Podcasts about Nah

Use our code for 10% off your next SeatGeek order*: https://seatgeek.onelink.me/RrnK/LAPLATICA10 Sponsored by SeatGeek. *Restrictions apply. Max $20 discount   Happy Monday LP Fam! This week Josh and Sebas invite Skateboarding legend P-Rod on the show for a conversation he hasn't had anywhere else. The guys discussed P-Rod's love life status, his dream girl, perfect first date, and the most romantic thing he's ever done. Josh and Sebas also dove into his skating beginnings, what set him apart from his friends at an early age, and his career trajectory before wrapping things up with a good ol' Girly Pop 101 quiz.   CHAPTERS: 00:00 – Intro 02:56 – Ready to Rock and Roll? 05:28 – Morph It Up! / It's Morphin Time 07:49 – You're the SB God 10:39 – For the LP Baddies

On this episode of The AIE Podcast… World of Warcraft is now on Zillow Congrats to Sethos on 70! Spring Abundance is in the air Nifty things are happening in LOTRO And, we have our dear friends Gusty and Shojo here to talk all about AIE in World of Warcraft All that and more coming up right now… Podcast Audio Raw Video http://youtu.be/dWQ9wXpGYyY Open Welcome to episode #442 of the podcast celebrating you, the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Mewkow: To my left is Tetsemi: – (catch phrase here). And to my right is Mkallah: (Hey folks, there is a homemade chicken pot pie in the Guild Kitchen). This week we are joined by special guests Gusty and Shojo who are here to talk to us about AIE in World of Warcraft Welcome! Ok, we'll be digging into World of Warcraft shortly, but first, let's cover this week's news… AIE News Community Mandatory Fun Nights Where the fun is mandatory but the attendance is not. Sunday – Destiny 2 8:30 pm Eastern Monday – GW2 9:30 pm Eastern Monday – STO 10:00 pm Eastern Tuesday – SWTOR 9:00 pm Eastern Wednesday – HFO Mythic+ Mayhem (WoW) 8:00 pm Eastern Friday – ESO 9:00 pm Eastern Saturday – LotRO 8:30 pm Eastern Saturday – FFXIV (Maps) 9:30 pm Eastern Saturday – Noob Raid (WoW) 11:00 pm Eastern Streaming and Guild Podcast News We have a ton of AIE member podcasts! Want to know where to find them? Look no further than here- New Overlords Podcast (Max and Sema) https://www.newoverlords.com Boards and Swords (Chris and Philip) https://boardsandswords.com/blog?category=Boards%20%26%20Swords Dr. Gameology ( Dr. Daniel Kaufmann ) https://drgameology.com/ STO – Fleet Action Report (Grebog and Nikodas) https://www.youtube.com/@fleetactionreport A Podcast Reborn: A FFXIV Community Podcast (Brandon aka Old Man Franks, Meagan, and Rho) – NSFL https://www.bonusroll.gg/directory/a-podcast-reborn/ NOMADS Rust on a PvE server since the new naval update came out. Boats are fun! New World will officially shutdown its servers January 31, 2027. We are still there! Keep an eye on the channel in nomads for a possible farewell as the end draws near. Valheim 5 Year Celebration and Regular Update. AIE Valheim Community Server Information is pinned in the AIE Discord #Nomads channel WoW Noob Raid had a great final run of Manaforge Omega on pre-Midnight launch – clearing both Normal and Heroic! Dankinia will be taking a break until the first raid in Midnight is released, around early April. Midnight launched on 3/2, with early access for folks who prepurchased expected to begin 2/27. Lots more about Midnight from our lovely guests later in the show. Player housing. This new feature is time consuming but a great deal of fun. The creativity of our Guildies is amazing to behold! WoW Classic As Jehdai pointed out, we have our first 70 (Sethos) and light activity on the 20th Anniversary TBC launch on Dreamscythed Horde side. We have the guild available with the guild bank open and invite others to join us in Outland. In other Classic news: Reminder that there are now 3 launchers for Classic (‘Original’, ‘Anniversary’, ‘Era’) “Original” Classic is progressing with Mists of Pandaria. The guild is available on Horde side on Galakras. If I have this right, MoP classic uses the modern guild interface so we have the new interface showing 651 members. “Anniversary” Classic which is now at TBC as mentioned above. “Era” classic is a separate launcher with 3 game modes: ‘Classic Era’ which is forever frozen in the original game (pre-TBC). We were on Mankrik here but really no activity or guild. “Season of Discovery” which is where experiments were performed by the devs which some expect may lead to the anticipated “Classic Plus” many hope for. We have no real activity there currently. “Hardcore” is the 3rd game mode in the Era client and probably our 2nd most active within the classic modes. We have an Alliance side guild on Doomhowl and some activity on the Horde side of Doomhowl but no guild currently. Lars plans to return to his attempt at a “Solo Self-Found” run to 60 in Hardcore but that has been on pause for quite some time. We did have guild members make it to 60 on the hardcore server previously. Ravisant is ProffessorWC or Sethos one of the raid leaders from HoG SWTOR In Swtor this week, we are ready for Update 7.8.1, Master’s Enigma. It will bring a story piece, Galactic Seasons 10, new date nights, and the Spring Abundance Festival. The story finale is coming in the June timeframe to make room for 8.0 at the end of the year. We continue to do our MFN on Tuesday nights. Please join us. There are no gear or level requirements, but you may need to have gotten your personal ship as we do tend to travel about. If you want to read about an awesome trip to Galaxy’s Edge, with not only pics but also tips and tricks for your own visit, check out guildie Strykezone’s blog post. You’ll find a link in the pinned messages in the swtor channel of the AIE discord. The Kanjiklub House https://kanjiklubhouse.com/2026/02/18/my-star-wars-adventure-to-galaxys-edge-at-disney/ ESO The guild has been working on endeavors and in game events. FFXIV This past Tuesday we got the new Variant dungeon with the newer middle level difficulty The next live letter is on March 13th at 4am PST, and they'll probably be discussing the next story patch LOTRO We had an update that brought us some nifty things. The new raid “The Folly of Nagakhêdi” (Nah-gah-KAY-dee) for tier 1 is live, tiers 2 and 3 are coming this week and next week. There is a new legendary reward track with some great rewards such as a rose-colored mûmak calf cosmetic pet. With other class changes, mainly with guardian, we also got a great change. It is now possible to start Private Encounters from inside of a Housing Neighborhood. Looking forward to seeing you in game and doing some of these awesome new instances. And with that, let's get back to Gusty and Shojo and find out what's going on in World of Warcraft. GAME NEWS CLOSE And that's our show for tonight. While the chatroom begins suggesting show titles, we want to thank Gusty and Shojo for joining us. If you have a question or comment about our show, you can email us at podcast@aie-guild.org You can find us on the AIE Discord and BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/aiepodcast.bsky.social. We record live with video once a month on Sunday at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. You can join the chatroom and play along with us on our website at https://aie-guild.org/podcast-live-stream/ and look for the link to our discord server at https://aie-guild.org. And for past episodes, you can see them on our Youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAIEPodcast ! Our theme was composed by the amazing Andrew Allen, follow him at @keyswithsoul! Next time, we'll be talking to Guest in Game. So until then, AIE… – This is Gusty – This is Shojo – This is Mewkow – This is Tetsemi – This is Mkallah And this has been… The AIE Podcast

Nice girls playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playli... In this episode of r/NiceGirls we meet some nice girls. Nah, just kidding. They're horrible people to be around and they just seem to stick like nothing else can. How do you get rid of them? Simple. Starve them of what they crave. Don't give them even a drop of attention and your nice girl problem will solve itself seemingly magically overnight! It doesn't matter what your background is, you always need to treat people like people and not use them simply to get off. Neckbeards seem to learn this lesson particularly slow and it really does make my blood boil... So we must bring it to light so others don't suffer alone. For your fill of neckbeard stories we've got you covered with the freshest weeaboo, niceguy, and neckbeard happenings on reddit. Stick with ReddX for your daily dose of cringe with a side-dish of relatability. You might even feel good for dessert... But who can say? ------------------------------------------------------------ #reddit #creepy #nicegirls Join me on Discord dude: https://discord.gg/Sju7YckUWu One-time PayPal donation: https://www.paypal.me/daytondo... Support this channel on Patreon: http://patreon.com/daytondoes Stalk me on the Twitter! http://www.twitter.com/daytond... Visit me over on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReddX... Got a story? I got a subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReddX... Here's an Amazon link to my microphone: https://amzn.to/3lInsRR Wanna rock the ReddX merch? https://teespring.com/stores/r... Character animations are by: https://twitter.com/DarkleyStu... Check out my other channel: https://www.youtube.com/dayton... Wifey's channel is right over here: https://www.youtube.com/channe... ------------------------------------------------------------ Did I mention that we have playlists??: Full neckbeard story compilations: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our neckbeard stories: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our legbeard stories: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our RPG Horror Stories: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our weeaboo tales: https://www.youtube.com/playli... ------------------------------------------------------------ Podcasts can provide some ReddX on the go! Check it out! Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/... Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/reddxy iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/... Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/fe... Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/... Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podc... Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/us/show... Podcast Addict: https://podcastaddict.com/podc... JioSaavn: https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows... Have you ever met a neckbeard or a nice guy? They are frustrating to deal with, but luckily you aren't alone! These r/neckbeardstories from Reddit are among the top posts of all time and include some of the funniest Reddit stories ever posted on the neckbeard stories subreddit! rSlash NeckbeardStories have all kinds of funny neckbeards in them, but especially the nice guy. And the weeaboo. There is a wide spectrum of neckbeards, and this is but a small slice of it. Listening to ReddX's neckbeard stories playlist is a great experience! These neckbeard stories Top Posts of All Time from Reddit are made for you to enjoy any time you feel like it, so be sure to save my rSlash neckbeard stories playlist to your favorites! While there are many rslash channels that read r/neckbeard stories and r/prorevenge from reddit. Some of the top rSlash entitled parents channels I recommend checking out are the original rSlash, Redditor, fresh, r/Bumfries, VoiceyHere, Mr Reddit, Storytime and Darkfluff. These Reddit story channels inspired me to start my own Reddit story channel, with a focus on Entitled Parents stories and at times going into the r/pettyrevenge and r/choosingbeggars subreddit as well. Because most of my audience prefers Entitled Parents stories of Reddit, I tend to just stick with reading the r/EntitleParents Top Posts of All Time. But I also enjoy getting up close and personal with neckbeards and weeaboos! Subscribe to ReddX for the freshest daily Reddit content. I post relatable readings of Reddit posts and Reddit stories every single day! Journey with me as I relate these amazing Reddit stories to my personal life journey. I'm greatly inspired by the top reddit posts of all time videos and reddit stories on YouTube. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channe... Discord: https://discord.gg/Sju7YckUWu Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/daytondo... PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/daytondo... Patreon: http://patreon.com/daytondoes Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/daytond... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReddX... Merch: https://reddx-shop.fourthwall....

Samantha's New Toy.Based on a post by smalltitslovr, in 4 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Steamy Stories.of my thighs slide against each. I knew if Tristan didn’t stop soon, I would have an entire other problem.Finally, Tristan stopped. He put the remote back on the bench, and stood up. “Well, I gotta head to class now,” he said. “See you around, Samantha. Nice to meet you.”I couldn’t say anything, because I knew my voice would give away what I was feeling, so I simply nodded to him. Then he turned around and left.As soon as he was turned around, I grabbed the controller, and turned the knob all the way down, and finally, the buzzing stopped. As I caught my breath, I looked down. When Tristan was far enough away, I opened my legs a little, and assessed the situation.The denim material between my legs was completely soaked with my cunt juices. I was also now regretting choosing a pair of shorts that were so short. I could see the inside of my thighs were shiny.I started to wipe away what I could, but then I noticed some people approaching nearby. So, I grabbedA lesson on oral sex.Monday morning came, and it was time to go to ASE, once again. I got up, took a shower, then got dressed. Like usual, I knew it didn’t really matter what I wore, because I would be naked in class anyhow. So, I pulled on a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt, not bothering with underwear. Then I grabbed my bag, and headed to class.I was running a little late, so I was nearly last to arrive. When I entered, I was greeted by the lovely sight of 11 naked students, sitting, waiting for class to start. I quickly pulled my shirt off, and saw the other three missing students (Alex, Eric, and Sofia) had just arrived as well. We all stripped, and soon Ms. Sharon came in, naked as usual.“Hello everyone,” she said. “I hope you had a good weekend. Everyone, please get with your partners.”A couple minutes later, and I was seated next to Alex and Tony. Everyone else was seated with their partner(s) as well.“Good. As we learned in our last class, the human body reacts to various stimuli. We demonstrated and observed this with sex toys. Today, we’ll take this a step further, and move on to oral intercourse. Who can tell me what oral sex is?”Nobody else seemed eager to speak up, so I raised my hand.“Yes, Samantha.”“Well, oral sex is when one person uses their mouth to pleasure someone else.”“Correct. There are three basic types of oral sex. Arguably the most common (although there’s no real way to prove it) is fellatio, also known as giving head, or a blow job, among other names. This is when a person uses their mouth to suck on a male’s cock. Let’s go ahead and practice that now."Although this can be performed by males, we won’t be covering homosexual intercourse for a few more classes. So, I will ask that all the females in the class please perform this act on your partners. Samantha, please do this for both Alex and Tony. Everyone, take special note of how much length you can take in your mouth, and try to take as much as you can. Also, guys, please don’t cum just yet. I’ll give you time for that in a little while.”Ms. Sharon then turned to John and Eric, and got on her knees. With no hesitation, she grabbed John’s cock, and put her lips around it, sliding it deep inside her mouth.Looking away, I turned to Alex and Tony. “Alright,” I said. “Who’s first?”They looked at each other, and both raised their hands. I smiled, and down on my knees. I moved closer, until I was between Tony’s legs, which he had opened wide for me. His cock was only slightly hard, but as soon as I grabbed it, it grew quickly.I hesitated at first, because I hadn’t ever tasted a guy’s cock before, so I started by licking the tip. It tasted a little salty, but not too bad. Then I slowly put my lips around the tip, and slid it across my tongue. Inch by inch, I took his manhood into my mouth, until I felt the tip push against the back of my throat.Remembering Ms. Sharon’s words, I pushed it further, until I felt myself start to gag. I knew it was possible to take more, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I stopped at about four inches. Then, I slid it back out. Before removing it, though, I felt Tony’s hand on the back of my head. He gently pushed me back down, and I didn’t resist. Soon, with Tony’s guidance, I was bobbing my head up and down on his cock. I sped up, and kept sucking on him. I felt him start to throb in my mouth, and I knew he was close to cumming. I wasn’t ready for that, so I pulled his cock out, and leaned back.“Thank you, Samantha,” he said. His cock throbbed up and down, but I didn’t see any cum.After taking a moment to catch my breath, I turned to Alex. “Your turn.” I said, smiling up at him.I moved forward, until my head was between his thighs. His cock was in his hand, and it appeared he had been jacking off while watching my performance with Tony. He aimed his cock at my face. With no hesitation this time, I opened my mouth, and graciously accepted it. It was smaller than Tony’s, but I still couldn’t quite take the whole thing on the first thrust. On the second one however, I stopped when it hit my throat, and realized there was only about half an inch left, so I pushed myself, and took the tip down my throat, until I felt my lips touch his balls. Then I pulled back out. He thrust into me a few more times, then pulled all the way out.I reached up and cleaned a little bit of drool and pre-cum from my lips, then got up and sat back in my chair. Looking around, it looked like I was last to finish, and everyone had been watching me.“Excellent job, everyone,” said Ms. Sharon, with a smile. “I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did."Now, the other type of oral sex is called cunnilingus; the act of orally pleasuring a woman. This is usually done by licking and sucking on the girl’s labia, but can also involve sticking the tongue inside her. Guys, please practice this on your partners now.”I turned back to the boys, and waited for their lead. They looked at each other and decided Alex should go first. As he moved closer, I leaned back, and spread my legs. He put his head down, and gave my cunt a long lick. Of course, by this time, I was very wet, so he got a good taste of my juices.Then he put his mouth in between my legs and started going at it. I lifted my legs up to give him a good angle. I noticed many of the girls around the room were in much the same position. Alex continued licking my cunt, then he sucked on my lips. After a few seconds of that, he pushed his tongue inside me, which felt amazing. Then he pulled his head away.Alex moved away, and Tony immediately took his place. There was only about 3 seconds between when Alex pulled his head away, and Tony put his lips on mine. I could immediately tell Tony had done this before. He immediately found my clit, and teased it with his tongue. Then he slowly slid his tongue down, until it was at my hole, and he started fucking me with it. I let my head fall back, and enjoyed it. He continued for about a minute, then pulled his head away.Once again, our group was last to finish, since there were three of us. Tony took his seat, then Ms. Sharon stood up.“Good job, everyone,” she said. “Now, there are many positions involving oral sex, but the one that comes up more than any other is the 69.” She turned around and drew the number on the board. “It is named this, because the two bodies take this shape. One person lies down, and the other lies on top of them, facing the other way. What’s unique about this position is it’s one of the only ways that two partners can give and receive oral sex simultaneously."Now, I’d like each group to demonstrate this position. Guys lay on the floor on your back, and the girls will get on top of you.”Alex laid down first. Once he was ready, I got on my knees, then straddled his face. He immediately started licking my cunt again. I let him go at it for a moment, enjoying it, and looked around.A few of the girls were facing the wrong direction, and couldn’t figure out what they were doing wrong. Amy looked particularly perplexed, as she mounted her partner in a cowgirl position, with his cock pressed against her ass cheeks. I didn’t get to see if she eventually figured it out, since I decided it was time to start sucking on Alex.I leaned forward, and I found that my mouth was at exactly the right spot to suck on his dick. So I did. As I sucked on him, he licked me and tongue-fucked me. After a good five minutes, Tony tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up, and realized I hadn’t given him a turn yet. So, I got up, he laid down, and I took the same position again, but over Tony this time.Doing this position with Tony was much better, probably because I was already worked up. Also, his cock was bigger and tasted better. While I sucked on Tony, he ate me out, and it was amazing.After too short a time, I heard Ms. Sharon’s say, “Alright everyone. That’s enough. Please return to your seats.”I reluctantly took Tony’s cock out of my mouth, and stood up. A few moments later, we were all back in our seats.“Excellent work everyone,” Ms. Sharon said. “Now, I only have one activity left, and then you may all leave. But before we begin, I have a few things to say, in regards to future activities and assignments."First off, today will be our last class that does not involve full-on intercourse. That means that if you have not already lost your virginity, and would like to do so in your own way, I would advise you to do so before the next class."Secondly, beginning today, you will have a homework assignment given at the end of each class, based on that day’s topic. A few guidelines for all of these assignments:"1. You must complete each assignment outside of class. Any activities in class may not be used for homework assignments."2. Each assignment will be graded simply upon completion. If you do the given activity, you get full credit. If you don’t do it, you get a zero."3. Since I will not be there when you complete the assignment, you are required to submit proof of each assignment, in the form of photographs or videos."4. I will drop one homework grade. That means you have the choice to not complete any one assignment. Beyond that, if you don’t complete the assignment, you get a zero. However, there will be many opportunities for extra credit, so if you feel uncomfortable doing more than one assignment, you may make up some of the points by complete additional tasks in other assignments."5. Most of the assignments will require someone else’s participation. You may partner with any of your classmates, but only for one assignment each. So, if you complete this first assignment with one person, you may not complete a later one with that same person. You also have the option of completing the assignments with people outside of class, but you must get their written consent. I have forms for that in my office."Any questions about the homework?” Nobody raised their hands. “Alright. One last thing: there will be a final project for this class, but you don’t need to worry about the details of that right now. I will explain it in the last few weeks of class."Alright, now on to today’s final activity. First, we need to move all the chairs to the sides, so we have ample floor space.” We moved chairs around, and soon we were all standing in the middle of the room. “Excellent. Now, everyone form a circle, with your group, with the girl on the left. Because the numbers don’t quite work out, I’ll ask that Tony and Eric sit outside the circle. In a little bit, you can switch with Alex and John.”We took a few minutes to do this, but soon we were in a large circle. On my right was Alex, and to my left was Roberto.“Alright, now I’ve looked for a name for what this is called, and the best I could find is a daisy chain. Everyone lie on the ground. Guys lie on your back, and girls on your knees. Your face should be between the legs of the person to your left. When you are in position, go ahead and start pleasuring your partner.”Soon, we were all in position. I started sucking on Roberto’s cock, and was slightly surprised when I felt Alex’s mouth make contact with my cunt. We all sucked and licked each other, which caused many noises, including slurps and moans of pleasure.After a few minutes, Ms. Sharon had Tony and Alex (and Eric and John) switch places, so Tony was now sucking on my labia, while Alex watched. He took it upon himself to jack off.A few minutes more, and Ms. Sharon had us turn around. So now, I was sucking on Tony, and Roberto was fucking me with his tongue. She also said we were welcome to cum whenever we were ready, but we were to continue the daisy chain until she said to stop.Latoya was on the other side of Tony, being pleasured by him. Apparently she had done a good job before we turned around, because it didn’t take long for Tony released his load. I felt a large spurt of cum shoot into the back of my throat. Since I wasn’t expecting it yet, I gagged a little, but I followed Ms. Sharon’s rule, and did not remove my mouth.For the next few minutes the room filled with the sounds of grunts and moans, as many of the guys, and a few of the girls came. Ms. Sharon had Tony get up and switch with Alex again. While they were switching, I swallowed Tony’s load. I only had a few seconds to catch my breath, then Alex’s cock was in my mouth again.The entire time, Roberto was slowly but surely bringing me closer to my orgasm, and it finally happened shortly after I started sucking on Alex. I moaned a little, then more, and finally I came hard, pushing my pelvis into Roberto’s face, and my mouth further onto Alex’s cock. It felt amazing! I hadn’t cum in a few days, so this was a long time coming.I continued to moan through the whole thing, which must have felt good for Alex, because shortly after I started, he followed my lead. I felt his large load of cum fill my mouth. It was more cum than Tony had released. As soon as I felt he was done, I swallowed it all.We had both finished cumming, but we didn’t stop pleasuring each other, or our partners. It appeared Ms. Sharon was waiting for each person to cum. A few minutes later, the last person (Barbara) had cum, and Ms. Sharon told us all we could stand up, and return to our seats.When we were all seated, she asked, “Did everyone enjoy that?” I looked around, and saw many nods, and more smiles. “Good. Now, that’s all I had planned for today, but I need to give you your homework assignment."By the next class period, you must give oral sex to one person, and receive oral sex from a different person. I don’t have any preference over whether your partners are the same sex or different. Remember, you may do your assignment with your classmates, but that counts them out for future assignments. Also, don’t forget to get proof of the encounters."Everyone have a good day, and I’ll see you next class period.”With that we were dismissed. We all stood, got dressed, and walked out. On the way out, I started talking with Nicole. After a bit of discussion about the class, she said she was going to a dining hall, and asked if I wanted to join her.“Nah, I’m not really hungry,” I said, with a smile. She laughed, and we parted ways.On my walk back to my dorm room, I thought about the day’s experience. Three guys had sucked on my cunt lips, fucked me with their tongues, and licked my clit. In exchange, I had sucked on each of their cocks, and swallowed two loads of cum. Quite an eventful morning.I also thought about who I’d complete the assignment with. After a little thought, I pulled my phone out and texted Nicole and asked her if she wanted to get her food to go, and join me in my room. Then I texted Alex as well.Suffice to say, the remainder of my day was fun. ;)Vaginal Intercourse.“Hello again, class,” Ms. Sharon said as she entered the classroom. “Long time, no see.”We were all seated, and ready to learn. And by that, I mean we were naked, and horny. Last class, the teacher had alluded to what we’d be doing this class period. She had made a point to tell everyone that if they cared to lose their virginity outside of class, to do it before today, because it would involve intercourse.This wasn’t a problem for me. I had lost mine to a good friend of mine in high school. I looked around and wondered if anyone else in the room was thinking about their first time too.I pulled myself away from that line of thought, and noticed I was already starting to get a little wet, just thinking about it. But it wasn’t just the thought of my first time that had me excited. All around the room there were cushions on the floor. I could only assume what they were for, but I had a pretty good idea.Ms. Sharon took her spot at the front of the classroom, and put her bag down, turning to the class. “Alright, class. Today, we’re in for a great time. I’ve already received everyone’s homework from last class, either via my email or my drop box, so we’ll jump straight into today’s material. I’m going to need a male and female volunteer.”She looked around at everyone, waiting for someone to raise their hand, but nobody did. I could tell everyone was excited about what was going to happen. I could visibly see it in some of the guys’ laps. But I guess nobody wanted to be the first to go. Ms. Sharon sighed, and said, “Alright, then I’ll have to resort back to the bag of volunteers”I had completely forgotten about the bag of volunteers. Back in the anatomy class, Ms. Sharon had created two bags with males and females, and said she’d use it if nobody volunteered for something. Those names that were removed from the bag would not be returned until everyone had been picked.“If you all remember, the only two names we’ve removed from the bag have been Nicole and Filipe. In our toys class, all the girls got a chance to demonstrate one of the toys, including Nicole, so I won’t be removing any new names from the girls bag. From the guy’s bag, however, I’ve already taken the liberty of removing Tony’s name, since he demoed the fleshlight, and none of the other guys demoed."So, first a girl.” She reached her hand into one of the bags, and I felt my heart start pumping with anticipation. Would it be my name she picked? If it was, what would she ask me to do? She pulled out a piece of paper, and unfolded it. “Sofia, please come up here.”I felt a little relieved, and a little disappointed. I looked over and saw the cute Latina girl lean her head forward in mock-defeat. Then she stood up, smiled, and walk to the front of the class. Her mid-sized tits, and beautiful ass jiggled the whole way.M

