Podcasts about Morley Safer

The jig is up! Morley Safer from CBS' 60 minutes has tracked us down! But, wait: It turns out that ol' Morley just wanted to defend the most indefensible of automobile makers: the French! Morley's folly on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.Get access to hundreds of episodes in the Car Talk archive when you sign up for Car Talk+ at plus.npr.org/cartalkLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Former MP Dan McTeague president of Canadians for Affordable Energy Dan McTeague joins Stand on Guard to discuss the rise of Mark Carney as the person most likely to become the next Liberal leader and prime minister of Canada. McTeague, never one to mince his words, promises to expose Carney as a globalist who will continue Trudeau's radical environmental policies.WATCH: British PM Liz Truss EXPOSES Mark Carney's Agenda: EXCLUSIVE Interview | Stand on Guard  https://www.youtube.com/live/YZ4URGzRpwY?si=CNSrS62SY38wSuEB...Dan McTeague on X @GasPriceWizardSupport his Canadians for Affordable Energy group-YT Channel @CanadiansForAffordableEnergy-Web https://www.affordableenergy.ca/...Mark Carney's sinister agenda is a political catastrophe in the making.

When Donald Trump delivered a birthday toast to power lawyer Roy Cohn, back in 1986, 60 Minutes was there to record the future president's tribute to Cohn's loyalty. Much has been written about Cohn's influence on the young Trump and by listening through 60 Minutes' two interviews with Cohn, you can hear why the notorious lawyer is the subject of so much fascination. In never-before-broadcast conversations with Mike Wallace and Morley Safer, Cohn explains his fighter mentality and obsession with winning at all costs -- from his earliest days working alongside Senator Joseph McCarthy to his final months spent denying he was dying of AIDS.For more episodes like this one, search for "60 Minutes: A Second Look" and follow the show, wherever you get your podcasts.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There are few men politically or intellectually smarter than President Lyndon Johnson and his defense secretary Robert McNamara. So how did LBJ and McNamara screw up America's involvement in Vietnam so tragically? According to Peter Osnos, the author of LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Fail, it might have been because the two men were, in their own quite different ways, too smart. For Osnos - a legendary figure in American publishing who, amongst many other things, edited Donald Trump's Art of the Deal - the catastrophe of America's war in Vietnam is a parable about imperial hubris and overreach. According to Osnos, who has access to much previously unpublished material from McNamara, The Best and the Brightest orchestrated the worst and dumbest episode in American foreign policy. Peter Osnos began his journalism career in 1965 as an assistant to I. F. .Stone on his weekly newsletter. Between 1966–1984 Osnos was a reporter and foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and served as the newspaper's foreign and national editor. From 1984-1996 he was Vice President, Associate Publisher, and Senior Editor at Random House and Publisher of Random House's Times Books division. In 1997, he founded PublicAffairs. He served as Publisher and CEO until 2005, and was a consulting editor until 2020 when he and his wife, Susan Sherer Osnos, launched Platform Books LLC. Among the authors he has published and/or edited are — former President Jimmy Carter, Rosalyn Carter, Gen. Wesley Clark, Clark Clifford, former President Bill Clinton, Paul Farmer, Earvin (Magic) Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Sam Donaldson, Kenneth Feinberg, Annette Gordon Reed, Meg Greenfield, Dorothy Height, Don Hewitt, Molly Ivins, Vernon Jordan, Ward Just, Stanley Karnow, Wendy Kopp, Charles Krauthammer, Brian Lamb, Jim Lehrer, Scott McClellan, Robert McNamara, Charles Morris, Peggy Noonan, William Novak, Roger Mudd. Former President Barack Obama, Speaker of the House Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill, Nancy Reagan, Andy Rooney, Morley Safer, Natan Sharansky, George Soros, Susan Swain, President Donald Trump, Paul Volcker, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and Nobel peace prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, as well as journalists from America's leading publications and prominent scholars. Osnos has also been a commentator and host for National Public Radio and a contributor to publications including Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. He wrote the Platform column for the Century Foundation, the Daily Beast and The Atlantic.com from 2006-2014. He has also served as Chair of the Trade Division of the Association of American Publishers and on the board of Human Rights Watch. From 2005-2009, he was executive director of The Caravan Project, funded by the MacArthur and Carnegie Foundations, which developed a plan for multi-platform publishing of books. He was the Vice-Chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review from  2007-2012. He is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations. He is a graduate of Brandeis and Columbia Universities. He lives in New York City, with his wife Susan, a consultant to human rights and philanthropic organizations. His children are Evan L.R. Osnos and Katherine Sanford. There are five grandchildren.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The title above does not do justice to today's guest, Alex Achten. Alex is from Kansas City where he grew up. After college he spent time in Texas where he worked as a news reporter for several years. We talk quite a bit about news reporting and what makes a good reporter.   As Alex explains, he finally felt that the stress of the reporting job caused him to want to go more into the communications and public relations aspects of media and media relations. His parents had moved to San Diego several years ago and so Alex decided to moved to San Diego as well. He joined the staff of the national nonprofit agency, Identity Theft Resource Center, where he directs media relations.   Alex tells us some about identity theft although he says he is not an expert. Even so, he has some excellent ideas about identity protection he passes along.   I asked him about his college minor in Leadership Studies and a certificate he recently earned in “Coaching as a Leadership Tool.” As you will hear, he is quite passionate about this topic and offers some great ideas about good leaders and quality leadership.   In all, no doubt that Alex is quite an unstoppable person. I am sure you will see why by the end of our conversation.     About the Guest:   Alex Achten is the Director of Communications & Media Relations for the Identity Theft Resource Center. Alex oversees the Communications Department of the ITRC and all of the company's Communications initiatives. He specializes in public relations and media relations. At the ITRC, Alex has helped secure media coverage with programs like CBS This Morning, NBC Nightly News, CNBC's American Greed, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Red Table Talk, and many others.   Previously, Alex was a TV Reporter at KAUZ-TV News Channel 6 in Wichita Falls, Texas. While at News Channel 6, Alex covered the political beat and interviewed Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, U.S. Congressman Pat Fallon, former U.S. Congressman Mac Thornberry, and many others. He also worked the city beat and covered breaking news ranging from plane crashes and fires to shootings and stabbings.   Alex is a graduate of Kansas State University, where he earned his Bachelor of Science with a Major in Broadcast Journalism and a Minor in Leadership Studies. While at K-State, Alex was involved with Channel 8 News, The Collegian, and The Wildcat 91.9. Alex won First Place in the Kansas Association of Broadcasters Student Awards for Complete Sports Feature and Sportscast, as well as Honorable Mention for Entertainment Programming and DJ Personality. His radio show was also a finalist in the South Central Competition for Audio Talent.   Alex recently completed and received a certificate for his participation in Fieldstone Leadership Network's Course titled “Coaching as a Leadership Tool.” His passion for leadership dates back to his involvement in Student Leadership Institute in high school. He has taken part in numerous leadership projects, most notably a service project that consisted of gathering and manipulating data to figure out better and more efficient ways of advertising for the Flint Hills Discovery Center in Manhattan, Kansas. Alex was born and raised in Kansas City and is a huge Chiefs and Royals fan! There is a good chance you will find him in San Diego wearing either blue, red, or purple!     Ways to connect with Alex:   Alex Achten LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-achten-27a9002b/ Alex Achten Twitter: @Alex_ITRC https://twitter.com/Alex_ITRC Alex Achten Facebook: @Alex-Achten-Identity-Theft-Resource-Center https://www.facebook.com/people/Alex-Achten-Identity-Theft-Resource-Center     About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes      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, yep, it is Mike Hingson Once again, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Today, we get to chat with Alex Achten and Alex and I have had some wonderful discussions ahead of this podcast and just to help you out and get you hungry. Since he spent a lot of his life in Kansas, we talk about ribs and shrimp. And we're now both very hungry, but we are going to resist on the podcast we're going to just chat and not eat in front of all of you. And we we do have the willpower at least for one episode to resist. Alex, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Alex Achten ** 02:02 Thank you I'm so so happy to be here and appreciate the the invite to be on. And I have to say saying no to ribs as someone from Kansas City that that's just wrong. Like I you know, I should not be saying no to ribs or rib talk or anything barbecue related or shrimp related. But here I am saying let's talk about something more important. So people listening to this against that. You might say Alex, what are you doing? Why are you giving up an opportunity to talk about ribs? But But hey, you know, you mentioned it we talked a lot about in our political.   Michael Hingson ** 02:38 I want to say that we're going to talk about something more important what we're going to talk about something else. But we could always talk about ribs, you know that's   Alex Achten ** 02:44 true. Ribs is an evergreen topic. You can talk about a whenever, wherever,   Michael Hingson ** 02:48 right? And eat them wherever and whenever you can just to say,   Alex Achten ** 02:54 just don't wear a white shirt. Like I'm like, I'm   Michael Hingson ** 02:56 right now. Right? Yeah, we're at least wear a bib. Yes, I've   Alex Achten ** 03:00 been at the minimum. Yeah, federal. Well, I   Michael Hingson ** 03:03 really am glad you're here. We had a fun time when we chatted last time. So why don't we start by maybe you telling me a little bit about you growing up and a younger Alex and all that kind of stuff?   Alex Achten ** 03:15 Yeah, absolutely. So I started I suppose I told you. I grew up in Kansas City. That's where I was born and raised. That's where my roots are. That is, that's where a lot of my family is. And and it's still home. You know, it is absolutely still home at my core. But yeah, that's where it that's where I grew up. I went to Kansas State University. So I am a Wildcat. Through and Through. I graduated there in 2015. I got a Bachelors of Science and I majored in broadcast journalism, and I minored in Leadership Studies and and from there, I went and pursued a TV career. And I went down to Texas, and was a TV reporter and multimedia journalist for about three to three and a half years down at KU Zee TV NewsChannel, six, and had a really good time there did a lot of a lot of interesting, interesting things that you wouldn't get to do it. Many other jobs, covered tons of different stories there. But even after three, three and a half years, I made the decision that I wanted to get into communications and public relations and also wanted to have the opportunity to get closer to home. And as I told you, in the past, my parents actually moved to San Diego in 2011, which is when I went to Kansas State so they had been there for a while I come out here and I knew I loved it. And I knew that ultimately, you know with my brother in Los Angeles as well, you know, it gave me an opportunity to get closer to home. So I went ahead and moved out here and I was able to land a job with the identity that The Resource Center where I'm at now and I've been here for four years working in communications and public relations. I'm our Director of Communications and Media Relations at the identity theft Resource Center now, and it's just really worked out. It's been a it's been a great, a great experience and opportunity for me. So that is kind of be in a nutshell on my background. But again, my roots, my roots are in Kansas. That's there's no doubt about that. But, but you know, you can't be living in America's Finest City there.   Michael Hingson ** 05:33 Well, having lived in Vista for six years, I can very well appreciate what you're saying. And we love the San Diego area. I still think it's the best weather in the country.   Alex Achten ** 05:44 I will not debate you on that. I will not debate you on I was telling I literally like the 10 day forecast for the next 10 days it is sunny and either 7374 75 or 76. That 10 day so yeah, doesn't get much better than that. It does it.   Michael Hingson ** 06:00 Next Friday, I fly to the National Federation of the Blind Convention, which this year is in Houston. Oh, one that's gonna weather Yeah, well be nice and toasty. That'll be nice and toasty there. You're wearing your clothes. Yeah, there is something to be said for air conditioning.   Alex Achten ** 06:22 But I've been down there to the   Michael Hingson ** 06:24 humidity in Houston is no fun either. been there before. That's okay. I can cope. Well. So when you were a news broadcaster, that must have been pretty interesting. Did you find it interesting and fun. And you must have introduced interviewed lots of people like the governor of Texas and people like that. Did you get a chance to talk to people like that?   Alex Achten ** 06:46 Absolutely. I did. I did interview the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, three or four different times, in my stint there at Channel six. And I actually worked the political beat. So I interviewed a lot of political figures in the state of Texas. So I interviewed Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. I also interviewed Beto O'Rourke a handful of times when I was there, and then pat Fallon, who is in the he is in the US House. Now. I interviewed him a handful of times, former congressman Mac Thornberry was was one of them. So a lot of a lot of political figures. I interviewed in my time there and I also had the, the city beat so that actual Wichita Falls that he beat. So I've covered all the the government related things going on in the city of Wichita Falls. And, you know, really what was kind of the, the wildcard was was really the breaking news that you've covered. I think, you know, I think every reporter will tell you that's one of the probably one of the most exciting parts of the job is the breaking news that you cover. And unfortunately, you know, not not all breaking news is good news. But as a reporter, you know, that's that's, that's what you go to school for, you know, you go to school for opportunities to be able to tell the public, you know, do your service tell the public what is going on and, and while it is something that you know, a lot of it is stuff you never want to see happen. You want to do to the best your ability, and it is a thrill to be in a situation now it can be a moment, don't get me wrong, it is emotionally draining. It is physically draining, mentally draining, it is draining in every sense of that word, but but your passion, your passion is what drives drives you and I tell everybody you know what my passion and my core is journalist I'm a I'm a I'm a journalist, at my core, even though I work in public relations, and Media Relations and Communications now and I love it. At my core, I'm a journalist and I am telling story. So in Wichita Falls, you know, I was able to, to cover so many stories that impacted my life in so many different ways and stories they'll carry with me forever. And I met people that I will remember and carry with me forever. You know, you talk with so many people every single day. When you when you're doing so many different stories and you hear so many stories from so many different people. It is just a very rewarding job and it can be very exhausting job. So it was it was something that again, I covered everything from you know, amazing story. I covered one guy who had like, multiple heart surgeries, didn't know if he was going to live and then he ended up a few months later being able to come out and ride in the Hunterdon hell bike race, which is a really really popular bike race Wichita County. I got to interview him. That was a great story. I got to do stories like that I got to ride To be 25 Bomber for one particular story, which was something that was actually really near and dear to my heart because my grandma was actually a Rosie the Riveter. So that was really, really cool opportunity for me. But on the flip side of that, you know, I covered a handful of stories and breaking news that didn't end well, that things that you won't forget. And, you know, those are the things that stick with you. But you know, I know, as a reporter, something that I was passionate about was telling these people, some of these people that may have been gone too soon telling their story, and telling their story in a way that that really highlighted them and showed them in the best light possible, so people could really get to know who they were in some of the tragic events that happen. And so that was something I took very seriously. And those are some of the things that I'll definitely remember. So, again, I could go on for days, about everything I got in that, in that in that role. But ultimately, what it just came down to was, it was a position where sustainability, you know, I just didn't think it was something that I could sustain long term going through that, again, that that mental, emotional, psychological, physical strain, needed some better work, some better work life balance, that was something that was really important. And then look, you know, I'm honest with people about it, you know, TV reporters, it's not the biggest salary in the world. It's not a and, you know, you also got to worry about you being able to support yourself financially. So you know, that's another piece of it, too. And again, not that you don't make a livable wage. But that, you know, I know a ton of people who have made the jump to communications PR for that reason, as well. So, but don't get it all.   Michael Hingson ** 11:47 As a speaker. I know that when I go somewhere to speak, from the time the airplane lands until I take off, I have to be on. Oh, yeah. And so I appreciate what you're saying about the whole emotional aspect of it, then sometimes you go on well, I went, I've gone to places where it was very interesting. And certainly the the tenor and tone of people and some of their views. Were not the views that I had. But I can't ever let that get in the way. And I'm there to do something. And I'm there to inspire. And I learn as much as I can about how to inspire every audience when I go. So it is different for different kinds of audiences. And for you, it must have been a challenge. I mean, going from beta O'Rourke to Greg Abbott, talk about two different ends of the spectrum. And that kind of thing has to be a real challenge for you, as a reporter, and if you are working to represent the story and talk to the people, then you have to do it without getting emotionally involved in and letting your biases and show on show and that has to be emotionally draining   Alex Achten ** 13:01 it 100% It absolutely is emotionally draining. I don't think people understand, understand how many aspects of that job, are emotionally draining. And, you know, not just that, but there's, you know, there's a lot of people out there that, that don't love what you do, and that, that you have to deal with when you're on the public as well. And unfortunately, I have stories about things that have happened to me, just trying to do stories and cover stories. And unfortunately, too many reporters do have stories like that. And it just kind of comes with the territory. But you're right, getting back to what you were saying, working that political beat in particular. When you're covering, you know, politicians from these, you know, complete opposite sides of the spectrum. You do, you have to let your biases, you have to leave your rises at the door, and you have to come in and you have to do your job, which is strictly to report, report what this person is saying, and then report what the other person is saying. And then you let the viewer come to the conclusion of whatever conclusion they're going to come to but your job is to report the facts. Your job is not to apply any, you know, any sort of speculation or any sort of any sort of leanings one way or the other. There's just something that you can't do. And I think I always told people that I thought the ultimate compliment was not when a when a when a politician told me that I did a good story. It was when they told me that I did a fair story, that that was what I really took as the ultimate cost. Because if I did a fair story, it meant they respected what I did, but you know, understood that, you know, I was tough, you know, and but I was but I wasn't disrespectful. You know, I did, I did my job. And so that was really kind of what I strive for in that in that position. So that was one piece that was really important. And then as you mentioned when you're getting a lot of these other stories that are emotional like Again, you know, I, you know, one story, did a touched on a girl who unfortunately was murdered walking home from school and her friend was with her and shot as well. And that was a story that really captivated kind of the way it happened really captivated the entire community. And it was really hard to leave your emotions out, you know, at the door on this particular piece, he was only 14 years old. It was a really sad backstory to it. And I was reported it was live on the scene, I was the reporter that was at her memorial, and I was the reporter that was speaking with her family, and that was just super emotionally draining. And there's multiple times stories like this, where you're trying to talk about someone's life. And you're also trying to report about the breaking news that might be happening, and maybe also about that trial, you know, I was part of the trial coverage do? How do you leave your emotions out of that when there's so much heavy emotion in it. But you have to find a way to leave it at the door. And that is really difficult to do, and it takes a toll on you. But you have to do it to be able to do the job to the best of your ability   Michael Hingson ** 16:07 I listened to from a standpoint of collecting old radio shows some interesting news reports through the years, I think the probably one of the most dramatic ones is when the Hindenburg exploded, and there was one reporter on the scene everybody else had left because it was late coming in. And he was there reported the whole thing herb Morrison did and did an incredible job. Although his emotions came through some there was no way not to. But yeah, but the point is that he was able to report the whole thing. And even through the emotion, he reported everything. I've heard reports, because I was alive then about JFK getting shot. And I heard the Columbia challenger or the Columbia space shuttle thing. And, you know, other things. What amazes me today is how many people when we see some reporters reporting on stories, and clearly being very bias and not just reporting, which we see a lot, and to all too many people won't hold them accountable and say that's not your job, your job is to report the news. And it's really scary. And so unfortunate that we see all too often today where people don't leave their biases at the door. And they portray things as facts that aren't. And that's too that's too bad too, because that gives the whole industry a very bad name.   Alex Achten ** 17:43 Exactly. You nailed it right there. At the end, it gives the industry a bad name. And it really damages the credibility of good reporters and a majority. And we say this best so many different fields of work, but you know, there's always a few bad apples that seemed it can ruin it for everybody. And in the news, everybody sees what to do. So if those few bad apples are going to be directly seen what what they're doing, and I used to tell some of the new reporters that came in, that I would train, you know, don't you know, don't take, you can't take some of this, you know, stuff that you're going to hear some stuff you're going to encounter, you can't take it too hard. You can't take it too personal. Yeah. And you can't you have to let it go if you have a bad day, because the reality of the fact, you know, the reality is, when you have a bad day, unfortunately, everybody's gonna see it, because you're on TV every day. And, you know, people aren't gonna see my bad days. Now, you know, when I'm when I'm working at the CRC, but they did when I was on TV, and there was no way to get around that and it's in the public eye. But you have to find a way to let that go. Getting to these kind of these bad apples that really kind of paint media in a bad light. It's the same thing, you know, they're being seen. And then, you know, people think, well, that's what all journalists and all media are like, and I think that's what's most disappointing to me is that there are so many good journalists out there, and they get overshadowed by some bad apples that ruin it. And I'm very clear with people that, you know, those that are inserting their opinions into things. That's not news. I mean, that that is entertainment programs and entertainment. Right? That is entertainment, that is not news. Entertainment, but no, I agree. And I've had people come up to me and say, you know, well, you know, I don't watch the news because of this person. And I think that's not like I don't even consider that a news program, whatever. They whatever. They came to me, and I'll tell them, you know, some of some of the some of the places that I think do have good news, but again, I you know, I got to know a ton of reporters when I worked in the industry. I know a ton now for my current role and working in media relations. And again, there's just so many good reporters out there. Air. And you know, I will say that the line, it's thinner now than it's been in a long time with within certain opinion in the news. And that is kind of a, you know, scary thing a little bit. But, you know, when you, you know, they teach you these things in school, how to handle these situations, and there's a lot of really good reporters who do good work. And it's hard work work that requires tons of research and education, and being able to be impartial and ask good questions. And not even just that, you have to, after you ask the question, do you have to tell the story and you have to be a good storyteller. There's so many pieces of that. And there's so many good reporters that doing that, and getting messages out that needed need to get out there. But unfortunately, not enough people. Read the news, watch the news, hear the news, because they just associate some of those bad apples in the opinion with it. So it's disappointing to hear kind of that misconception. And again, I, as a former reporter, I will obviously stand up for many reporters, and believing that it is it is still a good industry. But I will admit at the same time that there are some some some bad apples out there. But I definitely encourage people to if you hear opinion, you see opinion, there is a differentiator between what I would consider news and entertainment program. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 21:22 yeah. Well, for me, I was so impressed, watching a lot of the news once I got home on September 11, having gotten on at the tower and all that, but people like Aaron Brown on CNN, who all day stayed and covered it. Of course, they were across the river. I think he was in New Jersey, I believe, but he, he did the reporting for hours and hours. And I finally got to meet him. And just anyone who could do that, and Peter Jennings did the same thing on ABC, and just being able to do that. And I think with Peter Jennings Finally, there was some emotion, but but still ropey, how can there not be on the next Monday? Dan, rather, was interviewed on Letterman, and and he broke up on the Letterman Show. And yeah, how could you not and why shouldn't you? Yeah, because you're doing Yeah, they're human, they should you be able to react?   Alex Achten ** 22:26 Exactly. I, you know, I, I, I haven't met a reporter that hasn't had a broker who has not had a breakdown, I'll be honest and honest, I, every single reporter that I've worked with had a breakdown at one point or another, I've had breakdowns before as a reporter. It's going to happen, it comes with the territory. And when you're covering something like, like, September 11, I can't even imagine how difficult that had to be. And again, you're only human, you only can take so much. And, and that that is just a incredibly tough job to do. But I'm glad that you mentioned that is because that's that's a great example, and a perfect example. But you know, I think that you mentioned in there human. I mean, I think that that is kind of when I would remind people of you know, these reports are human. And, you know, they they're out here trying to do the best job that they can. Yeah, sure, there are again, there are some bad apples out there. And they're gonna, you know, you know, you need to be able to decipher news from non news. That's deaf, right thing. But But I again, I think that there's just a lot of lack of respect for for some media out there. And I don't think people understand how hard they work and what they go through. And so, you know, hopefully, that's something that, you know, I've been an advocate, again, that a lot for a long time, I'll continue to advocate for that. Because it's like I said, I'm a journalist at my core. Those are my people always advocate for them. But, but just again, you know, you're human, you will and go through so much. And I can't even imagine what it was like this 911 coverage, but I will say I have watched, I have gone back again, news junkie, I've just pronounced surprised anybody. I've gone back and watched to the coverage, one of the coverage from September 11. And it was, it was some very, very good coverage that day.   Michael Hingson ** 24:14 There was some some really good coverage that day. And it was very amazing that people held it together as much as they did. And it's a testimony to them and to their character that they did and they didn't go off and try to go off on deal with diatribes and lecturing people and so on but reported the business which is what they should have done.   Alex Achten ** 24:34 Exactly. And I'll say just one thing with that, too, that's so hard because you don't know they didn't know initially what was going on? No, and you have to have essentially wall to wall coverage of what's going on and you have to fill that time was something so you have to fill it and it's hard not to go to those places on well, they could have been this or it could have been that right it's that is that is so hard when you don't have a script, there's there's not a playbook for that. There's not there's not a playbook for that. That is so hard. You're going wall to wall all day long covering this event where you're learning what's going on. But you don't fully know, I mean that there's no job more difficult.   Michael Hingson ** 25:13 And one of the things that I realized pretty early on, and I'm not sure it was said, as much as it should have been, is that this was not an attack by Islam, this was attacked by a fringe group that wanted to have their way. But that's not the representation of the Muslim church. Yeah. And and I think that not nearly enough people understood that. And again, it's all too often that we, as the public haven't learned to step back and truly analyze, we listen, and we hear somebody, Oh, I agree with that. And then we just go on, and we don't analyze for ourselves. And we really need to do that. I'm not a great fan of Fox, but I watch Fox to hear what they say, as long as I can, can take it, and then I will go back and listen to other news, but I do like to watch a variety of different kinds of newscasts. And I could also go off and say things like, watching the BBC, or news from Europe and so on is really fascinating, because the way they report a lot of stuff is totally different, compelling way we do it here. And there's a lot of value in what they do.   