Podcasts about selected quotes

This week's Mid-Atlantic served up a blistering transatlantic roundup, with host Roifield Brown and a sharp panel of commentators dissecting political dysfunction from the White House to Westminster. First, Elon Musk's abrupt departure from the Trump administration drew collective side-eye. Denise Hamilton called it a “planned grift,” while Michael Donahue reminded us Musk's firms are still swimming in government contracts. As for public perception? Let's just say Tesla's aura now smells a lot like diesel.Next, Trump's vendetta against Harvard and foreign students provoked righteous fury. Michael labelled it “vindictive chaos,” while Denise broke down how this could gut America's soft power for decades. Meanwhile, Cory Bernard coolly suggested British universities may opportunistically benefit from Trump's xenophobic overreach. A win for Oxford, a loss for everyone else.On the UK side, Labour's Brexit “reset” is, according to Cory, “technocratic fudge.” While the EU quietly standardises global regulation, Britain remains a rule-taker masquerading as a rule-maker. The panel skewered Starmer's “quiet alignment” approach, calling it necessary but cowardly. Gaza and the UK's too-little-too-late condemnation of Israeli settlements brought a sombre close, with Denise lamenting performative outrage after the damage is done. Oh, and Trump's tariffs? Illegal, inflationary, and economically suicidal—now rubber-stamped as such by the courts.Selected Quotes from the Episode“This is just a three-card monte. You're looking over here, meanwhile, you're being robbed mercilessly.” – Denise Hamilton“You can't run a country like a business because government's job isn't to make money—it's to deliver the mail and send checks to old people.” – Michael Donahue“The UK's condemnation is just performative. Now that Gaza's flattened, suddenly everyone finds their moral compass.” – Cory Bernard“We are experiencing a level of grift we can't even process.” – Denise Hamilton“The EU is stealthily rewriting global corporate governance—and Britain is just cosplaying sovereignty.” – Roifield Brown Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Harmony Slater welcomes Kelsey Murphy, a renowned business coach and podcast host to the Finding Harmony Podcast. They dive into the complexities and joys of balancing a successful coaching business with personal life, especially as mothers and entrepreneurs. This conversation includes rich insights on personal development, the power of life coaching, and the spiritual journey of entrepreneurship. Listeners will discover practical strategies for work-life balance, the importance of self-reflection, and how to embrace growth and challenges in both personal and professional realms. Suggested Links: Kelsey Murphy's Website Whiskey and Work Podcast Harmony Slater's Website --- More details about this episode: Introduction and Welcome [00:00:00 - 00:00:43] Harmony introduces the podcast and its focus on integrating ancient wisdom and modern life. Introducing Guest: Kelsey Murphy [00:00:43 - 00:01:12] Kelsey Murphy, a business coach and podcast host, is introduced, highlighting her impact on Harmony's business. Balancing Work and Family Life [00:01:12 - 00:03:07] The discussion centers on achieving a harmonious balance between work and family life, emphasizing the unique challenges faced by entrepreneurial mothers. Journey Through B-School [00:03:07 - 00:03:47] Harmony shares her transformative experience in B-School, a pivotal point in her career. Role of a Business Mentor [00:03:47 - 00:03:57] Exploring the significance of mentorship in business and professional growth. Importance of Podcasting [00:03:57 - 00:07:00] Discussing the value and personal impact of podcasting in sharing ideas and building connections. Personal Growth and Self-Discovery [00:07:00 - 00:10:15] Kelsey reflects on her journey into life coaching and the importance of self-awareness. Power of Life Coaching [00:10:15 - 00:13:50] An in-depth conversation on how life coaching can transform lives. Delegating Tasks and Support [00:29:37 - 00:31:09] Insights on the crucial role of delegation and support in managing personal and professional responsibilities. Building Business as a Spiritual Practice [00:31:43 - 00:33:51] Discussing entrepreneurship and coaching as forms of spiritual practice, involving overcoming fears and self-reflection. Facing Fears and Insecurities [00:32:43 - 00:35:30] A conversation on confronting personal fears and insecurities in business growth. Challenges in Coaching Business [00:33:51 - 00:39:42] Identifying common challenges faced by coaches in establishing their businesses. Importance of Self-Reflection and Celebration [00:47:14 - 01:00:00] The significance of acknowledging achievements and positive self-talk in personal and professional success. Kelsey's Bio Kelsey Murphy is a Career & Business Coach for Fortune 500 companies like Facebook and Twitter, along with entrepreneurs like Kelly Leveque (Jessica Alba's Nutritionist). She is also the host of The Whiskey & Work Podcast, which has been said to be "Magic... full of contagious energy, relevant information, motivation, tips, and experience". Previously, Kelsey was the Advertising Account Director for Nintendo, Go Pro, and Elizabeth Arden-and now she coaches people who want to feel different about their work—more purposeful, more lit up, more satisfied. She's been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Huffington Post, LiveStrong, Living Healthy, and Lauren Conrad. But on her other business card, it might say, snowboarder, eater, dreamer, and fresh-air-addict. Selected Quotes: "Building a business is a spiritual practice." - Kelsey Murphy "We'd fire that friend who's always criticizing." - Harmony Slater "Identify primal fears that keep us in our comfort zone." - Kelsey Murphy "It's okay to be bad at something and have fun." - Kelsey Murphy Explore More Episodes: IF you liked this episode, we know you'll love these too! Unlocking Abundance: Step out of lack and Find True Wealth Miranda Mitchell: Human Design

Selected Quotes from Many Different Spiritual Masters, Mystics, Gnostic Gospels, Scriptures and Spiritual Classics -- A Sant Mat Satsang Podcast -- Spiritual Awakening Radio   In Divine Love (Bhakti), Light, and Sound, At the Feet of the Masters, Radhaswami, James Bean Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcasts Sant Mat Satsang Podcasts https://www.SpiritualAwakeningRadio.com    

In Episode 25, Del Leonard Jones, Referee/umpire in multiple sports, Author of three books, including At the Bat: The Strikeout That Shamed America and Advice from the Top, and former USA Today Business Journalist (nominated for Pulitzer Prize), talks with Phil about angle and perspective in refereeing and life, issues with VAR and instant replay, avoiding compounding mistakes, the law vs application of the law, respecting authority, and the #1 complaint referees get. Specifically, Del discusses: His story and how he developed his passion for sports, refereeing, writing, and leadership (2:26) The importance of knowing one’s angle and perspective in refereeing, and what it has to do with life outside of sports (12:14) The pros and cons of instant replay and VAR, whether we should get rid of it, and what life lessons we are missing because of its implementation (16:34) Make-up calls and compounding mistakes, and what life lessons we can learn from them (20:44) Power trips and referees making it about them, and what that can teach us about leadership outside the pitch (24:27) The law vs. application of the law, subjectivity in refereeing, and how it plays out in our life and leadership outside the game (28:30) The #1 complaint referees get, and what it has to do with other areas of our lives (31:37) Why we ought to respect officials, how we can properly do so, and how it relates to our lives and leadership off the pitch (40:36) Some great quotes from CEOs and other leaders in his book, Advice from the Top, and how they can help us in our life and leadership (47:58) (Below are some quotes from the book) How Del has used the lessons learned through sports in his life and leadership off the pitch (55:39) Selected Quotes from Advice from the Top Joe Moglia, Former TD Ameritrade CEO and Head Football Coach of Coastal Carolina University (from the Foreword “Just before Super Bowl XXXIX, I gave an interview to Del about the football lessons that apply to business. Here are a few X’s and O’s from my interview with Del: Be sure your people are playing in the right positions. Know the odds of success and the consequence of failure when taking a risk. Ingenious game plans fail if no one is blocking and tackling. Success requires spiritual soundness, dedication, courage and love. Love is the willingness to sacrifice for the team. It doesn't matter how many points you score if the team loses. "In football and business there are star performers. Convince the stars that the only way to succeed is to reach team goals." "The star quarterback won't be effective if he's on the ground due to lousy protection. In business, if your star running back doesn't recognize the importance of his blockers, you need another back." "You can have good athletes playing the wrong position. Move underperforming employees to where they can be successful." Larry Brown, NBA and Dream Team Coach “If your best player has great character, the chances of succeeding are incredible. If your best player is not of good character, then you have a problem.” Mike Eruzione, Captain of the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team on beating impossible odds "Game winners aren’t luck. They’re practice and preparation unless the shot bounces off somebody's head and goes in." "Miracles are one part luck, nine parts hard work." "If you believe you're going to lose, you probably will." Ronnie Lott, NFL Hall of Famer with the 49ers “It’s like players who invest time looking at film. Reflect on things you want to achieve each day.” Dan Lyons, Olympic Rower "The best team members feed off each other. They are a little quirky and odd. Bland groups, no matter how strong and powerful, underperform. That's the strength of diversity. It's not just racial or ethnic or gender diversity, it's diversity of spirit, of seeing life and the world." Wynton Marsalis, Trumpeter, composer, bandleader on the leadership lessons of jazz "When people trust each other they work for the common good. They are in sync and prepared for anything." Steve Young, Former 49er QB “Perfect information is never available. Gut instinct is crucial. Play a little blind, throw the ball trusting the receiver will be there. Take advantage of a glimpse, a piece of information.” Resources and Links from this Episode Del on LinkedIn At the Bat: The Strikeout That Shamed America, by Del Leonard Jones Advice from the Top: 1001 Bits of Business Wisdom from the Great Leaders of the Recent Past, by Del Leonard Jones The Cremation of Sam McGee, by Del Leonard Jones “Try Angles,” Referee Magazine (September 27, 2018) Uncut Video of the Episode HSEL Facebook Group Phil and HSEL on Clubhouse -- @phildarke Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown "Five Lessons on Leadership: What One CEO Learned as a Referee," Referee Magazine Miracle (movie) Leadership Jazz: The Essential Elements of a Good Leader, by Max Dupree  

Ever wonder, ‘what exactly is a craft-based designer and what do they do?’ Well then meet this week’s guest, Kitiya Palaskas. In this episode Kitiya will discuss how she got her start in this industry, how she stays creative in this crazy, tips to get reaching out and staying on big brands radar, and advice for turning your creative passion into a career.  Kitiya Palaskas is an Australian craft-based designer, author and speaker with a multi-disciplinary practice. She specialises in prop and installation design, content creation, illustration and workshops, focusing primarily on using handmade techniques and traditional craft methods re-imagined in contemporary ways. Her work is characterised by its bold colours and quirky themes and has spanned the retail, music, advertising and publishing industries. Her clients have included: Lego, Etsy, The Washington Post, Warner Music, Amazon, Bailey Nelson, Frankie Magazine and Lily Allen, among others. She is the author of Piñata Party, a DIY craft book available in Australia, the UK and the USA. Episode notes:  [05:43 ] What in the world is a craft-based designer?  [14:10] How to stay inspired in a digital world.  [21:35] The three tactical tips you need to pitch and secure big name brands as partners [33:03] How has your business pivoted since COVID?  [47:21] What advice do you have for people who want to turn their creative passions into a business?    Selected Quotes:     [ 11:32] " I get these ideas and I get so passionate about them and I just have to see them through. Life's short you just gotta like to follow your dreams,” Kitiya says.   [14:19] "I think it's really easy to think that you're looking for inspiration as you're scrolling through Pinterest or scrolling through Instagram feed. But really you're just absorbing the ideas of other people. And I know that's what inspiration is, but it's really hard when you then want to use your inspiration to create original work if the core inspiration came from somebody else's work, because it starts to form this rehashing cycle, where your work starts looking like everything else on Pinterest,” she mentions.  [25:27] “These brands get pitched all day long and have multiple campaigns running for different aspects of their business all the time. So you wanna make it really easy for them and clear for them to see exactly how they could use you,” she discusses.    [30:48 “It's not just about what you can get from them [clients], but it's about how you can nurture [that relationship] once they are your client and keep them on your list,” Kitiya says.    [45:18] “Self care and well-being need to come first! Because if you don't feel great like that, then you're not going to be able to be your most creative and authentic self and that's the thing that brands and clients want to work with you for.” She says.    [47:34] “First thing to do is just start putting your work out there! Don't worry too much about having a fully realized brand from the get-go, before you begin, because you might never feel ready then.” Kitiya says.   Show notes Get 50% off Flodesk Watch on Youtube! 

