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The Deputy Prime Minister believes the Government would be better off with the part-privatisation of Interislander ferries. A Treasury paper presented to Cabinet by the Minister for Rail, Winston Peters, says the Government can consider private investment to reduce costs. David Seymour agrees with the idea and says the Government has been far too relaxed with capital. He told Mike Hosking the Government is not a good operator of commercial enterprises, and there's no shortage of evidence for that. Seymour says you have to balance the books, and at the moment the Government owns too many underperforming assets. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has spent years spreading doubt about the safety of vaccines and linking them to autism. Dozens of studies have debunked the theory, but it has nevertheless persisted for years. Part of the reason why may be that autism diagnoses have soared over the last few decades.Dr. Allen Frances is psychiatrist who led the task force that created the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which expanded the definition of Autism. Frances says that expanded definition played a role in the increase.Rates of autism have exploded in recent decades. Could the clinical definition of autism itself be partly to blame? For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss take the elevator to the severed floor of where they work so that their innies can talk about the sociological aspects of a television show they both really like, Apple TV+'s Severance. Partly drawing from a chapter written by Palmer and Schueths in the edited volume, Reintegrating Severance, Eric and Louis explore how ideas found in classical sociology can be used to ‘illumonate' aspects of what we see unfolding in the show's first two seasons. Eric and Louis warn listeners that spoilers for the show are aplenty, so if you haven't watched Seasons 1 and 2 of the show, you might want to sit this one out.Music and sound effects for this episode come from various sources and is licensed under the Creative Commons 0 License, the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0, EFF Open Audio License, or is covered by a SFX (Multi-Use) License or a Commercial License from Epidemic Sound (www.epidemicsound.com). Tracks include:https://freesound.org/people/Tuben/sounds/272044/https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/yrihocqESJ/https://www.epidemicsound.com/sound-effects/tracks/aa2f842f-1dc6-487c-b35d-932422721468/https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/OcH616ujET/https://freesound.org/people/djlprojects/sounds/413641/https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/49eBs9LhPB/https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/7pXD5Vw3m9/https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/Ge4zoQrQS6/https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/A2V5xRtt5S/The opinions expressed in the Sociology of Everything podcast are that of the hosts and/or guest speakers. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone else at UniSA or the institution at large.The Sociology of Everything podcast | www.sociologypodcast.com