Samantha's New Toy.Based on a post by smalltitslovr, in 4 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Steamy Stories.of my thighs slide against each. I knew if Tristan didn’t stop soon, I would have an entire other problem.Finally, Tristan stopped. He put the remote back on the bench, and stood up. “Well, I gotta head to class now,” he said. “See you around, Samantha. Nice to meet you.”I couldn’t say anything, because I knew my voice would give away what I was feeling, so I simply nodded to him. Then he turned around and left.As soon as he was turned around, I grabbed the controller, and turned the knob all the way down, and finally, the buzzing stopped. As I caught my breath, I looked down. When Tristan was far enough away, I opened my legs a little, and assessed the situation.The denim material between my legs was completely soaked with my cunt juices. I was also now regretting choosing a pair of shorts that were so short. I could see the inside of my thighs were shiny.I started to wipe away what I could, but then I noticed some people approaching nearby. So, I grabbedA lesson on oral sex.Monday morning came, and it was time to go to ASE, once again. I got up, took a shower, then got dressed. Like usual, I knew it didn’t really matter what I wore, because I would be naked in class anyhow. So, I pulled on a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt, not bothering with underwear. Then I grabbed my bag, and headed to class.I was running a little late, so I was nearly last to arrive. When I entered, I was greeted by the lovely sight of 11 naked students, sitting, waiting for class to start. I quickly pulled my shirt off, and saw the other three missing students (Alex, Eric, and Sofia) had just arrived as well. We all stripped, and soon Ms. Sharon came in, naked as usual.“Hello everyone,” she said. “I hope you had a good weekend. Everyone, please get with your partners.”A couple minutes later, and I was seated next to Alex and Tony. Everyone else was seated with their partner(s) as well.“Good. As we learned in our last class, the human body reacts to various stimuli. We demonstrated and observed this with sex toys. Today, we’ll take this a step further, and move on to oral intercourse. Who can tell me what oral sex is?”Nobody else seemed eager to speak up, so I raised my hand.“Yes, Samantha.”“Well, oral sex is when one person uses their mouth to pleasure someone else.”“Correct. There are three basic types of oral sex. Arguably the most common (although there’s no real way to prove it) is fellatio, also known as giving head, or a blow job, among other names. This is when a person uses their mouth to suck on a male’s cock. Let’s go ahead and practice that now."Although this can be performed by males, we won’t be covering homosexual intercourse for a few more classes. So, I will ask that all the females in the class please perform this act on your partners. Samantha, please do this for both Alex and Tony. Everyone, take special note of how much length you can take in your mouth, and try to take as much as you can. Also, guys, please don’t cum just yet. I’ll give you time for that in a little while.”Ms. Sharon then turned to John and Eric, and got on her knees. With no hesitation, she grabbed John’s cock, and put her lips around it, sliding it deep inside her mouth.Looking away, I turned to Alex and Tony. “Alright,” I said. “Who’s first?”They looked at each other, and both raised their hands. I smiled, and down on my knees. I moved closer, until I was between Tony’s legs, which he had opened wide for me. His cock was only slightly hard, but as soon as I grabbed it, it grew quickly.I hesitated at first, because I hadn’t ever tasted a guy’s cock before, so I started by licking the tip. It tasted a little salty, but not too bad. Then I slowly put my lips around the tip, and slid it across my tongue. Inch by inch, I took his manhood into my mouth, until I felt the tip push against the back of my throat.Remembering Ms. Sharon’s words, I pushed it further, until I felt myself start to gag. I knew it was possible to take more, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I stopped at about four inches. Then, I slid it back out. Before removing it, though, I felt Tony’s hand on the back of my head. He gently pushed me back down, and I didn’t resist. Soon, with Tony’s guidance, I was bobbing my head up and down on his cock. I sped up, and kept sucking on him. I felt him start to throb in my mouth, and I knew he was close to cumming. I wasn’t ready for that, so I pulled his cock out, and leaned back.“Thank you, Samantha,” he said. His cock throbbed up and down, but I didn’t see any cum.After taking a moment to catch my breath, I turned to Alex. “Your turn.” I said, smiling up at him.I moved forward, until my head was between his thighs. His cock was in his hand, and it appeared he had been jacking off while watching my performance with Tony. He aimed his cock at my face. With no hesitation this time, I opened my mouth, and graciously accepted it. It was smaller than Tony’s, but I still couldn’t quite take the whole thing on the first thrust. On the second one however, I stopped when it hit my throat, and realized there was only about half an inch left, so I pushed myself, and took the tip down my throat, until I felt my lips touch his balls. Then I pulled back out. He thrust into me a few more times, then pulled all the way out.I reached up and cleaned a little bit of drool and pre-cum from my lips, then got up and sat back in my chair. Looking around, it looked like I was last to finish, and everyone had been watching me.“Excellent job, everyone,” said Ms. Sharon, with a smile. “I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did."Now, the other type of oral sex is called cunnilingus; the act of orally pleasuring a woman. This is usually done by licking and sucking on the girl’s labia, but can also involve sticking the tongue inside her. Guys, please practice this on your partners now.”I turned back to the boys, and waited for their lead. They looked at each other and decided Alex should go first. As he moved closer, I leaned back, and spread my legs. He put his head down, and gave my cunt a long lick. Of course, by this time, I was very wet, so he got a good taste of my juices.Then he put his mouth in between my legs and started going at it. I lifted my legs up to give him a good angle. I noticed many of the girls around the room were in much the same position. Alex continued licking my cunt, then he sucked on my lips. After a few seconds of that, he pushed his tongue inside me, which felt amazing. Then he pulled his head away.Alex moved away, and Tony immediately took his place. There was only about 3 seconds between when Alex pulled his head away, and Tony put his lips on mine. I could immediately tell Tony had done this before. He immediately found my clit, and teased it with his tongue. Then he slowly slid his tongue down, until it was at my hole, and he started fucking me with it. I let my head fall back, and enjoyed it. He continued for about a minute, then pulled his head away.Once again, our group was last to finish, since there were three of us. Tony took his seat, then Ms. Sharon stood up.“Good job, everyone,” she said. “Now, there are many positions involving oral sex, but the one that comes up more than any other is the 69.” She turned around and drew the number on the board. “It is named this, because the two bodies take this shape. One person lies down, and the other lies on top of them, facing the other way. What’s unique about this position is it’s one of the only ways that two partners can give and receive oral sex simultaneously."Now, I’d like each group to demonstrate this position. Guys lay on the floor on your back, and the girls will get on top of you.”Alex laid down first. Once he was ready, I got on my knees, then straddled his face. He immediately started licking my cunt again. I let him go at it for a moment, enjoying it, and looked around.A few of the girls were facing the wrong direction, and couldn’t figure out what they were doing wrong. Amy looked particularly perplexed, as she mounted her partner in a cowgirl position, with his cock pressed against her ass cheeks. I didn’t get to see if she eventually figured it out, since I decided it was time to start sucking on Alex.I leaned forward, and I found that my mouth was at exactly the right spot to suck on his dick. So I did. As I sucked on him, he licked me and tongue-fucked me. After a good five minutes, Tony tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up, and realized I hadn’t given him a turn yet. So, I got up, he laid down, and I took the same position again, but over Tony this time.Doing this position with Tony was much better, probably because I was already worked up. Also, his cock was bigger and tasted better. While I sucked on Tony, he ate me out, and it was amazing.After too short a time, I heard Ms. Sharon’s say, “Alright everyone. That’s enough. Please return to your seats.”I reluctantly took Tony’s cock out of my mouth, and stood up. A few moments later, we were all back in our seats.“Excellent work everyone,” Ms. Sharon said. “Now, I only have one activity left, and then you may all leave. But before we begin, I have a few things to say, in regards to future activities and assignments."First off, today will be our last class that does not involve full-on intercourse. That means that if you have not already lost your virginity, and would like to do so in your own way, I would advise you to do so before the next class."Secondly, beginning today, you will have a homework assignment given at the end of each class, based on that day’s topic. A few guidelines for all of these assignments:"1. You must complete each assignment outside of class. Any activities in class may not be used for homework assignments."2. Each assignment will be graded simply upon completion. If you do the given activity, you get full credit. If you don’t do it, you get a zero."3. Since I will not be there when you complete the assignment, you are required to submit proof of each assignment, in the form of photographs or videos."4. I will drop one homework grade. That means you have the choice to not complete any one assignment. Beyond that, if you don’t complete the assignment, you get a zero. However, there will be many opportunities for extra credit, so if you feel uncomfortable doing more than one assignment, you may make up some of the points by complete additional tasks in other assignments."5. Most of the assignments will require someone else’s participation. You may partner with any of your classmates, but only for one assignment each. So, if you complete this first assignment with one person, you may not complete a later one with that same person. You also have the option of completing the assignments with people outside of class, but you must get their written consent. I have forms for that in my office."Any questions about the homework?” Nobody raised their hands. “Alright. One last thing: there will be a final project for this class, but you don’t need to worry about the details of that right now. I will explain it in the last few weeks of class."Alright, now on to today’s final activity. First, we need to move all the chairs to the sides, so we have ample floor space.” We moved chairs around, and soon we were all standing in the middle of the room. “Excellent. Now, everyone form a circle, with your group, with the girl on the left. Because the numbers don’t quite work out, I’ll ask that Tony and Eric sit outside the circle. In a little bit, you can switch with Alex and John.”We took a few minutes to do this, but soon we were in a large circle. On my right was Alex, and to my left was Roberto.“Alright, now I’ve looked for a name for what this is called, and the best I could find is a daisy chain. Everyone lie on the ground. Guys lie on your back, and girls on your knees. Your face should be between the legs of the person to your left. When you are in position, go ahead and start pleasuring your partner.”Soon, we were all in position. I started sucking on Roberto’s cock, and was slightly surprised when I felt Alex’s mouth make contact with my cunt. We all sucked and licked each other, which caused many noises, including slurps and moans of pleasure.After a few minutes, Ms. Sharon had Tony and Alex (and Eric and John) switch places, so Tony was now sucking on my labia, while Alex watched. He took it upon himself to jack off.A few minutes more, and Ms. Sharon had us turn around. So now, I was sucking on Tony, and Roberto was fucking me with his tongue. She also said we were welcome to cum whenever we were ready, but we were to continue the daisy chain until she said to stop.Latoya was on the other side of Tony, being pleasured by him. Apparently she had done a good job before we turned around, because it didn’t take long for Tony released his load. I felt a large spurt of cum shoot into the back of my throat. Since I wasn’t expecting it yet, I gagged a little, but I followed Ms. Sharon’s rule, and did not remove my mouth.For the next few minutes the room filled with the sounds of grunts and moans, as many of the guys, and a few of the girls came. Ms. Sharon had Tony get up and switch with Alex again. While they were switching, I swallowed Tony’s load. I only had a few seconds to catch my breath, then Alex’s cock was in my mouth again.The entire time, Roberto was slowly but surely bringing me closer to my orgasm, and it finally happened shortly after I started sucking on Alex. I moaned a little, then more, and finally I came hard, pushing my pelvis into Roberto’s face, and my mouth further onto Alex’s cock. It felt amazing! I hadn’t cum in a few days, so this was a long time coming.I continued to moan through the whole thing, which must have felt good for Alex, because shortly after I started, he followed my lead. I felt his large load of cum fill my mouth. It was more cum than Tony had released. As soon as I felt he was done, I swallowed it all.We had both finished cumming, but we didn’t stop pleasuring each other, or our partners. It appeared Ms. Sharon was waiting for each person to cum. A few minutes later, the last person (Barbara) had cum, and Ms. Sharon told us all we could stand up, and return to our seats.When we were all seated, she asked, “Did everyone enjoy that?” I looked around, and saw many nods, and more smiles. “Good. Now, that’s all I had planned for today, but I need to give you your homework assignment."By the next class period, you must give oral sex to one person, and receive oral sex from a different person. I don’t have any preference over whether your partners are the same sex or different. Remember, you may do your assignment with your classmates, but that counts them out for future assignments. Also, don’t forget to get proof of the encounters."Everyone have a good day, and I’ll see you next class period.”With that we were dismissed. We all stood, got dressed, and walked out. On the way out, I started talking with Nicole. After a bit of discussion about the class, she said she was going to a dining hall, and asked if I wanted to join her.“Nah, I’m not really hungry,” I said, with a smile. She laughed, and we parted ways.On my walk back to my dorm room, I thought about the day’s experience. Three guys had sucked on my cunt lips, fucked me with their tongues, and licked my clit. In exchange, I had sucked on each of their cocks, and swallowed two loads of cum. Quite an eventful morning.I also thought about who I’d complete the assignment with. After a little thought, I pulled my phone out and texted Nicole and asked her if she wanted to get her food to go, and join me in my room. Then I texted Alex as well.Suffice to say, the remainder of my day was fun. ;)Vaginal Intercourse.“Hello again, class,” Ms. Sharon said as she entered the classroom. “Long time, no see.”We were all seated, and ready to learn. And by that, I mean we were naked, and horny. Last class, the teacher had alluded to what we’d be doing this class period. She had made a point to tell everyone that if they cared to lose their virginity outside of class, to do it before today, because it would involve intercourse.This wasn’t a problem for me. I had lost mine to a good friend of mine in high school. I looked around and wondered if anyone else in the room was thinking about their first time too.I pulled myself away from that line of thought, and noticed I was already starting to get a little wet, just thinking about it. But it wasn’t just the thought of my first time that had me excited. All around the room there were cushions on the floor. I could only assume what they were for, but I had a pretty good idea.Ms. Sharon took her spot at the front of the classroom, and put her bag down, turning to the class. “Alright, class. Today, we’re in for a great time. I’ve already received everyone’s homework from last class, either via my email or my drop box, so we’ll jump straight into today’s material. I’m going to need a male and female volunteer.”She looked around at everyone, waiting for someone to raise their hand, but nobody did. I could tell everyone was excited about what was going to happen. I could visibly see it in some of the guys’ laps. But I guess nobody wanted to be the first to go. Ms. Sharon sighed, and said, “Alright, then I’ll have to resort back to the bag of volunteers”I had completely forgotten about the bag of volunteers. Back in the anatomy class, Ms. Sharon had created two bags with males and females, and said she’d use it if nobody volunteered for something. Those names that were removed from the bag would not be returned until everyone had been picked.“If you all remember, the only two names we’ve removed from the bag have been Nicole and Filipe. In our toys class, all the girls got a chance to demonstrate one of the toys, including Nicole, so I won’t be removing any new names from the girls bag. From the guy’s bag, however, I’ve already taken the liberty of removing Tony’s name, since he demoed the fleshlight, and none of the other guys demoed."So, first a girl.” She reached her hand into one of the bags, and I felt my heart start pumping with anticipation. Would it be my name she picked? If it was, what would she ask me to do? She pulled out a piece of paper, and unfolded it. “Sofia, please come up here.”I felt a little relieved, and a little disappointed. I looked over and saw the cute Latina girl lean her head forward in mock-defeat. Then she stood up, smiled, and walk to the front of the class. Her mid-sized tits, and beautiful ass jiggled the whole way.M

Samantha's New Toy.Based on a post by smalltitslovr, in 4 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Steamy Stories.of my thighs slide against each. I knew if Tristan didn’t stop soon, I would have an entire other problem.Finally, Tristan stopped. He put the remote back on the bench, and stood up. “Well, I gotta head to class now,” he said. “See you around, Samantha. Nice to meet you.”I couldn’t say anything, because I knew my voice would give away what I was feeling, so I simply nodded to him. Then he turned around and left.As soon as he was turned around, I grabbed the controller, and turned the knob all the way down, and finally, the buzzing stopped. As I caught my breath, I looked down. When Tristan was far enough away, I opened my legs a little, and assessed the situation.The denim material between my legs was completely soaked with my cunt juices. I was also now regretting choosing a pair of shorts that were so short. I could see the inside of my thighs were shiny.I started to wipe away what I could, but then I noticed some people approaching nearby. So, I grabbedA lesson on oral sex.Monday morning came, and it was time to go to ASE, once again. I got up, took a shower, then got dressed. Like usual, I knew it didn’t really matter what I wore, because I would be naked in class anyhow. So, I pulled on a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt, not bothering with underwear. Then I grabbed my bag, and headed to class.I was running a little late, so I was nearly last to arrive. When I entered, I was greeted by the lovely sight of 11 naked students, sitting, waiting for class to start. I quickly pulled my shirt off, and saw the other three missing students (Alex, Eric, and Sofia) had just arrived as well. We all stripped, and soon Ms. Sharon came in, naked as usual.“Hello everyone,” she said. “I hope you had a good weekend. Everyone, please get with your partners.”A couple minutes later, and I was seated next to Alex and Tony. Everyone else was seated with their partner(s) as well.“Good. As we learned in our last class, the human body reacts to various stimuli. We demonstrated and observed this with sex toys. Today, we’ll take this a step further, and move on to oral intercourse. Who can tell me what oral sex is?”Nobody else seemed eager to speak up, so I raised my hand.“Yes, Samantha.”“Well, oral sex is when one person uses their mouth to pleasure someone else.”“Correct. There are three basic types of oral sex. Arguably the most common (although there’s no real way to prove it) is fellatio, also known as giving head, or a blow job, among other names. This is when a person uses their mouth to suck on a male’s cock. Let’s go ahead and practice that now."Although this can be performed by males, we won’t be covering homosexual intercourse for a few more classes. So, I will ask that all the females in the class please perform this act on your partners. Samantha, please do this for both Alex and Tony. Everyone, take special note of how much length you can take in your mouth, and try to take as much as you can. Also, guys, please don’t cum just yet. I’ll give you time for that in a little while.”Ms. Sharon then turned to John and Eric, and got on her knees. With no hesitation, she grabbed John’s cock, and put her lips around it, sliding it deep inside her mouth.Looking away, I turned to Alex and Tony. “Alright,” I said. “Who’s first?”They looked at each other, and both raised their hands. I smiled, and down on my knees. I moved closer, until I was between Tony’s legs, which he had opened wide for me. His cock was only slightly hard, but as soon as I grabbed it, it grew quickly.I hesitated at first, because I hadn’t ever tasted a guy’s cock before, so I started by licking the tip. It tasted a little salty, but not too bad. Then I slowly put my lips around the tip, and slid it across my tongue. Inch by inch, I took his manhood into my mouth, until I felt the tip push against the back of my throat.Remembering Ms. Sharon’s words, I pushed it further, until I felt myself start to gag. I knew it was possible to take more, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I stopped at about four inches. Then, I slid it back out. Before removing it, though, I felt Tony’s hand on the back of my head. He gently pushed me back down, and I didn’t resist. Soon, with Tony’s guidance, I was bobbing my head up and down on his cock. I sped up, and kept sucking on him. I felt him start to throb in my mouth, and I knew he was close to cumming. I wasn’t ready for that, so I pulled his cock out, and leaned back.“Thank you, Samantha,” he said. His cock throbbed up and down, but I didn’t see any cum.After taking a moment to catch my breath, I turned to Alex. “Your turn.” I said, smiling up at him.I moved forward, until my head was between his thighs. His cock was in his hand, and it appeared he had been jacking off while watching my performance with Tony. He aimed his cock at my face. With no hesitation this time, I opened my mouth, and graciously accepted it. It was smaller than Tony’s, but I still couldn’t quite take the whole thing on the first thrust. On the second one however, I stopped when it hit my throat, and realized there was only about half an inch left, so I pushed myself, and took the tip down my throat, until I felt my lips touch his balls. Then I pulled back out. He thrust into me a few more times, then pulled all the way out.I reached up and cleaned a little bit of drool and pre-cum from my lips, then got up and sat back in my chair. Looking around, it looked like I was last to finish, and everyone had been watching me.“Excellent job, everyone,” said Ms. Sharon, with a smile. “I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did."Now, the other type of oral sex is called cunnilingus; the act of orally pleasuring a woman. This is usually done by licking and sucking on the girl’s labia, but can also involve sticking the tongue inside her. Guys, please practice this on your partners now.”I turned back to the boys, and waited for their lead. They looked at each other and decided Alex should go first. As he moved closer, I leaned back, and spread my legs. He put his head down, and gave my cunt a long lick. Of course, by this time, I was very wet, so he got a good taste of my juices.Then he put his mouth in between my legs and started going at it. I lifted my legs up to give him a good angle. I noticed many of the girls around the room were in much the same position. Alex continued licking my cunt, then he sucked on my lips. After a few seconds of that, he pushed his tongue inside me, which felt amazing. Then he pulled his head away.Alex moved away, and Tony immediately took his place. There was only about 3 seconds between when Alex pulled his head away, and Tony put his lips on mine. I could immediately tell Tony had done this before. He immediately found my clit, and teased it with his tongue. Then he slowly slid his tongue down, until it was at my hole, and he started fucking me with it. I let my head fall back, and enjoyed it. He continued for about a minute, then pulled his head away.Once again, our group was last to finish, since there were three of us. Tony took his seat, then Ms. Sharon stood up.“Good job, everyone,” she said. “Now, there are many positions involving oral sex, but the one that comes up more than any other is the 69.” She turned around and drew the number on the board. “It is named this, because the two bodies take this shape. One person lies down, and the other lies on top of them, facing the other way. What’s unique about this position is it’s one of the only ways that two partners can give and receive oral sex simultaneously."Now, I’d like each group to demonstrate this position. Guys lay on the floor on your back, and the girls will get on top of you.”Alex laid down first. Once he was ready, I got on my knees, then straddled his face. He immediately started licking my cunt again. I let him go at it for a moment, enjoying it, and looked around.A few of the girls were facing the wrong direction, and couldn’t figure out what they were doing wrong. Amy looked particularly perplexed, as she mounted her partner in a cowgirl position, with his cock pressed against her ass cheeks. I didn’t get to see if she eventually figured it out, since I decided it was time to start sucking on Alex.I leaned forward, and I found that my mouth was at exactly the right spot to suck on his dick. So I did. As I sucked on him, he licked me and tongue-fucked me. After a good five minutes, Tony tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up, and realized I hadn’t given him a turn yet. So, I got up, he laid down, and I took the same position again, but over Tony this time.Doing this position with Tony was much better, probably because I was already worked up. Also, his cock was bigger and tasted better. While I sucked on Tony, he ate me out, and it was amazing.After too short a time, I heard Ms. Sharon’s say, “Alright everyone. That’s enough. Please return to your seats.”I reluctantly took Tony’s cock out of my mouth, and stood up. A few moments later, we were all back in our seats.“Excellent work everyone,” Ms. Sharon said. “Now, I only have one activity left, and then you may all leave. But before we begin, I have a few things to say, in regards to future activities and assignments."First off, today will be our last class that does not involve full-on intercourse. That means that if you have not already lost your virginity, and would like to do so in your own way, I would advise you to do so before the next class."Secondly, beginning today, you will have a homework assignment given at the end of each class, based on that day’s topic. A few guidelines for all of these assignments:"1. You must complete each assignment outside of class. Any activities in class may not be used for homework assignments."2. Each assignment will be graded simply upon completion. If you do the given activity, you get full credit. If you don’t do it, you get a zero."3. Since I will not be there when you complete the assignment, you are required to submit proof of each assignment, in the form of photographs or videos."4. I will drop one homework grade. That means you have the choice to not complete any one assignment. Beyond that, if you don’t complete the assignment, you get a zero. However, there will be many opportunities for extra credit, so if you feel uncomfortable doing more than one assignment, you may make up some of the points by complete additional tasks in other assignments."5. Most of the assignments will require someone else’s participation. You may partner with any of your classmates, but only for one assignment each. So, if you complete this first assignment with one person, you may not complete a later one with that same person. You also have the option of completing the assignments with people outside of class, but you must get their written consent. I have forms for that in my office."Any questions about the homework?” Nobody raised their hands. “Alright. One last thing: there will be a final project for this class, but you don’t need to worry about the details of that right now. I will explain it in the last few weeks of class."Alright, now on to today’s final activity. First, we need to move all the chairs to the sides, so we have ample floor space.” We moved chairs around, and soon we were all standing in the middle of the room. “Excellent. Now, everyone form a circle, with your group, with the girl on the left. Because the numbers don’t quite work out, I’ll ask that Tony and Eric sit outside the circle. In a little bit, you can switch with Alex and John.”We took a few minutes to do this, but soon we were in a large circle. On my right was Alex, and to my left was Roberto.“Alright, now I’ve looked for a name for what this is called, and the best I could find is a daisy chain. Everyone lie on the ground. Guys lie on your back, and girls on your knees. Your face should be between the legs of the person to your left. When you are in position, go ahead and start pleasuring your partner.”Soon, we were all in position. I started sucking on Roberto’s cock, and was slightly surprised when I felt Alex’s mouth make contact with my cunt. We all sucked and licked each other, which caused many noises, including slurps and moans of pleasure.After a few minutes, Ms. Sharon had Tony and Alex (and Eric and John) switch places, so Tony was now sucking on my labia, while Alex watched. He took it upon himself to jack off.A few minutes more, and Ms. Sharon had us turn around. So now, I was sucking on Tony, and Roberto was fucking me with his tongue. She also said we were welcome to cum whenever we were ready, but we were to continue the daisy chain until she said to stop.Latoya was on the other side of Tony, being pleasured by him. Apparently she had done a good job before we turned around, because it didn’t take long for Tony released his load. I felt a large spurt of cum shoot into the back of my throat. Since I wasn’t expecting it yet, I gagged a little, but I followed Ms. Sharon’s rule, and did not remove my mouth.For the next few minutes the room filled with the sounds of grunts and moans, as many of the guys, and a few of the girls came. Ms. Sharon had Tony get up and switch with Alex again. While they were switching, I swallowed Tony’s load. I only had a few seconds to catch my breath, then Alex’s cock was in my mouth again.The entire time, Roberto was slowly but surely bringing me closer to my orgasm, and it finally happened shortly after I started sucking on Alex. I moaned a little, then more, and finally I came hard, pushing my pelvis into Roberto’s face, and my mouth further onto Alex’s cock. It felt amazing! I hadn’t cum in a few days, so this was a long time coming.I continued to moan through the whole thing, which must have felt good for Alex, because shortly after I started, he followed my lead. I felt his large load of cum fill my mouth. It was more cum than Tony had released. As soon as I felt he was done, I swallowed it all.We had both finished cumming, but we didn’t stop pleasuring each other, or our partners. It appeared Ms. Sharon was waiting for each person to cum. A few minutes later, the last person (Barbara) had cum, and Ms. Sharon told us all we could stand up, and return to our seats.When we were all seated, she asked, “Did everyone enjoy that?” I looked around, and saw many nods, and more smiles. “Good. Now, that’s all I had planned for today, but I need to give you your homework assignment."By the next class period, you must give oral sex to one person, and receive oral sex from a different person. I don’t have any preference over whether your partners are the same sex or different. Remember, you may do your assignment with your classmates, but that counts them out for future assignments. Also, don’t forget to get proof of the encounters."Everyone have a good day, and I’ll see you next class period.”With that we were dismissed. We all stood, got dressed, and walked out. On the way out, I started talking with Nicole. After a bit of discussion about the class, she said she was going to a dining hall, and asked if I wanted to join her.“Nah, I’m not really hungry,” I said, with a smile. She laughed, and we parted ways.On my walk back to my dorm room, I thought about the day’s experience. Three guys had sucked on my cunt lips, fucked me with their tongues, and licked my clit. In exchange, I had sucked on each of their cocks, and swallowed two loads of cum. Quite an eventful morning.I also thought about who I’d complete the assignment with. After a little thought, I pulled my phone out and texted Nicole and asked her if she wanted to get her food to go, and join me in my room. Then I texted Alex as well.Suffice to say, the remainder of my day was fun. ;)Vaginal Intercourse.“Hello again, class,” Ms. Sharon said as she entered the classroom. “Long time, no see.”We were all seated, and ready to learn. And by that, I mean we were naked, and horny. Last class, the teacher had alluded to what we’d be doing this class period. She had made a point to tell everyone that if they cared to lose their virginity outside of class, to do it before today, because it would involve intercourse.This wasn’t a problem for me. I had lost mine to a good friend of mine in high school. I looked around and wondered if anyone else in the room was thinking about their first time too.I pulled myself away from that line of thought, and noticed I was already starting to get a little wet, just thinking about it. But it wasn’t just the thought of my first time that had me excited. All around the room there were cushions on the floor. I could only assume what they were for, but I had a pretty good idea.Ms. Sharon took her spot at the front of the classroom, and put her bag down, turning to the class. “Alright, class. Today, we’re in for a great time. I’ve already received everyone’s homework from last class, either via my email or my drop box, so we’ll jump straight into today’s material. I’m going to need a male and female volunteer.”She looked around at everyone, waiting for someone to raise their hand, but nobody did. I could tell everyone was excited about what was going to happen. I could visibly see it in some of the guys’ laps. But I guess nobody wanted to be the first to go. Ms. Sharon sighed, and said, “Alright, then I’ll have to resort back to the bag of volunteers”I had completely forgotten about the bag of volunteers. Back in the anatomy class, Ms. Sharon had created two bags with males and females, and said she’d use it if nobody volunteered for something. Those names that were removed from the bag would not be returned until everyone had been picked.“If you all remember, the only two names we’ve removed from the bag have been Nicole and Filipe. In our toys class, all the girls got a chance to demonstrate one of the toys, including Nicole, so I won’t be removing any new names from the girls bag. From the guy’s bag, however, I’ve already taken the liberty of removing Tony’s name, since he demoed the fleshlight, and none of the other guys demoed."So, first a girl.” She reached her hand into one of the bags, and I felt my heart start pumping with anticipation. Would it be my name she picked? If it was, what would she ask me to do? She pulled out a piece of paper, and unfolded it. “Sofia, please come up here.”I felt a little relieved, and a little disappointed. I looked over and saw the cute Latina girl lean her head forward in mock-defeat. Then she stood up, smiled, and walk to the front of the class. Her mid-sized tits, and beautiful ass jiggled the whole way.M

