Podcasts about Peace Corps

Send us a textIn this episode of At The Bench, Drs. Misty Good and Betsy Crouch speak with Dr. Stephanie Gaw, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at UCSF, about her path to becoming a physician-scientist and her translational research on placental infections. Dr. Gaw shares how early lab experiences, time in the Peace Corps, and a pivot from infectious disease to OB-GYN shaped her focus on maternal immunity and global health.The conversation covers Dr. Gaw's work on sepsis in pregnancy, COVID-19 and RSV vaccine responses, and congenital infections like syphilis. She also discusses her approach to building and managing a large placental biorepository, and the importance of thoughtful sample collection for reliable research outcomes. The episode includes practical insights on balancing clinical duties with research, the benefits of peer mentorship, and how clinical observations can drive lab-based investigation.This discussion offers a clear look into the realities and rewards of bridging bedside observations with bench research in maternal-fetal medicine. It's a valuable listen for early-career physician-scientists and anyone interested in the complexities of immunology, placental biology, and perinatal infection.As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: nicupodcast@gmail.com. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below. Enjoy!

Changemakers from the grassroots are the most inspiring people out there, but they need the right support to do their job well and make our home planet much better. Nick Mucha, Director of Environmental Issues and Strategy at Patagonia, talks about his latest book that explores how to empower intergenerational activism. Together with Corinna Bellizzi, he explains how to use art in elevating small actions against climate crisis and what it takes to boost skill-based volunteering. Nick also discusses the danger of monetizing public lands and why the smallest communities will be adversely affected by such a decision.About Guest:Nick Mucha is one of the editors of Tools to Save Our Home Planet. He serves as the Environmental Capacity Building Director at Patagonia. In this role, Nick leads Patagonia's efforts to focus and deliver strategic grantmaking support to Patagonia's grantee organizations while enhancing the effectiveness and durability of nonprofit partners. His work is born out of a deep appreciation for the vitally important role that nonprofit organizations play in tackling our most vexing environmental, social, and economic issues. Nick has 15 years' experience leading conservation and community development programs throughout the world. His interest in this work was born while he and his wife served as Peace Corps volunteers in Honduras from 2004-2006. From that experience Nick founded his own organization supporting coastal communities that were grappling with booming surf tourism in southern Nicaragua. After running that organization for 7 years, Nick served as Director of Programs for Save The Waves Coalition with a focus on protecting surf ecosystems worldwide. Nick holds a B.A.in political science from UC Santa Barbara. Outside of work, Nick is usually serving up dad jokes to his three kids or scheming to get in a quick surf, trail run, or weekend adventure off-grid.Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-mucha-95a6964Guest Website: https://www.patagonia.comShow Notes: Raw audio00:03:02 - Nick's Journey To Environmental Activism00:07:56 - Motivation And Inspirations Behind The Book00:14:03 - Helping Activists Avoid Burnout00:23:26 - Making The Book Fresh And Relevant00:26:32 - Protecting And Supporting Public Lands00:33:07 - Supporting The Noble Mission Of Patagonia00:40:19 - Picking Your Starting Point And Taking Action00:52:54 - Taking Care Of Yourself00:56:57 - Episode Wrap-up And Closing WordsJOIN OUR CIRCLE. BUILD A GREENER FUTURE:

 We really enjoyed talking with Libby, Owen, and Eli of Dallas Ugly. From hearing their unique band name story, to how they became a band was really a good time. We discussed their newalbum “See Me Now” (Available NOW!), and how they each individually write a song and then come together to finalize it.    Nashville's Dallas Ugly are an indie rock band of truly trusted friends, a trio who have been singing each other's songs for over a decade. Three distinctive voices: guitarist OwenBurton observes humanity at a wry remove, chuckling, multi-instrumentalist Libby Weitnauer lifts personal experience up into catchy tunes, and bassist Eli Broxham gracefully snakes through the low end on his more melancholy contributions. Together they've forged an ironclad, sibling-like bond, daring each other to ever increasing heights. Their listeners - lucky - get theoverlap of their Venn diagram, the best of their crop, otherwise known as “See Me Now,” their sophomore album.   Though they first started playing each other's songs back in their Chicago undergrad days, Dallas Ugly officially formed in 2020 when Owen, Libby, and Eli took a chance on relocatingto Nashville. Owen had been living in Senegal serving in the Peace Corps, Libby had established herself as an in-demand musician in New York City, and Eli was playing on frequent bluegrass and country gigs in Illinois - reunited in the Music City, they got to work, shaping both Dallas Ugly and the local scene while playing with a slew of other Nashville artists.   Check them out here:  BandCamp: Dallas Ugly  Website: Dallasugly.com  IG: dallasugly  TikTok: Dallasuglymusic  Facebook: Dallas Ugly  YouTube: Dallas Ugly  

Margaret J Wheatley, Ph.D. is an internationally acclaimed writer, speaker, and teacher. She began caring about the world's peoples in 1966 as a Peace Corps volunteer in postwar Korea. She is cofounder and President Emerita of The Berkana Institute, a charitable foundation that works with people around the world to strengthen their communities using the wisdom and wealth already present in their people, traditions, and environment. She is a guide in leading people back to understanding who we are as humans, being able to create the conditions for our basic qualities of generosity, contribution, community, and love. She is a grand contributor in creating an Island of Sanity in the midst of wildly disruptive seas. Her books lnclude Leadership and the New Science (Berrett-Kohler 1998), Turning To One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope in the Future (Berrett-Kohler 2009) and Opening to the World As It Is: Poems of Experience (Berkana Publications 2024)Interview Date: 3/14/2025 Tags: Margaret J Wheatley, Meg Wheatley, conscious communities, Islands of Sanity, generosity, kindness, human spirit, despair, overwhelm, Teddy Roosevelt, singing together, Personal Transformation, Social Change/Politics, Indigenous Wisdom

If you're disturbed or simply turned off by America's rigid political divisions this is the show for you. We discuss creative skills and practices that put a little hope back in your political lifeDoug Teschner and Beth Malow are co-authors of the forthcoming book "Beyond the Politics of Contempt: Practical Steps to Build Positive Relationships in Divided Times." Their work builds on what they've both learned as bridge builders and Braver Angels volunteers. They also write about their work on Substack.Imagine a country where people of opposing political beliefs and different social, geographical and educational backgrounds get along pretty well, and manage to make progress together on vital issues that they care about. Our two guests show how it can be done."We've always had debate and disagreement," Doug tells us. "The concern now is that this has become personalized. If you don't agree with me that means you're evil." People should disagree, but when it's about "us versus them, this is really dangerous for our country."Most Americans want to get along, says Beth. "I just think there are forces out there tearing us apart because that's what they see their profit and power in... We need to stand up and say enough is enough. We're better than this."Beth Malow leans blue. Doug Teschner leans red. He is a former Republican State Legislator in New Hampshire. Doug served as a Peace Corps country director in Ukraine and West Africa. He volunteers for Braver Angels as New England political leader. Beth Malow is a neurology physician, science and health communicator and lives in Vermont. She is also a trained volunteer moderator and debate chair for Braver Angels.This is our latest episode on the people, projects, and ideas of Braver Angels: The volunteer-led nationwide citizens' group that's working to bring people together across rigid and often antagonistic divides. During our interview Beth mentioned a May 20th Braver Angels New Hampshire debate that she's involved with.Our podcast host, Richard Davies, is a media trainer who works with clients to strengthen their public speaking, messaging, and interview skills. His email is daviescontentatgmail,com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lola Browning Linkedin Peace Corp Education: UIC-B.A. Political Science  

At age 74, Chris Hansen traded retirement for reinvention by joining the Peace Corps in Guatemala. In today's episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo talks with Chris about why service beats sitting still. From cultural immersion and multi-generational dynamics to empowering indigenous women with sustainable tools, Chris brings a lifetime of global development experience into sharp focus. With humor, purpose, and a mosquito net, he's proving it's never too late to make a difference. As they reflect on life, legacy, and learning, Jack also helps Chris shape his journey into a memoir that captures his extraordinary chapter as it unfolds.

On this episode of 1050 Bascom, we were honored and delighted to interview Amed Khan. Amed is the President of the Amed Khan Foundation and a UW–Madison alum who majored in International Relations and Political Science. His career defies any standard résumé: from working in the West Wing as a special assistant at the Peace Corps, to running rescue missions in Kabul, coordinating evacuations in Syria and Ukraine, and founding a refugee housing initiative in Greece. Amed has shown what it means to step up when the world falls apart and to do so without waiting for permission. In this conversation, we talked about what inspired him to take this path, what it really looks like to do humanitarian work in conflict zones, and how his time at UW-Madison helped shape a worldview that still guides him today. We thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and hope you will too.

In this inspiring episode of the Future Ready Librarians podcast, host Shannon McClintock Miller sits down with Jamie, a passionate and multifaceted school librarian whose journey into education is anything but ordinary. From dreams of becoming a professional bodybuilder, Peace Corps volunteer, lawyer, and even a music video director, Jamie shares how a love for Soul Train and a chance job fair led her to a fulfilling career in school libraries. Together, Shannon and Jamie explore the evolving role of librarians in schools—as collaborators, media literacy champions, and advocates for student well-being. Jamie opens up about her aspirations in educational leadership and reflects on how the next chapter of her life will be dedicated to growing as an educator, leader, and advocate. Don't miss this powerful conversation about passion, purpose, and the impact of school libraries in shaping the future of education. Guest Name: Jami Rhue Guest social media: @YURWI Future Ready Schools Website: futureready.org Twitter: @FutureReady, @ShannonMMiller Instagram: @FutureReadySchools, @ShannonMMiller Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FutureReadySchools Future Ready Schools is a registered trademark of All4Ed, located in Washington, D.C.  #FutureReady  #FutureReadyLibs

Matthew Shepherd, Director of Outreach and Education, Bring Back the Pollinators Matthew has worked for the Xerces Society for more than two decades, initially at the vanguard of a new movement to protect pollinators, but then on endangered species and a range of other issues, as well as several years leading Xerces' communications work. Throughout this time, he maintained a direct involvement in pollinator conservation in towns and cities, and in his current role has returned to outreach and community engagement. Much of this focuses on supporting neighborhood-level efforts such as pollinator gardens and small habitat projects in parks, as well as leading the Bring Back the Pollinators campaign and promoting the No Mow May and Leave the Leaves initiatives. Matthew is author of numerous articles and other publications, including Attracting Native Pollinators (Storey Publishing, 2011) and Gardening for Butterflies (Timber Press, 2016). He also is the long-time editor of Wings, the Xerces Society's magazine. Matthew's 35-year conservation career began in England and took him to Kenya before his arrival in the United States. After completing a master's of science in land resource management, Matthew managed National Trust lands in Oxfordshire, established a successful community-based conservation program in Essex, and helped to create Samphire Hoe, an award-winning nature park at the foot of the White Cliffs of Dover. During a VSO placement in Kenya, he worked with local communities and government agencies to improve the management of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest, on the coast north of Mombasa. It was in Kenya that he met a Peace Corps volunteer⁠—who is the reason he moved to Oregon. They live on the west side of the Portland metro region. Their two children are now at college, but they still get together—although sometimes they roll their eyes when Matthew points out yet another super-cool insect that he found.

The Long Journey Out (Wipf and Stock)? Born in Japan and raised between the strong cultural frameworks of his Japanese mother and his Jewish-American military father, Lieber lived in fourteen different places by the time he was 14. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica before settling in NYC, where he is a retired professor from SUNY Nassau and a licensed psychoanalyst in private practice. The book is culled from the many poems written over his 70 years of living. For more information, visit https://www.ronaldokuakilieber.com/.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.

Welcome to today's episode, where we're joined by Ronald Lieber, an award-winning poet whose debut collection, 'The Long Journey Out', weaves a lifetime of experiences into evocative verses. Born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a Jewish-American military father, Ronald's early life spanned fourteen homes by age fourteen, shaping his unique perspective. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica, a retired English professor from SUNY Nassau, and a licensed psychoanalyst in New York City, Ronald recently completed plant medicine guide training in Philadelphia. His poetry, praised by Kirkus Review for its penetrating exploration of wonder and emotion, draws from seven decades of reflection.

