Podcasts about Shadow Divers

This week Jamesy and Brando look at some of the listener mail they received about the Shadow Divers episodes. One upset listener who did not like the Exposed episode. One this is for sure, that series got people thinking and sharing their opinions with us.

“If the war was to be over by Christmas, as many believed, or at the latest by Easter 1915, tens of thousands of soldiers might be killed or wounded before the guns fell silent. Every army believed that it could crush its opponents within a few months.” Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! Join us as we dive into The First World War by Martin Gilbert. We'll explore the intricate details of WW1, from the seemingly pointless triggers to the significant aftermath that reshaped the world. We'll also touch on intriguing historical anecdotes, like Germany's return in WW2, and the far-reaching consequences of redrawing borders. History lovers, buckle up for this one! We cover a wide range of topics including: Technological advancements from cavalry to tanks and planes How WW1 redrew the map and ended empires The concept of 'war guilt' and its impact America's pivotal role and the intercepted telegram The seemingly unnecessary triggers of the first World War And much more. Please enjoy, and make sure to follow Nat, Neil, and Adil on Twitter and share your thoughts on the episode. Links from the Episode: Mentioned in the Show: The Great War on Youtube (2:32) Schlieffen Plan (10:57) French Foreign legion (16:48) Empires before WW1 (34:42) Zimmerman Telegram (41:21) Marshall Plan (1:13:34) They Shall Not Grow Old (1:26:26) Books Mentioned: The First World War The Second World War (3:13) Shadow Divers (43:46) The Power of Geography (1:24:57) Blueprint for Armageddon (1:38:21) The Brothers K (1:39:40) Musashi (1:39:47) People Mentioned: Martin Gilbert Ho Chi Minh (3:59) David Lloyd George (24:47) John J. Pershing (41:03) Dan Carlin (1:37:32) Ernest Shackleton (1:38:47) Show Topics: (0:00) Today, we're covering The First World War by Martin Gilbert. While the book offers a detailed play-by-play of WW1, it wasn't the most enjoyable read. However, we gained significant insights into the war. (4:53) The war's triggers and conflicts felt somewhat pointless. Despite this, WW1 felt more significant than WW2 as it redrew maps and ended four empires. Unlike WW2's clear-cut good vs. evil narrative, WW1 began with cavalry and ended with advanced technology like planes, tanks, gas, and submarines. (8:02) Numerous underlying tensions grew and eventually exploded in unpredictable ways. One of the triggers was Germany's insecurity about its geographical position. We delve into the circumstances that led to the start of the war. (11:10) A major theme was the widespread belief that the war would end quickly, without long-term consequences. We discuss what wars were like before WW1, typically regional with smaller armies and less impact on civilian populations. (13:57) What was the aftermath of the war like? You might belong to a different town or region, but it may not have affected your daily life much. (18:00) Nat, Neil, and Adil talk about the multiple empires that collapsed during this time.  (20:10) War guilt was a new concept, unlike previous wars where the winning side simply negotiated their gains. The sheer number of deaths and the devastation of this war was shocking.  (25:35) How did the Ottoman Empire get involved and what was their involvement in the war? (27:05) The Germans came back much stronger in WWII, despite being devastated in WWI. They put up a bigger fight just 20 years later. It leads us to wonder, from where did they find the resources? (31:38) How the war marked a complete era shift. Would communism have had as much impact in the 20th century without WWI? Would the Soviet Union have emerged? (34:42) We take a look at a map of empires before WW1 and how the territories looked before then, which leads into our first tangent of this episode! (37:52) Though Mexico wasn't involved in the war, Germany sent them a telegram promising several U.S. states in exchange for support. The British intercepted this message and informed the U.S. (40:34) America's entry into the war truly tipped the scales and accelerated the conflict. They joined gradually, but their involvement turned the tide. We discuss the telegram that prompted America's entry into WWI. (43:58) We were surprised by the advanced use of submarines in WWI. It's fascinating to consider how much the world has changed, especially thinking about the Ottoman Empire, which lasted over 600 years. (47:49) WWI was the first time oil played a significant role, and the Ottoman Empire had some of the largest oil reserves. Had they survived, they could have controlled one of the 20th century's most crucial resources. From the four dissolved empires, 40 new countries emerged. (50:12) While book wasn't the most entertaining and it felt repetitive, its importance lies in how it made people rethink the norms and rules of engagement. If a major war broke out next year, for example, there would likely be a similar period of figuring out new ground rules. (57:15) The Russian Revolution. Two generations of European leaders were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people. With two major world wars only 20 years apart, the loss of life was staggering. (1:02:11) In the last 6 months of the war, everyone believed they were losing. The Germans were preparing to surrender, and the British doubted they would make it. After the war, the US never ratified the Treaty of Versailles and chose not to get involved in the aftermath. (1:06:31) The redrawing of borders after the war marked the end of colonialism, profoundly impacting various parts of the world. Much of the end of colonialism stemmed from the end of WW1 and the dissolution of empires. The poorly executed division of territories led to cascading conflicts in the aftermath. (1:11:25) The Hapsburg empire isn't extensively covered in the book, yet it was a very old empire, with its dynasty dating back to the 11th century. The exact beginnings are unclear since it follows a family rather than a defined state, making the timeline a bit blurry. (1:13:34) We talk about the Marshall Plan. Would the Marshall Plan be effective in a kingdom-era setup? Plus, we talk about the idea of 'collective insanity' and how it can be seen as a form of self-governance, where a group loses its rationality as opposed to just an individual. (1:20:25) There were many overarching themes of the book and the war as a whole: From the end of the old European system to the transition from kingdoms to states. (1:24:01) Geographical positioning and how that plays a huge impact where you sit on the map. Much of the war is a downstream of geography. Some European countries were at a disadvantage based off of where they are on the map.  (1:30:25) How lives changed drastically because of the war. One day you're working your normal job and the next you're on the front lines of the war. (1:35:59) Neil and Adil give their final thoughts on the book, Gilbert's writing style, and what they took away from reading the book.  (1:38:47) That wraps up this episode! Stay tuned for our next episode where we'll be reading Endurance by Alfred Lansing. Make sure to pick up a copy of the book and head on over to our website to see what's next. If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by leaving a review on iTunes and tell a friend. As always, let us know if you have any book recommendations! You can say hi to us on Twitter @TheRealNeilS, @adilmajid, @nateliason and share your thoughts on this episode. You can now support Made You Think using the Value-for-Value feature of Podcasting 2.0. This means you can directly tip the co-hosts in BTC with minimal transaction fees. To get started, simply download a podcast app (like Fountain or Breez) that supports Value-for-Value and send some BTC to your in-app wallet. You can then use that to support shows who have opted-in, including Made You Think! We'll be going with this direct support model moving forward, rather than ads. Thanks for listening. See you next time!

Wait...WHAT?? TEN EPISODES of East Coast wreck diving... heroic deeds....noble virtues and grand character... all shot to hell? Surely our sacred realm of Scuba diving is a bastion of relief from the world's ugliness of greed and want of fame? Perhaps not! Have a listen as we examine yet another book detailing the East Coast wreck diving community and in particular the search for the identity of the U-Who (aka the U-869), listen to what deep shipwreck diving legend Gary Gentile has to say about "Shadow Divers" as we dive into his book, "Shadow Divers Exposed. The Real Saga of The U-869".

The boys finally make their way to the end of the U-Who and discover the true identity of the U-869. Dive by dive, Jamesy and Brando go back to the beginning and revisit the dives made on the mystery sub. Through triumph and tragedy, John and Richie finally get the clue they needed.

First off, thank you all for allowing us a week off... it was much needed and really helped with both of our "10 pounds of crap in a 5 pound bag" lives.... :-) .... This week we continue our dive into Robert Kurson's "Shadow Divers" with a look at the third main character, Richie Kohler. He's a quiet, studious boy that grows into the iconic Atlantic Wreck Diver and becomes partners with John Chatterton to help unearth the mystery of the this newly discovered WWII era sunken U-boat.... Join us as dive even deeper into the mystery of the "U-Who".

This week the boys dive into the next great character in Shadow Divers, John Chatterton. Commercial diver, scallop fisherman, army medic, deep wreck explorer, boat captain, and submarine researcher, John has done it all. Join us as we learn more about how he came to discover the answer to the U-Who.

This week the boys dive into the New York Times Bestseller ‘Shadow Divers' by Robert Kurson. It's another look at the U-Who but this time from the perspective of John Chatterton and Richie Kohler. We are first introduced however to Captain Bill Nagle, a legendary diver himself once, but now on a course of self-destruction. He was a diver's diver, and we explore who really deserves the title of, “a diver.”

Barrett Lindberg joins us to discuss opportunity zones - an innovative program that provides major tax incentives for long-term investments in low-income areas designated as opportunity zones. We explore how real estate investors can utilize opportunity zones to eliminate capital gains tax and recapture on properties by combining tax deferrals with cost segregation and bonus depreciation over long hold periods.Barrett Linburg is a co-founder of Dallas-based Savoy Equity Partners, which specializes in multifamily real estate investments. With 17 years in commercial real estate, Barrett has expertise in sourcing and capitalizing multifamily projects in all parts of a real estate cycle. [00:00 - 06:47] Barrett's Early Professional JourneyStarted in commercial mortgage brokerage for hotels and apartments after collegePersisted through the 2008 financial crisis by networking and building connectionsBegan buying and renovating multifamily properties in Dallas up to 2000 units[06:48 - 18:10] What You Need to Know About Opportunity ZonesBipartisan program to incentivize investments into low-income areasTax benefits include deferrals on gains, no capital gains after 10 years, and no depreciation recapture3 types of properties qualify - original use, vacant land, substantial renovation[18:11 - 28:37] Projects on OZ and Improving CommunitiesFocused efforts by acquiring 20+ properties within one OZ areaRevitalized a high-crime Dallas neighborhood by upgrading propertiesThe competition status in Opportunity Zone projects[28:38 - 33:44] The Final Four: Worst Job, Book, Skill to Learn, & Definition of SuccessWorst job ever was being a sandwich artistBook that gave a paradigm shift: "Shadow Divers” by Robert KursonSkill/talent to learn: Flying a planeSuccess means being able to set your own scheduleResources MentionedNovogradacConnect with BarrettWebsite:https://savoyequity.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/dallasaptgp LEAVE A 5-STAR REVIEW by clicking this link. WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE?Be sure to follow me on the below platforms:Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, or Stitcher.LinkedInYoutubeExclusive Facebook Groupwww.yonahweiss.comNone of this could be possible without the awesome team at Buzzsprout. They make it easy to get your show listed on every major podcast platform.Tweetable Quote:"The goalposts always move, right? And some days that's money. Some days that's, I just want to spend time with my family. But I think ultimately it revolves around family, being able to spend time with them and set your own schedule and do that." - Barrett LinburgSupport the show

I'm Ellen Bernstein-Ellis, Program Specialist and Director Emeritus for the Aphasia Treatment Program at Cal State East Bay and a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group. AA's strives to provide members with information, inspiration, and ideas that support their aphasia care through a variety of educational materials and resources. I'm today's host for an episode that will feature Dr. Kelly Knollman-Porter, who is a 2023 recipient of a Tavistock Trust for Aphasia Distinguished Scholar Award, USA and Canada. She will discuss how her interest in auditory comprehension and severe aphasia led to her work on reading comprehension.   Guest bio Dr. Kelly Knollman-Porter is an associate professor in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at Miami University. She directs the Neurogenic Language and Cognition lab, where her clinical research focuses on the development of supports and strategies for adults with aphasia to facilitate reading and auditory comprehension. Her research also explores the subtle reading processing differences exhibited by adults with aphasia through eye tracking technology. Dr. Knollman-Porter directs the Miami University Concussion Management Program, where her secondary research focuses on the development of assessment measures and treatments to manage the cognitive and communication challenges often associated with mild traumatic brain injury. She has over 30 years of experience working directly with adults with acquired brain injury. Listener take-aways In today's episode you will: Learn about how wanting to help clients with severe auditory comprehension challenges motivated our guest to pursue her doctoral degree after 15 years in clinical practice   Consider some of the challenges SLPs face in assessing reading in clinical practice using current standardized measures and learn about some advantages of incorporating a reading questionnaire and close observation for getting a better understanding of your client's individual reading style, preferences, and needs.   Explore the contribution of text to speech (TTS) to the dual modality model for supporting reading success at the book level and some of the critical factors to consider when implementing this strategy with clients.   Investigate how eye-tracking technology can help us gain insight to an individual's reading strengths and patterns. Show notes edited for conciseness and clarity Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  00:10 Kelly, let me just pause and say welcome! Thank you for being here. Kelly Knollman-Porter  01:02 Thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm so happy to be here. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  01:05 I am so excited you're here today. And as we talked, we always have a pre-meeting where we get to plan what we want to talk about in these podcasts, and as you know, I'm so excited to talk about book clubs and reading strategies. Thank you so much for being our guest today. Kelly Knollman-Porter  02:23 Thanks again, Ellen. And I have to thank you for your foundational work in the area of reading.  You can look back at a lot of the articles that myself or my research team have published and we reference you quite a bit. So thanks for your work also. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  02:39 Thank you for that kind, kind mention. I was very fortunate to partner with Dr. Roberta Elman to create the Book Connection at the Aphasia Center of California and be part of that body of work. We like to start with an icebreaker to give our listeners a chance to get to know you. I will open by asking you to share how the Tavistock Trust for Aphasia Distinguished Scholar Award has or you think will impact your work? Kelly Knollman-Porter  03:06 First of all, I'd like to just take a moment to thank the Duchess of Bedford and Nicole Campbell from the Tavistock Trust for giving me this honor. I was just so surprised and excited to hear when I was given this award. I had the lovely opportunity a couple of years ago at a Clinical Aphasiology Conference to meet both of these amazing women. I've been so impressed by the work of the Tavistock Trust. It's not just work in the UK, they have spread this out across the globe. They really have done so much to not only help people with aphasia, but also help educate the public about aphasia, help us as clinicians get connected, and as researchers get connected in order to stay abreast of more recent research that's coming out in terms of helping people with aphasia. I am just so thankful and appreciative of receiving this honor from this great organization. But how will it help me? I can honestly say that right now we're in the process of starting a new study  and through the support at the Tavistock Trust, we are going to be able to provide funding to help support these research studies and hopefully get some of these funds back into the hands of our participants. I'm excited to keep that research moving through their support. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  04:42 That's great. That was a really nice and gracious recognition. Yes, we're so appreciative of the work the Tavistock Trust has done. How about if we open by sharing a little bit about your professional journey? I think you considered yourself a non-traditional doctoral student.   You said you returned to get your doctorate after about 15 years of practice. Tell us a little bit more about what you were doing when you decided to return to your doctorate. And what were your passions that inspired you to return to school? Not an easy decision, I would guess. Kelly Knollman-Porter  05:19 No, it wasn't. I can honestly say I wasn't looking for it. I was very happy in clinical practice. I worked in a hospital for 15 years before coming to academia. I loved working in the medical field. I loved collaborating with other rehabilitation professionals, dieticians and physicians. I was very happy working in these environments. But Miami University actually reached out to me. They were wanting to further develop their adult program and they said, “Hey, will you come to academia and share some of your clinical knowledge and also lead the Miami University Aphasia Support Group?” They knew I had always had a long interest in working collaboratively with people with aphasia and clinically. So they asked me to come. I have to admit, I turned them down a couple times. And then finally, I made the big plunge and said, “Why not try it?” I wasn't really seeking it out. Originally, however, I was reaching a point where I was becoming frustrated with some of the reimbursement issues we were facing clinically. When working with people with aphasia, I sometimes felt like insurance was dictating how much treatment I could provide and how long I could provide it, even though I felt like many people could continue to make progress. I just felt like my hands were tied, and I was restricted. That was frustrating to me. I have to admit, when I came to academia, I was thinking, what can I do in order to explore this further? How can I potentially contribute to the research base in order to provide evidence to show that people with aphasia can continue to make progress, not just months after diagnosis, but 5, 10, 15 years? Because as a clinician, we've all seen it, absolutely. We know that people with aphasia want to continue to actively participate in life activities. And they can, if given the opportunity and the support. So, when I made that transition to academia, I quickly made the decision to go back and get my PhD. Primarily focusing on clinical research, specifically with people with chronic aphasia, Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  07:52 I am sure that there are listeners out there who may be sitting on that fence as well thinking, Should I do it? Should I pursue this doctorate? I just want to acknowledge and honor the challenges of being a doctoral student, especially while also being the parent of young children, but I just think it should be recognized. I was wondering, what was the best advice you got from your mentors? Because I'm sure you reached points in that process where you wondered, was this the right thing? And I want to support listeners who are out there thinking, “Can I do this? Should I do this?”  Kelly Knollman-Porter  08:30 It definitely required a team. When I decided to go back get my PhD, I had a 10 year old and a five year old. That just requires a lot of work, going to things after school for them and keeping your family a priority, but yet still working full time getting your PhD while commuting. And coming back, a special shout out to my spouse, who helped me keep all the balls up in the air. My family came along. I had amazing support from my in-laws and my parents, in terms of helping pick up the kids when needed. But I'm not going to lie, it was a challenge. And there were times when I wanted to throw in the towel. I wanted to say, “You know what, this is just too much for me to do right now.” But I did have people that came alongside me, that kept encouraging me, saying “It's okay, stay the course, what you're doing is good, and don't lose faith.” I have to give credit to Aimee Dietz. Dietz was my dissertation chair and she was very encouraging, supportive, and understanding that I was a mother and I had a life outside of PhD and work. She respected that. It was funny. She ended up getting pregnant at the same time and had her child. So I think we kind of supported each other through that. But one thing she said to me that I always remembered because she knew I loved clinical practice. I was like “Amy, maybe I should just go back to clinical practice?” And she said, “Kelly, you realize that your research is going to touch more people then your clinical practice.” Not downplaying clinical practice at all. But she said, “Your research has the potential of spreading information not only across our small geographic Midwest area, but also across the country and across the world.”  Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  10:35 What a wonderful piece of advice. No surprise, what a lovely mentor to have. Kelly Knollman-Porter  10:39 Absolutely. I think I told you this before, there was one very difficult day that I was having. My family was sitting around the dinner table and the house was a mess. I had grading to do and I said to my husband, “I'm going to quit, I'm not going to get my PhD.” And my 10 year old daughter was sitting there and her name's Anna. And she said, “Mom, what would you say to me if I told you I was going to quit something?” Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  11:11 What a wise 10 year old. Kelly Knollman-Porter  11:13 And at that moment, I realized that people were watching and other women might be watching and saying, “Hey, stay the course, persevere.” I am proud enough to say that that same daughter just recently graduated from vet school with her DVM and I hope that my perseverance helped her persevere also. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  11:36 I love that story. Thank you for sharing it with our listeners today. Your doctoral work originally focused on the treatment of auditory comprehension in severe aphasia. I know that was one of your clinical loves. I want to recommend to our listeners since we can't cover everything today, your 2018 article,  we'll put it in the references of the podcast show notes, about intensive aphasia auditory comprehension treatment. Why don't you share how you became involved in reading comprehension? Because you started out in this auditory comprehension world, right? Kelly Knollman-Porter  12:13 Absolutely. Well, again, I really feel like comprehension is instrumental. There's been some work done that says people with auditory comprehension deficits, the more severe the auditory comprehension deficits, the greater risk of decreased success in rehabilitation outcomes. So I always had a passion for exploring auditory comprehension and different potential treatments to facilitate comprehension with people with chronic aphasia. But Aimee Dietz gave me that opportunity to do that. But it was interesting. During my dissertation process, I actually found out that my son had a pretty significant dyslexia. We kind of suspected it with him growing up, but then when you hit kindergarten, you really start to see the reading challenges kind of surface. And I remember talking with Amiee about reading. During that time, we were able to get my son connected to a great reading program that explored different compensatory supports to help facilitate any reading process, one of which was text to speech technology. And at that time, Amiee was collaborating with Karen Hux from the University of Nebraska on a potential reading study. And she says, “You're so interested in reading right now and you're interested in aphasia? How about combining those two loves, and getting involved with a reading study?” And the rest is history, that kind of landslide into a lot of research collaborations over the past 12 years that I've been involved with. But my son Eric did inspire that because seeing his success with text to speech with dyslexia, it made me think, why not text to speech with people with aphasia? What about that dual modality presentation?  Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  14:15 That's great. I also think you're showing us yet again, how often our personal journeys inform our research and clinical paths. I think that's a beautiful example. Reading has been repeatedly shown to impact quality of life for individuals with aphasia. They tell us that so often, but it's often challenging for clinicians to allocate the limited clinical time to assessment and treatment. Reading treatment takes a while to do so. I feel like I'm asking you to address the million dollar question here. But what are your recommendations on how to manage this challenge? And what are some of the challenges in assessing reading? I've alluded to the time, but why don't you elaborate? You've done a deep dive here. Kelly Knollman-Porter  15:06 Absolutely. And it is challenging because first and foremost, I find that a lot of our standardized assessments will try to tap into assessing the reading challenges, but it really only scratches the surface. I haven't found a really great standardized assessment that I can use and rely on that really helps direct my treatment course, You have to use a variety and you have to do some that you just make up on your own based on how exactly that person is responding. But generally, if I'm going to assess, I first have to start by having a really in-depth conversation with the person with aphasia or their care partner. First of all, you have to find out if reading is of interest to them, of course,and the types of reading materials that they like to engage with. I think about people in our Miami University aphasia support group. I have one individual who would read a novel a week prior to her stroke. I had another person in our group who said to me, “Kelly, you know what? I never read books.” It was not something of interest to him. You have to treat those two people very differently. You have to find out what their interests are. That's always where I start--with just an interview and talking with them about aphasia. And then I talked to them about their interests in terms of “Are you comfortable with technology? Are you not comfortable with technology?” I actually give them reading tasks. When I assess reading, I of course, start at the word level, and then creep up to the sentence level and add more complexity and length. But when I give them a paragraph to read, I don't just look at, did they get the answers correct or incorrect? I'm not only looking at accuracy per response, but how long does it take them to process that multi sentence information? So for example, if I gave them a four sentence paragraph to read, I watch them very closely to see how they're attacking that reading task. And that doesn't take that long out of your assessment time. I watch where their eyes are moving. I watch to see if their eyes are regressing back within a sentence while they're reading. And if I notice that they're really struggling, I also say to them, “Tell me, what are you having difficulty reading right now? Can you point to the words that you're struggling with? Can you point to the words potentially that you're skipping? Tell me about this process, and try to tell me how it's different from the way you read before.” And sometimes we underestimate what people with aphasia can tell us about their reading experiences. I have found that a lot of the people that I have worked with can be very specific about what they're having difficulty with. Now, there's always that small population that might not have the awareness. But it's still the majority of them that can. I was just working with a gentleman last week, and I was like, “Show me what you're having difficulty with.” And he pointed to the words that he struggled with, and that helped me understand. Are you having more difficulty with content words? Are you having more difficulty with verbs? Are you having more difficulty with articles? What is it about this process that's  making it hard? Because many times people with aphasia can read that paragraph very slowly and very carefully and end up with a high percentage accuracy in terms of performance, but if it's taking them five minutes to read a four sentence paragraph, it is too fatiguing, it's too much. And they're going to end up avoiding getting back to reading things that they want to read for pleasure. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  19:18 Right, because the burden is too high. Kelly Knollman-Porter  19:21 Because the burden is too high. I really feel like if we can look at these things clinically, we just need to take a little bit of time to talk to the people and actively watch how they're attacking that reading task. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  19:37 If I circle back briefly to the impact reading has on quality of life, your 2015 article does a beautiful job of describing the contribution of access to reading to the quality of life. This was a qualitative study that interviewed six individuals with aphasia to hone in on their individual reading preferences and supports. But before you describe these results, I'd like you to share with the listeners your reading assessment survey. You just talked about listening carefully and asking questions. I think that's harder than you're making it sound. But you've given us this tool that is an amazing springboard. Many of us probably have just informal tools, lists of questions that we've developed on our own over time. But in that article, you actually attach this beautiful, clinical tool. How did you go about developing this initial reading survey that you do? Thank you for including that in the article. That was wonderful. Kelly Knollman-Porter  20:46 Oh, absolutely. A special shout out again to my research team, Karen Hux, Sarah Wallace, and Jessica Brown. We spent many hours of our meeting time creating this questionnaire. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  21:02 But that's great, these great clinical minds all coming together, embracing this questionnaire, planning to put it together, that's beautiful.   Kelly Knollman-Porter  21:10 Absolutely. I have to encourage everybody to try to get to be a part of a research team. We're stronger together than we are in isolation. I have the utmost respect for each of these women. They have taught me so much. We each brought to the table unique strengths. All four of us are unique in our own special way. And like I said, I've learned so much from them. But we bring that when we're creating our research studies. We always start with a rough draft. And then we question each other. We say, well, I've seen this clinically, or I think about this from a research perspective. I definitely brought to the table my clinical experience in working with people with aphasia, but then Sarah did also, so too Jessica, and so too Karen. Just working through what we saw were challenges that people with aphasia might experience and what we've found clinically to develop that questionnaire. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  22:11 So, you created this questionnaire with a variety of sections that helps someone systematically go through understanding that person's reading preferences and strengths and try to get a sense of what their profile is, right? That's your starting point. And then you take it from there. Kelly Knollman-Porter  22:28 Exactly. What do you like to read? Do you like to read text messages? Do you like to read novels? Where do you like to read? How do you like to read? Do you like to hold a book versus do you like using technology? What are all the different ways that you personally like to read? I can honestly say one thing that we learned from the qualitative study, I know I'm jumping to that, was everybody has their own unique reading experiences. There's not going to be a one size fits all approach to the assessment or the treatment of anyone with a reading challenge. You will not find a cookbook approach to this. You have to do it on an individual basis. And if you do, I think the outcomes are going to be stronger. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  23:20 Let's circle back to that 2015 article, we'll jump back and forth. Could you describe some of the key takeaways from that study? Maybe you could explain why you think that dual modality model, which we started to allude to earlier with text to speech, is so important to supporting reading success? That's part of my takeaway from that 2015 article.     Kelly Knollman-Porter  23:45 I wish I could tell you that in 2014, when we were initially planning this qualitative research study that we were thinking about TTS. I was from a distance, but we weren't actively looking at text to speech (TTS) at that time. But one thing that my colleagues and I felt we had to do first, if we were going to explore reading research more, we had to go to the people with aphasia to learn what they wanted. So, before we took our own personal opinions about what we thought people with aphasia needed in terms of reading, we thought we should start with a qualitative study and find out what they wanted and what they needed. And you know what, that was such an important starting place for our research. Because again, we found each of the people that I interviewed had their own unique needs, but yet every single one of them passionately wanted to read. They wanted to get back to reading and they wanted to read books. They wanted to read books about romance and they wanted to read about horror stories. I'll never forget one of our participants. She told me that she liked to read Stephen King novels. She laughed and says, “Kelly, you couldn't handle that.” And it's true. I don't like those scary stories. But, they wanted to read. They want to learn more about aphasia, but they just want to read what everybody else is reading. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  25:23 You want to read what your peers are reading.  I will always remember this story where one of our book club members at the Aphasia Center of California was so excited at a book club meeting because he had taken the book that we were reading, I think it was Shadow Divers at the time, to the golf course. No one usually approached him and chatted with him. But he actually had a couple guys come up when they saw the book and engage with him in discussion. So it became this beautiful bridge of connection. I can't communicate as well, but they had this awesome commonality to share. It was just what they were interested in. So that example of just wanting to do what your peers are doing because there's such joy in being part of that reading community. One of my favorite parts of that 2015 article is also the clinical reading framework that's on page 19. It helps a clinician start to think about how to implement reading supports and strategies. I think that is a beautiful contribution. Could you describe that model for our listeners?  Kelly Knollman-Porter  26:30 Sure, of course, you start with the questionnaire, you start with asking them what they want to read and what they like to read. And then you do an informal assessment. And then, as we walk through that framework, you establish personally relevant goals, based on their unique reading needs and experiences. But then as you're considering treatment, you have to think about lots of different avenues that you can potentially go down. And that's going to be based again on their needs. Specifically, are they interested in technology? If they're not interested in technology, then that's going to take you on one route, but if they are interested in technology should you consider text to speech? If they're not interested in technology, will picture support facilitate their understanding of the written text? So basically, looking at personalizing the treatment approach. And going through a process of trial and error, looking at the length of the reading that should be used, or the complexity of the reading materials, and again, gearing treatment towards their unique personal needs. That's kind of what it's all about. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  27:50 You really provide a very clear framework, and I think that always helps us with our clinical thinking-- to know what questions to ask and how to break it down. A wonderful follow up to that 2015 article, is the 2022 article that compared comprehension, processing time and modality preferences for individuals with and without aphasia when reading books using text to speech. Could you start by explaining or describing what motivated your work to be at the book level?  So often, we start with words and then sentences, but here, you took this big, big leap and started at the book level. Kelly Knollman-Porter  28:31 I'm going to swing back to my 2015 article real quick, if that's okay. Because I have to admit, one of the participants in that study gave us direction to go the TTS route first. So, of those people that we interviewed in that initial qualitative study, only one of them was reading more after his stroke than before his stroke. And this gentleman, he was in his mid 40s at the time, and very into technology. I remember when we were doing the interview with him, he was adamant. He was like, “Kelly, text to speech works!” So of the six people that we interviewed, he was the one that inspired us to start looking at text to speech more-- that eventually led to all these other studies. Because he said, “I've read a novel.” He laughingly told me that he read Fifty Shades of Grey, and he also was able to get online and, through text to speech, order things through Amazon or different mechanisms like that. We started exploring text to speech technology and the degree to which it could help from a dual modality presentation. So that kind of got us on that track. My colleagues and I explored the use of text to speech at the sentence and paragraph level to see if it helped. We really had mixed results, I have to admit. We were finding that sometimes it helped some people, but it didn't help all people. And we were almost getting a little frustrated with what we were finding, and we were feeling that we were hearing from clients. I have to admit, I've run into clinicians all over the country and they're like, “Yeah, text to speech works.” But we weren't seeing those strong outcomes with our research. It was right around the pandemic time. I said to my colleagues, “We're gonna have to take a big leap here with our research, instead of just looking at the sentence and paragraph level, why don't we just jump to books?” We know that people with aphasia want to read books. We have a feeling that the text to speech might help them at the book level. We know that this research is going to get a little muddy, there's going to be a lot of variables that we can't control for, but let's try to do a study based on what people with aphasia want. So we took this big leap of faith and did this book study. And this one was where we decided to control many factors in terms of having them read a certain section and then using text to speech and then read another section and then use text to speech for another section. There was a lot involved in it. But that's ultimately why--because people with aphasia told us that they want to read books. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  31:45 I know we're going back and forth. But these topics are all integrated. Let's take a moment and ask you to talk a little bit more about text to speech and what you've learned about using it for individuals with aphasia. You started to again allude to some of the things, particularly the variability across people. There are pros. And there's cons. Before we dive in, I want to refer our listeners to this nugget, this beautiful little gem, that I found just last week. It was in the March 2023 ASHA Leader, and it's with your co authors Sarah Wallace and Karen Hux. The article lays out some of the considerations to take when introducing a client to text to speech technology, like how to do it in a systematic way, how to explore and allow for the individualization that is necessary, that practice is necessary. It's a great clinical perspective article. We'll put the link in our show notes. But what do you want to say about the lessons learned with text to speech? Kelly Knollman-Porter  32:47 Absolutely. It takes practice when you're considering using text to speech with a person with aphasia. First of all, you have to see if they're interested in using technology. If they have access to technology, that's your first question. And then, can they access the device physically? So lots of things have to be taken into consideration. If they show interest in using the technology, you need to sit down with that person with that technology that they choose. If that's an Android device, if that's Mac device, if it's a laptop, if it's an iPad, if it's a smartphone, you have to bring their device to the table and see to what degree they can access the necessary text to speech applications that are needed in order to use it successfully for reading tasks. If they cannot access it, then you need to take a step back and create an instruction manual to help with pictures and aphasia friendly formatting, in order to give them a step by step method to access that technology. So often, we start to use technology intuitively. We think everybody else should be able to use it that easily. But we have to make sure that the person can turn the device on. A lot of older people also have decreased circulation in their fingertips and sometimes when touching the app, they can't get it to trigger, so they have to warm up their fingers before accessing it. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  34:33 I'm so glad you mentioned that because I can actually personally relate to that one. Because these nuances are so important. , I don't know if they're nuances, these challenges that you may not realize until you actually sit down and work with the person. Kelly Knollman-Porter  34:48 Absolutely. So when I know someone is interested in this, I always start with pictures--a detailed instruction book that shows you step by step what you have to touch in order to access that TTS system. I put it in a binder with a plastic coat covering over the top, so that they can have that manual sitting right there by their device. And then we practice with it. We say, “Okay, now I'm going to show you how to access this text to speech technology. Now you show me if you can do it using your manual.” And we go back and forth. We're not even to the reading part yet. You have to first access the system. If they show that they can then access it, then we actually get into playing with the different TTS features. So anything, from the speed of the voice presentation on TTS is crucial. You have to find that ideal speed for that person that's not too fast, and not too slow. That's going to help their processing. So, playing around with the speed. Also playing around with a voice. Do they want a male voice? Do they want a female voice? Do they want one with an accent? You'd be surprised people are very particular about the voice that they want. And then, also exploring the use of highlighting. Do they want to have highlighting? At the single word level? Do they want each word highlighted as it's read? Or do you want the full sentence highlighted? Or do you want no highlighting, because some people don't like the highlighting. So there's a whole sequence of steps that you need to go through in order to determine if someone is going to be able to access the TTS system, and then, if they're going to be able to use it successfully. And that does take time. And it takes experimentation and setting up a system for a person, letting them try it on their own. And then having them come back and ask, “Okay, what did you like? And what did you not like? Can we change this at all?” So it can be adaptive, it might change over time. We don't want to just give one structured TTS system to all people. It won't work. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  37:17 I think that dovetails beautifully with my next question, which is, if we circle back to that 2022 article, I was struck by some of the variability across participants and that you were able to embrace that as a researcher and look at what that means.  The variability across people reinforced your approach of taking a strength-based model approach when assessing reading performance for your clients. Are there other outcomes you want to highlight from that study? Kelly Knollman-Porter  37:49 Absolutely. One thing we found overall, is that for the group as a whole, TTS technology helped them process the written materials faster, without compromising comprehension. I'm gonna say that again, so they could access and process the written information faster, without compromising comprehension. For some of them, that was huge, right? Because they were able to read that book with less time, and hence less fatigue-- Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  38:27 ---that reduces that burden we were talking about earlier, right, that sense of fatigue and burden.  However, so keep going. I'm sorry. Kelly Knollman-Porter  38:34 So we found it helps process the information faster. But as a group overall, we found that it did not improve their comprehension. And that's been kind of the thorn in our heel, more like, why is this text to speech not facilitating comprehension? Because if you look at the theory on dual modality, if you're presenting something auditorily and through writing, that should facilitate comprehension, right? But we weren't seeing that with all participants. Now, some of that could be the varying degrees of complexity of their unique type of reading problem that they had.  Then we did have a couple people that actually did show improvements in comprehension.  We had one participant that had a 20% increase in comprehension with TTS compared to the read only condition. We had another person with like a 10% increase. So this works for some people, in terms of facilitating comprehension, but not all. So we felt like we're getting close, but we're still not quite there. And that's why we're needing to continue to do more research.   Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  39:50 I just want to take a pause.  This research was all done during COVID. I want to thank you for how clearly you describe the training and materials needed for this study in that article. I have watched some of my colleagues trying to do research during COVID. They did some incredible things. Looking at that article made me wonder how did you do that?  I want to shout out your tenacity in accomplishing this during COVID. I think you mentioned that it gave you multiple “front porch opportunities” to solve tech challenges, because you had to go to the house of your participants, literally sit on the porch and try to fix the iPad, or the Kindle, or the whatever, and hand it back to them. So thank you for just hanging in there during a time when it was really hard to do research. I'm looking at the time, and I want to make sure that we get to your eye fixation behaviors and processing time in individuals with and without aphasia article. I've just covered a lot at the moment. Was there something you wanted to reflect on in terms of your “porch moments”  before we jumped to the eye fixation study? Kelly Knollman-Porter  41:11 I think as a speech language pathologist, it's kind of in our blood that we have to be very adaptive and flexible. Sometimes you have to jump in the car and drive and sit on the porch, especially. This is another challenge with using technology, if an update happens, and it totally changes the formatting of an application you're using all the time. Now, if a person with aphasia cannot always adapt to that, I would get a call, “Hey, Kelly. Something's popping up here. And I can't get rid of it.” So I would just hop in the car, and I'd say, put everything on your front porch. I will be there. I'm just going to sit on your front porch, and I will deal with the update. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  42:02 That could be cold in Ohio. I'm picturing you sitting there with gloves and in a coat trying to fix things. Kelly Knollman-Porter  42:11 Yeah, that was about it. But that's our skill as speech language pathologists. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  42:17 You showed a lot of dedication. You keep giving a shout out to your team and your lab.     Kelly Knollman-Porter  42:24 I have a special shout out to Mackenzie Pruitt, who worked on that study. She was a masters level student, and she was right there in the trenches with me. I have a great team. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  42:35 I want to go back to this eye fixation behaviors study. While we're not likely to be able to assess eye fixation in daily practice because the equipment and technology is beyond what we would have in our clinics or private practices, but your results really hold clinical significance for understanding reading, processing strengths and challenges. Do you want to describe some of the highlights from that study? Kelly Knollman-Porter  42:59 I think one of the biggest frustrations when you work with someone with reading challenges is you really are not 100% sure how they're processing the written text. We're assessing them, we're watching them, we're seeing their response to the questions. But what are you having difficulty with? You can ask questions, you can watch their eyes clinically. But one thing that eye tracking technology has that I'm grateful for is, it showed me how people with aphasia process written text. And we wanted to specifically not just look at the word level, there's some great research out on word level processing and sentence level processing. But we wanted to take a big leap and look at multi sentence processing. So what are those eyes doing? What did they fixate on? What are they regressing to, and again, I'm going to give another shout out to Drew Bevelhimer. He was also a master's level student that was working in my lab at the time, who, again came alongside me to help get this eye tracking technology going. This really did show me how unique the reading challenges that people with aphasia have when reading multi sentence information. We specifically looked at how often they had within word regressions, like within a longer word within sentence regression--so when their eyes look back to another word within the sentence, and then how often they look back to a previous sentence. And one thing that that really showed us is with the use of text to text to speech technology, their numbers of regressions significantly decreased. So they did not have to regress as much while reading, which again, resulted in a decrease in processing time. Another thing that this study showed, which I and my colleagues thought was really interesting, we actually brought in a group of neurotypicals to do this study also. When we used the default text to speech voice rate,  we actually found the opposite results with neurotypicals. When using text to speech, set at that default speed, like right around 150 to 180 words per minute, they actually had more regressions with text to speech than in the read only condition. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  45:39 So, you have to match the speed with the person. Is that where this is headed? Kelly Knollman-Porter  45:43 That is exactly where that's headed. It really reinforced to us how you have to consider the speed of that text to speech voice. Because if you do not have the appropriate speed, it can actually have some detrimental effects in causing more regressions. That's one thing, looking to the future, that my colleagues and I are going start looking at-- exploring how to get that synching better in terms of the eye movements with the rate of speech. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  46:17 So is that is next in your research, where you're headed, Kelly Knollman-Porter  46:21 That's where we're headed., Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  46:23 I'm going to look forward to that. I just want to say that your body of research on reading and reading comprehension, and supporting and using strategies and understanding the patterns and challenges that people with aphasia have and how they get them back in the game to support them. I just think it's such a valuable contribution. I really appreciate this beautiful body of research. And there was another March 2023, ASHA Leader article, besides the one on text to speech, that describes how reading impacts return to work. It's an article that tells a story about your efforts to support a teacher who was working to return to the classroom. I'll put that link in the show notes too, because it's a beautiful collaborative, “we're going to do this as a team” story. And it wasn't easy. But it was very much supporting the individual goals and journey of your client. Do you have any parting advice as we wrap up for clinicians who are going to assess and work with reading with their clients? That's what this whole show has been about. But what else do you want to add we end?     Kelly Knollman-Porter  47:36 Don't be afraid to explore reading. I know it seems intimidating and overwhelming, because it is challenging to figure out what's specifically the problem, but I can honestly say that if you invest some time in it, the outcomes are going to be worth it for your clients. I look to some books studies that I've done here within our Miami University aphasia support group and, and I have many members that prior to the book club study that I did, had not picked up a novel for 15 years since their stroke, and through adaptive materials, and again, shout out to Roberta Elman's work in the Book Connection materials that her and her group have created. We've used them a lot here at Miami University. But through those adaptive materials that she's created, she's opened up a world of opportunity for people with aphasia to be able to access books. Giving people that opportunity to get back to reading materials that they'd like to read is just really rewarding. Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  48:55 Thank you so, so much for this conversation and for all the work you're doing. And we'd like to close with one kind of broader, big picture question. Kelly, if you had to pick only one thing that we need to achieve urgently as a community of Life Participation providers, what would that one thing be? Kelly Knollman-Porter  49:23 When we talked about this question, I was slightly discouraged because my ultimate reason for going and doing research was to provide research that will lead to greater reimbursement of services for people with chronic aphasia.  I hate to say it, but here are 15 years later, that's still my big takeaway point. We need to find better ways of helping people with aphasia in the chronic phases get reimbursement for services that they so desperately need. We also need to talk to clinicians across the country. We have to be very careful in terms of how we give services to this population. They can still make progress. They can still make gains. We just need the support in order to make that happen. I'm just going to throw one other thing out there. This pertains to the ASHA Leader 2023 article for the teacher that was trying to get back to work. We need to find more opportunities for people with aphasia to still have part-time jobs without losing their benefits, because they're caught between a rock and a hard place. If I go back to work a little bit, I'm going to lose my benefits. I remember in that article, Christine Bowles, who we interviewed, shared working full time is too hard, but I still have more to give. I still have more to give. I'm not done yet. I'm only in my 40s. Why can't we give people with aphasia more opportunity to work without losing benefits?  Ellen Bernstein-Ellis  51:09 Thank you for that message. I think it's critical and one that a lot of people face and think about. So thank you for bringing that up. And for participating today. It's been a wonderful opportunity to talk about your work. Your passion and excitement comes across so much. And I'm going to thank our listeners for listening today. And I just want to remind that our references and resources mentioned in today's show, just see our show notes. They're available on the website, www dot aphasia access.org. And there you can also become a member of our organization and support the podcast and all the other great work that's being done by aphasia access, and you can also browse our growing library of materials and find out about the Aphasia Access Academy. And if you have an idea for a future podcast episode, email us at info at Aphasiaaccess.org. For Aphasia Access Conversations. I'm Ellen Bernstein-Ellis. And thanks again for your ongoing support aphasia access   References and Resources The reading intake questionnaire discussed in this interview, is accessible here: https://aphasiaacc.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/Reading%20History%20Questionnaire-Knollman-Porter-AphasiaAccessPodcast.pdf   To see examples of adapted book club materials mentioned in this episode, go to: The Book Connection on the Aphasia Center of California website: https://aphasiacenter.net/the-book-connection/   Hux, K., Wallace, S. E., Brown, J. A., & Knollman-Porter, K. (2021). Perceptions of people with aphasia about supporting reading with text-to-speech technology: A convergent mixed methods study. Journal of communication disorders, 91, 106098. Hux, K., Knollman-Porter, K., Brown, J., & Wallace, S. E. (2017). Comprehension of synthetic speech and digitized natural speech by adults with aphasia. Journal of Communication Disorders, 69, 15-26. Knollman-Porter, K. (2023). Navigating a Job's Language Demands After a Stroke. Leader Live. The ASHA LEADER, 28(2), 42-46. Knollman-Porter, K., Bevelhimer, A., Hux, K., Wallace, S. E., Hughes, M. R., & Brown, J. A. (2023). Eye Fixation Behaviors and Processing Time of People With Aphasia and Neurotypical Adults When Reading Narratives With and Without Text-to-Speech Support. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 66(1), 276-295. Knollman-Porter, K., Brown, J., Hux, K., Wallace, S., & Crittenden A. (2022).  Reading comprehension and processing time when people with aphasia use text-to-speech technology with personalized supports and features.  American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 31, 342-358. Knollman-Porter, K., Dietz, A., & Dahlem, K. (2018). Intensive auditory comprehension treatment for severe aphasia: A feasibility study. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27(3), 936-949. Knollman-Porter, K., Hux, K., Wallace, S. E., Pruitt, M., Hughes, M. R., & Brown, J. A. (2022). Comprehension, Processing Time, and Modality Preferences When People With Aphasia and Neurotypical Healthy Adults Read Books: A Pilot Study. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 31(6), 2569-2590. Knollman-Porter, K., & Julian, S. K. (2019). Book club experiences, engagement, and reading support use by people with aphasia. American journal of speech-language pathology, 28(3), 1084-1098. Knollman-Porter, K., Wallace, S. E., Brown, J. A., Hux, K., Hoagland, B. L., & Ruff, D. R. (2019). Effects of written, auditory, and combined modalities on comprehension by people with aphasia. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 28(3), 1206-1221. Knollman-Porter, K., Wallace, S. E., Hux, K., Brown, J., & Long, C. (2015). Reading experiences and use of supports by people with chronic aphasia. Aphasiology, 29(12), 1448-1472.   Wallace, S. E., Hux, K., Knollman-Porter, K., Patterson, B., & Brown, J. A. (2023). A Mixed-Methods Exploration of the Experience of People With Aphasia Using Text-to-Speech Technology to Support Virtual Book Club Participation. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 1-24.   Wallace, S. E., Knollman-Porter, K., & Hux, K. (2023). How Text-to-Speech Aids Reading for People With Aphasia. Leader Live 28(2), 52-53. Wallace, S. E., Hux, K., Knollman-Porter, K., Brown, J. A., Parisi, E., & Cain, R. (2022). Reading behaviors and text-to-speech technology perceptions of people with aphasia. Assistive Technology, 34(5), 599-610.  

