Podcasts about Japanese

A label. A management team. Two sheriff's departments. Every one of them had a piece of the picture, and prosecutors say the relationship at the center of it began when Celeste Rivas Hernandez was young enough that the number alone ends most conversations.Long before the d4vd preliminary hearing, David Burke sat down for an interview and explained a character he had invented. He said he was writing a manga about a detective. The detective had an evil version of himself who showed up at random moments. That version committed murders. The detective then had to solve them.He named the character Itami, which means pain in Japanese. He called him an agent of chaos and compared him to Tyler Durden in Fight Club.Then he put him in the work. A bloody knife in one video. An animated sequence in another. A video before his debut album in which Burke drags a body and loads it into the trunk of a car.Tony and Robin use that as the doorway into a bigger question: who was this young man before any of it? Homeschooled after seventh grade. Gospel music only until thirteen. A social life built entirely inside gaming lobbies. Signed to a major label at seventeen with a valuation in the millions and no anchor anywhere near him.They also give the other argument its full weight. Violent art is not proof of violence, and treating lyrics as confessions is how innocent people get railroaded.But prosecutors allege Burke did the specific thing his character was written to do, and a whole machine of executives and managers watched a nineteen-year-old sell his own darkness without anyone asking what was underneath it.Burke has pleaded not guilty and denies all wrongdoing through his attorneys. Celeste Rivas Hernandez was fourteen years old.END_LINKSJoin Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/ Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod X Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodDISCLAIMERThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.HASHTAGS#D4vd #DavidBurke #TrueCrimeToday #Itami #CelesteRivasHernandez #TrueCrime #MusicIndustry #Interscope #Psychology #TrueCrimePod

Does becoming a billionaire turn one into an insufferable jerk, or is that an innate quality they bring to the position?Big-name billionaires – like Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg – literally flaunt their irrepressible jerkism, but the disease seems to inflict their entire class of über-rich corporate royals. Its telltale symptoms are not their grandiose mansions and yachts, but their sudden impulse to instruct us regular people on how to think. In particular, they're now demanding that we get out of their way so they can remake society in their image.Jensen Huang, for example, a Silicon Valley techno-whiz who heads Nvidia, now the world's richest corporation. He's demanding that we transform our economy and social structure into a new order of AI dominance, piously chiding those of us who're angry about AI's destruction of our jobs, communities, water, farmland, and democracy itself. Tut-tut, the gabillionaire scolds, you petty people must “create new social norms” to advance AI.Then there's the little-known honcho of SoftBank, a multi-trillion-dollar Japanese tech powerhouse trying to impose AI supremacy worldwide. He's now asserting a corporate “morality” of wealth, calling people who question AI “foolish.” He philosophizes that TechWorld “will transform our lives completely and do so in a way that generates profits.”For whom? For billionaires, of course. So there you have a clear statement of the values and goals of AI profiteers: More for them, no matter the cost to everyone else. SoftBank's imperious boss laughs at those of us who dare question his vision of an AI plutocracy, calling us fools who are “spitting upward.”No sir, look again. We are spitting straight at you.Do something!Want to join the rebellion against AI billionaires? Check out Public Citizen's work on Big Tech and other corporate monsters: https://www.citizen.org/topic/consumer-worker-safeguards/big-tech/Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

The most devastating number in this case is not a dollar figure and it is not a piece of forensic evidence. It is how old Celeste Rivas Hernandez was when prosecutors say David Burke first found her online.Who was David Burke before any of this? That is the whole conversation, and Tony and Robin do not take the easy route through it.He was homeschooled after seventh grade. Gospel music only until thirteen. Almost everything social in his life happened through a screen. His mother pushed him to stop crying about copyright strikes and make his own songs, and two years later he was seventeen, still in high school, and signed to Interscope.Nobody handles that at seventeen. But the part that stops people cold is what he built alongside the career.Burke created an alter ego and named him Itami, which is Japanese for pain. He described the character on camera as an agent of chaos, an evil version of himself in a blindfold. The idea came from a manga he was writing about a detective whose alter ego commits murders, murders the detective then has to solve. His own comparison was Tyler Durden in Fight Club.He put it in the videos. A bloody knife. A woman described as the ghost of the person the character killed. An animated sequence where the character takes an arm. And a video in which Burke drags a body and loads it into a car.The counterargument matters and it gets its due here: violent art proves nothing by itself, and thousands of artists make it without ever harming a soul.But prosecutors allege Burke did the exact thing the character did. Tony and Robin follow that line all the way back — the isolation, the money, the industry that sold the darkness and never asked a single question.Burke has pleaded not guilty. Celeste Rivas Hernandez was fourteen years old.END_LINKSJoin Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/ Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod X Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodDISCLAIMERThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.HASHTAGS#D4vd #DavidBurke #HiddenKillers #Itami #CelesteRivasHernandez #TrueCrime #HiddenKillersPodcast #MusicIndustry #Fortnite #TrueCrimeFans

James Hollis, Ph.D., was born in Springfield, Illinois. He graduated from Manchester University in 1962 and Drew University in 1967. He taught humanities at various colleges and universities for 26 years before retraining as a Jungian analyst at the Jung Institute of Zürich, Switzerland, from 1977 to 1982. He is currently a licensed Jungian analyst in private practice in Washington, D.C. He served for many years as Executive Director of the Jung Educational Center in Houston, Texas, and was Executive Director of the Jung Society of Washington until 2019. He now serves on the Jung Society of Washington's Board of Directors. He is a retired Senior Training Analyst for the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, was the first Director of Training at the Philadelphia Jung Institute, and is Vice President Emeritus of the Philemon Foundation. Additionally, he helped create the Jungian Studies program at Saybrook University in California, where he served as a professor. He lives with his wife, Jill—an artist and retired therapist—in a suburb of Washington, D.C. Together, they have three living children and eight grandchildren. He has written a total of 23 books, which have been translated into Swedish, Russian, German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian, Korean, Finnish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Farsi, Japanese, Greek, Chinese, Serbian, Latvian, Ukrainian, Czech, Estonian, and Arabic. Topics Discussed In This Episode: Exploring loneliness, isolation, and solitude (00:03:48) James's journey into Jungian Psychoanalysis (00:09:36) Navigating life's forks: decisions and changes (00:15:18) Understanding the face of suffering (00:19:03) Discipline in creative practices (00:33:23) Understanding and embracing anxiety (00:37:59)  Facing childhood fears and emotional growth (00:43:43) The significance of dreams in self-discovery (00:46:27) Finding meaning throughout life's journey (00:52:10) artistdecoded.com jameshollis.net

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard welcomes Edi Matsumoto, a visionary artist, former nurse practitioner, and bestselling author of Otter Therapy: 50 Whimsical Whisker Moments for the Soul. After spending nearly 30 years in healthcare, Edi made the courageous decision to leave a career she loved and embrace her true calling as an artist, transforming burnout into a life filled with creativity, joy, and purpose. Together, they explore how aligning your work with your passions can dramatically increase productivity, resilience, and fulfillment. Edi shares the pivotal moments that shaped her journey, from volunteering with Mother Teresa and navigating the changing healthcare system to discovering her artistic talent, opening her own gallery, and creating her signature "Otter Therapy" collection that has delighted people around the world. Gerald and Edi discuss the importance of mentors, coaches, and supportive relationships in helping us recognize gifts we often overlook in ourselves. They also dive into the Japanese concept of ikigai, explaining how discovering the intersection of your talents, passions, purpose, and livelihood can create a more meaningful and productive life. Whether you're feeling burned out in your career, searching for greater purpose, or looking for practical ways to reconnect with joy and creativity, this episode offers inspiring stories and actionable insights to help you create a life that's aligned with who you truly are. Ready to discover your own ikigai? Listen now and learn how embracing your gifts can transform both your productivity and your life.   What We Discuss [00:00] Productivity Smarts introduction [02:04] Meet Edi Matsumoto [04:53] Leaving healthcare to pursue art [08:02] Burnout, courage, and starting over [10:08] Why joy fuels productivity [12:15] Opening an art gallery without business experience [13:59] Finding a unique artistic niche [16:12] Creating the Otter Therapy movement [17:03] Why coaching accelerates success [20:05] Seeing the gifts you can't see yourself [22:19] Lessons learned from Mother Teresa [27:33] Turning work into a calling [28:04] Staying creative without burning out [30:27] Shifting your mindset in seconds [34:08] Simple ways to restore joy and energy [36:15] Discovering your ikigai [39:14] Living in alignment with your purpose [40:34] Where to find Edi and Otter Therapy [42:36] Final thoughts and subscribe   Notable Quotes [09:46] "I just love my life right now. I do what I love, and I'm still able to serve people and heal people." – Edi Matsumoto [17:23] "When we're inside the bottle, we can't see the label." – Gerald J. Leonard [21:22] "Sometimes it takes another person to see your gift." – Edi Matsumoto [27:25] "If you find your calling and it becomes your job, you'll never work a day in your life." – Gerald J. Leonard [34:37] "You can change your thoughts. You can change your mood instantly." – Edi Matsumoto [38:59] "Once you find alignment, productivity flows naturally." – Edi Matsumoto [40:24] "Life is short. Don't do what other people expect you to do. Do what you want to do." – Edi Matsumoto   Resource and Links Edi Matsumoto LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edi-matsumoto-781696140 Website: edimatsumoto.com Gallery: Edi Matsumoto Art & Design Gallery, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California Book: Otter Therapy: 50 Whimsical Whisker Moments for the Soul   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

