Podcasts about really what

*Yo! How are you today? Did you vote? *Thinking about sexting someone? Perhaps you should consider downloading this app that allows you to draft up legally binding NDA's so that people will think twive before sharing your naked pics. *Headlines! It's election day! Young people in Texas are voting in record numbers. Oregon governor throws a little shade Trump's way. Terror in Vienna. You can stop worrying, Britney says she's fine. How to deal with election day stress. There's a new all-time YouTube champ. *Over half of Americans polled said today would be the most stressful day of their life. Really? What was your most stressful day? *Nick Wright calls in because he's feeling anxious and he did something he's never done before! (You'll have to listen to find out what it was) *Speaking of stuff you've never done, if only there was a list of things everyone should do at some point. Oh wait, there is. *Can you guess who these celebs are voting for? Yes, you probably can. *We're out! Don't get too worked up tonight. Take a breather. Watch a stand up special or something.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paul proclaims in language that soars, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.” (Romans 8) Really? What if we reject God? What about sinners? What about the people of Israel? Grace and the good news are hard for us because we forget who makes us God’s people. Paul knows. Clue? It isn’t you.

My friend told me he wanted to know everything Jesus taught. I said it might surprise you to know that one-fourth of the time he spoke about money. He said, "Really? What else did he talk about?" One of the effects of the gospel going deeper into our souls is that it frees our fingers to loosen their grasp on our stuff. Generosity is one of the great evidences of truly being a disciple of Jesus Christ. But for the Christian, the issue is not just that we give, but how... “God loves a cheerful giver” 2 Corinthians 9:7. Christian generosity happily finds its' motivation from Jesus himself — our Savior, Lord and greatest treasure — demonstrated the ultimate in generosity in coming to save us... “Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” 2 Corinthians 8:9. If Jesus is in us, then increasingly such an open-handed tendency will be in us as well. We don't own anything. Instead we steward what we've been given. This leads to freedom. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21 Since our treasures reveal our hearts and our hearts are idol making machines then money reveals our idols. So we need help. Paul gives it to us in two simple paragraphs as he concludes his letter to the Philippian church. Contentment, needs vs wants, and the sacrifice of Jesus compel all believers to be generous stewards. Remember, the theme of the book of Philippians is joy and joy comes when you share with others!

P&C drink and review Southern Comet, a New England IPA, then discuss the American Declaration of Independence. People have a right to decide what kind of government they want. That is the amazing, radical idea that has led to hundreds of years of liberty. Pigweed and Crowhill review some of the history -- the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, and other things -- and then run into the fundamental problem with the declaration. "All men are created equal." Really? What about the slaves?

Anikah and Rose wonder if a tourist is brave enough to go into George's antique shop. This episode is not explicit. Voiced by Kari Aguila and Taylor Edwards of “Broken, Alaska” and written by Kari Aguila. www.brokenalaskapodcast.com TRANSCRIPT Oosiks. Oh, I’ve gotta go, Anikah. I see some tourists coming up to my produce stand. I’ll talk to you soon. Yesterday a tourist off the Queen of the Gulls stopped me on Main Street and asked about a public restroom. Really? What’d you say? "Well," I said. "You can always use the one in George's Antiques Shop.” I pointed across the street to the ramshackle little shop and the woman turned to go. "Oh, and by the way," I shouted to her, "George sometimes likes to hide behind the giant Oosik bones when he sees someone he doesn't know." Oh, George and his oosiks! "Oosik?" she asked. "Yeah. Walrus penis bones. He has quite a collection behind the obituaries and the handcuffs and the… You know what? Never mind. You’ll be fine." Did she go in? About ten minutes later, I saw that same tourist, coming out of the woods buttoning up her jeans. She just went in the woods? What’s up with that? This episode of Listen, Rinse, Repeat was voiced by Kari Aguila and Taylor Edwards of “Broken, Alaska” and written by Kari Aguila.

To join the community and be part of the conversation: Behind The Mask-ulinity Private Facebook Group To connect with me directly: E-Mail Me: BehindTheMaskulinity@gmail.com or Instagram Me Are you wearing your mask? Are you practicing social distancing? In these unprecedented days of this pandemic caused by Coronavirus/Covid-19, most all of us (minus the "strong" men who think it's weak to do so) find ourselves wearing masks to protect ourselves. When the CDC and WHO and organizations like that recommend wearing them, I'm going listen to them over some Facebook friend's disgruntled uncle who claims it's all a hoax. I get it, they're uncomfortable, they're hard to breathe in and even if you have the best mask and wear it correctly, you're still not guaranteed to not contract the virus. I get it, who the heck would want to wear one? I sure don't. But if it's for the safety of myself and those around me, I will do so. One argument I've heard around not wearing a mask--mostly from men--is that it makes them look weak. Really? Can you consider yourself "strong" and "manly" when you feel a measly mask is going to emasculate you and call into question your masculinity? Really?? What many don't realize who refuse to wear masks--because it may be construed by others as weakness--is that they are constantly wearing a figurative mask every single day of their lives. A mask of "manliness" that they constantly have to hide behind because they're afraid to open up, be vulnerable and let others see their pain, their hurt, their fear or whatever other "negative" emotion they may be going through because our culture has deemed that a "weakness" for men. Join me as I sit down with Ashanti Branch for a deep dive into why we wear these masks and what we can begin to do to shed them and show the world the real us, our true and best selves. Ashanti is a teacher/tutor/mentor who works to change how young men interact with their education and how their schools interact with them. Raised in Oakland by a single mother on welfare, he left the inner city to study Civil Engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. A construction project manager in his first career, his life changed after he tutored struggling students and realized his passion for teaching. In 2004, during his first year teaching high school math, he started the Ever Forward Club to provide support for African American and Latino males who were not achieving to their potential. Since then, Ever Forward has helped all of its 150 members graduate from high school, and 93% of them have gone on to attend two- or four-year colleges, military or trade school. You can also see him in the award-winning documentary "The Mask You Live In", a film that explores how our culture's narrow definition of masculinity is harming our boys, men and society at large and unveils what we can do about it. Ashanti's TEDx Talk "The Mask You Live In"

I’m reading from chapter five of Earning Freedom: Conquering a 45-Year Prison Term, by Michael Santos. It's the story of my prison journey. For a full copy, visit PrisonProfessors.com   Months 58-62 Since I received the divorce papers from Lisa, my interactions with women have been limited to Ms. Stephens, my work supervisor, and Susan, my friend from high school with whom I’ve had an ongoing, friendly correspondence. But those relationships don’t have any possibility for intimacy. This thing with Sarah is different.  She lives in Atlanta, and her proximity causes me to fantasize that I could seduce her, make her my woman.  Given the rules of this place, however, initiating physical intimacy will be a major challenge.  Still, forced celibacy doesn’t diminish my thirst for love or my desire for sex. Thoughts of love have been on my mind for years. Another prisoner, Eugene Fischer, fed my hopes with a story about Orianna Fallaci, a world-famous journalist who loved a man who served time in a Greek prison for an attempted assassination. I wonder whether I could find a woman who would see me as a man and love me despite my imprisonment. I’m 28, and I refuse to give up on the possibilities. Upon receiving the invitation to attend my graduation, Sarah surprises me by driving over to the penitentiary. I’m on a volunteer suicide-watch duty in the hospital, looking after a despondent prisoner, when I receive the call. While I study for final exams, the guard hollers my name from the other side of locked gates. “Santos!” he yells. “Let’s go!” I see him standing outside the gate, fumbling with the ring of keys hanging on a chain attached to his belt. “What?” I have no idea what he’s talking about. “We’ve been paging you for 30 minutes. You’re supposed to report to the visiting room.” “I didn’t hear a page.” I close my books and walk toward the guard. “Leave the books. You’re late. I’ve got to take you straight to visiting.” “Why?” “Your attorney is here and she’s been waiting. Didn’t you know she was coming?” “I didn’t have any idea.” The 15-minute walk takes me through a maze of gates and courtyards and metal detectors and corridors. With each step I’m thinking about Sarah. She’s not on my visiting list, so I wonder how she got in. If she felt this urgency to see me, perhaps it’s to tell me face-to-face that my invitation went too far and to clarify where we stand. Or maybe it’s something else. ******* Some prisoners’ families live near Atlanta and I hear the institutional loudspeaker page those men for visits regularly. Until this back and forth with Sarah began, my focus on school extinguished any longing to sit in the visiting room. Sarah’s surprise visit breaks my routine. The strip search by an inquisitive guard doesn’t even bother me. After the full inspection I pull on my boxers and socks, step back into my khakis, tuck in my shirt, and lace my sneakers tightly before walking into the visiting room. Since Sarah came as a lawyer, I’m directed past the stairs leading down into the general visiting room where hundreds of people sit beside each other under the scrutiny of guards and surveillance cameras. The guard instructs me to walk across the hall to one of the private conference rooms. “She’s in two,” he says. Through the narrow vertical window cut into the wooden door I see Sarah for the first time in three months, since that day she handed me her business card. For a second I pause to watch her. She’s seated at a small table, absorbed with a stack of papers. Black designer sunglasses hold her long, honey-colored hair away from her face while she works. She’s prettier than I remember. I knock, startling her. She looks over at me, smiles, and waves me in. As I open the door she stands and quickly straightens her navy skirt. Suddenly we’re face to face in a room half the size of my cell. “Surprise!” she greets me as I close the door. Her perfume lingers in the air and I inhale the subtle, sweet fragrance. “Wow! This is a surprise. How’d you get in without being on my list?” “Lawyer privileges. I just flash my bar card. What took you so long to get here?” I smile. “I didn’t know you were coming.” “It’s okay. I brought some work with me. How about a hug?” She opens her arms. Her arms encircle me in a friendly gesture. I’ve been deprived of a woman’s touch for almost 3 years and I load the gesture with a lot more meaning. I’m awkward, unsure if I should hold her slender waist or keep my hands high on her back. The embrace lasts a second, but in that second, through her silk blouse, I feel the warmth of her back on my hands and her breasts pressing into my chest. “It’s cozy,” she says, looking around the small room. Some designer of prisons splurged by using two shades to paint the concrete walls–dark beige to shoulder height and a lighter beige up to the matching ceiling above. Its dreariness contrasts with Sarah’s radiance. She moves the suit jacket she’s folded over the back of the extra chair and we sit. When she asks whether I’ve ever been in this part of the visiting room,
 I shake my head no, telling her that I hardly ever come to the visiting room. She nods, in empathy I think. “So you’re graduating next month.  Congratulations!”  Her eyes shine as she leans back, pushing her fingers through her hair. 
“I’m looking forward to the commencement ceremony. Did you get my letter inviting you to come?” “I did. That’s why I’m here.” “Uh-oh.” “What do you mean?” “If you went to all the trouble of driving out here just to give me an answer, it probably means you can’t come, or you won’t come.” “No, not at all. I’d love to watch you receive your degree. It’s just that you’ve expressed so much admiration for Bruce, and you wrote that they’d only allow you to have two visitors.  Maybe you should invite him and your sister. I can visit you any time.” “Well Bruce will be on vacation, but I asked you because I want you here. Will you come?” Our eyes lock as she smiles, nodding yes. “Good, I want you to meet my sister, Julie. I’ve written to her about you.” “Really? What about?” “Just that I’ve made a new friend and that we’re corresponding. My sister and I are close. She worries about me, wants me to be happy.” “I understand. Sounds like you’ve got a great sister.” “Two great sisters,” I say. “The best.”
 Sarah and I talk for three hours, discussing challenges I’ve faced, plans I’m making, and steps she’s taking to open her own practice. Without a doubt, I’m relishing the electricity between us, feeling a connection that hasn’t been a part of my existence for years. When I stand to leave we share a longer embrace, and she promises to return before my graduation. I’ll hold onto this memory of her breasts pressing into my chest.  It’s been the best day since my confinement began. ******* I return to my cell and read.  My brother-in-law, Tim, purchased a subscription to The Wall Street Journal for me last year. He’s building a career as an investment real estate broker and he advises me to familiarize myself with finance. Appreciating his advice, I make a point of carefully reading each issue. Learning more about the stock market helps me understand how to value public companies and reading the Journal broadens my business education. Rather than following sports, I devote time to commerce every day, convinced that the education will make me more capable of contributing to any business that will employ me once I’m released. I read an editorial in the Journal that upsets me. John DiIulio, a professor of politics at Princeton University, wrote a scathing article calling for society to build more prisons and urging administrators to manage them with tighter controls and fewer privileges. Wanting to provide him with a different perspective, I write him directly. In my letter I express my disagreement with his premise, explaining why we don’t need more prisons in America with tighter controls. Rather, we need strong, intelligent leadership to make better use of the prison resources we have. Instead of locking so many nonviolent people up and eradicating hope, I suggest administrators should implement policies that encourage prisoners to work toward educating themselves, reconciling with society, and earning freedom. I explain to Professor DiIulio what I’ve seen during the five years I’ve served. Most prisoners give up while they serve time. Many join gangs, hustle drugs and weapons, or incite disturbances. Oppressive policies cause negative adjustments. Instead, we need policies similar to those in business that encourage people to contribute with meaningful incentives. I explain to the Princeton scholar that I strive to live as a model for such reforms, that I’m about to graduate from Mercer University and that I’ll begin graduate school at Hofstra University in the fall. I conclude my letter by restating that by inspiring more prisoners to focus on preparing for release, prison leadership could better serve the interests of society by, among things, lowering recidivism rates. Dr. DiIulio surprises me by responding to my letter. Even though I’ve never stepped foot on a campus, universities have become a big part of my life. Holding the heavy stock of the envelope and letterhead gives me a charge. Wow! Princeton University. It’s one thing for me to write an unsolicited letter but quite another to receive a response. Through his letter he validates and honors me as a contributing citizen, as a man, not a prisoner.  It’s moments like these that inspire me to keep up the work of building my support network.  I’m on the right path. Dr. DiIulio agrees with all I expressed in my letter but says that the limitation of an op-ed piece doesn’t permit him enough space to elaborate on all his thoughts. After informing me that he has published extensively on the subject of prison management, he offers to send books I can read and comment on. It is the beginning of another fascinating correspondence. ******* To broaden my education, Bruce insists that I read classic literature, especially the plays of William Shakespeare.  He sent me a complete anthology.  Although I’m not smart enough to find much value in the poetry, I’ve read every play and I enjoyed many.  From Julius Caesar, a line stays with me: There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in the shallows and in miseries. In Dr. DiIulio’s offer to correspond with me, I find a new opportunity to read critically and to challenge opinions with confidence. It’s as if my tide has come in and the flood is leading to fortune. I feel it. If an Ivy League professor finds me worthy of his mentoring energies I’ll have an incredible resource, another strong academic reference that will distinguish me from other prisoners. ******* May 12, 1992 is a day I’ve been working toward ever since guards processed me into USP Atlanta. I’m so excited. I feel as if I’m being released, and in a way, I am. I’m being lifted above a life of insignificance, distinguishing myself as a college graduate. It’s a credential I’ll carry for the rest of my life. A sense of liberty comes with this accomplishment, because regardless of how the prison system tries to direct me, I know where I’m going. I will leverage my degree to pry open new opportunities, and on this day, at least, I’m more than just a prisoner. I wrote and rewrote a speech for the commencement ceremony, four single-spaced pages. For the past six weeks I’ve practiced my delivery at every opportunity and after hundreds of rehearsals I’ve committed each word, sentence, and paragraph to memory. I knew this day would have significance. Now that it’s here, I’m glad I took the time to prepare. When it’s my turn to speak I think I can stand onstage with confidence that the penitentiary is powerless to repress. Immediately after the guards clear the afternoon census count I walk with a hundred other prisoners to the education building. The carefully scripted ceremony will begin at five in the chapel. Mr. Chandler and his subordinates have taken care to prepare and honor the dignitaries from Mercer University who will share the stage with Warden Stock and members of his executive staff. Although I want to impress those community leaders, mostly I’m eager for Julie and Sarah to see me. The prisoners who’ve earned their GEDs cheer. During my speech I want to inspire them to continue their education, as I plan to do myself. We have a responsibility to change this system. The best way to bring change is to develop skills and credentials to ensure we emerge into society successfully, as well-educated citizens, ready to contribute. As a prisoner, I also want the Mercer administrators to leave with a clear understanding of the need for more educational opportunities in prison. And I want my speech to inspire everyone in the auditorium, especially my sister and Sarah. Julie is 29 now, working as a young executive with an international cosmetics company. We’ve only visited a few times since I arrived in Atlanta. Her professional responsibilities, an active social life, and the geographical distance between us make traveling to Atlanta difficult. For years she has accepted my collect phone calls, sent me money to purchase goods in the commissary, and paid my educational costs. She is vested in every choice I make and I’m determined to show her that her trust and support are well placed. With Sarah, I have different motivations. I’m a man and I want a woman in my life. The music opening our graduation ceremonies begins, and I walk at the head of the procession, leading all the graduates who are now in matching black gowns and caps with tassels. In the audience I see a dozen people I presume came from Mercer; Julie and Sarah sit in the front row. Dr. Colin Harris, one of my favorite professors, is on the stage with Jean Owens, Mercer’s outreach program coordinator. Mr. Chandler sits beside them with the warden and several other staff members. I can’t quit smiling, grateful for the recognition. I walk to the front row to take my seat. As Mr. Chandler opens the ceremony with obligatory expressions of gratitude to the warden and other staff members, I exchange glances with Julie and Sarah. Then, we all bow our heads as Dr. Harris, Professor of Religion, gives the invocation. Next, Jean Owens delivers the keynote, turning me crimson as she tells the audience about my work ethic and determination. She describes the bright future that opens with education. Using the catchy slogan to promote Michael Jordan’s basketball shoes, Ms. Owens encourages those in the audience to “be like Mike,” referring not to the basketball legend but to me, and she urges those in the audience to continue their studies. I think I might have to excuse myself and find a bathroom, but when it’s my turn to speak, I walk with assurance to the stage to deliver the valedictory address, all else forgotten. I feel so tall at the lectern, like I’ve just grown six inches. I turn to my left and thank those from Mercer University, then to my right to thank the prison staff, and then out at my audience of graduates, staff, and guests in the cushioned seats, thanking them for attending. Without notes I deliver my speech that I’ve carefully rehearsed hundreds of times. Julie beams with pride in the front row, and I see Sarah grasp her hand. They’ve only just met, but in their support of me they’ve come together. Those 12 minutes on stage feel as if they’re the most positively energizing of my entire life. The audience gives a standing ovation. Even Warden Stock stands and gives me an affirmative nod when I look his way. Elated, I return to my seat, squeezing my sister’s hand as I pass in front of her. The other prisoners and I then receive our diplomas. Mr. Chandler gives closing remarks and ends the ceremony in order to maintain the schedule. We don’t have time for a reception. After all, this is a penitentiary. I’m the only prisoner with guests, and no allowance is given for further visitation. At least they were allowed to come for my memorable moment, and I’m in high spirits. “You were awesome!” “Send us a copy of your speech.” “I’m so proud of you.”
 Though it’s involuntary, a smile stretches across my face as I walk between my sister and Sarah through the corridor. I stop at the entrance to B cellblock and, under the watchful eyes of the warden, I give each of my guests a hug good-bye. ******* I’m paged to the mailroom, and when I show up, Mr. Chandler is standing at the door. “Boy, all the years you done been locked up and you still ain’t learned nothin’?” I know this routine and I stand waiting for the head of the education department to continue his reprimand, though I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about or why he paged me to the mailroom. “I done tol’ you befo’ ’bout havin’ yo folk’ send boxes to my depar’ment without axin’ me ‘forehand.” “Yes, I remember. I haven’t had anyone send me any boxes.” “If you ain’t had no one send no boxes, then why I gotta go through this mess lookin’ through books that done come from Princeton University?” A month has passed since my correspondence with Professor DiIulio, and when I wrote that I would welcome the books, I wasn’t thinking about the mailroom rules. If books come from a publisher or bookstore in an envelope, we’re allowed to receive them. For a prisoner to receive boxes, a staff member must provide advance authorization. “Don’t be standin’ there with your mouth all hangin’ open like you ain’t know these is comin’. Letter’s addressed to you.” “I thought the books would come in an envelope from the bookstore,” I say in way of an apology and explanation. “I didn’t know there would be so many.” “Who this Professa D’oolioo? You know ’im?” “Not really. I just wrote him. He teaches at Princeton and writes books. He wrote that he would send me some books but I didn’t know they would come like this.” “Boy you a real piece a work.” He handles the books one by one and squints while reading the titles and flipping through the pages. “Guv’nin’ Prisons, No ‘xcape. This professa be writin’ these books?” “I guess so.” “What business you got readin’ all these books ’bout prison. Ain’t you know ’nough ’bout prisons yet?” “I’m still learning, sir.”
 “I hope you done learnt ’nough to stay out.”
 I sense Mr. Chandler likes me. My graduation from Mercer and the speech I gave during commencement put a positive spotlight on his department. His gruff demeanor doesn’t intimidate me anymore because I know it’s just his way. “Well go ’head on then. Next time make sure you see me ’bout auth’rization.” Jubilant, I carry the box of books back to the business office where I work. Dr. DiIulio sent 17 books, two of which he authored. I sit at my desk and clear a space on the bookshelf behind me. Reading the books will help me build a relationship with him. I intend to write him about what I learn from each, and I especially look forward to reading the books that he wrote. My small personal library will provide ample research material as I begin my studies at Hofstra. ******* Since I can’t earn an accredited law degree from prison I’ve had to think about what I can study. Although reading the Wall Street Journal, and studying the stock market and finance interest me, I don’t want to pursue an MBA. Instead, after consulting with Bruce I propose to Hofstra that I study prisons and the people they hold. My Hofstra advisor is Dr. Al Cohn, Professor of Psychology and he approves of my plan. We establish an interdisciplinary curriculum, with studies in sociology, cultural anthropology, and psychology. To complete the program, Dr. Cohn and other Hofstra professors will evaluate my research reports and the lengthy thesis I must write to earn a Master of Arts degree. The books from Dr. DiIulio give me a theoretical understanding of the functions prisons should serve in society: Prisons should deter citizens from engaging in criminal behavior.   They should punish those who stand convicted of having committed crimes.   Prison terms should incapacitate those who serve them from committing additional crimes, at least during the term of confinement.   And prisons should rehabilitate offenders in an effort to help them return to society as law-abiding citizens. After reading Governing Prisons, Dr. DiIulio’s comparative study of management in three separate prison systems, I begin collecting information to write my first term paper on prisoner adjustments. The book leads me to several other books and inspires me to develop a questionnaire to conduct original, ethnographic research to be tested on my fellow prisoners. The resulting term paper, which I entitle “The Crusonian Prisoner,” is accepted for presentation at an annual conference of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Chicago, boosting my self-confidence as a student. Perhaps it’s not surprising that my research leads to findings that differ from the distinguished Princeton professor. He calls for tighter controls in American prisons while my observations and experience convince me that administrators should run prisons like leaders run business.  They should govern through the use of incentives rather than threat of further punishments. In a letter to him, I offer reasons to support my conclusions and I also send a copy of my academic paper describing the Crusonian prisoner. ******* “I want to kiss you.” Sarah has come to visit five times since my graduation ceremony last month and our letters have become much more personal. Her lawyer privileges allow her to visit whenever she chooses, making the regularly scheduled visiting hours irrelevant. Today is Tuesday, not a visiting day, and it’s early evening as I sit with her in one of the private rooms reserved for lawyers and law enforcement interviews. In these lawyer rooms, surveillance cameras do not monitor us. The guard sits at his desk, fifteen yards away on a platform and down a flight of stairs. The intensity of our gaze on each other tells us what we haven’t previously expressed in words. I lean across the table when she says it. “Kissing is something better done than said,” I say as I sit back down, still savoring the sweet taste of Sarah’s lips, the moist warmth of her tongue. “You should send me a visitor’s form so I can visit you regularly. I could have a problem alone in a room like this with you.” She closes her eyes while gripping the edge of the table. “But this is so much better to visit alone, privately.” “It’s dangerous for me, the temptation. I could get into trouble for abusing privileges. The prison could deny me access.” I stand and take two steps toward the door to peer through the narrow window. “Come here. Look at this. The guard at the desk to our right can’t come toward us without us seeing him climb the stairs, and the only other entry is from the corridor, requiring unlocking a door to the left. We’re alone. I don’t want to give up this privacy.” Sarah runs her manicured fingertips over her gray skirt as she stands and walks over. I surrender the window and move behind her. She looks down the hall to the right toward the guard’s station and to the left toward the heavy steel door leading in from the main corridor. I’m directly behind her with both of my hands on her hips. With my face I push her hair to the side and I kiss her neck. “Stop,” she whispers while her body presses back. “Watch. You can see the guard. Tell me if he moves.” I continue kissing her, touching her, feeling her, moving with her. For this moment, right now, I’m not a prisoner. I’m a man, 28 and virile, alone with a woman for the first time in five years. My prison record doesn’t matter, my goals don’t matter, and my freedom doesn’t matter. I’m not thinking about her professional standing. In the passion of this moment, neither is Sarah. The decades I must serve seem too far away. I need release, and Sarah is the woman who gives it to me. When we return to our seats perspiration has glued my shirt to my skin. Sarah is disheveled but glowing. “My God! What are we doing?” her smile belies a mixture of nervousness and exhilaration after the forbidden interlude. “Nothing. We’re not doing anything,” I protest. “You call that nothing? I could lose my license!”
 “For what? As far as anyone is concerned, we’re just a lawyer and a client in here. There isn’t anything different now from when you walked in here, nothing different from any other time you’ve visited.” “Your shirt’s wet. What are you going to say when you go back in?” “It’s hot in here. Just stay for a while longer, it’ll dry.” “How do I look? Can you tell?” Her hands shake as she pulls a compact from her purse. She looks into the tiny mirror. “You’re sexy. I can’t take my eyes off you.” She smiles and applies makeup. “You’re going to get me in trouble.”  

