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What happens when success, hustle, and constant work stop bringing fulfillment? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I talk with marketing strategist and entrepreneur Carlos Hidalgo about business growth, faith, burnout, and the hidden cost of hustle culture. Carlos shares his journey from corporate marketing leader to founder of Digital Exhaust, along with lessons from his book The UnAmerican Dream about work addiction, burnout, and redefining success. Their conversation explores why growth does not need to be complicated, why storytelling builds trust in business, and why boundaries matter more than work life balance. Carlos also opens up about faith, failure, relationships, and the power of honest conversations. You will hear practical insights on leadership, personal growth, community, and building a life that is both successful and meaningful. Highlights: ·  06:04 – Carlos explains how his faith became a personal relationship. ·  17:32 – Why he left corporate work to start his own business. ·  25:40 – His approach to making business growth simple. ·  30:17 – How hustle culture often leads to burnout. ·  42:29 – Why boundaries matter more than work life balance. ·  54:33 – Why real community helps solve loneliness. Top of Form Bottom of Form About the Guest: Carlos Hidalgo is the co-founder and CEO of Digital Exhaust, a growth partner that helps clients make growth simple. Carlos serves his clients as an advisor, consultant, and teacher to ensure they have meaningful engagement with their customers at every stage of the journey and are able to mature and create sustainable growth. Carlos has 30 years of experience working with organizations of all sizes as an advisor, consultant, innovator, and growth expert. He is widely recognized for his expertise in demand generation, marketing, sales, and customer experience and for coaching executives in the areas of leadership and managing change. In addition to his work with his clients, Carlos has won numerous marketing awards and been named to several prestigious industry lists as a marketing leader. Carlos is also the author of Driving Demand, which is ranked as a top 5 marketing book of all time by Book Authority, and The UnAmerican Dream, which was released in 2019. In addition to books, Carlos is a well-known international keynote and TEDx speaker. You can follow Carlos on LinkedIn or on Twitter @cahidalgo Ways to connect with Scott**:** LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosahidalgo/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CHidalgoJr Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cahidalgo_ Twitter/X: https://x.com/cahidalgo About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Well, hi and welcome once again to an episode of unstoppable mindset. Today, our guest is Carlos Hidalgo. Carlos has many facets about him. He's a speaker. He deals with growth and growth management and with his company. He tries to make growth simple for the people who are his clients. I'm interested in learning about that, but he does other things as well. He is also involved with his wife and marriage counseling, which is a little bit different than the one I think I find a lot of people to do. So I think we got lots to talk about. So, Carlos, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Carlos Hidalgo  01:59 Thank you for having me. Michael, it's an absolute pleasure. Well, let's Michael Hingson  02:03 start with the early Carlos, why don't you tell us about you growing up and all that sort of thing, and where you came from, where you're headed, or whatever. Carlos Hidalgo  02:14 Sure, I was born one of six children. I was the youngest for about four years, and then my my parents had two more. So I am smack dab in the middle of middle six siblings. Was born in New Jersey, but call where I'm at now home, which is a little town in the Adirondack Mountains. And the reason I call it home, I started coming to camp here when I was five years old. Fell in love with the area, and then my father, in 1983 moved us up here when I was 12, and fell more in love with it. And that lasted for four years. And then my junior of high school, or right after my sophomore year, was told, Hey, we're we're moving I was 16, I was pretty pissed off at the prospect of leaving a place I loved, so I had engineered a plan to stay through my junior and senior high school, which in my mind, made perfect sense in my parents' mind, and for reasons now I understand, because I'm a parent, did not make so much sense, but I came back as often as I could, and then my wife and I moved here back full time in 2021 we also lived here in the 90s for two years, had our first son here so but grew up really charmed childhood was my dad was in advertising, so we got tickets to Great sporting events. We had horses that I took care of, along with some of my siblings, developed a love of the outdoors, which I still hold, which is one of the many benefits of living up here again. And so, yeah, pretty, pretty much, early childhood was, you know, be outside as much as I can run around school work wasn't my strong suit, but I muddled through and I Michael Hingson  04:04 made it. Where in New Jersey were you born? Carlos Hidalgo  04:07 Was born in a little town called Randolph in northern jersey. Spent most of our time in a place called blairis town. Their claim to fame as a prep school called Blair Academy, which I believe is still there. And then, I believe it was the original Friday the 13th was filmed. Part of it was filmed in Blairstown. Yeah, yeah. So I'm dating myself just a little bit. Michael Hingson  04:32 Well, we lived in Westfield for six years, so kind of know, New Jersey, but yeah, while we were back there, my wife always wanted to move back to California. She's a native. I was born in Chicago. She wouldn't let me call myself a native, even though we moved to California when I was five. But yeah, it's okay. Carlos Hidalgo  04:50 Sure, yeah, people get a little touchy about the term native or local and how it's defined, right? Michael Hingson  04:55 Oh, yeah, it varies all around the country, but there's. Nothing. You can't say anything bad about Chicago. They have Garrett Popcorn there. If you've never had it, next time we go through O'Hare Airport, you should get some Garrett Popcorn. Carlos Hidalgo  05:09 Okay, I will do that absolutely. Michael Hingson  05:12 Take a memo. Get Garrett Popcorn. It's it's really good stuff. Well, so what did you do for college? Or did you? Carlos Hidalgo  05:21 Yeah, I went to my first year, I went to a school called Word of Life Bible Institute. So it's a one year intensive program, study of the Bible actually here, not far from, literally eight miles down the road here, from where I live now. And at that point, it was really just an excuse to get back to the Adirondacks for a year, but I learned a whole lot. Met some incredible people, some of who I'm still very, very close with today. And then from there, I transferred to Cedarville University in Ohio. At the time I went there, we were about 2500 students. I think today they're closer to 7500 but I met my wife there, which was that, in and of itself, the three years of tuition that I paid as I transferred in, but study Business Communication, again, I wasn't a great student. What I realized is, if it was the things that I really loved to participate in, it was awesome. I had a really great time studying communication and language and how we speak. I was two years on the debate team, which was such a great education in and of itself. But everything else I didn't really love. I just the general ed stuff. I kind of thought, well, if I can skate by and, you know, get that, get the passing the credits. So that's really how I want about it. And the reality is, the way things are taught today, I'm a very visual and hands on learner, and so to sit in a classroom and try to take notes and go through theory and things like that just makes my brain hurt a little bit. So I but I but I finished. I got the degree and made some great friendships in the process. Michael Hingson  07:04 Well and clearly, based on what you did for your first year, you have a Christian orientation, or definitely a god orientation as well. Carlos Hidalgo  07:15 Yeah, that's that's really my operating system. Michael, I am a follower of Jesus Christ. I believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. I base my life on it. I spend time in it each and every day. And so what's interesting in that regard is, yes, I went to the Bible Institute. So while I had a lot of head knowledge about the Bible and God and Jesus and all these things, it's really been in the last 10 years that I would say I had a deep, meaningful relationship with them, and that came as from a lot of experience in my life, a lot of dark, dark moments in my life that were self induced, unfortunately. But really, what it's done for me is it's just radicalized who I am, changed my heart. And so it's gone from a having a head knowledge of it to a real experience and an engagement with Christ through His Word and through prayer. Michael Hingson  08:11 Yeah, head knowledge is is a fine thing as far as it goes, but there's nothing like personally experience coming closer to whatever it is, including dealing with believing in God and really recognizing what what God brings. And my last book that I wrote that was published last year, called Live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and moving forward in faith very much deals with with a lot of that, the whole concept of the value and the power of personal knowledge, as opposed to just head knowledge. I talk about the World Trade Center a lot in that book, specifically in terms of what I learned and how I developed a mindset to be able to control fear, rather than letting it be the thing that overwhelmed me or overwhelms anyone and and I've had a couple people on this podcast who talk about it, and they say the same sort of thing that you did. It's not about knowledge that you sort of intellectually know. It's what you really know. So people, for example, in evacuating the World Trade Center, would look at signs, and they would follow those and a lot of people were able to do that, but that's still not knowing that is really relying on something else that you may or may not really have access to. So True Knowledge is the only way to go Carlos Hidalgo  09:38 100% and I find that I gather that through experience, yeah. And so the example I use is, if you ask me about my wife, you know, do you know Suzanne? I would say, Oh, yeah. You know, blonde hair, blue eyes, about five, five. Funny, smart. I could tell you all the different facts, but there's a big difference when you sit and you get to experience being with her, seeing. Her, how she interacts with people, how she treats others, all of those things. Take that knowledge and actually make an experience an experience, yeah. And so that's been the difference for me, as it regard, in my relationship with Jesus Christ, yeah, well, Michael Hingson  10:14 and Suzanne, so that's good. Carlos Hidalgo  10:17 Well, so absolutely, 31 years and we're still going. There you go. Michael Hingson  10:21 Well, keep going. That's that's cool. That's great to have that kind of a relationship. It's all too often we don't see a lot of that in marriage, and just people get married without knowing and that leads to all sorts of potential challenges. So it's good to really get to know someone Carlos Hidalgo  10:41 absolutely, yeah, I'm still, still learning, still studying her and learning all I can, after 31 Michael Hingson  10:46 years, and she is too Yes, she is. Carlos Hidalgo  10:49 She does a phenomenal job. Michael Hingson  10:52 So what did you do after college? Carlos Hidalgo  10:56 After college, I actually moved back up here, where I'm at now. Worked for two years for Word of Life, the same group that ran the Bible Institute. So then, actually, unbeknownst to me, i My heart was really at that point, I wanted to go into law enforcement. My father in law was an FBI agent for 30 years. I'd always been intrigued by law enforcement, so I thought going into and getting a job for a few years, cutting my teeth while I filled out a resume. So started working in the office of donor development or advancement, and that was the first time I really started to get any exposure to anything formal, marketing wise. In the meantime, applied to the FBI, never went anywhere. Ended up applying again, never went anywhere at that point. Then we moved to we left here after two years of marriage and having one child. We moved to Michigan for a brief time, and then we went back to down to from Michigan. We went to Dallas, where we lived for 13 years, and I worked while I was still trying to get into law enforcement. I kept getting marketing jobs and companies. So eventually I gave up the dream of law enforcement and just followed what's unfolding and had a pretty good career in two software companies as a director of marketing to cut my teeth and learn what global business was all about do a lot of travel, which helped me career wise wasn't so great home wise or parent wise when you're away from your kids, but it's been my career for 30 plus years. I've had a heck of a career doing it and very grateful for it, but I still still get intrigued at the whole concept of law enforcement, but I'm afraid I'm a little too old at this point to start down that path. Michael Hingson  12:47 How come you kept not getting anywhere with it? Carlos Hidalgo  12:51 Well, I did get to a point where the FBI I took a test when we lived in Dallas, and just they called after said I had scored well, which made me chuckle, thinking back to my college days of test taking, but and then they said, Hey, do you speak Spanish, which I do not, despite my name, which is very Spanish, Carlo. And they said, Okay, well, we'll keep your we'll keep your application on file. Let you know if anything changes. And that was the last I heard. So at that point, I just thought, okay, I can keep pushing this and trying. But again, as things started to unfold in the software world, the jobs that I had took care of my family. They provided well for us. They gave me opportunities to learn new things, try new things, opportunity to, like I said, international business, which I never done before. So at that point, I just thought, you know, I'm kind of seven, eight years into this thing. What does this look like going forward? And then are we going to have to just hit reset in all facets of our lives, financially, where our kids are settled, for me to go into law enforcement. So I abandoned it, and I'm okay with that. I think it would have been a phenomenal career. I would have loved it, like I said. I'm still intrigued by it, I still have great respect for it, but it just wasn't in the cards for me, and I'm okay with that. I think sometimes the way we grow is through the death of a dream. Michael Hingson  14:21 Yeah, I know I've always been intrigued by law and law enforcement, and I know that they're never going to hire me, and now they won't, right, but, but they wouldn't hire me, but I took, actually, some courses in college dealing with police and other things like that, because I was, and still am fascinated by it, and I have a great respect for the law. And I I admire good lawyers who are knowledgeable, who really are in it to deal with the law. And you can tell those from the typical ambulance type chaser who manipulates, but, but. I really appreciate the law. I in my life have had the opportunity to be involved with some efforts of the National Federation of the Blind, where we've gone several times to Washington to meet with congressional types. And so I've met some interesting people, met Ted Kennedy, met Tip O'Neill when he was still speaker, Senator Saugus from Massachusetts and others, and found and through them, got to meet some people who were truly committed to what they were doing. They weren't in it for the power. They were in it to try to really help the country and help their individual constituencies in their states and so on. It's a lot of fun. Carlos Hidalgo  15:47 Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure it was, I that's quite a roster of people you've been able to engage with, and I'm sure, no doubt, influence well. Michael Hingson  15:57 And we were there to talk about legislation that we needed. But I'll never forget first time we went in and we met Paul Tsongas. We talked about what we wanted to talk about, and he said, Well, it's the end of the day. What are you guys doing now? And we said, well, we're just going to go back to the hotel. And he said, You got a few minutes talk to you about Massachusetts. Well, we ended up staying for two hours. It was a lot of fun. Carlos Hidalgo  16:19 Wow, yeah, that is a lot of fun. I had an opportunity a number of years ago to do a tour of the West Wing, which was just phenomenal. So when you get, when you get those opportunities, I don't care what side of the aisle you may sit on or are partial to, the answer is yes, take it, because you learn a whole lot, and it's it gives you a whole new appreciation for our country. Michael Hingson  16:40 Well, 20 years ago, I was invited to come back and meet George W Bush because a congressman I had met was fascinated by my story and the story of my guide dog, Roselle, and he arranged for us to meet George W and we went back. It was supposed to be a brief, like two minute just photo op. This ended up being like a 15 minute conversation, and then it was a lot of fun. And I hope that we inspired him some, and we made a difference. And, you know, that's always a good thing. Carlos Hidalgo  17:13 Yeah, at the end of the day, right there people just like us. They are, I think the and I've heard that a lot about George W is his investment in people where he knew his you know, everybody in the staff that he knew their names, he knew about their families. So it doesn't surprise me that a two minute Meet and Greet was extended a little bit. Michael Hingson  17:34 We kept the Italian Prime Minister waiting while we finished our conversation, as it turns out, that's fine, Carlos Hidalgo  17:42 but it was good. There you go. There's your there, there's your the two truth and the lie icebreaker that they have. You do sometimes. There's, you can work that in, Michael Hingson  17:49 I could work that in, yeah, that would be, yeah, I should do that. Well, it was, but it was, it was, it was very enjoyable to be able to do that. Well. So now, so when did you start your own company? That's been a little while, at least. Carlos Hidalgo  18:04 Yeah, I started my first company that I started, I co founded with my brother. In 2005 I was working at the software company, and I just, I started to just have an edge of, you know, I should start something. I don't know what that looks like. And I remember one time just talking to my wife, and I said, I don't want to be 7580 years old. And think, what if, yeah, and my wife is very practical. And she said, Okay, so go for it, and if it doesn't work, just go get another job. And when she broke it down like that, I just thought, wow. Okay, she, I think she believes in me more than I do. So in 2005 I left the software company and we started a agency. And really, at that point for me, the Yes, I wanted to start my own company and see if I could do it. But the the big driving factor was my at that point, I we had four children, so we have four, and they were all pretty small, and I was traveling all over the country, and I didn't want to miss their childhood. And I remember coming home from trips and hearing conversations or seeing things that that I wasn't a part of, and I thought this, this isn't right. I need to be here. I need to be home. So I went to the software company, asked them what they thought they became my first client, and I did that for from 2005 to just early 2017 when I resigned my position as CEO there just to get my life back and kind of hit the reset button again, but this time, I meant it, so I left, and they're still going. But that was my first foray into entrepreneurship, and I just kept doing it since I started another consultancy, and now this is my third one, and also been part of about two to three other companies that. We launched, but never made it. So I enjoy the whole process. I love it, but, yeah, it's, I don't know. I mean, I will never say never, but the idea of not working for myself seems rather foreign to me. Michael Hingson  20:16 So the first company you had for 12 years, what did that do? Carlos Hidalgo  20:21 We were a mark. Marketing Yeah, we were a marketing services company. So we worked with business to business companies to help them in their demand generation, acquiring new customers and also customer growth. So that's really where a lot of my career has been sent, centered right, helping companies design them strategies, everything from content to technology to developing personas and putting together strategies on how to reach them when they're looking for something to buy that that client offers. Michael Hingson  20:52 Okay, well, that makes sense and certainly a worthy thing to do. So, when did you form your current company, digital exhaust, which is a very clever name, you'll have to tell me about that. Carlos Hidalgo  21:04 Oh yeah, there's a little bit of a story behind that. So I was working in 2022 early 2022 I had an offer to go be the Chief Revenue Officer of another agency, which I my wife and I talked about it, we prayed about it, and I had a really, really close friend of mine who was their chief strategy officer at the time, so the ability to work with him, stay in the industry and work with some really good clients, I jumped at, so I took that role over that role lasted eight months. I won't get into all those details of why? Never, never, really did get a clear answer. The answer I was given, not exactly. The numbers didn't the number. I'll just say the numbers proved otherwise. All that said that came to an end in 2023 I believe. Yeah, yeah, 2023 and so February, 23 so at that point, I was like, Okay, well, what do I do? I can try to go get a job, which I did. Nobody was really interested in, you know, early 50s, guy coming in. So, you know, did the interview thing. And then I just thought, Well, why don't, why don't I just bet on myself again and go for it. So at that point, the my friend who was the chief strategy officer, he had also left, so he and I started talking and thought, why don't we just do this together? You know, services he loves to implement, I love to sell. Let's just see if we can make a run at this. So here we are now. It'll be four years in or three years, I guess, in February or April of 26 and we're still alive to talk about it. And so that's how it came to be. It was really just, I've done this before. There's no security, no more security. I believe in working for somebody else than working for yourself. So bet on yourself and put out your shingle and see what you can make happen. Michael Hingson  23:06 Where did the name digital exhaust come from? That's a clever name. Carlos Hidalgo  23:10 Oh, thank you. We were, we were batting around so many different names, and we just had a thing, I think we had a running Google Sheet, like, let's just throw names up there. And then I was listening to a recording of a vendor that we had done work with in our early days, and he was talking about how you can track the digital movements of someone. And he said, You know, so basically, you know, they're leaving behind their digital exhaust. And he used the term twice. So I called my then partner, Tracy, and I said, Hey, what do you think about the name digital exhaust as a company? And he was like, Oh, I love it. So I said, Well, before we that, we have to call Dan and see if he would be okay. So I did some looking, you know, the whole trademark search, and when I told our partner about it. He said, Oh my word, I love it. He said, Never, never even thought that that could be a name, but if you guys want it, go for it. So we took it and it is, it's, it's, we think it's pretty unique, and it also describes a lot of what we do with customer data to get an understanding of how do you engage with them, where are they, and how are they going to interact with you and your brand? How so well. Again, he was right. I can look at your digital footprint or your digital behavior. I can see what sites you've visited, what web pages you visited, how much time you spend on a product piece, how much content you engage so I can look at all of that behind the scenes. Start to score that if you're an account that I want to go after, or if I'm a lead based sale, that gives me a lot of intelligence on what you're interested in. And then there's ways to kind of, from a insight perspective, determine where you are in that journey, whether it's your four. First time as a purchase, you're a current customer and you're interested in purchasing something else. So it gives us a lot of insight into that, so that I can message you or I also know when should sales place a phone call to you and start that conversation. So that's why we use the term digital exhaust, because, again, it's a lot of what we do and how we use our customer data. Michael Hingson  25:20 Several years ago, I watched a 60 Minutes program, gosh, I don't know it's actually a number of years ago. And one of the segments there was a guy who was on he was a private detective, and what he said was, I can tell more about you than most anyone else can simply by looking at your trash. And in fact, I can't remember if it was Mike Wallace or not. Who was the interviewer, but they went on investigated some trash cans and and this guy could just tell you so much about your entire life just by looking at what was in the trash can. It was really pretty amazing and and I don't mean that in any way as a negative thing, but it's very clever that people have that insight. So I appreciate what you're saying about digital exhaust. It makes perfect sense. Carlos Hidalgo  26:17 Well, good. I'm glad it does. It means we've hit the mark. I'm not I will say this. I'm not going to go through my customers trash, but I am not surprised that if you did how much you could learn about somebody, 100% but Michael Hingson  26:30 you do look at their their digital footprint and so again, and it makes perfect sense that you can learn so much that can help you, help them grow. Yes, absolutely gives incredible insight. You talk about making growth simple, tell me more about what that means. Carlos Hidalgo  26:51 Yeah, you know, I've been in the space a long time, and that really came a couple years ago. We started seeing different models that would come up different frameworks that would come out from different vendors. Started talking, you know, I talked to a lot of chief marketing officers in my role, and over and over, what we saw was just complexity of taking terms that everybody would know and applying a new term or creating a new term to replace the old term, because you wanted to stay edgy. And I finally had a CMO who said to me, this is all so complex. Is there any any organization out there, or any way to just make this simple? And I thought, Gee, I kind of been thinking the same thing, because I see all these talking heads out there on LinkedIn and at these conferences showing these overly complex, overly engineered models, and I'm like, You got to be a PhD to implement that thing. And again, I'm also a pretty simple guy. I don't think growth needs to be all that hard if you know your customer, what they need, when they need it, and why it's important to them. I'm going to be able to sell you quite a bit. I'm also going to be able to be a better marketing, better partner to you, because I'll be the first one to be able to tell you you don't need that, or you need that, but you shouldn't get it from us, and here's why. And so we just started saying, You know what? Let's create with our models. And we have models and we have frameworks, but we want them to be kind of what Apple is, right, really innovative, where you can use it. You don't necessarily have to have someone to guide you through it. And so let's just make it as simple as possible for our clients to grow their companies without these over engineered models, which mostly a lot of them are created to sell stuff. And while we want to sell stuff more, so we want to help customers be better at what they do. And so that's why we say is we want to help you make growth simple, cut through the clutter, get to what matters and move forward. Michael Hingson  28:58 Yeah, which makes a lot of sense. By by any standard, how do you find storytelling comes into what you do and how you interact with customers? Carlos Hidalgo  29:11 Yeah, it's really important in the beginning, right in the beginning stages. Anytime I'm engaging with you, if I'm a consumer and you're a brand, I want to your brand should tell a story about who you are, the value that the customer gets when they're going to interact with you, they're going to use your product, what you stand for. Can they trust you? Trust is huge. Right now. We live in a trust economy. I want to know that if you say something, I can you're going to stand behind it. So all of those things are come through in terms of story. Now, what I've always said is I think that story is important. But when it comes to now, especially in the world I live in business to business, once I get into maybe I want to purchase something for you or purchase your product. Now I. Moves from a story to a dialog because I started, I start need, needing to know, what are you interested in? What are your challenges? What are your needs, what are your pain points? And as you're telling me that I can respond more in a conversation, I can still use parts of the story, but now it's a two way dialog, even in a digital world. So if I can create that, that's fantastic, then you become my customer. And now I still want to keep telling you stories. I want to tell you a story about why you can trust us. I tell you a story about how I interact with you. I tell you a story about how I deliver service and how I help you onboard. So all that bleeds into what we call, you know, what I call the big customer experience, from brand engagement to what I'm buying to now that I become a customer, all of those are experiential factors that we have to consider. Michael Hingson  30:49 Well, yeah, and I think that storytelling is a very significant part of selling and sales, because it's part of what really helps create the trust, because people can see through it, if you're just blowing smoke or playing games. Carlos Hidalgo  31:05 Yes, they can absolutely. And you only get one shot if that's what you're gonna do only, yeah, once I realized that forget it, I'm not coming back, that brand loyalty is away real quick. Michael Hingson  31:16 Yeah. So do you encounter in the interactions that you have with people with a lot of burnout or who are going that way. Carlos Hidalgo  31:25 Oh yeah. It's, it's something that I went through in 2016 it's, it's a, I mean, the World Health Organization, whatever you think about them, they definitely have listed it as a illness or as a condition. So it's something that I've seen. It's something that I've written against quite a bit. I don't think we need to get there, but I also think it is part of the consequence, or the outcome of when we make work center of our universe, and we make work our God, when that's going to happen then, yeah, you're going to experience burnout. And I think burnout comes in different flavors, but I see a lot of people who are going through it, trying to work through it, trudge through it. I heard the term the other day, manage burnout. I don't know why you would want to manage burnout. I think you need to take steps to avoid burnout, to avoid it. Michael Hingson  32:17 Yeah, why is it so many people face it, and are experiencing burnout is because they just deal with work, they don't relax, or what. Carlos Hidalgo  32:27 Well, I think there's a lot, lot in that. I've done a lot of study, and that was the topic of some of the topic of my book that I released in 2019 the UN American dream is, I think we, especially in our Western culture, we have adopted this idea that the busier I am, the more important, the more valuable I am, and so and the reality is, none of us are well wired to go, go, go, go, go. Rest is actually a gift from the Lord. And you know, I think very few of us. But you know, think about the last time you talked to anybody. How are you? Oh, I'm so busy. We love to be busy. We love to have jam packed calendars, because it makes us feel good. The other part of it is when you think about workaholism, you know, that is an addiction. And the only time in my experience, we engage with or become addicted to something, it's when we're trying to avoid something else. And so think our workaholism, which leads to burnout, is right up there with our rising rates of anxiety, of depression, of loneliness, because we have bought a false narrative that if we go, go go, we jam pack our calendars, we work like and work like crazy until we hit some imaginary number or we can call it quits. That's what life is all about. And I just sit there and you know, my number one question to people who are running that race is, how's it working for you? You don't seem really happy right now, you don't seem fulfilled, and you're living on the promise of some day and some days, not a day in the week, right? Michael Hingson  34:03 I People ask me, How are you all the time? And my response is something actually that I borrowed from somebody else. I just say, I'm lovely. Yeah, I get lots of reactions from that. It's kind of cute, but it's great. You know, I I agree with you, there is a there's a need and a time, and it's appropriate to not work all the time. Yes, we we don't ever take time even just to sit and think about what we did today. We don't take time at the end of the day to go in our own brains. How did this work out? How did that work out? Why didn't this work? Why did this work? What could I do to make it better and then listen for answers? It's like praying. So many people, when they pray to God, they pray to Jesus and so on. They spend all their time praying and saying what they want, never realizing God all. And he knows that, yeah, when are you going to start listening for answers and really listening? And that's, that's the challenge that I see so often people don't listen, and the answers are always there. They're in their inner the the inner voice that they can hear if they but practice well. Carlos Hidalgo  35:17 And I think to part of that is you need to be still, right? And we see that in scripture where we're told be still and know that I am God, if I mean there, there. We have so much noise and so much input with our phones and constant, you know, interaction and constant noise. We don't give ourselves the ability to sit and think and process, to just to be still. And that is something that I would say, really, for me, over the last decade, has come into focus of I enjoy my downtime. I enjoy the silence that I it's one of the reasons when I run, I don't run with headphones. In my own little world, in my head, praying, thinking about things. There are times I'll drive in the car without the radio on, just in silence, and I tell people, then they look at me like, I have three heads. Yeah, I'm like, oh, it's I am so much better for it, because I'm no longer living life reactively. I'm able to live life in a way that brings me a lot of peace, a lot of joy, a lot of happiness. And when I work, I work really, really hard, but it's definitely not the center of my universe. Michael Hingson  36:27 I know people think I'm crazy, but I can go days without looking well, not days. I'll go a day. I do it volitionally, but I can go quite a while without looking at text messages, and when I do, their message is there sometimes, but I know that I could actually go for a considerable length of time without needing to carry my phone around. Now, the only reason I do carry it around, I mean, clearly some phone calls can come in and so on, but I use other tools on it that you have access to in other ways. So I use it for those things. But the bottom line is, is that I don't need to have this phone with me to stay in touch with people all the time. So if I carry my phone more often than not, I will be in a hotel room listening to something on the phone and, sure, relaxing, rather than all the other things that one could do with it well. Carlos Hidalgo  37:25 And the number of people that I talked to and research shows this that, you know, the last I saw was over 60% it's the first thing people do when they wake up is they reach over and look at their phone and I say, sit there and say, What is so important that you can't even wait 15 minutes from the time your eyes open. But we've become addicted. We've come addicted to the noise, to the constant, go, go, go. And then, you know, we have a friend of ours last year was just, I'm so busy. I'm so busy. Told my wife, over the next three months, I only have this one day I can do lunch. And then you start realizing, like, Well, really, that's, that's how you want to live your life over the next 90 days, you only have one day. Now, I didn't believe it when I heard that. I don't think they were trying to make excuse, and I don't think lying. I think in their heads, they really had this belief of, oh, I can. I've only got one day out of the next 90, but we've weed ourselves into believing that this is how we should be living life. Yeah, and it's not how I want to live life. I'll work hard, I'll put everything I've got into my clients and my business and things like that, but I don't want to be that strapped. I was that strapped one time, time wise and work wise, and it made me absolutely miserable. Mm, hmm. Michael Hingson  38:45 I know when I wake up in the morning I do reach for my phone right at the beginning. One of the very first things that I do is reach for it to see what the temperature is outside, to see what the temperature is your house, to see whether I want to turn the heater on, you know, but I don't look at messages. I don't need to do that. I'll do it eventually, but, you know, I So, as I say, I use it for other tools, but I use the phone, because that's the tool that's available to me that gives me that information, and it'll help me decide, do I want to turn the heater on, or do I want to turn the air conditioner off? And that's what I do. And then I put the phone down, and I start visiting with the dog and the cat, and we have conversations which is, which is kind of fun, Carlos Hidalgo  39:29 but yeah, you get to enjoy life. Michael Hingson  39:32 I remember, remember the old technology town? Now it's old Blackberry. Oh yeah, the black and Research In Motion. There was one night when Research In Motion lost communications with all of the blackberries, and every BlackBerry went dead, I think, for about 12 hours. But I heard that even during the time when that occurred, people committed suicide because they had no way to look at their blackberries. And. Get information. And I always thought you're that dependent, that you can't cope for a while, especially at night without that information. Carlos Hidalgo  40:09 Come on. Yeah, it's staggering. The number of, again, over 50% of people said that they would be panicked if they want an app without their phones and so and again, I used to, I used to live that way. So I understand it to a degree, but, well, I understand it. Yeah, I also tell people you don't have to live that way, because people i The people I know who live that way, don't seem very content or fulfilled, right, right? Which is really the issue, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely, because we only go, we only get one shot at this life, and I want to make the most of it. Michael Hingson  40:43 Make growth simple. Carlos Hidalgo  40:46 That's right, personal, personal and business wise, right? Michael Hingson  40:49 Personal and business wise. So what is hustle culture? Carlos Hidalgo  40:54 Well, hustle culture has been promoted by a lot of folks, a whole lot more well known that I am, you know, where Kevin O'Leary for Shark Tank, Shark Tank talks about, you got to be willing to work eight days a week, you know, and give everything you've got, you know. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about, you know, go, go, go, go. And, you know, we just see it out there of this, you've got to be willing to go above and beyond. If you want to have success, if you want to make this money, you've got to just make sure you're willing to hustle at all costs, which to me, there's a place for that. As I said, when I'm working I hustle. I work hard. I get in a zone. I kind of block everything out and and there are some weeks where we require over and above it. You know, 16 or a week is is not something that has never been done. But the difference is, there's a couple of differences. Is I'm going to work hard because that's what I'm told to do. In Scripture, it says that with everything you do, do it with all your might and do it to the glory of glory of the Lord. So I'm going to do that. Plus work was one of the first things that God ever created. He told Adam in the garden, I want you to work now, what we also see is that it was cursed when man sinned, and it was part of the curse in the garden. But I do believe work is noble. I believe it's valuable, I believe it has so many things that can teach us. So I'm working. I'm hustling hard when I'm working, but this idea that I need to give everything I have to my business so that I'm successful. Well, what about our relationships? What about our own our last word, too, right? Our own physical health? What about my marriage? All of these things that require work yet, you know, you got a guy like Grant Cardone talking about 95 hour work weeks. That's insanity. Yeah, at what point, you know, so to me, I really believe, and I've had some people who've argued with me over this. If you want to know what the object of your affection is, show me where you're spending the most time and attention. And it's not time or attention, time and attention, right? I cannot. I cannot be, quote, unquote, working, but I can be with my wife, but my brain is working. My brain is thinking about my work, thinking about my business, thinking about my career. So what good is it to her if I'm there or not? Yeah, I'm not investing in that relationship, and that is just as much work as anything else. And I would I would say the rewards are better and the gratification that much deeper. So can work life balance actually be attained? I don't believe in work life balance. I believe in boundaries, and maybe I'm splitting hairs, but when I see that, over 70% of people say that work life balance is unachievable. It tells me it doesn't exist. It's also the only place in our lives where we talk we try to separate work from life. Nobody talks about finance life, business, kids life, business, marriage life, business. But we talk about work life balance. Now I understand we spend a lot of time at work in our modern day culture, but if I can decide that I'm going to put boundaries around the things that matter most to me, so like work, like my relationships, like my physical, mental and emotional health, my spiritual health, and that's how I've started to live life. Is instead of trying to balance everything, I'm going to set boundaries. So what does that look like? Well, the first thing I do in the morning is not check the phone. I get up, I pray. I have coffee with my wife. Sometimes we have really deep conversations. Sometimes we look just let the caffeine kick in and let it wake up, and then we set time in prayer. So every day, pretty much between 815 and 830 I'm at my desk ready to work, but I've put a boundary around that morning time, which allows me to start the time with with my Bible and with my wife from 830 To about 1230 I'm locked in. I am working. There's a boundary around there's a boundary. And then about 1230 to one, about two o'clock, that's my workout. Either go to the gym or I go for a run, come home, make my protein stuff, and then I'm back working again. And so and then when I'm done work, between 530 and six, I shut it down. Work is over, and now it's my personal life again, and whatever that looks like, and some of that is seasonal, because of where I live, in the summer, it'll get stay light till 930 and the winter, it gets dark by 430 there's quite a disparity. But because I have those boundaries, I know that I'm able to bring the best of myself to each of those areas of my life, and that is far easier than balance. And when one of those boundaries needs to move, I get to have a conversation. Hey, I've got a call tonight overseas. Or do we have anything? Are we good if I take this call at 730 at night? So I take the call at 730 at night, but I have that discussion, and it's it takes more effort to move a boundary, takes very little effort to get knocked off balance. Michael Hingson  46:05 Yeah, and I think that makes perfect sense. I know for me, when Karen was here, we we enjoyed breakfast and we enjoyed dinner, and I think there's a lot of value in that. Now, I was always the earlier riser, but partly because I worked for companies that kind of required that. That is to say I worked, for example, when I lived in the east for California companies. So I ended up being there later. But when I worked in the West, calling the east, I had to be in work by six, because that's what I needed to do. But we agreed on that, and I hear exactly what you're saying. The fact of the matter is that you've got to really make some decisions, but if you're in a relationship, then you both have to agree and make the decisions together, which is what really should happen 100% Carlos Hidalgo  46:58 and those boundaries will change. I mean my boundaries now that I'm an empty nester, you know, had I lived this way 15 years ago, would have looked far different because I still had children at home. And so the boundaries can shift and change. But to your point, you have to talk about that. And what I have come to believe is that if I'm making those decisions in regards to my business, my job, my career, and I'm not having the conversation with my significant other, then I'm not I'm not sacrificing anything. I'm just selfish. And yet, what we see is, Oh, you got to sacrifice for your business. I've said to couples before, if you and your wife believe and want to say, hey, we want to go build this thing and we want to go sell it so we know the next five years we're hardly going to see each other, and we're both on board with that, and this is what we want. Go in peace. I think you're nuts, but Go in peace, but still, you made the decision together. That's right, and that's the difference. And I find that a lot of people do not do that, and I also think it adds to the stress and the loneliness and the anxiety and the depression is because we're chasing something that is so fleeting, and no matter what Empire we may build professionally, we can't take it with us, right? Michael Hingson  48:13 And that's something that I wish more people would truly realize. It would make for a much happier world. Carlos Hidalgo  48:21 It would. But the unfortunate part is, until the pain and consequence of how you're living outweighs the fear of change, most likely you're never going to do anything different, right? 48:31 So tell me, Carlos Hidalgo  48:32 oh, go ahead. No. Oh, okay, tell me about the Michael Hingson  48:36 title of the book, the UN American Dream. Where did that come from? And why did you name the book that, why was that the title? And so on, Carlos Hidalgo  48:42 yeah, and so in 2016 is when I informed the company that I had started with my brother 11 years earlier that I was stepping down. Didn't really know what that looked like. I literally just one day, through the help of a friend and God's good grace, decided that it was time for me to go. And so the way they wanted to handle it in end of the year, and I think this was like end of October ish, when I made that decision, they said, You know what, let's not announce anything. We don't want our clients to get spooked in q4 so let's wait until the turn of the the new year. So that was into 2017 so I made a post, and I published it in February, 2017 about why I was leaving the company, some of the things that I was learning along the way. And what surprised me was the phone calls and emails I got from colleagues who said, Hey, I just read your post. Can we talk? I'm kind of thinking about the same thing. I'm miserable. And it was one email in particular that still stands out, where he said, I'm miserable. I started to think like, wow, okay, this, this is not just me. My circumstances were different. But this seems to be a problem, so I started to just do some research on our obsession with work, the number of hours we work, this idea of balance and hustle culture. Really immersed myself in it, and I thought this isn't what Truslow Adams meant when he coined the term the American dream. We're killing ourselves for what like, for What's the objective here to just add another zero to my bank account. So as I started to do that research, I saw myself and a lot of that same story, and the mistakes I made and how I was, you know, I had put my business first all the things that we've talked about. And I thought, Man, this is really quite un American, really, because we say we're the land of the free and the home of the brave, but we're not free if we're slaves to our company or our jobs or our careers. So I thought, You know what? I think what we're doing to ourselves is un American, and we're chasing the UN American dream, and that's how I came up with the title, Michael Hingson  51:05 who have been some of your greatest influencers? Carlos Hidalgo  51:09 Wow, I have had a lot. Obviously, my parents have been huge influences in my life. My mom is a fierce prayer warrior, and so I fervently believe I would not be where I'm at today if it wasn't for her and her faithfulness and that and my dad is it has been in marketing and sales and advertising. So learned a lot from him, just in life, and then also in business. There's a gentleman who lives up the street who is kind of like a second dad to me, it's an interesting relationship, because his son is also my best friend, but gentleman by the name of Keith Vander wheel who is salt of the earth, wise, just a wise, wise man has loved me, has when needed, given me a swift kick in the rear end, and just really helped keep keep me focused, and been one of these guys that I can go to, and it's a little about almost 20 years older than I am, so he's one that has seen more and done more. So I'm thankful for that. And then I am very fortunate to have about three or four very, very dear, dear friends, close friends, I mentioned one, Keith's son, who spur me on to greater things, encourage me when necessary, rebuke me and help me. And then I would say, more than anything, my wife, I learned stuff from her each and every day, her steadfastness, Her Grace, her strength of character, she is absolutely the strongest person I know, and has been the biggest influence in my life. Michael Hingson  52:45 I when I was in college, did radio, and I've always liked comedy. I've always liked trying to be a little bit flip and so on, yep. But I will tell you that my wife constantly amazed me. She was pretty much a lot more straight faced and straight laced than i But when she came out with a zinger, it came out of left field, and you never saw coming. She was amazing. Clearly, she observed me a whole lot more than I thought she did, right? Carlos Hidalgo  53:18 And what a gift that is to have. My wife and I were just, we went out for brunch today, with it being the holiday, and I just, I told her, I said, I just love how much we laugh. Yeah, what a gift that is to have in your marriage. We're just laughing together and laughing at each other in a way that's not demeaning, but appreciates our differences. And you know, we can tease each other and enjoy it and know it comes from a place of love, yeah. Michael Hingson  53:42 How do we deal with the epidemic of loneliness in our lives and in our world? Carlos Hidalgo  53:48 Wow, that's a great question. It's first of all, I think it's heartbreaking. I see this especially with men. And statistics would show that that men especially struggle with loneliness. I think number one is we have to come to the realization we were not meant to live in isolation. We are communal beings. God created us to live in community, and we need to step into that. And part of that is letting your guard down and being vulnerable and letting people know where you struggle. Now I'm not talking about wearing your heart on your sleeve and walking right every stranger and spilling, but those closest of relationships, and I can say, you know, for me, when I isolated, that's when I became the worst form of myself and went to places I never thought I would go. And so I think loneliness, first of all, get off social media and your phone, because that's not a connection. No, your friends, all of your 1000s of friends on Facebook, are not true friends. They're people, you know, but they're not people that are going to walk with you through some of the hardest times of your lives, and so find those. Group, find that community, whether it's your church, whether it's a small group that you take part in, whether it's people at your work, but really start to invest in those relationships and bring as much to it as you're expecting them to. And for me, it became just with those closest relationships. I'm an open book. I'm not going to BS. I'm going to talk about what's on my heart, what I'm struggling with, what my victories are, what my low points are. And for me, that starts with my spouse. As I mentioned, I've got three other men in my life that are around my age that I can confide in, be open with, and it's the most freeing, wonderful thing, and it's their relationships that I cherish, and I think that's how we end this cycle of loneliness. But I think a lot of people have been duped. Well, I'm on I've got a bunch of friends online, yeah, you know, put the phone down, get off your social media platform and go be human and interact with other people. Michael Hingson  56:01 It gets back to the same thing we talked about earlier. There's a whole big difference between head knowledge and really knowing. And the friends who are truly your friends are people who you know and who know you and that you can truly be honest with and who will be honest with you. And that is not something that you get from all those Facebook friends. Otherwise, you're being awfully silly, right? Carlos Hidalgo  56:23 And I also think we have to get out of this idea in our culture that if I don't affirm you, I somehow don't like you anymore, this idea that tolerance and love are the same thing. Some of my closest friends have been some of the ones that have come to me and said, Hey, here's what we've observed, and we're sure you don't like that about you, and you know this needs to change. And I love that. I love that I friends who will call my stuff and a wife who will say to me, this isn't the best you like what's going on here? I need that in my life, because if all I want to do is have people pat me on the back and affirm me. I'm going to get entitled pretty quick. Yeah, and that doesn't help at all. Right? How do we bring civil discourse to our society? We're in an environment and in a world where we just don't appreciate or have conversations anymore. How do we deal with that? Well, I think a couple of things. First of all, I think we have to get back to an appreciation for and a respect for human life and humanity in general. Michael, I'm sure if you and I spent a few hours together, we would eventually land on a topic that we don't just that we don't agree on. I can be okay with that, and because if I'm open to say, Hey, Michael is a human being. He's smart. He's overcome incredible odds in his life, and maybe if I listen, I can learn something. Doesn't mean I'm going to come to your side of the the position, but I can at least learn something. But I think systematically, over decades, we've been denigrating the the value of human life. I mean, how many millions of babies have we aborted in this country? You know, your your own story, your parents were told, hey, just put him in a home. He's not going to amount to anything because of his blindness. That's insanity, you know. So today, instead of civil discourse, if I don't like you, I berate you online, I make something up about you, or I kill you. And right so and to tell you how far we've gone, not only does that happen, but then we're gonna have people who celebrate in the murder of whether it's an insurance CEO or a Charlie Kirk, or anybody, and I just sit there and say, Okay, we've we've gotten so far right civil discourse. And so I think number one is just a respect and a value for human life, which we have a lot of work to do there. And then number two, again, back to what I said, this idea that if I disagree with you, I somehow don't love you anymore. And the example I use is this idea of, well, you need we need more tolerance and affirmation. There was a time Michael where my behavior within our marriage just was unacceptable. I mean, I was cheating on my wife, and once she found out she still loved me, but she couldn't tolerate the behavior for reasons that I think I need to explain. So at that point, you say, All right, well, how do those two things work together? If I had kept doing what I was doing, I know for 100% she would have loved me till the day she died, but she died, but she wouldn't have been able to stay with me, because you can't tolerate that behavior. She's supposed to affirm that. And so this idea that because I quote, unquote, love you, I affirm you, I actually make the case that if I love you, I'm going to help you be the best form of yourself, which sometimes means disagreeing with you and pointing things out in your life. That are unhealthy, that's fair. So I think we have to get back to that place of we can have disagreement, still have respect for each other. We can disagree vehemently and still do it respectfully, right? And then at the end of the day, I can respect your position because of who you are as a person, and that you know, giving you the benefit of the doubt. This is a well thought out position. And so, okay, great. We agree to disagree. We can still be friends, yeah? Michael Hingson  1:00:27 And we might learn something, or at least be put on a path where we think about it, and we may discover that, oh, that person's right, correct, yeah, which is Carlos Hidalgo  1:00:36 cool, yeah, and it's not that hard. And again, no, do your do your homework. Know what the real issues are, and stop reading headlines on social media. Michael Hingson  1:00:46 Yeah, really, get away from that. What else should we know about you? Carlos Hidalgo  1:00:50 Well, I'm the father of four amazing kids spread all over the country, ages 30 to 20. He'll be 24 in 10 days, and then an amazing daughter in law, soon to be daughter in law, my second son is engaged, gets married next year. I love the outdoors, anything outside. And I would say, if I want your audience to remember anything, it's that what Jesus Christ has done in my life has been nothing short of amazing. And like I said at the beginning, this is my operating system, and it's who I am and my reason for being in each and every day. And I sit here and I just am in awe of the life I get to live. So I'm very, very thankful and very, very humbled by it all. Michael Hingson  1:01:36 If people want to reach out to you and maybe explore working with your company, using your company to help them. How do they do that? Carlos Hidalgo  1:01:43 Yeah, you can email me at Carlos at Digital exhaust.co it's not.com so make sure it.co's or I won't get it. So you can shoot me an email visit our website, which is digital exhaust.co or looked me up on LinkedIn, just Carlos adalgo, H, I, D, A, L, G, O, right. That is correct. Yeah. I appreciate you getting the name right on the introduction. So thank you for that. I worked at it well. Michael Hingson  1:02:12 I want to thank you for being here. This has been wonderful. And as I tell people all the time, if I'm not learning at least as much as anybody else on this podcast, and I'm not doing my job well, which means I do need to listen and think about it. And I appreciate all the insights that you gave us today, and I appreciate all of you being here and being with Carlos and me. Love to get your thoughts. Please reach out to Carlos. Please email me at Michael H i, at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, but most of all, wherever you're listening or watching the pod podcast, please give us a five star review and a rating. We love that. We love your your input, please. Of course, I want it always to be positive, but I'll take whatever you send because we we value that. And for all of you and Carlos, you as well, if you know anyone else who ought to be a guest on the podcast. We'd love it if you'd let us know we're always looking to meet more people to help show that we're all more unstoppable than we think we are. And with that, I want to thank you again, Carlos, for being here. This has been absolutely fun. Carlos Hidalgo  1:03:13 Michael, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it. Michael Hingson  1:03:20 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m

