Podcast appearances and mentions of Robert Wagner

Le 29 novembre 1981, l'actrice américaine Natalie Wood est retrouvée noyée près de l'île Santa Catalina. Elle passait le week-end sur un yacht avec son mari Robert Wagner, l'acteur Christopher Walken et le capitaine Dennis Davern. La veille au soir, après une soirée très arrosée, des voisins entendent une femme crier à l'aide vers 23 heures. Wagner et Walken affirment n'avoir rien entendu. La disparition de Natalie est constatée vers 23 heures, mais l'alerte n'est donnée qu'à 1 h 15. Son corps est retrouvé à 7 h 44, vêtu d'une chemise de nuit et d'une veste. La mort est classée comme noyade accidentelle malgré des contusions et une alcoolémie élevée. Trente ans plus tard, en 2011, l'enquête est rouverte. Le capitaine révèle qu'une dispute a éclaté et que Wagner a retardé les recherches. Le certificat de décès est modifié en 2012 : « noyade et facteurs indéterminés ». Des ecchymoses au bras, poignet et cou, antérieures à la noyade, relancent les soupçons. En 2018, Wagner devient « personne d'intérêt » mais n'est jamais inculpé. Plus de quarante ans après, le mystère demeure Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Na madrugada de 29 de novembro de 1981, Natalie Wood uma das maiores estrelas de Hollywood estava a bordo do iate Splendour ao lado do marido, Robert Wagner, e do ator Christopher Walken quando algo aconteceu. Horas depois, seu corpo foi encontrado nas águas próximas à Ilha Catalina. Mais de quatro décadas depois, contradições, novas investigações e perguntas sem resposta continuam alimentando um dos maiores mistérios da história de Hollywood. Neste episódio, analisamos a carreira e tudo o que se sabe sobre a última noite de Natalie Wood. ❤ Torne-se um apoiador pelo Apoia.se ou pela Orelo❤ Segue a gente no ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ e no Youtube agora com vídeos dos casos Pesquisa e roteiro: Marcela Souza Edição: Alexandre LimaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sylvia Likens. Zodiac. Le Golden State Killer. Elisa Lam. Les meurtres de la Ligne 13. Alison Botha. Éric Borel. Les frères Menendez. Vingt-et-une affaires criminelles réunies en une seule compilation marathon de plus de deux heures. Des tueurs en série aux disparitions non résolues, des cold cases américains aux faits divers français, ce podcast horreur basé sur faits réels est une plongée immersive dans les dossiers les plus terrifiants du true crime.

Don and Tom tackle rising bond yields and the anxiety they create for investors, explaining why higher bond yields mean lower bond prices and why recent moves in long-term Treasury rates have sparked comparisons to the period before the 2008 financial crisis. They discuss inflation fears, interest rate policy, and why investors should be cautious about reading too much into bond market movements as predictors of future stock returns. The conversation reinforces the role of bonds as portfolio stabilizers rather than return generators, particularly for retirees. They also answer a listener question about covered-call ETFs, explaining how option premiums create income, why the strategy isn't “magic money,” and the tradeoffs between yield, complexity, and risk. The episode closes with a correction involving Robert Wagner and Robert Conrad and a humorous detour into reverse-mortgage celebrity spokespeople.0:05 Bond investing versus “bondage” and why bonds are suddenly making headlines1:07 Rising Treasury yields and concerns about the bond market2:30 Why investors compare today's bond yields to conditions before 20083:00 Bond prices, bond yields, and the inverse relationship between them3:51 Inflation fears, energy prices, and their impact on bonds5:50 Global bond market pressures and rising yields in Britain7:06 Federal Reserve rate expectations and inflation control7:51 Lessons from the bond market collapse of 20228:36 Can bond market activity predict future recessions or market declines?10:06 Why geopolitical events often fail as market-timing signals10:31 Why own bonds when long-term returns have been disappointing?11:03 The role of bonds in diversification and retirement portfolios12:06 Using bonds as a spending reserve during stock market declines13:07 Listener question: How covered-call ETFs generate income14:18 Covered-call basics and selling options against stocks17:26 Risks, costs, and limitations of covered-call strategies19:38 Evaluating JEPI and the tradeoff between yield and volatility21:22 Listener correction: Robert Wagner versus Robert Conrad24:01 Reverse-mortgage spokespeople and celebrity rankings25:34 Why making a top-five list may be life's greatest achievementQuestions? Comments? Click!

Ben and Eugene discuss Irwin Allen’s second attempt to get City Beneath the Sea going with this TV movie and seeming back door pilot. They discuss the survivability of an asteroid strike in the Pacific Ocean, Robert Wagner’s evil ‘tache, the fact that the unsuspecting people of Pacifica were always going to get saddled with the H128, and wonder if the US President’s name is Nelsonson. 00:00:34 Introduction to City Beneath the Sea00:07:18 Erwin Allen’s Recycling Tactics00:24:53 The H-128 Dilemma00:28:08 Asteroid Impact and Its Consequences00:29:50 The Science of Destruction00:33:52 Matthews’ Desperate Decision00:47:45 Behind the Scenes: Writers and Directors01:03:07 Final Thoughts on City Beneath the Sea Next Week: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Twiki is Missing Follow this blog on Mastodon or the Fediverse to receive updates directly in your feed.

Sommerpause bei Dynamo Dresden, aber nicht bei uns. Jens und Tino haben sich zum ausführlichen Interview mit Dynamos Sportgeschäftsführer Sören Gonther getroffen. Der 39-Jährige spricht über sein erstes halbes Jahr bei der SGD, über die starke Rückrunde der Schwarz-Gelben, die zum Klassenerhalt führte, und blickt voraus auf den Transfersommer. Wie groß sind die Chancen, dass die Leihspieler zurückkommen? Welche Prioritäten hat Gonther bei der Kaderplanung? Und wie soll Dynamo die neue Saison in der 2. Bundesliga angehen? Außerdem sprechen Tino und Jens über die ersten Kaderveränderungen und über den Sommerfahrplan von Dynamo Dresden.

Von Platz 18 auf Platz 11: Dynamo Dresden hat eine Achterbahnfahrt in dieser Zweitliga-Saison hinter sich. Jens und Tino ziehen Bilanz mit Patrick Franz (BILD, MDR) und Frank Noack (Lausitzer Rundschau). Trainer Thomas Stamm erklärt, wann er wusste, dass es klappen wird, wie wichtig Sören Gonther war und was die Mannschaft in der Rückrunde anders gemacht hat. Außerdem sprechen wir über Gewinner und Verlierer der Saison, die Zukunft der Leihspieler und was Dynamo im Transfersommer vorhat.

Dynamo Dresden hat es geschafft. 2:1 gegen Kiel, der Klassenerhalt perfekt. Die Mannschaft beendet die Saison auf Platz elf. Zur Winterpause noch Letzter, jetzt gerettet. Vincent Vermeij trifft doppelt, Tim Schreiber hält einen Elfmeter, Stefan Kutschke wird in seinem letzten Spiel emotional mit einer Choreo verabschiedet. Jens und Tino sprechen über den Saisonabschluss und lassen die Stimmen vom Platz zu Wort kommen: Kutschke, Vermeij, Schreiber und Robert Wagner erzählen, wie sich dieser Tag angefühlt hat.

No episódio da semana do Arauto Saúde, recebemos o ortopedista e traumatologista Robert Wagner para uma conversa sobre as dores que podem se intensificar nos períodos de frio e os cuidados necessários para manter a qualidade de vida. O episódio também aborda a importância da atividade física, da alimentação e dos hábitos que contribuem para a saúde e o bem-estar no dia a dia.

No episódio da semana do Arauto Saúde, recebemos o ortopedista e traumatologista Robert Wagner para uma conversa sobre as dores que podem se intensificar nos períodos de frio e os cuidados necessários para manter a qualidade de vida. O episódio também aborda a importância da atividade física, da alimentação e dos hábitos que contribuem para a saúde e o bem-estar no dia a dia.

Jens und Tino analysieren das 1:2 von Dynamo Dresden in Braunschweig. Sie sprechen über viele vergebene Chancen, unter anderem den verschossenen Elfmeter von Stefan Kutschke. Kutschke beendet seine Karriere im Sommer. Das hat er in der Vorwoche verkündet. Die beiden diskutieren seine mögliche künftige Funktion im Verein. Dazu gibt es Stimmen von Kutschke, Robert Wagner und Trainer Thomas Stamm. Außerdem im Gespräch Sky-Kommentator Hartmut von Kameke über das Saisonfinale in der 2. Bundesliga. In acht von neun Spielen geht es am Sonntag um 15:30 Uhr noch etwas. Hartmut analysiert die Konstellation für Dynamo Dresden gegen Holstein Kiel.

CAS 5-12-1-2026 Robert Wagner-USD Softball Coach by Calling All Sports

Dr. Robert Wagner, Senior Medical Director and Principal Investigator at CTI's Clinical Research Center, shares more about clinical trial operations at research sites.  Reflecting on nearly three decades in internal medicine and hospital‑based care, Dr. Wagner shares his path from patient care into clinical research, how that experience shapes his approach as an investigator, and why strong research sites are critical to trial quality and outcomes. The conversation also touches on the day‑to‑day realities of running trials and how site operations, technology, and patient‑centered practices continue to evolve. 01:00 His past experiences and current role as a Principal Investigator at CTI.03:00 How clinical experience shaped his transition into research.05:30 Daily responsibilities and the importance of sites.08:30 Technology, recruitment, and patient access.10:45 Guidance for physicians and patients; the future of clinical research.

Tino Meyer und Jens Umbreit sprechen mit Tim Schlegel (BILD) über den 1:0-Heimsieg von Dynamo Dresden gegen den 1. FC Kaiserslautern. Sie analysieren die abgezockte Leistung der Mannschaft bei brütender Hitze. Tim lobt die reife Vorstellung, bei der Vincent Vermeij das Goldene Tor in der 68. Minute erzielte. Die drei diskutieren die Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung für den Klassenerhalt der SGD. Dynamo braucht einen Punkt in Braunschweig oder muss auf Patzer von Düsseldorf und Fürth hoffen. Die Runde spricht über die Bedeutung der Winterneuzugänge für den Erfolg. Tim kürt Robert Wagner bereits zum Spieler der Rückrunde. Sie diskutieren die Zukunft von Ben Bobzien, Robert Wagner und Kofi Amoako. Dazu gibt es Stimmen von Vincent Vermeij, Robert Wagner, Jonas Sterner, Jakob Lemmer, Tim Schreiber und Trainer Thomas Stamm.