For those who haven't heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a two-episode look at the song “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, and the intertwining careers of Joe Boyd, Sandy Denny, and Richard Thompson. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-one-minute bonus episode available, on Judy Collins’ version of this song. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by editing, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum For about an hour this was uploaded with the wrong Elton John clip in place of “Saturday Sun”. This has now been fixed. Resources Because of the increasing problems with Mixcloud’s restrictions, I have decided to start sharing streaming playlists of the songs used in episodes instead of Mixcloud ones. This Tunemymusic link will let you listen to the playlist I created on your streaming platform of choice — however please note that not all the songs excerpted are currently available on streaming. The songs missing from the Tidal version are “Shanten Bells” by the Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” by A.L. Lloyd, two by Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, three by Elton John & Linda Peters, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow” by Sandy Denny and “You Never Know” by Charlie Drake, but the other fifty-nine are there. Other songs may be missing from other services. The main books I used on Fairport Convention as a whole were Patrick Humphries' Meet On The Ledge, Clinton Heylin's What We Did Instead of Holidays, and Kevan Furbank's Fairport Convention on Track. Rob Young's Electric Eden is the most important book on the British folk-rock movement. Information on Richard Thompson comes from Patrick Humphries' Richard Thompson: Strange Affair and Thompson's own autobiography Beeswing.  Information on Sandy Denny comes from Clinton Heylin's No More Sad Refrains and Mick Houghton's I've Always Kept a Unicorn. I also used Joe Boyd's autobiography White Bicycles and Chris Blackwell's The Islander.  And this three-CD set is the best introduction to Fairport's music currently in print. Transcript Before we begin, this episode contains reference to alcohol and cocaine abuse and medical neglect leading to death. It also starts with some discussion of the fatal car accident that ended last episode. There’s also some mention of child neglect and spousal violence. If that’s likely to upset you, you might want to skip this episode or read the transcript. One of the inspirations for this podcast when I started it back in 2018 was a project by Richard Thompson, which appears (like many things in Thompson’s life) to have started out of sheer bloody-mindedness. In 1999 Playboy magazine asked various people to list their “songs of the Millennium”, and most of them, understanding the brief, chose a handful of songs from the latter half of the twentieth century. But Thompson determined that he was going to list his favourite songs *of the millennium*. He didn’t quite manage that, but he did cover seven hundred and forty years, and when Playboy chose not to publish it, he decided to turn it into a touring show, in which he covered all his favourite songs from “Sumer Is Icumen In” from 1260: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Sumer is Icumen In”] Through numerous traditional folk songs, union songs like “Blackleg Miner”, pieces by early-modern composers, Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs, and songs by the Beatles, the Ink Spots, the Kinks, and the Who, all the way to “Oops! I Did It Again”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Oops! I Did it Again”] And to finish the show, and to show how all this music actually ties together, he would play what he described as a “medieval tune from Brittany”, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”] We have said many times in this podcast that there is no first anything, but there’s a reason that Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention’s third album of 1969, and the album other than Unhalfbricking on which their reputation largely rests, was advertised with the slogan “The first (literally) British folk rock album ever”. Folk-rock, as the term had come to be known, and as it is still usually used today, had very little to do with traditional folk music. Rather, the records of bands like The Byrds or Simon and Garfunkel were essentially taking the sounds of British beat groups of the early sixties, particularly the Searchers, and applying those sounds to material by contemporary singer-songwriters. People like Paul Simon and Bob Dylan had come up through folk clubs, and their songs were called folk music because of that, but they weren’t what folk music had meant up to that point — songs that had been collected after being handed down through the folk process, changed by each individual singer, with no single identifiable author. They were authored songs by very idiosyncratic writers. But over their last few albums, Fairport Convention had done one or two tracks per album that weren’t like that, that were instead recordings of traditional folk songs, but arranged with rock instrumentation. They were not necessarily the first band to try traditional folk music with electric instruments — around the same time that Fairport started experimenting with the idea, so did an Irish band named Sweeney’s Men, who brought in a young electric guitarist named Henry McCullough briefly. But they do seem to have been the first to have fully embraced the idea. They had done so to an extent with “A Sailor’s Life” on Unhalfbricking, but now they were going to go much further: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves” (from about 4:30)] There had been some doubt as to whether Fairport Convention would even continue to exist — by the time Unhalfbricking, their second album of the year, was released, they had been through the terrible car accident that had killed Martin Lamble, the band’s drummer, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson’s girlfriend. Most of the rest of the band had been seriously injured, and they had made a conscious decision not to discuss the future of the band until they were all out of hospital. Ashley Hutchings was hospitalised the longest, and Simon Nicol, Richard Thompson, and Sandy Denny, the other three surviving members of the band, flew over to LA with their producer and manager, Joe Boyd, to recuperate there and get to know the American music scene. When they came back, the group all met up in the flat belonging to Denny’s boyfriend Trevor Lucas, and decided that they were going to continue the band. They made a few decisions then — they needed a new drummer, and as well as a drummer they wanted to get in Dave Swarbrick. Swarbrick had played violin on several tracks on Unhalfbricking as a session player, and they had all been thrilled to work with him. Swarbrick was one of the most experienced musicians on the British folk circuit. He had started out in the fifties playing guitar with Beryl Marriott’s Ceilidh Band before switching to fiddle, and in 1963, long before Fairport had formed, he had already appeared on TV with the Ian Campbell Folk Group, led by Ian Campbell, the father of Ali and Robin Campbell, later of UB40: [Excerpt: The Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Shanten Bells (medley on Hullaballoo!)”] He’d sung with Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd: [Excerpt: A.L. Lloyd, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” ] And he’d formed his hugely successful duo with Martin Carthy, releasing records like “Byker Hill” which are often considered among the best British folk music of all time: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, “Byker Hill”] By the time Fairport had invited him to play on Unhalfbricking, Swarbrick had already performed on twenty albums as a core band member, plus dozens more EPs, singles, and odd tracks on compilations. They had no reason to think they could actually get him to join their band. But they had three advantages. The first was that Swarbrick was sick of the traditional folk scene at the time, saying later “I didn’t like seven-eighths of the people involved in it, and it was extremely opportune to leave. I was suddenly presented with the possibilities of exploring the dramatic content of the songs to the full.” The second was that he was hugely excited to be playing with Richard Thompson, who was one of the most innovative guitarists of his generation, and Martin Carthy remembers him raving about Thompson after their initial sessions. (Carthy himself was and is no slouch on the guitar of course, and there was even talk of getting him to join the band at this point, though they decided against it — much to the relief of rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol, who is a perfectly fine player himself but didn’t want to be outclassed by *two* of the best guitarists in Britain at the same time). And the third was that Joe Boyd told him that Fairport were doing so well — they had a single just about to hit the charts with “Si Tu Dois Partir” — that he would only have to play a dozen gigs with Fairport in order to retire. As it turned out, Swarbrick would play with the group for a decade, and would never retire — I saw him on his last tour in 2015, only eight months before he died. The drummer the group picked was also a far more experienced musician than any of the rest, though in a very different genre. Dave Mattacks had no knowledge at all of the kind of music they played, having previously been a player in dance bands. When asked by Hutchings if he wanted to join the band, Mattacks’ response was “I don’t know anything about the music. I don’t understand it… I can’t tell one tune from another, they all sound the same… but if you want me to join the group, fine, because I really like it. I’m enjoying myself musically.” Mattacks brought a new level of professionalism to the band, thanks to his different background. Nicol said of him later “He was dilligent, clean, used to taking three white shirts to a gig… The application he could bring to his playing was amazing. With us, you only played well when you were feeling well.” This distinction applied to his playing as well. Nicol would later describe the difference between Mattacks’ drumming and Lamble’s by saying “Martin’s strength was as an imaginative drummer. DM came in with a strongly developed sense of rhythm, through keeping a big band of drunken saxophone players in order. A great time-keeper.” With this new line-up and a new sense of purpose, the group did as many of their contemporaries were doing and “got their heads together in the country”. Joe Boyd rented the group a mansion, Farley House, in Farley Chamberlayne, Hampshire, and they stayed there together for three months. At the start, the group seem to have thought that they were going to make another record like Unhalfbricking, with some originals, some songs by American songwriters, and a few traditional songs. Even after their stay in Farley Chamberlayne, in fact, they recorded a few of the American songs they’d rehearsed at the start of the process, Richard Farina’s “Quiet Joys of Brotherhood” and Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn’s “Ballad of Easy Rider”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Ballad of Easy Rider”] Indeed, the whole idea of “getting our heads together in the country” (as the cliche quickly became in the late sixties as half of the bands in Britain went through much the same kind of process as Fairport were doing — but usually for reasons more to do with drug burnout or trend following than recovering from serious life-changing trauma) seems to have been inspired by Bob Dylan and the Band getting together in Big Pink. But very quickly they decided to follow the lead of Ashley Hutchings, who had had something of a Damascene conversion to the cause of traditional English folk music. They were listening mostly to Music From Big Pink by the Band, and to the first album by Sweeney’s Men: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “The Handsome Cabin Boy”] And they decided that they were going to make something that was as English as those records were North American and Irish (though in the event there were also a few Scottish songs included on the record). Hutchings in particular was becoming something of a scholar of traditional music, regularly visiting Cecil Sharp House and having long conversations with A.L. Lloyd, discovering versions of different traditional songs he’d never encountered before. This was both amusing and bemusing Sandy Denny, who had joined a rock group in part to get away from traditional music; but she was comfortable singing the material, and knew a lot of it and could make a lot of suggestions herself. Swarbrick obviously knew the repertoire intimately, and Nicol was amenable, while Mattacks was utterly clueless about the folk tradition at this point but knew this was the music he wanted to make. Thompson knew very little about traditional music, and of all the band members except Denny he was the one who has shown the least interest in the genre in his subsequent career — but as we heard at the beginning, showing the least interest in the genre is a relative thing, and while Thompson was not hugely familiar with the genre, he *was* able to work with it, and was also more than capable of writing songs that fit in with the genre. Of the eleven songs on the album, which was titled Liege and Lief (which means, roughly, Lord and Loyalty), there were no cover versions of singer-songwriters. Eight were traditional songs, and three were originals, all written in the style of traditional songs. The album opened with “Come All Ye”, an introduction written by Denny and Hutchings (the only time the two would ever write together): [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Come All Ye”] The other two originals were songs where Thompson had written new lyrics to traditional melodies. On “Crazy Man Michael”, Swarbrick had said to Thompson that the tune to which he had set his new words was weaker than the lyrics, to which Thompson had replied that if Swarbrick felt that way he should feel free to write a new melody. He did, and it became the first of the small number of Thompson/Swarbrick collaborations: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Crazy Man Michael”] Thompson and Swarbrick would become a brief songwriting team, but as much as anything else it was down to proximity — the two respected each other as musicians, but never got on very well. In 1981 Swarbrick would say “Richard and I never got on in the early days of FC… we thought we did, but we never did. We composed some bloody good songs together, but it was purely on a basis of “you write that and I’ll write this, and we’ll put it together.” But we never sat down and had real good chats.” The third original on the album, and by far the most affecting, is another song where Thompson put lyrics to a traditional tune. In this case he thought he was putting the lyrics to the tune of “Willie O'Winsbury”, but he was basing it on a recording by Sweeney’s Men. The problem was that Sweeney’s Men had accidentally sung the lyrics of “Willie O'Winsbury'” to the tune of a totally different song, “Fause Foodrage”: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “Willie O’Winsbury”] Thompson took that melody, and set to it lyrics about loss and separation. Thompson has never been one to discuss the meanings of his lyrics in any great detail, and in the case of this one has said “I really don't know what it means. This song came out of a dream, and I pretty much wrote it as I dreamt it (it was the sixties), and didn't spend very long analyzing it. So interpret as you wish – or replace with your own lines.” But in the context of the traffic accident that had killed his tailor girlfriend and a bandmate, and injured most of his other bandmates, the lyrics about lonely travellers, the winding road, bruised and beaten sons, saying goodbye, and never cutting cloth, seem fairly self-explanatory: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Farewell, Farewell”] The rest of the album, though, was taken up by traditional tunes. There was a long medley of four different fiddle reels; a version of “Reynardine” (a song about a seductive man — or is he a fox? Or perhaps both — which had been recorded by Swarbrick and Carthy on their most recent album); a 19th century song about a deserter saved from the firing squad by Prince Albert; and a long take on “Tam Lin”, one of the most famous pieces in the Scottish folk music canon, a song that has been adapted in different ways by everyone from the experimental noise band Current 93 to the dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah to the comics writer Grant Morrison: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Tam Lin”] And “Matty Groves”, a song about a man killing his cheating wife and her lover, which actually has a surprisingly similar story to that of “1921” from another great concept album from that year, the Who’s Tommy. “Matty Groves” became an excuse for long solos and shows of instrumental virtuosity: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves”] The album was recorded in September 1969, after their return from their break in the country and a triumphal performance at the Royal Festival Hall, headlining over fellow Witchseason artists John and Beverly Martyn and Nick Drake. It became a classic of the traditional folk genre — arguably *the* classic of the traditional folk genre. In 2007 BBC Radio 2’s Folk Music Awards gave it an award for most influential folk album of all time, and while such things are hard to measure, I doubt there’s anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of British folk and folk-rock music who would not at least consider that a reasonable claim. But once again, by the time the album came out in November, the band had changed lineups yet again. There was a fundamental split in the band – on one side were Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson, whose stance was, roughly, that Liege and Lief was a great experiment and a fun thing to do once, but really the band had two first-rate songwriters in themselves, and that they should be concentrating on their own new material, not doing these old songs, good as they were. They wanted to take the form of the traditional songs and use that form for new material — they wanted to make British folk-rock, but with the emphasis on the rock side of things. Hutchings, on the other hand, was equally sure that he wanted to make traditional music and go further down the rabbit hole of antiquity. With the zeal of the convert he had gone in a couple of years from being the leader of a band who were labelled “the British Jefferson Airplane” to becoming a serious scholar of traditional folk music. Denny was tired of touring, as well — she wanted to spend more time at home with Trevor Lucas, who was sleeping with other women when she was away and making her insecure. When the time came for the group to go on a tour of Denmark, Denny decided she couldn’t make it, and Hutchings was jubilant — he decided he was going to get A.L. Lloyd into the band in her place and become a *real* folk group. Then Denny reconsidered, and Hutchings was crushed. He realised that while he had always been the leader, he wasn’t going to be able to lead the band any further in the traditionalist direction, and quit the group — but not before he was delegated by the other band members to fire Denny. Until the publication of Richard Thompson’s autobiography in 2022, every book on the group or its members said that Denny quit the band again, which was presumably a polite fiction that the band agreed, but according to Thompson “Before we flew home, we decided to fire Sandy. I don't remember who asked her to leave – it was probably Ashley, who usually did the dirty work. She was reportedly shocked that we would take that step. She may have been fragile beneath the confident facade, but she still knew her worth.” Thompson goes on to explain that the reasons for kicking her out were that “I suppose we felt that in her mind she had already left” and that “We were probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, though there wasn't a name for it back then.” They had considered inviting Trevor Lucas to join the band to make Denny more comfortable, but came to the (probably correct) conclusion that while he was someone they got on well with personally, he would be another big ego in a band that already had several, and that being around Denny and Lucas’ volatile relationship would, in Thompson’s phrasing, “have not always given one a feeling of peace and stability.” Hutchings originally decided he was going to join Sweeney’s Men, but that group were falling apart, and their first rehearsal with Hutchings would also be their last as a group, with only Hutchings and guitarist and mandolin player Terry Woods left in the band. They added Woods’ wife Gay, and another couple, Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, and formed a group called Steeleye Span, a name given them by Martin Carthy. That group, like Fairport, went to “get their heads together in the country” for three months and recorded an album of electric versions of traditional songs, Hark the Village Wait, on which Mattacks and another drummer, Gerry Conway, guested as Steeleye Span didn’t at the time have their own drummer: [Excerpt: Steeleye Span, “Blackleg Miner”] Steeleye Span would go on to have a moderately successful chart career in the seventies, but by that time most of the original lineup, including Hutchings, had left — Hutchings stayed with them for a few albums, then went on to form the first of a series of bands, all called the Albion Band or variations on that name, which continue to this day. And this is something that needs to be pointed out at this point — it is impossible to follow every single individual in this narrative as they move between bands. There is enough material in the history of the British folk-rock scene that someone could do a 500 Songs-style podcast just on that, and every time someone left Fairport, or Steeleye Span, or the Albion Band, or Matthews’ Southern Comfort, or any of the other bands we have mentioned or will mention, they would go off and form another band which would then fission, and some of its members would often join one of those other bands. There was a point in the mid-1970s where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport Convention while Fairport Convention had none. So just in order to keep the narrative anything like wieldy, I’m going to keep the narrative concentrated on the two figures from Fairport — Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson — whose work outside the group has had the most influence on the wider world of rock music more broadly, and only deal with the other members when, as they often did, their careers intersected with those two. That doesn’t mean the other members are not themselves hugely important musicians, just that their importance has been primarily to the folk side of the folk-rock genre, and so somewhat outside the scope of this podcast. While Hutchings decided to form a band that would allow him to go deeper and deeper into traditional folk music, Sandy Denny’s next venture was rather different. For a long time she had been writing far more songs than she had ever played for her bandmates, like “Nothing More”, a song that many have suggested is about Thompson: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Nothing More”] When Joe Boyd heard that Denny was leaving Fairport Convention, he was at first elated. Fairport’s records were being distributed by A&M in the US at that point, but Island Records was in the process of opening up a new US subsidiary which would then release all future Fairport product — *but*, as far as A&M were concerned, Sandy Denny *was* Fairport Convention. They were only interested in her. Boyd, on the other hand, loved Denny’s work intensely, but from his point of view *Richard Thompson* was Fairport Convention. If he could get Denny signed directly to A&M as a solo artist before Island started its US operations, Witchseason could get a huge advance on her first solo record, while Fairport could continue making records for Island — he’d have two lucrative acts, on different labels. Boyd went over and spoke to A&M and got an agreement in principle that they would give Denny a forty-thousand-dollar advance on her first solo album — twice what they were paying for Fairport albums. The problem was that Denny didn’t want to be a solo act. She wanted to be the lead singer of a band. She gave many reasons for this — the one she gave to many journalists was that she had seen a Judy Collins show and been impressed, but noticed that Collins’ band were definitely a “backing group”, and as she put it “But that's all they were – a backing group. I suddenly thought, If you're playing together on a stage you might as well be TOGETHER.” Most other people in her life, though, say that the main reason for her wanting to be in a band was her desire to be with her boyfriend, Trevor Lucas. Partly this was due to a genuine desire to spend more time with someone with whom she was very much in love, partly it was a fear that he would cheat on her if she was away from him for long periods of time, and part of it seems to have been Lucas’ dislike of being *too* overshadowed by his talented girlfriend — he didn’t mind acknowledging that she was a major talent, but he wanted to be thought of as at least a minor one. So instead of going solo, Denny formed Fotheringay, named after the song she had written for Fairport. This new band consisted at first of Denny on vocals and occasional piano, Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Lucas’ old Eclection bandmate Gerry Conway on drums. For a lead guitarist, they asked Richard Thompson who the best guitarist in Britain was, and he told them Albert Lee. Lee in turn brought in bass player Pat Donaldson, but this lineup of the band barely survived a fortnight. Lee *was* arguably the best guitarist in Britain, certainly a reasonable candidate if you could ever have a singular best (as indeed was Thompson himself), but he was the best *country* guitarist in Britain, and his style simply didn’t fit with Fotheringay’s folk-influenced songs. He was replaced by American guitarist Jerry Donahue, who was not anything like as proficient as Lee, but who was still very good, and fit the band’s style much better. The new group rehearsed together for a few weeks, did a quick tour, and then went into the recording studio to record their debut, self-titled, album. Joe Boyd produced the album, but admitted himself that he only paid attention to those songs he considered worthwhile — the album contained one song by Lucas, “The Ballad of Ned Kelly”, and two cover versions of American singer-songwriter material with Lucas singing lead. But everyone knew that the songs that actually *mattered* were Sandy Denny’s, and Boyd was far more interested in them, particularly the songs “The Sea” and “The Pond and the Stream”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “The Pond and the Stream”] Fotheringay almost immediately hit financial problems, though. While other Witchseason acts were used to touring on the cheap, all packed together in the back of a Transit van with inexpensive equipment, Trevor Lucas had ambitions of being a rock star and wanted to put together a touring production to match, with expensive transport and equipment, including a speaker system that got nicknamed “Stonehenge” — but at the same time, Denny was unhappy being on the road, and didn’t play many gigs. As well as the band itself, the Fotheringay album also featured backing vocals from a couple of other people, including Denny’s friend Linda Peters. Peters was another singer from the folk clubs, and a good one, though less well-known than Denny — at this point she had only released a couple of singles, and those singles seemed to have been as much as anything else released as a novelty. The first of those, a version of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” had been released as by “Paul McNeill and Linda Peters”: [Excerpt: Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”] But their second single, a version of John D. Loudermilk’s “You’re Taking My Bag”, was released on the tiny Page One label, owned by Larry Page, and was released under the name “Paul and Linda”, clearly with the intent of confusing particularly gullible members of the record-buying public into thinking this was the McCartneys: [Excerpt: Paul and Linda, “You’re Taking My Bag”] Peters was though more financially successful than almost anyone else in this story, as she was making a great deal of money as a session singer. She actually did another session involving most of Fotheringay around this time. Witchseason had a number of excellent songwriters on its roster, and had had some success getting covers by people like Judy Collins, but Joe Boyd thought that they might possibly do better at getting cover versions if they were performed in less idiosyncratic arrangements. Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway went into the studio to record backing tracks, and vocals were added by Peters and another session singer, who according to some sources also provided piano. They cut songs by Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “You Get Brighter”] Ed Carter, formerly of The New Nadir but by this time firmly ensconced in the Beach Boys’ touring band where he would remain for the next quarter-century: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “I Don’t Mind”] John and Beverly Martyn, and Nick Drake: [Excerpt: Elton John, “Saturday Sun”] There are different lineups of musicians credited for those sessions in different sources, but I tend to believe that it’s mostly Fotheringay for the simple reason that Donahue says it was him, Donaldson and Conway who talked Lucas and Denny into the mistake that destroyed Fotheringay because of these sessions. Fotheringay were in financial trouble already, spending far more money than they were bringing in, but their album made the top twenty and they were getting respect both from critics and from the public — in September, Sandy Denny was voted best British female singer by the readers of Melody Maker in their annual poll, which led to shocked headlines in the tabloids about how this “unknown” could have beaten such big names as Dusty Springfield and Cilla Black. Only a couple of weeks after that, they were due to headline at the Albert Hall. It should have been a triumph. But Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway had asked that singing pianist to be their support act. As Donahue said later “That was a terrible miscast. It was our fault. He asked if [he] could do it. Actually Pat, Gerry and I had to talk Sandy and Trevor into [it]… We'd done these demos and the way he was playing – he was a wonderful piano player – he was sensitive enough. We knew very little about his stage-show. We thought he'd be a really good opener for us.” Unfortunately, Elton John was rather *too* good. As Donahue continued “we had no idea what he had in mind, that he was going to do the most incredible rock & roll show ever. He pretty much blew us off the stage before we even got on the stage.” To make matters worse, Fotheringay’s set, which was mostly comprised of new material, was underrehearsed and sloppy, and from that point on no matter what they did people were counting the hours until the band split up. They struggled along for a while though, and started working on a second record, with Boyd again producing, though as Boyd later said “I probably shouldn't have been producing the record. My lack of respect for the group was clear, and couldn't have helped the atmosphere. We'd put out a record that had sold disappointingly, A&M was unhappy. Sandy's tracks on the first record are among the best things she ever did – the rest of it, who cares? And the artwork, Trevor's sister, was terrible. It would have been one thing if I'd been unhappy with it and it sold, and the group was working all the time, making money, but that wasn't the case … I knew what Sandy was capable of, and it was very upsetting to me.” The record would not be released for thirty-eight years: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Wild Mountain Thyme”] Witchseason was going badly into debt. Given all the fissioning of bands that we’ve already been talking about, Boyd had been stretched thin — he produced sixteen albums in 1970, and almost all of them lost money for the company. And he was getting more and more disillusioned with the people he was producing. He loved Beverly Martyn’s work, but had little time for her abusive husband John, who was dominating her recording and life more and more and would soon become a solo artist while making her stay at home (and stealing her ideas without giving her songwriting credit). The Incredible String Band were great, but they had recently converted to Scientology, which Boyd found annoying, and while he was working with all sorts of exciting artists like Vashti Bunyan and Nico, he was finding himself less and less important to the artists he mentored. Fairport Convention were a good example of this. After Denny and Hutchings had left the group, they’d decided to carry on as an electric folk group, performing an equal mix of originals by the Swarbrick and Thompson songwriting team and arrangements of traditional songs. The group were now far enough away from the “British Jefferson Airplane” label that they decided they didn’t need a female vocalist — and more realistically, while they’d been able to replace Judy Dyble, nobody was going to replace Sandy Denny. Though it’s rather surprising when one considers Thompson’s subsequent career that nobody seems to have thought of bringing in Denny’s friend Linda Peters, who was dating Joe Boyd at the time (as Denny had been before she met Lucas) as Denny’s replacement. Instead, they decided that Swarbrick and Thompson were going to share the vocals between them. They did, though, need a bass player to replace Hutchings. Swarbrick wanted to bring in Dave Pegg, with whom he had played in the Ian Campbell Folk Group, but the other band members initially thought the idea was a bad one. At the time, while they respected Swarbrick as a musician, they didn’t think he fully understood rock and roll yet, and they thought the idea of getting in a folkie who had played double bass rather than an electric rock bassist ridiculous. But they auditioned him to mollify Swarbrick, and found that he was exactly what they needed. As Joe Boyd later said “All those bass lines were great, Ashley invented them all, but he never could play them that well. He thought of them, but he was technically not a terrific bass player. He was a very inventive, melodic, bass player, but not a very powerful one technically. But having had the part explained to him once, Pegg was playing it better than Ashley had ever played it… In some rock bands, I think, ultimately, the bands that sound great, you can generally trace it to the bass player… it was at that point they became a great band, when they had Pegg.” The new lineup of Fairport decided to move in together, and found a former pub called the Angel, into which all the band members moved, along with their partners and children (Thompson was the only one who was single at this point) and their roadies. The group lived together quite happily, and one gets the impression that this was the period when they were most comfortable with each other, even though by this point they were a disparate group with disparate tastes, in music as in everything else. Several people have said that the only music all the band members could agree they liked at this point was the first two albums by The Band. With the departure of Hutchings from the band, Swarbrick and Thompson, as the strongest personalities and soloists, became in effect the joint leaders of the group, and they became collaborators as songwriters, trying to write new songs that were inspired by traditional music. Thompson described the process as “let’s take one line of this reel and slow it down and move it up a minor third and see what that does to it; let’s take one line of this ballad and make a whole song out of it. Chopping up the tradition to find new things to do… like a collage.” Generally speaking, Swarbrick and Thompson would sit by the fire and Swarbrick would play a melody he’d been working on, the two would work on it for a while, and Thompson would then go away and write the lyrics. This is how the two came up with songs like the nine-minute “Sloth”, a highlight of the next album, Full House, and one that would remain in Fairport’s live set for much of their career: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth”] “Sloth” was titled that way because Thompson and Swarbrick were working on two tunes, a slow one and a fast one, and they jokingly named them “Sloth” and “Fasth”, but the latter got renamed to “Walk Awhile”, while “Sloth” kept its working title. But by this point, Boyd and Thompson were having a lot of conflict in the studio. Boyd was never the most technical of producers — he was one of those producers whose job is to gently guide the artists in the studio and create a space for the music to flourish, rather than the Joe Meek type with an intimate technical knowledge of the studio — and as the artists he was working with gained confidence in their own work they felt they had less and less need of him. During the making of the Full House album, Thompson and Boyd, according to Boyd, clashed on everything — every time Boyd thought Thompson had done a good solo, Thompson would say to erase it and let him have another go, while every time Boyd thought Thompson could do better, Thompson would say that was the take to keep. One of their biggest clashes was over Thompson’s song “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”, which was originally intended for release on the album, and is included in current reissues of it: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”] Thompson had written that song inspired by what he thought was the unjust treatment of Alex Bramham, the driver in Fairport’s fatal car crash, by the courts — Bramham had been given a prison sentence of a few months for dangerous driving, while the group members thought he had not been at fault. Boyd thought it was one of the best things recorded for the album, but Thompson wasn’t happy with his vocal — there was one note at the top of the melody that he couldn’t quite hit — and insisted it be kept off the record, even though that meant it would be a shorter album than normal. He did this at such a late stage that early copies of the album actually had the title printed on the sleeve, but then blacked out. He now says in his autobiography “I could have persevered, double-tracked the voice, warmed up for longer – anything. It was a good track, and the record was lacking without it. When the album was re-released, the track was restored with a more confident vocal, and it has stayed there ever since.” During the sessions for Full House the group also recorded one non-album single, Thompson and Swarbrick’s “Now Be Thankful”: [Excerpt, Fairport Convention, “Now Be Thankful”] The B-side to that was a medley of two traditional tunes plus a Swarbrick original, but was given the deliberately ridiculous title “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”] The B. McKenzie in the title was a reference to the comic-strip character Barry McKenzie, a stereotype drunk Australian created for Private Eye magazine by the comedian Barry Humphries (later to become better known for his Dame Edna Everage character) but the title was chosen for one reason only — to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the song with the longest title. Which they did, though they were later displaced by the industrial band Test Dept, and their song “Long Live British Democracy Which Flourishes and Is Constantly Perfected Under the Immaculate Guidance of the Great, Honourable, Generous and Correct Margaret Hilda Thatcher. She Is the Blue Sky in the Hearts of All Nations. Our People Pay Homage and Bow in Deep Respect and Gratitude to Her. The Milk of Human Kindness”. Full House got excellent reviews in the music press, with Rolling Stone saying “The music shows that England has finally gotten her own equivalent to The Band… By calling Fairport an English equivalent of the Band, I meant that they have soaked up enough of the tradition of their countryfolk that it begins to show all over, while they maintain their roots in rock.” Off the back of this, the group went on their first US tour, culminating in a series of shows at the Troubadour in LA, on the same bill as Rick Nelson, which were recorded and later released as a live album: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth (live)”] The Troubadour was one of the hippest venues at the time, and over their residency there the group got seen by many celebrities, some of whom joined them on stage. The first was Linda Ronstadt, who initially demurred, saying she didn’t know any of their songs. On being told they knew all of hers, she joined in with a rendition of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”. Thompson was later asked to join Ronstadt’s backing band, who would go on to become the Eagles, but he said later of this offer “I would have hated it. I’d have hated being on the road with four or five miserable Americans — they always seem miserable. And if you see them now, they still look miserable on stage — like they don’t want to be there and they don’t like each other.” The group were also joined on stage at the Troubadour on one memorable night by some former bandmates of Pegg’s. Before joining the Ian Campbell Folk Group, Pegg had played around the Birmingham beat scene, and had been in bands with John Bonham and Robert Plant, who turned up to the Troubadour with their Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page (reports differ on whether the fourth member of Zeppelin, John Paul Jones, also came along). They all got up on stage together and jammed on songs like “Hey Joe”, “Louie Louie”, and various old Elvis tunes. The show was recorded, and the tapes are apparently still in the possession of Joe Boyd, who has said he refuses to release them in case he is murdered by the ghost of Peter Grant. According to Thompson, that night ended in a three-way drinking contest between Pegg, Bonham, and Janis Joplin, and it’s testament to how strong the drinking culture is around Fairport and the British folk scene in general that Pegg outdrank both of them. According to Thompson, Bonham was found naked by a swimming pool two days later, having missed two gigs. For all their hard rock image, Led Zeppelin were admirers of a lot of the British folk and folk-rock scene, and a few months later Sandy Denny would become the only outside vocalist ever to appear on a Led Zeppelin record when she duetted with Plant on “The Battle of Evermore” on the group’s fourth album: [Excerpt: Led Zeppelin, “The Battle of Evermore”] Denny would never actually get paid for her appearance on one of the best-selling albums of all time. That was, incidentally, not the only session that Denny was involved in around this time — she also sang on the soundtrack to a soft porn film titled Swedish Fly Girls, whose soundtrack was produced by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow?”] Shortly after Fairport’s trip to America, Joe Boyd decided he was giving up on Witchseason. The company was now losing money, and he was finding himself having to produce work for more and more acts as the various bands fissioned. The only ones he really cared about were Richard Thompson, who he was finding it more and more difficult to work with, Nick Drake, who wanted to do his next album with just an acoustic guitar anyway, Sandy Denny, who he felt was wasting her talents in Fotheringay, and Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band, who was more distant since his conversion to Scientology. Boyd did make some attempts to keep the company going. On a trip to Sweden, he negotiated an agreement with the manager and publisher of a Swedish band whose songs he’d found intriguing, the Hep Stars. Boyd was going to publish their songs in the UK, and in return that publisher, Stig Anderson, would get the rights to Witchseason’s catalogue in Scandinavia — a straight swap, with no money changing hands. But before Boyd could get round to signing the paperwork, he got a better offer from Mo Ostin of Warners — Ostin wanted Boyd to come over to LA and head up Warners’ new film music department. Boyd sold Witchseason to Island Records and moved to LA with his fiancee Linda Peters, spending the next few years working on music for films like Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange, as well as making his own documentary about Jimi Hendrix, and thus missed out on getting the UK publishing rights for ABBA, and all the income that would have brought him, for no money. And it was that decision that led to the breakup of Fotheringay. Just before Christmas 1970, Fotheringay were having a difficult session, recording the track “John the Gun”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “John the Gun”] Boyd got frustrated and kicked everyone out of the session, and went for a meal and several drinks with Denny. He kept insisting that she should dump the band and just go solo, and then something happened that the two of them would always describe differently. She asked him if he would continue to produce her records if she went solo, and he said he would. According to Boyd’s recollection of the events, he meant that he would fly back from California at some point to produce her records. According to Denny, he told her that if she went solo he would stay in Britain and not take the job in LA. This miscommunication was only discovered after Denny told the rest of Fotheringay after the Christmas break that she was splitting the band. Jerry Donahue has described that as the worst moment of his life, and Denny felt very guilty about breaking up a band with some of her closest friends in — and then when Boyd went over to the US anyway she felt a profound betrayal. Two days before Fotheringay’s final concert, in January 1971, Sandy Denny signed a solo deal with Island records, but her first solo album would not end up produced by Joe Boyd. Instead, The North Star Grassman and the Ravens was co-produced by Denny, John Wood — the engineer who had worked with Boyd on pretty much everything he’d produced, and Richard Thompson, who had just quit Fairport Convention, though he continued living with them at the Angel, at least until a truck crashed into the building in February 1971, destroying its entire front wall and forcing them to relocate. The songs chosen for The North Star Grassman and the Ravens reflected the kind of choices Denny would make on her future albums, and her eclectic taste in music. There was, of course, the obligatory Dylan cover, and the traditional folk ballad “Blackwaterside”, but there was also a cover version of Brenda Lee’s “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”] Most of the album, though, was made up of originals about various people in Denny’s life, like “Next Time Around”, about her ex-boyfriend Jackson C Frank: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Next Time Around”] The album made the top forty in the UK — Denny’s only solo album to do so — and led to her once again winning the “best female singer” award in Melody Maker’s readers’ poll that year — the male singer award was won by Rod Stewart. Both Stewart and Denny appeared the next year on the London Symphony Orchestra’s all-star version of The Who’s Tommy, which had originally been intended as a vehicle for Stewart before Roger Daltrey got involved. Stewart’s role was reduced to a single song, “Pinball Wizard”, while Denny sang on “It’s a Boy”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “It’s a Boy”] While Fotheringay had split up, all the band members play on The North Star Grassman and the Ravens. Guitarists Donahue and Lucas only play on a couple of the tracks, with Richard Thompson playing most of the guitar on the record. But Fotheringay’s rhythm section of Pat Donaldson and Gerry Conway play on almost every track. Another musician on the album, Ian Whiteman, would possibly have a profound effect on the future direction of Richard Thompson’s career and life. Whiteman was the former keyboard player for the mod band The Action, having joined them just before they became the blues-rock band Mighty Baby. But Mighty Baby had split up when all of the band except the lead singer had converted to Islam. Richard Thompson was on his own spiritual journey at this point, and became a Sufi – the same branch of Islam as Whiteman – soon after the session, though Thompson has said that his conversion was independent of Whiteman’s. The two did become very close and work together a lot in the mid-seventies though. Thompson had supposedly left Fairport because he was writing material that wasn’t suited to the band, but he spent more than a year after quitting the group working on sessions rather than doing anything with his own material, and these sessions tended to involve the same core group of musicians. One of the more unusual was a folk-rock supergroup called The Bunch, put together by Trevor Lucas. Richard Branson had recently bought a recording studio, and wanted a band to test it out before opening it up for commercial customers, so with this free studio time Lucas decided to record a set of fifties rock and roll covers. He gathered together Thompson, Denny, Whiteman, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Pat Donaldson, Gerry Conway, pianist Tony Cox, the horn section that would later form the core of the Average White Band, and Linda Peters, who had now split up with Joe Boyd and returned to the UK, and who had started dating Thompson. They recorded an album of covers of songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Otis and others: [Excerpt: The Bunch, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The early seventies was a hugely productive time for this group of musicians, as they all continued playing on each other’s projects. One notable album was No Roses by Shirley Collins, which featured Thompson, Mattacks, Whiteman, Simon Nicol, Lal and Mike Waterson, and Ashley Hutchings, who was at that point married to Collins, as well as some more unusual musicians like the free jazz saxophonist Lol Coxhill: [Excerpt: Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band, “Claudy Banks”] Collins was at the time the most respected female singer in British traditional music, and already had a substantial career including a series of important records made with her sister Dolly, work with guitarists like Davey Graham, and time spent in the 1950s collecting folk songs in the Southern US with her then partner Alan Lomax – according to Collins she did much of the actual work, but Lomax only mentioned her in a single sentence in his book on this work. Some of the same group of musicians went on to work on an album of traditional Morris dancing tunes, titled Morris On, credited to “Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield”, with Collins singing lead on two tracks: [Excerpt: Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield with Shirley Collins, “The Willow Tree”] Thompson thought that that album was the best of the various side projects he was involved in at the time, comparing it favourably to Rock On, which he thought was rather slight, saying later “Conceptually, Fairport, Ashley and myself and Sandy were developing a more fragile style of music that nobody else was particularly interested in, a British Folk Rock idea that had a logical development to it, although we all presented it our own way. Morris On was rather more true to what we were doing. Rock On was rather a retro step. I'm not sure it was lasting enough as a record but Sandy did sing really well on the Buddy Holly songs.” Hutchings used the musicians on No Roses and Morris On as the basis for his band the Albion Band, which continues to this day. Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks both quit Fairport to join the Albion Band, though Mattacks soon returned. Nicol would not return to Fairport for several years, though, and for a long period in the mid-seventies Fairport Convention had no original members. Unfortunately, while Collins was involved in the Albion Band early on, she and Hutchings ended up divorcing, and the stress from the divorce led to Collins developing spasmodic dysphonia, a stress-related illness which makes it impossible for the sufferer to sing. She did eventually regain her vocal ability, but between 1978 and 2016 she was unable to perform at all, and lost decades of her career. Richard Thompson occasionally performed with the Albion Band early on, but he was getting stretched a little thin with all these sessions. Linda Peters said later of him “When I came back from America, he was working in Sandy’s band, and doing sessions by the score. Always with Pat Donaldson and Dave Mattacks. Richard would turn up with his guitar, one day he went along to do a session with one of those folkie lady singers — and there were Pat and DM. They all cracked. Richard smashed his amp and said “Right! No more sessions!” In 1972 he got round to releasing his first solo album, Henry the Human Fly, which featured guest appearances by Linda Peters and Sandy Denny among others: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “The Angels Took My Racehorse Away”] Unfortunately, while that album has later become regarded as one of the classics of its genre, at the time it was absolutely slated by the music press. The review in Melody Maker, for example, read in part “Some of Richard Thompson’s ideas sound great – which is really the saving grace of this album, because most of the music doesn’t. The tragedy is that Thompson’s “British rock music” is such an unconvincing concoction… Even the songs that do integrate rock and traditional styles of electric guitar rhythms and accordion and fiddle decoration – and also include explicit, meaningful lyrics are marred by bottle-up vocals, uninspiring guitar phrases and a general lack of conviction in performance.” Henry the Human Fly was released in the US by Warners, who had a reciprocal licensing deal with Island (and for whom Joe Boyd was working at the time, which may have had something to do with that) but according to Thompson it became the lowest-selling record that Warners ever put out (though I’ve also seen that claim made about Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, another album that has later been rediscovered). Thompson was hugely depressed by this reaction, and blamed his own singing. Happily, though, by this point he and Linda had become a couple — they would marry in 1972 — and they started playing folk clubs as a duo, or sometimes in a trio with Simon Nicol. Thompson was also playing with Sandy Denny’s backing band at this point, and played on every track on her second solo album, Sandy. This album was meant to be her big commercial breakthrough, with a glamorous cover photo by David Bailey, and with a more American sound, including steel guitar by Sneaky Pete Kleinow of the Flying Burrito Brothers (whose overdubs were supervised in LA by Joe Boyd): [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Tomorrow is a Long Time”] The album was given a big marketing push by Island, and “Listen, Listen” was made single of the week on the Radio 1 Breakfast show: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Listen, Listen”] But it did even worse than the previous album, sending her into something of a depression. Linda Thompson (as the former Linda Peters now was) said of this period “After the Sandy album, it got her down that her popularity didn't suddenly increase in leaps and bounds, and that was the start of her really fretting about the way her career was going. Things only escalated after that. People like me or Martin Carthy or Norma Waterson would think, ‘What are you on about? This is folk music.'” After Sandy’s release, Denny realised she could no longer afford to tour with a band, and so went back to performing just acoustically or on piano. The only new music to be released by either of these ex-members of Fairport Convention in 1973 was, oddly, on an album by the band they were no longer members of. After Thompson had left Fairport, the group had managed to release two whole albums with the same lineup — Swarbrick, Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks. But then Nicol and Mattacks had both quit the band to join the Albion Band with their former bandmate Ashley Hutchings, leading to a situation where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport plus their longtime drummer while Fairport Convention itself had no original members and was down to just Swarbrick and Pegg. Needing to fulfil their contracts, they then recruited three former members of Fotheringay — Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, Donahue on lead guitar, and Conway on drums. Conway was only a session player at the time, and Mattacks soon returned to the band, but Lucas and Donahue became full-time members. This new lineup of Fairport Convention released two albums in 1973, widely regarded as the group’s most inconsistent records, and on the title track of the first, “Rosie”, Richard Thompson guested on guitar, with Sandy Denny and Linda Thompson on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Rosie”] Neither Sandy Denny nor Richard Thompson released a record themselves in 1973, but in neither case was this through the artists’ choice. The record industry was changing in the early 1970s, as we’ll see in later episodes, and was less inclined to throw good money after bad in the pursuit of art. Island Records prided itself on being a home for great artists, but it was still a business, and needed to make money. We’ll talk about the OPEC oil crisis and its effect on the music industry much more when the podcast gets to 1973, but in brief, the production of oil by the US peaked in 1970 and started to decrease, leading to them importing more and more oil from the Middle East. As a result of this, oil prices rose slowly between 1971 and 1973, then very quickly towards the end of 1973 as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict that year. As vinyl is made of oil, suddenly producing records became much more expensive, and in this period a lot of labels decided not to release already-completed albums, until what they hoped would be a brief period of shortages passed. Both Denny and Thompson recorded albums at this point that got put to one side by Island. In the case of Thompson, it was the first album by Richard and Linda as a duo, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Today, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, and as one of the two masterpieces that bookended Richard and Linda’s career as a duo and their marriage. But when they recorded the album, full of Richard’s dark songs, it was the opposite of commercial. Even a song that’s more or less a boy-girl song, like “Has He Got a Friend for Me?” has lyrics like “He wouldn’t notice me passing by/I could be in the gutter, or dangling down from a tree” [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “Has He got a Friend For Me?”] While something like “The Calvary Cross” is oblique and haunted, and seems to cast a pall over the entire album: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “The Calvary Cross”] The album itself had been cheap to make — it had been recorded in only a week, with Thompson bringing in musicians he knew well and had worked with a lot previously to cut the tracks as-live in only a handful of takes — but Island didn’t think it was worth releasing. The record stayed on the shelf for nearly a year after recording, until Island got a new head of A&R, Richard Williams. Williams said of the album’s release “Muff Winwood had been doing A&R, but he was more interested in production… I had a conversation with Muff as soon as I got there, and he said there are a few hangovers, some outstanding problems. And one of them was Richard Thompson. He said there’s this album we gave him the money to make — which was I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight — and nobody’s very interested in it. Henry the Human Fly had been a bit of a commercial disappointment, and although Island was altruistic and independent and known for only recording good stuff, success was important… Either a record had to do well or somebody had to believe in it a lot. And it seemed as if neither of those things were true at that point of Richard.” Williams, though, was hugely impressed when he listened to the album. He compared Richard Thompson’s guitar playing to John Coltrane’s sax, and called Thompson “the folk poet of the rainy streets”, but also said “Linda brightened it, made it more commercial. and I thought that “Bright Lights” itself seemed a really commercial song.” The rest of the management at Island got caught up in Williams’ enthusiasm, and even decided to release the title track as a single: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Neither single nor album charted — indeed it would not be until 1991 that Richard Thompson would make a record that made the top forty in the UK — but the album got enough critical respect that Richard and Linda released two albums the year after. The first of these, Hokey Pokey, is a much more upbeat record than their previous one — Richard Thompson has called it “quite a music-hall influenced record” and cited the influence of George Formby and Harry Lauder. For once, the claim of music hall influence is audible in the music. Usually when a British musician is claimed to have a music ha

