Podcasts about Puget Sound

PURCHASE THIS PODCOURSE! If you are a therapist or counselor looking for continuing education, check out my NBCC Approved $5 Podcourses and other continuing education offerings.Plus, get your first Podcourse half off. In this 60-minute NBCC-approved podcourse, I'm joined by Michelle Page, PharmD, to explore perimenopause and menopause as neuroendocrine developmental transitions that significantly influence mood, sleep, cognition, stress regulation, relationships, and identity. We break down the clinical definitions of perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause, discuss common and underrecognized symptom presentations, and examine how hormonal variability may contribute to new-onset anxiety, mood instability, sleep disruption, and relational strain in midlife clients. We also explore differential diagnosis considerations, interdisciplinary referral thresholds, and practical psychotherapy interventions that remain within scope of practice. When you purchase this podcourse, you will also receive a Clinical Companion Guide, which includes a structured Menopause-Informed Clinical Formulation Model, differential diagnosis considerations, expanded symptom awareness, and applied case studies to support real-world clinical integration. This training supports therapists in recognizing menopause-related symptom clusters, differentiating endocrine-driven presentations from primary psychiatric disorders, and collaborating effectively with menopause-informed medical providers. Our hope is that you'll walk away with fresh strategies you can integrate into your clinical work right away and you can also earn one NBCC continuing education contact hour by completing this Podcourse. Michelle's other Podcourse: Beyond Digestion: How Your Gut Influences Your Mental Health

Last month, Olympia became the first city in Washington, and one of just a handful in the country, to pass explicit protections for polyamorous families. The city passed two ordinances in late February that establish protections for people in diverse family and relationship structures. Supporters say the changes are aimed at protecting these community members against discrimination and unfair housing practices. Similar efforts are underway in multiple cities across the west coast. More than 60% of people who responded to a 2025 survey on non-monogamy said they experienced discrimination or stigma in at least one domain, like healthcare or employment. We spoke to an advocate who backed these ordinances -- and who's hoping to bring similar change to Seattle. Guests: Jessa Davis is the executive director for the Seattle Coalition for Family and Relationship Equity Related links: First WA city with protections for polyamorous families | The Olympian In the Northwest, polyamory finds something new: legal protection | The Seattle Times Polyamorous protections moving ahead in Portland as council reaffirms LGBTQ safe harbor status | oregonlive.com 2025 Community Survey Report | OPEN (Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy) Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Agradece a este podcast tantas horas de entretenimiento y disfruta de episodios exclusivos como éste. ¡Apóyale en iVoox! En junio de 1947, semanas antes de Roswell y del auge mediático de los “platillos volantes”, algo extraño ocurre en Puget Sound, frente a la isla Maury. Un patrullero civil observa varios objetos circulares en el cielo. Uno de ellos parece fallar y comienza a expulsar material desconocido que cae sobre el mar y la costa, que deja heridos. Poco después, aparecen advertencias, llamadas anónimas y una visita inquietante que hoy identificaríamos como un Hombre de Negro. La investigación militar que se incia termina con un accidente aéreo mortal y un cierre apresurado del expediente. Las piezas no encajan. El programa se adentrará en el Incidente OVNI de la isla Maury, uno de los casos más oscuros, incómodos y tempranos de la ufología moderna. Un episodio con testigos, extraños restos materiales, coacción militar y un accidente aéreo mortal. Un caso donde, más que respuestas, lo que queda es una sensación persistente de que alguien vio algo que no debía ver. Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-214-swords-in-your-seventies-with-deborah-fisher  To support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy Deborah Fisher is a member and instructor with the Whidbey Swordplay Association, a historical martial arts club on Whidbey Island, a ferry ride north of Seattle, Washington. She specializes in rapier and small sword. Knighted as Dame Virago, she is a former assistant director and instructor for the Seattle Knights, the Pacific Northwest's premier sword fighting and jousting theatrical troupe. And as Captain Highjack, she is the former leader of a very scurvy and entertaining band of pirates known as the Pirates of Puget Sound. We talk about how and why Deborah got into swords at the age of 50, and what her current training looks like in her 70s. We discuss how some physical and mental abilities change as you age, but how one's peak is still an attainable future goal. Deborah is a professional writer, specializing in instructional materials for teachers, health-care practitioners, and community youth advocates. She has written six books on positive youth development and served as a national trainer for the Minneapolis-based Search Institute. She is also a co-author of Stamp of the Century, a nonfiction book about the history of flight and a famous airmail postage stamp called the Inverted Jenny. Two of Guy's blog posts mentioned in this episode are 100 Days No Booze Results: What Really Changed (and What Didn't) and You're probably holding your sword wrong. Here's why. Find out more about the Whidbey Swordplay Association at: https://whidbeyswordplayassociation.com/

New to salmon fishing in Washington state? Got a boat but feeling overwhelmed by where to even start?This episode breaks down the bare bones basics of trolling for salmon in Puget Sound, the Salish Sea, and the San Juan Islands. Whether you've never dropped a line or you're an experienced boater just getting into fishing, you'll walk away with a clear picture of what equipment you need and how the whole system works before you ever untie from the dock.In This Episode:• The essential trolling setup explained - downriggers, rods, reels, and why this method is so effective in Washington waters• What equipment you actually need to get started • How to use your boat's electronics to find bait and mark salmon• The strategy behind intercepting hungry Chinook on their journey back to spawn• Where to find step-by-step visuals showing the actual rigging processTimestamps:[0:00] — Intro / hook ("Is this the year you're officially gonna get started...")[0:20] — Overview of what the video covers (trolling for salmon in Washington, Puget Sound, San Juan Islands)[0:45] — Jamie introduces herself and Anglers Unlimited[1:05] — Her personal fishing backstory (started in 2014, got skunked, found a repeatable process)[1:40] — What Anglers Unlimited offers (community, courses, channel)[2:05] — Mention of podcast / YouTube / Spotify[2:25] — Big picture overview of salmon trolling begins[2:40] — How trolling works (slow speed, targeting fish on migration)[3:10] — Introduction to downriggers (what they are and why you need them)[3:55] — Downrigger brands (Scotty, Cannon, Penn) and choosing your setup[4:40] — Rod, reel, and line setup (10'6" salmon rod, 20–30 lb mono, conventional reel)[5:05] — Electronics / fish finders (sonar, marking bait and fish)[5:45] — Referencing Episode 36 (Sonar Basics with Steve Chamberlain)[6:15] — Referencing the older salmon trolling basics video[6:45] — Anglers Unlimited Gold membership plug (anglersunlimited.com/gold)[7:15] — Sign offKey Takeaways:• Salmon trolling uses downriggers to get your presentation down to the depth where Chinook are traveling.• You'll need 10-15 pound lead weights, a 10'6" rod, 20-30 lb test mono, and a conventional reel.• The key to success isn't just gear - it's having a repeatable, step-by-step process.• Electric downriggers save work compared to manual, but both get the job done.• Bait balls look like clouds on sonar; salmon marks look like longer arches.Resources & Links:• Sonar Training: Episode 36 - Sonar Basics for Fishing with Steve Chamberlain• Visual Tutorial: Salmon Trolling Basics video• WDFW Fishing Regulations: https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/regulations• Anglers Unlimited Gold Membership: https://anglersunlimited.co/goldCall to Action:Want the full structured learning experience with step-by-step courses, monthly expert seminars, fishing maps, and a community of 60+ anglers who want you to succeed? Join the waitlist for Anglers Unlimited Gold membership at https://anglersunlimited.co/goldAbout the Podcast:Fishing for a Reason is the Pacific Northwest saltwater fishing education podcast for new anglers and families who want to catch more salmon, halibut, lingcod, shrimp and crab in Washington waters. Hosted by Jamie & Scott Propst from Anglers Unlimited, each episode delivers practical techniques, local knowledge, and expert insights to help you get off the couch and into the fish. Perfect for reloca