Samantha's New Toy.Based on a post by smalltitslovr, in 4 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Steamy Stories.of my thighs slide against each. I knew if Tristan didn’t stop soon, I would have an entire other problem.Finally, Tristan stopped. He put the remote back on the bench, and stood up. “Well, I gotta head to class now,” he said. “See you around, Samantha. Nice to meet you.”I couldn’t say anything, because I knew my voice would give away what I was feeling, so I simply nodded to him. Then he turned around and left.As soon as he was turned around, I grabbed the controller, and turned the knob all the way down, and finally, the buzzing stopped. As I caught my breath, I looked down. When Tristan was far enough away, I opened my legs a little, and assessed the situation.The denim material between my legs was completely soaked with my cunt juices. I was also now regretting choosing a pair of shorts that were so short. I could see the inside of my thighs were shiny.I started to wipe away what I could, but then I noticed some people approaching nearby. So, I grabbedA lesson on oral sex.Monday morning came, and it was time to go to ASE, once again. I got up, took a shower, then got dressed. Like usual, I knew it didn’t really matter what I wore, because I would be naked in class anyhow. So, I pulled on a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt, not bothering with underwear. Then I grabbed my bag, and headed to class.I was running a little late, so I was nearly last to arrive. When I entered, I was greeted by the lovely sight of 11 naked students, sitting, waiting for class to start. I quickly pulled my shirt off, and saw the other three missing students (Alex, Eric, and Sofia) had just arrived as well. We all stripped, and soon Ms. Sharon came in, naked as usual.“Hello everyone,” she said. “I hope you had a good weekend. Everyone, please get with your partners.”A couple minutes later, and I was seated next to Alex and Tony. Everyone else was seated with their partner(s) as well.“Good. As we learned in our last class, the human body reacts to various stimuli. We demonstrated and observed this with sex toys. Today, we’ll take this a step further, and move on to oral intercourse. Who can tell me what oral sex is?”Nobody else seemed eager to speak up, so I raised my hand.“Yes, Samantha.”“Well, oral sex is when one person uses their mouth to pleasure someone else.”“Correct. There are three basic types of oral sex. Arguably the most common (although there’s no real way to prove it) is fellatio, also known as giving head, or a blow job, among other names. This is when a person uses their mouth to suck on a male’s cock. Let’s go ahead and practice that now."Although this can be performed by males, we won’t be covering homosexual intercourse for a few more classes. So, I will ask that all the females in the class please perform this act on your partners. Samantha, please do this for both Alex and Tony. Everyone, take special note of how much length you can take in your mouth, and try to take as much as you can. Also, guys, please don’t cum just yet. I’ll give you time for that in a little while.”Ms. Sharon then turned to John and Eric, and got on her knees. With no hesitation, she grabbed John’s cock, and put her lips around it, sliding it deep inside her mouth.Looking away, I turned to Alex and Tony. “Alright,” I said. “Who’s first?”They looked at each other, and both raised their hands. I smiled, and down on my knees. I moved closer, until I was between Tony’s legs, which he had opened wide for me. His cock was only slightly hard, but as soon as I grabbed it, it grew quickly.I hesitated at first, because I hadn’t ever tasted a guy’s cock before, so I started by licking the tip. It tasted a little salty, but not too bad. Then I slowly put my lips around the tip, and slid it across my tongue. Inch by inch, I took his manhood into my mouth, until I felt the tip push against the back of my throat.Remembering Ms. Sharon’s words, I pushed it further, until I felt myself start to gag. I knew it was possible to take more, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I stopped at about four inches. Then, I slid it back out. Before removing it, though, I felt Tony’s hand on the back of my head. He gently pushed me back down, and I didn’t resist. Soon, with Tony’s guidance, I was bobbing my head up and down on his cock. I sped up, and kept sucking on him. I felt him start to throb in my mouth, and I knew he was close to cumming. I wasn’t ready for that, so I pulled his cock out, and leaned back.“Thank you, Samantha,” he said. His cock throbbed up and down, but I didn’t see any cum.After taking a moment to catch my breath, I turned to Alex. “Your turn.” I said, smiling up at him.I moved forward, until my head was between his thighs. His cock was in his hand, and it appeared he had been jacking off while watching my performance with Tony. He aimed his cock at my face. With no hesitation this time, I opened my mouth, and graciously accepted it. It was smaller than Tony’s, but I still couldn’t quite take the whole thing on the first thrust. On the second one however, I stopped when it hit my throat, and realized there was only about half an inch left, so I pushed myself, and took the tip down my throat, until I felt my lips touch his balls. Then I pulled back out. He thrust into me a few more times, then pulled all the way out.I reached up and cleaned a little bit of drool and pre-cum from my lips, then got up and sat back in my chair. Looking around, it looked like I was last to finish, and everyone had been watching me.“Excellent job, everyone,” said Ms. Sharon, with a smile. “I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did."Now, the other type of oral sex is called cunnilingus; the act of orally pleasuring a woman. This is usually done by licking and sucking on the girl’s labia, but can also involve sticking the tongue inside her. Guys, please practice this on your partners now.”I turned back to the boys, and waited for their lead. They looked at each other and decided Alex should go first. As he moved closer, I leaned back, and spread my legs. He put his head down, and gave my cunt a long lick. Of course, by this time, I was very wet, so he got a good taste of my juices.Then he put his mouth in between my legs and started going at it. I lifted my legs up to give him a good angle. I noticed many of the girls around the room were in much the same position. Alex continued licking my cunt, then he sucked on my lips. After a few seconds of that, he pushed his tongue inside me, which felt amazing. Then he pulled his head away.Alex moved away, and Tony immediately took his place. There was only about 3 seconds between when Alex pulled his head away, and Tony put his lips on mine. I could immediately tell Tony had done this before. He immediately found my clit, and teased it with his tongue. Then he slowly slid his tongue down, until it was at my hole, and he started fucking me with it. I let my head fall back, and enjoyed it. He continued for about a minute, then pulled his head away.Once again, our group was last to finish, since there were three of us. Tony took his seat, then Ms. Sharon stood up.“Good job, everyone,” she said. “Now, there are many positions involving oral sex, but the one that comes up more than any other is the 69.” She turned around and drew the number on the board. “It is named this, because the two bodies take this shape. One person lies down, and the other lies on top of them, facing the other way. What’s unique about this position is it’s one of the only ways that two partners can give and receive oral sex simultaneously."Now, I’d like each group to demonstrate this position. Guys lay on the floor on your back, and the girls will get on top of you.”Alex laid down first. Once he was ready, I got on my knees, then straddled his face. He immediately started licking my cunt again. I let him go at it for a moment, enjoying it, and looked around.A few of the girls were facing the wrong direction, and couldn’t figure out what they were doing wrong. Amy looked particularly perplexed, as she mounted her partner in a cowgirl position, with his cock pressed against her ass cheeks. I didn’t get to see if she eventually figured it out, since I decided it was time to start sucking on Alex.I leaned forward, and I found that my mouth was at exactly the right spot to suck on his dick. So I did. As I sucked on him, he licked me and tongue-fucked me. After a good five minutes, Tony tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up, and realized I hadn’t given him a turn yet. So, I got up, he laid down, and I took the same position again, but over Tony this time.Doing this position with Tony was much better, probably because I was already worked up. Also, his cock was bigger and tasted better. While I sucked on Tony, he ate me out, and it was amazing.After too short a time, I heard Ms. Sharon’s say, “Alright everyone. That’s enough. Please return to your seats.”I reluctantly took Tony’s cock out of my mouth, and stood up. A few moments later, we were all back in our seats.“Excellent work everyone,” Ms. Sharon said. “Now, I only have one activity left, and then you may all leave. But before we begin, I have a few things to say, in regards to future activities and assignments."First off, today will be our last class that does not involve full-on intercourse. That means that if you have not already lost your virginity, and would like to do so in your own way, I would advise you to do so before the next class."Secondly, beginning today, you will have a homework assignment given at the end of each class, based on that day’s topic. A few guidelines for all of these assignments:"1. You must complete each assignment outside of class. Any activities in class may not be used for homework assignments."2. Each assignment will be graded simply upon completion. If you do the given activity, you get full credit. If you don’t do it, you get a zero."3. Since I will not be there when you complete the assignment, you are required to submit proof of each assignment, in the form of photographs or videos."4. I will drop one homework grade. That means you have the choice to not complete any one assignment. Beyond that, if you don’t complete the assignment, you get a zero. However, there will be many opportunities for extra credit, so if you feel uncomfortable doing more than one assignment, you may make up some of the points by complete additional tasks in other assignments."5. Most of the assignments will require someone else’s participation. You may partner with any of your classmates, but only for one assignment each. So, if you complete this first assignment with one person, you may not complete a later one with that same person. You also have the option of completing the assignments with people outside of class, but you must get their written consent. I have forms for that in my office."Any questions about the homework?” Nobody raised their hands. “Alright. One last thing: there will be a final project for this class, but you don’t need to worry about the details of that right now. I will explain it in the last few weeks of class."Alright, now on to today’s final activity. First, we need to move all the chairs to the sides, so we have ample floor space.” We moved chairs around, and soon we were all standing in the middle of the room. “Excellent. Now, everyone form a circle, with your group, with the girl on the left. Because the numbers don’t quite work out, I’ll ask that Tony and Eric sit outside the circle. In a little bit, you can switch with Alex and John.”We took a few minutes to do this, but soon we were in a large circle. On my right was Alex, and to my left was Roberto.“Alright, now I’ve looked for a name for what this is called, and the best I could find is a daisy chain. Everyone lie on the ground. Guys lie on your back, and girls on your knees. Your face should be between the legs of the person to your left. When you are in position, go ahead and start pleasuring your partner.”Soon, we were all in position. I started sucking on Roberto’s cock, and was slightly surprised when I felt Alex’s mouth make contact with my cunt. We all sucked and licked each other, which caused many noises, including slurps and moans of pleasure.After a few minutes, Ms. Sharon had Tony and Alex (and Eric and John) switch places, so Tony was now sucking on my labia, while Alex watched. He took it upon himself to jack off.A few minutes more, and Ms. Sharon had us turn around. So now, I was sucking on Tony, and Roberto was fucking me with his tongue. She also said we were welcome to cum whenever we were ready, but we were to continue the daisy chain until she said to stop.Latoya was on the other side of Tony, being pleasured by him. Apparently she had done a good job before we turned around, because it didn’t take long for Tony released his load. I felt a large spurt of cum shoot into the back of my throat. Since I wasn’t expecting it yet, I gagged a little, but I followed Ms. Sharon’s rule, and did not remove my mouth.For the next few minutes the room filled with the sounds of grunts and moans, as many of the guys, and a few of the girls came. Ms. Sharon had Tony get up and switch with Alex again. While they were switching, I swallowed Tony’s load. I only had a few seconds to catch my breath, then Alex’s cock was in my mouth again.The entire time, Roberto was slowly but surely bringing me closer to my orgasm, and it finally happened shortly after I started sucking on Alex. I moaned a little, then more, and finally I came hard, pushing my pelvis into Roberto’s face, and my mouth further onto Alex’s cock. It felt amazing! I hadn’t cum in a few days, so this was a long time coming.I continued to moan through the whole thing, which must have felt good for Alex, because shortly after I started, he followed my lead. I felt his large load of cum fill my mouth. It was more cum than Tony had released. As soon as I felt he was done, I swallowed it all.We had both finished cumming, but we didn’t stop pleasuring each other, or our partners. It appeared Ms. Sharon was waiting for each person to cum. A few minutes later, the last person (Barbara) had cum, and Ms. Sharon told us all we could stand up, and return to our seats.When we were all seated, she asked, “Did everyone enjoy that?” I looked around, and saw many nods, and more smiles. “Good. Now, that’s all I had planned for today, but I need to give you your homework assignment."By the next class period, you must give oral sex to one person, and receive oral sex from a different person. I don’t have any preference over whether your partners are the same sex or different. Remember, you may do your assignment with your classmates, but that counts them out for future assignments. Also, don’t forget to get proof of the encounters."Everyone have a good day, and I’ll see you next class period.”With that we were dismissed. We all stood, got dressed, and walked out. On the way out, I started talking with Nicole. After a bit of discussion about the class, she said she was going to a dining hall, and asked if I wanted to join her.“Nah, I’m not really hungry,” I said, with a smile. She laughed, and we parted ways.On my walk back to my dorm room, I thought about the day’s experience. Three guys had sucked on my cunt lips, fucked me with their tongues, and licked my clit. In exchange, I had sucked on each of their cocks, and swallowed two loads of cum. Quite an eventful morning.I also thought about who I’d complete the assignment with. After a little thought, I pulled my phone out and texted Nicole and asked her if she wanted to get her food to go, and join me in my room. Then I texted Alex as well.Suffice to say, the remainder of my day was fun. ;)Vaginal Intercourse.“Hello again, class,” Ms. Sharon said as she entered the classroom. “Long time, no see.”We were all seated, and ready to learn. And by that, I mean we were naked, and horny. Last class, the teacher had alluded to what we’d be doing this class period. She had made a point to tell everyone that if they cared to lose their virginity outside of class, to do it before today, because it would involve intercourse.This wasn’t a problem for me. I had lost mine to a good friend of mine in high school. I looked around and wondered if anyone else in the room was thinking about their first time too.I pulled myself away from that line of thought, and noticed I was already starting to get a little wet, just thinking about it. But it wasn’t just the thought of my first time that had me excited. All around the room there were cushions on the floor. I could only assume what they were for, but I had a pretty good idea.Ms. Sharon took her spot at the front of the classroom, and put her bag down, turning to the class. “Alright, class. Today, we’re in for a great time. I’ve already received everyone’s homework from last class, either via my email or my drop box, so we’ll jump straight into today’s material. I’m going to need a male and female volunteer.”She looked around at everyone, waiting for someone to raise their hand, but nobody did. I could tell everyone was excited about what was going to happen. I could visibly see it in some of the guys’ laps. But I guess nobody wanted to be the first to go. Ms. Sharon sighed, and said, “Alright, then I’ll have to resort back to the bag of volunteers”I had completely forgotten about the bag of volunteers. Back in the anatomy class, Ms. Sharon had created two bags with males and females, and said she’d use it if nobody volunteered for something. Those names that were removed from the bag would not be returned until everyone had been picked.“If you all remember, the only two names we’ve removed from the bag have been Nicole and Filipe. In our toys class, all the girls got a chance to demonstrate one of the toys, including Nicole, so I won’t be removing any new names from the girls bag. From the guy’s bag, however, I’ve already taken the liberty of removing Tony’s name, since he demoed the fleshlight, and none of the other guys demoed."So, first a girl.” She reached her hand into one of the bags, and I felt my heart start pumping with anticipation. Would it be my name she picked? If it was, what would she ask me to do? She pulled out a piece of paper, and unfolded it. “Sofia, please come up here.”I felt a little relieved, and a little disappointed. I looked over and saw the cute Latina girl lean her head forward in mock-defeat. Then she stood up, smiled, and walk to the front of the class. Her mid-sized tits, and beautiful ass jiggled the whole way.M

On this episode, Vin and Justin try to convince the Council of Nah that there might be more to Leprechauns and Faeries than meets the eye. Enjoy.

In today's show Chas confronts (and maybe reconciles) his longboard spite, Tony Hawk teaches Kelly Slater a lesson in how to contribute to the surf community while David designs a plan for redemption for Slater through exorcism, Gerry Lopez gets outed as a member of an elite secret society, Steph becomes an actual Barbie doll, and we learn which is the best culinary contraband to bring into the lineup. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nah- the market isn't crashing any time soon. In fact- there are so many reasons to be positive about this space!

Trump, İran'daki haleflik sürecinde ABD'nin de yer alması gerektiğini belirterek Mücteba Hamaney'in liderliğini reddetti. Azerbaycan, Nahçıvan'a yönelik İHA saldırısı nedeniyle İran'a nota verirken Tahran yönetimi iddiaları yalanladı.Bu bölüm Tersane Istanbul hakkında reklam içermektedir. Tersane İstanbul, Dünya Kadınlar Günü kapsamında 7 Mart'ta Zuhal Olcay konserine ev sahipliği yapıyor. Ayrıntılı bilgiye buradan ulaşabilirsiniz.

Iran kämpft erfolgreich weiter Ein Kommentar von Rainer Rupp.Die Regierung von Präsident Donald Trump soll Gerüchten zufolge in Panik geraten sein, denn angesichts ihrer entschlossenen und erfolgreichen militärischen Reaktion hat die neue iranische Führung einen dicken Strich durch Trumps feste Erwartung eines höchstens ein paar Tage dauernden Krieges und eines triumphalen US-Sieges gemacht. Ähnlich wie zu Beginn des 12-tägigen Kriegs im Juni vergangenen Jahres sind die brutalen US-zionistischen Enthauptungsschläge gegen die politische und militärische Führung fehlgeschlagen. Zwar gelang es den US-Zio-Völkerrechtsverbrechern erwartungsgemäß, einige Persönlichkeiten der obersten iranischen Führungsebene zu ermorden, aber die wurden schnell durch nicht weniger effiziente, jüngere Leute ersetzt, die nun einen über Jahrzehnte ausgearbeiteten Plan umsetzen und mit tödlicher Wucht auf die Angreifer zurückschlagen. Der Unterschied zum Juni 2025 besteht darin, dass a) die Iraner nun keine Rücksicht mehr nehmen (für sie handelt es sich um einen existentiellen Krieg, während es für die USA um einen willkürlich vom Zaun gebrochenen Krieg ihrer Wahl geht), und b) Hardline-Generäle das Kommando übernommen haben. Was sich derzeit abzeichnet – im Gegensatz zu dem, was die US-amerikanische und israelische Propagandamaschinerie darstellt – deutet darauf hin, dass Iran einen Plan umsetzt, der nicht nur darauf abzielt, die US-Streitkräfte mit ihren Basen aus der Region zu vertreiben, sondern auch das israelische Regime, nicht das israelische Volk! zu zerstören. Und nicht wenige Nah- und Mittelost-Experten räumen Iran dabei durchaus Erfolgschancen ein.„Den Verstand verloren?“Die Sperrung der Straße von Hormus ist in praktischer Hinsicht vollständig umgesetzt. Berichten zufolge dürfen nur noch chinesische und russische Schiffe passieren. Nur einen Tag nach der aufgeplusterten Erklärung von Präsident Trump, dass US-Kriegsschiffe Öltanker-Konvois bei der Passage durch die Straße von Hormus schützen würden, wurde diese Anweisung vom Hauptquartier der US-Marine klugerweise widerrufen. Die Marineführung war sich der schweren Verluste bewusst, welche die Umsetzung dieser gefährlich unüberlegten präsidialen Idee für die USA mit sich gebracht hätte. Kritiker Trumps bezeichneten seinen Konvoi-Vorschlag als weiteres Zeichen dafür, dass er „den Verstand verloren“ habe.Tatsächlich haben sich in letzter Zeit zunehmend Dinge ereignet, die nahelegen, dass Trumps kognitive Fähigkeiten zu versagen scheinen. Dies bedeutet, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit zunimmt, dass Trump in einer kritischen Situation er eine katastrophale Fehlentscheidung trifft, mit verheerenden Folgen nicht nur für die USA, sondern für die ganze Welt. Dagegen hoffen „Optimisten“, dass die wirtschaftliche Katastrophe, die sich derzeit vor allem für die westlichen Volkswirtschaften abzeichnet, ausreichend Druck auf Washington ausübt, um Trump politisch zu neutralisieren.Am Mittwochabend erreichte Washington eine Nachricht aus dem Iran, die die Panik im Weißen Haus über den weiteren Kriegsverlauf weiter angeheizt haben dürfte. Es wurde berichtet, dass die IRGC (Iranische Republikanische Garde Corps) die meisten US-Frühwarnradars in der ganzen Region zerstört habe. Ein mit der IRGC verbundener Telegram-Kanal vermerkte, dass die iranische Führung ein Kommuniqué veröffentlicht habe, in dem es hieß, Israel und die USA würden „blind“ sein. Die erste Reaktion im Westen war ungläubiges Staunen. Denn westlichen Medienberichten zufolge liegen die Iraner längst geschlagen und in den letzten Zügen am Boden. Folglich wurde diese Nachricht von westlichen Eliten als eine verrückte Durchhalteparole der auf dem letzten Loch pfeifenden iranischen Führung abgetan....https://apolut.net/panik-im-weissen-haus-von-rainer-rupp/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nice girls playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playli... In this episode of r/NiceGirls we meet some nice girls. Nah, just kidding. They're horrible people to be around and they just seem to stick like nothing else can. How do you get rid of them? Simple. Starve them of what they crave. Don't give them even a drop of attention and your nice girl problem will solve itself seemingly magically overnight! It doesn't matter what your background is, you always need to treat people like people and not use them simply to get off. Neckbeards seem to learn this lesson particularly slow and it really does make my blood boil... So we must bring it to light so others don't suffer alone. For your fill of neckbeard stories we've got you covered with the freshest weeaboo, niceguy, and neckbeard happenings on reddit. Stick with ReddX for your daily dose of cringe with a side-dish of relatability. You might even feel good for dessert... But who can say? ------------------------------------------------------------ #reddit #creepy #nicegirls Join me on Discord dude: https://discord.gg/Sju7YckUWu One-time PayPal donation: https://www.paypal.me/daytondo... Support this channel on Patreon: http://patreon.com/daytondoes Stalk me on the Twitter! http://www.twitter.com/daytond... Visit me over on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReddX... Got a story? I got a subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReddX... Here's an Amazon link to my microphone: https://amzn.to/3lInsRR Wanna rock the ReddX merch? https://teespring.com/stores/r... Character animations are by: https://twitter.com/DarkleyStu... Check out my other channel: https://www.youtube.com/dayton... Wifey's channel is right over here: https://www.youtube.com/channe... ------------------------------------------------------------ Did I mention that we have playlists??: Full neckbeard story compilations: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our neckbeard stories: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our legbeard stories: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our RPG Horror Stories: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our weeaboo tales: https://www.youtube.com/playli... ------------------------------------------------------------ Podcasts can provide some ReddX on the go! Check it out! Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/... Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/reddxy iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/... Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/fe... Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/... Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podc... Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/us/show... Podcast Addict: https://podcastaddict.com/podc... JioSaavn: https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows... Have you ever met a neckbeard or a nice guy? They are frustrating to deal with, but luckily you aren't alone! These r/neckbeardstories from Reddit are among the top posts of all time and include some of the funniest Reddit stories ever posted on the neckbeard stories subreddit! rSlash NeckbeardStories have all kinds of funny neckbeards in them, but especially the nice guy. And the weeaboo. There is a wide spectrum of neckbeards, and this is but a small slice of it. Listening to ReddX's neckbeard stories playlist is a great experience! These neckbeard stories Top Posts of All Time from Reddit are made for you to enjoy any time you feel like it, so be sure to save my rSlash neckbeard stories playlist to your favorites! While there are many rslash channels that read r/neckbeard stories and r/prorevenge from reddit. Some of the top rSlash entitled parents channels I recommend checking out are the original rSlash, Redditor, fresh, r/Bumfries, VoiceyHere, Mr Reddit, Storytime and Darkfluff. These Reddit story channels inspired me to start my own Reddit story channel, with a focus on Entitled Parents stories and at times going into the r/pettyrevenge and r/choosingbeggars subreddit as well. Because most of my audience prefers Entitled Parents stories of Reddit, I tend to just stick with reading the r/EntitleParents Top Posts of All Time. But I also enjoy getting up close and personal with neckbeards and weeaboos! Subscribe to ReddX for the freshest daily Reddit content. I post relatable readings of Reddit posts and Reddit stories every single day! Journey with me as I relate these amazing Reddit stories to my personal life journey. I'm greatly inspired by the top reddit posts of all time videos and reddit stories on YouTube. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channe... Discord: https://discord.gg/Sju7YckUWu Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/daytondo... PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/daytondo... Patreon: http://patreon.com/daytondoes Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/daytond... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReddX... Merch: https://reddx-shop.fourthwall....

You thought I fell off. Nah.

What does courage look like under fire? In captivity? In command? In service? This edition of Long Blue Leadership was recorded on location at the U.S. Air Force Academy's 33rd National Character and Leadership Symposium. We've explored these questions with our guests and captured the conversations for you. Ted Robertson, Multimedia and Podcast Specialist for the Air Force Academy Association and Foundation, hosts this special episode featuring voices shaped by combat, crises and lifelong service. Their message to cadets is clear: Leadership is earned through character, and character is forged in hard moments. - Seg. 1: Lt. Col. Mark George and C1C Jaime Snyder, officer and NCLS cadet director, respectively, set the stage for this year's NCLS and for the podcast. - Seg. 2: Senior Master Sgt. (Ret.) Israel "DT" Del Toro on courage in times of crisis. - Seg. 3: Task Force Hope developer and facilitator Maj. Tara Holmes on preparing future leaders to handle crisis before it happens. - Seg. 4: Former POW Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Edward Mechenbier '64, on leading in circumstances out of your control. - Seg. 5: Annapolis grad and Vietnam-era aviator, Capt. (Ret.) J. Charles Plumb on how character breeds courage. All of our guest's lives and careers reflect the reality of this year's theme through combat, crisis and service.     CONNECT WITH THE LONG BLUE LINE PODCAST NETWORK TEAM Ted Robertson | Producer and Editor:  Ted.Robertson@USAFA.org Send your feedback or nominate a guest: socialmedia@usafa.org   Ryan Hall | Director:  Ryan.Hall@USAFA.org  Bryan Grossman | Copy Editor:  Bryan.Grossman@USAFA.org Wyatt Hornsby | Executive Producer:  Wyatt.Hornsby@USAFA.org      ALL PAST LBL EPISODES  |  ALL LBLPN PRODUCTIONS AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR PODCAST PLATFORMS     FULL TRANSCRIPT OUR SPEAKERS:  - Host, Ted Robertson, Multimedia and Podcast Specialist, United States Air Force Academy Association and Foundation  - Seg. 1: C1C Jaime Snyder, NCLS Cadet Director; Lt. Col. Mark George, NCLS Officer  - Seg. 2: Senior Master Sargent Israel Del Toro  - Seg. 3: Maj. Tara Holmes, Task Force Hope  - Seg. 4: Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Edward Mechenbier '64  - Seg. 5: Capt. (Ret.) J. Charles Plumb   Ted Robertson 0:00 Welcome to Long Blue Line Podcast Network coverage of the 33rd annual National Character and Leadership Symposium. I'm Ted Robertson, multimedia and podcast specialist for the Air Force Academy Association & Foundation, coming to you from Polaris Hall located here at the United States Air Force Academy. This year's symposium centers on the theme Courage to Lead in the Profession of Arms: Combat and Crisis-tested Character, where attendees and cadets will explore how courage in all its forms shapes leaders when uncertainty, fear and consequence are real. Our coverage will start with the Center for Character and Leadership Development's Lt. Col. Mark George and NCLS director, Cadet 1st Class Jaime Snyder. They'll set the stage not only for NCLS, but for today's coverage. Then we'll talk with four key leaders speaking at the symposium, including Senior Master Sgt. (Ret.) Israel Del Torro on keeping courageous during times of crisis. We'll also talk with Task Force Hope developer and facilitator, Maj. Tara Holmes, on preparing leaders to handle crisis before it happens. Then, former POW, Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Edward Mechenbier, USAFA Class of '64, on leading in circumstances out of your control. And finally, Annapolis grad and Vietnam-era aviator, Capt. (Ret.) J. Charles Plumb, on how character breeds courage. All of our guests' lives and careers reflect the reality of this year's theme through combat, crisis and service. So I want to bring in our first two guests to help, as I said, frame the discussion today. We're going to dig in to learn what this is all about and sort of the “why” behind it. Cadet Jaime Snyder, 2026 NCLS director. Cadet Snyder, you've helped lead the organizing of the National Character and Leadership Symposium — 33rd year for this, as you know, and part of that work, you've trained cadets and permanent party. I'm going to ask you to explain permanent party, all of which helps strengthen your own public speaking and leadership communication skills. You want to kind of expound on that a bit? C1C Jaime Snyder 2:20 Yes, sir. So a part of my role being in NCLS is to, one, provide the guidance, the support and resources on the cadet side to succeed. But what really makes NCLS special is that we integrate permanent party with cadets. So oftentimes me, in supporting and training permanent party, is giving them cadet perspective, because while they're over here and the Center for Character and Leadership Development, we're over there in the Cadet Wing, and I can be the mediator between both parties. Ted Robertson 2:46 Let's talk a little bit about permanent party. What does that term mean? Who does that describe? C1C Jaime Snyder 2:52 Oh yes. Permanent party describes the civilian and military faculty that works in the Center for Character and Leadership Development that assists with the execution of NCLS — the National Character and Leadership Symposium. Ted Robertson 3:05 How big is the team behind this event every year? C1C Jaime Snyder 3:08 It's kind of complex where we'll get search cadets. We'll get a large number of volunteers, approximately around 300 from the Cadet Wing. Internal staff consists of 50 cadets who work it throughout the entire year, and around 50 staff members who are permanent party who work in the Center for Character and Leadership Development. Ted Robertson 3:29 I want to bring in next Lt. Col. Mark George, who is the experiential and training division chief and NCLS program director, the very fortunate man that gets to work for some incredibly talented cadets. Col. Mark George 3:43 That is absolutely true. Thanks to for having us on. Cadet Snyder has done an outstanding job leading this team. I came into this a little bit late. You know, we've had some reorganization here at the Academy, and after some shuffling, I got the honor and the privilege to take over NCLS while the planning was well underway. So my job was to just make sure this train kept rolling, that people had the resources that they needed, the top cover they needed. And as Jamie said, he was training me as a permanent party member to make sure that I had the cadet perspective. And then, you know, we were moving this ball forward as we got to this event. Ted Robertson 4:23 So coming up in the podcast we'll get to the sort of “why” and what's at the core of NCLS. Colonel, let's start with you. What is National Character and Leadership Symposium designed to do for cadets?   Col. Mark George 4:38 Sure. The National Character and Leadership Symposium — NCLS — is designed to bring exemplars that embody the core values and the traits that we want cadets to have when they become leaders on Day 1 and inspire them to a lifetime of service.   Ted Robertson 4:57 Cadet Snyder?   C1C Jaime Snyder 4:59 We definitely see at USAFA, there is a clear correlation with NCLS and character development. One thing we want cadets to get out of NCLS is to further develop leaders of character who are going to join the fight in the Air Force and Space Force, and that's why I see the epitome of NCLS as it's an opportunity to hear people's perspectives as well as learn from it and apply it to their daily lives. Ted Robertson 5:24 Gentlemen, this year's theme focuses on the courage to lead in the profession of arms. Cadet Snyder, we'll start with you. How did that theme come together, and why is it especially relevant for cadets right now? C1C Jaime Snyder 5:40 With our current structure at USAFA, we've had some implement of change. We recognize that the future war conflict is more prevalent than ever, and that it's important for the cadets to understand that we're changing the way we approach training, as well as what we're learning in curriculum. So this NCLS was an incredible opportunity to discuss courage when leading in the profession of arms, but furthermore, courage and crises-tested character. Which is what we're trying to further push along with what we do in training as well as what we teach in leadership. Ted Robertson 6:15 You make good decisions when your character is strong. You make those decisions with integrity when your character is intact and it's strong. Would you agree with that, Colonel? Col. Mark George 6:25 Absolutely. And I think Cadet Snyder hit the nail on the head that we really want the cadets to understand that the environments that they're stepping into are going to require that courage to do hard things. In my day, like we didn't necessarily think about the fight in that way. You know, we were kind of stovepiped in. And these cadets, whatever environment they may be stepping into, the next conflict is going to require a lot, a high demand of them, and their character is their foundation for that. Ted Robertson 6:59 One of the things you can say about this event is that it brings together voices from combat, crisis, athletics, academia and industry. How intentional is that mix, Cadet Snyder, and what do cadets gain from hearing such different perspectives on leadership and character? C1C Jaime Snyder 7:18 I think by hearing different perspectives, you get to see how universal courage is. When we say courage, it's not just one thing, it's also moral, social, spiritual. And by looking at different versions of courage, you can understand that there's different ways to actually apply courage. Understanding that courage is not the absence of fear, also knowing that courage is not simply being a confident individual. That it's more complex than you may define courage, and so you can then apply it that way — by looking at different perspectives. Ted Robertson 7:53 Colonel, I'll address this one to you as well. Col. Mark George 7:56 Sure. Courage — we're talking about courage here, and there's a heavy focus on the combat side with this year's speakers. The thing that sticks out to me is that courage always involves a decision to do the hard thing. And that's what all of our speakers brought this year. They're showing how in different environments, whether it's in a prison cell in Hanoi or up on the Space Station or — there's a hard decision and the right thing is sometimes pretty obvious, but it doesn't mean it's easy. It does not mean it's easy to do. And so courage always involves a decision to do the right thing. Ted Robertson 8:39 Cadet Snyder? C1C Jaime Snyder 8:40 What he said I find to be very true — understanding that courage is not simply doing something physical, but also in a leadership role, especially — we're talking to cadets who are going to soon be commissioned officers. It's important to know that you need to make the right decision on and off the battlefield. Ted Robertson 8:58 So from your perspective as a cadet — and this one is just for you, Cadet Snyder — what does it mean to help shape an event like NCLS while you're still developing as a leader yourself? C1C Jaime Snyder 9:10 What I've seen through NCLS is taking the time to relax. Don't focus on the future and focus where you're at right now, and that's character development. So don't let the pursuit of tomorrow diminish the joy today. We all have this aspiration to graduate, throw our hats in the air, Thunderbirds fly over. But right now it's important to focus on character development as that's going to be important as future officers. Ted Robertson 9:35 That makes 1,000% very clear sense. But I do want to ask you, less than 100 days from the day you toss your hat — you're giving me a big smile right now — talk about how that feels right now for you. C1C Jaime Snyder 9:47 It's incredible, and a part of it is less daunting, because I can say this institution has really prepared me to commission, and so it's more liberating than daunting for me. Ted Robertson 9:58 Col. George, I'm going to direct this one straight to you, and this is an ask of you from the leadership perspective: How do we events Like NCLS fit into the broader effort to intentionally develop leaders of character here at the Academy. Col. Mark George 10:14 So I get the honor of leading the experiential and training division in the Center for Character and Leadership Development. So we're all about creating experiences and those opportunities for cadets to have different types of environments where they'll learn about character. And right now, NCLS is an opportunity to listen to where people's character was tested, how they overcame it. And then we also have different events that we try to put the cadets in where we'll actually test their character. And that could be on the challenge tower, it could be through our character labs where we're having discussions. NCLS is a huge part of that, because the planning cycle is so long. Ted Robertson 10:59 Cadet Snyder? C1C Jaime Snyder 11:00 Yes, sir. One thing I wanted to add on to that is with NCLS, one thing that makes this event the most unique experience that I've had is the fact that we get to engage in meaningful dialog. This isn't a brief. This is an experience for everyone who attends. I've had the opportunity to talk to Col. George's son, who aspires to possibly come to the Air Force Academy. So I don't want to say this is just for cadets, but it's also a promotion tool. And understand that what we do at NCLS is very important. And anyone who wants to attend can come and see what we're doing and how important it is.   Col. Mark George 11:33 I want to thank you for that, by the way. He looks up to you, and that meant a lot.   Ted Robertson 11:37 That's pretty visionary stuff. That's touching the next generation. That's fantastic. All right, this is for you both. When cadets look back on NCLS years from now, what do you hope they're going to remember feeling or being challenged to do differently?   C1C Jaime Snyder 11:56 There is a very strong human component to NCLS, and with that, there's a human experience. Understanding that we're getting speakers and we'll see their bios that they're incredible. They have incredible stories of making the right decision when tensions were high, and getting to hear their stories and understand that they ultimately were no different than we are. Some of them were Air Force Academy graduates. Some graduated from the Naval Academy, West Point, other colleges, but they were young, 20-year-old people like we were as cadets. And so getting to understand where they're coming from, human experience is vital to NCLS, and how do we grow and understand where they're coming from? Ted Robertson 12:38 Col. George? Col. Mark George 12:39 Yeah, I think what I would want the cadets to remember is how these speakers made them feel. You're right, you won't remember every nugget of wisdom that was said. I just had the opportunity to talk with Gen. Scott Miller, and he was an incredible leader. And I feel like everything he was saying was gold. I wish I'd been able to write it down. But he really makes you feel like you understand just how important your role is going to be as a young leader. And when you come away as second lieutenants from this place, you've had incredible opportunities and now you're stepping out in the real world. I would think I want the cadets to remember that like, “Hey, what I do matters, and how I lead is very important to getting this mission done.”   Ted Robertson 13:24 Lt. Col. Mark George and C1C Jaime Snyder, officer and cadet in charge of the 33rd NCLS. Congratulations on the event. Well done, and thank you for spending time here with us on the podcast today. Hearing from both the cadet perspective and the senior leadership behind NCLS makes one thing very clear: This symposium is intentionally designed not just to inspire but to prepare future leaders for moments when character will be tested. And that brings me to my first featured guest, a man whose life story embodies what combat and crisis-tested character truly means. Israel “DT” Del Toro, welcome to the podcast. It's an honor to be with you here at the National Character and Leadership Symposium. Senior Master Sgt. (Ret.) Israel Del Toro 14:18 Thank you, Ted. Thanks for having me. Good to see you again.   Ted Robertson 14:21 Yes, it's not the first time we've gotten to spend some time together. Senior Master Sgt. Israel Del Toro 14:24 It's always great to talk to people, try and spread the word of the whole spark and the promise of my dad. Ted Robertson 14:30 The spark and the promises are the two things that really stood out to me about that interview — your heart and your soul man, from a very, very early age. Senior Master Sgt. Israel Del Toro 14:39 You know, losing my dad at 12, and then a year and a half later, losing my mom to a drunk driver, and being the oldest, you know, having to now kind of step up to be, like, the parent figure to my younger siblings. It was challenging.   Ted Robertson 14:55 Out of all of that, you wound up as a retired — you are currently a retired senior master sergeant. You took responsibility for your siblings, as you say, after you were orphaned as a teenager, and ultimately in the service combat-wounded airmen, and you survived catastrophic injuries against incredible odds, and that did not keep you down. One of the things that you did was you became an Invictus Games gold medalist. You're now a national speaker, and you talk a lot about resilience and purpose.   Senior Master Sgt. Israel Del Toro 15:27 Yes, sir. Yeah, Invictus, I won gold in shot put. It was pretty awesome. You know, everyone was just going nuts. Ted Robertson 15:37 You kind of make me feel like that was a soul-feeding, motivating time for you.   Senior Master Sgt. Israel Del Toro 15:42 It was. At that time, I was probably one of the senior guys, kind of. Obviously, I was one of the senior guys, wounded guys on the team, and so a lot of people looked up to me. And sometimes I wish — people would say, “Man, it's great. You're such trailblazer.” You're sometimes like, “Man, I just want to be one of the guys. I just, I just want to be No. 10.” You know, everything's all done, and no one's focusing everything on me. But it's a burden that I'm willing to carry on to try and continue to help people.   Ted Robertson 16:19 I want to linger here in your background a bit, because it's more than just impressive. I think impressive is pretty trite to describe what your background is. Let's start with before the Air Force and before combat, and just how your life demanded responsibility at such a young age. And what I want to ask is, how did stepping up for your family shape the leader that you became? Senior Master Sgt. Israel Del Toro 16:40 Well, I contribute that totally to my dad. I truly do. My dad was there. My dad, you know, I went everywhere with my dad. My dad — you know, he came from Mexico to this country, and he gave up a lot. You know, my family in Mexico is very wealthy, their ranchers and all that. He came here with nothing. And he always used to tell me, he's like, “Don't ever be envious of someone that's successful. Learn from them. Ask them questions.” He also used to tell me, “If you don't succeed, it's no one else's fault by yourself. Don't blame where you came from, where you grew up from, the situation. It is only your fault.” So my dad always had told me these little lessons and obviously the last lesson he gave me the night before he passed: Always take care of your family. And that just stayed with me, that kind of continued to shape me all throughout my life, all through my journey, at a young age to teenager to young adult to the military and to now, to this day, that really guided me to who I am. Now, it's like, I always hear people say, “Oh, man, I don't know if I can do it.” I was like, “Yeah, you can. You Just never know. You weren't ever put in that situation” I always believe — you always hear the fight or flight. “What are you gonna do?” I just fight, and I continue to fight. I just don't see the flight in me. And, you know, being the promise of take care of your family. Yes, I tell people, that originated with my family — my brothers and sisters. But throughout time it has evolved to now anyone I see that's having a hard time that needs maybe to hear a story or read a book or hear a journey to help them find that spark, because I see them now as my family. I see that as my family, as my mission now.   Ted Robertson 18:50 Let's stay with spark for a minute. It's just one of my favorite things that you've ever talked about. You're down, you've been badly burned, you're worried about whether you're going to survive, and a medic is helping you out, and he does something for you. He says something to you.   Senior Master Sgt. Israel Del Toro 19:07 Yeah, you know, the medic — I always like to say, you know, yes, I'm Air Force. Those guys were Army, and we bust each other's chops. But, we're all brothers and sisters, and we're down range, you know? We take care of each other, we tell stories, we talk about our family. So these guys knew what had happened in my past with my family. So when I'm, you know, laying there, after I coordinate getting air, and I started the adrenaline going down, I started getting scared. I was having a hard time breathing, and I just wanted to lay down and sleep. The medic came and reminded me, “DT, remember what you promised your son, that you'll never let him grow without his dad. Fight for your son. You got to fight for your son.” And he's just making me yell it. You use anything you can to keep your guy motivated, to help that spark go, keep going. And that's what he did. He found that spark to keep me going, to keep me fighting until that medevac came and to get me on that helicopter, to the FOB, to the hospital, and then to eventually San Antonio. Ted Robertson 20:24 After that injury, that's when the fight shifted. You had to get off the battlefield. You had to get that out of your head. You had to start battling for your recovery. So what did courage look like when progress seemed like it was slow and at one point nothing was guaranteed? Israel Del Toro 20:46 Yeah, it, you know, when he had a shift from now being on the battlefield to now a different kind of battle and your recovery, your way of life — it's difficult because you have people telling you this is what your life's going to be. You know, being told that you're never going to walk again. You got to be in a hospital for another year and a half, respirator for the rest of your life and your military career is pretty much over. You know, I like to say there's two choices again: Who you're going to be? Are you going to take the easy path, which is, I'm going to sit in a chair, accept what they say, hate life, you know, curse the world. Are you going to take the hard path where I want to fight? I'm going to show you I can do this. I'm going to prove that I still have value, and I want to come out of this ahead and show not only my son but the rest of the world. You stay positive, you find that spark, you will come out ahead. Ted Robertson 21:48 All right, last question on your background, because we're going to roll all this into why you're here and what messages you want to share with the cadets and the attendees that are here. You did something I don't think most human beings would even think about after that ordeal that you had been through all those years, everything. You reenlisted, and it wasn't just a medical milestone. It wasn't because you could, it was a conscious decision. So what internal commitment had to come first for you to make that decision. Israel Del Toro 22:22 You know, I guess it was, for me it was I loved my job. I knew I could teach, I could be prepare these next guys to [be] the next generation operators. Ted Robertson 22:38 You've never stopped being committed. You've never stopped. So it brings you to NCLS. This is the 33rd year for NCLS, and when you speak to cadets here, what message do you want them to take away with them? Senior Master Sgt. Israel Del Toro 22:53 I guess my message more is about that when you're in the military, no matter whatever happens to you, you still have a role to play. Even when I got hurt, did I miss being with my teammates? Yes, but now refocusing, OK, I'm here in this hospital, and I see all these wounded guys here as I guess I'm wounded also, but in my head is like I was still NCO in the Air Force. I still have a job to do. Yes, I'm hurt, I'm wounded, but the job of a leader is, no matter where you're at, is you try and take care of your troops. You try and make things better for them, even if you never see any of the benefits — that is your role. And so that's kind of what I want to leave with these guys that, you know, you're going to always have  challenges throughout your career, but you've always got to remember it's not about you, it's about the guys under you to take care of you. You know, I had a group of cadets yesterday and they were just asking me about leadership. So you know what? The best way to be a great leader is to earn the respect of yourtroops. If you demand it, you're not a leader, but when you earned the respect and they'll die for you, that is the greatest feeling. You know, I gave an example of one of the best moments I had after my injury, is after I got hurt, they sent my replacement, and he comes in and obviously introduce him to the scout team, to the Army company, individuals in leadership, and then the SF team, and all these guys I'm supporting. And the guy comes in like, “Hey, I'm here to replace DT.” And all of them, “You can't replace DT.” And I told that was the best moment that that's the best moment of respect, because I had Army guys saying, “He's our guy.” And that's the thing I told them, it's like, when you get to that moment when your guys say, “Nah, he's our guy,” I was like, “He can't replace him.” That is where you've truly earned the respect of your troops.   Ted Robertson 25:21 Israel, the only word that I can pull out of myself right now for your journey to describe it as “remarkable,” and you continue to give of yourself, and that's a wonderful thing. Your opportunity for a couple of final thoughts here, before we close out.   Senior Master Sgt. Israel Del Toro 25:38 Final thoughts, man, putting me on the spot, aren't you. I guess my final thoughts would be, you can't do it on your own. I'm not here right now, because I did it my own. I did it. I'm never gonna say that I did. I had friends, I had family, I had my wife that were by my side all throughout my journey to medical individuals. And I had those dark times, and I'm going down that spot, that rabbit hole, they were there to pull me out of it. So I think it's like, you know, don't try and do it on your own. We all need help. You know, the goal is, don't be prideful. There's a reason pride is one of the seven deadly sins. But, you know, ask for help, ask for advice. It's not going to hurt you. If anything, it will make you stronger and better. That's parting thoughts for the individuals listening to this. Ted Robertson 26:53 Perfect. Israel “DT” Del Toro, what a privilege to sit with you again. Want to say thank you from all of us for your service and continuing to lead by the example, which is a very rich and broad and deep example. Your story reminds us, and should remind us, that courage doesn't end with just survival. It always continues in service to others. Israel, thank you for being here.   Senior Master Sgt. Israel Del Toro 27:18 Thanks, Ted. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me again.   Ted Robertson 27:21 Israel's story reminds us that crisis and moral injury don't always arrive on a schedule, and that leaders are often expected to navigate those moments without ever having been taught how. That's where our next conversation takes us: into the intentional work of preparing leaders before crisis arrives. Maj. Tara Holmes, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you with us as part of the National Character and Leadership Symposium.   Maj. Tara Holmes  27:46 Thanks for having me; glad to be here.   Ted Robertson 27:48 You are currently deputy chief of staff here at Headquarters USAFA. You are formerly chief of cadet development for CCLD, the Center for Character and Leadership development. By way of background, you flew.   Maj. Tara Holmes  28:01 So I am a B-52 electronic warfare officer by trade, and then moved over into white jets. So instructed in the in the T-1 and I've kind of been in education and training for, I'd say, since about 2017.   Ted Robertson  28:19 You also hold a Doctorate in Business and Management, and you are an AETC master instructor. I will let you explain AETC.   Maj. Tara Holmes  28:27 Air Education Training Command, that's one of the that's our majcom that's responsible for education and training, and they have a pathway to become a master instructor. So I finished the qualifications for that while I was in white jets and working over at Squadron Officer School.   Ted Robertson  28:46 So let's talk about your work with Task Force Hope. We'll talk about what Task Force Hope is, but you are and have been a developer and facilitator of Task Force Hope, which is a crisis and moral injury leadership workshop.   Maj. Tara Holmes  29:01 Task Force Hope is about providing immediately useful tools to our workshop participants to prepare them to lead through crisis, whether that is no-kidding combat related, or whether that's crisis on the home front, going through stuff in life that's really hard. We work through a series of key concepts and exercises, through storytelling and participant engagement that hopefully provides our participants some self-awareness and some tools to recover as it deals with their relationships.   Ted Robertson  29:39 We talked about this. There's a lot of nuance in what you're teaching these people. There's discernment in it. Who should you talk to, who you should trust with information that you want to share? Because ultimately, some of this becomes a pressure release valve, right?   Maj. Tara Holmes  29:52 Yeah, so one of the key concepts that we talk about is worthiness, right? I think often people feel pressure to not share what they're going through because they don't think their problems are worthy of attention, whether theirs or someone else's. That's one thing that we spend a lot of time on. And like you said, you know, who to who to share with, and at what level, some people are more free with sharing than others, and that's OK. So we work through some frameworks that help illustrate how people can kind of work through those levels, or gain some self-awareness and some clarity around where they fall. Something that is a, you know, deep seated secret for you, maybe something that somebody else is willing to openly share, they just don't see it as that big of a deal. So it's definitely about self-awareness and learning some tools to help relieve some of the pressure and drain on our batteries, as it were, that comes from holding these things in.   Ted Robertson  30:52 People who are attending the workshop are going to learn some things that they may not realize are draining their batteries. You're teaching them to discern what those are, and to be careful to try to avoid those. It sounds like an example to me of things that we don't realize we do, that drains us, right, instead of energizes us.   Maj. Tara Holmes  31:10 So we use the kind of metaphor of a smartphone, right? So there are things that drain us, that are big, that we're taking a lot of energy to conceal the hard things that we're dealing with in our life. But then there's, like, the pesky background apps, there's the things that are always running in the background of our lives that drain our energy without us really even noticing it. You know, so for me as an officer, but also as a mom and a spouse, some of the things that are always draining my batteries are my to-do list, the laundry app, maybe social media apps. Sometimes I've probably spend way too much time reading the news these days. That's kind of always on for me. We have these big things that are draining our batteries, but then we have these like small things that are constantly going on, right? So Task Force Hope is about recognizing what those things are for us and then making a commitment to ourselves to make this space and time to recover.   Ted Robertson  32:09 So that brings us to a really unique place. You kind of function at the intersection of character, leadership and development pretty much every day. So how do you define character when you're responsible for shaping it across an entire Cadet Wing.   Maj. Tara Holmes  32:24 To me, character is the essence of who they are. It is how you show up day after day. It's the habits that you have. That's why, when you do something out of character, people are able to say that. You know, we talk about building character strengths as building blocks towards certain virtues. And virtues is really excellence of character. So it's easy to talk about how to be an excellent athlete, or how to be an excellent academic, right? And that's one of our core values, is being excellent. Well, how do you have excellent character? It's really about leveraging your character strengths in a way that can lead you to be more virtuous, and that's the goal.   Ted Robertson  33:05 You've served, both operationally and as an instructor. Tell me how those things shape the way you think about preparing leaders not just to perform but to endure.   Maj. Tara Holmes  33:19 What comes to mind is the importance of training and building those habits. We're, you know, in the previous question, we talked about it in terms of character. You know, you can, you can use any kind of training. It's about building readiness, right? And being able to build those habits so that when you are faced with a challenge, you have a way to work through the challenge, right? That really came out for me, both operationally and as an instructor. So operationally, you rely on your training to get your job done, and then as an instructor, you're helping others build those habits so that one day when your students are faced with challenges, they can rely on their training as well.   Ted Robertson  34:01 We've talked a bit about your experiences and how they shape the way you think about preparing leaders, not just to perform but to endure. And now let's bring it right down to the direct connection between Task Force Hope and why you are here talking about this program to attendees at NCLS. When we talk about Task Force Hope, it's a program that is really designed to prepare leaders to navigate crisis and recover from both emotional and moral injury. What can you tell me about a gap that a workshop like this fills, that traditional leadership education sometimes or often misses?   Maj. Tara Holmes  34:38 Task Force Hope is preventative in nature. It's training to prevent people from letting their burdens get the best of them so that they can show up. They have the tools to show up fully charged when stuff hits the van. And not only that they do that for themselves, but then they can help their teammates or their subordinates also get there. It's self-awareness, because we all perform self-care differently, and what you need to recharge your batteries is different from the way that I would do it. So it's being intentional and having some tools to be able to identify what works for you and then how to make space in your life, and building that commitment to yourself, to make that space so that the next time that you face a crisis, you're not facing it at 10%, you're full up, you're ready to go. So it's that sustained self-care, if that's what you want to call it. And it's important to say that you know, in a 75-minute session, we're really doing our best to provide exposure to key concepts and these tools. What we hope is that people walk out with the start of something. It's not it's not the end of their work to be done.   Ted Robertson  35:54 How often do you hear the question, “Why didn't I hear this earlier in my career?”   Maj. Tara Holmes  36:00 Every workshop. Last year, after the workshop, we had a 1970-something graduate say that exact thing. For me personally, I had four people say something, you know, “Hey, I was a cadet here in '90-something, '80-something, 2000-something. And, you know, I really wish that I would have had this earlier.” So that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to bring it as early as we can.   Ted Robertson  36:26 OK, so our last question of our visit, if cadets take just one lesson from Task Force Hope and NCLs this year, what is your hope for that lesson to be?   Maj. Tara Holmes  36:39 My hope is that they're worth it. No problem is too big or too small to be dealt with, and like we talked about earlier, I think often people keep things to themselves because they feel like they shouldn't bother others, or there's their supervisors or their teammates with what's going on in their lives. And that's a drain. Like, that's a drain on the system. It eats up your energy, right? But our cadets are worth it. Whatever they're dealing with, big or small, is worthy of being addressed. I hope that's the takeaway, and that we all deal with things, right? We don't always know what other people are dealing with.   Ted Robertson  37:22 Maj. Holmes. Thank you for the work you're doing to prepare future leaders, not just to lead in moments of clarity, but to stand firm in moments of crisis. We appreciate you being here.   Maj. Tara Holmes  37:32 Thanks, Ted.   Ted Robertson  37:33 That focus on preservation, resilience and moral courage brings us to our next conversation, one shaped by combat, captivity and a life of service under the most demanding conditions. Coming up next, my conversation with Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Edward Mechenbier. Gen. Mechenbier, welcome to the podcast. It is a huge honor having you here, sir.   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier 37:56 I hope you feel that way in a half hour so well,   Ted Robertson  37:59 Well, the conversation does promise to be interesting, because your life is… interesting. That was a pregnant pause, sir.   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier 38:07 Yeah, I've enjoyed it. It's different.   Ted Robertson  38:11 Just to sort of frame things, you retired as a major general, and what year was that, sir,   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier 38:15 2004   Ted Robertson  38:16 And you were USAFA Class of '64. You're a Vietnam-era pilot, having flown F-4s, you were shot down on your 113th combat mission, but that was you also your 80th over North Vietnam. OK, prisoner of war. Then for almost those entire six years following that, being shot down. You come with 3,600 flying hours across lots of different aircraft.   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  38:42 I was privileged fly either for primary capability or for familiarization with 43 different airplanes.   Ted Robertson  38:49 And now you describe yourself as a lifelong advocate for veterans and public service.   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  38:56 Well, yeah, I mean, I go to a couple prisons in Ohio, and “work with” is probably overstating my role. Veterans who are incarcerated for long periods of time. But my role is just to go there, spend some time, shoot the breeze with them, no agenda, no desired learning objective and let them know that somebody outside knows that they're there.   Ted Robertson  39:19 What I want to do is spend some time in your background. All right, I want to start with combat and captivity and how that tests leadership in its most extreme forms. And this is in course in keeping with the theme of NCLS here, what did character mean to you when circumstances were entirely beyond your control?   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  39:38 The Vietnamese kept us in small groups of one and two or three guys. I mean, we never really until near the end and later on when we got a little organization. But it got very down, very personal, when at one time, I was in a cell with four guys, three Class of 1964 Air Force Academy graduates and one poor Oklahoma State University graduate, and amongst the four of us, we had a senior ranking officer. And of course, you got the same rank, you go alphabetical. And so we made Ron Bliss the senior ranking officer in our room. We had a communication system. We had guidelines that, you know, which were basically consistent with the code of conduct. You know, name, rank, serial number, date of birth, don't answer further questions. Keep faith with your fellow positions. That was the key. Keep faith. Never do anything that you'd be embarrassed to tell somebody you did.   Ted Robertson  40:34 What you're explaining is how different leadership looks, and even how you describe it, how different it is from command. So now it comes down to trust and accountability and courage, and how do those show up in those conditions?   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  40:51 It was really a matter of, we always knew we were still in the fight. That was one thing that was with us, and so you just kind of conducted yourself with, OK, I'm not going to let myself be used. Now, we also knew that the more you resisted pushed back, the less likely they were to make you go meet an antiwar delegation or write a confession or do something else like that. So they tend to pick on, if you will, the low-hanging fruit or the easier guy to get to. So we always wanted to set the bar just a little bit out of their reach.   Ted Robertson  41:25 All right, having gone through all of that, it really can change people quite profoundly. So when you look back at it, what leadership lessons stayed with you long after you got out of captivity?   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  41:39 In the movie Return of Honor. Capt. Mike McGrath, Navy guy, describes the guys in their ability to resist torture and do things. And that's what you learn. Everybody's got a breaking point. If mine's here and somebody else's is there, that doesn't make me better or worse than them. So you learn to appreciate the talents and the weaknesses. If you know the foibles, the cracks in everybody around you and not to exploit them, but to understand them, and then to be the kind of leader that that they need.   Ted Robertson  42:12 Sir, one of the recurring themes when you're discussing leadership with leaders right is knowing something about each of your people so that you can relate to them in a way that that works for them and motivates them.   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  42:23 Yeah. Mark Welch, who's also a graduate and he is a chief of staff of the Air Force, always had a saying: “If you don't know what's going on, it's because you didn't ask.”   Ted Robertson  42:32 Now we're going to roll all that into your long journey between captivity and your visit here to NCLS this year. When you're speaking to the cadets at this year's event, what's your main hope? What do you hope they understand about courage before they even ever face combat?   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  42:54 Well, courage is a reaction to a clear and present threat. Nobody knows how they're gonna — know he's gonna say, OK, I'm gonna go to Vietnam and I want to get shot down, and when the Vietnamese capture me, I'm going to give them a middle finger and I'm going to be the meanest bad ass and hardest-to-break prisoner. Yeah, it's how you respond to the to the immediate perception of bodily harm or being used or something else like that. So courage is, yeah, it just happens. It's not something that you can put in a package and say, “OK, I've got courage.” It's how you respond to the situation, because you might respond quite differently than what you think.   Ted Robertson  43:35 And I have to say, you presented your story and you delivered your message in kind of a unique way. You drew from some contemporary references, specifically three clips from a movie that you like, that I was curious. How did you sum up your entire life in three movie clips from Madagascar? How did you do that?   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  43:57 Well, the three movie clips — when I watched the movie, I was looking at it, I have got two favorite movies. Madagascar is one, and the other is a Kelsey Grammer movie, Down Periscope. I mean, I think that is a perfect study in in leadership. But in the movie Madagascar, the premise was penguins can't fly, but yet it opens up with them applying resource, innovation imagination, and they eventually get this airplane to fly. OK, great. Success. Well, like everything else in life, things go wrong, and you got to have, No. 1, a backup plan, an exit ramp or a control mechanism for the disaster that's pending. So that's the second movie clip we saw. And then the third one was towards the end of the movie, when the crash landing has happened and the skipper asks for an accounting, and he's told that all passengers are accounted for, except two. And he says, that's the number I can live with. And the message there is, you go through life — you're going to have successes, but you're going to have failures, and failure has a cost, and it's not always pleasant, but that's OK, because that's life.   Ted Robertson  45:15 How do you explain how leaders can prepare themselves morally and mentally for moments they can't predict or control.   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  45:25 Watch movies like Madagascar and Down Periscope. You know, there's a breadth of unintentional, if you will, guidance on how to be a leader, if you know where to look or if you're looking for it. I mean, that's part of the whole progress program at the Academy. Nobody's going to say, OK, here's a scenario, lead these resources to a proper conclusion. It's kind of like, OK, here's the situation. What do we do? What can we do? What can't we do? It's like, in my presentation, I talk about being able to run across a pasture in nine seconds, in 10 seconds, but if the bull can do it, you're in trouble. So you got to realign your thinking, you got to realign your goals and you got to realign the application of resources. So that's the leadership part, right there. It's a realization of what you can and what you can't do. It's a realization of what you, your people, your resources, can and can't do. It's a realization of what the technology you have at your disposal to do your mission can and can't do. So it's all about workarounds and being flexible. And then the other thing is, we live in a world that just seems to be everything's got a prescription and a protocol on exactly how to do everything. Doesn't work that way. You got to be able to go left and right. You got to be able to be a little imaginative.   Ted Robertson  46:42 What parting thought did you leave the cadets with?   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  46:45 That failure is part of life. It's not death. And I'm part of an organization called American 300 — we go around and talk to young enlisted people and all the services to get them to understand that failure is a learning opportunity. It's not a dagger in the heart, and don't be afraid or ashamed to try, because if you don't, you'll never know what your true potential is. So with the cadets, we close with that last part from the movie Madagascar that basically said, OK, success comes with a price. Be aware and accept it.   Ted Robertson  47:23 All right, we've got to close it out here, but recap, if you would one more time that message that you want cadets to leave here with from having heard you speak.   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  47:32 You are now a living, breathing, viable, productive part of our United States Air Force. You bring talents that are unique. Apply them, but understand that they're all very transitory, and you have part of a larger community. If you stick with a community rather than the “I did,” “I want,” I have,” you'll go a long way.   Ted Robertson  47:54 All right, and stepping outside of that very briefly for your final thoughts, what would you like to leave listeners with today.   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  48:01 Be proud of the young men and women who are in our military now, not just those at the Air Force Academy. You know, our whole military structure has changed over the years. You know, it's a dynamic world. You got to be flexible and embrace change. We're so reluctant to change. Change is fine, except when you try to change me, is the old saying, but we all have to change. We have to be part of the world in which we live.     Ted Robertson  48:26 Gen. Mechenbier, I want to thank you from all of us for being here sharing those leadership lessons of yours and a lifetime of service that will continue to shape others — future leaders — for a very, very long time to come. We appreciate you very much.   Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier  48:43 Thank you much.   Ted Robertson  48:44 Our final conversation brings us to leadership at the strategic level, where decisions affect institutions, alliances and the nation itself. Capt. Charles Plumb, welcome to the podcast today, sir.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  48:56 Thanks, Ted. Appreciate being here.   Ted Robertson  48:59 It is a privilege to have you. You retired as a Navy captain in 1991 and you have not slowed down, not one inch since. We're going to talk a little bit about the work that you're doing in some very interesting spaces. And what informs all of that. Naval Academy, Class of '64.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  49:15 Yep, the Great Class of '64.     Ted Robertson  49:17 The great —that's how you express class pride?   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  49:20 Everybody knows the Great Class of '64.   Ted Robertson  49:23 So you are an Annapolis man.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  49:25 I am, in fact.   Ted Robertson  49:26 No doubt. And a pilot. You flew F-4 Phantoms, and you are a Vietnam-era pilot. You spent most of your time over North Vietnam. Sometimes you got sent to South Vietnam, depending on what was going on. But you said that you have flown 74 combat missions.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  49:45 Actually 74 and a half, Ted. I have one more takeoff and I have landings.   Ted Robertson  49:50 We should remember that, because it's a very important part of your life we haven't talked about yet. Since you got out of captivity, and then you retired a few years later, you became a published author and a speaker, and as such, you have been to every state, several countries, 5,000 presentations you've delivered in the leadership and character development space. Is there any reason you should not be here at NCLS?   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  50:24 Well, I appreciate that. You know, this is a great symposium, and I'm really proud to contribute to it.   Ted Robertson  50:32 Captain, you are a former POW.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  50:36 Yes, I was shot down on my 75th mission and captured, tortured and spent the next 2,103 days in communist prison camps.   Ted Robertson  50:49 You said you got moved around a lot.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  50:52 We did. I was in six different camps, and some of those camps more than once. We never really understood why. We kind of suspected that they wanted to try to deny any fraternization with their guards, and they wanted to keep us on our toes, because they recognized that being military guys, we were going to have leadership, and we were going to have organization and community and we were going to organize, to fight them, and they didn't want that. So they moved us around and kind of shuffled us up, which didn't work. We always had a military organization in every camp that I ever went to.   Ted Robertson  51:31 You found ways to support each other. You found ways to have a leadership structure, even in captivity.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  51:39 We were all fighter pilots or air crews and most of us were we, you know, we had 10 Air Force Academy grads from '64 in five Naval Academy grads from '64 and so we had in a lot of other academy grads. I don't remember how many, but probably 70 total academy grads. And so, you know, we were, we were dedicated. We were lifers. We were, you know, we were very focused guys, which helped out a lot that we knew a lot about military leadership.   Ted Robertson  52:11 You grew up in the Midwest, and you married a Midwestern girl.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  52:15 I did, my high school sweetheart the day after I graduated from Annapolis, we got married in the chapel, and my buddies were holding up their swords as we came out of the chapel. So it was a beautiful day.   Ted Robertson  52:27 Let's go back to how you found your way to the Naval Academy.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  52:32 I was a farm kid from Kansas. Never seen the ocean, never been out of the four states of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri. Never been in an airplane, and I needed an education. Found that the Naval Academy offered me an education.   Ted Robertson  52:50 Outside of Air Force Academy circles, you probably already know that we think of, you know, salty sea dog sailors when we think of people going in the Navy, but you chose aviation.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  53:02 I did. As a kid, I would see these Piper Cubs fly over and I was fascinated by flight, and wondered if I'd ever be able to ride in an airplane. That was my thought when I was a kid. I didn't have any hopes of ever being a pilot, you know, let alone a fighter pilot. That was, I was out of the realm. Nobody, as I grew up, ever told me that I could do that, or I should do that, or, you know, it would be a hope of mine to ever pilot an airplane. But I went to the Naval Academy and found out that was one of the options, and I took advantage of that option.   Ted Robertson  53:43 Yeah, and it led you, of course, to over North Vietnam, and the rest is that part of your history   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  53:51 Launched on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk on my wife's birthday, the 5th of November, wave goodbye to her, and promised her I'd be back in eight months. I didn't make it.   Ted Robertson  54:04 Hard. Very hard story to hear. Let's talk about all of that informing your presentation now, again, 5,000 of these delivered in the leadership and character development space, but you talk a lot about, in your presentation — and you keynoted here at NCLS — the mental game side of this, the integrity, the choices that you have to make, and character that sort of frames all of that.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  54:38 My message to the cadets, and really to most of my audiences, is around challenge and adversity. And I tell the cadets that they work awfully hard trying to get a degree. They study, they go to computers, they read books all to get a degree. And what I point out to them is that more important than the degree that they will get from the Air Force Academy is a character that they build while they are here. That the integrity first, you know, is part of their motto. And if, in fact, they can learn and live that integrity, if they can learn and live the commitment that they have, if they can learn in and live these kind of ethereal things, the things that you can't measure, things you can't define, the things that, you know, that crop up in your in your mind, in the back of your mind, are more important than the lessons they learn from a computer. And so that's kind of my message.   Ted Robertson  55:49 You know, we're in a leadership laboratory here. The art and the science is character development. And you're talking about a kind of character that leads people to make good decisions and make those decisions with integrity in mind. How did that play into your captivity and getting you through that?   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  56:09 You know, of course, I studied leadership at the Naval Academy, and I think that my period of experience more than teaching me anything, it validated what I had learned. And the whole idea — and I love the fact that this is called, you know, the Character and Leadership Symposium, because lots of times you see leadership without character, that's a negative kind of leadership. And if a leader does not have character, he doesn't last very long, and he's not very effective. And so if you can keep your character up front, the leadership can follow easily. And that's pretty much what we had in the prison camps. Several of the qualities of leadership that I promote are the things that almost came natural in a prison camp. First of all, we had to find a focus, a reason. We had to find, you know — and that was developed by our leadership in the prison camp. Return with honor — that was our motto, return with honor. And we all rallied around that.   Ted Robertson  57:22 So all of that said, you're standing here in front of a really big group of people as a keynote speaker, lot of cadets, mostly cadets, yeah.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  57:31 Now there were cadets. I'm speaking on a panel with Ed Mechenbier, my good buddy, and we're on a panel with mostly cadets. The first presentation, the keynote was by invitation only. So there were a number of civilians in the audience, number of cadets. There were Naval Academy midshipmen in my audience today. And we had ROTC people, and, you know, from all over the country. So it was quite a wide audience.   Ted Robertson  58:04 Quite a wide audience. And so if we were just focusing on what you leave with cadets, what do you want them to take away from their experience today?   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  58:15 I hope they understand my message, that more important than the degree that they graduate with, is the character that they graduate with, and the importance of the integrity that that they learned here, because that was vital in the prison camp, is integrity. We had to have each other's back, and when we when we finally were released, we refused to be released until all the sick, injured and enlisted men had gone home, and it was a question of integrity, is a question that this is the right thing to do. It's not the easy thing to do. Largely, the integrity thing to do is not the easiest thing to do, and that's what I wanted to leave with the cadets. In addition, I want them to know that regardless of what situation they're in, they still have a choice, and their choice is the way they respond to the surrounding adversity situation that they're in.   Ted Robertson  59:21 An Annapolis grad of '64, Midwest kid from Kansas who makes it into the cockpit, and like you said, 74 and a half flights, then some time in captivity, then to a published author with thousands of presentations all over the country, and some in in other countries. What final thoughts would you like to leave today, sir?   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  59:47 Well, you know, I think I've already told you, you know, you're a great interviewer, Ted, and I appreciate your questions. I think, finally, this whole idea of self-determination and I think that we all, and not just the cadets, but graduates and families and business people, families. You know that we all have choices, and sometimes when we deny the choice and give up that ability to make our life better for ourselves. And you know, we do it sometimes even when we're not even thinking about it. It's just automatic to blame somebody else for the problem, and in doing so, we give away that choice.   Ted Robertson  1:00:34 Don't give away the choice. Yeah, build that character and stick by your integrity all the time. Capt. J. Charles Plumb, what a privilege it is to meet you, sir. Glad that you're here at NCLs and keynoting like you are, and I do hope that our paths cross again.   Capt. J. Charles Plumb  1:00:52 Ted, thank you very much. I appreciate your willingness to tell my story. Thanks for that.   Ted Robertson  1:00:57 You're welcome, sir. Thank you. Ted Robertson Close As we've heard throughout these conversations, courage isn't a single moment. It's a lifelong practice, from cadets just beginning their journey to leaders shaped by combat and crisis to senior commanders responsible for forces and futures. Character is tested when certainty disappears and it's revealed by how we choose to lead. That's the challenge of the National Character and Leadership Symposium, and it's a challenge that extends far beyond these walls. I'm Ted Robertson, thank you for joining me for our Long Blue Line Podcast Network coverage of the 33rd National Character and Leadership Symposium. This podcast was recorded on Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026.         The Long Blue Line Podcast Network is presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation      

This topic did so well, we had to come back for Round 2. Joburg’s got jokes like that. We all drop the big names because they sound cooler. “I live in Fourways.” Nah babe… you’re probably in Magaliessig, Lonehill, Sunninghill, or Dainfern. “I’m in Roodepoort.” Sure… but is that Wilro Park, Florida Glen, Florida Hills, Ontdekkerspark, or Ruimsig? And don’t even get us started on “I stay in Sandton.” Really? Sandton… or Bryanston, Rivonia, Illovo, Hyde Park, or Buccleuch? Joburg is layered. Roodepoort is known. Fourways is known. Sandton is known. But inside those big names? Mini-suburbs hide like secret levels in a game. Case in point: there’s literally a place called Joburg North. Think you’re in Fourways? Technically… you’re not. Hang out with Anele and The Club on 947 every weekday morning. Popular radio hosts Anele Mdoda, Frankie du Toit, Thembekile Mrototo, and Cindy Poluta take fun to the next level with the biggest guests, hottest conversations, feel-good vibes, and the best music to get you going! Kick-start your day with the most enjoyable way to wake up in Joburg. Connect with Anele and The Club on 947 via WhatsApp at 084 000 0947 or call the studio on 011 88 38 947Thank you for listening to the Anele and the Club podcast..Listen live on Primedia+ weekdays from 06:00 to 09:00 to Anele and the Club broadcast on 947 https://buff.ly/y34dh8Y For more from the show go to https://buff.ly/gyWKIkl or find all the catch-up podcasts here https://buff.ly/K59GRzu Subscribe to the 947s Weekly Newsletter https://buff.ly/hf9IuR9 Follow us on social media:947 on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/947Joburg/ 947 on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@947joburg947 on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/947joburg947 on X: www.x.com/947 947 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@947JoburgSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Journalist und Nahost-Experte Karim El-Gawhary beschreibt die Situation im Gazastreifen als humanitäre Katastrophe mit zerstörter Infrastruktur, massiver Vertreibung und einer „Waffenruhe“, die diesen Namen kaum verdient. Er betont, dass die israelische Besatzung von Gaza und Westjordanland der zentrale Kernkonflikt ist und skizziert vier Optionen: Status quo, Vertreibung der Palästinenser, eine inzwischen fast unmögliche Zwei-Staaten-Lösung und eine schwer vorstellbare Einstaaten-Lösung mit gleichen Rechten für alle. El-Gawhary kritisiert die Rolle der USA und die „Glitzerpläne“ für Gaza, die die Lebensrealität der Palästinenser ausblenden, und warnt vor der politischen Dynamik unter Präsident Trump. Im Blick auf den Iran spricht er über ein reformunfähiges Regime, eine polarisierte Gesellschaft, mögliche Szenarien von Militärdiktatur bis Staatszerfall und die Gefahr eines regionalen Flächenbrands inklusive Angriffen auf Öl-Infrastruktur und der Straße von Hormus. Er erklärt, wie begrenzt der Zugang von Journalist:innen nach Gaza ist, schildert seine Arbeitsweise mit lokalen Partnern vor Ort und warum er konsequent menschennahe Geschichten erzählt. El-Gawhary setzt sich mit Vorwürfen der Einseitigkeit und des Antisemitismus auseinander und verweist darauf, dass Begriffe wie „Besatzung“ und „besetzte Gebiete“ völkerrechtlich definiert und vom Internationalen Gerichtshof bestätigt sind. Persönlich spricht er über Shitstorms, die Nicht-Verlängerung seines ORF-Vertrags, die große öffentliche Wertschätzung und seine Motivation, als unabhängiger Journalist weiterzuarbeiten – unter anderem mit einem wöchentlichen Podcast „Nahost. Nah dran.“ und Live-Formaten. Zum Schluss erzählt er, wie ihn Geschichten extremer Gewalt und Ohnmacht belasten und warum „Ausladen“ – also Erzählen, Schreiben und Diskutieren – für ihn ein zentraler Weg ist, seelisch in Balance zu bleiben. Podcast-Empfehlung der Woche: Podcast "Freiwärts - Aus dem Trauma in die Kraft" Titelbild Folge: Sascha Osaka Wir würden uns sehr freuen, wenn Du "Ganz offen gesagt" auf einem der folgenden Wege unterstützt:Werde Unterstützer:in auf SteadyKaufe ein Premium-Abo auf AppleKaufe Artikel in unserem FanshopSchalte Werbung in unserem PodcastFeedback bitte an redaktion@ganzoffengesagt.atTranskripte und Fotos zu den Folgen findest Du auf podcastradio.at

Confiar plenamente en Dios es el fruto de caminar con Él día tras día. No se trata de una fe ingenua, sino de una confianza formada en la experiencia de Su fidelidad. Al comenzar este mes, la confianza se vuelve un ancla para el futuro. El Señor Jesús confió plenamente en el Padre aun en los momentos más difíciles. De modo que, confiar no elimina la incertidumbre, pero sostiene el corazón en medio de ella. Dios no falla a quienes se apoyan en Él. Tal vez este mes trae preguntas o desafíos. Entrégalo a Dios con paz. Confiar plenamente es descansar en que Dios sigue siendo fiel. Por eso, confiemos plenamente en Dios y sigamos caminando con esperanza. La Biblia dice en Nahúm 1:7: “Jehová es bueno, fortaleza en el día de la angustia”. (RV1960).

Confiar plenamente en Dios es el fruto de caminar con Él día tras día. No se trata de una fe ingenua, sino de una confianza formada en la experiencia de Su fidelidad. Al comenzar este mes, la confianza se vuelve un ancla para el futuro.El Señor Jesús confió plenamente en el Padre aun en los momentos más difíciles. De modo que, confiar no elimina la incertidumbre, pero sostiene el corazón en medio de ella. Dios no falla a quienes se apoyan en Él.Tal vez este mes trae preguntas o desafíos. Entrégalo a Dios con paz. Confiar plenamente es descansar en que Dios sigue siendo fiel.Por eso, confiemos plenamente en Dios y sigamos caminando con esperanza. La Biblia dice en Nahúm 1:7: “Jehová es bueno, fortaleza en el día de la angustia”. (RV1960).

In today's show David and Chas investigate the ISA's latest bid to devalue the WSL and bolster their own reputation as the governing body of competitive surfing, discover Taylor Knox's new career opportunity as Hollywood stunt double, one listener confronts a shocking revelation of how he almost imploded his happy marriage, and Chas is forced to reckon with a heartbreaking realization. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send a textWe are BACK this week with our brand new show - MCU News. This week we review the latest MCU news and rumors - Talking Spider-Man Brand New Day synopsis, rumored villains, VisionQuest updates, Midnight Suns, and so much more. We also have Phase 4, 5, 6 Trivia as well as a new segment "Daddy or Nah?"It was a jam packed show. We hope you enjoy. Thanks for tuning in and supporting the show!The ABINGERSSupport the show

It's time for your favorite Zombie Movie Podcast, better known as Dead Man Still Walking — typically a solocast starring the inimitable Dr. Walking Dead Kyle Bishop! During this 59th edition of DMSW, Dr. Bishop is recording from inside a tent (in the late summer of 2025), participating in Girls' Camp! Hey, even if he's not the fastest or cleverest girl at Girls' Camp, he's always the prettiest! Nah, our dear professor is just a great dad and a salt-of-the-Earth individual who selflessly volunteers to chaperone and volunteer as "Bear Bait," in case the young teens are attacked in the wilderness of Utah. Kyle is so cool, he essentially recreates a "Dead Serious Horror Challenge" from the old HMP days and watches scary movies at night in his tent, movies that also occur out in the wilderness. Anywho, here in Dead Man Still Walking, Dr. Kyle William Bishop reviews a Netflix Original, Action Martial Arts / Science Fiction / Zombie flick from Thailand called Ziam (2025) — as in "Zombie Siam" or "Ziam." But using his technical definition, Dr. Bishop would not call "Ziam" much of a Horror movie, despite its zombie monsters because it has hardly any suspense or tension. It is mostly Action (with an empowered protagonist), which is not conducive to promoting fear within viewers. Even so, it's fun to hear Dr. Bishop talk about watching this film during his camping adventures. Listen! Note: This episode was recorded in August 2025. Also, to view ALL of Dr. Bishop's Dead Man Still Walking solocast episodes can USE THIS LINK. And to view ALL of Dr. Bishop's episode-by-episode commentaries on The Last of Us – Seasons 1 and 2, with Jay of the Dead, then USE THIS LINK. Dead Man Still Walking is a biweekly, short-form solocast hosted by Dr. Walking Dead Kyle Bishop, author of American Zombie Gothic and How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture. Dr. Walking Dead also presents a popular segment called The Dead Zone on regular episodes of this podcast. For his Dead Man Still Walking solocast episodes, Dr. Bishop will focus exclusively on zombie films, with the occasional exploration of zombie-related themes, zombie television, and other zombie media (e.g., comics, literature, etc.). Dr. Bishop is an academic and professional scholar of zombie films and other zombie narratives. He has been teaching for 23 years. Dr. Bishop serves as an English professor, Film Studies professor, and he's currently the English Department Chair at Southern Utah University. You are welcome to reach out to Dr. Bishop with comments or questions via email: bishopk@suu.edu, X: @DrWalkingDead, BlueSky and Instagram (@DrWalkingDead). You can also watch the documentary, Doc of the Dead (2014), which features Dr. Walking Dead. Find more links below for Dr. Bishop. Be sure to subscribe to Jay of the Dead's new Horror movie podcast on: Apple PodcastsSpotifyDeezer   You are welcome to email our show at HauntingYourHeadphones@gmail.com. You can also follow Jay of the Dead's New Horror Movies on X: @HorrorAvengers Dead Man Still Walking with Dr. Kyle Bishop is brought to you by Jay of the Dead's New Horror Movies, an audio Horror movie podcast. It features nine experienced Horror hosts review new Horror movies and deliver specialty Horror segments. Your hosts are Jay of the Dead, Dr. Shock, Gillman Joel, Mister Watson, Dr. Walking Dead, GregaMortis, Mackula, Ron Martin, Dave Zee and Spawn of the Dead! Due to the large number and busy schedule of its nine Horror hosts, Jay of the Dead's New Horror Movies will be recorded in segments, piecemeal, at various times and recording sessions. Therefore, as you listen to our episodes, you will notice a variety of revolving door hosts and segments, all sewn together and reanimated like the powerful Monster of Dr. Frankenstein!

Scripture Reading: Revelation 17 Revelation 17,18 describe, at length, the global kingdom of the antichrist during the coming time of tribulation. We have already seen, in chapter 13, that there will be both a political leader and religious leader in this vast kingdom … the beast, and the false prophet.  The political/religious structural system of the kingdom of the antichrist is called 'Babylon' in the book of Revelation. Revelation 17 describes the religious aspect of this global kingdom and chapter 18 describes the political aspect of it. The religious element of the antichrist kingdom is symbolically represented by a prostitute, riding on a scarlet beast.  In the Old Testament, idolatrous rebellion against God, was sometimes characterized as spiritual adultery or harlotry (cf. Nah 3:4; Ezek 16:35; 23:1-3). Undergirding the movement of events during the tribulation is the reality of God's sovereign design, ordering even the dark powers to fulfill his will.  "For God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled (Rev 17:17).  How glorious is our God, who works all things after the council of his will!  (Eph 1:11).

#342: Olympia-Finale in Antholz! Abschiede, Emotionen und die große Frage nach der Zukunft

In today's show David and Chas share the harrowing details of Kolohe's recent near tragedy, report on the massive shakeup underfoot of Gabriel Medina, pit Chris Hemsworth vs Josh Brolin in the ultimate surf celeb battle, learn why a pedicure may be the ultimate sign of a core surfer, and discover why rum may be JJF's secret weapon. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you ever wondered what happens when pop culture chaos meets questionable life decisions and just enough caffeine to fuel bad takes… welcome back to your favorite daily comedy show.Today's episode kicks off with a Star Wars “what could've been” that has us screaming into the galaxy. Apparently, Adam Driver pitched a standalone Kylo Ren movie and Disney said, “Nah.” Which means somewhere in an alternate universe, we're watching a billion-dollar backstory about Han and Leia's brooding kid — and instead we're just rewatching The Mandalorian trailer like the rest of civilization. We break down the missed opportunity and question Disney's decision-making like we're qualified executives. (We're not.)Then things take a turn when we unpack the wild situation involving The Blind Side actor Quentin Aaron — a spinal stroke, a coma, and waking up to find out your “wife” wasn't legally your wife at all. That's not a subplot. That's real life. We react in real time and try to wrap our heads around that level of chaos.Speaking of chaos — YouTube turned 21. Yes, we're officially old. We revisit the very first upload (“Me at the Zoo”) and spiral into nostalgia about how a 19-second elephant video turned into a trillion hours of conspiracy theories, mukbangs, and cat content. The internet is undefeated.In Crap on Celebrities, we dive into:Bourbon & Beyond festival lineup (bourbon, bands, and potential poor decisions)The possibility of a “lost” Van Halen albumOzzy's emotional final performance moment (yes, we teared up… a little)Jelly Roll and Bunnie XO content overload — is the celebrity machine moving too fast?Hugh Hefner's alleged sex diary controversy (because of course that exists)Shia LaBeouf getting knocked around in New OrleansAnd the most diabolical sitcom characters ever (Cartman supremacy confirmed)Plus: Match Up with Moon returns, and Riz is still rocking a goose egg. Competitive tension? Absolutely. Grace? Minimal.This episode is peak Rizz and the gang — music, celebrity nonsense, questionable nostalgia, sarcastic debates, and just enough heartfelt moments to remind you we're human… allegedly.If you're looking for a daily comedy show that blends entertainment gossip, weird news, St. Louis energy, and just the right amount of chaos, congratulations — you found it.Welcome to the daily comedy show where even the serious stories take a weird left turn.Follow The Rizzuto Show → linktr.ee/rizzshow for more from your favorite daily comedy show.Connect with The Rizzuto Show Comedy Podcast online → 1057thepoint.com/RizzShow.Hear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nice girls playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playli... In this episode of r/NiceGirls we meet some nice girls. Nah, just kidding. They're horrible people to be around and they just seem to stick like nothing else can. How do you get rid of them? Simple. Starve them of what they crave. Don't give them even a drop of attention and your nice girl problem will solve itself seemingly magically overnight! It doesn't matter what your background is, you always need to treat people like people and not use them simply to get off. Neckbeards seem to learn this lesson particularly slow and it really does make my blood boil... So we must bring it to light so others don't suffer alone. For your fill of neckbeard stories we've got you covered with the freshest weeaboo, niceguy, and neckbeard happenings on reddit. Stick with ReddX for your daily dose of cringe with a side-dish of relatability. You might even feel good for dessert... But who can say? ------------------------------------------------------------ #reddit #creepy #nicegirls Join me on Discord dude: https://discord.gg/Sju7YckUWu One-time PayPal donation: https://www.paypal.me/daytondo... Support this channel on Patreon: http://patreon.com/daytondoes Stalk me on the Twitter! http://www.twitter.com/daytond... Visit me over on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReddX... Got a story? I got a subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReddX... Here's an Amazon link to my microphone: https://amzn.to/3lInsRR Wanna rock the ReddX merch? https://teespring.com/stores/r... Character animations are by: https://twitter.com/DarkleyStu... Check out my other channel: https://www.youtube.com/dayton... Wifey's channel is right over here: https://www.youtube.com/channe... ------------------------------------------------------------ Did I mention that we have playlists??: Full neckbeard story compilations: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our neckbeard stories: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our legbeard stories: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our RPG Horror Stories: https://www.youtube.com/playli... All of our weeaboo tales: https://www.youtube.com/playli... ------------------------------------------------------------ Podcasts can provide some ReddX on the go! Check it out! Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/... Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/reddxy iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/... Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/fe... Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/... Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podc... Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/us/show... Podcast Addict: https://podcastaddict.com/podc... JioSaavn: https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows... Have you ever met a neckbeard or a nice guy? They are frustrating to deal with, but luckily you aren't alone! These r/neckbeardstories from Reddit are among the top posts of all time and include some of the funniest Reddit stories ever posted on the neckbeard stories subreddit! rSlash NeckbeardStories have all kinds of funny neckbeards in them, but especially the nice guy. And the weeaboo. There is a wide spectrum of neckbeards, and this is but a small slice of it. Listening to ReddX's neckbeard stories playlist is a great experience! These neckbeard stories Top Posts of All Time from Reddit are made for you to enjoy any time you feel like it, so be sure to save my rSlash neckbeard stories playlist to your favorites! While there are many rslash channels that read r/neckbeard stories and r/prorevenge from reddit. Some of the top rSlash entitled parents channels I recommend checking out are the original rSlash, Redditor, fresh, r/Bumfries, VoiceyHere, Mr Reddit, Storytime and Darkfluff. These Reddit story channels inspired me to start my own Reddit story channel, with a focus on Entitled Parents stories and at times going into the r/pettyrevenge and r/choosingbeggars subreddit as well. Because most of my audience prefers Entitled Parents stories of Reddit, I tend to just stick with reading the r/EntitleParents Top Posts of All Time. But I also enjoy getting up close and personal with neckbeards and weeaboos! Subscribe to ReddX for the freshest daily Reddit content. I post relatable readings of Reddit posts and Reddit stories every single day! Journey with me as I relate these amazing Reddit stories to my personal life journey. I'm greatly inspired by the top reddit posts of all time videos and reddit stories on YouTube. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channe... Discord: https://discord.gg/Sju7YckUWu Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/daytondo... PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/daytondo... Patreon: http://patreon.com/daytondoes Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/daytond... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReddX... Merch: https://reddx-shop.fourthwall....

durée : 00:59:55 - invitée : Youn Sun Nah "Lost Pieces" - par : Nicolas Pommaret - Dans la lignée de son avant-dernier album "Waking World" (2022), la chanteuse, autrice, compositrice coréenne Youn Sun Nah compose l'intégralité des titres de ce nouvel album "Lost Pieces". Parution demain chez Warner Music Arts. Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

I am getting sick of the topic because I am watching it get kookified before my eyes. I saw the same thing happen to 911 Truth. By the way, we just reached 200 Restacks on Empire Unmasked. If you have not seen or shared that yet you should start on it. The Epstein saga has reached McCarthy like hysteria where anyone “in the file” regardless of the context is being subjected to a witch hunt. Anyone except the ones who deserve the witch hunt. Now what are the odds of that? Epstein's cronies are still in power. This IS the Deep State.I kind of enjoy watching my cut-and-pasters get wrecked when they are questioned about Epstein and they cannot back up what they say. Got a new one here. I already did debate Tracey in spaces and he lost badly. (find a link to that later) And I never disagreed with debating as I was never even asked. That guy doesn't think a 52 year having sex with a 14 year old is pedophilia. I really doesn't matter what you want to call it. Sex and sex acts with a minor is illegal. Prostitution is also illegal. Sex with girls 15 or younger unless you are within two years of their age is especially illegal. Epstein was 52 when he had sex with multiple 14 and 15 year olds. That should have been 30 years in jail for even one count. And second degree felonies for the 16 year olds and 17 year old. The argument is that simple it takes about 1 minute. As far as his network that takes more time but you have all seen me lay it out before each person has a different paper trail. The girls were told to tell Epstein that they were 18 by their recruiter so he would have plausible deniability. Let's not play stupid. That's like paying a pimp instead of paying a girl directly and saying well its not prostitution because you didn't give any money to her. You know they're in high school when that's where you had people looking for them.The other weasel move is to say well he only held a vibrator to a naked 14 year old's vagina, but that's not “sex”. Well guess what, that is still illegal. And carries 5 to 30 years in prison. Paying them makes the Lewd or Lascivious Battery prostitution which only adds time for that too. I am only giving you Florida law to keep it simple. Epstein should have been locked away in 2008 until 2038 minimal. However, I want Ian and Whitney to debate Tracey because they don't actually know these cases and they will lose. I'm not doing the work for them just so they can copy me again and then go on Tucker and Rogan while I get passed over again. I'm the one doing all the original work and the one being canceled defamed and losing money. They've never been canceled or de-banked from anything. Why do I have to take all the heat and do all the work and then also be the debate mercenary too? I'll step in when these grifters recognize the truth.Am I salty? Damn right I am, and why shouldn't I be? I had my life turned upside down! And then I just get passed over. They can pay me. I'm sick of being used by people. It's funny NOW people want to acknowledge who knows the most about this topic and who put it all together. Nah f**k that. I'm on team Tracey when it comes to exposing these grifters. I'm not going to win their battles for them so that they can benefit while I live hand to mouth. They can all kiss my Southern ass.Why am I the only one being censored? Because I'm the only one whose a threat to the system. They do not understand what this was. It is just a bunch of disconnected sloganeering. This is exactly why I rarely talk about JFK. I already explained RFK and 911 and got no recognition. They just girft off my finding and act like everyone knew it all along. But they didn't. How many times have you heard people say jack Ruby was named Jacob Rubenstein? That wasn't common knowledge at all. I might change my mind. But right now I'm like screw these clowns. I'm focused on the Iran war and my island sinking into the ocean. I'm tired of people taking all the benefit and recognition while I get all the heat. Where my million dollar payout? I cant even use a PayPal or coinbase. No YouTube no Venmo, or Vimeo, Instagram etc etc why is that? Why am I censored and they are not? Because I know what I'm talking about and can back it up. They just memorize the conclusions. I'm a threat to the system. Clowns are a limited hangout.If others are going to pretend to experts then let them do the debates and heavy lifting. Why am I only doing the work and not the reward?I'll come in at the end like final boss and destroy everyone. But I'm not rescuing these clowns until after they're exposed.People saying Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell were body swapped, that they ate babies or built a secret lab to farm human body parts in New Mexico, dissolved bones in sulfuric acid etc sound like Candace Owens trying to investigate Charlie Kirk. Ive dealt with the kook movement enough regarding 911. I don't have patience or energy for it any more. Nor the other side denying pedophilia or blaming Russia. I just want to wash my hands of it. Not forever but I need a break from all the stupid because it makes me ill. I'm going back to bear hunting and discussing the War of Northern aggression. I'm not going to try to shout over all the noise. I don't have time for that. going blind in one eye makes one realize how limited our time is and I am not going to waste the time i have left arguing with donkeys or rescuing donkeys. There is too much I want to SEE. Substack will still have Epstein news because its a paid service. But X can ride a fat one. By the way I got locked out of the new Facebook. It needs a phone number to verify logging in which I do not have as that page was created in 2009. You can no longer just make new pages either as they require photo ID to make a page now and I am banned as is my immediate family. I will try to find a work around.Wexner has to talk to congress tomorrow. Be sure to subscribe because I am only going to be addressing that to subs. I hate having to do that but that's the situation i am in. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ryandawson.org/subscribe

Bezprostřednost, humor a schopnost mluvit s lehkostí o jakémkoli tématu patřily k osobnosti psychiatra Cyrila Höschla. Novinář Ivan Hamšík se s lékařskou legendou sblížil při práci na knize Tak o co jde?. Na Höschlovi oceňuje jeho schopnost odpovídat promyšleně, strukturovaně a vždy s vtipnou pointou.

“The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked” (Nah 1:3). 

In today's show Chas and David reveal while “betrayal” may be an understatement by Britt Merrick about his adopted brother Kelly Slater, they question if perhaps there is such a thing as bad publicity, learn that Tony Robbin's due diligence lacks thoroughness, $13k is up for grabs to a female filmmaker, why your next Fish will also cost you a diamond bracelet, and discover that one famed surf musician carries the burden of the most unfortunate doppelgänger association. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

-After Last Night's Super Bowl.. Are these TEXANS 'Close' or Nah to SB Trip? -Did the Super Bowl Champion Seahawks have this Year's BEST NFL Defense? -Weekend's Best, Weekend's Worst! Sam Darnold Sighting!

-The Seahawks Sit Atop the NFL World! What HURTS for Texans Fans.. -Bad Bunny's Record-Breaking Super Bowl Halftime Show; & Next Year's Show! -After Last Night's Super Bowl.. Are these TEXANS 'Close' or Nah to SB Trip? -Did the Super Bowl Champion Seahawks have this Year's BEST NFL Defense? -Weekend's Best, Weekend's Worst! Sam Darnold Sighting! -1 Thing About Last Night's Super Bowl should Make Texans Fans TERRIFIED- -T-Mil's Best Bet$ for Monday Night NBA Action!$!$

He drops back…taking his time…locates his target…and boom! The connection is made! That's right, the connection between podcast file and RSS feed, of course! And with that, another historic episode of YKS has been posted, and JF has showered DB with the celebratory Sports Electrolyte Drink. What color was it? Well it was either red or green…let's ask that fool!! Nah but that was a lot of fun. And so is this episode! Except just like this weekend, the best part is the ads and the halftime show (Producer Dan chugging a gallon of Aquafina).Music for YKS is courtesy of Howell Dawdy, Craig Dickman, Mr. Baloney, and Mark Brendle. Additional research by Zeke Golvin. YKS is edited by Producer Dan. Social Media by Maddalena Alvarez.Executive Producer Tim Faust (@crulge)Ad-free episodes of YKS are available on YKS Premium! And bonus episodes as well, naturally, as well. It is what it is – a VERY awesome situation indeed. Follow us on Instagram: @YKSPod, TikTok: YourKickstarterSucks and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more video stuff! This episode is brought to you by these fine brands:NordVPN – EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/yks Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guaranteeSquare – Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/YKS! #squarepodWow, 2026 is gonna be lit!! Gift subscriptions to YKS Premium are now available at Patreon.com/yourkickstartersucks/giftSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Xtra Butta, Cam & Dylan finally tackle the most quoted movie of all time: The Princess Bride. You know it. You love it. You can't stop saying the lines. We break down how this movie somehow pulls off romance, action, comedy, parody, and comfort-food vibes all at once while also gaslighting an entire generation into thinking sword fights and true love are normal life skills. We talk Westley's unmatched “as you wish” levels of devotion, Buttercup's all-time elite stress decision-making, and Inigo Montoya delivering one of the cleanest revenge arcs in cinema history (six fingers still catching strays). Plus: the logic of the poison scene, the absolute chaos of the Fire Swamp, and why every single side character feels like the main character. Is this the most rewatchable movie ever? Why does it hit harder the older you get? And how did a movie this unserious become so emotionally bulletproof? Inconceivable? Nah. That's just Xtra Butta doing what it does best. Wanna ask us something?!? Hit us up at Xtrabutta@gmail.com or our Instagram https://instagram.com/xtrabuttapodcast?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Former Nike exec Mark Hochgesang interviews Danny on Heavy Hitter Sports Podcast about MS & being an adaptive athlete. Just back from Belize! Training works. Summary My friend Mark Hochgesang, former Nike exec and host of Heavy Hitter Sports, recently interviewed me. While I usually wear my life on my sleeve on Health Hats, this conversation revealed something different—how I think about myself as an adaptive athlete. Phil Knight’s mantra: “If you have a body, you’re an athlete.” I never thought of it that way until Mark helped me see it. Training to travel? That’s athletic training. Loading a 60-pound wheelchair into an SUV? Strength work. Walking 3,500 steps a day with MS? Competition with myself. Here’s what we covered:

On this episode the guys tackle the Flat Earth theory, will the Council of Nah be convinced? Tune In.

For better AI agents, we just need bigger models, right?

I hope Paul Simon doesn't sue me for that title. Nah, he's got better things to do than listen to this show. Do you want some cool merch? Check out the store here- https://www.niceguysonbusiness.com/merch Need podcast production? We've got your back. https://turnkeypodcast.com/contact Your Voice, your message, fully produced. Leave a voice mail for the Nice Guys: 424-2DJ-DOUG – (424) 235-3684Need help podcasting? http://www.TurnkeyPodcast.comJoin our Nice Guys Community. http://www.NiceShortCut.com No time to get to this, but you can read the blog here: 12 Worries Every Entrepreneur Has (or they are lying) Show notes written lovingly by the most anonymous man (or woman) in the world. Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. Need podcast production? We've got your back. https://turnkeypodcast.com/contact Your Voice, your message, fully produced.

In today's show Chas and David mark an exponential growth spurt across the entire Challenger Series and try to pinpoint the catalyst, reveal the subtle juke from JJF regarding naming his kid, ponder if it's ever acceptable to have your dad fight your fights, celebrate the man who brought surfing to it's simultaneous highest and lowest points, and discover that even the coolest amongst us is still just cosplaying. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pepsi is slashing prices for some of its most popular brands, some by 15%. The company said it has spent the past year listening to consumer feedback. Nah. What happened is always what happens in this economy and why there is no breakout inflation. Companies that do raise prices end up sacrificing volumes because their customers can't afford to pay more. Eurodollar University's Money & Macro Analysis----------------------------------------------------------------Eurodollar University LIVE — February 2026, President's Day WeekendSmall group. Intimate setting. Direct access to experts you won't get anywhere else. Only a few VIP slots remain.Sign up here: https://eurodollar-university.com/event-home-page----------------------------------------------------------------PepsiCo to cut prices of Lay's, Doritos as consumers push backhttps://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-reporting/pepsico-tops-quarterly-revenue-estimates-resilient-demand-sodas-2026-02-03/After Years of Increases, PepsiCo Pledges to Cut Prices on Snackshttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/business/pepsi-doritos-cheetos-prices.htmlhttps://www.eurodollar.universityTwitter: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_EDU

Entrevista al geólogo Nahúm Méndez para hablar de los riesgos para el subsuelo en Grazalema por el temporal Leonardo.

How can indie authors raise their game through academic-style rigour? How might AI tools fit into a thoughtful research process without replacing the joy of discovery? Melissa Addey explores the intersection of scholarly discipline, creative writing, and the practical realities of building an author career. In the intro, mystery and thriller tropes [Wish I'd Known Then]; The differences between trad and indie in 2026 [Productive Indie Fiction Writer]; Five phases of an author business [Becca Syme]; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn; Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it's delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Melissa Addey is an award-winning historical fiction author with a PhD in creative writing from the University of Surrey. She was the Leverhulme Trust Writer in Residence at the British Library, and now works as campaigns lead for the Alliance of Independent Authors. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Making the leap from a corporate career to full-time writing with a young family Why Melissa pursued a PhD in creative writing and how it fuelled her author business What indie authors can learn from academic rigour when researching historical fiction The problems with academic publishing—pricing, accessibility, and creative restrictions Organising research notes, avoiding accidental plagiarism, and knowing when to stop researching Using AI tools effectively as part of the research process without losing your unique voice You can find Melissa at MelissaAddey.com. Transcript of the interview with Melissa Addey JOANNA: Melissa Addey is an award-winning historical fiction author with a PhD in creative writing from the University of Surrey. She was the Leverhulme Trust Writer in Residence at the British Library, and now works as campaigns lead for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Welcome back to the show, Melissa. MELISSA: Hello. Thank you for having me. JOANNA: It's great to have you back. You were on almost a decade ago, in December 2016, talking about merchandising for authors. That is really a long time ago. So tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing. MELISSA: I had a regular job in business and I was writing on the side. I did a couple of writing courses, and then I started trying to get published, and that took seven years of jumping through hoops. There didn't seem to be much progress. At some point, I very nearly had a small publisher, but we clashed over the cover because there was a really quite hideous suggestion that was not going to work. I think by that point I was really tired of jumping through hoops, really trying to play the game traditional publishing-wise. I just went, you know what? I've had enough now. I've done everything that was asked of me and it's still not working. I'll just go my own way. I think at the time that would've been 2015-ish. Suddenly, self-publishing was around more. I could see people and hear people talking about it, and I thought, okay, let's read everything there is to know about this. I had a little baby at the time and I would literally print off stuff during the day to read—probably loads of your stuff—and read it at two o'clock in the morning breastfeeding babies. Then I'd go, okay, I think I understand that bit now, I'll understand the next bit, and so on. So I got into self-publishing and I really, really enjoyed it. I've been doing it ever since. I'm now up to 20 books in the last 10 or 11 years. As you say, I did the creative writing PhD along the way, working with ALLi and doing workshops for others—mixing and matching lots of different things. I really enjoy it. JOANNA: You mentioned you had a job before in business. Are you full-time in all these roles that you're doing now, or do you still have that job? MELISSA: No, I'm full-time now. I only do writing-related things. I left that in 2015, so I took a jump. I was on maternity leave and I started applying for jobs to go back to, and I suddenly felt like, oh, I really don't want to. I want to do the writing. I thought, I've got about one year's worth of savings. I could try and do the jump. I remember saying to my husband, “Do you think it would be possible if I tried to do the jump? Would that be okay?” There was this very long pause while he thought about it. But the longer the pause went on, the more I was thinking, ooh, he didn't say no, that is out of the question, financially we can't do that. I thought, ooh, it's going to work. So I did the jump. JOANNA: That's great. I did something similar and took a massive pay cut and downsized and everything back in the day. Having a supportive partner is so important. The other thing I did—and I wonder if you did too—I said to Jonathan, my husband, if within a year this is not going in a positive direction, then I'll get another job. How long did you think you would leave it before you just gave up? And how did that go? Because that beginning is so difficult, especially with a new baby. MELISSA: I thought, well, I'm at home anyway, so I do have more time than if I was in a full-time job. The baby sleeps sometimes—if you're lucky—so there are little gaps where you could really get into it. I had a year of savings/maternity pay going on, so I thought I've got a year. And the funny thing that happened was within a few months, I went back to my husband and I was like, I don't understand. I said, all these doors are opening—they weren't massive, but they were doors opening. I said, but I've wanted to be a writer for a long time and none of these doors have opened before. He said, “Well, it's because you really committed. It's because you jumped. And when you jump, sometimes the universe is on board and goes, yes, all right then, and opens some doors for you.” It really felt like that. Even little things—like Writing Magazine gave me a little slot to do an online writer-in-residence thing. Just little doors opened that felt like you were getting a nod, like, yes, come on then, try. Then the PhD was part of that. I applied to do that and it came with a studentship, which meant I had three years of funding coming in. That was one of the biggest creative gifts that's ever been given to me—three years of knowing you've got enough money coming in that you can just try and make it work. By the time that finished, the royalties had taken over from the studentship. That was such a gift. JOANNA: A couple of things there. I've got to ask about that funding. You're saying it was a gift, but that money didn't just magically appear. You worked really hard to get that funding, I presume. MELISSA: I did, yes. You do have to do the work for it, just to be clear. My sister had done a PhD in an entirely different subject. She said, “You should do a PhD in creative writing.” I said, “That'd be ridiculous. Nobody is going to fund that. Who's going to fund that?” She said, “Oh, they might. Try.” So I tried, and the deadline was something stupid like two weeks away. I tried and I got shortlisted, but I didn't get it. I thought, ah, but I got shortlisted with only two weeks to try. I'll try again next year then. So then I tried again the next year and that's when I got it. It does take work. You have to put in quite a lot of effort to make your case. But it's a very joyful thing if you get one. JOANNA: So let's go to the bigger question: why do a PhD in creative writing? Let's be clear to everyone—you don't need even a bachelor's degree to be a successful author. Stephen King is a great example of someone who isn't particularly educated in terms of degrees. He talks about writing his first book while working at a laundry. You can be very successful with no formal education. So why did you want to do a PhD? What drew you to academic research? MELISSA: Absolutely. I would briefly say, I often meet people who feel they must do a qualification before they're allowed to write. I say, do it if you'd like to, but you don't have to. You could just practise the writing. I fully agree with that. It was a combination of things. I do actually like studying. I do actually enjoy the research—that's why I do historical research. I like that kind of work. So that's one element. Another element was the funding. I thought, if I get that funding, I've got three years to build up a back catalogue of books, to build up the writing. It will give me more time. So that was a very practical financial issue. Also, children. My children were very little. I had a three-year-old and a baby, and everybody went, “Are you insane? Doing a PhD with a three-year-old and a baby?” But the thing about three-year-olds and babies is they're quite intellectually boring. Emotionally, very engaging—on a number of levels, good, bad, whatever—but they're not very intellectually stimulating. You're at home all day with two small children who think that hide and seek is the highlight of intellectual difficulty because they've hidden behind the curtains and they're shuffling and giggling. I felt I needed something else. I needed something for me that would be interesting. I've always enjoyed passing on knowledge. I've always enjoyed teaching people, workshops, in whatever field I was in. I thought, if I want to do that for writing at some point, it will sound more important if I've done a PhD. Not that you need that to explain how to do writing to someone if you do a lot of writing. But there were all these different elements that came together. JOANNA: So to summarise: you enjoy the research, it's an intellectual challenge, you've got the funding, and there is something around authority. In terms of a PhD—and just for listeners, I'm doing a master's at the moment in death, religion, and culture. MELISSA: Your topic sounds fascinating. JOANNA: It is interesting because, same as you, I enjoy research. Both of us love research as part of our fiction process and our nonfiction. I'm also enjoying the intellectual challenge, and I've also considered this idea of authority in an age of AI when it is increasingly easy to generate books—let's just say it, it's easy to generate books. So I was like, well, how do I look at this in a more authoritative way? I wanted to talk to you because even just a few months back into it—and I haven't done an academic qualification for like two decades—it struck me that the academic rigour is so different. What lessons can indie authors learn from this kind of academic rigour? What do you think of in terms of the rigour and what can we learn? MELISSA: I think there are a number of things. First of all, really making sure that you are going to the quality sources for things—the original sources, the high-quality versions of things. Not secondhand, but going back to those primary sources. Not “somebody said that somebody said something.” Well, let's go back to the original. Have a look at that, because you get a lot from that. I think you immerse yourself more deeply. Someone can tell you, “This is how they spoke in the 1800s.” If you go and read something that was written in the 1800s, you get a better sense of that than just reading a dictionary of slang that's been collated for you by somebody else. So I think that immerses you more deeply. Really sticking with that till you've found interesting things that spark creativity in you. I've seen people say, “I used to do all the historical research. Nowadays I just fact-check. I write what I want to write and I fact-check.” I think, well, that's okay, but you won't find the weird little things. I tend to call it “the footnotes of history.” You won't find the weird little things that really make something come alive, that really make a time and a place come alive. I've got a scene in one of my Regency romances—which actually I think are less full of historical emphasis than some of my other work—where a man gives a woman a gift. It's supposed to be a romantic gift and maybe slightly sensual. He could have given her a fan and I could have fact-checked and gone, “Are there fans? Yes, there are fans. Do they have pretty romantic poems on them? Yes, they do. Okay, that'll do.” Actually, if you go round and do more research than that, you discover they had things like ribbons that held up your stockings, on which they wrote quite smutty things in embroidery. That's a much more sexy and interesting gift to give in that scene. But you don't find that unless you go doing a bit of research. If I just fact-check, I'm not going to find that because it would never have occurred to me to fact-check it in the first place. JOANNA: I totally agree with you. One of the wonderful things about research—and I also like going to places—is you might be somewhere and see something that gives you an idea you never, ever would have found in a book or any other way. I used to call it “the serendipity of the stacks” in the physical library. You go looking for a particular book and then you're in that part of the shelf and you find several other books that you never would have looked for. I think it's encouraging people, as you're saying, but I also think you have to love it. MELISSA: Yes. I think some people find it a bit of a grind, or they're frightened by it and they think, “Have I done enough?” JOANNA: Mm-hmm. MELISSA: I get asked that a lot when I talk about writing historical fiction. People go, “But when do I stop? How do I know it's enough? How do I know there wasn't another book that would have been the book? Everyone will go, ‘Oh, how did you not read such-and-such?'” I always say there are two ways of finding out when you can stop. One is when you get to the bibliographies, you look through and you go, “Yep, read that, read that, read that. Nah, I know that one's not really what I wanted.” You're familiar with those bibliographies in a way that at the beginning you're not. At the beginning, every single bibliography, you haven't read any of it. So that's quite a good way of knowing when to stop. The other way is: can you write ordinary, everyday life? I don't start writing a book till I can write everyday life in that historical era without notes. I will obviously have notes if I'm doing a wedding or a funeral or a really specific battle or something. Everyday life, I need to be able to just write that out of my own head. You need to be confident enough to do that. JOANNA: One of the other problems I've heard from academics—people who've really come out of academia and want to write something more pop, even if it's pop nonfiction or fiction—they're also really struggling. It is a different game, isn't it? For people who might be immersed in academia, how can they release themselves into doing something like self-publishing? Because there's still a lot of stigma within academia. MELISSA: You're going to get me on the academic publishing rant now. I think academic publishing is horrendous. Academics are very badly treated. I know quite a lot of academics and they have to do all the work. Nobody's helping them with indexing or anything like that. The publisher will say things like, “Well, could you just cut 10,000 words out of that?” Just because of size. Out of somebody's argument that they're making over a whole work. No consideration for that. The royalties are basically zilch. I've seen people's royalty statements come in, and the way they price the books is insane. They'll price a book at 70 pounds. I actually want that book for my research and I'm hesitating because I can't be buying all of them at that price. That's ridiculous. I've got people who are friends or family who bring out a book, and I'm like, well, I would gladly buy your book and read it. It's priced crazy. It's priced only for institutions. I think actually, if academia was written a little more clearly and open to the lay person—which if you are good at your work, you should be able to do—and priced a bit more in line with other books, that would maybe open up people to reading more academia. You wouldn't have to make it “pop” as you say. I quite like pop nonfiction. But I don't think there would have to be such a gulf between those two. I think you could make academic work more readable generally. I read someone's thesis recently and they'd made a point at the beginning of saying—I can't remember who it was—that so-and-so academic's point of view was that it should be readable and they should be writing accordingly. I thought, wow, I really admired her for doing that. Next time I'm doing something like that, I should be putting that at the front as well. But the fact that she had to explain that at the beginning… It wasn't like words of one syllable throughout the whole thing. I thought it was a very quality piece of writing, but it was perfectly readable to someone who didn't know about the topic. JOANNA: I might have to get that name from you because I've got an essay on the Philosophy of Death. And as you can imagine, there's a heck of a lot of big words. MELISSA: I know. I've done a PhD, but I still used to tense up a little bit thinking they're going to pounce on me. They're going to say that I didn't talk academic enough, I didn't sound fancy enough. That's not what it should be about, really. In a way, you are locking people out of knowledge, and given that most academics are paid for by public funds, that knowledge really ought to be a little more publicly accessible. JOANNA: I agree on the book price. I'm also buying books for my course that aren't in the library. Some of them might be 70 pounds for the ebook, let alone the print book. What that means is that I end up looking for secondhand books, when of course the money doesn't go to the author or the publisher. The other thing that happens is it encourages piracy. There are people who openly talk about using pirate sites for academic works because it's just too expensive. If I'm buying 20 books for my home library, I can't be spending that kind of money. Why is it so bad? Why is it not being reinvented, especially as we have done with indie authors for the wider genres? Has this at all moved into academia? MELISSA: I think within academia there's a fear because there's the peer reviews and it must be proven to be absolutely correct and agreed upon by everybody. I get that. You don't want some complete rubbish in there. I do think there's space to come up with a different system where you could say, “So-and-so is professor of whatever at such-and-such a university. I imagine what they have to say might be interesting and well-researched.” You could have some sort of kite mark. You could have something that then allows for self-publishing to take over a bit. I do just think their system is really, really poor. They get really reined in on what they're allowed to write about. Alison Baverstock, who is a professor now at Kingston University and does stuff about publishing and master's programmes, started writing about self-publishing because she thought it was really interesting. This was way back. JOANNA: I remember. I did one of those surveys. MELISSA: She got told in no uncertain terms, “Do not write about this. You will ruin your career.” She stuck with it. She was right to stick with it. But she was told by senior academics, “Do not write about self-publishing. You're just embarrassing yourself. It's just vanity press.” They weren't even being allowed to write about really quite interesting phenomena that were happening. Just from a historical point of view, that was a really interesting rise of self-publishing, and she was being told not to write about it. JOANNA: It's funny, that delay as well. I'm looking to maybe do my thesis on how AI is impacting death and the death industry. And yet it's such a fast-moving thing. MELISSA: Yes. JOANNA: Sometimes it can take a year, two years or more to get a paper through the process. MELISSA: Oh, yes. It moves really, really fast. Like you say, by the time it comes out, people are going, “Huh? That's really old.” And you'll be going, “No, it's literally two years.” But yes, very, very slow. JOANNA: Let's come back to how we can help other people who might not want to be doing academic-level stuff. One of the things I've found is organising notes, sources, references. How do you manage that? Any tips for people? They might not need to do footnotes for their historical novel, but they might want to organise their research. What are your thoughts? MELISSA: I used to do great big enormous box files and print vast quantities of stuff. Each box file would be labelled according to servant life, or food, or seasons, or whatever. I've tried various different things. I'm moving more and more now towards a combination of books on the shelf, which I do like, and papers and other materials that are stored on my computer. They'll be classified according to different parts of daily life, essentially. Because when you write historical fiction, you have to basically build the whole world again for that era. You have to have everything that happens in daily life, everything that happens on special events, all of those things. So I'll have it organised by those sorts of topics. I'll read it and go through it until I'm comfortable with daily life. Then special things—I'll have special notes on that that can talk me through how you run a funeral or a wedding or whatever, because that's quite complicated to just remember in your head. MELISSA: I always do historical notes at the end. They really matter to me. When I read historical fiction, I really like to read that from the author. I'll say, “Right, these things are true”—especially things that I think people will go, “She made that up. That is not true.” I'll go, “No, no, these are true.” These other things I've fudged a little, or I've moved the timeline a bit to make the story work better. I try to be fairly clear about what I did to make it into a story, but also what is accurate, because I want people to get excited about that timeline. Occasionally if there's been a book that was really important, I'll mention it in there because I don't want to have a proper bibliography, but I do want to highlight certain books. If you got excited by this novel, you could go off and read that book and it would take you into the nonfiction side of it. JOANNA: I'm similar with my author's notes. I've just done the author's note for Bones of the Deep, which has some merfolk in it, and I've got a book on Merpeople. It's awesome. It's just a brilliant book. I'm like, this has to go in. You could question whether that is really nonfiction or something else. But I think that's really important. Just to be more practical: when you're actually writing, what tools do you use? I use Scrivener and I keep all my research there. I'm using EndNote for academic stuff. MELISSA: I've always just stuck to Word. I did get Scrivener and played with it for a while, but I felt like I've already got a way of doing it, so I'll just carry on with that. So I mostly just do Word. I have a lot of notes, so I'll have notepads that have got my notes on specific things, and they'll have page numbers that go back to specific books in case I need to go and double-check that again. You mentioned citations, and that's fascinating to me. Do you know the story about Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner? It won the Pulitzer. It's a novel, but he used 10% of that novel—and it's a fairly slim novel—10% of it is actually letters written by somebody else, written by a woman before his time. He includes those and works with them in the story. He mentioned her very briefly, like, “Oh, and thanks to the relatives of so-and-so.” Very brief. He got accused of plagiarism for using that much of it by another part of her family who hadn't agreed to it. I've always thought it's because he didn't give enough credence to her. He didn't give her enough importance. If he'd said, “This was the woman who wrote this stuff. It's fascinating. I loved it. I wanted to creatively respond and engage with it”—I think that wouldn't have happened at all. That's why I think it's quite important when there are really big, important elements that you're using to acknowledge those. JOANNA: That's part of the academic rigour too— You can barely have a few of your own thoughts without referring to somebody else's work and crediting them. What's so interesting to me in the research process is, okay, I think this, but in order to say it, I'm going to have to go find someone else who thought this first and wrote a paper on it. MELISSA: I think you would love a PhD. When you've done a master's, go and do a PhD as well. Because it was the first time in academia that I genuinely felt I was allowed my own thoughts and to invent stuff of my own. I could go, “Oh no, I've invented this theory and it's this.” I didn't have to constantly go, “As somebody else said, as somebody else said.” I was like, no, no. This is me. I said this thing. I wasn't allowed to in my master's, and I found it annoying. I remember thinking, but I'm trying to have original thoughts here. I'm trying to bring something new to it. In a PhD, you're allowed to do that because you're supposed to be contributing to knowledge. You're supposed to be bringing a new thing into the world. That was a glorious thing to finally be allowed to do. JOANNA: I must say I couldn't help myself with that. I've definitely put my own opinion. But a part of why I mention it is the academic rigour—it's actually quite good practice to see who else has had these thoughts before. Speed is one of the biggest issues in the indie author community. Some of the stuff you were talking about—finding original sources, going to primary sources, the top-quality stuff, finding the weird little things—all of that takes more time than, for example, just running a deep research report on Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT. You can do both. You can use that as a starting point, which I definitely do. But then the point is to go back and read the original stuff. On this timeframe— Why do you think research is worth doing? It's important for academic reasons, but personal growth as well. MELISSA: Yes, I think there's a joy to be had in the research. When I go and stand in a location, by that point I'm not measuring things and taking photos—I've done all of that online. I'm literally standing there feeling what it is to be there. What does it smell like? What does it feel like? Does it feel very enclosed or very open? Is it a peaceful place or a horrible place? That sensory research becomes very important. All of the book research before that should lead you into the sensory research, which is then also a joy to do. There's great pleasure in it. As you say, it slows things down. What I tend to say to people if they want to speed things up again is: write in a series. Because once you've done all of that research and you just write one book and then walk away, that's a lot. That really slows you down. If you then go, “Okay, well now I'm going to write four books, five books, six books, still in that place and time”—obviously each book will need a little more research, but it won't need that level of starting-from-scratch research. That can help in terms of speeding it back up again. Recently I wrote some Regency romances to see what that was like. I'd done all my basic research, and then I thought, right, now I want to write a historical novel which could have been Victorian or could have been Regency. It had an openness to it. I thought, well, I've just done all the research for Regency, so I'll stick with that era. Why go and do a whole other piece of research when I've only written three books in it so far? I'll just take that era and work with that. So there are places to make up the time again a bit. But I do think there's a joy in it as well. JOANNA: I just want to come back to the plagiarism thing. I discovered that you can plagiarise yourself in academia, which is quite interesting. For example, my books How to Write a Novel and How to Write Nonfiction—they're aimed at different audiences. They have lots of chapters that are different, but there's a chapter on dictation. I thought, why would I need to write the same chapter again? I'm just going to put the same chapter in. It's the same process. Then I only recently learned that you can plagiarise yourself. I did not credit myself for that original chapter. MELISSA: How dare you not credit yourself! JOANNA: But can you talk a bit about that? Where are the lines here? I'm never going to credit myself. I think that's frankly ridiculous. MELISSA: No, that's silly. I mean, it depends what you're doing. In your case, that completely makes sense. It would be really peculiar of you to sit down and write a whole new chapter desperately trying not to copy what you'd said in a chapter about exactly the same topic. That doesn't make any sense. JOANNA: I guess more in the wider sense. Earlier you mentioned you keep notes and you put page numbers by them. I think the point is with research, a lot of people worry about accidental plagiarism. You write a load of notes on a book and then it just goes into your brain. Perhaps you didn't quote people properly. It's definitely more of an issue in nonfiction. You have to keep really careful notes. Sometimes I'm copying out a quote and I'll just naturally maybe rewrite that quote because the way they've put it didn't make sense, or I use a contraction or something. It's just the care in note-taking and then citing people. MELISSA: Yes. When I talk to people about nonfiction, I always say, you're basically joining a conversation. I mean, you are in fiction as well, but not as obviously. I say, well, why don't you read the conversation first? Find out what the conversation is in your area at the moment, and then what is it that you're bringing that's different? The most likely reason for you to end up writing something similar to someone else is that you haven't understood what the conversation was, and you need to be bringing your own thing to it. Then even if you're talking about the same topic, you might talk about it in a different way, and that takes you away from plagiarism because you're bringing your own view to it and your own direction to it. JOANNA: It's an interesting one. I think it's just the care. Taking more care is what I would like people to do. So let's talk about AI because AI tools can be incredible. I do deep research reports with Gemini and Claude and ChatGPT as a sort of “give me an overview and tell me some good places to start.” The university I'm with has a very hard line, which is: AI can be used as part of a research process, but not for writing. What are your thoughts on AI usage and tools? How can people balance that? MELISSA: Well, I'm very much a newbie compared to you. I follow you—the only person that describes how to use it with any sense at all, step by step. I'm very new to it, but I'm going to go back to the olden days. Sometimes I say to people, when I'm talking about how I do historical research, I start with Wikipedia. They look horrified. I'm like, no. That's where you have to get the overview from. I want an overview of how you dress in ancient Rome. I need a quick snapshot of that. Then I can go off and figure out the details of that more accurately and with more detail. I think AI is probably extremely good for that—getting the big picture of something and going, okay, this is what the field's looking like at the moment. These are the areas I'm going to need to burrow down into. It's doing that work for you quickly so that you're then in a position to pick up from that point. It gets you off to a quicker start and perhaps points you in the direction of the right people to start with. I'm trying to write a PhD proposal at the moment because I'm an idiot and want to do a second one. With that, I really did think, actually, AI should write this. Because the original concept is mine. I know nothing about it—why would I know anything about it? I haven't started researching it. This is where AI should go, “Well, in this field, there are these people. They've done these things.” Then you could quickly check that nobody's covered your thing. It would actually speed up all of that bit, which I think would be perfectly reasonable because you don't know anything about it yet. You're not an expert. You have the original idea, and then after that, then you should go off and do your own research and the in-depth quality of it. I think for a lot of things that waste authors' time—if you're applying for a grant or a writer-in-residence or things like that—it's a lot of time wasting filling in long, boring forms. “Could you make an artist statement and a something and a blah?” You're like, yes, yes, I could spend all day at my desk doing that. There's a moment where you start thinking, could you not just allow the AI to do this or much of it? JOANNA: Yes. Or at least, in that case, I'd say one of the very useful things is doing deep searches. As you were mentioning earlier about getting the funding—if I was to consider a PhD, which the thought has crossed my mind—I would use AI tools to do searches for potential sources of funding and that kind of research. In fact, I found this course at Winchester because I asked ChatGPT. It knows a lot about me because I chat with it all the time. I was talking about hitting 50 and these are the things I'm really interested in and what courses might interest me. Then it found it for me. That was quite amazing in itself. I'd encourage people to consider using it for part of the research process. But then all the papers it cites or whatever—then you have to go download those, go read them, do that work yourself. MELISSA: Yes, because that's when you bring your viewpoint to something. You and I could read the exact same paper and choose very different parts of it to write about and think about, because we're coming at it from different points of view and different journeys that we're trying to explore. That's where you need the individual to come in. It wouldn't be good enough to just have a generic overview from AI that we both try and slot into our work, because we would want something different from it. JOANNA: I kind of laugh when people say, “Oh, I can tell when it's AI.” I'm like, you might be able to tell when it's AI writing if nobody has taken that personal spin, but that's not the way we use it. If you're using it that way, that's not how those of us who are independent thinkers are using it. We're strong enough in our thoughts that we're using it as a tool. You're a confident person—intellectually and creatively confident—but I feel like some people maybe don't have that. Some people are not strong enough to resist what an AI might suggest. Any thoughts on that? MELISSA: Yes. When I first tried using AI with very little guidance from anyone, it just felt easy but very wooden and not very related to me. Then I've done webinars with you, and that was really useful—to watch somebody actually live doing the batting back and forth. That became a lot more interesting because I really like bouncing ideas and messing around with things and brainstorming, essentially, but with somebody else involved that's batting stuff back to you. “What does that look like?” “No, I didn't mean that at all.” “How about what does this look like?” “Oh no, no, not like that.” “Oh yes, a bit like that, but a bit more like whatever.” I remember doing that and talking to someone about it, going, “Oh, that's really quite an interesting use of it.” And they said, “Why don't you use a person?” I said, “Well, because who am I going to call at 8:30 in the morning on a Thursday and go, ‘Look, I want to spend two hours batting back and forth ideas, but I don't want you to talk about your stuff at all. Just my stuff. And you have to only think about my stuff for two hours. And you have to be very well versed in my stuff as well. Could you just do that?'” Who's going to do that for you? JOANNA: I totally agree with you. Before Christmas, I was doing a paper. It was an art history thing. We had to pick a piece of art or writing and talk about Christian ideas of hell and how it emerged. I was writing this essay and going back and forth with Claude at the time. My husband came in and saw the fresco I was writing about. He said, “No one's going to talk to you about this. Nobody.” MELISSA: Yes, exactly. JOANNA: Nobody cares. MELISSA: Exactly. Nobody cares as much as you. And they're not prepared to do that at 8:30 on a Thursday morning. They've got other stuff to do. JOANNA: It's great to hear because I feel like we're now at the point where these tools are genuinely super useful for independent work. I hope that more people might try that. JOANNA: Okay, we're almost out of time. Where can people find you and your books online? Also, tell us a bit about the types of books you have. MELISSA: I mostly write historical fiction. As I say, I've wandered my way through history—I'm a travelling minstrel. I've done ancient Rome, medieval Morocco, 18th century China, and I'm into Regency England now. So that's a bit closer to home for once. I'm at MelissaAddey.com and you can go and have a bit of a browse and download a free novel if you want. Try me out. JOANNA: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Melissa. MELISSA: That was great. Thank you. It was fun. The post Research Like An Academic, Write Like an Indie With Melissa Addey first appeared on The Creative Penn.