Longtime manager Alan Niven is celebrating his memoir, 'Sound N' Fury: Rock N' Roll Stories,' and dives into it in this exclusive interview.

In the United States, Martin Luther King, Jr., gets a holiday partly because he challenged Americans to live up to their own ideals and extend freedom and equality to people of all races. Partly because he delivered this challenge peacefully, with no violence. Partly because he paid for this cause with his life. And partly because he had a great wife, who stood by him. Coretta Scott King was also an activist, also risked danger, also spoke, protested, and lobbied. And America changed. Racism is not dead, sadly, but African Americans have far more opportunities than Coretta had in her youth, in part due to her efforts. Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures. This show survives on the support of listeners like you. Support the show on my Patreon page for ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and polls. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Your support helps me keep bring the stories of past women into the present. Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts, plus bonus content. Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows. Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Partly cloudy with a high of 80° today! Looking like some more rain moving into the area tomorrow afternoon/evening. We let you know what's new on New Release Tuesday this morning and we spoke with our buddy, Grant Bilse, of the Wisco Sports show! In the news this morning, a registered sex offender in Prairie du Chien was arrested after luring a 14 year-old girl into a van, Governor Evers declared June 16th as "Kwik Trip Day" in Wisconsin to celebrate their anniversary, the MyPillow guy was found guilty of defamation, an update on the Vance Boelter story, and Trump warns the citizens of Tehran to get out while they still can. In sports, the Brewers start a 3-game series in Chicago tonight against the Cubs, the Thunder beat the Pacers last night to take a 3-2 series lead in the NBA finals, the NHL Stanley Cup Final continues tonight with game six from Florida, there was a no-hitter in the College World Series yesterday, Team USA announced it's first six hockey players for the 2026 Winter Olympics, and the Kings' Anze Kopitar won the Lady Byng trophy! Elsewhere in sports, a singer decided to perform the National Anthem in Spanish before a recent Dodgers game, and Joey Chestnut is officially coming back for the 4th of July hot dog eating competition! Great video of an elephant saving a gazelle that was drowning, and check out this really old tortoise who just celebrated his first Father's Day! Another heart-warming story out of Texas as a principal hand-wrote personalized letters to all 443 of his graduating students! Had a couple of work-related stories this morning, including the results of a study about working 50 or more hours a week & the impact on your brain, the younger generation is trying to normalize in-office sex, and the Top 10 daily interactions that make us sick of people! And if you're really sick of people and want to live a lonely life in your old age, it might help you live longer! In today's edition of "Bad News with Happy Music", we had stories about a guy who called the cops on his neighbors over 3,000 times this year, a turkey soaked in tequila that nearly burned down an apartment in Madison, and a #FloridaWoman who was petting a gator!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

President Donald Trump recently revoked California's ability to enforce its nation-leading clean-car rules. But how much is California to blame and what recourse does it have? POLITICO's Debra Kahn breaks down what happened, how a former top California official is responding, and what's next in this saga. Plus, the Trump administration proposed its first biofuel blending mandates on Friday, increasing volumes over the next two years to record levels, but leaving open questions over exemptions from the mandates sought by small refiners. Debra Kahn is the editor of POLITICO's California Climate newsletter and author of Currents, a reported column about the energy, environment and climate debates. Nirmal Mulaikal is the co-host and producer of POLITICO Energy.  Alex Keeney is a senior audio producer at POLITICO.  Gloria Gonzalez is the deputy energy editor for POLITICO.  Matt Daily is the energy editor for POLITICO. For more news on energy and the environment, subscribe to Power Switch, our free evening newsletter: https://www.politico.com/power-switch And for even deeper coverage and analysis, read our Morning Energy newsletter by subscribing to POLITICO Pro: https://subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletter-archive/morning-energy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers,America is embarking upon a New Space Age, with companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin ready to partner with NASA to take Americans to a new frontier — possibly as far as Mars. Lately, however, the world is witnessing uncertainty surrounding NASA leadership and even an odd feud between SpaceX boss Elon Musk and the White House. At a critical time for US space competition, let's hope key players can stick the landing.Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I chat with James Meigs about the SLS rocket, NASA reforms, and the evolving private sector landscape.Meigs is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is a contributing editor of City Journal and writer of the Tech Commentary column at Commentary magazine. He is also the former editor of Popular Mechanics.Meigs is the author of a recent report from the Manhattan Institute, U.S. Space Policy: The Next Frontier.In This Episode* So long, Jared Isaacman (1:29)* Public sector priorities (5:36)* Supporting the space ecosystem (11:52)* A new role for NASA (17:27)* American space leadership (21:17)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. So long, Jared Isaacman (1:29)The withdrawal of Jared Isaacman . . . has really been met with total dismay in the space community. Everyone felt like he was the right kind of change agent for the agency that desperately needs reform, but not destruction.Pethokoukis: We're going to talk a lot about your great space policy report, which you wrote before the withdrawal of President Trump's NASA nominee, Jared Isaacman.What do you think of that? Does that change your conclusions? Good move, bad move? Just sort of your general thoughts apart from the surprising nature of it.Meigs: I worked sort of on and off for about a year on this report for the Manhattan Institute about recommendations for space policy, and it just came out a couple of months ago and already it's a different world. So much has happened. The withdrawal of Jared Isaacman — or the yanking of his nomination — has really been met with total dismay in the space community. Everyone felt like he was the right kind of change agent for the agency that desperately needs reform, but not destruction.Now, it remains to be seen what happens in terms of his replacement, but it certainly pulled the rug out from under the idea that NASA could be reformed and yet stay on track for some ambitious goals. I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic that some of these things will happen, but my sense is that the White House is not particularly interested in space.Interestingly, Musk wasn't really that involved in his role of DOGE and stuff. He didn't spend that much time on NASA. He wasn't micromanaging NASA policy, and I don't think Isaacman would've been just a mouthpiece for Musk either. He showed a sense of independence. So it remains to be seen, but my recommendations . . . and I share this with a lot of people advocating reform, is that NASA more or less needs to get out of the rocket-building business, and the Space Launch System, this big overpriced rocket they've been working on for years — we may need to fly it two more times to get us back to the moon, but after that, that thing should be retired. If there's a way to retire it sooner, that would be great. At more than $4 billion a launch, it's simply not affordable, and NASA will not be an agency that can routinely send people into space if we're relying on that white elephant.To me what was exciting about Isaacman was his genuine enthusiasm about space. It seemed like he understood that NASA needed reform and changes to the budget, but that the result would be an agency that still does big things. Is there a fear that his replacement won't be interested in NASA creative destruction, just destruction?We don't know for sure, but the budget that's been proposed is pretty draconian, cutting NASA's funding by about a quarter and recommending particularly heavy cuts in the science missions, which would require cutting short some existing missions that are underway and not moving ahead with other planned missions.There is room for saving in some of these things. I advocate a more nimble approach to NASA's big science missions. Instead of sending one $4 billion rover to Mars every 20 years, once launch costs come down, how about we send ten little ones and if a couple of them don't make it, we could still be getting much more science done for the same price or less. So that's the kind of thing Isaacman was talking about, and that's the kind of thing that will be made possible as launch costs continue to fall, as you've written about, Jim. So it requires a new way of thinking at NASA. It requires a more entrepreneurial spirit and it remains to be seen whether another administrator can bring that along the way. We were hoping that Isaacman would.Public sector priorities (5:36)Congress has never deviated from focusing more on keeping these projects alive than on whether these projects achieve their goals.It seems to me that there are only two reasons, at this point, to be in favor of the SLS rocket. One: There's a political pork jobs aspect. And the other is that it's important to beat China to the moon, which the Artemis program is meant to do. Does that seem accurate?Pretty much, yeah. You can be for beating China the moon and still be against the SLS rocket, you kind of just grit your teeth and say, okay, we've got to fly it two more times because it would be hard to cobble together, in the timeframe available, a different approach — but not impossible. There are other heavy lift rockets. Once you can refuel in orbit and do other things, there's a lot of ways to get a heavy payload into orbit. When I started my report, it looked like SLS was the only game in town, but that's really not the case. There are other options.The Starship has to quit blowing up.I would've loved to have seen the last couple of Starship missions be a little more successful. That's unfortunate. The pork part of SLS just can't be underestimated. From the get go, going way back to when the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, and even before to when after the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster — that's the second disaster — there was a really big effort to figure out how to replace the space shuttle, what would come next. There was a strong movement in Congress at that time to say, “Well, whatever you build, whatever you do, all the factories that are involved in working on the Space Shuttle, all of the huge workforces in NASA that work on the space shuttle, all of this manpower has to be retained.” And Congress talked a lot about keeping the experience, the expertise, the talent going.I can see some legitimacy to that argument, but if you looked at the world that way, then you would always focus on keeping the jobs of the past viable instead of the jobs of the future: What are we going to do with the blacksmiths who shoe horses? If we lose all this technological capability of shoeing horses . . . we'd better not bring in all these cars! That's an exaggeration, but as a result, first they aim to replace the Space Shuttle with a rocket called Constellation that would recycle some of the Shuttle components. And then eventually they realized that that was just too bloated, too expensive. That got canceled during the Obama administration replaced with the Space Launch System, which is supposed to be cheaper, more efficient, able to be built in a reasonable amount of time.It wound up being just as bloated and also technologically backward. They're still keeping technology from the Shuttle era. The solid fuel engines, which, as we recall from the first Shuttle disaster, were problematic, and the Shuttle main engine design as well. So when SLS flies with humans on board for the first time, supposedly next year, it'll be using technology that was designed before any of the astronauts were even born.In this day and age, that's kind of mind-blowing, and it will retain these enormous workforces in these plants that happen to be located in states with powerful lawmakers. So there's an incredible incentive to just keep it all going, not to let things change, not to let anything be retired, and to keep that money flowing to contractors, to workers and to individual states. Congress has never deviated from focusing more on keeping these projects alive than on whether these projects achieve their goals.I've seen a video of congressional hearings from 15 years ago, and the hostility toward the idea of there being a private-sector alternative to NASA, now it seems almost inexplicable seeing that even some of these people were Republicans from Texas.Seeing where we are now, it's just amazing because now that we have the private sector, we're seeing innovation, we're seeing the drop in launch costs, the reusability — just a completely different world than what existed 15, 16, 17 years ago.I don't think people really realize how revolutionary NASA's commercial programs were. They really sort of snuck them in quietly at first, starting as far back as 2005, a small program to help companies develop their own space transportation systems that could deliver cargo to the International Space Station.SpaceX was initially not necessarily considered a leader in that. It was a little startup company nobody took very seriously, but they wound up doing the best job. Then later they also led the race to be the first to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station, saved NASA billions of dollars, and helped launch this private-industry revolution in space that we're seeing today that's really exciting.It's easy to say, “Oh, NASA's just this old sclerotic bureaucracy,” and there's some truth to that, but NASA has always had a lot of innovative people, and a lot of the pressure of the push to move to this commercial approach where NASA essentially charters a rocket the way you would charter a fishing boat rather than trying to build and own its own equipment. That's the key distinction. You've got to give them credit for that and you also have to give SpaceX enormous credit for endless technological innovation that has brought down these prices.So I totally agree, it's inconceivable to think of trying to run NASA today without their commercial partners. Of course, we'd like to see more than just SpaceX in there. That's been a surprise to people. In a weird way, SpaceX's success is a problem because you want an ecosystem of competitors that NASA can choose from, not just one dominant supplier.Supporting the space ecosystem (11:52)There's a reason that the private space industry is booming in the US much more than elsewhere in the world. But I think they could do better and I'd like to see reform there.Other than the technical difficulty of the task, is there something government could be doing or not doing, perhaps on the regulatory side, to encourage a more sort of a bigger, more vibrant space ecosystem.In my Manhattan Institute report, I recommend some changes, particularly, the FAA needs to continue reforming its launch regulations. They're more restrictive and take longer than they should. I think they're making some progress. They recently authorized more launches of the experimental SpaceX Starship, but it shouldn't take months to go through the paperwork to authorize the launch of a new spacecraft.I think the US, we're currently better than most countries in terms of allowing private space. There's a reason that the private space industry is booming in the US much more than elsewhere in the world. But I think they could do better and I'd like to see reform there.I also think NASA needs to continue its efforts to work with a wide range of vendors in this commercial paradigm and accept that a lot of them might not pan out. We've seen a really neat NASA program to help a lot of different companies, but a lot of startups have been involved in trying to build and land small rovers on the moon. Well, a lot of them have crashed.Not an easy task apparently.No. When I used to be editor of Popular Mechanics magazine, one of the great things I got to do was hang out with Buzz Aldrin, and Buzz Aldrin talking about landing on the moon — now, looking back, you realize just how insanely risky that was. You see all these rovers designed today with all the modern technology failing to land a much smaller, lighter object safely on the moon, and you just think, “Wow, that was an incredible accomplishment.” And you have so much admiration for the guts of the guys who did it.As they always say, space is hard, and I think NASA working with commercial vendors to help them, give them some seed money, help them get started, pay them a set fee for the mission that you're asking for, but also build into your planning — just the way an entrepreneur would — that some product launches aren't going to work, some ideas are going to fail, sometimes you're going to have to start over. That's just part of the process, and if you're not spending ridiculous amounts of money, that's okay.When we talk about vendors, who are we talking about? When we talk about this ecosystem as it currently exists, what do these companies do besides SpaceX?The big one that everybody always mentions first, of course, is Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's startup that's been around as long as SpaceX, but just moved much more slowly. Partly because when it first started up, it was almost as much of a think tank to explore different ideas about space and less of a scrappy startup trying to just make money by launching satellites for paying customers as soon as possible. That was Musk's model. But they've finally launched. They've launched a bunch of suborbital flights, you've seen where they carry various celebrities and stuff up to the edge of space for a few minutes and they come right back down. That's been a chance for them to test out their engines, which have seemed solid and reliable, but they've finally done one mission with their New Glenn rocket. Like SpaceX, it's a reusable rocket which can launch pretty heavy payloads. Once that gets proven and they've had a few more launches under their belt, should be an important part of this ecosystem.But you've got other companies, you've got Stoke Aerospace, you've got Firefly . . . You've got a few companies that are in the launch business, so they want to compete with SpaceX to launch mostly satellites for paying customers, also cargo for payloads for governments. And then you have a lot of other companies that are doing various kinds of space services and they're not necessarily going to try to be in the launch business per se. We don't need 40 different companies doing launches with different engines, different designs, different fuels, and stuff like that. Eight or 10 might be great, six might be great. We'll see how the market sorts out.But then if you look at the development of the auto industry, it started with probably hundreds of little small shops, hand-building cars, but by the mid-century it had settled down to a few big companies through consolidation. And instead of hundreds of engine designs that were given 1950, there were probably in the US, I don't know, 12 engine designs or something like that. Stuff got standardized — we'll see the same thing happen in space — but you also saw an enormous ecosystem of companies building batteries, tires, transmissions, parts, wipers, all sorts of little things and servicing in an industry to service the automobile. Now, rockets are a lot more centralized and high-tech, but you're going to see something like that in the space economy, and it's already happening.A new role for NASA (17:27)I think NASA should get more ambitious in deep-space flight, both crewed and uncrewed.What do you see NASA should be doing? We don't want them designing rockets anymore, so what should they do? What does that portfolio look like?That's an excellent question. I think that we are in this pivotal time when, because of the success of SpaceX, and hopefully soon other vendors, they can relieve themselves of that responsibility to build their own rockets. That gets out of a lot of the problems of Congress meddling to maximize pork flowing to their states and all of that kind of stuff. So that's a positive in itself.Perhaps a bug rather than a feature for Congress.Right, but it also means that technology will move much, much faster as private companies are innovating and competing with each other. That gives NASA an opportunity. What should they do with it? I think NASA should get more ambitious in deep-space flight, both crewed and uncrewed. Because it'll get much cheaper to get cargo into orbit to get payload up there, as I said, they can launch more science missions, and then when it comes to human missions, I like the overall plan of Artemis. The details were really pulled together during the first Trump administration, which had a really good space policy overall, which is to return to the moon, set up a permanent or long-term habitation on the moon. The way NASA sketches it out, not all the burden is carried by NASA.They envision — or did envision — a kind of ecosystem on the moon where you might have private vendors there providing services. You might have a company that mines ice and makes oxygen, and fuel, and water for the residents of these space stations. You might have somebody else building habitation that could be used by visiting scientists who are not NASA astronauts, but also used by NASA.There's all this possibility to combine what NASA does with the private sector, and what NASA should always do is be focused on the stuff the private sector can't yet do. That would be the deep-space probes. That would be sending astronauts on the most daring non-routine missions. As the private sector develops the ability to do some of those things, then NASA can move on to the next thing. That's one set of goals.Another set of goals is to do the research into technologies, things that are hard for the private sector to undertake. In particular, things like new propulsion for deep-space travel. There's a couple of different designs for nuclear rocket engines that I think are really promising, super efficient. Sadly, under the current budget cuts that are proposed at NASA, that's one of the programs that's being cut, and if you really want to do deep space travel routinely, ultimately, chemical fuels, they're not impossible, but they're not as feasible because you've got to get all that heavy — whatever your fuel is, methane or whatever it is — up into either into orbit or you've got to manufacture it on the moon or somewhere. The energy density of plutonium or uranium is just so much higher and it just allows you to do so much more with lighter weight. So I'd like to see them research those kinds of things that no individual private company could really afford to do at this point, and then when the technology is more mature, hand it off to the private sector.American space leadership (21:17)Exploration's never been totally safe, and if people want to take risks on behalf of a spirit of adventure and on behalf of humanity at large, I say we let them.If things go well —reforms, funding, lower launch costs — what does America's role in space look like in 10 to 15 years, and what's your concern if things go a darker route, like cutting nuclear engine research you were just talking about?I'll sketch out the bright scenario. This is very up your alley, Jim.Yeah, I viewed this as a good thing, so you tell me what it is.In 15 years I would love to see a small permanent colony at the south pole of the moon where you can harvest ice from the craters and maybe you'd have some habitation there, maybe even a little bit of space tourism starting up. People turn up their nose at space tourism, but it's a great way to help fund really important research. Remember the Golden Age of Exploration, James Cook and Darwin, those expeditions were self-funded. They were funded by rich people. If rich people want to go to space, I say I'm all for it.So a little base on the moon, important research going on, we're learning how to have people live on a foreign body, NASA is gathering tons of information and training for the next goal, which I think is even more important: I do agree we should get people to Mars. I don't think we should bypass the moon to get to Mars, I don't think that's feasible, that's what Elon Musk keeps suggesting. I think it's too soon for that. We want to learn about how people handle living off-planet for a long period of time closer to home — and how to mine ice and how to do all these things — closer to home, three or four days away, not months and months away. If something goes wrong, they'll be a lot more accessible.But I'd like to see, by then, some Mars missions and maybe an attempt to start the first long-term habitation of Mars. I don't think we're going to see that in 10 years, but I think that's a great goal, and I don't think it's a goal that taxpayers should be expected to fund 100 percent. I think by then we should see even more partnerships where the private companies that really want to do this — and I'm looking at Elon Musk because he's been talking about it for 20 years — they should shoulder a lot of the costs of that. If they see a benefit in that, they should also bear some of the costs. So that's the bright scenario.Along with that, all kinds of stuff going on in low-earth orbit: manufacturing drugs, seeing if you can harness solar energy, private space stations, better communications, and a robust science program exploring deep space with unmanned spacecraft. I'd like to see all of that. I think that could be done for a reasonable amount of money with the proper planning.The darker scenario is that we've just had too much chaos and indecision in NASA for years. We think of NASA as being this agency of great exploration, but they've done very little for 20 years . . . I take that back — NASA's uncrewed space program has had a lot of successes. It's done some great stuff. But when it comes to manned space flight, it's pretty much just been the International Space Station, and I think we've gotten most of the benefit out of that. They're planning to retire that in 2030. So then what happens? After we retired the Space Shuttle, space practically went into a very low-growth period. We haven't had a human being outside of low-earth orbit since Apollo, and that's embarrassing, frankly. We should be much more ambitious.I'm afraid we're entering a period where, without strong leadership and without a strong focus on really grand goals, then Congress will reassert its desire to use NASA as a piggy bank for their states and districts and aerospace manufacturers will build the stuff they're asked to build, but nothing will move very quickly. That's the worst-case scenario. We'll see, but right now, with all of the kind of disorder in Washington, I think we are in a period where we should be concerned.Can America still call itself the world's space leader if its role is mainly launching things into Earth orbit, with private companies running space stations for activities like drug testing or movie production if, meanwhile, China is building space stations and establishing a presence on the Moon? In that scenario, doesn't it seem like China is the world's leader in space?That's a real issue. China has a coherent nationalistic plan for space, and they are pursuing it, they're pouring a lot of resources into it, and they're making a lot of headway. As always, when China rolls out its new, cutting-edge technology, it usually looks a lot like something originally built in the US, and they're certainly following SpaceX's model as closely as they can in terms of reusable rockets right now.China wants to get to the moon. They see this as a space race the way the Soviets saw a space race. It's a battle for national prestige. One thing that worries me, is under the Artemis plan during the first Trump administration, there was also something called the Artemis Accords — it still exists — which is an international agreement among countries to A) join in where they can if they want, with various American initiatives. So we've got partners that we're planning to build different parts of the Artemis program, including a space station around the moon called Gateway, which actually isn't the greatest idea, but the European Space Agency and others were involved in helping build it.But also, all these countries, more than 50 countries have signed on to these aspirational goals of the Artemis Accords, which are: freedom of navigation, shared use of space, going for purposes of peaceful exploration, being transparent about what you're doing in space so that other countries can see it, avoiding generating more space junk, space debris, which is a huge problem with all the stuff we've got up there now, including a lot of old decrepit satellites and rocket bodies. So committing to not just leaving your upper-stage rocket bodies drifting around in space. A lot of different good goals, and the fact that all these countries wanted to join in on this shows America's preeminence. But if we back away, or become chaotic, or start disrespecting those allies who've signed on, they're going to look for another partner in space and China is going to roll out the red carpet for them.You get a phone call from SpaceX. They've made some great leap forwards. That Starship, it's ready to go to Mars. They're going to create a human habitation out there. They need a journalist. By the way, it's a one-way trip. Do you go?I don't go to Mars. I've got family here. That comes first for me. But I know some people want to do that, and I think that we should celebrate that. The space journalist Rand Simberg wrote a book years ago called Safe Is Not An Option — that we should not be too hung up on trying to make space exploration totally safe. Exploration's never been totally safe, and if people want to take risks on behalf of a spirit of adventure and on behalf of humanity at large, I say we let them. So maybe that first trip to Mars is a one-way trip, or at least a one-way for a couple of years until more flights become feasible and more back-and-forth return flights become something that can be done routinely. It doesn't really appeal to me, but it'll appeal to somebody, and I'm glad we have those kinds of people in our society.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedMicro Reads▶ Economics* Trump economy shows surprising resilience despite tariff impacts - Wapo* Supply Chains Become New Battleground in the Global Trade War - WSJ* This A.I. 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What Will We Do With It? - WSJ* Oil's Lost Decade Is About to Be Repeated - Bberg Opinion* How the Pentagon Secretly Sparked America's Clean Energy Boom - The Debrief▶ Space/Transportation* Musk-Trump feud is a wake-up call on space - FT* Trump's 2026 budget cuts would force the world's most powerful solar telescope to close - Space▶ Up Wing/Down Wing* ‘Invasive Species'? Japan's Growing Pains on Immigration - Bberg Opinion* Incredible Testimonies - Aeon* How and When Was the Wheel Invented? - Real Clear Science▶ Substacks/Newsletters* Trump's "beautiful" bill wrecks our energy future - Slow Boring* DOGE Looked Broken Before the Trump-Musk Breakup - The Dispatch* Steve Teles on abundance: prehistory, present, and future - The Permanent Problem* Is Macroeconomics a Mature Science? - Conversable EconomistFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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 Ah, Aragon! They used to shoot westerns here, you know. The wide empty desert was the perfect backdrop for spaghetti western action. Cowboy versus cowboy, gunslingers living dying by the grace of their hair-trigger fingers and lightning-quick reflexes. And maybe the spirit of those films never really went away, because now we've got some old-fashioned drama like rival brothers and the return of a rider who was really fighting some technical difficulties. But was that really all there was to it? Does the tech tell a more complicated story? Or is it all mental?Live from the aftermath of Aragon, it's the Oxley Bom MotoGP Podcast. Cheers!Want more? Visit our website or support us on Patreon. With big thanks as always to Brad Baloo from The Next Men and Gentleman's Dub Club for writing our theme song. Check out The Nextmen for more great music!  

