Podcasts about Overton

The news out of Scotland of the young girl compelled to wield a knife and hatchet in defense of herself and her little sister against the predations of ravenous third-world migrants imported by her own government should serve as a red flag, a political tipping point, into Western awareness of the existential threat presented to everything we value by Easterners intent on stealing our wealth, culture, and future for their own ethno-corrupt purposes.  After all … unless the American trajectory changes, soon such headlines will be coming out of our own communities.Time has become of the essence. The tipping point is upon us. The gyre is widening. The moment of choosing is now. What shall we choose? What shall YOU choose? To watch your world, your culture, your posterity, the greatest nation on Earth eradicated by third-world Orcs imported by your own government to compel you to bend the knee to their tyrannical impulses?  Or are you prepared to use your voice, your vote, your sheer will to forcibly shove that corrupted Overton window hard over to American nationalism? To save ourselves, our wives, our children from being drowned in third-world mediocrity, incompetence, greed, graft, and predatory violence?  Whether that involves fighting against enemies foreign … OR also enemies domestic?Is there an American exceptionalism worth saving from third-world invaders? The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

Daniel McAdams Join Stew for unfiltered, hard-hitting commentary that fearlessly tackles controversial topics like U.S.-Israel relations, exposing hidden influences in politics, media, and finance. This show slams the Overton window open, empowering listeners with bold truths to reclaim their sovereignty. Scott Siverts joins Stew in exposing a group's alleged global control, from Israel's founding to destroying Christian symbols in Wales. Joined by Scott from The Berm Pit, he calls for dismantling foreign lobbies like AIPAC to reclaim America. Western civilization has been infected by a parasitic invasion of foreign ideals and values that have been introduced into our culture by strange and morally degenerate people whose goal is world domination. We have been OCCUPIED. Watch the film NOW! https://stewpeters.com/occupied/ AUGUST FREEDOM DRIVE – JOIN THE MOVEMENT Unfiltered. Uncensored. Uncompromising. This August, take your support to the next level. The war on truth is real, and the Stew Peters Network is on the front lines. Subscribers get: Access to Exclusive Content Early Access to New Docs & Exposés Direct Line to the Movement Support the Resistance Your subscription funds the fight against censorship, tyranny, and globalist agendas. Join today https://stewpeters.tv

Lucas Gage is a USMC War Vet, author and activist. He talks getting shadow banned on X, kicked of YouTube, why there is an Overton window on previous considered radioactive topics, getting doxxed, and much more. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE LIKE AND SHARE THIS PODCAST!!!   Watch Show Rumble- https://rumble.com/v6xxqec-decentralized-network-of-organizations-is-the-future-lucas-gage.html YouTube- https://youtu.be/AF1zejZqCDM   Follow Me X- https://x.com/CoffeeandaMike IG- https://www.instagram.com/coffeeandamike/ Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/CoffeeandaMike/ YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@Coffeeandamike Rumble- https://rumble.com/search/all?q=coffee%20and%20a%20mike Substack- https://coffeeandamike.substack.com/ Apple Podcasts- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coffee-and-a-mike/id1436799008 Gab- https://gab.com/CoffeeandaMike Locals- https://coffeeandamike.locals.com/ Website- www.coffeeandamike.com Email- info@coffeeandamike.com   Support My Work Venmo- https://www.venmo.com/u/coffeeandamike Paypal- https://www.paypal.com/biz/profile/Coffeeandamike Substack- https://coffeeandamike.substack.com/ Patreon- http://patreon.com/coffeeandamike Locals- https://coffeeandamike.locals.com/ Cash App- https://cash.app/$coffeeandamike Buy Me a Coffee- https://buymeacoffee.com/coffeeandamike Bitcoin- coffeeandamike@strike.me   Mail Check or Money Order- Coffee and a Mike LLC P.O. Box 25383 Scottsdale, AZ 85255-9998   Follow Lucas X - https://x.com/LucasGageX Rumble- https://rumble.com/LucasGage Website- t.co/uYDEM6eEJM Additional Links- https://bio.site/lucasgage   Sponsors Vaulted/Precious Metals- https://vaulted.blbvux.net/coffeeandamike McAlvany Precious Metals- https://mcalvany.com/coffeeandamike/ Independence Ark Natural Farming- https://www.independenceark.com/

Today I'm talking to economic historian Judge Glock, Director of Research at the Manhattan Institute. Judge works on a lot of topics: if you enjoy this episode, I'd encourage you to read some of his work on housing markets and the Environmental Protection Agency. But I cornered him today to talk about civil service reform.Since the 1990s, over 20 red and blue states have made radical changes to how they hire and fire government employees — changes that would be completely outside the Overton window at the federal level. A paper by Judge and Renu Mukherjee lists four reforms made by states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia: * At-will employment for state workers* The elimination of collective bargaining agreements* Giving managers much more discretion to hire* Giving managers much more discretion in how they pay employeesJudge finds decent evidence that the reforms have improved the effectiveness of state governments, and little evidence of the politicization that federal reformers fear. Meanwhile, in Washington, managers can't see applicants' resumes, keyword searches determine who gets hired, and firing a bad performer can take years. But almost none of these ideas are on the table in Washington.Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits and fact-checking, and to Katerina Barton for audio edits.Judge, you have a paper out about lessons for civil service reform from the states. Since the ‘90s, red and blue states have made big changes to how they hire and fire people. Walk through those changes for me.I was born and grew up in Washington DC, heard a lot about civil service throughout my childhood, and began to research it as an adult. But I knew almost nothing about the state civil service systems. When I began working in the states — mainly across the Sunbelt, including in Texas, Kansas, Arizona — I was surprised to learn that their civil service systems were reformed to an absolutely radical extent relative to anything proposed at the federal level, let alone implemented.Starting in the 1990s, several states went to complete at-will employment. That means there were no official civil service protections for any state employees. Some managers were authorized to hire people off the street, just like you could in the private sector. A manager meets someone in a coffee shop, they say, "I'm looking for exactly your role. Why don't you come on board?" At the federal level, with its stultified hiring process, it seemed absurd to even suggest something like that.You had states that got rid of any collective bargaining agreements with their public employee unions. You also had states that did a lot more broadbanding [creating wider pay bands] for employee pay: a lot more discretion for managers to reward or penalize their employees depending on their performance.These major reforms in these states were, from the perspective of DC, incredibly radical. Literally nobody at the federal level proposes anything approximating what has been in place for decades in the states. That should be more commonly known, and should infiltrate the debate on civil service reform in DC.Even though the evidence is not absolutely airtight, on the whole these reforms have been positive. A lot of the evidence is surveys asking managers and operators in these states how they think it works. They've generally been positive. We know these states operate pretty well: Places like Texas, Florida, and Arizona rank well on state capacity metrics in terms of cost of government, time for permitting, and other issues.Finally, to me the most surprising thing is the dog that didn't bark. The argument in the federal government against civil service reform is, “If you do this, we will open up the gates of hell and return to the 19th-century patronage system, where spoilsmen come and go depending on elected officials, and the government is overrun with political appointees who don't care about the civil service.” That has simply not happened. We have very few reports of any concrete examples of politicization at the state level. In surveys, state employees and managers can almost never remember any example of political preferences influencing hiring or firing.One of the surveys you cited asked, “Can you think of a time someone said that they thought that the political preferences were a factor in civil service hiring?” and it was something like 5%.It was in that 5-10% range. I don't think you'd find a dissimilar number of people who would say that even in an official civil service system. Politics is not completely excluded even from a formal civil service system.A few weeks ago, you and I talked to our mutual friend, Don Moynihan, who's a scholar of public administration. He's more skeptical about the evidence that civil service reform would be positive at the federal level.One of your points is, “We don't have strong negative evidence from the states. Productivity didn't crater in states that moved to an at-will employment system.” We do have strong evidence that collective bargaining in the public sector is bad for productivity.What I think you and Don would agree on is that we could use more evidence on the hiring and firing side than the surveys that we have. Is that a fair assessment?Yes, I think that's correct. As you mentioned, the evidence on collective bargaining is pretty close to universal: it raises costs, reduces the efficiency of government, and has few to no positive upsides.On hiring and firing, I mentioned a few studies. There's a 2013 study that looks at HR managers in six states and finds very little evidence of politicization, and managers generally prefer the new system. There was a dissertation that surveyed several employees and managers in civil service reform and non-reform states. Across the board, the at-will employment states said they had better hiring retention, productivity, and so forth. And there's a 2002 study that looked specifically at Texas, Florida, and Georgia after their reforms, and found almost universal approbation inside the civil service itself for these reforms.These are not randomized control trials. But I think that generally positive evidence should point us directionally where we should go on civil service reform. If we loosen restrictions on discipline and firing, decentralize hiring and so forth — we probably get some productivity benefits from it. We can also know, with some amount of confidence, that the sky is not going to fall, which I think is a very important baseline assumption. The civil service system will continue on and probably be fairly close to what it is today, in terms of its political influence, if you have decentralized hiring and at-will employment.As you point out, a lot of these reforms that have happened in 20-odd states since the ‘90s would be totally outside the Overton window at the federal level. Why is it so easy for Georgia to make a bipartisan move in the ‘90s to at-will employment, when you couldn't raise the topic at the federal level?It's a good question. I think in the 1990s, a lot of people thought a combination of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act — which was the Carter-era act that somewhat attempted to do what these states hoped to do in the 1990s — and the Clinton-era Reinventing Government Initiative, would accomplish the same ends. That didn't happen.That was an era when civil service reform was much more bipartisan. In Georgia, it was a Democratic governor, Zell Miller, who pushed it. In a lot of these other states, they got buy-in from both sides. The recent era of state reform took place after the 2010 Republican wave in the states. Since that wave, the reform impetus for civil service has been much more Republican. That has meant it's been a lot harder to get buy-in from both sides at the federal level, which will be necessary to overcome a filibuster.I think people know it has to be very bipartisan. We're just past the point, at least at the moment, where it can be bipartisan at the federal level. But there are areas where there's a fair amount of overlap between the two sides on what needs to happen, at least in the upper reaches of the civil service.It was interesting to me just how bipartisan civil service reform has been at various times. You talked about the Civil Service Reform Act, which passed Congress in 1978. President Carter tells Congress that the civil service system:“Has become a bureaucratic maze which neglects merit, tolerates poor performance, permits abuse of legitimate employee rights, and mires every personnel action in red tape, delay, and confusion.”That's a Democratic president saying that. It's striking to me that the civil service was not the polarized topic that it is today.Absolutely. Carter was a big civil service reformer in Georgia before those even larger 1990s reforms. He campaigned on civil service reform and thought it was essential to the success of his presidency. But I think you are seeing little sprouts of potential bipartisanship today, like the Chance to Compete Act at the end of 2024, and some of the reforms Obama did to the hiring process. There's options for bipartisanship at the federal level, even if it can't approach what the states have done.I want to walk through the federal hiring process. Let's say you're looking to hire in some federal agency — you pick the agency — and I graduated college recently, and I want to go into the civil service. Tell me about trying to hire somebody like me. What's your first step?It's interesting you bring up the college graduate, because that is one recent reform: President Trump put out an executive order trying to counsel agencies to remove the college degree requirement for job postings. This happened in a lot of states first, like Maryland, and that's also been bipartisan. This requirement for a college degree — which was used as a very unfortunate proxy for ability at a lot of these jobs — is now being removed. It's not across the whole federal government. There's still job postings that require higher education degrees, but that's something that's changed.To your question, let's say the Department of Transportation. That's one of the more bipartisan ones, when you look at surveys of federal civil servants. Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, they tend to be a little more Republican. Health and Human Services and some other agencies tend to be pretty Democrat. Transportation is somewhere in the middle.As a manager, you try to craft a job description and posting to go up on the USA Jobs website, which is where all federal job postings go. When they created it back in 1996, that was supposedly a massive reform to federal hiring: this website where people could submit their resumes. Then, people submit their resumes and answer questions about their qualifications for the job.One of the slightly different aspects from the private sector is that those applications usually go to an HR specialist first. The specialist reviews everything and starts to rank people into different categories, based on a lot of weird things. It's supposed to be “knowledge, skills, and abilities” — your KSAs, or competencies. To some extent, this is a big step up from historical practice. You had, frankly, an absurd civil service exam, where people had to fill out questions about, say, General Grant or about US Code Title 42, or whatever it was, and then submit it. Someone rated the civil service exam, and then the top three test-takers were eligible for the job.We have this newer, better system, where we rank on knowledge, skills, and abilities, and HR puts put people into different categories. One of the awkward ways they do this is by merely scanning the resumes and applications for keywords. If it's a computer job, make sure you say the word “computer” somewhere in your resume. Make sure you say “manager” if it's a managerial job.Just to be clear, this is entirely literal. There's a keyword search, and folks who don't pass that search are dinged.Yes. I've always wondered, how common is this? It's sometimes hard to know what happens in the black box in these federal HR departments. I saw an HR official recently say, "If I'm not allowed to do keyword searches, I'm going to take 15 years to overlook all the applications, so I've got to do keyword searches." If they don't have the keywords, into the circular file it goes, as they used to say: into the garbage can.Then they start ranking people on their abilities into, often, three different categories. That is also very literal. If you put in the little word bubble, "I am an exceptional manager," you get pushed on into the next level of the competition. If you say, "I'm pretty good, but I'm not the best," into the circular file you go.I've gotten jaded about this, but it really is shocking. We ask candidates for a self-assessment, and if they just rank themselves 10/10 on everything, no matter how ludicrous, that improves their odds of being hired.That's going to immensely improve your odds. Similar to the keyword search, there's been pushback on this in recent years, and I'm definitely not going to say it's universal anymore. It's rarer than it used to be. But it's still a very common process.The historical civil service system used to operate on a rule of three. In places like New York, it still operates like that. The top three candidates on the evaluation system get presented to the manager, and the manager has to approve one of them for the position.Thanks partially to reforms by the Obama administration in 2010, they have this category rating system where the best qualified or the very qualified get put into a big bucket together [instead of only including the top three]. Those are the people that the person doing the hiring gets to see, evaluate, and decide who he wants to hire.There are some restrictions on that. If a veteran outranks everybody else, you've got to pick the veteran [typically known as Veterans' Preference]. That was an issue in some of the state civil service reforms, too. The states said, “We're just going to encourage a veterans' preference. We don't need a formalized system to say they get X number of points and have to be in Y category. We're just going to say, ‘Try to hire veterans.'” That's possible without the formal system, despite what some opponents of reform may claim.One of the particular problems here is just the nature of the people doing the hiring. Sometimes you just need good managers to encourage HR departments to look at a broader set of qualifications. But one of the bigger problems is that they keep the HR evaluation system divorced from the manager who is doing the hiring. David Shulkin, who was the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), wrote a great book, It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Serve Your Country. He was a healthcare exec, and the VA is mainly a healthcare agency. He would tell people, "You should work for me," they would send their applications into the HR void, and he'd never see them again. They would get blocked at some point in this HR evaluation process, and he'd be sent people with no healthcare experience, because for whatever reason they did well in the ranking.One of the very base-level reforms should be, “How can we more clearly integrate the hiring manager with the evaluation process?” To some extent, the bipartisan Chance to Compete Act tries to do this. They said, “You should have subject matter experts who are part of crafting the description of the job, are part of evaluating, and so forth.” But there's still a long road to go.Does that firewall — where the person who wants to hire doesn't get to look at the process until the end — exist originally because of concerns about cronyism?One of the interesting things about the civil service is its raison d'être — its reason for being — was supposedly a single, clear purpose: to prevent politicized hiring and patronage. That goes back to the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883. But it's always been a little strange that you have all of these very complex rules about every step of the process — from hiring to firing to promotion, and everything in between — to prevent political influence. We could just focus on preventing political influence, and not regulate every step of the process on the off-chance that without a clear regulation, political influence could creep in. This division [between hiring manager and applicants] is part of that general concern. There are areas where I've heard HR specialists say, "We declare that a manager is a subject matter expert, and we bring them into the process early on, we can do that." But still the division is pretty stark, and it's based on this excessive concern about patronage.One point you flag is that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is the body that thinks about personnel in the federal government, has a 300-page regulatory document for agencies on how you have to hire. There's a remarkable amount of process.Yes, but even that is a big change from the Federal Personnel Manual, which was the 10,000-page document that we shredded in the 1990s. In the ‘90s, OPM gave the agencies what's called “delegated examining authorities.” This says, “You, agency, have power to decide who to hire, we're not going to do the central supervision anymore. But, but, but: here's the 300-page document that dictates exactly how you have to carry out that hiring.”So we have some decentralization, allowing managers more authority to control their own departments. But this two-level oversight — a local HR department that's ultimately being overseen by the OPM — also leads to a lot of slip ‘twixt cup and lip, in terms of how something gets implemented. If you're in the agency and you're concerned about the OPM overseeing your process, you're likely to be much more careful than you would like to be. “Yes, it's delegated to me, but ultimately, I know I have to answer to OPM about this process. I'm just going to color within the lines.”I often cite Texas, which has no central HR office. Each agency decides how it wants to hire. In a lot of these reform states, if there is a central personnel office, it's an information clearinghouse or reservoir of models. “You can use us, the central HR office, as a resource if you want us to help you post the job, evaluate it, or help manage your processes, but you don't have to.” That's the goal we should be striving for in a lot of the federal reforms. Just make OPM a resource for the managers in the individual departments to do their thing or go independent.Let's say I somehow get through the hiring process. You offer me a job at the Department of Transportation. What are you paying me?This is one of the more stultified aspects of the federal civil service system. OPM has another multi-hundred-page handbook called the Handbook of Occupational Groups and Families. Inside that, you've got 49 different “groups and families,” like “Clerical occupations.” Inside those 49 groups are a series of jobs, sometimes dozens, like “Computer Operator.” Inside those, they have independent documents — often themselves dozens of pages long — detailing classes of positions. Then you as a manager have to evaluate these nine factors, which can each give points to each position, which decides how you get slotted into this weird Government Schedule (GS) system [the federal payscale].Again, this is actually an improvement. Before, you used to have the Civil Service Commission, which went around staring very closely at someone over their typewriter and saying, "No, I think you should be a GS-12, not a GS-11, because someone over in the Department of Defense who does your same job is a GS-12." Now this is delegated to agencies, but again, the agencies have to listen to the OPM on how to classify and set their jobs into this 15-stage GS-classification system, each stage of which has 10 steps which determine your pay, and those steps are determined mainly by your seniority. It's a formalized step-by-step system, overwhelmingly based on just how long you've sat at your desk.Let's be optimistic about my performance as a civil servant. Say that over my first three years, I'm just hitting it out of the park. Can you give me a raise? What can you do to keep me in my role?Not too much. For most people, the within-step increases — those 10 steps inside each GS-level — is just set by seniority. Now there are all these quality step increases you can get, but they're very rare and they have to be documented. So you could hypothetically pay someone more, but it's going to be tough. In general, the managers just prefer to stick to seniority, because not sticking to it garners a lot of complaints. Like so much else, the goal is, "We don't want someone rewarding an official because they happen to share their political preferences." The result of that concern is basically nobody can get rewarded at all, which is very unfortunate.We do have examples in state and federal government of what's known as broadbanding, where you have very broad pay scales, and the manager can decide where to slot someone. Say you're a computer operator, which can mean someone who knows what an Excel spreadsheet is, or someone who's programming the most advanced AI systems. As a manager in South Carolina or Florida, you have a lot of discretion to say, "I can set you 50% above the market rate of what this job technically would go for, if I think you're doing a great job."That's very rare at the federal level. They've done broadbanding at the Government Accountability Office, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The China Lake Experiment out in California gave managers a lot more discretion to reward scientists. But that's definitely the exception. In general, it's a step-wise, seniority-based system.What if you want to bring me into the Senior Executive Service (SES)? Theoretically, that sits at the top of the General Service scale. Can't you bump me up in there and pay me what you owe me?I could hypothetically bring you in as a senior executive servant. The SES was created in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The idea was, “We're going to have this elite cadre of about 8,000 individuals at the top of the federal government, whose employment will be higher-risk and higher-reward. They might be fired, and we're going to give them higher pay to compensate for that.”Almost immediately, that did not work out. Congress was outraged at the higher pay given to the top officials and capped it. Ever since, how much the SES can get paid has been tightly controlled. As in most of the rest of the federal government, where they establish these performance pay incentives or bonuses — which do exist — they spread them like peanut butter over the whole service. To forestall complaints, everyone gets a little bit every two or three years.That's basically what happened to the SES. Their annual pay is capped at the vice president's salary, which is a cap for a lot of people in the federal government. For most of your GS and other executive scales, the cap is Congress's salary. [NB: This is no longer exactly true, since Congress froze its own salaries in 2009. The cap for GS (currently about $195k) is now above congressional salaries ($174k).]One of the big problems with pay in the federal government is pay compression. Across civil service systems, the highest-skilled people tend to be paid much less than the private sector, and the lowest-skilled people tend to get paid much more. The political science reason for that is pretty simple: the median voter in America still decides what seems reasonable. To the median voter, the average salary of a janitor looks low, and the average salary of a scientist looks way too high. Hence this tendency to pay compression. Your average federal employee is probably overpaid relative to the private sector, because the lowest-skilled employees are paid up to 40% higher than the private sector equivalent. The highest-paid employees, the post-graduate skilled professionals, are paid less. That makes it hard to recruit the top performers, but it also swells the wage budget in a way that makes it difficult to talk about reform.There's a lot of interest in this administration in making it easier to recruit talent and get rid of under-performers. There have been aggressive pushes to limit collective bargaining in the public sector. That should theoretically make it easier to recruit, but it also increases the precariousness of civil service roles. We've seen huge firings in the civil service over the last six months.Classically, the explicit trade-off of working in the federal government was, “Your pay is going to be capped, but you have this job for life. It's impossible to get rid of you.” You trade some lifetime earnings for stability. In a world where the stability is gone, but pay is still capped, isn't the net effect to drive talent away from the civil service?I think it's a concern now. On one level it should be ameliorated, because those who are most concerned with stability of employment do tend to be lower performers. If you have people who are