In today's show Chas and David learn the embarrassing reason that dog owners evolve to look like their pets, celebrate JJF's decision to stay off Tour and blueprint how the WSL could entice him back, discover that Influencers don't know what a barrel is, unlock the “sports board” as a new genre, reminisce on the “Playboy” era of the ASP, and learn why napkin dispensers are a blight on the environment. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Use AI for B2B Storytelling Without Losing Your Brand So many B2B companies and marketing teams waste budget on generic content that fails to resonate or support core business goals. In an era where AI-generated is everywhere, smaller B2B brands often struggle to maintain a unique identity while competing against larger firms with massive content engines. The key to staying relevant lies in a B2B brand’s ability to be authentic, human-centric, and strategically consistent despite the pressure to automate everything. So how can B2B brands effectively integrate AI into their marketing workflows without losing their unique voice and brand integrity? That's why we're talking to Nick Usborne (Founder, Story Aligned), who shared his expertise on leveraging AI through the lens of strategic storytelling. During our conversation, Nick discussed the critical distinction between simple narrative and a brand’s unique story, highlighting a significant gap where only 7% of top AI prompt libraries actually focus on storytelling. He shared actionable advice on building a “story vault,” training staff to avoid “brand drift,” and enforcing consistent AI usage to maintain the trust of the audience. Nick also underscored the importance of keeping human elements at the forefront of content creation to prevent AI from feeling overly mechanical, and advocated for a balanced approach that ensures scalable growth without sacrificing a brand's authenticity. https://youtu.be/dtgvg2-XXoU Topics discussed in episode: [02:53] The “Why” Behind AI Adoption: Why companies must embrace AI not just for efficiency, but to avoid being left behind by competitors who are already scaling their reach.  [04:10] The “Moat” of Storytelling: Why narrative and voice can be easily copied by AI, but your brand's unique “lived story” is the only defensible moat you have.  [11:27] Pitfalls of Inconsistent AI Use: The dangers of “shadow AI” use by employees (e.g., Using personal accounts vs. company custom GPTs) and how it leads to brand drift.  [16:46] The Human Element vs. AI: Nick explains why AI can describe the beach but can't “feel the sand between its toes,” and why human “messiness” is key to connection.  [24:26] Building a Story Vault: Nick provides a practical framework for formalizing your brand's folklore—from founder stories to customer service wins—so they can be systematically used in AI content.  [28:17] Actionable Steps for Marketers: Three immediate steps to take: build your story vault, interview key stakeholders (founders, early employees), and analyze customer service transcripts for sentiment.  [30:11] The Problem with “Killer Prompt” Libraries: Why copying “top 20 prompt” lists is a strategic mistake that leads to generic, non-differentiated content. Companies and links mentioned: Nick Usborne on LinkedIn  Story Aligned  Transcript Nick Usborne, Christian Klepp Nick Usborne  00:00 AI can do a wonderful job in many ways, but it’s never walked down the beach and felt the sand between its toes. It’s read about it. It’s never eaten ice cream. It’s read about that, but it’s never felt it. So that’s what I mean by lived experience. I think that content and stories that truly resonate with people you use those kind of touch points the the deeply human side of being alive. And like, say, I think AI can get close when you prompt it really well, but also, there’s a messiness that makes us recognize one another, the little mistakes we make. That’s what makes us human. We are messy. AI, it’s not very good at being messy. You can ask it to be messy, and it’ll try to figure that out, but it’s really not the same. And like I say, I think people are very sensitive to this kind of nuance. Christian Klepp  00:51 When brands rely on the same AI tools and prompts, they start to sound like everyone else. That loss of voice can hurt trust and lead to something called Brand drift. So how can B2B Marketing teams scale content with AI while staying true to their story? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today, I’ll be talking to Nick Usborne, who will be answering this question. He’s the Founder of Story Aligned, a training program for Marketing teams that want to scale content using AI while protecting the integrity of their brand story and voice. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B Marketers Mission is. Mr. Nick Usborne, welcome to the show, sir.  Nick Usborne  01:32 Thank you very much. Thank you Christian. Thank you for having me.  Christian Klepp  01:35 Pleasure to have you on the show. Nick, you know we had such a fantastic pre interview call. It was a bit of a you did drop a few hints and clues about what was to come, and I’m really looking forward to this conversation. I’m going to keep the audience in suspense a little while longer as I move us into the first question. So off we go.  Nick Usborne  01:55 Okay. Christian Klepp  01:56 All right, so, Nick, you’re on a mission to equip Marketing teams to scale AI powered content while staying aligned with their organization, story and voice. So for this conversation, let’s focus on the topic of how to use AI for B2B content without losing trust. And it is at the time of the recording, the end of 2025 and of course, we’re going to talk about AI, but we’re going to zoom in on something specific as it pertains to B2B content and a little bit of branding in there as well. But I wanted to kick off this conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them. So the first question is, why do you believe it’s so important for brands and their Marketing teams to embrace AI so that they can scale? And the second question is, why does this approach require the right prompts and guardrails? I think that’s one thing that you mentioned in our previous conversation, the whole the whole piece about prompts and guardrails. Nick Usborne  02:53 Well, the first question, why do companies need to embrace AI? And the ridiculous answer to that. It’s not a good answer, but it’s true is that because everyone else is, because your competitors are, and they will create content at scale while you are not, and they will achieve reach that you can’t achieve without AI. And in fact, if they do it well, their content, their new content, will be very good, content deeply researched beyond perhaps what you can do. So it’s like everything within AI right now, like, like, Why? Why do all the companies like open AI and Google and Meta, why they all racing? Because if they don’t, someone else will get there first. And it’s, I’m not saying it’s a great reason, but I think it is the fundamental reason for companies to embrace AI, is that you will be left behind if you don’t. This is a transformational moment, and as much as we’d like to have choice, I think in this matter, we don’t have a lot of choice. So that’s my answer to that question. Repeat the second question for me. Christian Klepp  04:00 Absolutely, absolutely so based on, based on that, like, why does this approach require the right prompts and guardrails? Nick Usborne  04:10 As part of my business, I’m constantly researching this, and in particular, I’m researching the prompts people do so when say, could be writers coders, but in our world. Let’s say writers, principally, or marketers, are using AI. They’re using prompts, and they’re generally prompting about two things. One is narrative, like, what should we say? Or, you know, please write us a blog post about x. So that’s the that’s the topic, that’s the narrative. And then they’ll put in something say, oh, please do it in a voice that is authoritative and yet accessible. All right, so now that’s a voice. What they haven’t mentioned is what I think is the foundational layer, which is, which is story. And that’s important, because story is the only thing that is uniquely yours, if you have an narrative, if you, if you have voice, if you talk about something in a particular way, I can copy that with AI. I can copy it at scale. I can, I can look at the transcripts of Christian podcasts, and I can say, oh, I want to do one in exactly. Tell her the same topic. I can, you know, so when you focus on narrative, on what you write about in voice. I can copy it. There’s no moat. The only moat you have is with story, because every company’s story is unique. We can look at origin stories, foundation stories, we can look at customer stories through case studies, things like that. Those are always unique. No one else has Apple’s origin story. No one else has virgin Atlantic’s Founder’s story, etc. But we did some research recently. Actually, we did some research months ago, and I reconfirmed it earlier this week. I ran it. I ran it all again to look at the data. If you look at the top 20 prompt libraries that you know the big, trustworthy companies and organizations that put out prompt libraries for companies. If you look at the top 20 libraries and the 1000s and 1000s of prompts within there, 76% of those prompts are about the narrative. What to say? 17 are about voice. How do you sound? Only 7% relate to story. So this, to my mind, is where we have a problem. We have a disconnect. Everyone is going crazy, prompting for narrative and story, both of which have 0, zero mode, anyone can copy them at scale. And only 7% this very small percentage, are actually focusing on the one thing that is uniquely theirs and cannot be copied or challenged. So that when you say, when you, when you say I’m on a mission, that’s the mission for me to say, Hey guys, wake up. You’re You’re prompting the wrong things in the wrong way. Let’s like, go back and look at story Christian Klepp  07:12 Absolutely, absolutely. It almost sounds like an oxymoron to us to a certain degree, because you’re saying scaling B2B content using AI without losing trust. Because, you know, the narrative that I keep seeing on social media, particularly LinkedIn, is that if people are using AI, there is a bit of a trust factor there. But I think it’s to your point and correct me if I’m wrong, it’s being able to embrace AI and you leveraging it the right way, so it’s not, it’s not, it’s not to replace, it’s not to replace the writers, right, or to replace the Marketers, I hope not. Nick Usborne  07:50 It may replace some. But, yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, you’re right, and the keyword you mentioned there is trust. I think, I think trust is going to be the most valuable commodity that a company can have in the months and years to come, because people don’t actually don’t if we’re talking about brand. So we’re trying to protect brand with story, right? And brand is something that a lot of companies have spent millions of dollars building and protecting over years or decades and well, one of the things let me come back to trust in a moment. But if I’m looking at brand, and I’m looking at all the stuff goes out there, it either builds brand or it burns brand. And if you burn brand, you lose trust. So if you’re going out with a whole bunch of content that sounds like everyone else is that it’s kind of meh. It’s ordinary. It’s in the middle, which is what AI is really good at. Without the right prompting, it will give you kind of in the middle, mediocre output. So you got to be much better at prompting than just like a, I don’t know, being careless about it, or taking a shortcut, shortcuts, or being lazy about it, because then you get brand drift, and all of a sudden the brand doesn’t sound quite right. And when that happens, you lose trust. And when you lose trust, you lose revenue. I mean, you really do. And people are getting very sensitive to brand of brand trust we saw recently. Was it tracker barrel tried to just change its logo. People freaked out. People freaked out.  Christian Klepp  09:27 It was an awful rebrand, but, yes.  Nick Usborne  09:30 Yeah, but it wasn’t. These weren’t. These weren’t. Saying is, I don’t think the design is up to snuff. It’s like, don’t mess with my tracker barrel. We actually feel very strongly about the brands. Talk to people who are absolute fans of Apple. Doesn’t matter that it costs twice as much, perhaps as not quite as good. It’s Apple. It’s my brand. Don’t mess with my brand. So we’re very sensitive to our loyalty to brands. And in fact, in some sense, it’s brand define us like a football team, a baseball team, in part, we can be defined by the brands that we support, local, Pepsi. You know, it’s like everywhere. So when a company uses AI carelessly at scale and all of a sudden that blog post, it kind of sounds like them, but something’s a tiny bit off. And then that LinkedIn update. Again, yeah, it’s them, but again, it’s, did I say is that the same as they were six months ago? You get the you get these little these little things that sound off, and now you get brand drift. And now you get people feeling uneasy, and the public are sometimes we think we can just make the public believe whatever we want them to believe, or companies to believe whatever we want them to believe, but actually, individuals, in their home lives and in their business lives are very, very sensitive to brand and they’re very, very sensitive to voice and what they hear, and if it’s off, they really don’t like it, and that does translate into loss of trust, and that does directly translate into loss of revenue.  Christian Klepp  11:07 Absolutely. I’m going to move us on to the next set of questions, particularly that one pertaining to key pitfalls that Marketers need to avoid when they’re trying to scale their B2B content using AI without losing trust. So what are some of these key pitfalls they should avoid, and what should they be doing instead? Nick Usborne  11:27 What I’m hearing from inside a number of companies is that there is an inconsistency in how people are using AI and even when systems are in place, that not everyone follows the system. So it’s early days. It is. These are messy times for, you know, working with AI within companies. So I think it’s really important that companies do have some frameworks in place, that people within the organization are using the same tools in the same way, and that they are encouraged to be consistent in what they do. So I’ve heard stories of where companies are set up, you know, they’re using Copilot, or whatever they use, and then some of the manager will walk by someone’s desk, and they’re actually, actually, they’re using Claude on their phone. That person like phone, and it’s like, well, yeah, but no, this is now, you know, you have no control. You also have to get people to do what they ask. I was talking to a Founder the other day. She has a PR (Public Relations) company, plenty of clients, and she’s smart. She’s created custom GPTs for each client. So each custom GPT is trained on with with a kind of database of information on that client and the content, so that you know when you when you ask it to do something else, it’s already has the context and the voice instructions and everything, and you can and it’s great, you get this consistency. But she says, what’s happening is some of her employees come in in the morning, they start work on client X, and they’re using that custom GPT. Then they move on to client Y, but they keep using the original custom GPT and not switching out. So the management has put in the structure in place to be consistent and to output the best, you know, the best content, but the employees are not always playing game, you know, going along with that. So so I do think we’re in a messy period now where companies are not entirely sure how to apply this, how to structure it, what kind of frameworks and guidance to put in place. What guardrails to put in place? Like? Again, I’ve heard horror stories of people grabbing content that should not be shared and putting it into a large language model and then turning that into customer facing or public facing content.  Christian Klepp  13:57 Oh, plagiarism.  Nick Usborne  14:04 So yeah, it is messy. So what I would say is, before you even try to make the best of the use of AI that you do, need to put systems and frameworks in place and educate your staff. So if you want your staff to use AI effectively give them access to training. Don’t just throw them at a tool and say, go for it, because they won’t know what to do with it, or they’ll be able to create stuff, but they won’t be able to create good stuff. So invest in the systems, invest in the frameworks and instructions, and invest in training for the people who are going to be using the tools.  Christian Klepp  14:46 Definitely some relevant points. I wanted to go back to something you said, though, because I think it’s really important. It’s certainly one thing to have the prompts and the guardrails in place and some kind of like, framework and structures. But to your earlier point, how do you enforce that? And I think you gave a really good example about like, if you have a custom GPT, and then they resort to like, using. Um Claude on their personal accounts, and then it’s a little bit like the wild west out there, isn’t it? Nick Usborne  15:06 It is, it is, and it’s and it’s, how do you enforce it? Well, that’s going to be a company by company decision. Like, like the Founder with the PR of the PR company, when she was telling me about how her employees just weren’t doing what they were asked. I was like, part of you is thinking about, why haven’t you kind of cracked down on this? But again, it depends on the company and what options you have when it comes to enforcing stuff like this. But I do think you need to, because then if we circle right back, if you have people who are untrained, and that’s the company’s responsibility to train their employees. If you have people who are untrained and they’re using these tools inconsistently, that is when you far more likely then to see errors for, you know, unforced errors like publishing stuff that you shouldn’t but you’re also going to see more brand drift, because you’re going to get this inconsistency between output and that is a disaster. Like I say, companies have sometimes spent, in a decade, several years in establishing and building a trustworthy brand. And people are very unforgiving. You can, you can lose all that goodwill very, very quickly. So, yeah, training frameworks make sure people are, you know, working within those boundaries, but as a company, it’s your responsibility to help make that happen. Christian Klepp  16:29 Yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. You kind of brought this up already, but you mentioned that AI can help to scale content, but it can’t replicate your lived story, so please explain what you meant by that, and provide an example. If you can, Nick Usborne  16:46 AI can do a wonderful job in many ways, but you know, it’s never walked down the beach and felt the sand between its toes. It’s read about it. It’s never eaten ice cream. It’s read about that, but it’s never felt it. So that’s what I mean by lived experience. So I think that content and stories that truly resonate with people, you use those kind of touch points, the deeply human side of being alive and like say, I think AI can get close when you prompt it really well, but also there’s a messiness that makes us recognize one another, the little mistakes we make, that’s what makes us human. We are messy, and it’s not very good at being messy. You can ask it to be messy, and it’ll try to figure that out, but it’s really not the same. And like I say, I think people are very sensitive to this kind of nuance and the lived story. It’s the it’s the weird stuff. I think that resonates. So I’ve spent quite a bit of my career doing copywriting for companies, and for a long period, I was doing some freelance, a lot of freelance copywriting. So this is just a little side note, a little side story for you. I used to live on a hobby farm. We had some sheep and pigs and chickens and all that good stuff, the good life. And also had freelance customers. And I went in, and I was and I went, you know, you go out, you feed the animals, you come in, I sit down to work, and my client said, this is just on the phone. This is even before the internet. Client said, Hey, you’re late. I was just out farming the pig and feeding the pigs. And the guy says, what? And this, I hadn’t realized. I never told him that I lived on a farm. He thought somewhere. So anyway, we talked a little bit about the pigs, then we get to work. So the project we’re working on worked out really well, and it won an award. So we fly off to your hometown, Toronto, for the awards ceremony, direct marketing awards ceremony, and he stands up and he says, Thank you very much. Blah, blah, blah. And special thanks to Nick Usborne, the pig farming copywriter. And I’m like, I’m like, in the audience, and I’m thinking, oh, please no. This guy is like, rebranding me constantly in front of all my peers, all my potential clients for next year. Big drama turns out so, so that that’s messy, all right? AI wouldn’t do that, you wouldn’t imagine that it wouldn’t do that. That’s a deeply human moment of my humiliation and him laughing, and everyone slapping me on the back and laughing and asking about my pigs. Turns out, over the next 12 months, I got a few phone calls out of the blue. And I say, Hello, Nick Usborne. I said, Oh, is that Nick Usborne? The cover of James Barber. And I say, why? Yes. And so I actually got work out of that, because it was such a distinct difference from every other copywriter out there. I was the only copywriter who had pigs. So that was just a fun story, but it also speaks to the difference between humans and AI, and it’s a live that’s a lived experience, and it’s a lived anecdote, and I tell the story, and it’s a true story that is really important, I think so, even when we use AI, even when we use it at its best, and it can be really good when you use it well, I think everyone should keep leave space for the human in the loop, as they say, keep that human element in there, big for those stories. So I so I encourage companies to create what I call like a story vault. So there’s the obvious stories, like the Founder story, the origin story, the six original success story, also put in the little quirky stories, like that one I just described, and and make that part of your process. And also go, you know, if you’re creating something with AI and it’s a big project, take the time to go and interview someone, talk to someone, get a human story, put it in just because you’re using AI, doesn’t mean to say that everything you create has to be 100% AI, you can, you can? I do this all the time. I look for it a draft with AI, then I’d go back in and I’ll rewrite the beginning with an anecdote, like the small s story, not a big dramatic story, just a little story. And what it does then is that then connects it with us, because as people, we recognize stories. Story is profound to all of us. I think in every country in the world, parents read their children bedtime stories. It’s something we share in common. It’s how we communicate, and it’s how we recognize our humanity in a sense of like, if you tell me a story, you connect with me, and vice versa. So that’s why I think stories are so important in this world of AI, because if you just go AI, it can get a little cold, and sometimes, as a reader, you don’t quite understand what’s happening and why, but you kind of feel it. There’s an absence. There’s something missing, and that what’s what you feeling is missing is that human touch, that human element, Christian Klepp  21:59 Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, there’s like, there’s like, telltale signs, right? Like em dash being one of them,  Nick Usborne  22:06 em dash Christian Klepp  22:07 Yes, or Yeah. Or it tends to, like, regurgitate the same type of war. It’s like, I find it loves using the word landscape or navigate, you know, things of that nature, right?  Nick Usborne  22:20 Yeah.  Christian Klepp  22:21 Or uses these funny like, you know, the colon or for, for, for titles of episodes, for examples. Nick Usborne  22:30 In titles, even when I give it clear instructions, do not use them. So sometimes, when I create content like that is, I’ll create it in with one model like say, GPT5, and I’ll take it over to flawed, and I’ll say, hey, please edit and clean this up for me, and remove any, you know, repetition or whatever. And sometimes it comes back say, hey, looks pretty clean, pretty good. Other times it’ll change stuff. And then, of course, always I will, you know, I will review. And that’s the other thing that the companies need to think about. Is that, at the moment, content generation at scale within companies, it is a bit like a conveyor belt in a factory of all these boxes flying off the end into the FedEx back of the FedEx van, and without, without any kind of quality control, which, which is actually what you do have with income within you know, if you’re manufacturing, and you do have quality control, and you pick out every 20th item or whatever to make sure that it’s good, a lot of that isn’t happening, that isn’t happening with a lot of people using AI is people don’t even see it. It’s fully automated, like, like a week’s worth of social media is automated, or a month’s work worth, and no one, no human, has read it or reviewed it. It’s just flying out automatically. And that is where at some point you’re inevitably going to have a problem. And it may not be a big problem, it may be lots and lots of small problems, lots of lots of things sounding not quite right, and then all of a sudden, when you’ve got enough little things not sounding right, then you start getting a medium sized problem. Christian Klepp  24:06 Yeah, yeah. No, exactly, exactly. Okay. Now, you talked about it a little bit in the beginning, but talk to us about some of these, these frameworks and these processes that B2B companies can use to help them, you know, organize themselves and reap those benefits of AI without losing trust. Like, what are some of these processes and frameworks? Nick Usborne  24:26 I do some training, and I have done a few rubrics where people can kind of use those to formalize the process. But I think if we talk about story, and I think I already mentioned the idea of each company having a story vault, so be formal and deliberate about it. Everyone can chat about their company’s stories, but if I say to you, hey, is there a folder? Can I can I get a Google folder and find a compilation of all of these stories? And have you graded those stories in terms of how strong and relevant? And they are, and how engaging they might be, or how evocative they might be, and the answer is almost always no, the story is around. But there’s no story vault, and there’s no rubric in place to grade those stories and decide which might be the most appropriate points at which to share those stories. So it’s that, it’s that formalizing the process, and I don’t like being 100% rules based, but I think in the AI world right now, where we are in that kind of messy middle period, I think it’s really important to have some systems in place so that we do have a consistent output, so that when you so that your brand doesn’t suffer from brand drift, and that you don’t make some significant missteps along the way. So somebody within the organization needs to be responsible for this. Maybe it’s the Chief AI Officer, if you have one, or otherwise, somebody in Marketing. So yeah, help people with training, but also help them by giving them some framework, some rubrics and some just a system like, you know, hey, picked up a story from customer service, put it in the story vault, categorize it. Customer service in the story vault says someone else can come back and find it. So it’s not just word of mouth. It’s not accidental. There’s a place where people can go to and then you’re going to do the same with narrative, the things we say. And you have another vault, as it were, and another rubric to to assess voice, how we say it. So it’s just this formalization of the process, and also trying to make sure that people use these systems as you put them in place. So somebody’s got to be walking along behind, behind and sort of, and again, it’s like, I guess, like early days of anything. Not every, not everyone will love the process. Not everyone loves using AI. But it’ll come. It’ll come. People will get in their heart better, not only using AI, but doing it well and following these processes. Christian Klepp  27:02 Okay, fantastic, fantastic. Let me just quickly recap, because I was writing this down. So obviously, having a story vault, grading them if you can, if possible, having systems and frameworks in place, training the team and getting them to familiarize themselves with the systems having a vault for narrative and voice, I think was the other piece. And finally, using, using the systems, once you have them, not letting them collect dust, as it were, right? Nick Usborne  27:32 Like and it is, I get it right now. I get it. It’s hard for a lot of companies, because I think using AI has been very kind of mixed. Some companies have dived straight in. Others are resistant, particularly companies that have compliance issues, financial, medical stuff like that. They’re being very careful, very cautious, and for very good reason. So the rate of adoption is very uneven at the moment, Christian Klepp  28:01 Absolutely, absolutely, all right. Nick you’ve given us plenty here, right? But if we’re going to talk about actionable tips, like something that somebody who’s listening to this conversation that they can take action on right after listening to this interview, what are like some of the top three things you would advise them to do? Nick Usborne  28:17 Well, I guess first is just we’ve talked quite a bit about the story, the story of collecting stories. Just do that because, like I say, I think story is your is your superpower, because it is the only place where you have a moat you don’t in what you say and how you say it. Anyone can copy you, and I can automate copying you through AI as well, but I cannot steal your story, because it’s just not true if, if it’s not my story. So I’d always start there and again, start, start that. Build the vault, select the story and formalize that process. Interview the Founders, if you can, interview early employees, even if they’re retired, interview the first three clients, if you can access them, interview customer service. So often overlooked, customer service in one way or another, so long as that’s not all automated, if there’s still humans in that loop, then have conversations with them. And you can, you can, you can, get transcripts, customer service transcripts, and feed them into AI and say, hey, please analyze and summarize this. What are, what are the most powerful messages we can get from our customer service? Sort of stream of content? Do? Do a sentiment analysis? What are people upset about? What are people happy about? So, yeah, story, I think, is like, I say, it will be your motive, it will be your savior. So first start to formalize that process of getting story and then making sure that it finds a place, somewhere in your automation of, you know, AI generated content, Christian Klepp  29:58 Fantastic, fantastic stuff. Okay, soapbox time. What is the status quo in your area of expertise that you passionately disagree with, and why? Nick Usborne  30:11 I guess again, I’m just going to overlapping. I don’t know what a status quo, but the thing that I passionately disagree with is is every time you see most or a social media title that says top 20 killer, unbeatable prompts.  Christian Klepp  30:31 Oh, yeah. Nick Usborne  30:32 No, no, no, absolutely, just, just no for two reasons. One is that they’re going to be generic. They’re not going to apply to your company in particular, they’ll be generic, and just because they work for someone else does not mean they’re going to work for you. And like I say, we did, I’ve done research on those prompt libraries, and only 7% of them even touch on story. So if I’m writing stories, the most important thing almost all of those prompt libraries are missing out on that. They’re just focusing on narrative and voice and ignoring stories. So not good and and, yeah, so, so that is, I don’t know whether the status quo, but it’s something I keep seeing, and it irritates me when I get it. I understand why they’re doing it, but not helpful for your company. Christian Klepp  31:18 Yeah, you and me both. I mean, those are the those are the pulse they attempt to ignore immediately. I mean, I just skim through it and see the prompts, and I’m like, Nah, but I think it’s human nature too, isn’t it? Like everybody wants to chase the next hack. They want to find that the you know, the shortcut, like the quickest route to get something done. And I get that, but it sometimes does more harm than good. Nick Usborne  31:43 Easy button, but also to be fair and to be a little bit more generous. This is early days, and so people are looking for help. And if it says top 20, this is, oh my goodness, thank you. I’ll take that now. Over time, that’ll change, and people will become a little more sophisticated, I think, but like us, like you. You know, I get it. I understand why those those posts and titles are attractive, and that’s why people create them. But we can do better. We can do better Christian Klepp  32:12 Absolutely, absolutely we can, and we will, hopefully, all right, here comes the bonus question. I’ve been thinking about this one, but Nick Usborne  32:23 I feel strangely nervous. I feel nervous, but it’s a bonus question. Christian Klepp  32:30 Just breathe. Just breathe. I mean, clearly from this conversation, you know, writing is in your blood, right? It’s something that you are passionate about, but it’s also something you’ve done professionally for a long time, I suppose. The bonus question is, if you had an opportunity to meet your favorite writer or author, living or dead, who would it be, and what would you talk about?  Nick Usborne  32:55 One of the people, I really admire, and I’ve already spoken to him, is David Abbott. So David Abbott is a copywriter from from England, and he had an agency called Abbot Mead Vickers, and he was an amazing writer. So I’ve already met him. Who I haven’t met I would like to re write to meet is Susie Henry. She was the copywriter behind a series of advertisements in the UK for an insurance company, and she is just a delightful writer, so I told you, well, no, I hadn’t told you. Maybe I will tell you I’m like, when I started out copywriting, it was at the tail end of the Mad Men period, and creatives were the Kings and Queens, and copywriting was such a craft, it was something to be absolutely proud of, like we’d go through so many drafts, and it was, I was, you know, I was, I was a craftsman, learning from other craftsmen. And David, ever I met, he was in a fantastic writer, just written Susie Henry so good, very, very conversational writer, which was very unusual for that time. So I’d like to meet and talk with her, and I still can’t remember the fiction writer. He’s science fiction writer. I completely lost blank on his name, and I’ve actually met him once briefly, but I’d like to get back to him and chat, but I can’t, because he’s he’s since passed. Christian Klepp  34:19 Oh, I see, I see, I see. All right, well, that’s quite the list of people, but, um, but yeah. No, fantastic. No. Nick, thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing your experience and expertise with the listeners. And please quick introduction to yourself and how people can get in touch with you. Nick Usborne  34:37 All right. Hi. My name is Nick Usborne, so my business build Story Aligned. So storyaligned.com and what we do there is pretty much, what I’ve talked about today is we train teams within companies to look at story, narrative and voice with a lot of emphasis on story, because that’s where the note is, so if you get a Story Aligned, you’ll find we have a white paper you can download. We have a blog that you can read, the description of the training. So yeah, if this interests you, if you find this an interesting topic, there’s plenty to do when you get there. So Story Aligned, A, L, I, G, N, E, D, yeah. Story Aligned. Christian Klepp  35:21 Fantastic, fantastic. And we’ll be sure to pop that into the show notes so that it’ll be easy for everyone to access. But once again, Nick, thank you.  Nick Usborne  35:28 Sorry, one last thing, if you want to please opening myself up, if you want to just talk to me directly, you can write to me at nick@storyaligned.com. Christian Klepp  35:38 Perfect, perfect. Nick, once again, thanks so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. Nick Usborne  35:44 Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It’s been a pleasure. Christian Klepp  35:47 Thank you. Bye for now. You.