Jessie Susannah Karnatz is an Intuitive Financial Coach, small business alchemist, and tax preparer bringing Capitalism-Critical financial education to clients in the Bay Area and online and doing it all with impeccable business lady style.   Episode Summary Bringing in PPP, tarot, astrology, finances, and personal budgeting, we sit down with Jessie Susannah Karnatz, aka $Money Witch$, to talk about losses, taxes, and financial wellness practices.  Episode notes:  [01:19] Stop asking, ‘How are you,’ and instead ask this.  [14:17] Can you define what bookkeeping is?  [27:40 ] Business structure 101: LLC vs. Sole proprietor vs. S-corp  [52:10] How does PPP forgiveness work?  [58:17] Any advice for business owners in general?     Selected Quotes:  “ I'm experiencing the full range of human emotion every day. I am all of that” Don't become an LLC or S Corp b/c some guy, said so, I see a lot of that.  [40:30] Running a business is a whole job! [55:36] “[We’re] using tarot as the spoon sugar to have the conversation about budgeting. [1:08:33]   Enroll in Moneywitch's Business Coven Show notes 

Topics: Air Jordans, Whitney Houston, Sade, The Color Purple, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Phylicia Rashad (Bonus Artist: Luck Pacheco)   1985 Notes   General Snapshots   1.    President: Ronald Reagan   2.    Jan – In Hollywood,  California, the charity single "We  Are the World" is recorded by USA for  Africa. The  single raises money to combat the  ongoing famine in Ethiopia. The  American act consists of high-profile  performers, including Michael  Jackson, Lionel Richie, Tina Turner,  Cyndi Lauper and Diana Ross.   3.    Jan – The newest music video channel, VH-1, begins broadcasting on American cable. It is aimed at an older demographic than its sister station, MTV. The first video played is Marvin Gaye's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner".   4.    Mar – WrestleMania debuts at Madison Square Garden.  In the main event, Hulk Hogan and Mr. T defeated Paul Orndorff and Roddy Piper. The attendance for the event was 19,121. The event was seen by over one million viewers through closed-circuit television, making it the largest pay-per-view showing of a wrestling event on closed-circuit television in the United States at the time.   5.    Apr – Coca-Cola changes its recipe and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.   6.    Aug - Ryan White who was expelled from Western High School in Indiana is allowed to attend his first day of classes via telephone.   7.    Sep - The Farm Aid concert is held in Champaign, Illinois, USA.   8.    Oct  – The Nintendo Entertainment System is released in U.S. stores. By 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software.  The NES was released two years after the North American video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.   9.    Nov - Microsoft Corporation releases the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0.   10.    Open Comments:   11.    Top 3 Pop Songs   12.    1    "Careless Whisper"    Wham!   13.    2    "Like a Virgin"    Madonna   14.    3    "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"    Wham!   15.    Grammy Awards   16.    Record of the Year: Quincy Jones (producer) for "We Are the World"   17.    Album of the Year: Phil Collins (producer & artist) for No Jacket Required   18.    Song of the Year: Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie (songwriters) for "We Are the World"   19.    Best New Artist: Sade   20.    Top 3 Movies   21.    Back to the Future   22.    Rambo: First Blood Part II   23.    Rocky IV   24.    Other Notables:  The Color Purple / Out of Africa / Cocoon / The Jewel of the Nile / Witness / The Goonies / Spies Like Us / The Breakfast Club / Brewster's Millions / St. Elmo's Fire /  Krush Groove   25.    Top 3 TV Shows   26.    The Cosby Show   27.    Family Ties   28.    Murder, She Wrote       29.    TV Debuts   30.    Sep - What's Happening Now!! / Stir Crazy   31.    Black Snapshots   32.    Feb -  Whitney Houston releases her debut  album – Whitney Houston.   33.    Mar  – Mike Tyson makes his professional debut in Albany, New York, a match which he wins by a first-round knockout.   34.    May - Michael Jordan is named as the NBA's "Rookie of the Year."   35.    May – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Mayor Wilson Goode, the  first African American to hold that office,  orders police to storm the  headquarters of the black liberation/back-to-nature group MOVE to end a stand-off over serving arrest warrants. (Due process?!?!)  The police drop 2 explosive devices into the headquarters, killing 6 adults and 5 children, and destroyed an additional 61 residental homes in the resulting fire. The survivors filed a civil suit against the city and the police department, and were awarded $1.5 million in 1996.   36.    Jul - The final episode of The Jeffersons airs. (1975-) 10 yrs   37.    Aug - Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids  (1972-) 13 yrs   38.    Nov - Ebony Man: EM  Magazine launches   39.    Best Comedy Recording: Whoopi Goldberg - Original Broadway Show Recording   40.    Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female: Aretha Franklin for "Freeway of Love"   41.    Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male: Stevie Wonder for In Square Circle   42.    Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal: Commodores for "Nightshift"   43.    Economic Snapshot   44.    Avg. Income = $22,138   45.    House = $99,331   46.    New Car = $9,531   47.    Avg. Rent = $375   48.    Tuition at Harvard = $9,800   49.    Movie Ticket = $2.75   50.    Gas = $1.20   51.    Stamp = $0.22   52.    Socilal Scene: “Money, it's gotta be da shoes!” - Mars Blackmon   53.    The Air Jordan I was originally released in 1985 and is almost single-handedly responsible for modern-day sneaker culture. Michael Jordan originally wanted to sign with either Converse or Adidas. But Converse declined and according to a Wall Street Journal article published in 2015 so did Adidas. Still MJ was not convinced. Only when Nike, thinking they had nothing to loose, offered to give MJ his own shoe- and clothing line did he change his mind. This was unheard of at the time, no NBA player had an entire product line named after them. As the first basketball player with his own signature shoes Jordan would immediately become the king of basketball sneaker advertising. Just to be on the safe side Nike worked an out-clause into the contract: if Air Jordans didn’t earn Nike $3 million in the first 3 years, or if Jordan didn’t make the NBA All-Star Game in his first three years, Nike could dump him. Jordan was voted into the All-Star Game as a Rookie starter and the "Air Jordan 1" shoe made Nike $130 million in 1985 alone. The rest is history.   54.    Open Comments:   55.    The pushback and common critisisms   56.    Extremely superficial materialism is one of the only ways that many black Americans express a sense of self worth.    57.    When you live in a society where nobody has a savings account, or a college degree, or has traveled abroad, having a fresh pair of sneakers and a gold chain shouldn't be your version of keeping up with the Joneses.   58.    Liking shoes is as much of a "black thing" as liking chicken is a "black thing". Everyone likes both of these things.   59.    Open Comments:   60.    It became popular in the late 80s for people with moderate or low incomes to wear clothing adorned with the names and logos of luxury, high-end brands. Then all the luxury brands started making their own low-end, logo-covered versions. You wear your favorite sports team to affiliate yourself with them. It's the same thing with Tommy Hilfiger, Gucci, Jordache, Guess, Wrangler, Levi, Gitano, Bonjour, Sasson, etc., it's a way of signalling.   61.    Question: We went from tailored suits and dresses to baggy jeans and yoga pants. From afro's and braids to fashioned bandanas and bleached blondes. From the stylish Supremes and Tempations to tatooed  faces and pireced everytginhg. - What do you think is at the root of our decisions? Are we victims of advertising?   62.    Music Scene   63.    Black Songs from the Top 40 (No Lionel Richie showed up!)   64.    5    "I Feel for You"    Chaka Khan   65.    6    "Out of Touch"    Hall & Oates   66.    12    "Easy Lover"    Philip Bailey and Phil Collins   67.    17    "Cherish"    Kool & the Gang   68.    20    "We Are the World"    USA for Africa   69.    22    "Part-Time Lover"    Stevie Wonder   70.    23    "Saving All My Love For You"    Whitney Houston   71.    26    "Cool It Now"    New Edition   72.    28    "Loverboy"    Billy Ocean   73.    29    "Lovergirl"    Teena Marie   74.    31    "Oh Sheila"    Ready for the World   75.    32    "Rhythm of the Night"    DeBarge   76.    38    "Neutron Dance"    The Pointer Sisters   77.    40    "Nightshift"    Commodores   78.    Vote:   79.    Top RnB Singles   80.    Jan - "Operator"    Midnight Star   81.    Jan - "Gotta Get You Home Tonight"    Eugene Wilde   82.    Feb -  "Mr. Telephone Man"    New Edition   83.    Feb - "Missing You"    Diana Ross   84.    Mar - "Nightshift"    The Commodores   85.    Apr - "Back In Stride"    Maze featuring Frankie Beverly   86.    Apr - "Rhythm Of the Night"    DeBarge   87.    May - "We Are the World"    USA for Africa   88.    May - "Fresh"    Kool & the Gang   89.    May - "You Give Good Love"    Whitney Houston   90.    Jun - "Rock Me Tonight (For Old Times Sake)"    Freddie Jackson   91.    Jul - "Hangin' on a String (Contemplating)"    Loose Ends   92.    Jul - "Save Your Love (For #1)"    René & Angela   93.    Aug - "Freeway of Love"    Aretha Franklin   94.    Sep - "Saving All My Love for You"    Whitney Houston   95.    Sep - "Cherish"    Kool & the Gang   96.    Sep - "Oh Sheila"    Ready For the World   97.    Oct - "You Are My Lady"    Freddie Jackson   98.    Oct - "Part-Time Lover"    Stevie Wonder   99.    Nov - "Caravan of Love"    Isley-Jasper-Isley   100.    Dec - "Don't Say No Tonight"    Eugene Wilde   101.    Vote:   102.    Top RnB Albums   103.    Jan - New Edition    New Edition   104.    Feb - Solid    Ashford & Simpson   105.    Mar - Gap Band VI    The Gap Band   106.    Mar p- Private Dancer    Tina Turner   107.    Apr - Nightshift    The Commodores   108.    Apr - Can't Stop the Love    Frankie Beverly and Maze   109.    May - The Night I Fell in Love    Luther Vandross   110.    Jun - Whitney Houston    Whitney Houston   111.    Jun - Rock Me Tonight    Freddie Jackson   112.    Nov - In Square Circle    Stevie Wonder   113.    Vote   114.    Featured Artists: Whitney Houston and Sade   115.    Whitney Elizabeth Houston, @22 yrs old: Singer, actress, model, and producer, Whitney Houston is one of the world’s most successful female entertainers of all time.   116.    Born and raised in Newark NJ,  she is the daughter of Grammy-award-winning gospel singer, Emily “Cissy” Houston and John R. Houston, who managed his daughter’s production company.    117.    Childhood & Early Life   118.    She was no stranger to the entertainment industry, having come from a line of singers and actresses. Not only did her mother’s vocal group, the ‘Sweet Inspirations’, sing backup for Aretha Franklin, but her cousins Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick are also renowned singers, as well as her godmother, Darlene Love. She began performing in her church’s gospel choir as a soloist at the age of eleven and learned to play the piano. While attending Catholic school, she took voice lessons from her mother, with whom she would occasionally perform in nightclubs.   119.    Career   120.    In 1977 (@ 14 yrs old), she was a backup singer for Michael Zager Band’s single ‘Life’s a Party’ and the following year she sang on Chaka Khan’s single ‘I’m Every Woman’. She was offered an opportunity to sign with a recording company, but her mother declined so she would finish high school. In the early 1980s, (@17 yrs old), she worked as a model, appearing in several magazines including, ‘Seventeen’, where she became the first African American to be featured on the cover. She also took on acting gigs appearing in TV show episodes such as, ‘Gimme a Break’, while continuing to develop her vocal skills. In 1983,(@ 20yrs old) she was signed with ‘Arista Records’. President Clive Davis spent the next couple years assembling lyricists and producers to balance her gospel-like sound with contemporary melodies. In 1985, her debut album, ‘Whitney Houston’ gradually became the number one selling album of her career.  She went on to win two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, 22 American Music Awards.   121.    Open Comments:   122.    A Hot Mess   123.    On February 11th, 2012, Whitney Houston (@ 48 yrs old) was found facedown in a bathtub.  Weeks later, an autopsy report would contribute Houston’s death to accidental drowning, heart disease and cocaine use. There were additional traces of a muscle relaxant, Xanax, marijuana and an allergy medication in the singer’s system.    124.    The sad, secret life of Whitney Houston: From a secret lesbian relationship to a decades-long struggle with drugs, five years after singer’s death, a new film ‘Whitney: Can I Be Me’ examines what caused her tragic downfall - Tara Brady [Jun 12, 2017] https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/the-sad-secret-life-of-whitney-houston-1.3105861   125.    Selected quotes from the article:   126.    What exactly killed Houston? Why did she drown? How did she drown? Was she simply overwhelmed by the controlling demands of her formidable mother, Cissy Houston, Svengali Clive Davis, and her record company, Arista? Did the aftermath of her toxic and co-dependent marriage to Bobby Brown send her spiralling? Or was it the dissolution of her decades-old lesbian relationship with her assistant Robyn Crawford? It’s complicated, as documentarian Nick Broomfield discovered.  “In the end I think the divide between who she was and what her public persona was became more and more difficult,” says  documentarian Nick Broomfield. “And she just went down,    127.    The imploding relations between Houston, Bobby Brown and Robyn Crawford. Brown told Us Weekly magazine that Houston was bisexual and that she once had an affair with Tupac Shakur. He went on to say that Houston kept her relationship with Crawford hidden because of Cissy. “I really feel that if Robyn was accepted into Whitney’s life, Whitney would still be alive today,” Brown told the magazine. “She didn’t have close friends with her anymore.”   128.    From Cissy’s notorious 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey:  “Would it have bothered you if your daughter was gay?”  “Absolutely,” Cissy snapped back. “You wouldn’t have condoned it?” continued an incredulous Oprah. “Not at all.” ...“I didn’t particularly like [Crawford],” Cissy told the talk show queen. “She just spoke too much, disrespectful sometimes, like she had something over Nippy (Houston’s nickname), and I didn’t like that at all. She was all right, she turned out to be all right, I guess. That was her friend.”   129.    Houston and Crawford first bonded while they were teenagers working at a community centre in East Orange, New Jersey. When Houston’s modelling career began to take off, she’d face bullying in school, and Crawford, who was originally a friend of Houston’s older brothers Michael and Gary, would frequently come to the rescue. When Houston moved out of her family home, she shared her first apartment with Crawford. Deep into Houston and Brown’s 14-year marriage, Crawford remained a fixture in Houston’s domestic arrangements.   130.    Houston’s marriage to Brown, understandably, made for an uneasy romantic trinity. In Derrick Handspike’s unauthorised 2008 biography, Bobby Brown: The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But . . ., the author quotes Brown as saying: “Now I realise Whitney had a different agenda than I did when we got married. I believe her agenda was to clean up her image while mine was to be loved and have children. “Whitney felt she had to make rumours of a lesbian affair go away. Since she was the American Sweetheart and all, that didn’t go too well with her image. In Whitney’s situation the only solution was to get married and have kids. That would kill all speculation whether it was true or not.”   131.    Supermarket tabloids did a brisk trade during the 1990s by peddling the idea that Houston’s life spiralled into addiction after she married Brown. She was the gospel-singing good girl – the church-going daughter of Cissy and a cousin of Dionne Warwick. He was a bad boy who, aged 20, when they first met, had already been shot and stabbed in the shoulder. Their tumultuous marriage (from 1992 to 2007), characterised by drug use, infidelity and a costly entourage, was seldom out of the headlines. But contrary to popular belief, Brown did not introduce his troubled wife to cocaine. Houston first dabbled with drugs with her brothers, Michael and Gary, as a teenager. The truth is that Houston was always as “street“ as her R&B star husband. But that part of her personal history didn’t fit with what Broomfield calls “the Whitney character”.  