Podcasts about Ordeal

With the World Cup coming to North America, millions of visitors will encounter more than stadiums and soccer. They'll also encounter the transportation systems, infrastructure gaps, and car-dependent development patterns that shape daily life in U.S. cities. Norm Van Eeden Petersman talks with Chuck Marohn and Rick Cole about “catastrophic money,” the danger of building for spectacle instead of long-term value, and what major events reveal about the places that host them. These visitors will move on when the games are over, but the systems they struggled with will still be ours to live with. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES "The U.S. campaigned to host the World Cup. Now soccer fans will trade their countries' train system for the U.S.'s ‘D' rated infrastructure" by Catherine Gioino, Fortune.com (May 2026) Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn) Chuck Marohn (LinkedIn) Rick Cole (LinkedIn) Articles Mentioned and Downzone: Just a thought: a Texas based World Cup (Article) The Mission: CIA in the 21st Century by Tim Weiner The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966-1996 and the Search for Peace by Tim Pat Coogan Only Murders in the Building (Site) Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.   This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

In this retail heat map episode, Carol Spieckerman examines the cascading cost crisis reshaping the consumer economy in 2026. From fuel price spikes driven by Strait of Hormuz disruptions to corporate pricing strategies that blur the line between necessity and opportunism, Carol connects seemingly disparate headlines to reveal a structural economic shift affecting every aspect of retail. Through her recent media contributions, including an appearance on China Global Television Network, Carol analyzes how petroleum-embedded supply chains create compounding cost pressures while retailers navigate impossible choices between absorbing increases or passing them to cash-strapped consumers. Plus, insights into Walmart's digital shelf label rollout, GLP-1 medication impacts on retail assortments, and why this inflationary wave differs fundamentally from previous cycles.Key TakeawaysFuel crisis creates retail domino effect across all categories – With gas prices experiencing the largest single-day increase since March 2022 and national averages nearing $5 per gallon, petroleum costs embedded throughout supply chains affect everything from plastic packaging to agricultural fertilizers. Carol explains how disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz (handling one-third of global seaborne oil) trigger immediate price spikes that retailers implement within days, creating a 3-6 week lag between crude oil disruption and consumer impact.Corporate profit margins reveal opportunistic pricing during crisis – Analysis of corporate earnings shows many companies maintaining steady or higher profit margins during inflationary periods, raising questions about legitimate cost increases versus margin padding. Carol explores the "honor system" approach to pricing transparency and how some companies use economic chaos as cover for profit expansion while others genuinely struggle with supply chain cost pressures.Walmart's digital shelf label technology enables dynamic pricing capabilities The retailer's chain-wide rollout of digital shelf labels brings operational efficiency gains but also introduces capability for real-time price changes every ten seconds. Despite Walmart's commitment to implementing updates outside shopping hours, the technology infrastructure supports surge pricing models already normalized in e-commerce, flight booking, and ride-sharing platforms.Consumer behavior shifts toward purposeful, consolidated shopping – Rising transportation costs drive preference for one-stop shopping destinations like Walmart and Amazon while penalizing specialty retailers requiring dedicated trips. Lower-income households face disproportionate budget pressure from necessity spending increases, while small businesses lack negotiating leverage to manage supplier cost increases, creating widening competitive gaps in retail marketplace.GLP-1 medication impacts follow cyclical patterns rather than permanent shifts – Weight-loss drug usage affects retail assortments and portion sizing, but Carol's analysis reveals cyclical consumer behavior as users plateau, reach goals, or discontinue medications. Rather than fundamentally reshaping availability for all shoppers, retailers expand assortments to accommodate GLP-1 users alongside traditional options, with larger diversified retailers better positioned to serve multiple consumer segments simultaneously.The Retail RealityCarol identifies this moment as a structural economic shift rather than temporary inflation, with cascading costs affecting petroleum-dependent supply chains, manufacturing processes, and transportation networks simultaneously. The crisis reveals competitive advantages for diversified retailers with multiple revenue streams (marketplace fees, advertising income, membership programs) while exposing vulnerabilities in specialty retail formats requiring dedicated consumer trips. Corporate pricing strategies range from legitimate cost management to opportunistic margin expansion, with long-term customer loyalty implications for companies perceived as exploiting economic hardship. Technology developments like digital shelf labeling accelerate dynamic pricing capabilities while consumer acceptance remains uncertain. The episode concludes that traditional retail assumptions about average consumers with predictable needs no longer apply, as economic pressure creates more calculated shopping behaviors, conditional brand loyalty, and expectations for demonstrable value on every purchase. Retailers must balance transparency about genuine cost pressures with creative value delivery methods that go beyond simple price competition.Want to be a guest on Spieckerman Speaks Retail? Contact team@spieckermanretail.comCheck out more of Carol's retail insights and updates Follow Carol on LinkedInFollow Carol on Twitter

From bizarre grocery store signs to the history of "Trial by Ordeal," we're diving deep into the weirdest corners of the news!

The American administration's next round of sabre-rattling has been directed at Cuba. But more military adventures there would probably prove disastrous. We profile the three starkly different contenders in Colombia's hyper-polarised presidential election. And our series looking at World Cup squads goes to Mexico.Guests and host:Sarah Birke, bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the CaribbeanKinley Salmon, Latin America correspondentJon Fasman, senior culture correspondentJason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”Topics covered: Cuba, American foreign policyColombia's electionsWorld Cup, MexicoGet a world of insights by subscribing to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The American administration's next round of sabre-rattling has been directed at Cuba. But more military adventures there would probably prove disastrous. We profile the three starkly different contenders in Colombia's hyper-polarised presidential election. And our series looking at World Cup squads goes to Mexico.Guests and host:Sarah Birke, bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the CaribbeanKinley Salmon, Latin America correspondentJon Fasman, senior culture correspondentJason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”Topics covered: Cuba, American foreign policyColombia's electionsWorld Cup, MexicoGet a world of insights by subscribing to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A tricky person can manipulate the Sotah rules...

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The Rev. Nick Lannon preaches a sermon on 1 Peter 4 and 5 (in which Peter offers wisdom to sufferers) and John 17 (in which Jesus prays at the Last Supper). You can endure your suffering because God is not absent. In Christ, he is with you, even in pain.

The Rev. Nick Lannon preaches a sermon on 1 Peter 4 and 5 (in which Peter offers wisdom to sufferers) and John 17 (in which Jesus prays at the Last Supper). You can endure your suffering because God is not absent. In Christ, he is with you, even in pain.

If the daily news cycle feels like a fever dream you can't wake up from, consider this your morning shot of espresso and sanity. Stephanie Miller dismantles the latest circus acts coming out of the White House with equal parts intellect and well-earned snark. She takes a deep dive into the administration's "pendulum style" of foreign policy, specifically the President's wildly contradictory stances on the Iran conflict. She'll break down the sheer absurdity of the "Donald Trump Desktop End of the Iran War-a-Day Calendar" and ask the question we're all thinking: How did we get here? From the bizarre involvement of the "B-Team" entourage—including Elon Musk and Brett Ratner—to the dangerous overstatements of military success, she's navigating the wreckage of international relations with a comedic compass. With guests Bob Cesca & Carlos Alazragui!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Processor Bill Barry and Ivan Batten of Port de Grave's Harbour Authority say the redevelopment of Ship Cove harbour is good news for the fishery + Christine Dawood is the author of "Ninety-Six Hours: A Wife and Mother's Desperate Search for the Lost Titan Sub."

May 5, 2026 ~ Chris Renwick and Lloyd Jackson talk with Hunter Patterson, a staff writer for The Athletic, about tonight's Pistons playoff game against the Cavaliers and other news. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sedeq's newest Pathfinders make a mark on the city.Watch this episode on Youtube here!Enter here for a giveaway for a Dispel Dice "Send Me Nudis" set or a 1-year Syrinscape subscription as a Supersyrin!Will Strange isGame Master - Adam Kelly (of The STF Network)Mraji - Kelly GilliamPhiblethrop - Will GarrettShelly - Kevin DeckerTashi - Jon SwanSupport our goal for a 2nd show and enjoy our merch (or don't but we'll know)https://ko-fi.com/willsavethepodcasthttps://shop.willsavethepodcast.com/We'd love if you rate us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen, follow us on social media, and check out our website WillSaveThePodcast.com for more!Special gratitude for our partner Syrinscape! They're responsible for how great our music is. Get 50% off your first month with code "willsave" and check out the sound sets we use at https://rebrand.ly/syrinscapeattributionsforwillsaveAnd thanks as always to Paizo, Epidemic Sounds, Syrinscape, and Dispel Dice!

We welcome you to Maundy Thursday. In the penultimate episode before Jane and Fi go off for a week, they learn that their influence knows no bounds in Purley Way! They also chat Winchester vs Basingstoke rivalries, cat-arse dispensers, erotic Ottolenghi recipes, why you should never turn to a bottle of Malibu… and a visit from the Easter Bunny. Plus, best-selling author William Boyd discusses the paperback of ‘The Predicament', the second instalment in the Gabriel Dax trilogy. You can check out our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@OffAirWithJaneAndFiOur new playlist 'Coiled Spring' is up and running: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4tmoCpbp42ae7R1UY8ofzaOur next book club pick is 'A Town Like Alice' by Nevil Shute.Our most asked about book is called 'The Later Years' by Peter Thornton.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radioFollow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producers: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fluent Fiction - Hebrew: Triumph Over Turmoil: Yael's High-Stakes Office Ordeal Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/he/episode/2026-04-02-07-38-20-he Story Transcript:He: שמש האביב הבריקה על משרדי החברה הגדולה, ופסח התקרב עם כל אירועיו והמטלות הכרוכות בו.En: The spring sun glistened over the offices of the large company, and Passover was approaching with all its events and associated tasks.He: בכל מקום אפשר היה לראות קישוטים של פסח שנשארו מהחגיגות של ערב קודם.En: Everywhere, Passover decorations from the celebrations of the previous evening could be seen.He: בעיצומה של תנועה קדחתנית במשרד, נעצרה יעל, מנהלת הפרויקטים הצעירה, והסתכלה סביב בהתרגשות ובחשש.En: In the midst of a feverish hustle in the office, Yael (pronounced Yah-el), the young project manager, paused and looked around with excitement and apprehension.He: היא עמדה לפני מצגת חשובה ללקוח חשוב ביותר.En: She was about to give an important presentation to a very significant client.He: היא חשה לחץ עצום, והפחד שלה לא להיקח ברצינות גרם לליבה לפעום בקצב מסחרר.En: She felt immense pressure, and her fear of not being taken seriously caused her heart to beat frantically.He: חמישה רגעים קודם למצגת, גילתה יעל שהקבצים החיוניים נעלמו.En: Five minutes before the presentation, Yael discovered that the essential files had disappeared.He: זמן להשלים לא היה, והחרדה רק גברה.En: There was no time to spare, and the anxiety only intensified.He: יעל נאנחה ונשמה עמוק.En: Yael sighed and took a deep breath.He: היא הבינה שאין ברירה אלא לפעול מיד ולחלק את המשימות.En: She realized there was no choice but to act immediately and delegate tasks.He: דניאל, עובד טכני מוכשר, נשלח לברר ב-IT האם יש בעיות ברשת או במערכת התיקיות.En: Daniel (pronounced Dan-ee-el), a talented technical employee, was sent to check with IT if there were any network or folder system issues.He: מיכה, חברתה מהצוות, קיבלה משימה לבדוק במהירות את תיבת הדואר שלה, לתקווה ששם נמצאים הקבצים האובדים.En: Micha (pronounced Mee-khah), her teammate, was tasked with quickly checking her email inbox in the hope that the missing files were there.He: בעוד שלוש דקות בלבד החלו להרגיש איך בורחות השניות האחרונות, והמשרד כולו היה בנשימה עצורה.En: With only three minutes remaining, they could feel every last second slipping away, and the entire office was holding its breath.He: לפתע, בעוד מיכה מסתכלת שוב באימיילים, צעקה בהתרגשות: "מצאתי!En: Suddenly, as Micha checked the emails again, she shouted excitedly, "I found them!He: הם היו מקובצים במייל ששכחתי!En: They were grouped in an email I had forgotten!"He: " הקובץ היה שם, מוחבא בין עשרות אימיילים ישנים.En: The file was there, hidden among dozens of old emails.He: יעל התעשתה חיש-מהר, וברגע האחרון מיהרה לחדר הישיבות עם הקבצים הנכונים בידיה.En: Yael quickly composed herself, and at the last moment, she rushed to the conference room with the correct files in hand.He: רגע לפני שהמצגת התחילה, החלה לדבר בביטחון ובשלווה.En: Just before the presentation began, she started speaking with confidence and calm.He: הלקוחות היו מרותקים, והכלי שהכינה הותיר עליהם רושם עז.En: The clients were captivated, and the tool she had prepared left a strong impression on them.He: העסקה נראתה שוב בהישג יד.En: The deal seemed once more within reach.He: כשחזרה למשרדה, הרגישה יעל הקלה עצומה.En: When she returned to her office, Yael felt immense relief.He: היא הבינה שלסמוך על הצוות שלה היה המהלך הנכון, ושתמיכה זה כוח ולא חולשה.En: She realized that relying on her team was the right move and that support is a strength, not a weakness.He: יעל חייכה – היא התכוונה להצליח, וכך גם היו הדברים באמת.En: Yael smiled—she intended to succeed, and that was indeed the reality. Vocabulary Words:glistened: הבריקהapproaching: התקרבdecorations: קישוטיםamidst: בעיצומהfeverish: קדחתניתapprehension: חששfrantically: בקצב מסחררimmense: עצוםdiscovered: גילתהanxiety: חרדהdelegate: לחלקnetwork: רשתfolder: תיקיותremaining: נותרוholding its breath: בנשימה עצורהcomposed: התעשתהconference room: חדר הישיבותcaptivated: מרותקיםimpression: רושםrelief: הקלהessential: חיונייםintensified: גברהbreathe: לנשוםsupport: תמיכהrelying: לסמוךstrength: כוחweakness: חולשהprepared: הכינהintent: התכוונהreality: המציאותBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/fluent-fiction-hebrew--5818690/support.