This is the AI discussion of my article:  The Quiet Power Of Knowing Who You Are.  This discussion is stunning!  Partly because this article is deeply personal, but the way the drill into the ideas, capturing the essence of what I was trying to say.   Be sure to take the time to listen. Here is the link to the original article:  https://partnersinexcellenceblog.com/the-quiet-power-of-knowing-who-you-are/

AUTOMATED GRAPHIC FORECAST LINK http://www.fcst-office.com/DAWS/WXSIM/graphic-fcst.php   Wednesday (Jun 4): Mostly cloudy to cloudy in the morning, becoming partly cloudy in the afternoon. Patchy light fog in the morning. High 75. The wind will be from the north around 5 mph in the morning, becoming east-northeast in the afternoon.   Wednesday night: Partly cloudy in the evening, becoming clear to partly cloudy after midnight. Low 55. The wind will be from the east-southeast around 2 mph in the evening, becoming northwest after midnight.   Thursday (Jun 5): Partly to mostly sunny in the morning, becoming partly cloudy in the afternoon. High 77. The wind will be from the northeast around 6 mph.   Thursday night: Partly to mostly cloudy in the evening, becoming mostly cloudy to cloudy after midnight. Low 56. The wind will be from the northeast around 4 mph.   Friday (Jun 6): Partly to mostly cloudy. High 75. The wind will be from the east-northeast around 5 mph in the morning, becoming east-southeast in the afternoon.   Friday night: Clear to partly cloudy in the evening, becoming mostly cloudy after midnight. Low 55. The wind will be from the east-southeast around 4 mph in the evening, becoming east-northeast after midnight.   Saturday (Jun 7): Mostly cloudy in the morning, becoming mostly cloudy to cloudy in the afternoon. A 30% chance of rain. Precipitation showery or intermittent. High 70. The wind will be from the northeast around 5 mph in the morning, becoming east-southeast in the afternoon. Precipitation mostly less than a tenth of an inch.   Saturday night: Partly to mostly cloudy in the evening, becoming partly cloudy after midnight. Low 55. The wind will be from the east-southeast around 3 mph in the evening, becoming southwest after midnight.   Sunday (Jun 8): Cloudy in the morning, becoming partly cloudy in the afternoon. A 60% chance of rain. Scattered thundershowers possible. High 75. The wind will be from the southwest around 11 mph, gusting to 21 mph, in the morning, becoming west in the afternoon. Precipitation mostly around a quarter of an inch.   Sunday night: Partly to mostly cloudy in the evening, becoming clear to partly cloudy after midnight. A 30% chance of rain. Scattered thundershowers possible. Low 53. The wind will be from the west around 7 mph, gusting to 17 mph. Chance of precipitation 30 percent. Precipitation mostly less than a tenth of an inch.   Monday (Jun 9): Mostly cloudy to cloudy. An 80% chance of rain. Thunderstorms very likely, some possibly severe. High 67. The wind will be from the west-southwest around 5 mph. Precipitation mostly around half an inch.   Monday night: Mostly cloudy in the evening, becoming clear to partly cloudy after midnight. Patchy light fog after midnight. Low 53. The wind will be from the west-northwest around 7 mph. Tuesday (Jun 10): Sunny. High 75. The wind will be from the west-northwest around 9 mph, gusting to 18 mph.   Tuesday night: Clear to partly cloudy in the evening, becoming mostly clear after midnight. Low 58. The wind will be from the west-northwest around 7 mph.   KASICA

AUTOMATED GRAPHIC FORECAST LINK http://www.fcst-office.com/DAWS/WXSIM/graphic-fcst.php   Tuesday (Jun 3): Cloudy. A 50% chance of rain. Scattered thunder showers are possible. Breezy and warm. High 84. The wind will be from the south-southwest around 15 mph, gusting to 25 mph. Precipitation totals will be mostly less than a quarter of an inch.   Tuesday night: Cloudy. Patchy light fog. A 90% chance of rain. Scattered thunder showers are possible. Breezy. Low 57. The wind will be from the southwest around 12 mph, gusting to 22 mph, in the evening, becoming northwest after midnight. Precipitation totals could be as much as 2 inches.   Wednesday (Jun 4): Cloudy in the morning, becoming partly to mostly sunny in the afternoon. Patchy light fog in the morning. A 20% chance of rain. High 73. The wind will be from the north-northeast around 7 mph, gusting to 15 mph. Precipitation will be mostly less than a tenth of an inch.   Wednesday night: Clear to partly cloudy in the evening, becoming mostly clear after midnight. Low 55. The winds will be from the southeast around 2 mph in the evening, becoming west-northwest after midnight.   Thursday (Jun 5): Partly cloudy in the morning, becoming partly to mostly cloudy in the afternoon. High 78. The winds will be from the north-northeast around 5 mph in the morning, becoming east in the afternoon.   Thursday night: Mostly cloudy in the evening, becoming mostly cloudy to cloudy after midnight. A 20% chance of rain. Low 59. The wind will be from the east around 4 mph. Precipitation totals will be mostly less than a tenth of an inch.   Friday (Jun 6): Mostly cloudy. High 70. The wind will be from the east around 5 mph.   Friday night: Partly cloudy in the evening, becoming cloudy after midnight. An 80% chance of rain. Scattered thunder showers possible. Low 53. The wind will be from the east-southeast around 3 mph in the evening, becoming north-northwest after midnight. Precipitation totals will be mostly between a quarter and half an inch.   Saturday (Jun 7): Mostly cloudy to cloudy in the morning, becoming mostly sunny in the afternoon. A 30% chance of rain. Scattered thunderstorms likely. High 69. The wind will be from the north around 7 mph, gusting to 17 mph, in the morning, becoming 11 mph, gusting to 20 mph, in the afternoon.  Precipitation will be mostly less than a tenth of an inch.   Saturday night: Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 53. The wind will be from the west-northwest around 5 mph in the evening, becoming southwest after midnight.   Sunday (Jun 8): Cloudy in the morning, becoming mostly cloudy in the afternoon.  A 70% chance of rain. Scattered thunderstorms likely. Breezy. High 74. The wind will be from the southwest around 11 mph, gusting to 21 mph, in the morning, becoming 15 mph, gusting to 24 mph, in the afternoon. Precipitation will be mostly around a quarter of an inch.   Sunday night: Mostly cloudy in the evening, becoming clear after midnight. Patchy light fog after midnight. A 40% chance of rain. Scattered thunder showers are possible. Low 56. The wind will be from the southwest around 9 mph, gusting to 18 mph, in the evening, becoming 13 mph, gusting to 20 mph, after midnight. Precipitation totals will be mostly less than a tenth of an inch.   Monday (Jun 9): Partly cloudy in the morning, becoming mostly cloudy in the afternoon. Patchy light fog in the morning. A 60% chance of rain. Scattered thunderstorms likely. Breezy. High 71. The wind will be from the west-northwest around 17 mph, gusting to 26 mph, in the morning, becoming 14 mph, gusting to 25 mph, in the afternoon. Precipitation amounts will be mostly around a tenth of an inch.   Monday night: Clear. Patchy light fog after midnight. Low 53. The wind will be from the north-northwest around 7 mph, gusting to 17 mph.   KASICA

Hey weather warriors! Dustin Breeze here, bringing you the hottest forecast in the Big Apple! Let me tell you, today's weather is looking like a perfect game plan - sunny with all the right moves!Current conditions are looking stellar. We've got temperatures climbing to a solid 77 degrees Fahrenheit, with winds doing a smooth south side shuffle at 5 to 9 miles per hour in the afternoon. It's like the weather is running a perfect offensive strategy!Let's break down today's Weather Playbook. Today, we're talking about something I like to call the "Wind Huddle" - how winds shift and dance across our urban landscape. Just like in football, weather has its own plays and formations. Today's winds are basically doing a strategic route change, starting calm and then sliding in from the south. Talk about a weather quarterback making some smooth adjustments!Now for our three-day forecast, and I'm calling these plays like I used to call plays on the field:Wednesday: Sunny offensive! High near 80 degrees. South winds at 5 to 11 miles per hour. It's gonna be a touchdown of a day!Thursday: Another sunny champion! High near 85 degrees. Southwest winds 7 to 11 miles per hour. We're looking at prime weather conditions, folks!Friday: Things get a bit interesting - 40 percent chance of showers after 2 p.m. Partly sunny with a high near 82. Consider this a weather wildcard play!Any unusual weather phenomena? Not today, New York! We're looking at classic early summer conditions that'll make you want to be outside!It's gonna be WIIIIILD out there, folks!Thanks for listening, and for more info check out inception point dot ai. This has been a Quiet Please production - learn more at quiet please dot ai. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast!