The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II.

From 2005- Robert Kurson, author of "Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans who risked everything to solve one of the last mysteries of World War II."

This week I talk about John Chatterton and Richie Kohler and their 6-year long adventure to uncover the identity of a mysterious World War II German U-boat they found. Rewriting a section of naval history, these men spent thousands of hours researching, traveling, and diving this wreck to not only discover its name but the names of the 56-dead crewmen who went down with it. Listen to this week's episode of Narcosis: Into the Deep for Part Two.The majority of the information gathered for this episode comes from Robert Kurson's book: "Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II." I only scratch the surface of this topic so I highly recommend you purchase and read Robert Kurson's book (this is not a paid advertisement - I just enjoyed his book that much!):Purchase in America: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/shadow-divers-the-true-adventure-of-two-americans-who-risked-everything-to-solve-one-of-the-last-mysteries-of-world-war-ii-by-robert-kurson/246665/item/232584/?gclid=CjwKCAjwmeiIBhA6EiwA-uaeFW1tbyi1CxRi9oUn0LX7PHl5Fybt7JOVm2kFCWVwqWUUKfCwg-GG2hoCvmgQAvD_BwE#idiq=232584&edition=1902704Purchase in the UK: https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/books/robert-kurson/shadow-divers/9780340824559Become a Patreon for just $3 a month! Receive exclusive updates, vote on what to hear next, get a shout-out at the end of the next episode, and merchandise discount!: https://www.patreon.com/narcosispod?fan_landing=trueBuy Podcast Merch (100% of profits from the "Save Our Reefs" line go to the Reef Restoration Foundation): https://www.etsy.com/shop/NarcosisIntoTheDeepLearn more about the Reef Restoration Foundation here: https://reefrestorationfoundation.org/Follow the podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/narcosispod/Join the Discord Server: https://discord.gg/hepFA9JtkjCheck out our new website here: https://www.narcosispod.com

Welcome to When It Goes Wrong, the podcast about disasters, accidents and when things fall apart. On this episode I discuss deep water scuba diving. I talk about how it's different to normal scuba and all the dangers associated with it. I then dive into the story about the German U-Boat - the U-Who which took years for divers to find and identify - resulting in the tragic deaths of three divers.  It would eventually be identified as the U-869. Please subscribe and review for more! You can follow the podcast on instagram at @whenitgoeswrongpod , on twitter at @itgoeswrongpod or email with your feedback and ideas to whenitgoeswrongpod@gmail.com.Sources:Shadow Divers - Rob KursonThe Last Dive - Bernie Chowdhuryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-869https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_divinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decompression_(diving)https://www.johnchatterton.com/final-report-on-u869-page-2/https://www.tdisdi.com/diving-pioneers-and-innovators/john-chatterton/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Divers 

This week I talk about John Chatterton and Richie Kohler and their 6-year long adventure to uncover the identity of a mysterious World War II German U-boat they found. Rewriting a section of naval history, these men spent thousands of hours researching, traveling, and diving this wreck to not only discover its name but the names of the 56-dead crewmen who went down with it. Listen to this week's episode of Narcosis: Into the Deep for Part One. Majorty of the information gathered for this episode comes from Rober Kurson's book: "Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II." I only scratch the surface of this topic so I highly recommend you purchase and read Robert Kurson's book (this is not a paid advertisement - I just enjoyed his book that much!): Purchase in America: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/shadow-divers-the-true-adventure-of-two-americans-who-risked-everything-to-solve-one-of-the-last-mysteries-of-world-war-ii-by-robert-kurson/246665/item/232584/?gclid=CjwKCAjwmeiIBhA6EiwA-uaeFW1tbyi1CxRi9oUn0LX7PHl5Fybt7JOVm2kFCWVwqWUUKfCwg-GG2hoCvmgQAvD_BwE#idiq=232584&edition=1902704Purchase in the UK: https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/books/robert-kurson/shadow-divers/9780340824559Become a Patreon for just $3 a month! Receive exclusive updates, vote on what to hear next, get a shout-out at the end of the next episode, and merchandise discount!: https://www.patreon.com/narcosispod?fan_landing=trueBuy Podcast Merch (100% of profits from the "Save Our Reefs" line go to the Reef Restoration Foundation): https://www.etsy.com/shop/NarcosisIntoTheDeepLearn more about the Reef Restoration Foundation here: https://reefrestorationfoundation.org/Follow the podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/narcosispod/Join the Discord Server: https://discord.gg/hepFA9JtkjCheck out our new website here: https://www.narcosispod.com

With the hopes of much more SCUBA diving on the horizon, this episode fits the theme of World Ocean Week with plenty of dive-related topics and a special interview with the man that helped to create Garmin's high-tech and multi-talented Descent dive and multi-sport watch. Please welcome to the show Patrick Danko, who has been working with Garmin since 2005 and, after learning to dive with his wife, helped spearhead the Descent program with Garmin. The boys dig into dive computer culture, how to design a dive computer that is also a full-time watch, and Patrick offers both a complete breakdown of the new Descent MK2's impressive feature list along with his love of wreck diving and some of the sites he has on his wishlist. Aside from the interview, James debuts a silly new segment, Jason has a snazzy new spring bar tool, and Final Notes offers a specifically ocean-based theme. Don't forget to check out the new notes platform on Substack at notes.thegreynato.com. Feel free to leave a comment and subscribe if you want the show and notes delivered to your inbox. As for this episode, all you have to do is press play! 1:36 notes.thegreynato.com https://bit.ly/2T8TImZ 3:10 Our New Logo from Matt Ludvigson (@lattmudvigson) https://bit.ly/3wd9agG 8:10 Hassler Instruments Bolt Action Spring Bar Tool MK1 https://bit.ly/2TcOZAH 13:03 Jason's Seiko 7002 https://bit.ly/3ccmCcx 14:04 James' Rolex Explorer II https://bit.ly/3pAJDvl 15:40 Everest Rubber Strap http://bit.ly/2VlZEIW 16:00 Garmin Descent MKII https://bit.ly/3zfbw0s 23:01 Garmin Fenix 6S https://bit.ly/3cOt33X 41:47 DEMA show https://bit.ly/3xdaAHN 54:46 U352 https://bit.ly/3csR4zc 55:44 Scapa Flow https://bit.ly/3w9UEGo 57:20 Shadow Divers https://amzn.to/2Ok2l6H 57:25 Submerged https://amzn.to/2RD6FVF 57:30 Into the Planet https://amzn.to/3zhJJMA 59:05 Garmin Outdoor on Instagram https://bit.ly/3csRXrw 101:10 The Urchin Diver via VAER watches https://bit.ly/3cv8ew4 1:03:41 Perpetual Planet: Heroes Of The Ocean (via Rolex) https://bit.ly/3gd6avf

Titanic Expedition, Ep27 Pt2 - John Chatterton chats to us about his incredible journey to Titanic!Find out what it was like to be in a special group of people to have visited the Titanic, how this self funded expedition came about, how it was planned and some of the crazy elements to this incredible journey like wiring $100s of thousands of dollars to the Russians swiss bank account via western union and how these ageing submersible craft had parts missing! not what you want to see or hear when you are under over 400 bar of pressure!John and his friends found compelling evidence that changed the 100 year old views on how the Titanic sank, this really is a must listen episode, more people have been into space or died on Mount Everest than have been down to see the Titanic

This episode of the Blue Earth Podcast is a conversation with Richie Kohler. He's an explorer, technical wreck diver, shipwreck historian, filmmaker, and author. Richie was featured in Robert Kurson's incredible book “Shadow Divers”. It's a thrilling true story about Richie and John Chatterton's quest to identify the wreck of an unknown WWII German U-boat (submarine), 65 miles off the coast of New Jersey. They dedicated six years of their lives attempting to identify the wreck. Richie has traveled the world and explored many deep wrecks, including the Andrea Doria, Titanic, and Britannic. He's the author of “Mystery of The Last Olympian” about the Britannic. For more information subscribe to our newsletter https://www.futurefrogmen.org/connect and look for us on social media @futurefrogmen. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/blueearth/support

It's the end of the month, so it must be time for another TGN Q+A episode! A huge thanks to everyone who sent in a voice memo question. We get into everything from straps to cameras, how to care for a NATO, naming your watch after a problematic historical figure, Shadow Divers, "what ifs," and a whole lot more. One quick note to those reading this in advance of listening: While we have loved making weekly episodes since March, the time has come to rebalance the schedule, and we're going to move to a format that will be three episodes per month. Thus, starting with the next new episode on August 13, we'll be going back to an every-other-week format, but we're going to continue doing a monthly Q+A that will come as a surprise drop sometime towards the end of each month (so be sure to send in your questions and subscribe to the feed!). A huge thanks to all of you who have been enjoying the weekly episodes and sending in your support. We think this new format is a good middle ground that ensures that TGN remains the best show possible. Just press play, and thanks so much for listening! 07:11 Festool https://bit.ly/3gfV8Tm 8:40 Dewalt stacking tool storage https://bit.ly/3fefzyC 11:50 Jason's “Safarni” https://bit.ly/2DKxkJ0 12:30 James' Doxa 50th Anni Professional https://bit.ly/3bOJxsg 13:30 Garmin Outage https://bit.ly/30WAv8d 24:05 Otto Frei https://bit.ly/2EwBB36 27:03 Roldorf & Co http://bit.ly/2nGJqYw 27:50 UTEwatchco https://bit.ly/2N85wQk 30:00 Garmin Instinct http://bit.ly/2K2PLLA 38:30 Ulysses Nardin Torpilleur https://bit.ly/3hNYldf 47:50 Richo GRIII https://bit.ly/3jT0OVG 55:00 Shadow Divers https://amzn.to/2Ok2l6H 1:27:10 “Shadow Diver on the U869 Narrated by John Chatterton” https://bit.ly/334KQ4C 1;30:55 “Crossing the deserts of Kazakhstan” https://bit.ly/3jNQOgi

Listen to Aron Arngrimsson interview Richie Kohler in lockdown as they delve deeper into Shadow Divers, Titanic, Britannic, and more!

Still got gifts to buy? We've got you covered.Show Notes (4:22) The 2019 TGN Holiday Gift Guide (6:57) Cameo(8:40) The Human Fund(11:09) Ad Patina(11:50) Big Bob Gibson Championship Red Sauce(12:30) Dinner for Everyone(15:00) Sur La Table Cooking Classes(15:10) Okonomi Classes(16:30) 10 Best Things to Do in Beacon, NY(18:25) Crap Taxidermy(20:19) Watches: A Guide By HODINKEE(20:43) Shadow Divers(22:50) Medallion Status(25:00) The 'Gold' Casio A500WGA-9DF World Timer(26:10) Seiko 5(26:30) Swatch Skin(26:50) The Watch, Thoroughly Revised(28:00) SQIRL Jam Club(30:00) Timex American Documents Collection(30:30) Ichizawa Bags(30:55) Picus (31:27) Kurashiki Card Candles(32:57) Togei Pottery Classes(33:00) Nikka Coffey Grain Whisky(35:36) Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking(36:45) Hedley & Bennet Aprons(38:22) Textured Light Grey Calfskin Watch Strap(38:36) The Sedona Watch Strap In Blue(38:47) The Sedona Watch Strap In Ash Grey(39:30) The Reid Watch Strap In Light Brown(40:06) Road & Track(42:15) Aesop Soap(42:25) Fue De Bois(42:40) Woods Candle, Byredo(46:40) J N Shapiro Watches(50:30) David Walter Timepieces(1:01:00) Uhren Werke Dresden(1:16:15) Josh's HSNY Lecture

Amanda and Vanessa discuss Italian comics, paranormal smut, and more in this week's episode of Get Booked. This episode is sponsored by Book Riot Insiders, Libro.fm and TBR. Subscribe to the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. Feedback None this week! Questions 1. I was just offered a position as a 4th grade reading/writing teacher starting in the fall. I've been teaching abroad for a while and need good kid-lit recs for my classroom as I'm out of the loop. Picture books, chapter books, and graphic novels are all welcome. I've already got some good ones like Lumberjanes, the Anne of Green Gables graphic novel, and of course Harry Potter. For context, the school is very diverse and has a very high ESL population with students from South Asia, the Middle East/ North Africa, and Central America. Books where kids can see themselves represented and that can cater to different English fluency levels would be amazing.  Thanks! -Teaching in America 2. I love historical fiction, it is one of my favorite genres. However, I am running out of books in my tbr that are historical fiction. My favorite eras are Tudor England and the American Civil War. (please no more WW2!) I tend to prefer stories surrounding larger-than-life figures or momentous events in history. But really I am up for anything, so long as I get attached to the characters. Some of my favorites include Wolf Hall, The Killer Angels, and The Help. (I also like historical fantasy and other genre-benders, but I don't need any help finding more of THAT.) -Katie 3. I hope you two can help! My boyfriend doesn’t read books at all, but that’s my main pastime and he has expressed an interest in trying to read more so we can hang out together and read. The main reason he doesn’t currently read books is because they need to grab him right away or he quickly loses interest, puts the book down, and never picks it back up again. A little about him: he’s an electrical engineer, is super smart, likes to tinker with cars and gadgets, is pretty curious about world events and all sorts of things – he will hear about something and go on an internet deep dive to learn all about it, and he has a great memory.  So far I have given him Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson and he really likes that one and I have Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai teed up for him because I think he will like the science-y, brain twistiness of both. Any ideas for what else I can give him? And for the record, I am totally fine with him not reading, but he has asked and so, of course, I am glad to oblige him and provide him with reading material! :) Thanks so much! -Elizabeth 4. A friend recently invited me travel to Italy this Fall, but I'm not sure if it's in my budget -- Can you help me find a graphic novel set in Italy so I can travel there in my imagination? Some comics/graphic novels/graphic memoirs I've enjoyed recently: Relish by Lucy Knisely, Moonstruck by Grace Ellis et. al., Sweater Weather by Sara Varon, and Lumberjanes  Thank you!! -Jess 5. I've been in a serious reading slump and I just need something super fast paced to get me out of it. I really like YA fantasy and romances. Anything with a map is great. I just bought Courting Darkness but haven't started it yet... I love Marissa Meyer and Richelle Mead. Stalking Jack the Ripper... The Dresden files... I read all over the place so basically anything is fine from kid lit to Adult. Love Captain Underpants.  -Rye 6. Please help with audiobooks for a concussed reader! Hi! I am a voracious reader, and after concussing myself on a freezer 10 days ago, I haven't been allowed to read text. I'm going into withdrawal!  I am a very eclectic reader, but generally I am more drawn to plot than characters. Humor, particularly snark, is always a plus, as well as just beautiful writing. Authors I love that I am in the mood for are Lois McMaster Bujold (particularly her Vorkosigan series, Cordelia is my favorite character), John Scalzi (particularly the Old Man's War series) and also Laurie R King (particularly her Mary Russell series). For beautiful writing, see China Mieville, though his books are way too complex for my poor brain to follow right now. Speaking of which, easy to follow is important right now! I'm having trouble with that. -Becca 7. hello ladies, firstly, I love listening to you guys- even when I'm not interested in the books suggested. I am on break in August for midwinter chill (hehah) and am on the lookout for some fun reads. I have just finished the psy-changeling series (got to support my fellow kiwis!) and Polaris Rising. They are both smutty and fun while still having a good plot. Can you give me any new SSF/smutty suggestions, I feel like I have read all the good ones and they are all the same. Thanks in advance!  -Shontelle Books Discussed Everlasting Nora by Marie Miranda Cruz Juana and Lucas by Juana Medina Leading Men by Christopher Castellani Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee Lexicon by Max Barry Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann Recursion by Blake Crouch Catwoman: When in Rome by Jeph Loeb Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life by Ulli Lust, translated from Austrian by Kim Thompson TW: sexual assault A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos, transl by Hildegarde Serle The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi Finder by Suzanne Palmer The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley Immortals After Dark  by Kresley Cole, shout out to Sarah MacLean’s Fated Mates podcast with Jen Prokop The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Robert Kurson used to be a lawyer… but he gave it all up to follow his passion project of being an author. Today, Robert is one of my FAVORITE authors. He wrote the incredible books “Shadow Divers” and “Rocket Men” based on true stories. In this episode, you’ll learn how to tell great stories, how to validate your ideas, and the interesting research process behind books. Full show notes at https://okdork.com/podcast/107

I'm so excited to bring you this show today! Robert Kurson is the author of "Pirate Hunters" a great book about John Chatterton and John Mattera finding a real pirate ship wreck - The Golden Fleece.  His latest book, "Rocket Men" is about the Apollo 8 mission, NASA's first manned space flight to orbit the moon in 1968. I've been trying to get Robert on the show for a couple years now and we finally made it happen.  We dig into all his writings about adventurers on water and in space and how he manages to make the stories feel so completely personal. And we do a shorty talk with Rich Manic aka Captain Festus McBoyle about their new music video and the new type of show they're doing. Under The Crossbones is a podcast all about pirate culture.  Your host Phil Johnson (comedian, musician, and pirate geek) interviews the most interesting people in the pirate subculture: Actors, Authors, Historians, Musicians, Artists, Festival Founders, Clothing and Prop Designers, Treasure Hunters, Archaeologists, and more. Read Robert's early piece, My Favorite Teacher as talked about during the interview. (Major trigger warning) - https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a1584/favorite-teacher-0300/  Check out my interviews with John Chatterton, the subject of 'Pirate Hunters': https://www.underthecrossbones.com/utc-027-wreck-diver-john-chatterton/ https://www.underthecrossbones.com/utc-028-wreck-diver-john-chatterton-part-2/   Pick up Pirate Hunters at Amazon - https://amzn.to/2N4U6v1 Pick up Shadow Divers at Amazon - https://amzn.to/2ORkRU4 Pick up Rocket Men at Amazon - https://amzn.to/2nQMpNI Be sure to also visit the MacKay Pirate Family's crowdfunding page to help them beat that nastiest enemy of all, cancer.  http://www.underthecrossbones.com/mackay    Today's show is sponsored by: 30 Day Guitar Challenge - Learn 3 songs in 30 days with just 10 minutes of playing time per day!  Free to participate.  http://www.underthecrossbones.com/guitar TeePublic - This is a great company that works with independent tshirt artists to get their work out to the world and pay them fairly for it.  I've personally curated a selection of 100 really cool pirate tshirts that you'll love.  You'll get a super cool shirt AND support both the artist and Under The Crossbones!  Check out the selection at: http://www.underthecrossbones.com/shirt Pirate Radio of the Treasure Coast - The best in pirate talk and music! Get to listenin'!  http://www.PirateRadioOfTheTreasureCoast.com For videos, pictures, album links and more, be sure to click through to the full show notes.  http://www.UnderTheCrossbones.com/154 Important Websites: Robert Kurson - http://www.RobertKurson.com Rich Manic - http://www.CaptainFestus.com     MacKay Pirate Family Crowdfunding to beat cancer - http://www.underthecrossbones.com/mackay  Find out more about my comedy, music, and tour dates at http://www.PhilJohnsonComedy.com Additional Show Notes: http://www.UnderTheCrossbones.com/154     Support the show!: http://www.UnderTheCrossbones.com/support    Subscribe to Under The Crossbones on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/under-crossbones-pirate-podcast/id1039621331?mt=2 Visit http://www.UnderTheCrossbones.com for all the episodes.     

Robert Kurson is an American author, best known for his 2004 bestselling book, Shadow Divers, the true story of two Americans who discovered a World War II German U-boat sunk 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey. His new book, Rocket Men, tells the story of Apollo 8, the first manned NASA mission to the moon in 1968. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert Kurson is the bestselling author of “Shadow Divers,” “Pirate Hunters” and his newest, “Rocket Men”. He writes about people and their explorations. And brings them to life. Before he became an esteemed author, he led a pretty conventional life. He went to Harvard Law School and carried out his degree in the field. But he dreaded every morning. So he started writing and took a huge leap of faith. This is his story… Show Notes: “Pirate Hunters” by Robert Kurson “Shadow Divers” by Robert Kurson “Rocket Men” by Robert Kurson Apollo 13 Machiavelli’s Advice for Nice Guys I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltucher.com/podcast. Thanks so much for listening! If you like this episode, please subscribe to “The James Altucher Show” and rate and review wherever you get your podcasts: Apple Podcasts Stitcher iHeart Radio Spotify Follow me on Social Media: Twitter Facebook Linkedin Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Robert Kurson is the bestselling author of "Shadow Divers," "Pirate Hunters" and his newest, "Rocket Men". He writes about people and their explorations. And brings them to life. Before he became an esteemed author, he led a pretty conventional life. He went to Harvard Law School and carried out his degree in the field. But he dreaded every morning. So he started writing and took a huge leap of faith. This is his story... Show Notes: "Pirate Hunters" by Robert Kurson "Shadow Divers" by Robert Kurson "Rocket Men" by Robert Kurson Apollo 13 Machiavelli's Advice for Nice Guys   I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltucher.com/podcast.   Thanks so much for listening! If you like this episode, please subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" and rate and review wherever you get your podcasts: Apple Podcasts Stitcher iHeart Radio Spotify   Follow me on Social Media: Twitter Facebook Linkedin Instagram ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn

My guest today is Robert Kurson, the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including his 2004 debut, Shadow Divers, the true story of two Americans who discovered a World War II German U-boat sunk 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey. Kurson began his career as an attorney, graduating from Harvard Law School and practicing real estate law. Kurson's professional writing career began at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he started as a data entry clerk. In 2000, Esquire published “My Favorite Teacher,” his first magazine story, which became a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He moved from the Sun-Times to Chicago Magazine, then to Esquire, where he won a National Magazine Award and was a contributing editor for years. His other New York Times bestsellers include Crashing Through (2007), Pirate Hunters (2015), and his latest, Rocket Men (2018), which tells the astonishing story of Apollo 8, mankind's first journey to the Moon.  The topic is his book Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: Sputnik The race to space WWII Nuclear arms race The Apollo space missions The Saturn V Jump in! --- I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals John Chatterton  – Star of Shadow Divers, Legendary Wreck Diver, Host of Deep Sea Detectives In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with John Chatterton, legendary wreck diver, star of Shadow Divers, and host of Deep Sea Detectives.  After time served in the military John had an epiphany one evening to […] The post LXD 013 : John Chatterton – Shadow Diver, Wreck Legend, Host appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Diving deeper and longer has a great appeal to many divers. The ability to visit great shipwrecks and remain for more than a few minutes has allowed divers like John Chatterton to explore many dive sites, at the same time inspiring more divers to take up the sport. John is one of the world’s most accomplished and well-known wreck divers. He was one of the co-hosts for 57 episodes of the History Channel’s Deep Sea Detectives television series and a subject of Robert Kurson’s Shadow Divers. Dive deep with this week’s Dive Team Report as host Greg Martin discusses the 1956 sinking of the SS Andrea Doria – ocean liner for the Italian Line home, ported in Genoa, Italy (most famous for her sinking) – with John.

In episode 2, Jason and James discuss their watch and adventure origin stories. From Seiko divers to Timex Indiglos, the guys share how they got started in the watch game. Later we learn of a killer "new" acquisition for Jason, and James has the lowdown on an ideal tool for the strap-hungry Tudor or Rolex owner. Finally, the guys recommend a stack of books, ted talks, online videos and some Toxic Nato straps. Picks, Recommendations, Links and Topics: Seiko Prospex "Turtle" SRP777: http://gearpatrol.com/2016/02/10/seiko-srp777-review/ Bremont ATL1-ZT James has in for review: http://www.bremont.com/collection/alt1-z/alt1-zt Tudor Pelagos Review: http://www.ablogtowatch.com/tudor-pelagos-25600-tb-titanium-dive-watch-review/ Horofix Spring Bar Pliers: http://www.esslinger.com/horofix-watch-bracelet-springbar-pliers-band-tool/ Hirsch Pure Rubber Strap: https://www.globalwatchband.com/pure-men-s-caoutchouc-rubber-waterproof-dive-watch-band-20mm.html Seiko Rubber Dive Straps: http://www.seiyajapan.com/collections/accessories "55 Hours in Mexico" - https://vimeo.com/138548519 Jason's "All The Right Stuff" 1967 Omega Speedmaster: https://www.instagram.com/p/BBnGLN1H6kn/?taken-by=jasonheaton Jaxa case back tool: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/jaxa-wrench Toxic Nato straps: http://toxicnatos.com Avaunt Magazine: https://avauntmagazine.com/ Alpine Modern: http://www.alpinemodern.com/ X-Ray Magazine: http://www.xray-mag.com/ "Shadow Divers" (book): http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Divers-Adventure-Americans-Everything/dp/0375760989/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455654270&sr=8-1&keywords=shadow+divers "The Devil's Thumb" by Jon Krakauer (from the book Eiger Dreams) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devils_Thumb "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe - http://www.amazon.com/Right-Stuff-Tom-Wolfe/dp/0312427565/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1455654501&sr=8-2&keywords=the+right+stuff Ben Saunders' Ted Talk -https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_saunders_to_the_south_pole_and_back_the_hardest_105_days_of_my_life?language=en Chris Burkard's Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_burkard_the_joy_of_surfing_in_ice_cold_water?language=en Paul Nicklen's Ted Talk (Leopard Seals): https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_nicklen_tales_of_ice_bound_wonderlands?language=en "Touching The Void" (book/documentary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touching_the_Void

Metal detecting and treasure hunting radio for you!  One from the vault!  Josh and Leighton sit down to talk shop with Capt. Carl "FIZZ" Fismer, world known treasure hunter and wreck diver.  Known by many as "FIZZ" Carl discusses some of his many experiences involving treasure hunting and wreck diving such as stories of working with many other well known treasure hunters like Mel Fisher, Jack Haskins, John Chatterton of Shadow Divers and many others.  Carl even discusses his new book "Unchartered Waters".  We had an absolute blast with this interview and will have Fizz back again sometime in the future.  Pre recorded but still a great time!  Original interview 1/27/16

Robert Kurson shares his journey from being an F-student in high school, to a desperately unhappy Harvard educated Lawyer and eventual New York Times Bestselling AuthorHIGHLIGHTS: A formative relationship that played a fundamental role in Robert's career Why a strong work ethic is important for a creative career The struggles of a challenging academic career Finding a level of belief that keeps you going From F's in High School to Harvard School The power of being desperately unhappy Making a drastic identity shift that allows us to produce incredible results Finding meaning in the activities in which we lose track of time How small opportunities can change into big change in our livesWhy we must take risk and experience temporary pain for our greatest achievementsWhy unhappiness increases our capacity for taking risk Mastering craft the storytelling Developing a sense for how a good story sounds The power of speaking from the heart QuotesReally great storytellers are people who notice the most (Click to Tweet)A well told story is a universal thing (Click to Tweet)Robert Kurson is an American author, best known for his 2004 bestselling book, Shadow Divers, the true story of two Americans who discover a World War II German U-boat sunk 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey. His new book Pirate Hunters is a gripping, true story today, of the hunt for lost gold, bitter rivalries on the high seas, a long-ago legendary pirate captain, and two adventurous American men determined to win treasure – and find something even deeper – along the way.Kurson began his career as an attorney, graduating from Harvard Law School, and practicing real estate law. Kurson's professional writing career began at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he started as a sports agate clerk and soon gained a full-time features writing job. In 2000, Esquire published “My Favorite Teacher,” his first magazine story, which became a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He moved from the Sun-Times to Chicago magazine, then to Esquire, where he won a National Magazine Award and was a contributing editor for years. His stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we have an interview with Robert Kurson the author of Shadow Divers. He is joined by John Mattera who is in Kursonâ??s new book Pirate Hunters. We still had all the other scuba obsessed things we talk about so this was a great show. Unless you think the joke was really bad.

This week we have an interview with Robert Kurson the author of Shadow Divers. He is joined by John Mattera who is in Kursonâ??s new book Pirate Hunters. We still had all the other scuba obsessed things we talk about so this was a great show. Unless you think the joke was really bad.

This week we have an interview with Robert Kurson the author of Shadow Divers. He is joined by John Mattera who is in Kursonâ??s new book Pirate Hunters. We still had all the other scuba obsessed things we talk about so this was a great show. Unless you think the joke was really bad.

Mack and Darrin review scuba in the news. Then the break the podcast. Tune in next week for out interview of the Shadow Divers author Robert Kurson. He talks about his new book Pirate Hunters. He is joined by shipwreck hunter and scuba diver John Mattera.

Mack and Darrin review scuba in the news. Then the break the podcast. Tune in next week for out interview of the Shadow Divers author Robert Kurson. He talks about his new book Pirate Hunters. He is joined by shipwreck hunter and scuba diver John Mattera.

Mack and Darrin review scuba in the news. Then the break the podcast. Tune in next week for out interview of the Shadow Divers author Robert Kurson. He talks about his new book Pirate Hunters. He is joined by shipwreck hunter and scuba diver John Mattera.

In this episode author Robert Kurson shares his journey from being an F-student in high school, to a desperately unhappy Harvard educated Lawyer and eventual New York Times Bestselling AuthorHIGHLIGHTS: A formative relationship that played a fundamental role in Robert's career Why a strong work ethic is important for a creative career The struggles of a challenging academic career Finding a level of belief that keeps you going From F's in High School to Harvard School The power of being desperately unhappy Making a drastic identity shift that allows us to produce incredible results Finding meaning in the activities in which we lose track of time How small opportunities can change into big change in our livesWhy we must take risk and experience temporary pain for our greatest achievementsWhy unhappiness increases our capacity for taking risk Mastering craft the storytelling Developing a sense for how a good story sounds The power of speaking from the heart QuotesReally great storytellers are people who notice the most A well told story is a universal thing Robert Kurson is an American author, best known for his 2004 bestselling book, Shadow Divers, the true story of two Americans who discover a World War II German U-boat sunk 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey. His new book Pirate Hunters is a gripping, true story today, of the hunt for lost gold, bitter rivalries on the high seas, a long-ago legendary pirate captain, and two adventurous American men determined to win treasure – and find something even deeper – along the way.Kurson began his career as an attorney, graduating from Harvard Law School, and practicing real estate law. Kurson's professional writing career began at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he started as a sports agate clerk and soon gained a full-time features writing job. In 2000, Esquire published “My Favorite Teacher,” his first magazine story, which became a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He moved from the Sun-Times to Chicago magazine, then to Esquire, where he won a National Magazine Award and was a contributing editor for years. His stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sometimes word nerds just need a place to talk shop, and that s what we intend to do here. In this episode of the The Writer Files I ve asked award-winning journalist Adam Skolnick to join me on a guest segment we’re calling Writer Porn. Adam is an award-winning, globetrotting travel journalist, which is kind of a rare thing these days. He is the author and co author of 25 Lonely Planet guidebooks, and has written for publications as varied as the New York Times (for whom he won a big award from the Associated Press Sports Editors last year), ESPN.com, Wired, Men’s Health, Outside, BBC, and Playboy Magazine. He recently finished his first narrative non-fiction book based on his award-winning NY Times coverage of the death of the greatest American free diver of all time, titled One Breath (slated for publication in January). Adam and I talk about how a page one New York Times story became a book, the secret literary legacy of Playboy Magazine, debunking Jack Kerouac’s prolificness, and tips and tricks to staying focused when you re working on multiple projects across multiple timezones. In this 29-minute file Adam Skolnick and I discuss: How a Tragic New York Times Story Became a Book What a Globetrotting Journalist Does to Get a Story The Secret Literary Legacy of Playboy Magazine What Mr. Skolnick Has in Common with Hunter S. Thompson One Great Trick to Stay Focused on Multiple Deadlines Busting The Urban Legend of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” Why You Shouldn’t Compare Yourself to Other Writers How to Stay Organized When You Have a Ton of Research Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes AdamSkolnick.com A Deep-Water Diver From Brooklyn Dies After Trying for a Record Top 10 Writers Published in Playboy ‘I Only Read It For The Interviews’ The Fact and Fiction of ‘On the Road’ Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors by Sarah Stodola Voice Recorder HD for Audio Recording, Playback, Trimming and Sharing Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Kaherine Boo Zeitoun by Dave Eggers Kelton Reid on Twitter Adam Skolnick on Twitter Writer Porn on Twitter Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By   Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today! The Transcript How Award-Winning Journalist Adam Skolnick Writes Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com. Kelton Reid: These are The Writer Files, a tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of working writers, from online content creators to fictionists, journalists, entrepreneurs, and beyond. I’m your host, Kelton Reid: writer, podcaster, and mediaphile. Each week, we’ll find out how great writers keep the ink flowing, the cursor moving, and avoid writer s block. In this episode of The Writer Files, I’ve asked award-winning journalist Adam Skolnick to join me on a guest segment we call Writer Porn. Sometimes, word nerds just need a place to talk shop, and that’s what we intend to do here. We’ll talk about how a page-one New York Times story became a book, the secret literary legacy of Playboy magazine, debunking the urban legend of Jack Kerouac’s creative Mount Everest, and tips and tricks to staying focused when you’re working on multiple projects across multiple time zones. Just a quick introduction of Adam: he is an award-winning, globetrotting travel journalist, and obviously, that’s a rare thing these days. He is the author and co-author of 25 Lonely Planet guidebooks, and he’s also written for publications as varied as ESPN.com, Men’s Health, Outside, BBC, and Playboy. He’s just now finishing up his first narrative non-fiction book based on his award-winning New York Times coverage of the death of the greatest American free diver of all time. The title of that book is One Breath, and it is slated for publication in January. Congratulations on that accomplishment. That must feel pretty good. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, it feels great. It was a big, big weight off my shoulders. Kelton Reid: To say the least, I’m sure. Adam Skolnick: Yeah. You have this goal in mind, and it’s driving you. It was well over a year from the time when he died to the point of getting the book deal and researching the book and tagging along with the free divers and embedding myself with his friends and family, then writing it. You re so singly focused for all that time. Then when it’s done, you do relax deeply. Kelton Reid: You actually won a pretty big award from the AP last year, didn’t you? How a Tragic New York Times Story Became a Book Adam Skolnick: I don’t know how big it is, but in sports writing, it s fairly large. I was there to do more of a general feature on free diving for the New York Times — this was an event in November 2013 called Vertical Blue. Vertical Blue is the Wimbledon of free diving. It’s competitive free diving, so the divers compete in three different disciplines. They hold their breath, and they go as deep as possible on that one breath, either with fins or without fins, or by pulling a line down and back. That’s the event, and that’s the sport. Because it’s a growing sport, more and more people are getting into it either casually or seriously, and there are schools opening all over the world. It’s an international sport, and I was just there to do a general feature. When he died, tragically, I just happened to be there 10 feet away, so it became a different story right off the bat. That story, I wrote it that evening — the first one, the day-one story — and it went viral. I think it was the New York Times number-one story that day. Then the next day, we did a follow-up piece with a group of writers, myself and three others, and both those stories were widely disseminated. I think people were enamored with the sport, enamored with the this diver, Nicholas Mevoli. The Times submitted it. I had no idea they were submitting it until they were. All the major papers submit to the APSE Awards. It’s a newspaper award, and it’s an organization, and they honor the best newspaper sports writing each year. I was lucky enough to win. Kelton Reid: It is an amazingly tragic story. I know that you spent a lot of time on the road, because I was getting rogue transmissions from you. Were you in Russia? What a Globetrotting Journalist Does to Get a Story Adam Skolnick: Yeah. The book starts with Nick s death, and then it goes back through his life. It’s Into the Wild meets Shadow Divers. Shadow Divers was a bestseller about some wreck divers and their quest to discover this new wreck they found, what it was and to name it. There was a lot of death and destruction involved in that, and it was a really compelling book. Into The Wild, we all know, is an iconic book and Krakauer’s first book. It’s a great book. Just like Chris McCandless in Into The Wild, Nick had a story where he had an even more troubled upbringing than McCandless, and he was searching for something, and he found it free diving after many, many forays into acting, into protest. The water was his refuge. The water was where he was free. He ended up finding this sport later in terms of athletics. He found it when he was 30. His first competition, he broke the American record. He was this gifted athlete, a tremendous athlete, not just as a swimmer. He was also a tremendous athlete on the bike. He was a near-X-Games-quality BMXer and just an incredible soul. Following him is a no-brainer. You want to tell that story. It s an inspiring story. I start with his story, and I go back and forth between him and the 2014 free diving seasons. For that, I went to Roatán for the Caribbean Cup, which is — if you use a tennis metaphor — one of the Grand Slam events, then the World Championships, which is obviously the World Championships, and that was in Sardinia, Italy, and then also back to Vertical Blue a year later. In the meantime, I spent time with two of the great Russian free divers. Natalia Molchanova and her son, Alexey Molchanov, are two of the very best free divers in the world. Natalia is the very best female free diver of all time, and Alexey is the deepest diver with fins, so he’s one of the two best free divers currently in the world. I spent time with them in Russia. Kelton Reid: You’ve been a little busy. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, I’ve been busy. What bridges those two stories in the book — Nick s story and his rise from the time he’s a child to getting into the sport, and then the 2014 season — is the work of some doctors who are trying to figure out what exactly happened to Nick, because his death is something the sport of free diving the sport had never seen before. It wasn’t the type of accident that you would have normally seen in free diving, it was very unique. Kelton Reid: It sounds like a really captivating story, and I actually can’t wait to read it. Adam Skolnick: Thanks, man. Kelton Reid: I just find it fascinating, the fact that you are a guy who is always on the road. You travel many, many months out of the year. You don’t have a permanent home. And then you’re constantly working on a handful of different deadlines simultaneously. One of those has been doing some writing for Playboy. I guess my first question is, how do average citizens react when you mention that you have published with them or are working for them? Adam Skolnick: Average citizens? Kelton Reid: I don’t know. How does your mom react? Adam Skolnick: I don’t know any average citizens, Kelton. Kelton Reid: I m sorry. The Secret Literary Legacy of Playboy Magazine Adam Skolnick: No, I think it’s funny. It depends on who it is. Some people react knowing that Playboy has this rich literary history, but more often, the younger folks I talk to laugh, and they have no idea of this rich history that Playboy has. I have to explain to them that there’s articles. Of course, I just finished up a story about free diving for Playboy that’ll be out in May. Going into the free diving community and explaining to them that I’m going to write a story for Playboy about the sport, some were just mystified that that’s a thing. I don’t know why. My theory is that people go elsewhere for their naked pictures, and that has somehow dimmed Playboy’s history in people s minds, when in reality, it’s still here. It s still kicking. It s still publishing good writers. Kelton Reid: So it s a generational thing, maybe. It s not that generation who’s saying, “I only read it for the articles,” any longer. They don’t even know that it has or had articles to begin with, or that some of the most famous authors of the 20th century published there, including Arthur C. Clarke, Ian Fleming, Nabokov, Chuck Palahniuk, Murakami, Margaret Atwood. The list goes on, and on, and on. You recognize some of those names. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, Gabriel García Márquez. Kelton Reid: Joseph Heller. Adam Skolnick: It’s an honor for me. I think Playboy’s upheld an ideal, and it was always a progressive ideal. It was a pushing-America-forward ideal. That’s how it was founded. Part of that is this great literary tradition. My favorite article probably of all time out of Playboy is the interview that Alex Haley did with Malcolm X, which subsequently led to the autobiography of Malcolm X, which was one of the great works of non-fiction in American history. Playboy has this incredibly rich tradition. It’s an honor to be associated with them. They have a full bar in their lobby. I love it. What Mr. Skolnick Has in Common with Hunter S. Thompson Kelton Reid: Another one of those great interviews, I think, was with Hunter S. Thompson, who, oddly enough, also wrote for the New York Times and was a pretty accomplished journalist himself. Another strange factoid — he relocated to Hawaii to work on a book. It sounds like a familiar theme. Did you write your book in Hawaii? Adam Skolnick: No, but I had relocated to Hawaii to do a story on the GMO corn seed farms that have cropped up where the old sugar cane plantations once were. There is one community that is being heavily impacted by tainted dust that’s blown into their community and damaged property and impacted public health. I moved out there to cover that story. In Hawaii, it’s very hard to parachute in and tell a story well. There’s trust issues with outsiders, and from the surf culture on, it s a very locals-only type spot. It was helpful for me to rent a house there and live there while I burrowed into this story. The person who came and shot that story, a photographer named Lia Barrett, had just come from the Caribbean Cup in 2013 where Nick had hit his 100-meter dive, and she was pitching, “Hey, we should be covering free diving together.” That was the whole genesis of me going to Vertical Blue in the first place, and that story also led me to connect with the New York Times in the first place. That story came out in Salon, but it connected me up with the New York Times science reporter there. It was just an odd turn of events that led me to be in the Bahamas that day, and Hawaii was definitely part of it. As far as me living overseas and working on stuff, that’s something I’ve done frequently. A couple of the places I’ve covered for Lonely Planet include Indonesia and Thailand, which I’ve covered each several times. Whenever I’m there and do those jobs, I tend to stay in the country to write my manuscript. I’ve done that several times. I’ve done the same thing. When I was working on stories, reporting about Myanmar and East Burma and the humanitarian crisis there, I’ve embedded in the community for some time to tell those stories. It’s something I’ve done and something I’ll continue to do. I enjoy doing that part of it and staying longer than most reporters would. Kelton Reid: Let me turn the conversation briefly to productivity. As you’re working on different long-form and short-form pieces, especially when you’re working on a hard deadline but you’re in a beautiful place like Bali or Hawaii, how do you stay focused, first of all? Adam Skolnick: The main thing for me is that I give myself a words-per-day quota. If you’re talking about a longer piece, or even with shorter pieces I do that now, you’re talking about a manuscript that’s upwards of 50,000, 100,000 words. Most books are over 100,000 words or around 100,000 words. The Lonely Planet manuscripts can vary anywhere from 30,000 to 80,000 — I ve had 90,000 words. It’s basically the same amount of material, but it’s just a different type of material. In order to hack through material, you have to give yourself a words-per-day quota, and once you do that, you find that you can meet it. That’s, I think, the hardest thing for newer writers, or younger writers, or any writer really — the focus, the expansion of that focus. Everyone could sit down when they’re inspired and pound out something, could make it sound good. What if they’re tired or dragging or not feeling it? How do they then push on? You have to. In order to put together any big piece of work, you have to be able to push through good days and bad days. Frankly, even the bad days could turn out better work than the good days sometimes. It’s just a matter of being there, showing up, doing it. I give myself a 3,000-word-a-day quota that I try to meet, whether I’m doing a Lonely Planet guide book or I’m doing my book. If I’m doing a magazine story — a feature story where I’ll still try to turn out a lot of words — I might do 2,000 words day then, because I’m going over the words a bit more carefully at first. Whereas with books, you can put out this massive amount of work and then go back through and edit and cut afterwards. With a magazine article, maybe you do a little bit less of that. Maybe you don’t let yourself ramble for 10,000 words because that’ll make it hard to cut. Kelton Reid: On that note, I know a lot of online content creators and novelists in general are working on multiple projects simultaneously. When you say you have your 3,000-word-a-day quota, when you have a manuscript-length project, like a 100,000-word project, but then you also have smaller projects that you’re working on the side, how do you balance the two? One Great Trick to Stay Focused on Multiple Deadlines Adam Skolnick: I think there’s two things. First of all, before you’re going to sit down and write a big piece of work, unless it’s fiction, and even if it is fiction, there’s the research element. For me, I end up in a rhythm where I’m researching and then I’m writing, and then I’m researching and then I’m writing. Then, if I have overlapping deadlines, which does happen, usually it’s when I’m researching something bigger. Then I might take on write-ups or something smaller, or I might have to research for two different things at the same time. I’ve also done things where I’ve researched all day and then at night I’ve written on a different project. That’s happened. Recently, when I had to do a draft of the Playboy story and turn that in prior to the submission date of my book, I did take a few days out of that work on One Breath to dedicate to the magazine article. I’m a one-trick pony. I have a hard time multitasking, to be honest with you. I tend to give everything to what I’m doing at that moment. That’s what I do. For me, multitasking is, “Okay, tomorrow I’m going to do this in the day, and in the night I’m going to do 1,500 words because I can’t do 3,000 because I’m only going to do a night session,” or something like that. I’ll just have that marked in my head. That’s the best multitasking I can probably do. You can’t help it if you’re doing a project that’s three months long. Something else might come up in between that you have to connect to. Usually, what I’ll do is I’ll disconnect from the longer project for a period of time, a couple of days, and do the smaller one. That’s usually what I do because it’s just easier for me to do that then try to do them all at once. Kelton Reid: That single-minded focus is good. I definitely ascribe to that. Subscribe to that? Do I aspire to that? Adam Skolnick: Yes, I don’t know. You could ascribe, aspire, and subscribe to it. Kelton Reid: Just a quick pause to mention that The Writer Files is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete website solution for content marketers and online entrepreneurs. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at Rainmaker.FM/Platform. Busting the Urban Legend of Jack Kerouac s On the Road Kelton Reid: Speaking of another famous author who published in Playboy: Jack Kerouac actually published in Playboy. He started his journalistic career, and I didn’t know this, as a sports reporter for the New York World Telegram — I’m sure that exists still. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, right. Kelton Reid: He s most well known for writing the 120,000-word novel On The Road in three weeks — I put three weeks in quotes — on this 120-foot long scroll of paper that he famously taped together or whatever. Adam Skolnick: Right. Didn’t Jim Irsay buy the scroll recently? Kelton Reid: I don’t know, the original or what? Adam Skolnick: The owner of the Colts — I think he bought the original scroll. Kelton Reid: That’s wild. I did get a chance to see that scroll actually here in Denver. Adam Skolnick: I bought that hardcover they released. Kelton Reid: Is that right? Adam Skolnick: Yeah, right around the auction time, they finally released it in hardcover. All the real names are in there that he doesn’t use. He uses his own name. He uses William Burroughs’ name. He uses Allen Ginsberg s name, and of course Neal Cassady s name. Kelton Reid: What I found most interesting about the fact that it’s this urban legend, or this creative Mount Everest, that he sat there for three weeks with this single-pointed attention and supposedly wrote this 120,000 word novel in those 20, 21 days on speed. It’s an urban legend that writers hold dear to their hearts. I read recently that that might not be as accurate as we thought it was, because according to Sarah Stodola s book Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors –which I highly recommend, I love it, it’s pure writer porn in my opinion — Kerouac wrote six drafts of On the Road in the three years leading up to those three weeks where he finally nailed it. When he wasn’t sitting at that typewriter, he was taking notes prolifically, much like you do, journalists do. When he was criss-crossing the country, and meeting all these crazy people, and collecting all these stories, that was part of his process. Really, he wrote that novel over three years time. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, the first draft, you mean. Kelton Reid: The first draft. It wasn’t published for another 6 years. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, I think that everyone loves the wunderkind, genius story, so that’s probably where that came from. Plus, he did sit down there for three weeks and do the scroll and do his 120,000 words. If you read the published version of that, you’ll see there’s no indentations or anything like that, so you can see his manic mind moving and working in a way that you can’t when you read the polished work. There’s something raw there. Of course the polished version is a classic. It s probably one of my favorite books of all time. Why You Shouldn t Compare Yourself to Other Writers Adam Skolnick: Yeah, it can be daunting when you start to compare yourself to other writers. I think that’s what that does. When you hear about that, you’re like, “God, I’m not capable of that. Does that mean I’m not capable of writing a book as good as On the Road. Does that mean I’m not capable of making a living as a writer?” I think those are the kinds of neurotic mind loops that we tend to go into, especially writers who are internal and in their head a lot anyway. At least I am. I think that debunking that myth is really good, because obviously you don’t get to be where he got to at such a young age without incredible work ethic. It’s not about doing speed and sitting down for three weeks, but it’s about doing it all the time. I think that’s what he did, and that’s why he was so great. Kelton Reid: Flexing that muscle — because he had really been writing from an early age. His father introduced him to writing. He had his own printing press. He started early. I think by the time he was 22, his writings amounted to something like 600,000 words. I think even William Burroughs said that when he met Jack Kerouac close to that, he probably had written closer to a million words. He was flexing that muscle, so to speak. That’s a monumental feat, but he was clearly a professional athlete in the sport. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, it’s the classic Gladwell thing now, the 10,000 hours. He had that real young. That’s what did it. Again, it’s no mystery why he was so great. He found his voice young because he was writing so much, and it became so natural for him. Yeah, there probably was something happening creatively by him doing this: “I’m going to sit down for three weeks and do it until it’s done, do it right this one last time.” We can’t completely let go of that myth because there had to be some sort of chemical reaction with the muse that made it so great that time he sat there. Otherwise he wouldn’t have continued to sit there. There’s something to that last gasp, three-week marathon that he pulled off that I think matters. Yeah, I think that’s not what makes him great. What makes him great is the work before and after. Kelton Reid: He was meticulously organized, this guy. He had files and notebooks and kept everything pretty neatly organized. I think a lot of his Beat friends who would visit his apartment would always marvel at the fact that he was just very regimented guy. I think he was also a merchant marine, if I’m not mistaken. Adam Skolnick: Yeah. Kelton Reid: When you’re travelling the world, Adam Skolnick, and you’re working on all these different mediums, you’re probably using not only notebooks, photographs, audio interviews. How to Stay Organized When You Have a Ton of Research Adam Skolnick: I’m not the most organized guy in the world. You are very organized, Kelton Reid. I’m not the most organized. When I first started, because I was a travel writer before I was doing harder core stories — and I still do a lot of travel stories, and obviously the Lonely Planet stuff is all travel-related — I would just use Moleskine notebooks or whatever notebooks I could find on the road if I ran out of notebooks. I kept it all in notebooks, kept all those notebooks on me, and when it came time to do the write-up, I would just go through the notebooks at the time. Then when Lonely Planet started to go to a shared publishing platform, I was part of the experimental phase. One of the higher-ups that came on the road with us — and we did this in Colorado, as a matter of fact — asked me to start taking notes on my phone just to see if I liked it. At first I didn’t like it at all, and I felt like I was losing something in terms of creativity with the mind and the whole idea of the hands and a brain. They’re connected, and if I’m writing something analog then my brain s working differently and somehow opening more organically, which was really probably just my own laziness, not wanting to have to adapt to using this app and using my thumbs. He said, “Just try it for a week, and then you can go back to the notebooks if you want.” Pretty soon after, I found that putting it into a phone right away, uploading it right away, actually made it easier and makes me, a less organized person, more organized. I started to use the phone, and I now use all sorts. I use the phone when I’m interviewing subjects. I’ll use the phone for notes sometimes. I’ll use my notebooks sometimes, depending on the situation, and then I’ll also use the audio recorder. Voice Recorder HD is the app I use, because you can back it up to Dropbox. I do that for some interviews. I’ll use any number of those three things. Then afterward, I’ll have to transcribe the voice interviews. I’ve done most of that myself, although I do farm it out sometimes to transcription services if I’m under the gun, and that’s just something I’ve started to experiment with lately. Then, in terms of the book, which I don’t have call to do this for anything else because if I’m doing a Lonely Planet guide book or a magazine story I could keep everything in one Notes file. I don’t need more than one Notes file, and then I can email that to myself and put it into a Word document. Now all my notes are already transcribed from the notebook, which is my phone, and it’s all right there. Then I can go through it and highlight what I need and look through it. I don’t have to do much. Although, when I’m writing a magazine story, what I’ll do is I’ll outline the story, and then I’ll go through those notes and take the chunks that I think relate to the subject or the turn in the story that I’m working. I’ll slot that into that piece in the outline so I have it all there for me. That’s how I’ll organize it right before I do the work. In terms of this book, there were literally hundreds of interviews. I couldn’t tell you right now because I haven’t counted them all out, but it’s over 100 interviews. I’m interviewing different people about different things and different places. Then I started to slot them into their own separate document. I’m just using Word documents, and I’ll just slot in those notes or that transcribed interview into the North Carolina pile, or the New York City pile, or the Russia pile, or the Sardinia pile, that kind of stuff. That’s how I did that. Then when it came down to the outline, again with the book, I did more detailed outline, and I started slotting in those big slabs of notes into those sections. So when I started working on it, it was all there for me. That’s how it worked. I probably have 1,000 Word pages of notes to work on. Kelton Reid: You’ve just got this huge raw block of clay, so to speak, that you start molding from there. You’ve got to start with something, and that’s pretty amazing. Last quick question for Adam Skolnick: can you give us a couple recommendations for favorite non-fiction reads you read recently? Adam Skolnick: I read Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which is beautiful. Katherine Boo, I believe, is the author. It s a beautiful book about the Mumbai slums. Zeitoun — a few years ago I read that. it’s one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time. That’s about a handyman who was caught in the floods in New Orleans after Katrina. It s a beautiful book by Dave Eggers, and I highly recommend that. Kelton Reid: Great one. Adam Skolnick: Then Harry Potter is my favorite non-fiction book I’ve ever read — J.K Rowling. Amazing how she embedded herself into that world. I found it magical … oh wait. Kelton Reid: I’m not familiar. Adam Skolnick: Are you not familiar with that work? Kelton Reid:Adam Skolnick: Thanks for having me. Kelton Reid: We will speak with you in another episode very soon. I appreciate your time. Remember, every great sculpture starts with a raw block of clay. Keep working, and eventually it will start to look like something. Thanks for flipping through Adam’s file with me. If you enjoyed this episode of The Writer Files, feel free to leave a comment or a question on the website at Writerfiles.FM. You can also easily subscribe to the show on iTunes and get updates on new episodes. Please leave a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. You can find me on Twitter @KeltonReid. You can find Adam @adamskolnick. You can find more Writer Porn @writerporn. Cheers. Talk to you next week.

Mac, Jim and Darrin huddle around the podcasting computer due to no ice and plenty of scuba to talk about. In addition to scuba in the news there are discussions about the book Shadow Divers as well as some things you don't want to see diving. You may also not want to hear the bad scuba joke.

Mac, Jim and Darrin huddle around the podcasting computer due to no ice and plenty of scuba to talk about. In addition to scuba in the news there are discussions about the book Shadow Divers as well as some things you don't want to see diving. You may also not want to hear the bad scuba joke.

Mac, Jim and Darrin huddle around the podcasting computer due to no ice and plenty of scuba to talk about. In addition to scuba in the news there are discussions about the book Shadow Divers as well as some things you don't want to see diving. You may also not want to hear the bad scuba joke.

This episode is a conversation with John Chatterton about deep wreck diving. We cover some of the dangers and challenges, as well as the fascination of the sport. We also talk about the discovery of U 869, which was mainly John Chatterton's achievement (as documented in the book Shadow Divers).

1.  Divers Two Dive Center in AVON by the SEA NJ. 2. Terrance Tysall of the Benthic Technologies discussing Side Mount and No Mount? Cave diving?. 3. We also go over New Jersey shipwreck diving, Shadow Divers giveaway, Andrea Doria trip and BTS 2006 update.

Mac, Jim and Darrin huddle around the podcasting computer due to no ice and plenty of scuba to talk about. In addition to scuba in the news there are discussions about the book Shadow Divers as well as some things you don't want to see diving. You may also not want to hear the bad scuba joke.

This week we have an interview with Robert Kurson the author of Shadow Divers. He is joined by John Mattera who is in Kursonâ??s new book Pirate Hunters. We still had all the other scuba obsessed things we talk about so this was a great show. Unless you think the joke was really bad.

Mack and Darrin review scuba in the news. Then the break the podcast. Tune in next week for out interview of the Shadow Divers author Robert Kurson. He talks about his new book Pirate Hunters. He is joined by shipwreck hunter and scuba diver John Mattera.