Podcasts about Penn

This week on Laugh Lines, Penn and I sit down with former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper to talk about bridging divides in a world that feels angrier by the minute. And yes, we know - politics can feel exhausting. But this conversation felt different. It felt human. It felt hopeful. It made us smile.Governor Cooper shares why he believes we are not as divided as social media makes us think, what it takes to work across party lines, and how faith has shaped his life of public service. We also talk about Penn's Dad, UNC basketball, and a reminder that community happens in real life, not just in the comment section.If you've been feeling weary about the state of things, we hope this conversation gives you a breath of fresh air. True leadership stands in someone else's shoes, values decency, and doesn't try to divide. Thanks for being here with us. We love to hear from you! Leave us a message at 323-364-3929 or write the show at podcast@theholdernessfamily.com. You can also watch our podcast on YouTube.To learn more about Roy Cooper visit: https://roycooper.com/Visit Our ShopJoin Our NewsletterFind us on SubstackFollow us on InstagramFollow us on TikTok Follow us on FacebookLaugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness is an evolution of The Holderness Family Podcast, which began in 2018. Kim and Penn Holderness are award-winning online content creators known for their original music, song parodies, comedy sketches, and weekly podcasts. Their videos have resulted in over three billion views and over nine million followers since 2013. Penn and Kim are also authors of the New York Times Bestselling Books, ADHD Is Awesome: A Guide To (Mostly) Thriving With ADHD and All You Can Be With ADHD. They were also winners on The Amazing Race (Season 33) on CBS. Laugh Lines is hosted and executive produced by Kim Holderness and Penn Holderness, with original music by Penn Holderness. Laugh Lines is also written and produced by Ann Marie Taepke, and edited and produced by Sam Allen. It is hosted by Acast. Thanks for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can trauma become a catalyst for creative transformation? What lessons can indie authors learn from the music industry's turbulent journey through technological disruption? With Jack Williamson. In the intro, Why recipes for publishing success don't work and what to do instead [Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast]; Why your book isn't selling: metadata [Novel Marketing Podcast]; Creating a successful author business [Fantasy Writers Toolshed Podcast]; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Jack Williamson is a psychotherapist, coach, and bestselling author who spent nearly two decades as a music industry executive. He's the founder of Music & You, his latest nonfiction book is Maybe You're The Problem, and he also writes romance under A.B. Jackson. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Finding post-traumatic growth and meaning after bereavement, and using tragedy as a catalyst for creative transformation Why your superpower can also be your Achilles heel, and how indie authors can overcome shiny object syndrome Three key lessons from the music industry: embracing change, thinking creatively about marketing, and managing pressure for better creativity The A, B, C technique for PR interviews and why marketing is storytelling through different mediums How to deal with judgment and shame around AI in the author community by understanding where people sit on the opinion-belief-conviction continuum Three AI developments coming from music to publishing: training clauses in contracts, one-click genre adaptation, and licensed AI-generated video adaptations You can find Jack at JackWilliamson.co.uk and his fiction work at ABJackson.com. Transcript of the interview with Jack Williamson Jo: Jack Williamson is a psychotherapist, coach, and bestselling author who spent nearly two decades as a music industry executive. He's the founder of Music & You, his latest nonfiction book is Maybe You're The Problem, and he also writes romance under A.B. Jackson. Welcome to the show. Jack: Thank you so much for having me, Jo. It's a real honour to be on your podcast after listening all of these years. Jo: I'm excited to talk to you. We have a lot to get into, but first up— Tell us a bit more about you and why get into writing books after years of working in music. Jack: I began my career at the turn of the millennium, basically, and I worked for George Michael and Mariah Carey's publicist, which I'm sure you can imagine was quite the introduction to the corporate world. From there I went on to do domestic and international marketing for a load of massive artists at Universal, so the equivalent of the top five publishers in the publishing world that we all work in. Then from there I had a bit of a challenge. In December 2015, I lost my brother, unfortunately to suicide. For any listener or any person that's gone through a traumatic event, it can really make you reassess everything, make you question life, make you question your purpose. When I went through that, I was thinking, well, what do I want to do? What do I want out of life? So I went on this journey for practically the next ten years. I retrained to be a psychotherapist. I created a bucket list—a list of all the things that I thought maybe my brother would've wanted to do but didn't do. One of the things was scatter his ashes at the Seven Wonders of the world. Then one of the items on my bucket list was to write a book. The pandemic hit. It was a challenge for all of us, as you've spoken about so much on this wonderful podcast. I thought, well, why not? Why not write this book that I've wanted to write? I didn't know when I was going to do it because I was always so busy, and then the pandemic happened and so I wrote a book. From there, listening to your wonderful podcast, I've learned so much and been to so many conferences and learned along the way. So now I've written five books and released three. Jo: That's fantastic. I mean, regular listeners to the show know that I talk about death and grief and all of this kind of thing, and it's interesting that you took your brother's ashes to the Seven Wonders of the world. Death can obviously be a very bad, negative thing for those left behind, but it seems like you were able to reframe your brother's experience and turn that into something more positive for your life rather than spiralling into something bad. So if people listening are feeling like something happens, whether it's that or other things— How can we reframe these seemingly life-ending situations in a more positive way? Jack: It is very hard and there's no one way to do it. I think as you always say, I never want to tell people what to do or what to think. I want to show them how to think and how they can approach things differently or from a different perspective. I can only speak from my journey, but we call it in therapeutic language, post-traumatic growth. It is, how do you define it so it doesn't define you? Because often when you have a bereavement of a loved one, a family member, it can be very traumatic, but how can you take meaning and find meaning in it? There's a beautiful book called Man's Search for Meaning, and the name of the author escapes me right now, but he says— Jo: Viktor Frankl. Jack: Yes. Everyone quotes it as one of their favourite books, and one of my favourite lines is, “Man can take everything away from you, apart from the ability to choose one thought over the other.” I think it's so true because we can make that choice to choose what to think. So in those moments when we are feeling bad, when we're feeling down, we want to honour our feelings, but we don't necessarily want to become them. We want to process that, work through, get the support system that we need. But again, try to find meaning, try to find purpose, try to understand what is going on, and then pay it forward. Irrespective of your belief system, we all yearn for purpose. We all yearn for being connected to something bigger than ourselves. If we can find that through bereavement maybe, or through a traumatic incident, then hopefully we can come through the other side and have that post-traumatic growth. Jo: I love that phrase, post-traumatic growth. That's so good. Obviously people think about post-traumatic anything as like PTSD—people immediately think a sort of stress disorder, like it's something that makes things even worse. I like that you reframed it in that way. Obviously I think the other thing is you took specific action. You didn't just think about it. You travelled, you retrained, you wrote books. So I think also it's not just thinking. In fact, thinking about things can sometimes make it worse if you think for too long, whereas taking an action I think can be very strong as well. Jack: Ultimately we are human beings as opposed to human doings, but actually being a human doing from time to time can be really helpful. Actually taking steps forward, doing things differently, using it as a platform to move forward and to do things that maybe you didn't before. When you are confronted with death, it can actually make you question your own mortality and actually question, am I just coasting along? Am I stuck in a rut? Could I be doing something differently? One of the things that bereavement, does is it holds a mirror up to ourselves and it makes us question, well, what do we want from our life? Are we here to procreate? Are we here to make a difference? Some of us can't procreate, or some of us choose not to procreate, but we can all make a difference. And it's, how do we do that? Where do we do that? When do we do that? Jo: That's interesting. I was thinking today about service and gratitude. I'm doing this Master's and I was reading some theology stuff today, and service and gratitude, I think if you are within a religious tradition, are a normal part of that kind of religious life. Whether it's service to God and gratitude to God, or service and gratitude to others. I was thinking that these two things, service and gratitude, can actually really help reframe things as well. Who can we serve? As authors, we're serving our readers and our community. What can we be grateful about? That's often our readers and our community as well. So I don't know, that helped me today—thinking about how we can reframe things, especially in the world we're in now where there's a lot of anger and grief and all kinds of things. Jack: That's what we've got to look at. We are here to serve. Again, that can take different shapes, different forms. Some of us work in the service industry. I provide a service as a psychotherapist, you serve your listeners with knowledge and information that you gather and dispense through the research you do or the guests you have on. We serve readers of the different genres that we write in. It's what ways can we serve, how can we serve? Again, I think we all, if we can and when we can, should pay it forward. Someone said this to me once in the music industry: be careful who you meet on the way up and how you treat them on the way up, because invariably you'll meet them on the way down. So if you can pay forward that kindness, if you can be kind, considerate, and treat people how you want to be treated, that is going to pay dividends in the long run. It may not come off straight away, but invariably it will come back to you in some way, shape, or form in a different way. Jo: I've often talked about social karma and karma in the Hindu sense—the things that you do come back to you in some other form. Possibly in another life, which I don't believe. In terms of, I guess, you didn't know what was going to happen to your brother, and so you make the most of the life that we have at the moment because things change and you just don't know how things are going to change. You talk about this in your book, Maybe You're The Problem, which is quite a confronting title. So just talk about your book, Maybe You're The Problem, and why you wrote that. Put it into context with the author community and why that might be useful. Jack: Thank you for flagging my book. I intentionally crossed out “maybe” on the merchandise I did as well, because in essence, we are our own problem. We can get in the way, and it's what happened to us when we grew up wasn't our fault, but what we do with it is our responsibility. We may have grown up in a certain period or a climate. We didn't necessarily choose to do that, but what we do with that as a result is up to us. So we can stay in our victimhood and we can blame our parents, or we can blame the generation we are in, or we can blame the city, the location—however, that is relinquishing your power. That is staying in a victim mindset rather than a survivor or a thriver mindset. So it's about how can we look at the different areas in our life. Whether that is conflict, whether that is imposter syndrome, whether that is the generation we're born into. We try to understand how that has shaped us and how we may be getting in our own way to stop us from growing, to stop us from expanding, and to see where our blind spots are, our limitations are, and how that may impact us. There's so much going on in the moment in the world, whether that is in the digital realm, whether that is in the geo-climate that we're in at the moment. Again, that's going to bring up a lot for us. How can we find solutions to those problems for us so that we continue to move forward rather than be restricted and hindered by them? Jo: Alright. Well let's get into some more specifics. You have been in the author community now for a while. You go to conferences and you are in the podcast community and all this kind of thing. What specific issues have you seen in the author community? Maybe around some of the things you've mentioned, or other things? How might we be able to deal with those? Jack: With authors, I think it is such a wonderful and unique industry that I have an honour and privilege of being a part of now. One of the main things I've learned is just how creative people are. Coming from a creative industry like the music industry, there is a lot of neurodivergence in the creative industries and in the author community. Whether that is autism, whether that is ADHD—that is a real asset to have as a superpower, but it can be an Achilles heel. So it's understanding—and I know that there is an overexposure of people labelling themselves as ADHD—but on the flip side to that, it's how can we look at what's going on for us? For ADHD, for example, there's a thing called shiny object syndrome. You've talked about this in the past, Joanna, where it's like a new thing comes along, be it TikTok, be it Substack, be it bespoke books, be it Shopify, et cetera. We can rush and quickly be like, “oh, let me do this, let me do that,” before we actually take the time to realise, is this right for me? Does this fit my author business? Does this fit where I'm at in my author journey? I think sometimes as authors, we need to not cave in to that shiny object syndrome and take a step back and think to ourselves, how does this serve me? How does this serve my career? How does this work for me if I'm looking at this as a career? If you're looking at it as a hobby, obviously it's a different lens to look through, but that's something that I would often make sure that we look at. One of the other things that really comes up is that in order for any of us to address our fears and anxieties, we need to make sure that we feel psychologically safe and to put ourselves in spaces and places where we feel seen, heard, and understood, which can help address some of the issues that I've just mentioned. Being in that emotionally regulated state when we are with someone we know and trust—so taking someone to a conference, taking someone to a space or a place where you feel that you can be seen, heard, and understood—can help us and allow us to embrace things that we perceive to be scary. That may be finding an author group, finding an online space where you can actually air and share your thoughts, your feelings, where you don't feel that you are being judged. Often it can be quite a judgmental space and place in the online world. So it's just finding your tribe and finding places where you can actually lean into that. So there'd be two things. Jo: I like the idea of the superpower and the Achilles heel because I also feel this when we are writing fiction. Our characters have strengths, but your fatal flaw is often related to your strength. Jack: Yes. Jo: For example, I know I am independent. One of the reasons I'm an independent author is because I'm super independent. But one of my greatest fears is being dependent. So I do lots of things to avoid being dependent on other people, which can lead me to almost damage myself by not asking for help or by trying to make sure that I control everything so I never have to ask anyone else to do something. I'm coming to terms with this as I get older. I feel like this is something we start to hit—I mean, as a woman after menopause—is this feeling of I might have to be dependent on people when I'm older. It's so interesting thinking about this and thinking— My independence is my strength. How can it also be my weakness? So what do you think about that? You're going to psychotherapist me now. Jack: I definitely won't, but it's interesting. Just talking about that, we all have wounds and we all have the shadow, as you've even written about in one of your books. And it's how that can come from a childhood wound where it's like we seek help and it's not given to us. So we create a belief system where I have to do everything myself because no one will help me. Or we may have rejection sensitivity, so we reject ourselves before others can reject us. So it's actually about trying, where we can, to honour our truths, honour that we may want to be independent, for example, but then realising that success leaves clues. I always say that if you are independent—and I definitely align a hundred percent with you, Joanna—I've had to work really hard myself in personal therapy and in business and life to realise that no human is an island and we can't all do this on our own. Yes, it's amazing with the AI agents now that can help us in a business capacity, but having those relationships that we can tap into—like you mentioned all of the people that you tap into—it's so important to have those. I always say that it's important to have three mentors: one person that's ahead of you (for me, that would be Katie Cross because she's someone that I find is an amazing author and we speak at least once a month); people that are at the same level as you that you can go on the journey together with (and I have an author group for that); and then someone that is perceived to be behind you or in a younger generation than you, because you can learn as much from them as they can learn from you. If you can actually tap into those people whilst honouring your independence, then it feels like you can still go on your own journey, but you can tap in and tap out as and when needed. Sacha Black will give you amazing insights, other people like Honor will give you amazing insights, but you can also provide that for them. So there's that safety of being able to do it on your own. But on the flip side, you still have those people that you can tap into as and when necessary as a sounding board, as information on how they were successful, and go from there. Jo: No, I like that. If you're new to the show, Sacha Black and Honor Raconteur have been on the show and they are indeed some of my best friends. So I appreciate that. I really like the idea of the three mentor idea. I just want to add to that because I do think people misunderstand the word mentor sometimes. You mentioned you speak to Katie Cross, but I've found that a lot of the mentors that I've had who are ahead of me have often been books. We mentioned the Viktor Frankl book, and if people don't know, he was Jewish and in the concentration camps and survived that. So it's a real survivor story. But to me, books have been mostly my mentors in terms of people who are ahead of me. We don't always need to speak to or be friends with our mentors. I think that's important too, right? Because I just get emails a lot that say, “Will you be my mentor?” And I don't think that's the point. Jack: Oh, I a hundred percent agree with you. If you don't have access to those mentors—like Oprah Winfrey is one of the people that I perceive as a mentor—I listen to podcasts, I read her books, I watch interviews. There is a way to absorb and acquire that information, and it doesn't have to be a direct relationship with them. It is someone that you can gain the knowledge and wisdom that they've imparted in whatever form you may consume it. Which is why I think it is important to have those three levels: that one that is above you that may be out of reach in terms of a human connection, but you can still access; then the people at the same level as you that you can have those relationships and grow with; and again, that one behind that you can help pave the way for them, but also learn from them as well. So a hundred percent agree that that mentor that you are looking for that may be ahead of you doesn't necessarily need to be someone that is in a real-world relationship. Jo: So let's just circle back to your music industry experience. You mentioned being on the sort of marketing team for some really big names in music, and I mean, it's kind of a sexy job really. It just sounds pretty cool, but of course the music industry has just as many challenges as publishing. What did you learn from working in the music industry that you think might be particularly useful for authors? Jack: The perception of reality was definitely a lot different. It does look sexy and glamorous, but the reality is similar to going to conferences. It's pretty much flight, hotel, and dark rooms with terrible air conditioning that you spend a lot of time in. So sorry to burst the illusion. But I mean, it does have its moments as well. There is so much I've learned over the years and there's probably three things that stand out the most. The first one was I entered the industry right at the height of the music industry. In 2000, 2001. That was when Napster really exploded and it decimated the music industry. It wiped half the value in the space of four years. Then the music industry was trying to shut it down, throwing legal, throwing everything at it, but it was like whack-a-mole. As soon as one went down such as Napster, ten others popped up like Kazaa. So you saw that the old guard wasn't willing to embrace change. They weren't willing to adapt. They assumed that people wanted the formats of CDs, vinyls, cassettes, and they were wrong. Yes, people wanted music, but they actually wanted the music. They didn't care about the format, they just wanted the access. So that was one of the really interesting things that I learned, because I was like, you have to embrace change. You can't ignore it. You can't push it away, push it aside, because it's coming whether you like it or not. I think thankfully the music industry has learned as AI's coming, because now you have to embrace it. There's a lot of legal issues that have been going on at the moment with rights, which you've covered about the Anthropic case and so on. It's such a challenge, and I just think that's the first one. The second one I learned was back in 2018. There was an artist I worked on called Freya Ridings. At that time I was working at an independent record label rather than one of the big three major record labels. She had great songs and we were up against one of the biggest periods of the year and trying to make noise. At the time, Love Island was the biggest TV show on, and everyone wanted to be on it in terms of getting their music synced in the scenes. We were just like, we are never going to compete. So we thought, we need to be clever here. We need to think differently. What we did is we found out what island the show was being recorded on, and we geo-targeted our ads just to that island because we knew the sync team were going to be on there. So we just went hard as nails, advertised relentlessly, and we knew that the sync people would then see the adverts. As a result of that, Freya got the sync. It became the biggest song that season on Love Island, back when it was popular. As a result of that, we built from there. We were like, right, we can't compete with the majors. We have to think differently. We need to do things differently. We need to be creative. It wasn't an easy pathway. That year there were only two other songs that were independent that reached the top 10. So we ended up becoming a third and the biggest song that year. The reason I'm saying that is we can't compete with the major publishers. But the beauty of the independent author community is because we have smaller budgets—most of us, not all of us, but most of us—we have to think differently. We have to make our bang for our buck go a lot further. So it's actually— How can we stay creative? How can we think differently? What can we do differently? So that would be the second thing. Then the third main lesson that I learned, and this is more on the creative side, is that pressure can often work against you, both in a business sense, but especially creativity. I've seen so many artists over the years have imposed deadlines on them to hand in their albums, and it's impacted the quality of their output. Once it's handed in, the stress and the pressure is off, and then you realise that actually those artists end up creating the best material that they have, and then they rush to put it on. Whether that's Mariah Carey's “We Belong Together,” Adele with her song “Hello,” Taylor Swift did the same with “Shake It Off”—they're just three examples. The reason is that pressure keeps us in our beta brainwave state, which is our rational, logical mind. For those of us that are authors that are writing fiction, or even if we are creating stories in our nonfiction work to deliver a point, we need to be in that creative mindset. So we need to be in the alpha and the gamma brain state. Because our body works on 90-minute cycles known as our ultradian rhythm, we need to make sure that we honour our cycle and work with that. If we go past that, our creativity and our productivity is going to go down between 60% and 40% respectively. So as authors, it's important—one, to apply the right amount of pressure; two, to work in breaks; and three, to know what kind of perspective we're looking at. Do we need to be rational and logical, or do we need to be creative? And then adjust the sails accordingly. Jo: That's all fantastic. I want to come back on the marketing thing first—around what you did with the strategic marketing there and the targeted ads to that island. That's just genius. I feel like a lot of us, myself included, we struggle to think creatively about marketing because it's not our natural state. Of course, you've done a lot of marketing, so maybe it comes more naturally to you. I think half the time we don't even use the word creative around marketing, when you're not a marketeer. What are some ways that we can break through our blocks around marketing and try to be more creative around that? Jack: I would challenge a lot of authors on that presumption, because as authors we're in essence storytellers, and to tell a story is creative. There's a great quote: “One death is a tragedy. A thousand deaths is a statistic.” If you can create a story, a compelling narrative about a death in the news, it's going to pull at the heartstrings of people. It's going to really resonate and get with them. Whereas if you are just quoting statistics, most people switch off because they become desensitised to it. So I think because we can tell stories, and that's the essence of what we do, it's how can we tell our story through the medium of social media? How can we tell a story through our creative ads that we then put out onto Facebook or TikTok or whatever platform that we're putting them out—BookBub, et cetera? How can we create a narrative that garners the attention? If we are looking at local media or traditional media, how can we do that? How can we get people to buy in to what we're selling? So it's about having different angles. For me with my new romance book, Stolen Moments, one of the stories I had that really has helped me get some coverage and PR is we recorded the songs next door to the Rolling Stones. Now that was very fortunate timing, very fortunate. But everyone's like, “Oh my God, you recorded next door to the Rolling Stones?” So it's like, well, how can you bring in these creative nuggets that help you to find a story? Again, marketing is in essence telling a story, albeit through different mediums and forms. So it's just how can you package that into a marketable product depending on the platform in which you're putting it out on. Jo: I think that's actually hilarious, by the way, because what you hit on there, as someone with a background in marketing, your story about “we recorded an album for the book next door to the Rolling Stones”—it's got nothing to do with the romance. Jack: Oh, the romance is that the pop star in the book writes and records songs. Jo: Yes, I realised that. But the fact is— For doing things like PR, it's the story behind the story. They don't care that you've written a romance. Jack: Yes. Jo: They're far more interested in you, the author, and other things. So I think what you just described there was a kind of PR hook that most of us don't even think about. Jack: I'm sure a lot of authors already know this, so it's a good reminder, and if you don't, it's great. It's called the A, B, C technique. When you get asked a question, you Answer the question. So that's A. You Build a bridge, and then you go to C, which is Covering one of your points. So whenever you get asked a question, have a list of things you want to get across in an interview. Then just make sure that you find that bridge between whatever the question is to cover off one of your points, and that's how you can do it. Because yes, you may be selling a story, like I said, about writing the songs, but then you can bridge it into actually covering and promoting whatever it is you're promoting. So I think that's always quite helpful to remember. Jo: Well, that's a good tip for things like coming on podcasts as well. I've had people on who don't do what you just mentioned and will just try and shoehorn things in in a more deliberate fashion, whereas other people, as you have just done with your romance there, bring it in while answering a question that actually helps other people. So I think that's the kind of thing we need to think about in marketing. Okay, so then let's come back to the embracing change, and as you mentioned, the AI stuff that's going on. I feel like there's so many “stories” around AI right now. There's a lot of stories being told on both sides—on the positive side, on the negative side—that people believe and buy into and may or may not be true. There's obviously a lot of anger. There's, I think, grief—a big thing that people might not even realise that they have. Can you talk about how authors might deal with what's coming up around the technological change around AI, and any of your personal thoughts as well? Jack: I was thinking about this a lot recently. I mean, I guess everyone is in their own ways and forms. One of the things that came up for me is we have genre expectations and we have generation expectations. When we look at genres, you will have different expectations from different genres. For romance, they want a happily ever after or a happy for now. For cosy mysteries, they expect the crime to be solved. So we as authors make sure we endeavour to meet those expectations. The challenge is that if we are looking at AI, we are all in our own generations. We might be in slightly different generations, but there are going to be different generation expectations from the Alpha generation that's coming up and the Beta generation that's just about to start this year or next year because they're going to come into the world where they don't know any different to AI. So they will have a different expectation than us. It will just be normal that there will be AI agents. It will just be normal that there are AI narrators. It will be normalised that AI will assist authors or assist everyone in doing their jobs. So again, it is a grieving period because we can long for what was, we can yearn for things that worked for us that no longer work for us—whether it's Facebook groups, whether it's the Kindle Rush. We can mourn the loss of that, but that's not coming back. I mean, sometimes there may be a resurgence, but essentially, we've got to embrace the change. We've got to understand that it's coming and it's going to bring up a lot of different emotions because you may have been beholden to one thing and you may be like, yes, I've now got my TikTok lives, and then all of a sudden TikTok goes away. I know Adam, when he was talking about it, he'll just find another platform. But there'll be a lot of people that are beholden to it and then they're like, what do I do now? So again, it's never survival of the fittest—it's survival of the most adaptable. I always use this metaphor where there are three people on three different boats. A storm comes. And the first, the optimist, is like, “Oh, it'll pass,” and does nothing. The pessimist complains about the storm and does nothing. But the realist will adjust the sails and use the storm to find its way to the other side, to get through. It's not going to be easy, but they're actually taking change and making change to get to where they need to go, rather than just expecting or complaining. I get it. We are not, and I hate the expression, “we're all in the same boat.” I call bleep on that. I'm not going to swear. We're not all in the same boat. We're all in the same storm, but different people are going through different things. For some, they can adjust and adapt really quickly like a speedboat. For others, they may be like Jack and Rose in the Titanic on that terrible prop where they're clinging to dear life and trying to get through the storm. So it's about how do I navigate this upcoming storm? What can I do within my control to get through the storm? For some it may be easier because they have the resources, or for some of us that love learning, it's easy to embrace change. For others that have a fear mindset and it's like, “Oh, something new, it's scary, I don't want to embrace it”—you are going to take longer. So you may not be the speedboat, but at some point we are going to have to embrace that change. Otherwise we're going to get left behind. So you need to look at that. Jo: The storm metaphor is interesting, and being in different boats. I feel I do struggle. I struggle with people who suddenly seem to be discovering the storm. I've been talking about AI now since 2016. That's a decade. Jack: Yes. Jo: Even ChatGPT has been around more than three years, and people come to me now and they're talking about stories that they've seen in the media that are just old now. Things have moved on so much. I feel like maybe I was on my boat and I looked through my telescope and I saw the storm. I've been talking about the storm and I've had my own moments of being in the middle of the storm. Now I definitely do struggle with people who just seem to have arrived without any knowledge of it before. I oscillate between being an optimist and a realist. I think I'm somewhere between the two, probably. But I think what is driving me a little crazy in the author community right now is judgment and shame. There are people who are judging other people, and there's shame felt by AI-curious or AI-positive people. So I want to help the people who feel shame in some way for trying new technology, but they still feel attacked. Then those people judge other authors for their choices to use technology. So how do you think we can deal with judgment and shame in the community? Which is a form of conflict, I guess. Jack: Of course. I think with that, there's another great PR quote: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Especially in this digital age, there's a lot of clickbait. So the more polarising, the more emotion-evoking the headline, the more likely you are to engage with that content—whether that is reading it or whether that's posting or retweeting, or whatever format you are consuming it on. So unfortunately, media has now become so much more polarising. It's dividing us rather than uniting us. So people are going to have stronger positions. There's so much even within this to look at. One is, you have to work out where people are on the continuum. Do they have an opinion on AI? Do they have a belief? Or do they have a conviction? Now you're not going to move someone that has a conviction about something, so it's not worth even engaging with them because they're immovable. Like they say, you shouldn't talk about sports, politics, and religion. There are certain subjects that may not be worth talking about, especially if they have a conviction. Because they may not even be able to agree to disagree. They may not be willing or able to hear you. So first and foremost, it's about understanding, well, where are those people sitting on the continuum of AI? Are they curious? Do they have an opinion, but they're open to hearing other opinions? Do they have a belief that could be changed or evolved if they find more information? That's where I think it is. It's not necessarily our jobs—even though you do an amazing job of it, Joanna—but a lot of people are undereducated on these issues or these new technologies. So in some cases it's just a case of a lack of education or them being undereducated. Hopefully in time they will become more and more educated. But again, it's how long is a piece of string? Will people catch up? Will they stay behind? Are they fearful? I guess because of social media, because of the media, as they say, if you can evoke fear in people, you can control them. You can control their perspectives. You can control their minds. So that's where we see it—a lot of people are operating from a fear mindset. So then that's when they project their vitriol in certain cases. If people want to believe a certain thing, that's their choice. I'm not here to tell people what to think. Like I said earlier, it's more about how to think. But I would just encourage people to find people that align with you. Do a sense test, like a litmus test, to find where they sit on the continuum and engage with those people that are open and have opinions or beliefs. But shy away or just avoid people that have convictions that maybe are the polar opposite of yours. Jo: It's funny, isn't it? We seem to be in a phase of history when I feel like you should be able to disagree with people and still be friends. Although, as you mentioned, there's certain members of my family where we just stay on topics of TV shows and movies or music, or what books are you reading? Like, we don't go anywhere near politics. So I do think that might be a rule also with the AI stuff. As you said, find a community, and there are plenty of AI-positive spaces now for people who do want to talk about this kind of stuff. I also think that, I don't know whether this is a tipping point this year, but certainly— I know people who are in bigger corporates where the message is now, “You need to embrace this stuff. It is now part of your job to learn how to use these AI tools.” So if that starts coming into people's day jobs, and also people who have, I don't know, kids at school or people at university who are embracing this more—I mean, maybe it is a generational thing. Jack: Yes. Look, there were so many people that were resistant to working from home, or corporations that were, and then the pandemic forced it. Now everyone's embraced it in some way, shape, or form. I mean, there are people that don't, but the majority of people—when something's forced on you, you have to adapt. So again, if those things are implemented in corporations, then you're going to see it. I'm seeing so many amazing new things in AI that have been implemented in the music industry that we'll see in the publishing industry coming down the road. That will scare a lot of people, but again, we have to embrace those things because they're coming and there's going to be an expectation—especially from the younger generations—that these things are available. So again, it's not first past the post, but if you can be ahead of the wave or at least on the wave, then you are going to reap the rewards. If you are behind the wave, you're going to get left behind. So that's my opinion. I'm not trying to encourage anyone to see from my lens, but at the same time, I do think that we need to be thinking differently. We need to always embrace change where we can, as we can, at the pace that we can. Jo: You mentioned there AI things coming down the road in the music industry. And now everyone's going, wait, what is coming? So tell us— What do you see ahead that you think might also shift into the author world? Jack: There are three things that I've seen. Two that have been implemented and one that's been talked about and worked on at the moment. The first, and this will be quite scary for people, is that major record labels—so think the major publishers on our side—they're all now putting clauses in their contracts that require the artists that sign with them to allow their works to be trained by their own AI models. So that is something that is now actually happening in record labels. I wouldn't be surprised, although I don't have insight into it, if Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, et cetera, are potentially doing the same with authors that sign to them. So that's going to become more standardised. So that is on the major side. But then on the creative side, there are two things that really excite me. The music AI platforms that we're hearing about, the stories that we've seen in the press, and it's the fact that with a click of a button, you can recreate a song into a different genre. I find it so fascinating because if you think about that—turning a pop song into a country song or a rap song into a dance song—the possibilities that we have as authors with our books, if we wish to do so, are amazing. I just think, for example, with your ARKANE series, Joanna, imagine clicking a button and just with one click you can take Morgan Sierra and turn her into a romantic lead in a romance book. Jo: See, it's so funny because I personally just can't imagine that because it's not something I would write. But I guess one example in the romance genre itself is I know plenty of romance authors who write a clean and a spicy version of the same story, right? It is already happening in that way. It's just not a one-click. Jack: Well, I think you can also look at it another way. I think one of the most famous examples is Twilight. With Twilight and Stephenie Meyer, if she had the foresight—and I'm not saying she didn't, just to clarify—but fan fiction is such a massive sub-genre of works. And obviously from Twilight came 50 Shades of Gray. Imagine if she had the licensing rights like the NFTs, where she could have made money off of every sale. So that you could then, through works that you create and give licence, earn a percentage of every release, every sale, every consumption unit of your works. There are just so many possibilities where you can create, adapt, have spinoffs that can then build out your world. Obviously, there may need to be an approval process in there for continuity and quality control because you want to make sure you're doing that, but I think that has such massive potential in publishing if we wish to do so. Or like I said, change characters. Like Robert Langdon's character in Dan Brown's books—no longer being the kind of thriller, but maybe being a killer instead. There's so many possibilities. It's just, again, how to think, not what to think—how to think differently and how we can use that. So that's the second of three. Jo: Oh, before you move on, you did mention NFTs and I've actually been reading about this again. So I'm usually five years early. That's the general rule. I started talking about NFTs in mid-2021, and obviously there was a crypto crash, it goes up and down, blah, blah, blah. But forget the crypto side—on the blockchain side, digital originality, and exactly what you said about saying like, where did this originate? This is now coming back in the AI world. It could be that I really was five years early. So amusingly—and I'm going to link to it in the notes because I did a “Why NFTs Are Exciting for Authors” solo episode, I think in 2022—it may be that the resurgence will happen in the next year, and all those people who said I was completely wrong, that this may be coming back. Digital originality I think is what we're talking about there. But so, okay, so what was the other thing? Jack: So the third one is the one that I'm most excited about, but I think will be the most scary for people. Obviously consumption changes and formats change. Like I said, in music I've seen it all the time—whether it's vinyl to cassettes, to CDs, to downloads, to streaming. Again, there's different consumption of the same format, and we see that with books as well, obviously—hardbacks, paperbacks, eBooks, audiobooks. Now with the rise of AI, AI narration has made audiobooks so much more accessible for people. I know that there are issues with certain people not wanting to do it, or certain platforms not allowing AI narration to be uploaded unless it's their own. The next step is what I'm most excited about. What I'm seeing now in the music industry is people licensing their image to then recreate that as music videos because music videos are so expensive. One of my friends just shot a music video for two million pounds. I don't think many authors would ever wish to spend that. If you can license your image and use AI to create a three-minute music video that looks epic and just as real as humanly possible, imagine if those artists—or if we go a step further, those actors—license their image to then be used to adapt our books into a TV series or a film. So that then we are in a position where that is another format of consumption alongside an audiobook, a paperback, an eBook, hardcover, special edition, and so on and so forth. It potentially has the opportunity to open us up to a whole new world. Because yes, there are adaptations of books that we're seeing at the moment, but for those of us that are trying to get our content into different formats, this can be a new pathway. I'm going to make a prediction here myself, Joanna. Jo: Mm-hmm. Jack: I would say in the next five to ten years, there will be a platform akin to a Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, Apple Plus, where you can license the rights to an image of an actor or an actress. Then with the technology—and you may need people to help you adapt your book into a TV series or a film—that can then be consumed. I just think the possibilities are endless. I mean, again, I think of your character and I'm like, oh, what would it be if Angelina Jolie licensed her image and you could have her play the lead character in your ARKANE series? I mean, again, the possibilities potentially are endless here. Jo: Well, and on that, if people think this won't happen—1776, I don't know if you've seen this, it's just being teased at the moment. Darren Aronofsky has made an American revolutionary story all with AI. So this is being talked about at the moment. It's on YouTube at the moment. The AI video is just extraordinary already, so I totally agree with you. I think things are going to be quite weird for a while, and it will take a while to get used to. You mentioned coming into the music industry in 2000, 2001—I started my work before the internet, and then the internet came along and lots of things changed. I mean, anyone who's older than 40, 45-ish can remember what work was like without the internet. Now we are moving into a time where it'll be like, what was it like before AI? And I think we'll look back and go like, why the hell did we do that kind of thing? So it is a changing world, but yes, exciting times, right? I think the other thing that's happening right now, even to me, is that things are moving so fast. You can almost feel like a kind of whiplash with how much is changing. How do we deal with the fast pace of change while still trying to anchor ourselves in our writing practice and not going crazy? Jack: Again, it's that everything everywhere all at once—you can get lost and discombobulated. I always say be the tortoise, not the hare—because you don't want to fly and die. You want pace and grace. Everyone will have a different pace. For some marathon runners, they can run a five-minute mile, some can run an eight-minute mile, some can run a twelve-minute mile. It's about finding the pace that works for you. Every one of us have different commitments. Every one of us have different ways we view the industry—some as a hobby, some as a business. So it's about honouring your needs, your commitment. Some of us, as you've had people on the podcast, some people are carers. They have to care. Some people are parents. Some people don't have those commitments and so can devote more time and then actually learn more, change more as a result. So again, it's about finding your groove, finding your rhythm, honouring that, and again, showing up consistently. Because motivation may get you started, but it's habit and discipline that sees you through. Keep that discipline, keep that pace and grace. Be consistent in what you can do. And know where you're at. Don't compare and despair, because again, if you look at someone else, they may be ahead of you, but the race is only with yourself in the end. So you've got to just focus on where you are at and am I in a better place than I was yesterday? Am I working on my business as well as in my business? How am I doing that? When am I doing that? And what am I doing that for? If you can be asking yourself those questions and making sure you're staying true to yourself and not burning out, making sure that you are honouring your other commitments, then I think you are going at the pace that feels right for you. Jo: Brilliant. Jo: Where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Jack: Thank you so much for having me on, Joanna, today. You can find me on JackWilliamson.co.uk for all my nonfiction books and therapy work. Then for my fiction work, it is ABJackson.com, or ABJacksonAuthor on Instagram and TikTok. Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Jack. That was great. Jack: Thank you so much. The post Post-Traumatic Growth, Creative Marketing, And Dealing With Change with Jack Williamson first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Billy Liucci discusses the retirement of Porter Garner. Bucky McMillan talks about wins and team defense. Billy talks Aggie baseball sweep over Penn.

Aggie Basketball Talk with Tom Schuberth and Tap Bentz + Brauny, Zane, and Scott preview this weekend's series against Penn!

Louie opens the day with quick thoughts from the Maroon and White Notebook.  Then the FINAL - Greg McElroy "Listen In" - Title Contender Series PLUS Michael Earley "Listen In" Penn this weekend.

Penn is strapped into a wheelchair and back performing in the big Penn & Teller show, cigarette advertising campaigns that haven’t aged well, solving the problem of awkward phone calls, audio technology, Matt continues learning Spanish, and lots more.

In this episode you will hear: (01:45) In Our Question from a Listener-Hilary joins Mark to answer a few questions: How does a student let a college know they will not be accepting their admission offer; who do they tell; when do they communicate this? (25:30) Mark interviews Elliot Felix, author of the book, 'the Connected College" o Elliot tells us what "sunsetting is" and he explains why more college need to sunset more programs o Elliot talks about what a student can do if they want to break into doing design and strategic work on college campuses o Elliot shares what he hasn't shared so far that he wants our families to know o Elliot gives a more detailed overview of the content he covers in the Connected College o Elliot is headquartered in Minneapolis, and he loves the entire state, and during the interview, he was wearing a support the Twin cities shirt for our interview, so I asked him, what is it people do not understand about Minneapolis and he gave us a straight answer (46:05) College Spotlight-Daniela Uribe and Summer Cobb Tell us What Penn is like for students. ¨ Summer and Daniela talk about imposters syndrome at Penn ¨ Summer and Daniela talk about the hot topics on campus ¨ Daniela and Summer discuss, "Penn face" ¨ Summer and Penn talk about M & T and Huntsman, two dual-degree programs that Penn is known for ¨ Summer and Daniela go on the hot seat and they drop some more pearls of wisdom for all of us Recommended Resource Guide to help first year students complete the Common Application- Application guide for first-year students Speakpipe.com/YCBK is our method if you want to ask a question and we will be prioritizing all questions sent in via Speakpipe. Unfortunately, we will NOT answer questions on the podcast anymore that are emailed in. If you want us to answer a question on the podcast, please use speakpipe.com/YCBK. We feel hearing from our listeners in their own voices adds to the community feel of our podcast. You can also use this for many other purposes: 1) Send us constructive criticism about how we can improve our podcast 2) Share an encouraging word about something you like about an episode or the podcast in general 3) Share a topic or an article you would like us to address 4) Share a speaker you want us to interview 5) Leave positive feedback for one of our interviewees. We will send your verbal feedback directly to them and I can almost assure you your positive feedback will make their day. To sign up to receive Your College-Bound Kid PLUS, our new monthly admissions newsletter, delivered directly to your email once a month, just go to yourcollegeboundkid.com, and you will see the sign-up popup. We will include many of the hot topics being discussed on college campuses. Check out our new blog. We write timely and insightful articles on college admissions: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/category/blog/ Follow Mark Stucker on Twitter to get breaking college admission news, and updates about the podcast before they go live. You can ask questions on Twitter that he will answer on the podcast. Mark will also share additional hot topics in the news and breaking news on this Twitter feed. Twitter message is also the preferred way to ask questions for our podcast: 1. To access our transcripts, click: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/category/transcripts/ 2. Find the specific episode transcripts for the one you want to search for and click the link 3. Find the magnifying glass icon in blue (search feature) and click it 4. Enter whatever word you want to search. I.e. Loans 5. Every word in that episode when the words loans are used will be highlighted in yellow with a timestamps 6. Click the word highlighted in yellow and the player will play the episode from that starting point 7. You can also download the entire podcast as a transcript We would be honored if you will pass this podcast episode on to others who you feel will benefit from the content in YCBK. Please subscribe to our podcast. It really helps us move up in Apple's search feature so others can find our podcast. If you enjoy our podcast, would you please do us a favor and share our podcast both verbally and on social media? We would be most grateful! If you want to help more people find Your College-Bound Kid, please make sure you follow our podcast. You will also get instant notifications as soon as each episode goes live. Check out the college admissions books Mark recommends: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/recommended-books/ Check out the college websites Mark recommends: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/recommended-websites/ If you want to have some input about what you like and what you recommend, we change about our podcast, please complete our Podcast survey; here is the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScCauBgityVXVHRQUjvlIRfYrMWWdHarB9DMQGYL0472bNxrw/viewform If you want a college consultation, text Mark at 404-664-4340, or email us at yourcollegeboundkid@yahoo.com All we ask is that you review their services and pricing on their website before the complimentary session; here is link to their services with transparent pricing: https://schoolmatch4u.com/services/compare-packages/

The Southeastern 16 crew previews weekend action in Week 2 of the Southeastern Conference baseball slate. Series include: Indiana at LSU, Xavier at Arkansas, Kent State at Tennessee, Delaware at Mississippi State, Kansas State at Auburn, Marist at Vanderbilt, Penn at Texas A&M, Coppin State at Oklahoma, Missouri State at Ole Miss, Michigan State at Texas, Kennesaw State at Florida, Kentucky at Evansville, Rhode Island at Alabama, Samford at Georgia, Army at South Carolina and Missouri at New Haven. Southeastern 16 Merch: https://se16.printify.me/ &COLLAR Stretchy. Wrinkle-proof. Built to look sharp. Welcome to Workleisure. Use promo code SEC16 for 16% off! https://andcollar.com/ ICON WALLETS Use promo code SEC16 for 20% off! https://icon-wallets.com/ ROKFORM Use promo code SEC25 for 25% off! The world's strongest magnetic phone case! https://www.rokform.com/ JOIN OUR MEMBERSHIP Join the "It Just Means More" tier for bonus videos and live streams! Join Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1w_TRbiB0yHCEb7r2IrBg/join FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA Twitter: https://twitter.com/16Southeastern ADVERTISE WITH SOUTHEASTERN 16 Reach out to se16.caroline@gmail.com to find out how your product or service can be seen by over 200,000 unique viewers each month! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The hit HBO medical drama “The Pitt,” follows a fictional emergency room in Pittsburgh, Penn. for one day. Each episode, is an hour of their shift. The show has been complimented for its accuracy in portraying a real emergency room. That's thanks in part to a Minnesota doctor. Dr. Jacob Lentz is an emergency room doctor at MHealth Fairview Lakes Medical Center in Wyoming, Minn. and he served as a medical consultant for the show. Season two is airing now on HBO. Dr. Lentz spoke to Minnesota Now host Nina Moini about his role on the show and how he helped contribute to its medical accuracy.

The Patina regroups and brings out the big guns.Cast: - Marathon Messenger is played by Penn Van Batavia. She can be found on Twitter at @acquiredchaste and in drag as horror king JOHN on Instagram at @john.is.risen. Penn is an indie TTRPG designer whose most recent work includes SLICE *IT* OUT, a grisly carving RPG about cutting pieces of yourself out to fit in. Check out faer other work at pennharper.itch.io. - Cassidy Shard is played by Sydney Whittington. She is our wonderful editor. She's also a contributing editor and occasional guest player for the Orpheus Protocol, a cosmic horror espionage actual play podcast. Find her on Twitter at @sydney_whitt. - Emma Blackwood is played by Cameron Robertson. Find her on Twitter at @midnightmusic13 and on Instagram at @reading_and_dreaming. Cameron is also a player on Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars Edge of the Empire actual play podcast. - Birdie Foundling is played by Kit Adames. Find her on Twitter at @venusvultures. Kit is also a voice actor and writer on Elevator Pitch Podcast, a queer genre-hopping anthology podcast that can be accessed on Spotify and YouTube. - Our GM and narrator is Nick Robertson. Find him on Twitter at @alias58. Nick is also the GM for Tabletop Squadron and can also be found as a player on the Orpheus Protocol.Music & Sound Credits: - This podcast features the musical talents of Dora Violet and Arne Parrott. You can find Dora at facebook.com/doraviolett. You can find Arne at atptunes.com. - old radio Channel search sound effect by Garuda1982. Link & License. - Memories in Love (ID 1144) by Lobo Loco. Link & License. - Carrot Sticks by Doctor Turtle. Link & License.Art Credits: - The official artwork for this podcast was created by Rashed AlAkroka, who can be found on Instagram and Artstation @rashedjrs.Find Us Online: - Our Website - Twitter - Join our Patreon - Join our Discord

Message us!Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities deserve a community where they can live, learn, and thrive. In this Whitley Penn Talks episode of our Whitley Penn Cares series, we introduce New Danville, a unique ranch style community in the Houston area that provides affordable housing, life skills training, and meaningful connection for adults who have aged out of the school system. From major campus expansion to a now famous chicken coop, this conversation highlights the impact of creating opportunity and independence with dignity.Key TakeawaysHow a napkin sketch turned into a thriving 42‑acre community for adults with intellectual disabilitiesA behind‑the‑scenes look at New Danville's classes, animal programs, and stories of growing independenceWhy demand for these communities is rising and how the Whitley Penn Philanthropic Fund helps power these programsThe beloved chicken coop story that highlights creativity, joy, and community supportWhy ListenIf you care about nonprofit impact and community support, this episode shows how a mission driven organization creates real outcomes for adults with intellectual disabilities. You will hear practical examples of scalable programs, powerful stories of independence, and how strategic funding helps organizations grow. It is an inspiring look at what effective, community centered work truly delivers.Fill out this form to have new episodes sent right to your inbox! Follow Whitley Penn on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and X for more industry insights and thought leadership!

Well folks... this is it. The final episode of Podcrushed. As a final parting gift, the gang called the only person befitting of the 'final guest' title: Leighton Meester. Leighton is not only the very first guest we ever had on Podcrushed, or Penn's co-star from the iconic series Gossip Girl, or the actor you know and love from projects like The Roommate and Nobody Wants This... but is also the most requested return guest of all time on Podcrushed. Be sure to stick around to the end to hear final thoughts from the hosts after three seasons and well over 100 episodes of Podcrushed. David is offering our listeners a special deal: buy 4 cartons and get the 5th free when you go to https://www.davidprotein.com/PODCRUSHED. To learn more about therapy with NOCD, go to https://www.nocd.com and schedule a free 15-minute call with their team.

On this episode of the SeventySix Capital Sports Leadership Show, Wayne Kimmel interviewed Alex Kades, a Former D1 Soccer Player and Founder of AK Footy. Alex is a former NCAA Division I soccer player at the University of Pennsylvania and a graduate of the Wharton Leadership Academy, where he completed a multi-year leadership and character development curriculum for student-athletes. Kades is the Founder of AK Footy, a private soccer training business focused on individualized technical development and high-level skill refinement for youth players, where he works full-time training athletes in one-on-one and small group.Kades has also served as an Assistant Coach with the Philadelphia Union Academy, gaining experience within one of the top youth development systems in the country and working in a high-performance professional academy environment.Prior to Penn, Kades was a four-year letterwinner and two-time captain at Harriton High School, earning recognition as a finalist for Pennsylvania Gatorade Player of the Year and 2018 Central League MVP. He was a multiple-time All-State selection and helped lead his team to a state tournament appearance. Connect with Alex Kades!LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-kades-a991011b0/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/akfooty_/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@akadesfootball?lang=enChapters00:00 Introduction to Alex Kades00:34 The World Cup's Impact on U.S. Soccer04:49 Alex's Journey as a Coach and Content Creator12:50 The Economic Impact of the World Cup19:00 Lessons from Youth Soccer Coaching21:24 Alex's Passion for Soccer and Content Creation25:13 MLS vs. Premier League: A Comparative Analysis28:01 World Cup Predictions and Home-Field Advantage29:14 The Passion of Soccer Fans30:56 The Role of Goalkeepers in Soccer31:51 The Pressure of Penalty Kicks35:24 Technology in Soccer: VAR and Beyond

Wed, Feb 18 1:41 PM → 3:12 PM Cardiac arrest at 1331 Penn Ave NW Radio Systems: - DC Fire and EMS

If you've ever thought, “I'm showing love to my partner, so why don't they feel it?” This episode is for you. This week on Laugh Lines, we're talking to the actual human who gave us the phrase “love language.” Yes. The one, the only... Dr. Gary Chapman. Dr. Chapman is the man behind the famous book, The Five Love Languages. He joins us to talk about what happens when you and your person are speaking completely different love languages, and why dialect of a love language is also important.'Acts of Service' might be my personal version of romance, but that's not Penn's. It's important to understand that how you show someone love doesn't mean they feel love. We discuss what to do when your partner's love language is the one you're worst at, how love languages shift in different seasons, and the five apology languages (including why “I'm sorry if you felt that way” absolutely does not count!)If you've ever wondered why you feel deeply loved when someone washes the dishes or why you just want someone to sit down and actually talk to you… this conversation might give you the language you've been missing. Whether you're married, dating, parenting, working, or just trying to understand the humans in your life - there's something everyone can take away. Sometimes the problem isn't love, it's how we show it. (Big thanks to Dr. Chapman for coming on the show, this was one of our favorite podcasts to record!) Learn more about Dr. Gary Chapman.We love to hear from you! Leave us a message at 323-364-3929 or write the show at podcast@theholdernessfamily.com. You can also watch our podcast on YouTube.Visit Our ShopJoin Our NewsletterFind us on SubstackFollow us on InstagramFollow us on TikTok Follow us on FacebookLaugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness is an evolution of The Holderness Family Podcast, which began in 2018. Kim and Penn Holderness are award-winning online content creators known for their original music, song parodies, comedy sketches, and weekly podcasts. Their videos have resulted in over three billion views and over nine million followers since 2013. Penn and Kim are also authors of the New York Times Bestselling Books, ADHD Is Awesome: A Guide To (Mostly) Thriving With ADHD and All You Can Be With ADHD. They were also winners on The Amazing Race (Season 33) on CBS. Laugh Lines is hosted and executive produced by Kim Holderness and Penn Holderness, with original music by Penn Holderness. Laugh Lines is also written and produced by Ann Marie Taepke, and edited and produced by Sam Allen. It is hosted by Acast. Thanks for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oil sanctions have given rise to dark shipping, reshaping global energy flows and producing far-reaching economic consequences. --- In recent years, oil export sanctions have become a central tool of U.S. foreign policy, targeting major producers including Russia, Iran, and, until very recently Venezuela. These sanctions were designed to limit oil revenues, apply economic pressure, and create geopolitical leverage. But their real-world effects have proven more complex than many anticipated. A growing “shadow fleet” of oil tankers now operates alongside the conventional global shipping system. These vessels, often older and operating with opaque ownership and shifting registrations, transport sanctioned oil through networks designed to evade restrictions. Despite extensive sanctions, large volumes of this oil continue to reach global markets. In this episode, Penn economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde examines how oil sanctions have contributed to the rise of dark shipping, and have become a lever in global great power competition. Drawing on new research, he explains how shadow oil flows reshape global markets, influence prices and industrial activity, and generate unintended outcomes. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde is a professor of economics and Director of the Penn Initiative for the Study of Markets at the University of Pennsylvania. Related Content Boomtowns in the Battery Belt: Risks and Opportunities of Clean Energy Investments in Smalls Towns of America https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/research/publications/boomtowns-in-the-battery-belt-risks-and-opportunities-of-clean-energy-investments-in-small-towns-of-america/ Energy System Planning: New Models for Accelerating Decarbonization https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/research/publications/energy-system-planning-new-models-for-accelerating-decarbonization/ Energy Policy Now is produced by The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. For all things energy policy, visit kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SUMMARY: ICS appears on a list of funniest podcasts. There's a new magic show coming to The Strip; is it better than Penn & Teller? In Scoop Mail, we're asked what to do when you've bought a house that belonged to a pervy peeper. Plus, Paul's got moose hands, a Jersey donkey, and a Scoopardy.

How do you stay audacious in a world that's noisier and more saturated than ever? How might the idea of creative rhythm change the way you write? Lara Bianca Pilcher gives her tips from a multi-passionate creative career. In the intro, becoming a better writer by being a better reader [The Indy Author]; How indie authors can market literary fiction [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; Viktor Wynd's Museum of Curiosities; Seneca's On the Shortness of Life; All Men are Mortal – Simone de Beauvoir; Surface Detail — Iain M. Banks; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn. This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Lara Bianca Pilcher is the author of Audacious Artistry: Reclaim Your Creative Identity and Thrive in a Saturated World. She's also a performing artist and actor, life and creativity coach, and the host of the Healthy Wealthy Wise Artist podcast. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why self-doubt is a normal biological response — and how audacity means showing up anyway The difference between creative rhythm and rigid discipline, and why it matters for writers How to navigate a saturated world with intentional presence on social media Practical strategies for building a platform as a nonfiction author, including batch content creation The concept of a “parallel career” and why designing your life around your art beats waiting for a big break Getting your creative rhythm back after crisis or burnout through small, gentle steps You can find Lara at LaraBiancaPilcher.com. Transcript of the interview with Lara Bianca Pilcher Lara Bianca Pilcher is the author of Audacious Artistry: Reclaim Your Creative Identity and Thrive in a Saturated World. She's also a performing artist and actor, life and creativity coach, and the host of the Healthy Wealthy Wise Artist podcast. Welcome, Lara. Lara: Thank you for having me, Jo. Jo: It's exciting to talk to you today. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Lara: I'm going to call myself a greedy creative, because I started as a dancer, singer, and actress in musical theatre, which ultimately led me to London, the West End, and I was pursuing that in highly competitive performance circles. A lot of my future works come from that kind of place. But when I moved to America—which I did after my season in London and a little stint back in Australia, then to Atlanta, Georgia—I had a visa problem where I couldn't work legally, and it went on for about six months. Because I feel this urge to create, as so many of your listeners probably relate to, I was not okay with that. So that's actually where I started writing, in the quietness, with the limits and the restrictions. I've got two children and a husband, and they would go off to school and work and I'd be home thinking, ha. In that quietness, I just began to write. I love thinking of creativity as a mansion with many rooms, and you get to pick your rooms. I decided, okay, well the dance, acting, singing door is shut right now—I'm going to go into the writing room. So I did. Jo: I have had a few physical creatives on the show. Obviously one of your big rooms in your mansion is a physical room where you are actually performing and moving your body. I feel like this is something that those of us whose biggest area of creativity is writing really struggle with—the physical side. How do you think that physical practice of creativity has helped you in writing, which can be quite constrictive in that way? Lara: It's so good that you asked this because I feel what it trained me to do is ignore noise and show up. I don't like the word discipline—most of us get a bit uncomfortable with it, it's not a nice word. What being a dancer did was teach me the practice of what I like to call a rhythm, a creative rhythm, rather than a discipline, because rhythm ebbs and flows and works more with who we are as creatives, with the way creativity works in our body. That taught me: go to the barre over and over again—at the ballet barre, I'm talking about, not the pub. Go there over and over again. Warm up, do the work, show up when you don't feel like it. thaT naturally pivoted over to writing, so they're incredibly linked in the way that creativity works in our body. Jo: Do you find that you need to do physical practice still in order to get your creativity moving? I'm not a dancer. I do like to shake it around a bit, I guess. But I mainly walk. If I need to get my creativity going, I will walk. If people are stuck, do you think doing something physical is a good idea? Lara: It is, because the way that our body and our nervous system works—without going into too much boring science, although some people probably find it fascinating—is that when we shake off that lethargic feeling and we get blood flowing in our body, we naturally feel more awake. Often when you're walking or you're doing something like dance, your brain is not thinking about all of the big problems. You might be listening to music, taking in inspiration, taking in sunshine, taking in nature, getting those endorphins going, and that naturally leads to the brain being able to psychologically show up more as a creative. However, there are days, if I'm honest, where I wake up and the last thing I want to do is move. I want to be in a little blanket in the corner of the room with a hot cocoa or a coffee and just keep to myself. Those aren't always the most creative days, but sometimes I need that in my creative rhythm, and that's okay too. Jo: I agree. I don't like the word discipline, but as a dancer you certainly would've had to do that. I can't imagine how competitive it must be. I guess this is another thing about a career in dance or the physical arts. Does it age out? Is it really an ageist industry? Whereas I feel like with writing, it isn't so much about what your body can do anymore. Lara: That is true. There is a very real marketplace, a very real industry, and I'm careful because there's two sides to this coin. There is the fact that as we get older, our body has trouble keeping up at that level. There's more injuries, that sort of thing. There are some fit women performing in their sixties and seventies on Broadway that have been doing it for years, and they are fine. They'll probably say it's harder for some of them. Also, absolutely, I think there does feel in the professional sense like there can be a cap. A lot of casting in acting and in that world feels like there's fewer and fewer roles, particularly for women as we get older, but people are in that space all the time. There's a Broadway dancer I know who is 57, who's still trying to make it on Broadway and really open about that, and I think that's beautiful. So I'm careful with putting limits, because I think there are always outliers that step outside and go, “Hey, I'm not listening to that.” I think there's an audience for every age if you want there to be and you make the effort. But at the same time, yes, there is a reality in the industry. Totally. Jo: Obviously this show is not for dancers. I think it was more framing it as we are lucky in the writing industry, especially in the independent author community, because you can be any age. You can be writing on your deathbed. Most people don't have a clue what authors look like. Lara: I love that, actually. It's probably one of the reasons I maybe subconsciously went into writing, because I'm like, I want to still create and I'm getting older. It's fun. Jo: That's freeing. Lara: So freeing. It's a wonderful room in the mansion to stay in until the day I die, if I must put it that way. Jo: I also loved you mentioning that Broadway dancer. A lot of listeners write fiction—I write fiction as well as nonfiction—and it immediately makes me want to write her story. The story of a 57-year-old still trying to make it on Broadway. There's just so much in that story, and I feel like that's the other thing we can do: writing about the communities we come from, especially at different ages. Let's get into your book, Audacious Artistry. I want to start on this word audacity. You say audacity is the courage to take bold, intentional risks, even in the face of uncertainty. I read it and I was like, I love the sentiment, but I also know most authors are just full of self-doubt. Bold and audacious. These are difficult words. So what can you say to authors around those big words? Lara: Well, first of all, that self-doubt—a lot of us don't even know what it is in our body. We just feel it and go, ugh, and we read it as a lack of confidence. It's not that. It's actually natural. We all get it. What it is, is our body's natural ability to perceive threat and keep us safe. So we're like, oh, I don't know the outcome. Oh, I don't know if I'm going to get signed. Oh, I don't know if my work's going to matter. And we read that as self-doubt—”I don't have what it takes” and those sorts of things. That's where I say no. The reframe, as a coach, I would say, is that it's normal. Self-doubt is normal. Everyone has it. But audacity is saying, I have it, but I'm going to show up in the world anyway. There is this thing of believing, even in the doubt, that I have something to say. I like to think of it as a metaphor of a massive feasting table at Christmas, and there's heaps of different dishes. We get to bring a dish to the table rather than think we're going to bring the whole table. The audacity to say, “Hey, I have something to say and I'm going to put my dish on the table.” Jo: I feel like the “I have something to say” can also be really difficult for people, because, for example, you mentioned you have kids. Many people are like, I want to share this thing that happened to me with my kids, or a secret I learned, or a tip I think will help people. But there's so many people who've already done that before. When we feel like we have something to say but other people have said it before, how do you address that? Lara: I think everything I say, someone has already said, and I'm okay with that. But they haven't said it like me. They haven't said it in my exact way. They haven't written the sentence exactly the way—that's probably too narrow a point of view in terms of the sentence—maybe the story or the chapter. They haven't written it exactly like me, with my perspective, my point of view, my life experience, my lived experience. It matters. People have very short memories. You think of the last thing you watched on Netflix and most of us can't remember what happened. We'll watch the season again. So I think it's okay to be saying the same things as others, but recognise that the way you say it, your point of view, your stories, your metaphors, your incredible way of putting a sentence togethes, it still matters in that noise. Jo: I think you also talk in the book about rediscovering the joy of creation, as in you are doing it for you. One of the themes that I emphasise is the transformation that happens within you when you write a book. Forget all the people who might read it or not read it. Even just what transforms in you when you write is important enough to make it worthwhile. Lara: It really, really is. For me, talking about rediscovering the joy of creation is important because I've lost it at times in my career, both as a performing artist and as an author, in a different kind of way. When we get so caught up in the industry and the noise and the trends, it's easy to just feel overwhelmed. Overwhelm is made up of a lot of emotions like fear and sadness and grief and all sorts of things. A lot of us don't realise that that's what overwhelm is. When we start to go, “Hey, I'm losing my voice in all this noise because comparison is taking over and I'm feeling all that self-doubt,” it can feel just crazy. So for me, rediscovering the joy of creation is vital to survival as an author, as an artist. A classic example, if you don't mind me sharing my author story really quickly, is that when I first wrote the first version of my book, I was writing very much for me, not realising it. This is hindsight. My first version was a little more self-indulgent. I like to think of it like an arrowhead. I was trying to say too much. The concept was good enough that I got picked up by a literary agent and worked with an editor through that for an entire year. At the end of that time, they dropped me. I felt like, through that time, I learned a lot. It was wonderful. Their reason for dropping me was saying, “I don't think we have enough of a unique point of view to really sell this.” That was hard. I lay on my bed, stared at the ceiling, felt grief. The reality is it's so competitive. What happened for me in that year is that I was trying to please. If you're a new author, this is really important. You are so desperately trying to please the editor, trying to do all the right things, that you can easily lose your joy and your unique point of view because you are trying to show up for what you think they all need and want. What cut through the noise for me is I got off that bed after my three hours of grief—it was probably longer, to be fair—but I booked myself a writing coach. I went back to the drawing board. I threw a lot of the book away. I took some good concepts out that I already knew were good from the editor, then I rewrote the entire thing. It's completely different to the first version. That's the book that got a traditional publishing deal. That book was my unique point of view. That book was my belief, from that grief, that I still have something to say. Instead of trusting what the literary agent and the editor were giving me in those red marks all over that first version, I was like, this is what I want to say. That became the arrowhead that's cut into the industry, rather than the semi-trailer truck that I was trying to bulldoze in with no clear point of view. So rediscovering the joy of creation is very much about coming back to you. Why do I write? What do I want to say? That unique point of view will cut through the noise a lot of the time. I don't want to speak in absolutes, but a lot of the time it will cut through the noise better than you trying to please the industry. Jo: I can't remember who said it, but somebody talked about how you've got your stone, and your stone is rough and it has random colours and all this. Then you start polishing the stone, which you have to do to a point. But if you keep polishing the stone, it looks like every other stone. What's the point? That fits with what you were saying about trying to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. I also think the reality of what you just said about the book is a lot of people's experience with writing in general. Certainly for me, I don't write in order. I chuck out a lot. I'm a discovery writer. People think you sit down and start A and finish Z, and that's it. It's kind of messy, isn't it? Was that the same in your physical creative life? Lara: Yes. Everything's a mess. In the book I actually talk about learning to embrace the cringe, because we all want to show up perfect. Just as you shared, we think, because we read perfect and look at perfect or near-perfect work—that's debatable all the time—we want to arrive there, and I guess that's natural. But what we don't often see on social media or other places is the mess. I love the behind the scenes of films. I want to see the messy creative process. The reality is we have to learn to embrace the messy cringe because that's completely normal. My first version was so messy, and it's about being able to refine it and recognise that that is normal. So yes, embrace it. That's my quote for the day. Embrace the cringe, show up messy. It's all right. Jo: You mentioned the social media, and the subtitle of the book mentions a “saturated world.” The other problem is there are millions of books out there now. AI is generating more content than humans do, and it is extremely hard to break through. How are we to deal with this saturated world? When do we join in and when do we step away? Lara: I think it's really important not to have black and white thinking about it, because trust me, every day I meet an artist that will say, “I hate that I have to show up online.” To be honest with you, there's a big part of me that does also. But the saturation of the world is something that I recognise, and for me, it's like I'm in the world but not of it. That saturation can cause so much overwhelm and nervous system threat and comparison. What I've personally decided to do is have intentional showing up. That looks like checking in intentionally with a design, not a randomness, and then checking out. When push comes to shove, at the end of the day, I really believe that what sells books is people's trust in us as a person. They might go through an airport and not know us at all and pick up the book because it's a bestseller and they just trust the reputation, but so much of what I'm finding as an artist is that personal relationship, that personal trust. Whether that's through people knowing you via your podcast or people meeting you in a room. Especially in nonfiction, I think that's really big. Intentional presence from a place where we've regulated ourselves, being aware that it's saturated, but my job's not to be focused on the saturation. My job is to find my unique voice and say I have something to bring. Be intentional with that. Shoot your arrow, and then step out of the noise, because it's just overwhelming if you choose to live there and scroll without any intentionality at all. Jo: So how do people do that intentionality in a practical way around, first of all, choosing a platform, and then secondly, how they create content and share content and engage? What are some actual practical tips for intentionality? Lara: I can only speak from my experience, but I'm going to be honest, every single application I sent asked for my platform stats. Every single one. Platform stats as in how many followers, how many people listening to your podcast, how many people are reading your blog. That came up in every single literary agent application. So I would be a fool today to say you've got to ignore that, because that's just the brass tacks, unless you're already like a famous footballer or something. Raising and building a platform of my own audience has been a part of why I was able to get a publishing deal. In doing that, I've learned a lot of hard lessons. Embrace the cringe with marketing and social media as well, because it's its own beast. Algorithms are not what I worry about. They're not going to do the creativity for you. What social media's great at is saying, “Hey, I'm here”—it's awareness. It's not where I sell stuff. It's where I say, I'm here, this is what I'm doing, and people become aware of me and I can build that relationship. People do sell through social media, but it's more about awareness statistically. I am on a lot of platforms, but not all of them work for every author or every style of book. I've done a lot of training. I've really had to upskill in this space and get good at it. I've put myself through courses because I feel like, yes, we can ignore it if we want to, but for me it's an intentional opting in because the data shows that it's been a big part of being able to get published. That's overwhelming to hear for some people. They don't want to hear that. But that's kind of the world that we are in, isn't it? Jo: I think the main point is that you can't do everything and you shouldn't even try to do everything. The best thing to do is pick a couple of things, or pick one thing, and focus on that. For example, I barely ever do video, so I definitely don't do TikTok. I don't do any kind of video stuff. But I have this podcast. Audio is my happy place, and as you said, long-form audio builds trust. That is one way you can sell, but it's also very slow—very, very slow to build an audio platform. Then I guess my main social media would be Instagram, but I don't engage a lot there. So do you have one or two main things that you do, and any thoughts on using those for book marketing? Lara: I do a lot of cross-posting. I am on Instagram and I do a lot of creation there, and I'm super intentional about this. I actually do 30 days at a time, and then it's like my intentional opt-in. I'll create over about two days, edit and plan. It's really, really planned—shoot everything, edit everything, put it all together, and then upload everything. That will be 30 days' worth. Then I back myself right out of there, because I don't want to stay in that space. I want to be in the creative space, but I do put those two days a month aside to do that on Instagram. Then I tweak things for YouTube and what works on LinkedIn, which is completely different to Instagram. As I'm designing my content, I have in mind that this one will go over here and this one can go on here, because different platforms push different things. I am on Threads, but Threads is not statistically where you sell books, it's just awareness. Pinterest I don't think has been very good for my type of work, to be honest. For others it might. It's a search engine, it's where people go to get a recipe. I don't necessarily feel like that's the best place, this is just my point of view. For someone else it might be brilliant if you're doing a cookbook or something like that. I am on a lot of platforms. My podcast, however, I feel is where I'm having the most success, and also my blog. Those things as a writer are very fulfilling. I've pushed growing a platform really hard, and I am on probably almost every platform except for TikTok, but I'm very intentional with each one. Jo: I guess the other thing is the business model. The fiction business model is very, very different to nonfiction. You've got a book, but your higher-cost and higher-value offerings are things that a certain number of people come through to you and pay you more money than the price of a book. Could talk about how the book leads into different parts of your business? Because some people are like, “Am I going to make a living wage from book sales of a nonfiction book?” And usually people have multiple streams of income. Lara: I think it's smart to have multiple streams of income. A lot of people, as you would know, would say that a book is a funnel. For those who haven't heard of it, a way that people come into your bigger offerings. They don't have to be, but very much I do see it that way. It's also credibility. When you have a published book, there's a sense of credibility. I do have other things. I have courses, I have coaching, I have a lot of things that I call my parallel career that chug alongside my artist work and actually help stabilise that freelance income. Having a book is brilliant for that. I think it's a wonderful way to get out there in the world. No matter what's happening in all the online stuff, when you're on an aeroplane, so often someone still wants to read a book. When you're on the beach, they don't want to be there with a laptop. If you're on the sand, you want to be reading a beautiful paper book. The smell of it, the visceral experience of it. Books aren't going anywhere, to me. I still feel like there are always going to be people that want to pick it up and dig in and learn so much of your entire life experience quickly. Jo: We all love books here. I think it's important, as you do talk about career design and you mentioned there the parallel career—I get a lot of questions from people. They may just be writing their first book and they want to get to the point of making money so they could leave their day job or whatever. But it takes time, doesn't it? So how can we be more strategic about this sort of career design? Lara: For me, this has been a big one because lived experience here is that I know artists in many different areas, whether they're Broadway performers or music artists. Some of them are on almost everything I watch on TV. I'm like, oh, they're that guy again. I know that actor is on almost everything. I'll apply this over to writers. The reality is that these high-end performers that I see all the time showing up, even on Broadway in lead roles, all have another thing that they do, because they can still have, even at the highest level, six months between a contract. Applying that over to writing is the same thing, in that books and the money from them will ebb and flow. What so often artists are taught—and authors fit into this—is that we ultimately want art to make us money. So often that becomes “may my art rescue me from this horrible life that I'm living,” and we don't design the life around the art. We hope, hope, hope that our art will provide. I think it's a beautiful hope and a valid one. Some people do get that. I'm all for hoping our art will be our main source of income. But the reality is for the majority of people, they have something else. What I see over and over again is these audacious dreams, which are wonderful, and everything pointing towards them in terms of work. But then I'll see the actor in Hollywood that has a café job and I'm like, how long are you going to just work at that café job? They're like, “Well, I'm goint to get a big break and then everything's going to change.” I think we can think the same way. My big break will come, I'll get the publishing deal, and then everything will change. The reframe in our thinking is: what if we looked at this differently? Instead of side hustle, fallback career, instead of “my day job,” we say parallel career. How do I design a life that supports my art? And if I get to live off my art, wonderful. For me, that's looked like teaching and directing musical theatre. It's looked like being able to coach other artists. It's looked like writing and being able to pivot my creativity in the seasons where I've needed to. All of that is still creativity and energising, and all of it feeds the great big passion I have to show up in the world as an artist. None of it is actually pulling me away or draining me. I mean, you have bad days, of course, but it's not draining my art. When we are in this way of thinking—one day, one day, one day—we are not designing intentionally. What does it look like to maybe upskill and train in something that would be more energising for my parallel career that will chug alongside us as an artist? We all hope our art can totally 100% provide for us, which is the dream and a wonderful dream, and one that I still have. Jo: It's hard, isn't it? Because I also think that, personally, I need a lot of input in order to create. I call myself more of a binge writer. I just finished the edits on my next novel and I worked really hard on that. Now I won't be writing fiction for, I don't know, maybe six months or something, because now I need to input for the next one. I have friends who will write 10,000 words a day because they don't need that. They have something internal, or they're just writing a different kind of book that doesn't need that. Your book is a result of years of experience, and you can't write another book like that every year. You just can't, because you don't have enough new stuff to put in a book like that every single year. I feel like that's the other thing. People don't anticipate the input time and the time it takes for the ideas to come together. It is not just the production of the book. Lara: That's completely true. It goes back to this metaphor that creativity in the body is not a machine, it's a rhythm. I like to say rhythm over consistency, which allows us to say, “Hey, I'm going to be all in.” I was all in on writing. I went into a vortex for days on end, weeks on end, months and probably years on end. But even within that, there were ebbs and flows of input versus “I can't go near it today.” Recognising that that's actually normal is fine. There are those people that are outliers, and they will be out of that box. A lot of people will push that as the only way. “I am going to write every morning at 10am regardless.” That can work for some people, and that's wonderful. For those of us who don't like that—and I'm one of those people, that's not me as an artist—I accept the rhythm of creativity and that sometimes I need to do something completely different to feed my soul. I'm a big believer that a lot of creative block is because we need an adventure. We need to go out and see some art. To do good art, you've got to see good art, read good art, get outside, do something else for the input so that we have the inspiration to get out of the block. I know a screenwriter who was writing a really hard scene of a daughter's death—her mum's death. It's not easy to just write that in your living room when you've never gone through it. So she took herself out—I mean, it sounds morbid, but as a writer you'll understand the visceral nature of this—and sat at somebody's tombstone that day and just let that inform her mind and her heart. She was able to write a really powerful scene because she got out of the house and allowed herself to do something different. All that to say that creativity, the natural process, is an in-and-out thing. It ebbs and flows as a rhythm. People are different, and that's fine. But it is a rhythm in the way it works scientifically in the body. Jo: On graveyards—we love graveyards around here. Lara: I was like, sorry everyone, this isn't very nice. Jo: Oh, no. People are well used to it on this show. Let's come back to rhythm. When you are in a good rhythm, or when your body's warmed up and you are in the flow and everything's great, that feels good. But what if some people listening have found their rhythm is broken in some way, or it's come to a stop? That can be a real problem, getting moving again if you stop for too long. What are some ways we can get that rhythm back into something that feels right again? Lara: First of all, for people going through that, it's because our body actually will prioritise survival when we're going through crisis or too much stress. Creativity in the brain will go, well, that's not in that survival nature. When we are going through change—like me moving countries—it would disconnect us a lot from not only ourselves and our sense of identity, but creativity ultimately reconnects you back into life. I feel like to be at our optimum creative self, once we get through the crisis and the stress, is to gently nudge ourselves back in by little micro things. Whether it's “I'm just going to have the rhythm of writing one sentence a day.” As we do that, those little baby steps build momentum and allow us to come back in. Creativity is a life force. It's not about production, it's actually how we get to any unique contribution we're going to bring to the world. As we start to nudge ourselves back in, there's healing in that and there's joy in that. Then momentum comes. I know momentum comes from those little steps, rather than the overwhelming “I've got to write a novel this week” mindset. It's not going to happen, most of the time, when we are nudging our way back in. Little baby steps, kindness with ourselves. Staying connected to yourself through change or through crisis is one of the kindest things we can offer ourselves, and allowing ourselves to come into that rhythm—like that musical song of coming back in with maybe one line of the song instead of the entire masterpiece, which hopefully it will be one day. Jo: I was also thinking of the dancing world again, and one thing that is very different with writers is that so much of what we do is alone. In a lot of the performance art space, there's a lot more collaboration and groups of people creating things together. Is that something you've kept hold of, this kind of collaborative energy? How do you think we can bring that collaborative energy more into writing? Lara: Writing is very much alone. Obviously some people, depending on the project, will write in groups, but generally speaking, it's alone. For me, what that looks like is going out. I do this, and I know for some writers this is like, I don't want to go and talk to people. There are a lot of introverts in writing, as you are aware. I do go to creative mixers. I do get out there. I'm planning right now my book launch with a local bookstore, one in Australia and one here in America. Those things are scary, but I know that it matters to say I'm not in this alone. I want to bring my friends in. I want to have others part of this journey. I want to say, hey, I did this. And of course, I want to sell books. That's important too. It's so easy to hide, because it's scary to get out there and be with others. Yet I know that after a creative mixer or a meetup with all different artists, no matter their discipline, I feel very energised by that. Writers will come, dancers will come, filmmakers will come. It's that creative force that really energises my work. Of course, you can always meet with other writers. There's one person I know that runs this thing where all they do is they all get on Zoom together and they all write. Their audio's off, but they're just writing. It's just the feeling of, we're all writing but we're doing it together. It's a discipline for them, but because there's a room of creatives all on Zoom, they're like, I'm here, I've showed up, there's others. There's a sense of accountability. I think that's beautiful. I personally don't want to work that way, but some people do, and I think that's gorgeous too. Jo: Whatever sustains you. I think one of the important things is to realise you are not alone. I get really confused when people say this now. They're like, “Writing's such a lonely life, how do you manage?” I'm like, it is so not lonely. Lara: Yes. Jo: I'm sure you do too. Especially as a podcaster, a lot of people want to have conversations. We are having a conversation today, so that fulfils my conversation quota for the day. Lara: Exactly. Real human connection. It matters. Jo: Exactly. So maybe there's a tip for people. I'm an introvert, so this actually does fulfil it. It's still one-on-one, it's still you and me one-on-one, which is good for introverts. But it's going out to a lot more people at some point who will listen in to our conversation. There are some ways to do this. It's really interesting hearing your thoughts. Tell people where they can find you and your books and your podcast online. Lara: The book is called Audacious Artistry: Reclaim Your Creative Identity and Thrive in a Saturated World, and it's everywhere. The easiest thing to do would be to visit my website, LaraBiancaPilcher.com/book, and you'll find all the links there. My podcast is called Healthy Wealthy Wise Artist, and it's on all the podcast platforms. I do short coaching for artists on a lot of the things we've been talking about today. Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Lara. That was great. Lara: Thank you.The post Audacious Artistry: Reclaiming Your Creative Identity And Thriving In A Saturated World With Lara Bianca Pilcher first appeared on The Creative Penn.

In this pod Jeb and Ryan are joined by Brady Penn to discussBradys new job- Braves injuriesWalt Weiss Hire- 2026 Expectations And More! If you like what youre hearing then leave a like, comment, subscribe and rate our show as it helps us out a ton!

What does it really mean to treat your writing as a business?In this episode, I'm joined by bestselling author and entrepreneur Joanna Penn to explore how writers can build a sustainable writing business without losing their creative spark.If you want to move from hobbyist to professional author, this conversation breaks down what a real author business looks like — from mindset shifts to practical systems.We cover:What a writing business actually is (and why most authors get this wrong) How to balance writing as a business without burnout or overwhelm How to get inside your reader's head and clearly define your target audience The essential steps to kickstart your author business today Direct book selling, special editions, and owning your customer relationship Book marketing methods that still work — email marketing, paid advertising, and author networking How to use AI in your writing business (marketing content, concept images, Amazon ads optimisation, book descriptions and more) How Joanna Penn uses AI herself to support her fiction and non-fiction author income Time management strategies for writers building a business while improving craftIf you're serious about turning your writing into income, this episode will help you think strategically, act intentionally, and build long-term author resilience.Because writing as a business isn't about selling out — it's about building freedom.About Joanna PennNon-fiction for authors: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/books-for-authors/Fiction (J.F. Penn): https://jfpennauthor.com/books/The Creative Penn Podcast: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/podcasts/Socials: Website: https://www.thecreativepenn.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jfpennauthor/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCreativePenn X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecreativepenn YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCreativePenn✍️ Join Our Community and Access Writing Tools:Join The Discord Community: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/TheFantasyWritersToolshed⁠Richie's Patreon for free stories: https://www.patreon.com/cw/RichieBillingWebsite and writing classes: ⁠https://richiebilling.com/online-writing-classesFollow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fantasywriterstoolshed/

Have an idea or tip? Send us a text!In the preview of his Photo Imaging CONNECT keynote, Stuart MacDonald — magician, filmmaker, entrepreneur — explores how LEAN principles, continuous improvement, and ruthless clarity transformed a faceplant into standing ovations, a win on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, and a top-10 finish at the world championships.MacDonald takes us through the nerve-wracking world of competitive magic, where originality is mandatory, time limits are tight, and the smallest defect can collapse the illusion. He breaks down how continuous feedback revealed hidden waste on stage, why a candelabra beat a single candle for instant story logic, and how standardized, travel-ready props removed friction from his global tour. We dig into 5S for creatives—everything in its place, every time—and the unglamorous decisions that protect attention when the lights hit.MacDonald's 100-runs-in-30-days practice loop shows how tiny upgrades compound into confidence and clean execution, even when things go sideways. If you've ever felt torn between art and process, this conversation proves structure is rocket fuel for creativity.Register today for the Photo Imaging CONNECT conference at www.photoimagingconnect.comPhoto Imaging CONNECTThe Photo Imaging CONNECT conference, March 1-2, 2026, at the RIO Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas, NMediaclipMediaclip strives to continuously enhance the user experience while dramatically increasing revenue.Independent Photo ImagersIPI is a member + trade association and a cooperative buying group in the photo + print industry.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREEPhoto Imaging CONNECTThe Photo Imaging CONNECT conference, March 1-2, 2026, at the RIO Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas, NDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showSign up for the Dead Pixels Society newsletter at http://bit.ly/DeadPixelsSignUp.Contact us at gary@thedeadpixelssociety.comVisit our LinkedIn group, Photo/Digital Imaging Network, and Facebook group, The Dead Pixels Society. Leave a review on Apple and Podchaser. Are you interested in being a guest? Click here for details.Hosted and produced by Gary PageauAnnouncer: Erin Manning

We get the second hour jumping with Shelbyville head coach John Hartnett breaking down his team's close win over New Pal. Then it’s Mark James with his Triton Central team’s win over Greensburg. Park Tudor came back from 18 points down to beat Liberty Christian tonight. Panthers’ head coach Tim Adams details how his team adjusted and persevered. Monroe Central and Wapahani faced off tonight, and the winning head coach of the Golden Bears Brian Klein has the breakdown for us. The great Greg Rakestraw had Lawrence North and Ben Davis tonight, while we also get to Loogootee head coach Josh Thompson. Plus, Hauser vs. Jac-Cen-Del, Jeffersonville vs Bedford. Lastly, Penn’s Barak Coolman shines light on his team's blowout win over South Bend Washington. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Penn is still recovering from his broken ankle, and Members of the Congregation are writing in to help him get higher. Plus, Matt’s back out to sea performing magic, Penn & Teller remain entirely unsentimental, vision measurements, vibrating tools, and lots more.

In this episode you will hear: (02:05) In Our Question from a Listener-Carter joins Mark to answer a question from a mom who wants her son to be authentic in his application, but he only wants to play video games, and she wonders how admission officers will perceive this (20:00) Mark interviews Elliot Felix, author of the book, 'the Connected College" o Elliot talks about an aha moment he had when he was doing research for his book o Elliot talks about how we have to change what we are doing with emailing students o Elliot talks about how we have to reinvent how libraries function, and how we have to have, "Next Generation Libraries" o Elliot talks about what he does with the 120 colleges that have hired him o Elliot talks about who the people on his team are and what are their roles (38:38) College Spotlight-Daniela Uribe and Summer Cobb Tell us What Penn is like for students. ¨ Daniela and Summer share their experience with the other two colleges: Wharton, which is the business school and the college of nursing ¨ I share some things one of my students at Wharton who was supposed to join us and had a conflict; I share what he told me are some things he wanted to share about Wharton ¨ Summer and Daniela continue to talk about some of Penn stereotypes, and they discuss if they feel it is true ¨ Daniela talks about coffee chatting is foundational at Penn ¨ Summer and Daniela describe Penn's personality ¨ Daniela and Summer get to be college counselors and I ask them, what does the student look like who you would recommend to Penn and what is the person that you would not recommend to Penn Recommended Resource Guide to help first year students complete the Common Application- Application guide for first-year students Speakpipe.com/YCBK is our method if you want to ask a question and we will be prioritizing all questions sent in via Speakpipe. Unfortunately, we will NOT answer questions on the podcast anymore that are emailed in. If you want us to answer a question on the podcast, please use speakpipe.com/YCBK. We feel hearing from our listeners in their own voices adds to the community feel of our podcast. You can also use this for many other purposes: 1) Send us constructive criticism about how we can improve our podcast 2) Share an encouraging word about something you like about an episode or the podcast in general 3) Share a topic or an article you would like us to address 4) Share a speaker you want us to interview 5) Leave positive feedback for one of our interviewees. We will send your verbal feedback directly to them and I can almost assure you your positive feedback will make their day. To sign up to receive Your College-Bound Kid PLUS, our new monthly admissions newsletter, delivered directly to your email once a month, just go to yourcollegeboundkid.com, and you will see the sign-up popup. We will include many of the hot topics being discussed on college campuses. Check out our new blog. We write timely and insightful articles on college admissions: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/category/blog/ Follow Mark Stucker on Twitter to get breaking college admission news, and updates about the podcast before they go live. You can ask questions on Twitter that he will answer on the podcast. Mark will also share additional hot topics in the news and breaking news on this Twitter feed. Twitter message is also the preferred way to ask questions for our podcast: 1. To access our transcripts, click: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/category/transcripts/ 2. Find the specific episode transcripts for the one you want to search for and click the link 3. Find the magnifying glass icon in blue (search feature) and click it 4. Enter whatever word you want to search. I.e. Loans 5. Every word in that episode when the words loans are used will be highlighted in yellow with a timestamps 6. Click the word highlighted in yellow and the player will play the episode from that starting point 7. You can also download the entire podcast as a transcript We would be honored if you will pass this podcast episode on to others who you feel will benefit from the content in YCBK. Please subscribe to our podcast. It really helps us move up in Apple's search feature so others can find our podcast. If you enjoy our podcast, would you please do us a favor and share our podcast both verbally and on social media? We would be most grateful! If you want to help more people find Your College-Bound Kid, please make sure you follow our podcast. You will also get instant notifications as soon as each episode goes live. Check out the college admissions books Mark recommends: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/recommended-books/ Check out the college websites Mark recommends: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/recommended-websites/ If you want to have some input about what you like and what you recommend, we change about our podcast, please complete our Podcast survey; here is the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScCauBgityVXVHRQUjvlIRfYrMWWdHarB9DMQGYL0472bNxrw/viewform If you want a college consultation, text Mark at 404-664-4340, or email us at yourcollegeboundkid@yahoo.com All we ask is that you review their services and pricing on their website before the complimentary session; here is link to their services with transparent pricing: https://schoolmatch4u.com/services/compare-packages/

Message us!Family folklore, questionable signatures, and courtroom surprises, this episode takes a fascinating look at how title defects, probate complications, and estate planning mistakes can expose mineral owners and operators to significant risks. In Part Two of our Crude Bit of Humor series, title attorney Mellisa Gardner of Ball Morse Lowe joins Buffie Campbell and Coby Nathanson to walk through real‑world scenarios where family dynamics, decades‑old documents, and unclear intent collide, often with complex and costly outcomes.Whether you work in oil & gas, manage mineral interests, or simply want to prevent avoidable legal challenges for your family, this conversation offers practical insight you won't find in a textbook.What you will learn: How seemingly harmless "family stories" can escalate into serious legal problemsHow risk is evaluated when the title isn't perfectly clear Common estate planning missteps mineral owners makeIn oil and gas, the past has a way of resurfacing.Old deeds, missing heirs, and long-forgotten interests can come back to haunt a project, especially after a merger, acquisition, or divestiture.Ball Morse Lowe is a leader in oil, gas, and energy law, delivering trusted, thoughtful title opinions and curative solutions that bring clarity to complex ownership.We understand tight timelines and the need for certainty - moving your projects forward with speed and precision.Ball Morse Lowe. Excellence from the ground up.Learn more at ballmorselowe.com.Fill out this form to have new episodes sent right to your inbox! Follow Whitley Penn on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and X for more industry insights and thought leadership!

To speak with an advisor and map out your student's next steps, book a Complimentary Strategy Call at admittedly.co/apply. In this episode of the Admittedly Podcast, Thomas Caleel steps away from tactical admissions advice to share the story behind Admittedly — how it started, why it exists, and where it's headed next. With nearly two decades inside selective admissions, including leading MBA Admissions and Financial Aid at Wharton, Thomas reflects on the experiences that shaped his philosophy as an educator, advisor, and parent. He talks candidly about his own path through boarding school, Penn, entrepreneurship, business school, and admissions leadership — and how working with thousands of families ultimately led him to build an education-first company focused on clarity, strategy, and integrity. Thomas also explains why Admittedly has grown so quickly: families are exhausted by hacks, shortcuts, and resume-stuffing advice — and are looking instead for honest guidance grounded in real admissions experience. From launching the podcast and free resources to building Early Edge Plus and Early Edge Premium, this episode lays out the long-term vision for how Admittedly supports students not just to get into college, but to become confident, independent, resilient adults. This episode is especially valuable for new listeners, parents considering professional guidance, and families who want to understand what truly differentiates Admittedly from traditional college consulting. Key Takeaways: Admissions outcomes are driven by strategy and intention, not checklists or hacks. Experience inside elite admissions offices fundamentally changes how guidance should be delivered. Education sits at the core of Admittedly's mission. Group learning, multiple admissions perspectives, and intentional planning create stronger outcomes. The goal isn't just college admission, but building confident, capable young adults. Listeners can continue the conversation by following @admittedlyco on Instagram and TikTok, where Thomas shares weekly guidance and answers real family questions. Free downloads, webinars, and additional resources are available at admittedly.co. To speak with an advisor and map out your student's next steps, book a Complimentary Strategy Call at admittedly.co/apply.

Alessandra Mauro"Irving Penn. Photographs 1939 - 2007"Centro della Fotografia, RomaFino al 29 giugno 2026Ad inaugurare il programma espositivo del neonato Centro della Fotografia di Roma è la grande mostra IRVING PENN. PHOTOGRAPHS 1939 – 2007, che presenta al pubblico una selezione di 109 stampe provenienti dalla prestigiosa collezione della Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) di Parigi, realizzate tra il 1939 e il 2007. La collezione della MEP è il risultato di un lungo rapporto di collaborazione con l'artista e, negli anni più recenti, di un dialogo continuo con la Irving Penn Foundation, istituzione fondata dallo stesso Irving Penn per preservare e promuovere il suo lascito artistico.La mostra è curata da Pascal Hoël, Head of Collections MEP, Frédérique Dolivet Deputy to Head of Collections MEP e Alessandra Mauro curatrice per il Centro della Fotografia di Roma.Irving Penn (1917–2009) è universalmente riconosciuto come uno dei più grandi maestri della fotografia del Novecento. Per oltre sessant'anni protagonista della scena internazionale e firma storica della rivista Vogue, Penn ha rivoluzionato i generi della fotografia di moda, del ritratto e della natura morta, con uno stile inconfondibile fatto di rigore formale, eleganza essenziale e straordinaria attenzione ai dettagli. Le sue immagini, per lo più realizzate in studio, sono celebri per la loro apparente semplicità e per la capacità di restituire, con la stessa intensità, soggetti famosi e persone comuni. Accanto ai ritratti di artisti, scrittori e celebrità, Penn ha dedicato grande attenzione a progetti personali diventati iconici, come le nature morte con mozziconi di sigarette o oggetti abbandonati, trasformati in immagini di sorprendente bellezza.La mostra, articolata in sei sezioni, offre una panoramica completa della sua opera, mettendo in luce non solo la potenza della sua visione artistica, ma anche la sua straordinaria abilità di stampatore. Penn seguiva, infatti, ogni fase del processo con estrema cura, sperimentando tecniche raffinate come la stampa al platino, per ottenere immagini senza tempo, oggi considerate pietre miliari della storia della fotografia.Il percorso espositivo si apre con i Primi lavori (1939-1947), cioe le prime fotografie che realizza lungo le strade di New York, poi nel sud degli Stati Uniti e poi ancora in Messico nel 1941. Nel 1945 e in Europa e in Italia, come autista volontario di ambulanze dell'esercito americano e utilizza la sua macchina fotografica per raccogliere testimonianze visive di quel periodo travagliato. In mostra anche la celebre fotografia dedicata al “gruppo d'intellettuali italiani al Caffe Greco” realizzata a Roma da Irving Penn per Vogue nel 1948. La seconda sezione e dedicata ai numerosi Viaggi tra il 1948 ed il 1971 per Vogue, dal Peru al Nepal, dal Camerun alla Nuova Guinea, nei quali realizza ritratti degli indigeni immersi nella luce naturale, dopo averli isolati dal loro ambiente in uno spazio neutro. La sezione numero tre riguarda invece i Ritratti (1947 – 1996) soprattutto delle celebrità e che vengono fotografate per lo più nel suo studio, dove Penn crea i suoi set. Nella quarta sezione troviamo i Nudi (1949 – 1967): una serie molto personale di fotografie di nudi femminili, per i quali sceglie modelle professioniste per pittori e scultori con l'obiettivo di inquadrare i corpi il piu da vicino possibile, senza mai mostrare i volti, celebrando la loro bellezza scultorea. Sottopone poi i suoi negativi a tecniche di stampa sperimentali, sbiancando e rielaborando le sue stampe fino a ottenere toni diafani che variano sempre da una stampa all'altra. La sua forza creativa e evidente anche nel lavoro che realizza nel 1967 per il Dancers' Workshop di San Francisco in cui non cerca di dare un preciso significato a una coreografia specifica, ma piuttosto sceglie un'interpretazione piu libera dei corpi in movimento che si esibiscono solo per essere fotografati. Infine, le ultime due sezioni: Moda e bellezza (1949 – 2007), durante la sua lunga carriera per Vogue, la moda e parte essenziale del suo lavoro e Still Life (1949 –2007), nella quale dimostra grande creativita nella messa in scena di oggetti inanimati, con una costante determinazione a rimuovere il superfluo. Spesso include nelle sue realizzazioni riferimenti alla Vanitas e al memento mori dell'arte antica, che conferiscono alle sue immagini un potere e una presenza senza tempo. E anche interessato a soggetti che a prima vista possono sembrare banali, insignificanti o ripugnanti, come i mozziconi di sigarette trovate in strada o le gomme da masticare usate, che Penn glorifica in sontuose stampe al platino-palladio. Così, esplorando nuovi soggetti con nuove tecniche, continua sempre a forzare i confini creativi del mezzo fotografico.Accompagna la mostra un booklet in vendita al bookshop del Centro di Fotografia.La mostra è promossa da Roma Capitale e Fondazione Mattatoio e organizzata da Civita Mostre e MuseiDiventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/

This week on Laugh Lines, Penn and I talk about something that sneaks up on a lot of us in midlife: friendship, purpose, and the quiet fear of wondering if we still matter the way we used to. We're joined by New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Wallace (straight from Oprah to Laugh Lines!) who explores why feeling seen, needed, and valued isn't just nice... it's essential to our well-being. The three of us dig into what “mattering” really means, why so many adults feel lonelier than they expected, and how friendships change when kids leave home, careers shift, and life gets a little more complicated.We've all been guilty of flaking on plans or feeling like if a kind gesture wasn't "perfect" we shouldn't do it. But the truth is, showing up messy and not canceling plans might be the most powerful relationship tools we have. Jennifer shares practical, doable ways to deepen friendships and how small moments of connection often mean more than big gestures.If you've ever missed someone you haven't called, felt unsure of your place in this season of life, or wanted to be a better friend but didn't know where to start, this conversation is for you. It's a good reminder that connection doesn't have to be perfect to be meaningful. (And if you're listening and wondering if you matter, you do.) We love to hear from you! Leave us a message at 323-364-3929 or write the show at podcast@theholdernessfamily.com. You can also watch our podcast on YouTube.Learn more about Jennifer's book, MatteringVisit Our ShopJoin Our NewsletterFind us on SubstackFollow us on InstagramFollow us on TikTok Follow us on FacebookLaugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness is an evolution of The Holderness Family Podcast, which began in 2018. Kim and Penn Holderness are award-winning online content creators known for their original music, song parodies, comedy sketches, and weekly podcasts. Their videos have resulted in over three billion views and over nine million followers since 2013. Penn and Kim are also authors of the New York Times Bestselling Books, ADHD Is Awesome: A Guide To (Mostly) Thriving With ADHD and All You Can Be With ADHD. They were also winners on The Amazing Race (Season 33) on CBS. Laugh Lines is hosted and executive produced by Kim Holderness and Penn Holderness, with original music by Penn Holderness. Laugh Lines is also written and produced by Ann Marie Taepke, and edited and produced by Sam Allen. It is hosted by Acast. Thanks for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On February 26th, parcel owners and registered voters from both Fire Protection Districts will have a chance to formally protest the consolidation. The hearing will be held at 10 a.m. at the Rough & Ready Fire Station at 14506 Rough and Ready Highway in Rough and Ready.

The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, Rooster Trailer, God of War Casting. Read the full article at sideshow.com/blog Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week's Overdrive Radio, part 2 of our series honoring our Trucker of the Year, John Penn, for the big win for 2025. Part 1, ICYMI: https://overdriveonline.com/15815690 In this edition, Penn details his approach to maintenance with an experiment he's conducted to extend oil drain intervals beyond the manufacturer-recommended 75,000 miles for his 2019 Freightliner Cascadia. Also: You'll hear about Penn's close attention to customer opportunity, and keys to prevention when it comes to the maintenance issues with emissions system in the Cascadia -- no "deleted" emissions here. He's running with all the sensors and the diesel particular filter, the diesel exhaust fluid dosing, and the rest, and hitting big fuel-efficiency numbers we detailed in the last episode featuring him. Above 10 mpg for a lifetime average is certainly nothing to sniff at, but has he been plagued with sensor failures and other problems common to emissions-equipped diesels? The answer is not really, though he's had some minor issues for certain. Part of his success on that front starts with his approach to the used market for such trucks to begin with -- with a keen eye not just on a prospective purchase's miles for previous-life wear and tear, but engine hours, too. The lower the hours, the less the unit's prior owner likely idled the rig -- one of the big killers of emissions equipment in modern trucks in his view. Penn, despite his late-model equipment, might well qualify among the oldest of the old-school in that regard. As he put it about his own idling practice: "This piece of machinery is feeding us and keeping a roof over our head," Penn noted, "so I want to treat it the best I can. I will not idle, ever. I don't care how hot it is." That's right, even in Texas in mid-summer, where he finds himself often enough at the end of one or another of his LTL furniture runs. "I don't have an APU or anything," he added, but he does utilize a fan and his truck's window screens. He's comfortable with the tradeoff. "I'd rather put my truck's health in front of my comfort," he said, laughing. He does run with a fuel-fired heater for those dangrously cold temps, but it's safe to say Trucker of the Year John Penn is one tough customer when it comes to downtime OTR. In the podcast, dive into new opportunities he's set himself up for with diligent, always-on customer service and networking. "You never know when an opportunity is going to pop up," he said, about potential new direct freight opportunites he details here. And he's made great strides, too, paying his growing experience forward to peers. There's good possibility of a bit of expansion for his one-truck JP Transport business as soon as this quarter, with addition of a leased owner he's really bonded with as a back-and-forth sounding board for trucking information, knowledge, advice. The like-minded pair may soon make for a great two-truck hauling team in JP Transport. Enter the 2026 Trucker of the Year competition: https://overdriveonline.com/toptrucker

Thursday, February 5, 2026 - Week 6 Happy #RareDisease & #BlackHistory Month!   #NaturalHistory means how this disease progresses.  Reminder: We have only been at this for 17 years, first patients were identified via Hamdan, 2009. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19196676/   Retrospective Digital NHS: cureSYNGAP1.org/Citizen (Growing list of tools available to families, for free)   Prospective Multi-disciplinary Multi-site NHS: ProMMiS cureSYNGAP1.org/ProMMiS   Reminder, only possible by CS1 support for non-CHOP sites and travel plus huge gift to Penn. https://www.chop.edu/news/25-million-gift-penn-medicine-and-children-s-hospital-philadelphia-establishes-center-epilepsy   Potential for being a control arm in the future.   Protocol: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/curesyngap1_syngap1-stxbp1-dee-activity-7425223573134327808-SVEQ & early data: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40119723/   Join the ~160 families who have enjoyed excellent clinical care and contributed tot he future of SYNGAP1.  Today, a 4 month old is going! CHOP: 119 new, V2- 67, V3- 32, V4- 10, V5- 4 CHCO: 37 new, V2- 7 Stanford: 8 new, V2- 2 Total: 164 (double counting one family who goes to multiple sites)   Survey English: https://curesyngap1.org/SurveyProMMiS Spanish: https://curesyngap1.org/encuestaProMMiS   94 Responses to survey, so far: Why not? Did not receive an invitation, Too far to travel, Too expensive Barriers: Logistics, Cost, Time off, Behaviors, Insurance   ETC. Pubmed 2026 is at 6!  But will soon be 7 with the McKee paper! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=syngap1&filter=years.2026-2026&sort=date   Biorepository needs more samples.  Check out the list and map here https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IjaHILXj7AlBDlbTJgvYrkBS_0bnI8VCnTIiPXJ7JGM/edit?usp=sharing and contribute blood.  The data and research we do with these samples is invaluable.   May 28, San Francisco, CA: cureSYNGAP1.org/SF26   SOCIAL MATTERS 4,668 LinkedIn.  https://www.linkedin.com/company/curesyngap1/ 1,520 YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/@CureSYNGAP1 11.2k Twitter https://twitter.com/cureSYNGAP1 45k Insta https://www.instagram.com/curesyngap1/   $CAMP stock is at $3.59 on 5 Feb. ‘26 https://www.google.com/finance/beta/quote/CAMP:NASDAQ   Like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen.  https://curesyngap1.org/podcasts/syngap10/ Episode 198 of #Syngap10 #CureSYNGAP1 #Podcast

Have you ever wondered what it was like to be in the room when the first pelvic embolization was performed or how the TIPS procedure was pioneered? Dr. Ernie Ring, a legendary figure from UCSF and a true forefather of Interventional Radiology, joins host Dr. Peder Horner to recount the early days of the specialty. Dr. Ring shares fascinating stories from his training at Massachusetts General Hospital under Dr. Stanley Baum, where he witnessed the birth of transformative techniques using angiographic catheters to treat life-threatening bleeding. --- SYNPOSIS From improvising the use of autologous blood clot and thrombin to stop massive hemorrhages to his pivotal role in developing the TIPS procedure and specialized biliary catheters, Dr. Ring's career is loaded with innovation. The conversation explores the "cowboy" era of IR, the evolution of essential tools like the glide wire, and the critical importance of maintaining a "high-touch" clinical practice in the face of emerging technologies like AI. Dr. Ring also reflects on his later transition into hospital leadership as Chief Medical Officer, where he applied his problem-solving mindset to institutional quality and safety. --- TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Introduction01:58 - Upbringing from Detroit to Mass Gen 06:55 - Early IR with an Embo Case13:50 - Trailblazing Cases in IR16:17 - Penn and Innovation20:00 - Polarizing Procedures24:13 - IR Device Innovation33:00 - Dotter's Separation from Diagnostics37:30 - Fear Finds Cowboys39:08 - AI and Robotics40:08 - Fun Hobbies

LECTURE ONE: CHURCH HISTORYSpeaker: Terry Parrish---Dr. John E. Penn was the Pastor Emeritus of North Bryant Baptist Church (formerly Southwest MBC), where he pastored for 43 years. He was also professor at the Missionary Baptist Seminary where he taught for 34 years (1970-2004). During Bro. Penn's time there, he taught several courses, including Church History, Hermeneutics, Comparative Religion, and Ministerial Practicalities.Bro. Penn was passionate about Church History and Hermeneutics. He taught Church History seminars in several states and conducted Church History tours in the U.S. and abroad in France and Italy. His pastorate was characterized by his conservative doctrinal stance, and his verse-by-verse exposition of the Bible, which led him to preach through the entire New Testament.We hope this lecture series will inspire the next generation to study and learn from God's word and about His people! Date: February 5, 2026

LECTURE TWO: HERMENEUTICSSpeaker: Joey McDermott---Dr. John E. Penn was the Pastor Emeritus of North Bryant Baptist Church (formerly Southwest MBC), where he pastored for 43 years. He was also professor at the Missionary Baptist Seminary where he taught for 34 years (1970-2004). During Bro. Penn's time there, he taught several courses, including Church History, Hermeneutics, Comparative Religion, and Ministerial Practicalities.Bro. Penn was passionate about Church History and Hermeneutics. He taught Church History seminars in several states and conducted Church History tours in the U.S. and abroad in France and Italy. His pastorate was characterized by his conservative doctrinal stance, and his verse-by-verse exposition of the Bible, which led him to preach through the entire New Testament.We hope this lecture series will inspire the next generation to study and learn from God's word and about His people! Date: February 5, 2026

Gilbert and Frank returned to the famed New York Friars Club to sit down with Gilbert's old pal, magician-illusionist-comedian-provocateur Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame. Over the course of an amusing and highly informative hour, Penn shared fond memories of Johnny Carson, George Carlin and Jerry Lewis, explained how his love of jazz inspired the hit 2005 documentary “The Aristocrats” (a movie he co-conceived and co-produced). Also, Penn reveals the real, no-“Bullshit” story behind the death of legendary showman Harry Houdini. PLUS: The near-death of Gilbert Gottfried! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cyber weapons knock out Iranian air defenses during strikes on nuclear sites. ShinyHunters dump more than a million stolen records from Harvard and Penn. Betterment confirms a breach exposing data from roughly 1.4 million accounts. Researchers uncover a sprawling scam network impersonating law firms. Italy blocks cyberattacks aimed at Olympics infrastructure. Critical bugs put n8n and Google Looker servers at risk of full takeover. A state-backed Shadow Campaign hits governments worldwide. OpenClaw shows how AI-powered attacks are becoming faster, cheaper, and harder to stop. Our guest is Tony Scott, CEO of Intrusion and former federal CIO, sharing his perspective on evolving regulation and the realities behind critical policy shifts. Your smartphone may testify against you. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest Our guest today comes as a segment from our Caveat podcast. Tony Scott, CEO of Intrusion and former federal CIO, joins Dave Bittner to share his perspective on evolving regulation and the realities behind critical policy shifts. You can listen to Tony and Dave's full conversation on this week's episode of Caveat, and catch new episodes of Caveat every Thursday on your favorite podcast app. Selected Reading Exclusive: US used cyber weapons to disrupt Iranian air defenses during 2025 strikes (The Record) Personal data stolen during Harvard and UPenn data breaches leaked online - over a million details, including emails, home addresses and more, all published (TechRadar) Data breach at fintech firm Betterment exposes 1.4 million accounts (Bleeping Computer) Researchers Expose Network of 150 Cloned Law Firm Websites in AI-Powered Scam Campaign (SecurityWeek) Italy Averted Russian-Linked Cyberattacks Targeting Winter Olympics Websites, Foreign Minister Says (SecurityWeek) n8n security woes roll on as new critical flaws bypass December fix (The Register) LookOut: Discovering RCE and Internal Access on Looker (Google Cloud & On-Prem) (Tenable) Cyberspy Group Hacked Governments and Critical Infrastructure in 37 Countries (SecurityWeek) The Rise of OpenClaw (SECURITY.COM) Smartphones Now Involved in Nearly Every Police Investigation (Infosecurity Magazine) Share your feedback. What do you think about CyberWire Daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. Thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. Want to hear your company in the show? N2K CyberWire helps you reach the industry's most influential leaders and operators, while building visibility, authority, and connectivity across the cybersecurity community. Learn more at sponsor.thecyberwire.com. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode you will hear: (02:48) In the News-Hilary and Kate join Mark to discuss an article that appears in USA Today that asks the question, "Are parent Facebook groups helpful or toxic"? Rachel Hale is the author of the article, which is entitled: "College, parent Facebook groups and when helicopter parenting goes too far" Part 3 of 3 (23:50) Mark interviews Elliot Felix, author of the book, 'the Connected College" o Elliot shares how his background has impacted the work he does today, helping colleges strategize to design campuses that produce the best learning o Elliot new book is called, "The Connected College" and he tells us "what a Connected College Is" o Elliot talks about what makes a great strategic plan and what are the flaws of so many strategic plans that are prevalent o Elliot explains how he gleaned his knowledge about what makes a Connected College (45:00) College Spotlight-Daniela Uribe and Summer Cobb Tell us What Penn is like for students. ¨ We take a look at the University of Pennsylvania by listening to one current Penn student and one recent college graduate ¨ Summer and Daniela share their background ¨ Daniela and Summer share what they feel are the best things about the University of Pennsylvania ¨ Summer and Daniela share what they would change if they could change anything about the University of Pennsylvania ¨ Daniela gives her best advice for students, and I want every parent to get their student to listen to what Daniela says ¨ Summer gives us an overview of the four different colleges Recommended Resource Guide to help first year students complete the Common Application- Application guide for first-year students Speakpipe.com/YCBK is our method if you want to ask a question and we will be prioritizing all questions sent in via Speakpipe. Unfortunately, we will NOT answer questions on the podcast anymore that are emailed in. If you want us to answer a question on the podcast, please use speakpipe.com/YCBK. We feel hearing from our listeners in their own voices adds to the community feel of our podcast. You can also use this for many other purposes: 1) Send us constructive criticism about how we can improve our podcast 2) Share an encouraging word about something you like about an episode or the podcast in general 3) Share a topic or an article you would like us to address 4) Share a speaker you want us to interview 5) Leave positive feedback for one of our interviewees. We will send your verbal feedback directly to them and I can almost assure you your positive feedback will make their day. To sign up to receive Your College-Bound Kid PLUS, our new monthly admissions newsletter, delivered directly to your email once a month, just go to yourcollegeboundkid.com, and you will see the sign-up popup. We will include many of the hot topics being discussed on college campuses. Check out our new blog. We write timely and insightful articles on college admissions: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/category/blog/ Follow Mark Stucker on Twitter to get breaking college admission news, and updates about the podcast before they go live. You can ask questions on Twitter that he will answer on the podcast. Mark will also share additional hot topics in the news and breaking news on this Twitter feed. Twitter message is also the preferred way to ask questions for our podcast: 1. To access our transcripts, click: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/category/transcripts/ 2. Find the specific episode transcripts for the one you want to search for and click the link 3. Find the magnifying glass icon in blue (search feature) and click it 4. Enter whatever word you want to search. I.e. Loans 5. Every word in that episode when the words loans are used will be highlighted in yellow with a timestamps 6. Click the word highlighted in yellow and the player will play the episode from that starting point 7. You can also download the entire podcast as a transcript We would be honored if you will pass this podcast episode on to others who you feel will benefit from the content in YCBK. Please subscribe to our podcast. It really helps us move up in Apple's search feature so others can find our podcast. If you enjoy our podcast, would you please do us a favor and share our podcast both verbally and on social media? We would be most grateful! If you want to help more people find Your College-Bound Kid, please make sure you follow our podcast. You will also get instant notifications as soon as each episode goes live. Check out the college admissions books Mark recommends: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/recommended-books/ Check out the college websites Mark recommends: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/recommended-websites/ If you want to have some input about what you like and what you recommend, we change about our podcast, please complete our Podcast survey; here is the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScCauBgityVXVHRQUjvlIRfYrMWWdHarB9DMQGYL0472bNxrw/viewform If you want a college consultation, text Mark at 404-664-4340, or email us at yourcollegeboundkid@yahoo.com All we ask is that you review their services and pricing on their website before the complimentary session; here is link to their services with transparent pricing: https://schoolmatch4u.com/services/compare-packages/

The Patina battles mercenaries and unravels the heart of Sasnak Traveling.Cast: - Marathon Messenger is played by Penn Van Batavia. She can be found on Twitter at @acquiredchaste and in drag as horror king JOHN on Instagram at @john.is.risen. Penn is an indie TTRPG designer whose most recent work includes SLICE *IT* OUT, a grisly carving RPG about cutting pieces of yourself out to fit in. Check out faer other work at pennharper.itch.io. - Cassidy Shard is played by Sydney Whittington. She is our wonderful editor. She's also a contributing editor and occasional guest player for the Orpheus Protocol, a cosmic horror espionage actual play podcast. Find her on Twitter at @sydney_whitt. - Emma Blackwood is played by Cameron Robertson. Find her on Twitter at @midnightmusic13 and on Instagram at @reading_and_dreaming. Cameron is also a player on Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars Edge of the Empire actual play podcast. - Birdie Foundling is played by Kit Adames. Find her on Twitter at @venusvultures. Kit is also a voice actor and writer on Elevator Pitch Podcast, a queer genre-hopping anthology podcast that can be accessed on Spotify and YouTube. - Our GM and narrator is Nick Robertson. Find him on Twitter at @alias58. Nick is also the GM for Tabletop Squadron and can also be found as a player on the Orpheus Protocol.Music & Sound Credits: - This podcast features the musical talents of Dora Violet and Arne Parrott. You can find Dora at facebook.com/doraviolett. You can find Arne at atptunes.com. - old radio Channel search sound effect by Garuda1982. Link & License. - gunshot.wav by mark646. Link & License. - " Bangs and Explosions » Explosion_001.mp3 " by cydon. Link & License. - Sundial_Bridge_03_cable_13.flac by DAAyer. Link & License. - The Leopard by Julia Kent. Link & License. - Long Story by Sergey Cheremisinov. Link & License.Art Credits: - The official artwork for this podcast was created by Rashed AlAkroka, who can be found on Instagram and Artstation @rashedjrs.Find Us Online: - Our Website - Twitter - Join our Patreon - Join our Discord

In this episode Nick and Mac are joined by Dave Stark of Cook Stark Management and host of the Athletes Podcast. Nick and Dave recap a weekend of festivities in Pennsylvania, beginning with the Working in Hockey event in Pittsburgh, and wrapping up with an unbelievable experience at the Penn state vs. Michigan State outdoor game at Beaver Stadium. Nick and Mac also react to the Artemi Panarin trade and the future of Chris Drury, the upcoming Beanpot championship, and they wrap up with the Weekly ReCap. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Penn continues healing from his broken ankle with the… help(?) of new drugs, thoughts on Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis,” Matt prepares to return to cruise ship life and another leg of the Jokers of Magic tour and looks to level up his marketing game, Penn & Matt’s big Super Bowl bet, and lots more.

Jesse Metcalfe comes on Podcrushed and opens up about being bullied for being “too pretty,” carrying a chip on his shoulder into Hollywood, and how the peaks and valleys of his incredible career introduced him to spirituality. He revisits John Tucker Must Die with Penn for the first time in decades, including JTMD moments from behind the scenes, and a dinner moment involving edamame that still haunts Penn to this day. There’s soap-opera hell portals, pilot-season pressure cookers, and a brutally honest reckoning with fame and identity. Funny, uncomfortable, and unexpectedly deep — this one's a banger. David is offering our listeners a special deal: buy 4 cartons and get the 5th free when you go to https://davidprotein.com/PODCRUSHED Right now, new customers can get 15% off sitewide at https://magneticme.com.

Bomani Jones is joined by Shannon Penn, a former producer of The Right Time and currently at ESPN. They delve into the history and cultural significance of the Dallas Cowboys and their 1990s dynasty. They break down the cultural significance of Michael Irvin and Deion Sanders while pondering what is keeping the Cowboys from returning to their past success. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The world feels heavy and instead of trying to joke our way around that, this episode is about sitting with it. This week, Penn and I talk about how a post we made about hope turned into a political statement, the process behind the scenes, and how we're feeling. We are very lucky to have a fun job, but it doesn't mean it's not challenging in times like these. Sometimes it's hard to make comedy when you want to cry.We know you came for the humor, we hope you'll stay for the humanity. Penn and I are here for joy, for laughter, and for standing with people who need it. We believe laughter and compassion aren't opposites. Sometimes humor is how we survive, and sometimes it's how we tell the truth. We're all still learning, growing, and trying our best to love our neighbors well. We promise to keep showing up as our full selves... funny, flawed, and deeply human. (And with a cookie cake.) Thanks for being here. We love to hear from you! Leave us a message at 323-364-3929 or write the show at podcast@theholdernessfamily.com. You can also watch our podcast on YouTube.Visit Our ShopJoin Our NewsletterFind us on SubstackFollow us on InstagramFollow us on TikTok Follow us on FacebookLaugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness is an evolution of The Holderness Family Podcast, which began in 2018. Kim and Penn Holderness are award-winning online content creators known for their original music, song parodies, comedy sketches, and weekly podcasts. Their videos have resulted in over three billion views and over nine million followers since 2013. Penn and Kim are also authors of the New York Times Bestselling Books, ADHD Is Awesome: A Guide To (Mostly) Thriving With ADHD and All You Can Be With ADHD. They were also winners on The Amazing Race (Season 33) on CBS. Laugh Lines is hosted and executive produced by Kim Holderness and Penn Holderness, with original music by Penn Holderness. Laugh Lines is also written and produced by Ann Marie Taepke, and edited and produced by Sam Allen. It is hosted by Acast. Thanks for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:03:43) - Heroes and inspirations (00:07:14) - The rise of Chinese electric vehicles (00:12:13) - The Tesla experience (00:31:04) - Tesla's rapid development and industry impact (00:32:54) - The culture of speed and frugality at Tesla (00:34:10) - Elon's leadership and pressure tactics (00:37:22) - Transitioning from Tesla to Waymo (00:39:43) - Waymo's organizational structure and challenges (00:43:35) - The future of autonomous vehicles (00:54:34) - Founding Light Source and addressing procurement issues (01:00:23) - Conclusion and final thoughts Links: LightSource - https://lightsource.ai/ Spencer on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/spenpenn/ Preorder the Book of Elon - https://a.co/d/02huhEee To support the costs of producing this podcast:  >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/  >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage  >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend >> Or at least give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners! Quotes from Spencer: “It was the most fun I never want to have again.” (Describing his time at Tesla during the Model 3 production ramp) “The Model 3 seat feel is attuned directly to Elon's butt.” “I'm not an Elon fanboy, but I'm also not a critic. I'm an optimist.” “Speed wins. After seeing both Tesla and Waymo, that's my belief.” “We were the underdog. Eventually, it does end up feeling like you're on the winning team.” “You couldn't go into a meeting with Elon and show up empty-handed.” “This opportunity we're pursuing at LightSource should have disappeared 20 years ago.” “ERP is the finance system of record. What's Salesforce in reverse? That's LightSource.” “The thing that surprised me: every company still runs procurement on spreadsheets and email.” “Tesla built their own ERP system from scratch. That's not normal.” “There are things that are just core to the P&L of every business… and yet completely orphaned in the tech stack.”

Dr. Matt Bernstein is a clinical psychiatrist and leading voice in metabolic psychiatry, with 25 years of experience helping people achieve lasting mental health and functional recovery. A Columbia graduate (summa cum laude) and Penn-trained physician, he completed residency at MGH/McLean, where he served as chief resident and later held senior leadership roles. Now Chief Medical Officer at Ellenhorn, he develops innovative, community-based models for mental health care and serves on advisory boards advancing the metabolic psychiatry movement. In this episode, Drs. Tro and Matthew talk about… (00:00) Intro (02:19) How Dr. Matthew found his way into metabolic psychiatry (05:53) Autoimmune encephalitis (09:59) Psychiatric health and the physical body (14:41) Infectious diseases causing psychiatric diseases (18:25) Psychiatric guidelines (23:04) How Dr. Matthew's clinic approaches the treatment of psychiatric disorders from a metabolic health perspective (26:31) How diet effects the brain (29:00) The most amazing case of disease reversal Dr. Matthew has seen recently (34:22) The data on the effectiveness of metabolic psychiatry and why many psychiatrists currently practicing are resistant to it (37:32) The great work being done to heal people at Accord Mental Health (43:27) Outro and plugs For more information, please see the links below. Thank you for listening! Links: Please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.lowcarbmd.com/ Resources Mentioned in this Episode: Dr. Matt Bernstein: Accord Mental Health: https://accordmh.com/ Ellenhorn: https://www.ellenhorn.com/ Dr. Brian Lenzkes:  Website: https://arizonametabolichealth.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianLenzkes?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author Dr. Tro Kalayjian:  Website: https://toward.health Twitter: https://twitter.com/DoctorTro IG: https://www.instagram.com/doctortro/ Toward Health App Join a growing community of individuals who are improving their metabolic health; together.  Get started at your own pace with a self-guided curriculum developed by Dr. Tro and his care team, community chat, weekly meetings, courses, challenges, message boards and more.  Apple: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/doctor-tro/id1588693888  Google: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.disciplemedia.doctortro&hl=en_US&gl=US Learn more: https://toward.health/community/

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

Penn is recording from bed while he recovers from his broken ankle and Matt is snowed in dealing with weather cancellations on tour. But none of that can stop the Preaching Love! Penn’s unprecedented new pain relief, somehow managing to listen to even more Dylan, crazy audience volunteers on the Jokers of Magic Tour, and more.

Brynleigh and Cyrus are trapped within Magnus's icy walls while Penn opens the barrier between worlds.Do you want to buy the script? ⁠https://tinyurl.com/sixminutesscript⁠Want to listen to music from the show? ⁠https://tinyurl.com/sixminutestheme⁠Looking for official Six Minutes merch? ⁠https://tinyurl.com/sixminutesmerch⁠For more great shows and to listen early and ad-free, visit ⁠GZMshows.com⁠.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week calls for a hug and cookie cake that says “Happy Birthday” (even though it's nobody's birthday... more on this in the show.) If you're feeling worn down, overwhelmed, or just need a break from everything feeling so heavy, this episode is for you. We're talking about the little things that make us laugh when the world feels like too much.Snow day chaos. January being the longest Monday of the year. Dogs in slow motion. Buying dessert for no reason. Letting your spouse be a dancing bear whose only job is to cheer you up (even when said spouse has shingles... also more on this in the show.)We don't ignore what's hard, but we also believe laughter is a survival skill. So this episode is a reminder that you're not alone if you're craving a moment of relief right now. We love to hear from you! Leave us a message at 323-364-3929 or write the show at podcast@theholdernessfamily.com. You can also watch our podcast on YouTube.Visit Our ShopJoin Our NewsletterFind us on SubstackFollow us on InstagramFollow us on TikTok Follow us on FacebookLaugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness is an evolution of The Holderness Family Podcast, which began in 2018. Kim and Penn Holderness are award-winning online content creators known for their original music, song parodies, comedy sketches, and weekly podcasts. Their videos have resulted in over three billion views and over nine million followers since 2013. Penn and Kim are also authors of the New York Times Bestselling Books, ADHD Is Awesome: A Guide To (Mostly) Thriving With ADHD and All You Can Be With ADHD. They were also winners on The Amazing Race (Season 33) on CBS. Laugh Lines is hosted and executive produced by Kim Holderness and Penn Holderness, with original music by Penn Holderness. Laugh Lines is also written and produced by Ann Marie Taepke, and edited and produced by Sam Allen. It is hosted by Acast. Thanks for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.