Amidst the global pandemic, there's a push to get back to normal. But what is normal, REALLY? What are we actually trying to get back to? In this unprecedented interruption of daily life, we have a sacred obligation: to reckon with the suffering that's endemic to human life, and to life on Earth because of our presence--the often invisible background hum of "normal." This podcast mentions the work of the Compassion Prison Project. Here is the video and website: https://compassionprisonproject.org/ Piano music: "Reverie" by Claude Debussy, arranged and performed by Jessica Roemischer

Onnnnnnnnnnnnnn today's episode of the primary care podcast, we talk about the new montelukast black box warning. What's the deal? Really? What's the evidence, should it change your practice, and what you need to know.

-- Dividend reinvestment plans, or take the cash? -- What’s going on with Praemium? -- I want to invest… but now? Really? -- What happens when rates go to zero; and -- How does the dollar impact foreign ETFs?

Have you ever had a doctor give you a "wake-up call?" or try a "scared straight" tactic? These techniques - and a lot more - blew up on Twitter recently. Stacey noticed that it also seemed that the doctors andhealth care providers who weighed in weren't interested in listening to diabetes advocates online. What's the disconnect all about? Full transcript below Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcription:  Stacey Simms  0:00 This episode of Diabetes Connections is brought to you by The World's Worst Diabetes Mom: Real Life Stories of Parenting a Child With Type 1 Diabetes available on Amazon as a paperback ebook and audiobook at Diabetes Connections.com.   Announcer  0:15 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:26 Welcome. This is one of our mini episodes, shorter episodes that I put together starting at the beginning of this year, just when I have something to say, news to share or anything that doesn't fit in the traditional longer format interview show that we do every week that drops on Tuesdays. I am your host, Stacey Simms, and I want to talk to you today about well, I really want to talk to your doctors about something, but we'll get to why and maybe how to share with them. I want to talk to you about what are doctors think of diabetes, and I don't really mean our endocrinologists Just to hopefully know what they're talking about and stay up to date. I mean, the other doctors that we see or we bring our children to pediatricians, the doctors, the dentists, you know what I mean, right? There seems to be this disconnect between what the diabetes online community which doesn't speak in one voice, I get it. But what we have learned over the years and what we talk about all the time, in terms of there's a hashtag language matters, right? There's this disconnect between what we as patients want, which is no blame and shame. Work with me, help me with resources, give me the information, let me make my decisions. And the physicians who many many, many times want to scare patients straight, you know, we're gonna give them a wake up call. We're going to show them how bad they're doing and that will make them do better. And this disconnect played out on Twitter recently and I want to share with you how it went and then I would ultimately was shared at a medical conference. Before I jumped right in though I do want to Say with those doctors who are you know, in the scare em  straight kind of school, I really do think the intentions there are good. I don't know any doctor who wants their patient to walk around with a 14 A1C, you know who obviously isn't feeling well and is going to be in poor health. I don't think any doctor wants that. The question is, why don't some doctors listen to their patients more? Why don't they seem to believe us when we tell them what we think works and doesn't work. So that's my perspective. today. Let's go through what happened. There's a guy on Twitter. His name on Twitter is @DGlaucomflecken. He says he's an ophthalmologist, a comedian, and a speaker. On February 17. He tweeted, “Want to know why diabetic eye exams are so important. I can take a 28 year old with an A1C of 14, show her a picture of a normal retina, then a picture of her diseased retina. Then a picture of what her retina could look like in 10 years with an A1C of 14. Very effective wake up call.”  And he posted the pictures that he had just talked about now. Kind of an innocuous tweet a couple of years ago, I probably wouldn't have thought anything of it. But and I was not alone here. There were some telling language in this that made me want to speak up. I'm going to link this up if you want to go through the Twitter thread. It is ginormous because a lot of people chimed in as you can imagine. I'm going to read a few tweets here. I'll just read first names from the people who tweeted this out. So these are the advocates who tweeted back Megan wrote, “As someone who works in eye casualty for a while and has type 1 diabetes. I have heard doctors have similar conversations. I then also seen patients walk away upset and distressed. Living with diabetes can be filled with anxiety. I find it best not to feel that scare tactics aren't always the best understanding and empathy for diseases hard to manage may be better.” Melinda wrote, “Did you ask her if she could afford her insulin and supplies? If she had a support network to encourage her or did you just decide to be Dr. Judgy Pants?” Melissa wrote, “Do you know if she went to her car and cried from helplessness like I used to after I exams with an ophthalmologist who had This kind of bedside manner? It took some time to find a doctor who could help me create a plan instead of send me off alone and frightened.” And then Mike wrote, “This mentality scared me into doing something better briefly as a teen. Soon enough, it led to hopelessness and years worth of higher A1Cs until love, actual good doctors and peer support inspired me to change how I lived” I wrote “Curious if there are any long term studies showing this is effective, other than the patient saying, Wow, that's a wake up call. What is it like for them? 10 years down the road? Did it help hurt make no difference?” And I actually wrote “not being sarcastic, genuine question” because you know, Twitter, but then the ophthalmologist chimed in back. And during all the time these advocates are saying these things, other doctors and other people are telling us how wrong we are. So the original ophthalmologist chimes in with, “I'm just showing people their own body part. I've never had a patient get upset with me for showing them pictures. I have taken up their own body part. I don't need a study to convince me to keep doing that.” Another doctor said “Patients Like pictures. We do the same with coronary angiograms. In cardiac patients, a picture's worth 1000 words, also puts in their minds the idea of the now and the potential future, good practice.” Another person a medical resident wrote, “I like it, it's hard to convince some patients without symptoms that keeping an A1C down to an arbitrary number is worth the effort of diet, exercise and expensive meds. This could help motivate many patients.” And then he writes “Also, it's not the author's job, the ophthalmologist job to make sure the patient has all of the resources needed to adequately treat the patient's diabetes during their brief eye exam. That's our jobs as PCPs.” So that's what he's going to be or may be already is I can't really tell from his Twitter bio primary care physician. Okay, so, literally, this went on for days, I kept getting notifications, because I kept chiming in, like, Are there studies like, oh, let's talk about this, you know, and, as you can imagine, it got pretty nasty sometimes. I mean, there's jerks in every Twitter thread on every side, so we're not going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the discussion and the disconnect because this is that fascinating. Most of the doctors really believe this is a good thing, I'm so glad that that primary care physician chimed in and said, “well, it's really not your job as an ophthalmologist to give them any resources or do more with them.” And this original doctor kept chiming in and saying, “No, I really do try to support patients.” It was just one tweet, you know, we don't know what he's really doing. So maybe he is, you know, talking to them more. What about your experience? In my experience with those other doctors, right, not the endocrinologist, the eye doctor, the dentist, even the pediatrician with Benny, they have no idea what diabetes takes. That's okay. It's not their specialty. I don't mind that. They don't know. I mind when they try to tell us more than they know. Right? Like, I had an eye doctor once Tell me, Benny was not in the room, he asked, “how long has he been diagnosed?” 12 years. I think at that time. “Well, you know, 20 years is when the complication starts showing up in the eyes.” And I actually said out loud because I'm a pain in the ass patient. And I said, Really? What was the last time you actually read anything in a medical book about diabetes? I tried to be nice, I said it kind of nicer than that. But it's it really, when did you learn about type 1 diabetes? And he said in medical school, and I said, and when was that, right 25 years ago? And really, when were those studies done? Right? If you're looking at a study from 25 years ago, that study probably followed people living with diabetes who had been diagnosed at least 10, if not 20 years before that. So your data is kind of outdated. And we know if you're a longtime listener of the show, you know, from studies like the EDIC trial, and many others, that eye complications, along with many other complications are way down and almost non existent for people with diabetes, who have access to good care and insulin. I mean, we know there's a whole other world out there, but we know these complications when care is given our way down. And whenever I talk about complications, I always want to say complications can happen even with the best care with diabetes. I mean, look at life - complications can happen with anything. So we try to do the best. We can see just other factors, you know, genetics, environmental, what have you. But with eyes in particular, I've talked to two endocrinologists in the past year, who say when they see a patient with any kind of eye issue under the age of 40, with Type 1 diabetes, they call everybody who's nearby, because they never see it. They want everybody to come in and identify it and look at it and see what the poor patient, but see what it really is all about, because they never see it anymore. So my little conversation with that eye doctor, hopefully made him rethink a little bit about how he talks to other people with diabetes. I've had the same conversation with my pediatricians when I feel like educating because sometimes it is absolutely exhausting. And I had to back away from the Twitter thread because of that, that it is exhausting to keep educating and educating. You don't know everything about type 1 diabetes, you're not a specialist. Thank you for pointing this out. But what can we do about it? What's the point? Why would you say you're going to be in trouble? I'm going to give you a wake up call. I'm going to scare you straight. Why would you say all those things Thinking the outcome is going to be positive? If you're aware of a study that talks about these things, and I was pilloried on Twitter for suggesting there could be a study, what would the control group look like? people who never get good health information, people who are never shown their bad eyes, or that they're going to lose a limb or blah, blah, blah, right? No, look, I don't create scientific studies. But you don't have to be a genius here. But why couldn't you something really short, that just gives you a taste of what we're talking about here? Do a six month study, right? Pick an age group to a six month study your 25 year olds with Type 1 diabetes, everybody gets the same exams, but your feedback is - you're doing terrible. You have to be nervous. We're scaring you straight, kiddo. It's a wake up call. Now go get better. And the other one is, Hey, I really feel like we could do more together. Well, how can I support you? What are the challenges you're seeing that are creating these issues with Type 1 diabetes, there may not be anything I can do to help but I understand that you're probably doing the best you can because type one is really difficult. And then the other one, the third part of the study would People who are told here are your test results. See you next, right with no emotional kind of feedback. Why couldn't you do a quick study of that and see what happens in just six months? My guess is you would see really interesting results. So better minds than me, thank goodness picked up on this and actually put it in a presentation at ATTD, at the international conference for advanced technologies and treatments for diabetes. This is the conference that I just talked to Kevin Sayer. That episode just aired a couple days ago. This is where he was in Madrid, Spain. So this is a huge international conference and this Twitter thread made it to a presentation, which shocked me. What shouldn't have shocked me is who was doing the presentation. This was the hashtag talk about complications presentation by Renza Scibilia and grumpy pumper Chris, who we've had them both on the show separately to talk about this and other issues. But this talk about complications slide that made its way to the presentation showed the original a tweet from the doctor, the ophthalmologist comedian, and they actually blacked out his name, which I didn't do here, because Twitter is public. And they showed the original tweet, you know, very effective wake up call. And then they put another tweet next to it. And I think that this is a hope that physicians might consider saying this instead. So let me read you the original tweet again. And then the one that they suggest. So the original tweet, “Why are diabetic eye exams are so important? I can take a 28 year old with an A1C of 14 show her a  picture of a normal retina, then a picture of her diseased retina then a picture of what her retina could look like in 10 years with an A1C of 14. Very effective wake up call.” Here's an alternative to saying that “Diabetes is really tough, and you're managing as you can right now. Thank you for coming to see me eye screening is really important. We know having a higher A1C increases the risk of diabetes related conditions. Let's work together to try to reduce the risks.” Now I know some of you and maybe hopefully if you got your physician or not Doctor or dentist or somebody else to listen to this episode, it might sound very, you know, Kumbaya and woo woo. And, you know, let's work together. But I'm telling you, as the mom of a kid with type one, as a person who sees doctors for her own conditions, it is so much more helpful to hear this than to hear the other scary, effective wake up call. I mean, you know, when I go to my doctor, and I say, I'm really upset, I've been trying hard and gaining weight, you know, what I don't want to hear is “You're really fat. And we know that being obese can help lead to health complications, and higher increase of cancer. Because you know, you really want to watch out what happens, you have this risk and your family and blah, blah, blah. So just stop eating desserts.” What would be really helpful is, “Yeah, boy, it's really tough. I can see that your whole life, you've been a healthy weight. You're an active person who knows how to eat well. What's changed in your life in the last couple of years? How old are you? What is your metabolism doing? Let's sit down and talk about how things are changing maybe so that you can find a plan that might help you change” I mean, I just came up with that at the spur the moment, but it's so much different to here. Let me help you. And let's figure out what you can do to make this better rather than let me blame you and shame you and scare you. A lot of people tune that out. And if they're scared, they don't want to do anything to make it better because they lose hope. I really hope that some healthcare professionals who saw this on Twitter took a moment to stop and think about it. I know a lot of them responded. And remember kind of insulting frankly, calling the diabetes advocates, trolls and one person called the bats. I don't know if that's a UK thing, or I don't know what that was all about. And there were some people who got kind of nasty, as I said earlier, but I really hope that people who saw this conversation, maybe had a different conversation with the next patient that came into their office, maybe a person with diabetes, who saw the conversation had the words now to tell one of their health care providers. Look, this isn't helping me. I need you to speak to me in this way. Which is really, really hard to do. I will say before I let you go here that a lot of the physicians piped in with Well, my patients never react poorly when I give them this news, they all seem to appreciate it. Do the doctors not know that we talk to them differently than other people? Do doctors not know that some people like get dressed up to go to the doctor will really make sure that they are well groomed. I mean, it sounds silly, but you know exactly what I'm talking about. Right? doctors don't realize that we go to our cars. And as Melissa said, in that tweet, sometimes we cry, we call the friend and say you won't believe what happened to me. Or some people will tell a nurse things that they won't tell a doctor or they'll tell the front receptionist and they'll get the anger and so the doctor, people don't tell their doctor unless you're me and you're a pain in the butt. Very few people tell their doctor, hey, you're wrong. Or I don't like this. Or even Can we try something different? People don't talk back to doctors. And the fact that they don't know this… Come on, guys. You got to be better. You got to think about it. What do you think my way off base here? Were you part of that? Twitter chat, did it make you mad? Did it make you think? Let me know. You can always email me Stacey at Diabetes Connections. com. I'll put this in our Facebook group as well Diabetes Connections of the group on Facebook. I'd love to keep the conversation going. If you're a physician who has listened to this long oh my gosh, thank you so much. I cannot tell you how much we appreciate it when you take a moment to consider the other side of the stethoscope for lack of a better word. Let's keep this conversation going. Of course, if you think I'm wrong, I am the world's worst diabetes mom, I can live with that. And you can find out much more at the website diabetes dash connections.com. Please subscribe to the show on any podcast app or just keep listening through social media or however you found us. We appreciate that we're not going to tell you where to listen. We just hope you keep on tuning in. I'm Stacey Simms, and I'll see you back here next week.   Unknown Speaker  15:57 Diabetes Connections is a production of social Stacey Simms media All rights reserved all wrongs avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

. I was doing a big fundraiser event and it was going great. I'm plowing through joke after joke and the crowd is loving it. All of a sudden, things got quieter and quieter. I can't see anything from the stage, so I started wondering if I said something that offended people. It was weird. I finally wrapped up, got off stage, and the meeting planner came over and said – well I guess I shouldn't have rolled in the 6 foot high chocolate fondue fountain during your show. Really? What a horrible idea. Nothing can compete with chocolate. I lost everyone's attention in the room instantly.   This week I'm talking about how to put together a great event. I've run a few meetings in my life when I was a marketing person before comedy, and now as a comedian I've been a part of thousands of meetings. I know some do's and don'ts. And my first tip. If you want to have a good event, don't have several things going on at once. Whether it's a chocolate fondue fountain being rolled in or the wait staff clearing dishes with the speaker or comedian on stage. Don't have more than 1 thing happening at once. Period. I've had to perform while people lined up in the buffet line, I've performed during a raffle – where they took a break to hear comedy and then continued the raffle. It doesn't work. Have one main event going on, and don't make it a literal 3-ring circus. It sounds like common sense not to have too many things going on at once, but you'd be surprised how many times it happens!   If you want to add humor to your event, check out my comedywriterblog.com.   That's it for today. Take care and enjoy your journey.    

To build a movement that's going to change the world, you call a bunch of fishermen? Really? What is up with that? Rev. Dr. Dorothy White answers the questions in her sermon she preached on Matthew 4:12-23 at Community worship on Tuesday, January 28, 2020.

This week we continue our reflection on the Beatitudes of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew. This Sunday we will reflect on Jesus's second pronouncement. Blessed or "Happy" are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Once again we find a strange, counter-intuitive definition of happiness (at least according to our culture). Mourning as the road to happiness? Really? What might Jesus mean here? Why is grief a means to happiness, according to Jesus? Let's think on it this Sunday.

Eli is retiring but is he a HOF? 2 SB wins but 117-117 as a starter. No All-Pro nods in his sixteen year career Two of the greatest postseasons ever. And beat the greatest NFL team ever in the 18-0 who became the 18-1 Pats. Derek Jeter wasn't a unanimous pick for Cooperstown but he had one hell of a career. Glad I was able to see him play. Knicks brass said before season that not making the playoffs would be disappointing. Really? What did they see that no one else did?

It's easy to pay lip service and say your trust your soul and your soul leads the way. But does it? Do you? Really? What truth does the evidence of your life point too?I'm Amy Biondini and I’m a Shaman, Priestess and Conscious Wealth Coach and I utilise a unique combination of intuitive energy alchemy, spiritual strategy and mindset to get you out of what you don’t want and into soul alignment, quickly and with permanent results. I hold deep and powerful space for soul level wealth transformation, so you can have the freedom to become who your soul came here to be. Your soul is calling you to go deeper. Into your light. Into your dark. Into your magic. Into your power. If you’re ready to master your wealth and the embodiment chakras (money, power, sex), then sign up for The Gold Circle . It’s time and you are ready. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Emunah Series/Women's Class Ki Seitzei: This women's class was presented on Tuesday Parshas Ki Seitzi, 10 Elul, 5779, September 10, 2019 at the Ohr Chaim Shul, Monsey, NY There is a strange Mishnah concerning a mitzvah in the portion of Ki Seitzei. Someone who says, Your mercy extends upon a nest of birds, is to be silenced Someone who says Modim Modim twice, Thank You G-d, Thank You G-d, is to be silenced. What is the juxtaposition between the two casesthe person who speaks of G-ds compassion to the birds, and the person who says Modim twice. Why does the Mishnah pair them together in a single sentence and dictates us to silence them both equally? The class presents a fabulous interpretation by Rabbi Yosef Chayim (1835-1909), the Ben Ish Chai, chief Rabbi of Baghdad. There is another enigmatic Mishnah in Ethics of the Fathers: Rebbi would say: Which is the right path for a person to choose for himself? Whatever is beautiful for the one who does it, and is also perceived as beautiful by other people. Both the question and answer are deeply problematic. How can the Mishnahthe primary body of the Jewish oral transition and lawwonder what is the right path for a person? For this, we were given the Torah! What is more, the Mishnah emphasizes that the person ought to choose the right path. Is this the Jewish approach? Since when did the Mishnah become so liberal as to allow each person to choose his or her path in life?! Even more strange is the author of this questionnone other than Rabbi Judah the Prince, who was the spiritual leader of the Jewish people during his day, and the editor of the Mishnahthe main body of Jewish law and tradition. His answer seems no less startling. Rebbi suggests to each person to choose a path that he considers beautiful, and that others consider beautiful. Really? What if what I think is beautiful contradicts the Torah? And what if what the street considered glorious undermines the moral system of Judaism? These questions were raised by the Lubavitcher Rebbe during his fabrengen on Shabbos Parshas Tazria-Metzora 5748 (May, 1988). I still remember the intensity of the Rebbes powerful questions on this Mishnahseemingly out of sync with what we often think of Judaism. And then the Rebbe presented one of the most beautiful and inspiring explanations. In my minds eye I can still see and hear the Rebbe share these moving insights, which reframed my perspective on Judaism.

Believers talk about faith all the time, but what is it REALLY? What does it look like in the writing life? And why is it crucial for a writer’s heart? You may be surprised at the answers! When we start our work calls, we like to read from Streams in the Desert, and then pray. … The post 096 – Why Writers Need Faith appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Here's Part 2 of Depression, Really? What makes you think you're depressed? Maybe you need to leave that church you go to that keeps condemning you. Maybe that relationship, maybe that job. Perhaps you're not depressed... perhaps you're sad, hurt, grieving or... PISSED. 

Love, Life & All Things Weird Radio Show Our bodies are often the thing we fight with the most in this reality. After all, we have to contend with taking care of them on the daily, and often they are in pain, or some kind of emotional intensity. Plus, we all have a bunch of judgments about our bodies that often leads to low self-esteem and separation. It’s no wonder then, that we have a challenging time even recognizing, let alone activating our body’s capacities. I’m sure by now you’ve heard the Access saying “Your wrongness is your strongness”… Well, have you applied that concept to your body? Really? What gifts, magic, talents, and unique capacities does your body have, that you could activate now? Join us this Wednesday, as we dive into this juicy topic and do a special activation process to awaken and open your body’s capacities. Isn’t it time to feel and express your body’s magic? ~ More about Love, Life & All Things Weird ~  What if you really can have it all? No–really? What if everything you THINK you desire is only a starting point for the life you are truly capable of creating? On Love, Life, & All Things Weird, we will explore topics from magic to practical step by step processes, and everything in between. There’s no place we won’t go, nothing too ridiculous or weird in the quest to live as grand a life as possible. Hosts Megan Sillito and Suzanne Stauffer are the embodiment of “opposites attract”. Collectively, they’re the summation of Megan’s big vision coupled with Suzanne’s knack for details. Partnered in love and in business for the last five years, they’re taking co-creation to a whole new level. Join Megan and Suzanne for Love, Life, & All Things Weird, where we will talk about living a life that’s inspired, overflowing, and completely awesome. Together, they’re the embodiment of “opposites attract”, and the result is true synergistic power. Collectively, they’re the summation of Megan’s big vision coupled with Suzanne’s knack for the details, Megan’s universal wisdom punctuated with an exclamation point by Suzanne’s incisive truth, and Megan’s playful meanderings subtly sorted by Suzanne’s practical step-by-step approach. So what does this means for you? In true “two birds, one stone” fashion, you’ve found a one stop shop for invoking inspiration, unearthing tools for transformation, and having two crazy-weird chicks who will stop at nothing to support you in HAVING IT ALL! http://www.MeganSillito.com      http://livingyoursoultruth.com Join our fun Facebook group where we give additional tips and tools and continue the conversation after the show:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/1615639452040672/ AND COME PLAY with Live Your Magic, LIVE - Anywhere in the world!!  Find Dates & Details HERE - http://tinyurl.com/LiveYourMagicNow To get more of Love, Life & All Things Weird with Megan Sillito and Suzanne Stauffer, be sure to visit the archives page for replays of all their shows here: https://www.inspiredchoicesnetwork.com/podcast/love-life-all-things-weird-megan-sillito-suzanne-stauffer/  

Dems can’t quite get themselves to impeachment. It’s getting more and more difficult to sustain a rationale for not beginning at least an impeachment inquiry. It turns out the White Knight Robert Mueller doesn’t want to testify in public. Something about not wanting to tarnish his personal brand. Really? What’s up with all the walking-on-eggshells around the Special Counsel? As the Trump administration prepares to go after Julian Assange for espionage, investigative journalism is in the crosshairs. Make no mistake about it, this move is less about Julian Assange and more about gagging the muckraking press. And right-wing extremism is on the rise in Europe. Right-wing parties from France to Italy to Poland to Bulgaria came out strong in this past weekend’s EU elections. And, of course, Steve Bannon was all over the place. Theresa May steps down as Prime Minister of the UK on Friday. Make room for Boris Johnson. And, in perfect character, Tony Blair emerges from his dusty vault to blame Corbyn. Tom Corbett’s - yes you heard that correctly - Tom Corbett’s Charter Appeals Board met last week to grant an appeal to Catalyst Charter School in Pittsburgh and they will be meeting again in a couple of more weeks to possibly grant appeals for Eastern University Charter School in Philadelphia and Propel Charter School in Pittsburgh.   Eastern University Charter School had their charter renewal application denied by the Philadelphia School Reform Commission & Propel had their application denied by the Pittsburgh School District and Pennsylvania Department of Education.  Propel has 8 Charter Schools across Allegheny County and they are looking to establish their own quasi-school district in Western, Pennsylvania. The issue with the Charter Appeals Board is that it is dominated by five Corbett appointees whose terms expire in 2015 In today’s Last Call, SpaceX’s new launch of 60 Starlink satellites freaks out a bunch of people who thought aliens were finally invading. Meanwhile, astronomers are pissed saying Starlink will permanently alter the night sky. Elon Musk says he hears the concerns...the next batch will not be so shiny. Despite all of Tesla’s problems, SpaceX raised over $1 billion in two rounds of funding...in large part due to its new Starlink system. Sean YOLOing at ArtsFest. Sean says nothing else happened in PA this past week and a half. Totally unrelated, we’re looking for someone interested in covering what’s happening in PA to come on the podcast from time to time.   Free Will held its 4th Annual Pints & Paws at Free Will event last weekend and brewed up something extra special with our Friends from Harley’s Haven for the cause—Haven, a New England-style IPA hopped with Cashmere, Mosaic, and Citra. $4 from every 4-pack sold will be donated to Harley's Haven Dog Rescue.

“Over the break I turn sixty. Wife says: “From now on I’ll be living with an old guy!” I’m like: “Really? What’s his name?” [SCRIPT] Late Nite Last Week · Bill Maher, Real Time, Samantha Bee, Full Frontal, Colin Jost, Michael Che, Weekend Update, Saturday Night Live, SNL, James Corden, The Late Late Show, Carpool … Continue reading 157 • Did Joe Biden Have A Stroke? · Vir Das · Jay Leno · Lenny Marcus →

Boston 2019 All in – my  21st Boston Marathon (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/Boston2019.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - … I didn’t sleep great the night before.  Part of it was the driving rain and the thunder and lightning that shook the house.  Part of it was my ruminating brain.  You might think that having such a great training cycle would allow me to rest easy. But, no, it somehow raised the stakes.  My trusty subconscious was chattering away.  What if after all this work I managed to screw up the race? What if the weather was bad?  Of course I tied to let my big brain take over and talk myself down from the window ledge.  I am grateful to be here. Yeah.  I am happy to still be doing this 20+ years in?  Yeah.  I am blessed?  Yeah.  Blah, blah, blah… After 20 years you’d think I’d be able to rationalize.  Repetition doesn’t lower the stakes.  This is the Boston Marathon.  It matters to me.  I put in the work.  I qualify.  It matters.  It matters to me. … I rolled out of bed reasonably refreshed and put on my throw-away clothes.  With the lingering rain I didn’t want to wear my race stuff, especially my shoes.  Stay dry as long as possible.  I had time to take a nice shower and have a bit of breakfast.  A normal day at the Russell house.  My wife dropped me off at the local Starbucks where I caught a ride with some of the folks from my running club out to Hopkinton.  Without incident I hopped the spectator bus to downtown Hopkinton and made my way over to the senior center to join Eric and the St. Louis runners.  My second year of avoiding Athletes’ Village. Call me soft, but warm and dry with a bathroom beats ankle deep mud and a 45 minute porta-john line.  I stretched and rubbed and pre-gamed.  Got my race gear on and lubed up really well.  With the humidity and warmer temps I figured chaffing might be an issue.  I ran in my old Hoka Cliftons, split shorts and a race singlet.  Nothing fancy.  I wore the Boston Strong hat I had bought at the expo.  I felt like that was an appropriate message for my training cycle and my race plan.  Like Coach said in his pep talk to me;  it didn’t matter if it was 100 degrees or if there were 80 mile an hour winds.  I was not going to waste this training cycle.  No matter what happened I was committed.  I wasn’t giving myself any option to give up or to ease off.  No matter what I was all in.  I would control the only thing any of us really controls; my commitment to fight – to be strong.  We watched the early waves start on TV.  We saw the wheelchair finish, which seemed a bit strange to see people finish a race you are an hour away from starting.  In the room were several faster, red-bib, wave 2 runners.  That seemed to be the demographic in general.  Lots of fit, young, fast runners in Nike Vapor Fly’s and a handful of us old war horses.  Eric and I were in the same wave and corral.  3/3, which put us up the hill not far from the start line. Without hurry we made our way over when the time was right. … It’s an electric time.  Walking to the start of the Boston marathon.  If you could somehow drop an emotional energy meter into the center of Hopkinton Massachusetts it would be bouncing off the rails and maxing out.  Thousands of qualified athletes stepping into the culmination of their training cycles.  Each one a story of dedication and perseverance and, right now, in this very moment, at their emotional peak.  This is it.  The big test.  The qualification effort is well in the past.  The months of training and sacrifice all leading in an inevitable emotional march to this day and this moment.  The atmosphere buzzes like an electric field.  Eric and I made our way out of the senior center in the misty, post-rain, cool, overcast morning.  The sun was struggling to break through the remnants of the storms that had passed.  We walked the short trek to Main Street and the bottom of the hill where the first half of the corrals take a turn back towards athletes’ village. As we cleared security to access the melee of runners trying to find corrals I ran straight into Alett.  This is one of the alternate universe characteristics of Boston.  If you are trying to meet people on purpose, you can’t find them.  But, you randomly run into people you know, for no predictable or probable reason in the crowd of 30,000 athletes.  I gave her a hug.  We had a few words.  Eric and I continued our hike up the hill towards the start line to find our apportioned 3rd corral.  Corral 3 is close to the actual start line.  We got to the opening just before our wave start time and ended up in the back of the corral just as they pulled the ropes and the corral 4 runners flooded in to fill the gap.  And like that we were off again, bounding down the steep hill out of Hopkinton, heading towards another date with destiny.  … I went into my training cycle angry.  It was mid-October and I had just jogged off the course at Baystate after one lap.  I thought I would have the legs after that big training cycle volume over the summer training for the Burning River 100 mile ultra.  But, I could not hold the pace at Baystate and gave up.  There wasn’t a lot of urgency in that race.  I was already qualified.  I could run another if I wanted to.  I let my big brain rationalize me off the course.  Ultra-training was all about multi-hour runs in the trails.  Great for fitness, great for peace of mind, but not great for racing marathons.  While putting in those 90+ mile long training weeks I didn’t pay much attention to nutrition or flexibility.  I paid no attention to speed and tempo work.  Coming into the late summer I was tipping the scales in the mid-180’s.  That’s not obese for me, but it is some extra weight.  I have discovered that as I age, I’m losing body mass in general so my old race weights aren’t something I can compare against.  Instead I look at body fat % as a decent proxy for excess.  Late summer I was up in the 12-13% body fat.  The extra weight doesn’t matter when you’re ambling around in the woods, in fact it’s probably an advantage, but it sucks to carry when you’re trying to run fast circles on a track or hard charges up a hill.  Trying to tune up for that race in the fall I noticed that I really struggled with speed and tempo.  My legs weren’t cooperating.  My turnover was pathetic, and I had no pop.  That’s when I got a bit angry.  I knew I had work to do.  Talking with Coach, after the race, he convinced me to not try to race again and to focus on Boston, still 5 months in the future.  I committed, to get lean, to get healthy and to go into my 2019 Boston training cycle with a higher level of commitment.  To see what I could do.  Running a qualifying time has never been easy for me. I’m not that naturally talented athlete who glides by the standards.  I struggle and work to barely scrape by.  The BAA has helpfully lowered the standard by 10 minutes over the last few years and that struggle to scrape by is even more scrapier.  I need to meet the same standard today as I did two age groups ago.  And so it began…I worked my diet and worked my plan through the holidays.  Dropping those first 10 pounds and working daily on my tight hamstrings and quads.  I came into this training cycle lean and fit.  By the end of this cycle I was hovering around 170 pounds and 9% body fat.  I was getting good sleep and I was healthy.  Bringing this health into my training cycle enabled me to hit paces I haven’t seen in 10 years. It enabled me to attack workouts that I would have walked away from in previous cycles.  I had the quality, if not the volume, I needed to do well.  Like I said.  I’m quite proud of this training cycle.  I feel like it was a major lifestyle change for me.  I’m also cognizant of the fact that I’m not a 20-year-old (or a 30-year-old…or a 40-year-old) anymore and this kind of intensity may not be the best choice for longevity in this sport.  … I was dead set on sticking to my plan.  I was not going to go out too fast.  I was going to stick to 8 minute miles or slower.  My strategy was to make it through the hills with enough juice left to close the race. Maybe it was because we started at the back of the corral, but it seemed very crowded in the beginning.  We crossed the first mile mark at somewhere around an 8:24 pace, successfully resisting the pull of the hills.  Again, from the random encounter files, Frank, one of my training partners tapped me on the shoulder and congratulated me for not going out too fast.  I was glad to see him, but I turned around and he was gone, running his own race.  I say ‘somewhere around an 8:24 pace’ because my Garmin was off the mile marks from the start and got worse as the race progressed.  I ended up off my 3 tenths of a mile.  Which is a lot.  It’s close to 3 minutes discrepancy at the finish.  The next few miles brought our average down to right around 8:03 official at the first 5Kmark.  Which was right where I wanted to be.  We were running smart.  According to the official BAA timers we were right on our target splits. At 5K and at 10K. My legs didn’t feel great.  There have been times at Boston that early in the race I can feel that ‘pop’ in my legs.  This wasn’t one of those.  I knew it was going to be a work day, but I was committed to the work.  I wasn’t going to waste this training.  No matter what I was going to work my plan – all the way.  The race felt very crowded this year, especially in the water stops.  People were bumping and pushing and getting knocked off pace in those early tables.   Eric started grumbling about it ‘not being his day’ but I pushed back and said all we have to do is hold this pace and get to the top of that hill.  Hold this pace and make it to the top of Heartbreak.  That’s the plan and I was working my plan – come hell or high water – all in.  We were taking water at every aid station because it was a bit warmer than it should have been and we wanted to stay ahead of it.  I got a couple endurolytes down at around the 10K point.  It was still overcast and wasn’t uncomfortable.  I had a couple gels with me that I had tried to pin to the waistline of my shorts.  I had no ither way to carry them, except in my hands.  I was going to tuck them inside my shorts but that didn’t feel right so I let them hang outside and flop around.  At one point I had a guy say “You’re going to lose those gels” and one did break free, but I got the other one through the first hour and choked it down.  With the warmer weather I was a bit concerned about my gut.  I knew I had to stay on top of the water and fuel but by doing so also risked nausea from too much.  Again, when you’re racing at your threshold pace your body doesn’t like to digest stuff too.  Some where before the 10-mile mark I turned around and Eric was gone.  Off to run his own race.  Now I had to pace myself and execute my plan.  Through the half I was right on pace, with even a couple faster miles.  According to my watch I was a bit faster than the race splits and that difference would end up being significant.  My watch splits were probably 5 seconds a mile off my race clock splits.  We pulled through Wellesley and the scream tunnel.  I stayed to the middle of the road to not get tangled up.  I remember seeing some young men mixed in with the Coeds and hoping this wasn’t a trend.  I was pacing a couple guys around my age who looked like they were on the same mission.  But, one of them had this annoying habit of going much faster on the downhills and I moved on.  Somewhere around Wellesley the clouds cleared and the full sun came out.  Not terribly warm, but full sun, calm and around 70.  … The weather was a big story this year at Boston as it usually is.  It wasn’t a major issue, but it was a big story.  A week out it was forecast to be raging thunderstorms, rain and wind like we had last year.  The race officials moved up the wave 4 start to get people out of athletes’ village and onto the course a bit sooner.  As the race got closer the forecast changed to 60’s, rain and significant tailwind.  This forecast held right up to the race.  The only thing that changed as the days clicked by was that the temperatures were predicted to creep up to close to 70.  Still, drizzly with a stiff tail wind sounded pretty good to me.  The dynamic was, as it usually is, that Boston is the last stop for any storm train that rolls across the country.  Typically, these come through in waves, or fronts.  When you look at a weather forecast for New England it really depends on where these storm fronts are, how fast they are moving and what’s on either side.  That’s why this year was so squirrely.  We had two energetic systems sweeping across the country and as good as our weather technology is it’s a guess as to when the fronts show up and when they leave.  The first traveler was a warm front with tropical downpours.  Then on the heels of that one was a cold front with another line of rain and high winds.  This is all in the same 24 hour period.  Depending on a couple hours or a shift in the storm path you could get rain, wind, warm, cold or sunny skies and/or calm.  That’s why you’ll hear people say they got all 4 seasons during the race this year.  That’s why, even the night before, we didn’t know what we were getting.  What we ended up getting was the tropical storm early with lots of rain, warm temps and wind.  That’s what woke me up the night before.  As the out of town runners made their way out on the buses to Athetes’ village they had to deal with these tropical downpours, thunder and lightning.  As the waves started to go off this weather calmed and it was overcast, wet and calm.  Still this early rain turned the Hopkinton Highschool fields in athletes’ village into a medieval mud bath again for the waiting athletes.  By the time my wave, wave 3 went off it was overcast, warmish and humid with very little wind.  As I started the race in corral 3 wave 3 it was mid-60’s, calm, overcast and humid – not bad racing weather.  But, as we got into Wellesely and the hills in Newton the sun came out.  It was 70, full sun and no wind.  A bit warm for us but not horrible.  Ironically, after all the storms and dire forecasts, all the New Englanders got a touch of sunburn on their virgin skin.  Those poor people from out of town who packed their winter gear in anticipation of Armageddon got a nice, warm and sunny New England day.  Then that second front, the one with the rain and tailwinds, came through right after we finished. By the time I finished the clouds were coming in again.  It started raining and gusting walking to the hotel.  When I left for the train a couple hours later (after a shower and rehydrating) the temperature had dropped and there was a biting wind in the city.  All four seasons in one day.  The net result was, at least for we wave 2-3 runners, we hit the gap exactly between storm fronts and ran on a clear, windless, slightly too warm, spring day.  Did it impact my race?  I don’t know.  It was a bit warmer than I like and there was no tail wind.  It certainly didn’t help, and I’ve heard a lot of people blaming it, for poor performances, but it wasn’t awful.  Probably more of a convenient excuse than a causative factor. That’s Boston.  After the sun came out and we passed through the scream tunnel the next major landmark is the drop down into Newton Lower Falls and the start of the hills, with ‘hill zero’ climbing up over 128.  It was in this section where I started to feel a bit funky.  I had a classic power loss moment and it freaked me out.  This is too early in the race to be having power loss.  All those negative thoughts started swirling.  I shut them off and recommitted to fighting it all the way.  I took another gel and that did the trick.  I felt human again.  Just in time for the hills.  I worked my downhill form down the steep hill into Newton Lower Falls and refocused on getting to the top of Heartbreak.  I did great job of reeling my mind in.  Each time my head started to go sideways I would refocus on what I was doing right now.  My mantra became “Run the mile you’re in”.  And I kept working.  I lost 10 seconds or so on that slow mile but according to my watch I had a couple minutes in the bank for the hills so I wasn’t going to let up.  And that’s the trick at Boston.  How do you go fast enough in the beginning that you don’t fall behind your pace and have a bit of buffer for the hills, while at the same time not burning out your legs in the process?  I was right on my plan.  It was a work day but I was on my plan.  According to my watch I could give a couple minutes back and still make my time.  Maybe not my A goal but certainly my B goal. Hill zero was hard but manageable.  After you get over the highway they are handing our gels again so I grabbed on of those for later.  I was keeping my water intake up, but not really drinking much of the F2C I was carrying in my bottle.  Mostly because it was warm by now and my stomach was a bit nasty.  I couldn’t summon the energy to dig my Endurolytes out but figured I was getting enough from the gels and occasional sip from my bottle.  We turned by the Fire House and I was grinding away, staying on pace.  The uphills didn’t feel great but my downhill pace was nice a strong.  It was still work and I wasn’t having a great day but I thought I was managing it well.  I was running the mile I was in and focused on getting to the top of Heartbreak. Hill one wasn’t bad and I ran really well off the back of it to recover.  This was very positive for me because many years this is the spot where the race completely unravels.  Around 18 miles in before you even get to Heartbreak.  Hill 2 was a bit harder, but again I recovered well and ran smoothly on the back side.  Then we were into Heartbreak  I wasn’t looking at my watch anymore.  I was all in, working as well as I could and staying as close to pace as I could, looking to get to the top of that hill and reap the benefits of the downhills and flats into the finish.  I took a quick walk of the water table before entering the hill to get my head right and started to climb.  I raised my head and looked up that ½ mile climb and I got back to work. … My training and preparation were excellent.  The only blip was that I had a business conference in Chicago the final week of my taper going into the race.  I ate too much and drank too much beer, got bad sleep and spent way too much time on my feet.  That shouldn’t have been enough to unravel the total quality of my training, but it may have been one of the small factors influencing my race. My legs were a bit tight and I was a bit jetlagged and heavy as I rested out the weekend before the race.  Since I was flying back from Chicago Friday morning anyhow, I figured I’d swing by the expo and pick up my bib.  I usually go in Saturday, but this seemed convenient and I really wanted to get off my feet and rest for the remainder of the time I had left.  I dragged my travel bags onto the train and made my way over to the Hynes at the Pru for the expo.  There was no line at the bib pickup.  I cruised right through without breaking stride.  When I turned into the shirt pickup room there was a long line. Luckily, instead of just joining the line I asked someone what the line was for.  Apparently, it was for people to take a photo of themselves in front of a particular wall banner.  I skipped that line and cruised through shirt pickup without breaking stride.  There were people and family groups taking pictures all around with their bibs and shirts. There were people immediately taking the shirts out and trying them on for fit so they could exchange if necessary.  All these people were just so excited to be there.  They were clutching and fawning in the symbols and idolatry of the moment.  So many stories, all different, but all the same too.  They worked so hard to get here and now they were celebrating and in awe of the moment I made my way over to the expo.  This is where the crowds were. There was a veritable feeding frenzy at the Adidas official gear booth.  Crowds of runners pawing through the over-priced merch and a line to check out that would make Disney proud.  I didn’t see anything I liked.  I usually buy a hat, but all the racing hats had the logo as a stuck-on chunk of plastic, not stitched in, so I passed.  None of the shorts looked like anything I’d want to wear either, so I skipped that line too and moved on.  The Expo seemed smaller than usual.  A bit underwhelming and disappointing. There were the usual big shoe companies and such.  There was the theater showing the race course run through video which is always popular.   On the negative side there seemed to be a lot of ancillary, what I might call, “late night TV products”.  Various potions and devices guaranteed by someone to do something.  On the good side there were two beer booths.  The Sam Adams guys had a large presence and runners were happily consuming the 26.2 brew specially made for the race.  And Zelus, the beer for runners out of western Mass had a booth. I might suggest that they consider the expo at Boston as part of the character of the race and find a way to do better.  Maybe get people and products in that fit our lifestyle.  I’m sure it’s just a financial thing, they fill the space with whoever is willing to pay.  How about setting aside booth space for something more intrinsic to our demographic? How about authors?  Important charities? Or maybe to good races? Or maybe some science-based products?  Maybe I’m over thinking it. … My legs were pretty shitty at as I went into the ascent of Heartbreak.  Even after all those awesome sets of hill repeats I had donei n training I couldn’t find that gear, that energy and strength, so instead of slowing to a shuffle I switched to a fast-hike, run cadence, an ultra-running trick, to save my legs and not lose too much time.  My legs were really heavy and refused to climb well but I worked through to the top of the hill.  I figured that was my time buffer.  Now I had to hang on to close to race pace to have any chance of making my time.  Coming off the hill I relaxed and again had good downhill form and effort.  I felt comfortable.  I figured I was really close to my goal pace and just had to keep hitting it. I kept running the mile I was in.  I thought I carried a couple minute buffer at least into the hills, so even if I lost a minute or two, I would still be close.  The course started to take its toll on the runners.  The pack was looser here but runners would be stopping or weaving or sitting on the side of the road and you had to watch out or bump your way through.  I saw two runners being packed onto stretchers by EMTs.  I pushed on. In my head I thought I could just stay close.  All in.  keep fighting.  It was work.  I wasn’t terribly uncomfortable.  I was able to maintain close to goal pace on the downs and flats in the that last 10K.  I felt strong rolling down that hill with the train tracks into Cleveland Circle.  Then, I looked up to see the 24 mile sign, and, out of habit, looked at my watch.  My Garmin said almost exactly 3:20.  Even with my addled brain I could do the math.  I would have to run the last 2.21 miles in 15 minutes to get my time.  I had been battling to hold on to 8:10’s in these last miles, thinking I had some buffer.  But, battling as I was, there was no way I was going to lay down a couple sub-7:30’s at that point.  The wind came out of my sails.  I let my foot off the gas.  I reminded myself to lift my head up and look around.  The screaming crowds, the Citgo sign, the mile to go, the right on Herford, the left on Boylston.  The crowd on Boylston like a living, screaming animal pulling you in to the finish.  I let myself be in that moment.  I finished easy in 3:40:19 according to the BAA timer.  A full five minutes off my B goal time.  As near as I can figure, with my watch being so far off the race splits I did not have that 2-3 minute buffer going into the hills.  I probably only had 45 seconds to a minute.  When I lost those 2-3 minutes in the hills, combined with a couple slower miles where I was 5 or 10 seconds off pace at the end I was in the hole coming off Heartbreak.  I didn’t have the juice to negative split it in.  In those final miles where I was working to stay close to race pace I really needed to be negative splitting.  Of those 5 minutes I missed by, ½ of that is real and half of that is me taking my time to enjoy the last 2miles of the race. .. In these last few days since the race I struggle with how to write and talk about it.  I suppose that’s the defining characteristic of this race – that it refuses to play along and be categorized.  On the one hand I feel blessed and awed to be able to be part of this great thing.  On the other I have mixed feelings about how I haven’t had a great race there in almost a decade.  That’s why I like to let these things sit a bit before I try to write it up.  Let something that makes sense congeal into narrative and form.  Come to some sort of conclusion.  Some sort of tidy summary to stamp a smiley face on the report before turning it in for grading.  This week, since the race, I’ve been waking up early.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s the early rising sun of late spring.  Maybe it’s the damage in my legs.  Maybe it’s my unsettled mind.  I’m typically blessed with clarity in mornings so why not work on this report for you?  Let’s see if we can’t benefit from an early release of green, fresh thoughts still weeping sap from the fresh cuts. … The summary statement, if one can ever summarize a Boston Marathon race, is I’m happy with my training effort, I’m happy with my racing effort, I think I executed my plan well, but I’m a bit disappointed with my results.  Here are the two sides of that coin; I missed my A goal by 10 minutes, and I missed my B goal by 5 minutes.  Now I’m out of qualification.  Flip that over and you find that I trained well, executed my plan, worked hard and didn’t give up.  Relatively I did very well.  But, relatively doesn’t get you entry into next year’s race.  How can I say that relatively I did well?  That’s quite simple.  Since Boston is a seeded race all you need to do is to look at how you performed vis-à-vis your bib number.  For every finishing spot you beat your bib number by you finished better than someone who qualified with a better time than you did.  I beat my bib number by 6,595 places.  Even if you throw out the outliers it’s obvious I had a much better day than many of my cohort.  It was my training, my execution and my pure stubbornness that enabled me to do so.  Part of me wonders just what I have to do to have a break out race at Boston.  Part of me wonders if I have anything left I can do.  Part of me wonders if maybe I just don’t have the ability to pull it off anymore.  And, of course, part of me wonders why I care so much?  Really? What is it about this race that turns me into a neurotic mess once a year? Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have a terrible race. I’m not jumping out the window with remorse.  I’m just stressed out, because I controlled everything I could, I did everything I could, and it still wasn’t enough for Boston.  … Based on my training paces I should have hit my A goal of breaking 3:30 and should have easily hit my B goal of 3:35.  But that didn’t happen.  I crossed that line with a hard fought 3:40:19.  I am beat up and sore.  I executed my plan but those training paces and that training fitness weren’t enough for Boston. I worked hard.  I worked my plan.  And I never gave up.  I’m proud of the effort. There were times in this race where I was struggling and I was able to pull myself together, focus on the mile I was in, and keep racing.  It was probably the depth and quality of my training that allowed me to fight back.  A positive spin on it might be that without that training and execution it would have been a real train wreck.  … So here we are, Dear Reader, out of qualification.  As my training buddies and I joke there is not way to gracefully disengage from Boston. If you have a good race, you’re qualified and might as well run.  If you don’t you’re pissed off and don’t want to end on a down note.  Either way you’re back on the neurotic Boston horse for another round. I signed up for the Vermont Cities Marathon at the end of May.  I’m going to take this training and go up there and get my qualification on a reasonable course that doesn’t feel the need to demonstrate its dominance and extract its pound of flesh.  And, I’ll see you out there.

There are 3 easy levers every MLMer can pull to cause more success in their business…   DO YOU WANT TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN MLM?   Back in the day when I was first joining MLM, I was brought to the side and a guy asked me, "Stephen do you want to be successful in MLM?"   And I said, "Well of course."    And he said "Well, what successful people do is they take their phones out and they chat with people in their contact lists and then they three way me in with them and I do the selling for you."   And I was like "Really? What if they're not interested. Alright, well sounds good if that is how it happens then let's do it."    This should be ruffling a few feathers right about now.   That's usually what happens, right? And there's nothing wrong with that if you KNOW the person has a pre-existing desire for MLM.   But if they DON’T, that can be really, really awkward.    I'm not saying huge down lines have not been created that way. Of course they have.    It's possible, it's just not very probable.    If I look across the street and I'm like, "Oh my gosh I need to go grab Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones needs this opportunity, he's got to come in and join me."    The problem is that if they need the opportunity, they’re usually not a good fit in the first place.    If they need it, rather than want it, that sets precedents for how they will behave inside of your down line.    MY FIRST DOWNLINE PROBLEMS     I started recruiting a bunch of people and it was awesome, it was cool, and I had a bunch of fun doing it. I recruited 13 people my first month. I think it was about 5 weeks actually.    NONE OF THEM DID ANYTHING.    They came to me and started asking me the dreaded question, "Stephen, what do I do next?"    And I said, "Well, do you want to be successful in MLM?"   And they're like, "Yeah."    And I'm like "Well this is what successful people do. They take their phones out, they reach out to the contacts, and then they three way me in and I'll do the selling for you."    I felt myself do the same script I was taught, and many of us do… Because we've just never been taught that there actually is another way.    My program, Secret MLM Hacks, shows you how to create auto recruiting systems. For any MLM that you're in. You don't get pitched in the program. I'm just trying to change the industry.    You've got to solve a lot of the downline problems that people experience after they join you.    There's followup problems, problems they did not have until they joined my downline. How can I solve followup problems the most for all of the people who are joining me?    HOW I SOLVE DOWNLINE PROBLEMS     I've trained my people and many methods. I've trained my people in many ways. There's a training program that we're coming out with for my team and I thought it would be kind of cool to show you how I treat the onboarding process.    It's a program called Hack MLM. Don't go there unless you want me to pitch you. What's cool about it is, it walks through all the setup. It walks through here's how to make sure you get all the bonuses you didn't know about. It walks through how to setup our teams recruiting funnels and systems and content and process and pitching.    One of the things that was frustrating for me with the first MLM I joined was that I felt like I wasn't getting enough training from my up line.    Beyond talking to my warm market, my friends and family… Once those people dried up, I didn't know how to get more leads.    I had to become a marketer in order to turn back around and try to solve this problem.    For the last five years I've been obsessively learning how to do that and I'm stoked because with all the ways I've been helping solve the followup downline problems for the people I recruit.     I finally have a full course that I send my people when they join me. It walks them through, day by day, for 30 days. Your first 30 days in my downline, this is what you should be doing.    Oh and by the way, here's a whole bunch of prebuilt stuff just for being in my team.    I wanted to teach you how to create your own onboarding system. I'm not pitching you guys into my downline, I'm telling you guys what I do though to help automate it.    MLM ONBOARDING PROCESS   When I think about onboarding, I think about it in several different fashions:   There's the act of actually recruiting the individual There's everything that you do though before you recruit them to get them in your world    Most people are like, "Well I'm gonna focus on recruiting. I'm gonna focus on what I say. I'm gonna focus on the scripts that I do. I'm gonna focus on making sure they know about this bonus. I'm gonna make sure that they know it's buy-one-get-one free, or there's this onboarding bonus if they join now."    Those are all cool... But if you just change who you're speaking to before, you don't have to do a lot of those tricks.   Most of the MLM books that are available in today's market are very much like, "Here's the top three things you can say to get anybody to join your down line."   I don't really believe in mind control. Instead if you just change the who, and you stop going for Mr. Jones across the street, "who needs the opportunity."   I start going for people who want it. It completely changes the game.    There's three levers you can turn in the MLM space that you likely don't know about.    WHO HOW ONBOARDING    WHO ARE YOU ONBOARDING?    The first thing is you can just switch up the who. Switch up who you're speaking with.    Secondly, you can switch how they're pitched. You know I have auto recruiting funnels and we still get three to four people a day asking to join my down line. We are about to cross 1,100 in the last year and a bit. Which is crazy.   Who I'm speaking to and how they're pitched - Those are two things I can have control over in the MLM space.    You don't own anything in MLM. You have no assets.    Out of the box, you just have what the MLM has given you. You get your starter pack, you got your bonus opportunities. But you don't own the product, you don't own the scripts. You don't own any of the stuff.    I'm not trying to freak anybody out, but I want you to be very clear about this. You don't own anything when you join an MLM.   Instead what I do is I change up who I'm speaking with. I get people who actually want to join me and buy from me.   HOW ARE YOU ONBOARDING?   HOW I speak to all of these people is not the traditional method. They have to go through an application. That's one of the levers I can turn.    My friends and family, they're not actually interested so I’m not going to waste my time and trying to pitch them.    HOW I bring someone into my MLM is very key. How I bring somebody into my MLM sets the precedent for what I'll need to be doing with them after they join.    If I recruit somebody by begging them, I probably just became a life coach for that individual.    If someone has to apply to join me or they have to prove that they really are a good fit for my down line. Now, what's the precedents I've set for after I've recruited them? Now I've become a business coach, not a life coach.    Now I go and I say, "Now do this now do that now do this now do that." And they do it. Rather than me saying, "Well I know someone said something mean to you are you okay, are you fragile?"   If you've noticed it's hard for you to reach out and contact those in your downline, you probably recruited people who were doing you a favor. They don't actually want to be in it.   I know I'm flicking some nerve chords here in this episode.   There's a few levers you can turn to drastically increase the amount of people that you recruit AND the quality of the recruit.    I'm not saying the value of the person. I'm saying the quality of the recruit in terms of what they're willing to do. If they're already business savvy. If they're already ready to run.    WHAT IS YOUR ONBOARDING PROCESS?    When someone joins your downline, there's not a lot of things you can change. That's controlled by the MLM. But after they join, this is a completely different game.    The thing that I have control over is my onboarding. The way I onboard somebody. That's a huge deal.    WHO, HOW and ONBOARDING are the three levers I can turn and have a lot of control over in the MLM space.    I can upgrade:    The WHO HOW I pitch people and HOW I approach them The training that they receive afterwards    After I joined that first MLM I was like, "Who do I speak to? I don't even know what to do next." I remember explicitly having that thought.    I didn't know who to go talk to anymore. Which means all I have is do the method I've been taught. Then when people join my downline, I don't know what else to tell them. I can't onboard them.    A lot of Secret MLM Hacks walks through this kind of thing. How to upgrade your process for reaching out to people and the onboarding piece. The onboarding piece is tons of fun.   We have several methods in the program but the one we're launching right now is called Hack MLM. It's free for those who are in my down line. What is does is walk you through the first 30 days in my team.    I want to show you guys some of the easiest ways to come up with the downline problems your people need help with. A lot of times, people want to have success and they're willing to do what they need to. Sometimes they just don't know what to do.    DO YOU WANT TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN MLM?    The first thing I ask people to do in the onboarding sequence is to define what success is. When someone joins my down line, if they are actively publishing, and if they have their recruiting funnel up at a bare minimum. That is a very successful person.   Just the fact that they're publishing, they will recruit people. There's so much authority that comes with creating a video. People reach out, they want to join me. Regardless of what I have for them if they do.    Listen to tons of those podcasts that are out there in the MLM space on iTunes. A lot of those people recruit simply because they're publishing. That's why I tell everyone to freaking publish. It will change your life.   I need to find out what success even looks like and what it is that I want everyone of my recruits to be doing. I want them to recruit the world! Okay, that's not accurate, you have to think somewhat realistic. It's possible, not probable.   Other things your downline needs to know is:    Product education Back office education When the next event is Teach them to setup their e-wallet so that they can actually get paid Educate them on the bonuses Scripts Give them the confidence to approach people or use a computer   There's a lot of stuff someone has to understand in order to have success.    I need to figure out what order somebody should consume those topics in. This is not easy. It took me about three or four months of actively thinking about it to come up with the order of topics somebody should consume this process in.    ONBOARDING FOR SUCCESS   One of the first things you can do is go talk to the people. Talk with your up line. Ask them "Hey, what are all the things you have found people need in order to be successful." Then you list all those down.    Then you ask them things like, "What are all of the concerns that you hear from the people that you guys are recruiting as well, people inside of the rest of our team." That's gold.   If you can figure out what it is that everyone else is struggling with, that's a massive way to figure out how to actually go and build an onboarding system.    Talk with people that you've recruited. Ask them things like, "What do you wish I would've provided for you at the beginning." Or, "What are you guys struggling with right now?"    What's great about what I'm telling you right now is, it means you don't need to be a marketing genius to pull this off. All you're gonna do is ask, "What is it that you guys are struggling with. What is it that you wish that I had provided for you. What is it that would really help you."    And they're like, "I need more leaders. I wish I knew how to talk to people. When somebody tells me no, I don't know how to overcome objections."   So then you're like "Okay, I need training on objections. I need training on certain kinds of scripts.”    How do I help my team:    Get more leads Upsell Go back to people and tell them about other products that are out there so we all can increase our revenues    YOUR DOWNLINES ONBOARDING NEEDS   I'm gonna go in andlist a whole bunch of needs of my team. I'm gonna get them from my up line, from my downline, from people who are successful already. Maybe I can find several lists on blogs.   Don't try to organize it yet. Just brain dump it.    Then what I do is I go through and create 30 topics.    I organized them, I condensed them.    This topic, this topic and this topic are super similar - I could teach those at the same time.    And then this topic and then this topic - Those are really similar as well. I could teach those at the same time.    I condense them and realized, "I want to make this a 30 day thing”   It could be 21, it could be 14. You don't even need to do the day thing. Just the fact that you have on boarding training massively increases your likelihood of having a successful downline.    We made a big list of team needs. Then, what I did is I went I spoke with my up line, and other successful people and my MLM and I said, "Hey, how can my team make the most money from the get go."   Now this is what was really powerful. This is why I'm trying to teach you this.   “How can I make my team rich”, is what I asked them.    We went in and what we asked was, "Can you help us understand all of the bonuses that we don't know exist. What are the bonuses that we don't know our team could have advantage of. Whether when they're brand new, or existing."    SUCCESSFUL MLM TRAINING    We realized by day 14 there is a bonus thing that starts that I don't know if everyone knows about. Then if they do some other things within 30 days there's some huge bonuses as well.    We listed out all these other bonuses and now we had these milestones. So guess what day 14 was about inside of our onboarding training. THAT BONUS.    It's been 14 days since you joined our team. Thank you so much. But by the way, this bonus, you're now eligible for, it's really easy to get. This is how you go do it.   On the next day we said, “Hey by the way, if you take advantage of X, Y and Z you also get this bonus if you do this and this within 30 days.”    Here's a bunch of pre-made assets and pre-made lessons for you that make it easy for you to go get that extra cash bonus.    Now they got money coming back in.    ONBOARDING WEEK ONE     We made week one all about setting up the back office.   Setting up the back office Product education History of the MLM itself Different products An overview of where you get the most commissions   It's very much a familiarization of what is going on in the MLM itself.   ONBOARDING WEEK TWO   The second week was about how to take advantage of additional bonuses.    Here's how to meet and greet those inside of our community   Let's:    Get you set up and integrated in the first two weeks Make sure that your wallet's set up Make sure you don't do anything where you're not qualified for cash   That's one of the most frustrating things. I've totally had that happen to me before in the past. There's two things I didn't have set up in my back office and because of that I wasn't getting paid.   I don't want my downline to be doing that.   ONBOARDING WEEK THREE   On week 3, the training was all about solving some of these big needs.    I wanted them to get leads, baby. Lots and lots of leads.   How can I pre-build lead systems for them and train them on them? So that's what I did.   The last bit on day 22 (it actually stops at day 29, not 30) is where I teach them how to make NOISE.    How to:    Make noise Get traffic Get eyeballs Have a consistent source of leads Get the lead machines set up in week three Fill it with just tons of people   After that, the next thing we're doing is help them understand how to go and sell even more of the product itself.   I just want you guys to understand just because you recruit them, that DOES NOT mean you are done.   One of the easiest ways for you to get real big in this space is to just solve more problems than other team leaders. Just give it to your people. Train them.   DO YOU WANT MY MLM TRAINING?   All of this MLM training cost me $15,000. I have a very professional team. We built an amazing members area and a massive drip sequence.    It's really impressive but it was expensive for me to create.   The way you bring somebody into your downline sets the pace for how they'll behave in your downline. How you recruit someone usually determines if you'll get to be their business coach or forced to be their life coach.    Because of that, I make it kind of hard to join my own downline. There's an application process and a phone interview that is required for someone to join my team. There's a mini course that walks them through the set up of their own recruiting funnels and their own lead sources. Much of which is pre-built for them.   Here's why I'm telling you this. In the past I've trained my downline in many ways with many methods. But I finally decided to put all the training in a single spot in a course that walks my new recruits through their first 30 days in my down line.   Back office set up PLUS recruiting funnels.   I'm about to launch it to em. This is a new thing that we've got for them which should and solve a lot of problems.    If you wanna be kind of an ant on the wall and jump into see how I train my teams, you're more than welcome.    BUT, FAIR WARNING…    The course is meant specifically for my team. You will find out what MLM I'm in.    If you come in to check out what's going on, I will pitch you.   There is stuff all over the place telling you to just join my team.   Fair warning. Don't go there if you don't want that.   You might be trying to build similar things that I've built. That's great. Then come in and check it on out and see how we've structured everything.   If you wanna check it out go to hackmlm.com. Funny enough hackmlm.com was available and we built the whole thing on top of it.   Hackmlm.com is the actual thing if you wanna see how we've done it.    If not then, take the training that I just showed you. It's all free. No pressure. All free. Have not charged a dime for it. Not going to.    This training is for my down line specifically. If you wanna come in and check it out though, you're more than welcome to. See how I actually train and coach my people on how to pitch, set up auto recruiting funnels and a lot of cool stuff that's in there for them.   Please don't feel any pressure at all. I just wanna teach you that those who solve the most follow up problems tend to win in the MLM space. There's not many people solving follow up problems.   WHY I’M SO PASSIONATE ABOUT MLM TRAINING   This whole thing started because of my desire to get more answers... And I couldn't find them.   I've been obsessed for four years… How do I solve more downline problems for my teams?   I tried something and it wouldn't work.    Then I'd try something else and it wouldn't work.   I'd try something and it would kind of work, but it was only something a super psycho marketing nerd like myself could do it.    I was like, crap. That's not good enough.   Simplify, simplify, simplify, simplify.    Then I got down to space where finally, pretty much anyone can do it if they just decide.

YES ! What you allow to go in will always come out. Listen to the story about the orange and then look at YOURSELF ? YOU take a bottle and fill it with water. Come back the next day and pour yourself a glass of wine out of that bottle. REALLY ? What utter NONSENSE ! What goes in WILL come out. What goes into YOU will come out of YOU. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/nolan-emmett/message

Where was your September edition of SIHCA?  Everyone blame Brandy.  And Germany.  And Amsterdam.  Hold on to your hats, it's Captain America: Civil War! How long IS this movie? What is the time line in this universe? Who is Scarlett Johansson's character?  She can only punch?  REALLY? What came first Vision or the stone? Is anyone going to hook up in this movie? Every planet should have a Jeff Goldblum.  We still hate you Darkman. Comment, questions, concerns - find us here:   Twitter   Facebook Instagram  Email

‘REALLY’ What do you do when putting God first doesn’t make sense; when what he asks you to do causes you to stop and say “really”? This message by Pastor Ed Luther will help you navigate your life when putting God first seems to make no sense. Recorded on 14.09.18 For more info visit: city-church.net

Tonight we dive into reincarnation. Is it possible for the soul to go on after death? There is some pretty convincing possible proof. The most convincing proof seems to come from children! Miss Courtney brings another 540Foodiechick surprise for EK for mystery munchies: (insert munchie here). In weird news: What's it like to be in a relationship with a Ghost? Have you seen a two headed cow? And who steals a shark? Really? What kind of people are you?

 "The next evolutionary step for humankind is to move from human to kind." ― Anonymous What is next for human beings? Will we actually conquer the next frontier? Will we finally achieve world peace? Really? What is next? Listen to the episode and join the conversation by sharing your comments below...did you share the episode with your friends? Sharing is caring :) ----more---- Episode Shout-out to WokeNFree Episode 45, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, Elephant Glasses Galaxy Lunch Tote Bag, Thermos Dual Compartment Lunch Kit, TMNT, ScienceAlert, On The Galactic System: With Regard To Its Structure, Origin And Relations In Space (1909), and Astronomical Engineering: A Strategy For Modifying Planetary Orbits     Music Credits: Music Intro/Outro: “Thoughts” by Killah Smilez Music Outro: “Explained” by Killah Smilez Make sure you check out the Killah Smilez song on Amazon  Catch the music video by Killah Smilez HERE Want to share the episode? Please share the episode on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Soundcloud Don’t forget to subscribe to WokeNFree on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Google Play Do you want to join the show as a guest on an upcoming episode? Contact us HERE Don't forget to submit a scenario to us for SCENARIO TIME!    SCENARIO TIME: How would you respond to these scenarios in SCENARIO TIME? Let's chat HERE!  Have you reviewed our show yet? Pick your platform of choice HERE     Do you want to start a podcast? We are here to HELP! Schedule a FREE consultation with us HERE This post contains affiliate links. That means if you click on a link and buy something, WokeNFree will earn a small commission from the advertiser at no additional cost to you.

In the last thirty years, the importance of marketing has grown significantly in the practice of law. For most lawyers in private practice, an ability to generate work is now a prerequisite for becoming a partner.  At the same time, the tools for building your reputation and cultivating business relationships have grown. Selling legal services still requires you to develop a practice niche and building a network of clients who know, like and trust you. But social media has changed the way lawyers communicate with their networks. On today’s show, Betsy Munnell talks about how to incorporate social media into your legal marketing. Betsy has decades of experience representing lending institutions, private equity funds and businesses in structuring sophisticated debt and equity financings.  More importantly she is an accomplished rainmaker who has spent the last 9 years coaching lawyers on how to be successful in building a law practice. Betsy began her career as an associate at the Boston law firm Choate Hall and Stewart and then spent the bulk of her time practicing with the law firm Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge (which has since become Locke Lord).  She was among the core group of “rainmakers” responsible for the growth of the Firm’s nationally recognized media and communications finance practice.  She was also one of the chief architects of her firm’s diversity program.   In 2009, Betsy left the partnership to pursue her interest in coaching.  She works with attorneys at all stages of their careers and has extensive experience coaching female law students at Harvard, Boston College and Boston University on transitioning into large firm practice.  At Harvard, Betsy directs an intensive individual coaching program for a small group of women headed for large firm summer jobs who are selected from the Board of the Women’s Law Association. Betsy also serves on the Board of the American Bar Association’s Legal Career Central. Betsy is a strong advocate for intensive training in business and financial skills and business generation for lawyers, particularly for associates who may otherwise advance to junior partnership under-equipped to manage critical relationships or generate revenue. She co-founded and teaches, with Matt Rubins, a former private equity fund manager, a one of a kind, case study driven business education program for law firm lawyers. She is an avid participant in social media and someone who is extremely generous in promoting the work of other professionals through social media (including myself!) As part of every coaching engagement, Betsy teaches her clients how to use online platforms --including LinkedIn and Twitter--to build network and brand and to develop lasting professional relationships. But she has an interesting approach that may appeal to those of you who are more leery of interacting and posting on social media. Additional Resources Twitter for the Reluctant Lawyer Winning Social Media Networking Strategies to Land a Job or Gain New Clients (a webinar) The Time for LinkedIn Has Come. Really What do Blogging and Vegas Have in Common

“I’m one fat lip from the championship, So don’t give up the fight, And whatever it takes, I’m going to make everything alright…” – from “Whatever It Takes” by James Hunter Back in February a new James Hunter Six record came out, "Whatever It Takes." The title track had a lyric in the fourth verse that immediately grabbed me. It's an old-school R&B sound. Magical.  Right away, under the old format of this show, I began crafting a draft for this show. Over the past months, I've come at this thing from more angles than a junior high math class protractor. So many ideas were prompted by that first line - "I'm one fat lip from the championship." Adversity. Perseverance. Victory. Adversity. Perseverance. Victory. Those 3 continued to play on the endless loop in my head. And in that order. I focused on that first one because it's the only universal one - adversity. We all face it. But we don't all exhibit perseverance. Which means we don't all experience victory. Whatever it takes. It's a line we may have said often. Maybe we said it to ourselves, about ourselves. Or maybe we said it to somebody else. It's one of those great sounding lines we deploy when we're looking for inspiration. Of course, like so many wise sounding themes, if you dig too deeply you realize how untrue these kinds of things can be. Whatever it takes? Really? What if it means sacrificing your marriage? Your kids? Your convictions? Will you really do WHATEVER it takes? I hope not. Victory does have a price tag. Part of the problem is it never tells you how much it'll cost. You have to find out for yourself. Along the way, you may discover the cost is too high. And you may jettison the fight. Or... You may figure out as the cost goes up, that you'll call or even double down. Or fold. It's up to you. We each have the power and ability to decide if the price is too high. But that decision doesn't always appear so rational. Many of us pay prices that are too high given the reward. Others of us don't pay enough of a price because we may not see the truly high value of the payoff. It's Free Form Friday here inside The Yellow Studio. I've been noodling this idea since I first heard that song. And that lyric. Happy Friday! How Can You Help The Podcast? Subscribe at iTunes | Stitcher Leave us a review at iTunes Pick your favorite way to support us financially Join the conversation at our Facebook group Tell your friends. Promote the shows on social media.

I'M FINALLY BACK!! And I've missed you all! Enjoy the podcast and THANK YOU for your wonderful wishes and tremendous patience! The E-cubed PODCAST is UP and READY for YOU!! #LearnEnglish #ESL #LMEtoday #LetsMasterEnglish   Today’s English expression and dialog: to clinch   You look happy! I clinched the top spot in Google!! Really? What search term?      Search for “English teacher Coach Shane”.   Subscribe on iTunes and get this English podcast EVERY DAY! Support the Let’s Master English team! On PayPal: Send to Or you can go here: PLEASE support my sponsors: (Get a free AUDIO BOOK!) Study English, FREE ENGLISH LESSONS:

Click above to listen in iTunes... Here is how I have mitigated risk as I prepare to leave my job... What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host Steve Larsen.  Hey, so the last few days have been pretty intense, not in a bad way. There's good intense and bad intense. You know what I mean? But the pressure has been increasing. My wife came to me the other day. I think it was yesterday or two days ago. She walked up to me. It was morning time. You know, everyone's kind of getting up. She walks in and she's like, "I had a really bad dream last night." I was like, "Really? What was it?" She goes, "I had a dream that you were upstairs ..." I have a home office here upstairs, kind of in the corner of the house, which is kind of nice to have. I've got sound panels all over the place. I totally made a man cave. I love sitting in this room and creating stuff. I got whiteboards all over the place. Quotes on the wall. Three bookshelves totally full. Anyway, I love it. Sound equipment all over the place. Film stuff. I've got a sheet over on the wall over here, top to bottom. It's a black sheet that I stand in front of and film a bunch of 4K videos with, which looks awesome, super cool, and actually pretty pro. It looks pretty awesome. Anyway, I like video a lot. Anyway, back to the story. She goes, "I had a dream that you came down from the office. That you had left ClickFunnels. This was later on in the future, in January. You came down and you just said, 'Alyssa, is there a check in the mail?'" She was like, "I said back to you, 'No. Why would there be a check in the mail?'" I'm like, "I don't know," or, "Who it'd be from?" "I don't know. I'm just wondering if there's a check in the mail. We only have a thousand dollars in our bank account." This is all in the dream. My wife was like, "What? Oh my gosh. Are you kidding me? There's no money in the bank account?" Like, "What have you been doing?" I was like, "Ah, I haven't started selling anything yet." She's like, "Well, go start selling crap." Like, "What are you waiting for?" Anyway, the pressure is here, okay? The pressure is turned up. I'm excited. It was never my intention to be an employee. But I am super thankful that I've had this experience. I would never regret the fact that I've gone through this and that I've worked for somebody else and that it's Russell Brunson. I mean, come on. Holy crap. This is like a dream job which seems all the more ludicrous that I would leave ClickFunnels. What's funny about it is that there's a lot of people ... I don't know if some of you guys who listen to this that still think that I'm crazy about them. It's hilarious to me how many people have reached out, giving me their opinion on the fact that I should not leave. I go, "Okay. You have no idea what I'm going to go do." Some person messaged me and they're like, "Hey. Awesome. You're going to go do ..." I'm won't say exactly what they said, but it's just hilarious like ... It reminds me of the quote like if you're not marketing hard enough or if you don't offend someone by noon, you're not marketing hard enough. It's funny, guys. As you develop your own attractive character, be prepared to have a lot of naysayers that pop out. I actually kind of look forward to it now. If I don't get enough naysayers, I feel like I'm not taking as aggressive of moves as I should be, so bring it on. I like hearing the other side too, but man, every once in a while it's like, "Gosh." I wrote something back to a certain individual like three times, and I just ended up deleting it. I was like, "It's not even worth it. Just, ugh, whatever." It's funny. It's funny, but the pressure is on. So what do you do ... I know a lot of you guys are thinking like what do you do when you know that you're about to lose your job? I shouldn't say lose my job, I'm leaving. But most people they either lose their immediately because they got fired or they're leaving this other job with a two weeks notice. I've known for a very long time you guys, way before it was ever announced. Way before Russell every announced it before, everybody start talking about it. We have both known that I was going to leave ClickFunnels for a long time. What's funny about it is it's almost like ... I'm trying to think of an example, but you know like when you put something off and there's more ... I forgot the name of it. There's an actual theory behind this. It's when there's an ... Like if you have three months to get something done, because you have three months, there is added stress and pressure because you have three months of stress and pressure rather than it being needed to be done in three days because you know that it's three days. You know what I mean? It's been fumy because that's exactly what's happened. I've totally had sleepless nights. I've thought through ... I'm just being open about this, okay? I'm being open and I'm being real. I'm letting you guys know where I am. What's funny is I'm not nervous about creating revenue on my own. Obviously, I would not leave ClickFunnels without that being a very solid plan, which it is. I'm grabbing a little ownership and a few other things that I haven't quite announced yet. There's a lot going on behind the scenes in the world of Steve Larsen. But what I wanted to talk about real quick today was if you ... Okay, quick story. Russell has got this cool story he was telling me about the other day. I can't remember who, but he had this thing called like the 30 day challenge or something like that. I actually can't remember what it was called. But basically, the premise was this guy went around to all these gurus and he started saying things like, "Hey, let's say you lost everything. You lost your reputation or you don't have one. You're starting literally from scratch. What would you do to be back on your feet in 30 days?" It's a pretty powerful question when you think about that. Think about where you are right now and go ground zero in your own head, ground zero. No assets, nothing. No money, no reputation, no following, nothing. No list, anything, nothing at all. You have a ClickFunnels account and your rent on your internet has been pre paid for a month or something like that. What would you do? Right? What would you do? Someone messaged me the other day. They're like, "How can we not sleep anymore?" and stuff like that. What would you do if you knew you don't have a job in a few weeks? Come on. Tell me how would you handle it. I worked my butt off which I've been doing. We are more than fine. I made like 10 grand last week on this one event funnel, I'm sorry, application funnel. That's not to be cocky. I'm letting you guys know I'm not an idiot. I'm not going to just jump ship from something without any plan. It's a very solid plan. It's been there for a long time. It's amazing and extremely lucrative, and it's awesome. I'm excited to talk more about it once I'm no longer part of ClickFunnels, anyway, and tell you guys a little bit more about those things you guys can follow and totally funnel hack, which is awesome. Anyway, but what would you do? What would you think about? So I want you to know the process that I've gone through in my head to make sure that I'm ready to make the leap because I know a lot of you guys are trying to do that because you message me about it. A lot of you message me. I don't think you guys realize how many of the rest of you are also messaging me besides a lot of the rest of you also. There's a lot of messages that I get. It's fun and it's awesome. Please don't get offended if I can't answer every single one of them. It's logistically impossible now. But anyway, what would you do though? You think about that. What would you actually do? Then what I invite you to do is as I go through like two or three things here to let you know what I've done. I've already tested it. It's already making great money. It's already like this, you know, which is why I can leave, which is why I can go jump off and do that stuff. I want you to think through in your head your own checklist. What is it that you would do? Then I invite you to actually do it. Create that actual environment in your head and just get it done. You know what's funny about building funnels? It's really easy. I know some of you guys are laughing when I say that, but it is. Click drag, drop, click buttons, choose some colors, right? I mean, if you can send email, you can use the ClickFunnels editor, right? What most people screw up on and the reason why it gets hard for them is because they suck at making offers, okay? Funnel building is more about offer creation than it is putting a few pages together, okay? Any monkey can put a few pages together. They're even pre-done for you in templates where you literally would just have to change the copy on the page, okay? There's templates over the place. So then what is it really? Let's think about it. What actually is the reason why the funnel isn't working? It's because you suck at offer creation. If that stings a little, that's okay. It's medicine. Think through, "Wow. Do I actually know how to create offers?" Wherever you are in the world right now, I want you to raise your hand. I'm not trying to get on a side tangent here, but I want you to realize how I've been able to secure my landing as I jump from ClickFunnels, because I know how. I know exactly why. I want you to be the same. You've got to know why your stuff's working or why it isn't. If you don't know, that's the scariest thing ever. So I'm trying to shed some light on usually the number one reason why a funnel doesn't convert. Raise your hand right now and say, "I will not sell products anymore." What? "Oh, Mylanta. Steve Larsen, what are you telling me to do?" Okay, "I will not sell products or services anymore." Now you raise your other hand and you say, "I will now sell offers. I only sell offers now." Now think about that. The point ... I was getting kind of ticked off when someone's like, "The book Expert Secrets is only about info products." Bullcrap. It's not true at all. "The book Expert Secrets is only about webinars." No, you missed the whole point if you think that. Go back and read it again, okay? Webinars is just an example of what to do. It's an example of how to pull off what the book teaches. Expert Secrets is such a good book because it's about offer creation. It's not about webinars. It's not about info products. Those are just two examples of how to pull off what's it's really teaching you to do. If you missed it, go back, especially to the third section there what's called your moral obligation to sell. But honestly, the whole thing though, okay. The reason why I am totally at peace about this decision, there's some few butterflies here and there, but honestly, I'm very excited and I'm totally at peace about it. There's some freakout moments. I'm not going to lie, okay? It has nothing to do with whether or not my ability to make money. It has everything to do ... My biggest freakout has everything to do with not being around other marketers, okay? Sitting in isolation in my home office, that freaks the crap out of me. Not because I'm a chatty guy, I'm actually not. In public, I'm actually kind of shy. I am. I don't know what to say a lot of times. Whenever like after I finish speaking at an event or something like that, whatever it is, I'm actually pretty shy about it, okay? Anyway, it actually scares me more to just be alone and not be connected to the marketing nucleus that ClickFunnels is. You know what I mean? That actually scares me to death. So I have a few things coming out, a few things to help mitigate that. Things that I've watched and things that Russell has taught me one on one. As I sat back and I asked specific questions and realized like, "Oh, that's why you do this. That has nothing to do with you needing money over there is it?" He's like, "No. No, no, no, no." I was like, "That has everything to do with you staying connected and making sure that you've got the best of the best of the best." He's like, "Yeah." "Oh, man. Well, I'm going to do that." So just watch closely over the next few months because I am a funnel hacker. Anyway, so here's the reason why. It's because of offer creation. I've learned how to create offers. I'm actually using the same process that I teach as the Two Comma Club coach, the Secrets Master Class coach. This is not something where it's like I've read about it and now I feel like I can teach it. It's actually not that at all. I've been doing this for a long time and on my own before I worked at ClickFunnels, doing it for other people, doing it for their clients, doing it for their businesses, their customers, their product lines, and doing it for my own, right? Took a total hiatus, dropped pretty much everything except this podcast and a few other things as I started working for ClickFunnels. I will tell you that the two things that really made the jump, that it is making the jump more easy for me is that I've gotten much better at selling products. I'm sorry, selling offers rather than products. Then number two, I am far better at marketing and not just selling, okay? Those are the two major differences there. It's about two and a half, three years ago when I really learned the difference between marketing and selling, and then selling products versus offers, okay? When I sell offers, awesome. When I sell products, bad. I have to compete in price. When I do marketing, awesome. When I just do sales and no marketing, it's like starving leads kind of salesmen. It's not a fun place to be in at all. It's a terrible spot to be in. Anyway, so here's what I've done though, so I want you to know ... That's a long freaking intro. I'm so sorry. But anyway, here's what I've done, okay? What I did is I sat back and I thought, "What is the core of my business?" Now you think about what the core of your business is. Let's think about it. I think it's a ... Gosh, what book is it? I think it's Rework. Yeah, Rework. At a hotdog stand, can you sell hotdogs without relish? Yeah, you could, right? You could do that. Could you sell hotdogs, I mean, could you have a successful hotdog stand without having mustard? Yeah. What about buns? Technically, yeah, sure, you could. Could you have a successful hotdog stand without hotdogs? No, okay. At every single business and in every single value letter, there is a core aspect to the business. You got to figure out what that is, okay? If you don't know what that is, it's scary because you treat every product like the core and you shouldn't. That's where a lot of you will start getting in trouble and they start to ... they confuse offers and it causes a little schizophrenia inside of their customers because they don't know what the core of the offer is. They don't know what the core of the business is and what it's actually offering, okay? What I did is I figured out what the core of my business is and I placed it inside of a thousand dollar webinar which just kind of fits in the middle of the Value Ladder, okay? When I knew what the core was, I now could start testing it. First though, I wanted to make sure there would be traffic, ample traffic, ridiculous traffic, traffic in a way that I knew I would never have to worry about it again. So I started creating cool little free front-end products, and then I put them out there for free or I just put places over here or small little free plus shipping things or things ... You know what's funny? It exploded. It exploded. It made so much money on just this little dinky free crap where like barely any money kind of stuff. I was like, "What the heck?" We went on a cruise. We did all sorts of stuff. Anyway, it made almost matching my beginning salary with ClickFunnels for a very long time, which is hilarious. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, "Oh my gosh. There's something to this." It took me a solid two and a half, three years to really clarify the core and the niche, and find the niche and create it. Then what I did is I wanted to make sure that I would have an easy ascension. I know in past episodes I've said, "Hey, start at the core of the business and only sell that," which I did and I've done, but I have gone out and I've made sure there is an easy ascension. I've made sure that there's easy traffic in the front-end. I've made sure ... There's different strategies and ways to pull this thing off, okay? I've tested the core offer like crazy. It's not like I was skipping that step. I did not skip it at all. But anyway, so if you're going to jump ship, or if you're just trying to get your first thing off the ground, or if you're just trying to make a little extra money, I remember like my first goal was just to make an extra thousand dollars a month. If I could do that, I thought that I would die and be in heaven because I would be able to cover some bills. That was my goal four years ago, okay? It's crazy that how tiny that is. You can do that, okay? If you're trying to figure that out, number one, you've got to figure out your Value Ladder, okay? What I mean is figure out the core of the business, figure out a price point around a thousand dollars. Do not go cheaper, okay? And go start testing it. Go sell it like crazy. That's what I did. Then when I knew it could sell, I went in and found an additional traffic source, I proved out that traffic source, and that was a really easy very soft landing for me to land on as I jumped from ClickFunnels, okay? That Value Ladder, guys, is stronger than the majority of the business models I learned in my marketing degree. I feel like it gets misunderstood a lot of times. I'd go back and I read DotCom Secrets again if you don't quite understand that or whatever. Anyway, but that's how, that's why. I've got at least jitters. I've got all these, I mean, guys, I'm nervous. I am nervous, but there's complete safety in my head. Not just in my head, I've tested it. The fact that I've tested these things, there's a Value Ladder and I only am focusing on one step of the Value Ladder at a time. I've built up the front-ends. I've built up the back ends. I'm finishing up the core right now, and then I just got to turn the machine on. Everything else has been tested. I know it's literally about me just clicking a few buttons now which is great. If you're trying to figure out what to do next or if you're waking up and you're like, "Oh my gosh. Steven, there's so much data out there. There's so many things out there that I could go be doing right now. There's so much noise." What I'm telling you to do is go nail that Value Ladder. Figure out a core thousand dollar product or at least 500 bucks to two grand. Somewhere in there because then you don't need that many to actually change your life. Figure that out. If you don't know what it is yet, fine, don't let your brain leave that problem sitting still. That's where your head needs to settle. Be okay with the fact that it's unanswered still and just let it sit there, let it marinate, let it marinate, let it marinate. You sit there and you figure it out. Then you just focus on that one thing, go test it. It could be life changing. It was life changing for us. How crazy that that little tiny test that I did, guys, that had the complete ability to pay for the down payment on our house. We don't have a huge house, but it's not a tiny house. You know what I mean? It's because of that. Again, not showboating, I'm just telling you. I'm trying to illustrate the power of what it is that ... Anyway, so I totally have the jitters, okay? I'm nervous. I'm scared. There's a solid plan. I have I think eight different revenue sources identified. I'm just turning them on one by one now. They've been working great. Anyway, it's exciting... So what's cool about this, guys, is that from the ... This podcast is going to continue as I move past ClickFunnels, but what I really want to do is I'm trying to continue to podcast. I want to get to episode 100 before the end of the year. I don't think that's going to happen, but I'm not sure yet. But the reason why is because I want zero to 100 to be my journey with ClickFunnels. Then I want 101 beyond, I want to document my journey. I want to document what's going on, the process that I'm going through, being super transparent, letting you know like, "Hey, this Value Ladder worked really well over here. This one did terrible over here. This one and this one ..." You know what I mean? And just being super open so you guys can see like, "Look, Steven is hitting the freaking ground running, and he's on his own. This is how he's doing, and this is how he's doing it." You know what I mean? I feel like that would be crazy valuable, so I'm excited. I'm excited to keep doing these things, and I'm excited to keep pushing out. But I mean, there's totally been fear with it. I'm just trying to be true to myself so and it's going to be awesome so ... Anyway, I'd still be contracted as the Two Comma Club coach for Secrets Master Class which I'm very excited about. I'll still be very involved at ClickFunnels, actually, from that aspect. But I probably will never be an employee again in my life which is crazy. If you want that and you're still an employee or even if you're not, like get more clear in that Value Ladder, it's totally the key to blowing this thing up. We've noticed, especially people inside the inner circle, I've noticed other people ... Anyway, when someone has a clear Value Ladder, when they know what the core of their business is, when they know how they're actually making money ... What's funny is a lot of people don't know how they're making money, or it's haphazard, or they're like they think that the value is over here but really the market's giving them all the money in this area over here or whatever it is. What's funny about that whole thing is every time someone gets super clear on their Value Ladder, I'm going to give this free thing. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go read the book DotCom Secrets, okay? That would give you context for the whole thing, of everything I'm talking about right now, but it is. When I read that and I was laying in the dirt with my M16 in my right hand and DotCom Secrets in my left hand, no kidding, when I read that and I was laying on the security line reading that book, my brain was exploding because now I had a map. I wasn't making it up anymore. Suddenly, there was this logical progression that went from this product to that product to that product. Oh, sorry. That product doesn't fit, so I can't do it. There was so much clarity in my head. It made so much more sense. It actually was calming to me on what the path was that my business needed to take. So it's the same thing. If you got noise just like screaming in your head right now, you probably don't know where you're going, okay? That's probably it. You probably have no idea where you're going. I know exactly where I'm going as I leave ClickFunnels. I have known for a long time, okay? At least six months, very, very clearly. About a year and a half, kind of fuzzy. But especially in the last month, the clarity is ridiculous. So if you got the noise in your head, you have no idea where you're going, it's time to get back to the Value Ladder and think through what am I actually trying to sell, what is my offer, and then what funnel matches that offer . Go build that funnel type, okay? You stay on that funnel till it's profitable, and the whole game will get so much more clear in your head. You might actually have fun with that again, okay? Hopefully, you still are, but that's exactly what I'm trying to tell you is that this is it's a very fun game. It is a game. I look at it as a game. I have a lot of fun with it, but it doesn't need to be this super confusing thing. I was confused out of my butt in my entrepreneurship classes in college. I took a lot of them because I really wanted to be one. All except one that they offered. I did really well in every one of them. I was always that weird kid that has actually doing entrepreneurial things, and actually had businesses, and was actually making money versus all the other students that were just trying to get A's reading books and writing reports. What I can tell you is that there's a lot of information out there, but it's as vital as for you to learn a ton of stuff as it is for you to shield yourself from a lot of crap and noise out there... The way I've done it is through the Value Ladder. That's the entire way that I'm able to go do what I'm about to do in January. So anyways, guys, excited for the journey to continue. I'm excited to have you guys with me as I keep doing it. I'm excited to keep pushing forward as I take this huge next step, it's a big step. All right, guys. Talk to you later, bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today.

Let's Talk Gun ControlWhat is it Really?What can it do?Who does it help?Who does it hurt? 

I was talking to my neighbor one day and he told me they were selling their house, I asked why?  He said he and his wife were splitting up, I said, “CONGRATULATIONS!” Some of you may be like, “Shaun that’s horrible!”.  Is it?  Really? What if a break up was the best thing that ever Read More The post Episode 112 – You Just Broke Up? CONGRATULATIONS! appeared first on Shaun T Fitness.

Oh, you're such a narcissist. Really? What does this mean and how does this relate to our communication and relationships with others? We end this episode with a practical way to deepen relationships with others. www.marijopuleo.com  Music by Ephemeral Rift "When My Spirit Calls". 2011 Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ Verify at http://ccmixter.org/files/EphemeralRift/34006  

Today’s English expression and dialog: hit me up If you want free English lessons, hit me up. Really? What kinds of lessons? Two—speaking and listening. Great! I’ll email you today^^ Happy MONDAY!! Today's expression is excellent for a Monday. For any day, really! If you want to show how EXCELLENT you are, you can use today's expression. You are excellent, right? Then you need today's expression!!! No pressure! Have a SUPER week^^ Coach Shane PS. If you want free lessons, hit me up at www.letsmasterenglish.com/free!!! If you want our TODAY ONLY discount for DDM VIP, hit me up at dailydictationmembers AT gmail DOT com!!!     Subscribe on iTunes and get this English podcast EVERY DAY! PLEASE support my sponsors: (Get a free AUDIO BOOK!) Study English, FREE ENGLISH LESSONS, on our YouTube channels: Support the Let’s Master English team! On PayPal: Send to Or you can go here:   Today's Daily Easy English Expression PODCAST is UP and READY for YOU!! #LME #LearnEnglish #ESL

If you could conquer the world, would you want to? Really? What if you were given the opportunity to carry the one ring into Mordor? Could you? This is not exactly what Riley wanted to know but it is close enough. Max tries to be funny and fails. Hollywood is into cow porn. And Benji [...]

'Fundamentalist Progressivism' is on the rise. Really? What does a Fundamentalist look like, anyway?

Kelly: My next guest worked with his brother, and was so fierce and mean in his first career that some journalists called him and his brother the “Bruise Brothers”. He wasn't in the mafia. He was an NFL safety for the Miami Dolphins. Greetings! This is Kelly Coughlin. Voiceover:     Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast, Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now, your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly:             Hello! This is Kelly Coughlin. I am the CEO of BankBosun and program host. This is the first in a two-part interview series with a guest that I think is fascinating, interesting and frankly, he’s simply an enjoyable guy.   His name is Glenn Blackwood. And he is a Board Member and Principal of Equias Alliance, a bank-owned life insurance and nonqualified benefits consultant for regional and community banks.   What makes Glenn more fascinating and interesting than your average BOLI guy is Glenn is a former NFL athlete with the Miami Dolphins. And for all you bankers out there, who of you never reenacted the 5 seconds left, game on the line, opponent in the red zone, pass thrown your way, interception, game over, you win…   Well, this guy has been there, done that. And you all hear that not all games ended this way. You will win some and lose some, and learning to deal with that was part of being a professional athlete.   You know, in my mind, competition is the common denominator between sports and business. Certainly, professional sports are a business industry in and of themselves, but I am talking about the competition on the field of play in sports - the gridiron; and the competition on the field of play in business - the boardroom.   So what can be learned from professional sports about competing more effectively in business? And more specifically, what can our bank clients learn from professional sports and a professional athlete who knows business? That’s the purpose of this podcast.   Glenn has over 25 years of experience in the bank-owned life insurance and nonqualified benefit plans consulting and has worked with hundreds of banks in the design and construction of cost-effective solutions, to help banks compete and retain good talent. But before that, he was with the Miami Dolphins for about 10 years and I think he played middle linebacker for the Dolphins. Glenn, did I get that one right?   Glenn:            You got everything right except position. If I had played middle linebacker, I’d have gotten killed.   Kelly:             Oh that’s right, you played safety. Glenn:            Yes, I played safety.   Kelly:             All right. Great. Glenn, welcome! How are you doing?   Glenn:            Thank you. I am doing fine. Glad to be visiting with you.   Kelly:             Great! Thanks for coming on board. Glenn, I don't want to try to summarize your background, because you know yourself better than I know you. Just give us a summary of education, business background, family, where you living, how many kids?   Glenn:            My wife and I have been married for 34 years and we have 4 children and 4 grandchildren. I grew up in Texas and I grew in a football family. My dad played running back at Baylor in the late ‘40s. And then, I had two brothers and one sister.   My sister was a very good athlete as well. She played tennis and actually was one of the top tennis players in the city of San Antonio where we grew up. I’m the youngest of the four and my oldest brother Lyle played at TCU and went on and played in the NFL with a variety of teams, and actually ended up playing with me down in Miami for his last 5 years, which was really a kick.   Then I have another brother Mike, who was probably the best athlete of all of us, but he was just smaller than Lyle and I were. He was a tremendous baseball player, basketball player, golfer, football player, and he played at TCU and then primarily due to size restraint, he wasn’t able to play in the NFL.   I did really well academically in high school so back then there wasn’t as much educational counseling it’s kind of like, well, if you did really good in grades you went into med, you became a doctor.   And then I ended up going to the University of Texas out of my high school. Darrell Royal was kind enough to offer me a scholarship and there is a long story there, which I won’t bore you with. I was not his early on pick, because I was kind of small as well. And they ended up taking a chance on me and I think it worked out for them and certainly worked out for me.   I ended up starting three years there at the University of Texas. I was captain the last year of my playing there.   So I was in pre-med at the University of Texas. Actually, had completed those or was right in the process of completing, when the Dolphins drafted me. And the dean at one of the, I think it was the University of Texas Dental School, said "Look, you can come back and go to school anytime, but how many people get a chance to play in the NFL?"   So I really appreciated him having the candor because a lot of academic guys don’t really value the sports side. He was really a balanced guy and he said, “Go try the NFL. And you can always come back and go to school.”   And I was drafted by the Miami Dolphins in the 8th round and I ended up. So after 10 years in NFL, I wasn’t going to go back and try to redo that, and ended up playing 10 years for the Dolphins. And started my career there and ended my career there. I actually had nine seasons. I played in my last year but I was on injured reserve with a knee injury, which ultimately ended my career. So it was a good run.   Kelly:             Those were Don Shula years, I’m thinking, right?   Glenn:            That would be correct. That was 1979. I was drafted and I retired in April of 1989. I had all my years with coach Shula and that was a great experience from a standpoint of playing for a coach who had a grasp of the game and all phases of the game, as well as how to manage a football team. The head coach has to do a lot of stuff and Shula was probably as good at it as anybody I've ever seen.   Kelly:             And let’s see, Bob Griese would have been the quarterback in those years?   Glenn:            Actually, Griese was there the first two years I came to the Dolphins and then after that, we had a little stub period and then we drafted this kid out of Pittsburgh named Dan Marino and that was the end of that.   Kelly:             And that was the end of that. So you had, what, four years with Marino at the helm?   Glenn:            Danny came in at '83. So I actually had five years of playing with Danny.   Kelly:             Five years, yeah.   Glenn:            There is a great story there. He came up to my brother was in the locker room and my brother had been playing at that time for like 12 years, kind of the seasoned veteran. And here is the rookie Marino at his first start and Danny tells the story during his Hall of Fame speech.   My brother walked up to him and said, "Danny, look just relax. You are a great football player. You’ve got a great arm. You are going to be great in this league. Don't be nervous. Don't go out there with any anxiety. But just remember our whole season is riding on your shoulders."   Marino said, “Thanks a lot!” And he properly went out threw for a 356 yard game and so began the career of Dan Marino and probably one of the most amazing releases I’ve ever seen by a quarterback. He was so quick release. People say, “Oh, what it’s like playing with Danny?” And I’d said, “Well, you know I watched him from the sidelines so I was glad I wasn’t playing against him. But I practiced against him every day. And he made me a better football player because his release was so quick that you had to get a jump. You couldn't play around with him. You couldn’t give him any space because he could get that ball going with accuracy and velocity quicker than anybody I’ve ever seen.   Kelly:             I always have this incredible amount of respect for defensive players - safeties and cornerbacks - when they are in a situation where they know the game is on the line and then it’s the safety and the cornerback facing a really good quarterback and a really good receiver and there you are getting ready for the play. What’s that like? How do you get your mind in the game, where you’re not thinking "Oh my God! If I blow this, I’m done." Right? How do you get yourself prepared for that?   Glenn:            Well, I think part of it is that you realize that you are playing against professionals that are really good at what they do. So you’re going to get beaten some. And if you don't have a healthy understanding of that, then you’ll be a basket case in the NFL. There are those individual NFL players that are so talented…they relish that opportunity because they know they’re that good and they’re going to be able to rise to the occasion.   Most of the players in the NFL are really good athletes, but they are not of that ilk where they are just going to dominate every time. So it’s nerve racking and it is exhilarating when you rise to the occasion, and it’s a gut punch when you don’t. And I’ve been beat for touchdowns and I’ve intercepted passes as they were going in for touchdowns and I’ve stopped the play. And as they said in the Wide World of Sports, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. And it’s painful. But if you don't realize that that’s very much the way life is. You’re going to have some moments of exhilaration in life and you are going to have some pain parts in life as well. If you don't negotiate that well, then it can make for a tough time.   Most guys who have a difficult time with that don't last as long in the game, because they can't handle the pressure. I really felt like I prepared extremely well for a game. I had knowledge of my opponents. I knew what they liked to do. I knew what they like to do in certain downs and distances. And so I could it whittle it down.   I remember there was a play where we were playing with the Jets one time and they had a really good tight end, almost like a receiver guy a guy named Jerome Barkum, and I knew what pass route they were going to run. They ran it against me and Richard Todd threw the ball, completed it ind the end zone for touchdown. I knew exactly what they were going to run. I was just playing against a really talented receiver and a quarterback who put the ball in a place where only he could catch it.   Kelly:             Do you get in situations or have you seen players in situations where the fear factor of getting burned it almost creates a paralysis and they get so consumed by failing that they are almost slow to react cause they are so consumed by that?   Glenn:            There is no doubt you see that. You see it all the time. And that’s happened to me. Everybody has those moments where you know you say, “I don't want to be the weak link in this defense or this offense.” So absolutely, that happens. And I think some guys can live through that and come out on the back side and learn from it, and they mature and they grow through things. And then others, they never get a handle on it. And I think it hinders their career.   Look, I watched a lot of guys that were much better athletes than me, come into training camp every year and for some reason you know I was able to keep my job for you know ten years. A large part of it was because I really prepared a lot for the games and I had a good knowledge of the game, and I could coordinate our defense really well. The other part of it was that you kind of grow into that knowing that you’ve got to realize that you are going to have times where you make the play and there’s going to be times where it doesn’t work out the way you wanted to.   And that’s the game of football. You are playing with really good players on the other side of the line and that their job is to make you look bad, to beat you. They are good athletes. So sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Fortunately, down in Miami, we won a little bit more than we lost and that was good.   Kelly:             Ever been in that situation where there is just mismatch, you are making the wrong reads and then, they are picking on you?   Glenn:            Very seldom I saw myself in that position because I was not reading things right. It usually was just physical talent. I wasn’t the biggest, fastest guy out there. You are going to get in those situations – and sometimes the quarterbacks see it and sometimes they don't.   Kelly:             So after the NFL, you decided you wanted to get in to the bank-owned life insurance business. How did you end up picking this industry?   Glenn:            You know the reason I got into the business is that – it’s a long story but I will make it very short. I ran into a former adversary of mine in the NFL, a guy named Wally Hilgenberg. And Wally played linebacker for the Minnesota Vikings…and played sixteen years in the NFL. And he and a few other gentlemen had started this business and they called the company Bank Compensation Strategies. And that company placed the first BOLI product on a bank in Bloomington, Minnesota back in 1982. And it was kind of a quid pro quo. It was an insurance policy purchase to hedge a SERP or deferred compensation expense.   And that’s the way this whole business really got started. And Wally and I ran into each other at a fishing tournament..I’ve got a name for it but I won’t say it on this…but it’s basically the old guys fishing tournament..former retired guys from the NFL we were fishing down in Louisiana and I happened to sit next to Wally on a bus going to the fishing tournament. And he and I got to talking.   And I had prepared for after football by going to a university down in Miami and studying for a couple of years. I had worked in an investment banking firm because I knew they’d kick me out of football one day. And that’s probably the one thing if I could say for most athletes, especially professional athletes is you’ve got to prepare for the day they tell you you're not good enough anymore. Because it will happen. And when it does, the severing of that cord, of that tie is swift, and it’s brutal, and it’s fast and it’s painful.   If you are not economically prepared and educationally or vocationally prepared, it’s a very tough transition. Fortunately, I had done that and Wally and I got to talking and he said we’ve got this program where he had this BOLI asset and the benefit needs. And he explained it to me and what I saw in it, was I saw there were three real focused needs of expertise.   You had to have some sense mathematically. You had to have accounting grasp. You had to have a legal grasp, because there were agreements involved. And then, you had to understand the regulatory piece of it. And I loved the multitasking and juggling all those balls. That was very similar to what I did on the football field, because I ran our defense for most of the years I was playing down there in Miami.   And so, I had to know what the line backers were doing. I didn’t play their position but I had to know what they were doing, what their challenges were, and our defensive line, our corners. And then I had to when the offense came up and showed us a different formation, I had to change our defense and put us in the right one. I love Bill Arnsparger, my defense coordinator, who was one of the greatest defense coordinators in the NFL and he sat me down on the bleachers one time and said before I was going into my first start, where I was running the defense, and he said, “Glenn. I can only guess right half of time. You have to put the right defense the other half.”   And first of all, Bill was understating his capabilities, because he didn’t guess, number 1. He was well prepared. And most of the time, he gave us the right defense. But he gave me that freedom, to move and change if I saw something I didn’t like.   And I loved that ability, the need to understand all the different pieces of how a defense works together. And it is the same way in this business. You got to understand the legal, the accounting, the regulatory. And I love being able to juggle those balls and being able to put everything together and explain to a bank and a bank board how this works, how we can put it in, how it works from an accounting perspective, and tax and balance sheet and income statement, and then what we do to take care of them to caretake for them on an ongoing basis. I looked at it and I thought this is a good fit for my skill set and Wally wanted somebody in Florida and I said I think I found the right guy for you, and that's me.   Kelly:             Did you ever have to play up in Metropolitan Stadium in the winter?   Glenn:            I played in the Met Stadium but not in the winter. And by the time I played up there in the winter, we had a dome. But I did play in the Packers in the teens and I played in New England and Chicago and New York.   Kelly:             How tough was it from Miami because half your games were down or more than half of your games were down in the southern climate, right? But how tough was that?   Glenn:            It was hard because you had to adjust to the cold weather really, it hardens everything and it makes it harder to catch the ball. One of things coach Shula used to say is don’t overdress and he’d be yelling in the locker room, don’t overdress. His point out of that was you can be warm, you can put on enough stuff to get you warm, but you can't function. You had to get that balance of layering that allowed you to maintain some form of body heat but also be able to move fluidly in your uniform, etc. I think, actually, while it was tough on us, I think it was much harder for the northern teams in November to come down to Miami and play in 80 degree weather and it’s humid. I’ve watched teams literally just melt right before us because they just couldn't handle it in the second half.   Kelly:             Really? What about the Mile High Stadium? Did you ever must have played there?   Glenn:            We did play at Mile High Stadium. That just really wasn't a lot  of problem either for me. The lack of altitude was offset by the lack of humidity…and so you didn’t sweat a lot out there. It was invigorating…I loved playing in that. The worst place I ever played from a physical standpoint of trying to be able to breathe was when we played the Rams out in Anaheim one year and they had a stage four smog alert. It was a one o'clock game; they had to turn the lights on in the stadium. There was so much smog. My lungs burned for about 2 days after that game.   Kelly:             Let's finish with the dumbest thing you have ever done or said in your situation?   Glenn:            I remember one time I was so, we had a fourth and one the Buffalo Bills were going into our endzone. They had kind of a strong set towards me and I was a strong safety and I really wasn’t that big a guy, so my adrenaline was flowing and I thought this guy was going to try and kill me. And they’re going to try to run right over me. It was kind of what you talked earlier, where there’s a little bit of fear there and I didn't want to be the weak link in the defense. So I was geared up and as soon as the ball was snapped, I took off to run into that flanker, he just turned sideways and I whiffed on him and he was a tight end flanker, it was a real tight set. They ran a play action pass and you know when I whiffed on him, I basically stumbled and the guy I was supposed to be covering ran right into the end zone and they threw him a little pass for a touchdown.   Kelly:             Well, that finishes Part 1 of my interview with Glenn Blackwood. I started the podcast saying Glenn was fascinating, interesting and simply a good guy, and I think that came out in this interview. I personally just love hearing his war stories of the NFL.   In Part 2, we will talk more about his second career in business and focusing on his expertise in the bank-owned life insurance business. And true to his form, he is competing and winning in this business just like he did with the Miami Dolphins. Thanks.   Voiceover:     We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com. The audio content is produced and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination, with the help of Kevin Boyle.   Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin.   If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. And now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant.  The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier.

Curtis told a very sad story today about his family's Christmas traditions. He told us that everyone in his family buys their own gifts earlier in the year and then Katie takes them away from everyone and wraps them up. The family doesn't get to see/have their gifts (that they bought for themselves!) until Christmas morning. Really? What the heck!? Also on the show we went through a list of things that stress you out, we talked to Jeff Musial the animal guy that will be at Kidabaloo, and we look back in time at the many different faces of our office building. All of that, Curtis' Whatever, and much more on today's show!

"Have you ever read the Declaration of Independence? Not just the “all men are created equal” stuff - have you read the whole thing? If you have, then you know that most of the Declaration is simply a list of complaints, bad things that the colonists said that the king was doing. And perhaps you’ve noticed that one of those complaints accused King George III of encouraging “domestic insurrections?” Really? What insurrections? And by whom? Rob Parkinson of Binghamton University will tell us all about it."  Your Weekly Constitutional is hosted by Constitutional Law Professor Stewart Harris. Stewart teaches Constitutional Law at the Appalachian School of Law (ASL) in Grundy, Virginia. In 2011, Professor Harris created a public radio show, Your Weekly Constitutional, which is produced at WETS-FM, the NPR affiliate in Johnson City, Tennessee, and syndicated nationally.  YWC is underwritten by the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at Montpelier, the historic home of the Father of the Constitution, James Madison. Friday 3:00 PM EDT/Noon PST on Coffee Party Radio

Living the Olympic dream! If you were in the Olympics, what sport would you like to compete in? Bring it on, and bring it on in Portuguese.DialogueA: Se você pudesse ser atleta nas olimpíadas, em que esporte seria? B: Bom, já que estamos sonhando com o impossível, acho que seria o atletismo. A: Sério? E em quais provas você entraria? B: Pra mim seria muito legal correr na 100m rasos ou talvez revezamento 4x100m. A: Concordo, e se a gente corresse juntas eu poderia passar o bastão pra você. B: Claro. E juntas poderíamos subir a rampa e cantar o hino nacional!A: If you could be an athlete in the Olympics, what sport would it be? B: Well, if we are dreaming about the impossible, I think it would be running track. A: Really? What events would you like to enter into? B: For me it would be cool to run in the 100 meters or the 4x100 relay. A: Agreed, if we ran together, I could pass the baton on to you. B: Of course. And we could climb on the podium and sing the National Anthem.

Living the Olympic dream! If you were in the Olympics, what sport would you like to compete in? Bring it on, and bring it on in Portuguese.DialogueA: Se você pudesse ser atleta nas olimpíadas, em que esporte seria? B: Bom, já que estamos sonhando com o impossível, acho que seria o atletismo. A: Sério? E em quais provas você entraria? B: Pra mim seria muito legal correr na 100m rasos ou talvez revezamento 4x100m. A: Concordo, e se a gente corresse juntas eu poderia passar o bastão pra você. B: Claro. E juntas poderíamos subir a rampa e cantar o hino nacional!A: If you could be an athlete in the Olympics, what sport would it be? B: Well, if we are dreaming about the impossible, I think it would be running track. A: Really? What events would you like to enter into? B: For me it would be cool to run in the 100 meters or the 4x100 relay. A: Agreed, if we ran together, I could pass the baton on to you. B: Of course. And we could climb on the podium and sing the National Anthem.

Our computers and mobile devices are easy things to hide behind.  People can use fake names on their rude comments or forget that the comment is actually going to land in front of a real person. Have you every been at the end of some online treatment that left you thinking “REALLY? What did I do... Read More The post #113 – An Alarming Digital Trend that Needs to Stop appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.

A simple lesson that Russell learned from his carpet cleaner. ---Transcript--- Hey, everybody. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to an amazing, beautiful outside day, and a new episode of “Marketing in Your Car”. I just want to share. I had something that made me smile over the last day or so. I thought I would bring it up to you guys. As you know, we had a big, huge event out here in Boise for the last four days. It was awesome. People loved it. It’s some of the best stuff we’ve ever done, and I’m really proud of it. One of the things we talked a lot about was funnels. We talked a lot about how to structure your funnel the right way, how to make a lot of money, and one thing I taught is that the concept of that amateurs focus on the front end, and smart business owners like you and me focus on the back end. How do we structure that? How do we put more of our effort over there? After that, I had a funny experience. We’ve been getting our carpets cleaned for probably the last three years from this guy, and he’s a really nice guy. My wife always talks about him, but I’d never had a chance to meet him. So he was coming over to our house, and he was cleaning the carpet again. I’d say this is the sixth or seventh time we’ve hired him to clean the carpets. He’s made some pretty good money off of us. So I was talking to him, and he said, “Yeah, so you used to own CitySmart.com, right?” to which I said, “Yeah.” “City Smart”used to be, back before Groupon came out. When Groupon was only nine cities, we saw what they were doing, so we  launched a Groupon here in Boise called City Smart, and we were growing it and everything, and then Groupon and Living Social came in and beat us out, unfortunately, but it was a lot of fun. Supposedly we ran his offer on City Smart, and I asked him, “That’s interesting. How did it go for you?” and he goes, “It was horrible, the worst thing I ever did.” I said, “Really? What happened?” He said, “Well, I did it, and from that I ended up getting like, I don’t know, 150 customers. I went and cleaned the houses, and I made no money off of it. It was a complete waste of my time and energy.” I said, “Really? That’s interesting. So how did my wife meet you?” He goes, “Well she bought one of the things off of City Smart.” I was like, “Interesting,” and then I just kind of left it there, to see if he would pick up what I was laying down, and he totally missed it [laughs]. I just want for all of you guys who actually understand marketing and business to smile with me, because that guy didn’t realize that that little cheapy thing he’d run on City Smart, that at least us, if nobody else, at least us – we came in so far, and have hired him at least six or seven times since then, probably spent $1,000 or more with him, and we will continue to keep doing that, because he’s a nice guy and does a great job. I’m guessing those other 150 people we gave him – clients that we drove to him – I’m guessing a big percentage of those guys probably hired him to come back again and again. I would bet that if he looked at his stats from that City Smart promotion, it was probably the best thing that his business ever had – ever. And that wasn’t even considering the fact that he’s a horrible sales person. If it wasn’t for my wife and the fact that when she meets somebody she likes, she just keeps hiring them over and over and over again, but he never follows up. If you look at one of my buddies, Joe Polish, he teaches carpet cleaners how to  build these big businesses, and what he teaches carpet cleaners is that when someone comes in, get them on a continuity program where you go back every three months and clean their carpet. If he was to pitch us a maintenance fee, where we paid him ninety-seven bucks a month and then three times a year, he came and cleaned our carpets at a discount, we would have done it, and I’m betting out of those 150 other people, a lot of other people would have done it as well [laughs]. It just made me smile. It’s unfortunate, but it made me laugh, that someone like that, who got all of these leads from us was upset about the experience, whereas it’s exactly what’s fueling his business right now. I just want all of you guys to know, and I want to make sure all of you guys understand that I know [laughs] that amateurs focus on the front end. I would rather lose $20, $30, $40, $50 on the front end sale if it acquires a customer, because that customer, as you’ve seen with my wife and I and the carpet cleaning did buy, and we’ve continued to buy it over and over and over again. So for you guys, think about your businesses. What are you being short-sighted on? What are you freaking out on because the front end is not quite right? What could you change around to make it a lot better for you and for your business? I’m at the office. It’s a beautiful day. I’m excited. Remember, amateurs focus on the front end, and you guys, as people inside DotComSecrets and inside the “Marketing in Your Car” podcasts, you understand that we focus on the back end. That’s it for today, you guys. Have a great day, and we’ll talk to you guys all again, soon.

Hi, it’s Jackie Ulmer and welcome this Q and A edition of the Street Smart Wealth, Profit in Your PJs Podcast   This is show 21 and  Show notes can be found at JackieUlmer.com/QA021   Today’s question is -  How do I overcome call reluctance?   SPONSOR   Is it really possible to build a network marketing business online? to have people come to me, already sold on a business? Yes, and you can Visit SocialMediaBackstagePass.comfor details on this complete coaching and training program.   Today’s question is…. How to overcome Call Reluctance? Emailed in by PJ Stratford   So, PJ, here are some thoughts!     ANSWER   What are you reluctant about?    It usually comes down to fear.   This gets to the heart of it. Is it telling people you are building a network marketing business and asking them to take a look and give you their opinion?     What is it REALLY? What is the fear?     Let’s take a look at some things that might help -   What’s your burning, compelling why?   Is it stronger than your fear of what others think?   Do you know what to say? Have you practiced it? Are you worried about sounding like an idiot?   Get ideas at StreetSmartScripts.com   Are you aware that you are offering an opportunity and not asking for a favor?   What is the worst thing that could happen and would you survive it?   Your ego is in the way - let your ego take the hit - meaning be strong enough in your own belief in yourself that you are undaunted by anyone else’s lack of education around what you are doing.   Our ego can direct how we interpret everything that goes on in our daily experience. We know that our perception of any event will determine what we get from that experience. Was it positive or negative? Was it an opportunity or setback? The answers depend upon our perception.   Remember - other people’s opinions. You can’t offer an opinion on what I am doing unless you have at least taken a look at it and can talk about it in an educated way. When you are wiling to do that, then we can have a conversation!   Show notes - JackieUlmer.com/QA021   Good luck in your business   Do you have a question? Ask it at JackieUlmer.com/questions   Hey, if you’re looking for 8 easy steps to create and build your network marketing business online then Grab the free guide over at ProfitInYourPjsNow.com    Until next time - remember this - Hesitation Never Cashed a Check!  

Thug is a Python low-interaction honeyclient. All too often in Incident Response you have logs that indicate a client was exploited by an exploit kit and compromised, but retrieving a copy of the the applicable piece of malware is difficult. Thug is designed to mimic a vulnerable web browser and follow the exploit kit back to its malware. But with all that in the books, the conversation quickly turn to porn, smut and "sextortion." Yup, this was the first time that word had ever been uttered on the Paul's Security Weekly, which required a visit to Urban Dictionary. As Allison noted, you can now get your very own sextortion coffee mugs, bumper stickers and magnets. The article described talks about how someone hacks into girls' computers (password guessing?), finds risqué photos and then uses those to get the girls to either send more pictures or go on video. Another man was recently charged with a similar crime where he'd talk to boys in IRC, get them to reveal themselves in a video chat where he'd then grab screenshots and use that against the victims. Lessons learned? If you are going to take a nude picture of yourself, DON'T INCLUDE YOUR FACE! But if push comes to shove, profit off it. As Paul said, it worked for the Kardashians and the Hiltons. Did you know you're 182 times more likely to get malware on a news site than on a porn site? China hacked the New York Times! Or did they? Wait, China did it? How in the world did a country of one billion people hack the NY Times. Isn't that the same thing as my blog getting hacked by the kid down the street and saying "The United States did it!" Maybe it was someone in China, maybe it was someone hired by Chinese government officials maybe it was someone who does things the same way that Chinese hackers have done it in the past. But as Allison and Jack noted, it's good that the Times is being so public with the situation. As we begin adding more technology to embedded devices like televisions, we're not paying any additional attention to the security on them. Researchers are reporting having seen televisions and CCTV cameras pop up in their honeypots. Paul talked about fifty million Universal Plug and Play network devices being open to packet attack. As he noted: "This is not a shock to me at all. UPnP is horrible, there just had to be a flaw in there somewhere. HD Moore found some, and turns out there are millions of vulnerable devices on the Internet. I am so happy to see this research come to light, it needs to happen. Free tools exist to check for the vulnerabilities, and details are forthcoming." Speaking of forthcoming, the new version of Backtrack Linux is coming... Oracle now cares about fixing the flaws in Java. Really? What could have possibly spurred this on? Maybe when the US Department of Homeland Security is telling everyone to stop using it? Maybe when they say they're patching the flaws and then a few minutes later, someone already has a new vulnerability for it? Good to know that this is what it takes for Oracle to finally care about security. Now imagine if such a company were involved in things like databases? Oh wait. Wrapping this up with just a few more things. Paul talks about an XSS vulnerability in the VMware Management Interface. Free environment snapshots? Yes please! Allison brings up the new law making it more illegal to jailbreak your mobile device if the carrier says you can not. But what about if you buy an unlocked phone for full price? That's ok, right? Oh yeah, that grad student who was expelled from a Canadian university for telling them about their bad security practices? Well, it's actually a little worse. According to his expulsion letter, he was twice caught and admitted to using SQL injection to break into their informational systems. Yeah, that's a little more than just informing the school about their bad security practices, that's rubbing their nose in it. So lesson for the day, if you're paying someone thousands of dollars for a graduate degree, don't rub their nose in their bad security practices and expect to stick around. Did you hear that Security BSides Rhode Island tickets are now on sale? Get them at http://bsidesri.eventbrite.com

Jokes You Can Use: While walking to the ninth hole, one psychiatrist said to his colleague, would you believe that yesterday I had a patient who claimed he heard music every time he put on his hat?” “Really? What did you do?” The psychiatrist answered, “I took it away and removed the band.” A man was on a beach when he discovered an old lamp in the sand. He rubbed it and a genie popped out. The genie said "I will grant you three wishes. The only condition is that you cannot wish for more wishes." "Alright," said the man, "I wish for more genies." A tribal farmer watching a Tarzan movie rushed out of the hall the moment a tiger appeared on screen, advancing menacingly towards the audience. The gatekeeper trying to stop him argued that it's only a movie, to which the tribal replied: “I know it’s a movie, you also know it is, but does the tiger know"? Q: How do Eskimos have babies? A: They keep on rubbing their noses together until the little boogers come out. On Our Mind: mthman Ron King Hey @MSMatters...do you remember the #NMSA session about HOTS question stems on colored paper in the teacher's line of sight? #midleved Eileen Award: Liz N. and Tim H. Thanks for the kind words. Advisory: Middle School Science Minute by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com) Part 3: This middle school science minute is about the ELA common core standards in Reading and their relationship to science. The four areas of reading include: key ideas and details; craft and structure; integration of knowledge and ideas; and range of reading and level of text complexity. In this podcast, we look at the three reading standards that relate to science in grades 6 - 8 in the area of integration of knowledge and ideas, along with the range of reading and level of text complexity. From the Twittervse: Don’t forget to join the conversation on MiddleTalk and Twitter at #midleved this Friday at 8:00 pm EST. News: http://www.minddump.org/you-have-the-same-hours-per-day-as-helen-kell https://www.sifteo.com/product Coming this summer. Show & Tell These results suggest children are extremely sensitive to the subtleties of a teaching scenario, Schulz says: What matters is not if children are shown a function, but how they are shown that function. If they believe that an informed teacher has taught them everything, they will be less motivated to explore. http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/06/30/if-students-believe-that-a-teacher-has-taught-them-everything-they-will-be-less-motivated-to-explore/ The original post: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/miot-dsd063011.php What should students be able to do with technology in grade school? http://www.edutopia.org/blog/elementary-technology-skills-mary-beth-hertz Resources: Fur.ly http://fur.ly/ Brain Rules http://www.brainrules.net/about-brain-rules Brightstorm Thousands of FREE video resources for Math & Science. One neat thing is that you can search by textbook. There is also Test Prep materials. Includes transcripts for the videos. http://brightstorm.com/ National Archives Document of the Day A different historical document every day. Includes support links. Also a mobile app is available. http://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/ Knovio: Animaps Create and view beautifully informative animated maps, for free! http://www.animaps.com/#!home Kodu Kodu is a visual programming language made especially for creating games. Kodu’s language is entirely icon-based, fairly easy to learn, and aimed at kids 9 to 17. It works on PCs and on the Xbox. http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/07/students-create-games-that-focus-on-global-issues/ Show Me iPad app. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/showme-interactive-whiteboard/id445066279?mt=8 Web Spotlight: Snag Films: Red, White & Blue Voting. 35 minutes. http://learning.snagfilms.com/film/journeys-through-the-red-white-and-blue Events & Happenings:

I am a Man...of Fearlessness. Are you fearless? Really? What does it mean to be a fearless man of God?