What happens when a childhood dream refuses to let go? In this episode, I sit down with cartoonist and Lum and Abner historian Donnie Pitchford to explore how old-time radio, comic strips, and a love for storytelling shaped his life. Donnie shares how he grew up inspired by classic radio shows like Lum and Abner, pursued art despite setbacks, and eventually brought the beloved Pine Ridge characters back to life through a modern comic strip and audio adaptations. We talk about creativity, persistence, radio history, and why imagination still matters in a visual world. If you care about classic radio, cartooning, or staying true to your calling, I believe you will find this conversation both inspiring and practical. Highlights: 00:10 Discover how a childhood love of Lum and Abner sparked a lifelong dream of becoming a cartoonist. 08:00 Hear how college radio and classic broadcasts deepened a passion for old time radio storytelling. 14:33 Understand how years of teaching broadcast journalism built the skills that later fueled creative success. 23:17 Learn how the Lum and Abner comic strip was revived with family approval and brought to modern audiences. 30:07 Explore how two actors created an entire town through voice and imagination alone. 1:00:16 Hear the vision for keeping Lum and Abner alive for new generations through comics and audio. Top of Form Bottom of Form About the Guest: Donnie Pitchford of Texas is a graduate of Kilgore College, Art Instruction Schools, Stephen F. Austin State University and the University of Texas at Tyler. He has worked in the graphic arts industry and in education, teaching at Hawkins High School, Panola College, and Carthage High School at which he spent 25 years directing CHS-TV, where student teams earned state honors, including state championships, for 20 consecutive years. In 2010, Donnie returned to the endeavor he began at age five: being a cartoonist! The weekly “Lum and Abner" comic strip began in 2011. It is available online and in print and includes an audio production for the blind which features the talents of actors and musicians who donate their time. Donnie has created comic book stories and art for Argo Press of Austin, illustrated children's books, written scripts for the "Dick Tracy" newspaper strip, and produced the science fiction comedy strip "Tib the Rocket Frog." He has collaborated with award-winning writers and cartoonists George Wildman, Nicola Cuti, John Rose, Mike Curtis, Joe Staton, and others. In 2017, Donnie began assisting renowned sculptor Bob Harness and currently sculpts the portraits for the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame plaques. Awards include the 1978 Kilgore College "Who's Who" in Art, an Outstanding Educator Award from the East Texas Chapter of the Texas Society of CPAs in 1993, the CHS "Pine Burr" Dedicatee honor in 2010, and a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2018 from Spring Hill High School. In 2024, Donnie was inducted into the City of Carthage Main Street Arts Walk of Fame which included the placement of a bronze plaque in the sidewalk and the Key to the City. Donnie and his best friend/wife, Laura, are members of First Methodist Church Carthage, Texas. Donnie is a founding officer of the National Lum and Abner Society and a member of Texas Cartoonists, Ark-La-Tex Cartoonists, Christian Comic Arts Society, and the National Cartoonists Society. Ways to connect with Michaela**:** https://www.facebook.com/groups/220795254627542 https://lumandabnercomics.com/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson  01:21 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. I've been looking forward to this one for a while. We have Donny Pitchford as our guest today. You're probably going, who's Donnie Pitchford? Well, let me tell you. So years ago, I started collecting old radio shows. And one of the first shows that I got was a half hour episode of a show called Lum and Abner, which is about a couple of characters, if you will, in Pine Ridge, Arkansas. And I had only heard the half hour show sponsored by frigid air. But then in 1971 when ksi, out here in Los Angeles, the 50,000 watt Clear Channel station, started celebrating its 50 year history, they started broadcasting as part of what they did, 15 minute episodes of lemon Abner. And I became very riveted to listening to lemon Abner every night, and that went on for quite a while. And so I've kept up with the boys, as it were. Well, a several years ago, some people formed a new Lum and Abner society, and Donnie Pitchford is part of that. I met Donnie through radio enthusiast of Puget Sound, and yesterday, USA. And so we clearly being interested in old radio and all that, had to have Donnie come on and and talk with us. So Donnie, or whatever character you're representing today, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Donnie Pitchford  02:58 Huh? I'm glad to be here. Michael Hingson  03:00 He does that very well, doesn't he? It's a Donnie Pitchford  03:04 little tough sometimes. Well, I'm really glad to be here. Thank you. Michael Hingson  03:10 Well, I appreciate the audio parts of lemon Abner that you you all create every week, and just the whole society. It's great to keep that whole thing going it's kind of fun. We're glad that that it is. But let's, let's talk about you a little bit. Why don't you start by telling us about the early Donnie, growing up and all that. I'm assuming you were born, and so we won't worry about that. But beyond that, think so, yeah. Well, there you are. Tell us about tell us about you and growing up and all that, and we'll go from there. Donnie Pitchford  03:42 Well, I was born in East Texas and left for a little while. We lived in my family lived in Memphis, Tennessee for about seven years, and then moved back to Texas in 1970 but ever since I was a kid this I hear this from cartoonists everywhere. Most of them say I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was five years old. So that's in fact, I had to do a speech for the Texas cartoonist chapter of the National Cartoonist Society. And that was my start. I was going to say the same thing, and the President said, Whatever you do, don't do that old bit about wanting to be a cartoonist at age five. Everybody does that, so I left that part out, but that's really what I wanted to do as a kid. And I would see animated cartoons. I would read the Sunday comics in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and then at some point, my dad would talk about radio, and my mother would talk about listening to radio. We would have the reruns of the Lone Ranger television show and things like Sky King and other programs along those lines, and my parents would all. Way say, Well, I used to listen to that on the radio, or I would hear Superman on the radio, or Amos and Andy or whatever was being rerun at that time, and that fascinated me. And I had these vague memories of hearing what I thought were television programs coming over the radio when I was about two years old. I remember gunshots. I remember, you know, like a woman crying and just these little oddball things. I was about two years old, and I kept thinking, Well, why are we picking up television programs on my mother's radio? Turns out it was the dying gasps of what we now call old time radio. And so at least I remembered that. But when I was about, I guess eight or nine we were, my dad took me to lunch at alums restaurant in Memphis, and I saw that name, and I thought, What in the world? So what kind of name is that? And my dad told me about London Abner, and he said it reminds me. It reminded him of the Andy Griffith Show or the Beverly Hillbillies. I said, I'd love to hear that. He said, Ah, you'll never hear it. He said, those were live they don't exist, but years later, I got to hear them. So yeah, but that's how I grew up wanting to be a cartoonist and coming up with my own characters and drawing all the time and writing stories and that sort of thing. Michael Hingson  06:24 So when did you move back from Memphis to Texas? Donnie Pitchford  06:28 July 2, 1970 I just happened to look that up the other day. How old were you then? I was 12 when we came back. All right, so got into, I was in junior high, and trying to, I was trying to find an audience for these comic strips I was drawing on notebook paper. And finally, you know, some of the kids got into them, and I just continued with that goal. And I just, I knew that soon as possible, you know, I was going to start drawing comics professionally. So I thought, but kept, you know, I kept trying. Michael Hingson  07:06 So you, you went on into college. What did you do in college? Donnie Pitchford  07:11 Well, more of the same. I started listening to some old time radio shows even as far back as as high school. And I was interested in that went to college, first at a college called Kill Gore College, here in East Texas, and then to Stephen F Austin State University. And I was majoring in, first commercial art, and then art education. And I thought, well, if I can't go right into comics, you know, maybe I can just teach for a while. I thought I'll do that for a couple of years. I thought it wouldn't be that long. But while I was at Stephen F Austin State University, the campus radio station, I was so pleased to find out ran old time radio shows. This was in 1980 there was a professor named Dr Joe Oliver, who had a nightly program called theater of the air. And I would hear this voice come over the radio. He would run, he Well, one of the first, the very first 15 minute lemon Abner show I ever heard was played by Dr Oliver. He played Jack Benny. He played the whistler suspense, just a variety of them that he got from a syndicated package. And I would hear this voice afterwards, come on and say, It's jazz time. I'm Joe Oliver. And I thought, Where have I heard that voice? It was, it's just a magnificent radio voice. Years later, I found out, well, I heard that voice in Memphis when I was about 10 years old on W, R, E, C, radio and television. He was working there. He lived in Memphis about the same time we did. Heard him on the campus station at Nacogdoches, Texas. Didn't meet him in person until the late 90s, and it was just an amazing collection of coincidences. And now, of course, we're good friends. Now he's now the announcer for our audio comic strip. So it's amazing how all that came about. Well, I Michael Hingson  09:16 I remember listening to sort of the last few years of oval radio. I think it was, I don't remember the date now, whether it's 57 or 50 I think it's 57 the Kingston Trio had come out with the song Tom Dooley, and one day I was listening to K and X radio in Los Angeles. We lived in Palmdale, and I heard something about a show called suspense that was going to play the story of Tom Dooley. And I went, sounds interesting, and I wanted to know more about it, so I listened. And that started a weekly tradition with me every Sunday, listening to yours truly Johnny dollar and suspense, and they had a little bit of the FBI and peace and war. Then it's went into half and that that went off and Have Gun Will Travel came on, and then at 630 was Gun Smoke. So I listened to radio for a couple of hours every week, not every Sunday night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. And so that's how I really started getting interested in it. Then after radio went off the air a few stations out in California and on the LA area started playing old radio shows somebody started doing because they got the syndicated versions of the shadow and Sherlock Holmes with Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson. And I still maintain to this day that John Gielgud is the best Sherlock Holmes. No matter what people say about Basil Rathbone and I still think Sir John Gielgud was the best Sherlock Holmes. He was very, very good. Yeah, he was and so listen to those. But you know, radio offers so much. And even with, with, with what the whole lemon Abner shows today. My only problem with the lemon Abner shows today is they don't last nearly long enough. But that's another story. Donnie Pitchford  11:11 Are you talking about the comic strip adaptation? Okay, you know how long, how much art I would have to 11:21 do every week. Michael Hingson  11:25 Oh, I know, but they're, they're fun, and, you know, we, we enjoy them, but so you So you met Joe, and as you said, He's the announcer. Now, which is, which is great, but what were you doing then when you met him? What kind of work were you doing at the time? Donnie Pitchford  11:45 Well, of course, there was a gap there of about, I guess, 15 years after college, before I met him. And what ended up happening my first teaching job was an art job, a teaching art and graphic arts at a small high school in Hawkins, Texas, and that was a disaster. Wasn't a wasn't a very good year for me. And so I left that, and I had worked in the printing industry, I went back to that, and that was all during the time that the National London Abner society was being formed. And so I printed their earliest newsletters, which came out every other month. And we started having conventions in MENA, Arkansas and in the real Pine Ridge and the my fellow ossifers As we we call ourselves, and you hear these guys every week on the lemon Abner comic strip. Sam Brown, who lives in Illinois, Tim Hollis, from Alabama. Tim is now quite a published author who would might be a good guest for you one day, sure. And just two great guys. We had a third officer early on named Rex riffle, who had to leave due to various illnesses about 1991 but we started having our conventions every year, starting in 1985 we had some great guests. We brought in everybody we could find who worked with lemon Abner or who knew lemon Abner. We had their their head writer, Roswell Rogers. We had actors, I'm sure you've heard of Clarence Hartzell. He was Ben withers, of course, on the Old Vic and Sade show. He was Uncle Fletcher. We had Willard Waterman, parley Bayer, some of their announcers, Wendell Niles. And my memory is going to start failing me, because there were so many, but we had Bob's, Watson, Louise curry, who were in their first two movies. We had Kay Lineker, who was in their third movie. The list goes on and on, but we had some amazing when did Chester lock pass away? He passed away? Well, Tuffy passed away first, 1978, 78 and Chet died in 1980 sad. Neither of them, yeah, we didn't get to media. Yeah, we didn't meet either one of them. I've met Mrs. Lock I've met all of chet's children, several grandchildren. We spoke to Mrs. Goff on the phone a time or two, and also, tuffy's got toughie's daughter didn't get to meet them in person, but we met as many of the family as we could. Michael Hingson  14:32 Still quite an accomplishment all the way around. And so you you taught. You didn't have success. You felt really much at first, but then what you taught for quite a while, though, Donnie Pitchford  14:45 didn't you? Yes, I went back to the printing industry for about a year, and in the summer of 85 about two weeks before school started, I had got a call that they needed someone to teach Broadcast Journalism at. Carthage High School, and we had a department called CHS TV. I ran that for 25 years. I taught classes. We produced a weekly television program, weekly radio program. We did all kinds of broadcasts for the school district and promotional video. And then in the last I think it was the last 10 years or so that I worked there, we started an old time radio show, and we were trying to come up with a title for it, and just as a temporary placeholder, we called it the golden age of radio. Finally, we said, well, let's just use that, and I think it's been used by other people since, but, but that was the title we came up with. I think in 19 I think it was in 93 or 9495 somewhere in there. We started out. We just ran Old Time Radio, and the students, I would have them research and introduce, like, maybe 45 minutes of songs, of music, you know, from the 30s, 40s, maybe early 50s, big band and Sinatra and Judy Garland and you name it. Then, when the classes would change, we would always start some type of radio program that was pre recorded that would fill that time, so the next class could come in and get in place and and everybody participated, and they went out live over our cable television channel, and we would just run a graphic of a radio and maybe have some announcements or listing of what we were playing. And we did that for several years, usually maybe two or three times a year. And then in I think it was 2004 or so, we had an offer from a low power FM station, which was another another county over, and we started doing a Sunday night, one hour program each week. And I think we ended up doing close to 300 of those before I left. And so we got old time radio in there, one way or the other. Michael Hingson  17:03 Well, I remember. I remember, for me, I went to UC Irvine in the fall of 1968 and by the spring the last quarter of my freshman year, I had started getting some old radio shows. So started playing shows, and then in the fall, I started doing a three hour show on Sunday night called the Radio Hall of Fame, and we did radio every night. And what I didn't know until, actually, fairly recently, was our mutual friend Walden Hughes actually listened to my show on Sunday, and so did the gas means actually, but, but we had a low power station as well, but it made it up, and so people listened to it. And I've always been proud of the fact that during the fact that during the time I ran the Radio Hall of Fame, I'd heard of this show called 60 minutes with a guy named Mike Wallace, but never got to see it. And then it was only much later that I actually ended up starting to watch 60 Minutes. Course, I always loved to say I would have loved to have met, met Mike Wallace and never got to do it, but I always said he had criminal tendencies. I mean, my gosh, what do you think he was the announcer on radio for the Green Hornet, a criminal show, right? Sky King, a lot of criminals. Clearly the guy. Anyway, I would have been fun to meet him, but, Donnie Pitchford  18:31 and his name was Myron. Myron Wallach at the time. Wallach, you're right. I think that's right. Michael Hingson  18:37 But it was, it was fun and and so I've actually got some Sky King shows and green Hornets with him. So it's, it's kind of cool, but Right? You know, I still really do believe that the value of radio is it makes you imagine more. I've seen some movies that I really like for that the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Kevin McCarthy back in 1955 I thought was such a good movie because they didn't show the plants taking over the humans. It was all left to your imagination, which was so cool, and they changed all that in the later remake of it with Leonard Nimoy, which I didn't think was nearly as good, not nearly as suspenseful. But anyway, that's just my opinion. But radio, for me was always a and continues to be a part of what I like to do. And so I've been collecting shows and and enjoying and, of course, listening to lemon Abner, So what made you decide to finally end teaching? Donnie Pitchford  19:38 Well, you know, I could only do that so long. I was getting I was getting very tired, getting kind of burned out, and I had to have a change. There's something had to change. And I was able to take a few years early and retire, and I still the whole time I had a. That it was like a haunting feeling. I, you know, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I would pray, you know, you know, Lord, is there some way can I, can I get out of this? And can I do what I really want to do? And I had some mentors that was finally able to meet people that I would write letters to as a kid, a cartoonist and comic book editor named George Wildman was one of them. He was nice enough to answer my letters when I was a kid, and I'd send him drawings, and he would encourage me, or he would send little corrections on there, you know. And another one was a gentleman named high Eisemann, who passed away recently at age 98 on his birthday, but men like this inspired me, and that it kept at me through the years. I finally met George in 1994 at a convention of the the international Popeye fan club. And I'm I'm at high the same way, and also a writer named Nicola Cuddy, who wrote some Popeye comics. I met him the same way, same event, we all became friends, and I had a good friend named Michael Ambrose of Austin, Texas, who published a magazine devoted to the Charlton Comics company. Sadly, he's deceased now, but Mike and I were talking before I retired, and finally I got out of it. And he said, now that you're out of that job, how would you like to do some art? I said, That's what I want to do. So he gave me the opportunity to do my first published work, which was a portrait of artist George Wildman. It was on the cover of a magazine called Charlton spotlight, then I did some work for Ben Omar, who is bear Manor media publisher for some books that he was doing. One was Mel Blanc biography that Noel blank wrote, did some illustrations for that. This was all happening in 2010 and after that. So I was getting it was getting rolling, doing the kind of work I really wanted to do. And there's a gentleman named Ethan nobles in Benton, Arkansas, who wanted to interview me. I'd gotten, I don't know how he I forgot how he got in touch with me. Maybe he heard me on yesterday USA could be wanted to interview me about London Abner. And so he was starting a website called first Arkansas news. And somewhere in early 2011 we were talking, and I said, you know, you want this to be an online newspaper, right? He said, Yes. I said, What about comics? He said, I hadn't thought about that. So I said, Well, you know, you're a big Lum and Abner fan. What if we could we do a Lum and Abner comic strip? He said, Well, who would Where would I get? Who would do? And I said, Me. So I drew up some proposals, I drew some model sheets, and we did about four weeks of strips, and got approval from Chester lock Jr, and he suggested there's some things he didn't like. He said, The lum looks too sinister. He looks mean. Well, he's mad. He said he's mad at Abner. This won't happen every week. He said, Okay, I don't want LOM to be I said, Well, you know, they get mad at each other. That's part of the that's the conflict and the comedy Michael Hingson  23:30 at each other. Yeah. Donnie Pitchford  23:33 So we, we ironed it all out, and we came up with a financial agreement, and had to pay royalties and one thing and another, and we started publishing online in June 2011, and about six weeks later, the MENA newspaper, the MENA star in MENA, Arkansas, which was the birthplace of Lyman, Abner, Chet Locke and Norris Goff, they picked it up, and then we had a few other newspapers pick it up. And you know, we're not, we're not worldwide, syndicated in print, but we're getting it out there. And of course, we're always online, but and the first Arkansas news went under three or four years later, and so now we have our own website, which is Lum and Abner comics.com so that's where you can find us Michael Hingson  24:24 online. So where's Pine Ridge? Donnie Pitchford  24:28 Pine Ridge is about 18 miles from Mena, Arkansas. MENA is in western Arkansas, and Pine Ridge is about 18 miles east, I believe I'm trying to picture it in my mind, but it's it's down the road, and it actually exists. It was a little community originally named for a postmaster. It was named waters, waters, Arkansas, and in 1936 the real. At cuddleston. He was a real person who owned a store there in waters, and was friends with the locks and the golfs with their parents, as well as Chet and Tuffy. But he proposed a publicity stunt and an actual change of name to name the community Pine Ridge. So that's how that happened. Michael Hingson  25:24 Now, in the original 15 minute episodes, who is the narrator? Donnie Pitchford  25:28 Well, it depends what era their first one trying to remember. Now, Gene Hamilton was an early announcer in the Ford days, which was the early 30s. We don't have anything recorded before that. Charles Lyon was one of the early announcers, possibly for for Quaker Oats. I don't have any notes on this in front of me. I'm just going on memory here. Memory at the end of a long week. Gene Hamilton was their Ford announcer. Carlton brickert announced the Horlicks malt and milk did the commercials when they 1934 to 38 or so. Lou Crosby took over when they were sponsored by General Foods, by post them, the post them commercials, and Lou stayed with them on into the Alka Seltzer era. And his daughter, the celebrity daughter, is Kathie Lee Crosby, you may remember, right, and she and her sister Linda, Lou were a couple of our guests at the National lemon Avenue society convention in 1996 I think let's see. Crosby was Gene Baker came after Crosby, and then in the 30 minute days, was Wendell Niles. Wendell Niles, yeah, in the CBS the 30 minute series and Wendell. We also had him in Mina, super nice guy when it came, when it got into the later ones, 1953 54 I don't remember that announcer's name. That's when they got into the habit of having Dick Huddleston do the opening narration, which is why we now have Sam Brown as Dick Huddleston doing that every week. Michael Hingson  27:27 So was it actually Dick Huddleston? No, it Donnie Pitchford  27:30 was North golf, tough. He always played the part of Dick Huddleston. Okay, the only, the only time that, as far as I know, the only time the real dick Huddleston was on network radio, was at that ceremony in Little Rock Arkansas, when they changed the name of the town that the real dick Huddleston spoke at that event. And we actually, we discovered a recording of that. I was just gonna ask if there's a recording of that there is. Yeah, it's on 12 inch, 78 RPM discs. Wow. And they were probably the personal discs of lock and golf, and they weren't even labeled. And I remember spinning that thing when Sam Brown and I after we found it, it was down in Houston, and we brought them a batch of discs back, and I remember spinning that thing and hearing the theme song being played, I said, this sounds like a high school band. And suddenly we both got chills because we had heard that. I don't know if it was the Little Rock High School band or something, but it's like, Can this be? Yes, it was. It was. We thought it was long lost, but it was that ceremony. Wow. So that was a great find. Michael Hingson  28:45 Well, hopefully you'll, you'll play that sometime, or love to get a copy, but, Donnie Pitchford  28:50 yeah, we've, we have we played it on yesterday, USA. Oh, okay, so it's out there. Michael Hingson  28:57 Well, that's cool. Well, yeah, I wondered if Dick Huddleston actually ever was directly involved, but, but I can, can appreciate that. As you said, Tuffy Goff was the person who played him, which was, that's still that was pretty cool. They were very talented. Go ahead, Donnie Pitchford  29:19 I was gonna say that's basically tough. He's natural speaking voice, yeah, when you hear him as Dick Huddleston, Michael Hingson  29:24 they're very talented people. They played so many characters on the show. They did and and if you really listen, you could tell, but mostly the voices sounded enough different that they really sounded like different people all the time. Donnie Pitchford  29:41 Well, the fun thing are the episodes where, and it's carefully written, but they will, they will do an episode where there may be seven or eight people in the room and they get into an argument, or they're trying to all talk at the same time, and you completely forget that it's only two guys, because they will overlap. Those voices are just so perfectly overlapped and so different, and then you stop and you listen. So wait a minute, I'm only hearing two people at a time, but the effect is tremendous, the fact that they were able to pull that off and fool the audience. Michael Hingson  30:15 I don't know whether I'd say fool, but certainly entertained. Well, yeah, but they also did have other characters come on the show. I remember, yes, Diogenes was that was a lot of fun listening to those. Oh yeah, yeah, that was Frank Graham. Frank Graham, right, right, but, but definitely a lot of fun. So you eventually left teaching. You decided you accepted jobs, starting to do cartoons. What were some of the other or what, well, what were some of the first and early characters that you cartooned, or cartoons that you created, Donnie Pitchford  30:50 just, you mean, by myself or Well, or with people, either way, I did some things that were not published, you know, just just personal characters that I came up with it would mean nothing to anybody, but a little bit later on, I did a little bit of I did a cover for a Popeye comic book. Maybe 10 years ago, I finally got a chance to work with George Wildman, who was the fellow I talked about earlier, and it was some of the last work he did, and this was with Michael Ambrose of Argo press out of Austin, Texas. And we did some early characters that had been published by Charlton Comics. They had, they had characters, they were, they were rip offs. Let's be honest. You know Harvey had Casper the Friendly Ghost. Well, Charlton had Timmy, the timid ghost. There, there was Mighty Mouse. Well, Charlton Comics had atomic mouse, so and there was an atomic rabbit. And Warner Brothers had Porky Pig. Charlton had pudgy pig, but that was some of George's earliest work in the 1950s was drawing these characters, and George was just he was a master Bigfoot cartoonist. I mean, he was outstanding. And so Mike said, let's bring those characters back. They're public domain. We can use them. So I wrote the scripts. George did the pencil art. Well, he inked the first few, but Mike had me do hand lettering, which I don't do that much. So it was that was a challenge. And my friend high Iseman taught lettering for years and years, and so I was thinking, high is going to see this? This has to be good. So I probably re lettered it three times to get it right, but we did the very last story we did was atomic rabbit and pudgy pig was a guest star, and then George's character named brother George, who was a little monk who didn't speak, who lived, lived in a monastery, and did good deeds and all that sort of thing. He was in there, and this was the last thing we did together. And George said, you know, since I've got these other projects, he said, Do you think you can, you can ink this? So that was a great honor to actually apply the inks over George's pencil work. And I also did digital color, but those were some things I worked on, and, oh, at one point we even had Lum and Abner in the Dick Tracy Sunday comic strip, and that was because of a gentleman named Mike Curtis, who was the writer who lived in Arkansas, was very familiar with Lum and Abner, and he got in touch with me and asked, this was in 2014 said, Would it be possible for me to use Lum and Abner in a Sunday cameo? So I contacted the locks. First thing they first thing Chet said was how much I said, I don't think they're going to pay us. I felt like, Cedric, we hunt, no mom, you know. And I felt like he was squire skimp at the time, yeah, but I said, it's just going to be really good publicity. So he finally went for it, and Lum and Abner had a cameo in a Sunday Dick Tracy comic strip, and about four years later, they honored me. This was Mike Curtis, the writer, and Joe Staton, the artist, who was another guy that I grew up reading from as a teenager, just a tremendous artist, asked if they could base a character on me. And I thought, what kind of murderer is he going to be? You know, it was going to be idiot face or what's his name, you know. So no, he was going to be a cartoonist, and the name was Peter pitchblende. Off, and he was, he said his job was to illustrate a comic strip about a pair of old comedians. So, I mean, who couldn't be honored by that? Yeah, so I don't remember how long that story lasted, but it was an honor. I mean, it was just great fun. And then then I had a chance to write two weeks of Dick Tracy, which was fun. I wrote the scripts for it and and then there's some other things. I was able to work with John rose, a tremendously nice guy who is the current artist on Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. We did a story, a comic book story, on Barney Google on Snuffy Smith in a magazine called Charleton spotlight, and I did the colors, digital coloring for that. So just these are just great honors to me to get to work with people like that. And Nick Cuddy, I did some inking, lettering coloring on some of his work. So just great experience, and Michael Hingson  36:02 great people, going back to atomic rabbit and pudgy pig, no one ever got in trouble with, from Warner Brothers with that, huh? Donnie Pitchford  36:09 Well, not, not on atomic rabbit, however, pudgy pig created a problem because George was doing some art, and I think somebody from Warner Brothers said he looks too much like Porky, so the editor at the time said, make one of his ears hang down, make him look a little different. But pudgy didn't last long. Pudgy was only around maybe two or three issues of the comic book, so, but yeah, that's George. Said they did have some trouble with that. Michael Hingson  36:44 Oh, people, what do you do? Yeah, well, I know you sent us a bunch of photos, and we have some of the Dick Tracy ones and others that people can go see. But what? What finally got you all to start the whole lemon Abner society. Donnie Pitchford  37:07 Oh, well, that goes back to 1983 right, and I'll go back even farther than that. I told you that my dad had mentioned lemon Abner to me as a kid. Dr Joe Oliver played a 15 minute lemon Abner show on KSA you at Stephen F Austin State University. That got me. I was already into old time radio, but it was the next summer 1981 there's a radio station, an am station in Gilmer, Texas Christian radio station that started running Lum and Abner every day. First it was 530 in the evening, and then I think they switched it to 1215 or so. And I started listening, started setting up my recorder, recording it every day. And a friend of mine named David Miller, who was also a radio show collector, lived in the Dallas area, I would send them to him, and at first he wasn't impressed, but then suddenly he got hooked. And when he got hooked, he got enthusiastic. He started making phone calls. He called Mrs. Lock chet's widow and talked to her. He spoke to a fellow who had written a number of articles, George Lily, who was an early proponent or an early promoter of lemon Abner, as far as reruns in the 1960s and it was through George Lilly that I was put in touch with Sam Brown in Dongola, Illinois, and because he had contacted Mr. Lilly as well. And before long, we were talking, heard about this guy named Tim Hollis. Sam and I met in Pine Ridge for lemon Abner day in 1982 for the first time, and hit it off like long lost friends and became very good friends. And then in 84 I believe it was Sam and Tim and Rex riffle met again, or met for the first time together, I guess in Pine Ridge. And I wasn't there that time. But somehow, in all of that confusion, it was proposed to start the national lemon Abner society, and we started publishing the Jot them down journal in the summer of 1984 Michael Hingson  39:43 and for those who don't know the Jotham down journal, because the store that lemon Abner ran was the Jotham down store anyway, right? Donnie Pitchford  39:50 Go ahead, yes. And that was Tim's title. Tim created the title The Jotham down journal, and we started publishing and started seeking information. And it started as just a simple photocopy on paper publication. It became a very slick publication. In 1990 or 91 Sam started recording cassettes, reading the journals, because we were hearing from Blind fans that said, you know, I enjoy the journal. I have to have somebody read it to me. This is before screen readers. And of course, you know this technology better than I do, but before any type of technology was available, and Sam said, Well, I'll tell you. I'll just start reading it on tape and I'll make copies. Just started very simply, and from then on, until the last issue in in 2007 Sam would record a cassette every other month, or when we went quarterly, four times a year, and he would mail those to the the blind members, who would listen to those. And sometimes they would keep them, and sometimes they would return them for Sam to recycle. But incidentally, those are all online now, Michael Hingson  41:03 yeah, I've actually looked at a few of those. Those are kind of fun. So the London Avenue society got formed, and then you started having conventions. Donnie Pitchford  41:14 Yes, yes. First convention was in 1985 and we did a lot of things with we would do recreations. We would do a lot of new scripts, where, if we had someone that we got to the point where we would have people that hadn't worked with lemon Abner. So we would have lemon Abner meet the great Gildersleeve. Actually, Willard had worked on the lumen Abner half hour show at some point. I believe les Tremain had never worked directly with them, but he was well, he was in some Horlicks malted milk commercials in the 1930s and of course, the Lone Ranger was never on the London Abner show and vice versa, until we got hold of it. So we had Fred Foy in 1999 and he agreed to be the announcer, narrator and play the part of the Lone Ranger. So we did Lum and Abner meet the Lone Ranger, which was a lot of fun. We had parley bear, so Lum and Abner met Chester of Gun Smoke. And those were just a lot of fun to do. And Tim, Tim would write some of them, I would write some of them, or we would collaborate back and forth to come up with these scripts. Did love and amner, ever meet Superman? No, we never got to that. That would have been great. Yeah, if we could have come up with somebody who had played Superman, that would have been a lot of fun. We had lemon Abner meet Kathie Lee Crosby as herself. Yeah, they met Frank brazzi One time. That must be fun. It was a lot of fun. We had some people would recreate the characters. We had the lady who had played Abner's daughter, Mary Lee Rob replay. She played that character again, 50 years later, coming back home to see, you know, to see family. Several other things, we had London Abner meet Gumby one time. Of all things, we had Dow McKinnon as a guest. And we had Kay Lineker come back and reprise one of her roles, the role she played in the London Abner movie. Bob's Watson did that as well. Some years we didn't have a script, which I regret, but we had other things going on. We had anniversaries of London Abner movies that we would play. So whatever we did, we tailored it around our guest stars, like Dick Beals, Sam Edwards, Roby Lester, gee whiz. I know I'm leaving people out. Michael Hingson  43:52 Well, that's okay, but, but certainly a lot of fun. What? Yes, what? Cartoonist really influenced you as a child? Donnie Pitchford  44:01 Oh, wow. I would say the first thing I saw that got my attention was the Flintstones on on prime time television, you know, the Hanna Barbera prime time things certainly Walt Disney, the animation that they would run, that he would show, and the behind the scenes, things that would be on the Disney show, things like almost almost anything animated as a kid, got my attention. But Walter Lance, you know, on the Woody Woodpecker show used to have, he'd have little features about how animation was done, and that that inspired me, that that just thrilled me. And I read Fred lachel's Snuffy Smith Chester Gould's Dick Tracy. Tracy, which that was a that's why the Dick Tracy connection, later was such a big deal for me. Almost anything in the Sunday comics that was big. Foot. In other words, the cartoony, exaggerated characters are called, sometimes called Bigfoot, Bigfoot cartooning, or Bigfoot characters. Those were always the things I looked for, Bugs Bunny, any of the people that worked on those some were anonymous. And years later, I started learning the names of who drew Popeye, you know, like LZ seagar, the originator, or bud sagendorf or George Wildman, and later high eysman. But people like that were my heroes. Later on, I was interested in I would read the Batman comics, or I would see Tarzan in the newspaper. I admired the work of Russ Manning. Michael Hingson  45:49 Do you know the name Tom Hatton? Yes, I do. Yeah. Yes. Tom did Popeye shows on KTLA Channel Five when I was growing up, and he was famous for, as he described it, squiggles. He would make a squiggle and he would turn it into something. And he was right on TV, which was so much fun. Donnie Pitchford  46:09 We had a guy in Memphis who did the same thing. His name was, he's known as Captain Bill, C, A, P, you know, Captain Bill. And he did very much the same thing. He'd have a child come up, I think some, in some cases, they're called drools. Is one word for them. There was a yeah, in Tim hollis's area, there was cousin Cliff Holman who did that. And would he might have a kid draw a squiggle, and then he would create something from it right there on the spot, a very similar type of thing, or a letter of the alphabet, or your initials, that sort Michael Hingson  46:43 of thing. Yeah. Tom did that for years. It was fun. Of course, I couldn't see them, but he talked enough that I knew what was going on. It's kind of fun. My brother loved them, yeah? So later on, when you got to be a teenager and beyond what cartoonist maybe influenced you more? Donnie Pitchford  47:03 Well, I would have to say George, probably because I was corresponding with him, right? Also, I would see the work of Carl Barks, who created Uncle Scrooge McDuck and the Donald Duck comics and all that. His stuff was all in reprint at that time, he was still living, but I didn't know he could be contacted. I didn't try to write to it, right? Years later, years later, I did get an autograph, which was, was very nice. But those people, a lot of people, Neil Adams, who did Batman, the guys at Charlton Comics, Steve Ditko, who was the CO creator of spider man, but he had a disagreement with Stan Lee, and went back to Charlton Comics and just turned out 1000s of pages, but his work was was inspirational. Another was Joe Staton, who was working at Charleton comics, who I got to work with on several projects later on, and I would say just all of those guys that I was reading at the time. Pat Boyette was another Charlton artist. I tend to gravitate toward the Charlton company because their artists weren't contained in a house style. They were allowed to do their own style. They didn't pay as much. But a lot of them were either older guys that said, I'm tired of this, of the DC Marvel system. I want to just, you know, have creative freedom. Charlton said, come on. And so they would work there and less stress, less money, probably one guy named Don Newton started there and became a legend in the industry at other companies. So I found all of those guys inspiring, and I felt I could learn from all of them. Michael Hingson  48:59 Well, you always wanted to be a cartoonist. Did you have any other real career goals, like, was teaching a goal that you wanted to do, or was it just cartooning it? Donnie Pitchford  49:07 Well, it was just a secondary, you know, as I said, when I started, I thought, I'll just do that for a few years. You know, I didn't know it was going to be like 27 but I we had a lot of success. We had, I had some student groups that would enter video competitions. And for 20 straight years, we placed either first, second or third in state competition with one Summit, one entry, another or another every year. And that was notable. I mean, I give the kids the credit for that. But then about five or six of those years, we had what we call state championship wins, you know, we were like the number one project in the state of Texas. So, you know, we had some great success, I think, in that so a lot of years there, I really, you know, that was a blessing to me. Was that career, you. Well, it just, it just got to be too much time for change. After a while, Michael Hingson  50:05 was art just a talent that you had, and cartoon drawing a talent you had, or, I don't remember how much you said about did you have any real special training as such? Donnie Pitchford  50:14 Well, all of my training was, I just couldn't afford to go to a specialized school. You know, at one time, the Joe Kubert School opened just about the time I graduated high school, it was in New Jersey. I just couldn't make that happen, so I went to state colleges and universities and did the best I could. I took commercial art classes, drawing classes, design classes, even ceramics, which came in very handy when I did some sculpting here in the last eight or nine years and worked as an assistant to a sculptor named Bob harness who lives here in Carthage, but I never had any actual comic strip slash comic book training, so I learned as much of that as I could from guys like George wild. And then after I started the lemon Avenue comic strip, an artist named Joe, named Jim Amish, who worked for Marvel, did a lot of work for the Archie Comics. And tremendous anchor is his. He's really a tremendous anchor, and does a lot of ink work over other artists pencils. Jim would call and say, he said, I want to give you some advice. I'm like, okay, at 3am he's still giving me advice. So I'd go around for two or three days feeling like a failure, but then I would, I would think about all the lessons, you know, that he had told me. And so I learned a lot from Jim and tremendous, tremendous guy. And I would listen to what high, sometimes high would call up and say, Why did you use that purple beg your pardon. So it was fun. I mean, those fellows would share with me, and I learned a great deal from those guys. Michael Hingson  52:11 Are you in any way passing that knowledge on to others today? Donnie Pitchford  52:16 I don't know that I am. I've had an offer or two to do some teaching. I just don't know if I'm if I'm going to get back into that or not. Yeah, I'm so at this point, focused on, quote, unquote, being a cartoonist and trying to make that, that age five dream, a reality, that I'm not sure I'm ready to do that again. And you know, I'm not, I'm not 21 anymore. Michael Hingson  52:45 I didn't know whether you were giving advice to people and just sort of informally doing it, as opposed to doing formal teaching. Donnie Pitchford  52:51 Well, informally, yes, I mean, if anybody asks, you know, I'll be glad to share whatever I can. But yeah, I'm not teaching any classes at this point. Michael Hingson  53:01 Well, you have certainly taken lemon Abner to interesting places in New Heights. One, one thing that attracted me and we talked about it before, was in 2019, lemon Abner in Oz. That was fun. Donnie Pitchford  53:17 Well, the credit for that goes to Tim Hollis. Tim wrote that as a short story years ago when he was first interested in lemon Abner. And I don't know if he ever had that published through the International oz society or not. I don't remember, but Tim later turned that into a radio script when we had a batch of guests. This was in 2001 we had, let's see Sam Edwards, Dick Beals, Roby Lester and Rhoda Williams. And each of them had done something related to Oz, either the children's records or storybook records or animation or something. They were involved somewhere in some type of Oz adaptation. So Tim turned his short story into a radio script that we performed there at the convention. So that was a lot of fun. And then he suggested, Why don't I turn that into a comic strip story? So that's what we did. But that was fun, yeah, and we used the recordings of those people because they had given us permission, you know, to use a recording however we saw fit. The only problem is we had a mistake. The fellow that was running the sound had a dead mic and didn't know it. Oh, gosh. So some of them are bit Off mic in that audio, but we did the best. I did the best I could Michael Hingson  54:40 with it's it sounded good. I certainly have no complaints. 54:45 Thank you for that. Michael Hingson  54:47 I I said no complaints at all. I think it was really fun and very creative. And it's kind of really neat to see so much creativity in terms of all the stuff that that you do. As a cartoonist, me having never seen cartoons, but I learned intellectually to appreciate the talent that goes into it. And of course, you guys do put the scripts together every week, which is a lot of fun to be able to listen to them well. Donnie Pitchford  55:17 And that's what that was, the audience I hoped that we would would tap into right there and it, it was guys like you that would would talk to me and say, What am I going to do? You know, I can't see it. So that's why the audio idea came about. And it's taken on a life of its own, really. And we've got Mark Ridgway, who has created a lot of musical cues for us that we use and Michael Hingson  55:45 who plays the organ? Donnie Pitchford  55:47 That's Mark Ridgway. It is Mark, okay, yes, yes. And it's actually digital, I'm sure. I think it's a digital keyboard, Michael Hingson  55:55 yeah, but it is. It's a, it's a really good sounding one, though. Donnie Pitchford  55:59 Yes, yes. There are a few cues that I did, which probably are the ones that don't sound so good, like if we ever need really bad music. If you remember the story we did, and I don't remember the name of it, what do we call it anyway? Lum tries to start a soap opera. Think this was about a year ago. Yeah, and Cedric is going to play, I don't remember it was an organ or a piano, and I don't remember what he played, but whatever it was, I think was Mary Had Michael Hingson  56:32 a Little Lamb, Mary's, Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano. Sort of kind played. Donnie Pitchford  56:35 It was played very badly, well that, yes, it was on purpose. When mom plays lum tries to play the saxophone. That was me, and I hadn't played this. I used to play the sax. In fact, I played in a swing orchestra here in Carthage, Texas for about five years back in from the early 90s. And so I had this idea, and I hadn't played the horn probably since, probably in 20 years, and his. So I got it out, and I thought, you know, it's gonna sound terrible because it needs maintenance, but it doesn't matter. It's lump playing it, so I got to play really badly. Michael Hingson  57:14 It was perfect. It was perfect, Donnie Pitchford  57:16 yeah, because it had to sound bad. Michael Hingson  57:19 How do y'all create all these different plots. I remember so many, like the buzzard, you know, and, oh yeah, that was fun. And so many. How do you come up with those? Donnie Pitchford  57:28 Well, I used to get some really good ideas while mowing the yard. Don't ask me, why? Or I get ideas. I get ideas in the weirdest thing, weirdest places. Sometimes I have ideas in the shower. You know, I said, I better write this down. Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, but there the ideas just come to me. Yeah? The buzzard was fun. I'd had that one. Pretty creative. Yeah, the one about, the one about, let me see. Oh, there was one we did, where wasn't the buzzard? What was that other one? I called the Whisper? Yeah, there was a strange voice that was coming lum thought it was coming from his radio. And he turns his radio off, and He still hears it, and it was a villain who had somehow hypnotized everyone so that they wouldn't see him and he would use his voice only. And then there's a character I came up with, and let me see Larry Gasman played it, and I called him Larry John Walden, and he was the only guy he was blind. He was the only guy that wasn't hypnotized because he couldn't see the you know, I use the old thing about the watch in front of the eyes. I mean, he was the only guy that wasn't hypnotized, so he wasn't fooled by the whisper, and he could track him, because his hearing was so acute that he was able to find him. In fact, I think he could hear his watch ticking or something like that. So he was the hero of that piece. But, well, I just, I just think up ideas and write them down. Tim Hollis has written some of the scripts, maybe three or four for me, I've adapted some scripts that London Abner did that were never broadcast or that were never recorded. Rather, I've adapted a few, written several, and I keep saying, Well, when I completely run out of ideas, I'll just have to quit. Michael Hingson  59:32 Well, hopefully that never happens. What? What are your future plans? Donnie Pitchford  59:38 Well, right now, there's nothing major in the works other than just maintaining the strip, trying to continue it, trying to make it entertaining, and hopefully doing a little work on the website and getting it into the hands of more people. And I'd like to increase. Least newspaper coverage, if at all possible. And because this thing doesn't, you know, it's got to pay for itself somehow. So you know, I'm not getting rich by any means. But you know, I want to keep it fun. I want to keep having fun with it. Hopefully people will enjoy it. Hopefully we can reach younger readers, listeners, and hopefully lemon Abner can appeal to even younger audiences yet, so that we can keep those characters going. Michael Hingson  1:00:29 Yeah, there's so much entertainment there. I hope that happens now in the the life of Donnie Pitchford. Is there a wife and kids? Donnie Pitchford  1:00:40 Yes, there's a wife of almost 40 years. We unfortunately don't have any children. We've almost feel like we adopted several children all the years we were teaching. We we've adopted several cats along the way. And so, you know, we've had cats as pets for almost ever, since we were married. But that's she's, she's great, you know, she's, she's been my best friend and supporter all these years. And we were members of first Methodist Church here in Carthage, Texas, and doing some volunteer work there, and helping to teach Sunday school, and very involved and active in that church. Michael Hingson  1:01:19 So I have a cat, and I hear her outside, not outside the house, but outside the the office here, she wants me to go feed her, and we, we shaved her yesterday because her hair gets long and Matt's very easily. So she got shaved yesterday. So she's probably seeking a little vengeance from that too, but, but my wife and I were married 40 years. She passed away in November of 2022 so it's me and stitch the cat and Alamo the dog, and Karen is monitoring us somewhere. And as I tell everyone, I've got to continue to be a good kid, because if I'm not, I'm going to hear about it. So I got to be good. But it's a lot of fun. Well, I want to thank you for being with us today. This has been a lot of fun. I've learned a lot, but it's just been great to have another podcast talking about old radio shows. And you said again, if people want to reach out, they can go to lemon Abner comics.com if people want to talk to you about doing any kind of cartooning or anything like that. What's the best way they can do that? Donnie Pitchford  1:02:24 Well, they can go to the London Abner dot lumen, Abner comics.com website, and there's a contact a link right there at the top of the page. So yeah, they can contact me through that. Probably that's the easiest way to do it. Michael Hingson  1:02:37 Okay, well, I want to thank you again for being here, and I want to thank all y'all out there. That's how they talk in Texas, right? It's all y'all for everybody. Donnie Pitchford  1:02:46 Well, some of them do, and some of them in Arkansas do too. Well, yeah. Michael Hingson  1:02:49 And then there's some who don't, yeah, y'all means everything, and it Speaker 1  1:02:54 don't, yeah, I don't think squire skimp says it that way. Michael Hingson  1:02:58 Well, Squire, you know, whatever it takes. But I want to thank you all for being here, and please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening or watching the podcast. Donnie would appreciate it. I would appreciate it, and also give us a review. We'd love to get your reviews, so please do that. If you can think of anyone else who ought to be a guest, and I think Donnie has already suggested a few. So Donnie as well, anyone else who ought to come on the podcast, we'd love it. Appreciate you introducing us, and you know, we'll go from there. And I know at some point in the future, the Michael hingson Group Inc is going to be a sponsor, because we've started that process for lemon. Abner, yes, thank you. Thank you. So I want to, I want to thank love and Squire for that 1:03:45 years. Well, it's been my pleasure. Michael Hingson  1:03:50 Well, thank you all and again, really, seriously, Donnie, I really appreciate you being here. This has been a lot of fun. So thank you for coming. Donnie Pitchford  1:03:58 Thank you. It's been a great honor. I've appreciated it very much. Michael Hingson  1:04:06 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

