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Welcome to episode 204. Today's episode, you're going to hear from Bethany Braun Silva, who interviewed me on Fertile Imagination's launch day on Halloween. Bethany is the author of Like a Mother, Banish Guilt, Blaze Your Trail, and Break the Rules to Create a Life You Love. It's amazing to be interviewed by a fellow mom, author, and New Yorker. We discussed how watching our moms go first really informed how we, and what we thought we were capable of as moms. I wanted to just share this. So this episode is brought to you by my book, fertile imagination, which actually hit number one, Amazon bestseller in two categories. motherhood and women in business. It's available right now and it makes for the perfect gift. Shop/gift/review - Fertile Imagination: https://amzn.to/3F6AgMu If you enjoy this episode then tell me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/ TRANSCRIPT So quick napkin math. Here's the statistics. Reviews on Amazon matter and when they show up matters even more. Right now, the books that Amazon will share with anyone online. Need to have at least 100 Amazon reviews. So two to three sentences that share your opinion about the actual book. So imagine this every month, 197  million users log on to Amazon each day, 6. 7 million users log on to Amazon. And if I had to just guess, I would say maybe 3 million moms log into Amazon every single day. What if today? 3 million moms would have seen Fertile Imagination, my book, as a recommended product. For that to happen, we need 100 written out Amazon reviews. So each day that I am not at that 100 number, that means that there's 3 million missed opportunities to suggest to a mom, a tired mom, a mom who doesn't believe in herself, a mom who needs some inspiration. to actually have seen fertile imagination in her list of recommended products to add to her shopping cart. I'm all about encouraging moms on how to think for themselves in terms of the changes that they want to see in their lives, in their homes, and in the world. Could you imagine if 3 million moms today saw the book fertile imagination, which maps out exactly how to go about making a maximum impact based on your unique heart's desire? That's what we're going for. And I need your help. So as you listen to this conversation, I would love your support in taking your cell phone, going to Amazon, selecting fertile imagination, and then scrolling down and just left clicking on write a review. That's if you actually shop the book, if you having it shop the book, then listen to this review right now. And it's available on Amazon. So it says, As someone who is and advocates for moms, it's sometimes difficult to spark moms to be inspired by themselves. In Fertile Imagination, Melissa not only reminds moms we're inspiring, but provides the tools, anecdotes, and encouragement to get us moving towards what's important. Changing the world by nurturing the inner genius we each possess. As I turned the pages, I was reminded of many dreams I placed aside and recommitted to move toward action. Bravo. That is the sort of message that I would love moms to be able to listen to, hear and absorb and activate in their lives. Enjoy the conversation with Bethany Braun Silva. Tell me about why you launched today. Like, what was it about you and Halloween and launching your book? Yeah, so Halloween is the day that, as a little girl, I don't know for anyone else that's like an 80s kid or whatever, but there was a Halloween that I was like Madonna, I was Funky Bruiser, I was Turbo Shortcake with the plastic like mask. And that was the day I got to be anything I wanted to be. You could be anything you want to be. And when I was writing the book, Fertile Imagination, I was thinking to myself, I was like, what? Like we're moms and we actually get to play that role in our own unique way. We can be. any kind of mom that we wish to be and today is a day that like it's almost like permission to be weird literally one of the chapter names of my book so as we see kids out there like dressing up in like these like very random like gnome or Fall guys or whatever sort of costumes. It's like, well, what about us? What about us moms? Right. We're like the ones that are making these days, these moments so special. And part of that is the vision that we have for the childhood. We want to provide for our kids. Like it's our vision for other people. And so the book is about, well, what's your vision. As what would you like to imagine more of in your life, in this world, in your community? And so for me, it's kind of like, okay, well, obviously it would have been obvious, right? Launch on Mother's Day. Like, it makes sense. But for me, I was like, nah, I want to do things differently. Like that's just not creative enough for me. It's like, no Halloween. Let's do it today. Let's help moms rediscover our imagination. Cause we're in that mind frame for our kids. Today. I mean, there's some crazy imaginative costumes I've seen out there. So. Yeah. For me, it made sense. I love that. I love that. That's really what I'm all about, too. Like, like rediscovering ourselves, pursuing our passions, being like unapologetic about it. That's also why we connected, I think, so much, too. Like, we're very aligned with, with those things. Like, we're moms, but like, we have our own stuff happening here.  Yeah, absolutely. And I think we go first. Like I feel when I'm sure through your conversations and like through my conversations, you're talking to moms and like we want so much for our kids. But the interesting part, it's like, well, how are they going to get what they want if we don't feel like we have what we want yet? Like, right. Are we skipping something like Yeah. Like we've got to like lay the path, like show them, okay, this is what it looks like to move forward and then fall down and then get back up. This is what it looks like to like try doing things in one way and then trying a whole different way. And I think That's part of the, the, the idea in terms of the book. I think it's really about showing my kids. Mommy did it. Mommy did it and mommy did it and you can do it and you could do even better. What I mean, because this is where, this is where I left off. So here you go. Yeah. I love that. And actually, yeah, I shared that yesterday on my Instagram when you commented, because like, I, I kind of like followed a dream and a passion, like. When I was pregnant, like I was like, it sort of all started to like align for me then and I was 26 years old and that's young, but it wasn't like young to go into this to like journalism, right? Like I was like a 26 year old pregnant intern. There was  like, I fought against a lot of that. But then now when I look at what I've done and like seeing myself through my kids eyes, it really is. So fulfilling in that way. Like my kids know that they can do anything at any time. Like it doesn't have to be on anyone's timeline because I did it late or push myself through like in a, in not in a nontraditional timeline. So I love that I'm showing I'm like that example for them too. Absolutely. And in the book, I actually interviewed, so it's kind of like a funny story, but I'll save that for the book. Basically, my former landlord happened to have been also a Senator and House of Representative for New Hampshire, Martha Hennessey, and she's so badass, I will say, which is why I featured her in the book. But is it too late for anything? Well, Martha proves us Totally like, no, there's nothing that you want on your heart that it's too late for, like she retired quote unquote, and decided to then run for office, like two different positions, one, then both. She's a grandmother of seven grandkids right now. And I think her as an example, and just kind of like looking outside of our family. So let's imagine that in our families as. Was the case for me. We don't have these examples. I don't know for you, Bethany. Did you have journalists in your family? I don't know. No journalists, but I did have a mother who pivoted at around 34 years old. And that's when she got pregnant with me to a brand new career. And she was an artist. And then she went into, into medicine and literally like kicked so much ass, like, On like, like, incredible. She just retired like, like, like two years ago, but like literally hadn't went the pivot with had nothing to do. And same thing with her. She had nobody in that in the medical field to rely on. She put herself through her got her second masters while I was like a baby and then got a doctorate and like, I watched it all. So I have to say that while I didn't have like connections, I had a really good shining example of like what it means. to like really go after a dream while like providing and caring  for a child. So that's, that was really my inspiration for sure. Yeah. And, and I'm sure like for you, it's, it's interesting because there were probably moments that your mom would not have thought you were looking, but you were.  I was looking, I was looking and actually for me, I didn't really put that together until I kind of was like, Oh my God, I'm doing the same thing. Like I, maybe I did it a little bit earlier or whatever, but I literally was doing the same thing. And, and then I, when I realized that I was like, wow, I saw that I was able to do it. I had permission. I gave like the audacity to believe in myself because I had this mother who worked her ass off. She was, she is and was the breadwinner in my family, because it was crazy, it was crazy. But no, it's really such a good, kind of like a very nice like tie in for me. And then now being, now raising boys, like what does that look like? Like wanting to be that example for them, but also to understand sort of like the role that they play within society too. It's very different than raising girls. So yeah, and I'll never know, right? Like I always joke with people. I'm like three's enough for me boys, my identical twins. And I think when it comes to that, just like, like, I feel like the greatest gift, like as a mom that you can give your kid is living your own best life. Like, I don't really don't see that as like a selfish thing. I see that as like an example. And I see that as like an opportunity because like maybe. For me, for example, as I was writing the book, what really stood out for me was my kids were watching me. Like they were seeing me like go out on a Saturday morning to like write this book. They were watching me like sometimes honestly be at the foot of my bed while I would, while we were living in Australia, typing out some copy or whatever, sending it to my editor. And they were watching me do things and. I was so uncomfortable at times, but I was still doing them. And I think when it comes to any endeavor, any goal, right? Like if you want to pivot into like journalism, or if you want to pivot like me from coaching marketers to coaching entrepreneurial moms, it's like. You've got to do it even in uncomfortable moments, even regardless of the season of motherhood. And I think that's something else like your mom, for example, and yourself, like your dreams, both of your dreams, they were important to you at that stage of your life. It happened to coincide with being pregnant for both of you, right? Like,  right. And so, which is interesting, right? That's, that's a rather productive time of a mom's life. You're creating, right? And so it's kind of like, well, what do you do? Like, do you pause the desires of your heart or do you find a flexible way forward? And so that's where our imagination, our fertile imagination comes into play. It's like, okay, if you are able to figure out the logistics of just a day, like today, right? Like, how am I going to get my kids from house to house safely? How am I going to look through their candy, make sure it's safe to eat, right? How am I going to hide their candy? Or somehow secretly throw it away.  That's so bad. Don't tell my boys.  I know, right? It's too much sugar. But how am I going to do that? So you use your creativity and your imagination for things like that. Right. And I think the same can be done when it comes to our dreams, irrespective of the complications that are involved. And there's a lot of variables when it comes to kids that much. I could tell you over 12 years. You might plan your family out beautifully, just like we might plan our birth plans, but ultimately it's like when stuff happens, you've got to rise to the occasion and make stuff up. Yeah, I really like what you said about like the flexibility, right? Like flexibility in because parenting really is all about that, right? Like kind of being in the moment, flexible, adapting to anything that could happen at any moment. But also when we think about like ourselves, like, right, like. Having to be flexible with our dreams and pursuing our goals. And if something kind of comes up, not to quit, right, but to be flexible, to figure out the way to manage it so that you still have that, that goal in sight. I really liked that actually. I've never really thought of it like that before, but I, that's pretty much how I've done it. And it's, I'm like 11, 12 years in the game of parenting and 11, 12 years in my career. And that's not. By accident, like we just, like we just said, and I'm thinking about all the sort of flexibility that I've had to exercise throughout parenting and my career as like I was like doing them in tandem. And it's really wild actually to think about. Yeah, I think that that's something that I think that's the difference between achieving a goal versus not achieving a goal. So it's kind of like if you have this one thing that you want to do as a you, you might write it out. You might even come up with a beautiful like roadmap  and, and that's amazing. However, what about that day when you wake up and the night before your kid was vomiting all over the place? Projectile vomiting because I've been there right or like what if school is shut down for whatever reason a flood I'm literally thinking about real life situations  Right or what if you you your file like is corrupt and you can't open it Again, 12 years in as an entrepreneur online, like these are real things. So what do you do from there? Right. And so in one chapter, like I was thinking about it, there's a Sundance award winner, Diane Bell, who had never written like a movie before, had never produced, was told you're never going to get it done for a hundred thousand dollars. And the learning that I got from her was like, well, in her mind, she invested in her idea and she set forth on a plan that even if no one else believed was possible, she was going to keep going through the obstacles, the hurdles, and just keep moving forward until it was just done. So she almost. started with that end in mind  and figured it out along the way. And for me, I think to myself, like feels a lot like Indiana Jones and the temple of doom, how he's like running and there's this boulder behind him, like that's straight up motherhood and entrepreneurship, right? What happens when the algorithm. Changes, what happens when childcare falls apart, you've got to be so nimble, like Jack, be quick, Jack, be nimble, all that stuff. No, no, no. Mom, be nimble. Mom, be quick because you got to jump over a candlestick, legs and a million other things, right? And Legos. All those hurt.  Those hurt. Yeah. I know. It is, it's, it's, it's really, I was going to say something too about, oh yeah, so about like, it's one thing to like, be flexible, but like, it also is, and I don't even know if you want to get into it, but like how, like, society and, and the private sector is not really set up to support flexibility. So we have to also think about that with moms who are Thanks, Cassidy. feeling like they can't do it, right? Like I have to give up. I have to stop because of the way like things are set up for them. Like we're kind of like not only fighting against our own stuff, right? Like being as flexible as we can managing our careers and our kids, but also fighting against like not being supported at work, like not feeling like there's a place for us if we come back after maternity leave or something like that, so. Is all of that and I think we're really now seeing a push for that like because of these conversations because we're like after the I talked about this to like the pandemic was so unkind and that's like we putting it nicely to mothers right but now we're like coming back like A little bit pissed off, a little bit more ambitious, like more ambitious than ever. And like, like this can't happen again. You saw what it did to us. I mean this is, and so I think that's it too, like having these kinds of conversations to change the workplace, to change at the federal level for child care, like we need these things to be successful. And so I think any mom who's thinking or maybe watching this and be like flexible. I can't manage another thing in my brain like you want me to be now flexible for this and this and this is like, just remember that the way things are set up right now, it's like it's really not to help you. You're to help you to succeed. So just keep that in mind, like give yourself a little bit more grace as you're like navigating this whole A hundred percent. And I would say when I was coaching marketing executives for the last 12 years, and I was coaching on purpose, both men and women. So although I was talking with a lot of working moms, I wanted to just see how the conversations were different between working moms and working dads as an example, right? And what I noticed was that for women, there was this like major investment in like that one job, that one good. boss, that one company that lets them go work from home one day a week, that they would then burn themselves out to keep that job at all costs, not at no cost, at all costs. And so I was calling that career trauma. And I was seeing that. So vividly because moms are going to put on a game face, you're at the office and you're like, I'm here to resolve stuff within this timeframe. So I could go back home and do my stuff again, right? The second and third shift. And I think this flexibility, it's why I decided to leave the corporate setting. Although I have my MBA, like the MBA in a corporate setting. Matters a lot, quote unquote, obviously there's now some dilution there, but in the entrepreneurial space, it does not matter a bit. So why did I do that? I did that because this was pre pandemic 12 years ago. I did not find the flexibility that I desired, which was to work from home one day a week on a Friday with a full straight up Excel communication plan that I put out there to my former boss. It wasn't possible. And so for me, I said, what, okay, I'm in a position where I have the credentials. How can I make this work for me in an entrepreneurial setting? And the last 12 years as an entrepreneur, I've noticed a very similar dynamic. So you talk about flexibility in the corporate space, which is something that each mom has to work out for herself and be her own advocate for, but in the entrepreneurial. space, the same sort of factors are at play, right? Because what entrepreneur out there has not been on as an example, Instagram 24 seven to keep up with the algorithm. So inflexibility and flexibility,  those two ideas are huge when it comes to having an imagination, one that can be productive and can produce useful. Ideas, right? And at the end of the day, even as an entrepreneur, I had noticed mom's falling off what I call the cliff. Okay, so the 1 thing that we can all do to figure out how to find some. Some, some air to breathe as moms working moms is take it onto ourselves, figure out for ourselves what we want and what we really, really need in terms of flexibility and in terms of using all the resources that we do have, which was something you mentioned in your journalism video, right? What do you have and figuring out how to make lemon sorbet out of lemons. Right, right. Who doesn't like lemon sorbet?  Everybody. Everybody. And I want to ask you, too, as an entrepreneur, how do you set boundaries for yourself, like, so that you don't burn out? Like, because I, I know that a lot of us struggle with that because, like, I'll be like, scrolling  just to like, like, what's happening? Is there something timely I need to. to figure out and, and I work, I have my own brand, but I'm working for other brands and all of this. So tell me how you have you, how you've managed that. Yeah, I think it's really about figuring out, okay, what is it that I want? Like, do I really want to display my family on Instagram? Do I really want to build up engagement to a point where this weekend I'm going to be like in a coma on my bed? And, and totally wiped out, like, what do you want? Because here's the thing, the trend is right. So a lot of people talk about hustle culture. Don't do it. I gotta be honest. I don't know how to actually produce the Instagram results that are quote, unquote, necessary in order to get the reach that they say I should have. But what I do know is early on in my career, I remember this was, yeah, 12 years ago. I was Exploring social media. I don't even remember if Instagram existed. The point is this, I was pushing out, let's say like one piece of content a day, which back then it was like, wow, I was a new mom. I had one boy, he was a baby and I didn't have like full time childcare. Let me be clear, which I think makes a big difference. And I remember one person who now is a. Telling me, Melissa, you should go crazy on social media. You should just like kill it on social media. And I remember just thinking to myself, oh my God, I'm dying here as a new mom. I'm like not sleeping. I'm like barely learning how to nurse and now I'm supposed to go on social media. More, this is before those scheduling tools, really. And I remember thinking to myself, I'm going to have to miss the boat. I have to miss the boat. And I'll be honest, I missed the boat. And am I taking full responsibility for having quote unquote missed the boat? I am. So for me, the way that I manage my boundaries is I have to play it in the moment. What do I need right now? If my agenda. If my values, if my needs are like top to my priority list today, I have to pick them. Even if it's at the detriment, at the detriment of my business or at the detriment of what the other world says I should be focused on, because I can't make myself want something that someone else wants. I can't do it. Yeah. I try. Trust me.  I can't. I love that, actually. I think that's, that's super, that's super important because I think I beat myself up, too, about missing that social media boat. Like, I was there, I was watching, but I was like, I can't, I couldn't do it. It didn't feel right for me. And now I feel like, in so many ways, I'm playing catch up, but also, I'm like, this is where I'm at. Like, I'm just gonna be authentic, share what I want to share in the moment, and not really... Put too much into like a strategy because I'll, I'll die. That's not even a joke. We will actually die if we like, like, like a book marketing launch plan. Like this is like the verge of,  but you did it. You're doing it. I did it and I'm doing it. And I'm so appreciative, Bethany. Like, I am so grateful to like all the mom authors that have come before me. I am. So, so, so grateful, Bethany.  I mean, I, something that I also like love to talk about is like this unified power of mothers. Like we don't realize how powerful we are as a collective. So anytime I see a mom out there doing this, like I'm like, yes, let's do it. But how can I help you? What can we do? And we're going to get you on my podcast too. So that stay tuned for that. So this is not the end.

  As we hit the one-year mark of the pandemic, it's a good time to see where we are, and what we expect moving through 2021 into 2022. Will we see a return to normalcy? What have we learned about how to successfully execute virtual events? Will we go back to in-person like we saw before the pandemic? Virtual events are endlessly complex, and no two are the same, but there are some universal lessons from the past year. Join us for this episode to hear three key takeaways we think apply to every event going forward. ----- Prefer to read? Transcript: So here's where we are, one year in. The hope that by this time we'd be back to in-person events has faded, even as the news about vaccines and a return to more normality keeps getting better. Because events take so much preplanning, most 2021 events have announced they will stay virtual this year, with hope for a return in 2022. 2022? My god, we're living in the future. I have a robot cleaning my house, a TV that sticks to my wall, and a machine that makes me a really decent cappuccino with the push of a single button. But some of that future has become exhausting. I remember years ago taking hours using these really primitive IRC apps to try to set up a video call with my parents so they could see their grandkids. Now we're on video every day with clients, co-workers, friends. And just like we used to get dressed up to fly on a plane but now it's flip flops and tank tops if you're lucky, our Teams and Zoom standards are eroding as well. I used to have what I called my Emergency Shirt next to my desk. If I had a meeting that required video I'd grab that nice shirt and put it on so I looked presentable. My last Teams call was a hoodie and some strong uncertainty about when my last shower was. The client was dressed the same. I'm not sure if it's better or worse, but I do know I'd really love to take a shower, put on some nice clothes and go out to dinner looking like I cared what I look like.  I'm guessing some of you feel the same. Let's talk then about where we are and where we go from here. Because while much continues to change, you should consider — and plan for — a new normal in how you approach events. The world shifted on its axis in our event world, and we need to shift with it or be permanently out of sync with what our audience wants and expects. I'm going to go over 3 things we think are most important right now First, Live virtual events are hard. Like, really, really hard. You see it whether you turn on the Golden Globes and see an at-home winner give his acceptance speech with his mute button on, and on most events you may have attended that featured technical glitches, crappy sound, poor connections or all of the above. We recently did an event for 500 people where I personally did an announcement between sessions, and although I triple checked my video feeds setup, I still managed to have one button wrong and caused an echo so bad no one could understand me. We're all trying our best, but every live element adds one more point of failure. Since we are all remote, you're coordinating speakers and sessions across different geographies, with people who have differing level of comfort and skill with technology, not to mention the issues with technology and connections themselves. I'm more convinced than ever that pre-recorded sessions, often played during the event as if they are live – what is often called simulive – is the best solution for almost every live event situation. We produced an awards ceremony for Microsoft for the second year using 100% prerecorded segments, from the introduction, entertainment, awards announcements and executive thank yous. It even included a special performance from three Broadway stars, something the client produced separately but which integrated perfectly into the show. The awards show ran a very tight 42 minutes from beginning to end, and the feedback was tremendous. Not one person commented that they were disappointed it wasn't l...