As Pattie Howard, Houston’s backing vocalist, notes: “People may not know it but Whitney was from the ‘hood’. They wanted to present her as the princess. And that’s what white America was presented with.” Kenneth Reynolds, who worked in marketing for Arista Records recalls that: “Anything that was too black sounding was sent back. We wanted Joni Mitchell. We wanted Barbra Streisand. ” “She was very carefully groomed for nearly two years before the first album came out,” explains Broomfield. “So every aspect of her was carefully considered. She was a major project. A lot of money was spent on her. Anything that was too R&B was out. They didn’t want a female James Brown. That was not part of their vision. Which, of course, was a very successful vision.”   132.    In 1989, just as Houston topped 25 million in album sales and surpassed the Beatles’s record with seven consecutive number one hits, she attended the Soul Train awards where, in response to her “white” music, she was roundly booed. Pre-Beyoncé and Mariah Carey, “crossover” was synonymous with cultural betrayal. People shouted “Oreo” – brown on the outside, white on the inside – as her nomination for Best Female Vocalist was announced. “It’s not a good feeling,” says Houston, in Can I Be Me. “It’s horrible and kind of funny. You think: ‘Are they booing me?’ And you have to sit there and be cordial and smiley. And you feel like: ‘Oh my God’.” Kirk Whalum, the saxophonist who toured with Houston for more than seven years recalls that night, which coincidentally, was the first time she met Brown. “It was devastating [for her],” says Whalum.   133.    By the end of the 90s, Houston found herself at the centre of a perfect storm of ongoing racial friction, marital troubles and drug abuse. Friends, unable to watch Houston’s decline, began to drift away. Her father, John, died in 2003, but not before his management company, John Houston Entertainment LLC, filed a $100 million lawsuit against his own daughter. Months before his death, he made a public appeal on the syndicated show, Celebrity Justice: “You get your act together, honey, and you pay me the money that you owe me.” Robyn Crawford’s departure in 2000, too, prompted a new, crippling dependency on crack-cocaine and other substances. - “Robyn was the one who was keeping her together,” says writer Allison Samuels. “That’s when drugs became so important to her.”   134.    Open Comments:   135.    The Smooth Operator -Helen Folasade Adu, professionally known as Sade (@26 yrs old)   136.    Sade is an internationally renowned, multi-Grammy award winning singer who is known for her smooth, melodic vocals and the seamless incorporation of different styles of music. She was born in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria on January 16, 1959. Her father Adebisi Adu, a Nigerian lecturer of economics, and her mother Anne Hayes, a district nurse, had met in London. Sade was the couple’s second child. Shortly after her birth, Sade’s parents separated and she and her brother followed their mother to Colchester, Essex, England. There, the children were raised by their mother as well as their maternal grandfather. Upon finishing her education at Clacton County High School in Colchester, she enrolled at Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design in London to pursue fashion and design. After completion of her program, she worked as a model and menswear designer.    137.    Sade entered the music scene around 1980 when she started singing harmony for Arriva, a Latin funk band. She joined another funk band called Pride and was a background singer for the group. Pride garnered much attention from record companies due to their performances around London. Eventually Sade and fellow bandmates, Stuart Matthewman, Paul Denma, and Andrew Hale signed a deal with the U.K. division of Epic Records and formed the band Sade. In 1984 the band’s debut album, Diamond Life, was released to much critical success and was bolstered by singles such as “Hang On to Your Love” and “Smooth Operator.” The band followed up their debut with their next album, Promise, which was released the following year. “The Sweetest Taboo,” a single from Promise, was on the U.S. Hot 100 for six months. She was awarded the Grammy for best new artist of 1985.    138.    Open Comments:   139.    Selected quote about her sound   140.    Let's get this into context. With Sade it's unlikely there will ever be a full, naked baring of the soul. In terms of contemporary icons, it's better to listen to Mary J for stories of drama and shattered devotion. But Sade, today, is all about the acknowledged presence of absence. What's missing in her music is as important as what's present. - The Fader   141.    A small, yet important, fact: When Sade signed her first record deal with Epic in the early '80s, she accepted a small advance, worth ~$70,000 in exchange for an unusually high cut of sales for a new artist—15 percent. It was a deal that ended up proving immensely lucrative, and it has freed her from many of the commercial demands that often encumber artists. Put simply, she only works when and how she wants to. As one executive at her label, Epic, put it to me: "Who's going to argue with a woman who's sold 50 million albums? She's more powerful than anyone working at the label, including the [President]." - The Fader   142.    Question: Does the Sade sound ever wear out?   143.    The Movie Scene   144.    The Color Purple/Film synopsis   145.    An epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg), an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry. After Celie's abusive father marries her off to the equally debasing "Mister" Albert Johnson (Danny Glover), things go from bad to worse, leaving Celie to find companionship anywhere she can. She perseveres, holding on to her dream of one day being reunited with her sister in Africa. Based on the novel by Alice Walker.   146.    Review by Roger Ebert   147.    Returning to "The Color Purple" after almost 20 years, I can see its flaws more easily than when I named it the best film of 1985, but I can also understand why it moved me so deeply, and why the greatness of some films depends not on their perfection or logic, but on their heart. The movie may have inconsistencies, confusions and improbabilities, but there is one perfect thing at its center, and that is the character of Celie, as played by Whoopi Goldberg. "Here is this year's winner for best actress," I wrote in my original review, and that should have been true, but although "The Color Purple" had 11 nominations, it won not a single Oscar. When a movie character is really working, we become that character. That's what the movies offer: Escapism into lives other than our own. I am not female, I am not black, I am not Celie, but for a time during "The Color Purple," my mind deceives me that I am all of those things, and as I empathize with her struggle and victory I learn something about what it must have been like to be her.  - Roger Ebert   148.    Selected Quotes   149.    In Honor of Its 33rd Anniversary, Here Are 10 Life Lessons I Learned From the Color Purple - By Melissa Kimble Dec 18, 2018 [https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/tv-movies/a25616715/the-color-purple-quotes-anniversary/]   150.    I was born a few years after the film was released. However, I can credit much of my self discovery to the many times I’ve watched it. My favorite quotes from the movie taught me valuable lessons about Black womanhood, faith, and self love. And these 10 are the ones I’ll never forget.   151.    “Girl, you oughta bash Mister’s head open and think about heaven later.” By Oprah Winfrey - In a film where women are treated like inferiors, Sofia breaks the mold by refusing to be her husband's punching bag. This scene-stealing monologue, with its rage filled entrance by the O of O, is an act of defiance—especially one committed in early 20th century Georgia. It was powerful and necessary to see a Black woman go against the grain on screen. And to me, it was a call to action to be fearless.   152.    "I'm poor, Black, I may even be ugly, but dear God, I’m here! I’m here!" By Whoopi Goldberg - What a victorious statement this was by Celie, who, up until this point, had spent most of her life feeling unworthy and invisible. It reminded me that even with our flaws and imperfections, we still deserve to show up in our own lives.   153.    "Until you do right by me, everything you think about is going to crumble." By - Whoopi Goldberg - With these words, Celie breaks a cycle of abuse from Mister and sticks up for herself. I interpreted this line as a sign that I don’t have to carry the weight of people who have caused my pain; life will take care of everything.   154.    “Miss Celie, why you always covering up your smile?” By Desreta Jackson - Growing up, I was very insecure about my smile. And when Shug Avery posed this question to Miss Celie, it also made me turn to myself. When Shug encourages Celie to smile, I learned that there’s no need to cover up my own   155.    Open Comments:   156.    Featured Artist   157.    Caryn Elaine Johnson, a.k.a. Whoopi Goldberg (@ 30 yrs old): an American comedian, actress, singer-songwriter, Broadway star, political activist, author and talk show host, she is one of the most successful and established African American actresses of her time.    158.    Born and raised in Manhattan, she is one of 14 entertainers ever to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. What differentiates Goldberg from her contemporaries is the excellence that she portrayed in all the mediums of entertainment, be it television, theatre, films or radio.    159.    Childhood & Early Life   160.    Her mother was a nurse and a teacher while her father served as a clergyman. She was raised in the Chelsea-Elliot Houses by her mother alone after her father disbanded the family when she was young. She studied until her teen years and later dropped out of school. Her started acting started at a young age. It was during her stage performance that people complimented her by saying that she looked like whoopee cushion. It was from there that she took the stage name Whoopi and adopted Goldberg as her surname to sound more Jewish.    161.    Career   162.    In 1974, (@ age 19) she moved to California and thereafter lived in various cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. It was during this time that she honed her acting skills and developed her talent as a stand-up comedian.  However, soon thereafter, she returned to New York and started receiving training under acting coach Uta Hagen. Her first ever appearance on screen was for William Farley’s feature, ‘Citizen: I'm Not Losing My Mind, I'm Giving It Away’ in 1982 (@ 27). In 1983, she created, starred and directed a ‘The Spook Show’, a one-woman show that addressed the issue of race in American but in a unique and innovative style. Next, she created other off-Broadway productions such as ‘Little Girl’ an African-American child obsessed with having blond hair and ‘Fontaine’ a junkie who also happens to hold a doctorate in literature. The innovative presentation and sense of wit and style in her shows impressed director Mike Nicholas who offered to take ‘The Spook Show’ to the Broadway. The show which ran for 156 performances, met with much acclaim both commercially and critically. It went on to earn her a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. The eye-catching performance and amazing positive reception of the show earned her attention of the Hollywood bigwigs. It helped her bag a role in the Steven Spielberg film, ‘The Color Purple’, released in 1985. The movie met with resounding success, clutching 11 Academy Awards nominations and she won her first Golden Globe award.   163.    Open Comments:   164.    Oprah Gail Winfrey , a.k.a. Oprah Winfrey (@ 31 yrs old): Talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist.   165.    Childhood & Early Life   166.    Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on a small family farm, to an unwed mother who had a short relationship with a soldier stationed nearby, Oprah grew up in dire poverty, and was primarily raised by her grandmother. Sexually abused and mistreated as a child, Winfrey rose above adversity to focus on her primary and high school education.    167.    Career   168.    When she was still a teenager, the local CBS television station in Nashville, Tennessee offered her a job as a co-anchor. She turned it down three times. At age 19, Oprah Winfrey said yes after the fourth offer. She failed the interview, but instead was offered a job as a full-time reporter for a Baltimore television news channel. She did poorly as a reporter, and by age 22 she was fired from the news division. The director of the station gave Winfrey a boost by selecting her to anchor a morning talk show entitled ‘People are Talking’. For the next seven years, her talk show enjoyed excellent ratings. In 1981, (@ 27) she moved to Chicago to host a talk show entitled ‘A.M. Chicago’. Four years later, (1985) after a tremendous boost in the ratings, the producers changed the name to ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’. She caught the attention of Quincy Jones, a Chicago native, and he cast her as Sofia for the first movie he produced, 'The Color Purple'. The following year ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ was broadcast nationally.    169.    Open Comments:   170.    TV Scene:   171.    Featured Actor: Phylician Ayers Allen, a.k.a Phylicia Rashad is an Emmy-nominated American actress, singer, and director.   172.    Her multi-faceted career began with Broadway before she branched into television and films. She is best remembered for her character as Claire Huxtable in the NBC sitcom ‘The Cosby Show’, which ran for eight years. The series brought Phylicia much deserved recognition, also earning her two Emmy nominations. Phylicia, however, is immortalized for her rich performances on the stage as an artist. She starred in several lavish musicals and dramas, all praised highly by critics. She became the first African American actress to walk away with a Tony Award for her performance in Lorraine Hansberry’s ‘Raisin in The Sun’.  Subsequently, she was venerated within the African American acting community at the NAACP Awards, where she was called ‘The Mother’ of the Black Community. Her other popular plays include ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, ‘August: Osage Country’, and ‘Gem of the Ocean’. She has tried her hand at stage direction and has successfully directed hit plays at prominent stages. Over the course of her career, Rashad has starred in several television series and voiced many characters. Her prolific output continues to be on the rise as she is still an active part of the entertainment industry.   173.    Childhood & Early Life:   174.    Phylicia Rashad was born Phylician Ayers Allen on June 19, 1948, in Houston, Texas to Vivian Ayers and Andrew Arthur Allen. Her mother was a prize-winning poet and artist, while her father was a reputed orthodontist. She has three siblings: Andrew Arthur Allen Jr., Debbie Allen, and Hugh Allen. Phylicia was raised in the United States and Mexico. She studied at Howard University, Washington D.C. and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in theatre in 1970. During her university days, she was inculcated into the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.   175.    Career   176.    After graduating with a degree in theatre, Phylicia immediately joined the Negro Ensemble Company in New York. She toured the city and was seen in several plays under this troupe. Her Broadway debut occurred in 1972 and she was seen in several minor roles for hit musicals, including ‘The Wiz’ (1975) and ‘Dreamgirls’ (1981). In 1978, Rashad tried her hand at something new by releasing the concept album ‘Josephine Superstar’, an album that was based on Josephine Baker’s life. She decided to embark on an alternative career in television owing to the scarcity of good roles given to her. In 1982, after moving to television, Rashad landed a recurring role in the series ‘One Life to Live’ as Courtney Wright, a publicist. In 1984, Phylicia Rashad was roped in to play the role of Clair Huxtable, an attorney, in the hit comedy ‘The Cosby Show’. The show starred Bill Cosby in the lead role and Phylicia played his wife. The series ran for over eight years and was a critical and commercial success. Phylicia’s role as Clair proved to be the highest point in her career, earning her two Emmy Award nominations.   177.    Open Comments   178.    Question: Is she a good actor? Do you buy her in other roles?   179.    Vote: Best Pop Culture item/event for 1985

Topics: Air Jordans, Whitney Houston, Sade, The Color Purple, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Phylicia Rashad (Bonus Artist: Luck Pacheco)   1985 Notes   General Snapshots   1.    President: Ronald Reagan   2.    Jan – In Hollywood,  California, the charity single "We  Are the World" is recorded by USA for  Africa. The  single raises money to combat the  ongoing famine in Ethiopia. The  American act consists of high-profile  performers, including Michael  Jackson, Lionel Richie, Tina Turner,  Cyndi Lauper and Diana Ross.   3.    Jan – The newest music video channel, VH-1, begins broadcasting on American cable. It is aimed at an older demographic than its sister station, MTV. The first video played is Marvin Gaye's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner".   4.    Mar – WrestleMania debuts at Madison Square Garden.  In the main event, Hulk Hogan and Mr. T defeated Paul Orndorff and Roddy Piper. The attendance for the event was 19,121. The event was seen by over one million viewers through closed-circuit television, making it the largest pay-per-view showing of a wrestling event on closed-circuit television in the United States at the time.   5.    Apr – Coca-Cola changes its recipe and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.   6.    Aug - Ryan White who was expelled from Western High School in Indiana is allowed to attend his first day of classes via telephone.   7.    Sep - The Farm Aid concert is held in Champaign, Illinois, USA.   8.    Oct  – The Nintendo Entertainment System is released in U.S. stores. By 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software.  The NES was released two years after the North American video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.   9.    Nov - Microsoft Corporation releases the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0.   10.    Open Comments:   11.    Top 3 Pop Songs   12.    1    "Careless Whisper"    Wham!   13.    2    "Like a Virgin"    Madonna   14.    3    "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"    Wham!   15.    Grammy Awards   16.    Record of the Year: Quincy Jones (producer) for "We Are the World"   17.    Album of the Year: Phil Collins (producer & artist) for No Jacket Required   18.    Song of the Year: Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie (songwriters) for "We Are the World"   19.    Best New Artist: Sade   20.    Top 3 Movies   21.    Back to the Future   22.    Rambo: First Blood Part II   23.    Rocky IV   24.    Other Notables:  The Color Purple / Out of Africa / Cocoon / The Jewel of the Nile / Witness / The Goonies / Spies Like Us / The Breakfast Club / Brewster's Millions / St. Elmo's Fire /  Krush Groove   25.    Top 3 TV Shows   26.    The Cosby Show   27.    Family Ties   28.    Murder, She Wrote       29.    TV Debuts   30.    Sep - What's Happening Now!! / Stir Crazy   31.    Black Snapshots   32.    Feb -  Whitney Houston releases her debut  album – Whitney Houston.   33.    Mar  – Mike Tyson makes his professional debut in Albany, New York, a match which he wins by a first-round knockout.   34.    May - Michael Jordan is named as the NBA's "Rookie of the Year."   35.    May – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Mayor Wilson Goode, the  first African American to hold that office,  orders police to storm the  headquarters of the black liberation/back-to-nature group MOVE to end a stand-off over serving arrest warrants. (Due process?!?!)  The police drop 2 explosive devices into the headquarters, killing 6 adults and 5 children, and destroyed an additional 61 residental homes in the resulting fire. The survivors filed a civil suit against the city and the police department, and were awarded $1.5 million in 1996.   36.    Jul - The final episode of The Jeffersons airs. (1975-) 10 yrs   37.    Aug - Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids  (1972-) 13 yrs   38.    Nov - Ebony Man: EM  Magazine launches   39.    Best Comedy Recording: Whoopi Goldberg - Original Broadway Show Recording   40.    Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female: Aretha Franklin for "Freeway of Love"   41.    Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male: Stevie Wonder for In Square Circle   42.    Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal: Commodores for "Nightshift"   43.    Economic Snapshot   44.    Avg. Income = $22,138   45.    House = $99,331   46.    New Car = $9,531   47.    Avg. Rent = $375   48.    Tuition at Harvard = $9,800   49.    Movie Ticket = $2.75   50.    Gas = $1.20   51.    Stamp = $0.22   52.    Socilal Scene: “Money, it's gotta be da shoes!” - Mars Blackmon   53.    The Air Jordan I was originally released in 1985 and is almost single-handedly responsible for modern-day sneaker culture. Michael Jordan originally wanted to sign with either Converse or Adidas. But Converse declined and according to a Wall Street Journal article published in 2015 so did Adidas. Still MJ was not convinced. Only when Nike, thinking they had nothing to loose, offered to give MJ his own shoe- and clothing line did he change his mind. This was unheard of at the time, no NBA player had an entire product line named after them. As the first basketball player with his own signature shoes Jordan would immediately become the king of basketball sneaker advertising. Just to be on the safe side Nike worked an out-clause into the contract: if Air Jordans didn’t earn Nike $3 million in the first 3 years, or if Jordan didn’t make the NBA All-Star Game in his first three years, Nike could dump him. Jordan was voted into the All-Star Game as a Rookie starter and the "Air Jordan 1" shoe made Nike $130 million in 1985 alone. The rest is history.   54.    Open Comments:   55.    The pushback and common critisisms   56.    Extremely superficial materialism is one of the only ways that many black Americans express a sense of self worth.    57.    When you live in a society where nobody has a savings account, or a college degree, or has traveled abroad, having a fresh pair of sneakers and a gold chain shouldn't be your version of keeping up with the Joneses.   58.    Liking shoes is as much of a "black thing" as liking chicken is a "black thing". Everyone likes both of these things.   59.    Open Comments:   60.    It became popular in the late 80s for people with moderate or low incomes to wear clothing adorned with the names and logos of luxury, high-end brands. Then all the luxury brands started making their own low-end, logo-covered versions. You wear your favorite sports team to affiliate yourself with them. It's the same thing with Tommy Hilfiger, Gucci, Jordache, Guess, Wrangler, Levi, Gitano, Bonjour, Sasson, etc., it's a way of signalling.   61.    Question: We went from tailored suits and dresses to baggy jeans and yoga pants. From afro's and braids to fashioned bandanas and bleached blondes. From the stylish Supremes and Tempations to tatooed  faces and pireced everytginhg. - What do you think is at the root of our decisions? Are we victims of advertising?   62.    Music Scene   63.    Black Songs from the Top 40 (No Lionel Richie showed up!)   64.    5    "I Feel for You"    Chaka Khan   65.    6    "Out of Touch"    Hall & Oates   66.    12    "Easy Lover"    Philip Bailey and Phil Collins   67.    17    "Cherish"    Kool & the Gang   68.    20    "We Are the World"    USA for Africa   69.    22    "Part-Time Lover"    Stevie Wonder   70.    23    "Saving All My Love For You"    Whitney Houston   71.    26    "Cool It Now"    New Edition   72.    28    "Loverboy"    Billy Ocean   73.    29    "Lovergirl"    Teena Marie   74.    31    "Oh Sheila"    Ready for the World   75.    32    "Rhythm of the Night"    DeBarge   76.    38    "Neutron Dance"    The Pointer Sisters   77.    40    "Nightshift"    Commodores   78.    Vote:   79.    Top RnB Singles   80.    Jan - "Operator"    Midnight Star   81.    Jan - "Gotta Get You Home Tonight"    Eugene Wilde   82.    Feb -  "Mr. Telephone Man"    New Edition   83.    Feb - "Missing You"    Diana Ross   84.    Mar - "Nightshift"    The Commodores   85.    Apr - "Back In Stride"    Maze featuring Frankie Beverly   86.    Apr - "Rhythm Of the Night"    DeBarge   87.    May - "We Are the World"    USA for Africa   88.    May - "Fresh"    Kool & the Gang   89.    May - "You Give Good Love"    Whitney Houston   90.    Jun - "Rock Me Tonight (For Old Times Sake)"    Freddie Jackson   91.    Jul - "Hangin' on a String (Contemplating)"    Loose Ends   92.    Jul - "Save Your Love (For #1)"    René & Angela   93.    Aug - "Freeway of Love"    Aretha Franklin   94.    Sep - "Saving All My Love for You"    Whitney Houston   95.    Sep - "Cherish"    Kool & the Gang   96.    Sep - "Oh Sheila"    Ready For the World   97.    Oct - "You Are My Lady"    Freddie Jackson   98.    Oct - "Part-Time Lover"    Stevie Wonder   99.    Nov - "Caravan of Love"    Isley-Jasper-Isley   100.    Dec - "Don't Say No Tonight"    Eugene Wilde   101.    Vote:   102.    Top RnB Albums   103.    Jan - New Edition    New Edition   104.    Feb - Solid    Ashford & Simpson   105.    Mar - Gap Band VI    The Gap Band   106.    Mar p- Private Dancer    Tina Turner   107.    Apr - Nightshift    The Commodores   108.    Apr - Can't Stop the Love    Frankie Beverly and Maze   109.    May - The Night I Fell in Love    Luther Vandross   110.    Jun - Whitney Houston    Whitney Houston   111.    Jun - Rock Me Tonight    Freddie Jackson   112.    Nov - In Square Circle    Stevie Wonder   113.    Vote   114.    Featured Artists: Whitney Houston and Sade   115.    Whitney Elizabeth Houston, @22 yrs old: Singer, actress, model, and producer, Whitney Houston is one of the world’s most successful female entertainers of all time.   116.    Born and raised in Newark NJ,  she is the daughter of Grammy-award-winning gospel singer, Emily “Cissy” Houston and John R. Houston, who managed his daughter’s production company.    117.    Childhood & Early Life   118.    She was no stranger to the entertainment industry, having come from a line of singers and actresses. Not only did her mother’s vocal group, the ‘Sweet Inspirations’, sing backup for Aretha Franklin, but her cousins Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick are also renowned singers, as well as her godmother, Darlene Love. She began performing in her church’s gospel choir as a soloist at the age of eleven and learned to play the piano. While attending Catholic school, she took voice lessons from her mother, with whom she would occasionally perform in nightclubs.   119.    Career   120.    In 1977 (@ 14 yrs old), she was a backup singer for Michael Zager Band’s single ‘Life’s a Party’ and the following year she sang on Chaka Khan’s single ‘I’m Every Woman’. She was offered an opportunity to sign with a recording company, but her mother declined so she would finish high school. In the early 1980s, (@17 yrs old), she worked as a model, appearing in several magazines including, ‘Seventeen’, where she became the first African American to be featured on the cover. She also took on acting gigs appearing in TV show episodes such as, ‘Gimme a Break’, while continuing to develop her vocal skills. In 1983,(@ 20yrs old) she was signed with ‘Arista Records’. President Clive Davis spent the next couple years assembling lyricists and producers to balance her gospel-like sound with contemporary melodies. In 1985, her debut album, ‘Whitney Houston’ gradually became the number one selling album of her career.  She went on to win two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, 22 American Music Awards.   121.    Open Comments:   122.    A Hot Mess   123.    On February 11th, 2012, Whitney Houston (@ 48 yrs old) was found facedown in a bathtub.  Weeks later, an autopsy report would contribute Houston’s death to accidental drowning, heart disease and cocaine use. There were additional traces of a muscle relaxant, Xanax, marijuana and an allergy medication in the singer’s system.    124.    The sad, secret life of Whitney Houston: From a secret lesbian relationship to a decades-long struggle with drugs, five years after singer’s death, a new film ‘Whitney: Can I Be Me’ examines what caused her tragic downfall - Tara Brady [Jun 12, 2017] https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/the-sad-secret-life-of-whitney-houston-1.3105861   125.    Selected quotes from the article:   126.    What exactly killed Houston? Why did she drown? How did she drown? Was she simply overwhelmed by the controlling demands of her formidable mother, Cissy Houston, Svengali Clive Davis, and her record company, Arista? Did the aftermath of her toxic and co-dependent marriage to Bobby Brown send her spiralling? Or was it the dissolution of her decades-old lesbian relationship with her assistant Robyn Crawford? It’s complicated, as documentarian Nick Broomfield discovered.  “In the end I think the divide between who she was and what her public persona was became more and more difficult,” says  documentarian Nick Broomfield. “And she just went down,    127.    The imploding relations between Houston, Bobby Brown and Robyn Crawford. Brown told Us Weekly magazine that Houston was bisexual and that she once had an affair with Tupac Shakur. He went on to say that Houston kept her relationship with Crawford hidden because of Cissy. “I really feel that if Robyn was accepted into Whitney’s life, Whitney would still be alive today,” Brown told the magazine. “She didn’t have close friends with her anymore.”   128.    From Cissy’s notorious 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey:  “Would it have bothered you if your daughter was gay?”  “Absolutely,” Cissy snapped back. “You wouldn’t have condoned it?” continued an incredulous Oprah. “Not at all.” ...“I didn’t particularly like [Crawford],” Cissy told the talk show queen. “She just spoke too much, disrespectful sometimes, like she had something over Nippy (Houston’s nickname), and I didn’t like that at all. She was all right, she turned out to be all right, I guess. That was her friend.”   129.    Houston and Crawford first bonded while they were teenagers working at a community centre in East Orange, New Jersey. When Houston’s modelling career began to take off, she’d face bullying in school, and Crawford, who was originally a friend of Houston’s older brothers Michael and Gary, would frequently come to the rescue. When Houston moved out of her family home, she shared her first apartment with Crawford. Deep into Houston and Brown’s 14-year marriage, Crawford remained a fixture in Houston’s domestic arrangements.   130.    Houston’s marriage to Brown, understandably, made for an uneasy romantic trinity. In Derrick Handspike’s unauthorised 2008 biography, Bobby Brown: The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But . . ., the author quotes Brown as saying: “Now I realise Whitney had a different agenda than I did when we got married. I believe her agenda was to clean up her image while mine was to be loved and have children. “Whitney felt she had to make rumours of a lesbian affair go away. Since she was the American Sweetheart and all, that didn’t go too well with her image. In Whitney’s situation the only solution was to get married and have kids. That would kill all speculation whether it was true or not.”   131.    Supermarket tabloids did a brisk trade during the 1990s by peddling the idea that Houston’s life spiralled into addiction after she married Brown. She was the gospel-singing good girl – the church-going daughter of Cissy and a cousin of Dionne Warwick. He was a bad boy who, aged 20, when they first met, had already been shot and stabbed in the shoulder. Their tumultuous marriage (from 1992 to 2007), characterised by drug use, infidelity and a costly entourage, was seldom out of the headlines. But contrary to popular belief, Brown did not introduce his troubled wife to cocaine. Houston first dabbled with drugs with her brothers, Michael and Gary, as a teenager. The truth is that Houston was always as “street“ as her R&B star husband. But that part of her personal history didn’t fit with what Broomfield calls “the Whitney character”.  As Pattie Howard, Houston’s backing vocalist, notes: “People may not know it but Whitney was from the ‘hood’. They wanted to present her as the princess. And that’s what white America was presented with.” Kenneth Reynolds, who worked in marketing for Arista Records recalls that: “Anything that was too black sounding was sent back. We wanted Joni Mitchell. We wanted Barbra Streisand. ” “She was very carefully groomed for nearly two years before the first album came out,” explains Broomfield. “So every aspect of her was carefully considered. She was a major project. A lot of money was spent on her. Anything that was too R&B was out. They didn’t want a female James Brown. That was not part of their vision. Which, of course, was a very successful vision.”   132.    In 1989, just as Houston topped 25 million in album sales and surpassed the Beatles’s record with seven consecutive number one hits, she attended the Soul Train awards where, in response to her “white” music, she was roundly booed. Pre-Beyoncé and Mariah Carey, “crossover” was synonymous with cultural betrayal. People shouted “Oreo” – brown on the outside, white on the inside – as her nomination for Best Female Vocalist was announced. “It’s not a good feeling,” says Houston, in Can I Be Me. “It’s horrible and kind of funny. You think: ‘Are they booing me?’ And you have to sit there and be cordial and smiley. And you feel like: ‘Oh my God’.” Kirk Whalum, the saxophonist who toured with Houston for more than seven years recalls that night, which coincidentally, was the first time she met Brown. “It was devastating [for her],” says Whalum.   133.    By the end of the 90s, Houston found herself at the centre of a perfect storm of ongoing racial friction, marital troubles and drug abuse. Friends, unable to watch Houston’s decline, began to drift away. Her father, John, died in 2003, but not before his management company, John Houston Entertainment LLC, filed a $100 million lawsuit against his own daughter. Months before his death, he made a public appeal on the syndicated show, Celebrity Justice: “You get your act together, honey, and you pay me the money that you owe me.” Robyn Crawford’s departure in 2000, too, prompted a new, crippling dependency on crack-cocaine and other substances. - “Robyn was the one who was keeping her together,” says writer Allison Samuels. “That’s when drugs became so important to her.”   134.    Open Comments:   135.    The Smooth Operator -Helen Folasade Adu, professionally known as Sade (@26 yrs old)   136.    Sade is an internationally renowned, multi-Grammy award winning singer who is known for her smooth, melodic vocals and the seamless incorporation of different styles of music. She was born in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria on January 16, 1959. Her father Adebisi Adu, a Nigerian lecturer of economics, and her mother Anne Hayes, a district nurse, had met in London. Sade was the couple’s second child. Shortly after her birth, Sade’s parents separated and she and her brother followed their mother to Colchester, Essex, England. There, the children were raised by their mother as well as their maternal grandfather. Upon finishing her education at Clacton County High School in Colchester, she enrolled at Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design in London to pursue fashion and design. After completion of her program, she worked as a model and menswear designer.    137.    Sade entered the music scene around 1980 when she started singing harmony for Arriva, a Latin funk band. She joined another funk band called Pride and was a background singer for the group. Pride garnered much attention from record companies due to their performances around London. Eventually Sade and fellow bandmates, Stuart Matthewman, Paul Denma, and Andrew Hale signed a deal with the U.K. division of Epic Records and formed the band Sade. In 1984 the band’s debut album, Diamond Life, was released to much critical success and was bolstered by singles such as “Hang On to Your Love” and “Smooth Operator.” The band followed up their debut with their next album, Promise, which was released the following year. “The Sweetest Taboo,” a single from Promise, was on the U.S. Hot 100 for six months. She was awarded the Grammy for best new artist of 1985.    138.    Open Comments:   139.    Selected quote about her sound   140.    Let's get this into context. With Sade it's unlikely there will ever be a full, naked baring of the soul. In terms of contemporary icons, it's better to listen to Mary J for stories of drama and shattered devotion. But Sade, today, is all about the acknowledged presence of absence. What's missing in her music is as important as what's present. - The Fader   141.    A small, yet important, fact: When Sade signed her first record deal with Epic in the early '80s, she accepted a small advance, worth ~$70,000 in exchange for an unusually high cut of sales for a new artist—15 percent. It was a deal that ended up proving immensely lucrative, and it has freed her from many of the commercial demands that often encumber artists. Put simply, she only works when and how she wants to. As one executive at her label, Epic, put it to me: "Who's going to argue with a woman who's sold 50 million albums? She's more powerful than anyone working at the label, including the [President]." - The Fader   142.    Question: Does the Sade sound ever wear out?   143.    The Movie Scene   144.    The Color Purple/Film synopsis   145.    An epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg), an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry. After Celie's abusive father marries her off to the equally debasing "Mister" Albert Johnson (Danny Glover), things go from bad to worse, leaving Celie to find companionship anywhere she can. She perseveres, holding on to her dream of one day being reunited with her sister in Africa. Based on the novel by Alice Walker.   146.    Review by Roger Ebert   147.    Returning to "The Color Purple" after almost 20 years, I can see its flaws more easily than when I named it the best film of 1985, but I can also understand why it moved me so deeply, and why the greatness of some films depends not on their perfection or logic, but on their heart. The movie may have inconsistencies, confusions and improbabilities, but there is one perfect thing at its center, and that is the character of Celie, as played by Whoopi Goldberg. "Here is this year's winner for best actress," I wrote in my original review, and that should have been true, but although "The Color Purple" had 11 nominations, it won not a single Oscar. When a movie character is really working, we become that character. That's what the movies offer: Escapism into lives other than our own. I am not female, I am not black, I am not Celie, but for a time during "The Color Purple," my mind deceives me that I am all of those things, and as I empathize with her struggle and victory I learn something about what it must have been like to be her.  - Roger Ebert   148.    Selected Quotes   149.    In Honor of Its 33rd Anniversary, Here Are 10 Life Lessons I Learned From the Color Purple - By Melissa Kimble Dec 18, 2018 [https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/tv-movies/a25616715/the-color-purple-quotes-anniversary/]   150.    I was born a few years after the film was released. However, I can credit much of my self discovery to the many times I’ve watched it. My favorite quotes from the movie taught me valuable lessons about Black womanhood, faith, and self love. And these 10 are the ones I’ll never forget.   151.    “Girl, you oughta bash Mister’s head open and think about heaven later.” By Oprah Winfrey - In a film where women are treated like inferiors, Sofia breaks the mold by refusing to be her husband's punching bag. This scene-stealing monologue, with its rage filled entrance by the O of O, is an act of defiance—especially one committed in early 20th century Georgia. It was powerful and necessary to see a Black woman go against the grain on screen. And to me, it was a call to action to be fearless.   152.    "I'm poor, Black, I may even be ugly, but dear God, I’m here! I’m here!" By Whoopi Goldberg - What a victorious statement this was by Celie, who, up until this point, had spent most of her life feeling unworthy and invisible. It reminded me that even with our flaws and imperfections, we still deserve to show up in our own lives.   153.    "Until you do right by me, everything you think about is going to crumble." By - Whoopi Goldberg - With these words, Celie breaks a cycle of abuse from Mister and sticks up for herself. I interpreted this line as a sign that I don’t have to carry the weight of people who have caused my pain; life will take care of everything.   154.    “Miss Celie, why you always covering up your smile?” By Desreta Jackson - Growing up, I was very insecure about my smile. And when Shug Avery posed this question to Miss Celie, it also made me turn to myself. When Shug encourages Celie to smile, I learned that there’s no need to cover up my own   155.    Open Comments:   156.    Featured Artist   157.    Caryn Elaine Johnson, a.k.a. Whoopi Goldberg (@ 30 yrs old): an American comedian, actress, singer-songwriter, Broadway star, political activist, author and talk show host, she is one of the most successful and established African American actresses of her time.    158.    Born and raised in Manhattan, she is one of 14 entertainers ever to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. What differentiates Goldberg from her contemporaries is the excellence that she portrayed in all the mediums of entertainment, be it television, theatre, films or radio.    159.    Childhood & Early Life   160.    Her mother was a nurse and a teacher while her father served as a clergyman. She was raised in the Chelsea-Elliot Houses by her mother alone after her father disbanded the family when she was young. She studied until her teen years and later dropped out of school. Her started acting started at a young age. It was during her stage performance that people complimented her by saying that she looked like whoopee cushion. It was from there that she took the stage name Whoopi and adopted Goldberg as her surname to sound more Jewish.    161.    Career   162.    In 1974, (@ age 19) she moved to California and thereafter lived in various cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. It was during this time that she honed her acting skills and developed her talent as a stand-up comedian.  However, soon thereafter, she returned to New York and started receiving training under acting coach Uta Hagen. Her first ever appearance on screen was for William Farley’s feature, ‘Citizen: I'm Not Losing My Mind, I'm Giving It Away’ in 1982 (@ 27). In 1983, she created, starred and directed a ‘The Spook Show’, a one-woman show that addressed the issue of race in American but in a unique and innovative style. Next, she created other off-Broadway productions such as ‘Little Girl’ an African-American child obsessed with having blond hair and ‘Fontaine’ a junkie who also happens to hold a doctorate in literature. The innovative presentation and sense of wit and style in her shows impressed director Mike Nicholas who offered to take ‘The Spook Show’ to the Broadway. The show which ran for 156 performances, met with much acclaim both commercially and critically. It went on to earn her a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. The eye-catching performance and amazing positive reception of the show earned her attention of the Hollywood bigwigs. It helped her bag a role in the Steven Spielberg film, ‘The Color Purple’, released in 1985. The movie met with resounding success, clutching 11 Academy Awards nominations and she won her first Golden Globe award.   163.    Open Comments:   164.    Oprah Gail Winfrey , a.k.a. Oprah Winfrey (@ 31 yrs old): Talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist.   165.    Childhood & Early Life   166.    Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on a small family farm, to an unwed mother who had a short relationship with a soldier stationed nearby, Oprah grew up in dire poverty, and was primarily raised by her grandmother. Sexually abused and mistreated as a child, Winfrey rose above adversity to focus on her primary and high school education.    167.    Career   168.    When she was still a teenager, the local CBS television station in Nashville, Tennessee offered her a job as a co-anchor. She turned it down three times. At age 19, Oprah Winfrey said yes after the fourth offer. She failed the interview, but instead was offered a job as a full-time reporter for a Baltimore television news channel. She did poorly as a reporter, and by age 22 she was fired from the news division. The director of the station gave Winfrey a boost by selecting her to anchor a morning talk show entitled ‘People are Talking’. For the next seven years, her talk show enjoyed excellent ratings. In 1981, (@ 27) she moved to Chicago to host a talk show entitled ‘A.M. Chicago’. Four years later, (1985) after a tremendous boost in the ratings, the producers changed the name to ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’. She caught the attention of Quincy Jones, a Chicago native, and he cast her as Sofia for the first movie he produced, 'The Color Purple'. The following year ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ was broadcast nationally.    169.    Open Comments:   170.    TV Scene:   171.    Featured Actor: Phylician Ayers Allen, a.k.a Phylicia Rashad is an Emmy-nominated American actress, singer, and director.   172.    Her multi-faceted career began with Broadway before she branched into television and films. She is best remembered for her character as Claire Huxtable in the NBC sitcom ‘The Cosby Show’, which ran for eight years. The series brought Phylicia much deserved recognition, also earning her two Emmy nominations. Phylicia, however, is immortalized for her rich performances on the stage as an artist. She starred in several lavish musicals and dramas, all praised highly by critics. She became the first African American actress to walk away with a Tony Award for her performance in Lorraine Hansberry’s ‘Raisin in The Sun’.  Subsequently, she was venerated within the African American acting community at the NAACP Awards, where she was called ‘The Mother’ of the Black Community. Her other popular plays include ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, ‘August: Osage Country’, and ‘Gem of the Ocean’. She has tried her hand at stage direction and has successfully directed hit plays at prominent stages. Over the course of her career, Rashad has starred in several television series and voiced many characters. Her prolific output continues to be on the rise as she is still an active part of the entertainment industry.   173.    Childhood & Early Life:   174.    Phylicia Rashad was born Phylician Ayers Allen on June 19, 1948, in Houston, Texas to Vivian Ayers and Andrew Arthur Allen. Her mother was a prize-winning poet and artist, while her father was a reputed orthodontist. She has three siblings: Andrew Arthur Allen Jr., Debbie Allen, and Hugh Allen. Phylicia was raised in the United States and Mexico. She studied at Howard University, Washington D.C. and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in theatre in 1970. During her university days, she was inculcated into the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.   175.    Career   176.    After graduating with a degree in theatre, Phylicia immediately joined the Negro Ensemble Company in New York. She toured the city and was seen in several plays under this troupe. Her Broadway debut occurred in 1972 and she was seen in several minor roles for hit musicals, including ‘The Wiz’ (1975) and ‘Dreamgirls’ (1981). In 1978, Rashad tried her hand at something new by releasing the concept album ‘Josephine Superstar’, an album that was based on Josephine Baker’s life. She decided to embark on an alternative career in television owing to the scarcity of good roles given to her. In 1982, after moving to television, Rashad landed a recurring role in the series ‘One Life to Live’ as Courtney Wright, a publicist. In 1984, Phylicia Rashad was roped in to play the role of Clair Huxtable, an attorney, in the hit comedy ‘The Cosby Show’. The show starred Bill Cosby in the lead role and Phylicia played his wife. The series ran for over eight years and was a critical and commercial success. Phylicia’s role as Clair proved to be the highest point in her career, earning her two Emmy Award nominations.   177.    Open Comments   178.    Question: Is she a good actor? Do you buy her in other roles?   179.    Vote: Best Pop Culture item/event for 1985