"It was very dangerous to be a friend of the Harts because... yes, they were always getting killed." -- Stefanie PowersGet ready for a masterclass in sophisticated glamour!In this episode of 80s TV Ladies, hosts Susan Lambert Hatem and Sharon Johnson sit down with the incomparable Stefanie Powers. Known to millions as the elegant and erudite Jennifer Hart from the smash-hit series Hart to Hart, Stefanie redefined what a TV marriage could look like alongside co-star Robert Wagner—showing us a partnership that was sexy, equal, and genuinely fun.But Stefanie's legacy goes far beyond the "chauffeur and limousines" of the 80s. We dive into her history as a true television pioneer, including her groundbreaking role as the first woman to lead an hour-long series in the 1966 spinoff The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. Whether you're a die-hard fan of the Harts or a lover of television history, this conversation is a sparkling look back at one of the most iconic eras of TV.THE CONVERSATIONTHE FIRST LADY OF ACTION: Exploring Stefanie's groundbreaking role in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. as the first woman to headline her own hour-long action series.THE LOVE OF HER LIFE: Led her to her 45-year lifetime legacy of conservation. Creating the William Holden Wildlife Foundation to honor and expand the work of William Holden.THE GREATEST STRIKE EVER: Getting the call from Aaron Spelling, writer Tom Mankiewicz, and Robert Wagner – and the lucky newspaper strike that led to her starring in Hart to Hart, instead of going to Broadway with Stacy Keach.HART TO HART: Diving into the "tennis match" rapport with Robert Wagner and the creation of a TV marriage built on equality, sexy banter, and high-stakes mystery.SOFTBALL COACH TO SHOWRUNNER: Stories of Sidney Sheldon, Leonard Goldberg, and how Aaron Spelling was Stefanie's softball coach before he became the legendary showrunner and creator of so many hit shows, they often called ABC, Aaron's Broadcasting Company.THE LA SCALA “THREE ROOMS: A look at the old Hollywood social hierarchy when Hollywood was a very small town.KIDDIES BALLET CLASS: The surprising shared history between Stefanie, Natalie Wood, and Jill St. John.STUDIO SYSTEM SURVIVOR: Stefanie reflects on her early days at MGM, being one of the last contract players, and working under the rigorous eye of brilliant - and monstrous - Jerome Robbins in West Side Story.WORKING WITH “FREEWAY”: Behind-the-scenes secrets of their canine co-star, including the hilarious truth about how they made such a friendly dog look like a fierce protector.A GLOBAL LEGACY: Stefanie discusses her 45-year journey as Founder and President of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation and her hands-on work in conservation and education in Kenya.SUCCESS VS. FAILURE: A candid look at why the industry prepares artists for failure, but rarely gives them the tools to navigate massive, life-changing success.WILLIAM HOLDEN WILDLIFE FOUNDATION: Why Stefanie believes that if you have a passion for a cause, you can't wait for others—you have to be the one to step up. “Participation is not just asked for, it is required.”AUDIO-OGRAPHYWatch episodes of Hart to Hart on Tubi or Roku.Catch The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. on DVD at Ebay.  Or find it at Internet Archive.Learn more about the work of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation at WHWF.orgGo directly to the WHWF DONATE page. Check out her official website: StefaniePowersOnline.comFollow Ms. Powers on Facebook and Instagram.Watch Stefanie guest star in The Rockford Files episode, The Real Easy Red Dog at Apple TV.VITAL READINGCheck out Democracy Docket here.Learn more about the ACLU here.Make sure you're registered to VOTE at Vote.orgPROMO DEALSGet 21% OFF on awesome sheets and pajamas at COZY EARTH.Be sure to use the promo code: 80STVLADIES.Happy Shopping!MARCH 8TL DEALS BLOCK:80s TV Ladies deals and discounts:Cozy Earth (21% Off)

No episódio da semana do Arauto Saúde, recebemos o ortopedista e traumatologista Robert Wagner para um bate-papo sobre saúde musculoesquelética e qualidade de vida.Uma conversa importante sobre prevenção, cuidados com o corpo e os caminhos para viver com mais movimento e bem-estar.

No episódio da semana do Arauto Saúde, recebemos o ortopedista e traumatologista Robert Wagner para um bate-papo sobre saúde musculoesquelética e qualidade de vida.Uma conversa importante sobre prevenção, cuidados com o corpo e os caminhos para viver com mais movimento e bem-estar.

Dynamo Dresden hat gegen Hertha BSC mit 0:1 verloren und bleibt im Abstiegskampf der 2. Bundesliga unter Druck. Jens Umbreit und Tino Meyer analysieren mit Fußball-Kommentator Corni Küpper die Partie und die schweren Ausschreitungen vom Samstagabend. In der 19. Minute stürmten Fans beider Lager auf den Rasen und beschossen sich mit Pyrotechnik. Schiedsrichter Sven Jablonski unterbrach das Spiel für rund 20 Minuten. Sportlich vergab Vincent Vermeij in der 77. Minute einen Elfmeter gegen die in Unterzahl spielenden Berliner. Nur drei Minuten später traf Marten Winkler zum 1:0 für Hertha. Dynamo erholte sich von diesem Doppelschock nicht mehr. Dazu gibt es Stimmen von Vincent Vermeij, Stefan Kutschke, Robert Wagner, Tony Menzel und Trainer Thomas Stamm. In der Folge gedenken wir an Hansi Kreische. Sportjournalist Uwe Karte erinnert im Interview mit Jens an Dynamos Ehrenspielführer, der in der Nacht zum Mittwoch im Alter von 78 Jahren verstorben war.

Everything you want in a cheesy disaster...disaster. If you've ever wondered what would happen if a disaster movie inhaled a gallon of jet fuel, ignored every known law of physics, and then sprinted straight into absurdity with a grin, The Concorde... Airport '79 is your answer. This is high “so bad it's good” cinema - a movie so committed to escalating nonsense that it becomes a kind of accidental masterpiece. It doesn't just jump the shark; it straps the shark to the Concorde and fires it into international airspace. The effects are gloriously, unapologetically cheesy. Miniatures wobble, explosions bloom like overcooked popcorn, and the Concorde itself seems to operate on a proprietary fuel source called “plot convenience.” Missiles zigzag like confused bottle rockets, fighter jets materialize only to be obliterated moments later, and physics as a concept is treated less like a rulebook and more like a vague suggestion. The sheer number of McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs that get blown out of the sky “just because” is almost impressive - like the movie is trying to win a bulk discount on destruction. Then there's Robert Wagner as the villain, a man so dedicated to covering up his crimes that he creates exponentially worse problems at every turn. It's like watching someone try to put out a grease fire with dynamite. His master plan hinges on an evil corporation deploying what may be the least effective missile system ever conceived - an instrument so catastrophically unreliable that it becomes the film's secret comedic MVP. Every time it fires, you're less worried about the Concorde and more curious about what unintended target it'll embarrassingly fail to destroy next. And presiding over this carnival of chaos is George Kennedy, reprising his role with the energy of a genial battering ram. He doesn't so much act as he exists - a walking, talking, reassuringly friendly phallus of authority who blusters through scenes with unwavering confidence and zero concern for plausibility. It's oddly comforting. In a movie where nothing makes sense and everything explodes, Kennedy is the human equivalent of a thumbs-up. All told, The Concorde... Airport '79 is less a film and more a spectacle of glorious incompetence. The stakes are absurd, the logic is nonexistent, and the execution is delightfully misguided. But that's exactly why it works. It's a beautiful disaster - loud, ridiculous, and endlessly entertaining for anyone who appreciates their cinema served with a heavy side of unintentional comedy.

Hart to Hart's Stephanie Powers joined us to talk: -How she met Bill Holden -Her passion, the foundation WHWF.org -Why Bill Holden moved to Switzerland  -The chemistry with Robert Wagner on 'Hart to Hart' was so good that people that they were married in real life "Yes they did.  And our answer always was, Yes, we are to OTHER people!" -How small is Hollywood?  She was in a kiddie dancing class with: Natalie Wood, and Jill St James (all Robert Wagner wives and tv wife) To subscribe to The Pete McMurray Show Podcast just click here

In honor of tomorrow's 98th Academy Awards show, we are joined by film historian and acclaimed New York Times bestselling biographer Scott Eyman on this episode of You Are What You Read. In this conversation, we take a look back on Hollywood history through the lens of Joan Crawford, Scott's latest subject in his new biography, "Joan Crawford: A Woman's Face". Scott is the author of eighteen books including the bestsellers "John Wayne: The Life and Legend", "Pieces of My Heart", and "You Must Remember This", which Scott co-wrote with actor Robert Wagner. Scott is a former literary critic at The Palm Beach Post and currently writes book reviews for The Wall Street Journal.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send Kevin a Text MessageHollywood icon Robert Wagner (known as “RJ”) joins host Kevin Goetz for an intimate, wide-ranging conversation about his life and career. From caddying alongside Clark Gable and Cary Grant to starring opposite Spencer Tracy. From the golden age of the studio system to reinventing himself as a television star, Wagner reflects on the journey that made him one of Hollywood's most enduring figures, later delighting a new generation of audiences as Number 2 in the Austin Powers films. He also reflects on his personal life, including his marriage to actress Natalie Wood, and the family and friendships that shaped him, including his wife of nearly four decades, Jill St. John.Caddying for Legends (06:21): Wagner recounts his early days as a caddy, where he found himself watching Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, and Randolph Scott walk down the fairway.Marilyn Monroe and Screen Tests (09:22): As Fox's go-to "screen test guy," Wagner did Marilyn Monroe's first two tests. His own breakthrough came when Zanuck cast him as a shell-shocked soldier in With a Song in My Heart.Spencer Tracy as Mentor (14:49): Working alongside Tracy in Broken Lance, Wagner earned the older actor's respect and friendship.Advice from Cary Grant (18:07): When Wagner was preparing to play a thief for It Takes a Thief, he went to Grant for guidance. Years later he would become a television icon again opposite Stefanie Powers in Hart to Hart.Lou Wasserman and the Move to Television 18:41): At a time when television was considered beneath film stars, Lew Wasserman called Wagner in and told him, "I think this is your medium."Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis (22:43): Wagner speaks warmly about his three-year relationship with Barbara Stanwyck. He also recalls reaching out to Bette Davis after she publicly praised his work.John Ford Knocks Him Down…Literally (26:39): On the set of a John Ford film, Wagner followed a script direction and glanced toward where music was playing. Ford stopped the scene, questioned him, and knocked him down.Pink Panther (29:21): When the studio system collapsed, and Fox dropped its contract players, Wagner moved to Rome and worked on The Pink Panther, his all-time favorite film.Jill St. John, Family, and Friends (36:16): In one of the episode's most moving moments, Wagner reflects on the profound role friends and family have played in his life.Few careers in Hollywood history span as many eras, genres, or legends as Robert Wagner's, and fewer still have been lived with such grace. Host: Kevin GoetzGuests: Robert WagnerProducer: Kari CampanoWriters: Kevin Goetz, Darlene Hayman, and Kari CampanoAudio Engineer: Gary Forbes (DG Entertainment)For more information about Robert Wagner:Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_WagnerIMDB: https://wwFor more information about Kevin Goetz:- Website: www.KevinGoetz360.com- Audienceology Book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Audience-ology/Kevin-Goetz/9781982186678- How to Score in Hollywood: https://www.amazon.com/How-Score-Hollywood-Secrets-Business/dp/198218986X/- Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Substack: @KevinGoetz360- LinkedIn @Kevin Goetz- Screen Engine/ASI Website: www.ScreenEngineASI.com

Dynamo Dresden hat das Heimspiel gegen Darmstadt mit 3:1 gewonnen und steht auf Platz 15 der Tabelle. Jens Umbreit, Tino Meyer und Sportjournalist Patrick Franz (MDR, BILD Dresden) analysieren den starken Auftritt vom Freitagabend und sprechen über den Doppelpack von Vincent Vermeij, die umstrittenen Schiedsrichterentscheidungen mit der Bewertung der beiden Platzverweise. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage nach der Linie von Schiedsrichter Lars Erbst. Dazu kommen Stimmen von Doppeltorschütze Vincent Vermeij, Ben Bobzien, Robert Wagner und Trainer Thomas Stamm. Themen sind auch das kommende Auswärtsspiel in Karlsruhe, die neue U21-Liga im deutschen Fußball und die stockende Reform der fünf Regionalligen.

National Flannel day. Entertainment from 1987. Duct tape invented, France has to give Britian Canada, Professional wrestling admits in court its not real. Todays birthdays - Boris Pasternak, Robert Wagner, Roberta Flack, Lionel Cartwright, Laura Dern, Elizabeth Banks. Shirley Temple died.Intro - God did good - Dianna Corcoran  Dianna on SpotifyFlannel - Buddy BrownOpen your heart - MadonnaHow do I turn you on - Ronnie MilsapChattanooga Choo Choo - Glenn MillerBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent     http://50cent.com/Killing me softly with his song - Roberta FlackLeap of faith - Lionel CartwrightGood ship lolipop - Shirley TempleExit - Bad Habit - Christie Lamb   https://www.christielamb.com/countryundergroundradio.comHistory & Factoids about today webpagecooolmedia.com

This week we deep dive into the whole history of one home in Laurel Canyon, with a number of owners connecting into our investigation. Our focus is 7708 Woodrow Wilson Drive, a beautiful English Country home built by Natalie Wood's parents, and where she begins her married life with Robert Wagner. Natalie sells the home in the 1960s to the "Earth Mother of Laurel Canyon" Cass Elliot, who entertains in grand style until her death in 1974. Musician Harry Nilsson enters the frame from here, with Ringo Starr as a featured player. Dan Aykroyd and Donna Dixon have many years in the home, eventually selling to Beverly D'Angelo in 2008. So many players in our universe floated in and out through the decades in this home, along with perhaps some actual floating ghosts. All the spooky encounters are also included in today's story! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Myopia Movies, we continue our Erotic Thrillers month with the spiciest 27 year old high schoolers you have ever seen! We watched Wild Things, one of the most paused VHS tapes in history.  How did Wild Things hold up? Host: Nic Panel: Keiko, Alex, and Matthew Directed by John McNaughton Starring: Kevin Bacon, Neve Campbell, Matt Dillon, Theresa Russell, Denise Richards, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Robert Wagner, Bill Murray, Carrie Snodgress

Any day is a terrific day to talk about Natalie Wood, and this week the beloved actress is coming into full focus on Done and Dunne. Included in this first episode of Natalie Wood Week, we investigate her childhood and early stardom, along with those family complications. Next it is her teenage years, with the accompanying struggles found in Hollywood for a young woman. Natalie's two marriages to and one divorce from Robert Wagner is a focus, although her second divorce and love affairs are covered as well. The spiderwebs are off the charts in this one bringing in many previous players into the frame. 

Any day is a terrific day to talk about Natalie Wood, and this week the beloved actress is coming into full focus on Done and Dunne. Included in this first episode of Natalie Wood Week, we investigate her childhood and early stardom, along with those family complications. Next it is her teenage years, with the accompanying struggles found in Hollywood for a young woman. Natalie's two marriages to and one divorce from Robert Wagner is a focus, although her second divorce and love affairs are covered as well. The spiderwebs are off the charts in this one bringing in many previous players into the frame. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

FROM THE VAULT | Natalie Wood was one of Hollywood's brightest stars - a child actress turned icon whose career spanned decades and generations. But in 1981, her life was cut short under circumstances that remain deeply controversial. When Natalie drowned off the coast of Catalina Island during a weekend aboard a yacht with her husband Robert Wagner and co-star Christopher Walken, questions quickly overshadowed the official explanation.

⭐My Top 10 Color Film Noirs⭐

This week on The Way They Were, we're unlocking one of our most popular Patreon episodes of the year and sharing it on the free feed. We're doing something a little different today. Chantal swaps her mic for a magnifying glass and Gráinne pulls her fedora low as they step away from the usual romantic nostalgia and into the glittering golden age of Hollywood. This time, our sleuthing duo turn their attention to the tragic, endlessly puzzling story of Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner: movie stars, tabloid royalty, and the centre of one of Tinseltown's most haunting mysteries. If you enjoy this kind of deep-dive, pop culture, history, mystery, and two hosts gently sparring their way through it, there's plenty more where this came from. Join us on Patreon: ⁠⁠patreon.com/TheWayTheyWere⁠⁠ You can also access our exclusive bonus episodes every other week and take part in The Gossip our exclusive Patreon group chat! Happy New Year!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We're joined by Stefanie Powers for a layered conversation that spans Hollywood's golden-era traditions, cultural change, and a life shaped by both stardom and purpose.For those in the Los Angeles area, Stefanie, with co-star Patrick Wayne, will be performing 'Love Letters' at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood as a benefit for the William Holden Wildlife Foundation on January 11, 2026!Stefanie reflects on growing up alongside future screen legends at Hollywood High School, and how her lifelong love of animals began at home, thanks to a stepfather who raised thoroughbreds and kept exotic animals. Her first professional job came at age 15 when she was cast in the film West Side Story, where the young cast prepared by listening to recordings of real New York street kids to capture authentic rhythms and speech patterns. However, Stefanie's tender age required too many work time restrictions as the production's intensity ramped up and her part was re-cast. She describes old school studio system rigors, where actors “sold their lives” for a seven-year contract. Restrictive, yes, but also an entertainment education that taught singing, dancing, acting, and stage presence, alongside publicity essentials.Still under contract with Columbia, she was loaned out to United Artists to make McLintock! and Stefanie shares memories of working with John, Michael and Patrick Wayne.The legendary show biz tales are boundless. Did you know that Natalie Wood, Jill St. John and Stephanie were all in the same childhood dance class? All would, one way or another, be married to Robert Wagner. And, true story: During a painful divorce, Stefanie was offered solace at Roddy McDowell's house by fellow travelers, Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner.She also recounts the party at Dean Martin's home where she danced the night away with Bobby Kennedy Sr. as he encouraged her to use her Spanish language skills to become more civically involved with Latino communities here at home.She also speaks candidly about her complex romantic relationship with William Holden, whose influence on her life is ongoing. In his name, she has created The William Holden Wildlife Foundation in Kenya where local youth learn biodiversity, species conservation and alternatives to habitat destruction for humans and wildlife.And of course, we talk Hart To Hart where Stefanie starred with Robert Wagner. She was actually on her way to Broadway when a newspaper strike halted her production of Cyrano, and freed her to take a pilot that would change her life!In current media --Fritz: (joined by his daughter Carly!) Nuremberg, in theaters and streamingWeezy: The documentary Twas The Fight Before Christmas on Apple TV+ and PrimePath Points of Interest:Love Letters at the El PortalWilliam Holden Wildlife FoundationStefanie PowersStefanie Powers on WikipediaStefanie Powers on IMDBStefanie Powers on FacebookStefanie Powers on InstagramNurembergTwas The Fight Before Christmas

TVC 718.5: Stefanie Powers talks to Ed about why her experience as a contract player at Columbia Pictures at the start of her career was like "a finishing school for actors"; working with Ava Gardner on Maggie (CBS, 1986), a pilot for a series that marked Gardner's final screen appearance (the pilot, however, never aired); and why James Garner ranks alongside Robert Wagner as among Stefanie's favorite co-stars. (Stefanie starred opposite Garner in "The Red Easy Red Dog," a second-season episode of The Rockford Files.) Stefanie Powers will reunite with McLintock! co-star Patrick Wayne for the first time in sixty years for a one-performance-only benefit production of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters that will take place on Sunday, Jan. 11 on the Debbie Reynolds Main Stage at the historic El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, CA beginning at 1pm. Proceeds will support the efforts of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation. For tickets and more information, call (818) 508-4200 or go to ElPortalTheatre.com. Stefanie Powers is also featured in Vision for the Future: Capturing Inspiring Stories from Leaders and Changemakers, a recently released anthology eBook that profiles twenty-five visionaries who not only are making a significant impact in their respective fields, but are dedicated to making the world a better place through hope, action, and lasting change. Vision for the Future recognizes Stefanie for her work with The William Holden Wildlife Foundation. Vision for the Future is available for free at visionforthefuture.ai.

Denise Nicholas joined me to discuss watching the Ed Sullivan Show; living on the same block as Hitsville, USA; not fitting in with her family; joining the Free Southern Theater and performing Waiting for Godot; Roscoe Orman; her part in the Civil Rights Movement; Negro Ensemble Company leads to It Takes a Thief with Robert Wagner; loving 2 1/2 Men; Room 222, the first "dramedy"; James L. Brooks; episodes were taken from the headlines; going on game shows with Karen Valentine; Hollywood Squares; injuring herself on Battle of the Network Stars; singing on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson in 1971; being the mystery guest on What's My Line; Match Game; Dinah Shore Show; having to prove herself to Sidney Poitier to cast her in Let's Do it Again; fighting to play Carroll O'Connor's girlfriend on In the Heat of the Night; asking for black writers; Redd Foxx; Baby, I'm Back; guesting on Diff'rent Strokes; her sisters gruesome murder; being in the pilot for Masquerade; guesting on Magnum, PI; getting an NAACP nomination for telefilm Mother's Day; joining the cast and writing staff of In the Heat of the Night; Ghost Dad; Richard Roundtree; her novel Freshwater Road; her second novel turning into her memoir deciding whether to work or not; 23 and me saying she is 64% European and 34% Nigerian; going to Nigeria and no one there believing she's Nigerian; Blacula; too much television shows

Forrest, Conan Neutron, Kristina Oakes and Ian Miller of Kowloon Walled City talk about Robert Altman's the PlayerAfter a decade in the wilderness, Robert Altman returned to Hollywood in 1992 to lacerate it with a satirical look at the Holywood Studio system of the 1980s and 1990s. The Player is the story of Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) a sleazy Hollywood Executive whose life spirals out of control after he murders a writer David Kahane (Vincent D'Onfrio)Featuring an array of cameo appearances Anjelica Huston, Jeff Goldbum, Bruce Willis, John Cusack, Julia Roberts, Burt Renyolds, Susan Sarandon, Rod Steiger, Elliot Gould, Nick Nolte, Andi McDowell, Robert Wagner, Terri Garr, Peter Falk, Malcolm McDowell, Joel Grey, Sally Kirkland, Cher, Robert Carradine and Harry BelafonteStarring Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Gallagher, Brion James, Cynthia Stevenson, Richard Grant, Gina Gershon, Sydney Pollack, Lyle Lovett, and Dean Stockwell #altman #theplayer #robertaltman #jeffgoldblum #goldblum #timrobbins #susansarandon #harrybelafonte #hollywood #1992 #screenwriters #hollywoodmovies #hollywoodstudios #warnerbros #theplayers #kowloonwalledcity #kowlooncity #movieanalysis #podcast #moviepodcast #filmpodcast #cher #whoopigoldberg Forrest and Kristina are starting a new YouTube channel/show The Absurdity Space!! https://www.youtube.com/@UCa3LavkP9F_NxOnl0A2soXQ We are also streaming on @thisspacetv throw them a followJoin our discord: https://discord.gg/ZHU8W55pnhJoin our Patreon to get all our After Parties https://www.patreon.com/MovieNightExtraConan Neutron & the Secret Friends new noir inspired music video "A Villain of Circumstance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXjmjKzbTSI

Send us a textIn this episode Matt and Matt discuss A Hollywoood mystery that's coming to an end, Robert Wagner's side gig, The deathbed confessional, and Extraterrestrial culpability.Weird News including Being a man at any age, Snap into a slim jim, Mama Mia, A K-9 10-32, FBJOI. We're thankful for you. Make sure you get stuffed appropriately. 

Mayor of Seven Hills Tony Biasiotta and Gerneral Robert Wagner join Bob to talk about a ceremony happening on Veterans day to honor MSG Joseph J Andres.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#1 ACS #1285 (feat. Robert Wagner, Alison Rosen and Bryan Bishop) (2014)#2 ACS #1300 (feat. Jillian Barberie, Matt Atchity, David Moxley, Alison Rosen and Bryan Bishop) (2014)Hosted by Superfan GiovanniRequest clips:Classics@adamcarolla.comSubscribe and Watch Clips on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@AdamCarollaCornerSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Strangers! Daisy was recently on an episode of What Went Wrong. Here's a snippet of that episode. For the full thing, visit: What Went Wrong, or find it wherever you get your podcasts!   When Natalie Wood drowned in 1981 she was only 43 years old. Thanks to films like ‘West Side Story', ‘Rebel Without a Cause', and ‘Miracle on 34th Street' she was an icon, but she'd been out of the spotlight for almost a decade. Wood was in the midst of filming her comeback, ‘Brainstorm', when she, her co-star Christopher Walken, and her husband Robert Wagner took their yacht out for Thanksgiving weekend. What happened that night depends on who you ask… and when you ask them. Join Chris, Lizzie, and special guest Daisy Eagan from Strange and Unexplained for the first episode of our bonus series 'Out of Frame' where we'll investigate the darker, more obscure corners of Hollywood history. In this episode we'll find out if Wood's death sank her final film, or if ‘Brainstorm' had something to do with her death.

June 6, 1944 - a day history will never forget. After taking much of mainland Europe, wrecking havoc on civilian populations and propgating the largest genocide in history, Nazi Germany thinks itself nigh invincible. But on that stormy day in an area of France no one could contemplate, the biggest mililtary invasion in modern warfare changed the course of the war and the very future of planet Earth. John Wayne was also there (in spirit). Next week: escape! Questions? Comments? Suggestions? You can always shoot us an e-mail at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠forscreenandcountry@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   Full List: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/war-movies/the-100-greatest-war-movies-of-all-time⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/forscreenandcountry⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/fsacpo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠d⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Our logo was designed by the wonderful Mariah Lirette (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://instagram.com/its.mariah.xo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) The Longest Day stars John Wayne, Mel Ferrer, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Eddie Albert, Rod Steiger, Richard Beymer, Peter Lawford, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Red Buttons, Sal Mineo, Roddy McDowall, George Segal, Robert Wagner, Paul Anka, Fabian, Richard Dawson and Henry Fonda; directed by Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton and Bernhard Wicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!This week the dads step into glamorous 1960s Europe with Blake Edwards' The Pink Panther (1963) — the first outing for Peter Sellers' bumbling Inspector Clouseau.For many of us, this was like watching it for the first time. Sure, we'd caught bits on Sunday TV over the years, but sitting down start-to-finish was a new experience — and a surprising one. Despite being branded a Clouseau movie, Sellers actually takes a back seat to David Niven's dashing jewel thief Sir Charles Lytton and Robert Wagner's playboy nephew George.We dig into:The film's mix of heist caper and sixties sex comedy — sometimes charming, sometimes painfully long.Sellers' scene-stealing slapstick: globes, violins, and his endless (and fruitless) attempts to seduce his wife.David Niven's unlikely role as a 50-something ladies' man — suave or just icky in hindsight?The technicolour glamour of Cortina ski resorts, high society parties, and that unforgettable animated title sequence.Whether The Pink Panther works better as a star vehicle for Niven/Wagner or as a platform for Sellers' Clouseau — and why the sequels got the balance right.It's long, it's dated, it's occasionally hilarious — and it launched one of cinema's most iconic comedy characters.

