Podcast appearances and mentions of rocky flats

SAVING SOCIAL SECURITY, PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATIONS, & GRASSROOTS FEMINIST ORGANIZING We launch GREEP Zoom #212 with a lovely poem from our Laureate MIMI GERMAN, who tells us about the feminist community of Rohava in northern Syria. Co-convenor MIKE HERSH introduces Prof. ERIC KINGSON takes us on a long journey for saving Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid, which he says have deep popular support.   MARGARET VILLANI expresses her concern about the lethal swoop now trashing Medicare & Medicaid.   ELLEN GOTTLIEB from Save Social Security & Medicare Now.com tells us of upcoming Florida events.   Longtime organizer DANIELA GIOSEFFI warns that the dispersal of personal from Social Security & Medicare comprise an urgent threat.   We hear from ROBERT COPLIN on California's SSI shortcomings.   KEVIN EISENSTADT seeks guidance on the best time to take SSI benefits.   DONALD SMITH and MICKI LEADER warn about the need to sustain public support for these public institutions.   Grassroots organizing questions come from BRYAN BLAKELY.   Environmental broadcaster KEN GALE checks in from WBAI with vital green info about ECO-RADIO.   Plutonium at Livermore is also opposed by MARJORIE MIKELS, who tells us about upcoming demonstrations there.   The No Nukes community is thanked by HEIDI VIERTHALER who adds new about her Green Energy Economy work.   Safe Energy activist MYLA RESON evokes the Plutonium that's contaminated the Greater Denver region & remembers the great Dr. Karl Johnson and the Rocky Flats guards who shot 3-headed rattlesnakes.   We hear from DAVID ANTOS about a young activist named NABILA SAYED.   BARBARA HARRISON ask for our Environmental Network.     Radio legend LYNN FEINERMAN asks if the US will ever have a Jewish president.   The highly democratic process of knowing your neighbors is outlined by MIMI, MIKE & LYNN.   Building local community is evoked by MURTAZA MOGRI.   Fighting white supremacists powers the inquiry MIMI S from California.    

The title of the new film may make you think it is about Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) located in northern New Mexico. But you would be wrong. “Half-Life of Memory: America's Forgotten Atomic Bomb Factory,” a film by Jeff Gipe, is about the dangerous legacy of the Rocky Flats atomic bomb factory, located near Denver, Colorado. The world premiere will take place in early November at the Denver Film Festival. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ccnsupdate/support

Cold War Horse, sculpture by Jeff Gipe – the only acknowledgement of the radiological history of Rocky Flats nuclear factory present at the site. This Week’s Featured Interview: Numnutz of the Week (for Outstanding Nuclear Boneheadedness): Nuclear Regulatory Commission “apologizes” for “misinformation” about – OOPS! – radioactive water from Monticello nuclear in the Mississippi river...

After four full years of podcasting, we bring you the most important episode to date to kick off Season 5. An interview with Sean Pond, the de facto leader of the Halt the Dolores Movement shares why stopping this National Monument designation in its tracks. Please listen on your favorite podcast app and follow-up with the Call to Action. Sean needs our help.6:12 – what the Navy doesn't tell you is that you'll see a whole lot more water than you will see of the world 11:28 – I worked in building 771 at Rocky Flats, the most dangerous building in the world at the time             15:57 – if my close friends were to describe me, they'd tell you I do two things – I hunt and I wheel 23:11 – if you like to hunt and you like off-road and you like the thrill of the chase, it's a hard habit to break 24:54 – HALT THE DOLORES – let's talk about what it is and why it matters!36:29 – it stifles ranching, mining, outdoor recreation, hunting – it affects so many people, it's a shame43:53 – google the 30 by 30 agenda and the America the Beautiful Act; over 100 million acres of public land will lose access to for all time53:36 – if we were standing around at an event talking about this, you'd think it was a conspiracy theory1:01:49 – CALL TO ACTION:  Sign the petition, call your congressman, Share, Share, SHARE, help fund the fightSpecial thanks to 4low Magazine and Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.Support the show

In 1989, a team of FBI agents raided and shut down the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant after nearly 3 years of investigation into its environmental and waste practices. It was the first-ever raid of one government agency by another. Featured guests include Kristen Iversen (Author of Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats), Jon Lipsky (Former FBI Special Agent who led the Rocky Flats raid), and Dr. Deborah Segaloff (Colorado Physicians for Social Responsibility). 

Sponsored by Tecovas, Western Week reaches a thrilling finale! The Downtown Denver Partnership and Mayor Mike Johnston rolled out a new safety program this week in the form of 650 yellow-vested private security and nonprofit outreach workers. Could these new “ambassadors” be the signal of a safer downtown? And as homelessness and migrant arrivals take up city resources, will the mayor make good on his promise to prioritize the arts? Producer Paul Karolyi and host Bree Davies are joined by politics and green chile correspondent Justine Sandoval to dissect all the stories that mattered to Denverites this week, plus a round of Rocky Mountain Highs and Lows.  Justine talked about a four-part series in the Denver Post on alcoholism in Colorado. Bree mentioned at story from the Colorado Sun on artists moving to the San Luis Valley and an obituary for her great uncle, John Litz. Paul discussed the IRS and TABOR, this week's Rocky Flats news, and his five-part podcast series “Unclear Danger: The Colorado Story of Rocky Flats,” which he neglected to mention was supported by a Denver Arts & Venues grant — what a coincidence! What do you think? Text or leave us a voicemail with your name and neighborhood, and you might hear it on the show: 720-500-5418‬ For even more news from around the city, subscribe to our morning newsletter Hey Denver at denver.citycast.fm. Follow us on Instagram: @citycastdenver Chat with other listeners on reddit: r/CityCastDenver Support City Cast Denver by becoming a member: membership.citycast.fm/Denver Looking to advertise on City Cast Denver? Check out our options for podcast and newsletter ads at citycast.fm/advertise Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today – Sun reporter Jason Blevins breaks down the latest outdoor recreation participation numbers in Colorado and what is cause for celebration but also concern.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This month Devon, Denise, Jana, and Josie discuss Full body burden: growing up in the nuclear shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen. Next month we will discuss Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez. What did you think of the podcast? We'd love to know. Submit your questions, reactions, or comments about the month's book in one of these ways:By emailing us at longmontadult.programs@longmontcolorado.gov, Facebook comments, or by leaving a recorded voicemail message at 303-774-4875. Or stop by the Reference desk on the 2nd floor and let us know in person.Sign up for our monthly podcast newsletter and get links, reading suggestions, and comments from hosts in your inbox. Go here to sign up.The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of the podcast hosts and do not reflect or represent the views or opinions of the Longmont Public Library, The City of Longmont or the Friends of the Longmont Library. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This month Barb, Denise, and Edward discuss Denver Noir edited by Cynthia Swanson and the winner of the 2023 Colorado Book Award for best anthology. Next month, Josie, Jana, Devon, and Denise will discuss Full body burden: growing up in the nuclear shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen. What did you think of the podcast? We'd love to know. Submit your questions, reactions, or comments about the month's book in one of these ways:By emailing us at longmontadult.programs@longmontcolorado.gov, Facebook comments, or by leaving a recorded voicemail message at 303-774-4875. Or stop by the Reference desk on the 2nd floor and let us know in person.Sign up for our monthly podcast newsletter and get links, reading suggestions, and comments from hosts in your inbox. Go here to sign up.The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of the podcast hosts and do not reflect or represent the views or opinions of the Longmont Public Library, The City of Longmont or the Friends of the Longmont Library. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://www.markarose.substack.com/I am Mark Rose activist, in 2009 I helped shaped what would become the Cannabis Industry in Colorado, by opening one of the first medical cannabis dispensaries, also testifying on behalf of patient rights at the State Capitol and working directly with State lawmakers. I have been interviewed in High Times, Rolling Stone, Denver Post, WSJ, & New York Times. I was involved with the distribution of Cannabis since I was a kid and continued that in a big way after I moved to Colorado, I realized the hypocrisy of cannabis laws and worked hard to change them. I am now in the process of starting a new company.I have gone through Ketamine therapy which has changed my life for the better. I have suffered from severe PTSD, and Bipolar since I was a child and traditional medicines never worked. While with just 6 shots of Ketamine, my symptoms were improved to a point of being almost gone. My first LSD experience was in 1972 and ever since I wanted others to be able to experience what I had. I have been through the opioid epidemic; after I fell 150 ft., and was one of the first patients given oxycontin and luckily survived that addiction so many do not, psychedelics helped me break those chains. Just like when I spoke about Cannabis at the State Capital in Colorado or in the press back in 2009 when we were fighting for our rights to use Cannabis- it's the same with Psychedelics: I speak from experience and my heart, people need to know it is safe and effective and I aim to make that happen. I was also involved in the movement to shut down Rocky Flats who made plutonium triggers for the nuclear weapons industry in Colorado in the early 80s.I have worked in Healthcare;Cardiopulmonary, EMT-I, registered polysomnography Technologist in the very early days of sleep medicine. I have also owned several businesses. I also was a delegate for Bernie Sanders in 2016. I grew up in the rust belt town of Toledo Ohio, I left in 1978 to join the United States Air Force's MedicalSquadron, I then came to Boulder Colorado, lived mostly in or near my beloved Nederland Colorado. I also spent some time in Bellingham, Washington & Yellowstone. I have been to Russia, Thailand, Malaysia, Germany, Holland, Tajikistan, and fished just over the border in Northern Afghanistan. Active every election because I feel it is my civic duty.Currently I am looking into starting a business that involves Iboga therapy. I am currently employed at JM Smuc I became disabled from a severe inflammatory reaction from the Moderna vaccine that damaged my AV node, but my health is improving everyday.

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) the ONLY operating deep underground radioactive waste dump in the world. Located southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico……  BUT another not so talked about place hiding in plain sight in Carlsbad, California;) Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Rocky Flats. Support is Appreciated:    Support the Show – Psychopath In Your Life   The post Plutonium: Rocky Flats Anatomy of Disaster. USA has 92 Nuclear, China 55, Russia 37, Japan 33, South Korea 25 India 22 Canada 19, Ukraine 15, IRAN has ONE. appeared first on Psychopath In Your Life.

It's Regional Roundup Monday! Today we feature a new, biweekly production of the Rocky Mountain Community Radio Coalition, of which KZMU is a proud member. We hear stories from public and community radio stations in Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. Today's show features a roundtable about reporting on harm reduction, overturning a Utah bill that would have allowed people who sell drugs to be prosecuted in overdose deaths and ongoing environmental concerns about the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge.

Happy New Year, Roomies! In this episode, your hosts invite you to reconsider how much trust you put in the government. IYKYK. Kristel covers the Rocky Flats of Colorado and Shawnna tells you a tale about Project Sunshine. They share a bizarre "three in a million death" and banter about frightening sea life and lots of cute creatures for your Googling pleasure. Welcome to 2023!

Greg is Senior Vice President of Fluor's Mission Solutions Nuclear and Civil Solutions business line with more than 40 years of nuclear operations and safety experience. In his current role, Greg oversees Fluor's interests in the government construction, base operations, secure services, and environmental and nuclear sectors, as well as commercial nuclear power pursuits. His customers include the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), National Nuclear Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, and the United Kingdom's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.Previously, Greg was the president and general manager of B&W Technical Services Pantex, LLC. Greg has also held significant senior management positions in operations, project management, and project support at three other DOE sites: Hanford, Savannah River, and Rocky Flats.Greg completed a 24-year career in the U.S. Navy that included assignments as a submarine commander and a diplomatic post in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was the Joint Chiefs of Staff Representative to the Conference on Disarmament anda senior member of the U.S. Delegation that negotiated the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Greg received his B.S. in marine engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and M.S. in nuclear engineering from the University of Wisconsin. He is a graduate of the National War College. He is a Certified Safety Professional and Project Management Professional.

William began researching political, social, and economic crimes by the U.S. Government in 1989 after the Panama invasion where the U.S. Military committed numerous crimes against the Panamanian people to include murder and rape of civilians. William's first work was in fact Panama as he was there to photograph the events for Associated Press International. Some of that photographic work was presented in the film; The Panama Deception. From there William collected documents and video evidence concerning the Rocky Flats scandal involving possible theft of nuclear material in the 90's. This material was presented in the two hour documentary; On Deadly Ground: The Rocky Flat's Cover-up. William attended graphic design and film school and after graduating has been using those skills to expose government corruption including school shootings through the web and documentary films.

William began researching political, social, and economic crimes by the U.S. Government in 1989 after the Panama invasion where the U.S. Military committed numerous crimes against the Panamanian people to include murder and rape of civilians. William's first work was in fact Panama as he was there to photograph the events for Associated Press International. Some of that photographic work was presented in the film; The Panama Deception. From there William collected documents and video evidence concerning the Rocky Flats scandal involving possible theft of nuclear material in the 90's. This material was presented in the two hour documentary; On Deadly Ground: The Rocky Flat's Cover-up. William attended graphic design and film school and after graduating has been using those skills to expose government corruption including school shootings through the web and documentary films.

“We have to be careful to not be chasing the shiny object.” - Doug BurkeThank you for tuning in to episode 36 of The CUInsight Network, with your host, Lauren Culp, Publisher & CEO of CUInsight.com. In The CUInsight Network, we take a deeper dive with the thought leaders who support the credit union community. We discuss issues and challenges facing credit unions and identify best practices to learn and grow together.My guest today is Doug Burke, CEO at Aux. Aux is a CUSO that started as a shared branching network and has since expanded their services based on feedback from clients. Now, Aux offers a robust suite of credit union back-office services, such as accounting, compliance, and data analytics. Aux is committed to helping credit unions, specifically small- and medium-sized credit unions survive and thrive.Doug started his career in the credit union industry over 30 years ago. In this episode, he explains how Aux takes the “people helping people” philosophy a step further as the ones helping credit unions so they are more equipped to help their members. Aux supports small and medium credit unions by taking on back-office tasks so their teams can focus on strategic growth.Tune in to hear Doug speak about the growing team at Aux and how they maintain company culture in the midst of major shifts. He explains their team dynamics as a fully remote organization and how they stay connected. Doug emphasizes how their remote structure allows for increased talent pools and greater accessibility for their credit union clients. He shares his thoughts on how to keep team members motivated and emotionally healthy in a remote environment. During our conversation, you'll also hear about trends for the future and how Aux plans to innovate to stay ahead of these challenges and meet the needs of credit unions and their members.As we wrap up the episode, Doug shares his travel “must have” item, the nuclear shadow of Rocky Flats, and cycling with his son. Enjoy my conversation with Doug Burke!Find the full show notes on cuinsight.com.Connect with Doug:Doug Burke, CEO at Auxdburke@auxteam.comhttps://auxteam.com  LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook

Photo:   A weapons-grade ring of electrorefined plutonium, typical of the rings refined at Los Alamos and sent to Rocky Flats for fabrication. The ring has a purity of 99.96%, weighs 5.3 kg, and is approx 11 cm in diameter. It is enough plutonium for one bomb core. The ring shape helps with criticality safety (less concentrated material). 1/2: #Ukraine: Kgs of Plutonium. Henry D. Sokolski @HenrySokolski, Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC).  Henry #Sokolski  @NuclearPolicy https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsiaeas-grossi-at-davos-discusses-nuclear-power-iran-and-ukraine-9729661 ..  ..  ..  Permissions 1995  /  Source | Scanned from: Christensen, Dana (1995). "The Future of Plutonium Technology". Los Alamos Science(23): 170. Author | Los Alamos National Laboratory This image comes from Los Alamos National Laboratory, a national laboratory privately operated under contract from the United States Department of Energy by Los Alamos National Security, LLC betweeen October 1, 2007 and October 31, 2018. LANL allowed anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed. Redistribution, derivative work, commercial use, and all other use is permitted. LANL requires the following text be used when crediting images to it: (link) Unless otherwise indicated, this information has been authored by an employee or employees of the Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), operator of the Los Alamos National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. Government has rights to use, reproduce, and distribute this information. The public may copy and use this information without charge, provided that this Notice and any statement of authorship are reproduced on all copies. Neither the Government nor LANS makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any liability or responsibility for the use of this information.