Alex Achten ** 26:29 Oh, yeah, absolutely. Did you write I would encourage someone go go watch a BBC broadcast and see what the way that it did. It is much different than the way than the way and that's not a bad thing. No, no, not a bad thing at all. And, but But I will say, you know, you're right. I think that it is important for people to again, be able to watch different different news outlets and be able to get news from different places. And because, you know, again, I just think it's good to be hearing what everybody's saying and thinking and then I think if you can come to more of an educated opinion, on whatever it is that that that's going on. But if you're only watching the news that plays into the narrative that you want to believe I mean, how much are you really, you know, learning or to the flip side of that, if you're only watching news that goes against what you believe in, they're there to just, you know, mock what they're saying, again, I'll say the same thing. What are you what are you really gaining from that? I my default is always tell people that I go back to you know, I like to watch. You know, I like to watch a galley i I'm, I worked at CBS affiliate, I think CBS news is, is pretty good. I work with the investigate TV team, for television a lot. I actually used to be in a great, great TV employee. But I think investigate TV has an has an incredible team of people there. And I think that NBC is not not MSNBC, just NBC MVCs investigative team is tremendous. I think that there's some tremendous reporters on their investigative team. So again, I think it's about you know, figuring out being able to sift out you know, who's, you know, who's going to really tell this, you know, who tells stories from an impartial standpoint,   Michael Hingson ** 28:28 given my age. I'm a relative late comer to 60 minutes. I love watching 60 minutes, but I had a radio program on our college radio station K UCI at 9.9 on your dial on every Sunday night, I played old radio shows for three hours. And I learned along the way when somebody called from the Orange County Jail in California, that half the people in the jail wanted to listen to our show on Sunday nights and roughly half of the people wanted to listen and watch 60 minutes. And ultimately we beat out Wallace so I'm really glad that we'd be Wow, look at that. And you know, of course what I say to everybody is that Wallace was really just kind of a guy with criminal tendencies if you listen to him when he did old radio shows. What did he announce the Green Hornet What's that all about? Crime and Sky King you know, what's that all about crime? So we know what we don't what kind of mic well, it says I never got to meet him and say that a person who would have been great to do   Alex Achten ** 29:29 Mike Well, that is true. But it was it   Michael Hingson ** 29:33 was really funny that we we we beat out 60 minutes and so they wanted more entertainment the news that's okay.   Alex Achten ** 29:40 Hey, you know what? There's so many there's so many things that are coming into my mind right now but it's it's what was it I you know, if it bleeds it leads like that was one that I remember being like a really popular saying yeah, and then there I there was another one that rhymed at sales, and I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting what it was but but You're right. I mean, you know a lot of these news producers, I mean, they're stalking their shows know what what people are gonna be most interested in here and are seeing at the beginning of a show.   Michael Hingson ** 30:09 My favorite, my favorite 60 minutes is still the one where Morley Safer interviewed Miss Piggy. And she had him on the ropes. It was so funny. I'd love to get a copy of that. She kept calling him Morty and all sorts of stuff that is still my favorite 60 minutes episode.   Alex Achten ** 30:29 Well, I'll say this. I do like some good news mixed in with that. Yeah. I hear people talk about you know, I hate how much bad news is the beginning. And I get it why people say that. I also understand why is it the beginning of shows and why it's so prevalent, but I think it is important to sprinkle some things in. And yeah, I watched CBS Sunday Morning, every morning because I love their feature stories. And I at the station that I worked at, we had a good news segment at the end of every show. So I'm sure it's something that we that we'd like to mix in, I think it's important to be able to get that in. So again, you know, you have to hear the people and there's a lot of people want some more good   Michael Hingson ** 31:05 news. Yeah. And sometimes I don't think we get as much of it as we could, and probably should. There's so much bad stuff. And that's what seems to get a lot of the headlines, I understand it. But and the other part of it is there always seems to be something that is dramatic enough that we do have to get those headlines. So you know, that's the other part about it. We there's there's hardly a slow news day anymore. No, no. Which is, which is too bad. Well, you know, but we cope. So how did you then I understand why you decided that you wanted to leave actually doing real reporting? How did you end up at the identity theft Resource Center?   Alex Achten ** 31:47 Yeah, well, you know, getting back to, you know, you count what I said a little bit earlier in the podcast, you know, it was kind of a situation where, you know, okay, and do you want to sign on it, you know, sign a contract with your, you know, with your current employer and, you know, stay longer? Do you want to look to go to a new station and a bigger market? You know, what do you want to do, and I was kind of at the crossroads, they were, you know, it was time to make a decision one way or the other. And I've been mulling it over for a while, you know, again, I was like, This is not something that's not sustainable. It's really a stressful job. I love what I'm doing. But it's super stressful. And, you know, again, I wanted a little bit of more financial stability, my life, I wanted a little more work life balance, and I wanted to be ultimately be, you know, a little bit closer to family. That was something that would that I wanted as well. So I moved to San Diego, and said, You know what, I'm going to go after this communications thing and see what happens. So I came out to San Diego, I got involved in prsa, which is the Public Relations Society of America, the San Diego chapter in particular, and took part in a mentorship program actually, there. And that was an amazing experience, I was able to work with somebody who at the time was with VA II, out here in San Diego. And they helped me with with a ton, you know, with prep on the industry, interview PrEP. PrEP on the resume, refining the resume. And they really helped me with a lot of that. And I'll say this is a very common jump. And I don't know how many of you will know this very common jump for people and news to jump to communications and PR, I would say, I mean, I don't know if 50% of the people who work in PR are former news people but it, it feels like it well, I'm meeting with them all the time. And it feels like half the time they're like, Yeah, I used to be a reporter as well or used to work in the news as well. And I have a ton of friends that have made the jump since me even from news to PR. So it's a really, really common jump. There's a lot of parallels there. But I ended up you know, the mentorship program was great, it helped me learn a lot. And then I landed a position with the identity theft Resource Center is a communication specialist with a focus on PR. And after about a year, a little over a year, year and a half, I got a promotion to earn an own media specialist. So it was more really focused on media relations. In particular, which is more what I wanted to do. And then from there, I got a promotion to head of earned and owned media relations, which really kind of allowed me to kind of begin to run the show on that side of things. And then the way things ended up shaking out I got another promotion to Director of Communications and Media Relations. So now I'm running an overseeing the communications team for the identity theft Resource Center. And it is a position that that I Love, you know, I love the company, I love the people that I work with. And I love that, you know, I have an executive that we have an executive team there that is so supportive of me and supportive of the work that I do, and they give me the freedom to go out and, and do what I think needs to be done to put the ITRC in the best light publicly, to get us media coverage, to execute successful communications campaigns. And it is something that I really do enjoy, we got a great team. I'm in a managerial role now, which is something that that I said I would never do. I was like, I'll never I'm never I'm never gonna be be a manager, I'm never going to manage people. That's not something I'm going to do. Here I am 31. And now I'm a director, so, so much for that. But, but that's what I said, But you know, I really do enjoy it. I better work life balance. Closer my parents, I get to see them more often. And I've built a community of friends out here that that I really enjoy. And, again, you can't beat San Diego, but but I really I really do. I really do love it. And I think what is something that has really helped me is being a former reporter. Being able to speak with people who work in the media, I feel like it's so much easier for me to speak with them. And so yours didn't say easier. But it's so easy for me to speak with them. Because I feel like I know how to talk to them. How would I know? How to myself back when I was sitting at my news desk? What would I tell? What would I tell Alex like, that's what I think when I'm when I'm writing a press release, or I'm right, you know, I'm I'm personally pitching somebody, or if I'm about to send out a media alert, you know what, what I want to hear and then I think of it just about how people will have it I want people to communicate with me, so much of it is about building relationships. And I put a ton of stock and building relationships with with these people in the media, and it goes beyond just hey, I've got a story for you, or, Hey, I'll scratch your back here, if you scratch our back there, you know, it goes further than that. It's about you know, taking genuine interest in these people. Because again, you know, these amateurs, good journalists, I mean, they're good people, and being able to build those relationships with them. And getting to know them is something that I think is really important. And when I was a reporter, it was the same, you know, I kind of had the same approach, I wanted to get to know the PR people that I was working with, and I took a lot of stock and building those relationships. So I that's something that's really important to me, kind of with where I'm at right now with the with the communications team, at the ITRC is our executive team knows that media relations and public relations is really kind of my my bread and butter. So they let me really stay in the weeds and kind of do all of that. But, but I delegate for the most part, a good chunk of the the other stuff that we do marketing stuff, project management stuff, I'll delegate that to other to other people on the team. But, but I really do stay in the weeds with the media relations stuff, because I love it, I mean that I really am passionate about that. And I love to see the ITRC highlighted on these programs. And and now that I've worked in a space for four years, I didn't I am really passionate about helping these victims because I see the the way that these victims of identity crimes are impacted. And I always I you know, one of the things I wanted to do, and I moved into communications, I wanted to take take a role, where I felt like I would make a difference. You know, I didn't want to take a role to take a role, you know, I wanted to take a role or I could make a difference. And I feel like you know, being able to get media coverage of the ITRC and our services and our reports and our data and all this stuff in return helps get more, you know, help to these victims who need it again, whether or not that means it leads to more government assistance, government programs, whether it means that they find the ITRC and we're able to help them whatever it might be they know that's something that I'm that I'm definitely passionate about. So it has been it has been a great four years working with the communications team at the ICRC   Michael Hingson ** 39:23 well tell me a little bit more about what the ITRC is what it does and and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, the   Alex Achten ** 39:29 I didn't have resource center there. It's a national nonprofit. And it really is and I won't sit here and you know, read off I'm not gonna I won't go into Mr. PR and read off the mission statement and do all that. I'll say the thought of that. But I but I will say it's a national nonprofit that works in the in the identity crime space. The only national nonprofit that has free remediation services for for victims of victims can call us or live chat with us for free and we can help I help them with their identity crime case. Or we can help. Even if you're not a, you know, a victim of identity theft, you know, you can always message us if you have a question or you know, something that's preventative, you can message us about anything. And we are advisors will, will work with people on whatever the issue is toll free. And it's not like you just call one time or message one time, and then we're like, well, there's a fee, the second or third time No, it's, you know, you can, however, many times you need to reach out to us however long you need to talk to us, we'll do it, we'll do it. And that is something that we do. And we also work with, we also work a lot in the research side of things, we do a lot of research. When it comes to identity crimes, right now we're doing a lot of research in the identity crime landscape, in particular in the black communities, and how they're impacted by any crime. So that's something that we're working on right now. We track data breaches, and we report our findings and our trends and what they mean and, and we do things to try to see, you know, try to get additional support for victims. So you know, we'll work we'll work with the, with other organizations, and you know, the government, we have a lot of federal federal grants, and we'll we'll work to try to get more resources for victims add that as part of it as well. And then, you know, we obviously provide education, we'll provide education to businesses, and things of that nature. So there's a lot of different things that we do. But ultimately, you know, the goal is to, is to help reduce identity crime, and, and really to be able to educate people on what's going on in cybersecurity,   Michael Hingson ** 41:36 privacy. So somebody, so somebody calls and says, you know, my identity has been stolen, I've had 10,000 or $50,000, in lost credit card charges, and so on. How do you guys help? What is it that the senator does?   Alex Achten ** 41:51 Yeah, so the senator, what we do is we ultimately can help somebody create a resolution plan with, okay, you know, here's what you need to do next. In regards to steps, who, here's who you need to call, here's what you need to tell them. Here's what you need to get from them. And then here's the steps that you need to take to protect yourself. So we're not there actually doing all of these things for the victims, but we are there to help provide them a resolution plan. And to really guide them through this process that is so tricky, and so difficult, especially people are so vulnerable at those moments. And it's hard. I mean, look, I mean, I mean, a lot of us are the victims of identity crimes, and we know how it can play on your emotions. And you may not be thinking in your proper state of mind at that time, you know, well, we can we can help you in that moment. Walk you walk you through that process, and make sure that you're able to take the appropriate steps to keep yourself as as safe as possible. So that's really, really our role in that. And again, you know, we're there to always provide support.   Michael Hingson ** 42:58 One of the things that we did I have a niece who had she and her family had their identity stolen, gosh, it's gotta be close to 10 years now. And one of the things that we did was we signed up with LifeLock obviously gives some protection and so on. But that's a different kind of an entity that does sort of different things than what you do, right.   Alex Achten ** 43:24 Yeah, yeah, exactly. You're You're right that there, that's more identity theft, protection. Talking about that, and look, you know, I Norton, Norton LifeLock is one of our is one of our supporters. So we work with them on certain things, but But you're right, that that is that is more service based. And we, you know, we're really, we're really not service based, you know, we're just some things in the works that that will roll out at a later time, but, but we're really not.   Michael Hingson ** 43:54 You help people and you help give people perspective and you help give guidance in some way.   Alex Achten ** 43:59 Exactly. We're there to provide guidance for people that help help victims and, and be able to help businesses and and again, get and do the research and figure out what's going on what are the trends and that really could help guide us and what needs to be done next in the space to to help reduce the number of data breaches or identity crimes or whatever it may be. And so again, there's so many layers to what we do, but at the core, again, it comes back to the victims and being able to help those help those victims and provide them the best resources that we can.   Michael Hingson ** 44:38 And really, again, help them get back to having some perspective because you are in a very traumatized situation when you discover something like this has happened. And sample. Generally, it's like being a reporter. They don't know how to step back like most reporters can do and you're probably in theory, a little bit better position. Shouldn't if identity were to be stolen from you, because you can learn to step back, but I'll bet even then you are going to have to deal with it with the emotions. And so it's a challenge for you to.   Alex Achten ** 45:09 I'm glad you brought that up. Because recently that did happen to be where I was targeted, I won't get into the details of it, but I was targeted with with a particular scam, and even knowing exactly what scam there, I could I could have told you the name of the scam, I could have told you what exactly their tactics were, I could have told you everything. But when you hear it, it's still scary. And it still can, you know, make you paranoid, and you can freeze and you know, I froze for a brief, you know, brief minute in that situation. And again, that's with a background is being a reporter and working in this space and all these different things and knowing what scams are talking about and knowing that they're they're literally following a playbook knowing all this, it's still hard for me to pull myself back. So I can't even imagine someone who may not have that type of knowledge. And you know, it can there's so many identity criminals out there. And it's really, it can just be really difficult. And I think the emotional impacts is again, you know, people talk about identity crimes and financial losses. And yeah, you know, financial losses are really, really sad seeing some of them. But I think one of the things that people don't talk about enough as the the emotional impacts of those crying, we ever we do a report that's strictly on that, because it's such a such an important piece. But, um, but it's just, you know, that's something that I don't think people think about is just that, you know, yeah, physical physical abuse, you can see, right, you can you can see the marks from the emotional abuse, you can't, you can't see it. And so, you know, it's harder sometimes to to get people to take it seriously, they can't actually see the, you know, the physical marks of what you've gone through, you know, because it's something that's emotional.   Michael Hingson ** 47:05 One of the challenges that happened with my niece was, for a while even law enforcement was not convinced that she wasn't doing this to herself, or perpetrating and in some way, and she said, look, here's all the evidence, and it was still hard for people to accept that this really occurred, which is so unfortunate   Alex Achten ** 47:29 why and unfortunately, it's not surprising. Yeah, I've heard that story so many times, too. And the crazy thing is, I've had, again, working in media relations. I've had reporters who I'll work with who work, maybe a cybersecurity beat, or a consumer reporter beat reach out to me and say, Oh, my gosh, I'm a victim. Can I talk with one of your advisors like that? Or, you know, this horrible thing is happening to me, I need your help. That is absolutely, I've had a handful reach out like that. It is just so hard to to escape it. I really, really is. And I tell people I said I think this just made me a little more of a cynic now because I feel like I'm questioning everything. My mom will it's funny. I'll use this example. She so I'm still on my parents family plan for our phone because we're all on the family plan together. But my brother and I, we have to pay right? You know, so yeah, Your Honor family pay up you have to pay. So we Venmo my mom every month she'll sit she'll send us like the transaction saying this is how much you owe. And you know, we'll we'll pay through Venmo I am such a cynic. Now that I text my mom every time even though I know it's coming. And it says it says the amount it says it's from her it says what it's for, but I'll still text her and say did you just spend money for this this much money for the phone bill? Then yeah, she'll say yep. And I'll be I'll go, Okay, I'll pay it now. I mean, that is like, that is where my brain is, because of where I work, but, but they're just they're just, you know, there's so many, again, identity criminals out there and, and you have to you have to keep an eye on them. But the good news is, the good news is there are things you can do to protect yourself. And that's the great thing. And, you know, again, we're about education. So you know, we'll try to educate people the best we can, so they can be as safe as possible. So hopefully they don't fall victim.   Michael Hingson ** 49:17 Yeah, and it is it is so easy. I've seen some really good email scams that I almost fell for until I really looked carefully at where the mail came from and all the stuff in the header. I went Wait a minute and chose correctly I know not to do anything with it, but you've got to watch 24 hours a day. Because it is so scary that they're they're getting so clever about what they do much less all the robo calls on the scams that come from that   Alex Achten ** 49:53 100% and and you know, again, this gets back to BBA probably being a little bit of a cynic, but this is this is it definitely something that we put in all of our content. We always tell people, if you get a message or someone you're not expecting, don't respond to it, you know, reach out directly to the person they claimed to be, or the sword, you know, the company they claimed to be from and say, did you send this? And if they did, then you're going to respond? And if they didn't, you know, that it's a scam? And, and again, it's crazy that it's like, oh, I have to I really have to, like, go to the source every time I receive a message where Yep, for somebody I didn't, didn't expect. And I'm gonna say, Yeah, I mean, that that would be my that would be what I would encourage you to do.   Michael Hingson ** 50:32 I do it from people where I'm expecting a message. And this is this comes through. And I haven't had a problem that is I haven't, like you with Venmo haven't had one where it wasn't true. But I still check. Because I've seen some really good texts, too. I got a message about a month ago, from Walmart. And it said that there was a charge for $124 or $184, or something like that. And I forget what it wanted me to do to verify it or whatever. But Amelia, I'm going, Wait a minute. First of all, I didn't spend any money at Walmart. Yeah, of course, the scammer wouldn't know that. But you know, I wasn't even going to respond to the message because of that kind of thing. I didn't expect it. It couldn't have possibly been true. But unfortunately, things happen. I've done credit card charges somewhere, like buying gas. And a day or so later, suddenly, the bank calls and said, we've got these other charges that we don't know about how in the heck, they got the credit card. Info. I mean, this is a long time ago. So I don't think that they even had the ways of sticking the credit card tracker inside of the reader. But nevertheless, somehow people got charged information and used it. And you got to watch everything that goes on. You've got to monitor it all.   Alex Achten ** 52:01 Yeah, it's a scary world. It's a scary world. And unfortunately, people are going to continue to try to find ways to to get Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 52:08 yeah, it is. It is really too bad. Well, what are some things that you would advise people to do to protect themselves?   Alex Achten ** 52:19 I, you know, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 52:21 Obviously, one is, is what we just talked about, what kinds of things would you advise people?   Alex Achten ** 52:27 Yeah, you know, I'll go back to our default messaging that we have at the ITRC, which really is gets back to kind of what we would call I know, we, you know, preventative tips, some of you could call it cyber hygiene. But really, it gets back down to not over sharing information. I think that's yeah, that's one we always talk about, you know, not over sharing personal information, using unique passwords on all your accounts. So essentially, using a different password on every account, in particular passphrase is that's actually something that's more effective passphrase is that we say, are usually at least 12 characters long. So some sort of saying that you'll remember. So that way, if somebody may get into one account, they won't get into all your accounts. So that's, that's one of the common ones we give. And then we always encourage people to use multi factor authentication with an app if possible, because text messages can get spoofed. But But user acquisition is an added layer of security that people have to go through to get into an account. So if you have that, that's just going to, you know, make it make your accounts that much safer. So those are some of the basics. And we always tell people freeze their credit, if you there's no reason for your, you know, if you don't have, you know, a loan out or anything like that, you know, we always tell people that or I shouldn't say tell we don't tell people anything, we encourage people to freeze your credit, if it's something that they may not need at that time, because, again, you know, a criminal can't access credit that's frozen. So that what does that mean, exactly? Here? You know, I have to be 100% honest, it's hard for me to get into the specifics, because I tell people all the time, I'm not going to act like I'm an expert in identity theft.   Michael Hingson ** 54:10 But if you talk about freezing freezing credit, what does that mean?   Alex Achten ** 54:14 Yeah, so freezing credit, essentially, that means that you can't have your credit taken by somebody else. I mean, that that you can do there's you can get your credit frozen by the credit reporting agencies. And essentially, they can't, uh, you know, they can't happen to that they can't get that credit and use it against you and commit identity crimes. That is because that's again, you can there's credit monitoring, right that we were you can monitor your credit, but it's just, you know, it's something that we always tell people it's not necessarily as effective because you can monitor it but once something happens to us, something happened to it. If your credit if your credit is frozen, you know, nothing. Again, nothing can happen to it because it is frozen, and then you can unfreeze it. We especially tell people who have who have children to freeze their credit, reduces child identity theft, because a child's not going to be using their credit, no, that's not you, they don't, they're not going to have their child's not going to go get an apartment tomorrow, you know, go buy a car and get a loan. That's not something that's going to happen. So that's something that we encourage, too. But, but yeah, so that's just a good universal tip. But again, you just take those tips, typically, it it does indeed, help bring someone   Michael Hingson ** 55:25 at risk. If someone freezes their credit, does that mean then that nothing can be charged, or you have to verify it before a charge can be made?   Alex Achten ** 55:33 Well, essentially, freezing the credit. So do that you can't do again, like if you've got a loan out or something like that, that's not something that you can that you can do, I that more really applies to and again, I won't get too too much in the weeds, you don't want to act like I'm the expert on it. But, um, but that is something that it can't be you, right? You can't like if your credit is frozen, you can't necessarily use that if you need to use it for something you will have to go thaw that credit or unfreeze it. And then you can use that credit again, if you want again, you go in, I'm ready to go buy a car, you know, how to get a loan? Well, you can unfreeze that credit, and then you can use it for for that purpose.   Michael Hingson ** 56:13 Freeze credit again, so that nothing else can be done.   Alex Achten ** 56:16 Exactly that you can think of when you're when you're not using it again. So that is it. And I think there's a misconception people think if I freeze it, I can't unfreeze it when you can't, I   Michael Hingson ** 56:23 am That was why I was asking. Well, you minored in Leadership Studies and you just got a certificate. Tell us about that?   Alex Achten ** 56:32 Yes, I did. So I am a Leadership Studies minor. And you know, my passion for leadership studies, actually, I think came in high school, where I was involved in the Student Leadership Institute at Kansas Christian, where I, where I graduated high school. And I actually got a scholarship to leadership, the School of Leadership Studies at Kent State. And so, you know, I was I can't, you know, this is this is interesting. And let me let me, you know, obviously, what this is about, and I got into it, and, you know, I was captivated. I was captivated immediately, in my introduction class. And, and we learned about so many different things. So many different leadership styles, you know, culture and context, adaptive leadership, a bunch of different types of leadership practices that can be implemented. And by the way, people, people think about leadership, and they think, oh, you know, that just means you're a good leader here. You're a good leader there. But there are so many, I mean, there's so much, there's so much leaders that people don't understand. But it really hooked me and, and I learned a ton about being a good leader, being an effective leader. And our, our mission statement, which is something that I really believed was becoming, I'm gonna blank on it now that I'm on the spot, but it was becoming more it was becoming. I see I rattle off time all i rattle it off all the time. And now I'm on here, and I'm freezing when I'm trying to think of it, but the crux of it is to become knowledgeable, ethical, caring, inclusive leaders for a diverse and changing world. knowledgeable and knowledgeable, ethical, knowledgeable, ethical, caring, inclusive. I'm missing one, I'm missing one or two. But everywhere people get the point of that. So the cool, knowledgeable, ethical, caring, caring giver, yes. And in inclusive. Yeah, exactly. Because you haven't. And I think it is something that is really, really true. Because, you know, the world is constantly changing. And to be a good leader, you have to be able to evolve and adapt with what is changing in the world. And so it's something that has been really helpful to me, I've been able to apply it to my jobs, I was able to, again, apply a lot of that a lot of those things as a reporter. And then in the role now I'm able to apply it as a manager as a director as a leader. And you mentioned that I just got done. Taking a about a four month course, that on coaching, coaching as a leadership tool, and it was through the fieldstone fields Student Leadership Network, in San Diego, through the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance. And it was really, really a beneficial course and it really kind of reinforced kind of reinforced a lot of the things that I really tried to implement, which is the first thing you have to do as a leader is you have to look at yourself and who like who are you what are your values, what do you stand for, and we talk about being like the self aware leader, you know, you have to be a self aware of the type of leader that you are. Once you're aware of that then you can dive into you know, the other aspects of being able to be a good coach. And, you know, we talk about one thing we talked about a lot was was, was these different models that you can use, and one is the is the GROW Model, which can apply to many different leadership, leadership situations where you're able to kind of objectively look at these situations and say, you know, what's the goal, you know, what are some realistic opportunities here. And, you know, what's next, and when, and, and it's really, really an impactful model, that that you can apply. So I, that was a very, very helpful course and being able to look at that, you know, being able to be a good leader includes so many things, and you have to be authentic, you have to be empathetic, you have t