Is peace really possible? Is there a business plan for peace? How can we all help reduce conflict in our workplace, community, home and even inside ourselves? What is the role of our ego in conflict-situations and arguments? How can I find my true path in life and reconnect with my own inner guidance system? These are some of the questions we will answer in Episode 5 with three-times Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Dr. Scilla Elworthy. Scilla has spent her entire life building peace and working with leaders in high-pressure conflict zones all around the world. In this Episode, she shares her wisdom from a lifetime of preventing war and violence and offers fascinating stories from the frontlines that we can all learn from. Scilla offers concrete tools to help us all identify who we really are, become better leaders, connect with our own inner wisdom and combat the desire for revenge we may all have experienced.    This episode will bring you hope, concrete tools, inspiration and… goosebumps.    WHAT WE WILL COVER: What you can do to build peace and reduce conflict everywhere Tools for communicating with people whom you violently disagree with – a conflict resolution tool successfully taught to CEOs as well as children How to nourish empathy and enable understanding between people to dissolve conflict Why the root cause of all violence and conflict is humiliation and how to better acknowledge your own role in conflicts How to turn a tense meeting or negotiation around and create a more constructive and pleasant atmosphere If we succeed in building peace, what’s in it for the companies who are currently benefitting massively from war? How to become aware of your own ego, when it’s in charge in an unhealthy way and its role in all conflicts How to find your life path and connect with your inner guidance system Creating efficient and pleasant meetings and negotiations through meeting human to human – not ego to ego How can we tell the difference between the voice of intuition and the ego’s desire? How to inspire leaders to live a life with purpose and compassion    SELECTED QUOTES   “One of the root causes of war and conflict is humiliation. Respect is the fastest antidote to humiliation. To show someone a gesture of respect, immediately diffuses a war between you.” “You’re clearly a gifted leader but what is it really you want to accomplish in the world? What is it that really makes you feel when you’re older you have given a great gift to your country, your community – what would you be really proud of? What’s the closest thing to your heart’s fulfillment that you can imagine you could do? It’s these questions that most leaders don’t have time or the inclination to ask themselves.”   RESOURCES: Scilla Elworthy homepage The Business Plan for Peace The Peace Talks Webinars open for all Scillas TEDx talk on nonviolence   ABOUT SCILLA ELWORTHY Three times Nobel Peace Prize nominee for her work with Oxford Research Group to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. She founded Peace Direct (2002) to fund, promote and learn from local peace- builders in conflict areas and co-founded Rising Women Rising World (2013), and FemmeQ (2016). Scilla was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in 2003 and was adviser to Peter Gabriel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Sir Richard Branson in setting up ‘The Elders’. Her latest book The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World Without War (2017) and her book Pioneering the Possible: awakened leadership for a world that works (North Atlantic Books, 2014) received critical acclaim from experts in the field. Her TED talk on nonviolence has been viewed by over 1,130,000 people.       