Welcome to today's episode, where we're joined by Ronald Lieber, an award-winning poet whose debut collection, 'The Long Journey Out', weaves a lifetime of experiences into evocative verses. Born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a Jewish-American military father, Ronald's early life spanned fourteen homes by age fourteen, shaping his unique perspective. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica, a retired English professor from SUNY Nassau, and a licensed psychoanalyst in New York City, Ronald recently completed plant medicine guide training in Philadelphia. His poetry, praised by Kirkus Review for its penetrating exploration of wonder and emotion, draws from seven decades of reflection.

Designed as a domestic version of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps is one of the many government agencies affected by the Dept. of Govt. Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to cut federal spending.

In this episode, Dr. Samuel B. Lee, MD sits down with Christopher August, founder of Beats & Breath, author of Master Your Breath, and a pioneer in the conscious breathwork movement. From escaping the corporate grind to a near-death experience in the Zambezi River, Christopher's journey is a profound exploration of soul awakening, trauma release, and divine remembrance through the breath.Christopher shares how a drowning accident sparked a rebirth and awakened his mission to teach breath as a spiritual technology. He speaks deeply about the somatic intelligence of the body, his time in the Peace Corps in Tanzania, and how merging ancient breathwork with cannabis and music has helped thousands heal and awaken.This episode dives deep into parasympathetic breathwork, trauma stored in the body, and the sacred intersection of breath and intention, offering powerful tools for those seeking grounded healing, spiritual insight, and an embodied sense of purpose.

Designed as a domestic version of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps is one of the many government agencies affected by the Dept. of Govt. Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to cut federal spending.

Tysor Anderson is a men's basketball assistant coach at Wofford College having joined the staff in June of 2022. Anderson spent the previous three seasons at Jacksonville State University. Prior to Jacksonville State, Tysor was a head coach at the high school level. He served as head coach at Atlanta's South Gwinnett High School from 2016 to 2018 before taking the head coaching job at Holy Spirit Prep in 2018. Anderson coached future NBA first-overall pick Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves while at HSP. In the collegiate ranks, Anderson spent two seasons as an assistant coach. His 2011-12 season was spent at South Georgia State College, and he served in the same capacity at the University of North Georgia during the 2015-16 season. In between those stops Anderson served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cambodia from 2012 to 2014. Anderson is a 2010 graduate of Georgia Tech where he received his degree in Social Science, Technology and Culture, and also earned a certificate in Business Management. As a walk-on for the Yellow Jackets, Anderson lettered three years and served one season as a student assistant under head coach Paul Hewitt.Anderson is the grandson of legendary, Hall of Fame, college basketball coach Charles "Lefty" Driesell, who retired in 2003 after 41 years as a head coach at Davidson, Maryland, James Madison and Georgia State.On this episode Mike and Tysor discuss Tysor's coaching experiences from high school to collegiate levels. Throughout the episode, we delve into Anderson's formative years, marked by his early exposure to the coaching profession through his grandfather, the esteemed Lefty Driesell, and discuss the profound impact of familial legacies on his career aspirations. As we explore his transition from a head coach in high school to an assistant at the collegiate level, we examine the invaluable lessons learned regarding the importance of building relationships within the community and fostering team cohesion. Furthermore, Anderson articulates the challenges posed by the rapidly evolving landscape of college athletics, particularly in the realms of recruitment and player development. Ultimately, this episode serves as a compelling examination of the multifaceted nature of coaching, underscoring the vital balance between personal ambition and the collective success of the teams we lead.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @hoopheadspod for the latest updates on episodes, guests, and events from the Hoop Heads Pod.Make sure you're subscribed to the Hoop Heads Pod on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there please leave us a 5 star rating and review. Your ratings help your friends and coaching colleagues find the show. If you really love what you're hearing recommend the Hoop Heads Pod to someone and get them to join you as a part of Hoop Heads Nation.You'll want to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Tysor Anderson, men's basketball assistant coach at Wofford College.Website - https://woffordterriers.com/sports/mens-basketballEmail - andersontd@wofford.eduTwitter/X - @tysorandersonVisit our Sponsors!Dr. Dish BasketballOur friends at Dr. Dish Basketball are here to help you...

George is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, a husband and father of two, a consultant to credit unions, a cross-country cyclist, a man living the dream on his terms, and someone I'm looking forward to sitting down and having a beer with one day. Our conversation wanders to lots of places, including leveraging the phrase “I don't know” as a consultant, how vulnerability shows up in his personal life, his two cross-country cycling trips, the generosity of people, and how he found his way to working with credit unions. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hofheimer/

Discovering Balance and Healing: A Journey with Trish Lott In this episode of Good News!, Lynn Shematek and Deacons Jon Shematek and Lauren Welch welcome Trish Lott, who shares her fascinating career evolution from a health educator in reproductive health to a licensed acupuncturist deeply involved in international outreach. Trish recounts her transformative experiences in the Peace Corps, living in rural Paraguay, and how these shaped her approach to acupuncture. She explains the philosophy behind acupuncture, its roots in nature, and her unique practice model in Towson, Maryland. Additionally, Trish discusses her work with midwives in Guatemala through the Global Acupuncture Project, emphasizing the importance of reconnecting with nature for holistic wellness. Tune in for an uplifting conversation about the intersection of passion, service, and healing.00:00 Welcome and Introduction00:20 Trish Lott's Early Career and Peace Corps Experience02:26 Transition to Acupuncture03:29 Philosophy and Practice of Acupuncture08:39 Community Acupuncture Model12:28 International Work and Impact14:52 Personal Reflections and Advice18:08 Conclusion and FarewellCommunity Acupuncture of Towson website: https://www.catowson.comCommunity Acupuncture of Townson FaceBook page: https://www.facebook.com/CommunityAcupunctureofTowson/The Good News! podcast series is part of the ListeningforClues portfolio. Catch us at https://listeningforclues.com/#listeningforclues.com #Good News! #EDOM #incarnationbmore.org #deacons #Community Acupuncture of Towson #Trish Lott© 2025 Listening for Clues

In this inspiring episode of the ASVAB Domination Podcast, Mickey sits down with 1LT Sean Lundy of the Minnesota National Guard. Both returned Peace Corps Volunteers, Mickey and Sean dive deep into their eerily parallel journeys—from global service to leading soldiers. They talk about studying for the ASVAB as older, more life-experienced recruits, navigating the National Guard, emotional intelligence in command, and what Peace Corps teaches you that basic training never could. Topics covered: Studying for the ASVAB with a growth mindset Emotional intelligence as a leadership asset The Peace Corps mindset vs. the military structure Transitioning from idealism to service execution Officer-Enlisted relationships built on trust and learning The meaning of life (yes, Viktor Frankl gets a mention) Links: Connect with Sean Lundy: STLundy7@gmail.com | LinkedIn Profile ASVAB prep courses: GamonalTutors.com https://asvabdomination.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/LT-Lundy.mp3

RU342: RON OKUAKI LIEBER ON THE LONG JOURNEY OUT, PSYCHOANALYSIS, PSYCHEDELICS & POETRY: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru342-ron-okuaki-lieber-on-the-long Rendering Unconscious episode 342. Rendering Unconscious welcomes Ron Okuaki Lieber to the podcast! He's here to discuss his book of poetry The Long Journey Out (2023). https://amzn.to/44Gsery Ron describes his journey from a restless youth to a career in psychoanalysis and poetry. He recounts a transformative psychedelic experience in his teens, which led him to explore literature and poetry. Lieber joined the Peace Corps in Costa Rica, where he deepened his interest in culture, language and the human condition. He later studied at Columbia University and then the Center for Modern Psychoanalysis. Lieber's poetry, influenced by formal training and personal experiences, is described as formal and crafted. He emphasizes the importance of the unconscious in both art and psychoanalysis, and his work reflects themes of longing and loss. Of Japanese and Jewish lineage, Ronald Okuaki Lieber was born in Tokyo. He grew up as an army brat, moving every year until the age of 14 when his parents settled in Petersburg, VA. He graduated from the College of William and Mary with a BS in Biology, then served two years as a Peace Corp volunteer on the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. He returned to live in NYC and eventually graduated from the MFA Program at Columbia University. He later began psychoanalytic training at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. After graduation, He became the Director of the institute and editor of its journal, Modern Psychoanalysis. He is currently in private practice and has completed training as a guide at the Center for Medicine Work in Philadelphia. https://www.ronaldokuakilieber.com He has a poetry reading May 8, 2025 at Unnameable Books, 615 Vanderbilt Avenue (located inProspect Heights, Brooklyn) at 7:00 with Todd Colby and Mitch Highfill, music by Flose & Aura. https://www.ronaldokuakilieber.com/events For those interested in entering into psychoanalysis with me, I provide remote psychoanalytic treatment online, as well as consultation services for those in psychoanalytic formation. For more information visit my website https://www.drvanessasinclair.net Feel free to email me directly at vs [AT] drvanessasinclair [DOT] net www.drvanessasinclair.net/contact/ News and updates: I have a few events coming up! Saturday, May 3rd, I'll be giving an online talk on “Scansion in Psychoanalysis & Art” for Corpo Freudiano Vancouver. https://corpofreudianovancouver.com/event/scansion-in-psychoanalysis-and-art-with-vanessa-sinclair-psyd/ Join me Saturday, May 10th, for an online workshop as I explore “Dreams as Art” with writer Emmalea Russo. We'll be delving into dreamwork, artwork, psychoanalysis as a creative practice, and the varying relationships Freud, Jung, Lacan had with art. More info & register here: DREAMS AS ART: Freud, Jung, Lacan: https://emmalearusso.com/new-products/p/psychoanalysis-as-art-freud-jung-lacan Then beginning Sunday, May 25th, I'll be giving a 4-week online course via Morbid Anatomy Museum: The Cut in Creation: Exploring the Avant-Garde, Dada, Surrealism, Modern Art, Noise Music, and Performance Art through a Psychoanalytic Lens: https://www.morbidanatomy.org/classes/p/the-cut-in-creation-exploring-the-avant-garde-dada-surrealism-modern-art-noise-music-and-performance-art-through-a-psychoanalytic-lens-led-by-vanessa-sinclair-psyd Thank you for being a paid subscriber to Rendering Unconscious Podcast. It makes my work possible. If you are, so far, a free subscriber, thanks to you too. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to gain access to all material on the site, including all future and archival episodes of Rendering Unconscious Podcast: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com

The Long Journey Out (Wipf and Stock)? Born in Japan and raised between the strong cultural frameworks of his Japanese mother and his Jewish-American military father, Lieber lived in fourteen different places by the time he was 14. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica before settling in NYC, where he is a retired professor from SUNY Nassau and a licensed psychoanalyst in private practice. The book is culled from the many poems written over his 70 years of living. For more information, visit https://www.ronaldokuakilieber.com/.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.

[RE-UPLOAD FROM DEC. 8, 2021]In this episode Zsofia talked with Dr. Inga Zasada, nematologist with the USDA-ARS based out of Corvallis, OR. We chatted about how Inga was inspired by her scientist parents and growing up in Alaska and Oregon to want to become a biologist. She also talked about her unusual path to nematology, including being a Peace Corps volunteer on the Maltese Islands for 2 years where she had to learn on the job. We chatted about her graduate education at North Carolina State University and UC Davis and then working for the USDA as a nematologist.Watch this episode on YouTube here!You can follow Bug Talk on Instagram and Twitter @bugtalkpodcast, and YouTube @bugtalk6645

Liza Roeser is the Founder and CEO of FiftyFlowers, an innovative online floral retailer that delivers farm-fresh flowers directly to customers across the US. Her journey began in the early 1990s with the Peace Corps in Ecuador, where she developed a passion for the floral industry and later spent over a decade building relationships with sustainable farms worldwide. Under her leadership, FiftyFlowers has grown into a multimillion-dollar business with over a million orders delivered. A serial entrepreneur, Liza also founded Flower Fix, Farm Exports, Inc., and The Flower CEO, where she shares insights on entrepreneurship, ecommerce, and the floral industry. In this episode… Hiring the right people is hard — keeping them in the right roles as your company scales is even harder. When a business evolves from startup to eight and nine figures, the team that got you there might not be the team to take you further. How do you reassess your structure without disrupting momentum or compromising your culture? Liza Roeser, a leader in the floral ecommerce space, offers hard-won lessons on navigating team restructuring during rapid growth. Liza emphasizes the power of the “right people, right seats” philosophy from Jim Collins and how using tools like the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) framework and the GWC analysis can help leaders make data-backed decisions about personnel. She also highlights the importance of onboarding rigor, cultural alignment, and frequent evaluations to catch misalignments early. Through constant, value-driven contact across all stages of the customer journey, brands can improve customer engagement, especially when the product experience is deeply emotional or tied to milestone events. In this episode of the Minds of Ecommerce, Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews Liza Roeser, Founder and CEO of FiftyFlowers, about building high-performing teams while scaling. Liza shares how she uses EOS to evaluate team alignment, why founder-led marketing builds deeper trust, and how expectation management creates lifelong customer advocates.

It’s a Mesirow Monday! Every week, a specialist from Mesirow Wealth Management joins Jon Hansen to discuss a different topic related to finances. This week, Managing Director and Wealth Advisor at Mesirow, Dr. Gregg Lunceford, joins Jon to discuss joining the Peace Corps in retirement and its benefits. For more information, visit www.mesirow.com or call 877 Mesirow.

In this episode, I speak with Kellen Parrish of Ocean Cowboy Outfitters. Kellen and I discuss his time spent in the Peace Corps and his experiences diving up in the cold dark waters of the Northern Pacific where hiking to your spot is a way of life. This led him to develop a spearfishing specific backpack for long hikes into dive spots . Check out more from Kellen @kellenlp and his spearfishing backpack at @oceancowboyoutfitters . . Announcements WANT TO LEARN MORE? 100% Online Spearfishing Course www.spearfactor.com Or at  www.spearfishingmentor.com This podcast is a part of the Waypoint TV Podcast Network. Waypoint is the ultimate outdoor network featuring streaming of full-length fishing and hunting television shows, short films and instructional content, a social media network, Podcast Network. Waypoint is available on Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Android TV, IoS devices, Android Devices and at www.waypointtv.com all for FREE! Join the Waypoint Army by following them on Instagram at the following accounts @waypointtv @waypointfish @waypointhunt @waypointpodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this first guest episode of Hōmish, Anna sits down with her childhood friend Nicole Bryan to talk about what it means to make home in unexpected places, and what it means to come back.Nicole's journey has taken her, quite literally, around the world. From small-town Tennessee to the Peace Corps in Madagascar, a cross-cultural relationship, a season in South Korea, and back again, her story is shaped by the complexities of culture, identity, and belonging. This episode is about becoming someone you're proud to come home to. About the quiet courage it takes to hold life with open hands. About loving deeply, letting go, and trusting that even impermanence can be sacred.If you want to connect with Nicole, she's is also in the middle of a no-buy year where she's documenting her journey toward intentional style, ethical fashion, and mindful consumption. And yes, it is *very* cool. You can follow her on Instagram and TikTok at @foreverabaobab

From scaling Kilimanjaro to reshaping communities through Peace Corps missions, Paul Burnore has lived a life of purposeful motion. In this interview, we unpack the stories behind his memoir No Flight Plan, a globe-trotting, heart-expanding collection of life lessons and poetry forged from over 70 countries' worth of experience. We explore his shift from IBM exec to international humanitarian, dive into the philosophies guiding his daring decisions, and reflect on how introspection turned into poetry. Tune in as Paul reminds us that taking chances is often the surest route to self-discovery.

Morten Bøås (PhD) is a Research Professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. He works on violent conflict, insurgencies, and fragile states in Africa and the Middle East. From 2020 to 2023 Bøås was the Principal Investigator of the EU Horizon 2020 funded Project PREVEX – Preventing violent extremism in the Balkans and the MENA: Strengthening resilience in enabling environments. His latest book is “Resisting Radicalization: Exploring the Non-Occurrence of Violent Extremism.” Out of 9-11 attacks, one major conclusion is it was a Black Swan Operation which means it could happen, but intelligence services missed the signals. Grievances or underlying causes may push someone into a violent life due to lack of education, food insecurity, or poverty.  Soft Power programs, such as Peace Corps, UN assistance and USAID may provide a better life for people who are susceptible.  USAID is rated as an extremely efficient and effective self-help program. 

What is theological education like at the new Lutheran seminary in Tanzania? Rev. Bryan and Deaconess Keah Payne, serving the Lord in Tanzania, join Andy and Sarah to talk about their journey to serving as missionaries in Tanzania, the community where they live, how both of them are involved in theological education at the new Lutheran seminary there, how their service in the Peace Corps prepared them for service on the mission field, and family life in Tanzania. Learn more about the Paynes and how to support their work at lcms.org/payne and facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094281640024. Reach out to Rev. Payne at bryan.payne@lcms.org. As you grab your morning coffee (and pastry, let's be honest), join hosts Andy Bates and Sarah Gulseth as they bring you stories of the intersection of Lutheran life and a secular world. Catch real-life stories of mercy work of the LCMS and partners, updates from missionaries across the ocean, and practical talk about how to live boldly Lutheran. Have a topic you'd like to hear about on The Coffee Hour? Contact us at: listener@kfuo.org.

Feeling stuck planning projects across subjects? It's more common than you think. Without the right structures, interdisciplinary projects often feel messy, disconnected, and overwhelming — for both teachers and students. But what if a few small shifts could lead to more engaged students, stronger collaboration across subjects, and less stress for you? In this episode, I sat down with Ryan Murfield, Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary PRAXIS Program at the International School of Kuala Lumpur, to unpack three simple shifts that make interdisciplinary planning work: Focus planning around real-world problems that drive deeper engagement Build milestone checkpoints that keep interdisciplinary teams aligned Design assessments that capture real learning across subjects—without adding more work If you're ready to plan across subjects with more clarity, connection, and confidence, this conversation is for you. Connect with Ryan: Learn more about the PRAXIS Program: Get the 12 shifts book for student-centered environments: www.transformschool.com/whereistheteacher  Free Interdisciplinary Project Planner Ryan's Bio: Initially from South Dakota, Ryan Murfield  is the coordinator of the 9th grade interdisciplinary program called (PRAXIS) at the International School of Kuala Lumpur.  Prior he taught in the USA and then in Seoul, South Korea. The favourite part of his role is seeing the amazing work students are able to do when given the opportunity to grapple with complex, real-world, authentic problems. He was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine where he to speak Ukrainian and lived in a small town, teaching English at a local school. He helped organize events promoting leadership and for young people in the region, and also met his wife, Courtney, another Peace Corps volunteer.   

In episode 50, Tamara Kocharova welcomes Phil Rhodes, the award-winning Chief Learning Officer at Phillips 66, a Fortune 20 company renowned for its multi-billion-dollar transformations.Join us for a deep dive into culture, leadership, and the future of learning as Phil shares his extraordinary journey—from serving in the Peace Corps in Lesotho to coaching leaders through some of the most significant cultural shifts in corporate history. Discover how he balances people-first strategies with high-stakes operational demands and why democratizing learning is key to organizational success.Together we will speak about the power of storytelling in driving cultural change, building trust and accountability in teams, AI and coaching: How technology enhances (but doesn't replace) human connection, leadership development that delivers 95% retention rates, humility and ambition.Bonus: Learn about Phil's unexpected passion—rescuing plants and fostering growth both at work and in his garden! This episode is packed with actionable insights on creating inclusive, high-performance cultures. Tune in! Follow Tamara Kocharova, the podcast host and CEO at Lanes AI, on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tkocharova Book a meeting to learn more about Lanes AI: lanes.ai/demo?utm_campaign=podcast-50-episode Listen all Episodes of LPTP podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lptl-love-people-technology-learning/id1736176315 Follow Tamara Kocharova, the podcast host and CEO at Lanes AI on LinkedIn to stay tuned for future episodes: linkedin.com/in/tkocharovaBook a meeting to learn more about Lanes AI: lanes.ai/demo

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comEvan is an attorney and gay rights pioneer. He founded and led Freedom to Marry — the campaign to win marriage until victory at the Supreme Court in 2015, after which he then wound down the organization. During those days he wrote the book Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry. Today he “advises and assists diverse organizations, movements, and countries in adapting the lessons on how to win to other important causes.” We became friends in the 90s as we jointly campaigned for what was then a highly unpopular idea.For two clips of our convo — on the early, fierce resistance to gay marriage by gay activists, and the “tectonic” breakthrough in Hawaii — pop over to our YouTube page.Other topics: raised in Pittsburgh by a pediatrician and a social worker; being a natural leader in high school; his awakening as a gay kid; the huge influence of John Boswell on both of us; working at Lambda Legal; Peace Corps in West Africa; a prosecutor in Brooklyn; the AIDS crisis; coalition building; engaging hostile critics; Peter Tatchell; lesbian support over kids; the ACLU's Dan Foley; Judge Chang in Hawaii; Clinton and DOMA; Bush and the Federal Marriage Amendment; the federalist approach and Barney Frank; Prop 8; the LDS self-correcting on gays; the huge swing in public support; Obama not endorsing marriage in 2008; Obergefell and Kennedy's dignitas; Trump removing the GOP's anti-marriage plank; Bostock; dissent demonized within the gay community; the Respect for Marriage Act; and Evan and me debating the transqueer backlash.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Claire Lehmann on the success of Quillette, Francis Collins on faith and science and Covid, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee on Covid's political fallout, Sam Tanenhaus on Bill Buckley, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on the Biden years, and Paul Elie on his book The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Ben B. studied International Relations in college. He wanted to get some real world experience in this topic, so joined the Peace Corps as a volunteer. He spent all of his time in a small town in Ethiopia helping out the local community. When he was there he was doing Linchpin workouts & he would have to run 2 miles in order to do pull-ups from a tree. This is his story.

This week we get the opportunity to speak with Daniel, a missionary who has served with the St. Francis Xavier Lay Missionary Society as well as the PeaceCorps.  He bring his unique perspective as an child of both American and Chinese parents, raised in the Catholic faith, who has had the opportunity to observe and serve the church in China and Taiwan.  Don't miss this incredible episode. To learn more about St. Francis Xavier Lay Missionary Society:https://www.laymissionary.org/Click here to learn more about supporting the Pontifical Missions Societies:https://pontificalmissions.orgFollow us on socials!https://x.com/tpms_usahttps://www.instagram.com/tpms_us/

In this episode, The Sun's Tracy Ross sits down with Jessica Moon, a multidisciplinary artist whose global adventures and multicultural heritage shape her vibrant installations. They explore how her Peace Corps experience in Mongolia inspired her to transform waste materials into poignant statements on consumerism, capitalism, and climate change, all while bringing a bright sense of hope to environmental advocacy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Consul General of France meets with military and state officials in Hawaiʻi; Peace Corps braces for the possibility of cuts after DOGE visit

Share your thoughts about our conversation!What does facilitation have in common with quantum physics? What do organisations have to do with molecules? And why when you ask a question, are you playing around with someone's mind?All will be revealed this week with Jimmie White! A seven-times best-selling author, an indomitable facilitator that has trained The Peace Corps and supported NASA with somatic integration, and in a past life, a teacher of ballroom dancing.It's perhaps not surprising then, that Jimmie's facilitation is alive with somatic movement, storytelling - and even neuroscience. It's something Jimmie calls ‘Walking Your Story': a physical navigating of group narratives, helping us to rewrite our stories, explore multiple outcomes, and bond with others in the steps we take.Press play for an incredible, expansive conversation!Find out about:Jimmie's ‘Walking Your Story' method, and how it can foster deep reflection, transformation and connectionThe Observer Effect of Quantum Physics and what it means for facilitationHow physical movement can change our relationship with past storiesThe methods of somatic storytelling and socratic thinkingThe importance of fostering psychological safety in personal storytellingDon't miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.Links:Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.Connect to Jimmie White:LinkedInWebsite"Designing & Leading Life-Changing Workshops: Creating the Conditions for Transformation in Your Groups, Trainings, and Retreats" by Ken Nelson, Lesli Lang, David Ronka, Korabek-Emerson and Jim WhiteSupport the show✨✨✨Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more:https://workshops.work/podcast✨✨✨Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!

Episode #113 - In this episode of the Awakened Heart Podcast, I sit down with Monica Mangelson, a life-purpose coach, digital nomad, and adventure seeker who turned societal expectations on their head to create a life of freedom and fulfillment. Raised in an orthodox home where marriage and motherhood were the expected path, Monica knew deep down there had to be more. After a canceled Peace Corps opportunity left her feeling stuck, she and her husband took control of their destiny—building an online business that allows them to travel the world. Now, as a certified life-purpose coach with a deep understanding of neuroscience, Monica helps others step into their power and design lives they truly love. Join us as we explore the neuroscience behind personal transformation, overcoming fear, and breaking free from limiting beliefs.TakeawaysThings always work out the way they're supposed to.We can live and work anywhere.I felt a lot of pressure from that side.Everything that I've been through was for this moment.I would have probably been in corporate America today.We have to just be so radically honest with each other.You didn't start this so you can work 24 seven.Our brains are wired for efficiency.A lot of people are afraid of making success.You can design your life.Sound Bites"We can live and work anywhere.""Our brains are wired for efficiency.""You can design your life."Chapters00:00 Introduction and Background Mishap02:39 The Journey to Becoming Digital Nomads05:43 Breaking Free from Traditional Expectations08:22 The Impact of the Pandemic on Their Plans11:10 Finding New Paths and Opportunities14:06 Building a Business as a Couple16:53 Mindset Shifts and Lifestyle Changes19:38 Neuroscience of Change and Overcoming Blocks28:29 Fear of Success: The Hidden Barrier30:44 The Transformative Power of Belief34:11 Redefining Freedom and Life Purpose36:24 Creating a Freedom-Based Lifestyle42:08 Unexpected Lessons from Travel45:55 Embracing Uncertainty and Future PossibilitiesConnect with Monica:WebsitePodcastFacebookFacebook GroupLet's Connect!WebsiteInstagram FacebookYoutubeRumble⁠Tik Tok⁠digital nomad, neuroscience, life coaching, personal growth, mindset, freedom lifestyle, couple goals, entrepreneurship, overcoming fear, community support

Free class on The Great Discover is at www.SallyGimon.comCalander:  https://www.thetrustisyou.com/scheduling https://www.facebook.com/TheTrustisyou/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallygimon/ https://www.instagram.com/sallygimon/ https://twitter.com/GimonSally https://www.tiktok.com/@spendthrifttrust https://www.youtube.com/@sallygimon?sub_confirmation=1 www.TheTrustIsYou.comSummaryIn this engaging conversation, host Sam Knickerbocker interviews Sally Gimmon, who shares her vibrant life story, from her early entrepreneurial spirit as a child to her diverse career experiences, including her time in the Peace Corps.Sally discusses her transition into real estate and tax lien investing, providing insights into the ethical considerations of her work. The conversation highlights the importance of financial education and the impact of cultural exposure on personal growth.In this conversation, Sam Knickerbocker and Sally Gimon delve into the complexities of real estate investing, family dynamics, and the challenges of taxation. They explore personal anecdotes, the impact of financial decisions on family relationships, and the intricacies of navigating tax liens and trusts.Sally shares her journey into real estate, highlighting significant profits and the lessons learned from overcoming financial hurdles. The discussion also touches on the skepticism surrounding tax strategies and the importance of understanding legal frameworks in wealth building. In this conversation, Sally Gimon and Sam Knickerbocker delve into the intricacies of grantor and non-grantor trusts, discussing their importance in estate planning and privacy.They explore the ongoing maintenance and costs associated with trusts, as well as resources available for individuals looking to educate themselves on trust planning. Real-life success stories highlight the financial benefits of utilizing trusts, emphasizing the significance of legacy beyond mere wealth. The discussion concludes with final thoughts on taking action towards financial education and planning for the future.TakeawaysSally's vibrant personality and energy are infectious.The importance of financial education is often overlooked.Early entrepreneurial experiences shape future career paths.Traveling can significantly broaden one's perspective.The Peace Corps experience can be life-changing and educational.Understanding tax liens is crucial for real estate investing.Ethics in investing can be complex and subjective.Networking and relationships are key in real estate.Sally's journey reflects resilience and adaptability.Investing in tax liens can be profitable but requires careful consideration. Sally's mother had strong opinions about her real estate work.Navigating family dynamics can complicate financial decisions.Tax liens can be profitable but raise ethical questions.Real estate investing requires understanding local laws and processes.Sally's journey into real estate began with a mentor.Financial challenges can lead to unexpected opportunities.Trusts can provide significant tax benefits if structured correctly.Many people are unaware of their financial responsibilities after a family member's death.Skepticism about tax strategies is common among professionals.Understanding the history of tax laws can empower investors. Grantor Trust means the person setting up the trust has control.Non-grantor trusts provide privacy and prevent beneficiaries from being grantors.Ongoing maintenance of trusts includes tax filings and potential fees for changes.Trusts can save significant amounts in taxes, as shown in real-life examples.Education on trusts is crucial for effective estate planning.Legacy planning involves more than just financial assets; it includes values and behaviors.Trusts can help control how wealth is passed down through generations.Real estate investors can benefit greatly from utilizing trusts for tax savings.Sally offers resources like presentations and articles for those interested in trusts.Taking action towards financial education can lead to significant life changes.

Have you ever felt stuck between two good choices?   Through my personal story of leaving a life I loved to join the Peace Corps, I illustrate how choosing between two good things - while challenging - can lead to profound growth and fulfillment.   If you're struggling with a decision that feels impossible because both options have value, this episode is for you.   Get full show notes, transcript, and more information here: https://www.mariemurphyphd.com/212

In this Brush Pass episode of Brush Pass, Le Carre Cast and Barbican Station podcast host Jeff Quest, gives us the lowdown on two spy-related theatrical productions: 'Operation Mincemeat' and 'Dakar 2000'. Operation Mincemeat on Broadway John Golden Theatre   252 W. 45th St., New York, NY The stunning true story of a scheme every bit as dicey, daring, and ridiculous as opening a new musical on Broadway! The best-reviewed show in West End history is now on Broadway! 74 ★★★★★ Reviews and Counting! (which, according to our calculations, adds up to 370 stars) SYNOPSIS: It's 1943, and the Allied Forces are on the ropes. Luckily, they've got a trick up their sleeve. Well, not up their sleeve, per se, but rather inside the pocket of a stolen corpse. Equal parts farce, thriller, and Ian Fleming-style spy caper (with an assist from Mr. Fleming himself), Operation Mincemeat tells the wildly improbable and hilarious true story of the covert operation that turned the tide of WWII. SCHEDULE: March 25–30: Tuesday @7pm, Wednesday @2pm and 7:30pm, Thursday @7pm, Friday @7:30pm, Saturday @2pm and 7:30pm, Sunday @2pm Running Time: 2 hours and 30 minutes with one intermission Dakar 2000 In Senegal on the eve of Y2K, an idealistic Peace Corps volunteer survives a mysterious car accident. An imposing State Department operative immediately takes command of the situation and his safety. Though they couldn't be more different, they form an unlikely relationship. But when it becomes clear that they both have secrets, the volunteer is roped into a darker side of public service – one he can't come back from. Unpredictable at every turn, this world-premiere thriller was commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club. Written by Rajiv Joseph (Pulitzer Prize finalist for Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo; King James at MTC) and directed by May Adrales (Vietgone and Poor Yella Rednecks at MTC).   Have you watched Operation Mincemeat and/or Dakar 2000? What did you think? Let us know in the Spybrary community.

Join host Peter Pappas and co-host J. Antoine Miner as they discuss pressing topics in politics and international affairs. From the dynamic conversation surrounding the recent "SmackDown" featuring Zelensky and Donald Trump to Pete Hegseth's contentious remarks on transgender military personnel, this episode promises an engaging discussion that pulls no punches. In an insightful segment, Peter Pappas interviews Jenny Haddle, a former aid worker with extensive experience in international humanitarian efforts. Jenny shares her valuable perspective on the effects of USAID and the challenges faced by communities around the world that depend on international aid for survival. Through her personal stories, from the Peace Corps to working with nonprofit organizations, she adds a human element to the often complex subject of foreign aid.Whether you're curious about the intricacies of global aid or the latest in national defense policy, this episode is filled with information and viewpoints that will spark your curiosity and keep you engaged. Get ready for an earnest, no-holds-barred discussion on the Carolina Cabinet!

Lawrence Grobel is the author of 32 books. Among his honors are a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction; Special Achievement Awards from PEN for his Conversations with Capote, and Playboy for his interviews with Barbara Streisand, Dolly Parton, Marlon Brando and Al Pacino; and the Prix Litteraire from The Syndicat Francais de la Critique de Cinema for his Al Pacino: In Conversation with Lawrence Grobel. He has been a Contributing Editor for Playboy, Movieline, World (New Zealand), and Trendy (Poland). He served in the Peace Corps, teaching at the Ghana Institute of Journalism; created the M.F.A. IN Professional Writing for Antioch University; and taught in the English and Honors Departments at UCLA. He has served as a jury member at the annual Camerimage Film Festival in Poland and has appeared as himself in the documentary Salinger and Al Pacino's docudrama Wilde Salome. His works have been translated into fourteen languages.

It might not sound like a climate job, but mechanical insulators help make buildings more energy efficient. We head out to meet a young woman who trained in the trade through a program set up by the Youth Climate Corps BC. The group is training young people around British Columbia for a wide variety of good, green jobs and hopes to expand across the country.

At age 26, Andy Hilliard had a quarter-life crisis that changed the trajectory of his life. In an effort to find himself, Andy joined the Peace Corps in 1988. On assignment in Costa Rica, he fell in love with the culture—and the woman who became his wife. The experience led Andy to dedicate himself to enriching businesses and individuals through valuable cultural exchange.  As CEO of Accelerance, Andy helps companies find the talent they need to scale high performing, globally distributed software engineering and product development teams.  Andy and Accelerance travel the world, assessing and certifying development partners with a proprietary matching system, so clients can connect with confidence to the top 1% of outsourcing partners worldwide. The Accelerance team also helps clients optimize their outsourcing partner relationships through mutual understanding, communication, and effective management.  Previously, Andy founded the groundbreaking nearshore software development services company, Isthmus Costa Rica. He began his global software services career as a Division Manager at Cognizant Technology Solutions during its formative years.  Currently living in Kenwood, California, Andy has visited more than 60 countries. He holds an MBA in International Business, Finance, and Marketing from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. 

Our guest this time, Kane Brolin, will quickly and gladly tell you that as a blind person born in Iowa in 1965 he was mightily blessed to be born in that state as it had the best programs for blind people in the nation. Kane was born prematurely and, because of being given too much oxygen he became blind due to a condition known as retinopathy O. Prematurity. In fact I am blind due to the same circumstance. As it turns out, Kane and I share a great many life experiences especially because of the attitudes of our parents who all thought we could do whatever we put our minds to doing. Kane attended public school and then went to Iowa State University. He wanted to be a DJ and had a bit of an opportunity to live his dream. However, jobs were scarce and eventually he decided to go back to school at Northwestern University in Illinois. He formed his own financial and investment company which has been in business since 2002. He is a certified financial planner and has earned the Chartered Special Needs Consultant® designation.   We talk quite a bit about financial matters and he gives some sage advice about what people may realize are good investment ideas. He talks about investing in the stock market and urges investing for the long term. I leave it to him to discuss this in more depth.   Kane is quite committed to “pay it forward” insofar as dealing with blind people is concerned. He is currently the president of the National Federation of the Blind of Indiana. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Penny Forward, Inc., a not-for-profit founded and run by blind people which strives to build a diverse and aspirationally-focused community of blind people who help one another achieve financial fitness, gainful employment, and overall fulfilment in life.   I find Kane quite inspirational and I hope you will do so as well. He has much to offer and he provided many good life lessons not only about financial matters, but also about blindness and blind people.       About the Guest:   Born in 1965, Kane Brolin spent his formative years in the state of Iowa and later went on to earn a Master's degree from the JL Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, which is near Chicago.  Since the year 2002, he has owned and operated a financial planning and investment management business based in Mishawaka, Indiana, located not far from The University of Notre Dame.  Over the years, he has become a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professional and has earned the Chartered Special Needs Consultant® designation.  When doing business with his clients, securities and Advisory Services are offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, a Registered Investment Advisor which is a Member of FINRA and SIPC,.   Having been totally blind for all his life, Kane feels indebted to many people who selflessly gave of their time, talent, and resources to help him acquire the education, skills, and confidence that enable him to lead a busy and productive life in service to others.  Many of those who made the biggest impact when Kane was growing up, also happened to be members of the National Federation of the Blind.  So after getting established on his current career path, he increasingly felt the impulse to give back to the organized blind movement which had served his needs from an early age.   Kane co-founded the Michiana Chapter in the National Federation of the Blind in 2012 and subsequently was elected to serve a two-year term as president of the Indiana State Affiliate of the NFB in October, 2022.  He is thankful for the early introduction of Braille, as well as for the consistent drumbeat from parents, peers, and professors which set and reinforced continuously high expectations.     In addition to his work with the NFB, Kane serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Penny Forward, Inc., a not-for-profit founded and run by blind people which strives to build a diverse and aspirationally-focused community of blind people who help one another achieve financial fitness, gainful employment, and overall fulfilment in life.   Kane lives in Mishawaka with Danika, his wife of 27 years, and their four children.  Kane and Danika were active foster parents for 11 years.  The Brolin family have been committed to numerous civic organizations; they and their family are active in their place of worship.  Giving back to the world is a continuously high priority.  They endeavor to teach their children by example, and they impart to them the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “You can all be great, because you can all serve.”   Ways to connect with Rob:   BrolinWealth.com LinkedIn public profile nfb-in.org pennyforward.com   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Hi, everyone. I am your host, Michael Hingson, or you can call me Mike. It's okay. And this is unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity in the unexpected. Meet today. We're going to do a little bit of all. We're inclusive because my guest Kane Brolin, or if you're from Sweden, it's Brolin, and it's pronounced Brolin, not Brolin, but Kane bralin, or broline, is in Indiana, and Kane also happens to be blind, and has been blind his entire life. We'll get into that. He is very much involved in investing and dealing with money matters that I'm interested to get a chance to really chat about it's always fun to talk to people about how they're helping people with finances and money and getting insights. And I'm sure that he has some to to offer. So we'll get to that. Kane also happens to be the president of the National Federation of the Blind of Indiana, and so that keeps him busy, so he deals with money, and he's a politician to boot. So what else can you ask for? I pick on Kane by doing that, but nevertheless, Kane, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Thank   Kane Brolin ** 02:34 you. And there are there are times when the politics and the money issues can be a dream. There are other times it can be an absolute nightmare, either one, either one or both and and the thing that ties those together in common ground is that I walk in in the morning, and sometimes they have no idea what I'm about to walk into. So it does make for an adventure. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 02:57 the Fed has lowered interest rates. What do you think about that?   Kane Brolin ** 03:01 Well, there is some ramification for what happens in the consumer marketplace. The main thing that I've been hearing today is that even with those lowering of short term interest rates, you're seeing some long term interest rates go down the mortgage rates, especially, and those two are not necessarily always related. You don't always see the long term interest rates that the market determines through supply and demand. They don't always go in sync with the short term baseline rate that the Federal Reserve banking system sets, but in this particular case, they are, and what I've been reading this morning is that that may be at least good news in the short run for consumers, because they'll be paying Lower interest for new mortgages and also perhaps lower credit card rates or credit card payments. Of course, the downside is that if one invests and is lending money instead of borrowing it, that means sometimes lower rates of income that you can get from things like a certificate of deposit or an annuity. So there's always two sides of the same coin, and then it depends on which side you happen to be looking at. At the moment, right now, the market seems to like this convergence of interest rate activities, and the stock market has generally been up today. So by the time people hear this, that won't matter because it's a whole different day, but, but right now, the early returns coming in are pretty good for the the common human being out there trying to just manage their money.   Michael Hingson ** 04:54 Well, that's not really surprising, in a sense, because rates have been high for a while. Yeah, and things have been tough. So it's not surprising that people have made, and I would put it this way, to a degree, the marketing decision to respond favorably to the rates going down, and I know there's been a lot of pressure for the thread to lower its rate, and so they did. And I think that a lot of different entities kind of had to respond in a reasonably positive way, because they kept saying that it's time that the rates go down. So they had to respond. So we'll see how it it all goes. I   Kane Brolin ** 05:33 think, you know, and there's an issue I think that's salient to people with disabilities, blind people, included, if it's less expensive for the consumer to borrow money, it should follow that in the coming weeks, it should be less expensive for businesses to borrow money if they need some, and they may be more inclined to open up more jobs to people or to not shrink the jobs or The hiring that they have done by laying people off so and that's what I was just about. No one is a recession, and so it may mean that there are openings, there's room in the job market for more of us, because the thing I'm most passionate about in this whole game of helping blind people is getting us access to money and getting us access to gainful permanent work.   Michael Hingson ** 06:24 And that's what I was actually going to going to talk about, or not talk about a long time, but, but mention was that the real test will be how it affects the job market and the unemployment rate and so on. And I hope that that that will go down. I know it's been sort of ticking up a little bit, although in reality, of course, for persons with disabilities, the unemployment rate is a whole lot higher than around 4% so it'll be interesting to see how all that goes all the way around. But even just the national unemployment rate, I would hope that if that has been an excuse because the rates have been high, that now we'll see that start to drop, and, you know, so we'll see. But I think it's a it's going to be one of those waiting games to see how the world responds. Of course, we have a whole political thing going on with the election and I'm sure that some people on the political side like the the drop better than people on the other side do, but again, we'll see how it all goes. So it's it makes life fun. Well, tell me a little bit about you, if you would, sort of maybe the early cane growing up and all that sort of stuff. You were born, according to your bio, back in 1965 so I was 15 at the time, so I remember the year. So you've, you've been around a little while, though, however, so tell us a little bit about the early cane.   Kane Brolin ** 07:54 Yeah, I don't remember too many years, or any years, really, prior to about maybe 1971 or 72 with any degree of real clarity. You know, I would say that my early years were a mixed bag, but in the main they were good, of course, being immediately confronted with rLf, or retinopathy of prematurity, as they call it these days, and being blind from the very beginning, most people would probably out there consider it a tragedy. But if I if I knew that it was my fate to be a blind person, which I suppose it is, then I won the lottery as being a blind person, I think. And that might be a controversial statement, but the truth is that there is no place in the United States, and probably no place in the world that would have been better for me to grow up in in the late 1960s and 1970s than in Iowa, because now there was, there was no other blindness in my family. It's not hereditary. My parents had no idea how to deal with it in the very beginning.   Michael Hingson ** 09:12 Were you born prematurely? I was, yeah, which is why I weigh you have that   Kane Brolin ** 09:16 something like two pounds, 10 ounces at birth. So there is a part of me that realizes that I am very fortunate to be alive, and I'm very fortunate that my brain has functioned pretty well for most of my life. You can't always count on that either, you know, and when you get when you get older, my my father was a very bright person, and yet he lived during the last 10 years of his life, he struggled with dementia and some other problems so but I can say that I've had a good run so far, and you know what they what they didn't know. At least my parents and others in my family knew what they didn't know. And I. But when you don't know what you don't know, you flounder and and settle for almost anything, including fear. But when you know what you don't know, then you understand you need to research things. And I happened to be in a state that had been graced by the presence of Dr Kenneth Jernigan, principally. And of course, other people that I had no idea who they were at that time. You know, folks like James gaschell and James on VIG right, and and others. I think Joanne Wilson came out of that mix. I didn't know her either, but I've read about all these people in the past, but, but first and foremost, my parents found out that Dr Jernigan was number one, very brilliant. Number two did not settle for low expectations. And number three had the advantage of being both the head of the Iowa Commission for the Blind, which was a state sanctioned Agency, and the National Federation of the Blind, which is, or, you know, has been for most of the last 84 years, the leading advocacy organization and civil rights organization of the Blind in in the United States. Now, I'm not here to make a political point about that, but in Iowa, they were definitely more well known than anyone was, and because he could pull strings which influence things like educational budgets, and he also had very much a civil rights mindset and an aggressive mindset of going forward and breaking down barriers, this is a rare combo platter of traits and possibilities that I very much benefited from. And when I say that, I mean that from the very beginning, at five or six years old, I had Braille. I didn't have Braille in the beginning, but, but my parents did and and my dad actually knew enough about it to construct a set of blocks with print lettering on one side, Braille on the other side. And so not only did I have a really good teacher in my first couple of years of public school education named Doris Willoughby, some may be familiar with her. I know Doris will rip she has passed on in the past couple years, but she made a great impact in in my life, and a very deep impact in others lives too. But because of her influence and like minded people, I had access to books. I had access to mostly mainstreamed integrated education, where I was in the classroom with other sighted students, except for certain parts of certain days, you know, I had access to a great big wall mounted tactile map that was like a puzzle. And I understand Dr Jernigan designed that one too, where I could actually feel and take apart the states of the Union. And so I could tell where Oklahoma was, where Massachusetts was, where Indiana is. I could tell the shapes of the various states. I thought it was kind of curious that California, where you are from, Michael, is shaped very much like a banana, or at least that's what occurred to me at that time. I had recorded books. I had talking books. And you know, while there are things I did not get out of a mainstream public education that I kind of wish I had gotten out of it, from a social standpoint, from an athletic standpoint, the academics were on point, and I had access to resources, and I kind of just was living in a in a dream world, in a way, because even through my college days, I thought, Well, gee, it's great that we have all this now. Why is there all this blind civil rights stuff going on now? Because this was solved from the beginning of my childhood. Little did I realize that that is not the case in most other parts of the country or the world, but I got what I needed to at least have a shot on goal at success, and I'm very grateful for that, and it's one of the reasons that I have chosen to dedicate a portion of my life, during my prime working years, even to the National Federation of the Blind, because I want to pay this forward and help out some people that may not have had all the advantages that I had, even, even in the bygone days that I was growing up,   Michael Hingson ** 14:23 sure? So tell me, because I went through some of the same experiences you did in terms of being born premature and becoming blind due to rLf, which stands for retro enteral fibroplasia. And if people want to know how to spell that, they can go by thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog, and the triumph of trust at ground zero. And you can learn how to spell it there, because I don't remember how to spell it. We put it in the book, but that's what I remember. But so when you be when it was discovered that you were blind, how did your parents handle that? What did they say? Right? What did the doctors say to them? Because my experience was and, you know, of course, I didn't know it at the time, but my parents told me later that the doctor said, send him off to a home because he could never amount to anything, because no blind child could ever contribute to society. What was, if, from your understanding from your parents, what was what happened to you? If any   Kane Brolin ** 15:21 doctor ever said that to them? They never told me about it. What I what I do know is that there is an eye doctor that was a part of their lives, who I saw a couple of times, probably in my childhood, who was a a female optometrist or maybe an ophthalmologist in the area, and they really had a lot of respect for her. I never felt marginalized or dismissed. Yeah, as a part of my childhood, part of it is that I don't think my parents would have tolerated that, and my   Michael Hingson ** 15:55 parents didn't, either my parents and my parents didn't either they said, No, you're wrong. He can grow up to do whatever he wants, and we're going we're going to give him that opportunity. And they brought me up that way, which is, of course, part of what led to my psyche being what it is. And I too, believe in paying it forward and doing work to try to educate people about blindness and so on, and supporting and and I've been involved with the National Federation of the Blind since 1972 so it's been a while. Yeah, I would say,   Kane Brolin ** 16:27 I know I remember. I have a very, very fuzzy memory of being four, maybe five years old, and I know that they considered putting me into the Iowa Braille and sight saving School, which was a school for the blind in Iowa no longer exists, by the way, but they did consider it and decided against it. I don't think they wanted me to just go off to boarding school I was five. I know that that does work for some people, and I know that in later years, I've read that in some cases, even Dr Jernigan believed that schools for the blind were better, especially in places where there wasn't a truly sincere effort by public school systems to integrate and set high expectations for blind students. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 17:13 of course, here in California, for example, in the 50s and so on, as the California School for the Blind we had and and earlier, Dr Newell Perry, among others, who was a blind mathematician. Of course, Dr tembrech was was out here, and there were values and reasons why the schools could make a difference. My parents were pushed really hard by my elementary school principal to send me off to that school, and I actually remember hearing shouting matches between them, because parents said ah and and I didn't go to the school. I don't know what it was like by the time we moved out here and we were putting me in kindergarten, first and second grade. So like in 5657 I'm not sure what the school was like, but my parents didn't want me to not have a real home environment. So, you know,   Kane Brolin ** 18:12 yeah, and so, you know, I remember my childhood is, well, it wasn't like everybody else's childhood. One of the the issues happened to be that my the neighborhood that my family lived in, did not have a lot of kids in it that were my age for most of the time I was there, the schools in the early to mid 70s at least that admitted blind students in the town that I grew up in, which was Cedar Rapids, Iowa, there was only one set of schools on the opposite side of town where they were sending blind kids for those resources. Now that later changed and the decision was made. I guess I made the decision to stay out there. So one of the differences was that I was bussed from the southeast side of town to the southwest side of town. So there were kids I got to know through school, but I didn't have any kind of social life with most of them, with a couple different exceptions, through my childhood. So it was a lot of academics, it wasn't a lot of play time, right? That certainly informed how I grew up, and it's made me a little bit struggle to understand and and be a really sensitive, playful, patient type parent, because my my kids and I'll, we'll go there when we get there, but my, my children, I have four, they're all still in home right now, are very normal kind of rambunctious kids that enjoy and struggle with the same things that any other kids do. They are all sighted, but, but my parents were. Was pretty strict. They set high expectations, but some of that was high expectations for behavior as well. So I really wasn't ramming around and causing trouble and getting into mischief and, you know, getting on my bike and riding for miles outside the way kids did in the 70s. So there there were limitations in my childhood, but, but, you know, my parents, too, expected me to utilize and to have the resources that would lead me to be anything I wanted to be. And I honestly think that if I had said, I want to be the President of the United States, they would not have ruled it out. Now, the only thing I've really been president of is several different civic organizations and the Indiana branch of the NFB. You know, that's something not everyone does. I've interviewed a governor before when I was a journalism student. That was fun, and I've met congress people, but they did not set the limitations. You know, sometimes maybe I did, but but they didn't. And so I'm really grateful for that, that as long as I knew what I wanted, they made sure that I had the tools and access to whatever training they knew about that could help me to   Michael Hingson ** 21:18 get there. So you you went through school. And I think our our younger lives were fairly similar, because I also, when I went into fourth grade, and we finally had a resource teacher in the area, I was bused to the other side of town for that. And all of that kind of came together when I started high school, because everyone in Palmdale went to the same high school, so anyone I knew prior to going across town, I got to know again, and still knew as as friends growing up, but we all went to high school together. But you know, I hear exactly what you're saying, and my parents did not impose limitations either, and I'm very blessed for that. But you went through school and then you went to college. Tell me about college.   Kane Brolin ** 22:19 It was a fun experience. Glad that I went through it. I attended Iowa State University for my bachelor's degree. I know that you've never, ever heard this before, but I really dreamed about being a radio personality. And I say that sarcastically. It's what I wanted to be, because I had a cousin that was in the business. But of course, since then, as I've gotten more into blind blindness culture and met many other people that I never knew growing up, I know that that the media and especially radio as a gift, is really fascinating to many of us, and a lot of us have had rotations in different parts of that, especially with the advent of the internet, but this was back during the 70s and 80s, and what I wanted to be at first was a DJ. Used to pretend to be one at home all the time and then, but I also knew where the library was, and I developed a great love of books and information and data. To some degree, I wasn't really a math guy, more of a word guy, but I then developed a deep interest in journalism and investigation and research, and so by the middle to late 80s, what I wanted to be was, let's just call it the next Peter Jennings, if one can remember who that is, right. And I'm sure that there are probably, you know, facsimiles of him today,   Michael Hingson ** 23:50 but it's hard to be a facsimile of Peter Jennings. But yeah, he really is,   Kane Brolin ** 23:55 and that he was great and but you know the disadvantage, the advantage and the disadvantage of going to Iowa State University. I Why did I go there? Because any of my few relatives that had gone to college, including my dad, had had gone there. My dad was very loyal to his alma mater, and he told both myself and my sister, who is a very different person and not blind at all. If it was good enough for me, it's good enough for you, and if you want me to pay for it, here's where you're going to go. Now, Iowa State is mostly an engineering and agricultural school. It's a land grant institution. And I know that land grant institutions are a little controversial in today's climate where there is more of an emphasis on diversity, equity, inclusion and making up for some past societal wrongs, but these are deeply respected institutions that mainly turned out people that ended up well, doing things like building. Bridges and being mechanical engineers and developing new seed corn hybrids and things of this nature. It did have a telecommunicative arts program, and I was in it, but there were very few of us in it, and I did get a chance to get my hands on the equipment. I was a broadcaster, first on a student radio station at Iowa State called K usr. Then I actually did work for pay, sort of for a number of years for w, O I am and FM, which were flagship stations of what we would now call the the NPR network. You know, these were around since the 20s, and I actually did work for them. I was on air a little bit. I ran the control board a lot, and I worked for those two stations on a part time basis, probably about a three quarter time basis, for several years after leaving college, and it was really a student job, but I had trouble finding any other more meaningful work in the industry. What I gradually came to find out is that I loved radio, but radio really didn't love me, and I wasn't really thinking strategically. At that time, I graduated in 1988 it is that very same year that a little known figure from Kansas City named Rush Limbaugh hit the American airwaves like a ton of bricks. And because of him and some other people like him, all of a sudden, local stations realized that they could drop their news and information programming, stop hiring so many people, and because Mr. Limbaugh was as popular as he was, they could basically run a lot of satellite based programming, have somebody sort of halfway monitor the board and hire somebody else to program computer systems that would put automated commercial breaks on and things like this, and they wouldn't really have to produce local content. We also saw the elimination of the equal time standard and the Fairness Doctrine, which required local stations to put on a variety of viewpoints and air programming every week that was in the public interest, that didn't necessarily have commercial value. And so the things I wanted to do became a lot harder to do, because by the time I was ready to get hired to do them, not a lot of radio stations were hiring people to do it, even in the even in the television world, and so strategically, I was buying into a sinking market, and That wasn't a great place to be at that time. And so with some reluctance, after a lot of fruitless job searching, I chose another path, not necessarily knowing where that path would lead. And so the last time I ever got paid to run a shift for a radio station was in late June of 1993 I've been a guest on a couple of different shows and some podcasts like this one. I greatly enjoy it. I've even thought about doing some internet broadcasting. I don't have the time, really to do that now, but, but, and I miss it, but I have found out there are ways of diverting the skill sets I have to another path.   Michael Hingson ** 28:25 And what path did you choose?   Kane Brolin ** 28:28 Initially, the path I chose was graduate school. I was fortunate enough to have gotten good enough grades that I was able to get approved by a number of different business schools. You know, the first path I really wanted to do is be a Foreign Service Officer for the diplomatic corps. I applied for the US Department of State. And I had some hopes in doing that, because around 1990 a gentleman named Rami Rabbi. You may know him, I do did became the first blind person ever to be a Foreign Service Officer. Now, he had advantages. He had traveled the world. I had traveled to Mexico and Costa Rica, and I spoke Spanish, and I was pretty fluent, but he was a little bit more qualified in different ways that they were looking for. So I wanted some international experience. I applied for the Peace Corps, and I had no real shot at that. What they were looking for was something very different from what I was then. But I did apply to the Foreign Service, and I made it almost all the way down the hiring process. I made the final 3% cut among the class they were looking at in 1990 and 91 I went to Virginia to, I think Alexandria and I sat for the last round of interviews and simulations that they did. Unfortunately, I was in the top 3% and they wanted the top 1% so I had a really fun few days out there at the government's expense. But I also found that I was not going to be hired to be the second blind. Foreign Service officer. I later found out that Mr. Robbie had to actually file a lawsuit and win that lawsuit to get his opportunity. So I know that the system were not exactly bought in to blame people doing this on a regular basis. I know there's others that have gotten there since that, and I've met one of them, but but that that wasn't for me, but they also said what I really needed was more management experience. I'd never done anything in management, so I decided to go to management school or business school as graduate school. I got accepted by a few different places. I chose Northwestern University in Chicago. My sister had gone through that program. I guess that's maybe one of the reasons I selected that one. I could have gone to a couple of others that also had accepted me, and sometimes I wonder what would have happened had I done that. But I did spend two years in Chicago land met some of the most impressive people that I've ever met in my life. Figured out train systems and pace bus systems, and went all over the place and had friends in the city, not just in the school. I made the most of that time, and that's what I did from 1993 to 1995 unfortunately, I found out you can get a an MBA or a master of management, but they still, still weren't hiring a lot of blind people out there. And so while my associates were getting jobs at McKinsey and Company, and Booz Allen Hamilton, as it was known at that time, and they were working for Bank of America, doing all kinds of interesting things and and also brand management companies like disco and Kellogg and all that. I got all of one job offer coming out of one of the top 5b schools in the country, and I took that job offer, which led me to Midland, Michigan, where I knew nobody at that time, but I spent about three and a half years doing various types of business research for the Dow Chemical Company, and that did not last as a career, but I got a chance to make the first real money I had ever earned. At that time through another connection that wasn't related to Dow, I happened to meet the woman that I eventually married and am with now, and have had four kids with, and so that was a whole different kettle of fish. But at the end of 98 I was downsized, along with several others in my department, and we decided at that time that entrepreneurship was probably not a bad way to go, or, you know, something that wasn't just strictly speaking corporate. In 2000 I landed in the South Bend, Indiana area, which is where she is from. I had never lived here before. This is where I am now. And while struggling to find a place here, I realized that I could get hired on as what is called a financial advisor. I had no idea what that was. Well, you know, with a business degree, I could probably be a credible hire as a financial advisor. Little did I know that that involved tele sales. In the very beginning, never thought I was a salesperson either. Since then, I have found out that I have more selling ability than I had ever thought that I might and that that is an honorable profession if you're convincing people to do what is right for themselves. And so I've found that over the years, being what I am enables me to, well, in a way, keep my own hours. We've chosen the small business, sort of independent contracting route, rather than the employee channel, working for a bank or for somebody else's brokerage. I get to be a researcher, I get to be a public speaker now and then, and I get to help people problem solve, which is something I would not have had a chance to do on the radio. And when someone comes up to you, as a few people have and have, said, you know, thank you for making it possible for me to retire and to do what I want to do, and to spend time with grandkids and to live where I want to live. You know, that's a that's definitely a hit. That's a great feeling to have someone say, Thank you for helping me to do and to be what I didn't know I could do or be. So   Michael Hingson ** 34:38 investing isn't what you had originally planned to do with your life. So I can't say that it was necessarily a lifelong goal from the beginning, but you evolved into it, and it seems to be going pretty well for you.   Kane Brolin ** 34:51 Well, yeah, I think it has. It's investing means different things to different. People, to some clients, the goal is, I just don't want to lose money. Please put me in something that earns a little bit, but I don't want the chance for anything I'm in to go down for others. What investing means is, I want to be more aggressive. I want to build what I have. What do you think about this or that opportunity? What stock should I be in? Because I really want to grab onto an opportunity and seize the day and have as much as I can have at the end of the day. And you know, For still others, it means, it means giving. It means building something up so I can pass it along, either to a charity, to the kids, to the grandkids, to to my religious institution of choice, whatever that is. So I find that investing is not just investing, the the at the root, at the heart of investing, the heartbeat of it, is really the people that I serve. And you know, I was told early on, hey, you don't have a practice. All you're doing is practicing, unless you have people to be in front of. And so in my mind, you know, and I'm not that much of a quantitative guy. I'm I'm not the person out there working as an actuary for Symmetra Life Insurance Company figuring out how much money has to go in and how much it must earn to be able to give 50,000 people the payouts they want from an annuity till the end of their projected lifespans. That's that's not where I am. I'm not designing a mutual fund that's more like what a certified financial analyst would be. I am a Certified Financial Planner practitioner, and what a CFP does is takes numbers that you see and translates those into action steps that I can explain in plain English terms to a client I'm in front of that can give that individual person, family or small business the kinds of outcomes that they want. So I'm on the retail end of the food chain, and my job is to try to take the numbers that others are generating and boil that down into something that is digestible to the common man and woman, that allows them to, we hope, live the way they want. So   Michael Hingson ** 37:29 I gather from listening to you though, that you enjoy what you do.   Kane Brolin ** 37:36 I do particularly when it works.   Michael Hingson ** 37:39 Well, there's times.   Kane Brolin ** 37:40 There are times it gets a little tricky. 2001 2002 I know that you had a very personal experience that vaulted you, Michael, into this, into the realm of the famous, or the Almost Famous, on 911 I remember what 911 was like as a very small time retail investment person working out of a field office. I was somebody's employee at that point. I was working for American Express financial advisors, and I remember my life was never in danger in 911 but there were a lot of clients that thought their money and their data were in danger, and then the country that the country itself, might even be in danger. And so I morphed during that week from being a telemarketing person trying to set appointments with people I'd never met to being a person who was trying to dole out comfort and a feeling of security and solace to people I had met who the few that I was managing their accounts at that time, calling them and saying, You know what, your money and your data are safe. I'm here. The company that you have your stuff invested with is based in Minneapolis. It's not based in the Twin Towers, the markets are shut down. There will be volatility, but you're not crashing today, just so   Michael Hingson ** 39:08 the other the other side of it, the other side of that, was that during that week after September 11, there were a lot of people who were working and moving, literally Heaven and Earth, if you will, to bring Wall Street back. And I know I'm working with some of those companies and providing them with the backup equipment, or not so much at the time, backup equipment, but the equipment that would be able to read existing tape backups and put that back on computers. And I know, I think it was Morgan Stanley had found an office space sometime during the week after September 11. Then, as they describe it, it was the building with a floor the size of a foot. Football field, and they scrounged and scavenged and got their providers of equipment, like IBM to provide them with computers, even taking them from IBM employees desks to provide enough equipment to be able to set up what was the equivalent to the trading floor that had been in the world trade center that was destroyed on September 11, and literally from Friday afternoon that would have been the 14th to the 16th in 36 hours. They not only reconstructed physically what the trading floor was but because of what we provided them with, they were able to completely reconstruct what everything looked like on their computers. So when Wall Street reopened on the 17th, everything was like it was when everything shut down on the 11th now, I think there's some blessings to the fact that the towers were struck before Wall Street opened. I don't know how much easier that made it maybe some, but the reality is that data is backed up regularly, so they would have been able to to survive, but the fact that the markets hadn't opened in the US certainly had to help. But by Monday, the 17th, they brought Wall Street back, just as if nothing had happened. It was a monumental feat to be able to do that. That is a story   Kane Brolin ** 41:37 that I would love to read, because I've never heard that story before, and that makes me feel very unintelligent. Michael, you know, I can't even imagine the logistics and the people and just even the imagination that it would take to reconstruct that. I'm sure it was 1000s. I'm sure it was 1000s of people. And I'm sure that probably that's something that somebody had thought about even before the 911 incident happened. I don't think that was invented out of whole cloth on Friday the 14th, but that's a story that would be a very captivating book, and if no one's written it, then, gosh, would that be a fun thing to research and write.   Michael Hingson ** 42:21 Well, you know, the reality is, the SEC required that all data from financial institutions had to be backed up and kept available off site for seven years. So first of all, the data was all around and that's why I think it was an especially great blessing that the markets hadn't opened, because all the backups from the previous night, and probably from all the not only the futures, but the sales from foreign markets, were pretty much all backed up as well. So everything was backed up. That, of course, was the real key, because getting the hardware, yes, that was a logistical nightmare that they were able to address, getting the computers, getting everything where they needed it. Then companies like ours providing them with the wherewithal to be able to pull the data from the tapes and put it back onto the computers. It had to be quite a feat, but it all worked. And when Wall Street opened, it opened as if nothing had happened, even though some of the the offices were now in completely different places across the river. But it all worked, incredible. Yeah, I was, it was, it was pretty amazing. I knew people from the firms. And of course, we helped them by providing them with equipment. But at the same time, hearing about the story later was was really quite amazing, and and they did a wonderful job to bring all that back. So it was pretty, pretty amazing that that all that occurred. So that was pretty cool all the way. And   Kane Brolin ** 44:00 of course, the other struggle was in 2007 2008 I remember when I would be sitting at my desk and I'm not a day trader, I'm, I'm, I'm a long term investor. That's what most of my clients want. I'm not in there, you know, trading, trading daily options. I'm not doing inverse leveraged products that have to be bought in the morning and then sold in the afternoon under most cases. But I remember sitting at my desk in 2008 when the great recession was going on with the financial crisis happened and and when banks and huge investment banks, brokerage institutions were, in some cases, completely failing, that's a whole other story that was chronicled in books like The Big Short as an example, but I remember sitting at my desk and timing it and watching in a five minute period of time. As the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was back in in those days, was, was what maybe 6000 or so as a benchmark. It was going up and down by a margin of error of 800 points in five minutes, it would be 400 up one minute, and then 400 down from that level. In other words, an 800 point swing within a five minute period of time. There was one day I went to take a test, because I have continuing education on a pretty regular basis, had to go to a testing center and take a test that lasted maybe three hours. I got back, and I think the market for at least the Dow Jones had dropped by 800 points during the time that I was in the testing center. And that gives you some stomach acid when that sort of thing happens, because even though it it's, you know, things always bounce back, and they always bounce up and down. Clients call and they say, oh my gosh, what happens if I lose it all? Because people really think that they could lose it all. Now, if you're in a mutual fund with 100 different positions, it's very unlikely, right? All of those positions go to zero. What I found out is that when people's money is concerned, it's emotional. Yeah, it's all rational. They're not looking at the empirical data. They're thinking fight or flight, and they really are concerned with what in the world am I going to do if I go to zero? And   Michael Hingson ** 46:38 it's so hard to get people to understand, if you're going to invest in the market, it has to be a long term approach, because if you don't do that, you can, you can disappoint yourself, but the reality is, over the long term, you're going to be okay. And you know now, today, once again, we're seeing the evidence of that with what the Fed did yesterday, lowering by a half a point, and how that's going to affect everything. But even over the last five or six years, so many people have been worried about inflation and worried about so many things, because some of our politicians have just tried to scare us rather than dealing with reality. But the fact of the matter is that it all will work out if we're patient and and allow things to to work. And what we need to do is to try to make wise decisions to minimize, perhaps our risk. But still, things will work out.   Kane Brolin ** 47:43 Yeah, I remember, I think, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is what always used to get quoted, at least on the radio and the television. It was somewhere in the somewhere in the 11,000 range, before the 2008 debacle. And it fell to, I think, 6400 right was the low that it reached. Now it's over 41,000   Michael Hingson ** 48:11 closed up above 42 yesterday. I'm not   Kane Brolin ** 48:13 sure it very well may have so you know when you when you really think about it, if you just stayed in and it's more complicated than that. One of course people have with the market is that when the market crashes, they also may need to get their money out for different, unrelated reasons. What if I lost my job as a result of the market crashing? Right? What if? What if there is a need that I have to fulfill and that money has to come out for me to make a house payment. You don't know that. And so that's the unfortunate part, is that a lot of the academic missions don't take into account the real human factor of real people that need to use their money. But if you could stand to hang on and leave it in, it would be worth you know, what would that be like six or seven times more than it was in 2008 but that's not what what clients often do. They they often want to sell out of fear when things are down, and then wait too long to buy back in when the elevator has already made its way quite a ways up, right?   Michael Hingson ** 49:25 I remember once, and I don't remember what the cause was, but Rolls Royce dropped to $3 a share. And there were some people saying, this is the time to buy. It is it's not going to go away. And those who did have done pretty well. Bank   Kane Brolin ** 49:44 of America was $3 a share for quite some time. It was, it was technically a penny stock. This is Bank of America, you know, one of the leading financial institutions in the in the country, which, incidentally, has a very interesting. History. It wasn't born in New York, it was born in the south, right? But, yeah, if you only knew what those trough opportunities were and knew exactly when to buy in and and I'm constantly telling people, look my my goal is, is not so much to figure out what to buy but when to buy in. We're trying to buy low and sell high, and just because something did well last year doesn't mean you have to hang on to it. It might mean we want to trim that position a little bit, take some profit and and pick something that doesn't look as attractive or sexy because of last year's lackluster returns, but maybe this year. It will just due to changing conditions. Financial markets run in cycles. And it's not that some things are inherently good or bad. Some things are in favor now. They were not in favor last year, and they might not be in favor, you know, two years from now, but they are now. So that's the hard part. You're not supposed to really time the market. We can't predict all these things, but that's why you encourage people to diversify and to have some things that are not correlated with each other in terms of doing well or badly at the same time. So you can always sometimes be gaining with in with your left hand, while your right hand is is struggling a bit. Hence,   Michael Hingson ** 51:25 the need for people who are certified financial planners, right? So there you go. So you, you got married, what, 27 years ago, and you married someone who was fully sighted, who probably didn't have a whole lot of exposure to blindness and blind people before. How did all that work out? Obviously, it's worked out because you're still married. But what was it like, and was it ever kind of an uncomfortable situation for you guys?   Kane Brolin ** 51:58 I don't think blindness. Surprisingly enough, I don't think it was super uncomfortable for her. Now, she had not encountered lots of blind people before, maybe not even any before. She met me, but I met her, and this is where I had it easy. She didn't have it easy, but I met her through her family. I knew my wife's name is Danica. I knew her brother before I knew her, because he and I had been buddies. We for a little while. We ended up living in the same town up in Michigan, and it was not here in the South Bend area where she is, but I went home and had a chance to be to tag along as he was doing some some family things and some things with his friends so but, but my wife is a very interesting father. She has a very interesting dad who is no longer with us. May he rest in peace? No, no. Hello. Sorry. My nine year old just made a brief appearance, and she's incorrigible.   Michael Hingson ** 53:00 You wouldn't have it any other way. No, there   Kane Brolin ** 53:03 are days when I would, but I don't. So anyway, the I found out some interesting things raising kids as a blind parent too, but you know, her dad did not see really any kind of limitations when the world around him was racist he really wasn't. When the world around him was ableist. He really didn't. And one of the things he encouraged me to do, they had a little acreage Danika parents did. And he actually asked me one time when it was a leaf blowing or leaf storing season, it was in the fall, lots of oak trees, different things there to drive the garden tractor, as there was a Baleful leaves behind that he was taken to an area where they would eventually be burned up or composted or something. And I did that. He had an old garden tractor with a, you know, his gas powered, and it had pedals and steering wheel, and he would literally run around alongside it, didn't go very fast, and tell me kind of when and where to turn. I'm told that I almost crashed into the pit where the basement of the home was one time, but I didn't. So he was one of these people that like saw virtually no limitations. Encouraged his kids and others to do great things. He didn't have a great feel for people. He would have been an anti politician. He had trouble remembering your name, but if you were a decent person and treated him right, it didn't matter if you were black, purple, green, blind, deaf, whatever. He saw it as an interesting challenge to teach me how to do things. He taught me how to kayak. He taught me how to cross country ski. Back in those days before climate change, we actually got quite a bit of snow in the area where I live, even as early as Thanksgiving to. I'm in November. And so the first couple of winters that we lived here, and we would go to a local park, or, you know, even just out in the in the backyard of where his property was, and, and, and ski, Nordic ski, not downhill ski, really, but it was, it was an amazing exercise. It's an amazing feel to be able to do that, and I have no memory, and I had no relatives that that were in touch with the true Scandinavian heritage, that ancestry.com says that I have, but the act of doing a little bit of Nordic skiing with him gave me a real feel for what some people go through. Because traditionally, skiing was a form of transportation in those countries. In the Larry P you skied to work, you skied to somebody else's house. So, you know, I thought that that was fun and interesting. Now, the last few winters, we haven't gotten enough snow to amount to anything like that, but I do have, I still have a pair of skis. So no, that may be something that we do at some point when given the opportunity, or some other place where we have a bit more of a snow base.   Michael Hingson ** 56:10 Well, I'm sure that some people would be curious to to know this being blind and doing the work that you do, you probably do. Well, you do the same things, but you probably do them in different ways, or have different technologies that you use. What's some of the equipment and kind of technologies that you use to perform your job?   Kane Brolin ** 56:32 Well, you know, I wouldn't say that. I'm cutting edge. I'm sure there are people who do differently and better than I do, but I do most of my work in a PC based environment. It's a Windows based environment at the present time, because the broker dealers and the other firms that I work through, you know, I'm independent, in a way, meaning I pay my own bills and operate out of my own space and have my name of Berlin wealth management as a shingle on my door, so to speak. But you never walk alone in this business. And so I chose, ultimately, a company called the Commonwealth financial network to serve as my investment platform and my source of technology, and my source of what is called compliance, which means, you know, they are the police walking alongside what I do to make sure that I've documented the advice I've given to people, to make sure that that advice is suitable and that I'm operating according to the law and in the best interest of my clients, and not Not taking money from them, or, you know, doing phony baloney things to trade into a stock before I recommend that to somebody else. You know, there's a lot of malfeasance that can happen in this type of industry, but all these securities that I sell and all the advice that I given are done so with the blessing of the Commonwealth Financial Network, which is a member of FINRA and SIPC, I just need to point that out here. But they also provide technology, and most of their technology is designed to work in a Windows environment, and so that's typically what I have used. So I use JAWS.   Michael Hingson ** 58:23 And JAWS is a screen reader that verbalizes what comes across the screen for people who don't know it right, or puts   Kane Brolin ** 58:28 it into Braille, or puts it into Braille in the in the in the early days of my doing the business, many of the programs that we had to use to design an insurance policy or to pick investments, or to even monitor investments were standalone programs that were not based on a web architecture that would be recognizable. And so I was very fortunate that there was money available from the vocational rehab system to bring somebody in from Easter Seals Crossroads here in Indiana, to actually write Jaws script workarounds, that is, that could help jaws to know what to pull from the graphics card on the screen or in the system, to be able to help me interact. Because otherwise, I would have opened up a program and to me, it would have just been like a blank screen. I wouldn't be able to see or interact with data on the screen. Now, with more things being web based, it's a little easier to do those things. Not always. There are still some programs that are inaccessible, but most of what I do is through the use of Windows 10 or 11, and and with the use of Jaws, I do have, I devices. I like Apple devices, the smaller ones. I'm actually speaking to you using an iPad right now, a sixth generation iPad I've had for a while. I have an iPhone so I can still, you know, look up stock tickers. I can send 10. Text messages or emails, if I have to using that. But in general, I find that for efficiency sake, that a computer, a full on computer, tends to work best and and then I use that more rapidly and with more facility than anything else, right? I use the Kurzweil 1000 system to scan PDFs, or sometimes printed documents or books, things like that, into a readable form where I'm trying to, trying to just kind of anticipate what other things you may ask about. But you know, I use office 365, just like anybody else might. You know, I I have to use a lot of commonly available programs, because the people monitoring my work, and even the clients that I interact with still need to, even if they have sight, they need to read an email right after I send it. You know, they've my assistant has to be able to proof and manipulate a document in a form that she can read, as well as one that I can listen to or use Braille with. I'm a fluent Braille reader and writer. So there are some gizmos that I use, some braille displays and Braille keyboards and things of that nature. But, you know, most people seem to be under the misconception that a blind guy has to use a special blind computer, which must cost a king's ransom, not true, if anybody's listening to the program that isn't familiar with 2024 era blindness technology, it's mostly the same as anybody else's except with the modifications that are needed to make stuff accessible in a non visual format, and   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:45 the reality is, that's what it's all about. It's not like it's magically expensive. There are some things that are more expensive that do help. But the reality is that we use the same stuff everyone else uses. Just have some things that are a little bit different so that we are able to have the same access that other people do, but at the same time, that's no different than anyone else. Like I point out to people all the time, the electric light bulb is just a reasonable accommodation for light dependent people. Anyway, it's just that there are a whole lot more people who use it, and so we spend a whole lot more time and money making it available that is light on demand to people. But it doesn't change the fact that the issue is still there, that you need that accommodation in order to function. And you know that that, of course, leads to and, well, we won't spend a lot of time on it, but you are are very involved in the National Federation of the Blind, especially the NFB of Indiana, and you continue to pay it forward. And the NFB has been all about helping people to understand that we're not defined by blindness. We're defined by what we are and who we are, and blindness is happens to be a particular characteristic that we share   Kane Brolin ** 1:03:09 well, and there's a lot of other characteristics that we might not share. As an example, somebody, I don't know that he is involved in the NFB as such, but you know blind, if you're involved in American Blind culture and and that you've probably heard of a man named George Wurtzel. He is the brother of the guy that used to be president of the NFB of Michigan affiliate. But I understand that George is very good at things that I am not at all good at. He, you know? He understand that he almost built his own house from the ground up. His skill is not with computers and email and all this electronic communication that they do today, but he's a master woodworker. He's an artisan. You know, I I'm also involved, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it, I'm also involved with an organization called Penny forward, which is, you know, it could be the direction that I ultimately head in even more because it dovetails with my career. It's financial, education and fitness by the blind, for the blind, and it was started by a young man named Chris Peterson, who's based in the Twin Cities, who is not an NFB guy. He's actually an ACB guy, but his values are not that much different, and he's been a computer programmer. He's worked for big organizations, and now he started his own and has made a full time business out of financial fitness, educational curricula, podcasting, other things that you can subscribe to and buy into. And he's trying to build a community of the varied blind people that do all kinds of things and come from all sorts of backgrounds. And in one of the later editions of his podcast, he interviewed a man who's originally from Florida, who. Founded a company called Cerro tech that some might be familiar with, Mike Calvo, and Mike came to some of the same conclusions about blindness that you and I have, except that he's much younger. He's from Florida, and he's a Cuban American. He's a Latino whose first language growing up probably was Spanish, and who actually came out of, out of the streets. I mean, he was, he was in gangs, and did all kinds of things that were very different from anything I was ever exposed to as a young person. So I think in a lot of ways, we as blind people face the same types of issues, but we don't. None of us comes at it from the same vantage point. And, you know, we're, we're all dealing with maybe some of the same circumstances, but many, many, we've gotten there in very many different ways. And so I try to also impose on people. We are all different. We're a cross section. We don't all tie our shoes or cook our meals the same way. We don't want to live in the same environment. We don't want to do the same hobbies. And we don't all have better other senses than sighted people do. I don't know how many times you've heard it. I'd be a very rich man if I had $1 for every time someone said, Well, yeah, but you know, being blind, your hearing must be so much better, your sense of smell must be so much more acute. Well, no, the the divine forces in the universe have not just compensated me by making everything else better. What do you do with someone like Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf. There are people with plenty of people with blindness, and also other morbidities or disabilities, or I don't even like disabilities, different different abilities, different strengths and weaknesses. Along with blindness, there are blind people who also happen to be autistic, which could be an advantage to them, in some ways a disadvantage to others. I would like to go beyond the discussion of disability and think of these things, and think of me and others as just simply being differently able, because, you know, what kinds of jobs and roles in life with people that have the characteristic of autism, maybe they are actually better at certain things than a non autistic person would be. Maybe overall, people who live with the characteristic of bl

Innovation and nonprofits don't always seem like a natural fit—but they should be. In this episode, Rob Harter talks with Leah Kral, author of Innovation for Social Change, about how nonprofit leaders can infuse creativity and innovation into their organizations. Leah shares her insights on overcoming common barriers to innovation, fostering a culture of creativity, and building sustainable systems that support new ideas. Key topics include: Why innovation is often overlooked in the nonprofit sector How Leah's experiences in the Peace Corps shaped her passion for nonprofit strategy Practical ways nonprofits can embed innovation into their organizational DNA The six principles of social change innovation The importance of empowering frontline staff to bring forward new ideas Lessons nonprofits can learn from organizations like Pixar and Mayo Clinic How to embrace experimentation and learn from failure Leah also shares inspiring examples of nonprofits that are leading the way in innovation and offers actionable advice for nonprofit leaders looking to step up their creativity. Mentioned in This Episode: Leah Kral's Website – Learn more about Leah and download her book club discussion guide Innovation for Social Change – Leah Kral's book on nonprofit innovation World Reader – Using digital books to promote literacy worldwide Pixar's Creative Process – How Pixar fosters creativity and collaboration This Episode is Sponsored By: DonorBox – Helping nonprofits maximize their impact with user-friendly donation forms and secure fundraising solutions. Links to Resources: Interested in Leadership and Life Coaching? Visit Rob's website: RobHarter.com Find us on YouTube: Nonprofit Leadership Podcast YouTube Channel Suggestions for the show? Email us at nonprofitleadershippodcast@gmail.com Request a sample coaching session: Email Rob at rob@robharter.com Subscribe and Share Listen and subscribe to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or Amazon. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share with other nonprofit leaders!

On the women who've designated themselves as voices for the Earth and prioritizing joy amidst the truths of our times.  (0:00) - Introduction to Mallory McDuff and the Podcast (1:52) - Hannah Herman's Connection to Mallory McDuff (4:49) - The Power of Climate Storytelling (6:20) - Colette Pichon Battle's Story (12:03) - Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson's Focus on Ocean Justice (24:50) - Mari Copeny's Activism in Flint, Michigan (36:11) - Kendra Pinto's Fight Against Fracking in New Mexico (44:55) - Conclusion and Call to Action Mallory McDuff discovered the field of Environmental Education as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic, where she saw the critical importance of integrating local communities in conservation. She's the author of four books examining the intersection of spirituality and the climate crisis: Natural Saints (OUP, 2010), Sacred Acts (New Society Press, 2012), Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love (Broadleaf Books, 2021), and Love Your Mother: 50 States, 50 Stories, and 50 Women United for Climate Justice (Broadleaf Books, 2023).     She also co-authored a book for practitioners Conservation Education and Outreach Techniques (OUP, 2015) and written more than 50 essays for the New York Times, Washington Post, WIRED, Newsweek, and more.    In this episode, we discuss Love Your Mother.   Much of her writing draws on her life at Warren Wilson College, where she lives with her two daughters. In her classes, students collaborate with diverse community partners—from youth to senior citizens—to teach and learn together using the forests, farms, and fields of the campus.

  On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, friend of the podcast, Charles Murray returns to chat with Razib again. Murray has been a public intellectual and scholar since the 1970's. He is the author of Losing Ground, The Bell Curve, Human Accomplishment, Real Education, Coming Apart and What it means to be a libertarian and Human Diversity, among others. Born in 1943 in Newton, Iowa, Murray has a BA from Harvard, an MA and PhD from MIT, and did a 1960's stint in the Peace Corps in Thailand. He has held positions at the American Institutions for Research, the Manhattan Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. More than four years after their last conversation, and seven years after his official retirement, Murray reflects with Razib on where he sees America going in the next decade, and what has surprised him about the last 25 years. Razib asks what it is like to be a long-standing “Never Trump conservative” and a libertarian in Trump's populist America. They also discuss the end of the “awokening” that began in the mid-2010s, and whether Murray's long exile from notice and acknowledgement from mainstream opinion-leaders and tastemakers is at an end. Murray also addresses the ideological fractures he sees on the right, and how America will deal with the last generation of mass immigration that has altered the US' demographic balance. They also discuss how taboo it still is to talk about group differences in cognitive performance, and whether America will be able to face the reality of demographics and the social consequences thereof in the 21st century.