What a delight to talk to laura thompson about Agatha Christie. Above all, this episode was fun. Laura really does know more than anyone about Agatha and we covered a lot. What did Agatha Christie read? What did she love about Shakespeare? Was she pro-hanging? Why so much more Poirot than Marple? Why was she so productive during the war? We also talked Wagner, modern art, the other Golden Age writers, nursery rhymes, TV adaptations, poshness, nostalgia, Mary Westmacott, and plenty more. TranscriptHENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to the very splendid Laura Thompson. All of you will know Laura's Substack. She has also written books about the Mitfords, heiresses, Lord Lucan, many other subjects, and most importantly today, Agatha Christie, who died 50 years ago. And there's a new book coming from Laura about Agatha Christie's 1926 disappearance.Laura, welcome.LAURA THOMPSON: So lovely to be here, Henry. I'm such a fan of your Substack, as you know.OLIVER: Well, same. Same. This is a mutual admiration call.THOMPSON: Well, thank you. Well, that's what we like.Christie's Favorite WritersOLIVER: Now tell me, what did Agatha Christie like to read?THOMPSON: Oh, a lot the same as us. I discovered she was a huge fan of Elizabeth Bowen, as we are. And Nancy Mitford, Muriel Spark. But her big love really was Dickens. She absolutely adored Dickens. I mean, she grew up in a house full of books, you know, and she wrote a screenplay of Bleak House for which she was handsomely paid. And it was never—I know, don't you long to know what that was like? Can you imagine—OLIVER: We've lost it? We don't have the typescript?THOMPSON: I've never seen it. I mean, maybe—I don't know whether it exists somewhere. But I just wonder how she tackled it, what she did. But yes, so that happened. And of course, Shakespeare, as we know from her books, which are full of subliminal and—I mean, you kind of notice them, but you don't have to.OLIVER: Yes. There's Shakespeare in every book?THOMPSON: No, but it's there, particularly Macbeth, which I suppose figures.OLIVER: Yeah.THOMPSON: Like The Pale Horse is completely Macbeth themed. And when I was a kid reading them, I think she really—Tennyson she uses a lot—she affected my reading in a good way.OLIVER: She sent you back to Shakespeare and the poets?THOMPSON: Well, sent me to them as a kid, probably. And also, there's a lot of Bible in her books, as I'm sure you've noticed.OLIVER: Yes. Yes.THOMPSON: Very easy facility with quoting the Bible.Christie and ShakespeareOLIVER: Now, what did she learn from Shakespeare? Because she clearly knows the plays in detail. She sees them a lot. She reads them. She and he are, I think, quite good plotters.THOMPSON: Is she even better than he is?OLIVER: Well, let's not get into that. But there is a sort of, in a funny way, a kind of affinity between them as writers.THOMPSON: That's so interesting.OLIVER: What do you think she learned from him?THOMPSON: Tell me how you—how you see that.OLIVER: Well, do you know that Margaret Rutherford adaptation, which probably you don't like and I do—THOMPSON: Go on.OLIVER: It's called Murder Most Foul, isn't it?THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And there's something about the way that they can both walk the line between the sort of dark and deadly and the histrionic. Margaret Rutherford can't walk that line, but Agatha Christie can, right?THOMPSON: That's really interesting.OLIVER: And Miss Marple could come onstage in a couple of the plays. She's not so far off from being a Queen Margaret or some—in her angry moments maybe, do you think?THOMPSON: More rational, maybe.OLIVER: Much more rational.THOMPSON: Not so mad. Well, she's not mad, Margaret, is she? But she's upset.OLIVER: She starts off as a much sort of nastier character—Murder at the Vicarage, right?THOMPSON: Yes, she does. She was more acidic and then gradually—OLIVER: Waspish.THOMPSON: Waspish, and sort of mellowed. I see what you mean. And almost in the way that she calls herself—although that's obviously not Shakespeare—calls herself Nemesis.OLIVER: And the sense of atmosphere.THOMPSON: Yes, and the way they're structured. That's not necessarily just true of Shakespeare, but there is this sort of act three entanglement and this beautiful act five resolution that goes on with a soliloquy, I suppose.OLIVER: And some people think they both get confused in act four, but that's obviously not true, that this is the real mess of the plot. I think she might have learned quite a lot from Shakespeare, right?THOMPSON: That's really interesting. But, you know, the way she writes about Shakespeare in her letters to her second husband, Max, because when she was living in London during the war and almost at her most productive—I mean, her productivity levels are insane. And hitting every ball for six, really, you know: Towards Zero, Five Little Pigs, a couple of Westmacotts, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But she spent a lot of time going on her own to see Shakespeare.She's very—I hope I'm right in saying this—she's very sort of Ernest Jones [CB1] in her approach. She doesn't regard them so much as the products of words on a page; she regards them as rounded characters. Why were Goneril and Regan the way they were? What's wrong with Ophelia? You feel like saying, “Well, whatever Shakespeare wanted it to be,” but she sees them in that way. And Iago particularly—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —is the one that gets her. Yes. In one of her, I better not say which, but a major, major novel.And the book that she wrote under the name Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree, which I think might well be her best book of all. I think—well, I'll just say she wrote these six books under a pseudonym, Mary Westmacott. People call them romantic novels; that's sort of the last thing they are. And they're very, very interesting mid-20th-century human condition novels, and they're full of lots of stuff that she had to distill for the detective fiction. And she talks a lot about Iago in The Rose and the Yew Tree really interestingly, I think.Christie on Shakespeare?OLIVER: Now, Max said she should just write a book about Shakespeare, all this Shakespeare all the time. But she didn't. Why?THOMPSON: No. I don't think she ever liked being told what to do.OLIVER: [laughs]THOMPSON: His letters to her are quite annoying, aren't they?OLIVER: Yes, yes. I've only read what's in your book, but yes, I didn't warm to him.THOMPSON: I'm glad because people do. He gets a really good press even though he was unfaithful. But it worked, the marriage, because they both got what they wanted from it. But he said that, yes, and she says, “Oh no, they're just thoughts for you.” I don't think she would've felt the need, somehow. I think she liked saying things in her own more oblique way.OLIVER: Save it for the novels.THOMPSON: Yes, she's a great mistress of the indirect, I think, really. The way she writes about Macbeth in The Pale Horse, which I think is a really underrated novel, including thoughts on how it should be staged, which are really interesting and very, very good. I think she would've preferred to do that and use it to her ends.And of course, she has an incredibly powerful sense of evil, which I suppose is also in Shakespeare. Hers is a Christian sensibility, I mean, no question. People never talk about that, but it really is.OLIVER: Was she pro hanging?THOMPSON: Well, I think she took a kind of utilitarian approach that the innocent must be protected. And she took a view that if you've killed once, it becomes very easy to kill again because something in you has shifted, so you become a danger to the community. So I suppose in that sense she was.I mean, Miss Marple was. She's quite—“I really feel quite glad to think of him being hanged.”OLIVER: It's one of her most striking lines.THOMPSON: It is, isn't it?OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: So I suppose she was. I mean, I suppose she was. You know, she's very modern, she's very subtle in her thinking, but at the same time, she is a late Victorian product of her society. Yes.Dickens and Christie's FamilyOLIVER: Now, you mentioned this Bleak House script. She loved Bleak House. Do we know what she loved about it? It's obviously the first detective novel. Are there other factors?THOMPSON: You are going to know—this is when I'm going to start coming across as an idiot. Is it written before The Moonstone? Yes, of course it is.OLIVER: I think so. Yes. Yes. It's the first time there's a police detective in a major English novel.THOMPSON: Okay. I think she—do you know, this is a really good question. I don't actually know why she loved Dickens so much. She grew up—she had that rather intriguing upbringing whereby she had two much older siblings, a sister who was 11 years older, a brother who was 10 years older. Father died when she was 11.So she grew up incredibly close with a really rather intriguing mother, Clara. This is in the house at Torquay. And her mother encouraged her in a way that, it seems to me, quite unusual for the time and for the class to which she belonged. Because it was never deemed that it would interfere with her marrying and leading a more conventional life. But she always wanted to express herself creatively. And I think her mother possibly was a frustrated creative. I don't know. She had a lot of go in her.And whether it was just something she read with—I think anything she did at an early age with her mother would've made a huge impression on her. I think what you read when you're that age, you never quite—I never read Dickens at that age, so I've never quite got the habit.OLIVER: But if she's born in 1890, presumably her mother is just about old enough to have been alive when Dickens was alive. And so she's got a somewhat direct—THOMPSON: Yes, she was.OLIVER: You know, it's sort of back to the original culture of it, as it were.THOMPSON: Yes. Isn't that extraordinary?OLIVER: Yes. Yes. It's crazy to think. So she must have taken it in maybe in a more original way, somehow?THOMPSON: Possibly. Certainly Tennyson, I get that feeling, because her mother wrote this rather leaden sub-Tennysonian poetry. [laughter] It's like Tennyson on the worst day he ever had, but worse than that.OLIVER: But worse, yes.THOMPSON: Yes. And she wrote poetry like that, the mother, which is really rather sweet and touching to read. And obviously she would've been alive at the same time as Tennyson. So, yes, I'd never, ever thought of that before. Isn't that extraordinary? I mean, they went to see Henry Irving.OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: Yes. And yet she feels—it just amazes me, this—so I'm leaping slightly here, but this 21st-century halo of cool that she has around her, Agatha Christie. [laughter] I know, it's awful in a way, but the way she can be reinterpreted—that is a bit Shakespearean, in a way.I don't mean to make extravagant claims, but there's a sort of translucent quality to what she writes that means that people can impose and pull it and twang it and know that she won't let them down, as we are seeing constantly at the moment.Art and MusicOLIVER: Yes. No, I agree. Other arts—we know about all this, she loves reading. What music did she enjoy, for example? Did she like paintings?THOMPSON: Yes, she loved paintings. She liked modern art. She was painted by Kokoschka. It's very good. And she writes about modern art. In Five Little Pigs, the painter in that is a modern artist.And then music was her grand passion. I mean, music was her original career choice, as you know, of course. She must have had a good voice. She thought she could make a career of it. And she could play the piano. Beautiful piano at Greenway, it's still there.And they used to do this thing—I think it's a lovely idea—as a family. They would fill in what they called the book of confessions, and it would be questions like, “What is your state of mind? If not yourself, who would you be?” And at the age of 63, which is the last time she filled it in, she wrote, “An opera singer.” So that was still what she would've dreamed of doing. She loved Wagner very, very deeply.OLIVER: Okay. Interesting.THOMPSON: And there's a Wagner theme in a very late book, Passenger to Frankfurt, the one that everybody hates except me. And music, I mean, as a girl when—so her voice wasn't strong enough for opera. I think her ultimate—same as I grew up wanting to be a ballet dancer, I think her ultimate would've been to sing Isolde at Covent Garden.And in some of her short stories and in her first Mary Westmacott, which is called Giant's Bread, which is about a musician—and she really inhabits this character, Vernon, and it's all about modern music. And somebody who knew about this stuff, which I don't, told me, “No, she knew. She knew what was going on. She knew about the trends.” This is in the late twenties.And she always went to Beirut, and that was her real, real, real passion. She was one of those restlessly creative people. And her mother, God bless her, encouraged it.Christie's UniquenessOLIVER: What is it that distinguishes her from the other detective fiction writers? Because she doesn't, to me, feel—she's obviously part of this whole generation, this whole golden age, whatever you want to call it, but she doesn't feel the same as them somehow.THOMPSON: No.OLIVER: What is that?THOMPSON: Do you think it's her simplicity, that distilled simplicity that she has? She doesn't write linear; she writes geometric, I always think.OLIVER: Tell me what you mean.THOMPSON: Well, if you think of a book, the one I admire the most, as I constantly go on about, which is Five Little Pigs—you think about the amount of stuff that's in that book. It's a meditation on art versus life. The solution is unbelievably intriguing, I think. There's a whole family psychodrama in there. And every move of the plot, she's also moving on a—every move of the plot is impelled by a revelation of character. So plot and character are utterly intertwined, distilled together.I don't think any of the others can do that. I think Dorothy Sayers would take twice as many pages. And she'd dot every i and cross every t, and she couldn't bear loose ends or anything, could she? And she liked to reveal her knowledge of other things, almost to—I think the others like you to know that they're a bit better than the genre, maybe. Their detectives are superhuman, almost; wish-fulfillment man, almost.She doesn't do that with Poirot. He's just pure omniscience, really, plus a few tics and traits and, you know, mustache. I think it's that distillation and simplicity and the way she inhabits the genre in a way that the others don't quite do. And at the same time, she's redefining it from within.OLIVER: There's something as well, I think, about—she gets past the kind of Sherlock Holmes model in a different way. They still all have a bit of an overreliance on that, maybe.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: Whereas Poirot in, what is it? In something like, is it Murder in the Mews? Very sort of Sherlock and Watson—THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: —kind of dynamic. But within, I don't know, two or three novels, that's gone, and he's Poirot as we know him, as it were.THOMPSON: Yes, yes.OLIVER: And she kind of, as you say, makes it her own thing and goes off in new directions.Christie and the TheaterTHOMPSON: Yes. She's sort of conceptual and the others aren't quite, I think. She doesn't do—she does something completely different with the whole concept of what a solution is, it seems to me. She doesn't—it's not Cluedo, is it? It's not, there's six of them, and eventually it has to be one of them; however many tergiversations or however you say that word, you sort of know that. Whereas with her, it's: it's nobody, or it's everybody, or it's the policeman, or it's a child, or there's something bigger and bolder going on.And she writes—I think she writes very theatrically. I think she writes scenically. I think she's incredibly good at character and action. That scene where you know the girl's a thief because Poirot leaves out 23 pairs of silk stockings, and he goes back in the room and there's 19 or something like that, tells you everything. It's all in there.OLIVER: The solution to 4.50 from Paddington, which we shan't reveal, but—THOMPSON: That's Cards on the Table. But what I mean is, she's given us a little scene that tells us all we need to know about that person, really: a sort of timid thief who can't resist—OLIVER: Yes, but that's what I'm saying. At the end of 4.50, the solution is staged.THOMPSON: Oh, sorry. Yes.OLIVER: It is literally a little re-creation of the drama, if you see what I mean.THOMPSON: Yes, I do. Sorry, Henry. Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: No, no. We're crossed wires.THOMPSON: Yes, yes, yes.OLIVER: But she is very theatrical, yes.THOMPSON: No, you are absolutely right. That's a reenactment.OLIVER: Of something that was seen almost like in a—you know, the whole thing is very—THOMPSON: Yes, yes. Well, she was a great—I mean, obviously Shakespeare, but she was a great lover of the theater as a medium. And of course, she wrote plays, as we know, which I think are far weaker than her books, myself.OLIVER: Even The Mousetrap?THOMPSON: Especially. [laughter] When did you last see it? Or have you not—OLIVER: I've seen it once. I've seen it—you know, I don't know, before I had children, a long time ago. And I thought it was great. It was a lot of fun. The ending of act one, when someone opens a door and they say, “Oh, it's you.” It's very dramatic moments. You don't like it?THOMPSON: No, I think you're right. I wouldn't mind seeing it done really, really well. There's something strong at the heart of it, that theme that haunts a lot of her books about what happens to children who are unwanted.OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: Which is in loads of her—no, not loads. It's in Ordeal by Innocence. It's in Mrs. McGinty. That's, I think, because that happened to her mother. Her mother was given away as a child. Her own mother was a poor widow and gave up her daughter to be raised by her rich sister, which is not—it's not abandonment, but I think—OLIVER: Well, yes.THOMPSON: — it's not great. And I think all these things were absorbed by Agatha as a child. She grew up in what we would today call a house of—I hate this—strong women. I hate that “strong woman” thing, but they were strong women. Her mother was very, you know, as we've said, a sort of driving little person. And the rich grandmother, the poor sister, the dynamic there, they both fed into Miss Marple.And then her older sister, Madge, who was a big personality and actually had a play on in the West End before Agatha did, which I've always thought was extraordinary, just to write a play and have it on in the West End in 1924.And the men were—the father was feckless and charming and a rather grand New Yorker, he grew up as, and then settled in Torquay. And the brother was the Branwell Brontë. [laughter] He ended up a drug addict, which is also a type that feeds into her fiction: the man who could have made something of his life and goes wrong.The TV AdaptationsOLIVER: So all this theatricality in the books is obviously why she adapts so well to TV, and again, a lot of the others don't.THOMPSON: Yes, that's true.OLIVER: How famous would she be now without the TV adaptations?THOMPSON: Well, by 1990, so the centenary, she was a hell of a lot less—and that's really when the Poirots got going, which she never wanted. She never wanted—she didn't really want Murder on the Orient Express. It was only because it came via Lord Mountbatten. I don't know. I don't know because I think they're mostly not very good. I don't know what you think about the adaptations. But maybe that's deliberate, that they're less—if they drove you back to the books, you'd probably get quite a pleasant surprise.OLIVER: It's hard for me to say because I saw them all more or less after I'd finished reading her.THOMPSON: What did you think?OLIVER: I love Joan Aiken—not Joan Aiken, what's she called?THOMPSON: Yes, Joan Hickson is marvelous. Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Hickson. I think she's just perfect because as you say, the simplicity, the not overstating. The “Pocketful of Rye” episode where she turns up and quotes the Bible, and the vicious older sister is there, and they have that moment. It's all so cleanly done.THOMPSON: Yes, I agree.OLIVER: David Suchet, I quite like him. I think he has those wonderful moments. “I cannot eat these eggs. They are not the same.” I think that's very good. It's very funny, you know, he gets it.THOMPSON: You prefer him in spats and art deco mode to when he became—he became like a de facto member of the House of Atreus by the end, hadn't he? It had gone very, very—OLIVER: I mean, I certainly didn't watch them all, no, no.THOMPSON: No. Well, I sort of had to.OLIVER: Yes, you did.THOMPSON: But I could never get through those short story ones. I don't think I've ever got—OLIVER: The moral sort of doom of it all, yes.THOMPSON: Well, the early ones, when they always had—you could see they'd hired a car for the day. [laughter] And I don't think I've ever got to the end of one of those.But I think—sorry, going back to your question, I think they probably did make a massive difference. You know, they're really, really popular. And whether she would have—what you think her—she might be read as much as somebody like Sayers if it weren't for all those adaptations. But then the fact of all those adaptations tells its own story in a way, because that wouldn't happen to one of the others, as you rightly said.Resurgence and PopularityOLIVER: No, they don't have that quality. And also, she was bigger than them. That's why they picked her, because she was bigger than them anyway.THOMPSON: And simpler. Because when I used to read them at university between the pages of Beowulf or whatever, like porn, [laughter] it was a bit mal vu. You read her for entertainment. But you certainly—I don't think—she's always been admired by a certain kind of French intellectual, hasn't she, for that subtextual quality that she has, that sort of fathomless quality that she has.But when I researched that biography, which I started in 2003, I can remember going on the radio. And names will not be named, but I was like a figure of fun with a couple of other detective writers, quite well known, who just sort of openly mocked me for taking her seriously and more or less said, “Oh yeah, we love her, but she's terrible” kind of thing. “Why are you taking her seriously?” I mean, it was regarded as a bit of a joke to take her seriously.I'm not saying I changed the game or anything like that, but I think there must have been a movement around that time in the early twenty-naughties—whatever the damn thing, decade's called—to start seeing that she is an interplay of text and subtext, facade and undercurrents, and these powerful foundations that underpin her books. Murder on the Orient Express is, you know, “Does human justice have the right to exert itself when legal justice has let it down?”There are these very strong—I think this is part of why she's survived the way she has. We intuit powerful truths underneath the Christie construct, if you like. I always say she's not real, she's true. I think she's incredibly wise about human nature, possibly more than any of them.You take a book like Evil Under the Sun, and there's a femme fatale who's murdered. “Oh, the femme fatale. No man can resist her.” Turns out she can't resist men. She's prey; she's not a predator. And of course, women who are so dependent on their looks and so on, that is what they are. They are prey. They're not predators. They're very, very vulnerable. Just a really small thing like that. And I just think, oh, you're very—there's so much easy wisdom in there somehow.And she deploys it perhaps differently—I mean, Ruth Rendell is wise, but it's very, “I am wise and you're going to pay attention to me.” You know what I mean? It's all very, “I'm very dark and very wise and very,” you know. I love her, but everything's so easy with Agatha. It's so, to coin a phrase, two tier. You can read them and have fun with them. You can read them and there's so much stuff going on underneath, and yet she presents this smooth face. I don't think any of the others are quite that resolved, if you like.Self-AdaptationsOLIVER: Now, you wrote that her own stage adaptations of The Hollow and Five Little Pigs lack the subtlety of the original books, quote, “almost as if Agatha herself did not realize what made them such good books.” How much of her talent do you think was unconscious in that way?THOMPSON: Yes. That's such a good question. I do think that, about those plays, it could have been that she just thought, “That's not what my audiences are going to want from me. They're just going to want to be entertained by”—we know she can do the other thing because of her Mary Westmacott books, where everything is laid out. They're not distilled at all; they're quite the opposite.I think they must have been such a pleasure for her to write because she didn't have to constantly—they're unresolved; they ask questions that don't have to be answered. She could have done that with those plays, I'm sure, but I think she would've thought people aren't coming to see them for that. I think she had a very good opinion of herself, in the best possible way.OLIVER: Hmm.THOMPSON: Like I said to you earlier, she didn't take a lot of notice of anything anybody said to her. Because it is like writing this other little book, the one I've just done about 1926. She was very acclaimed right from the start. I didn't emphasize that enough in the biography. And she was really recognized as very special right from the start.And I think it's extraordinary to me how—it's so difficult for us today, isn't it? We're so at the mercy of “That won't sell, don't do that, blah, blah, blah.” She really did not just plow her own furrow, but create that furrow in a way that you can only compare with, like, Lennon and McCartney. Or whether the time was absolutely right that they let her run, they trusted her to do what she wanted, and because she had the gift of pleasing readers . . .You do really feel, although those books are very tight and taut, you do feel an instinctive ease in what she's doing, an instinctive sort of—there's a kind of liberated—which sounds perverse because they are so controlled, the books. But I always feel she's doing exactly what she wants to do because she knows what it is and she knows how to do it. Because I think, would she be amazed that you and I are having this conversation now? I don't know that she would be, really. What do you think?OLIVER: No, I agree with you. I think she had what Johnson said, the felicity of rating herself properly. I think she knew she was really good.THOMPSON: You might know he'd say it right.OLIVER: Yes. [laughs] But there's a—I think there must have been something about—I think it's in Poirot's Christmas, one of those, where someone gets killed in the night in their bedroom, and they go up. And one of the women says, “Who would've thought the old man had so much blood in him?”And the quotation just sort of occurs to—I think there's quite a lot of that in Christie, right? Things are coming up and it fits. And she's good enough to run on instinct at times.THOMPSON: That's right. That's it. Exactly. That's absolutely right. Like the way she quotes from the—yes, I love the bit when she quotes from the Book of Saul in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, which is really quite a profound novel about whether—I mean, it's terribly timely—whether it's better to be run by a corrupt capitalist or to let in the radicals. And as I said in the biography, the corrupt capitalist wins on points. But then another element enters, which is what power does to people. And that's when she quotes from the Book of Saul.And it's just like you said, this—an instinctive that she—I do always feel her as an instinctive writer, even though—her notebooks are intriguing because obviously some plots she really has to work away at. And yet they feel felicitous. A coup like The ABC Murders, and she's really—that went through lots and lots of iterations. But what she'll often do is scribble down a line of dialogue, a line of “There they are.” It's the whole—it's not bullet points, which is a loathsome concept. It reminds me of a bee going from flower to flower and knowing exactly which—and she's got this gift of knowing what flowers we're going to need.I sometimes fear I overdo it. I don't want be like one of those people who's writing a PhD on, what was the thing I said on Substack, gynocracy in St. Mary Mead or whatever. It's not—I do think that's a bit overdone these days, the rummaging in the subtext, because she's an interplay. And that's why I write that chapter in the book called “English Murder,” which is about the facade, you know, “smile and smile and be a villain.” And there's nothing more interesting. There's nothing more interesting than murder among classes who are trying to cover things up.And she does that—that's at the heart of golden age murder, I suppose. And I just think she does that better than anybody because she's so all the things we've been talking about. She's so distilled, she's so simple, she's so smooth, she's so instinctive. And she's doing it the way she wanted to do it because of your wonderful Dr. Johnson quote. She knew not to take notice of other people, including her—Quick Opinions on ChristieOLIVER: Should we have—THOMPSON: Yes. Go on.OLIVER: Sorry, sorry. Should we have a quick-fire round?THOMPSON: Please.OLIVER: I will say the name first of a few of her books—THOMPSON: Oh, god.OLIVER: —and then a few other detective writers, and you will just give us your unfiltered opinion: good, bad, ugly, indifferent.THOMPSON: Okay. What fun.OLIVER: You can “nothing” them if you want to.THOMPSON: Okay. [laughter]OLIVER: Hallowe'en Party.THOMPSON: Underrated. Very interesting on sixties counterculture and the effects of societal breakdown, et cetera. What do you think?OLIVER: I think it's a real page turner. I remember reading that for the first time. I loved it. Yes. Nemesis.THOMPSON: I can't keep saying the same thing. Underrated. [laughter] Very interesting philosophy of love in that book, I think. I think it harks back to her first marriage. However badly it turns out, it's better to have experienced it. It's quite a mournful novel.OLIVER: The Mr. Quin—THOMPSON: Oh.OLIVER: Oh, sorry.THOMPSON: No, no. Sorry. You carry on. Marvelous. So inventive, don't you think? Such a clever character.OLIVER: Why didn't she do more of him?THOMPSON: Yes, that would've been good. And she was always interested in the commedia dell'arte. She wrote poems about it as a girl. And the concept of Mr. Quin, yes, as this sort of evanescent figure who's also a moral force, isn't he really? Or—yes, I wish she'd done more. They're marvelous.OLIVER: Towards Zero.THOMPSON: Oh, top notch, don't you think?OLIVER: One of the best.THOMPSON: Yes, I agree. Frightening motive. Very Ruth Rendell.OLIVER: It's very distinct in her. I haven't read all of her novels, but it's very distinct.THOMPSON: But the plot is, again, typical of her because it redefines the word contingent. [laughs] I mean, Dorothy Sayers would be having palpitations. She's very bold and grand like that. “Oh, there's a loose end. Oh, who cares?” You know, I mean, it's so—it just drives along that book, doesn't it? Yes. But I agree with you, one of her best.OLIVER: Death on the Nile.THOMPSON: Quite moving, I think. I think it's one of those ones from the thirties that, again, is talking about love in a way that—I think it just strikes a personal note to me because she was very in love with her first husband, Archie Christie. And he did fall in love with another woman, and it did cause her extreme pain that some people said to me she never quite got over.And I feel that a little bit in that book. There's a shadow of something quite powerful in that book, I think. Again, very, very loose and lovely plot, but powerful. Would you agree? Very good on the place as well, I think, Egypt.OLIVER: I love it. I think the solution is great.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And it makes a really good film.THOMPSON: It's a great film, yes. Wonderful film.Other Mystery WritersOLIVER: Yes. Okay. A few other detective writers: Michael Innes.THOMPSON: You've got me. I haven't read him. Should I?OLIVER: Oh, I think you will like him. Yes. Try Hamlet, Revenge!THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. Oh, I like it already.OLIVER: Yes, yes, yes. Oh, this is exciting. Gladys Mitchell.THOMPSON: Can't get into her.OLIVER: No.THOMPSON: What do you think? Should I try a bit harder?OLIVER: I read two. I thought they were good. I was not intrigued.THOMPSON: No, somebody told—OLIVER: The ones I read—Spotted Hemlock is a wonderful, like, wow, that's great.THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. Somebody said to me, I know she really—no, I didn't—I read it in a book that she really hadn't liked Agatha Christie, but you know, who knows? All that Detection Club rivalry, you can imagine. But okay, Spotted Hemlock—if I'm going to read one, try that, yes?OLIVER: Yes, that's a great book. Margery Allingham.THOMPSON: Kind of love her, but I never understand her plots. I always feel I'm in a bit of a fog, but she's quite a good writer. Do you think? Or what do you think?OLIVER: She's good at the fog. She's good at that sort of whirligig sense that there's a lot going on—THOMPSON: Yes, whirligig.OLIVER: —and you've got to get to the end before they do, kind of thing.THOMPSON: Also, she had a pub in her sitting room. Now, I like a woman who has a pub in their sitting room.OLIVER: [laughs] E. C. Bentley.THOMPSON: You've got me again, Henry.OLIVER: Oh, The Blotting Book mystery. You'll like this.THOMPSON: Okay. Okay.OLIVER: The other one is not so good, but you'll like that a lot.THOMPSON: Okay.OLIVER: Edmund Crispin.THOMPSON: Didn't get on with him.OLIVER: Why not?THOMPSON: Don't know. Don't know. It sounds like I don't read the men, doesn't it? Which is not the truth at all.OLIVER: I think that's fair enough, isn't it?THOMPSON: Well, I don't know. I don't think anyone's ever come up with a really good reason why women have shone so brightly in this genre. I don't know. Why didn't I—I read that one, the toyshop one [The Moving Toyshop] or whatever. I don't know. I just didn't get on with it.OLIVER: Too glib?THOMPSON: Possibly.OLIVER: Bit flippant, bit sort of funny-funny?THOMPSON: Possibly. I just couldn't quite get hold of it in some way. I don't know.OLIVER: I quite like Edmund Crispin, but I do think he's got a bit of a “he's a very clever boy” about him.THOMPSON: Maybe that's what it was. Maybe that.OLIVER: Something, yes. G. K. Chesterton.THOMPSON: I haven't read Father Brown. Oh, this is awful, isn't it? I'm starting to sound like a radical feminist by accident.OLIVER: [laughs] Maybe that's what you are, Laura. Maybe you just need to admit it. [laughs]THOMPSON: No, it does. It sounds really bad because I do really love almost all the women. I just, I don't know why I haven't read him.Christie and NostalgiaOLIVER: Was Agatha a nostalgia writer?THOMPSON: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think anyone who was a nostalgia writer would've written At Bertram's Hotel, which is an entire spin on the riff of nostalgia. Really clever. I think that's such a clever book. The way she traps us in her golden age, you know, this phantasmagoria of the re-created golden age. And then she says, “Ha, really fooled you.”I've written about this. I think she moved with the 20th century far more than is realized. I love those Cold War novels she writes about her dislike of ideologies. I love her postwar books about the fragmentation of the hierarchical society. I think she's—well, she's an incidental social historian, as are, I think, P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, but they're much more underlined about it. Again, I'm intrigued what you think. Do you think she is?OLIVER: I think there's definitely some quality, particularly to the Miss Marple stories—as you say, the social history sort of becomes a way of preserving something that's disappearing. One of them, written in the sixties—you can tell me which one—it opens with that description of all the new houses in the village and the mothers who give their children cereal for breakfast. And what sort of a thing is that to give a child? They should have bacon and eggs. Bacon and eggs is a real—you know, and she does have a real something heartfelt and real sense that this part of England is going, and this new thing is coming in.THOMPSON: That's true. That's absolutely true. That's The Mirror Crack'd. And it's—OLIVER: The Mirror, yes, yes.THOMPSON: Yes, and that whole thing of Mrs. Bantry's house has now been bought by a film star and blah, blah, blah. Yes, no, you are absolutely right. I didn't think hard enough before I answered your question.OLIVER: But no, what you said is also true. I can't sort of work out to what extent she regrets it, to what extent it's just useful material for her, you know?THOMPSON: Both. I mean, some of her late books, including Endless Night, I think, which is an incredibly modern book—that whole “me, me, me” culture of “I want, therefore I will have now,” which is written when she was quite an old lady. And then a book like Passenger to Frankfurt, which is—it's a bit sub–Brave New World, but it's very honest and pessimistic about a future—well, the one we are living in, really—full of fear and uncertainty and almost dystopian.She was a realist. You know, she is Miss Marple in a lot of ways. She was a realist in a way that I think a lot of us would find it difficult to be. And her American publishers were often—would sort of say, can she tone this down? Can she not have a young person who's completely evil? Readers want to know, is she going get any therapy? [laughter] And it's so true. There's quite a lot of that going on.She's very clear-eyed. So if she—I'm a bit nostalgic for Blur, do you know what I mean? I mean, you can't help it, in a way, like that brilliant example you give at the start of The Mirror Crack'd. But I would say her image is quite at odds with the reality of her in that way. But the image—OLIVER: And the adaptations don't help with that.THOMPSON: No. No. But at the same time, that Christie image, you know, the gentlewoman, the tea or the eternal bridge party, blah, blah, blah, that has a huge power of its own. So just being too iconoclastic about her, I think, is also a lie. Because I think, again, it's that interplay. She used the image, and the image—I hate the word cozy. I loathe the word cozy, but there's no denying that any book of that kind does have that quality. So I suppose even that's nostalgic in a way.Christie's PoshnessOLIVER: In a way, yes. How posh was she?THOMPSON: Good question. I've been thinking about that a lot. Quite, I would say. Quite grand, with that confidence. Her father really was—as I said, he was a young blade in New York dancing with Jennie Jerome and blah, blah, blah. And then it so happened that he ended up in Torquay, which of course then was very posh. And the fact that when she disappears, she disappears to Harrogate, [laughs] which is like the Torquay of the north.I remember her grandson saying to me, “She dealt with her literary agent. To her, he was staff.” You know, that kind of thing. Her sister, there is a—well, her sister ended up very grand indeed with a huge house up in Cheshire.I think she just had that internal confidence, really. She wasn't—and that there wasn't much money. I mean, there was very little money when she was growing up, as of course you know, but that didn't matter. I mean, her voice is insane. Her voice is, [affecting a posh voice] “Oh, it's lucky it just happens.” [laughter] But yes, there's a part of her that is real late Victorian upper middle class that, again, underpins her books.It's amazing really how broad-minded and cosmopolitan she was. But possibly, I mean, possibly that does—she was—you know, when she disappeared, she was described in foreign newspapers as an Anglo-American, the embodiment of Englishness, and that's how she was described. And then of course she was genuinely cosmopolitan in her love of travel and her love of other cultures and all that obvious stuff. Yes.Inspirations for Miss MarpleOLIVER: How much of her grandmothers is in Miss Marple?THOMPSON: Quite a lot, I would say, particularly the—OLIVER: Drawn from life?THOMPSON: Well, in an essential way not, because Miss Marple has no real experience of life in that way. We're occasionally told about some chap who came calling who wasn't suitable or whatever, but she's almost defined by nonexperience of life in a sense, but observation of life. She's an observer. She's not an outsider in the way that Poirot is. She has a place within the social hierarchy and whatever, and that village has a reality to it. And the way it changes has a reality to it. But she is defined by being an observer, I would say.But Margaret Miller, who was the rich grandmother, who is the one who had the big house at Ealing and was—you know, she's the one who would go to the Army and Navy stores and all that stuff that's in At Bertram's Hotel. She was—there's a lot of her in Miss—I think, as I say in the book, she grew up with the sound of female wisdom in her ears. You know, her grandmother was the sort of—if she'd seen her up in Harrogate, she would've known exactly what was going on. You know, one of those kind of women who could spot an affair at a hundred paces, just a wise sort of woman, worldly, worldly woman.And Miss Marple is worldly in her thinking, but not in her experience, particularly in a book like A Caribbean Mystery, which I think is—she's a real sophisticate, Agatha. I mean, I'm reading The Hollow again at the moment. And it's really astounding to me how there's a love affair at the center of it with a young woman who's kind of a self-portrait and this married man. And not only, there's not—it's not only nonjudgmental; there's literally no concept of judgment being in the vicinity. It's really, really sophisticated, grown-up stuff, I think. And again, I think that's maybe not recognized about her that much.Nursery RhymesOLIVER: What are the importance of nursery rhymes to her?THOMPSON: Yes, that's interesting. They're part of that distilled quality she had, I suppose, that really simple ability to catch hold of something that is simple and familiar in itself and then subvert it. There's books where she—I don't think she needs it in Five Little Pigs. I think the book is almost too good for that.But is it not to do with that—like her titles, which are really, really simple with a faint frisson of the sinister about them. Is it not that ability she has to catch, to take something really, really simple and subvert it for her own ends? What do you think? Do you think that's right? Or do you think it's something more than that?OLIVER: No, I think the simplicity is the point, and I think it probably gives her a way of talking, of showing how fundamental the wickedness is. And as you say, the children can be evil, and it's part of the darkness in a way, but it gives the appearance of innocence and, oh, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe? You know, children do this. And so it leads you through and makes it worse somehow. [laughs]THOMPSON: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. But I know I've—how many times have I said the word simple? But I really do feel that's the heart of her. And I also feel it's the heart of why she was misunderstood when I was growing up reading her because it was mistaken for simplistic.Wartime ProductivityOLIVER: Why was she so productive during the war? I mean, there were four books one year.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And as you say, they're some of the best. I mean, what is it about the war that gets her so busy?THOMPSON: Well, she was on her own, which she had never been, really. Well, obviously she divorced her first husband in 1928. So there's a couple of very bleak, dead years before she met her second husband and married him in 1930. But she wasn't completely on her own because she had her friend Charlotte Fisher, who was a sort of secretary-companion, but much more than that—really, really good friend.But in the war, Max Mallowan was abroad. Her daughter—she had one child—her daughter was married and living in Wales. And she was living in the Isokon building in North London, which I love because that's like, “You think I'm chintzy and old fashioned. And here I am socializing with the sort of left-wing intelligentsia at the Isokon building.” And there's something about being in that adorable little flat—they're so fabulous, those flats—and being alone but not feeling abandoned, as she had after her first marriage.And I suppose also, you know, war is, you either cower in despair or you think, “Right, well, better get on with it.” War is stimulating in that way. I think it was to quite a few writers, maybe, or quite a few creatives. The shadow of death. But there was something about that solitude but not abandonment, plus the stimulation of not knowing whether it was your last day on earth that did—it did. I mean, it's absolutely insane how productive she is.And then she wrote—she had a week off. She was also working as a dispenser at a London hospital, and she had a week off. And she wrote a Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring, which is one of her best Westmacotts, I think. I mean, she's got a week off and she writes a book. I mean, Jesus, there's a challenge to us, Henry. [laughter]The Mary Westmacott NovelsOLIVER: What are those Mary Westmacotts like? Because I've never read them, but you seem very—THOMPSON: Oh, have you not?OLIVER: You're very up on them. You like them?THOMPSON: I am. I really am. Well, for a biographer, they were a treasure trove because they're very revealing. Unfinished Portrait is, I think, as close as you are ever going to come to a true autobiography, as opposed to the actual autobiography, which is charmingly disingenuous.OLIVER: And also dull. No? I mean, it's just so dull.THOMPSON: Do you think? It is a bit.OLIVER: I couldn't read it. I couldn't read it. No, it was so long and so leaden. I felt like she didn't really want to tell me the story of her life. Just couldn't.THOMPSON: Well, I think that's probably right. It was very heavily edited after her death. And her daughter was very, very protective of her. So, Max Mallowan as well. So maybe there was a much better book in there somewhere. Who knows?OLIVER: So we should read Mary Westmacott if we want the unfiltered Agatha?THOMPSON: I would say Unfinished Portrait. It really fascinates me because the worst time you've ever gone through in your life—so in 1926, she lost her mother and her husband in the space of four months. And I think an awful lot of people, even writers, would think, “I'm going to put that behind me and get on.” But she had to reopen the wound. She had to go through it all again eight years later. I find that really, in itself, incredibly revealing about her.Poirot vs. MarpleOLIVER: Why is there so much more Poirot than Marple?THOMPSON: Yes, I've wondered that because there is this little thing that she hated him, which I don't really think she did. It's just something people say, isn't it?OLIVER: Well, it's a common thing about artists. They're supposed to hate their most successful work, but—THOMPSON: Yes. Yes. All I could come up with was that he was easier to put in different places. He could conceivably be on the Nile or in Mesopotamia or—I mean, it would be a—she does manage to get Miss Marple to the West Indies, but it's certainly—OLIVER: There are only so many holidays your nephew can send you on.THOMPSON: He was really successful, that nephew, wasn't he? Who do you think he was like? Sort of Ian McEwan or—OLIVER: [laughs] I know. It was sort of crazy, isn't it?THOMPSON: And very kind to her.OLIVER: It might be to her credit that she doesn't do a Midsomer Murders thing and just sort of wave away and say, “Oh, we can just have as many of these murders as we want.” She says, “No, we can only fit—” Do you think maybe that's it?THOMPSON: I think there might be a bit of that. I mean, her notebooks sort of—some of the books were originally Marples, like Cat Among the Pigeons and Death on the Nile, in fact. And then they became Poirots. I just wonder whether he's a bit more malleable because she is a more rooted, fixed entity.And he is—I don't mean to denigrate David Suchet because he's a fantastic actor, but he does root him more than I think the written version. I think he is a sketch on the page. And one of her great skills, I think, is how she can sketch, and they've got that quality of aliveness on the page, which you just can't analyze, really. I don't—well, I can't. And that's how I see Poirot. So he was more movable in that sense.And she's incredibly good at certain—like Sleeping Murder, there's no way you could have him in that. And Miss Marple is—her qualities are so perfect for a book like that, which has suddenly reminded me of how she got me into John Webster. I never read John Webster until—OLIVER: [laughs] That's great.THOMPSON: The way she uses The Duchess of Malfi is so clever. Do you think that's right about Poirot? Do you think there's something more . . .Reader Preferences and SalesOLIVER: I can see that. I wondered if there was some reader's prejudice involved.THOMPSON: Oh.OLIVER: Poirot is the sort of exotic—Sherlock Holmes, one thing that makes him popular is that he's a bit wacky, you know. And Poirot—he's always talking about, “You English are so xenophobic. Excuse me, I am Belgian.” And with the eggs and all the little—whereas Miss Marple's just the kind of old lady that we all wish there were more of. And how much of that will readers take? I don't know.THOMPSON: Yes. Although, as I say, she, she did—I mean, I think her publishers did like her to do Poirot, but I don't know that she would've been influenced by that necessarily. I mean, maybe she was—maybe I'm overdoing her—OLIVER: Well, she had these terrible money problems. Didn't she have to be a little bit focused on the dollar?THOMPSON: She did. She did, but she didn't—well, I mean, the money problems are insane because they were absolutely no fault of her own. They were to do with test cases, and it was just this sort of accumulation of horror that put her in tax problems during the war. And she really never could dig her way out of them and was advised to go bankrupt twice, which is unbelievable, just as a way of clearing it. I mean, it's terrible.But I don't know that she—I think her attitude was a bit more, “Well, why should I even bother if they're just going to take it away from me?” In 1948 she didn't write anything at all because I think she thought, “What's the point?” But then, that wasn't her way. But I don't know that she thought of writing as a way of digging out of it necessarily. But I could be—OLIVER: The Marples, did they make less money? Were they, did they sell less?THOMPSON: Not really. I think they all sold. Even poor old Passenger to Frankfurt sold hugely, absolutely hugely. I think people—I mean, my parents would—it was like people just wanted them, the Christie for Christmas.Rereading ChristieOLIVER: How many times have you read these books? Do you ever get bored?THOMPSON: No.OLIVER: Really?THOMPSON: Well, I have them on rotation, and I don't—as you know, I do interleave them with our beloved Elizabeth Bowen, who's my passion at the moment, and other people. But they are consolatory, I suppose. They are—there's bits of—there is this kind of—there's bits of them that I just know completely off by heart, like the gramophone record in And Then There Were None and all that.But there's something—and maybe I should have said this earlier, when I say—I've said it on Substack—that they're fairy tales for adults. There's something about that. There's an almost physical sensation of pleasure, really, when the resolution comes. It is a bit like act five of Shakespeare. I'm not going to say she's quite on that level. Not even I am going to say that.But there is—and it is like being a child again and reading the end toward the happy-ever-after, even though her happy-ever-afters are sometimes compromised. And there is something almost primal in that pleasure. And it almost sounds borderline mad, me saying it like that, but I do think there's something in it because the resolution is so—because it's character based, and at her best, she's character and plot as one, as in Five Little Pigs or The Hollow or Murder on the Orient Express or blah, blah, blah.Her resolutions do tell you something about human nature. You do think, “Oh, yes, that is what that would be. Yes, it would be all about money. Yes. Yes, doctors are untrustworthy,” or something on a more profound level than that. There's something that is a satisfaction, both childlike and I'm experiencing it as an adult. In my defense, P. G. Wodehouse said you can never read them too many times. [laughs] It doesn't matter if you know who did it. There's so much pleasure in them.Thompson's CareerOLIVER: Now, I want to ask a little bit about your career.THOMPSON: Mm-hmm.OLIVER: You were at a sort of stage school, then you studied at Merton, and then you worked at The Times.THOMPSON: Yes. Very briefly. Yes.OLIVER: How does one therefore go from all of this to being the biographer?THOMPSON: Well, I did always think I would have a career in—I wanted to direct plays. I directed Hamlet after university, which is probably the thing I'm still proudest of. But what it was, was that I wrote a couple of books. I won an award when I was quite young.And then I had an agent who—I said to him, “I want to write a biography of Nancy Mitford.” And he wasn't very keen on the idea, but I must have written an okay proposal. Again, because I thought Nancy Mitford was a little bit undervalued, that she's a lot more than just a posh girl. And at the time her reputation was quite low. And so somebody bought into that idea, and it sort of went from there, really.But it's a bit—I sometimes look back at the books I've written, including a memoir of my publican grandmother, and I think, gosh, this is all quite scatter-gun, but maybe that's okay. Maybe you should just write the books you really want to write. But it was a passion for Nancy Mitford that sort of started that particular ball rolling.And then I had the idea of—oh, no. I was down in Devon with a boyfriend, and he said, “You never stop talking about Agatha Christie. Why don't you try and write her biography?” And that was just a luck of timing because her daughter was still alive. So I met her, and she liked me because I knew the Mary Westmacotts so well, and that sort of happened. I mean, quite often these things are very fortuitous, don't you think? Did you not find that with your book?OLIVER: Yes, yes. No, I did. I did. I think some writers, as you say—I don't think of it as scatter-gun. I think of it, it's sort of an emergent thing, and you happen to have these different interests, and you just follow your nose, and that's fine.THOMPSON: Yes, exactly.OLIVER: Tell us about this production of Hamlet.THOMPSON: Oh. Do you know, I think it was not bad. I had a very good Hamlet. I think if you've—well, you're in trouble without—who is now quite a successful actor. And we were all really young, but he was—I saw him in something and said, “Do you want to play Hamlet for me?” And he said, “Okay then.” And it was a room above a pub in Chelsea, and it was very spare and very quick.And it was about—I can't bear when people overanalyze the character of Hamlet, and why does he delay? He delays because Shakespeare wants him to, so that he can write all those incredible speeches. That's a bit simplified, but it was—he was so, he so understood the translucent power of those soliloquies, this actor. So it just sort of worked because we didn't do too much to it. And it was, yes, it was good. I think it was good. But then I did Macbeth, and that was much less good.Secretly Reading ChristieOLIVER: And you've said here, and I think you said it in your book, that when you were at Merton, you were reading Agatha Christie between the covers of what you were supposed to be reading.THOMPSON: Yes, yes, I was.OLIVER: That can't be—is that a slight exaggeration, or did you really not get on with the syllabus?THOMPSON: Well, hang on. I was a bit stuck in the first term. Can you imagine coming from a performing arts school—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —and then being told, “Read that bloody, you know.OLIVER: Yes, yes. No, it's intense.THOMPSON: All I knew was French. How I got in is a minor mystery, but there it was. I've tried to do it honor ever since by writing as best books I possibly can. But I was okay once I got over that bit. Once I got into my beloved Tennyson and all the people we've been talking about, Hardy and blah, blah, blah. Larkin, about whom the best thing I've ever read—the best thing I've ever read about Larkin is your Substack about him, without a shadow of a doubt.OLIVER: Oh, thank you.THOMPSON: Just wonderful. So I sort of winged it a bit, but I had a very nice don. And the autodidact side of me, which is very like Agatha Christie, who barely went to school, and Nancy Mitford—I think it can be a good thing in a way, because you have such a respect for learning and truth. I always try to be truthful in my biographies, which as we know, not everybody is. [laughter]And I think you carry on wanting to learn and carry on wanting to fill all the gaps because I only had half an education, because in the morning you would do ballet and drama and all that kind of thing. So it is a bit odd, but in some ways I think it's been a good thing.OLIVER: Now, the new book is about the 1926 disappearance. When can we expect it to be published?THOMPSON: It's only a short book—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —because obviously I covered it a lot in the biography, and it doesn't—but I have found out a couple of new things. And that will be out in August here and in November in America. And I have come up with a slightly different slant on it, but mainly—and I treat it a little bit like a cold case. And it was—I had to write—I wrote it in five weeks, but it was incredibly good fun. Oh, and I reenacted her journey, which was very interesting, to Harrogate.But mainly it's such a pleasure because I, you know, on Substack, and I think, “Oh, you can't write about Agatha Christie again.” There always seems to be quite a lot to say. I'm intrigued by how you, who I think of as a true intellectual, how you have clear regard for her.Henry on Agatha ChristieOLIVER: I started reading her when I was about 12, and I just thought she was great, and I went through most of them. But I read them at intervals. So I was reading her into my twenties, thirties. And before this interview I tried to—I thought, “Laura's always saying Five Little Pigs is the best one. I'm going to read it.” And I just sort of found that I've lost the taste, in a way.THOMPSON: Okay.OLIVER: Which I was quite, I don't know, just maybe—I feel like this is my failing. Maybe I should take a week off and sit by the pool and read it properly. But I've always thought she's really, really great, and very few people can do that many very compelling stories without you sort of thinking, “Oh, I've read this one. I know. Yes. It's the same as the other one, isn't it? Yes. Yes, it was the”—as you say, it's not Cluedo. Even Dorothy L. Sayers, I don't think I could read much more by her, frankly. Great, she's great, but it's enough. [laughs]THOMPSON: Well, I quite like her. The whole—most girls who went to Oxford are quite keen on Gaudy Night, and the character of Harriet Vane is quite satisfying, I think.OLIVER: Indeed, indeed. And Strong Poison is great. And there—but I just mean if she'd written as many books as Agatha, you can't imagine it would've sustained the level of quality.THOMPSON: No, no. There is that lightness in Agatha and that terrible cliché of, “I wrote a long book because it was too—I didn't have enough time to write a short book,” and all that kind of thing. The brevity amazes me. When I said at the start, most writers would take twice as many pages to get all that in.She has style—I don't know if you can call it a style, but there is something blindingly effective about it that nobody can imitate. And it does—there's something so fathomless about her, and that's what continues to compel me. But I think it's very lovely of you to do this if you are no longer an admirer because you've let me sort of—OLIVER: Well, it's not that I'm not an admirer. It's just that I don't—I had this with P. G. Wodehouse. I read quite a lot of it, and now, I don't know, somehow I've reached a point where it's—I sort of get it, but it's just not that funny anymore. I don't know, just need some time away.THOMPSON: Well, maybe. Maybe, but you know, I'm a bit—she's part of my life now. It's like if somebody said, “You can't read her anymore,” it would be like, “You can't listen to the Rolling Stones anymore.” I mean, it'd be like a kind of death. She's part of my life the same way they're part of my life. She's now inseparable from just the way I go on, as is Shakespeare. And if I had to lose one of them, trust me, it would be her, you'll be reassured to know. [laughter]OLIVER: Very good. Laura, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you very much.THOMPSON: Oh, I've really enjoyed it. I really have. And I was really looking forward to it, and it's been even nicer than I thought it would be. So thank you.OLIVER: Oh, it's been delightful.THOMPSON: Thank you so much, Henry.OLIVER: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

Steve is joined by U.S. Army veteran Rory Aylward who serves as a military technical advisor to the film and television industries, and film historian, writer and researcher Avie Hern, as they discuss the making of and legacy of "Patton" - the Best Picture of 1970.

In October of 1066 William of Normandy defeated King Harold II of England on a battlefield near Hastings, and the effects of that Norman Conquest would reshape England's culture, politics, language and religion for more than 1,000 years. But the seeds of that event were sown more than 60 years earlier, when the teenage daughter of a Norman duke arrived on England's shores to marry its king. Her name was Emma, and her career as queen and matriarch would span the reigns of seven of England's kings: she married two kings, two of her sons became kings as did two of her stepsons, and her father-in-law was king. Writer Patrica Bracewell, author of the Emma of Normandy trilogy, will explore the life of this powerful woman who became the wealthiest woman in England, a patron of the arts, a savvy political strategist, and a pivotal figure in the family politics that governed England. Medievalist Elaine Treharne will discuss communities of learning in 11th century England, focusing particularly on the manuscripts produced by religious establishments. Among these are some of the most magnificent volumes ever produced in the pre-print era that show how much emphasis was placed on education, piety and commemoration in this period. Musician Shira Kammen and her ensemble In Bocca al Lupo will present a short program of medieval music inspired by and about the queens of this tumultuous era. Join Humanities West to explore Emma of Normandy, the challenges she faced, the victories she led, and the world in which the woman who was the only twice-crowned queen of England lived. The Commonwealth Club of California is a nonprofit public forum; we welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our programming. A Humanities Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. In association with Humanities West. Speaker photos courtesy the speakers; painting: William Blake's The Ordeal of Queen Emma. Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a public forum. Any views expressed in our programs are those of the speakers and not of Commonwealth Club World Affairs. Organizer: George Hammond  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

MP for Warrington North shares her experience as a complainant in a rape trial where the man she accused was acquitted. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

Mandy spoke of her trouble with trying to get to Tenerife and how poorly the whole situation was handled, with regards to a flight that had a large number of families with kids.

5. Joseph Ellis, *The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773 to 1783*. Nathaniel Greene saved the Continental Army from collapse at Valley Forge by stabilizing the food supply as quartermaster. The veterans of this ordeal began to see themselves as an "aristocracy of virtue" committed to the necessity of a strong federal government. Figures like John Laurens envisioned the revolution as a crusade to end slavery, viewing it as the purest expression of the cause. Furthermore, the Continental Army was a genuinely integrated force, with African Americans making up 8-10% of the troops and serving in combat units at a level not seen again until the KoreanWar. (5)1492 COLUMBUS

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Maintaining a balance between your creative passions and the "real world" is a challenge every blerd (black nerd) faces when they decide to hit record. In this episode, we're peeling back the curtain on the business, the hustle, and the mental health required to survive as an independent nerdy content creator.Whether you're a cosplayer, a YouTuber, or a comic book writer, being "independent" means you are the CEO, the intern, and the talent all at once. We'll discuss how to build a brand that stays true to your geeky roots while navigating an industry that doesn't always have a blueprint for us.Open show: Join Our Patreon: http://patreon.com/vvclifeGrab Some Gear: http://vvcmerch.comGeneral TalkWeekly Recap Sign Up For PatreonBaldur's Gate 3 Sessions!Monday Night Co Op!!Lor Travis Invitational TournamentPokemon CompetitionThe Precious: JS-1: https://amzn.to/4qOtukDFame: https://a.co/d/3ZJSSYhJaelyn: https://a.co/d/eaAkAWrSloan: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4370365252/?ref=share_ios_native_controlCommercial #1Main Topic: Commercial: #2Games:Duel Fire Walled CityMagical AcademyLoot BoundSemiNews: Nights everyone should plan with their friendsSamsung is top dog!If buying doesn't count as ownership then…..Demolition Man 2 in productionComic Of The week: OrdealInstagram:  http://instagram.com/blacknerdpodcast  facebook:   http://facebook.com/blacknerdpodcastReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/blacknerdgang/s/uftLsO0Ad9website: http://blacknerdpodcast.comhttp://twitter.com/vvcradio   http://instagram.com/js1thasupplier  http://instagram.com/fameplanbhttp://instagram.com/jaelynaleisehttp://instagram.com/sloan_tempest

The Black Sensei Society crew is back with Episode 112, kicking off our new monthly guest appearance series! This week, we welcome Bama and returning guest Moon Peaches Taylor for one of our most heated anime debates yet.In this episode:The squad tackles the burning question: Is The Apothecary Diaries actually underappreciated? Random pulls up with a legendary 46-page slideshow presentation breaking down the numbers, rankings, and receipts—but was the whole debate just an elaborate troll? Find out as the crew goes back and forth on one of the most popular anime in Japan right now.We also dive into whether Ordeal will shake up the anime industry, share our thoughts on the latest Game of Thrones hate watch, and Miles puts us on to the Fate/Strange Fake light novel. Plus, we address the Bleach hater allegations and announce next week's Bleach appreciation episode.Join the conversation in our Discord where all the real debates go down!Don't forget to:☆ Rate us 5 stars on your podcast platform☆ Like and subscribe on YouTube☆ Join our Discord communityKeywords: anime podcast, Apothecary Diaries review, anime debate, Ordeal anime, Black anime podcast, manga discussion, anime community, winter anime 2026, Bleach, JJK, Jujutsu Kaisen, Attack on Titan, Fate Strange Fake, anime rankings, anime hot takeshttps://linktr.ee/blacksenseisociety

Masterpiece Audiobooks: Collection of Chinese Classic Novels

Candide by Francois Voltaire w/Tom Libby & Jesan Sorrells ---00:00 "Voltaire, Leadership, and Absurdity"11:11 Voltaire, Swingers, and Pancakes14:12 "Timeless Stories Often Retold"17:38 "Reassembling Lost Meaning"26:36 "The Impact of the Printing Press"32:50 "Candide: Chapter 2 Overview"37:58 "Voltaire, War, and Absurdity"41:50 "Voltaire's Cynicism and Candide"44:46 "Leaders Are Problem Solvers"50:55 "Disgust, Pragmatism, and Leadership"57:16 "Timeless Thinkers and Their Impact"01:04:07 "Candide's Ordeal and Reflection"01:08:14 "Limits of Enlightenment and Reason"01:14:41 Promote Team Builders, Not Performers01:19:28 "Moral Courage Over Physical Acts"01:25:34 "Challenges in Leadership Perspective"01:27:58 "Shift to Prompt-Based Thinking"01:33:23 "Ironic Detachment in Leadership"01:41:26 Empathy and Generational Disconnect01:45:50 "Gen X's Call to Action"---Opening and closing themes composed by Brian Sanyshyn of Brian Sanyshyn Music.---Pick up your copy of 12 Rules for Leaders: The Foundation of Intentional Leadership NOW on AMAZON!Check out the Leadership Lessons From the Great Books podcast reading list!--- ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ Subscribe to the Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Podcast: https://bit.ly/LLFTGBSubscribeCheck out HSCT Publishing at: https://www.hsctpublishing.com/.Check out LeadingKeys at: https://www.leadingkeys.com/Check out Leadership ToolBox at: https://leadershiptoolbox.us/Contact HSCT for more information at 1-833-216-8296 to schedule a full DEMO of LeadingKeys with one of our team members.---Leadership ToolBox website: https://leadershiptoolbox.us/.Leadership ToolBox LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ldrshptlbx/.Leadership ToolBox YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@leadershiptoolbox/videosLeadership ToolBox Twitter: https://twitter.com/ldrshptlbx.Leadership ToolBox IG: https://www.instagram.com/leadershiptoolboxus/.Leadership ToolBox FB: https://www.facebook.com/LdrshpTl

Over the next weeks, we'll be revisiting Lance's series called “The Lord is in the Whirlwind and the Storm”. In this episode, Lance shares part 1 from this series on Nahum. This episode is called “As Seen in the Nations” By the grace of God, may you be part of the Lord's work in our generation. May you know the One who has all authority and power in heaven and on earth in His hands. May you know the deep deep love of Jesus.www.lancelambert.org Chapters (00:00:00) - Lance Lambert(00:00:53) - The Little Book of Nahum(00:04:15) - Prayer for the Word(00:05:49) - Nahum's prophecy about the coming of the Lord(00:15:47) - The Whirlwind, Storm and Cloud(00:18:35) - The whirlwind and the storm(00:29:01) - What does September 11th mean for our country?(00:31:49) - What will A War with Iraq Unleash?(00:34:36) - Islam's goal is world domination(00:43:22) - Islam's view of the end times(00:48:05) - The Last Battle of the Muslims(00:59:06) - God is in the whirlwind(01:06:19) - The Right to Personal Rights(01:08:47) - The Birth Pangs of the Coming Kingdom(01:16:18) - An Ordeal for the Generation