ep.108: ‘Repurposing Subsidies for Favorable Outcomes'  Guest: Todd Barker of Meridian Institute --- Favorable Outcomes In this episode you'll hear that when subsidies are dolled out based on positive outcomes instead of crop type – good things happen.   You see, according to a Sept 2021 UN FAO briefing, agriculture contributes a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, 70% of biodiversity loss and 80% of deforestation across the globe. And, it's also true that nearly 90% of the $540 bn in global subsidies given to farmers every year are “harmful.” It's true that the majority of well-intentioned agricultural support now damages human health, exacerbates the climate crisis, dwindles nature and drives inequality by excluding smallholder farmers. For real food systems change, support needs to be better aligned with favorable outcomes. To learn more about this whole ball of wax we connected with Meridian Institute CEO Todd Barker on the myriad ways that the organization is bringing together stakeholders in the U.S. and around the world to take action.   Incentivizing Collaborative Efforts “Interest in food systems has never been greater. As challenging and controversial as the problems are, we at Meridian are seeing that while issues about partisanship, polarization, and conflict are capturing media headlines – the hunger for collaborative solutions to these problems has never been higher,” explains episode 108 guest Todd Barker.   A Novel Angle at US Crop Insurance The AGree Economic and Environmental Risk Coalition (AGree E2 Coalition) advocates for federal policy improvements to drive broader adoption of conservation practices on working lands. Conservation practices such as cover crops, no-till, and other recognized good farming practices can reduce farm risk to extreme weather events while improving environmental outcomes and soil health. Meridian Institute launched the AGree Initiative more than 10 years ago after more than two years of collaboration with a diverse group of food and agriculture stakeholders.   Multi-Stakeholder Initiative (MSI) Juggernaut  Meridian is a mission-driven, nonprofit consultancy that has helped clients and partners develop and implement solutions to complicated, often controversial problems—big and small, global and local—for over two decades. They do it with an innovative approach that brings together a deep understanding of the issues at hand, as well as the people, politics, and power dynamics that surround them. Meridian not only shapes meaningful consensus and action in the near term, but also builds partners' capacity for cooperation that often continues for years, even decades.   Finding Common Goals to Drive Change The Meridian Institute offers five key services: collaboration, implementation, strategy, research, and philanthropic support. Meridian has a dedicated team of 80 experts and an ability to foster constructive discussions, manage decisions, and support actions that shape the world for the better. facilitating change: Todd Barker Todd Barker is CEO of Meridian. He currently leads projects that focus on agriculture, food systems, water, climate, big data, and clean energy. A highlight of his over 20 year tenure at Meridian has been the AGree Initiative, which successfully advocated and lobbied for changes in the 2018 farm bill that support soil health. He also has extensive international experience, including current work with the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Todd cut his teeth as a mediator, facilitator, and strategist over 20 years ago, working on the cleanup of Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility. He is a trusted advisor to foundations and funder collaboratives working on agriculture and food systems. He serves on the board of the DendriFund and chairs the board for the Clean Energy Group.

Today, the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is free and open to the public. It's located outside of Denver, Colorado on a windy, picturesque plateau. However, this unassuming site has a long -- and controversial -- past, one with disturbing nuclear incidents. Critics claim the government is actively covering up the full extent of the danger. Why? Tune in to learn more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

This Week’s Featured Interview: The Idaho National Laboratory – a major Department of Energy site in the nuclear complex – has appeared in stories about waste and submarines and a smattering of other issues, but it's never been a real focal point on Nuclear Hotseat… until now.  We learn details of the site and the...

The final installment of the Nuke-O-Rado series, we discuss the Grand Jury investigation into Rocky Flats' alleged environmental crimes, the clean-up effort, and the ongoing legacy of Rocky Flats. We're also joined by Giselle Herzfeld and Usama Khalid of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center to discuss their efforts regarding Rocky Flats. Sources: Ambushed Grand Jury by Wes McKinley and Caron Balkany My reporting in the Colorado Springs Independent Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center excerpt of "Radiation Suit" by Hot Rod Circuit --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Things get weird in the waning days of Rocky Flats. A UFO sighting, two missing persons cases, and of course continued concerns about the disposal of nuclear waste and the rising rates of cancer for Denver-area residents. It all culminates with a raid on the plant by the FBI. Sources: Dark Side of the Mountain Colorado Bureau of Investigation Brother Tony's Boys by Mike Echols Ambushed Grand Jury by Wes McKinley (there was a website where you could download a free .pdf, which I did a few weeks ago, the page is gone now. Weird.) --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

On today's Morning Magazine, we hear about what happens when college enrollments rise and the housing stock doesn't. Then, we get an update on where things stand with the ongoing legal battle over the Rocky Flats nuclear site. After that, […]

In this episode we take a look Colorado's role in the Manhattan Project with the Uranium mining operations in Uravan and the Uranium refinery in Grand Junction. After World War II, Colorado was chosen as the site for Dow Chemical's plutonium manufacturing plant, Rocky Flats, which had it's first series of accidents in 1957. Sources: Atomic Heritage Foundation Department of Energy Rocky Flats Timeline by Pat Buffer Demon Core Incident Many of the documents I will be citing in this series came from the Office of Legacy Management's website, and it appears those .pdfs aren't available anymore, LOL. If you want to take a look at the source documents feel free to email westernfringe@protonmail.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter on running for re-election, the Build Back Better plan, and helping Rocky Flats workers. Then, a shelter's financial struggles highlight housing instability challenges in the state. Also, a new program to help rescuers dealing with their own trauma. Plus, the "cliché killer." And Telluride singer/songwriter Emily Scott Robinson.

Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter on running for re-election, the Build Back Better plan, and helping Rocky Flats workers. Then, a shelter's financial struggles highlight housing instability challenges in the state. Also, a new program to help rescuers dealing with their own trauma. Plus, the "cliché killer." And Telluride singer/songwriter Emily Scott Robinson.

In this interview, Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center's Administrator, Christopher Allred, and Nuclear Guardianship and Outreach Coordinator, Giselle Herzfeld, discuss their recent Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) requests regarding Rocky Flats and the Rocky Mountain Greenway. During the interview, they go over RMPJC's stances on Rocky Flats and the Rocky Mountain Greenway, what they found through their CORA requests, and more. Originally aired on June 16th, 2021. Interview by News Director John Boughey.

This episode goes into the history of disasters, mismanagement, and general lack of safety surrounding the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant

We'll bring you the latest news in the legal fight against trials near Rocky Flats followed by Naturally with Brigitte Mars. https://sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/kgnu-show-archives/audioarchives/MorningMagazine/2021/MorningMagazine_2021-07-07.mp3 The Morning Magazine features local news headlines, stories, and features and broadcasts on KGNU Monday through Friday 8.04-8.30am.

Nearly everything is fine in moderation. Plastics exploded as an industry in the post World War II boom of the 50s and on - but goes back far further. A plastic is a category of materials called a polymer. These are materials comprised of long chains of molecules that can be easily found in nature because cellulose, the cellular walls of plants, comes in many forms. But while the word plastics comes from easily pliable materials, we don't usually think of plant-based products as plastics. Instead, we think of the synthetic polymers. But documented uses go back thousands of years, especially with early uses of natural rubbers, milk proteins, gums, and shellacs. But as we rounded the corner into the mid-1800s with the rise of chemistry things picked up steam. That's when Charles Goodyear wanted to keep tires from popping and so discovered vulcanization as a means to treat rubber. Vulcanization is when rubber is heated and mixed with other chemicals like sulphur. Then in 1869 John Wesley Hyatt looked for an alternative to natural ivory for things like billiards. He found that cotton fibers could be treated with camphor, which came from the waxy wood of camphor laurels. The substance could be shaped, dried, and then come off as most anything nature produced. When Wesley innovated plastics most camphor was extracted from trees, but today most camphor is synthetically produced from petroleum-based products, further freeing humans from needing natural materials to produce goods. Not only could we skip killing elephants but we could avoid chopping down forests to meet our needs for goods. Leo Baekeland gave us Bakelite in 1907. By then we were using other materials and the hunt was on for all kinds of materials. Shellac had been used as a moisture sealant for centuries and came from the female lac bugs in trees around India but could also be used to insulate electrical components. Baekeland created a phenol and formaldehyde solution he called Novolak but as with the advent of steel realized that he could change the temperature and how much pressure was applied to the solution that he could make it harder and more moldable - thus Bakelite became the first fully synthetic polymer. Hermann Staudinger started doing more of the academic research to explain why these reactions were happening. In 1920, he wrote a paper that looked at rubber, starch, and other polymers, explaining how their long chains of molecular units were linked by covalent bonds. Thus their high molecular weights. He would go on to collaborate with his wife Magda Voita, who was a bonanist and his polymer theories proven. And so plastics went from experimentation to science.  Scientists and experimenters alike continued to investigate uses and by 1925 there was even a magazine called Plastics. They could add filler to Bakelite and create colored plastics for all kinds of uses and started molding jewelry, gears, and other trinkets. They could heat it to 300 degrees and then inject it into molds. And so plastic manufacturing was born. As with many of the things we interact with in our modern world, use grew through the decades and there were other industries that started to merge, evolve, and diverge.  Éleuthère Irénée du Pont had worked with gunpowder in France and his family immigrated to the United States after the French Revolution. He'd worked with chemist Antoine Lavoisier while a student and started producing gunpowder in the early 1800s. That company, which evolved into the modern DuPont, always excelled in various materials sciences and through the 1920s also focused on a number of polymers. One of their employees, Wallace Carothers, invented neoprene and so gave us our first super polymer in 1928. He would go on to invent nylon as a synthetic form of silk in 1935. DuPont also brought us Teflon and insecticides in 1935. Acrylic acid went back to the mid-1800s but as people were experimenting with combining chemicals around the same time we saw British chemists John Crawford and Rowland Hill and independently German Otto Röhm develop products based on polymathy methacrylate. Here, they were creating clear, hard plastic to be used like glass. The Brits called theirs Perspex and the Germans called theirs Plexiglas when they went to market, with our friends back at DuPont creating yet another called Lucite.  The period between World War I and World War II saw advancements in nearly every science - from mechanical computing to early electrical switching and of course, plastics. The Great Depression saw a slow-down in the advancements but World War II and some of the basic research happening around the world caused an explosion as governments dumped money into build-ups. That's when DuPont cranked out parachutes and tires and even got involved in building the Savannah Hanford plutonium plant as a part of the Manhattan Project. This took them away from things like nylon, which led to riots. We were clearly in the era of synthetics used in clothing.  Leading up to the war and beyond, every supply chain of natural goods got constrained. And so synthetic replacements for these were being heavily researched and new uses were being discovered all over the place. Add in assembly lines and we were pumping out things to bring joy or improve lives at a constant clip. BASF had been making dyes since the 1860s but chemicals are chemicals and had developed polystyrene in the 1930s and continued to grow and benefit from both licensing and developing other materials like Styropor insulating foam.    Dow Chemical had been founded in the 1800s by Herbert Henry Dow, but became an important part of the supply chain for the growing synthetics businesses, working with Corning to produce silicones and producing styrene and magnesium for light parts for aircraft. They too would help in nuclear developments, managing the Rocky Flats plutonium triggers plant and then napalm, Agent Orange, breast implants, plastic bottles, and anything else we could mix chemicals with. Expanded polystyrene led to plastics in cups, packaging, and anything else. By the 60s we were fully in a synthetic world. A great quote from 1967's “The Graduate” was “I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics.” The future was here. And much of that future involved injection molding machines, now more and more common. Many a mainframe was encased in metal but with hard plastics we could build faceplates out of plastic. The IBM mainframes had lots of blinking lights recessed into holes in plastic with metal switches sticking out. Turns out people get shocked less when the whole thing isn't metal.  The minicomputers were smaller but by the time of the PDP-11 there were plastic toggles and a plastic front on the chassis. The Altair 8800 ended up looking a lot like that, but bringing that technology to the hobbyist. By the time the personal computer started to go mainstream, the full case was made of injection molding. The things that went inside computers were increasingly plastic as well. Going back to the early days of mechanical computing, gears were made out of metal. But tubes were often mounted on circuits screwed to wooden boards. Albert Hanson had worked on foil conductors that were laminated to insulating boards going back to 1903 but Charles Ducas patented electroplating circuit patterns in 1927 and Austrian Paul Eisler invented printed circuits for radio sets in the mid-1930s. John Sargrove then figured out he could spray metal onto plastic boards made of Bakelite in the late 1930s and uses expanded to proximity fuzes in World War II and then Motorola helped bring them into broader consumer electronics in the early 1950s. Printed circuit boards then moved to screen printing metallic paint onto various surfaces and Harry Rubinstein patented printing components, which helped pave the way for integrated circuits. Board lamination and etching was added to the process and conductive inks used in the creation might be etched copper, plated substrates or even silver inks as are used in RFID tags. We've learned over time to make things easier and with more precise machinery we were able to build smaller and smaller boards, chips, and eventually 3d printed electronics - even the Circuit Scribe to draw circuits. Doug Engelbart's first mouse was wood but by the time Steve Jobs insisted they be mass produceable they'd been plastic for Englebart and then the Alto. Computer keyboards had evolved out of the flexowriter and so become plastic as well. Even the springs that caused keys to bounce back up eventually replaced with plastic and rubberized materials in different configurations.  Plastic is great for insulating electronics, they are poor conductors of heat, they're light, they're easy to mold, they're hardy, synthetics require less than 5% of the oil we use, and they're recyclable. Silicone, another polymer, is a term coined by the English chemist F.S. Kipping in 1901. His academic work while at University College, Nottingham would kickstart the synthetic rubber and silicone lubricant industries. But that's not silicon. That's an element and a tetravalent metalloid at that. Silicon was discovered in 1787 by Antoine Lavoisier. Yup the same guy that taught Du Pont. While William Shockley started off with germanium and silicon when he was inventing the transistor, it was Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce who realized how well it acted as an insulator or a semiconductor it ended up used in what we now think of as the microchip. But again, that's not a plastic… Plastic of course has its drawbacks. Especially since we don't consume plastics in moderation. It takes 400 to a thousand years do decompose many plastics. The rampant use in every aspect of our lives has led to animals dying after eating plastic, or getting caught in islands of it as plastic is all over the oceans and other waterways around the world. That's 5 and a quarter trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean that weighs a combined 270,000 tons with another 8 million pieces flowing in there each and every day. In short, the overuse of plastics is hurting our environment. Or at least our inability to control our rampant consumerism is leading to their overuse. They do melt at low temperatures, which can work as a good or bad thing. When they do, they can release hazardous fumes like PCBs and dioxins. Due to many of the chemical compounds they often rely on fossil fuels and so are derived from non-renewable resources. But they're affordable and represent a trillion dollar industry. And we can all do better at recycling - which of course requires energy and those bonds break down over time so we can't recycle forever. Oh and the byproducts from the creation of products is downright toxic. We could argue that plastic is one of the most important discoveries in the history of humanity. That guy from The Graduate certainly would. We could argue it's one of the worst. But we also just have to realize that our modern lives, and especially all those devices we carry around, wouldn't be possible without plastics and other synthetic polymers. There's a future where instead of running out to the store for certain items, we just 3d print them. Maybe we even make filament from printed materials we no longer need. The move to recyclable materials for packaging helps reduce the negative impacts of plastics. But so does just consuming less. Except devices. We obviously need the latest and greatest of each of those all the time!  Here's the thing, half of plastics are single-purpose. Much of it is packaging like containers and wrappers. But can you imagine life without the 380 million tons of plastics the world produces a year? Just look around right now. Couldn't tell you how many parts of this microphone, computer, and all the cables and adapters are made of it. How many couldn't be made by anything else. There was a world without plastics for thousands of years of human civilization. We'll look at one of those single-purpose plastic-heavy industries called fast food in an episode soon. But it's not the plastics that are such a problem. It's the wasteful rampant consumerism. When I take out my recycling I can't help but think that what goes in the recycling versus compost versus garbage is as much a symbol of who I want to be as what I actually end up eating and relying on to live. And yet, I remain hopeful for the world in that these discoveries can actually end up bringing us back into harmony with the world around us without reverting to luddites and walking back all of these amazing developments like we see in the science fiction dystopian futures.

Photo: A weapons-grade ring of electrorefined plutonium, typical of the rings refined at Los Alamos and sent to Rocky Flats for fabrication. The ring has a purity of 99.96%, weighs 5.3 kg, and is approx 11 cm in diameter. It is enough plutonium for one bomb core.  The ring shape helps with criticality safety (less concentrated material). .CBS Eye on the World with John BatchelorCBS Audio Network@BatchelorshowWill Geneva speak of the nuclear arsenals? @KatrinaNation @TheNation https://news.yahoo.com/anti-nuclear-campaigner-urges-biden-132649355.html

Mario Acevedo is the author of the bestselling Felix Gomez detective-vampire series, which includes Rescue From Planet Pleasure from WordFire Press. His debut novel, The Nymphos of Rocky Flats, was chosen by Barnes & Noble as one of the best Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Decade and was a finalist for a Colorado Book Award. Mario cntributed two stories for the award-winning horror anthology, Nightmares Unhinged, by Hex Publishers. His novel, Good Money Gone, co-authored with Richard Kilborn, won a best novel International Latino Book Award in 2014. His new novel, just out, is Luther, Wyoming co-authored with Tomas Alamilla. Mario lives and writes in Denver, Colorado

We join a rally in Louisville organized by moms working to end gun violence. Then, we hear from opponents to development and trails at Rocky Flats about their continued work followed by a report on how conservation groups have joined […]

Today’s topics include opposition to the Rocky Mountain Greenway Trail through Rocky Flats, remembrance of the victims of the Boulder King Sooper shooting, and a look […]

December 19. W. Lloyd Wright. As a physician, Wright served Colorado School of Mines for 22 years. On this date in 1986, the university awarded Wright the Mines Medal for outstanding personal and professional contributions to the campus community.  After Mines, Wright also served as physician for Coors Brewery and Rocky Flats. Doctor Wright died in 2016; he was 99.  In hard […] The post W Lloyd Wright, US, Medical Doctor first appeared on 365 Christian Men.

Speaker 1: The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. I'm Richa Sigdel and I'm Tri-city influencer. Paul Casey: We measure what we value. I love that because what gets measured gets done. If you want to make sure a new habit is going to occur, you've got to track it. You've got to measure it. So if you want to get better at whatever your goal is, track it. Speaker 3: Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-cities of Eastern Washington, it's the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to the TCI Podcast where local leadership and self leadership expert Paul Casey interviews local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and non-profit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: It's a great day to grow forward. Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Scott Sax. He is the president and project manager of the Central Plateau Cleanup Company, and Jennie Stults, who is the business development director of Amentum. And they like hanging out together so we decided to do it together. And I asked them what's funny and they sort of give a yin and yang kind of answer that one loves green pens, one loves purple pens. So tell us the story of that. Scott Sax: So, yeah. That's something interesting that Jennie and I have discovered about each other. She asked me why I always wrote in green, and there all kinds of quirky answers that you could have like Navy captains always write in green. Well I wasn't in the Navy. But I do have a real story. It's a leadership story. I was walking into one of my plants in Colorado when I was running the site. The manager was with me, and he was signing a work permit to access the area, and he signed in red ink. And our control technician said, "You can’t sign in red. You have to sign in black." And he said, "Why?" He says, "Well, that's just the way you do things." And so when we went out, I figured out, "I’ve got to find out if he has to sign in black ink." And sure enough there was no real reason to sign in black ink. It was all stuck to the old xerox machines that you signed in black or blue in the 60s. And it stayed around and it just became a legacy requirement. Scott Sax: So from that moment on, I always signed everything in green ink to remind myself that you can change anything. Okay? And remind yourself that anything can be changed if it's inefficient, dumb, or just a legacy thing. Paul Casey: A great leadership principle from a quirky thing. I love it. I love it. It's sort of like the ham. "Why was the ham cut off?" "Oh, it's because my grandma cut it off because her grandma..." "Because the oven was too big, and we had to cut it off." Scott Sax: Right. Paul Casey: Well we're going to dive in after checking in with our Tri-City Influencer sponsor. Mario Martinez, Northwestern Mutual. Mario, what types of services do you offer? Mario Martinez: Hey Paul. Thank you for letting me be on here. We run bifurcated practices in that we focus in two areas of financial plans. The first one is we do protection pieces which include life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance, really the things that people should be focused on to protect their families, their businesses. And on the other side of our practices, we do investment services. And on the investment platforms we do both the brokerage platform, and we do the advisory level services. So depending on what someone is looking for as far as guidance on their investment strategies, we can curtail and build a strategy for them to make sense. Paul Casey: Mario, how can people get in touch with you? Mario Martinez: The easiest way you can reach out to me directly on my business cell phone is 509-591-5301. You can send me an email at mario.martinez@nm.com. Or you can reach out to us on our social media platforms, the easiest one being Mario Martinez Northwestern Mutual on Facebook. Paul Casey: Thank you for your support of leadership development in the tri-cities. Well, welcome Scott and Jennie, and thanks for being a part of this today. And we had the hard drive crash of 2020 in among the other crazy things that have happened in 2020. So thanks for coming back and re-interviewing here on the Tri-City Influencer. So tell us a little bit about your backgrounds so that our influencers can get to know you. Maybe a little bit of your journey to your current position and why you love what you do. They're just pointing at each other. It's sort of funny. Scott Sax: I‘ll go ahead and start since I’ve got the longer story because I'm way older than Jennie. So I started my career after college training sailors in the Navy Nuclear Power Program. In the center of Idaho there's actually an aircraft carrier and two submarines, or there was. And that's where they train sailors before they could sink their submarine. And that’s what I did. I was working for Westinghouse. I went from there to Plutonium Production for weapons at Rocky Flats in Colorado, and I've done a variety of things since then, came and ran the plutonium finishing plant here in the early 2000s, worked at Tank Farms as a chief operating officer. In the early 2010s, I went to the UK and I was in charge of all of the commercial nuclear fuel work for the United Kingdom. Came back, ran River Corridor Closure Project as a project manager and president, and starting Monday, I'll start kicking off my new job as the president and project manager for Central Plateau Cleanup, cleaning up the center of Hanford. Paul Casey: What a story. So all the Hanford people are just, "Yeah." Checking things off the list. "I remember that. I remember that." And the rest of us are, "All those sound like acronyms that I don't understand.” Jennie Stults: Every time I hear him talk about his career it's really amazing. So, yeah. He deserves all of a lot of credit. Paul Casey: Incredible. Jennie Stults: Yeah. So my career has been a little different. I've been mostly at Hanford. I started out at, well I actually started out way back when I was in high school. And then I went on, was at PNNL for multiple years. And then took a career change out to Hanford and I worked at Tank Farms, and when my second kiddo was born, I took a state job at the Department of Ecology, and worked on the flip side of being a contractor, actually doing the regulatory work, and did that till I think my youngest was in kindergarten or so, and then went back to the contractor, which was a highlight. I actually got hired a four, and went into a completely different kind of career into the hardcore DOD group out there, which was a great highlight. It was a big change for me, and really loved it. And I worked in Hanford for 13 years doing that work. Jennie Stults: And recently joined Amentum last year as a business development director. So I took another career change. So I've done a lot of different kind of things, which is good. I call myself kind of a utility player. But I've adapted because of different things, a lot of different challenges. And so I'm enjoying my current job. So that's a highlight too. So... Paul Casey: And what does Amentum do? Jennie Stults: So, Amentum, which is the parent company for where Scott has been, you've been Amentum and all the legacy companies, right? Scott Sax: Correct. Jennie Stults: Yeah. So we're a government contractor that has around 20,000 employees. And we just bought DynCorp, so now we're going to have 37,000, 40,000, I don't know, 20 some odd countries. I probably should know the tagline a little bit better. Jennie Stults: So all over. But our division that has gone there, and nuclear environmental, so we run a lot of the DOE sites, our partners on the DOE sites as well as other federal, state, local cleanup work across the US, and in the UK and Japan. So we've got a big division. Paul Casey: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Scott Sax: So a little bit to add onto what Amentum is. So a lot of people know who Amentum is, and Amentum was born out of AECOM, which was a partner with URS which bought The Washington Group which bought Morrison-Knudsen, and Westinghouse. So a lot of the old companies that have been around Hanford for literally almost 60 years, since the beginning. So, a very big company and now Amentum is just focused on those government supports primarily for the Department of Defense, NASA, and the Department of Energy. Paul Casey: Okay. And why do you both love what you do? Got to love what you do. So what wakes you up with enthusiasm in the morning? Jennie Stults: So for me, personally I like to be challenged. I like to do a lot of different things. I like to take on new roles. That's what excites me. I think my thing in terms of leadership is I really like to work on teams. I like to bring people together and foster a sense of kind of collaboration. That really drives me. I don't like environments where it's just very you're one on one, and everybody is kind of free for all. I like to get consensus. So I think if anything that kind of drives me at work, is to work on new things. And for me, I'm not afraid to try something new. I like change. A lot of people don't, and that's fine too. So I'd say that kind of drives me for sure. Paul Casey: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Has virtual been hard for you being a team person? Jennie Stults: No. Actually in some ways it hasn't because I've gotten to do different things again. It just forces you to- Paul Casey: Another challenge. Yeah. Jennie Stults: Yeah. Yeah. And there's other things I like about virtual. I'm actually not too much of a people person believe it or not, but I do like to work in groups and teams, and so we've just tried different things. Scott Sax: I'll give you an alternate answer to that. I hate virtual, okay? I love to work with teams too, and I love to get stuff done, and the stuff I like to get done is executing projects, delivering products, all the people I work with have heard me say, "We deserve to provide the taxpayer a nuclear baker's dozen. We need to give 13 units for every 12 units of money they give us." And that's not the reputation of the Department or Energy kind of work in the nuclear cleanup. It's always going to cost more, take longer, et cetera. Scott Sax: And so that's what gets me charged up is working with a group of people to figure out how to do more for less, and save the taxpayers money. Paul Casey: Sounds like efficiency to me. Scott Sax: Yeah. Paul Casey: So give us a hurdle along your journey that you've overcome in your career. Scott Sax: I think my biggest hurdle, and I probably will never overcome it, is that self confidence in my own ability to get things done, and understanding what's possible. So I think there's always a little bit of insecurity when you're going into a job. "Am I good enough for this? Am I going to deliver or not for the people? Am I going to leave my guys that are working with me and for me lacking because of some weakness I have?" So I think the hurdle I have every single day is to strive harder and work harder, and I think that that's probably consistent with a lot of type A kind of people is that they have that little bit of insecurity that makes them think they're not as good as anybody else, so they work harder, or try harder. Paul Casey: Sounds like humility to me, Scott. Jennie how about you? Jennie Stults: So I probably have something very similar to Scott on that part. I think so my biggest hurdles in terms of growing as a leader and moving up or achieving more, have been because I am a utility person, I have quite often my career found being turned to the left because there has been a company project, and, "Oh, you were kind of on this trail, but oh my gosh, there's an emergency out here. So Jennie, you're perfect." And one day I'm out at the 100K area trying to figure out how to do X, Y, Z, and I've never done it before. Jennie Stults: So I think it's great to be a utility person. I think you need them. I think the hardest part for me with that is it led to sometimes hard to establish a path up into leadership. And so I guess one of my lessons though is you still need to be true to who you are. If you enjoy doing a lot of different things, then do that. Eventually it will work. It may feel like you're getting to the left, to the right, but the one thing I learned about all of my jobs, and I know Scott has probably had jobs where he thought he was going this way, and well I know he has, and you end up going a different way. You didn't get what you wanted. Is that, "I wouldn't be doing my job today had I not done all those different things." Jennie Stults: So at the time it feels a little bit to the left or a set back or different things, but in reality I think every time, I learn something. And so you just have to approach