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 845, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: the bee 1: Bees gather this flower secretion to make honey. Nectar. 2: Bees are found on every continent but this one. Antarctica. 3: Young bees are fed beebread, made from honey and this plant product. Pollen. 4: On their heads bees have 5 of these -- 2 compound and 3 simple. Eyes. 5: Karl von Frisch won a Nobel Prize for deciphering the circling and wagging types of this form of bee communication. Dancing. Round 2. Category: forestry 1: It's the term for baby trees used to reforest areas. seedlings. 2: This president established the U.S. Forest Service. Teddy Roosevelt. 3: In forest management, it's a group of trees of the same age and type; Custer's last one is famous. a stand. 4: Fire, mostly man-made, diseases and these destroy as many trees each year as are cut down. insects. 5: Brazil is second to this country in total forest area. the Soviet Union. Round 3. Category: theatre history 1: In 1904 Daphne du Maurier's father, Gerald, became the first actor to play this villain in "Peter Pan". Captain Hook. 2: Pisistratus established a tragedy contest as part of this city's Great Dionysia Festival around 534 B.C.. Athens. 3: Victorien Sardou wrote the 1882 play "Fedora" for this great French actress who triumphed in it. Bernhardt. 4: In the 1640s these supporters of Oliver Cromwell closed all the theatres in London. the Roundheads (Puritans). 5: London's Royal Coburg Theatre was renamed the Royal Victoria and affectionately nicknamed this. the Old Vic. Round 4. Category: cuba 1: In the news in 1961, this bay in the Cuban province of Las Villas is also called Bahia de los Cochinos. Bay of Pigs. 2: This Pulitzer and Nobel prize-winning novelist's home in pre-Castro Cuba was called "Finca Vigia". Ernest Hemingway. 3: Cuba's first big screen role was in this 1988 film starring Eddie Murphy as a transplanted African prince. Coming to America. 4: In 1997 this magazine chose Cuba as one of its "50 Most Beautiful". People. 5: In a 1995 TV movie Cuba soared with this first squadron of black combat pilots. the Tuskegee Airmen. Round 5. Category: entertaining canadians 1: Last name of Canadian-born actress Meg, Jennifer's sister. Tilly. 2: Most know William Shatner is Canadian, but so is James Doohan, who played this "Star Trek" engineer. Scotty. 3: Joshua Jackson, a star of this Massachusetts-set WB series, is a Vancouver native. Dawson's Creek. 4: On screen he's been Studio 54 founder Steve Rubell and would-be world dominator Dr. Evil. Mike Myers. 5: It's no longer news that this current "60 Minutes" correspondent hails from north of the border. Morley Safer. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/