In the summer of 1960, seven-year-old Roger Woodward was just a kid looking forward to a boat ride on the Niagara River to celebrate his sister's birthday—he had no idea he was about to experience something that should have been impossible. When a simple mechanical failure turned their peaceful afternoon into a nightmare, Roger found himself being swept toward the edge of Niagara Falls, powerless against 750,000 gallons of water rushing past him every second. What followed was a series of moments so improbable, so perfectly timed, that witnesses called it a miracle—from his sister's desperate fight for survival just feet from the brink, to Roger's own journey over a 188-foot waterfall. This is the story of the boy who fell into Niagara Falls and lived, and the ordinary people who became heroes in the most extraordinary circumstances. Time Stamps: 00:00 Introduction to The Crux True Survival Story Podcast 00:31 Listener's Suggestion: Roger Woodward's Story 01:23 Niagara Falls: A Natural Wonder 02:34 The Fateful Boat Ride 05:49 The Upper Niagara River: A Deceptive Calm 06:47 The Point of No Return 12:06 The Rapids: A Fight for Survival 16:52 Deanne's Rescue 21:23 Roger's Ordeal in the Rapids 22:34 The Calm Before the Plunge 22:53 Facing the Abyss 24:34 Over the Edge 25:07 Rescue by the Maid of the Mist 27:41 Miraculous Survival 29:58 The Aftermath and Media Frenzy 36:17 A Life Beyond the Falls 40:02 Reflecting on Survival and Legacy 42:25 Closing Thoughts and Listener Engagement Listen AD FREE: Support our podcast at patreaon: http://patreon.com/TheCruxTrueSurvivalPodcast Email us! thecruxsurvival@gmail.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thecruxpodcast/ Get schooled by Julie in outdoor wilderness medicine! https://www.headwatersfieldmedicine.com/ REFERENCES & SOURCES "Bonus Episode: The Boy Who Went Over the Falls," Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe podcast, August 16, 2024 30th anniversary speech at Glengate Alliance Church, 1990 "50 years later, survivor recalls accidental plunge over Niagara Falls," Deseret News, July 17, 2010 "Sean Kirst: Survivor of plunge over Niagara at age 7 recalls terror at the brink," Buffalo News, July 13, 2019 "'Miracle at Niagara' — 50 years later," Lockport Journal, July 2, 2010 "Alabama man recalls fall over Niagara Falls 50 years ago," Rapid City Journal, 2010 "Miracle At Niagara Falls: The Roger Woodward Story," B&B Niagara, July 30, 2017 "Miracle At Niagara -- 7-Year-Old Survived A Plunge Over The Falls," The Seattle Times, November 26, 1998 "Roger Woodward - Niagara Falls Miracle, Incidents, Survivor, Story," InfoNiagara.com "History of Niagara Falls Daredevils - Roger Woodward," NiagaraFallsInfo.com, February 8, 2017 "The 7-year-old who survived going over Niagara Falls," INniagararegion, March 31, 2023 "7-Year-Old Boy Survives Plunge Over Niagara Falls," Go Niagara Tours, July 31, 2025 "Amazing Story of a Seven-Year-Old who Survived Niagara Falls," The Vintage News, August 11, 2018 "Roger Woodward and Psalm 139," Words of Hope, April 19, 2021 "Niagara," The History Channel documentary, 1999 "Niagara: Miracles, Myths and Magic," IMAX film Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John Granger Attempts to Convince Nick (and You!) That The Hallmarked Man will be Considered the Best of the Series.We review our take-away impressions from our initial reading of The Hallmarked Man. Although we enjoyed it, especially John's incredible prediction of Robin's ectopic pregnancy, neither of us came away thinking this was the finest book in the series. For Nick, this was a surprise, as enthusiastic J. K. Rowling fan that he is other than Career of Evil every book he has read has been his favourite. Using an innovative analysis of the character pairs surrounding both Cormoran and Robin, John argues that we can't really appreciate the artistry of book number eight until we consider its place in the series. Join John and Nick as they review the mysteries that remain to be resolved and how The Hallmarked Man sets readers up for shocking reveals in Strike 9 and 10!Why Troubled Blood is the Best Strike Novel:* The Pillar Post Collection of Troubled Blood Posts at HogwartsProfessor by John Granger, Elizabeth Baird-Hardy, Louise Freeman, Beatrice Groves, and Nick JefferyTroubled Blood and Faerie Queene: The Kanreki ConversationBut What If We Judge Strike Novels by a Different Standard than Shed Artifice? What About Setting Up the ‘Biggest Twist' in Detective Fiction History?* If Rowling is to be judged by the ‘shock' of the reveals in Strike 10, then The Hallmarked Man, the most disappointing book in the series even to many Serious Strikers, will almost certainly be remembered as the book that set up the finale with the greatest technical misdirection while playing fair.* The ending must be a shock, one that readers do not see coming, BUT* The author must provide the necessary clues and pointers repeatedly and emphatically lest the reader feel cheated at the point of revelation.* If the Big Mysteries of the series are to be solved with the necessary shock per both Russian Formalist and Perennialist understanding, then the answers to be revealed in the final two Strike novels, Books Two and Three of the finale trilogy, should be embedded in The Hallmarked Man.* Rowling on Playing Fair with Readers:The writer says that she wanted to extend the shelf of detective fiction without breaking it. “Part of the appeal and fascination of the genre is that it has clear rules. I'm intrigued by those rules and I like playing with them. Your detective should always lay out the information fairly for the reader, but he will always be ahead of the game. In terms of creating a character, I think Cormoran Strike conforms to certain universal rules but he is very much of this time.* On the Virtue of ‘Penetration' in Austen, Dickens, and Rowling* Rowling on the Big Twist' in Austen's Emma:“I have never set up a surprise ending in a Harry Potter book without knowing I can never, and will never, do it anywhere near as well as Austen did in Emma.”What are the Key Mysteries of the Strike series?Nancarrow FamilyWhy did Leda and Ted leave home in Cornwall as they did?Why did Ted and Joan not “save” Strike and Lucy?Was Leda murdered or did she commit suicide?If she was murdered, who dunit?If she commited suicide, why did she do it?What happened to Switch Whittaker?Cormoran StrikeIs Jonny Rokeby his biological father?What SIB case was he investigating when he was blown up?Was he the father of Charlotte's lost baby? If not, then who was?Why has he been so unstable in his relations with women post Charlotte Campbell?Charlotte CampbellWhy did her mother hate her so much?What was her relationship with her three step-fathers? Especially Dino LongcasterWho was the father of her lost child?Was the child intentionally aborted or was it a miscarriage?What was written in her “suicide note”?Was Charlotte murdered or did she commit suicide?If she was murdered, who done it?If she committed suicide, why did she do it?What happened to the billionaire lover?What clues do we get in Hallmarked Man that would answer these questions?- Strike 8 - Greatest Hits of Strikes 1-7: compilation, concentration of perumbration in series as whole* Decima/Lion - incest* Rupert's biological father not his father of record (Dino)* Sacha Legard a liar with secrets* Ryan Murphy working a plan off-stage - Charlotte's long gameStrike about ‘Pairings' in Lethal WhiteStrike continued to pore over the list of names as though he might suddenly see something emerging out of his dense, spiky handwriting, the way unfocused eyes may spot the 3D image hidden in a series of brightly colored dots. All that occurred to him, however, was the fact that there was an unusual number of pairs connected to Chiswell's death: couples—Geraint and Della, Jimmy and Flick; pairs of full siblings—Izzy and Fizzy, Jimmy and Billy; the duo of blackmailing collaborators—Jimmy and Geraint; and the subsets of each blackmailer and his deputy—Flick and Aamir. There was even the quasi-parental pairing of Della and Aamir. This left two people who formed a pair in being isolated within the otherwise close-knit family: the widowed Kinvara and Raphael, the unsatisfactory, outsider son.Strike tapped his pen unconsciously against the notebook, thinking. Pairs. The whole business had begun with a pair of crimes: Chiswell's blackmail and Billy's allegation of infanticide. He had been trying to find the connection between them from the start, unable to believe that they could be entirely separate cases, even if on the face of it their only link was in the blood tie between the Knight brothers.Part Two, Chapter 52Key Relationship Pairings in Cormoran Strike:Who Killed Leda Strike?To Rowling-Galbraith's credit, credible arguments in dedicated posts have been made that every person in the list below was the one who murdered Leda Strike. Who do you think did it?* Jonny Rokeby and the Harringay Crime Syndicate (Heroin Dark Lord 2.0),* Ted Nancarrow (Uncle Ted Did It),* Dave Polworth,* Leda Strike (!),* Lucy Fantoni (Lucy and Joan Did It and here),* Sir Randolph Whittaker,* Nick Herbert,* Peter Gillespie, and* Charlotte Campbell-RossScripted Ten Questions:1. So, Nick, back when we first read Hallmarked Man we said that there were four things we knew for sure would be said about Strike 8 in the future. Do you remember what they were?2. And, John, you've been thinking about the ‘Set-Up' idea and how future Rowling Readers will think of Hallmarked Man, even that they will think of it as the best Strike novel. I thought that was Troubled Blood by consensus. What's made you change your mind?3. So, Nick, yes, Troubled Blood I suspect will be ranked as the best of series, even best book written by Rowling ever, but, if looked at as the book that served the most critical place in setting up the finale, I think Hallmarked Man has to be considered better in that crucial way than Strike 5, better than any Strike novel. Can you think of another Strike mystery that reviews specific plot points and raises new aspects of characters and relationships the way Strike 8 does?4. Are you giving Hallmarked Man a specific function with respect to the last three books than any of the others? If so, John, what is that exactly and what evidence do we have that in Rowling's comments about reader-writer obligations and writer ambitions?5. Nick, I think Hallmarked Man sets us up to answer the Key mysteries that remain, that the first seven books left for the final three to answer. I'm going to organize those unresolved questions into three groups and challenge you to think of the ones I'm missing, especially if I'm missing a category.6. If I understand the intention of your listing these remaining questions, John, your saying that the restatement of specific plot points and characters from the first seven Strike novels in Hallmarked Man points to the possible, even probable answers to those questions. What specifically are the hallmarks in this respect of Hallmarked Man?7. If you take those four points, Nick, and revisit the mysteries lists in three categories, do you see how Rowling hits a fairness point with respect to clueing readers into what will no doubt be shocking answers to them if they're not looking for the set-ups?8. That's fun, Nick, but there's another way at reaching the same conclusions, namely, charting the key relationships of Strike and Ellacott to the key family, friends, and foes in their lives and how they run in pairs or parallel couplets (cue PPoint slides).9. Can we review incest and violence against or trafficking of young women in the Strike series? Are those the underpinning of the majority of the mysteries that remain in the books?10. Many Serious Strikers and Gonzo Galbraithians hated Striuke 8 because Hallmarked Man failed to meet expectations. In conclusion, do you think, Nick, that this argument that the most recent Strike-Ellacott adventure is the best because of how it sets us up for the wild finish to come will be persuasive -- or just annoying?On Imagination as Transpersonal Faculty and Non-Liturgical Sacred ArtThe Neo-Iconoclasm of Film (and Other Screened Adaptations): Justin requested within his question for an expansion of my allusion to story adaptations into screened media as a “neo-iconoclasm.” I can do that here briefly in two parts. First, by urging you to read my review of the first Hunger Games movie adaptation, ‘Gamesmakers Hijack Story: Capitol Wins Again,' in which I discussed at post's end how ‘Watching Movies is a a Near Sure Means to Being Hijacked by Movie Makers.' In that, I explain via an excerpt from Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, the soul corrosive effects of screened images.Second, here is a brief introduction to the substance of the book I am working on.Rowling is a woman of profound contradictions. On the one hand, like all of us she is the walking incarnation of her Freudian family romance per Paglia, the ideas and blindspots of the age in which we live, with the peculiar individual prejudices and preferences and politics of her upbringing, education, and life experiences, especially the experiences we can call crises and consequent core beliefs, aversions, and desires. Rowling acknowledges all this, and, due to her CBT exercises and one assumes further talking therapy, she is more conscious of the elephant she is riding and pretending to steer than most of her readers.She points to this both in asides she make in her tweets and public comments but also in her descriptive metaphor of how she writes. The ‘Lake' of that metaphor, the alocal place within her from her story ideas and inspiration spring, is her “muse,” the word for superconscious rather than subconscious ideas that she used in her 2007 de la Cruz interview. She consciously recognizes that, despite her deliberate reflection on her PTSD, daddy drama, and idiosyncratic likes and dislikes, she still has unresolved issues that her non-conscious mind presents to her as story conflict for imaginative resolution.Her Lake is her persona well, the depths of her individual identity and a mask she wears.The Shed, in contrast, is the metaphorical place where Rowling takes the “stuff” given her by the creature in her Lake, the blobs of molten glass inspiration, to work it into proper story. The tools in this Shed are unusual, to say the least, and are the great markers of what makes Rowling unique among contemporary writers and a departure from, close to a contradiction of the artist you would expect to be born of her life experiences, formative crises, and education.Out of a cauldron potion made from listening to the Smiths, Siouxie and the Banshees, and The Clash, reading and loving Val McDermid, Roddy Doyle, and Jessica Mitford, and surviving a lower middle class upbringing with an emotionally barren homelife and Comprehensive education on the England-Wales border, you'd expect a Voldemort figure at Goblet of Fire's climax to rise rather than a writer who weaves archetypally rich myths of the soul's journey to perfection in the spirit with alchemical coloring and sequences, ornate chiastic structures, and a bevy of symbols visible only to the eye of the Heart.To understand Rowling, as she all but says in her Lake and Shed metaphor, one has to know her life story and experiences to “get” from where her inspiration bubbles up and, as important, you need a strong grasp of the traditionalist worldview and place of literature in it to appreciate the power of the tools she uses, especially how she uses them in combination.The biggest part of that is understanding the Perennialist definition of “Sacred Art.” I touched on this in a post about Rowling's beloved Christmas story, ‘Dante, Sacred Art, and The Christmas Pig.'Rowling has been publicly modest about the aims of her work, allowing that it would be nice to think that readers will be more empathetic after reading her imaginative fiction. Dante was anything but modest or secretive in sharing his self-understanding in the letter he wrote to Cangrande about The Divine Comedy: “The purpose of the whole work is to remove those living in this life from the state of wretchedness and to lead them to the state of blessedness.” His aim, point blank, was to create a work of sacred art, a category of writing and experience that largely exists outside our understanding as profane postmoderns, but, given Rowling's esoteric artistry and clear debts to Dante, deserves serious consideration as what she is writing as well.Sacred art, in brief, is representational work — painting, statuary, liturgical vessels and instruments, and the folk art of theocentric cultures in which even cutlery and furniture are means to reflection and transcendence of the world — that employ revealed forms and symbols to bring the noetic faculty or heart into contact with the supra-sensible realities each depicts. It is not synonymous with religious art; most of the art today that has a religious subject is naturalist and sentimental rather than noetic and iconographic, which is to say, contemporary artists imitate the creation of God as perceived by human senses rather than the operation of God in creation or, worse, create abstractions of their own internally or infernally generated ideas.Story as sacred art, in black to white contrast, is edifying literature and drama in which the soul's journey to spiritual perfection is portrayed for the reader or the audience's participation within for transformation from wretchedness to blessedness, as Dante said. As with the plastic arts, these stories employ traditional symbols of the revealed traditions in conformity with their understanding of cosmology, soteriology, and spiritual anthropology. The myths and folklore of the world's various traditions, ancient Greek drama, the epic poetry of Greece, Rome, and Medieval Europe, the parables of Christ, the plays of Shakespeare's later period, and the English high fantasy tradition from Coleridge to the Inklings speak this same symbolic language and relay the psychomachia experience of the human victory over death.Dante is a sacred artist of this type. As difficult as it may be to understand Rowling as a writer akin to Dante, Shakespeare, Homer, Virgil, Aeschylus, Spenser, Lewis, and Tolkien, her deployment of traditional symbolism and the success she enjoys almost uniquely in engaging and edifying readers of all ages, beliefs, and circumstances suggests this is the best way of understanding her work. Christmas Pig is the most obviously sacred art piece that Rowling has created to date. It is the marriage of Dantean depths and the Estecean lightness of Lewis Carroll's Alice books, about which more later.[For an introduction to reading poems, plays, and stories as sacred art, that is, allegorical depictions of the soul's journey to spiritual perfection that are rich in traditional symbolism, Ray Livingston's The Traditional Theory of Literature is the only book length text in print. Kenneth Oldmeadow's ‘Symbolism and Sacred Art' in his Traditionalism: Religion in the light of the Perennial Philosophy(102-113), ‘Traditional Art' in The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr(203-214), and ‘The Christian and Oriental, or True Philosophy of Art' in The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy(123-152) explain in depth the distinctions between sacred and religious, natural, and humanist art. Martin Lings' The Sacred Art of Shakespeare: To Take Upon Us the Mystery of Things and Jennifer Doane Upton's two books on The Divine Comedy, Dark Way to Paradise and The Ordeal of Mercy are the best examples I know of reading specific works of literature as sacred art rather than as ‘stories with symbolic meaning' read through a profane and analytic lens.]‘Profane Art' from this view is “art for art's sake,” an expression of individual genius and subjective meaning that is more or less powerful. The Perennialist concern with art is less about gauging an artist's success in expressing his or her perception or its audience's response than with its conformity to traditional rules and its utility, both in the sense of practical everyday use and in being a means by which to be more human. Insofar as a work of art is good with respect to this conformity and edifying utility, it is “sacred art;” so much as it fails, it is “profane.” The best of modern art, even that with religious subject matter or superficially beautiful and in that respect edifying, is from this view necessarily profane.Sacred art differs from modern and postmodern conceptions of art most specifically, though, in what it is representing. Sacred art is not representing the natural world as the senses perceive it or abstractions of what the individual and subjective mind “sees,” but is an imitation of the Divine art of creation. The artist “therefore imitates nature not in its external forms but in its manner of operation as asserted so categorically by St. Thomas Aquinas [who] insists that the artist must not imitate nature but must be accomplished in ‘imitating nature in her manner of operation'” (Nasr 2007, 206, cf. “Art is the imitation of Nature in her manner of operation: Art is the principle of manufacture” (Summa Theologia Q. 117, a. I). Schuon described naturalist art which imitates God's creation in nature by faithful depiction of it, consequently, as “clearly luciferian.” “Man must imitate the creative act, not the thing created,” Aquinas' “manner of operation” rather than God's operation manifested in created things in order to produce ‘creations'which are not would-be duplications of those of God, but rather a reflection of them according to a real analogy, revealing the transcendental aspect of things; and this revelation is the only sufficient reason of art, apart from any practical uses such and such objects may serve. There is here a metaphysical inversion of relation [the inverse analogy connecting the principial and manifested orders in consequence of which the highest realities are manifested in their remotest reflections[1]]: for God, His creature is a reflection or an ‘exteriorized' aspect of Himself; for the artist, on the contrary, the work is a reflection of an inner reality of which he himself is only an outward aspect; God creates His own image, while man, so to speak, fashions his own essence, at least symbolically. On the principial plane, the inner manifests the outer, but on the manifested plane, the outer fashions the inner (Schuon 1953, 81, 96).The traditional artist, then, in imitation of God's “exteriorizing” His interior Logos in the manifested space-time plane, that is, nature, instead of depicting imitations of nature in his craft, submits to creating within the revealed forms of his craft, which forms qua intellections correspond to his inner essence or logos.[2] The work produced in imitation of God's “manner of operation” then resembles the symbolic or iconographic quality of everything existent in being a transparency whose allegorical and anagogical content within its traditional forms is relatively easy to access and a consequent support and edifying shock-reminder to man on his spiritual journey. The spiritual function of art is that “it exteriorizes truths and beauties in view of our interiorization… or simply, so that the human soul might, through given phenomena, make contact with the heavenly archetypes, and thereby with its own archetype” (Schuon 1995a, 45-46).Rowling in her novels, crafted with tools all taken from the chest of a traditional Sacred Artist, is writing non-liturgical Sacred Art. Films and all the story experiences derived of adaptations of imaginative literature to screened images, are by necessity Profane Art, which is to say per the meaning of “profane,” outside the temple or not edifying spiritually. Film making is the depiction of how human beings encounter the time-space world through the senses, not an imitation of how God creates and a depiction of the spiritual aspect of the world, a liminal point of entry to its spiritual dimension. Whence my describing it as a “neo-iconoclasm.”The original iconoclasts or “icon bashers” were believers who treasured sacred art but did not believe it could use images of what is divine without necessarily being blasphemous; after the incarnation of God as Man, this was no longer true, but traditional Christian iconography is anything but naturalistic. It could not be without becoming subjective and profane rather than being a means to spiritual growth and encounters. Western religious art from the Renaissance and Reformation forward, however, embraces profane imitation of the sense perceived world, which is to say naturalistic and as such the antithesis of sacred art. Film making, on religious and non-religious subjects, is the apogee of this profane art which is a denial of any and all of the parameters of Sacred art per Aquinas, traditional civilizations, and the Perennialists.It is a neo-iconoclasm and a much more pervasive and successful destruction of the traditional world-view, so much so that to even point out the profanity inherent to film making is to insure dismissal as some kind of “fundamentalist,” “Puritan,” or “religious fanatic.”Screened images, then, are a type of iconoclasm, albeit the inverse and much more subtle kind than the relatively traditional and theocentric denial of sacred images (the iconoclasm still prevalent in certain Reform Church cults, Judaism, and Islam). This neo-iconoclasm of moving pictures depicts everything in realistic, life-like images, everything, that is, except the sacred which cannot be depicted as we see and experience things. This exclusion of the sacred turns upside down the anti-naturalistic depictions of sacred persons and events in iconography and sacred art. The effect of this flood of natural pictures akin to what we see with our eyes is to compel the flooded mind to accept time and space created nature as the ‘most real,' even ‘the only real.' The sacred, by never being depicted in conformity with accepted supernatural forms, is effectively denied.Few of us spend much time in live drama theaters today. Everyone watches screened images on cineplex screens, home computers, and smart phones. And we are all, consequently, iconoclasts and de facto agnostics, I'm afraid, to greater and lesser degrees because of this immersion and repetitive learning from the predominant art of our secular culture and its implicit atheism.Contrast that with the imaginative experience of a novel that is not pornographic or primarily a vehicle of perversion and violence. We are obliged to generate images of the story in the transpersonal faculty within each of us called the imagination, one I think that is very much akin to conscience or the biblical ‘heart.' This is in essence an edifying exercise, unlike viewing photographic images on screens. That the novel appears at the dawn of the Modern Age and the beginning of the end of Western corporate spirituality, I think is no accident but a providential advent. Moving pictures, the de facto regime artistry of the materialist civilization in which we live, are the counter-blow to the novel's spiritual oxygen.That's the best I can manage tonight to offer something to Justin in response to more about the “neo-iconoclasm” of film This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of 'Disaster Strikes,' hosts Kaycee McIntosh and Julie Henningsen delve into the tragic story of Natalia Nagovitsyna, a Russian mountaineer who perished while attempting to summit Victory Peak in Kyrgyzstan. Despite having already conquered four of the five Snow Leopard Peaks, Natalia's climb ended in heartbreak on August 2025, with her and fellow climber Luca Sinigaglia losing their lives in one of the world's most unforgiving mountain terrains. The episode explores the brutal conditions of Victory Peak, the heroic but ultimately futile rescue efforts, and the sobering realities of high-altitude mountaineering. The story highlights not only the relentless pursuit of mountaineering dreams but also the high cost that comes with scaling the world's most dangerous peaks. 00:00 Introduction to Disaster Strikes 00:38 The Death Zone: A Place of No Mercy 01:18 Victory Peak: The Ultimate Challenge 03:43 Natalia Nagovitsyna: A Story of Determination and Tragedy 06:10 The Climb and the Fall 09:21 The Deadly Descent 18:22 The Rescue Attempts 22:30 The Legacy of Victory Peak 26:59 Conclusion: Lessons from Tragedy References Fox News - "Rescue effort halted for stuck climber on treacherous mountain after climber dies trying to help her: reports" (August 2025) CBS News - "Climber dies trying to rescue injured Russian woman from Kyrgystan's highest mountain; search halted" (August 2025) CNN - "Victory Peak, Kyrgyzstan: Hopes fade for injured climber stuck up icy mountain for 12 days after breaking her leg" (August 2025) The Moscow Times - "Russia's Top Investigator Orders Rescue of Climber in Kyrgyzstan" (August 2025) Meduza - "Kyrgyzstan's mountains turn deadly Russian climber is stranded in Kyrgyzstan with broken leg and no food as weather thwarts rescue attempts" (August 2025) Explorersweb - "Pobeda: The Snow Leopards' Most Dangerous Summit" (2025) Explorersweb - "The Tragic End of Natalia Nagovitsyna's Ordeal on Pobeda Peak" (August 2025) Ultimate Kilimanjaro - "Natalia Nagovitsyna: Stranded (Who Was She & How Did She Die?)" (2025) Gripped Magazine - "Rescuer Dies as Climber's Ordeal Continues" (August 2025) Adventure Mountain - "Drama on Kyrgyzstan's highest mountain – rescue operation called off" (August 2025) Wikipedia - "High-altitude pulmonary edema" (Medical information on HAPE) Cleveland Clinic - "High-Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE): Causes & Treatment" (2025) NCBI Bookshelf - "High Altitude Pulmonary Edema" (StatPearls, 2023) Physiopedia - "High-Altitude Pulmonary Oedema" Expeditions Unlimited - "Mountaineering expedition Kyrgyzstan: climb Victory Peak" (Route descriptions and logistics) SummitPost - "Abalakov route - Pobeda" (Technical climbing information) Central Asia Travel - "Pobeda Peak. Expedition to Pobeda Peak (7439 m)" (Route details) Wikipedia - "Jengish Chokusu" (Mountain history and climbing statistics) KULUAR - "Pobeda Peak 2021. Season results. Three dead on 21 successful ascents" (2024) KULUAR - "Top 5 Deadliest Peaks in the World" (2024) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On Monday, December 8, an Afghan family was called to Malta, NY for an immigration appointment. This next segment continues our story which aired on Monday to better understand the ordeal which the family was experiencing.