GP opens on the Grizzlies loss to the Blazers last night and Darius Acuff going big again for Arkansas and moving up draft boards. (22:45) Mike Wallace joins to talk Grizzlies, NBA and more(48:55) Memphis Tigers home finale tonight vs USF, sweet scene at Houston last night, Jack Hughes continues to punish Canada, St. Louis wins A10 and RIP Lou Holtz(1:25:00) GP's Carry Out 

What happens when a childhood dream refuses to let go? In this episode, I sit down with cartoonist and Lum and Abner historian Donnie Pitchford to explore how old-time radio, comic strips, and a love for storytelling shaped his life. Donnie shares how he grew up inspired by classic radio shows like Lum and Abner, pursued art despite setbacks, and eventually brought the beloved Pine Ridge characters back to life through a modern comic strip and audio adaptations. We talk about creativity, persistence, radio history, and why imagination still matters in a visual world. If you care about classic radio, cartooning, or staying true to your calling, I believe you will find this conversation both inspiring and practical. Highlights: 00:10 Discover how a childhood love of Lum and Abner sparked a lifelong dream of becoming a cartoonist. 08:00 Hear how college radio and classic broadcasts deepened a passion for old time radio storytelling. 14:33 Understand how years of teaching broadcast journalism built the skills that later fueled creative success. 23:17 Learn how the Lum and Abner comic strip was revived with family approval and brought to modern audiences. 30:07 Explore how two actors created an entire town through voice and imagination alone. 1:00:16 Hear the vision for keeping Lum and Abner alive for new generations through comics and audio. Top of Form Bottom of Form About the Guest: Donnie Pitchford of Texas is a graduate of Kilgore College, Art Instruction Schools, Stephen F. Austin State University and the University of Texas at Tyler. He has worked in the graphic arts industry and in education, teaching at Hawkins High School, Panola College, and Carthage High School at which he spent 25 years directing CHS-TV, where student teams earned state honors, including state championships, for 20 consecutive years. In 2010, Donnie returned to the endeavor he began at age five: being a cartoonist! The weekly “Lum and Abner" comic strip began in 2011. It is available online and in print and includes an audio production for the blind which features the talents of actors and musicians who donate their time. Donnie has created comic book stories and art for Argo Press of Austin, illustrated children's books, written scripts for the "Dick Tracy" newspaper strip, and produced the science fiction comedy strip "Tib the Rocket Frog." He has collaborated with award-winning writers and cartoonists George Wildman, Nicola Cuti, John Rose, Mike Curtis, Joe Staton, and others. In 2017, Donnie began assisting renowned sculptor Bob Harness and currently sculpts the portraits for the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame plaques. Awards include the 1978 Kilgore College "Who's Who" in Art, an Outstanding Educator Award from the East Texas Chapter of the Texas Society of CPAs in 1993, the CHS "Pine Burr" Dedicatee honor in 2010, and a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2018 from Spring Hill High School. In 2024, Donnie was inducted into the City of Carthage Main Street Arts Walk of Fame which included the placement of a bronze plaque in the sidewalk and the Key to the City. Donnie and his best friend/wife, Laura, are members of First Methodist Church Carthage, Texas. Donnie is a founding officer of the National Lum and Abner Society and a member of Texas Cartoonists, Ark-La-Tex Cartoonists, Christian Comic Arts Society, and the National Cartoonists Society. Ways to connect with Michaela**:** https://www.facebook.com/groups/220795254627542 https://lumandabnercomics.com/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson  01:21 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. I've been looking forward to this one for a while. We have Donny Pitchford as our guest today. You're probably going, who's Donnie Pitchford? Well, let me tell you. So years ago, I started collecting old radio shows. And one of the first shows that I got was a half hour episode of a show called Lum and Abner, which is about a couple of characters, if you will, in Pine Ridge, Arkansas. And I had only heard the half hour show sponsored by frigid air. But then in 1971 when ksi, out here in Los Angeles, the 50,000 watt Clear Channel station, started celebrating its 50 year history, they started broadcasting as part of what they did, 15 minute episodes of lemon Abner. And I became very riveted to listening to lemon Abner every night, and that went on for quite a while. And so I've kept up with the boys, as it were. Well, a several years ago, some people formed a new Lum and Abner society, and Donnie Pitchford is part of that. I met Donnie through radio enthusiast of Puget Sound, and yesterday, USA. And so we clearly being interested in old radio and all that, had to have Donnie come on and and talk with us. So Donnie, or whatever character you're representing today, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Donnie Pitchford  02:58 Huh? I'm glad to be here. Michael Hingson  03:00 He does that very well, doesn't he? It's a Donnie Pitchford  03:04 little tough sometimes. Well, I'm really glad to be here. Thank you. Michael Hingson  03:10 Well, I appreciate the audio parts of lemon Abner that you you all create every week, and just the whole society. It's great to keep that whole thing going it's kind of fun. We're glad that that it is. But let's, let's talk about you a little bit. Why don't you start by telling us about the early Donnie, growing up and all that. I'm assuming you were born, and so we won't worry about that. But beyond that, think so, yeah. Well, there you are. Tell us about tell us about you and growing up and all that, and we'll go from there. Donnie Pitchford  03:42 Well, I was born in East Texas and left for a little while. We lived in my family lived in Memphis, Tennessee for about seven years, and then moved back to Texas in 1970 but ever since I was a kid this I hear this from cartoonists everywhere. Most of them say I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was five years old. So that's in fact, I had to do a speech for the Texas cartoonist chapter of the National Cartoonist Society. And that was my start. I was going to say the same thing, and the President said, Whatever you do, don't do that old bit about wanting to be a cartoonist at age five. Everybody does that, so I left that part out, but that's really what I wanted to do as a kid. And I would see animated cartoons. I would read the Sunday comics in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and then at some point, my dad would talk about radio, and my mother would talk about listening to radio. We would have the reruns of the Lone Ranger television show and things like Sky King and other programs along those lines, and my parents would all. Way say, Well, I used to listen to that on the radio, or I would hear Superman on the radio, or Amos and Andy or whatever was being rerun at that time, and that fascinated me. And I had these vague memories of hearing what I thought were television programs coming over the radio when I was about two years old. I remember gunshots. I remember, you know, like a woman crying and just these little oddball things. I was about two years old, and I kept thinking, Well, why are we picking up television programs on my mother's radio? Turns out it was the dying gasps of what we now call old time radio. And so at least I remembered that. But when I was about, I guess eight or nine we were, my dad took me to lunch at alums restaurant in Memphis, and I saw that name, and I thought, What in the world? So what kind of name is that? And my dad told me about London Abner, and he said it reminds me. It reminded him of the Andy Griffith Show or the Beverly Hillbillies. I said, I'd love to hear that. He said, Ah, you'll never hear it. He said, those were live they don't exist, but years later, I got to hear them. So yeah, but that's how I grew up wanting to be a cartoonist and coming up with my own characters and drawing all the time and writing stories and that sort of thing. Michael Hingson  06:24 So when did you move back from Memphis to Texas? Donnie Pitchford  06:28 July 2, 1970 I just happened to look that up the other day. How old were you then? I was 12 when we came back. All right, so got into, I was in junior high, and trying to, I was trying to find an audience for these comic strips I was drawing on notebook paper. And finally, you know, some of the kids got into them, and I just continued with that goal. And I just, I knew that soon as possible, you know, I was going to start drawing comics professionally. So I thought, but kept, you know, I kept trying. Michael Hingson  07:06 So you, you went on into college. What did you do in college? Donnie Pitchford  07:11 Well, more of the same. I started listening to some old time radio shows even as far back as as high school. And I was interested in that went to college, first at a college called Kill Gore College, here in East Texas, and then to Stephen F Austin State University. And I was majoring in, first commercial art, and then art education. And I thought, well, if I can't go right into comics, you know, maybe I can just teach for a while. I thought I'll do that for a couple of years. I thought it wouldn't be that long. But while I was at Stephen F Austin State University, the campus radio station, I was so pleased to find out ran old time radio shows. This was in 1980 there was a professor named Dr Joe Oliver, who had a nightly program called theater of the air. And I would hear this voice come over the radio. He would run, he Well, one of the first, the very first 15 minute lemon Abner show I ever heard was played by Dr Oliver. He played Jack Benny. He played the whistler suspense, just a variety of them that he got from a syndicated package. And I would hear this voice afterwards, come on and say, It's jazz time. I'm Joe Oliver. And I thought, Where have I heard that voice? It was, it's just a magnificent radio voice. Years later, I found out, well, I heard that voice in Memphis when I was about 10 years old on W, R, E, C, radio and television. He was working there. He lived in Memphis about the same time we did. Heard him on the campus station at Nacogdoches, Texas. Didn't meet him in person until the late 90s, and it was just an amazing collection of coincidences. And now, of course, we're good friends. Now he's now the announcer for our audio comic strip. So it's amazing how all that came about. Well, I Michael Hingson  09:16 I remember listening to sort of the last few years of oval radio. I think it was, I don't remember the date now, whether it's 57 or 50 I think it's 57 the Kingston Trio had come out with the song Tom Dooley, and one day I was listening to K and X radio in Los Angeles. We lived in Palmdale, and I heard something about a show called suspense that was going to play the story of Tom Dooley. And I went, sounds interesting, and I wanted to know more about it, so I listened. And that started a weekly tradition with me every Sunday, listening to yours truly Johnny dollar and suspense, and they had a little bit of the FBI and peace and war. Then it's went into half and that that went off and Have Gun Will Travel came on, and then at 630 was Gun Smoke. So I listened to radio for a couple of hours every week, not every Sunday night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. And so that's how I really started getting interested in it. Then after radio went off the air a few stations out in California and on the LA area started playing old radio shows somebody started doing because they got the syndicated versions of the shadow and Sherlock Holmes with Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson. And I still maintain to this day that John Gielgud is the best Sherlock Holmes. No matter what people say about Basil Rathbone and I still think Sir John Gielgud was the best Sherlock Holmes. He was very, very good. Yeah, he was and so listen to those. But you know, radio offers so much. And even with, with, with what the whole lemon Abner shows today. My only problem with the lemon Abner shows today is they don't last nearly long enough. But that's another story. Donnie Pitchford  11:11 Are you talking about the comic strip adaptation? Okay, you know how long, how much art I would have to 11:21 do every week. Michael Hingson  11:25 Oh, I know, but they're, they're fun, and, you know, we, we enjoy them, but so you So you met Joe, and as you said, He's the announcer. Now, which is, which is great, but what were you doing then when you met him? What kind of work were you doing at the time? Donnie Pitchford  11:45 Well, of course, there was a gap there of about, I guess, 15 years after college, before I met him. And what ended up happening my first teaching job was an art job, a teaching art and graphic arts at a small high school in Hawkins, Texas, and that was a disaster. Wasn't a wasn't a very good year for me. And so I left that, and I had worked in the printing industry, I went back to that, and that was all during the time that the National London Abner society was being formed. And so I printed their earliest newsletters, which came out every other month. And we started having conventions in MENA, Arkansas and in the real Pine Ridge and the my fellow ossifers As we we call ourselves, and you hear these guys every week on the lemon Abner comic strip. Sam Brown, who lives in Illinois, Tim Hollis, from Alabama. Tim is now quite a published author who would might be a good guest for you one day, sure. And just two great guys. We had a third officer early on named Rex riffle, who had to leave due to various illnesses about 1991 but we started having our conventions every year, starting in 1985 we had some great guests. We brought in everybody we could find who worked with lemon Abner or who knew lemon Abner. We had their their head writer, Roswell Rogers. We had actors, I'm sure you've heard of Clarence Hartzell. He was Ben withers, of course, on the Old Vic and Sade show. He was Uncle Fletcher. We had Willard Waterman, parley Bayer, some of their announcers, Wendell Niles. And my memory is going to start failing me, because there were so many, but we had Bob's, Watson, Louise curry, who were in their first two movies. We had Kay Lineker, who was in their third movie. The list goes on and on, but we had some amazing when did Chester lock pass away? He passed away? Well, Tuffy passed away first, 1978, 78 and Chet died in 1980 sad. Neither of them, yeah, we didn't get to media. Yeah, we didn't meet either one of them. I've met Mrs. Lock I've met all of chet's children, several grandchildren. We spoke to Mrs. Goff on the phone a time or two, and also, tuffy's got toughie's daughter didn't get to meet them in person, but we met as many of the family as we could. Michael Hingson  14:32 Still quite an accomplishment all the way around. And so you you taught. You didn't have success. You felt really much at first, but then what you taught for quite a while, though, Donnie Pitchford  14:45 didn't you? Yes, I went back to the printing industry for about a year, and in the summer of 85 about two weeks before school started, I had got a call that they needed someone to teach Broadcast Journalism at. Carthage High School, and we had a department called CHS TV. I ran that for 25 years. I taught classes. We produced a weekly television program, weekly radio program. We did all kinds of broadcasts for the school district and promotional video. And then in the last I think it was the last 10 years or so that I worked there, we started an old time radio show, and we were trying to come up with a title for it, and just as a temporary placeholder, we called it the golden age of radio. Finally, we said, well, let's just use that, and I think it's been used by other people since, but, but that was the title we came up with. I think in 19 I think it was in 93 or 9495 somewhere in there. We started out. We just ran Old Time Radio, and the students, I would have them research and introduce, like, maybe 45 minutes of songs, of music, you know, from the 30s, 40s, maybe early 50s, big band and Sinatra and Judy Garland and you name it. Then, when the classes would change, we would always start some type of radio program that was pre recorded that would fill that time, so the next class could come in and get in place and and everybody participated, and they went out live over our cable television channel, and we would just run a graphic of a radio and maybe have some announcements or listing of what we were playing. And we did that for several years, usually maybe two or three times a year. And then in I think it was 2004 or so, we had an offer from a low power FM station, which was another another county over, and we started doing a Sunday night, one hour program each week. And I think we ended up doing close to 300 of those before I left. And so we got old time radio in there, one way or the other. Michael Hingson  17:03 Well, I remember. I remember, for me, I went to UC Irvine in the fall of 1968 and by the spring the last quarter of my freshman year, I had started getting some old radio shows. So started playing shows, and then in the fall, I started doing a three hour show on Sunday night called the Radio Hall of Fame, and we did radio every night. And what I didn't know until, actually, fairly recently, was our mutual friend Walden Hughes actually listened to my show on Sunday, and so did the gas means actually, but, but we had a low power station as well, but it made it up, and so people listened to it. And I've always been proud of the fact that during the fact that during the time I ran the Radio Hall of Fame, I'd heard of this show called 60 minutes with a guy named Mike Wallace, but never got to see it. And then it was only much later that I actually ended up starting to watch 60 Minutes. Course, I always loved to say I would have loved to have met, met Mike Wallace and never got to do it, but I always said he had criminal tendencies. I mean, my gosh, what do you think he was the announcer on radio for the Green Hornet, a criminal show, right? Sky King, a lot of criminals. Clearly the guy. Anyway, I would have been fun to meet him, but, Donnie Pitchford  18:31 and his name was Myron. Myron Wallach at the time. Wallach, you're right. I think that's right. Michael Hingson  18:37 But it was, it was fun and and so I've actually got some Sky King shows and green Hornets with him. So it's, it's kind of cool, but Right? You know, I still really do believe that the value of radio is it makes you imagine more. I've seen some movies that I really like for that the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Kevin McCarthy back in 1955 I thought was such a good movie because they didn't show the plants taking over the humans. It was all left to your imagination, which was so cool, and they changed all that in the later remake of it with Leonard Nimoy, which I didn't think was nearly as good, not nearly as suspenseful. But anyway, that's just my opinion. But radio, for me was always a and continues to be a part of what I like to do. And so I've been collecting shows and and enjoying and, of course, listening to lemon Abner, So what made you decide to finally end teaching? Donnie Pitchford  19:38 Well, you know, I could only do that so long. I was getting I was getting very tired, getting kind of burned out, and I had to have a change. There's something had to change. And I was able to take a few years early and retire, and I still the whole time I had a. That it was like a haunting feeling. I, you know, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I would pray, you know, you know, Lord, is there some way can I, can I get out of this? And can I do what I really want to do? And I had some mentors that was finally able to meet people that I would write letters to as a kid, a cartoonist and comic book editor named George Wildman was one of them. He was nice enough to answer my letters when I was a kid, and I'd send him drawings, and he would encourage me, or he would send little corrections on there, you know. And another one was a gentleman named high Eisemann, who passed away recently at age 98 on his birthday, but men like this inspired me, and that it kept at me through the years. I finally met George in 1994 at a convention of the the international Popeye fan club. And I'm I'm at high the same way, and also a writer named Nicola Cuddy, who wrote some Popeye comics. I met him the same way, same event, we all became friends, and I had a good friend named Michael Ambrose of Austin, Texas, who published a magazine devoted to the Charlton Comics company. Sadly, he's deceased now, but Mike and I were talking before I retired, and finally I got out of it. And he said, now that you're out of that job, how would you like to do some art? I said, That's what I want to do. So he gave me the opportunity to do my first published work, which was a portrait of artist George Wildman. It was on the cover of a magazine called Charlton spotlight, then I did some work for Ben Omar, who is bear Manor media publisher for some books that he was doing. One was Mel Blanc biography that Noel blank wrote, did some illustrations for that. This was all happening in 2010 and after that. So I was getting it was getting rolling, doing the kind of work I really wanted to do. And there's a gentleman named Ethan nobles in Benton, Arkansas, who wanted to interview me. I'd gotten, I don't know how he I forgot how he got in touch with me. Maybe he heard me on yesterday USA could be wanted to interview me about London Abner. And so he was starting a website called first Arkansas news. And somewhere in early 2011 we were talking, and I said, you know, you want this to be an online newspaper, right? He said, Yes. I said, What about comics? He said, I hadn't thought about that. So I said, Well, you know, you're a big Lum and Abner fan. What if we could we do a Lum and Abner comic strip? He said, Well, who would Where would I get? Who would do? And I said, Me. So I drew up some proposals, I drew some model sheets, and we did about four weeks of strips, and got approval from Chester lock Jr, and he suggested there's some things he didn't like. He said, The lum looks too sinister. He looks mean. Well, he's mad. He said he's mad at Abner. This won't happen every week. He said, Okay, I don't want LOM to be I said, Well, you know, they get mad at each other. That's part of the that's the conflict and the comedy Michael Hingson  23:30 at each other. Yeah. Donnie Pitchford  23:33 So we, we ironed it all out, and we came up with a financial agreement, and had to pay royalties and one thing and another, and we started publishing online in June 2011, and about six weeks later, the MENA newspaper, the MENA star in MENA, Arkansas, which was the birthplace of Lyman, Abner, Chet Locke and Norris Goff, they picked it up, and then we had a few other newspapers pick it up. And you know, we're not, we're not worldwide, syndicated in print, but we're getting it out there. And of course, we're always online, but and the first Arkansas news went under three or four years later, and so now we have our own website, which is Lum and Abner comics.com so that's where you can find us Michael Hingson  24:24 online. So where's Pine Ridge? Donnie Pitchford  24:28 Pine Ridge is about 18 miles from Mena, Arkansas. MENA is in western Arkansas, and Pine Ridge is about 18 miles east, I believe I'm trying to picture it in my mind, but it's it's down the road, and it actually exists. It was a little community originally named for a postmaster. It was named waters, waters, Arkansas, and in 1936 the real. At cuddleston. He was a real person who owned a store there in waters, and was friends with the locks and the golfs with their parents, as well as Chet and Tuffy. But he proposed a publicity stunt and an actual change of name to name the community Pine Ridge. So that's how that happened. Michael Hingson  25:24 Now, in the original 15 minute episodes, who is the narrator? Donnie Pitchford  25:28 Well, it depends what era their first one trying to remember. Now, Gene Hamilton was an early announcer in the Ford days, which was the early 30s. We don't have anything recorded before that. Charles Lyon was one of the early announcers, possibly for for Quaker Oats. I don't have any notes on this in front of me. I'm just going on memory here. Memory at the end of a long week. Gene Hamilton was their Ford announcer. Carlton brickert announced the Horlicks malt and milk did the commercials when they 1934 to 38 or so. Lou Crosby took over when they were sponsored by General Foods, by post them, the post them commercials, and Lou stayed with them on into the Alka Seltzer era. And his daughter, the celebrity daughter, is Kathie Lee Crosby, you may remember, right, and she and her sister Linda, Lou were a couple of our guests at the National lemon Avenue society convention in 1996 I think let's see. Crosby was Gene Baker came after Crosby, and then in the 30 minute days, was Wendell Niles. Wendell Niles, yeah, in the CBS the 30 minute series and Wendell. We also had him in Mina, super nice guy when it came, when it got into the later ones, 1953 54 I don't remember that announcer's name. That's when they got into the habit of having Dick Huddleston do the opening narration, which is why we now have Sam Brown as Dick Huddleston doing that every week. Michael Hingson  27:27 So was it actually Dick Huddleston? No, it Donnie Pitchford  27:30 was North golf, tough. He always played the part of Dick Huddleston. Okay, the only, the only time that, as far as I know, the only time the real dick Huddleston was on network radio, was at that ceremony in Little Rock Arkansas, when they changed the name of the town that the real dick Huddleston spoke at that event. And we actually, we discovered a recording of that. I was just gonna ask if there's a recording of that there is. Yeah, it's on 12 inch, 78 RPM discs. Wow. And they were probably the personal discs of lock and golf, and they weren't even labeled. And I remember spinning that thing when Sam Brown and I after we found it, it was down in Houston, and we brought them a batch of discs back, and I remember spinning that thing and hearing the theme song being played, I said, this sounds like a high school band. And suddenly we both got chills because we had heard that. I don't know if it was the Little Rock High School band or something, but it's like, Can this be? Yes, it was. It was. We thought it was long lost, but it was that ceremony. Wow. So that was a great find. Michael Hingson  28:45 Well, hopefully you'll, you'll play that sometime, or love to get a copy, but, Donnie Pitchford  28:50 yeah, we've, we have we played it on yesterday, USA. Oh, okay, so it's out there. Michael Hingson  28:57 Well, that's cool. Well, yeah, I wondered if Dick Huddleston actually ever was directly involved, but, but I can, can appreciate that. As you said, Tuffy Goff was the person who played him, which was, that's still that was pretty cool. They were very talented. Go ahead, Donnie Pitchford  29:19 I was gonna say that's basically tough. He's natural speaking voice, yeah, when you hear him as Dick Huddleston, Michael Hingson  29:24 they're very talented people. They played so many characters on the show. They did and and if you really listen, you could tell, but mostly the voices sounded enough different that they really sounded like different people all the time. Donnie Pitchford  29:41 Well, the fun thing are the episodes where, and it's carefully written, but they will, they will do an episode where there may be seven or eight people in the room and they get into an argument, or they're trying to all talk at the same time, and you completely forget that it's only two guys, because they will overlap. Those voices are just so perfectly overlapped and so different, and then you stop and you listen. So wait a minute, I'm only hearing two people at a time, but the effect is tremendous, the fact that they were able to pull that off and fool the audience. Michael Hingson  30:15 I don't know whether I'd say fool, but certainly entertained. Well, yeah, but they also did have other characters come on the show. I remember, yes, Diogenes was that was a lot of fun listening to those. Oh yeah, yeah, that was Frank Graham. Frank Graham, right, right, but, but definitely a lot of fun. So you eventually left teaching. You decided you accepted jobs, starting to do cartoons. What were some of the other or what, well, what were some of the first and early characters that you cartooned, or cartoons that you created, Donnie Pitchford  30:50 just, you mean, by myself or Well, or with people, either way, I did some things that were not published, you know, just just personal characters that I came up with it would mean nothing to anybody, but a little bit later on, I did a little bit of I did a cover for a Popeye comic book. Maybe 10 years ago, I finally got a chance to work with George Wildman, who was the fellow I talked about earlier, and it was some of the last work he did, and this was with Michael Ambrose of Argo press out of Austin, Texas. And we did some early characters that had been published by Charlton Comics. They had, they had characters, they were, they were rip offs. Let's be honest. You know Harvey had Casper the Friendly Ghost. Well, Charlton had Timmy, the timid ghost. There, there was Mighty Mouse. Well, Charlton Comics had atomic mouse, so and there was an atomic rabbit. And Warner Brothers had Porky Pig. Charlton had pudgy pig, but that was some of George's earliest work in the 1950s was drawing these characters, and George was just he was a master Bigfoot cartoonist. I mean, he was outstanding. And so Mike said, let's bring those characters back. They're public domain. We can use them. So I wrote the scripts. George did the pencil art. Well, he inked the first few, but Mike had me do hand lettering, which I don't do that much. So it was that was a challenge. And my friend high Iseman taught lettering for years and years, and so I was thinking, high is going to see this? This has to be good. So I probably re lettered it three times to get it right, but we did the very last story we did was atomic rabbit and pudgy pig was a guest star, and then George's character named brother George, who was a little monk who didn't speak, who lived, lived in a monastery, and did good deeds and all that sort of thing. He was in there, and this was the last thing we did together. And George said, you know, since I've got these other projects, he said, Do you think you can, you can ink this? So that was a great honor to actually apply the inks over George's pencil work. And I also did digital color, but those were some things I worked on, and, oh, at one point we even had Lum and Abner in the Dick Tracy Sunday comic strip, and that was because of a gentleman named Mike Curtis, who was the writer who lived in Arkansas, was very familiar with Lum and Abner, and he got in touch with me and asked, this was in 2014 said, Would it be possible for me to use Lum and Abner in a Sunday cameo? So I contacted the locks. First thing they first thing Chet said was how much I said, I don't think they're going to pay us. I felt like, Cedric, we hunt, no mom, you know. And I felt like he was squire skimp at the time, yeah, but I said, it's just going to be really good publicity. So he finally went for it, and Lum and Abner had a cameo in a Sunday Dick Tracy comic strip, and about four years later, they honored me. This was Mike Curtis, the writer, and Joe Staton, the artist, who was another guy that I grew up reading from as a teenager, just a tremendous artist, asked if they could base a character on me. And I thought, what kind of murderer is he going to be? You know, it was going to be idiot face or what's his name, you know. So no, he was going to be a cartoonist, and the name was Peter pitchblende. Off, and he was, he said his job was to illustrate a comic strip about a pair of old comedians. So, I mean, who couldn't be honored by that? Yeah, so I don't remember how long that story lasted, but it was an honor. I mean, it was just great fun. And then then I had a chance to write two weeks of Dick Tracy, which was fun. I wrote the scripts for it and and then there's some other things. I was able to work with John rose, a tremendously nice guy who is the current artist on Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. We did a story, a comic book story, on Barney Google on Snuffy Smith in a magazine called Charleton spotlight, and I did the colors, digital coloring for that. So just these are just great honors to me to get to work with people like that. And Nick Cuddy, I did some inking, lettering coloring on some of his work. So just great experience, and Michael Hingson  36:02 great people, going back to atomic rabbit and pudgy pig, no one ever got in trouble with, from Warner Brothers with that, huh? Donnie Pitchford  36:09 Well, not, not on atomic rabbit, however, pudgy pig created a problem because George was doing some art, and I think somebody from Warner Brothers said he looks too much like Porky, so the editor at the time said, make one of his ears hang down, make him look a little different. But pudgy didn't last long. Pudgy was only around maybe two or three issues of the comic book, so, but yeah, that's George. Said they did have some trouble with that. Michael Hingson  36:44 Oh, people, what do you do? Yeah, well, I know you sent us a bunch of photos, and we have some of the Dick Tracy ones and others that people can go see. But what? What finally got you all to start the whole lemon Abner society. Donnie Pitchford  37:07 Oh, well, that goes back to 1983 right, and I'll go back even farther than that. I told you that my dad had mentioned lemon Abner to me as a kid. Dr Joe Oliver played a 15 minute lemon Abner show on KSA you at Stephen F Austin State University. That got me. I was already into old time radio, but it was the next summer 1981 there's a radio station, an am station in Gilmer, Texas Christian radio station that started running Lum and Abner every day. First it was 530 in the evening, and then I think they switched it to 1215 or so. And I started listening, started setting up my recorder, recording it every day. And a friend of mine named David Miller, who was also a radio show collector, lived in the Dallas area, I would send them to him, and at first he wasn't impressed, but then suddenly he got hooked. And when he got hooked, he got enthusiastic. He started making phone calls. He called Mrs. Lock chet's widow and talked to her. He spoke to a fellow who had written a number of articles, George Lily, who was an early proponent or an early promoter of lemon Abner, as far as reruns in the 1960s and it was through George Lilly that I was put in touch with Sam Brown in Dongola, Illinois, and because he had contacted Mr. Lilly as well. And before long, we were talking, heard about this guy named Tim Hollis. Sam and I met in Pine Ridge for lemon Abner day in 1982 for the first time, and hit it off like long lost friends and became very good friends. And then in 84 I believe it was Sam and Tim and Rex riffle met again, or met for the first time together, I guess in Pine Ridge. And I wasn't there that time. But somehow, in all of that confusion, it was proposed to start the national lemon Abner society, and we started publishing the Jot them down journal in the summer of 1984 Michael Hingson  39:43 and for those who don't know the Jotham down journal, because the store that lemon Abner ran was the Jotham down store anyway, right? Donnie Pitchford  39:50 Go ahead, yes. And that was Tim's title. Tim created the title The Jotham down journal, and we started publishing and started seeking information. And it started as just a simple photocopy on paper publication. It became a very slick publication. In 1990 or 91 Sam started recording cassettes, reading the journals, because we were hearing from Blind fans that said, you know, I enjoy the journal. I have to have somebody read it to me. This is before screen readers. And of course, you know this technology better than I do, but before any type of technology was available, and Sam said, Well, I'll tell you. I'll just start reading it on tape and I'll make copies. Just started very simply, and from then on, until the last issue in in 2007 Sam would record a cassette every other month, or when we went quarterly, four times a year, and he would mail those to the the blind members, who would listen to those. And sometimes they would keep them, and sometimes they would return them for Sam to recycle. But incidentally, those are all online now, Michael Hingson  41:03 yeah, I've actually looked at a few of those. Those are kind of fun. So the London Avenue society got formed, and then you started having conventions. Donnie Pitchford  41:14 Yes, yes. First convention was in 1985 and we did a lot of things with we would do recreations. We would do a lot of new scripts, where, if we had someone that we got to the point where we would have people that hadn't worked with lemon Abner. So we would have lemon Abner meet the great Gildersleeve. Actually, Willard had worked on the lumen Abner half hour show at some point. I believe les Tremain had never worked directly with them, but he was well, he was in some Horlicks malted milk commercials in the 1930s and of course, the Lone Ranger was never on the London Abner show and vice versa, until we got hold of it. So we had Fred Foy in 1999 and he agreed to be the announcer, narrator and play the part of the Lone Ranger. So we did Lum and Abner meet the Lone Ranger, which was a lot of fun. We had parley bear, so Lum and Abner met Chester of Gun Smoke. And those were just a lot of fun to do. And Tim, Tim would write some of them, I would write some of them, or we would collaborate back and forth to come up with these scripts. Did love and amner, ever meet Superman? No, we never got to that. That would have been great. Yeah, if we could have come up with somebody who had played Superman, that would have been a lot of fun. We had lemon Abner meet Kathie Lee Crosby as herself. Yeah, they met Frank brazzi One time. That must be fun. It was a lot of fun. We had some people would recreate the characters. We had the lady who had played Abner's daughter, Mary Lee Rob replay. She played that character again, 50 years later, coming back home to see, you know, to see family. Several other things, we had London Abner meet Gumby one time. Of all things, we had Dow McKinnon as a guest. And we had Kay Lineker come back and reprise one of her roles, the role she played in the London Abner movie. Bob's Watson did that as well. Some years we didn't have a script, which I regret, but we had other things going on. We had anniversaries of London Abner movies that we would play. So whatever we did, we tailored it around our guest stars, like Dick Beals, Sam Edwards, Roby Lester, gee whiz. I know I'm leaving people out. Michael Hingson  43:52 Well, that's okay, but, but certainly a lot of fun. What? Yes, what? Cartoonist really influenced you as a child? Donnie Pitchford  44:01 Oh, wow. I would say the first thing I saw that got my attention was the Flintstones on on prime time television, you know, the Hanna Barbera prime time things certainly Walt Disney, the animation that they would run, that he would show, and the behind the scenes, things that would be on the Disney show, things like almost almost anything animated as a kid, got my attention. But Walter Lance, you know, on the Woody Woodpecker show used to have, he'd have little features about how animation was done, and that that inspired me, that that just thrilled me. And I read Fred lachel's Snuffy Smith Chester Gould's Dick Tracy. Tracy, which that was a that's why the Dick Tracy connection, later was such a big deal for me. Almost anything in the Sunday comics that was big. Foot. In other words, the cartoony, exaggerated characters are called, sometimes called Bigfoot, Bigfoot cartooning, or Bigfoot characters. Those were always the things I looked for, Bugs Bunny, any of the people that worked on those some were anonymous. And years later, I started learning the names of who drew Popeye, you know, like LZ seagar, the originator, or bud sagendorf or George Wildman, and later high eysman. But people like that were my heroes. Later on, I was interested in I would read the Batman comics, or I would see Tarzan in the newspaper. I admired the work of Russ Manning. Michael Hingson  45:49 Do you know the name Tom Hatton? Yes, I do. Yeah. Yes. Tom did Popeye shows on KTLA Channel Five when I was growing up, and he was famous for, as he described it, squiggles. He would make a squiggle and he would turn it into something. And he was right on TV, which was so much fun. Donnie Pitchford  46:09 We had a guy in Memphis who did the same thing. His name was, he's known as Captain Bill, C, A, P, you know, Captain Bill. And he did very much the same thing. He'd have a child come up, I think some, in some cases, they're called drools. Is one word for them. There was a yeah, in Tim hollis's area, there was cousin Cliff Holman who did that. And would he might have a kid draw a squiggle, and then he would create something from it right there on the spot, a very similar type of thing, or a letter of the alphabet, or your initials, that sort Michael Hingson  46:43 of thing. Yeah. Tom did that for years. It was fun. Of course, I couldn't see them, but he talked enough that I knew what was going on. It's kind of fun. My brother loved them, yeah? So later on, when you got to be a teenager and beyond what cartoonist maybe influenced you more? Donnie Pitchford  47:03 Well, I would have to say George, probably because I was corresponding with him, right? Also, I would see the work of Carl Barks, who created Uncle Scrooge McDuck and the Donald Duck comics and all that. His stuff was all in reprint at that time, he was still living, but I didn't know he could be contacted. I didn't try to write to it, right? Years later, years later, I did get an autograph, which was, was very nice. But those people, a lot of people, Neil Adams, who did Batman, the guys at Charlton Comics, Steve Ditko, who was the CO creator of spider man, but he had a disagreement with Stan Lee, and went back to Charlton Comics and just turned out 1000s of pages, but his work was was inspirational. Another was Joe Staton, who was working at Charleton comics, who I got to work with on several projects later on, and I would say just all of those guys that I was reading at the time. Pat Boyette was another Charlton artist. I tend to gravitate toward the Charlton company because their artists weren't contained in a house style. They were allowed to do their own style. They didn't pay as much. But a lot of them were either older guys that said, I'm tired of this, of the DC Marvel system. I want to just, you know, have creative freedom. Charlton said, come on. And so they would work there and less stress, less money, probably one guy named Don Newton started there and became a legend in the industry at other companies. So I found all of those guys inspiring, and I felt I could learn from all of them. Michael Hingson  48:59 Well, you always wanted to be a cartoonist. Did you have any other real career goals, like, was teaching a goal that you wanted to do, or was it just cartooning it? Donnie Pitchford  49:07 Well, it was just a secondary, you know, as I said, when I started, I thought, I'll just do that for a few years. You know, I didn't know it was going to be like 27 but I we had a lot of success. We had, I had some student groups that would enter video competitions. And for 20 straight years, we placed either first, second or third in state competition with one Summit, one entry, another or another every year. And that was notable. I mean, I give the kids the credit for that. But then about five or six of those years, we had what we call state championship wins, you know, we were like the number one project in the state of Texas. So, you know, we had some great success, I think, in that so a lot of years there, I really, you know, that was a blessing to me. Was that career, you. Well, it just, it just got to be too much time for change. After a while, Michael Hingson  50:05 was art just a talent that you had, and cartoon drawing a talent you had, or, I don't remember how much you said about did you have any real special training as such? Donnie Pitchford  50:14 Well, all of my training was, I just couldn't afford to go to a specialized school. You know, at one time, the Joe Kubert School opened just about the time I graduated high school, it was in New Jersey. I just couldn't make that happen, so I went to state colleges and universities and did the best I could. I took commercial art classes, drawing classes, design classes, even ceramics, which came in very handy when I did some sculpting here in the last eight or nine years and worked as an assistant to a sculptor named Bob harness who lives here in Carthage, but I never had any actual comic strip slash comic book training, so I learned as much of that as I could from guys like George wild. And then after I started the lemon Avenue comic strip, an artist named Joe, named Jim Amish, who worked for Marvel, did a lot of work for the Archie Comics. And tremendous anchor is his. He's really a tremendous anchor, and does a lot of ink work over other artists pencils. Jim would call and say, he said, I want to give you some advice. I'm like, okay, at 3am he's still giving me advice. So I'd go around for two or three days feeling like a failure, but then I would, I would think about all the lessons, you know, that he had told me. And so I learned a lot from Jim and tremendous, tremendous guy. And I would listen to what high, sometimes high would call up and say, Why did you use that purple beg your pardon. So it was fun. I mean, those fellows would share with me, and I learned a great deal from those guys. Michael Hingson  52:11 Are you in any way passing that knowledge on to others today? Donnie Pitchford  52:16 I don't know that I am. I've had an offer or two to do some teaching. I just don't know if I'm if I'm going to get back into that or not. Yeah, I'm so at this point, focused on, quote, unquote, being a cartoonist and trying to make that, that age five dream, a reality, that I'm not sure I'm ready to do that again. And you know, I'm not, I'm not 21 anymore. Michael Hingson  52:45 I didn't know whether you were giving advice to people and just sort of informally doing it, as opposed to doing formal teaching. Donnie Pitchford  52:51 Well, informally, yes, I mean, if anybody asks, you know, I'll be glad to share whatever I can. But yeah, I'm not teaching any classes at this point. Michael Hingson  53:01 Well, you have certainly taken lemon Abner to interesting places in New Heights. One, one thing that attracted me and we talked about it before, was in 2019, lemon Abner in Oz. That was fun. Donnie Pitchford  53:17 Well, the credit for that goes to Tim Hollis. Tim wrote that as a short story years ago when he was first interested in lemon Abner. And I don't know if he ever had that published through the International oz society or not. I don't remember, but Tim later turned that into a radio script when we had a batch of guests. This was in 2001 we had, let's see Sam Edwards, Dick Beals, Roby Lester and Rhoda Williams. And each of them had done something related to Oz, either the children's records or storybook records or animation or something. They were involved somewhere in some type of Oz adaptation. So Tim turned his short story into a radio script that we performed there at the convention. So that was a lot of fun. And then he suggested, Why don't I turn that into a comic strip story? So that's what we did. But that was fun, yeah, and we used the recordings of those people because they had given us permission, you know, to use a recording however we saw fit. The only problem is we had a mistake. The fellow that was running the sound had a dead mic and didn't know it. Oh, gosh. So some of them are bit Off mic in that audio, but we did the best. I did the best I could Michael Hingson  54:40 with it's it sounded good. I certainly have no complaints. 54:45 Thank you for that. Michael Hingson  54:47 I I said no complaints at all. I think it was really fun and very creative. And it's kind of really neat to see so much creativity in terms of all the stuff that that you do. As a cartoonist, me having never seen cartoons, but I learned intellectually to appreciate the talent that goes into it. And of course, you guys do put the scripts together every week, which is a lot of fun to be able to listen to them well. Donnie Pitchford  55:17 And that's what that was, the audience I hoped that we would would tap into right there and it, it was guys like you that would would talk to me and say, What am I going to do? You know, I can't see it. So that's why the audio idea came about. And it's taken on a life of its own, really. And we've got Mark Ridgway, who has created a lot of musical cues for us that we use and Michael Hingson  55:45 who plays the organ? Donnie Pitchford  55:47 That's Mark Ridgway. It is Mark, okay, yes, yes. And it's actually digital, I'm sure. I think it's a digital keyboard, Michael Hingson  55:55 yeah, but it is. It's a, it's a really good sounding one, though. Donnie Pitchford  55:59 Yes, yes. There are a few cues that I did, which probably are the ones that don't sound so good, like if we ever need really bad music. If you remember the story we did, and I don't remember the name of it, what do we call it anyway? Lum tries to start a soap opera. Think this was about a year ago. Yeah, and Cedric is going to play, I don't remember it was an organ or a piano, and I don't remember what he played, but whatever it was, I think was Mary Had Michael Hingson  56:32 a Little Lamb, Mary's, Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano. Sort of kind played. Donnie Pitchford  56:35 It was played very badly, well that, yes, it was on purpose. When mom plays lum tries to play the saxophone. That was me, and I hadn't played this. I used to play the sax. In fact, I played in a swing orchestra here in Carthage, Texas for about five years back in from the early 90s. And so I had this idea, and I hadn't played the horn probably since, probably in 20 years, and his. So I got it out, and I thought, you know, it's gonna sound terrible because it needs maintenance, but it doesn't matter. It's lump playing it, so I got to play really badly. Michael Hingson  57:14 It was perfect. It was perfect, Donnie Pitchford  57:16 yeah, because it had to sound bad. Michael Hingson  57:19 How do y'all create all these different plots. I remember so many, like the buzzard, you know, and, oh yeah, that was fun. And so many. How do you come up with those? Donnie Pitchford  57:28 Well, I used to get some really good ideas while mowing the yard. Don't ask me, why? Or I get ideas. I get ideas in the weirdest thing, weirdest places. Sometimes I have ideas in the shower. You know, I said, I better write this down. Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, but there the ideas just come to me. Yeah? The buzzard was fun. I'd had that one. Pretty creative. Yeah, the one about, the one about, let me see. Oh, there was one we did, where wasn't the buzzard? What was that other one? I called the Whisper? Yeah, there was a strange voice that was coming lum thought it was coming from his radio. And he turns his radio off, and He still hears it, and it was a villain who had somehow hypnotized everyone so that they wouldn't see him and he would use his voice only. And then there's a character I came up with, and let me see Larry Gasman played it, and I called him Larry John Walden, and he was the only guy he was blind. He was the only guy that wasn't hypnotized because he couldn't see the you know, I use the old thing about the watch in front of the eyes. I mean, he was the only guy that wasn't hypnotized, so he wasn't fooled by the whisper, and he could track him, because his hearing was so acute that he was able to find him. In fact, I think he could hear his watch ticking or something like that. So he was the hero of that piece. But, well, I just, I just think up ideas and write them down. Tim Hollis has written some of the scripts, maybe three or four for me, I've adapted some scripts that London Abner did that were never broadcast or that were never recorded. Rather, I've adapted a few, written several, and I keep saying, Well, when I completely run out of ideas, I'll just have to quit. Michael Hingson  59:32 Well, hopefully that never happens. What? What are your future plans? Donnie Pitchford  59:38 Well, right now, there's nothing major in the works other than just maintaining the strip, trying to continue it, trying to make it entertaining, and hopefully doing a little work on the website and getting it into the hands of more people. And I'd like to increase. Least newspaper coverage, if at all possible. And because this thing doesn't, you know, it's got to pay for itself somehow. So you know, I'm not getting rich by any means. But you know, I want to keep it fun. I want to keep having fun with it. Hopefully people will enjoy it. Hopefully we can reach younger readers, listeners, and hopefully lemon Abner can appeal to even younger audiences yet, so that we can keep those characters going. Michael Hingson  1:00:29 Yeah, there's so much entertainment there. I hope that happens now in the the life of Donnie Pitchford. Is there a wife and kids? Donnie Pitchford  1:00:40 Yes, there's a wife of almost 40 years. We unfortunately don't have any children. We've almost feel like we adopted several children all the years we were teaching. We we've adopted several cats along the way. And so, you know, we've had cats as pets for almost ever, since we were married. But that's she's, she's great, you know, she's, she's been my best friend and supporter all these years. And we were members of first Methodist Church here in Carthage, Texas, and doing some volunteer work there, and helping to teach Sunday school, and very involved and active in that church. Michael Hingson  1:01:19 So I have a cat, and I hear her outside, not outside the house, but outside the the office here, she wants me to go feed her, and we, we shaved her yesterday because her hair gets long and Matt's very easily. So she got shaved yesterday. So she's probably seeking a little vengeance from that too, but, but my wife and I were married 40 years. She passed away in November of 2022 so it's me and stitch the cat and Alamo the dog, and Karen is monitoring us somewhere. And as I tell everyone, I've got to continue to be a good kid, because if I'm not, I'm going to hear about it. So I got to be good. But it's a lot of fun. Well, I want to thank you for being with us today. This has been a lot of fun. I've learned a lot, but it's just been great to have another podcast talking about old radio shows. And you said again, if people want to reach out, they can go to lemon Abner comics.com if people want to talk to you about doing any kind of cartooning or anything like that. What's the best way they can do that? Donnie Pitchford  1:02:24 Well, they can go to the London Abner dot lumen, Abner comics.com website, and there's a contact a link right there at the top of the page. So yeah, they can contact me through that. Probably that's the easiest way to do it. Michael Hingson  1:02:37 Okay, well, I want to thank you again for being here, and I want to thank all y'all out there. That's how they talk in Texas, right? It's all y'all for everybody. Donnie Pitchford  1:02:46 Well, some of them do, and some of them in Arkansas do too. Well, yeah. Michael Hingson  1:02:49 And then there's some who don't, yeah, y'all means everything, and it Speaker 1  1:02:54 don't, yeah, I don't think squire skimp says it that way. Michael Hingson  1:02:58 Well, Squire, you know, whatever it takes. But I want to thank you all for being here, and please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening or watching the podcast. Donnie would appreciate it. I would appreciate it, and also give us a review. We'd love to get your reviews, so please do that. If you can think of anyone else who ought to be a guest, and I think Donnie has already suggested a few. So Donnie as well, anyone else who ought to come on the podcast, we'd love it. Appreciate you introducing us, and you know, we'll go from there. And I know at some point in the future, the Michael hingson Group Inc is going to be a sponsor, because we've started that process for lemon. Abner, yes, thank you. Thank you. So I want to, I want to thank love and Squire for that 1:03:45 years. Well, it's been my pleasure. Michael Hingson  1:03:50 Well, thank you all and again, really, seriously, Donnie, I really appreciate you being here. This has been a lot of fun. So thank you for coming. Donnie Pitchford  1:03:58 Thank you. It's been a great honor. I've appreciated it very much. Michael Hingson  1:04:06 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

GP opens on the Grizzlies getting blasted by the Warriors last night + Darius Acuff looking the part of a lottery pick in Arkansas' win. (22:50) Mike Wallace joins to talk Grizz and more(56:50) Memphis v Wichita State tonight, UCONN blasts St. John's, Cincy suing former QB, Cardi B went crazy on SNL set, and Metallica is coming to the Sphere. (1:46:40) GP's Carry Out 

GP opens on a fun night of College Hoops where potential lottery picks Darius Acuff, AJ Dybansta, Labaron Philon and more all went big + the Darryn Peterson saga got weirder at Kansas as he checked himself out of a game again. (22:40) Mike Wallace joins to talk Grizzlies return to action, draft prospects, Ja and more(46:50) Memphis at USF tonight, KD addresses burner accounts, Flagg jersey sells for $1M, LaMelo can't stop driving like a madman, and the former Prince Andrew was arrested in the UK(1:20:00) GP's Carry Out 

It's an Olympic Friday with Hoch, Crowder, and Jimmy as Team USA faces Italy in Women's Hockey during the show. We're also excited for the Miami Hurricanes Baseball season opener against Lehigh tonight and this weekend, with an announcement about the Mark Light shake for this weekend. Plus, Clay Ferraro, Ben Volin, and Mike Wallace join the program, along with more.

GP opens on the Grizzlies losing at Denver to finish the road trip 1-4 plus the breaking news that Jaren Jaackson Jr will have a knee procedure and miss the remainder of the season(22:20) Mike Wallace joins to continue the Grizz discussion(46:38) Big game for Memphis at North Texas tonight, Jerome Tang goes off on his team, Basketball Hall of Fame, BYU Football Star Arrested, RIP James Van Der Beek(1:32:30) GP's Carry Out with what we're checking out this weekend 

Kaboly had some bad moments with James Harrison and Mike Wallace. Joe recalls Ben calling Todd Haley's offense a pop-gun offense. Mark and Joe share their Myron Cope stories. Should the Steelers take Ty Simpson in the first round? He doesn't think the Steelers should sign Malik Willis. Joe is more interested in Willis than Aaron Rodgers.

Featuring announcer, Mike Wallace. Guest Jack Owens, and the usual gang including Dorothy Shea, Spike Jones, and the City Slickers. Spike kicks off with, Alabamie Bound. Dorothy talks to Spike…

GP opens on the Grizzlies dropping their 4th straight last night in a loss to the Charlotte Hornets. (20:00) Mike Wallace joins to continue the Grizzlies discussion and what's next as we approach the trade deadline. (40:00) Memphis looks to snap losing streak tonight vs FAU, LeBron gets emotional in his return to Cleveland, Wemby goes big again, Australian Open, National Film Registry Announces new members. (1:10:00) GP's Carry Out with what we're checking out tonight 

GP opens on the Grizz loss to the Hawks last night and our thoughts on the final possession + Ja Morant's postgame comments on the loss. (24:30) Mike Wallace joins to continue the Grizzlies discussion and his thoughts on the future of Ja with the franchise. (46:50) Memphis Basketball collapsed down the stretch at Tulsa last night, Derrick Rose is getting his jersey retired, Undefeated CBB Teams, Bills owner on Keon Coleman, and the Oscar Nominees have been announced. (1:28:00) GP's Carry Out

Spike's guest is the Sinatra of the Steinway, Jan August. Mike Wallace introduces Spike Jones and his City Slickers as they play, No, No Nora. Dorothy Shea, the blonde Park…

GP opens on the Grizzlies loss to the Suns last night and Dillon Brooks postgame comments(27:13) Mike Wallace joins to continue the Grizz discussion and look ahead to a big week for the team ahead of the NBA International Games(50:30) Ole Miss v Miami tonight in the CFP Semifinals, Memphis Football has their QB, Big time college hoops in Nashville last night, Arkansas looks like a Final four contender, and Roku CEO has big prediction on the future of AI (1:22:00) GP's Carry Out 

This episode was originally released on 1/1/2021. While new episodes of Breaking Walls are on hiatus I'll be going back and posting the older episodes. ____________ In Breaking Walls episode 111 we resume our mini-series in January of 1949. CBS is now the nation's number one network, and NBC is left to come up with programming answers. We'll focus on the shows they launched in the spring and summer of 1949. —————————— Highlights: • Jack Benny: Now on CBS • First The News • Network Radio Opens 1949 with Record Earnings • John Wayne, Claire Trevor, John Ford, and Ward Bond Open The NBC Theater • David Sarnoff and the Mass NBC Exodus • It's the Martin and Lewis Show! • Alan Young and Henry Morgan • Richard Diamond • Jack Webb Launches Dragnet • Fred Allen Finally Has Enough • William Conrad, The Killers, and The Four Star Playhouse • Dangerous Assignment • San Francisco's YUkon 3-8309 Lady Detective • Looking Ahead to the Fall of 1949 —————————— The WallBreakers: http://thewallbreakers.com Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts. To support the show: http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers —————————— The reading material used in today's episode was: • On the Air — By John Dunning • Network Radio Ratings, 1932-53 — By Jim Ramsburg As well as articles from: • Billboard Magazine • Broadcasting Magazine • Radio Daily —————————— On the interview front: • Virginia Gregg, Lurene Tuttle, Herb Vigran, Mike Wallace, Don Wilson were with Chuck Schaden. Hear their full chats at SpeakingOfRadio.com. • Parley Baer, Lilian Buyeff, Herb Ellis, Betty Lou Gerson, Virginia Gregg, and Peggy Webber were with SPERDVAC. For more information, go to SPERDVAC.com • Arnold Stang was with Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC's The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these at Goldenage-WTIC.org. • Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin were with Cedric Adams • Fred Allen was on Tex and Jinx • Donald Vorhees was interviewed for Allen's Biography In Sound • Jack Kruschen was with Jim Bohannon • John Dehner was with Neil Ross • William Conrad was with Chris Lambesis • E. Jack Neuman was with John Dunning • Frank Sinatra was with Walter Cronkite —————————— Selected music featured in today's episode was: • Takin' A Chance on Love — By Helen Forrest • The Pavane — By Steve Erquiaga • Lenore Overture Number 3 — By Ludwig Van Beethoven • And Fly Me To The Moon — By Frank Sinatra

GP opens on the Grizzlies getting a big road win in Minnesota last night against the Timberwolves and Jaren Jackson Jr continuing his strong play. (21:00) Mike Wallace joins to continue the Grizz discussion (40:00) Memphis MBB loses to Vanderbilt in OT, CFB coaches on how they think the playoff will unfold, Knicks won't hang a banner, Chicago Bears considering move to Indiana, and Mahomes expected to be back early next season(1:04:00) GP's Carry Out 

GP opens on Charles Huff being introduced as Head Coach of the Memphis Football program yesterday and his thoughts from the press conference. (27:00) Mike Wallace joins to talk Grizzlies and more(51:00) Sherrone Moore fired at Michigan for inappropriate relationship with staffer, Phillip Rivers speaks on his return to the NFL, another CBB player is caught up in a gambling scandal, Pete Alonzo is an Oriole, and Taylor Swift tells which of her songs is her favorite. (1:46:00) GP's Carry Out 

It's another installment of the Spotlight Revue. With announcer Mike Wallace, Spike Jones and the City Slickers, and Dorothy Shey the Park Avenue Hillbilly. Spike starts out with, Running Wild.…

He's been working in AI since the late 1970s, and started a pioneering machine learning hedge fund in the 1990s. Now he's a professor, a podcaster, a Substacker, a yoda -- and has just written a cracking book on the subject. Vasant Dhar joins Amit Varma in episode 432 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss the life and times of AI through the life and times of Vasant Dhar. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Vasant Dhar on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Scholar and NYU Stern. 2. Thinking With Machines: The Brave New World of AI -- Vasant Dhar. 3. Brave New World -- Vasant Dhar's podcast. 4. Vasant Dhar's Brave New World on Substack. 5. Brave New World — Episode 203 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vasant Dhar). 6. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley. 7. Death of a Salesman -- Arthur Miller. 8. Aldous Huxley interviewed by Mike Wallace. 9. Anil Seth On The Science of Consciousness – Episode 94 of Brave New World. 10. How the Mind Works -- Steven Pinker. 11. Anthony Zador on How our Brains Work — Episode 35 of Brave New World. 12. The Naked Sun -- Isaac Asimov. 13. Human and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare — Episode 4 of Brave New World (w Eric Topol). 14. Daniel Kahneman on How Noise Hampers Judgement — Episode 21 of Brave New World. 15. The Nature of Intelligence — Episode 7 of Brave New World (w Yann LeCun). 16. Philip Tetlock on the Art of Forecasting — Episode 31 of Brave New World. 17. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction — Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner. 18. "When you control the mail..." -- Clip from Seinfeld. 19. The Future of Liberal Education — Episode 11 of Brave New World (w Michael S Roth). 20. The Surface Area of Serendipity -- Episode 39 of Everything is Everything. 21. When Should We Trust Machines? -- Vasant Dhar's TEDx talk from 2018. 22. From Strength to Strength -- Arthur Brooks. 23. The Innovator's Dilemma -- Clayton Christensen. 24. Raghu Sundaram on Building a Great University -- Episode 88 of Brave New World. 25. Power and Prediction -- Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb. 26. The Paperclip Maximiser. 27. The Wealth of Nations -- Adam Smith. 28. The Theory of Moral Sentiments -- Adam Smith. 29. Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister — Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay. 30. Aswath Damodaran on Investing — Episode 33 of Brave New World. 31. The Damodaran Bot. 32. Dmitry Rinberg on the Mysteries of Smell — Episode 62 of Brave New World. 33. Alex Wiltschko on the Sense of Smell — Episode 81 of Brave New World. 34. Sandeep Robert Datta on Smell and the Brain -- Episode 90 of Brave New World. 35. Alex Wiltschko on Digitizing Scent -- Episode 97 of Brave New World. 36. A Billion Wicked Thoughts -- Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam. 37. Being You: A New Science of Consciousness -- Anil Seth. 38. Noise -- Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein. 39. Thinking, Fast and Slow -- Daniel Kahneman. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Amit Varma runs a course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here. Amit and Ajay Shah also bring out a weekly YouTube show, Everything is Everything. Have you watched it yet? You must! And have you read Amit's newsletter? Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: 'The Mage' by Simahina.

It's another installment of the Spotlight Revue. With announcer Mike Wallace, Spike Jones and the City Slickers, and Dorothy Shey the Park Avenue Hillbilly. Spike starts out with, Running Wild.…

GP opens on the Grizzlies looking to snap their 5 game losing streak tonight vs the lowly Sacramento Kings(15:00) Mike Wallace joins to continue the Grizzlies discussion(36:10) Memphis MBB takes on #1 Purdue in the Bahamas, big top 5 matchup in college hoops last night, Lane Kiffin/coaching carousel, MLB coming to Netflix, movie rentals are back!(1:08:55) GP's Carry Out 

GP opens on the Grizzlies 131-95 loss in Boston last night where the defense looked the worst it has looked all season. And will the return of Zach Edey be enough to turn things around? (20:20) Mike Wallace joins from Boston to continue the Grizzlies discussion(48:40) Luka comments on Nico Harrison's firing, Jokic goes big last night, RIP to the Penny, and a fun night of College Hoops on tap. (1:18:50) GP's Carry Out 

GP opens on Ja Morant hitting a game winner in Phoenix last night to improve the Grizzlies record to 3-2. Plus another big showing from Cedric Coward has us asking when he'll be in the starting lineup.(24:33) Mike Wallace joins to continue the Grizzlies discussion(45:40) Blue Jays takes a commanding lead in the World Series, Louisiana Governer says the President will make the hire on the next LSU coach, NCAA says punishment coming if NIL deals not reported properly, and Memphis Basketball takes on Auburn tonight. (1:17:18) GP's Carry Out 

As a bonus episode, we are sharing a timely conversation for local leaders about the month-long federal government shutdown. NLC's Mike Wallace, Legislative Director for Community and Economic Development, joined Todd Glover and Erica Wright from the Municipal Association of South Carolina on their podcast, SCDC. Together, they discuss how we got to this point, the impacts of delaying a funding bill and what local elected officials can expect as they continue leading their communities.For more information, visit us at nlc.org.

PVAMU Coach Tremaine Jackson. BOXTOROW host Donal Ware talks with Prairie View A&M head football coach Tremaine Jackson as he talks about the possibility of being up for the UAB head job and what how HBCU football coaches are perceived. Donal speaks about how HBCU Media entities are treated and perceived. Mike Wallace, senior editor […]

In hour three, a look at the NFL Week 8 slate. Tyreek Hill opens up about his NFL future and it sounds like he's contemplating retirement. Plus, NBA and Grizzlies analyst, Mike Wallace, makes his return to the show to discuss the chaotic Rozier / Billups saga and previews tonight's Heat-Grizzlies game.

FOOTBALL FRIDAY? Can McDaniel, Tua and the Dolphins right the ship Sunday? Chris Perkins joins the show to preview the game. Importance of winning the MLS playoffs for Messi's legacy with Chris Wittyngham. Plus, Mike Wallace, makes his return to the show to discuss the chaotic Rozier / Billups saga and previews tonight's Heat-Grizzlies game.

(3:00) Ja Morant scores 35 in Grizzlies win over the Pelicans in the Home Opener, Cedric Coward has a big debut, and why GP likes Tuomas Iisalo's philiosophy when players get in foul trouble. (20:00) Mike Wallace joins to continue the Grizzlies discussion(40:00) GP spoke with college coaches at Big 12 Media Day about this new development of schools recruiting players from the G-League, Tony Vitello hired by the Giants, airport divorces: good or bad? and Joe Flacco is a man of the people.(1:19:25) GP's Carry Out 

This week we're discussing every album by Women. From Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Women are a right-down-the-middle-split between indie garage rock and noisy prog rock, with almost nothing in the middle. Made up of Patrick Flegel (guitar, vocals), Matt Flegel (bass, vocals), Mike Wallace (drums), and Christopher Reimer (guitar). The band struggled in their existence, despite their acclaimed second album, Public Strain and broke up due to an onstage fight. Reimer tragically died unexpectedly two years later.   Intro 00:00 Mike and Alex Mourn D'Angelo 13:07 Band Overview 20:28 Self-Titled 22:46 Public Strain 41:04 Rarities 2007-2010 1:10:23 Outro 1:16:49   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Patreon https://www.patreon.com/everyalbumever   Merch https://pandermonkey.creator-spring.com/   Mike's EP: Pander Monkey on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple,   Mike on Instagram @pandermonkey Alex on Bluesky @octatron3030 Tom on Instagram @tomosmansounds   History Tom's stuff: Music on Spotify, Apple Podcast on Spotify, YouTube Substack Website   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, Michael Hingson welcomes Karolyn Grimes, best known for her unforgettable role as Zuzu Bailey in Frank Capra's timeless classic It's a Wonderful Life. At 85, Karolyn brings not just cherished memories from Hollywood's Golden Age but profound lessons in faith, resilience, and gratitude that still inspire today. She shares vivid behind-the-scenes stories of working with Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, John Wayne, and Maureen O'Hara—moments that shaped her life long after the cameras stopped rolling. From learning her lines at six years old to celebrating a surprise birthday on the set of Rio Grande, Karolyn offers a heartfelt glimpse into the wonder and warmth of old Hollywood. But her story reaches far beyond fame. After losing both parents by age fifteen and later enduring the heartbreak of losing her husband and son, Karolyn rediscovered purpose through the enduring message of It's a Wonderful Life. Today, she travels to Seneca Falls, New York—the real-life Bedford Falls—attends festivals, supports the Zuzu House foundation, and co-hosts the Zuzu All Grown Up podcast, continuing to spread the film's message of hope. Michael and Karolyn also share exciting plans for a Richard Diamond, Private Detective radio drama at next year's REPS showcase. Filled with nostalgia, laughter, and heart, this episode reminds us that no matter the season—or the challenges— “It truly is a wonderful life.”   Highlights: 01:24 – Hear how Karolyn's early music and elocution lessons opened doors to a Hollywood career at just six years old. 07:50 – Discover how losing both parents by age fifteen changed her path and led her to a quieter life in Missouri. 14:51 – Learn what it was like to work under Frank Capra's direction and how he brought out the best in young actors. 19:12 – Feel the kindness of Jimmy Stewart as Karolyn recalls a moment when he turned a mistake into encouragement. 27:20 – Relive her birthday surprise on the set of Rio Grande with John Wayne and a cake she'll never forget. 31:29 – Get a candid glimpse of Maureen O'Hara's fiery personality and how it lit up the screen. 47:23 – Walk with Karolyn through Seneca Falls, New York—the real-life inspiration for Bedford Falls—and its annual It's a Wonderful Life festival. 58:27 – See how she keeps the film's spirit alive today through public appearances, the Zuzu House foundation, and her Zuzu All Grown Up podcast.   About the Guest:   Karolyn Grimes is an American actress best remembered for her role as Zuzu Bailey in Frank Capra's timeless film It's a Wonderful Life (1946), where she delivered one of cinema's most cherished lines: “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.” Born in Hollywood, California, in 1940, Grimes began acting as an infant and appeared in 16 films during her childhood, including The Bishop's Wife (1947). Her early career placed her alongside Hollywood legends like James Stewart, Donna Reed, Loretta Young, and David Niven. She later earned honors such as a star on the Missouri Walk of Fame and the Edwin P. Hubble Medal of Initiative for her contributions to film and culture. Grimes' personal story is one of remarkable endurance. Orphaned by age 15, she was sent from Hollywood to rural Missouri to live with strict relatives, yet she persevered and eventually became a medical technologist. Life brought both love and heartbreak—two marriages, seven children, and the tragic loss of her youngest son and husband. In the 1980s, renewed popularity of It's a Wonderful Life reconnected her with fans and co-stars, inspiring her to embrace the film's message of hope. Today, she travels widely to share her memories of the movie, appears annually at the Seneca Falls celebration that inspired Bedford Falls, and continues to spread its enduring message that every life truly matters.   Ways to connect with Karolyn:   podcast site, www.zuzunetwork.com Facebook page Karolyn Grimes, www.zuzu.net     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, a gracious hello to you, wherever you happen to be today, I am your host, Mike or Michael. I don't really care which hingson and you are listening to or watching unstoppable mindset. Today, we get a chance to chat with someone who, well, you may or may not know who she is, you will probably by the time we're done, because I'm going to give you a clue. Probably one of the most famous lines that she ever spoke was, whenever a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. And you are right, if you guessed it, you get to meet Zuzu or Karolyn Grimes. Today, I met Karolyn a few years ago when we were both involved in doing recreations of old radio shows with the radio enthusiasts of Puget Sound, and we have had the opportunity to chat and do things together like other recreations ever since. I'm going to miss, unfortunately, the one in September, because I'm going to be off elsewhere in Texas doing a speech. But what do you do anyway? Karolyn or Zuzu, whichever you prefer, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.   Karolyn Grimes ** 02:35 I'm so disappointed I don't get to see your dog.   Michael Hingson ** 02:40 Oh, next time. Okay, see we and you know that's the thing Carolyn is, just like everyone else, it's always all about the dog. Forget me. That's okay. It's okay. He loves it.   Karolyn Grimes ** 02:58 Well, I'm sorry you're not coming. Because you know what, I really am going to do a fantastic part that I love, and that's playing Loretta Young's part in the bishop's wife, the bishop's wife, right? Yes, and you're going to miss it. Well, I   Michael Hingson ** 03:14 will probably try to at least listen on the internet and and hear it. I think that'll be fun. It's a it's a great part. Well, you were in the bishop's wife originally, weren't you?   Karolyn Grimes ** 03:25 Yes, I was, who did? Who did you play? I played Little Debbie, who was David Nevin and Loretta Young's little girl, and Cary Grant was an angel who came down to straighten my dad out,   Michael Hingson ** 03:43 and at the end he straightened him out, but there was never any memory of him being there. Was there.   Karolyn Grimes ** 03:50 That's right, he was erased, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 03:56 oh, you know, it's all about doing it, and not about him. So it's okay. I think I thought Cary Grant did a great job. I really always was wonderful, wonderful. What was he like to work with? And what was David Nevin like to work with, much less Loretta Young?   Karolyn Grimes ** 04:13 Well, at the beginning of the movie, they told me not to go near David Nevin. Don't bother him. So I never did. I just had the feeling he didn't like kids or something, I don't know. But Loretta Young was cordial and nice, but she pretty much sat in her chair and studied the script most of the time, so I didn't really get to visit with her all that much, but boy, Cary Grant was hands on. Oh, he was great. He there was a lot of snow in the movie, and there was an ice skating scene, and there was actually an ice rink on our stage. So every day at lunch, he would come and get me and. And he pulled me around on a sled while he practiced ice skating. And that was so much fun,   Michael Hingson ** 05:08 cool. And that was all in Hollywood, right?   05:11 Oh, yes,   Michael Hingson ** 05:15 I, I always found it interesting. We went to see the Rockettes a couple of times at Radio City Music Hall in New York. And it was interesting to see their, quote, ice skating rink, which was, was a very smooth floor and and they could raise it and lower it and all sorts of things. It was. It was kind of fascinating to actually know about that. And I actually got a chance to go look at it was kind of pretty interesting.   Karolyn Grimes ** 05:45 Can you imagine, they actually made a skating rink on stage. I mean, you know, yeah, before miracles.   Michael Hingson ** 05:55 Well, tell us a little bit about, kind of, maybe the early Karolyn growing up, and, you know, how things got started and and what you did a little bit? Well, my   Karolyn Grimes ** 06:04 mother gave me all kinds of lessons. I was an only child, and so when I was about, I guess, three, she started me on the piano, the violin, dancing, which never took singing, and even elocution, diction, everything I had lessons coming out my eyeballs and I played the violin and piano.   Michael Hingson ** 06:30 So did you ever? Did you ever compete with Jack Benny playing the violin? Not hardly just checking.   Karolyn Grimes ** 06:37 I did win a scholarship, though, to go to college on my violin when I was in high school. So, you know, I I played it for a long time, but I didn't play the piano, just I stuck with the violin and I did singing. I did a lot of vocal stuff when I got older, but when I was little, she gave me all these lessons and and I can remember saying, Well, I really don't want to go to school today if I stay at home and I practice my elocution, or I practice this, or practice my piano or whatever, well, then could I stay home and she let me stay home from school so I would practice.   Michael Hingson ** 07:21 Yeah. Did you ever   Karolyn Grimes ** 07:23 go ahead? That's fine, that's all.   Michael Hingson ** 07:26 Did you ever ask her or ever learn why she was so adamant that you took all these kinds of lessons when you were young and so on, as opposed to just going to school and so on. Well,   Karolyn Grimes ** 07:38 unfortunately, she started getting sick when I was eight years old. And, you know, I was too young to think about asking questions like that, you know. And then she died when I was 14. So that was kind of the end of my career, for sure.   Michael Hingson ** 07:55 Well, yeah, and sort of it was but, but you never really did learn why she was so so steadfast in her beliefs that you had to take all of those lessons.   Karolyn Grimes ** 08:07 I had no idea, because when she started getting sick, she had early onset Alzheimer's, and so, you know she wasn't, you couldn't communicate.   Michael Hingson ** 08:18 Really, yeah, yeah. And it was only when you were old enough that that started. So, yeah, you really couldn't get a lot of information and do a lot of communicating. I understand that. No, and you didn't have much time after that to really talk to your father about it either. No, I didn't.   Karolyn Grimes ** 08:41 He died a year after she did. And I was 15, and the court in Hollywood shipped me to a little town in Missouri. I think there were 700 people in the town, or something like that. Yeah. So it's quite a culture shock, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Get me out of Hollywood was great.   Michael Hingson ** 09:01 So what did you do then? So you were now 15, and they sent you off to Missouri. Why Missouri?   Karolyn Grimes ** 09:09 Well, those were the only people who volunteered to take me. I had a lot of people in LA, where I lived, who would have taken me, but my father didn't leave a will. So when I asked the judge, I said, Do I have any say at all about who I go to live with? And he said, whatever you want is like a drop in the bucket. So needless to say, my mean aunt and uncle took me back to Missouri, in a little town, but it was like, I say the best thing ever happened to me, because they're real people. They weren't phony. They were they were serious and and they were loving and kind, and they realized I was in a. Horrible home situation. So they really my teachers and merchants, everybody knew, and they really made up for that. They made my life livable and that I will never forget it, and I will always love that town, because   Michael Hingson ** 10:19 what town was it? Osceola,   Karolyn Grimes ** 10:21 Missouri. Oh, Osceola. Okay, I've heard of it. 800 people in there or something.   Michael Hingson ** 10:27 You said they were your mean aunt and uncle. Why did you Why do you call them mean?   Karolyn Grimes ** 10:34 My uncle wasn't mean, but he was beaten down by his wife. She would her. Her best ploy would be to if I did something wrong, she would punish other people. And that was worse than punishing you. Yeah. So it was very, very hard to not do something wrong, because I kind of seemed like I did all the time.   Michael Hingson ** 11:05 Yeah, you didn't know what the rules were. No, yeah, that that made it, made it very tough. So what did you do once you went back there? I assume you went to, you finished school.   Karolyn Grimes ** 11:21 Yes, I finished school, and then I went to college. Where did you go? Well, it was called Central Missouri State at that time, and it was the home of the mules. And of course, my major was music, so that was what I did, mostly with my life, but I ended up going into science and I became medical technologist.   Michael Hingson ** 11:46 Uh huh, well, the mules, so you majored in music. Did you get any advanced degree or just get a bachelor's?   Karolyn Grimes ** 11:57 No, okay, I changed everything and decided that I need to make money instead, to survive,   Michael Hingson ** 12:05 yeah, you got to do some of that kind of stuff. Yeah, you do. It's one of those, those things that happens. So what did you do after college?   Karolyn Grimes ** 12:13 I got a job working for medical office in was kind of a clinic in Kansas City, Missouri, okay? And I spent probably 15 years there, maybe, maybe more I remember for sure, and that's, that's what I did. Then after that, I retired and raised a bunch of kids.   Michael Hingson ** 12:42 Well, that's a worthwhile endeavor.   12:46 It's stressful.   Michael Hingson ** 12:50 Well, you know, but as long as they don't call you mean, then that probably counts for something.   Karolyn Grimes ** 12:56 Yeah, they didn't call me mean. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 13:00 there you are. So you you did all of your your acting and movies and so on, kind of at a younger age, you didn't go back into doing any of that. No, I   Karolyn Grimes ** 13:11 didn't, but I did get active in the theater scene in the Kansas City area. So I did quite a few plays, and I had a really good time doing that. Okay, only problem with that is you have to memorize so much.   Michael Hingson ** 13:27 Yeah, you can't use cue cards and you can't use a script,   Karolyn Grimes ** 13:30 yeah? So I tried to work and do that, yeah, it's kind of tough, but I did. I the last one I did. I think I was 40 something, but it was fun. I loved it.   Michael Hingson ** 13:44 So what, what kind of maybe famous plays were you in?   Karolyn Grimes ** 13:49 Not famous? They were small ones. And honestly, I can't even remember what they were. I it's in my mind, one, the last one was musical, and it was kind of a Western. I can't remember what it was to save my soul, but that's, that's privilege of getting old.   Michael Hingson ** 14:09 Yeah, you never know. You might remember one of these days,   Karolyn Grimes ** 14:14 yeah, oh, I will, I'm sure, probably about an hour from now.   Michael Hingson ** 14:18 Yeah. Well, so going back earlier, what was the first movie you were in   Karolyn Grimes ** 14:27 that night with you, and that starred, Oh, see, there goes. My mind again. It was an opera singer. Can't think of Suzanne, York, oh, okay, and it had Irene Ryan, who was in the hillbillies. She was a maid. And it was, it was a Christmas scene, or it was section of the movie where I was one of. Five orphans that were sent. This opera singer wanted us to give us a Christmas night. We were from an orphanage, and so she had us come. We were going to spend the night, and she had presents for us and all that sort of thing. And the first thing I did was break an ornament on the Christmas tree. Oh, dear. Ah, so the kids got mad at me, because they knew we were going to be sent back to the orphanage. But anyway, in the end, she held me on her lap and sang a lullaby to me, and I will always remember that.   Michael Hingson ** 15:39 Yeah, you mentioned Irene, Ryan, granny, which was, yeah, she was in. She played a maid. What a character she   15:46 was. She was a maid.   Michael Hingson ** 15:50 Then what did you do after that movie? How old were you for that movie? I was four. You're four. So you do remember it sort of, yeah.   Karolyn Grimes ** 16:01 Just don't remember names particularly. I mean, yeah, but you were really funny about it that the there was one agent, pretty much, that had all the kids in her stable that worked in the movies back then. It was an easy thing, and she had Jimmy Hawkins, who was Tommy, and it's a wonderful life. And she also had his older brother, and his older brother was in that particular movie with me, so it was kind of a family affair all every time you went to an audition or an interview you saw the same kids over and over.   Michael Hingson ** 16:49 Well, how did you end up then being in It's a Wonderful Life. What? What did they what does it think and decide that you were the person for   Karolyn Grimes ** 17:01 it. Well, nothing really special. You know, I went on the interview back in the day. They didn't have what they do today. They had interviews where you went, and you had a one on one situation. Maybe five or six us girls would go to the interview, and then they'd bring another batch in, and that's kind of how it went. And most of us, as I say, had the same agent, so we, my mother took me to the interview, to the and it's like, it's not like an audition, it's an interview, and you actually go in and talk to casting director. And you know, you know, do what they tell you to do. So in this particular interview, there was a little girl who accidentally spilled some coffee on my dress. Her mother's coffee on my dress, because so back then, we all wore dresses, and I just didn't think a thing about it didn't bother me to have a dirty dress. I just I went in and did my interview. When I went in there, I meant Frank Capra was in, ah, and he interviewed and and cast every single person in that film, even the extras. That's how precise he was. But I went in there, and I remember he asked me how I would look, how I would act if I lost my dog and he died. I gave him my spiel, all with a dirty dress, but didn't bother me a bit. Came out, and then when we were leaving, I heard my mother mentioned to one of the other mothers that she felt like that, that girl's mother had had her spilling on purpose so they would intimidate me. But I didn't know it. I didn't realize it, and didn't bother me a bit.   Michael Hingson ** 19:11 What did you say when Frank Capra asked me that question? Do you remember?   Karolyn Grimes ** 19:16 Well, I I didn't say anything.   Michael Hingson ** 19:20 I just looked, no, I mean, about the dog?   Karolyn Grimes ** 19:22 Well, I just looked, oh, you know, yeah, squeezed up kind of teared, and was unhand picked. That was, you know, there was no line involved. It was just that, well, she must ask the other lines, but I don't remember, I just remember that.   Michael Hingson ** 19:46 So what was he like to work with?   Karolyn Grimes ** 19:49 He was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. He would get down on his knees so that he could communicate with those kids. And I. I thought that was really great, and I'm sure you got a lot more out of us by doing that. Rather than looking down on us and telling us what he wanted   Michael Hingson ** 20:09 us to do, he made you feel like a part of it all.   Karolyn Grimes ** 20:13 Yes, he did. He gave us a lot of power that way.   Michael Hingson ** 20:17 Yeah, and what was it like working with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed.   Karolyn Grimes ** 20:22 Well, you know, I didn't have any scenes with Donna Reed, except that being the movie, that's true. I didn't have any interaction with her. I had no lines. I don't even remember Donna Reed, but he was my focal point. Jimmy Stewart was fabulous. He was kind, considerate, and I fluffed a line in the pedal scene, and he said that, that's all right, Carolyn, you'll get it right next time. And it was things like that, you know, that made a difference between, if you messed up online, where they would get aggravated with you, and then you probably mess it up again. But he did the right thing. He made me not feel bad about it, and encouraged me to do it again.   Michael Hingson ** 21:17 It's, it's interesting, and it, it's a great lesson to you know, to point out that when when people help empower and they aren't negative and are encouraging no matter what you're doing, that counts for a lot. And I I find that when I encounter people who just decide they're going to be mean because they got to boss you around and do all sorts of obnoxious things to try to intimidate you and so on. In the long run, that is just so unproductive, it seems to me.   Karolyn Grimes ** 21:49 Yes, I agree. I don't see what it accomplishes.   Michael Hingson ** 21:53 Yeah, so I can appreciate what you're saying, and it makes a lot of sense. Well, I'm glad, and I always thought that Jimmy Stewart was that kind of a person, both he and Cary Grant both seemed sensitive, really concerned about people succeeding. They weren't jerks.   Karolyn Grimes ** 22:13 No, they weren't. And caught up with him later in life, he was getting calls from a lot of people about whatever happened to that little girl. And so he had one of his secretaries Call Me and find Me and and he called me and we had chat. And here I am in Missouri. He's in Hollywood. That was pretty cool when you're 40 years old. When that was the first year I ever saw the movie after I talked to him. So that was kind of how it went. But then after that, I met him in New York at a function, and we spent some time together, and he was delightful, so kind, so   Michael Hingson ** 23:01 generous. I remember when I first saw part of It's a Wonderful Life. It was back in the day when there was regular television. Then there was UHF, which was everything above, basically channel 13. And you had to have special at that time receivers to receive it. And one day I was, I just come home from high school, from classes, and I turned on the television, and it was a UHF channel, and I started scrolling across, and all of a sudden I heard Jimmy Stewart's voice, and I went, What's that? And it took me a couple of minutes of listening to it to figure out what the movie was, because I had heard about it enough that I I figured it out, but I listened to about half the movie, and then later I found the whole movie and watched it. And of course, also since then, I have had the opportunity to listen to radio broadcasts of it, like Lux radio theater and so on, where, where they did it. But I remember it well, yes, so did you do much of anything in in radio?   Karolyn Grimes ** 24:13 Then? Not really, not really. I can remember being on the radio for the opening night of the bishop's club. That was really exciting.   Michael Hingson ** 24:28 It's a lot of interesting movies back then. You know, It's a Wonderful Life The Bishop's wife in 1947 also, there was Miracle on 34th Street that people thought was never going to go anywhere. And it and also,   Karolyn Grimes ** 24:43 I'm sorry, still alive today, it   Michael Hingson ** 24:46 is and, and it's a classic. All three of them are classics and, and should be, right? So what did you do after the bishop's wife, from movie standpoint?   Karolyn Grimes ** 24:59 Oh. Um, I think I really don't remember exactly, but I did some movies that were westerns, and I really liked those. They were really fun. I did Rio Grande John Wayne and off Scott and I did honey child with Judy Canova.   Michael Hingson ** 25:28 I'll bet that was a   25:29 was a hoot. It was a hoot. What   Michael Hingson ** 25:33 was Judy Canova like?   Karolyn Grimes ** 25:36 Well, she was really nice. I played her niece, and I lived with her, and she was very nice. It's like that this particular movie, her mother had just died, so she was kind of not all happy, herself, still mourning, but she was very nice and considerate. And you know, she's the one that's saying, I'll be coming around when I come. Yeah, she'll be coming around the corner when she comes. That was what I always remembered her for, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 26:15 Oh, she was always quite the character.   Karolyn Grimes ** 26:18 Oh, she was and she though she had that voice that was unusual.   Michael Hingson ** 26:27 So what? What did you do? What was your role in Rio Grande with John Wayne and marine O'Hara?   Karolyn Grimes ** 26:39 I was the school teacher's daughter, and we lived on a fort. We were in Moab, you daughter? Film it. Yeah, we lived on a fort. And I, my uncle was Victor McLachlan. And so the Indians came and raided us, and he they saved us and put us in a wagon to send us off to be safe. But the Indians got us and killed my mom and put us in the top of a Chapel Church, and that's where we were. And so they the three of the the people, I can't think of their names again. That's problem for me names, but I'll think of them eventually. They rescued us kids, and Victor McLachlan came to get me when the Calvary had gotten there, and I'm on a plat, kind of a platform, ringing the bell. I was ringing a bell throughout this movie, and I hit a bell. I hit Harry Carey Junior over the head with a bell. I always had a bell, so I'm ringing this giant bell to say it's okay for the Calgary to come in. And Vic McLachlan had to pull me off the platform and get me out the door and into a wagon to be rescued, because all his kids were being rescued. And so when he pulled me off that platform, I had this little dress on, and I got a big bad splinter in my bottom. Oh, gosh, it was horrible. It hurt so bad I was going to say, I bet it did. You can never show anything like that. So I did not show it. I just jumped off into his arms, and that was it.   Michael Hingson ** 28:44 Well, I would presume they eventually got the splitter out. Well, my   Karolyn Grimes ** 28:48 mom did, yeah, those things happen.   Michael Hingson ** 28:53 So what was it like working with John Wayne and Marie? No Hara, what both, what characters they are? Oh,   Karolyn Grimes ** 29:02 yeah. Well, John Wayne was just a booming voice. Yeah, he was a huge figure. He I didn't really have any relationship with him, but I had a birthday in the Fourth of July while I was there, ah, and the Korean flicked. Had just broken out. It was 1950 and the government had commandeered airplanes, so John Wayne managed to have airplane bring in a bunch of supplies, and it was one of them was a big, giant birthday cake for me, and bunch of fireworks. He had $300 worth of fireworks, and so we he threw me a party out on Colorado River bluffs, and we had glass. Do is really so funny. Said Happy birthday Little Miss Carolyn and Pat way and his son, who's my age, was out there too. He was he and Michael on school break for summer, and so they were part of the film. He was my age, so we hung around a lot. We were kind of upset because all we got to do with all those fireworks, two little sparklers, what   Michael Hingson ** 30:32 was marine O'Hara like?   Karolyn Grimes ** 30:38 I guess maybe she and Mr. Ford didn't get along very well, and she had a temper. He had a   Michael Hingson ** 30:47 temper, an Irish temper, yes, yes.   Karolyn Grimes ** 30:50 And I saw a lot of that. And one particular time we were in, they had a limo that would take us from the motel to the set which was on the Colorado River, and it was on this person's ranch. So we go down this terribly dangerous road to go to his ranch. At least it was dangerous to me. I was scared, definitely going to Fall River, yeah, because it was right on the edge. But she was angry, and we were in this limo, and she was with her hairdresser. They were in the front row, and my mother and I were in the back of the limo. She was cursing and carrying on about mister Ford, and I didn't pay any attention to it. And so her hairdresser said, Miss O'Hara, there's, there's a little girl in the back. She just kept right on going. But when she said that, I started paying attention what she was in and she was just a string of curses. It was so bad, she was so angry, and it was so funny. So she didn't, it didn't bother her to swear in front of the little child.   Michael Hingson ** 32:14 Just think how much language and how much elocution you learned, huh? Oh no, I did because, oh   Karolyn Grimes ** 32:19 yeah, potential, until she said that, then I listened.   Michael Hingson ** 32:25 Just rounded out your vocabulary. Oh,   Karolyn Grimes ** 32:28 yes, I've never heard words like that, and   Michael Hingson ** 32:32 probably never did again, no, than the ones you used, but, you know, but still. Oh, that's, that's pretty cool, though. So, did you ever have any kind of an opportunity to reunite and be with all of the Bailey family again from the movie?   Karolyn Grimes ** 32:53 Yes, in 1993 or four? Wow. It was quite a while, 60 years later, yeah, um, I had already been in contact with little Tommy. We've been conversing on a phone for about five years, but the target tour had, It's a Wonderful Life is a sort of a theme in their stores that year, and so they thought it would be a good ploy to have a reunion with the Bailey kids. So they brought us all together and put us on a tour. And that was when we all met up again, and I was so excited to do it, and that's the first time I actually saw people's response to this movie. We were in an autographed line at some of the targets that we went to, and people would come through the line and they share their stories about how the movie had affected their lives, and I was so impressed. I well, I just couldn't forget it. And so from that time forward, I became very enamored of sharing messages with other people, and I started doing various appearances and things like that.   Michael Hingson ** 34:23 Yeah. So what other kinds of appearances have you done?   Karolyn Grimes ** 34:28 Oh my gosh, I couldn't even begin to tell you lots. Well, that's good. All different kinds. I mean, you know, all different kinds.   34:38 Have you had   34:40 Go ahead. Thanks.   Michael Hingson ** 34:43 Have you had any or any significant number of appearances and interviews on television over the years?   Karolyn Grimes ** 34:50 No, just interviews, lots of interviews, live interviews. Yeah, yes, that's all never involved with anything again. And, but, yeah, I think I might do something kind of fun in September   Michael Hingson ** 35:08 March or in in Washington.   Karolyn Grimes ** 35:11 No, no, what in Ireland?   Michael Hingson ** 35:15 In Ireland, be gosh and be Garda. Yes, what are you going to   Karolyn Grimes ** 35:19 do? They're going, they're filming movie about Jimmy Stewart. Oh, and they want me to do a cameo. Well, cool. Isn't that fun?   Michael Hingson ** 35:31 That'll be exciting. Yes, I'm really excited. Wow. So long later. I, yeah, you know, I, I, I've seen, of course, movies with Jimmy Stewart, and I remember seeing him once on The Tonight Show, Later in the period of The Tonight Show and so on. And I'm not sure how long after that, he he passed, but I remember his his appearance, which was kind of fun.   Karolyn Grimes ** 35:59 Did you happen to hear him when he did the poem about his dog bull.   Michael Hingson ** 36:04 Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. That's the one I saw   Karolyn Grimes ** 36:07 that was so tender and true. It was just really something.   Michael Hingson ** 36:13 And the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was such a wonderful show. I watched reruns of it regularly on some of the channels, and I just think that it's so much more fun than a lot of what we see in late night TV. Today, I do miss Johnny Carson. Yes, did you ever, did you ever meet him?   Karolyn Grimes ** 36:32 No, I didn't.   Michael Hingson ** 36:38 Well still, I remember old Bo   Karolyn Grimes ** 36:43 Yes, he was a wonderful man. Yeah, they did a special thing in 19 a, 1990 it was they had a special event that was honoring him and all the people that he worked with, Allison, you know, all the stars that he'd work with. And so he invited me to come. So I went to New York, and I just had a really wonderful time about to meet his wife, and it was just good old fun just to see him again, because he was just such a down to earth man, yeah, and he just was so kind and so generous that it was a real, real exciting moment For me, that's for sure.   Michael Hingson ** 37:40 I watch him occasionally now, because he is regular, not regularly, but he's often on the Jack Benny show. And the Jack Benny show is being run on a couple on some of the TV stations, and so it's kind of fun to see the by play between he and his wife and Jack Benny. And, of course, Jack Benny, it's the traditional Jack Benny image. But the shows are so much fun, yes? And clearly, Jimmy Stewart, well, all of them have a lot of fun doing those shows.   Karolyn Grimes ** 38:17 Yeah, I think they did. Yeah. Those old radio shows were so great. I really enjoyed them back in the day well.   Michael Hingson ** 38:29 And I find that when people really enjoy what they do, and you see that come out in even on some of the earlier television shows, with the radio shows, it makes such a difference, because you can feel the energy that's coming from people.   Karolyn Grimes ** 38:48 You do. You really do.   Michael Hingson ** 38:52 If people don't enjoy what they're doing, that comes through. And you you can tell so it's it's fun, when people really enjoy it. Well, how did you get involved with the Marshfield Cherry Blossom Festival? You've been doing that for a while,   Karolyn Grimes ** 39:14 a long years, more than I true. Well, Nicholas called me. He runs the festival. I can't tell you what year it was, but it probably was early 80s. Maybe, wow, no, wouldn't have been early 80s. Sorry, no. Probably in early 2000 okay? And he called me and asked me if I would come down and be in the festival. So I said, Okay, and so. We flew back and went to the festival, and it was Dean Martin's daughter was there, and one of the Munchkins was there. Can't think of his name. One lived in St Louis, character. He was there. Couple of other people that were there, you know, old stars, and it rained, it snowed, and it was just, it was awful. It sweeted. It was just really bad. So there wasn't much of a turnout, and it was kind of a disappointment to Nicholas, I think because it since then they've changed the date, so it's a little later in the year. And yeah, you know, kind of count on the weather being a little better. But then I didn't come back for about two years, and then he called me King, and from that time forward, I went back every year, and one of the special things that happened by being there was that the lady who played violet bit, young, Violet bit, she can't think of her name, but I'm really bad At names today. Yeah, way she she was a psychologist, and for the last, oh, I guess long, maybe eight years before I met her, Jimmy Hawkins, the littlest boy in the movie, and myself, had tried to get her involved with the film, and what the things that we did for the film, and she wouldn't have anything to do with it, because she thought it was Hollywood, and she didn't believe in that, and this was the only movie she did. So someone by the name of Nicholas convinced her to come that year. So she came, and she her son brought her, and when she saw how much that movie is loved and how it had affected so many people and their story, she got the first hand view of that that was then for her. She decided she wanted to be a part of It's a Wonderful Life from then on, did they   Michael Hingson ** 42:27 show the movie that you're at the festival? No, oh, okay,   Karolyn Grimes ** 42:32 no, she just came,   Michael Hingson ** 42:34 and so many people just talked about it.   Karolyn Grimes ** 42:37 Yeah, yeah. She she finally realized that people really loved the movie. Of course, she saw it after that, because after that little appearance, I say you're coming to Seneca Falls. I won't take no for an answer. So her son brought her every year after that, and of course, we saw the movie dead, and she had experienced the real love that the people had for the film and for the characters in the film.   Michael Hingson ** 43:12 What was it like being around and working with Lionel Barrymore,   Karolyn Grimes ** 43:20 well, I really wasn't around him very much. We had cast fish shoes sometimes, and he he was in his he was really in a wheelchair. He had crippling arthritis. It's terrible. His hands are all gnarled. And I really didn't talk to him or having any interaction with him. I might have been in scene with him, or we've done publicity photos with him, but I don't, I don't remember ever   Michael Hingson ** 43:50 interacting with him, with him that much, yeah,   Karolyn Grimes ** 43:53 but he wasn't scary, yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 43:57 Well, that's a start. Not, not like marine O'Hara huh?   Karolyn Grimes ** 44:01 No, no. And they had a cast party at the end of movie. Most movies after they're finished, had a cast party, uh huh? This one was celebrating the end of its wonderful life. And so he, he came and I got to talk to him without, you know, he had a skull cap on, and it raised his forehead about two inches, so he had real elongated, big forehead, and took more hair off his head, so he looked meaner. That was the idea. So he didn't have that on you just look like a normal man and everything, and he didn't look mean. And so I chatted with him. He was fine. He wasn't really a nice guy.   Michael Hingson ** 44:51 Again, it's one of those things where he was perfect for that part, though.   Karolyn Grimes ** 44:55 Oh yes, he was perfect. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 45:00 It was, it was fun. And I, I think, at the time, when I first saw the movie, I didn't even know that he was the person who played Mr. Potter, but I didn't, I didn't realize that because I was young enough, but I hadn't really learned about different characters and and different actors, but I figured it out soon enough. Yeah, so tell me about Zuzu house back there.   Karolyn Grimes ** 45:30 Well, one night I was writing in a limo, and it was during the Christmas season. I was somewhere in New York, and I can't remember where I was doing a gig, and Nicholas called me, and I'll always remember it, because I was sitting in this room all and he said, Carolyn, I just discovered there are people in this community. This is very small town. Well, it's a small town, and there are people who young people who don't have a place to sleep. They're sleeping on park benches. There's this couch surfing, all this chippy said I had no idea this was going on. I want us to start a house and make it possible for them to have shelter. And so he said, The reason I'm calling you is because I want to know if it's alright if I name it the Zuzu house. So I said, Well, of course, go right ahead. So from then on, I became active with the Zuzu house and their foundation and their situation, all that they do. Unfortunately, covid happened right after that, and it made it really hard to get, you know, materials, building materials, and things like that that we needed to finish it. So it took a long time to finish the house, but it's finished now, and it houses now. It houses is us refuse for women from mean men, I guess, and that's what it is. So I'm proud to be part of it, and they did such a fabulous job. It's a great, wonderful, beautiful facility, and it's way out in the country, and it's really a place where they can get their marbles all on sack again.   Michael Hingson ** 47:33 How far is it from Marshfield? Um, I didn't get to go there when I was there last year.   Karolyn Grimes ** 47:40 My guess is about 30 minutes. Oh, okay.   Michael Hingson ** 47:47 Well, now the the the other question I would ask is, as you pointed out, the reason that the women are there, so do you go and teach them elocution, like how Marino Hara talk so that they can, yeah, I just just say, help them out, you know,   Karolyn Grimes ** 48:08 yeah, I learned a lot there.   Michael Hingson ** 48:12 But yeah, that that's really cool, that that you, you do that. Well, tell me about Seneca Falls, or, should we say, Bedford Falls, and what goes on there, and, yes, what you do and so on. I'll always think of it just Bedford Falls, but   Karolyn Grimes ** 48:27 most people do,   Michael Hingson ** 48:29 as opposed to potters field, you know. But yeah,   Karolyn Grimes ** 48:34 about seeing my this is my 23rd year. So 23 years ago, God, I can't believe it's that long. I knew cameraman on the Oprah show. It's very good friend of mine. And so it was September, and he called me and he said, Oh my god, Carolyn, this is it. This is the town you've got to come here. You've got to come He says, I'm going to go talk to somebody. And that was the last I heard. But he talked to somebody, the right person who knew what it was about and saw the possibilities. And so her name was mo cock at the time. Her name is Young. Now mo young, but she went to the Historical Society and got funding and turned it around real fast so that they could create an event for me to come and appear. So I did, and I landed in Rochester, I believe what drove to Seneca Falls, and it was snowing, and I there was no one on the streets. There was no one around. And she drive, drove up to the Main Street and open. The car door. When we just walked on Main Street, the bridge was there. It was all lit up, yeah, lit up on each post, lamp post. And it was the most wonderful experience, because I really felt like this was the place, if Frank Kaplan wanted to see a place that would inspire him to build bamboo falls, this would be the place to come. And I was so impressed. And I just loved it. So I came back every year after that, yeah, and, and then I started inviting other people like Jimmy Hawkins and Jamie, who Carol Coombs, who played Jamie, and, you know, other people. And so it was very neat event. And I even invited the babies who played Larry, the oldest boy in the movie. You know, they have a they have to have twins to play babies, because they can't be under the lights so long. So they rotate them. And so that was, that was really kind of incredible, too. Now, it's a huge affair and it   Michael Hingson ** 51:21 never had anything to do with the movie originally, right?   Karolyn Grimes ** 51:25 We're not sure. I actually think that Frank Capra had an aunt in Aurora, which is south of that town, and there's a barber there that he swears that he cut Capra's hair, and when I first started going there, what, 20 years ago, he was still alive. So I talked to him, and I said, Do you really think that was Frank Capra? And he said, Yes, I do. I really do. And he said, You know, I cut his hair, and I will always remember we chatted, and he said he was from Sicily, and I was from Sicily too, so we had a lot of calm. And he said his last name was Capra, and it means goat in Italian. And Tommy's name, the barber's name is bellissimo, which means beautiful. So he said, I always remember cutting the goat's hair. Wow, I saw three weeks later in a newspaper, there was an article about him going to make the movie. It's a wonderful love. So he said I knew that was who he was, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 52:54 so he had clearly been there, and imagery made such an impression on him,   Karolyn Grimes ** 53:03 and also on the bridge, there's a plaque, and he would have seen this, and it was for a young Italian immigrant. And of course, you know, capper was strong Italian. And this young Italian immigrant didn't know how to swim, but he jumped in the canal to save the life of a wasp woman who was committing suicide, and he made her her get out of our she got out of the water safely, and he died, he didn't know how to swim. So it was a huge thing back then, and it brought the community together. You know, there was the Italian side and and the the other side. And this brought everybody together. And it, it turned out that the they brought the whole family, his whole family, over, because they were, you know, what, wanted to do something, because they appreciated what he'd done so much to say that woman's life. And so I think camper would have seen that and that plaque, and he would have learned a story, and maybe that gave him some ideas about It's A Wonderful Life.   Michael Hingson ** 54:28 I don't know a lot about Frank Capra, but it's fascinating to hear the stories that you're telling, because it it certainly portrays him as a not only a caring person, but a person who pays attention to a lot of detail. The very fact that that he was in that town, and all the imagery and all the things that he brought to it had to, had to be very relevant. Well, all   Karolyn Grimes ** 54:56 the names of the streets in the town are. The movie, or, you know, quite a few of them, yeah, and the main street had a part of it at that time that had trees down the middle of it. And there's just so many things in in the town that are applicable to the film. And I used to know tons more when I was trying to convince everybody that this was the place. But now I don't have to remember those anymore, because people already know there are 1000s and 1000s of people that go through the town and feel the magic that now then we, we the gift shop is making it possible for people to remember their loved ones by putting bells on the bridge. And it's really, you know, become something. And then the museum, which I helped start, is really a cool museum, but they are getting a new museum, which is going to be much larger because they can't even begin to display all the things they have.   Michael Hingson ** 56:14 Well, it's, it's, it's interesting how all of this has has come up, but none of the filming of the movie was was done there. It was all in Hollywood, right? Oh, yes, but, but still, the the imagery and the vision that that people have, that brought you and everyone together to create that celebration is certainly great for the town. I love that one is it? I'm just going to have to show up. It's a Christmas event every year, right?   Karolyn Grimes ** 56:47 Yes, yeah. There's a 5k run, and they start on the bridge. And there's a few serious people in the beginning, some fellas and gals that want to win. But after that, let me tell you, it's fun. There are people dressed like Christmas trees. They got lights all over themselves. They they light up their dogs, their babies, their strollers, and they're all in this run, and it's five miles. And at some of the they go through the residential district, and some of the houses they have the booths give them a little bit of hot toddy and so forth to get them on   Michael Hingson ** 57:29 the way. Yeah, in Christmas time, I would think so it's just   Karolyn Grimes ** 57:33 a lot of fun. And people love it. And I always started every time they have it. I've always started it, so that's kind of a tradition.   Michael Hingson ** 57:46 So you have done some cameos, like Gremlins and Christmas vacation, right? Well, yeah, cameo appearances,   Karolyn Grimes ** 57:55 yeah, I guess you say that, yeah. What was that like? Well, it's, it was just, you know, the movie they showed the movie, yeah, so that was, that was all. It was just, they showed the movie just like they showed it in Christmas vacation. And somehow, when they show the movie, it's always when Zuzu is saying that line. Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 58:21 okay, so it's not so much you as it is the the original movie, yeah, it's little Zuzu well, but it's a great line. I mean, you know, well, it is. I remember last year, wasn't it? I think at the reps event. We'll get to that in a sec. But I remember getting some bells from you, and I actually, I think I told you I was going to send one to my cousin, and I let you say hello to her, and she got that bell and was completely blown away. She loves it. Oh, good. And I have the bell. I have my bell sitting out in open plain sight for the world to see, and I go by and ring it every so often. Oh, great. Oh, well, we gotta have those angels out. So what kind of events and things do you do typically, or do you like to to enjoy doing it Christmas?   Karolyn Grimes ** 59:20 Um, I kind of work during Christmas. Well, that's my season, and so I do gift shows. I do appearances, I introduce the movie. I do I'm on the road the whole time, and I love it, because I interact with these wonderful people who love the movie. And if they love the movie, believe me, they are wonderful people.   Michael Hingson ** 59:45 Yeah, undoubtedly, so well, so you you also have been involved with some of the radio recreations from from reps. And what do you think about that? How do you like that? Do.   Karolyn Grimes ** 59:59 Oh, my goodness, so much fun. And I'm old enough to remember a   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:04 lot of the shows.   Karolyn Grimes ** 1:00:07 No, I remember very well. And, you know, I it was just a whole bunch of fun to do that and recreate these scenes from older raining days. And I remember my mother and father bought a brand new Frazier. It's a car, and I'm sure nobody's ever heard of Kaiser Fraser cars, because that was the ugliest name car in my life. But they had to have that car. And I remember when we got the car, my dad was offered he could either have a heater and he could afford to pay for either a heater or a radio. And he chose the radio. So I heard inner sanctum. I heard all these wonderful, wonderful plays. Back in the day, all these shows from the radio.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:07 I came in near the the so called traditional end of radio, probably actually 1957 so I had five years, but almost from the beginning, I always wanted to collect more of the shows and did, and then also did a radio program for six and a half, almost seven years at the campus radio station where I worked, kuci. We did radio every Sunday night, so I had three hours of radio. And I love to tell people I heard about this show on television called 60 minutes. But my show was opposite Mike Wallace, and mine went for three hours, and his was only an hour, but it was like seven years before I got to watch 60 minutes and and learn about it, because we had shows every year or every every Sunday night, and we had a deputy sheriff who called from the Orange County jail once to tell me. He said, You know, you guys have created a real challenge for us, because he said, so many people have heard about what you do, some of a lot of our inmates, that on Sunday nights, we have to split the jail and send half people up, half the people upstairs, where there's enough radio reception, they can listen to your show, and the other half listens to and watches 60 minutes, which I always thought was kind of cute. So you do a podcast now too, don't you?   1:02:34 I do tell us   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:36 about that. I know we were focused on it. Yeah,   Karolyn Grimes ** 1:02:39 Chris and I do it. He's He's a psychologist, and we interview all kinds of people, all walks of life, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:51 How long has it been running now,   Karolyn Grimes ** 1:02:54 this is second year, okay,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:57 well, I don't know. Chris hasn't said a single word during this whole thing.   Karolyn Grimes ** 1:03:01 Oh, he's not here. What good is he, you know, right?   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:09 Well, so you know, we've been, can you believe what we've been doing? This an hour?   Karolyn Grimes ** 1:03:14 Oh, really, I did not know. I'm   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:18 telling you, time flies when you're having fun. Is there kind of anything that you want to talk about that maybe we haven't yet, any any last questions or thoughts that you have that you want to bring up?   Karolyn Grimes ** 1:03:31 No, I don't think so. I think we've covered it pretty good. We've, we've,   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:37 we've done a lot. But you know, it's really wonderful to to have you on if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that?   Karolyn Grimes ** 1:03:45 They can reach me at Carolyn, K, A R, o l, y n, dot Wilkerson, W, I, L, k, e r, s o n@gmail.com,   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:01 okay. Well, hopefully people will reach out, and if they want to also have a website, I was going to ask   1:04:10 you that zoo, zoo.net,   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:12 well, you can't do better than that. And what's the podcast called   Karolyn Grimes ** 1:04:22 seeing this is the thing with names. There it goes again. You think, I know? Oh, my goodness, I can't remember. Oh, tell you, I'm getting old. It's getting worse and worse.   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:36 All grown up is the puppy. All grown up, all grown ups. Oh, Carolyn, Carol, well, there you go. Well, yeah, and I, I enjoyed being on it. Well, I'm sorry we're going to miss seeing you at reps, because I won't be able to be there. I had told Walden, and walden's actually been on unstoppable mindset now a couple of. On, but I had told him he and I had talked about me doing Richard diamond private detective and actually playing Richard diamond. And I said, I want Carolyn to play Helen Asher. So we'll now have to postpone, postpone that till next year,   1:05:14 but we're going to do it. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:17 yeah. It'll be fun. I Richard diamond has always been kind of really my favorite radio show, and I think I can carry off that voice pretty well.   Karolyn Grimes ** 1:05:27 So it'll be fun. Yeah, it will well.   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:30 I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening to us today, reminisce and talk about all sorts of stuff. Love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to email me at Michael H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and, of course, wherever you're observing the podcast today, I hope that you'll give us a five star rating. Karolyn deserves a five star rating, even if you don't think I do do it for Karolyn. We love to have great reviews. We appreciate it. And Karolyn for you and everyone out there who is listening and watching. If you know anyone else who ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, we'd love it if you'd reach out and let us know, give us an introduction. I think everyone has a story to tell, and I enjoy getting the opportunity to to visit with people and hear stories. So please, if you have any thoughts, introduce us. We'd love to to meet other people. But again, Karolyn, I really appreciate you being here, and I want to thank you for being with us today.   1:06:38 My pleasure being here.   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:42 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

The Second Anglo-Dutch War begins, and we take a closer look at the Royal Navy of the Restoration. Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World, 2023. Nicholas Rodgers, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, Volume 2, 1649–1815 Anna Keay, The Restless Republic, 2022. Rebecca Rideal, 1666: Plague, War, and Hellfire, 2016. Charles Wilson, England's Apprenticeship: 1603-1763, 1975. David Veevers, The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600-1750, 2020. John Childs, General Percy Kirke and the Later Stuart Army, 2014. Philip Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India, 2011. Edwin Burrows, Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, 1999. Julie Svalastog, Mastering the Worst of Trades: England's Early Africa Companies and their Traders, 1618–1672, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Opening and closing music courtesy of Harpeth Presbyterian Church. My interview with cricket bowlers on Forest Hills Methodist lawn, Sunday, October 5thA word about today's avatar — I spent a little quality time with my weekend edition of WSJ, and in the book review, I found this title, Gotham At War© 2025 by Mike Wallace (presumably of CBS News fame). In the review of this 900-page tome, I can find no mention of the most famous photo of WWII in NYC, the capsized Normande'. She wasn't just a beautiful ship; she was the pride of France. 

If you love great storytelling, you'll connect with this conversation. I sit down with Walden Hughes, a man whose Unstoppable passion has kept Old Time Radio alive for decades. As the voice behind YESTERDAY USA and a driving force with REPS, Walden has dedicated his life to preserving the art, sound, and soul of classic radio. We talk about what made those early shows so timeless, the craft of the actors, the power of imagination, and how simple audio could create entire worlds. Walden also shares how modern technology, archives, and community support are bringing these programs to new audiences. This conversation is about more than nostalgia. It's about keeping storytelling alive. Walden reminds us that great radio never fades and that imagination will always be Unstoppable. Highlights: 00:10 – Discover why Old Time Radio still captures the imagination of listeners today. 01:19 – Hear how the end of an era shaped the way we think about storytelling. 02:32 – Learn what made the performances and production of classic radio so unique. 04:25 – Explore how legendary shows left a lasting influence on modern audio. 05:16 – Gain insight into what separates timeless audio drama from today's versions. 08:32 – Find out how passion and purpose can turn nostalgia into something new. 12:15 – Uncover the community that keeps classic radio alive for new generations. 16:20 – See how creativity and teamwork sustain live radio productions. 24:48 – Learn how dedication and innovation keep 24/7 classic broadcasts running. 33:57 – Understand how listener support helps preserve the magic of radio history. 37:38 – Reflect on why live storytelling still holds a special kind of energy. 41:35 – Hear how new technology is shaping the future of audio storytelling. 46:26 – Discover how preservation groups bring lost performances back to life. 50:29 – Explore the process of restoring and protecting rare audio archives. 55:31 – Learn why authenticity and care matter in preserving sound for the future.     About the Guest: From a young age, Walden Hughes developed a lifelong love for radio and history. Appearing in documentaries on “Beep Baseball,” he went on to collect more than 50,000 old-time radio shows and produce hundreds of live nostalgic broadcasts. His work celebrates radio's golden era through events, celebrity interviews, and re-creations performed nationwide. His deep family roots reach back to early American history — from a Mayflower ancestor to relatives who served in major U.S. wars — shaping his respect for storytelling and legacy. With degrees in economics, political science, and an MBA in finance, he built a successful career in investments before turning his passion into purpose. As general manager and producer for Yesterday USA and longtime board member of SPERDVAC, he's preserved classic entertainment for future generations. Honored with awards like the Herb Ellis and Dick Beals Awards, he continues to consult for icons like Kitty Kallen and the Sinatra family, keeping the voices of radios past alive for audiences today.   Ways to connect with Walden:   Cell:  714/454-3281 Email:  waldenhughes@yesterdayusa.com or www.yesterdayusa.com Live shows are Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights beginning at 7:30 PDT.     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Wherever you are listening from, we're really glad you're here, and we are going to have a guest who we've had on before we get to have him on again, and we're going to grill him really good. I want you to remember that a few weeks ago, we talked to Walden Hughes. And Walden is a collector of old radio shows. He's been very involved with organizations that help promote the hobby of old radio shows, and old rate Old Time Radio, as I do, and I thought it would be kind of fun to have him back, because there are a number of events coming up that I think are very relevant to talk about, and so we're going to do that. So Walden, welcome back to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Michael, been such a long time, and glad you invited me back. Well, I know it's been so long well, so tell me, let's, let's go back again. You know, radio people talk about the golden days of radio, or the time of old radio. When do we think that? When do we say that officially ended, although I think it went beyond   Walden Hughes ** 02:29 it. I though I jumped 30th, 1962, I'm, yeah, I I think the style changed a little bit, I'm probably a romantic somewhat. I love the style of old time radio. I love how it sound. Yeah, I think in in the 3040s and 50s, the studios and the theater that they use sounded great for radio, and it disturbed me, and I bet you have the same feeling, Michael, that when you get new production and new the new studio, it just doesn't sound right. I feel the equilibrium is not quite the way. I love old time radio. I think Old Time Radio A prime web. I think a lot of new productions out there that, you know, release their podcasts and things on a weekly basis. I think they're handicapped. They just don't have the budget to really create and build a studio the way I think it should be, that if they have, it sound just natural and just right.   Michael Hingson ** 03:43 And I think that's part of it, but I think the other part of it is that people today don't seem to know how to act and create the same kind of environment with their voice that Old Time Radio actors did in the 30s, 40s and 50s and into into the early 60s, even we had Carl Amari on several weeks ago. And of course, one of the things that Carl did was, did complete recreations of all of the Twilight Zone shows. And even some of those are, are they sound sort of forced? Some of the actors sound forced, and they they haven't really learned how to sound natural in radio like some of the older actors do.   Walden Hughes ** 04:34 Yeah, and I know Bob we call did it for a bike I get thrown off when he generally way. Did have the highway stars remote end, and he had a Stock Company of Chicago after, and I could hear the equilibrium just not quite right. That bothers me. I don't know if the average person picks up on that, and you're right. I don't know if. Is it the style of acting that they teach in film and TV? It needs a radio acting different in a lot of ways, and you got it as you point. It's got to be realistic into the environment. And actors don't get that for radio,   Michael Hingson ** 05:25 yeah, and you talked about the last day for you of real radio was September 30, 1962 and we should probably explain why that is   Walden Hughes ** 05:36 diet throughout the CBS your Troy John and suspense as the two main keys of old time radio. And that was the last day of old time radio out of New York. And I hardcore Lacher sister. Think that's one radio Shane died per se   Michael Hingson ** 05:58 Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel were gone, right,   Walden Hughes ** 06:01 and the soap operas ended in November 2560 I like soap operas. I know a lot of people do not, but there's something can't there's something campy about it that I like. I would, I would like, I prefer to listen to somebody also proper than do some of the new production and make sure the acting style,   Michael Hingson ** 06:27 but I think there's a lot to do with it that that makes that the case. And I think you're absolutely right that so many things are different, but at the same time, radio did sort of continue. And there was, there were some good shows zero hour, the Hollywood radio theater that Rod Serling did later. And of course, NPR did Star Wars.   Walden Hughes ** 06:58 And I like that I did.   Michael Hingson ** 07:02 Yeah, I think that was done pretty well. And what do you think of CBS mystery theater? Honestly, CBS mystery theater, I thought that generally, CBS mystery theater had some good actors, and they did a pretty good job. I I can't complain too much about that, and it was on for a long time.   Walden Hughes ** 07:18 But what do you think of the script, though?   Michael Hingson ** 07:22 Well, part of the problem for me and CBS mystery theater is, and I'm sure it was a cost issue. There weren't very many people in most of the scripts. There was like two or three or so and and that was a problem. But I think that that the scripts suffered because there weren't more people in the scripts to really make it again sound pretty natural. I think that was a problem.   Walden Hughes ** 07:52 Yeah, Hyman Brown really knew how to crank it out. I think it has a good, solid B production, you know, the scripts. And I think the scripts are quite hampered. You couldn't, actually couldn't knock the actors. I thought the actors were Mercedes McCambridge and all those were terrific actors, but you're right. Sam dam wrote a lot of them, yeah, and things like that. But I   Michael Hingson ** 08:21 think, I think they would have been nicer to have more people in the scripts. But I understand that, that that probably was more difficult to do just because of union and scale and the cost. But gee, I think it would have made a big difference in the shows. But Hyman Brown really knew, as you said, How to crank them   Walden Hughes ** 08:39 out. Yeah, that's why, in some ways, I think the series, radio theater, the way 70 is a it's a terrific series. Didn't have the financial backing to make it last longer than the two years I was   Michael Hingson ** 08:52 on. Now, one show I really liked on in PR later was alien world, which I thought was good. I'd never heard any of them, so they were good, yeah, yeah, okay. I'm very happy with alien worlds. There were some actors from radio and in early television and so on. Hans con read, for example, was on some, yeah, I thought alien worlds went really well. I guess we're gonna have to get you some and get you to lose, Okay, interesting.   Walden Hughes ** 09:21 I just got done taking a eight week course on entrepreneurship for disabled people, and my idea is to pitch that we should be doing audio theater as a podcast. I think if it's big enough, it attracts national sponsors. And if you look at the numbers, everybody podcasting, 135 million people in the USA download a podcast once a week. Revenue, $2.46 billion yeah. Worldwide, 5 billion people download a podcast once a week. Revenue, three. $4 billion and so she had a well known he had a podcast with well known stars. I think she could get that 1% in that market, and then you can generate between the 24 to 40 million, $40 million in revenue a year. That would easily sure be a good financial model, and that's what I'm pitching. But when I went to the court, they asked me what to analyze, what's wrong with my what obstacles I have. And one of the things I put down is besides the studio we talked about and the acting, which a really good actor, actress, everybody, like a Beverly Washburn can pick up a script and knock it out of the park right away. Most actors are not able to do that. That's a real gift, as Michael was pointing out. But the other thing most scripts are written for film and TV, which is a verbal which is a eye medium, and a radio script is written for the ear, and I have produced enough the ear is faster than the eye. If you take like a TV script and a book and read it out loud, the mind wander. It has to have a faster pace for the ear. And I don't think more people notice that when they're analyzing a script,   Michael Hingson ** 11:31 yeah, but you you're sort of treading around the edges of something else. I think that is fascinating, that we can start to talk about one of the things that has occurred some over the past few years, and whether it be with a podcast or even just with the mechanisms we're using today, is there are some attempts to recreate some of the old radio shows and and you and I have both Well, we Have to get you acting in one of those shows, Walden. But I have, I've acted in the shows Walden works behind the scenes, and there are a number of people who have been involved with him. And you really can tell some of the good actors who performed in old radio as you said, Beverly Washburn, Carolyn Grimes and others. Carolyn, of course, is Zuzu from It's A Wonderful Life, and by the way, she's going to be coming on unstoppable mindset in the not too distant future. But, but the point is that you can tell those people because they've done it, and they're very comfortable with it, and they know how to make it come across really well. So for example, you're the president of the radio enthusiasts of Puget Sound. Now you're down here in Southern California. How did you work out being the president of reps?   Walden Hughes ** 13:01 Why my closest friends a hobby, Brian Haygood, and Brian's been one of the big movers and shakers of reps over the years. And when the founder, Mike Sprague, decided to step down, they were looking for new people to run showcase back in 2007 so Brian asked me, because I'm the one that has the contacts, you know, I'm the one booking guests for y USA rep, I'm sure the go to person with contacts and phone numbers, everybody. And so I just wound up doing the CO produced showcase back in 2007 with Brian. So that's been one of the things I wound up doing.   13:50 I produce   Walden Hughes ** 13:52 almost 30 923, or four days events of All Time Radio around the country. So tell us about showcase, showcase. It will be September 18, 19/20, 21st is a big event for us, for reps, and we got funding thanks to Ford culture and the state of Washington to do this. And it's free. You can go to reps online.org, and RSVP and come. And people that you get to see this time around are Beverly Washburn from Star Trek, when the bear ministry shows, yeah, when, when the bear man a good, solid voice actress, and also is a coach. Carolyn Grimes, as you mentioned, Margaret O'Brien, of course, you know Margaret from Oscar war winner from meet me in St Louis, Gigi Perot, and she goes back to the 40s and 50s. And did the belly hunting TV show, Tommy cook and Lacher Riley, a radio show. Ivan Kirk. Troy. Bobby Benson. Bill Owen, who you had on ABC TV announcer, author of The Big broadcast, Ron cocking. He and his great wife, Gloria Macmillan ran acting school for children.   Michael Hingson ** 15:15 Bill Ratner Miller, of course, is famous for radio.   Walden Hughes ** 15:18 Right arm is Brooks. Bill Ratner from GI Joe. Bill Johnson, who does Bob Hope around the country. John provoke to Timmy Lacher. Chuck Daugherty, the announcer for second announcer for Sergeant president of the Yukon King and discover the Beach Boys. David Osman from fire sign theater. Phil prosper from fire sign theater. John Iman, who was from the TV show Lacher. And there was Larry Albert and John Jensen, the big band Lacher. John Laurie gasping, and Dan Murphy used to be the program director ki Xi out in Seattle. And so that's gonna be a great weekend. We'll produce close to it, I think, 1819 radio recreation that's still negotiating. And we have several interviews and panel. It's all free. So you can go to repsonline.org, and that's one of our two major events, the other major events at the Christmas show in December, the first week in December. I'm hoping Mike can make it up that   Michael Hingson ** 16:31 weekend, I was hoping to be able to come to the Showcase. And one of my favorite shows, and Walden and I had talked about doing it, is Richard diamond private detective. And I actually asked to be cast as Richard diamond, but then a speaking engagement came up. So unfortunately, rather than being in Washington, I am going to be in Minnesota, I'm sorry, in Pennsylvania, speaking. So I won't be able to be there, but we'll do Richard diamond. That's gonna be a fun show one of these days. We'll do it.   Walden Hughes ** 17:06 We'll put we put it aside. So when Mike can can do it, we can do it so but no, really blessed to have the financial grants to keep audio theater live on a nonprofit basis, and that that that's a great board, and cannot every group's had that financial abilities right now to do that, and it's so expensive around the country to do it, terms of airfare, hotel commitments and Just meeting room costs, I mean, for people who may or may not know, when you go to a hotel a live event now, a lot of hotels expect that that meeting room needs to generate at least $10,000 of income per day. That that's a lot of money. And so we have a place that doesn't, that doesn't do that, and we're able to produce that. And so rep definitely focus on the live, live audio theater part, and also has a large library, like 33,000 shows I heard where we have so people can download, and we're also aggressively buying discs and things to add to the library. And I remember spur back I part of and I'll tell you some of the latest news and that when we talk to that topic, but it's just old time radio is in really good   Michael Hingson ** 18:41 shape at the moment. You mentioned Larry Albert, and most people won't know, but Larry Albert's been in radio for what, 40 years, and has played Detective Harry Niles that whole time, and he's also Dr Watson on Sherlock Holmes again, there are some really good professionals out there, which is cool, yeah, yeah, who understand and know how to talk in a way that really draws people in, which is what it's all about,   Walden Hughes ** 19:15 absolutely. And considering Larry and a co founder, they run all vacations, sure, the after of imagination theater. Sure they carry the banner up in Seattle, and it's pretty amazing what they're able to produce.   Michael Hingson ** 19:32 Yeah. Now, in addition to the Showcase and the Christmas show that reps is going to be doing, reps also does some other shows, don't they, during the year for like veterans and others up in the Seattle area, Tulsa, right?   Walden Hughes ** 19:46 We I thought that idea down here at spur back in 2017 the Long Beach Veterans Hospital, they still have the original theme. Leader, Mike, that Jack Benny and Bob Hope did their shows in front of the Vets at Long Beach. And I know you and I have radio shows from the Long Beach Veterans Hospital. Yes, and the stage is still there. It's the biggest stage I've ever seen. Mike, the seating area is mobile, so that way they can bring patients in who are wheelchairs or whatever, or in bed. They still have the 1940 film projectors and booth up above that they want to run movies in there, and it's just a remarkable feeling to be on stage that Bob Hope and and Jack Bailey did a show, and then the famous broadcast were Ralph Edward consequences, yeah, the Hubert Smith, who was A patient at the hospital and and so in 2017 we did. It's a Wonderful Life. And we had a gigantic crowd. I think it was almost 200 people came to that. And I was for the public and people inside the hospital. And it was, it was a exciting event to have deluxe version of It's a Wonderful Life, which was the 70th anniversary of the broadcast, right? And so I decided to take that concept and take up to Seattle and start performing shows inside the VA hospital system in Seattle. It took a while. It's hard, it's hard to get into the VA, VA system to put on shows, because you got to talk to the right people, and you gotta get a hold of PR and not always easy. So I found the right contacts, and then the state awards, and then has a grant for for veterans or veteran family member to be in shows, and so we're able to get some funding from the state for that so, and then we will also encourage them to come to showcase in September so. But no, that's that's another program we got going for that,   Michael Hingson ** 22:20 someone who I unfortunately never did get to meet, although I heard a lot of his shows, and he helped continue to bring memories of radio to especially the military. Was Frank brazzi, who was around for quite a while, and then he he was also on yesterday USA, a lot. Wasn't he sure where he's   Walden Hughes ** 22:46 from, from 1993 until 2018 so he had a good 25 year run on why USA, Frank and I co host the Friday night show for many years, until he passed away in 2018 show from 2000 to 2018 Frank was amazing guy. He was. He owned his own radio station in South Carolina, South Carolina Island. When he was 19, he had to form the first tape course in Hollywood show Bob Hope would hire him, and he would record all Bob stuff at Paramount Studio and sit to radio station and travel with Bob to record his radio Show. He also was Jim Hawthorne producer for television, Frank wound up developing board games a pass out sold 6 million copies in the new wedding the dating game. He had a company that got gift for game shows on television. He also set up a brother in a company to monitor when commercials were run on TV. Frank also produced record albums every day. He had Walter Winchell record the life of Alex joelson. Met with Jimmy Durante, had Jimmy Durante do an album, Eddie Cantor and so frank is one of these great entrepreneurs that was able to make a lot of money and spend a lot of it on his love for radio. He was the substitute for little beaver, for example, on Red Rider so and he loved doing the show the golden days of radio, which started in 1949 and from 1967 on, it was part of the Armed Forces Radio Service, which was put on 400 stations. And I'm the, I'm the care caregiver, caretaker of. All that items. So I have all the shows and getting them transferred and play them on y USA and Frank wanted to make sure his entire collection was available to collectors. So we want to make sure things were copied and things like that for people to enjoy. But no big part of old time radio, in a lot of ways, not behind the scene a little bit. You know, wasn't a big name person during the golden days of radio, but afterwards, wound up being a major person that carried the fire Troy, full time radio.   Michael Hingson ** 25:35 I know we talked about a little bit, but talk to us about yesterday, USA, that has been around quite a while, and in general, for those who don't know, yesterday, USA is an internet radio station, actually two, if you will. There's a red and a blue network of yesterday USA, and they both stations broadcast to old radio 24 hours a day, although conversations and up to date conversations are interspersed, it still primarily is a a vehicle for playing old radio shows, right?   Walden Hughes ** 26:13 Yeah, been around since 1983 founded by its start. Yeah. Founded by Bill Bragg, Bill started the largest communication museum in the world back in 1979 in Dallas, Texas, and he had a film exchanger. And there was a TV station called a nostalgia channel, and it had these films of old TV shows, but they didn't have the media to transfer it, and so they contacted Bill. Bill agreed to transfer the film. He asked what it is exchanged for him. They said, we can give you an audio channel on satellite. And they gave that to him. And so he tried to decide what to do. So he started a broadcast Old Time Radio over satellite, and he was over the big C span satellite   Speaker 1 ** 27:12 until Oh into the 2005   Walden Hughes ** 27:16 era or so. Wound up being the audio shop carrier for WGN got it high in 2000 at the third most popular internet broadcast site in the world, behind the BBC and CNN around the Lacher saw around 44 that's not too bad, with 15,000 stations online.   Michael Hingson ** 27:41 I remember, I remember it was probably like 1998 or so, maybe 97 we were living in New Jersey, and I was doing something on my computer. And I don't even remember how I discovered it, but suddenly I found yesterday, USA, and at that time, yesterday, USA was one channel, and people could become DJs, if you will, and play old radio shows. You could have an hour and a half slot. And every other week you updated your broadcast, and they put on your shows at different times during the the two week period. But it was a wave that, again, a lot of people got an opportunity to listen to radio, and I'm sure it was very popular.   Walden Hughes ** 28:32 Yeah, yeah, if they'll to Lacher show, we don't, we don't get 40,000 to 60,000 listening hours a month, with it a lot, because a lot, maybe some people might listen to seven minutes, some might people listen to a half hour and all that accumulative, it's almost 60,000 hours a month. So that's a lot of hours that people are accessing in it, there's something nice about being alive. I don't know what you think Mike, but doing something live is pretty special, and that's, that's the nice thing about what yesterday USA can provide, and we can talk, take calls, and then, you know, in the old days, you have more and more people talk about Old Time Radio. No doubting, but a lot of new people don't have those memories, so we we might do some other things to keep it interesting for people to talk about, but it's still the heart and soul. Is still old time radio in a lot of ways, and we're definitely the fiber, I think for new people to find old time radio.   29:43 How did you get involved with it?   Walden Hughes ** 29:47 I became aware of it in the early 80s when sperback mentioned it in the news trailer, so I knew it's out there. And I called, and Bill returned my call. I said, I would like my cable TV. A company to play it, and I contacted my cable TV. They couldn't get to that channel that was on the satellite, so they put big band music on those dead on the community board. And so at the same time as you about 1998 I had a good enough computer with a good enough sound card I could pick up yesterday, USA. I was aware of it. It started on the internet in 1996 I started to listen, and then I would sort of call in around 2000 they would ask a question Bill and Mike and not really know the answer, so I will quickly call and give the answer, then leave. Eventually, they realized that I knew kitty Cowan, the big band, singer of the 40s and 50s. They asked me to bring on and do the interview, which we did September 17 of 2000 and then they asked, Could I do interviews on a regular basis? And so when a kiddie friend who I knew, Tess Russell, who was Gene Autry's Girl Friday, who ran kmpc for the audience, that was the station with the stars down the road, easy listening music,   Michael Hingson ** 31:21 golden broadcasting, and that was the station Gene Autry owned, yep.   Walden Hughes ** 31:26 And I think everybody in the music business but the old touch rush all favor. So she she hooked up, she signed up. She gave me set book 17 guests for me, right away from Joe staff or the Troy Martin to Pat Boone Patti Page, who wrote them all out. So I had a major start, and then I started to contact people via letters, celebrities and things. And I think it's a really good batting average. Mike, I had a success rate of 20% Wow. Wish it was a person that didn't I had no contact with that I could turn into a guess. I always thought I was a pretty good batting average. Yeah, and I got Margaret Truman that way. I mean, she called me, said, Wong, I forgot I did this radio show with Jimmy Stewart. She did jackpot, you know, the screen director of Playhouse. And we talked about her time on The Big Show with Tallulah Bankhead. They said, a big help with Fred Allen to her. She we talked about she hosted a show, NBC show called weekday with what the weekday version of monitor was, Mike Wallace. And she talks about how Mike had a terrible temper, and if he got upset with the engineer, she has to grab his jacket and pull him back in his chair just to try to cool them off. And so we had a great time with Margaret O'Brien, Margaret Truman, but, but I always thought that would a pretty good bat Navy getting 20% and in those days, in early 2000 a lot of celebrities would be were willing to interact with the through the website, with you, and so I did that. So I booked hundreds of celebrity interviews over the years, and so it's been a, I think, an important part what I do is trying to preserve people's memories, right that way we have the recordings.   Michael Hingson ** 33:43 And so how long was Bill with yesterday, USA.   Walden Hughes ** 33:49 I passed away in 2019 so Bill from 83 to 2019, to us, 10 years or so of his wife, though he had   Michael Hingson ** 34:05 Alzheimer's and dementia, and so you could tell he was he was sounding older, yeah, and   Walden Hughes ** 34:11 he wasn't behind the scene. He was really erratic in a lot of ways. So Kim, Kim and I wound up his wife, and I wound up running the station for the last 10 years, behind the scene, okay, Bill wasn't able to do it, and so I would be the one handling the interaction with the public and handling the just jockeys, and Kim would do the automation system and do the paperwork. So she and I pretty much ran the station.   34:43 And now you do   Walden Hughes ** 34:45 it, I do it, yeah, and so I think Bill always had in mind that I'd be the one running the station in a lot of ways. And think to the listeners, we've been able to pay the bills enough to keep it. Going, I would love to generate more income for it.   Michael Hingson ** 35:03 Well, tell us about that. How are you doing the income generation? And so most of it is through   Walden Hughes ** 35:09 a live auction that we have in November this year, will be on Saturday, November 22 and people donate gift cards or items, and people bid on it, or people donate, and that money we basically use to help pay the monthly bills, which are power bills and phone bills and things like that, and so, which is a remarkable thing. Not every internet radio station has a big enough fan base to cover the cost, and so all the internet stations you see out there, everybody, the owners, sort of really have to pull money out of their own pocket. But why USA been around long enough, it has enough loyal following that our listenership really kicks in. I mean, we built a brand new studio here with the with the audience donating the funds, which is pretty remarkable. You know, to do that,   Michael Hingson ** 36:16 yeah, you got the new board in, and it's working and all that. And that's, a good thing. It really is. Well, I have been a listener since I discovered y USA. When we moved out to California for a while, I wasn't quite as active of a listener, but I still worked at it as I could. But then we moved down here, and then after Karen passed, was easier to get a lot more directly involved. And so I know I contribute to the auction every year, and I'm gonna do it again this year.   Walden Hughes ** 36:49 So would you, when you were after what you knew, why you said, Did you did you come with your question still quite a bit when you were working and traveling all the time over the years.   Michael Hingson ** 37:01 Oh, yeah, yeah, oh, I did a lot of times, and still, do I listen to some internet radio stations? Why USA among them when I travel, just because when I go to a new hotel, sometimes I can make the TV work, and sometimes I can't, but also sometimes finding the stations that I want to listen to is a little bit more of a challenge, whereas I can just use my my smartphone, my iPhone, and I've got a number of stations programmed in the only time I have had A little bit of a challenge with some of that is when I travel outside the US, sometimes I can't get direct access to some of the stations because of copyright laws. They don't they don't allow them to be broadcast out of the US, but mostly even there, I'm able to do it. But I do like to listen to old radio when I travel, typically, not on an airplane, but when I when I land, yes, yeah.   Walden Hughes ** 38:08 I think that's one thing that they ended up taking over. I think a lot of people grew up listening to the radio. Enjoy the uniqueness of radio station had. I don't know if you see that today, but I think the internet have replaced that.   Michael Hingson ** 38:24 Well, somewhat, I've seen some articles that basically say that there is a lot more shortwave listening and actual radio listening to radio stations than there is through the internet, but there is an awful lot of listening to the radio stations through the internet as well, but people do still like to listen to radio.   Walden Hughes ** 38:50 What do you think podcast? How you think podcasts fit in? I mean, you'd be hosting your own show. How you think that fit into the overall consumer questioning habit?   Michael Hingson ** 38:59 Well, I think then, what's going on with podcasts is that, like with anything, there are some really good ones. There are a lot of people who just do do something, and it's not necessarily really great quality. They think they're doing great, and they maybe are, but, but I think that overall, podcasting is something that people listen to when they're running, when they're walking, when they're doing exercising, when they're doing something else, running on a treadmill or whatever, a lot More than listening to a radio program that probably requires a little bit more concentration. But make no mistake about it, podcasts are here to stay, and podcasts are very dominant in in a lot of ways, because people do listen to them   Walden Hughes ** 39:56 a niche audience. So you find you find your audience who. Are looking for that particular topic, and so they tune into that their favorite podcast that they knew there really might be covering that topic.   Michael Hingson ** 40:07 Sure, there is some of that. But going back to what you were talking about earlier, if you get some good audio drama, and I know that there are some good podcasts out there that that do some things with good drama, that will draw in a wider audience, and that gets to be more like radio and and I think people like radio. People like what they used to listen to, kids so much today, don't but, well, they never heard old they never heard radio. But by the same token, good acting and good drama and good podcasts will draw people in just like it always has been with radio.   Walden Hughes ** 40:54 What I'm also noticing like the day the disc jockeys are, they somewhat gone. I mean, we grew up in an era where you had well known hosts that were terrific Dick jockey that kept you entertained. And I make it, I don't listen to too much because, for example, everybody the easy listening big band era, pretty much not in LA in the La radio market right now, right and I missed it.   Michael Hingson ** 41:23 I miss it too. And I agree with you, I think that we're not seeing the level of really good radio hosts that we used to there are some on podcasts. But again, it is different than it used to be. And I think some podcasts will continue to do well and and we will see how others go as as time passes, but I think that we don't see a Gary Owens on television on radio anymore. We don't see Jim Lang or Dick Whittington and whitting Hill and all those people, we don't see any of that like we used to. And so even Sirius XM isn't providing as much of that as as it used to.   Walden Hughes ** 42:20 And so what do you think AI is going to fit? I was listening to, I'm a sport fan, and Mike is a sport fan, so I like listening to ESPN and Fox Sports Radio.   Michael Hingson ** 42:32 And I was listening to a discussion over the weekend that they are, they are working some of the immediate it to replace the play by play announcer they're working with. Ai, can I figure eventually that can be a caution. It to do away with all announcers. I'm not sure that's going to happen, because I don't know. It doesn't seem like it could. I'm not sure that that will happen. I think that even if you look at the discussions about audible and other organizations providing AI voices to read books, what people say, and I'm sure over time, this will change a little bit, but and I'll get back to the button in a moment, people Say, I would much rather have a human narrated book than an AI narrated book, and the reason is, is because AI hasn't captured the human voice. Yet you may have somebody who sounds like an individual person to a degree, but you don't have the same pauses, the same intonations, the same kind of thing with AI that you do with humans. Now, will that get better over time? Sure, it will. But will it get it to be as good as humans? I think that's got a long way to go yet, and I don't think that you're going to see AI really replacing people in that regard. I think AI's got a lot that it can do, but I actually had somebody on the podcast last year, and one of the things that he said is, AI will never replace anyone. People will replace people with AI, maybe, although that may or may not be a good thing, but nobody has to be replaced because of AI, because you can always give them other jobs to do. So for example, one of the discussions that this gentleman and I had were was about having AI when you have autonomous vehicles and you have trucks that can drive themselves, and so you can ship things from place to place, keep the driver in the truck anyway. And instead of the driver driving the vehicle, the driver can be given other tasks to do, so that you still keep that person busy. And you you become more efficient. And so you let i. I do the things that it can do, but there are just so many things that AI isn't going to do that I don't think that AI is ever going to replace humans. The whole point is that we make leaps that AI is not going to be able to do.   Walden Hughes ** 45:15 Yeah, I think a good example in the audio book field, a really great reader can give you emotion and play the characters and make it realistic. And I don't know AI ever going to reach that point to bring emotions and feelings into a reading of story   Michael Hingson ** 45:32 not the same way. And as I said, I've been involved or listened and watched discussions where people say, for example, I might use AI to read a non fiction book because I'm not really paying so much attention to the reader and I'm just getting the information. But when it comes to reading a fiction book, and when it comes to really wanting to focus on the reader, I don't want AI is what I constantly hear. I want a person, and I understand that,   Walden Hughes ** 46:00 yeah, I think what you'll see AI, especially, take over the drive thru when people go to a fast food place. I can see AI replacing the interaction and trying to get those things corrected. I can see that   Michael Hingson ** 46:14 maybe, maybe, I mean, you know some of that to a degree, but I think that people are still going to rule out in the end, for quite a while. Well, you know, in talking about all the different radio organizations, I know we talked about a little bit last night last time, but tell me about spurt back.   Walden Hughes ** 46:36 Yeah, I can give you some new updates. Spoke actually been around to 1974   Michael Hingson ** 46:42 I remember when spurred back began a person who I knew, who was a listener to my radio program, Jerry Hindi, guess, was involved with with all of that. My problem with attending spurred back meetings was that it was they were way too far away from me at UC Irvine to be able to do it, but I joined by mail for a while, and, and, and that was pretty good. But by the same token, you know, it was there,   Walden Hughes ** 47:11 it was there. And spur back. Have honored over 500 people who worked in the golden days of radio. A lot of district donated. They had the meetings in the conventions now we're evolving very quickly this year into more preservation work. So we have bought over $10,000 in computers here recently. We bought and we donated, actually, we won a prize, although the first Lacher disk turntables from Japan, which is over a $10,000 turntable, we'll be using that to help dub disc. And the board is just voted in. It's going to increase the board to at least 11 people next year who will have a carryover of the seven board member and we want to have no new board members. So maybe you and I can talk about that Mike for you to be on for next year, because we'll be definitely expanding the board with 11 one. So I think it'd be really strong in the preservation stuff, because perfect got 20 to 30,000 deaths that need to get out there. And with all your new equipment, it's amazing how full time radio sounds so good today terms of the new technology, and compare where I started collecting the 70 and I ran into a lot of even commercial stuff really muddy in those days. Mike, I bet you did too, and it's a remarkable difference. Spur back is planning to be at the Troy Boston festival next April, what does spread back? Stand for the society to preserve and encourage radio drama, variety and comedy. And you can go to spur back.com Join. You can go to repsonlect.org to join. And we then mentioned yesterday, USA. Yesterday usa.com or.net and can go there and listen away and participate in the auction, which will be coming up November 22 Yeah, very important to do as well. But anyway, I really think full time radio is in a really good spot. Mike. I think if it was for the internet, I don't know if we would find all the young people who are interested in it. I think it then it been a double edged sword. It knocked out a lot of dealers. You know, they used to make money selling their tapes and CDs and everything, and I bought a lot. I know you did too over the years, but those days are pretty. Pretty much done, and but if found a lot of new younger people to find the stations or find podcast and they get to learn about yesterday USA and Old Time Radio, and all the different radio ones more and all the different internet station are playing it until they can expose and I don't think that would have happened before the internet, so I think it'll always have it created a whole new listenership.   Michael Hingson ** 50:30 I am still amazed at some of the things that I hear. I remember once when somebody found a whole bunch of old Petri wine sponsored Sherlock Holmes with basil, Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. They were horrible quality. Was it Chris who   Walden Hughes ** 50:50 found? Yep, Chris one best founded me up and found me a bookstore.   Michael Hingson ** 50:55 And the quality wasn't wasn't good at all, but they were remastered, and they sound incredible. They do how they do it, because I'd love to be able to do that with shows that I have, and like to remaster them.   Walden Hughes ** 51:13 Yeah, what happened was, you know, they were two writers, green and Boucher, Lacher, Lacher, right, and Boucher was a famous bachelor Khan. The famous mystery convention is named after him. And Dennis Green was an actor on radio, and he was also a historian. He knew, like all everything about Sherlock Holmes. And so they created the new venture who saw a comb based upon maybe a scene from a previous right story and gets expanded upon it. And so when it when one of them passed away, the collection wound up in a bookstore in Berkeley, California, and crystal investor found out. And so there became a buying group led by John tough fellow, Kenny Greenwald, Dick Millen, Joey brewing and others, got in a bidding war with the Library of Congress, and they outbid and won. They paid $15,000 for the sets of Sherlock, Holmes and so and Shirley Boone was an NBC audio engineer and chief film engineer. He really knew how to dub, and so they they did a terrific job. And then they decided to put out a record album on their own with the first two episodes. And then after that, they decided to market it to Simon Schuster, and they decided to do small vignettes. They could copyright the vignette. These were quite three minutes introduction, so they would get Ben Wright, who wanted to always Sherlock Holmes and Peggy Webber in order to reminisce and or create little scenes to set up the stories that way they could copyright that part. They couldn't copyright the show because they fell in the public domain, right? But they wound up paying the estates of everybody anyway. But that's what how they all came out, and they were hoping to do Gunsmoke. We talked to Kenny Greenwald and others, but that never, that never came off and but that's part of the remarkable thing that Karl Marx done. He's been able to get into CBS, and I think he's working on NBC, and he licensed them, so he'll be able to get into the vault and get more stuff out for all of it to enjoy. And that's an amazing thing that Carl drives for the hobby is to get new stuff out there. It's been locked away for all these years.   Michael Hingson ** 53:53 I am just amazed at the high quality. I'd love to learn more about audio engineering to be able to do that, because I have a lot of recording I'd love to make a lot better than they are.   Walden Hughes ** 54:05 Yeah, Jerry Henry used to use a software called Diamond Cut, ah, and I would the those originally was used for the Edison solder records. And the guy who issued this, Joe, they developed the software. And that's where Joe, hi, who did so much transfer work, that was the program he wound up using to create good sound,   Michael Hingson ** 54:32 yeah, and, and did a lot of it,   Walden Hughes ** 54:36 yep, see there, see, there was a software, everybody, I think original is hardware. And I think originally almost was a $50,000 piece of equipment, harder before 2000 now it's gone to software base and a couple $1,000 that's another way. That's another program that people use to clean disk. Now. Crackles and pop out of the recording.   Michael Hingson ** 55:02 So but it's not just the snap crackle and pop. It's getting the the real fidelity back, the lows and the highs and all that you said, what was the one he used? Diamond Cut. Diamond Cut, yeah. Diamond Cut, yeah. But yeah. It's just amazing. The kinds of things that happen, like with the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and and others.   Walden Hughes ** 55:23 But you also have good ears for that. Because, yeah, I remember about 2025, years ago, it was serious. XM. Everybody has this stereo sound, I know, if you're shooting, has a certain ambiance about it. And there were companies that were taking old time radio and creating that same effect, and that could bug me. I was so used to listen to old radio show in an analog feel about it. And they when they try to put false stereo in a recording, yeah, oh my gosh. It just didn't sound right. And so they've gotten away from that pill, a lot of new dubbing. They do don't have that. So it sounds terrific now, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 56:15 sounds a lot better. What do you think is the future of the hobby?   Walden Hughes ** 56:19 I think more and more stuff are coming out. A lot of stuff that were with agreements to hold on to the material have disappeared, because a lot of it is passing from generation to generation. And so I think over the next 10 years, you see so much more stuff coming out. In some ways, that's sort of what you John Larry and I do. We collect almost everything, just because you got to make sure it's captured for the for the next generation, even though we might not be listening to it. There's so much stuff we don't listen to do everything. But I think we're, we're short of the wide billions of old time radio so we try to capture all of it and preserve it on hard drives, yeah, but eventually it'll go to future generations. But I really think more and more stuff are coming out. I think with the yesterday USA, more and more people will find it. And I'm hoping, with creating new audio theater, I would like to reproduce the great radio scripts we have no recordings for, like one man, family, I love, a mystery, all those things. That's sort of what I want to do, is one of my goals. And I think be great to hear stories that we've all collected, that we wonder about, and to get audio production behind some of these scripts. And I think it's in very good shape. It will all come down to money, Michael, as you know, you know,   Michael Hingson ** 57:58 but I also think that it's important that we, as we're recreating the shows, that while we can, we have people who understand what we really need for actors who are going to be recreating the shows, are able to find the right people to do it, train them how to do it. I think that's so important.   Walden Hughes ** 58:19 I think so. I think, I think you find a lot of young people who like theater, who are not necessarily radio fan, if they came, if the radio fan, like Brian Henderson and people like that, they become really good actor because they love to listen to the shows ahead of time. Yeah. Beverly Washburn does the same. She likes hearing the original performances that way. She get field for me to the show. And I think you and I think Larry does it that way. And you might not necessarily want to copy everything, but you got a benchmark to work from, and you sort of know what, with the intent when   Michael Hingson ** 59:01 you say Larry, which Larry? Larry Gasman,   Walden Hughes ** 59:03 great, yeah. And I think that's a great help to study and listen how people did it, because I think a lot of old time radio, it's like the prime rib. It was the best of the best of all time of radio drama, and it's a great way to learn the craft, by listening to it and absorbing it.   Michael Hingson ** 59:30 Well, if people want to reach out to you and maybe learn more about yesterday, USA or reps and just talk with you about radio, how do they do that, they can give me a   Walden Hughes ** 59:41 call at 714-545-2071, that's my studio number for the radio stations. Lot of times I can, I'll pick it up and talk to on air, off air. They can always drop me an email Walden shoes at yesterday. Us. Dot com and happy the answer, you can always call my cell phone at 714-454-3281,   Walden Hughes ** 1:00:11 you can chase me down at over, at reps, at reps online.org. You know, get forward to me or spur vac at S, P, E, O, D, V, A, c.com, or you can even get hold of Michael Henson and Mike.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:26 You can always get a hold of me. And people know how to do that, and I will get them in touch with you as well, you bet. So I'm glad to do that. Well, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this. This is a little bit different than a lot of the podcast that we've done. But it is, it is so important to really talk about some of these kinds of concepts, and to talk about old radio and what it what it still adds and contributes to today. So I hope that you enjoyed it. I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to me. Michael H, i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, love to hear from you. Wherever you're listening, please give us a five star rating. We value that a lot, and I hope that you'll go listen to YESTERDAY usa.com, or.net then again, in both, there's the red and the blue Network, or repsonline.com, and we, we have a lot of fun. Every so often we do trivia contests, and we'll take hours and and gentlemen in New Jersey and his wife, Johnny and Helen Holmes, come on and run the trivia, and it's a lot of fun, and you're welcome to add your answers to the trivia questions, and you can come on in here and learn how to even do it through the chat.   Walden Hughes ** 1:01:51 But my kids watch this every Friday night on, why USA too?   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:56 Yeah, I get to be on every Friday night, and that's a lot of fun. Yeah. So we'd love to hear from you, and we'd love you to to help us further enhance the whole concept of old radio show. So I want to thank you again. And if you know of other people who ought to be on the podcast, Walt, and of course, you as well as you know, please introduce us. We're always looking for more people to talk to us about whatever they want to talk about. So I want to again. Thank you all and for being here. And Walden, thank you for being here as well.   Walden Hughes ** 1:02:27 All right, Mike, I'll be talking a little while.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:33 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

As the Supreme Court begins its new term, Trump lost six different cases in district courts just last week, ranging from bans on deploying the National Guard, to defending freedom of speech for noncitizens, to yet another court rejecting his executive order abolishing birthright citizenship. At the same time, Trump is claiming an illegitimate legal basis for ordering the murder of civilians he claims are trafficing in drugs. David Cole will comment—he's former national legal director of the ACLU.Also, There's a wonderful new history of New York City from the Depression thru WWII, out now - It's called “Gotham at War,” written by Mike Wallace. He won the Pulitzer Prize in History for the first volume in his “Gotham” series. To talk about ‘Gotham at War,' we'll turn to Brenda Wineapple, who writes for the New York Review and the New York Times Book Review; her most recent book is the Scopes trial--it's called ‘Keeping the Faith.'Our Sponsors:* this is a paid advertisement from BetterHelp. Check out BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/THENATIONAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

As the Supreme Court begins its new term, Trump lost six different cases in district courts just last week, ranging from bans on deploying the National Guard, to defending freedom of speech for noncitizens, to yet another court rejecting his executive order abolishing birthright citizenship. At the same time, Trump is claiming an illegitimate legal basis for ordering the murder of civilians he claims are trafficing in drugs. David Cole will comment—he's former national legal director of the ACLU.Also, There's a wonderful new history of New York City from the Depression thru WWII, out now - It's called “Gotham at War,” written by Mike Wallace. He won the Pulitzer Prize in History for the first volume in his “Gotham” series. To talk about ‘Gotham at War,' we'll turn to Brenda Wineapple, who writes for the New York Review and the New York Times Book Review; her most recent book is the Scopes trial--it's called ‘Keeping the Faith.'Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

New trade policies annoy the Dutch, and new English companies attempt to force their way into West African markets. New Amsterdam becomes New York. The Second Anglo-Dutch War begins. Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World, 2023. Anna Keay, The Restless Republic, 2022. Rebecca Rideal, 1666: Plague, War, and Hellfire, 2016. Charles Wilson, England's Apprenticeship: 1603-1763, 1975. David Veevers, The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600-1750, 2020. John Childs, General Percy Kirke and the Later Stuart Army, 2014. Philip Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India, 2011. Edwin Burrows, Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, 1999. Julie Svalastog, Mastering the Worst of Trades: England's Early Africa Companies and their Traders, 1618–1672, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

(3:00) GP opens on ESPN's ranking of the Top 10 NBA Players and the lack of American stars + where some Grizzlies land in the top 100. (17:00) Mike Wallace joins to talk Grizzlies biggest storylines as we get closer to media day on Monday(44:30) Ole Miss QB controversy, Wagner Coach suspended for alleged abuse, Memphis Monopoly drops, Aaron Judge hits HR number 50, and the Guardians have officially completed the comeback. (1:11:00) GP's Carry Out 

(3:00) GP opens on the Memphis/Arkansas game and Bennett gets fired up after being featured in the Tigers hype video(24:00) Mike Wallace joins to talk Grizzlies and the uncertainly surrounding the Warriors heading into the season(43:00) Jimmy Kimmel suspended for comments on his show, Kyler Murray has to apologize for photo, is the Messi hype still a thing? WNBA playoffs tonight, and the artist named D4VDwe talked about last week might be in real trouble. (1:16:20) GP's Carry Out  

2 hours and 50 minutes of old time radio fun!Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy 1940-11-22 e1555 Luminous Dragon Eye RingChallenge Of The Yukon 1950-10-02 The Malacca Cane Kraft Music Hall 1947-10-02 Al Jolson Now Hosts Guest Edgar BergenDamon Runyon Theater 1949-01-09 Little Miss Marker Crime On The Waterfront 1949-02-24 (Mike Wallace)Suspense 1943-01-12 The Pit & The Pendulum with Henry Hull

As you will learn, our guest this time, Walden Hughes, is blind and has a speech issue. However, as you also will discover none of this has stopped Walden from doing what he wants and likes. I would not say Walden is driven. Instead, I would describe Walden as a man of vision who works calmly to accomplish whatever task he wishes to undertake. Walden grew up in Southern California including attending and graduating from the University of California at Irvine. Walden also received his Master's degree from UCI. Walden's professional life has been in the financial arena where he has proven quite successful. However, Walden also had other plans for his life. He has had a love of vintage radio programs since he was a child. For him, however, it wasn't enough to listen to programs. He found ways to meet hundreds of people who were involved in radio and early television. His interviews air regularly on www.yesterdayusa.net which he now directs. Walden is one of those people who works to make life better for others through the various entertainment projects he undertakes and helps manage. I hope you find Walden's life attitude stimulating and inspiring. About the Guest: With deep roots in U.S. history and a lifelong passion for nostalgic entertainment, Walden Hughes has built an impressive career as an entertainment consultant, producer, and historian of old-time radio. Since beginning his collection in 1976, he has amassed over 50,000 shows and has gone on to produce live events, conventions, and radio recreations across the country, interviewing over 200 celebrities along the way. A graduate of UC Irvine with both a BA in Economics and Political Science and an MBA in Accounting/Finance, he also spent a decade in the investment field before fully embracing his love of entertainment history. His leadership includes serving as Lions Club President, President of Radio Enthusiasts of Puget Sound, and long-time board member of SPERDVAC, earning numerous honors such as the Eagle Scout rank, Herb Ellis Award, and the Dick Beals Award. Today, he continues to preserve and celebrate the legacy of radio and entertainment through Yesterday USA and beyond. Ways to connect with Walden: SPERDVAC: https://m.facebook.com/sperdvacconvention/ Yesterday USA: https://www.facebook.com/share/16jHW7NdCZ/?mibextid=wwXIfr REPS: https://www.facebook.com/share/197TW27jRi/?mibextid=wwXIfr About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset, where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. We're going to deal with all of that today. We have a guest who I've known for a while. I didn't know I knew him as long as I did, but yeah, but we'll get to that. His name is Walden Hughes, and he is, among other things, the person who is the driving force now behind a website yesterday USA that plays 24 hours a day old radio shows. What I didn't know until he told me once is that he happened to listen to my show back on K UCI in Irvine when I was doing the Radio Hall of Fame between 1969 and 1976 but I only learned that relatively recently, and I didn't actually meet Walden until a few years ago, when we moved down to Victorville and we we started connecting more, and I started listening more to yesterday, USA. We'll talk about some of that. But as you can tell, we're talking, once again, about radio and vintage radio programs, old radio programs from the 30s, 40s and 50s, like we did a few weeks ago with Carl Amari. We're going to have some other people on. Walden is helping us get some other people onto unstoppable mindset, like, in a few weeks, we're going to introduce and talk with Zuzu. Now, who knows who Zuzu is? I know Walden knows, but I'll bet most of you don't. Here's a clue. Whenever a bell rings, an angel gets his wingsu was the little girl on. It's a Wonderful Life. The movie played by Carol from Yeah, and she the star was Carolyn Grimes, and we've met Carolyn. Well, we'll get to all that. I've talked enough. Walden, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're   Walden Hughes ** 03:19 here. Hello, Michael boy, I mean, you, you had John Roy on years ago, and now you finally got to me that's pretty amazing.   Michael Hingson ** 03:25 Well, you know, we should have done it earlier, but that's okay, but, but you know what they say, the best is always saved for last.   Walden Hughes ** 03:34 Hey. Well, you know, considering you've been amazing with this show on Friday night for the last year. So here yesterday, USA, so we you and I definitely know our ins and outs. So this should be an easy our place talk.   Michael Hingson ** 03:47 Yes. Is this the time to tell people that Walden has the record of having 42 tootsie rolls in his mouth at once?   Walden Hughes ** 03:52 That's what they say. I think we could do more, though, you know. But yeah, yeah. Well, we won't ask, miss, yeah, we won't ask you to do that here. Why not?   Michael Hingson ** 04:03 Yeah, we want you to be able to talk. Well, I'm really glad you're here. Tell us a little about the early Walden growing up and all that.   Walden Hughes ** 04:12 I'm my mom and dad are from Nebraska, so I have a lot of Midwestern Nebraska ties. They moved out here for jobs in 65 and I was born in 1966 and I was the first baby to ever survive the world Pierre syndrome, which means I was born with a cleft palate, being extremely near sighted and and a cup and a recession. So I was the first baby through my mom and dad debt by $10,000 in 17 days, and it was a struggle for my folks. You know, in those early days, without insurance, without any. Thing like that. You know, people really didn't think about medical insurance and things like that in those days, that was not an issue. So, um, so I've always had extremely loving family. Then I went through five retina detachments, and starting when I was seven years old, up to I was nine, and I finally woke up one morning seeing white half circle so the retina detached. Sometime in the middle of the night, went to the most famous eye doctor the world at times, Dr Robert macchermer, who was the one who invented the cataract surgery and everything. Later, he wound up being the head of Duke Medical that was down in Florida, and they took one last ditch effort to save my sight, but it was a 2% chance, and it didn't work out. So they went blind in November 75 and went into school for people who may or may not know California pretty aggressive in terms of education, and so when I wear hearing aids, so I parted a hard of hearing class. Newport school. Mesa took care of the kids who were hard of hearing and the blind children went up to Garden Grove. So when I walked my site, went up to Garden Grove. And so that was my dedication. I was always a driven person. So and I also had a family that supported me everything I ever did. They didn't it just they were ultimately supporting me in education, all sorts of stuff. So I wound up in the Boy Scout Program. Wound up being an Eagle Scout like you, wound up being visual honoring the OA. And this was always side of kids. I was sort of the organizer all decided kid, and there was Walden that was right, I was that way in my entire life, which is interesting that the most kids are all hanging out. We were sighted and and even the school district, which was pretty amazing to think about it, Newport, they told my mom and dad, hey, when Wong ready to come back to his home school district, we'll cover the bill. We'll do it. And so my freshman year, after my freshman year in high school, we thought, yeah, it's time to come back. And so the Newport school, Mesa picked up the tab, and so did very well. Went up, applied to seven colleges, Harvard, a Yale Stanford turned me down, but everybody else took me   Michael Hingson ** 07:53 so, but you went to the best school anyway.   Walden Hughes ** 07:57 So I mean, either like Michael Troy went to UCI and I graduated in three years and two quarters with a degree in economics, a degree in politics, a minor in management, and then I went to work as a financial planner with American Express and then a stockbroker. I always wanted to go back get my MBA. So I got my MBA at UCI, and I graduated with my MBA in accounting and finance in 1995 so that's sort of the academic part Wow of my life.   Michael Hingson ** 08:32 How did your parents handle when it was first discovered that you were blind? So that would have been in what 75 how do they handle that?   Walden Hughes ** 08:42 They handle it really well. I think my dad was wonderful. My dad was the one that took, took me my birth, to all the doctor appointments, you know, such a traumatic thing for my mom. So my dad took that responsibility. My mom just clean house. But they, they My dad always thought if I were going to make it through life, it was going to be between my ears. It could be my brain and I, I was gifted and academically in terms of my analytical abilities are really off the chart. They tested me like in 160 and that mean I could take a very complicated scenario, break it down and give you a quick answer how to solve it within seconds. And that that that paid off. So no, I think, and they they had complete and so they put in the time.   Michael Hingson ** 09:47 What kind of work did your dad do? My dad   Walden Hughes ** 09:51 wound up being a real estate agent, okay, and so that gave him flexibility time. My mom wound up working for the Irvine camp. Attorney, which is the big agriculture at that time, now, apartments and commercial real estate here in oil County and so. So with their support and with the emphasis on education, and so they helped me great. They helped my brother a great deal. So I think in my case, having two really actively involved parents paid off, you know, in terms of, they knew where to support me and they knew the one to give me my give me my head, you know, because I would a classic example of this. After I graduated from college at UCI, I was looking for work, and mom said, my mom's saying, oh, keep go to rehab. Talk to them. They're both to help you out, give it. I really wasn't interested, so I sat down and met with them and had several interviews, and they said we're not going to fund you because either A, you're gonna be so successful on your own you pay for your own stuff, or B, you'll completely fail. So when I, and that's when they flat out, told me at rehab, so I I had more more luck in the private sector finding work than I did ever in the public sector, which was interesting.   Michael Hingson ** 11:39 I know that when I was in high school, and they it's still around today, of course, they had a program called SSI through the Department of Social Security, and then that there, there was also another program aid of the potentially self supporting blind, and we applied for those. And when I went to UC Irvine, I had met, actually, in 1964 a gentleman while I was up getting my guide dog. He was getting a guide dog. His name was Howard Mackey, and when I went to college, my parents also explored me getting some services and assistance from the Department of Rehabilitation, and I was accepted, and then Howard Mackey ended up becoming my counselor. And the neat thing about it was he was extremely supportive and really helped in finding transcribers to put physics books in braille, paid for whatever the state did it at the time, readers and other things like that that I needed provided equipment. It was really cool. He was extremely supportive, which I was very grateful for. But yeah, I can understand sometimes the rehabilitation world can be a little bit wonky. Of course, you went into it some 18 to 20 years later than that. I, in a sense, started it because I started in 6869 Yeah. And I think over time, just the state got cheaper, everything got cheaper. And of course, now it's really a lot different than it used to be, and it's a lot more challenging to get services from a lot of the agencies. And of course, in our current administration, a lot of things are being cut, and nobody knows exactly what's going to happen. And that's pretty   Walden Hughes ** 13:30 scary, actually. When I went to UCI, the school picked it up the pic, the school picked up my transcribing. They picked up my readers and all that. So interesting. How?   Michael Hingson ** 13:39 But did they let you hire your own readers and so on? Or do they do that?   Walden Hughes ** 13:43 They just put out the word, and people came up and and they paid them. So they just, they were just looking for volunteer, looking for people on the campus to do all the work. And, yeah, in fact, in fact, I had one gal who read pretty much all my years. She was waiting to get a job in the museum. And the job she wanted, you basically had to die to get it open. And so she for a full time employee with the read, can I be taking 20 units a quarter? Yeah. So I was, I was cranking it out. And in those days, everybody, you were lucky they I was lucky to get the material a week or two before midterm. Yeah, so I would speed up the tape and do a couple all nighters just to get through, because I really didn't want to delay, delay by examinations. I wanted to get it, get it through. But, uh, but, you know, but also, I guess I was going four times just throughout the quarter, set them into the summer. Okay, I wanted to get it done. Yeah, so that's, that's how I   Michael Hingson ** 14:50 did it. I didn't do summer school, but I did 16 to 20 units a quarter as well, and kept readers pretty busy and was never questioned. And even though we have some pretty hefty reader bills, but it it worked, no and and I hired my own readers, we put out the word, but I hired my own readers. And now I think that's really important. If a school pays for the readers, but lets you hire the readers, that's good, because I think that people need to learn how to hire and fire and how to learn what's necessary and how to get the things that they need. And if the agency or the school does it all and they don't learn how to do it, that's a problem.   Walden Hughes ** 15:36 If fashioning is just a sidebar issue, computer really became a big part. And with my hearing loss, TSI was really, yeah, telesensory, the one Incorporated, right? And they were upscale, everybody. It was, you know, $2,500 a pop. And for my hearing, it was the was for the card, the actual card that fits into the slot that would read, oh, okay, okay, right. And eventually they went with software with me, a lot cheaper, yes, and so, so my folks paid for that in the early days, the mid 80s, the computers and the software and a lot of that were trial and error terms of there was not any customer support from the from the computer company that were making special products like that, you were pretty much left on your own to figure it out. Yeah, and so time I went to graduate in 1990 we figured, in the business world, financial planning, I'm gonna need a whole complete setup at work, and we're gonna cost me 20 grand, yeah, and of course, when we have saying, We biking it, we're gonna finance it. What happened was, and this has helped with the scouting program. I knew the vice president of the local bank. And in those days, if it was, if it was still a small bank, he just went, he gave me a personal loan, hmm, and he, I didn't have to get any code centers or anything. No, we're gonna be the first one to finance you. You get your own computer set up. And so they, they, they financed it for me, and then also Boyle kicked in for 7500 but that was, that's how I was able to swing my first really complicated $20,000 units in 1990   Michael Hingson ** 17:33 the Braille Institute had a program. I don't know whether they still do or not they, they had a program where they would pay for, I don't know whether the top was 7500 I know they paid for half the cost of technology, but that may have been the upper limit. I know I used the program to get in when we moved, when we moved to New Jersey. I was able to get one of the, at that time, $15,000 Kurzweil Reading machines that was in 1996 and Braille Institute paid for half that. So it was pretty cool. But you mentioned TSI, which is telesensory Systems, Inc, for those who who wouldn't know that telesensory was a very innovative company that developed a lot of technologies that blind and low vision people use. For example, they developed something called the optic on which was a box that had a place where you could put a finger, and then there was attached to it a camera that you could run over a printed page, and it would display in the box a vibrating image of each character as the camera scanned across the page. It wasn't a really fast reading program. I think there were a few people who could read up to 80 words a minute, but it was still originally one of the first ways that blind people had access to print.   Walden Hughes ** 18:59 And the first guinea pig for the program. Can I just walk my site in 75 and they, they wanted me to be on there. I was really the first one that the school supply the optic on and has special training, because they knew I knew what site looked like for everybody, what Mike's describing. It was dB, the electronic waves, but it'd be in regular print letters, not, not broil waters, right? What   Michael Hingson ** 19:25 you felt were actually images of the print letters, yeah.   Walden Hughes ** 19:30 And the thing got me about it, my hand tingled after a while,   Michael Hingson ** 19:35 yeah, mine   Walden Hughes ** 19:36 to last forever,   Michael Hingson ** 19:38 you know. So it was, it wasn't something that you could use for incredibly long periods of time. Again, I think a few people could. But basically, print letters are made to be seen, not felt, and so that also limited the speed. Of course, technology is a whole lot different today, and the optic on has has faded away. And as Walden said, the card that would. Used to plug into computer slots that would verbalize whatever came across the screen has now given way to software and a whole lot more that makes it a lot more usable. But still, there's a lot of advances to be made. But yeah, we we both well, and another thing that TSI did was they made probably the first real talking calculator, the view, plus, remember   Walden Hughes ** 20:25 that? Yep, I know a good sound quality.   Michael Hingson ** 20:28 Though it was good sound quality. It was $395 and it was really a four function calculator. It wasn't scientific or anything like that, but it still was the first calculator that gave us an opportunity to have something that would at least at a simple level, compete with what sighted people did. And yes, you could plug your phone so they couldn't so sighted people, if you were taking a test, couldn't hear what what the calculator was saying. But at that time, calculators weren't really allowed in the classroom anyway, so   Walden Hughes ** 21:00 my downside was, time I bought the equipment was during the DOS mode, and just like that, window came over, and that pretty much made all my equipment obsolete, yeah, fairly quickly, because I love my boil display. That was terrific for for when you learn with computers. If you're blind, you didn't really get a feel what the screen looked like everybody. And with a Braille display, which mine was half the screen underneath my keyboard, I could get a visual feel how things laid out on the computer. It was easier for me to communicate with somebody. I knew what they were talking   Michael Hingson ** 21:42 about, yeah. And of course, it's gotten so much better over time. But yeah, I remember good old MS DOS. I still love to play some of the old MS DOS games, like adventure and all that, though, and Zork and some of those fun games.   Walden Hughes ** 21:57 But my understanding dos is still there. It's just windows on top of it, basically,   Michael Hingson ** 22:02 if you open a command prompt in Windows that actually takes you to dos. So dos is still there. It is attached to the whole system. And sometimes you can go in and enter commands through dos to get things done a little bit easier than you might be able to with the normal graphic user interface, right? Well, so you, you got your master's degree in 1995 and so you then continue to work in the financial world, or what did   Walden Hughes ** 22:35 it for 10 years, but five years earlier? Well, maybe I should back it up this way. After I lost my site in 1976 I really gravitated to the radio, and my generation fell in love with talk radio, so I and we were really blessed here in the LA market with really terrific hosts at KBC, and it wasn't all the same thing over and over and beating the drum. And so listening to Ray Breen, Michael Jackson, IRA for still kill Hemingway, that was a great opportunity for somebody who was 10 years old.   Michael Hingson ** 23:18 Really, they were all different shows. And yes, I remember once we were listening to, I think it was Michael Jackson. It was on Sunday night, and we heard this guy talking about submarines, and it just attracted Karen's and my attention. And it turns out what it was was Tom Clancy talking about Hunt for Red October. Wow. And that's where we first heard about it, and then went and found the book.   Walden Hughes ** 23:45 But So I grew up in the talk radio, and then that, and I fell in love with country music at the time on koec, and then Jim Healy and sports, yep, and then, and then we were blessed in the LA market have a lot of old time radio played, and it was host like Mike was here at K UCI, John Roy, eventually over KPCC, Bob line. And so my relatives said you should listen to this marathon KPFK, which was a Pacific did an all day marathon. I fell in love with that. Jay Lacher, then one night, after I walked my site, I tuned in. Ray bream took the night off, and Bill balance had frankly sit in. And the first thing they played was Jack Armstrong, and this is where Jack, Jack and Billy get caught up in a snow storm and a bone down the hill. And Brett Morrison came in during the one o'clock two o'clock hour to talk about the shadow. And so my dad took me to, oh, I'm trying to think of the name of the record. Or if they gave away licorice, licorice at the at the record store tower, yeah, not Tower Records. Um, anyway, so we bought two eight track tapes in 1976 the shadow and Superman, and I started my long life of collecting and so. So here we up to 1990 after collecting for 15 years. Going to spill back conventional meetings. I knew Ray bream was going to have kitty Cowan at the guest. Kitty Cowan was a big band singer of the 40s who later the fifth little things mean a lot. And I figured nobody was going to act about her days on the Danny Kaye radio show. And so I called in. They realized I had the stuff. I had the radio shows, they took me off the air, and Kitty's husband, but grand off called me the next day, and we struck up a friendship. And so they were really connected in Hollywood, and so they opened so many doors for me. Mike I Katie's best friend with Nancy Lacher, SR bud with the one of the most powerful agents in town, the game show hosting, who could come up with a TV ideas, but did not know how to run a organization. So that was Chuck Paris, hmm, and Gong Show, yeah, so I wound up, they wound up giving me, hire me to find the old TV shows, the music, all that stuff around the country. And so I started to do that for the Sinatra family, everybody else. So I would, while we do the financial planning, my internet consulting thing really took off. So that wound up being more fun and trying to sell disability insurance, yeah. So one wound up doing that until the internet took over. So that would that. So my whole life would really reshape through kitty Carolyn and Ben granoff through that. So I really connected in the Hollywood industry from that point on, starting 1990 so that that really opened up, that really sure reshaped my entire life, just because of that   Michael Hingson ** 27:28 and you've done over the years, one of the other things that you started to do was to interview a lot of these people, a lot of the radio stars, The radio actors   Walden Hughes ** 27:39 and music and TV, music,   Michael Hingson ** 27:44 yeah.   Walden Hughes ** 27:45 And I think when Bill Bragg asked me to interview kitty Carol, and I did that in 2000 and Bill said, Well, could you do more? And so one of Kitty friends, but test Russell. Test was Gene Autry Girl Friday. He she ran kmpc for him. And I think everybody in the music industry owed her a favor. I mean, I had Joe Stafford to Pat Boone to everybody you could think of from the from that big band, 3040s, and 60s on the show. Let's go   Michael Hingson ** 28:24 back. Let's go back. Tell us about Bill Bragg.   Walden Hughes ** 28:29 Bill Bragg was an interesting character all by himself. Born in 1946 he was a TV camera man for CBS in Dallas. He was also a local music jockey, nothing, nothing, big, big claims of fame boys working for channel two. And then he in Dallas, he was at a press conference with LBJ, and LBJ got done speaking, and the camera crew decided that they were going to pack up and go to lunch. And Bill thought it'd be fun to mark what camera, what microphone the President used for his address, and the guys were in a rush door in the box, let's go have lunch. So Bill lost track, and that bothered him. So he started the largest communication Museum in 1979 and he collected and was donated. And so he had the biggest museum. He had a film exchanger. So in those early days of cable TVs, you know, we had a lot of TV stations specializing in programming, and there were channels, I think this was called a nostalgic channel, wanted to run old TV shows and films. They had the film, but they didn't. Have the equipment. And they got hold of Bill. He said, Okay, I'll do it for you. But what you're going to give me is games. Bill was a wheel and dealer, yeah. And Charlie said, We'll give you your own satellite channel. And I was talking to Bill friend later, John women in those days, in the 1983 when Bill got it, the value of those satellite channels was a million dollars a year, and he got it for free. And Bill would try and figure out, What in the world I'm going to do with this, and that's when he decided to start playing with old time radio, because really nobody was playing that on a national basis. You had different people playing it on a local basis, but not really on a national basis. So Bill was sort of the first one before I play old time radio. I became aware of him because of bur back, so I was trying to get the service on my cable TV company. Was unsuccessful.   Michael Hingson ** 30:58 So what he did is he broadcast through the satellite channel, and then different television stations or companies could if they chose to pick up the feed and broadcast it. Did, they broadcast it on a TV channel or   Walden Hughes ** 31:13 on radio public asset channel. Okay, so remember note day a lot of public it would have the bulletin boards with the local news of right community, and lot of them would play Bill can't   Michael Hingson ** 31:28 play Bill's channel because the only because what they were doing was showing everything on the screen, which didn't help us. But right they would show things on the screen, and they would play music or something in the background. So Bill's programs were a natural thing to play,   Walden Hughes ** 31:44 yeah, and so Bill wound up on a stout then he wound up being the audio shop Troyer for WGN, which was a nice break and so. And then Bill got it to be played in 2000 nursing homes and hospitals, and then local AMFM stations would pick us up. They were looking for overnight programming, so local throughout the country would pick it up. And so Bill, Bill was a go getter. He was a great engineer, and knew how to build things on the cheap. He was not a businessman, you know, he couldn't take it to the next level, but, but at least he was able to come up with a way to run a station, 24 hours a day. It was all the tapes were sent down to Nash, down to Tennessee, to be uploaded to play into the system. Eventually, he built a studio and everything in Dallas. And so,   Michael Hingson ** 32:38 of course, what what Weldon is saying is that that everything was on tape, whether it was cassette or reel to reel, well, reel to reel, and they would play the tapes through a tape machine, a player or recorder, and put it out on the satellite channels, which was how they had to do it. And that's how we did it at kuci, we had tape, and I would record on Sunday nights, all the shows that we were going to play on a given night on a reel of tape. We would take it in and we would play it.   Walden Hughes ** 33:13 And so that's how it's done in the 80s. Eventually built bill, built a studio, and then started to do a live show once a week. Eventually, they grew up to four days a week. And so here is about 1999 or so, and they were playing Musa from kitty cat, and did not know who she was. I would quickly, I would quickly give a couple background from AIM hang up. I didn't really they had no idea who I was yet. I didn't talk about what I would do and things like that. I was just supplying information. And eventually, after two years, they asked me to bring kitty on the show, which I did, and then I started to book guests on a regular basis for them, and then eventually, the guy who I enjoyed all time radio shows listening to Frank Percy 1976 built decided that I should be his producer, and so I wound up producing the Friday Night Live show with Frankie, and eventually we got it up and running, 2002 So Frank and I did it together for 16 years and so that so Bill built a studio in Texas, mailed it all to my House. My dad didn't have any engineering ability. So he and my bill got on the phone and built me a whole studio in six hours, and I was up and running with my own studio here in my bedroom, in 2002 and so overhead, I'm in my bedroom ever since Michael, you know, there you go.   Michael Hingson ** 34:58 Well and to tell people about. Frank Bresee Frank, probably the biggest claim to fame is that he had a program called the golden days of radio, and it was mainly something that was aired in the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service on the radio, where he would every show play excerpts of different radio programs and so on. And one of the neat things that's fascinating for Frank was that because he was doing so much with armed forces, and doing that, he had access to all of the libraries around the world that the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service had, so he could go in and oftentimes get shows and get things that no one else really had because they were only available in at least initially, in these military libraries. But he would put them on the air, and did a great job with it for many, many years. Yeah, Frank   Walden Hughes ** 35:53 was an interesting character, a pure entrepreneur. He invented a game called pass out, which was a drinking game, board game, and he for 20 years, he spent six months in Europe, six months in United States. And he was making so much money in Europe, he would rent out castles and lived in them, and he would and he would spend months at a time in Germany, which was the main headquarter of art, and just sit there in the archives and make copies of things he wanted to play on his show, yeah. And so that's how he built that. And then he he started collecting transcriptions when he would to 10 he was a radio actor, and so he had one of the largest collection, collection, and he his house, his family house was in Hancock Park, which was the, it was Beverly Hills before Beverly Hills, basically, what did he play on radio? Well, when he was, he was he was deceptive. He was the backup little beaver. When someone Tommy, writer, yeah, when, when Tommy Cook had another project, it was Frank be was a substitute. And so that was a short coin of fame. He did bit parts on other shows, but, but that's what he did as a kid. Eventually, I think Frank came from a very wealthy family. He wound up owning the first radio station when he was 19 years old on Catalina Island in 1949 and then he wound up being a record producer. He worked with Walter Winchell, created albums on without about Al Jolson worked on Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante and anyway, Frank, Frank had a career with game with creating board games, doing radio and having an advertising company. Frank was responsible for giving all the game shows, the prices for TV and the way he would do it, he would call an advertise, he would call a company. He said, you want your product. Beyond on this section, go to say, yes, okay, give us, give us the product, and give me 150 bucks. And so Frank would keep the cash, and he would give the project to the TV shows,   Michael Hingson ** 38:17 Dicker and Dicker of Beverly Hills. I remember that on so many shows   Walden Hughes ** 38:23 so So Frank was a wheeling dealer, and he loved radio. That was his passion project. He probably made less money doing that, but he just loved doing it, and he was just hit his second house. The family house was 8400 square feet, and so it was pretty much a storage unit for Frank hobbies, right? And we and he had 30,000 transcriptions in one time. But when he was Europe, he had a couple of floods, so he lost about 10 to 20,000 of them. Okay? Folks did not know how to keep them dry, but he had his professional studio built. And so I would book guests. I arranged for art link writer to come over, and other people, Catherine Crosby, to come over, and Frank would do the interviews. And so I was a big job for me to keep the Friday night show going and get Frankie's guess boy shows. I would have been. He died,   Michael Hingson ** 39:22 and he was a really good interviewer. Yeah, I remember especially he did an interview that we in, that you played on yesterday USA. And I was listening to it with Mel Blanc, which is, which is very fascinating. But he was a great interviewer. I think it was 1969 that he started the golden days of radio, starting 49 actually, or 49 not 69 Yeah, 49 that was directly local, on,   Walden Hughes ** 39:49 on Carolina, and K, I, G, l, which was a station I think heard out in the valley, pretty much, yeah, we could pick it up. And then, and then he started with on. Forces around 65   Michael Hingson ** 40:02 that's what I was thinking of. I thought it was 69 but,   Walden Hughes ** 40:06 and well, he was, on those days there were armed forces Europe picked them up. And also, there was also the international Armed Forces served around the far eastern network, right? Yeah. And so by 67 he was pretty much full on 400 stations throughout the whole world. And I that's probably how you guys picked him up, you know, through that capability.   Michael Hingson ** 40:30 Well, that's where I first heard of him and and the only thing for me was I like to hear whole shows, and he played excerpts so much that was a little frustrating. But he was such a neat guy, you couldn't help but love all the history that he brought to it   Walden Hughes ** 40:46 and and then he would produce live Christmas shows with with the radio. He would interview the guest he, you know, so he had access to people that nobody generally had, you know. He worked for Bob Hope, right? So he was able to get to Jack Benny and Bing Crosby and yes, people like that, Groucho Marx. So he was, he had connections that were beyond the average Old Time Radio buff. He was truly a great guy to help the hobby out, and loved radio very much.   Michael Hingson ** 41:21 Well, going back to Bill Bragg a little bit, so he had the satellite channel, and then, of course, we got the internet, which opened so many things for for Frank or Frank for, well, for everybody but for Bill. And he started the program yesterday, usa.net, on the radio through the internet,   Walden Hughes ** 41:44 which he was the first one in 1996 right? There's a great story about that. There was a company called broadcast.com I bet you remember that company, Mike. Anyway, it was founded by a guy who loved college basketball, and he was a big Hoosier fan, and he was living in Texas, and so he would generally call long distance to his buddy, and they would put up the radio. He could went to the basketball games. And eventually he decided, well, maybe I could come up and stream it on my computer, and all these equipment breaking down, eventually he came up with the idea of, well, if I had a satellite dish, I could pick up the feed and put and stream it on the computer, that way people could hear it right. And he hired bill to do that, and he offered bill a full time job installing satellites and working Bill turned them down, and the guy wound up being Mark Cuban. Yeah, and Mark Cuban gave every every employee, when he sold broadcast.com to Yahoo, a million dollar bonus. So Bill missed out on that, but, but in exchange, Mike Cuban gave him broadcast.com While USA channel for free. So Bill never had to pay in the early days, until about 2002 so when Yahoo decided to get out of the streaming business for a while, then that's when we had to find and we found life 365 eventually, and we were paying pretty good. We're paying a really good rate with like 265 Bill was used to paying free, and we were paying, I think, under $100 and I knew guys later a couple years, were paying over $500 a month. And we were, we were, but there was such a willing deal able to get those things for really dope less   Michael Hingson ** 43:45 money, yeah. Now I remember being in New Jersey and I started hearing ads for an internet radio station. This was in the very late 90s, maybe even into 2000 W, A, B, y. It was a company, a show that a station that played a lot of old songs from the 50s and 60s and so on. And it was, it was, if you tuned on to it, you could listen. And after four or five hours, things would start to repeat, and then eventually it disappeared. But I started looking around, and I don't even remember how I found it, but one day I heard about this radio station, www, dot yesterday, usa.net. Right, yep.net.com,   Walden Hughes ** 44:31 yep, and yeah. And   Michael Hingson ** 44:33 I said, Well, oh, I think I actually heard an ad for it on W, A, B, y, when it was still around. Anyway, I went to it, and they were playing old radio shows, and they had a number of people who would come on and play shows. Everyone had an hour and a half show, and every two weeks you would have to send in a new show. But they. They played old radio shows, 24 hours a day and seven days a week, except they also had some live talk shows. And I remember listening one day and heard Bill Bragg talking about the fact that he was going to have his standard Friday night show with Walden Hughes, it would start at nine o'clock. I had no idea who Walden was at the time. And the problem is, nine o'clock was on the in Pacific Time, and it was, I think, Midnight in New Jersey time, as I recall the way it went anyway, it was way too late for me to be up. And so I never did hear Walden on yesterday USA, or I may have actually listened. Just stayed up to listen to one and fell asleep, but the show, the whole innovative process of playing radio all the time on the internet, was intriguing and just opened so many opportunities, I think. And of course, the internet brought all that around. And now there are any number of stations that stream all the time. And Bill Bragg passed away. What in 2016   Walden Hughes ** 46:15 2018   Michael Hingson ** 46:18 1819 2019 Yeah. And Walden now is the person who directs, operates, and is the manager of yesterday USA. And so when I go ahead,   Walden Hughes ** 46:30 it's fascinating. In the height of the station, there was 15,000 internet radio stations out there in 2000 they did a survey yesterday, USA was number three in the world, behind the BBC and CNN, which I thought was a pretty nice number to be concerned. We had no budget to promote, right? And the last time I saw the numbers been a couple years, we were number 44 in the world, which I don't think of, 15,000 radio stations. Not bad. No, not at all. You know, really not bad. But now there is more talk than there used to be, because Walden and the gasmans, who we had on years ago on this podcast, but   Michael Hingson ** 47:16 have interviewed a lot of people, and continue to interview people. And of course, so many people are passing on that. We're trying to talk to people as much as we can, as they can, and all of us now, because I've started to come a little bit and become a little bit involved in yesterday USA. And as Walden said on Friday night at 730 Pacific Time, see it's earlier, we we do a talk show. Bob Lyons, who did a lot of radio out here, and for 50 years, had a program called Don't touch that dial. And John and Larry and Walden and I get on the air and we talk about, Gosh, any number of different things. We've talked about Braille, we've talked about sometimes, everything but radio. But we talk about a lot of different things, which is, which is a lot of fun.   Walden Hughes ** 48:04 And I think it probably is, you know, in the old days, it would pretty much no entertainment, and Bill telling some stories and things like that. But with me, I always had a focus in interviews, but it's so much more fun to do radio as a co host. And that's when Patricia and I connected back in the 2007 I knew was in 2005 she's my co host. And Patricia didn't grow up with whole town radio. She became a fan after she found yesterday, USA into 2000 but she's a very articulate person, and so through the shows, what she and I did on Saturday night, the audience grab it and just we should talk about everything, and I just generate calls. I mean, when she and I were doing eight hours a night, we would average about 18 calls a night, which was pretty amazing, but we would cover the gamut, and I think a really good talk show host had to know a little bit about a lot of things. Yes, he got it. You got to be flexible. And Patricia and I compliment each other that way, that we're able to cover history and politics and music and just everything. And so when I do a show with her, you never know what direction we go with where. When I'm with John Roy, it's more radio centric. So it depends on what night a week people tune in, is what you're going to   Michael Hingson ** 49:40 get. And Walden has Patricia on now Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, but we know why she's really on there, because she likes hearing Perry Como song Patricia that starts out every show Walden plays that he's in love with Patricia. One of these days, there's still the possibility. But anyway, we. We, he, we love it when he, he has Patricia on, and it's every week. So, so it is really cool. And they do, they talk about everything under the sun, which is so fascinating. Tell us about Johnny and Helen Holmes.   Walden Hughes ** 50:15 Ah, well, it's an interesting story. I I say the second biggest old time radio station in the country, after yesterday USA. It's about half the size in terms of audience basis. Radio once more, and you can find them at Radio once more.com and they do a good job. No else with probably yesterday USA branch offers own internet radio station, and he found he would go to the east coast to the nostalgic convention, and he connected with Johnny and Helen. Holmes and Johnny and Helen are people who love to attend nostalgic convention and get autographs and things. And they became really friends. So Neil convinced them, why don't you come on? Just come on radio once more. And so after a while, they do the presentation the coffee shop. Neil convinced them to take it, take it to the air, and they started to have their own show, and I was aware of them, and I produced the spirback convention, 2017 in Las Vegas. So Johnny helm came to the convention, and Johnny wanted to say hi to me. I said, I know who you are. I think he was for by that that I knew who he was, but I invited Johnny and Helen to come on with Patricia and I one night to talk about their coffee shop presentation and their show on Radio once more. And we just bonded very quickly and easy to bond with Johnny. They really are really fabulous people. He's really a generous guy, and so over the last six, seven years, we have developed a great friendship on you, and almost have created a whole subculture by itself, playing trivia with them. Every time they come on,   Michael Hingson ** 52:17 they do a lot of trivia stuff, and Johnny produces it very well. He really does a great job. And he'll put sound bites and clips and music, and it's gotten me such a major production with Johnny and Helen. And people look forward to it. I sometimes count the interaction people hanging out in the chat room, on the phone, email, about 18 to 20 people will get and get an answer question, was it amazing that that many people will be interested in trivia like that? But and, and Johnny also collects, well, I guess in Helen collect a lot of old television shows as well. Yep. So we won't hold it against him too much, but, but he does television and, well, I like old TV shows too, you bet. Well, so you know, you are, obviously, are doing a lot of different things. You mentioned spurred vac oop. They're after you. We'll wait. We'll wait till the phone die. You mentioned, well, I'll just ask this while that's going on. You mentioned spurred back. Tell us a little bit about what spurred vac is and what they've been doing and what they bring to radio.   Walden Hughes ** 53:23 Sprint vac started in 1974 it's the largest full time radio group in the country, called the society to preserve and encourage radio drama, variety and comedy. John Roy Gasman were two of the main driving force behind the club. It reached up to a membership of 1800 people, and they've honored over 500 people who worked in the golden days of radio and to speak at their meeting, come to the special conventions. And so I attended some dinners at the Brown Derby, which was a great thrill. I started attending their conventions, and it was just, it was wonderful. So I so I really got to meet a lot of the old time radio personality and become friends with Janet Waldo and June for a and people like that. And so I eventually got on the board. I eventually became one young, somewhat retired. I wound up being the activity person to book guests, and started producing conventions. And so that became a major part of my life, just producing those things for spur back and in other places, and I first started to do that for reps. Was it the Old Time Radio Group in Seattle in 2007 so they were actually the first convention I produced.   Michael Hingson ** 54:54 And rep says radio enthusiasts of Puget Sound,   Walden Hughes ** 54:57 right? Reps online.org, G and so I would produce new convention. I was helping super vac, and I also helping the Friends of all time radio back in New Jersey and so. And it probably helped my contact, which is 300 pages long, so, and I would book it. I would also contact celebrities via the mail, and my batting average was 20% which I thought were pretty good. I got Margaret. I got Margaret Truman. She called me, said, Walden, I got your order, and I forgot that I did the show with Jimmy Stewart. I'd be happy to come on talk about my memory. You know, she talked about Fred Allen on the big show, and how, how Mike Wallace had a temper, had a temper. She was a co host. Was among weekdays, which with the weekday version of monitor. Monitor was weekend and weekday, we see NBC. And so she was just fabulous, you know, so and I would get people like that 20% bad average, which was incredible. So I met, that's how it's up to two, my guess was, so I, I was sort of go to guy, find celebrities and booking them and and so in that help yesterday, USA helped the different conventions. And so it and so you're so you're booking the panels, and then you're coming up with ideas for radio recreations. And so I produce 37 of them, ranging from one day to four days. And I get counted, over the last 18 years, I've produced 226 audio theater plays with it. A lot at least, have an idea of how those things   Michael Hingson ** 56:55 work. So right now, speaking of recreations, and we're both involved in radio enthusiasts of Puget Sound, and for the last couple of years, I've participated in this. Walden has done radio recreations, and twice a year up in the Washington State area, where we bring in both some some amateurs and some professionals like Carolyn Grimes Zuzu and so many others who come in and we actually recreate old radio shows, both before a live audience, and we broadcast them on yesterday USA and other people like Margaret O'Brien who won   Walden Hughes ** 57:46 Gigi Powell coming this year. Phil Proctor. David Osmond from fire sign theater. Chuck Dougherty from Sergeant Preston. John Provo from Timmy from Lassie, Bill Johnson, who does a one man show on Bob Hope. Bill Ratner from GI Joe. Bill Owen, the who might have had he is the author of The Big broadcast, Ivan Troy who Bobby Benson, Tommy cook from the life O'Reilly Gigi parole, a movie actress of the 50s, as you mentioned, Carolyn grime, Beverly Washburn and others, and it's just the radio folks are really down to earth, really nice people, and you get to break bread with them, talk to them and reminisce about what was it like doing that radio show, this movie, or that TV show, and then They still got it, and they can perform on stage,   Michael Hingson ** 58:43 and they love to talk about it, and they love to interact with people who treat them as people. And so yeah, it is a lot of fun to be able to do it. In fact, I was on Carolyn Grimes podcast, which will be coming out at some point in the next little while, and Carolyn is going to be on unstoppable mindset. So keep an eye out for that. Bill Owens program is coming out soon. Bill and I did a conversation for unstoppable mindset, and we're going to be doing Bill Johnson will be coming on, and other people will be coming on. Walden has been very helpful at finding some of these folks who are willing to come on and talk about what they did, and to help us celebrate this medium that is just as much a part of history as anything in America and is just as worth listening to as it ever was. There is more to life than television, no matter what they think.   Walden Hughes ** 59:40 And also, we do a Christmas thing too. And hopefully Mike, if his speaking engagement allow him, will be with us up at Christmas saying, Well, I will. I'm planning on it. We're gonna do, It's a Wonderful Life. Keith Scott, coming over from Australia, who's a he's the rich little of Australia. And we'll do, It's a Wonderful Life. We'll do. The Christmas Carol, milk on 34th Street film again, Molly Jack Benny will have a great time.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:07 These are all going to be recreations using the the original scripts from the shows, and that's what makes them fun. And for those of us who don't read print, we do have our scripts in Braille, absolutely so that's kind of fun. Well, Walden, this has been absolutely wonderful. We're going to have to do it some more. Maybe we need to get you, John and Larry all together on that. That might be kind of fun. But I really, I don't think we need a host if you that. No, no, we just, you know, just go on. But this has been really fun. I really enjoy it. If people want to reach out to you, how do they do that?   Walden Hughes ** 1:00:45 Oh, I think they can call my studio number 714-545-2071, I'm in California, or they can email me at Walden shoes at yesterday, usa.com, W, A, l, D, E, N, H, U, C, H, E, S at, y, E, S T, E, R, D, A, y, u, s a.com, I'm the president of radio enthusiast sound, that's reps online.org or on the board of Sper back, which is S, P, E, R, D, V, A, c.com, so while waiting shakes me down, when   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:25 will the showcase actually occur up in Bellevue in Washington?   Walden Hughes ** 1:01:30 That will be September 18, 19 20/21, and then our Christmas one is will be Friday, December five, and Saturday, December the sixth. And then we're also going back and spir back, and I bet we'll see you there. We're going to go back to the Troy Blossom Festival next April, 23 to 26 and we'll know, are we set up to do that now? Yep, looks like that gonna happen? Yeah? Oh, good, yeah. So kick out the phone with Nicholas here a few days ago. So everything's gonna go for that, so that will be good.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:03 Yeah, we will do that. That's cool. Well, thank you for being here, and I want to thank you all for listening. I hope you had fun. This is a little different than a lot of the episodes that we've done, but it's, I think, important and enlightening to hear about this medium into to meet people from it. So thank you for listening wherever you are. We hope that you'll give us a five star review of unstoppable mindset wherever you're listening or watching. Please do that. We'd love to hear from you. You can reach me at Michael H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and you can also go to our podcast page if you don't find podcasts any other way. Michael hingson.com/podcast, that's m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, singular. So thanks again for being here and for listening to the show, and Walden, once again, I want to thank you for being here. This has been great.   Walden Hughes ** 1:03:01 Thank you, Michael,   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:07 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

(3:00) NFL returns tonight with Cowboys vs Eagles in primetime + people are pissed the RedZone is adding commercials(24:55) Mike Wallace joins to talk Kawhi situation, new NBA all star format and more (55:40) Sophie Cunningham v Skip Bayless, Angel Reese calls out her teammates, Big 12 could be partnering with Barstool, Red Sox star injured, and Tom Brady was almost a Raider(1:25:25) GP's Carry Out 

(3:00) Louisvill is in conversations with the NCAA to get their 2013 vacated championship reinstated....could development lead to Memphis following suit to get their Final Four banners back? (21:34) Mike Wallace joins (53:20) Big 10 Expansion could happen sooner than expected(1:05:05) Keegan Bradley not placing himself on the Ryder Cup team (1:12:15) Blake Lively might not be getting an invite to Taylor Swift's wedding(1:18:08) Mets rookie continues to impress 

(3:30) Taylor Swift joined Travis and Jason Kelce on the New Heights Podcast (30:00) Mike Wallace joins to talk Grizzlies schedule release(46:30) Tennessee signs huge deal with Adidas (58:30) Shedeur Sanders injury (1:02:00) Alcohol consumption at it's lowest point in 90 years (1:12:50) The Mets lose in the most unbelievable way last night

This episode was originally released on 10/1/2019. While new episodes of Breaking Walls are on hiatus I'll be going back and posting the older episodes. ____________ In Breaking Walls Episode 96, we laugh, scream, and cry while we join radio's best as they celebrate Halloween on the air. —————————— Highlights: • The Birth of the Great Gildersleeve • Sam Spade has a Halloween adventure • Ernest Chappell says, “Don't Tell Me About Halloween” • Spike Jones and His City Slickers Celebrate • Sherlock Holmes and the Laughing Lemur • The Story Behind Bing Crosby's Departure from NBC and move to ABC • Ozzie, Harriet, David, and Ricky • Jack Benny goes Trick-Or-Treating • John Guedel, Art Linkletter, and People Are Funny • Looking Ahead to the Holiday Season —————————— The WallBreakers: http://thewallbreakers.com Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts. To support the show: http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers —————————— The reading material used in today's episode was: • On The Air — By John Dunning • Terror On The Air!, Horror Radio in America — By Richard J. Hand • Network Radio Ratings, 1932-53 — by Jim Ramsburg As well as articles by: • TUNE IN Magazine - September 1946 • Broadcasting Magazine - April 14th, July14th, and September 15th, 1947 —————————— On the interview front: • Chuck Schaden interviewed Jack Benny, Ken Carpenter, John Guedel, Shirley Mitchell, Arch Oboler, Hal Peary, Lurene Tuttle, and Mike Wallace. Hear their full chats at SpeakingofRadio.com. • Howard Duff, June Havoc, and Bill Spier were with Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC's The Golden Age of Radio. These interviews can be heard at GoldenAge-WTIC.org. • John Gassman of SPERDVAC was with Art Linkletter in 1991. For more information, please go to SPERDVAC.com. • Jack Kruschen and Shirley Mitchell were with Jim Bohannon on September 12th, 1987. • Chuck Cecil interviewed Ozzie Nelson. • Johnny Hayes, David Nelson, and Jack Wagner were interviewed by KRLA • Johnny Carson interviewed Orson Welles, Ozzie, Harriet, and Ricky Nelson for The Tonight Show, while David Hartman interviewed David, Harriet, and Ricky for Good Morning America. • Frank Bresee interviewed Bing Crosby, John Scott Trotter • And Dick Joy was with John Dunning for 71KNUS. —————————— Selected Music featured in today's episode was: • A Wicked Thought - By John Zacharely • Ghost Bus Tours - By George Fenton for High Spirits and • Travelin Man - By Ricky Nelson

Dave Rubin of "The Rubin Report" talks about Hunter Biden's insane unhinged interview on "Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan" where he launched a scathing attack against George Clooney, Barack Obama and every other Democrat that he blames for pushing his father out of office, he also shocks the host with his inability to denounce the dangers of crack cocaine; Joy Reid regretting her appearance on "Piers Morgan Uncensored" after Piers humiliated her by cornering her with some basic facts on the mass deportation of illegal immigrants; Hakeem Jeffries' failed attempt to blame the recent border agent shooting in NYC by an illegal immigrant on Donald Trump's aggressive deportation policies; White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt telling Fox News what the Trump administration plans to do to stop Zohran Mamdani from becoming the mayor of New York City; Scott Galloway explaining to MSNBC why housing affordability issues are driving more young voters to support any socialist who promises to fight this issue; Johnny Carson telling "60 Minutes'" Mike Wallace why he didn't discuss politics on "The Tonight Show" and why future late night comedians like Stephen Colbert would be wise to follow his advice; and much more. WATCH the MEMBER-EXCLUSIVE segment of the show here: https://rubinreport.locals.com/ Check out the NEW RUBIN REPORT MERCH here: https://daverubin.store/ ---------- Today's Sponsors:  Tax Network USA - If you owe back taxes or have unfiled returns, don't let the government take advantage of you. Whether you owe a few thousand or a few million, they can help you. This month only, you'll get 10% off as part of their American Pride Month celebration. Call 1(800)-958-1000 for a private, free consultation or Go to: https://tnusa.com/dave GoldCo - Protect your money with gold and silver during these unstable times. Learn about their UNLIMITED bonus silver offer on all qualified orders, just for getting started. You'll also get a complimentary 2025 Gold & Silver Kit to help you make a decision. Go to: http://davelikesgold.com/ Lean - A powerful weight loss supplement with remarkable results to help lower blood sugar, burn fat by converting it into energy, and curb your appetite. Rubin Report viewers get 20% off plus free rush shipping off their first order! Go to: https://TakeLean.com and enter promo code DAVE20 for your discount

On today's show, we run through the MLB All Star Game and our buddy Brent Rooker hitting 3 home runs, why there is a North Carolina basketball bus parked outside our studio, and Cedric Coward talking to Mike Wallace from Grind City Media (3:00) + a dialogue about our Summer League Grizzlies team and why they aren't winning (9:40) + news about the Memphis Tigers being put on probation (20:53)Ryan Mitchell from Houston High School in Memphis was drafted in the 2nd round of the Major League Baseball Draft by the St. Louis Cardinals. He joined us in-studio (37:28).Jessica Benson joins the show in-studio to talk about the Emmy Nominations (1:18:56)  Host: Chris VernonCo-Hosts: Jon Roser, Devin WalkerGuests: Ryan Mitchell, Jessica BensonTechnical Director: Jaylon WallaceAssociate Producer: Jena Broyles 

(3:55) Vegas Summer League starts tonight highlighted by Cooper Flagg and the Mavs vs Bronny James and the Lakers(24:30) Mike Wallace live from Vegas to talk Grizz Summer League and more(46:00) Congrats Former Memphis Basketball Great William Bedford, Caitlin Clark's return, Angel Reese 2K Cover, Casey Anthony, Deion Sanders gets offended by reporters question, and former NBA player Ben McLemore headed to prison. (1:38:15) GP's Carry Out 

On this Independence Day, Michael Savage shares a poetic judgment on the state of America. He then leads a nostalgic discussion about an America that he remembers and mourns. He draws on his own memories of growing up in New York City and reflects on societal changes he has witnessed in his lifetime. Then, Savage introduces listeners to a 1958 interview with author Aldous Huxley by Mike Wallace. Savage connects Huxley's predictions about technology, propaganda, and drugs to modern-day America. Learn what Huxley wrote about the rise of technology, psycho-active drug use, and why people would willingly accept their loss of freedoms.

In this episode of Good Morning Liberty, Nate Thurston delves into the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. He opens with historical context, recounting Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions and the U.S.'s previous wars in the Middle East. Nate shares his thoughts on the recent bombings, the potential for a wider war, and the roles of various political figures including Trump and Netanyahu. Reflecting on his own political stance, he responds to claims about Iran's nuclear capabilities and discusses the implications of U.S. involvement. Tune in for an in-depth analysis of the complexities and potential consequences of this international crisis. (00:00) Saddam Hussein's Nuclear Ambitions (02:38) Introduction to Good Morning Liberty (03:17) Current Events: Israel-Iran Conflict (05:01) Reflections on War and Media (08:37) US Involvement and Political Reactions (19:05) Netanyahu's Perspective and Historical Context (35:32) Trump's Diplomatic Struggles with Israel and Iran (36:09) Trump's Warnings to Netanyahu (37:35) Mike Wallace's Dismissal and Its Implications (38:52) Dan Caldwell's Perspective on Trump's Diplomacy (40:20) Trump's Diplomatic Intentions Questioned (42:11) Trump's Response to Israel's Actions (45:39) Tulsi Gabbard's Stance on Iran's Nuclear Program (48:39) IAEA's Assessment of Iran's Nuclear Capabilities (53:28) Historical Context and Current Tensions with Iran (57:14) Libertarian Views on Trump's Foreign Policy (01:03:30) Dave Smith's Critique of Trump's Actions   Links:   https://gml.bio.link/   YOUTUBE:   https://bit.ly/3UwsRiv   RUMBLE:   https://rumble.com/c/GML   Check out Martens Minute!   https://martensminute.podbean.com/   Follow Josh Martens on X:   https://twitter.com/joshmartens13   CB Distillery 25% off with promo code GML   cbdistillery.com   Join the private discord & chat during the show!   joingml.com