Live from the no panic zone—I'm Steve Gruber—I am America's Voice— I am a radical MAGA American extremist— AND I have heard enough! The radical Green New Dealers and those that think your gender is determined by the pants you wear or the color of your hair—are done here—we will prevail!   Here are three big things you need to know right now— ONE— Just when you thought things could not possibly get worse—there is a looming beer shortage—and you are not going to believe why—I will have that coming up— TWO— Whistleblowers inside the FBI say President Biden pushed hard to fabricate extremist and White Supremacy cases—just to bolster his claims of those things— THREE— Speaking of Joe Biden—I talked to you yesterday about the pathetic 60 Minutes interview conducted by Scott Pelley of CBS News that was like a softball tournament—with a bunch of ridiculously easy questions—and basically no follow up at all—and no discussion at all about the border crisis—brought to light last week when Governor Ron DeSantis sent just 50 illegals to Martha's Vineyard and sent the Democrats and all the far-left people into a total meltdown—   But here is something you haven't heard before— I will get back to that in a moment— But first the truly disgraceful 60 Minutes interview—that would be an embarrassment to Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and all the legendary journalists that created the franchise and turned into must watch TV on Sunday nights across America— When I was a kid—60 Minutes was something my father sat down to watch every week—it wasn't optional and you were not allowed to make noise while it was on—or ask too many questions—which I was guilty of many times—60 Minutes, despite the very left leaning political viewpoints of the main on camera folks—was willing to go after anyone—ask the questions that no one else would—and really pound people with bruising interviews, no matter what their political affiliation was— Let's be clear—that is not 60 Minutes today—it is a case study in the decline and failure of American media almost across the board at the big 3 networks and their cable news spinoffs—and Scott Pelley—was an embarrassment to the 60 Minutes Brand—and himself with such silly questions— The one that really stuck in my mind when I watched it—was when he asked President Biden—what came to mind when he saw the staged FBI picture of folders inside former President Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate—following the raid on August 8th… I mean he could have just said—what is wrong with Donald Trump? Is Donald Trump a bad man, how bad would it be if he were President again—should he even be allowed to run again? I mean seriously—asking fluff questions about your main political rival—that have no substance and are just teeing up Biden to fire away at a target that cannot even respond—I think pathetic might be too polite— BUT and this is a very big BUT—despite the questions being hand fed to Joe Biden very gently—and with no serious follow up or pushback from Pelley the make-believe journalist—Joe Biden managed to create several major blunders—and remember this is his first sit down interview with anyone in 7 months— Among other things, Biden told us the Covid-19 pandemic is over—which means every rule used to manipulate the American people in all 50 states—are basically null and void today—and that left people scrambling—remember just two weeks ago Biden gave away a Trillion dollars to erase student loan debt—mostly for well off folks—and all in the name of Covid— Biden then for the fourth time in a few months—put the Chinese on notice that America is willing to fight for Taiwan—and this is really serious—I mean this senile old man with this kind of reckless talk could get us into a serious shooting war with Beijing— And those things are bad—BUT when it comes to the mid-term elections coming up on November 8th— he took a seriously wrong turn—and totally dismissed the idea that Americans are hurting when it comes to the sky high inflation numbers—and the economic pain ordinary Americans are in right now— He sounded more out of touch on that answer than most of the others—and he wasn't doing well there as we have already heard— I mean this is completely out to lunch—and calling what he did tone deaf—is not nearly strong enough— And his trainwreck of an interview on 60 Minutes might be the high point of the Presidents month—because the deal the President proclaimed he'd secured between a dozen railroad unions and the companies they work for could be in serious jeopardy of never getting ratified—and the deal could be rejected in mid-October—delivering a crippling blow to the US economy—less than a month before Election Day— If just one of those unions says no to the contract—which many insiders say is quite possible—then the whole thing appears will fall apart—and Joe Biden will have delivered to himself an October surprise—of epic and potentially devastating results—  I will of course keep an eye on it for you—  But wouldn't it be nice—it the American Press would just do its job and report on the facts—not cover some of it up like a cat in a litter box and amplify others—I mean even Bill Maher has figured it out—Joe Biden is a doofus—and anyone that would continue to support these things… well, you figure it out…  

To download the transcript CLICK HERE This episode is Part 2 with Paul Kalemkiarian who is the owner of the original wine of the month club. We dive into the modern day history of drinking habits in the US and it's reputation around the world. We look at how The 1976 Judgement of Paris put California on the map, and Paul goes into detail laying out the facts and the key players behind this tasting. We discuss the film Bottleshock which portrayed this important event (although not too factually!). We also talk about the Sideways Movie and how this changed peoples perception towards Merlot and Pinot Noir. If you are a movie buff, I've got quite a few facts in there for you. And talking about facts we have a whole section dedicated to those wonderful things called Polyphenols. So if you want to learn about some new health studies and how red wine can do you wonders, listen on. There are also wine suggestions, and book suggestions throughout so this is a jam-packed episode to enjoy! If you want to skip ahead: 1.55: The Story of The Judgment of Paris, and the people who set it up 9.49: The Sideways effect: Discussing the movie and the change in sales for Merlot and Pinot Noir. 13.22: Fascination with Pinot Noir 16.42: Affordable Pinot Noir's 20:42: Looking at The French Paradox and Morley Safer's Mediterannean lifestyle book, and how this changed sales with red wines in the US 22.33: Cabernet Sauvignon and the cost of land in California. Where are the best values? 25.50: Discussing red wine and the part it plays in health. Which are the red wines with the most polyphenols? 29.48: Health facts based on the consumption of red wine in moderation 38.09: The Somm Movie 40.27: The Sour Grapes Documentary Fancy watching some videos on my youtube channel: Eat Sleep Wine Repeat Or come say hi at www.eatsleepwinerepeat.co.uk Or contact me on Instagram @eatsleep_winerepeat or on email: janina@eatsleepwinerepeat.co.uk Until next time, Cheers to you

Sarah is a plucky girl reporter!  Lyle is a hot war correspondent who's also a news anchor I guess?  (Maybe he's a far more uncool Morley Safer?) Anyway he isn't a print journalist but he's decided he's going to restart the weekly newspaper on Compostela, a Caribbean island that we might as well call Smasrshbuda.  She wants the job!  He's incredibly inappropriate and she takes it anyway!  It's 1981!  He has a terrible mustache and looks exactly like that guy from The Young and the Restless that Sara keeps calling Vincent!  (Courtney is screaming.)  It's Blue Days at Sea by Anne Weale, Harlequin #444! This is an interesting little book because - okay, remember back to our NINTH episode which was TWO YEARS AGO omg when we covered Adam and Eva by Sandra Kitt?  We were so young then. That was the first Harlequin by an African American author featuring a Black couple.  I read when we were working on that one that there was a stealth Black Harlequin earlier, that was written with no physical description of the couple's skin tonesl and that even the original cover is racially ambiguous.  And it turns out that that's true, and that it's this book, and y'all it is weird.  They're actually both British, and most of the people on the island are Afro-Caribbean.  But I'd assumed that to pull this off it would have to be a setting where the race of the two leads isn't necessarily so relevant that it feels odd that it's not mentioned.  HA.  HA.  These people are constantly in situations where they're naturally talking about race and where their conversations would be different depending on their backgrounds, experiences with institutional racism, cultural upbringing - everything!  On the one hand it's pretty bold - it's always talking about the consequences of colonialism in the Caribbean, about racism, about interracial relationships - but then it's kind of tone deaf that Anne Weale, who's white, thought she had the cultural competence to write this.  So that's a major content warning. BUT that's all!  For the low low price of this $5 used Harlequin paperback you also get: a sex pest on the mantel in Act 1 that goes off in Act 3! Labor law violations innumerable! A really awful 1981 guy! Fat shaming and diet culture that just kind of sneak up on you every so often! Sexual assault and really awful failures to support her afterwards! I am probably forgetting something!

On today's episode, Andrew Keen talks with Peter Osnos, founder of PublicAffairs, about the recent news that Bertelsmann, the parent of Penguin Random House, will purchase Simon & Schuster and why this does not mean the Amazonization of the publishing industry. Between 1966-1984 Peter Osnos was a reporter and foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and served as the newspaper's foreign and national editor. From 1984-1996 he was Vice President, Associate Publisher and senior editor at Random House and publisher of Random House's Times Books division. In 1997, he founded PublicAffairs, an imprint of the Hachette Brook Group specializing in books of journalism, history, biography and social criticism. He served as Publisher and CEO until 2005. Among the authors he has published and or edited are; former President Jimmy Carter, Rosalyn Carter, Gen. Wesley Clark, Clark Clifford, former President Bill Clinton, Sam Donaldson, Dorothy Height, Molly Ivins, Vernon Jordan, Stanley Karnow, Wendy Kopp, Jim Lehrer, Scott McClellan, Robert McNamara, Charles Morris, Peggy Noonan, Barack Obama, Tip O’Neill, Nancy Reagan, Andy Rooney, Morley Safer, Natan Sharansky, George Soros, Donald Trump, Paul Volcker, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and Muhammad Yunus, as well as journalists from America’s leading publications and prominent scholars. Osnos has also been a commentator and host for National Public Radio and a contributor to publications including Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, and The New Republic.  He has also served as Chair of the Trade Division of the Association of American Publishers and on the board of the Human Rights Watch. He was executive director of The Caravan Project, funded by the MacArthur and Carnegie Foundations, which developed a plan for multi-platform publishing of books. He was Vice Chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Chicago News Cooperative and is active in a number of other journalism and human rights organizations. He writes a regular column called Peter Osnos' Platform on Medium.com. He is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations. He is a graduate of Brandeis and Columbia Universities. He lives in Greenwich, CT with his wife Susan, a consultant to human rights and philanthropic organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Move over Usain Bolt! The Fantasy Football Party-Goers broke several land-speed records—not to mention a dozen or so glasses and a couple of hearts along the way—as their second preseason episode clocked in at less time than it takes Morley Safer and Andy Rooney to fill that precious space between the end of the Cowboys game and the start of “Murder, She Wrote”. But do not despair, it’s still jam-packed with all the fantasy goodness you’ve come to know, love, and expect from these three amigos. As is their Wednesday night habit Bo, Magsh, and 2V gathered at JL Beers in Burnsville to trade barbs, toss back malted beverages, and dispense more fantasy football wisdom. Our beloved party-goers touched on the pertinent news of the day, addressed some early-season favorable schedules—and those that may be decidedly less so—and filled in the blanks on your 2019 fantasy football Mad Libs. Plus, Bo grabbed Chubb (despite 2V’s negative assessment of Cleveland’s crumbling offensive line), Magsh took a Duke (which 2V wholeheartedly endorsed despite the Texans’ shaky blocking), and 2V polished his helmet in hopes Antonio Brown would don it and get himself back on the field. Don’t adjust your dial; you’re listening to the podcast guaranteed to help you win your fantasy league or die trying. Pour one out for the final preseason edition of the Fantasy Football Party! ***** Follow the show on Twitter @TheFFParty and its co-hosts @MplsMaggio, @Bo_Mitchell, and @jtuvey Support your local show sponsors! Use the code FFP to get a seven-day free trial of rake-free DFS at FantasyDraft At FantasyLabs, the code 10OFF saves you $10 on a trial membership at the site all the FF Party-goers turn to to help set their DFS lineups. And of course, visit JL Beers in Burnsville for the best brew and burgers south of the river!

We look at a television program that began 50 years ago in 1968 and is still going to this day. That program is CBS News 60 Minutes. The Sunday night news magazine program debuted September 24, 1968, and continues on the air. We recall some of the stories and events covered in the years since this program began. We also recall the correspondents who have presented the stories over the years. Harry Reasoner, Morley Safer, Mike Wallace, Dan Rather, among many, are still remembered from the program's early years. For many of school-age, 60 Minutes marked the end of the weekend and the night before a new week. Join us as we look back upon this program and recall your memories of this show on Galaxy Moonbeam Night Site, on the Galaxy Nostalgia Network.