12-4 Papa & Silver Hour 1: The Greg's break down the Giannis trade ordeal with NBA on NBC's Grant Liffman & they also go in depth with Giants insider, Susan Slusser on the Giants free agency searchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Every great movie has that moment — the hero face-down in the dirt, bleeding, doubting, wondering if they've got anything left. That's not the end of the story. That's the middle. So if you're there right now — business messy, life loud, wondering if you've blown it — you're not failing. You're in your Hero's Journey. In this powerful episode of PivotMe, April unpacks The Hero's Journey — that timeless storytelling arc that shows up in every great movie, book, and… your own life. From Luke Skywalker to Moana to Rocky, this universal path of struggle, transformation, and triumph is the same journey entrepreneurs and leaders walk every day. April walks through the 12 stages of the Hero's Journey and shows you how to identify where you are in your own story — so you can stop fighting the plot and start directing the outcome. This episode reminds every business owner and high performer that the mess isn't the end — it's the middle. Key Takeaways 1️⃣ Every leader is on their own Hero's Journey. Your business, your challenges, your growth — they all follow a story arc. 2️⃣ The 12 Stages of the Hero's Journey (and how they apply to real life): Ordinary World: The comfort zone that starts to feel too small. Call to Adventure: The whisper that says "There's more." Refusal of the Call: The fear that talks you out of it. Meeting the Mentor: The guide who shows you what's possible. Crossing the Threshold: The moment you commit — no turning back. Tests, Allies, and Enemies: The messy middle — growth under fire. Approach to the Inmost Cave: Preparation before your biggest challenge. The Ordeal: The breaking point that becomes your turning point. The Reward: The transformation — confidence, courage, clarity. The Road Back: Integration of lessons into real life. The Resurrection: Final test — choosing differently this time. Return with the Elixir: Sharing your wisdom, leading from strength. 3️⃣ The Hard Middle Is Not Failure. It's transformation in progress. 4️⃣ Knowing Your Stage Brings Clarity. When you can name where you are in the journey, you can stop reacting and start leading yourself through it. Quotes "Struggle isn't a detour. It's the way forward." "Mentors don't give you permission — they give you perspective." "The Ordeal isn't where the hero dies. It's where the old version of them dies." "When you understand your story, you stop fighting the plot and start directing the outcome." Challenge for Pivoters Ask yourself:

12-4 Papa & Silver Hour 1: The Greg's break down the Giannis trade ordeal with NBA on NBC's Grant Liffman & they also go in depth with Giants insider, Susan Slusser on the Giants free agency searchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Natalie Orpett and Eric Ciaramella to talk through the week's big national security news stories, including:“The Art of the Ordeal.” The Trump administration has been at the center of yet another bout of shuttle diplomacy the last several weeks, after an initial “28-point plan” for peace in Ukraine it appeared to hash out with Russia was met with widespread skepticism, both at home and in Kiev — leading it to shift focus to a “19-point plan” officials hashed out in closer consultation with Ukrainian officials and European officials, which was subsequently rejected by Russian President Vladimir Putin. What does this chaotic process tell us about the Trump administration's strategy and priorities? And what is it likely to mean for America's Ukrainian allies? “The War Crime on Drugs.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is at the center of another controversy, this time over his reported order to “kill everybody” in the first strike on an alleged narcotics-smuggling boat this past September—an order that, intentionally or not, led to a second strike that killed several people who were by that point clinging to wreckage in the open sea, in seemingly clear violation of Defense Department practice and the laws of armed conflict. Hegseth and the White House have sought to shift responsibility for the second strike to senior military personnel, but it's not clear whether Congress—where Democrats and Republicans on the armed services committees are threatening oversight—are persuaded.“Unlawful Good.” Several legislators who are also current or former servicemembers have been labeled the “Seditious Six” by the Trump administration and its allies for public statements they made reiterating that servicemembers' are only obligated to follow lawful orders, specifically in relation to ongoing counter-narcotics military operations in the Caribbean. And at least one—Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired naval officer—has been publicly threatened with a court martial by the Defense Department. How seriously should we take these legal actions? And what could the broader ramifications be for the military?In object lessons, Ben uses his once per decade mulligan. Eric recommends his current reading selection, "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare," a book that Scott reviewed on the Lawfare Podcast earlier this year. Scott gets into the spirit with one of his favorite seasonal albums, "It's a Holiday Soul Party." And Natalie plugs Lawfare's new Domestic deployment tracker - plus, a fabulous, olive-filled stuffing recipe (just add croutons!)Rational Security will be having its traditional end-of-year episode later this month, which will focus on listener-submitted topics and object lessons! So if you have topics you want us to discuss and object lessons you want to share—whether serious or frivolous—be sure to send them to rationalsecurity@lawfaremedia.org by Dec. 17th!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Natalie Orpett and Eric Ciaramella to talk through the week's big national security news stories, including:“The Art of the Ordeal.” The Trump administration has been at the center of yet another bout of shuttle diplomacy the last several weeks, after an initial “28-point plan” for peace in Ukraine it appeared to hash out with Russia was met with widespread skepticism, both at home and in Kiev — leading it to shift focus to a “19-point plan” officials hashed out in closer consultation with Ukrainian officials and European officials, which was subsequently rejected by Russian President Vladimir Putin. What does this chaotic process tell us about the Trump administration's strategy and priorities? And what is it likely to mean for America's Ukrainian allies? “The War Crime on Drugs.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is at the center of another controversy, this time over his reported order to “kill everybody” in the first strike on an alleged narcotics-smuggling boat this past September—an order that, intentionally or not, led to a second strike that killed several people who were by that point clinging to wreckage in the open sea, in seemingly clear violation of Defense Department practice and the laws of armed conflict. Hegseth and the White House have sought to shift responsibility for the second strike to senior military personnel, but it's not clear whether Congress—where Democrats and Republicans on the armed services committees are threatening oversight—are persuaded.“Unlawful Good.” Several legislators who are also current or former servicemembers have been labeled the “Seditious Six” by the Trump administration and its allies for public statements they made reiterating that servicemembers' are only obligated to follow lawful orders, specifically in relation to ongoing counter-narcotics military operations in the Caribbean. And at least one—Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired naval officer—has been publicly threatened with a court martial by the Defense Department. How seriously should we take these legal actions? And what could the broader ramifications be for the military?In object lessons, Ben uses his once per decade mulligan. Eric recommends his current reading selection, "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare," a book that Scott reviewed on the Lawfare Podcast earlier this year. Scott gets into the spirit with one of his favorite seasonal albums, "It's a Holiday Soul Party." And Natalie plugs Lawfare's new Domestic deployment tracker - plus, a fabulous, olive-filled stuffing recipe (just add croutons!)Rational Security will be having its traditional end-of-year episode later this month, which will focus on listener-submitted topics and object lessons! So if you have topics you want us to discuss and object lessons you want to share—whether serious or frivolous—be sure to send them to rationalsecurity@lawfaremedia.org by Dec. 17th! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Segment 3 — Newfoundland Ordeal: Facing Impossible Weather in the Race Across the Atlantic — David Rooney— Teams faced "suicidal" weather conditions in Newfoundland, the mandatory launch point for transatlantic attempts. In May 1919, the impatient Hawker and Grieve departed in their small Sopwith aircraft and disappeared, prompting widespread public grief. The Rolls-Royce engines employed by competitors, particularly the Eagle and Falcon models, cemented the company's reputation as the premier aircraft engine manufacturer. 1927