In today's show Scott and David introspect on whether their surfing will ever improve again or whether the act is even about riding waves any longer, they then delve into Slater's underperformance in SITD, the poor surf and the inevitability of it ending in a wave pool, and the boys disagree on whether JJF latest announcement will bode as a net gain or loss for surfing collectively. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gregg Lunceford, Managing Director at Mesirow Wealth Management and a retirement transition researcher, joins Lesley Logan to explore why retirement is about more than financial planning. He introduces the concept of the “third age”—a longer, undefined stage of life where identity, purpose, and structure matter just as much as money. Together, they discuss why work identity is so hard to release and how shaping your retirement identity early can make your next chapter feel intentional instead of uncertain. If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co mailto:beit@lesleylogan.co. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/#follow-subscribe-free.In this episode you will learn about:Why modern retirees now face a long “third age” requiring purpose beyond leisure.How work identity provides recognition, social connection, and daily structure.The difference between living as your “ought self” versus your “ideal self.”Why failing to plan identity often leads retirees to burn through money.Why creating a shared retirement vision helps guide future decisions together.Episode References/Links:Mesirow Wealth Management - https://www.mesirow.comGregg Lunceford on LinkedIn - https://beitpod.com/greggluncefordExit From Work by Gregg Lunceford - https://a.co/d/c84euxXThe Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel - https://a.co/d/feJq9lhGuest Bio:Gregg Lunceford has 32 years of experience in financial services. He is a Managing Director, Wealth Advisor in Mesirow Wealth Management and Vice Chair of the Mesirow DEI Council. He creates comprehensive financial planning strategies for individuals, families, organizations, athletes and business owners. He is the Investment Committee Chair for the American Heart Association, on the Board of Directors for the Juvenile Protective Association, an Advisory Board Member for the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park at Governors State University and is an Advisory Board Member for the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University. Gregg is also a frequent speaker on WGN radio's “Your Money Matters.” Gregg earned a B.A. from Loyola University, an MBA from Washington University, and a PhD from Case Western Reserve University where he conducted research on retirement. He is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional and holds a Certificate in Financial Planning Studies from Northwestern University. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. https://lovethepodcast.com/BITYSIDEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentCheck out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentBe in the know with all the workshops at OPC https://workshops.onlinepilatesclasses.com/lp-workshop-waitlistBe It Till You See It Podcast Survey https://pod.lesleylogan.co/be-it-podcasts-surveyBe a part of Lesley's Pilates Mentorship https://lesleylogan.co/elevate/FREE Ditching Busy Webinar https://ditchingbusy.com/Resources:Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gLesley Logan website https://lesleylogan.co/Be It Till You See It Podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjogqXLnfyhS5VlU4rdzlnQProfitable Pilates https://profitablepilates.com/about/Follow Us on Social Media:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lesley.logan/The Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gFacebook https://www.facebook.com/llogan.pilatesLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-logan/The OPC YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@OnlinePilatesClasses Episode Transcript:Gregg Lunceford 0:00  What we all need to start to focus on right now is just like we had that career guidance counselor helping us and coaching us and to that next thing, we need to start taking time to figure out that action plan for that next thing. And once you start to figure out, I need to form a retirement identity and understand my ideal self. You start to self motivate and become excited about it.Lesley Logan 0:27  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started. Lesley Logan 1:10  Okay, Be It babe. This conversation is really cool. It's really, really cool. It might you I'm going to introduce it in just a second, I'm going to introduce the guest, and it might be somebody like when you think about this, you yes, you do. Yes, you do. And I actually am really excited once I hit in on this, because Brad and I have already talked about this topic with each other, but I we've actually not dove into what retirement looks like, right? Like? What does it look like? Who are we, you know. And I think especially if you're an elder like me, you're like, I'm still trying to figure that out for my work stuff, but, but there's, there's an even bigger reason for us to think about it now, and Gregg Lunceford is going to explain that to us, and it's going to give you so much inspiration and a joy and excitement and possibility. And I can't think of a better be it till you see it, thing that be working on than what Greg is going to offer us up today. So here he is. Lesley Logan 2:04  All right, Be It babe, I'm really excited, because when I met this guest, I was like, hold on, this is very different. This is a whole different attitude to have about. Fine, we're going to talk money. And I know some of you want to, like, put your head in the sand and ostrich out, but we're gonna talk retirement. We're gonna talk about some really cool things, also just thought processes to have. We have an amazing guest, the first person ever make me think of this in a different way. Gregg Lunceford from Mesirow, is here to rock our world today. So Greg, tell everyone who you are and what you do.Gregg Lunceford 2:34  Hello, Lesley, thank you so much for the opportunity to be on your show. My name is Gregg Lunceford. I am a career professional in financial services. I work for a firm called Mesirow Financial in Chicago. We have locations across the country and some overseas. I am a wealth advisor. In addition to that, I am also an academic researcher, and my field of study is retirement transition. And so what I work with clients on is getting them, not only do you understand the financial part of retirement, but also the social, emotional components of making the transition and how it is unique to them, because the 21st Century retiree retirement transition is much different and way more dynamic than most people think, having watched others do it in the 20th century.Lesley Logan 3:21  This is so cool, because you're not, like, our, you know, our grandfather or father is like, like, financial planner, you are actually thinking, like, deep about the person. And that I find, I don't think I've known anyone who does that. Like, usually it's like, here are the numbers, here's your sheet. Let's put this in. How much money do you want to have and like, that's it, but you you've brought more personality to it and also more emotions to it. How did you get started in that? Gregg Lunceford 3:47  So I'll give you a little bit of a backstory. So as I mentioned, I've been in financial services for 33 years, and when the real estate bust occurred in 2008 I was working for another organization, and we were having people come in and very successful people, and they were set for life. They were being offered an exit package from their from their employer. They were leaving a lot of C suite roles, or maybe a little role below the C suite. And we were having meetings with them to prepare for retirement, and we would go through all the financial numbers and something still wasn't right. And what I was noticing was they were hesitant to make the retirement decision, even though the company was saying, look, we, giving you this excellent opportunity to exit early create cost savings for us. It'll create great financial opportunity for you, especially because we were in this period of time like unemployment was going above 11%, and so here's the opportunity to take this nest egg and be good, which was counter to what we were taught in our industry when I came in the industry that, you know exiting out was an economic choice, that once you hit a certain number, then you would go look for activit ies of leisure, because work can be depressing and daunting and stressful and all those kinds of things. And even when I was watching, you know, commercial ads from people in the industry and competitors, you know, you'll see something that goes, and I won't call the company, but they had a very successful campaign that said what's your retirement number? Yes. And this number will follow you down the street. Is this? You know, you walk from the door, do you remember that? And you look at your balance, it's like, if today's the day you just tell your boss, I can't stand you, and it's over with, right? And so this was very counter to what I was experiencing. And so I started to talk to some of the senior level people in my organization. I said, there's something going on here and and they said, well, it's probably because they're talking to us, and they're also shopping with other people to see who they which which company they want to work with. So go offer them a great discount, because it's probably all things equal, and it's just they're being sensitive about numbers, once again, making this an economic choice, so we would do that. And what I recognize is the sales cycle got even longer. And so I would go back to them. But I said, have you been looking at the trends for our sales cycle? And you would think that these would be quick, easy, easy sales, you know, because people supposed to be running out of the door, and they took longer. And so I said, there's something we don't understand about someone who is at this stage, and the feedback I got was, if it's something social emotional, there's nothing we can do about it. You know, if someone's afraid about running out of money, you can create an annuity product to take care of them for life. Somebody's worried about interest rates going up, you can create a product that deals with interest rate sensitivity, but nothing can deal with how a person feels. And I didn't accept that as an answer. I thought that was wrong, because the way I view it is, clients hire us, and they trust us, and we can do a better job the more we understand the client beyond just their finances, right? And I felt like there was a big problem here. So I basically said, you know, I want to go back to school and study this. And I negotiated for time to be in class, and I got it. And so I went to Case Western Reserve University. I got into a PhD program there, and I did four years of PhD study and lots of studies trying to figure out what are the social, emotional factors, as well as the financial factors that a person considers when making the retirement decision. And there were just tons of things that I learned in that process that I used to help my clients. Were happy to talk to you about that journey.Lesley Logan 7:37  Yeah, I'm excited to get in with that, because it's really funny as you talk about this, I like, my my family, right? My mom is two years from retirement, and she's got two homes, you know, in California that it, honestly, I was trying to get her to sell few years back because it would have been a great idea. And like, get a condo, be set for life. And we're like, showing her the numbers. We're like, look at this. This is a you, you can set yourself up to just be chill, and she is like, not listening, and I think it's because of the emotional attachment to these properties versus, like, the numbers. And so I can I get that right? Like, I get my my in laws could have retired years ago. I don't think that they know what to do if they don't have work things. And I don't even know that they love their work. I think they like what the what the work represents that they do during their day. So I do want to dive into this, because in being it till you see it like I'm hoping that every listener here gets to live to the age that they desire, like and we all are, as you mentioned, like that, the time that we're in people are living a much longer time, like retired at 65 and dying at 90. It's a long time to not have a J-O-B, right? So it would be really cool to chat with you, because like being it till we see it means including what we want to be. How do we want to be when we're older and not doing the thing we're doing? How do we want to be in retirement? So let's dive into that a little bit.Gregg Lunceford 9:06  Sure, so a couple things I want to cover off on. It was like one, how did we get here? And I think you've already touched on that. The fact is, we're living longer. And so if you are looking at a retirement maybe 50 years ago, when people really started to expire in their late 60s and their 70s. What occurred was you got to 65 and the system told you 65 is the number. Why does this arbitrary number was picked one day when they were trying to figure out Social Security, they said it was 65 is the number, right? And so you come out at that period of time, and you only have just a few healthy years in front of you, or at least you anticipate you only have a few healthy years. So what came out was this concept of a bucket list. So I am going to use these healthy years to travel, play all the golf I can, and have all this leisure that I can before I am too physically unable to do this or mentally unable to do this. And so couple things were wrong there, as it relates to our retirement 21st century. One, we're living longer, so you're going to be physically and mentally able to do something for a long period of time. So if you don't sort of set goals for yourself and see what you can be in the futurem you're going to get bored really, really quickly, and you're going to start to decline very quickly, simply because you're absent of certain things, purpose and drive and and goals and accomplishment. You know, it's more than just a couple rounds of golf that are going to make you happy. And so what I think people don't understand is we are now living in a period of time where it used to be you went from your youth to middle age and to old age. And so this transition from middle age to old age was about that 60 mark, right? And so people just basically said, I have no more control. The system is going to do what it does to me. I'm going to be booted out of my job. I'm going to be sent off to do leisure. I guess that means I play with my grandchildren or volunteer, and I'll just follow suit. And what happened is a lot of people found themselves doing things that weren't rewarding to them. Now we're in a new era, because we live longer. And what is present now is what is called, in academic terms, the Third Age. So you now go from early age to middle age to this Third Age, which is this undefined period, and today's retirees are the first people to go on this, and then you go on the old age, and the Third Age is this 20 year life bonus, where you get to define who and what you want to be. And think about it, you're wiser than you ever been. For most people, you have more financial resources than you ever had. You don't have a commitment to other people, meaning you've raised your children so you don't have to worry about them. Hopefully you're in a position where you don't have to care for aging loved ones, right? So this is a period of time where you can do anything and everything you always wanted to do. And people go, well, what didn't I have the opportunity to do whatever I wanted to do? Not quite, because remember when we were growing up, and those before us were growing up, we were kind of encouraged to do things that were socially acceptable. Rght? Lesley Logan 11:02  I agree. Gregg Lunceford 9:07  It wasn't until recent decades where someone says, I'm going to start a computer company out of my garage. I'm going to drop out of college and do something that's undefined and pioneer so the current generations, entering into into retirement, have never developed this proactive protein behavior the way maybe millennials and Generation Z has.Lesley Logan 12:54  I completely agree. Because, like, I, I mean, I feel very lucky that even though I was raised very much by, like, almost a Boomer and and a hippie like, I do have a career where I am doing whatever I want. I'm an elder millennial, so I have that, but I have friends who are just a few years older than me, and I don't think that they have a they don't have hobbies. If they have a hobby, it's going to the gym. You know what I mean? Like, it's like they don't really have things so outside of their work, it's like, what do you do for fun? Are you kidding? Like there's no and so I feel like what you're getting at is, like, no one has actually spent time thinking like, but what do I actually want? How can I dream about that, right? How can I make that so exciting that that I want to take a retirement package or that I'm excited to I have this I'm not just like, oh, let me go play golf three times a week. Like, what else? I have no purpose. I think it's really fascinating that that there is a good chunk of, like, I would say, probably over 45 who don't really, they're exploring it, but don't know. And how do you figure that out?Gregg Lunceford 13:59  So let me ask you a question. Lesley, what is your earliest memory? Or how about how old do you think you were when someone first asked you what you wanted to be when you grow up?Lesley Logan 14:09  I remember being in elementary school, and I'm sure it was asked of me earlier, because people have told me that I said something different earlier. But I remember in fourth grade, I had to, like, write a poem about who I was and what like, what did it feel like, and what did it sound like, and what did it look like. And I said, a judge, you guys, that should shock everyone.Gregg Lunceford 14:36  My point is so since age 10, someone has been helping you develop your work identity. So people were asking you at home or in your neighborhood or a church or wherever you socialize, what you're going to be then you're going to go to a middle school and you're at the high school and they're going to assign a counselor, going to start telling you to think about college or trade school or whatever it is. Is then you got to get into career. And then whatever career you get in, maybe you're assigned a mentor that's helping you understand or think about how to advance in that career. And then you get to this point where maybe you're like late 40s or 50s. And does anybody help you figure out what your identity will be after work. Lesley Logan 15:22  No, as you're saying this. Gregg Lunceford 15:24  You're on your own. You're on your own. And the only thing that was different here is when they put you into that position where you were felt forced into retirement, right? And then there was also a safety net there in the form of a pension that doesn't exist the way it once did, and there were other government safety nets that may not exist the way they once did before, when they put you there, you just said, okay, I'll accept it, because I'm only going to be around five years anyway. So let me work on this bucket list, but you never really thought about and I think people don't really dig into thinking about what the value of work is, beyond the financial resources it provides. So they get to the tail end of their career, and some people may not even think about it anyway, either. So career, because you've spent all this time having these conversations, you start developing this identity because your work, you become what your work is, right? And so, so a lot of people look at the economic resources it provides, but work also provides for us ways to get psychological success. Who doesn't like completing a task and getting recognition, and if you're in a good working environment, right? Everyone says, Let's applaud Lesley because she did this for the team which created this opportunity for the company, which created this value that she should be recognized for, right? So that that's very important, that gives you a reason to get out of bed, that gives you a reason to thrive, and that has some value when you walk out of the work environment. How do you replace that when you go into this third age? The second thing is, work provides socialization. No matter what you think about your work colleagues, if you like them, that's great. They give you somebody that you want to see every day, that you become personal friends with, that you grow with, that you learn to care about. If you hate them, they give you something to laugh about at the end of the day. You know what that idiot Bob did today again, right? That gives that gives you more than you think, right? And so work provides socialization. And then the third thing that work provides that we often overlook is structure in your day. What to do with your time, right? And so for a lot of people, when they don't have somewhere to go, something to do that makes them feel accomplished, and people to be around that they enjoy or either get some form of comical satisfaction from, they're lost when you put them out there on their own. And so what I learned and through my research is this transition for a lot of people, is the first career transition that they've made independently, and it is scary. Lesley Logan 18:08  Yeah. I mean, when you put all that together and I'm just like, going, wow, you know, people aren't it, one of the questions we've got on the pod is like, how do you make friends as a note when you move to a new place? It's like, I mean, for us, we work for ourselves. So, like, we didn't have a place to go to make, you know, so I, my husband and I have a different experience in, like, how to find socialization and structure to our day. And, you know, like we've had to make it happen. But for so many you know, my dad, he quit his he quit his security job. Yes, guys, my 72 year old father was a security guard, but he quit it because he got frustrated. Anyways, he is back working as a crosswalk guard because he's like, I'm bored. I have nothing to do, and I'm like, but dad, we could get a hobby. We could play these game like, all this stuff. And it's because he never, ever, ever in his whole life, did anyone ever encourage developing the skills outside of work.Gregg Lunceford 19:06  Developing a retirement identity, right, developing a retirement identity. And what also makes it hard is, you know, when you are developing a retirement identity, like I said, this is your first shot at personal freedom in life. Okay, when you're growing up, you had to do what your parents told you to do. Then you became an adult, and then you had all these set of responsibilities. And so you were doing what people told you you ought to do. You were really working on your art self. So if you're going to have a family, you ought to find a job that produces enough income, you know. So you didn't really think about ideally what you wanted to do. And what is really amazing to me is I've interviewed some highly successful people that do amazing things, and when I start talking to them about forming their ideal self, the stuff they come up with is so counter to what what and who they are. It is. Is amazing to me. So I get cancer surgery or successful attorneys or engineers to say I want to learn how to write mystery novels, or I want to start a rock band. And so what it points to me, and what it what comes out to me is these are probably things that they wanted to do in the 10, in their teens, in their early 20s, all along, but they couldn't do that because society told them these are not the things a person ought to do. You know, if they want stability in terms of income, if they want respect in their community, if they want you know, the structure that around it allows them to have a family and not have to worry about things. And so now you get to this third age, and I saw all off the table. You're wiser than you've ever been. You have more financial resources than you've ever had. You know, you have more personal freedom. Now you get to, really, for the first time, work on who your ideal self, not your ought self, who you want to be. And if you get it right, you're the only person you have to hold accountable. If you get it wrong, you're the only person you have to hold accountable. And so some people go, well, Greg, what does it have to do with money? I think people who don't take time to find this identity burn through a lot of money trying to find themselves. Right? And so, when I first started this journey, I was trying to find a cohort of individuals that had finished their career, achieved financial success and had 30 years ahead of them. And what were their behaviors, and where you consistently see this is with professional athletes, right? You're out of the game early. Right? You're in your 30s, and you're Tom Brady, you're 40, but that's the long game. But you're really out in your late 20s, your early 30s, you don't have financial concerns, right? And what is the behavior? And sometimes we demonize athletes for dysfunctional behavior after Hey, but all they're showing us is who we are going to be if we don't develop a retirement identity.Lesley Logan 22:09  Yes, Greg, you are 100% correct there. I think most people, think most people will say they don't know how to manage their money and and to your research and what we've been talking about here, it's not about managing money it's about they don't know who they are without their sport because they spent, for those people, they spent, literally, since they were a child in that sport and getting so many accolades, and then all of a sudden, no one cares. No one pays attention to them. For the most part, they're not going to be on TV like, that's it. And so I think it, I think you're spot on. It's not about the money responsibility, although they might need to learn some. It's about who, who are they now that they're not playing.Gregg Lunceford 22:50  Right and so then you go, well, this athlete just went broke because they put all this money in his business. Well, they're trying to get the same accolades in business they got in sports, right? They're trying to replace that identity that made them feel good, made them feel accomplished and some people are very successful at it. Those aren't. But my point is, there has to be a road map to get that yes, and it doesn't always have to be in business. It could be in your civic activities. It could be you learning to act, or you become in sport, but you have to first of all imagine who your ideal self is. And just like you were coached and you read and you trained to build that ought self, hopefully, for some people, a lot of people, the ought self is their ideal self, and they're usually entrepreneurs like you, where you that you know what, I'm not going to go to normal path. I'm going to carve a path for myself, and entrepreneurship gives me that freedom. But for a lot of people, they have to figure out now that I've satisfied all these obligations to other people and other things, who do I ideally want to be and then work at how do I get there? Because if you go in there blindly, you're just the same as that person out of that was in sports or any other industry, you're just trying to find this quick hit to replace all of these accolades or psychological successes you got. And you can blow up a lot of money doing that. So the well being comes from getting all of these components right, not just as we were taught in the 20th century, just making sure you don't run out of money. Lesley Logan 24:26  Gregg, this is insane. So okay, so I love all of this. And it's, it's, it's like, so aligned, because I'm always like, can't be you're not gonna get right the first time. Like, we have to ditch perfection, which, of course, in workplace, it's very honed. Like, check the box. Do it right. Do it right. So you have to talk to the boss about how you did it wrong. Like, get it right. Like, so of course, when you, when you retire, if you haven't been working on these things, you're you're going to be hard on you're going to take your ought self into your retirement. So I guess, like, first of all, I don't think that most financial retirement planners do any of these questions. So when, if, when people come to you talk retirement, are you like pulling are you like asking them what their ideal, what they want their ideal self to be? Do they even know how to find it? What questions do they have to ask themselves? Gregg Lunceford 25:13  Well, we do have. We have. We have a lot of conversation about, you know, not only can you financially afford it, we can put some numbers of software and come up with that answer pretty quickly, right? But we also have a conversation about, what do you think your lifestyle will be, and why do you think this is right for you? And what do you want to accomplish? And you know, some folks will come in and say, hey, I think I want to start a small business, right? And so we might talk about them, and they don't want they don't want work again in the way they want it, but they want something to do that is work on their own terms. So a lot of this is you changing the terms of what you're doing and because when we go, especially if we go to work for a corporation or some that's usually a unilateral contract, right? The person the institution is telling you, I'll give you X amount of dollars if you do this. And you say, but what if I did a little different? No, you don't get a choice in that. This is what you got to do, right? And what we're recognizing is we do have some power in that. We do have some power. I've seen a lot of people be successful in going back to their places of work and negotiating consulting contracts. And they basically said, you know, I don't want to do nine to five, but if you have a special project that you bring on, let's say you bring you on new software, whatever, and this is going to be a nine-month project, or it's going to be something you need few hours, you know, out of the week and but I get the summers off. I'm your person for doing that. And that's how they're able to get from their ought self into their ideal self, because the time that they're not there, they now start to figure out what their personal freedom, what they really like to do. So I think of one person now, he was very successful at this, but he also was confident enough talking to his employer, because he was the head of HR, so he knew he was a little bit more comfortable. But basically what he did was he got to this point, and he was ready to make this transition now, but he didn't know what he wanted to do. So he went to and he said, look, I'm the head of HR, I got 70 people reporting to me. I'm willing to give all of my direct reports to my successor. If you help me, let me help you identify my successor, and help me groom your successor. So his role became more of coach, manager, mentor, in this last couple of years, and that was three days a week. He said the other day a week. These are institutions, nonprofit institutions, that we, as an organization, support. I want one day to volunteer with one of them, and so now they get a free executive for one day a week. That was great for the company. Worked out well. He said, then the fifth day of the week, I just want a day off. I want to see if I really enjoy leisure. Everyone tells me I'm supposed to play all these rounds of golf and lay back and relax. Let me make sure that that's the right thing for me. So he has three days a week that he is engaging in what he traditionally knows in terms of what his identity is. He has one day a week to see if he wants to change his identity in his community through his volunteerism, and he has one day a week to figure out if I just want to exit all together. And the answer is, you can do one of the three of those. You can continue doing all of the three of those. What we have now is, if you shape them correctly, is we have what are called boundary-less careers. And so this is where I think, you know, we give Millennials a bad rap. We give millennials a bad rap because we always say, well, they like to do a gig economy. They don't stay anywhere 30 years. But what they're really engaging in is today's boundary-less career, where they define success for themselves, versus going down the traditional path, which says you can only be successful by going up the pyramid. For them is, you know what? I can be equally financially successful. I can gig here, gig there, and add it all together, or I can and get this personal freedom and know how to negotiate so that I'm spending more time, just as much time developing my ideal self as I'm developing my ought self.Lesley Logan 29:21  Oh my gosh, Gregg, you just like, I think you're the first person to ever give the millennials a compliment. But thank you. Constantly find myself defending, like, I'm like, what are we talking about? Like, we're not bad, we're we're a group that's how to really fight, like, figure things out. Because when we came into the world where we got a job, like, everything was so uncertain. You know, between 911 and between, that's when I went to college, and then I got out of college, and it was like the recession, like, there's not, there's not been an opportunity to have a certainty of a 30-year career. But I think what you're, what I'm, what I love about what your saying is, like, we've actually been spending our careers figuring out who we are, and like, spending time doing that. And I am obsessed with what the example of the guy you gave, because I think so many people can start playing with that right now. So many companies are looking to go to a four day work week, you know, like, so many places are looking to have like, Okay, you're in office for some days and you're at home for other days. Like, we can look at those opportunities as ways to figure out our retirement identity. Gregg Lunceford 30:22  Right. And a lot of us get stuck in this, oh, well, I work for this large corporation. They aren't flexible. There are a lot of small, medium sized companies that are in growth mode that that model works very well. That's what they can afford. And they need the institutional knowledge and the wisdom you got to be able to and this is where we go back to talking about boundary list careers. You got to think about all of the universe and parts of it you don't even know exist. This is where your personal curiosity has to kick in to get what you want. Lesley Logan 30:53  Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Gregg, so I feel like you are a unicorn though. Like, I really do feel like, because, I mean, obviously, what a cool company, that they're like, yeah, go, take four years to figure out this idea you have, and then, like.Gregg Lunceford 31:09  Well no, they weren't that cool. That's why I'm here. Lesley Logan 31:14  Okay, that's cool. Gregg Lunceford 31:15  I kind of, I took a lot of flack as I was doing this, and because people were going, we don't understand why you're doing thi, right, and you know, we don't really understand your need to do it. And there were a few key executives that said, you know, they were really supportive of me, but overall, it was, you know, I was sort of like I was trailblazing, and people were going, you you have a very good set of responsibilities here, that you could be highly successful. Why do you want to tinker with the mouse trap? And I said, I think this would make me a better advisor to my clients, if I, if I came to understand this now, back then, and, you know, there was no one talking about psychology. I'm a certified financial planner now, the CFP exam as of I think, like two, three years ago, 11% of the exam is psychology now. But I was, I was in a very uncomfortable space, but I believed I was right. So when you start talking about, you know, be it till you see it, right, I'd be, I was in a very uncomfortable space. And this is my book, Exit From Work, I write about it in my book, but I am glad I had the journey, because I feel as though I'm a better professional, and my clients appreciate it.Lesley Logan 32:21  Yeah. I mean, like, you know, years ago, I read the book Psychology of Money, right? I think that's what it's called, or maybe it's called profit, but I think that's money. And, like, I said, like, the type of person you have to be to get money is very different than the type of person you'd be to keep the money. And I was like, like, that's, by the way, that's, like, the thing I remember from the whole book, it's, but at any rate, I remember that sticking going, hold on a second. Like, we as people have to evolve, like, one on the getting, two on the keeping, and that goes kind of along with what you're saying. Like, you know, you have to understand the emotion psychology behind all of this. Because, yes, spreadsheets are great, but with AI, like, we don't need a bunch of people do a spreadsheet anymore. So there's that we need someone to help guide us to like, well, who is it like, where is this money going? What do you want to do with it? What like was also, what if, instead of like, okay, here comes our retirement age, what if it's like, oh my gosh, like, I can't even wait, or, actually, I'm going part time now, and my retirement is part time, and I'm doing all these other things. Like, that's so cool that you, I mean, you do that, it's not easy to be a trailblazer. It's not easy to be the only person talking about it, though. Gregg Lunceford 33:27  Right. It's rewarding in the end, and so, and I think a lot of people find it liberating, because if you got 20 years, you just really want to do what people tell you you ought to do. I mean, especially when you spent the first 60 doing that. And so really, what this third age is supposed to be. It's supposed to be the most dynamic part of your life, right? It is a way to course correct or either enhance something that's already gone well for you, versus a lot of people going to retirement, because that's what retirement was when it first started off, it was really this negotiation between management and labor, where, especially, we were in an industrial society. So labor was more physical, right now we're in a service economy, so it was really more cerebral. But back then, you know, they wanted a management wanted employees who could swing a hammer so many times a minute, and that was usually somebody under age 40, and this is where we start getting age protection laws, right. And anyone over 40 they wanted out of the workforce. So, you know, retirement didn't start off as this, oh, this is this great thing, and they're going to write me checks for the rest of my life. It didn't start off as that. It really started off as you were really making someone feel devalued because you you didn't have any and so we've gone along with this model. It wasn't until maybe, like the 19 late 70s or 1980s when we went into this global recession where people started getting offered these early retirement packages to come out of companies because globally, a lot of people, a lot of companies, had financial issues to deal with. And what they weren't expecting when they let this 55 year old go is that life expectancy was starting to go up, and so now this 55 year old is now living to 80, and they got the best end of the deal. And what is happening financially right now is people are looking at their parents and grandparents who got that deal, and they're going, I can never afford to do what they did, and not realizing that that was an anomaly. And so a lot of people, socially, emotionally, feel like they're failing, and they don't want to talk about retirement because they feel as though I'll never be able to do what the person did before me and therefore there must be something wrong with what I'm doing or what me and the reality is the game is changing, and so you actually have more personal freedom than they have. And just like they walked into a unique situation, you have to craft a unique situation for you that works.Lesley Logan 36:04  Yes, that, Gregg, this is, you're a historian. You're like a life coach and like the person we all need to be thinking about when it comes to like, because it doesn't matter how I mean, obviously we're told, like, the earlier you can start thinking about retirement, the better. But people don't want to do that, like I said the beginning of this. They want to put their head in the sand, like, I can't be my grandparents, so I'm just going to keep doing what I ought to do, and just and like, we'll deal with that later. We'll figure out the number later. But I think if we can, like, start thinking about it now, it really does allow us to curate the experience we have with work, but then also set ourselves up for that third age where we can have a really good time getting to know ourselves even deeper, and not not losing money along the way.Gregg Lunceford 36:51  That's correct, because in that third age, you may convert a hobby. So I have a friend who was in banking with me. He would always go take a week or two off every year and just go to Europe and backpack. He would stay at, you know, two three star hotels. He was like, I'm not there every day. And he would just go take the most amazing pictures he bring them back to the office. And we would go, Jim, you know, you should have an art show. And he was like, Nah, they're just hobbies or whatever. And he had a hard shell, and people started buying his art. And so, you know, now in retirement, you know his joy also produces income. And so he has defined work on his own terms. It doesn't even feel like work to him. And so what a lot of people who are looking at their parents and grandparents and then going, you know, they got this pension for life, and they don't offer pensions anymore, and they didn't get sandwiched. So they didn't have the burden, financial burden of raising kids and having to take care of parents. I'm stuck. I'll never be able to do that. There's something wrong you don't understand. You now have this 20 year life bonus, where you can learn to gig, you can learn to I often point to the show The Golden Girls. I don't know if the creators of the show knew what they were doing or they intentionally did this, but look at that model. I think that's the model a lot of people are going to have to go to. And I think you touched on this a little bit earlier. You start talking about your father and your in laws. And you know, we don't have kinship the way we once did, once small, we have smaller families, right? Two, geographically we disperse, right? And so what in this planning process of your ideal self, what you also have to learn how to do is to replace kinships with friendships. So that's what was going on in that in that Golden Girls house, you had Dorothy and her mother, Sophia, that had a kinship, but where they didn't have kinship, they replaced it with their roommates with Blanche and Betty (inaudible). And so now that you have this replacement of family that you trust and you get along with, now you got four people to split your rent with, so that makes the money go longer, right? Yeah, then you start talking about what went on every day. Well, sometimes they were doing volunteer work, and then they had to spin off where they bought a hotel. So they basically were doing their own version of a gig economy, right? They were engaging as much as they wanted to or not. Then they had socialization from each other. There was always something going on in that house, right? Yes. And so, right? And then they had things to create psychological success. So I don't know if the creators of the show recognized at the time, but to me, I looked at it as sort of foreshadowing what people have to create for themselves on their own with this life bonus, and it will help them both financially, as well as their mental and their mental well being. Lesley Logan 40:00  Gregg, yes. I mean, I joke with my friends who have kids. I'm like, I just want you to know that your kid is gonna have to take care of me because I don't have kids. But really, actually, I just need to find my Golden Girls, my husband. I just need to find a co op, a little commune of all of our friend all of our friends who don't have kids, we actually like what we're being with. And we could have a great little retirement home, maybe make it a BnB. This what I what I just I'm obsessed with, and why I got excited to have you on is, you know, oftentimes the Be It Till You See It podcast really talks about, like, what we can do right now, like, for right now, what we can do to be it till we see it tomorrow, or for the thing we want next year. Or there might be some stuff I have never thought of it as like, what can we be doing right now to be it till we see it for retirement in a way that we can choose, like we get the life is literally what we want, and the research you've done, the education you've had, and how you've literally seen it implemented in unique ways, because of all this work, is so cool. It makes me excited to actually, like, look into that future. Because, like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm not gonna look past 50, because I got things to do with my job, with the job that I created for myself. It's like, oh, hold on a second. What, like, what can I be playing with right now so that I know what I'm gonna do past 50, so that I have something to look forward to. So I'm excited about it. So, Gregg, what are you most excited about right now?Gregg Lunceford 41:20  I'm excited about I'm writing and researching and learning about the person I'm becoming. So and so I often joke with my clients, but I'm really not joking. They'll come back and they'll tell me some amazing experience they had, and I always tell them, leave me a list of notes so I know where to start when it comes to my time, and I say that jokingly, but it's something it is serious. What we all need to start to focus on right now is just like we had that career guidance counselor helping us and coaching us. And to that next thing, we need to start taking time to figure out that action plan for that next thing. And once you start to figure out I need to form a retirement identity and understand my ideal self, you start to self motivate and become excited about it. So what I really enjoy about what I've done through my work, whether it be here as an advisor or through my research, is that I'm helping people understand that they have a lot to be encouraged by, right? You're going to get 20 years to do whatever it is you want to do. And what I also want people to be understanding of. You don't have to leave the workforce if you're doing something awesome already. Just keep doing it. And if you want to modify that in some kind of way, figure out a plan, or figure out your terms and how to negotiate those terms. Say you can do that. Lesley Logan 42:51  Oh, I just like each answer. I just get more excited for people. I'm excited for myself. Like, I'm like, wow, this is so fun. We're gonna take a brief break and then find out where people can find you, follow you, work with you and your Be It Action Items. Lesley Logan 43:00  Okay, Gregg, where can they connect with you? You have a book, Exit From Work, but where, where can they go to chat with you, work with you like, get more ideas about their retirement identity?Gregg Lunceford 43:14  Sure, so I can be reached at mesirow.com so our website, M-E-S-I-R-O-W dot com, on that, if you put in my name in our search engine, Gregg Lunceford, you'll come up with my team web page. We'll have my bio, my contact information, also a list of all my publications. Also, if you're interested in my book, Exit From Work. This can be found on amazon.com, and I'm always encouraged by people who take time to drop me a note, or we didn't even go into I talked about the Golden Girls situation. We didn't even go into their academically based retirement communities. Now, basically, instead of dormitory you lived in when you were in your late teens and 20s, now people are going back to retire near where they went to school. So they now have, because we don't have these kinships, they're now bracing building friendships based on the fact that they're alumni, or they love the school and and so it's sort of like this, you were living in the Golden Girls subdivision, maybe. Lesley Logan 44:15  Oh, my God. Gregg Lunceford 44:15  So there are all kinds of things that are going on right now, and I just, I write about it in my book too. I just want people to learn about that so they don't feel as though they're confined to what they saw their parents do. Lesley Logan 44:27  Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh, Brad, when you listen to this, we'll choose your school, because he went to music school, so we'll choose that one.Gregg Lunceford 44:37  He could, he could probably teach all the people I know they want to start a rock band. Lesley Logan 44:41  Yeah, yeah, yeah, him and his buddies. That could be their whole little they would love it. Okay, you've given us a lot, but I do want to dive into the bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted steps people can take to be it till they see it. What do you have for us?Gregg Lunceford 44:56  Okay, so what you first have to do is you have to create a vision. And if you have a partner, it is very important that that be a shared vision. The last thing we want to do is get to the end of our career and then have conflict with our partner. And a lot of that happens because most couples do not talk about retirement. They don't even know if the other partners is saving for retirement. Like 40% couples don't even talk about this. Don't even do the calculation to get past them. So so if you haven't even done the basics on that end, talking about this thing you aspire to be is very difficult because And so last thing you want to do is you both jump in it, and then you you're stuck and you're unhappy. So create a vision. If you have a partner, make sure that's a shared vision. And then start talking about goals. Engage someone like myself, who's a financial planning professional, to help you see how you can align your financial wherewithal with those goals. And then think differently. Think about being your best self at this stage, not being someone who society just said it's time for you to leave, because that's not the case. You have more value to offer a lot of people than you think.Lesley Logan 46:07  I do, I love that. This is an episode I really hope my in-laws actually listen to. I really am. I'm actually just really excited for even our our listeners who who are like, you know, they might be in there. They might be, like, 15, 20 years away from retirement, but, or even 10, but, like, we have a bunch of them, and I hope this helps them rethink that, because I think sometimes there's a fear to, oh, my God, you know. And you just said it like being the system has told them that they're done, but you're not done. And so I just you've given, like, so much excitement around this topic, and joy and possibility. So Gregg, thank you for being you. You all, how are you going to use these tips in your life? We want to know. Make sure you tell Gregg Lunceford your takeaways. I'm sure it will make his day. Share this with friend who needs to hear it, that friend who's like, so worried all the time, like, absolutely needs this. And you know what to do until next time, Be It Till You See It. Lesley Logan 47:01  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.Brad Crowell 47:44  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 47:49  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.Brad Crowell 47:54  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.Lesley Logan 48:01  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.Brad Crowell 48:04  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

0:00 - Yesterday, Mike Florio published an article about the AFC Championship saying that the snow made it unwatchable. He suggested that the championship games should be played at a neutral site with good weather, like the Super Bowl, to ensure a watchable product. Vic agrees with the snow part of it. That's not "football weather." It completely ruined the ending of the game. 12:46 - DMac went BACK to the same NESN (Boston TV) show that he was on last week, so he could face the music. Good for him, but MAN he let that host tear him a new one. Stick up for yourself, Darren!29:29 - Shedeur Sanders was officially named to the Pro Bowl. Look, no disrespect to Shedeur. We're all rooting for him to find success in the NFL. But a Pro Bowler? Nah man.Also, they Nuggets FINALLY made it back to Denver and will play the Pistons tonight at Ball Arena. What are the keys to a Nuggets victory?

In today's show David and Chas learn a life lesson about forming snap judgments, question Kelly's truest motive with Stab In The Dark, learn what will be lost if JBay gets cancelled, discover that Pedro Scooby is the least disgusting part of his new McDonalds ad, learn which pro surfer is a doppelgänger for Stevie Janowski, and decide whether you should take fitness advice from Shane Dorian. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices