Podcasts about trade center

On the 9th of April 1995, a rental truck was unassumingly parked in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City. Seconds later, the truck exploded. 169 people, including children, were killed. Almost instantly. A massive investigation unfolded. Jeff Lanza, a seasoned FBI agent, was deeply involved. He immediately got to work acquiring information and starting the hunt for the person responsible. Jeff joins host Brent Sanders on this episode of Crime Insiders: Detectives to share insight from this case and many others from his time in the FBI. If this content affects you, the number for Life Line is 13 11 14. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Subscribe to David's Substack: Macroeconomic Policy Nexus Scott Lincicome is the vice president of general economics and trade at Cato. Scott returns to the program to discuss the past, present, and future of Trump's trade war, the impact of tariffs on the US consumer, myths about globalization, the state of globalization worldwide, and much more. Check out the transcript for this week's episode, now with links. Recorded on March 19th, 2025 Follow David Beckworth on X: @DavidBeckworth Follow Scott Lincicome on X: @ScottLincicome Follow the show on X: @Macro_Musings Check out our new AI chatbot: the Macro Musebot! Join the new Macro Musings Discord server! Join the Macro Musings mailing list! Check out our Macro Musings merch! Subscribe to David's new BTS YouTube Channel  Timestamps: (00:00:00) – Intro (00:01:01) – Cato's Trade Center (00:04:06) – Current State of Trump's Trade War (00:14:09) – Trade War Strategy (00:20:48) – Break in the Globalization Trend (00:29:51) – Bilateral Trade Deficit View (00:54:01) – Comparative Advantage (01:00:30) – How to Support Free Trade (001:01:44) – Outro  

Alex Golden and Facci closeout the MAILBAG podcast answering the following questions: 1). Erik Nikol  If you guys are doing the consolidation trade in the offseason, which players are you keeping vs trading?  2). Mann Marsden  Real take on the play of Tyrese and is he a superstar or franchise player ? Or jus mid like Evan Turner warned us about 3). Nicholas Thornburg If Myles Turner does not re-sign with the Pacers this offseason, what route do you think the Pacers would go for at the center position? Do you think a priority would need to be to go after a stretch big given the ability of Haliburton to dish well to centers for 3 pointers? 4). Adam aka REDS FAN RIP 19 What do you guys think has been the biggest reason for the turnaround and better play? 5). Sam Tompkins Do you think the starters would have more success with Nesmith in the line up? Would this free Mathurin up for more offensive production with TJ/Obi/etc by coming off the bench? 6). Josh Lovell The Pacers lack shooting, aside from Tyrese. Instead of Alex Len for the 15th spot, would they be better off with a real shooter, like Bojan? 7). Christopher Lloyd AKA The Film Critic With big contracts going to their stars, it's clear the Pacers can't play and pay all of their young talent: Nembhard, Mathurin, Walker, Nesmith, Sheppard, Furphy. How many do you think they keep long-term, and which ones? Thank you all for sending in your questions and for making Setting The Pace a part of your daily listen. Cheers! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In today's episode of This Day in Miami History, we take a look at Interama. The proposed trade and culture exchange predated EPCOT by more than a decade, except it never actually got built. Learn more about the saga that spanned six presidencies, from Truman to Ford.Visit the This Day in Miami History shop on Spreadshirt for the ALL-NEW Interama t-shirt, and more, as well as TDMH-branded material!Remember to follow This Day in Miami History Podcast on your preferred podcast provider, as well as Twitter and Facebook!Proclamation of assistance and cooperation with the Inter-American Cultural and Trade Center, January 30, 1952 | Harry S. Truman LibraryInterama at the JFK LibraryInterama at the LBJ LibraryInterama | World's Fair PhotosInternational Bazaar for the International Area of the Interama Project — Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern ArchitectureSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/this-day-in-miami-history-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode of the IC-DISC show, I speak with Susanne Cook, a senior partner at Denton's Cohen and Grigsby, exploring the world of international trade compliance. Based in Pittsburgh, Susanne chairs the firm's International Business Team and provides insights into import regulations and export control classifications. We dive deep into the complexities of U.S.-China trade relations, examining Section 301 tariffs and their impact on small-value imports. She shares practical strategies companies use to navigate these challenges, such as China's establishing factories in Mexico to counter tariff restrictions. The conversation highlights the critical importance of accurate prior disclosures to regulatory agencies. Through a compelling case study, Susanne illustrates how businesses can effectively manage compliance, demonstrating that U.S. agencies can be forgiving when companies approach disclosure with transparency and comprehensiveness. Beyond trade compliance, we touch on personal development. I share insights on work-life balance and the significance of building a capable team. Susanne's expertise provides a unique lens into how professional challenges can be navigated with strategic thinking and thorough preparation.     SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Susanne Cook, a senior partner at Denton's Cohen and Grigsby, shares her expertise on international trade compliance, focusing on the import side of the practice. The episode discusses the importance of accurate prior disclosures to regulatory agencies and the potential consequences of incomplete disclosures. We explore the challenges and strategies related to U.S.-China trade relations, specifically regarding Section 301 tariffs and the implications for small-value imports. Susanne provides a case study on determining export control classifications, highlighting the role of full disclosure and the forgiving nature of U.S. agencies when proper steps are taken. The conversation covers the growth of Denton's trade practice, emphasizing their specialization in assisting foreign companies entering the U.S. market. We examine China's strategy of building factories in Mexico to circumvent tariffs through USMCA and the role of trade experts in advising businesses. The discussion touches on the characteristics of an ideal client for trade advisory services, including large companies with sophisticated internal traffic groups and growing businesses. We highlight the importance of early compliance to avoid potential pitfalls and the necessity for companies to understand their import-export responsibilities. Susanne and I delve into personal growth and team building, discussing the significance of surrounding oneself with a capable team and achieving work-life balance. The episode offers practical advice on personal and professional development, emphasizing teamwork and strategic client selection.   Contact Details LinkedIn- Susanne Cook (https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanne-cook-722a239/) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Dentons GUEST Susanne CookAbout Susanne TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Hello, this is David Spray and welcome to another episode of the IC Disc Show. My guest today is Susanne Cook, and Susanne is a senior partner and she chairs the Denton's Cohen and Grigsby International Business Team, so her practice is all international trade and one of the fun things we got into was on the import side, which I know little about. So, although our firm has an export focus, it was really interesting hearing about the import side, because many people assume that if we have exporting capabilities and expertise, that we have comparable capabilities on the inside, or the import in which we don't comparable capabilities on the inside, or the input, in which we don't. So this was a wide-ranging interview and Susanne is a really interesting person and she's from the Pittsburgh and in the Pittsburgh office of the firm and I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Good morning, Susanne. How are you today? Susanne: I'm doing well in sunny Pittsburgh. Dave: Oh, that is great. Now are you a native of Pittsburgh. Susanne: No, Pittsburgh is my adopted city. You may detect an accent I am German. Dave: I attended law school in the United. Susanne: States. I attended law school in the United States and Pittsburgh is my adopted city and I am a fan. Dave: Okay, that is great. Well, I know that you chair your firm's international business team. Susanne: What does that tell me about what that entails? Tell me about the international business team at DIMMS. It really consists of two pieces and maybe going into it historically kind of explain the development of that team. Being German, I've always had an interest in international law and I liked Pittsburgh and decided to practice international law from Pittsburgh, heading out of law school, and in those days it was a little bit more unusual than it is today. We lived through COVID and can connect from wherever we are. 10, 20 years ago it was more unusual to practice international law in Pittsburgh, but that's what we decided to do so. We tend the group tends to international clients coming to the United States to do business here and have developed what we call the soft landing program. And that grew the trade practice, the export-import trade practice that, frankly, within the last five years or so has quadrupled in size. We engaged additional attorneys in that field as trade. Dave: Everybody reading the paper can see how we impose additional tariffs, how we impose additional expert control measures and so, responding to that need, that part of our practice has grown incredibly of our practice has grown incredibly Okay, and so it's mostly I guess they would call this inbound business mostly foreign companies trying to do business in the US, or is it split pretty evenly between that and US companies like on the export controls work and such? Susanne: I'm glad you're asking. We do both, but the majority is really inbound. Yes, we do assist companies, do business overseas, but really what that entails is finding somebody in that country who is like the Susanne Cook overseas to do what we do here, and ultimately we just hand it off to a good resource. Now I think that's valuable for a client, but really where we are more engaged is on the inbound side. And then for on the trade side, it's also companies who do business internationally and need US export control advice. Dave: Okay, that's helpful and so help us understand. I love case studies, examples. Could you give us an example? And if you need to anonymize the client's name, of course feel free to do so but maybe give us an example of like a couple engagements that might be representative and maybe kind of lay out sort of the fact pattern and again, you know, anonymize as appropriate. Susanne: Right, of course. Of course, a simple case study would be a client who is engaged in exporting and at one point wonders whether the software or a hard product is export controlled and reaches out to us and we look at the product and assist in classification as to whether this item is controlled or not. If we determine it's not controlled, that's wonderful, the end of the story. The next step may be that it is controlled and at that point we look at okay, point, we look at okay. We look at past exports to see if any of those should have been pursued under a license, and that could be a license through commerce, it could be a license under ITAR, which is military, and ultimately, depending on the circumstances, that may lead to what we call a prior disclosure, where the client approaches through us, the regulatory agency in charge, and discloses the issues in the past. And I have to say that generally US agencies are pretty forgiving. Us agencies are pretty forgiving. If the prior disclosure is done well, the circumstances aren't too egregious. Generally, I have to say, our prior disclosures we've had great success in coming clean and the client then can walk away knowing that this is not in their past and could pop up any moment. Dave: Well, I'm really just, as a us citizen, I'm really pleased to hear that, because it would seem like like that's the system that we would want, that now I'm. I'm presuming, though, the flip side of that if the client does not identify the issue and the government agency somehow identifies it then the consequences are maybe not as favorable to the client. Is that a fair assumption? Susanne: That is, yes, that is the dynamic here and really also I always say there's one thing worse than not doing a prior disclosure and doing a bad prior disclosure At that point doing a prior disclosure means full disclosure, because if a partial disclosure is done and the agencies find out that this was really a very calculated prior disclosure, with keeping in the background some of the items that the client wasn't ready to share, that is actually viewed as an aggravating effect an aggregating, aggravating effect. Dave: So it's all, it's almost so. In the sequence, the worst thing to do is a prior, an incomplete prior disclosure, and then the next verse would be no disclosure and the agency comes calling and, just you know, plead ignorance. So you actually get in. Typically, the client would get in less trouble for just being clueless, if you will, than for strategically disclosing only some stuff. Susanne: Oh, absolutely, that goes to knowledge right. It is negligence, gross negligence, or this now goes to intentional misconduct. And with respect to intentional misconduct, even if the client decides not to do a prior disclosure for whatever reason and there are reasons what we consistently counsel the behavior cannot continue because once it has been determined that something should be corrected, if the client continues doing that now it becomes with knowledge intention. And so, yes, it has to change one way or the other. Okay, yes, yeah way or the other. Okay, yes, yeah, so that is on the export side. We also in the trade, we do the importation side and it's rather similar and again, like the export side, we like to stay ahead of trouble. I always say we can do it this way or this way. And this way is prospectively working with a client, developing a program where violations are likely not to occur, or we can assist after a violation occurred, and we much prefer to be on the front end and I think really the client is served better. Dave: Now, on the import side, where does the trouble lie? Susanne: Is it failing to pay like an import tariff, or and there I can tell you, we used to have tariffs averaging of maybe 0.4 to 0.6 percent. There were a few, maybe two, three percent duties, and companies, and the regulatory agencies as well, did not pay a whole lot of attention to payment of duties. But now we have the Section 305, 20 percent duties that are imposed on pretty much all goods from China. We have other tariffs, similar to the Section 232, imposed on most of steel that we import. So now everybody pays attention, as you can imagine, and so the incentive of trying to find a legal way to not pay those is, you know, much greater than it was a couple of years ago. At the same time, yes, customs pays attention much more than they did five years ago, because we're talking real money now. Dave: Yeah, yeah, it's much more material. So I'm really not familiar with the import tariffs. How do they logistically work? Does the importing company that's subject to the 25% tariff? Are they responsible for like remitting that to like volunteer? You know, I say voluntarily, but but is it their responsibility or is there somehow like a? Is that basically how it works? Susanne: Yes, the system works through customs brokers. Okay, so it's rare that a company will perform their own entry, so they engage a customs broker and the customs broker is like the intermediary in this system. And, yes, all duties are being paid through that system. Okay, all duties are being paid through that system. A significant part of determining what duties are due is what we call the harmonized tariff schedule classification of the product. Believe it or not, it's kind of mind-boggling, but anything, any product in the world has an HTS classification. Dave: Okay. Susanne: So, and it can get tricky, particularly sometimes products evolve. They were not even there when the HTS was developed. But still somehow we interpret it for those products to be classified in this HTS system. Sometimes reasonable people can disagree on classification and there's a ruling system. One can go approach customs and request a ruling. But really it's like anything garbage in, garbage out. If there is an incorrect determination on the HTS classification, only bad things can follow. Dave: Yeah, and I'm guessing the reason that you know that there may be a difference of opinion in the classification is because one product may have a higher import tariff than another, so thus the client seeks to make the case that it should fall under the lower tariff classification. Susanne: Absolutely, absolutely. And even when we submit rulings it's a little bit like you know, even court filings, you kind of make your best case as to why we believe this product falls in the category that we would prefer it to be in. Of course we have to be accurate and correct, but, yes, we stress the factors that would make it more likely for a product to be classified in our desired classification. Dave: Okay, and so, and again the process. So the customs broker is actually the one doing the classification of the product. Susanne: They do. However, they work on very, very small margins. Dave: Right. Susanne: And so in difficult cases, yeah, they will make a suggestion, but ultimately it's always the importer's responsibility. It's kind of like a tax return you engage your CPA, but if something goes wrong, it's the taxpayer, and here it is the importer of record who would be on the hook. So in difficult cases or if there is a whole lot of money involved, we get involved as a law firm in classification as well, and it's you know. The sums of money could be staggering. Dave: Yeah, yeah. And so the product comes in. The customs broker, either proactively or independently, will do a classification of the item, or maybe a preliminary classification, or, if it's not clear, they'll perhaps reach out to the client for guidance. Is that my right? So far, that's right. And then the product comes in. And then how soon does the company have to remit those tariffs? Is it a weekly process? A? Susanne: monthly process, quarterly. It's a simultaneous process. Dave: Simultaneous okay. Susanne: Simultaneous process. Dave: It's a simultaneous process, simultaneous. Okay, simultaneous process, obviously, but I'm guessing if they receive the product, if the product lands at 4 pm on a Tuesday, they don't have to remit the money at 4 or 1 pm on Tuesday. I assume there's some. Susanne: There's some leeway and there is a customs bond in the background. Dave: Okay. Susanne: Backing up the payments so as I increase their imports or they may not even increase them. But there is now all of a sudden a dumping duty applied to the product or a 25% additional tariff because the items are shipped from China. The bond may have to be increased because it doesn't cover the standard amounts anymore. Dave: I see, and the bond is that required by customs? Yes, and every company has to have one, or when they get to a certain size. Susanne: Every company has to have one, or when they get to a certain size, it's through the broker. The broker always yes, it's part of the system. Dave: Okay, yes. Susanne: So every product that gets imported is somehow falls under the umbrella of a particular bond. Unless, it's a one-off like you and I just importing things. We're not under that bond system but in professional companies who import as a business. Yes, a bond would be involved. Dave: So is there a threshold where those tariffs come into play? Like if I buy a hundred dollar item from China and I'm buying it with the intent of selling it in the US and I sell it for $150. I mean, is there a minimum threshold? Dollars $800. Susanne: Okay, yes, and this is actually subject to scrutiny, political scrutiny by now, at this point. To scrutiny, political scrutiny by now, at this point, because these de minimis entries are subject to no duties and in this age where everybody is ordering stuff online, and sometimes these are big businesses who are shipping entries, hundreds of entries every day into the United States to the ultimate customer under the $800 exclusion limitation, and a lot of them are country of origin, china, which is under scrutiny. China is a country that is under scrutiny. These de minimis shipments are currently scrutinized and I would frankly expect there to be additional regulations by the end of this year or beginning of next year, just cutting back on these exclusions, because you can see the Congress is suspicious that this is being abused by larger companies. Dave: Yeah, and is the 800 per order, or is it a cumulative amount for a period of time? Susanne: It's per entry per day, so if the US consumer are the recipient of I don't know what you ordered online, that would be, let's say, $600 worth. Dave: So the strategy if I imported $20,000 of goods annually from China and I divide that by you know 250 business days, I think that's like about $100, like a day. If I'm doing my math right, 250, 2500. Yeah, so that's about $100 a day. So if I had that, my strategy then would be to ensure that the imports are staggered such that no one day $800 is imported. Right, and that's the strategy. I can imagine where that'd be a complicated thing to try to pull off, you know the coordination and the timing and it wouldn't be so much there. Susanne: And it wouldn't be so much there. But if you're doing like $200,000 a year, or you divide that by $250, and you're approaching $800 a day, then I would imagine that it would be very difficult to try to manage the timing of all of that. And it's also an issue, frankly, on custom side, because those small orders typically are not scrutinized, and now, if we are scrutinizing them, that's also an increased bureaucracy. So there are considerations here on all sides. At the same time, there are in place, as we all know, increased regulations on imports from China. All these Section 301 tariffs are mostly from China, on goods from China, and one of the proposals is that these de minimis items still would be subject to the 25% Section 301 duties, which they currently are not. Dave: I see. So you're saying that $800 threshold would no longer apply. So if you import, an item that costs $2, you still have to pay 50 cents. Susanne: But then again the bureaucracy right. So there is a real it's not an easy issue, but yes, it's mostly targeted really at China. Dave: Yeah, so one of the things I follow closely it's just a hobby of mine is the electric vehicle space, and I don't know if that's something you pay much attention to, but China produces like I think the latest stats I heard 70 or 80% of the electric vehicles produced in the world are produced in China, and they have tremendous excess capacity. I want to say they produce like 100% 15 to 20 million electric vehicles a year, but they have capacity for like 15 months. So of course they're looking to export them, and so one of the ways that they're looking to get around this is to take advantage of NAFTA or whatever the new NAFTA name is. What's the name? Susanne: USMCA yes. Dave: So what they're doing then is they're building factories in Mexico. Yes, so what they're doing then is they're building factories in Mexico and then importing that way, and what's interesting is that's like historically seemed to be appropriate because it's been a Mexican produced product. It just so happens to be owned by a Chinese company. But the, the talking or the, the suggested proposals, I think by both parties, certainly by the Trump administration is to disallow those products to be exempt from the import tariffs. I'm just curious have you heard anything about this? Not particularly, I have not followed the electric vehicles. Susanne: But that doesn't surprise me at all because those issues are always raised and trying to fight circumvention, where the country of origin is being changed artificially or legitimately right, and that decision and determination is always in the eye of the beholder and there are significant incentives to try to deviate from the country of origin determination of China and at the same time, the United States is investigating these issues all the time. And yes, there are exclusions I'm aware of, for country of origin or to no longer benefit from USMCA for certain specific items, for example. Another item is steel from Russia. We impose more restrictions on that, even if it's channeled through Mexico, and really I mentioned that our group, trade group, has increased. Well, as these issues increase, it really requires more attention and more expertise to advise clients on what is permitted and what is not permitted. And, of course, as a US importer, you always want to import items with the least amount of tariff. Dave: Yeah, of course. Yeah, no, that makes sense, well, good. Well, that's really helpful, because the funny thing is, you know, our practice is all export driven, but the average person thinks export is a part of a compound word called import-export and they just assume that we're well-versed in all the import rules and I always have to keep telling people it's just, that's not what we're focused on. So my knowledge of import rules is now infinitely higher than it was an hour ago. So thank you for that, Susanne. Susanne: You're welcome. You're welcome, and I can see how clients view that. To them, it's just things that cross the border. Dave: Whichever way, yeah, it's all the same to them. So what would you say are the characteristics for you of like an ideal client? Because, like I'm guessing, somebody who imports you know $2,000 a year of stuff from outside the US and they have a business that does $50,000 a year in revenue, I'm guessing that's like you all. That's not a good fit for you. It's just like overkill, right, there's just not. So help me understand what just like. Maybe you just pick the perfect client. What would the characteristics be? Susanne: There are really two buckets, I would say. The one is, of course, we like working with large importers and exporters who do this all the time, who have a traffic department who manages these functions and, as it gets to be, let's say, like you mentioned, the electric vehicle to a very specific case where they need outside assistance, that would be then our role and that is an ideal client. There is another bucket, and the other bucket is really the growing business. You know, if you are the company that imports $100,000 a year, okay, often, really, the company doesn't even realize they're importing and they often do not pay a whole lot of attention to that. Dave: Sure. Susanne: In the way our international world is going, they probably will increase the imports and their exports over the next couple of years and to me it's always best to counsel that company on how to develop a department that looks at these issues and remains compliance, not when they are now importing or exporting 100 million. You want to catch them before that. I don't know when that ideal spot is to where they don't get into trouble. As I said, we always want to counsel companies before they get into trouble. Counsel companies before they get into trouble. The function is a little bit on how precarious the items is. If everything let's say half a million dollars all imports from China, I would take a look at that, the imports that will be scrutinized. Or if you export, and you export half a million of items that are export controlled, you need to pay attention. So there is a little bit of an overlay. How controlled is the item? But and if it's just, I always use the example of brooms where you import brooms or export brooms not regulated of course then the threshold would be higher. You're really not under much of a scrutiny at all Not that there are none, but it's much less and really I would love to get all these companies at the sweet spot. Sure they grow appropriately and have a system in place, because it's always harder If you get somebody with 100 million of imports. They don't even have a good system. That's a difficult task. Dave: Yeah, yeah. So just to recap, so kind of the two perfect types are one would be like a large company with a relatively sophisticated internal traffic group, that's, you know that you know is basically set up for success and you know, they kind of know what they're doing. And then they call on you for specific arcane cases or situations where they can pull you in, you know, kind of as the expert. Now do you actually do you do opinion letters? You all do opinion letters in your practice. Susanne: We do, we do, and opinion letters is really on both sides export control and on customs. It's only the agencies who can give a binding ruling on how these items are classified. We will give opinions. What that will do? It will mitigate culpability. It doesn't mean we say we are 100% right all the time, because only the agencies can give these rules. Dave: Of course. Susanne: But it will go a long way to mitigating any exposure because the company obviously went out of their way. Dave: Yeah, well, and they relied. I think the key term is the reliance. They relied on your opinion and so, like you said, that then gives them, you know, protection from you know the extreme impacts of regulatory rulings. Susanne: Correct, correct and, yes, we will give opinions. Of course, a better way, if it's possible, is to get a binding ruling, because it's actually, in a way, often less work to get a binding ruling. Dave: Oh, is it? Yeah, I can see why Because you only have to provide enough data to satisfy the regulatory agency, Whereas for an opinion letter you maybe have to be more comprehensive to encompass all these different factors Correct. Correct. Yeah, that makes sense. So this is where, as we're nearing the end here, so I'm going to put you on the spot with this one. Okay, Are you ready? So I'm guessing that Denton's is not the only law firm in the world that's involved in international trade. Is that probably a fair assumption? So why, when your clients select you specifically, or the firm, if you've ever asked them, hey, you know how did you choose us. Why did you choose us? You know why do you keep using us? What's the response you get from your clients as far as why they they use the firm? Susanne: I believe that they use us because we are extremely business oriented and a lot of the other trade outfits are much more theoretical and okay professorial and really I going back full circle to my introduction how we got into this. We got into this because we have had clients in that space that we wanted to assist. Dave: Okay. Susanne: So we're a little bit more of like an in-house legal department. How we look at this, we're very practical. What can the company do to implement these rules and regulations with undue burden? We don't just counsel. These are the rules. This is what you have to do. We always take it a step further and assist the client in finding the best way to be compliant. Dave: Okay. Susanne: And that's in our blood. Dave: Okay. Susanne: Any piece of advice we give, we always ask ourselves, when we look at it from the perspective of the client, the company Okay, how can they do that? How can they do that? Because one can give all kinds of theoretical advice, which is good advice, but it just doesn't work, and we always ask that question. So I think that's an advantage. The other advantage is just the location Pittsburgh. Our cost structure tends to be more competitive than a you know, yes, our competitors often sit in new york, manhattan, in chicago, miami, the big trade centers now Trade Center. So now yes, so our cost structure is a Pittsburgh cost structure. Dave: Yeah, and then I suppose for a client who's actually based in Pittsburgh, it's a you know kind of a bonus or that makes you uniquely attractive to have a local resource with the international capabilities that you all have. Susanne: Correct, correct. Dave: Okay, so I've got only two more questions. One's an easy one. One's gonna be the hardest that you're gonna have. So the easy one is is there anything I didn't ask you that you wish I had asked you? Anything we didn't cover? Susanne: No, I would say that the one area we all believe that trade compliance will continue on this trajectory of increased attention and I think duties will continue to increase Export control requirements will increase as well. So I think this trajectory, will continue for anybody doing business internationally, and really this is one of the areas where it does not matter how our election will turn out, that's the trajectory Our world is more complicated and increased trade rules will continue to apply. Dave: Well, I'm glad you brought that up, because for the listener who's thinking, well, yeah, this is kind of a problem now, but I'm sure it's just temporary. If the right person wins the election, then this is going to go away. So thank you for saying that, that they need to get that naive thought out of their mind, right, it's only going to increase. Susanne: It's continuing. Dave: Yes, yeah, and so it sounds like the real takeaway is the the company companies involved in international trade should just accept that and expect the increase in it and just basically be prepared for that. Susanne: And for business it's always a cost-benefit analysis right. Dave: Of course, of course. Susanne: And the cost will not go away. Dave: Exactly Yep, no, that makes sense. Cost will not go away. Exactly Yep, no, that makes sense. So the last question. So this is the tougher one, and it's okay if you need to take a bit to think about it. So if you could go back in time and give advice to your 25-year-old self, what advice might you give to yourself? Susanne: When the 25-year-old myself was mostly interested always in international trade but I was interested in outbound transactions doing joint ventures in. Brazil, in Russia, in travel and really being in private practice in Pittsburgh. That turned out to be a bad business plan Because if I did my job well, like I said, I would find the perfect match in those countries to tend to the client and I might continue having a supervisory role or occasionally advise the client. But if it was the perfect match, even that would start being less and less. So, yes, the more focusing on the inbound transaction is, the better business. Dave: Okay, so you would have. The advice you'd give is focus more on that import transactions earlier, sooner than later. Susanne: That's right. And on export transactions dealing with US companies. But don't expect on the outbound side to continue to do the work if they form a company, if they outside of the United States and it's logical, very logical, but the 25 year old me did not see that sure, and what about? Dave: and what about, like on a maybe a more personal perspective advice you might give yourself of just you know kind of lessons you've learned more on the personal side? You know work, more work, less travel more. Travel, less eat, eat more desserts, eat less desserts. Any advice you you'd have for your 25-year-old self personally? Susanne: The advice is you need a good team. Dave: Okay. Susanne: You just need a good team and pay attention to building that team, and it also you alluded to it balance of life kind of situations One person can't do it all. It's the team that performs. Dave: Understood Well that is really great advice. Well, Susanne, this has really been fun for me, and I've learned so much about import items that I didn't know anything about, so I really appreciate your time and I hope you have a great afternoon. Susanne: Well, thank you, David, you too. Special Guest: Susanne Cook.

What a combination, but true for our guest Moustafa Hamwi. Moustafa grew up in the Middle East and then worked for companies such as Nokia as a major force in Marketing and PR.   In the 2010 timeframe Moustafa decided that his life was not being fulfilled with his career and left his job and purchased a one-way ticket to India where he decided to explore what he really wanted to do with his life. He will tell us his story and how he eventually found his calling as a coach, speaker and author.   Moustafa has many words of wisdom he imparts to us during his episode. I think you will find his observations relevant and worth hearing. He also gives us free access to the eBook version of his book The Slingshot.     About the Guest:   Moustafa is a bestselling author, international speaker, and mindset coach.   His background spans diverse disciplines — from executive coaching, hypnotherapy, yoga, and meditation to adventure sports and nature healing.   Moustafa's unique lifestyle as an executive nomad has him traversing the globe, often spending months living out of a campervan, immersing himself in diverse cultures and forging a deep connection with nature.   His quest for self-discovery leads him to learning and meditation centres worldwide, exploring the intricacies of mind, body, and soul. His life journey and extensive research have culminated in unparalleled knowledge and insight. He's globally recognised as a foremost expert and thought leader in reigniting passion within organisations and teams.   Ways to connect with Moustafa:   Linked in https://www.linkedin.com/in/moustafahamwi/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/moustafahamwi/ Book landing page to collect bonuses https://moustafa.com/slingshot/   The code to use for claiming the bonuses is “Unstoppable” I will explain more about the bonuses for your listeners when we speak     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hello everyone, and welcome to unstoppable mindset from wherever you happen to be. I'm your host, Mike Hingson, and we are glad that you're with us today for another episode of unstoppable mindset today. Our guest is Moustafa Hamwi and Moustafa is, well, he has an interesting thing that he says about himself. He says that he is a unique he has a unique lifestyle. He's an executive Nomad, and he will tell us about that, among other things, but he is a best selling author, a mindset coach, and a number of other kinds of things. So I'm not going to give it all away. It's more fun to let him describe it and and kind of lead our conversation. So Moustafa, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 02:10 Thank you, Michael, for having me. I'm really excited to be on your show.   Michael Hingson ** 02:14 Well, thank you. We really appreciate you being here. And because you are an executive Nomad, where are you nomading From today?   Moustafa Hamwi ** 02:23 In the moment I'm in Melbourne. So I use Melbourne as a satellite base for kind of Asia and Australia, New Zealand. And then I use Dubai as a satellite base for Europe and kind of the Middle East area.   Michael Hingson ** 02:39 So where is home base. If you are at home base ever   Moustafa Hamwi ** 02:42 see last year, I decided to give up everything I own, downsize my life into two bags, one bag that has my formal stuff, one bag that has my casual stuff, and I pretty much gave up everything else that I own, took a camper van and started driving around Australia. So since then, I'm pretty much an executive, no matter just that home is where the heart is. So that's why I have two bases I use just as a central area to move from there. But yeah, depends on the day. What   Michael Hingson ** 03:10 made you do that? What made you decide to down so down size and not only take up that kind of lifestyle, but live in in the way that you do   Moustafa Hamwi ** 03:22 beautiful question. I mean that that has a lot of layers to it. I'd say my journey start of pursuing my own passion in life started at about 2008 when I was in events and nightlife, having an externally very successful life, but feeling empty on the inside. I started reading, researching, yoga, meditation, all of these things. 2012 bought a one way ticket to India. 2013 came back to Dubai, started delivering inspirational talks, and people would say, You changed my life. And this is really when I knew that that's my passion and purpose. However, also I realized from that trip that me, including, yeah, and a lot of other people. We burden ourselves with a lot of belongings. The mind is a hoarder, and we like to hoard stuff. We like to have stuff, but these things were weighing me down and not enabling me to move as much as I wanted to, and to travel and to explore, and especially that the speaking brought me a lot of joy from seeing different parts of the world and different people and different cultures. So I started, I put a mission for myself since about 2000 and probably 14. I said, every year I'm going to give away half of everything I owned unconditionally. The only condition is half has to go. I love it. I it belongs. It has memories. There's always half that doesn't have that criteria. So every year, half and funny enough, it took me about 10 years to get rid of almost everything I have last year due to a lot of reasons, including a lot of stress, a lot of things, I've been procrastinating that dream. Yeah, and obviously, pandemic did not allow a lot of movement, but last year, I literally woke up on them like, you know what time to do it? What's left is not too much anyway now and let me downsize and live light, so that enables me to be anywhere I want in the world. Where   Michael Hingson ** 05:15 did you house yourself during the pandemic?   Moustafa Hamwi ** 05:20 Whoa. Well, pandemic was an interesting period. Very challenging. Yeah, very well. It was very challenging for everybody. For me, however, I found a big challenge brought a lot of opportunities. Which one of them is what we're talking about today is actually my my latest book is slingshot,   Michael Hingson ** 05:40 right? So where did you? Did you move around a lot during the pandemic? Or were you in one place just because it became a little bit of a challenge and an issue to travel?   Moustafa Hamwi ** 05:51 Well, I came out of a divorce looking for a fresh start. Came to Australia, Melbourne, particularly, looking for just the reset. And I arrived here at about 20 Marsh 2020, which is just two days before Melbourne lockdown, and it became the longest lockdown on the planet. So yeah, was an interesting period. There wasn't a lot of movement outside four walls.   Michael Hingson ** 06:20 So with the lockdown, I'm just curious about hearing how it went in other parts of the world. Do you think the lockdown worked and really helped keep the pandemic from spreading worse than it could have?   Moustafa Hamwi ** 06:34 That's a very complicated conversation. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 06:36 I know it's, you know, and I don't know the answer. I'm just sort of curious. But   Moustafa Hamwi ** 06:40 my my personal opinion is No, I totally disagree. I think if anything, it did more damage to people than it then it helped, because the mental health, that pressure that it brought on people, including me, this is one of the experiences I had, is the fact that I thought, if I am a speaker and a coach and an author, and I work on mindset, and I do all of this stuff, and I found it very challenging to handle the pressure that this lockdown brought on me, especially extended period of of lockdown just made life a lot more difficult than it needed to be. So yes, it might have, if you really think at micro level, helped a little bit on reducing spread of a virus, which I think still very difficult because it's an airborne virus. But on the other hand, in the grand scheme of things, it's like trying to shoot a small bird with a bazooka. Yes, you might get the bird, but you've caused so much collateral damage that I don't think it was worth it   Michael Hingson ** 07:37 well, and that's it. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 07:39 And that included, actually, that my father caught covid in Dubai, and he was hospitalized, and I did not get the chance to see him before he passed away, simply because of the lockdown. So really, how they put a price tag on that? Well, my dad caught covid Anyway, even during lockdown, but the extended lockdown meant I couldn't see my father. And the question is, well, what did that benefit me and I eventually, somehow, I ended up catching covid With all the lockdowns and getting sick and all of that. So were   Michael Hingson ** 08:06 there mask mandates or requirements in Melbourne? And yeah,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 08:10 Melbourne, Australia, was one of the most locked down cities in the world. That's that's a topic of discussion by itself. It's quite a it wasn't a pleasant place, and developed a very bad rep of the politicians that were running this place at that time. What about   Michael Hingson ** 08:23 the whole idea, though, of wearing masks? Did you think that that helped slow down or prevent some of the disease spread and or, or at least catching the disease? Blocking down is one thing, but I'm thinking of just wholly, i the whole idea of wearing a mask,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 08:43 again, very debatable. And I can't speak medically, I can tell you, on the level of mental health, pressure that it put on people, you pretty much sure so that made made breathing more difficult for a lot of people, put pressure on a lot of people. And it was through all of these experiences that I feel, if you're talking about a mask, is that put the pressure, lockdown, pressure, masks, all of these things started pushing me further into a place where I needed to find a solution. And this is where the journey of me writing slingshot came from,   Michael Hingson ** 09:14 and we will definitely get to that. I know that when the lockdown happened here, I had just gotten out of New York, where I was delivering a speech before the lockdown happened. In fact, I left early on a day earlier on a day that I was scheduled to leave just because of that, and I'm glad that I did. And for me and my wife, our situation with the lockdown was that she was in a wheelchair her whole life, and she also had rheumatoid arthritis, so she had an autoimmune disease. And so I think the lockdown, or at least, let me rephrase it, us being locked down, was probably a good thing, and we chose. Was to not worry about it a whole lot at the same time, it did affect me as a speaker, also, because I wasn't able to travel and speak, so I did look at other opportunities, which eventually also led to this podcast. I did some things virtually, and some speaking virtually, but now with the fact that my wife passed away in November of 2022 and we actually did a podcast about that in January of 2023 and I had somebody interview me about it. But we with her passing, I'm now starting to ramp up speaking again and working to find engagement. So that's a process, but we'll get there.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 10:42 Condolences, and I know this was a tough period for everybody, and losing somebody loved, a loved person close to us is never easy, and especially when it happened during a lockdown and during a pandemic. So   Michael Hingson ** 10:54 Well, again, it happened in 2022 so supposedly a lot of the pandemic has lifted. But I agree with you, I think that it's a very complicated issue, and I am very concerned that while covid is airborne, and while there are things that we can do that help lower the potential for death, all it takes is another mutation that we don't catch right away For that to all change, and and covid is certainly not something that has gone away yet. I don't buy the conspiracy theorists who talk about the fact that they're just injecting into us, ways of tracking us and things like that. I'm really not sensitive to to a lot of that, but I also recognize that there are all sorts of challenges. And children clearly had a lot of challenges with it, because they couldn't go to school and they didn't do things virtually as well. I think also, parents are needing to help that mindset, but, but that's, that's where we are, and you know, it will all, it will all be something that we'll just deal with as we can. I'm sure. I'm sure, yeah, tell us about the early Moustafa, growing up and all that that eventually led to where we are. But tell us about your maybe a little bit about your childhood and growing up, and what you did and all that before you adopted the lifestyle you have now.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 12:26 Oh, how far do we want to go so?   Michael Hingson ** 12:30 Well, whatever. I'll   Moustafa Hamwi ** 12:31 give you a bit of background. My I'm Syrian by birth. I moved to Saudi when I was two years old, which is where I spent most of my primary school, went back to Syria for a bit, and then studied my first year of uni in Jordan, then finished my uni in Egypt. And uni is University, okay, right, IO in Alexandria and Cairo, and then I went to Dubai to start my career in 2000 so that, and from there, it's been pretty much a long stint of 20 plus years in Dubai.   Michael Hingson ** 13:12 So what was your career initially, when you started after after university.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 13:18 So after I started my uni, my first job was a telesales operator, because it was the only job I could get. Funny, I came out of uni, I'm the guy who didn't have holidays or weekends. I was always studying, doing courses, doing internships, with the promise that one day I'll end up getting jobs and everything. And it was a big disappointment, because I came into the job market with a big CV, and all my friends were like, Mustafa was going to be the first guy who gets a job. I didn't even get a job interview. And it was a friend of mine who got my dream job, which is to be a marketing researcher. And he ended up passing on his his side gig, which was a telesales operator, to me as a favor. So you can imagine how that was. You know, as happy as I am for him, the question to me was like, What did I do wrong? What was wrong with me? And that, funny enough, put a lot of pressure on me to perform and figure out a way around. So I said, in one year from now on, I'm going to be working in a multinational. Took me about 13 months from starting that job to end up working in a multinational ad and advertising and public relations agency handling the PR for Nokia and the Middle   Michael Hingson ** 14:31 East. So you were doing marketing and PR, as opposed to sales for Nokia? Yes.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 14:36 So that was my the start of my proper career. It was in public relations for Nokia Showtime, Cisco and many other multinationals, and that pretty much gave me a lot of exposure to a lot of nightlife and events, because back in the days, I'm guessing yourself and anybody watching the show would be old enough to remember a Nokia phone.   Michael Hingson ** 14:55 Well, that was I was actually going to say that there was a process. It. Are you familiar with Ray Kurzweil?   15:02 Yes, of course. Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 15:04 so Well, the singularity. But long before that, he was the developer of omnifont, optical character recognition. And he developed a a machine that read out loud for blind people. And in the late 2009 2010 well, 2009 by that time, the software technology had evolved and hardware had evolved that he was able to put his reading software on originally, I think it was a Nokia N 82 and then it went to a couple of other Nokia phones as well. So for probably about three or four years, the Nokia phone was the main platform because it had not only enough memory, it had a high enough resolution camera, and you could load the character recognition software as well as a screen reader, so it would verbalize whatever came across the screen. And actually, I was the major distributor for it, and I worked with others and signed them as distributors in the United States. So we sold a lot of the, what we're called KNFB Reader mobiles in the United States, a lot of Nokia phones. Amazing,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 16:20 amazing. Yeah. Well, well, I mean, yeah, you know how big Nokia was at that time. And, yeah, Ray Kurzweil is phenomenal in the tech space, and you're right now that you mentioned, I remember he did have a lot of technology enabling visually impaired people to, you know, to consume data and information from the world around them. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 16:39 he, he did some really good things for blind and low vision people. And then, of course, later, he developed the, probably, I haven't heard anyone disagree with this best music synthesizer, and it still is the most about the most natural sounding one I think I've heard. And then he also was involved in voice recognition, which is cool. So he did a lot of really useful things,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 17:05 yeah, amazing stuff, amazing stuff. And it was more amazing the fact that it was on a Nokia, on a Nokia handheld,   Michael Hingson ** 17:11 yeah, yeah. But then Symbian eventually went away, or the the iPhone came along and was a lot more powerful, and then everything sort of migrated, and Nokia was also, I don't know whether they were making bad decisions, but a lot of things were happening that made it much less popular than than it had been. Yeah, but so, so how long did you work for Nokia and the other companies like that?   Moustafa Hamwi ** 17:36 So I was handling the PR for Nokia in the Middle East for a couple of years, and during that period, I got exposed to all the nightlife and events because they were the sponsor for all these beautiful things, and that made me one of the most popular guys in Dubai, because I had backstage access to every single event that was happening. And that meant that I eventually started partying. More and more, started throwing after parties. And next thing I know, I decided to leave the company I'm working for and open up my own event agency. And that led me, that led me to go growing my business from four people, 45 people, multi million dollar turnover, and my life got crazier and crazier. Daytime, we're doing conferences, seminars, events and nighttime. We're sponsoring concerts and parties and things like that.   Michael Hingson ** 18:27 That must have been quite a challenge and tearing you in so many different directions.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 18:33 Well, it was, it was exciting for a young guy in his 20s to have that, you know, a video clip lifestyle, but Asher, while it did burn me out, and it made me reflect on a lot of things in life, first and foremost was, what am I doing with my life? What, like all of this fine is short term, short lived joys, but they're not fulfilling at all, and they don't make me feel better by the day, if anything, day by day, they start becoming less enjoyable, and they start making me feel emptier and emptier. And this eventually led me to leave everything behind and buy a one way ticket to India on a search, on a soul search journey finding passion and purpose.   Michael Hingson ** 19:17 Yeah. Well, you finally discovered was that all that nightlife stuff and all the other things that you were doing were great, but where was it really getting you? Mustafa,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 19:28 it was, I mean, look, I was making money, I was partying and everything, but it was fulfilling me. It wasn't getting me far. It wasn't getting me far. That's, that's really sometimes, sometimes the biggest challenges in life, side of the biggest blessings in hindsight, and when we're able to go through the experience, we realize that there's something in it for them that makes us ask deeper questions. And that's   Michael Hingson ** 19:50 the issue, and that's what I was getting at, is that in reality, all that other stuff, all that physical stuff and so on, was was fine, but. And as you said, Where does it really get you, and how is it really helping you emotionally and your your your inner self, the inner musafa, and it wasn't really helping that at all   20:11 100%   Michael Hingson ** 20:12 so you went to India. What did you do in India?   Moustafa Hamwi ** 20:17 Well, it was just, I remember what my mom called me. She's like, What are you doing? I said, I quit my job and I'm buying a one way ticket to India. She's like, are you crazy? What are you going to do in India? I said, I don't know. I'm going to go get lost. It was one of those things where I did not know, but I knew I had to go in that direction. It was an intuition to go to India, but I did not know exactly what I was looking for. I was looking for an answer. Obviously, yeah, no answer for what. And along the journey, I met by coincidence or a universal alignment, a guru or Swami, who had been in caves for 13 years. He had been meditating in solitude in caves for 13 years, and he had came out a few years before I met him, and in one of the interactions with him, I'm asking him about life, meaning of things, and so on. And he goes to me, he used to play with his beard. He goes, Hmm, do you know what you are thirsty for? Because if you do not know what you are thirsty for, you cannot quench your thirst. And that was a big aha for me, like I'm searching for an answer, but I never actually focused on what the question is. And a realization since then, till today, especially when I got into coaching, the real value is in the question. The best thing you can do is ask a question, because a well thought, well designed question gives you a valuable answer, and at that time, I did not know what I was looking for throughout my journey. Then a few months later, I end up, coincidentally, walking into a hospital getting myself checked up, and I discover I had a medical condition that was labeled non curable, and that freaked me out, because I had to reflect and ask myself, What if this was a cancer? What if this was something that was going to end my life? You know, what? What meaning that I have in my life? Did my life have any value? And reflecting on that, I realized that the answer to the question of, What am I thirsty for? The answer was, I'm thirsty for impact, to be able to know that I have left a positive impact on this planet. So then I 2013 I ended up buying a ticket back to Dubai, and I started delivering inspirational talks called Cavalli to Manali, which is talking about the journey of going from the Cavalli club nightlife in Dubai into Manali, where I met my Swami, and a few months later, a random person sees me sitting in a cafe in Dubai and just walks up to me, goes, Hey, you're that speaker guy. I said, Yeah. He goes, you did there talk about India? I said, Yeah, he goes, You changed my life. And that was an aha moment for me of ah, the answer to the question is, I am seeking impact in my life, and I know I can have impact by sharing my story, by doing inspirational talks and by doing coaching.   Michael Hingson ** 23:05 Yeah, I absolutely relate to what you're saying. Because as I tell people after September 11 and escaping from the World Trade Center, and people started asking me to come and tell my story, and they wanted to hire me to do it. As I say, I decided that selling life and philosophy was a whole lot more rewarding and a lot more fun than selling computer hardware. Yeah, I have to earn a living at it, and I had a wife who needed me to earn an income as well, and I still need to do that, but the rewards and when people tell you how you've changed their life, those kinds of comments really are what it's all about, as you well know, 100 100%   Moustafa Hamwi ** 23:54 and sometimes we feel we are as inspiring as We think we are, and until we meet the next inspiring person. So the reality is not that I am inspiring in the absolute is just that I've had an inspiring experience. However, since I got on this journey, I realized that there's so many more inspiring people, more than me, and literally, until we spoke last time before the episode and you told me your story, I'm like, Wow, here you go. There's one more. And what I love about this being in this industry is actually the amazing surroundings and people that you hang around and you communicate with. But this is not to say that someone who's not in the industry is not inspiring. I feel I've had so many experiences where I've been inspired by some of the most normal, average day experiences, because they also remind us to that the passion and purpose is a day to day pursuit. It's not just about a mission of changing someone's life, because a mother who's sacrificing and dedicating her life to her children is is as inspiring, if not more inspiring, absolutely   Michael Hingson ** 24:57 and um. You know, I think for me, the the issue is that I love to meet people. I think everyone inspires me to some degree, some more than others, and there are some that I don't need to ever meet, just observing them, if they inspire other people, that's that's fine. But I also think that it's important that as we inspire, as we speak, as we do, the things we do, all of those affect our lives. And so every inspiration, every time we meet someone, it affects us, and I think it helps us. I was going to say, codify, but it helps us more specifically understand what our philosophy is, and it helps clarify it, and helps us move forward. And I think that's very important,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 25:53 100% 100% it is. I there's a there's a saying in Arabic. I'll try to translate to English, but it says the wisdom is the PERS is the Holy Grail, and pursuit of the wise, wherever they might find it, they will grab it. So really, any any experiences that would help, any interactions that would help us as a person and as a human being grow is really the pursuit should be the pursuit of every, everyone,   Michael Hingson ** 26:24 yeah, and, and if we can contribute to that in one way or another, then that's great for For my part, I don't try to quantify how inspiring I am. My goal is to inspire where I can, and I know that not everyone who hears me necessarily goes away and will be as inspired as other people, but they're probably looking for other things. On the other hand, I know that I have contributed to inspiring some people. There was an article, oh well, I delivered a speech in 2014 and last year, somebody wrote an article about that talk and said some very positive and kind and nice things about my talk. And I love to say to people, how many times do you remember a speaker nine years later and decide to write about him so he must be doing something right, and what what I do right is what other people feel I'm doing right, and as long as as they feel that, then I'm going to continue to do what I can do. And certainly my message will evolve over time as your message evolves over time, as we learn more. That's very important in what it's all about,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 27:36 100% 100% and it is a journey, not a not a goal, I think, correct the whole conversation about mindset, you know, and kind of a beautiful segue into talking about mindset. Here is when I was talking to you last time, and then I, you know, was talking about my book and the mindset and everything, and you talked about your experience, you know, leaving the Trade Center during the 911 or escaping more, more than leaving, you know, and I asked you, how challenging was it for you? You actually gave me a huge mindset shift talking about that. Probably that was a more natural environment for you, not not being able to see, compared to someone like me, who's used to to external visual references, to be able to find my way, you probably had better chances and better mindset being able to deal with with everything that was going around you, which was very impressive, and a mindset shift for me just having that conversation with you. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 28:38 I think it's important, though. The the other part about that is, and as I think I explained a little bit, I spent a fair amount of time learning all that I could about the World Trade Center, what to do in an emergency, where all of the exits were, what the process was. And so, whereas sighted people typically want those visual cues. I knew that if I were ever in an emergency in the building, and what started that was that, of course, there was a bombing there in 1993 it wasn't something that caused a lot of damage, but it had happened, right? And so the bottom line is that being in that building now, right, there have now been something that happened, and there could be something else that happens. So I needed to know, and also I was the leader of that office, and so it was important for me to make sure I knew all I could, because it might very well be that we would find ourselves in a situation where there weren't visual cues for people smoke and other things like that, which we didn't really have in the building that day, but still we we could have, and it taught me how to be more observant. So for example, when we got into the stairwell, I began smelling an odor, and it took me about three or four floors to realize I was smelling the fumes from burn. Jet fuel. None of us had any idea what really happened. The airplane hit 18 floors above us on the other side of the building. And as I love to tell people, the last time I checked Superman and X ray vision were fictitious, so none of us knew what happened. And in fact, none of the people on the stairs from all the offices where we were and that we we and with the people we encountered, hundreds of people all the way down. No one knew, because we were all on the other side of the building. And so I smelled this odor, and it took me a while to suddenly realize I'm smelling the fumes from burning jet fuel. And I observed that to other people, and they said, Yeah, we were trying to figure out what that is. We must have been hit by an airplane, but we didn't know why. We didn't know any of the details, but again, it's learning to pay attention to the details, and it's really learning to have all the knowledge that we can possibly have. Visual cues are really lovely as far as they go, but that's visual cues that don't necessarily really point to the level of knowledge that we can have if we focus on maybe learning how to deal with an emergency as a blind person should. And I say it that way because I know of a lot of blind people who don't take the time to do what what I did, and so they might very well be in a fearful situation, but that was my makeup, and that's what I chose to do.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 31:21 Amazing.   Michael Hingson ** 31:23 And, you know, I think it's important, and I think in fact. And so the article talked about some of that, and I've given a number of speeches on emergency preparedness and safety, and talk about the fact that people need to learn about what to do in an emergency. Don't rely on reading science, because that may or may not work for you. And there have been a few situations where after giving a talk like that, people have come up to me like somebody who is involved in running a power company for a state, and he said, you raise a really good point. We're going to figure out, we want your help to figure out a way that the people can evacuate from our generating stations, our electric generating stations, if there's a fire and there's smoke, so that they can't see where the signs are, to tell them where the emergency exits are. And we figured that out.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 32:16 Wow, amazing.   Michael Hingson ** 32:18 It is. It is part of what, what we need to do. So again, I'll contribute where I can. I'm not an expert on electric generator plants, but I know what I did, and if I can help people and and inspire them that way, that's great. But you know, we all have our experiences, and hopefully we can contribute and and help other people. And that's what it's about, of course,   32:44 beautiful.   Michael Hingson ** 32:46 So for you, I want to go back to your Swami said, What are you thirsty for? Did you have an answer for him? Or how did you deal with that at the time?   Moustafa Hamwi ** 32:56 Well, at the time, I did not have an answer what. What ended up happening, obviously, is what I just mentioned earlier, is that my journey of first discovering I had a medical condition, and I had to ask myself, well, if this was a cancer, if it was undiscovered now and could have turned into a cancer, would have I been proud of my life and what that was? And the answer was, Well, what I was thirsty for is to have meaning and to have impact, but I did not know how I'm gonna do it. And eventually, the experience in Dubai of somebody saying, You changed my life made me understand that. The how, so, the what, the what was impact and the How was speaking, coaching and sharing my story. Did   Michael Hingson ** 33:40 you ever get to go back and tell your guru what you discovered?   Moustafa Hamwi ** 33:46 I actually not. I discovered I got to see him again on the same journey while I'm still in India. And actually, that's why I went back to him after I discovered I'm seeking purpose. At that time, I did not discuss that with him, because, remember, I was still dealing with my own medical condition. So my priority was me, because as much as Yes, of course, we want to help, but the reality is, I can't help anybody if I'm dead, so I my priority was healing and dealing with my own stuff and and I spent a lot of time with him, but that was not a, not a conversation I had with him, as much as reflecting deeper and deeper and a lot of other things in life with him. But   Michael Hingson ** 34:24 that question really did change your life in so many ways over time. 100% Yeah, which is, which is, of course, probably what, what he intended, as long as you were willing to think about it, and clearly you were so that was great, yep. So you know a lot of us, I believe that as we go through life, we make choices, and I love to realize that I can trace a lot of where I am. A day, back to choices that I made some time ago and the choices that brought me here, for example, whatever that is. But in dealing with our past and dealing with choices, is that an important thing to do, or do we just forget our past and we just live in the moment? Beautiful   Moustafa Hamwi ** 35:19 question, and what you're asking about is kind of the whole premise and trigger behind my book slingshot. And the analogy of Slingshot is that, yes, we do need to go and take a step back to deal with our past, but only enough to discover what is holding us back, but then we have to let go of that so we can slingshot into the future. So the answer is not an absolute yes or not an absolute no, it is a yes. And how do we move on after we take that step back? Otherwise, we get stuck in the past, which happened to me for a while, while I was stuck in the space of healing, and all the healing space does is dig deeper and deeper. And it's like peeling an onion. You take one layer out and there's another layer and another layer and another layer, and that alone becomes an addiction. So reality is, yes, take a step back, but let go so you can accelerate into the future. So   Michael Hingson ** 36:15 how does the healing process then actually work?   Moustafa Hamwi ** 36:20 One, of the biggest elements of healing and growth in life is actually awareness. So the first step is, is if we're if one is able to step back and face the reality of what happened. And one system I use in slingshot the book is actually we ask people to write their story first. So the way we do it, and I can do it here is with you, is ask, okay, if your life was a movie, what genre would it be? Okay? And then you'd put a name to that movie. So you say, okay, my the genre of my life is, I'll give you an example. The genre of my life was at a period when everything was not going well in my life, and losing my business and so on. The genre was a sad drama, and the title of my movie was dreams broken on the shores of reality. I mean, I say it now and I laugh at it, but at that time, I was very depressed, sitting in and staring into the horizon, at every sunset, going, Oh, my life, everything is not working. And then, and then, the story of my life was, I'm a failure because of my upbringing, because I didn't have a good English education. I didn't have a proper university education. I had a uni, but it wasn't a, you know, something that is inspiring, and all these stories that the outside world fills into our head. And I was looking for an excuse for any failed experience which is not failure in the ultimate and then reframe that story and through the exercises that go through the book. So what happened is, by reframing a lot of those stories, the genre of my movie changed from a sad drama into an adventure, and then the title of my movie was an adventure of a lifetime, a life to die for. So then suddenly that little mental shift and reframing of the story showed me the best side of the life that I'm living and allowed me to capitalize on the opportunities. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 38:15 I hear what you're saying. Well, go ahead,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 38:19 yeah. So I'd say this is a simple exercise we can give to any listeners to really start by asking yourself, if life, my life was a movie, what genre would it be? And be honest with yourself, because the healing element here does not work. So if I was to pretend that I'm in, that I'm positive about my life, I don't believe positivity works. It's a bunch of bollocks, because positivity, if you're not truly inspired from inside, is just putting makeup on something. It doesn't change the reality of what that thing is. We have to face, honor and acknowledge and understand that we are sad, that we are upset, that we are angry, that we are hurt. These are all natural emotions and the challenge is throughout now this industry, unfortunately, the self help industry, people are are feeding people. No, you got to be positive, and you got to be this, and you got to be that. You can only be what you are congruent with. And that has to come from genuineity, from authenticity and from truth. And if your truth and genuineity and authenticity in that moment is sadness, then honor it, because you can only resolve some emotions, or the emotions and emotions you have. You can only resolve them when you go through them, not over them. You know when they say, get over it. You cannot get over it. You have to get through it. And once you get through it, you dissolve it, and then healing can happen. It's like, if you have, if you have something under your skin that's a an infection that is so bad that it's starting to develop pus. The only way to heal it is to actually cut it open, clean it and then stitch it again. If you try to ignore it, it doesn't work. So really, awareness is a big element in any healing journey. Me.   Michael Hingson ** 40:01 For me, I kind of view positivity a little bit different than I think you're describing, and I appreciate what you're saying. I think that positivity is, in a sense, focusing on dealing with the things that are going to help you advance and trying to not focus so much on the negative things that you can leave behind you. Maybe another way to put it is so many of us worry about so many different things, and most of the time we don't have any control over them, if we would just focus on the things that we can control and leave the rest alone, we would be a lot more productive and a lot less stressful in our lives.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 40:48 I totally agree with you, however, I would still want to debate that the positivity conversation, and I'll ask you a simple question and to anybody who's listening, would you consider yourself a glass half empty or glass half full guy,   Michael Hingson ** 41:03 I guess I would probably view myself more as a glass half full guy than a glass half empty guy. Beautiful,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 41:09 and I'll tell you I personally disagree or and I would tell you you're probably not that, and I'll explain why. Okay, I'm I'm a guy who says the glass is half empty half full. And how can I fill the empty this is by that, yeah, so you are the guy who's practical. And practicality versus positivity are two different stories, because what happens sometimes people who are just focusing on the positivity never also understand where they need to develop and they they need to grow, and they become stale, right? And that it's just a labeling conversation that we're having. Of course, yes, it is attitude, and of course, you gotta look at the glass half full. And if you focus, if you focus on the negativity in your life, you'll never get, get get out of that. But also, equally, if you don't acknowledge and understand that these things require growth, then you also never grow there. So it's a, it's not a, it's not a black or white conversation. It's a conversation of totality, of looking at the half full and half empty. Otherwise people get mis eluded, and that's why I keep talking about the self help industry, because it it sells a lot better to talk about positivity. People don't want to hear about the hard work they have to do to fill in half of the glass. Nobody wants to talk about, okay, you talk about positivity, but nobody understands that the level of hard work, as you said, you had to go through to be prepared to deal with situation where you're not getting visual cues, because you had to depend on other things that took work that didn't happen by itself. So what I talk about here is not just the positivity, it's the totality of the approach of being truly realistic and honoring that the struggles in your life do bring their own opportunities, and they allow you to grow only when you own them rather than ignore them. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 42:51 and again, for me, and as I was describing, the whole concept of positivity is really dealing with the negativity that we focus on so much that we don't need to have around us if we choose to deal with it and we can, there are things that go on that are challenges to us, but we have the choice of dealing with those challenges, and I think that's the important thing, as I tell people we had no control over September 11 happening, and I am not convinced that all the communications between all the government agencies would have figured it out in the US having read the September 11 report. But what we all have control over, and all had control over, is how we deal with September 11, and we can choose to deal with it as a horrible thing, and it was a horrible thing, but we could choose to deal with it in a very negative way in our lives, or we can learn and grow from it. And I think that's the issue of making a choice that helps move us forward and get away from the negative stuff. And I met some people who are very negative after September 11, and I could see years later that they were locked in a mindset that wasn't ever going to help them be more productive and help them grow   Moustafa Hamwi ** 44:13 beautifully said. And it's that mindset conversation about how to really not get stuck in your past story. However, I only talk about the mindset mastery as a second stage to the healing. And the healing is what requires us to look at the half empty so we can acknowledge what needs to work and then work on the half full. And in that, we'll have a totality of a full glass that that is always serving us, and never get stuck in diving into negativity layer after layer after layer. So it's always a yin and yang approach. It's a coherent approach. So agree on that point.   Michael Hingson ** 44:50 Yeah, it's, you know, it still becomes an issue of of growth and of choice and and I would never say. You don't pay attention to the negativity part. You've got to know that it's there before you can deal with it. And it's it's more an issue of, again, the choices that we make, and I agree with you, mindset is a part of it. And you can talk about, oh, I got this mindset. Well, do you really, how is that helping you advance, do you really have it? And it's it's so often the case that people talk a good talk, but they're not really walking it, and which is part of the problem,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 45:29 100% and not just that. It's actually having the courage and the humility to acknowledge where we are now and then working towards where we want to be. Otherwise, it's fake. It's just all the Rura hooha motivational Yes, yes, yes. You can do it. You can do it. Yeah. Well, guess what? I do a lot of extreme sports, and one of them is skydiving. Skydiving means opening the airplane door at 13,000 feet and jumping out if I don't acknowledge that. One of the things is, I'm not a bird, and I don't have wings, and for me to do that, I have to have a parachute. So so in a way, it is a it is a weakness, not to have a wings, but then when I acknowledge it and I understand it, then the strength, there's the design and the engineering that goes behind the parachute that I have to make sure it's strapped onto me, that have to make sure it's ready. Allows me now to complete that picture of the glasses half empty, where I'm not a bird, but with the parachute, my glass becomes half full,   Michael Hingson ** 46:27 right? And and the joy of skydiving, I've never done it, that's okay, but the joy of skydiving and the experience and what you see when you're doing it and you land and so on. That fills up a lot of the rest of the glass, for the moment,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 46:46 100% it's a beautiful it's one of those amazing experiences that I'd highly recommend you do. I   Michael Hingson ** 46:51 want to do it someday. I just haven't. I haven't tried it. It is, it is a doable thing. I know some blind people who have done   Moustafa Hamwi ** 46:59 it. I mean, I mean, you do a tandem anyway, the first job. So maybe this is your cue. Somebody will be strapped onto you, and they will, yeah, yeah. And   Michael Hingson ** 47:05 the other blind people who I know did it in tandem, and that's fine. I'm I still get to experience it. And I I've done a number of things like that. I've flown an airplane and and flew it for about an hour. The trick is, as I tell people, you just stay high enough that you don't hit the mountains and you're good,   47:26 amazing, and it works. And   Michael Hingson ** 47:29 I've driven a car and some other things like that, although I had some directions, that's the technology is getting better, not autonomous vehicles, but literally, it is. It is possible. There is technology so that a blind person can drive a car. If you ever want to explore that, there's a website. It's called www dot Blind Driver challenge.org, and you can actually see a car that was developed with the technology so that a person who is blind can get behind the wheel and truly get the information to drive the car. And I, I did the simulator, but I haven't driven the car, but again, a lot of adventures. I've traveled to a number of countries, and I travel alone, and it's part of what I do, and I love doing it and inspiring people. And I've spent a number of days in countries where I don't speak the language, and we had to rely on an interpreter to help with doing a speech. But it, it's so fun and so rewarding when, again, people come up and say, we really appreciate what you say   Moustafa Hamwi ** 48:35 amazing.   Michael Hingson ** 48:37 So it's, it's, it's a lot of fun. Well, tell us a little bit more about slingshot and what makes slingshot and your methodology different than other things.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 48:49 A beautiful question. Michael, it's basically the practicality of it, as as you figured with this conversation about you know, half full or half empty. My my my approach is very pragmatic and practical. So I always like to have things that number one are coherent. So slingshot really offers the healing and the mindset mastery together, the schools of thought out there generally have been kind of, you know, unipolar in a way, where they're either they're either trying to talk about coaching, which is just go, go, go mentality. You can make it. You can do it. It's all in your mind, or other schools that are just healing. And let's dig into the past, and let's be in the feeling. But that is a never ending journey. You don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes. This book offers a coherent approach where you take a step back to heal, and then you release to mindset master. The second thing that makes the approach in the book slingshot special is that it is also results driven, because myself, I've struggled a lot throughout my journey with a lot of you know, self proclaimed goo. Gurus and coaches and things like that, that promise the sun, the moon and the sky, but don't deliver results. So I've always promised myself, whenever I deliver something, it'll be measurable results. So everything in the book is structured. You read on one page, but then the practical it's not just theory. The practice is on the other page. You fill in the blanks, and you yourself will get immediate results in that moment to understand it. And third thing is that it is actually a continuous journey. So the kind of books I offer are not just theory. They're practical, and they entice you to reuse them all the time. So what happens is, okay, you do one exercise at a certain point of time, but that doesn't mean it's not a one time transformation. You get immediate results. But I say in the last chapter of the book, I say, keep brushing your teeth, and that's an analogy of you can go to the doctor to get teeth whitening, but if you don't brush your teeth daily, you don't get the consistent results. And the same thing with the book that I offer, it's a companion that allows people to consistently keep working with the book at any stage of life when they're having challenges. And   Michael Hingson ** 51:01 that makes sense to have a way to keep being able to go back and re examine whatever it is that that is guiding you along the way. And you have to do that. I think that any decent book or any decent kind of instruction that we allow ourselves to do has to be something where we can continue to do it. It isn't just a one time thing, 100% so that that makes a lot of sense. Well, you know, we're always talking about mastering our destiny and and really becoming a whole lot better than than we are. And we've also talked about the mindset. Why is it important to master your mindset on the way to mastering your destiny? If that's a relevant question to ask   Moustafa Hamwi ** 51:48 amazing question, Michael and I'll give you a simple example. What what mindset does is minds. Our mindset impacts our behaviors, and our behaviors impact our actions, and our actions impact the results. And naturally, the results feed our mindset so and that becomes either a positive loop or a negative loop. When our mindset is inspired, using your terminology, positive, I'd like to call it more inspired, determined in a mastery state, then we behave in that way, and our probabilities of taking inspired actions increases, and as the actions increase, probability of success increase. And then the more we succeed, then we start reaffirming ourselves that we are really successful. But the same thing can happen in negative way, because if we're having a negative attitude, we will not do our best, and when we don't do our best, the results probably will not be the best, which then reaffirms that things do not work for us, and it becomes a negative feedback loop. And if you think about the importance of a mindset, it's like a car driver. Imagine a supercar. Okay, what's what's your favorite? Talking about cars, what would be your favorite supercar.   Michael Hingson ** 53:01 Oh, gosh, um, not me much of a driver. Um, oh, I'll just say a Cadillac. What the heck?   Moustafa Hamwi ** 53:11 Okay, let's, let's say a super Cadillac. Yeah, the racing Cadillac has, I think it's a scene.   Michael Hingson ** 53:15 Let's say a Ferrari. Okay, that's more racing. So we'll say a Ferrari. Let's   Moustafa Hamwi ** 53:19 take a Ferrari. Okay, let's take a red Ferrari. Typical, typical image in people's head is a red Ferrari. Yeah, okay, so take a Ferrari. Now imagine that Ferrari being driven by your average taxi driver. How much will he or she be able to get out of the Ferrari like an average taxi driver can get out of a taxi. Now imagine the same Ferrari, same red color, driven by Michael Schumacher, being a professional race driver, he will get 110% out of that car, same car, same color, same everything. Two different drivers, two different results.   Michael Hingson ** 53:55 I would only say if you're comparing it to New York tab drivers, some of those guys are pretty good, but I'm just being silly. Go ahead,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 54:02 yeah. I mean, yes, but still I hear what you're saying. No, I hear what you're saying nowhere near as good. I mean, they're probably get skidding with it and move fast, but they would never be as good as somebody who never seconds. And the reality is, in between those two, the driver is the mindset. So the same you split Mustafa into two, and you put a taxi driver in to drive this as driving a taxi, and you put then a professional Formula One driver, the driver of the Mustafa's, the one that's driving more professional, will get professional results. And that's how life goes on. So that's why it's very important for us, for us to master our mindset in the pursuit of mastering destiny. Now how I discovered that is when I was doing my work with passion, early on in my speaking career. So about 10 years back, with the live passionately book, I would help people discover their passion and. Would know with absolute certainty, this is it. What I want to do. I want to do this. I want to pursue that. It's going to make me fulfilled. But then self doubt kicks in, and anxiety, fear, limiting beliefs, and suddenly they would quit on their dream before they even start, because they're so scared of the outcome, and their mindset is not ready. So suddenly they've got a dream of a Ferrari but a mindset of a rickshaw or a tuk tuk or a small car, and then they're never able to accelerate their life. So without that mindset upgrade, people don't go very far in life, or even if they stay where they are and convince themselves I'm happy. Pandemic has taught us that nobody's immune to challenges in life, because even when everybody thought they're immune, everybody got it tough and during pandemic. So reality life is going to hit hard sooner or later, and the more our mindset is upgraded and prepared, the better for us.   Michael Hingson ** 55:55 And the other part about that, let's go back to the cab driver and Michael Schumacher, the reality is, with a mindset, you can develop and change your mindset and develop a different mindset. So it is certainly possible, depending on the drive of the cab driver and his motivations or her motivations, they might develop the skills to be a professional race car driver, but they have to work at it, 100%   Moustafa Hamwi ** 56:23 100% there's that that funny story of every overnight success takes 10 years. People only see the final outcome, but they don't see how much work it took that person to prepare and train. It's the 10,000 hours that we all have to put in. And people have that dream, have that aspiration, but don't have the mental tenacity to stay at it, day in day out, to reach their goal. And this is where mindset mastery becomes very important.   Michael Hingson ** 56:49 How do people develop this kind of mindset mastery methodology, and how do they develop the ability to master their mindset?   Moustafa Hamwi ** 56:59 Beautiful question, and that part of the second part of slingshot the book, answers with a lot of exercises. However, I will give a couple of exercises that would make it easy for anybody listening to apply a little bit of those. So first question I like to ask people is, actually, what would you regret if you did not pursue your passion. So what is that regret? So if you say, I'm dreaming of becoming a speaker, a coach and an author, because I struggled with that at the beginning, remember I didn't fly out of India to become who I am today. I struggled with that, with that self limiting beliefs. So if you ask yourself, what would I regret by not pursuing that dream or that passion that would   Michael Hingson ** 57:43 I would and my answer would be, I would regret not knowing how far I could take it and what I could do with it. Beautiful,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 57:50 beautiful. And then you keep going. So what you do is, I want a long list. I want at least 10 or 12, a list of 10 or 12 items. So you keep showing going, Okay, I'm not going to discover how far can I go? I I will, I will. I will be, I will be sad. I will lose my self confidence, because then, you know, I've doubted myself, and   Michael Hingson ** 58:09 I'll always wonder, what if, what is, which is that's me, but that's what I would do? Yeah, everybody,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 58:16 not just you, because that's where, that's what happens, is the regret for what we did not do is bigger than the regret, and then we   Michael Hingson ** 58:23 talk ourselves into having taken that position, well, I wouldn't have been able to succeed. How do you know,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 58:28 deep inside, we know this is yes, exactly right. People will when you question yourself, you will lose confidence in yourself, and that's the negative self limiting belief cycle that I talked about. So what happens is you put that list of what, what would I regret if I did not pursue my passion? And then that gives you a motivation away from so you run away from that ugly space of you know, regrets, right? Then I give another exercise, and I say, What's the best that could happen if you pursue that passion and that goal? So that gives you a motivation too. So one regret is I would never know how far I could go. So now if I ask you, what's the best scenario if you pursue that passion, I succeed. You succeed. And then deposit what are the positive outcomes there. People   Michael Hingson ** 59:21 ask me to speak. They tell me that I changed their life, beautiful.   Moustafa Hamwi ** 59:25 So you get to speak, you get to change people's lives. You get to travel. You get to explore the world. And then you put that list. So now you've got a motivation too. So you've got one motivation away from the regret, one motivation towards the aspiration. And typically, there's a blockage there of but what if this does not work? Then I ask people to write a list of what's the worst that could happen if you pursue that goal or passion. So let's say you decided to speak, what's the worst that could happen?   Michael Hingson ** 59:55 I didn't get many speaking engagements. I wasn't able to change. Change lives,   Moustafa Hamwi ** 1:00:00 and I and then I didn't charge as much as I could charge, and I didn't charge as much as I could have charged, right? And then you put that list, and then, then this is a list where I'd say, Well, get over it. What? So what? So what if you didn't get as many speaking gigs, you just keep marketing and promoting. So what if you couldn't charge as much as you want, you just keep working till you can raise your prices over time. So what if you did not inspire the millions that you thought you would? Well, guess what? Inspiring one person is as good as inspiring a million. It's still a life that you have changed. So once we put all of these stories that you know, that we tell ourselves, of why I don't want to do so that away from that, what am I? What would I lose by not pursuing the passion? And then what would I gain by pursuing that passion? And what's the worst that could happen if I pursue that passion or goal? Those three things are the simplest excerpts I could give from slingshot, the book that would help people mindset, master their life.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:53 The other well, going back to the third thing, the other part about that is, and then maybe it's the physicist in me, or the way I look at things, if I don't succeed at it, then I need to also ask myself why, and I need to teach myself by learning what maybe I'm not doing right or or what I'm doing but I could do better and figuring out how to improve. So I'm a firm believer in the fact that people can learn how to overcome challenges like that. I do agree with you, but it is also important then to take it further and say, Well, why am I not succeeding? What is the deal? Go back and learn some more   Moustafa Hamwi ** 1:01:36 100% and that's but that you can only do that when you have developed that level of mindset mastery where you're not looking at limitation, you see the exit. And that's why, if you remember I said, this book is not a one time use. It's a manual that you keep using, because every time you use it, you slowly develop the habit of not paying too much attention to the negative outcomes and focusing more on the positive outcomes, and then building a bridge of what is needed for me to to get there. So one other exercise we use there, which is, you know, follows the methodology that you're talking about, is, is called Use what you have to get what you want. So it's about putting a list of what resources do I have. And I think you are an amazingly walking example of somebody who has done that, because if you were to focus on what you don't have, you're going to go, hold on. But I but I can't see so how am I on Earth going to be able to do podcast interviews? But you did not focus on what you did not have. You focused on what you had, and you capitalized on it. Your ability to ask deep into deep, deep, deep questions, deep, reflective questions, to be passionate about it, to figure out the technology around it, capitalize on your technology background, to be able to find the tech that supports your journey. That's a beautiful example on how you can master your

On the 9th of April 1995, a rental truck was unassumingly parked in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City. Seconds later, the truck exploded. 169 people, including children, were killed. Almost instantly. A massive investigation unfolded. Jeff Lanza, a seasoned FBI agent, was deeply involved. He immediately got to work acquiring information and starting the hunt for the person responsible. Jeff joins host Brent Sanders on this episode of Crime Insiders: Detectives to share insight from this case and many others from his time in the FBI.  If this content affects you, the number for Life Line is 13 11 14. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chrissie gives you a quick overview of the day of the 9/11 attacks.Read the essay here: https://historywiththeszilagyis.org/hwts252 Find us on the socials:The Network: @BQNPodcasts The Show: @HistorySzilagyi. Chrissie: @TheGoddessLivia.  Jason: @JasonDarkElf.Send topic suggestions via our above accounts or on our Facebook page History with the Szilagyis.History with the Szilagyis is supported by our patrons: PatiSusan Capuzzi-De ClerckLaura DullKris HillVince LockeJoin these wonderful supporters by visiting patreon.com/historywiththeszilagyis. The BQN Podcast Collective is brought to you by our listeners. Special thanks to these patrons on Patreon whose generous contributions help to produce this podcast and the many others on our network! Nay nar nay nar AenarJason AndersonAnonymousJerry AntimanoVera BibleSusan L. De ClerckRyan DamonDavidChrissie De Clerck-SzilagyiLars Di ScenzaThad HaitMatt HarkerPeter HongWilliam JacksonJim McMahonJoe MignoneMahendran RadhakrishnanTom Van ScotterJenediah SeastrumJonathan SnowDavey WillettCarl Wonders Join the Hive Mind Collective at https://www.Patreon.com/BQN and become an integral part of our podcast. Your unique perspective and support will help us continue to produce high-quality content that you love!

In this powerful episode of All Things Crime, Jared welcomes Frank Bruno, a retired NYPD detective, who shares his firsthand account of responding to the tragic events of 9/11. Frank was part of the brave first responders who rushed to the scene of the World Trade Center collapse and worked tirelessly on the recovery efforts.With the anniversary of 9/11 approaching, Frank takes us back to that fateful day in 2001, describing the shock, chaos, and heroism that unfolded in the wake of the attacks. From navigating blocked bridges to being part of the bucket brigade atop the Trade Center debris, his story serves as a vital reminder of the sacrifices made by so many.Frank also opens up about the ongoing impact of 9/11, including health challenges faced by many first responders. This episode is a heartfelt tribute to the lives lost and a call to remember that tragic day and its aftermath.Join Jared and Frank as they reflect on the importance of never forgetting, honoring those who served, and sharing the untold stories of heroism and resilience.Don't forget to subscribe for more insightful crime stories and first-hand experiences from incredible guests!Connect with Frank Bruno:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/u4FUUkG8gRnzNJXw/?mibextid=LQQJ4dConnect with Jared Bradley:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredvbradleyWebsite: https://www.m-vac.comhttps://www.m-vac.com/All Things Crime is a new, comprehensive video series that will explore every aspect of crime and the ensuing investigation, one video interview at a time.  The host, Jared Bradley, is the President of M-Vac Systems, which is a wet-vacuum based forensic DNA collection system, and has experience traveling the world training all levels of law enforcement and crime lab DNA analysts in using the M-Vac to help solve crime.  Along the way he has met people from all walks of life and experience in investigating crimes, so is putting that knowledge to use in another way by sharing it in these videos.If you are interested in more videos about the M-Vac, DNA and investigations, also check out the M-Vac's channel https://www.youtube.com/@MVacSystemsDNACollection

Agradece a este podcast tantas horas de entretenimiento y disfruta de episodios exclusivos como éste. ¡Apóyale en iVoox! ¿Por qué se cayó el World Trade Center 7? ¿Qué impactó contra el Pentágono el 11 de septiembre? ¿Cómo eran los sistemas antincendios de las Torres Gemelas? Estas preguntas han intrigado a muchos desde los trágicos eventos del 11 de septiembre de 2001. El colapso del WTC 7, que no fue impactado directamente por los aviones, y el ataque al Pentágono, así como la efectividad de los sistemas antincendios de las Torres Gemelas, siguen siendo temas de debate. Para esclarecer estos puntos, el arquitecto Javier Vega ofrecerá respuestas detalladas, basadas en su experiencia profesional y conocimientos técnicos, proporcionando una comprensión más clara y precisa de estos eventos históricos.Escucha este episodio completo y accede a todo el contenido exclusivo de Informe Enigma. Descubre antes que nadie los nuevos episodios, y participa en la comunidad exclusiva de oyentes en https://go.ivoox.com/sq/277207

Host of one of the most popular podcasts on death, grief and loss, David Ferrugio comes into the work with a deep personal understanding of loss. His father (also David) died in the world Trade Center on 9/11 when David was only twelve years old.  In this episode David shares some of his life philosophies, his appreciation for gallows humor and how critical supports helped him to process his loss.  The subject matter may be heavy, but this conversation isn't. David's joy and love of life is infectious.  

Fala, Maleiros! No episódio de hoje, quero te contar tudo sobre meu terceiro dia explorando Nova York. Vamos passear pela agitada Wall Street, espiar os interiores impressionantes da Oculus Center, e fazer uma visita emocionante ao Memorial e Museu do 11 de Setembro. Links do episódio: Site do Canal: https://www.canalnamala.com Revista Guia de Nova York: https://go.hotmart.com/X92167371T City Pass: https://getyourguide.tp.st/kPPhZllW Compartilhe suas experiências e dúvidas nos comentários. E não se esqueça de se inscrever no Podcast do Canal Na Mala para acompanhar os próximos episódios. #podcast #viagens #novayork #wallstreet #oneworld #11desetembro #memorial #historia #dicas #informacoes #curiosidades #bastidores #canalnamala

In part 2 of our deep dive into the history of Quanzhou, we'll talk about the infamous official Pu Shougeng and explore the controversial role he played in shaping the history of Quanzhou as a maritime trade center.

In the first installment of what will be a two-part feature, we'll talk about how an innovatively designed bridge laid the groundwork for a small port on the southeast coast of China to emerge as the center of the country's maritime trade during the Song and Yuan dynasties.

Dennis Bernstein of the Fourth Period joins Campbell vs Gallo to talk all things NHL trade deadline.

Anna Dua of NHL Network joins Campbell v Gallo to talk about the Trade Deadline.

Memphis Grizzlies--Chris Herrington w/Jeffrey on the Steven Adams Trade/Center position

This is a conversation with former mobster now mafia historian Louis Ferrante about his intriguing new book BORGATA: RISE OF EMPIRE. The former “chop shop” small time thug now erudite Ferrante is like a cross between Sonny Corleone & Niall Ferguson. Essential viewing/listening. Transcript below.AK (00:18): Hello everybody. It is Tuesday, January the second, 2024. We're in a new year, but old themes. Last year we did several shows on the Mafia, one with the historian Paul Moses on the what he calls, at least the true story of the immigrant cops who fought the rise of the Mafiaa. He had a new book out called Appropriately Enough, the Italian Squad, another with an interesting writer, Matt Beck, the Life We Choose about a series of conversations he had with a Mafiaa member called William Big Belly Delia. He talked about not just Donald Trump and Michael Jackson, but also Jimmy Hoffer, and we're going one better in 2024 rather than writing or talking to people who have spoken to people in the Mafiaa. We have a man, Louis Ferrante, who once upon a time was a member of the Mafia. And since become a very successful writer, the author of many books, bestselling books, including particular Mob Rules, what the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman. It was a huge hit. And he has a new book out. It's a history of the Mafia, the Borgata Trilogy, volume one, rise of Empire. It came out in November of last year in the uk, and it's out this week in the US. Louis Ferrante is joining us from his home in Sarasota on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Louis, before we went live, you told me it's very nice in Florida.Louis Ferrante (02:01): Florida's beautiful, the Sunshine State, a lot of sun. I need sun. I grew up in New York, and the winters are dark and dreary, and London's a beautiful place too. I like the people in London, but once again, the weather's not the best part.AK (02:17): Dreary. Yeah, I'm talking to actually from California. So Louis, when you fly out and you get on a plane, you happen to sit next to someone and you get into conversation and they ask you what career you have or had, what would you say?Louis Ferrante (02:31): I'd tell 'em a hijacker if I'm on a plane.AK (02:36): And what do they do?Louis Ferrante (02:38): They look for the attendant or they go to the bathroom? No, I mean, I was a truck hijacker, a little different from a plain hijacker, but I tell them I'm a writer and a television host, which is the truth. I'm a bestselling author. My books have been translated into 2020 languages, and I hosted a show for Discovery Channel.AK (03:04): It's a good trade being a writer. But did you always intend to be one, or how did you go from being, as you say, a truck hijacker, someone who knows the Mafia, the American Mafia to actually writing about it.Louis Ferrante (03:21): I faced the rest of my life in prison, and I was lucky to get out of it with a 13 year sentence. I was represented at the time by the civil rights attorney, William Kunstler, who was very instrumental in, yeah, he helped Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. He went in to negotiate with the convicts during the Attica riots, and he defended me, and I was able to get a plea of 13 years without cooperating against anyone, and I didn't have to go to trial and possibly get the rest of my life sentenced to rest of my life in prison. And while I was there, I started to think through my life and eventually I picked up my first book, fell in Love with books, became an avid reader, and at some point or another I was reading a book a day, and that's what made my time go. And I started to teach myself how to write by reading all the great authors and taking notes as to how Leo Tolstoy begins and ends a chapter, how Dostoevsky Begins and Ends a plot, how Charlotte Bronte introduces a character, et cetera, et cetera. And that's how I taught myself how to write. And by the time I came home from prison, I was ready to be a writer. And my last book, Mob Rules was an international bestseller in 20 languages. And my current book will hopefully get picked up in a lot of languages as well. And it's a trilogy.AK (04:42): Yeah, it's already been picked up by the Germans. You imply that in prison, you were a meticulous reader. Is meticulousness something that's prized within the mafia? Was that one of your skills?Louis Ferrante (05:00): Skills? Yeah, I mean, I was a heist guy. I ran a crew of heist guys, heist and hijackings, and you need to know what you're doing and everything's, you got to cross your T's and dot your i's make sure that everybody knows their role. Make sure that you need a well-oiled machine when you're going to do a heist or a hijack in one mistake. And everybody's lives are at stake, including innocent people. Something I might regret now, but something that was just a fact then. But we wanted to get away with it. We wanted the money. I wasn't thinking about people's lives back then. I was thinking about money and we wanted to get away with it, and you need to know what you're doing and everybody needs to know what they're doing. And I was a big planner. I would make drawings, I would go over everything with everyone. I would do mock runs to the highway to make sure we had an escape route, a backup escape route. I made sure we had backup guys in place. I never just pulled the trigger too fast. At one point, I was picked up by the feds in California where you are. We were in San Francisco and we were looking to hit an armored car, and the feds swooped in on us and grabbed us the day before we were going to hit that armored car. And it was a crucial thing. I was one guy short, and the reason why we waited was I was waiting for an extra guy to come from New York so that he could make sure we had enough guys on the heist. But yeah, so I guess I was meticulous in that sense. I was ignorant and naive in a million other ways, but I was meticulous in that sense.AK (06:27): Yeah, you should come back, Louis. It's much easier to do your heist these days. I don't know if there are any police left in South Africa. Yeah,Louis Ferrante (06:34): I don't know if anyone would care anymore.AK (06:36): Yeah, you'd probably be encouraged. Lots of films and books about how young kids get into the mafia. There's The Godfather, of course, & the Irishmen. How did you get into it?Louis Ferrante (06:48):  If you start committing big enough crimes, they'll find you. And that's what happens. Once I started hijacking trucks, I ran an auto crime, a chop shop. I supplied car parts to auto collision shops for a long time when I was a kid, stole cars, chopped them up and sold them to a shop. That little operation started out with just a few car thieves, me and my friends, and eventually grew into, as I said, a chop shop. And then at some point, once we started hijacking,AK (07:18): What is a chop shop?Louis Ferrante (07:22): Chop shop is you have a shop where you steal a car, you get an order from a collision shop. So a collision shop, for example, has, let's say they got a Mercedes and they got to spend $30,000 in parts because it's a hundred thousand dollars car and the car's wrecked, so they need 30,000 in parts. They might tell us, look, we'll give you five grand, can you get us all the parts? And then they'll put the stolen parts on the customer's car and sell them back the repaired car. So we would get paid then to go out, steal the car, try to get the same color so they wouldn't even have to paint it, but if you had to, you paint it. It's not always easy to match colors, but we would steal the car, chop it up, give them the parts they needed, and then dump the skeleton somewhere in the beginning we dumped it in the woods. And then at some point or another, we started renting. Back then you could lease a building under a phony name and then just abandon the building when you were done with it. I don't think you could get away with that. Nowadays there's too many identifications and stuff required, and people are hip at things like that, but back then you could even fly. When I told you I went to California to knock off an armor car, we flew under different names. Pre 9/11, you just booked an airline ticket under any name. I just picked the name out of the phone book. Just get on a plane.AK (08:35): Those were the days. You mentioned your bestselling book, Mob Rules, what the Mafia can Teach the Legitimate Businessman. There's a sort of cliche, Louis, I'm sure you've heard it a thousand times, that had you been born into the New York or Boston upper classes, you would've ended up at Harvard Business School and made a million dollars that way, is what you were doing. Is that a form of innovation and in some ways equivalent to what kids are taught at Stanford or Harvard Business School these days to think and be meticulous and accomplish what they set out to do?Louis Ferrante (09:19): Yeah, I don't know if they're taught any more to think. I don't know what an Ivy League upbringing is like, so it would be unimaginable for me to even,AK (09:33): But you've met those types.Louis Ferrante (09:36): Oh, all day long. Yeah, all day long. Some of them can't tie their shoes. I mean, just can't fix a flat. I was with a doctor once who got a flat and didn't know what to do, had no idea where the jack was, where to even begin. If I wasn't with him, he would've sat on the side of the road probably for the rest of his life until he died of starvation. So yeah, I would rather grow up and have to learn how to do things yourself.AK (10:01): Where did you grow up? What town?Louis Ferrante (10:03): In Queens? Yeah. I grew up in Queens and one of the five boroughs in New York, lower New York. The lower borough.AK (10:08): Yeah. My son lives there now.Louis Ferrante (10:10): Does he really? What part?AK (10:13): On the border with Brooklyn.Louis Ferrante (10:17): Oh, okay. They're building it up. It's probably up.AK (10:20): Yeah. It's much more fashionable now than it, I'm sure it used to be.Louis Ferrante (10:23): Yeah. I mean, I was in a lower income section of Queens, middle to lower income, so it wasn't all that, but a lot of people now, they've bought up a lot of big real estate in Brooklyn, and I guess they're moving to Queens now too.AK (10:37): Did your family know what you were doing? How old were you when you started your chop shop?Louis Ferrante (10:42): I was in high school when I was running the chop shop, so I kept it from them as best I can. I remember the first time I came home with a tagged car. A tagged car would be if, let's say I bought a wrecked vehicle, let's say a wrecked Cadillac, and I bought the completely, it was totaled out. So you pick up the wreck for a couple hundred bucks. Nobody wants it, but it's got a clean title. If you have a clean title, you don't have to go to motor vehicle and go through an inspection at that time. I don't know if things have changed. Now, this is many years ago. So if you bought a wrecked car, you had a clean title, you could then go out and steal a car, pop a couple of the tags off, for example, the VIN number in the dashboard, pop that tag off, put it on your stolen car, and then drive that as if it's yours. If you get pulled over by a cop, usually the cops just checked the dashboard tag. They never went through the rest of the car unless it was auto crime, which was something different. They'd have to be looking for you. So I came home with a beautiful brand new El Dorado, and I remember my mother was heartbroken. She came out on the porch and looked at it and said, you're killing me. You're breaking my heart.AK (11:48): Right, because she knew what you were doing.Louis Ferrante (11:50): Yeah, of course. How would I afford that car? I didn't have a job. So I tried to tell her that my friend who I work at the Body shop for part-time, he gave me the car and he's going to let me pay it off, but she wasn't buying it. She came from a family who was crooked, although she was law abiding. She was hip to the streets in a way, and she knew something was wrong. And she said, you're breaking my heart. And I never forgot that I did break her heart. She eventually died in my arms. And when I was young, she died at 47. I was 19, turning 20, and I went off the deep end after that. But to this day, I regret that she had to go through that and no, did I admit it to her? No. Did I tell her? But she, no, she knew she was hip.AK (12:33): Louis, talk to me about why you've written this history. Is it bound up with your own history? I mean, much of this history, this first volume is set in the 19th, late 19th, early 20th century when of course you weren't around. But is this a very personal narrative or have you tried to step back and write about the history of the mafia as an objective historian?Louis Ferrante (13:18): Both. And so first answer, I'll answer that question and tell you how the book came about. I do try to be as objective as possible. I don't want anybody to believe that I'm inserting myself where I don't belong. I want to tell a real history. And Publishers Weekly gave me a rave review saying that I did not rest on my own experiences alone.AK (13:40): You didn't threaten them, did you?Louis Ferrante (13:42): No, I did not. No, I didn't hang anybody out of a window or anything. No. And then handed them a pen and said, you know what to do? No, I didn't. Basically, they just said it was Well-researched all my notes. My source notes are in the back years, years reading articles, books. But what I was able to bring to the table from my own insights was I have an extra sense that most people wouldn't have. Being I was a criminal when I read something, I know if it was true or if it wasn't. I know if the writer has been, they don't, usually a writer wouldn't intentionally mislead the reader, but sometimes writers themselves are misled and they may get information, and because they don't know the world or the culture, the subculture, they write the wrong story. And a lot of times I'd be in jail when I was reading history, biographies, science philosophy. I would hear other guys, mob guys reading mob books, and you would hear a lot of guys blurting out b******t never happened, who wrote this crap? And when I finally started to do my own research, I realized that I came across a lot of things that were untrue, and I was able to decipher that stuff for the reader, which I think is interesting. I debunked a lot of old mafia myths that have been around for decades about leading Mafia figures. And I would explain to the reader, this is why it could have never happened. I don't want the reader to just take my word. I want the reader to have confidence in me as a writer to know that this is why this could never have happened. So time and again, I do that. To go back to your original question is where the book came from, how it came about. It wasn't something I really thought about. I was invited to Mob Rules, as we mentioned, was an international bestseller. And I was invited to Sicily by the German media conglomerate at Axel Springer, and it was a retreat for editors in Argento, Sicily. And I was seated next to an older man who happened to be there, and his name was George. And him and I hit it off. He was in his nineties, but a very young nineties, sharp as nails. And we talked all evening, and at the end of the evening, he said, I would like to publish the next book. And it turned out to be Lord George Denfeld, one of the biggest of the 20th century. And the next day we had lunch in Argento overlooking the ruins with Lord George and his charming wife, lady Annabelle. And Lady Annabelle had some priceless input as well, which persuaded me to write the book, what turned down to morphed into a trilogy. Originally, I was contracted to write a book, but I said, you can't squeeze all this into a book. There's too much here. It has to be stretched out. And I probably could have wrote 10 volumes, but I ended up writing a trilogy, and that's how the book came about. Lord George, as I understand it, he had a reputation of connecting writers with subjects, and I was the last one he had personally did that with before he unfortunately passed away.AK (16:39): Louis, if you were to write a history of the Mafia itself, would that begin in Sicily? There's a very strong Sicilian quality, but the mafia existed throughout Italy, of course. Is there something about the Sicilian Mafiaa and the history of the American mafia that are inseparable?Louis Ferrante (18:23): There is, as I pointed out in the early chapters of the book, I dug deep into how the mafia was formed inside the Sicilian womb, and it did indeed start in Sicily and then spread throughout the peninsula up and down the peninsula of Italy. But it was born in Sicily, and it had a lot to do with socioeconomic reasons, culture, family tradition, as I point out all these things in the book. And there was also, I point out a strong Arab influence in Western Sicily, which is interesting because Sicily was invaded by so many different people's over the course of centuries, whether it be the Spanish, the French, the Austrians, and the Arabs at some point. So the Arabs had a strong, I believe, where it developed in Western Sicily for the most part, in places like Palermo and Argento and Casa Lama del Gulfo, there was a strong Arab influence there, which is still present, still prevalent in a lot of places in the architecture and stuff, in words, in people's names, et cetera. So I was able to trace the history deep into Sicily and how it started in America was during the Southern Italian mass exodus wave into the United States after slavery was abolished in the United States in the 1860s. That came on around the same time when the unification of Italy occurred in Europe. And Sicilians were not happy with the unification of Italy being sort of absorbed by Italy proper. And they felt like a lot of Sicilians felt like it was just the newest conqueror, the newest ruler, no different from the bans in France or whoever else was there. So they were like, Hey, you know what? We're not happy with this. And there was a lot of poverty. And when America abolished slavery, we needed labor. We needed cheap labor quick because we no longer had slave labor in the United States. And at that point, we started looking around and there were plenty of poor people in Europe, and we invited them, and they came here in droves, and the mafia rode in on those boats. A lot of them, and I go to detail, I go very, very close detail throughout the early chapters of how exactly that happened. And I'm also very, very careful to point out that most Italian-Americans came here to work hard and to make a new life for themselves and their children and grandchildren, and had nothing to do with the mafia and never committed crimes. But the unfortunate circumstance, the unfortunate byproduct of that mass immigrant wave was the Italian criminals that came with them. A lot of them were fugitives from justice in Sicily, and they planted new flags here in American cities throughout the country, in metropolitan areas. At one point or another. There were just as many Mafia families as there were metropolitan areas across the United States. There was one in every metropolitan area, and then the strongest one survived and went on sort of like Arnold Toby's Darwinian theory of how empires are built, the strong survive. It was the same thing with a lot of these.AK (21:27): Why was it that the Mafia, that the Sicilian Mafia became so dominant, and there were many immigrants from Naples and other parts of mainland southern Italy. What is it about the Southern Sicilian, and is it different in its principles organization, morality or lack of morality from the Neapolitan Mafia, for example?Louis Ferrante (21:51): Yeah. Well, the Neapolitan Mafia was the Kimora. I had done a documentary for the History Channel about them very different from the Italian Sicilian, the Sicilian Mafia in Sicily. A lot of these other mafias from Calabria, from Naples, and even there were a few in northern Italy, very weak. None of them had that sort of Sicilian, the Sicilians. They had something very special on that island. It was an island different throughout up and down the peninsula of Italy. You had city states throughout the Renaissance and stuff. So they were all very, I'm still asked, her father was from Naples, and her mother was from Sicily. So I have two grandparents on my mother's side from Naples and Sicily. And my father's, both parents were from Bari, all from southern Italy. But I'm still asked by people who are Italian American, where are you from? And they sort of connect with you a lot faster if you're from the same place they were from. So you can only imagine back then how territorial Italy was and how people really responded to people like themselves. So at that time, Sicily was an island away from even all those city states, and they were really, really isolated, and they really, really relied on themselves. And throughout history, there were always weak central governments in Sicily, no matter who ruled Sicily, they really never cared about the Sicilian people and implementing any positive changes, whether social changes or institutional changes. They just wanted to pretty much rape Sicily of whatever agrarian products they could get off the island. So most of the time, the Sicilian people relied on themselves, and that went a lot into it as well. And it was a patriarchal society, which in some cases comes from the Arab influence in Sicily.AK (23:33): Are you presenting then the Sicilian Mafia as a resistance, organizational resistance to colonialism of one kind?Louis Ferrante (23:41): Believe it or not, at one point they were. Now, I know that they evolved or devolved extremely quickly into something much more treacherous and less upstanding than that. But I do make the argument that in the very beginning, they were indeed just that in my book, even the word I trace, for the first time, people were, historians were sort of in agreement that it came from an Arabic word, but they threw out a half a dozen different Arabic words that it might've come from one meaning a cave dweller, another one meaning a proud horse, and all kinds of different words from the Arabic language, I was able to trace the word mafia. Those of us in the West who are familiar with the siege of Khartoum, where the Victorian general Gordo, the British General Gordo,, was sent to sort of hold off against the Muslim guy who sort took control and launched this rebellion and said, I am the sort of the prophet. I am the prophet incarnate. And he was sort of like a rebellious character against the status quo all throughout the world, throughout the east and the Middle East. And in this particular case, when the Arabs were pushed into the western region of Sicily, after the unification of Italy, the modest regime was known as the Media, which was one letter away from Mafia. So I left it, look, I'm not an etymologist, but I left it to future historians to debate this. And I make a cogent argument that this is where it came from, my quote, encyclopedia Britannica. I quote people who were on the scene at the time, I quote history books, et cetera, to make this argument. And I do believe it came from that particular word.AK (25:29): As I said, Louis, we've done lots of shows on the mafia infiltration, the response of the police, but is the reason why the Mafia became so powerful and perhaps remained so powerful in the United States because it's a country with a tradition of weak central government, of federal government, of government that isn't for the most part, very effective or efficient. So in other words, was there something, and you have to be careful using this word as a historian, but was there a degree of inevitability about the mafia's rise to power in late 19th century America?Louis Ferrante (26:12): It's a great question, and the answer is yes. There was a Sicilian mobster, and I don't recall his name, but he said, why in the world can anybody think why? When Sicilians left Sicily for New life in America, and a lot of them landed in South America, central America, a lot of them landed in North Africa. They went everywhere. Sicilians were scattered everywhere. But why only in America did the American Mafia, did the Mafia really take root as it did? And that goes to our system, which is we have always had a very corrupt system. And I traced that it was very easily manipulated by mobsters who really learned how to bribe politicians and law enforcement officials during prohibition. And that was a prime time because during prohibition, which took place the roaring twenties into 1930, we had people in America who wanted to drink and were told by their government, you're not allowed. And so the people as a whole didn't agree with this. So they were really, really suddenly the mafiaa who wanted to provide them with liquor, with alcohol and supplying the demand for alcohol weren't seen as these animals anymore. These killers, these beat bad guys, they were all of a sudden these romantic sexy figures who were giving the United States, the people of the country, alcohol when they desperately wanted it. And that's when the mafia began to corrupt a lot of politicians and political machines. And the influence ran throughout law enforcement agencies and that deep influence they had during prohibition, basically, once prohibition was repealed and Americans could drink again, the mafia kept a lot of those deep corrupt alliances that they had made, and they moved on to use them for gambling and stuff, to open up casinos, to have a casino, to have a casino. So a lot of why the mafia was able to prosper here in America had a lot to do with the easily corruptible local governments. And at that point, there wasn't an overarching federal government who could come in and say, Hey, you've been all corrupted. We'll take over from here. We know you're all bought and paid for by the Mafiaa here in your local town. So here the federal government's going to move in with j Edgar Hoover's, FBI, et cetera, et cetera. That didn't happen.AK (28:44): Yeah. And of course, j Edgar Hoover's, FBI began in some ways as a response, not always a particularly effective one to prohibition. To what extent the book covers legendary figures and legendary mafia figures like Lucky Luciano & many others. To what extent do these kind of guys capture the spirit of a violent independent 19th century America?Louis Ferrante (29:16): They do and don't. By the time we get to Luciano and Genovese and Costello, they're sort of this newer generation of American mobsters. So the first generation with these sort of old mustache, peats, grease balls, all the derogatory names that they were called in this country, they were sort of like off the boat, Italians. That was the first generation. Then there was the second generation that were more American, and they weren't as clannish as the Sicilians were. They understood that if they were going to prosper in America, they needed to form these diverse relationships with Jews, with blacks, with Irish. They needed to really, if they were going to get somewhere, they basically came up with the plan that they were going to, Hey, we're going to keep this thing of ours, this thing of ours, this our thing, La Cosa Nostra. We're going to keep that to ourselves.Nobody's allowed entry into this secret organization that we have, but let's deal with everyone. We're not going to get anywhere if we stay to ourselves. And they made alliances with everyone across the country. And that was the key. And that was sort of like that second generation, even though Costello and Luciano came to the country when they were eight or nine years old, they may as well have been born here. They were just as good as Americans, just as good as American born citizens. They were a second generation of this. And they did away with the old ones, the old clannish Mafiosos, who felt like, no, we have to defend ourselves. We have to stick with ourselves. We have to continue to live amongst ourselves, and we can't trust the Irish. We can't trust the blacks or the Jews. This second generation of Italian-Americans said, no, we can trust them and we're going to, and we're going to deal with them.And for example, Frank Costello not only partnered with a million Jews in business, but he married a Jew. So he had a Jewish family. And at one point or another, Al Capone in Chicago, his guy Jake, greasy Thumb Gik was his best friend. He was a Jew. And when somebody had bragged that he made this little Jew greasy thumbs wine, Capone was beside himself, and he went looking for the guy, and he unloaded a revolver in his face and murdered him because Capone wasn't going to allow that to happen. He says, Jew or Italian, it doesn't matter if you're my friend, I protect you, I defend you. So these relationships really started by that sort of next generation of Italian American mobsters. And by my generation, I mean, I had a hijacking heist crew. The two of the toughest guys in my crew were Jews, and they were treated the same as any other Italian. We were all from the same neighborhood. We all grew.AK (31:50): It extend to race as well? I mean, in The Godfather, we all remember the explicit racism of many of the fictional figures were black Americans, African-Americans, were they as welcome as Jewish Americans?Louis Ferrante (32:08): Yes. Now, even in my time you had at one time, I said, for example, mobsters weren't going to go, oh, that African American owes me money. Let's go over there and pay him a visit. Obviously, the lingo would be that N owes me money. Let's go over there and pay him a visit. And the N would refer to us as a grease ball or whop a Guinea. So the words that we used back then would be considered racist today. But were we racist? And what were the Italians or the blacks racist against each other? Absolutely not. The only color we all saw was green. And that was it. And I point out in my book, they made a strong alliance, Lucky Luciano Luciano did with Bumpy Johnson. Bumpy Johnson, when they took over the policy racket in Harlem, they needed to smooth things over with the blacks because the black was a huge population in Harlem blacks. So Luciano struck a deal with Bumpy Johnson, where Bumpy Johnson was going to pretty much handle any black problems in Harlem and deal directly with Luciano. And bumpy Johnson's wife wrote a memoir years later that praised Luciano and said that him and my husband were best friends. And it was a real legitimate friendship. It wasn't just business. They had a real friendship. So all that racism they try to make, that's all television now because it sells. But for the most part, yeah, the talk, you told jokes about each other. You called each other what would be considered horrible names now, but were we really racist toward each other? Absolutely not. People will say Italians. And the Mafia hated gays. The Genovese family ran all the gay clubs in Greenwich Village. They controlled all the gay clubs.AK (33:53): How about women? We did a show last year on female drug gang leaders in Latin America. There aren't that many women in your narrative, are there?Louis Ferrante (34:03): No. I mean, if you want to say misogynistic, then I have to agree. Yeah. Not racist, but misogynistic. The Italian, theAK (34:09):Women in all the movies, the women are at home cooking the past, and the men are out killing each otherLouis Ferrante (34:14): Yeah, go home and cook. No Italian man wants his wife buttoned into his business. So I have to concede that point. I won't give in on racism because it wasn't there. But I will give in on misogynistic outlook toward women.AK (34:27): And I don't necessarily mean that critically. One way. The other narrative, Louis, which of course is most clearly articulated in the Godfather, the movies, the Godfather, maybe even Godfather three, is that the mafia began in a sort of communal way, reasonably decently, even if there was a great deal of violence, and it went really badly wrong with drugs. And of course, that was the foundation of the narrative in The Godfather, the cause of all the bloodshed. Is there any truth in that? There is tell you that veto Corleone in the Godfather wasn't a bad guy, and then it all went wrong when his family got in the drug business.Louis Ferrante (35:07): Yes, there definitely is a direct correlation between the movie and real life and the movie, whether Putto, I believe Mario Puzo, who was the author that they based the movie on, but either Puzo or Francis Ford Coppola adopted it from a real life story, which was Frank Costello. Frank Costello was the acting boss when Lucky Luciano went to jail and then was deported. And when Costello was boss, he was dead set against drugs. He did not want his Borgata dealing drugs because he felt that he had all these big political leaders in Tammany Hall who did everything that they could do for the mob to keep them out of jail, to help them with things. They had judges, they put judges in. They chose the head of Tammany, who in turn helped choose the mayor of New York slash the governor. And then obviously through the governor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt started out in New York and ended up being the president. So it's no telling how high you could go. Well, Costello said, if we continue to deal drugs, these political alliances are going to run away from us. They're not going to, this is something the American people do not like. They're fine with alcohol. They wanted alcohol. We gave it to them. They're fine with gambling. If the United States prohibits gambling and we allow them to gamble, that's fine. The people have no problem with that. They feel like we're providing them with a desire that they have. Even Luciano ran a chain of bordellos. That's an ointment for the hard up. That's fine. But obviously it's human slavery.AK (36:40): can I quote you on that ointment for the hard up?Louis Ferrante (36:44): Well, that's what, yeah, it basically was. It was like an outlet for social frustration maybe. Obviously. Obviously it's woman trafficking. It's disgusting. However, however, Luciano really didn't have a direct connection to it, but it was taking place, but it wasn't thought of by the American people, I should say, as the worst thing in the world.AK (37:10): I mean, the way the Godfather presents it is that this was the argument I think Sonny Cordone made with his father is that if we don't do it, someone else will. There's going to be other groups who do it. Was there any truth to that?Louis Ferrante (37:24): Yes. Yes. And everyone uses that argument today. There are still mobsters who sell drugs and say, if I don't do it, somebody else will. Somebody's got to do it. And me, myself, I never went near drugs. I had an uncle who was a drug addict. He was a heroin addict. And my mother from when me and my sister were little kids, she would beg us, please don't ever do drugs. Please don't ever do drugs. Don't put us through this hell that your uncle put us through. And we never did. I never did it, and I wouldn't sell it. I wouldn't call that curse down upon another person's family. I was dead set against it, but some people did. I knew people who sold drugs. I was in jail with a million different people who sold drugs. I don't think a lot of them sat down and really, really thought deeply about the consequences that could have with regard to mothers crying for the rest of their lives. And some kid dropped dead on his bed because he OD'ed or some, yeah, IAK: Excuse the Dimwittedness of this one. Louis, you've mentioned the word “Borgata” a couple of times. You might define it. Why did you title your book “Borgata”?Louis Ferrante (38:37): Borgata is what we called a crime family is the Borgata or the Broga, we would say, and it's a slang for a crime family. We wouldn't say we belong to a crime family. We wouldn't say we belong to the Mafiaa. We would say, I'm in so-and-So's Borgata or Borgata, and a Borgata. In the Italian definition of the word, it stems from the Latin burial. It's sort of like a poorer neighborhood of Italians would be a Borgata. A poorer community of Italians would be considered a Borgata. And that became, somehow, it became the name of a crime family, which is a little bit of a community. And obviously they don't start off super well off, or they wouldn't be committing crimes. People typically aren't born into wealth and commit crimes. So whoever the name came to mean, a crime family, that's what it means. And nobody had ever used it for a book before. So I figured, what the hell? It's perfect. So I went with the Borgata trilogy.AK (39:32): Well, I hope in this trilogy we're going to get to have you on at least two more shows for volume two and three. You end in the sixties, of course, in The Godfather, there were a wonderful moment in Godfather two, filmed in Cuba. Cuba was central. You make Cuba an important place in this narrative. Why'd you end in the sixties? Did something happen? Did something profoundly change?Louis Ferrante (39:58): Yes. There's a major shift that occurs in 1960 from the beginning of Borgata volume one until the end of Borgata volume one, there really isn't any concerted effort to destroy the Mafia. Thomas Dewey, who went on to become the Governor of New York and eventually ran as the Republican candidate for President against FDR, he did take a shot at locking up some gangsters in New York, but there was never really a concerted effort by the institutions of law enforcement to go after the mob. When Bobby Kennedy, when John f Kennedy's elected president in 1960, or begins his term in 1960, he appoints Bobby Kennedy, his younger brother, the Attorney General of the United States. And Bobby always had a thing against the mafia. He had started out in the McClellan Committee where he went after Jimmy Hoffa, and he went after other gangsters and called them to testify. And he was incensed that they took the Fifth Amendment all the time, and he didn't like that they would hide behind the Fifth, how dare them. And he swore he would go after them one day. And when John F. Kennedy becomes president, and Bobby is appointed Attorney General of the United States, he now suddenly has all of the Justice Department's, 30,000 employees under his control, treasury, I-R-S-I-N-S-F-B-I, et cetera, et cetera.AK (41:18): Although Bobby Kennedy used to call j Edgar Hoover, j Edna Hoover. He never seemed to listen very much to what Bobby Kennedy said.Louis Ferrante (41:27): No, he demeaned Hoover to, I mean, beyond what we would even consider. I mean, our standards today, forget it. They'd cancel Bobby Kennedy in a minute. But he was horrible to Hoover. And Hoover hated him. But Hoover did not. Hoover was dragged into the fight kicking and screaming. Hoover knew that if you made a concerted effort to destroy the mob, a lot of those mobsters, their backgrounds led to Congress led to congressmen, politicians, senator,AK (42:00): And of course, Hoover wonderful new biography, Al Prize winning biography. I'm sure you've read it. He was more interested, I think, in racial divisions in America. He might've been slightly sympathetic to the Mafia because they were white.Louis Ferrante (42:15): Yeah, I mean, he probably was at some point or another, he used the Mafiaa to uncover, I don't know if you're familiar with when those three civil rights workers were killed down in Mississippi.  Johnson put tremendous pressure on Hoover to crack the case, and Hoover probably got dragged into the fray kicking and screaming. I'm sure he didn't want to go after that. He was not deferential to blacks at all, Hoover. But he knew that that's what Johnson wanted. And the public wanted to know who these people were that killed these three civil rights workers, two whites and one black. And Hoover called one of his FBI informants down south and told them, here's the KK guy. The agents told, not Hoover himself, but Hoover's agents told this mob guy, here's the KKK guy. We believe the KKK guy we believe had something to do with it. You could beat it out of him if you want. Go for it. And this guy did. And then they dug up the bodies and they cracked the case. But Hoover, Hoover didn't like Italians, but he didn't go after them. And of course he didn't like blacks. Hoover was old school, very conservative in his views. Yeah. I mean, he was a man of his own time, but he was only concerned with groups trying to advocate the destruction of the United States. He was big on communists. He did not like communists Obviously, blacks and Italians weren't trying to overthrow the United States, but groups for the most part, like communist groups…AK (43:50): Right. His obsession with anti-Communist. And finally, Louis ending in the sixties, of course, in the sixties, America descended into a great deal of political violence, and particularly the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, of Bobby Kennedy, of Martin Luther King, many others. Lots of stories. And I'm sure you covered this in the book about Mafia involvement in one kind of assassination or another in the sixties, is in an odd ironic way at the end of this first volume, did America and the mafia kind of come together? Are they increasingly inseparable in the 1960s in the public use of violence of one kind or another?Louis Ferrante (44:31): That's a great question. I guess they've always remained, there's some sort of inseparability between them. But yeah, America became a very violent place.AK (44:44): Always was, but politically much more violent in the sixties.Louis Ferrante (44:48): Correct. I mean, we didn't have assassinations like we did. There's still a song. I heard it the other day. Where's my old friend, Johnny Martin, Luther King, John and Bobby, they died. Where are they? I forget the lyrics of the song, but it was made on the heels of that violence, and it still plays on the radio today. Where's my old friend Johnny? I think it is. But yeah, I mean, America became a violent place. I do believe that the mafia had something to do directly with John f Kennedy's. I present tremendous evidence in volume two of the Borgata Trilogy, trilogy. They had something to, andAK (45:24): That book's not out yet, right? Louis?Louis Ferrante (45:25): It's not out yet. But they did have something to do with his murder. And I also believe at some point or another, I intend to write a book about the Mafia's involvement with Martin Luther King's murder as well. I do believe there was a mafia informant who had something to do with Martin Luther King's murder as well. And I think if Hoover's hands aren't dirty in each of those cases, he definitely had his head in the sand and he heard things that he chose to ignore. And I think that that was the type of person, Hoover was where if I want a certain outcome and I just didn't see it or didn't hear it, it's like if you have a neighbor whose dog's been crapping on your lawn for the last 10 years, and then somebody beats up the neighbor, maybe you didn't see it. Maybe you looked the other way when it happened. I don't know. Maybe you get the outcome you wanted. So that could be what happened with Hoover.AK (46:19): Final question. I got to ask you this. We will get more next time you come on the show with volume two, talking about JFK and all that. What about you grew up in Queens? What about, you know who, I'm not sure if you've ever met him or come across him, but there's a mafia quality in the way, maybe a wannabe mafiaa quality to your fellow queens in New Yorker?Louis Ferrante (46:43): I never met him. I will say a lot of people have accused him of his construction business and the buildings that went up in New York having some type of mafia involvement. But I will say this, I know for a fact all of the buildings that went up in New York had some sort of mafia involvement. So you couldn't operate as a building developer in New York, especially back then, without having to deal with the mafia controlled unions without having to deal with the mafia controlled construction companies without having to deal with the mafia controlled concrete companies. There was something the mafia had, which was called the Concrete Club. And any bid over a million dollars, which would be any bid for a skyscraper, was controlled by the mafia. They let any bids under a million, they let them go, but anything over a million, they wanted to control. My friend, my former friend, I haven't seen him in years, I did time with him also. Tommy Rizzo supplied the rebar for the Trade Center. He was a Colombo gangster, Colombo family mobster. The guy who was supposed to fireproof the supports in the trade center was a Gambino family mobster. And the Port Authority cleared him of any wrongdoing when the towers fell. But I mean, these are mobsters who have all these contracts in New York and all these building developers to some extent have to deal with them. Now, usually there's a GC on the job, a general contractor, and at some point or another way below, someone like him or someone like somebody, his associates in that industry, somewhere down there, there's someone dealing with the cash envelopes under the table and stuff. But I don't think it ever rises to the height of himself or people like him in the developing industry. I think they're much bigger. They go to the parties. If he has a flamboyant nature, that's a completely different thing. But I mean, as far as incriminating something that he may have done incriminating, I don't believe so. I believe it was done lower, much lower than him. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Meredith Oda shows how city leaders and local residents in San Francisco fashioned a postwar municipal identity through their promotion of what Oda calls transpacific urbanism. Though the Japanese American presence in prewar San Francisco had been minor, it boomed as Japan came into vogue during the early Cold War. The Japanese Cultural and Trade Center was the apotheosis of urban redevelopment to attract Japanese capital and sell Japanese culture. Oda traces the conflicts and collaborations between a diverse set of stakeholders, including municipal planning officials, local merchant-planners, Japanese American professionals, Japanese-Hawaiian bankers, and African American neighborhood organizers. San Francisco's rise as a major business and cultural hub in the postwar Pacific World benefited the Japanese Americans who called the city home even as it reinscribed their status as perpetual foreigners in American life. Ian Shin is assistant professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Meredith Oda shows how city leaders and local residents in San Francisco fashioned a postwar municipal identity through their promotion of what Oda calls transpacific urbanism. Though the Japanese American presence in prewar San Francisco had been minor, it boomed as Japan came into vogue during the early Cold War. The Japanese Cultural and Trade Center was the apotheosis of urban redevelopment to attract Japanese capital and sell Japanese culture. Oda traces the conflicts and collaborations between a diverse set of stakeholders, including municipal planning officials, local merchant-planners, Japanese American professionals, Japanese-Hawaiian bankers, and African American neighborhood organizers. San Francisco's rise as a major business and cultural hub in the postwar Pacific World benefited the Japanese Americans who called the city home even as it reinscribed their status as perpetual foreigners in American life. Ian Shin is assistant professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Meredith Oda shows how city leaders and local residents in San Francisco fashioned a postwar municipal identity through their promotion of what Oda calls transpacific urbanism. Though the Japanese American presence in prewar San Francisco had been minor, it boomed as Japan came into vogue during the early Cold War. The Japanese Cultural and Trade Center was the apotheosis of urban redevelopment to attract Japanese capital and sell Japanese culture. Oda traces the conflicts and collaborations between a diverse set of stakeholders, including municipal planning officials, local merchant-planners, Japanese American professionals, Japanese-Hawaiian bankers, and African American neighborhood organizers. San Francisco's rise as a major business and cultural hub in the postwar Pacific World benefited the Japanese Americans who called the city home even as it reinscribed their status as perpetual foreigners in American life. Ian Shin is assistant professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Fluent Fiction - Japanese: The Sushi Battle: A Businessman's Triumph Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.org/the-sushi-battle-a-businessmans-triumph Story Transcript:Ja: まばゆい太陽が、東京のコンクリートジャングルを包み込む満ちる昼下がり。ひと際大きなスクリーンが、トレードセンター前の広場で明日開催される「東京寿司バトル」という大会を宣伝していた。ヒロシ、東京在住のビジネスマンは、そのスクリーンを見つめていた。ヒロシは自分が参加者リストに名を連ねていることに気づき、心臓が急騰する。En: On a dazzling afternoon, the radiant sun enveloped the concrete jungle of Tokyo. A particularly large screen in the square in front of the Trade Center was promoting the upcoming "Tokyo Sushi Battle" competition. Hiroshi, a businessman living in Tokyo, stared at the screen. Hiroshi suddenly realized that his name was on the participant list, causing his heart to race.Ja: しかし、寿司についての知識はほとんどないヒロシは、名前が間違って登録されたのだろうと考えた。しかし、思い返せば数週間前に酔っ払いながらオンラインで何かをポチポチとクリックした記憶があったのだ。何となくではあるが、その時に大会のエントリーをしてしまったのではないかと思い始める。En: However, Hiroshi had little knowledge about sushi and thought that his name must have been mistakenly registered. But when he thought back, he remembered drunkenly clicking something online a few weeks ago. He started to suspect that he might have entered the competition at that time, albeit vaguely.Ja: ヒロシは一瞬あきらめることを考えるが、同僚のナオミが他の出場者の支援を引き受けるために見に来てくれることを思い出し、狼狽えた。冒頭ヒロシが思い浮かべたわけでない結末は、ナオミに笑いものにされるというものだった。En: Hiroshi briefly considered giving up, but then remembered that his colleague Naomi had offered to come and support the other participants. This made him feel frantic. The unexpected ending that Hiroshi had imagined was being laughed at by Naomi.Ja: だがヒロシもただのビジネスマンではなかった。彼の姿勢はスーツを着てビジネスマンになる前に番組プロデューサーだったときに鍛えられたものだ。そこで彼は、解決不能な問題に立ち向かう術を学んだ。En: But Hiroshi was not just an ordinary businessman. His attitude was shaped when he was a television program producer before he became a suit-wearing businessman. He had learned how to confront unsolvable problems.Ja: ヒロシは、自分の宿敵であるスシロールを作るために、急いで寿司作りのオンライン教程を見始め、その間、最も高価な鮪を注文しました。大会の前日まで、彼は寝る間も惜しんで寿司を巻き、失敗作ばかりだったその作品を何度も何度も試食しました。En: In order to create his arch-nemesis, the sushi roll, Hiroshi hurriedly began watching online tutorials on sushi-making and ordered the most expensive tuna. Until the day before the competition, he rolled sushi tirelessly, sacrificing sleep, and repeatedly tasted his failed creations.Ja: そしてついに大会の日が到来した。ヒロシは全身から緊張と汗を滲ませながらステージに上がった。しかし、何度も試作を重ねた寿司を手に、彼は自信を取り戻し始めた。En: Finally, the day of the competition arrived. Hiroshi went up on stage, his entire body exuding tension and sweat. However, with the sushi he had repeatedly experimented with in his hands, he began to regain his confidence.Ja: 彼の寿司は審査員からは絶賛されることはなかったが、彼がゼロから作りあげたと知った観客からは惜しみない拍手が送られた。ヒロシは舞台で微笑み、自分が挑戦した証としての寿司を見つめた。そして、ナオミが観客席から彼に手を振るのを見つけた。彼女の顔は、明らかに笑っていたが、それは彼をからかう笑いではなく、尊敬と誇りに満ちた笑顔だった。ヒロシは知っていた。自分の努力は報われると。En: While his sushi was not acclaimed by the judges, the audience, who learned that he had made it from scratch, showered him with applause. Hiroshi smiled on stage, gazing at the sushi as evidence of his challenge. Then, he spotted Naomi waving at him from the audience. Her face was clearly filled with joy, but it was not mocking laughter; it was a smile of respect and pride. Hiroshi knew. His efforts had paid off.Ja: そして、まさにその瞬間、ヒロシには全てが報われたと感じられた。寿司バトルの勝者は彼ではなかったけれど、それでも、彼は自分が最高の勝者だと確信していた。En: And in that very moment, Hiroshi felt that everything had been rewarded. He may not have been the winner of the Sushi Battle, but he was convinced that he was the ultimate champion. Vocabulary Words:afternoon: 昼下がりsun: 太陽concrete jungle: コンクリートジャングルTokyo: 東京screen: スクリーンsquare: 広場Trade Center: トレードセンターpromoting: 宣伝していたupcoming: 明日開催されるcompetition: 大会businessman: ビジネスマンparticipant list: 参加者リストrealized: 気づきheart: 心臓mistakenly: 間違ってregistered: 登録されたlittle knowledge: 知識はほとんどないdrunkenly: 酔っ払いながらonline: オンラインでsuspect: 思い始めるconsidered: 考えるcolleague: 同僚offered: 引き受けるsupport: 支援participants: 出場者frantic: 狼狽えたordinary: ただのtelevision program producer: 番組プロデューサーsuit-wearing businessman: スーツを着てビジネスマンconfront unsolvable problems: 解決不能な問題に立ち向かう

In The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Meredith Oda shows how city leaders and local residents in San Francisco fashioned a postwar municipal identity through their promotion of what Oda calls transpacific urbanism. Though the Japanese American presence in prewar San Francisco had been minor, it boomed as Japan came into vogue during the early Cold War. The Japanese Cultural and Trade Center was the apotheosis of urban redevelopment to attract Japanese capital and sell Japanese culture. Oda traces the conflicts and collaborations between a diverse set of stakeholders, including municipal planning officials, local merchant-planners, Japanese American professionals, Japanese-Hawaiian bankers, and African American neighborhood organizers. San Francisco's rise as a major business and cultural hub in the postwar Pacific World benefited the Japanese Americans who called the city home even as it reinscribed their status as perpetual foreigners in American life. Ian Shin is assistant professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west

In The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Meredith Oda shows how city leaders and local residents in San Francisco fashioned a postwar municipal identity through their promotion of what Oda calls transpacific urbanism. Though the Japanese American presence in prewar San Francisco had been minor, it boomed as Japan came into vogue during the early Cold War. The Japanese Cultural and Trade Center was the apotheosis of urban redevelopment to attract Japanese capital and sell Japanese culture. Oda traces the conflicts and collaborations between a diverse set of stakeholders, including municipal planning officials, local merchant-planners, Japanese American professionals, Japanese-Hawaiian bankers, and African American neighborhood organizers. San Francisco's rise as a major business and cultural hub in the postwar Pacific World benefited the Japanese Americans who called the city home even as it reinscribed their status as perpetual foreigners in American life. Ian Shin is assistant professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

In The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Meredith Oda shows how city leaders and local residents in San Francisco fashioned a postwar municipal identity through their promotion of what Oda calls transpacific urbanism. Though the Japanese American presence in prewar San Francisco had been minor, it boomed as Japan came into vogue during the early Cold War. The Japanese Cultural and Trade Center was the apotheosis of urban redevelopment to attract Japanese capital and sell Japanese culture. Oda traces the conflicts and collaborations between a diverse set of stakeholders, including municipal planning officials, local merchant-planners, Japanese American professionals, Japanese-Hawaiian bankers, and African American neighborhood organizers. San Francisco's rise as a major business and cultural hub in the postwar Pacific World benefited the Japanese Americans who called the city home even as it reinscribed their status as perpetual foreigners in American life. Ian Shin is assistant professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Rich Zeoli Show- Full Episode (12/19/2023): 3:05pm- Lori Ann LaRocca of CNBC writes: “Attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants on ships in the Red Sea have already rocked global trade. And there could be more disruptions and price increases to come for shipments of goods and fuel. Several major shipping lines and oil transporters have suspended their services through the Red Sea as more than a dozen vessels have come under attack since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in early October.” How much will this disruption of supply chains impact American consumers? You can read the full article here: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/18/how-houthi-attacks-in-red-sea-threaten-global-supply-chain.html 3:30pm- In an editorial for DailyMail, Fox News' Kennedy writes: “White House dime bags, a crack-engorged First Son, topless trans activists...and now a lurid Senate sexcapade. America is overrun by fetishist weirdos and whackjobs—and we all know who's to blame!” You can read the full editorial here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12881455/KENNEDY-senate-sex-tape-staffer.html 3:45pm- In his latest piece for Politico Magazine, editor David Siders notes that, perhaps surprisingly, a large number of Mexican-Americans are excited to vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in a hypothetical presidential election rematch against President Joe Biden in 2024—citing the former president's hardline immigration policies. You can read the full article here: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/road-trip-el-paso-2024-00131703 3:50pm- On Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 4 which would make entering the country illegally a crime in Texas—allowing the state's law enforcement to arrest and deport migrants who enter the U.S. unlawfully. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the legislation. 4:05pm- Congressman Guy Reschenthaler— Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 14th district & House Republican Chief Deputy Whip—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss the ongoing chaos at the U.S. Southern border. Yesterday, a record-setting 12,000+ migrants crossed the border unlawfully. Perhaps most alarmingly, Reschenthaler explains, is that there have been an estimated 300 people who have been caught crossing the border illegally that were on the U.S. terror watch list—but how many other terror watch-list suspects weren't caught and successfully entered the country unlawfully? 4:25pm- Rich and Henry play Christmas music requests from the audience. Matt sulks because he has been banned from selecting music after advocating for Mariah Carey's “All I Want for Christmas is You.” 4:30pm- While speaking with the media, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg credited the Biden Administration with spurring an “economic recovery.” 4:35pm- While appearing on CNN with anchor Jim Acosta, Democrat pollster Stanley Greenberg warned that President Joe Biden is “losing ground every month” due in large part to the country's economic underperformance. 4:40pm- Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he would not vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump if he selects Nikki Haley to be his Vice President. 4:50pm- The Philadelphia Eagles lost to the Seattle Seahawks on Monday Night Football—what the heck happened? 4:55pm- Adam Sabes of Fox News writes: “An alleged congressional staffer who filmed an explicit sex tape inside a Senate hearing room could face criminal charges, one lawyer argues. The U.S. Capitol Police told Fox News they were aware of an amateur pornographic video published by the Daily Caller on Friday, which shows someone identified as a congressional staffer, engaging in sex with another man in Hart Senate Office Building room 216… Posts on social media claimed the alleged staffer worked for Sen. Ben Cardin's office. Hours after the story broke, Cardin's office announced that a legislative aide had been dismissed but did not address reports linking a member of his staff to the sex tape.” You can read more here: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-sex-tape-congressional-staffer-allegedly-seen-leaked-video-could-face-charges-lawyer-says 5:05pm- Michael Ruiz of Fox News writes: “A federal judge in New York has ordered the unsealing of dozens of documents naming people linked to the disgraced financier and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. The documents are expected to identify more than 180 people, including associates, victims, investigators and journalists who covered the case.” You can read the full article here: https://www.foxnews.com/us/jeffrey-epstein-scandal-federal-judge-unseal-180-previously-redacted-names 5:15pm- In an editorial for DailyMail, Fox News' Kennedy writes: “White House dime bags, a crack-engorged First Son, topless trans activists...and now a lurid Senate sexcapade. America is overrun by fetishist weirdos and whackjobs—and we all know who's to blame!” You can read the full editorial here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12881455/KENNEDY-senate-sex-tape-staffer.html 5:20pm- During a television interview with Pix11, Mayor Eric Adams was asked to describe New York City's 2023 in just one word—his response could not have been worse. Adams bizarrely explained: "This is a place where every day you wake up you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our Trade Center to a person celebrating a new business…which is why it's the greatest city on the globe.” 5:25pm- During a holiday celebration, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was being shouted down by pro-Palestinian protesters while trying to address those in attendance. To combat the protesters, Mayor Bowser began singing “This Little Light of Mine” at the top of her lungs! 5:45pm- Pennsylvania Senate Bill 140 was passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA)—providing the state with prosecutorial authority over crimes that occur within 500 yards of a SEPTA location. During a press briefing denouncing the legislation, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said that “this is an attack on democracy” and “an erasure of Philadelphia votes” claiming it was the work of Donald Trump and MAGA extremists despite support from Democrats. 5:55pm- Rich Zeoli hosts The Mark Levin Show!