Today I'm talking to economic historian Judge Glock, Director of Research at the Manhattan Institute. Judge works on a lot of topics: if you enjoy this episode, I'd encourage you to read some of his work on housing markets and the Environmental Protection Agency. But I cornered him today to talk about civil service reform.Since the 1990s, over 20 red and blue states have made radical changes to how they hire and fire government employees — changes that would be completely outside the Overton window at the federal level. A paper by Judge and Renu Mukherjee lists four reforms made by states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia: * At-will employment for state workers* The elimination of collective bargaining agreements* Giving managers much more discretion to hire* Giving managers much more discretion in how they pay employeesJudge finds decent evidence that the reforms have improved the effectiveness of state governments, and little evidence of the politicization that federal reformers fear. Meanwhile, in Washington, managers can't see applicants' resumes, keyword searches determine who gets hired, and firing a bad performer can take years. But almost none of these ideas are on the table in Washington.Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits and fact-checking, and to Katerina Barton for audio edits.Judge, you have a paper out about lessons for civil service reform from the states. Since the ‘90s, red and blue states have made big changes to how they hire and fire people. Walk through those changes for me.I was born and grew up in Washington DC, heard a lot about civil service throughout my childhood, and began to research it as an adult. But I knew almost nothing about the state civil service systems. When I began working in the states — mainly across the Sunbelt, including in Texas, Kansas, Arizona — I was surprised to learn that their civil service systems were reformed to an absolutely radical extent relative to anything proposed at the federal level, let alone implemented.Starting in the 1990s, several states went to complete at-will employment. That means there were no official civil service protections for any state employees. Some managers were authorized to hire people off the street, just like you could in the private sector. A manager meets someone in a coffee shop, they say, "I'm looking for exactly your role. Why don't you come on board?" At the federal level, with its stultified hiring process, it seemed absurd to even suggest something like that.You had states that got rid of any collective bargaining agreements with their public employee unions. You also had states that did a lot more broadbanding [creating wider pay bands] for employee pay: a lot more discretion for managers to reward or penalize their employees depending on their performance.These major reforms in these states were, from the perspective of DC, incredibly radical. Literally nobody at the federal level proposes anything approximating what has been in place for decades in the states. That should be more commonly known, and should infiltrate the debate on civil service reform in DC.Even though the evidence is not absolutely airtight, on the whole these reforms have been positive. A lot of the evidence is surveys asking managers and operators in these states how they think it works. They've generally been positive. We know these states operate pretty well: Places like Texas, Florida, and Arizona rank well on state capacity metrics in terms of cost of government, time for permitting, and other issues.Finally, to me the most surprising thing is the dog that didn't bark. The argument in the federal government against civil service reform is, “If you do this, we will open up the gates of hell and return to the 19th-century patronage system, where spoilsmen come and go depending on elected officials, and the government is overrun with political appointees who don't care about the civil service.” That has simply not happened. We have very few reports of any concrete examples of politicization at the state level. In surveys, state employees and managers can almost never remember any example of political preferences influencing hiring or firing.One of the surveys you cited asked, “Can you think of a time someone said that they thought that the political preferences were a factor in civil service hiring?” and it was something like 5%.It was in that 5-10% range. I don't think you'd find a dissimilar number of people who would say that even in an official civil service system. Politics is not completely excluded even from a formal civil service system.A few weeks ago, you and I talked to our mutual friend, Don Moynihan, who's a scholar of public administration. He's more skeptical about the evidence that civil service reform would be positive at the federal level.One of your points is, “We don't have strong negative evidence from the states. Productivity didn't crater in states that moved to an at-will employment system.” We do have strong evidence that collective bargaining in the public sector is bad for productivity.What I think you and Don would agree on is that we could use more evidence on the hiring and firing side than the surveys that we have. Is that a fair assessment?Yes, I think that's correct. As you mentioned, the evidence on collective bargaining is pretty close to universal: it raises costs, reduces the efficiency of government, and has few to no positive upsides.On hiring and firing, I mentioned a few studies. There's a 2013 study that looks at HR managers in six states and finds very little evidence of politicization, and managers generally prefer the new system. There was a dissertation that surveyed several employees and managers in civil service reform and non-reform states. Across the board, the at-will employment states said they had better hiring retention, productivity, and so forth. And there's a 2002 study that looked specifically at Texas, Florida, and Georgia after their reforms, and found almost universal approbation inside the civil service itself for these reforms.These are not randomized control trials. But I think that generally positive evidence should point us directionally where we should go on civil service reform. If we loosen restrictions on discipline and firing, decentralize hiring and so forth — we probably get some productivity benefits from it. We can also know, with some amount of confidence, that the sky is not going to fall, which I think is a very important baseline assumption. The civil service system will continue on and probably be fairly close to what it is today, in terms of its political influence, if you have decentralized hiring and at-will employment.As you point out, a lot of these reforms that have happened in 20-odd states since the ‘90s would be totally outside the Overton window at the federal level. Why is it so easy for Georgia to make a bipartisan move in the ‘90s to at-will employment, when you couldn't raise the topic at the federal level?It's a good question. I think in the 1990s, a lot of people thought a combination of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act — which was the Carter-era act that somewhat attempted to do what these states hoped to do in the 1990s — and the Clinton-era Reinventing Government Initiative, would accomplish the same ends. That didn't happen.That was an era when civil service reform was much more bipartisan. In Georgia, it was a Democratic governor, Zell Miller, who pushed it. In a lot of these other states, they got buy-in from both sides. The recent era of state reform took place after the 2010 Republican wave in the states. Since that wave, the reform impetus for civil service has been much more Republican. That has meant it's been a lot harder to get buy-in from both sides at the federal level, which will be necessary to overcome a filibuster.I think people know it has to be very bipartisan. We're just past the point, at least at the moment, where it can be bipartisan at the federal level. But there are areas where there's a fair amount of overlap between the two sides on what needs to happen, at least in the upper reaches of the civil service.It was interesting to me just how bipartisan civil service reform has been at various times. You talked about the Civil Service Reform Act, which passed Congress in 1978. President Carter tells Congress that the civil service system:“Has become a bureaucratic maze which neglects merit, tolerates poor performance, permits abuse of legitimate employee rights, and mires every personnel action in red tape, delay, and confusion.”That's a Democratic president saying that. It's striking to me that the civil service was not the polarized topic that it is today.Absolutely. Carter was a big civil service reformer in Georgia before those even larger 1990s reforms. He campaigned on civil service reform and thought it was essential to the success of his presidency. But I think you are seeing little sprouts of potential bipartisanship today, like the Chance to Compete Act at the end of 2024, and some of the reforms Obama did to the hiring process. There's options for bipartisanship at the federal level, even if it can't approach what the states have done.I want to walk through the federal hiring process. Let's say you're looking to hire in some federal agency — you pick the agency — and I graduated college recently, and I want to go into the civil service. Tell me about trying to hire somebody like me. What's your first step?It's interesting you bring up the college graduate, because that is one recent reform: President Trump put out an executive order trying to counsel agencies to remove the college degree requirement for job postings. This happened in a lot of states first, like Maryland, and that's also been bipartisan. This requirement for a college degree — which was used as a very unfortunate proxy for ability at a lot of these jobs — is now being removed. It's not across the whole federal government. There's still job postings that require higher education degrees, but that's something that's changed.To your question, let's say the Department of Transportation. That's one of the more bipartisan ones, when you look at surveys of federal civil servants. Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, they tend to be a little more Republican. Health and Human Services and some other agencies tend to be pretty Democrat. Transportation is somewhere in the middle.As a manager, you try to craft a job description and posting to go up on the USA Jobs website, which is where all federal job postings go. When they created it back in 1996, that was supposedly a massive reform to federal hiring: this website where people could submit their resumes. Then, people submit their resumes and answer questions about their qualifications for the job.One of the slightly different aspects from the private sector is that those applications usually go to an HR specialist first. The specialist reviews everything and starts to rank people into different categories, based on a lot of weird things. It's supposed to be “knowledge, skills, and abilities” — your KSAs, or competencies. To some extent, this is a big step up from historical practice. You had, frankly, an absurd civil service exam, where people had to fill out questions about, say, General Grant or about US Code Title 42, or whatever it was, and then submit it. Someone rated the civil service exam, and then the top three test-takers were eligible for the job.We have this newer, better system, where we rank on knowledge, skills, and abilities, and HR puts put people into different categories. One of the awkward ways they do this is by merely scanning the resumes and applications for keywords. If it's a computer job, make sure you say the word “computer” somewhere in your resume. Make sure you say “manager” if it's a managerial job.Just to be clear, this is entirely literal. There's a keyword search, and folks who don't pass that search are dinged.Yes. I've always wondered, how common is this? It's sometimes hard to know what happens in the black box in these federal HR departments. I saw an HR official recently say, "If I'm not allowed to do keyword searches, I'm going to take 15 years to overlook all the applications, so I've got to do keyword searches." If they don't have the keywords, into the circular file it goes, as they used to say: into the garbage can.Then they start ranking people on their abilities into, often, three different categories. That is also very literal. If you put in the little word bubble, "I am an exceptional manager," you get pushed on into the next level of the competition. If you say, "I'm pretty good, but I'm not the best," into the circular file you go.I've gotten jaded about this, but it really is shocking. We ask candidates for a self-assessment, and if they just rank themselves 10/10 on everything, no matter how ludicrous, that improves their odds of being hired.That's going to immensely improve your odds. Similar to the keyword search, there's been pushback on this in recent years, and I'm definitely not going to say it's universal anymore. It's rarer than it used to be. But it's still a very common process.The historical civil service system used to operate on a rule of three. In places like New York, it still operates like that. The top three candidates on the evaluation system get presented to the manager, and the manager has to approve one of them for the position.Thanks partially to reforms by the Obama administration in 2010, they have this category rating system where the best qualified or the very qualified get put into a big bucket together [instead of only including the top three]. Those are the people that the person doing the hiring gets to see, evaluate, and decide who he wants to hire.There are some restrictions on that. If a veteran outranks everybody else, you've got to pick the veteran [typically known as Veterans' Preference]. That was an issue in some of the state civil service reforms, too. The states said, “We're just going to encourage a veterans' preference. We don't need a formalized system to say they get X number of points and have to be in Y category. We're just going to say, ‘Try to hire veterans.'” That's possible without the formal system, despite what some opponents of reform may claim.One of the particular problems here is just the nature of the people doing the hiring. Sometimes you just need good managers to encourage HR departments to look at a broader set of qualifications. But one of the bigger problems is that they keep the HR evaluation system divorced from the manager who is doing the hiring. David Shulkin, who was the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), wrote a great book, It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Serve Your Country. He was a healthcare exec, and the VA is mainly a healthcare agency. He would tell people, "You should work for me," they would send their applications into the HR void, and he'd never see them again. They would get blocked at some point in this HR evaluation process, and he'd be sent people with no healthcare experience, because for whatever reason they did well in the ranking.One of the very base-level reforms should be, “How can we more clearly integrate the hiring manager with the evaluation process?” To some extent, the bipartisan Chance to Compete Act tries to do this. They said, “You should have subject matter experts who are part of crafting the description of the job, are part of evaluating, and so forth.” But there's still a long road to go.Does that firewall — where the person who wants to hire doesn't get to look at the process until the end — exist originally because of concerns about cronyism?One of the interesting things about the civil service is its raison d'être — its reason for being — was supposedly a single, clear purpose: to prevent politicized hiring and patronage. That goes back to the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883. But it's always been a little strange that you have all of these very complex rules about every step of the process — from hiring to firing to promotion, and everything in between — to prevent political influence. We could just focus on preventing political influence, and not regulate every step of the process on the off-chance that without a clear regulation, political influence could creep in. This division [between hiring manager and applicants] is part of that general concern. There are areas where I've heard HR specialists say, "We declare that a manager is a subject matter expert, and we bring them into the process early on, we can do that." But still the division is pretty stark, and it's based on this excessive concern about patronage.One point you flag is that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is the body that thinks about personnel in the federal government, has a 300-page regulatory document for agencies on how you have to hire. There's a remarkable amount of process.Yes, but even that is a big change from the Federal Personnel Manual, which was the 10,000-page document that we shredded in the 1990s. In the ‘90s, OPM gave the agencies what's called “delegated examining authorities.” This says, “You, agency, have power to decide who to hire, we're not going to do the central supervision anymore. But, but, but: here's the 300-page document that dictates exactly how you have to carry out that hiring.”So we have some decentralization, allowing managers more authority to control their own departments. But this two-level oversight — a local HR department that's ultimately being overseen by the OPM — also leads to a lot of slip ‘twixt cup and lip, in terms of how something gets implemented. If you're in the agency and you're concerned about the OPM overseeing your process, you're likely to be much more careful than you would like to be. “Yes, it's delegated to me, but ultimately, I know I have to answer to OPM about this process. I'm just going to color within the lines.”I often cite Texas, which has no central HR office. Each agency decides how it wants to hire. In a lot of these reform states, if there is a central personnel office, it's an information clearinghouse or reservoir of models. “You can use us, the central HR office, as a resource if you want us to help you post the job, evaluate it, or help manage your processes, but you don't have to.” That's the goal we should be striving for in a lot of the federal reforms. Just make OPM a resource for the managers in the individual departments to do their thing or go independent.Let's say I somehow get through the hiring process. You offer me a job at the Department of Transportation. What are you paying me?This is one of the more stultified aspects of the federal civil service system. OPM has another multi-hundred-page handbook called the Handbook of Occupational Groups and Families. Inside that, you've got 49 different “groups and families,” like “Clerical occupations.” Inside those 49 groups are a series of jobs, sometimes dozens, like “Computer Operator.” Inside those, they have independent documents — often themselves dozens of pages long — detailing classes of positions. Then you as a manager have to evaluate these nine factors, which can each give points to each position, which decides how you get slotted into this weird Government Schedule (GS) system [the federal payscale].Again, this is actually an improvement. Before, you used to have the Civil Service Commission, which went around staring very closely at someone over their typewriter and saying, "No, I think you should be a GS-12, not a GS-11, because someone over in the Department of Defense who does your same job is a GS-12." Now this is delegated to agencies, but again, the agencies have to listen to the OPM on how to classify and set their jobs into this 15-stage GS-classification system, each stage of which has 10 steps which determine your pay, and those steps are determined mainly by your seniority. It's a formalized step-by-step system, overwhelmingly based on just how long you've sat at your desk.Let's be optimistic about my performance as a civil servant. Say that over my first three years, I'm just hitting it out of the park. Can you give me a raise? What can you do to keep me in my role?Not too much. For most people, the within-step increases — those 10 steps inside each GS-level — is just set by seniority. Now there are all these quality step increases you can get, but they're very rare and they have to be documented. So you could hypothetically pay someone more, but it's going to be tough. In general, the managers just prefer to stick to seniority, because not sticking to it garners a lot of complaints. Like so much else, the goal is, "We don't want someone rewarding an official because they happen to share their political preferences." The result of that concern is basically nobody can get rewarded at all, which is very unfortunate.We do have examples in state and federal government of what's known as broadbanding, where you have very broad pay scales, and the manager can decide where to slot someone. Say you're a computer operator, which can mean someone who knows what an Excel spreadsheet is, or someone who's programming the most advanced AI systems. As a manager in South Carolina or Florida, you have a lot of discretion to say, "I can set you 50% above the market rate of what this job technically would go for, if I think you're doing a great job."That's very rare at the federal level. They've done broadbanding at the Government Accountability Office, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The China Lake Experiment out in California gave managers a lot more discretion to reward scientists. But that's definitely the exception. In general, it's a step-wise, seniority-based system.What if you want to bring me into the Senior Executive Service (SES)? Theoretically, that sits at the top of the General Service scale. Can't you bump me up in there and pay me what you owe me?I could hypothetically bring you in as a senior executive servant. The SES was created in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The idea was, “We're going to have this elite cadre of about 8,000 individuals at the top of the federal government, whose employment will be higher-risk and higher-reward. They might be fired, and we're going to give them higher pay to compensate for that.”Almost immediately, that did not work out. Congress was outraged at the higher pay given to the top officials and capped it. Ever since, how much the SES can get paid has been tightly controlled. As in most of the rest of the federal government, where they establish these performance pay incentives or bonuses — which do exist — they spread them like peanut butter over the whole service. To forestall complaints, everyone gets a little bit every two or three years.That's basically what happened to the SES. Their annual pay is capped at the vice president's salary, which is a cap for a lot of people in the federal government. For most of your GS and other executive scales, the cap is Congress's salary. [NB: This is no longer exactly true, since Congress froze its own salaries in 2009. The cap for GS (currently about $195k) is now above congressional salaries ($174k).]One of the big problems with pay in the federal government is pay compression. Across civil service systems, the highest-skilled people tend to be paid much less than the private sector, and the lowest-skilled people tend to get paid much more. The political science reason for that is pretty simple: the median voter in America still decides what seems reasonable. To the median voter, the average salary of a janitor looks low, and the average salary of a scientist looks way too high. Hence this tendency to pay compression. Your average federal employee is probably overpaid relative to the private sector, because the lowest-skilled employees are paid up to 40% higher than the private sector equivalent. The highest-paid employees, the post-graduate skilled professionals, are paid less. That makes it hard to recruit the top performers, but it also swells the wage budget in a way that makes it difficult to talk about reform.There's a lot of interest in this administration in making it easier to recruit talent and get rid of under-performers. There have been aggressive pushes to limit collective bargaining in the public sector. That should theoretically make it easier to recruit, but it also increases the precariousness of civil service roles. We've seen huge firings in the civil service over the last six months.Classically, the explicit trade-off of working in the federal government was, “Your pay is going to be capped, but you have this job for life. It's impossible to get rid of you.” You trade some lifetime earnings for stability. In a world where the stability is gone, but pay is still capped, isn't the net effect to drive talent away from the civil service?I think it's a concern now. On one level it should be ameliorated, because those who are most concerned with stability of employment do tend to be lower performers. If you have people who are leaving the federal service because all they want is stability, and they're not getting that anymore, that may not be a net loss. As someone who came out of academia and knows the wonder of effective lifetime annuities, there can be very high performers who like that stability who therefore take a lower salary. Without the ability to bump that pay up more, it's going to be an issue.I do know that, internally, the Trump administration has made some signs they're open to reforms in the top tiers of the SES and other parts of the federal government. They would be willing to have people get paid more at that level to compensate for the increased risks since the Trump administration came in. But when you look at the reductions in force (RIFs) that have happened under Trump, they are overwhelmingly among probationary employees, the lower-level employees.With some exceptions. If you've been promoted recently, you can get reclassified as probationary, so some high-performers got lumped in.Absolutely. The issue has been exacerbated precisely because the RIF regulations that are in place have made the firings particularly damaging. If you had a more streamlined RIF system — which they do have in many states, where seniority is not the main determinant of who gets laid off — these RIFs could be removing the lower-performing civil servants and keeping the higher-performing ones, and giving them some amount of confidence in their tenure.Unfortunately, the combination of large-scale removals with the existing RIF regs, which are very stringent, has demoralized some of the upper levels of the federal government. I share that concern. But I might add, it is interesting, if you look at the federal government's own figures on the total civil service workforce, they have gone down significantly since Trump came in office, but I think less than 100,000 still, in the most recent numbers that I've seen. I'm not sure how much to trust those, versus some of these other numbers where people have said 150,000, 200,000.Whether the Trump administration or a future administration can remove large numbers of people from the civil service should be somewhat divorced from the general conversation on civil service reform. The main debate about whether or not Trump can do this centers around how much power the appropriators in Congress have to determine the total amount of spending in particular agencies on their workforce. It does not depend necessarily on, "If we're going to remove people — whether for general layoffs, or reductions in force, or because of particular performance issues — how can we go about doing that?" My last-ditch hope to maintain a bipartisan possibility of civil service reform is to bracket, “How much power does the president have to remove or limit the workforce in general?” from “How can he go about hiring and firing, et cetera?”I think making it easier for the president to identify and remove poor performers is a tool that any future administration would like to have.We had this conversation sparked again with the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. But that was a position Congress set up to be appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and removable by the President. It's a separate issue from civil service at large. Everyone said, “We want the president to be able to hire and fire the commissioner.” Maybe firing the commissioner was a bad decision, but that's the situation today.Attentive listeners to Statecraft know I'm pretty critical, like you are, of the regulations that say you have to go in order of seniority. In mass layoffs, you're required to fire a lot of the young, talented people.But let's talk about individual firings. I've been a terrible civil servant, a nightmarish employee from day one. You want to discipline, remove, suspend, or fire me. What are your options?Anybody who has worked in the civil service knows it's hard to fire bad performers. Whatever their political valence, whatever they feel about the civil service system, they have horror stories about a person who just couldn't be removed.In the early 2010s, a spate of stories came out about air traffic controllers sleeping on the job. Then-transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, made a big public announcement: "I'm going to fire these three guys." After these big announcements, it turned out he was only able to remove one of them. One retired, and another had their firing reduced to a suspension.You had another horrific story where a man was joking on the phone with friends when a plane crashed into a helicopter and killed nine people over the Hudson River. National outcry. They said, "We're going to fire this guy." In the end, after going through the process, he only got a suspension. Everyone agrees it's too hard.The basic story is, you have two ways to fire someone. Chapter 75, the old way, is often considered the realm of misconduct: You've stolen something from the office, punched your colleague in the face during a dispute about the coffee, something illegal or just straight-out wrong. We get you under Chapter 75.The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act added Chapter 43, which is supposed to be the performance-based system to remove someone. As with so much of that Civil Service Reform Act, the people who passed it thought this might be the beginning of an entirely different system.In the end, lots of federal managers say there's not a huge difference between the two. Some use 75, some use 43. If you use 43, you have to document very clearly what the person did wrong. You have to put them on a performance improvement plan. If they failed a performance improvement plan after a certain amount of time, they can respond to any claims about what they did wrong. Then, they can take that process up to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and claim that they were incorrectly fired, or that the processes weren't carried out appropriately. Then, if they want to, they can say, “Nah, I don't like the order I got,” and take it up to federal courts and complain there. Right now, the MSPB doesn't have a full quorum, which is complicating some of the recent removal disputes.You have this incredibly difficult process, unlike the private sector, where your boss looks at you and says, "I don't like how you're giving me the stink-eye today. Out you go." One could say that's good or bad, but, on the whole, I think the model should be closer to the private sector. We should trust managers to do their job without excessive oversight and process. That's clearly about as far from the realm of possibility as the current system, under which the estimate is 6-12 months to fire a very bad performer. The number of people who win at the Merit Systems Protection Board is still 20-30%.This goes into another issue, which is unionization. If you're part of a collective bargaining agreement — most of the regular federal civil service is — first, you have to go with this independent, union-based arbitration and grievance procedure. You're about 50/50 to win on those if your boss tries to remove you.So if I'm in the union, we go through that arbitration grievance system. If you win and I'm fired, I can take it to the Merit Systems Protection Board. If you win again, I can still take it to the federal courts.You can file different sorts of claims at each part. On Chapter 43, the MSPB is supposed to be about the process, not the evidence, and you just have to show it was followed. On 75, the manager has to show by preponderance of the evidence that the employee is harming the agency. Then there are different standards for what you take to the courts, and different standards according to each collective bargaining agreement for the grievance procedure when someone is disciplined. It's a very complicated, abstruse, and procedure-heavy process that makes it very difficult to remove people, which is why the involuntary separation rate at the federal government and most state governments is many multiples lower than the private sector.So, you would love to get me off your team because I'm abysmal. But you have no stomach for going through this whole process and I'm going to fight it. I'm ornery and contrarian and will drag this fight out. In practice, what do managers in the federal government do with their poor performers?I always heard about this growing up. There's the windowless office in the basement without a phone, or now an internet connection. You place someone down there, hope they get the message, and sooner or later they leave. But for plenty of people in America, that's the dream job. You just get to sit and nobody bothers you for eight hours. You punch in at 9 and punch out at 5, and that's your day. "Great. I'll collect that salary for another 10 years." But generally you just try to make life unpleasant for that person.Public sector collective bargaining in the US is new. I tend to think of it as just how the civil service works. But until about 50 years ago, there was no collective bargaining in the public sector.At the state level, it started with Wisconsin at the end of the 1950s. There were famous local government reforms beginning with the Little Wagner Act [signed in 1958] in New York City. Senator Robert Wagner had created the National Labor Relations Board. His son Robert F. Wagner Jr., mayor of New York, created the first US collective bargaining system at the local level in the ‘60s. In ‘62, John F. Kennedy issued an executive order which said, "We're going to deal officially with public sector unions,” but it was all informal and non-statutory.It wasn't until Title VII of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act that unions had a formal, statutory role in our federal service system. This is shockingly new. To some extent, that was the great loss to many civil service reformers in ‘78. They wanted to get through a lot of these other big reforms about hiring and firing, but they gave up on the unions to try to get those. Some people think that exception swallowed the rest of the rules. The union power that was garnered in ‘78 overcame the other reforms people hoped to accomplish. Soon, you had the majority of the federal workforce subject to collective bargaining.But that's changing now too. Part of that Civil Service Reform Act said, “If your position is in a national security-related position, the president can determine it's not subject to collective bargaining.” Trump and the OPM have basically said, “Most positions in the federal government are national security-related, and therefore we're going to declare them off-limits to collective bargaining.” Some people say that sounds absurd. But 60% of the civilian civil service workforce is the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security. I am not someone who tries to go too easy on this crowd. I think there's a heck of a lot that needs to be reformed. But it's also worth remembering that the majority of the civil service workforce are in these three agencies that Republicans tend to like a lot.Now, whether people like Veterans Affairs is more of an open question. We have some particular laws there about opening up processes after the scandals in the 2010s about waiting lists and hospitals. You had veterans hospitals saying, "We're meeting these standards for getting veterans in the door for these waiting lists." But they were straight-up lying about those standards. Many people who were on these lists waiting for months to see a doctor died in the interim, some from causes that could have been treated had they seen a VA doctor. That led to Congress doing big reforms in the VA in 2014 and 2017, precisely because everyone realized this is a problem.So, Trump has put out these executive orders stopping collective bargaining in all of these agencies that touch national security. Some of those, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seem like a tough sell. I guess that, if you want to dig a mine and the Chinese are trying to dig their own mine and we want the mine to go quickly without the EPA pettifogging it, maybe. But the core ones are pretty solid. So far the courts have upheld the executive order to go in place. So collective bargaining there could be reformed.But in the rest of the government, there are these very extreme, long collective bargaining agreements between agencies and their unions. I've hit on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as one that's had pretty extensive bargaining with its union. When we created the TSA to supervise airport security, a lot of people said, "We need a crème de la crème to supervise airports after 9/11. We want to keep this out of union hands, because we know unions are going to make it difficult to move people around." The Obama administration said, "Nope, we're going to negotiate with the union." Now you have these huge negotiations with the unions about parking spots, hours of employment, uniforms, and everything under the sun. That makes it hard for managers in the TSA to decide when people should go where or what they should do.One thing we've talked about on Statecraft in past episodes — for instance, with John Kamensky, who was a pivotal figure in the Clinton-Gore reforms — was this relationship between government employees and “Beltway Bandits”: the contractors who do jobs you might think of as civil service jobs. One critique of that ‘90s Clinton-Gore push, “Reinventing Government,” was that although they shrank the size of the civil service on paper, the number of contractors employed by the federal government ballooned to fill that void. They did not meaningfully reduce the total number of people being paid by the federal government. Talk to me about the relationship between the civil service reform that you'd like to see and this army of folks who are not formally employees.Every government service is a combination of public employees and inputs, and private employees and inputs. There's never a single thing the government does — federal, state, or local — that doesn't involve inputs from the private sector. That could be as simple as the uniforms for the janitors. Even if you have a publicly employed janitor, who buys the mop? You're not manufacturing the mops.I understand the critique that the excessive focus on full-time employees in the 1990s led to contracting out some positions that could be done directly by the government. But I think that misses how much of the government can and should be contracted out. The basic Office of Management and Budget (OMB) statute [OMB Circular No. A-76] defining what is an essential government duty should still be the dividing line. What does the government have to do, because that is the public overseeing a process? Versus, what can the private sector just do itself?I always cite Stephen Goldsmith, the old mayor of Indianapolis. He proposed what he called the Yellow Pages test. If you open the Yellow Pages [phone directory] and three businesses do that business, the government should not be in that business. There's three garbage haulers out there. Instead of having a formal government garbage-hauling department, just contract out the garbage.With the internet, you should have a lot more opportunities to contract stuff out. I think that is generally good, and we should not have the federal government going about a lot of the day-to-day procedural things that don't require public input. What a lot of people didn't recognize is how much pressure that's going to put on government contracting officers at the federal level. Last time I checked there were 40,000 contracting officers. They have a lot of power. In the most recent year for which we have data, there were $750 billion in federal contracts. This is a substantial part of our economy. If you total state and local, we're talking almost 10% of our whole economy goes through government contracts. This is mind-boggling. In the public policy world, we should all be spending about 10% of our time thinking about contracting.One of the things I think everyone recognized is that contractors should have more authority. Some of the reform that happened with people like [Steven] Kelman — who was the Office of Federal Procurement Policy head in the ‘90s under Clinton — was, "We need to give these people more authority to just take a credit card and go buy a sheaf of paper if that's what they need. And we need more authority to get contract bids out appropriately.”The same message that animates civil service reform should animate these contracting discussions. The goal should be setting clear goals that you want — for either a civil servant or a contractor — and then giving that person the discretion to meet them. If you make the civil service more stultified, or make pay compression more extreme, you're going to have to contract more stuff out.People talk about the General Schedule [pay scale], but we haven't talked about the Federal Wage Schedule system at all, which is the blue-collar system that encompasses about 200,000 federal employees. Pay compression means those guys get paid really well. That means some managers rightfully think, "I'd like to have full-time supervision over some role, but I would rather contract it out, because I can get it a heck of a lot cheaper."There's a continuous relationship: If we make the civil service more stultified, we're going to push contracting out into more areas where maybe it wouldn't be appropriate. But a lot of things are always going to be appropriate to contract out. That means we need to give contracting officers and the people overseeing contracts a lot of discretion to carry out their missions, and not a lot of oversight from the Government Accountability Office or the courts about their bids, just like we shouldn't give OPM excess input into the civil service hiring process.This is a theme I keep harping on, on Statecraft. It's counterintuitive from a reformer's perspective, but it's true: if you want these processes to function better, you're going to have to stop nitpicking. You're going to have to ease up on the throttle and let people make their own decisions, even when sometimes you're not going to agree with them.This is a tension that's obviously happening in this administration. You've seen some clear interest in decentralization, and you've seen some centralization. In both the contract and the civil service sphere, the goal for the central agencies should be giving as many options as possible to the local managers, making sure they don't go extremely off the rails, but then giving those local managers and contracting officials the ability to make their own choices. The General Services Administration (GSA) under this administration is doing a lot of government-wide acquisition contracts. “We establish a contract for the whole government in the GSA. Usually you, the local manager, are not required to use that contract if you want computer services or whatever, but it's an option for you.”OPM should take a similar role. "Here's the system we have set up. You can take that and use it as you want. It's here for you, but it doesn't have to be used, because you might have some very particular hiring decisions to make.” Just like there shouldn't be one contracting decision that decides how we buy both a sheaf of computer paper and an aircraft carrier, there shouldn't be one hiring and firing process for a janitor and a nuclear physicist. That can't be a centralized process, because the very nature of human life is that there's an infinitude of possibilities that you need to allow for, and that means some amount of decentralization.I had an argument online recently about New York City's “buy local” requirement for certain procurement contracts. When they want to build these big public toilets in New York City, they have to source all the toilet parts from within the state, even if they're $200,000 cheaper in Portland, Oregon.I think it's crazy to ask procurement and contracting to solve all your policy problems. Procurement can't be about keeping a healthy local toilet parts industry. You just need to procure the toilet.This is another area where you see similar overlap in some of the civil service and contracting issues. A lot of cities have residency requirements for many of their positions. If you work for the city, you have to live inside the city. In New York, that means you've got a lot of police officers living on Staten Island, or right on the line of the north side of the Bronx, where they're inches away from Westchester. That drives up costs, and limits your population of potential employees.One of the most amazing things to me about the Biden Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was that it encouraged contracting officers to use residency requirements: “You should try to localize your hiring and contracting into certain areas.” On a national level, that cancels out. If both Wyoming and Wisconsin use residency requirements, the net effect is not more people hired from one of those states! So often, people expect the civil service and contracting to solve all of our ills and to point the way forward for the rest of the economy on discrimination, hiring, pay, et cetera. That just leads to, by definition, government being a lot more expensive than the private sector.Over the next three and a half years, what would you like to see the administration do on civil service reform that they haven't already taken up?I think some of the broad-scale layoffs, which seem to be slowing down, were counterproductive. I do think that their ability to achieve their ends was limited by the nature of the reduction-in-force regulations, which made them more counterproductive than they had to be. That's the situation they inherited. But that didn't mean you had to lay off a lot of people without considering the particular jobs they were doing now.And hiring quite a few of them back.Yeah. There are also debates obviously, within the administration, between DOGE and Russ Vought [director of the OMB] and some others on this. Some things, like the Schedule Policy/Career — which is the revival of Schedule F in the first Trump administration — are largely a step in the right direction. Counter to some of the critics, it says, “You can remove someone if they're in a policymaking position, just like if they were completely at-will. But you still have to hire from the typical civil service system.” So, for those concerned about politicization, that doesn't undermine that, because they can't just pick someone from the party system to put in there. I think that's good.They recently had a suitability requirement rule that I think moved in the right direction. That says, “If someone's not suitable for the workforce, there are other ways to remove them besides the typical procedures.” The ideal system is going to require some congressional input: it's to have a decentralization of hiring authority to individual managers. Which means the OPM — now under Scott Kupor, who has finally been confirmed — saying, "The OPM is here to assist you, federal managers. Make sure you stay within the broad lanes of what the administration's trying to accomplish. But once we give you your general goals, we're going to trust you to do that, including hiring.”I've mentioned it a few times, but part of the Chance to Compete Act — which was mentioned in one of Trump's Day One executive orders, people forget about this — was saying, “Implement the Chance to Compete Act to the maximum extent of the law.” Bring more subject-matter expertise into the hiring process, allow more discretion for managers and input into the hiring process. I think carrying that bipartisan reform out is going to be a big step, but it's going to take a lot more work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Busy calls day: Men's History and nasty accusations. Illegal Irish deported! An appreciative country caller. Caller got into it with a black gal online! Haters and "The Snake" poem/song.The Hake Report, Wednesday, August 6, 2025 ADTIMESTAMPS* (0:00:00) Start* (0:02:28) AI Golardo (not to be confused with AJ Gallardo)* (0:03:52) Hey, guys! Vacation shirt?* (0:07:04) NICK, Chicagoland, 1st: Drunk drag crashed at church* (0:15:23) DAVID, Ocala, FL: Winger. Robert Wagner. Kirk Douglas. 007, Lana Wood* (0:24:44) DAVID: black drama, why? Sarah Jakes.* (0:30:05) DAVID: Blue Oyster Cult* (0:32:10) Coffee: Cesar on shmorn* (0:34:53) Coffee: Popcorn on BLS* (0:39:29) Coffee: Greggatron Maze' husband?* (0:40:10) Coffee: Carver on the Irish deportations* (0:51:37) DAVID, VA, 1st: Anger, not my business, understanding w/o understanding, enjoy w/o enjoyment, body hurt but don't hurt, 50s, reconstructed Confederate soldier, seeing hell* (1:00:32) BRANDI, HI, 1st: JLP call on my fight w/ black gal* (1:15:33) MARK, L.A.: Catholic hero, Jesus Christ Superstar* (1:18:02) MARK: Maze offers nothing* (1:19:06) MARK: NJF vs Matt Walsh vs WNs; Tucker too little too late* (1:23:46) MARK: Trump should ignore judges? Feedback on callers* (1:26:54) ALEX, CA: Thomas Crapper? 60M illegals: No M. Fatigue?* (1:29:21) ALEX: Anger in a traffic jam, driving over the hill* (1:33:43) ALEX: Trump 2nd time, time to respond?* (1:35:24) WILLIAM III: Shirt, Wilt Chamberlain, Rush, Steve Garvey* (1:42:54) WILLIAM III: Hawaii gal, Snake poem* (1:45:59) WILLIAM III: Maze a shame! American Indian. KY John!* (1:46:58) Coffee: Cesar on my shirt, and Muslims vs J's on Jesus* (1:49:45) Coffee: Ronnie on WN* (1:51:33) MAZE, OH* (1:54:04) Closing: Punchie TV today! Or call tmrw!BLOG https://www.thehakereport.com/blog/2025/8/6/the-hake-report-wed-8-6-25PODCAST / Substack HAKE NEWS from JLP https://www.thehakereport.com/jlp-news/2025/8/6/jlp-wed-8-6-25–Hake is live M-F 9-11a PT (11-1CT/12-2ET) Call-in 1-888-775-3773 https://www.thehakereport.com/showVIDEO: YT - Rumble* - Pilled - FB - X - BitChute (Live) - Odysee*PODCAST: Substack - Apple - Spotify - Castbox - Podcast Addict*SUPER CHAT https://buymeacoffee.com/thehakereportSHOP - Printify (new!) - Cameo | All My LinksJLP Network: JLP - Church - TFS - Nick - PunchieThe views expressed on this show do not represent BOND, Jesse Lee Peterson, the Network, this Host, or this platform. No endorsement or opposition implied!The show is for general information and entertainment, and everything should be taken with a grain of salt! Get full access to HAKE at thehakereport.substack.com/subscribe