leaving the federal service because all they want is stability, and they're not getting that anymore, that may not be a net loss. As someone who came out of academia and knows the wonder of effective lifetime annuities, there can be very high performers who like that stability who therefore take a lower salary. Without the ability to bump that pay up more, it's going to be an issue.I do know that, internally, the Trump administration has made some signs they're open to reforms in the top tiers of the SES and other parts of the federal government. They would be willing to have people get paid more at that level to compensate for the increased risks since the Trump administration came in. But when you look at the reductions in force (RIFs) that have happened under Trump, they are overwhelmingly among probationary employees, the lower-level employees.With some exceptions. If you've been promoted recently, you can get reclassified as probationary, so some high-performers got lumped in.Absolutely. The issue has been exacerbated precisely because the RIF regulations that are in place have made the firings particularly damaging. If you had a more streamlined RIF system — which they do have in many states, where seniority is not the main determinant of who gets laid off — these RIFs could be removing the lower-performing civil servants and keeping the higher-performing ones, and giving them some amount of confidence in their tenure.Unfortunately, the combination of large-scale removals with the existing RIF regs, which are very stringent, has demoralized some of the upper levels of the federal government. I share that concern. But I might add, it is interesting, if you look at the federal government's own figures on the total civil service workforce, they have gone down significantly since Trump came in office, but I think less than 100,000 still, in the most recent numbers that I've seen. I'm not sure how much to trust those, versus some of these other numbers where people have said 150,000, 200,000.Whether the Trump administration or a future administration can remove large numbers of people from the civil service should be somewhat divorced from the general conversation on civil service reform. The main debate about whether or not Trump can do this centers around how much power the appropriators in Congress have to determine the total amount of spending in particular agencies on their workforce. It does not depend necessarily on, "If we're going to remove people — whether for general layoffs, or reductions in force, or because of particular performance issues — how can we go about doing that?" My last-ditch hope to maintain a bipartisan possibility of civil service reform is to bracket, “How much power does the president have to remove or limit the workforce in general?” from “How can he go about hiring and firing, et cetera?”I think making it easier for the president to identify and remove poor performers is a tool that any future administration would like to have.We had this conversation sparked again with the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. But that was a position Congress set up to be appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and removable by the President. It's a separate issue from civil service at large. Everyone said, “We want the president to be able to hire and fire the commissioner.” Maybe firing the commissioner was a bad decision, but that's the situation today.Attentive listeners to Statecraft know I'm pretty critical, like you are, of the regulations that say you have to go in order of seniority. In mass layoffs, you're required to fire a lot of the young, talented people.But let's talk about individual firings. I've been a terrible civil servant, a nightmarish employee from day one. You want to discipline, remove, suspend, or fire me. What are your options?Anybody who has worked in the civil service knows it's hard to fire bad performers. Whatever their political valence, whatever they feel about the civil service system, they have horror stories about a person who just couldn't be removed.In the early 2010s, a spate of stories came out about air traffic controllers sleeping on the job. Then-transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, made a big public announcement: "I'm going to fire these three guys." After these big announcements, it turned out he was only able to remove one of them. One retired, and another had their firing reduced to a suspension.You had another horrific story where a man was joking on the phone with friends when a plane crashed into a helicopter and killed nine people over the Hudson River. National outcry. They said, "We're going to fire this guy." In the end, after going through the process, he only got a suspension. Everyone agrees it's too hard.The basic story is, you have two ways to fire someone. Chapter 75, the old way, is often considered the realm of misconduct: You've stolen something from the office, punched your colleague in the face during a dispute about the coffee, something illegal or just straight-out wrong. We get you under Chapter 75.The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act added Chapter 43, which is supposed to be the performance-based system to remove someone. As with so much of that Civil Service Reform Act, the people who passed it thought this might be the beginning of an entirely different system.In the end, lots of federal managers say there's not a huge difference between the two. Some use 75, some use 43. If you use 43, you have to document very clearly what the person did wrong. You have to put them on a performance improvement plan. If they failed a performance improvement plan after a certain amount of time, they can respond to any claims about what they did wrong. Then, they can take that process up to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and claim that they were incorrectly fired, or that the processes weren't carried out appropriately. Then, if they want to, they can say, “Nah, I don't like the order I got,” and take it up to federal courts and complain there. Right now, the MSPB doesn't have a full quorum, which is complicating some of the recent removal disputes.You have this incredibly difficult process, unlike the private sector, where your boss looks at you and says, "I don't like how you're giving me the stink-eye today. Out you go." One could say that's good or bad, but, on the whole, I think the model should be closer to the private sector. We should trust managers to do their job without excessive oversight and process. That's clearly about as far from the realm of possibility as the current system, under which the estimate is 6-12 months to fire a very bad performer. The number of people who win at the Merit Systems Protection Board is still 20-30%.This goes into another issue, which is unionization. If you're part of a collective bargaining agreement — most of the regular federal civil service is — first, you have to go with this independent, union-based arbitration and grievance procedure. You're about 50/50 to win on those if your boss tries to remove you.So if I'm in the union, we go through that arbitration grievance system. If you win and I'm fired, I can take it to the Merit Systems Protection Board. If you win again, I can still take it to the federal courts.You can file different sorts of claims at each part. On Chapter 43, the MSPB is supposed to be about the process, not the evidence, and you just have to show it was followed. On 75, the manager has to show by preponderance of the evidence that the employee is harming the agency. Then there are different standards for what you take to the courts, and different standards according to each collective bargaining agreement for the grievance procedure when someone is disciplined. It's a very complicated, abstruse, and procedure-heavy process that makes it very difficult to remove people, which is why the involuntary separation rate at the federal government and most state governments is many multiples lower than the private sector.So, you would love to get me off your team because I'm abysmal. But you have no stomach for going through this whole process and I'm going to fight it. I'm ornery and contrarian and will drag this fight out. In practice, what do managers in the federal government do with their poor performers?I always heard about this growing up. There's the windowless office in the basement without a phone, or now an internet connection. You place someone down there, hope they get the message, and sooner or later they leave. But for plenty of people in America, that's the dream job. You just get to sit and nobody bothers you for eight hours. You punch in at 9 and punch out at 5, and that's your day. "Great. I'll collect that salary for another 10 years." But generally you just try to make life unpleasant for that person.Public sector collective bargaining in the US is new. I tend to think of it as just how the civil service works. But until about 50 years ago, there was no collective bargaining in the public sector.At the state level, it started with Wisconsin at the end of the 1950s. There were famous local government reforms beginning with the Little Wagner Act [signed in 1958] in New York City. Senator Robert Wagner had created the National Labor Relations Board. His son Robert F. Wagner Jr., mayor of New York, created the first US collective bargaining system at the local level in the ‘60s. In ‘62, John F. Kennedy issued an executive order which said, "We're going to deal officially with public sector unions,” but it was all informal and non-statutory.It wasn't until Title VII of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act that unions had a formal, statutory role in our federal service system. This is shockingly new. To some extent, that was the great loss to many civil service reformers in ‘78. They wanted to get through a lot of these other big reforms about hiring and firing, but they gave up on the unions to try to get those. Some people think that exception swallowed the rest of the rules. The union power that was garnered in ‘78 overcame the other reforms people hoped to accomplish. Soon, you had the majority of the federal workforce subject to collective bargaining.But that's changing now too. Part of that Civil Service Reform Act said, “If your position is in a national security-related position, the president can determine it's not subject to collective bargaining.” Trump and the OPM have basically said, “Most positions in the federal government are national security-related, and therefore we're going to declare them off-limits to collective bargaining.” Some people say that sounds absurd. But 60% of the civilian civil service workforce is the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security. I am not someone who tries to go too easy on this crowd. I think there's a heck of a lot that needs to be reformed. But it's also worth remembering that the majority of the civil service workforce are in these three agencies that Republicans tend to like a lot.Now, whether people like Veterans Affairs is more of an open question. We have some particular laws there about opening up processes after the scandals in the 2010s about waiting lists and hospitals. You had veterans hospitals saying, "We're meeting these standards for getting veterans in the door for these waiting lists." But they were straight-up lying about those standards. Many people who were on these lists waiting for months to see a doctor died in the interim, some from causes that could have been treated had they seen a VA doctor. That led to Congress doing big reforms in the VA in 2014 and 2017, precisely because everyone realized this is a problem.So, Trump has put out these executive orders stopping collective bargaining in all of these agencies that touch national security. Some of those, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seem like a tough sell. I guess that, if you want to dig a mine and the Chinese are trying to dig their own mine and we want the mine to go quickly without the EPA pettifogging it, maybe. But the core ones are pretty solid. So far the courts have upheld the executive order to go in place. So collective bargaining there could be reformed.But in the rest of the government, there are these very extreme, long collective bargaining agreements between agencies and their unions. I've hit on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as one that's had pretty extensive bargaining with its union. When we created the TSA to supervise airport security, a lot of people said, "We need a crème de la crème to supervise airports after 9/11. We want to keep this out of union hands, because we know unions are going to make it difficult to move people around." The Obama administration said, "Nope, we're going to negotiate with the union." Now you have these huge negotiations with the unions about parking spots, hours of employment, uniforms, and everything under the sun. That makes it hard for managers in the TSA to decide when people should go where or what they should do.One thing we've talked about on Statecraft in past episodes — for instance, with John Kamensky, who was a pivotal figure in the Clinton-Gore reforms — was this relationship between government employees and “Beltway Bandits”: the contractors who do jobs you might think of as civil service jobs. One critique of that ‘90s Clinton-Gore push, “Reinventing Government,” was that although they shrank the size of the civil service on paper, the number of contractors employed by the federal government ballooned to fill that void. They did not meaningfully reduce the total number of people being paid by the federal government. Talk to me about the relationship between the civil service reform that you'd like to see and this army of folks who are not formally employees.Every government service is a combination of public employees and inputs, and private employees and inputs. There's never a single thing the government does — federal, state, or local — that doesn't involve inputs from the private sector. That could be as simple as the uniforms for the janitors. Even if you have a publicly employed janitor, who buys the mop? You're not manufacturing the mops.I understand the critique that the excessive focus on full-time employees in the 1990s led to contracting out some positions that could be done directly by the government. But I think that misses how much of the government can and should be contracted out. The basic Office of Management and Budget (OMB) statute [OMB Circular No. A-76] defining what is an essential government duty should still be the dividing line. What does the government have to do, because that is the public overseeing a process? Versus, what can the private sector just do itself?I always cite Stephen Goldsmith, the old mayor of Indianapolis. He proposed what he called the Yellow Pages test. If you open the Yellow Pages [phone directory] and three businesses do that business, the government should not be in that business. There's three garbage haulers out there. Instead of having a formal government garbage-hauling department, just contract out the garbage.With the internet, you should have a lot more opportunities to contract stuff out. I think that is generally good, and we should not have the federal government going about a lot of the day-to-day procedural things that don't require public input. What a lot of people didn't recognize is how much pressure that's going to put on government contracting officers at the federal level. Last time I checked there were 40,000 contracting officers. They have a lot of power. In the most recent year for which we have data, there were $750 billion in federal contracts. This is a substantial part of our economy. If you total state and local, we're talking almost 10% of our whole economy goes through government contracts. This is mind-boggling. In the public policy world, we should all be spending about 10% of our time thinking about contracting.One of the things I think everyone recognized is that contractors should have more authority. Some of the reform that happened with people like [Steven] Kelman — who was the Office of Federal Procurement Policy head in the ‘90s under Clinton — was, "We need to give these people more authority to just take a credit card and go buy a sheaf of paper if that's what they need. And we need more authority to get contract bids out appropriately.”The same message that animates civil service reform should animate these contracting discussions. The goal should be setting clear goals that you want — for either a civil servant or a contractor — and then giving that person the discretion to meet them. If you make the civil service more stultified, or make pay compression more extreme, you're going to have to contract more stuff out.People talk about the General Schedule [pay scale], but we haven't talked about the Federal Wage Schedule system at all, which is the blue-collar system that encompasses about 200,000 federal employees. Pay compression means those guys get paid really well. That means some managers rightfully think, "I'd like to have full-time supervision over some role, but I would rather contract it out, because I can get it a heck of a lot cheaper."There's a continuous relationship: If we make the civil service more stultified, we're going to push contracting out into more areas where maybe it wouldn't be appropriate. But a lot of things are always going to be appropriate to contract out. That means we need to give contracting officers and the people overseeing contracts a lot of discretion to carry out their missions, and not a lot of oversight from the Government Accountability Office or the courts about their bids, just like we shouldn't give OPM excess input into the civil service hiring process.This is a theme I keep harping on, on Statecraft. It's counterintuitive from a reformer's perspective, but it's true: if you want these processes to function better, you're going to have to stop nitpicking. You're going to have to ease up on the throttle and let people make their own decisions, even when sometimes you're not going to agree with them.This is a tension that's obviously happening in this administration. You've seen some clear interest in decentralization, and you've seen some centralization. In both the contract and the civil service sphere, the goal for the central agencies should be giving as many options as possible to the local managers, making sure they don't go extremely off the rails, but then giving those local managers and contracting officials the ability to make their own choices. The General Services Administration (GSA) under this administration is doing a lot of government-wide acquisition contracts. “We establish a contract for the whole government in the GSA. Usually you, the local manager, are not required to use that contract if you want computer services or whatever, but it's an option for you.”OPM should take a similar role. "Here's the system we have set up. You can take that and use it as you want. It's here for you, but it doesn't have to be used, because you might have some very particular hiring decisions to make.” Just like there shouldn't be one contracting decision that decides how we buy both a sheaf of computer paper and an aircraft carrier, there shouldn't be one hiring and firing process for a janitor and a nuclear physicist. That can't be a centralized process, because the very nature of human life is that there's an infinitude of possibilities that you need to allow for, and that means some amount of decentralization.I had an argument online recently about New York City's “buy local” requirement for certain procurement contracts. When they want to build these big public toilets in New York City, they have to source all the toilet parts from within the state, even if they're $200,000 cheaper in Portland, Oregon.I think it's crazy to ask procurement and contracting to solve all your policy problems. Procurement can't be about keeping a healthy local toilet parts industry. You just need to procure the toilet.This is another area where you see similar overlap in some of the civil service and contracting issues. A lot of cities have residency requirements for many of their positions. If you work for the city, you have to live inside the city. In New York, that means you've got a lot of police officers living on Staten Island, or right on the line of the north side of the Bronx, where they're inches away from Westchester. That drives up costs, and limits your population of potential employees.One of the most amazing things to me about the Biden Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was that it encouraged contracting officers to use residency requirements: “You should try to localize your hiring and contracting into certain areas.” On a national level, that cancels out. If both Wyoming and Wisconsin use residency requirements, the net effect is not more people hired from one of those states! So often, people expect the civil service and contracting to solve all of our ills and to point the way forward for the rest of the economy on discrimination, hiring, pay, et cetera. That just leads to, by definition, government being a lot more expensive than the private sector.Over the next three and a half years, what would you like to see the administration do on civil service reform that they haven't already taken up?I think some of the broad-scale layoffs, which seem to be slowing down, were counterproductive. I do think that their ability to achieve their ends was limited by the nature of the reduction-in-force regulations, which made them more counterproductive than they had to be. That's the situation they inherited. But that didn't mean you had to lay off a lot of people without considering the particular jobs they were doing now.And hiring quite a few of them back.Yeah. There are also debates obviously, within the administration, between DOGE and Russ Vought [director of the OMB] and some others on this. Some things, like the Schedule Policy/Career — which is the revival of Schedule F in the first Trump administration — are largely a step in the right direction. Counter to some of the critics, it says, “You can remove someone if they're in a policymaking position, just like if they were completely at-will. But you still have to hire from the typical civil service system.” So, for those concerned about politicization, that doesn't undermine that, because they can't just pick someone from the party system to put in there. I think that's good.They recently had a suitability requirement rule that I think moved in the right direction. That says, “If someone's not suitable for the workforce, there are other ways to remove them besides the typical procedures.” The ideal system is going to require some congressional input: it's to have a decentralization of hiring authority to individual managers. Which means the OPM — now under Scott Kupor, who has finally been confirmed — saying, "The OPM is here to assist you, federal managers. Make sure you stay within the broad lanes of what the administration's trying to accomplish. But once we give you your general goals, we're going to trust you to do that, including hiring.”I've mentioned it a few times, but part of the Chance to Compete Act — which was mentioned in one of Trump's Day One executive orders, people forget about this — was saying, “Implement the Chance to Compete Act to the maximum extent of the law.” Bring more subject-matter expertise into the hiring process, allow more discretion for managers and input into the hiring process. I think carrying that bipartisan reform out is going to be a big step, but it's going to take a lot more work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Today, Hunter was joined once again by Grant Miller, Salt Lake City Public Defender and Representative of Utah's 24th House District. Last time that he was on the show, Grant was running for office. Now, Grant joins to discuss how his first legislative session went. From passing a bill to reduce fines and fees to helping ensure the Overton window didn't shift too far to tough on crime side, Grant gives us a reason to be optimistic even when we hold minimal political power.   Guest: Grant Miller, Public Defender and Utah House Representative, Salt Lake City, House District 24   Resources: Contact Grant https://www.grantmillerforhouse24.com/ https://www.instagram.com/grantistheguy/?hl=en     Contact Hunter Parnell:                                 Publicdefenseless@gmail.com  Instagram @PublicDefenselessPodcast Twitter                                                                 @PDefenselessPod www.publicdefenseless.com  Subscribe to the Patreon www.patreon.com/PublicDefenselessPodcast  Donate on PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=5KW7WMJWEXTAJ Donate on Stripe https://donate.stripe.com/7sI01tb2v3dwaM8cMN Trying to find a specific part of an episode? Use this link to search transcripts of every episode of the show! https://app.reduct.video/o/eca54fbf9f/p/d543070e6a/share/c34e85194394723d4131/home  

In this episode of the Buckeye Weekly Podcast, hosts Tony Gerdeman and Tom Orr dive into the controversial proposal by Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti for a 24 or 28-team college football playoff. The hosts express their concerns about the idea, discuss the concept of the Overton window, and analyze how this could affect the sport's regular season. They also look at various hypothetical playoff matchups and explain why such an expansion could render the regular season almost meaningless. Tune in for a detailed discussion on the future of college football playoff formats. 00:00 Introduction and Apologies 00:41 Controversial Playoff Expansion Proposal 02:04 Debating the Overton Window 03:28 Big Ten's Strategic Response 05:35 Hypothetical Playoff Scenarios 08:01 Impact on Regular Season and Championship Integrity 12:13 Chat GPT's Bracket Analysis 19:49 Final Thoughts and Sign-Off

In this powerful Monday Mindset session, Barry Overton—veteran, retired Denver police officer, entrepreneur, and real estate leader—shares his journey of discovering true purpose through service. Using the simple metaphor of a pencil, Barry reveals how greatness isn't found in titles or status, but in the impact we leave on others. He explores the pain of purpose versus the pain of regret, the role of mentorship and accountability, and the importance of embracing failure as growth. Packed with wisdom and personal stories, Barry inspires agents to realign their businesses and lives around fulfillment, service, and legacy.

The three mustaches take a trip to Southern California to solve the mysterious death of 46-year-old Janet Overton. After suffering from a mysterious illness for over two years, Janet suddenly collapsed in her driveway while preparing to go whale watching with her son. Did she die of natural causes, or something more sinister? Maybe she's born with it… maybe it's MURDER.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/crime-corner-with-jessie-wiseman/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Lexlee Overton is a former trial lawyer who spent more than 30 years in the courtroom before choosing a different path. After experiencing firsthand how the legal profession can wear lawyers down, she founded Mind Over Law to help lawyers move beyond burnout and lead with greater clarity, resilience, and purpose. Today, she works with both individual lawyers and legal teams using a science-based approach that combines mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and practical leadership tools to build healthier law firms with better performance. WHAT'S COVERED IN THIS EPISODE ABOUT LAWYER WELL-BEING AND HIGH-PERFORMING TEAMS The legal profession loves to reward hustle, grind it out, power through, keep your head down and just get the work done. But what if the real power comes from doing things differently? Lexlee Overton spent decades playing by those rules until she realized something had to change. After 30 years in the courtroom, a health crisis at age 30 made her question everything about how lawyers are supposed to work. She founded Mind Over Law because she believes lawyers can be healthier, happier people and still do excellent work. Now she works with individual lawyers and legal teams, teaching them that energy management is way more important than time management. She's discovered that when leaders work on themselves first, they naturally start building better teams. In this episode of The Lawyer's Edge podcast, Elise speaks with Lexlee about why that "badge of honor" mentality around overwork is actually making lawyers less powerful, what happens when teams are chronically depleted, and how law firm leaders can build the kind of culture that actually attracts and keeps good people. 2:32 - Lexlee's personal breaking point and wake-up call 5:22 - The changing attitudes toward mindfulness in law 9:59 - Warning signs lawyers ignore before burnout hits 12:51 - Simple practices for skeptical, hard-driving lawyers 16:06 - The neuroscience of fight-or-flight in legal practice 18:32 - The statistics on lawyer mental health and malpractice 20:36 - Reframing the "lose your edge" mentality 23:15 - Why law firm leaders should care about well-being initiatives 26:41 - Using biofeedback to demonstrate coherency 29:12 - The one leadership habit Lexlee would change overnight 30:58 - Emotional intelligence in high-performing legal teams 37:16 - Getting started with culture change 40:04 - The curse of knowledge insight MENTIONED IN BEYOND BURNOUT: BUILDING HIGH-PERFORMING LEGAL TEAMS THROUGH WELL-BEING Mind Over Law | LinkedIn American Bar Association (ABA) study on lawyer depression and substance abuse Get connected with the coaching team: hello@thelawyersedge.com The Lawyer's Edge SPONSOR FOR THIS EPISODE... Today's episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women's Business Development Accelerator, a 9-month business development program created BY women lawyers for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers AND supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession. If you are interested in either participating in the program or sponsoring a woman in your firm to enroll, learn more about Ignite and sign up for our registration alerts by visiting www.thelawyersedge.com/ignite.

Jeremy Wendt sits down with Kim Dillon, the new Director of Overton County Schools, to discuss her unexpected journey from classroom teacher to district leadership. Originally planning to become an attorney, Dillon switched paths after having children and has now been in education for 23 years. She shares her thoughts on how career pathways have evolved, the importance of secondary education, and the recent success of AP and dual enrollment programs — including record-high AP test scores and the enthusiastic support behind the AP Academy they are hoping to implement this coming school year. Dillon also addresses the district's new no-phone policy, acknowledging the challenges of implementation while emphasizing the need for focused learning environments. Despite the pressures of state-level decisions, she remains passionate about her work and reminds us that the professionalism of educators deserves far more recognition than it often receives. Listen To The Local Matters Podcast Today! News Talk 94.1

Success doesn't just happen—it's built, brick by brick, on the foundation of discipline. In this episode, Barry Overton breaks down the three pillars that can transform your business and life: consistency, self-control, and resilience. Drawing lessons from legends like Kobe Bryant and entrepreneurs like Sara Blakely, Barry reveals:How a 4 AM routine can create years of competitive advantageWhy saying “no” might be the most powerful business decision you makeHow to turn setbacks into setups for bigger winsThe daily non-negotiables that keep top agents growing“Guard your yes” — a mindset shift to eliminate distractionsFrom goal-setting hacks to emotional resilience techniques, this Mindset Monday isn't just motivation—it's a practical playbook for building habits that last.

Mentor Sessions Ep. 023: Robbie Bernstein on Bitcoin vs. Government, Trump Fiscal Policy, Decentralization & Media CollapseWhat if Bitcoin is the ultimate Trojan horse against government overreach, Trump's chaotic fiscal policy, and dying centralized media? In this unfiltered Mentor Sessions interview, comedian and podcaster Robbie Bernstein (Run Your Mouth, Part of the Problem) torches the status quo, exposing how currency manipulation erodes personal responsibility, why decentralization is killing mainstream media, and Bitcoin's role as a defiant asset in a fiat nightmare. From Epstein conspiracies to Porch Tour tales, Robbie unpacks Trump's tariffs, government corruption, and why comedy is the new truth serum. Hesitant on Bitcoin? Robbie reveals his 40% net worth bet and how it defunds endless inflation. Dive into this wild ride blending Bitcoin, Trump, government scams, decentralization, media death, Epstein intrigue, currency wars, fiscal policy fails, Porch Tour antics, and razor-sharp comedy—essential for escaping the matrix!Chapters:• 00:00:00 - Intro• 00:01:06 - Wild Open: Epstein, Bitcoin Price & Final Solutions JokeHumor hits hard with Epstein lists, Bitcoin forecasts, and satirical takes.• 00:02:15 - Politics Realignment: Trump vs. DemocratsDiscussing Trump's declining popularity and why he's still the better option.• 00:03:18 - Porch Tour Tales: Meeting America's Autistic FansRobbie shares road stories from his unique backyard comedy tour.• 00:03:48 - Trump Critique: Fiscal Policy, Tariffs & Central PlanningBreaking down Trump's nightmares on economy, wars, and factory jobs obsession.• 00:06:15 - Bitcoin Voting Bloc: Why Root for Trump?How Bitcoiners influenced politics and Trump's pro-Bitcoin promises.• 00:08:08 - Currency Wars: Highlander Analogy & Bitcoin Trojan HorseBitcoin as the one true currency driving out fiat, with stablecoins' role.• 00:11:47 - Comedians as Truth Tellers: Covid & Media DeathWhy comics outperform journalists, plus Overton window shifts post-Covid.• 00:13:36 - Epstein Deep Dive: Trump's Handling & Elite BlackmailUnpacking the Epstein saga, Trump's fumble, and intelligence ties.• 00:18:30 - Decentralization Beauty: Media & Culture ShiftsHow media decentralization empowers ideas, with Bitcoin parallels.• 00:24:44 - Comedy Roots: Politics, Upbringing & SkepticismRobbie's journey from comedy to politics, influenced by 2008 crisis.• 00:32:02 - Batshit Conspiracies: Aliens, UFOs & Sorting TruthWild theories on aliens, government lies, and incentive structures.• 00:40:53 - Debt Awareness: $37T Hole & Bitcoin ContrarianismPublic ignorance on debt, plus Robbie's 40% Bitcoin allocation.• 00:52:44 - Wrap-Up: Best Sandwiches, Comedians & Porch Tour PromoFood favorites, inspiring comics, and invites to Robbie's events.About Robbie Bernstein:Comedian & Podcaster, Run Your Mouth & Part of the ProblemX: @robbiethefireWebsite: porchtour.com⚡ POWERED by @Sazmining — the easiest way to mine Bitcoin and take control of your financial future. ⛏️You own the rig