AUTOMATED GRAPHIC FORECAST LINK   Monday (Jun 2): Partly cloudy in the morning, becoming sunny in the afternoon. Breezy and warm. High 83. The wind will be from the south around 11 mph, gusting to 22 mph.   Monday night: Partly cloudy. Breezy. Low 62. The wind will be from the south around 13 mph, gusting to 19 mph.   Tuesday (Jun 3): Mostly cloudy in the morning, becoming mostly cloudy to cloudy in the afternoon. A 50% chance of rain Scattered thunderstorms likely. Windy and warm. High 83. The wind will be from the south around 15 mph, gusting to 26 mph, in the morning, becoming 19 mph, gusting to 29 mph, in the afternoon.   Tuesday night: Cloudy. Patchy light fog. An 80% chance of rain. Thunderstorms are very likely, some possibly severe. Low 56. The wind will be from the south around 13 mph, gusting to 23 mph, in the evening, becoming northwest around 8 mph after midnight.   Wednesday (Jun 4): Mostly cloudy in the morning, becoming mostly sunny in the afternoon. Light to moderate fog in the morning. High 73. The wind will be from the north around 5 mph in the morning, becoming northeast in the afternoon.   Wednesday night: Mostly clear in the evening, becoming clear to partly cloudy after midnight. Low 54. The wind will be from the east-southeast around 3 mph in the evening, becoming west-southwest after midnight.   Thursday (Jun 5): Partly cloudy in the morning, becoming partly to mostly cloudy in the afternoon. Warm. High 77. The wind will be from the north around 4 mph in the morning, becoming east in the afternoon.   Thursday night: Cloudy. A 40% chance of rain. Low 56. The wind will be from the northeast around 5 mph in the evening, becoming east after midnight.   Friday (Jun 6): Cloudy. A 20% chance of rain. High 65. The wind will be from the east around 9 mph, gusting to 17 mph.   Friday night: Mostly cloudy in the evening, becoming partly cloudy after midnight. Low 52. The wind will be from the east around 7 mph.   Saturday (Jun 7): Mostly cloudy in the morning, becoming mostly cloudy to cloudy in the afternoon. High 68. The wind east-northeast around 8 mph, gusting to 15 mph.   Saturday night: Partly cloudy in the evening, becoming clear after midnight. Low 52. The wind will be from the northeast around 3 mph.   Sunday (Jun 8): Sunny in the morning, becoming mostly sunny in the afternoon. High 75. The wind will be from the east-northeast around 6 mph.   Sunday night: Clear in the evening, becoming partly cloudy after midnight. Patchy light fog after midnight. Low 57. The wind will be from the southeast around 6 mph.   KASICA

Title: Your Will Be Done Text: Acts 22:22-29 FCF: We often struggle trusting God when we are in difficult situations Prop: Because God providentially works to accomplish His purposes through man's choices, we must trust the Lord. Scripture Intro: [Slide 1] Turn in your bible to Acts chapter 22. In a moment we will read from the LSB starting in verse 22. You can follow along in the pew bible or in whatever version you prefer. Since Acts chapter 19 we have been in the final Act of the unfolding narrative of the book of Acts. In his part 2 of this gospel sent to Theophilus, which is designed to assure him of the truth of what he has believed, Luke is demonstrating the continuing saving power of Jesus. The Kingdom of God continues to invade the world through the power of the comforter, the third person of the Godhead the Holy Spirit. This last act began when Paul turned his attention toward going to Jerusalem. God has called him to go there and to suffer in chains. Paul goes willingly even against the advice of others who warn him. He knows the warnings but also knows that God has willed that He go to Jerusalem. This final act is the great culmination of the Lord Jesus' command to His apostles to take the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth. And while it is true that the gospel has gone to Rome already… Paul will take it directly to the Emperor's throne. But before he does… he must go through many twists and turns along the way. If you have grown tired of hearing about God's providence and sovereign hand in the book of Acts… the last few chapters are gonna be a bit of a slog for you. Because God's providence will be laced to many of the episodes left in this book as we hasten toward the end. Stand again with me to give honor to and focus on the reading of God's Word. Invocation: Sovereign Lord, You are in absolute control over all that happens. But we also are responsible to act according to Your revealed will and live in this world making wise decisions based on information and resources that You have given us. Help us Lord neither to forget or disbelieve that nothing is outside Your control nor allow us to abdicate the agency we possess to do justly and live wisely. Help us Lord in this text to strike the balance of these two paradoxical teachings so that we may be both in the world but not citizens of it. Bless us with understanding from the Spirit we pray in Jesus' name… Amen. Transition: Let's once again hop right into this new episode of the ongoing adventure of Paul at the hands of the Jews and the Romans. I.) God providentially works to accomplish His purposes through man's sin, so we must trust the Lord. (22-24) a. [Slide 2] 22 - And they were listening to him up to this statement, and then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live!” 23 - And as they were crying out and throwing off their garments and tossing dust into the air, i. The following episode is broken up into two scenes. ii. The second scene occurs in the barracks of the Anatolian fortress. iii. The first scene occurs as an interruption to Paul's defense of himself before the mob in Jerusalem. iv. These two scenes compose our two primary points in the sermon. v. In this first scene we see the rather disheartening and disappointing story of how the mob in Jerusalem was listening quite closely to the testimony of Paul. vi. How is that disheartening and disappointing? vii. Partly because the gospel is preached clearly and effectively. 1. Jesus is presented, on full display, as having the same essence and status as God the Father. Jesus is Yahweh. 2. Jesus is the LORD who is obviously not dead but has risen and furthermore is in heaven. 3. Jesus is the LORD whom Paul is persecuting by imprisoning and killing His People, which are people of The Way. 4. Jesus is the name on which Paul was to call for the forgiveness of his sins and to be baptized in the Spirit. 5. Jesus is the name in which Paul was to be baptized in water. 6. Jesus is the LORD who commands Paul's purpose and destiny to go far from Jerusalem. 7. Jesus is the LORD who sends him to the Gentiles. viii. But all of this is so good. And they were listening. When does it become disheartening? 1. When they stop listening. Indeed, they stop listening so aggressively that they interrupt his story. a. Paul is following a typical style of speech one would use to defend themselves in court. b. Scholars point out that the style is truncated and incomplete. c. This clues us in to the fact that Paul wasn't done. d. No doubt he intended to speak about the wonders he had beheld as God did miraculous things and led many pagans to confess this Jewish Messiah as LORD. e. No doubt Paul would have ended by telling them about Trophimus who was one of these and how he did not bring Trophimus into the temple. f. But Paul never got to that part of his defense. Why? Because they interrupted him. g. Why? 2. They interrupt him in anger because of their national pride and racist bigotry against the Gentiles. a. It was the mention of Paul being commissioned by Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, to go and take something Jewish to the pagans… which provoked the crowd to lose their marbles. b. What do I mean by that statement? c. Well first they demand Paul's death. i. Because Paul has the audacity to suggest that the Jewish Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Man, the Son of God, would command him to take the message of hope to the Gentiles – they determined he was unworthy to live. ii. How did they get there? iii. Think of the illustration Jesus uses in Matthew chapter 7 during his sermon on the mount. iv. He says do not give what is holy to dogs and do not scatter pearls before swine. v. Contextually Jesus is talking about correcting ungodly behavior in others. vi. As He completes that teaching he gives this illustration. vii. In the context then this communicates the idea that just as dogs will not make any distinction between temple food that has been sanctified for worship purposes and other forms of food and just as pigs won't differentiate between pearls under their feet verses anything else – so also a man who never desires to be corrected and is convinced he is never wrong should eventually be left alone in his error. viii. We know the Jews generally felt this way toward gentiles. Ther are even biblical references to pagans around them being viewed as… dogs and swine. ix. In other words, if the gospel was so great, and it had a Jewish origin, a Jewish Messiah, and is offered to the Jews first – it would be absolutely unthinkable to offer it to dogs and pigs. x. But what is their mistake? You see it already, don't you? Their mistake is two-fold 1. God never indicated anything but the plan for all the nations to be His portion. a. For a time, Israel was His portion. b. But He makes it absolutely explicitly clear in the Old Testament, that God owns the whole earth and that He will one day reclaim the nations through His Messiah. 2. Secondly, they miss the concept of not being able to determine if someone is a dog or pig until you try to feed them something holy. a. This is the same context where Jesus invites people to knock to receive a good gift from God – much like holy food and pearls. b. This is in the same context where Jesus cautions that false teachers can be judged by their fruit since bad trees bear bad fruit. c. In other words, the entire context essentially says that you can't judge a person by anything but their reaction to holy things. Do they desire holy things or not? xi. They had mistakenly assigned the status of “unworthy of holy things” to people whom God has always said He was going to reclaim. xii. Therefore, in their eyes, Paul is guilty of blasphemy because he has offered the things of God to pagan people. xiii. And all this stems from the question – who are the people of God? xiv. Are they born into it… or are they born again into it? And Nicodemus' interaction with Jesus clearly tells us the answer. xv. Even Nicodemus, a teacher of the law, a member of the Sanhedrin – must be born again. xvi. There are only two families and they are not Jew and Gentile. They are children of the Serpent and children of the Seed of the woman. xvii. Which means you are either born once and die twice or you are born twice and die once. ix. These first century Jews heard the majesty of the gospel. But what prevented them from hearing more? What prevented them from believing? Ultimately – it was their love for their sin. x. Indeed, they loved their national pride and their racist bigotry SO MUCH… that they started tearing off their clothes and kicking up dust. They throw a religious tantrum. They are demanding Paul to be killed. xi. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. xii. This Jewish mob is the same as every other person who has been given the gospel and has not turned from sin. They actively choose their sin over salvation. Because you can't have both. b. [Slide 3] 24 - the commander ordered him to be brought into the barracks, stating that he should be examined by flogging so that he might find out the reason why they were shouting against him that way. i. Here we see the Roman commander being utterly in the dark as to what is going on here. ii. Why is that the case? iii. There are two potential reasons. 1. First, Paul spoke in Aramaic. a. The likelihood that the Roman Commander spoke Aramaic is very small. b. And when the people violently yell against Paul, they probably did so in Greek. c. So, the commander hears Paul speak and suddenly the crowd turns on him. 2. Second, the layers and flavors of all of this are abundantly Jewish. a. Even if he did understand some of it, there is so much pent-up national pride and bigotry here that it would be difficult for someone outside the culture to see it. b. All he knows is that they were listening intently one moment and then just suddenly snapped and demanded his death. iv. Now, since the commander has already tried to get answers from the crowd and come up with pretty much nothing, he intends to flog Paul until Paul confesses what he has done to provoke them to this point. v. Roman commanders were given liberty to beat confessions or statements out of people, especially when all other non-violent forms of questioning had been exhausted. vi. And right here at the climax of the episode and at the end of scene one – let's take a commercial break and take a moment to digest what we've learned.

pWotD Episode 2947: Emmanuel Macron Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 364,690 views on Tuesday, 27 May 2025 our article of the day is Emmanuel Macron.Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron ([emanɥɛl makʁɔ̃] ; born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He was Minister of Economics, Industry and Digital Affairs under President François Hollande between 2014 and 2016. He has been a member of Renaissance since he founded it in 2016.Born in Amiens, Macron studied philosophy at Paris Nanterre University. He completed a master's degree in public affairs at Sciences Po and graduated from the École nationale d'administration in 2004. He worked as a senior civil servant at the Inspectorate General of Finances and investment banker at Rothschild & Co. Appointed Élysée deputy secretary-general by President Hollande after the 2012 election, Macron was a senior adviser to Hollande. Appointed Economics Minister in 2014, in the second Valls government, he led several business-friendly reforms. He resigned in 2016, to launch his 2017 presidential campaign. A member of the Socialist Party between 2006-09, he ran in the election under the banner of En Marche, a centrist and pro-European political movement he founded in 2016.Partly due to the Fillon affair, Macron was elected President in May 2017 with 66% of the vote in the second round, defeating Marine Le Pen of the National Front. Aged 39, he became the youngest president in French history. In the 2017 legislative election, his party, renamed La République En Marche! (LREM), secured a majority in the National Assembly. Macron was elected to a second term in the 2022 presidential election, again defeating Le Pen, becoming the first French presidential candidate to win reelection since Jacques Chirac in 2002. Macron's centrist coalition lost its majority in the 2022 legislative election, resulting in a hung parliament and formation of France's first minority government since 1993. In 2024, Macron appointed Gabriel Attal as Prime Minister, after a government crisis. Following overwhelming defeat at the 2024 European Parliament elections, Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called for a snap legislative election which resulted in another hung parliament and electoral defeat for his coalition. Two months afterwards, Macron appointed Michel Barnier, a conservative and former chief Brexit negotiator, as Prime Minister. Only three months in, Barnier was toppled by a historic vote of no confidence, prompting Macron to replace him with centrist veteran François Bayrou.During his presidency, Macron has overseen reforms to labour laws, taxation, and pensions; and pursued a renewable energy transition. Dubbed "president of the rich" by opponents, increasing protests against his reforms, culminating in 2018–2020 with the yellow vests protests and the pension reform strike. In foreign policy, he called for reforms to the European Union (EU) and signed treaties with Italy and Germany. Macron conducted €40 billion in trade and business agreements with China during the China–United States trade war and oversaw a dispute with Australia and the US over the AUKUS security pact. From 2020, he led France's response to the COVID pandemic and vaccination rollout. In 2023, the government of his prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, passed legislation raising the retirement age from 62 to 64; this led to public sector strikes and violent protests. He continued Opération Chammal in the war against the Islamic State and joined in the international condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:24 UTC on Wednesday, 28 May 2025.For the full current version of the article, see Emmanuel Macron on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Joey.

The steady hand behind the last four Mission: Impossible films is back on the Filmmaker Toolkit, but this Mission brings a different tone than before. Partly due to the attempt to tie the entire nearly three decade old series into the story, but also to allow enough budget and time to execute the two most impressive and dangerous sequences we've yet seen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We have long lacked a biography of Erving Goffman. Partly this can be explained by Goffman's direction for his papers not to be opened to researchers after his death. This meant those who may wish to write Goffman's biography had a lack of material to draw upon. Dmirti Shalin, author of Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination (2025, Routledge), has overcome this by developing the Erving Goffman Archives, a collection of correspondence, family histories, syllabi and reminisces which allows for this book to exist as the first true biography of the great scholar. In providing the details of Goffman's life, Shalin has provided new ways of looking at Goffman, showing how factors like his upbringing in a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, his relationship with, and the sad suicide of, his wife, his interactions with colleagues and his everyday interactions shaped his sociology. Along the way we are encouraged to look anew at Goffman's work on topics such as the presentation of self, mental health, gambling and gender. In doing so, we learn much about Goffman not just as a scholar, but as a man. In our conversation we cover the whole of Goffman's life, moving from his youth and onto the significant points in his career and their impact upon his sociology. We also discuss the archive and how it came to be and discuss what Goffman's legacy maybe for the future of democratic politics. Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), along with other texts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

We have long lacked a biography of Erving Goffman. Partly this can be explained by Goffman's direction for his papers not to be opened to researchers after his death. This meant those who may wish to write Goffman's biography had a lack of material to draw upon. Dmirti Shalin, author of Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination (2025, Routledge), has overcome this by developing the Erving Goffman Archives, a collection of correspondence, family histories, syllabi and reminisces which allows for this book to exist as the first true biography of the great scholar. In providing the details of Goffman's life, Shalin has provided new ways of looking at Goffman, showing how factors like his upbringing in a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, his relationship with, and the sad suicide of, his wife, his interactions with colleagues and his everyday interactions shaped his sociology. Along the way we are encouraged to look anew at Goffman's work on topics such as the presentation of self, mental health, gambling and gender. In doing so, we learn much about Goffman not just as a scholar, but as a man. In our conversation we cover the whole of Goffman's life, moving from his youth and onto the significant points in his career and their impact upon his sociology. We also discuss the archive and how it came to be and discuss what Goffman's legacy maybe for the future of democratic politics. Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), along with other texts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

We have long lacked a biography of Erving Goffman. Partly this can be explained by Goffman's direction for his papers not to be opened to researchers after his death. This meant those who may wish to write Goffman's biography had a lack of material to draw upon. Dmirti Shalin, author of Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination (2025, Routledge), has overcome this by developing the Erving Goffman Archives, a collection of correspondence, family histories, syllabi and reminisces which allows for this book to exist as the first true biography of the great scholar. In providing the details of Goffman's life, Shalin has provided new ways of looking at Goffman, showing how factors like his upbringing in a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, his relationship with, and the sad suicide of, his wife, his interactions with colleagues and his everyday interactions shaped his sociology. Along the way we are encouraged to look anew at Goffman's work on topics such as the presentation of self, mental health, gambling and gender. In doing so, we learn much about Goffman not just as a scholar, but as a man. In our conversation we cover the whole of Goffman's life, moving from his youth and onto the significant points in his career and their impact upon his sociology. We also discuss the archive and how it came to be and discuss what Goffman's legacy maybe for the future of democratic politics. Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), along with other texts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

We have long lacked a biography of Erving Goffman. Partly this can be explained by Goffman's direction for his papers not to be opened to researchers after his death. This meant those who may wish to write Goffman's biography had a lack of material to draw upon. Dmirti Shalin, author of Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination (2025, Routledge), has overcome this by developing the Erving Goffman Archives, a collection of correspondence, family histories, syllabi and reminisces which allows for this book to exist as the first true biography of the great scholar. In providing the details of Goffman's life, Shalin has provided new ways of looking at Goffman, showing how factors like his upbringing in a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, his relationship with, and the sad suicide of, his wife, his interactions with colleagues and his everyday interactions shaped his sociology. Along the way we are encouraged to look anew at Goffman's work on topics such as the presentation of self, mental health, gambling and gender. In doing so, we learn much about Goffman not just as a scholar, but as a man. In our conversation we cover the whole of Goffman's life, moving from his youth and onto the significant points in his career and their impact upon his sociology. We also discuss the archive and how it came to be and discuss what Goffman's legacy maybe for the future of democratic politics. Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), along with other texts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

AUTOMATED GRAPHIC FORECAST LINK   Weather Forecast for Jackson, WI by George Kasica - Netwrx Consulting   Sunday (May 25): Partly cloudy in the morning, becoming partly to mostly sunny in the afternoon. High 66. The wind will be north-northeast around five mph, gusting to 24 mph.   Sunday night: Clear in the evening, becoming partly cloudy after midnight. Cool. Low 44. Wind east-southeast around three mph in the evening, becoming northeast after midnight.   Monday (May 26): Partly to mostly cloudy in the morning, becoming partly to mostly sunny in the afternoon. High 66. Wind east-northeast around eight mph, gusting to 16 mph.   Monday night: Partly cloudy in the evening, becoming mostly cloudy after midnight. Patchy light fog after midnight. Low 49. Wind east-northeast around five mph.   Tuesday (May 27): Mostly cloudy to cloudy in the morning, becoming cloudy in the afternoon. A 30% chance of rain. High 64. Wind east-northeast around nine mph, gusting to 17 mph.   Tuesday night: Cloudy. An 80% chance of rain. Low 50. Wind north-northeast around 11 mph, gusting to 17 mph.   Wednesday (May 28): Cloudy. Patchy light fog in the morning. A 60% chance of rain. High 61. Wind north-northeast around seven mph.   Wednesday night: Partly to mostly cloudy in the evening, becoming mostly cloudy to cloudy after midnight. Light to moderate fog. A 50% chance of rain. Low 51. Wind northwest around six mph.   Thursday (May 29): Cloudy in the morning, becoming mostly cloudy in the afternoon. Patchy light fog in the morning. A 40% chance of rain. High 64. Wind west-northwest around nine mph, gusting to 18 mph.   Thursday night: Partly cloudy. Patchy light fog after midnight. Low 52. Wind west-northwest around eight mph.   Friday (May 30): Partly cloudy in the morning, becoming partly to mostly cloudy in the afternoon. Patchy light fog in the morning. A 40% chance of rain. Scattered thundershowers are possible. Breezy. High 72. Wind west-northwest around 12 mph, gusting to 22 mph.   Friday night: Mostly cloudy in the evening, becoming clear after midnight. Patchy light fog in the evening, then moderate fog after midnight. A 60% chance of rain. Scattered thundershowers are possible. Low 53. Wind north-northwest around 10 mph, gusting to 19 mph.   Saturday (May 31): Sunny in the morning, becoming partly cloudy in the afternoon. Moderate fog in the morning. Breezy. High 65. Wind north-northwest around 13 mph, gusting to 24 mph.   Saturday night: Clear. Light to moderate fog after midnight. Low 49. Wind west around four mph in the evening, becoming nine mph after midnight.   KASICA  

We have long lacked a biography of Erving Goffman. Partly this can be explained by Goffman's direction for his papers not to be opened to researchers after his death. This meant those who may wish to write Goffman's biography had a lack of material to draw upon. Dmirti Shalin, author of Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination (2025, Routledge), has overcome this by developing the Erving Goffman Archives, a collection of correspondence, family histories, syllabi and reminisces which allows for this book to exist as the first true biography of the great scholar. In providing the details of Goffman's life, Shalin has provided new ways of looking at Goffman, showing how factors like his upbringing in a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, his relationship with, and the sad suicide of, his wife, his interactions with colleagues and his everyday interactions shaped his sociology. Along the way we are encouraged to look anew at Goffman's work on topics such as the presentation of self, mental health, gambling and gender. In doing so, we learn much about Goffman not just as a scholar, but as a man. In our conversation we cover the whole of Goffman's life, moving from his youth and onto the significant points in his career and their impact upon his sociology. We also discuss the archive and how it came to be and discuss what Goffman's legacy maybe for the future of democratic politics. Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), along with other texts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Mythical flying horses couldn't possibly be real; but there is one that we all may meet in our most vulnerable hours. Genre: Mythology, Fantasy, Fairy Tale   Excerpt: They emerge from the shadow-light of the moon mist. I resist the urge to reach out.  I gasp and shiver.  The room has grown cold.  Not the crisp cold of winter.  Not the numbing cold of ice.  Not even the cold of night.  It is a bracing but fortifying cold.  A vast cold.   What story or stories am I revisiting in this episode? Each Season 8 episode is a standalone story, but it's connected to or inspired by a previous story through a character, a place, an object, a concept, a continuation of events (ahem, sequel), and so on. When I was a kid, I desperately wanted unicorns and flying horses to be real. Revisiting a childhood desire in adulthood can be…unnerving. So, why do I keep doing it? This episode was inspired by “A Gildenfaere's Gift.”     MERCH!Interested in merch, like mugs and notebooks, featuring my artwork? Please visit my Store page for updated info on where you can buy: STORYFEATHER STORE   MY FIRST BOOK (yay)Ever wonder how I've gotten all these hundreds of stories written?  I have a method. And I talk all about it in my book called Fictioneer's Field Guide: A Game Plan for Writing Short Stories. It's now available as an eBook, paperback, and hardcover. The book title takes you straight to the book on Amazon. Or you can visit my Store page: STORYFEATHER STORE The Store page has a sign-up form for my email newsletters. Fictioneering mischief and writing tips. Choose what you want. (Either way, you're choosing high jinks.)   CREDITSStory: “Noctemfaere” Copyright © 2021 by Nila L. Patel Narration, Episode Art, Editing, and Production:  Nila L. Patel   Music: “Magic Within” by ANDREW SITKOV (Intro and Outro) “Abstract Vision #5” by ANDREW SITKOV (Outro)   Music by ANDREW SITKOV (MuzStation Game Music)* “Ice and Fire (peaceful part)” “Magic Within”   Music by NICHOLAS JEUDY (Dark Fantasy Studio)* “Compass” “In the shadows” “Oinions (second part)” “Oinions” “Don't move” “Winterheart (seamless)” “Stars above”   *These tracks were part of a music and sound effects bundles I purchased from Humble Bundle and sourced from GameDev Market.   Music by Nicholas Jeudy and Andrew Sitkov is licensed from GameDev Market Sound effects from AudioJungle, and GameDevMarket Changes made to the musical tracks? Just cropping of some to align with my narration. Find more music by Nicholas Jeudy and Andrew Sitkov at gamedevmarket.net Find more stories by Nila at storyfeather.com   Episode Art Description: Digital drawing. Center, a winged horse facing viewer, seen from chest up, mane falling to its right. Partly extended right wing is shadowy and hazy. The left wing is raised and stretched out, and the feathers are defined, some turning dark. Emerging from the horse's sides under its wings are two more flying horses whose forms are translucent. The horse on the left flank extends a wing and raise a leg. The horse on the right flank extends a wing and raise's two legs. A glowing mist streams down from center top. At bottom beside the figures are bright sparks in the fog. Watermark of “Storyfeather” along main horse's right wing. Top and bottom borders depicting dark fog and glowing mist make the image square.

Wx Headline: Days turn to Summer with more humidity and some rain • It's a very pleasant morning to start Friday • Friday morning & Saturday morning may be the coolest & nicest until October • Today's another sunny & warm day but it won't be humid • Saturday's very similar but the humidity starts to build in on Sunday • An isolated shower/storm may try to pop Sunday afternoon, but that won't be much • Memorial Day will be a typical NE FL summer day • Partly sunny, hot & humid with a few afternoon storms • Memorial Day does not look like a washout, but keep an eye to the sky in the afternoon • Weather pattern turns wetter mid to late week next week TODAY: Mostly Sunny & Hot. High: 92 TONIGHT: Pleasant. Low: 65 SAT: Mostly Sunny. 65/90 SUN: Mostly to Partly Sunny, Isolated PM Storm. 68/91 MEMORIAL DAY: Partly Sunny, A Few Afternoon Storms. TUE: Partly Cloudy, Afternoon Storm. 70/91 WED: Partly Sunny, Afternoon Storm. 71/91 THU: Partly Cloudy, Afternoon Storm. 71/90

Not as hot with lower humidity • This morning is warm with temperatures in the upper 60s and 70s across most neighborhoods. • Partly to mostly cloudy morning before some more sun this afternoon. • Highs in the upper 80s to lower 90s. • This weekend will be seasonally hot with highs in the upper 80s to lower 90s. • An isolated shower/storms may develop late in the day/evening on Sunday. • Memorial Day will feature a few afternoon showers/storms. TODAY: Mostly cloudy start, some afternoon sun. Not as hot. HIGH: 90 TONIGHT: Mostly clear. LOW: 63 FRIDAY: Mostly sunny. 63/89 SATURDAY: Mostly sunny. 65/90 SUNDAY: Partly sunny. Isolated shower/storm late. 68/91 MEMORIAL DAY: Partly sunny, a few afternoon showers/storms. 69/92 TUESDAY: Partly sunny, an afternoon shower/storm. 70/91 WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny with scattered afternoon showers/storms. 71/91

The year's most anticipated book in Washington has finally arrived: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's “Original Sin” dropped overnight, just as Joe Biden's physical and cognitive health as president is the topic dominating the D.C. discourse. And the din of that conversation is likely to only grow louder. Partly, that's because the Biden story isn't going away. But it's also because Republicans are eager to keep the focus there rather than the politically risky proposed cuts to Medicaid that have now taken center stage in the debate over the House GOP's Big Beautiful Bill. President Donald Trump heads to Capitol Hill this morning to try and win over Republican holdouts. Playbook contributing author Adam Wren joins managing editor and author Jack Blanchard to unpack it all. 

It's entirely possible that we would not know the name of Johannes Brahms very well if Brahms hadn't met Joseph Joachim as a very young man. Joachim, who was one of the greatest violinists of all time, had already established himself as touring soloist and recitalist, and he happened to know the musical power couple of Robert and Clara Schumann quite well. Joachim encouraged Brahms to go to Dusseldorf to meet the Schumann's, and the rest is history. I've talked about the Brahms-Schumann relationship dozens of times on the show before, but to keep it very brief, Robert Schumann's rhapsodic article Neue Bahnen(new paths) launched Brahms' career, and until Schumann's deterioration from mental illness he acted as a valued friend and mentor for Brahms. Clara Schumann, as a performer, was a powerful advocate for Brahms' music as well as a devoted and loving friend throughout the rest of their lives. Almost constantly present in this relationship was the sound of Joseph Joachim's violin. Brahms did not have a huge circle of friends, but for the often difficult to get along with composer, Joachim was a musical and spiritual companion. Brahms' legendary violin concerto was written for him, and the two collaborated closely for the entire course of their musical lives, except for one significant break. Brahms and Joachim were estranged for 7 years, until Brahms reached out with a remarkable conciliatory gesture: a concerto for Violin and Cello and that would be dedicated to Joachim. Brahms and Joachim(as well as Brahms and Clara Schumann) had often resolved disputes through music, and this was no exception. Clara Schumann gleefully wrote in her diary after Joachim had read through the piece with cellist Robert Hausmann: "This concerto is a work of reconciliation - Joachim and Brahms have spoken to each other again for the first time in years.” One would expect that a work like this would be beloved, but the Double Concerto has had a checkered history, which we'll also get into later. Clara herself wrote that it lacked "the warmth and freshness which are so often found to be in his works,” It would turn out to be Brahms' last work for orchestra, and one of the few in his later style, which makes It fascinating to look at from a compositional perspective. Partly because of the cool reception it got in its first few performances, and the practical challenges of finding two spectacular soloists who can meet its challenges, the piece is not performed all that often, though I have always adored this piece and am very grateful to Avi who sponsored this week's show from my fundraiser last year before the US election. So let's dive into this gorgeous concerto, discussing the reasons for Joachim and Brahms' break, their reconciliation, the reception this piece got, and then of course, the music itself! Join us!

A few afternoon showers/storms before heating up • Tracking a dry morning commute with areas of fog developing. • Temperatures in the 60s and 70s this morning • Highs today in the lower to mid 80s • A few widely scattered afternoon showers/storms developing after 2 pm • Dry tomorrow and for the rest of the week and weekend • Heating to near or right at record levels Friday and into the weekend. TODAY: Some AM fog. Partly sunny. A few afternoon showers and thunderstorms. HIGH: 85 TONIGHT: Partly cloudy. LOW: 63 WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny and warmer. 63/88 THURSDAY: Mostly sunny, heating up. 65/91 FRIDAY: Mostly sunny and hot. 69/94 (Record: 96 - 1995) SATURDAY: Partly sunny and hot. 70/96 (Record: 96 - 1995) SUNDAY: Mostly sunny and hot. 71/95 (Record: 96 - 1899) MONDAY: Mostly sunny and hot. 69/94 (Record: 97 - 1960)

AP's Lisa Dwyer reports that infant death rates are down.