The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 3: Michael Ruiz of Fox News writes: “A federal judge in New York has ordered the unsealing of dozens of documents naming people linked to the disgraced financier and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. The documents are expected to identify more than 180 people, including associates, victims, investigators and journalists who covered the case.” You can read the full article here: https://www.foxnews.com/us/jeffrey-epstein-scandal-federal-judge-unseal-180-previously-redacted-names In an editorial for DailyMail, Fox News' Kennedy writes: “White House dime bags, a crack-engorged First Son, topless trans activists...and now a lurid Senate sexcapade. America is overrun by fetishist weirdos and whackjobs—and we all know who's to blame!” You can read the full editorial here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12881455/KENNEDY-senate-sex-tape-staffer.html During a television interview with Pix11, Mayor Eric Adams was asked to describe New York City's 2023 in just one word—his response could not have been worse. Adams bizarrely explained: "This is a place where every day you wake up you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our Trade Center to a person celebrating a new business…which is why it's the greatest city on the globe.” During a holiday celebration, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was being shouted down by pro-Palestinian protesters while trying to address those in attendance. To combat the protesters, Mayor Bowser began singing “This Little Light of Mine” at the top of her lungs! Pennsylvania Senate Bill 140 was passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA)—providing the state with prosecutorial authority over crimes that occur within 500 yards of a SEPTA location. During a press briefing denouncing the legislation, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said that “this is an attack on democracy” and “an erasure of Philadelphia votes” claiming it was the work of Donald Trump and MAGA extremists despite support from Democrats. Rich Zeoli hosts The Mark Levin Show!

In today's episode of the IC-DISC show, I have a captivating discussion with Carolyn Turner from the Alabama International Trade Center. We uncover fascinating details about Alabama's economic progress and the pivotal role of the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) in boosting job growth and new businesses. Carolyn shares inspiring success stories of SBDC clients who utilized free services to export goods successfully. I also learned more about the SBDC's impactful support for small businesses through cost-free assistance. We wrap it up by exploring how SBDC teams in Texas and Colorado foster business growth.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Carolyn Turner, the Assistant Director of Research and Training at the Alabama International Trade Center for Imports and Exports, joins us to discuss Alabama's economic progress and the impact of the Small Business Development Center (SBDC). We discuss the remarkable growth in job creation, economic investment, and new business formations in Alabama, which can be directly linked to the efforts of the SBDC. Carolyn shares inspiring success stories of businesses that have used the SBDC's free services to successfully export goods. We delve into the valuable, cost-free services provided by the SBDC and its transformative role in Alabama's business landscape. We explore the flourishing industries in Huntsville, Alabama, including aerospace, aviation, missile defense, and genomics. Carolyn and I have a lively discussion about the economic influence of Bucky's in Alabama and the importance of taking breaks. We touch on the peculiarities of international business, such as the unnecessary pursuit of perfection, and engage in a playful debate about whether to use hot or cold water when scooping ice cream. We highlight the work being done by the SBDC teams in Texas and Colorado to support small businesses and entrepreneurs. Carolyn emphasizes the importance of making use of SBDC resources, particularly for those in Texas, and encourages checking out the San Antonio SBDC. We end on a note of importance, discussing the significance of finding joy in what you do and taking breaks to maintain passion and enthusiasm. LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Alabama International Trade Center GUEST Carolyn TurnerAbout Carolyn TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Hi, my name is David Spray and this is the IC disc show. My guest today is Carolyn Turner from Alabama. Carolyn is the Assistant Director of Research and Training at the Alabama International Trade Center for Imports and Export. I think this might be the longest title of any guest I've ever had. So the Alabama International Trade Center for Importing and Exporting is a division of the Alabama Small Business Development Center, which in turn is funded by the Small Business Administration. I learned that every state has its own Small Business Development Center focused on increasing the economic impact of small businesses. So we talked about the different ways that the Small Business Development Center in Alabama has had an impact. Carolyn shares some amazing stats as far as job growth, economic investment, new business formations in Alabama that are directly tied to the Small Business Development Center. We also discussed some specific stories of clients of her organization who export and successful export stories and success stories that developed. And then, on a more fun note, we also talked about which Texas retail behemoth has had a bigger impact on her life in Alabama the famous Whataburger or the famous Buckeys and her answer there was pretty interesting. So even if you're not in Alabama, I would recommend that you investigate the Small Business Development Center in your state as well as the exporting arm to take advantage of their free services. This was a great episode and Carolyn has a real passion for helping small businesses and it comes through in the entire conversation. Carolyn: I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Dave: Good morning, Carolyn. Welcome to the podcast. Carolyn: Good morning. Thanks for having me. Dave: Sure. Now. Where are you? Where are you located today? I'm in Birmingham, Alabama, In Birmingham okay, and so are you a native Alabama. Is that the correct term? Carolyn: I've spent most of my life here. Technically, I was born in California, but I grew up in Alabama. Dave: Got there as quick as you could. That's what we say in Texas. Carolyn: I know it gets a bad rep, but it's a pretty good state to live in. Dave: I know I've been to Alabama several times. We have a client there and always wonderful experiences there. So let's talk about the organization, and I'm really intrigued by this whole structure and I've learned a lot about this from you. So you're technically an employee of the University of Alabama, right? Carolyn: Yes. Dave: But this is part of a bigger structure, so could you maybe give the audience a sense of how everything fits together? So let's maybe start at the top. What's the umbrella organization for everything? Carolyn: Sure, so I'm part of America's SBDC that stands for the Small Business Development Center. We are a national organization that's funded mostly through Congress, through the Small Business Administration, and there are these in every state. So Alabama SBDC is part of that organization and in the state of Alabama it's a partnership with the University of Alabama, so this is really considered a federal state partnership. Funding comes through Congress, through the SBA. We get some matching funds through the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama manages our grant. Dave: Okay. Carolyn: Slightly differently in other states. Every state can kind of handle it differently, but in Alabama that's how it's worked for the last 40 plus years. Dave: Okay, and then within the Alabama SBDC, I guess there's kind of sub organizations, of which the Research and Economic Development Center is one of those kind of subsidiary arms, is that right? Carolyn: So the University Office of Research and Economic Development is a UA department. Within the SBDC we have four kind of divisions. We have our domestic business advisors that are just called the SBDC Small Business Development Center. We have our government contracting branch, which recently changed names to APEX. We have the Alabama International Trade Center, which I'm a part of, and then we also have a separate capital access team that is part of the SBDC. Dave: Okay. Carolyn: And within UA, we are housed within the Office of Research and Economic Development. Okay, and that's the dean that we report to. Dave: Okay, well, that's, and I believe that you're a proud graduate of the University of Alabama. Carolyn: Right Double degree graduate yes, I got my undergrad in international marketing in Spanish, with some extra studies and international studies, and then, a number of years later, once I started back with the SBDC, I got my master's degree in global business management. Dave: Okay, now would, if you'd been a graduate from, say, one of the other large Alabama universities, would that have been a problem in your current role, or are they kind of not as competitive as people are on Saturdays? Carolyn: No, In fact, because the university manages our grant, they actually manage the grants for a number of the other SBCs located throughout the state. So within Alabama, we have offices located at all of the major universities Auburn, Troy, Jacksonville State, North Alabama, UAH, Alabama State University, South Alabama, West Alabama. I think that's all of them, but many of them, even though they're located at Auburn or at UAH, they can be considered a University of Alabama employee. Dave: Okay, that must be interesting for the folks at Auburn. Carolyn: It can be. We do have some people that are UA employees but are definitely Auburn fans, and it's okay. Dave: That's wonderful. Yeah, nothing like a nice friendly rivalry, friendly, some friendlier than others. Carolyn: So the way it doesn't manage all of our centers, some universities still manage their own grants. We'll just see where it goes. Dave: Gotcha, what a great attitude. So let's talk about the SBDC then in Alabama, and that's the Small Business Development Center. Is that what the C stands for? Yes, do you? I know I'm not as familiar with Alabama, but I know like in Texas the SBDC has a really big impact on the small business community. Do you happen to have any types of stats or summary or anything of the economic development that's occurred because of the SBDC or that the SBDC has been involved in? Carolyn: Absolutely we do. We publish an economic impact report every year. So last year the metrics that we had were in 2000,. We created or helped create in Alabama over 1278 jobs. We worked with a lot. I know and for a relatively small center, I think it's a pretty big impact. We had nearly 350 new business starts last year and our capital access team helped companies get over $100 million in capital access, whether that be traditional bank loans, sba loan guarantees, startup loans, investment capital all sorts of options. Wow, we do track that over the years as well. So over the last five years combined, we've helped over 7000 job creations, about 1300 new business starts and around 550 million in capital access. Dave: Wow, that's really amazing. Carolyn: It's a really incredible thing to see the impact that we can have. A few years ago, we informally did an interview of our employees and one of the questions was what is the reason you get out of bed in the morning? Why do you do this job? And the majority decision was the reason why all of us do this is because we love making an impact in our community. Dave: Yeah, that really resonates with me because our business is really serving the same market. It's those privately held, closely held small businesses that seem to be the economic driver of our economy and I find it to be very satisfying to be able to make a difference in those organizations, because they are the bedrock of our communities. So, that's pretty cool. And how long have you been doing this? How long have you been involved with these various entities? Carolyn: I just celebrated 15 years 15 years, wow. Dave: Well, that's awesome, so obviously you must really enjoy it. Carolyn: I do. I love my job. I love the different projects that we get to work on and all the different companies. I love seeing the impact that we get to have. One of the downfalls in economic development across the industry is that you have to spend a lot of time and a lot of hours trying to work on projects before something turns to fruition. So being able to be here for the long haul and seeing the results of the work that we do is really inspiring. Dave: Yeah, I bet it is. I bet it is. So why don't we now drill down to the division that you're part of, that's the Economic Development Center. So, at kind of a high level, what are some of the ways that the center helps businesses? Carolyn: So the Alabama International Trade Center is focused on helping the small and medium-sized companies in Alabama grow through international trade. Our domestic business advisors work on what I call domestic business issues how to start a business, what kind of legal formation do you want, market research on how to grow your business, hiring and firing and tax questions, and quick books and all the basics of how to run a business. When it comes to international, we help them when they are trying to either export or import their products or services. Most of our clients tend to be manufacturers, just because it's, I guess, more common industry knowledge to export a tangible product. But many of companies have services that they can export. So we definitely work with exports of services as well. But the vast majority of our clients are manufacturers. They manufacture some kind of product that has typically been selling successfully domestically for a number of years and then they start branching internationally, and so the way that we work with companies is through a variety of different services. We have educational training sessions available on different international business topics. So about once a month we host an educational seminar on some kind of international business topic. I'm hosting one tomorrow on international documentation, partnered with UP, on the documentation requirements for exporting and importing. In the past we have done sessions on inco terms, classification, export controls, hazardous material, shipping certifications, on how to sell in Europe, general data protection regulations, you name it. We've probably hosted a seminar on that topic, okay. I have to do one-on-one training. So I will go and visit companies and provide a few hours of one-on-one training on different business topics. Sometimes it's on Zoom. I'm seeing that a lot more often and I think probably across the country. You see this, Teams are not localized anymore. They might have team members spread over the country, and so pretty often we're doing Zoom sessions with clients when they'll bring in at the same time all of their employees from various locations and we'll do a training session on the basics of exporting or the basics of importing or export compliance, those types of things, and it's really great because new to export companies obviously need this training. You know they don't know what they're doing, but what we see a lot of is even successful companies. As they grow and hire more people or they have turnover in employees, they'll bring us back in a couple years later and do refresher training, continuous education, for their employees. So that gives a lot of use. And then we also provide guidance on export trade finance. So that's really a niche market kind of separate than our general capital access team. When companies need to get access to the money that they need to manufacture their product for export. Sometimes it can be very challenging for them to get access to a line of credit through a bank, and so we'll talk to them about export working capital programs that exist, export credit insurance that they could get through the XM Bank on how they can mitigate risks of foreign receivables and what companies through all of those options, Because these programs exist to make it less risky for a small to medium size company to start thinking about exporting. And you know, maybe they're exporting $250,000 worth of equipment to Germany or India, and if that customer in Germany or India didn't pay them, that could really hurt their business. I mean, who knows they could go out of business or doesn't pay them $250,000. And so why these programs exist? To make it easier. We also do a lot of market research, so that is one of the great partnerships that we have with the University of Alabama. We provide an internship to University of Alabama students that are then able to come in and help put together these industry specific customized market research reports for our Trade Center clients. So whether that maybe they have no idea where they want to export to, and so we're starting from scratch, trying to help them figure out where overseas would be a good target market to start with, or successfully exported to 100 countries, and now they're trying to get into a new one for the first time, or they're having trouble with their existing distributor and they want contact information for other options. So standard research reports for us could take anywhere from 40 to 60 hours and we pay to have access to a lot of databases. As well as being part of the university, we get access to databases through the university, and so we'll pull all these different pieces of information and put together a customized report that companies can use to help develop their export strategy. It's great experience for the students because they get to work real world projects, not just make believe, made up ones, yeah, interaction with the companies usually and it's great information for the clients as well. I mean they would pay thousands and thousand dollars on the private market sector for this kind of research. Dave: Sure, now, and that raises the question I was curious about Is there any? Does the Trade Center generate any revenues from any of its services, or are they all just complimentary? Carolyn: It's all offered at no fee, so we do not charge for any of the services that we provide. Because our funding comes from the SBA, we are allowed to offer these services at no cost. The only thing we ask in return from our clients is that twice a year, they fill out a survey letting us know it's done a good job, because we have to gather all of that data and our metrics. You know we're one of the few organizations that is really judged on our metrics and if we don't meet our goals, if we don't work with enough companies and help them grow and succeed and increase their sales and get access to capital, then we are at risk of losing our funding. So every metric point that we report, every economic impact that we report, is actually backed up by our clients. We're not allowed to claim anything, any kind of success, without their written permission. Dave: Okay, well, that's well. That seems like a really fair trade. You do all this to help these companies and they just have to complete a survey twice a year. That seems like a fair trade. Carolyn: It's pretty good and we're not just one time. That's one of the other things people think oh, you know, I'll just talk to you one time. No, most of my clients have been working with me for years and for a new to export company. Sometimes that's how long it takes, Other times, you know, they've just grown tremendously over the last few years and it's amazing to see where they've started versus where they are now. Dave: Yeah, that's awesome and I bet you're really popular with your clients because you're providing the service at no out-of-pocket cost to them. Carolyn: For the most part. Yes, I think our clients are fairly satisfied. We use a net promoter score rating that we track with our clients. It's typically pretty high up there. Every now and then we'll get a client that you know feels like they already know everything, like they don't need any help, but for the most part they're pretty helpful for the help that they receive. Dave: Yeah, I would think so, because they're certainly getting their money's worth, right? Carolyn: So at least they should feel like it. I think so. We're constantly adding to our services as industry changes, as things modernize. So, you know, especially during the COVID pandemic, we switched a lot of efforts into online marketing, global website globalizing websites, information on how to do international shipping for direct you know, direct to consumer and e-commerce. We launched a program a few years ago on graphic design, so now we offer graphic design for free so that companies that are trying to upgrade their website so that it's more user-friendly for international users. Or we have a student right now who's creating animation videos for marketing for a couple of companies all at no cost. Dave: That's awesome. Well, I love like case studies stories. I think it really kind of pulls it all together. Do you happen to have any examples of companies you've worked with in the last few years that you could kind of use as a case study and share some of the details? Carolyn: Absolutely. We do turn in success stories to the SBA every year. That's part of our goals and metrics. I think that definitely makes us a little bit unique. We have a confidentiality agreement with all of our clients, so we're not allowed to discuss specifics of what we do with anyone else without written permission, so it's good that we get these authorized success stories from companies. Over the last few years we've had quite a variety of different companies that have that we've worked with on these. So last year we worked with a company in Huntsville Polaris Solar Systems, polaris Sensor Technologies, I think is what it was called and we helped them navigate the world of export compliance. They have a regulated, export-controlled technology and so they had to make sure that they were following all the regulations and applying for licenses. We helped them practice their pitch when they were going to be pitching to foreign customers, realizing that the benefits of their products and technologies were actually different in different parts of the world and used in a different way, and so working with them to develop their pitch and their value proposition and introducing them to potential customers overseas. Another example is totally different industry sector. There was a company in a very rural, economically disadvantaged area of the state that had created a company developing very small tractors or very high tech. But the way that they came up with this design, it was easy to build, it was small, it was more affordable for individually run farms or small co-ops. And they had this novel idea of they were either going to manufacture these tractors in northeast Alabama or they would give the design, the blueprints of the tractor, for free, at no cost, to a foreign manufacturer for them to be able to create a manufacturing plant overseas and create local jobs. It's one of the ways that they wanted to give back to the community. Oh, that's how cool is that? It was really cool. They changed names a couple of times when we worked with them. It was called Kleber Technologies and so we worked with them way back in the beginning, before they had done any exporting, and we went and visited them and provided in-house training on basics of international shipping and how to do export marketing. Through the years we did market research to help them find customers or distributors and overseas parts of the world. They eventually went and visited and sent pictures of clients in sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Latin America writing on the tractors Last year. So this is probably seven or eight years after we started with them. But last year, at this particular company, one of the Alabama's governor's exports awards oh, wow, because they successfully exported to 50 plus countries now and it's just amazing to see. So I tracked back down the student who had helped work on their market research way back in the beginning. Oh, really I actually did that article on LinkedIn. I said hey, do you remember that project from eight years ago? Look at them now. Dave: Wow, that's really cool. And that first company you mentioned you said they were in Huntsville, right? Yes, and I think a lot of folks outside of Alabama don't realize that Huntsville is like one of the rocket capitals of the US, right, space industry. How would I describe the industry? Carolyn: Yeah, I mean rocket and space were known for NASA in Huntsville. We also have Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville and FBI, I think, just relocated down there. There's SpaceX activities that are planned, so aerospace, aviation, missile defense is another big one. But then surprisingly, hudson Alpha also is located there and they have been instrumental in genetics, genomics, research, pharmacogenomics, so it definitely kind of covers the gambit. When you take a tour at Hudson Alpha it's really interesting. From one side of the building you can look out and see all the NASA and space technologies, and then inside the building is genomics and genetics and agrogenetic, and then on the other side is cornfields, because that's the real Huntsville. Dave: Wow, that is pretty cool. So this has really been kind of a fun overview for folks who are listening to this, who are in Alabama, who do international trade. What would be the best way for them to learn more? Would you just direct them to the website, or where should they kind of start? Should they just reach out to you? What's the kind of ideal process? Carolyn: Just go to our website, aitcuaedu. Registration is free. As I said, we don't charge for anything that we do, and within the state of Alabama, we're part of a bigger group called the Export Alabama Alliance, so that's a group of all of the entities in the state that work together to promote trade. So we've got the Governor's International Trade Office, the US Department of Commerce on the federal level, local chambers of commerce, sba, ports, various entities that exist to help promote exporting, and so when you get one of us, you get all of us. We work together as a team to make sure that the companies get the support that they need, no matter what they're trying to do. And then, yeah, I just strongly recommend, no matter what state you're in, google your SBD, because they have a very valuable resource. Dave: That's awesome. Well, as we're wrapping up, I have a couple of kind of more personal wild card type questions just for fun. So you mentioned you joined the organization 15 years ago, and so I'm just curious if you could like go back in time and give advice to your 15 year younger self, knowing what you know now. Like, what advice might you give to yourself with the perspective of 15 years of experience? Carolyn: That's a tough one. Dave: I know that's what makes it fun Fun for me, not so much fun for you. Carolyn: I'm a. On a personal note, I am a recovering perfectionist. Dave: Oh yeah, my wife is one of those, but not the recovery stage yet. Carolyn: That has been a hard lesson to learn. A colleague that I had taught me something and it's a quote that has stuck with me and I tell it to everyone now and it is that you are a human being, not a human doing Okay, so that'd be your advice to yourself is just taking a bit of a chill pill and absolutely. Dave: Yeah, my one of the quotes I like around that subject I also have some perfectionist tendencies is that great quote progress, not perfection. Carolyn: Yes. Dave: So, although you know there are some things I do push back a little bit, there are some things you need perfection on landing an airplane, open heart surgery, right, I mean, there's some things that you know it pretty much, perfect is the only, the only option. Carolyn: Yeah, I agree. But in the world of international business I think perfection is not needed and progress is. And you know what I tell my students all the time that are doing these market research reports? Because you know they're so open ended. You could just keep researching for ever and ever and keep on finding more pieces of information. So I focused a lot on quality over quantity. Dave: That is awesome. So by last question and this is a really fun one I think there are two famous or at least you know Texas institutions that have expanded eastward and I'm going to ask you which one you think is had made a bigger difference in your life, if any of them have. What a burger or Bucky's, oh Bucky's. I had a feeling you'd answer that one. Carolyn: Yeah, it's kind of a saving joke. I mean I think we have two Bucky's in Alabama, maybe three. Dave: According to the research I just pulled up, that as of April 10th of 2023, they'll have four stations in Alabama, but it's not quite clear how many of those are up and running right now. Carolyn: There is one not far outside of Birmingham, on the path between Birmingham and Atlanta, and it is packed no matter what time of day it is. It's like a town, it's so big. Dave: But Does it have? Is the road it's on called like Bucky's Boulevard too? That seems to be. Carolyn: I don't think so. I don't know. Maybe, but it's definitely impacted everyone's road trips. I think you can't. Dave: Yeah, I'm told that, not by without stopping at Bucky's. Yeah, I'm told that Alabama has the second most number of Bucky's outside of Texas. So things are, yeah, and it's interesting because they're always Bucky's are always the same, but like in a good way, you know, and the best one, and I've always said that off on a tangent. I've always said that it seems like Bucky's competitive business advantage are the clean restrooms. That seems to be like what they really differentiate. But when you take a big picture, look at it from a business perspective, you're thinking that shouldn't be a sustainable business differentiator. Right, because in theory that anybody could copy that, but for whatever reason, nobody else cares to. Carolyn: I don't know. I mean, I would say their main competitors would be like the pilots and the lying Jays. Sure, I remember the names of them. But as far as competition, I think that's definite competition there. I think Bucky's is the shop I mean it's, I don't know. Cracker barrel meets gas. Dave: Yeah, yes, yeah. It's hard to describe to somebody who's not been to a Bucky's. Carolyn: No, but this. Dave: And they seem to be an economic development force because everyone I've ever been to because they need so much land and they always want to be on a busy highway that they oftentimes are not near cities, they're kind of in the middle of nowhere and they're always advertising really high starting hourly wages. So I get the sense that for a lot of these areas that they come into they really bring economic opportunity for folks that live nearby. I mean, it seems like the classic example is the person working the checkout registers Oftentimes seem to be a teenager that lives there locally and I think, man, can you think of a better like part-time job to have in high school than to be making $15 or $18 an hour working at Bucky's inside the air conditioning? Yeah, just talking to folks all day, I don't know. *Carolyn: * My high school job was scooping ice cream at Baskin Robbins. Oh that's. I mean with free ice cream perks. Dave: Yeah, that one might have to trump Bucky's. I bet you're. I've always wondered are your hands and wrists and forearms just worn out at the end of the day? Oh my gosh, yes. Carolyn: And gosh, the first Baskin Robbins I worked at. They used cold water in their faucets where you put the ice cream scoop and it was At my one arm. I had like huge muscle by the end of every summer. Dave: Now did you get used to it then Like by the end of the summer, were you not as fatigued by the end of the day? Carolyn: Yeah, but then you know, other ice cream shops use hot water to store their ice cream scoops in and it makes a huge difference. Dave: Oh, I bet it does. You know why they use the cold water instead of hot? Yeah, any theory. Carolyn: Looking back, I think they were just being cheap Okay. Dave: Yeah, because I think I know at home if I'm scooping up several servings. You know, I know the old trick of the hot bowl of water to dip the scooper in to make it work better. The people. Carolyn: We used to get these, the big old jars of cherries, and they would make us go through and cut them all in half. Oh wow, they would last twice as long, oh wow. Well, Honey, you know I guess. Managing is almost as hard right. Dave: Yeah, that's the beauty of the free enterprise system. Every person tries, you know, gets to do it their way, and all of that. I mean, who knows, maybe the little bit of money they saved, maybe that translated to higher hourly earnings for the employees who knows, maybe, who knows? Carolyn, this has really been a fun conversation. Was there anything I didn't ask you that you wish I had, or anything that we should mention? Carolyn: I would just say that the world of international trade is constantly changing. Okay, so find a local resource in your area that can keep you up to date. Dave: Okay, that's awesome. Well, I appreciate that and I really appreciate your time today. I've really learned a lot more about the whole SBDC program in general and you've kind of inspired me to take a look the two states I spend the most time in are Texas and Colorado to take the initiative to start to learn more about those organizations Absolutely. Carolyn: The SBDC team in Texas is absolutely amazing. This is absolutely phenomenal. I'm not sure if I've met anyone from the SBDC Colorado team, but definitely take advantage of your in Texas. Dave: Yeah, I know in Houston. I think it's associated with the University of Houston. I think it's called the U of H SBDC. Carolyn: I know it's the San Antonio SBDC that does most of international trade work in Texas. Dave: Okay Well that's good to know. I'm going to be in San Antonio in a few weeks. I should check that out. Well, that's great. Well, that's great advice and this has really been a fun conversation and I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to share the story and obviously you have great enthusiasm and passion for what you're doing and that comes through and that's always fun to see people that really are inspired and really focused on how much they enjoy their job. Carolyn: It makes a big difference when you enjoy what you do For sure, all right. Dave: Well, have a great day, carolyn. Carolyn: You too. Special Guest: Carolyn Turner.

We're 20 years behind in the contracting industry, and the old way of doing things has been outdated. Today's guest — Johnny Vescio, founder of Kolaabo Inc. — wants to create a modern vibe in the contracting world. He discusses the need for modernization in the contracting industry and what it means to be a modern contractor.   In this episode, we talk about: The contracting industry's outdated practices and the need for modernization The idea of being a modern contractor Changing the mindset of contractors to transform the industry Campaign for educating contractors to help change the contracting industry Qualities and skills modern contractors should possess  Reasons why projects of some contractors fall apart The importance of self-mastery in the contracting world Creating balanced relationships with clients and employees if you want win-win outcomes Leadership, self-mastery, and creating a positive work environment Fears of a contractor: not having enough work and their body retiring before they do Marketing strategies of modern contractor About Kolaabo — a scheduling tool for contractors Trade Center feature of Kolaabo for contractors to collaborate and share resources Mentioned:   Kolaabo    Johnny V (@moderncontractor) on TikTok   Johnny Vescio on LinkedIn  Links to resources:    Book A Call With Triplett: Call with Triplett   The Pond Digger - https://theponddigger.com/   You can also check out The Pond Digger's products at: http://helixpondfiltration.com/    TWT Contractor Circle   TWT Contractor Power Circle   And follow his adventures in the pond world at: Instagram  Facebook  TikTok 

The guys are joined this week by Patrick Reynolds. They talk about his history with East Durham, Jimmy Diresta's House, One world Trade Center, and New York City. They also get deep into Maker Camp and what it takes to bring a town back to life with a new energy and a new community. When he's not in East Durham NY, you can find Patrick on Instagram here...@reynopatrickCheck out The Art of Craftsmanship on YouTube, Instagram, and Patreon here...youtube.com/theartofcraftsmanship@theartofcraftsmanship@theartofcameraguypatreon.com/theartofcraftsmanshipRecommendations:Devon:Brooks Robinson's Hall of Fame Speech from the 1983'shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1qMIs2BuoIPatrick:Joe Dispenza on YT "Introduction to Your Brain"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0In3V8NWxADustin:Follow the #makercampmakerswap2023 on IG to see whos making what for maker camp this year and what you might come away with if you enter. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Government set to roll out three additional trade centers around the world to support Ghana's non-traditional exports

Wow is all I can say about our guest in this episode, Suzanne Jean. Suzanne has spent more than 50 years in the social services arena. Much of that time has been creating and promoting a program called PowerED. She is the Director of Fit4Defense Consulting Ltd which is her springboard for bringing PowerED into schools and classrooms.   As Suzanne will tell us, bullying, especially of children, is significantly on the rise. She has reasons for this increase and will illustrate what is happening in our society that permits this to happen.   I believe this episode of Unstoppable Mindset is one of the most powerful ones I have had the privilege to conduct. Enough from me. I hope you will listen to Suzanne and take her observations and lessons to heart.     About the Guest:   Bullying Stops Here Bullying hurts! It is not merely physical aggression but includes persistent disparaging condescending, demeaning comments and behaviors that cause physical and mental anguish to others. The harm and costs are well documented, examples are illness, addiction, suicide, anxiety, depression, unemployment, and domestic violence. Under the umbrella of Fit4Defense, PowerEd classes work to help children, youth, adults, and seniors build a sense of confidence and self-worth through a variety of discussions, exercises, and self-defense techniques. The 4 in Fit4Defense's name represents "the four As," and this forms the pillars of the program. This training examines how attention, awareness, avoidance, and action can help people to break through self-imposed limitations and habits. Attention: It's about tuning in to the here and now. Observing others and the environment around you. Expanding perception and mindfulness. Awareness: Self-study-discovering what do you believe, feel, need, and want? Gaining skills to effectively communicate this. Feeling seen, heard, valued, and safe. Loving yourself and caring for others. Avoidance: Taking steps to stay safe, not only physically but emotionally. Action: The last resort, is to defend yourself if you are bullied or threatened. How do you stop bullying? You become 100% responsible for your feelings, thoughts, and behaviors and learn how to communicate them assertively   Ways to connect with Milam:   Website and Programs Offered: https://www.fit4defense.ca     About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hello once again, and welcome to unstoppable mindset where inclusion diversity in the unexpected meet. And as I always love to say the unexpected is the fun part about it. And I just learned how unexpected this is. I told her I was going to do this. Our guest today is Suzanne Jean who was on vacation in Maui. Can you believe it? Geez. And we didn't get invited along. And neither did any of you. I think that this is something that we need to discuss in some way. But Suzanne, seriously, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here and that you took the time to do this on a vacation.   Suzanne Jean ** 01:56 Oh, thank you my call and only for you when I get off the beach.   Michael Hingson ** 02:02 You couldn't have to be here. You couldn't have taken the laptop down and done it from the beach. Now there'd be too much surf. Well, well, yeah. Yeah. gotta you gotta do. Got to do what you got to do, right? I think you're the first person that I least recall, who has talked to us from Hawaii. If there's been someone else, I don't recall it. But Well, I'm glad you're having a good vacation over there. And you're in a wonderful place for it. So that's cool. Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about you kind of as, as I described, I would ask sort of the early Suzanne growing up, what it was like being a kid or what anything like that, that you want to tell us so that we get to know you a little better.   Suzanne Jean ** 02:48 Well, the earliest is and growing up, it was pretty hyperactive, pretty busy girl, always moving. And it was quite interesting. Because I was living in Montreal, I am from Canada, and that's on the east coast of Canada. And I wasn't getting a lot of sleep. And my doctor said you have two choices, you have something called ADHD. And I'm gonna give you two choices. You either go on medication, or you take Tai Chi. And I went no, not Tai Chi, because I had seen people doing this very slow exercise. And I was very hyper. So not wanting to go on medication, I agreed to go down and check it out. And so I went to a Tai Chi class and I hated it. It's the very slow movement. But this woman said to me, Hey, after class, we all go to Chinatown and have a big feast. And it's only like 250 a person don't want to come and I said Now we're talking. So I had some motivation to go back to Tai Chi. And I I found it really did help me and helped me relaxed my metabolism. And it was the first beginnings of being mindful. And fast forward. I came to Vancouver and I went to find a Tai Chi teacher because now this is my, this is my prescription. I and I met this Tai Chi teacher and he said, Why are you doing tai chi? And they said, Because I you know, it's good for me. I'm, it's good for for my well being. And he said, No, you need to come to karate. And I said karate, I don't want to do karate and he said absolutely. You're born to do karate. He said, Come on over. So I said, I'll come to one class. He was also a tai chi. He was a Tai Chi teacher and he was just teaching Tai Chi to to make money to do while he was doing his PhD. So I went to his karate class and I never I walked out the door and bought my GI and I have never stopped. And I am now I just had my 70th birthday. So I've been doing martial arts since I was about 17. When did you move? Oh, go ahead. I continue to do Tai Chi.   Michael Hingson ** 05:18 Good for you, you know, stay loyal? Yes. When did you move to Vancouver,   Suzanne Jean ** 05:25 early 70s. So I moved to Vancouver, and I'm in social services. So I have about 5060 years of community based social service background. And I was working with at risk youth. And I was noticing that we were criminalizing their behavior that the caregivers, people working with these kids couldn't deal with the aggression and the anger and some of those behaviors. And rather than learn how to deal with that conflict, they were just, you know, putting them in jail, they were ending up. And then it's a vicious circle. So I began to become interested in how perhaps I could use martial arts and Self Defense in a way to give those workers more a feeling of security around those kinds of behaviors. And so I began to work doing that kind of de escalation training, and it was quite successful. And I, I began to see how I could build confidence quite quickly, through self defense. So that was the first seeds of realizing that there is some real power here. Because with with the dynamics of bullying, and aggression, and any kind of aggression, it's fundamentally a study of power. And when you can teach self defense and the pillars of the program as they evolved, you can see real substantial change in terms of, you know, giving youth and children insights into their strengths, and their unique qualities and their abilities to be safe. And so it kind of grew from there. I have written a book and and the first chapter of the book, there's a very interesting story, because I was teaching self defense to women, as well as and studying martial arts quite seriously. And I got a call one day, and it was from a woman and she said, your name Suzanne. I said, Yes. She said, I heard on the street that you're okay. And I said, really? No. Yeah, I said, and she says, I'm a sixth grade worker, and we're in trouble. There's a serial killer. And two of my friends have been murdered. And we need self defense. And I, and this took really took me aback, right. I was like, what? And she said, Will you teach us and I said, Well, I'll agree to meet with you, and see if that would be viable. I have no idea at this point. And so she set up a meeting and the meeting was at two in the morning at a restaurant, and I arrived, and there were 50 women showed up for the meeting, in the middle of the night. And we chatted and I had no idea if I you know, I've never done anything like this before. They had no idea. But I wanted to help them. Because they were so sincere. And I said, Look, there's we'll give it a go. I said there's three conditions you show up and you're not wasted on drugs and alcohol, you know, you're in good, fairly good shape, you show up, and that you just give it 100% You give it everything you have. So the woman, Rhonda, the the woman who was organizing the whole thing said, I know the minister at the church, and I'm sure he'll let us practice there. And I think the classes should be 730 in the morning before we go to bed after work. So I was like, again, just like okay, so mostly they could meet the condition of giving it everything but you know, they would come off their shifts, or they were and it was amazing. And to see the sentence of To see the change in them to see them grow, to start to recognize the community and support each other. And realize, you know, if a car if if Sunland felt the car was unsafe to get into, they would they wouldn't do it. They started learning the moves. And it was a remarkable learning experience for me, I was just so impressed with that. It's at least   Michael Hingson ** 10:32 good that they, they did it at a fairly decent hour in the morning, but before they went to bed, that's pretty cool. But 730 In the morning, better than 2am Every day, I'll say. But by the same token, I can see what you're saying that you are teaching them self defense. And probably a lot of them, maybe most of them felt somewhat defenseless right from the outset. And so you are instilling a lot of confidence in these women where they didn't have it before.   Suzanne Jean ** 11:07 Mm hmm. Absolutely. And so as my program, my program is called power, and as I said, you know, it is it is a study of power. And there's four pillars to the program. And the first pillar is attention. And that's around tuning into the here and now and really observing yourself observing others observing the environment around you. And the you know, as they say, where your attention goes, your energy flows, so much of, for young people, so much of the world is in this little box, right? It's in social media, it's on telephones, it's gaming, it's on computers. And they're not looking at words, they're not looking at each other. In, in a way, that's when I saw when I do these classes, and we have discussions, they think it's rocket science, Oh, can we do that, again, that was really great. No, we're just we're having a conversation. But if you think about their world, that kind of attention is not something that's, that's common. It's not common. And part of that also, what I teach is being able to recognize LOA allies and people that can support you in your life. The second pillar is really the heart and soul. And that's awareness. And that is building self study, bringing people to recognize what they truly believe and feel and what they want. And then having the skills gaining the skills to be able to communicate it. So in order to force somebody to say no to getting into a car, right, that could be a threat to them to their lives, they have to care about themselves, they have to take that step where I do care about myself, and I'm not going to take that chance. So having that awareness and that self love loving yourself loving others, that piece is all about the self awareness pillar. So this is not, you know, you think of self defense, you just think of the physical, and I take it to a whole different level, I take self defense to a whole different level, a psychological level. The fourth, the third pillar is avoidance. And that's all the things you do to stay safe. And again, it ties into attention, recognizing what those things are, but and not not safety just from a physical but from a most emotional. So kids do learn street smarts, and they learn that sort of thing. But then they learn a little bit more about how to set boundaries for themselves, how to be emotionally safe. And in the way the awareness piece helps them to communicate that to others and set those boundaries with other people. And then the final one is the action piece. So that's where they have the skills to defend themselves physically and emotionally. If they're bullied or they're threatened. And the action piece is doesn't stop again, with just the physical, it moves into being able to make good choices and good decisions for yourself. So all those four pillars kind of are they're interrelated. But they support they support it pretty good mindset. So the program the classes themselves, involve physical self defense. discussions, self awareness exercises, perception exercises mindfulness, and physical, you know, games, they're pretty well rounded, because it has to be fun, I'm not going to get children and youth doing this unless it's really fun.   Michael Hingson ** 15:18 You mentioned before about the fact that a lot of their behaviors, over the years have become more criminalized and so on. Do you think that the behavior of children and younger people has actually grown worse? Or a relatively speaking or that people perceive that it has? Or is that really something that's happening, much less the fact that now we don't want to deal with it, we just send them off to jail?   Suzanne Jean ** 15:50 Yeah, I think there's elements that really, that make it a little more extreme, like get the gang thing. I mean, we all want a sense of belonging. And if kids can, in a really nurturing community and a healthy community, they're going to find a sense of belonging somewhere else, and the gang is a is a perfect place for it. And so, you know, my job is to really try to prevent, to teach them how to how to have that sense of community without needing to go to those places. And we have to talk to kids, we have to talk to her children. And, you know, sometimes I'm criticize, or you're opening these cans of worms, you're talking about these subjects, you know, sexual abuse and these subjects that we shouldn't be talking about suicide, and I said, No, we need to talk about these things. And we need to talk about how we can feel different, like how we can feel better about ourselves. And so those, that's where they really do appreciate those discussions, you know, because they'll say, Oh, I didn't know, anybody else felt like that. Because they're not texting and you feel like, oh, that's how I feel, right? This is important to know that, you know, or if I do this, it hurts. And what does that feel like? And why do you want to hurt somebody? Right?   Michael Hingson ** 17:20 That's so much of we're losing in the whole art of conversation, I've read articles about how we're, even as adults, forgetting the art of conversation, and we go way out on power trips, and other things like that we don't talk, we don't discuss feelings at all. That doesn't mean that every other sentence has to be about how we feel. But we really should do a lot more conversing and interacting and true engaging than we tend to do these days.   Suzanne Jean ** 17:55 And I'll just do simple lead ins to that, like, I have a sheet of all these feelings, and I'll do what I call a parent shear, where I say, Pick somebody you don't know, and, and choose a feeling of fear that you felt recently and tell another person about when you felt it and why. And that's the exercise. And they love it. Because they're talking about themselves. Right. And it's the lead in for me, obviously, to go into anger and teaching them about anger. Which, you know, again, leads into aggression and violence. And understanding that, and so you're right, it's a wonderful opportunity to bring get to and, you know, I think, for sure, Zoom has brought us all together and certainly through the terrible time of COVID. But having face to face having kids face to face, is where it needs to happen. And the physical self defense obviously has to be   Michael Hingson ** 19:00 tastefully physical, right? But even with Zoom, there are a lot of opportunities to augment the process, although it's not quite the same as physically being there, but you can do a lot with Zoom. You certainly can't do with texting.   Suzanne Jean ** 19:18 Yeah, for sure. For sure. But it is, yeah, it's those groups that I can really build the awareness in.   Michael Hingson ** 19:29 Well, age wise, you and I are pretty similar. I'm three years ahead of you. So not much, but we came up in went to school in the same general era. So one of the things that it seems to me we are facing a lot more now is this whole issue of bullying. I don't remember even being a blind kid in school. Ever been a real victim of bullying? I think there was was one time when one kid did but I never really found that was an issue and I never heard about it growing up. And although I wasn't in the big city, but still, I think I hear about it a lot more. Was your experience the same? And if so, why is it that it is so much more an issue? Or why are we seeing so much more bullying today?   Suzanne Jean ** 20:19 I think it's because we don't have healthy, self confident, confident kids who really know who they are. And, you know, they don't, they don't can't describe their values, they they're uncertain about their strengths are so much I, I pick up so much fear, and so much uncertainty and kids today, they don't, they don't believe the world is gonna, you know, they, the climate change, and all of these different things are a major factor for them in terms of their security. And I think that, out of that comes this this easy place to just put down others to feel better, you know, in any kinds of differences.   Michael Hingson ** 21:07 Yeah, because we, we don't have support systems like we used to, I remember growing up talking with, with other kids. And even more important, talking with my parents, and we talked about feelings, we talked about any issues that we felt sometimes we were a little reluctant, as kids are with parents, but still, our parents knew how to bring things out of us and really have those discussions. And there's so many reasons why it doesn't happen today. How do you get parents to deal with that with kids? Because as you said, the problem is all too often now we criminalize things. And parents haven't really learned that they need to deal with creating more self confident kids. How do we deal with that?   Suzanne Jean ** 22:01 Well, we've got to give them more time. I think that one of the things that, you know, if you look at families, and you look at all the commitments, and two working parents and all the pressures, there's a lot of latchkey kids, that are just coming home, and there's nobody there. And they need to be listened to. And often they don't even want you to solve anything, they just want you to listen, right? But if there's nobody there to listen, I'm very adamant that we have to address conflict and bullying in the schools in the communities. And we have to say, Well, why don't you just say, No, we have to take a stance. I mean, it is a World Health Organization, major issue, now they've declared it, it is so prevalent compared to when you and I were were young. And I think if you don't take a stand and you don't deal with it, then it's just gonna continue. And I believe that it has to be everybody on the same page coming together. Because it's so it's so often people don't want to deal with conflict. And if you can teach people how to steps to deal with conflict in a way that's really positive and has an amazing positive outcome, then they're more apt to try to do it the next time. Right? Right. But if everybody just turns their head, I mean, as there's another story in my book, this was in Canada, um, this boy was being seriously bullied at school and the teachers knew the principal's knew. The parents knew, and they did nothing. And he, his mum arrived at school in time to see him being murdered. And everybody went, right. But there was no intervention. And all of those people, including those boys had, that were bullying needed to be part of something to make that difference. Because a life was taken. And yeah, it's pretty that's an extreme case, but it happens in so many ways. One of the things with the kids, I do this exercise, Michael, and it is the most amazing, I do it in the first session. And I divide the group into three, and they have a big piece of paper and they answer the question, what is bullying? Why do kids bully and what can be done about bullying? And they and the papers moved from person to person, right? So all three groups get to answer all the questions and then they choose somebody to report that. Well, this is the first time that the bully and the bullied are sitting side by side and it's all are often the first time that the bully gets to see what other kids think of them. And they're described as weak as having problems. Problems at home, as like, you know, how. And you I, as an instructor, I can just tell which, which kids or which, right that looks on their faces. Because they don't, they've never seen them that other kids saw them that way. So I, my daughter is an instructor in in a middle elementary school. And she said, Mom, I really want you to come and do this program with me because there's a kid in the program, and he's, he's a real bully. And he's a problem. And they're say, he's going to ruin the class. I'm not, and I don't have the skills to deal with his behavior. So I'd love it if you did it with me. And I said, Absolutely, I'll do. So yeah, the principal and all the teachers had nothing but terrible things to say about this kid. I call them Johnny in the book. And we were doing this exercise. What is it really? Why do people believe what can you do bubbling? And little, this other kid, I was in the group with Johnny. And this other kid looked at me, and he said, you know, you're a bully, don't Johnny. And I thought, oh, here we go. He's gonna escalate. You know, we're gonna have a big scene now. And Johnny looked at me said, I know, but I don't want to be. And my heart just broke. And it was like, after this exercise, he made a 360 change. And he was, because he just saw it. He saw how I love   Michael Hingson ** 26:45 me. But why did he bully in the first place? Oh, he had?   Suzanne Jean ** 26:49 Yeah. The usual has, he was beaten? At home. Right? Yeah, that's, that's how you solve problems. You just hit somebody. But he had never, he had never had positive attention. So he happened to be he was a little Irish boy. And he happened to be so good at the techniques. So suddenly, other kids present, Oh, Johnny, you're really good at that. And I always do this, this demo thing like demo, and everybody shows their stuff. And, and he chose stuff. And, and at the end, the principal came in to see a demonstration at the end of the program, and you shouldn't have seen that kid shine. And and the principal is just like, I don't believe this, you know, and I said, Well, that's, that's the power of awareness. That's the power of awareness. That's holding an app and saying this, I don't, I don't want to be this, I want to be something else helped me be that. And for a lot of kids, it's shining the light, it's shining the light for them. Right?   Michael Hingson ** 27:48 It literally is true that poor Johnny didn't know anything else until you had this, this class in this program.   Suzanne Jean ** 27:57 That's what he knew. That's what he knew. So he was a bully, and he happy and, and, which is another thing they say about, you know, the kids say about bullies as well, they're very unhappy. They're very angry, they're very unhappy. You know, they just want to let they just want to act tough. They just want to, yeah, they're just really weak. It's like, wait a minute, I'm the tough guy. Yeah, so it's, it's, it's the power, it's the power of awareness. So it's changing. It's really, you know, moving those topics through and, and, and then more and more, I've been experimenting with mindfulness, giving them some tools to calm their calm their mind self regulation tools, because there's a lot of anxiety. And I think that also feeds into bullying. And it's, it's that kind of nonspecific, general anxiety. Like, you know, you'd need to be a psychologist, I guess, to get to the bottom of it, but it, it's messy. And it has a lot of weird sorts of characteristics in terms of behavior. But yeah, so I'm doing more of that, like, you know, breathing and slowing it down looking and they really liked those exercises. They liked the body scans and and the little guys will say, Oh, could you do that thing? Suzanne, where you put us to sleep? Yeah, I can do that again. So this program is really eclectic. I mean, it's got all these elements but it as I said, it breaks very nicely into those four pillars of attention, awareness. Avoid Then Senate action and taking a real direct route to trying to put some strategies in place to avoid bullying. So, in the book, in one of the chapters, I talk about how any organization can set up an anti bullying program in school, and the steps to doing that, I have done this. And they can, they can change the culture of their organization, if they put the steps into place. And those steps involve the parents. They involve the teachers, they involve the students, the peers, they involve the bullies. And the administration. So it's, it's a real program.   Michael Hingson ** 30:49 Do the kids oftentimes as they become more aware, how do I put this almost take charge and really deal with the bullies in a in a positive way? And, and become part of the solution? Yeah,   Suzanne Jean ** 31:04 you got it, it changes the culture, they decide what's not okay. And in a really positive way, they they, they start to make that happen? What kind of world do you want to live in? You know, how do you want to feel? Well, and as you   Michael Hingson ** 31:21 said, it's all about belonging, it's about belonging. And certainly, if the, a lot of the kids say this is not good behavior, this is not acceptable. And convey that to the bullies or to the people who continue to behave that way, at some point, they're going to recognize we're being left out.   Suzanne Jean ** 31:45 Yeah. And it's, you know, it's not difficult, it's not difficult to, to put this kind of thing in place. And having fit for defense, having the power ed program in there really takes care of the peer part. Because you can do peer training, you can train those kids to be leaders very easily. I sometimes train them to be navigators to take you know, if kids after they've done the program, they often what happens is, they'll start moving again. And they'll say, ah, you know, I used to play soccer, or I used to dance or I used to, or I want to study a martial art. And it's really hard for them to walk through those doors without somebody helping them. So I will sometimes pay kids on our areas to be navigators and to go with those kids. And go to the first martial arts class, you know, figure out where, what a good place would be sometimes with low income kids, we find funding, and just open those doors and get them moving again. And again, as you say, That's connection back to the community. So that's priceless. In terms of, you know, we're, then then we're at a whole other level in terms of good citizens.   Michael Hingson ** 33:03 Have you can you give us a you know, I love stories, can you give us a couple of stories about bullies who completely turned around and became very successful? And I, you, you gave one, but I'd love to hear, you know, more real success stories and why they're so important, and maybe how that helped other   Suzanne Jean ** 33:25 people? Well, I, I see change often with the, you know, with the really at risk kids, the angry kids who, who kind of, kind of put that down, they they in the course of of this training, they'll they'll put that aside, and they become the ones there's the they're the ones who are in foster care, you know, 13 placements, they're the ones that have have those kind of histories that we would just go, how did they even get here out of the Union survive, right? Yeah. And I have one such girl who I've worked with, who went through the program, and I trained her to be an instructor, and she was very out of control in her youth, and hurt a lot of people and hurt herself and was involved in, you know, addiction and the whole nine yards, and came through it. And she just passed past. She just graduated with her degree in social work. Wow. And about a month ago, I got a call to provide a reference for her for a job. And I was so proud to do that. And it was like that the whole continuum, the whole thrown full circle, right? Because all she wanted to do at that point was to give back to other kids and help help other kids who might have had a life like her. So, at some level,   Michael Hingson ** 35:06 she must have wanted to succeed right from the outset, except just didn't know how to deal with that. And you showed the solution or you showed her away.   Suzanne Jean ** 35:16 And it's not a straight line, obviously. Right? There's, you think it's, you think you're through the woods, and then the next thing, you know, there's something else but but the out the final outcome, and I know that she's, she will just be so wonderful, working with kids, and that's who she's going to work with. So, that's a great story. And then there's, you know, there's, there's the little stories. For, for some kids, it's so normalized to be bullied, they don't realize that they're being bullied. And that's one of the things in terms of the awareness, they realize what it is, you know, they and what their rights are, what they should, should, how they should be treated. And there was this one, I was doing an elementary school, and this little girl came to me and she says, I'm being bullied. And I said, Oh, and she said, It's my, my brother, he's always hitting me, he pulls the chair out from underneath, and I fall, and he hits me, and he slaps me, and he punches me. And he knocks my books out of my hands. And I'm walking to school. And she said, and I'm always scared. And I use bullying me. But she, she had gone to her parents, and they just laughed, and they normalized it oh, oh, he's just a boy. Right? It's just being a brother, right? And it's through the course of of power. He goes, he's I'm being bullied in and I said, Yeah, you are, and what do you want to do about it? And she said, Well, you talk about having a difficult conversation. She said, I want to have a difficult conversation. And I want to tell him what he's doing. And I want to tell him how I feel, and that he has to stop. And so I worked with her. We did, we wrote a script, we went through the steps. She practiced it several times. But I was a little worried that he would get really angry and hurt her. So it would they were in the cafeteria for the difficult conversation. And I was kind of just outside. You know, he couldn't see me, but I could hear it. And she went in there. And she told him and I thought, you know, he's gonna get super angry, he did get angry. But she continued, and she continued to give him as met the message, I love you, you're my brother, but you can't hurt me anymore. This is not okay. And I thought for sure that he was gonna lose it. But he started to cry. And he, he started to cry. And he said, I am so sorry. And then she cried. And they both cried, and they hugged and changed the game. changed the game. Yeah. And that was that would have gone on probably into adulthood. That pain that she was carrying, not only physically but mentally, right.   Michael Hingson ** 38:33 It's still all about having a conversation.   Suzanne Jean ** 38:37 It's about having a conversation. And having the skills and having the support behind you. Like she knew I was behind her to like, so she gave her that little bit of extra. She got to practice, you know, she got to know be clear on what she wanted to say. So that's what are saying, knowing what what it is you believe what it is you want. You have to know that before you can express it to somebody else. Before you can have that conversation in the power elite. These are all really, really I think, Barry's important tools.   Michael Hingson ** 39:17 You sort of talked about a little bit, but why self defense as part of the whole process? And is that a regular part of all the power ed programs?   Suzanne Jean ** 39:28 Absolutely. Because you can learn something in your body much faster than you can learn it in your head. So I can teach a boundary, a physical boundary and then move that to a psychological emotional boundary and have the kids get it faster. From having that feeling. I can teach defense position and build more confidence in kids being able to step back and protect their vital points than I could for in a month a Sunday. is talking about it. Because they can feel what defense is. They can feel their strength, when they hit a focus pad, they can feel how strong they are. They can let that out that energy out. That pent up anxiety. And I can move them into the parasympathetic nervous system. So they start to let go of all that. And, and get rid of the crazy the crazy head stuff, right? Yeah. So it is, yeah. It's a direct route. And if when we're talking adolescents cognitive is not, it's not the best starting point. I mean, their brains aren't even developed for the, you know, by the time until they're 2627. So yeah, I kind of short circuit it, I go into the body into the strength into the temple. And, yeah, that's where it's, it's fast. I can teach lessons fast. And I've just kind of, I'm just kind of put this together as I go along, right? I mean, I didn't have a manual, I wrote the manual. But trying stuff, seeing how it works, evolving it. And I'm still I'm still evolving. As I told you, I'm now I'm adding much more around self regulation and mindfulness and into the program.   Michael Hingson ** 41:32 Have you ever had a situation where you've gone through and done a lot of the teaching that you've done, and someone feels now that I've learned to defend myself and so on that my only way to deal with the bully is through strengthen, go off and deck them or something like that? Or do you find that people really get it and don't need to go that way?   Suzanne Jean ** 41:55 No, it's, it's, it's not   Michael Hingson ** 41:59 acceptable. But I'm just curious, we have found that that happened throughout   Suzanne Jean ** 42:02 now. It's mastery over yourself is true power. Right? If you can master yourself, you don't need to duck the person. You know, there's no need, you can handle it so much. It just takes care of itself when you have that confidence and that strength and that strength. Over You know, your own emotion. Yeah, it just, it takes that response out of out of the mix. And I've never had it happen. And it's also I teach, you know, lots of schools, and it's something that teachers worry about, and I have never had any buddy use the physical techniques outside of the classroom. Even bullies? Yeah, never. And I my deal to is, the instructors say this is, you know, this is really, this is special stuff, and you, you use it wrong, no more, you know, you want to learn this, you gotta, you gotta follow the discipline. So there is a, there is a lot of that martial arts discipline that I bring in their, that they respect each other, they show that respect, they understand what hurting is, pain is. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 43:30 And they, and they learn to feel why all this is important. And I'm thinking especially of the bullies who catch on, and realize what they've done or should do. And they, of course, as everyone does, but they especially it seems to me, become all the better for it.   Suzanne Jean ** 43:52 That's right. And it's always a new day, they can leave it behind, like it's a new day, they're gonna learn new things, this is it, you know, this is how we are we become powerful and how we become happy, and how we make good choices for ourselves and good decisions in our lives and how we get the things that we want. And so, yeah, I have not had I have not had an incident of that.   Michael Hingson ** 44:18 And that is that is wonderful in such testimony are testament to the success of the program by any standard, which is which is really great. And it is so unfortunate that we have to encounter so many bullies, and we live in a world where it's it's so hard because we've got I mean all of our politicians who clearly demonstrate absolutely no respect for each other and are not acting as role models at all. It really makes it hard to view them as leaders because they're certainly not leading by example other than being jerks a lot of the time.   Suzanne Jean ** 44:58 Yeah, And the thing about the the thing about power as well is, and that power of awareness isn't so many of our behaviors and our patterns and our habits, like they're, they're really unconscious, right? They're, they're learned, we learn to be a bully. But they're not, it's not their habits. And when you kind of shine the light with like, with Johnny, that's the beginning of making a positive change. That's the beginning of change. And I think the main success of this program is that I'm super non judgmental in that, like, we're not judging, we're not judging it, we're together, and we're where we're at. And there's not this, you need to be like this, or that, you know, it's just, you know, let's just look at ourselves. Let's look at why we do things and how we do things. And, and let's be curious. And so when the light is shone, it's in that nonjudgmental and the the positive change can happen. Yeah, it just frees it up. It's I don't know, it's it's the magic to me.   Michael Hingson ** 46:18 I think one of the biggest blessings that I got growing up was that my parents, really in cure encouraged a curious mind and encouraged me to be curious, of course, for me, it was more of a challenge, I guess, in one sense, or more of a necessity, maybe as a better way to put it because being blind, I didn't necessarily see things the way other kids did. But my parents really encouraged me to explore, and, and ask questions. And as a blind person growing up much before GPS, and a lot of the technologies we had today, asking questions, was the chief way that I would get information. And I wish more people would do that today. And one of the things I say about blindness, people are always thinking they are experts on blindness. And what I tell people all the time is the biggest problem with blind people or people who say they're experts about blindness is I've never tried it. You know, the reality is, it's, there's, there's a lot to learn, it's not something you're going to learn overnight, but know, or understand or understand. But the reality is that you can learn to be a very curious person you can learn to explore, and good teachers understand the value of, of exploring and talking and, and truly mentally growing to understand as you go along.   Suzanne Jean ** 47:51 Yeah, I think that's really critical. And I think it's, it's where that kind of development can happen. That personal development and growth is through that is through that curiosity and that willingness to kind of, you know, suspend judgment. And kids are so critical of themselves. I mean, you know, it's just everything is like, Oh, this is no good. That's no good. I can't I can't, I can't, I can't. Yeah, you can. You can, you can. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 48:31 You may not be able to do it yet, or you may not know the right way to do it. But you can and yeah, that's the biggest issue. When I was born, my parents were told to send me off to a home for handicapped children, because no blind person could ever grow up to do anything in society. And my parents playing out now disagreed with that. And that started the, the pathway that they they and I went on, and I think yes, yeah, absolutely.   Suzanne Jean ** 49:06 Yeah. It's very special parents, because at that time, you know, there wasn't, there wasn't an open mindedness around any disabilities.   Michael Hingson ** 49:20 It goes back to the basic though philosophy of whether it's disability or not, it still goes back to the basic philosophy of dealing with with kids from a parent's standpoint. It's harder today because there are so many things that can get a kid in jeopardy. And I don't mean that in a negative way, or like bullying, but just in general, and it is so hard to I think it's really hard to be a kid today because there's so many dangerous things that you have to deal with. And it's hard for your parents to deal with, but at the same time, we've got to let our kids explore and grow and We have to figure out or learn ways to help them with doing that. And allow them to grow and ask questions and maybe make mistakes and help them, but be part of their lives all the way around. And I know it's hard, especially with families where you have both parents earning incomes to support the family. But at some point, you got to do some of that.   Suzanne Jean ** 50:25 Yes, you do. And that's what I'm trying to do. With my program, and the program is for all ages, children and mainstream youth, my particular niche is the more at risk kids and those kids don't have families. So I tried to work with teaching them how to create a family of choice. Right. Right. And, but yes, for sure. It's so important. And so that that's being available. I mean, I was talking about these busy lives, right, being just being around just being available for your kids to talk to you. I mean, if you're not there, you're not there. Yeah, yeah. And   Michael Hingson ** 51:17 bottom line is you chose to be parents, mostly. There are some who probably didn't expect it, but it did happen. And if you keep the child, there are all the responsibilities that go with it. And so at some point, you've got to be able to make the time available to, to talk with them and to interact with them and make them feel wanted. And I know that's a lot of what happens to so many kids, they just really feel they're not wanted because the parents aren't around. And maybe they don't know how to express that to the parents to get the parents to understand why they have to do things a little differently, either.   Suzanne Jean ** 51:55 Yeah, they don't show important. They're not a priority.   Michael Hingson ** 52:00 And don't know how to say that.   Suzanne Jean ** 52:02 Yeah. Don't know how they don't know how to express it. But the thing when, when you when I was talking about the anti bullying strategy, when you get kind of everybody in the conversation, it's a great, it's, it's amazing how much people can bring to the table in terms of ideas, right, and commitment. And then nobody's nobody's feeling alone, right? Because they're actually doing something about it. And they're establishing some guidelines, and they're there. They're building an intervention, you have to I said that before you have to intervene, you have to be can't be afraid of conflict.   Michael Hingson ** 52:52 And you have to be very important. Yeah.   Suzanne Jean ** 52:55 Yeah. But having said talked about all of these things, as I said, this program is super fun. Like, it's, there's a lot of play in it, I add a lot of games, and a lot of play. We do. You know, they do slow motion fights, they're 10 feet away from each other, and they do the slow motion fights, and they do, you know, all kinds of tank games and all kinds of building agility and, and strength, then there's, they work with focus pads and full noodles. And there's all kinds of all kinds of things going on. So it's really it is really fun.   Michael Hingson ** 53:39 What is the focus pad?   Suzanne Jean ** 53:42 A focus pad is a hard, well, it's not that hard. It's a target that you use that you hit. Okay, so you learn punches, and but you actually get to snack something. So you get to feel your strength, you get to feel your strength, right, you get to follow through, and you get to exhale and focus your technique on focus, Pat, Better that than on a person. And it's a great feeling.   Michael Hingson ** 54:09 There you go. Yeah, we've, we've talked about parents a lot and so on. What do you say to parents who say, Well, I just don't have any time because we're both working all the time. You know, we've talked about those double income parents, but what what do you say to them?   Suzanne Jean ** 54:24 Create, Create some opportunities, create some special special time? Right? If you're both working like take make Saturday. Family time? Yeah. Where everybody you know, every week you get different person gets to choose what you do, but you do something together every week, right? You have to set you have to make it happen. You have   Michael Hingson ** 54:49 to make it happen. And that's the real issue, isn't it?   Suzanne Jean ** 54:52 Yeah. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 54:55 It's it's got to be a priority. To keep the family together, and I think that's also partly something that a lot of parents haven't learned. And, you know, you said there's no manual for a lot of this, there isn't necessarily a great manual for, for being parents, or at least parents don't seem to want to read the manuals that might help them a lot or, or haven't found them.   Suzanne Jean ** 55:23 Yeah, so one of the manuals for parenting that I got being a parent is that the best form of discipline is natural consequences. Yeah, that if there is a punishment of some kind, it has to be a consequence of that particular behavior. And it has to be within a short timeframe. And it has to be, it has to make sense. And it has to be consistent. Yeah. And so that's with what I teach in terms of setting up interventions with bullying, that there's a natural consequence to things. And that the person that's been harmed and the person that's harming figure that out together, yeah, there you go. And it's a natural consequence. So if you, you know, if you ripped up my scribblers or they still called scrollers.   Michael Hingson ** 56:25 If you punched a hole in my, my mat,   Suzanne Jean ** 56:29 you broke if you broke my earbuds,   Michael Hingson ** 56:36 there has to be a consequence. And   Suzanne Jean ** 56:38 yeah, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna save up your money and buy new some new ear buds. And say, sorry,   Michael Hingson ** 56:46 right, and that saying, Sorry, is a significant part of it, it isn't just replacing the ear buds. It's very being sorry, 21. and a half years ago, I worked in the World Trade Center and an escaped, and for for all the time, since then, I have talked a lot about not being really afraid. And there were reasons I wasn't afraid. But the the biggest reason was that I had created a mindset by learning a lot of things like what to do in an emergency in the World Trade Center. Also, having at that time worked with five guide dogs, I learned a lot of the same kinds of concepts that we're talking about here. There's a consequence for bad behavior. And it's not just when the dog behaves badly. But if I don't handle things in the right way, then I have to make amends and deal with the two because we as a team have to respect each other and make no mistake about it. It is a two creature team, both of whom have feelings. And both of whom might sense when the other does something that isn't supposed to be done. And you do you do have to fix it. But during the during the pandemic, I've realized that we don't talk about how to control fear or anything like that. So we're actually writing a new book called A Guide Dogs Guide to Being brave. And the idea is to teach people also about the fact that fear is not something that as I put it needs to blind you, you can use it as a very positive powerful thing. There's a lot of physical, physiological natural reactions, but you can learn to use fear in a very positive way. And that's, in part the kinds of things you're saying as well.   Suzanne Jean ** 58:30 Absolutely, it is very much the same. And when, when you're doing physical techniques together, and you're practicing those things, you come face to face with, you know, your own protection. And it's an interesting thing, to believe in yourself, you have to trust yourself, you have to trust yourself, and you had to trust your dog as well, right. And it definitely, the fight or flight response is in that limbic brain it's in and it has to, in order to come out of that and be able to think, move breve function. These are the skills that you're building.   Michael Hingson ** 59:31 But it is a two way, but it is a two way street. So the dog has to trust me as well. You know, the purpose of the dog is to make sure that we walk safely, not to know where to go and how to get there and there are a lot of reasons for that. But the dog has to trust me as well. And one of the things that I have said many times is while dogs love unconditionally, they don't trust unconditionally but the difference between dogs or most dogs unless they're really abused But the difference basically between dogs and people is, dogs are at least open to trust and they're at least open to trying to develop a trusting relationship. And we've been taught in so many ways, not to trust, to be fearful to be fearful.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:00:17 And and when you were coming out of the Trade Center were you confident that you were going to make it I was confident   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:27 I was going to make it. But at the same time, I kept an ear open like listening for the first sounds of the building groaning or something like that. So I, I stayed observant. But what happened for us was that the airplane struck 18 floors above us on the other side of the building, so neither I nor anyone else in my office or around me, or as we were going down the stairs, any of the people near me on the stairs, knew what had happened, we figured out an aeroplane must have hit the building, because we smelled in the stairwell, the fumes from burning jet fuel. But we didn't really think, well, most of us didn't really think that we would perish. There were a couple of times that some people started to panic. And we we worked on that all of us knew we had to keep everyone focused and going down the stairs. And we did that. And one of the people who at one point, Panic was my colleague, David Frank, who was in our office that day from our corporate office in California, because he was going to be talking about pricing. We were doing sales seminars for 50 people. They hadn't arrived yet. But David was there because he was responsible for a lot of the distribution and reseller pricing. And David on the 50th floor, said, Mike, we're gonna die. We're not going to make it out of here. And I just snapped at him very deliberately, David, stop at a for sale, and I can go down the stairs, so can you. And what David then did was, he said, I want to walk a floor below you, and shout up to you what I see on the stairs, because I gotta take my mind off of thinking about what might happen. And he and he did that all the way down the stairs. Did I need him to do it? I didn't need him to do it. But when Gates did it, he needed to do it. But you know, what was even better about it was that he became a beacon for anyone within the sound of his voice. Mike, I'm on the 44th floor. This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is going on down, not stopping. And so anyone who heard him knew there was someone on the stairs, who was okay. Now to David, think about that going down the stairs. I've never heard him say that he did. But still, he had to keep 1000s of people focused just by his shouting, as we went down the stairs, which I think is incredibly cool. Because he needed to do it for himself. And it turns out helped so many other people along the way as well.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:02:54 Amazing. Yeah, wonderful story.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:58 It is it is one of those things that, you know, doesn't get talked about much. But it but it did happen. But for me, I didn't worry about it. And as I would tell people now one of our biggest problems in the world is we worry about so many things, rather than just worrying about what we can control, we stop worrying about all the things we can control and just worry about what we can, we would be much less stressed, and much better off.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:03:22 And that's why I'm working hard to build confident, healthy kids. So we can control that we can give them those skills, we can give them the ability to make choices and to feel strong, and to be an entity and deal with their fears. And they have a lot of fears. Like I was saying, you know they're, they're pretty discouraged. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:52 And, and advice aren't helping.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:03:55 And when I first when I first started working in the field, kids, this kind of kids at risk kids, they were much more scrappy, they had more energy, they were you know, they had more resilience, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And now there's this sense of defeat, depress there. I was I had a recent class and we were talking about anger and triggers what like what, what makes you what pisses you off? What makes you angry? You know, what makes you go from zero to 10 in terms of a trigger, and all all 10 of them, there's 10 of them in the group and they want to Oh, nothing nothing bothers me. Nothing makes me mad and, and oh, no, I don't have any triggers. And we went around the group and there was this one guy was an athlete. He was a rugby player and he says, Come on, man. Like, you know, you're on the field and someone just says you you don't get pissed off, like in the sport. No, I expect that that's just part of the game. So we went all around the group, and in this program, staff bring their dogs to work. And the kids love the dogs. And the dogs come in the classroom all the time. And they love the dogs. So they got that we got back to the to me. And I said, Okay, that's amazing. None of you have any triggers. So it's like, perfectly okay for someone to kick a dog. And they just went ballistic. They were like, No, you can't kick a dog. What did the dog ever do to you? And oh, wow. And I, you know, and they were all 10 of them were chirping away. They were like, Yeah, bla bla bla bla. And I said, I think I, I think you have a trigger. And then some of them were took that and they said, and it's the same with people. Like it's not okay to diss people. It's not okay to just like, you know, just put them down for no reason. And suddenly, this whole discussion was happening with this, but prior to me provoking them, it was like, No, everything's cool now. Everything's cool. Everything's cool. Yeah, no, it's not. No, it's   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:13 not. You just aren't ready to admit it yet. You're just not ready to acknowledge it. But and it's to use the same terminology, sometimes a challenge, but you found the trigger?   Suzanne Jean ** 1:06:27 Yes, I certainly did. Which is, which is great. Which is really kind of funny is when we're, yeah. Anyway, that's a cute story that happened very recently.   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:38 What do you do when you're not doing Power ed, and teaching and so on?   Suzanne Jean ** 1:06:43 I worked in social services. For many years, I ran a couple of agencies and mental health agency and an addiction agency. I built them from scratch and ran them. I then went on to work in quality assurance, which is kind of seeing that organizations maintain a really high level of standards around service delivery, and business standards in social services.   Michael Hingson ** 1:07:11 But what do you do today to relax to get away from all of this, other than making a trip to Hawaii?   Suzanne Jean ** 1:07:16 Can I continue to do martial arts? I'm working on my third degree black belt. And I'd like to achieve this year I still do Tai Chi, I do yoga. I said before, I'm very hyper, I have a lot of energy. I wrote my book. And so I've been promoting the book I've been teaching developing instructors. So my program is that it's a train the trainer, so I trained instructors to run the program. So I've been doing lots of that. I have some grandbabies. I have three grandkids, here you go. And they are joy, a total joy. I'm loving that. And yeah, I think life is good. Life is great.   Michael Hingson ** 1:08:03 I mean, that's that's the way it should be, you know, you can always find negative things, but you can always find positive things. And there's, you know, there's no reason to consider life in a negative way of their lives. It's too much of an adventure, not to want to be part of it.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:08:18 And like you said, Michael, so much to be curious about, even ourselves learning about ourselves still. There's so much it's just I No two days are ever the same. Which is great. Yeah. So Well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:08:36 this has been fun. And we need to let you go back to your vacation. And remember, I told you, we might go more than an hour, we have now gone 67 minutes. So we're doing well. We could probably keep going and you're very generous and kind of your with your time.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:08:53 Well, it's wonderful talking to you. You're amazing. If people want to   Michael Hingson ** 1:08:57 reach out to you learn more about the program or whatever. How do they do that?   Suzanne Jean ** 1:09:00 They can go to my website, it's fit4defense.com, and it's fit with a 4 pillars and defenses spelt with an S. So it's fit for defense.com and they can go on the website and learn all about it. Reach out to me. And if anybody is interested in starting an anti bullying program, I'd be happy to to guide them in that process.   Michael Hingson ** 1:09:29 I need to have you have a conversation with my cat. Oh, she's a wonderful kitty. She likes to get petted while she eats. Literally, she won't eat unless I'm in there petting her and she yells at me until I come in there and then pet her while she eats and she'll wake me up during the night. I've mostly got a little bit of a detente whether she can only do that once during the night and occasionally she tries to do it more than once and I'll wake up enough to say Ah, we didn't once but can't She's acuity and wouldn't have it any other way. It's great to have a cat that's engaged in Alamo who is my ace guide dog. And she get along. So that works out well.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:10:12 That's wonderful.   Michael Hingson ** 1:10:13 But I want to thank Oh, go ahead.   Suzanne Jean ** 1:10:15 It's been a pleasure talking to you. Well, I   Michael Hingson ** 1:10:17 want to thank you again. And I'd like to thank you for listening. Please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening to us. We really appreciate those ratings. And also, feel free to give us comments, you can reach out to me via email by going out emailing Michaelhi at accessibe A C C E S S I B E.com. And AccessiBe is a company that makes products that help make websites more usable for a lot of different kinds of persons with disabilities. You can also go to our podcast page, which is www dot Michaelhingson h i n g s o n.com/podcast. But wherever you are, please give us a rating of five star rating. We always love those. And also your comments. And Suzanne, for you or anyone listening if you know of anyone else who we ought to have as a guest, I would sure appreciate you letting us know and giving us an introduction. We're always looking for people who want to come on and tell their stories like like you Suzanne did today. So hopefully, you might think of other folks. But one last time again, thank you very much for being with us and giving us all your time today. Back to the beach. Back to the beach.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:11:35 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Yes, all three in the title are correct and there is even more. Marnie Vincolisi was born in Chicago in the 1950s. She and her older brother were raised by her mother and her grandmother as her father left the family and was not heard from for forty years. Marnie did not attend college in part due to the challenges of having dyslexia, although she did not realize her specific circumstances until later. Marnie by any definition is an entrepreneur. She did work for a bit as a hairdresser in the main store of Marshal Fields in Chicago. However, she grew tired of that and so created her own toy-manufacturing business. She will tell you about the business and how eventually she realized that such also was not to be her life path. Near the end of her time building toys she had the opportunity to reconnect with her father whom she never knew growing up. For the past thirty years, Marnie has been teaching Reiki as well as helping others develop and grow through her Reiki skills as well as through the use of other tools she has learned. Today her company, Light Internal, helps people around the world. She will tell us about that. I trust you will appreciate Marnie's thoughts and wisdom. By any standard, this incredible person is quite unstoppable. I hope her attitude and thoughts will help each of us be more unstoppable as well. About the Guest: Marnie Vincolisi, Founder and CEO of Light Internal, has been an entrepreneur for her adult life, constantly changing and creating businesses that bring her joy and align with her spiritual focus. For the last three decades, she has devoted her time to developing a unique way of transforming people's lives through past life regression, energy clearing, classes, meditations, and the authoring of books. In her material, the focus is on appeasing the intellectual left brain with detailed information, then allowing the intuitive right brain to feel the spiritual shift. Marnie helps you access your inherent intuition with guided practices, sometimes using pendulums, quartz crystal healing, or Reiki meditations but always using simple instructions to make learning Reiki and spirituality a fun experience. Anyone can make lasting positive changes with Marnie's spiritual healing and products. Her joy reflects in her private practice – online classes, blogs, and lectures. She continues to explore new avenues of enlightenment to keep her energy clear while sharing her discoveries with others. She is an enthusiastic and well-informed speaker traveling internationally, conducting tours, seminars, and energy treatments. Marnie draws upon her business experience, extensive knowledge in holistic health, and refined innate healing abilities to guide others to clearly understand how to balance their mental, physical, and spiritual presence. Marnie does not teach anyone anything they don't already know; she merely awakens the inherent knowledge within them. Marnie's initial Reiki training occurred in Frankfort, Germany, after which she returned to the States and developed the Light Internal System of Reiki. Ways to connect with Marnie: Marnie's three books: Finding Your Inner Gifts, Inner Gifts Uncovered and Claiming Your Inner Gifts. Youtube: Marnie Vincolisi Instagram: @marnievin Tiktok: @lightinternal LinkedIn: Marnie Vincolisi Websites: https://lightinternal.com/ Book page https://bit.ly/3vV30UH Book Amazon: https://amzn.to/3M99Mvq B&N https://bit.ly/3FqknzE About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Hi, once again, this is Michael Hingson. Your host for unstoppable mindset. Today, we get to chat with Marnie Vincolisi, and I'm glad I asked her in advance because there's an I at the end and my screen reader says Vincolisi, but it's not it's Vincolisi. Good, good name all the way around. Marnie has an interesting story to tell in a lot of ways. She's written a number of books, she happens to be a person with dyslexia, dyslexia, she has formed her own company. And we're going to get into all of that. And the best way is for money to tell her own story. So Marnie, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 02:05 Thank you. I'm glad to be here and glad to share my story with your audience.   Michael Hingson ** 02:11 Well, and I hope my audience and I'm sure my audience is glad to hear your story that you're going to share. Why don't we start by you talking a little bit about kind of you as a young morning where you came from, and growing up in some of those things. It's always fun to start at the beginning.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 02:26 Okay, well, let's start at the beginning. I grew up in Chicago, my mother and father divorced before I was even born. So they're, and things happen in the family that put them very far apart. And so I never met my dad never had him in my life, lived about 40 years. That way, I grew up in the 1950s in Chicago, raised by my mother and my grandmother, who were, you know, to single women alone in the 50s, which was not common. They lived in fear. They felt that, you know, things weren't going their way, or they struggled with money, and they felt control was a really good way to raise children. And that didn't work so well for me. But I, you know, I did it, I got through it. And so I've written, I've written five books I've talked about that. I will talk about that. I am dyslexic in the 50s. They didn't know what dyslexia was, didn't talk about it didn't understand it. I remember dancing with my little black ballet shoes on and there was a red star on one side and a blue star on the other so that I would remember which foot I was supposed to use. So my dyslexia was right there when I was like three years old, going around and dancing, but no one ever connected that with reading at school, so I did pretty well in grammar school. But when I went to high school, we switched from Chicago to Skokie, Illinois, and our high school had a very high Jewish population. And those kids studied hard and it was, you know, going from city school to suburban school. It was so hard for me. I just couldn't get what they were saying and and how to write down the concepts. So after about two years in high school, I realized I can't even get through high school. How am I gonna get through college? So I dropped the idea of going to college and getting any other education and went into hairdressing. And I enjoyed it. I really had fun with it. moved from Chicago to Denver, and in Denver, I changed my vocation and I started a toy company, and it was called The Pee Wee TP company and I made a little play tents for children and Then I made costumes, and I travel around the country and I'd sell things at fairs. This is before the internet, this was before cell phones. So all the research I had to find on my products I had to do in the library and something called the Thomas directory. The Thomas directory had information about, you know, companies and where to buy, you know, different types of things, because I was putting all these things together. So this is a pretty successful cottage industry. I'm decided one day, well, things are happening. Okay, so my books that I write are on metaphysics or personal empowerment, and intuition. And, you know, intuition comes in many different ways. And I was running a toy company that was running pretty well. But I kept getting a message that needed to be doing something different. But I didn't know what that was. And I certainly didn't want to leave something that was bringing me income. So I, my van was actually my intuition. Your intuition comes through different ways. Some people hear it, some people see pictures. But this was my van telling me do something different. It never broke down the 15 years, I was in business until that last year, and it would break down on the road. And but I'd be right in front of a gas station. So it always protected me. But the last time it broke down, I was going, I was in Kansas, heading to Chicago to do some a big Christmas show, and then over to Texas. And I pulled into a gas station because the wheels were making this grinding noise. It was sort of strange. And I pulled in and the guy put my, my van up on a hoist, unhook my trailer, put it up on the hoist and the wheel fell off. He just fell right off. And he said, Lady, there was an angel on this wheel. I said, I know I put her there. So the bearing was fried. I said check the other bearing. He says, Oh, they don't both go out at the same time. I said, Well appease me, he did. And sure enough, he said you wouldn't have made it 30 miles on that bearing. So at that point, you know, he didn't have the parts, you have to order them and it was going to take three days, I realized, I am not going to get to Chicago, I'm not going to be able to do that big Christmas show. And maybe perhaps I need to listen to what's going on here. So this full story is in my first book that I wrote called Finding Your inner gift. But I won't bore you with all those details. I'll just let you know that. I stepped into what was a small hotel motel. And I sat down on the bed and I said, That's it, I quit. I talked to the universe. I said, I'm not going to do this anymore. I quit this business right now this moment. So the Vanguard fixed, I drove back home, I cancelled all my shows. From September to December, I sell toys. This was a big deal. And I just went into that place of trust, just trusting the universe that something's going to come my way. And what what came my way after about nine months, which I thought was an interesting gestation period was Reiki, someone mentioned that I should learn Reiki Reiki is a hands on healing modality. And so you might wonder, why am I jumping from hairdressing to Toy making to, you know, Reiki, because because I was dyslexic, I didn't think I was smart enough to, you know, work for a company, I didn't think I was a value. It took me decades to realize that I really am smarter than I think. And just because I don't spell right. And I don't comprehend when I read, I'm valuable, and I can bring that value to other people. So that's how I started my metaphysical business. Well, along this way, somewhere along the line, I just I found that I could find my dad, I never seen him, never met him. And in my last book, it's called they did the best they could discovering your path to compassion. In that book, I talked about how I found my Dad, how I learned all the stories about my family from the late 1800s in Italy, you know through now, just so many synchronicities and and stories and realizing how I was lied to all of my life. And you know, all those unrealistic expectations that I had, yet I was able to find compassion for the people that unknowingly hurt me. So that's basically me in a nutshell.   Michael Hingson ** 09:58 What a story Yeah. That's okay, though. Well, several things. So were in Chicago. Did you grow up? On the   Marnie Vincolisi ** 10:07 north side? Okay. And after I got married, I live closer to the lake. But yeah, north north side, Chicago. And you lived in Chicago, but you were the south side, correct?   Michael Hingson ** 10:19 Yeah, I was born on the south side and live there only for five years. And then we relocated to California. Although I've enjoyed it every time I get a chance to go back, as we were talking earlier. We both Miss Franco minutes from Marshall Fields when i Miss Marshall Fields for that matter, but oh, yeah, Marshall Fields and Franco mints. But along the way, several years ago, while traveling through O'Hare Airport, I discovered Garrett's popcorn. So that's always a treat when I go to Chicago now, and I actually stayed downtown for a meeting, and got to go to one of the Garretts facilities downtown. And found it was just the same as it was at the airport. Very good.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 11:04 All right, yeah. Well, my treat when I go to Chicago is going to the art museum. I just love it. I run up the stairs and go see the Renoise and I have my special places. Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe are some of my favorites. But you mentioned Marshall Fields. And that's actually where I was a hairdresser. So I was a hairdresser at Marshall Fields.   Michael Hingson ** 11:30 I like the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, although it's been a long time since I've been there. And I'd like to go back. But usually when I go to speak, I'm never there long enough to be able to go see the museum. So I've got to work that out somehow.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 11:43 All right. Yeah. That's, there's so much information in Chicago. It's just a wonderful place to be and I love the lake.   Michael Hingson ** 11:49 I'd love to like, well, so you grew up being a person with dyslexia, dyslexia being dyslexic? When did you realize what was really going on?   Marnie Vincolisi ** 12:02 That's a good question. I. But it must have been somewhere in my pocket when I started writing. And once I started teaching and writing, which was in my 30s, I realized that I had to really organize my thoughts in order to get that information out to other people. And so I would, I would bullet point things, I would, you know, write write the paragraph, but then underneath that bullet point, or number it so that it was very explainable and the things that people tell me about my books, my first three books are on personal empowerment. And people have told me gee, if I wrote a book about, you know, Reiki and hands on healing and intuition, I would write a book like this. And, and they often say, it's so easy to understand. And so I had to make it easy to understand for myself, which helped other people.   Michael Hingson ** 13:04 Well, you and I gather that you've been pretty successful at doing that.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 13:09 Yes. And, you know, I've got, you know, of course, people that would go over, you know, my copy and, you know, we talk about what's not clear or how I put in angles instead of angels, you know, different words, you know, letters that I would switch, but one thing that's helped me a lot is Grammarly, and I don't know if your listeners are aware if they write that much but Grammarly, I think, think you can get you can get a free version. And it'll go through everything that you write, whether it's on the computer, on your on your phone, on your tablet, it will you can download it so that it's checking your spelling and your words all the time. And that really really saves me a lot. So I'm really happy with Grammarly that's helped me I think I've   Michael Hingson ** 14:00 tried Grammarly, but it's been a while and I found it to be a little bit inaccessible. And maybe it's improved. But for me using a screen reader, there were some challenges with it. But yeah, I think that's in the past. And maybe they've improved it because they certainly could.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 14:16 Yeah, yeah. And another thing I found that helped my dyslexia is when I was writing my memoir, when I was writing, they did the best they could. I took a class and an online class. It's great courses, it's called, and it was on how to write nonfiction. And I went through that whole course and I of course, took notes. And I followed what they said and it really helped me put everything together in a way that it would be interesting for people because, you know, one thing they talked about was, you know, if you write and you just list things. It doesn't give the reader you know the picture and I'm sure you would understand this, when you're reading, you want to see the picture you want to see, you know, what did it smell like? What did it feel like? What was the temperature outside? What were they wearing, you know, what were they looking at, you know, through their eyes. And I was able to really capture that. And they did the best they could. And many people have told me that as they read that book, they find that my stories are similar to theirs, you know, we all go through struggles as children. And, and so it shows I went through the same things, the characters may be different, the location could be different. But the hurt in our heart could be the same, you know, feeling unloved, or not honored. It all, it's all similar. And so in my book, the second half of the book shows how you can deal with those issues, and not hold a grudge, find compassion for those that and, and people don't hurt us willingly, it usually is unknowingly. And so,   Michael Hingson ** 16:03 and ultimately, no matter how much even if it's intentional, they may hurt us in so many different ways. The reality is, we really hurt if we allow ourselves to be hurt. I mean, that is we're dealing with a mental situation, we have control over how we deal with that kind of pain. Oh, absolutely. And we have the ability if we choose to exercise it to not let that kind of hurt, injure us or affect us to the point where we've turned negative and, and as a result become very bitter, which doesn't mean that we don't recognize that there was a hurt, but we do have control over how we deal with it. And I've used the example of the World Trade Center many times being in it when it was attacked by terrorists. We didn't have control over the World Trade Center being attacked. But we do have control over how we deal with it. And I think that's true. And in all cases, it's really up to us as to how we want to deal with situations we face.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 17:12 Exactly, exactly. And I, you know, I do counseling. And as a Reiki Master, I'm able to move energy as well as counsel people and in their counseling. I do talk about, you know, how we can look at that person that unknowingly hurt us? And what happened to them? What put them in this situation, you know, people have, you know, these kinds of things at work, where they've got co workers or a boss that just really gives them a hard time. And so this is about how can we look at what's the struggles that they're going through so we can better understand their situation? And perhaps why they treat us the way they do. And once you understand that better, you can let go of that hurt and that pain and like you say, have have you have a different way of looking at it rather than saying, Oh, they did that to me. And it's not fair. And it's like, yeah, we move beyond that.   Michael Hingson ** 18:10 Yeah. And the other part about it is, Was it intentional or not, if it's intentional, in a sense, that will only determine differently, perhaps how you deal with it.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 18:22 Right. And if it was intentional, I would say they even hurt even more than you do. Because someone that acts out and is mean to another person, there's something that's really hurting them inside, and you can find what's hurting them, you can find compassion, you don't have to forgive them for what they did. But you can find compassion for why they acted that way.   Michael Hingson ** 18:45 Well, but even forgiveness is a very important thing to do. Because even if they hurt you, and it was very deliberate, you can forgive them, which doesn't mean that you're going to put yourself in a position to allow them to hurt you some more, as my wife used to always say, Don't put your sails in their wind. But it doesn't mean that you can't forgive them and recognize and move beyond it.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 19:09 Right. Right. I totally agree. And that's the kind of things that I talk about in my book is is how to get through and just sort of float through through life. You know, they did the best they could. I was going to call that walking in grace. But I realized the title really didn't tell you a whole lot about what's inside the book. But you know, walking in Greece, that kind of thing of Yes, things happen. And I can be graceful about how I deal with it and be kind to people. And that's what I look at. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 19:44 tell us about you. You finding your father You said that you after for two years finally did that. Can you talk about that a little   Marnie Vincolisi ** 19:51 um, I can. Let's see because I was doing art shows. I happen to be Are you traveling to Chicago for an art show? And two weeks before I was leaving, my, my mother called me out. And she moved from Chicago out here to Denver after she had retired. And she told me that a friend of hers in Chicago, someone that was actually in their wedding party said, they're saying some prayers for a Tony, even police at our parish, do you think it's the same person. And my mom, you know, didn't know for sure, but maybe thought that it was. And so she called me up. And she said, Well, they're saying prayers for your father at the parish, not that he was ever a father to you. And those words, just like, hit me in the heart. And when I shared with her months later that she said that she Oh, that's a terrible thing to say, I would never say that. So it's interesting how we respond to a shock. Here, my mom didn't have any contact with him. As they say, they got divorced, the families were in kind to each other. And there was a confrontation, and my dad left the city and stopped paying child support after about a year. So that was really a hardship on my mom in the 50s, trying to, you know, raise two children. And what also happened to her is, she got divorced, and she moved in with her mother and father. And the month after the divorce was final, her father died. So now she's got my brother, who was about a year older than me, myself brand new baby, and has to take care of two children and her mother. Because my grandmother didn't work since she was instance, she got married. I mean, that's how things were back in the, in the in the 20s, and 30s. And Grandma did have one job, when she was 19, she worked for the Western Union. And her job was to deliver the messages that came in. So they would come in on a telegraph. And they'd have to be quickly brought over to another room where they would be typed in and sent out. And they were rollerskates. So at 19, grandma took the messages and roller skated from one part of the building to another. So I figured well, in the late 40s, you know, her skill of roller skating was not going to really give her a very good job. So hence why she didn't go out and get a job. So my mom, you know, here she is, you know, having to support, you know, two children herself, and her mother was really tough. And that's how she lived the rest of her life. But anyway,   Michael Hingson ** 22:35 I can see her so roller derby wasn't in her future, you're saying   Marnie Vincolisi ** 22:39 she wasn't going to be a roller derby queen. So I can sort of understand why my mother was angry at my dad, and you know, but that that really hurt me. So her saying that you know not to do this ever father to you, I didn't feel open to say, and Mom, give me the name of that friend of yours. So I can go find him. You know, that door was not open. And, and so in my book, I talk about how I go into my mom's condo, I have my children take her out to lunch. And I go inside and I'm rifling through her index cards to try to find this woman may see and find her number. Yeah. And, and I did find it. I did call her up. So when we get we went to Chicago and brought the kids with us, but this confrontation of meeting my father, I didn't know what would happen. So in the book, there's a beautiful story of how I go to Macy's house. And we look in the telephone book for his name. And, and it was there, which shocked me because my mother had an unlisted number. My father had an unlisted number, neither one of them wanted to find each other, you know, he would have been thrown in jail for not paying child support. And you know, so all that. So I thought, well, this, this can't be this can't be him. But I look at the address. And the address is around the corner, from Macy's house, this woman's house, who is in their wedding party, he lived around the corner from them, which I talked about synchronicities in this book, this one was way too bizarre. My mom would visit Macy, they would go out for walks on hot summer nights in Chicago, easily have walked by his house. Never saw him, right. So I'm thinking probably not him. But let's you know, Macy said, Well, here's his phone number. Why don't you call him up? I said, What would I say? I said, No, I'm not calling him up. I'm walking over there. So my husband Macy and I walk over to his house and I knock on his door. And the it was hot summer day was the third of July, the wood door was open. The screen door was closed. An old four year old man walks to the door and white hair did They look really healthy. And I asked him, I said, Are you Tony vocalise? He says, Yes, I am. I said, Well, I said, Were you married to Lorraine? He said, Yes. I said, I'm your daughter, Marlene. And at that time, originally, my name was Marlene. And he looks at me and he said, I had a son named Jimmy. And with that, it just, it just shocked me. I was like, story of my life. You know, everybody, I felt my brother was more honored than I was in the family. Here I am Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, once again, he doesn't remember me. But he remembers my brother. And I just sort of took a little step back. And my husband placed his hands on my shoulders just on my back. And he just gave me a little nudge. And I could hear him his thoughts in my head, saying, Go ahead. You can do this is okay. And so I again spoke, and I said, Well, I'm his sister. I'm Marlene. And you said, I had a baby girl. I only held her once in my arms. I said, open the door, you can hold her again. Dead silence. He's staring out into space. Nothing's happening. No one knows what's going on. And Macy finally says, Tony, Tony opened the door. This is your daughter open the door, you know. And with that, it takes him out of that shock. And he opens the door. And he falls into my arms and he just sobs and he says Marlene Marlene, I never thought I'd see you again. This is a miracle. This is a miracle. God sent you to me. And that's how the story began or continued. Just a little blip of 40 years. Just a little blip, just just a little blip.   Michael Hingson ** 26:54 So you were able to reconnect. Well, how did your mother react to all of that?   Marnie Vincolisi ** 26:59 Well, I that that that was another story. Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you this, he had lung cancer. And if you know anyone that has lung cancer, he was not you know, the doctor told him the beginning of the year, he wasn't going to be around long. And this was July. But he says to me, you know, we were sitting on the sofa and and he says, I've got to take you to my sister's, one of the sisters had just passed on two weeks before that. And he says, I gotta take your two sisters. Well, all I had heard from my mom is how, how mean his sisters were to her. And I thought, oh my gosh, you know, here I am. You know, I've gotten through this part of actually meeting him and saying hello, and finding out that, you know, he does love me. But now I've got to be taken to the sister uglies, you know, so I'm like, Oh, my gosh. And then scarier than that was he said, Well, I'll drive us there. And so here's this man who can hardly walk, and he's going to be our chauffeur. But it was okay. We got there and met the sisters. And they were just so so glad to see me. It was it was just beautiful. So yes, I come back home. And you know, I've got to tell my mom, I, you know, I didn't even tell my brother I was going. And so I I call up my brother and tell him what happened. He says, You got to tell mom, I said, I'm not telling mom. He says you got to tell mom. I said, Nope. I'm not telling mom. I hang up the phone. And I paced back and forth for about a half an hour. And I was like, he's right. I gotta go tell my mom. So yes, I did go tell her. She was definitely not too happy with me. But you know, it's family. And over the weeks and the months, she softened, she got better. And I was actually able to have her reconcile with these sisters that she didn't like, you know, my dad passed on and three months later, and I would travel to Chicago for business. And sometimes my mom would come with and visit her sister and I asked her to come with and I actually got her to go see my Aunt Mary. And they knocked on the door and it was, you know, bygones be bygones you know, beautiful Italian family that that forgives and forgets. And I really feel they taught my mom how to do that. Because my Mom hung on to her anger for a long time. But once she met them, they became friends again. And it was you know, it was beautiful.   Michael Hingson ** 29:26 So again, what was your profession at the time that all this happens?   Marnie Vincolisi ** 29:29 Or do you my I was I had I had a cottage industry making toys,   Michael Hingson ** 29:35 or you're still in the toy business that I was in the toy business. Your van was not sending you strong enough messages yet to change   Marnie Vincolisi ** 29:43 that at that point. But you know, you know we reach parts in our life that just completely change how we deal with life. And I think after meeting my dad and understanding that the love that I didn't have was really there. I think it gave me the strength To stand up and say I can I can do something more, I can do something better. And the work that I'm doing now, which I've been doing for over three decades, is really heart centered. It's helping people. It's, it's showing people how they don't have to suffer emotionally or physically. And I really think meeting my dad catapulted me in into that position. I mean, I already I always have that. I mean, I was a child of the, you know, in this in the 60s, a teenager in the 60s, you know, flower child. So, I looked into meditations and yoga way back when no one was doing yoga. No, you know, I mean, well, people but you know, not not in the masses that they're doing it now. And, and my toy company, even when I sold those toys, I saw my tents as a safe haven for children to go into, I would fill those with light. So that if there was any disturbance going on in the home, that the children could go into that little tent, and it would be a place where they would feel loved and peace. And so I always worked with energy through I'd say, from my 20s on. So stepping into the vocation that I have now is as an intuitive. It was easy. Yeah. It was familiar to me. And I think meeting my dad helped help do that.   Michael Hingson ** 31:24 Well, when you decided to change from toys, what really made you go into learning Reiki and being a Reiki Master and going into the whole profession that you have now? Because that's quite a major change in direction.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 31:40 That is a jump, isn't it? Five years before I started learning Reiki I, I looked, someone gave me a book said, oh, you should you should, you should look into this, you should do Reiki and I thumbed through it. I said, I'm not a healer and threw it off to the side. But within five years, and after meeting my dad, and just knowing that my business had to be different, and it had to be, I wanted it to be something that helped people more than I was doing now, rather than just games and toys and playing. And so someone presented Reiki to me again. And this time, it clicked in my head. I was like, Okay, I'll look into this. But what happened was that the friend of mine that told me about Reiki says you need to go to my Reiki Master, I said, Okay. And she lives in Germany, outside of Frankfurt, Germany, and I'll tell you, you know, Boulder, Colorado is a very metaphysical community. And you can throw a rock in any direction and probably hit a Reiki Master, you know, diamond doesn't. But somehow I was guided to leave the country, which I've never done before. And go to this woman and and learn Reiki, so I went there. She was very German, she was very strict. She was very traditional, which is not how I teach Reiki now, but um, and, you know, why did I go there? Well, I found that I had a past life, in Germany, in this town at this church. I mean, I would say, maybe a year or so before that, in meditation, I saw past lives. And, and so I understood on a feeling level, at least I saw in my own mind's eye lives that I'd had before and when I was in Germany, and as I've traveled more throughout the world, I find that when I'm at a place where I've been before I get emotional. In Egypt, I stood by Coptic jars, I had seen myself as the one in Egypt that took the organs out of nobleman and put them in Coptic jars. And when I started these particular Coptic jars, and I saw many there, I started to sob. And I walked away, I came back three times. And every time I stood by those jars, I cried, knowing in my mind that those were the jars that I worked with. So in Germany, I'm standing in front of this big church, we go into her small village, and we're walking around, and I stand in front of these big wooden doors. And I started to cry. And I was like, I was a priest, in that church. And then I was guided to just turn around, and I turned behind me, and I saw ruins of a castle. And again, in my mind's eye, when I did meditation, I saw myself tortured as a priest because I didn't follow the way they wanted me to do it, which is how I am now. And I said, that's where I was tortured. And even walking through the countryside, I saw a small church and again, tears came to me and I knew I had lived there. That was where I was my parish as a small boy. So why did I go to Germany, all these all these things that sometimes you just do because you just feel you Should Do you ever get that Michael? Oh, yes. And you don't understand why, you know, why did I quit my toy business in the moment? Because I knew there was something out there. I knew it.   Michael Hingson ** 35:09 And that's all the understanding, you need to make a choice. If you're certain, then that's what you do. My favorite example of that kind of thing is a real simple one. Do you ever play Trivial Pursuit?   Marnie Vincolisi ** 35:21 Not very well.   Michael Hingson ** 35:24 But how many times do you play the game? Or do you interact with other people who are playing the game? Somebody asked the question, you know the answer, and you just say, Well, that can't be right. And you give a different answer. And it's the wrong answer. And the one that you thought at first was the right answer truly was correct. All the time and Trivial Pursuit. So when I play Trivial Pursuit, I have learned to listen, because usually, it's the right answer. And we, we ignore our inner guide. So much, we ignore those things that are really telling us what to do. So as they say, in Australia, New Zealand Good on you for what you're doing and how you do it. So what did what did you write?   Marnie Vincolisi ** 36:14 Let me let me let me just segue on top of that, I'm going to give a little exercise that that I have in some of my books on how to build that intuition. I mean, just what you're saying you second guess it. So I say this is what you do for the next, if you want to, if you want to create a new pattern, you do it for 30 days, or at least 21 days, you know. And so every time you have an intuitive thought, you should write it down. Just just by having a little notebook, of course, now we've got our phones. So in your phone, you could have in your notes and intuitive thought I wasn't going to go down the highway this particular way. I'm gonna go the other way. And you find out that the way we're first gonna go now has a block of of traffic. Yeah, it's an intuitive thought you go to the grocery store, you think you need something, you get it? And you find out yes, indeed I do. Just keeping track of all those intuitive thoughts, because we have way more than we think we do, you will start building that confidence within yourself to trust as you found to go with that first thought. So that's one practice. Okay, back to your question.   Michael Hingson ** 37:20 People have asked me if I ever felt any nudge or reason not to go to the World Trade Center on September 11. Even though there was a very severe thunderstorm that came right over our house at 1230. That morning, I never had, and I can sit here today and say I never had a single inkling that I shouldn't go. There was no message that said Don't go. And what happened, though, at at the World Trade Center for me, I think justify that just all the experiences that I had that day, but the reality is that we we do get so many different kinds of things that if we would, but listen, we would be so much better off, but we tend not to we ignore them, or we say that can't possibly be right. And then as you say, it turns out it is and I think your exercise is a very good one, that people who don't listen to those inner thoughts really are, are missing out on something extremely valuable. Well, right. So, so go ahead.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 38:34 Yeah, well, and you know, you go into the Trade Center, we could call that divine order, because it completely changed how you work and what you do and, and how much more you can give to people than you were doing there. And I don't feel divine order is necessarily God given. I mean, it can be if that's your belief system, but I feel our divine order comes from within ourselves. We know within ourselves, we've got something more to do that can help people society life grow. And we follow that.   Michael Hingson ** 39:06 Well, of course, the reality is that is God. And I think it's all interrelated. What did you make a master think of your past life experiences? I assume you divulge those to her when you were in Germany.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 39:21 You know, I can't, you know, I don't remember a lot lot with her. We talked a lot I shared it. She was she was very stoic. Let's say that way. You know, so there wasn't you know, a lot coming from her. And I'll tell you this when I first learned the energy, I didn't feel it. I mean, when I teach people Reiki, they feel the energy coming through their hands and all through their body, but with this woman, I didn't feel anything happening there. It wasn't because she wasn't a good teacher. It was just, I was just different. I but I it was about trust. We're going back to why did I follow through, I get attune to the energy which channels the energy into you and you feel it. I didn't feel any of that I didn't feel energy coming out of my hands. But in my heart of hearts, I knew this was my path. And as I continued to practice it and get move on to the higher levels, I started feeling a lot more energy. But it really helped me to teach people to tell them, I didn't feel anything, but it works. And it's channeling love into the body. Reiki is channeling the infinite love of the universe, into your head, into your heart, you channeled it out your hands to a situation to a person or to yourself. And it's just working with love, it's, it's pretty simple.   Michael Hingson ** 40:45 Well tell us a little bit more about what Reiki is.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 40:49 Reiki, like I say, is channeling the infinite love of the universe, through your body into another one, when we heal at the deepest level, we heal through love. On some level, we're allowing the medicine to work, allowing the procedure the doctors giving you to work, or just trusting that your body can be better. And so building that love in and around a person allows them to get better and understand things in a different perception. And we sort of talked about compassion, but you know, compassion, and we talked about looking at what goes on with other people. It's perception, how do you perceive something that makes you ill, you know, a lot of illnesses that come in are from stress doctors, they'll tell us that, you know, this is happening, you know, because you're stressed, you know, your heart is hurting, or whatever. So if we could be less stressed, that means that we would have to have a different perception of what's happening around us. And coming into a space of love or feeling love around you or asking love to come in you is going to put you to a softer space, so you can see things in a different way. So Reiki channels in loves and gives you a new perspective. And once you have the new perspective, you can act differently, you can feel differently, your body's going to relax, because Reiki just doesn't come into your physical body, we have four bodies, we have a physical body, we have an emotional body, which is an etheric body, it's about you know, inter to offer our our skin, hence why we like to hug, why we shake hands, it's that touching of that emotional body that we're really looking for, the mental body is a little bit further out probably about 18 inches out, we're all those thoughts that run through our head are right there in our face. And then the spiritual body is right at the edge. So Reiki not only comes into the physical body, but goes through the emotional body, palms that emotion goes into the mental body gives you a new perception of the thoughts that you've been having. And it's charged with that spiritual body, which is that God given right that we come into our life with   Michael Hingson ** 43:01 is Reiki always hands on. So it's a physical touch or something that you can do remotely.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 43:08 Yeah, some masters teach it hands on, yes, you can do it remotely. When you move up on the levels. It's definitely can be sent remotely. And I work with people all around the world. And even though I do counseling, at some point, I might say, you know, just close your eyes relax, I'm going to direct this healing energy, this loving Reiki energy into and they you know, I always check in, you know, what do you notice? And what do you sense what's different? What's the same? And they feel it even across the miles? And that's that's the beauty of it.   Michael Hingson ** 43:41 That's certainly pretty cool. And it's great to have that that kind of experience. How about your, your family, your children husband? Do they do Reiki or   Marnie Vincolisi ** 43:55 I have trained let's see, two of my three children, you know, not all of them go along. But two of my three children have learned it and and use it not as practitioners but just in their everyday life. My little granddaughter I one time I picked her up from from preschool. And she says, Wait a minute, no, no, I can't go right now I have to go help Billy. He fell down. And I have to go give him Reiki. And she went over to him and put her hands on him. And then you know, just a few seconds and then and then came back again. So it's it's sort of cool.   Michael Hingson ** 44:32 Well, it really is and it's always good to explore.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 44:37 It is and and it's fun. And what I find with Reiki is that when when I trained someone in Reiki and they can go home and place their hands on someone and someone actually feels calmer. Their headache subsides. Their backache goes away. It makes them realize, Oh my gosh, if I've got this within me, and I can do this, I can do anything. And, and I've seen it over and over, over the decades that I've taught that people step out of their vocation that they had and moved to something that serves them better. They, they moved to new locations, they change family, they change, not family, but you know, friends, it really empowers them, it really is an empowerment kind of thing. It's not like you've got to learn it and, you know, be a practitioner and give treatments to people, but it just shows you that you have the power to change your life, and understand and perceive what's best for you and follow it. Right. So there's a lot of aspects to it that people don't think about when they think of Reiki hands on healing. But again,   Michael Hingson ** 45:42 it requires you to be open, and to absorb information and process it. And I noticed when I was reading some of the information about you, you talk about getting information into the left side of the brain, and then allowing the right side to accept it spiritually.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 46:03 Yeah, it well and spiritually, because the right side is the feeling sensing part. And that's the part that we don't trust. Yeah. And once we start trusting it, we can get a deeper a deeper connection to what we see as as spirit or power beyond us, or power within us. You know, however we focus on that. And, you know, Reiki is not the only thing I do. I mean, I also you know from that it stems out into meditation, which again, helps people understand that they have the power to do what they need to do for themselves to come, there's themselves down, you know, they don't need to, you know, take take drugs to be more relaxed. And that, and vegetation, people get so scared about meditation, I've got to have absolutely no thoughts. It's like, no, that's, that's not what it's about. It's about just changing that thought from that auto rewind that you have. And So meditation is putting in a different thought, seeing a different picture. And you don't have to do it for hours on end. 20 minutes is good. And when I start people out, I say do it for five minutes, just close your eyes, you know, just think about ocean waves, I often start with the breath, watching how your lungs rise, and just drop down. And when we breathe, the rising of our lungs take some effort, but when we exhale, they just drop all by themselves. And it's going into that space of letting go. Breathing in and letting go.   Michael Hingson ** 47:37 That's really it. It's not about having no thoughts, it's not having directed thoughts, it's letting go and letting your mind really go where it chooses to go. And you just doing that and following along and not trying to control.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 47:55 Right. And it gets to be fun. I mean, there's a sensation in your body that is so uplifting when when you meditate that like, yeah, I want to I want to hit that again. Yeah. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 48:10 And, again, if you learn how to do that, and to let go and to let your mind direct you, if you will, again, that will enhance your your being in your life a whole lot. And it will help you in understanding so many things about other people. And and what's happening to you as well. Yeah, well,   Marnie Vincolisi ** 48:33 you know, we we give our body a rest, we will lay down at night and we sleep. But we never really give our mind that that reprieve and meditation, just 20 minutes a day gives your mind that rest and we start figuring things out better and start working with both sides of the brain. And we know the left side is our that analytical side, the right side is the feeling side. But if we could be in that whole brain thinking we could we could do the analytical and allow the intuitive right brain to tell you which direction to go. And so just like you were talking about trusting your intuition, you can do that if you meditate because you're gonna get that whole brain thinking going on. So you're not battling it. You know, when you've got that one idea that comes in and the other one says, No, that's not it. You know, the intuition comes in. And the other one says, Now that can't be it. They stop arguing. Yeah. They start they start communicating better. Yeah. And I just got here I've got meditations on my website. I know you'll put it up for your, for your audience. It's light internal.com And there's mp3 is on there. And you know, when you start with meditation will listen to somebody it's a lot easier to have because as as a meditator and as a Reiki Master, I'm able to bring that calm energy into my voice and into you. So you're gonna get into that space a lot faster. And if you don't listen to mine, there's other People out there, but find someone that sounds good to you feels good to you makes you relax. And it's a lot easier to listen to. One, when you get started,   Michael Hingson ** 50:10 you know, you were talking about sleeping, and we don't really let our brains do the things that that they should. The fact is that there should never be anything wrong with taking a few minutes at the end of the day just to relax, maybe just think about the day, think about what worked, what didn't work, and let your mind direct you as to how you deal with it tomorrow. But we don't tend to learn how to be introspective,   Marnie Vincolisi ** 50:37 right, and you know, at work, and now not that many more people are working at home. But when people worked more in the office, there were you know, you would get coffee breaks, yeah. And then they stopped, the coffee breaks, but people that smoked would go outside and smoke, they would take their break. So I would I would tell my students tell you what, you know, you don't have to go out and smoke. But just give yourself five minutes, just put your hands on the computer screen and close your eyes or a keyboard. And just close your eyes for five minutes and give yourself the break that other people are taking. But yours is much healthier.   Michael Hingson ** 51:14 And more productive. And more.   Marnie Vincolisi  51:16 Yes. And and I think companies are beginning to learn that, that people are more productive when they're happier when they're relaxed. And there's ways to give them that.   Michael Hingson ** 51:28 Tell us about the different products and services that your company does and the name of the company again, and just a little bit about how people can reach out to you and learn more about what you do and so on.   51:41 Okay, well, my website's a great place to go light internal, a lot of people want to call it light, eternal, and it's like, no, it's the light that's within you. Okay, lightinternal.com I write a weekly blog. And in there, sometimes I'll have meditations that you can listen to. I talk about things that are pertinent with what's what's going on how we can see things differently, how to deal with, you know, angry people or things that upset us. Lots and lots of information in there. And so you'll find that on the site, as I've got YouTube videos, so if you put my name in, you know, Marnie, Marnie, Vin or Marnie Vincolisi, I'll pop up on YouTube. Facebook, not so much. I got hacked on Facebook a few years ago, and was able to get back on I was like, Oh, well, let that go on Instagram. I'm on. I'm on Instagram. My products are I've got five books. Three of the books, the first books I wrote, we're about personal empowerment using Reiki and other meditative type techniques. One is called Finding Your inner gift. Second one is inner gifts uncovered. And the third one is claiming your inner gift. And then you asked about my family. So another grandchild who lives in San Francisco, I was telling her story, as we were going through San Francisco, I was in the backseat with her my daughter's driving. And you know, she's getting sort of fussy, and the story that I told her turned into a book. And it's, it's called the House who found its home. It's a children's book, it's a good reader for early readers, because there's repetitive statements. And it's about a house, it was living in a place that was too tight and too bright and too noisy. So the House took off to find a new place to live. And of course, it's because it's my book, The House learned a valuable lesson. Yeah, and the last book is they did the best they could discovering your path to compassion, with beautiful guidance on how you can work through issues that might be bothering you. But as I said, there's mp3 there's as well. And you know, and anytime that you've got issues, I'd love to work with you through hypnosis, guidance. Counseling, does moving energy for you. And that's my counseling. So it's all there on the site on lightinternal.com. And   Michael Hingson ** 54:13 you do that worldwide. So anyone who is listening who wants to can certainly reach out to you and I hope that they will   Marnie Vincolisi ** 54:20 write and all my books I can, I can ship worldwide as well.   Michael Hingson ** 54:26 Did you publish them yourself?   Marnie Vincolisi ** 54:28 I did. I did do self publishing the first three books I did self publishing, because they were my processes. And I didn't want to give them away to a publisher because I know if it doesn't sell the way they want and the books off the shelf. Yeah, you know, once I learned how to do that, I just continued with my other books and self published. And I just love the creative nature of it. The last book, you know, I created the cover the background that you see here is is the cover of my latest book. And let's see I can sort of see it here. I worked with fonts and how to do the layout and just that creative part of me that right brain, Mason, create your own books and create how they lay out and do your covers. And it's just fun.   Michael Hingson ** 55:14 So that's certainly not allowed dyslexia to stand in the way and your brain has dealt with that.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 55:21 It has, it's some pretty good,   Michael Hingson ** 55:23 which is cool. I want to thank you for being with us again, on unstoppable mindset. And clearly, if we're going to talk about someone who's unstoppable, that would be you. I am so glad that you, you found us because you actually found us and said, I want to be a guest on your podcast, which I'm grateful for you to have done. So very much. That was great.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 55:45 Right? And I've so I've so enjoyed meeting you and hearing, you know how you've dealt with diversity and what you've gone through. I mean, I love your story about riding your bicycle at seven years old by yourself and a neighbor complaining. May I May I take a moment and ask you that. So my father in law was blind. And so I learned, you know, a lot of things through him. So when you were riding your bike, did you listen for how the air went by you to know if there was something along the side of you? I mean, you knew how far I mean, how many turns to the end of the quarter? Yeah. How many times did you go around? Tell me how you did it?   Michael Hingson ** 56:22 No, it's not so much the air going by you. It's just all the echoes and all the sounds. I mean, it's like, how would you describe to someone when you're riding a bike, what it looks like, and what you see how do you describe that sense. And it's the same thing, you're using different senses to do the same thing. And the fact is that with all the different kinds of noises echoing and so on that you can hear, it's possible to ride a bike. Now, I'm not going to probably want to be a bike messenger in New York City. But I, I enjoyed riding a bike. It's been a long time since I've written but I've enjoyed it. And you learn to trust your senses, which is what we've talked a lot about here.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 57:04 Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that with me. And thank you for having me on. I've really enjoyed meeting you. And I hope I get to talk to you again.   57:12 Well, I think we definitely ought to stay in touch by by all means. And and when you're listening out there, please go off and give us a five star rating, especially if you can go to iTunes and do it. We love that five star rating is always helpful. But we want to hear your comments and read your comments. So feel free to leave those as well. Email me at Michaelhi at accessibe.com or go to www dot Michaelhingson.com/podcast. And you can hear all the episodes and leave us comments there as well. But definitely, we really appreciate you giving us your feedback and giving Marnie your feedback as well. Reach out to Marnie. I know she would be very happy to talk with you. And if you feel there's some ways that she can help them. Let us know how it goes. We are always interested. And we're not going to we're not going to let Marnie get away. We're going to have more times to chat definitely we have to do more of this as we go forward. But I really enjoyed you today and you having us be a part of your life. And I want to thank you one last time for doing this and for coming on a sample bites.   Marnie Vincolisi ** 58:25 Thank you. And thank you for being here, Michael.   **Michael Hingson ** 58:33 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Please welcome San Francisco Bay area architect Richard Gage, AIA, member of the American Institute of Architects and founder & former CEO of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.  He, along with his courageous wife and assistant Gail, continues to lead the charge toward a real investigation into the destruction of all 3 World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11 at RichardGage911.org. The organization he founded, AE911Truth, now numbers more than 3,500 architects and engineers demanding a new investigation into the destruction of all three Trade Center high-rise buildings on 9/11. If you have the opportunity, please watch the full episode on our YouTube channel or Facebook page to see his full presentation with detailed evidence. THINK BIG with Michael Zellner would like to thank our sponsor, Platinum Jewelers.

The Georgia Republican Party wraps up its state convention this weekend in Columbus, Georgia. In this special edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Politically Georgia podcast, AJC political insiders Greg Bluestein and Patricia Murphy take you inside the Columbus Convention and Trade Center as the state GOP debates over the party's future. Former President Donald Trump makes his first appearance in Georgia at this weekend's convention since launching his comeback bid, delivering slashing defenses against his federal indictment and his potential indictment from Fulton County prosecutors for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential results in Georgia. Plus, our insiders bring you key moments from speeches from Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones and Friday's keynote speaker Kari Lake. You'll also hear from members of the Georgia delegation, top party officials, and grassroots activists. Have a question for Greg and Patricia? Call the 24-hour Politically Georgia Podcast Hotline at (404) 526-AJCP (2527). We'll play back your question and answer it during the Listener Mailbag segment on next Friday's episode.     Links to today's topics: A defiant Trump attacks ‘scam' federal indictment in return to Georgia Recap of all our updates from the GOP convention     Subscribe to the AJC: If you aren't a subscriber to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, click here to get unlimited digital access to the AJC at a special price.   Listen and follow our podcast for free at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher. You can also tell your smart speaker to “play Politically Georgia podcast.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AP correspondent Julie Walker reports on World Trade Center Bombing Anniversary

The 9/11 Commission credits Stanley Praimnath as the only known survivor from the impact zone at the World Trade Center towers on September 11. “The Lord saw fit for me to live,” says Praimnath, who works in the banking industry in New York. His riveting tale of survival is chronicled in “Plucked from the Fire” (Rosedog Books), coauthored with William Hennessey. The post Episode 15 – Stanley Praimnath – Only known survivor from Trade Center impact zone pays tribute to God's grace first appeared on God Reports.

Jennifer Lieberman comes by her writing and creativity honestly. She has been writing, organizing, and working toward a career in theater writing ever since she was a student in school. She has written her own one-person play as well as a book entitled “Year of the What” based on the play.   As Jennifer tells us about her life, she discusses living in New York City during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. She will discuss how her life changed after that day.   Jennifer clearly is a person who set goals for herself and then worked to achieve them. She is absolutely unstoppable. I think you will enjoy this interview and the creative personality of this wonderful person.   About the Guest: After years of pounding the pavement and knocking on doors with no success of breaking into the entertainment industry, Jennifer decided to take matters into her own hands and created the solo-show Year of the Slut. This show proved to be her break and the play went on to win the Audience Choice Award in New York City and is now the #1 Amazon Best Selling novel Year of the What? and was awarded the Gold Medal at the Global Book Awards 2022 for Coming of Age Books. Since deciding to make her own break Lieberman has appeared in over 30 international stage productions, has produced over 40 independent film and theatre productions and has helped over 100 creatives make their own break through her coaching and consulting work. She has penned a number of stage and screen plays and her short films have screened at the Festival de Cannes Court Métrage among other international festivals. She is currently gearing up to direct her first feature film.   Social Media Links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamjenlieberman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamjenlieberman/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iamjenlieberman Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-lieberman-33b20426/       About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson  01:21 Hi, again, it's Michael Hingson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset, the podcast where inclusion diversity in the unexpected me. And today, Jennifer Lieberman, our guest I think certainly has lots of unexpected things that she's going to tell us about. If you don't know, Jennifer, and you may or may not know who she is, I will just tell you that you want to talk about unexpected. She wrote her own one person play called The year of the slug, and we're gonna get into that I am sure, along with a lot of other things. So Jennifer, welcome to unstoppable mindset. How are you?   Jennifer Lieberman  02:00 I'm fabulous. Michael, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to chat with you today.   Michael Hingson  02:07 Well, we're really excited that you're here. And I know you do have lots of stories and you faced a lot of challenges. And it will be good to go through some of those. Why don't we start new sort of telling me a little bit about your early life and how you kind of progressed a little bit?   Jennifer Lieberman  02:21 Sure. So I started off as the competitive gymnast. And I was in competition. By the time I was five, and was training almost every day after school. By the time I was eight years old. I kind of had a natural aptitude for the sport. And that was my main focus for a really long time. And then I ended up coaching, I founded a high school team. And I think it's relevant because from a very early age, I had to have like a certain amount of discipline. And that discipline has really helped me with longevity in the creative world where it's It's a thankless business a lot of the time.   Michael Hingson  03:11 So where are you from originally?   Jennifer Lieberman  03:13 Oh, yes, I'm from. I was born in Toronto raised in Maple, Canada, just outside of Toronto. I went to York University in Toronto, I studied philosophy and English Lit. And when I graduated, I moved to New York City to pursue a career in theatre. I started writing at a young age, I was about eight years old when I started writing scripts. Originally, it started off as fan fiction for shows that I wanted to be on as a child. And then by the time I was 12, I my imagination evolved enough to create my own plots and characters and storylines that weren't borrowing from worlds that were previously created by other writers. So it was always something in me. But like I said, gymnastics was the main focus, you know, until halfway through high school when I had a career ending knee injury. But like, I still love the sport and love being in the gym. So coaching kind of allowed me to stay in the world that I was used to. And then in university is when I started taking acting classes, and I just kind of never looked back like I am in love with the creative process, whether it's writing performance, filmmaking, and I've developed a lot of skills over the years in order to stay working and stay in the game. Because especially as an actor, you don't have a lot of agency or control over when you get picked And what you get picked for.   Michael Hingson  05:02 So for you, philosophy ended up sort of being a means to an end, as opposed to being a career that you are going to go into in some way. Well,   Jennifer Lieberman  05:11 actually, I studied philosophy, it's interesting that you bring it up, but the Greeks are who invented theatre. That's where a theater was born in these Greek Dionysian festivals, and, you know, East Escalus. Like all of these writers wrote, theatrically, and that's kind of, you know, philosophy played on these stories, or at least in the earlier days, so it always felt connected to me. Philosophy, Greek philosophy, mythology, it was all kind of wrapped up in some sort of performance.   Michael Hingson  05:53 But you went through and got a degree in philosophy, and then you move to New York, is that because you wanted to go into Broadway? Oh, yeah. And   Jennifer Lieberman  06:01 also, like, my parents didn't consider a degree in theater a degree, you know. And I knew, I also knew that I was a writer. And then I wanted to tackle, you know, topics that were, you know, that would challenge people. And that would make people think and different points of view. So I thought, for the writing side of it, because it was never just to be an actor, it was always an actor who wrote projects. So the philosophy and the English Lit just seemed like a great jumping off point in order to develop my skills, grappling different difficult subject matters and structure and theatrical writing and all of that stuff.   Michael Hingson  06:49 Well, so you move to New York. And I guess something that none of us would know. Listening to you and talking with you here is your half African did that have a an impact on you and being able to break into this industry? Or?   Jennifer Lieberman  07:07 No, not at all, because I look, I look like a white girl, I'm my dad's side is Polish. My mother is tunisienne from Tunis. 10 is yeah, she immigrated to Canada with her parents and siblings, and she was the young girl. So so nobody has any inkling of my African roots, unless I actually mentioned it. So, um, so yeah, that's kind of something that's very unexpected, and people don't really place me in that category. Even though I really identify with my 10 ASEAN, heritage and culture, especially traditions, you know, family traditions, things like that my was very close to both of my 10 ASEAN grandparents, I they grew up five houses away from where I grew up, so I saw them almost every day. And that is just ingrained in who I am.   Michael Hingson  08:12 So does that make you essentially a bi racial person?   Jennifer Lieberman  08:16 Um, you know, it's funny, cuz my sense, it's, my family is North African. And like I said, like, my grandfather had dark skin, but my grandmother had light skin. I don't even know if I would be considered biracial. Because once again, like, by looking at me, you couldn't really tell I don't appear to be bipoc. So it's not something that really comes up. Actually. I don't even know what people would consider me to be honest.   Michael Hingson  08:49 A writer and an actress. Yes, so so it really didn't have much of an impact, which is, which is cool. Well, it shouldn't anyway, but it seemed relevant to ask the question. You know, so you, you move to New York. Tell us about that. Where did you go? What did you do in New York? And and what's your favorite bagel place? You know, all the important things?   Jennifer Lieberman  09:17 Yes. Um, so I basically after my last exam, I didn't even wait around for graduation. I wasn't there. On the day, they gave out diplomas because I really didn't care about a diploma. I felt like that was more an obligation I had to fulfill for my parents sake, and then I could start my life. So I showed up in New York and like I say, with a duffel bag and a dream and I was just like, I'm here and stumbled my way. I had rented an apartment sight unseen, which was not a great apartment and last in there very long. And I'm Just basically there was a newspaper back then called Backstage, it used to be a physical newspaper, now you can get an online subscription. And I just started looking in the newspaper that was specifically for the acting world and started circling different auditions I could show up at or submit to. And that's how it all began. And I was fortunate enough to get in with a couple of different theatre companies. And I was able to work with the same people. consistently over time, there were three different companies that I was working with consistently. So that helped me grow and develop as an artist. And one of the companies I ended up becoming a producer at 22. So I learned every aspect, from carpentry using power tools to help get the sets made to running the lighting and sound stage management, costuming, anything that was needed. You just kind of when you're an off off Broadway company without any real funding. You just scraped together whatever you can to make it happen. But also, pardon? Go ahead. Oh, but also those lessons have been invaluable for where I am now. Because, you know, not having the perfect sort of circumstances, or the amount of money we wish we had has never deterred me from making something happen.   Michael Hingson  11:37 So you wore many hats. And you obviously learned a lot as you went along. What was kind of the biggest challenge that you had back in those early days?   Jennifer Lieberman  11:47 Oh, well, I grew up in a really small town. My neighbors were trees. So getting used to the fast paced kind of hustle and bustle of New York City. It was a huge culture shock for me, I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and then move to the center of the world, with everything happening. And just as I was starting to get my footing in New York, 911 happened. And   Michael Hingson  12:18 where were you at the time,   Jennifer Lieberman  12:21 I was on my way to work. I was walking towards the subway at Astor Place, I was living in Alphabet City, and witnessed the first plane, fly into the World Trade Center and thought it was a fluke accident and got on the subway and continued with my day.   Michael Hingson  12:49 So for people who don't know where is Alphabet City, and what is   Jennifer Lieberman  12:52 Oh, yes, so Alphabet City is like the East most part of the East Village. So I was at Avenue D and 10th street. That's where I was living. I didn't last very long in that apartment. I moved in there. And on September 1, and I think by the 15th of September, I had packed everything up and went back to Canada for a while because I couldn't handle the reality of what happened. And I needed to go home. As   Michael Hingson  13:31 I went, he didn't last long either. You just   Jennifer Lieberman  13:35 got damnit, I'm going back to New York.   Michael Hingson  13:38 So you, you said you argued with people, as you were going on the subway and so on. Tell us about that if you want.   Jennifer Lieberman  13:46 I argued with people who were saying it was a terrorist attack. Because at that age, you know, the level of innocence being raised very sheltered in a small town in Canada. I was just like, This doesn't happen, like we're living in, you know, 2001 like, What do you mean? No, this is impossible that somebody hijacked a plane and flew it into a building in the United States. Like it's impossible. I just thought it was a freak accident and continued to work. And you know, there were arguments on the subway because some people saw it as we were all getting on the subway together. But then there were other people who had been on the subway for a while and are hearing it for the first time. So there was a panic. And then I got to two I was working at 34th and Park at a real estate company. That was my side hustle at the time. And I told my boss what happened. And he got really angry with me. And he said that it's not funny, like we don't joke about these things. And I was like, I'm not joke like, who wouldn't joke about these things? Like, turn on the radio. And he did. And that's when we heard about the second plane. And I just remember, like my soul leaving my body at the realization that it couldn't be an accident if there were two that happened in that short amount of time. Like, it was just literally, I felt my innocence Leave me. And yeah, I became a different person that day.   Michael Hingson  15:32 I think a lot of us did. One of my employees was on the PATH train paths stands for Port Authority, trans Hudson, it goes under the river. But he was on the PATH train coming in from Hoboken. They just pulled into the path station under tower Well, under the central part of the World Trade Center. Yep. At the fourth sub level when the second plane hit. And he told me later, the train just started shaking and so on in the pilot, the pilot, the conductor, and the engineer just said, don't leave the train. And they just literally turned around and went back. Right, in Hoboken, because I think they may have known that something was going on. But they didn't know, of course, about the second plane, because it was happening in real time. But nevertheless, they just turned around, went back to New Jersey. Yeah. Yeah, it was just Well, and, of course, who would have thought, right? Exactly. It's one of those things that it's really hard to imagine. And I can understand your reaction. And it did change all of us who were there. And as I've said to many people, and my wife has really pointed this out the problem for most people, certainly the people outside of the immediate area where this occurred that is outside New York City and so on, or further away, who just couldn't see what was happening. Your view, not yours, because you were there. But the view of people was only as large as your TV screen or your newspaper. And you couldn't have the same impact in your mind as all of us who were there at the time did. So you went back to Canada for a couple of months. And that's sort of understandable. You had a place to escape to as it were.   Jennifer Lieberman  17:33 Yeah. First I went to the Poconos. So I had a good friend Heather. She was initially my roommate. And then we, you know, we both ended up living in Alphabet City, actually. But she moved in with a boyfriend. And you know, no cell phones were working. As you know, all the cell towers were down because they were in the Trade Center. So we couldn't get I couldn't call my parents. I couldn't call anyone in Canada. But Heather and I somehow found each other on the street. And I guess it took two or three days for her dad to be able to drive to the city and get us because the city was closed. They weren't letting any vehicles in or out of the city. And I ended up going her dad picked us up. It was her boyfriend at the time. She and myself. And we went to their house in the Poconos for a few days. And then I got back to the city. And I don't know if planes were back up in the air yet, but I took the train home to Toronto, it was like a 12 hour train ride. And I just like packed up everything I had and just hopped on the train. Because I also felt like my dreams were so trite and insignificant compared to the weight of what happened. And I felt silly. I felt you know that everything that was so important to me the day before, was completely superfluous after that incident.   Michael Hingson  19:12 Yeah, what could you do? And it it makes perfect sense that you just left. You're fortunate to be able to do that. Some cell phones were working that day because I was able to call my wife in New Jersey. She couldn't call me. But I could call her interesting. And we were able to, to communicate learned later that day that the trains had started running from Penn Station in New York to Penn Station in Newark. So I was able to get a train later that evening, back to Newark, and then catch the train going from Newark out to Westfield, where we lived. So we got home at about seven that night. It was interesting being on the train, going from New York to New Jersey, people came up to me and said, You're really dirty. Were you downtown? And I said, Yeah, I was in Tower One. And it was interesting while we were going to the train station, from the apartment of a friend of my colleague, David's who I was with, although it wasn't the same as typical, still cars were moving, there was traffic. And it seemed like even only being a few miles away, it was already so significantly different than what we were experiencing downtown.   Jennifer Lieberman  20:40 Oh, yeah, the whole world stopped. If you were on the island of Manhattan, the whole world stopped, you know, and I ended up in New Jersey as well, actually. Because I was beneath 14th street and they didn't really want anybody coming back home if you were below 14th street because they didn't know. Like we talked about before we started recording, you know, gas leaks, fires under the city, things like that the fires could travel through the subway lines, you know, through the tunnels and stuff. So I ended up in New Jersey at a colleague's place for I guess, the first couple of nights. And yeah, it was it's It's surreal. It was just, that's the only word. You know, I can think   Michael Hingson  21:30 of was just how did you get to New Jersey?   Jennifer Lieberman  21:32 I believe I took a train from Penn Station.   Michael Hingson  21:35 Okay, so you were able to catch a train too, which was cool.   Jennifer Lieberman  21:39 Yeah, I was able to catch a train. Yeah, it was. I can't even   Michael Hingson  21:45 Well, let's, let's go back to you. So you moved back to Canada for a little while. Yeah.   Jennifer Lieberman  21:50 Canada. And you know, that didn't last? No, it didn't last because, you know, after I got over the initial shock of what actually happened. I was like, Yeah, you know, my dreams are important to me. And art is just as important as ever, especially during a crisis, having writers and having theater and having stories and people who are able to tell stories in compelling ways. And I basically did a, I did a one ad. And when all I went right back to what I was doing before, with an even stronger conviction than I had previously.   Michael Hingson  22:37 So what happened?   Jennifer Lieberman  22:40 So I continued with the theatre company that I was with, and I got into, like I said, couple other theatre companies I was performing off off Broadway pretty regularly. I was with a mime company called the American mime theatre, and trained and performed as a mime for a few years. And this company was quite special. It was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. And it was its own medium. It wasn't a copy of French pantomime. It was its own discipline. And that was actually coming. You know what, when we got to the one woman shows, but doing the mind training was the best foundation I could have asked for moving forward and doing one person shows where I was playing multiple characters and had to snap in and out of them very quickly. And being able to just snap into a physicality that made it very clear to the audience that I was somebody new, or somebody different as to the character who was previous. So yeah, I ended up producing a bunch of shows off Broadway got into film production. I was in New York for about six years and, and just try to learn as much as I could and craft as much as I could. I started working with a director named Jim craft offered rest in peace he passed a couple years ago during the pandemic, not from COVID. But he was a phenomenal writer and director he studied under Ilya Khazanah at the actor studio, and his play to patch it was a real tipping point in my artistic career. I had to play a mentally challenged girl who was raped and murdered. And once I was able to get through that, I realized like yeah, I really prove to myself like okay, this is where I belong. You know, I have the I have the chops. I have the stamina, I have the drive and you You know, that was like a big milestone, also, in terms of it was the most challenging role that I had ever come across. And I really had to rise to the occasion. And a lot of times in creative work, like until you were given the opportunity to rise to the occasion, you don't know what you're made of. So that was a huge milestone for me. And then, while I was working after I was working on capatch it, my grandma got sick, and I ended up back in Toronto for about a year and a half to help my mom, and my grandma got better and which was great. And then I decided to give la a try. One of the films that I had produced in New York was in a festival in LA and I went to the festival, the film won a couple of awards. And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna give Hollywood a shot now. And that's, that's what happened next.   Michael Hingson  26:01 Well, typically, people always want to get noticed and seen and so on. So what kind of was really your big break? And in terms of whether it be Broadway or wherever? And why do you consider it a big break?   Jennifer Lieberman  26:16 Okay, um, so I, when I was in LA, I had been there for about a year and this is where Europe the sled came into play. A friend suggested that I create a vehicle for myself that, you know, everybody comes from all over the world, to have their, you know, hat in the ring and give it a try to be a star in Hollywood. And very, very, very few people make it. And you have to kind of come up with a way to get noticed. So a friend of mine suggested, do a one woman show, showcase your writing, showcase your acting ability, and you can invite agents, you can invite directors, you can invite people that can hire you people that can represent you, and that will be a good vehicle. So I did what she said. And nobody from the industry really showed up, I kind of compare it to the movie lala land with Emma Stone where she does this one woman show and there's like one person in the audience, I had more than one person, because I had supportive friends from acting class and my mom came from Canada. But in terms of industry, nobody, nobody who could represent me or hired me show up showed up. However, I had so much fun creating the characters working on the show, and taking so this was like the next plateau in my career to patch it, where I played the mentally challenged girl was like the first kind of plateau of being like, okay, you know, you really have to rise to the occasion, doing an hour and a half on stage by yourself playing 10 characters was a whole different level of rising to the occasion. And I did it successfully expecting to fail. And not only that, so much of my time in LA up until that point, had been trying to get in the door, trying to get the job trying to get the audition. And none of that was actually doing what I went there to do, which was being creative, and performing. So I realized, like, okay, of course, I'm still going to submit to auditions. And I'm still going to try and get an agent and all of that. But in the meantime, I have the agency and the ability to create this piece and develop it and keep going with it. And I did and I did a few different workshops in LA and then I got invited to be in a festival in New York, I won the Audience Choice Award at the festival and then Doom like that was the next kind of plateau because now not only could I did I prove to myself, I could do a one woman show, but I proved that it could be recognized and successful. And that led to another one woman show in Australia. And then when I got back from Australia, because at this point in time, I had been a producer for hire for many, many years I had been producing since I was 22. And I had produced well over a dozen film and theatre projects at this point. And I was like huh, I I can help other actors who are frustrated spinning their wheels achieve what I achieved. And that's when I founded my company make your own break. So you know, nobody ever gave me a big break. I'd like them to if anyone has a big break waiting, I'll take it. But, um, but also realizing that I could do this for myself and I can do this for other actors and writers on a small scale was really exciting to me, because I love the creative process. And I love working with actors, and I love working with writers and storytelling, and I love helping I call it I love helping people dig for the gold that's inside of them, because everybody has a treasure buried inside. But a lot of times we're we're not put in situations that push ourselves to actually dig for it. Especially when we're in situations where other people are giving us opportunities, as opposed to us having to really dig down inside and figure out how do I create this opportunity for myself?   Michael Hingson  30:53 Well, and it's also true that oftentimes, we don't necessarily recognize the opportunities are right there for the taking.   Jennifer Lieberman  31:02 Exactly, exactly. And then so creating the one woman show set me on this whole trajectory of I'm just going to keep creating my own stuff. And I created a web series with a friend of mine from acting class, we wrote it together, we produced it together, we both starred in it. You know, it wasn't like commercially successful, like, there's dismal. You know, we did this almost 10 years ago, and there's like dismal YouTube views. It's very embarrassing, but it's also one of the things I'm the most proud of, I had the most fun working on it, I loved everything about it. And it's one of those projects where all the problems with it could have been solved if we had more money. And, to me, that's a success. Because, you know, we couldn't help the fact that we didn't have more money to make it. And the fact that you know, okay, fine, you know, the, the camera work wasn't fantastic, or the stats weren't fantastic, you know, but all the actors were fantastic. The directing was fantastic, the writing was fantastic, you know, so so I'm so super proud of that. And then Rebecca, my partner on that we made a short film together. And then I finally finally after decades of being a writer, because I started writing when I was eight, had the confidence to produce something that I had written on my own. And that was my short film leash. And that ended up screening at the short film corner at the Cannes Film Festival, which was like another huge milestone, I still couldn't get any agents or managers or anybody to take me on or represent me. But at this point, it's like, I got my film that I made that I wrote that, you know, that I produced that I was in to the biggest, most important film festival in the world. And I'm like, okay, that like, you know, even though the industry quote unquote, you know, hasn't recognized me yet. In terms of like, the agents and the managers and staff that's like, there must be something valid to my creativity. And then I made another short film, and it also got screened in the short film corner at the Cannes Film Festival on screen at the Cambridge Film Festival in the UK, and it just kind of, you know, so all these little bits of validation, they haven't turned into, you know, the career that I'm aspiring towards, but it's all encouragement. That helps me keep going.   Michael Hingson  33:57 You certainly are unstoppably optimistic.   Jennifer Lieberman  34:01 Well, the thing is, I don't even think it's that. I think it's just I don't have a choice. This is just who I am. It's what I do. I just keep creating, I can't help it. There was this movie years ago with Jeffrey rush called quills about the marquis decide, and how he was imprisoned because of his writing and how he was persecuted. And, you know, he kept writing no matter what he kept writing, he would write in blood on his bedsheets. And eventually he was just nude in a in a cell with nothing, because they needed to stop him from writing the depraved material that he was writing. And, you know, it was just I wouldn't say my my compulsion is that extreme. But yeah, I don't feel like this is something I chose. I feel like it chose me It's something inside of me. And I get very depressed when I'm not able to have a creative outlet. You know, it's almost survival, which I know sounds completely absurd, but any other creative who has the same conviction? I do, it makes complete sense to them.   Michael Hingson  35:23 Well, you wrote starred in and did everything regarding, of course, your, your one woman show your of the slot what happened to it? Because it did oh yeah appear and you had some awards with it and so on. So what happened?   Jennifer Lieberman  35:39 So, um, in the interim, so once we won the award in New York, some people, like lots of people, actually friends, colleagues, people that I didn't know, suggested that it would be a great Chiclet book, and that I should write the novel. So I did, I wrote, I wrote the novel and shopped it around for a couple years. But once again, I was so green, it didn't even occur to me, like, oh, you should hire an editor, and you should hire a proofreader. And you should get a whole team of people together before you start sending it to agents and, and, you know, publishing companies. So I gave up on it. Over a decade, I probably gave up on it about three times. You know, the first time, I was completely unprepared. The second time, I did hire an editor, and she just was the wrong fit. And it didn't resonate with her. So she was just very cruel in her feedback. And I couldn't look at it for another two years. And, and then finally, a friend of mine encouraged me to finish it and self publish it not to be successful, but just to get to the finish line, and not have one more project hanging over me that's unfinished. So with that state of mind, it was actually kind of a relief, because it's like, Oh, I'm not even trying to make this book successful. I'm just trying to get to the finish line. And then I did, and I, I self published Europe, the sled and it was censored. And for a good year, I tried my damnedest to get around the censorship issues with Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, in terms of advertising. It was allowed to be on Amazon, I was allowed to have a Facebook page, I was allowed to have an Instagram account, but it couldn't do any advertising, which means I couldn't break through my audience of peers. So if you weren't already my friend, I couldn't get the information to you. Which kind of made it dead in the water. A colleague of mine after a year suggested to change the title since that was the only barrier. And I was like, No, the title is what's you know, is why it was a success in the first place. That's what packed houses. Village Voice had no problem. Printing ads with the title timeout in New York had no problem none of the, you know, none of the entities that came to review the play had problems publishing the title. But I guess since it was published after the ME TOO movement, the climate had changed a little bit. And we weren't able to. Yeah, well, I just wasn't able to get it out there. So after a few months of hemming and hawing over the whole situation, because I had the title before I had the story. I'm just I was just pretty good at coming up with catchy titles. So I was really married to it and then finally revamped it, retitled it, rebranded it, relaunched it. And it's now a number one bestseller on Amazon. It recently won the gold medal at the Global Book Awards for Best Coming of Age book, it won a bronze medal at the independent publishing Awards for Best romance slash erotica ebook. And, yeah, it's won a couple more, but those are the most notable and it served me well to to retitle the book so,   Michael Hingson  39:30 and the title of the book is   Jennifer Lieberman  39:32 near of the what, so it rhymes with slut. But it's not as controversial. And it actually serves me because in the process of, of publishing this first one, I realized that it's a trilogy and Book Two is going to be year of the bitch and I'll have the same problems. So I'm just going to keep it under the year of the white umbrella. a lot.   Michael Hingson  40:01 I would I would submit, maybe not. I know there is, well, I suppose anything's possible. But my wife and I love to read a variety of books. And we've written or we've read a number of books by an author Barbara Nino. So she wrote the Stasi justice series. Have you ever read any of her books? I haven't been on familiar with her. So she's also written the bitches Ever After series published with that name, so maybe it won't be quite the same? Well,   Jennifer Lieberman  40:34 there's a big book out called the ethical slut, that? Well, you know, and they had no problems with censorship, either. But I think sometimes it can, it depends on who your publisher is and who you're connected to. But um, but anyway, I think the year of the web series serves me because as soon as someone opens the first page of the book, The subtitle is right there, right. Yeah,   Michael Hingson  41:00 so people should go look for year of the what? Yes. Well, I'm glad it has been really successful. And you have worn a lot of hats on, off off Broadway and Hollywood and so on. And now you're back in Canada, and so on. What do you like best of all those hats and all those jobs or opportunities.   Jennifer Lieberman  41:27 That's number one. That's always been my number one passion. That's why I started writing fan fiction when I was eight, is because I just wanted to be in these movies and shows that I watched, and I really enjoy writing, I actually really enjoy producing and helping bring projects to life, whether they're mine or somebody else's. But the there's something magical about performing and living and breathing in somebody else's skin and a different world that a writer created. And it's just incomparable. So   Michael Hingson  42:14 year of the well, we'll, we'll do the slot. What? Is it funny?   Jennifer Lieberman  42:21 It is yes. So what are the words that one was best rom com of 2021. So when I submitted it to book life through Publishers Weekly, one of the reviews was that it doesn't fit neatly into the romance genre. And it doesn't fit neatly into the erotica genre. And it doesn't fit into this genre and doesn't fit into that genre. They didn't even review the book, like didn't even give like a positive or negative review. All they did was list all the genres it didn't fit into. And, but it is quite humorous. Because it's about these dating misadventures, and coming of age and coming to terms with sexuality, being a young woman in New York City, and kind of having to reevaluate a lot of the stories or, you know, kind of expectations that were ingrained in the character. So it's not even about her being a slut. It's about her reevaluating what that word means to her, because she only planned to be with my one man. So anything more than that would put her in the slot category. But yeah, so it was her kind of, you know, reevaluating her perception of what is the slot? And, you know, how many partners is too many and all of that stuff? Because, also, in today's world, how realistic is it? For someone to be with just one partner for their whole life? I don't know. Especially like in Western society? I don't know.   Michael Hingson  44:14 Well, since you have been involved in writing something that's humorous and so on, have you at all been involved in comedy stand up comedy or any of those kinds of things?   Jennifer Lieberman  44:26 Yeah, I did do stand up comedy. I do it from time to time. I wouldn't call myself a stand up comedian. Because I don't love it enough to be hitting the clubs every single night trying to get on stage, which if you're trying to make a living as a stand up comedian, you have to be hitting the clubs every night. All of the legit stand up comedians, I know will hit 234 Different clubs at night to get up. And I'm not that committed to it. It's a nice muscle to flex, it's nice to know that I have the courage to get up and do it that I can make an audience laugh. But I'm no by no means a professional stand up. I got into it by accident, I responded to a casting notice looking for females who could be funny. And it was a promoter looking for more female comics to be on his shows. And he was willing to train and coach to coach women because he just felt like he wasn't getting enough women applying to be on his on his lineups. And he wasn't meeting enough women. This was this was a few years ago, this was like I think 2014 is when I started, it was just before Amy Schumer, like, had her breakout success and became a huge household name. Now, now when you go into the comedy scene, there are so many more women than then there was, you know, about eight years ago. So now, it's not the same climate. So his name? Matt Taylor, his name's Matt Taylor. So he kind of convinced me to give it a go and try five minutes. Because I was like, oh, no, like, That's too scary. I don't do that. But after doing two one woman shows where I was on stage by myself for over an hour, each one I was like, Okay, what's five minutes. And I did it. And when I was a hit, it was great. Nobody thought everybody thought I was quite seasoned. All the other comedians on the lineup thought that I had done it dozens of times before. And I, I did it pretty consistently for a couple of years. But once again, like I said, I just didn't love it enough. Like I'd rather I would run, I would run to a theater every night to do Shakespeare or Tennessee Williams, I wouldn't run to a theater every night to do stand up. So it's just not the type of creative that I am. But once again, nice to know that, that I can flex that muscle.   Michael Hingson  47:14 So how many books have you written so far? One novel,   Jennifer Lieberman  47:17 which we discussed, and then under Mike, my consulting business to make your own break business I've published to during the pandemic, I always intended to publish books, under the Make Your Own break umbrella, about low budget, film production, low, no budget is more accurate, no budget theatre production, how to develop a solo show. So all of those are still coming. But during the pandemic, I was asked to coach a few executives, to help them with their presentation skills and engaging their team. And I'm kind of like a nerd and I didn't feel qualified to coach these people. So I was like, Okay, I have to come up with a system before I feel confident enough to like go and actually, you know, do this and charge money. So I came up with these seven steps on how to master your virtual meeting. So that's one of the books make your own break, how to master your virtual meeting in seven simple steps. And then I also recorded my AUDIO BOOK during the initial lockdown, and I messed up a lot. And I had to I recorded the entire book and had to throw it in the garbage and start again from scratch. And then the same friend colleague who suggested I changed my title suggested that I write a how to book geared towards self published authors and indie authors on how they can record and publish their own audio books. So that's book number two how to record and publish your audio book in seven simple steps once again under the Make Your Own break umbrella. And yeah, so there are those two books and like I said, I I will be publishing more How To books under the Make Your Own break, but those will probably pertain more to film theater production and creative process.   Michael Hingson  49:23 And then the what? At pardon. And then more year of the what and then more   Jennifer Lieberman  49:28 year of the wet because that I've realized as a trilogy. You know, when women are young, if people want to attack us in our teens and 20s Regardless of what our personal lives are, people call us a sloth. Whether it's male or females, it's a woman it's a it's a word is weaponized against women. And then as we get older, more assertive, more confident, we're we're called a bitch. So I'm kind of going through the trajectory of words. are used as weapons against women, and how we can reframe them and own them, instead of being ashamed of them.   Michael Hingson  50:09 Then you can write the fourth book what bitch. But anyway, that's another story. Exactly. So did you publish an audiobook?   Jennifer Lieberman  50:18 I did, yes. This year of the what is available on Audible? Yes. So I did I, I was I finally recorded a successful version. And it was after that, that I decided that okay, yeah, maybe I can write the how to book on how to do this. And it's specifically encouraging self published authors. Because if you have enough conviction to write your story, you should be the one telling it.   Michael Hingson  50:47 It's interesting in the publishing world today, that and people will tell you, this agents and others will tell you this, that it isn't like it used to be, you have to do a lot of your own marketing, even if you get a publisher to take on your book and take that project. So the fact is doing an indie publishing project certainly uses a lot of the same rules, you still have to market it, you're gonna have to do it either way, you're still going to be doing a lot of the work, the publishing industry can help. But you still got to do a lot, if not most of the work.   Jennifer Lieberman  51:29 Yeah, and not just that, I don't know, if if you follow any celebrities, on on Twitter, or Instagram, but I believe nowadays, like I'm a, I'm a member of the Screen Actors Guild, that union in the US, and a lot of contracts now have social media obligations written into them, that you have to tweet that you have to post a certain amount to help promote the show. And a lot of decisions are based on how big of a following you have, there's actually, I'm not sure if you were a Game of Thrones fan, I was a big Game of Thrones fan. But one of the characters, it was between her and another actress and she had a bigger social media following. And that was the tipping point of how she got cast. So it you know, self promote, like that's what social media is, it's all self promotion. So it's not just the publishing world, it's the acting world, I think it's just become the norm of it doesn't matter what business you're in. It used to be that you needed a.com. In order to exist now you need a social media following in order to exist.   Michael Hingson  52:53 I know when we originally did fender Dogg, and Thomas Nelson put, picked it up and decided to publish it. Even then back in 2010, and 2011. One of the main questions was, how much will you be able to contribute to the marketing of the book? How much will you be able to help promote it? Now? We have a contract to do our next book, A Guide Dogs Guide to Being brave, unless the publisher decides once we're done to change the title. But still, it is all about how big of a following do you have? How much are you going to be able to contribute contribute to the book because you're probably not going to get some sort of big book tour or anything like that paid for by the publishing company, unless there's some compelling reason to do it. And it is all about what you can do. So publishing is changing, the landscape is changing. mainstream publishers are great, they do add a lot of value. But you do need to learn to sell and to market and be intelligent about it as an author, no matter how your book gets published.   Jennifer Lieberman  54:03 Yes. And, you know, it's a double edged sword, because it gives lots of opportunities to indie, indie authors, but it also, it's sad for me because it becomes a popularity contest. And it's not necessarily about how good your book is, or how good your work is. It's just if you, you know, have a buzz factor. And if you have a following or if you had, like some mishap in your life that went viral, then all of a sudden, you have this huge platform for all these opportunities, regardless of how talented or prepared you are for those opportunities. And you know, it like I said, it's a double edged sword. There are benefits to it. And there are, you know, there are detriments to it but also like I'm the type of artist. I'm gonna I'm willing to go outside of my integrity. So let the chips fall where they may.   Michael Hingson  55:05 Well, you have written both in the literary world, if you will. And in the theater world, which do you prefer? And why? Oh, that's a toughy. Because you're doing a lot with each one, aren't you?   Jennifer Lieberman  55:21 Yeah. And I'm still like, I'm, you know, and that's the thing, like I write plays, I write scripts for film, and I'm writing a TV pilot right now. And in the literary world, the benefit of writing in the literary world, is once the writing is finished, and when I mean writing, I mean, also the editing and the proofreading. Your job is done, like the project is complete. When you're writing theatrically, whether it's film or theatre, that's just step one, there's still a very, very, very long road ahead of you, you know, and trying to get into the right hands, trying to raise the money, trying to, you know, get the right team together, and the right actors, the right, you know, then you had, then there's the feat of filming it, and then the post production process, and then the distribution process. So there is something very satisfying when writing a book that's finished. But there's also something very exciting to me, you know, in the whole process of getting a project produced from you know, from step one to step 55.   Michael Hingson  56:45 So, as a writer in the theatrical world, you really can't just be a writer, and then you turn it over to someone, if you're going to make it successful, I gather, what you're saying is, you really have to be the driving force behind the whole project, not just the writing part.   Jennifer Lieberman  57:01 Well, at my level, because like I said, I don't have an agent, I don't, I'm trying to get things into other people's hands. So right now, I'm shopping around here of the what for theatrical opportunity, I went to the Cannes Film Festival to the market there, I've met with a certain number of people. And one of the questions was, how involved would you want to be in this project? And my answer is, however involved you would like, you know, because I'm not married to this project. Like I, I've been living with this for a decade, between writing it, workshopping it, and then the novel between the play and the novel, like, I'm ready to let this go. If somebody wants to write me a check. Go ahead, do what you will with it. You know, but then there are other pieces that are closer to my heart that I'm like, oh, no, like, this isn't for sale. We can partner on this and make this together. But this is, you know, staying under my under my wings, so to speak. But I have another I have a short piece, a short film, that a friend of mine is shooting in LA next month, and I'm not really gonna have any creative involvement in it.   Michael Hingson  58:26 Out of curiosity, when somebody asks you that question, is there sort of a general trend as to what do they want the answer to be? Or is it really something that varies? They they're not necessarily looking for you to be involved typically, or they'd like you to be involved typically, as a really an answer that makes more sense to most people than not,   Jennifer Lieberman  58:47 you know, it's interesting, because I've gotten both, I've gotten both opinions. You know, for, I guess the higher up people are on the food chain. They're very relieved to hear that I don't need to have any involvement in it at all, because they know how hard it is to get something made in the first place, let alone having all of these, you know, kind of stipulations. It's like, well, I can only get made, you know, she gets to approve the script and this and this and this and that, you know, so the less I think the less involvement I have, the easier it is for the producer because they have more freedom to negotiate. Right. But that's an instinct once again, I don't know, you know,   Michael Hingson  59:32 it probably does very well. How do you keep such a positive attitude and keep yourself to use the terminology of our podcast unstoppable as you get a lot of rejections as you face a lot of challenges. And as you said, you haven't had that huge break. But how do you keep yourself going?   Jennifer Lieberman  59:51 I love it. This is a love affair. This is a lifelong love affair for me. And I was on a podcast A few days ago, we had to write a creativity statement. And my creativity statement is that being a creative is like being in a one sided relationship, and you have to love it enough for both of you. Because the the industry isn't necessarily going to love you back. But if you love it enough, if you love the creative process enough, you're just gonna keep going.   Michael Hingson  1:00:22 I want you to extrapolate that to just anyone even outside the theatrical world. What would you tell somebody if they come up to you and say, How can I just keep myself going,   Jennifer Lieberman  1:00:35 find something that you love and do it as often as possible? It doesn't have to be your job, you don't have to make money at it. You just have to have something in your life that you really love and enjoy doing. You know, whether it's dancing, whether it's singing, you know, and that's the thing like, you don't have to be a superstar. I'm not a superstar. Maybe one day I will be universe. But I, I'm not going to stop what I do, because it just brings me so much joy. And I'm so happy and I do I get in a funk. I get in a funk when I'm not able to create. And, you know, for some people it might be hiking or kayaking or camping or connecting with nature. That's something that that I love to do. Also, that brings me joy. But yeah, I think a lot of us get so caught up. And also I would say close your screen. Go dark, go dark for a few days. Don't worry about what's going on on social media. Don't worry about the internet, like go outside and actually be in the real world connect with real people connect with nature. Be in your body. I find when I get in my head, too much I can spin out. But when you're in your body, you can you can feel your you can feel your essence. You   Michael Hingson  1:02:04 know, always good to step back.   Jennifer Lieberman  1:02:07 So that would be my advice.   Michael Hingson  1:02:10 It's always good to step back and look at yourself and just relax. And we don't do that often enough. We get too involved in that social media and everything else as you point out.   Jennifer Lieberman  1:02:22 Yeah, exactly. And it's proven like there are statistics, social media makes people depressed. People only put their Insta life best moments on social media. I'm sure someone will mention if they're going through a hard time or whatever. But that's not the majority of people. People will sift through their life find take a million photos of one of one scenario, find the best photo doctorate with with face tune filters and whatever and make their life look fabulous. And you know, everything's curated. I'm actually I wrote a poem about this. Would you mind I've never shared this publicly. Can I? Really?   Michael Hingson  1:03:09 Sure. Go ahead.   Jennifer Lieberman  1:03:11 Okay. It's called Black Sabbath. And basically, it's about going dark. Can we all just go dark for a day? Turn off the devices be still be silent and pray? No posts, no distractions? No waiting impatiently for strangers reactions. Can we all just go dark for a day? No selfie indulgence? No curated inspiration. No unsolicited motivation. Be present. Be awake. Meditate. Can we all just go dark for a day hold our loved ones dear if not in our arms in our consciousness spear. Make amends with our Maker, the true force of nature and submit to the power of our sublime creator. Can we all just go dark for a day, shut our screens, search our souls reclaim our minds that get hijacked every time we scroll. And finally take back our grip of the only thing we can control. That's it.   Michael Hingson  1:04:24 That's as powerful as it gets. And it is so true. Yeah. Yeah. It is absolutely so true. So what you've already alluded to it, what do you do when you're not writing and being creative? What do you like to do to relax? You said some of   Jennifer Lieberman  1:04:41 it. Yeah, I'm a yoga Holic. Like I said, I spent the first half of my life as a competitive gymnast. So I'm super active. I love physical activity. I don't work out in terms of like, I don't go to the gym and I don't do a certain amount of reps and I I'm on a treadmill for 20 minutes a day I do physical activities that I enjoy, so I enjoy yoga. I'm quite advanced at it with a gymnastics background so it's fun and acrobatic for me. I love hiking. I love connecting with nature whether it's stand up paddleboarding, kayaking, canoeing, waterskiing, I love all of that stuff. Not much of a snow skier though I don't really love the cold, even though I'm Canadian.   Michael Hingson  1:05:30 How lucky you were you live in? You don't like to call it okay.   Jennifer Lieberman  1:05:34 Yeah, I don't. But basically anything active and outdoors. There's a treetop trekking course not far from where my parents are. And like, that's next on the list. I'm really excited to do that. What is that? Basically, they have these like, kind of obstacle courses up in the trees. So you're on harnesses, and you know, whether it's like platforms that you walk across, or ropes courses that you have to, you know, I don't know, I haven't been but it sounds fun.   Michael Hingson  1:06:12 Well, you have to let us know what it's like after you, you get to go clearly not wheelchair accessible. So I'm sure my wife's not gonna want to do it. But nevertheless, you got to let us know how it goes once you do it.   Jennifer Lieberman  1:06:27 Yes, I will. I will. It's very exciting. Oh, and I love live music. So like rock shows. That's my jam. I'm a rocker chick.   Michael Hingson  1:06:36 There you go. Well, I want to thank you for being here. And spending the last hour and a little bit more with us. This has been fun. Clearly, you keep yourself going you do move forward, you're not going to let things stop you, you are going to be unstoppable, as I said, using the parlance of the name of the podcast, but I want to thank you for being here and inspiring all of us and telling us your story. If people want to reach out to you and contact you and learn more about you find your books or anything else. How will they do that?   Jennifer Lieberman  1:07:10 Okay, so year of the what.com is the website for the book, but it'll link you to almost everything. Or you can go to make your own break.com. Both of those have links to all of the books and all the social media. And they also have contact pages that will come to my inbox directly. So that's the best way. If you want to find out more about me, and on social media, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. I am Jen Lieberman. So the at sign, and then I am Jen. J e n Lieberman L i E,B E R m a N.   Michael Hingson  1:08:00 Well, I hope people will reach out oh, I should ask you you written in your writing the How To books? Are you going to do anything like create any online courses or anything?   Jennifer Lieberman  1:08:10 You know, it's funny I was doing in person courses. I haven't gotten around to doing the online ones yet. But yes, that is also in the works. There's a laundry list. Bed. And like we talked about, I wear many hats. And I'm always more interested in the creative stuff. As opposed to the as opposed to the business side. So I you know, I always feel like, oh, there'll be time for the course there'll be time for that. And as it as it so happens, the more successful my creative career is, the more validity I have to teach these other courses. So it's all in good time.   Michael Hingson  1:08:49 Great. Well, again, thank you for being here with us people, please go visit your of the what.com or make your own break.com. And reach out to Jen, she would love to hear from you. And I would love to hear from you. I'd love to know what you thought about today, I would really appreciate you giving us a five star rating. Jennifer Lieberman needs a five star rating. So let's give her one you all. And I want to thank you all for for being here. Reach out to me, feel free to do so by emailing me at Michaelhi at accessibe.com Or go visit WWW dot Michael hingson.com/podcast. Or just go to Michael hingson.com and learn more about the things that I do. But either way, please help us give Jen rave reviews. And Jen one last time. Thank you very much for being here.   Jennifer Lieberman  1:09:48 Thank you so much, Michael. This was such a treat. I really appreciate you having me on.   Michael Hingson  1:09:53 Well, the fun and the honor was mine. So thank you you   1:09:59 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

The Eagles make a big addition to their Defense.... Another edition of Get Up, Get Down... Plus, Brian Windhorst joins the show to talk Hoops. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Eagles make a big addition to their Defense.... Another edition of Get Up, Get Down... Plus, Brian Windhorst joins the show to talk Hoops. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Bunny welcomes Adam Baran to talk about his work as a filmmaker, spaces for sex and cruising and his thoughts on Bros. Adam Baran is a writer, director, producer, and curator whose work focuses on hidden histories of queer life and identity. Baran's short documentary TRADE CENTER screened at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival, AFI Docs, Frameline, Maryland, Provincetown and the Oak Cliff Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Mention from the Best Documentary Short jury. Baran produced the 2020 Netflix documentary CIRCUS OF BOOKS which was nominated for an Emmy award for Outstanding Writing for a Non-Fiction Program. He is a co-producer on the forthcoming doc-series HOW TO HAVE SEX IN A PANDEMIC which examines the impact of COVID on LGBT New Yorkers. He wrote the first season of the hit webseries HUNTING SEASON and was a contributing editor at BUTT Magazine for many years. As producer, Baran's projects include Emmy-winning director Jeffrey Schwarz's feature documentaries BOULEVARD! A HOLLYWOOD STORY and the forthcoming MINESHAFT: THE CRUISING MURDERS. His next documentary as director explores the history of the leather and motorcycle club scene from 1964-1989. As a curator, Baran co-created the long-running Queer/Art/Film screening series at the IFC Center in Manhattan, and his new monthly screening series is called Narrow Rooms, which highlights dark and dirty gay films every month at the Anthology Film Archives in New York. Adam is also the creator of the NYC INFERNO sex parties, an inclusive sex party which he calls a "sex party for sex nerds". . More can be found on Instagram @nycinfernoparty Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with Nick Salanis/Old Timers Parade Chairman about tomorrow's parade in Madera, the Trade Center beam that will lead the parade and why Christina Musson is the keynote speaker.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A friend called that morning and said, "Ron, You should turn on the TV. An airplane just hit one of the World Trade Center towers." There was no file folder in my heart for what I was about to see. I quickly found a news channel. And from that moment on, I did not turn it off. My wife and I were in Manhattan, in that area not long before, and we were friends with a lot of people who worked in Manhattan. We'd been occasional visitors to the observation deck atop the Trade Center, and we watched one horrific event after another unfold before our eyes that day. And when the towers collapsed in that killer cloud of dust, we couldn't contain the tears. Neither could the TV reporters who, for those gut-wrenching moments, lost their journalist's detachment and they melted with all of us. They were stunned and shocked - disbelief. And I prayed. I was groping for what to say and what to pray. And I found myself praying, "Lord, would You please help me see this through Your eyes? What are You seeing in this tragedy that's just too big for our hearts to handle?" And in the hours that followed, I believe He answered my prayer. And what I saw - beyond the unspeakable events that raked our souls - has stuck with me for over a decade. Every year, watching those deeply moving remembrances of the events at "Ground Zero," the echoes reverberate again in my heart. "Make every day count with the people you love." I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Urgent Messages From the Towers." All those heart-rending cell phone calls from hijacked planes and burning buildings were pretty much about one thing - "I love you." Who can know now that this day might be our last day to ashure people that we know that we love them. It's not good enough to just leave our dear ones on an "I love you till further notice" basis. Each of them needs to know it, and feel it today. The psalmist said, "Teach us to number our days aright" (Psalm 90:12). Live and love like today is all you've got, because someday it will be. Ask the "make a difference" question. A lot of folks did after they saw so many lives end so suddenly before our eyes. "Am I just making a living or am I really making a difference?" People changed careers after that. They changed their life plans in light of the powerful wake-up call of September 11. With our life and the lives around us so fragile, it's good to stop and weigh the most significant use of this one short life. The God who created us as "His workmanship for good works He prepared in advance for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10). He doesn't want us settling for less than our destiny. This time of remembering is also a time to be reflecting on the changes that we need to make in order to make the greatest possible difference with the rest of our life. Life's real heroes are the rescuers. In the days that followed September 11, sports stars and paparazzi-ed celebrities were saying, "Don't call us heroes. Heroes are those guys who went into the flames and the rubble to save lives." All over the country, America honored and continues to honor our first responders. I think heaven honors them too. Now, our word for today from the Word of God, Proverbs 24:11 says the hero like that sees and understands that their friends and loved ones who've never met their Jesus are "staggering toward slaughter" and "being led away to death." And God says.: "Rescue them." Be ready for eternity whenever it comes. More than anything, I think that's what screamed - and still screams - to me from the rubble of Ground Zero. We just can't count on tomorrow. That's why the Bible says, "Prepare to meet your God" (Amos 4:12). He's not a Savior you "get around to someday," because we live one heartbeat from eternity. We can only be ready to meet a holy God if He's forgiven our sins based on the fact that we've put all our trust in what Jesus did on the cross when He died for those sins. If you're not sure you belong to Him, don't count on another day. Go to our website. Find out how you can belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com. That's the website. There's no greater peace, there's no greater security than to know for sure that you are ready for eternity whenever and however it comes.