video: https://youtu.be/viTzTFszR_Q In this episode of Destination Linux, we interview the founder of Kove, Dr. John Overton, about the journey from co-inventing distributed hash tables that powered the early cloud to his latest breakthrough Kove:SDM, a Software Defined Memory system that literally lets servers "download more RAM". Overton dives into the open source ethos that shaped his career. If you're passionate about Linux, composable infrastructure, or tech that bends the laws of physics, this conversation is a must watch. Forum Discussion Thread (https://destinationlinux.net/forum) Download as MP3 (https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/32f28071-0b08-4ea1-afcc-37af75bd83d6/38a5a806-3b8d-42aa-b5f1-dbd2d2e219cd.mp3) Support the show by becoming a patron at tuxdigital.com/membership (https://tuxdigital.com/membership) or get some swag at tuxdigital.com/store (https://tuxdigital.com/store) Hosted by: Ryan (DasGeek) = dasgeek.net (https://dasgeek.net) Jill Bryant = jilllinuxgirl.com (https://jilllinuxgirl.com) Michael Tunnell = michaeltunnell.com (https://michaeltunnell.com) Links: https://kove.com/ (https://kove.com/) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributedhashtable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table) Chapters: 00:00:00 Intro 00:01:21 Why we turned a 3-minute booth chat into a full interview 00:02:40 John Overton of Kove 00:03:48 Early career & inventing distributed hash tables 00:16:10 Foundational tech that made today's cloud possible 00:24:56 Sandfly Security, agentless Linux security [ad] 00:26:48 John's take on AI 00:39:52 The birth of Kove SDM – why it started 01:03:16 Making "download more RAM" real – memory-pool magic 01:17:40 Kove SDM vs. Compute Express Link (CXL) 01:24:54 What are there new challenges in computing you're excited to tackle? 01:35:39 Lightning round – guilty pleasures, movies & more 01:40:03 Outro

How has the landscape of legal education shifted, and what ramifications has that already started having? How do politics factor into judicial appointments more than ever before, and how did we get to this point?Ilya L. Shapiro is a senior fellow and the director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. He's also the author of several books, including Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America's Highest Court Cato Supreme Court Review.Greg and Ilya explore issues related to Supreme Court nominations, cancel culture, and the impact of bias in legal education. Their conversation also addresses the longstanding politicization of judicial appointments, challenges within legal academia such as DEI and student activism, and the broader implications for law and society. Ilya also shares potential reforms for improving the legal profession and education system.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:When the law becomes just another form of activism35:49: Another failure of our systems of legal education or of the culture of the legal profession. Young lawyers seeing themselves as the law or their legal tools as just another part of activism, rather than as a profession. Or law schools not teaching lawyers the same way. The way to be a good lawyer is to be able to understand and see all sides of a given argument or issue or dispute. That is how you can best advocate your own sides, your own client's position. Well, if half of that 360 degrees is illegitimate, or you cannot even discuss beyond the pale, outside the Overton window, as they say, then you are going to be a much less effective lawyer. And yes, I think the legal profession has suffered, in general, its credibility, its reputation.What universities were meant to be43:19: It is the purpose of universities to develop, to have free inquiry, to have civil debate, to confront new ideas. And if universities have not been doing that for a whole host of reasons, then I think that is a level of criticism—something that they should be held to account for.On judges and legal objectivity04:36: You would hope that law and policy are different things, because there is a reason why we separate out the judicial power, and that reason is for it to be a counter-majoritarian check. You do not need judges to buttress popular opinions. You need judges to protect against abuses of power by elected officials. You need judges to protect individual rights against mob rule. And so, it cannot be the case that what is right on the law is always going to be what the majority of policy views. When fear shapes the future of the legal profession30:27: Most students just want to get their degree, get their credential, get a job, have some fun while they are at it, and that is about it. They are not politically motivated or philosophically motivated. They are just there because—especially when we are talking about law schools, rather, or some other professional school as opposed to college—they are there because this is the next step on their career trajectory, and they are just trying to keep their head down so as not to be caught in the cancellation crossfire. And it is fear, and this is how I counsel students, is that you do not have to be a martyr. You do not have to stand up and be an individual, objecting to every injustice you face.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Ketanji Brown JacksonBurwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.Robert BorkTheodore RooseveltJames MadisonAlexander HamiltonJohn JayMancur OlsonWilliam TreanorThe Paper ChaseLewis F. Powell Jr.John Paul StevensGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at The Manhattan InstituteProfile at the CATO InstituteProfile for Burke Law GroupLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Substack - Shapiro's GavelAmazon Author PageLawless: The Miseducation of America's ElitesSupreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America's Highest CourtCato Supreme Court ReviewReligious Liberties for Corporations?: Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the ConstitutionAmicus Brief -- Alvarez v. Smith

Trump’s new religious liberty order isn’t just a policy shift—it’s a cultural permission slip. In this episode, the guys lay out why now is the most strategic time in a generation to start a business, plant a church, or build something that lasts. With 10,000 baby boomers retiring a day, and the Overton window swinging wide open, Christians have a window to reclaim territory our apathy gave away. We break down how to seize this moment without waiting for permission, what faithful entrepreneurship looks like in a post-COVID economy, and why the church must stop outsourcing courage. Don’t waste this presidency. Don’t wait for “someday.” The time to build is now. Fight Laugh Feast 2025 Conference (October 16-18, Nashville) - Register HERE: https://flfnetwork.com

Trump’s new religious liberty order isn’t just a policy shift—it’s a cultural permission slip. In this episode, the guys lay out why now is the most strategic time in a generation to start a business, plant a church, or build something that lasts. With 10,000 baby boomers retiring a day, and the Overton window swinging wide open, Christians have a window to reclaim territory our apathy gave away. We break down how to seize this moment without waiting for permission, what faithful entrepreneurship looks like in a post-COVID economy, and why the church must stop outsourcing courage. Don’t waste this presidency. Don’t wait for “someday.” The time to build is now. Fight Laugh Feast 2025 Conference (October 16-18, Nashville) - Register HERE: https://flfnetwork.com

The latest guest on The PR Week podcast is Cheryl Overton, founder of Cheryl Overton Communications and an alum of agencies including Egami Group, Zeno Group, PMK*BNC and Edelman. She talks about the growing appreciation for earned media and its versatility, why brands are wise to focus on consumers over the age of 50 and the changing nature of DEI at corporations. Overton also discusses the biggest marketing and communications news of the week, from more personnel changes at Edelman, Astronomer's celebrity response to its corporate crisis, American Eagle's controversial jeans campaign and much more.  AI Deciphered is back—live in New York City this November 13th.Join leaders from brands, agencies, and platforms for a future-focused conversation on how AI is transforming media, marketing, and the retail experience. Ready to future-proof your strategy? Secure your spot now at aidecipheredsummit.com. Use code POD at check out for $100 your ticket! Follow us: @PRWeekUSReceive the latest industry news, insights, and special reports. Start Your Free 1-Month Trial Subscription To PRWeek

Trump’s new religious liberty order isn’t just a policy shift—it’s a cultural permission slip. In this episode, the guys lay out why now is the most strategic time in a generation to start a business, plant a church, or build something that lasts. With 10,000 baby boomers retiring a day, and the Overton window swinging wide open, Christians have a window to reclaim territory our apathy gave away. We break down how to seize this moment without waiting for permission, what faithful entrepreneurship looks like in a post-COVID economy, and why the church must stop outsourcing courage. Don’t waste this presidency. Don’t wait for “someday.” The time to build is now. Fight Laugh Feast 2025 Conference (October 16-18, Nashville) - Register HERE: https://flfnetwork.com

‘More Sufficiency Now!' tees - for a sufficiently limited time onlyThere may no longer be an insufficiency of sufficiency themed t-shirts walking the streets but YOUR opportunity to join the burgeoning sufficiency movement is rapidly closing like the Overton window on climate ambition! YOU can make sufficiency a thing by heading to our merch page and grabbing one of these tees, which will only be available for the next week before they disappear like the t-shirt you didn't need in the first place. Run, don't walk over to: www.letmesumup.net/p/merch/.—From the Torres Strait to the Hague, this week climate was in the courts and your intrepid hosts cross examined not one but two landmark climate court cases: one dismissed in Australia, one seismic win in the International Court of Justice. While the case Uncle Pabai Pabai and Uncle Paul Kabai brought against the Commonwealth to Australia's Federal Court found the Federal Government does not owe a duty of care to prevent climate change impacts on Torres Strait Islanders, the judgement was not without a judicial side-eye at past governments' climate targets—“window dressing” and “no regard for science” were phrases that made it into the ruling. This excellent summary from Adam Morton at the Guardian is worth a read.Further afield, what started as a grassroots campaign from Pacific Island students led to a unanimous advisory opinion from the UN's highest court. Their view? States have binding obligations to protect the climate—and yes, they could be held liable for climate damages. The implications? This legal mic drop will have global ripple effects for some time. Watch this space!Our main courseRefined Ambitions or Rube Goldberg machines powered by beef fat and hope? Deloitte's recent report for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, “Refined Ambitions: Exploring Australia's Low Carbon Liquid Fuel Potential' made it clear that clean-ish fuels can be yours, for a HEFA-ty price! Your intrepid hosts levelled-up on acronyms (HEFA, ATJ, FT, and PTL, anyone?) and zeroed in on aviation, freight, and mining as the big targets for low carbon, liquid fuels. And speaking of zeroes. These fuels are so expensive - like $1,000 to $5,000 per tonne of CO₂ abated expensive - this report had Luke feeling bullish on green hydrogen! If we're fuelling our planes with $10/litre synthetic champagne, maybe it's time to rethink the flight plan. No easy wins here. One more thingsTennant's One More Thing is: the Shift Key podcast Summer School miniseries, with Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins! Basics; thermal techs; renewable techs. More to come!Frankie's One More Thing is: The UN report Seizing the moment of opportunity - ahead of COP30 and the next round of NDCs it's efficiency, renewables, electrification for the win!Luke's One More Thing is: An on-the-ground report from Allegra Spender's tax roundtable.And that's it for now, Summerupperers. There is now a one-stop-shop for all your LMSU needs: head toletmesumup.netto support us on Patreon, procure merch, find back episodes, and leave us a voicemail!