things that way, is you can't see it at the time, but six months later, a year later, you go, "Oh, well that's why that happened." So I think those are some of the hurdles, but I think it is how you face them when you do have those hurdles. Paul Casey: Would you also be an advocate of cross training for that reason? Being versatile to be able to be put in different places in an organization? Jennie Stults: I think so. I think that's one thing as leaders, that's hard to do when you have good people working for you, or around you or even up, is you do not want to let them go because they're there. But I think, and Scott might have some experience with this, is I think it does people good to be forced into different things. You learn some new tools, you learn adaption, you learn how... And sometimes it makes you better I found. I think I got better in positions where I was the least comfortable, but you really have to work hard. Paul Casey: What's your biggest ongoing challenge as a leader? What really stretching you even after all of your years of experience? Scott Sax: I'll give you two answers to that. One answer is directly with a current job, as we're about ready to kick off a transition and take over a major contract. And so establishing the vision, and bringing the team along, and establishing the culture we want, but also growing and learning the culture that's already existing in there. So I think that vision and that leadership part of that is really important for me personally. I'm not at the beginning of my career. So personally I'm at the end of my career. I'm not going to have a lot more jobs. So keeping that passion every single day to get up and drive and make a difference is different in the different parts of your job. So that's it. That's my two. Paul Casey: What does stoke that passion for you? Scott Sax: People. People. And I think in analogies, and I think in pictures. And so, and the things that really just absolutely turn me on is when I talk to somebody that has got a Ph.D in forklift, that just is absolutely a master in running a forklift because I'm not. And asking them how do they do their job so well, and what could I do to help them do their job better. It's real exciting. And so that does turn me on when you get to see somebody just do something that is just marvel. Paul Casey: Love it. Jennie Stults: So for me, I think you work on things all the time. It's kind of funny. And you go through one week, it seems like you're working on something the next week. So for me, it kind of varies depending on what I'm working on, but sometimes I think us type A people try and take on too much, and that's probably my biggest thing I work on, is- Paul Casey: I wouldn't know what that means. Jennie Stults: Yeah, I know. Setting those good boundaries. And so I have really tried to embrace that over the last few years, and chosen to build up my teams around me, and rely on them. And I have found a passion for doing that. I really enjoy mentoring people, I really enjoy working as a team and getting them, because sometimes it's amazing what ideas... I can't remember who. I think it might have been Patton who even said you just tell them where you want to go and they're all figure it out, and there will be a better answer than you could ever come up with. And I've seen that in action myself. I've tried some techniques like that, and it does work. So not just saying, "Oh I can do this because I can do it." but actually stepping back and letting other people start to shine, I think us leaders really need to embrace that, and I think it's something I work on myself is making sure. And I get a lot of reward out of it but it's tough still too. Paul Casey: It is. But it multiplies your influence, doesn't it? Jennie Stults: Yeah. Yeah. Paul Casey: If you both had a leadership philosophy that you put front and center on a bulletin board in your office at all times for everyone to see, what would those messages say? Scott Sax: So it's funny you ask that question because I actually have four signs that I've had with me, and I've added them throughout my career. And the very first one I put up on my wall was just sign that said Pride. And I had my favorite coach in college, a guy named Sonny Holland, and his leadership skill, and what I took away from him was you need to be proud of your individual effort contributing to the team's success, and if you are every single day to try to do that, you could be proud of your team. And I think being proud of something as a father, as a manager, as a teammate, is probably the thing that is my philosophy is, "Don't do anything that you wouldn't be proud of, and try to do things that you can be proud of." Jennie Stults: What's your other signs though? Paul Casey: Yeah, now we want to know because you said there's four. Scott Sax: There's four. "Be part of the solution, not part of the problem." Paul Casey: Love it. Scott Sax: I put that one up when I was a maintenance manager. "The key to getting better is working smarter not harder." And I did that to keep reminding myself every single day that extra hours don't necessarily mean extra productivity. Paul Casey: True. Scott Sax: And then probably my favorite of all time is, "If you aim at nothing, you hit it every time." And so that ties back to that vision. You got to know where you want to go, where you're expecting to go, where you want your team to go, instead of just marching off smartly in all directions. Paul Casey: Good ones. Good ones. Jennie Stults: So I have two, or three maybe. But the one I would say the teams that work with me the most hear me say the most is, "We’ve got to get to point B first." So I see a lot, and I understand totally that you got to have a whole team that sees things all differently. But a lot of times in leadership you'll hear all sorts of things about a step that's 20 months down the road, and we'll have spent 30 minutes on it. And I really try and focus my teams on, "Yes. We have to think long term, but you also have to get to B." You know what I mean? "You're worried about G. Let's get to B first, and let's figure that out." And I think Scott probably sees a lot of that in his leadership that he has done too is we could worry about every single thing going wrong but let's try and figure out the near term, and then we'll keep going. Jennie Stults: And so I think that's probably the one, if you ask some of the people that work with me that hear me say that the most. The other thing I would say is a philosophy of mine is to do what you're doing today the best you can. So we all have things on our jobs that aren't our favorite, but you got to focus in, and I think as leaders, it's really important to remember that because you always lean towards the things you'd like to do. But I really do try, I'm not perfect at it, but I really do try to do my best at what I'm doing today, and sometimes that is stuff that you think, "Oh my gosh. Why am I doing this?" But sometimes you just got to do it and stuff. Jennie Stults: So that's something I try and always make sure the teams around me always know that you got to pitch in, you got to do stuff, let's all work together. And usually it works pretty good that way. Paul Casey: Yeah. I do one thing, I saw you do everything. So that's why you do your best at everything. Jennie Stults: Right. Paul Casey: Well before we get into our next question on vision and more of these guys; dream about the future, let's shout out to our sponsor. Mario Martinez, Northwestern Mutual. Mario, why should people work with a financial advisor? Mario Martinez: Hey Paul. That's a great question. Really I think there's two types of people who should be seeking out a financial professional. The one person is somebody who has very limited access to financial guidance. Maybe they're a younger professional, or somebody who just hasn't had an introduction to a financial professional yet. And the other type of person is really someone who has a lot of different exposure to different professionals. They just haven't found the one person that they really trust to take guidance from. So there's really an over information in that sense. So those are really the two types of people that should be looking to be introduced to a financial professional. Paul Casey: Fantastic. So Mario, how can people get in touch with you? Mario Martinez: The easiest way is to reach out to me directly on my business cell phone which is 509-591-5301. You can send an email to mario.martinez@nm.com, or you can find us on our business Facebook page which is Mario Martinez Northwestern Mutual. Paul Casey: So Jennie and Scott, most influencers I know have a little bit of visionary inside them, and as the leader we have to think about the next hill, even though as Jennie said, we get to point B first before we get to Z. So where do you take time to dream about the future? What does that look like for you? Scott Sax: So I find that I get my best dreams about the future when I'm really tired of fighting the daily mundane bureaucratical stuff. I'm actually not known for my patience. In fact I'm pretty famous for my impatience. Paul Casey: Jennie, stop laughing. Scott Sax: When I get very impatient, I start grading even on myself. I just go out into the field and I watch work get done, and wander around and talk to people. And they just energize me. And most of the things that I can actually say about myself is I've had a tremendous number of ideas or great ideas, but I'm a good implementer of ideas. So if I can ask somebody, "What's your idea for something to make our job better?" and they have it, I love to grab that and run with it and turn that into the future. And so I think dreaming up what you can be and what perfect looks like is important. But again, embrace today and get everything you can get done today. And it enables a lot of stuff in funny ways for tomorrow. Paul Casey: And you listen to your constituents to help create the vision it sounds like. Scott Sax: Right. Jennie Stults: So I get a lot of my personal inspiration stuff because I'm a very avid reader. So I actually like to read different sources: leadership newsletters in my email, sometimes some of them speak to me. And I would say that's probably my biggest source. Sometimes I listen to different things when I'm walking or whatever else, but I tend to do that. I tend to go in batches, and try and really take on some things, especially when I'm finding some challenges, I'll go and look for some inspiration there, and, "How do you handle this? How do you handle that?" And so I think that probably is my biggest source of different things, is doing that, but there's all sorts of different inspirations. I think Scott is right. Every day you get inspired by co-workers, friends, family, whatever it is. Paul Casey: And you can learn from everything, right? Jennie Stults: Absolutely. Paul Casey: Yeah, I'm sitting at a conference, and I may not even completely connect with the person that I'm listening to, but my brain takes one of those concepts and runs with it in a applicable way for what I'm doing, or if I'm listening to a podcast, same deal. And so with the emails. And it's hard not to be compulsive because, "Oh, this newsletter came in. I've got to get something from it. Before I delete it, I have to..." And sometimes I can get a little OCD about that. But I want to learn from everything. Paul Casey: But let's go a little granular with your life here. What's yourtypical morning routine for both of you? Maybe before work, maybe once you arrive at work, do you have any rituals that help you start your day strong? Scott Sax: Well I get up, get in the shower, and get to work in 30 minutes. Paul Casey: And you probably have to get up early, right? Scott Sax: I do. And I try to get to work between 5:00 and 5:30. I did that primarily when I had little kids because I added all my time onto the beginning of the day, and tried not to take their time away from them at night, or on weekends. And so my days got longer. Now I just go to bed earlier. But so I get up, get to work, drink coffee, and I dive into those mundane emails that you're talking about, and try to get the routine stuff cleaned off my system before everybody else starts getting to work. And then I can engage people. Paul Casey: So many leaders I've interviewed use that morning time before they get interrupted by the flood of people arriving to really get some quality stuff done. Jennie Stults: So I have kind of a typical routine, at least when I'm working onsite or a project, I get up very early but I'm a very avid exerciser. So I usually am up about 3:45 and I'm exercising by about 4:15, and I really like to exercise before work. I actually get a lot of my creativity there. I do. I listen to podcasts when I'm doing stuff, I get a lot of great ideas. My team actually one time said, "You've got to stop running." Because I got on a running kick and I come into work going, "All right, I got it. This is it." Paul Casey: Something about the open road. Jennie Stults: I had a thought. So I have been accused of that. But, so I usually do that, and it's very good for me. It clears my head in the morning, it lets me focus. And I did start doing that similar to Scott because my kids were little, and that was the only time I had for a little bit of me time. And so but it does clear my head, and really get me focused and excited for the day. Paul Casey: It probably helps you avoid burnout too. Jennie Stults: It does. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my typical morning. Paul Casey: How did you both prioritize family time and yet still be high performers at work? I know the lines get blurred as you go through your career, but how did you make sure there was time for both? Scott Sax: I think the priest that married my wife and I said something to me when he was telling us how to be married, which I always thought was an interesting me for a priest to teach me how to be married. And I guess, but his explanation for that was, "I see all the problems when it's not working." Paul Casey: Oh, sure. Sure, sure. Yeah. Scott Sax Yeah. So I took his- Paul Casey: Research. Scott Sax: Exactly. But he said, "One thing you have to understand Scott..." and we had known each other for quite some time, "...is being a good father and being a good husband, one of your roles is being a provider and the way you're doing that. So providing and doing your work is a key responsibility for you as a family member." So that relieved a lot of guilt when you had to stay late or you missed a birthday, or you had to work on Christmas, or some of that stuff because that was part of my role as a dad and a husband is providing. And so, didn't relieve all of it. Okay? Scott Sax: I never missed my kids' sports and I was engaged with them in at least their goal setting of all their school. Their mom raised them. I have a amazing wife, and she did a lot of the different stuff to get them through their lives setting their goals and doing all that stuff. But I tried to never work on weekends. I tried to never take my phone out at a basketball game. And phones are detrimental to your family I believe. So putting your phones away and focused on conversation instead of texts, that is really important. So... Paul Casey: We'll tweet that. Phones are detrimental to your families. Scott Sax. Jennie Stults: So I have kind of a different thing because I had my first son when I was 23 I think, not quite 24. And so I've had a challenge of being a mom, and a single mom relatively when my kids were relatively young. And so it was a hard balance for me. I'm very open about talking about this because I think it is really important for people to know that some of us have tough barriers that way, and I never asked for anything special because of it, but it was a challenge. But I think that what I did myself is I looked for roles that I could do. So Scott talks about being the operations manager at PP and some of the other roles. I couldn't do those. It just wouldn't have worked with my family and my kids, that they needed me home at 5:00 so that I could take them to the sports and be there for the dinners. And we always had dinners together and everything. I just could not take some roles I would have liked to. Jennie Stults: But what I learned is that's okay. I had great roles. It just was different. So I think one thing I tell people when they come and ask me about advice for this, because they do know my story, is I tell them, "Look around and find the role that fits. Talk to your manager. Tell them your things, but tell him what you're willing to do." So me, I did a lot after my kids went to bed at 8:00, I'd log on the computer for an hour and a half and I'd work till 10:00 and catch up on those emails that Scott was doing at 5:00AM. I did them in 8:30 at night. Paul Casey: Sure. Jennie Stults: And I never missed deadlines. So sometimes I had to work Saturday nights when my kids were watching movies with their friends. I was working to get ahead. So I did what I needed to do, but I accepted the roles. And the other thing I did was, when I got asked to do some of these emergency roles, I would talk to the manager and say, "Look, I am a single mom. Here's my thing. But here's what I will do. I will work very hard. This is what I do, and I'll work with you." And after that, usually we can work something out. But you do have to realize I think when you do have family balance issues, but the other thing is it doesn't last forever. So my youngest just left for college. So I'm now free to go do whatever I want. And so, it's not permanent. You can work it out. So, I think people just need to try and learn that balance for them, whatever works for them. Paul Casey: Yeah. I love that. It's contentment with whatever situation you're in, and it's also being very clear with your boundaries, "Here's what I can do, here's what I can't do." And doing it with the utmost respect. Jennie Stults: Yeah, but you have to be prepared to work hard though if you do have some of those challenges. I mean I did when Saturday night and they had friends over eating pizza and everything, I would have loved to have just sat there and whatever. But, no. I was working. So it doesn't mean you don't have to work really hard, especially if I want to be a leader and go up. So... Paul Casey: Yeah. And if you want a special work arrangement, you got to almost work double hard to show that, "Hey, I'm on board." Jennie Stults: Yeah. Paul Casey: Well finally, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining new influence? Scott Sax: Well I think being a new leader, leading is different than doing, okay? And I think having a mentor to learn your leadership stuff is very important. Colin Powell's Rules on Leadership are really my Bible on leadership. And I know which leaders in my career gave me the most positive attributes to work on. I also know which ones gave me some of the negative attributes not to work on. And so I think get a philosophy that's not perfect, but you can sink your teeth into, and anchor yourself with that. And that's what Colin Powell did for me. Scott Sax: Second thing is I think always listen and learn. You talked about cross training at the beginning of this, and I think one thing cross training really does for you is it some people think that if you're cross training, you can do all of it, right? For me, cross training gave me the ability to notice when somebody was exceptional at it. So I just knew enough to watch somebody and say, "That's the person that needs to be doing this, not me. I just know enough to appreciate real quality." So listen, learn. When you're in doubt, go do something. Find something you can do that day to cause the project, the team, the company to move forward. That gets noticed. You might not think it's getting noticed, but it is getting noticed, and those people that are always causing stuff to happen seem to advance. So that's what I'd say. Cause things to happen, continue to learn, and listen. Find your own mentor. Paul Casey: Good stuff. Jennie Stults: So, I would want to echo what Scott says about finding a mentor, and I think you need to look around for mentors. I've had some mentors. I will tell you my best ones were not the ones that were like me at all, and they weren't necessarily even the ones that I said, "Oh, this needs to be my mentor." But looking back on it, I learned the most from them. So Scott is a great leader but someone who's a lot like Scott, might actually find a better mentor in someone who's totally not him. So I actually think personally, I learn the most from mentors and leaders who I wasn't drawn to, but they challenge me in a different way. I learn something from them. Maybe even appreciation for finding someone else who is like them to counter me. So I think that but there's a lot of great leaders at Hanford as elsewhere. You can find a leader to be with that isn't in your field. I think you can learn a lot. I've learned a lot from people that have nothing to do with Hanford, and really pushed me in different ways, opened my opportunities. Jennie Stults: Volunteer is another one that I like to do. I'm on a board, Scott is on boards. Personally I've got a lot out of that. You meet a lot of different kinds of leaders that way because they're usually from a whole different wide variety of industries and stuff. And usually that way you usually can find some passion about some things, and really get into things. And then the other advice that I found in my career for being a younger leader when I was younger, and then middle age, and starting to be older, is look around. And I've coached this lot for people when they've asked some tips for success is, look around for those items that are getting just dropped. They're just going anywhere. They're the thing on the schedule that keeps pushing to the right and whatever, the things that people just are not that excited about." And even if it's not your favorite, try and embrace that and go after that because that's usually the stuff that actually you can shine at. Because to Scott's point, they'll appreciate you. Jennie Stults: So for me, I went and did the Department of Ecology job and did the regulatory thing just as kind of so I could be at home at normal hours with my kids and have a normal 8:00 to 4:30 kind of job for a while when my kids were young. But it ended up leaning me to a lot of things, and so a lot of times I do a lot of the regulatory work because it wasn't as high a priority as some of the other work. And so it made me shine in my career in different things and take on some new projects. So, I think trying to look for some of those. And I don't know about you Scott, but I've seen a lot of people shine just picking up kind of the stuff that nobody is picking up, and then all of a sudden you're looking and you're, "Wow they took off. Look at that." Paul Casey: The team says, "Hurray." Jennie Stults: Yeah, exactly. Don't know how they made that happen, but great. Scott Sax: I agree. Paul Casey: Great stuff. Well how can our listeners best connect with you both? Scott Sax: Well I'm pretty good at responding to emails, and so my corporate email is scott.sax@amentum.com. And be happy to respond to an email. Paul Casey: Thank you. Jenny Stults: And so my email just like Scott is @amentum.com jennie.stults. And I also am on LinkedIn. So people can connect with me there. And then Scott did mention the brand new website that's going to be launching for his company. So you can probably catch him there too and find out how to get him there. Paul Casey: Cool. Well thanks for all you do to make the Tri-cities a great place, and keep leading well. Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. From a gentleman I met last year at a National Speakers Association conference: Kevin McCarthy. He specializes in blind spots that leaders have. And you might say, "I don't have any." Well that's why it's called a blind spot. So you can go to www3.blindspot.com, and you can actually take a little survey, 14 quick questions to reveal your blind spots. It's a free assessment. It actually comes with an eight page PDF, and Kevin McCarthy is his name, blindspots.com. Paul Casey: Again, this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guests today Jennie Stults and Scott Sax from Amentum for being here today on the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. And we want to thank our TCI sponsor and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so we can collaborate to inspire leaders in our community. Paul Casey: Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road. To help me make a difference in your circle of influence. The secret to leadership is simple. Do what you believe in, paint a picture of the future, go there, people will follow. Until next time, KGF, Keep Growing Forward. Speaker 3: Thank you to our listeners for tuning into today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership, and experience their key desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org for a consultation that could help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life, or your team forward. Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done every day by offering you his free Control My Calendar checklist. Go to www.takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool, or open a text message to 72000 and type the word growing. Paul Casey: Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.

In reaction to the film, DARK CIRCLE, Pablo and Ana talk about what it's like living so close to Rocky Flats.

On episode #15 of the Green Root Podcast, host Josh Schlossberg interviews Tiffany Hansen, co-founder and director of Rocky Flats Downwinders, about the ongoing plutonium (and other) contamination from Rocky Flats, the former nuclear weapons facility outside Denver, Colorado; concerns about the health of nearby communities; using hemp to remediate the toxic soil; and creating a Rocky Flats cannabis strain.

Soil testing at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site could lead to new trails. Then, CPW has a message about wildlife encounters. Plus, the history of Nucla as the power provider works to go green. Also, what happened after the historic Apollo landing on the Moon. And, answering the need for rural sign language interpreters in Colorado.

Brunswick Nuclear site map of vulnerability to flooding from ocean surge, Cape Fear River.From Dave Lochbaum powerpoint (available below) This Week’s Featured Interviews: BRUNSWICK NUCLEAR UPDATE – Dave Lochbaum, Director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, explains the safety status of Brunswick Nuclear Reactors 1 & 2, both the same...

Westword's Patricia Calhoun on the "re-opening" of Rocky Flats.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marker at the Trinity site, where the world’s first nuclear explosion took place. This Week’s Featured Interview: Filmmakers Taylor Dunne and Eric Stewart on their new documentary-in-progress, OFF COUNTRY, which examines lives impacted on-the-ground after the Trinity test, the first nuclear explosion in the world, and at Rocky Flats, the plutonium contaminated former nuclear weapons...

This Week’s Featured Interviews: Kristen Iversen, author of the superb book Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, explains the Preliminary Results of the Rocky Flats Health Survey, which is meant to determine what has happened to the health of those who lived and worked in proximity with that nuclear...

INTERVIEW: Author Kristen Iversen on the history of the Manhattan Project and plutonium trigger manufacturing waste at Rocky Flats, which is about to open as a Colorado Wildlife Refuge .   NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK: The New York Times goes in for hard core “hormesis” (no – Whore-YOU-sis) propaganda that completely undercuts its reputation as...

Wordfire Press Writers and Editors present their latest works; Aaron Michael Ritchey is the author of The Never Prayer and Long Live the Suicide King, both finalists in various contests. His latest novel,Elizabeth's Midnight.  Mario Acevedo is the author of the bestselling Felix Gomez detective-vampire series which includes Rescue From Planet Pleasure from WordFire Press. His debut novel,The Nymphos of Rocky Flats, was chosen by Barnes & Noble as one of the best Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Decade.  Vivian Trask has studied under Rebecca Moesta, Kevin J.   Anderson, Dave Farland and Peter J. Wacks. She is a member of the Editorial Freelancer's Association. When not editing, Vivian writes across all genres of speculative fiction, and especially loves weird westerns and science fiction.      Chatting With Sherri is now sponsored by Atelier Leseine  http://atelierleseine.com/ 

SISTER MEAGAN RICE’S MAILING ADDRESS: Megan Rice 88101-020 MDC Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center P.O. Box 329002 Brooklyn, NY 11232 TWEET THE POPE: @Pontifex – Free Sister Megan Rice, 84-year-old who protested nuclear weapons, in jail for 32 months. INTERVIEWS: Kristen Iversen, author of Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats,...

William began researching political, social, and economic crimes by the U.S. Government in 1989 after the Panama invasion where the U.S. Military committed numerous crimes against the Panamanian people to include murder and rape of civilians. William's first work was in fact Panama as he was there to photograph the events for Associated Press International. Some of that photographic work was presented in the film; The Panama Deception. From there William collected documents and video evidence concerning the Rocky Flats scandal involving possible theft of nuclear material in the 90's. This material was presented in the two hour documentary; On Deadly Ground: The Rocky Flat's Cover-up. William attended graphic design and film school and after graduating has been using those skills to expose government corruption including school shootings through the web and documentary films. Contact Details: William Zabel P.O. Box 1171 Brighton, Colorado 80601 80601 Email: birdman2219@comcast.net Website: www.thephantomchasers.org/ Phone: (720) 518-1215This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/1198501/advertisement

William Zabel on the Columbine ShootingsWilliam began researching political, social, and economic crimes by the U.S. Government in 1989 after the Panama invasion where the U.S. Military committed numerous crimes against the Panamanian people to include murder and rape of civilians. William's first work was in fact Panama as he was there to photograph the events for Associated Press International. Some of that photographic work was presented in the film; The Panama Deception. From there William collected documents and video evidence concerning the Rocky Flats scandal involving possible theft of nuclear material in the 90's. This material was presented in the two hour documentary; On Deadly Ground: The Rocky Flat's Cover-up. William attended graphic design and film school and after graduating has been using those skills to expose government corruption including school shootings through the web and documentary films. Contact Details: William Zabel P.O. Box 1171 Brighton, Colorado 80601 80601 Email: birdman2219@comcast.net Website: www.thephantomchasers.org/ Phone: (720) 518-1215This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/1198501/advertisement