Design is amazing! It truly has the ability to radically improve life on this planet but, also the opposite, destroy this planet. Dr. Leyla Acaroglu is a millennial on a mission to challenge the status-quo of the design world. She’s dead-set on helping people realize they don’t need to accept the way things work – we all have the agency to rescript the future by taking the right actions today. She is a highly intelligent, modern day super hero, an anti-establishment, creative boundary pusher and thinker. In this episode, we explore how to radically change the education system to correspond to the world we live in, how to mobilize people to change the status-quo, nourish curiosity, see all things as interconnected, embrace failure, create space for creativity to flourish and how living a life of purpose influences your brain and well-being. We talk all things change and how to shift our collective capacity to become regenerators who spend our lives adding value instead of just extracting, consuming and exploiting. This episode is nothing short of exhilarating!   WHAT WE WILL COVER:   The defining moment which led Leyla to commit her life to making designers and product-makers aware of how their choices impact the well-being of people and planet Leyla’s approach to curiosity, how she never pretends to know it all and how she constantly fills her own knowledge gaps What is a good first step towards becoming a regenerator – a disruptive designer that makes this planet better The disruptive design-method, key elements of problem-solving and how your brain tricks you in these processes The tools you need in order to make effective change through your creative practice Why she has bought a 2000-year-old farm she calls “a crazy project” – the co-project (CO standing for Creative Optimism) How she spends time in nature to admire the intelligence of nature design and to create the space for generating new ideas and nurturing curiosity Her personal reflections on dealing with success, stress, anxiety and burnout as a passionate change-maker who had no idea how to stop and rest   SELECTED QUOTES:   “I wanted to solve the problem that I experienced in Academia which I was constantly feeling extremely oppressed creatively. I was very frustrated with the type of pedagogy in knowledge transfer that Academia has so I got very much into critical pedagogy and the idea of the educator being the guide through knowledge and not the dictator of knowledge.”   “Many people wake up one morning and go: “Hey hang on a second. Deep down inside me I have this sense of purpose and belonging that I should do something more meaningful with my life and now I’m stuck in this system…and I’m unhappy. It’s a sad state of affairs that we don’t have businesses that can accommodate the needs of their people and that we’re still stuck in an industrial mindset when it comes to education and the relationship between work, purpose, production and society at large.”   “Each human has the agency to affect a positive change in the world and we don’t need to believe what is perceived to be the status quo… you have to know that the future is NOT defined. It’s based on the actions we take today and every minute of our lives.”   “You have to remember that life is a magical wonderland. It’s absolutely phenomenal that life exists on this planet. Physicists have never found anything anywhere in the cosmos even remotely as magical as this planet.”   “We need to shift to being producers. We are all interconnected with the planet, we cannot deny that. You have to breathe, you have to eat, you have to drink water – free resources provided by this earth to us – but, as a species, what we have done is we keep extracting resources, we keep polluting. We are being extremely selfish teenagers essentially.”   “How can we quickly grow up and become regenerators? Instead of just degenerate the natural systems that we are a part of. This to me is the ultimate design challenge.”   “If you are an organization that prides itself by being an innovator and you are not at the absolute forefront pioneering sustainable change and circularity within your industry and meeting the needs of your employees in a more harmonious way with purpose and fulfilling opportunities, then you are FOR SURE going to be disrupted in a way that you are NOT going to like. For sure.”   “I truly believe that creativity brings hope and, in this current narrative of dystopian futures, the one thing we need to be reminded of is we built this world – and we can rebuild it in a way that helps make it more equitable and ethical and constructive.”   “The little people are going to inherit a legacy of our inaction unless we start to work together to really re-imagine the future.”   “I’m super excited about failing well. I really like it when I screw up. Once I get over the sting – cause there is always a little sting especially when you’re a high-achiever – I’m focused on what I can learn from this.”   RESOURCES: Leyla's website UnSchool of Disruptive Design  Disrupt Design  Portugal Project - the CoProject    ABOUT LEYLA ACAROGLU  Sustainability provocateur and cultural protagonist Dr. Leyla Acaroglu challenges people to think differently about how the world works. As an award winning designer, UNEP Champion of the Earth, sociologist, and entrepreneur, she developed the Disruptive Design Method and designs cerebrally activating experiences, gamified toolkits, and unique educational experiences that help people make the status quo obsolete. Her mainstage TED talk on sustainability has been viewed over a million times, and she leads presentations around the world on activating positive social change through creative interventions and systems thinking.  

New York's Citicorp Tower was an architectural sensation when it opened in 1977. But then engineer William LeMessurier realized that its unique design left it dangerously vulnerable to high winds. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the drama that followed as a small group of decision makers tried to ward off a catastrophe in midtown Manhattan. We'll also cringe at an apartment mixup and puzzle over a tolerant trooper. Intro: A surprising number of record releases have been made of sandpaper. In high school, Ernest Hemingway wrote a poem composed entirely of punctuation. Sources for our feature on the Citicorp Tower: Joseph Morgenstern, "The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis," New Yorker, May 29, 1995. "All Fall Down," The Works, BBC, April 14, 1996. Eugene Kremer, "(Re)Examining the Citicorp Case: Ethical Paragon or Chimera?" Arq: Architectural Research Quarterly 6:3 (September 2002), 269-276. Joel Werner, "The Design Flaw That Almost Wiped Out an NYC Skyscraper," Slate, April 17, 2014. Sean Brady, "Citicorp Center Tower: How Failure Was Averted," Engineers Journal, Dec. 8, 2015. Michael J. Vardaro, "LeMessurier Stands Tall: A Case Study in Professional Ethics," AIA Trust, Spring 2013. P. Aarne Vesilind and Alastair S. Gunn, Hold Paramount: The Engineer's Responsibility to Society, 2010. Caroline Whitbeck, Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research, 1998. Ibo van de Poel and Lambèr Royakkers, Ethics, Technology, and Engineering: An Introduction, 2011. Matthew Wells, Skyscrapers: Structure and Design, 2005. Gordon C. Andrews, Canadian Professional Engineering and Geoscience: Practice and Ethics, 2009. "William J. LeMessurier," American Society of Civil Engineers, July 1, 2007. David Langdon, "Citigroup Center / Hugh Stubbins + William Le Messurier," ArchDaily, Nov. 5, 2014. Vanessa Rodriguez, "Citicorp Center - New York City (July 1978)," Failures Wiki (accessed Oct. 28, 2017). Jason Carpenter, "The Nearly Fatal Design Flaw That Could Have Sent the Citigroup Center Skyscraper Crumbling," 6sqft., Aug. 15, 2014. Stanley H. Goldstein and Robert A. Rubin, "Engineering Ethics," Civil Engineering 66:10 (October 1996), 40. "Selected Quotes," Civil Engineering 66:10 (October 1996), 43. "Readers Write," Civil Engineering 66:11 (November 1996), 30. James Glanz and Eric Lipton, "A Midtown Skyscraper Quietly Adds Armor," New York Times, Aug. 15, 2002. "F.Y.I.," New York Times, Feb. 2, 1997, CY2. Anthony Ramirez, "William LeMessurier, 81, Structural Engineer," New York Times, June 21, 2007, C13. Henry Petroski, "Engineering: A Great Profession," American Scientist 94:4 (July-August 2006), 304-307. Richard Korman, "LeMessurier's Confession," Engineering News-Record 235:18 (October 30, 1995), 10. Richard Korman, "Critics Grade Citicorp Confession," Engineering News-Record 234:21(Nov. 20, 1995), 10. Listener mail: Wikipedia, "Relative Hour (Jewish Law)" (accessed Nov. 11, 2017). "The Jewish Day," chabad.org (accessed Nov. 11, 2017). "Hours," chabad.org (accessed Nov. 11, 2017). "Zmanim Briefly Defined and Explained," chabad.org (accessed Nov. 11, 2017). Wikipedia, "Twenty Questions" (accessed Nov. 11, 2017). "Two Types: The Faces of Britain," BBC Four, Aug. 1, 2017. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Kelly Bruce. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

Giles is the businessman of the future we've all been waiting for. His approach to life and work is truly a crack of light in today’s world and therefore he had to be the first guest on the Cracks of Light Podcast. Reading his books resonated with me on such a deep level I was often in tears. His thoughts represent the courageous new ideas we need on our quest to change the current paradigm from hurting both the people and our planet to instead optimize and regenerate. Giles was very successful in the corporate world, working as a management consultant for KPMG. But he always wondered: "How can I apply these learnings to the things I really care about and when?" Listen to his fascinating journey from a high-paced, rational business-career in London to a heart-filled, rich life close to nature in the countryside of Devon. I promise you'll be inspired, motivated and excited about the future.   WHAT WE WILL COVER: • Why he left a successful career to follow the whispers of his heart, surrendering to uncertainty • What humans and corporations can learn from nature • How Shamanic and indigenous approaches to life are relevant in today's business world • How corporations can become thriving, resilient, vibrant and future-fit • The role of spiritual intelligence and intuition in the business world • How we have become separate from nature and ourselves and how to re-establish that connection • How we can open up to who we truly are and bring this into the business world • How nature affects our psychology • How to incorporate wellbeing into the leadership narrative • How to embrace uncertainty and vulnerability • Key Leadership traits of the future   SELECTED QUOTES:  "When he (David Attenborough) said: "The Time is Now" it really spoke to me because I was kind of waiting. I was kind of thinking: "How long do I wait? How long do I learn? Do I wait until I become CEO of an organization? What do I do?" When he spoke it felt like NOW IS THE TIME. And so I started to change." "This is essentially about good business sense. Corporations with a living systems approach consistently outperform their mechanistic counterparts. This isn't about being soft and fluffy - this is about opening up to how life really is and becoming wiser and more effective as a result".   RESOURCES: • Giles Hutchins website  • The books of Giles Hutchins • B-corp movement • Richard Barrett Values Center • The Tedx-talk I gave that we refer to: "How silence can lead us to a sustainable world"   ABOUT GILES HUTCHINS Giles Hutchins is a visionary thought leader, speaker and adviser on the future of business. Previously, Global Sustainability Director for Atos, and business transformation specialist with KPMG, he has helped transform a wide range of organizations (corporate, third sector, public sector and start-up) and is author of the books The Nature of Business and The Illusion of Separation. He advises many forward-thinking organisations, has been interviewed by the BBC, and writes for a number of global networks. His latest book is Future Fit, watch a short 3 minute video about it here. Giles Hutchins blogs at www.thenatureofbusiness.org and is Chairman of The Future Fit Leadership Academy www.ffla.co

0:00 Why socioeconomic diversity is important 6:21 How UT Austin is increasing socioeconomic diversity 12:10 SES diversity is intertwined with viewpoint diversity 15:05 Cristine’s recent experience with controversial class topics 20:00 Positive class evaluations 22:49 Techniques to have productive conversations in class 26:30: Illustrating unproductive forms of dialogue Chris Martin interviews Cristine Legare, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas-Austin. She specializes in the study of culture, cultural learning, and cognition. She is a winner of the 2015 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. She serves on the executive board of Heterodox Academy. Selected Quotes: "And so one of the things that I had them do as an assignment for this book was to use Moral Foundations Theory to present arguments for and against teaching creationism in science classrooms, and the way the students were graded in this particular assignment was the extent to which both sides of that argument were equally persuasive....I wasn’t arguing that we should teach creationism in science classrooms, I don’t think that we should. But I think it’s a useful opportunity to accurately represent and convey beliefs that are very different from your own, and students struggle with this a little bit, but really embraced it and took this on. And gathered data from all kinds of different sources. They kind of spontaneously interviewed friends of theirs that were young-earth creationists. It was really fascinating." "In addition to modeling constructive ways to have a dialogue, I also model a few examples of bad practice...I used examples in class of both very religious people as well as atheists, and ways in which people from both those camps did a good and a bad job at reaching others, and I also use this as an opportunity to talk about how particular styles of argumentation are not persuasive. They're meant basically to further endear you to people who already think the way that you do. That is kind of psychologically satisfying for people but that is not constructive, so when you get a famous atheist scientist talking on and on about how stupid religious people are, his goal is definitely not to convert, not to persuade, from a persuasion perspective, that is entirely ineffective. In fact, I would say destructive."

Over the course of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus talks about and models what we call “spiritual disciplines.” These are practices that help us to grow and mature in our faith. They are the practices we participate in that help form us into who God wants us to be. Disciples and discipline share the same root in the Greek language and Jesus shows us that these concepts are tied together. If we want to follow Jesus, we have to be disciplined. Or, to say it the other way, disciplines make disciples. For the next six weeks, we’re going to learn the disciplines that help us to be disciples. Selected Quotes:

 In this episode, Chris Martin interviews April Kelly-Woessner, Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Legal Studies at Elizabethtown College. She specializes in public opinion, mass behavior, and political psychology. She is the co-editor of The Still Divided Academy: How Competing Visions of Power Politics and Diversity Complicate the Mission of Higher Education (2011).   2:30 Marcuse reflected in a Harvard Crimson op-ed 7:21 Why political researchers mistakenly thought tolerance was increasing 8:10 Shutting down opinions reflects an insecurity about civic knowledge 12:00 Often, American government classes are taught by high school coaches 13:00 How do you teach students about political tolerance? 19:10 Are conservatives opting out of academia because of college experiences? 21:40 The role of viewpoint diversity in making people tolerant 23:35 At small colleges, students can’t self-isolate 26:28 Is there an effect among people who don’t attend college? 27:10 Social media and intolerance *** Selected Quotes "What we find is that confidence in civic knowledge correlates pretty strongly and is a good predictor of political tolerance. So if you think you know a lot relative to other people, if you think you can hold your own in a political conversation, you’re more tolerant than people who are insecure about their civic knowledge. So I think the perception of these college students protestors is that they’re ideological radicals who have these strong opinions, and yet what they data shows is wanting to shut down other voices reflects an insecurity to defend your own. So the decline in civic knowledge is a big factor in political intolerance." *** "On average, the [people] that aren’t in college are less tolerant than the ones that are. So this [rising intolerance] isn’t just something that’s just happening on college campuses. I think campuses become a spotlight for this. And I wouldn’t even say that college campuses are creating this, but I would argue that if we are serious about the mission of higher education, we have an obligation to counter it. This is the place where we are supposed to listen to other people, and to engage in ideas that are different than their own." *** You can learn more April Kelly-Woessner at her faculty page. Her posts on the Heterodox Academy blog can be found here. Some articles and books mentioned during the interview: Social Justice and Social Order: Binding Moralities across the Political Spectrum The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory Democracy Other episodes of Half Hour of Heterodoxy.    

On Episode 2 At FLG Lacrosse Club, CEO Mike Winkoff and his son, Program Director Corey Winkoff, have a unique approach toward the youth lacrosse. Their mission is to develop well-rounded "studletes" who excel on the field, in the classroom and in their communities. In Episode Two, we sit down with Mike and Corey Winkoff from FLG Lacrosse. The Winkoff's have a ton of experience in the lacrosse space as players, coaches and administrators. In the podcast, they provide poignant commentary on a variety of topics including the early recruiting phenomenon, and provide salient advice for club owners, parents and student-athletes. Show Notes On first positive and first negative experience of playing lacrosse as a parent/coach-son combination, and using those experiences to shape current the current mindset [3:40] On the history of FLG Lacrosse [7:25] On how they go about helping players in the recruiting process [9:00] On why they enjoy assisting players in the recruiting process [11:15] On helping parents who may be feeling the pressure in the recruiting process [13:15] On the clubs values, goals and philosophy [24:15] On early recruiting [26:15] On establishing relationships between the club and college coaches [36:10] On advice to club staffers and parents in dealing with the recruiting process [40:30] Selected Quotes from Mike Winkoff “I wasn't happy with the landscape. So we started a team. We had one team, and raised the money from donors. Nobody paid for anything – hotels, tournament fees, etc. The following year (2006-7), we had three teams – two boys teams and one girls team – and raised $225,000. Of course in 2008, the world changed and we had to move to the pay for play model. But that is where we started.” “The recruiting process for me and the directors is probably our favorite part of the job, because you are helping somebody make the biggest decision in lives to that point that is going to form the rest of their life. It's a great experience.” “The bottom line is you have to be real with the family. Every student-athlete is so different. If you have anxiety because somebody else does something – that is a bit short-sighted. You can't get caught up in the stuff that's not important. What's important is the happiness of the child. At the end of the day, it's about where and when is the right fit.” “The pressure put on these kids, being recruited so young, is unfortunate. If it was up to myself and Corey, they would only recruit rising seniors. But we can't change that landscape. So what we have to do is tell parents and help them realize. We once had a player get 11 DI offers his rising senior year. So there is always opportunity. At the end of the day, the kid who commits later is in a better spot. They are finding the right fit. An eighth or ninth grader cannot find the right fit. They are just trying to figure out high school.” “We know the process is flawed. These kids aren't ready to make the decision of where to go to college. It's all about guidance, and sometimes, the parents need it more than the kids.” "LacrosseRecruits is our organizational tool for recruiting, and it's been a godsend. It helps our kids organize themselves; it helps us organize each recruit – following their activity and seeing what they are doing. We need that tool for a small program like ours – I can only imagine how bigger organizations do not have something like that.” “If you come to our program, everybody plays equally. We are not looking to win the fourth grade national championship. It's not something that means anything to us. We want to develop the players and get them better. Our goals are different than other people's goals.” “The biggest problem that I see is they are not spending the time to evaluate the fit. They are rushing through the process instead of doing their homework. Look at the process identically as if you weren't an athlete. Do the homework about the school – how the child fits academically, socially and economically for the family.” "I believe that our job as club directors is to be what the guidance teacher is in school. Get to know the student-athlete and what makes them happy. We all know the happier the student, the better their experience." “We are not saying our philosophies are the right ones. We are saying they are ours. We want like-minded people in the organization. We are not saying we are right and others are wrong. We are saying if these philosophies and morals align with yours, come join our program." Selected Quotes from Corey Winkoff “Youth sports shouldn't really be about the wins and the losses. It should be about the development.” “We find it insane that there are clubs out there with four or five teams per age group. How could you possibly help all of those kids? That's why we stick to the one team per age group.” “Every player's recruiting process is different. Some happen a lot sooner than others. That's where the time comes in. We have a passion for helping players get from one stage to the next. The motivation comes naturally.” “It depends on what you represent and what you want your brand to represent. In our minds, if we have 20 players, we want 20 players to have amazing experiences and be happy. If only 19 are happy, it's up to us to reevaluate.” “If you are playing for our program, we feel you want to use the sport of lacrosse to get into a great school or set yourself up for success.” About FLG Lacrosse Through lacrosse, FLG teaches its members valuable skills, such as leadership, teamwork, friendship and a good work ethic, that are important in every aspect of life. Off the field, FLG players are taught the importance of giving back, partaking in various charities, mentoring and community service events. Since its inception in 2007, the FLG organization has successfully used lacrosse as a foundation to build more than just athletes.