Hey there, I'm C.Lee Cawley and in my final episode of this takeover, I share what brings me happiness now and I hope it inspires you.     Transcript   So hello and again, you are listening to Everyday Happiness with Katie Jefcoat. But I am C.Lee and it's been a thrill to be here.   The most important question Katie asked me is - what do you do now that brings happiness?   And I am so very lucky that my career brings me so much joy. One of the reasons is because I'm able to help transform people's lives in such profound ways.   So I teach a course called The Paper Cleanse, which takes people from chaos to calm. And I do that by teaching them ways to declutter their paper files and curate their reference files so that they get a lifetime of paper organization. But what's more important than the paper organization is the confidence that getting that taken care of instills in them.    And I have had students in the last year that have reported back to me that because they got their papers organized, their marriages improved, they were able to take the time to travel, their finances improved because they took control of the paper and realized where their money was and how to manage it. I had a client start a non-profit and I've had more than a few start to volunteer, which has given them a huge amount of purpose.    So just getting their papers organized was a knock-on effect to give them a lot more happiness and joy and purpose in their lives and that kind of clarity to my students, when they report back to me, fills my heart with joy! I am so lucky that what I do is able to help so many people and that gives me a huge amount of happiness.   So I have been thrilled to answer these questions and ponder Everyday Happiness and how important it is in all of our lives. I want to thank you for listening all week long.   And don't forget, you can catch another episode of Everyday Happiness here tomorrow.   About C.Lee:    As an award-winning Certified Professional Organizer – of which there are fewer than 400 worldwide - C.Lee is an “agent of change” for her thousands of clients, students, and followers - transforming their lives and homes with her adroit advice and insightful instruction.   Her current mission is to clear desks and minds around the world with her signature course “The Paper Cleanse”. In it, she teaches people how to declutter their paper piles and curate frustrating files for a lifetime of paper organization.   C.Lee lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband of over 30 years and considers herself "indoorsy".  She delights in having friends over for decadent drinks and deep discussions.  And it appears that she adores alliteration!    You can connect with C.Lee On Instagram = https://www.instagram.com/c.leecawley_simplifyyou/   On Facebook = https://www.facebook.com/DMVOrganizing   And at her website which offers tips, tools and a resourceful blog = https://www.cleecawley.com/    *   *   *    Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness   And, let's connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram   Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/

Diary #1Diary #2Bristol Stool ScaleGet my 9 page OTs Map to the World of Pelvic Health.Meet me on the OTs for Pelvic Health Facebook Group!Check Out More OT Pelvic Health Content here.Find me on IG! @functionalpelvis-- Transcript --So the good ol' bowel, bladder and food diaries…. It's a powerful trio!  And they are amazing for examining how our clients' habits may be contributing to their symptoms. This is so important because whoever takes the time to review things like this with them? It is so valuable for the big picture, combined with all the other tools we bring to the table. I love giving them the diaries to fill out before the first session and it's ideal for the diaries to span 3-5 days to get an accurate read of their habits, and I love it to span the weekday and weekend. I wanna see it all! When I talk with my clients about why I am asking them to fill it out, because it is a big ask, I share the following with them: A Diary Gives us A Good Snapshot Of What's Happening With their BodyFor example, if they are leaking. Knowing how often they leak, when, and how much can help us create voiding habits that work with their body, as well as better assess what we need to address the leakage.  Do they Always have a problem at 10 in the morning?  Perhaps they need to examine what foods they are having for breakfast or how much time they are allowing yourself to use the toilet.   Keeping a diary will help illuminate these patterns so we can investigate the whys.Another example is if they are having FI, keeping a diary Helps us To Identify Triggers That May Be Causing them To Have it. By keeping a record, you can start to uncover trends that may be contributing to the issue. For instance, that cup of coffee first thing in the morning may be irritating their bowels more than they thought before, hinting that it's time to rethink your java habit.Lastly, It Provides them With A Roadmap For A Discussion with us. Recording leaks and daily habits gives us a chance to outline everything they have been experiencing can really help detail the discussion. For many, when and how they eliminate is not something they really record and recall with incredible accuracy  --it's really not the highlight of their day, right? So having this roadmap really makes these patterns black and white, which helps us create a customized tx plan for them. some of my faves are:https://www.niddk.nih.gov/-/media/Files/Weight-Management/Stool_Diary_508.pdfhttps://medicine.umich.edu/sites/default/files/content/downloads/Food%20Fiber%20Fluid%20and%20Bowel%20Diary%207%2015.pdf Which combines it most of it in one sheet!  It excludes urgency and medsWhat are we looking at with these diaries?·        Analyze water intake (total amount, do they spread out their drinking over the day or do they cluster drink/chug?) ·        Analyze caffeine intake (total amount)·        What is the ratio between these two fluids?&a

Are you looking forward to Locktober? There's more information appearing on the Locktober page all the time. Find the new Chastity Mindset Sessions in the shop. Transcript So welcome to “How to Succeed at Locktober, Part One”. This is Part 1 of a 2-part series dedicated to the Spoken By Elswyth Locktober, for 2022. Now, […] The post 4.26 How to Succeed at Locktober, Part One appeared first on Spoken By Elswyth.

  As the pandemic shifts, it's a good time to see where we are, and what we expect moving forward. Will we see a return to normalcy? What have we learned about how to successfully execute virtual events? Will we go back to in-person like we saw before the pandemic? Virtual events are endlessly complex, and no two are the same, but there are some universal lessons from the past year. Join us for this episode to hear three key takeaways we think apply to every event going forward.   ----- Prefer to read? Transcript: So here's where we are, one year in. The hope that by this time we'd be back to in-person events has faded, even as the news about vaccines and a return to more normality keeps getting better. Because events take so much preplanning, most 2021 events have announced they will stay virtual this year, with hope for a return in 2022. 2022? My god, we're living in the future. I have a robot cleaning my house, a TV that sticks to my wall, and a machine that makes me a really decent cappuccino with the push of a single button. But some of that future has become exhausting. I remember years ago taking hours using these really primitive IRC apps to try to set up a video call with my parents so they could see their grandkids. Now we're on video every day with clients, co-workers, friends. And just like we used to get dressed up to fly on a plane but now it's flip flops and tank tops if you're lucky, our Teams and Zoom standards are eroding as well. I used to have what I called my Emergency Shirt next to my desk. If I had a meeting that required video I'd grab that nice shirt and put it on so I looked presentable. My last Teams call was a hoodie and some strong uncertainty about when my last shower was. The client was dressed the same. I'm not sure if it's better or worse, but I do know I'd really love to take a shower, put on some nice clothes and go out to dinner looking like I cared what I look like.  I'm guessing some of you feel the same. Let's talk then about where we are and where we go from here. Because while much continues to change, you should consider — and plan for — a new normal in how you approach events. The world shifted on its axis in our event world, and we need to shift with it or be permanently out of sync with what our audience wants and expects. I'm going to go over 3 things we think are most important right now First, Live virtual events are hard. Like, really, really hard. You see it whether you turn on the Golden Globes and see an at-home winner give his acceptance speech with his mute button on, and on most events you may have attended that featured technical glitches, crappy sound, poor connections or all of the above. We recently did an event for 500 people where I personally did an announcement between sessions, and although I triple checked my video feeds setup, I still managed to have one button wrong and caused an echo so bad no one could understand me. We're all trying our best, but every live element adds one more point of failure. Since we are all remote, you're coordinating speakers and sessions across different geographies, with people who have differing level of comfort and skill with technology, not to mention the issues with technology and connections themselves. I'm more convinced than ever that pre-recorded sessions, often played during the event as if they are live – what is often called simulive – is the best solution for almost every live event situation. We produced an awards ceremony for Microsoft for the second year using 100% prerecorded segments, from the introduction, entertainment, awards announcements and executive thank yous. It even included a special performance from three Broadway stars, something the client produced separately but which integrated perfectly into the show. The awards show ran a very tight 42 minutes from beginning to end, and the feedback was tremendous. Not one person commented that they were disappointed it wasn't live.

There's a lot of pressure for making a great Episode 1! I hope I deliver :)I wanted to start with a fundamental question: What is a Pelvic Floor OT?Find me on IG! @functionalpelvisGet my 9 page OTs Map to the World of Pelvic Health.Check Out More OT Pelvic Health Content here.---Transcript---So a question I get a lot is what is a pelvic floor OT, right? Are you wondering that same thing? I think it's a really natural question. And the reason for that is, is that many, many of us, the public even OTs have, have heard about PTs in pelvic health, right? The natural question that arises from that is, well, then what's a pelvic health OT. Can we even do this work? I find that it all comes down to your approach, not your credentials. There really isn't any skill that PTs have that OTs can't acquire. And likewise, there's no skills that an OT has that a PT can't acquire. It's literally about skill acquisition and desire. That's it. Now that being said, I am by, towards a pelvic health approach that let's say looks more at the person as a whole, including the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental wellness aspects.We aren't beings that are in silos. We're a whole person, and it is absolutely a essential to learn how to connect with our clients and ask questions about these areas of their life, how to use motivational, interviewing how to use non-verbal communication and how to approach the relationship with a facilitator versus a fixer approach. In the decade that I have been a pelvic health OT, I have found that addressing everyday activities in a person's life while taking into account their environment, their relationships, their level of functionings and their goals are key. Why, why is this approach key? Well, the thing is that pelvic health addresses the most intimate aspect of our client's lives, right? I mean the three main jobs of pelvic health are elimination. And by the way, this means keeping it in when it's not time to go, but also letting it out when it is completely second job intimacy.So this means participating in whatever intimate act you choose and having it be pleasurable with the ability to experience orgasm and last up support. So that's elimination, intimacy and support. And when I talk about support, this includes the organs within the pelvis, but also the support that goes all the way up to the top of the head, right? Thanks to gravity, the pelvic floor support everything on top of it, right? So the Vista and our abdomen, our hearts, our lungs are 10 pound skull and everything in between, right? What a huge job for such an underrated body part, all of the jobs that the pelvic floor have often happen behind in closed, right? Particularly intimacy and elimination. And what happens when an activity happens in secrecy? Well, we don't have many opportunities to talk about how it functions optimally. So for example, have you ever asked someone, Hey, uh, so when you start peeing to you, like ever push a little bit to get it going, or, Hey, uh, it kind of hurts when my partner and I start fooling around.Does that ever happen to you? Nah, I don't think this happens very often, even with our closest to friends. So this means we don't know things like it is optimal to not use effort to start or stop our urine or that we should pee once every two to four hours or that just in case peeing is an optimal for bladder and brain communication. And of course that intimacy of every kind should not hurt. These are the kind of, of myths that we're gonna be busting on this podcast. Are you in, is this interesting to you? I urge you to hit subscribe because I don't want you to miss it when I have any future episodes coming up. Also, I have got to tell you that it is 100% within the O scope of practice to 

Transcript: So there’s a ton of those kinds of books. I like any writer’s biography because you want to learn from that. One of the things I always recommend –– I should have a copy sitting in front of me but it’s on my bedside table –– is “Monster: Living life off the big screen.” It … Continue reading "15 Even More On Books I Couldn’t Teach Without from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]" Related posts: 08 Bess Meredyth from When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues [Video] 07 Husbands As Unreliable Narrators from When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues [Video] 06 Female Writers Can Be Unreliable Narrators from When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues [Video]

Transcript: So what’s different in this one? In a nutshell right? We’re going to go back to — she’s ambitious but she’s a rock star. He’s a rock idol. We’re still he’s jealous. It’s hard not to be jealous. We’re going to add the component that they write a song together. That is one of … Continue reading "18 What’s Different?…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video" Related posts: 14 What Changed?…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video] 12 Here Comes Judy…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video] 08 A Star Is Born (1937) from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]

Transcript: So she brings a journalistic background to this. She brings feminism to this in a way that maybe it didn’t appear as much in that this is Barbra Streisand not only is she acting in this piece, she’s producing it right? She’s the first woman producer on this movie. So she has final say … Continue reading "17 More On Joan Didion…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]" Related posts: 16 Joan Didion…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video] 15 1976…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video] 04 The Writers of A Star Is Born (1937) from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here Transcript: So fascinating but you’re right and what’s interesting is you just hit on the fact that here Shonda Rhimes who almost always has a hit but not always because it’s not science right? You can’t even … Continue reading "28 Art Is Very Subjective from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video]" Related posts: 26 Controversy Scares Broadcasters from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video] 27 Queen Charlotte from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video] 15 Stumptown from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video]

In this Conversation, Jason Crawford and I talk about starting a nonprofit organization, changing conceptions of progress, why 26 years after WWII may have been what happened in 1971, and more. Jason is the proprietor of Roots of Progress a blog and educational hub that has recently become a full-fledged nonprofit devoted to the philosophy of progress. Jason's a returning guest to the podcast — we first spoke in 2019 relatively soon after he went full time on the project . I thought it would be interesting to do an update now that roots of progress is entering a new stage of its evolution.   Links Roots of Progress Nonprofit announcement Transcript So what was the impetus to switch from sort of being an independent researcher to like actually starting a nonprofit I'm really interested in. Yeah. The basic thing was understanding or getting a sense of the level of support that was actually out there for what I was doing. In brief people wanted to give me money and and one, the best way to receive and manage funds is to have a national nonprofit organization. And I realized there was actually enough support to support more than just myself, which had been doing, you know, as an independent researcher for a year or two. But there was actually enough to have some help around me to basically just make me more effective and, and further the mission. So I've already been able to hire research [00:02:00] assistants. Very soon I'm going to be putting out a a wanted ad for a chief of staff or you know, sort of an everything assistant to help with all sorts of operations and project management and things. And so having these folks around me is going to just help me do a lot more and it's going to let me sort of delegate everything that I can possibly delegate and focus on the things that only I can do, which is mostly research and writing. Nice and sort of, it seems like it would be possible to take money and hire people and do all that without forming a nonprofit. So what what's sort of like in your mind that the thing that makes it worth it. Well, for one thing, it's a lot easier to receive money when you have a, an organization that is designated as a 5 0 1 C three tax status in the United States, that is a status that makes deductions that makes donations tax deductible. Whereas other donations to other types of nonprofits are not I had had issues in the past. One organization would want to [00:03:00] give me a grant as an independent researcher, but they didn't want to give it to an individual. They wanted it to go through a 5 0 1 C3. So then I had to get a new. Organization to sort of like receive the donation for me and then turn around and re grant it to me. And that was just, you know, complicated overhead. Some organizations didn't want to do that all the time. So it was, it was just much simpler to keep doing this if I had my own organization. And do you have sort of a broad vision for the organization? Absolutely. Yes. And it, I mean, it is essentially the same as the vision for my work, which I recently articulated in an essay on richer progress.org. We need a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century and establishing such a philosophy is, is my personal mission. And is the mission. Of the organization to just very briefly frame this in the I, the 19th century had a very sort of strong and positive, you know, pro progress vision of, of what progress was and what it could do for humanity and in the [00:04:00] 20th century. That optimism faded into skepticism and fear and distrust. And I think there are ways in which the 19th century philosophy of progress was perhaps naively optimistic. I don't think we should go back to that at all, but I think we need a, we need to rescue the idea of progress itself. Which the 20th century sort of fell out of love with, and we need to find ways to acknowledge and address the very real problems and risks of progress while not losing our fundamental optimism and confidence and will to, to move forward. We need to, we need to regain to recapture that idea of progress and that fundamental belief in our own agency so that we can go forward in the 21st century with progress. You know, while doing so in a way that is fundamentally safe and benefits all of humanity. And since you, since you mentioned philosophy, I'm really like, just, just ask you a very weird question. That's related to something that I've been thinking about. And [00:05:00] so like, in addition to the fact that I completely agree the philosophy. Progress needs to be updated, recreated. It feels like the same thing needs to be done with like the idea of classical liberalism that like it was created. Like, I think like, sort of both of these, these philosophies a are related and B were created in a world that is just has different assumptions than we have today. Have you like, thought about how the, those two, like those two sort of like philosophical updates. Yeah. So first off, just on that question of, of reinventing classical liberalism, I think you're right. Let me take this as an opportunity to plug a couple of publications that I think are exploring this concept. Yeah. So so the first I'll mention is palladium. I mentioned this because of the founding essay of palladium, which was written by Jonah Bennet as I think a good statement of the problem of, of why classical liberalism is [00:06:00] or, or I think he called it the liberal order, which has maybe a slightly different thing. But you know, the, the, the basic idea of You know, representative democracy is you know, or constitutional republics with, with sort of representative democracy you know, and, and basic ideas of of freedom of speech and other sort of human rights and individual rights. You know, all of that as being sort of basic world order you know, Jonah was saying that that is in question now and. There's essentially now. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to frame this my own way. I don't know if this is exactly how gender would put it, but there's basically, there's, there's basically now a. A fight between the abolitionists and the reformists, right. Those who think that the, the, the, that liberal order is sort of like fundamentally corrupt. It needs to be burned to the ground and replaced versus those who think it's fundamentally sound, but may have problems and therefore needs reform. And so you know, I think Jonah is on the reform side and I'm on the reform side. I think, you know, the institutions of you know, Western institutions and the institutions of the enlightenment let's say are like [00:07:00] fundamentally sound and need reform. Yeah, rather than, rather than just being raised to the ground. This was also a theme towards the end of enlightenment now by Steven Pinker that you know, a lot of, a lot of why he wrote that book was to sort of counter the fundamental narrative decline ism. If you believe that the world is going to hell, then it makes sense to question the fundamental institutions that have brought us here. And it kind of makes sense to have a burn it all to the ground. Mentality. Right. And so those things go together. Whereas if you believe that you know, actually we've made a lot of progress over the last couple of hundred years. Then you say, Hey, these institutions are actually serving us very well. And again, if there are problems with them, let's sort of address those problems in a reformist type of approach, not an abolitionist type approach. So Jonah Bennett was one of the co-founders of palladium and that's an interesting magazine or I recommend checking out. Another publication that's addressing some of these concepts is I would say persuasion by Yasha Munk. So Yasha is was a part of the Atlantic as I recall. [00:08:00] And basically wanted to. Make a home for people who were maybe left leaning or you know, would call themselves liberals, but did not like the new sort of woke ideology that is arising on the left and wanted to carve out a space for for free speech and for I don't know, just a different a non-local liberalism, let's say. And so persuasion is a sub stack in a community. That's an interesting one. And then the third one that I'll mention is called symposium. And that is done by a friend of mine. Roger Sinskey who it himself has maybe a little bit more would consider himself kind of a more right-leaning or maybe. Just call himself more of an individualist or an independent or a, you know, something else. But I think he maybe appeals more to people who are a little more right-leaning, but he also wanted you know, something that I think a lot of people are, are both maybe both on the right and the left are wanting to break away both from woke ism and from Trumpism and find something that's neither of those things. And so we're seeing this interesting. Where people on the right and left are actually maybe [00:09:00] coming together to try to find a third alternative to where those two sides are going. So symposium is another publication where you know, people are sort of coming together to discuss, what is this idea of liberalism? What does it mean? I think Tristan ski said that he wanted some posting to be the kind of place where Steven Pinker and George will, could come together to discuss what liberalism means. And then, then he like literally had that as a, as a podcast episode. Like those two people. So anyway, recommend, recommend checking it out. And, and Rob is a very good writer. So palladium, persuasion and symposium. Those are the three that I recommend checking out to to explore this kind of idea of. Nice. Yeah. And I think it looks, I mean, I mean, I guess in my head it actually like hooks, like it's sort of like extremely coupled to, to progress. Cause I think a lot of the places where we, there's almost like this tension between ideas of classical liberalism, like property rights and things that we would like see as progress. Right. Cause it's like, okay, you want to build your [00:10:00] Your Hyperloop. Right. But then you need to build that Hyperloop through a lot of people's property. And there's like this fundamental tension there. And then. I look, I don't have a good answer for that, but like just sort of thinking about that, vis-a-vis, it's true. At the same time, I think it's a very good and healthy and important tension. I agree because if you, if you have the, if you, so, you know, I, I tend to think that the enlightenment was sort of. But there were at least two big ideas in the enlightenment, maybe more than two, but you know, one of them was sort of like reason science and the technological progress that hopefully that would lead to. But the other was sort of individualism and and, and, and, and Liberty you know concepts and I think what we saw in the 20th century when you have one of those without the other, it leads to to it to disaster. So in particular I mean the, the, the communists of you know, the Soviet union were were [00:11:00] enamored of some concept of progress that they had. It was a concept of progress. That was ultimately, they, they got the sort of the science and the industry part, but they didn't get the individualism and the Liberty part. And when you do that, what you end up with is a concept of progress. That's actually detached from what it ought to be founded on, which is, I mean, ultimately progress by. To me in progress for individual human lives and their happiness and thriving and flourishing. And when you, when you detach those things, you end up with a, an abstract concept of progress, somehow progress for society that ends up not being progress for any individual. And that, as I think we saw in the Soviet union and other places is a nightmare and it leads to totalitarianism and it leads to, I mean, in the case specifically the case of the Soviet union mass. And not to mention oppression. So one of the big lessons of you know, so going back to what I said, sort of towards the beginning that the 19th century philosophy of progress had, I think a bit of a naive optimism. And part of that, [00:12:00] part of the naivete of that optimism was the hope that that all forms of progress would go together and work sort of going along hand in hand, the technological progress and moral and social progress would, would go together. In fact, towards the end of. The, the 19th century some people were hopeful that the expansion of industry and the growth of trade between nations would lead to a new era of world peace, the end. And the 20th century obviously prove this wrong, right? There's a devastating, dramatic proof though. And I really think it was my hypothesis right now is that it was the world war. That really shattered the optimism of the 19th century that, you know, they really proved that technological progress does not automatically lead to moral progress. And with the dropping of the atomic bomb was just like a horrible exclamation point on this entire lesson, right? The nuclear bomb was obviously a product of modern science, modern technology and modern industry. And it was the most horrific destructive [00:13:00] weapon ever. So so I think with that, people saw that that these things don't automatically go together. And I think the big lesson from from that era and and from history is that technological and moral progress and social progress or an independent thing that we have. You know, in their own right. And technological progress does not create value for humanity unless it is embedded in the, you know, in the context of good moral and social systems. So and I think that's the. You know, that's the lesson of, for instance, you know, the cotton gin and and American slavery. It is the lesson of the of the, the Soviet agricultural experiments that ended on in famine. It's the lesson of the, the Chinese great leap forward and so forth. In all of those cases, what was missing was was Liberty and freedom and human in individual rights. So those are things that we must absolutely protect, even as we move technological and industrial progress forward. Technological progress ultimately is it is [00:14:00] progress for people. And if it's not progress for people and progress for individuals and not just collectives then it is not progress at all the one. I agree with all of that. Except the thing I would poke is I feel like the 1950s might be a counterpoint to the world wars destroying 20th century optimism, or, or is it, do you think that is just sort of like, there's almost like a ha like a delayed effect that I think the 1950s were a holdover. I think that, so I think that these things take a generation to really see. And so this is my fundamental answer at the, at the moment to what happened in 1971, you know, people ask this question or 1970 or 73 or whatever date around. Yeah. I think what actually happened, the right question to ask is what happened in 1945, that took 25 years to sink in. And I think, and I think it's, so my answer is the world wars, and I think it is around this time that [00:15:00] you really start to see. So even in the 1950s, if you read intellectuals and academics who are writing about this stuff, you start to read things like. Well, you know, we can't just unabashedly promote quote-unquote progress anymore, or people are starting to question this idea of progress or, you know, so forth. And I'm not, I haven't yet done enough of the intellectual history to be certain that that's really where it begins. But that's the impression I've gotten anecdotally. And so this is the, the hypothesis that's forming in my mind is that that's about when there was a real turning point now to be clear, there were always skeptics of. From the very beginning of the enlightenment, there was a, an anti enlightenment sort of reactionary, romantic backlash from the beginnings of the industrial revolution, there were people who didn't like what was happening. John chakra. So you know, Mary Shelley, Karl Marx, like, you know, you name it. But I think what was going on was that essentially. The progress you know, the, the progress movement or whatever, they, the people who are actually going forward and making scientific and technological progress, they [00:16:00] were doing that. Like they were winning and they were winning because they were because people could see the inventions coming especially through the end. I mean, you know, imagine somebody born. You know, around 1870 or so. Right. And just think of the things that they would have seen happen in their lifetime. You know, the telephone the the, you know, the expansion of airplane, the automobile and the airplane, right? The electric light bulb and the, and the, the electric motor the first plastics massive. Yeah, indoor plumbing, water, sanitation vaccines, if they live long enough antibiotics. And so there was just oh, the Haber-Bosch process, right. And artificial or synthetic fertilizer. So this just like an enormous amount. Of these amazing inventions that they would have seen happen. And so I basically just think that the, the, the reactionary voices against against technology and against progress, we're just drowned out by all of the cheering for the new inventions. And then my hypothesis is that what happened after world war II is it wasn't so much that, you [00:17:00] know the people who believed in progress suddenly stopped believing in it. But I think what happens in these cases, The people who, who believed in progress their belief was shaken and they lost some of their confidence and they became less vocal and their arguments started feeling a little weaker and having less weight and conversely, the sort of reactionary the, the anti-progress folks were suddenly emboldened. And people were listening to them. And so they could come to the fore and say, see, we told you, so we've been telling you this for generations. We always knew it, that this was going to be what happened. And so there was just a shift in sort of who had the confidence, who was outspoken and whose arguments people were listening to. And I think when you, when you have then a whole generation of people who grew up in this new. Milia, then you get essentially the counterculture of the 1960s and you know, and you get silent spring and you get you know, protests against industry and technology and capitalism and civilization. And, [00:18:00] you know, do you think there, mate, there's just like literally off the cuff, but there might also be some kind of like hedonic treadmill effect where. You know, it's like you see some, like rate of progress and, you know, it's like you, you start to sort of like, that starts to be normalized. And then. It's true. It's true. And it's funny because so well before the world war, so even in the late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds, you can find people saying things like essentially like kids these days don't realize how good they have it. You know, people don't even know the history of progress. It's like, I mean, I found. I found it. Let's see. I remember there was so I wrote about this, actually, I hadn't had an essay about this called something like 19th century progress studies, because there was this guy who was even before the transcontinental railroad was built in the U S in the sixties. There was this guy who like in the 1850s or so [00:19:00] was campaigning for it. And he wrote this whole big, long pamphlet that, you know, promoting the idea of a transcontinental railroad and he was trying to raise private money for it. And. One of the things in this long, you know, true to the 19th century, it was like this long wordy document. And one of the parts of this whole thing is he starts going into the, like the whole history of transportation back to like the 17th or 16th century and like the post roads that were established in Britain and you know, how those improve transportation, but even how, even in that era, that like people were speaking out against the post roads as, and we're posing them. No sidebar. Have you seen that comic with like, like the cave men? The caveman? Yes. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. The show notes, but caveman science fiction. Yeah, that one's pretty good. So I'm, I'm blanking on this guy's name now. But he, so he wrote this whole thing and he basically said that. The [00:20:00] story of progress has not even been told and people don't know how far we've come. And if, you know, somebody should really like collect all of this history and tell it in an engaging way so that people knew, you know, how far people knew, how far we've come. And this is in like the 1850s. So this is before the, the, the railroad was built, right? The transcontinental one, this is before the, the light bulb and before the internal combustion engine and before vaccines and, you know, everything. It was pretty, that was pretty remarkable. I also remember there was like an 1895 or 96 anniversary issue of scientific American, where they went over like 50 years of progress. And there was this bit in the beginning that was just like, yeah. You know, people just take progress for granted these days. And there was another thing, a similar thing in the early 19 hundreds, I read where somebody went out to find one of the inventors who'd improved. The the mechanical Reaper I think it was somebody who'd invented an automatic binder for the sheaves of grain and and was saying something like, yeah, people don't even remember, you know, the, the inventors who, you know, who made the modern world. And so [00:21:00] we've got to go find this inventor and like interview him and to record this for posterity. So you're seeing this kind of kids these days type attitude all throughout. So I think that that kind of thing is just natural, is like, I think is sort of always happening. Right. There's this constant complaint. I mean, it's just like, you know, at any pretty much any time in history, you can find people complaining about the decline of morality and you know, the, how the youth are so different and The wet, the ankles, they exposed ankles. Right? Exactly. So I think you have to have some somewhat separate out that sort of thing, which is constant and is always with us with kind of like, but what was, you know, what we're. What was the intellectual class? You know as Deirdre McCloskey likes to call it the clerisy, what were they saying about progress and what was the general zeitgeist? Right. And I think that even though there are some constants, like people always forget the past. Whatever they have for granted. And even though you know, every new invention is always opposed [00:22:00] and fought and feared. There is an overall site Geist that you can see changing from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century. And I think where you can really see. There's a, there's a couple of places you can really see it. So one is in the general attitude of people towards nature. And what is mankind's relationship to nature in the 19th century? People talked unabashedly and unironically about the conquest of nature. They talked about nature almost as an enemy that we had to fight. Yeah. And it sort of made sense you know, nature truly is red in tooth and claw. It does not, it's not a loving, loving mother that has us in her nurturing embrace. You know, the reality is that nature is frankly indifferent to us and you know, we have to make our way in the world in spite of now. Let's say, let's say both because of, and in spite of nature, right? Nature obviously gives us everything that we need for life. It also presents it. It also gives none of that in a [00:23:00] convenience form. Everything that nature gives us is in a highly inconvenient form that, you know, we have to do layers and layers of industrial processing to make into the convenient forms that we consume. David Deutsch also makes a similar point in the beginning of infinity, where he says that, you know, the idea of earth as like a biosphere or a life support, you know, or the ecosystem as a, as a life support system is absurd because a life support system is like deliberately designed for, you know, maximum sort of safety and convenience. Whereas nature is nothing of that. So there was some, you know, so there was some justification to this view, but the way that people just on a, on ironically talked about conquering nature, mastering nature, taming nature improving nature, right? The idea that the manmade, the synthetic, the artificial was just to be expected to be better than nature. Like that is a little mindblowing. Today I was just there was a quote, I was just looking up from I think the plastic is a great example [00:24:00] because plastic was invented and, and, and you know, or arose in this era where people were more favorable to it, but then quickly transitioned into the era where It, it became just one of the hated and demonized inventions. Right. And so in the early days, like in the 1930s I think it was 1936 Texas state had a, some sort of state fair and they had a whole exhibition about plastics and somebody was quote, one woman who was, who, who saw the exhibition, you know, was quoted as saying like, oh, it's just wonderful how everything is synthetic these days, you know, as this is like, nobody would say. Yeah, right. Or there was a documentary about plastic called the fourth kingdom and it was something like, you know, in addition to the, the three kingdoms of what is it like animal vegetable and mineral, you know, man has now added a fourth kingdom whose boundaries are unlimited. Right. And again, just that's just like nobody would ever put it that way. And sometimes, okay. So to come back to the theme of like naive optimism, sometimes this actually led [00:25:00] to problems. So for instance, in this, this still cracks me up in the late 19th century. There were people who believed that we could improve on. Nature is distribution of plant and animal species. The nature was deficient in which species you know, we're aware and that we could improve on this by importing species, into non-natural habitats. And this was not only for like, you can imagine some of this for industrial, like agricultural purposes. Right. But literally some of it was just for aesthetic purposes. Like someone wanted to imitate. Yeah. If I'm recalling this correctly, someone wanted to import into America like all of the species of birds that were mentioned in Shakespeare sun. And this is purely just an aesthetic concern. Like, Hey, what if we had all these great, you know, songbirds in from, from Britain and we have them in America. So it turns out that in importing species, Willy nilly like can create some real problems. And we got by importing a bunch of foreign plants, we got a bunch of invasive pest species. And so this was a real [00:26:00] problem. And ultimately we had to clamp down. Another example of this that is near to my heart currently, because I just became a dad a couple months ago. Thanks. But it turns out that a few decades ago, people thought that for me, that infant formula was like superior to breast milk. And there was this whole generation of kids, apparently that was, that was just like raised on formula. And, you know, today, There's this, I mean, it turns out, oops. We found out like, oh, mother's breast milk has antibodies in it that protect against infection. You know, and it has maybe some, I don't know, growth hormones, and it's like this, we don't even know. It's a really complicated biological formula. That's been honed through, you know, millions or hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Right. However long mammals have been around. Right. And. So yeah, so again, some of that old sort of philosophy of progress was a little naive. You know, but now I think that someday we'll be able to make synthetic, you know whatever infant sustenance that will, [00:27:00] you know, that could be better than than what moms have to put out and given the amount of trouble that some women have with breastfeeding. I think that will be a boon to them. And we'll just be part of the further, a story of technology, liberating women. But we're not there yet, right? So we have to be realistic about sort of like where, where technology is. So this, this sort of relationship to nature is I think part of where you see the the, the, the contrast between then and now a related part is people's people's concept of growth and how they regarded growth. So here's another. One of these shocking stories that shows you going like the past is a foreign country in the, in 1890 in the United States. The, the United States census, which has done every 10 years was done for the first time with machines. With that we didn't yet have computers but it was done for the first time with tabulating machines made by the Hollerith tabulating company. And if it, if it ha you know, the, the, the census had grown large and complicated enough that it had, if it hadn't been known these machines, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it done on time. It was becoming a huge clerical challenge. So, okay. Now, [00:28:00] everybody, now this is an era where. The population estimates are not, are just there. Aren't like up to the minute, you know, population estimates just available. You can't just Google what's the population of the U S and get like a current, you know, today's estimate. Right? So people really didn't have a number that was more like the number they had for the population in the U S was like 10 years old. And they were all sort of curious, like wondering, Hey, what's the new population 10 years later. And they were gunning for a figure of at least 75. There was this one, the way one one history of computing put, it was there were many people who felt that the dignity of the Republic could not be sustained on a number of less than 75 million. And so then, then, so then the census comes in. And the real T count is something in the 60 millions, right? It's not even 70 million. And like, people are not just disappointing. People are incensed, they're angry. And they like, they like blame the Hollerith tabulating company for bundling. They're like, it must've been the machines, right. The machines screwed this. [00:29:00] Yeah, that's right. Demand a recount. Right. And, and so they, they they're like, man, this, this Hollerith guy totally bungled the census. Obviously the number is bigger. It's gotta be bigger than that. Right. And it's funny because, so this is 1890, right? So fast forward to 1968 and you have Paul and, and Erlick writing the population bomb, right. Where they're just like overpopulation is the absolute worst problem facing the entire world. And they're even essentially embraced. You know, coercive population control measures, including you know, and and not, but not limited to like forced sterilization essentially in order to in order to control population because they see it as like the worst risk facing the planet. I recommend by the way Charles Mann's book, the wizard and the prophet. For this and, and many other related issues. One of the things that book opened my eyes to was how much the the 1960s environmentalist movement was super focused on on overpopulation as like its biggest risk. And then, you know, today it's shifted to, they've shifted away [00:30:00] from that in part, because population is actually slowing. Ironically, the population growth rates started to slow right around the late 1960s, when that hysteria was happening. You know, but now now the population is actually projected to level off and maybe decline within the century. And so now of course the environmentalist concern has shifted to resource consumption instead because per capita resource consumption is growing. But, yeah. So just like that flip in, how do we regard growth? Right. Is growth a good thing? Something to be proud of as a nation that our population is growing so fast, right? Or is it something to be worried about? And we breathe a sigh of relief when population is actually level. Yeah, I'm getting like a very strong, like thesis, antithesis synthesis vibe of like we've had, we had the thesis, like the sort of like naive but like naive progress is the thesis, the sort of backlash against that is the, the antithesis. [00:31:00] And then like, now we need to come up with like, what is, what is the new city? Yeah, I mean, I'm not a hit Gelien, but I agree. There's something, there's something. Yeah, sir. Like a police back to two routes of progress, the organization something that I've been just sort of like wondering like Fox is like I feel like sort of a lot of the people. In, in like the, the progress movement in the slack, or like, I would say people like us, right? Like people, people from tech and I've, I've sort of talked to people who are either in academia or in government. And they're like really interested. And I was like, wondering if you have like, faults about like, sort of like now that is sort of onto like the next phase of, of this. I have like, sort of like ways to Rodan broad, like almost like broadened the scope brought in the sort of like people, [00:32:00] I don't know what the right word is like under, under the umbrella, under the tent. And sort of like, yeah, or like just sort of how you, how do you think about that? Cause it seems like really useful to have sort of as many sort of worlds involved as possible. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me talk about that. Maybe both longterm term and short term. So. Fundamentally, I see this as a very, long-term like a generational effort. So in terms of, you know, results from my work do like direct results from my work. I'm sort of looking on the scale of decades on games. And I think that yeah, I would refer you to a, an essay called culture wars are long wars by tenor Greer of his blog scholar stage which really sort of lays out why this is that the ideas at this fundamental level are sort of they, they take effect on a generational level, just like the, just like the philosophy of progress took about a generation to flip [00:33:00] from, I think, 1945 to 1970, it's going to take another generation to re. Established something deep and new as as the nude psychosis. So how does that happen? Well, I think it starts with a lot of deep and hard and difficult thinking. And and writing and like the most absolutely the, the fundamental thing we need is books. We need a lot of books to be written. And so I'm writing one now tentatively titled the story of industrial civilization that I intend to be sort of. To, to lay the foundation for the new philosophy of progress, but there are dozens more books that need to be written. I don't have time in my life to even write them all. So I'm hoping that other people would join me in this. And one of the things I'd like to do with the new organization is to help make that possible. So if anybody wants to write a progress book and needs help in our support doing it, please get in touch like a list of titles that you'd love to see. Yeah, sure. So I think we actually need three categories of of books or more broadly of contents. [00:34:00] So one is more histories of progress. Like the kind that I do where just a retelling of the story of progress, making it more accessible and more clear, because I just think that the story has never adequately been told. So I'm writing about. The, in, in the book that I'm writing virtually every chapter could be expanded into a book of its own. I've got a chapter on materials and manufacturing. I have a chapter on agriculture. I have a chapter on energy. I have one on you know, health and, and medicine. Right. And so just like all of these things does deserve a book of their own. I also think we could use more sort of analysis of maybe some of the failed promises of progress, what went wrong with nuclear power, for instance what what happened. The space travel and space exploration. Right? Why did that take off so dramatically and then sort of collapse and, and have a period of stagnation or similarly for for air travel and like, why is it that we're only now getting back supersonic air travel, for instance. Perhaps even nanotechnology is [00:35:00] in this category, if you believe. Jason was, Hall's take on it. In his book, where is my flying car? You know, he talks about he talks about nanotechnology as sort of like something that we ought to be much farther along on. So I think, you know, some of those kinds of analyses of what went wrong I think a second category. Of books that we really need is taking the the, just the biggest problems in the world and addressing them head on from kind of the, the pro progress standpoint. Right. So what would it mean to address some of the biggest problems in the world? Like climate change global poverty the environment War existential risk from, you know, everything from you know, bio engineered, pandemics to artificial intelligence, like all of these different things. What would it mean to address these problems? If you fundamentally believe in human agency, if you believe in science and technology and you believe that kind of like we can overcome it, it will be difficult. You know, it will, it's, it's not easy. We shouldn't be naive about it, but like we can find solutions. What [00:36:00] are the solutions that move us, the move humanity forward? You know, how do we, how do we address climate change without destroying our standard of living or killing economic growth? Right. So those are, that's like a whole category of books that need to be written. And then the third category I would say is visions of the future. So what is the, what is the kind of future that we could create? What are the exciting things on the horizon that we should be motivated by and should be working for? Again Hall's book where's my flying car is like a great entry in this. But we could use do you use a lot more including you know, I mean, I would love to see one and it made some of the stuff probably already exists. I haven't totally surveyed the field, but we absolutely need a book on longevity. What does it mean for us all to, to, to, to conquer aging and disease? You know, maybe something on how we cure cancer or how we cure all diseases, which is the the, the mission for instance, of the Chan-Zuckerberg foundation or Institute. We should you know, we should totally have this for nanotechnology. I mean, I guess some of this already exists maybe in Drexler's work, but I just think, you know, more positive visions [00:37:00] of the future to inspire people, to inspire the world at large, but especially to inspire the young scientists and engineers and founders who are going to actually go you know, create those things. The plug is a project hieroglyph which was like, if you've seen that. I've heard of that. I haven't read it yet. Why don't you just say what's about, oh, it was a, it's a collection of short science fiction of short, optimistic science fiction stories. That was a collaboration between, I believe Arizona state university and Neal Stephenson. And like the, the opening story that I love is by Neil Stevenson. And it just talks about like, well, what if we built just like a, a mile high tower that we use that like we've launched rockets out. Like, why not? Right? Like, like you could just, it's like, you don't need a space elevator. You seem like a really, really tall tower. And it's like, there's nothing, we wouldn't actually need to invent new technologies per se. Like we wouldn't need to like discover new scientific principles to do this. It would just take a lot of [00:38:00] engineering and a lot of resources. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a similar concept in Hall's book called the space pier, which you can look up. That's also on, on his website. It does require like discovering new things. Right? Cause the space depends on like being able to build things out of them assignments. The, the space tower just like involves a lot of steel like a lot of steel. So, so you've touched a little bit actually on, this is a good segue into, I've been talking about. But then like, beyond that, you know, the same, the basic ideas need to get out in every medium and format. Right. So, you know, I also do a lot on Twitter. We need, we need people who are good at like every social media channel. You know, I'm, I'm much better at Twitter than I am at Instagram or tech talks. So, you know, we need people kind of on those channels as well. We need, you know, we need video, we need podcasts. We need just sort of like every, every format platform me. These ideas need to get out there. And then ultimately you know, they need to get out there through all the institutions of society. Right. We need more journalists who sort of understand the history on the promise of [00:39:00] technology and use that as context for their work. We need more educators, both at the K-12 level and at university who are going to incorporate this into the. And I've already gotten started on that by creating a high school level course in the history of technology, which is currently being taught through a private high school, the academy of thought and industry we need you know, it needs to get out there in documentaries, right? Like there should be I'm really I'm really tempted as a side project. A a docu-drama about the life of Norman Borlaug, which is just an amazing life and a story that, that everybody should know is just, it's just like an underappreciated hero. I think a lot of these sort of stories of great scientists that had mentors could really be turned into really excellent, compelling stories, whether it's documentaries or I sort of fictionalized you know, dramas. The Wright brothers, it would be, you know, another great one. I, I decided after reading David McCullough's history of them and their invention and, and so forth. Right. So there could just be a lot of these. And then I think ultimately it gets into the culture through through fiction as well in all of its [00:40:00] forms. Right. So optimistic Saifai in, you know, novels and TV shows and movies and everything. Yeah. It's just also, I think I'm not. Science fiction, but just like fiction about what it's like to like what it's actually like to, to, to push things forward. Because I think I, like, I don't know. It's like most people don't actually know. Like researchers do along these lines Anton house had a good post blockbuster two, where he was talking about movies that dramatize invention and was looking for recommendations and was sort of reviewing movies by the criteria. Which ones actually show what it's like to go through the process. Right. And the sad thing about a lot of popular, even the popular treatments of this stuff, like Anton reviewed I guess there was a recent movie about Mary Curie. And there's a similar thing about you know Edison and like the current wars starting Benedict Cumberbatch. [00:41:00] And the problem with a lot of these things is they just sort of focus on like human drama, like people getting mad at each other and yelling and like fighting each other and so forth. Right. And they don't focus on like the iterative discovery process and the joy of, of inventing and discovering. So the, one of the totally you know, unexpected, the sleeper hit of Anton's review was this movie, I think it's actually in Hindi called pad man, which is a drama. the real story of. A guy who invented a cheap menstrual pad for women and that could be made you know, using a sort of like very low capital and then, and be made affordable to women in India. And I mean, he was really trespassing on social you know, cultural norms and boundaries to do this and was sort of like ostracized by his own community. But really pursued this process and the, the movie I saw the movie it's, I, I recommend it as well. It really does a good job of dramatize. The process is process of iteration and [00:42:00] invention and discovery and the trial and error and the joy of finding something, you know, that that actually works. So we need, yeah, we need more stuff like that that actually shows you know, shows the process and and the dedication you know, it's funny, one of the. One of my favorite writers in Silicon valley is Eric Reese who coined this term, the lean startup and read a book at the same name. And he's got this. He has this take that you know, whenever you see these stories of like business success, there's kind of like the opening scene, which is like the spark of inspiration, the great idea, you know, and then there's like, there's like the closing scene, which is. Basking in the rewards of success and in between is, is what he calls the montage, right? Because it's typically just a montage of kind of like people working on stuff, you know, and maybe, you know, maybe there's some like setbacks and there's some iteration and stuff, but it's just kind of glossed over. There's this like two minute montage of people iterating and some music is sort of playing over it. Right. And, and Eric's point is like, the montage is where all the [00:43:00] work happens. Right. It's unglamorous, it's a grind. It's like, you know, it's not necessarily fun and, you know, in and of itself, but it is where the actual work is done. And so you know, his point in that, in that context, it was like, we need to open up the, the, you know, the covers of this a little bit. We need to like teach people a little bit more about what it's like in the montage. And I think that's what we need, you know, just sort of like more broadly for science and. Okay. Here's, here's a pitch for a movie. I believe that the, the Pixar movie inside out right where they like go inside the, the little girl's head that, but for the montage. Right? So like the hall with the montage is that a lot of it is like sitting and thinking and like, not necessarily, it's like not necessarily communicated well with other people or just be talking, but like, you could have an entire internal drama. Oh, The of the, the process as a way to like, show what's [00:44:00] going on. Yeah. Good work. I don't know. I'm so sorry. All of that is so all of that is sort of the long-term view. Right? I think how things happen. A bunch of people including me, but not only me need to do a lot of hard thinking and research and writing and and speaking, and then these ideas need to get out to the world through every, in every format, medium platform and channel and, and institution and you know, sort of that's how ideas get into the zeitgeist. And so then I, you know, I said there's also, so the short term, so what's, so in the short term I'm going to work on doing this as much as possible. Like I said, I'm writing a book. I'm hoping that when I hire some more help, I'll be able to get my ideas out in more formats and mediums and channels. I would like to support other people who want to do these things. So again, if. Any vision that you are inspired to pursue along the lines of anything I've been talking about for the last 10 minutes. And, and there's some way that you need help doing it, whether it's money or connections or advice or coaching or [00:45:00] whatever, please get in touch with me at the roots of progress. And you can find my email on, on my website. And and I would love to support these products. And then another thing I'm going to be doing with the new organization and these resources is just continuing to build and strengthen the network, the progress community finding people who are sympathetic to these ideas and meeting them, getting to know them and. Introducing them to each other and getting them and getting them to know that they all getting everybody to sort of look around at everybody else and say, ah, you exist. You're there. You're interested in this great list form of connection. And I hope through that that there will be you know, a people will just understand, Hey, This is more than just me or more than just a small number of people. This is a growing thing. And also that people can start making connections to have, you know, fruitful collaborations, whether it's supporting each other, working together coaching and mentoring each other, investing in each other and so forth. So I plan to hold a a series of events in the beginning probably be private events. For a, you know, people in various niches or sub-communities of [00:46:00] the progress community to sort of get together and talk and meet each other and start to make some plans for how we develop these ideas and get them out there. Isn't that seems like an excellent, an optimistic place to close. I, I really sort of appreciate you, like laying out the, the grand plan. And just all the work you're doing. It's it's I mean, as you know, it's like, it's super exciting. Thanks. Same to you and yeah, it was great to be here and chat again. Thanks for having me back.

Episode 118 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Do-Wah-Diddy-Diddy" by Manfred Mann, and how a jazz group with a blues singer had one of the biggest bubblegum pop hits of the sixties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Walk on By" by Dionne Warwick. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of tracks by Manfred Mann. Information on the group comes from Mannerisms: The Five Phases of Manfred Mann, by Greg Russo, and from the liner notes of this eleven-CD box set of the group's work. For a much cheaper collection of the group's hits -- but without the jazz, blues, and baroque pop elements that made them more interesting than the average sixties singles band -- this has all the hit singles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript: So far, when we've looked at the British blues and R&B scene, we've concentrated on the bands who were influenced by Chicago blues, and who kept to a straightforward guitar/bass/drums lineup. But there was another, related, branch of the blues scene in Britain that was more musically sophisticated, and which while its practitioners certainly enjoyed playing songs by Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters, was also rooted in the jazz of people like Mose Allison. Today we're going to look at one of those bands, and at the intersection of jazz and the British R&B scene, and how a jazz band with a flute player and a vibraphonist briefly became bubblegum pop idols. We're going to look at "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Do Wah Diddy Diddy"] Manfred Mann is, annoyingly when writing about the group, the name of both a band and of one of its members. Manfred Mann the human being, as opposed to Manfred Mann the group, was born Manfred Lubowitz in South Africa, and while he was from a wealthy family, he was very opposed to the vicious South African system of apartheid, and considered himself strongly anti-racist. He was also a lover of jazz music, especially some of the most progressive music being made at the time -- musicians like Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane -- and he soon became a very competent jazz pianist, playing with musicians like Hugh Masakela at a time when that kind of fraternisation between people of different races was very much frowned upon in South Africa. Manfred desperately wanted to get out of South Africa, and he took his chance in June 1961, at the last point at which he was a Commonwealth citizen. The Commonwealth, for those who don't know, is a political association of countries that were originally parts of the British Empire, and basically replaced the British Empire when the former colonies gained their independence. These days, the Commonwealth is of mostly symbolic importance, but in the fifties and sixties, as the Empire was breaking up, it was considered a real power in its own right, and in particular, until some changes to immigration law in the mid sixties, Commonwealth citizens had the right to move to the UK.  At that point, South Africa had just voted to become a republic, and there was a rule in the Commonwealth that countries with a head of state other than the Queen could only remain in the Commonwealth with the unanimous agreement of all the other members. And several of the other member states, unsurprisingly, objected to the continued membership of a country whose entire system of government was based on the most virulent racism imaginable. So, as soon as South Africa became a republic, it lost its Commonwealth membership, and that meant that its citizens lost their automatic right to emigrate to the UK. But they were given a year's grace period, and so Manfred took that chance and moved over to England, where he started playing jazz keyboards, giving piano lessons, and making some money on the side by writing record reviews. For those reviews, rather than credit himself as Manfred Lubowitz, he decided to use a pseudonym taken from the jazz drummer Shelly Manne, and he became Manfred Manne -- spelled with a silent e on the end, which he later dropped. Mann was rather desperate for gigs, and he ended up taking a job playing with a band at a Butlin's holiday camp. Graham Bond, who we've seen in several previous episodes as the leader of The Graham Bond Organisation, was at that time playing Hammond organ there, but only wanted to play a few days a week. Mann became the substitute keyboard player for that holiday camp band, and struck up a good musical rapport with the drummer and vibraphone player, Mike Hugg. When Bond went off to form his own band, Mann and Hugg decided to form their own band along the same lines, mixing the modern jazz that they liked with the more commercial R&B that Bond was playing.  They named their group the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers, and it initially consisted of Mann on keyboards, Hugg on drums and vibraphone, Mike Vickers on guitar, flute, and saxophone, Dave Richmond on bass, Tony Roberts and Don Fay on saxophone and Ian Fenby on trumpet. As their experiences were far more in the jazz field than in blues, they decided that they needed to get in a singer who was more familiar with the blues side of things. The person they chose was a singer who was originally named Paul Pond, and who had been friends for a long time with Brian Jones, before Jones had formed the Rolling Stones. While Jones had been performing under the name Elmo Lewis, his friend had taken on Jones' surname, as he thought "Paul Pond" didn't sound like a good name for a singer. He'd first kept his initials, and performed as P.P. Jones, but then he'd presumably realised that "pee-pee" is probably not the best stage name in the world, and so he'd become just Paul Jones, the name by which he's known to this day. Jones, like his friend Brian, was a fan particularly of Chicago blues, and he had occasionally appeared with Alexis Korner. After auditioning for the group at a ska club called The Roaring 20s, Jones became the group's lead singer and harmonica player, and the group soon moved in Jones' musical direction, playing the kind of Chicago blues that was popular at the Marquee club, where they soon got a residency, rather than the soul style that was more popular at the nearby Flamingo club, and which would be more expected from a horn-centric lineup. Unsurprisingly, given this, the horn players soon left, and the group became a five-piece core of Jones, Mann, Hugg, Vickers, and Richmond. This group was signed to HMV records by John Burgess. Burgess was a producer who specialised in music of a very different style from what the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers played. We've already heard some of his production work -- he was the producer for Adam Faith from "What Do You Want?" on: [Excerpt: Adam Faith, "What Do You Want?"] And at the time he signed the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers, he was just starting to work with a new group, Freddie and the Dreamers, for whom he would produce several hits: [Excerpt: Freddie and the Dreamers, "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody"] Burgess liked the group, but he insisted that they had to change their name -- and in fact, he insisted that the group change their name to Manfred Mann. None of the group members liked the idea -- even Mann himself thought that this seemed a little unreasonable, and Paul Jones in particular disagreed strongly with the idea, but they were all eventually mollified by the idea that all the publicity would emphasise that all five of them were equal members of the group, and that while the group might be named after their keyboard player, there were five members. The group members themselves always referred to themselves as "the Manfreds" rather than as Manfred Mann. The group's first single showed that despite having become a blues band and then getting produced by a pop producer, they were still at heart a jazz group. "Why Should We Not?" is an instrumental led by Vickers' saxophone, Mann's organ, and Jones' harmonica: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Why Should We Not?"] Unsurprisingly, neither that nor the B-side, a jazz instrumental version of "Frere Jacques", charted -- Britain in 1963 wanted Gerry and the Pacemakers and Freddie and the Dreamers, not jazz instrumentals. The next single, an R&B song called "Cock-A-Hoop" written by Jones, did little better. The group's big breakthrough came from Ready, Steady, Go!, which at this point was using "Wipe Out!" by the Surfaris as its theme song: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "Wipe Out"] We've mentioned Ready, Steady, Go! in passing in previous episodes, but it was the most important pop music show of the early and mid sixties, just as Oh Boy! had been for the late fifties. Ready, Steady, Go! was, in principle at least, a general pop music programme, but in practice it catered primarily for the emerging mod subculture. "Mod" stood for "modernist", and the mods emerged from the group of people who liked modern jazz rather than trad, but by this point their primary musical interests were in soul and R&B. Mod was a working-class subculture, based in the South-East of England, especially London, and spurred on by the newfound comparative affluence of the early sixties, when for the first time young working-class people, while still living in poverty, had a small amount of disposable income to spend on clothes, music, and drugs. The Mods had a very particular sense of style, based around sharp Italian suits, pop art and op art, and Black American music or white British imitations of it. For them, music was functional, and primarily existed for the purposes of dancing, and many of them would take large amounts of amphetamines so they could spend the entire weekend at clubs dancing to soul and R&B music. And that entire weekend would kick off on Friday with Ready, Steady, Go!, whose catchphrase was "the weekend starts here!" Ready, Steady, Go! featured almost every important pop act of the early sixties, but while groups like Gerry and the Pacemakers or the Beatles would appear on it, it became known for its promotion of Black artists, and it was the first major British TV exposure for Motown artists like the Supremes, the Temptations, and the Marvelettes, for Stax artists like Otis Redding, and for blues artists like John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson. Ready Steady Go! was also the primary TV exposure for British groups who were inspired by those artists, and it's through Ready Steady Go! that the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, Them, and the Who, among others reached national popularity -- all of them acts that were popular among the Mods in particular. But "Wipe Out" didn't really fit with this kind of music, and so the producers of Ready Steady Go were looking for something more suitable for their theme music. They'd already tried commissioning the Animals to record something, as we saw a couple of weeks back, but that hadn't worked out, and instead they turned to Manfred Mann, who came up with a song that not only perfectly fit the style of the show, but also handily promoted the group themselves: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "5-4-3-2-1"] That was taken on as Ready, Steady, Go!s theme song, and made the top five in the UK. But by the time it charted, the group had already changed lineup. Dave Richmond was seen by the other members of the group as a problem at this point. Richmond was a great bass player, but he was a great *jazz* bass player -- he wanted to be Charles Mingus, and play strange cross-rhythms, and what the group needed at this point was someone who would just play straightforward blues basslines without complaint -- they needed someone closer to Willie Dixon than to Mingus. Tom McGuinness, who replaced him, had already had a rather unusual career trajectory. He'd started out as a satirist, writing for the magazine Private Eye and the TV series That Was The Week That Was, one of the most important British comedy shows of the sixties, but he had really wanted to be a blues musician instead. He'd formed a blues band, The Roosters, with a guitarist who went to art school with his girlfriend, and they'd played a few gigs around London before the duo had been poached by the minor Merseybeat band Casey Jones and his Engineers, a group which had been formed by Brian Casser, formerly of Cass & The Cassanovas, the group that had become The Big Three. Casey Jones and his Engineers had just released the single "One Way Ticket": [Excerpt: Casey Jones and His Engineers, "One-Way Ticket"] However, the two guitarists soon realised, after just a handful of gigs, that they weren't right for that group, and quit. McGuinness' friend, Eric Clapton, went on to join the Yardbirds, and we'll be hearing more about him in a few weeks' time, but McGuinness was at a loose end, until he discovered that Manfred Mann were looking for a bass player. McGuinness was a guitarist, but bluffed to Paul Jones that he'd switched to bass, and got the job. He said later that the only question he'd been asked when interviewed by the group was "are you willing to play simple parts?" -- as he'd never played bass in his life until the day of his first gig with the group, he was more than happy to say yes to that. McGuinness joined only days after the recording of "5-4-3-2-1", and Richmond was out -- though he would have a successful career as a session bass player, playing on, among others, "Je t'Aime" by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, "Your Song" by Elton John, Labi Siffre's "It Must Be Love", and the music for the long-running sitcoms Only Fools and Horses and Last of the Summer Wine. As soon as McGuinness joined, the group set out on tour, to promote their new hit, but also to act as the backing group for the Crystals, on a tour which also featured Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and Joe Brown and his Bruvvers.  The group's next single, "Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble" was another original, and made number eleven on the charts, but the group saw it as a failure anyway, to the extent that they tried their best to forget it ever existed. In researching this episode I got an eleven-CD box set of the group's work, which contains every studio album or compilation they released in the sixties, a collection of their EPs, and a collection of their BBC sessions. In all eleven CDs, "Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble" doesn't appear at all. Which is quite odd, as it's a perfectly serviceable, if unexceptional, piece of pop R&B: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble"] But it's not just the group that were unimpressed with the record. John Burgess thought that the record only getting to number eleven was proof of his hypothesis that groups should not put out their own songs as singles. From this point on, with one exception in 1968, everything they released as an A-side would be a cover version or a song brought to them by a professional songwriter. This worried Jones, who didn't want to be forced to start singing songs he disliked, which he saw as a very likely outcome of this edict. So he made it his role in the group to seek out records that the group could cover, which would be commercial enough that they could get hit singles from them, but which would be something he could sing while keeping his self-respect. His very first selection certainly met the first criterion. The song which would become their biggest hit had very little to do with the R&B or jazz which had inspired the group. Instead, it was a perfect piece of Brill Building pop. The Exciters, who originally recorded it, were one of the great girl groups of the early sixties (though they also had one male member), and had already had quite an influence on pop music. They had been discovered by Leiber and Stoller, who had signed them to Red Bird Records, a label we'll be looking at in much more detail in an upcoming episode, and they'd had a hit in 1962 with a Bert Berns song, "Tell Him", which made the top five: [Excerpt: The Exciters, "Tell Him"] That record had so excited a young British folk singer who was in the US at the time to record an album with her group The Springfields that she completely reworked her entire style, went solo, and kickstarted a solo career singing pop-soul songs under the name Dusty Springfield. The Exciters never had another top forty hit, but they became popular enough among British music lovers that the Beatles asked them to open for them on their American tour in summer 1964. Most of the Exciters' records were of songs written by the more R&B end of the Brill Building songwriters -- they would record several more Bert Berns songs, and some by Ritchie Barrett, but the song that would become their most well-known legacy was actually written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Like many of Barry and Greenwich's songs, it was based around a nonsense phrase, but in this case the phrase they used had something of a longer history, though it's not apparent whether they fully realised that. In African-American folklore of the early twentieth century, the imaginary town of Diddy Wah Diddy was something like a synonym for heaven, or for the Big Rock Candy Mountain of the folk song -- a place where people didn't have to work, and where food was free everywhere. This place had been sung about in many songs, like Blind Blake's "Diddie Wah Diddie": [Excerpt: Blind Blake, "Diddie Wah Diddie"] And a song written by Willie Dixon for Bo Diddley: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "Diddy Wah Diddy"] And "Diddy" and "Wah" had often been used by other Black artists, in various contexts, like Roy Brown and Dave Bartholomew's "Diddy-Y-Diddy-O": [Excerpt: Roy Brown and Dave Bartholomew, "Diddy-Y-Diddy-O"] And Junior and Marie's "Boom Diddy Wah Wah", a "Ko Ko Mo" knockoff produced by Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Junior and Marie, "Boom Diddy Wah Wah"]  So when Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich wrote "Do-Wah-Diddy", as the song was originally called, they were, wittingly or not, tapping into a rich history of rhythm and blues music. But the song as Greenwich demoed it was one of the first examples of what would become known as "bubblegum pop", and is particularly notable in her demo for its very early use of the fuzz guitar that would be a stylistic hallmark of that subgenre: [Excerpt: Ellie Greenwich, "Do-Wah-Diddy (demo)"] The Exciters' version of the song took it into more conventional girl-group territory, with a strong soulful vocal, but with the group's backing vocal call-and-response chant showing up the song's resemblance to the kind of schoolyard chanting games which were, of course, the basis of the very first girl group records: [Excerpt: The Exciters, "Do-Wah-Diddy"] Sadly, that record only reached number seventy-eight on the charts, and the Exciters would have no more hits in the US, though a later lineup of the group would make the UK top forty in 1975 with a song written and produced by the Northern Soul DJ Ian Levine. But in 1964 Jones had picked up on "Do-Wah-Diddy", and knew it was a potential hit. Most of the group weren't very keen on "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", as the song was renamed. There are relatively few interviews with any of them about it, but from what I can gather the only member of the band who thought anything much of the song was Paul Jones. However, the group did their best with the recording, and were particularly impressed with Manfred's Hammond organ solo -- which they later discovered was cut out of the finished recording by Burgess. The result was an organ-driven stomping pop song which had more in common with the Dave Clark Five than with anything else the group were doing: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Do Wah Diddy Diddy"] The record reached number one in both the UK and the US, and the group immediately went on an American tour, packaged with Peter & Gordon, a British duo who were having some success at the time because Peter Asher's sister was dating Paul McCartney, who'd given them a hit song, "World Without Love": [Excerpt: Peter and Gordon, "World Without Love"] The group found the experience of touring the US a thoroughly miserable one, and decided that they weren't going to bother going back again, so while they would continue to have big hits in Britain for the rest of the decade, they only had a few minor successes in the States. After the success of "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", EMI rushed out an album by the group, The Five Faces of Manfred Mann, which must have caused some confusion for anyone buying it in the hope of more "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" style pop songs. Half the album's fourteen tracks were covers of blues and R&B, mostly by Chess artists -- there were covers of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Ike & Tina Turner, and more. There were also five originals, written or co-written by Jones, in the same style as those songs, plus a couple of instrumentals, one written by the group and one a cover of Cannonball Adderly's jazz classic "Sack O'Woe", arranged to show off the group's skills at harmonica, saxophone, piano and vibraphone: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Sack O'Woe"] However, the group realised that the formula they'd hit on with "Do  Wah Diddy Diddy" was a useful one, and so for their next single they once again covered a girl-group track with a nonsense-word chorus and title -- their version of "Sha La La" by the Shirelles took them to number three on the UK charts, and number twelve in the US. They followed that with a ballad, "Come Tomorrow", one of the few secular songs ever recorded by Marie Knight, the gospel singer who we discussed briefly way back in episode five, who was Sister Rosetta Tharpe's duet partner, and quite possibly her partner in other senses. They released several more singles and were consistently charting, to the point that they actually managed to get a top ten hit with a self-written song despite their own material not being considered worth putting out as singles. Paul Jones had written "The One in the Middle" for his friends the Yardbirds, but when they turned it down, he rewrote the song to be about Manfred Mann, and especially about himself: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "The One in the Middle"] Like much of their material, that was released on an EP, and the EP was so successful that as well as making number one on the EP charts, it also made number ten on the regular charts, with "The One in the Middle" as the lead-off track. But "The One in the Middle" was a clue to something else as well -- Jones was getting increasingly annoyed at the fact that the records the group was making were hits, and he was the frontman, the lead singer, the person picking the cover versions, and the writer of much of the original material, but all the records were getting credited to the group's keyboard player.  But Jones wasn't the next member of the group to leave. That was Mike Vickers, who went off to work in arranging film music and session work, including some work for the Beatles, the music for the film Dracula AD 1972, and the opening and closing themes for This Week in Baseball. The last single the group released while Vickers was a member was the aptly-titled "If You Gotta Go, Go Now". Mann had heard Bob Dylan performing that song live, and had realised that the song had never been released. He'd contacted Dylan's publishers, got hold of a demo, and the group became the first to release a version of the song, making number two in the charts: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] Before Vickers' departure, the group had recorded their second album, Mann Made, and that had been even more eclectic than the first album, combining versions of blues classics like "Stormy Monday Blues", Motown songs like "The Way You Do The Things You Do", country covers like "You Don't Know Me", and oddities like "Bare Hugg", an original jazz instrumental for flute and vibraphone: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Bare Hugg"] McGuinness took the opportunity of Vickers leaving the group to switch from bass back to playing guitar, which had always been his preferred instrument. To fill in the gap, on Graham Bond's recommendation they hired away Jack Bruce, who had just been playing in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with McGuinness' old friend Eric Clapton, and it's Bruce who played bass on the group's next big hit, "Pretty Flamingo", the only UK number one that Bruce ever played on: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Pretty Flamingo"] Bruce stayed with the band for several months, before going off to play in another band who we'll be covering in a future episode. He was replaced in turn by Klaus Voorman. Voorman was an old friend of the Beatles from their Hamburg days, who had been taught the rudiments of bass by Stuart Sutcliffe, and had formed a trio, Paddy, Klaus, and Gibson, with two Merseybeat musicians, Paddy Chambers of the Big Three and Gibson Kemp of Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Paddy, Klaus, and Gibson, "No Good Without You Baby"] Like Vickers, Voorman could play the flute, and his flute playing would become a regular part of the group's later singles. These lineup changes didn't affect the group as either a chart act or as an act who were playing a huge variety of different styles of music. While the singles were uniformly catchy pop, on album tracks, B-sides or EPs you'd be likely to find versions of folk songs collected by Alan Lomax, like "John Hardy", or things like "Driva Man", a blues song about slavery in 5/4 time, originally by the jazz greats Oscar Brown and Max Roach: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Driva Man"] But by the time that track was released, Paul Jones was out of the group. He actually announced his intention to quit the group at the same time that Mike Vickers left, but the group had persuaded him to stay on for almost a year while they looked for his replacement, auditioning singers like Rod Stewart and Long John Baldry with little success. They eventually decided on Mike d'Abo, who had previously been the lead singer of a group called A Band of Angels: [Excerpt: A Band of Angels, "(Accept My) Invitation"] By the point d'Abo joined, relations  between the rest of the group and Jones were so poor that they didn't tell Jones that they were thinking of d'Abo -- Jones would later recollect that the group decided to stop at a pub on the way to a gig, ostensibly to watch themselves on TV, but actually to watch A Band of Angels on the same show, without explaining to Jones that that was what they were doing – Jones actually mentioned d'Abo to his bandmates as a possible replacement, not realising he was already in the group. Mann has talked about how on the group's last show with Jones, they drove to the gig in silence, and their first single with the new singer, a version of Dylan's "Just Like a Woman", came on the radio. There was a lot of discomfort in the band at this time, because their record label had decided to stick with Jones as a solo performer, and the rest of the group had had to find another label, and were worried that without Jones their career was over. Luckily for everyone involved, "Just Like a Woman" made the top ten, and the group's career was able to continue. Meanwhile, Jones' first single as a solo artist made the top five: [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "High Time"] But after that and his follow-up, "I've Been a Bad, Bad, Boy", which made number five, the best he could do was to barely scrape the top forty. Manfred Mann, on the other hand, continued having hits, though there was a constant struggle to find new material. d'Abo was himself a songwriter, and it shows the limitations of the "no A-sides by group members" rule that while d'Abo was the lead singer of Manfred Mann, he wrote two hit singles which the group never recorded. The first, "Handbags and Gladrags", was a hit for Chris Farlowe: [Excerpt: Chris Farlowe, "Handbags and Gladrags"] That was only a minor hit, but was later recorded successfully by Rod Stewart, with d'Abo arranging, and the Stereophonics. d'Abo also co-wrote, and played piano on, "Build Me Up Buttercup" by the Foundations: [Excerpt: The Foundations, "Build Me Up Buttercup"] But the group continued releasing singles written by other people.  Their second post-Jones single, from the perspective of a spurned lover insulting their ex's new fiancee, had to have its title changed from what the writers intended, as the group felt that a song insulting "semi-detached suburban Mr. Jones" might be taken the wrong way. Lightly retitled, "Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James" made number two, while the follow-up, "Ha Ha! Said the Clown", made number four. The two singles after that did significantly less well, though, and seemed to be quite bizarre choices -- an instrumental Hammond organ version of Tommy Roe's "Sweet Pea", which made number thirty-six, and a version of Randy Newman's bitterly cynical "So Long, Dad", which didn't make the charts at all. After this lack of success, the group decided to go back to what had worked for them before. They'd already had two hits with Dylan songs, and Mann had got hold of a copy of Dylan's Basement Tapes, a bootleg which we'll be talking about later. He picked up on one song from it, and got permission to release "The Mighty Quinn", which became the group's third number one: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "The Mighty Quinn"] The album from which that came, Mighty Garvey, is the closest thing the group came to an actual great album. While the group's earlier albums were mostly blues covers, this was mostly made up of original material by either Hugg or d'Abo, in a pastoral baroque pop style that invites comparisons to the Kinks or the Zombies' material of that period, but with a self-mocking comedy edge in several songs that was closer to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Probably the highlight of the album was the mellotron-driven "It's So Easy Falling": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "It's So Easy Falling"] But Mighty Garvey didn't chart, and it was the last gasp of the group as a creative entity. They had three more top-ten hits, all of them good examples of their type, but by January 1969, Tom McGuinness was interviewed saying "It's not a group any more. It's just five people who come together to make hit singles. That's the only aim of the group at the moment -- to make hit singles -- it's the only reason the group exists. Commercial success is very important to the group. It gives us financial freedom to do the things we want." The group split up in 1969, and went their separate ways. d'Abo appeared on the original Jesus Christ Superstar album, and then went into writing advertising jingles, most famously writing "a finger of fudge is just enough" for Cadbury's. McGuinness formed McGuinness Flint, with the songwriters Gallagher and Lyle, and had a big hit with "When I'm Dead and Gone": [Excerpt: McGuinness Flint, "When I'm Dead and Gone"] He later teamed up again with Paul Jones, to form a blues band imaginatively named "the Blues Band", who continue performing to this day: [Excerpt: The Blues Band, "Mean Ol' Frisco"] Jones became a born-again Christian in the eighties, and also starred in a children's TV show, Uncle Jack, and presented the BBC Radio 2 Blues Programme for thirty-two years. Manfred Mann and Mike Hugg formed another group, Manfred Mann Chapter Three, who released two albums before splitting. Hugg went on from that to write for TV and films, most notably writing the theme music to "Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?": [Excerpt: Highly Likely, "Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?"] Mann went on to form Manfred Mann's Earth Band, who had a number of hits, the biggest of which was the Bruce Springsteen song "Blinded by the Light": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann's Earth Band, "Blinded by the Light"] Almost uniquely for a band from the early sixties, all the members of the classic lineup of Manfred Mann are still alive. Manfred Mann continues to perform with various lineups of his Earth Band. Hugg, Jones, McGuinness, and d'Abo reunited as The Manfreds in the 1990s, with Vickers also in the band until 1999, and continue to tour together -- I still have a ticket to see them which was originally for a show in April 2020, but has just been rescheduled to 2022. McGuinness and Jones also still tour with the Blues Band. And Mike Vickers now spends his time creating experimental animations.  Manfred Mann were a band with too many musical interests to have a coherent image, and their reliance on outside songwriters and their frequent lineup changes meant that they never had the consistent sound of many of their contemporaries. But partly because of this, they created a catalogue that rewards exploration in a way that several more well-regarded bands' work doesn't, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a major critical reassessment of them at some point. But whether that happens or not, almost sixty years on people around the world still respond instantly to the opening bars of their biggest hit, and "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" remains one of the most fondly remembered singles of the early sixties.

Episode 118 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Do-Wah-Diddy-Diddy” by Manfred Mann, and how a jazz group with a blues singer had one of the biggest bubblegum pop hits of the sixties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on “Walk on By” by Dionne Warwick. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of tracks by Manfred Mann. Information on the group comes from Mannerisms: The Five Phases of Manfred Mann, by Greg Russo, and from the liner notes of this eleven-CD box set of the group’s work. For a much cheaper collection of the group’s hits — but without the jazz, blues, and baroque pop elements that made them more interesting than the average sixties singles band — this has all the hit singles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript: So far, when we’ve looked at the British blues and R&B scene, we’ve concentrated on the bands who were influenced by Chicago blues, and who kept to a straightforward guitar/bass/drums lineup. But there was another, related, branch of the blues scene in Britain that was more musically sophisticated, and which while its practitioners certainly enjoyed playing songs by Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters, was also rooted in the jazz of people like Mose Allison. Today we’re going to look at one of those bands, and at the intersection of jazz and the British R&B scene, and how a jazz band with a flute player and a vibraphonist briefly became bubblegum pop idols. We’re going to look at “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”] Manfred Mann is, annoyingly when writing about the group, the name of both a band and of one of its members. Manfred Mann the human being, as opposed to Manfred Mann the group, was born Manfred Lubowitz in South Africa, and while he was from a wealthy family, he was very opposed to the vicious South African system of apartheid, and considered himself strongly anti-racist. He was also a lover of jazz music, especially some of the most progressive music being made at the time — musicians like Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane — and he soon became a very competent jazz pianist, playing with musicians like Hugh Masakela at a time when that kind of fraternisation between people of different races was very much frowned upon in South Africa. Manfred desperately wanted to get out of South Africa, and he took his chance in June 1961, at the last point at which he was a Commonwealth citizen. The Commonwealth, for those who don’t know, is a political association of countries that were originally parts of the British Empire, and basically replaced the British Empire when the former colonies gained their independence. These days, the Commonwealth is of mostly symbolic importance, but in the fifties and sixties, as the Empire was breaking up, it was considered a real power in its own right, and in particular, until some changes to immigration law in the mid sixties, Commonwealth citizens had the right to move to the UK.  At that point, South Africa had just voted to become a republic, and there was a rule in the Commonwealth that countries with a head of state other than the Queen could only remain in the Commonwealth with the unanimous agreement of all the other members. And several of the other member states, unsurprisingly, objected to the continued membership of a country whose entire system of government was based on the most virulent racism imaginable. So, as soon as South Africa became a republic, it lost its Commonwealth membership, and that meant that its citizens lost their automatic right to emigrate to the UK. But they were given a year’s grace period, and so Manfred took that chance and moved over to England, where he started playing jazz keyboards, giving piano lessons, and making some money on the side by writing record reviews. For those reviews, rather than credit himself as Manfred Lubowitz, he decided to use a pseudonym taken from the jazz drummer Shelly Manne, and he became Manfred Manne — spelled with a silent e on the end, which he later dropped. Mann was rather desperate for gigs, and he ended up taking a job playing with a band at a Butlin’s holiday camp. Graham Bond, who we’ve seen in several previous episodes as the leader of The Graham Bond Organisation, was at that time playing Hammond organ there, but only wanted to play a few days a week. Mann became the substitute keyboard player for that holiday camp band, and struck up a good musical rapport with the drummer and vibraphone player, Mike Hugg. When Bond went off to form his own band, Mann and Hugg decided to form their own band along the same lines, mixing the modern jazz that they liked with the more commercial R&B that Bond was playing.  They named their group the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers, and it initially consisted of Mann on keyboards, Hugg on drums and vibraphone, Mike Vickers on guitar, flute, and saxophone, Dave Richmond on bass, Tony Roberts and Don Fay on saxophone and Ian Fenby on trumpet. As their experiences were far more in the jazz field than in blues, they decided that they needed to get in a singer who was more familiar with the blues side of things. The person they chose was a singer who was originally named Paul Pond, and who had been friends for a long time with Brian Jones, before Jones had formed the Rolling Stones. While Jones had been performing under the name Elmo Lewis, his friend had taken on Jones’ surname, as he thought “Paul Pond” didn’t sound like a good name for a singer. He’d first kept his initials, and performed as P.P. Jones, but then he’d presumably realised that “pee-pee” is probably not the best stage name in the world, and so he’d become just Paul Jones, the name by which he’s known to this day. Jones, like his friend Brian, was a fan particularly of Chicago blues, and he had occasionally appeared with Alexis Korner. After auditioning for the group at a ska club called The Roaring 20s, Jones became the group’s lead singer and harmonica player, and the group soon moved in Jones’ musical direction, playing the kind of Chicago blues that was popular at the Marquee club, where they soon got a residency, rather than the soul style that was more popular at the nearby Flamingo club, and which would be more expected from a horn-centric lineup. Unsurprisingly, given this, the horn players soon left, and the group became a five-piece core of Jones, Mann, Hugg, Vickers, and Richmond. This group was signed to HMV records by John Burgess. Burgess was a producer who specialised in music of a very different style from what the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers played. We’ve already heard some of his production work — he was the producer for Adam Faith from “What Do You Want?” on: [Excerpt: Adam Faith, “What Do You Want?”] And at the time he signed the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers, he was just starting to work with a new group, Freddie and the Dreamers, for whom he would produce several hits: [Excerpt: Freddie and the Dreamers, “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody”] Burgess liked the group, but he insisted that they had to change their name — and in fact, he insisted that the group change their name to Manfred Mann. None of the group members liked the idea — even Mann himself thought that this seemed a little unreasonable, and Paul Jones in particular disagreed strongly with the idea, but they were all eventually mollified by the idea that all the publicity would emphasise that all five of them were equal members of the group, and that while the group might be named after their keyboard player, there were five members. The group members themselves always referred to themselves as “the Manfreds” rather than as Manfred Mann. The group’s first single showed that despite having become a blues band and then getting produced by a pop producer, they were still at heart a jazz group. “Why Should We Not?” is an instrumental led by Vickers’ saxophone, Mann’s organ, and Jones’ harmonica: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Why Should We Not?”] Unsurprisingly, neither that nor the B-side, a jazz instrumental version of “Frere Jacques”, charted — Britain in 1963 wanted Gerry and the Pacemakers and Freddie and the Dreamers, not jazz instrumentals. The next single, an R&B song called “Cock-A-Hoop” written by Jones, did little better. The group’s big breakthrough came from Ready, Steady, Go!, which at this point was using “Wipe Out!” by the Surfaris as its theme song: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, “Wipe Out”] We’ve mentioned Ready, Steady, Go! in passing in previous episodes, but it was the most important pop music show of the early and mid sixties, just as Oh Boy! had been for the late fifties. Ready, Steady, Go! was, in principle at least, a general pop music programme, but in practice it catered primarily for the emerging mod subculture. “Mod” stood for “modernist”, and the mods emerged from the group of people who liked modern jazz rather than trad, but by this point their primary musical interests were in soul and R&B. Mod was a working-class subculture, based in the South-East of England, especially London, and spurred on by the newfound comparative affluence of the early sixties, when for the first time young working-class people, while still living in poverty, had a small amount of disposable income to spend on clothes, music, and drugs. The Mods had a very particular sense of style, based around sharp Italian suits, pop art and op art, and Black American music or white British imitations of it. For them, music was functional, and primarily existed for the purposes of dancing, and many of them would take large amounts of amphetamines so they could spend the entire weekend at clubs dancing to soul and R&B music. And that entire weekend would kick off on Friday with Ready, Steady, Go!, whose catchphrase was “the weekend starts here!” Ready, Steady, Go! featured almost every important pop act of the early sixties, but while groups like Gerry and the Pacemakers or the Beatles would appear on it, it became known for its promotion of Black artists, and it was the first major British TV exposure for Motown artists like the Supremes, the Temptations, and the Marvelettes, for Stax artists like Otis Redding, and for blues artists like John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson. Ready Steady Go! was also the primary TV exposure for British groups who were inspired by those artists, and it’s through Ready Steady Go! that the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, Them, and the Who, among others reached national popularity — all of them acts that were popular among the Mods in particular. But “Wipe Out” didn’t really fit with this kind of music, and so the producers of Ready Steady Go were looking for something more suitable for their theme music. They’d already tried commissioning the Animals to record something, as we saw a couple of weeks back, but that hadn’t worked out, and instead they turned to Manfred Mann, who came up with a song that not only perfectly fit the style of the show, but also handily promoted the group themselves: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “5-4-3-2-1”] That was taken on as Ready, Steady, Go!s theme song, and made the top five in the UK. But by the time it charted, the group had already changed lineup. Dave Richmond was seen by the other members of the group as a problem at this point. Richmond was a great bass player, but he was a great *jazz* bass player — he wanted to be Charles Mingus, and play strange cross-rhythms, and what the group needed at this point was someone who would just play straightforward blues basslines without complaint — they needed someone closer to Willie Dixon than to Mingus. Tom McGuinness, who replaced him, had already had a rather unusual career trajectory. He’d started out as a satirist, writing for the magazine Private Eye and the TV series That Was The Week That Was, one of the most important British comedy shows of the sixties, but he had really wanted to be a blues musician instead. He’d formed a blues band, The Roosters, with a guitarist who went to art school with his girlfriend, and they’d played a few gigs around London before the duo had been poached by the minor Merseybeat band Casey Jones and his Engineers, a group which had been formed by Brian Casser, formerly of Cass & The Cassanovas, the group that had become The Big Three. Casey Jones and his Engineers had just released the single “One Way Ticket”: [Excerpt: Casey Jones and His Engineers, “One-Way Ticket”] However, the two guitarists soon realised, after just a handful of gigs, that they weren’t right for that group, and quit. McGuinness’ friend, Eric Clapton, went on to join the Yardbirds, and we’ll be hearing more about him in a few weeks’ time, but McGuinness was at a loose end, until he discovered that Manfred Mann were looking for a bass player. McGuinness was a guitarist, but bluffed to Paul Jones that he’d switched to bass, and got the job. He said later that the only question he’d been asked when interviewed by the group was “are you willing to play simple parts?” — as he’d never played bass in his life until the day of his first gig with the group, he was more than happy to say yes to that. McGuinness joined only days after the recording of “5-4-3-2-1”, and Richmond was out — though he would have a successful career as a session bass player, playing on, among others, “Je t’Aime” by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, “Your Song” by Elton John, Labi Siffre’s “It Must Be Love”, and the music for the long-running sitcoms Only Fools and Horses and Last of the Summer Wine. As soon as McGuinness joined, the group set out on tour, to promote their new hit, but also to act as the backing group for the Crystals, on a tour which also featured Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and Joe Brown and his Bruvvers.  The group’s next single, “Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble” was another original, and made number eleven on the charts, but the group saw it as a failure anyway, to the extent that they tried their best to forget it ever existed. In researching this episode I got an eleven-CD box set of the group’s work, which contains every studio album or compilation they released in the sixties, a collection of their EPs, and a collection of their BBC sessions. In all eleven CDs, “Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble” doesn’t appear at all. Which is quite odd, as it’s a perfectly serviceable, if unexceptional, piece of pop R&B: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble”] But it’s not just the group that were unimpressed with the record. John Burgess thought that the record only getting to number eleven was proof of his hypothesis that groups should not put out their own songs as singles. From this point on, with one exception in 1968, everything they released as an A-side would be a cover version or a song brought to them by a professional songwriter. This worried Jones, who didn’t want to be forced to start singing songs he disliked, which he saw as a very likely outcome of this edict. So he made it his role in the group to seek out records that the group could cover, which would be commercial enough that they could get hit singles from them, but which would be something he could sing while keeping his self-respect. His very first selection certainly met the first criterion. The song which would become their biggest hit had very little to do with the R&B or jazz which had inspired the group. Instead, it was a perfect piece of Brill Building pop. The Exciters, who originally recorded it, were one of the great girl groups of the early sixties (though they also had one male member), and had already had quite an influence on pop music. They had been discovered by Leiber and Stoller, who had signed them to Red Bird Records, a label we’ll be looking at in much more detail in an upcoming episode, and they’d had a hit in 1962 with a Bert Berns song, “Tell Him”, which made the top five: [Excerpt: The Exciters, “Tell Him”] That record had so excited a young British folk singer who was in the US at the time to record an album with her group The Springfields that she completely reworked her entire style, went solo, and kickstarted a solo career singing pop-soul songs under the name Dusty Springfield. The Exciters never had another top forty hit, but they became popular enough among British music lovers that the Beatles asked them to open for them on their American tour in summer 1964. Most of the Exciters’ records were of songs written by the more R&B end of the Brill Building songwriters — they would record several more Bert Berns songs, and some by Ritchie Barrett, but the song that would become their most well-known legacy was actually written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Like many of Barry and Greenwich’s songs, it was based around a nonsense phrase, but in this case the phrase they used had something of a longer history, though it’s not apparent whether they fully realised that. In African-American folklore of the early twentieth century, the imaginary town of Diddy Wah Diddy was something like a synonym for heaven, or for the Big Rock Candy Mountain of the folk song — a place where people didn’t have to work, and where food was free everywhere. This place had been sung about in many songs, like Blind Blake’s “Diddie Wah Diddie”: [Excerpt: Blind Blake, “Diddie Wah Diddie”] And a song written by Willie Dixon for Bo Diddley: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, “Diddy Wah Diddy”] And “Diddy” and “Wah” had often been used by other Black artists, in various contexts, like Roy Brown and Dave Bartholomew’s “Diddy-Y-Diddy-O”: [Excerpt: Roy Brown and Dave Bartholomew, “Diddy-Y-Diddy-O”] And Junior and Marie’s “Boom Diddy Wah Wah”, a “Ko Ko Mo” knockoff produced by Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Junior and Marie, “Boom Diddy Wah Wah”]  So when Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich wrote “Do-Wah-Diddy”, as the song was originally called, they were, wittingly or not, tapping into a rich history of rhythm and blues music. But the song as Greenwich demoed it was one of the first examples of what would become known as “bubblegum pop”, and is particularly notable in her demo for its very early use of the fuzz guitar that would be a stylistic hallmark of that subgenre: [Excerpt: Ellie Greenwich, “Do-Wah-Diddy (demo)”] The Exciters’ version of the song took it into more conventional girl-group territory, with a strong soulful vocal, but with the group’s backing vocal call-and-response chant showing up the song’s resemblance to the kind of schoolyard chanting games which were, of course, the basis of the very first girl group records: [Excerpt: The Exciters, “Do-Wah-Diddy”] Sadly, that record only reached number seventy-eight on the charts, and the Exciters would have no more hits in the US, though a later lineup of the group would make the UK top forty in 1975 with a song written and produced by the Northern Soul DJ Ian Levine. But in 1964 Jones had picked up on “Do-Wah-Diddy”, and knew it was a potential hit. Most of the group weren’t very keen on “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, as the song was renamed. There are relatively few interviews with any of them about it, but from what I can gather the only member of the band who thought anything much of the song was Paul Jones. However, the group did their best with the recording, and were particularly impressed with Manfred’s Hammond organ solo — which they later discovered was cut out of the finished recording by Burgess. The result was an organ-driven stomping pop song which had more in common with the Dave Clark Five than with anything else the group were doing: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”] The record reached number one in both the UK and the US, and the group immediately went on an American tour, packaged with Peter & Gordon, a British duo who were having some success at the time because Peter Asher’s sister was dating Paul McCartney, who’d given them a hit song, “World Without Love”: [Excerpt: Peter and Gordon, “World Without Love”] The group found the experience of touring the US a thoroughly miserable one, and decided that they weren’t going to bother going back again, so while they would continue to have big hits in Britain for the rest of the decade, they only had a few minor successes in the States. After the success of “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, EMI rushed out an album by the group, The Five Faces of Manfred Mann, which must have caused some confusion for anyone buying it in the hope of more “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” style pop songs. Half the album’s fourteen tracks were covers of blues and R&B, mostly by Chess artists — there were covers of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Ike & Tina Turner, and more. There were also five originals, written or co-written by Jones, in the same style as those songs, plus a couple of instrumentals, one written by the group and one a cover of Cannonball Adderly’s jazz classic “Sack O’Woe”, arranged to show off the group’s skills at harmonica, saxophone, piano and vibraphone: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Sack O’Woe”] However, the group realised that the formula they’d hit on with “Do  Wah Diddy Diddy” was a useful one, and so for their next single they once again covered a girl-group track with a nonsense-word chorus and title — their version of “Sha La La” by the Shirelles took them to number three on the UK charts, and number twelve in the US. They followed that with a ballad, “Come Tomorrow”, one of the few secular songs ever recorded by Marie Knight, the gospel singer who we discussed briefly way back in episode five, who was Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s duet partner, and quite possibly her partner in other senses. They released several more singles and were consistently charting, to the point that they actually managed to get a top ten hit with a self-written song despite their own material not being considered worth putting out as singles. Paul Jones had written “The One in the Middle” for his friends the Yardbirds, but when they turned it down, he rewrote the song to be about Manfred Mann, and especially about himself: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “The One in the Middle”] Like much of their material, that was released on an EP, and the EP was so successful that as well as making number one on the EP charts, it also made number ten on the regular charts, with “The One in the Middle” as the lead-off track. But “The One in the Middle” was a clue to something else as well — Jones was getting increasingly annoyed at the fact that the records the group was making were hits, and he was the frontman, the lead singer, the person picking the cover versions, and the writer of much of the original material, but all the records were getting credited to the group’s keyboard player.  But Jones wasn’t the next member of the group to leave. That was Mike Vickers, who went off to work in arranging film music and session work, including some work for the Beatles, the music for the film Dracula AD 1972, and the opening and closing themes for This Week in Baseball. The last single the group released while Vickers was a member was the aptly-titled “If You Gotta Go, Go Now”. Mann had heard Bob Dylan performing that song live, and had realised that the song had never been released. He’d contacted Dylan’s publishers, got hold of a demo, and the group became the first to release a version of the song, making number two in the charts: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “If You Gotta Go, Go Now”] Before Vickers’ departure, the group had recorded their second album, Mann Made, and that had been even more eclectic than the first album, combining versions of blues classics like “Stormy Monday Blues”, Motown songs like “The Way You Do The Things You Do”, country covers like “You Don’t Know Me”, and oddities like “Bare Hugg”, an original jazz instrumental for flute and vibraphone: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Bare Hugg”] McGuinness took the opportunity of Vickers leaving the group to switch from bass back to playing guitar, which had always been his preferred instrument. To fill in the gap, on Graham Bond’s recommendation they hired away Jack Bruce, who had just been playing in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with McGuinness’ old friend Eric Clapton, and it’s Bruce who played bass on the group’s next big hit, “Pretty Flamingo”, the only UK number one that Bruce ever played on: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Pretty Flamingo”] Bruce stayed with the band for several months, before going off to play in another band who we’ll be covering in a future episode. He was replaced in turn by Klaus Voorman. Voorman was an old friend of the Beatles from their Hamburg days, who had been taught the rudiments of bass by Stuart Sutcliffe, and had formed a trio, Paddy, Klaus, and Gibson, with two Merseybeat musicians, Paddy Chambers of the Big Three and Gibson Kemp of Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Paddy, Klaus, and Gibson, “No Good Without You Baby”] Like Vickers, Voorman could play the flute, and his flute playing would become a regular part of the group’s later singles. These lineup changes didn’t affect the group as either a chart act or as an act who were playing a huge variety of different styles of music. While the singles were uniformly catchy pop, on album tracks, B-sides or EPs you’d be likely to find versions of folk songs collected by Alan Lomax, like “John Hardy”, or things like “Driva Man”, a blues song about slavery in 5/4 time, originally by the jazz greats Oscar Brown and Max Roach: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Driva Man”] But by the time that track was released, Paul Jones was out of the group. He actually announced his intention to quit the group at the same time that Mike Vickers left, but the group had persuaded him to stay on for almost a year while they looked for his replacement, auditioning singers like Rod Stewart and Long John Baldry with little success. They eventually decided on Mike d’Abo, who had previously been the lead singer of a group called A Band of Angels: [Excerpt: A Band of Angels, “(Accept My) Invitation”] By the point d’Abo joined, relations  between the rest of the group and Jones were so poor that they didn’t tell Jones that they were thinking of d’Abo — Jones would later recollect that the group decided to stop at a pub on the way to a gig, ostensibly to watch themselves on TV, but actually to watch A Band of Angels on the same show, without explaining to Jones that that was what they were doing – Jones actually mentioned d’Abo to his bandmates as a possible replacement, not realising he was already in the group. Mann has talked about how on the group’s last show with Jones, they drove to the gig in silence, and their first single with the new singer, a version of Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman”, came on the radio. There was a lot of discomfort in the band at this time, because their record label had decided to stick with Jones as a solo performer, and the rest of the group had had to find another label, and were worried that without Jones their career was over. Luckily for everyone involved, “Just Like a Woman” made the top ten, and the group’s career was able to continue. Meanwhile, Jones’ first single as a solo artist made the top five: [Excerpt: Paul Jones, “High Time”] But after that and his follow-up, “I’ve Been a Bad, Bad, Boy”, which made number five, the best he could do was to barely scrape the top forty. Manfred Mann, on the other hand, continued having hits, though there was a constant struggle to find new material. d’Abo was himself a songwriter, and it shows the limitations of the “no A-sides by group members” rule that while d’Abo was the lead singer of Manfred Mann, he wrote two hit singles which the group never recorded. The first, “Handbags and Gladrags”, was a hit for Chris Farlowe: [Excerpt: Chris Farlowe, “Handbags and Gladrags”] That was only a minor hit, but was later recorded successfully by Rod Stewart, with d’Abo arranging, and the Stereophonics. d’Abo also co-wrote, and played piano on, “Build Me Up Buttercup” by the Foundations: [Excerpt: The Foundations, “Build Me Up Buttercup”] But the group continued releasing singles written by other people.  Their second post-Jones single, from the perspective of a spurned lover insulting their ex’s new fiancee, had to have its title changed from what the writers intended, as the group felt that a song insulting “semi-detached suburban Mr. Jones” might be taken the wrong way. Lightly retitled, “Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James” made number two, while the follow-up, “Ha Ha! Said the Clown”, made number four. The two singles after that did significantly less well, though, and seemed to be quite bizarre choices — an instrumental Hammond organ version of Tommy Roe’s “Sweet Pea”, which made number thirty-six, and a version of Randy Newman’s bitterly cynical “So Long, Dad”, which didn’t make the charts at all. After this lack of success, the group decided to go back to what had worked for them before. They’d already had two hits with Dylan songs, and Mann had got hold of a copy of Dylan’s Basement Tapes, a bootleg which we’ll be talking about later. He picked up on one song from it, and got permission to release “The Mighty Quinn”, which became the group’s third number one: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “The Mighty Quinn”] The album from which that came, Mighty Garvey, is the closest thing the group came to an actual great album. While the group’s earlier albums were mostly blues covers, this was mostly made up of original material by either Hugg or d’Abo, in a pastoral baroque pop style that invites comparisons to the Kinks or the Zombies’ material of that period, but with a self-mocking comedy edge in several songs that was closer to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Probably the highlight of the album was the mellotron-driven “It’s So Easy Falling”: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “It’s So Easy Falling”] But Mighty Garvey didn’t chart, and it was the last gasp of the group as a creative entity. They had three more top-ten hits, all of them good examples of their type, but by January 1969, Tom McGuinness was interviewed saying “It’s not a group any more. It’s just five people who come together to make hit singles. That’s the only aim of the group at the moment — to make hit singles — it’s the only reason the group exists. Commercial success is very important to the group. It gives us financial freedom to do the things we want.” The group split up in 1969, and went their separate ways. d’Abo appeared on the original Jesus Christ Superstar album, and then went into writing advertising jingles, most famously writing “a finger of fudge is just enough” for Cadbury’s. McGuinness formed McGuinness Flint, with the songwriters Gallagher and Lyle, and had a big hit with “When I’m Dead and Gone”: [Excerpt: McGuinness Flint, “When I’m Dead and Gone”] He later teamed up again with Paul Jones, to form a blues band imaginatively named “the Blues Band”, who continue performing to this day: [Excerpt: The Blues Band, “Mean Ol’ Frisco”] Jones became a born-again Christian in the eighties, and also starred in a children’s TV show, Uncle Jack, and presented the BBC Radio 2 Blues Programme for thirty-two years. Manfred Mann and Mike Hugg formed another group, Manfred Mann Chapter Three, who released two albums before splitting. Hugg went on from that to write for TV and films, most notably writing the theme music to “Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?”: [Excerpt: Highly Likely, “Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?”] Mann went on to form Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, who had a number of hits, the biggest of which was the Bruce Springsteen song “Blinded by the Light”: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, “Blinded by the Light”] Almost uniquely for a band from the early sixties, all the members of the classic lineup of Manfred Mann are still alive. Manfred Mann continues to perform with various lineups of his Earth Band. Hugg, Jones, McGuinness, and d’Abo reunited as The Manfreds in the 1990s, with Vickers also in the band until 1999, and continue to tour together — I still have a ticket to see them which was originally for a show in April 2020, but has just been rescheduled to 2022. McGuinness and Jones also still tour with the Blues Band. And Mike Vickers now spends his time creating experimental animations.  Manfred Mann were a band with too many musical interests to have a coherent image, and their reliance on outside songwriters and their frequent lineup changes meant that they never had the consistent sound of many of their contemporaries. But partly because of this, they created a catalogue that rewards exploration in a way that several more well-regarded bands’ work doesn’t, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a major critical reassessment of them at some point. But whether that happens or not, almost sixty years on people around the world still respond instantly to the opening bars of their biggest hit, and “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” remains one of the most fondly remembered singles of the early sixties.

Watch this entire presentation Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!   Transcript: So when I watched Samantha!, I thought, “Okay so how does this work? Oh, you know what? Pretty universal. She wants to be important. She wants to matter in the world. That’s what everybody wants, right, and she … Continue reading "45 Universal Themes in Samantha! from Brazil from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (37 seconds)" Related posts: 44 Samantha! from Brazil from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (1 minute) 41 UK TV In The US from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (39 seconds) 06 Stories Are Important! from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (51 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!   Transcript: So why didn’t everyone do that? A couple of reasons. These guys are famous studio heads back in the day, Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, and Carl Lemley. Carl Lemley was of Universal Studios. They, when they created … Continue reading "24 Studios and “Work For Hire” from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (1 minute 10 seconds)" Related posts: 07 Storytelling And Unreliable Narrators from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (1 minute 30 seconds) 23 Edna Ferber and New York Writers from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (1 minute 8 seconds) 08 Jeannie Macpherson from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (1 minute 3 seconds)

Life is totugh without adversity but when it strikes its always a good tip to know the things that will help us cope during those difficult times.Transcript:So life is tough enough as it is. Whether its striving for that next promotion, that 6 pac physique or juggling your hobbies with your children.But what happens when adversity strikes and times become even more difficult?Well this video will give you some steps to really protect your mental health and wellbeing during these times.Write it down: Journalling or simply writing down what has happened is a key to removing the mismatch of ideas and scenarios you are creating in your head. You will likely jot more logical representations of what is actually going on and you are more likely to find a solution either to solve the difficulty you are facing or coping with it.Tackle it. If it is something that can be tackled, then one of the sure fire ways to eliminate or ease your fears is to tackle it. Now ideally this should come after step 1, as you will likely have a better solution for tackling your difficulty.Get support. Your friends and family are there to be leaned upon and not ignored or avoided during your times of difficulty. I have found personal strength, encouragement and support when I have found the courage to reach out in my moments of adversity and I cannot recommend it enough. If you are facing something more serious, especially mental health related, please see your GP and request further help.Remind yourself of the last time you faced a challenge or time of difficulty and how you are still here today to watch this video or listen to this podcast. This can be your badge of honour or reminder to jog your memory of how resilient you are. Control the controllables. I speak about this more than I speak about anything but if we can remember this quote, mantra we will always have a better perspective on things we are able to control and cope with during difficult times.Allow yourself some time to go through what your going through. If you are grieving, be kind to yourself and give yourself the time you need. If you are facing obstacles or difficulties that you want to scream and shout about, do it. Just don't let it become an everyday thing and know that at some stage you have to take that step forward and grow from the experience.Prioritise your self care routines. These include working out, eating right, hydration, meditation etc. The things you know after doing them, positively benefit you are often the things we quickly neglect or stop doing when we need to do them the most.Episode on forgiveness:https://youtu.be/Rq1oDkLYpqkBooks to buy:Buy Outwitting the Devil: https://amzn.to/3c97pGqBuy Principles: https://amzn.to/2ZOk1jsBuy How to stop worrying & start living: https://amzn.to/3esi4h4Buy The 4 hour work week: https://amzn.to/3cuAwnZBuy Essentialism: https://amzn.to/2xHUTiLBuy Mindset by Carol Dweck https://amzn.to/2QajMvZSupport the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/findyourvoicePodcast equipment recommended:Rodecaster Pro: https://amzn.to/2M36Lj5Rode podmic: https://amzn.to/36yfYcyRode NT-USB - https://amzn.to/2X7LsDpCameras:Sony DSCHX90 Digital - https://amzn.to/2TCAfIDCanon Powershot SX730 HS - https://amzn.to/2yQkbs6Canon EOS 4000D DSLR Camera and EF-S 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 III Lens - https://amzn.to/2WYtWkTNikon D5300 - https://amzn.to/3c825mNLogitech BRIO 4K webcam - https://amzn.to/3enEuA1Sony a6500 mirrorless - https://amzn.to/2ZAOJfWPodcast host (acast):Acast: https://open.acast.com/invite/r/arendeuLinks to me:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/findyourvoicepodcastWebsite: https://www.arendeu.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/aren.deu/Twitter: https://twitter.com/arendeuFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/aren.singhLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aren-deu/Podcast: https://www.findyourvoicepodcast.com/subscribeAs an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, but you are charged the same. This in effect helps me use the proceeds towards growing the Find Your Voice Podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Transcript“So when will it come back? You know, I'm a historian, so I'm uncomfortable with predicting the future, but as a doctor, if I were making a prognosis, I would say it's going to come back.” — Dr. Howard Markel“It does get weary when you see the same mistakes being made over and over and over again. And many of the mistakes of past pandemics are being made today, particularly in how we're administering and reacting to it.“ — Dr. Howard MarkelWith states gradually starting to re-open, many are wondering whether we will face a second wave of infections. In today’s episode, Dr. Celine Gounder speaks with Dr. Howard Markel, a physician and medical historian at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. They ask the question: can history help us prepare for the future? They discuss the lessons that the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 can teach us about COVID-19, and consider whether the history of the 1918 pandemic is repeating itself in present day.This podcast was created by Just Human Productions. We're powered and distributed by Simplecast. We're supported, in part, by listeners like you.#SARSCoV2 #COVID19 #COVID #coronavirus

This is the first of a multi-part series where Denver addresses how many of the things found in nature point to Christ. Transcript So it did not surprise me at all when Joseph went out to pray in the grove and as he began that search he got attacked by the adversary and then calling … Continue reading 111: Nature, Part 1 → The post 111: Nature, Part 1 appeared first on Denver Snuffer.

How to stop feeling guilty, even when we know we have so many things to be grateful for.Remember you are not alone if this is you! I promise you. Try and use this 4 step process to help you stop feeling that guilt when it arises and know those emotions will pass:Transcript:So if your anything like me, sometimes you have those days where things are just off!Now "feeling off", I do believe is a technical term used to convey disinterest or enthusiasm.But even then it can get even worse, where you feel low, sad, grumpy, angry, dissatisfied, anxious, frustrated, unhappy etc..Now if I told you this was normal and its okay, you’d think I’m just being nice. Now depending on where you fall on the self awareness spectrum, a spectrum I have just created right this secondYou would either be:1. Oblivious to those off days2. Feeling guilty about having those daysNow I really want to focus on the second point here! Because many of us who are aware of these days, have no idea where they start, why they happen and why they ruin our mood! Many of us then feel extremely guilty for feeling bad, or moaning because we know deep down that if you are able to listen to this podcast, our life in the grand scheme of things is pretty good! You see, we can easily compare ourselves with those, who are less fortunate, possess less, have less or see less. Yet still sometimes writing that down and being grateful just isn’t enough! You still want to moan, feel lousy, eat chocolate, drink a beer and just wallowing self-pity.Now although I don’t advocate this, especially for a consistent period, I will say 2 things:1. Its 100% okay to have those days, where you know your life is great, but you still feel shitty. You are allowed to feel shitty or experience such emotions.2. Your pain, or what you are experiencing is still real to you.Yes I understand emotions come and go, just like seasons and night and day. But sometimes its very difficult to shake it off and just go back to the super version of yourself.So here're some recommendations I think can massively help you:1. Acknowledge it! Once you acknowledge it, you now get at least be self aware enough to recognise that this has happened before and is happening now. It may also happen again next week. Now what do you want to do about it? Do nothing? Do it! Do your favourite things? Do them! Not do the things you want to do ? Don't do them! This is your time to just have a sulk!2. Allocate a stop loss. So as much as I urge you to vent or wallow in step 1, I also need you to put a stop loss on this moment. It can not go on forever. This is not the podcast for that, this is the podcast for us going on a journey of self discovery and improvement each one of my words reach your ears. So set it. It can be 5 minutes, 5 hours, but please lets not do 5 days! Less than 24 hours please!3. Acceptance. Sometimes we have to forgive ourselves when this happens. If we knew it was going to happen, and prepared we wouldn’t feel bad. But sadly it comes at the time we least expect it and really causes a stir. On top of that the aftermath is where we beat ourselves up on how we shouldn’t feel guilty and how we should be super perfect! Nobody is perfect, sorry.4. Assessment. Maybe once this happens a few times, you start to recognise why? Was it every time you drank perhaps? The high extremes of joy and dancing, to the lows of a hangover and a lack of energy with a storming headache. Or perhaps every time you’re around someone, who just doesn’t add to your life? Could that be it? Perhaps. Either way the more you understand yourself, your triggers, your habits the better chance you have at being better equipped next time around.So that’s just 4 swift ways I waned to share with you because a lot of people funnily enough have messaged me feeling guilty for feeling the way that they are.Listen, until we know better and can do better, we are all just learning this thing called life. There is no-one out there so in tune with their self that they never have these days.We all have bad days. We all have days, when everything in our life regardless of how well it is going still feel completely off. There is nothing wrong with you, or about the way you think. Please know that.I hope you are all staying safe and urge you all to check the https://www.youtube/c/findyourvoicepodcast out too :)Also do not forget to check out our new sponsor coming soon: https://www.healthxcel.co.ukFree Audible book sign up: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Audible-Memb...Best book on Mindset by Carol Dweck: Mindset https://amzn.to/2QajMvZSupport the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/findyourvoice & check out our new sponsor: https://www.healthxcel.co.ukLinks to me:Website: https://www.arendeu.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/aren.deu/Twitter: https://twitter.com/arendeuFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/aren.singhLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aren-deu-...Podcast: https://www.findyourvoicepodcast.com/subscribeYouTube: http://tiny.cc/51lx6y See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

"5 Ways to Live With Integrity" #50 by Aren DeuTagline: "If you don't find what's important to you, you will find yourself doing what is important for others"Hopefully these 5 steps will at least get you thinking about what Integrity means to you. It is important, that your inner dialogue and mind is in sync with your external words, actions and feelings. The full transcript is shown below for anyone who needs it, to help them.Don't forget to share!Transcript:So before I BEGIN I want to explain why I believe integrity is important for finding your voice. Now used as a metaphor for finding you way in life, doing you, finding you and writing your own story: through all the conversations, research, interviews and self development I have personally done, we will only ever become truly successful when we act out of integrity.Yes you can make short term gains, or wins trying to pull the wool over peoples eyes behind captions, smart articulated words or clever manipulative tactics.But on the whole LIKE the great quote states:“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”So for me its better to just do act with integrity from the onset right? Because success, true success should enviably lead you to happiness and fulfilment and that is the underlying theme and goal of this show right?By the way I mean happiness and fulfilment meant on the inside, not on Instagram, when we act out of integritySo just incase someone is thinking what the hell is integrity - as we don’t know what we don’t know a quick google definition explains it as the following:IntegrityDefinition:1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.2. The state of being whole and undividedSo very quickly integrity for me, stands as 1 of my core values. For me it means following my moral and ethical beliefs through & being true to myself at all times.Now, if anyone doesn’t know me and this is the 1st interview they have stumbled across, I am not, I repeat NOT, sitting here pretending to be all righteous and holier than anyone else.I am simply trying to live by my best code of practice and always do the right thing.Of course the right thing can always be led to interpretation, but basic things like:1. Being kind2. Sticking to your word3. Following through with your actions4. Helping people whenever you can help people5. Making a positive contribution to society etc etc are all some things I genuinely try my best to do.Do I always master it? Hell no, but I try!So it kind of brings me onto this brain dump short fire episode.What does integrity mean to you?I urge you to have a true think about It & irrespective of your moral and ethics code, see if you are aligned and congruent with that.You see I think Integrity falls short if:What you say ORWhat you feel ORWhat you doAre never in sync.For example:1. If you say you are an honest individual, but then feel deceitful due to some of your actions, that screams alarm bells.2. Another example is that if you feel a certain type of way but say and do things differently externally, that screams a lack of congruency and doesn’t show integrity.So this is just some thoughts that ran through my head as the more people I meet on this journey o find your voice, the more purposeful I am about finding people with sincere honest integrity.“After all, you’ve probably seen the famous quote:Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.”So again, conscious of not just making this a sound dump lets give some quick takeaways on how to live with integrity:1. Stick to your word. Actions speak louder than words. I always say this. What we say is one thing, whether that is to somebody else or even ourselves. What we need to do is follow through on those actions.2. Understand your core values, from a moral and ethical perspective. If you don’t know what is important to you, you may find yourself doing what is important for others. Only when you truly understand yourself, who you are, and who you are not can you find your purpose and of course, find your voice!3. Do the right thing off social media. The reason I SAY this, is because it’ll form a positive habit of adding value and contribution without the need for external applause or validation. Plus doing the right thing is the right thing! Period.4. Know your bigger picture. Now what I mean by this, is and its very closely linked actually to point 2. Is to know your price and limits. When you have a future vision of yourself, the person you truly want to become that will come at a sacrifice. It will require, sacrificing sleep, recreational times, money, nights out etc. But it should never come at the expense of your integrity. So often I have seen people chase quick money and sell their soul. Or lie about things to get a few followers. This to me, alongside being deceitful, inauthentic and damn right annoying also screams a lost soul. Someone who doesn’t know themselves. Learn to know yourself!5. Find people similar to yourself. I tweeted something a few days ago actually that this year is about removing people from my table. The quote wasn’t mine, before anyone goes all Jay Shetty on me, but it resonated with me. I am probably the most trustworthy person. Even after I have been lied too, cheated on, stolen from and taken a ride for on many occasions. But I live in good spirits that people do the best with what they can, and deep down most of us, as I cant guarantee all of us do, are nice people just lost. So to avoid heartache and not make the same mistakes over and over, I find myself simply upgrading my network and removing the issues wherever I can!And there we have it!So hopefully this adds some value to you all, as I always whole heartedly appreciate your time and value it too.Let’s try just for this week at the very least, to follow one of these and live with Integrity!Thanks for listeningFree Audible book sign up:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Audible-Membership/dp/B00OPA2XFG?actionCode=AMN30DFT1Bk06604291990WX&tag=are86-21Best book on Mindset by Carol Dweck: Mindset https://amzn.to/2QajMvZSupport the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/findyourvoiceLinks to me:Website: https://www.arendeu.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/aren.deu/Twitter: https://twitter.com/arendeuFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/aren.singhLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aren-deu-65443a4b/Podcast: https://www.findyourvoicepodcast.com YouTube: http://tiny.cc/51lx6y See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Transcript: So when is the best time to look for Job. But before we get into that, welcome. I welcome you all to job tips and in job tips we share some of the best insights that we have captured working with and in terms of job seekers and recruiters and thousands of recruiters and understanding some of the core strengths and some of the core strategies that some of the best jobseekers are using today and recruiters are using today to recruit top talent pool. And we're bringing right that conversation to you so you could learn and take advantage of. And if you like what you see we do appreciate if you share and subscribe and let your community know so that many people could take advantage of these services and practices. So thank you once again. So now let's talk about the best time to look for job. And I think we did a brief survey internally and we asked lot of professionals. What is the best time to look for a job and I think someone said hey you know what. Best time to look for a job is; I think the best answer we got was or at least the common answer was six to seven months before you actually start looking. And that is so far from the truth, that is so far from-- it could be relevant to you or for you in many ways. But number one; our take on that and some of the experts that we talked to agreed to what we have to say here is the best time to look for a job is; the first day you join your job. Before you panic let me just-- let's go deeper into what's going on. So typically when you're looking for a job. So six months into this you start to say okay I start looking would be six or three or four months or two months or maybe the day you are let go. Now you're just trying to look there's a desperation going on. There's an anxiety that's kicking in. You are not methodical and when and when you have this anxiety is building up in your brain when you're looking. You would you tend to be less rational about your approach on how you're doing your job search. You are more attuned to compromises; you're more open to desperation which ultimately mess up your interview and your conversation as well. And you are less inclined to the right representation and more inclined to the very aspect of the result of getting a job. Read More at http://work2.org/episode49-best-time-to-look-for-job-jobtip-careertip-work2dot0

Transcript So far in this podcast series I’ve introduced essential lean concepts like the idea of value and the seven wastes of lean. I’ve also discussed the concept of flow and the evils of over production. The thing is, though, that all of these ideas are the outcome of scientific thinking and how scientific thinking […] The post 007 – Lean Thinking is Scientific Thinking appeared first on Lean Smarts.

651_Transcript So, I’m driving to The Original Pancake House to have breakfast with one of my coaching clients. You’ve probably heard me talk about how some of my clients come to St. Louis and spend time with me. That’s what’s happening today. I’ve been thinking about this and want to share it with you… If […]

651_Transcript So, I'm driving to The Original Pancake House to have breakfast with one of my coaching clients. You've probably heard me talk about how some of my clients come to St. Louis and spend time with me. That's what's happening today. I've been thinking about this and want to share it with you… If […]

651_Transcript So, I’m driving to The Original Pancake House to have breakfast with one of my coaching clients. You’ve probably heard me talk about how some of my clients come to St. Louis and spend time with me. That’s what’s happening today. I’ve been thinking about this and want to share it with you… If […]

This very moment is unique, perfect and vibrating with life. Transcript: So the question is, “Can the mind include the future in the moment?” So, this gets a bit vague, I know it gets vague, but there’s a lot of energy around it now, in that there is no time as we know it. Everything ...

Find the original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GktlB8SsAk   Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is known for his megaprojects. But his newest one might be the craziest one yet. Support this channel on Patreon! http://www.patreon.com/answerswithjoe Follow me at all my places! Instagram: https://instagram.com/answerswithjoe Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/answerswithjoe Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/answerswithjoe Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/answerswithjoe   Transcript: So back in January of 2016, Musk was speaking at SpaceX’s Hyperloop pod competition, when he said this: “It’s a really simple and obvious idea and I wish more people would do it: build more tunnels. Tunnels are great. It’s just a hole in the ground, it’s not that hard. But if you have tunnels in cities you would massively alleviate congestion and you could have tunnels at all different levels – you could probably have 30 layers of tunnels and completely fix the congestion problem in high-density cities. So I strongly recommend tunnels.” But it was something he just kinda said off the cuff and nobody but the most ardent Musk-watchers paid any attention to. He claims to have built a machine that can dig tunnels for transportation 500 to 1000% more efficiently than current boring machines. And his logic is that people in cities live and work in a 3D space, in vertical buildings that can house more people. But our city transportation is on a 2D plane, meaning all these vertically packed people are now crammed into a horizontal space. By creating a 3D transportation grid, we can alleviate the congestion and drive like civilized human beings. Now, there are a couple of criticisms of this plan, one is that this idea’s been around for over a hundred years, it’s called subways. And subways are great for densely packed urban areas like New York but for cities like LA, or Dallas for that matter, where things are spread far apart, not so much. For example, it’s a 20 or 30 minute drive just to get to my closest light rail station, at that point, I might as well just drive the rest of the way. It’s just not practical. But underground highways under strategic high-traffic arteries could make a big difference. And reducing the time cars are idling in traffic could cut down on pollution as well. The other criticism is that building tunnels is not nearly as easy as it sounds, even with a giant high-tech earthworm machine doing all the work. Obviously in urban areas there’s all kinds of things we’ve put under the ground in terms of sewers, gas lines, telecommunication lines and so forth. But we at least know where those are, what we don’t know is other things like pockets of gas, unstable rocks, hidden fault lines, and so forth. But… I’m sure all those things will be addressed before any large-scale tunneling begins in LA., there’s a mountain of bureaucratic red tape to get past before that happens. Which should put completion around the Fall of… never. A side benefit of this tunnel machine would be for SpaceX’s future Mars colonies, since boring underground would be the best protection against cosmic rays. Now this is of course nowhere near Elon’s first foray into transportation, I mentioned earlier his hyper loop competition, well, he just hosted another competition in January. 27 teams entered designs, of those, 3 were picked to actually run, and of those, two won awards, one for design, and the other for speed, maxing out at 90 kilometers per hour, or 55 miles per hour. That’s a far cry from the 900 miles per hour predicted for the hyper loop, but it’s early yet, and it’s only a one-mile stretch of track, so it’s probably not getting up to top speed.

Download The Bourbon Community Roundtable #9 talks about the recent news of one man who has defrauded the secondary bourbon market with counterfeit bourbon. We wrap up the show talking about the Weller 12 craze. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes: http://bit.ly/bpitune We are looking for partnerships to help support the podcast. Get more information at http://bourbonpursuit.com/partner-with-us/ Show Notes: - The biggest reveal in secondary market history. A seller with 2+ years worth of building up sales reveals that he's been counterfeiting bottles. - hear the story unfold - how does this impact bourbon going forward? - how do you trust you seller? - how can you trust anything in bars? - What has happened with Weller12? It’s madness   TRANSCRIPT So on June 14th, the bourbon internet broke. I remember going to bed, looking at my phone and then not putting it down for almost an hour. This is a long story and we are going to break out the conversation based on the 3 segments of the story. Part 1. Here’s how it started. , a longtime seller on the secondary market, has admitted to buying empty bottles on Ebay, refilling them, resealing them, and selling them as new. I’ll let the people who did the sleuthing remain anonymous and refer to them as A&A. had provided elaborate excuses, claiming he had bought a number of what-he-thought-were-real bottles from a man from Chicago, now un-findable, in two deals that went down in Indianapolis in January. After letting him toil over it for two days, A&A had all their direct evidence ready. It was presented  to . A&A had his ebay account, the empties he bought, and photos of the exact same bottles now “full and new” owned by his unsuspecting customers. first denied everything, but eventually confessed. He intentionally defrauded people, and frankly, A&A had planned to tear him apart in public. Instead, A&A spent hours talking with him, trying to figure out what he should do from here. has offered to make things right as best he can. He has already issued some refunds and says he will do so for anyone else who received a fake. He asks that his family won’t be harassed, his property damaged, his business destroyed, and whatever other retaliatory acts people may be contemplating. As it turns out, dozens of the empties he bought are actually sitting on his home bar, refilled but open, to show off to guests as bar stock. A&A  asked him to destroy those and provide proof. A&A asked Don’t panic over every bottle you have. The market itself is still by and large trustworthy. If you have a bottle you bought from within the past 6 months and it has a wax or plastic seal, or just a plain tax stamp, it may be fake. He did sell mostly real bottles. All bottles prior to 2017 seem to be ok at this point. A&A have been working with him to verify individual bottles he faked. You have to know that had been selling bottles consistently, every week for years. He had mules at Liquor Barn raffles, willett runs, and paid people to stand in lines. Rumors began swirling that his sales were in upwards of $100k. Of course and without question, everyone began questioning their previous purchases. In the span of 48 hours, people were looking at bottles such as their 4R Small Batch LEs and noticed that the film seemed off, like it was done with a hair dryer. Others brought out their tax stamped bottles and there was even a rumor that he went as low as counterfeiting a Lost Prophet orphan barrel. So before we get into parts 2 and 3 where he digs himself deeper, the community went up in arms and were asking for his head. Blake what was your initial impression? People were wondering, is it even possible to take it to the authorities for grand theft and fraud, from a legal standpoint, Brian does that sound like a dumb idea? Do you all think it was a wise choice to not outright viciously attack him and his family and business? People believe he is only sorry he got caught. which is probably true Here’s the thing, this guy didn’t look like he needed the money. He has pictures from courtside games, multiple Super Bowls, drove a really nice car. Was it greed? I wonder if WIllett raising prices is what made him go chris route. Because he was like the walmart of bourbon on the secondary market. a $120 bottle he would sell for like $180 or $160. after shipping that’s like a $40 profit. didn’t make sense. Something should have been up when there are rules in place in some forums that say you can’t delete a post. However, his were always deleted. The real question is, what as he refilling them with? Part 2. Within 24 hours, he shut down his Facebook account and people started blasting his business on Yelp, Facebook, and Google. The business took down their Facebook pages and it didn’t take long to find his home address since he shipped so many packages. Not to mention the Yelp rating went down to 1 star almost immediately. A&A started the refund process that involved ’s cooperation. also has a full statement to make to apologize to the bourbon community. The community was in an uproar and wanted his head on a silver platter. A&A insisted they are not going soft on him. We’re being practical, level-headed, and extremely wary. asked that everyone stop retaliations against his business and family. Those that had posted public messages about him, asks that you remove them. He knows you’re beyond furious and this will all be addressed in his statement. A&A said Immediacy is not the priority. Accuracy and thoroughness is. Again thanks for your cooperation, understanding, and patience. Did deleting his Facebook account really help the situation? How many bar and liquor stores could be scammed by this going forward as Louisville passes the new vintage spirit bill. If he wanted his business spared, perhaps using that business email address to conduct illegal and fraudulent sales was a terrible idea. He misused business resources to break the law. HE would do well to keep that in mind before making demands. Is he in a position to make demands? I mean i guess he still has the upper hand after all Did any of you all buy bottles from him? At this time, it was rumored that the local news caught wind of the story but it never aired. From a slander point of view, is this something that could have been broadcast on public airwaves? To salvage his family business, went on yelp and said “there are some people out there trying to destroy “our business” reputations by making false accusations. We have been in business since 1956 & our track record speaks for itself. We helped hundred of families buy and sell their home. our business was built around service and integrity”. That takes some balls, no? Part 3. releases his statement. A&A say ’s statement is entirely him. What you see here is entirely A&A. A&A presented facts, not passing judgement or offering opinion, so please recognize this as such. A&A is not “representing” . A&A We’re trying to track down fakes and get restitution to those defrauded. A&A isn’t the law or the government. A&A did this for the benefit of the community and because of our interest/expertise in counterfeit collectible whiskey. has so far refunded 9 people since this was uncovered, and has worked with a 10th to agree on a payment plan for a larger multi-bottle purchase. A&A can confirm that is working to repay all who received fakes. He has to pull together the finances. Restitution to all who received fakes truly does seem to be his goal, and achievable, though it may take him some time. That is A&As feeling at this time. A team was assembled to review fakes (and that team is highly regarded in the community for knowing vintage bottles) and restitution comes directly from . At this point, A&A has confirmed with  about 30 fakes. 24 were traded/sold and 6 were at his home “sealed.” Another couple dozen or so “open bottles” (i.e. refilled but not resealed) were also on display as stock in his home bar. He also bought a small number of red and green tax strips. Total value of fakes sold is currently estimated at $16k. This may rise to $18k-$20k. Number of victims is about 20, which may rise by a few. The uncertainty is because is often inexact and hard to pin down on details. He has been cooperative yet sometimes evasive and/or unavailable. A&A did not suspect this was of a significantly larger scale. To help identify fakes/empties/refills, A&A’s MO commonly included asking questions that they already knew the answer to. For instance, when first sent us his statement, it claimed he didn’t fake anything prior to 2017. A&A knew this to be untrue, although the vast majority of fakes were made in 2017. When A&A finally confronted that untruth with evidence to the contrary, revised the not-before date to November 2016. A&A confirms that was buying empties on eBay as early as November, 2016. At this point no evidence has presented itself that he made fakes prior to then. I think this is where it gets funny. destroyed the open “fake drinker” bottles he still had. He provided “before” pictures as well as a video of him smashing them. Since A&A recognized this as a dangerous task, they reminded to wear protective gear, gloves, thick clothing, eye protection, etc. chose to wear no protection. He ended up in Urgent Care with injuries to his hand and foot. This is included as an example of one of the many challenges that caused continued delays and frustrations. A&A concludes they are not here to “let him off easy.” They are not trying to keep this “away from law enforcement.” They have asked for your patience and cooperation in what has been a very difficult, intensive process. Here’s ’s Statement: “I want to formally apologize to everyone affiliated with these groups.  This was without a doubt the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life & it's something I have to learn & live with.  I understand that admitting my faults & working to make each one right will never be good enough. With the exception of my brothers death this is the hardest thing I've ever had to go through in my life.  Many innocent people that I'm close to are now being negatively affected by this.  I would ask that people focus their hate on me instead of my family or businesses I'm associated with. The problem I'm faced with now is that I was a very active seller in these groups for the past couple of years.  I checked my Fedex account & I shipped over 1200 packages in 24 months.  77% of these packages had more than one bottle.  Now everyone I've ever sold to thinks they have received a fake bottle & I completely understand why.  98.6% of everything I sold was real.   I'm hoping that people will soon see that to be true. What I did was wrong & by no means am I trying to justify my actions in this message.  I’ve worked with others to confirm fake bottles with whom they went to along with a plan on how they will be paid back.  I have destroyed any fake bottles that I had in my possession. The list of fake bottles isn't nearly as long as many of you may think. Some of you have already received refunds & others I've been in contact with & committed to a date which they will receive their refund. I would please ask that you remove all the public messages about me that have been posted.  People are posting negative remarks about my company all across the internet.  Doing this affects too many innocent people.  I know many of you want to destroy me & reading this message may make you hate me even more.   For me to be accused of selling 10s of thousands of dollars of fake bourbon is crazy.  I've seen some reviews where I'm being accused of selling $100s of thousands in fake bourbon. I would like to apologize for my yelp post.  I was trying to defend the business itself & not my actions.  I can see how that would have been misinterpreted.  I have removed that post. Telling the truth comes with many consequences which I'm fully prepared to accept.  However, this situation has snowballed & has gotten extremely out of proportion.  I've had countless threats mainly from people that I did nothing to.  The few guys that were directly impacted by this have been the most forgiving.  I've never really been a religious person, but this has made me look to God as I don't know what else I can do.  I'm praying everyday & hoping that people will view me for how I handled this as supposed to what I have done. To the guys that did receive fake bottles.  I want to assure you that I will make this right.  There are no words that can explain how bad I feel about this.  It will not do any good to post the factors that led to me doing this.  The bottom line is it was wrong. I built *allot* of good relationships over the last few years with allot of you & now those relationships have been destroyed.  For me that's the my biggest lost.  Many of you defended in a time of need & I let each & everyone of you down.  This most of all is what I'm having a hard time dealing with. The guys in these groups share a special bond that I can't describe.  It was this bond that made these groups so enjoyable to be a part of over the last few years. I could have easily denied all of these allegations & just disappeared, but in order for me to clear my conscious I have to make this right.  There is no doubt that this the biggest mistake I've ever had to fix in my life. I want to emphasize that I am going to complete the refund process.  I want this over & I couldn't imagine how bad it would get if I say I'm going to send refunds & I don't come through.  If I didn't plan on paying anyone back I wouldn't even bother responding to the messages I received.  I wouldn't bother cooperating in general.  I just wanted to make that clear. My goal is to have 100% of the refunds completed by 4th of July. So just to clarify so there's no confusion.  I've already refunded 10 guys.  The remaining few will get refunds by next Friday. I have a plan in place to make this happen. In closing I hope people use this as an example of what not to do.  I really enjoyed getting to know many of you & will miss being a part of the community.  You will never see me in the years to come sell another bottle of bourbon.” In the hours that followed, there was a new 5Star Yelp review by Cliff B saying “the negative reviews are the furthest thing from the truth. is a very respected agent. Looks like to me a bunch of drunk bourbon members have too much time on their hands. I speak for *allot* of people when i say you will always have our respect.” This is was easily ousted as a fake review because he misspelled the the word “a lot” once again. And the memes continue from there. I wish we could see the bottle smash video! Do you think the apology letter was sincere? So what’s the verdict, do you really think we are only looking at $16k-20k or is it still a very shady situation? I mean 30 out of 1200 packages. Once the payments are done and restitution is complete, what happens? Are the flood gates open? How is this going to change the secondary market going forward? What provenance do you have to make up to know the history of bottle acquisition?   Listen Now: http://bourbonpursuit.com/ Watch Now: https://www.facebook.com/bourbonpursuit iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bourbon-pursuit-podcast/id975392298 Google Play Music: https://play.google.com/music/m/Ijewpxez375itl4xkhyapvccfsq?t=Bourbon_Pursuit YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BourbonPursuit Instagram: http://instagram.com/BourbonPursuit Twitter: https://twitter.com/bourbonpursuit

TRANSCRIPT So after two years of absolute lunacy over the COVID scam, the CDC just quietly drops a press release last week and says, "We're all good now, folks." In one line —stunning in its understatement — the last two years are just brushed aside: "This guidance acknowledges that the pandemic is not over but also helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives." First, the World Health Organization announced last year that the so-called pandemic was over — so there's that. But the second half of that sentence really bears scrutiny: "COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives." Let's be very clear: It was not COVID-19 that severely disrupted our daily lives, but the government using COVID-19 to disrupt our daily lives. And that extends to the U.S. bishops, many of whom are in league (or at least ideological lockstep) with the Marxist globalists in government. What did the government do? They shut down the economy, caused the bankruptcies of thousands of small businesses, manufactured a reason to ignore all voting laws en route to an election theft, instituted mask mandates, gave Big Pharma trillions of your dollars for a so-called vax that does not work (ask Joe Biden). And, in the process, they made those same pharmaceutical companies legally exempt from any lawsuits or claims, fired countless military and civil servants who refused it and ordered all businesses with more than 100 employees to jab them all (that, eventually, got tossed out by the courts). Every one of these "rules" had a massive knock-on effect, and those do continue to disrupt our daily lives in thousands of ways. The government handouts to average Americans have forever transformed the economy and the labor pool, as people just sat home and were paid to not work. The "vax" question tore families and marriages apart as people chose up sides. They completely and totally went along with it. The medical side effects are too numerous to count, including, most especially, the deaths. The "stay in your house" promotion opened the door for fraud through mail-in voting, which gave the nation the most unpopular and least competent president and administration in U.S. history. The current occupant of the White House — there because of the election shenanigans owing to COVID propaganda — has completely tanked the U.S. economy and brought about conditions most Americans alive today have no reference point for in their lived experience. A supply-chain crisis has been overseen and advanced by a homosexual who took paternity leave with his perverted lover, as store shelves emptied. His response to the high price of gas was "Buy an electric car; it's good for the environment" — completely sidestepping the reality that the electric power grid they so despise (fueled by coal) is how you power your electric vehicle. This is one giant ball of yarn so tangled up together that it's virtually impossible to disentangle. All we can ever really do is talk about aspects of it like gas prices, food shortages, supply-chain problems, the baby formula crisis, inflation, and life-altering medical side effects. But make no mistake, all of those (and many more) add up to one solitary thing: the complete transformation of the United States as we have known it. And Joe Biden has not caused it; he is merely finishing it. His former boss, Obama, is the one who set it all into high gear, setting the stage for everything you see going on right now. He completely remade the nation's intelligence agencies through huge personnel changes, up and down the ranks. He set the table for Hillary to come in and finish it all off, but then Donald Trump happened. The man had to be stopped at all costs, shut down, with his "America first" rhetoric. He could upset the entire plan. In reality, what he did was highlight the uni-party swamp and delay the implementation of operation "America last." The awareness he brought to their plans galvanized patriots across the country and created a civil war within the GOP to oust the RINO establishment. That war is in full swing right now; we'll see how it turns out. But having won in '16, despite having his campaign spied on and a Democratic fabricated dossier (which was nothing but lies) used as a pretext to spy on him and his campaign, the Deep State swung into high gear and hampered him for four years, largely through the exploitation of the media. The constant hammering, coupled with the COVID-fueled election, was enough to get him out of office, and, now, every possible weapon in their arsenal is being used to prevent him from getting back into office. COVID has now outlasted its usefulness — time to shelve it. Perhaps it might be helpful again, but, for now, it's time for a new crisis strategy. So in the midst of all this willful destruction of a nation, what did the bishops do? They completely and totally went along with it. Those weak, emasculated pansies couldn't wait to jump on the COVID-scare bandwagon, closing every parish and refusing sacraments, even to the dying. They also still, to this very day, propagate this falsehood right in the very church building themselves. Hand sanitizer by the gallon has become part of the "ritual" of the Mass. Face masks, while not generally demanded, are still "encouraged" and very visible — got to keep that fear level just right. And away from center stage, chancery officials who didn't want to get the jab were fired, and seminarians were kicked out and not allowed to return to their pursuit of the priesthood. That last one keeps the herd thinned with weak, complacent "go-along" type men, regardless of their own personal orthodoxy. "Oh, the bishop said I have to have an abortion-tainted jab shot into me if I'm going to get ordained, so I have to be obedient." Heck, even to this day, right here in the archdiocese of Detroit, Abp. Allen Vigneron refuses to permit a priest from outside his diocese to come in long-term and help relieve the heavy workload of current pastors unless he is jabbed. Part of the globalist plan in locking down control is the destruction of the Faith. In fact, from a diabolical standpoint, all the rest of everything going on is in service to that. We'll say it until we are blue in the face: Weak men suck. Satan doesn't give a rip about economies and political policies and so forth, not in themselves. He cares about all this only in so far as it all advances his goal of the destruction of souls — brought about most expeditiously by the flattening of the Catholic faith. What better way to bring that about than through weak males (many of whom are homosexual, who cooperate with a Marxist agenda either through willingness or cowardice or confusion or indifference)? Neither the government nor the bishops can just come out and say that they were wrong for the immense suffering they brought about temporally and, most especially, spiritually. Even those few in either arena who have come to realize the truth don't have the fortitude to actually say it and apologize. To apologize would be more than just saying "We're sorry." It would import something like, "We were wrong." It would expose the incompetence of some and the wickedness and deceit of others. Both would be bad, but the second one would be horrible. So don't hold your breath for an apology. We'll say it until we are blue in the face: Weak men suck. They are destroyers of the good, and it doesn't matter whether they intended to or not. God will judge their intentions and punish them accordingly. But we live with the effects of their actions in the here and now. The entire civilization is on the brink. It may, in fact, have already fallen off the edge and would therefore be unsalvageable. But none of that matters. The only truly Catholic response is to fight. We fight. We leave it to God to handle the disposition of our fighting. But whatever the outcome for the culture, the outcome for our souls is eternal life. It's why a saint once said, "The only way to win is to die fighting." Just don't expect to hear an apology along the way from those you are fighting.