Podcasts about Pentagon

Subscribe now for an ad-free experience and all of our episodes. Derek has journeyed to Bolivia seeking contact with the newly discovered cat species, so Alex Jordan of Always at War steps in to bring you the headlines. This week: in New Delhi, BRICS member states issue a fractured joint statement on restraint in the Middle East (1:12); Iran strikes a U.S.-contracted vessel near the Strait of Hormuz (5:42); a cyberattack disables Texas-bound tankers (8:30); a new Pentagon report puts the Iran war's cost at $33.4 billion (9:59); the Houthis/Ansar Allah advance in Taiz and hit Saudi Arabia (14:46); Yemeni government forces strike back while the U.S. rules out direct involvement (19:00); China pushes Iran to restrain the Houthis (22:37); an Israeli strike collapses a building in Gaza City, killing at least 21 people (25:12); the U.S. approves a $2.8 billion weapons sale to Israel (27:34); Russia and Ukraine strike each other's energy infrastructure (30:57); the House passes a Russia sanctions bill named in honor of Lindsey Graham (33:37); a banking scandal roils Brazil's presidential race (37:53); and in Sweden, a left-wing bloc narrowly wins an election (41:12).     Don't forget to grab your copy of Danny's new book Imperialist Realism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Derek has journeyed to Bolivia seeking contact with the newly discovered cat species, so Alex Jordan of Always at War steps in to bring you the headlines. This week: in New Delhi, BRICS member states issue a fractured joint statement on restraint in the Middle East (1:12); Iran strikes a U.S.-contracted vessel near the Strait of Hormuz (5:42); a cyberattack disables Texas-bound tankers (8:30); a new Pentagon report puts the Iran war's cost at $33.4 billion (9:59); the Houthis/Ansar Allah advance in Taiz and hit Saudi Arabia (14:46); Yemeni government forces strike back while the U.S. rules out direct involvement (19:00); China pushes Iran to restrain the Houthis (22:37); an Israeli strike collapses a building in Gaza City, killing at least 21 people (25:12); the U.S. approves a $2.8 billion weapons sale to Israel (27:34); Russia and Ukraine strike each other's energy infrastructure (30:57); the House passes a Russia sanctions bill named in honor of Lindsey Graham (33:37); a banking scandal roils Brazil's presidential race (37:53); and in Sweden, a left-wing bloc narrowly wins an election (41:12).  Don't forget to grab your copy of Danny's new book Imperialist Realism.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode Tim & Ian are joined by Clyde Do Something to discuss Rumors erupting that China's Xi may have suffered a stroke during BRICS summit The Pentagon preparing for warfare on & around the moon Anthropic roasted for wanting a woke group to oversee AI development NYC Mayor suing Trump over immigration laws Hosts:  Tim @Timcast (everywhere) | https://www.shoutout.fans/timpool Phil @PhilThatRemains (X) | https://allthatremains.komi.io/ Ian @IanCrossland (everywhere) Producer: Carter @carterbanks (X) |  @trashhouserecords  (YT) https://carterbanks.komi.io Guest:  Clyde Do Something @ClydeDoSomethin (X) Clyde Do Something is a Canadian-American online political and current-events commentator who describes himself as a mechanic and produces videos discussing U.S. politics, culture, and news. His commentary generally approaches political issues from a conservative perspective.

Thursday, September 17, 2026Today, Judge Emmet Sullivan has ordered Todd Blanche to produce handwritten FBI interview notes from the Epstein investigation; Congress might be about to hand Trump sweeping tariff authority; House Republicans flee Washington again to avoid a vote on impeaching Pete Hegseth; a Pentagon watchdog releases a scathing report on US losses in the Iran war; Trump has announced a deal to send thousands of one-ton bombs to Israel paid for by our tax dollars; all supporting acts in Ed Sheeran's tour have withdrawn in solidarity with Macklemore; Canada becomes the first associate member of the European Union; the Fed has raised interest rates for the first time since 2023 as inflation mounts; plus Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.Thank You, HoneyLove | Save 20% Off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/DAILYBEANS #honeylovepod #sponsoredThank You, Smalls | For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life, when you head to Smalls.com/DAILYBEANSBlue Wave Nation | https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mswbluewave The Trump Epstein Memorial BookmobileThe Daily Beans is proud to partner with Miles Taylor and our friends at DEFIANCE.org For a limited time, members of the Daily Beans community can receive a FREE 3-month full membership to DEFIANCE.org and gain access to one of the fastest-growing pro-democracy movements in America. Join here: https://www.defiance.org/beans Guest: Scott GreytakAnti-Corruption AttorneyDeputy Executive Director - Transparency International U.S. The Latest Breakdown →Trump's DOJ Just Blew Up Its Own Story In My LawsuitNew Unjustified →The Grand ConspiracyDiamond Dames → Diamond Dames - YouTube Diamond Dames - A Ted Lasso PodcastPatreon → The Daily Beans | PatreonStoriesCongress Might Be About to Hand Trump Sweeping Tariff Powers | The AtlanticFed raises interest rates for first time since 2023, defying Trump as inflation mounts | NBC NewsE.U. Talks of Making Canada First ‘Associate Member' as U.S. Ties Weaken | The New York TimesTrump's planned sale of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel is largest in years | The Washington PostPentagon Watchdog Reveals Devastating U.S. Losses in Iran War | The New RepublicAll supporting acts withdraw from Ed Sheeran's tour in solidarity with Macklemore | The GuardianHouse to leave early, punting Hegseth impeachment vote until after November elections | NBC NewsGood TroubleHow to Submit a Public Comment on the Head Start Proposed Changes - NHSAComments on Regulations.gov→Battleground Support Hub - Democrats.org →Get Out The Vote: Volunteer Info Session→Voter Registration Deadlines - Vote.org→Hands Off Our Vote! 2026 Toolkit | Indivisible→Help staff your local polling place - Power The Polls→Voter Registration Volunteer Opportunities · Mobilize→Helpline Orientation- Spanish Speakers Needed! - VoteRiders→Help save Texas from Ken Paxton! →NO HATE in WA State→Stand With Minnesota →iceout.org Good NewsCommon PowerA New Generation of Gorillas - Conservation AlliesTexoma Roller Derby - EventTalk of the Town: Texoma Roller Derby's Aliens vs. Cows Open Gender Mash UpDana Goldberg: Outrageous - Sep 23 - Den Theater - Chicago Dana Goldberg's Southwest FunnyFest Oct 9 - City of Albuquerque→Share your Good News & Good Trouble - The Daily Beans→Beans Talk audio -beans-talk.simplecast.comSubscribe to the MSW on YouTube - MSW Media - YouTubeOur Donation LinksThe Trevor Project - trevorproject.org/beansBlue Wave California - ActBlue.com/donate/msw-bwcDonate to Public Citizen - https://citizen.org/beans/National Security Counselors - Donate, WhistleblowerAid.org/beansDonate to It Gets Better / The Daily Beans FundraiserPathways to Citizenship - boomerang - pathways Dana and The Daily Beans support of Human Rights Campaign ONE CAUSE HRCThe Daily Beans supports It Gets BetterDr. Allison Gill - The Breakdown | Allison Gill, Mueller, She Wrote @muellershewrote.com - Bluesky, MSW & The Daily Beans Podcast @muellershewrote - Instagram, MSW Media - YouTube →Federal workers email AG - fedoath@pm.meDana Goldberg - Dana is on Patreon! At Dana's Dugout, @dgcomedy - Bluesky, @dgcomedy - IG, Dana Goldberg - Facebook, DanaGoldberg.comMore from MSW Media - Shows, Cleanup On Aisle 45 pod, The Breakdown | Allison Gill Reminder - you can see the pod pics if you become a Patron. The good news pics are at the bottom of the show notes of each Patreon episode! That's just one of the perks of subscribing! patreon.com/muellershewrote Listener Survey:http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortFollow the Podcast on Apple:https://apple.co/3XNx7ckWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?https://patreon.com/thedailybeanshttps://dailybeans.supercast.com/https://apple.co/3UKzKt0 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

P.M. Edition for Sept. 17. Yesterday's interest rate increase from the Fed seemed to some like an assertion of the central bank's independence. But afterward President Trump revealed that he and Warsh had a conversation before the decision was announced. WSJ Washington bureau chief Damian Paletta discusses what we know and what this could mean for the future of the Fed. Plus, House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home early this week ahead of the November election, despite criticism that Congress isn't doing its job. We hear from Journal reporter Maya Davis about what the data show about how much Congress is getting done. And Mastercard becomes the latest credit card company to roll out the option for AI bots to do your everyday shopping. But, as reporter Ben Glickman notes, many consumers aren't yet ready to hand over their cards to a bot. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Episode 4227 │ September 17, 2026 Roughly 95,000 bomb casings approved against 17,500 guidance kits. Better than five to one. The package is a readout of what we can still build. WHAT THIS EPISODE COVERS Scott Kesterson breaks down a reported $2.8 billion munitions package for Israel — roughly 60,000 bomb casings and penetrator warheads with no guidance kits attached in any reporting — and traces it back through 2025's separate guidance-kit and casing approvals to reveal a ratio of better than five bomb casings for every guidance kit across both years, arguing the package is a readout of production capacity rather than tactical preference. The episode maps two distinct supply chokepoints behind that imbalance — a Chinese-controlled rare earth magnet supply feeding precision guidance kits, and a self-inflicted domestic forging shortage where only four American companies can produce the massive steel casings for bunker-buster penetrator warheads — before turning to a second, unconfirmed story: an Israel-Saudi intelligence-sharing arrangement against the Houthis that traces to Israeli media alone, and that boxes Riyadh into a lose-lose position regardless of whether the arrangement is real. The episode closes on the Neo-Mercantile Model, Scott's framework connecting this munitions package to AI financing, a domestic gas station pricing scheme, and a national laboratory-to-Pentagon pipeline as four instances of the same closed circuit: issued currency manufacturing its own demand, with the cost deferred onto a future that has no vote in the arrangement. KEY QUESTIONS ADDRESSED What does the ratio of roughly 95,000 bomb casings to 17,500 guidance kits across the 2025 and 2026 munitions packages reveal — and why does Scott argue the absence of guidance kits in the current $2.8 billion package means this is a readout of what America can still manufacture rather than a strategic choice? What are the two distinct chokepoints constraining precision munitions production — the Chinese-controlled rare earth magnet supply behind guidance kits, and the four-company domestic forging base behind bunker-buster penetrator casings — and why does Scott argue one was imposed from outside while the other was self-inflicted? What is the Neo-Mercantile Model — and why does Scott argue that a munitions sale to Israel, an AI financing arrangement between Nvidia and OpenAI, a discounted gas station chain, and a national laboratory research pipeline all share the same underlying structure: issued currency creating its own demand, with the bill deferred rather than paid? ABOUT BARDSFM BardsFM is a daily independent podcast covering faith, liberty, history, and information warfare. Hosted by Scott Kesterson — combat veteran, documentary filmmaker, and rancher. Over 4,200 episodes and 51 million downloads. New episodes every weekday. bards.fm This episode was researched and produced under the Spatial Terra Intelligence Methodology (STIM v5) — the analytical framework built by Scott Kesterson — with AI-assisted research synthesis at a 70/30 human/AI authorship ratio, fully disclosed. All analysis, conclusions, and editorial judgments are those of Scott Kesterson. BardsFM's archive includes hundreds of episodes on prayer, scripture, and walking the Way of Christ — available free in the full episode catalog. DOWNLOADS Citizen's Guide - Community Organizing Against Data Centers: click here Citizen's Guide - Auditing Automatic License Plate Readers: click here Citizen's Guide - Auditing Your State's Driver License Data: click here AFFILIATE LINKS Bards Nation Health Store: www.bardsnationhealth.com MYPillow promo code: BARDS >> Go to https://www.mypillow.com/bards and use the promo code BARDS or... Call 1-800-975-2939.  EMPShield protect your vehicles and home. Promo code BARDS: Click here Treadlite Broadforks...best garden tool EVER. Promo code BARDS26: TreadliteBroadforks.com EnviroKlenz Air Purification, promo code BARDS to save 10%: www.enviroklenz.com Morning Intro Music Provided by Brian Kahanek: www.briankahanek.com Founders Bible 20% discount code: BARDS >>> TheFoundersBible.com Windblown Media 20% Discount with promo code BARDS: windblownmedia.com White Oak Pastures Grassfed Meats, Get $20 off any order $150 or more. Promo Code BARDS: www.whiteoakpastures.com/BARDS Mission Darkness Faraday Bags and RF Shielding. Promo code BARDS: Click here DONATIONS: If you wish to support this podcast directly you can donate here... DONATE: Click here MAILING ADDRESS: Xpedition Cafe, LLC Attn. Scott Kesterson 591 E Central Ave, #740 Sutherlin, OR  97479

00:00:00 – The Pope Must Die DVD hunt 00:05:00 – Alex Jones clips of the week 00:09:55 – Nashville Christmas bomber's reptilian worldview 00:36:48 – Trump calls the AI takeover a hoax 00:41:46 – China warns AI threatens party rule 00:46:23 – Anthropic staff mourn retired Claude 00:51:22 – AI recruiter accepts total gibberish 00:53:43 – People named Al get mistaken for AI 01:02:25 – Garbage trucks scan homes for code violations 01:07:22 – Tucker Carlson claims Trump buried Epstein files 01:11:05 – Costco rations motor oil amid refinery crisis 01:16:05 – Liberland draws hundreds of thousands of applicants 01:21:04 – UK village votes to secede over asylum plan 01:25:59 – Pentagon changes UFO disclosure rules 01:30:28 – Americans weigh the impact of alien disclosure 01:35:19 – Zoo advertises a child predator tour 01:39:14 – Netflix revives the Stanford Prison Experiment 01:49:04 – Firefighters finish mowing a sick man's lawn 01:53:53 – End-of-show wrap-up Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research ▀▄▀▄▀ CONTACT LINKS ▀▄▀▄▀ ► Phone: 614-388-9109 ► Skype: ourbigdumbmouth ► Website: http://obdmpod.com ► Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/obdmpod ► Full Videos at Odysee: https://odysee.com/@obdm:0 ► Twitter: https://twitter.com/obdmpod ► Instagram: obdmpod ► Email: ourbigdumbmouth at gmail ► RSS: http://ourbigdumbmouth.libsyn.com/rss ► iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/our-big-dumb-mouth/id261189509?mt=2  

Russia is quietly feeding Iran the intelligence it needs to kill American service members, the munitions stockpile the administration swears is full is demonstrably empty, and the sailors on the USS Lincoln haven't seen their commander in chief set foot on the deck. Meanwhile the president's son is accepting gifts from a foreign "close friend," the attorney general is running interference instead of investigations, and the Iran war is now polling worse than the data centers inside MAGA itself. This is a media blitz episode — Paul Rieckhoff stitching together the sharpest moments from four national cable hits in eight hours into one no-BS conversation about what's actually breaking in America right now. From the Pentagon to the Fed, from Cash Patel to Lane Kiffin, Paul draws the line between war profiteering and college football's booster-collective gold rush — and asks the same question of both: who's protecting the workers, the players, the troops? He lays out why the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs may be the last adult in the room, why 25 years of war have hollowed out recruiting and retention, and why the populist streak in this country is ready to snap over rich men partying in the Bahamas while working-class kids get shipped to the Middle East. Independent, veteran-led, and unafraid to name names on both sides of the rigged two-party system. -WATCH full video of this episode here. -Millions of American veterans are being locked out of primary elections in the country they served. See what we're doing to change that. -Visit Kalshi and trade on anything. Use code INDEPENDENT to get $25 when you trade $25. -Head to cozyearth.com and use the code AMERICANS for an exclusive 20% off. -Join Noble Mobile today and get a $100 bonus when you use code PAUL and stay a member for 2 months! -Join IVA and help us get independent veterans elected to office. -Learn more about Paul's work to elect a new generation of independent leaders with Independent Veterans of America. -Learn more about American Veterans for Ukraine here. -Remember Independent is an Attitude. -Learn more about The Headstrong Project for Veterans, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and Department of Veterans Affairs resources in your area. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness. It's a show of strength. If you or a loved one are in immediate crisis, dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255. Connect with Independent Americans: Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all podcast platforms Read more at Substack Support ad-free episodes at Patreon  Connect: Instagram  • X/Twitter • BlueSky • Facebook  Follow on social: @PaulRieckhoff on X, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky -Join the movement. Hook into our exclusive Patreon community of Independent Americans. Get extra content, connect with guests, meet other Independent Americans, attend events, get merch discounts, and support this show that speaks truth to power.  -And get cool IA and Righteous hats, t-shirts and other merch now in time for the new year.  Independent Americans is powered by veteran-owned and led Righteous Media.  And now part of the BLEAV network!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What the hell is happening with U.S. defense technology? Chris Brose, the President and Chief Strategy Officer of defense tech firm Anduril joins us to talk about how private defense companies are innovating and revolutionizing American national security, America's lousy defense acquisition habits, and what we can learn from Ukraine and the war with Iran. The traditional US defense industrial base is slowly cranking out exquisite and outdated weapons. If things don't change, we risk losing a war to China. We discuss the crucial shift towards technological advancement, what the Pentagon and Congress must do, and what this means long term for the safety and security of the American people.Chris Brose is President and Chief Strategy Officer of Anduril Industries, a venture-backed defense technology company. He is the author of The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare (2020) and formerly senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 2014-2018, he was the staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee supporting then Chairman John McCain. From 2009-2014, Mr. Brose served as senior policy advisor to Senator John McCain, and from 2008-2009, he was senior editor of Foreign Policy. From 2005-2008, he served as policy advisor and chief speechwriter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and began his career in government as a speechwriter for Secretary of State Colin Powell, from 2004-2005.Read the transcript here.Subscribe to our Substack here.

00:00 Intro00:56 China Hosts Iranian FM Ahead of Trump–Xi Meeting01:09 Iranian FM in China as Trump–Xi Summit Draws Near03:44 Huawei Trial: Employees Allegedly Photographed T-Mobile's Robot05:49 Hearing Examines China's Influence Network in United States08:12 EU Will 'Use All Tools to Cut China Trade Deficit'09:12 EU Wants Canada as First Associate Member11:06 Saudi–China Trade Hits $100 Billion in 202511:40 China Opens Pinglu Canal Linking Inland Areas to Sea12:40 Space Weapons to Counter China–Iran Air Threats?16:44 Former Space Chief: Space Superiority Is Essential18:28 Pentagon's Signal to China Ahead of Xi Visit?

Bill Walton returns to Hearts of Oak to discuss the AI safety debate after Anthropic's leadership warned that advanced systems could pose a serious risk to humanity within a decade. He argues that heavy federal regulation would entrench the biggest players, squeeze open-source development, and slow innovation, while the U.S.–China race makes a simple pause unrealistic because AI is dual-use. Bill then turns to what he sees as the more immediate threat: rising long-term Treasury yields, global government debt, and the limits of taxing, borrowing, or inflating the problem away. The conversation closes on crypto, quantum computing, financial surveillance, Europe's safety-first regulation, and why risk-taking and free speech matter more than trying to make everything “safe.” Bill Walton is a former Chairman and CEO of a $10 billion NYSE-traded investment company, a successful investor, renaissance man and the host of The Bill Walton Show. After decades in finance, private equity and as an entrepreneur and CEO, he now writes and speaks about the intersection of finance, policy, and culture. Bill has served at senior levels across business, government, and the arts—ranging from Vice Chairman of CPAC and President of the Council for National Policy, to President of the National Symphony Orchestra; and National Trustee and Finance Advisor to the National Gallery of Art Trustees and Chairman of the Kelley (Indiana) School of Business. Other national board service includes Heritage, AEI, Wolf Trap, and the National Venture Capital Association. Earlier in his career, Walton served in the U.S. Army at the Pentagon, headed strategic planning for a major commercial bank, worked in mergers and acquisitions at Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, and later advised CBS founder William S. Paley.  As a feature film producer, two of Bill's films screened at the Cannes and Tribeca Film Festivals. In 2016-2017 he led President Trump's 2016 Financial Agency Transition Teams.  He attended public schools in Indiana and is now a private investor.    Connect with Bill Walton  The Bill Walton Show | Money Culture Power The Bill Walton Show | Substack The Bill Walton Show Podcast Series – Apple Podcasts The Bill Walton Show - YouTube   Connect with Hearts of Oak...

“What's Buggin' You” segment for Thursday 9-17-26

Zu Beginn der Folge von "Was tun, Herr General?" greifen Tim Deisinger und General a.D. Erhard Bühler Zuschriften zur jüngsten Balkan-Ausgabe auf. Es geht um sprachliche und historische Einordnungen und um die bis heute spürbaren politischen Sensibilitäten in der Region. General Bühler erläutert seine Aussagen und weist den Vorwurf zurück, Propaganda jedweder Art zu unterstützen. Im Schwerpunkt analysieren die beiden die aktuellen Personalkonflikte im Pentagon. Auslöser ist der Rücktritt des Staatssekretärs Daniel Driscoll, der für das US-Heer zuständig war. Hintergrund sind die anhaltenden Differenzen mit US-Verteidigungsminister Pete Hegseth. Bühler ordnet die Entwicklung als Teil einer größeren Umstrukturierung der US-Streitkräfte ein und beschreibt die Folgen für Führung, Modernisierung und Einsatzbereitschaft der US-Army. Außerdem geht es um weitere Personalentscheidungen in Washington, den Umgang mit militärischer Expertise in politischen Entscheidungsprozessen sowie die Frage, ob die derzeitigen Spannungen die Handlungsfähigkeit der Vereinigten Staaten in internationalen Krisen beeinträchtigen könnten.Wenn Sie Fragen haben: Schreiben Sie an general@mdraktuell.de oder rufen Sie kostenfrei an unter 0800 6373737. Info: Die nächste Ausgabe von "Was tun, Herr General?" ist für den 23. September 2026 geplant.

On today's Wednesday show Ryan and Emily speak to Former Pentagon official David Pyne about the merging of the Israel U.S. militaries. After we look at Kash Patel's latest hearing on a myriad of topics and finally Ryan speaks to Yemeni journalist Hussain Al-Bukhaiti about the Houthis. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A conference in San Francisco hears from Open AI's boss, Sam Altman, who says the world should trust his industry's ability to do the right thing, amid concerns that it's developing too quickly. But speakers at a rival conference held in Washington, DC, call for greater regulation. Also: the Pentagon issues a report which says the Iran war has left the US military with a shortfall of munitions. All support acts for the British singer, Ed Sheeran, withdraw from his US tour in solidarity with Macklemore, who was dropped from the line-up for making pro-Palestinian remarks. Villagers in England voice their anger about immigration by holding a symbolic referendum to leave the UK. And the mother in the US who's been put on the child abuse and neglect register for allowing her five-year-old son to go on a walk by himself.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk Photo: A control unit at a semiconductor factory, used to power AI data centers. Credit: FILIP SINGER/EPA/Shutterstock

A.M. Edition for Sept. 16. The EU top's executive proposes making Canada the bloc's first associate member as traditional U.S. allies forge stronger ties in the face of tensions with the Trump administration. Plus, WSJ correspondent Jared Malsin details how the U.S. is burning through its interceptors to counter Iran. And, we tee up one of the most consequential Fed rate decisions in recent memory. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels are on a rapid offensive in Yemen, seizing the port of Mokha and the islands of Mayun, Perim, and Hanish, all in or around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world's most important oil chokepoints. A former Pentagon official called it "the cork in the Red Sea bottle," warning it threatens Saudi oil exports and could push global fuel prices up. Trump has threatened "major military punishment" for Iran over future attacks. Is the world's oil supply now in rebel hands?

The 60 Minutes Propaganda Machine. No Pressers Since May. with Dan Lamothe  The Pentagon has gone dark. No press conferences since May. No real embeds in an active shooting conflict. Four-star generals pushed into retirement with a short phone call and no explanation. An Army Secretary out. Polygraphs on the table. And a 60 Minutes segment that played less like accountability journalism and more like a Hegseth highlight reel. Washington Post national security reporter Dan Lamothe returns for his 11th appearance to walk Paul through what it actually looks like to cover Pete Hegseth's Pentagon in 2026 — and why the propaganda machine is only getting louder. Paul and Dan get into the purge of senior officers around Dan Driscoll, the JD Vance-Driscoll axis and what it means for 2028, the paid "military influencers" quietly on the Pentagon payroll while attacking reporters online, and General Dan Cain's growing credibility problem after Trump falsely placed him in the room at a partisan event. They also dig into the story nobody in the building wants to touch: what is the Pentagon actually doing about AI, and does anyone in leadership grasp the threat the way earlier generations grasped nukes? This is the kind of no-BS, intelligence-grade conversation you won't get in a five-minute cable hit. -WATCH full video of this episode here. -Millions of American veterans are being locked out of primary elections in the country they served. See what we're doing to change that. -Visit Kalshi and trade on anything. Use code INDEPENDENT to get $25 when you trade $25. -Head to cozyearth.com and use the code AMERICANS for an exclusive 20% off. -Join Noble Mobile today and get a $100 bonus when you use code PAUL and stay a member for 2 months! -Join IVA and help us get independent veterans elected to office. -Learn more about Paul's work to elect a new generation of independent leaders with Independent Veterans of America. -Learn more about American Veterans for Ukraine here. -Remember Independent is an Attitude. -Learn more about The Headstrong Project for Veterans, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and Department of Veterans Affairs resources in your area. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness. It's a show of strength. If you or a loved one are in immediate crisis, dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255. Connect with Independent Americans: Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all podcast platforms Read more at Substack Support ad-free episodes at Patreon  Connect: Instagram  • X/Twitter • BlueSky • Facebook  Follow on social: @PaulRieckhoff on X, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky -Join the movement. Hook into our exclusive Patreon community of Independent Americans. Get extra content, connect with guests, meet other Independent Americans, attend events, get merch discounts, and support this show that speaks truth to power.  -And get cool IA and Righteous hats, t-shirts and other merch now in time for the new year.  Independent Americans is powered by veteran-owned and led Righteous Media.  And now part of the BLEAV network!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Defense Department's Under Secretary for Research and Engineering and CTO, Emil Michael, joins Squawk on the Street as the AI pacing debate intensifies, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei doubling down at Dreamforce on the need for a slowdown. Michael leading the Pentagon's decision to blacklist Anthropic earlier this year. Plus, it's Fed decision day, with former Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart discussing the outlook for rates. And one industry executive sounds the alarm over soaring fuel costs, comparing the spike to something out of a “science fiction movie.”Squawk on the Street Disclaimer Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

No in-studio guest tonight, just CannCon and Ashe in America playing prosecutor as they roll the tape on David Becker's members-only town hall, the one Ashe tried to record and got 49 minutes of silence for her trouble, now recovered from the group's own YouTube. They pick apart his victory-lap framing that the DOJ is a perfect zero for 23 in voter-data cases, his turnout sleight of hand, and a candid admission that even the government's own analysis shows non-citizen voting almost never happens. Along the way they hit the ERIC-to-CEIR data handoff, the identity-theft "holy trinity," and why NGOs and China get the rolls but the administration cannot. Then it's part two: the Supreme Court's mail-in ballot order and a close read of Justice Alito's dissent, including a wrinkle that surprised even them. Plus a 9/11 Pentagon debate, meatball sliders, and guard week chaos.

Critical minerals form the foundation of modern defense and commercial technologies, from fighter aircraft and missile systems to satellites, batteries, and advanced electronics. As global supply chains remain vulnerable to disruption and critical mineral processing remains concentrated overseas, securing reliable access to these materials has become an increasingly important challenge for the U.S. industrial base.In this episode of Emerging Tech Horizons, Dr. Arun Seraphin speaks with Brett Lambert, Executive Chairman of VaultCo and Managing Director of the Densmore Group, about the effort to strengthen U.S. access to critical minerals. They discuss Lambert's experience shaping manufacturing and industrial policy at the Pentagon, the creation of Project Vault and VaultCo, and how a public-private approach can help address vulnerabilities across critical mineral supply chains.Key topics include:- How critical mineral dependencies can create vulnerabilities across the defense and commercial industrial base.- How VaultCo's demand-driven model is designed to create a strategic “stock buffer” of critical minerals and connect industry demand with available supply.- The differences between VaultCo's approach and traditional government stockpiles, and how it complements other federal efforts to strengthen critical mineral supply chains.- Why expanding domestic and allied processing capacity will be essential to building a more resilient industrial base, and how government and private-sector investments can work together to address these challenges.NDIA Emerging Technologies Institute: https://www.ndiaeti.orgBe sure to follow us on social media for updates, early access to upcoming events, inside scoops, & more:LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4htROo0Twitter: https://bit.ly/48LHAx3Facebook: https://bit.ly/47vlht8And for more podcasts, articles, & publications covering all things emerging tech, visit: ndiaeti.org#CriticalMinerals #DefenseIndustrialBase #SupplyChain #NationalSecurity #EmergingTechnology

【欢迎订阅】 每天早上5:30，准时更新。 【阅读原文】 标题：A Judge Has Blocked the Pentagon's Attempt to Blacklist Anthropic正文：A federal judge has blocked the Pentagon's attempt to blacklist Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind Claude, ruling that the T administration's actions were unlawful. US District Judge Rita Lin overturned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's decision to designate Anthropic a national-security “supply-chain risk”, a label that threatened its work with the Pentagon and other government contractors.The ruling marked a striking victory for a company that, only months earlier, had been one of the US military's important AI partners.知识点：overturn v. /ˌəʊvəˈtɜːn/· 英文释义：to reverse a decision or ruling, especially in a legal context· 中文释义：推翻（决定、判决）· 文中意：法官推翻了国防部长将Anthropic列为供应链风险的决定· 例句一：The Supreme Court overturned the lower court's ruling on the privacy case. 最高法院推翻了下级法院对这起隐私案的裁决。· 例句二：The board voted to overturn the CEO's controversial hiring decision. 董事会投票推翻了首席执行官那项备受争议的用人决定。【节目介绍】 《早安英文-每日外刊精读》，带你精读最新外刊，了解国际最热事件：分析语法结构，拆解长难句，最接地气的翻译，还有重点词汇讲解。 所有选题均来自于《经济学人》《纽约时报》《华尔街日报》《华盛顿邮报》《大西洋月刊》《科学杂志》《国家地理》等国际一线外刊。 【适合谁听】 1、关注时事热点新闻，想要学习最新最潮流英文表达的英文学习者 2、任何想通过地道英文提高听、说、读、写能力的英文学习者 3、想快速掌握表达，有出国学习和旅游计划的英语爱好者 4、参加各类英语考试的应试者（如大学英语四六级、托福雅思、考研等） 【你将获得】 1、超过1000篇外刊精读课程，拓展丰富语言表达和文化背景 2、逐词、逐句精确讲解，系统掌握英语词汇、听力、阅读和语法 3、每期内附学习笔记，包含全文注释、长难句解析、疑难语法点等，帮助扫除阅读障碍。

Rear Admiral Kavon "Hak" Hakimzadeh has flown E-2 Hawkeyes off carrier decks, commanded a carrier strike group, and racked up over 3,300 flight hours and 850 arrested landings. Now he's running Norfolk Naval Shipyard — the oldest and largest public shipyard in the country. ADM Foggo sits down with him to talk about the journey from flight deck to dry dock, the toughest lessons from five Pentagon tours, and what it takes to lead one of the Navy's most critical industrial commands.Season 5 of Maritime Nation is produced in partnership with Johnson Group Defense.

NATO jets shoot down a drone in Lithuanian airspace, A Pentagon inspector confirms the Iran war has led to U.S. munitions shortfalls, Massie moves to impeach Hegseth over the Iran war, an inquiry finds that some of the infant deaths in the U.K.'s Lucy Letby case could have been prevented, the U.S. confirms It has deployed weapons in space, Ukraine's prime minister warns that the country's finances are nearing a 'critical point,' Venezuela's Rodríguez reportedly plans to attend next week's U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. Supreme Court blocks new postal mail ballot rules, China enacts new rules allowing exit bans over security concerns, and a 'Pro-Human Assembly' in Washington brings together Sanders and Bannon to discuss AI risks. Sources: Verity.News

“What's Buggin' You” segment for Wednesday 9-16-26

P.M. Edition for Sept. 15. The annual Census report on households' financial well-being showed that median household income notched a new record last year. But as WSJ economics reporter Rachel Wolfe explains, not all Americans are seeing the gains. Plus, a landmark bill that would regulate the crypto industry failed in a procedural vote in the Senate. We hear from reporter Vicky Ge Huang about where the measure goes from here. And the Kennedy Center's board voted to close the venue for renovations, even as President Trump threatened to block them over a naming dispute. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of The President's Daily Brief:• The United States makes a historic admission that it has weapons in orbit, with the Pentagon publicly revealing the capability as it seeks to send a message to China and Russia.• The Pentagon's inspector general warns that Operation Epic Fury has depleted key U.S. munitions stocks, raising questions about how quickly the military can rebuild its arsenal for another major conflict.To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President's Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com.Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybriefHomeServe: Protect your home systems from expensive repairs with https://HomeServe.com/dailybriefand get 50% off your first year of coverage.Brunt Workwear: Get $10 Off at BRUNT with code PDB at https://www.bruntworkwear.com/PDB#BruntpodSundays for Dogs: Upgrade your dog's food without the hassle—try Sundays for Dogs and get 30% off your first order at https://sundaysfordogs.com/PDB or use code PDB at checkout.

An institution at war is being hollowed out from the inside. As many as 80 generals and admirals have been fired or had their promotions blocked. Trusted mentors with decades of combat leadership have been purged with no explanation. Key positions sit empty for months while deployments stretch to record lengths and munitions run short. Paul Rieckhoff joins MS NOW's Alicia Menendez and Pentagon reporter Priya Sridhar to lay out what's really happening under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — and why it should alarm every American, regardless of party. This episode also unpacks the 60 Minutes segment that put two rescued crew members on camera after their F/A-18 went down behind enemy lines to a $100,000 missile — a segment Hegseth reportedly pushed for. Paul calls it what it is: propaganda, prime time, with a compliant network carrying water for a Secretary who seems more interested in running for president than caring for the troops. From the culture-war purge of women, people of color, and now decorated white special forces veterans, to Chairman Dan Cain's dramatic retreat from the traditional advisory role, this is a no-BS breakdown of a Pentagon in crisis. -WATCH full video of this episode here. -Millions of American veterans are being locked out of primary elections in the country they served. See what we're doing to change that. -Visit Kalshi and trade on anything. Use code INDEPENDENT to get $25 when you trade $25. -Head to cozyearth.com and use the code AMERICANS for an exclusive 20% off. -Join Noble Mobile today and get a $100 bonus when you use code PAUL and stay a member for 2 months! -Join IVA and help us get independent veterans elected to office. -Learn more about Paul's work to elect a new generation of independent leaders with Independent Veterans of America. -Learn more about American Veterans for Ukraine here. -Remember Independent is an Attitude. -Learn more about The Headstrong Project for Veterans, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and Department of Veterans Affairs resources in your area. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness. It's a show of strength. If you or a loved one are in immediate crisis, dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255. Connect with Independent Americans: Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all podcast platforms Read more at Substack Support ad-free episodes at Patreon  Connect: Instagram  • X/Twitter • BlueSky • Facebook  Follow on social: @PaulRieckhoff on X, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky -Join the movement. Hook into our exclusive Patreon community of Independent Americans. Get extra content, connect with guests, meet other Independent Americans, attend events, get merch discounts, and support this show that speaks truth to power.  -And get cool IA and Righteous hats, t-shirts and other merch now in time for the new year.  Independent Americans is powered by veteran-owned and led Righteous Media.  And now part of the BLEAV network!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

September 15, 2026 – 5am:Supreme Court rejects Trump's vote by mail restrictionsTrump dismisses AI concerns as a 'hoax'Trump privately met with OpenAI's Sam Altman in Dallas‘Clarity Act' crypto regulation bill nears Senate voteMitch McConnell returns to Senate after long absencePentagon watchdog releases report on impact of Iran warWhistleblower: DHS voter probe may have broken state lawsNewsom says he won't run for President in 2028 if Harris doesWAPO: Alligator Alcatraz detainees put in small cagesVeteran Leela Gray to face GOP Rep. Luna in November78th Annual Emmy Awards recap To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

War Room Massie Moves To Impeach Hegseth For ‘High Crimes & Misdemeanors,' Trump Calls Butler Assassination Attempt A ‘Dem Plot,' John Kennedy Introducing Bill To Require ‘Kill Switch' On AI Models & Pentagon Confirms It Has Weapons Deployed In Space

-AI overlords hype up sci-fi harms of their tech, ignore real harms -Trump admin. commits to climate chaos, repeals power plant rules -Pentagon official admits U.S. has weapons in space -SHOCKING: Mitch McConnell alive??

Bibi is in hot water. The Pentagon is thinking hard about its future in the Middle East. Electronic shelf labels are coming for your wallet. An Albany County sheriff commits some serious time theft. And a handful a wildflowers, because we love you.   https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-09-08/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/netanyahu-got-an-explicit-warning-before-oct-7-he-didnt-brief-security-chiefs/000001a0-7a3b-d7d5-a9fc-7eff3d0f0000   https://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-warnings-to-netanyahu-ahead-of-oct-7-massacre-shatter-his-core-political-defense/   https://www.canadianaffairs.news/2026/09/05/in-cod-we-trust/   https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-are-extremely-popular-56-million-workers-would-join-a-union-if-they-could/    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/09/electronic-shelf-labels-grocery   https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/sheriff-albany-county-investigator-charged-22424123.php // https://www.reddit.com/r/Albany/s/S8wUZFdmoa    https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/08/politics/us-military-intelligence-bases-troops-middle-east   https://nysfocus.com/2026/09/09/upstate-new-york-bike-lanes-cycling-infrastructure

00:00 Intro01:09 Analyst: China's New Law 'Wake-Up Call' for Pentagon01:37 Expert: Revision Allows China to Seize Western Business Assets02:13 Analyst: China Increases Resilience to Deal With Long War02:56 Global South Pushes for Local Currency Trade04:17 Trump Weighs Risks: China, Self-Improving AI06:49 Anthropic: CCP Uses AI to Target, Surveil Dissidents09:23 Lawmakers Weigh Legislation to Address AI Threat11:19 Trump Responds to Allegation of China–Iran Cooperation12:43 Panamanian Lawmakers Growing Closer to Taiwan14:11 Putin Declares European Forces in Ukraine Targets If Sent

The lessons I carried away from September 11 did not begin that day, and they certainly did not end there. In this solo episode, I reflect on how my parents taught me not to accept the limits others placed on blindness, how my guide dogs taught me about trust and teamwork, and how September 11 confirmed so much of what I already believed about fear, leadership, change, and possibility. I share why I work hard not to worry about things I cannot control, why I believe we can never truly go back to “normal,” and why strong teams are built through trust rather than control. I also challenge some of the ways we think about blindness and disability, because different does not mean less capable. I hope these lessons help you think differently about fear, change, leadership, and what it really means to live with an unstoppable mindset. Highlights: 00:46 – Why the lessons of September 11 began long before that day. 08:56 – How Michael learned that blindness is not the real barrier. 17:13 – Why focusing on what you can control can reduce fear. 24:28 – Why getting back to “normal” is not always the answer. 32:30 – What guide dogs taught Michael about trust and teamwork. 1:01:37 – Why disability does not mean a lack of ability. About the Host: Michael Hingson, blind since birth, was born in Chicago to sighted parents who believed in raising their son with a can-do attitude. Treated like all other children in his family, Michael rode a bike did advanced math in his head and learn to read and write – Braille that is! Michael's family relocated to the warm Palmdale area of California when he was five years old. It is here that Hingson had his first adventure with Guide Dogs for the Blind and received his first guide dog. He later went to college receiving a bachelor's and master's degree in Physics along with a secondary teaching credential from the University of California at Irvine. Michael then enjoyed a nearly-30-year career working for high tech companies spending most of his time in management roles. Michael Hingson's life changed dramatically on September 11, 2001 when he and his guide dog, Roselle, escaped from the 78th floor of Tower One in the World Trade Center moments before it collapsed. Soon after, Michael and Roselle were thrust into the international limelight where Michael began to share his unique survival story and 9-11 lessons of trust, courage, heroism, and teamwork. Mike has served as The National Public Affairs Director for one of the largest Nonprofit organizations in the nation: Guide Dogs for the Blind; He has served as the vice president of the National Association of Guide Dog Users; Michael has held a seat on the Fort Worth Lighthouse for the Blind. He is the chair of the board of directors of the Earle Baum Center for the Blind  and is the vice chair of the Colorado Center for the Blind; Michael is The National Ambassador for the Braille Literacy Campaign of the National Federation of the Blind. Until October 2019 he worked as the CEO of the Do More Foundation, the non-profit arm of Aira Tech Corp, a manufacturer of assistive technology which makes a revolutionary visual interpreter for blind people. In January 2021 Mike joined accessiBe as its Chief Vision Officer to help advance the company goal of making the entire internet fully inclusive. He held this position through June of 2026. He is the author of the #1 New York Times Best Seller: “Thunder dog –The True Story of a Blind Man, a Guide Dog & the Triumph of Trust” – selling over 2.5 million copies Worldwide. In 2013 Mr. Hingson published his 2 book “Running with Roselle”- which Is the first of its kind- A story for our youth shedding light on one of Americas Darkest Days. Mr. Hingson's third book, “Live Like A Guide Dog”, was released on August 20, 2024. This book shows readers how they can learn to control fear and not, as Mike would say, “become blinded by fear in the face of crisis”. Aside from his talents and advocacies, Mr. Hingson has traveled the Globe from Japan to New Zealand, the Netherlands to his hometown, Chicago. Speaking to some of the world's most elite: from former President, George W. Bush to Larry King, to Fortune 500 companies and colleges and Universities Nationwide. After sharing his story of survival on hundreds of TV and Radio programs, Michael is now an Expert hired by many of today's major corporations and organizations. Speaking and consulting on the importance of Teamwork and Trust, Moving from Diversity to Inclusion, as well as offering Adaptive Technology Training – spearheading innovation for ALL! - Thus, bringing organizations to the forefront of the ever-changing competitive modern world. In June, 2024 Mike was inducted as an alumni member into the honors Fraternity Phi Beta Kappa. Currently Michael lives in Victorville, California with Alamo, Michael's eighth guide dog and his rescue feline, Stitch. More information on Mr. Hingson is available on his website. Here also is a link to Mr. Hingson's press kit: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/q8uxu9u7pap4puj5de7rg/h?rlkey=22bziy0wmghf8111kad73685y&dl=0 http://www.michaelhingson.com/live-like-a-guide-dog www.michaelhingson.com www.michaelhingson.com/podcast Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/mhingson https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://www.facebook.com/Roselle911GuideDog/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1568642850718948 https://www.facebook.com/?paipv=0&eav=AfZNi2VDR2R4nC6SveyCvZIyKtyi9VOLOzOKcG-v0Hk1glaVssEHwdR920w1_u-8B-k&_rdr https://www.facebook.com/?paipv=0&eav=AfZNi2VDR2R4nC6SveyCvZIyKtyi9VOLOzOKcG-v0Hk1glaVssEHwdR920w1_u-8B-k&_rdr Twitter, https://twitter.com/mhingson LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson Youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfCx2L9OVN38Dv4mX6udP8g Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Well, hello, everyone. I am Michael Hingson. I am your host on Unstoppable Mindset, and this happens to be episode 475. Yeah, we've done a lot of these, and most all of them have been conversations with people who said that they wanted to come on the podcast and talk about one thing or another. And I was really pleased to have them. This episode is going to be a little bit different, as the last few have been. Episode 472, which we published on September 4, was a talk I gave in April of 2024, which told my story of being in the World Trade Center on september 11, on episode 473 on the eighth of September, Michelle Abraham interviewed me, and we talked about a number of things around september 11 and so on. Episode 474, which was published on the 11th of September, 2026. was a conversation with Bob Ellis, who was in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, an escape, and we hear his story, and we got to chat and kind of talked about notes from both of us. Now it's episode 475, and it was suggested that I ought to talk about things that I learned from September 11th and how my life has changed, and I'm going to do the best I can to talk about all that. So you're just going to be hearing me today. I hope you won't go away. I hope that you'll enjoy it. I just returned from speaking all week from September 9th through September 11th in Kilgore, Texas, at Kilgore College, they did an incredible job of doing some things to help people become aware of September 11th. They actually had in the library and around the library at Kilgore College a monument to September 11th. They had some columns or portions of columns from the World Trade Center. They had a list of all of the names. They had flags in a in a in several rows with the names of all of the people who were lost on September 11th. They had a timeline from my book Thunderdog: The Story of a Blind man, his guide dog, and the triumph of trust at Ground Zero-a timeline of what I experienced, and they also had, I think, a timeline of just the World Trade Center events in in general. Well, okay, so all of that happened. I got back last night, and now here it is, Sunday. It is the 13th of September, and I'm recording this so that we can publish it on Tuesday, september 15. So that's a little bit of a long way to get to where we are. But as I said, people asked me to talk about what I learned that day, and how I proceeded and progressed from that day, but I have to go back to long before September 11th to really do everything justice and to put it all in context. So let me start this way. I believe that I have said a few times on this podcast, and certainly in some of the speeches that I've given, that I was born two months premature, and I was given a pure oxygen environment when I was born, because I was born early. Medical science had started to hear that even too much oxygen might not necessarily be a good thing, but the doctors in Chicago where I was born didn't buy into that concept yet, and so the result was I was given a pre-oxygen environment, and my retinas didn't develop as they should, and I became blind. So was I born blind? If you're very technical, no. But for all intents and purposes, yes. The doctors told my parents to send me to a home, to send me away, because no blind child could ever. Michael Hingson  04:59 Grow up to amount to anything, and all I would be would would end up being a drain on my family, sucking up all the love that my parents might have had for their older son, two years older than I, my brother Ellery. But the reality is, my parents said you're wrong. He can grow up to do whatever he chooses, and we're going to give him that opportunity. And I grew up with that idea. I grew up with that concept. My parents told me at some point when I was still fairly young about what the doctors had said, and they said, "You know, we think that you can do whatever you want. We want you to have that opportunity. Well, they did a number of things to help the process along. For example, we lived in Chicago until I was five, but at the age of four, typically children in in Illinois start or in Chicago start kindergarten, and I did as well. My parents worked with other parents and the school district to start a kindergarten class for children who were blind, and there were a number of preemies in the Chicago area. In that class, Miss Lapree, my teacher, taught me Braille. See, I remember her name. Taught me Braille. Taught me other skills. Taught the other blind kids because it was a kindergarten class for blind children. Taught us all a variety of different things that we could use, and then unfortunately, in a sense, I guess after kindergarten at the age of four, and it was over, my father had gotten an offer and took a job out in California, and we moved to California. Well, in California, kindergarten starts at five, and even though I had had a course in kindergarten already, I had to go through a second year of it, but we didn't have any kind of facilities to teach us or teach me about Braille going forward, getting me Braille books and so on. So kindergarten, first, second, and third grade, I didn't have access directly to textbook material. My parents helped me though. My father taught me math. He was an electronics and electrical engineer. I was doing algebra in my head by the time I was six. My mother read other assignments to me, taught me the spelling words because in first, second, and third grade you learned to spell, and in theory beyond third grade as well, of course. But what happened for me was that I learned about spelling by my mother teaching me how to spell the words, and then she would say the words, and then I would spell them. Well, that ended up going even further because typically in classrooms, what happened was that when it came time to take the actual spelling test, which happened on Fridays, the teacher would say the words. All of us or all the children in the class would write down the answers. Then we would exchange papers, and the teacher would then write the correct spellings on the board. Not in my class. I had to. Well, I got to get up. I. I don't want to say I had to. That's a lesson that I want to get to. wasn't that I had to get up. I got to get up, and actually spell the words out loud. I remember once missing a word, at least starting to miss a word, and somebody made a noise, and I realized, oh, that must be wrong, and I corrected it. But I learned how to spell words, and I learned to spell them out loud for the whole class, and not be afraid of them, and that way students could grade each other's papers. And so, in a sense, I could say that's where I started to learn how to be involved in doing public speaking, and I learned not to be afraid of standing up and and saying things as long as they were the right kinds of things. Well, between third and fourth grade, I got access to Braille books. Cora Hershberger was hired by the school district to come in. She was a resource teacher with training in dealing with blindness and blind kids and so on. Michael Hingson  08:56 And there were a number of us, and she she was able to get us books, she was able to work with each of us and prove our Braille skills and my Braille skills especially, and so on. So I tell you all of that because I want to put things in perspective, and I think that the most important thing is the doctors told my parents that I couldn't do anything. My parents said, "Of course he can, and they brought me up believing that I could. So I rode a bicycle to school. Everybody still thinks that's amazing. One of the important things that I have learned over the years, and I've learned to articulate it even more effectively. I hope, certainly, I believe better since the World Trade Center, and I became a full-time keynote public speaker, which I've been doing for 25 years, I have learned to discuss this whole concept of blindness and accept the fact that there are going to be a lot of people who have eyesight who get it wrong. They think that, like the doctor said, blind people really can't do anything. You can't absorb the same material, or at least you don't get the same. As sighted people do, so you really aren't going to be able to do the things that we can do. And I have learned that I can't be angry at that. I've learned that in reality, I need to articulate the fact that blindness isn't the problem. The problem happens to be the misconceptions and poor attitudes that people have about blindness. It would be so easy just to be upset every time I hear some comment that talks about what I can do and what I can't do. You can't really ride a bicycle. That's amazing that you could do that. I can't imagine anybody else doing it. I know lots of blind kids who rode bikes, and I'm sure that they still do. Blindness isn't the problem. The reality is the problem consists of the misconceptions and poor attitudes that sighted people have about blindness. Whether you like it or not, that's the way it is. Blindness isn't the problem. We can learn to do the same things pretty much that you can do, and we can learn to do things that you can't do, and we learn all of that and use that knowledge to help us move forward and be more effective. What can I do that you can't do? Try walking around in the dark. You can't do it. You don't know how to do it. You don't have the techniques to do it. One of the things that has cropped up over the past significant number of years is restaurants do something called dining in the dark. Dining in the dark, and there are organizations that promote that, and they say, "Oh, you get to learn how blind people eat and how much of a challenge it is. That is so disgusting that people do that because dying in the dark isn't going to teach you anything about blindness. You don't get the training that you need in order to function as a blind person. Just like I don't get the training to learn how to function as a sighted person. Although I've spent a lot of time observing sighted people, and I understand a lot about eyesight, and I understand what you can do, and I accept that. But I expect, and I think it is reasonable for you to understand and accept that I can do lots of things. That it's not about eyesight. I wrote a book in 20, and it was published by Thomas Nelson Publishing in 2011. I and Susie Florey wrote the book. It's called Thunderdog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dogs, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero. And there is a section near the end of the book called Guide Dog Wisdom. And number two in Guide Dog Wisdom includes a sentence that says, "Don't let your sight get in the way of your vision. You all strictly deal with eyesight, and if it's not something that you can see with your eyes, or you don't really separate eyesight from vision, you tend to really misunderstand so many things. But the reality is, don't let your sight get in the way of your vision. Recognize there's a whole lot more to life than eyesight. Michael Hingson  13:01 SEAL Team Six, other military teams, so many other people learn how to use those other senses, and that's the same thing that we as blind people do. We learn to use our other senses. They're not magically enhanced simply because we go blind, but rather we learn how to use those senses? I hope, or we try to, and by doing so, we improve them and we develop them. And those of us who truly do that are a lot more better off, and we're able to do so many things that people think are amazing, but they're not. They're not really amazing. They're certainly not amazing to me. Anyway, I grew up believing all of that, and of course, I was also very fortunate to have a number of jobs throughout my career. And the final result of all of that was I ended up getting the opportunity to open an office in the World Trade Center for Quantum ATL, the company that hired me to open an office in New York, and there we were on September 11th when everything happened. The night, as September 11th ended, was spent by me and my wife Karen. By the way, Karen was in a wheelchair her whole life. We got married in November of 1982, and we were married through into November of 2022. We were married 40 years. Karen was in a wheelchair her whole life. It was a great marriage, as I love to tell people. She read, I pushed, worked out well. How do I push a person in a wheelchair? Well, she used a manual chair, and when we got to curbs and so on, she would stop, and she would hold the wheels, and and I knew that she had stopped. And I would tip the chair back. She might say, "There's a curb. I would tip the chair back onto its back wheels. We'd roll down off the curb, put the chair down. We'd cross the street, tip the chair up. Front wheels go up on the curb on the other side, unless there was a ramp to go up. And we continued on our way. It's not that magical. It is just what I learned to do, and I enjoyed it. and And I enjoyed Karen's company and so on for 40 years. We were locked down during the pandemic and so on. We'll get to some of that in a bit. But I learned overall that in reality, what my parents taught me was true. Blindness wasn't going to be the problem; eyesight was going to be the problem. And that night after September 11th, we kind of tried to make sense of it. It was me and Karen and a friend of Karen's who I also got to know, and who became a friend of mine. Tom Painter had come down. Tom and Karen went to the same high school, but we all ended up in New Jersey. And Tom came to visit us, actually visit Karen after September 11th started. When he heard about the terrorist attacks, he just came down, not knowing whether I was in the office or not. But I was, and Karen and Tom, well, Tom stayed with Karen and and drove her to pick me up at the Westfield, New Jersey train station at about 7p.m. on september 11. We went home with my guide dog Roselle. When we got home, I took Roselle's harness off because I was going to take her outside. She would have none of it. She ran off. She grabbed her favorite tug bone and started playing tug of war with my retired guide dog Linnie. Well, that was kind of fun, and I didn't think a lot about it. But I went. That was interesting. The next day, I contacted Guide Dogs for the Blind because several people from there had visited us in the World Trade Center, and among others, I spoke to the head of the veterinary department, and I said, "So, tell me, how is all this going to affect Roselle? Because everybody's talking about how it's going to affect everyone and all that, and and he asked me, "Did anything threaten directly Roselle? Did anything really threaten her? And I said, No, not really. Nothing directly affected her. And he said, Well, there you go. Dogs don't do what if. They live in the moment. Michael Hingson  17:13 And when you took the harness off, it was over for her, and she was ready to go play. She wanted to relax. She wanted to play, and she did. Oh, and yes, we did eventually get her outside. But the bottom line is, I think that's one of the most important things that I learned coming out of September 11th, and I, I kind of knew it beforehand, but I really got to understand it afterward. We what if everything to death? We what if anything that comes into our lives, well, we're we're in a war with Iran. Well, what if Iran bombs us? What if Iran does this? What if the Hooties do that? What are we going to do? What if our government takes us to war in the first place? Well, they have. The bottom line is, though, we don't have control over all of that. We do have control over some things in our lives, and those are the things that we should worry about. We should stop worrying about everything else. And people say, "Well, it's natural to worry. No, it's not. Not any more natural to worry than it is not to worry. We learn to worry because we're taught that. But the bottom line is, if we learn only to focus on the things over which we truly have control, and be aware of the other things, but don't let them worry us. Don't let them cause fear in our lives. We will live much less fearful and much more stress-free lives than in any other way. If you want another example of why I believe this, on September 11th, David Frank, my colleague who had come in to be involved with the seminars, David had come in the night before, and he came to our office about 8o'clock in the morning on the 11th of September. When we were escaping from the towers, we ended up downstairs and outside. David saw fire in Tower Two, and the way we happened to walk took us very close to Tower Two. We were at Broadway and Vessi Street, maybe 100 yards away from Tower Two. And when David stopped, he said, "You know, there's fire in Tower Two. I want to take pictures of it. And and I also wanted to try to call my wife Karen to let her know that we had gotten out of the towers, I couldn't get through. The circuits were busy because, as we later learned, people were calling and talking to loved ones. But anyway, David had just started putting his camera away. I had put my phone away, and a police officer yelled, "Get out of here! It's coming down right now! And we heard this sound I describe as kind of a combination of a freight train and a waterfall. I could hear glass breaking, metal clattering, and then just the building collapsing straight down. We didn't necessarily know that it was going to do that, but it did. It did exactly what it was designed to do. Anyway, everyone turned and ran. David ran. I turned 180 degrees. With Roselle, and started running back the other way. And as soon as I started to run, I thought to myself, "God, I can't believe that you got us out of a building just to have it fall on us. And I heard in my head a voice as clearly as you hear me right now-a voice that said, "Don't worry about what you can't control, focus on running with Roselle, and the rest will take care of itself. And I had this absolute sense of conviction that if we worked together, we would be fine. Well, we were. Where'd that voice come from? It was God talking to me. I grew up with my father very seriously believing in the concept of God. If you don't, that's fine. That is your choice. I've had people on my podcast who don't necessarily have strong beliefs and convictions about God. I do, but it's not my job to force people or compel people to believe in God. I will tell my story, and people can accept it or reject it as they choose. But that's what happened to me, and I've realized from that time on: don't worry about what you can't control. And I really, truly work very hard to focus on not worrying about the things that I don't have any influence over. Michael Hingson  21:16 I like to be aware of them. I hear from people all the time today about don't watch the news. I don't like to watch the news because it just makes me so angry and so fearful. And my response is, I'm going to watch the news because I want to know what's going on. And sometimes I'll yell at politicians through the TV, but I won't really overall get angry at them. I will hear it. I will either accept it or decide I don't have any influence over it, so I'm not going to worry about it, and I don't because it isn't going to help me to worry about it. It isn't going to help anyone else to worry about any of those kinds of things. Don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on what you can and leave the rest alone, and that's one of the basic premises of the third book that I wrote, which was published in 2024, entitled "Live Like a Guide Dog: True Stories from a Blind Man and His Dogs About Being Brave, Overcoming Adversity, and Moving Forward in Faith. And that book was written by me and Carrie Wyatt Kent. The book was published by Tyndale House, and is out there for people to to read. The first book was published by Thomas Nelson Publishing, which is now part of Harper Collins, and a lady, Jeanette Hanscom, and I wrote the second book, which is called Running with Roselle, which is really a book more for children, teaching them about me growing up, Roselle growing up, and how we met. A little bit about the World Trade Center. That one was self-published, but all three books are available wherever you can find books, so you can get them always from Amazon, of course. And so I hope that that you'll get them and read them. They will help. Live Like a Guide Dog probably is the best book for me to talk about in terms of things that I learned over the years, but if I really summarize mostly what happened for me after September 11th, it is that what happened on that day validated everything that I've believed about me. Certainly, what I believe about God, but it validates everything that I've ever thought about blindness, blind people, what we can do, the challenges we face, some of the issues that other people have, and the validation is certainly something that helped what I learned. But I learned other things along the way, and you know I want to talk about some of those things. The first, as I said, is don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on what you can, and let the rest take care of itself. Speaker 1  23:56 If you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes, thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. One Michael Hingson  24:28 of the things that happened to me almost immediately after September 11th is I started hearing people say, "We got to get back to normal. If we don't get back to normal, that's a problem. We got to get back to normal. And I always reacted internally, at least pretty negatively to that. And I finally realized why I reacted to that statement about we got to get back to normal. The reason I reacted to that statement, and I still react to to myself to that statement, is normal will never be the same again. We can't get back to normal. If we get back to normal the way it was prior to September 11th, the same thing will happen again. We can't do that. We have to get back to a different normal, and and in fact, normal is probably going to be an ongoing, constant process of change. We ought to learn not to fear that either. Change is all around us. We always say that, but then we don't like change. It's kind of a paradox. But the reality is, change is all around us. And what we really need to do is to learn how to focus in change. And we need to learn that in reality, we can deal with change. And if we have any influence over it, then we should do something about that too. But the bottom line is, getting back to normal prior to September 11th isn't going to help any of us, and and it isn't going to happen. So that is an one thing that I will say definitely. I learned from September 11th: normal will never be the same again. As I said a lot earlier, I think I probably learned about public speaking at least the beginning of it by doing the spelling tests and so on. But after September 11th, the media got my story, and that happened because Joanne Ritter, the public and information services person at the time at Guide Dogs wanted to write a story, and I kind of agreed. And I said, "That's fine. And then she said, "I'll bet you'll be on TV. What television show do you want to be on first? So I kind of just sort of flippantly said, "Larry King Live. That was on the 12th of September when I talked with her. On the 13th, she called back and she said, "Larry King wants you on his show on september 14, which was a Friday, and they sent a car to pick me up, and and I recall Karen and and Tom one as well, and anyway, we went into the World Trade Center, not to the World Trade Center, but we went into New York, and I appeared on CNN, which was the first of five interviews with Larry. Larry also, by the way, at my request, wrote the foreword for Thunderdog. So when you read Thunderdog, you'll get to read Larry's words as well. But after being on Larry King, the media really got my story, and a lot of things happened after that. I started getting literally calls every day for interviews. People wanted to talk to me about September 11th and ask questions and so on. And one of the things that I learned was that talking to reporters could be a great therapy because they would ask virtually any kind of question you can imagine. And of course, a lot of people said things like, "Well, did you know what happened on September 11th when it was happening? And I said no. And they said, well, of course you didn't. You're blind, you know. And my response is, anybody who says that really needs to not let their sight get in their way or their vision to be polite about it. The fact of the matter is, as we were going down the stairs, no one knew anything about what was going on. When I got into the stairwell, I began smelling an odor, and it took me four floors to realize I was smelling the fumes from burning jet fuel. I did a lot of travel for my company, and so I was in airports a lot. So I recognized that smell. People were speculating about what they were smelling. People were speculating about what was going on. Nobody had a clue. Michael Hingson  28:20 When I realized I was smelling jet fuel, I observed it to everyone around me, and they said, "You're right. That's what we're smelling. It's burning jet fuel. We must have been hit by an airplane. You see, no one knew. We had no clue. Superman and X-ray vision just aren't real. And the bottom line is, nobody knew what was actually happening on September 11th. Blindness have nothing to do with it. People want to feel more comfortable by saying, "Well, most people probably did know, but you're blind. You didn't know. We've got to get away from these habits of thinking that just because somebody is different than we are, that they're less than we are. That's just not true. In any case, the bottom line is that we we really deal with those kinds of things, and that helped me as as time went by recognize and realize that normal would never be the same again, and it validated more my belief that blindness isn't the problem; it's the misconceptions and poor attitudes that people have about blindness that tends to truly be the problem that we face. So, as I began to talk with reporters, I didn't think about what was actually happening. But later, I realized when people started saying, "Well, did you ever get counseling or therapy, and I said no. And then it just popped into my head to say I probably had the best therapy around. I got interviewed by hundreds of reporters that asked basically any question that you can imagine, and I learned to answer those questions without being upset, especially when they were asking pretty derogatory questions or making derogatory comments. Your dog led you down the stairs. No, my dog did not lead me down the stairs. Guide dogs do not lead; they guide. And I understand the definition of lead, but it's a little bit different than what people were truly saying. What they were saying is you didn't know anything, and the dog took you all the way down the stairs because the dog could see. No, in fact, Roselle didn't lead me. Roselle's job wasn't, and no guide dog's job is to lead a person or to take charge. The dog's job is to make sure that we walk safely. I also have a job on the team. My job is to make sure that I know where we're going and how to get there. A lot easier now than it was 25 years ago, but the bottom line is that I'm the one that has to direct the dog and give the dog commands, and the dog needs to make sure that we carry out those commands safely. We are a team; we work together. I've always kind of known that guide dog schools didn't necessarily early in my guide dog career, express it that way, but it's it's a much stronger statement now. They recognize that truly we're a team. We each have a job to do on the team, and we have to work together to make the team work, which is true of any team. I've mentioned Seal Team Six earlier. They're a team. They work together. The firefighters in the World Trade Center and the other people who who were around there worked as a team, and they had to work as a team in order to develop a level of trust and a relationship where essentially each person knew what the others on their team were going to do, and it gave them more of a confidence to be able to function. Teamwork is so crucial in our world, and I learned, and and again on September 11th, it was totally validated how teamwork is so important. Roselle and I worked together well. The firefighters worked together well. Yes, we lost people, but the team really is so important, and we need to recognize that anyone listening to this ought to work in any of the things that they do to develop teams. Being alone makes no sense; it isn't going to work. You're going to have to and should learn to work with other people to make teams work better. I've seen companies where when they have award ceremonies, the leader of a team or the boss of a team gets an award, but the rest of the team doesn't really get the same recognition. Michael Hingson  32:30 If a leader is truly doing a good job at creating a team and being a part of a team, then that leader is really enhancing everyone else on the team, and that leader is the person who should help to make sure that when awards are given, that everyone on a team is recognized. We need to to learn and realize that a team is a bunch of people. It's not just one people, but they learn to work together, and that is also so important. And as I learned more and more about the events of the World Trade Center, I learned and realized more about the whole understanding of teamwork and trust and the value of it. I knew about it with me and Roselle, and I recognized the concept of teamwork. But certainly, September 11th again validated that a whole lot more effectively than anything else that I could think of, but I worked with eight dogs over the years, and working with eight dogs from my first guide dog Squire, who was a golden retriever, up through my current guide dog Alamo, I've learned probably I think more than I ever learned from experts and teamwork and sales and so on and motivation. I learned more from those dogs than I ever learned from the human experts because of the fact that one, I had to build a team with a creature who didn't think the same way I did, who didn't talk the same language that I did, and that expected things from me, and and as one of the things that I've learned is that dogs who are guide dogs really want the human to be the pack leader because it is the pack leader, it is the human who's supposed to tell the dog what they want the dog to do, and dogs take that so incredibly seriously. I mentioned Linny. Well, I didn't mention her, I think, by name. But Lenny was my fourth guide dog, and we were out in in San Diego at a company meeting one Friday in May of 1999, and we came home. It was a Saturday morning that we got home. I flew a red eye home, fed Lenny, and then rested and and all that. But Saturday night, when it came time to feed Linny, I called her. She wouldn't come. Karen even called her. She wouldn't come. We went. Upstairs and found her lying on her bed, kind of really not very responsive. We got her to a veterinarian, and it took a few days for the veterinarian to diagnose what she had as something called glomerular nephritis, which is a disease where the kidneys, the glomeria of the kidneys, which would normally pass out bad stuff from the kidneys but not the good stuff. They were passing out the good stuff as well, and Lenny was was not doing well. We were able to reverse that, but she had to retire from being a guide dog. In fact, we thought in late June of 1999 that we were going to lose her. We went off to a a meeting, not a meeting, but we went off to a hotel to say goodbye to Linny, if you will, on like the second of July. But Linny didn't pass away then, and she did get better. And then Roselle came into our lives, and Roselle and Linny became really good friends, but I mention all of it because I had no clue what was happening to Linny. Guide dogs love their jobs; they take them very seriously. And the fact of the matter is, as I learned, and especially after September 11th, I learned that these dogs will work till they drop. They will. They will do everything they can to please us, because they love what we do. They love us, and we need to bestow the same kind of love on them, which is all part of what teamwork is all about. Well, the bottom line was with Linny. She was with us for three more years, and she got to play with Roselle a lot, and so on. Michael Hingson  36:41 Of course, as I also mentioned after September 11th, but I again, especially because of what happened to Linny, but then afterward on September 11th, I realized how much it was important for me to do all I could to keep the team relationship a positive, strong one, to recognize that in reality these dogs work so hard on their own part to make the team's relationships work. They they deal with what they have to deal with. They get very stressed if we're upset. They take it very personally if we get upset, even if we're not necessarily upset at them; they still take it very personally. The more stress that a guide dog faces in their lives, the harder it's going to be for them, and frankly, the shorter their lives are going to be. So I learned, even before September 11th, but especially after September 11th, to do all I could to keep the stress away from the dog. As we were going down the stairs on September 11th, I constantly encouraged and praised Roselle. What a good dog! Keep going. What a good job! Good girl, Roselle. Even if I wasn't able to hold the harness because the stairs were so crowded that Roselle couldn't walk next to me and had to walk behind me at heel, and I would just hold the leash. I kept praising her because I wanted her to know for her I was okay, and I had to focus on not being afraid and letting that fear come out. Well, I was fearful like anyone was, and in fact, I love to tell people. Being a great fan of science fiction, I have a great imagination, and I was listening for the building to make creaks and groans, and you never knew what was going to happen. Fortunately, it didn't all the way down. But the bottom line for me was that doing so kept me focused. And I and I learned later that while I might have been afraid on September 11th, partly because I was encouraging Roselle and working to sound very calm and confident, I was able to also help other people, but help Roselle and keep Roselle from being afraid and and being stressed. And I work very hard to do that with my guide dogs that I've had since even more than prior to September 11th. My current guide dog Alamo and I travel the world speaking all over the place, if you will. We've been to Israel. We've been well, actually, Alamo didn't get to go to London, but we've been to Israel with my seventh guide dog, Africa. We went to the Netherlands, Alamo and I have been to Wisconsin. I've been to a variety of places, and of course, all around the the world, all around the United States, to Canada, everywhere. And again, I don't necessarily know a lot about where we're going in advance, but I ask a lot of questions so that I can learn where we're going to go, so that I can give the dogs the appropriate commands. I mentioned Wisconsin's. I've been all over the United States. It's been an honor, and I'm going to continue to do that. If anybody wants a public speaker to come and talk to their organization, please reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you. My email address is really simple. It's speaker@michaelhinkson.com. We'll put that in the show notes, and love to hear from you. So anyway, I learned a lot about teamwork from working with eight guide dogs, and I continue to learn every day. I think it's very important for me to learn and to focus all that I can to make sure that I do what it is that's necessary to make a team work, and I believe it is all about the team. I've mentioned that I've written three books, and each one was a collaboration with someone else: Susie Florey with Thunderdog, Jeanette Hanscom with Running with Roselle and Carrie Wyatt Kent with Live Like a Guide Dog, and and the fact of the matter is those collaborations I think were very important. Michael Hingson  40:49 They made the books come out a lot different than I might have imagined them coming out by themselves and the way I would have written them without having collaboration, and probably Live Like a guide dog more than more than the other two, just because of the way it all went. But with live like a guide dog, we focused on each of my my guide dogs and the lessons that we learned. So I mentioned Squire, who I worked with in high school and then went to college with Squire, and Squire was was all around where wherever I was. One night in a dorm, I was with a roommate. Well, actually, a person who lived in a room next door to mine, and I was in his room. We were dealing with a physics problem. By the way, my master's degree is in physics. I have a secondary teaching credential, but I was in with Richard dealing with a physics problem. When I went back into my room, there was no Squire. I didn't realize that a couple of the students decided to play a trick and kidnap him. I went looking around the dorm. I even went into the bathroom and opened the shower door and called Squire, and nothing was totally quiet, and finally, I was getting a little bit concerned. And one of the people said, "Oh well, look, we took the dog. We'll show you. They went into the bathroom, opened the shower door, and out comes Squire. He was in on it. He didn't do a thing when I opened the door, but when the other people did, then then he came out. I wasn't mad at him. Sneaky dog that he is, he had a great sense of humor. But I got vengeance because that that person didn't tell the other people that they showed him where showed me where Squire was. I went and hit Squire somewhere, and then I went back out into the main part of the dorm and I started going, "Who took my dog? What's going on? Where is he? And all the other people said, "Oh, come on, he's in the bathroom. And they went in and opened the door to the shower. No Squire, and they were starting to worry about what happened to him. And Squire, of course, was again not making noise. But eventually, I brought him out and I said, "Okay, I found him. I knew where he was. We're playing a trick on you just like you played a trick on me. That'll teach you. I learned that dogs have a sense of humor that day, but I also learned how much I valued having Squire around, and so Squire worked with me up until and through my first graduate year in physics at UC Irvine, and then Squire retired and went to live with my parents. And in 1973, I got my second guide dog, Holland. Holland was with me through 1986. He worked for almost 13 years, and in fact, was two weeks from retiring when he collapsed in our backyard one day, and we took him to the vet. And the vet said, "I could probably bring him out of whatever he's got, maybe a stroke or a heart attack or both, but he won't have a good quality of life. And so we said goodbye to to Holland. Holland and Squire were both golden retrievers, but again, Holland so strongly reinforced all the things that that I had felt about teamwork, and I learned so much more from him about what I needed to do in order to to function well, not just with a dog, but in my whole life. Then I got Klondike, who was my third guide dog, who was also a golden retriever. Soon after I got Klondike, well, about a year after I got Klondike, suddenly one day he had a very strong grand mal epileptic seizure, and we took him to the vet, and they put him on some medication that wasn't really helping that. And we then kept trying to to deal with it, and finally, and during that same time, I was looking for a job. I had owned my own company for four years, but decided I wanted to go back into the workforce, and and I finally got a job with a company. Michael Hingson  44:52 And on one of the first days that I worked there, Klondike had four grand mal seizures in the. Period of time, and we thought we were going to have to say goodbye to Klondike. But I talked to our veterinarian, and he said, "You know, before we do that, I want to send him to a neurologist who did an electroencephalograph. And he said, "I didn't see much, but he said one thing he did was to take some blood tests, and he said I noticed that his Klondike's thyroid level is low, and low thyroid levels in dogs like Klondike can make them more susceptible to have seizures, just like it can for children. Well, we put Klondike on synthroid, synthetic thyroid, as well as on phenobarbital to control the seizures. The synthroid had much more of an effect than the phenobarb did, Klondike actually became a much more active and playful and interactive dog, and did not have from that time on for the next seven years that he worked for me as a guide dog never had a single seizure. So the thyroid theory was a good one. Again, with with Klondike, it was about developing a team and recognizing that we had to work together. Well, then I got Linny, and again I mentioned Linny only worked for three years. Linny had glomerular nephritis that was really probably from a tick bite where the tick had Lyme's disease, and we didn't know any of that was happening until that night that Linny didn't wake up at all or didn't get up from her bed, and we finally got it diagnosed. And then I got Roselle. Now Roselle was a a wonderful dog. One of the things that I've always said is that when I get a new guide dog and I tell the trainers I want a dog with an on-off switch. That is, I want a dog that knows when the harness is on, it's time to work, and when the harness is off, then they can play. Clearly, Roselle had that when she was in harness. She was very focused. She did develop a phobia of thunderstorms, but there were a few times that we had thunderstorms, and she was able to continue to guide, even though she would shake and she would shiver a little bit. But she continued to guide. She focused. In fact, there was a thunderstorm the morning of September 11th, about 12:30 in the morning. But there was no thunder when we were going through what we did in the World Trade Center, so none of that caused her to be fearful. But again, Roselle was a dog that that taught me a lot about observation, learning what the dogs do, what what they fear, and how to help keep them focused and calm. And so I did that. My sixth guide dog was Meryl. Meryl only worked for about a year. Roselle retired in 2007. Merrill worked from 2007 to 2008, but Merrill became very fearful of guiding, and so ended up not being a guide dog very long. And I I'd never experienced that, although I had heard other people who had issues where dogs didn't work very long. Lenny only worked for three years, but a dog that didn't work for more than a year-that was unusual for me. However, poor Meryl wasn't able to do well as a guide, and so she retired. And then we got Africa. Now Africa was my seventh guide dog. Africa's mother was Fantasia. In January of 2006, we were working. I was working at Guide Dogs for the Blind, and we applied to be what were called breeder keepers. That is, they were the the people who would keep a breeder dog in their home because the guide dogs for the blind bred their own guide dogs and so on. And breeder keepers would keep dogs in their homes so that the dogs weren't just cooped up in kennels all day, and we volunteered to do that. And the director of breeding, Marina Hall, called us and said, "I've got four dogs for you to look at. I think one's better than the others for you, but I want you to come and meet these dogs. So we went down, and and she made the comment again. I think one dog is going to be better than the others. Michael Hingson  49:02 And and I said, well, if you think so strongly, but which one is it? Well, she finally sort of told us. She said, I didn't want to tell you, but I'll tell you. So she did. But anyway, the first dog who came in was a dog named Fantasia, and it works sort of the same way that when people get guide dogs, you're in a room. The dog is allowed to come in, and you see how the dog reacts to you. When I met Squire for the first time, I was sitting in a chair. They let Squire in. He came over and started sniffing me all over. Didn't leave me. He just started sniffing. And Bruce Benzler, who was the apprentice instructor at the time, later became director of Guide Dogs for the Blind, CEO anyway, anyway. Bruce then said, "Looks like you found a friend already, and we became friends. But anyway, when when Fantasia came into the room, she took one look at Karen and leaped into Karen's lap. She had no fear of the power wheelchair that Karen was using by that time. The other three dogs, we still looked at them, and they all expressed one level of fear or concern about being around this wheelchair. But Marina said Fantasia was the one that we thought you'd like best and would like you best, and she was. So anyway, in 2006, we got Fantasia in January, and later that year, she had a litter of puppies, and then in early or mid 2007, she Fantasia had her second litter. I guess it was late in 2006 she had the second litter, but anyway, by the middle of 2008, when we had to retire Meryl because she wasn't working out very well, we were notified that they found a dog that they thought would be a really good replacement for Meryl, and that's a dog named Africa. And Karen and I realized Africa was a name that we suggested as as breeder keepers that they could name one of their puppies if they had puppies who came from an A litter. And the way it works, by the way, is when a litter is born, they're assigned a letter of the alphabet, and they got a big book, and they go into that book and they get the next names that are available. They don't use names of current guide dogs, so when a dog retires, then they can start using that name again. But anyway, Africa was a name that we suggested, and as soon as we saw the email that said Africa, we knew Fantasia was Africa's mother. Well, Africa came and joined us, and mom and daughter did really well, and Roselle was still with us. So the three of them have a lot of fun together, but again with Africa, I learned about teamwork and doing the things that I needed to do. Every dog is different, and one of the things that I developed over the years was an understanding that to truly develop a relationship with a dog takes probably close to a year by the time we really are totally comfortable with each other, but I worked with Africa. We became good friends. Africa became good friends with Roselle. Of course, Africa liked her mom, and all worked out really well. Developing those teeming relationships is so important, and you can learn a lot more about them if you get live like a guide dog. I think you'll find them all very interesting to to read about. So in 2017, I noticed that Africa was starting to slow down and not do as well. She wasn't able to see as well at night. Sort of typical signs of a dog getting older, even though I work to to keep stress out as much as possible, but I applied and in 2018 on the 9th of February, Africa's puppy raisers, Bill and Peggy Sproul from San Francisco or San Diego rather, came to visit us in Victorville, and we had offered them the opportunity to take Africa because we had Fantasia, and we had Africa. And if we kept Africa and Fantasia, and I got a new guide dog, Karen would have a hard time taking care of two dogs when I traveled, because I was doing a great deal of travel by then as a keynote speaker, and so the Sprouls came and got Africa. Michael Hingson  53:26 Left our house, Africa didn't even look back. She was gone. We had visited her several times since then, and and in in the Sprouls home, Africa died in 2020. But we we got to visit Africa several times and it was a lot of fun and and she she loved us and all that and remembered us anyway on the 11th of February two days later I went to Guide Dogs for the Blind and I met Alamo who was my first black Labrador and I met him we we met in the room and he kind of sniffed me a little bit and walked around the room. But then came back and sniffed me, and then I took him on leash back to our our dorm room at Guide Dogs for the Blind, and I decided I'd sit on the floor to to visit with him. And the next thing I know, this big, huge, 60 pound Labrador is in my lap. Alamo was and is a lapdog, but he doesn't know a stranger, which is great. I mentioned earlier that I always said that when I get a guide dog, I want a guide dog that has an on and off switch. Another thing that I require is that guide dogs that I get be raised by cats. I have known of animals who of guide dogs who don't like cats, and I would not want that because we always have had cats. And by that time, when we got Alamo, we had Stitch, who we rescued in January of 2015. So now here it is, February of 2018. So I knew that we needed to have a dog that wasn't going to be. Be afraid of cats. Well, so Stitch and Alamo kind of walked around each other a little bit when we first went home, but they got to like each other pretty well pretty quickly, and they have been together ever since. Alamo has been on a number of aircraft, as I've mentioned over the years, he went to Israel with me. He didn't go to England when I spoke in 2024, but he's been to other places and will continue to travel with me. I work really hard to keep the stress out of his life. I don't want him to become any more stressed than he ever has to be, and he feeds off of how I behave, as as I've learned guide dogs do. So that's one of the most important things that I've learned is to keep that stress out of his life. I would point out that is just as much true for human teams. Don't stress out your team. If you are a leader, your job is to enhance what those leaders, what the team does. Your job isn't to boss them around. If you're doing that, you're only causing more stress, and you're going to find you're going to have a big job turnover, much more than you really should. I've always felt that my job isn't to boss people around when I hire them, my job is to enhance their abilities by using the skills that I have and learning to work with them to give them the benefit of what I know and to use the benefits of what they know to learn myself as well, so that we become more effective. And the people who really get that do very well. The people who didn't get that tend not to last very long at the company because they don't perform very well. Because I know that in reality, I add value to the team by working to add value, not bossing the team around. I think there's a big difference between leaders and bosses, and I've learned that over the years. That leaders are people who can enhance what other people do, who work to make the whole team effective and not just try to boss people around. In late 2020, I discovered a company called Accessibe, A C C E S S I capital B E. Website is accessibee.com. Was a company that made products to help make internet websites more inclusive, and at first, they had some challenges because they were using a lot of AI stuff to make their products work, and they sort of did. But there were there were challenges. But one day in January of 2021, the founder of the company, Sheer Eckerling. Michael Hingson  57:41 contacted me and said we're interested in you joining the company. I had been looking at possibly selling their products because the pandemic had hit, and I thought I could sell them from home because we were locked down. And and he said, well, you know, we we'd like you to not sell as a partner, just on your own, we'd like you to join the company. Well, he asked what I was doing, and by that time I had started to learn about podcasting because I couldn't travel and speak all over the world. So what I decided to do was to look at using podcast as a revenue source. And Shear said, "Well, you know, we we're really interested in having somebody do a podcast for us. And I said, "What do you want? And he said, "I want to just get somebody who will do a podcast to show that we're part of the world. And you join the company; you could do that in part. I joined the company, and he didn't have any specific agenda for the podcast. So, in August of 2021, I began Unstoppable Mindset, and soon it became unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. And I'll explain all of that in a moment. But the point is that we started the podcast. I created the title. I recreated the description, and I wanted the podcast to be conversations. And as anyone who has been on the podcast knows, we don't do interviews as such. We do conversations, and I ask people to send me materials to help me prepare to be able to do the conversation. And so a number of times we've had diversity experts on people from the DEI world, and when I ask them what they do, they say, you know, we focus a lot on diversity, and I say, what does that mean? And they say, well, we deal with race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. And we chat for a little while, and then I say, but you haven't talked about disabilities. And they say, oh, disability is not a minority. And I say, what do you mean? He said, well, disability is a social justice thing. It's not like race, gender, or sexual orientation. And my response to that is balderdash. I like to use balderdash. I could go back and use what Colonel Sherman Potter did on Mash and say monkey muffins. But anyway, balderdash because diversity should include disability because it is a minority. Even the Center for Disease Control says that. Adversity, or that that people with disabilities are a minority of about 25% of people in the United States. Well, so the bottom line for me is that I would say to them, "What do you mean you're you're not including it? And they say, "Well, it's a it's a disability, but it's social justice. It's always about being a lack of ability, and as I have learned, especially since September 11th and and beyond, disability does not mean a lack of ability. You might want to think it does. You might want to try to make that fit, but it doesn't. And I learned that most effectively in March of 2023 when I went to something, by that time Karen had passed, and I was working with a person who had been Karen's caregiver, who decided to work for me. Very grateful for Josie doing that. Josie entered my name in the contest to be a guest at the Kelly and Ryan Oscar after party, which was going to be held the Monday after the Oscars at the Dolby Theater, well, I didn't even know she entered me, but I got a call the Tuesday before the Oscar after party and the Oscars, and I was and I picked up the phone and they said congratulations, and I said for what? Oh, you won an invitation to come to the Kelly and Ryan Oscar after party, and I went really well. Anyway, I went down with my niece and nephew, Tracy and Charlie Green. The there wasn't room for taking Josie, her husband, and her mother and her five kids. So it was just me, Tracy, and Charlie. Michael Hingson  1:01:37 We got up to our room about 3o'clock in the afternoon on the Saturday before the Oscars, the day before the Oscars, we put our luggage in our room and we were coming back down the main stairwell staircase actually from the third to the first floor in the Hollywood Roosevelt. It's a very open staircase, and all of a sudden I heard people screaming, and it took me a while to to try to understand what's going on, and finally I couldn't figure it out. I said, Tracy, what's going on? And she said, Oh, we just lost power and lighting on the stairs, and and power and lighting in and around the entire hotel. Now it didn't bother Tracy. Tracy had known me for a long time, but people were panicky because they weren't getting all the light they expected, even though the windows were open, the the shades were up on the first floor in the lobby, and so on. Lots of light, but it wasn't all that people expected. And I thought about that, and what I learned from that was, it proves that disability isn't a lack of ability; it proves that disability is a characteristic that we all have. Thomas Edison and others worked on the light bulb, and Thomas Edison is credited with developing the electric light bulb back in 1878. But in the 148 years since the light bulb was developed, all society has done in that regard is worked very hard on coming up with better ways of providing light on demand, so that you sighted people could have all the light you want when you want it. Nowadays, we have smartphones, we have flashlights, we have other ways of getting light on demand. But as the Americans with Disabilities Act would describe it. The light bulb is simply, or any piece of technology that produces light on demand, is simply a piece of technology that provides light on demand to light-dependent people who otherwise don't function well without it. The bottom line is, disability is not a lack of ability. We got words like discrete, discern, disciple. What is discern? Is it a lack of discern? What is it? What is disciple? A lack of viple? No. Disability is not a lack of ability. Disability is a character

Ryan talks with ABC News Correspondent Jordana Miller (live from the Middle East) about a Saudi pipeline hit by drones that will be out of service for weeks, the postponement of Gulf-Iran talks, and a Pentagon inspector general report saying the Iran war has caused weapons shortages.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Associate Editor Peter Beck and Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss an Afghan legal permanent resident deported less than 2 months after case is filed in the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, updates in the Grand Conspiracy, a judge allowing the Pentagon to fire Stars and Stripes journalists, developments in President Trump's attack on mail voting, litigation over the use of SAVE data for elections, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare's new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Monday, September 14, 2026Today, Todd Blanche's deputy has filed an appeal to resurrect the $1.776B Slush Fund and Trump tax immunity agreement; Iran-backed Houthis have attacked the East West Saudi oil pipeline and have seized a key island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait; the Pentagon pushed two airmen shot down over Iran to appear on 60 Minutes; Chinese satellite imagery has been linked to an Iranian strike that killed three US troops; Donald Trump pushes back against Anthropic's Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman called for an artificial intelligence slowdown; a federal judge has ruled that Trump's plan to cut FEMA by 50% is illegal; plus Allison delivers your Good News.Thank You, HomeChef |For a limited time, get 50% off and free shipping for your first box PLUS free dessert for life! HomeChef.com/DAILYBEANS. Must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert.Thank You, Honeylove | Save 20% Off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/DAILYBEANS #honeylovepod #sponsored Blue Wave Nation | https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mswbluewaveThe Trump Epstein Memorial BookmobileThe Daily Beans is proud to partner with Miles Taylor and our friends at DEFIANCE.org For a limited time, members of the Daily Beans community can receive a FREE 3-month full membership to DEFIANCE.org and gain access to one of the fastest-growing pro-democracy movements in America. Join here: https://www.defiance.org/beansThe Latest Breakdown →Trump's DOJ Just BLEW UP Its Own Story In MY LawsuitNew Unjustified →The Grand ConspiracyDiamond Dames → Diamond Dames - YouTube Diamond Dames - A Ted Lasso PodcastPatreon → The Daily Beans | PatreonStories‘A f***-up of epic proportions': Blame game begins after Iran-backed Houthis' lightning advance down Red Sea coast | CNNSaudi oil pipeline shut down after attack triggers fires | CNN PoliticsInside Hegseth's push to showcase a dramatic Iran rescue on ‘60 Minutes' | CNN PoliticsU.S. Links Chinese Satellite Imagery to Iranian Strike That Killed Three Troops | WSJTrump downplays the need to check AI development and says he doesn't want to cede edge to China | ABC7 Los AngelesFederal judge rules Trump plan to cut FEMA by 50 percent was unlawful | Washington PostGood TroubleScreenings — Steal This Story, Please!→Battleground Support Hub - Democrats.org→Voter Registration Deadlines - Vote.org→Hands Off Our Vote! 2026 Toolkit | Indivisible→Help staff your local polling place - Power The Polls→Voter Registration Volunteer Opportunities · Mobilize→Helpline Orientation- Spanish Speakers Needed! - VoteRiders→Help save Texas from Ken Paxton! →NO HATE in WA State→Stand With Minnesota →iceout.org Good Newssaatchiart.com - tommmcintire@tommcintireartist.bsky.socialYork River State ParkOct 9 -Southwest Funny Fest:Dana Goldberg's Southwest FunnyFest - City of Albuquerque -Email Dana@DanaGoldberg.com for sponsorship informationTickets for Dana Goldberg: Outrageous - Sep 23 - Den Theater - Chicago →Share your Good News & Good Trouble - The Daily Beans→Beans Talk audio -beans-talk.simplecast.comSubscribe to the MSW on YouTube - MSW Media - YouTubeOur Donation LinksThe Trevor Project - trevorproject.org/beansBlue Wave California - ActBlue.com/donate/msw-bwcDonate to Public Citizen - https://citizen.org/beans/National Security Counselors - Donate, WhistleblowerAid.org/beansDonate to It Gets Better / The Daily Beans FundraiserPathways to Citizenship - boomerang - pathways Dana and The Daily Beans support of Human Rights Campaign ONE CAUSE HRCThe Daily Beans supports It Gets BetterDr. Allison Gill - The Breakdown | Allison Gill, Mueller, She Wrote @muellershewrote.com - Bluesky, MSW & The Daily Beans Podcast @muellershewrote - Instagram, MSW Media - YouTube →Federal workers email AG - fedoath@pm.meDana Goldberg - Dana is on Patreon! At Dana's Dugout, @dgcomedy - Bluesky, @dgcomedy - IG, Dana Goldberg - Facebook, DanaGoldberg.comMore from MSW Media - Shows, Cleanup On Aisle 45 pod, The Breakdown | Allison Gill Reminder - you can see the pod pics if you become a Patron. The good news pics are at the bottom of the show notes of each Patreon episode! That's just one of the perks of subscribing! patreon.com/muellershewrote Listener Survey:http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortFollow the Podcast on Apple:https://apple.co/3XNx7ckWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?https://patreon.com/thedailybeanshttps://dailybeans.supercast.com/https://apple.co/3UKzKt0 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired or blocked promotions of 10% of the military's top ranked officers. Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall says it's created 'a climate of fear throughout the entire institution.' What's going on inside the Pentagon, and what it means for the future of the U.S. military. *** Thank you for listening. Help power On Point by making a donation here: wbur.org/giveonpoint

Have you ever thought about how you update your F-22? Probably not, but someone has to. Rob Slaughter, former Air Force officer and co-founder of Defense Unicorns, joins the Fighter Pilot Podcast to discuss fixing how the Department of War builds, delivers, and updates software. From the Pentagon to disconnected battlefields. We talk innovation, air-gapped systems, and what it takes to bring modern software to the fight. Support the show at: Fighter Pilot Podcast — Creating air combat-related content. | Patreon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Headlines: Trump skipped the 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York to fall asleep at the Pentagon's 9/11 ceremony. He then flew to Ireland where the Irish president seated him behind a notably small desk, protests featured an inflatable Trump being inflatable-Netanyahu'd in the streets, and he called Irish reunification "fantastic" and "a cool thing," breaking 28 years of official US neutrality on an issue that has historically caused quite a bit of conflict. This landed at an awkward moment given that Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland are meeting today to discuss potentially dissolving the United Kingdom entirely. Trump also lunged at ABC reporter Rachel Scott when she asked about his $5,000 check promise and pointed out the national debt is $40 trillion, the White House called journalist Aaron Rupar a "sick, deluded freak" for noting Natalie Harp was in Ireland, and Trump blamed Zelensky for global energy prices and told him to stop hitting Russian diesel. It was quite the weekend for the President. While we're on that, a Russian drone strike near the Polish border may have targeted a train carrying Boris Johnson and David Petraeus, prompting air raid warnings in Poland. In other news, An American diplomat accused of possessing child sex abuse material was quietly flown out of London on a secret military flight before police could question him. France expanded its Epstein investigation, identifying 13 new potential victims and multiple potential recruiters, one of whom was found dead in his home right before he was set to be questioned. On AI, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Dario Amodei all posted this weekend calling for AI regulation and a slowdown — simultaneously — very sketchy. And finally, ectopic pregnancy deaths have nearly doubled since the pandemic and increased even more in states with abortion bans, and Texas responded by simply deciding not to analyze maternal mortality data from 2022 and 2023 — the years the abortion ban went into effect — making it impossible to measure its impact. Resources/Articles mentioned: WaPo: At the Pentagon, Trump ties the legacy of 9/11 to his Iran war NYT: In Doonbeg, Trump's Irish Open Visit Prompts Protests and Praise NYT: Trump Says Irish Unification Would Be ‘Fantastic,' Breaking With Precedent Telegraph: Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish leaders meet to plan break-up of United Kingdom The New Republic: Trump Lunges at Female Reporter Asking About Those Supposed $5K Checks Newsweek: White House Calls Journalist ‘Sick, Deluded Freak' Over Natalie Harp Post NYT: Trump Blames Ukraine for Global Diesel Shortage The Guardian: Train carrying Boris Johnson and ex-CIA chief may have been targeted in Russian strike, officials say | Ukraine Sky News: US officials 'secretly flew diplomat out of UK' after indecent image allegations NYT: France Widens Sex-Trafficking Investigation Linked to Jeffrey Epstein WaPo: Top AI leaders unite to warn the technology is advancing too fast Fortune: Sam Altman confirms OpenAI won't go public this year, saying an IPO now would come at an 'ill-advised moment' given AI safety concerns CNN: Ectopic pregnancy deaths have nearly doubled. It's worse in states with abortion bans Texas Observer: Texas Maternal Mortality Committee's Next Report Will Skip Post-'Roe' Deaths. Lawmakers Suspect Political Influence. Subscribe to the Betches News Room and join the Morning Announcements group chat. Go to: betchesnews.substack.com Morning Announcements is produced by Sami Sage and edited by Grace Hernandez-Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In some ways Zayd Ayers Dohrn's childhood was normal; his parents went to work and played with him in the park. Though in other ways it was anything but: moving between safe houses, fleeing in the night as the FBI moved in. His parents were the leaders of a violent revolutionary group called the Weathermen and then the Weather Underground, which the US government classed as a domestic terror group. They opposed the Vietnam war and racism in American society. They drew attention to their cause though bombing campaigns targeting government institutions from police stations to the Pentagon. The group were largely white college graduates, they worked with militant black organisations such as the Black Liberation Army to organise bank robberies and jailbreaks. By the time Zayd was born his parents had been fugitives for several years. They taught him how to identify the FBI agents who were looking for them and how to lose a tail if he was being followed. For Zayd, as a small child, it was a game – but one with potentially serious consequences as his parents' activities could see them sent to prison for years. However, they wanted him to go to school and for him to do this they decided to hand themselves in.Presenter: Jo Fidgen Producer: Julian SiddleLives Less Ordinary is a podcast from the BBC World Service that brings you the most incredible true stories from around the world. Each episode a guest shares their most dramatic, moving, personal story. Listen for unbelievable twists, mysteries uncovered, and inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else's life and expect the unexpected.   Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784   You can read our privacy notice here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

***Adnan Husain invited me to join him and Rabab Abdulhadi for livestream conversation on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 WTC attacks. This is first hour! We continued for another hour plus! To listen to the entire episode subscribe on Patreon or watch the episode on the EIAP YouTube channel***   Friday is the 25th Anniversary of 9/11/2001 and all that followed from the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon: the launching of the "Global War on Terrorism", the wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the drone campaigns across Africa and Asia, the securitization and surveillance regimes threatening political rights, the globalizing of paradigms of Islamophobia. What do imperial/imperialist commemorations "forget" as if history began on 9/11/2001 or 10/7/2023? Some talk about the GWOT as history, but has it ended? The anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect upon the last twenty five years and the contrasts and continuities with contemporary conditions. Join me, Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi (San Francisco State University) and Sina Rahmani (East is a Podcast). Bring your comments and questions! Follow Sina's channel The East is a Podcast: https://youtube.com/@theeastisapodcast This discussion will also air on the YouTube channels the Arab and Middle East Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) led by Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi: https://youtube.com/amedsfsu2018 You can follow Teaching Palestine, AMED, and Dr. Abdulhadi on social media: Facebook: AMED STUDIES SFSU https://www.facebook.com/p/AMED-Studies-at-SFSU-100064100371121/ Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi: https://www.facebook.com/rabab.abdulhadi/ Instagram: @amedstudies https://www.instagram.com/amedstudies/ @teachingpalestine https://www.instagram.com/teachingpalestine/ @abdulhadirabab https://www.instagram.com/abdulhadirabab/?hl=en Twitter: @amedstudies https://twitter.com/amedstudies?s=21 @teachingpal https://twitter.com/teachingpal?s=11 @abdulhadirabab https://twitter.com/abdulhadirabab?s=11 Please support our fundraiser for students in Gaza taking my online course, Guerrilla History: Anticolonial Resistance History, Theory, Practice, for materials and supplies for their final history research projects and the costs to support an in-person version of the course starting in September for displaced students from Gaza on the campus of the American University in Cairo: https://chuffed.org/project/174168-support-a-third-round-of-spocs-for-gaza Support the show on Patreon or Substack, if you can (and get early access to episodes)! www.patreon.com/adnanhusain https://www.adnanahusain.substack.com Or make a one-time donation to the show and Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/adnanhusain Like, subscribe, share! Also available as audio podcast on all major platforms: https://adnanhusainshow.libsyn.com X: @adnanahusain Substack: adnanahusain.substack.com www.adnanhusain.org

What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here:Want my help starting a business? Join me here inside Zero To FounderSign up for my AI Masterclass: AI MasterclassFOLLOW TOM:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=enTwitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeuYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeuTailor Brands: Check out Tailor Brands to get started with your business today: https://bit.ly/TailorBrandsSeptQuince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpodElevenLabs: Book your demo at https://elevenlabs.io/impactpodIncogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/impact Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription order.Horizon.ai: Go to https://horizon3.ai/IMPACTTHEORY and request your free NodeZero demo. No commitment required. Results in hours, not weeks.Butcherbox: Go to https://ButcherBox.com/IMPACT to get $20 off your first box, plus your choice of free ribeye, new york strip, or filet mignon in every box for a year — with free shipping alwaysQuo: ​​Try for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/impactThe team digs into a strange and revealing controversy at the frontier of AI: a potential mathematics breakthrough where humans and AI are now fighting over who deserves the credit. For about a year, NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster and a researcher at Anthropic had been working on an obscure approach to one of the famous Clay Institute "millennium prize" problems (with $1 million on the line)—running their drafts through private OpenAI Codex sessions hosted on OpenAI's servers. When a step forward emerged (a result related to "blow-up" in the Euler equations of fluid dynamics), accusations flew that OpenAI's model had essentially "copied their homework"—learning from their private work and then producing the result itself. The host uses it to open up what he thinks is the defining debate of the era: when you collaborate with an AI, and it helps you reach an insight you genuinely pushed it toward, who owns the result? He walks through the emerging solutions—Alex Karp of Palantir's "put something in the middle" approach, versus self-hosting an open-source model behind your own servers with your own tuned "weights" so your inputs stay proprietary even as the world uses your outputs. He's candid that he's genuinely torn: as someone building his own project (Kaizen), he admits feeling the impulse to keep some paths secret for a six-month lead, while also arguing that since AI was trained on all of humanity, there's an obligation to keep letting it aggregate humanity's breakthroughs—especially in a field like medicine, where he shares a personal story about a family member's cancer and how siloed, firewalled medical data made coordination nearly impossible. His most provocative point is psychological: that the reason people aren't celebrating even a real (if modest) step forward is a raw human fear of being made to feel irrelevant—that "I can't let it be the AI that did this." He closes on his recurring throughline: rather than running to the government to regulate AI (which he thinks would hurt the open-source models that are the real check on Big AI), the open market and open source should be allowed to solve this—letting young upstarts protect their proprietary "weights" and compete, so a handful of giant companies can't hoard the breakthroughs.The team breaks down a sharp escalation in the Iran conflict and maps how it connects to a much bigger global picture. The immediate news: an intensifying tanker war in the Strait of Hormuz, with the IRGC claiming its largest attack of the war (striking multiple vessels and claiming hits on US destroyers), the US reportedly sinking eight Iranian oil tankers over four days, and Iran launching 20 ballistic missiles at a US base in Jordan—of which Jordan says 18 were intercepted and two hit empty desert, with no casualties reported. The host stresses a key caveat: with the IRGC claiming major damage and the Pentagon denying it, the truth is genuinely murky, and neither side's account should be taken at face value. He reads the "2-for-1" retaliation pattern and Rubio's "shoot at our ships and you lose tankers" posture as a deliberate US strategy of disproportionate response—while flagging the real risk that Iran is trying to bait the US into depleting munitions it may need for two other potential fights: a cornered, economically flailing Germany squaring off with a declining Russia, and the looming US-China collision. From there he lays out his central framework: that the US and China are two "wounded animals," both the largest economies, both feeling a narrow window, both pressing—China racing to divorce from the dollar (he floats his own contested theory that they may back the yuan with gold), reshore chip-making, and potentially move on Taiwan by 2027, because the deeper prize underneath everything is AI, and AI runs on chips. He argues energy undergirds the entire board, which is why the Strait, the Houthi attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure, OPEC fracturing, and the Venezuela play all matter, and offers his read on why the US actually entered Iran (securing GCC capital for the AI bet, under the banner of non-proliferation). He's candid about which parts are his interpretation, flags his gold-backed-yuan idea as highly contested, and lands on his recurring throughline: a multipolar world is coming, and the real question is what kind of "overlord" order the world ends up choosing—one you can vote out, or one you can't.The team connects a series of escalating global stories that the host argues are increasingly becoming one convergent conflict. First, Iran: the Revolutionary Guard reportedly fired hypersonic ballistic missiles at a US aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer in the Strait of Hormuz—a dramatic escalation from base and drone attacks—with both ships evading and no Americans hurt, after which US forces struck and reportedly sank Iranian oil tankers. The host frames a country as most dangerous when it's weakest, and notes Bessent's argument that Iran is running out of the pre-purchased Chinese oil money keeping it afloat, meaning the coming months could get more dangerous before any off-ramp. Second, Europe: reports that Germany is moving toward direct conflict with Russia (closing Russian consulates, restricting entry after a drone incident), which could trigger NATO and pull in the US—complicated by the rise of Germany's AfD party (now reportedly the second-largest, around 23% to the leading party's ~30%), which has floated exiting the EU. Third, diplomacy: Witkoff and Kushner arriving to broker talks, with a reported 72-hour agreement between Putin and Zelensky not to strike each other's capitals (though front-line fighting continues and a broader ceasefire was rejected)—the host cautiously optimistic given their Abraham Accords track record, while noting their recent results have been thinner. Fourth, the US-Venezuela deal versus China, which claims its own competing, "internationally protected" interest there—prompting the host's blunt aside that "international law" is really just a function of who holds the most power. And finally, the bigger economic picture: a Nordic country reportedly selling ~$80B in US Treasuries, central banks buying gold in historic amounts (with gold reportedly overtaking US debt as the top reserve asset), and the resurfaced Ray Dalio warning about what happens when an empire has to start buying its own debt. The host's throughline: the US has a real opportunity—if it rebuilds a genuine moral center, restores fiscal discipline, and competes with China by being genuinely better for partner nations (Venezuela being the key test)—but the window is closing, and a multipolar world can deliver either the benefits of real competition or the dangers of everyone violently choosing sides.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In his first year atop the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth rebranded himself as a secretary of war, not defense. And the changes didn't stop there. Under his leadership, the department has announced that all “warfighters” 30 and older will be tested for testosterone deficiency, and that they would be judged on their appearance and grooming. But possibly the most profound change has been a shake-up in the highest ranks of the armed forces. Top officers—especially in the Army—have been stymied, pushed out or fired. Michael Gordon and Lara Seligman join host Alex Ossola to discuss Hegseth's approach, as well as the possible consequences of fast turnover in the highest echelons of the world's most powerful military. Further Reading: Trump Fires Top Pentagon Officers in Sweeping Overhaul Hegseth Cuts Army Commander's Storied Career Short as Part of Broader Shake-Up Hegseth Blocks Eight Navy Senior Officer Promotions Pete Hegseth Army Chief Pick in Jeopardy Over Republican Objections Army Secretary Dan Driscoll Resigns After Months of Friction With Hegseth New Drone Unit to Be Phased Out as Hegseth's Army Pick Makes His Mark Tillis Wants Hegseth Fired. Is the Pentagon Chief in Trouble? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mona Charen talks with Adam Isacson and John Walsh of the Washington Office on Latin America about Operation Southern Spear, the Trump administration's deadly strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats, and the secret legal theory being used to justify them. They examine the killing of survivors in a second strike, Pete Hegseth's purge of military lawyers, the evidence that the campaign hasn't reduced the cocaine supply, and why U.S. allies are increasingly wary of sharing intelligence that could be used in the strikes.Upgrade your everyday essentials with Quince, from Mongolian cashmere and premium-stretch denim to leather bags, 14k gold jewelry, bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and furniture. Quince works directly with ethical factories to offer quality pieces at prices 50–80% less than similar brands. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at https://www.quince.com/MONA. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. Further reading:WOLA — Killing Spree: Extrajudicial Executions in the U.S. Boat Strikes Campaignhttps://www.wola.org/analysis/killing-spree-extrajudicial-executions-in-the-u-s-boat-strikes-campaign/The Washington Post — Deadly U.S. boat strikes have failed to curb cocaine supply, Pentagon and DEA officials sayhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/07/27/operation-southern-spear-has-not-slowed-cocaine-entering-us/Reuters — We bought everything needed to make $3 million worth of fentanyl. All it took was $3,600.https://www.reuters.com/investigations/we-bought-everything-needed-make-3-million-worth-fentanyl-all-it-took-was-3600-2024-07-25/

This week on The Necessary Conversation, it's Chad, Haley, and Mary Lou. Bob is still out recovering.

Joanna Coles and Hugh Dougherty take apart Trump's bizarre week of self-glorification and political humiliation  — from the half-empty “Trump-a-palooza” where his supporters were urged to “cheat like hell,” to the Republican candidate he publicly belittled and the disturbing threats of political violence echoing through the crowd. Then comes the confrontation with ABC's Rachel Scott, when Trump lunges into an angry tirade over his $5,000 checks, exposing a startling flash of the rage and intimidation that increasingly seems to be bubbling just beneath the surface. As Trump's war in Iran worsens and his social media outbursts grow increasingly unhinged, Hugh and Joanna ask whether we are watching a president unravel in real time. And on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Trump's strangely low-energy appearance at the Pentagon—and his apparent struggle to engage with a day that isn't about him—provides an unsettling ending to one of the most revealing weeks yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of John Solomon Reports, host John Solomon reflects on the solemn anniversary of September 11, marking 25 years since the tragic terrorist attacks that reshaped America. Solomon addresses the troubling trend of denialism surrounding the events of that day, emphasizing the importance of remembering the true nature of the attacks and honoring the nearly 3,000 victims who lost their lives.Joining Solomon is Fred Fleitz, who discusses the alarming efforts by some educators and media figures to reinterpret the motives behind the 9/11 attacks, downplaying the role of Islamist extremism. The conversation highlights the dangers of redefining history and the potential consequences for future generations' understanding of this pivotal moment in American history.Throughout the episode, Solomon recounts personal experiences from that fateful day, including his interactions with Barbara Olson, a victim of the attack on the Pentagon, and the subsequent work he undertook to expose failures in the intelligence community that allowed the attacks to occur. He urges listeners not to forget the lessons learned and the sacrifices made by first responders and military personnel in the years that followed.The episode features insights from Dr. Seb Gorka, Senior Director for Counterterrorism under President Trump, and a discussion with war hero Jack Carr, who shares his perspective on the ongoing fight against terrorism.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

25 years ago, Muslim terrorists attacked America by hijacking airplanes and crashing into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and almost hitting Washington, DC. Glenn was live on air in Florida, and he plays audio from that show as he watched that tragic day unfold. Glenn also plays the audio of the prayer he gave live on air, which is strikingly similar to the same prayers we pray today. Glenn plays some of the haunting footage and coverage from September 11th, which stands as a harsh reminder of the day America was changed forever. Ideological Defense Institute founder and CEO, Danny Burmawi, joins to discuss his past as a former Muslim who cheered on 9/11 to an anti-Jihadist who's warning America about the dangers of radical Islam. Glenn speaks with Charlie Kirk's pastor and close friend, Frank Turek, who shares how to speak with conviction in a culture that is desperate for truth. Glenn plays highlights of his speech from Charlie Kirk's remembrance, where he called for men and women to both strive for higher standards.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

25 years ago, Muslim terrorists attacked America by hijacking airplanes and crashing into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and almost hitting Washington, DC. Glenn was live on air in Florida, and he plays audio from that show as he watched that tragic day unfold. Ideological Defense Institute founder and CEO, Danny Burmawi, joins to discuss his past as a former Muslim who cheered on 9/11 to an anti-Jihadist who's warning America about the dangers of radical Islam. Glenn speaks with Charlie Kirk's pastor and close friend, Frank Turek, who shares how to speak with conviction in a culture that is desperate for truth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices