Podcast appearances and mentions of mike mann

Mabel's Storytime***Written by: Mike Mann and Narrated by: Nichole Goodnight***Tubing My Troubles Away***Written by: No One of Consequence and Narrated by: Owen McCuen***Happily Ever After***Written by: James Tloczynski***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Title music by: Alex Aldea

On this episode, we talk to Mike Mann from Thomasville Fire Rescue. What does it take to fight a fire? A lot more than we thought - things like water, data, water pressure, and a whole lot more. Thanks for tuning in!

In this festive yet chilling episode of Scary Stories Told in the Dark, Otis Jiry and Malcolm Blackwood deliver five spine-tingling tales that intertwine the warmth of holiday cheer with bone-chilling terror. From a neighbor's peculiar holiday decorations to a supernatural broadcast haunting college students, these stories uncover the dark undercurrents of the season. Featuring contributions from authors Brian Martinez, Mike Mann, Micah Edwards, Nicky Exposito, and Dominic Eagle, this episode blends holiday themes with horror, leaving listeners uneasy by the fireside. Get your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to https://www.mintmobile.com/dark To watch the podcast on YouTube: http://bit.ly/ChillingEntertainmentYT Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link! http://bit.ly/ScaryStoriesPodcast If you like the show, telling a friend about it would be amazing! You can text, email, Tweet, or send this link to a friend: http://bit.ly/ScaryStoriesPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Featured Authors: CTFDN Founder Craig Groshek, Mike Mann, and Seth Paul. Take a moment to sit back and relax with a cool glass of lemonade, a warm summer breeze, and miles away from where anyone can hear your screams. The season premiere not only brings terrifying tales from the countryside, but also introduces Otis Jiry's new next door neighbor Malcolm Blackwood, who presents the third tale of the evening. In our first story, a man's evening walk turns decidedly unpleasant when he finds a most unusual wishing well. In the second, a construction worker has a bad day at work when his demonic sidekick makes some very sudden demands. In a third story, a grandfather's outlandish tale of folklore may be less fiction than it appears on first glance...but is that a good thing, or a bad thing? Get your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to https://www.mintmobile.com/dark To watch the podcast on YouTube: http://bit.ly/ChillingEntertainmentYT Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: http://bit.ly/ScaryStoriesPodcast If you like the show, telling a friend about it would be amazing! You can text, email, Tweet, or send this link to a friend: http://bit.ly/ScaryStoriesPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mike Mann ist oftmals der erste an einem Notfalleinsatzort. Er ist Notfallsanitäter, ehemaliger Leitstellendisponent und arbeitet mittlerweile in der Luftrettung. Im Podcast erzählt er Florentine, wie er mit Einsätzen umgeht, bei denen jede Sekunde zählt.

Eric Balkman and Kentucky Fantasy Football State Championship (KFFSC) commissioner Ferrell Elliott fish for some great advice with the 2023 Fantasy Football Players Championship (FFPC) Main Event Week 16 leader Mike Mann. The guys will get you ready for the final week of the championship rounds in both the 2023 FantasyPros Championship by helping you with your lineup submissions, as well as give you the latest updates in the FFPC Best Ball Tournament, the FFPC Superflex Best Ball Tournament and FFPC Dynasty Leagues. The players will also give you a few guys to cut in 2023 FFPC Terminator drafts and tell you what you need to know in the Week 17 FFPC Weekly Challenge. They'll also answer your tweets, emails and more all on The High Stakes Fantasy Football Hour! Listen To The High Stakes Fantasy Football Hour: Apple - https://tinyurl.com/bdfj6yyh Spotify - https://tinyurl.com/2p874v9h Play Fantasy Football at the FFPC: Website - https://www.MyFFPC.com More on The High Stakes Fantasy Football Hour: Website - http://www.HSFFHour.com Follow The FFPC on Social Media: X - http://www.x.com/FFPC Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/FantasyFootballPlayersChampionship Instagram - http://www.instagram.com/OfficialFFPC Follow The High Stakes Fantasy Football Hour on Social Media: X - http://www.x.com/HSFFHour Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/HSFFHour Eric Balkman - http://www.x.com/EricBalkman Ferrell Elliott - http://www.KFFSC.com

As the saying goes, history often repeats itself. Could that also hold true when looking at the current state of the climate and where we may be heading? On this episode, the team talks with Dr. Michael Mann, the director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media and one of the world's leading experts on climate change. They discuss his new book, “Our Fragile Moment,” that examines Earth's climate history. Mann explains why the climate change we're currently experiencing is unique, why the next decade is so critical to our future climate, and what could happen to life on Earth if no action is taken. We want to hear from you! Have a question for the meteorologists? Call 609-272-7099 and leave a message. You might hear your question and get an answer on a future episode! You can also email questions or comments to podcasts@lee.net. About the Across the Sky podcast The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team: Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Headliner and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Sean Sublette: Hello once again, everybody. I'm, meteorologist Sean Sublette, and welcome to Across the Sky, our national Lee Enterprises weather podcast. Lee Enterprises has print and digital operations in more than 70 locations across the country, including in my home base in Richmond, Virginia. I'm joined by my colleagues from across the sky, Matt Holiner in Chicago, and Joe Martucci at the Jersey Shore. Kirsten Lang is out this week. Our very special guest this week is Dr. Michael Mann, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, and the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science. His latest book came out a couple of weeks ago called Our Fragile Moment. It goes through Earth's climate history to illustrate how we know what the current warming climate is without precedent in Earth's history. There is so much good stuff in this book. I could go on and on, but I really like the way he goes into paleo climate and helping us understand why we are at this moment in time and why he calls it Our Fragile Moment. And as a quick aside, in the book, he kind of alludes to, the police, the band The Police, and the, extinction of the dinosaurs and walking in your footsteps. So those of us of a certain age who remember that a good part of, you know, sting was the lead man of the police, and, Fragile was another song that Sting wrote. So this all kind of ties back into me. Here I am showing my age. but, guys, this is such a great conversation. What did you kind of take out of this? Joe Martucci: I think, you know, and just take a step back. I mean, Mike Mann is, I would say, one of the people who really put climate science on the map to the general public. So this is really a big interview that we have here. And, when you're listening, sometimes we're getting into the weeds, sometimes it's big philosophical questions. In fact, at the end, we talk about his thoughts on where our position as the human race is in the universe just by writing this book. So, it was a nice interview, and good to be with, Mike here. Matt Holiner: Yes, there are few people that are a bigger expert on climate change than Mike Mann. And so, yeah, we're honored to have him on the podcast. And what I like is how he talks about paleo climate, which is something that's starting to get a little bit of buzz now. I think everybody's accepted that, okay, the climate is changing now, but hasn't it changed in the past? And he does dive into that. Yes, it has changed, but what he points out is the change that we're undergoing right now is unique, and he. Joe Martucci: Points out why that is. Matt Holiner: And I really liked his discussion of that. Sean Sublette: Yeah, there is so much good stuff. So let's get right to it and start up with our interview with Dr. Michael Mann. Mike Mann, it is so good to have you on the across the sky podcast. Dr. Michael Mann writes a new book about climate change called ‘Our Fragile Moment' Sean Sublette: I want to jump right into this on this book, Our Fragile Moment. This is the 6th book. What I loved about this one is that it goes a lot deeper into understanding paleo climatology. For us real science geeks out there, it really gets into depth about how we know how we got to this fragile moment. So I wanted to start on the big picture. What motivated you to write this book now? Dr. Michael Mann: Yeah. Thanks, Sean. It's great to be with all of you. All three of you know, it's interesting, this is sort of where I got my start as, a climate scientist, Paleo Climate, the hockey stick curve that my co authors and I published. it's hard to believe now, but it's, two and a half decades ago, that graph became sort of this iconic symbol, in the climate change debate. And that's really how I sort of entered the fray. And so now, two and a half decades later, I decided, well, let's do a deeper dive, because the hockey stick only went back a thousand years. That's really shallow time, as we say in Paleo climate. We've got four plus billion years of Earth history to look at and let's see what we can learn from it. And so it's sort of a return to my roots, in a sense. I hadn't really written a book about paleo climate, even though it's where I started as a scientist. And there's another sort of driving force here as well, which, relates to my last book, The New Climate War, which is about sort of the challenges we face now as climate denial becomes almost untenable, because we can all sort of see the impacts of climate change playing out. Bad actors are using misinformation to delay transition off fossil fuels Dr. Michael Mann: But there are other tactics that bad actors are using to sort of delay the transition off fossil fuels. and one of them, ironically, is doom mongering. If they can convince us that it's too late to do anything about the problem, then why bother? And so I was seeing Paleo Climate, something that I hold dear. I was seeing paleo climate science. Weaponized. Now in the same way that climate deniers used to weaponize misinformation. I was seeing climate doomers weaponizing misinformation about paleo climate to convince us it's too late, that we're experiencing runaway warming. We are going to it's yet, another mass, extinction that we've set off that's unstoppable and we will all be gone in less than ten years. There were players out there, serious protagonists who have pretty large followings, who have been spreading that sort of misinformation. So I decided, let's reclaim paleo climate. Let's look at what the science actually says. And that was the purpose of the book initially, was to address some of those misconceptions that have been used to feed climate doomism. But in the process, I realized, well, no, there's a whole lot more to talk about. there are all sorts of lessons in 4 billion plus years of Earth history. Let's see what we can learn from it for sure. Sean Sublette: Before I turn it over to the other guys for questions, I want to talk a little bit more about that doomism concept. It's important to walk a line between urgency and agency, as you like to talk about, but get away from doomism. I'd like to point out I was actually talking to a Rotary Club earlier today, that there has been progress. Right. clearly there needs to be more, but I like to point out we're starting to phase out coal globally. So there are things going how do you walk that line in terms of this is important, we need to stay on it, showing that there's progress and not succumbing to doomism for folks who are kind of depressed about it. Dr. Michael Mann: Yeah, no, absolutely. And there's sort of two pieces to it. First of all, there is just the science. Like, does the science say that we've triggered unstoppable warming and nothing we do to reduce carbon emissions is going to make a difference? No, it doesn't. And I wanted to make that very clear. And no, the paleo climate record doesn't support that. the best available science, in fact, tells us now that the planet stops warming up when we stop adding carbon pollution to the atmosphere. So there's this direct and immediate impact, on the climate of our efforts to act here. There's another piece to it, though, which is sort of there's another sort of component to doismism, which is like, we're not going to get our act together. And you could argue that remains to be seen, that's at least Arguable, the science doesn't support runaway warming. It doesn't support that sort of side of doomism. But will we garner the will to tackle this problem? Only the, future will tell. But it's interesting because you mentioned Rotary Club. There are lots of reasons for optimism. Lots of reasons. Things that we can look at, where we can say we're making real progress, rotarians have really taken a leadership role on this issue. I've spoken to some Rotary Clubs, groups in the past, and the Youth Climate movement, right. I mean, just, there is all of this energy. I see. know I teach at the University Of Pennsylvania. Climate is probably the number one issue to these students today, to these gen zers. Now, some of them fall victim to climate anxiety and climate doomism. So it's really important for them to understand the agency part of that urgency and agency duality. But yeah, the science certainly doesn't support the notion that we can't do something about the climate crisis. And the paleo climate record certainly doesn't support that either. Joe Martucci: Hey, this is Joe and just want to thank you so much for coming on again. We really appreciate it. And best of luck to you and your, book here, Our Fragile Moment. More journalists are reporting on extreme weather events linked to climate change Joe Martucci: My question does partially relate to what you said about gen zers. And some people do have climate anxiety. And if you're young, you're impressionable you're getting content from a variety of different sources, right? More than ever before, when we talk about extreme weather events and parlaying this into climate change. Right. I feel like in the past five years, maybe three years, we've seen a lot of this recently. And I think, personally, from my perspective, it's good. It's always a good teaching moment to talk about the facts and to forecast the climate science. How do you feel, though, about journalists reporting on this, as opposed to meteorologists who are experts in their field? There's many great journalists all across the country. We know that. But just like I don't know everything about maybe astronomy, right. Journals may not be completely in sync with what's happening with some of these events. Dr. Michael Mann: I don't know if you could kind. Joe Martucci: Of give us where you fall on this and how you would like to see these extreme weather events being parlayed into coverage as we go forward. Dr. Michael Mann: Thanks, Joe. It's a great question. And, you were talking about young folks, and, I used to think of myself as a young person, and then today I realized that David Lee Roth is 69 years old. I finally forced to accept the fact that I am now old. But you're right, there is this, energy and passion, among young folks. And another part of what's going on is we're seeing the impacts of climate change now play out in a profound way in the form of these extreme weather events. And there's always sort of this delicate balance in the way we cover those events. You'll often hear people say, well, you can never blame any one, weather event, on climate change. and the thinking there has evolved quite a bit. We have detection and attribution. We can characterize how likely an event was to occur in the absence of climate change and how likely it was to occur. When we consider climate change and when we see that there's a huge increase when an event is a thousand year event without climate change, and it's suddenly a ten year event when we include climate change, then we can say, hey, the fact that we saw this is probably because we've warmed up the planet and we've made these sorts of events, these extreme heat waves, heat domes that we've been reading about, wildfires floods, superstorms. So there's this scientific machinery now that allows us to sort of characterize the impact that climate change is having on these events. But you're right. When you have trained meteorologists and climate experts who are familiar with that science, they're able to sort of frame it that way. When you have just sort of say, political journalists, journalists from other fields covering, the science, it's a quandary. It's very complicated because they're hearing conflicting things. They're hearing this. You can never blame any one event on climate change, but now they know that there is a way to try to characterize the impact that climate change is having. So I think there's some confusion among in the journalistic community right now. you also sometimes see it overplayed, right, where, like, every extreme event was caused by climate change. We can't say that it's like a loading of the dice. Sixes are going to come up anyways. The fact that they're coming up so often is because we've loaded those dice, by the warming of the planet. So it is a complicated topic, and it's difficult to even trained climate and meteorology, specialists, even for us, it can be sort of challenging to explain the science and how we're able to quantify the impact climate change is having on these events. And that means that it often gets very confused in the public discourse. And at the same time, I would say that we are seeing the signal of climate change now emerge from the noise in the form of these extreme weather events. And it's a lost opportunity for certain if we don't explain that to the public. And so I personally think that there has been sort of a shift towards journalists in general, recognizing that there is a relationship and mentioning that when they talk about these events, not as often as we might like them to do, but we do see much more of that now. Climate change is part of the conversation here. And that's a real game changer, because that's where the rubber hits the road. When people realize, oh, man, it's these devastating fires. I have a friend who lost a house, or I have people, I know who got flooded, by that storm. When people start to know people who have been impacted or who have been impacted themselves, when people have their own climate story to tell, it really changes the whole conversation. And I think we're seeing that shift. Matt Holiner: Hey, Mike, it's Matt, and I think you're right about the climate change just becoming a term that everyone is familiar with now. But I think the term that people aren't as familiar with that. Matt Holiner: You mentioned your book is Paleo climate. So when you're talking about paleo climate, how far back are you looking and what are you looking at to determine what the climate was thousands or millions of years ago? Dr. Michael Mann: So it's a matter of perspective, right? If you ask my daughter what's paleo climate LBO is like, those winters when you were growing up, that's paleo climate, to me, those 1970s winters. so it's always a matter of perspective. One person's paleo climate is another person's sort of recent, climate history. I focused a lot of my early work on the last thousand years where we could pull together all sorts of types of information to try to reconstruct in some detail how the climate had changed. but there are ways to go much further back. There are sediment cores. We can look at ancient, oxygen isotopes and reconstruct what ocean temperatures were and what, sea, levels were. so there's all of this wealth of information. And so what paleo climate really means, technically, it's anything that predates the historical era of the last couple of centuries where we actually have thermometer measurements or rain gauges measurements or what have you. Anything farther back than that, where we have to turn to indirect measures of climate like tree rings or corals or ice that becomes paleo climate. And so 1000 years that's paleoclimate. But a million years is paleoclimate and a billion years is paleoclimate. And the stories are so different on these different timescales. And the puzzles are all different. And each of these intervals, there are all of these events in Earth's climate history that I talk about in the book, and we can learn something from each of them. Snowball Earth. Yes, the Earth was once entirely covered in ice and unpacking. That tells us a lot about the dynamics of the climate system. the faint early sun. The great Carl Sagan recognized that the Earth should have been frozen 4 billion years ago, when life first emerged in the oceans. And we know it wasn't because there was liquid water, there was life. And he realized because the sun was only about 70% as bright back then, the Earth should have been frozen, but it wasn't. What, what's the explanation? How come there was an even stronger greenhouse effect? And it turns out that, gets us into sort of the Gaia hypothesis because there's this remarkable story where as the sun gradually gets brighter and the Earth should have got hotter and hotter, but it didn't because the greenhouse effect got weaker over time. And in just such a way that the planet's climate, with some exceptions, like snowball Earth, stayed within habitable bounds, within bounds, that are habitable for life. Why is that? that's a really interesting puzzle. And it turns out life itself plays a role in stabilizing the climate, the global carbon cycle, the oxygenation of the atmosphere. There are all of these things that life itself did to change the composition of our atmosphere and to change the dynamics of the planet. And amazingly, life works in such a way as to help keep the climate, Earth's climate, habitable for life. And so that's an interesting puzzle. There's a lot to learn from that as well. And that's a good thing, right? There are stabilizing factors within the climate system that helps us. There is a certain amount of resilience. And that's one of the arguments against doomism that we're getting some help from the behavior of Earth's climate. There's a m safety margin. There's a margin, where we can perturb the climate, and it will stay within habitable bounds. The problem and what makes this such a fragile moment is we're now sort of at the edge of that envelope of stability. And if we continue with business as usual, we continue to pollute the atmosphere with carbon pollution, we will leave that moment behind. We, will depart from the sort of climate upon which all of this societal infrastructure was built to support now a global population of more than 8 billion people. And that's the real threat today. Sean Sublette: All right, so we're going to take a quick break. We'll come back with a couple more key questions with Michael Mann on the across the sky podcast. Stay with us. Michael Mann talks about the chemistry that helps us reconstruct past climate Sean Sublette: And we're back with Dr. Michael Mann on the across the sky podcast. The new book is our fragile moment. It is a very deep dive, as they say, into paleo climatology, and why this particular moment in time is so crucial in the climate going forward. Mike, your expertise, obviously, is in paleo climates and all these things that we use geologically to reconstruct climate. A lot of us are familiar with the ice cores. also, these oxygen isotopes, those for the weather folks, are not quite as complicated. But, what I'd like to talk about a little bit, explain some of the chemistry that's involved, that help us tell us what the climate was like. When we look at ocean sediment cores, these are things that aren't classic atmospheric proxies, right? These are much more in the rocks, geological proxies, those stalagmites, stalactites, those kinds of things. Can you talk about what are we doing with these things in terms of chemistry that tell us what we need to know? Dr. Michael Mann: Yeah, so it's amazing. There are these paleothermometers, we sometimes, call them, and you think about ice, right? Ice is frozen water. That's h 20. And so there's an O in there. There's oxygen, atoms, in that ice. And it turns out that the ratio of heavy to light isotopes of oxygen there are two main stable isotopes of oxygen oxygen 16 and oxygen 18. And the ratio, of them is a function of, the temperature. And when you form precipitation, when you condense water vapor into a droplet, there is what we call fractionation, where the heavy and the light isotopes behave differently during that process. That's true for evaporation, it's true for condensation. And so if you think about what's going on an ice core, you're drilling down in the ice, and that ice got there because it snowed at some point. And that snow was condensation of water vapor in the atmosphere. And that water vapor originally came from the evaporation from the ocean surface. And so at each stage, we have what's called a fractionation, where you're getting some sort of separation between the behavior of oxygen 16 and oxygen 18. The bottom line is, because of that, we can say things about ancient sea level from oxygen isotopes in sediment cores. We can say something about temperature from oxygen isotopes in sediment cores. We can say something about temperature from ice in ice cores on land. And it isn't just oxygen. We can look at carbon isotopes because there's carbon twelve and carbon 13, two different stable isotopes of carbon. And that allows us, for example, to figure out, what happened with carbon dioxide, and what happened with ocean acidification, how much CO2 there was, dissolved in the ocean. In fact, if you really want to get into it, we can estimate the PH of the ocean from other isotopes, boron isotopes. And I'm not going to get into the chemistry of that. But the bottom line is there are all of these amazing we call them proxy data. It's almost like nature provided us a way to sort of solve this puzzle of what happened in distant past. Almost like we were given, clues. It's like, well, I'm going to give you these isotopes, and if you're smart, and if you figure out the chemistry and the physics, you will be able to figure out what happened to sea level, what happened to ocean temperatures, what happened to the amount of ice, what happened to the acidity of the ocean. All of these things that are very relevant to how carbon pollution is impacting our environment today. Matt Holiner: And Mike, I think we've reached a point now where everybody acknowledges that the climate is changing. It took us a long time to get here, but I think we've reached that point. But what people are pointing out now is that, as you're talking about with paleo climate, the Earth's climate has changed many times over the years, warming and cooling. So what makes the climate change that we're experiencing now unique compared to the past? Dr. Michael Mann: Yeah, it's a great question, because we can certainly find times in the distant past when carbon dioxide levels, greenhouse gas levels, carbon dioxide being the main sort of greenhouse, gas that varies over time. They were higher than they are today, and global temperatures were warmer than they are today. During the Early Cretaceous Period, dinosaurs were wandering the polar regions of the planet. There was no ice on, the face of the Earth. We've seen Earth go from ice covered to ice free. So we know there are times when it's been much colder than today. And there are times when it's been considerably warmer than today. So then the question is, all right, well, then what makes climate change such a problem? Because even if we warm the planet, with carbon pollution, we're not going to get up to those Early Cretaceous levels. Well, actually, if we tried really hard, we could. If we extracted every bit of fossil fuels we could find, we could do that. Why? Because all of that carbon that was in the atmosphere slowly got deposited beneath the surface of the Earth in what we today call fossil fuels, ancient carbon, organic carbon that got buried in soils or shells that fell to the bottom of the ocean. Carbon that was in the atmosphere, got buried beneath the surface of the planet and came down from those very high early Cretaceous levels, over 100 million years. Due to those natural processes, carbon dioxide levels came down. Well, what we're doing now is we're taking all that carbon that got buried over 100 million years beneath the surface and we're putting it back into the atmosphere, but we're doing it a million times faster. We're taking carbon that was buried over 100 million years and we're putting it back up in the atmosphere over 100 years. And so I sometimes say if I was going to write a slogan for this, it would be, it's the rate, stupid. We all remember, it's the economy, stupid. I think we're old enough some of us are old enough to remember that was sort of a political sort of logo. Well, it's the rate, stupid. Which is to say it's not so much how warm the planet is or, what the CO2 levels are. It's what climate are you adapted to and how rapidly are you moving away from that climate. Because we have developed this massive societal infrastructure over a 6000 year period. Civilization, I talk about sort of the origins of civilization in Mesopotamia, 6000 years was the first true civilization. And it turns out global temperatures were remarkably stable for six, seven, 8000 years during which we developed all of this infrastructure that supports eight plus billion people. And we are dependent on the stability of that climate and its ability to continue to support that infrastructure which we've created. And if we're rapidly changing the climate and moving out of that window of variability during which we created civilization, that's a real threat. If the warming exceeds our adaptive capacity and it exceeds the adaptive capacity of other living things, life has learned to adapt to, climate changes that take place over tens of millions of years. That's pretty easy. Adapting to climate changes of similar magnitude that take place over tens of years, that's much more difficult. And again, what makes it so fragile, such a fragile moment for us is that we have leveraged the number of people who can live on this planet, what we call the carrying capacity of the planet. We've probably leveraged it by a factor of ten. Through our technology, through our infrastructure. We can support eight plus billion people because we have all of this infrastructure, agricultural infrastructure, engineering. But it's fragile, right? Because if the planet warms dramatically and that infrastructure no longer remains viable, then we can no longer support that elevated carrying capacity. Then we revert to the natural carrying capacity of the planet, which is maybe a billion people. And you think about that. The planet without our infrastructure, without our technology, probably can't support more than a billion people. We've got more than 8 billion people. That's why we can't afford to destabilize the infrastructure that supports human civilization today. And that's what dramatic warming, that's what unmitigated climate change will do. How does studying Paleo climatology make you see our place in the universe? Joe Martucci: John said, I had the last question here, so I'll wrap up with this. how does studying Paleo climatology and maybe even writing this book make you see our space or our race as humans in this universe? Because a lot of what you're talking about, you said Fragile Rights, the name of the book. How do you see our place in the universe, given what you've studied over the decade? Dr. Michael Mann: Thanks. It's a great question. and it's something I get into a little bit. Have some fun. At one point, we do some thought experiments. Some thought experiments, like, what if in one of the chapters, which is on, an episode of rapid warming, and by rapid warming, we mean, like, over 10,000 or 20,000 years rapid on geological timescales. Nothing like what we're doing today. But there was this period of relatively rapid warming, about 56 million years ago. We call it the PETM. Stands for the Paleocene eocene thermal maximum. It just rolls right off the tongue. And it was this period during which there was a massive injection of carbon dioxide into the system. Obviously, there weren't SUVs, and there weren't coal fired power plants. This was a natural input of volcanism through unusually intense volcanic eruptions, centered in Iceland, that tapped into a very carbon rich reservoir and put a very large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over a relatively short period of time. And so it turns out that you can ask the question, can we rule out the possibility that there was an intelligent civilization back then that went on this massive fossil fuel burning spree and basically extinguished themselves? And my good friend Gavin Schmidt, who's the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has written a paper and has written some popular, essays about this idea because of the Silurian hypothesis. and it's basically imagine lizard people who existed 56 million. How can we rule out that that's what happened? And I grew up watching the land of the lost. And, Gavin, around the same time he was in Britain, and I think it was Dr who had a similar that's where the Silurian there were, like, these reptile beings, that basically destroyed their environment. And so it's a really interesting question. Can we rule that out? And in the process of trying to rule that out, it actually raises some really interesting questions about, what are the conditions for life? Do intelligent civilizations extinguish themselves naturally? this is sometimes called the Fermi paradox. it was something that Carl Sagan thought about if the universe is teeming. With life? How come we're not hearing from them? How come we're not getting radio signals? And it turns out you can look at all of the different how many planetary systems are there in the universe? You can sort of try to do the math and figure out how many intelligent civilizations you might expect there to be in the universe based on various assumptions. And it turns out the defining problem, all the uncertainty comes down to when intelligent civilizations emerge, how long do they persist for? Do they extinguish themselves? And that would be one explanation of Fermi's paradox. Obviously, it's very personal to us. We don't want to think that, we are on our own way to self caused extinction. So there's some deep questions there. When you look at Paleo Climate and you look at some of these past episodes, you can start to ask some larger questions that tap into these deeper philosophical questions about our place in the universe. is there life elsewhere in the universe? The thinking that you go through turns out to be very relevant to the thinking that you need to go through for, Know. And the punchline is, Adam. I'm going to draw a blank on his, so, he's a well known astrophysicist, and writes about the search for extraterrestrial life. Adam and I'm drawing a blank on his last name, which is very embarrassing. I'm, sure he'll watch this and be very upset at me. but, he actually came to Gavin because he was interested in the search for extraterrestrial life and asking some questions about climate change and climate change on other planets. and could that explain why we're not hearing from other civilizations? Because they cause climate change and they extinguish themselves. And, Adam Frank is his name, and he's a well known sort of, science communicator, astrophysics search for extraterrestrial, sort of continuing the legacy of Carl Sagan and the Planetary Society and the sorts of questions that they were asking. So he came to Gavin, who's a climate modeler, and know, I want to work on, know, figuring out if climate change could have been what caused these other potential civilizations elsewhere in the universe to extinguish themselves. And then Gavin says, how do we know that that didn't happen on Earth? And they go through this amazing sort of thought experiment, and it turns out it's hard at first blush to rule out that that's what happened. For example, the PETM. It takes quite a bit of work to convince yourself that it couldn't have been ancient lizard people that burned, fossil fuels. and so, yeah, so there's a lot you can learn from what are seemingly silly thought experiments that actually start to get at some pretty deep questions about us and our place in the universe. Sean Sublette: We know not all questions are silly. What plate tectonics has only been around for about 100 years or so. And everybody kind of thought, well, that was silly at the time. Dr. Michael Mann: Mike, we're going to stickers stop plate tectonics bumper stickers. Sean Sublette: Yeah, we're going to let you go. But, again, the book is our fragile moment. Social media is a mess nowadays, but where's the best place people can find you digitally and online? Dr. Michael Mann: Well, they can still find me on, what are we calling it this day? X. that's what it's called this week. But, I've sort of diversified. You can find me pretty much on all of the major social media platforms now. I'm still on Twitter. X, and, Instagram and mastodon and Blue, sky, and I'm forgetting threads. It's like, now we've got to be so diversified because we're no longer confident we can rely on the one that we were all relying on for so long. But, yeah, I'm out there and people can find me at WW Michaelman Net. So, yeah, it was great talking with you guys and I, hope to do so again. Sean Sublette: Mike, appreciate it so much. Take care. travel safely. Good luck promoting the book. and it's great. I mean, I've read it. It's just wonderful. And also, I will say this publicly. Thanks for the little shout out at the back, my friend. Dr. Michael Mann: Thank you, my friend. It was great talking with you guys. Sean Sublette: Those are some very deep answers, guys. where is our place in the universe and this concept of lizard people from 50 OD million years ago. and the things you will go down the road you will go down when you start doing these thought experiments. But for me, the importance here, I think what Mike said is the pace of the warming is without precedent. What we're doing is happening so fast, it is going to be difficult to adapt. Some things are going to adapt more easily than others. And that's why this moment in time is so particular. Yeah, it's been warmer in the past, but our civilization, which is increasingly global over these last 2000, 3000 years in particular, last couple of hundred years, where the population has just blossomed, really kind of dependent on the climate that we have out there now. Guys, what do you think? Joe, what did you kind of take away from? Joe Martucci: Well, you know, anytime we talk about our place in the really, I don't know, just really focused on the topic because it does make you think about in some ways, how small we are relative to everything. And not just even planet Earth and the spec of the universe, but also human life in the span of the Earth's long, long history. And like he also said a few minutes before that question, it's the rate of change of the warming that's unique. I say this a lot of times when I do public talks. I said, listen, yeah, we've been warmer than we've been before, we've been colder than we've been before. But barring like an asteroid or some cataclysmic event, this is the only time we're really changing at such a rate. and there's facts and forecasts, and then there's what to do or not to do about it. And that's where your beliefs come in. But there's no denying that the rate of change, a lot of this is significant and something we haven't seen really in the scope of human history. And beyond that, the Earth's history, again, minus the early millions, billion, two or four years, when the Earth was really trying to just get itself together, for lack of a better word. And in some of these asteroid or supervolcano events, it happened as well. Matt Holiner: I would say this was a humbling conversation, because also at the end, when he was talking about why haven't we encountered other intelligent life? And then the comment that stood out to me is like, maybe it has existed, but because of their actions, resulted in their own extinction, and are we headed down that path? And is that why we haven't encountered intelligent life? And then, the other comment that he made is when he was talking about carrying capacity, and now the Earth has a population of 8 billion. But you take out our technology, and what we could see if we continue on this path, if the climate continues. To the rate the change that it's. Matt Holiner: Experiencing now, that carrying capacity could drop to a billion. And then you think, you think about going from a population of 8 billion people to 1 billion, 7 billion people disappearing. That makes the hair stand your, arms and to think about could we result in our own extinction by our actions? And when you hear that, you want to say, let's not make that mistake, let's do something about this. Because again, the other comment was it's the rate stupid? And he talks about, yes, climate has changed in the past. And that's what some people keep coming out. It's like, well, what's the big deal if the climate has changed the past? We're just going through another cycle, but it's never changed at this pace and. Joe Martucci: We can't keep up. Matt Holiner: He also talked about the planet has taken care of itself. When the sun became stronger, the greenhouse effect decreased. And so there has been that the Earth has all these protections in place to kind of keep the climate in balance. But we're breaking that. We're breaking these natural protections. That's why he calls it our fragile moment. Because if we continue at this pace, the Earth isn't going to be able to heal itself. And so we have to take action to make sure we don't lose 7 billion people. So, again, we don't want to talk about the doomism. So it's a fine balance, though, because we absolutely have to take action, but know that we can take action. This is not hopeless. We still have time to fix this. Problem, so let's get on it. Sean Sublette: Yeah, as he says, there is urgency, but there is also agency. So I think that that's the quote that I like from him, most of all. So as we look to some other episodes coming down the pike, a little bit less heady. coming up next week, we've got Paul James of HGTV. We're going to look at the science of changing leaves. We are thick into, the fall right now, the leaves changing from north to south across the country, and we're also working in the background to bring you a broader winter forecast. We're still turning a couple of knobs on that, but we're working on that. I'll be talking to Neil degrasse Tyson in a few weeks. We'll bring that to the podcast. also I've talked to a couple of colleagues, the fifth national climate assessments coming out, and we're going to say, well, what does that mean and why should we care? We'll answer those questions. we've got one more, Joe. you've got somebody coming in from Ohio State, right? Joe Martucci: Yeah, we do. That's coming up in a couple of weeks. That's for your, November 6 episode. We're speaking with Dr. Lawrence Sutherland, and it's tips prepare older loved ones in case of natural disasters or extreme weather. I've covered this topic a, number of times for the press of Atlantic City, where I'm based out of shout out to everybody listening Jersey, but talking about, some of the challenges our senior citizens are having when there are these kind of extreme weather events. so that should be really good. I'm looking forward to that one, too. And that one comes out on November. Sean Sublette: So we have got a lot of good stuff in the pipeline in the weeks ahead, but for now, we're going to close up shop. So for Joe Martucci at the Jersey Shore. Matt Hollner in Chicagoland. I'm meteorologist Sean Subletz at the Richmond Times dispatch. We'll talk with you next time. Thanks for listening to the across the sky podcast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all use weather forecasts to help get us through our days and plan ahead. The same is true for corporations. Whether it's for planning outdoor maintenance or business continuity, weather forecasts play an important role in day-to-day operations. Mark Elliot, the principal meteorologist for AT&T, has his hands full helping a major telecommunications company maintain operations in any conditions. Before joining AT&T, Elliot spent the first two decades of his career as an on-camera meteorologist at The Weather Channel. Though different, it turns out the two jobs have a lot in common. In this episode, Elliot shares stories about his time at The Weather Channel, discusses what he does in his current role for AT&T, and explains why meteorologists are becoming an essential part of more and more companies. We want to hear from you! Have a question for the meteorologists? Call 609-272-7099 and leave a message. You might hear your question and get an answer on a future episode! You can also email questions or comments to podcasts@lee.net. About the Across the Sky podcast The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team: Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Headliner and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Joe Martucci: Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of, the Across the Sky Podcast, a Lee Enterprises podcast. We appreciate you listening, whether it's on your favorite podcast platform or on your favorite local news website. We are talking about the phone companies in weather. Believe it or not, phone companies hire meteorologists. And we thought there would be no better person to talk to than then Mark Elliot, who is the principal meteorologist for AT&T, of course, one of the country's biggest phone companies here. He's also been on the Weather Channel for nearly 20 years. You can still see him there on occasion. And join with me to interview him. We have Matt Holiner in the Midwest and Sean Sublette down in Richmond, Virginia. Kirsten Lang is out for today. Guys, how's it going? Matt Holiner: Going pretty good. Yeah. Matt Holiner: I really enjoyed this interview because I got to reconnect with Mark a little bit. I actually got a chance to work with him in my, brief summer internship at the Weather Channel in the summer of 2013. And, he was typically in the afternoons. I was most often in the mornings, but I got to work all the shifts, so I did get a chance to work with him there. It was good talking about the experience of being at the Weather Channel because it is just an amazing place if you're a meteorologist to work at. But also hearing why he made the shift from being at some would call it a dream job at the Weather Channel to working for At T, and the change that came with that. It was a really interesting conversation. Sean Sublette: Yeah, I like that as well. The things that he learned at the Weather Channel, how he was able to apply those and his new job and the rationale for making the jump and just trying to understand, well, why does AT&T need a meteorologist? And once you stop to think about all the hardware that's scattered all about the country and it's outside, then it all begins to add up. But, yeah, so he has a lot of interesting things to say about that. So it's a good episode. Joe Martucci: Yeah, good episode. We're excited to show you here. So let's dive into it. Mark Elliot is principal meteorologist at AT&T Joe Martucci: You're listening to Mark Elliot on the across the sky podcast. We are here with our special guest for today on the across the sky podcast. Mark Elliot, principal meteorologist at at and T, which we're going to talk plenty about. You may know him from the Weather Channel, where he has spent nearly 20 years in front of the camera talking to audiences all across the country. He's still doing some freelance work. Now, he is a graduate of Rutgers University, which I might just say is the best university on the planet. But we'll let other people decide that one. And got his master's of science at, Georgia Institute of Technology, also known as Georgia Tech. Mark, thanks for coming on the podcast. We appreciate it. Mark Elliot: My pleasure. Thanks for the invite, guys. Joe Martucci: Yeah, no, absolutely. We're looking forward to diving into everything. Corporate meteorology is a growing, exploding part of the field Joe Martucci: But I do want to ask this, because and I'm even thinking about this know, if I put my non weather hat on. Why would AT&T need a meteorologist? What are you doing there? I, know it's important work, but can you explain what's going on? Where did the motive to have a meteorologist at AT&T come? Mark Elliot: And, you know, even stepping back from, like, not necessarily anything specific to my current job at AT&T corporate meteorology is a growing, exploding part of the field. That these companies are realizing that it is a strategic advantage, it's a monetary advantage to have forecasters, to have meteorologists with experience that can talk about these complicated patterns, complicated science, and put it onto the company level, talking about how weather will directly affect them. It's slightly different from what you'd get from, the National Weather Service or from a National Weather Channel. It's more those places, while they have access to where the weather will be, don't necessarily have the same access to the company's internal data of where their stuff is, what's there, what's important, how are each one of those assets affected by the weather? And once you start thinking about it that way, it makes a lot of sense for companies big and small to have some sort of weather connector, weather service of some kind that is giving them information, and AT&T recognized that as well. Joe Martucci: How many people work? Are you the only meteorologist there? Do you have a team? How does that work? Mark Elliot: We're a small but mighty team. I'm not the only one, but, it's one hand or less that is, making up, the lot. We do a lot of work with just a small number of people. We're talking about United States, Mexico, areas around the world where there might be data connections under the ocean. Yeah. It's a global reach, as you can imagine, for a company with that name. Sean Sublette: Yeah, for sure. Mark, one of the things, and again, I don't want you to give away any kind of secrets or anything like that, because I think in our own minds, we can understand. Okay, well, anything from space weather, of course, affects communications, as well as heavy precipitation, or any other kind of thing that affects telecommunications. That's kind of where my mind is. And as you alluded to, this is becoming a growing field. We already know that this has happened a lot in the financial industry, in the energy industry over the last ten to 20 years. In particular, use that information to leverage your position against your competition. How does the weather affect a telecommunications company like AT&T? Sean Sublette: what other kinds of things, without you giving away too much, how does the weather affect a company like AT&T or any telecommunications company? over what I kind of mentioned. Mark Elliot: Yeah. And you're right. you're right and more right. Almost every type of extreme weather could have an extreme impact. And so it's our job to basically forecast the risk. It's not necessarily a weather forecast, it's a risk forecast. And then we have other teams that go out there, and they are trying to take that information and mitigate or minimize that risk as much as possible. So, first things first. It's about for these companies, companies big and small, that have corporate meteorology. It's about protecting the people, right? You want to make sure your people know what they're getting into day by day. So first on the list is people. Second is probably places the assets that are fixed and are out there, whether those are buildings, whether those are communication towers. In my case, any type of weather that could affect something sticking up into the air, whether that's a building or a tower or anything else. And obviously, you don't need me to tell you what that might be. Lightning, tornadoes, extreme wind, flooding, all really important to those fixed assets. And then there's mobile assets, things that are moving around. Whether it's company fleets, they need to know what they might be driving into. it's really far and wide, I would say. I think a lot of corporate meteorologists and AT&T included, we focus a lot on Tropics because they are such big players when they come into an area. But also wind in general, strong wind can have an outsized influence. Tornadoes, while really important, as we know, are really small scale. And so they often can be really troublesome and problematic and destructive in those local areas. But for a national scale, they might not be as important, right? It's all about perspective and what that individual company needs at the time. How do you handle the lightning situation with all these cell phone towers? Matt Holiner: And Mark, I'm curious about the lightning, because I would imagine the most common thing that you might have to deal with are just general thunderstorms. Not necessarily severe thunderstorms, but just regular thunderstorms that have lightning and all those cell phone towers. So what goes into the forecast? And, are there any special preparations to try and protect those towers ahead of time? And then what happens when those towers inevitably do get struck by lightning? How do you handle the lightning situation with all these cell phone towers sticking way up in the sky, certainly attracting some lightning, right? Mark Elliot: They're big, tall, pointy objects. And it's what we've always said, like, don't be the tallest object out in the field, and yet that's what towers are. That's what our buildings are. and so we use the same technology that any tall building would have. There is lightning, mitigation on top of these tall, pointy objects, just like the Empire State Building is struck multiple times a year, and yet the building is still there. A lot of these towers have lightning rods of some kind in order to ground them. So that the charge can flow through and not destroy everything. But there's also always all kinds of alerts that go off if things go wrong. And so then the tech teams can go back out there and figure out what went wrong and fix it up. Meteorologists are constantly monitoring the weather across the country Joe Martucci: So this sounds to me is this like a 24/7 kind of job where you guys are always looking out for what's happening across I'm assuming the whole country, right? Mark Elliot: The weather doesn't really stop right for that's true weekends and holidays and you know what you're getting into when you sign into this field. We are not really staffed 24/7, but we're also not staffed either. I mean, when it's a big event, we're going to be up watching it anyway. So we might as well be helping the company through it, kind of thing. US meteorologists, we get not excited, but we study this. We want to see what's happening when big weather happens. And so if we were going to be up watching it, we're going to be forecasting for it, kind of thing. If people in the business are interested enough in it, you better believe the meteorologists in the business are interested in it too. But what I will say is that a lot of our work happens very early. I'm not a morning person by nature. I don't know if you can see it in my eyes or hear it in my voice. But we start roughly 05:00 A.m. Every day in order to get the bulk of our forecasting work and risk analysis done before other decision makers get up and start making their plans because the weather affects those plans. And so my busiest time of the day is often that five to eight a M Eastern time frame. And yet the company doesn't work on those hours. And so there will still be meetings and special projects and all kinds of stuff for someone on the West Coast after their lunchtime and next thing you know it you've hours. You know, it's it's not a job that has fixed nine to fives. It's not an easy role to slide into if that's the goal. Are you doing longer term climate risk also as a company? Sean Sublette: So let me jump in next we talk about those short term threats, whether it's a, ah, winter storm, ice, snow, wind, lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, all that stuff. But are you kind of evolving also into a longer term climate risk? Like, hey, we've got these assets on the coastline or near the coastline. Are we worried about those for 10, 15, 20 years? Are you doing kind of this longer term climate risk also? Mark Elliot: As a company, yes. As me, not as much. I'm involved in some of those discussions. But there's an entire other team that is looking at long term climate risk. In fact, there's some great partnerships with AT&T and argum National Labs putting out publicly available climate risk down to the location. So it's called Climar Climber Climmrr. And it's publicly available. It's from AT&T Labs, basically At T's Innovators and the Argon National Laboratory. And you can put in, an address if you have a building, if you have your home, and you want to know what the climate risk may be there, for that location in the years to come. We've made it available because we think that should be a public good, as AT&T made that choice to put that out there for everybody. And then, of course, we use that data both in short and long term ways. We can use it in the short term to be kind of an extra data point. If we're looking at flooding, like, will this cause flooding to our assets? Well, we can take one more piece of data. Know, you have the Ero from the Weather Prediction Center. You might have the flood risk from FEMA as part of your decision making, but maybe you also bring in the Argon National Laboratory. And it's saying in 50 years there's pretty much no risk here because of local elevation or because of small scale changes that might be even more fine tuned than your FEMA data. That can help us lower or raise even a current day's forecast of risk at a location. So we're using it. And then, of course, for long term site picking, if you had a choice of putting a new building here or here, and one of them is saying, this is going to be underwater in 20 years, and one is saying it's not. That's an added piece of data that you can start to use the data. Part of this is really important in the long run. Mark Elliot: Trying to communicate risk in Mexico was a challenge for me Matt Holiner: So, Mark, besides the early mornings and the occasional long hours, what would you say is the most challenging part of your job? Mark Elliot: Oh, challenging part. I mean, I didn't do a lot of international, forecasting at the Weather Channel. Right. It was very much us. Based. Trying to figure out the right way to communicate risk in Mexico was a challenge for me because I'm not a Spanish speaker. if you're doing forecasts internationally, you don't have the same kind of available data that you would be used to using if you were looking at a front approaching the US. Or coming through the US. Watching typhoons in the West Pacific was not really in my day to day, and now it, was, I'd argue, interesting and a new challenge because of it. Matt Holiner: And is there any part of the world that AT&T is not concerned about? Or do you literally have to look. Mark Elliot: Across the whole globe? Matt Holiner: Or is there some area that you can say, you know what, we can skip that part of the forecast. Mark Elliot: It's different. we care about it differently. I'm not spending a lot of time in, say, Central Europe, but we know those patterns influence what happens downstream, and eventually it comes to us anyway. So if you're not at least paying attention to where there's big pattern changes know, really life threatening weather. Communication is life saving. And so if we have the ability to help a community because of destructive weather, AT&T is probably going to be there in some way. And once our people are there, we're forecasting spot forecasts for wherever they are. So if the weather gets bad enough and our people are going to help, whether it's reestablished communication or whatever the case may be, we're also involved so that while they're there, they're getting spot forecasts from, us. Joe Martucci: Awesome. Well, we're going to take a brief break here and we'll come back on the other side with more from Mark Elliot on the across the sky podcast. Mark Elliot started at The Weather Channel right after graduating from Rutgers Joe Martucci: And we are back with the across the sky podcast hosted by the Lee Enterprises weather team. I'm here with Matt Holliner and Sean Sublick. Kirsten Lang could not be with us today. Mark Elliot is with us here. He is our guest for today principal, meteorologist at AT&T and longtime meteorologist at the Weather Channel. We'll dive into this a little bit, so, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mark, I think you started at The Weather Channel right after Rutgers. Is that true? Mark Elliot: It is, pretty rare. Joe Martucci: That's what I was going to get into, because from my perspective as a meteorologist, the Weather Channel is like the I just, it always feels like something you work towards for a while and you get that moment. I mean, it's great you started there right off the bat, but I have to ask, how did you do it? Mark Elliot: Yeah. So, it's a combination of really hard work and a little bit of luck. I mean, let's face it, it requires a little bit of both. Joe Martucci: Yeah. Mark Elliot: I will credit Rutgers as you should. Go ahead, Joe, jump in there. Joe Martucci: All right, we got an R. We got an. Mark Elliot: Yeah. Joe Martucci: Yeah. Mark Elliot: I will credit Rutgers and Rutgers meteorology for really giving me the opportunity to be able to be seen by the Weather Channel. So here's how this went in kind of a short form version. So at Rutgers, and I guess before and after I was a bit of an overachiever, I did the double major program at Rutgers, which meant that my electives were things like organic chemistry for fun. Joe Martucci: I'll tell you why, you know, as well as imark organic chemistry at Rutgers is not an easy class. I know a lot of people who took it and did not do so well on the first go around on that. So that's a toughie at Rutgers. Mark Elliot: Non a grades at Rutgers. I, mean, it wasn't too far down, but I had a, huge GPA, I had two different majors, and I did all of these internships while at Rutgers. At Rutgers sanctioned and helped organize. So I had a TV internship at News Twelve New Jersey. I had a National Weather Service internship at Mount Holly at the New Jersey office. I was doing research within, or at least data collection and analysis. I don't know if I'd really call it research, looking back on it, but for the Rutgers Pam site, so the photochemical assessment, monitoring. So I was getting into field work and figuring out what the big profilers did and what they meant and all this and that was all through Rutgers at the same time. The Rutgers Meteorology Club and kind of my year and right around my year, of being there were the first ones to really organize and start sending student groups to the American Meteorological Society conferences and the student conference in particular. So I saw a table at a conference for the Weather Channel for student internships, and I gave them my resume, which also had know, Weather Watcher, right? The Re weather watcher program, which is TV. It had radio experience from WRSU because I worked, on there and was doing their news team weather reports occasionally. So I had all this stuff on the resume, and I handed it into a summer internship, thinking like, oh, my gosh, ah, this is going to be so amazing. And I didn't even hear a no, right? And I didn't get a yes no, much less a yes. I heard nothing. And I'm like, well, I got nothing. And I'm about to graduate senior year. And I am internally, and rather externally, I think, also panicking. my friends were signing up for grad schools. They knew what they wanted to research. They were getting job offers. They were moving. And I was just applying to job after job after job and not even hearing no's, still nothing. And I applied to National Weather Service Puerto Rico. I was like, I'll learn Spanish. That's not what they wanted, right? But I was applying to anywhere because I liked all things weather. I didn't have a focus. I think that actually hurt me a little bit. I wasn't like, I'm only looking at tropical things. I'm going to go to grad school for tropical meteorology, and I'm going to work at CSU and do long range forecasting. There wasn't a goal like that because I just wanted to be in the field. I just wanted to do something weather. So I was about to graduate, and my in room dorm phone rang. and my roommate answered, thinking it was a joke or a prank or whatever, because somebody called saying they were from the Weather Channel. And once he realized it was real, he changed his tone a bit and got me the phone. And it was for a because I had Rutger's Radio, the WRSU experience, on my resume. it floated around the building for, I think, about a year and a half. And somebody was going on maternity leave. And they said, do you want this job? It starts in August. There is no moving expenses. There is no help finding a place to live. It goes from August to November. It is four days a week max. It is 35 hours a week max. There is no benefits. You cannot work at the month of December or else it triggers you to be full time and you're not allowed to be. So it's literally this, do you want it? And I said yes, I do. And so I went to the Weather Channel for a part time job in radio and stayed 18 years, is the long and short of it. Joe Martucci: Wow, that's incredible on a lot of fronts there. Because even still, even with the WRSU, which is great, I feel like, to get it, as I'm sure a wide pool of applicants, is a big testament to your skills and everything you've done. And obviously, you made a very long career out of it, being there for 20 years, and even still freelancing there now, what's it like working there? I've never been there. I know where it is, but I've never been there. When you're there, does it just feel like, special? Because for the people who are listening, for a lot of us meteorologists, you grew up watching The Weather Channel because you didn't really know anybody who was interested in weather growing up. That was the same for me. I knew nobody that was going to be a meteorologist in their career until I went to Rutgers. So when you get there, is it just like, wow, I made it? Is that how it feels? Mark Elliot: In many ways, at least I always did. I always got that thrill putting on the blue jacket, right? There was something about I didn't care what time it was when I went into the field, you put on that blue coat and you're walking down the hallway of a hotel with no power, and you're like, you got a strut, right? You got a different feel about it because everyone knows that brand. It's one of the most well and well respected brand. It wins the most respected news brand year after year after year after year. But away from that, in the building, it is very mission driven. But people you see on air, on air, because they have mission and purpose, and they're trying to communicate this science and keep people safe. You're soaking up so much weather knowledge communication knowledge Mark Elliot: They look at it, and I looked at it as someone listening right now, we could save their life if we give them the right info, if we give them the right information that they can use and react to the right way or not do the wrong thing, which I think is often more often the case. So that mission, and purpose was very apparent. Like, people knew why we were there. And then you're surrounded in a room of other meteorologists like you. How where else can you go where you have a severe weather question? You can go up to Dr. Forbes or you have a hurricane. that's coming up. And you can go to a director of the National Hurricane Center. You could just be like Rick first name, right? forget Dr. NAB. Joe Martucci: Dr. NAB, tell me what's up. Mark Elliot: What's with this question? That's awesome, having that kind of knowledge base. And then you have the people that we all know that have been there since we've all been watching, right, since it started in the early eighty s, more or less. And you can have a question for Jim about broadcast, or Mike Seidel about field work, or Kelly Cass name, the broadcaster, the longevity of the people there. And, the skill that comes from that is really impressive. And so you're just a sponge. You're soaking up so much weather knowledge communication knowledge. Weather communication knowledge, which is its own little, microcosm of interesting. And it's not just meteorologists, right? You have producers and directors and news gatherers and they're all the best of the best in that room putting a show together. And you're part of that team. And so you're learning how that works and you're learning how it goes, and you're the expert, because it's not just the News channel, it's the Weather Channel. And so your knowledge is important and they value it. So it was really a special place and, it was not something I didn't enjoy anymore. Right. So that wasn't the motivation for leaving there. I still go back. Right. That says something. How many people leave their jobs and still go to hang out because it's still fun for them? Joe Martucci: Yeah, I understand. Did you feel like you missed out by leaving local weather to go national? Joe Martucci: Let me ask you this too, because I do feel like a number of people who are working on the Weather Channel, they might start in local news and then work their way up to the Weather Channel. Did you feel like you missed out maybe by not taking working in that local news setting and going right to national? Or is it something that, hey, I'm at the Weather Channel, I love it here, I'm here. Mark Elliot: A little of both, maybe. I feel like it would be difficult for me to have left the Weather Channel and gone to local because there have been many who have done that. And so I might not know enough to be able to speak to it, right. Because I wasn't in that world long. An internship, is not the same as being a chief meteorologist at a local spot. But I was used to following the weather and my ship changing no matter where the weather was that day. So I would go where the weather could kill you. I would jump around to the middle of the night, I would be in the evenings because there was lots of severe weather. I'd occasionally move to the afternoons and then back to the overnight. I would follow the weather. You don't really do that in local. You've got your set time frame. The weather might be boring for a long stretch in one location, whereas if you're looking nationally, there is always a weather story somewhere. And so for me, it was always like, man, if I had to just look at one market, what would that feel like after looking at a national scale for, as long as I did? You guys can tell me I'm wrong and be like, local, best. And it's super interesting. And we get to do the school talks, and we get to be part of the community, and I would find all the things that I would love about that. But it's very different from looking at a national scale and talking about where the big story is only well, I'll. Joe Martucci: Say as somebody who literally just came from a school visit to talk to you right now, Mark, it's always good to be a part of the community. I do like it that way. But, I mean, hey, listen, again, when you're at the weather mean, you made it. I mean, you're so I know, Matt, you had a question, so, god, I don't want to take up too much. Mark Elliot: Not I'm not putting down local by any stretch. I think I love being in a community that way and being really focused and that kind of thing. but your original question was, do I feel like I missed out on not starting in that route? And I think I did some of those local feel type things at the national network. Right? I came in through radio, and so I was on local radio stations, some of them live and part, you know, people that were listening didn't know I wasn't in their sound booth with their board radio board in front of me. Right. We tapped into it virtually and digitally, but I was kind of part of those local communities. And then again, I'm dating myself a little bit, but video on the Internet was a new thing, and so I was doing local forecasts on your local on the eigth page, I think they actually called it that. How weird is that thinking, back on the days of weather.com, in the early 2000s or so, where kind of mid 2000s, probably when video was coming out on weather, but your local page had a video of just the New York City forecast that was new. And so that was me. They didn't have the full on air people doing that shift all the time because they had their full on air shift to do. So I would be jumping in. So I got some of that trial by fire local TV and local Feel experience at the national network, which was different, but pretty cool to be able to say I did it that way. Matt Holiner: Yeah, Mark, I know exactly what you're talking about, because when I was interning at the Weather Channel, I mean, at the time, it was really cool to me. But I got to do some of those. Joe Martucci: Local web forecasts. Matt Holiner: They let me do it near the end of my internship. I had to do a few sample videos for it to make sure I was good enough. And boy, when my first thing showed up on weather, it was just amazing. As, somebody who is in college to be on weather, it was fantastic. It was certainly not the same as being on the actual Weather Channel. Being on the website was pretty cool. And I felt the exact same way about being at the Weather Channel. Being in that building, and just the knowledge, the immense knowledge of the TV business, but also the forecasting business, meteorology be around, all those other meteorologists. It was a fantastic place to work. When was the moment that you realized you need to make a change? Matt Holiner: So my question for you is, when was the moment that you realized you need to make a change? What caused you to make the shift from being at the Weather Channel, for some people, their dream job, to then switching to a very different role at AT&T? Mark Elliot: I don't know if I did realize it just kind of happened. A lot of it was on a whim. So the real answer is, I was doing my CCM certification, the certified consulting meteorologist, through the, AMS. And I had a mentor who was encouraging me to do that project. I was doing it on my off time, it was COVID time. And so shifts were really strange at the Weather Channel. Times were moving around, some people were working from home, I was working in the studio. But more often than not only at the times of extreme, severe weather, right? Dr. Forbes had stepped away, mostly retired. And I was certainly not taking that role as the severe weather expert, but I was on the expert staff at that point, and often being told to, follow where the severe weather would go, but there isn't severe weather every day. So I was using some of that time to really think about what else was out there and what else was happening. And I was like, I think basically I'm a consultant. I come in now and I talk about just the most extreme weather, and I have to be able to make that digestible, but you have to be able to communicate differently. And you're doing some post analysis reporting, and a lot of things that a consultant would be asked to do. So I'm like, okay, this is different. This is not just a broadcast seal anymore for me. I'm going to try for the consulting meteorologist seal, which the process was epic, some will argue harder than getting the master's degree that I have to get the I won't necessarily swear by that, but it was a long process. It's doable, and it's fulfilling, and it's important. So if you're thinking about doing it, you should for people that are listening. But it's not quick. really by answering one of the questions that comes in the written exam, if you will. I wound up on a wormhole on the AMS site. And I stumbled into this job post for a tropical expert meteorologist that could do communication, and kind of briefing style communications that, could help lead a team to some degree and focus on the big weather stories of the day. And I was like, can do that, can do that, can do that, can do that, can do that. Do you ever see a job post and you're like, is this written about me? And then the kicker was, and it's in Atlanta where I was already living. And I was like, and I don't have to move for it. And so basically it was a thought experiment. And I was like, okay, well, what would it be like if I took a two decades broadcast resume and tried to make it sound like I was doing all these other things? Because I really was. But that's not what you're thinking about when you're doing broadcast meteorology. And there are so many skills that translate from broadcast meteorology to corporate meteorology and many other big data science or communication or PR type jobs. And so I basically said, okay, let's see, I'm going to use this next day. And instead of working on this or that, on my off time, I'm going to redo my resume. It's time to refresh it anyway. I basically was like, this will be fun. What else could I do today? And I applied to this job and I got an interview. And then I wound up getting the job. And then I had a really tough decision because again, I didn't dislike what I was doing. And I didn't necessarily sit there and say, I need to find something else. I don't like this anymore. I'm not interested in this anymore, or I'm not learning more. I'm not making a difference here. It was none of those things. It was a shiny new toy. And after a lot of reflection with myself and my family and asking, could this be a better work life balance for us? Could this be better for my young kids? Because again, I was bouncing around. I didn't know where I was going to be, right? That, could be sent out quickly. I didn't know what shift I was going to be on. I would miss events with the family. It was hard to plan stuff. And we said, okay, maybe this will have a little bit more regularity to it. It's a corporate world after all, and it is different in that way. And so I took the risk. Ah, so again, it wasn't like, I'm going to switch. It was like, I guess I'll switch. So hold on. Joe Martucci: Let me go puke in the corner. Mark Elliot: Because, yeah, it was frightening. It was a big change. I'm still not used to being the new guy. I'm surrounded by people that have 20 to 60 years of experience within at and t, and now I'm here, like. Joe Martucci: I have a year and a half. Mark Elliot: It's very different, but not necessarily in a bad way. Sean Sublette: No, I think you're right. A lot of those skills you do in broadcast do come back, or they're applicable in so many other areas. Communications of risk of scientific principles. You take a very complex situation, and you need to distill it into actionable information. Sean Sublette: One of the things that I've really admired about the weather channel is doing that this is submersive mixed reality stuff, that they continue to do, and I know you had some involvement in some of those as well. take me through as much as you were involved in production and actually recording the things, because I know any of us who have done broadcast meteorology, you're used to standing in front of a green screen and looking at something off camera and getting your bearings, kind of. How is that, in terms of doing IMR and producing and all that? How big is the team for that? For one thing? Mark Elliot: Yeah, there's a lot of questions there. And I guess I'll start with, I was doing some pieces there that were basically IMR before it was called that. Right. So there's a whole series of what was weather wizards that started as, could we open up a kitchen cabinet and do some sort of experiment at home with kids, or for yourself, and learn about the weather through cooking it up in front of you? And so we did a whole series of those, and basically started running out of good ideas. And that was a small team. I came up with a lot of, them. We had one producer, she would come up with several of them as well. We'd script it out. We'd think about what kind of graphics might pop up next to us, but it was mostly filmed handheld down in an experiment that you were doing. And we said, okay, what if the wizardry was not because of dry ice anymore and food coloring? It was because graphics would show up in front of you in the real world. And so we started doing these outside weather wizards that the graphic would be part of the environment that you were in. Thunderstorms would happen next to you, or you'd pan up, and suddenly you'd be up in the cloud, and you'd watch a raindrop change. Snow, sleet, rain kind of thing, as it went back down, and then landed back where I was, next to my shoe, stuff like that. And that technology kept evolving and kept growing all the way up to what's now classic, I guess not classically, but now known as IMR. That immersive mixed reality, where the entire room around you, more or less, is a green screen, and everything can be changed, whether it's the floor, the background, the walls, all of it. When it was a smaller thing, I was writing a lot of them, right? We won tele for the safest room piece, which is basically walking through a house and almost like, what if I was mayhem today? And I just stood back and all this stuff would happen around me, to the house, to the outside, and show people where you really need to be and why. So that won all kinds of awards and really kind of, I would argue, cemented the weather channel on going down this graphically heavy path. Because it is, I remember it, it. Sean Sublette: Was really well done. Mark Elliot: Yeah, I wrote most of that with a team, right. And really the graphics guys on that who are still buddies of mine, they did incredible stuff, like two x fours that would crash through a wall and when I bent under a two x four that wasn't actually there, a shadow would go across. Right? Like those little things that really make an IMR feel like IMR. So now it's done mostly back inside. But you've seen some of these things where walls of water come into an actual town and show you what that actual town could look like if storm surge happened or if a flash flood happened. You can't feel what that's like without that, you're not going to go there when that's happening. And so it's those graphical entries into that world that are really effective communication tools. Like 9ft of storm surge. Okay, who cares? That's not the right answer. But 9ft is suddenly above an actual building and you've seen that building and you know how high that is. That's a totally different communication thing. So as those have got more and more elaborate and more and more people were doing them, the teams got bigger and bigger. Lots of graphic artists, lots of writers. I only did a couple of those official IMRs. The whole staff was then brought in to do more of them because they were epic, right? And everyone wanted a chance to be able to be in that room and they should have been. And I'm glad that we all were. They're really great communication, tools. I think Stephanie Abrams did one with wildfire. Like, you're not going to be in a forest to see what it's like when a wildfire goes a football field a second, but we were able to show that with graphics and her standing there on the little silver disc. And then a lot of those ended with a climate story. Like how is this type of extreme weather changing as the world is changing? Are we getting more of these, less of these? Is things happening faster or slower? You can't show that without a graphic. And so to have that graphic happen around you was really epic. they're really cool pieces. When we have hurricanes or snowstorms, how do you guys determine who goes where? Joe Martucci: Mark, I want to ask you one more and then we'll get you out of here. Because this is maybe I'm just curious about this myself, but when we have hurricanes or snowstorms, how do you guys determine who goes where? How does that happen? Are you in the meeting for that? Who's deciding that? Is it a lot of discussion? Is it pretty easy? Mark Elliot: It is a war room. There's a whole bunch of people yeah, from the very higher stuff, people, that are in charge of TV, in charge of storytelling, to the people that are in charge of scheduling and VPs of talent. And then meteorologists are in the room, producers are in the room. I mean, it is a whole fleet of people. And the meteorologists have a say, as well. even all the way down to, like, you're sent here and you're there and you're like, I think the storm is changing. I think we need to be mobile to be here. All of that is still like, you're in constant communication. And the best part of being at a place like the Weather Channel for field work is that you have a building worth of people watching your back, that you have people back there that are focused on safety. And if you ever said, like, I can't do this broadcast, I'm not safe here, or for security reasons, for weather reasons, for anything, it was never a question. It was always like, yes, we'll do something from the studio, we're not doing it live. it was never asked, why you were never pushed to do something where you said, it's not safe here. Joe Martucci: interesting. I always love seeing the map where it shows everyone, like, your face and everybody's faces and where they are on the coast for a hurricane or snowstorm. Mark Elliot: I thought that was always real on a weather. I always think it's interesting when meteorologists talk about how they got started Joe Martucci: Anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it on up? I mean, this was great. We love hearing from you. Mark Elliot: I mean, I always think it's interesting when meteorologists talk about how they got started or what made them interested in weather. And, so many people I've talked to about this cite, a tree falling. I know that is tied to my experience. I don't know if you guys have any of that in your kind of origin story, but I think if you're the right age kid and something that seems permanent, like a giant tree can fall in front of you, or near you or hit something, you know, that also should have felt permanent as a young kid. I think it does something to our brains. Like, I never looked back, after watching a tree ball for why I wanted to do weather. It was always my answer, what do you want to be when you grow up? And it was weatherman. And the second part of that is my dad was involved in national preparedness, emergency preparedness for the VA hospital system, which in recent times, has turned into more like cybersecurity and terrorist act and stuff. But back in the early eight, late eighty s and early 90s, that almost exclusively meant where could weather disasters happen? And so he would be sent into areas that had weather problems. And I would watch the Weather Channel because there was a channel on that was talking about where my dad was. And so I just never stopped. I still haven't stopped. I still watch it as a viewer, even when I'm not there every day. So, yeah, I think that the origin story of trees falling or family connections are really important to young minds and how they get into the science of weather. How'd you get into weather? We should have asked that earlier Joe Martucci: Yeah, and we should have asked that earlier, and I apologize. How'd you get into weather? I say this all the time. I said it when I was at school earlier. It's something that for a lot of people, you know, at a young age, and you definitely are in that category, and it's hard to just fall into weather. I feel like I don't really see too many people who just fall into weather as a career. Mark Elliot: Well, I wasn't sure what I wanted to major in, and I took an Elements of Meteorology class and I just kept going. It's usually not that Elements of Meteorology because I had to fulfill my one science requirement and I never looked back. Right. Or I always wanted to be a meteorologist. I guess I should have followed that. People actually make careers of this. or, I am a meteorologist and I've known since I was yes. Joe Martucci: Yeah, that was me. I mean, really, one of the first things I ever remember in my life was about wanting to be a meteorologist. Anyway, Mark, we really appreciate the time, really insightful. We got to hear about your AT&T career, your Weather Channel career, more about you. So thanks a lot, we really appreciate it and we'll chat with you soon. Mark Elliot: Yeah, thanks for having me. Anytime. If you, come up with more questions again, I used to talk for a living, so I'll talk some more. Joe Martucci: Well, keep that in mind. For sure. Companies are realizing the value of having a meteorologist Joe Martucci: Awesome interview with Mark Elliot. He has many stories, as you would if you, worked for the Weather Channel for 20 years and working at the one of, if not the largest phone companies I know, I always see the commercials about is it AT&T or Verizon? Or is it T Mobile sprint. Now, I'm not too sure, but point is, his job is very important at T, like Sean said at the know equipment and tech all across the globe. It's a big, you know, I'm glad that he's enjoying it. So, Matt, what'd you think? Matt Holiner: Yeah, when you're working for a big international company like AT&T, what stood out to me was when he mentioned that one of the most challenging parts of his job is not just forecasting for the US. Anymore, which he had plenty of experience with at the Weather Channel. But that's all the Weather Channel has to worry about is the US. But AT&T, this is a global company, and they have assets across the globe. And so they're going to be concerned about the weather happening all over the planet. So a huge mean in some ways. His job almost got even bigger. Now he has to look the entire planet worth of weather. That is just a huge responsibility on him. But you know that I think this is also I always bring this up. I think we need more meteorologists, and I think we're seeing that. I think companies are realizing the value that having a team of meteorologists working for especially these really big companies, because they know specifically what they want and what weather information they need, and then they can go to their meteorologist. Rather than having to contact the media or the National Weather Service, they have a team working on what they know is most important for them and where their assets are located and getting these really specific forecasts. So I think this is something that we're probably going to see more and more, especially starting, of course, with these really big companies, but maybe even more medium sized companies actually thinking about getting some meteorologists because the weather has an impact on so many businesses. So I think this, isn't going to be an exception, these companies having their own meteorologists. I think we're going to see more. And more of it. Sean Sublette: Yeah, I agree. This kind of comes under the umbrella of weather risk management. The forecasting has gotten so much better in the last 20 years. But there is an overload of data, right? So you need a professional to go through the data that's important. Distill the most critical information to your business, and help those decision makers within a business manage risk. be sure your resources and your hardware are safe, and that's not something you can get. I love my brothers and sisters in broadcast meteorology, but you're not going to get what you need in a two and a half or three minute weather forecast if you've got a lot of assets that need protecting. So I think that, there's a lot of growth in there and the whole weather risk and ultimately climate risk management as well. So it was really nice to hear Mark talk about that as well, share some of those Weather Channel stories. Joe Martucci: Thanks again, Mark. We appreciate it. Always good to have another Rutgers guy on the podcast, too, if I may end. Across the Sky has a full slate of podcasts coming up on Mondays Joe Martucci: All right, so we have a full slate of podcasts coming up for you on the following Mondays. Sean, do you mind if I turn it over to you to talk about next Monday's episode with Mike Mann? Sean Sublette: Yeah. So a, very special episode we've got we're going to record next week, drop it, a week or so after that. Mike Mann. world famous climate scientist. He has written several books. The most recent one is called Our Fragile Moment. I had a chance to preview it a couple of weeks ago. It's an exceptional book. If you've always wondered, how do scientists know what the climate was like, 1000, 100,000, 10 million years ago? He walks through all of that in a very nice, easy to digest book. So we're going to talk to him about that book, and what else he's working on in the podcast next week. So very excited to have Mike Man on. Joe Martucci: Yeah, we're happy to have him on. And then on the 23rd, we're going to have Paul James from HGTV Fame here to talk about the science of changing leaves. And I think we're going to have a winter forecast for you on the 30 October as well. November 6, we're going to have, someone talk about tips to prepare older loved ones for extreme weather. That's with Dr. Lauren Sutherland from Ohio State. And then we got another big one. Sean keeps landing all these big podcast guests for us. Sean, this is the first time I've. Sean Sublette: Said this publicly, so I think most people who are into science have heard of Neil deGrasse Tyson. He likes to say your personal astrophysicist. He's got his podcast, he's got the Star Talk thing. He's got cosmos. He's all over the place. He's going on a book tour. He's going to be down here in Richmond. And I have scored a 15 minutes interview with him. It's going to be a little ways away. I'm going to do it in November. But we will turn that into a podcast as well. So I am uber excited about that one. Joe Martucci: We're over the mood. Sean Sublette: I am over the mood and the stars excited to talk to him. I only have 15 minutes, so I got to make it count. Joe Martucci: If he's going to talk for 15. Matt Holiner: Minutes, I'm sure we'll have plenty of commentary and plenty to digest from that 15 minutes because he is fantastic to listen to. Sean Sublette: Yeah, I, went through his new book when I think you all knew I Went to Italy. I read his new book on the flight over and back to Italy. And I will tell you all this because your meteorologist first chapter of his new book talks all about, the lowest, layers of the atmosphere. So he talks all about the atmosphere first. The book is called To Infinity and beyond. So he basically starts with the ground and works up. So, of course, you've got to start in the atmosphere before you get to outer space. So we talked about that, which I thought was just terrific. So, yeah, it's a couple, ah, three, four weeks away. Joe Martucci: yeah, that'll be our November 13 episode right now. So you can circular your calendar for that one. And of course, all the other ones we have coming out on mondays, too. So for John Sublette, Matt Holiner and Kirsten Lang, I'm meteorologist Joe Martucci thanks again for listening to the Across the Sky Podcast. We'll be back with you next Monday.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For sports fans who also play in fantasy leagues, monitoring the weather forecast can make the difference between winning or losing. Starting a player in fantasy baseball when a rainout is possible could lead to no points at that position. And picking a quarterback that's playing in a dome vs. a snowy or windy location could lead to a lot more points. Kevin Roth, Chief Meteorologist for RotoGrinders.com​, uses his weather knowledge to help fantasy sports players and sports betters decide who to start or sit and which games to wager on. Roth shares how he got into the industry, the types of sports he covers, and some of his most challenging forecasts. He also provides tips you can use before your next round of games! More episodes about weather and sports The weather makes a difference in sports. You can bet on that Football weather stories with ESPN's Kris Budden How weather forecasts impact Major League Baseball How the weather impacts the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest Hitting the links? Learn the many ways weather impacts the game of golf Heat and football: Here's what athletes should know to stay safe We want to hear from you! Have a question for the meteorologists? Call 609-272-7099 and leave a message. You might hear your question and get an answer on a future episode! You can also email questions or comments to podcasts@lee.net. About the Across the Sky podcast The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team: Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Fantasy football is in full swing now and we are talking all about that's impacting the weather with somebody whose sole job is to work in fantasy sports and what weather means to it. I'm meteorologist Joe Martucci from the lead weather team. Join with me is Matt Holiner out in the Midwest and Sean Sublette over in Richmond, Virginia. You guys play fantasy football daily. Fantasy football? No, I'm too old. No one. No, no. Here's the thing. I would. It's not that I don't want to do it, but I feel like if I wanted to do it well, I would have to spend more time on it than I want to spend on it. Does that fall? Understand? Is that figure? If I did it just a little bit, I would be bad. And I don't have. I. I'm for old school might just but the line that's it. Did they cover? Did they not? But nowadays there's like all these second and third derivative things. You can bet on. He is such and such going to get ten yards in the third quarter if it's raining. I mean, there's all that kind of stuff now. So that might I'm kind of just. Did they cover or did they not cover? Although I do. I will do the over under one store. I do like the over unders fund. Yeah. Yeah. But I had Sean I'm totally with you with the fantasy sports. You know, I actually did it the most in high school. I go when I had the most free time back in the old high school days. I did it in fantasy baseball, fantasy football. And then I laid off as a gone to college. I laid off the the fantasy baseball and just it fantasy football. And I did it for a couple of years out of college. But then I just got busier and busier. And again, I enjoyed it. But it's one of those things I maybe enjoyed it too much, and I always got frustrated when I wasn't doing good and I felt like I had to commit more time to it in order to do well. And as I started to do worse because I couldn't spend as much time on, it's like I'm not I'm just not going to do it. I don't like losing. I hear you, man. I used to do like, size it, I think had some kind of fantasy. Oh, wow. Sports Illustrated. Yeah. It was like a basic HTML web page. It was a long time ago. Yeah, I used to do three fantasy football leagues, then went down to two, and now I'm just in one. I'm the commissioner of a fantasy football league that we've been doing for 12 years. So this is a serious line and it's a 14 team. So if you're not the fantasy football, 14 teams is on the bigger and for a number players in there but we have fun in this year actually we just got a trophy for the first time or and it is a we like trophy I don't have the fortune you know So anyway enough about our fantasy football. We'll talk to you about your fantasy sports team or your daily fantasy sports with Kevin Roth from rotogrinders.com. He is a meteorologist who like he says in the in the interview here just fell into it one day and has loved it ever since with Alfred you again turn it over and we are really happy to welcome on our guests today Kevin Roth. He is an Emmy award winning broadcast meteorologist in Houston, Texas. And his love of weather and sports took him in a very unique direction. Evan is a sports meteorologist for Rotogrinders.com. That means fantasy sports and more. His sports centric weather forecasts have been featured on Weather Channel, Fox Weather, CBS Sports, Forbes and more, including this very podcast year cabin. And all of his sports weather analysis can be found on Twitter or X, whatever you're calling it nowadays at having Roth w x happen. Welcome to the show. And am I going to win my fantasy football season here? Rethink As long as you're paying attention to the weather, I like your chances. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to kind of chat about, you know, how I've ended up in this weird niche that I've got. Yeah, let's dive into it. Because, you know, I think, you know, I think of myself, I use Yahoo fantasy sports and I see that little weather icon on there. And me as a meteorologist, I'm like, Oh, it's like all these other, you know, iPhone generic weather app stuff on there. But if you really are in the game of fantasy sports and sports betting, you know, weather does play a role and you'll want to pay attention to it. So where did you go to school? How did you get interested in the weather and what brought you to Roanoke? Yeah, it was a weird journey to get here, but I've always wanted to to be a TV meteorologist my whole life, even when I wasn't sure how. You know, just as a kid, like, what do you want to be? I was like, I want to do that. And sure enough, that ended up going to school, got my master's degree at Mississippi State in meteorology and started doing the normal TV grind, small markets and Mississippi up to Louisiana. And eventually I landed in in Dallas and I thought, okay, this is this is what I want to do. I want to do the TV gig forever. And then I randomly got an email from a friend who said, Hey, I've got a random coworker who's looking to hire a meteorologist for something. I don't even know what it is, but you should reach out. And I was like, okay, well, you know, why not? And I reached out and they said they needed one who loves weather and sports, but also was, you know, down to just kick back and drink a beer. And I was like, well, that that is me. It's that is entirely me. And that's how I got linked up with with the Rotogrinders team started our time and it's just been growing and building. And you mentioned those icons. You know, when you look at Yahoo, it turns out people have a need for legitimate sports weather information, not just, you know, stupid little icon with rain that may or may not help anyone. But yeah. So, you know, tell us about Rotogrinders, the Web site besides the weather. What can you find on there? Yes, Rotogrinders is primarily for folks who play daily fantasy sports, like on DraftKings and band tool. So these are often, you know, more invested in more intense fantasy players. And Rotogrinders gives people the plays, the information, the choices. It breaks down everything you could fathom. And I'm kind of the weather arm of that company. I'm just separate, you know, a little art of of that website that says, oh, by the way, while you're factoring out all these other things, keep in mind, winds are going to be 20 miles per hour in this game. And that could have, you know, impacts X, Y and Z. Hey, Kevin, Sean, over here. Now we're getting into football season or we're in football season. I'm imagining this is the busiest time. But is is that is that a, you know, incorrect? As I know, baseball obviously has as a big impact. You've got wind, you've got humidity, you've got heat. But in terms of how busy you're going to be, is this kind of prime time. So I think I'd say that NFL, once you get into football, that's when I have the greatest audience, because fantasy football is massive compared to, say, fantasy baseball, which is, you know, kind of a much smaller community. But I'm definitely busiest during baseball season because it's every single day there's, you know, 12 to 15 games, seven days a week and baseball games get legitimately rained out. That's something you don't see in football all the time. But in baseball, you play these guys in fantasy and the game gets rained out. You get zero points. So that is that is really when I am at my most important is during those Reynolds and then Kevin for football what are the main things that you're looking at What is your audience looking for as far as the weather information for football games? I think the audience is getting smarter. It used to be people would say, Oh, it's it's really cold in this spot. And the truth is the temperature doesn't really matter. Rain and snow has some impact on the game, but rain and snow and poor footing impacts the offense and the defense in particular snow, which is the one element that only impacts the offense is the wind. That is the only time when those quarterbacks drop back and throw the ball. If those winds are sustained 15 to 20 miles per hour or higher, you see significant downgrades in passing yards in total scoring. Those are the games that we really try to target and those are also the games that are easier to forecast for days out. So that helps the sports betting a bit as well. Or is with rain, do you really know if it's going to rain specifically? At one point at one time or four days out? Probably not. But with wind you can have a pretty good idea in advance. Tell us what your day is, white or football season here and are there other sports, you know, in the fall that you're looking at, you know, being after most of the fantasy baseball season, is it really just football in October and November? So tell us what a week looks like for you now, now that we're kind of closing our baseball season still, the first thing is wake up. Look at the forecasts for football. I daily keep things updated because as far as sports betting goes, people want to know this information as it comes out. It started off with my job. I could just give one update a week before the game and everyone's like, Oh, this is great. But as you start giving out that content, people of course want more and more of that content. So I keep the the forecasts up essentially all week long. Twitter hits. I do PR hits like kind of what I'm doing now in a sense, weather and sports is super interesting. People want to talk about it. So part of my job is not just giving the weather, but it's also using weather as an in or PR to help my company. So that's why I'm on the Weather Channel and Fox Weather and these various podcasts letting people know that there is a spot where you can find good sports weather information and then hopefully people come over to Rotogrinders and take a look at that and seeing what else the site offers. So is there kind of a slower time once we get baseball and football, which I think are the other two busy outdoor seasons? Do you go into a slower time there in late winter, early spring? You know, football's done. Baseball hasn't started spring training yet. Is that is that a time to kind of regroup or are there other little things going on out there? Well, there's always golf. Yeah. In general, I'd say that is a slower time, but that's when people start asking about, you know, how's the soccer game look? How's the golf, how's the NASCAR? You know, there's there's always some outdoor sporting event to to forecast for. And a lot of these sports golf in particular has a massive weather impact on those winds in particular. So there's always content to be had. But during those slower times, that's when I can set up a lot of the PR work that I do as well. And Kevin, just to clarify, are you the only meteorologist I wrote a Grinder's or are you old and if you are, are you looking to expand anytime soon? And you know of any other meteorologists out there that are focused on fantasy sports like you maybe not at Rotogrinders, but at other places. So I'm the only one that that does it for Rotogrinders. And it is, you know, seven days a week. It's it's got its perks because I'm working from home. But it also is especially during baseball season, it's a grind seven days a week and it's pretty high stakes with rain outs. I don't know of anyone else who is currently doing it. I've seen some other folks kind of dabbling in in sports weather, but to my knowledge, I think I'm the only one who consistently is cranking that out and who is paid to do that job. And I'm happy with that. That works for me. Kevin You know, I as someone in New Jersey, you know, we were the first to legalize sports betting. Yeah, back in. What was it now? I can't remember five or six years ago. So we're very used to it here in New Jersey with the sports betting. But I want to talk to explain to people how your job or does it differ between actual sports betting on the event and daily fantasy sports? Are there different things people are looking for when it comes to football season in that? It's a great question. I think the biggest difference is that for daily fantasy sports, you're essentially making these lineups and these players salaries are set each and every week at the start. So you pay $8,000 for this good player, whereas sports betting, the lines are always evolving. So they'll say, okay, we're expecting 50 points total in this football game, but if the forecast starts showing high wins, then that total will begin to drop. And by the time you get to Thursday, it's 48 points and by Friday it's 46 points. And as that total drops, you're losing your opportunity to get your money in at a good time, at a smart line. So for sports betting, you need to be able to get the information earlier and still be certain that that that is going to happen. You don't want to make a bet where the weather never comes through for you, but you need that content earlier for sports betting. Whereas for fantasy sports, so long as you know it by Sunday morning, that's fine. On that note, I've got some friends who do a lot of commodity forecasting, you know, whether it's agriculture or agribusiness energy trading. And they will tell me it's like, you know what, Shawn Sousa knew GFC drops. I see the markets move this way. I see the markets move that way. Is there anything similar to that in sports betting like, oh, the new GFC has come in, it's windier, the line has dropped just like you alluded to. Or is that still not quite. Are we still not quite there yet? Yeah, I don't think that most people are that in-tune or that advanced with the forecast yet. I would say if anything moves, it might be like when I put my article out, like I want to get my forecast out. I think the average band is kind of just looking at those icons like we talked about. They're not that invested in it and gradually people are learning, eh, that it does matter and B they're learning what matters as well. They're learning that it's the wind and not so much the rain. They're learning the things that really do matter. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot so far, Cavendish. It's all good stuff. I'm learning a lot. You could check him out again on Rotogrinders. We're gonna take a brief break and come back on the other side. You're listening Across the Sky podcast. And welcome back, everybody, to the Across the Sky podcast with the Lee Weather team. You can find new episodes of the Across the Sky podcast every Monday on your favorite news website or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are talking with none other than Kevin Roth from Rotogrinders, meteorologist for Rotogrinders. Yes, a sports betting and fantasy site does have a meteorologist and Kevin's been explaining all series. It's a wide juicier. So, you know, Kevin, when you're you know, it looks like you're doing a lot of videos here. You know, people they can't see it now, but you're in front of a green screen at your house. Tell me what it's like making these videos. Is it are people giving you requests for videos? Are you determining what's going out? How does that work? I'm kind of my own boss in the in the weather department, so I just find high impact events, whether it's this weekend and football, I guess this podcast is airing a little later. But whether it's a weekend in football or a golf event or whatever it is, it's a high enough impact event and there's a weather forecast you can get out. People want the information, they'll share the information, and it just kind of grows organically that way. With the green screen, everything, it's kind of amazing, right? Like how low the cost of technology is to produce videos now. I mean, you know, you don't need the full TV studio. They're great, obviously. Right? We all have experience and it's are wonderful. But what's your setup like at home and how much did it cost you? Oh, it was nothing. I mean, I've got a pop up green screen that, you know, is maybe 100 bucks. I got a webcam and a microphone and and that's all I really need to get things done. And we do have I got to give a shout out to wrote about it. We have a great production team that can help. They put together a lot of the videos. So I just basically go in front of my green screen. I talk about the forecast and then they make it look really pretty. So shout out, shout out to the behind the scenes crew. Yeah, shouts Roto Grind. Yeah. And as far as graphics go, are you using any kind of all weather graphics package or is it the folks are Rotogrinders kind of helping create the graphics for you? Yeah, they're creating the graphics for me and that might be the next step for me is to be able to create all of my own content. I'm not quite there yet, and as far as needing to do that because I'm happy with the setup with Rotogrinders, but that'd be the next setup if I could somehow get a max box or something and have legitimate up to date, you know, weather graphics, it'd be fantastic. I'd love that. You have any interesting stories about one particular event or a couple of particular events that went really well? And conversely, if you want to talk about it, maybe not so well, I mostly have ones that have gone bad with you. You know, the forecast that you hit, you're expected to hit them so those don't stand out. It's the ones that go wrong, that stand out, because I've got 60,000 people on Twitter barking at me when it goes wrong. So those those are the ones that I remember. There's been rain outs. You know, I'm thinking in baseball in particular, the Washington Nationals famous for weather shenanigans, they have postpone the game for rain when they did not get a single drop of rain. So I had the game is it was all green. It was all good. Nothing could go wrong. They postponed the game. It never rained and you know, people don't understand why it was postponed. They just know that you were wrong and the game got postponed. So, you know, I hear about that. There was a postponement a few years ago in San Diego for rain. It result. I don't know if it barely drizzled. I don't even know how they postponed it, but they're just not used to drizzle there. So there's been some some ones that stand out on the negative end just because I clearly remember those moments. Well, yeah, I got to imagine, too, you're probably doing some of these international games, too, right? And how did that work out for you? That can be a bit of a struggle because my usual tools like the the RR model and a lot of these things that I generally used or North American forecasting, well, that doesn't apply. So that can be a bit of a struggle. The weather patterns are very different. Golf is a big one where they're always in the UK or Scotland, you know, they're always somewhere. While that seems like those can be a struggle, plus the timing of those is at odd times when I might apt to stay awake later than I want to or wake up earlier than I want you to get the latest data. And then I have for Major League Baseball and NFL. We're going to go with both most challenging place to forecast for. Is there one that stands out You were always that gives you more trouble more often than not in the NFL and MLB. Yeah, and MLB, it is most definitely in Washington. And it's not so much the weather pattern. It's it's the organization. Some organizations like the Twins, they've got meteorologists on staff and they are so well prepared and they communicate the expectations and what they plan to do about rain that's coming. And other organizations like the Washington Nationals, they give you enough that they give you nothing and they just will postpone at the drop of a hat. Or maybe they'll wait out the rain for 5 hours. You just have no idea. And that's the challenging part of my job sometimes is not just nailing the weather, but trying to figure out the organization and response to the weather That is every bit as important for fantasy players, but it's a whole lot harder to figure out. And then as far as football goes, you know, you've got some good ones, man. Buffalo might be buffalo in the wintertime. You know, you get those snow bands or it might be feet of snow, or if they're just on the other edge, it might be an inch. Yeah, it's it is just a sharp delineation and forecasting for Buffalo is always fun and kind of terrifying. Now I want to go back to the stadiums. You're like, is that just experience over time? Like what the threshold is for postponing or do you actually meet with the teams? How does that work? It's just learned experience over time. And I think that is is one thing. I've been doing this for ten years that I've really started to learn to get an understanding of how certain organizations work, which organizations communicate better, which organizations are more patient, like the Colorado Rockies, they'll wait out anything. They're a fantastic organization. Or even if I see storms in the forecast, I know unless it floods in that ballpark, they're going to get that game in. And that just comes with with doing this year in and year out. There's also incredible microclimates in these various ballparks. Whereas in Wrigley, if the winds are blowing out in Wrigley, this is a massive, massive advantage to hitters, whereas there are other ballparks like in San Francisco, they built that park to minimize wind impacts. So the same wind blowing out at 10 to 15 miles per hour does almost nothing in one ballpark or in the other one. And it has a massive impact. And you just got to learn those those differences. Yeah, I was thinking about that, too, with regard not just to baseball, but football. I mean, all these I mean, we don't have football stadiums nowadays that are open on one end and anymore those are pretty much a bygone era. But I always think about the swirling nature of wind and a high wind impact. And in your experience doing this for ten years and there's a high wind event and I see high wind 15, 20, not you, not dangerous, Right. But is there a consistency to like, okay, I know the wind is going to be from this direction and it's going to be about this speed. So this consistently does X or Y and this stadium or that stadium with regard to football, because from my mind I'm like, well, if it's a it's a stadium encircled and it's a we're going to down I always have trouble with that do those microclimate what what have you learned with respect to that over the years. That's a great question and it's it matters, you know, what stadium you're talking about. I can think of some on the negative end like in Cleveland when those winds come in it it swirls. It has a huge impact in Cleveland in particular. And there are there are some places where I've learned it matters a lot. And I also have a tool where I've it's called Weather Edge. And essentially we've pulled all the data from every single game in each stadium, all of the weather data. And we've seen, okay, if the winds are 15 to 20 miles per hour from this direction, this is how it's impact passing yards, scoring. And so it can help me digest what the impact is because I've got the statistics on on all of it. Moneyball. Yes. Yes. So I want to know. Right. So it's Sunday, right? It's NFL Sunday. Are you like Scott Hansen and just sitting in one place all day long, not go into the bathroom waiting for all the games to finish? What what is it like for you? I'd I'd Sunday it's very busy leading up to kick off you know like trying to get the forecast out and doing all the PR hits and getting the tweets out. I generally just get to enjoy the games. But if there is weather games, if there's rain games or win games, I want to watch them. I want to see how that 20 mile per hour wind impacted this game. I want to see how the team adjusted their game plan because of the rain. So I tried to make a conscious effort to watch any impact to weather games, but I still do it, you know, as a fan just as much as I'm doing it. You know, as a professional. I'm going to follow up, too, because we didn't actually ask this question. Are you doing college football as well? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This seems like a lot more places are slightly. BERNERO The space is so many games. There's so many games are you do it all the yeah one so yeah I'm trying yes I'm trying it's much harder to keep up consistently with the forecast. I'm not admittedly a massive college football fan. So first you know Mike All right. This school, I don't know where it is, so I got to Google, right? Where is this school? And like, do they have a dome? And I got to Google, you know, do they have a dome? And it's it's a Ross s and I'm it's one of those things. This is new to me the college football I've only done for a couple of years. And as I learn just like I've learned through MLB and NFL, I'll get better at it. But right now, that is it's kind of the bane of my existence. It's college football. Yeah, because I'm thinking of like Wyoming, like they're 7200 feet high places, Crazy stuff, you know? Yeah. Always windy. Yeah. It's it's fun because you can get some really wild games. But also if I have a weakness, it's my lack of knowledge in that sport, you know. Oh, it's going to be windy here. So take the under Well turns out these two teams just run the wildcat and they don't pass anyway. So then the winds don't matter. You know, I don't know those nuances in college like I do the other sports. And then, Kevin, I'm curious about how much the wind direction does matter because you're talking about the orientation of the stadiums. Like, I would think that the wind speed itself is probably the biggest factor about how strong the winds are, regardless of direction. But how big a role do you think wind direction does play into football games and baseball? You're right. You know, it's wind strength first and foremost, and then it's orientation. But in baseball, the two are tied in, Right? We don't care how strong the winds are in baseball, we care. Are the winds blowing now and are they going to carry it all, run balls or are they blowing in and they're going to suppress homeruns? So in baseball, those two things are tied in. And equally important, whereas in football, as a general rule, it's a crosswind that is most impactful because if you get these winds parallel with the field and sure, one team is at a disadvantage and they're throwing into the wind, but the other team has the wind at their back and they can they can move the ball pretty efficiently. And then of course, that switches through the game. But if you get a crosswind, that's both teams, you get a 20 plus mile per hour crosswind. Any throw over 20 yards is not on a line that's going to get blown off course and it leads to more incompletions or more turnovers and then going off for college football because I think I open the can of worms that I didn't mean to, but I'm thinking about like I can't read what it's called by Dave the college basketball game every year it's on an aircraft carrier outside. You know, I'm talking about I do know the basketball game. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing that you what do you do for that? How does that work? Yeah, I don't know. That's the other problem with college football is that there are all these games where you think it's the home team's game, but it turns out they're playing at a at a neutral site. I'm just basically trying to keep my head above water and give people some semblance of what to expect in college football. And I would say my expertise certainly lies in baseball, NFL and PGA gods. So college basketball on the aircraft carrier? Not really. Not not really the forte yet. There are some fun niche forecasts like the Winter Classic in the NHL is an outdoor event. And you know, if it's really cold and the goalkeepers sit there in the freezing cold or everybody else is skating around and warming up at the goal is just they're freezing like is that could impact him. That's a good point. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Nathan's hot dog contests all my guys. Yeah. Is it going to be 90 degrees when these guys are choking down hot dogs? That's give me the under there. You're not eating 72 hot dogs. If it's 94, I'm going to follow up on that. So what do you think of this year's hot dog eating contest with the rain delay? It was the first ever it was amazing. That was like that was my Christmas. We had my Twitter was blow it up. People like, what do we do? Wrath is are they going to come back? Oh, I really enjoyed that. And I do love kind of those events in baseball. They've got the Field of Dreams game where they go out into Iowa. Yeah, Iowa and they've got the corn arounds. And I was telling everyone about corn sweat, how that corn leads to really high dew point, high humidity. And a high dew point is good for the ball carrying. And so I was like, all right, you know, take the overseer, We got the corn sweat overs and they must hit like eight home runs in that game. And so the corn sweat overs were were a fantastic bet. And David, I'm thinking about some of the other podcasts that we've done talking about weather in sports and some of the other sports that have come up have been horse racing and NASCAR. Do you do anything with those a little bit? Again, I'd say I more so dabble in that. There is a big demand for it, but I'm not too familiar with horse racing and I'm not too familiar with NASCAR. So if people ask me, I'll forecast for it. But I don't truly know what impact that has and how we can bet on those things. And that's the thing about sports weather is that if you don't fully understand both sides of it, both the weather and the sport itself, then you're not going to be able to give and communicate really good advice. So those sports just aren't my niche, at least not yet. I think that's all we got. Unless. Shawn, you have a final question. No, I am good. This has been fabulous. Yeah, I can hang out with you guys, so I guess we could do this for another 30 minutes. This is a blast. I mean, we might have. Maybe we'll have you for the hot dog eating contest. A part to bring a part to those I love. Now, this is great. I'm trying to think if there's anything we haven't achieved. Anything you want to add? Well, okay, but I'll. I'll throw this out. I mean, I think they're going be some people listening to this. You know, one thing we like about this podcast is exposing people to other jobs. And meteorologists have besides the guys on TV because that's their most familiar reporters, our media folks and the bi people business like and weather and sports. That's two things I love. Oh yeah. And advice for people. I mean, I guess that could be creating competition for you. But people who want to get into where where you are and want to, you know, look at this world of weather and sports. You have any advice for people who are looking to come in to this world? Because I think it's only going to be growing. Sounds like you could use some pretty. Yeah. So advice for folks who want to get into this world of weather and sports. Yeah. Well, whether it's you know, whether and sports or just to weather and fill in the blank with your passion whatever it is, there's probably a market for it. And if it's weather and sports and you just put out good free content and create a name for yourself, like that's what it's all about. And I'm fortunate to have and a first mover advantage. I was the first person doing it and that certainly helped. But if you just get your name out there, anyone is starved for content these days, right? Any and all media sources are looking for content. So if you're willing to do free work to build your brand and build your name, that will eventually lead to paid work. I feel confident in saying that I agree. Good, good life advice. You're of right on, guys. Sports. It's so fun. Every day I wake up and I'm like, What's the exciting sports weather thing going to be today? But it's a great job. Yeah, no, totally. And since we you know, since I reached out to you, I've been following you on on Twitter and just some like you pointed out. And so it's it's it's relevant. It's just kind of what it's like to see sports and sports betting, whether it's great. I love it. So I really appreciate you coming on and sharing with us about this and a different way to look at weather forecasting. But you can go to rotogrinders.com, That's where you can find Karen or his Twitter or page, whatever you're calling it. That's at Evan Roth W AX cabin. We love that I'm beyond and I think we're going to bring you on for a part two at some point in the future. So so thanks a lot. I love it, guys. Thank you so much for having me. And if anybody's out there and you're thinking, all right, I'm fantasy sports, what do I do with this weather? If it's winds over 20 miles per hour, don't play the receivers, don't play quarterback, everything else, you're probably in pretty good shape. Good piece of advice. Thanks a lot, Carrie. We appreciate the time. Thank you. Hope you guys all loved that interview with Kevin And, you know, having a good point at the end with the Winter Classic. And it's always getting cold. I never thought of that. And as somebody who plays hockey, that actually makes a good point. If you're standing around all day and it's ten or 12 degrees, you may not be at your sharpest, But what did you think, Matt, what you think of the pod? Well, you know, again, we we've said this on every episode we've done with about how weather impacts sports and you can really dive into some some tiny details like he mentioned, the heat in Iowa, the corn sweat and the added humidity and how that impacts home runs. And then also his discussion about wind direction and wind speed. Now, wind speed is really the biggest impact when you look at baseball and football. And it was interesting, wind speed more but more so than wind direction, especially for football. And I never thought about that. It's more the crosswinds rather than being parallel with the football field, because those crosswinds impact both teams instead of one team occasionally having an advantage for half of the game and then a disadvantage the other half a game. So it's actually more impact, more crosswinds. But then I had to think like, you must have some crazy number of bookmarks because you have to look at every stadium if you want to figure out which wind direction is going to be, most of it is going to be a parallel win or is it going to be across the field? And so you have to think about the orientation of each stadium. So I imagine it's this crazy number of bookmarks somewhere with all these different stadiums to see their orientation. So you can I mean, it sounds like you need some help. And I feel like that I think they need to expand their weather team. I think they need to hire some additional meteorologists. I bet there's some folks listening to this podcast will be like, hey, I'll sign up for that. Yeah, I suspect you're right. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, it's a cool website. It is. Twitter page is good because he does get into the nitty gritty of some of these games when he like rain out the ballparks. And so she has again to football. You know we continue to get into football season and snow starts coming everyone loves that first snow game of the year, which is usually somewhere at a college football stadium in the Rockies in like late October, early November. And then it starts writing as it go on that that's what we have for this episode of the Across the Sky podcast. You can always send us your questions via email at podcast at Leeds. And that we also have a phone number as well. Leave a voicemail. We have actually gotten a couple of voicemails. We haven't shared any on the pod, but if you did want to do that, you certainly could. Our phone number for that. It's 6092727099 again. 6092727099. As we say, every episode, we've got more episodes for you on what's happening. We have lined up for you and as we go into the month of October, we are going to be talking about what we can learn from the past with Mike Mann. Dr. Mike Mann he's most, I would say, famously known for the hockey stick diagram of greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures on the earth. That's coming up. We'll have more for you as well as we go deeper into the fall. So for Sean Sublette and Matt Holiner and Kirsten Lang, who couldn't be with us, I'm meteorologist Joe Martucci. And thanks again for listening the Across the Sky podcast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the sixth episode of Law Firms On The Map, Kristaps Brencans the CEO at On The Map Marketing, gets together with Mike Mann, the Founder of fabulous corporations and charities including Phone.com, DomainMarket.com, SEO.com, and MakeChange.com.They get together on a topic rarely discussed in attorney digital marketing: choosing a domain name. Here are some things they discuss in the episode:Mike's background in charityHow Mike started entrepreneurshipHow to build a brandHow to estimate the value of your domain nameAnd much more.About Mike: Mike is the founder of several successful, active, for-profit corporations. Three of these corporations were listed among the 2012 Inc 500 fastest-growing small companies in America – Phone.com, DomainMarket.com, and SEO.com. He also has a charitable fund, Make Change Trust! which you can read more about at MakeChange.com. About Kristaps Brencans: The CEO of On The Map Marketing, Kristaps, has helped establish the agency as a leading law firm marketing agency, serving 300+ clients nationwide.About On The Map Marketing: As the name suggests, the law firm SEO agency started with ranking attorneys on the map. Over a decade later, it now has delivered multi-million dollar worth of value for attorneys in the most competitive niches such as personal injury, DUI, etc. If you enjoyed the show please leave a review on Apple. If you have any questions you can find me (Kristaps Brencans, the CEO at On The Map Marketing on Twitter).Thank you for listening :)