In this episode, Vance Crowe delves into the cultural shifts that are quietly but rapidly unfolding beneath the surface of our society. This change, is not inherently good or bad, but it's crucial to be aware of it to avoid the dangers of mob mentality. Vance discusses how the narratives that have long defined us are being challenged by new voices and ideas that were once considered unthinkable. Figures like Nick Fuentes and Sam Hyde are gaining traction among young people, offering perspectives that challenge the status quo and the traditional Overton window of acceptable discourse.These emerging voices are not just about political dissent; they represent a broader cultural shift where young people are seeking new ideas and narratives that resonate with their experiences and frustrations. As mainstream platforms struggle to contain these ideas, alternative platforms are flourishing, providing a space for free speech and new ideas. Vance explores how this cultural change could impact power dynamics and societal structures, urging listeners to critically engage with these ideas and consider their implications.Legacy Interviews - A service that records individuals and couples telling their life stories so that future generations can know their family history. https://www.legacyinterviews.com/experienceRiver.com - Invest in Bitcoin with Confidence https://river.com/signup?r=OAB5SKTP

¿Qué te pareció este episodio?¿Qué es la ventana de Overton y por qué ya no disfrutas de tu superhéroe favorito?Lee el artículo aquí: https://jugo.pe/superman-no-se-volvio-woke/Al suscribirte a Jugo recibes nuestro contenido diariamente. Tienes la oportunidad de ser juguero por un día. Pero, sobre todo, patrocinas que nuestro contenido llegue gratuitamente a personas que lo necesitan. Contamos con tu apoyo para no desenchufar la licuadora. Suscríbete aquí. Haz clic aquí para seguirnos en Twitter Haz clic aquí para seguirnos en Facebook Haz clic aquí para seguirnos en Instagram

Southwest Michigan's Morning News podcast is prepared and delivered by the WSJM Newsroom. For these stories and more, visit https://www.wsjm.com and follow us for updates on Facebook. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today's news: Riverwood Center CEO Ric Compton is sounding the alarm about some upcoming changes to how the state manages behavioral health services. Plans to develop the former Overton property in South Haven into housing have hit another delay. A new invasive species has been found at the Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery in Mattawan. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today's news: Riverwood Center CEO Ric Compton is sounding the alarm about some upcoming changes to how the state manages behavioral health services. Plans to develop the former Overton property in South Haven into housing have hit another delay. A new invasive species has been found at the Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery in Mattawan. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jesus' famous words in Matthew 24 come to life in the modern day, as we see wars, rumors of wars and rumors saturate the news cycle. But those who have studied history through a biblical lens know that this is just Jesuit theater, staged and choreographed conflicts, dialectics, signs and wonders — all to move the Overton window so that accepting the unacceptable becomes the norm.* 00:00 - Montage* 26:02 - Introduction* 36:44 - Why Nukes Are Fake* 1:36:25 - The Battle of Armageddon* 1:47:02 - Jesuit Theater* 3:11:47 - Floods* 3:29:50 - Iran War* 4:08:37 - Epstein & The Jews* 5:35:39 - Image of the Beast* 7:08:39 - Final Thoughts This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.danceoflife.com/subscribe

Referencias: - Noveno misionero muerto en lo que va del año: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2025/05/02/lds-missionary-magna-killed-after/ - Niños secuestrados por secta fundamentalista: https://abc7.com/post/amber-alert-issued-missing-idaho-teens-linked-fundamentalist-church-jesus-christ-day-saints-group/16852764/  - Revelación sobre la poligamia: https://www.kuer.org/race-religion-social-justice/2025-06-26/an-1880s-lds-polygamy-revelation-raises-awkward-questions-today-says-historian  - Tribune: Oaks y el electroshock: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/11/16/dallin-oaks-says-shock/ - FAIR: Oaks y el electroshock: https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/aversion-therapy-at-byu  - Oaks y la criminalización de la homosexualidad: https://lattergaystories.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Principles-to-Govern.pdf - KnoWhy 2: El Libro de Mormón como manual administrativo: https://centraldle.es/knowhy/fue-utilizado-el-libro-de-mormon-como-el-primer-manual-administrativo-de-la-iglesia

Is your 2025 still aligned with the goals you set back in January? Barry Overton breaks down how to reset your business, reclaim your time, and build consistent momentum—with a life you actually love.In this energizing episode of Agent Power Huddle, Barry Overton shares how his move to San Diego transformed more than just his zip code—it recalibrated his lifestyle, business strategy, and mindset.This session is packed with real estate coaching gold for agents feeling stuck, distracted, or off-track midyear.

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada.Dr. DeVries gives an overview of his presentation on the economics of feeding more than one ration to lactating cows, with special consideration for additional costs (beyond increased feed costs) such as delivering additional loads of TMR, labor cost and mixing errors. He notes that producer surveys indicate that simplicity and not making mistakes are reasons given for not feeding an increased number of different rations. The surveys suggest there is some real money to be made if appropriate rations are used. Diminishing marginal returns should also be considered: going from one ration to two will yield the largest gain in income over feed costs, with each additional ration yielding smaller gains. (1:52) Dr. Burhans and Dr. Overton discuss some considerations for feeding multiple rations, including environmental impacts, herd size, pen availability, feed costs and milk production impacts. Dr. DeVries emphasizes the costs of feed delivery are a big part of this as well. (9:20)The panel discusses a spreadsheet that Dr. DeVries presented during his presentation to calculate delivery costs. Dr. Burhans mentions some of the on-farm software gives an assessment of how close the actual ration was to the formulated ration, allowing for adjustments if needed. (16:28)The panel considers the importance of body condition scores and recording actual data during nutritionist walk-throughs of dairy herds. They also delve into feeding frequency and optimal feed refusals levels. (27:45)Panelists share their take-home thoughts. (43:08)Please subscribe and share with your industry friends to invite more people to join us at the Real Science Exchange virtual pub table.  If you want one of our Real Science Exchange t-shirts, screenshot your rating, review, or subscription, and email a picture to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Include your size and mailing address, and we'll mail you a shirt.

We want to encourage you to not just sit back and watch, but to really engage along with your church family today. So, gather up the family and grab your Bible, share this and invite your friends, turn your volume up, and let's worship Jesus TOGETHER today!Ready to take a next step? (Baptism, serving, etc) https://harvesttime.churchcenter.com/people/forms/125818Need prayer? Text HTPRAYER to 97000 and someone from our team will connect with you.Give online here: https://harvesttime.net/give

Head and neck cancers have many names based on where the cancer starts. Dr. Overton discusses risk factors, signs and symptoms and treatments.

What if the words you use every day are the biggest barrier to your success? Learn how shifting your language can transform your mindset, your habits—and your future.In this thought-provoking Monday Mindset Training episode, Barry dives into the transformational power of language and how your internal dialogue directly shapes your outcomes in life and business.From simple phrases like “I can't” and “I'll try” to deep mindset rituals inspired by icons like Michael Jordan and Thomas Edison, Barry explores how to rewire your thoughts and create forward momentum—even when the path feels unclear.

In this episode Naamah discusses the gas lighting from the left that is used to attempt to shift the Overton window and much more.

If you are planning on doing AI policy communications to DC policymakers, I recommend watching the full video of the Select Committee on the CCP hearing from this week. In his introductory comments, Ranking Member Representative Krishnamoorthi played a clip of Neo fighting an army of Agent Smiths, described it as misaligned AGI fighting humanity, and then announced he was working on a bill called "The AGI Safety Act" which would require AI to be aligned to human values. On the Republican side, Congressman Moran articulated the risks of AI automated R&D, and how dangerous it would be to let China achieve this capability. Additionally, 250 policymakers (half Republican, half Democrat) signed a letter saying they don't want the Federal government to ban state level AI regulation. The Overton window is rapidly shifting in DC, and I think people should re-evaluate what the [...] --- First published: June 27th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RPYnR7c6ZmZKBoeLG/you-should-update-on-how-dc-is-talking-about-ai --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Still stuck in the hamster wheel of transactions? Discover how Barry built a business that runs without him—and how you can too.In this powerful episode, Barry Overton reveals how he made the leap from top-producing real estate agent to scalable business CEO—and why you should too. If you're feeling stuck chasing commissions or burned out from one-off deals, this session is your roadmap to building systems, creating leverage, and stepping into true entrepreneurial leadership.

If you've ever looked successful on the outside but were secretly falling apart on the inside—this episode is for you.Bill Overton spent decades as a top executive in the HOA industry… until his high-functioning depression caught up with him. In this powerful conversation, he shares what burnout really looks like behind the boardroom doors, why “self-care” isn't enough, and how leaders can model the mental health shift we urgently need.We go deep on his personal crash, his recovery, and how it led to him writing the industry-defining book Managing Mental Health. Bill's not here to sugarcoat anything—but he is here to give you tools, language, and hope.

In this episode of Anchored by the Sword, I'm joined by Naomi Overton—CEO, author, and general editor of Every Woman's Bible. Naomi's heart for people shines through every word as she shares her powerful journey of growing up serving in the orphanages of Tijuana, Mexico, and how a rainy day and a little girl's home changed everything.From that defining childhood moment to leading global ministries like MOPS and Stonecroft, Naomi walks us through her freedom story—a life marked by reconciliation, restoration, and God's vision for flourishing. We also dive into the incredible backstory of Every Woman's Bible—how it came to be, what makes it different, and the worldwide team of women who made it happen.You'll hear about: • Why Ephesians is her anchor • The power of crossing barriers in Jesus' name • How her mission was shaped by love and justice • What it means to truly embrace every woman • Why this Bible is both solid in theology and full of invitationWe also talk about how Every Woman's Bible isn't just another women's Bible—it's an embrace. A place where your story meets God's story and you're reminded you belong.

Get the inside scoop on this year's highly anticipated Plant Trial Roadtrip with Dr. Andrew King, Assistant Professor at Texas A&M AgriLife Research & Extension Center in Overton. In this Green Report Podcast episode, Dr. King previews what growers, retailers, and landscapers can expect when the tour kicks off June 26 in Overton. Discover which plants are standing out in both container and landscape trials, and learn about key insights shaping the season's top performers. Listen in and plan your visit: Watch the Overton Plant Trial Preview

Want a business coach who never sleeps, never judges, and helps you close more deals? Barry shows how AI can reshape your mindset—and your income.In this powerful episode, Barry Overton redefines the coaching game by introducing AI as your personal, always-on mindset mentor. From real estate to entrepreneurship, mindset is often the difference between average and elite—and Barry reveals how tools like ChatGPT can help bridge that gap affordably and effectively.Backed by stats (like 34% more closings in just 90 days) and personal case studies, Barry walks through how AI is transforming everything from listing presentations to daily check-ins. He shares his four-week AI-enhanced mindset training program, along with tools like MIND and WYSA for journaling, accountability, and stress relief.Whether you're just starting or scaling up, this episode delivers a blueprint for integrating AI into your business and self-development routines—with immediate, trackable results.

In this episode, I sit down with Tommy Overton — a rising star in the insurance world who, after just three years, is now taking home $40,000 a month. His secret? A laser-focused Medicare sales strategy and smart cross-selling that maximizes every client interaction.Tommy breaks down exactly how he built his book of business, the systems he uses to generate consistent income, and how you can replicate his success — whether you're new to the game or looking to level up.

Send us a textI sit down once again with Professor Paul Robinson to continue our exploration of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war. We dive into the uncomfortable questions rarely addressed in mainstream media: Have Western sanctions actually worked? Why does media silence dissent within Ukraine? And is Canada's role sustainable—or even justified—in a war with no clear end?From examining the economic reality of sanctions and shadow fleets to questioning the strategic silence on Ukraine's democratic backsliding, this conversation pulls no punches. We also explore the uncomfortable truth about Western foreign policy's double standards, and whether Ukraine is being used as a proxy in a much larger geopolitical chess match.Professor Robinson and I also tackle the peace process—if it can even exist—and the uneasy truth that peace often means compromise no one wants to make. We dissect the differing diplomatic philosophies between the Biden and Trump camps, the shifting Overton window in Canada, and the quiet erosion of civil society's voice in the name of “duty.”Support the showVisit my NEW Website! https://www.christopherbalkaran.comCheck out my Instagram/Tik Tok for daily posts: Instagram @openmindspodTiktok @openmindspodcast

In this episode of The Friendship Tour, we get real about vulnerability — what it means, why it's terrifying, and why it's absolutely essential for deep, lasting friendships. I share a personal story about opening up to Mia during my journey with infertility, and how her response showed me what true friendship looks like in times of pain and uncertainty. Her words offered more than comfort and understanding — they offered hope and a path forward. We also talk about the deeper truth of vulnerability: it's not just sharing a story or a struggle — it's letting yourself be seen for who you really are. And that can be scary. Because if people see the real you and walk away, it hurts in a very real way. But here's the flip side: if someone sees the real you and stays — listens, embraces, supports — that's when friendship deepens. That's when connection gets real. We explore why vulnerability isn't weakness — it's courage. It's how you find your people. And if someone rejects the real you? That tells you everything you need to know. This episode is for anyone who's ever wondered if they're too much, not enough, or just afraid to let the mask drop. We're here to say: it's worth the risk. Want to Connect Between Episodes? 1. Join the Women, Friendship, and Community Facebook group.  2. Follow @thefriendshiptourpodcast on Instagram. 3. Email me at ccurtis@thefriendshiptourpodcast.com.

In this heartfelt episode of The Friendship Tour, I sit down with an old friend, Mia Overton-Smith, for a deep, honest conversation that starts with confidence—and goes so much further. Together, we explore where confidence really comes from and what happens when we struggle to believe we're enough. As the conversation unfolds, we dive into topics like self-love, body image, healing from internal lies, faith, and the powerful act of being a good friend to yourself. It's the kind of real, vulnerable dialogue that only happens between trusted friends—and we're so glad to share it with you.

What if burnout isn't just a personal failure, but a leadership blind spot?In this third episode of our Built to Lead series, host Bridgit Norris sits down with Lexlee Overton—veteran trial lawyer, executive coach, and founder of Mind Over Law—for a conversation that goes far deeper than self-care clichés.You'll learn why exhaustion is baked into the legal culture, how to rewire your nervous system for clarity and performance, and what it really takes to lead without sacrificing your well-being.If you're done glorifying grind and ready to reclaim your energy, this episode offers the exact tools to start now. Don't wait for your body to force the change—this is your wake-up call.Key Takeaways from Bridgit and Lexlee:1. Prioritize Energy Before ProductivityBefore diving into your tasks, take a moment to check in with your energy levels instead of your calendar.By starting the day with a short practice, such as breathwork or intentional movement, you lay the foundation for sustainable focus and clearer decision-making.2. Replace Hustle with CoherencyInstead of powering through stress with more hustle, learn to create internal alignment. Practicing simple techniques like heart-centered breathing before a meeting or tough conversation helps regulate your nervous system and keeps your response intentional, not reactive.3. Time Audit to Reclaim HoursFeeling overwhelmed? Start with a week-long time audit, tracking your tasks in 15-minute increments.This will reveal where your time and energy are going—and more importantly, what you can delegate or eliminate to free up space for what matters most.4. Set a Team Baseline for Emotional Check-insTo prevent burnout from spreading through your team, embed emotional awareness into your weekly stand-ups.Begin each meeting with three prompts: share one win, one current challenge, and one way the team can support you—this builds a culture of trust and shared accountability.5. Reframe the “No Time” NarrativeIf your go-to thought is, “I don't have time,” pause and challenge it.Just three minutes of gratitude-focused breathing can reset your state, calm your mind, and boost your capacity, proving that restoration doesn't have to be time-consuming to be effective. "If you're showing up overwhelmed, you're impacting your team. Like that one: you're not performing, you're not delegating, you're not doing the things that you should be doing, and you also are impacting them in response to that." — Lexlee OvertonGet in touch with Lexlee Overton:Website: https://mindoverlaw.com/Show: Mind Over Law: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mind-over-law-with-lexlee-overton/id1755386630LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexleeoverton/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexleeoverton/Are you a high-achieving woman in law ready to become a powerhouse CEO?Then HER Law was built for you.

On this episode of The 105, National Recruiting Analyst Hudson Standish joins 247Sports Director of Scouting Andrew Ivins preview 5-Star OT Jackson Cantwell's upcoming commitment, break down some of the latest commitments from around the country and go in-depth on the upcoming full 5-Star reveal for the class of 2026. 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

Either Trump ignores the courts, or his presidency will end in failure. It's that simple. Today, I go through a litany of immigration cases to show how far the Overton window has moved in the courts. So even if the Supreme Court magnanimously walks back a few of the rulings, we will still be playing behind par. Also, once again, the Supreme Court appears to be ready to overturn the conservative Fifth Circuit on a health care case, but not overturn liberal circuits. Finally, I discuss the lack of a plan to fortify red states against the hell that is coming our way. RINOs are blocking everything DeSantis wants to do in that regard. Relatedly, I discuss how marijuana is destroying everything in its path and how it's disgusting that most Republicans refuse to block it in red states. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a young man is found shot to death, the investigation delves into the dangers of online dating.Season 17, Episode 9Originally aired: August 6, 2023Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WatchSnappedPodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Did you live in Budapest at one point?How to deal with enormous moral failureDefinitions. Please teach us how to build good definitions.I miss your content brotherWhat have you been doing and will you start making videos again. Do Spotify podcasts like then old days on youtubeWill you shave your head for 4b movement ?What do you think is the value of a college degree anymore?If you feel like every thought you have is outside of society's Overton window should you consider moving?How do you define the ‘meaning of life'?Hi Stef, hope you're doing great. I used to watch your podcasts when you were on YT.Won't you take me to funky town?Seriously, I don't think the brainwashed radical leftists are going to stop. What are your thoughts?Are politicians subject to contract law? (Why don't they simply put their campaign promises in writing?)Why do the masses hate the truth so much, and those who speak it?GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK!https://peacefulparenting.com/Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025