Bryan Bashin was born fully sighted, but over time he lost his eyesight. Like many such people, he tried to hide his blindness. Bryan was, in some senses, different than many. Because as he began to discover that other blind people were leading full and successful lives, he decided that he could do the same. He received training and then began to seek employment and attained a most successful career.   Bryan would tell you that he loves learning and advocating. He is an extremely inclusive individual although he clearly does do a powerful job of advocating for blind and low-vision persons. Oh yes, not vision impaired, but low vision. You will hear about this during our conversation.   For the past 13 years, Bryan Bashin has been the CEO of the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind. He has proven to be quite an innovator due to his philosophical orientation concerning blindness. You will hear of his accomplishments.   Bryan announced his retirement from the Lighthouse earlier this year. His future plans are typical of Bryan. Come along with us and hear Bryan's story and then please give us a 5-star rating wherever you listen to this podcast episode.     About the Guest: Bryan Bashin, CEO, reports to the Board of Directors and supervises the directors of Communications, Development, Operations, Programs and Enchanted Hills Camp and Retreat. Mr. Bashin has served in this position since 2010. Mr. Bashin's extensive professional experience includes Executive Editor for the Center for Science and Reporting, Assistant Regional Commissioner for the United States Department of Education: Rehabilitation Services, and Executive Director of Society for the Blind in Sacramento. Mr. Bashin has been blind since college and from that time has dedicated a substantial part of his career to advocating for equality, access, training and mentorship for individuals who are blind or low vision. He serves or has served on numerous committees and organizations, including California Blind Advisory Committee, VisionServe Alliance, San Francisco State University's Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability, World Blind Union, National Industries for the Blind, and California Agencies for the Blind and Visually Impaired.         About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes UM Intro/Outro  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson  01:21 Welcome to unstoppable mindset. And I am really excited today to have an opportunity to talk with Bryan Bashin, the CEO of the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind. And you will see why as we go forward. Bryan is a very interesting and engaging guy. I've known him for quite a while. And I think we've both known each other we like each other, don't we, Bryan?   Bryan Bashin  01:44 Yeah, we have traveled in the same paths. And we have been on the same side of the barricades.   Michael Hingson  01:51 And that's always a good thing. So you're doing well.   Bryan Bashin  01:57 I'm doing great. This is a this is a good time for me and Lighthouse after 13 years, thinking about sort of a joyous conclusion to a number of projects before I move on.   Michael Hingson  02:10 Wow. Well, that's always a good thing. Well, tell me a little bit about you before the lighthouse growing up and stuff like that, so people get to know about you a bit.   Bryan Bashin  02:20 Sure. The short version I grew up as a sighted boy started becoming blind when I was 12 became legally blind when I was a sophomore at UC Berkeley. And like all newly blind, low vision people tried to hide it for as long as possible, and really failed. I didn't have role models, then, like my Kingson. I didn't really know what was possible in blindness. That pivot came later in my life. And so I just did what a lot of low vision people do. Hide, try to pass all of that. So I did that in my early 20s. I started my career in journalism. I my first job out of Berkeley was at the CBS television affiliate in San Francisco KPI X, API X. Yes, Gen five and the news department there. And I worked there for a couple of years that I wanted to move up in the world. And I joined the channel 10, the CBS Benli a CBS affiliate in Sacramento, and I was higher up on that journalism,   Michael Hingson  03:32 and wrong and you move and you moved from five to 10.   Bryan Bashin  03:35 I did. I doubled. See. After after a few years in local broadcast news, television news, I thought I'm a little more serious person that and I wanted to go deeper. And so I quit my job and I started writing for newspapers, and then magazines, and specialized in science and public policy. So I did lots of work and environment, Space Science, energy usage, epidemiology. You know, for kind of curious guy like me, journalism was a really good fit because it fed all the things I want to learn about him. And I was in my 20s. Somewhere along the way, as I had less than less vision, I knew that I needed to get solutions. And I didn't know where those would come from, but I knew it involves people. But short version is almost 30 years ago. In a quiet time in my life. I just picked up some copies of the Braille monitor and started reading them. And in it, I found all kinds of stories about blind people doing amazing things. Things that I didn't think I could do as a person like travel where I wanted when I want it or efficiently use Computers, all that. So I went into a boot camp. It was then the fourth NFB Training Center. Actually it was in Sacramento. Just that the year that I needed it. It only lasted one year. The Marcelino center run by the California affiliate of the NFB, anyway, long story short, I threw myself into training, got training, and then had the most successful period in journalism I've ever had. And that's the first half of my working career.   Michael Hingson  05:33 Did you ever know mozzie? Marcelino?   Bryan Bashin  05:35 No, I didn't. He passed before the Senator that was named after him. That's right. Yeah.   Michael Hingson  05:41 He was one of the very active early members of the National Federation of the Blind of California and managed a lot of the legislative activities of the Federation. In Sacramento, if you went with him into the Capitol, everyone knew Mazie. Which, which is important.   Bryan Bashin  06:02 Yeah. Yeah, I certainly was living in Sacramento in the 90s. And his memory was an active presence, then. Well, I finished up my immersion training at the Marcelino center. Four years later, I was running the Society for the blind there in Sacramento. Having gotten the confidence, and aspiration, that I could do stuff there, Executive Director, retired after 33 years, and I interviewed and got the job. That's when I got my first taste of real service in the blindness community. Chance to like, think of a project, think of a problem, get funds for it, hire cool staff for it and do it. And for me, you know, I might have written an article in a magazine and a million people would read it, but I wouldn't meet any of them. And I wouldn't have that thing that we all love that community. So when I started working at society for the blind, that community was right there. And it was deeply gratifying. And so I started working on many, many projects. And I did that in Sacramento for six years, had a wild time with it. And then I was asked to apply in the US Department of Education, to be one of the regional commissioners in region nine for the Rehab Services Administration. So that was, that was really bittersweet to leave the Society for the blind, but I wanted to learn more. And suddenly, I found myself responsible for half a billion dollars in federal spending across all disabilities, and learning like a fire hose about the public rehabilitation system. And I did that until all the regional offices were closed by the administration. And I found myself for the first time in my working life, not knowing what I was going to do for a living. So I, I did some expert witnessing in court, I worked with a startup, I did some other things regarding direction, mentoring of blind people looking for employment. And then after 20 years, the director of the Lighthouse for the Blind, took a new job. And it was the first job I was hired for that I actually knew what I was doing when I came in, because I'd run another org like that. And that was 13 years ago.   Michael Hingson  08:36 There you are. What who was the commissioner when the offices closed?   Bryan Bashin  08:42 Yeah, well, it was Joanne Wilson until it was Joanne Yeah, yeah, it was Joanne Wilson, then   Michael Hingson  08:48 no, no, she necessarily had a lot of choices. But   Bryan Bashin  08:51 well, that's a long story. She used everything in her power to oppose this. But it was it was at a higher level that was made. Yeah.   Michael Hingson  09:04 So you've been at the lighthouse 13 years. And tell me a little bit about what it was like when you started and why did you decide to go to the lighthouse?   Bryan Bashin  09:19 You know, one thing that I can say is that my predecessor, had been prudent with funds. And so this was an agency that had good amount of money in the bank, like $40 million. I came from society for the blind. When I got there. We had six weeks of revenue. And we grew that and made it more stable. But I was attracted to the lighthouse because it was a storied organization. It had been around for, you know, 100 years. It owned this amazing camp in Napa that I'll talk about. It had the bones of a really great Oregon As a nation, and I thought I could do something with it. And I came there and I first saw the headquarters building then across from the symphony. And I thought, there's not enough places here to teach. There's not enough public spaces down. I have things happen. It was just the lighthouse had outgrown its its place. And I thought, oh, here we go. Again, I done a capital campaign in Sacramento to get its new building. Now, I'm going to have to do this again in San Francisco. But we looked at that and we thought, it's got to be close to transit. It's got to be in San Francisco, got to have cool places for people to work to ennoble the workforce not to be a dark hole windowless, undistinguished former garage, which was the old, old building, we found a place in the end, after many different things, we found a place right on top on top of the civic center BART station. And through a partnership and some other things we were able, I was able to convince the board to take this leap. And they did. And five years ago, six years ago, now, we occupied our new headquarters, which really has made us a place where people want to come and work and convene and hold events. It really now has the feel of a center.   Michael Hingson  11:32 Chris, the other thing that happened for the for the lighthouse was you got a pretty significant capital infusion along the way.   Bryan Bashin  11:40 Yeah, a little bit. I would do want people to know that this idea for a new building, the search for the Board's agreeing to do it and agreeing to buy it happened all before the big request, right? So we did, we made all that happen. In December and January, January 2014. Five months later, out of the blue, we got the first letter, understanding that we were going to be receiving receiving a request, that turned out to be the largest request in the history of American blindness to an individual $130 million. It turned out. And that allowed so much of what happened after to be possible.   Michael Hingson  12:31 Right. And that was what I was thinking it wasn't so much the building, but then you could really put into practice the vision that you were creating. That's right. That's right. So how, how has the lighthouse changed in over, let's say the last eight years since 2014?   Bryan Bashin  12:52 Yeah, I think I think I could say, ambition and reach and kind of audaciousness some things are pretty well known. We launched the Holman prize for blind ambition, it's a world prize, we've had, it's getting close to 1000 applicants over the seven years we've had the homerun prize. Those applicants come from every continent, maybe I haven't aggregated all of them. But it wouldn't surprise me to say 40 countries or so have applied. And if you go on YouTube and go to home and price.org. And look, you're going to see what blind people are saying they their dreams are from all over the world. And you cannot think about blindness the same way when you see people in rural Nepal or Africa or an urban Europe, talk about what's important to them. There is no real public way to aggregate all these things other than what we've done thus far. And so that's the kind of audaciousness that has come up in the last eight years. But it's been across everything.   Michael Hingson  14:07 What is the homerun prize? Exactly.   Bryan Bashin  14:10 Prom homerun prize is an annual prize awarded to three people each year by independent jury of blind people that the lighthouse convenes none of those juries are Lighthouse employees. The purpose of the prize is to show great growth and ambition in anything. It's not necessarily a project to do good in the world for blind people or though it can be it could be personal growth, like rowing a boat across the Bosphorus or climbing a mountain or organizing something that was never organized before that kind of thing. We award 320 $5,000 awards, and the price has been amazingly popular with hundreds of 1000s of views about blind people on our website and on YouTube. I'm happy to say that our partner Waymo, is now sponsoring one of the prizes at $25,000.   Michael Hingson  15:11 That is pretty exciting. Yeah. And I've I've watched it through the years and it's it is absolutely amazing and wonderful to see the the different attitudes and philosophies and as you said, dreams that blind people have, because most of the time, we're not encouraged.   Bryan Bashin  15:31 Yeah, most of the time people settle. This is, this is really, beyond mere skills that any blind organization teaches. And I don't mean to derogate them, the skills are essential. We can't do anything without skills. But they're not enough. Somehow my you got the confidence to be a captain of your own ship, metaphorically speaking. That's what got you out of the World Trade Center. That's what got you into business in science and everything else. We want to we this is the this is the mission that any Blind Agency really needs to focus on. Beyond skills. How do you teach confidence? How do you teach what Jacobus tenBroek said that we have a right to live in the world to be at that table, that we are not an embarr and a barren sea in the human condition. We're part of the human condition. And so getting that deep knowledge, something that the late James avec said, not just knowing it in your head, but in your heart, that It's respectable to be blind. And all of that that's, that's the best agencies get at that as well.   Michael Hingson  16:49 We as as a class, need to be more in the conversation and it isn't going to happen unless we demand it. You know, it's it's interesting. We celebrated Global Accessibility Awareness Day last, what Thursday, and later in the year, we'll be celebrating some other events regarding disabilities. What amazes me is even with the visibility that's happened so far, it never seems to hit any of the mainstream television news. Casts or talk shows, the I don't see anyone celebrating Disability Employment Awareness Month, or anything relating to disability awareness, like we see African American history or LGBTQ pride, awareness and so on. Why is it that we're just not still included? Even though even though according to the CDC, up to 25%, of all Americans have some sort of a disability. And we'll of course leave out like dependents, which takes in everyone else, but nevertheless.   Bryan Bashin  18:06 Well, you know, we live in a different as a longtime journalist, we live in a different journalistic culture now. And so what triumphs is narrative, not policy. What triumphs is something that gets is clickbait. Something that gets you emotionally. And I won't say that there, there haven't been good stories. The lighthouses then, Board Chair Chris Downey, who you know, is, as one of only a handful of practicing blind architects got 15 minutes on 60 minutes, one of their most popular episodes been rebroadcast four or five times now. That is a powerful narrative. So we need more of them. I really do think that in any state, any blind organization has stories, just like Chris is just as powerful. You know, our job is to actually be out there relationally with journalists so that they can understand what the stories are. But it's not going to be from a press release, or some some kind of awareness month. It's going to have to be the personal connections that we have with journalists so that we can wind up pitching stories.   Michael Hingson  19:27 Well, it's the usual thing. What it really means is we need to tell the story.   Bryan Bashin  19:35 That's right. As soon as it becomes a story about them. We lose, huh? Yeah.   Michael Hingson  19:41 Yeah, we need we need to be out there and tell the story. And you're right. We need to tell it in a way that will click with people and interest people. But I think that that certainly is something that can be done and we We also collectively need to understand that we need to tell the story and not be shy about it.   Bryan Bashin  20:08 That's right. Yeah, that's right.   Michael Hingson  20:11 And I think all too often, we tend to be shy and we don't want to, to be out there talking about I remember early on after September 11, we got pretty visible in the news. And it was because really of me contacting Guide Dogs for the Blind, just to say, we got out because people from Guide Dogs had seen us in the world transip Trade Center, they've visited us. And I joined guide dogs in about a year afterward. And there was a lot of visibility interviews in the media. By that time, we had been on Larry King Live three times. And on one of the guide dog lists, somebody said, Well, he's just a meteor media whore. And a number of people fortunately reacted, I did not, but a number of people said, What are you talking about? He's out there telling the story. And that is, in reality, the case is that somebody needs to and we all should be out there telling the story saying we're better than people think.   Bryan Bashin  21:12 That's right. That is really true. You know, there's an inherent tension between this knee that you just said about, we need to tell the story because otherwise Hollywood is going to tell the story about us. And the need, you know what the most radical thing is, it's the average blind person doing their average job, unremarkably, and without fanfare and attention, that is the revolution. And so, you know, why should Why should every blind person feel obligated to write a book or do a story. And yet, we have a responsibility as a you have taken to say, This is my life experience, people will learn from it. And so I'll do the hard work to get it out there.   Michael Hingson  21:59 But the very fact that other people are just going to work, and trying to go to work, doing the job, and trying to even get better at doing the job is as much if not more of the story as anything else.   Bryan Bashin  22:14 That's the real revolution. And that's the world we want to help bring about.   Michael Hingson  22:20 So I am curious about something. I believe it's been attributed to you. Scary already. But but I've I've adopted it. People say that we're blind or visually impaired, and I object to the concept of visually impaired because I've always thought I looked the same. I don't like vision impaired because I think I got lots of vision, although as I love to say, but I don't see so good. But I can accept vision impaired. What do you think about that, that concept of the, the terminology like that? And where do words matter in what we do?   Bryan Bashin  23:00 words do matter. And every every generation needs to own and invent words that are relevant to them. And so although I work in a building that says Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, I've come to see that word visually impaired is actually ablest. It means that we are being defined by what we cannot do, we have impairment of vision, we are not a normal part of society. You know, I think the more neutral and non ablest way to construct it is just to talk about people who are blind, or have low vision. Yeah, so that's, that's a positive way. It's neutral way. All these other things over the years, skirting around the word blind, as if that was something we shouldn't be proud of, are talking about the proud people with low vision, instead of looking at them as just simply a characteristic they have, they have low vision. We look at them as impairment or other other ways in which they're, quote, not normal. So that's why words matter. And we in our publications at Lighthouse tried to use a modern language to talk about blindness.   Michael Hingson  24:19 And I do like the concept of low vision. If you talk to a person who is deaf, and you say hearing impaired, you're apt to be shot because that is absolutely unacceptable, deaf or hard of hearing, which is the same concept.   Bryan Bashin  24:34 Yeah. And of course, you always want to talk to the people ourselves, about how we want to be caught. Yeah.   Michael Hingson  24:43 Unfortunately, I think there's still all too many of us that have not really thought it through. But I think as people learn and recognize that we do have the same right to live in the world and are demanding it more, more and more people will wreck denies the value of something like blind or a person who happens to be low vision.   Bryan Bashin  25:05 There are agencies around the country who have steadily taken the word blind out of their name. I think it's a profound mistake, as if who we are needs to be euphemized or just lately swept under the rug. I am a proud blind person because I've been around other blind people who haven't want to euphemized who we are. But yet we have agencies around the country with hundreds of millions of dollars who think that they don't want the word blind in their name. I think the first step in proper rehabilitation is to say who you are.   Michael Hingson  25:46 And do it with pride. Yep. So well, and just to carry that on a little bit more, Dr. Ken Jernigan passed down the late Dr. Ken Jernigan, past president of the National Federation of the Blind, I think came up with the best definition of blindness of all, which is basically if you are eyesight is decreased to the point where you have to use alternatives to full eyesight to accomplish things, then you should consider yourself blind and there's nothing wrong with that.   Bryan Bashin  26:17 Yeah, we're all in this together. Just like, I can't speak for that community. But it's been 150 years since African Americans blacks would talk about various grades and gradations of, of their, their heritage. Just part of the movement now as it should be,   Michael Hingson  26:40 as it should be. And it's unfortunate that it takes some of the kinds of things that it has done to raise awareness for black lives, if you will. But hopefully we're making some progress, although the politicians tend to be the biggest obstructionist to a lot of that big surprise   Bryan Bashin  27:01 there, Mike.   Michael Hingson  27:05 Yeah, it is amazing. As I love to tell people I I try not to be political on this podcast. So I'm an equal opportunity abuser, you know, I'm, I'm with Mark Twain. Congress is that grand old benevolent asylum for the helpless and that's all there is to it. So we can we can abuse them all. It's it's a whole lot more fun. Well, so you have really made some evolutionary changes in the lighthouse. You mentioned enchanted Hills, which I first learned about when I was here in Southern California as a teenager, did not go to Enchanted hills. But I went to what that time, what was the foundation for the junior blinds camp camp Bloomfield, and but I've heard and kept up with enchanted Hills throughout the years and the camp had some challenges a few years ago with the fires and so on. That that took place up in Northern California, and you've been really working to address a lot of that. Tell us a little if you would about enchanted hills. Yeah. Where it was, where it came from, and and where it's going? Well,   Bryan Bashin  28:17 a blind woman rose Resnick founded it in 1950, because she wanted blind people, blind youth and adults to be active participants in nature. At the time, most blind folks went to schools for the blind, urban and restrictive. And Rose had a great experience growing up back east, with camps for the blind, it was a liberation for her. There were no camps when in outwest, for the blind, he founded the first one that we've had at Lighthouse for 72 years now. Why is it important? That mentorship to see cool blind people who are just a few years ahead of you who are owning their lives, you can't learn this in a classroom. You've got to hang out with people, it takes time. It's like that, that same mentorship, you'll see in a convention, a blank convention. The power of that is you got to week, well, you've got a summer at camp, and you've got a summer with people where you can actually have time to finish your conversations and to get lost and try to grow in different ways and fail and try again. And this is a huge and powerful part. What any camp for the blind is there are only a handful left in the United States. So in 2017, those Napa fires we watched as the fires got closer and closer to camp we evacuated and then watch for week as the fires crept closer, we didn't know if camp would survive. And when we finally were able to get back in camp, we found that half of the buildings had burned the old camp deep in the Redwood Forest. We have 311 acres there. It's an enormous P and valuable and beautiful piece of property. And soon after, first we were relieved that nobody was hurt. But after our team realized like this was the opportunity that had waited for three generations, how could we reimagine camp? What are the things now in 2022 that bind people wish they had that we didn't have before. So yes, of course, we have the same all all American camp.   Bryan Bashin  30:44 But we're rebuilding camp to be environmentally friendly, universally accessible, every building at camp every every building at El is will be wheelchair accessible. Every watt of power and use will not be through trucked in propane or hydro or fossil fuels, but be solar generated with our solar canopy over our park parking lot. Every building will be heated and insulated. So is changing from summer camp to a year round place where up to 220 people can stay and learn and form community, both informal things like classes, retreats, and all of that. But informally now, when we reopen, you'll be able to grow, go up to camp with a group of your friends and 20 people, family reunion, whatever you can cook for yourself, or you can take advantage of our full time kitchen staff and all of that. Imagine a blind Asilomar a conference center that is accessible, networked with everything from braille embossers, to the latest tech stuff. That's what camp is and every last part of it, please touch, please use our woodworking stuff, learn how to do ceramics, get to learn how to own and care for a horse. Get in that boat and Sue ads and, and row, go swim, go do arts, go do music and our wonderful new Redwood Grove theater, all of that stuff. So this was the inspiration when when the camp burned five years ago, we were able to get all these buildings on the master plan with a county, we found a contractor we're halfway through the rebuilding all of lower camp now you can see those buildings, the foundations are poured, the roofs are up we're putting in Windows this week. And when we were done, we'll have this amazing, beautiful village in the Redwoods where people can stroll and accessible paths, no guide ropes anymore, by the way, accessible paths. And as you go around camp, you'll be able to be just within hailing distance of other people, people you may not know but should know. So half of the program at camp and why it produces 40 50,000 hours each summer of people contacting people half that program is just that, not what we're talking at you about but people that you meet and form lifelong bonds.   Michael Hingson  33:31 And that's a whole different idea for a camp in general, but it is really creating community and people will leave with I would think lots of memories they never thought they would get.   Bryan Bashin  33:46 You know one of the key features that has been the hallmark of the last 13 years is that we usually have 20 counselors and another half dozen counselors in training. Three quarters or up to 90% of those counselors are now blind, or have low vision. No camp hardly in the country does that there are a lot of camps in which everybody in power. Every director and every assistant director and every counselor, they're all sighted. They're all very well meaning and giving. But where's the mentorship there? Where's the role modeling? So in Jannah Hills is different. The overwhelming majority of our counselors and counselors and training are blind. Our staff and area leaders are overwhelmingly blind as well. Because this is part of the purpose of camp to be able to meet people who are in charge of their own lives and a part of a community   Michael Hingson  34:45 and that's as good as it can possibly get. How does the the camp then it's it's a separate entity but it's part of the lighthouse. How did the the two connect what kind of value does Is the lighthouse itself bringing to the camp and vice versa?   Bryan Bashin  35:03 Yeah, we're all one organization. But increasingly, because of the new construction, we use camp as a retreat for people who want to go deep into their blindness. So for people who are newly blind, or for people who have been blind a while, and now have decided it's time to do something about it, we have an initial immersion called Changing vision changing lives, people go to camp. And there, they take their first steps, sometimes, first time they ever put a white cane in their hands, or their first introduction to what a computer could do. All these kinds of things. It's a deep dive and initial dive, immersion to whet people's appetites for the real hard work that comes after camp where they're going to put in time to learn skills of blindness. But before you start doing skills, you have to have the why, why are we doing that, and you have to have met a dozen or two dozen blind people who are just using those skills. So you're not learning that as an abstraction. Camp is wonderful that way. So the teachers who teach edtech and oh nm, and braille, and, you know, independent living and home repair, and all, these are the same people, whether they're at our headquarters in San Francisco, or they're in a special retreat in Napa. That's what we're going to be doing more and more of around the around the year. Same thing is true with our new program for little for blind infants and toddlers, lighthouse, little learners is an early intervention program. From across northern California, we have built camp in part to be a wonderful place for families of blind infants and toddlers to come together. Almost every family that has a newborn who's blind is utterly unprepared, and is so hungry for information. And of course, as you know, if you get it right, your child grows up and does anything that she or he wants. But those are key years. And so our family cabins now are built so that infants and toddlers, and then later on young kids will have time with their families before it's time for them to go off to camp individually, when they get into the middle years at a teens.   Michael Hingson  37:33 You mentioned the blindness conventions like the National Federation of the Blind convention, and it brought to mind something that I think about every time I go to a convention or know that a convention is coming up, especially with the NFB because of the the way that the organization has handled conventions, there is nothing like watching a five year old who suddenly has a cane put in their hand. And they're given a little bit of cane travel lessons over a very short period of time at the convention. And then they're dragging their parents all around the convention hotel, that the parents usually can't keep up and the kids are just going a mile a second.   Bryan Bashin  38:13 Yeah, that is, that's what we all want. We want that aha moment, like that. And parents are. So when they're new in the game, it's not just talking about the best ophthalmologist, although that's important and the best stimulation and the best this and that. They're also looking at those counselors and counselors in training and seeing their kids in 15 years. And they're just seeing competent blind people. Give them the sense about what's possible and why. And that that is another unspoken role of conventions, or in retreats like camp where you have the time to put into what is like the big change in life. Your blindness is not just something you do superficially, you got to dive in camp helps with that.   Michael Hingson  39:07 It's a characteristic blindness is simply a characteristic. It is something that we all have as part of our beings. And I think it's an enhancement because it allows us should we take advantage of it to have a significantly different perspective on part of life than most people have? And it gives us a broader and more open perspective, which is as good as it gets.   Bryan Bashin  39:38 Absolutely. You know, we're in an age which is supposedly celebrating diversity and all of that, well the diversity that we bring to the to the human experience is profound. And you know, we we will celebrate our intersectionalities with all the other human diversities. Are we are, we are good to live in an age, which doesn't sort of characterize and other, but works or at least seeks efficiently to include.   Michael Hingson  40:13 Sometimes it's a little more superficial than we probably would like. And there are things happening in our modern technological era that are a challenge. For example, one of the examples that I often give is nowadays, there are so many television commercials that are totally graphic pictorial, they may have music, but absolutely no verbiage to the commercial. So a number of us are left out of understanding them. And of course, graphics are so easy to produce. But what the people who produce those commercials, it seems to me don't realize is that by not having verbiage, and having meaningful and full content, verbally presented in the commercials, they're not just leaving out us, but they're leaving out anyone who gets up from their couch or chair, when the commercial comes on to go get a drink. They'll never know what the commercials were about, they're missing a true dimension of access to all it seems to me.   Bryan Bashin  41:19 Well, you put your finger on a key aspect of our culture, which is we live in an age of screens, great. Screens are ubiquitous and cheap. And so we're, we're in a in an age now where it's sort of post linguistic almost, that the ability to manipulate and to show successions of images, capture, you owe 90 some percent of people most of the time, but it does a great disservice to the abilities of human beings of all sorts to appreciate. And it kind of cheapens the subtlety and discourse, I think, you know, we this this ability, words are able to convey a universe of experiences in just a few syllables. Pictures, not so much, and not so standard.   Michael Hingson  42:19 Someone said, I don't recall who but I read it somewhere. Maybe a picture is worth 1000 words. But it takes up a whole lot more memory. I love that. It's an it's so true. Yeah. And we, we really need to recognize collectively the value of challenging and using all of our senses, it's so important to do that, and no scent should be left out. Now, we haven't figured out a way yet to transmit, smell and taste through the television system. And that may be a long ways away. But we certainly have other senses that we should be using. And that isn't, and shouldn't just be screens. But hopefully we can get that discourse to occur and get, get people to change, maybe a little bit about what they're thinking and see the value in that change again.   Bryan Bashin  43:21 Well, you've been a pioneer in this. And as things emerge, I know Mike Kingston is going to be part of it.   Michael Hingson  43:29 Well, it's been fun to to be involved with some of the technologies. You know, for me, it started with Ray Kurzweil. And then last decade was IRA, which has certainly been a product that has made a significant difference for a lot of people but other butter products along the way being involved in some of the refreshable braille displays and, and a lot of people don't realize how easy it is in some senses to produce Braille today because refreshable braille displays means I can take any file, any like ASCII file or a Word file, and put it in a medium that I can import into a Braille display and suddenly read that document. That's, that's pretty new.   Bryan Bashin  44:15 I think we are just now on the cusp of, of having critical mass in a refreshable Braille display that's got enough pixels to be useful as an image producer, and then ways to quickly and sort of economically produce those images. Yeah, Lighthouse has a unit MATLAB they have a group called touching the news. And here every week or two, there's a news graphic, the map of Ukraine during the war, the what is that helicopter on perseverance look like? Those kinds of things, the ephemera and the news of our society, the ability to get those quickly out. If you have a Braille display or a Braille embosser is going to really we're almost at the time when culture will pivot, and 61,000 Blind K through 12 errs in American schools will be able to get new and fresh material all the time, and compare it or look at the output of an oscilloscope in real time, and change and vary and act in a lab accordingly. So the efforts now to make real time expressible refreshable. screen displays are amazing and so important.   Michael Hingson  45:39 The other thing that I would hope as we get into more of a virtual real world virtual reality world, is that we would do more with sound binaural sound which is easy to produce, which truly with a set of headphones allows you to hear sound coming from any direction. And actually can help immerse all gamers in games rather than it just being from the screen. But if they do it right, it certainly would make a lot of games more accessible to us than are available today.   Bryan Bashin  46:12 If you've heard a good binaural recording of something, it can be terrifying. The lighthouse work with this group called The World According to sound to produce several dozen binaural shows about the rich experience that blind people have every day. And you can find those online. We worked with Chris and Sam, who just did splendid work for us about how we live how we how we go around what we notice the subtleties and richness in our lives. So there's there's importance for that. And then later, if you look ahead a few years, the metaverse and the idea of group connections, because what we're doing now Mike, on Zoom is not going to be just like a pandemic, Blip. This is the way people are going to interact. And we want this to be richer. I want to be in a room where I can hear who's on the left of the conference table and who's on the right. Right, I want to be able to face them in the three dimensional view on that screen. It's coming. It's coming quickly. And we need to be part of what MATA is doing as they may be the standard or other people may develop other standards. But this is around the corner.   Michael Hingson  47:33 And the technology is really here to do it. It's it is a matter of making it a priority and deciding to do it in such a way that will keep the costs down. And that isn't all that hard to do. Yeah. So for you, you are I think you have been appointed to the Ability One commission.   Bryan Bashin  47:58 That's right, President Biden appointed me last July. And it's been a wild ride ever since   Michael Hingson  48:04 tell us about the commission and what you're doing with it and so on.   Bryan Bashin  48:09 Well, this commission was set up during the FDR time in 1938. And it was designed originally to provide some way that blind people, and then later on, people with other significant disabilities could find work and an age where there was almost no work. The employment rate of blind people in 1938 was I don't know two or 3%, or something like that. So it was a groundbreaking bit of legislation in the 30s. But over the years, it became a place where blind people worked in non integrated settings. And some people call them sheltered workshops. There were many blind people who are earning less than minimum wage because of a loophole in the law there and all of that. This has been a fight for the last decades to eliminate the sub minimum wage, and also now to seek blind people not working in silos without the benefit of the wider world only working in a place with people with disabilities. But to integrate and find opportunities for that same federal contracting federal contracts federal government buys, what six or $700 billion worth of stuff every year. This ability one program uses about 4 billion of the 600 billion to provide employment, people will make things the lighthouse itself. We have a social enterprise we make environmentally sound cleaning compounds and disinfecting compounds using sort of state of the art Technology, we got an EPA Safer Choice Award for how benign our stuff is, instead of the other harsh ammonia and caustic chemicals. Anyway. So on this commission, the job is how much wiggle room do we have to provide integrated employment now, you know, if you're working in making airplane parts, only with blind people in a separate building, and meanwhile, Boeing has people doing the exact same job. along with everything else, and the glitz and glamour of working for international big company. Why shouldn't blind people be part of that, instead of the sort of set aside, it was a great idea in the 1930s and 40s, and 50s. Now it's time to change. So the first step of the change is our strategic plan. And we've rolled out the draft strategic plan, we have had eight or maybe more now community meetings about it. The public engagement with this change is 500%, more than we had in the past with the AbilityOne. Commission. We we have launched this strategic plan, I sure it'll be codified in upcoming weeks, when it is over five years, we're going to both look at ways that we can get competitive integrated employment experiences as much as we can. And that may require that we open up the Javits, Wagner eau de Act, the legislation in order to maybe change some possibilities to increase competitive integrated employment. Because in the 30s, it just said employment, that's our charge. The idea of competitive integrated employment for blind people, or people with significant that was science fiction, and FDR, Stein. Now it's something you and I have both lived. And why shouldn't the 45,000 people in the program right now have that opportunity? So that's my work in the AbilityOne. Commission, to bring the fruits of federal contracting to the hundreds of federal contractors, and let them benefit from a workforce that includes diversity of all kinds, including people who are blind,   Michael Hingson  52:28 is the tide turning so that we can see the day that the Javits Wagner, eau de Act, Section 14, see will actually go by the wayside, and we'll be able to truly address the issue of competitive employment.   Bryan Bashin  52:44 Yes, we have taken many steps along that line, the main step is that organizations that hold such certificates may not be allowed, in the very short term it very shortly to compete for new contracts. So the cost of paying subminimum h is going to be very expensive for people who wish to get more contracts. This is in process now. We are not going to, you know, pull the emergency cord and throw people out of work, who are now working under these programs, but new contracts, and new opportunities are going to be you know, bias towards competitive integrated employment. And, you know, on the blind side, there are no organizations in the blindness side of Ability One paying sub minimum wages Now, none. That's that's already ended on the significant disability sides. I think the number is around 3000. People still are working on legacy contracts like that. We expect that if I talk to you in a couple of years, Mike, that will be gone.   Michael Hingson  54:02 Well, and historically, I think when the act was originally established, it was done with good intentions. And maybe it wasn't as five sided as it could be. But as I understood the original Act, the non competitive employment centers were supposed to be training centers to get people prepared to and then out into the more competitive world of employment. But it morphed and evolved over the years to something different than that.   Bryan Bashin  54:33 It is and if legally, if you look, there's nothing in the ACT about training. It's just about employment. That's that was the mindset in 1938. Yeah. Now, of course, that's what we want. That's what we want to celebrate. We want to give the nonprofit agencies credit for training people and bringing them out into competitive employment. We think if we open up the act, we want to strike threat. So those agencies who are successful at getting people trained up and out, should be rewarded for that.   Michael Hingson  55:08 That makes perfect sense. What is the pandemic done to the whole rehabilitation system? And what do you see happening as we come out of it?   Bryan Bashin  55:19 This is not a happy topic.   Michael Hingson  55:22 Yeah, it is a challenge.   Bryan Bashin  55:25 The the number of people who are just enrolled in VR across the country has been slashed a third to a half those those people part of that is because VR with its three and a half billion dollars worth of funding, doesn't find, you know, the homemaker outcome, which is basically blind, independent living training, that's now no longer legal. So those people who went to VR thinking they could learn how to do certain things. But without a vocational goal, that is not not any, any more part of the public rehab system. So some people went away for that. But I think the larger question and it's kind of profound is that we've been through two years of a pandemic, after, after a century of saying to blind people get out there, learn to travel, be at everybody's table, take risks. And now we've had two years and more of stay in your place. It's a dangerous world. And our you know, my observation is all of our skills are rusty, are on him skills are rusty, our social skills are rusty. And everybody in the world will say, Oh, you're blind is easy to stay at home, look from look for work at home and all of this, but we lose if we're not in the room. And so the bottom line is that the pandemic has caused, I think a lot of us to take a giant step back in our social integration and just our horizons. Through the pandemic, I watched as my sighted friends could just get in the car and go where they wanted safely. Every time you and I want to go somewhere, Mike, we have to get into a conveyance with a person of unknown infectivity status. This is the nature code, we can't just Uber ourselves to a park without the sense like, okay, we're taking a controlled risk. This is why a future of autonomous vehicles is so great, no guide dog denials, no coughing driver, who may or may not be wearing a mask these days, technology can be our friend, if the technologists start considering our needs.   Michael Hingson  57:53 Well, and autonomous vehicles are, are definitely in our future and the whole concept of opposing them. Anyone who does we're, we're seeing someone who just doesn't have a lot of vision, because the reality is that they're, as you would say, right around the corner. I think some of the things that have happened with Tesla vehicles is unfortunate, especially when, in reality, they were probably not using the technology correctly. And that causes many accidents is anything. I have a friend who owns a Tesla, I actually drove it down the I 15 toward San Bernardino a few years ago. But I called him one day and he told me he had an accident with his Tesla. Now he had driven some race cars in the past and he said that there was a situation where a car was coming at him. He had the Tesla in copilot mode and was monitoring. But when this vehicle was coming at him as a racecar driver, he said my inclination is to speed up and get away from it. The car wanted to slow down and he said I overrode the copilot and we had an accident. I should have let the car do   Bryan Bashin  59:14 it. Your way there. I can't let that pass. Mike. You were in the driver's seat of a Tesla on Interstate 15.   Michael Hingson  59:24 Absolutely, why not? No, he was he was there of course. And but I had my hands on the wheel and we had it in copilot mode and I could feel it moving. It was a pretty straight run. But we did it for about 15 minutes. And then I said no, I don't think that the Highway Patrol would be happy with us if we kept that going.   Bryan Bashin  59:44 I don't think the statute of limitations quite expired on that one bike so   Michael Hingson  59:50 well, they gotta prove it now. I don't know it's been more than two years and nothing and nothing happened. I will wasn't in the car with the accident, we had a completely uneventful time, I just want to point out   Bryan Bashin  1:00:06 now, but these, these technologies, we must be pressing the companies for Level Five accessibility. That means from the time you walk down your friend steps to the car waiting there for the time you get to your destinations, front steps, you're in control the whole time. Yeah, it would be heartbreaking to have legislation that allows less than that. So that yeah, you have to like drive until you're on the freeway, and then you can do autonomous driving, that would lock us all out. That would mean this whole technology is useless for us.   Michael Hingson  1:00:44 And that would be useless legislation, it wouldn't solve the big problem that the autonomous vehicle can bring us. I'm a firm believer, and we got to get the concept of driving out of the hands of drivers. Because, as far as I'm concerned, using a Tesla or not the way most people drive on the road, I would certainly be able to do as well as they do.   Bryan Bashin  1:01:07 Absolutely. I wrote in, I wrote an autonomous vehicle in San Francisco last summer. And I felt it in control, confident, cautious, but it had a different sort of feel in that car and felt like I noticed like in San Francisco, if you want to make a left turn, a sighted driver would sort of drive into the intersection, start making the turn. And then once you're made the 90 degree turn, then accelerate the autonomous driver drives into the intersection and starts accelerating in the intersection intersection, knowing full well that it knows and has decided where it wants to go. So if it was more confidently powering into the term than a human one would do. I found that interesting.   Michael Hingson  1:02:05 It is, and I just am firmly convinced that we will make the road so much more safer if we take not the decision making but the whole concept of driving away from so many people who haven't learned to do it. Well, it does mean that we need to program the technology appropriately. And well. We're still on the cusp, but it's coming and it's going to be here sooner than we probably think.   Bryan Bashin  1:02:36 Yeah, well, the main thing is that all there may be 50 Different groups five, zero, looking at autonomous driving, it's turning out to be a much harder technical problem than people were saying just a few years back. But we need to be in those early design phases. You know, my car right now has a radio that I can't use. Yeah, because it needs a touchscreen. I mean, if they can't get that, right, what about the ability to change directions, at a stop on a whim, respond to a safety emergency, we need to let the folks know, all the ways that we need to be involved and not like was one set of the Mercury astronauts, we're not just spamming again.   Michael Hingson  1:03:25 Right? Well, and the the Tesla, for example, is so disappointing, because everything is really touchscreen driven. So I could deal with the wheel and deal with the car once someone else completely shut it up. And there is some ability to do voice activation, if you do the right things with the touchscreen first. And the bottom line is I couldn't work the radio, I couldn't do anything that a passenger should normally be able to do. Because it's all touchscreen driven. And it really takes away, it seems to me from the driving experience, even because I have to focus on the touchscreen. I can't be watching the road as well as a sighted driver.   Bryan Bashin  1:04:10 Yeah, this is not inherent to blindness. It's just smart design that's inclusive. And those are fun projects. And that's when you get blind people, engineers, by engineers, sighted engineers together on a problem that is a beautiful Association and it produces really great results.   Michael Hingson  1:04:31 I'm remember I remember some of the early discussions that we had when we were working on the pedestrian enhancement Safety Act and we worked with the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers and eventually got a law passed that said that quiet cars and so on needed to make a noise although we're still really waiting for a standard so that there is a sound that hybrid cars and totally quiet cars produce and it's taking way To long, unfortunately, but still working together, we were able to educate and get some people to really imagine a lot more than they thought that they would. And we're making progress, but it sometimes it just seems like it's very slow. Well, let me ask you one last thing, what are you going to do when you leave the lighthouse, you announced that you're, you're wanting to move on. And I know that there is now a search to find a, a person who will step into your shoes, which I think is going to be an impossibility. But what are you going to do?   Bryan Bashin  1:05:37 Well, I love I love the search, I love that lighthouse is going to have a long, open, transparent process to find that right person. So that will be wonderful to cheer them on when they show up. But for me, I am a guy who likes learning. And I've had 13 years of heavy responsibility running a large agency, I want to be in places where I have more of a beginner mind. That could be journalism, that could be advocacy, it will be advocacy. That will be in design, like we were just talking about autonomous vehicles or other interesting projects. I would like to be in those places, whether it be corporate boards, or design Charettes, or architecture, any of these things were blind people haven't been before, to sort of bring people together to make really exquisite designs, and beautiful human centered outcomes. So whether it's working with the Ability One Commission, or working on contract with companies that have a problem to design, whether it's it's talking truth to power, and making sure that our extended community has is protected and safe and supported in Congress in the state house. You'll find me in all those places.   Michael Hingson  1:07:04 Well, I hope that as you move on and do things that you will come back and talk with us and keep us posted and give us a chance to learn from you and and maybe give you things that you can use as well. So I hope that this won't be the only time we hear from you on this podcast.   Bryan Bashin  1:07:22 It's always a pleasure, Mike, it's in conversation with you. I learned so much. And I feel we are part of that same community.   Michael Hingson  1:07:30 How can people learn about you, the lighthouse, and so on?   Bryan Bashin  1:07:35 Well, our websites always a good place to start WWW dot Lighthouse dash s f.org.   Michael Hingson  1:07:44 And everything is there, there are so many different programs that the lighthouse offers. And there's so much that all of us can learn from the various adventures and programs that the Lighthouse has. So I hope that you'll all go visit WWW dot Lighthouse dash s s.org and peruse the pages. And if you're able to do so maybe consider volunteering or being involved in some way. And I hope that you'll make that happen. If people want to reach out to me, we are always available. As I tell people every week you can reach me via email at Michael H I at accessabe.com or through the podcast page which is www dot Michael hingson M I C H A E L H I N G S O N.com/podcast. And once you finish listening to this, please give us a five star rating. We love those five star ratings and, and Brian, hopefully you'll listen and give us a five star rating when this comes up.   Bryan Bashin  1:08:46 Oh, I'm already pre sold on this one. You're also welcome to leave my email address. I'll go folks on on the website or here. It's simply b Bastion b ba Shi n at Lighthouse stash fsf.org.   Michael Hingson  1:09:03 So reach out to Brian and I'm sure that discussions will be interesting. And as I said we want to hear of your adventures as you go forward. Thank you, Michael. Thanks very much for being here. And to all of you. We'll see you next week on unstoppable mindset.   UM Intro/Outro  1:09:23 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Janet Russell is a psychic medium, spiritual advisor and television host for one of New York's top cable access programs titled Beyond the Unexplained. The show has been seen across the country for years. Janet has made guest appearances on many cable programs with interviews that range from her predictions for future events to communicating messages from people who have passed over. She has also co-hosted radio programs on the paranormal as well as television specials in Britain. She recently expanded the scope of Beyond the Unexplained by launching two new televised shows titled When Spirits Connect and The Spirits Within.Janet has worked with police investigators on such cases as the infamous Katie Beers kidnapping, a case where a nine year old girl was miraculously found alive seventeen days later. Janet had been the only psychic to state that Katie was chained by the neck, describing the area where Katie was being held. Janet has also worked with the New York Police Department on several murder cases during her career.Janet had actually predicted the TWA Flight 800 tragedy and, in early September of 2001, warned a gentleman employed at the World Trade Center to be careful, stating she felt ‘a great sense of danger at the Trade Center'. Sadly, this gentleman perished on September 11, 2001, in the World Trade Center disaster.Janet has been doing psychic readings for the past forty years. After a near death experience in 1993, she found that she had a renewed gift for communicating with people who have passed over.Janet is known worldwide for her insight, credibility and on target predictions. She has done many fundraisers as the main attraction and is known for her help with fundraisers in the local area. Her experiences have been written about and documented in many books and magazines including those of Brad Steiger. She has appeared on A&E's Paranormal State, Haunted New York with Emily Frances, which was nominated for an Emmy, as well as Psychic to the Stars on PIX Channel 11.Janet has an extensive mailing list and does her own advertising, sending out monthly announcements on her upcoming appearances at local venues. As a member of the Chamber of Commerce, her community involvement and public appearances always benefits the venue she is working with. Janet believes that if you have a gift, then you need to help others.

The answer to this question is simple: it was the center of an important trade It was the junction of two trade routes, one east €“west and one north south The latter, which was the more important, was the one that crossed the Isthmus of Tehuantepec It was at this point that the trade from Oaxaca to the region of the Gulf of Mexico was transferred from the Pacific to the Atlantic slope This route had two branches, one of which went to the Gulf of Mexico and the other to the Valley of Mexico The latter was the most important It went through the state of Oaxaca and passed near the site of the city of Oaxaca, the present capital of the state From here it went on to the valley of Mexico, where it made contact with the northern route to the center of Mexico The trade route from Oaxaca to the Gulf of Mexico passed by the site of El Mirador Along this route in pre-Hispanic times passed an important merchandise, cacao It was this trade that led to the founding of the city of El Mirador The cacao tree is a relative of the tropical American palm tree, the coconut palm The fruit of this tree is a pod, rounded at both ends and about the size of a large plum Inside the pod are several yellowish seeds, each about the size of a chicken egg, with a thin shell and a sweet, fatty, edible pulp The seeds are collected and transported to the place where they are to be sold They are then roasted in an earthen oven When they are sufficiently roasted, they are removed and the shell is removed The kernel is then ground into powder, which is used in the preparation of a beverage and of a confectionery https://www.lakechamplainchocolates.com/where-do-cocoa-beans-grow/ As was mentioned , the cacao tree was introduced into the New World by the Spaniards, who had learned about it on the Islands of the Azores and the Canaries, whence it had been brought by the Portuguese They took it to the West Indies, where it was cultivated in the 16th century From there it was brought to the mainland of America https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Cacao --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/david-nishimoto/message

After serving as one of the biggest shopping centers in metro Detroit for decades, the Gibraltar Trade Center in Mt. Clemens closed for good in 2017. Fast forward five years and two local companies are teaming up to take over part of the space -- The Pleasantrees cannabis company and Blake's Hard Cider. The two will come together to make their own products, marijuana and ciders. But they will also team up for CBD + cannabis beverages, a market that's basically untouched in Michigan. WWJ's Zach Clark has more.

What does a small cluster of less than 100 villages in Tamil Nadu have in common with agrarian flatlands of Burma? And what are both of these doing in a conversation taking place in a modern urban home in the IT corridor of Bangalore? This week, in the the third episode of teh series, The Great Migration, we look at the story of the Chettiar community, who at the dawn of the 20th century owned a financial empire that straddled both South and South East Asia. Their migration and subsequent legacy in Burma is contested, and brings to the fore tough questions about the legacy of migratiory communities. Tune in, and discover the life lessons in their story, and an emotional passionate lesson from a modern urban home in Bangalore. Special thanks to Jaisimha Chandra, who not only opened his home to me, but took time out to share the rich collection of artefacts he has so lovingly preserved. Till then Check out the other episodes of "India's Linguistic Heritage" The Hidden Story of Sanskrit, and the North-South Divide : https://ivm.today/3CpKQuO Reclaiming India's Linguistic Heritage: 300 Ramayanas?: https://ivm.today/3kgataz Partitions Unknown: Hindi, Urdu and the Umbilical Cord: https://ivm.today/3DhQCz2 The Hidden Injustice in India's Languages: https://ivm.today/3HA6YWo Breast Tax, Brahmins and the Bizzare origins of Modern Malayalam: https://ivm.today/3nQyuam The Improbable Impact Of Nature On 2000 Languages: https://ivm.today/3EvvmXz You can check previous episodes of 'Podcasts from Nowhere' on IVM Podcasts website https://ivm.today/3xuayw9 You can reach out to our host Utsav on Instagram: @whywetravel42 (https://www.instagram.com/whywetravel42) You can listen to this show and other awesome shows on the IVM Podcasts app on Android: https://ivm.today/android or iOS: https://ivm.today/ios, or any other podcast app.

L.A. County pushes mask wearing indoors, even among vaccinated; Israel revives mandate. 12 dead, 149 unaccounted for in high-rise condo collapse; Dispatch audio:”Almost resembles the Trade Center”.  800 responders from 60 agencies assisting search and rescue.  Florida State Attorney plans to call for grand jury probe of collapse.  Letter to residents 2 months before condo collapse were told “the concrete deterioration is accelerating”. Report: Contractor found cracking 3 hours before collapse. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy