on live.sorgatronmedia.com. Let us know what you think of the show, and your thoughts on the wrestling world by emailing us at goodtimes@wrestlingmayhemshow.com!

DJLunchbox, The WrestleFan and Sorg are learning new terms from CM Punk, excited by Destination X, and more! In part 2 of our wrestling comics series, we are joined this week by Mike Kingston of Headlocked as we catch up with him since the last time he was on, and talk wrestling storytelling, his experience on the Cons, and what's coming up for Headlocked. This is Episode 277 for Tuesday, July 5, 2011. You can get the episode here on Talkshoe, Blip.tv subscribe to the audio or video versions on iTunes, look us up on Youtube, Roku, or Boxee, and as always, stay tuned to www.wrestlingmayhemshow.com for the latest! The Wrestling Mayhem Show is recorded live and can be heard/viewed from 8 PM to 10 PM Eastern on live.sorgatronmedia.com. Let us know what you think of the show, and your thoughts on the wrestling world by emailing us at goodtimes@wrestlingmayhemshow.com!

DJLunchbox, The WrestleFan and Sorg are learning new terms from CM Punk, excited by Destination X, and more! In part 2 of our wrestling comics series, we are joined this week by Mike Kingston of Headlocked as we catch up with him since the last time he was on, and talk wrestling storytelling, his experience on the Cons, and what's coming up for Headlocked. This is Episode 277 for Tuesday, July 5, 2011. You can get the episode here on Talkshoe, Blip.tv subscribe to the audio or video versions on iTunes, look us up on Youtube, Roku, or Boxee, and as always, stay tuned to www.wrestlingmayhemshow.com for the latest! The Wrestling Mayhem Show is recorded live and can be heard/viewed from 8 PM to 10 PM Eastern on live.sorgatronmedia.com. Let us know what you think of the show, and your thoughts on the wrestling world by emailing us at goodtimes@wrestlingmayhemshow.com!

Recently Jenny and Mike had the chance to speak with Mike Kingston, author of the forthcoming comic book Headlocked. Listen in to hear the writer's thoughts about wrestling, comic books and how they're not that dissimilar.

Recently Jenny and Mike had the chance to speak with Mike Kingston, author of the forthcoming comic book Headlocked. Listen in to hear the writer's thoughts about wrestling, comic books and how they're not that dissimilar.

Recently Jenny and Mike had the chance to speak with Mike Kingston, author of the forthcoming comic book Headlocked. Listen in to hear the writer's thoughts about wrestling, comic books and how they're not that dissimilar.

Recently Jenny and Mike had the chance to speak with Mike Kingston, author of the forthcoming comic book Headlocked. Listen in to hear the writer's thoughts about wrestling, comic books and how they're not that dissimilar.