An interview with Laravel woman around town and lover of puppies J.T. Grimes. SPONSOR: Twilio provided J.T. audio recording equipment ❤️ J.T. on twitter Actuary Marco Cantu COBOL Fortran Delphi CompuServe IBM iSeries Zend ZendCon Alan Seiden QCodo Juan Treminio Yak shaving Transcription sponsored by LaraJobs Matt Stauffer: It's time to learn about Miss J.T. Matt's son: It's time to learn about J.T., JST. Matt Stauffer: No, just J.T. Matt's son: J.T. Matt Stauffer: Time to learn about J.T. Matt's son: Time to learn about J.T. Matt Stauffer: Welcome to the third interview of Laravel Podcast, season three. We're going to be talking to J.T. Grimes who has been around the Laravel community and is one of the funniest people in Laravel, but you might not know much about her. Stay tuned. We're going to get started. It's the next episode. This is the third interview of Laravel Podcast season three, so the first one was Taylor Otwell, so Taylor who everyone knows he created Laravel. The second was introducing Neo who a lot of people don't know but within his world he's extremely well-known, so within the Laravel, Nigeria world everyone knows who Neo is. It was kind of a fun little world, way for them to join in to maybe I don't know if the American or whatever space. m This next interview is very interesting and I very intentionally not told anybody who I'm talking to, which is tough because what I wanted to do was go out in Twitter and say, "Hey, who has questions for this person?" But I decided intentionally to wait because I think that this is going to be such a treat for someone who is everywhere but nobody knows anything about her. The interview today is with J.T. Grimes and I actually need to pull up your Twitter profile because one of the things about your Twitter profile, is it a South Park character? J.T. Grimes: Yeah. Matt Stauffer: Almost everybody who interacts with you doesn't even know you look like. The Golden State, we got some Cal going on there, there's South Park, but you're one of those folks like you and Amanda Folsom like nobody unless you've been to a Lericon Conference and had the pleasure of interact with J.T. don't actually know. I guess like at Sunshine PHP or something like, you're actually know what J.T. looks like, but are you wearing the hat right now? J.T. Grimes: I'm wearing a hat. Matt Stauffer: Are wearing a Cal hat? J.T. Grimes: I'm wearing a Cal hat, of course. Matt Stauffer: Is it safe to assume you're always wearing your Cal hat. J.T. Grimes: Sometimes it's a raiders hat but- Matt Stauffer: Okay, fair enough. J.T. Grimes: My hair wants to do this Alfalfa thing all the time, and it's either be seen in public like that or wear a hat- Matt Stauffer: Got it. Got it. J.T. Grimes:... so always the hat. Matt Stauffer: I like it. J.T., can you tell people, say hi to people and tell them who are you in whatever length you want to say, and where do you work and what do you do and what brings you exposure to the Laravel community? J.T. Grimes: I was frankly a little surprised that you wanted to talk to me because I don't see myself as being one of the "She's everywhere" community members. I work for a little insurance company in San Francisco, I've been in the same job for 21 years. Matt Stauffer: Wow. J.T. Grimes: Well the same company. Longer than some of your listeners have been alive. Matt Stauffer: It's true. J.T. Grimes: I never wanted to be a programmer, I was very clear that that was not going to be the direction my life was going in. My mother is a programmer and so I spent all of my teenage years saying, "I'm not going to be like her." I went to school with a degree in Statistics, got a job as an actuary or an actuary trainee. Every job I had they kept trying to make me progress. I kept saying no, no this is so me. Matt Stauffer: The universe. J.T. Grimes: Finally I just had to give in. Matt Stauffer: Actually, I need to pause and do one thing. I said I was going to do this, getting like totally failed. I'm looking at you and I'm seeing a microphone sitting in front your face and that microphone arrived too because Twilio the people at Twilio.com are amazing human beings and they have sponsored us getting good recording equipment to anybody who doesn't have it. I want to say, Twilio, if you need text messages or voicemails or anything like that programmatically Twilio are the bomb, they're freaking amazing people. Greg Baugues is the man so as Ricky, and they sent us stuff over. Okay, thank you, Twilio. We love you, you're great. Okay, now back to my question. When they got you in? J.T. Grimes: Can I throw-? Matt Stauffer: Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. J.T. Grimes: Let me throw in a quick shout out to Twilio. They've just added fax capability. Matt Stauffer: What? J.T. Grimes: Yeah. When you work in insurance and you're in all the economy kind of company you are still sending faxes. Matt Stauffer: Got it, so you actually love, you are using them on a regular then? J.T. Grimes: Oh yeah. Matt Stauffer: Oh man. Good, Twilio. They finally convince you, you're an actuary, you're doing the very, very exciting. Is that like I mean, is it Excel? Are using Excel is an actuary or is there a like more complicated stuff? J.T. Grimes: I know that there are companies who use more complicated stuff. I've always been an Excel user, but it being a data monkey, it comes with data coming in a little bit of analysis going out. Matt Stauffer: I'll ask you more in a second now that you're doing programming there. Originally, when you were first doing that before they can convince you go to programming, was it basically Excel and Access and Spreadsheets and numbers like that? J.T. Grimes: Yeah. Matt Stauffer: Adam often I forget his exact same term would be, basically says like, "What we're doing is all basically just like Excel." He may say it in the inverse anything you could do in programming you do in excel something like that. It seems like a pretty reasonable transition to me and I got to say there's not a lot of people who are, I don't want to say anything about generations but there's not a lot of people who are at least in my generation whose parents are programmers because it's not ... What kind of programming was your mom doing? J.T. Grimes: She started doing Fortran. Matt Stauffer: Okay, that's pretty good. J.T. Grimes: For a local oil company in the late 60s, switched to COBOL and was at Bank of America and a couple of other banks for 40 years. Matt Stauffer: Wow, okay so that's how she got in. When they finally convinced you to be a programmer? What was the task or what was the language? Tell me more about that first time. J.T. Grimes: There were a lot of Excel macros, there was a lot of ... This isn't really programming but I'll just write a program to do this. Matt Stauffer: Got it. J.T. Grimes: There was the first thing I used in a professional capacity was Delphi one. Delphi was visual Pascal the one language Microsoft has never given us the visual version of. Matt Stauffer: Wait a minute. Can I pause you? I know that Visual Basic is the thing, I know that there is visuals. I don't actually know what a visual version of a language is, can you tell me what that means? J.T. Grimes: Generally, when Microsoft uses it, it means that it is designed to build native apps on those. Matt Stauffer: Okay, got it. J.T. Grimes: Visual Basic gives you the tools to make your Windows Forms in all of your screens. Matt Stauffer: But using a programming, so visual means this programming language is meant to build native user interface on it versus whatever else? J.T. Grimes: Right. Matt Stauffer: Okay, so sorry I interrupted you were talking about Pascal and Delphi, a whole bunch of words that I don't understand so I got it like [inaudible 00:06:49] one by one. J.T. Grimes: Pascal is a C like language but very verbose instead of brackets you have begin and end and everything is words instead of symbols, but you've still got pointers, you can still do all the things you can do in C. There was a little bit of Visual Basic, there was a little bit of Perl as little as I could manage. I figured out real quick that if Perl was what it took to be a programmer in this new exciting Internet age it was not for me. Matt Stauffer: How were you learning at this point? What resources were you using to learn these languages? J.T. Grimes: With Delphi, it was books, there may have been a CompuServe forum. Yes, I'm old enough to have used CompuServe forums, but we actually had printed pieces of paper and we would pile them up on our desks, and sometimes we'd use them to lift monitors up as well. Matt Stauffer: I assume you're referencing books when you talk about printed pieces of paper. J.T. Grimes: I think that's what they're called. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, books. Am I allowed to ask? I'm not asking anything about age but just at this moment when you were learning to code and you're at it totally non-determined age, what time period was that because it's CompuServe, so this is early '90s or ...? J.T. Grimes: It would have been the mid '90s. Matt Stauffer: Okay, mid '90s. All right. J.T. Grimes: I mean I've said I've been at my current job for 21 years so I'm sure knowing that. Matt Stauffer: Hey, I'm not, okay so that part makes a little more sense. Yeah, okay, cool. All right, so you were pre-internet teaching yourself the code. I mean a lot of people's stories Neo stories and Taylor story and my story, we're talking about teaching ourselves the code by viewing source on websites. A lot of us didn't get into anything until we got it a PHP and that's how we got into like, whatever. You're teaching yourself A) pre-internet and B) you're teaching yourself like some, I don't know what the term is, it's not hard code but like this is legitimate programming stuff and you're just kind of hacking it through as you went. Did those books really help you or is it a little more just kind of trial and error? J.T. Grimes: There's a lot of trial and error, there is a lot of ... let me try and build a program that does this and learn just enough to do it- Matt Stauffer: Got it. J.T. Grimes:... which is how- Matt Stauffer: Everyone is right. J.T. Grimes: I think everyone has learned for the last 30 years. Just like always, there were a couple of authors and a couple of imprints that were very reliable. This was before O'Reilly had different animals on the coverage of everything. I'm not sure they were even a thing. Matt Stauffer: Do you remember anybody who really kind of stood out as a helpful resource then? J.T. Grimes: Marco Cantu was the guy's name who wrote the best Delphi books, and I can't believe I just pull that name out of my head. That is a brain shell that could have done something useful, but instead- Matt Stauffer: It prepared for this moment right now. J.T. Grimes: Marco Cantu. Exactly. Matt Stauffer: That was we're talking about mid '90s. You learned all those languages, but that's not where you're writing today. What was the next step ... Well actually I don't know. I mean, I assume that because I met you at Lericon and because you basically joke on the whole Laravel community a little bit at a time, that you're writing in at least some pitch piece and web based stuff today, but there's got to be some things that happened between that moment 20 years ago and where you are today. What kind of transitions did you go through? I mean you're staying in the same job, they weren't job transitions, or at least they weren't company transitions. What was next after you started learning? J.T. Grimes: I work for an insurance company and one of the things you have to do is read different kinds of policies. We have algorithms that are built to do the reading. It's a frame building with this kind of roof and this like square footage and, oh you're running a music studio so there are kids in there all the time, so your liability charts goes way up. Somebody has to get all those algorithms into the system, so it's not really programming in a language but it's building algorithms and it's functionally programming. The system we've got to do this in is really cool, I would love to show it off some time but it is in COBOL. Matt Stauffer: Wow. J.T. Grimes: The back end at my insurance company is COBOL, we've got four or five COBOL programmers who are great, who are some of the best programmers I've worked with, which always surprises people. Matt Stauffer: You're saying is not was. You're talking about today. J.T. Grimes: I'm talking about today. The system we're on when life in, I want to say 1990 or '91 and has been in continuous operations since then. There's active development going on along with maintenance. Most of the system has been rewritten in those 25 years, but yeah we were running the same thing, have been running the same thing in COBOL 25 years. It's solid. Matt Stauffer: That's amazing. I've got so many things to ask you but I got to pause you, you're talking about a system running longer than almost anybody listening. Some of them have not even in the life that long. That's silliness aside, I would say there's a very, very, very tiny percentage of people who have been programming as long as that system has been running. You know what things were are fads now. You know the limitations of Laravel, and I want to keep getting back to your story in a minute but I got to stop you there. What could you point to if anything well you say, "You know what that is something that I can learn from this nearly 30 year running code base that we could kind of benefit from today," like what are some of the things that have helped that be so stable? Is it because of COBOL, is because there are great programmers, are there any things systems are structured or practices or attitudes that you could share with us? J.T. Grimes: So the tooling that's in place is terrible. It's awful. We don't have source control. Matt Stauffer: Wow. J.T. Grimes: We don't have a staging server, there is Dev which works as test and there's production because we're running on a mainframe and you can't exactly get a mainframe at everyone's desk. Matt Stauffer: Oh my gosh. J.T. Grimes: There is no virtual machine that emulate an IBM, I think Power I is what they're currently calling the product but basically one of IBM's mainframes. So much of the tooling in the system that's in place is awful, and the only reason that I can think of but we're still running and I need to knock wood because if I did shit someone will kill me. Is that we've had really exceptional people, but beyond that I was looking at our system and I thought, "Here's a great conference talk. If I were not painfully shy and unable to speak in front of people." We, as a financial services kind of thing need to be able to roll back transactions do things out of order, keep track of rebuild the policy from scratch. This is really cool and I don't know anyone who's doing this in PHP and just as I was thinking that, I can't remember what you call it now, CQRS. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, the event sourcing and the command query in response to separation and all that stuff. J.T. Grimes: Event sourcing became a new hotness, and essentially what this is. is event sourcing that we've been doing in COBOL for 30 years. The database design has been super solid if I were going to give people one piece of advice that goes against everything you hear now, get your database design down first. It is the most important part of your system, whatever you're showing, whatever you're making, 90% of it, if you're using Laravel probably 98% of the products you're making are crowd apps. You are reading data and you are writing data, and if the database isn't right you're going to be in a world of hurt. Matt Stauffer: That's really helpful, and I'm going to dig down there a little further, I think that's a great advice from you. I would say, if you've got these really kind of pro programmers that you're working around every single day, get the database right, I mean that's a huge thing. I would say like there's people who have taught me various things like I can look to one person who taught me about simplicity, and I can look to another person who taught me about denormalizing databases, various things that they taught me. When you think about the people in your team who you're so impressed with, are there any specific things where even if they're not sure, well you can say, "You know what, like by working with this person they really made me better at this or at that." J.T. Grimes: I can't think of a specific thing that they've made me better at, but I can tell you that working with them has made me better. I've gotten a lot better at communicating because we don't, once we are on our machines we don't speak the same language at all. We have variables and we have loops and we have, we're accessing the same data, but we have very different terminology for it, and so being able to bridge that has been a really useful skill. Matt Stauffer: Where are your various code base is talking together? Is there shared databases that they're interacting with? Or how are they actually connecting to each other? J.T. Grimes: The main system, the source of all truth is the COBOL, the I series, the Db2 database that's running on there. The AS/400 or the I series who's IBM's current marketing term for it, and when you've been using the same thing for 30 years you call it by its 30-year-old name it happens. It is the source of truth, we have web apps on other servers, public face and servers that talk to it through essentially a homemade API. PHP is one of the only modern languages that runs smoothly on IBM set up, and that's because they've done it partnership with Zend, Zend actually makes an interpreter specifically for running on IBM's mainframes. Matt Stauffer: That's fascinating. I had no idea. J.T. Grimes: ZendCon is coming up. If you're going check out the I series though usually have a day of sessions that are specifically about running PHP on IBM hardware. It's a very different group from who you find in the other sessions, they tend to be in those same sessions together the whole time because your company is paying for you to go learn this one thing that you cannot learn anywhere else. Matt Stauffer: Anywhere else. That's fascinating, because there's just a small subset of people who are actually doing that extremely vital PHP on IBM kind of thing then right? J.T. Grimes: I think so, but it's one of those invisible communities. There are a lot of them out there, but people who aren't doing cutting edge stuff who aren't at startups are probably the bigger part of the PHP communities for folks working for the government, for bank, for anywhere else that's boring. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, well it's so interesting because I hear you say that and I go, "Yeah, I know those people are out there," but again I met you at Lericon and the first thing that doesn't come to my mind is people who are working on applications that have been running for 30 years who you talk about the boring stuff. Even ZendCon, I mean ZendCon like I went to ZendCon a year or two ago, and one of the reasons was because they're really trying to reach out to the non-Zend world, because like I think even just not even talking about PHP on IBM people, I'm just talking about Zend in general, it tends to be relatively disconnected from like the Laravel of the world. You're talking even a further thing within the Zend world. There's this even much smaller subset of people who are the Zend and IBM. This is like a really, I don't want to say it's a niche because I don't know how small it is, but how on earth? You know what, I've got so many questions I was about to ask how they put, I'm jumping ahead of myself. Let's step back a second. Are there any big transitions in the work you're doing between when you first got started, when you first were doing all that kind of work when you were learning COBOL and you're learning the visual stuff Pascal and all that, and what you're doing today because obviously today you're doing at least some web, you're doing some PHP. What was that transition like? How did it take from you to go from there to here? J.T. Grimes: I'm going to correct two things. One, I don't do COBOL. Matt Stauffer: Okay, sorry, I was mixing up all my old language. J.T. Grimes: I understand. I actually advocate for people to learn COBOL, all the COBOL programmers want to retire and there's no one to fill in for them. Matt Stauffer: Wow. J.T. Grimes: You would be surprised at how many financial institutions, other big companies are still running COBOL, and they're doing it for the same reason that my company is, which is two-fold. One, it's incredibly expensive to rewrite everything you've got. Two, once it's been in production for 10, 20, 30 years, it's effectively been tested every way possible. The risk of going to something new, I think Visa still using COBOL. If you are the largest payment processor in the world the risk of rolling out a new system is- Matt Stauffer: Is not worth it. J.T. Grimes:... is mind boggling. Matt Stauffer: You'd rather use a 30-year-old system and keep paying for those old mainframes, and then paying enough money obviously for IBM to keep producing them and for Zend to keep doing those integrations. That's pretty incredible because when you say COBOL like I hear people say, I learn a [inaudible 00:20:41] COBOL and I'm like, "Yeah, 30 years ago. I don't think about today." J.T. Grimes: The jobs were out there, the need is out there because ... and it's not just maintenance, some companies are still doing new development. Mostly it's maintenance but- Matt Stauffer: But we're not talking maintenance at the level of like, "Oh just fix this thing a little bit until we replace it." We're talking about long term maintenance as long as they can keep running on the system kind of maintenance. J.T. Grimes: Well, one of the really big differences about being an enterprise and I'm making air quote when I see that, developer as opposed to somebody who's working for a startup or an agency is that your time horizons are drastically different. We are not looking for something that will keep us going until we get profitable. We have been profitable for 150 years off and on. Matt Stauffer: Geez. J.T. Grimes: The other thing when we talk about rewriting the system is, "Okay, this can be a five to 10-year process. What technology stack would you want to build on that will still be useful, available, not archaic in 10 years?" Five years ago, I would have said, Java, thank goodness we didn't do that but with things changing as quickly as they are it makes it really hard to plan for the long term and much easier to stand pat. Matt Stauffer: It's really interesting. One of the things that we've talked about often and like the Laravel Podcast is that, there's often conflicts between the Laravel world and various people who have a very, very distinctly different mindset, just within the PHP community. I think one of the helpful things that we came to over time is, you know what we're noticing that the differences often are less about people who have different opinions about the way the world should work, because they are different people and it's more because they're in different contexts. I can look at event sourcing for a start-up and you can look at event sourcing for a financial institution, and we can come to a different conclusion about whether or not event sourcing is a wise decision for the products we're working on. If we don't recognize it, it's because we're in a different context we could say, "Well, you like it and it's wasting time," and well you don't like it because you know it's like, "Oh no we just have different needs." Again, in that those conversations first of all it's helpful to recognize that but second of all, we're usually still only talking about web applications built by PHP developers in frameworks written in the last five years. This is so many steps beyond that, that it's just fascinating to me how far out it is. Before I step to my next thing you watch all this happen on Twitter. You are involved in your lobbying, I mean you in yes are two of the funniest people I've ever met in my entire life especially the way you guys interact on Twitter. Do you look at the online conversations of the Laravel crew? Do you look at the Laravel podcast? Do you look at stuff that happens? Do you have anything to share with us? Did you have any outside perspective where we say, "You know what, don't worry about this or focus more on this, or man you all could learn this," or anything like that. J.T. Grimes: I see a lot of people who I think are talking past each other because of what you just said the different contexts. If you're doing Greenfield totally new development, you're going to have a very different set of goals than somebody who's got a system that's been in production for its PHP, so a couple of years, which in PHP sounds like a long time. You're looking at different things. You have a really different experience in terms of maintenance. A question I've taken asking in interviews is, what's the oldest code base you've worked on? What's the longest you've had to maintain a section of code? If you can find somebody who's got a couple of years in, grab them they actually have experience doing maintenance. The other thing is, I am older than a lot of the Laravel community, I have been in the same job for 20 years. My perceptions of other people are going to be colored by that, but it looks to me like the kids today and I take credit for bringing the phrase, "Get off my lawn at Laravel community," but you kids today switch jobs every 18 months, every two years. There isn't that I've been working on the same code base for a long enough to have really absorbed it and taken it all in, and the ownership not just the ownership the experience with it that you get after working at the same place in the same code for a long time is very different from what you get when you're changing often. Matt Stauffer: That's really, really interesting and if I were someone who was a mid-level developer and I maybe been in my job for the last 18 months, do you have one piece of advice just in this little kind of concept that you're talking about in terms of experience with the code base. Is there one good way I could act on what you just shared with me? J.T. Grimes: It's really hard for me to give career advice to anyone else. Matt Stauffer: Fair, that's fair. J.T. Grimes: It's been a long time since I looked for a job, I only know what I'm looking for not what other hiring managers are looking for. Matt Stauffer: Well, let's say maybe not even about switching jobs, would you say ... because one of the things that I took away from what you just said was, maybe consider sticking around a little longer but I don't know if you're actually saying that. Are you? J.T. Grimes: I don't know if I'm saying that either. Matt Stauffer: Okay. J.T. Grimes: For me, a lot of the job satisfaction and I think a lot of the skill that I bring is having really deep business knowledge, knowing all of the contacts. I have worked in insurance longer than I've been a programmer. I know this stuff often better than the users who are giving specs to us. Having that really good context for everything, it sort of it lets me know I'm building the thing that user needs not with the thing the user asked for. I wonder how much people get of that when they're changing jobs often. I think that there is a different kind of job satisfaction you can get from staying with a project for a long time. Matt Stauffer: That's really, really cool. That's really helpful to hear. I've found that I started seeing this a lot in the podcast, but I could talk about this for an hour but let's move on to something else. I was wrong about COBOL, you're not writing COBOL but that was fascinating where we just went down. When did you start doing web based stuff and what does a web based applications look like? Is it facing the customers of the insurance agency and giving them access to data that they previously would have called in for? What kind of stuff do you build there? J.T. Grimes: There's both internal applications and external phasing ones, and what we do is we access either the database or we actually run COBOL programs calling them from PHP. I know I'm not the only person doing this because somebody else built tools to do it, but it feels like that's an easiest thing there is out there. It's one of those things where there are, there's just a very small community of people who you can ask questions of and who know about this stuff. On the one hand, when you run into trouble you'd know who the people are to talk to. On the other hand, when you run into trouble you may literally be the first person to have this. Matt Stauffer: You're not going to stack overflow. How do you even know the folks to talk to about this? J.T. Grimes: I met one of them at Gen Con while he was presenting on the IBM and I stuff, and the single thing, probably the most valuable thing I've ever gotten out of the conference was having breakfast with this guy. I've still got three pages of note from that. Alan [Shaiden 00:29:15] is his name and if anyone else is doing Laravel on the IBM I series, A) hit me up but B) hit up Alan for anything about the I series. Matt Stauffer: All right, so you're not just doing web applications, you're actually using Laravel, so how on earth when you're in this kind of enterprise, a kind of old school system, how you just stumble across Laravel and what attracted you to it versus the other options available to you? J.T. Grimes: I had used CodeIgniter before, and CodeIgniter, the single best thing about it was that if you had a question you could find an answer, either in the docs or in the forums, but somebody knew what needed doing if you had a problem. I also used once or twice a framework called Qcodo, which has since died a very quiet, but the guy who wrote it was a Delphi developer before he got into PHP. The way everything was set up was very familiar to me. You built your web forums in a very sort of Microsoft a Visual Studio kind of way where you said, "Okay, put in a select box here and put a label on it here." It was familiar to me but it was also not the documentation wasn't great and development had clearly slowed down on it by the time I needed something for the last project. I was fiddling with CodeIgniter and it didn't feel good anymore and the way it had when I started with it. I started browsing around what other frameworks are out there, oh this guy is trying this new thing called Laravel and it's on version three. It stuck around for at least three months give it a try. It took a surprisingly long time for Laravel to click for me because I was so used to other frameworks and other ways of doing things, but once it did I found it was just easy to get the stuff that I needed done. Aside from reading the database on Db2 on the IBM mainframe. Even that we've got like now we're actually using Laravel's query builder with a couple of little custom things thrown in to access the database. Matt Stauffer: Wait a minute. Is it the query builder and it's heading like the actual database connection system, or are you using something, are you like layering the query builder on top of a non-database seeking system? How does that actually work? J.T. Grimes: Laravel's query builder wants to connect through PDO and while in theory, you can use PDO to talk to a Db2 system. I've never gotten that to work. Matt Stauffer: Got it. J.T. Grimes: But PHP has built in, thanks to Zend and IBM in their thing, and Db2 function is the same as the old MySQL functions that nobody should be using anymore. What I did was I made basically a connection class that simulated being PDO but was actually calling all the Db2 functions underneath. Matt Stauffer: That's fascinating. J.T. Grimes: You end up being able to use Laravel's query builder, you can use eloquent in theory I haven't actually describe that. Matt Stauffer: Those are my next questions. J.T. Grimes: But there's no reason it couldn't. The only reason I don't use eloquent on the mainframe is that the tool we used to generate COBOL has some very interesting opinions and conventions around it, and none of the file names or table names are useful or readable so they all have to be translated to something else anyhow. Matt Stauffer: Got it, yeah, so at that point trying to force kind of eloquent has opinions and that tool has opinions and reconcile their opinions just doesn't really seem worth it when you could just use that query builder. J.T. Grimes: Exactly. Matt Stauffer: That's cool. You're building applications, so your day-to-day transitioning between a 30-year stable system, on a mainframe to one of the most modern PHP frameworks that there is with just testing and TDD and migrations and sitting at stuff like that, do you feel the burden of a lot of contact switching, or is it all connect together in your brain? J.T. Grimes: Most of it connects together in my brain. The places where I run into problems are where I just don't have the tooling that I want. I don't have access to multiple IBM I series. I can't just spin up a new database, spin up a new instance. I wanted to test my interaction with a program, I need to be very careful to make sure that I am not hitting production data and it's with my setup way easier than it should be. I spend way too much of my time building safeguards for no, no, you don't mean that. Matt Stauffer: That's interesting because we talk often about how a lot of things that have to do with type hinting and a lot of these other things are, well I don't trust the other developers. The stranglehold that you're not allowing developers to do things because you don't trust them. It's interesting because what you're talking about is really well I don't trust myself to not accidentally touch something that would basically lose me a lot of other people their jobs if I completely destroyed everything. What sort of things are you finding yourself reaching for for those safeguards? Is it easy to share some of those? J.T. Grimes: I find myself hard coding addresses to our test system it's like, if you want to hit production on this it's not just changing an environment variable, it's not just telling it, "Oh, we're in staging now, go ahead and hit the staging server." Everything is hard coded to the wrong server until it's time to move it to the right one. Matt Stauffer: That's fascinating. It makes sense, totally though. Until you know the thing is not going to break things, make it like you have to be very explicit and intentional to actually even touch that thing that you don't want to broke in. J.T. Grimes: Yeah, we have a lock on the door to the server room for a reason. This is my server room lock. We have a server room, we have physical hardware it's very exciting. Matt Stauffer: In terms of testing, do you do much of your Laravel code? And if you do, what is it look like to simulate the data that's coming back? Or are you using real data from the staging server? How does that kind of work in your testing? J.T. Grimes: I dreamt of my test and bandwagon a couple of years ago. It has not been that long, it's been longer than for some people. Everybody kind of has this one moment where it clicks in for them. For me, there's a guy named and I'm going to scrape his name, Juan Trimenio, and he wrote a couple of articles on using PHP unit, many got bored and started going off and doing puppet things. Oh that's really cool too, but these three or four articles he wrote are what absolutely clicked for me. Thank you if you're listening. It was what got me to slowly start writing more tests. Once I did that, I found that I was much more confident pushing new code and making new changes because I could tell if I'd broken something. If I broke something and I didn't know then I just wrote a test for it, and now the next time I know. The value became clear. As soon as I thought I was ready to put the code in production and then said, "Oh, I just need to change one little thing and everything blew up." Oh thank goodness, I have these tests. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, the first time a test catches you and you're not, you haven't yet internalized the value that is coming from it. It's like a, I don't know it's like a breath. I don't even know it, it's not a breath of fresh air. It's this amazing moment though. J.T. Grimes: It's magic. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, it's exactly what it feels like you're like, I never had this, this, the responsibility for this thing that breaking always lived in my brain and my shoulders and my stress, and all of a sudden this just magical little creature just came and told me with a little red axe, you just screwed it up. It's really an amazing experience. J.T. Grimes: Finding out that I broke stuff before it hit production was the best thing ever. Matt Stauffer: That's cool. I like that. Okay, so once again, I'm going to talk to you about this for another hour. I'm going to move on. I've got a couple random questions we could talk a little bit more about code and architecture infrastructure, but I want to make sure that we have time to talk about J.T. stuff. You are a shaver of an ungulates. I assume that that is somehow refers to dogs but I intentionally didn't Google it beforehand. What is an ungulate? How do you see it? J.T. Grimes: Ungulates are four legged hoofed mammals. It's a reference to shaving yaks. Matt Stauffer: Oh, I was going to say hoofed. No, okay, your yak shaver. That was an incredibly indirect developer joke way to go. All right, yak shaving, got it. Yak shaving and bikeshedding. Do you bike? J.T. Grimes: I do not. I feel so alone. Matt Stauffer: Because you live in the Bay Area and you don't bike at all? J.T. Grimes: Well I'm part of the PHP community, we don't bike at all. Matt Stauffer: Are you Oakland for life? J.T. Grimes: I am a third generation Oaklander. Matt Stauffer: Wow, that's amazing. I know very little bit about Oakland. Basically my knowledge is I, what was that show that was sent, I think it was sent in Oak, wasn't it? J.T. Grimes: Was it [Shansvanerky 00:39:08]? Was it here? Matt Stauffer: No. Anyway, wherever it was, it was sent some beautiful Bay Area that seemed very rustic but honestly it was probably a multimillion dollar house. I visited Oakland a tiny little bit and I understand the concept of it being kind of like the less quickly gentrifying kind of across the bay cousin of San Francisco. What do you love and hate most about Oakland? J.T. Grimes: What I hate most is that, it's gentrifying much more quickly here. You don't run into that many people from Oakland who are in Oakland, who are from Oakland. Matt Stauffer: Really? That quickly. J.T. Grimes: Yeah. The houses here, the prices have shot from reasonable to insane. There's a lot for sale in my neighborhood and it's people have lived in the neighborhood for a long time who just can't afford not to sell because it's so much money. Matt Stauffer: Right, it's not even the property taxes, it's just when you look at your finances and selling your house could basically pay off your debt or whatever else, you can afford to stay there anymore. J.T. Grimes: Well, I've told my boss a couple of times and they really don't like hearing it. I could sell my house and retire. I couldn't move to Reno and find a crummy little apartment for 400 bucks a month and live up. Matt Stauffer: Never work a day to get a new life. J.T. Grimes: Yeah. Matt Stauffer: Wow. Go ahead. J.T. Grimes: To me that's just insane. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, it makes sense. We all understand why it's gentrifying it's across the way from San Francisco, you got the gentrifying wedge of hipsters and artists who wanted to come in to the rundown place or whatever. Additionally, it's relatively close access and the more it gentrifies the more people feel comfortable stepping in there. Oakland has more going for just than being across the way from San Francisco. What do you love the most about Oakland? J.T. Grimes: It's home. The weather is great. The people are neat. I was going off on a rant and I can do a half hour on how great the Bay Area is. Any time you need that. One thing is that, it's a port city, and port city have so much more interaction with the rest of the world and have since they were founded. In the 1850s, there were days when San Francisco had more Russian fur traders than actual San Franciscans because folks would hit the port and go to town. You end up with communities that are really tolerant of differences who are just used to, you're not like me but that's fine. That is just a wonderful thing if you are like me. Matt Stauffer: Let's talk about like you. If someone had never met you before how would you describe yourself? I know this is something I usually start off with, but what are you about? J.T. Grimes: I'm smart and I'm funny and I like cute things. Matt Stauffer: I can attest to all these things having known you for so many years. Why are you so funny? Do you ever like do comedy or that is your family really funny or does that come from any source other than just your personality? J.T. Grimes: Oh no, it's deep internalized pain. Matt Stauffer: Fair. I believe it. J.T. Grimes: You'll never find anyone who's funny who is not just suffering inside. Matt Stauffer: That was one of the most truest ones, that is so incredibly true. Is that something you've just discovered, or is that something people talk about that? Is that a commonly known thing? J.T. Grimes: I think it's a commonly known thing if you pay attention to it. Matt Stauffer: Got it. J.T. Grimes: Most comics are fairly upfront about that this doesn't come from a place of knock knock joke. Knock knock jokes are just fun. You can't make a living with those, you can't make a living exposing yourself to people with your pain, giving them something that they can relate to from their own lives because nobody's life is easy. It would be great if they were, but everybody's got something. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, that was really deep. J.T. Grimes: I'm sorry, it won't happen again. Matt Stauffer: Thanks for assuring that. J.T. Grimes: No, no, we'll talk about puppies. Matt Stauffer: That's actually next on my list. Tell me about puppies. Tell me about your puppies. Tell me about puppies. J.T. Grimes: Puppies are awesome, puppies are everything that is good in the world. As a teenager, I decided that we could have world peace if we could just make leaders of nations negotiate treaties in a room full of Labrador puppies, and I still believe this is true. Matt Stauffer: I love it. J.T. Grimes: It's really ... Matt Stauffer: Go ahead. J.T. Grimes: It's really hard to plant bomb someone or to screw them in a trade deal when there's a cute little fluffy Labrador trying to nibble on your ear. It's just not going to happen. Matt Stauffer: All right. How many dogs do you have? J.T. Grimes: I just have one. Matt Stauffer: Oh, just one. I figured there's like five run around all a time. J.T. Grimes: Nope, he's a grumpy old man who will not share. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, he would not put up with anybody else infringing his territory. J.T. Grimes: No. Matt Stauffer: That's awesome. We have a companywide, it's not quite stand up because it's 33 minutes long, but every Monday I really gets there and then talks about what you do this weekend and what are you up to. We found over time that eventually there was more cats and also dogs but cats than non-cats there around the way. It ended up being renamed to cat meet up. There's not always a lot of cats up on it but new people joining the company they go, "What? Why is it cat meet up?" Just enjoy the weird, enjoy the fluffy. We just had an interview with someone about a week ago and she's super apologetic, she's like, "I'm so sorry my cat may end up walking directly in front of the camera as we're talking, which it eventually did." I was like, "No, it just means you're going to fit right in around here." J.T. Grimes: Exactly. We asked as part of the interview process what pet do you have, and if you say none, I mean that's not good for getting a callback. Matt Stauffer: That's awesome, so let's talk about interview process. What is your favorite interview question you ask people? J.T. Grimes: What one thing do you absolutely hate about PHP, Laravel, COBOL? Matt Stauffer: [crosstalk 00:45:24]. J.T. Grimes: Yeah. Matt Stauffer: I love that question. It's one of my favorite questions because everyone could talk about the good things. It's when you actually have had real life experience with it, that you can start talking about the things that really bother you. J.T. Grimes: Yeah, that gives you a really good idea of how deep their knowledge is. If they were interviewing for PHP job and they've never really written production code, there are things that they just haven't been burned by it, and they will. If your biggest hang up about PHP is variable order or function naming I'm with you that that's annoying, but that's the first year complain. Matt Stauffer: Totally true. I totally believe you. Are there any signs on a tech interview that are an instant no, instant start, no way, not going to happen. I mean, I'm sure there are some personally if somebody saying some horribly racist things or whatever. Are there any kind of coding or communication style things anything like that, where you just go, when do you see that, that's a definite no. J.T. Grimes: I have a very direct communication style, we try to think will much pressure anyone who follows me on Twitter. I think the only thing that would surprise them is that I've gone this long without coercion. Matt Stauffer: I'm pretty impressed. J.T. Grimes: Sometimes I spend time around kids, I actually can't turn it off. I really value that kind of direct communication style and if I feel like I'm not getting that back, if I feel like someone is sort of coming at things in a roundabout way. I might take it as a lack of confidence in an interview and I might try and draw them out and see if I can get them to be more direct. If it seems like this is really their communication style all the time, I know that, that really, really hard for me to work with. Matt Stauffer: Are you all remote or are you in-person? J.T. Grimes: We are in-person. Matt Stauffer: Okay. I've noticed that indirect communication is even harder when you're remote, but I mean in general just being able to communicate in a certain way is totally necessary for every environment, so I hear you on that for sure. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given? J.T. Grimes: If you go on a date with someone and they're a bad kisser end it then, because they're not going to get better at anything else. Matt Stauffer: All right. J.T. Grimes: And you can cut that too if you need to. Matt Stauffer: Oh, are you kidding meant? See, Laravel Podcast season three is about the people not the code, so whatever else you got just keep a calm. What's your favorite beverage to drink? J.T. Grimes: Diet 7up, I like my water sweet and sparkly. Matt Stauffer: Wait a minute, diet 7up, not seven ... Is it diet because of your concern about sugar intake or do you prefer the taste or? J.T. Grimes: It started as sugar intake with as much sodas I drank. If it was sugared I could not fit out in my house, but I've gotten so used to the diet soda taste that now when I do drink a real soda it just taste too sweet and weird, and why is my tongue [crosstalk 00:48:29]. Oh it's supposed to, oh dear. Matt Stauffer: Right, got it. Okay, so we're running short on time, and I feel like there's a whole personality person of J.T., J.T. what do you do in your free time? J.T. Grimes: Not as much as I would like, so this is going to set you up for the next podcast with me. Matt Stauffer: Brilliant. J.T. Grimes: I am suffering from burnout really bad right now, I suffer from depression. It can be really hard to just get off the couch during my downtime, when I can exercise, walk the dog, just hang out outside get some sun, read. Right now, not enough in my free time. Matt Stauffer: I hope that I'm not centering myself by saying this, but burnout depression and anxiety are all part of my story as well. Thank you for sharing it because I know that it's not always easy to share. Having kind of been in that place, especially is burnout, I assume that you mean kind of work related burnout? J.T. Grimes: Yeah. Matt Stauffer: One of the things that I've noticed often is that sleep, rest, being outdoors, people, animals, these kind of foundational things are often like a really big part of the things that help people like to start to kind of breathe again. Have you found that there's things outside of those that are also really helpful, or is it really just like centreing in on the simplest beautifulest things and just kind of really staying in those same places is what's most helpful? J.T. Grimes: I had a shrink tell me once that there are three things that are protective against depression, and I have found that there are the three things that help the most. Family and connectedness, family, friends, people, pleasure doing things that you actually enjoy and feelings of accomplishment. That one doesn't seem to be on most people's list, but when you're depressed and it feels like nothing goes right, just small little steps forward just being able to look at something and go, "Hey, I did that. I got the dishes put away. Yes! Yay me!" It is something you can build on and start working with. Matt Stauffer: I know and I don't want to read into your story mind, but I want to see if this goes anywhere for you. For me, one of the hardest parts about chemical depression and depression versus just being sad is that, it's not that there's a thing that happens and you go, "Oh, I'm sad about that thing." People often hear depression, they think sadness about bad things, but it's a lot more kind of ... it's more complicated, it's less directly tied to circumstances and events, and it is a lot harder to reconcile or rectify than just being saddest. Is that an experience you have, and if so, is there anything that you feel like people should understand about that circumstance or that experience or people who are suffering from that, that you want people to be more aware of? J.T. Grimes: I think that depression is a really unfortunate name for this problem. I feel like it is an energy disorder, like when I am depressed for me it comes out as just having almost no energy to do anything. Matt Stauffer: Yeah for sure. J.T. Grimes: The other thing is for me depression doesn't take the form particularly of sadness, so much as kind of a flattening of mood. I'm not sad but it's really hard for me to get happy. I think that I know everyone experiences depression differently if people listening are going, "Well, that's not what it is at all." You're right your thing is your thing, and your thing is real, but I also feel like those are pretty common ways to experience depression. If you're dealing with someone who struggles with depression trying to cure them up and make them not sad does not address the, they have no energy or their mood is flat. Matt Stauffer: Acknowledging that everyone's experience of depression is different, what does it look like for someone to be a good friend to J.T. when she's experiencing these things? J.T. Grimes: For me, the biggest thing is understanding and helping me to manage my energy level. I will try and schedule things early in the week because I know that I recharged over the weekend and then as the week goes on my energy level drops and drops and drops and drops. If you invite me to something on a Friday or a Saturday there's no change I'm going to do it. I might agree to do it, there's no chance it's going to happen. First, I need you to not hold against me that I am bailing out because I can't do it, but I need you to understand what I can and can't do and not push too hard for the things I can't do. Sometimes push a little bit for the things that maybe I can. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, which is sounds like the foundational core of this, it is appreciating you not just for the presence you bring or that comedy you bring to a situation but for the person you are. Also, knowing you deeply and well enough to know those, I don't want to say idiosyncrasies but the ways that you uniquely experience, the difficulties in the places you should and should not be put. Everyone just like said, everyone has an experience of the same which means the whole Monday versus Friday thing is probably not the case for somebody else. Someone can't just say, "Well, I heard this on a podcast once and so therefore my sister depression or my brother depression something like that, I'm not going to treat him this way," like no you know the person deeply and you know in their words and their experiences what that looks like. I love you saying that, but now that brings my next question that requires you to have a level of self-awareness and willingness to describe it. First of all to the friends around you, but right now tens of thousands of people. What is it look like to get to the place where you're comfortable, you're self-aware enough and you're comfortable with sharing it? J.T. Grimes: Well, first I didn't know tens of thousands of people were going to be listening, so now just if you could raise everything that would be great. Matt Stauffer: Just raise everything, yeah. J.T. Grimes: For me, I don't want to go off on too big a tangent here but we're going to go off on a bit of one. Matt Stauffer: Let's do it. J.T. Grimes: I am gay. I prefer that term to lesbian because lesbian sounds like a diagnosis and gay sounds fun. Matt Stauffer: I love it. J.T. Grimes: But I came out in the Bay Area in the early '90s and had a really easy time of it relatively speaking. I didn't lose family, I didn't lose friends, I didn't lose my job. Everybody was either okay with it or not great with it but not going to say anything, which in the early '90s- Matt Stauffer: That's a win. J.T. Grimes:... was an amazing. The reason I was able to do that is because other people had done the hard work first, other people had come out and had lost their jobs, had lost their families. By the time, I came along everybody I knew everybody living in the Bay Area already knew gay people, I was not some demon freak evil sent from ... It was just another gay person. For me knowing that knowing other people coming out and talking about their experience made it easier for me, makes me feel not necessarily obliged, but it lets me know the value of talking about it when we come to my depression. I can do the heavy lifting for someone else. I can be out about these are the things I struggle with, this is how I deal with it. Morley Safer, I think it was Morley Safer, man I'm old, was one of the hosts on 60 Minutes, and I remember him saying you know essentially coming out and saying he was on [talk show 00:56:51] and being at home watching it go and, "Hey, that's the same thing I'm on. I could be on 60 minute." Being able to see other people who share the same experience as you and seeing that it is not necessarily that debilitating, seeing that there's hope, that there is hope is the biggest thing. It's huge. Matt Stauffer: Well, for those listening you could be a guest or a host on Laravel Podcast with depression. It is possible. Thanks J.T. it's really helpful to hear that, and so I'm going to dig a little further in this again with those spaces where you just, you got to say for it. The PHP community if you compare it against for example the Ruby community, or the Javascript through CSS communities, it's a little bit more monocultural. It's a little bit more old school. Especially, like the SaaS community and the Ruby communities are extremely intentionally and thoughtfully and loudly progressive. I wouldn't use those terms to describe the PHP community, and not to say that we're in a repressive horrible place. Do you have any reflections about, or thoughts about, or experiences you want to share, or warnings for encouragements for the PHP community in particular and also Laravel about ways that ... I don't want to prescribe anything else. Do you have anything to share or say? J.T. Grimes: I come from a place of privilege not just as a white person but as a person who owns my own home and has valuable skills that people will pay for. It puts me in a really good place to tell not just my employers but really anyone else, where they can shove anything that they have about me. That's really freeing and it makes me not care if the PHP community is less, is more conservative maybe than I might like. Then it would be if I ran the world. If I ran the world we would all be happy little liberals running around but it's not my world, very sad. I come from a place where if somebody doesn't agree with me, if somebody doesn't like me, if somebody's opinions are different from mine I'm happy to talk to them for a while, but I don't care. I don't care that you don't agree, I don't care that you don't like me. I have a dog. My dog likes me. Matt Stauffer: Your dog loves you, [crosstalk 00:59:32]. J.T. Grimes: My dog does love me. Matt Stauffer: Cool, now that makes sense. J.T. Grimes: I can't change the community except by being a part of it and being me publicly, reasonably publicly. I can tell you that there are a gay Laravel developers I know this because I am one. I can tell you that there are women Laravel developers. I know this because I am one. I can't speak to things that I'm not, but I would tell people that there are enough of us who will welcome you whatever you bring. Matt Stauffer: I love that and when I push you about that is, because I know you well enough to know that when you say whatever you bring you don't mean whatever non-white, non-male, non-liberal thing you bring. You mean whatever you bring and I think that one of the things I love about that is, what I want to hear from people is, you can be just as conservative as you want as long as you're welcoming people. You can just be as liberal as you want just as long as you're welcoming people. I don't want to go too far down this road, but one of the things that I've noticed is that some communities go, I think so far in the intentionally progressive direction that they're unwelcoming to conservatives. That's a frustrating thing as well because if we're in a place where someone who may have a different viewpoint is not welcome, who's not mistreating people. They're not treating people poorly because their viewpoint they're just having different viewpoint, then it doesn't matter which direction the difference is coming from, you're still making people not welcome. That statement you said at the end there whatever you have to bring, whoever you are, you're welcome here. I think that that is a really ... I mean I know I'm making a small thing sound like a big thing, but in some ways it is a big thing. That's a beautiful message. All right. We are pretty late on the call. I'm trying to look at a couple questions that I cued up. Let me see if I got anything else. Is there anything you want to talk about? Anything you wish we had covered? Anything you want to share? Anything you want to plug? J.T. Grimes: Hyenas are really cool and I can do 20 minutes on how awesome hyenas are. Matt Stauffer: I feel like you need a podcast. J.T. Grimes: Possibly. Matt Stauffer: I would listen to it. Can you give me like that 30 second version of why hyenas are really cool. J.T. Grimes: Hyenas are a matriarchy, they are a pack hunter. Most of the time in the nature specials where you see the lion sitting with the kill and the hyenas skulking around. The hyenas killed it and the lion has bullied them away and taken their food. Hyenas poop white because they crunch up the bones of their prey. Matt Stauffer: And get all the them in and out. J.T. Grimes: Yeah, and as those bones come out you get white poo. Matt Stauffer: Now, is that exciting because they're so smart that they're getting them mirror out, or is it literally just because they are white poo? Is that mean like the excitement there? J.T. Grimes: It's because they can crunch up the bones- Matt Stauffer: That's pretty bold. J.T. Grimes:... of their prey. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, that's true. My entire exposure to hyenas has been Lion King. I got to be honest. J.T. Grimes: You have two young kids so you know Lion King backwards and forwards and upside down. Matt Stauffer: The funny thing there is actually my kids are, my daughters too young for that stuff. My son is extremely emotionally sensitive and so movies where bad things happen he really doesn't like. I mean imagine Disney movies, what Disney movie doesn't start out with some family member dying, so Lion King, it took us really long. He still hasn't seen what's the one of the big old giant inflated white guy that I want to call them Big ... J.T. Grimes: Big something- Matt Stauffer: Yeah, Big Hero 6. J.T. Grimes:... Big Hero 6. Matt Stauffer: It's a brilliant movie but I can't see it because my son see it yet because somebody dies at the beginning. So Lion King he's seen all of once, but now that he's seen it which was very recently. Now, you're right I will hear it 10,000 times. Anyway J.T., I keep saying this to people I could talk for hours. You should talk for hours you should get that podcast. I will listen to it. I'll plug it to everybody, but until then. Thank you so much. People want to follow you on Twitter it's jt_grimes. J.T. Grimes. Just look for Cal everything and the little cartoon character. It has been an absolute pleasure talking to you and I thank you so much for your time. J.T. Grimes: Thank you, Matt. It's been a pleasure.

For our September Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Bob Mankoff, the former cartoon editor of The New Yorker and the current humor and cartoon editor of Esquire. He will speak about the intersection of the illness experience and humor and the ways each of these life-changing forces can transform the experience of health and healthcare. Bob Mankoff will be introduced by Ben Schwartz, MD, a . . Mfaculty member at Columbia University Medical Center who works with both the Departments of Surgery and Medicine. Bob Mankoff has had an accomplished career in the funny business. In 2015, he was profiled in a “60 Minutes,” in which Morley Safer dubbed him the “Cartoon Doctor.” In 2013, he gave a TED talk, entitled “Anatomy of a New Yorker cartoon.” He edited national 2006 bestseller The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker, which featured all 68,647 cartoons published in The New Yorker since its debut in 1925. He describes this as the “golden age of humor,” where humor helped build personal connections in business and personal relationships. An accomplished cartoonist, Mankoff has edited dozens of cartoon books and published four of his own. Over 950 of his cartoons have been published in The New Yorker over the past 20 years, including the best-selling New Yorker cartoon of all time (the harried businessman at his desk with a phone to his ear, reviewing his calendar and saying: “No, Thursday’s out, how about never. Is never good for you?”) He is the author of The Naked Cartoonist, a book published in 2003 on the creative process behind developing magazine-style cartoons. His most recent book is the memoir How About Never–Is Never Good For You?: My Life in Cartoons (Henry Holt, 2015) Mankoff, who graduated from Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences in 1966, entered the doctoral program at City University of New York to pursue a degree in experimental psychology. At age 30, just short of completing his dissertation, he decided to use his know-how in a new way: as a cartoonist. In 1977, Mankoff spent four months creating hundreds of original cartoons; it took more than a year to break into The New Yorker–and within three years became a regular contributor. On April 30, 2017, Mankoff retired from The New Yorker and two days later un-retired himself to become humor and cartoon editor of Esquire. Benjamin Schwartz, BA, MD, Columbia University, who will introduce Bob Mankoff, is a faculty member at Columbia University Medical Center, working with both the Departments of Surgery and Medicine. His work focuses on using visual storytelling techniques and the principles of Narrative Medicine to train expressive and empathetic physicians. He also focuses on developing engaging educational content for the web and social media to improve health literacy amongst the general population. Dr. Schwartz is also a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker, where he sneaks his daughter’s name into each of his cartoons.

On this episode of #SoLA, Camille and Charlie talk with Los Angeles street artist Morley about the difference in Beverly Hills and Compton, being Clark Kent but never Superman, junkie-years Robert Downey, Jr., Warren Beatty, Casey Affleck, Morley Safer and other street artists including Shepard Fairey, Banksy and Poster Boy. Movies discussed include The Parallax View, Imagine, A Hard Day’s Night, Back to the Future, Pulp Fiction, and Elvis on Tour (look out for those Scorsese montages!). Dungeons & Dragons, The Artist’s Way, Ernest Hemingway’s six-word-story, Bobbie Lee Mason’s biography of Elvis Presley, and, of course, Me and Mother Makes Three all came up. Velvet Underground, Dead Boys, The Beatles, and the musical artist Chaz, who Charlie promises will be a recurring character, all made appearances. We talked about Domino’s Pizza for hopefully the last time, Papa John’s, Cafe 101, Cafe 50’s and the dreaded 110 freeway. Thanks again to the folks at Silver Lake Wine for the Pool Party rosé!

[yendifplayer type=audio mp3=http://s2.radioboss.fm:8424/stream] Lawrence W. Schonbrun is the executive director of Class Action Watch, a nonprofit organization and is a s a nationally recognized authority on the issue of the reasonableness of attorneys' fee awards in class actions. He has appeared on behalf of unnamed class members in approximately 150 class actions throughout the United States. A New York City native now living in Northern California, he received his undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont in 1966 and his law degree from Boston College Law School in 1969. Mr. Schonbrun has been featured on John Stossel's ABC special, "The Trouble With Lawyers," as well as Morley Safer's 60 Minutes report, "The Disaster That Wasn't." He has also testified before the United States Congress on the issue of attorney contingency fees and before the California Senate Judiciary Committee on class action reform legislation. Lawrence W. Schonbrun's work in the field of class actions has been chronicled in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, The Washington Post, Barron's, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg Business News Service, and American Thinker. Mr. Schonbrun also hosts the popular weekly radio show "Lies, Lawyers & Liberalism with Larry the Lawyer" every Saturday at 5:30 PM on San Francisco's KNEW 910AM. Lawrence and I will discuss the threat posed by an increasingly unaccountable judiciary that is undermining the rule of law across our nation. The California Supreme Court—a national trendsetter—has granted review to the Hernandez v. Restoration Hardware, Inc. (RHI) case. Lawrence Schonbrun, who is an attorney in the case, contends that it is a court of appeal opinion so full of errors, both factual and legal, as to make one wonder if our legal system is losing its commitment to the rule of law itself. If rulings like this can be issued by the second-highest court in California—a highly influential legal arena—then we could be witnessing a phenomenon that will soon sweep the nation. Don't miss this conversation -- the judiciary in America has been loaded with "Living Constitution" adherents and we're reaping the consequences. ********************** In the second 1/2 hour my guest will be Scott Jones. N. Scott Jones brings 25 years of experience in business, politics and the media to his role as host of Pissed Off, Politically Speaking. In politics, Scott has served three US presidents and two Texas governors as a key volunteer, staff and/or government appointee, including two terms as Chairman of the Texas Department of Transportation – MVB under Governors W.P. Clements and George W. Bush. He has served as communications and campaign strategist for numerous local, state and national candidates for public office. In addition to being founder and host of Pissed Off, Politically Speaking, Scott was a co-host of the long-running Gang of 405 on The 405 Radio from Los Angeles. Scott got his start on radio as a political analyst on The Gary Snyder Show on WBAT 1400 in Northern Indiana. In other media, Scott is an accomplished editorial columnist, and has served as a contributor to Dallas Morning News, Boston Herald and Irving Daily News. During the 2012 presidential election, Scott was a recurring contributing columnist for the Daily Caller. He spent five years as Editor of a national publication , The Insider, directed at PBS stations in the US for BBC Worldwide Americas. In business, Scott served in executive management for three of the nation's leading public relations firms, before forming his own boutique agency. He has served nearly two dozen FORTUNE 500 CEOs directly involving some the most high profile public/crisis communications issues of the time. He is a national “Who's Who” in business and communications, and his work has been published extensively, including the Seton Hall Law Review. Scott is a passionate defender of our country, liberties and rule of law. He is dedicated to public service and mentoring our youth as the future of our nation. Listen in as Scott and I discuss the shooting of Steve Scalise and other Republican congressmen, North Korea and the imprisonment, probable torture, and death of Otto Warmbier, and how The Left took a vitriol pause of about two minutes before starting up the hate-fest. Follow Scott Jones on Twitter at @POPSradio, and me at @tamij AND tweet your questions/comments during the show using hashtag #tjrs. *Sponsored by Rentacomputer, your premier source for Sound System rentals , by ROBAR® Guns, a True Custom firearms and firearms finishing shop located in Phoenix, AZ, and found online at RobarGuns.com, and by Dispatches, your site for the BEST conservative resources to fight and win the information war.

Executive Producer & Chairman of CBS News. A rare insider's conversation with this multiple Emmy & Peabody Award winner who is and has been at the pinnacle of broadcast journalism in America for over 30 years. Jeff's only the 2nd Executive Producer in the 50 year history of "60 Minutes." A fascinating look into what it's like to work with giants, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Charlie Rose & more, Jeff describes the standards that make "60 Minutes" the gold standard, he gives great advice to aspiring journalists, takes us on the ultimate office tour of amazing memorabilia and has a very interesting personal Trump story. Release date - 01- 02-17 #60minutes #jefffager #trump #journalists #newsmakers

Morley Safer, a long-time staple of 60 Minutes, just transitioned to the Next World. A big name former colleague of his was on hand to greet him and offer him a job. We'll tell you who it was and whether or not Safer accepted the offer. Tammy Faye Bakker's new TV court show is finally airing. Fellow former televangelist Jan Crouch plays Tammy's bailiff on the show. How are the two divas getting along so far and why is the studio audience laughing at Jan. You won't believe it when you hear. Veteran actor Ernest Borgnine has a new line of work in the Afterlife. Wait til you hear what he's doing and why the Academy Award winner says he doesn't care if he ever appears on screen again. The co-inventors of the airplane, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright were working as models when we last heard from them. The Next World rumor mill is buzzing that theater are about to abandon that for a surprising new line of work. You'll never guess what it is.

Democratic primary shenanigans. Brief obits worthy of future segments (Muhammad Ali, Mark Lane, Morley Safer). The usual Parallax fare.

Matt pays tribute to Morley Safer, the legendary 60 Minutes correspondent who recently passed away after a legendary career. Safer was many things: a fearless reporter, a poet, a painter, a storyteller - not to mention one of Matt's greatest influences.

Democratic primary shenanigans. Brief obits worthy of future segments (Muhammad Ali, Mark Lane, Morley Safer). The usual Parallax fare.

#22 - Hootie Hoo for 22! Let's talk about sex babie!! Yup, it's true. That happened. And drinking and all around fun and frivolity. Join the boys for a toddy and insight. www.805liveshow.com Spike PWNS on a ‘Name that Tune’ round PornHub Goes Fitness http://www.avclub.com/article/introducing-pornhubs-sex-based-exercise-program-ba-237046 Morley Safer, John Berry, Megadeth Drummer RIP Chum PLEA! Stump Spike

If I truly lacked integrity I could have called this coloring or buying Easter Eggs with Morley Safer. If you have ever dreamed of muckraking and breaking the case with the team like Morley and Borely this may or may not be a story you will sleep to. When my attempts to expose agribusiness go nowhere we head out to buy eggs and solve some brotherly problems. Plus we make a dog named Greyson's easter dreams come true...somewhat. Never fear about this making sense as it will just be remixed in your sleeping subconscious. Subscribe: iTunes | Android Please support our Patreon!!! http://www.patreon.com/sleepwithme Commission a song from Jonathan Mann for any special person or event in your life or as a theme song! http://www.jonathanmann.net Amazon Links http://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/amazon http://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/amazonuk http://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/amazonca   Facebook Community A place to share and be shared with other listeners!!!! Become a fan on Facebook On Twitter @dearestscooter Spotify Playlist Sleep With Me is a bedtime story designed to take your mind off of the racing thoughts that keep you awake at night. As you listen you will find yourself distracted from your worries and drifting off into dreamland..due to the fact the story gets a little bit more boring with each passing minute This podcast is a little weird, a bit silly and a tad offensive so beware. It is very similar to ASMR or guided meditation bedtime story that slowly carries you off to slumber. "Sleep With Me" is a groundbreaking podcast created to help you fall asleep. So get in bed, press play and drift off into dreamland. If you struggle with insomnia or just getting a good night's rest, you've found the podcast for you. Music by Christopher Postill @ Sounds Like An Earful Podcast "A Podcast about collecting stories, tinkering with noises and fumbling with really big questions" Sleep With Me podcast art created by Always Trending Up Scott & Jennifer Sleep With Me is written by Drew Ackerman and "performed" by Dearest Scooter

 On this episode the guys open up with talk about Wayne's son, the TV show Scream and older women. They also run off at the mouth about pooping your pants, more documentaries and movies, scooters with helmets, Adam messes up his own joke and Rum buys things he shouldn't, a kidnapping story, cultures that hate each other, Morley Safer passes away, the pun guy returns with a vengeance, hipsters and hipster terms, people stealing from other cultures, the ball pit, Facebook threads and Full metal Mouse .. and a ton more of total insanity for you to enjoy.. learn, listen and share !! Also check out our friends DisAfterDark here for the best Disney coverage out there. You should also check out our friends at the Couch Pilots Podcast here. Also check out our friends on the FYFcast right HERE Music by Patrick Plata  Podcast produced and mixed by: Wayne   Share us, friend us, follow us and just like us on all social networks you're on!! Check for us on Twitter: @mhogpodcast & Instagram: mhog_podcast Check us out on Stitcher, Facebook & iTunes. Our website is www.mhogpodcast.com Buck Lightning and The Rum Guy's Disney/ Universal Studios podcast, RADIO DCP. Gamers can find Wayne and Justin under the tags "Nutso 187"and "The Rum Guy" on x-box live

The death of Morley Safer was a loss for the CBS and "60 Minutes" family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

9 AM - 1 - Joe goes into vivid detail about his prostate exam yesterday. 2 - Morley Safer brought the horrors of the Vietnam War into our living rooms. 3 - The News with Marshall Phillips. 4 - Jack says electric bikes are a comin'; Final Thoughts.

Morley Safer, Microsoft Nokia Fail, Theranos & More #MorleySafer Youtube.com

EgyptAir flight 804 crashes; Remembering '60 Minutes' Morley Safer and USA TODAY NETWORK investigates Trump's tax trouble.

This week, u/itsyerdad, u/dogboobes, and u/myfreeday discuss r/pointlessstories at 7:00am. Before the gang came to u/itsyerdad's garage studio (that's not sponsored by stamps dot com), he realized that he didn't have any creamer for their coffee, so he looked in his fridge frantically and found Hershey's caramel, so he decided to put caramel in their coffee instead of cream. So the coffee was ok after all. Last of all, Resters in Peacers Morley Safer - the king of non pointless stories. We didn't mean to curse you. Thanks for all those minutes.

FBI agents tell Steve Kroft about their 16-year search and eventual capture of Boston mobster Whitey Bulger, once No. 1 on the Most Wanted list; Morley Safer profiles Wikipedians, those "persnickety," techy types who keep your favorite Internet information website brimming with data; and Neil deGrasse Tyson tells Charlie Rose about his fascination with the universe and his own personal journey to reignite interest in the great beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From smartphones to cars and defense missiles, modern U.S. life depends on rare earth elements but China dominates the industry. Lesley Stahl reports; Anderson Cooper has the story of a woman who was arrested and charged with helping her dying father kill himself; Morley Safer profiles a billionaire investor who's pledging a good part of his fortune to save America's history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FBI Director James Comey speaks with Scott Pelley about our lives online and the need for government electronic surveillance, but only with a court order; Lesley Stahl discovers the shock and anxiety of a cancer diagnosis can be followed by a second jolt: the astronomical price of cancer drugs; As the Italian government struggles to maintain its historic ruins and monuments, Morley Safer discovers it's become fashionable to help, all that and more on "60 Minutes." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scott Pelley explores the effects on children -- Arab and Israeli -- in the age-old conflict that reached another boiling point in last summer's war between Gaza and Israel; Morley Safer profiles philanthropist David Rubenstein who has decided to donate his money to patriotic causes; Steve Kroft picks up the pieces of an unfinished story by his late colleague Bob Simon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson talks about the evolving role of his massive security efforts that encompass several governmental agencies; In a rare interview, prominent Irish Republican politician Gerry Adams addresses allegations that he was complicit in the 1972 murder of Jean McConville; Morley Safer meets up with the Wikipedians, the "persnickety," techy types who keep your favorite Internet information website brimming with data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everyone! Hope you had a great Thanksgiving and avoided getting an elbow in the face while you shopped Friday. We're talking about THE BABADOOK, an excellent psychological horror movie by Jennifer Kent, and UNDER THE SKIN, the Scarlett Johansson alien movie, just because we can. And this week on the show, Evan is Morley Safer and Dave is Ed Bradley. Kris didn't pick a "60 Minutes" correspondent, so let's just say he was Harry Reasoner.

Dwight Slaughter graduated from Verbum Dei High School, a school with one of the top 10 winning basketball teams of all time. While at Verbum Dei High School Dwight was voted number one player in the Country in 1972 by different sports magazines.  He then went on to further his education and play basketball at Cal State Los Angeles from 1972 to 1976—a period that would set a precedent with new laws changing how colleges accept athletes. During his athletic career, Slaughter was interviewed by such greats as Howard Cosell, on his show SportsBeat and in his book, I Never Played the Game; Morley Safer from 60 Minutes; and John Chancellor from World Nightly News. He was voted by ESPN and Sports Illustrated as one of the top 100 basketball players in the State of California.

Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Prevention Magazine May is Mental Health Awareness Month & highlighted throughout America. According to the National Mental Heath Association, an estimated 22.1 percent of Americans ages 18 and older- 1 in 5 adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. Mental health disorders can also affect 1 in 5 young people. This segment is for educational purposes only. Please, if you or a loved one is experiencing depression, there is so much help available so reach out. There are people that care, talk to someone. There is hope. If you are being treated for depression, always consult with your own personal physician who can address your medical needs. My guest Cheryl Myers is head of scientific affairs and education for EuroPharma, Inc., a natural medicine company with over 80 products being sold throughout North America and Europe. In this role, Cheryl oversees technical literature development, product research validation, educational outreach and acts as a liaison with thought leaders in integrative health. She has a degree in psychology & worked in the field of psychiatry for 10 years. A recognized expert in integrative health and dietary supplement use, Cheryl has been a featured guest on more than 250 radio and television shows. She is well known as an advocate of bridging the worlds of mainstream and natural medicine to achieve health outcomes neither can create alone. Cheryl has been interviewed by the New York Times, Prevention Magazine, the Wall Street Journal and other periodicals on wide ranging topics such as dementia prevention, menopause symptom relief, cancer care, heart disease and many other aspects of health and wellness. She has appeared on the PBS television show “American Medical Review,” hosted by Morley Safer, to explain coenzyme Q10 and cardiac recovery. She has acted as a technical consultant for many segments of the PBS TV series “Healing Quest,” hosted by Olivia Newton-John. A graduate (with honors) of Purdue University, Cheryl, whose first degree was in nursing, also has clinical certifications in oncology (cancer care) and gerontology (health issues of aging). She has lectured on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias at TriState University in Indiana. As a member of the editorial board of the Natural Medicine Journal (the official journal of the American Naturopathic Association), Cheryl evaluates scholarly articles and studies illuminating the science behind natural health interventions. Contact Cheryl @ cmyers@europharmausa.com ~ Europharmausa.com Join Me on Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/BuildingAbundantSuccess

Nat'l Integrative Health Expert ~ Cheryl is head of scientific affairs & education for Europharma,Inc. a natural medicine company with over 400 products being sold throughout North America. In this role, Cheryl oversees technical literature development, product research validation, educational outreach and acts as a liaison with thought leaders in integrative health. Cheryl is also the owner and founder of the natural health information website, HulaGoGo.com. The website motto is: “Think. Care. Act.” and she tries to carry this sentiment forward in all her endeavors. A recognized expert in integrative health and dietary supplement use, Cheryl has been a featured guest on more than 250 radio and television shows. She is well known as an advocate of bridging the worlds of mainstream and natural medicine to achieve health outcomes neither can create alone. Cheryl has been interviewed by the New York Times, Prevention Magazine, the Wall Street Journal and other periodicals on wide ranging topics such as dementia prevention, menopause symptom relief, cancer care, heart disease and many other aspects of health and wellness. She has appeared on the PBS television show “American Medical Review,” hosted by Morley Safer, to explain coenzyme Q10 and cardiac recovery. She has acted as a technical consultant for many segments of the PBS TV series “Healing Quest,” hosted by Olivia Newton-John. In other media ventures, Cheryl served as the technical/medical advisor for the Tony Shalhoub independent film, “Feed the Fish.” With several scenes shot in emergency rooms and clinics, Cheryl helped to insure authenticity, and to assist in creating comedic exaggeration of bandages and medical props. A graduate (with honors) of Purdue University, Cheryl has past clinical certifications in oncology (cancer care) and gerontology (health issues of aging). She has lectured on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias at TriState University in Indiana. As a member of the editorial board of the Natural Medicine Journal (the official journal of the American Naturopathic Association), Cheryl evaluates scholarly articles and studies illuminating the science behind natural health interventions. Cheryl’s own nationally published articles have addressed a variety of health applications for natural products, including a referenced letter on the safety of taking St. John’s Wort prior to surgery in Aesthetic Surgery Journal and “Therapeutic Herbs for Gastrointestinal Disorders” in the Nutrition in Complementary Care: A Dietetic Practice Group of the American Dietetic Association. Additionally, Cheryl is an expert educator on dietary supplements and was invited to give educational presentations on various topics at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, MN; the Jefferson-Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital , in Philadelphia, PA, and at Florida Hospital Celebration Health, in central Florida, amongst others. You may contact Cheryl at: cmyers@EuroPharmaUSA.com Join On Me Facebook ~ http://artist.to/buildingabundantsuccess/

  **Today's host(s):** Scot Landry and Susan Abbott **Today's guest(s):** Fr. Roger Landry, executive editor of The Anchor, the newspaper of the Fall River diocese; and Gregory Tracy, managing editor of The Pilot, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston. * [The Anchor](http://www.anchornews.org) * [The Pilot](http://www.pilotcatholicnews.com) * [St. Thomas More College](http://www.thomasmorecollege.edu/) * [CNS, "Dancing with the saints: Retreat master says that's the key to Lent"](http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1101089.htm) * [The Boston Herald, "Nuns sue Archdiocese of Boston over retirement funds""](http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20110321nuns_sue_boston_archdiocese_over_retirement_funds/) * [Raymond L. Flynn, "Halting bigotry against Mass. Catholic schools"](http://www.lowellsun.com/editorials/ci_17633890) * [Pioneer Institute](http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/) **Today's topics:** Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York interviewed on CBS News' *60 Minutes*, the Pope's Lenten retreat, school choice, the Daughters of St. Paul dispute with Archdiocese of Boston over pension funds, St. Thomas More College relocation **A summary of today's show:** In a brisk review of the week's news, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York on being a "conservative" Catholic and then the ongoing response to the sexual abuse crisis; the Pope's Lenten retreat focusing on Pope John Paul II; an effort to repeal anti-Catholic laws in Massachusetts; the dispute between the Daughters of St. Paul and the Archdiocese of Boston does not undermine the mutual love and respect; and a relocation of a Catholic college to the archdiocese. **1st segment:** Susan reflected on the past week since her last appearance and how she and friends and colleagues have been reflecting on Lent and the joy in Lent. Scot said it's always a trial to keep up with Lenten disciplines and also there appears to be many more people showing up for Mass each day at the Pastoral Center. **2nd segment:** Scot and Susan welcomed Gregory Tracy and Fr. Roger Landry. First item up for consideration was an interview by *60 Minutes'* Morley Safer with Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York. Fr. Roger recalled knowing then-Msgr. Dolan when Fr. Roger was a seminarian at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. Archbishop Dolan was as warm, friendly, and jovial as he remembered him and seemed to win over Morley Safer with his personality. Archbishop Dolan leads the US Catholic Church in several ways, both holding the biggest pulpit in the US at St. Patrick's Cathedral and as president of the USCCB. *A clip from the show includes Safer's comments calling Archbishop Dolan a right-wing conservative. Archbishop Dolan bristles at being called right-wing, but he is enthusiastically grateful and committed to the timeless traditions and history of the Church.* Scot notes that many people like to label the Church, especially calling people who take their faith seriously as right-wing. Greg noted that there's a tendency to put everything under political labels, like "left" and "right". But that doesn't really apply to the Church, which is what Archbishop Dolan was saying. Fr. Roger noted that Christ's word is eternal and those who follow don't put their finger in the wind to see which it's blowing. People try to make the Church a political messiah, like people tried to make Christ a political messiah back in the day. We are supposed to be conservative if we define it as supporting life issues and the Church's teaching on morality, but liberal if we define it as supporting the Church's teachings on the poor, for example. As Catholics we must defy those easy labels because we are called to be both. Susan said what came to mind was the paradox people saw in Pope John Paul II, being both orthodox on the Church's teachings and so politically "liberal" on issues related to war and peace. *A clip from the interview on the Archbishop's experience meeting with abuse victims and the Church's response to the scandals. in some ways, Archbishop Dolan said, he doesn't want the crisis to be over. It needs to haunt the Church.* Fr. Roger said he heard those words, having worked with so many victims who've been wounded in the Church, and it struck him because of the awful experience of the victims, not just from the original injury but also from the lack of compassion from the Church in so many cases. All of this needs to haunt the Church, and Fr. Roger is thrilled that Archbishop Dolan gets this at a visceral level. We don't just institute a policy and move on, but take it to heart and make reparation. And then use this as something that drives us to go on in a way that serves everyone into the future. Scot mentioned to Greg that so many want to just move on from the crisis, but there are others who say we always have to remember it because those who have been hurt will be with for a long time. Gregory sees a persistent theme in all coverage of the Church that the abuse scandal is always coming up. The Pilot has often received comments from readers asking them to stop covering the crisis because if something good can come out of the revelations of the abuse, it;s that it forced the Church to confront this evil, but also to bring awareness to the problem in general to society as a whole. The Church can provide a model to society on how to deal with this. Fr. Roger noted in this week's editorial that Archbishop Dolan has been using his blog to speak frankly and plainly about the issue of abuse as well as the response to the Church, the part of the story being missed which is that the bishops have begun to get things right and create the circumstances by which young children are perhaps safer in Catholic churches than in any other institution. We shouldn't be so ashamed at what has occurred that we become a punching bag for those who want to use the evil that occurred as a way to silence the Church. * [Archbishop Dolan's blog about his airport encounter with an angry man](http://blog.archny.org/?p=1127) **3rd segment:** Pope Benedict has an annual retreat for Lent along with the Roman curia. The theme this year was on Pope John Paul II. They also heard profiles of other courageous saints under a concept he called, "Dancing with the saints". Susan said she was pleased at the reference by the retreat master's reference to the upcoming beatification of Pope John Paul II: "This beatification, which will be an event of immense importance for the church and the entire world, requires deep spiritual preparation involving the entire people of God and, in a particular way, the Holy Father and his closest collaborators.' She also is pleased that the Pope recalls for us the importance of Lenten retreats. Fr. Roger noted that Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the chaplain to the papal household, has preached the Advent retreats for the papal household for the past 32 years. He recently came to Boston to preach a night of reflection. * [Fr. Cantalamessa's website](http://www.cantalamessa.org/) Greg found it interesting that the theme was intended to help people prepare for the beatification of Pope John Paul II, especially since he only recently died. Pope John Paul II was a great believer in the potential of all people to become saints and he canonized and beatified more people than all other pope's combined and so his beatification and reflection on that now helps us to recall that vision. **4th segment:** Last week, there was a news conference featuring former US Ambassador to the Vatican and former Boston mayor Ray FLynn in which he highlighted the existence of anti-Catholic amendments to the Massachusetts constitution that hurt parents who wish to send their children to Catholic schools. It is called the Know Nothing amendment, referring to a nativist movement of the 19th century that resisted the influx of immigrants, especially Irish Catholics, and a great fear that the upstart Irish would gain power. The name comes from the fact it was a semi-secret organization. There was an 1854 amendment putting the original anti-Catholic laws in place and then another amendment in 1917 that blocked the ability to repeal the amendment by citizen referendum. * [The Know Nothing party](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing) The law prevents government aid from going to Catholic schools. Fr. Roger said there is immense economic pressure on Catholic schools, especially in the inner-city. People can't afford even the $3000 tuition, which is below cost, while paying thousands of dollars in property taxes for public schools. Archbishop Dolan has pointed out that studies show Catholic schools do a better job of educating inner-city students and do it at about half the cost of public schools. He said we don't address the issue because there is still an anti-Catholic bias. When this came up in Massachusetts in the 1980s, it failed despite the fact that many of the legislators were themselves Catholics and had experienced the benefits of Catholic education, because they had bought into the secularist arguments. Susan said every Catholic should have an interest in the benefits of Catholic schools. Inside every classroom in Boston is a sign that says "Christ is the reason for this school." Also, every society benefits from a populace that is well-educated. And on a practical level, if Catholic schools didn't exist, the burden on the public schools would be enormous. They would have all those Catholic school students without any additional property tax funds. We hope to have Ambassador Flynn and Catholic schools superintendent Mary Grassa-O'Neill on next week to discuss this issue in depth. **5th segment:** On the front page of the *Boston Globe* this past Monday, we saw an article on the Daughters of St. Paul, as the paper put it, suing Cardinal Sean. At essence of the story, the Daughters want to manage their pension fund on their own and the trustees of the Archdiocesan pension plan asked for proof that they had a management plan in place as required by their fiduciary duty to those who have contributed to the pension plans. Greg noted that the issue is not a new one, but has been going on for a long time and precedes any current changes to the pension plan that are being put in place for current employees. Scot wanted to make sure that everyone understood that there remains a lot of affection between the Daughters of St. Paul and the Archdiocese of Boston. Susan said she is personally close to the Daughters. It's important to realize that there are good people on both sides, she said. Her office is planning several projects with them over this summer and in the fall. They are a cutting edge religious order, involved in the communications and the media. Susan felt that Romans 8:28 is a good verse for this situation: "We know that all things work for good for those who love God." Scot said it is tough to see a religious order you love and the Church you love being put at odds on the front page of the newspaper. Moving on exciting news that St. Thomas More College is moving from its current location in Merrimac, NH, to Groton, Mass. It will become the 7th Catholic college in the archdiocese. Greg said the better news is that their move is motivated by plans to grow. He also notes that they're not abandoning the location in New Hampshire, which will become a graduate school. Scot said more good news is that the beautiful Sacred Heart Church in Groton was sitting unused because of parish mergers and that Groton was planning to build a fire station on the property. The college is purchasing the church as its chapel. An interesting side note is that the school's main property that it's purchasing is the former estate of the J. Geils band. The town wins by getting the property for its fire station, but also preserving a large open area. The college plans to move by 2013. The school said they will be able to revive their adult faith formation programs at the new location as well. * [The life of St. Thomas More](http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14689c.htm) * [A Man for All Seasons](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060665/) St. Thomas More is the patron saint of lawyers and was the chancellor for King Henry VIII and gave up his life rather than capitulate to Henry VIII on his dispute with the Catholic Church over divorce. His letters to his daughter Margaret are very enlightening. * ["A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg" by J.A. Guy](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618499156/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=catholicnetrevie&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0618499156)