Partly sunny and very warm • This morning, we are tracking temperatures in the 50s, 60s and 70s. • The morning commute will be dry • A few areas of patchy low clouds/fog NW of JAX this AM. • Highs today in the mid to upper 80s inland and lower 80s at the coast. • Jacksonville will be mainly dry today • An isolated shower is possible this afternoon south of JAX as the sea breeze moves inland • Highs tomorrow in the upper 80s to near 90 degrees inland and 80s along the coast. • We see the return of showers and a few afternoon thunderstorms by Wednesday. • The unsettled weather patter will linger into the weekend and early next week. TODAY: Mostly to partly sunny. Warm. Isolated shower south. HIGH: 87 TONIGHT: Turning mostly clear and comfortable. LOW: 65 WEDNESDAY: Partly cloudy, a few PM showers/storms. 65/87 THURSDAY: Partly cloudy, a few showers/storms. 66/88 FRIDAY: Partly cloudy with scattered showers/storms. 66/82 SATURDAY: Turning mostly cloudy with scattered showers/storms. 66/81 MOTHER'S DAY: Turning mostly cloudy with scattered showers/storms. 65/80 MONDAY: Mostly cloudy. Scattered showers/storms. 65/82

Hey weather warriors! Dustin Breeze here, and boy do we have some wild atmospheric action brewing in the Big Apple! Let me kick things off with our current playbook. Overnight, we've got a 40 percent chance of showers rolling through, with temperatures holding steady around 61 degrees Fahrenheit. Think of it like a defensive huddle with some light precipitation action.Now, for our Weather Playbook segment - today we're talking about precipitation probability. Think of it like football odds. Just like a quarterback reading the defense, meteorologists read atmospheric conditions to predict the likelihood of rain. When we say 40 percent chance, it means there's a decent shot of moisture hitting the field - or in this case, the streets of New York City!Speaking of moisture, let's break down our three-day forecast like a championship game strategy:First Down - Friday: Partly sunny with a high near 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Chance of showers and thunderstorms after 2 pm. Winds southwest at 6 to 11 miles per hour. Probability of precipitation? About 30 percent - not quite a guaranteed touchdown, but definitely keep an eye on those clouds!Second Down - Saturday: Higher chance of weather drama! Partly sunny with a high near 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Showers and thunderstorms likely after 2 pm. South winds 6 to 14 miles per hour. Precipitation chance jumps to 60 percent - this is looking like a full-contact weather day!Third Down - Sunday: Mostly cloudy with a high near 69 degrees Fahrenheit. Chance of showers at 60 percent, with potential thunderstorm action after 2 pm.And now, our unusual weather watch: Keep an eye out for potential localized thunderstorm activity that might bring some unexpected rainfall amounts!It's gonna be WIIIIILD out there, folks! Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast, and for more info, check out inceptionpoint.ai. This has been a Quiet Please production - learn more at quietplease.ai. Thanks for listening, weather warriors!

Niall Sargent, Current Affairs Correspondent with The Currency, discusses how RTÉ has written down a figure of €3.6 million on a partly failed IT system.

Anna and Annie discuss the 2025 Women's Prize Shortlist. Our book of the week is MEMORIAL DAYS by Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of HORSE. This is a moving and honest memoir of Brooks' time grieving her late husband Tony Horwitz and also a portrait of their marriage.  Partly set on a remote island off the coast of Tasmania, it is our final Australian book for #AussieApril. Coming up: FUNDAMENTALLY by Nussaibah Younis. Follow us! Email: Booksonthegopodcast@gmail.com Instagram: @abailliekaras and @mr_annie Substack: Books On The Go Credits Artwork: Sascha Wilkosz  

Warm weekend ahead with a few showers arriving • Dry this morning with temperatures in the 60s • Some morning sunshine • Partly cloudy this afternoon • Highs in the mid to upper 80s today inland and 70s/lower 80s along the coast. • Saturday will be mainly dry with highs in the upper 80s to near 90 degrees. • Record high temperature Saturday is 92 degrees (2011) TODAY: Partly sunny and warm. HIGH: 84 (Near 80 at the coast) TONIGHT: Partly cloudy. LOW: 65 SATURDAY: Partly sunny. 65/90 (Record: 92 - 2011) SUNDAY: Partly sunny. Late day/evening shower/storm. 65/88 MONDAY: Partly cloudy. A few showers moving inland. 66/84 TUESDAY: Partly sunny. Isolated shower. 65/84 WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny. 64/86 THURSDAY: Partly sunny. 67/87

A few inland showers, warm through the weekend • Dry this morning with temperatures in the 60s • Some morning sunshine • Partly cloudy this afternoon • An isolated inland shower is possible this afternoon. • Most local neighborhoods don't see rain today. • Highs in the mid to upper 80s today inland and 70s/lower 80s along the coast. • Friday will be mainly dry with highs in the lower to mid 80s. TODAY: Partly to mostly cloudy. Isolated well inland shower. HIGH: 85 (Near 80 at the coast) TONIGHT: Dry, mild. LOW: 64 FRIDAY: Partly sunny. 64/84 SATURDAY: Partly sunny. Isolated inland shower. 65/90 SUNDAY: Partly sunny. Isolated afternoon shower/storm. 65/88 MONDAY: Partly cloudy. A few showers moving inland. 66/84 TUESDAY: Partly sunny. 65/84 WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny. 64/86

A few inland showers/storms, but mainly dry • Dry this morning with temperatures in the 60s • Some morning sunshine • Partly to mostly cloudy this afternoon • Highs in the mid to upper 80s today inland and 70s/lower 80s along the coast. • Only a few isolated inland showers/storms are possible this evening. The primary spot to see these would be north of I-10 into SE Georgia. TODAY: Partly to mostly cloudy. Isolated well inland shower/storm. HIGH: 86 (lower 80s at the coast) TONIGHT: Dry, mild. LOW: 64 THURSDAY: Mostly sunny. Isolated well inland shower. 64/85 FRIDAY: Partly cloudy. Isolated inland shower. 64/84 SATURDAY: Partly sunny. Isolated inland shower. 65/90 SUNDAY: Partly sunny. Isolated afternoon shower. 65/88 MONDAY: Partly cloudy. A few showers moving inland. 66/84 TUESDAY: Partly sunny. 65/84

Welcome to Trek Tuesday on Exploring Humanity Through Sci-Fi, where I dive deep into all things Star Trek.  In this episode, host Tony Tellado celebrates one of the most beloved Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes—“The Inner Light.” Partly inspired by a George Harrison Beatles song and rooted in Taoist philosophy, “The Inner Light” takes Captain Picard on a powerful journey as he lives 4o years of the life of the scientist Kamin. Joining Tony is actor Richard Riehle, known for playing Kamin's close friend Batai , who shares behind-the-scenes stories about the making of this iconic episode, his experiences working alongside Patrick Stewart, and the camaraderie built on set. Richard also reminisces about his time on Star Trek: Voyager and the unforgettable moments he shared with the cast. Plus, we reflect on the legacy of Picard's Ressikan flute and “The Inner Light's” lasting impact on Star Trek fans and the franchise as a whole.  Start Your Free Trial On Sci-Fi Talk Plus, Today. 

Warm afternoon inland • Dry and warm today with highs in the mid to upper 80s inland and 70s along the coast • Some morning cloud cover. • Partly to mostly cloudy this afternoon • Moderate rip current risk at local beaches • Highs in the mid to upper 80s this week inland and 70s along the coast. • Some inland neighborhoods west of Highway 301 may touch 90 degrees this week • Only a few isolated showers are possible starting Wednesday afternoon. TODAY: Partly to mostly cloudy. HIGH: 87 (upper 70s to near 80 at the coast) TONIGHT: Dry, mild. LOW: 64 WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny, A few inland showers. 64/86 THURSDAY: Mostly sunny. Isolated inland shower. 64/85 FRIDAY: Partly cloudy. Isolated inland shower. 64/87 SATURDAY: Partly sunny. Isolated inland shower. 65/87 SUNDAY: Partly sunny. Isolated afternoon shower. 65/88 MONDAY: Partly cloudy. A few showers moving inland. 66/84

(The Center Square) – The Washington State Senate on Friday approved Engrossed Substitute House Bill 1296, one of this session's most controversial and divisive pieces of legislation, on a 30-19 party-line vote. Majority party Democrats contend the bill will provide safeguards for K-12 students. Minority Republicans worry it could penalize schools and infringe on parental rights by undermining Initiative 2081, which lawmakers passed last year. I-2081 primarily focuses on providing parents with increased access to their child's school records, the right to review educational materials, and the ability to opt their child out of certain activities and instruction.

Not as expected. Battles never go as planned. A research team in the field adds another complication to the story. Partly fighters. Partly observers, though not exactly innocent. Our professor is retreating through the back country, looking forward to seeing her friend and sharing her accomplishments. But this is the end. And it ends the […]

On "Forbes Newsroom," HarrisX Founder and CEO Dritan Nesho discussed a new poll showing how voters feel about President Trump's tariffs, which may partly explain why the President issued a shock 90-day pause to most of them.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Princeton University said several dozen of its federal grants have been halted. It's just the latest Trump administration move targeting colleges. Partly in response, Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley announced he’s leaving not only his school, but the country, to teach at the University of Toronto. Stanley joined Amna Nawaz to discuss his decision. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Magentaaaaaaaa VernuliaaaaaaaanMagenta VernuuuuuuuuliaaaaaaanAlso some folks are trying to bribe for information, so we'd better see how that's going.Pledge/donate on Patreon: www.patreon.com/thatdndpodcastSend feedback to: ThatDnDPodcast@Gmail.comVisit our website: http://www.thatdndpodcast.comAmazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/?rw_useCurrentProtocol=1&tag=thdnpo07-20

Round two on the anxious generation. Well, honestly, round three. But we had a false start with round two, which is why this episode is a little late in coming. If you want to hear the gory, data-heavy details of our second attempt, you can access the episode by becoming a patron (https://www.patreon.com/c/Increments) (was there ever a better sell?). We discuss Whether the rise in self-harm rates was due to reporting changes Whether education and common core could be affecting mental health Whether cultural pessimism is on the rise Cyberbullying Martin Gurri's thesis on the digital revolution How Vaden will handle social media with his kids References David Wallace Wells opinion piece (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/smartphones-social-media-mental-health-teens.html) Our patreon episode (https://www.patreon.com/posts/subscriber-ep-23-124502992) on David Wallace Wells' thesis Peter Gray on common core (https://petergray.substack.com/p/letter-51-common-core-is-the-main) Revolt of the Public (https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millennium/dp/1732265143/) Errata Ben said The Revolt of the Public was written in 2014. It was written in 2018. Vaden said he would list all four of Haidt's points about why girls are uniquely vulnerable to negative effects of social media, and only got halfway in before forgetting he said that. The four reasons Haidt gives are: Girls are more affected by visual social comparison and perfectionism Girls' aggression is more relational Girls more easily share emotions and disorders Girls are more subject to predation and harassment Quotes Here is a story. In 2007, Apple released the iPhone, initiating the smartphone revolution that would quickly transform the world. In 2010, it added a front-facing camera, helping shift the social-media landscape toward images, especially selfies. Partly as a result, in the five years that followed, the nature of childhood and especially adolescence was fundamentally changed — a “great rewiring,” in the words of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt — such that between 2010 and 2015 mental health and well-being plummeted and suffering and despair exploded, particularly among teenage girls. For young women, rates of hospitalization for nonfatal self-harm in the United States, which had bottomed out in 2009, started to rise again, according to data reported to the C.D.C., taking a leap beginning in 2012 and another beginning in 2016, and producing, over about a decade, an alarming 48 percent increase in such emergency room visits among American girls ages 15 to 19 and a shocking 188 percent increase among girls ages 10 to14. Here is another story. In 2011, as part of the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a new set of guidelines that recommended that teenage girls should be screened annually for depression by their primary care physicians and that same year required that insurance providers cover such screenings in full. In 2015, H.H.S. finally mandated a coding change, proposed by the World Health Organization almost two decades before, that required hospitals to record whether an injury was self-inflicted or accidental — and which seemingly overnight nearly doubled rates for self-harm across all demographic groups. Soon thereafter, the coding of suicidal ideation was also updated. - David Wallace Wells, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/smartphones-social-media-mental-health-teens.html Studies confirm that as adolescents moved their social lives online, the nature of bullying began to change. One systematic review of studies from 1998 to 2017 found a decrease in face-to-face bullying among boys but an increase among girls, especially among younger adolescent girls.[47] ... According to one major U.S. survey, these high rates of cyberbullying have persisted (though have not increased) between 2011 and 2019. Throughout the period, approximately one in 10 high school boys and one in five high school girls experienced cyberbullying each year.[49] In other words, the move online made bullying and harassment a larger part of daily life for girls. - Haidt, The Anxious Generation p. 170 Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Anyone you want to cyberbully into body dismorphia? Tell us who to send photos of our hot bods to over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Episode 463 is presented by Anders Navigare. For two decades Anders has been a reliable source of purist psychedelia for those in the know. Partly as a visionary event organizer and booking manager for international festivals, partly as a vagabond DJ, and today as one of the founders of the Swedish label Navigare Audio. For this journey he will guide us into the realms of tribalistic, transcendental Techno aimed for the dancefloor. Follow : https://soundcloud.com/anders-navigare https://www.instagram.com/anders_navigare/ https://soundcloud.com/navigare-audio https://navigareaudio.bandcamp.com/ Monument x Carbon Carbon is a new music platform designed by and for fans of electronic music. Carbon's goal is to provide a more convenient platform to discover new and relevant content while improving revenues artists and labels can earn from streaming. Visit: urlr.me/mNtbwu

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: Language, words, are what allow us to form and communicate thought and words, to a large degree, control our thought. Members of media well know this and use such to engage in opinion shaping even when pretending to be engaged in straight reporting. From more alleged abortionists being arrested in Texas, to DNI Tulsi Gabbard and the A.P., to misleading by omission in stories of the deportation of criminal illegal aliens, stories daily prove that legacy media has no right to any presumption, or reputation, of being “legitimate” press versus other media.Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.Why President Trump is partly wrong and partly right as well as the same for Chief Justice Roberts, wrong and right, over the issue of impeaching federal judges. Turley's piece: No, the House Should Not Impeach Judge Boasberg Over His Tren de Aragua Restraining OrderListen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

Before we jump into today's podcast episode, I want to remind you that Write Your Way Through It is currently open for registration! Join us now and take advantage of the early bird price. We start at the end of this month! This week's minisode comes from a direct message I received from a podcast listener. She sent me a message saying that she related to something I was going through and admires me for the way I seem to handle it. [Visit AndreaOwen.com/660 to see the direct message] I'll be honest with you, this one made me very emotional. Partly, because I always love receiving messages like these from listeners, partly because it always feels amazing to be validated for your own growth, and partly because I knew I wanted to come on the podcast and be honest with you about what that particular journey has really looked like. Do I always move through challenges like these with steadiness? Not at all. Tune into the podcast where I open up about this, talking specifically about values work, self trust, and the support we seek and hopefully find in our friendships. Resources from this episode:  Write Your Way Through It Sign up to make sure you don't miss any of my birthday episodes! Episode 658: Lesson 1 on self-abandonment, codependency, and self-trust Book recommendations: I love a good personal development book, and you do too, right? I've compiled a list of book recommendations, as mentioned in past episodes. Check out these amazing book recommendations here. Happy reading!   MSN is supported by: We love the sponsors that make our show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: andreaowen.com/sponsors/ Episode link: http://andreaowen.com/660 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Partly because of the courts and partly because the White House keeps stepping on rakes or trying to break everything, the Dems who were too chill about Trump pre- and post-election have fully moved into 'threat to the Republic' mode. Meanwhile, angry bureaucrats, particularly at the FBI, are digging in. But don't be sanguine because the administration is still trying to take a wrecking ball to the civil service— anything that goes wrong that involves the government though (like that measles outbreak in Texas) they're going to own from here on out. Plus, Trump's dirty energy policy, the challenge of getting his tax cuts through Congress, and Kanye goes all in on Hitler. Ezra Klein joins Tim on the weekend pod. show notes Ezra's forthcoming book with Derek Thompson, "Abundance" Ezra's show on YouTube Measles Outbreak Mounts Among Children in One of Texas' Least Vaccinated Counties Tim's playlist