My guest today worked for Club Med from 1985 to 1986, starting his first season as a DJ at Club Med Eleuthera. He graduated with honors in Finance from Iona College, worked as a location scout on the classic film A Bronx Tale, and went on to write and direct four feature films, including the Club Med-inspired film Life's a Beach, starring Rutger Hauer, Christopher Walken, Morgan Fairchild, and Robert Wagner. We're going to explore all of that and so much more. Please welcome, Tony Vitale! Tony takes us on a vivid journey through all three of his seasons, including his unforgettable time in the grass-hut village of Aighion, Greece, during the summer of 1986. He shares the friendships that shaped him and the experiences that sparked the idea for his 2001 CBS sitcom he created, Some of My Best Friends. In a future episode, we'll dive into two of the films he wrote and directed: Kiss Me Guido and Life's a Beach. Enjoy this heartfelt trip down memory lane with Tony! **My First Season podcast has always been ad-free and free to listen to and is available to download on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Samsung Podcasts, Podbean App, Podchaser, Spotify, Amazon Music/Audible, TuneIn + Alexa, iHeartRadio, PlayerFM, Pandora, and Listen Notes. And if you like what you hear, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.  To watch Life's a Beach, written and directed by Tony, please visit the link below: Life's a Beach | Full Comedy Movie | Christopher Walken, Darren Geare, R.J. Knoll For more information on Tony, see the Wikipedia link provided: Tony Vitale - Wikipedia  

In the premiere episode of Fun for All Ages with Frank Santopadre, Frank kicks off this new adventure with a heartfelt and hilarious tribute to "Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast!" Joining Frank for an hour of stories, memories and laughs are GGACP producing partner Dara Gottfried, entertainment reporter Gino Salomone, and comedy legend Alan Zweibel. Also in this episode: Bob Costas almost tanks his career, Gino runs afoul of Robert Wagner, Dara shares a priceless voicemail from Bill Macy, and everyone recalls their favorite Gilbert moments. PLUS: Dick Cavett saves the day! Gino remembers Ruth Buzzi! Alan reports from SNL's 50th! And Frank lays out his next chapter in podcasting! Be sure to subscribe now on  Apple ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fun-for-all-ages-with-frank-santopadre/id1824012922⁠ Spotify ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/18EQJNDwlYMUSh2uXD6Mu6?si=97966f6f8c474bc9⁠ Amazon ⁠https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/13b5ed88-d28d-4f0c-a65e-8b32eecd80f6/fun-for-all-ages-with-frank-santopadre⁠ YouTube ⁠https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgvlbF41NLLPvsrcZ9XIsYKkH_HvUXHSG⁠ iHeart ⁠https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-fun-for-all-ages-with-fran-283612643/⁠ TuneIn ⁠http://tun.in/pxOWO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the 1960s, Natalie Wood was one of the world's leading actress, her star shining as bright as Elizabeth Taylor's. She'd been acting since she was a small child, appearing in movies like Miracle on 34th Street. She'd starred opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, and she'd been linked romantically to Warren Beatty, Michael Caine, Elvis Presley, and Dennis Hopper. And her husband, actor Robert Wagner, may have gotten away with killing her off of Catalina Island in 1981, during a weekend getaway the couple shared with none other than Christoper Walken. For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com 

Last week we took a week off to enjoy Wrestlemania weekend in Las Vegas but we're back with a DOOZY of an episode!   This week we're covering the Mysterious death of Natalie Wood.  Considered Hollywood royalty, Natalie Wood died in 1981 in what was officially labeled as an "accidental drowning".  However, more information came out in 2011 that implicated husband , actor Robert Wagner as a "person of interest".   Was this an accident or did that guy with the eye patch from Austin Powers toss her over board in a jealous rage due Christopher Walken's flirtatious dancing?? As always follow us on the stuff Merch Store- http://tee.pub/lic/doEoXMI_oPI Patreon- https://www.patreon.com/Artandjacobdoamerica Website- https://artandjacobdoamerica.com/ Network- https://podbelly.com/ Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/artandjacobdoamerica YouTube Channel- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0rT6h3N2pWtlkxaqgIvaZw?view_as=subscriber Twitter- https://twitter.com/ArtandJacobDoA1 Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/artandjacobdoamerica/   ALSO! Make sure you're checking out our sponsor https://cavemancoffeeco.com  

YEAH BABY! We're headed to the swinging 60's where secret agent, Austin Powers (Mike Myers) and partner, Mrs Kensington (Mimi Rogers) are hot on the trail of Dr. Evil (also Mike Myers) in his plan to take over the world. When Dr Evil fails in his attempt, he freezes himself, inserts himself into a Big Boy and launches into space with his cat Mr. Bigglesworth. In order to fight Dr. Evil on his return, Austin has also frozen himself and 30 years later when the Big Boy lands, Austin also comes back. Disoriented, Austin has to learn to acclimate himself to the 90s and after meeting with Basil Exposition (Michael York) he's set up with MISS Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley). Dr. Evil has also reunited with his lackeys, Patty O'Brien (Paul Dillon), Mustafa (Will Ferrell), #2 (Robert Wagner) and Frau Farbissina (Mindy Sterling) who introduces him to his son, Scott (Seth Green). It's our happening and it's FREAKING us out! Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, this week on Doom Generation. Support this podcast at patreon.com/doomgeneration

Rob Lowe's impression of Robert Wagner was so good that Mike Myers included it in “Austin Powers 2!” The legendary Robert Wagner joins Rob Lowe to talk about their decades-long friendship, his bond with Frank Sinatra, his experiences working with Spencer Tracy and Paul Newman, the secret to staying sharp and happy at 95 years old, and much more.

The show opens with Godfrey reuniting with his old friend Jason “Mayhem” Miller and then telling a story of the time he had to fight someone outside the Comedy Cellar. This leads to a discussion about how great fighters - Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali & Adam Carolla - started boxing. Then Adam recounts the many run-ins with his childhood bully, Chris Dittman. After that Adam tests Godfrey's knowledge of old TV theme songs and they bond over their shared appreciation of Thin Lizzy. Next, Jayson “Mayhem” Miller begs to read the news including stories about Nvidia employees having to work insanely long hours but not quitting because of the “lavish” pay, LeBron James not allowing son Bronny to call him “Dad” on the court, a lonely dolphin attacking people in Japan, and an epic cobra vs. mongoose fight on an airport runway in India. Then, Godfrey talks about working with Robert Wagner on “A Dennis the Menace Christmas” which leads them down a long rabbit hole of TV & movie references and discussing what makes Godfrey able to retain information so well. For more with Godfrey: ● INSTAGRAM: @godfreycomic ● TWITTER/X: @godfreycomedian ● WEBSITE: godfreylive.com Thank you for supporting our sponsors: ● http://ForThePeople.com/Adam or Dial #LAW (#529)