Last time we spoke about the Japanese offensive at Changsha. In late September 1941, fighting in China had become a brutal struggle of endurance. Japanese forces kept pushing forward, but China—though battered by heavy losses—refused to yield. Help from abroad was slowly beginning to matter. American aid reached China through groups like the Red Cross, and volunteers later associated with the Flying Tigers offered crucial support to Chinese operations. Against this backdrop, Changsha in Hunan became the center of a dangerous autumn campaign. Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist leadership treated the city as strategically vital, knowing that its fate could influence the wider course of the war. In the end, the resistance at Changsha showed China's key advantage: resilience. The city's defense helped slow the Japanese advance, break up momentum, and create uncertainty as the campaign continued.   #212 The Autumn Battle of Changsha, 1941 Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. In late September 1941, the war in China had already entered its fifth year. By then the conflict had lost whatever remained of novelty and had settled into something harsher and more exhausting: a long war of attrition fought across enormous distances, under conditions of chronic shortage, strategic uncertainty, and repeated local catastrophe. Japan still possessed formidable military strength. Its armies could strike hard, move fast, and exploit superior firepower, air support, and communications in individual campaigns. Yet the larger shape of the war had begun to change. China had not collapsed. The Nationalist government still stood. Chinese armies, however battered, still held the field. The line between survival and defeat remained dangerously thin, but it had not broken. This was the situation in which the autumn campaign in Hunan and Hubei unfolded.   The struggle around Changsha did not occur in isolation. It belonged to a wider military and political moment. In Europe, the war had already expanded into a continent-wide convulsion. Germany and the Soviet Union were locked in a massive struggle after the German invasion in June. Leningrad was under threat, Kiev had become the scene of disaster, and the approach of the battle for Moscow suggested that still greater bloodshed lay ahead. Stalin had pressed Churchill to open a second front in Europe and had been refused. The global balance of war was shifting, but not yet in any way that guaranteed relief to China.   In Asia, Japan continued to press forward. The pressure on China remained immense. Yet by mid-1941 China's position, though still precarious, no longer looked quite as desperate as it had in earlier years. International sympathy had grown. Material aid, however limited, was beginning to take more concrete form. In July, the American Red Cross sent China medical supplies worth millions of dollars. In August, more than a hundred retired American pilots and mechanics came together to aid China against Japan. The air unit they formed, later celebrated as the Flying Tigers, meant more than aircraft and personnel alone. It signaled that China's war was no longer quite so isolated. That change in atmosphere did not produce calm in Chongqing. It sharpened urgency.   For Chiang Kai-shek, the possibility that the international situation might slowly improve for China carried with it a hard implication: China had to endure long enough to benefit from it. That meant surviving not in abstract terms, but in particular places, against particular offensives, at moments when a local defeat might have consequences far beyond the immediate battlefield. In the autumn of 1941, one of those places was Changsha. Changsha had long occupied an outsized place in the military geography of the war. It stood as the capital of Hunan, a hinge between regions, and a vital position in the defense of central China. Its security affected the Xiang River basin, communications across the province, and the broader defensive posture shielding approaches toward the wartime capital. To lose it, even temporarily, would be more than a symbolic blow. It would threaten the larger balance of the front in south-central China and test whether Japanese offensives could still force dramatic strategic results.   At the same time, the battle for Changsha was not a simple contest between one Chinese army and one Japanese army facing each other across a fixed line. It was part of a larger operational struggle linking the Ninth War Zone with supporting actions from the Third, Fifth, and Sixth War Zones. It involved frontal resistance, hurried reinforcement, mobile defense, rear harassment, and the constant effort to turn Japanese momentum into Japanese overextension. Chinese commanders were trying not merely to survive a blow, but to absorb it, stretch it, and eventually strike back against an enemy whose speed could become a liability once supply lines lengthened and formations dispersed. This was the burden resting on the Military Commission in Chongqing.   There, while reports arrived in fragments and maps were revised hour by hour, Chiang Kai-shek spent long stretches in the operations room watching the situation in Hunan and Hubei develop. He had already ordered the various war zones to support the Ninth War Zone's operations, and now he followed the campaign with intense concentration. His attention moved repeatedly toward reports from the Sixth War Zone and Chen Cheng's counteroffensive toward Yichang, for Yichang was tied not only to local fighting in Hubei but also to the defense of the Yangtze approach and therefore to the security of Chongqing itself. In his mind, Hunan and Hubei had become the focal point of China's war effort in that season.   Meanwhile at the front, the situation was deteriorating fast. Japanese forces pressing into northern Hunan had already imposed severe strain on the Chinese defense. Blocking units had been battered back. Communications were uncertain. Some formations fought stubbornly but could not hold; others dissolved more quickly than hoped. The Japanese advance toward Changsha created exactly the kind of crisis Chinese commanders feared most: one in which the enemy moved with enough force and speed to threaten a major city before a coherent defensive response could be reassembled. Chinese units had to be thrown into action as they arrived, often after exhausting marches, often with incomplete knowledge of the situation, and often under immediate pressure from artillery, aircraft, and aggressive infantry assaults. Yet even at this dangerous stage, the campaign contained an opportunity as well as a threat.   The deeper Japanese units pushed into Hunan, the more exposed their rear became. Supply depots, transport lines, and communications stretched farther behind the spearhead. Chinese formations that had been driven aside were not always destroyed; some remained capable of reappearing to strike roads, depots, and isolated detachments. If Changsha represented the visible center of the struggle, the enemy rear represented its hidden vulnerability. The Chinese aim, therefore, was not simply to defend passively around the city. It was to combine stubborn resistance in front with harassment and disruption behind, so that Japanese advance would become increasingly difficult to sustain. The battle that followed unfolded under these pressures: a threatened city, a strained but unbroken defense, commanders forced to improvise under severe danger, and a wider international war that made every local decision feel heavier than the ground on which it was taken.   This subtle improvement in China's larger situation did not mean safety. China was still battered, under-resourced, and vulnerable. Japanese forces still possessed enormous advantages in mobility, firepower, and air power in many sectors. Large parts of the country remained occupied or threatened. Yet by mid-1941 something in the atmosphere had changed. In July, the American Red Cross sent China medical supplies worth millions of dollars. In August, more than a hundred retired American pilots and mechanics came together to aid China in its struggle against Japan. The air unit they formed would become famous under the name by which China knew them: the Flying Tigers. Their significance exceeded their immediate tactical value. They represented a visible sign that China was not entirely abandoned to isolation.   For Claire Chennault, romantic, aggressive, and optimistic by temperament, the new situation encouraged increasingly bold thoughts. For the first time he included in his planning the idea that Japanese home territory might one day be bombed from bases in China. Such schemes were ambitious and perhaps premature, but their very existence reveals an altered horizon of possibility. A country that imagines striking back is already psychologically in a different position from one concerned only with preventing collapse.     Yichang mattered directly to the fighting in Xiangbei, but it also mattered independently. It was tied to the security of the Yangtze approach and therefore to the defense of Chongqing. It belonged not only to the immediate problem of battlefield maneuver but to the larger question of whether China could do more than absorb Japanese offensives. Could Chinese forces exploit enemy overstretch? Could Japanese advances be turned into liabilities? Could local counterattacks and rear harassment generate effects greater than the raw size of the forces involved? By September 1941, these questions were no longer hypothetical. They were urgent. In Chiang's mind, Hunan and Hubei had become the focal point of China's war effort in that season.   The struggle around Changsha was central to that effort. From Chongqing, Chiang telegraphed Commander Xue Yue of the Ninth War Zone with instructions that made both the danger and the opportunity plain. The message emphasized that the enemy in northern Hunan, though still pressing hard, had already been bravely intercepted by Chinese units and was now exhausted, with lines of advance increasingly difficult to sustain. This, Chiang argued, created an excellent opportunity for Chinese forces to strike at the enemy's rear and seek annihilation rather than mere delay. He urged officers and soldiers alike to remain determined to destroy the enemy. Even if Japanese troops advanced to the vicinity of Changsha itself, Chinese forces were to renew their efforts, maintain their confidence in victory, and prevent the enemy from establishing a foothold.   The telegram also pointed to the broader operational picture. Japanese troops drawn from the sectors of the Fifth and Sixth War Zones had been committed to the invasion of northern Hunan, leaving their rear areas dangerously exposed. The Third, Fifth, and Sixth War Zones had launched supporting offensives on the twenty-third. Therefore, the Ninth War Zone had to strike resolutely and fiercely, preventing the Japanese from coordinating their forces and frustrating any attempt to occupy Changsha. The message was at once exhortation and operational logic. It reflected the core Chinese problem in the campaign: the Japanese thrust was dangerous and had to be blocked, but the very speed and depth of that thrust could also expose the attacker. Yet by the time Chiang sent his instructions, the danger around Changsha was already severe. After the 74th Army had been beaten back, there was no major Chinese force north of the city that could confidently block the Japanese advance in a straightforward, stable line. The Japanese 4th Division, together with the Hayabuchi Detachment, had defeated the 95th Division of the Chinese 37th Army and pushed toward Changsha. The prospect that the city might fall, at least temporarily, was no longer remote.   In response, Xia Chuzhong's 79th Army from the Sixth War Zone was ordered to move toward the city. Its vanguard was Wang Jiaben's 98th Division. That movement was a forced march in the literal sense. It was not a flourish of language but an admission of emergency. Troops were pushed beyond ordinary endurance because there was no time to gather strength under favorable conditions. Changsha could not wait for convenience, rest, or ideal concentration. Either reinforcements arrived in time to fight immediately, or they arrived too late to matter. Wang Jiaben was no stranger to battle. A veteran officer from the Yunnan Army, he had fought the Japanese repeatedly—more than twenty times since the outbreak of the War of Resistance. He belonged to that generation of commanders who had been shaped by the fragmented military politics of Republican China but whose careers were now being rewritten by the national emergency of the anti-Japanese war.   During the First Battle of Changsha, he had already distinguished himself. He led troops in a counterattack along the Tongcheng line in southern Hubei and intercepted retreating Japanese forces at Longmenchang and Changshoujie, killing more than a thousand enemy soldiers. He had experience, reputation, and a sense of what it meant to fight in the Changsha theater. This time he marched from Changde, driving his division forward with all possible speed. By noon on September 26 the 98th Division reached a position about two kilometers northeast of Changsha. There was scarcely time to settle the men. No careful preparation was possible. They had arrived because the city was in danger, and battle began almost at once. At dusk the division engaged the Hayabuchi Detachment.   The fighting continued until late in the night without decisive result. That in itself was costly enough. Troops who have just completed a punishing march are already close to the limits of their endurance. To be thrown immediately into combat magnifies every weakness: thirst, fatigue, confusion, and the difficulty of building fieldworks under pressure. What the soldiers of the 98th Division could do that night, they did with their hands and whatever tools they had. They scraped positions out of the earth. They assembled makeshift cover. Officers moved along the line trying to impose order on terrain that had become a battlefield almost as soon as it was occupied. At dawn on September 27 the Japanese intensified the pressure from the air.   More than twenty aircraft bombed the 98th Division's positions, tearing apart the earthworks that officers and soldiers had spent the night constructing. Bombing had a double effect. Physically, it damaged positions, wounded men, and disrupted preparations. Psychologically, it reminded defenders that they were being observed from above and struck by an enemy against whom they could often do little in the sky. Immediately after the bombing came a fierce infantry assault. Wang Jiaben and several other commanders went down to their respective regiments to supervise the fighting personally. This was dangerous, but under such circumstances commanders often believed that presence itself mattered. When fieldworks are collapsing, shell bursts are continuous, and communications are unreliable, authority must sometimes be carried by a body rather than a wire. The defenders held.   Again and again the Japanese attacked. Again and again they were repulsed only to reorganize and come on once more. Every minute the Chinese line remained in place was bought with blood. Fallen and wounded men were carried rearward in what seemed an endless stream. The cost of resistance accumulated visibly before the eyes of those still fighting. By noon even water could no longer be delivered to the front. That detail reveals the intensity of the battle more clearly than many grander statements could. A line that cannot be supplied even with water has reached a condition of severe strain. During brief pauses in the fighting, officers and soldiers pulled out dry rations and chewed them slowly, swallowing with difficulty while they waited for the next attack. Such moments are among the most characteristic in battle: not the long, smooth continuity imagined in peacetime rhetoric, but brief interludes of miserable necessity between explosions. At two in the afternoon the crisis deepened sharply.   A unit of the Japanese 4th Division worked its way behind the 98th Division's position and attacked from the rear. This was the kind of tactical development every defending commander dreads. A force can endure heavy frontal pressure if its line remains coherent and its rear reasonably secure. But when enemy troops appear behind a position, the entire structure of defense begins to dissolve. There, behind the line, were more than a hundred Chinese wounded awaiting evacuation. Japanese soldiers attacked them with bayonets. One of the wounded Chinese soldiers, already beyond ordinary capacity for resistance, rushed forward and detonated a grenade against a Japanese attacker. It was an act of desperation, but also of defiance. The episode captures something essential about the tone of the battle around Changsha. This was not a neat engagement between organized lines alone. It was a desperate collision in which even the badly wounded were drawn into last resistance. For Wang Jiaben, however, the tactical reality was impossible to deny. If he stayed where he was, the division might be annihilated. Personal courage could not alter encirclement. Resentfully, bitterly, and under the kind of pressure that leaves permanent scars on a commander's memory, he ordered retreat. When he led the survivors off the battlefield, fewer than half his men remained.   Reinforcements from another direction now entered the struggle. The Provisional 2nd Army of the Seventh War Zone dispatched the Provisional 8th Division under Zhang Junsong. At seven in the evening on September 27, Zhang's force arrived at Zuojiatang on the eastern outskirts of Changsha. Personnel of the Ninth War Zone waiting there reported grim news: a Japanese detachment had already entered the city that afternoon, and another detachment was only three kilometers away. The situation invited rashness. A commander arriving near a threatened city at dusk, with reports that the enemy is already inside, may feel compelled to hurl troops forward immediately in a gesture of resolution. Yet night fighting in an urban approach without adequate reconnaissance can turn courage into waste. Zhang Junsong considered the matter carefully. He concluded that to rush blindly into the city at night would likely produce confusion and heavy losses. Instead he first sought to strike the enemy outside the city. His troops deployed quietly and crept forward through the darkness, launching a probing attack. But they soon discovered that the Japanese were fully prepared and not vulnerable to easy surprise. The line could not be broken. With no prospect of success, the force withdrew.   The moment is revealing because it shows how narrow the margin had become. Chinese commanders were trying to recover initiative while still groping through uncertainty. Reports were incomplete, Japanese dispositions difficult to fix, and every hour dangerous. On the evening of September 28, the 79th Army's 6th Provisional Division occupied Yuelu Mountain west of Changsha. From that height officers and soldiers looked across the Xiang River toward the city. Changsha, for the first time, was in Japanese hands. The emotional force of that sight can only be imagined. Changsha had lived for years under threat. It had been defended, contested, prepared, and feared. The possibility of its loss had hovered over military planning and public consciousness alike. Now the danger had become fact. A city that had stood as an object of effort and anxiety was visibly occupied by the enemy. No single feeling could have governed the men who saw it. There must have been anger, shame, weariness, and dread—but also stubbornness. For in war a city seen in enemy hands is not always simply lost. Sometimes it is a summons.   Late that night Zhao Jiping, commander of the 6th Provisional Division, received a telegram from Xue Yue. He read it and then stood before the map for a long time. Days of anxiety began to lift. He was not alone in that reaction. Many Chinese generals involved in the campaign had felt that they were fighting a confused and chaotic battle. Japanese movements had been broad, rapid, and difficult to pin down. The Ninth War Zone had thrown numerous units into blocking actions, yet both well-regarded formations and weaker, improvised units had repeatedly failed to hold. After ten days of combat, Chinese losses were heavy. But Japanese forces too had been worn, stretched, and damaged. Only now, as the Japanese reached the apparent culmination of their advance, did the Ninth War Zone begin to recover rhythm. Chaos did not disappear, but it became more legible. The possibility of a more ordered counteroffensive emerged.   In the early hours of September 29, Zhao Jiping issued the order to force a crossing of the Xiang River and attack the enemy in Changsha. The preparations consumed the entire day. River crossings under combat conditions are among the most delicate operations in war. Boats must be assembled or found. Units must be organized into waves. Timing matters. Surprise matters. The location of landing points matters. The men themselves matter most of all, because they must sit exposed in fragile craft knowing that the real test will begin not in the middle of the river but at the far bank. Late that night the division crossed secretly by boat in six groups. The crossing itself went well enough. The river did not betray them. The groups made progress in darkness. Yet everyone involved understood that smooth movement on the water did not guarantee success. The crucial question was what waited at the landing points. It was expected that the troops going ashore at Daximen would be first to meet the Japanese. Once battle began there, the rest of the crossing accelerated.   Chinese soldiers landed, attacked fiercely, and drove the enemy back from the riverbank. The momentum of the assault mattered. In such moments hesitation on shore can doom an entire crossing, but aggression can seize a foothold before the defender fully stabilizes. By the time Chinese forces entered the city, dawn was breaking. Then came street fighting. Changsha had ceased to be an objective on a map. It became again what cities become in war: a place of corners, walls, alleys, debris, smoke, and sudden death. Fighting in a city strips away much of the abstraction through which campaigns are often remembered. Streets channel movement. Buildings become cover, obstacles, or traps. Distances shrink but danger multiplies. A few men behind masonry can delay many more. Noise magnifies confusion. The city itself seems to fragment into a hundred separate battlefields. For Changsha, the long season of anxious anticipation ended in direct flame.   Yet to understand the campaign only through the struggle at Changsha would be incomplete. While the city drew attention as the central prize, another set of operations was unfolding across Hunan and Hubei—less dramatic in appearance perhaps, but strategically significant. These were the actions of the 27th Army Group under Yang Sen. If the fighting around Changsha demonstrated the pressure of frontal battle, Yang Sen's operations illustrated another principle entirely: the stubborn, opportunistic use of weaker forces to harass, sting, and trouble a stronger enemy from behind. The 27th Army Group was composed largely of Sichuan troops. Their presence speaks to one of the larger political transformations of the war. Republican China had long been fractured by regional militarism. Armies had often owed stronger loyalty to commanders, provinces, or local power structures than to any unified national command. Yet the anti-Japanese war compelled a partial reordering of those loyalties. Many warlord forces, however imperfectly integrated, now turned their weapons outward under Nationalist command.   There were exceptions. Some men, like Han Fuqu, had preserved their own strength at the cost of military responsibility and lost both opportunity and honor in doing so. But in the main, especially among middle and lower-ranking officers and ordinary soldiers, the imperative of national survival overrode provincial identity. Men from distant regions marched and fought in terrains not their own because the war no longer permitted a narrow conception of interest. Yang Sen himself was an old warlord soldier, one of those figures formed in the fractured military world of earlier decades. By 1941 he was deputy commander of the Ninth War Zone and commander-in-chief of the 27th Army Group. Along the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi border he had long been cautious in his operations.   At the beginning of the northern Hunan battle, his troops proved unable to withstand the force of the Japanese offensive and retreated in disorder into mountains and forests. That fact should not be softened. They were pushed back. But retreat did not mean disappearance. This is where Yang Sen's role became important. Once the main Japanese force had advanced far ahead, the troops that had scattered began to reemerge. They knew the terrain. They knew the roads, villages, passes, and wooded approaches. If they could not defeat the Japanese in a grand collision, they could search for openings behind the advancing columns.   On September 20, as the Japanese main force drove into the heart of northern Hunan, Yang Sen led elements of the 4th, 58th, and 20th Armies in pursuit for an entire day. The main body of the 4th Army had already been badly beaten at the Xinqiang River line, and only the 60th Division, recently transferred from the 37th Army, remained relatively intact. That single fact sharply defined the weakness of his means. He was not pursuing with fresh and powerful forces prepared for a decisive encounter. He was pursuing with fragments, survivors, and such units as still retained some offensive potential. But the Japanese, intent on rapid advance southward, paid too little attention to what followed behind them. That was the opening Yang Sen needed.   On the morning of September 21, the 60th Division acted on information supplied by an old beggar. Such details often sound almost literary, but they remind us that war in China was never fought by armies alone. Villagers, refugees, peddlers, guides, boatmen, and the destitute all participated in the circulation of military knowledge. A beggar could see what a reconnaissance officer had missed. On the basis of that tip, the 60th Division launched a surprise attack on the supply depot of the Japanese 40th Division at Zhangjiayuan. Division Commander Dong Yu led the action.   The Chinese quickly overwhelmed the more than three hundred Japanese troops guarding the depot. Once they broke in, they discovered an astonishing quantity of matériel: shell boxes, ammunition, food, medicine, gasoline, explosives, protective clothing, telephone wire, body bags, stretchers, and more, all stacked beneath heavy canvas. For men accustomed to scarcity, it must have seemed almost unreal. Dong Yu, delighted, is remembered as exclaiming to his deputy commander, "It's practically a department store!" The line has a momentary comic brightness in the middle of war, and that is part of why it survives. But its deeper significance lies in what it reveals. A modern army advancing deep into hostile territory is sustained by accumulation—ammunition, fuel, wire, medicines, rations, transport materials. To seize such a depot is not merely to take objects. It is to grasp the hidden skeleton of movement. Dong Yu then issued a one-word order: "Move."   At once the whole division became a swarm of carriers. Officers and soldiers grabbed whatever they could and began hauling the captured supplies away. The scene must have been one of extraordinary improvised energy—riflemen transformed into laborers, war reduced for a moment to the brute physical act of lifting, dragging, and carrying. They moved like ants dismantling a storehouse. But there was too much to remove and too little time. Before even two regiments had completed the work, the Japanese returned in force. Enraged, they sent more than a dozen aircraft to bomb the troops carrying off the captured crates, while over a thousand infantrymen rushed in on the ground. Dong Yu immediately ordered the men to abandon what remained and destroy it. Amid deafening explosions, the 60th Division withdrew from Zhangjiayuan. The Japanese pursued hard, driving them back into the mountains before finally stopping. Measured purely in terms of territorial occupation, the action changed little. The Chinese did not hold the depot. They were forced back again. But judged in operational terms, the raid mattered. Supplies had been captured, destroyed, or disrupted. Japanese rear security had been embarrassed. Time and energy had been consumed in response. In a campaign where the Japanese were racing south and depending increasingly on stretched lines, such harassment was not trivial.   After September 23, Yang Sen expanded these efforts. He sent whole divisions to harass the Japanese rear while also dispatching battalions and companies to ambush supply columns and disrupt transport lines. This was not the kind of warfare that produces neat dramatic maps in conventional military histories. The actions were scattered, local, opportunistic, and often inconclusive. Yet precisely for that reason they can be misunderstood. Not every useful military action ends in the destruction of an enemy division. Sometimes its value lies in forcing a stronger opponent to spend attention where he had hoped to spend only momentum. These operations were costly and uncertain. Small Chinese units striking roads and depots risked encirclement or aerial punishment. Yet they possessed one advantage: they did not need to win a grand battle to matter. They needed only to make movement harder, supply more precarious, and the rear less secure.   On September 25, even after the 26th and 37th Armies had suffered defeat elsewhere, Yang Sen gathered the troops that still retained some offensive capacity and launched another attack. In these actions, the 90th Division captured Wukou; the 59th Division reached the north bank of the Miluo River; the 60th Division advanced to Donggang; and elements of the 58th Army controlled the Yuanba–Zheyangqiao highway line by the twenty-sixth. These gains were not the dramatic centerpiece of the campaign. But they formed part of the cumulative pressure on Japanese operations. Every road contested from the rear, every convoy threatened, every depot exposed, and every forced diversion of troops weakened the enemy's ability to convert tactical advance into stable success.   The battlefield was fluid enough that Yang Sen's headquarters itself had to keep moving—from the Miluo River northward to Pingjiang. Mobile headquarters in such conditions lived under constant uncertainty. Reports arrived late or contradictory. Rumors outran facts. The front could bend in unpredictable ways. A command post that seemed safely behind the line in the morning might by afternoon lie only a few kilometers from enemy forces. Years later Mao Jiuyin, who had then served as an operations staff officer under Yang Sen, recalled the old commander's outward behavior in those dangerous days. Yang Sen, Mao remembered, was always joking with the people around him and could still laugh and talk during battle. On one occasion he even joked with his bodyguard about putting chili oil in his tea. To younger staff officers, such behavior appeared almost absurd.   Yet they knew how dangerous their situation often was. Sometimes they were only a few kilometers from the main Japanese forces. There is more than anecdote in this memory. Old commanders often cultivated a style of ease under danger not because they felt no fear, but because they believed visible calm itself was part of command. Men take emotional bearings from those above them. A commander who panics spreads panic faster than any enemy breakthrough. Yang Sen was sixty years old during the Second Battle of Changsha, and he liked to remark that he was five years older than Chiang Kai-shek. Age had not removed him from the front. His function in the campaign was not to shatter the enemy in one decisive frontal blow. It was to persist, reappear, sting, and remain troublesome. The 27th Army Group followed the Japanese nearly all the way to the outskirts of Changsha.   They did not fight many large set-piece engagements. That was never their main value. But the Japanese could not ignore them. If Japanese units turned and tried to hit them directly, they tended to dissolve into the landscape. If the Japanese pushed on and ignored them, they reappeared to sabotage roads, hit supply lines, and create alarms in the rear. Even Japanese official histories later described them memorably. They called them "like a swarm of annoying flies." The phrase was meant as contempt. But as so often happens in war, an insult became an accurate description of effect. If these Chinese troops could not be tigers in formal battle, they could still become intolerable as flies. And under certain conditions—fatigue, heat, uncertainty, stretched supply, shaken morale—flies can become more oppressive than an enemy would like to admit.   When later generations look back on campaigns, they often search for a single explanatory image. But the fighting of September 1941 resists reduction to one symbol alone. What gives the campaign its force in memory is not one isolated episode, but the convergence of several pressures at once: a city under threat, a command trying to coordinate multiple fronts, exhausted reinforcements thrown directly into battle, Japanese forces advancing quickly but becoming increasingly vulnerable the farther they pushed, and Chinese troops in the rear refusing to disappear after defeat. Seen from Chongqing, the campaign was a matter of telegrams, maps, and the management of strategic risk. Seen from the front, it was a matter of thirst, mud, broken fieldworks, sudden bombing, exhausted marching, and the uncertainty of whether the next order meant reinforcement, retreat, or death. Seen from the Japanese side, it was initially an aggressive advance toward an important objective, but one increasingly troubled by stretched supply, difficult terrain, and the persistent reappearance of Chinese forces behind the line of movement.   At the same time, the campaign reveals a Chinese war effort that had become more resilient than in the earliest years of the conflict. The Japanese advance toward Changsha was dangerous and at moments appeared close to success. Chinese blocking forces suffered severe defeats. Units arrived exhausted and were hurled into action at once. Commanders lost men at devastating rates. Changsha itself briefly fell into enemy hands. And yet the city was not simply surrendered as an accomplished fact. Chinese forces regrouped. Orders were coordinated across war zones. Reinforcements marched at desperate speed. Counterattacks were mounted. Forces west of the Xiang prepared and crossed back into the city. Elsewhere, troops under Yang Sen gnawed at the Japanese rear and made advance more costly than a map of front lines alone might suggest. This combination of desperate frontal resistance and incessant rear harassment was one of the characteristic strengths of China's resistance in this stage of the war. China could not always match Japanese power in one concentrated blow. But it could absorb, delay, fragment, and trouble that power across space and time. That is why the struggle around Changsha in late September 1941 deserves to be remembered not merely as a sequence of engagements, but as a layered event in which tactical battle, morale, logistics, political endurance, and international context all converged.   I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. In late September 1941, Japan pushed deeper into China, but Chinese forces—supported gradually by international help—kept resisting. Changsha in Hunan became the central point of the conflict, seen as vital to strategic control in south-central China. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Hunan and Hubei, Yang Sen's 27th Army Group—often using smaller, opportunistic actions—reappeared behind Japanese lines to disrupt depots and convoys. Even when Chinese gains were temporary, the cumulative pressure delayed Japanese momentum.       

For too many bartenders, sake remains one of the most intimidating sections of the back bar, with confusing labels and endless categories making it hard to know where to even begin. Luckily, this week we are joined by Yoko Kumano and Kayoko Akabori, co-founders of the beloved Japanese beverage shop Umami Mart and authors of Everyday Sake: The Go-To Guide for Choosing, Pairing, and Serving. Together they have made it their mission to demystify sake and make it approachable for everyone, from curious first-timers to seasoned industry pros. So tune in as they break down how to navigate the category with confidence, from choosing the right bottle to pairing it with food and serving it in both modern and traditional settings. Umami Mart: https://umamimart.com/ Get the book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/769406/everyday-sake-by-yoko-kumano-and-kayoko-akabori/ ____________________________________ Join us every Monday as acclaimed bartender, Erick Castro, interviews some of the bar industry's top talents from around the world, including bartenders, distillers & authors. If you love cocktails & spirits then this award-winning podcast is just for you. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: Get early access to episodes, exclusive bonus episodes, special content and more: https://www.patreon.com/BartenderAtLarge WATCH OUR VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/bartenderatlarge FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM: Erick Castro: www.instagram.com/HungryBartender Bartender at Large: www.instagram.com/BartenderAtLarge FOLLOW US ON TIKTOK: Erick Castro: https://www.tiktok.com/@hungrybartender?_t=ZT-8uBekAKOGwU&_r=1 Bartender at Large: www.tiktok.com/BartenderAtLarge  

On the morning of April 23, 1994, a park cleaner in Inokashira Park opened a utility trash container expecting ordinary market waste, only to find a severed human foot inside a translucent blue plastic bag. Within hours, police recovered twenty-seven separate body parts distributed across twenty-seven public trash bins—each piece meticulously cut to an exact length of twenty centimetres, drained completely of blood, and scrubbed clean.Despite deploying over 110,000 police officers, investigating countless leads, and uncovering forensic perfection that defied normal criminal behaviour, two-thirds of the victim's body—including his head and internal organs—were never found. The case eventually hit the statute of limitations, leaving investigators staring into an absolute void.In this episode, we explore the chilling Inokashira Park dismemberment and pair it with the ancient Japanese myth of the Noppera-bō (The Faceless Phantom)—examining how a human predator wiped away a man's face, identity, and record from history, leaving behind a blank, featureless slate.Unique Facts About This Case The killer cut every single body part to an exact length of 20 centimeters specifically because that was the precise width of the trash can slots in the park. The remains were so thoroughly drained of blood and treated that investigators found no bloodstains inside the plastic bags or the bins where they were left. To this day, two-thirds of the victim's body—including his face, skull, and internal organs—have never been recovered. Thank you for listening legends...Stay curious...Stay a little scared...And whatever you do... if you pass a stranger in the dark tonight... don't look too closely at their face.Have a great week ahead legends!

It's a hot one today! Figuratively and literally as temperatures rises and ACs break. Cohh is out this week spreading the good word of Emberville, but Zeke returns to brave the heat of Texas with JP! Valve doomposts over memory shortages, Nintendo at war with everyone, Blizzard GM carries raid group, all the news from the FFXIV Fanfest in Berlin! Games this week: Pathogenic, Dinoblade, Desktop Explorer and many more! 0:00 - Intro1:00 - The Real CohhCarnage7:00 - Air Conditioning11:00 - Zeke vacation15:40 - Memory shortage not ending21:30 - Nintendo at war with Japanese patent23:30 - Nintendo vs tariffs27:30 - WoW GM helping players prog43:40 - Final Fantasy XIV Fanfest Berlin51:50 - Project Zomboid build 421:03:50 - Marathon releases PVE mode1:06:20 - Wardogs devs get banned on Twitch1:12:30 - DCKO1:16:50 - High on Life 21:22:40 - Pathogenic1:29:00 - Dinoblade1:38:00 - Doomsday Diner1:40:40 - Path of Exile: Curse of the Allflame1:42:00 - Marvel Tokon beta1:53:40 - Photomalay1:58:00 - Desktop Explorer2:02:50 - The Incident at Galley House2:06:00 - Moldrise2:10:30 - Ritter & Rotwein2:16:00 - Avatar Legends2:24:50 - Shoutouts See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: The term “explosive diarrhea” captured the nation's attention, turning all eyes toward the company linked to a major cyclosporiasis outbreak. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck discuss the much-talked about food poisoning story and the PR flubs of Trump-aligned Taylor Farms. Then, the hosts give an update on Trump's latest attempt to keep his beloved tariffs alive after the Supreme Court ruled his original plan illegal. And finally, they react to the Japanese prime minister's recent claim of sleeping zero to three hours a night.In the Slate Plus episode: Is Diet Coke embracing “fridge cigarettes"? Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Jessamine Molli. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: The term “explosive diarrhea” captured the nation's attention, turning all eyes toward the company linked to a major cyclosporiasis outbreak. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck discuss the much-talked about food poisoning story and the PR flubs of Trump-aligned Taylor Farms. Then, the hosts give an update on Trump's latest attempt to keep his beloved tariffs alive after the Supreme Court ruled his original plan illegal. And finally, they react to the Japanese prime minister's recent claim of sleeping zero to three hours a night.In the Slate Plus episode: Is Diet Coke embracing “fridge cigarettes"? Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Jessamine Molli. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joseph Turner is a PhD student in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in the dialogue between continental and Japanese philosophical traditions. His dissertation explores the development of a political ontology that bridges Nishitani Keiji's concept of emptiness with Jean-Luc Nancy's shared ontology of "being-with."He holds an MA in Literary Studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and has published on Jean Baudrillard's work. Joseph has presented at numerous academic conferences on philosophers, including Baudrillard, Giorgio Agamben, Nishitani Keiji, and Jean-Luc Nancy. His research contributes to cross-cultural philosophical dialogue and offers new perspectives on political ontology that transcend frameworks of predetermined political antagonisms. Based in Madison, philosophicalWisconsin, Joseph works at the intersection of Eastern and Western hilosophical traditions, bringing attention to underexplored thinkers and fostering promising theoretical frameworks. In this episode we discuss Keiji Nishitani's book The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism---Become part of the Hermitix community:The Hermitage: the-hermitage.mn.coHermitix Twitter - ⁠ / hermitixpodcast ⁠Support Hermitix:Patreon - ⁠ www.patreon.com/hermitix ⁠Donations: - ⁠https://www.paypal.me/hermitixpod⁠

Episode Notes Join our Patreon for early access and bonus episodes and help support the show! Get exclusive Japanese horror merchandise and join the Discord! These seven horrifying tales from Japan will make you question what's lying in wait in not just the dark, but the light as well… BGM thanks to Myuuji, Kevin MacLeod and CO.AG. Sound effects thanks to Free Sound and freeSFX. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License Support Kowabana: 'True' Japanese scary stories from around the internet by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/kowabana

Jordan was in Jersey eating pizza and has thoughts, what food apps does Max use and some advice for influencers, an exploration of hot dog toppings, Comfy vs. Ricky, Dallas possibilities, Japanese ice, outdoor dining options, what to order at Hermon's, will Stella West Hollywood return, where to get a LA BEC, and thoughts on the new Pizzeria Sei.

With 19 Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup medals, an Alpha King win, and nine beers scored 95-plus by Craft Beer & Brewing—including two in our upcoming Fall issue—Sunriver has become a medal-winning powerhouse of a production brewery and brewpub. But while their hop-forward offerings get much of the attention—and a fair amount of time in this podcast episode—they're equally adept at brewing beers with left-field culinary ingredients. The throughline? Palates they're constantly training and challenging, and a sense for quality of flavor, refinement, and integration. In this episode, head brewer Patrick Raasch discusses: differentiating between American and West Coast IPA blending pils and two-row malts in IPA using lager yeast to lean into sulfur with more pungent hops brewing their Alpha King–winning double IPA with 34/70 yeast bittering with Mosaic CO2 extract dry hopping under pressure at cooler temperatures competition bottling for minimal oxygen ingress taking IPA from great to medal-winning integrating hops in barrel-aged American barleywine brewing “garden party” rice lager with Japanese cucumber, yuzu, and basil And more. This episode is brought to you by: G&D Chillers A quick word for the brewers out there staring down a broken chiller. You know the pain—warm fermenters, stressed yeast, and that sinking feeling when the repair quote lands in your inbox. With refrigerant regulations changing and the cost of obsolete refrigerants skyrocketing, sometimes the fix costs more than the unit's worth. G&D Chillers is there to help, whether you're a small brew pub or large full-scale production brewery. Don't throw good money at bad equipment. Invest in a solution that grows with your brewery—and keeps your tanks cold when it counts. Big thanks to G&D Chillers for supporting this podcast since 2019, reach out to them at gdhillers.com/podcast to learn how they can support these next years of your brewery's growth. Berkeley Yeast It's here! Berkeley's FRESH™ Chico is now available dry. You've heard here on the podcast just how many medal-winning brewers use FRESH™ Chico as their house strain because of how clean and versatile it is. If you want to make world-class IPA, your fermentation must avoid unwanted or distracting flavors, and Berkeley's robust low-diacetyl technology is a game changer with healthy and highly viable cells that ferment fast and clean every time. Bringing that level of fermentation innovation to dried yeast is no small feat, but the experts at Berkeley Yeast love making the impossible possible. With bricks priced as low as $88, it's a cost-effective solution, and you'll save even more by eliminating ALDC from your brews. Head over to berkeleyyeast.com and start leveling up your IPA today. PakTech This episode is sponsored by PakTech—delivering craft-beer multipacking you can trust. Our handles are made from 100 percent recycled plastic and are fully recyclable, helping breweries close the loop and advance the circular economy. With a minimalist design, durable functionality you can rely on, and custom color matching, our carriers help brands stand out while staying sustainable. Trusted by craft brewers nationwide, we offer a smarter, sustainable way to carry your beer. To learn more, visit paktech-opi.com. Indie Hops Oregon hop country is heaven to world-class lager varieties, and Indie Hops is proud to have introduced Oregon's newest lager hop, Lórien, in 2022. Lórien is in a growing list of beers that have found their way to the podium and—more importantly—into the hearts of lager lovers across the country. Discover Indie Hops Lórien. (Side effects may include rampant festivity, sales bumps, and exceeded expectations.) Indie Hops—Life is Short. Let's Make It Flavorful. Midea 50/50 Flex If you're like many podcast listeners, you've got a lot of beers at home, and your regular fridge is at capacity. Enter the Midea 50/50 Flex—the industry's first dual compartment three-way convertible freezer. Here's what all that means for you: options! The 50/50 has the power to be all freezer, all fridge, or a little bit of both. But you'll probably want to use those 20 cubic feet as a massive, garage-ready beer fridge. You can also change which side the door is on or how you want the shelves to be arranged—the 50/50 totally flexes to fit your life. Plus, it's designed to maintain a stable temperature even in non-climate-controlled conditions—so you can crack a cold one even on the warmest days in the man cave. Take your garage to the next level! Check out Midea.com/us/ to get more info about this game changer today. Cheers! Briess Malting Briess Malting has been supplying craft brewers with the highest quality base and specialty malts since the early 1980s. As Briess celebrates their 150th Anniversary this year, they are proud to remain a fifth-generation, family-owned company. They love to support the creativity and passion in craft brewing that results in amazing beers. All Briess malts are made in America, so you can count on a reliable supply chain. Barley is sourced from 300 growers in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming and Montana. Plus, technical support is available through their Center of Malting Excellence. With 150 years of malting expertise, check out why so many craft brewers trust Briess for their specialty malt at BrewingWithBriess.com. Wyeast Laboratories This episode is brought to you by Wyeast Laboratories. If you've brewed with our 1056 American Ale, you've brewed with the strain that helped build craft beer from the ground up. Four decades later, it's still one of the most-used strains in the country, delivering the same quality and consistency. As legendary liquid-yeast providers, we celebrated our 40th anniversary alongside America's 250th on the 4th of July, and as part of the celebration, we're offering 10 percent off every order of 1056 American Ale scheduled by July 31 and shipped by August 30. Already have an order in that window? Don't worry, your discount will be automatically applied. Here's to 40 years of living culture and best-in-craft liquid yeast. Check out the anniversary at wyeastlab.com.

With the MLB trade deadline looming, it's time to put on our general manager hats and cook up some creative deals that are sure to make some noise. Even though there might be more buyers than sellers this year because so many teams are still in the playoff race, these eight ideas could be possible—or they could be completely crazy. On this episode of Baseball Bar-B-Cast, Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman cook up some trades that could help bolster lineups and rotations. Among the possible deals, the guys wonder if the Pittsburgh Pirates could make a play for Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal to add him to their dynamic rotation. They also discuss whether the New York Yankees could trade Jasson Domínguez and Will Warren to the Athletics in exchange for a new catcher. Later in the show, Jake and Jordan are joined by Yuri Karasawa to discuss the impact that Rintaro Sasaki signing with the Miami Marlins could have on future Japanese players looking to make the leap to the major leagues. They also discuss why Shohei Ohtani might be kicking himself for missing out on a Cy Young Award this year, the impact Munetaka Murakami has had in America and two players to keep an eye on in NPB. They close out the episode by making their weekly picks in The Good, The Bad & The Uggla.   2:03 - The Opener: Eight crazy trade ideas 5:38 - Skubal to Pirates 11:09 - Zach Neto to Red Sox 16:16 - Yankees get a catcher 23:37 - Mason Miller for Bubba Chandler 28:31 - Yuri Karasawa joins the show: Rintaro Sasaki's impact 47:15 - Shohei Ohtani's Cy Young quest 56:21 - Which NPB players to watch 1:04:19 - The Good, The Bad & The Uggla Subscribe to Baseball Bar-B-Cast on your favorite podcast app:

Linktree: ⁠https://linktr.ee/Analytic⁠Join The Normandy For Ad-Free NME, Additional Bonus Audio And Visual Content For All Things Nme+! Join Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://ow.ly/msoH50WCu0K⁠ In this segment of Notorious Mass Effect, Analytic Dreamz delivers a detailed key points breakdown of Rhythm Heaven Groove, the fifth mainline entry in Nintendo's iconic rhythm series. Released worldwide July 2 2026 for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, this fully original title marks the first new Rhythm Heaven game in over 11 years and celebrates the franchise's 20th anniversary. Analytic Dreamz covers its 80-plus brand-new minigames, Everyone Play multiplayer for up to four players, unlockable Beatspell RPG mode, precise rhythm-focused gameplay, Tsunku's original soundtrack, record-breaking Japanese launch of 393378 physical copies, Metacritic score near 82, and overall strengths that make it one of the series' strongest entries.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Houthi rebel attacks on Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea and their blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait are hiking oil prices. Also, two of OpenAI's agents teamed up in a surprise move to hack into a different company's digital library during a test when the AI models were supposed to be cut off from the internet. And, a look at the role of salmon in human migration to North America. Plus, a new establishment in Tokyo aims to teach foreigners about Japanese bar culture. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky has fired the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Oleksandr Syrsky. That follows days of protests at his sacking of the defence minister. Our correspondent analyses the fallout. America's murder rate is falling, so why are cops killing more people? And a shift in the Japanese taboo on living in homes where people have died.Guests and host:Shashank Joshi, defence editorDaniel Knowles, US Midwest correspondentMoeka Iida, East Asia reporterRosie Blau, co-host of “The Intelligence”Topics covered: Fedorov, Syrsky, Zelensky, UkrainePolice killings, gun crime, murderJapan, haunted houses, jiko bukkenListen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to The Economist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky has fired the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Oleksandr Syrsky. That follows days of protests at his sacking of the defence minister. Our correspondent analyses the fallout. America's murder rate is falling, so why are cops killing more people? And a shift in the Japanese taboo on living in homes where people have died.Guests and host:Shashank Joshi, defence editorDaniel Knowles, US Midwest correspondentMoeka Iida, East Asia reporterRosie Blau, co-host of “The Intelligence”Topics covered: Fedorov, Syrsky, Zelensky, UkrainePolice killings, gun crime, murderJapan, haunted houses, jiko bukkenListen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to The Economist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ukraine has a new commander-in-chief after days of protests, and FT calculations show the US has collected more than $13bn in revenues from Venezuelan oil sales this year, but it's unclear what has happened to the money, and US President Donald Trump may unleash fresh tariffs on dozens of countries as soon as this week. Plus, Samsung is in talks to invest in French AI start-up Mistral, and investors are worried about betting big on Japanese bonds.Mentioned in this podcast:Zelenskyy replaces top Ukraine general in biggest military shake-up since 2024 The US has collected about $13bn of Venezuela's oil money. Where is it?Donald Trump prepares fresh tariff barrage with 10% levies set to expireSamsung in talks to invest in Mistral at €20bn valuationInvestors fear Japanese bond bets risk becoming new ‘widow-maker trade'Want to get in touch? Email us at podcasts@ft.comNote: The FT does not use generative AI to voice its podcasts The FT News Briefing is produced by Victoria Craig, Sonja Hutson, Saffeya Ahmed, Katya Kumkova, and Fiona Symon. Our editor is Marc Filippino. Our show is mixed by Sam Giovinco and Alex Higgins. Additional help from Gavin Kallmann, Michael Lello, Peter Barber and David da Silva. Our intern is Cole van Miltenburg. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz. Flo Phillips is the FT's global head of audio. The show's theme music is by Metaphor Music.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to The Bourbon Road, airing from the Bourbon Road Bar in Simpsonville, Kentucky. This week Jim Shannon rejoins co-host Todd after a week away, and the two dive into a four-bottle lineup that spans continents, traditions, and corn colors. The session opens with a pair of Japanese-influenced whiskeys before pivoting to a high-rye Kentucky icon and a blue corn single barrel that rounds out one of the more eclectic tasting mats the show has assembled. On the Tasting Mat: - Bardstown Bourbon Company Distiller's Reserve – Mars Single Malt Japanese Blend: A 109.8-proof collaborative release blending 69% Kentucky 10-year bourbon (74 corn / 18 rye / 8 malted barley), 8% Kentucky 16-year bourbon (75 corn / 13 rye / 12 malted barley), 20% Mars Komagatake 5-year 100% malted barley, and 3% Mars Shinshu 5-year 100% malted barley. The Japanese whiskeys were co-aged with the Kentucky bourbons in barrel for a full year in Kentucky rather than merely finished. Available in 375ml at an MSRP of $100. The nose opens with bright orchard fruit, plum blossom, and a floral spring-day quality. On the palate it delivers concentrated, intense flavor with a mid-palate tingle, rich dark plum, orange marmalade, honeydew, and a savory undertone riding alongside well-integrated oak. *(00:02:52)* - Yokai Small Batch Bourbon (Mugen Spirits, 3rd Release): A 117-proof small batch aged 7–8 years, produced by Louisville-based Mugen Spirits, co-founded by Kojin Tashiro and Justin Delaney. The distillate is sourced from Bardstown Bourbon Company. Labels are created by a Japanese artist, and the name draws from Japanese folklore creatures. MSRP $99.99. The nose is classic and inviting — vanilla cream, cherry, and butterscotch caramel. The palate surprises with intensity: big flavors up front transitioning to a smokier, oakier back palate, with a notable red hots-style sizzle on the sides and rear of the mouth, hints of candy green apple, and a lingering almond nuttiness. *(00:12:52)* - Willett Family Estate Small Batch Bourbon: A cask-strength expression bottled at approximately 126.6 proof, blending 70–80% of Willett's high-rye mash bill (52 corn / 38 rye / 10 malted barley) with 20–30% of their traditional mash bill (72 corn / 13 rye / 15 malted barley), aged 4–5 years across roughly 50-barrel batches. MSRP $65. The nose is unmistakably Willett — spiced gumdrops, menthol, and grain from the pot still, balanced by sweet ethanol appropriate to its proof. On the palate, a bold upfront spice bite gives way to root beer float, Maraschino cherry, whipped cream, and a sassafras-like hound quality, with the finish fading a touch quicker than the powerful front palate suggests. *(00:27:44)* - Bluegrass Distillers Blue Corn Single Barrel Bourbon (7 Year): A single barrel expression bottled at barrel strength, 129 proof, from Elkwood Farm in Midway, Kentucky. The mash bill is 70% blue corn, 21% rye, and 9% malted barley, aged 7 years. MSRP $70, available at the distillery. The nose is subdued and corn-forward with a light graininess and a hint of blueberry. The palate opens up considerably: buttery and pastry-forward with blueberry hand-pie character, a glazed pastry quality, burnt orange citrus notes, and a slow, warming burn. The finish is notably long and satisfying, distinguishing it from the more front-loaded expressions on the mat. *(00:34:29)* Jim and Todd close out the episode with a reminder about their upcoming Roadie gathering at the Frankfurt Bourbon Society on August 22nd from 5–8 PM. Entry is $5 (temporary FBS membership) and requires a Bourbon Road member ID card — sign up free at TheBournonRoad.com to get yours and RSVP through the Roadie Bar event calendar. Expect a room full of sample bottles, Frankfurt Bourbon Society members, door prizes, and good company. Whether you're a local Kentucky Roadie or making a bourbon trail weekend of it, come find Jim and Todd and raise a glass in person.

Cobweb, Infested, Sting, the list of recent films guaranteed to set off your arachnophobia is long but this mini beast inspired episode is to celebrate the upcoming release of the new MCU offering, Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Allow us to bring you Japanese folklore, cautionary tales and a classic retelling of a children's scary story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sebastian's got World Cup fever while Pete is still celebrating the Knicks win. The guys discuss the UFC White House card and whether or not the fighters should have been coming out of the Oval Office. They discuss cleaning up after themselves at movie theaters, hotels and other events compared to how the Japanese soccer fans are leaving their stadium sections spotless. Is parenting dead? Sebastian re-lives the adventure getting in to the stadium for the World Cup match. Pete's daughter has him questioning an interaction with one of his neighbors. Sebastian's song with Steve Aoki goes viral with one of the biggest soccer stars but he has to answer his dad's question about doing acid. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Charlotte Greenway in for Nick again this morning and joined by the mirrors David Yates. They begin with the rumours doing the rounds this morning that Kia Joorabchian and his number one jockey David Egan have parted ways and what this might mean for the Amo Racing operation. We bring you an update from Beverley's chief executive Sally Iggulden before looking head to the racing this weekend as we hear from Naohiro Goda on the Japanese runners in Saturday's King George as well as Andrew Balding, who's hoping Kalpana can go one better than she did last year. He also has an update on Dante winner item, who returns to York this weekend. Billy Nash of Timeform has our weekly update and reflects Johanna Walsh's performance in Saturdays Irish Oaks, as well as a two year-old to note for later this year and next.

The merging of big-technology with the CIA, and general intelligence community, alongside of social and mainstream media, is well-established in both fact and conspiracy lore. However, tracking down the origins of companies like Palantir, Axonius, OpenAI, ShieldAI, Flock Safety, etc., traces the origin of this system of total surveillance mostly to Israel, though countries like China play a role too - though they have worked heavily with Google. Many of the companies involved also derive their names from mythical realms and draw upon the inspiration of the all-seeing eye. Now that eye is infiltrating classrooms. Nvidia-backed Figure AI has been pushed by the White House directly, with its humanoid robot. Now the New York State Salamanca City Central School District is introducing Sally, a lifelike silicone teacher who will know students not by name but ID number. Sally is made by Reealbotix, which draws heavily from the language models of OpenAI, Meta and Google. Two are their hyper-realistic robots were given Hebrew names: Aria and David. Besides robotics, the U.S. has spent $30 billion to replace paper with digital devices in schools. This has reportedly led to a noticeable decline in cognitive ability among Gen Z. Although countries like Japan are famous for electronics, and have implemented similar policies in schools, Japanese students still outperform American students in most areas. Could this mean that perhaps the issue is far more related to effort and study than it is to technology? Then again, according to PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), Japan had the lowest of all OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries for screen time. A study form the University of Tokyo also found that using paper strengthened brain activity more than screens, which has contributed to some schools taking a hybrid approach -- just like with gasoline and electric vehicles.*The is the FREE archive, which includes advertisements. If you want an ad-free experience, subscribe below.

【一起来读书吧 Bookclub】 我们最近会举办两个读书会活动！ 《台湾漫游录》线下读书会： 8月9日，我们会在纽约中文独立书店Accent Sisters举办《台湾漫游录》线下读书会。故事讲述了1938年日本统治台湾时期，一位年轻的日本女性小说家来到岛上，希望能一路吃穿台湾，在这个过程中她爱上了自己的女性翻译，但却苦于难以克服殖民者与被殖民者之间的鸿沟。这本书今年斩获了国际布克奖，是首部获得这部奖项的华语原著作品。 读书会链接：https://luma.com/yayseynm Apple in China 线上读书会： 7月24日，我们想和大家一起线上共读Patrick McGee 的热销作品 Apple in China。这本书细致讲述了苹果如何在中国建立起现代史上最复杂、最高效的制造与供应链体系之一，也讲述了中国如何成为世界上最有价值公司的关键支柱。作者 Patrick McGee 将在活动最后 30 分钟加入我们，回答大家的问题；问答部分使用英文。 读书会链接：https://luma.com/buwyzrkk We have two book club events coming up soon! "Taiwan Travelogue" In-Person Book Club: On August 9th, we'll be hosting an in-person book club for Taiwan Travelogue at Accent Sisters, a Chinese-language independent bookstore in New York. The story follows a young Japanese novelist who travels to Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period in 1938, hoping to eat and dress her way across the island. Along the way, she falls in love with her female translator, but struggles to overcome the gulf between colonizer and colonized. The book won this year's International Booker Prize, making it the first Chinese-language original work to receive the award. Book club link: https://luma.com/yayseynm On July 24th, we'll be reading Patrick McGee's bestselling book Apple in China together online. The book offers a detailed account of how Apple built one of the most complex and efficient manufacturing and supply chain systems in modern history in China. It also tells the story of how China became a crucial pillar of the world's most valuable company. Author Patrick McGee will join us for the final 30 minutes of the event to answer questions. The Q&A session will be conducted in English. Book club link: https://luma.com/buwyzrkk 【聊了什么The What】 这是一场线下录制内容！ 最近，小杨参加了Same Room纽约播客节，和友台新新人类的主播采薇、残言片语的主播Mercy和喜剧播客唠点扭腰磕的主播Rachel以匮乏时代的流行文化为主题，聊了一期2026流行文化小盘点。 本来有大纲来着，但是四个女的全部失控。录制过程十分快乐，希望你也能听得开心！ This is an in-person recorded episode! Xiao Yang recently attended the Same Room New York Podcast Festival and sat down with hosts from three sister podcasts — Cai Wei from "New New Humans," Mercy from "Fragments of Remaining Words" (残言片语), and Rachel from the comedy podcast "Nagging Points, Twisting Waists" (唠点扭腰磕) — for a conversation about pop culture in a 2026 vibecession. We did have an agenda but that went out of the window - but we had fun, and hope you do too. 【时间轴 The When】 00:00 - 开场：7月及8月线上线下读书会报名指南 01:21 - 播客节现场：四位女性主播的聚首 05:30 - 细聊郑智化轮椅风波：为什么我们难以讨论少数群体的权利 11:29 - TradWife 与利己主义：解析当代女性面对经济下行的心理补偿 18:22 - 文化口红指数：为什么网络上教人“拿结果”的博主大行其道 29:00 - 记者 vs 博主：主流媒体的娱乐化趋势与事实查证的消失 38:45 - 寻找真相的困境：在信息爆炸中感到匮乏的希望 41:25 - 迪拜巧克力走红背后：从视觉与听觉冲击到味觉的割裂 46:09 - 茉莉奶白商战纪实：中国速度与抽象美学在曼哈顿的结合 60:22 - 争议性讨论：关于网红“夏美”与性工作者的可见度困境 67:11 - 拒绝碎片化：如何通过“笨手机”和无聊感重获个人Voice重新注意力对抗无聊 00:00 – Intro: sign-up guide for July and August online/offline book club sessions 01:21 – At the podcast festival: four female hosts come together 05:30 – A close look at the Zheng Zhihua wheelchair controversy: why it's so hard to discuss minority rights 11:29 – Tradwives and self-interest: unpacking the psychological compensation contemporary women seek amid economic downturn 18:22 – The "cultural lipstick index": why influencers teaching people to "get results" are thriving online 29:00 – Journalists vs. influencers: mainstream media's drift toward entertainment and the disappearance of fact-checking 38:45 – The struggle to find truth: feeling a scarcity of hope amid an explosion of information 41:25 – Behind the Dubai chocolate craze: from visual and auditory impact to a disconnect in taste 46:09 – A true account of the Molly Tea (茉莉奶白) price war: Chinese speed and abstract aesthetics colliding in Manhattan 60:22 – A controversial discussion: influencer "Xia Mei" (夏美) and the visibility struggles of sex workers 67:11 – Rejecting fragmentation: reclaiming personal voice and attention through "dumbphones" and embracing boredom 【疲惫红书 CyberRed】 除了播客以外，疲惫娇娃的几个女的在小红书上开了官方账号，我们会不定期发布【疲惫在读】、【疲惫在看】、【疲惫旅行】、【疲惫Vlog】等等更加轻盈、好玩、实验性质的内容。如果你想知道除了播客以外我们在关注什么，快来小红书评论区和我们互动。 Apart from the podcast, we have set up an official account on Xiaohongshu. We will periodically post content such as “CyberPink Reading,” “CyberPink Watching,” “CyberPink Traveling,” “CyberPink Vlog,” and more. Those are lighter, more fun and more experimental stuff about our lives. Leave us some comments on Xiaohongshu! 【买咖啡 Please Support Us】 如果喜欢这期节目并愿意想要给我们买杯咖啡： 海外用户：https://www.patreon.com/cyberpinkfm 海内用户：https://afdian.com/a/cyberpinkfm 商务合作邮箱：cyberpinkfm@gmail.com 商务合作微信：CyberPink2022 If you like our show and want to support us, please consider the following: Those Abroad: https://www.patreon.com/cyberpinkfm Those in China: https://afdian.com/a/cyberpinkfm Business Inquiries Email: cyberpinkfm@gmail.com Business Inquiries WeChat: CyberPink2022

Most of us are familiar with the idea that you need to take 10 thousand steps per day to stay healthy but getting to this magic number is not that easy. The 10,000-step target first became popular in Japan in the 1960s. A clockmaker capitalising on people's new interest in fitness following the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games made a pedometer with a name that, when written in Japanese characters, resembled a walking man and coincidentally translated as “10,000-steps metre.” A study of over 78,000 people in the UK between 2013 and 2015 using wearable trackers was published in the journals JAMA Internal Medicine and JAMA Neurology. Where did we get the number 10 thousand from? Does that mean that we do not need to take 10 steps? So how many steps should I be aiming for per day? In under 3 minutes, we answer your questions! To listen to the last episodes, you can click here: ⁠⁠Can you eat eggs everyday?⁠⁠ ⁠⁠What is Lucky Girl syndrome, this new method that is all the rage on Tik Tok?⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Which type of wine is best for your health?⁠⁠ A podcast written and realised by Amber Minogue. First broadcast: 19/1/2023 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trying to shield Henderson Field with carrier based aircraft, Japanese submarines go hunting for them. Their successes further weaken Adm. Nimitz's offensive air arm. Want to go beyond the battlefield with The History of WWII Podcast? Dive deeper into the war with exclusive bonus episodes, expert interviews, and commercial-free listening for just $5/month! Every penny supports the show and keeps the history coming. https://worldwariipodcast.net/members/ Donations are always welcome and help keep the History of WWII Podcast free for all. https://bit.ly/3UuTZxU  Follow The History of WWII Podcast: RSS – https://feeds.megaphone.fm/history-of-world-war-ii Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/wwii45 Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/rayharrisjr/ TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@wwiiguy YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@historyofwwiipodcast8712 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last time we spoke about the Miluo River Catastrophe. On September 17, General Xue Yue, watching alarming reconnaissance telegrams, learns the Japanese 11th Army has massed across the north bank of the Xinqiang River—3rd, 4th, 6th, and 40th Divisions—alongside additional detachments. Chinese operatives even intercept a Japanese order directing divisions to prepare for an attack on September 18. Despite this, Xue Yue's decisions and readiness remain inadequate. By September 21–23, the fighting at and around the Miluo River and Dongting Lake destroys the 37th Army's ability to function as a coherent combat force. The disaster as both tactical collapse and a failure of planning: Japanese interception and decoding of radio orders allow them to shift toward encirclement, turning Chinese movements into a "trap" laid in advance.   #211 The Japanese Blunt China's Iron Army at Changsha Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The four divisions that had stormed into northern Hunan had made good progress, achieving the victory of defeating three main Chinese armies in quick succession. General Anami Korechika, commanding the Japanese forces, was secretly pleased, but he dared not slacken his efforts in the slightest. He was a methodical man, and he understood that the contest was not yet decided. Every day, his intelligence officers placed before him a stream of intercepted Chinese military telegrams and aerial reconnaissance reports. What they showed gave him reason for both confidence and caution. Two significant forces were moving toward the battlefield — forces unlike those he had so far encountered. One of them was Chiang Kai-shek's elite 74th Army, a formation whose reputation had reached Anami long before, from his time at headquarters in Tokyo. The other was the 10th Army, considered second only to the 74th in quality and fighting spirit.   The 74th Army was no ordinary unit. It had been rigorously trained under German and Soviet instructors specially hired by Chiang Kai-shek, its officers schooled in both European combined-arms doctrine and Soviet tactical flexibility. It was characterized by its disciplined offensive and defensive tactics and was lavishly equipped by the standards of the Chinese military. Most remarkably, it had maintained an undefeated record on the battlefield since the beginning of the war — a distinction that had earned it the title of "Iron Army of the Anti-Japanese War" among the Chinese people. In the high command of the Imperial Japanese Army, it was referred to, with a mixture of respect and wariness, as the Tora no Ko — the "Tiger Child" — meaning, in essence, the ace in the enemy's hand.   The 10th Army was held in nearly equal esteem. The deployment of either of these two formations required the personal approval of Chiang Kai-shek himself. The Generalissimo's principle for employing them was clear and deliberate: they were to be committed only to the most critical battles, those that would decide outcomes, or to the most prominent ones, where their prowess could demonstrate the might of the Chinese army to a watching nation. Since the outbreak of the war, the 74th Army had been kept in reserve at Fenyi in Jiangxi Province, and the 10th Army at Hengyang in southern Hunan. Both forces had been conserving their strength, training, and waiting.   Now Anami's relentless offensive had forced Chiang Kai-shek's hand. The battle situation had tilted dangerously under the weight of Japanese pressure, and the fall of several elite units had left the Chinese commander of the Ninth War Zone, General Xue Yue, with little room to maneuver. Xue Yue had no choice but to appeal to Chongqing for help, and Chiang Kai-shek, reluctantly and with full awareness of the risks, agreed to release his two trump cards. Anami, having mastered his opponent's intentions through his intelligence apparatus, now found himself in the rare and advantageous position of a card player who could see his opponent's hole cards. He carefully planned his battle strategy, studying maps late into the night, conferring with his officers, and calculating how best to neutralize the Chinese elite before they could bring their full weight to bear. He knew that his life's honor, his career, and his legacy rested on this one gamble.   Li Yutang, the commander of the 10th Army, was from Guangrao in Shandong Province — a place that had given China more than its share of fighting men. He was a graduate of the first class of the illustrious Whampoa Military Academy, where he had trained alongside men who would go on to shape the fate of China. At the academy, he had been part of a celebrated group known informally as the "Four Lis of Shandong": himself, Li Xianzhou, Li Yannian, and Li Hanfan. The first three would all rise to significant commands in the Nationalist army. The fourth, Li Hanfan, a native of Changqing in Shandong, had taken an entirely different path, joining the Communist Party of China and fighting the same war under a different flag. In later years, the group became known as the "Three Lis of Shandong," the fourth having parted ways with his classmates long before the guns fell silent.   Li Yutang had not risen quickly or through privilege. He embodied the hardworking, resilient, and tenacious qualities long associated with the men of Shandong — qualities forged by a hard land and harder circumstances. He had climbed the ranks of the army step by step: platoon leader, company commander, battalion commander, regimental commander. Each step had been earned through performance under fire. When Japan launched its full-scale invasion in 1937, Li Yutang was serving as commander of the 3rd Division of the 2nd Army under Li Yannian, participating in the brutal Battle of Shanghai in August of that year. He fought in the grinding urban warfare along the Suzhou Creek, learning lessons in modern combat that would serve him for the rest of the war. The following spring, in March and April of 1938, he led his troops in the Battle of Xuzhou, holding the Linyi line northeast of Taierzhuang, blocking the Japanese 5th Division under Itagaki Seishiro from breaking through to reinforce the embattled Japanese forces at that critical engagement. His handling of the defense contributed to one of the few early Chinese battlefield successes of the war.   For his performance at Xuzhou, he was promoted to commander of the 8th Army. During the Battle of Wuhan in 1938, he led his troops in major engagements against the Japanese 101st and 106th Divisions along the Nanxun Railway, inflicting significant casualties on the attackers. After that campaign, General Xue Yue, recognizing both Li's talent and his Shandong origins — Shandong being home to Mount Tai, the foremost of China's Five Sacred Mountains — personally inscribed a banner reading "Mount Tai Army" and formally presented it to Li Yutang's 8th Army. Chiang Kai-shek added his own recognition, awarding Li Huazhou a medal. In the Battle of Nanchang, Li Yutang again distinguished himself, leading his troops in the defense of Wuning for ten days and ten nights of uninterrupted fighting. When the battle was over, Japanese soldiers lay piled in front of his defensive lines, and the name "Taishan Army" was on every officer's lips from Chongqing to the front. After the First Battle of Changsha in 1939, Chiang Kai-shek personally nominated Li Yutang to take command of the 10th Army — the posting that would now define his legacy. The orders came on September 20, 1941 — three days after the Japanese forces had broken through the Xiangbei defense line in the north. General Xue Yue's summons reached Li Yutang's headquarters in Hengyang, and the 10th Army began immediate preparations for movement to the battlefield.   The mobilization was extraordinary even by the standards of an army that prided itself on discipline and fighting spirit. Li Yutang addressed his men, and the response was unlike anything a commander might ordinarily expect. He received wave after wave of letters — requests to be placed at the front, declarations of determination, pledges to die before surrendering. Some of the letters were written in ordinary ink. Others had been written in blood, the soldier biting his own finger to draw enough for a few lines. These were not men who needed to be driven to battle. They were men who had spent months training for precisely this moment.   Their preparation had been rigorous to the point of fanaticism. For six months before the order came, the 10th Army had conducted intensive training in the three core skills of infantry combat: marksmanship, grenade throwing, and bayonet fighting. The Ministry of National Defense had set a standard that considered a unit successful if one quarter of its men scored "top-tier" in each category. Chiang Kai-shek had personally raised the bar for the 10th Army: eighty percent of every unit must score "top-tier," with the remainder no lower than "excellent." Any unit falling short would face elimination. When the assessments were completed, the result was unambiguous — one hundred percent of the army had met the standard.   Over 30,000 men boarded seven special trains at Hengyang, their military songs and mobilization slogans ringing through the station as families and bystanders watched them depart. The troops traveled by train to Zhuzhou, then transferred to motor vehicles for the road north to Changsha, arriving in the Jinjing area — some seventy kilometers northeast of the city — on September 22nd. They had moved with professional speed. What awaited them would test something no training exercise could fully replicate. From the moment of arrival, the situation was clear to any officer with eyes: the 10th Army had stepped into chaos. However, given the already established passive situation, the 10th Army was like a leaf caught in a whirlpool as soon as it arrived on the battlefield. General Xue Yue, at the Ninth War Zone Command, immediately ordered the entire army to support the besieged 37th Army and simultaneously launch an offensive against the Japanese 3rd Division. It was an ambitious order for troops who had just completed a multi-day journey and had not yet oriented themselves to the ground. Nevertheless, Li Yutang passed the order down and his divisions began to move.   The first division to feel the dislocating effect of high command's demands was Zhu Yue's 190th Division. On September 23rd, the vanguard regiment of the 190th made contact with Japanese forces and was preparing to engage. Before a single shot was fired in earnest, Division Commander Zhu Yue received a telegram from army headquarters ordering him to abandon his current position and rush immediately to Shending Mountain to relieve the siege of the 140th Division of the 37th Army. The order brooked no delay. The troops dropped their baggage where it lay and ran — truly ran, in light order — to the vicinity of Shending Mountain.   They had barely formed ranks at their new position when a second telegram arrived from General Xue Yue. The 190th Division was to immediately reverse course and return to the Fulipu area to establish a defensive line and block the Japanese advance southward. Another forced march, exhausting men who had already marched and traveled for days. They arrived at the designated position on time — a testimony to their conditioning — and Zhu Yue established his division headquarters at Liangjiaduan, near Fulipu. After all the aimless marching and countermanding orders, after all the wasted energy and fruitless attempts, the troops were running on the last of their reserves. They worked through the night constructing fortifications with shovels and bare hands. Just as the first light of dawn revealed the outline of their new positions, the Japanese army advanced.   General Toyoshima Fusataro's Japanese 3rd Division had not rested. It had decisively defeated the 37th Army on the night of the 23rd and turned immediately, without pause, to attack the 190th Division. The blow came from the sky before it came from the ground. At dawn, more than ten Japanese planes swept down over Zhu Yue's division headquarters — seemingly guided, as the Chinese soldiers would later say, as if they had eyes in their heads, so accurate was the targeting. The small village that housed the headquarters was bombed almost to the ground. Dust and smoke billowed over the ruins as the aircraft banked away, and before it had settled, over a thousand Japanese infantrymen, seemingly springing from the earth itself, rushed forward directly toward the headquarters position. The regiment commanders, still at their positions elsewhere, could not be recalled in time.   Division Commander Zhu Yue did not hesitate. He drew his pistol and began commanding his subordinate units to fight back, rallying the headquarters staff and support troops into a perimeter defense. Under the fierce and accurate Japanese fire, Zhu Yue was hit by a bullet in his right arm. Then another round struck him in the left leg, and he went down. Almost simultaneously, Deputy Division Commander Lai Shixiang took command of the nearest available men and attempted to lead a breakout with a machine gun. An enemy mortar round found its mark, and Lai Shixiang was killed instantly. The division headquarters personnel, already shocked by the swiftness of the attack and the wounding of their commander, broke into disorder. Chaos erupted on the battlefield. Many soldiers ran blindly in the smoke and confusion, dying in the crossfire from multiple directions.   Division Chief of Staff Tao Xiu, now acting as deputy division commander with Zhu Yue incapacitated, took hold of the situation as best he could. He led the remnants of the headquarters staff in retreat toward a hollow in a grove of trees near the edge of the village. When the headcount was taken, approximately twenty men remained capable of fighting. It was already ten o'clock in the morning. Tao Xiu gathered these few men and led them along a small path through the dense forest on the outskirts of the village, bypassing Liangjiaduan, searching for the dispersed units of the division.   Out on the main positions, the 568th, 569th, and 570th Regiments were simultaneously surrounded and attacked. The officers and soldiers, exhausted from days and nights of continuous fighting, summoned what remained of their endurance and put up a tenacious resistance. From dawn until the afternoon, several positions were cut off and divided by Japanese encircling movements. In the ever-shrinking pockets, each cluster of defenders became an isolated target for enemy aircraft and artillery. Completely losing the initiative, groups of officers and soldiers perished in the shelling. Many of them died not in defiance but in something closer to despair — regretting this humiliating reversal, the waste of their patriotic aspirations, their unfulfilled desire to fight and kill the enemy on their own terms.   By evening, the regimental commanders had lost control of their respective battalions and companies. The remaining soldiers on each position scattered and concealed themselves in whatever ground offered cover, hiding in all directions across the darkening hills. It was not until midnight that the lightly wounded and unwounded officers and soldiers managed to assemble, as the contingency plan had directed, in a dense forest on the southwest side of the position. Division Commander Zhu Yue, wounded in both his arm and his leg, had been sent to the rear to receive treatment. Acting Deputy Division Commander Tao Xiu stood before the assembled survivors — more than two hundred men gathered from the regiments — and offered them quiet words of comfort. There was little else he could give them. The people present carried the seriously wounded on improvised stretchers and supported the lightly wounded with their arms and shoulders, groping their way through the darkness toward Zhuzhou. The 10th Reserve Division, under Commander Fang Xianjue, had been assigned to hold the Jinjing line — a position that, on paper, formed an anchor of the defensive scheme. In practice, the situation was deeply flawed from the outset. The Ninth War Zone Command had placed the 10th Reserve Division alone at Jinjing with no depth behind it and no friendly forces on either flank — an isolated salient that offered the Japanese every opportunity for encirclement.   On the 23rd, the division captured the Kanai line at noon, an initial success that promised more than it delivered. Around six o'clock in the evening, as darkness gathered, General Kanda Masatsuka arrived at the front with the vanguard of the Japanese 6th Division. He was not a man to move without information. Before committing to a full assault, Kanda ordered a probing attack and watched its progress carefully through binoculars from a small hill behind the advancing force. What he saw gave him pause. However he searched for a weak point in the Chinese line, the defenders showed none. No gap in the wire, no position carelessly manned, no sector that sagged under pressure. Kanda lowered his binoculars and considered his next step. He felt this was indeed an elite unit with excellent tactical skills, and should not be underestimated. He ordered a halt to the attack and waited for the full arrival of his division's strength.   On the morning of the 24th, the Japanese launched their proper assault — a fierce attack from the east, north, and west simultaneously. The three-directional pressure was designed to pin the defenders and deny any lateral reinforcement. Kanda went further, requesting permission from General Anami to concentrate all thirty-plus bombers available for the entire battlefield and direct them at the 10th Reserve Division's positions in a single concentrated raid. Anami granted the request. The bombing was devastating. The defending positions were almost completely destroyed from the air. Yet in the ruins of their fortifications and bunkers, the soldiers of the 10th Reserve Division continued fighting, repelling Japanese ground attacks wave after wave through the rubble and the smoke.   At two o'clock in the afternoon, a report reached Fang Xianjue that halted him in his tracks. A Japanese regiment had executed a large-scale outflanking maneuver around the south side of Jinjing and was approaching the rear of the position. The encirclement was closing. Fang Xianjue was shocked. He now grasped in full the tactical impossibility of his assignment. The Ninth War Zone Command had placed the 10th Reserve Division here alone, exposed on all sides, without depth and without support. The order to "block the enemy's southward advance" had been an empty promise from the start. Fang Xianjue could not understand the strategic intention behind the deployment at all — there was none that made any tactical sense. The only purpose of holding out here, he concluded bitterly, was to theoretically be seen to be "fighting the Japanese." Before Fang Xianjue could translate his analysis into a decision, the Japanese troops launched another fierce attack from the front and both flanks, and one side of the defensive line was breached. The situation became critical. Fang Xianjue decided to withdraw before the encircling force to the south could complete its movement and seal off all escape. He did not have time to seek authorization from the war zone — there was no time. He ordered each regiment to organize its own breakout and reassemble at designated locations.   At four o'clock in the afternoon, Fang Xianjue led the division headquarters in the first withdrawal from the battlefield. Looking back as he departed, he watched as the regiments were cut apart by Japanese fire, large numbers of officers and soldiers falling among the mountain ridges and into the ditches and gullies. There was nothing more he could do for them.   By the 25th, approximately half of the division's troops had reached the designated reception point. After a hasty reorganization, they were ordered to occupy positions along the Xueshi Bridge line and prepare to resume the defense. That same evening, a portion of the Japanese 3rd Division — fresh from its defeat of the 190th Division — launched a fierce attack on Xueshi Bridge. The positions could not be held. The scene of the previous day's rout was repeated almost exactly, and this second defeat completed the destruction of the 10th Reserve Division as a coherent fighting force. General Xue Yue's rebuke reached Fang Xianjue shortly afterward, and the division commander had no way to express the depth of his frustration — the tactical position he had been placed in had made his assignment impossible before the first shot was fired. On the 26th, he led the surviving troops to be received and reorganized by war zone units near Changsha. Compared to the bitter fates of the 190th Division and the 10th Reserve Division, Zhou Qingxiang's 3rd Division wrote a different kind of story in these same days — one of extraordinary tactical competence maintained against mounting odds. In the equally fierce battles, the 3rd Division demonstrated the qualities of an elite force more effectively than any other unit on either side.   On the 22nd, the 3rd Division had been ordered to establish positions two kilometers east of Fulipu. At noon on the 24th, after the Japanese 3rd Division defeated Zhu Yue's 190th Division, a portion of the Japanese force turned and attacked the right flank of Zhou Qingxiang's position. It was repelled. That evening, the Japanese 4th Division, riding the momentum of its success against the 37th Army, launched a night attack on the 3rd Division's left flank. It too was repelled. On the 25th, Zhou Qingxiang's division was attacked from both sides simultaneously by the main forces of two Japanese divisions — forces that outnumbered the defenders several times over. The officers and soldiers of the entire division showed no fear. They fought bravely and with skill honed by months of intensive preparation, holding their lines despite heavy casualties and preventing the Japanese from breaking through at any point.   When word of this resistance was relayed to General Anami Korechika at his headquarters, he fell into a long, uncharacteristic silence. He studied the reports before him, the maps, the casualty tallies on both sides. Then he turned to his chief of staff, General Isamu Kinoshita. "This is the elite force," Anami said quietly. He paused a moment, and added: "I really want to go there and see for myself." The compliment, delivered in the private setting of a Japanese headquarters, was perhaps the most honest assessment of the fighting quality of Zhou Qingxiang's men that history has preserved.   Anami's response, however, was not admiration — it was determination to overwhelm. On the morning of the 26th, he concentrated nearly the entire combat power available to him against the single 3rd Division: units drawn from the Japanese 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 40th Divisions — close to 100,000 men — were directed to surround and destroy the Chinese formation. The 3rd Division stubbornly held its ground despite catastrophic casualties, the soldiers refusing to give way even as the perimeter contracted and the dead accumulated.   To ease the relentless pressure from enemy aircraft, the division commanders made a calculated decision: all positions were ordered to allow the Japanese troops to close to hand-to-hand fighting range. If the enemy was within arm's reach, the bombers above could not strike without killing their own men. Several instances of fierce hand-to-hand fighting erupted across the defensive line as a result — bayonets, shovels, pistols and bare hands in the broken earth and shell craters. By noon, the 8th Regiment had been divided and surrounded. Shortly afterward, the 7th and 9th Regiments met the same fate. Zhou Qingxiang moved the division headquarters to the position of the 7th Regiment to maintain command over his most accessible unit, while the deputy division commander and chief of staff were dispatched to coordinate the independent defense of the 8th and 9th Regiments respectively. For another half day, each of the three regimental pockets fought alone. At dusk, Zhou Qingxiang ordered a breakout.   As darkness fell, exploiting the brief respite that came when the Japanese halted their attacks for the night, each regiment burst simultaneously from its position. Carefully prepared covering detachments remained behind and created convincing feints toward false breakout directions, drawing the enemy's main pursuit forces away from the actual withdrawal routes. The deceptions worked. By the time the Japanese commanders understood what had happened, the breakout had succeeded. Officers and soldiers filtered into the designated reception point in small groups — three men here, five there — arriving through the night and into the following morning. When the count was complete, the 3rd Division was a remnant of less than one-fifth of its pre-battle strength. The finest infantry division in the 10th Army had bled itself almost dry, but it had done so on its own terms, and it had extracted as much as it was possible to extract from an impossible situation.   On September 27th, a chilly autumn wind blew across the city of Changsha. At the playground of Lizhong Middle School in the eastern part of the city, Li Yutang stood and watched the survivors of his divisions come in. A week before, on September 20th, more than 30,000 men had departed Hengyang aboard seven special trains. Their military songs had filled the railway station. Their letters of determination, some written in blood, had been stacked on Li Yutang's desk. Their training scores were the highest ever recorded for a Chinese army unit — a perfect one hundred percent of "top-tier" achievement across all three infantry skills. They had been, by every measurable standard, the finest army China could produce.   Standing now at the playground of a secondary school repurposed as a muster point, Li Yutang looked at what remained: a little over 2,000 men, including lightly wounded soldiers from Changsha who had been caught up in the fighting and bandaged civilians who had taken up arms. Two thousand, from thirty thousand. What had happened to the others? They were dead. They were injured. They were maimed. Some had broken under the pressure and run. The accounting was simple and devastating. Li Yutang's expression remained dignified as he inspected his survivors — the face of a commander who understood that bearing is required of officers precisely in the moments when bearing costs the most. But his heart was filled with tears. Perhaps soon, he reflected, there would be another 10th Army — still heroic and spirited, still singing loudly as it went to war. But it would not be the same one.   History has no gaps or blank pages. The story of the 10th Army's ordeal was barely complete before the next chapter began. Reluctantly, one must turn the page. Following the 10th Army, Wang Yaowu's 74th Army also suffered a crushing defeat. Wang Yaowu had received his orders from Commander Xue on September 21st and had immediately begun moving his three divisions from their cantonments at Fenyi and Xinyu in Jiangxi Province. The 74th Army was composed of three divisions: the 51st Division under Li Tianxia, the 57th Division under Yu Chengwan, and the 58th Division under Liao Lingqi. These were the formations that had kept the "Iron Army" undefeated through four years of brutal warfare. Their code names told their own story — the 51st Division was called "Frontline," the 57th was called "Tiger Warrior," and the 58th was called "Exhilarating." Wang Yaowu had personally chosen the code name for the army headquarters: "Brilliant." Chiang Kai-shek himself had once remarked, "Of all the code names, yours is the best." It was a small distinction, but one that Wang Yaowu quietly cherished.   What Wang Yaowu did not know — could not know, for Anami's intelligence network had kept the preparation perfectly concealed — was that Anami Korechika had been monitoring his movements since the order to deploy was first issued. The Japanese commander had already selected the terrain, positioned his units, and laid the trap. He was waiting for the 74th Army's arrival.   On the 25th, Wang Yaowu led the 57th Division into the battlefield first, marching rapidly as Xue Yue had directed to Chunhua Mountain on the north bank of the Laodao River, east of Changsha, to occupy positions and cover the main force's deployment. On the evening of the 25th, the 169th and 170th Regiments of the 57th Division arrived at the south side of Chunhua Mountain and encountered a Japanese search party of over a hundred men. The 169th Regiment swiftly cut off the small force's escape route, coordinating effectively with the 170th. The Japanese detachment suffered heavy casualties, and the survivors fled toward Chunhua Mountain. When part of the 170th Regiment reached the foot of the mountain, they ran into a much larger Japanese force coming down to meet them — and learned in that moment that Chunhua Mountain had already been occupied by the enemy.   Wang Yaowu responded instantly. To seize the initiative before the Japanese could consolidate, he ordered two regiments to assault Chunhua Mountain that same night. Around midnight, the troops advanced in silence through the dark. After a fierce night battle, two Japanese battalions were unable to hold against the assault and withdrew in the early hours of the morning. The 57th Division had its foothold. At dawn on the 26th, a regiment from the 57th Division followed up the night's success, and Yu Chengwan positioned the division along the Chunhua Mountain line. As the morning advanced, the 51st and 58th Divisions arrived to complete the deployment. Following Xue Yue's orders, Wang Yaowu spread his force across the line: the 57th Division at Chishi River, the 58th Division at Chunhua Mountain itself, and the 51st Division at Fengjiang Bridge. They were ready. Or so it appeared.   At dawn on the 27th, Wang Yaowu went on the offensive. The 57th Division launched a surprise attack on the camp of the main force regiment of the Japanese 3rd Division. The Japanese were caught entirely unprepared — the attack came in total darkness, and the camp was thrown into chaos before anyone could organize a coherent response. The Japanese managed to form some kind of defense only as the first light of dawn broke, and through the morning the two armies clashed furiously. By mid-morning, the Japanese had been forced back three kilometers — a genuine and significant victory achieved through aggression and timing.   Then, at eight o'clock, the Japanese 3rd Division launched its counterattack with the support of dozens of aircraft — fighter-bombers diving low over the Chunhua Mountain positions, strafing and bombing. Both armies knew themselves to be elite formations; each had its country's reputation riding on the outcome. They clashed with corresponding ferocity.   Around noon, Wang Yaowu climbed to the rooftop of a farmhouse and studied the Japanese battle line through his field glasses. What he saw was encouraging: a breach had appeared in the enemy's formation to the north of Chunhua Mountain — a gap that, if exploited quickly, could roll up the Japanese flank. He ordered Li Hanqing, the infantry commander of the 51st Division, to take two regiments and execute an outflanking maneuver through that gap, striking the Japanese from the side. An hour later, Li Hanqing's movement succeeded. The Japanese forces were thrown into disarray, breaking rearward in a rout. For one brief hour, it seemed as though the 74th Army might achieve a decisive success. Then the Japanese 4th Division arrived. It swept in from behind Li Hanqing's flanking force, surrounding his two regiments before they could extract themselves. In the desperate fighting of the breakout attempt, Li Hanqing was shot and killed.   In the afternoon, with two of its regiments lost to encirclement and its flanking stroke reversed, the 57th Division found itself holding off two full Japanese divisions alone. The fighting continued — artillery, rifle fire, close assaults — until nightfall dimmed the battlefield. The division had suffered over 3,000 casualties, and more than half of all commanders below battalion level had been killed or wounded. Division Commander Yu Chengwan conferred with Wang Yaowu over the field telephone, and together they decided to withdraw the troops to prepared positions to hold through the night.   Meanwhile, on the same 27th of September, Liao Lingqi's 58th Division at Chunhua Mountain was subjected to a separate and equally devastating assault by the Japanese 6th Division, reinforced by elements of the 3rd Division. The positions at Chunhua Mountain were compact and clustered — ideal targets for concentrated aerial bombardment. The Japanese bombers came in two waves, and after both had passed, the hastily constructed earthen fortifications were almost entirely destroyed. Across what had been the defensive line, limbs and broken bodies could be seen among the wreckage. The entire division had suffered devastating casualties.   Beginning at nine o'clock in the morning, tens of thousands of Japanese troops launched successive offensive waves, methodically dividing the defensive line into sections and breaking through each one in turn. The defenders engaged the Japanese in hand-to-hand combat at position after position, gunfire and the shouts of bayonet fighters filling the smoke-thickened air. At two o'clock in the afternoon, the Chunhua Mountain defense line collapsed. The surviving soldiers attempted to break out in small groups, but many were intercepted and cut down by Japanese forces waiting along the escape routes.   Wang Yaowu was seething. He directed the battle from wherever he could find a usable vantage point, issuing orders in rapid succession — one moment ordering the 51st Division to send reinforcements to Chunhua Mountain, the next directing the army's directly subordinate regiments to absorb the shattered remnants of the 58th Division, then ordering the 57th Division to block Japanese forces from reinforcing the encirclement. He was everywhere at once, doing the work of a staff of twenty, improvising responses to crises that unfolded faster than any plan could accommodate. And as he directed, the same thought played and replayed: wasn't the Ninth War Zone just feeding them to the wolves? They had jumped into the enemy's encirclement without any initiative, while the enemy could attack from whatever direction they chose. He had nowhere to vent his frustration on the battlefield, only able to fend for himself. While directing the battle, he cursed under his breath: "What kind of hell is this?!"   As dusk fell over the chaos, the gunfire gradually subsided. The Japanese as a rule did not launch night attacks — a pattern the Chinese had come to rely upon for the brief respite it offered. Li Tianxia, commander of the 51st Division, concentrated his troops from the flanks toward the center to consolidate a defensible perimeter. The 57th Division, adjacent to the 51st and badly diminished by the day's fighting, did the same. Both divisions settled into their positions, and the exhausted soldiers lay down fully clothed, weapons in hand, and tried to rest. At midnight, the battlefield exploded.   Fierce gunfire roused the soldiers from whatever shallow sleep they had found. Two elite regiments of the Japanese 6th Division had broken through the gap that had opened between the positions of the 51st and 57th Divisions — a gap created by both units pulling inward — and were driving directly toward the headquarters of the 74th Army. In Wang Yaowu's many years of battlefield experience, this was the only instance he ever encountered of a large Japanese force launching a major attack at night.   The knowledge of terrain displayed by the attacking Japanese regiments was so precise, the route to army headquarters so accurately selected, that it raised immediate suspicions of an intelligence compromise — an inside source who had provided the attackers with maps and positions. Whatever the explanation, the effect was devastating. The headquarters' directly subordinate regiment and guard battalion were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed. They fought where they could, but the Japanese pushed through them.   The guard platoon leader, a man who had served at Wang Yaowu's side through numerous campaigns, gathered several of his best soldiers and formed a close escort. He led Wang Yaowu into the darkness as the Japanese closed around the headquarters compound. More than a hundred Japanese soldiers gave chase — moving through the dark with a sureness of foot that seemed almost preternatural, as if they had developed night vision. The platoon leader recognized that Wang Yaowu could not outrun a hundred men. He shouted to the general and the remaining escort: "Go quickly!" Then he and a single machine gunner turned and stayed behind. Wang Yaowu ran. A few minutes later, the machine gunner was killed. Shortly after that, the platoon leader was shot through the leg and fell to the ground. He was captured.   Wang Yaowu threw himself into the grass beside a drainage ditch and lay still as Japanese soldiers searched the ground around him, their voices close enough to touch. From his hiding place, he heard his platoon leader — the man who had been at his side day and night, who had chosen to stay behind so that his general might live — cursing the Japanese soldiers from the ground where he lay captured and wounded. Then a Japanese officer drew his sword. The cursing stopped. The Japanese soldiers moved on. The gunfire subsided. Wang Yaowu lay in the grass in the dark and did not move until he was certain they were gone. When he crawled out of the bushes, he looked up at the stars, found the direction of Liuyang, and began walking in the darkness with the few guards who had stayed close. He walked until dawn.   Since joining the army, Wang Yaowu had never allowed himself to think about fear of death. He had spent too many years on battlefields, seen too much death and bloodshed, to entertain it as a personal concern. This time, however, he was in tears. Not from sadness, and not from fear. From something harder to name and harder to bear: frustration — the frustration of a capable commander who had been committed to battle by a higher command that neither understood the ground nor provided him the support to fight on it, and who had watched good men die for orders that made no tactical sense.   In the aftermath of the battle, Wang Yaowu's grief was compounded by something beyond the ordinary losses of combat. The 27th alone had cost the 57th Division nearly half its strength, and the 58th Division had been essentially wiped out as a fighting formation. Of his three powerful divisions, only the 51st remained relatively intact. In war, such losses, however painful, are comprehensible. What happened next was not. Liao Lingqi, the commander of the 58th Division — one of the three officers Wang Yaowu had called his "tigers" — did not remain with his shattered troops to regroup and reorganize them. Instead, after the division's collapse, he slipped away from the battlefield with only his personal guards, changed into civilian clothes, and boarded a train bound for his hometown of Qiyang in southern Hunan to visit his family.   By unhappy chance, a senior staff officer from the Ninth War Zone was aboard the same train. He recognized Liao Lingqi and watched, saying nothing, as the division commander traveled south in civilian dress while his men lay dead on Chunhua Mountain. Upon arriving in Hengyang, the officer went directly to report the incident to General Xue Yue. Xue Yue instructed the Military Law Supervision Department to investigate and referred the case to the Military Commission's Military Law Enforcement Directorate on charges of desertion in the face of the enemy. At that point, in that situation, there was nothing Wang Yaowu could say. He had no words left. He had given everything he had to the battle, and this was what greeted him at the end of it.   The elite 74th Army, with its heroic spirit and its unbroken record, had captured the imagination of the Chinese nation and the hearts of countless young men. When soldiers of the 74th Army returned to their hometowns on leave, they wore their elite status openly, and the prestige of the unit was such that families sought them as sons-in-law. Young men who enlisted and were not selected for the 74th Army were known to weep. What a fine unit. But this time, the trap had been perfectly laid, and the intelligence had been mastered. Anami had looked at his opponent's hole cards and played accordingly. He had concentrated overwhelming force, moved with coordination and speed, and exploited the confusion generated by contradictory orders from the Ninth War Zone Command. The Chinese elite had fought with courage and skill that earned the admiration of their enemies. They had simply been outgeneraled at the operational level.   The Second Battle of Changsha, Phase Three, had cost China two of its finest armies. The 10th Army had departed Hengyang over 30,000 strong and returned barely 2,000. The 74th Army had suffered a crushing defeat from which it would require months to rebuild. Wang Yaowu had walked alone through the dark to Liuyang. Li Yutang had stood in the autumn wind at a schoolyard and looked at what remained of the men who had written their determination in blood.   I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Phase Three of the second battle of Changsha showed Anami Korechika using intelligence and planning to blunt China's elite forces as Chiang Kai-shek reluctantly deployed the "Iron Army" 74th and the 10th. Intercepted communications enable encirclement and heavy losses. Li Yutang's merit and experience shape resistance, yet Japanese strategy dominates from the outset through coordinated advances.

On the final days of Obon, fishermen along Japan's western coast once believed the sea belonged to the dead. In this episode, I read Lafcadio Hearn's eerie and beautiful essay “By the Japanese Sea.” Along the journey, we encounter drowned spirits rising from the waves, cats carried aboard fishing boats to ward off ghosts, delicate straw vessels made for lost souls, and a haunted futon whispering in the voices of two freezing children. This reading originally appeared as one of the bedtime stories shared with Uncanny Japan Patreon supporters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can small daily choices completely transform your health? Join us on Spaghetti on the Wall as we welcome Haley Bishoff, Registered Dietitian and founder of Rūtsu Nutrition, for an inspiring conversation about plant-based nutrition, the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, sustainable wellness, and creating lifelong healthy habits.Connect with Haley BishoffYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@rutsu.nutritionInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/hbishhh/?hl=enLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haleybishoff/Website: https://www.rutsunutrition.com/

Today's episode of The Carmudgeon Show is a bumper episode. It's also a headlight, taillight, and side market episode - all of the above which were effected greatly in the mid-1970s to 1980s by updated US Department of Transportation regulations in 1974.===Visit http://JasonSentMe.com to get a Hagerty Guaranteed Value (TM) collector-car insurance quote! === But first, a Rover update!! The Rover is back (temporarily) on the west coast - we get some long awaited updates, new plans, and of course a new chapter of the saga which may send the car back where it just was……the project never stops! 5-mph bumpers were one of the crucial components removed from the Rover to make it tolerable to look at today. These US-mandated bumpers (and headlights and taillights) the bane of existence for many European and Japanese manufactures in period. Most of these manufactures were so perturbed by this regulation, that the bumper integration became a bit of an afterthought. Cars like the Mercedes-Benz R107 and W116 were considered some of the worst offenders given the size and integration of the bumper in comparison to the car's raw proportions. Other cars like the BMW E21, E23, E24, E28, and E30 were also repeat offenders. Other cars mentioned include but are not limited to: Maserati Bora, Lamborghini Countach, Rover SD1, Volkswagen Scirocco (MK2) + Cabriolet, Citroen CX, Jaguar XJS, Alfa Romeo Spider, Honda Accord, Datsun Z, BMW 2002, Volkswagen Beetle, Toyota Corolla, Ford Taurus, and Ford Thunderbird. Rarely, did a manufacture decide they would go the extra mile and integrate the bumper into the design of the car - the G-body Porsche 911 and Chevrolet Corvette C3 were one of the few of the time. And if you didn't get enough Rover air time this episode or need a recap, Jason's just written a 5 column article for The Intercooler about his experience so far - you can red it here: https://www.the-intercooler.com/library/features/america-fast-part-two/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 2026 Boston Red Sox have given their fans quite the ride over the past four months. After a rough start to the season that saw manager Alex Cora lose his job, they now find themselves on a 13-game winning streak and suddenly in a wild card spot. They're also just seven games out of first place in the AL East. Is a division title in the cards? On this episode of Baseball Bar-B-Cast, Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman talk about the historic run Boston has been on, including sweeping their rivals, the Tampa Bay Rays, this past weekend. They highlight how the Red Sox bullpen has been incredibly strong during this stretch, as well as the offensive contributions from Willson Contreras, Wilyer Abreu and Caleb Durbin. Later in the show, Jake and Jordan discuss the surprising news that Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani will put pitching on hold for the rest of the season as he battles a leg injury, and whether Pete Crow-Armstrong could overtake the Japanese star for the NL MVP award. They also break down the Toronto Blue Jays getting a reality check from the Chicago White Sox this past weekend, the Milwaukee Brewers sweeping the Miami Marlins and recap all the other action from around baseball.   1:15 - The Opener: Red Sox win streak 21:54 - We Need To Talk About: Ohtani steps off the mound 32:52 - PCA vs. Ohtani for MVP? 39:39 - How Sweep It Is: Brewers sweep Marlins 52:13 - Blue Jays get a reality check 55:32 - Field Report: Skenes guts it out vs. Guardians 1:01:56 - How Sweep It Is: Weekend recap Subscribe to Baseball Bar-B-Cast on your favorite podcast app:

Today's story: In cities of the far north, it never gets fully dark around the summer solstice. Cities and towns celebrate with festivals, outdoor events, and late-night traditions, from baseball in Alaska to White Nights in St. Petersburg. But constant light can also affect sleep, so people use blackout curtains, dim lights, and other routines to help their bodies adjust. Transcript & Exercises: https://plainenglish.com/883Get the full story and learning resources: https://plainenglish.com/883--Plain English helps you improve your English:Learn about the world and improve your EnglishClear, natural English at a speed you can understandNew stories every weekLearn even more at PlainEnglish.comMentioned in this episode:Hard words? No problemNever be confused by difficult words in Plain English again! See translations of the hardest words and phrases from English to your language. Each episode transcript includes built-in translations into Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and Turkish. Sign up for a free 14-day trial at PlainEnglish.com

Illustrator, toy designer, filmmaker, and lifelong storyteller Chogrin joins Toys on Tap to trace a creative journey shaped by two cultures and an unstoppable love of characters.Growing up in Ecuador, Chogrin absorbed everything from Super Sentai and Japanese heroes to Ghostbusters, Ninja Turtles, and classic rubber-hose animation. After moving to the United States and starting over, he turned that mix of influences into a career that led from Cartoon Network to Adventure Time, gallery shows, designer toys, filmmaking, and Magic: The Gathering.We talk about:• Rebuilding his childhood toy collection • Working behind the scenes on Adventure Time • Finding his voice through illustration • Turning art-show ideas into 3D objects • Creating Guru del Toro and his “Guru” toy series • Designing toys inspired by TMNT and Jurassic Park • Opening your own doors instead of waiting • His next short film, Sector 1218This episode is a fast, inspiring look at what happens when curiosity, persistence, and genuine fandom collide.On Instagram: @chogrinThanks to Our SupportersRate & Review the Show! Leave a rating and review wherever you listen it's the best way to help Toys on Tap grow!Empire Blisters: If you are looking for blisters for vintage toys or new bootleg figures head over to https://www.empireblisters.com and use code TOYSONTAP10 for 10% offSubscribe and Follow AlongInstagram:@toysontapLinkedin: Abraham MustoFacebook:@toysontapYoutube:@Toysontap

We review all the latest Ipswich Town transfer news - with deals for three World Cup 2026 stars looking close, potentially Town's first Japanese player, plus a couple of Dutch goalkeepers!

It's 海の日 -Umi no Hi (Marine Day) here in Japan, and I'm marking it with a taste of what a Japanese summer at the sea really feels like

Ross Halls is joined by Alex Jones for a Monday edition of Ipswich Town Transfer Talk.The boys reflect on a busy weekend of news, with deals agreed for Leicester City star Abdul Fatawu and Fulham defender Issa Diop.Then it's onto the Blues' interest in Dutch goalkeepers Kayne van Oevelen and Kjell Scherpen, playing at FC Volendam and Union SG respectively.There's also talk about Hidemasa Morita, the Japanese midfielder in talks over a switch to Portman Road after leaving Sporting CP.Kings of Anglia is sponsored Molecular! Get 10% OFF with promo code KOA10 at https://www.molecular-uk.com/Subscribe on our website to watch the video version of the podcast - https://www.eadt.co.uk/subscribe/You can shop the KOA range here - (kings-of-anglia.myspreadshop.co.uk) 

** Trump describes military personnel killed in Jordan and Iraq as "great patriots" ... ** Asylum Seekers going hungry on Nauru as they can't afford enough food ... - アメリカ、ドナルド・トランプ大統領は、ヨルダンとイラクで戦死した米軍兵士をGreat Patoriots「偉大な愛国者」と称え、イランへの夜間攻撃は彼らを称えるためのものだと話しました。ナウル難民支援センターによると、ナウルでオーストラリアへの難民申請をしている人々のほぼ全員が、十分な食料を買う余裕がないため、飢えに苦しんでいると伝えています。Listen to SBS Japanese Audio on Tue, Thu and Fri from 1pm on SBS 3. Replays from 10pm on Tue, Thu and Sat on SBS1. Listen to past stories from our podcast. Download the free SBS Audio App and don't forget to visit SBS Japanese Facebook and Instagram page! - SBSの日本語放送は火木金の午後１時からSBS3で生放送！火木土の夜10時からはおやすみ前にSBS1で再放送が聞けます。SBS日本語放送ポッドキャストから過去のストーリーを聞くこともできます。無料でダウンロードできるSBS Audio Appもどうぞ。SBS 日本語放送のFacebookとInstagramもお忘れなく。

⚠ CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains extensive, highly detailed accounts of real-world serial murder, financial exploitation, the complete thermal destruction of human remains, and themes of animal cruelty. Listener discretion is absolutely mandatory.Welcome back to Stories Fables Ghostly Tales. Tonight, we present The Art of Transparency: The Saitama Dog Lover Murders — Japan, 1993.Deep within the mountain passes of Saitama Prefecture, a remote wooden hut once hid a factory of absolute non-existence. We pull back the friendly, commercial facade of a luxury pet breeding kennel to dissect a terrifying pattern of cold-blooded, economically driven slaughter.

In this episode, sponsored by the Embroiderers’ Guild of America (egausa.org), Gary Parr talks with needlework teacher and designer Kris Andrews about a career spent mastering — and teaching — an impressive range of techniques, from surface embroidery and goldwork to Japanese embroidery and rug hooking. Kris traces her path back to teaching Hardanger at Tea Time Stitchery, and shares what’s kept her drawn to teaching ever since, including her work introducing needlework to children and her love of designing stitching gardens. She’s a Certified Japanese Embroidery instructor and a Certified Oxford Punch Needle Rug Hooking Instructor through The Oxford Company. She’ll be teaching classes at the EGA 2026 National Seminar, “Wish Upon a Stitch,” in Orlando, FL. It’s a conversation about craftsmanship, curiosity, and passing a love of the needle on to the next generation of stitchers. Listen to the podcast: This show is also available on FlossTube. Watch the video You can listen by using the player above or you can subscribe to Fiber Talk through iTunes, Amazon Music, Spotify, Audible, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, Podbay, Podbean, and many other podcast sources. To receive e-mail notification of new podcasts, provide your name and e-mail address below. We do not sell/share e-mail addresses. Here are some links: Embroiderers’ Guild of America website Kris Andrews website The Oxford Company website We hope you enjoy this conversation with Kris Andrews. We're always looking for guests, so let me know if there is someone you’d like me to have on the show. To add yourself to our mailing list and be notified whenever we post a new podcast, provide your name and email address below. You won’t get spam and we won’t share your address.

Watch the full podcast! https://chinauncensored.tv/programs/podcast-343 In a desperate attempt to subvert Japanese politics and society, the CCP has gone too far. Now it's coming back to bite them hard. We are joined by David Day, Chairman of the Global Risk Mitigation Foundation. Join our fight to expose the CCP at https://chinauncensored.tv and get ALL the new full-length interviews!

Britain's governing Labour Party has officially declared Andy Burnham its new leader paving the way for him to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister. In his first speech as leader, he pledged to 'bring back hope'. China's President Xi Jinping has called for global cooperation on the development of artificial intelligence to mitigate the risks it poses. India has begun operating its first ever hydrogen-powered train; it's hoped the green technology will help modernise one of the world's biggest rail networks. The Japanese parliament has approved a bill to relax imperial succession rules, amid concerns over the dwindling size of the imperial family. But it does not change the law barring women from ascending to the throne. An angry crowd has reportedly attacked a hospital housing an Ebola treatment centre, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, forcing patients and health workers to flee. A UK study of a minimally-invasive treatment for prostate cancer has found it is as effective as surgery or radiotherapy - but with far fewer side-effects. For the first time, astronomers have detected an atmosphere around an Earth-like rocky planet that could have water on its surface. And the great niece of the acclaimed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo expresses concern that the growing hype and merchandise connected with her image, might detract from her art. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk Photo: Henry Nicholls/ Reuters Credit: Andy Burnham reacts as he speaks after being confirmed as the Labour Party's new leader and the country's next Prime Minister

Artificial Intelligence continues to infiltrate every aspect of life including the pulpits of America’s churches. On In The Market with Janet Parshall this week, tech expert Doug Smith was back to explain how more and more pastors are turning to these programs to prepare sermons and why we should be concerned about programs designed to become addictive. Israel continues to be the focal point of word’s ire and Jim Scudder explained why there is an ongoing spiritual war against the Promised Land and its people. Aaron Armstrong explained why so many believers do not live in the true transformative power of their faith and how to get back to a relational faith with God that opens the door for life altering change. On July 30th, 1945, the Japanese sank the U.S.S Indianapolis. Of the 900 cast in shark infested waters only 316 survived. One of those survivors, Edgar Harrell joined us to share his harrowing account of that event and how his faith sustained him during one the worst naval disasters in history. Join Janet & Craig for another exploration of the headlines through the lens of God’s unchanging word.Become a Parshall Partner: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/inthemarket/partnersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While ICE is still murdering people in the streets, more than 60,000 people are currently being held in ICE detention centers across the country. The largest facility is at Fort Bliss in El Paso—which was an actual Japanese internment site in WWII. Detainees there are being deprived of needed medication; some have been held incommunicado; others have reported that the tent camp was not designed for humans to live there. When the conditions are not dire enough to make detainees self-deport, guards terrorize them into submission. Plus: Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants are particularly caught in the crosshairs of the escalating deportation campaign. And Tim holds forth on Trump's goons murdering our neighbors, ICE's reckless Kavanaugh stops, the straight-up Constitutional violations the administration is encouraging, and the illegal and marauding settler groups in the West Bank.The New Yorker's Jon Blitzer joins Tim Miller.show notes Jon's piece, "Locked Away" Nick Miroff's Atlantic piece on the Maine shooting  The NYT on Marco running Venezuela (gift link) The episode of "This American Life" Jon referenced, "What Is Your Emergency?" Jon's book, "Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here" The HBO Max show, "Proud," Tim referenced

Episode 1998 - brought to you by our incredible sponsors: Lucy - Level up your nicotine, get a discount on your first order by using promo code HARDFACTOR at lucy.co/hardfactor 00:00:00 Timestamps 00:01:20 Pat was a bad boy last night 00:05:00 Both Facebook and the major news story suck 00:08:20 Japan has a mass shortage of male porn actors 00:18:20 Teenager pays $3 for 1972 Wilt Chamberlain NBA FInals warm up  00:23:30 A Nepalese elephant has killed 25 people and tortured a family for 14 years 00:29:50 25+ year revenge billboard in Norfolk VA for unpaid loan finally paid off and removed 00:36:00 Man needs to be cut out of porta-potty after being in the bottom tank For more head over to patreon.com/hardfactor for weekly bonus episodes and most importantly HAGFD! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Read an even deeper-dive into the werewolf trials here: https://weirddarkness.com/wolves-on-trial/Across four centuries of European court records, dozens of men, women, and children confessed to shedding their skins for wolf-hides and hunting under the moon — and the magistrates who heard them believed every word.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/RealWerewolfTrialsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/43rjhjvpFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: We're all familiar with the concept of werewolves – they are all over pop culture, movies, television, comic books, novels, and every other medium you could possibly imagine. And while they are considered fictional, or at least in the realm of cryptids, that doesn't mean there aren't true stories of reported werewolves in history. (Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves) *** Just the idea of going to prison is enough to scare people into living a squeaky-clean life, but if you're one of the most dangerous prisoners known to exist, ordinary prison would look like a vacation as compared to life in the Florence ADX Supermax Prison. (Life In The Supermax) *** What was supposed to be a two day trip turned into a maritime mystery when the ship, the MV Joyita was discovered floating with no crew on board. What happened? (The Mysterious Abandonment of the MV Joyita)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:37.814 = Show Open00:03:32.506 = Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves, Part 100:28:44.978 = Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves, Part 2 ***00:42:51.099 = The Mysterious Abandonment of the MV Joyita ***01:02:49.562 = Life In The Supermax ***01:15:37.977 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves” by Miss Celania for MentalFloss.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p84ut66, Nick Redfern for Mysterious Universe: http://bit.ly/2MFFx5p, WolvesRox on Playbuzz.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9bjcht, and Tim Flight for HistoricCollection.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p87s85sThe short fable, “The Werewolf” was written by Angela Carter: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckt8fn6“The Mysterious Abandonment of the MV Joyita” by Marcus Lowth for UFOInsight.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8sux2j“Life In The Supermax” by Jacob Shelton for Ranker.com's Unspeakable Times: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8u82p9(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2022Weird Darkness digs into three dark corners this time out — the real men and women who were tried and executed as werewolves across Early Modern Europe, the South Pacific ghost ship MV Joyita found drifting with all 25 aboard vanished, and daily life inside America's most locked-down prison, the ADX Supermax in Florence, Colorado.It opens with the documented history of lycanthropy trials, tracing the term back through the Old English werwulf and the Greek myth of King Lycaon, whom Ovid recorded being turned into a wolf by Zeus. From there the episode walks through the real cases: the Gandillon family, burned in France in 1598 after the witch hunter Henri Boguet arranged their arrest; Thiess of Livonia, an eighty-year-old man tried in 1692 who claimed to be a benevolent werewolf who fought the Devil for the year's harvest; Peter Stubbe, the "Werewolf of Bedburg," broken on the wheel and beheaded on October 31st, 1589; Gilles Garnier, the "Hermit of Dole," burned alive in 1573 for killing and eating children; the Werewolves of Poligny; the Wolf of Ansbach, an ordinary wolf hanged from a gibbet in a wig and beard in 1685; teenaged Hans the Werewolf, executed in Estonia in 1651; fourteen-year-old Jean Grenier of Gascony, spared the stake and sent to a friary; the "Demon Tailor" of Chalons; and the more modern Spanish serial killer Manuel Blanco Romasanta, the "Werewolf of Allariz," who used lycanthropy as his legal defense, alongside the Ludwigslust and Angers cases and the cannibal beggar Swiatek of Poland.From there the show turns to the MV Joyita, the yacht built in 1931 in Los Angeles for director Roland West and named for his wife, Jewel Carmen. On October 3rd, 1955, she left Apia, Samoa, for the Tokelau Islands carrying 16 crew and nine passengers, and vanished; found over a month later on November 10th by the merchant captain Gerald Douglas, she was drifting more than 600 miles off course, partially submerged but afloat thanks to her cork-lined refrigerated hold. Investigators found the cabin lights on, the clocks stopped at 10:25, the radio tuned to the distress frequency, a doctor's bag holding a scalpel and blood-stained bandages, mattresses stacked over the engine, and all four escape craft gone — with the cargo, and all 25 people, never recovered. Captain Thomas Miller took the blame for sailing on one engine, but the theories that followed ran from mutiny to Japanese fishermen, Soviet submarines, pirates, and insurance fraud, with researcher Robin Maugham laying out the mutiny case in his book The Joyita Mystery.The episode closes inside the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, the ADX Supermax that has held Ted Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, Robert Hanssen, Ramzi Yousef, and Zacarias Moussaoui since 1994. Inmates spend 23 hours a day alone in 7-by-12-foot concrete cells with a single 4-inch window angled so the sky and the surrounding mountains stay out of view, communicating through drained toilet pipes and "finger handshakes" through recreation-cage fencing. Former inmates and staff — including warden Robert Hood, who called the architecture itself the control, and prisoner Travis Dusenbury — describe a facility that strips away nearly every trace of ordinary life, the suicide of mentally ill inmate Jose Vega in 2010, and the ongoing lawsuits over medical and mental-health treatment that forced ADX to reevaluate its practices in the mid-2010s.

Most people assume that if a goal is hard to achieve, getting there has to feel hard too. We tend to believe that extraordinary results require extraordinary suffering.But my guest says the secret to success isn't gritting your teeth; it's making the path enjoyable. His name is Jia Jiang, and in his new book, Easy Discipline, he argues that consistency comes from designing your work and your life so that doing the right thing becomes something you actually want to do. Today on the show, Jia explains the difference between hard and easy discipline, why "eating bitterness" isn't the best way to go after your ambitions, and how to make your work feel more like play without lowering your standards. Along the way, we discuss Soviet hockey, Japanese tea ceremonies, rejection therapy, one-action goals, and the power of pursuing aims that are an expression of who you are.Resources Related to the PodcastJia's previous book: Rejection TherapyJia's 100 Days of Rejection Therapy videos, including asking for a "burger refill"AoM Article: Motivation Over DisciplineAoM Podcast #954: The Feel-Good Method of ProductivityConnect With Jia JiangJia on SubstackJia's websiteJia on LinkedIn0:00 Introduction to the AOM Podcast0:41 Introducing Jia Jiang and Easy Discipline1:36 Welcome Jia Jiang / The Myth of Sisyphus6:05 Hard Discipline vs. Easy Discipline9:36 Eating Bitterness10:44 Soviet Hockey: Tarasov vs. Tikhonov16:02 The EASY Framework: Enjoyment31:02 Artistry and Ichi-go Ichi-e33:54 Systems and One Action Goals41:22 Repetition with Variation44:18 Why: Being True to Yourself52:33 Where to Find Jia Jiang's WorkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tom Rinks got his start in the commission-only "shark tank" of midwestern furniture sales. That's where he learned what makes customers buy. Decades later, those instincts helped him grow a joke of a side hustle into a $400 million success.In 2009, he created the iconic branding for an obscure sun tan lotion, drawing on a mish-mash of surf culture, Scandinavian furniture, and Japanese streetwear. Sun Bum became a huge success, but even before that, Tom helped boost a wildly diverse range of brands: a line of tequila, a series of Christian videos, and the ubiquitous “Yo quiero Taco Bell” campaign. All were successful, though it took a prolonged legal battle for Tom to get paid for the Taco Bell chihuahua. In this episode, Tom reveals how he learned to manipulate consumer psychology, survive the brutal warfare of a stolen idea, and engineer a brand explosion on his own terms. WHAT YOU'LL LEARNChihuahuas and Apes: How the Right Mascot can Transform a Brand What it takes to survive a five-year legal battle against a corporate titan.The "Elvis Principle:” How combining unexpected design elements can create an unforgettable package The "Trojan Horse" Strategy: Why forcing retailers to buy a massive display creates the illusion of a brand overnight.TIMESTAMPS08:15 - What selling furniture taught Tom about customer psychology 10:00 - How the Slogan “Surf Michigan” got him into the T-shirt Business 25:07 - Psycho Chihuahua, Taco Bell, and the Branding Deal that Wasn't 33:49 - Inside the grueling battle over a chihuahua mascot. “I was the guy suing Taco Bell.” 39:35 - A dramatic legal verdict, and Tom's branding business takes off with fancy Tequila 49:47 - The sun screen opportunity: “I saw a gigantic hole that you could drive through.” 55:03 - How Tom and his partner came up with their “badass ape” logo 1:07:36 - Opening (fake) Sun Bum headquarters in Cocoa Beach, Fla 1:10:31- Early store displays and making the brand seem bigger than it was 1:14:56 - A $400M sale to SC Johnson, and Tom starts a new companyThis episode was researched by Katherine Sypher and Susannah Broun and produced by Casey Herman, with music by Ramtin Arablouei, and edited by Neva Grant. Follow How I Built This:Instagram → @howibuiltthisX → @HowIBuiltThisFacebook → How I Built ThisFollow Guy Raz:Instagram → @guy.razYoutube → guy_razX → @guyrazSubstack → guyraz.substack.comWebsite → guyraz.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.