Our latest episode features Armageddon talk, James Bonding talk, a brief discussion about the worst professionally made movie Patrick has seen in recent memory, Star Trek fan-hood, a 5-star review of Disney's Light & Magic, a shout-out to long-time friend of the podcast Mike Mann, and early thoughts about Amazon's Rings of Power (no spoilers, recording was completed before the 2-part episode premiere). Movies We've Seen since last time kicks off at 9:47, TV Talk at 41:59, and Entertainment News/Upcoming Stuff at 1:03:06, before another edition of WTF Did They Just Say?/Not Like This at 1:21:30. Then it's on to a brand new installment of What Year Did That Come Out Again? (where Patrick “totally redeems himself” from the embarrassment of his episode 52 attempt) at 1:26:22, and a special Wolfgang Peterson edition of Guess That Rotten Tomato Score (1:30:05). Finally, the fellas wrap things up with a heart-felt tribute to Nichelle Nichols at 1:50:15.

Mike is with the Fig Garden Rotary Club and Darlene is the wife of local orthopedic surgeon Dr Eric Hanson who was born in Thailand to American medical missionaries and he spent the first 13 years of his life in Thailand where he made a lifelong friend, Michael Mann. Dr. Hanson and his family, along with Michael Mann, decided to help these villagers. Together they formed a foundation in Thailand with paid staff to provide basic hygiene education to the villagers.  They also co-founded a 501(c)(3) here in Fresno, the Lanna Foundation (Lanna Coffee). As a water & agriculture expert, Mike Mann developed a gravity fed water delivery/purification/storage system (there is no electricity). As a nurse, Darlene also has first hand experience working and living in the jungle villages. Listen to learn more and to Support please visit www.handstoheartthailand.org  An event with Vice President Kamala Harris featured her and guests at the table introducing themselves with their names, pronouns, and descriptions of their clothing, drawing both mockery and defense from media members online. The Mega Millions jackpot has crossed the $1 billion threshold. The grand prize in Friday night's drawing will be an estimated $1.02 billion, lottery officials said, though that's certain to grow as more and more tickets are bought as that drawing approaches. Calls to boycott Hulu and cancel existing subscriptions to the streaming service have been growing on social media after the network declined to run political ads from Democratic organizations on topics including abortion and gun control.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Whoaaaaa! You're reading this show note (possibly) on Halloween, about an episode released on Halloween, featuring a game called "Halloween", inspired by the movie "Halloween". Spooky! Which is appropriate because in episode 292, we're playing the Wizard Video 1983 title "Halloween". If you enjoy sprite decapitations and 8-bit child murder in a Skittles-colored house, this is the game for you. If not, blame Patreon supporter Patrick McCarthy who suggested this.  Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat" and "Pinball Spring".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for "Storytime" theme.  www.carnivalofgleecreations.com is where you need to be for all the info and notes you could ever want for this podcast ATARI BYTES here and my other show IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN here.  The website also has info about books that I've written, including the brand new (very) short story collection 2nd DUCK ON THE RIGHT here.  You can support the show by subscribing on the ATARI BYTES page on patreon.com here and may be get episodes early and even bonus content! Thanks!

EPISODE QUOTES - Mike Mann "My first 3 years at school I had 3 different head coaches...It was very clear that first morning (Laqua started) that it was, okay, we're not going to do things the way they've been done here before. We're gonna implement a system...hop on board or get out the way." "[What amazed me] we how clear expectations were and how little he could care about little things. The things he cared about he cared about 100%." "My 10 best friends are all from Dragon Football....Dragon Football is truly a family." "When I was there we had an underdog mentality. We always bonded together to overcome with what we had." "[Doing what's right], that applies to my everyday life. One of the coach's examples...walking the hallway, seeing something on floor and pick it up. Even today I get so mad at myself if I ever pass up that opportunity." "I was never the biggest, the fastest, or the strongest guy. I always tried to show up and to the right thing and eventually I got quite a bit of playing time...In my life, there's people a lot smarter than me, a lot more talented than me. But I think showing up, nose to the grindstone everyday and just be willing to outwork people is something I'll carry with me for the rest of my life." "Those cold winter mornings going to conditioning in January are brutal, but that's when you decide if you really love football or not. You figure out why you're doing it because no one wants to go morning conditioning at 5am on a Tuesday. Figure out your why, what's driving you to do the work." "When I got to Moorhead I was a kid. When I left I was closer to being a man. Laqua and the coaches gave us a lot of opportunities to become adults and gave us responsibility and earn their trust." For those of you who don't know what THE DRAGON WAY is, simply it's four things Dragon Football focuses on to create men of character. Do What's Right, Find A Way, Be A Great Teammate, and Keep Getting Better! That's THE DRAGON WAY.  

EPISODE QUOTES - Mike Mann "My first 3 years at school I had 3 different head coaches...It was very clear that first morning (Laqua started) that it was, okay, we're not going to do things the way they've been done here before. We're gonna implement a system...hop on board or get out the way." "[What amazed me] we how clear expectations were and how little he could care about little things. The things he cared about he cared about 100%." "My 10 best friends are all from Dragon Football....Dragon Football is truly a family." "When I was there we had an underdog mentality. We always bonded together to overcome with what we had." "[Doing what's right], that applies to my everyday life. One of the coach's examples...walking the hallway, seeing something on floor and pick it up. Even today I get so mad at myself if I ever pass up that opportunity." "I was never the biggest, the fastest, or the strongest guy. I always tried to show up and to the right thing and eventually I got quite a bit of playing time...In my life, there's people a lot smarter than me, a lot more talented than me. But I think showing up, nose to the grindstone everyday and just be willing to outwork people is something I'll carry with me for the rest of my life." "Those cold winter mornings going to conditioning in January are brutal, but that's when you decide if you really love football or not. You figure out why you're doing it because no one wants to go morning conditioning at 5am on a Tuesday. Figure out your why, what's driving you to do the work." "When I got to Moorhead I was a kid. When I left I was closer to being a man. Laqua and the coaches gave us a lot of opportunities to become adults and gave us responsibility and earn their trust." For those of you who don't know what THE DRAGON WAY is, simply it's four things Dragon Football focuses on to create men of character. Do What's Right, Find A Way, Be A Great Teammate, and Keep Getting Better! That's THE DRAGON WAY.  

Mike Mann shares the history of coffee from the hill tribes in Thailand to the world and how it has been a platform to address economic injustices. The impact coffee has had for thirty years and maintained fair trade standards. To learn more, visit https://itdfinternational.org/

I LOVE TRASH! ANYTHING FUNNY AND GAMEY AND PODCASTY! OH, I LOVE TRASH...PODCASTS! In episode 291, can you tell me how to get to podcast street? We're playing the 1983 educational title SESAME STREET: OSCAR'S TRASH RACE. Oh, yes. We are. Bad Poetry Corner: GROUCH POTATO - A POEM Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Pinball Spring" and "Reformat".  Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. www.carnivalofgleecreations.com is where you should go for info and show notes and episodes for ATARI BYTES here and my other show IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN here.  The website also has info and links to buy my books, like HELL'S CEREAL: VERY SHORT STORIES FORTIFIED WITH ESSENTIAL SYLLABLES.  Support the show on the ATARI BYTES page on patreon.com. Thanks!

Today's episode is my first multi-guest show featuring Mike Mann and Hippy Britt. Mike is going on 4 years as a vanlife veteran. Mike and Britt were also my first guests for the show IN the van. I happened to bump into them at The Grand Tetons, which is a cool story we share on the podcast. We discuss Mike's journey and vanlife origin story. We talk personal hygiene, making money on the road, bathroom emergencies, staying healthy while traveling, things we'd do differently, and how Britt has transitioned from home life to van life when given the opportunity to travel with Mike. Intro and welcoming Mike and Britt(3:50) Making money on the road(6:15) Synchronicities at Jackson, WY(10:45) Personal hygiene, laundry, kidney filtration (16:00) Mike's vanlife origin story, the beginning of nomad life, and when I bought my van(30:20) What we miss most, hitting things with our van(34:45) Britt's take on vanlife and adjustments from home living(37:00) Parking overnight/sleeping tips(40:19) Britt's favorite parts of vanlife, synchronicities at The Grand Tetons(45:20) Being healthy on the road, doing dishes, not giving a f*ck, healthy lounges that stay open late,(55:00) Vacation mode, alcohol(58:20) Final van life tips from Mike, minimalism, my two van life inspirations(1:05:35) Britt's final thoughts on vanlife (1:06:30) Wrap up questions (1:10:28) Recap, and the coming episodeIntro and outro music by Birocraticbirocratic.bandcamp.com

In this episode we talk to Mike Mann from the Integrated Tribal Development Foundation (ITDF) in Thailand. ITDF works with hilltribe people in the north of Thailand by undertaking water and sanitation projects, providing microloans, running schools and medical clinics and assisting with sustainable agriculture. ITDF is also the source for La Mai coffee (www.lamai.co.nz). To find out more about ITDF visit (https://www.brighthopeworld.com/partnerships.asp?pid=163). Send feedback to podcast@brighthopeworld.com.

In this special episode of Climate 2020 for The Years Project, we interview Mike Mann about his new book, THE NEW CLIMATE WAR. Mann is one of the world’s premier climate scientists. In this interview, he describes how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change. He also offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet. Mann argues that all is not lost. But the long-running climate wars have shifted, and he explains why we all need to know where – and how - the new battle lines have been drawn.

In this informative interview we travel deep down the path to profits with domain investor, Alex Verdea. Step by step he takes us through the twists and turns of his journey from frustrated beginner to profit making professional. Over the course of the interview Alex reveals his domain investing secrets for acquiring, listing and closing a steady stream of domain sales by using the advice and guidance he received from Mike Mann. Topics include hand registrations, dropped domains, landing pages, keyword evaluation, pricing and how to negotiation successfully via email. Don't miss it!!

In this informative interview we travel deep down the path to profits with domain investor, Alex Verdea.  Step by step he takes us through the twists and turns of his journey from frustrated beginner to profit making professional.  Over the course of the interview Alex reveals his domain investing secrets for acquiring, listing and closing a steady stream of domain sales by using the advice and guidance he received from Mike Mann. Topics include hand registrations, dropped domains, landing pages, keyword evaluation, pricing and how to negotiation successfully via email.  Don't miss it!!

If sports is a metaphor for human competition, auto racing is a metaphor for life as a whole: going round and round as fast and loud as possible, consuming as many resources as possible, without actually getting anywhere.  Exhibit A: this week in ATARI BYTES episode 213, we're playing Atari's 1977 contribution to automotive sports INDY 500. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines and perhaps you'll outrun the futility of existence without crashing into the inevitability of the finish line that awaits us all. This week's short story: ANATOMY OF VROOM: A POEM Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Pinball Spring" and "Reformat".  Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Show notes, episode links, social media for ATARI BYTES here. Same stuff for the monthly exploration of the "Peanuts" comic strip, IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN here. The website also has info and links to just some of the places you can order books by your host. For example, MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS. Pick up "Go play some old games. They've missed you." shirts and mugs at zazzle.com/ab_pod_store.  Become a subscriber and help keep the lights on in the podcast studio by signing up at the Atari Bytes Patreon page. Get episodes early! Get bonus episodes! Good stuff!

On episode 212 of ATARI BYTES, we learn that maybe not all board games need to make the jump to the TV screen. To be fair, our discussion of Atari's 1979 BACKGAMMON adaptation could be colored by the flu and flu-related weariness bombarding the podcast studio while putting the episode together. But we're not sure that excuses everything... This week's short story: GET BACK, GAMMON! Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat" and "Pinball Spring".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. You can find show info, social media and links for ATARI BYTES on www.carnivalofgleecreations.com here and the same for the monthly devotion to ALL things related to the iconic comic strip "Peanuts" IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN here. Pick up "Go play some old games. They've missed you." shirts and mugs on zazzle.com/ab_pod_store here. Support show by becoming a subscriber on the ATARI BYTES Patreon project here.  Go here for info and links to some of the places you can order books written by your host, like MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS.

Episode 211 of ATARI BYTES asks you, the listener, to test your MEMORY and remember back to a time long ago. CONCENTRATE and get ready to MATCH the fun you had with Hunt & Score in episode 192 as we get ready to play CONCENTRATION this week; the same game, by another name. I know. You're not sure you can handle so much excitement in such a short time. It'll be okay.  This week's short story: PERFECT MATCH Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat" and "Pinball Spring".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Get show notes, episodes, social media and more for ATARI BYTES on www.carnivalofgleecreations.com Also find show notes, episodes, social media and more for the monthly discussion of all things related to Peanuts comics here on www.carnivalofgleecreations.com  Get "Go play some old games. They've missed you." shirts and mugs.  Support the show by subscribing on the Atari Bytes page on Patreon here. Get episodes early! Got BONUS content! 

Episode 210 of ATARI BYTES is a science lesson. Did you know fire is sentient and can move around at will? It can! But fear not, you can defeat it with a hammer. Also, gorillas hate you. Also barrels. But mostly you. That's right! We're playing iconic game DONKEY KONG this week! But, Bill, you say, you done did that! Yes, yes, I did (ep. 37). But this time...it's for the 7800!!!!!! Please try to control yourselves.  Does Jumpman have the same spring in his step this time? Is he springier? We'll find out. THIS WEEK'S STORY: DONKEY DESTINY Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs 'Take a Chance", "Reformat" and "Pinball Spring".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Find show notes, info and links to episodes for ATARI BYTES here. And for the monthly discussion of all things related to the legendary Shoopy-rific comic "Peanuts" IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN here. Pick up "Go play some old games. They've missed you." stuff at AB_Pod_Store at Zazzle.com here. Become a supporter of the show by subscribing on Patreon.com. You could get episodes early! You could get BONUS episodes! You could keep the lights on in the podcast studio so I don't stumble around and hurt myself.  Find info about books I've written and just some of the places you can order them on www.carnivalofgleecreations.com here. 

Episode 209! We're having so much fun in Atari future that we're hanging around to play FIGHT NIGHT from 1988 for the Atari 7800. You know it's a good game because the words in the title rhyme. That's how they grade games, right? So is this one a knock out or one of those matches where the fighters just exhaustedly hug each other until the ref pulls them apart? Spit in your bucket and left hook punch the "play" button to find out.* *ATARI BYTES not responsible for damage to your listening device. This week's story comes from Bad Poetry Corner: THE SWEET SCIENCE IN A WORLD THAT HATES SCIENCE - A POEM Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat" and "Pinball Spring".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. On www.carnivalofgleecreations.com find ATARI BYTES episodes, social media and more here. Find IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN episodes, social media and more here. Bill's books: MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS and IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME. Find info and just a few links to sellers on www.carnivalofgleecreations.com Become an ATARI BYTES subscriber to support the show financially on the Patreon project here. Get episodes early! Get bonus episodes! "Go play some old games. They've missed you." shirts and mugs at the AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com.

Episode 208 of ATARI BYTES finds us hanging out with the 7800 Pro System once again. It's so pretty in this futuristic world. The sun high and gorgeous. Lush vistas spread out before us. Hey...what's that squirming around over there...Oh, no! It's... CENTIPEDE! We thought we left you behind on the 2600. But no...the fight against the angry arthropds continues in this 1987 port of the classic arcade-er (a word I just created. Cool, no?). Not to mention, scorpions, spiders and your own self-doubt at your ability to survive. Revisit this classic and your own failings all at the same time! This week's short story: CENT IMPEDED Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat", and "Pinball Spring".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Find show notes, info, social media and episodes at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com for ATARI BYTES here and for my monthly podcast about all things related to Snoopy and friends from the "Peanuts" comic strip IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN here. Support the show by becoming a subscriber on Patreon.com here. Get episdes early! Get BONUS episodes! Thanks! Your podcast host is an author too! Check out books he's written and just some of the places you can order them here.  Pick up "Go play some old games. They've missed you." stuff at zazzle.com/ab_pod_store here.

Go suck an egg! Sorry...meant go lay an egg. No, that's not right.  Oh! Right. In episode 207, we're playing the 1987 Atari 7800 port of JOUST where, astride a fierce ostrich (yep) you do battle with knights on buzzard-back (really), scrambling (heh!) to keep the buzzard eggs from hatching into new enemies. I swear, that's what this game is.  This week's short story: THE INFINITE CIRCUS Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat" and "Pinball Spring".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the Mad Mike Hughes update theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Get more info, social media and episodes of ATARI BYTES and my other podcast IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN here. Get info and links to some of the places you can order my novel IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME or the short story collection MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS here.  Become a subscriber on the ATARI BYTES Patreon page here. Get epsisodes early! Get bonus episodes! Pick up "Go play some old games. They've missed you." stuff at the AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com here.

In episode 206, we're playing the 1983 game SORCERER'S APPRENTICE. The game was inspired by the Mickey Mouse "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of the iconic 1940 Disney masterpiece "Fantasia"....oh, and some poem by Wolfgang von Goethe. But mostly Mickey. This week's short story: THE SORCERER'S RETIREMENT Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat" and "Pinball Spring". Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Find social media, episodes and more about ATARI BYTES here and about my other show, IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN, the monthly discussion of all things related to the Peanuts comic strip and related stuff here on www.carnivalofgleecreations.com  Your host is a writer too! Find out about books he has written, like IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME and MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS, including some of the places you can order them at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com too. Support the show financially by becoming a subscriber on Patreon.com here. Get episodes early! Get bonus content! Pick up "Go Play Some Old Games. They've Missed You." shirts and mugs here at the AB_Pod_Store on zazzle.com 

Mike Mann joins BK on the air for a live SWDWE (Star Wars Daily Weekend Edition)to talk about The Rise Of Skywalker

So. For the last episode in 2018,  I reviewed a video game-related movie (Megaforce). This year, I fully intended to do that again, but after playing the game "Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes", I decided instead to go with one of its inspirations, the 1978 disaster parody "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes".  It's a...comedy?....about ordinary tomatoes that mutate and go aroud killing people. Also, there's the San Diego Chicken. And a song about puberty.  Yep.  I couldn't keep all this fun for myself. Sean and Jim from the "Pie Factory" podcast are in the studio to talk about the movie too! Don't worry, I unlocked the door and let them out when it was over. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Pinball Spring" and "Reformat". Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Go to www.carnivalofgleecreations.com for episode links, social media and info about ATARI BYTES, my other monthly show IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN.  The website also has info about my books MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS and the holiday-themed IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME. Links to some of the places to order them too! Support Atari Bytes financially by subscribing on Patreon.com here. Pick up "Go Play Some Old Games. They've Missed You" shirts and mugs at the AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com.

Like the mud and slush stuck to the runners of Santa's sleigh, episode 204 glides onto your podcast rooftops. No game this week, but plenty of nog-worthy fun! Our short story is: TINY TIM'S ATARI DREAMS. Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat", "Pinball Spring", Jingle Bells", "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", Dance of the Tuba Plum Fairy", and "Oh, Christmas Tree".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Email the show at ataribytes2016@gmail.com. Like the show on our Facebook page. Follow the show on Twitter @ataribytes or follow me personally @carnivalofglee. Check out the Instagram too. Don't forget, you can call the podcast and leave a voicemail at 563-265-1978 and it might get played on the show. Check out the website www.carnivalofgleecreations.com for info, social media and show links for ATARI BYTES and my monthly discussion and analysis of all things related to the Peanuts comic strip IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN. The website also has info about my books IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME and MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS, including some of the places you can order them. Consider becoming a subscriber to the show on the ATARI BYTES Patreon page. You could get early episodes and BONUS episodes. Thanks! Pick up "Go play some old games, they've missed you" shirts and mugs at AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com

Episode 203 comes to you from a galaxy pretty not far away at all. In honor of the final installment of the most recent Star Wars trilogy coming out, we're playing STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE JEDI - DEATH STAR BATTLE, inspired by the final installment of the original film trilogy. Does this 1983 Parker Brothers offering feel the force or does it Jar Jar Binks all over the place? This week's short story: "Life in Three Parts" By the way, Henry's on the show this week, but you can't hear him a lot of the time because I couldn't convince him to sit closer to the microphone. Kids, man. Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Pinball Spring" and "Reformat". Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Find ATARI BYTES show notes, episodes and social media at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com.  Love Snoopy? Every month on IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN, we talk about ALL things in, around, and inspired by the Peanuts comic strip universe.  Go to www.carnivalofgleecreations.com for episodes, show notes and social media.  Find info and links to some of the places you can order IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME and MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com  Help keep the lights on at ATARI BYTES studios by becoming a Patreon subscriber. Early access! Bonus content! All the goodness! Pick up "Go play some old games. They've missed you." shirts and mugs at the AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com 

Do you have any idea how hard it is to put four pairs of tiny boxing gloves on a spider? We find out this week on episode 202 as we're playing the Activision 1982 title SPIDER FIGHTER. Was designer Larry Miller confessing a phobia with this one? His other titles "Snake Strangler", "Dental Damage", and "When You Have to Give a Speech, Blast Everyone Naked with Your Laser" would seem to suggest yes... This week's short story: RECLUSE REFORMATION Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat", and "Pinball Spring". Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" update theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. You can find show notes, social media and all manner of what not for ATARI BYTES here and about my other show, the monthly ode to all things "Peanuts" comics, IT'S  A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN, here. Your podcast host is an author too. Go here for info and retailer links for MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS and the holiday themed Santa story for adults IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME. Support the podcast by becoming a subscriber on Patreon.com. Get episodes early! Get BONUS episodes! Thanks! Pick up "Go play some old games. They've missed you." shirts, mugs and what not in the AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com

You might not know it from the recent self-destruction of Sears & Roebuck, but back in the day Sears was HIP, man. All the best stuff came from Sears. And then there's SLOTS, the Sears Tele-Games 1979 version of the Atari title SLOT MACHINE. Because there's nothing eight-year-olds like better than casino gambling. SLOTS is our focus this week in episode 201 and playing it gives you some insight that the harbingers of Sears's future doom were present even in 1979. THIS WEEK'S SHORT STORY: "A Place for Everyone and Everyone in Their Place" *Sorry for the occasional audio drop. Tried to clean them up. Lately, my software seems to be rebeling. Everyone is a critic. Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs, "Take a Chance", "Pinball Spring" and "Reformat".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" update theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Info, show links, social media for ATARI BYTES can be found at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com here. Info, show links, and social media for the podcast IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN is here. Check out Bill's books MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS, as well as the holiday-themed Santa Claus for adults, IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME.  You can support the show financially by becoming a Patreon subscriber here. Early episdes! BONUS episodes!  Pick up "Go Play Some Old Games. They've Missed You." shirts and mugs at the Zazzle.com store AB_Pod_Store. 

TWO HUNDRED EPISODES! Yep, two hundred weeks in a row (well, except for that one week I missed in 2017) this dumb show has been burrowing into your brain via your listening holes.  To celebrate, this week we're taking a break from writing stories and playing video games. Sort of. We're playing a BOARD game!  What?!?! I know! We're playing the 2018 IDW adaption of one of my favorite games: MISSILE COMMAND, now in board game form. Anarchy, I tell you! Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Reformat", "Pinball Spring" and "Take a Chance".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" update theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Find show links, info and social media for ATARI BYTES and my other podcast, the monthly ode to all things related to the Peanuts comic strip IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN. It's the holiday season! Time to pick up books for the book lovers in your life. Go to www.carnivalofgleecreations.com for info and links to some of the places you can pick up IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME and MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS. Become a Patreon subscriber on the Atari Bytes page there. Get episodes early! Get bonus content! Do it! Pick up "Go Play Some Old Games. They've Missed You." mugs and shirts at www.zazzle.com/ab_pod_store 

"Blueprint" is a process developed in the 1800s to reproduce techical documents, turning them blue in the process. Coincidentally, the CBS Electronics game "Blueprint" also makes people blue. What about you? This week's short story: WITNESS TESTIMONY, THE PEOPLE vs. BARNABY BUILDER Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat" and "Pinball Spring". Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Find links to info, show notes and social media for ATARI BYTES and the monthly tribute to all things "Peanuts" comics IT'S  A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN. Check info about my books IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME and MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS here. Become a Patreon subscriber here. Early episodes! Bonus episodes! Pick up "Go Play Some Old Games, They've Missed You." shirts and mugs in the AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com

We've finally crossed over to the mirror universe! Mike Mann takes over at FacePod helm, and let's just say thank you to Brian South for being a sport about it. That said, we cover banking, improv, sing the song of the south, and disturb an infant. So, overall? Rousing success.

Episode 198 is PELE'S SOCCER, Atari's tribute to one of the greatest athletes of all time: Brazilian soccer star PELE. That's right, this week's game about an amazing sports star is brought to you by one of the least sports-y people ever. Enjoy! This week's short story: LEAVE IT ALL ON THE FIELD Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Reformat", "Pinball Spring" and "Take a Chance". Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. You can find ATARI BYTES show info, episode links and social media at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com If you love Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the whole Peanuts gang, check out my monthly show IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN for all things Peanuts. More info at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com  Your host is an author too. Find out more about my books IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME and MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS here. There are even links to just some of the places you can order the books! You can get "Go play some old games. They've missed you." mugs and shirts at AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com here.

Remember how great Sears was? When I was a kid, Sears Roebuck was THE place to shop. And along with your Toughskins and washer/dryer sets, you could get Atari games cleverly renamed and packaged in boring, generic text labels so that...well, I don't know why exactly. BUT, thanks to this bit of video shell-gaming,  in episode 197 we get to revisit one of the "original nine" from 1977, COMBAT, only now it's called TANK PLUS. "Plus what?" you ask. Plus FUN, my friend! This week's short story: Who Will Be Tank's Plus One? Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat" and "Pinball Spring".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" update theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for "Storytime" theme. Links to episodes, show notes and social media for ATARI BYTES and my other podcast IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN can be found at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com.  Become a financial backer of the podcast by subscribing on the Atari Bytes page on Patreon.com here. Pick up "Go Play Some Old Games, They've Missed You" stuff at the AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com Check out my collection of short stories MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS or my Santa Claus story for adults IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME

Episode 196 featuring the 1983 Fox Video Games offering REVENGE OF THE BEEFSTEAK TOMATOES is clearly an allegory for the plight of the American farmer in the 1980s international trade market. Also, tomatoes are trying to kill you, so maybe the message is: Kids, eat less fruit. This week's short story: TOMATO PUREE  Flat Earth Rocketman Measuring Curve of the Unite States A ROM Has Been Released of Atari's "Pursuit of the Pink Panther" Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Pinball Spring" and "Reformat". Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" update theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. www.carnivalofgleecreations.com is where you can get info, episode links and social media for this show, ATARI BYTES, and my other show IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN. The webiste also has info about my novel IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME, a sort of Santa Claus story for adults and MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS. Pick up "Go play some old games, they've missed you." shirts and mugs at the AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com. You can support the show financially by becoming a Patreon subscriber here. Get episodes early! Get bonus episodes!  

In episode 195, we're teeing up the golf ball that is the podcast to sink in a hole in one of your earholes. Or maybe both. But we don't want to overreach. That's right, we're playing MINIATURE GOLF, Atari's 1978 plaintive cry about being out of ideas already. "Weird. I thought they'd come up with more stuff. They had such potential," said the 1970s consumers. This week's short story: MINIATURE DEATH  *Producer's Note: This week's recording was overrun with audio drops. Don't know why. Tried to clean it up as best I could, but if it sounds incoherent in places, just assume it's a technical issue, not the failings of your host. Please. Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Reformat", "Pinball Spring" and "Take a Chance".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" update theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. ATARI BYTES show notes, episodes, social media and more at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com  IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN is a monthly show about all things in and around the "Peanuts" universe. Find out more here. Pick up "Go play some old games, they've missed you" shirts and mugs at the AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com  You can become a Patreon subscriber and get access to bonus content by going to the Atari Bytes Patreon page here.  Find out here about my books IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME and MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS

Don't stop believin'...it's episode 194 of ATARI BYTES! Drive one of your Cars to your game console and Wham your cartridge in. Don't get distracted by the Eagles above or Hall & Oats bringing you chicken nuggets and Oreo Speedwagons. We're playing JOURNEY ESCAPE, a 1982 game inspired by the artwork on Journey's album of the same name. Because apparently in 1982, Atari was doing lots of coke.* *Kidding.** **It was probably heroin. This week's short story is: IT'S THE JOURNEY. NOT THE DESTINATION Atari Brings Back Centipede, Asteroids & More in Exclusive Arace1Up Deal Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat" and "Pinball Spring". Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. ATARI BYTES info, episode links, social media can all be found at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com  IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN is my other show; a monthly excursion ito all things Peanuts. Find out more here. Support ATARI BYTES by becoming a Patreon subscriber here. Bonus episodes! Early episodes! Madness! Find out about books I've written like MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS here. Pick up "Go play some old games. They've missed you." stuff at the AB_Pod_Store at Zazzle.com

Aron Eisenberg passed away and its heartbreaking to us and the Trek community, so we fast forward to season 7 and pay a drunk space nine tribute to Aron Eisenberg and his work on the show by talking about, "It's only a Paper Moon." one of our favorite Nog episodes. I'm joined by Drunk Space Nine Alumni, Mike Mann a.k.a. Manndroid who keeps things on track very poorly but aptly by being the Designated Runabout Pilot tonight.Special Note: Excuse all the sniffling, Starfleet boy had allergies to cheap wine.

Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Cogito ergo playsumhuhhhh???? I think no one knows what this game is; does it exist? In episode 193, we're playing AUTO RACING, which despite hold it in my hand, seems to not exist if the Internet is to be believed. But I played it...I think I played it...does anyone else see the walls melting? This week's bad poetry corner: OTTO RACING Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Pinball Spring" and "Reformat".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme.  Find show notes, social media and show info for ATARI BYTES and IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com At the website books and publications page, you can also find out about my publications like IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME and MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS. Support ATARI BYTES at Patreon to unlock early access to episodes and BONUS episodes here.  You can get "Go play some old games, they've missed you." shirts, mugs and more at AB_Pod_Store at Zazzle.com

This week on the show, you have two jobs. You must hunt. You must score. That's because we're playing Atari's 1978 Concentration, Memory, Memory Match, A Game of Concentration...fine, let's call it HUNT & SCORE. You might remember that as being part of the second wave of new titles from Atari. But hopefully that's not all you remember, because you'll need a steel-trap mind to line up these pairs and crush the computer with infinite (not infinite; not in 1978) memory.  This week's short story: NO MATCH FOR ME Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Reformat", and "Pinball Spring".  Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes". Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Find episodes, social media links for this show, ATARI BYTES, and the monthly IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN, about all things related to the inconic "Peanuts" strip at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com I'm a writer too. Find info about and links to some of the places you can pick up my books at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com Support the show ATARI BYTES on Patreon.com and get access to episodes early or even get bonus episodes. Pick us "Go play some old games, they've missed you" shirts at mugs at AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com The Far Side could be coming to the Internet "We're Going to Slam a Spacecraft Into an Asteroid to Try to Deflect It" "When We used to Storm Area 51 at the Arcade"

Episode 191 is right up your alley...if you're a cold-hearted criminal - possibly with an eye patch, but that may be optional - or a federal agent with a chronic inability to avoid the short straw for assignments. From 1982, we're playing Spectravision's GANGSTER ALLEY. Join me as we power through my personal game cartridge's attempts to sabotage the episode. Grrrrr, technology! *shakes fist at the sky dramatically* This week's short story is: FAMILY TERROR, I MEAN FUN "Lost in the Time Vortex: The American Cult of Doctor Who" Water Found on a Potentially Life-Friendly Planet Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Take a Chance", "Pinball Spring" and "Reformat". Thanks to Mike Mann for the "Mad Mike Hughes" theme. Thanks to Sean Courtney for the "Storytime" theme. Find links to episodes, social media and other info about ATARI BYTES and my other podcast IT'S A PODCAST, CHARLIE BROWN at my website www.carnivalofgleecreations.com  Find links to pick up my books IN THE ST. NICK OF TIME and MISERY BANANA: VERY SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY OLD GAMES AND ODD THOUGHTS at www.carnivalofgleecreations.com Support the podcast on the ATARI BYTES Patreon page here. Pick up "Go Play Some Old Games, They've Missed You" merchandise at the AB_Pod_Store on Zazzle.com

  It's bro time on VIVALADERBY! Super Fun Happy Time. Recorded live at Rollercon Downunder, it is our first ever sausage fest episode. BK and Mic Riot  sit down with Bob Noxious, Honest Dave and Mike Mann to discuss announcing, sports and a big chat about the new WFTDA playoff structure. Listen in and have a super fun happy time too. You can download this episode directly by right clicking on the link below and choosing “Save Link As”. Or simply use the embedded player to listen to it in your browser. If you download through iTunes don't forget to rate and review.  DOWNLOAD THAT GOOD SHIT RIGHT HERE.