Honest Overview Let's cut the small talk and get straight to the marrow. Brandon Handley isn't just wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving; he's handing you the blueprint to your own evolution. We're sitting here discussing the Hero's Journey—not because we're writing a screenplay, but because it is the undeniable architecture of high-stakes sales, addiction recovery, and relentless personal growth. You think you're just hitting a wall in your business? You think that burnout is random? It's not. It's a pattern. Campbell identified it, Hollywood monetized it, but you? You have to survive it to cash in. Handley breaks down the 12 steps, proving that whether you're white-knuckling a steering wheel outside a liquor store or waiting for legal to sign a massive contract, the psychological arc is exactly the same. Here is the gritty truth about where you are and where you're going: The Call and The Refusal: It starts with a whisper or a meltdown. You know the current routine—the "Ordinary World"—is dead. But then comes the fear. The Imposter Syndrome. The "who am I to lead this?" That doubt isn't a stop sign; it's the entry fee. The Point of No Return: You meet the mentor (maybe it's a person, maybe it's a program), and you cross the threshold. You surrender the need for total control. You stop waiting for permission to lead and you step into the unknown. The Ordeal in the Cave: This is the part nobody puts on Instagram. You face the "Inmost Cave." The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. In sales, this is confronting your insecurity. In recovery, it's sitting with the emotions you used to numb. This is where the old identity dies so the new one can breathe. The Resurrection & Return: You don't just come back; you come back changed. You return with the "elixir"—the wisdom to mentor others, to lead teams with empathy, and to win because of who you are, not who you're pretending to be. The Edge: Hacking the Identity Handley isn't just talking theory; he's engineering the outcome. He's using AI to compose music that reinforces the new identity and breathwork to embody the journey physically. Why? Because imprinting must happen before expression. You have to see it and feel it internally before it shows up in your bank account. The Stakes This is about Superhuman Selling. The market doesn't need another script robot. It needs you—the grounded, aligned, gritty version of you. The version that stopped asking, "Am I enough?" and started playing the game on a mythic level. Stop trying to be "Sales Guy." Be the hero of your own damn story. If you're ready to win from your true identity, it's time to cross the threshold

MUSICAlex Van Halen has talked about using generative A.I. to complete some unfinished Van Halen music. His nephew Wolfgang is NOT a fan of the idea, even though he's powerless to stop it. https://consequence.net/2025/11/wolfgang-van-halen-david-lee-roth-feud-2025/ Super 7 has launched new White Stripes action figures based upon the duo's Elephant era. The figures of Jack and Meg White wear the same outfits as the ones on the cover of the 2003 album and include Meg's drumsticks and Jack's hollow-body electric guitar. https://shop.brooklynvegan.com/products/the-white-stripes-2-pack-reaction-figures-elephant Filmmaker Matt Zane has announced a crowdfunding campaign to create a new doc that focuses on the relationship between late Static-X founder Wayne Static and his late wife, adult film star Tera Wray. https://blabbermouth.net/news/unauthorized-documentary-exploring-relationship-between-late-static-x-frontman-wayne-static-and-his-wife-tera-wray-to-begin-production Bunnie Xo just sat down with TV-legend Maury Povich on her "Dumb Blonde" podcast. https://people.com/bunnie-xo-jelly-roll-trying-to-have-a-baby-in-gods-hands-11842597 TVThe Motion Picture Association (MPA) is battling Meta, the parent company of Instagram. https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/mpa-meta-cease-desist-letter-instagram-pg-13-rating-teen-accounts-1236570205/ Influencer Haley Kalil, who goes by haleyybaylee on socials, is revealing the biggest factor in her divorce from her ex-husband former NFL player Matt Kalil has to do with the size of his manhood. https://www.tmz.com/2025/11/05/haley-matt-kalil-sex-life-caused-divorce-nfl/#continued MOVING ON INTO MOVIE NEWS: Get your wallets ready, movie fans, because some truly legendary pieces of Hollywood history are about to hit the auction block, and the price tags are as epic as the films they came from.Leading the charge is a holy grail for Star Wars collectors. o The actual EE-3 carbine blaster wielded by the fan-favorite bounty hunter Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back is up for grabs -- it's believed to be the only original hero blaster used in the film, and it's been matched to the screen through photos and even its serial number. With that kind of history, it's expected to sell for anywhere between $462,000 and a jaw-dropping $924,000!o The list of legendary props doesn't stop there. Adventure has a name, and it's Indiana Jones! The signature fedora worn by Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is also going up for auction and is expected to sell for upwards of $400,000.o Alan Rickman's personal archives, including his own heavily annotated shooting scripts from two of his most famous roles: Hans Gruber in Die Hard and Harry in Love Actually, giving a rare glimpse into the actor's creative process.These items are all part of Propstore's Winter Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction, which will feature over 1,350 lots and takes place in London from December 5-7. Ms. Piggy is ready for her close-up. https://gizmodo.com/miss-piggy-movie-jennifer-lawrence-emma-stone-cole-escola-muppets-2000681941 Sydney Sweeney stars in the boxing film Christy, in theaters this Friday, Nov. 7th. https://www.mmamania.com/boxing/400678/serious-sydney-sweeney-pursuing-legitimate-boxing-match-following-christy-biopic-i-can-take-punch "KPop Demon Hunters 2" is officially happening at Netflix. Unfortunately for fans, it won't come out until 2029. https://consequence.net/2025/11/kpop-demon-hunters-2-netflix-2029/ Jordan Peele made a documentary about how black cowboys have been erased from the myth of the Old West. Check out the trailer. https://deadline.com/2025/11/jordan-peele-black-cowboy-documentary-release-date-trailer-1236608541/AND FINALLYIt's that time of year again . . . for Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop holiday gift guide. It includes six vibrators, which is six more than you'll find on Oprah's Favorite Things list. https://goop.com/holiday-gift-guide/c/ AND THAT IS YOUR CRAP ON CELEBRITIES!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Oooof guys, there's been great food and bad blood shared between two groups caught in the throws of a merger. No one wins... except the podcast! Come listen and help us come out on top!

When a brand gave a mom influencer a New York Marathon bib she didn't train for, the internet lost it…and for good reason. In this episode, Michelle and the sōsh team unpack how unchecked authority reveals a bigger problem in both marketing and politics: influence without integrity.From misguided brand partnerships to political propaganda disguised as truth, the team explores how easily influence can be weaponized. They also discuss what ethical standards should exist for those shaping public opinion.When everyone has influence, how do we know who to trust? And where does accountability stand?If you enjoy our flavors, then share and subscribe to Social Soup!Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn: ⁠linkedin.com/in/michelledattilio⁠ Learn more about sōsh! Visit our website and reach out at: ⁠getsosh.com

In this episode of the Crux True Survival Story Podcast, hosts Kaycee McIntosh and Julie Henningsen recount the harrowing 20-hour survival and rescue ordeal of 65-year-old Lithuanian adventurer Valdas Bieliauskas in the wilderness of Tasmania. After a tragic fall left Valdas' leg wedged between two boulders in freezing rapids, his friends and a dedicated Australian rescue team faced impossible decisions and extraordinary challenges. The rescue's climax involved an underwater amputation performed with minimal resources, saving Valdas' life. This story underscores human resilience, the capabilities of modern emergency medicine, and the extraordinary courage of wilderness rescue professionals. 00:00 Introduction to the Podcast 01:32 The Incident on the Franklin River 04:03 The Rescue Operation Begins 07:04 The Struggle to Free Valdas 16:24 Critical Decisions and Final Attempts 21:13 A Desperate Situation 21:43 The Arrival of Dr. Kippax 22:57 The Underwater Amputation 26:39 A Race Against Time 29:15 The Miracle of Hypothermia 30:42 A Remarkable Recovery 34:14 Reflections on Risk and Rescue 38:52 Valdas' Future Plans 41:44 Final Thoughts and Gratitude 42:57 Closing Remarks Listen AD FREE: Support our podcast at patreaon: http://patreon.com/TheCruxTrueSurvivalPodcast Email us! thecruxsurvival@gmail.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thecruxpodcast/ Get schooled by Julie in outdoor wilderness medicine! https://www.headwatersfieldmedicine.com/ References- ABC News Australia. "How one slip on the Franklin River triggered a race to save a rafter's life." June 28, 2025. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-29/franklin-river-rescue-man-stuck-lithuanian-valdas-leg-amputated/105420916 RNZ News. "Your leg or your life: Inside a perilous 24-hour wild river rescue." June 29, 2025. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/565467/your-leg-or-your-life-inside-a-perilous-24-hour-wild-river-rescue LRT (Lithuanian National Radio and Television). "Your leg or your life: Lithuanian traveller lost limb in near-deadly accident in Tasmania." February 1, 2025. https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2474903/your-leg-or-your-life-lithuanian-traveller-lost-limb-in-near-deadly-accident-in-tasmania Australian Story (ABC). "The River: Franklin River Rescue" (Parts 1 & 2). June 30 & July 7, 2025. Available on ABC iview. Brittle, Rob and Parkinson, Mitch (Intensive Care Flight Paramedics, Ambulance Tasmania). "Patient Centred Team Based Critical Care In Austere Environments." Australian College of Paramedicine. https://paramedics.org/news/patient-centred-team-based-critical-care-in-austere-environments Paddling Magazine. "Inside The Whitewater Accident That Led To An Underwater Amputation." July 18, 2025. https://paddlingmag.com/stories/news-events/underwater-amputation-rescue/ Pulse Tasmania. "Tasmanian doctor receives prestigious Lithuanian award for dramatic river leg amputation." July 7, 2025. https://pulsetasmania.com.au/news/tasmanian-doctor-receives-prestigious-lithuanian-award-for-dramatic-river-leg-amputation/ Water by Nature Tasmania - Franklin River Rafting. https://franklinriver.com/ Rafting.com. "Franklin River Rafting Trips." https://www.rafting.com/australia/tasmania/franklin-river/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Migrants travel by boat for hundreds of miles from Africa to reach Spain's Canary Islands. After surviving the dangerous crossing, many are stranded for months and unable to work. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Anthony and Harrison discuss what they've found funny about this whole Clippers thing and how it's really opened eyes about the NBA, its coverage and all other levels involved To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“If you're left one on one with Messi, you're dead”. Mikel Jon Obi reveals what it was like to play against that incredible Barcelona team and a prime Lionel Messi, how Chelsea won that incredible Champions League in 2012, and Mikel explains the horrifying moment his Father was kidknapped… twice! Join THE PLAYERS LOUNGE, the official fantasy football club of The Rest Is Football. It's time to take on Gary, Alan and Micah for monthly prizes  As a member, you'll get access to exclusive tips from Fantasy Football Hub including AI-powered team ratings, transfer tips, and expert team reveals to help you climb the table. Join THE PLAYERS LOUNGE here: therestisfootball.com  For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

 In this episode, host welcomes Justin McNeil, an author from Texas, to discuss his book 'The Bigfoot Paradox.' Justin shares his initial skepticism and recounts a harrowing encounter with a large, mysterious creature while hog hunting in Arkansas in 2001. The conversation delves into the complexities of Bigfoot research, including folklore, scientific skepticism, and the persistent debate about whether these creatures are flesh-and-blood or possess extraordinary abilities.Justin also recounts a terrifying survival experience in the Philippines involving alleged mythical creatures known as 'Aswang.' The episode explores the challenges and methods of investigating Bigfoot, emphasizing a balanced view that respects both empirical evidence and anecdotal testimonies. Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our SponsorsVisit Untold Radio AM00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome 00:22 Justin's Bigfoot Encounter 09:17 Post-Encounter Reflections 10:46 Skepticism and Research 17:17 Writing the Book 19:57 Exploring Global Bigfoot Legends 21:10 Journey into the Jungle 23:04 A Guide's Betrayal 23:48 Survival Instincts Kick In 24:43 A Sinister Encounter 26:40 Escape from Danger 29:30 Seeking Help and Recovery 30:54 Reflecting on the Ordeal 34:41 Bigfoot: Flesh and Blood or Something More? 44:20 The Bigfoot ParadoxBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

In which we look at the physical misery & psychological strain endured by the soldiers during the Overland Campaign. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We confront the devastating truth about police suicide through the deeply personal story of Brian Sizemore, the father of Lucas Sizemore, a dedicated police officer who tragically took his own life. This emotional and eye-opening conversation dives deep into the mental health crisis in law enforcement, the cultural stigma that prevents officers from seeking help, and the traumatic toll that constant exposure to danger and stress takes on our heroes in blue. Brian shares his heartbreaking journey of loss, grief, and resilience. He reveals how this tragedy led to the creation of the Lucas Foundation, a powerful movement dedicated to raising awareness, providing resources, and advocating for mental health support in the law enforcement community.

A gruesome murder at a snake farm reveals deadly secrets and lies.This Week's Episode is Brought To You By:Fast Growing Trees - Get 15% off your first order with code LOVEMURDER at fastgrowingtrees.com/lovemurderShopify - The Platform Commerce is Built On - $1 per month trial https://shopify.com/lovemurderHiya Health - Essential Super Nutrients for Kids - https://hiyahealth.com/LOVEMURDER for 50% off your first orderSources:Akers, Mick, and Arthur Kane. “Robin Lehner's Snake Farm Purchase Led to ‘Tiger King'-like Ordeal, Bankruptcy | Golden Knights | Sports.” Las Vegas Review-Journal, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 19 Jan. 2023, https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/goldenknights/snakes-death-and-bankruptcy-robin-lehners-tiger-king-like-ordeal-2714939/.American Monster. 2022.“Benjamin Blue-Brich ‘Ben' Renick (1987-2017) - Find a Grave Memorial.” Find a Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/180400211/benjamin_blue-brich-renick. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.“Custom Scales - MorphMarket.” Captive Bred Reptiles For Sale from Breeders Worldwide - MorphMarket, https://www.morphmarket.com/stores/customscales2022/. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.Dateline. 24 Mar. 2023.Farwell, Zachary. “Convicted Murderer Lynlee Renick Files Lawsuit against Accuser - ABC17NEWS.” ABC17NEWS, 16 Feb. 2022, https://abc17news.com/news/crime/2022/02/16/convicted-murderer-lynlee-renick-files-lawsuit-against-accuser/.Geisler, Lucas. “Man Convicted in Ben Renick Murder Claims Key Witness Testimony Hearsay - ABC17NEWS.” ABC17NEWS, 1 Feb. 2023, https://abc17news.com/news/top-stories/2023/01/31/man-convicted-in-ben-renick-murder-claims-key-witness-testimony-hearsay/.Grigoriadis, Elias. “Knights' Robin Lehner Sued for Millions Months before Bankruptcy Filing - Yahoo Sports.” Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Sports, 17 Jan. 2023, https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/knights-robin-lehner-sued-for-millions-months-before-filing-for-bankruptcy-181751436.html.“Lynlee Renick Drops Appeal of Her Conviction in Snake Dealer's Death | State News | Columbiamissourian.Com.” Columbia Missourian, https://www.facebook.com/ColumbiaMissourian/, 10 Jan. 2023, https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/state_news/lynlee-renick-drops-appeal-of-her-conviction-in-snake-dealers-death/article_77047f6e-912f-11ed-88c0-27a9310c2aad.html#:~:text=She%20was%20found%20guilty%20of,in%20the%20Chillicothe%20Correctional%20Center.Vanapalli, Viswa. “Lynlee Renick's Kids: Matthew Alyn and Emilia Marie Are Living With Their Aunt Today.” The Cinemaholic, https://www.facebook.com/thecinemaholic, 10 Jan. 2023, https://thecinemaholic.com/where-are-lynlee-renicks-kids-now/.Columbia Daily Tribune, 18 Jan. 2020, https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/news/crime/2020/01/18/columbia-spa-owner-charged-with/1870431007/.48 Hours, 12 Mar. 2022.FBI, https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/stlouis/press-releases/2012/president-of-pet-food-company-indicted-on-fraud-charges. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.Fox 2 Now, 17 Jan. 2020, https://fox2now.com/news/two-charged-with-murder-in-missouri-snake-breeders-death/.Find LOVE MURDER online:Website: lovemurder.loveInstagram: @lovemurderpodTwitter: @lovemurderpodFacebook: LoveMrdrPodTikTok: @LoveMurderPodPatreon: /LoveMurderPodCredits: Love Murder is hosted by Jessie Pray and Andie Cassette, researched by Sarah Lynn Robinson and researched and written by Jessie Pray, produced by Nathaniel Whittemore and edited by Kyle Barbour-HoffmanSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.