In this episode of The Tactics Meeting, Dan sits down with Patrick Gallagher, Executive Director of the Marine Exchange of Puget Sound, for a practical conversation about what “response readiness” actually looks like in the Pacific Northwest—when the weather's bad, systems fail, and you still have to keep the region moving. They dig into the Marine Exchange's behind-the-scenes role supporting WSMC's 24/7 watch, the value of resilient AIS coverage, and how the Marine Exchange has even backed up the Coast Guard's Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) when federal systems stumble. Along the way, they talk continuity planning (generators, fuel, cloud redundancy), the reality that help may not arrive quickly in a Cascadia-scale event, and what preparedness looks like when you're building it with limited resources. Topics include: Continuity of operations for maritime response and vessel traffic oversight AIS as an operational backbone (and why redundancy matters) Coordinating notifications, early incident intelligence, and on-call incident command Shipboard fire readiness, Unified Command, and hard lessons learned Communications resilience (including radio) and emerging hazards like lithium-ion battery fires  

Seattle is in earthquake country, and our most recent big reminder of that came 25 years ago this Saturday, when the Nisqually Earthquake shook the Puget Sound region. Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square neighborhood was hard hit, and a lot changed as a result of it. We'll explore how the neighborhood has grappled with its vulnerability to earthquakes while preserving its history. We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. Tap here to make a gift and keep Seattle Now in your feed. Got questions about local news or story ideas to share? We want to hear from you! Email us at seattlenow@kuow.org, leave us a voicemail at (206) 616-6746 or leave us feedback online.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Boeing is once again pulling critical aerospace work out of Washington state — shifting engineering roles tied to major aircraft programs to South Carolina — while simultaneously cutting 17,000 jobs nationwide as of October 2024. For Seattle and the broader Puget Sound region, this is more than corporate restructuring — it's a direct blow to high-wage jobs, skilled labor, and Washington's economic foundation.On this episode of Left Coast News, we break down why Boeing's decisions are bad news for Seattle, why Washington keeps losing aerospace jobs to right-to-work states, and how poor leadership, labor hostility, and political pressure are hollowing out one of the state's most important industries. If Boeing was once the backbone of Washington's economy, the cracks are now impossible to ignore.#Boeing #SeattleJobs #WashingtonState #AerospaceIndustry #JobCuts #EconomicImpact #LeftCoastNews #ManufacturingJobs #UnionJobs #TechJobs #Workforce #CorporateAmerica #SeattleEconomy #BoeingLayoffs #StateEconomy

Today's guest on The Long View is Hilary Wiek. Hilary is a principal analyst at PitchBook, where she leads PitchBook's coverage of fund strategies and performance, publishing primary research on the alternative space. Hilary also leads PitchBook's coverage of the ESG and impact investing space. Hilary has over 20 years of experience in asset owner, manager, and advisory roles. Prior to joining PitchBook, she was the director of investments at the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundations, where she handled portfolio management, impact and ESG investment, investment due diligence and monitoring, and investment operations. Before that, she worked in senior positions at Segal Rogerscasey, the South Carolina Retirement Systems Investment Commission, Buckingham Financial Group, Dayton Power & Light, and KeyCorp. Wiek received a master's degree in finance and economics from Case Western Reserve University and a bachelor's degree in business leadership and finance from the University of Puget Sound. She is based in PitchBook's Seattle office. PitchBook is a Morningstar company. Episode Highlights 00:00:00 Background in the Private Markets and Joining PitchBook 00:04:49 Drivers of Private Market Slowdown in 2026 and Pockets of Outperformance 00:14:15 Key Lessons for Investing in Private Market Funds 00:18:12 Private Market Fees, Hidden Volatility, and Valuations 00:20:38 Evergreen Investment Growth, Interval Funds, and Questions Investors Should Ask 00:32:26 Is It Worth It to Invest in Private Markets? 00:36:50 ESG, Impacting Investing, and Key Themes for 2026 00:41:05 Private Market Exposure in 401(k)s PitchBook Reports Discussed Benchmarking and Returns: Why Are There So Many Numbers? Evergreen Funds: We Have Questions The Evergreen Evolution The New Face of Private Markets in Your 401(k) US Evergreen Fund Landscape 2025 Impact Investing Update If you have a comment or a guest idea, please email us at TheLongView@Morningstar.com. Follow Christine Benz (@christine_benz) and Ben Johnson (@MstarBenJohnson) on X, and Christine Benz, Amy Arnott, and Ben Johnson on LinkedIn. Visit Morningstar.com for new research and insights from Christine, Ben, and Amy. Subscribe to Christine's weekly newsletter, Improving Your Finances. If you want more Morningstar podcasts, check out The Morning Filter and Investing Insights. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I had the chance to sit down with Douglas Sackman, a history professor at the University of Puget Sound, for a conversation that feels especially timely. Professor Sackman joined me to talk about the Gilded...

If you've ever wondered why you can only fish for Chinook a handful of days a year while anglers in Canada are limiting out on fish from your own backyard — this episode is for you. Jamie breaks down the North of Falcon salmon season process from the ground up: where it came from, why it works the way it does, and most importantly, what you can do right now to get involved before the 2026 seasons are locked in. Timestamped Sections00:00 — Introduction: Why Jamie rush-recorded this episode 01:45 — What's at stake: Chinook seasons, Marine Area 7, and fishing for the next generation 04:20 — Big picture overview: halibut seasons expanding vs. Chinook contracting 05:45 — A brief history of Washington salmon fishing in the 1950s–70s 07:30 — Tribal fishing rights, treaty negotiations, and the Fish Wars 09:50 — The Boldt Decision (1974): what Judge George Boldt ruled and why it still governs everything 12:15 — Co-management: tribes as equal partners in science, decision-making, and enforcement 14:00 — What "North of Falcon" actually means and where the name comes from 15:45 — How the annual North of Falcon process works (February through June timeline) 18:00 — The ESA listing of Puget Sound Chinook (1999) and NOAA's annual biological opinion 19:30 — Common Q&A: Why only 5–6 days? Why can Canadians fish our fish? Hatcheries? Seals? 23:45 — Four action items to take right now before seasons are locked inKey TakeawaysThe Boldt Decision split the harvestable salmon 50/50 between tribes and non-tribal fishers — and that split is federal law, not something WDFW chose.Tribes aren't just participants in the North of Falcon process — they're co-managers with equal say in the science and decision-making.Marine Area 7's season shrunk from 92 days to 3–6 because constraining Chinook stocks that migrate through it are ESA-listedSalmon don't respect borders. Washington hatchery Chinook migrate to Canadian waters, and the Pacific Salmon Treaty governs how those fish are harvested.Hatchery production of Chinook in Puget Sound has roughly doubled since the ESA listing — without hatcheries, there would be very few fish left to target.Resources MentionedWDFW Public Meeting Schedule: https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/management/north-falcon/public-meetingsFish Washington App: https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/regulations/appNOAA — Puget Sound Chinook: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/endangered-species-conservation/puget-sound-chinook-salmonHistoryLink — Boldt Decision: https://historylink.org/file/21084NW Indian Fisheries Commission: https://nwifc.orgEpisode 52 — The Science of Salmon: Fisheries Experts Reveal the Truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDhEf5IusdUAnglers Unlimited Gold: https://anglersunlimited.co/goldAttend the February 27th North of Falcon meeting — in person in Olympia or via Zoom starting at 9:00 AM. Register at This link

Lalita du Perron talks to Trishna Senapaty, Mellon Postdoc and Teaching Fellow in the Crime, Law and Justice Studies Program at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, about her work in open prisons in North India, and how communities are built in and around them.

Layoffs have sent a shockwave through the tech sector. Thousands of workers around Puget Sound are suddenly or soon to be out of work. Puget Sound Business Journal Tech reporter Rick Morgan is here to talk about what’s next for laid off workers. We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. Tap here to make a gift and keep Seattle Now in your feed. Got questions about local news or story ideas to share? We want to hear from you! Email us at seattlenow@kuow.org, leave us a voicemail at (206) 616-6746 or leave us feedback online.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

418 Mindful Presence   Being mindful of our presence in the lives around us is an integral part of the human experience, whether it be for our own personal comfort and growth or to ease the lives of those around us. Though we all have our own unique reasoning and paths to walk, it is important to remember we don't have to travel alone and by working together we can all get to the finish line. In today's episode Sarah Elkins and Renée Smith discuss the importance of community in becoming the best version of yourself as well as the importance of developing our problem solving skills to always be able to take action.   Highlights There is no linear path, take your time and find your own. Connecting with strangers through lived experience. Teaching others your toolset and learning others toolset so that everyone succeeds.     Quotes "Being able to be present with them in a trusting way." "A problem is a gap between where you are now and where you want to be." "Maybe you don't have what you need to take action." Dear Listeners it is now your turn, I'm really curious to hear what was sticky for you in today's conversation. Whether you're thinking now about your presence, about how you demonstrate love and support and care for people especially those that are strangers, those that you might disagree with. I know how hard it can be, how challenging it is to feel love for people that have different perspectives than us right now, more than ever before. And I'm here to say that if you can allow that open moment where you express your own experience and they hear it and that you are sharing this to connect with them and not to change their mind, this leaves the door open for them to carry that forward.         And, as always, thank you for listening.    About Renée Renée Smith, MSOD (she/her) is the strategist leaders turn to when they want to make their workplace more loving and human. As the creator of Love-Centered Leadership and the Human Workplace EX Roadmap, she helps people and results rise together. The founder and CEO of the consultancy, A Human Workplace, and the non-profit Center for a Loving Workplace, Renée promotes loving workplace cultures, primarily through research, education, impact projects. She led award-winning culture work as a state executive and served in the Governor's Office as Director of Workplace Transformation for the State of Washington. Smith is a researcher, writer, and speaker who's reached hundreds of audiences in eleven countries, making the business case for love. She earned a Master of Science in Organization Development from Pepperdine University and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt from the University of Washington. She lives in Tacoma with her husband Jim in a multi-generational household with her son and his family. When she is not traveling, she enjoys sculling on the Puget Sound, watercolor painting, and hosting dinner parties. Be sure to check out Renée's LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram! As well as Loving Workplace, Renée Smith Speaks, and A Human Workplace! About Sarah "Uncovering the right stories for the right audiences so executives, leaders, public speakers, and job seekers can clearly and actively demonstrate their character, values, and vision." In my work with coaching clients, I guide people to improve their communication using storytelling as the foundation of our work together. What I've realized over years of coaching and podcasting is that the majority of people don't realize the impact of the stories they share - on their internal messages, and on the people they're sharing them with. My work with leaders and people who aspire to be leaders follows a similar path to the interviews on my podcast, uncovering pivotal moments in their lives and learning how to share them to connect more authentically with others, to make their presentations and speaking more engaging, to reveal patterns that have kept them stuck or moved them forward, and to improve their relationships at work and at home. The audiobook, Your Stories Don't Define You, How You Tell Them Will is now available! Included with your purchase are two bonus tracks, songs recorded by Sarah's band, Spare Change, in her living room in Montana. Be sure to check out the Storytelling For Professionals Course as well to make sure you nail that next interview!

Staring at your fish finder and seeing nothing but squiggly lines? Or worse—a completely blank screen while you're trolling for salmon in Puget Sound?In this episode, Jamie breaks down the four essential fish finder skills that'll help you stop guessing and start catching more salmon in Puget Sound and Washington waters. You'll learn how to dial in your settings, interpret what you're actually seeing, and make real-time decisions that put your gear right in front of the fish.Episode Overview: Why leaving your sonar on "auto" is sabotaging your catch rate How to choose the right frequency for your depth What those arches and bait balls actually mean—and what they don't Simple adjustments that will help you catch more fish consistently Timestamps: 00:00 – Why your fish finder feels overwhelming 01:00 – The 4 essential fish finder skills 02:00 – Using the right frequency for your depth 03:00 – Understanding what your sonar is showing you 04:00 – Don't be afraid to tweak your settings 05:00 – Fish finder decision making: React to what you see 06:00 – Making it a habit and final takeawaysKey Takeaways: Low frequency (50-83 kHz) = zoomed out, wide view with less detail. High frequency (200 kHz) = zoomed in, sharp detail on smaller area. Big arches don't always mean big fish—interpret shape, density, and what's around it. Your downrigger ball sits higher than the depth you set it at due to momentum and angle. When you see bait or marks, adjust your gear depth immediately—don't just observe. If you're not watching your fish finder consistently, you're missing fish.Resources & Links: Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife fishing regulations: https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/regulationsWant the full structured learning experience? Join the waitlist for Anglers Unlimited Gold membership at https://anglersunlimited.co/goldAbout the Podcast Fishing for a Reason is the Pacific Northwest saltwater fishing education podcast for new anglers and families who want to catch more salmon, halibut, lingcod, shrimp and crab in Washington waters. Hosted by Jamie & Scott Propst from Anglers Unlimited, each episode delivers practical techniques, local knowledge, and expert insights to help you get off the couch and into the fish. Perfect for relocated professionals, military families, and boaters who are just getting into fishing.

Today, Thursday, February 5 on Urban Forum Northwest on 1150 AM KKNW/www1150kknw.com, on Alexa and my Podcast 2:03-3:00 pm (PST) my guest for the hour are:*Lem Howell, Retired Civil Rights Attorney comments on the Trump Administration's approach to immigration and the tactics being employed by ICE.*Hayward Evans, Co Convener, Seattle King County Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Committee provides an update on the organizations Black History event that will be held on Saturday, February 21 at Holgate Street Church of Christ.*Ramon Bryant Braxton, the Conductor of Songs of Black Folk 2026 that will present "Music of Resistance & Hope" that will feature India Arie on Saturday, February 14 at the Federal Way Performing Arts & Event Center. There will be two shows at 4:00pm and 7:30pm.*Stephanie Johnson-Toliver, President, Black Heritage Society of Washington State, Inc. The organization will honor the trailblazing legacies of Washington State Black Judges on Tuesday, February 10 at 7:00 pm at the Museum of History and Industry.*Kimi Ginn, President and CEO, Vibrant Schools of Puget Sound is hosting an event recognizing the 100th year of Black History Observances . The event will be held at Lakes High School in Pierce County on Sunday, February15 3-5 pm. The Keynote Speaker is Dr. Carl Mack, former President of the Seattle King County NAACP.*Author L. Stanley Bascomb who has two books for sale, The Parameters of Positivity and Poetry in the Key of Black.Urban Forum Northwest streams live at www.1150kknw.com. Visit us at www.urbanforumnw.com for archived programs and relevant information. Like us on facebook. X@Eddie_Rye.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Seattle's downtown office vacancy just hit a record 39.1%—nearly four out of every ten commercial spaces are empty. But sure, let's keep blaming remote work instead of the real culprits: sky-high taxes, a millionaire tax driving out wealth, America's highest minimum wage killing restaurants, and a mayor who's never successfully run anything now experimenting with socialist grocery stores. Meanwhile, Amazon and Microsoft are fleeing to Bellevue, tech layoffs are accelerating, and "McStabbies" remains a worldwide symbol of Seattle's public safety disaster. The city has one of America's most beautiful settings overlooking Puget Sound, yet businesses are choosing literally anywhere else. When private companies can't make the math work and your solution is more taxes and DEI hires, you're not in a "struggle"—you're in a self-inflicted economic nosedive. Is anyone surprised that 40 years of Democrat control produced the highest vacancy rate in North America? How much more evidence do Seattle voters need that these policies destroy prosperity? Drop your thoughts below, and if you're tired of watching beautiful cities commit economic suicide, subscribe for more reality checks the mainstream media won't give you.

Tacoma, Washington songwriter Kye Alfred Hillig returns with “Ezekiel Bobbing For Apples,” the new single arriving January 7, 2026, and the first release from his upcoming album The All-Night Costume Company, due March 4. Built around haunting guitar leads and striking male-female harmonies that nod to the emotional gravity of classic country duets like Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, the track introduces Hillig at his most direct and melodic. It sits between alternative-country and indie rock, carrying the tension and plainspoken urgency of a songwriter raised on punk rooms rather than polish. Hillig has spent more than two decades working the margins of the Puget Sound music scene, balancing songwriting with the realities of work, responsibility, and long stretches outside the spotlight. Since stepping fully into his solo work in 2012, he's released a deep catalog of records defined by sharp hooks and lyrical candor. His songs often land where discomfort and dark humor overlap, more interested in honesty than resolution. Fans of Father John Misty, The Jayhawks, and early-era The Shins will recognize the instinct for narrative and melody, even as Hillig's voice and perspective remain distinctly his own. “Ezekiel Bobbing For Apples” moves with restless intent. The arrangement is lean but charged, guitars circling and cutting while the rhythm section pushes steadily forward. The blend of voices adds weight rather than gloss, creating moments of tension and release that feel earned instead of ornamental. Lyrically, the song sits with a kind of open-eyed vulnerability. “It's really a bit of singing up from the bottom of the well,” Hillig says. “Everything feels kind of screwed and hopeless at times, but the message is I am with you. There's something freeing about saying that out loud.” Shaped by years of DIY spaces and unvarnished rooms, the song carries a quiet defiance, even as it stretches into broader country and indie-rock forms. It never pauses to second-guess itself. Kye Alfred Hillig Online INSTAGRAM | SPOTIFY | BANDCAMP | FACEBOOK Checkout my YouTube Channel with long form interviews from the Subversives | the History of Lowest of the Low. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9d1VSeOHYuxFWKuRdmn9j8UTW6AHwS_fAlso my Weekly Tour Vlog is up an live on the YouTubeshttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9d1VSeOHYuwphwhc4zd0VgY66f1OUQZp Pledge monthly with Patreon https://www.patreon.com/apologueShop Apologue products at http://apologue.ca/shopCheck out new Four Square Here: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/foursquare/brighton-beach-ephttps://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/foursquare/seven-oh-sevenhttps://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/foursquare/industry-at-home–21st-anniversary-remix-remasteredhttps://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/foursquare/when-weeks-were-weekends

In Washington State, 42% of Black households have zero net worth. It's a statistic echoed in Black communities across the nation--including here in Cleveland. The legacy of historical policies like segregation and redlining has impacted both homeownership and opportunities to build generational wealth today. Now, skyrocketing rents and a shrinking housing supply have put homeownership out of reach for many. But what if it doesn't have to be this way?rnrnEmerging in 2021, the Black Home Initiative is a new regional effort based in the Seattle-Tacoma region that seeks to target the racial inequities at the core of the housing ecosystem. The initiative is powered by the Civic Commons through a large network of 122 public, private, philanthropic, and nonprofit institutional partners. Together, they focus on growing the pool of homes for purchase; supporting Black households who want to buy a home and obtain a mortgage; and improving collaboration to create a more efficient and effective ecosystem for Black homeownership.rnrnHow can we work together to grow wealth and build vibrant communities through homeownership? Join us at the City Club as Alesha Washington from The Seattle Foundation leads a conversation with Michael Brown from the Civic Commons on what we can learn from the Black Home Initiative.

Opening SummaryChinook fishing seasons in Puget Sound keep shrinking while hatchery production has actually increased over time. This episode pulls back the curtain on fisheries management with a panel of experts representing over 120 years of combined experience. You'll discover where Washington's hatchery Chinook are really going, why international treaties matter more than local regulations, and what the Endangered Species Act actually means for your fishing days. If you've ever been frustrated by three-day seasons in your home marine area while Canadian anglers limit out just across the boarder, this conversation will finally make sense of it all.Episode OverviewWhy Chinook hatchery production has increased while our seasons continue to shrink How treaties with Alaska and Canada impact your Puget Sound seasonsThe real reason Marine Area 7 gets 3-5 days while other waters stay open year-roundWhat "mass marking" means and how it changed modern salmon managementWhy your license dollars fund fish that get caught in Canadian watersThe complex relationship between tribal rights, recreational fishing, and endangered speciesTimestamps00:00 - Introduction: The contradiction of doubled production and reduced seasons 01:30 - Steve Stout on fishing tide point and the reality of 6-day seasons 03:00 - Pat Pattillo explains the history: from 1950s Neah Bay to today's restrictions 06:15 - The evolution of hatchery management and mass marking programs 09:45 - International treaty impacts: Why Canadians are catching Washington's fish 12:30 - Tom Chance on endangered species, tribal coordination, and complexity 16:00 - Mike Haggerty on hydrology, flood control, and productive Chinook populations 18:45 - The democracy of fisheries: North of Falcon and public participation 20:30 - Legacy fishing and teaching the next generation 22:00 - Why you should attend the Seattle Boat Show panel discussionResources & LinksSeattle Boat Show Panel: "The Science of Salmon" - Sunday February 1st at 3:00 PMFeaturing: Tom Chance (Lummi Natural Resources) Steve Stout (Hatchery Management)Mike Haggerty (Fisheries Hydrologist)Pat Pattillo (Retired WDFW)Seattle Boat Show Tickets: https://www.seattleboatshow.comWDFW Regulations: https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/regulationsNorth of Falcon Process: https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/management/north-falconAnglers Unlimited Gold Waitlist: Want access to more conversations like these? Join the waitlist: https://anglersunlimited.co/goldSee you Sunday Feb 1st!Join us live at the Seattle Boat Show on Sunday, February 1st at 3:00 PM for "The Science of Salmon" panel discussion. Get your questions answered in person and discover what really happens behind the scenes of fisheries management. About the PodcastFishing for a Reason is the Pacific Northwest saltwater fishing education podcast for new anglers and families who want to catch more salmon, halibut, lingcod, shrimp and crab in Washington waters. Hosted by Jamie & Scott Propst from Anglers Unlimited, each episode delivers practical techniques, local knowledge, and expert insights to help you get off the couch and into the fish. Perfect for relocated professionals, military families, and boaters who are just getting into fishing.

Imagination, storytelling, and the human voice are at the heart of this conversation I shared with voice actor and coach Linda Bearman. We talked about her journey from early acting to decades in voiceover, why audio drama is finding new life, and what it really takes to build a career in a changing industry shaped by home studios and AI. Linda offered honest insight into training, discipline, and the business side of voice work, along with a clear reminder that technology cannot replace lived experience, emotional truth, or imagination. More than anything, this episode is about staying human, staying kind, and following the passion that brings stories to life, no matter how fast the world changes. Highlights: 00:10 – Hear why sounding natural and emotionally present matters more than performance tricks in voice acting. 02:52 – Learn why audio drama is resurging and what today's audiences are craving from storytelling again. 10:48 – Understand how voiceover evolved into a true craft and why it demands respect, discipline, and training. 20:17 – Get a clear look at how AI has already changed the voiceover industry and where human voices still hold the edge. 30:18 – Discover why imagination is a muscle that must be trained to bring stories to life through audio alone. 55:22 – Learn why preserving classic radio techniques is essential to developing the next generation of voice actors. About the Guest: Linda Bearman has amassed decades of experience in the performing arts beginning as a child actress and continuing into adulthood. Her career was enriched by studies and performances in the US and abroad working with legendary actors from prestigious theatre's including; The Arena Stage (Washington D.C.), The Actors Studio (NYC), The National Theatre of Great Britain and The Old Vic (UK). After obtaining her degree in Acting, Linda continued performing on stage and screen until moving to Los Angeles where she transitioned into TV production working for King World Productions on shows; The Oprah Winfrey Show, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. Later, while working for Landmark Productions she was offered a position at the esteemed commercial talent agency, SBV,Inc (Sutton, Barth & Vennari). Becoming a VO agent was a pivotal point in Linda's career as it was there that Linda discovered her passion for voiceover, an art form that perfectly aligned with her acting background and business acumen.  Following seven years at SBV, she relocated to Utah and worked in the casting department of Leucadia Film Corp. while also voicing regional radio and TV commercials. Recognizing the need for a professional full service talent agency in Salt Lake City, she established, co-owned and operated the successful TMG,Inc. (Talent Management Group) in its first decade of business. Her enthusiasm for developing talent led her to become a full-time VO coach, mentoring actors in performance techniques, branding, marketing, and demo production of which several earned industry recognitions. She stays up to date with the latest industry developments and actively shares it with her clients. Linda is honored to serve as a judge for the annual international SOVAS Arts Awards (Society of Voice Arts and Sciences) and delights in performing live recreations of radio shows from the "Golden Age" with REPS (Radio Enthusiasts of Puget Sound) in Seattle, WA each year.  Ways to connect with Linda**:** LinkedIn-Linda Bearman About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes:

Today, Thursday, January 22 on Urban Forum Northwest:*Omer Qureshi, Co Founder & CEO, Americans 4 Equality/MLK Gandhi Empowerment Initiative will be joined by Erica Hoard and Bryan Haynes who both have excelled in the technology training program and are currently playing a significant role in the Intern Program.*Jaebadiah Gardner, Owner, Gardner Global, Inc a development company who has purchased the Mount Calvary Christian Center property on 23rd Avenue just north of East Union Street where he will build two eight story apartments on both sides of 23rd Avenue. He provides an update on the progress of his development.*Dominique Remy, Executive Director, 1 Drop is Pierce County development firm that specializes in single family and multi family rehabilitation in Pierce County and south King County. He was recognized by the Business Journals 40 under 40 young executives shaping the Puget Sound region's economy in 2025.*Tyna Dowers is niece of the late Madge Thompson who was the great-granddaughter of the first African American US Senator Hiram Revels who represented the state of Mississippi in 1870 for one year during Reconstruction. Madge chaired the Seattle MLK Celebration Committees Food Committee for over twenty years and was honored last Monday during the Seattle MLK Organizing Coalition's Celebration at Garfield High School.Reverend Dr. Paul Stoot, Sr., Senior Pastor, Greater Trinity Church and Founder of Rise Up Academy, the school admits students as young as two years of age. The late SeaHawk Kenny Easley was major player in the start of the school. Easley's Celebration of Life was held last week in Virginia, Pastor Stoot attended the service and comments.Urban Forum Northwest streams live at www.1150kknw.com. Visit us at www.urbanforumnw.com for archived programs and relevant information. Like us on Facebook. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you've relocated to Washington or you're just getting started saltwater fishing in the Puget Sound or San Juan Islands, breaking into the local fishing community can feel impossible. You're watching everyone else post their big catches while you're coming home skunked, spending hundreds on trips that go nowhere. Here's the truth: the anglers crushing it aren't better than you—they just have better information about what is actually happening under the water's surface. In this episode, Jamie breaks down exactly how to find your fishing crew and accelerate your success on Washington waters.Episode OverviewWhy fishing with a community matters more than you think - learn how local knowledge and fishing buddies help you avoid costly mistakes and catch more fish fasterThe 3 proven ways to break into the Pacific Northwest fishing scene - specific events, volunteer opportunities, and communities that actually welcome new anglersSeattle Boat Show 2025 breakdown - which seminars to attend, including the "Science of Salmon" expert panel on February 1stInside Puget Sound Anglers - how to find your local chapter and what to expect from monthly meetings with decades of local expertiseStructured learning communities - when to invest in step-by-step training that gets you on fish faster (Anglers Unlimited Gold opens February 2026)Timestamps:00:00 – The Friday night scroll: why you're stuck on the outside looking in02:45 – The real cost of fishing blind (it's not just money)05:30 – Strategy #1: Show up to focused events like the Seattle Boat Show08:15 – Strategy #2: Volunteer at local fishing events (Salmon for Soldiers, local derbies)12:40 – Seattle Boat Show 2025 seminar lineup and what to attend18:20 – Strategy #3: Join Puget Sound Anglers (13 chapters across Washington)22:10 – Structured learning communities: Anglers Unlimited Gold membership overview26:45 – Success story: first-time San Juan Islands king salmon after one training session28:30 – Why fishing is just better with peopleKey TakeawaysThe guys crushing it aren't better anglers—they just have better intel. Show up to events where fishing people gather. Be honest about being new. Puget Sound Anglers chapters are everywhere and free to visit. Derby fishing is about networking at first, not winning. Piecing together knowledge vs. structured learning. Fishing is better with people—for learning and for bad days. Resources & LinksSeattle Boat Show 2026: https://seattleboatshow.com/Puget Sound Anglers: https://pugetsoundanglers.org/home/Local Fishing Events:Salmon for Soldiers: https://salmonforsoldiers.org/Everett Coho Derby: https://everettcohoderby.com/Edmonds Coho Derby: https://www.edmondscohoderby.com/Anacortes Resurrection Derby: https://www.resurrectionderby.com/Anacortes Halibut Derby: https://www.psafidalgo.org/anacortes-halibut-derby/Anglers Unlimited: Join the Waitlist: https://anglersunlimited.co/goldWashington Department of Fish & Wildlife: https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/regulationsWant the full structured learning experience? Join the waitlist for Anglers Unlimited Gold membership (opening February 2026) at

On this episode of the Great Lakes Fishing Podcast, host Chris Larsen sits down with Tyson Colby, founder and engineer behind AccuTroll, to dive deep into one of the most talked-about innovations in trolling speed control. Tyson shares his engineering background and explains how AccuTroll was built using modern IoT technology to solve a problem every troller faces—maintaining precise, consistent speed in changing conditions. From closed-loop “cruise control” trolling that automatically adjusts throttle based on speed feedback, to ultra-compact under-cowling installation, AccuTroll brings a fresh, modern approach to kicker motor control. The conversation covers how AccuTroll integrates with NMEA 2000 networks, paddle wheel sensors, and GPS speed, why it excels in current-driven waters like the Great Lakes and Puget Sound, and how anglers can retrofit it to existing throttle systems with minimal effort. Tyson also explains the smartphone-based control system, Bluetooth remote with programmable macros, and how over-the-air updates allow the platform to grow with new features and integrations. Whether you're a charter captain or a weekend troller looking to simplify your spread and focus more on fishing, this episode breaks down why automated speed control is one of those tools you “didn't know you needed until you used it.”

Professor Nick Brody teaches Communications at the University of Puget Sound. His research focuses on digital communication, cyber bullying, and the social implications of technology.  He joined us to talk about the concept of Morally...

This week, we chat with Nicolas Cary! Nic is the Co-Founder and Vice Chairman at Blockchain.com! He is responsible for bringing new adopters into the crypto ecosystem. A fascination with tech, money and politics led Nic to become deeply passionate about helping people reinvent their relationship with money.After an international upbringing, Nic worked as a teacher in India before becoming a founding team member at SaaS company PipelineCRM.com, where he focused on product development and management.A trilingual communicator, Nic is the Founding Commissioner of the Blockchain Commission for Sustainable Development and co-author of The Future is Decentralised. Deeply passionate about entrepreneurship, Nic is also co-founder and chairman of SkysTheLimit.org, the leading non-profit digital business accelerator. Regularly cited in the global press as one of the earliest crypto industry experts, Nic was named the European Digital Leader of the year in 2015 and honored with a Professional Achievement Award in 2017 by his alma mater, the University of Puget Sound.A proven leader, investor, public speaker, and brand ambassador, Nic focuses on designing performant cultures that persevere in adverse markets.✨ This episode is presented by Brex.Brex: brex.com/trailblazerspodThis episode is supported by RocketReach, Gusto, OpenPhone & Athena.RocketReach: rocketreach.co/trailblazersGusto: gusto.com/trailblazersQuo: Quo.com/trailblazersAthena: athenago.me/Erica-WengerFollow Us!Nicolas Cary: @niccarySky's The Limit: https://www.skysthelimit.org/@thetrailblazerspod: Instagram, YouTube, TikTokErica Wenger: @erica_wenger

Welcome to our first post-holiday post since mid-December. Here is our first-ever, back-to-back twin episode post featuring The Artists Index podcast host Scott Bishop's conversations with Maggi Kerr Peirce, the author of A Belfast Girl. HERE IS PART ONE: According to the Parkhurst Brothers Publishing website, she "...sang her native Irish ballads from the Newport Folk Festival to Puget Sound during the 1970s. She performed on many of the same stages as Pete Seeger, the Kingston Trio, and Peter, Paul, and Mary." She graced storytelling festivals from coast-to-coast with her Irish stories. The revered storyteller, a founder of the Tryworks Coffeehouse, a legendary and long-running (1967-2002) folk music and arts venue in New Bedford, Massachusetts, held at the First Unitarian Church. It was a vibrant community hub for the musicians, poets, and young people of the South Coast. Maggi has been featured at the National Storytelling Festival and received the National Storytelling Network (USA) Oracle Award for lifetime achievement. Scott Bishop spoke with her at her home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. Maggi Peirce was 93 at the time of her passing in December 2024. She shared just some of her many memories, as well as her love of the Tryworks Coffeehouse, the South Coast, and so much more.   Maggi Kerr Peirce Fairhaven Massachusetts 02719   Email | Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube   PODCASTS ALSO AVAILABLE ON: YouTube WHILE YOU'RE HERE: Please consider donating whatever you can to ensure that our mission continues as we document the legacies of South Coast Artists. If you would like to be a guest on The Artists Index or have a suggestion, please let us know!  

Welcome to our first post-holiday post since mid-December. Here is our first-ever, back-to-back twin episode post featuring The Artists Index podcast host Scott Bishop's conversations with Maggi Kerr Peirce, the author of A Belfast Girl. HERE IS PART TWO: According to the Parkhurst Brothers Publishing website, she "...sang her native Irish ballads from the Newport Folk Festival to Puget Sound during the 1970s. She performed on many of the same stages as Pete Seeger, the Kingston Trio, and Peter, Paul, and Mary." She graced storytelling festivals from coast-to-coast with her Irish stories. The revered storyteller, a founder of the Tryworks Coffeehouse, a legendary and long-running (1967-2002) folk music and arts venue in New Bedford, Massachusetts, held at the First Unitarian Church. It was a vibrant community hub for the musicians, poets, and young people of the South Coast. Maggi has been featured at the National Storytelling Festival and received the National Storytelling Network (USA) Oracle Award for lifetime achievement. Scott Bishop spoke with her at her home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. Maggi Peirce was 93 at the time of her passing in December 2024. She shared just some of her many memories, as well as her love of the Tryworks Coffeehouse, the South Coast, and so much more.   Maggi Kerr Peirce Fairhaven Massachusetts 02719   Email | Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube   PODCASTS ALSO AVAILABLE ON: YouTube WHILE YOU'RE HERE: Please consider donating whatever you can to ensure that our mission continues as we document the legacies of South Coast Artists. If you would like to be a guest on The Artists Index or have a suggestion, please let us know!  

Hello to you listening in Keenesburg, Colorado!Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is Stories From Women Who Walk with 60 Seconds for Motivate Your Monday and your host, Diane Wyzga.  If you followed my New Year's Day Polar Bear Dive story published in Episode 774 and Episode 776 it might have sounded all too easy: show up, scream, run, dive in, go home.I'm here to tell you that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool introverted kinda gal. I do not do well in settings where I have to show up alone, don't know anybody, have to make small talk, and may end up looking the fool.  The Polar Bear Dive was a real challenge for me. Not the part where I dove into the 43 Fahrenheit degree water of Puget Sound but showing up. I could have stayed in bed, stayed at home, walked onto the beach and turned back, stayed on the beach but hung out in the background watching the others. You know what I'm talking about. And, no one would have known. I could have lied about what I did or didn't do.But that's not how I live anymore. Practical Tip:  Here's what I've learned: the courage isn't about getting to the Finish Line; the courage is agreeing that you will start. And once you start it's all Finish Line from there on out! Guaranteed!You're invited: “Come for the stories - stay for the magic!” Speaking of magic, I hope you'll subscribe, follow, share a 5-star rating and nice review on your social media or podcast channel of choice, and join us next time! Remember to stop by the website, check out the Services, arrange a Discovery Call, and Opt In to stay current with Diane and Quarter Moon Story Arts.  Stories From Women Who Walk Production TeamPodcaster: Diane F Wyzga & Quarter Moon Story ArtsMusic: Mer's Waltz from Crossing the Waters by Steve Schuch & Night Heron MusicAll content and image © 2019 to Present: for credit & attribution Quarter Moon Story Arts

This Biotech CEO Wants To Cure Lung Cancer – Maria Zanes President & CEO bioAffinity Technologies BIAF Ticker: BIAF Websitehttps://bioaffinitytech.com/Maria Zannes, Chief Executive Officer, President, and Director, bioAffinity Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIAF)BioSince founding bioAffinity Technologies in 2014, Ms. Zannes has built a team of award-winning scientists and executives who are advancing breakthrough diagnostics for lung cancer and other pulmonary diseases. The company's first commercial product, CyPath® Lung, is a noninvasive, accurate test for early-stage lung cancer that has proven to detect the disease as early as Stage 1A when it can be cured. Prior to bioAffinity Technologies, Ms. Zannes founded The Zannes Firm to provide strategic solutions for private industry in the medical, environmental and energy fields. Previously, she was President of the Energy Recovery Council, a national trade group and General Manager of ECOS Corporation, a subsidiary of Burlington Environmental. Earlier in her career, she was a legislative aide to Congressman Charles Wilson (D-TX) after having worked as a journalist for Voice of America and the Associated Press. She has been awarded Lifetime Achievement Awards by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Earth Engineering Center Award from Columbia University. Ms. Zannes received her J.D. from the University of Puget Sound in Washington State and is licensed to practice law in New Mexico. bioAffinity Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: BIAF)Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide with an estimated 1.8 million deaths annually. Diagnosing and treating early-stage lung cancer can significantly improve outcomes and increase patient survival. bioAffinity Technologies addresses the urgent need for noninvasive, accurate early-stage lung cancer diagnosis. The Company's lead product, CyPath® Lung, accurately detects early-stage lung cancer in high-risk patients as early as Stage 1A. Using CyPath® Lung as part of the diagnostic pathway can lead to earlier diagnosis, fewer unnecessary invasive procedures, reduced patient anxiety, and lower medical costs for the world's largest cancer killer. CyPath® Lung is sold as a Laboratory Developed Test (LDT) by Precision Pathology Laboratory Services, a bioAffinity Technologies company, and reimbursed by Medicare, private payors and federal healthcare systems, including the VA. CyPath® Lung uses proprietary advanced flow cytometry and artificial intelligence (AI) to detect cancer by analyzing the lung microenvironment. CyPath® Lung incorporates a fluorescent porphyrin that is preferentially taken up by cancer and cancer-related cells. The test demonstrated 92% sensitivity, 87% specificity, and 88% accuracy in individuals with small indeterminate pulmonary nodules that often pose diagnostic challenges. The test provides actionable information for physicians to guide next steps in patient care. Physicians using CyPath® Lung for their high-risk patients have reported multiple case studies in which CyPath® Lung detected lung cancer at Stage 1A when standard imaging, risk calculator models and serum marker tests indicated the nodules were likely benign. Conversely, a negative CyPath® Lung result has spared many patients from unnecessary and sometimes risky invasive procedures, including biopsy.

If you're tired of burning fuel, chasing other boats, and coming home with an empty cooler, this episode is for you.Jamie breaks down why most anglers struggle to catch salmon consistently—and why it has nothing to do with luck, secret spots, or the newest gear. Instead, successful anglers follow a repeatable system that adapts to conditions, tides, and fish behavior.You'll learn the foundation of the 4 P's Method and how treating fishing like a well-oiled machine can completely change your results on the water. This episode is especially valuable for Puget Sound, Salish Sea, and San Juan Islands anglers who want more confidence, fewer frustrating days, and more fish in the box.What Listeners Will LearnWhy salmon fishing success has nothing to do with luck or “magic” gearThe 4 P's Method and how elite anglers use it to catch fish consistentlyCommon mistakes that sabotage most fishing tripsWhy strategy matters more than time spent fishingHow reading tides, currents, and electronics increases your hookup rateHow to stop guessing and start fishing with confidenceResources MentionedFREE Exclusive Training: The Only 3 Salmon Lures You Need — And Exactly How We Rig Them

Jake Cross is General Manager and a fourth-generation leader at Seldens, a family-owned home furnishings and design business serving the Pacific Northwest for 85 years. Born into a legacy of craftsmanship and customer service, Jake's journey with Seldens began long before he officially joined the business. Growing up immersed in the values of integrity, quality, and community stewardship, he now helps steer the company toward an exciting and innovative future. As part of the leadership team, Jake has been instrumental in Seldens' expansion, bridging the gap between honoring the company's deep heritage and pursuing forward-thinking strategies that meet modern customer needs.Seldens has been the Puget Sound region's home furnishings destination since 1940. Offering over 150 quality designer brands and expert design services, Seldens is dedicated to providing an exceptional client experience. With a commitment to quality, craftsmanship and community, and showrooms in Tacoma, Olympia and Bellevue, Seldens continues to be a trusted name in home furnishings.The Seldens family of furniture brands also includes Bassett® Furniture and Summer House Patio outdoor furniture showrooms, each with locations in both Bellevue and Tacoma.Jake's Links:Website: https://seldens.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Seldens/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seldensdesignLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobcross1/Freebie: https://seldens.com/pages/seldens-catalogThe Impatient Entrepreneur's links:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheImpatientEntrepreneurPod⁠LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theimpatiententrepreneurpod/⁠Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theimpatiententrepreneurpod/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheImpatientEntrepreneurPod⁠Online: https://www.theimpatiententrepreneurpod.comConnect with us⁠⁠: https://www.theimpatiententrepreneurpod.com/contact⁠Kwedar & Co.'s links:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kwedarco⁠LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kwedarco⁠Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kwedarco⁠YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KwedarCo⁠Online: www.kwedarco.comConnect with us: https://www.kwedarco.com/book-consultation

Fisher Blades co-founder Chas Fisher was born in the swamp and raised in the mountains. He is a long-time hunter, climber and outdoorsman. Chas Fisher trained for over 25 years in Wing Chun kung-fu, and currently teaches Wing Chun in Seattle and Missoula, Montana. He also is part of the InSights Training Center instruction staff, coaching pistol, rifle, unarmed and blade defensive courses in the Puget Sound area. To learn more about Fisher Blades visit FisherBlades.com and follow @FisherBlades on Instagram.   RELATED PODCASTS:   Can You Survive? | Higher Line Podcast #261 Win the Fight-Chronicles of Regiment Blades // Higher Line Podcast #221 Make the Time to Live | Higher Line Podcast #184   ---   Music Attributions: Intro - "3rd Eye Blimp" by Otis McDonald Outro - "I Want More" by Silent Partner   The Carry Trainer Higher Line Podcast is available on iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, Stitcher and most importantly CarryTrainer.com.

Tom and Joey are joined by Pat Patillo of the Puget Sound Recreational Fishing Advisory Board to discuss the 2026 Salmon outlook and the upcoming Seattle Boat Show, they check in on some local Steelhead opportunities with Todd Daniels of Tall Tails Guide Service, they bring you the latest on the Governor’s  probe into WDFW in the Northwest Outdoor Report, and they wrap up the show by telling you some of the biggest local fishing and hunting opportunities. 

It’s New Year’s Eve. At midnight, many of us will be raising glasses, kissing loved ones, and trying to remember the words to “Auld Lang Syne.” That song, if you don’t recall, begins with a question: “Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?” We here at Soundside say, NO! We will remember. This year, we brought on a couple new producers, and they have been fantastic additions to our team! I am super excited to see how they help us grow. But we will never forget those who helped us get here. So, today, we’re playing back some of the great work by former Soundside producers. RELATED LINKS: 'Thousands of stiches, all by hand': a look at Puget Sound's artisan sailmakers Remembering Soul Radio-o-o-o-o-o-o 1250 KYAC - Seattle How the Olympic marmot became Washington's fuzziest state symbol Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you're unsure what fishing rod you should be fishing for salmon — or you've bought gear in the past that never felt right on the water — this episode will clear the confusion fast.On this week's Fishing for a Reason, we sit down with founder of ProLite Rods Chris Wegeleben, who has spent nearly a decade building technique-specific fishing rods for salmon, halibut, and nationwide fisheries. Chris explains how choosing the right blank, power, and action directly affects your hookup rate, your fight control, and how many fish make it to the net.Instead of chasing brands or stiffness, you'll learn how to choose gear based on how you actually fish — whether that's trolling for kings in Puget Sound, or jigging heavy pipe for halibut in Alaska. If you want to stop guessing, start buying with confidence, and get more fish to the boat, this is the episode to listen to.What You'll Learn:How rod design actually affects landing ratesThe real role of rod blanks and materialsWhen to choose graphite, fiberglass, or composite tipsWhy longer rods help cushion king head-shakes near the boatHow to match power/action to your technique (downrigger, mooching, 360, jigging)The difference between durability-built guide rods and sensitivity-built rec rodsHow beginners should shop their first salmon rod without overspendingHalibut rod setup—lengths, fast tips, and why spiral wraps reduce torqueResources MentionedJOIN OUR INNER CIRCLE: Anglers Unlimited Gold MembershipProlite Rod Technology (Custom Builds, Take-Down Rods, Salmon & Halibut Gear)

David Troutt: Nisqually Natural Resources Director on the amazing MILLION chums returning to Puget Sound and chinook recovery update // American Sportsfishing Association's Larry C Phillips Pinniped predation and a Federal solution to a Federally-caused problem: The Marine Mammal Protection Act vs The Endangered Species Act // Austin Moser of austinsnorthwestadventures.com Rufus Wood Triploid time!

In this episode, Jamie dives deep into the science, migration, and behavior of Pacific Market Squid—Washington's most accessible winter fishery.Whether you're jigging from Edmonds Pier at night or hunting massive schools from a boat with sonar, understanding migration, spawning windows, and habitat will directly increase your success rate.If you love accessible fisheries, fast action, winter nights, and a freezer full of calamari—this is your jam.What Listeners Will LearnWhy Pacific Market Squid return to Puget Sound by the millions in winterHow their short life cycle & single-spawn death creates boom-or-bust fisheriesHow females spawnTypical commercial harvest volumeThe seasonal migration route Why night lights draw schools into casting rangeWashington retention rules (up to 10 pounds, water drained)Why El Niño collapses production and La Niña supercharges abundanceWhere to go next for tactics.Resources MentionedEpisode 35 – Squid Fishing in Puget Sound: Gear, Jigs & Secrets to Get You StartedAnglers Unlimited Gold Membership & SeminarsWashington Squid Limits & Regulations – WDFW site

What happens when curiosity, resilience, and storytelling collide over a lifetime of building something meaningful? In this episode, I welcome Nick Francis, founder and CEO of Casual Films, for a thoughtful conversation about leadership, presence, and what it takes to keep going when the work gets heavy. Nick's journey began with a stint at BBC News and a bold 9,000-mile rally from London to Mongolia in a Mini Cooper, a spirit of adventure that still fuels how he approaches business and life today. We talk about how that early experience shaped Casual into a global branded storytelling company with studios across five continents, and what it really means to lead a creative organization at scale. Nick shares insights from growing the company internationally, expanding into Southeast Asia, and staying grounded while producing hundreds of projects each year. Along the way, we explore why emotionally resonant storytelling matters, how trust and preparation beat panic, and why presence with family, health, and purpose keeps leaders steady in uncertain times. This conversation is about building an Unstoppable life by focusing on what matters most, using creativity to connect people, and choosing clarity and resilience in a world full of noise. Highlights: 00:01:30 – Learn how early challenges shape resilience and long-term drive. 00:06:20 – Discover why focusing on your role creates calm under pressure. 00:10:50 – Learn how to protect attention in a nonstop world. 00:18:25 – Understand what global growth teaches about leadership. 00:26:00 – Learn why leading with trust changes relationships. 00:45:55 – Discover how movement and presence restore clarity. About the Guest: Nick Francis is the founder and CEO of Casual, a global production group that blends human storytelling, business know-how, and creativity turbo-charged by AI. Named the UK's number one brand video production company for five years, Casual delivers nearly 1,000 projects annually for world-class brands like Adobe, Amazon, BMW, Hilton, HSBC, and P&G. The adventurous spirit behind its first production – a 9,000-mile journey from London to Mongolia in an old Mini – continues to drive Casual's growth across offices in London, New York, LA, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong and Greater China. Nick previously worked for BBC News and is widely recognised for his expertise in video storytelling, brand building, and corporate communications. He is the founding director of the Casual Films Academy, a charity helping young filmmakers develop skills by producing films for charitable organisations. He is also the author of ‘The New Fire: Harness the Power of Video for Your Business' and a passionate advocate for emotionally resonant, behaviorally grounded storytelling. Nick lives in San Francisco, California, with his family. Ways to connect with Nick**:** Website: https://www.casualfilms.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@casual_global  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/casualglobal/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CasualFilms/  Nick's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickfrancisfilm/  Casual's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/casual-films-international/  Beyond Casual - LinkedIn Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=6924458968031395840 About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson  01:21 Well, hello everyone. I am your host, Mike hingson, that's kind of funny. We'll talk about that in a second, but this is unstoppable mindset. And our guest today is Nick Francis, and what we're going to talk about is the fact that people used to always ask me, well, they would call me Mr. Kingston, and it took me, as I just told Nick a master's degree in physics in 10 years to realize that if I said Mike hingson, that's why they said Mr. Kingston. So was either say Mike hingson or Michael hingson. Well, Michael hingson is a lot easier to say than Mike hingson, but I don't really care Mike or Michael, as long as it's not late for dinner. Whatever works. Yeah. Well, Nick, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're Nick Francis  02:04 here. Thanks, Mike. It's great to be here. Michael Hingson  02:08 So Nick is a marketing kind of guy. He's got a company called casual that we'll hear about. Originally from England, I believe, and now lives in San Francisco. We were talking about the weather in San Francisco, as opposed to down here in Victorville. A little bit earlier. We're going to have a heat wave today and and he doesn't have that up there, but you know, well, things, things change over time. But anyway, we're glad you're here. And thanks, Mike. Really looking forward to it. Tell us about the early Nick growing up and all that sort of stuff, just to get us started. Nick Francis  02:43 That's a good question. I grew up in London, in in Richmond, which is southwest London. It's a at the time, it wasn't anything like as kind of, it's become quite kind of shishi, I think back in the day, because it's on the west of London. The pollution from the city used to flow east and so, like all the kind of well to do people, in fact, there used to be a, there used to be a palace in Richmond. It's where Queen Elizabeth died, the first Queen Elizabeth, that is. And, yeah, you know, I grew up it was, you know, there's a lot of rugby played around there. I played rugby for my local rugby club from a very young age, and we went sailing on the south coast. It was, it was great, really. And then, you know, unfortunately, when I was 10 years old, my my dad died. He had had a very powerful job at the BBC, and then he ran the British Council, which is the overseas wing of the Arts Council, so promoting, I guess, British soft power around the world, going and opening art galleries and going to ballet in Moscow and all sorts. So he had an incredible life and worked incredibly hard. And you know, that has brought me all sorts of privileges, I think, when I was a kid. But, you know, unfortunately, age 10 that all ended. And you know, losing a parent at that age is such a sort of fundamental, kind of shaking of your foundations. You know, you when you're a kid, you feel like a, you're going to live forever, and B, the things that are happening around you are going to last forever. And so, you know, you know, my mom was amazing, of course, and, you know, and in time, I got a new stepdad, and all the rest of it. But you know, that kind of shaped a lot of my a lot of my youth, really. And, yeah, I mean, Grief is a funny thing, and it's funny the way it manifests itself as you grow. But yeah. So I grew up there. I went to school in the Midlands, near where my stepdad lived, and then University of Newcastle, which is up in the north of England, where it rains a lot. It's where it's where Newcastle Football Club is based. And you know is that is absolutely at the center of the city. So. So the city really comes alive there. And it was during that time that I discovered photography, and I wanted to be a war photographer, because I believe that was where life was lived at the kind of the real cutting edge. You know, you see the you see humanity in its in its most visceral and vivid color in terrible situations. And I kind of that seemed like an interesting thing to go to go and do. Michael Hingson  05:27 Well, what? So what did you major in in college in Newcastle? So I did Nick Francis  05:31 history and politics, and then I went did a course in television journalism, and ended up working at BBC News as a initially running on the floor. So I used to deliver the papers that you know, when you see people shuffling or not, they do it anymore, actually, because everything, everything's digital now digital, yeah, but when they were worried about the the auto cues going down, they we always had to make sure that they had the up to date script. And so I would be printing in, obviously, the, you know, because it's a three hour news show, the scripts constantly evolving, and so, you know, I was making sure they had the most up to date version in their hands. And it's, I don't know if you have spent any time around live TV Mike, but it's an incredibly humbling experience, like the power of it. You know, there's sort of two or 3 million people watching these two people who are sitting five feet in front of me, and the, you know, the sort of slightly kind of, there was an element of me that just wanted to jump in front of them and kind of go, ah. And, you know, never, ever work in live TV, ever again. But you know, anyway, I did that and ended up working as a producer, writing and developing, developing packets that would go out on the show, producing interviews and things. And, you know, I absolutely loved it. It was, it was a great time. But then I left to go and set up my company. Michael Hingson  06:56 I am amazed, even today, with with watching people on the news, and I've and I've been in a number of studios during live broadcasts and so on. But I'm amazed at how well, mostly, at least, I've been fortunate. Mostly, the people are able to read because they do have to read everything. It isn't like you're doing a lot of bad living in a studio. Obviously, if you are out with a story, out in the field, if you will, there, there may be more where you don't have a printed script to go by, but I'm amazed at the people in the studio, how much they are able to do by by reading it all completely. Nick Francis  07:37 It's, I mean, the whole experience is kind of, it's awe inspiring, really. And you know, when you first go into a Live, a live broadcast studio, and you see the complexity, and you know, they've got feeds coming in from all over the world, and you know, there's upwards of 100 people all working together to make it happen. And I remember talking to one of the directors at the time, and I was like, How on earth does this work? And he said, You know, it's simple. You everyone has a very specific job, and you know that as long as you do your bit of the job when it comes in front of you, then the show will go out. He said, where it falls over is when people start worrying about whether other people are going to are going to deliver on time or, you know, and so if you start worrying about what other people are doing, rather than just focusing on the thing you have to do, that's where it potentially falls over, Michael Hingson  08:29 which is a great object lesson anyway, to worry about and control and don't worry about the rest Nick Francis  08:36 for sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, it's almost a lesson for life. I mean, sorry, it is a lesson for life, and Michael Hingson  08:43 it's something that I talk a lot about in dealing with the World Trade Center and so on, and because it was a message I received, but I've been really preaching that for a long time. Don't worry about what you can't control, because all you're going to do is create fear and drive yourself Nick Francis  08:58 crazy, completely, completely. You know. You know what is it? Give me the, give me this. Give me the strength to change the things I can. Give me the give me the ability to let the things that I can't change slide but and the wisdom to know the difference. I'm absolutely mangling that, that saying, but, yeah, it's, it's true, you know. And I think, you know, it's so easy for us to in this kind of modern world where everything's so media, and we're constantly served up things that, you know, shock us, sadness, enrage us, you know, just to be able to step back and say, actually, you know what? These are things I can't really change. I'd have to just let them wash over me. Yeah, and just focus on the things that you really can change. Michael Hingson  09:46 It's okay to be aware of things, but you've got to separate the things you can control from the things that you can and we, unfortunately aren't taught that. Our parents don't teach us that because they were never taught it, and it's something. That, just as you say, slides by, and it's so unfortunate, because it helps to create such a level of fear about so many things in our in our psyche and in our world that we really shouldn't have to do Nick Francis  10:13 completely well. I think, you know, obviously, but you know, we've, we've spent hundreds, if not millions of years evolving to become humans, and then, you know, actually being aware of things beyond our own village has only been an evolution of the last, you know what, five, 600 years, yeah. And so we are just absolutely, fundamentally not able to cope with a world of such incredible stimulus that we live in now. Michael Hingson  10:43 Yeah, and it's only getting worse with all the social media, with all the different things that are happening and of course, and we're only working to develop more and more things to inundate us with more and more kinds of inputs. It's really unfortunate we just don't learn to separate ourselves very easily from all of that. Nick Francis  11:04 Yeah, well, you know, it's so interesting when you look at the development of VR headsets, and, you know, are we going to have, like, lenses in our eyes that kind of enable us to see computer screens while we're just walking down the road, you know? And you look at that and you think, well, actually, just a cell phone. I mean, cell phones are going to be gone fairly soon. I would imagine, you know, as a format, it's not something that's going to abide but the idea that we're going to create technology that's going to be more, that's going to take us away from being in the moment more rather than less, is kind of terrifying. Because, I would say already, even with, you know, the most basic technology that we have now, which is, you know, mind bending, compared to where we were even 20 years ago, you know, to think that we're only going to become more immersive is, you know, we really, really as a species, have to work out how we are going to be far better at stepping away from this stuff. And I, you know, I do, I wonder, with AI and technology whether there is, you know, there's a real backlash coming of people who do want to just unplug, yeah, Michael Hingson  12:13 well, it'll be interesting to see, and I hope that people will learn to do it. I know when I started hearing about AI, and one of the first things I heard was how kids would use it to write their papers, and it was a horrible thing, and they were trying to figure out ways so that teachers could tell us something was written by AI, as opposed to a student. And I almost immediately developed this opinion, no, let AI write the papers for students, but when the students turn in their paper, then take a day to in your class where you have every student come up and defend their paper, see who really knows it, you know. And what a great teaching opportunity and teaching moment to to get students also to learn to do public speaking and other things a little bit more than they do, but we haven't. That hasn't caught on, but I continue to preach it. Nick Francis  13:08 I think that's really smart, you know, as like aI exists, and I think to to pretend somehow that, you know, we can work without it is, you know, it's, it's, it's, yeah, I mean, it's like, well, saying, you know, we're just going to go back to Word processors or typewriters, which, you know, in which it weirdly, in their own time, people looked at and said, this is, you know, these, these are going to completely rot our minds. In fact, yeah, I think Plato said that was very against writing, because he believed it would mean no one could remember anything after that, you know. So it's, you know, it's just, it's an endless, endless evolution. But I think, you know, we have to work out how we incorporate into it, into our education system, for sure. Michael Hingson  13:57 Well, I remember being in in college and studying physics and so on. And one of the things that we were constantly told is, on tests, you can't bring calculators in, can't use calculators in class. Well, why not? Well, because you could cheat with that. Well, the reality is that the smart physicists realized that it's all about really learning the concepts more than the numbers. And yeah, that's great to to know how to do the math. But the the real issue is, do you know the physics, not just the math completely? Nick Francis  14:34 Yeah. And then how you know? How are the challenges that are being set such that you know, they really test your ability to use the calculator effectively, right? So how you know? How are you lifting the bar? And in a way, I think that's kind of what we have to do, what we have to do now, Michael Hingson  14:50 agreed, agreed. So you were in the news business and so on, and then, as you said, you left to start your own company. Why did you decide to do that? Nick Francis  14:59 Well, a friend of. Ryan and I from University had always talked about doing this rally from London to Mongolia. So, and you do it in an old car that you sort of look at, and you go, well, that's a bit rubbish. It has to have under a one liter engine. So it's tiny, it's cheap. The idea is it breaks down you have an adventure. And it was something we kind of talked about in passing and decided that would be a good thing to do. And then over time, you know, we started sending off. We you know, we applied, and then we started sending off for visas and things. And then before we knew it, we were like, gosh, so it looks like we're actually going to do this thing. But by then, you know, my job at the BBC was really taking off. And so I said, you know, let's do this, but let's make a documentary of it. So long story short, we ended up making a series of diary films for Expedia, which we uploaded onto their website. It was, you know, we were kind of pitching this around about 2005 we kind of did it in 2006 so it was kind of, you know, nobody had really heard of YouTube. The idea of making videos to go online was kind of unheard of because, you know, broadband was just kind of getting sorry. It wasn't unheard of, but it was, it was very, it was a very nascent industry. And so, yeah, we went and drove 9000 miles over five weeks. We spent a week sitting in various different repair yards and kind of break his yards in everywhere from Turkey to Siberia. And when we came back, it became clear that the internet was opening up as this incredible medium for video, and video is such a powerful way to share emotion with a dispersed audience. You know, not that I would have necessarily talked about it in that in those terms back then, but it really seemed like, you know, every every web page, every piece of corporate content, could have a video aspect to it. And so we came back and had a few fits and starts and did some, I mean, we, you know, we made a series of hotel videos where we were paid 50 quid a day to go and film hotels. And it was hot and it was hard work. And anyway, it was rough. But over time, you know, we started to win some more lucrative work. And, you know, really, the company grew from there. We won some awards, which helped us to kind of make a bit of a name for ourselves. And this was, there's been a real explosion in technology, kind of shortly after when we did this. So digital SLRs, so, you know, old kind of SLR cameras, you know, turned into digital cameras, which could then start to shoot video. And so it, there was a real explosion in high quality video produced by very small teams of people using the latest technology creatively. And that just felt like a good kind of kick off point for our business. But we just kind of because we got in in kind of 2006 we just sort of beat a wave that kind of started with digital SLRs, and then was kind of absolutely exploded when video cell phones came on the market, video smartphones. And yeah, you know, because we had these awards and we had some kind of fairly blue chip clients from a relatively early, early stage, we were able to grow the company. We then expanded to the US in kind of 2011 20 between 2011 2014 and then we were working with a lot of the big tech companies in California, so it felt like we should maybe kind of really invest in that. And so I moved out here with some of our team in 2018 at the beginning of 2018 and I've been here ever since, wow. Michael Hingson  18:44 So what is it? What was it like starting a business here, or bringing the business here, as opposed to what it was in England? Nick Francis  18:53 It's really interesting, because the creatively the UK is so strong, you know, like so many, you know, from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin to the Rolling Stones to, you know, and then on through, like all the kind of, you know, film and TV, you know, Brits are very good at kind of Creating, like, high level creative, but not necessarily always the best at kind of monetizing it, you know. I mean, some of those obviously have been fantastic successes, right? And so I think in the UK, we we take a lot longer over getting, getting to, like, the perfect creative output, whereas the US is far more focused on, you know, okay, we need this to to perform a task, and frankly, if we get it 80% done, then we're good, right? And so I think a lot of creative businesses in the UK look at the US and they go, gosh. Firstly, the streets are paved with gold. Like the commercial opportunity seems incredible, but actually creating. Tracking it is incredibly difficult, and I think it's because we sort of see the outputs in the wrong way. I think they're just the energy and the dynamism of the US economy is just, it's kind of awe inspiring. But you know, so many businesses try to expand here and kind of fall over themselves. And I think the number one thing is just, you have to have a founder who's willing to move to the US. Because I think Churchill said that we're two two countries divided by the same language. And I never fully understood what that meant until I moved here. I think what it what he really means by that is that we're so culturally different in the US versus the UK. And I think lots of Brits look at America and think, Well, you know, it's just the same. It's just a bit kind of bigger and a bit Brasher, you know, and it and actually, I think if people in the US spoke a completely different language, we would approach it as a different culture, which would then help us to understand it better. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, it's been, it's been the most fabulous adventure to move here and to, you know, it's, it's hard sometimes, and California is a long way from home, but the energy and the optimism and the entrepreneurialism of it, coupled with just the natural beauty is just staggering. So we've made some of our closest friends in California, it's been absolutely fantastic. And across the US, it's been a fantastic adventure for us and our family. Michael Hingson  21:30 Yeah, I've had the opportunity to travel all over the US, and I hear negative comments about one place or another, like West Virginia, people eat nothing but fried food and all that. But the reality is, if you really take an overall look at it, the country has so much to offer, and I have yet to find a place that I didn't enjoy going to, and people I never enjoyed meeting, I really enjoy all of that, and it's great to meet people, and it's great to experience so much of this country. And I've taken that same posture to other places. I finally got to visit England last October, for the first time. You mentioned rugby earlier, the first time I was exposed to rugby was when I traveled to New Zealand in 2003 and found it pretty fascinating. And then also, I was listening to some rugby, rugby, rugby broadcast, and I tuned across the radio and suddenly found a cricket game that was a little bit slow for me. Yeah, cricket to be it's slow. Nick Francis  22:41 Yeah, fair enough. It's funny. Actually, we know what you're saying about travel. Like one of the amazing things about our Well, I kind of learned two sort of quite fundamentally philosophical things, I think, you know, or things about the about humans and the human condition. Firstly, like, you know, traveling across, you know, we left from London. We, like, drove down. We went through Belgium and France and Poland and Slovenia, Slovakia, Slovenia, like, all the way down Bulgaria, across Turkey into Georgia and Azerbaijan and across the Caspian Sea, and through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, into Russia, and then down into Mongolia. When we finished, we were due north of Jakarta, right? So we drove, we drove a third of the way around the world. And the two things that taught me were, firstly that human people are good. You know, everywhere we went, people would invite us in to have meals, or they'd like fix our car for not unit for free. I mean, people were so kind everywhere we went. Yeah. And the other thing was, just, when we get on a plane and you fly from here to or you fly from London, say to we, frankly, you fly from London to Turkey, it feels unbelievably different. You know, you fly from London to China, and it's, you know, complete different culture. But what our journey towards us, because we drove, was that, you know, while we might not like to admit it, we're actually quite, you know, Brits are quite similar to the French, and the French actually are quite similar to the Belgians, and Belgians quite similar to the Germans. And, you know, and all the way through, actually, like we just saw a sort of slowly changing gradient of all the different cultures. And it really, you know, we are just one people, you know. So as much as we might feel that, you know, we're all we're all different, actually, when you see it, when you when you do a drive like that, you really, you really get to see how slowly the cultures shift and change. Another thing that's quite funny, actually, was just like, everywhere we went, we would be like, you know, we're driving to Turkey. They'd be like, Oh, God, you just drove through Bulgaria, you know, how is like, everything on your car not been stolen, you know, they're so dodgy that you Bulgarians are so dodgy. And then, you know, we'd get drive through the country, and they'd be like, you know, oh, you're going into Georgia, you know, gosh, what you go. Make, make sure everything's tied down on your car. They're so dodgy. And then you get into Georgia, and they're like, Oh my God, you've just very driven through Turkey this, like, everyone sort of had these, like, weird, yeah, kind of perceptions of their neighbors. And it was all nonsense, yeah, you know. Michael Hingson  25:15 And the reality is that, as you pointed out, people are good, you know, I think, I think politicians are the ones who so often mess it up for everyone, just because they've got agendas. And unfortunately, they teach everyone else to be suspicious of of each other, because, oh, this person clearly has a hidden agenda when it normally isn't necessarily true at all. Nick Francis  25:42 No, no, no, certainly not in my experience, anyway, not in my experience. But, you know, well, oh, go ahead. No, no. It's just, you know, it's, it is. It's, it is weird the way that happens, you know, well, they say, you know, if, if politicians fought wars rather than, rather than our young men and women, then there'd be a lot less of them. Yeah, so Well, Michael Hingson  26:06 there would be, well as I tell people, you know, I I've learned a lot from working with eight guy dogs and my wife's service dog, who we had for, oh, gosh, 14 years almost, and one of the things that I tell people is I absolutely do believe what people say, that dogs love unconditionally, unless they're just totally traumatized by something, but they don't trust unconditionally. The difference between dogs and people is that dogs are more open to trust because we've taught ourselves and have been taught by others, that everyone has their own hidden agenda. So we don't trust. We're not open to trust, which is so unfortunate because it affects the psyche of so many people in such a negative way. We get too suspicious of people, so it's a lot harder to earn trust. Nick Francis  27:02 Yeah, I mean, I've, I don't know, you know, like I've been, I've been very fortunate in my life, and I kind of always try to be, you know, open and trusting. And frankly, you know, I think if you're open and trusting with people, in my experience, you kind of, it comes back to you, you know, and maybe kind of looking for the best in everyone. You know, there are times where that's not ideal, but you know, I think you know, in the overwhelming majority of cases, you know, actually, you know, you treat people right? And you know what goes what goes around, comes around, absolutely. Michael Hingson  27:35 And I think that's so very true. There are some people who just are going to be different than that, but I think for the most part, if you show that you're open to trust people will want to trust you, as long as you're also willing to trust Nick Francis  27:51 them completely. Yeah, completely. Michael Hingson  27:54 So I think that that's the big thing we have to deal with. And I don't know, I hope that we, we will learn it. But I think that politicians are really the most guilty about teaching us. Why not to trust but that too, hopefully, will be something we deal with. Nick Francis  28:12 I think, you know, I think we have to, you know, it's, it's one of the tragedies of our age, I think, is that the, you know, we spent the 20th century, thinking that sex was the kind of ultimate sales tool. And then it took algorithms to for us to realize that actually anger and resentment are the most powerful sales tools, which is, you know, it's a it's something which, in time, we will work out, right? And I think the problem is that, at the minute, these tech businesses are in such insane ascendancy, and they're so wealthy that it's very hard to regulate them. And I think in time, what will happen is, you know, they'll start to lose some of that luster and some of that insane scale and that power, and then, you know, then regulation will come in. But you know whether or not, we'll see maybe, hopefully our civilization will still be around to see that. Michael Hingson  29:04 No, there is that, or maybe the Vulcans will show up and show us a better way. But you know, Nick Francis  29:11 oh, you know, I'm, I'm kind of endlessly optimistic. I think, you know, we are. We're building towards a very positive future. I think so. Yeah, it's just, you know, get always bumps along the way, yeah. Michael Hingson  29:24 So you named your company casual. Why did you do that? Or how did that come about? Nick Francis  29:30 It's a slightly weird name for something, you know, we work with, kind of, you know, global blue chip businesses. And, you know, casual is kind of the last thing that you would want to associate with, a, with a, with any kind of services business that works in that sphere. I think, you know, we, the completely honest answer is that the journalism course I did was television, current affairs journalism, so it's called TV cadge, and so we, when we made a film for a local charity as part of that course. Course, we were asked to name our company, and we just said, well, cash, cash casual, casual films. So we called it casual films. And then when my friend and I set the company up, kind of formally, to do the Mongol Rally, we, you know, we had this name, you know, the company, the film that we'd made for the charity, had gone down really well. It had been played at BAFTA in London. And so we thought, well, you know, we should just, you know, hang on to that name. And it didn't, you know, at the time, it didn't really seem too much of an issue. It was only funny. It was coming to the US, where I think people are a bit more literal, and they were a bit like, well, casual. Like, why casual, you know. And I remember being on a shoot once. And, you know, obviously, kind of some filmmakers can be a little casual themselves, not necessarily in the work, but in the way they present themselves, right? And I remember sitting down, we were interviewing this CEO, and he said, who, you know, who are you? Oh, we're casual films. He's like, Oh, is that why that guy's got ripped jeans? Is it? And I just thought, Damn, you know, we really left ourselves open to that. There was also, there was a time one of our early competitors was called Agile films. And so, you know, I remember talking to one of our clients who said, you know, it's casual, you know, when I have to put together a little document to say, you know, which, which supplier we should choose, and when I lay it on my boss's desk, and one says casual films, and one says agile films, it's like those guys are landing the first punch. But anyway, we, you know, we, what we say now is like, you know, we take a complex process and make it casual. You know, filmmaking, particularly for like, large, complex organizations where you've got lots of different stakeholders, can be very complicated. And so, yeah, we sort of say, you know, we'll take a lot of that stress off, off our clients. So that's kind of the rationale, you know, that we've arrived with, arrived at having spoken to lots of our clients about the role that we play for them. So, you know, there's a kind of positive spin on it, I guess, but I don't know. I don't know whether I'd necessarily call it casual again. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that or not, but, oh, Michael Hingson  32:00 it's unique, you know? So, yeah, I think there's a lot of merit to it. It's a unique name, and it interests people. I know, for me, one of the things that I do is I have a way of doing this. I put all of my business cards in Braille, so the printed business cards have Braille on them, right? Same thing. It's unique completely. Nick Francis  32:22 And you listen, you know what look your name is an empty box that you fill with your identity. They say, right? And casual is actually, it's something we've grown into. And you know it's we've been going for nearly 20 years. In fact, funny enough for the end of this year is the 20th anniversary of that first film we made for the for the charity. And then next summer will be our 20th anniversary, which is, you know, it's, it's both been incredibly short and incredibly long, you know, I think, like any kind of experience in life, and it's been some of the hardest kind of times of my entire life, and some of the best as well. So, you know, it's, it is what it is, but you know, casual is who we are, right? I would never check, you know? I'd never change it. Michael Hingson  33:09 Now, no, of course not, yeah. So is the actual name casual films, or just casual? Nick Francis  33:13 So it was casual films, but then everyone calls us casual anyway, and I think, like as an organization, we probably need to be a bit more agnostic about the outcome. Michael Hingson  33:22 Well, the reason I asked, in part was, is there really any filming going on anymore? Nick Francis  33:28 Well, that's a very that's a very good question. But have we actually ever made a celluloid film? And I think the answer is probably no. We used to, back in the day, we used to make, like, super eight films, which were films, I think, you know, video, you know, ultimately, if you're going to be really pedantic about it, it's like, well, video is a digital, digital delivery. And so basically, every film we make is, is a video. But there is a certain cachet to the you know, because our films are loved and crafted, you know, for good or ill, you know, I think to call them, you know, they are films because, because of the, you know, the care that's put into them. But it's not, it's, it's not celluloid. No, that's okay, yeah, well, Michael Hingson  34:16 and I know that, like with vinyl records, there is a lot of work being done to preserve and capture what's on cellular film. And so there's a lot of work that I'm sure that's being done to digitize a lot of the old films. And when you do that, then you can also go back and remaster and hopefully in a positive way, and I'm not sure if that always happens, but in a positive way, enhance them Nick Francis  34:44 completely, completely and, you know, it's, you know, it's interesting talking about, like, you know, people wanting to step back. You know, obviously vinyl is having an absolute as having a moment right now. In fact, I just, I just bought a new stylist for my for my record. Play yesterday. It sounded incredible as a joy. This gave me the sound quality of this new style. It's fantastic. You know, beyond that, you know, running a company, you know, we're in nine offices all over the world. We produce nearly 1000 projects a year. So, you know, it's a company. It's an incredibly complicated company. It's a very fun and exciting company. I love the fact that we make these beautifully creative films. But, you know, it's a bit, I wouldn't say it's like, I don't know, you don't get many MBAs coming out of business school saying, hey, I want to set up a video production company. But, you know, it's been, it's been wonderful, but it's also been stressful. And so, you know, I've, I've always been interested in pottery and ceramics and making stuff with my hands. When I was a kid, I used to make jewelry, and I used to go and sell it in nightclubs, which is kind of weird, but, you know, it paid for my beers. And then whatever works, I say kid. I was 18. I was, I was of age, but of age in the UK anyway. But now, you know, over the last few 18 months or so, I've started make, doing my own ceramics. So, you know, I make vases and and pictures and kind of all sorts of stuff out of clay. And it's just, it's just to be to unplug and just to go and, you know, make things with mud with your hands. It's just the most unbelievably kind of grounding experience. Michael Hingson  36:26 Yeah, I hear you, yeah. One of the things that I like to do is, and I don't get to do it as much as I would like, but I am involved with organizations like the radio enthusiasts of Puget Sound, which, every year, does recreations of old radio shows. And so we get the scripts we we we have several blind people who are involved in we actually go off and recreate some of the old shows, which is really a lot of fun, Nick Francis  36:54 I bet, yeah, yeah, sort of you know that connection to the past is, is, yeah, it's great radio. Radio is amazing. Michael Hingson  37:03 Anyway, what we have to do is to train some of the people who have not had exposure to old radio. We need to train them as to how to really use their voices to convey like the people who performed in radio, whatever they're doing, because too many people don't really necessarily know how to do that well. And it is, it is something that we're going to work on trying to find ways to get people really trained. And one of the ways, of course, is you got to listen to the old show. So one of the things we're getting more and more people to do when we do recreations is to go back and listen to the original show. Well, they say, Well, but, but that's just the way they did it. That's not necessarily the way it should be done. And the response is, no, that's not really true. The way they did it sounded natural, and the way you are doing it doesn't and there's reality that you need to really learn how to to use your voice to convey well, and the only way to do it is to listen to the experts who did it. Nick Francis  38:06 Yeah, well, it's, you know, it's amazing. The, you know, when the BBC was founded, all the news readers and anyone who appeared on on the radio to to present or perform, had to wear like black tie, like a tuxedo, because it was, you know, they're broadcasting to the nation, so they had to, you know, they had to be dressed appropriately, right, which is kind of amazing. And, you know, it's interesting how you know, when you, when you change your dress, when you change the way you're sitting, it does completely change the way that you project yourself, yeah, Michael Hingson  38:43 it makes sense, yeah, well, and I always enjoyed some of the old BBC radio shows, like the Goon Show, and completely some of those are so much fun. Nick Francis  38:54 Oh, great, yeah, I don't think they were wearing tuxedo. It's tuxedos. They would Michael Hingson  38:59 have been embarrassed. Yeah, right, right. Can you imagine Peter Sellers in a in a tux? It just isn't going to happen. Nick Francis  39:06 No, right, right. But yeah, no, it's so powerful. You know, they say radio is better than TV because the pictures are better. Michael Hingson  39:15 I agree. Yeah, sure, yeah. Well, you know, I I don't think this is quite the way he said it, but Fred Allen, the old radio comedian, once said they call television the new medium, because that's as good as it's ever going Nick Francis  39:28 to get. Yeah, right, right, yeah. Michael Hingson  39:32 I think there's truth to it. Whether that's exactly the way he said it or not, there's truth to that, yeah, but there's also a lot of good stuff on TV, so it's okay. Nick Francis  39:41 Well, it's so interesting. Because, you know, when you look at the it's never been more easy to create your own content, yeah, and so, you know, and like, in a way, TV, you know, he's not wrong in that, because it suddenly opened up this, this huge medium for people just to just create. Right? And, you know, and I think, like so many people, create without thinking, and, you know, and certainly in our kind of, in the in the world that we're living in now with AI production, making production so much more accessible, actually taking the time as a human being just to really think about, you know, who are the audience, what are the things that are going to what are going to kind of resonate with them? You know? Actually, I think one of the risks with AI, and not just AI, but just like production being so accessible, is that you can kind of shoot first and kind of think about it afterwards, and, you know, and that's never good. That's always going to be medium. It's medium at best, frankly. Yeah, so yeah, to create really great stuff takes time, you know, yeah, to think about it. Yeah, for sure, yeah. Michael Hingson  40:50 Well, you know, our podcast is called unstoppable mindset. What do you think that unstoppable mindset really means to you as a practical thing and not just a buzzword. Because so many people talk about the kinds of buzzwords I hear all the time are amazing. That's unstoppable, but it's really a lot more than a buzzword. It goes back to what you think, I think. But what do you think? Nick Francis  41:15 I think it's something that is is buried deep inside you. You know, I'd say the simple answer is, is just resilience. You know, it's, it's been rough. I write anyone running a small business or a medium sized business at the minute, you know, there's been some tough times over the last, kind of 1824, months or so. And, you know, I was talking to a friend of mine who she sold out of her business. And she's like, you know, how are things? I was like, you know, it's, it's, it's tough, you know, we're getting through it, you know, we're changing a lot of things, you know, we're like, we're definitely making the business better, but it's hard. And she's like, Listen, you know, when three years before I sold my company, I was at rock bottom. It was, I genuinely thought it was so stressful. I was crushed by it, but I just kept going. And she's just like, just keep going. And the only difference between success and failure is that resilience and just getting up every day and you just keep, keep throwing stuff at the wall, keep trying new things, keep working and trying to be better. I think, you know, it's funny when you look at entrepreneurs, I'm a member of a mentoring group, and I hope I'm not talking out of school here, but you know, there's 15 entrepreneurs, you know, varying sizes of business, doing all sorts, you know, across all sorts of different industries. And if you sat on the wall, if you were fly on the wall, and you sit and look at these people on a kind of week, month to month basis, and they all present on how their businesses are going. You go, this is this being an entrepreneur does not look like a uniformly fun thing, you know, the sort of the stress and just, you know, people crying and stuff, and you're like, gosh, you know, it's so it's, it's, it's hard, and yet, you know, it's people just keep coming back to it. And yet, I think it's because of that struggle that you have to kind of have something in built in you, that you're sort of, you're there to prove something. And I, you know, I've thought a lot about this, and I wonder whether, kind of, the death of my father at such a young age kind of gave me this incredible fire to seek His affirmation, you know. And unfortunately, obviously, the tragedy of that is like, you know, the one person who would never give me affirmation is my dad. And yet, you know, I get up every day, you know, to have early morning calls with the UK or with Singapore or wherever. And you know, you just just keep on, keeping on. And I think that's probably what and knowing I will never quit, you know, like, even from the earliest days of casual, when we were just, like a couple of people, and we were just, you know, kids doing our very best, I always knew the company was going to be a success act. Like, just a core belief that I was like, this is going to work. This is going to be a success. I didn't necessarily know what that success would look like. I just but I did know that, like, whatever it took, we would map, we'd map our way towards that figure it out. We'd figure it out. And I think, you know, there's probably something unstoppable. I don't know, I don't want to sound immodest, but I think there's probably something in that that you're just like, I am just gonna keep keep on, keeping on. Michael Hingson  44:22 Do you think that resilience and unstoppability are things that can be taught, or is it just something that's built into you, and either you have it or you don't? Nick Francis  44:31 I think it's something that probably, it's definitely something that can be learned, for sure, you know. And there are obviously ways that it can there's obviously ways it can be taught. You know, I was, I spent some time in the reserve, like the Army Reserve in the UK, and I just, you know, a lot of that is about teaching you just how much further you can go. I think what it taught me was it was so. So hard. I mean, honestly, some of the stuff we did in our training was, like, you know, it's just raining and raining and raining and, like, because all your kits soaking wet is weighs twice what it did before, and you just, you know, sleeping maybe, you know, an hour or two a night, and, you know, and there wasn't even anyone shooting at us, right? So, you know, like the worst bit wasn't even happening. But like, and like, in a sense, I think, you know, that's what they're trying to do, that, you know, they say, you know, train hard and fight easy. But I remember sort of sitting there, and I was just exhausted, and I just genuinely, I was just thought, you know, what if they tell me to go now, I just, I can't. I literally, I can't, I can't do it. Can't do it. And then they're like, right, lads, put your packs on. Let's go and just put your pack on. Off you go, you know, like, this sort of, the idea of not, like, I was never going to quit, just never, never, ever, you know, and like I'd physically, if I physically, like, literally, my physical being couldn't stand up, you know, I then that was be, that would be, you know, if I was kind of, like literally incapacitated. And I think what that taught me actually, was that, you know, you have what you believe you can do, like you have your sort of, you have your sort of physical envelope, but like that is only a third or a quarter of what you can actually achieve, right, you know. And I think what that, what the that kind of training is about, and you know, you can do it in marathon training. You can do it in all sorts of different, you know, even, frankly, meditate. You know, you train your mind to meditate for, you know, an hour, 90 minutes plus. You know, you're still doing the same. You know, there's a, there's an elasticity within your brain where you can teach yourself that your envelope is so much larger. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, like, is casual going to be a success? Like, I'm good, you know, I'm literally, I won't I won't stop until it is Michael Hingson  46:52 right, and then why stop? Exactly, exactly you continue to progress and move forward. Well, you know, when everything feels uncertain, whether it's the markets or whatever, what do you do or what's your process for finding clarity? Nick Francis  47:10 I think a lot of it is in having structured time away. I say structured. You build it into your calendar, but like, but it's unstructured. So, you know, I take a lot of solace in being physically fit. You know, I think if you're, if you feel physically fit, then you feel mentally far more able to deal with things. I certainly when I'm if I'm unfit and if I've been working too much and I haven't been finding the time to exercise. You know, I feel like the problems we have to face just loom so much larger. So, you know, I, I'll book out. I, you know, I work with a fan. I'm lucky enough to have a fantastic assistant who, you know, we book in my my exercise for each week, and it's almost the first thing that goes in the calendar. I do that because I can't be the business my my I can't be the leader my business requires. And it finally happened. It was a few years ago I kind of, like, the whole thing just got really big on me, and it just, you know, and I'm kind of, like, being crushed by it. And I just thought, you know what? Like, I can't, I can't fit other people's face mask, without my face mask being fit, fitted first. Like, in order to be the business my business, I keep saying that to be the lead in my business requires I have to be physically fit. So I have to look after myself first. And so consequently, like, you know, your exercise shouldn't be something just get squeezed in when you find when you have time, because, you know, if you've got family and you know, other things happening, like, you know, just will be squeezed out. So anyway, that goes in. First, I'll go for a bike ride on a Friday afternoon, you know, I'll often listen to a business book and just kind of process things. And it's amazing how often, you know, I'll just go for a run and, like, these things that have been kind of nagging away in the back of my mind, just suddenly I find clarity in them. So I try to exercise, like, five times a week. I mean, that's obviously more than most people can can manage, but you know that that really helps. And then kind of things, like the ceramics is very useful. And then, you know, I'm lucky. I think it's also just so important just to appreciate the things that you already have. You know, I think one of the most important lessons I learned last year was this idea that, you know, here is the only there. You know, everyone's working towards this kind of, like, big, you know, it's like, oh, you know, when I get to there, then everything's going to be okay, you know. And actually, you know, if you think about like, you know, and what did you want to achieve when you left college? Like, what was the salary band that you want? That you wanted to achieve? Right? A lot of people, you know, by the time you hit 4050, you've blown way through that, right? And yet you're still chasing the receding Summit, yeah, you know. And so actually, like, wherever we're trying to head to, we're already there, because once you get there, there's going to be another there that you're trying to. Head to right? So, so, you know, it's just taking a moment to be like, you know, God, I'm so lucky to have what I have. And, you know, I'm living in, we're living in the good old days, like right now, right? Michael Hingson  50:11 And the reality is that we're doing the same things and having the same discussions, to a large degree, that people did 50, 100 200 years ago. As you pointed out earlier, the fact is that we're, we're just having the same discussions about whether this works, or whether that works, or anything else. But it's all the same, Nick Francis  50:33 right, you know. And you kind of think, oh, you know, if I just, just, like, you know, if we just open up these new offices, or if we can just, you know, I think, like, look, if I, if I'd looked at casual when we started it as it is now, I would have just been like, absolute. My mind would have exploded, right? You know, if you look at what we've achieved, and yet, I kind of, you know, it's quite hard sometimes to look at it and just be like, Oh yeah, but we're only just starting. Like, there's so much more to go. I can see so much further work, that we need so many more things, that we need to do, so many more things that we could do. And actually, you know, they say, you know, I'm lucky enough to have two healthy, wonderful little girls. And you know, I think a lot of bread winners Look at, look at love being provision, and the idea that, you know, you have to be there to provide for them. And actually, the the truest form of love is presence, right? And just being there for them, and like, you know, not being distracted and kind of putting putting things aside, you know, not jumping on your emails or your Slack messages or whatever first thing in the morning, you know. And I, you know, I'm not. I'm guilty, like, I'm not, you know, I'm not one of these people who have this kind of crazy kind of morning routine where, like, you know, I'm incredibly disciplined about that because, you know, and I should be more. But like, you know, this stuff, one of the, one of the things about having a 24 hour business with people working all over the world is there's always things that I need to respond to. There's always kind of interesting things happening. And so just like making sure that I catch myself every so often to be like, I'm just going to be here now and I'm going to be with them, and I'm going to listen to what they're saying, and I'm going to respond appropriately, and, you know, I'm going to play a game with them, or whatever. That's true love. You know? Michael Hingson  52:14 Well, there's a lot of merit to the whole concept of unplugging and taking time and living in the moment. One of the things that we talked about in my book live like a guide dog, that we published last year, and it's all about lessons I've learned about leadership and teamwork and preparedness from eight guide dogs and my wife's service dog. One of the things that I learned along the way is the whole concept of living in the moment when I was in the World Trade Center with my fifth guide dog, Roselle. We got home, and I was going to take her outside to go visit the bathroom, but as soon as I took the harness off, she shot off, grabbed her favorite tug bone and started playing tug of war with my retired guide dog. Asked the veterinarians about him the next day, the people at Guide Dogs for the Blind, and they said, Well, did anything threaten her? And I said, No. And they said, there's your answer. The reality is, dogs live in the moment when it was over. It was over. And yeah, right lesson to learn. Nick Francis  53:15 I mean, amazing, absolutely amazing. You must have taken a lot of strength from that. Michael Hingson  53:20 Oh, I think it was, it was great. It, you know, I can look back at my life and look at so many things that have happened, things that I did. I never thought that I would become a public speaker, but I learned in so many ways the art of speaking and being relaxed at speaking in a in a public setting, that when suddenly I was confronted with the opportunity to do it, it just seemed like the natural thing to do. Nick Francis  53:46 Yeah, it's funny, because I think isn't public speaking the number one fear. It is. It's the most fit. It's the most feared thing for the most people. Michael Hingson  53:57 And the reality is going back to something that we talked about before. The reality is, audiences want you to succeed, unless you're a jerk and you project that, audiences want to hear what you have to say. They want you to be successful. There's really nothing to be afraid of but, but you're right. It is the number one fear, and I've never understood that. I mean, I guess I can intellectually understand it, but internally, I don't. The first time I was asked to speak after the World Trade Center attacks, a pastor called me up and he said, we're going to we're going to have a service outside for all the people who we lost in New Jersey and and that we would like you to come and speak. Take a few minutes. And I said, Sure. And then I asked him, How many people many people were going to be at the service? He said, 6000 that was, that was my first speech. Nick Francis  54:49 Yeah, wow. But it didn't bother me, you know, no, I bet Michael Hingson  54:54 you do the best you can, and you try to improve, and so on. But, but it is true that so many people. Are public speaking, and there's no reason to what Nick Francis  55:03 did that whole experience teach you? Michael Hingson  55:06 Well, one of the things that taught me was, don't worry about the things that you can't control. It also taught me that, in reality, any of us can be confronted with unexpected things at any time, and the question is, how well do we prepare to deal with it? So for me, for example, and it took me years after September 11 to recognize this, but one of the things that that happened when the building was hit, and Neither I, nor anyone on my side of the building really knew what happened. People say all the time, well, you didn't know because you couldn't see it. Well, excuse me, it hit 18 floors above us on the other side of the building. And the last time I checked X ray vision was fictitious, so nobody knew. But did the building shake? Oh, it tipped. Because tall buildings like that are flexible. And if you go to any tall building, in reality, they're made to buffet in wind storms and so on, and in fact, they're made to possibly be struck by an airplane, although no one ever expected that somebody would deliberately take a fully loaded jet aircraft and crash it into a tower, because it wasn't the plane hitting the tower as such that destroyed both of them. It was the exploding jet fuel that destroyed so much more infrastructure caused the buildings to collapse. But in reality, for me, I had done a lot of preparation ahead of time, not even thinking that there would be an emergency, but thinking about I need to really know all I can about the building, because I've got to be the leader of my office, and I should know all of that. I should know what to do in an emergency. I should know how to take people to lunch and where to go and all that. And by learning all of that, as I learned many and discovered many years later, it created a mindset that kicked in when the World Trade Center was struck, and in fact, we didn't know until after both towers had collapsed, and I called my wife. We I talked with her just before we evacuated, and the media hadn't even gotten the story yet, but I never got a chance to talk with her until after both buildings had collapsed, and then I was able to get through and she's the first one that told us how the two buildings had been hit by hijacked aircraft. But the mindset had kicked in that said, You know what to do, do it and that. And again, I didn't really think about that until much later, but that's something that is a lesson we all could learn. We shouldn't rely on just watching signs to know what to do, no to go in an emergency. We should really know it, because the knowledge, rather than just having information, the true intellectual knowledge that we internalize, makes such a big difference. Nick Francis  57:46 Do you think it was the fact that you were blind that made you so much more keen to know the way out that kind of that really helped you to understand that at the time? Michael Hingson  57:56 Well, what I think is being blind and growing up in an environment where so many things could be unexpected, for me, it was important to know so, for example, when I would go somewhere to meet a customer, I would spend time, ahead of time, learning how to get around, learning how to get to where they were and and learning what what the process was, because we didn't have Google Maps and we didn't have all the intellectual and and technological things that we have today. Well intellectual we did with the technology we didn't have. So today it's easier, but still, I want to know what to do. I want to really have the answers, and then I can can more easily and more effectively deal with what I need to deal with and react. So I'm sure that blindness played a part in all of that, because if I hadn't learned how to do the things that I did and know the things that I knew, then it would have been a totally different ball game, and so sure, I'm sure, I'm certain that blindness had something to do with it, but I also know that, that the fact is, what I learned is the same kinds of things that everyone should learn, and we shouldn't rely on just the signs, because what if the building were full of smoke, then what would you do? Right? And I've had examples of that since I was at a safety council meeting once where there was somebody from an electric company in Missouri who said, you know, we've wondered for years, what do we do if there's a fire in the generator room, in the basement, In the generator room, how do people get out? And he and I actually worked on it, and they developed a way where people could have a path that they could follow with their feet to get them out. But the but the reality is that what people first need to learn is eyesight is not the only game in town. Yeah, right. Mean, it's so important to really learn that, but people, people don't, and we take too many things for granted, which is, which is really so unfortunate, because we really should do a li

Catherine Linka is the past president and current treasurer of the Puget Sound chapter of Sisters in Crime. The author of three traditionally published YA novels, her first adult suspense is currently making the rounds of publishers. Elle Cosimano called Catherine's last novel What I Want You to See “a stunning portrait of deception.” As a book buyer for an indie bookstore, Catherine learned everything about publishing they didn't tell her in grad school. Website: https://www.catherinelinka.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catherine_linka/ *****************About SinCSisters in Crime (SinC) was founded in 1986 to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of women crime writers. Through advocacy, programming and leadership, SinC empowers and supports all crime writers regardless of genre or place on their career trajectory.www.SistersinCrime.orgFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/sincworldwideInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sincworldwide/Threads: https://www.threads.com/@sincworldwideBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sincworldwide.bsky.socialTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sincworldwideeTikTok:: https://www.tiktok.com/@sincnationalLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sisters-in-crime/The SinC Writers' Podcast is produced by Julian Crocamo https://www.juliancrocamo.com/

Puget Sound Industrial Market Trends and Predictions for 2026 In this Five-Minute Friday episode of the Industrial Advisors Podcast, Bill Condon and Matt McGregor discuss recent trends in the Puget Sound industrial real estate market, focusing on net absorption and market activities. They highlight the market's positive momentum over the past 45 days, the potential closing of several deals by year-end, and outlook for the coming years. The hosts predict a slight negative absorption for the current year but are optimistic about significant positive absorption in the first half of 2026, driven by major deals involving companies like Amazon and other substantial projects. The episode concludes with forecasts for the end of the year and the first two quarters of 2026. 00:00 Market Momentum in the Last 45 Days 00:29 Introduction to Five Minute Friday Industrial Advisors 00:40 Net Absorption and Year-End Predictions 01:01 Big Deals on the Horizon 01:22 Amazon's Potential Moves 01:49 Activity in the 1 to 200 Range 02:21 Market Picking Up in the 20 to 50 Range 02:35 Year-End and 2026 Predictions 03:19 Conclusion and Farewell

Big news for the show: The Pedalshift Project is setting up camp in a new city! This episode breaks down what that means for future tours, how this opens up brand-new riding possibilities, and why the destination may be a bit of a surprise and also not a surprise at all.   My new home: Seattle! Why? This move is all about geography, access, and expanding the Pedalshift touring sandbox. Seattle places world-class touring terrain right outside the door and increases the show's ability to cover more routes, more often. And yes—this is a return to the broader PNW. Think of it as a new basecamp, and not a commentary on my beloved Portland. It remains the land of sunshine and bunnies, and it's just down I-5. There's obviously other details to all of this but they are far more weedsy than worth getting into for you all. Let's focus on the parts that impact the pod!   What Seattle Unlocks for Bike Adventures Puget Sound & the Islands Bainbridge, Vashon, Whidbey, and the San Juans Ferry-based overnighters and S24Os Olympic Peninsula ACA Pacific Coast connections Port Townsend → Sequim → Forks routes Big coastal scenery for trip diaries Cascade Range Palouse to Cascades Trail (hello, cross-state gravel epic) Snoqualmie Pass corridor North Cascades Highway rides when the snow gods allow British Columbia Vancouver + Victoria loops Easier cross-border touring content Western US Access Simpler jumps to NorCal, SoCal, Alaska, and Rocky Mountain tour starts   How the Show Evolves   More Micro-Tours Seattle puts quality riding minutes—not hours—away, which means more short trips, more experiments, more rapid-fire episodes. Some Non-Bicycle Adventures Exploring by foot - hiking, urban adventures and more. Not a replacement for bikes, but a compliment. New Possible Arcs The Islands Project The Puget Sound Loops Palouse to Cascades: Piece by Piece Return to the Coast (Seattle → Portland → Coast → beyond) Year-Round Riding Milder PNW winters = more shoulder-season content and gear discussions. Also proximity to southern CA for winter riding?   What Stays the Same The philosophy of intentional, practical, joyful bike travel Long-form tours and multi-state adventures Portland is the land of sunshine and bunnies, and Seattle will need a tagline   Early Seattle Recon Riding West Seattle, Alki, and Elliott Bay Ferry recon missions Scouting trails, routes, and spots for easy S24Os Checking out the local bike shop ecosystem   Production Notes Scheduling in winter and spring TBD with some back and forth travel Regular episode cadence with best-of's    Listener Input Wanted Got Seattle, Puget Sound, or PNW route suggestions? Hidden gems? Ferries worth timing for golden hour? Winter riding hacks? Hit me up—I'll feature the best ones in future episodes.

How do you identify “an expert”? The answer to this question is more complex than you might think. Most of us might think of people with multiple degrees or extensive experience in a specific field as experts. However, as our guest this week is discovering, experts can be people with passion, people with connections or people with specific job titles. Recognizing the enacted and relationally valued characteristics of an expert is essential to creating systems where experts that reflect a community's ideas and values are the ones making the decisions. One example is the community of people around and connected to the Puget Sound watershed region and the jurisdiction of the Puget Sound Partnership: an area spanning 12 counties and 28 recognized Tribal Nations. Large restoration efforts are underway to restore Puget Sound and prime the ecosystem for climate adaptation. These efforts hinge on not just access to climate adaptation knowledge, but who is recognized to apply such knowledge and the social structures to shape its uptake. Our guest this week is Krista Harrington, a 4th year PhD Candidate in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences. Krista utilizes political ecology and science, technology, and society theory in environmental natural resource management. During her Bachelor's degree, Master's degree and time spent working in wildlife conversation, she kept asking herself “who are we going to for expertise?”. This question ultimately shaped the path of her PhD work and is how she is contributing to restoring Puget Sound. Hosted by Emilee Lance and Esteban Hernandez

2014's Pompeii is all over the place. Designed to be a Roman apocalypse story with a star making turn by Game of Thrones' Kit Harrington, Pompeii fizzled at the box office. But strangely, it's a phenomenal film to talk about the Roman empire and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Historian and archaeologist Dr. Steven Tuck joins in to talk everything this film gets right and wrong about Roman history. Easily one of our best episodes ever.About our guest:Steven L. Tuck is a professor of classics, who is currently head of classics at Miami University. He teaches many classics courses at Miami University, especially those relating to the arts.He received a Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from University of Michigan in 1997, and he is the author of the textbook A History of Roman Art. In addition to his teaching, he has lectured the general public at Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder, Yale University, the University of Puget Sound, Baylor University and for the Getty Villa. He has also appeared in the media discussing classics, including in a 2019 feature for Atlas Obscura on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. and its impact on refugees and migration in the ancient world. For the Vergilian Society, he managed the Villa Vergiliana in Cumae, and organized educational programs there. He is also the author of the brand new book Escape from Pompeii: The Great Eruption of Mount Vesuvius and Its Survivors.

The Seattle Mayor race is looking much more decisive, an orca superpod came to Puget Sound, and many Washingtonians are still struggling from the government shutdown. It’s our daily roundup of top stories from the KUOW newsroom, with host Paige Browning. We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. Tap here to make a gift and keep Seattle Now in your feed. Got questions about local news or story ideas to share? We want to hear from you! Email us at seattlenow@kuow.org, leave us a voicemail at (206) 616-6746 or leave us feedback online.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we delve into all the ways memoir can be transformative. In framing her own memoir as an act of service, Julie Lythcott-Haims helps us to contextualize what your memoir is for, who it's for, and whether you're ready to write it for others, or if it needs to stay with just you, at least for a while. This is a powerful and impassioned conversation about memoir, why we write, and what we write for. Julie also shares about how prescient her memoir, Real American, was—as she was writing it in 2016 with the rise of Trumpism, and what it meant to be part of a chorus of voices writing about experiences of race and racial identity in America. Julie Lythcott-Haims is a writer, speaker, teacher, mentor, and activist. The New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult, which inspired a widely viewed TED Talk. Her award-winning memoir, Real American, explores her experience as a Black and biracial person in white spaces. Her third book is Your Turn: How to Be an Adult. Julie earned a B.A. from Stanford, a J.D. from Harvard Law, and an M.F.A. in Writing from California College of the Arts. She also holds an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Puget Sound. She lives in Palo Alto, where she serves on the City Council, advocating for housing, equity, climate, and youth mental health. Julie and her lifelong partner Dan are parents to two twentysomethings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we delve into all the ways memoir can be transformative. In framing her own memoir as an act of service, Julie Lythcott-Haims helps us to contextualize what your memoir is for, who it's for, and whether you're ready to write it for others, or if it needs to stay with just you, at least for a while. This is a powerful and impassioned conversation about memoir, why we write, and what we write for. Julie also shares about how prescient her memoir, Real American, was—as she was writing it in 2016 with the rise of Trumpism, and what it meant to be part of a chorus of voices writing about experiences of race and racial identity in America. Julie Lythcott-Haims is a writer, speaker, teacher, mentor, and activist. The New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult, which inspired a widely viewed TED Talk. Her award-winning memoir, Real American, explores her experience as a Black and biracial person in white spaces. Her third book is Your Turn: How to Be an Adult. Julie earned a B.A. from Stanford, a J.D. from Harvard Law, and an M.F.A. in Writing from California College of the Arts. She also holds an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Puget Sound. She lives in Palo Alto, where she serves on the City Council, advocating for housing, equity, climate, and youth mental health. Julie and her lifelong partner Dan are parents to two twentysomethings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Democrats knew they were funding healthcare for illegal immigrants — and lied about it. The federal government says Washington State can’t force foster parents to accept their children's gender identity. Guest: National political director for the Republican Jewish Coalition Sam Markstein reacts to the horrifying prospect of an antisemite like Zohran Mamdani becoming mayor of New York. // Big Local: A look at some of the key local races around the Puget Sound region tonight. // You Pick the Topic: A University of Chicago professor that was previously arrested at an anti-ICE protest posted vile comments about Dick Cheney moments after his death was announced today.

In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the mysterious death of a mother of two is ruled a suicide. But her loved ones believe there's more to her death than meets the eye. And as soon as we looked into her case, the cracks in the official ruling started to show. If you have any information about Gwen Hasselquist or her death or movements the night of March 20th, 2020, please email tips@audiochuck.com.If you or a loved one is struggling with thoughts of suicide or self-harm, you can call or text the Crisis and Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or visit 988lifeline.org. You can learn more about The Good segment and even submit a story of your own by visiting The Good page on our website! Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit:  https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/mysterious-death-of-gwen-hasselquist/Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit crimejunkie.app/library/ to view the current membership options and policies.Don't miss out on all things Crime Junkie!Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuckTikTok: @crimejunkiepodcastFacebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllcCrime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawatTwitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawatTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.