Podcasts about understandably

There's a secret weapon in the campaign to end the mortal threat the Iranian regime poses to Israel, America and Western civilization: namely, the people of Iran.  After all, the mullahs' Sharia-supremacist totalitarian misrule has impoverished, isolated and murdered them for over four decades. In addition, the ruling ayatollahs believe they must bring back their messiah by initiating the Apocalypse, which would kill untold millions of Iranians, among others.  If empowered to liberate themselves, Iran's people can do more to end the regime's doomsday nuclear weapons program than any external power. So, we need to encourage and enable them to rise up.  Understandably, they'll only take the immense risks of doing so if convinced Western deal-making with the regime won't sell them out again. That means no further negotiations with the mullahs for any purpose other than their unconditional surrender.  This is Frank Gaffney.

Daily Dose of Hope June 16, 2025   Scripture - Matthew 12:38-50   Prayer:  Lord Jesus, Mighty God, Holy One...We come to you this morning with humility and gratefulness.  Thank you that your mercies are new every morning.  Thank you that you continue to love and guide us, even though we mess up again and again.  Thank you for your patience and your never-ending care.  Lord, we are so very grateful.  Help us, on this Monday, to start our week with the right attitude.  We belong to you and we are under your authority.  Help us see others the way you see them.  Help us produce fruit in our lives.  Oh, Lord, how we need your help.  Please, Jesus, may we hear your voice today.  In Your Name, Amen.   Welcome back to the Daily Dose of Hope, a Deep Dive into the Gospels and the book of Acts.  Happy Monday!   Our Scripture reading for today is the last half of Matthew 12.  We start with the discussion about the sign of Jonah.  The Pharisees have asked Jesus for a sign to demonstrate that he is the Messiah.  Apparently, all the miracles he has done thus far aren't enough for these guys.  Remember, the Pharisees were even attributing some of his miracles to Satan.  Understandably, this request doesn't go over too well with Jesus.    On the surface, there isn't anything wrong with their request.  There are times in the Old Testament in which people asked God for a sign.  But Jesus can see right through their request.  Nothing he does will make these guys believe in him.  In fact, they are looking for more ammunition to use against Jesus.  There is nothing sincere about the request.  Matthew Henry writes in his commentary, "Christ is always ready to hear and answer holy desires and prayers, yet he will not gratify corrupt lusts and humors."   Jesus does promise the sign of Jonah.  The Jews believed that the Ninevites repented when Jonah preached because they knew it was the God of all who spoke through him.  And they knew this because God kept him from dying in the belly of the big fish.  In the same way, Jesus' resurrection will signify God's vindication of him and affirm the truth of what he says and his divinity.  But Jesus knows that even the resurrection won't be enough to make most of these Jewish leaders believe.  Their hearts are hard.    Now, let's take a look at the text about Jesus' mother and brothers.  I'll be honest, growing up I used to really struggle with this passage. It seemed so harsh! But deeper reflection yields a different perspective.   Can you imagine what it must have been like for Jesus' immediate family? We know that Mary knew that Jesus was special but did she really understand the significance of his life at this point? What must his siblings have thought?   We see in this text that his mother and brothers are wanting to talk to him, interrupting a teaching session. Are they chatting about Sunday dinner or do they want him to stop making such a ruckus around town? Again, we don't have details but it's clear they don't really know him as the Son of God (yet).   Jesus' reaction is a bit off-putting. As a mom, I might have gotten my feelings hurt more than a little bit. But he is making a point. Jesus' family has become much wider than Mary, Joseph, and the boys. There are no bounds to who may be part of it. Anyone who does the will of my Father is my brother and sister and mother.  Jesus is redefining family for those who profess faith in him.  Yes, biological family relationships are important but spiritual family relationships (and this might be hard to hear) are even more important.    Given the strong emphasis on family ties in first century Palestine, Jesus' words here would have been shocking.  But what he is saying is that believers should consider themselves family and care for one another like they are family members.  In the words of Sister Sledge, we are family.   The apostle Paul in his New Testament letters expanded on this idea of believers being a family of faith:  In Galatians 6:10, Paul speaks of our need to care for those in the household of God, “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”  Family was a big deal at the time.  People lived with extended family.  Who you were related to mattered.  You were under social and moral obligation to care for your extended family.  And Paul is saying who you are related to in Christ is also a big deal.  Those people in your church family, those other believers that worship with you, those other people who profess faith in Jesus --- these are your brothers and sisters as well.  These people are family. In Ephesians 2:19, Paul writes, Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household…  We are members of God's household.  We are members of God's family.  If you have said yes to Jesus as Lord and Savior, then God is your father.  You are a child of God.  And you have many siblings.  We are brothers and sisters.  We are family.  We are no longer strangers.  Think about those people at church, at New Hope.  Some you know and some you don't know.  Some you like and others you might not like.  But we are family and we will spend eternity together. And the early church clearly behaved in the way biological families behaved.  They ate together, they spent time together, they sacrificed and worked together.  Acts 2:44-47, All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.   They behaved like a family.  They loved each other like a family.  They sacrificed together like a family.  There was nothing fakey about this.  Notice it doesn't say they came together on Sunday morning, shook hands, and then went their own way.  No, they did life together.  It was real.  It was genuine.  And guess what?  God added to their numbers. Because people see that and they want that. It's no different today.  We have an epidemic of loneliness.  People are disconnected.  People are struggling.  Even those who aren't struggling are always looking for sincere, genuine places of love and acceptance.  The family of faith is intended to be a place in which you are loved, accepted, cared for, held accountable, belong, where you know people have your back, where you can learn and grow…. It's far from perfect because it involves human beings.  Over the years, the church has too often been exclusive, cliquey, fake, and judgmental.  Sometimes, we have been more dysfunctional family than healthy family.  We have done harm.  I think we need to repent of that.  If we at New Hope have ever been part of putting walls up, then we need to repent of that.  If I have ever been part of mistreating my brother or sister, if you have been part of excluding or hurting your brother and sister, then you need to repent of that.  Period. We are a family.  And families are funny.  Families are not polished and pulled together.  Families love each other, they are loyal to one another, but they sometimes get annoyed with one another.  They sometimes hurt one another (I am thinking of my own three kids – they love each other fiercely and yet, they can really push each other's buttons).  It's no difference with our siblings in Christ.  Family is a place where we do a lot of forgiving, a lot of extending grace, but it's also a place where we know that we belong no matter what.  Strong families are places where when you come together, you can just take a deep breath and say, “I'm home.”  It isn't the building but it's the people.  This is the thing.  When a church family loves like Jesus, people get a glimpse of Jesus.  When we care for one another sacrificially, people see Jesus.  When the family of faith sacrifices for one another, then people get to see Jesus in action.  Lives are transformed.  Hearts are changed.  Our faith grows stronger.  Jesus Christ is glorified. And the Lord added to their numbers those who were being saved.  Think about the relationships you have made within the faith family. Are they strong? Why or why not? What holds you back from creating strong, meaningful connections to your brothers and sisters in Christ?   Blessings, Pastor Vicki

With Thomas Frank having now left Brentford, a wave of emotion has swept through the fanbase. His departure marks the end of an era that saw the Bees rise to the Premier League and earn respect across English football for their style, spirit, and smart recruitment. Understandably, fans are feeling a mixture of gratitude, sadness, and anxiety about what comes next. In this special “therapy edition” of the Besotted podcast, the crew headed to the pub to process the news, discuss how this week's developments might affect the club's direction, and share hopes—and worries—for the future. From memories of Frank's touchline passion to concerns over maintaining the club's identity, the episode captures a fanbase at a crossroads. With Dave Lane this week are Matt “The Allard” Allard, Lewis “Sherlock” Holmes, Charlie Briggs, and Robin Hood—plus a deep dive into the current bookies' favourites to take over as head coach. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Donald Trump won't be too happy with Helen Clark right now, because she's saying she doesn't want New Zealand to be an ally of the United States ever again. I'm with her on that one – while Trump is president, anyway. I'm also with Defence Minister Judith Collins who isn't saying anything about Trump doing a review of the AUKUS military alliance with Australia and the UK, to make sure that it's a fair deal for America. I think Judith Collins going all quiet about this cloud over AUKUS is the approach we should be taking more broadly, as well. And New Zealand should be more like Switzerland and keep pretty much every country at arm's length. As Helen Clark is saying, if you're an ally, you can get dragged into all sorts of things you shouldn't. Whereas, if you're a “friend”, you can keep your head down, treat every country pretty much equally, and stay out of international dramas you don't need to be involved with. I heard former defence minister Wayne Mapp saying that the fact Trump has said this AUKUS review will be done and dusted in 30 days, shows that it's unlikely that the U.S. is about to pull out. Tell that to Dr Emma Shortis —who is a senior researcher in international affairs at the Australia Institute— who is pointing out that the submarine part of the AUKUS deal includes a “get-out clause” for the United States. She reckons Trump is about to use that clause – not that she's too upset about it. She's saying today that AUKUS is "a disaster" for Australia and only ties Aussie ever closer to “an increasingly volatile and aggressive america”. And, with respect to Wayne Mapp, I'm going to listen to this expert from Australia. Understandably it's caused a fuss in Australia, because they're due to get a few nuclear subs from America as part of all this. Three second-hand submarines for $368 billion. On this side of the Tasman though, the Government is keeping shtum, with Defence Minister Judith Collins not wanting to get dragged into it. Which makes sense, because —at the moment— we've got nothing to do with AUKUS. The Government's been making noises recently about doing a bit of tyre-kicking and seeing whether we might get involved at a lower level. “Pillar 2” is what they call it. But there's nothing coming from the Government about Donald Trump running his eye over AUKUS to check that America's getting the best deal. Former Prime Minister Helen Clark isn't holding back though. She says: "I would not want to see us back in the position where New Zealand is expected to spend a whole lot more money on defence; expected to follow the US into whatever its strategic venture is. I'm old enough to remember the Vietnam War and New Zealand going into that for not a good reason at all and walking out the other end with Kiwis dying on the battlefield for no good reason. I don't want to see us ever in that position again." I'm with her on that one. Australia's possibly feeling that way too, given that it signed up to the AUKUS agreement when Joe Biden was president. And, aside from wanting to get the submarines, and aside from the fact that it's already ploughed $800 million into AUKUS, it might still be having a bit of buyer's remorse given Trump's unpredictability. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Time and again, we've examined how the challenges we face – poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, and more – are deeply intertwined. Understandably, it can start to feel pretty overwhelming. But here's the encouraging part: the solutions are just as interconnected. In this episode of Biophilic Solutions, we speak with Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and director of Local Futures, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring ecological and social well-being by revitalizing local communities and economies. Helena envisions a world where food is grown by nearby farmers, money circulates within communities, local businesses thrive, and meaningful work is accessible to all.She argues that many of today's crises stem from an overly globalized economic system and that the path forward lies in a broad shift toward localization. Helena advocates for a more informed and intentional public that values local economies and deeper connections with nature. In our conversation, we explore the power of local food systems, the importance of community and ecological bonds, and the role vulnerability plays in healing. Drawing on lessons from indigenous cultures, Helena makes a compelling case for localization as a path toward greater social cohesion and environmental resilience.Show NotesAbout HelenaPlanet Local Summit | September 3-7 | LadakhLocal FuturesAncient Futures: Learning From Ladakh by Helena Norberg HodgeLocal Is Our Future: Steps to an Economics of Happiness by Helena Norberg HodgeTo Heal the Planet We Must First Heal Ourselves (Urth Magazine)Key Words: local, localism, economy, economics, local economy, community, indigenous community, indigenous wisdom, Local Futures, farmers market, global economy, globalism, capitalism, nature, nature based solutions, biophilia, biophilic design, Helena Norberg-HodgeBiophilic Solutions is available wherever you get podcasts. Please listen, follow, and give us a five-star review. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn and learn more on our website. #NatureHasTheAnswers

What happens when the "great Australian dream" turns into a nightmare? This sermon tackles the age-old question of suffering, not from a philosophical standpoint, but through the raw and practical lens of the Book of Job. Join us as speaker Andy Prideaux unpacks the opening chapters of Job, exploring how a man who was "blameless and upright" faced unimaginable loss. Discover the heavenly drama behind Job's trials and Satan's cynical challenge: "Does Job fear God for nothing?". Learn from Job's profound initial responses of worship amidst devastation and his unwavering integrity even when urged to "curse God and die". This message encourages us to consider how we respond to suffering and reminds us that even in our darkest moments, we can move towards God, who is in control and working for our ultimate good. To catch up on the latest sermons from Deep Creek, go to iTunes, Spotify ordeepcreekanglican.comand check out the website for more info about whats happening. We are a welcoming and growing multigenerational church in Doncaster East in Melbourne with refreshing faith in Jesus Christ. We think that looks like being life-giving to the believer, surprising to the world, and strengthening to the weary and doubting. Transcription Bible Reading: Job 1:1 - 2:10 Bible reading today comes from Job chapter one, verse one through to chapter two, verse ten. In the land of us there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright. He feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East. His sons used to hold feasts in their homes on their birthdays, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When a period of fasting or feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning, he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them. Thinking perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. This was Job's regular custom. One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, where have you come from? Satan answered. Satan answered the Lord from roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it. Then the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright. A man who fears God and shuns evil. Does Job fear God for nothing? Satan replied, have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face. The Lord said to Satan, very well then, everything he has is in your power. But on the man himself do not lay a finger. Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. One day, when Job's sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house, a messenger came to Job and said the oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabines attacked and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, the fire of God fell from heaven, and burnt up the sheep and the servants. And I am the only one who has escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said that the Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels, and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them, and they are dead. And I am the only one who has escaped to tell you. At this Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said, naked, I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised. In all this Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. On another day, the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him. And the Lord said to Satan, where have you come from? Satan answered the Lord from roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it. Then the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright. A man who fears God and shuns evil, and he still maintains his integrity. Though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason. Skin for skin. Satan replied, A man will give all he has for his own life. But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face. The Lord said to Satan, very well, then, he is in your hands, but you must spare his life. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die. He replied, you're talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble? In all this Job did not sin in what he said. This is the word of the Lord. Introduction to the Sermon and the Book of Job If someone else is going to do the clicking. If I did it, we'd end up. I'd be putting the news on or something. It'd be. It'd be very awkward. my name is Andy Prideaux. And thank you for your invitation. Or at least for Megan's invitation to come and begin the series that you're going to be doing on the Book of Job. This really challenging, confronting, but I think ultimately encouraging and helpful book in the Old Testament. it's so wonderful to be able to share with you today. I'm really encouraged seeing the reading up in three different languages. I work with international students at Melbourne Uni, with the Christian Union, and, I they would be if they were here now, they'd be very excited to see their language, up on the screen as, as the scriptures are read. I went to a wedding recently. One of the women in our team, a Chinese woman, I said, oh, will there be any translation in the service? And she said, yes, it will be translated from Mandarin into Cantonese, which neither of which helped me. But the English was up on the screen. But it was a good reminder that that's what it feels like for a lot of the students coming along. You know, I got to feel what it's like for my language not to be the main one. I think that was a really good thing. but I'm always encouraged because God is bringing people from every tribe, language and nation into his family. And, just it's like a small reminder of that, I think, which is great. one of the reasons, or maybe the reason that Megan invited me to come and speak is because I recently had a commentary published on The Book of Job. It's my latest book. It's my only book, actually. and I'll be coming back at the end of the series to do a QA on Job after you've heard Megan and other people teaching. and I'll bring some books there to sell. So hopefully you'll have so many questions. You want to buy a copy? If on the off chance you have to be a salesman, if on the off chance you want to buy one today, I can give you one for the special discounted price of $25. They're usually $30. So yeah, what can you do? anyway, I won't be offended if you don't buy today because it's early days. But just put a little planting the seed, planting the seed. but more importantly, let's actually come to God's word, to Job and the opening section of this book. I'll pray as we do that. Father God, we thank you for your amazing love for us in Jesus that we've already been reminded of today, in our prayers and in the reading and in the songs, in everything that's happened. I thank you, Lord God, that the Lord Jesus has been glorified, that he has been lifted up. Father, as we grapple with your Word today in a very challenging part of your word, help us to learn more of your all sufficient love for us so that when we struggle and when people around us struggle, we keep going. We keep looking to to you, holding on to you, knowing that you are the one who holds on to us. And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. The Great Australian Dream vs. Life's Realities Well in the not so recent federal elections, not the other election. the made both of the major parties promised to deliver us from our worst nightmares, didn't they? And deliver the great Australian dream. What is what is at the heart of the great Australian dream? Home ownership. But I wonder what is. What is living the dream look like in our lucky country? Maybe we could take a, like a progressive sort of look at that. Maybe it starts with the right birth plan, then the right preschool or kinder, then the the right school, then the right course after school, then the right job, then you find the right spouse, and then you get the right car and you get the home, and then you get the better car, that new car smell. Maybe you even get to enjoy that. You experience overseas travel. You improve your health. Like me. You get to middle age. You realize you haven't done any exercise in the last 20 years. Maybe I should have a look at that. Then you get the better car, then you get the super. Then you got to improve the health again. Then you get the final car. Maybe then you get the retirement, then maybe some more travel, then protect the health. Then you get the right burial plot. That last one, I believe it or not, I was reminded of almost every day when I came into Melbourne Uni because you got on College Crescent, as it's called, you got all the residential colleges and then literally on the other side you've got the Melbourne Cemetery and there was this big fancy sign at one stage up near the sort of gatehouse of the cemetery. what did it say? It said premium spaces available. Reserve your spot now. That's what it said. I kid you not. It was like my FOMO was being fed even as I thought about my own mortality. Now there's nothing inherently wrong, I think, with the great Australian Dream as I've described it there. We actually need education. Having good health is a good thing. Holidays refresh us. Most of us are going to need a car. All of us are going to need somewhere to live. And if we live long enough, yes, we're going to need some kind of plan for retirement. Of course. And as Christians, we actually have something good to say about these things we can say, because it's true that we receive all of them with thanksgiving from God. They all come from the hand of God. We can receive them with an open hand, rather than sort of just clutching them to ourselves and to our families. We can receive them with thanksgiving rather than turning them into helpless little idols like our lifestyle TV shows do. We can worship God with the whole of our life and in every stage of our life. When Plans Are Interrupted: The Question of Suffering But as God's children. What will we do when some of those plans, or maybe even all of those plans, are interrupted in some way? No one plans for suffering in their five year outlook. Maybe we do in terms of insurance, but I certainly did it when I had a very difficult year in terms of mental illness. I didn't sort of say, well, I'm going to work for a couple of years, then I'll have some holidays, and then in about six months I'll have a mental health crisis and spend some time in hospital. I did sort of plan for that to happen. What do we do when God doesn't give us the gifts that I choose, or the gifts that other people around me seem to be enjoying? What about when God chooses to bring other things into our life? Maybe an old car to drive. Maybe a place to rent instead of to own. Maybe a different job to my dream job. Maybe singleness, maybe childlessness, maybe a broken marriage, maybe chronic illness. The philosopher asks if there is a good God and an all powerful God. Why is there suffering in the world? That's the question of theodicy, and it's a good question to ponder. But the question the book of Job asks is actually a practical one. The question the Book of Job asks is, what will I do when I suffer? And how will I respond to the suffering of other people around me? The short answer to that question is that we will either move towards God or away from him. Job's Story: An Unfolding Narrative of Pain and Faith Now, Job was a man who suffered greatly throughout his life. That's probably a little bit of an understatement. And in the prologue, that is the opening two chapters that have just been read. We see him at the beginning of his pain, I guess, and as the narrative, as the story unfolds, Job's words are going to get more and more emotional. They're going to get more and more passionate, more and more confused, more and more raw. Sometimes you're going to wonder, why on earth did God choose to preserve these words? In the Bible, there should be like a Netflix censorship label sort of warning you for what's what you're about to read. But all of these words, these words of lament are words of faith. They're words of hope in God. They're prayers, actually, that God does answer in Job's lifetime, but ultimately he answers them, like with the lament Psalms, if you like in The Suffering Servant, when the Lord Jesus comes into the world. Job is a poetry sandwich. So the meat in the middle. Most of the book is written in a poetic style. Takes a while to get used to that. You sort of got to go with the flow of it. But like reading the Psalms and the bread on either side is written in prose, which just means normal sentence style narrative kind of a thing. So the prologue that we've just heard and which sets up the story and the epilogue which brings it to a close, is written in prose, and the prologue unfolds in five scenes. And we're going to be looking at the first four of those, because the fifth one is a bit like a hinge into the rest of the book. Scene 1: Job Living the Dream And the first scene, I think. Yes. Megan's on the clicker. Thank you. The first scene is we see Job living the dream. and it makes, I think, the great Australian dream look a bit pale compared to Job's life at this point. Interestingly, this guy is a Gentile. He wasn't a member of Israel, and yet he lives a life that is spiritually described here as blameless and upright. He fears God. He shuns evil. That is, his life was consistent in the way that he loved God and loved his neighbor. Maybe we'd we'd sort of describe it in that way. He was a complete man. He was like the whole package. And he lived a complete life. So the number ten or or or multiples of ten keep coming up. That's the number of wholeness. He had ten children, which it was good to have lots of children back then. Ten children. Thumbs up. He had tens of thousands of livestock. He had a great reputation that seemed to be earned when when people looked at him, they said, here is the greatest man in all the East. Great in wisdom, great in faith, great in wealth, great in life. He was concerned for the spiritual health of his family. He offered sacrifices on their behalf. Like like the patriarchs of old. A kind of a priestly thing. He was. He was concerned not just for appearances being religious, but they might have sinned in their hearts. We need to talk to God about this. He lived consistently. Everyone who looked at him would say he is the blessed person. And and we. We read later on, if you read chapter 29 of Job, it fills out the picture that we just get a glimpse of in the first five verses. So if you want to flesh it out a bit over lunch today, you could read chapter 29. And, it was clear that, yeah, everyone sought out his counsel. they they saw him as a wise man, a compassionate man, a godly man who looked after those people who were in need. But how would these same people, how would his friends view him when all these outward blessings were taken away? Will they stick with him? Will they sit with him? Will they pray for him? Will they care for him? Now this picture, this ideal picture is really important for reading the rest of the book, because you're going to hear in the chapters that follow the his friends who come to comfort him. At first, they're like that song you say at best when you say nothing at all. As soon as they open their mouths, it all goes downhill and they're going to see his suffering as evidence of God's judgment. He must have done something wrong. Nobody suffers that much. If they're a good person, he must have sinned. He suffers because he sins. And then they're going to say. And when he complains he's singing his speech, he's still sinning in the way that he speaks to us about God. But that's not true. The narrator says, the Lord says, we'll hear it again. No, he suffers because he is good, because he is righteous. At the end of the book. In chapter 42, the Lord will say his words, unlike the friends, were words of faith. Even his laments, even his angry outbursts, had faith running through them. Back to the prologue. Scene 2: The Lord's Boast and Satan's Lies We're into season two now. The Lord's boast and Satan's lies. Have a look. Let's have a look at verse six. One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, where have you come from? Satan answered, sorry. Satan answered the Lord from roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it. Now we need to remember. And I mean, this is going to become very clear as the book unfolds and certainly in the last few chapters, but it comes up again and again that God is a creator and sustainer of all that is, he is the sovereign ruler, the King over all that he is. And what we discover here is that that includes even the unseen spiritual realm, the realm of angels and demons. Nothing happens that is outside God's direction and control, and that includes even the actions of Satan. So you have this throne room scene. The angels report to him. Satan also comes into their midst. God asks Satan, what have you been doing? And he gives an evasive answer, going to and fro throughout the earth. More accurately, what he's been doing is what we hear in one Peter five and verse eight, your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Satan is prowling around and Job is on the menu on this occasion. And the Lord does something that seems strange at first. In verse eight, he draws Satan's attention to Job. The Lord instigates the action of this chapter. He said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? There's no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. There's that description again. But then Satan replies, Does Jo fear God for nothing? Haven't you put a hedge around him in his household? Everything he has. You've blessed the work of his hands so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face. It's important to see here the Lord's initiative and the Lord's ultimate control. He brings up the question of Job. Whatever will happen to Job, whatever Satan thinks that he can achieve. It's caught up into God's larger plan, and it has to do with something to do with God proving the reality of Job's faith. The devil cannot escape God's sovereign will. And I want you to hear how much the Lord loves Job. He's. He's gushing over Job. There's no one like him in all the earth, he says. Which is what God does with his people before heavenly beings. Before the universe, if you like. The Lord boasts of his people. He celebrates his church. He writes their names in his book of life. So that so that anyone in the universe can can see it. When one sinner repents. Jesus says he throws a heavenly party. And Zephaniah tells us that God sings over his people. It's extraordinary. We've been singing to God this morning. Listen to Zephaniah 317. The Lord your God will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exalt over you with loud singing. That's extraordinary. The kind of love that God has for his people. We need to remember that whatever happens to Job and whatever happens to us, we are actually in the palm of God's hand. Suffering will happen, but it will not be the last word. But of course, Satan is the ultimate cynic. He sees through it all. God, you're deluded. And Job. He's a phony. He's only in it for the money. Come on. He's only in it for the health, the wealth, the blessing. Take all that away. He'll spit in your face. He'll curse you. See, Satan's not only confronting Job at this point, he's confronting God. He's calling into question the possibility that God and a human being could actually have a relationship like this. Satan's deluded, though, isn't he? We know that he's defeated. God will vindicate himself. And his servant and their relationship before these lies. But a key question in Satan's challenge is raised in verse nine of chapter one. Does Job fear God for nothing? Well, the law will allow Job's many blessings to be taken away so that nothing is left. Because he's confident that what will be left is his faith in God by God. Let me say it again will remain entirely in control. Satan only acts with God's permission. Verse 12, the Lord said to Satan, very well, then, everything he has is in your power. But on the man himself do not lay a finger. Scene 3: Job's Life Interrupted Scene three Job's life interrupted. Well, we've heard of. We've seen Job live in the dream. But now we see Job's life painfully, I guess. Dismantled. Pulled apart piece by piece. Each of the material blessings he enjoyed are taken away from him. These foreign invaders have come in and decimated his property, his livestock, everything that he owns. There's a sole survivor left after each disaster, but it's almost like they're only spared so that they can bring more bad news until the worst news of all. Verse 18, when he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine in the oldest brother's house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them, and they are dead. And I am the only one who has escaped to tell you. Job woke up that morning, as he always did. To pray to offer sacrifices on behalf of his children. Completely unaware of the tragedy awaiting him and his wife. By the end of that same day, their seven sons and three daughters were dead. I think it's easy to get used to stories and descriptions in the Bible, so we get used to knowing them really well. Like when people encounter Jesus and their lives are changed around. We're so used to, you know, we don't sort of think about what it would mean to be blind from birth and then be healed. Like, yeah, Jesus healed the blind man. Okay, what's the next thing? Kind of a thing? I think it's the same thing with the weight of what's going on here. And it came back to me at least about a week ago. I was watching the news and more bad news from Gaza. There was a family, a husband and wife, both doctors, ten children, just like Joe and his wife. The wife was working at the hospital at the time. A bomb struck the building where the family was. The building came down and nine of the ten children died, and the husband and the remaining child were in a critical condition. Bodies were taken to the hospital, and it was the mother who was one of the first people attending. Who. These are my. These are my kids. What do you do? What can you do? How do you make sense of it? How do you respond? We need to remember. The Job knows nothing of the conversation. And the heavenly throne room. Stuff's happening on Earth that's affected by what happens in heaven. But he doesn't get to overhear that. And we don't get to overhear those conversations either, do we? We have more information than Joe because Jesus has come into the world. But still we don't. We're not privy to. We don't sort of have God explaining, okay, now all these things are happening, but don't worry, because tomorrow it doesn't work like that. And it didn't work like that for Joe. All he knows is that one day everything was going well, the next day. It's like everything's turned upside down. How do you respond? Well, how did Job respond? Well, the rest of the book will continue to unpack that response, but this is the initial response in verse 20. He got up, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell to the ground in worship, and said, naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised, literally blessed. In all, this Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. What does he do? He mourns. Of course he mourns. He tears his robe. He shaves his head. He falls to the ground. And he worships God by acknowledging the reality of who God is and what his life is. No one chooses to be born. Not one person in this room chose to be born. Life is a gift given by God, and God chooses when our life will end, which seems obvious. But in practice, I think even as believers, we sometimes act as if we make ourselves that we answer to ourselves, that we're in control. You know, if I get this situation sorted out and avoid that person and have this experience and adopt this exercise regime, then things, everything should work out. We're in denial of our fragility, our utter dependence upon God, and we're shocked when death interrupts. He'd only just retired. He was going to travel the world. But Job is right. His words are words of faith. Whoever we think we are, whatever we have achieved, whatever others think of us. The truest thing about us is that all that we are and all that we have, and all that we will be, lies in the hands of our maker. It's a famous verse, isn't it? We bring nothing into the world. You take nothing with you naked little screaming, fragile, wrinkly little babies coming into the world, dusty, frail, naked human beings going out of the world. We are really like little babies screaming out into the darkness of the universe in the hands of our maker, who is free. But as the rest of this book will show ultimately, and the rest of the Bible will show is also good, and we owe him our complete worship the Lord gave. The Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised. Scene 4: Suffering Intensifies - "Skin for Skin" Well, the optimists amongst us, I'm afraid to say I'm a pessimist a lot of the time, but the optimists amongst us might be saying, well, as long as you've got your health, dear, that's the main thing. Well, suffering came down on Job's wealth, even his children. But now it hits his health. It hits his body, it hits his mind. Opening verses of chapter two. It's familiar territory. The heavenly court is again in session. Angelic beings report to God. Satan intrudes. God questions him. Once again, the Lord draws Satan's attention to Job. Once again, the Lord delights in Job and here exposes the failure of Satan's plans. Job still holds fast his integrity. Although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason. What a Job! Say blessed be the name of the Lord. He didn't curse God. He blessed God. But Satan's never satisfied. He's always despising God's good word about his servants. Skin for skin. It's one thing to lose your staff, even your loved ones. But what happens if you feel trapped in the pain of your own mind and body, when your experience is so painful? You just want it to end. Well again, Job's faith will be proven. God's purposes will be vindicated. God allows this terrible interruption to Job's life. The most painful test. But again, notice he's in control. Satan has to answer to God. Verse six of chapter two. Behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life. And then we hear something of Job's experience. Verse seven Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it. As he sat among the ashes. The ash heap, the rubbish dump. It's some kind of terrible skin disease that covers his body. He's in constant pain and discomfort. He smells. Even his wife finds it hard to be near him again. Others around him increasingly see him as unclean and cursed. Even children make fun of him. A huge thing in that culture. He has insomnia. His mind, his emotions are in turmoil. And I'm getting that from other little snippets where he describes his situation. So chapter seven, verse five. My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt. My skin hardens, then breaks out of fresh. Chapter 19, verse 17. My breath is offensive to my wife. I'm a stench to the children of my own mother. Chapter 30, verse 17. The night racks my bones. The pain that gnaws me takes no rest. Chapter 30, verse 30. My skin turns black and falls from me. And my bones burn with heat. And spiritually in his relationship to God. It feels like God's just moved further and further away, so we don't hear Job's voice from after the prologue until we get to the to the theophany, the appearance of God in chapter 38. And it's a very long book. That's a very long silence. So Job's going to keep calling out. He's going to keep saying, I can't, I can't feel you. Please speak to me. Why can't I hear your voice? Please show me that you love me. Almost the worst pain for Job, actually, than his physical pain is actually his pain in relationship with God. Because he knows that if he doesn't have God, in the end he doesn't have anything. What he wants most of all is to know that God is for him. Understandably, Job's wife is deeply upset, and I think we need to sit with Job's wife. We don't hear a lot about her, but I think we need to understand that it's her life that's been destroyed as well, isn't it? She bore these children that have died, and this is her husband that she has to watch powerless going through this suffering. And later, as she sits and listens to everyone, just continually throw these, shoot these arrows at Job, she has to hear her, the name of her husband denigrated, and all these terrible things being said about him. I think he or she is speaking out of her pain. She wants it to be over. It's just too much. But we also need to recognize that without knowing it, because she hasn't heard the conversation either. She's echoing the words of Satan when in verse nine she says, are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die. How does Joy respond this time? The last verse we're looking at, you're talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble? In all this Job did not see in him what he said. Behind the word accept. There shall we not accept the good and the bad is the meaning. Shall we not make use of? Shall we not profit from not just the good stuff, but shall we not make use of the hard stuff as well? He's trusting in God. He recognizes the good things, and the hard things come from God's hand. They might not fit into our plans, our five year plans, but thankfully everything fits into God's plans for his people. Personal Reflection: God is For You So my illness meant that I was not working for a year I wasn't able to see. People did church online. and I was very grateful for, a handful of Christian friends who were very careful in the way that they rang up to to pray for me or just listen to me, or just sort of to be there. And I remember very clearly a much older mentor who rang up on one occasion and he said, after a very long conversation, said very carefully. He said, do you know, Andy, that, if if God thought that what was happening to you would lead to your eternal damage, he would not let it happen? Andy, God is for you. And that's not just for me, is it? That's for all of us. What does Romans 828 say in all things? Not just the good things, not just the happy things, but the difficult things, the things that other people around us don't understand and aren't sure what to say. In all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose, not my purpose. My purpose is often interruption, interrupted and frustrated, which I think is probably a good thing. But God's purpose is not frustrated by these things. God doesn't say, well, I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what to do with Andy. I guess just taking too long. Is this too. It's just too complicated. His life's too messy. No, he never did that. He never does that. In God's hands, our suffering is not meaningless. In God's hands, nothing is wasted. God is good. Moving Towards God in Suffering When Job suffered and he starts doing it here and he'll keep doing it through the book. Even as he's screaming out of God, he's moving towards God like a little child screaming out in the supermarket. Their parents aren't there. They're doing the right thing. Everyone else is a bit embarrassed how that little child screaming like that in the supermarket had never happened with my children. Rubbish. But anyway. But God, God, he's the best parent, isn't he? He's the perfect father. And Job knew that all, all the thing to do was to run to him. And his words weren't pretty or polite. It's like the kid just screams out. They don't sort of work out this script of how I can be polite to my mum in the supermarket, you know what I mean? His words are passionate. They're angry, they're confused. But in all these prayers, he's crying out to the right person because he's crying out to the one who's in control. He's crying out to the one whose purpose for Job and for his world is good. And we know now. Something the Job didn't know that all those prayers were ultimately going to be answered in Jesus. That in Jesus we see the suffering servant and we discover that in Jesus God has entered into our suffering with us, not metaphorically, but literally. Sharing our tears, sharing our pain. God moves towards us in our suffering. That's the thing that underlies our faith. Before we make any kind of movement towards God, God has already made the first move. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and gave His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. In Christ. God forgives us all our sins. He takes away all our guilt, all our shame, and will finally heal and transform and restore us when Jesus comes again. But right now, maybe for a long time, it won't feel like it. But we need to remember that God is good and he's working for your good, and he's working for the glory of his name in all the earth. Closing Prayer So my prayer for you and for myself, actually, is that as we hold on to Jesus, as we cry out to our loving Heavenly Father who's not embarrassed, not embarrassed even when we can't say anything at all. Actually, when there are only tears that as we do that we know that he is the one who is holding on to us. And whatever happens, he will never let us go. And when we look to the Lord Jesus and what he has done for us and who he is for us, now we know, don't we, that that is true. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we do thank you that you are the most perfect and patient and kind and holy and loving. Heavenly father, we thank you that you did so loved the world that you gave your son, that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. We thank you that you do walk beside us in our suffering, and that you do catch our suffering up into your purposes for our lives and for your world. We thank you that nothing is wasted in your hands. Lord God, please help us to keep keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, remembering that your eternal hands hold us up now and forever. That we have nothing to fear because your love is true and strong and good. Please sustain us. Please strengthen us. Please help us just to keep going. And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.

In our 165th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards explore strategies for breaking down complex ideas into clear, simple explanations that clients can easily grasp.  For full show notes, see kitces.com and thesocietyofadvice.com.

We spoke to this weapon..... Ex-Royal Marine Mitch Hutchcraft has just completed the world’s longest sea-to-summit ascent of Everest and it’s nothing short of legendary.⁠ ⁠ Starting with a 34 km swim across the English Channel, he then cycled more than 11,910 km to India, ran 900 km to Kathmandu, and trekked 359 km to Everest Base Camp.⁠ ⁠ Understandably, the journey’s been dubbed ‘the world’s longest triathlon'. Mitch Hutchcraft started by swimming the English Channel on 15 September and the 240-day challenge concluded when he topped the world's highest mountain He was doing it for charity and you can donate here as well - https://givestar.io/gs/limitless

In this second episode of my recent interview with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, we begin by discussing his reaction to the horror of October 7. Within minutes of hearing and reading reports of the Hamas atrocities, he said he knew that this would result in total disaster for Hamas as well as the people of the Gaza Strip. He decided to pivot in his very comfortable life and job to immerse himself in explaining and advocating the conundrum of Gazans. Alkhatib is adamant that the majority of the people living in the Strip hate Hamas. And now they are suffering immeasurably because of Hamas. He refuses to despair, and he refuses to accept that Palestinians cannot and will not be self-governing. He also refuses to blame Israel for the disaster that has befallen the people of the Gaza Strip - including many members of his family and personal friends. This is what we talk about. That horrible day. What has ensued... and what may transpire. Ahmed is determined and hopeful.As a postscript to our discussion, I would be remiss if I did not mention the tragedy that occurred yesterday. Nine children of a female pediatrician who was working in a hospital were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Understandably, the international community is outraged. So are many Israelis. These tragedies... at this point there has just been too much pain and death and destruction for all. I am also confident that Ahmed would allow himself to feel immense sorrow but would temper it with his signature rationalism. We must, he would maintain, find a way to end this endless conflict and suffering.State of Tel Aviv is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib leads Realign For Palestine, a groundbreaking new project at the Atlantic Council. This project challenges entrenched narratives in the Israel-Palestine discourse and develops a new policy framework for rejuvenated pro-Palestine advocacy. Realign For Palestine aims to cultivate a new generation of Palestinian voices committed to a two-nation solution, nonviolence, and radical pragmatism.Alkhatib serves as a resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Middle East Programs, where he writes extensively on Gaza's political and humanitarian affairs, is an outspoken critic of Hamas, and a promoter of a radically pragmatic approach to peace and Palestinian statehood as the only path forward between Palestinians and Israelis. His writing and opinions have been published and featured across the US, Israeli, and international press, and his views are prominently featured across social media platforms, with his accounts that have tens of thousands of engaged followers.Alkhatib holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master's in intelligence and national security studies. He grew up in Gaza City and left Gaza in 2005 to attend college in the United States as an exchange student. Much of Ahmed's experience is influenced by having grown up in Gaza during the Oslo peace process, and the difficulties resulting from Oslo's failure, and the rise of Hamas and Islamism in Gaza.Following the deadly October 7 massacre, Alkhatib's life was deeply impacted when three different airstrikes killed 33 of his immediate and extended family members. Still, he has made a deliberate choice to be part of breaking the cycle of dehumanization and defying the cycle of hatred, incitement, violence, and revenge. In his presentations to students, policymakers, and thought leaders, Alkhatib exemplifies how others can exercise individual responsibility, spread empathy, and engage peacefully in the often-divisive Israel and Palestine discourse. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stateoftelaviv.com/subscribe

God's Word for Today21 May, 202513 My son, eat honey, for it is good, and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste.14 Know that wisdom is such to your soul; if you find it, there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off.-Prov 24:13-14 ESV WISDOM IS HONEY TO OUR SOULEating honey is always associated with pleasure and satisfaction. Was not the "Promised Land" depicted as a land flowing with good things, such as milk and honey? (Exo 3:8, 17). Honey was among the most pleasurable substances known to man in the Middle East during Old Testament times for its sweetness (Gen 43:11; 1 Sam 14:27) People find pleasure in eating it directly from the honeycomb. Occasionally, it was presented as a gift (Gen 43:11; 1 Kings 14:3). It was a staple in John the Baptist's diet (Matthew 3:4). Exodus 16:31 compares the taste of manna to that of wafers made with honey. This enhances the biblical connection between godliness, manna, truth, and the ministry of Jesus Christ (Psa 119:103–104; John 6:32–35; 14:6; 20:31).Thus, the Bible does not condemn pleasure and enjoyment of earthly things, does it? God blesses us with creation to enjoy. (1 Tim 4:4). However, excess, addiction, and greed are physical abuses and spiritual errors. Appreciating what God has provided in this life is not a sin. Honey, itself, is a "good thing." It is appropriate to take pleasure in properly experiencing something the way God intended. Something pleasurable and valuable like honey is as wisdom to the soul. As honey provides pleasure and nourishment to the body, wisdom is uplifting and life-giving to the soul. The word of God is more desirable than honey, as the psalmist expresses;“More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.”[Psa 19:10]Scripture, especially here in the book of Proverbs, connects godly wisdom with concepts such as life and security (Prov 10:7; 12:28; 14:27). Proverbs note that godly people can suffer tragedy and hardship (Psa 18:6; 132:1; Pro 24:16). However, in most cases, those who follow God's will and avoid sin are much safer from negative natural consequences than the wicked. They are closer to God and are promised with deliverance (Prov 8:32–36; 11:4). Understandably, a person closer to truth brings is closer to God. (John 14:6)But, the Scripture is the truth.[John 17:17] Thus we can rest in it. Whatever it says is true. As John 3:36 promises, "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life", we can lay hold unto it. Jesus is the truth [John 14:6]. Believers are guaranteed a place in heaven because He is trustworthy. He promised, saying, "In my Father's house are many rooms… And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also" (John 14:2–3). This promise is as honey that gives pleasure to our weary souls. Our hope of seeing Jesus and being with Him in heaven is sure and guaranteed. The writer of Hebrews 6:19 describes the believer's hope as "a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain."Watch in YouTube: https://youtu.be/lPuuvKVODmgListen and FOLLOW us on our podcast Spotify: http://bit.ly/glccfil_spotify Apple Podcast: http://bit.ly/glccfil-applepcast Audible Podcast: http://bit.ly/glccfil-audibleFollow us on various media platforms: https://gospellightfilipino.contactin.bio#gospellightfilipino#godswordfortoday

"Always lead by example in being a genuinely good person. Unfortunately, there are creators of conflict, rage baiters, and evil that exists. When people need a reason to heal, let your compassion for all beings and love of life serve as a safe landing/launching pad of inspiration. Those who spread false narratives for the sake of sabotage, causing confusion and avoiding/refusing accountability -- or who intentionally hurt people, places and spaces just to feel better about themselves -- deep down are insecure, lack a real sense of identity and purpose, or perhaps even feel dead inside. Pray for them, hope for their healing, rise above it all... May peace, love, alignment, and harmony be with You/U."

Episode 18 — Initiation: When Do You Know You've Done Enough in the World of Women?____________________________________________________Neither Zan nor Jordan are strangers to men seeking advice on a very particular predicament: “I'd like to settle down with one beauty, but I feel like I haven't had all the experiences I wanted to with women, and I don't want to feel like I forever missed out.”Depending on your life's journey, you might feel like what you need now is to settle down with one woman. Understandably so, you might also be afraid that your curiosity for more experiences with women could one day put a wrench in a beautiful relationship. So how do you tame it? Can you?In today's episode, Zan and Jordan attempt to give guys in this position an answer. Here's something you might find illuminating: you pursue women, but women aren't actually what you're looking for. I see it in myself–using women to make myself feel godly, or pursuing her with the hope of forever basking in the goddess inside of her. But as the guys say in today's episode, no woman can fulfil this longing of yours forever. If instead of trying to fill that void within you, you explored it, for what it is–what kind of beauty, artistic expression, and capacity for brand new pursuits could open up?..Like a dog chasing cars–you wouldn't really know what to do with one once you caught one! At least, after the honeymoon phase wears off :)____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Join Zan Perrion in Bucharest for WWZD (What Would Zan Do) Live—a full week of immersive, hands-on training with real models.No more dry theory: learn sub-communication to command attention, master magnetic eye contact that sparks unforgettable connections, and explore the subtle art of touch—like a magician's misdirection. Plus, unlock exclusive tactics to break through social boundaries with playful mystery.Only a few spots available. Secure yours now: https://arsamorata.com/wwzd-live/Giddy-up!____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/lifementoring/____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Join our newsletter here & get all our latest: https://arsamorata.com____________________________________THE AMORATI is a close-knit fraternity of men from all over the world who have devoted their lives to the philosophy of The Ars Amorata.The Amorati are lovers of women. The Amorati are lovers of life. The Amorati are treasure hunters and raconteurs. The Amorati are on a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure.JOIN US in the AMORATI membership - Go to https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________ARS AMORATA is a celebration of the art of seduction, the rebirth of romance, and a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure.Ars Amorata is a philosophy of beauty. It is a way of life. It is not a religion. It is a belief system, similar to the way one might cSupport the show

Is the annual performance conversation season a chance to turn around engagement? Last week kicked off our new Coaching Café Podcast series by unpacking the newly released Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report for 2025.  But the headlines are hard to ignore: Is the global workplace at breaking point? Employee engagement on the brink (of collapse) Management engagement falls from 30% to 27% (no other worker category has experienced as significant decline). This round of Coaching Cafés Podcasts we are focusing on enabling effective performance conversations. Understandably, this might feel worrying for some managers, given low engagement scores.  However, we believe there is a real opportunity. If done right, the annual performance conversation season could be a chance for many managers to begin the turnaround of employee engagement.  Therefore, join Natalie and Paula as we explore: 

On Monday night Em and Michael celebrated the 2 year anniversary of Emsolation going independent by doing a live stream of the podcast. Understandably not everyone could be there for it, so we've assembled some of our favourite moments from the full hour of hilarity for you to enjoy. Inside Em and Michael chat about the election result and what Anthony Albanese needs to do next, and even what the future holds for the Liberal party and Peter Dutton. Em reveals her algorithm is serving her reels of slow-mo rugby men and guys in spandex doing backflips, Michael also introduced Em to the abs of former rugby player and independent politician David Pocock. They also talk about their last minute trip this week to the US and took your questions answering if they got Lady Gaga tickets and will they be doing more ‘Okay, Stop!' segments and so much more. Then in our Sealed Section, on our premium service Emsolation Extra, Em and Michael reveal all the details about why they're off to the US and everything they plan to do while there and it's a LOT! You can sign up and listen for $1.87 a week, or listen and watch the video of our main episode via the Supercast website for $2.50 a week at emsolation.supercast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this first episode of Season Nine of The Family Histories Podcast, host Andrew Martin meets Canadian genealogist Ron Williams whose family tree research resulted in him encountering a 57 year old mystery...  Understandably, Ron couldn't not investigate and in doing so, uncovered a fascinating story which he then turned it into a book.THE LIFE STORY - ALFRED VICTOR WILLIAMSRon has chosen to tell the fascinating story of his paternal Grandfather - Alfred Victor Williams - one that involves mystery and intrigue, and 57 missing years.The story sees Ron find just a few clues that hint towards some very different elements of his Grandfather's missing first 57 years - an affidavit, a school photograph of a son, and a letter. Why did Alfred spend years living under the alias Roy Hammond?Ron has turned Alfred's story into a book titled 'The Lost Fifty-Seven - A genealogical journey of discovery, deception, secrets and scandal' (2024).THE BRICK WALL - MARY WILLIAMS It's the identity of his 2x Great Grandmother - Mary Williams - that is causing Ron problems in his research. He knows that she was born in about 1831, and likely in Shropshire (or Salop as it was known back then). After finding a confusing 'Cumberland in Salop' reference, Ron has found further Salop references in her census entries after her marriage to George Williams.As Ron doesn't know the birth name of Mary, he's struggled to find the correct marriage, which he estimates was circa 1853, as the couple rapidly grow a family, starting with his Gt Grandfather in 1854.What was Mary Williams' pre-marriage surname?If you think you have a clue or a research idea, you can contact Ron at his website, or alternatively you can find him on Twitter and Bluesky. You can also send us a message, and we'll pass it on to him.In the meantime, Ron is fascinated by Andrew and Sándor's offer of help... but someone's clearly hungry....- - -Credits:Andrew Martin - Host and ProducerRon Williams - GuestJohn Spike - Sándor PetőfiSupport the showThank you for listening! You can sign up to our email newsletter for the latest and behind the scenes news. You can find us on Twitter @FamilyHistPod, Facebook, Instagram, and BlueSky. If you liked this episode please subscribe for free, or leave a rating or review, or consider giving us a 'tip' to keep the show funded.

Our message begins with Saul, still blind in Damascus.  The Lord appears to a man named Ananias and gives him instructions to pray for Saul.  Understandably anxious, Ananias obeys the Lord and Saul has his sight restored and is baptized.  He immediately begins to preach that Jesus Christ is the Son of God! It's not long before the "persecutor" becomes the "persecuted."  When Saul goes to Jerusalem, he experiences the same challenge he faced in Damascus.  We will also look at Saul's so-called "silent" years. 

There are not many weeks that go by that we end up discussing news of a horror reboot. This show we talk about the Urban Legends reboot. There is not much news as of yet, but it is definitely coming. We talk about our memories of the movie, why it tends to be overlooked, and whether we are looking forward to it.During our last show, we talked about the awesome marketing behind Weapons. The advertising blitz for the film continues. This week a two hour YouTube video was released of security camera footage. There was also a bonkers trailer. The question becomes, when can you have too much of a good thing?Horror movies tend to be based around folklore. So it is not that surprising that there are not that many vampire films from Asia. Daydreamers is one of the first vampire movies to come out of Vietnam. Understandably, the story is a predictable one about a group of bloodsuckers who are fighting the urge to kill humans.There is no doubting how stylish Daydreamers is. And since there are so few vampire stories from that part of the world, it is easy to forgive many of the missteps. However, there is only so much you can overlook. Poor writing and pacing ruing what would be a flawed, but passable watch.Taking popular children's stories and putting a horror spin on them is nothing new. We talk about the recent glut of these types of movies and why people do not really care about them anymore. This leads to our feature presentation, the body horror retelling of Cinderella, The Ugly Stepsister.The plot is basically the same story everyone knows, but told from the point of view of one of the cruel stepsisters. Still, The Ugly Stepsister is its own tale. Though it covers many of the themes of the source material, the fact that it is told from a different perspective gives everything a different meaning. It is filled with surprises and is disgusting in all the best ways. Adventures in Movies! is a part of the Morbidly Beautiful Podcast Network. Morbidly Beautiful is your one stop shop for all your horror needs. From the latest news and reviews to interviews and old favorites, it can be found at Morbidly Beautiful.Adventures in Movies! is hosted by Nathaniel and Blake. You can find Nathaniel on Instagram at nathaninpoortaste. Blake can be found on Twitter @foureyedhorror and on Instagram at foureyedhorror. You can reach us personally or on Twitter @AdventuresinMo1.Music in the background from https://www.FesliyanStudios.com

Host: Wayne Jones  |  Released Wednesday, April 23, 2025 Understandably, Samson is normally an example of what not to do in leadership. In this weeks’s episode of Authentically Adam, Wayne uses Samson in the usual fashion. Specifically, the discussion centers around Judges 15 and the back-and-forth exchanges of retaliation between Samsons and the Philistines. “As […]

Host: Wayne Jones  |  Released Wednesday, April 23, 2025 Understandably, Samson is normally an example of what not to do in leadership. In this weeks’s episode of Authentically Adam, Wayne uses Samson in the usual fashion. Specifically, the discussion centers around Judges 15 and the back-and-forth exchanges of retaliation between Samsons and the Philistines. “As […]

0:00 - The Avs 2nd line hasn't recorded a single point in 2 playoff games. Val Nichushkin has been held off the score sheet for 2 consecutive games. We didn't see that coming.14:54 - The vibes are weird on the show today because of the Double Lose-A-Roo. Understandably so. We need to work through our emotions. We need some sports talk therapy.31:51 - The Nuggets had one last timeout in their pocket last night when the game ended. That was the correct thing to do. Coach Adelman made the right decision not using the timeout.

Episode 198Series: On the Mission Field - 21In this installment of the On the Mission Field series, we interview the O'Briens to Ukraine. John and his wife Cathy have dedicated their lives to reaching the lost souls of eastern Ukraine. Despite the horrors following the 2022 invasion and at great personal cost, they refused to leave, continuing to provide help, comfort, supplies, and the gospel to the people of the region. Understandably, most missionaries have fled. With so many lives lost, so many homes destroyed, and so many families bereft of hope and security, people are now more open to spiritual truth. John and Cathy stand in the gap, serving the Lord and being the vessels through whom God continues to shower grace on the Ukrainians. Additionally, their ministries to the deaf and to military servicemembers are thriving amidst the chaos. Though they did not initially set out to minister to these people groups, God equipped and commissioned them for it. You won't want to miss their incredible testimony of God's work in their lives, and in the lives of the souls God wants to save through their ministries.Listen to the Removing Barriers Podcast here:Spotify: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cutt.ly/Ega8YeI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Apple Podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cutt.ly/Vga2SVd⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Edifi: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cutt.ly/Meec7nsv⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cutt.ly/mga8A77⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Podnews: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podnews.net/podcast/i4jxo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠See all our platforms: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://removingbarriers.net⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Contact us:Email us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://removingbarriers.net/contact⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Financially support the show: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://removingbarriers.net/donate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Affiliates:Book Shop: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bookshop.org/shop/removingbarriers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christian Books . com: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/home?event=AFF&p=1236574⁠See all our affiliates: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://removingbarriers.net/affiliates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Notes:Website: https://fbcminthill.org/ministries/missions/john-obrien/

If you're recovering from an eating disorder, you might well desire to eat all the foods that you have been depriving yourself of, as a rebellion against the restriction or dieting fatigue. You may have an all or nothing relationship with food. You're either being super-healthy and good, or chaotic and devouring everything in sight. Maybe you binge on ‘bad foods' that you would normally forbid yourself. In recovery, it's helpful to move towards permitting all these foods into your eating plan. This doesn't mean eating donuts for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Or throwing health goals out of the window. It's about embracing food neutrality and taking food off the pedestal of maximal pleasure. It's possible to achieve healthy eating (not orthorexic eating!), whilst honouring taste, satisfaction and pleasure. Understandably, you might not know where to start. This podcast episode will give your practical steps to make this possible. I hope that you find it helpful.   Harriet's Substack: https://substack.com/@theeatingdisordertherapist   Harriet Frew's current offers: - Online 10 Steps to Intuitive Eating Course https://www.theeatingdisordertherapist.co.uk/online-courses.html Online Breaking Free from Bulimia  https://www.theeatingdisordertherapist.co.uk/bulimia-nervosa-online-course.html Eating Disorders Training for Professionals https://www.theeatingdisordertherapist.co.uk/eating-disorders-training-with-harriet-frew.html Body Image Training for Professionals https://www.theeatingdisordertherapist.co.uk/body-image-training-with-harriet-frew.html    

Israel is a nation often in the news but seldom for its potential as an investment.​Israel is a tiny country but a powerhouse for investing opportunities, particularly in the tech sector. Brian Mumbert joins us today to examine Israel in a different light.Brian Mumbert is Vice President and Regional Sales Executive at Timothy Plan, an underwriter of Faith & Finance.Is It Safe to Invest in Israel?Despite frequent headlines about conflict in the Middle East, Israel stands out as a remarkably resilient nation with an entrepreneurial spirit.Israelis have a low view of debt culturally. In fact, at one point, the government even sent out piggy banks to every citizen to encourage savings and wise stewardship. That mindset—combined with a tech-forward economy—creates strong fundamentals that appeal to values-based investors.Understandably, some investors may wonder about the safety of investing in a country with frequent regional conflict. Israel is regulated just like the U.S. They have their own stock exchange—the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange—and the top 125 companies are listed on the Tel Aviv 125 index.Even during times of war, Israel's economy continues to operate. Brian compared it to the U.S. during World War II: while volatility occurred, the Dow still gained over 50% from 1939 to 1945.A Developed Economy with Room to GrowIsrael graduated from the emerging markets category to a developed economy in 2009. While this was a major step forward, it ironically resulted in less attention from global investors, since many international funds tend to favor larger developed economies like Japan or those in Europe.Still, the fundamentals are strong. Israel's unemployment and inflation rates remain low, and the U.S. continues to be a committed ally.Israel has earned the nickname “Startup Nation” for good reason. Its high-tech sector employs 12% of the workforce and generates 20% of the country's GDP.Many Israeli companies don't become household names because giants like Apple, Google, and Amazon acquire them. Notable examples include:Mobileye—A leader in automotive safety tech.Waze—The crowd-sourced navigation app developed to navigate Jerusalem's winding roads.Cherry Tomatoes—Yes, even innovations in agriculture like drip irrigation and cherry tomatoes can be traced back to Israeli ingenuity.The government's support of tech innovation has made Israel the third-largest tech hub globally by capital raised—just behind Silicon Valley and New York.While tech leads the way, Israel's financial sector is also strong due to the cultural avoidance of debt. This contrasts sharply with many Western nations. Innovations in agriculture (like drip irrigation) and strong export activity also contribute to Israel's economic resilience.Over 50% of Israel's exports are tech-related; major U.S. companies like Apple have invested heavily in Israeli startups, demonstrating the global demand for their innovations.Israel's global relationships are improving, with normalization efforts such as the Abraham Accords expanding diplomatic and trade ties across the Middle East.Venture capital is thriving, too. Israel boasts over 270 active VC funds, and from 2014 to 2018, investment in Israeli startups grew by 140%—more than double the rate in the U.S. during the same period.The Timothy Plan's Israel Common Values FundTimothy Plan offers the Israel Common Values Mutual Fund for those interested in investing in Israel in a biblically responsible way. This fund stands out in several ways:Actively managed—Fund managers respond in real time to geopolitical developments.Focused exposure—At least 80% of companies in the portfolio are domiciled in Israel.Faith-based screening—Just like all Timothy Plan funds, this one avoids investments in companies involved in abortion, pornography, and other areas contrary to Christian values.The fund performed very well last year as the Israeli Stock Exchange closed the year up over 20%, with most of that growth coming in the second half.If you're interested in learning more about investing in Israel and doing so in a way that aligns with your faith, visit TimothyPlan.com.On Today's Program, Rob Answers Listener Questions:I just sold my home with $200,000 in profit. Where's the best place to put this money to earn more interest while keeping it ready for my next home purchase in 6-9 months?As a veteran with limited funds, can I set up a Christian investment account to tithe $100 monthly and distribute it to ministry programs after my death?I'm considering buying a rental property for passive income, but I would like to know if it is wiser to meet with a financial advisor and invest in the stock market instead. I'm single, planning for the future, and want to avoid the time-consuming aspects of managing a rental property.Resources Mentioned:Faithful Steward: FaithFi's New Quarterly MagazineTimothy Plan | Israel Common Values Mutual FundBankrate.comWisdom Over Wealth: 12 Lessons from Ecclesiastes on Money (Pre-Order)Look At The Sparrows: A 21-Day Devotional on Financial Fear and AnxietyRich Toward God: A Study on the Parable of the Rich FoolFind a Certified Kingdom Advisor (CKA) or Certified Christian Financial Counselor (CertCFC)FaithFi App Remember, you can call in to ask your questions most days at (800) 525-7000. Faith & Finance is also available on the Moody Radio Network and American Family Radio. Visit our website at FaithFi.com where you can join the FaithFi Community and give as we expand our outreach.

Earlier today, President Trump announced a pause on reciprocal tariffs for 90 days. Our Global Head of Fixed Income Research and Public Policy Strategy Michael Zezas looks at the fallout.----- Transcript ----- Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Morgan Stanley's Global Head of Fixed Income Research and Public Policy Strategy. Today – possible outcomes of President Trump's sudden pause on reciprocal tariffs.It's Wednesday, April 9th, at 10pm in New York. We'd actually planned a different episode for release today where my colleague Global Chief Economist Seth Carpenter and I laid out developments in the market thus far and looked at different sets of potential outcomes. Needless to say, all of that changed after President Trump announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs that were set to rise. And so, we needed to update our thinking.It's been a truly unprecedented week for financial markets. The volatility started on April 2, with President Trump's announcement that new, reciprocal tariffs would take effect on April 9. When added to already announced tariffs, and later adding even more tariffs in for China, it all added up to a promise by the US to raise its average tariffs to levels not seen in 100 years. Understandably, equity markets sold off in a volatile fashion, reflecting investor concerns that the US was committed to retrenching from global trade – inviting recession and an economic future with less potential growth. The bond market also showed signs of considerable strain. Instead of yields falling to reflect growth concerns, they started rising and market liquidity weakened. The exact rationale is still hard to pin down, but needless to say the combined equity and bond market behavior was not a healthy situation.Then, a reprieve. President Trump announced he would delay the implementation of most new tariffs by 90 days to allow negotiations to progress. And though he would keep China tariffs at levels over 100 per cent, the announcement was enough to boost equity markets, with S&P gaining around 9 per cent on the day.So, what does it all mean? We're still sorting it out for ourselves, but here's some initial takeaways and questions we think will be important to answer in the coming days.First, there's still plenty of lingering uncertainties to deal with, and so investors can't put US policy risk behind them. Will this 90 day reprieve hold? Or just delay inevitable tariff escalation? And even if the reprieve holds, do markets still need to price in slower economic growth and higher recession risk? After all, US tariff levels are still considerably higher than they were a week ago. And the experience of this market selloff and rapid shifts in economic policy may have impacted consumer and business confidence. In my travels this week I spent considerable time with corporate leaders who were struggling to figure out how to make strategic decisions amidst this uncertainty. So we'll need to watch measures of confidence carefully in the coming weeks. One signal amidst the noise is about China, specifically that the US' desire to improve supply chain security and reduce goods trade deficit would make for difficult negotiation with China and, ultimately, higher tariffs that would stay on for longer relative to other countries. That appears to be playing out here, albeit faster and more severely than we anticipated. So even if tariff relief is durable for the rest of the world, the trade relationship with China should be strained. And that will continue to weigh on markets, where costs to rewire supply chains around this situation could weigh on key sectors like tech hardware and consumer goods. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

Understandably, we get upset with leaders who abuse political power. Instead of serving the public, they're serving themselves.

Send us a textFIDELITY: Protecting LoveMarriage Tune-Up | Part 4Senior Pastor Keith StewartMarch 16, 2025#Realspringcreekchurch #springcreekchurch #marriagetuneup #marriage #healthyrelationships #protectinglove #protectlove______If the statistics are to be believed, somewhere between 20-40% of all marriages will experience the heartache of infidelity. That's a sobering reality. But that's also why it's vitally important to do a relationship check-up. What are the signs of vulnerability that we need to look for? How do you protect yourself and your marriage from life's ultimate betrayal? What are the essentials to keeping a marriage growing and strong? That's what we'll discover in this message about fidelity and how to protect love. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. Have you or someone you care about ever gone through the experience of adultery? How did they or how would you describe it? Did the relationship survive? If not, why not? If it did, how? 2. Pastor Keith talked about the environment that creates vulnerability to an affair; indifference, intensity and isolation. Go back over the message notes and share what you took away from this part of the message. Where are you strongest? Where are you weakest? What would you suggest to someone struggling with one or more of these areas of vulnerability? 3. Understandably, most people are deeply disturbed by sexual infidelity. But it is often the emotional entanglement that determines the difficulty of breaking free of an illicit relationship. At the same time, there are likely far more people who have been emotionally unfaithful than have been sexually unfaithful to their spouse. Why do you think this is so? How do people justify it in their minds? Why is this sort of bond so difficult to break? What precautions do you take to ensure this doesn't happen to you? 4. As Pastor Keith wrapped up the message, he described the four fidelities of marriage as; to a person, to a vow, to a process of intimacy, and to a calling. Take some time and recap all four fidelities. Which stood out to you most? In which area do you need to grow? What steps will you take? How could you encourage your mate or other couples in regard to the four fidelities? 5. What was your biggest takeaway from this message? How did that affirm you? Correct you? Inform you? Guide you? Encourage you?

So much of a new mother's attention is focused on her newborn in the postpartum stage. Understandably so, a new mom should also be taken care of, and her health made a priority so she has the energy and clarity for her new role in motherhood.  During pregnancy, your body is devoted to your baby, but taking the time to be mindful of your nutrition once the baby arrives isn't self-indulgent, it's necessary. After pregnancy, you are more susceptible to anemia, osteopenia, fatigue, and depression. Consuming a nutrient-dense diet will enrich your milk with the nutrients necessary to help your baby's brain and body grow and develop.  In this episode, I cover all the things new mothers need to do (and not do) after the baby is born. From who to have around in your home to what foods and supplements to take. I hope this helps you in some way on your postpartum journey. Share this episode with other mamas who need postpartum support. Highlights from this episode: How to support yourself postpartum Things not to do postpartum Communicating your needs for childbirth The most nourishing foods & drinks for postpartum healing Postpartum recovery kit must-haves Top nutrients mamas need postpartum Postpartum support - work with me! Show sponsors: Ultimate Baby Nutrition Consulting - Send me an email at marniwasserman.com/contact with the title “I want to work with you” if you're interested in working with me to support your postpartum journey Paleovalley - Save 15% off your 1st order of Paleovalley products, discount applied at checkout Needed - Save 20% off your 1st order of Needed Lactation Support Plan when you use the code ultimatebaby at checkout Lumebox - Save $250 off Lumebox Red Light Therapy, discount applied at checkout Related links: Follow @marniwasserman and @ultimatehealthpodcast on Instagram for Sarelle and Hayden updates Listen to TUB036: My Breastfeeding Journey Continued – Oversupply, Tandem Feeding, and Weaning Frida Mom Postpartum Recovery Essential Kit Motherlove Nipple Cream Wish Garden Herbs - Afterease for Postpartum Support Subscribe to TUBP in Apple Podcasts and Spotify Note: Some of the links above are affiliate links. Making a purchase through these links won't cost you anything but we will receive a small commission. This is an easy, free way of supporting the podcast. Thank you!

Clark loves to travel and does so very often. Understandably, many people are nervous about flying these days. Clark discusses airline safety, and how you can save big bucks with discount carriers. Also today - the latest on used car prices. A First Class Spirit Flight: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Used Car Prices: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: After a string of incidents, some flyers are sticking with a surprising carrier: Spirit Southwest Offers Companion Pass as New Credit Card Signup Bonus- Clark.com Your Passport Could Be Useless -- Even if It's Not Expired What is ETIAS - European Union / UK Travel ETA Should I Tip on a Cruise? Best Credit Cards With No Foreign Transaction Fees 5 Money Tips To Know Before You Travel Abroad Car Rental Insurance: Everything You Need To Know - Clark.com Credit Card Car Rental Insurance: What You Need To Know - Clark.com How To Buy a Used Car - Clark.com Do I Need a Mechanic Inspection When Buying a Used Car from CarMax or Carvana? Should You Allow Your Auto Insurance To Monitor Your Driving? Liability vs. Full Coverage: Which Auto Insurance Do You Need? Clark.com resources Episode transcripts Community.Clark.com / Ask Clark Clark.com daily money newsletter Consumer Action Center Free Helpline: 636-492-5275 Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Sponsors Credit Karma Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dear friends,Sadly Peter was sick when we recorded this episode of Two Ways News, so it is a solo effort for today's topic. Thankfully, Peter has now recovered. From Genesis 1 we see the power of God's word, which is part of God's wisdom by which he created the world. Thus, the power of words is one of the joys and problems of life. The devil's power is in his lying words. Yet it is God's word that never returns to him empty but always achieves his purposes. Understandably but wrongly, this leads people in authority to censorship.Yours,Phillip This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe

While policy noise continues to dominate the headlines, our Global Head of Fixed Income Research and Public Policy Strategy Michael Zezas points out a key theme: a transition toward a multipolar world.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Morgan Stanley's Global Head of Fixed Income Research and Public Policy Strategy. Today we'll be discussing what investors need to focus on amidst all the U.S. policy headlines.It's Friday, March 7th, at 12:30 pm in New York.In recent weeks the news flow on tariffs, immigration, and geopolitics has been relentless, culminating in this week's state of the union address by President Trump and, if headlines hold, a partial reversal in course on Mexico and Canada tariffs that were just levied earlier this week. Understandably, measures of policy uncertainty, such as the Baker, Bloom, and Davis index, have reached all time highs. And this tracks with the confusion expressed by investing and corporate clients. In our view, this policy noise is going to continue. But, there is an important signal. These developments track with one of our four key themes of 2025. The transition toward a multipolar world. The tense White House meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, played out live in front of the news cameras, was another reminder that the U.S. is evolving its role in driving international affairs. And tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China are a reminder of the U.S.'s interest in rewiring global trade. The reasons behind this are myriad and complex, but in the near term it's about the U.S. looking more inward. Economic populism is, well, popular with voters in both parties. There's a few net takeaways for investors here. One is a positive for the European defense sector. The combination of tariffs and the evolving U.S. posture on global security has long been part of our thesis on why Europe would eventually chart a new path and step up to spend more on defense. The current situation in Russia and Ukraine underscores this, with potential for another $0.9-$2.7 trillion in defense spending through 2035. Germany's new ‘whatever it takes' approach to defense spending is a key signpost in this trend, per our colleagues in European economics, equities, and foreign exchange. Another critical takeaway is around the effects of U.S. trade realignment on both macro markets and equity sector preferences. Whether these trade policy changes play out well over time or not, the attempt costs something in the near term. Tariffs are part of that cost. And while the precise path of tariff increases is unclear, what is clear is that they're headed higher in the aggregate, a tactic in service of the administration's goal of reducing trade deficits and creating reciprocal trade barriers in order to incentivize greater production in the U.S. Over the next year, our economists expect that those tariff costs will crimp economic activity. That slower growth should eventually feed through into a more dovish monetary policy. Both factors, in the view of our U.S. rates strategy team, should continue pushing yields lower – good news for bond investors, but more challenging posture for equity investors, and a key reason our cross asset team is currently flagging a preference for fixed income. That tariff activity should also drive supply chain realignment. But, going forward, changing those supply chains may now be more costly. Per work from our Global economics team, the supply chains that need to be moved now are complex and concentrated in geopolitical rivals. That's a challenge for certain sectors, like U.S. IT hardware and consumer discretionary. But the investment to make it happen creates demand and is a benefit for the capital goods and broader industrials sector. Bottom line, the policy noise will continue, as will the market cross currents it's driving. We'll keep you informed on it all here. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

Brendan McFarlaneOn Tuesday we buried our friend and comrade Brendan McFarlane. Bik texted me just over 2 weeks or so ago to say he was back in hospital. He had been battling cancer for some time. A few days later the medics stopped his treatment. There was nothing else they could do for him. Suddenly and unexpectedly he was gone. He died peacefully surrounded by his loving family.My solidarity and sympathy to Lene, a mighty woman, and to their children Emma, Tomás and Tina, his brother Gerard and the wider family circle. His loss for them is immeasurable. For his countless friends and comrades his death is a deep blow. Fáilte abhaile LeonardLeonard Peltier was finally released from prison in Florida last week. The 80-year-old political prisoner had spent almost the last 50 years in prison protesting his innocence. Leonard is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and he now on his reservation in North Dakota. His family and friends gathered to welcome him home. After his release he said: “They may have imprisoned me but they never took my spirit!” and he thanked “all my supporters throughout the world who fought for my freedom.” Fáilte abhaile Leonard.Taking A Stand.The decision by Uachtarán Shinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald and Leas Uachtarán Michelle O'Neill not to attend the St. Patrick's Day events in the White House and the Speakers lunch on Capitol Hill, will undoubtedly upset some of our friends across Irish America. This is very understandable.  Sinn Féin's access to successive US administrations was won after decades of very hard work by many people across North America. Understandably they do not want to jeopardise or lose that influence. It is worth noting that in the past Sinn Féin has always attended White House events when invited, including during President Trump's first term in office.So the Sinn Féin decision was taken after much deliberation.  The catalyst for this was the recent statements from President Trump in which he calls for the expulsion of over two million Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip, his refusal to countenance their return and his proposal that the United States of America will take over the region. The decision would have been the same had a democratic President called for the expulsion of two million Palestinians.  

What do you know about James Frey? Or what do you think you know about James Frey? I'm guessing it's not nothing. Everyone has an opinion! When I first spotted '​A Million Little Pieces​' on my wife's bookshelf when we were moving in together I was like “Oh? Really? That book? The Oprah guy?” And she was like “Have you read it?” And I was like “No, no idea what it's even about. Just that it's not real or whatever.” She looked at me with disappointed eyes. Understandably so! I hadn't bothered to go below the surface. To read about it on my own. I had just soaked in some distant fumes off the story. “Read it,” she said, and pushed the book into my hands. That night I opened 'A Million Little Pieces' and was completely pulled into this pulsing, frenetic, endlessly climactic story of addiction, growth, and finding yourself. The book shook me. It was a masterpiece. I couldn't believe it existed. I almost felt anger towards ​the Oprah saga​ because it headfaked me into thinking I knew what the book was about… when I couldn't have been more off. I went deeper into James Frey's catalogue and found myself similarly seduced by books like '​Bright Shiny Morning​' and '​Katerina​,' and am looking forward to Frey's new novel, '​Next To Heaven​,' which is coming out in June 2025. His stories have a pace and staccato to them that's perfect for distracted brains like mine. He doesn't mince words, he doesn't shy away, and his characters always punch you in the gut. In this classic chapter of 3 Books. I sat down with James with a lot of questions and I loved our discussions around fatherhood and living an intentional life. We talk about teaching children to read, the importance of secular bibles, why (and how) we can slowly stop comparing ourselves to others, what getting drunk really means, and much, much more... Let's flip the page back to Chapter 25 now...

It seems like every other week there's a new beauty trend popping up promising to be the *thing* to help us achieve our beauty goals  - LED masks, LED scalp devices, wrinkle patches, mouth taping, preventive botox, and the tip stitch are just a few. Understandably, it's become quite hard to tell what actually works and what's just clever marketing. That's why we've brought in Dr. Michael Bassiri to help share if any can make a real difference.Also in this ep, the new (and new-to-us) beauty brands that have piqued our interest, Bettina's very through body care routine and product recs, and of course our MVPs - a lightweight volumising product and a spa-like foot treatment for under $20!All links for products below as promised!New-ish beauty brandsLana Banana The Day SerumTronque Firming Butterskelp! Head First Pre-Cleanserskelp! Rehab All-In-One Leave-In Hair Treatment SprayBettina's pregnancy body careBioderma Atoderm 2 in 1 Dry Body OilAestura AtoBarrier365Aveeno Stress Relief Lavender Scent Body LotionOsea Undaria Algae™ Body OilLa Roche-Posay Cicaplast Baume B5+Ego QV Ceramides CleanserMVPsNioxin Volumizing Dry ShampooUtopia Nourishing Nirvana Foot BalmListenScalp is the new skin, with trichologist Anthony PearceDr BassiriFollow Dr Bassiri: @doctormbthttps://doctormbt.com/*We use some affiliate links here and we may earn a small commission if you decide to make a purchase. Thanks for your support!Credits:Your hosts & producers: Carli Alman & Bettina Tyrrell.Thanks to our guest, Dr Michael Bassiri-TehraniFollow us on Instagram: @thatbeautypodcastJoin us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/260952718436828/

Ahhhh, attention (aka traffic, aka your ‘top of funnel' in marketing speak). The darling of the Internet!Understandably so, it's the tip of the proverbial Internet iceberg and the ONLY thing that's visible when we're scrolling online. And for that reason, we're obsessed with it and start to think that the ultimate success of our online businesses lives and dies by it. And whilst it's true that it matters, it's just one piece of the marketing funnel pie. Let's talk all things top of funnel – aka traffic, aka the darling of the Internet – and answer some of the biggest questions.[

If you have a dog with fear, anxiety, or aggression issues, you've likely wondered—or, more likely, worried—whether your own personality traits are to blame for their unwanted behaviors.Understandably so. For years, dog owners have been fed messages like, “it's all how you raise them” and “there are no bad dogs, only bad owners.” Even experienced dog behavior professionals, who fully acknowledge the huge influence of biology and individual traits on dog behavior outcomes, are quick to affirm that stressy, anxious owners are far more likely to have anxious dogs.Listen to Co-Hosts Sarah Fraser and Brian Burton (both are Co-Founders of INSTINCT with a Master's in Animal Behavior) discuss this topic, including how the existing research and their experience with thousands of dogs and owners have shaped their thoughts and approach on whether anxious owners cause anxious dogs. Episode References:Ask, H., Eilertsen, E. M., Gjerde, L. C., Hannigan, L. J., Gustavson, K., Havdahl, A., … & Ystrom, E. (2021). Intergenerational transmission of parental neuroticism to emotional problems in 8‐year‐old children: Genetic and environmental influences. JCPP advances, 1(4), e12054.Clarke, T., & Loftus, E. (2023). Owner psychological characteristics predict dog behavioral traits. University of Edinburgh, Preprint, not yet published, https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2657563/v1Dodman NH, Brown DC, Serpell JA (2018) Associations between owner personality and psychological status and the prevalence of canine behavior problems. PLoS ONE 13(2): e0192846. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0192846 Finn, C., Mitte, K., & Neyer, F. J. (2013). The Relationship–specific Interpretation Bias Mediates the Link between Neuroticism and Satisfaction in Couples. European Journal of Personality, 27(2), 200-212. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.1862Gobbo E, Zupan M. Dogs' Sociability, Owners' Neuroticism and Attachment Style to Pets as Predictors of Dog Aggression. Animals. 2020; 10(2):315. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10020315Huber A, Barber ALA, Faragó T, Müller CA, Huber L. Investigating emotional contagion in dogs (Canis familiaris) to emotional sounds of humans and conspecifics. Anim Cogn. 2017 Jul;20(4):703-715. doi: 10.1007/s10071-017-1092-8. Epub 2017 Apr 21. PMID: 28432495; PMCID: PMC5486498.Kang W, Establishing the associations between the Big Five personality traits and self-reported number of close friends: A cross-sectional and longitudinal study. Acta Psychologica, Volume 239, 2023, 104010, ISSN 0001-6918, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.104010.Kis A, Turcsán B, Miklósi Á, Gácsi M. The effect of the owner's personality on the behaviour of owner-dog dyads. Interaction Studies: Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems. 2012;13(3):373-385. doi:10.1075/is.13.3.03kisMcNulty JK. Neuroticism and interpersonal negativity: the independent contributions of perceptions and behaviors. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2008 Nov;34(11):1439-50. doi: 10.1177/0146167208322558. Epub 2008 Aug 13. PMID: 18703488.Podberscek, A.L. and Serpell, J.A. (1997), Aggressive behaviour in English cocker spaniels and the personality of their owners. Veterinary Record, 141: 73-76. https://doi-org.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/10.1136/vr.141.3.73Wright, Amanda & Jackson, Joshua. (2022). Is parent personality associated with adolescent outcomes for their child? A response surface analysis approach. 10.31234/osf.io/ahmzwINSTINCT Resources:Youtube Version of the Episode (video): https://youtu.be/KrlyTh7Z8o0 

We are accustomed to labeling events or occurrences in our lives as either good or bad. Depending on our experience or perception, whether we had pain or pleasure, gain or loss, these are clearcut categories that we use to describe what happened to us.But from Chazal we see that this is not only superficial but incorrect. Understandably we absorb what happens in our lives through personal experience. How could we do it any differently? But, perhaps it's time to lift ourselves above our individual experiences and see things for what they are.  And on this journey, Yisro, Moshe Rabbeinu's father-in-law can be our rebbe!Please share your comments and insights If you seek the Torah's timeless wisdom to assist in navigating your life's challenges, check out other helpful episodes on this podcast.

Last time we spoke about the Mukden Incident. In the early 1930s, Ishiwara and Itagaki of the Kwantung Army believed Japan must seize Manchuria to secure its interests against China and the USSR. Frustrated by delays from Tokyo, they orchestrated a surprise attack, framing it as retaliation for the mysterious death of a fellow officer. On September 18, 1931, they bombed railway tracks, claiming a Chinese atrocity, and swiftly attacked, overwhelming Chinese forces despite being outnumbered. Their decisive actions sparked Japan's occupation of Manchuria, defying orders from high command. In a bid to expand Japan's influence, Ishiwara and Itagaki incited chaos in Manchuria, leading to the Mukden Incident. They manipulated local unrest to justify military action, swiftly capturing Kirin without resistance. Despite Tokyo's orders against expansion, they continued their aggressive tactics, pushing for Manchuria's independence. Ishiwara's defiance of command led to significant military successes but also sowed seeds of indiscipline within the army. Ultimately, their actions set Japan on a path toward conflict with China and the West, forever changing the region's fate.   #138 How Zhang Xueliang lost Manchuria Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Little disclaimer this is not a quote en quote regular episode. In this one we are going to look more so into the reasons the Japanese had an easy time conquering Manchuria. Its honestly a very complicated subject involving numerous variables, but I thought it be important to talk about this before we get into the campaign itself.  So last we left off are good friend Ishiwara Kanji had unleashed the Mukden Incident, initiating an unofficial war with China. On September 18, 1931, the Japanese executed a false flag operation by detonating explosives along the South Manchurian Railway near Mukden. This action was followed by an assault from 500 Kwantung soldiers on the Peitaying Barracks, which were defended by 7,000 troops under Zhang Xueliang. At the time, Zhang was in Beiping serving as the North China garrison commander. Those around him, including Chiang Kai-shek, urged him to instruct his men not to resist, to conceal their weapons, and to retreat westward if possible. Chiang Kai-shek recognized that the Japanese were attempting to provoke a full-scale war with China, a conflict they were not prepared to win at that moment. China needed additional time to organize and train its forces to confront such an adversary. Zhang Xueliang understood the weakness of his own forces and aimed to preserve a significant army, making these orders advantageous for him. Both men also believed that the League of Nations or the Wakatsuki cabinet might intervene to halt the illegal occupation. During the confrontation at the Peitaying Barracks, approximately 500 Chinese soldiers were killed, many surrendered, and others fled as the Japanese forces destroyed the barracks and the small air force stationed there. Now what is known as the invasion of Manchuria, is actually an extremely complicated story. For those interested over on the Pacific War Channel I have a full documentary covering it with a lot of combat footage and Chinese Drama Series footage which is always absolutely hilarious. To overly summarize, the officials in charge of various regions of Manchuria did one or more of three options when faced with Japanese aggression. 1) Most defected in return for monetary gain and new positions under the emerging puppet government. 2) They attempted to sabotage and thwart the Japanese while portraying themselves to be complicit. And 3) they actively fought back. So before we begin this story lets talk about Manchuria during this time period. After the death of his father Zhang Zuolin, Zhang Xueliang inherited an extremely chaotic Manchurian dynasty one could call it. The problems were political, social and economic and while the Young Marshal was tackling these issues, 3 years into his new reign, on September 18th of 1931 the Japanese commenced an invasion. The Japanese had been greatly concerned at Zhang Xueliang' moves to assume control over the regional industries and railways, whose income was incredibly important to Japan after the Great Depression had hit in 1929. What ultimately happened to Zhang Xueliang echoed the fate of Yuan Shikai during his tenure of 1912-1916. Yuan Shikai had made moves to centralize China while simultaneously alienating its populace by abolishing its provincial assemblies and trying to make the militarists dissolve their armies. Both men faced enormous external threats while trying to transition their regimes. Nonetheless, Zhang Xueliang did oversee a lot of real change in manchuria in terms of political awareness, education, greater availability of foreign goods and increased the populations feeling they were part of China proper. This increased awareness alongside a sense of international crisis caused by the clashes with the USSR and Japan, spur a new sense of nationalism that would persist for the 15 year war.  So lets talk about the regions of Manchuria shall we. There are 3 provinces in Manchuria, Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, altogether they encompass 380,000 square miles. The central third of Manchuria consists of plains, with the Xing'an range extending around the border areas from the west to northeast and the Changbaishan mountains following the border from east to southeast. To the west of the Xing'an Mountains lies a region that is geographically part of Mongolia and is characterized by steppe terrain. The most fertile regions include the alluvial plain extending from the Gulf of Liaodong to Changchun, as well as the areas near the Sungari and Nonni Rivers in northern Jilin and Heilongjiang. This area experiences significant seasonal climate variations, with average temperatures in July reaching approximately 24 degrees Celsius, while winter averages drop to around –12 degrees Celsius in southern Manchuria and –24 degrees Celsius in the far north. By 1931, there had been no official census conducted in the area, but the Research Bureau of the South Manchurian Railway estimated the population in 1930 to be approximately 34.4 million people. This included 15.2 million in Liaoning, 9.1 million in Jilin, and 5.3 million in Heilongjiang. Population density varied, with Liaoning having 212 people per square mile, Jilin with 89, and Heilongjiang with 23. By 1931, over 90 percent of the population was Han Chinese, while Manchus accounted for about 3 percent, Mongols around 6 percent, and the remaining population comprised Koreans, Russians, and Japanese. During the Japanese occupation, the economy of Manchuria was primarily agricultural, with soybean products accounting for 60 percent of the region's total exports in 1930. In contrast, industrial development was limited in 1931, mainly concentrated in the Japanese-controlled cities of Dairen and Harbin, as well as in areas managed by the South Manchuria Railway and the Chinese Eastern Railway. However, since the early 1920s, a military-industrial complex had begun to emerge, driven by Zhang Zuolin's demand for modern weaponry. The Shenyang arsenal, established in 1919, manufactured rifles and ammunition, employing 20,000 skilled workers who operated at full capacity during the Zhili-Fengtian wars, producing up to 400,000 rounds daily at its peak in 1924-25.The population of Manchuria was overwhelmingly rural and the rivers and roads remained their principal means of transportation. The Amur, Nonni and Sungari rivers were the lifeline of trade, while the roads were in quite a terrible state of repair by 1931. There were 3 key groups of people who met the Japanese invasion, military power brokers, nationalists and civilians who were largely alienated from Zhang Xueliang's regime. Amongst all of them was a large level of interprovincial rivalries.  Local militarism in Manchuria was heavily factionalied with each clique retaining both civilian and military followers. The old comrades of Zhang Zuolin were categorized by the Japanese as “the old faction”, such men as Zhang Zuoxiang and Zhang Jinghui who had risen up alongside the Tiger of Manchuria during the 1920s. They had amassed large fortunes and although they had been subordinate to Zhang Zuolin, they were also power brokers in their own right with private armies and economic bases under their control. Some like Zhang Zuoxiang and Wan Fulin stayed loyal to the Young Marshal once he assumed power. They were often aided by the Japanese who were not keen at all with Zhang Xueliang's enthusiasm for Chinese nationalism. Zhang Zuoxiang would become one of Zhang Xueliangs most important associates. He was born in Jinzhou and at the age of 16 fled his village to escape a family feud and became a bricklayer in Shenyang. However in 1901 he got involved in an incident ending with him stabbing another man, prompting him to flee for Xinmin where he joined forces under Zhang Zuolin. He quickly rose within the military and attended the Fengtian Military Academy. During the 1920s he remained a close ally to Zhang Zuolin, serving as a military governor of Jilin. When Zhang Zuolin was assassinated, Zhang Zuoxiang used his authority to preserve power for Zhang Xueliang who was stationed outside Manchuria at the time and needed time to return to Manchuria.  Wan Fulin would become Zhang Xueliang's other second in command. He was born in 1880 in Changling county of Jilin. Born to a poor farming family, he joined a local militia of around 50 men. His militia was gradually incorporated into the local militarist Wu Junshengs troops in 1900 and from then on Wan rose through the ranks. After Zhang Zuolin's death Wan Fulin was appointed as the military affairs supervisor or “duban” for HEilongjiang. He then took a newly created position of provincial chairman “Zhuxi” in 1929 and held said position during the Mukden Incident.  Now after the Old Tiger had died, one of his old associates Zhang Zongchang, whom I think we all know very well, proved to Zhang Xueliang he could not rely on his fathers old guard. Zhang Zongchang and Chu Yupu tossed their lot in with the Japanese and attacked from Tangshan with 60,000 troops trying to overthrow the new KMT led government. That little venture only lasted from August 2-8th, ending in a hilarious defeat for the so called rebels, but the experience taught Zhang Xueliang that his Fengtian army needed to be reformed, even though it was against the wishes of many of its senior officers.  The most significant opposition to Zhang Xuliang came from his fathers former chief of staff Yang Yuting and his associate Chang Yinhuai. Yang Yuting had been born in Hebei, but his family moved to Faku county in Fengtian when he was young. He was an adept student, rising through the system and by 1909 joined the Japanese military academy “Shikkan gakko”. During the republic days, he joined the Old Tiger and slowly became a trusted ally. In 1925 as General Guo Songling rebelled, in a large part because of Yang Yuting's advocacy of continued militarism even after the failure of the Fengtian army during the second Fengtian-Zhili War. Yang Yuting was chosen by Zhang Zuolin to lead the unsuccessful counterebellion and then became his chief of staff. By 1927 Yang Yuting began negotiations with the Japanese, some of whom thought he would make a much better replacement to the Old Tiger. Yang Yuting saw Zhang Zuolins death as an opportunity to development himself, however in 1928 he began negotiations with Nanjing as well. This led him to change his mind about Japan and adopted unification measures with Nanjing. He hoped to snuggle up to Chiang Kai-Shek, but likewise retained close connections with the Japanese. Dishing out appointments was something Yang Yuting was quite keen upon. When Zhang Xueliang sought to appoint one of his supporters as the new governor of the Eastern Special Zone, this was an area around Harbin that had been made autonomous in its role as a hub for the Chinese Eastern Railway, well Yang Yuting made Zhang Jinghui the de facto governor instead. Yet Yang Yuting's spiderlike nature would become his downfall. One of his closest friends was Chang Yinhuai, who was appointed governor of Heilongjiang by Zhang Xueliang in 1928. Chang Yinhuai's contempt for the Young Marshal became more and more open, until it reached the point where he would money to Yang Yuting for ordnance expenses but not the Young Marshal, oh and he was building his own private army. On the 10th of January of 1929 Chang and Yang went to meet Zhang Xueliang, demanding he create a new post of Northeastern Railway Supervisor for Chang. They both argued they wanted to take control over the Chinese Eastern Railway, currently under Soviet-Chinese dual control, but Zhang Xueliang dragged his feet during the meeting. When the two men left, Zhang Xueliang instructed his police chief Gao Jiyi to arrest and shoot them, which he did. M.S Myers, the American consul in Shenyang cabled his superiors about the execution, noting, “the elimination of the two most powerful and probably able members of the Fengtien Party[,]... although strengthening the position of the existing head of this territory for the time being, may later result in the breakup of that party through internal and external agencies.” Well Mr. Myers was quite right. Although Zhang Xueliang's actions had the effect of stopping Yang Yutings overreach, it ultimately was more of a sign of his weakness, rather than strength. Some like Zhang Jinghui were saved by the fact they were old associates with Zhang Zuolin and had built their own power bases. However other like Zang Shiyi for example, who were close associates of Yang Yuting had to wait for Zhang Xueliang to move to Beiping to take up his position as deputy commander of the Nationalist forces before gaining office as chairman of Liaoning. Zhao Xinbo only managed to grab the office of mayor over Shenyang after the Japanese took over. Overall Zhang Xueliang did not exercise strong enough control over his local militarists any more than his father did. When Guo Songling had rebelled in 1925, Zhang Zuolin's support had bled considerably, it was only Japanese intervention that saved him. His son would find out his rule was more tolerated rather than supported. There was also a lot of friction between those supporting the KMT vs those supporting the CCP in Manchuria. Qian Gonglai was a professor at the Shendao school in SHenyang and was arrested as a Bolshevist agitator in march of 1927. He had developed a large following amongst his students and the local intelligentsia. Qian had been involved with multiple organization such as the local YMCA and within the Shendao school, which were breeding grounds for young activities. These youthful types were inspired by the May Fourth and May Thirtieth movements, most being from Fengtian. Once Zhang Xueliang and his close followers set up a base of operations in Beiping after 1931, these types of intellectuals would become the founders and key movers of the Northeast National Salvation Society or “NNSS”, the most important propaganda organization to favor the military recapture of Manchuria in defiance of Chiang Kai-Shek's nonaggression strategy. One of their members, Yan Baohang was born in a village within Haicheng county of Fengtian. He came from a poor family, but managed to attend the village school and performed well enough to encourage a local elite to pay for his primary schooling. He went on to study at the teacher training college in Shenyang where he came under the influence of Christianity, but also nationalist ideas promoted by the May fourth movement. He attended the Shenyang YMCA and went to college where he met other young activities such as Wang Zhuoran, Du Zhongyuan and Gao Chongmin. After graduating Yan attempted his new teaching methods at various Fengtian schools, before setting up a free school in Shenyang for poor children. This school was supported by the YMCA and funds from Guo Songling's wife. The school was widely admired, and Zhang Xueliang gave it his full support. Yan became quite famous and was sent to Beijing for further training. By 1925 Yan received a scholarship to go to Edinburgh University where he earned a certificate in Social Studies. While in Europe he traveled widely, visiting places like Denmark and Moscow. He came back to Shenyang in 1929 and alongside Lu Guangji, Gao Chongmin, Wang Huayi and Che Xiangchen formed the Liaoning Provincial Nationalist Foreign Affairs association. This organization, whose core members formed the NNSS, was supported by Zhang Xueliang. Their aim was to seek China's freedom and equal status, which obviously stood against the Japanese. By 1931 it had 46 branches and Yan also set up within the YMCA a Liaoning anti-opium association and a Liaoning Provincial Nationalist Education Advancement Association. By 1930 the Educational Advancement Association's speakers went out on 14 occasions to talk about “exposing various crimes and secret plans the Japanese had for invading the Northeast”. Yan would become one of the heads of the NNSS's propaganda section after 1931. The adoption of the KMT in Manchuria post 1929 meant the nationalist activists all became party members. Yan Baohang and his friends Lu Guangji, Che Xiangchen, Du Zhongyuan,Wang Huayi, Zhao Yushi, and Wang Zhuoran were among thirteen delegates sent to Nanjing for the KMT national conference in May 1931. Lu Guanji had a similar career to that of Yan. Born in 1894 in Haicheng county, he came to Shenyang at the age of 15 and graduated from the teacher training college in 1918. He taught in a SMR-zone Chinese school. In 1922 he attended a national YMCA meeting in Shenyang and soon after was dismissed from teaching for supporting student protests. After this he went to Shenyang to see if his friend Yan Baohang could use his influence with Zhang Xueliang to obtain him a job as a schools inspector. By 1926 he left education for business, becoming a manager over a local printing firm. By 1929, he was elected deputy head of the Fengtian Chamber of Commerce where he frequently met with Zhang Xueliang who liked to make use of the chamber to organize anti-Japanese protests that would not be officially linked to himself.  Chen Xianzhou was born in Huanren county to a family who were handicraft manufacturers, but they went bankrupt during the First Sino-Japanese War. Chen moved in with other relatives who paid for his education. He entered the Huanren Teacher training college in 1915, where he also learned Japanese. In 1919 he won a scholarship to Sendai Industrial College where he studied electrical engineering and became active in overseas chinese student groups protesting for the return of Port Arthur and Dairen. After graduating in 1924 he was employed by the Shenyang municipal administration to negotiate with the Japanese on the building of a new tram line. Through his efforts it was built in a year for less than 2 million yuan and for this in 1927, he was asked to do the same service for Harbin. Under Zhang Xueliang's administration, Chen was given permission to restructure the Northeasts telecommunications and broadcasting network. He added 12 new transmitters linking Shenyang, Harbin, Qiqihar, Yingkou and Changchun. After the Mukden Incident, Chen became a committee member of the NNSS in Beiping, advising resistance armies on how to operate field radios.  Du Zhongyuan was born in Huaide county, once located in Fengtian, now in Jilin. He came from a poor village family, but local elites helped pay for his education, allowing him to study at the Fengtian Provincial teacher training college. He also studied english and japanese. He first became a english teacher, but then developed an interest in the porcelain industry, which was heavily dominated by the Japanese in Manchuria. He thought he could break into their market, so he went to Tokyo Industrial college from 1917-1923, before returning to set up a porcelain manufacturing firm in Shenyang. In 1929, Zhang Xueliang authorized a 120,000 yuan loan to support his factory. Du rose into a prominent figure and was elected deputy chairmen of the Liaoning Chamber of Commerce in 1927, then chairman in 1929. His time in Japanese had been spent mostly as a student, but he was also an activist. He had led a group of 29 Chinese students to protest Zhang Zuolin's government for continuing to allow the Japanese to control the Kwantung leased territory. He had a flair for publicity and found himself in a good position to head the NNSS. He befriended Yan Baohang and Lu Guangji along his journey. Che Xiangchen was born in Faku county to a local elite family. He attended Beijing University extension school in 1918 and was quickly caught up in political activities, taking part in the May fourth movement. After graduating he studied at Zhangguo University then after that joined the Shenyang YMCA befriending Yan Baohang. Encouraged by Yan Baohang, he established schools for delinquent and disadvantaged children. The exact field I work in outside of Youtube and Podcasts. By July 1929 he sponsored 41 schools within ities and over 200 rural schools. Alongside Yan Baohang, and Zhang Xiluan he organized the Liaoning Associate for the Encouragement of Nationalist Education. Wang Huayi was born in Liaozhong county to a poor farmer family. He managed to get funding for his education at the Fengtian Teacher training college in 1916. During his studies he befriend Yan Baohang who introduced him to the YMCA and involved him in its activities. He also became friendly with Zhang Xueliang and this paid off after 1928 when he was made deputy head of the Liaoning Education Department. Wang Zhuoran was born in Fushun county to a farmer family. He attended teacher colleges in Beijing and Shenyang where he befriended Yan, Du, Lu and Wang Huayi and other activists at the YMCA. From 1923-1928 he studied at Columbia University in New York and traveled to England often before returning to Shenyang in 1928. He became the tutor to Zhang Xueliang's children and was active in the Northeastern Nationalist Foreign affairs association. All of these figures dominated Liaoning, specifically the area of Shenyang and this meant the core of nationalist activism was also found here. Here the Japanese would manage to co opt local elites, but many of said elites would fight to see Manchuria recaptured by China. Now that covered the educated, nationalistic and politically aligned to Zhang Xueliang types, but the elites of Manchuria at the county level were anything but aligned with the Young Marshal. In fact most of the provincial elites were actually prejudiced against Zhang Xueliang. As a result of the Warlord Era wars, an enormous amount of Manchuria's spending went to the military. To give a more specific idea. Between 1922 and 1924, Zhang participated in the Fengtian-Zhili Wars. Thanks to the careful financial management of his finance minister, Wang Yongjiang, the budget was able to accommodate these expenses even in 1923, despite approximately 50 percent of revenue being allocated to military spending. Fengtian's revenue amounted to 26.8 million yuan, with expenditures totaling 18.2 million yuan; of this, 13.9 million yuan—around 76 percent—was directed towards the military, while only 3 percent was spent on education. However, by 1925, Fengtian's income had decreased to 23 million yuan, while military expenditures surged to 51 million yuan. In an attempt to address this issue, Zhang Zuolin resorted to printing money, which led to rampant inflation. On March 1, 1927, the exchange rate was 6.71 Fengtian dollars for one Japanese gold yen, but by February 1928, it had plummeted to 40 dollars per yen. As Ronald Suleski observes, “Zhang Zuolin drained the provincial economy in order to pay his troops fighting in China proper.” Local elites became very resentful of the increased military spending and rising inflation and this was furthermore met by Zhang Zuolin silencing their complaints by neutralizing their provincial assemblies. The military spending kept growing, alongside the inflation causing high unemployment. By February of 2918 the Shenyang Chamber of Commerce reported , “5,089 businesses were forced to close, among them 456 sundry goods shops, 416 restaurants, 165 factories, 157 machine shops, 142 rice shops, 116 foreign goods stores, and 83 general stores.” When the Young Marshal assumed power he promised major changes including “the development of industry and commerce, the pursuit of education, and utmost efforts to maintain peace.” Yet his fathers pattern of spending did not change. In 1930, total regional expenditure reached 144.2 million yuan, with 98.6 million yuan allocated to the military (68.3%), compared to just 4.7 million yuan for education (3.26%) and 0.34 million yuan for construction projects (0.24%). Regional revenue from taxes and other government sources, including fines, amounted to 122 million yuan, resulting in a deficit of 22 million yuan. Of this revenue, only 8.3 million yuan (6.8%) came from direct taxation, primarily land tax, while the salt gabelle was the most profitable source, generating 45.9 million yuan (37.3%). Following their occupation, the Japanese observed that “if such a large sum were not spent on military purposes, the finances of the Three Eastern Provinces would show a significant surplus.” Many of the civilians who served in Zhang Zuolin's government became quickly disillusioned with the rule of militarists and felt very uneasy about Zhang Xueliangs alliance with Nanjing, as to most in Manchuria, Chiang Kai-Shek was just another warlord. Many of the elites saw Japan as a more rational alternative for an alliance. Yu Chonghan who had been the foreign minister to Zhang Zuolin until he resigned in 1927 had a long lasting relationship with the Japanese. During the Russo-Japanese War he had been a spy for Japan and always kept close contact with Tokyo. Chen Xinbo, the advisor to Yang Yuting was a former legal adviser to Zhang Zuolin. However he also had long standing connections to Japan, working as a school teacher in Dairen, before studying at Meiji University for law. Yuan Jinkai, the former minister of civil affairs for Zhang Zuolin was “a mentor figure to the civilian clique in the 1920s”. He was born in Liaoyang in the 1870s and was a scholar who became head of the conservative faction in the joint provincial assembly. But when Zhang Xueliang came to power, in the words of a Japanese reporter “demoted by the ‘new faction' and completely lost his power. He was exalted to being a member of the Northeastern Governmental Affairs Committee [Dongbei zhengwu weiyuanhui: the highest political body in the Northeast after 1928] and a committee member in the Nanjing Government's Control Yuan, but from the start he was treated as a relic of the past [kotto].” Understandably he became disillusioned with Zhang Xueliang. Yuan was just one of many prominent disenfranchised elites who sought an opportunity to regain what they had lost to the Young Marshal and the Japanese occupation proved a great opportunity.  The South Manchurian Railway was a major factor that contributed to the co-option of the Chinese towards Japanese occupation. It ran 700 miles, over 5 lines and had land rights attached to it encompassing 105 cities, towns and villages. Not only did it provide railway services but also administration and social services. By 1924 the SMR had expanded its workforce to nearly 40,000 with ¾'s being local chinese. It provided expensive facilities, such as hospitals in Mukden, Tieling, Changchun and Dairen. The growth in Chinese nationalism against the Japanese grew amongst the intelligentsia, but the average blue collar types more or less enjoyed the benefits the Japanese were providing. Historian Chong-Sik Lee noted “The living conditions among the Chinese population in the Kwantung Leased Territory were much better than those in China proper, and this was true throughout the region” A combination of improved conditions compared to those in intramural China and the appeal of Japanese-sponsored jobs in industry and mining, he argues, resulted in a significant influx of immigrants to the area. The Japanese capitalized on this newly available labor force by implementing a development strategy that necessitated the hiring of large numbers of unskilled Chinese workers, even with the use of modern equipment. This approach was largely motivated by a desire to avoid widespread unemployment, as these workers also served as consumers of Japanese products. Furthermore, although the working conditions for manual laborers employed by the Japanese were poor by contemporary standards, they were not necessarily worse—and may have even been better—than those faced by factory workers in Japan, such as women aged twelve to thirty-five employed in Nagano's silk factories, where the mortality rate due to lung disease was 23 per 1,000, compared to the typical rate of 7 per 1,000 for that age group.The Japanese had also set up the Manchurian Youth League “Manshu Seinen renmei” in 1928 to specifically deal with the threat of the growing Chinese nationalism, by advocating for a separate state in Manchuria. Both the Japanese army and civilian settlers aspired to set up a Japanese controlled Manchuria that could make use of the existing Chinese local government structures.  There was also the issue of currency. Coins, ingots and notes were all in circulation, but their value differed from region to region. There were competing currencies, Chinese, Japanese and Soviet. Zhang Zuolin had set up three eastern provincial banks aiming to issue a unified currency to supersede the foreign currencies, backed by silver reserves, but it never worked out. Politically when Manchuria joined the new Nanjing system, it meant the KMT would begin a process of elections and appointments, but in the interim it fell upon Zhang Xueliang, who simply reverted to his fathers old way of relying on regional figureheads. Basically only Liaoning saw any real political reform. Militarily Zhang Xueliang inherited his fathers Fengtian military. He wished to reduce the spending of it, but found himself unable to deal with the high unemployment that would result from mass demobilization. Zhang Xueliang also feared reducing his military strength to the point he might become vulnerable to any of his given rivals. On the economic front, it was really Japan who benefited the most from Manchuria's economic activities. 70% of Manchurian imports came from Japan as were 75% of its exports. Zhang Xueliang was determined to reverse the Japanese economic dominance, but the great depression greatly hampered any efforts.  Ultimately, Zhang Xueliang had grand plans when he rose to power in 1928. He intended to align the Northeast with the Nanjing government and diminish Japanese influence in the region. Additionally, he sought to enhance local infrastructure in Manchuria and regain the trust of provincial elites who had been alienated by his father. Although some progress was made toward these objectives, the outcomes fell short of the efforts invested. His alliance with Chiang Kai-shek was marked by mutual suspicion. The economic depression devastated the agricultural exports that had fueled Manchuria's remarkable growth, undermining the financial resources needed for Zhang's initiatives. Both civilian and military leaders in the area struggled to trust Zhang, as incidents like the assassination of Yang Yuting and the outbreak of civil war in 1930 led them to believe that, despite his claims, he was much like his father. Most importantly, the Japanese grew increasingly concerned about the possibility of a nationalist regime threatening their “special position.” By 1931, they recognized a risk to their dominance, while Zhang's reforms remained incomplete and unpopular. Concurrently, the sentiment in Japan was shifting toward aggression against China, which was being partially blamed for exacerbating Japan's economic difficulties. These combined factors led to the coup on September 18, 1931. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Zhang Xueliang sure inherited one hot potato so to say. Much could be blamed upon his father Zhang Zuolin, but likewise the Young Marshal failed to meet the demands of his new reign. Many Chinese would ultimately throw their lot in with the Japanese, rather than what appeared to be a failing warlord. 

Welcome to another episode of "Dishing with Stephanie's Dish." Today, we're thrilled to talk with Rebecca Blackwell, a recipe developer, Substack writer, and published cookbook author of the “Lets Get Lost Cookbook”. Rebecca shares her fascinating journey of selling her possessions to live and travel full-time in an RV with her husband. Join us as we dive into Rebecca's upcoming cookbook, "Let's Get Lost," her inspirational journey of writing and recipe development, and the launch of the “Lost Supper Club.” We'll explore how she balances creativity and connection while on the road, finding community through food, and the power of diverse culinary experiences that make the world feel a little bit smaller and certainly more delicious. Get ready for a heartwarming discussion about food, community, and life's unexpected adventures!Here is a recipe from the bookThis is an upside down cake, with a sticky caramel date mixture that's baked on the bottom of the cake but is then flipped over to become the top. The batter is flavored with pureed dates, an entire orange, a bit of miso, and a lot of vanilla.Wait. Miso? I fell in love with miso in baking after making the Miso Maple Loaf in Baking With Dori and I haven't looked back. Just as it does in savory dishes, miso adds layers of complex flavor, including a hint of umami - and a little umami is always a good thing, even in sweet treats.Candied pistachios add some crunch, and I would like to mention that if you want any leftover for the actual cake it's wise to make extra because you and everyone around you will find them irresistible.It's also worth mentioning that one of our Lost Supper Club guests (you know who you are, Narissa) actually squealed with delight after tasting this cake. Like an actual, alarmingly loud, squeal. It was really more of a scream, and I can't imagine a higher endorsement.Orange and date cake with candied pistachiosIngredientsFor the caramel and date glaze:* 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature* 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons brown sugar, light or dark* 1 tablespoon corn syrup* 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract* 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, OR 1/2 teaspoon table salt* 8 ounces dates (about 1 cup), pits removed, cut into bite-size piecesFor the cake:* 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour* 1 3/4 tsp baking powder* 1/4 tsp baking soda* 1/4 tsp salt* 1 medium to large size orange* 1/2 cup brown sugar, light or dark* 1 stick (4 ounces/ 8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature* 1/4 cup white miso* 2 large eggs, at room temperature* 8 ounces (about 1 cup) dates, pits removed* 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract* 1/3 cup plain, unsweetened greek yogurt, whole milk or 2%* 1/2 cup orange marmaladeInstructions:Get Instructions for the recipe hereLISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Stephanie Hansen [00:00:15]:Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's dish. I'm Stephanie Hansen. You are here at the podcast that talks to foodies, cookbook writers. And today, we have, I would say, all 3 plus more. We have Rebecca Blackwell. She is a recipe developer. She is on the verge of releasing her “Let's Get Lost”, the cookbook. She is a Substack writer who has a Substack newsletter called “Let's Get Lost. She also is starting and launching the “Lost Supper Club” and has been out in the space. One of the things about Rebecca that intrigues me, not the most because you're just a nice person, but beyond that, you live in an RV. You kinda upended your life, sold your worldly possessions, and bought a pull behind, and you and your husband travel all over the United States in your RV. We are talking right now in your RV, which I know you've got a good cookbook shelf. I see it behind you. Welcome to the show, Rebecca.Rebecca Blackwell [00:01:11]:Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie. I'm so happy to be here.Stephanie Hansen [00:01:14]:Me too. So for people that maybe aren't familiar with your story, can you talk about how you decided to just chuck it all and get into the RV?Rebecca Blackwell [00:01:24]:Yeah. Absolutely. So, we had 3 children, and, when our youngest was about 7, we decided that we wanted to work towards getting to the place where we could work from anywhere in the world by the time all of our kids were graduated. And so our youngest was getting off or getting ready to go off to college in in 2019, and and we had done it. We were both working virtually, and and we could work anywhere where there was an Internet connection. And and so we were our initial plan was that we were gonna just rent Airbnb's in various places for, you know, 3 months or 6 months or whatever at a time. So some friends of ours in Southern California were heading off to Europe for a couple of months and asked us to come house sit, and we were like, great. This will be a great test run for how this works.Rebecca Blackwell [00:02:11]:And we loved living and working in a new place, but we hated living in somebody else's home. And so we weren't sure what we were gonna do about that, and, we met up with some old high school friends while we were there that lived in an RV, and it was like the answer to all of our problems. We had never considered living in an RV. We had never in our entire lives spent one night in any kind of a camper of any kind. We're just not the camping kind of people. But we went home from that trip, and, within 5 months, we had sold our house and bought a 5th wheel RV and moved ourselves into it. So the first night we ever spent in a camper, we had already sold the house and bought our RV. So and that it's been a long time 5 years.Stephanie Hansen [00:03:00]:Did you feel brave doing it at the time?Rebecca Blackwell [00:03:04]:You know, we just felt very exciting until the night we closed on our house, and then I got a little freaked out. Understandably. What have I done? But, you know, the first night, we, we lived in Colorado, and we drove, we closed on our house on a Monday, and we drove to, Katy, Texas to pick up the RV on a Tuesday and, picked it up on Wednesday. And that first night in the camper, I wasn't worried at all. It it instantly felt like the right decision. We felt at home in it almost immediately. And, you know, we really haven't looked back. We we say that we'll keep doing it until we get tired of doing it, but so far, you know, it's been almost 5 years, and we're not anywhere close to being ready to stop.Stephanie Hansen [00:03:53]:What I think is kinda hilarious about you in particular is you have this sort of idea of who might be in an RV park, and I've been in a lot of RV parks.Rebecca Blackwell [00:04:02]:Yeah.Stephanie Hansen [00:04:02]:And you're I don't know about your husband, but for sure, you are like this type a organized, hyper productive person who's doing all this work from an RV park. I mean, your substack newsletter alone with Let's Get Lost kind of focuses on the RV living aspects and the travel aspects, but also recipes. And then as if that wasn't enough, you've launched the Lost Supper Club that just launched. What made you decide you needed yet another outlet? Because you just seem super prolific.Rebecca Blackwell [00:04:34]:Yeah. Well, you know, ask me at the end of the year if I regret adding another thing, and I'll I'll let you know. But but, really, at the end of last year, I I was just looking for more ways to connect with people on a more meaningful way as we travel around. It you know, we love being in a new place and kind of immersing ourselves in the culture of the place as much as we can. And we have met people without even trying all over the country, and that's been really fun. But this year or this last year, I I was just thinking a lot about how, when we're in a new place, when I have the opportunity to spend a few hours with somebody that lives there, it it just enriches both of our lives, in a in a really meaningful way. And so I thought, well, with the lost supper club, if I can do that and then write about it, then maybe I could also inspire other people to get together with friends over dinner on a more regular basis. I feel like it's kind of a a lost art that, and we're we're we're just craving that in person connection.Rebecca Blackwell [00:05:42]:Everywhere I go, I talk to people about this, and everybody seems to be craving that in person connection, but they're not really sure how to go about starting it. So that's kinda what I'm hoping to do is by doing it myself and writing about it, inspire more people to do the same thing.Stephanie Hansen [00:05:56]:I think food too is so common in that everyone speaks the same language when it comes to food. You know, no no matter what you eat, whether what you prepare, it has a way of bringing people together. And one of the things that you and I have talked about offline is how challenging you know, when you're a a nomad, we'll call it, it's challenging to keep up those, relationships with friends and family because they don't know where you are, and you can't just, you know, have your weekly tennis date.Rebecca Blackwell [00:06:27]:That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's been a big challenge with our friends back home in Colorado is maintaining those relationships with some of our closest friends. Thankfully, we tend to attract the kind of friends that are also similar in that they, they're very independent. They have they travel all over the place. And so it's pretty easy to just pick up where we left off. But, but I I'm just I'm starting to become a little more conscious of, trying to do things like phone calls and just just text messages and and just reaching out in any way I can to some of these relationships while we're on the road because because they are important.Rebecca Blackwell [00:07:05]:They're, those those connections that we form with people that become lifelong friends, you know, it's it's one of the most valuable things, in my life. The older I get, the more I realize how how deeply important they are.Stephanie Hansen [00:07:22]:Also, like, I'm curious what your thoughts are because I don't know your husband at all. But, my husband has a small group of friends, and they're the same friends he's had since, like, 6th grade. Oh, wow. I am, like, someone that craves a lot of friends, lot of different types of people. Everyone I meet becomes my friend. Like, we just have different needs. I'm an extrovert. He's an introvert.Stephanie Hansen [00:07:46]:Like, how to fill our buckets. Would you say you're more introverted? Or how do you is your husband, like, on the same page with you? Or do you spend a lot of time forging connections?Rebecca Blackwell [00:07:56]:Yeah. So, both of us have a strong tendency to just keep to ourselves and hold ourselves away. And that's part of the the more concentrated effort on my part of reaching out to more people and making those connections. Because if it's not deliberate, we won't do it. We're very happy parking ourselves in the middle of nowhere for months at a time and not really talking to anybody except each other.Stephanie Hansen [00:08:23]:My god. That's horrifying to me.Rebecca Blackwell [00:08:27]:We love it. We love it. We love it. But the like, no matter how introverted you tend to be, those those connections with other people are are just important. And, and so, you know, my my husband's a little worried about how many social activities I have planned for us this year because he, he gets really worn out by it. But, but, also, when he's there, he has a good time, and he knows that it's good for him as well. So, so we'll see. At the end of the year, we'll we'll take stock and see if it was too much for us or or not.Stephanie Hansen [00:09:07]:So let's get lost details. It's your newsletter on Substack that details all the places that you are and what you're cooking along the way. The Last Supper Club is the new paid version of substack that you will belong to this club. You'll talk about ways to entertain. You'll share recipes in your January edition. You did a really nice overview of homemade pasta. Because I just filmed a TV show about pasta, and I made pasta myself at home for the first time.Rebecca Blackwell [00:09:37]:Oh, fun.Stephanie Hansen [00:09:38]:Yeah. So it was really fun to read your recipe and your techniques. And then the let's get lost, the cookbook is on the verge of coming. So tell me where you're at with that and when we'll be able to get our hands on it.Rebecca Blackwell [00:09:50]:Yeah. So that should be out the last week of this month, January, the last week of January. And, there'll be links on, rebecca Blackwell.com and on both of my blogs. So, yeah, I'm I'm very excited about that. It's a 140 something recipes, 135 page cookbook, full color photos of every of every recipe. And, it wasn't a book I had intended to write last year. I just I was publishing so many recipes on substack that I thought, you know, I'm just gonna throw these together into, like, a quick little downloadable book, and then it turned into a full blown a full blown cookbook. SoStephanie Hansen [00:10:35]:So how do you do it? Are you printing on demand? Because you're obviously not warehousing things in your RV.Rebecca Blackwell [00:10:41]:Exactly. Yeah. No. Yeah. We're printing on demand. So it'll be available on print and, downloadable PDF and Kindle. So 3 different options for that. And then I'm already started on volume 2.Rebecca Blackwell [00:10:55]:So this year's volume 2 will be focused more on, supper club, and it'll be organized by the areas, that we've traveled to. So Southern California, Louisiana, the Midwest. There's a there's a pool. Yeah. And it'll include other people's recipes as well. So as we travel around and and cook and have dinner with other people, they will contribute recipes to the book. So it'll be more of a a collaborate collaborative effort.Stephanie Hansen [00:11:23]:Oh, gosh. I just love it. You're so prolific. You were a marketer in your other life before getting into the RV and kind of branching off and doing your own freelance. What did you market?Rebecca Blackwell [00:11:34]:Yeah. So I mostly worked with, businesses who wanted to improve their online strategies. So, strategies. So, I put together very comprehensive strategies for them that included, you know, a lot of different factors, and I did a lot of writings, wrote a lot of websites, a lot of emails, a lot of blog posts. I was the ghostwriter for quite a few companies' blog posts over the years. So back in 2013, I thought, maybe I'd like to do this for myself, and that's when I started my first blog. And and then gradually, I started as the blog grew, I was able to let go of some clients on a very gradual basis and was finally full time with food blogging by 2020.Stephanie Hansen [00:12:18]:That's so exciting. When you're in your RV and you're, like, making a recipe, you know, do you find space as a limitation, or how do you get, like, the perfect photograph? And have you had to adapt?Rebecca Blackwell [00:12:30]:Yeah. Yeah. That has been a a big adaption in in our house before we sold it and moved into the RV. I had a whole room just for photography, and that was that was amazing. But I have discovered that there's really nothing that you can't do in a small space. If you have it's like money. If however much you have, you seem to need it all. And that's how space is.Rebecca Blackwell [00:12:53]:I think however much you have, you figure out a way to need it all, but you don't actually need it all. So, for an RV kitchen, mine is much nicer and much bigger than a lot of RVs. As we were looking towards buying an RV, we looked at, I don't know, a 100 different models and found one where the kitchen would work for me. And it hasn't limited what I've been able to do really at all, which has been really nice. And then photography, I just use these, like, 24 inch photography boards. And Yeah. You know, some of them, you would never know that it's a board even though it's a small little board. You know, the cover of the cookbook has a window in the background, the the cover photo.Rebecca Blackwell [00:13:40]:And people are shocked to know that that's not a window, that it's just a a board that I set up on on my kitchen table.Stephanie Hansen [00:13:48]:And create, like, a little good light, and there you go.Rebecca Blackwell [00:13:51]:Exactly. Exactly. Artificial lighting for photography has been a a game changer for me because, relying on how the light comes in and what time of day it is and where we are in the world and what the weather is doing and, you know, all of those things affect it. And so that's been that's been really important to use artificial lighting in in the RV.Stephanie Hansen [00:14:14]:One thing I'm curious about, I feel like travel and being in new spaces and meeting new people, I feel like that so, like, inspires creativity and gets you sort of out of your day to day existence. Does that persist when you're, like, your day to day existence is all those things? So I'm just curious. Like, I'm wondering how it is that you, like, ground yourself when everything around you is changing, or is that just a constant source of inspiration? Like food, like the ingredients. Everything is different everywhere you go.Rebecca Blackwell [00:14:52]:That's true. Yeah. That's very true. You know, it's interesting. I I just started listening to a book that's talking about the difference between, it's it's mostly focused on anxiety and the difference between right brain and left brain functionality. And our right brain is really where our creativity lies. And, the more stressed out and anxious we are, the the more it shuts down creativity. It, like, just closes that part off of us. And I feel like as we travel around, I can identify how when we get into a new place, the more I'm able to just be present in that place and appreciate the experience of being there, the more I can feel that creativity opening up and, just relaxing relaxing my mind enough to to, like, really see where are we and and and what is this place like. And and that just brings forth a whole bunch of new ideas. And then also What's the book?Stephanie Hansen [00:15:55]:Do you know?Rebecca Blackwell [00:15:56]:Oh, yeah. It's, Martha Beck.Stephanie Hansen [00:15:59]:Okay.Rebecca Blackwell [00:15:59]:And, I don't remember the title, but it's her it's her newest one, and there's the word anxiety in the title.Stephanie Hansen [00:16:04]:It's highly recommended. And just put it in the show notes in case anyoneRebecca Blackwell [00:16:08]:Very good. Yeah. Because she has this idea that we can use our creative mind to calm stress and anxiety in our lives, and I I love that idea. So and, you know, before we moved into the RV, I I could have, you know, shopped at the same places, and I could have very distinct ideas and just go to the grocery store and get them. And now I have to show up with a very loose idea of what I want because you never know. You never know what's gonna be there. Yeah.Stephanie Hansen [00:16:33]:And that justRebecca Blackwell [00:16:35]:also been a creative, I think a creative boost to not be so rigid in that thinking.Stephanie Hansen [00:16:41]:Yeah. I love that idea. Also, I think for we're in this kind of weird political place where everybody is very polarized in their silos, and you're either all this or you're all that, and there's very little nuance. One thing I found about traveling that really helped me a lot is this idea that wherever you are in an RV park, like Yep. Whether you're alone or you're with others, everybody's kind of there for the same things.Rebecca Blackwell [00:17:11]:That's right.Stephanie Hansen [00:17:12]:You might approach them differently. Like, your political flag might fly differently. But at the end of the day, they're sitting out there at their campfire. You're sitting out at your campfire. It doesn't hurt you to kinda go over and introduce yourself and share a beer or a glass of wine. And I just felt so appreciative that I had that experience because when I'm in a dark place and I'm feeling like I'm alone in my own silo, I remember that, oh, no. There's all these other people out there, and we kinda get to it a different way, but we want security for our family. We wanna have jobs that are meaningful.Stephanie Hansen [00:17:47]:We wanna love and be able to be, you know, in a place that's beautiful. That really helped me have a lot of empathy for people that weren't like me.Rebecca Blackwell [00:17:57]:Yeah. I agree completely. We had this one experience a couple of years ago where we were talking to a couple in our campground, and, he got on a a tangent of all sorts of political ideas. And and we just stood there listening, and and I didn't agree with pretty much anything he was saying. And at the end of it, I I just said, you know, I didn't actually agree with anything that you just said, but one thing that I've learned is that there are good people everywhere even if they think differently from me. And so then we ended up talking about that. And that, I I have strong opinions about a lot of things. And so the more I meet people that don't share that same perspective, the the better it is for me, the better it is for my my state of mind.Rebecca Blackwell [00:18:50]:I can get very pigeonholed into thinking that the world is a dark place. And then when I'm out in it and actually meeting the people that live in all of these places, it's a it's a solid reminder that it's not it's not a dark place. Most people are very generous and very kind and very friendly. And in every state, that's true.Stephanie Hansen [00:19:12]:We Yeah.Rebecca Blackwell [00:19:13]:We have states that we enjoy more than others, but we have found good people and beautiful places pretty pretty much everywhere.Stephanie Hansen [00:19:23]:That is, like, the moral of the story, isn't it? Like, right what you just said. And it's why I I love sailing. I love RV ing. I love going to Europe. I love traveling. And Yeah. You know, I'm fortunate in that I have some reserves to do that, but you can just travel to your state park down the road and just really explore it in your car and sleep in your car and meet so many different people. And I didn't sleep in a tent for well, honestly, I've only slept in a tent, like, probably twice because I've either had an RV or a cabin or but it is a very eye opening experience to just put yourself out there and the people that you meet.Stephanie Hansen [00:20:03]:So I'm really excited about your lost, the let's, not the let's get lost. I'm excited about the lost supper club. Because in the Midwest, as you know, supper clubs are such a big deal here.Rebecca Blackwell [00:20:15]:Yes. I know. So that I did I didn't know anything about supper clubs until we visited the Midwest. And then I was like, well, this is cool.Stephanie Hansen [00:20:24]:Yeah. And some of them are they're sort of older, folks here, but then there's others that are more modern now, and we're kinda getting back to seeing fancy relish trays and fancy high end restaurants. And just the idea of the supper club being, like, a place where you gather on a Friday or Saturday night, and it can be with friends. And it doesn't have to be at a restaurant all the time, and it certainly does not have to always be steak.Rebecca Blackwell [00:20:49]:That's right. Well, and in the south, if you say supper club, people don't even realize that you're talking about an establishment. They supper clubs are a group of friends that get together on a regular basis. They're very organized, and, we we met some friends in Louisiana a few years ago. We're we're gonna do a supper club, at her place this year. But but she invited us to her home for dinner, and that's what it was. It was a supper club, and the table was tablescaped, and the China was out, and everybody was in their Sunday best. And, I mean, like, it was a it was an amazing dinner, an amazing event, and they they just she just does that all the time.Rebecca Blackwell [00:21:29]:It's just a a normal part of life to have theseStephanie Hansen [00:21:32]:Oh, fun.Rebecca Blackwell [00:21:33]:Amazing dinner parties with groups of people gathered around her table. And and so that's more what it is in the south. So, there's there's a lot of options and a lot of variety, for people to kind of create more community over food. And and, honestly, there's something about humans where we want if we're gonna get together with people, we want there to be food.Stephanie Hansen [00:21:56]:Yeah. Yes. Hot tea does not do it. You gotta have a stone or a biscuit or something else.Rebecca Blackwell [00:22:03]:Yes. That's right. That's right.Stephanie Hansen [00:22:24]:You can preorder the book now. We will provide a link in the show notes. Rebecca Blackwell, thank you for being our guest today. It was super fun to just chat with you. I think it's funny too the cookbooks behind you that made it on the RV list. You have probably, like, 30, way more than I would have thought.Rebecca Blackwell [00:23:09]:I have another 30 in our bedroom.Stephanie Hansen [00:23:12]:Okay. So do you read cookbooks like you read novels? Yes. Same. Like, at night when I'm in bed, I'm, like, reading a cookbook, not necessarily a book as it were.Rebecca Blackwell [00:23:23]:Yes. Well and I'm starting to order more on Kindle because, you know, I only have so much space. And Yeah. And I don't love the the Kindle cookbooks as much. It's ugh. I love having a book in my hands, but I can't stop buying them. So Yeah. Something hasStephanie Hansen [00:23:40]:Yeah. You gotta make make do where you can. Well, it was great to chat with you. Like I said, I'll have all the links for everything in the show notes here, and good luck. And I can't wait to connect with you next year after you've had this whole year of creativity behind you to see where it goes.Rebecca Blackwell [00:23:56]:Thank you so much for having me.Stephanie Hansen [00:23:58]:Thanks, Rebecca. We'll talk soon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to another episode of "Dishing with Stephanie's Dish." Today, we're thrilled to talk with Rebecca Blackwell, a recipe developer, Substack writer, and published cookbook author of the “Lets Get Lost Cookbook”. Rebecca shares her fascinating journey of selling her possessions to live and travel full-time in an RV with her husband. Join us as we dive into Rebecca's upcoming cookbook, "Let's Get Lost," her inspirational journey of writing and recipe development, and the launch of the “Lost Supper Club.” We'll explore how she balances creativity and connection while on the road, finding community through food, and the power of diverse culinary experiences that make the world feel a little bit smaller and certainly more delicious. Get ready for a heartwarming discussion about food, community, and life's unexpected adventures!Here is a recipe from the bookThis is an upside down cake, with a sticky caramel date mixture that's baked on the bottom of the cake but is then flipped over to become the top. The batter is flavored with pureed dates, an entire orange, a bit of miso, and a lot of vanilla.Wait. Miso? I fell in love with miso in baking after making the Miso Maple Loaf in Baking With Dori and I haven't looked back. Just as it does in savory dishes, miso adds layers of complex flavor, including a hint of umami - and a little umami is always a good thing, even in sweet treats.Candied pistachios add some crunch, and I would like to mention that if you want any leftover for the actual cake it's wise to make extra because you and everyone around you will find them irresistible.It's also worth mentioning that one of our Lost Supper Club guests (you know who you are, Narissa) actually squealed with delight after tasting this cake. Like an actual, alarmingly loud, squeal. It was really more of a scream, and I can't imagine a higher endorsement.Orange and date cake with candied pistachiosIngredientsFor the caramel and date glaze:* 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature* 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons brown sugar, light or dark* 1 tablespoon corn syrup* 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract* 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, OR 1/2 teaspoon table salt* 8 ounces dates (about 1 cup), pits removed, cut into bite-size piecesFor the cake:* 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour* 1 3/4 tsp baking powder* 1/4 tsp baking soda* 1/4 tsp salt* 1 medium to large size orange* 1/2 cup brown sugar, light or dark* 1 stick (4 ounces/ 8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature* 1/4 cup white miso* 2 large eggs, at room temperature* 8 ounces (about 1 cup) dates, pits removed* 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract* 1/3 cup plain, unsweetened greek yogurt, whole milk or 2%* 1/2 cup orange marmaladeInstructions:Get Instructions for the recipe hereLISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Stephanie Hansen [00:00:15]:Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's dish. I'm Stephanie Hansen. You are here at the podcast that talks to foodies, cookbook writers. And today, we have, I would say, all 3 plus more. We have Rebecca Blackwell. She is a recipe developer. She is on the verge of releasing her “Let's Get Lost”, the cookbook. She is a Substack writer who has a Substack newsletter called “Let's Get Lost. She also is starting and launching the “Lost Supper Club” and has been out in the space. One of the things about Rebecca that intrigues me, not the most because you're just a nice person, but beyond that, you live in an RV. You kinda upended your life, sold your worldly possessions, and bought a pull behind, and you and your husband travel all over the United States in your RV. We are talking right now in your RV, which I know you've got a good cookbook shelf. I see it behind you. Welcome to the show, Rebecca.Rebecca Blackwell [00:01:11]:Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie. I'm so happy to be here.Stephanie Hansen [00:01:14]:Me too. So for people that maybe aren't familiar with your story, can you talk about how you decided to just chuck it all and get into the RV?Rebecca Blackwell [00:01:24]:Yeah. Absolutely. So, we had 3 children, and, when our youngest was about 7, we decided that we wanted to work towards getting to the place where we could work from anywhere in the world by the time all of our kids were graduated. And so our youngest was getting off or getting ready to go off to college in in 2019, and and we had done it. We were both working virtually, and and we could work anywhere where there was an Internet connection. And and so we were our initial plan was that we were gonna just rent Airbnb's in various places for, you know, 3 months or 6 months or whatever at a time. So some friends of ours in Southern California were heading off to Europe for a couple of months and asked us to come house sit, and we were like, great. This will be a great test run for how this works.Rebecca Blackwell [00:02:11]:And we loved living and working in a new place, but we hated living in somebody else's home. And so we weren't sure what we were gonna do about that, and, we met up with some old high school friends while we were there that lived in an RV, and it was like the answer to all of our problems. We had never considered living in an RV. We had never in our entire lives spent one night in any kind of a camper of any kind. We're just not the camping kind of people. But we went home from that trip, and, within 5 months, we had sold our house and bought a 5th wheel RV and moved ourselves into it. So the first night we ever spent in a camper, we had already sold the house and bought our RV. So and that it's been a long time 5 years.Stephanie Hansen [00:03:00]:Did you feel brave doing it at the time?Rebecca Blackwell [00:03:04]:You know, we just felt very exciting until the night we closed on our house, and then I got a little freaked out. Understandably. What have I done? But, you know, the first night, we, we lived in Colorado, and we drove, we closed on our house on a Monday, and we drove to, Katy, Texas to pick up the RV on a Tuesday and, picked it up on Wednesday. And that first night in the camper, I wasn't worried at all. It it instantly felt like the right decision. We felt at home in it almost immediately. And, you know, we really haven't looked back. We we say that we'll keep doing it until we get tired of doing it, but so far, you know, it's been almost 5 years, and we're not anywhere close to being ready to stop.Stephanie Hansen [00:03:53]:What I think is kinda hilarious about you in particular is you have this sort of idea of who might be in an RV park, and I've been in a lot of RV parks.Rebecca Blackwell [00:04:02]:Yeah.Stephanie Hansen [00:04:02]:And you're I don't know about your husband, but for sure, you are like this type a organized, hyper productive person who's doing all this work from an RV park. I mean, your substack newsletter alone with Let's Get Lost kind of focuses on the RV living aspects and the travel aspects, but also recipes. And then as if that wasn't enough, you've launched the Lost Supper Club that just launched. What made you decide you needed yet another outlet? Because you just seem super prolific.Rebecca Blackwell [00:04:34]:Yeah. Well, you know, ask me at the end of the year if I regret adding another thing, and I'll I'll let you know. But but, really, at the end of last year, I I was just looking for more ways to connect with people on a more meaningful way as we travel around. It you know, we love being in a new place and kind of immersing ourselves in the culture of the place as much as we can. And we have met people without even trying all over the country, and that's been really fun. But this year or this last year, I I was just thinking a lot about how, when we're in a new place, when I have the opportunity to spend a few hours with somebody that lives there, it it just enriches both of our lives, in a in a really meaningful way. And so I thought, well, with the lost supper club, if I can do that and then write about it, then maybe I could also inspire other people to get together with friends over dinner on a more regular basis. I feel like it's kind of a a lost art that, and we're we're we're just craving that in person connection.Rebecca Blackwell [00:05:42]:Everywhere I go, I talk to people about this, and everybody seems to be craving that in person connection, but they're not really sure how to go about starting it. So that's kinda what I'm hoping to do is by doing it myself and writing about it, inspire more people to do the same thing.Stephanie Hansen [00:05:56]:I think food too is so common in that everyone speaks the same language when it comes to food. You know, no no matter what you eat, whether what you prepare, it has a way of bringing people together. And one of the things that you and I have talked about offline is how challenging you know, when you're a a nomad, we'll call it, it's challenging to keep up those, relationships with friends and family because they don't know where you are, and you can't just, you know, have your weekly tennis date.Rebecca Blackwell [00:06:27]:That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's been a big challenge with our friends back home in Colorado is maintaining those relationships with some of our closest friends. Thankfully, we tend to attract the kind of friends that are also similar in that they, they're very independent. They have they travel all over the place. And so it's pretty easy to just pick up where we left off. But, but I I'm just I'm starting to become a little more conscious of, trying to do things like phone calls and just just text messages and and just reaching out in any way I can to some of these relationships while we're on the road because because they are important.Rebecca Blackwell [00:07:05]:They're, those those connections that we form with people that become lifelong friends, you know, it's it's one of the most valuable things, in my life. The older I get, the more I realize how how deeply important they are.Stephanie Hansen [00:07:22]:Also, like, I'm curious what your thoughts are because I don't know your husband at all. But, my husband has a small group of friends, and they're the same friends he's had since, like, 6th grade. Oh, wow. I am, like, someone that craves a lot of friends, lot of different types of people. Everyone I meet becomes my friend. Like, we just have different needs. I'm an extrovert. He's an introvert.Stephanie Hansen [00:07:46]:Like, how to fill our buckets. Would you say you're more introverted? Or how do you is your husband, like, on the same page with you? Or do you spend a lot of time forging connections?Rebecca Blackwell [00:07:56]:Yeah. So, both of us have a strong tendency to just keep to ourselves and hold ourselves away. And that's part of the the more concentrated effort on my part of reaching out to more people and making those connections. Because if it's not deliberate, we won't do it. We're very happy parking ourselves in the middle of nowhere for months at a time and not really talking to anybody except each other.Stephanie Hansen [00:08:23]:My god. That's horrifying to me.Rebecca Blackwell [00:08:27]:We love it. We love it. We love it. But the like, no matter how introverted you tend to be, those those connections with other people are are just important. And, and so, you know, my my husband's a little worried about how many social activities I have planned for us this year because he, he gets really worn out by it. But, but, also, when he's there, he has a good time, and he knows that it's good for him as well. So, so we'll see. At the end of the year, we'll we'll take stock and see if it was too much for us or or not.Stephanie Hansen [00:09:07]:So let's get lost details. It's your newsletter on Substack that details all the places that you are and what you're cooking along the way. The Last Supper Club is the new paid version of substack that you will belong to this club. You'll talk about ways to entertain. You'll share recipes in your January edition. You did a really nice overview of homemade pasta. Because I just filmed a TV show about pasta, and I made pasta myself at home for the first time.Rebecca Blackwell [00:09:37]:Oh, fun.Stephanie Hansen [00:09:38]:Yeah. So it was really fun to read your recipe and your techniques. And then the let's get lost, the cookbook is on the verge of coming. So tell me where you're at with that and when we'll be able to get our hands on it.Rebecca Blackwell [00:09:50]:Yeah. So that should be out the last week of this month, January, the last week of January. And, there'll be links on, rebecca Blackwell.com and on both of my blogs. So, yeah, I'm I'm very excited about that. It's a 140 something recipes, 135 page cookbook, full color photos of every of every recipe. And, it wasn't a book I had intended to write last year. I just I was publishing so many recipes on substack that I thought, you know, I'm just gonna throw these together into, like, a quick little downloadable book, and then it turned into a full blown a full blown cookbook. SoStephanie Hansen [00:10:35]:So how do you do it? Are you printing on demand? Because you're obviously not warehousing things in your RV.Rebecca Blackwell [00:10:41]:Exactly. Yeah. No. Yeah. We're printing on demand. So it'll be available on print and, downloadable PDF and Kindle. So 3 different options for that. And then I'm already started on volume 2.Rebecca Blackwell [00:10:55]:So this year's volume 2 will be focused more on, supper club, and it'll be organized by the areas, that we've traveled to. So Southern California, Louisiana, the Midwest. There's a there's a pool. Yeah. And it'll include other people's recipes as well. So as we travel around and and cook and have dinner with other people, they will contribute recipes to the book. So it'll be more of a a collaborate collaborative effort.Stephanie Hansen [00:11:23]:Oh, gosh. I just love it. You're so prolific. You were a marketer in your other life before getting into the RV and kind of branching off and doing your own freelance. What did you market?Rebecca Blackwell [00:11:34]:Yeah. So I mostly worked with, businesses who wanted to improve their online strategies. So, strategies. So, I put together very comprehensive strategies for them that included, you know, a lot of different factors, and I did a lot of writings, wrote a lot of websites, a lot of emails, a lot of blog posts. I was the ghostwriter for quite a few companies' blog posts over the years. So back in 2013, I thought, maybe I'd like to do this for myself, and that's when I started my first blog. And and then gradually, I started as the blog grew, I was able to let go of some clients on a very gradual basis and was finally full time with food blogging by 2020.Stephanie Hansen [00:12:18]:That's so exciting. When you're in your RV and you're, like, making a recipe, you know, do you find space as a limitation, or how do you get, like, the perfect photograph? And have you had to adapt?Rebecca Blackwell [00:12:30]:Yeah. Yeah. That has been a a big adaption in in our house before we sold it and moved into the RV. I had a whole room just for photography, and that was that was amazing. But I have discovered that there's really nothing that you can't do in a small space. If you have it's like money. If however much you have, you seem to need it all. And that's how space is.Rebecca Blackwell [00:12:53]:I think however much you have, you figure out a way to need it all, but you don't actually need it all. So, for an RV kitchen, mine is much nicer and much bigger than a lot of RVs. As we were looking towards buying an RV, we looked at, I don't know, a 100 different models and found one where the kitchen would work for me. And it hasn't limited what I've been able to do really at all, which has been really nice. And then photography, I just use these, like, 24 inch photography boards. And Yeah. You know, some of them, you would never know that it's a board even though it's a small little board. You know, the cover of the cookbook has a window in the background, the the cover photo.Rebecca Blackwell [00:13:40]:And people are shocked to know that that's not a window, that it's just a a board that I set up on on my kitchen table.Stephanie Hansen [00:13:48]:And create, like, a little good light, and there you go.Rebecca Blackwell [00:13:51]:Exactly. Exactly. Artificial lighting for photography has been a a game changer for me because, relying on how the light comes in and what time of day it is and where we are in the world and what the weather is doing and, you know, all of those things affect it. And so that's been that's been really important to use artificial lighting in in the RV.Stephanie Hansen [00:14:14]:One thing I'm curious about, I feel like travel and being in new spaces and meeting new people, I feel like that so, like, inspires creativity and gets you sort of out of your day to day existence. Does that persist when you're, like, your day to day existence is all those things? So I'm just curious. Like, I'm wondering how it is that you, like, ground yourself when everything around you is changing, or is that just a constant source of inspiration? Like food, like the ingredients. Everything is different everywhere you go.Rebecca Blackwell [00:14:52]:That's true. Yeah. That's very true. You know, it's interesting. I I just started listening to a book that's talking about the difference between, it's it's mostly focused on anxiety and the difference between right brain and left brain functionality. And our right brain is really where our creativity lies. And, the more stressed out and anxious we are, the the more it shuts down creativity. It, like, just closes that part off of us. And I feel like as we travel around, I can identify how when we get into a new place, the more I'm able to just be present in that place and appreciate the experience of being there, the more I can feel that creativity opening up and, just relaxing relaxing my mind enough to to, like, really see where are we and and and what is this place like. And and that just brings forth a whole bunch of new ideas. And then also What's the book?Stephanie Hansen [00:15:55]:Do you know?Rebecca Blackwell [00:15:56]:Oh, yeah. It's, Martha Beck.Stephanie Hansen [00:15:59]:Okay.Rebecca Blackwell [00:15:59]:And, I don't remember the title, but it's her it's her newest one, and there's the word anxiety in the title.Stephanie Hansen [00:16:04]:It's highly recommended. And just put it in the show notes in case anyoneRebecca Blackwell [00:16:08]:Very good. Yeah. Because she has this idea that we can use our creative mind to calm stress and anxiety in our lives, and I I love that idea. So and, you know, before we moved into the RV, I I could have, you know, shopped at the same places, and I could have very distinct ideas and just go to the grocery store and get them. And now I have to show up with a very loose idea of what I want because you never know. You never know what's gonna be there. Yeah.Stephanie Hansen [00:16:33]:And that justRebecca Blackwell [00:16:35]:also been a creative, I think a creative boost to not be so rigid in that thinking.Stephanie Hansen [00:16:41]:Yeah. I love that idea. Also, I think for we're in this kind of weird political place where everybody is very polarized in their silos, and you're either all this or you're all that, and there's very little nuance. One thing I found about traveling that really helped me a lot is this idea that wherever you are in an RV park, like Yep. Whether you're alone or you're with others, everybody's kind of there for the same things.Rebecca Blackwell [00:17:11]:That's right.Stephanie Hansen [00:17:12]:You might approach them differently. Like, your political flag might fly differently. But at the end of the day, they're sitting out there at their campfire. You're sitting out at your campfire. It doesn't hurt you to kinda go over and introduce yourself and share a beer or a glass of wine. And I just felt so appreciative that I had that experience because when I'm in a dark place and I'm feeling like I'm alone in my own silo, I remember that, oh, no. There's all these other people out there, and we kinda get to it a different way, but we want security for our family. We wanna have jobs that are meaningful.Stephanie Hansen [00:17:47]:We wanna love and be able to be, you know, in a place that's beautiful. That really helped me have a lot of empathy for people that weren't like me.Rebecca Blackwell [00:17:57]:Yeah. I agree completely. We had this one experience a couple of years ago where we were talking to a couple in our campground, and, he got on a a tangent of all sorts of political ideas. And and we just stood there listening, and and I didn't agree with pretty much anything he was saying. And at the end of it, I I just said, you know, I didn't actually agree with anything that you just said, but one thing that I've learned is that there are good people everywhere even if they think differently from me. And so then we ended up talking about that. And that, I I have strong opinions about a lot of things. And so the more I meet people that don't share that same perspective, the the better it is for me, the better it is for my my state of mind.Rebecca Blackwell [00:18:50]:I can get very pigeonholed into thinking that the world is a dark place. And then when I'm out in it and actually meeting the people that live in all of these places, it's a it's a solid reminder that it's not it's not a dark place. Most people are very generous and very kind and very friendly. And in every state, that's true.Stephanie Hansen [00:19:12]:We Yeah.Rebecca Blackwell [00:19:13]:We have states that we enjoy more than others, but we have found good people and beautiful places pretty pretty much everywhere.Stephanie Hansen [00:19:23]:That is, like, the moral of the story, isn't it? Like, right what you just said. And it's why I I love sailing. I love RV ing. I love going to Europe. I love traveling. And Yeah. You know, I'm fortunate in that I have some reserves to do that, but you can just travel to your state park down the road and just really explore it in your car and sleep in your car and meet so many different people. And I didn't sleep in a tent for well, honestly, I've only slept in a tent, like, probably twice because I've either had an RV or a cabin or but it is a very eye opening experience to just put yourself out there and the people that you meet.Stephanie Hansen [00:20:03]:So I'm really excited about your lost, the let's, not the let's get lost. I'm excited about the lost supper club. Because in the Midwest, as you know, supper clubs are such a big deal here.Rebecca Blackwell [00:20:15]:Yes. I know. So that I did I didn't know anything about supper clubs until we visited the Midwest. And then I was like, well, this is cool.Stephanie Hansen [00:20:24]:Yeah. And some of them are they're sort of older, folks here, but then there's others that are more modern now, and we're kinda getting back to seeing fancy relish trays and fancy high end restaurants. And just the idea of the supper club being, like, a place where you gather on a Friday or Saturday night, and it can be with friends. And it doesn't have to be at a restaurant all the time, and it certainly does not have to always be steak.Rebecca Blackwell [00:20:49]:That's right. Well, and in the south, if you say supper club, people don't even realize that you're talking about an establishment. They supper clubs are a group of friends that get together on a regular basis. They're very organized, and, we we met some friends in Louisiana a few years ago. We're we're gonna do a supper club, at her place this year. But but she invited us to her home for dinner, and that's what it was. It was a supper club, and the table was tablescaped, and the China was out, and everybody was in their Sunday best. And, I mean, like, it was a it was an amazing dinner, an amazing event, and they they just she just does that all the time.Rebecca Blackwell [00:21:29]:It's just a a normal part of life to have theseStephanie Hansen [00:21:32]:Oh, fun.Rebecca Blackwell [00:21:33]:Amazing dinner parties with groups of people gathered around her table. And and so that's more what it is in the south. So, there's there's a lot of options and a lot of variety, for people to kind of create more community over food. And and, honestly, there's something about humans where we want if we're gonna get together with people, we want there to be food.Stephanie Hansen [00:21:56]:Yeah. Yes. Hot tea does not do it. You gotta have a stone or a biscuit or something else.Rebecca Blackwell [00:22:03]:Yes. That's right. That's right.Stephanie Hansen [00:22:24]:You can preorder the book now. We will provide a link in the show notes. Rebecca Blackwell, thank you for being our guest today. It was super fun to just chat with you. I think it's funny too the cookbooks behind you that made it on the RV list. You have probably, like, 30, way more than I would have thought.Rebecca Blackwell [00:23:09]:I have another 30 in our bedroom.Stephanie Hansen [00:23:12]:Okay. So do you read cookbooks like you read novels? Yes. Same. Like, at night when I'm in bed, I'm, like, reading a cookbook, not necessarily a book as it were.Rebecca Blackwell [00:23:23]:Yes. Well and I'm starting to order more on Kindle because, you know, I only have so much space. And Yeah. And I don't love the the Kindle cookbooks as much. It's ugh. I love having a book in my hands, but I can't stop buying them. So Yeah. Something hasStephanie Hansen [00:23:40]:Yeah. You gotta make make do where you can. Well, it was great to chat with you. Like I said, I'll have all the links for everything in the show notes here, and good luck. And I can't wait to connect with you next year after you've had this whole year of creativity behind you to see where it goes.Rebecca Blackwell [00:23:56]:Thank you so much for having me.Stephanie Hansen [00:23:58]:Thanks, Rebecca. We'll talk soon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

This week we're reading Luke 4:14-30, the story of Jesus giving his inaugural sermon at his home synagogue in Nazareth. In the Gospel of Luke this passage serves as a kind of mission statement for the ministry of Jesus, which he envisions as fundamentally “good news to the poor.” This is a good measure, we think, for our own communities. To what extent is our work in the world good news to the poor, and so to what degree does it conform to the Gospel of Jesus? Yet, while the people of Nazareth are initially receptive to Jesus's message, he goes on to describe his ministry in light of the Israelite prophets Elijah and Elishah, who in Jesus's telling focused on ministering to people outside of Israel altogether. Understandably, perhaps, this comparison makes the people of Nazareth angry, as he seems to say his ministry has nothing for them. Why does Jesus do this, we wonder, and what does it have to say to us today? If Jesus is always pressing toward the margins, then what is the good news for those in the center? And if Jesus is constantly expanding the boundaries of inclusion, how can we remain rooted in the communities that have shaped us? 

The Morning Shift hit the Wake Up Call to hear from listeners on how they feel about the future prospects of the Falcons moving into the final week of the season.

I had Erin Hanson on today. She's such an interesting person because she's a terrific artist. I love her artwork, and I show it in my gallery. Erin is also a great businessperson and she's an innovator in the art space.Today we focused in on this process of 3D printing that she does with her paintings. She's really one of the only people that's doing such a thing. Understandably it's expensive, costing upwards of half a million dollars just to get the machines, not to mention the specialized highly skilled individuals required to do this process.Erin has also amassed a huge social media presence and she's done it organically, which is not an easy task. I think her Instagram is at 300k followers at the time of posting. So I hope you enjoy this. I think it's a very good, podcast for artists to learn and to see something new and interesting that really only Erin Hanson is doing.

Understandably underappreciated due to his complete inability to hit, Luis Aparicio fell into disfavor amongst new fans in the 21st century. But, on the 54th anniversary of his trade from the White Sox to the Red Sox, Mike and Bill discover that there was far more to Aparicio's game than meets the eye, including some of the best defense of all time and the blinding speed that brought the stolen base back to baseball after years of dormancy. Plus, happy birthday to Cookie Lavagetto and Gary Ward. And farewell to Bob Speake and Ozzie Virgil Sr.

Previously on the Seventh Valkyrie, Meridia receives Val's cryptic note threatening the High Commander, but little other information. Understandably thrown by this sudden shift in their plans, what will Merida's next move be? Find out now, on the Seventh Valkyrie! Meridia, The 16th Day of Winter, After Dusk —--------------------- Thanks for listening to The Seventh Valkyrie! Sure love having you along for the ride.  To Support Us On Patreon (Plus get Bonus Features, Early Access, and the TABTA Archive): https://www.patreon.com/7thvalkyrie For 7th Valkyrie Gear and Apparel: https://store.7thvalkyrie.com/ To Join the Conversation/Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/theseventhvalkyrie/ To See the Series Come to Life: https://www.instagram.com/7thvalkyrie/ If You Don't Like My Voice Acting (Novelization and Ebooks): https://a.co/d/8ikI6dP  

Last time we spoke about the first encirclement campaign against the CCP. The Jiangxi Soviet expanded despite opposition, but urban uprisings struggled, with labor union support declining. Li Lisan pushed for urban revolts, while Mao Zedong favored rural expansion. In 1930, failed attacks on Nanchang and Changsha deepened the divide between their strategies. Mao's forces later captured Ji'an, but tensions led to purges, including the Futian Incident. Meanwhile, the Nationalist Army launched an encirclement campaign. Mao's strategy of “luring the enemy in deep” ultimately positioned the CCP for survival and future success. The NRA exploited internal conflict among the Reds, launching attacks on Donggu. Miscommunication led to friendly fire between NRA divisions. Despite capturing towns, overextension weakened the NRA, allowing the Red Army to counterattack. Through guerrilla tactics and local support, the Reds encircled and decimated multiple NRA divisions, capturing thousands of prisoners and weapons. Mao Zedong's strategies proved effective, bolstering Red Army morale and influence. By the end of the third campaign, the Jiangxi Soviet had expanded significantly.   #127 The fourth encirclement campaign  Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The CCP had just survived 3 brutal encirclement campaigns in 1931, collectively known as the First Encirclement Campaign. The Reds were quite lucky in 1931, for China had major problems requiring Chiang Kai-Sheks attention. Understandably one of those major problems was a full blown Japanese invasion of Manchuria, that rest assured we will tackle in depth in future episodes, but for coherency sake I thought it best to try and get through all the other events before we start talking about the beginning of the 15 year war. The Japanese invasion immediately began influencing the KMT-CCP conflict. The Japanese invasion directly threatened Soviet interests and Moscow looked at the CCP as a potential bulwark against the Japanese. From 1930-1931, the CCP's Red Army was successful in defending their territory against the NRA extermination campaigns, however they still suffered from a lack of discipline, supplies and professionalism. New leadership came from the new Central Committee, now led by the 28 Bolsheviks and a new comintern representative, Otto Braun. The Red Army began adopting a series of initiatives in 1932 to improve. All Red Army units were standardized to establish better command and control. Political indoctrination and military training also became standardized with waves upon waves of manuals distributed to the forces. The Red Army expanded the Red Academy by establishing the Red Army War College for mid-grade and senior officers. Branch schools and speciality schools to increase competency and training. Political mobilization remained cornerstone to the Red Army. Recruitment of new troops also began to see a renewed emphasis on urban proletariats. A large change to the operations for the Red Army was the adoption of Soviet offensive tactics to seek out decisive battles. CCP leaders were under the misbelief that revolutionary fervor would simply have the Red Army victory. What they lacked initially was professionalism, alongside good weaponry and equipment. Couple this with the NRA's adoption of more and more effective counterinsurgency tactics, the Red Army really began to suffer terrible casualties. Now as the Red Army defeated the NRA in the third extermination campaign of 1931 not to be mistaken for the large third extermination campaign later, another intraparty power struggle was brewing in the CCP. After the fall of Li Lisan, a group of students returning from studies in the USSR began a systematic operation to gain control over the CCP. This group became known as the 28 Bolsheviks. 20 or some of them returned to China with the new Comintern adviser, Pavel Mif in 1931. Two key members of the group, Qin Bangxian known colloquially as Bo Gu, and Chen Shaoyu as Wang Ming would seize key positions at the top brass of the CCP. Many of these students attended Moscow's Sun Yat-Sen University, where they became acquainted with Mif, the head rector of said university. This university was a breeding ground for ultra-orthodox Stalinist communist doctrine. It goes without saying the students were indoctrinated with a very Moscow perspective. Mif regarded them as a very well disciplined force and used them to purge out divergent groups within the university. During the third Plenum in September of 1930, Mif attempted to use the forum to denounce Li Lisans plan, but had failed to convince the majority of the Central Committee. After Li Lisan was condemned and recalled to Moscow, Mif saw a major opportunity. At the fourth Plenum in January of 1931, Li Lisan and 11 of his supported were ousted from the Central Committee, with their best positions seized by Moscow aligned CCP members. The next year, the 28 Bolsheviks unleashed a brutal intraparty war with other factions. By late September the Bolsheviks effectively destroyed most of the opposition and incorporated the surviving members into a the Central Committee loyal to Moscow. Bo Gu was appointed head of the Central Committee from Wang Ming who returned to Moscow. Once the 28 Bolsheviks were in control of the CCP at Shanghai, they then set their eyes upon Mao Zedong and the Red Army Soviet areas. During the first All-China Soviet Congress of November 1931, they launched their first attack. Mao Zedong received prior word of their intentions from loyal followers in Shanghai and prepared to face them. Before the Central Committee arrived at Ruijin, Mao had just emerged victorious from the encirclement campaigns, had suppressed dissension amongst his ranks and established a delegation of loyalists within the Soviet Congress. The Bolsheviks failed to gain a majority within the Congress, taking only 2 seats in the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet. Meanwhile Zhu De was appointed Commissar of War and other Mao loyalists took high ranking positions. To try to break Mao Zedongs monopolistic control over the Red Army, the Bolsehviks employed Zhou Enlai.  In early 1932, the CCP urged the Red Army to expand Soviet territory as its forces grew. Successful defenses against encirclement Campaigns brought many NRA soldiers into the Red Army, some willingly, others by force. A key boost came on December 14, 1931, when the NRA's Twenty-sixth Route Army rebelled and joined, forming the Fifth Red Army Corps. With this and other recruits, the First Front Red Army grew to about 70,000, requiring more territory to sustain itself and the revolution. On January 9th of 1932, the CCP Central Committee issued a resolution outlining a new strategy for the party and the Red Army. The resolution assessed the current situation in China, that of a major depression, the effects of the Mukden Incident and the string of CCP successes against the encirclement campaigns. The resolution reasserted the renewed commitment to recruit urban proletariats for the revolution and “expand the territory, link up the separated Soviet areas to form an integrated Soviet area, and take advantage of the present favorable political and military conditions to seize one or two important central cities so as to win an initial victory of the revolution in one or more provinces.” The Red Army would conduct a series of offensive to expand their Soviets and connect them starting in early 1932. They would target southern Jiangxi, such places as Ganzhou, Jiujiang, Nanchang and also Fujian's Fuzhou, Xiamen and Zhangzhou. The resolution also pushed for a “positive and offensive line, rather than the luring of the enemy into the deep strategy, as it was no longer viable”. Furthermore the resolution directly attacked Mao Zedong's strategy as “being right opportunism that underestimated the situation and maintained a pessimistic attitude, and all party and army members should actively guard against its incorrect mindset”. This cemented the divide between the Bolshevik groups adoption of offensive strategy vs Mao Zedong's defensive lure the enemy in deep strategy. The next operation would be against Ganzhou in Jiangxi. The city linked the Hunan-Jiangxi border areas with the Fujian-Jiangxi border areas and provided a nice launching point against Ji'an in the north. During another meeting in 1932 at Ruijin, Mao Zedong expressed his reservations about the operation, stating the Red Army did not have the necessary weapons or supplies to seize a major city. Zhu De backed him up, but the Central Military Committee vetoed them and continued planning the Ganzhou operation. On January 10th orders were handed out for the 1st, 3rd and 5th Red Army corps, along with the Jiangxi Soviet military regional forces to conduct the operation by February. On the other side, the KMT were well prepared to meet an attack against Ganzhou, they were also most likely tipped off.  On February 3rd of 1932 the Red Army arrived at Ganzhou quickly encircling the city. The next day the 5th Red Army Corps, roughly 20,000 men were the first to attack the city. They struck the East Gate, breaching the defenses slightly before being repelled. On the 17th and 23rd the Red Army forces conducted two major assaults, expanding the attacks to the West and South gates, but failed to gain a foothold. During the siege, two NRA brigades reinforced the Ganzhou garrison. Then on March 4th, the Red Army conducted a fourth major attack and was likewise repelled. Three days later the Red army retired to Jiangkou to reorganize after they had suffered 3000 casualties. Despite this the CCP leadership remained undeterred, believing the offensive strategy was still optimal. When Japan began rooting itself permanently in Manchuria, the CCP saw this as the perfect condition for a real revolution to take place. At a meeting on March 18th, Mao Zedong again argued his strategy fit the current conditions much more and that the offensive strategy was too ambiguous. Yet his arguments fell on deaf ears and the CCP leadership had the Red Army reorganized into two route armies. The west route army consisted of the 3rd army corps and was made responsible for expanding the Soviet areas west of the Gan River in Hunan-Jiangxi with a focus built around Zhuchuan, Taihe and Wan'an. The Central Route army consisted of the 1st and 5th Red army corps and would take Mao Zedong's recommendations to perform expansion operations in south Fujian with Xiamen being the final target. On March 26th, the Central route red army occupied Changtin under Mao Zedongs guidance. There they conducted political mobilization of the local populace. Yet seeing little military action taking place, Zhou Enlai pushed Mao Zedong to stop the political mobilization and instead engage the enemy in the direction of Zhangzhou. Thus the Reds headed south and attacked the 49th NRA division. On April 10th the Reds managed to seize Longyan where they annihilated a single brigade of the 49th NRA division. The 5th NRA corps attempted to reinforce the 49th NRA division, but lost two brigades in the process. The Reds then continued marching south and on April 20th seized Zhangzhou where they defeated the 49th NRA division. At Zhangzhou they seized 1675 prisoners, 2000 rifles, some artillery pieces, 13,00 rounds of ammunition, two aircraft and over a million yuan. Alongside that came a lot of provisions, salt, oil and other goods needed to keep their men moving. After the success Mao Zedong telegrammed Zhou Enlai, requesting the Red army move back to Jiangxi with their booty to improve operations in the soviet area. It was Mao Zedong's belief the Reds had made great gains at Zhangzhou but could not hold onto the area. Instead he wanted to expand operations in Fujian using smaller local militia and guerilla groups. The CCP yet again overruled Mao Zedong and on June 5th ordered him to keep up the offensive, now turning towards Guangdong military forces currently occupying southern Jiangxi.  Once that was completed they were to advance north up the Gan River Valley and attack Ganzhou, Zhangshu, Ji'an and Nanchang so as to foster a revolution in Jiangxi. The Red army then reorganized its forces placing the 1st, 3rd and 5th red army corps under the First Front Red Army who advanced into Guangdong. From late june into early July the Reds seized Shuikou, Nanxiong and defeated 15 Guangdong based NRA brigades and expanded the Soviet into the province. Yet even with the string of offensive victories, Mao Zedong still remained vocally in opposition towards the strategy, constantly submitting his recommendation to adjust their footing. On July 25th, Mao Zedong and Zhu De sent a joint communique to the CCP leadership requesting a change of strategy. They argued instead of immediately attacking Ji'an and Zhangshu they could perform clearing operation on the eastern part of the valley, focusing on Yihaung and Le'an. The CCP central committee was initially against the proposals, however Zhou Enlai intervened and gave his support to them. In August the 1st front red army held a conference and confirmed they would attack Yihaung and Le'an. They took Le'an shortly after, defeating the 27th NRA division. With that victory they gained 5000 prisoners, 4000 rifles, 20 machine guns, 20 artillery pieces and 3 wireless communication sets. Afterwards the Reds contemplated attacking Ji'an, however after consideration Mao Zedong argued on September 25th, the NRA presence at Ji'an was too strong. He instead recommended they conduct political mobilization operations around the Le'an Yihuang area. By this point the CCP Central Committee was really pissed off with what they considered insubordination from Mao Zedong. By this time the 28th Bolsheviks had gained enough power and began striping Mao Zedong of key positions with the Red Army. First he was removed from the Military Committee of the Central Bureau of the Soviet Areas. Have I mentioned how much communists love making endless committees? Later in October of 1933 an emergency conference was held at Ningdu to plan future operations on the eve of an impending KMT campaign. Participants included Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Chen yi, Liu Bocheng and Peng Dehuai who all agreed they should take up offensive actions outside the Soviet. Alongside this the party condemned Mao Zedongs strategy called it inadequate and outdated. Zhou Enlai then argued for “expanding Soviet territory swiftly, engaging the enemy on KMT territory, bringing Jiangxi and its neighboring Soviet areas together by force, taking key cities in the Gan valley, including Nanchang, Ji'an, Ganzhou, and Pingxiang, so as to achieve preliminary successes in one or more provinces.” After the Ningdu conference, the Red Army continued with the offensive operation, now attacking Jianning, Lichuan and Taining in October. By November the 1st front army took the Jiangxi county seats of Zixi and Jinxi. This helped the CCP expand the Soviet in the eastern Gan valley, but it also placed them on a vulnerable footing, just in time for the KMT's 4th major encirclement campaign. During the CCP's expansion activities, the KMT had been performing a communist suppression campaign in Shanghai, driving out the Bolsheviks and other CCP members towards the Jiangxi Soviet by late 1932. Their arrival to the Jiangxi Soviet added further tension to the Red Army who were facing a new encirclement campaign. The presence of high ranking Central Committee members also changed their politics. The Mao Zedong adapted Marxist-Leninist theory was replaced by more orthodox and Moscow leaning theory. Many of 28 Bolsheviks moved to many Soviets sparking a new phase.  Before the start of the 4th major encirclement campaign, the Red Army from the Jiangxi Soviet conducted expansion operations into Fujian and Guangdong. Other Red army units performed similar operations in Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan. All of this red activity was enough to push Chiang Kai-Shek to refocus his military operations against them. On April 9th, 1932, Chiang Kai-Shek created the Bandit Suppression Headquarters in Wuhan with He Yingqin as its commander. Beginning in June 1932 He Yingqin had a force of 500,000 soldiers who unleashed a brutal encirclement and suppression campaign against the Hubei-Henan-Anhui and western Hubei-Hunan Soviet areas. By November of 1932, both soviets collapsed. After this Chiang Kai-Shek ordered He Yingqin to direct his efforts against the Jiangxi Soviet. In December Chiang Kai-Shek shifted over 400,000 troops and 30 divisions to the Central Soviet Operation. He even personally moved down to Nanchang to supervise the operation. The main forces consisted of 3 columns, roughly 150,000 troops in 12 divisions led by Chen Cheng. The KMT plan was to build a series of blockhouses as a means of economically blockading the Soviet. Around 240,000 troops were allocated for the blockade, in addition to the main force which brought the entire figure to 400,000 men. Each flank of the blockade had 70,000 troops, roughly 6 divisions who would conduct blocking operations in the Jiangxi-Guangdong border area and the Fujian-Jiangxi border area. Around 100,000 would be used to conduct anti-guerilla operations in the northwest and northeast of Jiangxi as well as in southeast Hunan and southwest Jiangxi. Was the blockade was set, the NRA would deploy 3 columns along separate routes converging upon the Red Army's rear for a concentrated attack. Over on the other side, the Red Army based near Lichuan had roughly 70,000 men from the 1st, 3rd and 5th Red army corps and the 11th,12th, 21st and 22nd Red Armies. The 4th encirclement campaign coincided with the Red Army's urban offensives. By December of 1932 the Reds had targeted Nancheng. The Central Committee issued the attack orders but due to the large NRA reinforcement efforts had to order the Red Army to withdraw from the outskirts of Nancheng. The next potential target was Nanfeng. The Central Committee again pushed for urban offensive as Nanfeng was attacked beginning in February of 1933. On February 7th the Red Army besieged the city. The NRA quickly dispatched the Central Route Army to reinforce the city and conduct a counterattack. Seeing the large concentration of NRA in the area, on February 13th Zhou Enlai ordered the forces to pull out and head over to Luokou.  The Red Army set up a diversion to cover their withdrawal. Using similar tactics employed during the third encirclement campaign, the 11th Red Army pretended to be the main force and suddenly attacked Lichuan. The NRA took the bait immediately sending 3 columns to Lichuan. While marching the 1st NRA column's 52nd and 59th NRA division became separated. On February 25th the two divisions moved west towards Huangpi along two routes separated by a mountain ridge. As they did so, their distance from the NRA 2nd and 3rd columns increased making mutual support efforts impossible. On the 27th the 1st and 3rd Red Army corps and 21st Red army unleashed a surprise attack against the 52nd NRA division. The next day the 5th Red army corps and 22nd red army attack the 59th NRA division around Huangpi. The division was annihilated with its commander captured. After the victory the Red Army pulled back to Luokou.  After the loss the NRA reorganized its force into 2 columns and changed strategy. Now instead of heading in 3 wide columns they would concentrate as 2 down the center of the Soviet. On March 16th, the two NRA columns began their advance as the Reds deployed their 11th army to perform more deception operations. The 11th Red army made a feint towards Guangchang, attracting the NRA front column. This action separated the two columns by 50 kms and isolated the 11th NRA division near Caotaigang. On March the 20th the 1st front red army attacked the 11th NRA division near Xuzhuang decimating them and severely defeating the 9th NRA division. For the remainder of the 4th encirclement campaign there were no other major battles. During March of 1933 the Reds conducted political operations near Le'an until NRA forces moved there to secure the city.  In April the NRA began to withdraw from the Jiangxi Soviet area, effectively ending their encirclement campaign. The NRA had suffered considerable losses for their efforts. They had lost the equivalent of 3 divisions; over 10,000 prisoners were taken. The Reds and seized 10,000 rifles, 300 German made machine guns and 40 artillery pieces. Another consequence of the failed encirclement campaign was the validation of the Bolshevik led offensive strategy. The CCP then adopted a series of reform measures hoping the Red Army could seize large cities. First the CCP attempted to expand the Red Army's overall strength by launching a large recruitment drive. In addition they incorporated all the local militias in the main Red Army. To fund the expansion the CCP adopted a large land distribution policy to generate revenue. Under the guise of performing a land investigation the CCP distributed 80% of the land within the soviet area. During the distribution the CCP attempted to raise nearly one million yuan. During the summer of 1933 the CCP also focused on suppressing counterrevolutionaries. One of the 28 Bolsheviks greatest critics was Luo Ming, the secretary of the Fujian-Guangdong-Jiangxi soviet committee. A large amount of recruitment and taxation had hurt the morale of the local people in the Soviet. When the Central Committee wanted troops there to deploy for action Luo Ming argued they needed to stay for local defense and that they should scale back offensive operations. However from the perspective of the 28 Bolsheviks it looked very similar to Mao Zedongs lure the enemy in deep strategy. At this point there were still many loyal to Mao Zedong and his strategy, so the Bolsheviks saw an opportunity to hurt him through punishing Luo Ming. They created a new pejorative term “Luo Min Line” to describe any non-offensive strategy and began a purge of the Fujian-Guangdong-Jiangxi Soviets leadership. The “Luo Ming line” became a new slogan to describe any in the CCP opposing the offensive strategy. During the summer of 1933, the Central Committee, emboldened by surviving the fourth encirclement campaign, continued to press on with their offensive strategy. With the Bolshviks and Otto Braun, the Jiangxi Soviet increased the central oversight over the Red Army and gradually seized direct control over military matters. On May 8th, the CCP passed a resolution separating the Central Military council and the Red Army leadership. Zhu De and Zhou Enlai remained in charge of the Red Army, but Bo Gu gained greater control over the military council and now controlled the Red Army's strategy and the employment of its military. Also Otto Braun would play a much larger role in military strategy, leveraging his experience at the Frunze Academy to push for offensive action.  The Red Army also reorganized its units to facilitate the execution of the new offensive strategies. In June the CCP divided the 1st front red army into the eastern front red army and central red army. Bo Gu and Braun believed that the Red Army had grown strong enough, both in firepower and manpower, to no longer require coordinated, mutually supportive operations. Instead, they felt the Red Army units could carry out independent operations in different regions. The Eastern Front Red Army, composed of the Third Red Army Corps, was stationed in western Fujian, while the Central Red Army, formed from the First Red Army Corps, remained in the Central Soviet area. Under the guidance of the new Central Military Committee, the Eastern Front Red Army launched expansion efforts into Fujian after the NRA vacated the region. Peng Dehuai's forces embarked on a three-month campaign in Fujian, expanding Soviet-controlled territory, securing supplies—especially salt—and raising funds, addressing key shortages for both the Red Army and the CCP. Before the Fifth Extermination Campaign, the Central Soviet controlled an impressive 60,000 square kilometers, spanning parts of three provinces. However, as they focused on territorial expansion, the Red Army neglected to monitor the KMT, which was preparing for another encirclement campaign. Now we have primarily focused on one of the major Soviets implicated in the fourth encirclement campaign. In reality the fourth encirclement campaign had been a large scale operation against three major soviets: the Hunan-Western Hubei Soviet also referred to as the Honghu Soviet; the Hubei-Henan-Anhui or Eyuwan Soviet and the Jiangxi Soviet. You would be led to believe and rightfully so because many lets just say, CCP aligned sources like to highlight the Jiangxi Soviet story, that the communists had kind of duped the NRA and stolen their victory from them. It was much more of a mixed bag overall. The campaign against the Hunan–Western Hubei Soviet saw the NRA successfully defeat the local Red Army forces, overrunning their main base in southern Hubei and Hunan. The majority of the fighting occurred around Jingzhou and overall was seen as a loss for the CCP. For the campaign against the Eyuwan Soviet, drought, famine and epidemics severely hurt the CCP forces in 1932. Between July and September, Chiang Kai-Shek had allocated more than 300,000 troops for the operation. The CCP suffered tremendously because of the numerical superiority of the NRA. The NRA General Xia Douyin unleashed a scorched earth campaign, killing countless, burning many villages and destroying to seizing crops. Historians like Chen Yaohuang argue the fourth Red Army who participated in this area were defeated largely because they had adopted conventional warfare tactics. The peasantry were very hostile to the NRA, forcing their forces to depend on unreliable local elites for provisions, creating a very vulnerable supply line. However the CCP failed to exploit this weakness by not committing guerilla warfare. Despite the NRA victory, it was a rather incomplete one and they ended their campaign prematurely celebrating. The fourth red army had successfully retreated into the border region between Shaanxi and Sichuan leaving behind a small force to conduct guerilla warfare. The remaining Communist forces in the Eyuwan Soviet, led by Gao Jingting and Xu Haidong, capitalized on the early Nationalist withdrawal to rebuild a guerrilla movement. They hid in the mountains, survived by foraging, and organized poor peasants to seize grain from landlords and public granaries. The 25th Red Army, under their leadership, managed to maintain a Communist presence in the region for several more years. After all was said and done, as was the case with the previous encirclement campaigns, reports from field commanders were far too optimistic. Many reported to Chiang Kai-Shek exaggerated numbers of casualties inflicted, prisoners taken and areas secured. In reality what the communists were doing was simply moving around to give off the impression of major defeats. Sure the Reds were taken enormous losses, but they were constantly recruiting and spreading. They could probably sustain these yearly encirclement campaigns if the NRA did not do something much more bold…like actually encircle the Reds. As great as the Reds were becoming at outwitting their opponent, their luck would eventually run out. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The Reds had survived 4 large encirclement campaigns. The 28 Bolsheviks and their moscow allies were greatly emboldened thinking it was their time to go on the offensive and usher in a true revolution. However those like Mao Zedong knew the dire reality of the situation and were bracing themselves for the coming storm.

  Technological Taylorism: How Modern AI is Reshaping the Future of Work In this episode, we delve into the concept of Technological Taylorism and how the advent of AI and automation is restructuring the workforce. We revisit Frederick Taylor's principles of scientific management and examine their relevance in today's job market. The discussion covers the rise in workplace surveillance, the transformation of jobs into piecemeal tasks, and the increasing vulnerability of freelance and middle management roles. The episode also explores the larger implications of AI on job creation, economic growth, and the potential for a technological singularity. Featuring insights from experts like Paul Daugherty and Yossi Sheffi, this thought-provoking discussion questions the future of labor in an efficient, data-driven world. 00:00 Introduction: Technological Taylorism and the Future of Work 00:32 The Legacy of Frederick Taylor's Scientific Management 01:31 Modern Workforce Surveillance and AI 03:04 The Rise of Freelancers and Automation 05:39 Creative Destruction in the Digital Age 08:13 The Future of Work: Concerns and Predictions 10:24 Conclusion: Human + Machine Paradigm   Technological Taylorism: The Automation of Efficiency and the Future of Work The philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan contends that "we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us", The idea suggests that we create and adapt to technologies. These technologies, in turn, shape our behaviours, perceptions, and ultimately, our societies. This goes for any technology from the stopwatch to the advanced artificial intelligence.  I hope I am wrong... In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Frederick Taylor introduced a management approach that would fundamentally change the industrial world. With tools as basic as a pen, ledger, and stopwatch, Taylor meticulously observed and recorded the activities of factory workers, aiming to enhance efficiency through what he termed "scientific management." This system dissected every action into its basic elements. Taylor's analysis led to the precise timing and reorganization of each task to maximize speed and efficiency. Initially, these changes led to significant productivity gains, but they also stripped workers of their autonomy and sense of craftsmanship. Understandably, Taylorism reduced skilled artisans to interchangeable cogs in a mechanized process. Fast forward to today, and Taylor's shadow looms large over modern workforce management. Today's management practices have evolved to slice jobs into ever-smaller tasks. In 2019, The Wall Street Journal highlighted a significant shift towards workplace surveillance, labelling employees as "workforce data generators." This marked a new phase in management's scientific approach, now armed with AI-driven tools far beyond Taylor's  stopwatch. The COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to remote work turbocharged the use of these surveillance tools. A 2021 study by Gartner revealed that the adoption of technologies like facial recognition among employers had doubled to 60% during the pandemic, with predictions of continued growth. This surge in monitoring tools reflects a crisis-induced rush towards greater control, reminiscent of Taylor's response to perceived inefficiencies. The narrative has been that a surefire way to protect yourself in an age of AI is to have a complex, human job. However, when you really examine any complex job it is just a Gordian knot of simple tasks, tasks that can be cheese sliced apart. Consider, AI-powered project management software that eliminates middle management by automating tasks. Once it has unbundled jobs into tasks, it then assembles freelance teams. While these freelancers initially benefit, the software soon learns from their work, and gradually replaces them too.  Freelancers are increasingly becoming a significant part of the workforce. A 2022 study by Upwork found that 38% of Americans engaged in...

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Oct. 31. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 7. To receive future episodes as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoGeordie Gillett, Managing Director and General Manager of Grand Targhee, WyomingRecorded onSeptember 30, 2024About Grand TargheeClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Gillett FamilyLocated in: Alta, WyomingYear founded: 1969Pass affiliations: Mountain Collective: 2 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Jackson Hole (1:11), Snow King (1:22), Kelly Canyon (1:34) – travel times vary considerably given time of day, time of year, and weather conditions.Base elevation: 7,650 feet (bottom of Sacajawea Lift)Summit elevation: 9,862 feet at top of Fred's Mountain; hike to 9,920 feet on Mary's NippleVertical drop: 2,212 feet (lift-served); 2,270 feet (hike-to)Skiable Acres: 2,602 acresAverage annual snowfall: 500 inchesTrail count: 95 (10% beginner, 70% intermediate, 15% advanced, 5% expert)Lift count: 6 (1 six-pack, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Grand Targhee's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himHere are some true facts about Grand Targhee:* Targhee is the 19th-largest ski area in the United States, with 2,602 lift-served acres.* That makes Targhee larger than Jackson Hole, Snowbird, Copper, or Sun Valley.* Targhee is the third-largest U.S. ski area (behind Whitefish and Powder Mountain) that is not a member of the Epic or Ikon passes.* Targhee is the fourth-largest independently owned and operated ski area in America, behind Whitefish, Powder Mountain, and Alta.* Targhee is the fifth-largest U.S. ski area outside of Colorado, California, and Utah (following Big Sky, Bachelor, Whitefish, and Schweitzer).And yet. Who do you know who has skied Grand Targhee who has not skied everywhere? Targhee is not exactly unknown, but it's a little lost in skiing's Bermuda Triangle of Jackson Hole, Sun Valley, and Big Sky, a sunken ship loaded with treasure for whoever's willing to dive a little deeper.Most ski resort rankings will plant Alta-Snowbird or Whistler or Aspen or Vail at the top. Understandably so – these are all great ski areas. But I appreciate this take on Targhee from skibum.net, a site that hasn't been updated in a couple of years, but is nonetheless an excellent encyclopedia of U.S. skiing (boldface added by me for emphasis):You can start easy, then get as wild and remote as you dare. Roughly 20% of the lift-served terrain (Fred's Mountain) is groomed. The snowcat area (Peaked Mountain) is completely ungroomed, completely powder, totally incredible [Peaked is lift-served as of 2022]. Comparisons to Jackson Hole are inevitable, as GT & JH share the same mountain range. Targhee is on the west side, and receives oodles more snow…and therefore more weather. Not all of it good; a local nickname is Grand Foggy. The locals ski Targhee 9 days out of 10, then shift to Jackson Hole when the forecast is less than promising. (Jackson Hole, on the east side, receives less snow and virtually none of the fog). On days when the weather is good, Targhee beats Jackson for snow quality and shorter liftlines. Some claim Targhee wins on scenery as well. It's just a much different, less crowded, less commercialized resort, with outstanding skiing. Some will argue the quality of Utah powder…and they're right, but there are fewer skiers at Targhee, so it stays longer. Some of the runs at Targhee are steep, but not as steep as the couloirs at Jackson Hole. Much more of an intermediate mountain; has a very “open” feel on virtually all of the trails. And when the powder is good, there is none better than Grand Targhee. #1 ski area in the USA when the weather is right. Hotshots, golfcondoskiers and young skiers looking for “action” (I'm over 40, so I don't remember exactly what that entails) are just about the only people who won't call Grand Targhee their all-time favorite. For the pure skier, this resort is number one.Which may lead you to ask: OK Tough Guy then why did it take you five years to talk about this mountain on your podcast? Well I get that question about once a month, and I don't really have a good answer other than that there are a lot of ski areas and I can only talk about one at a time. But here you go. And from the way this one went, I don't think it will be my last conversation with the good folks at Grand old Targhee.What we talked aboutContinued refinement of the Colter lift and Peaked Mountain expansion; upgrading cats; “we do put skiing first here”; there's a reason that finance people “aren't the only ones in the room making decisions for ski areas”; how the Peaked expansion changed Targhee; the Teton Pass highway collapse; building, and then dismantling, Booth Creek; how ignoring an answering machine message led to the purchase of Targhee; first impressions of Targhee: “How is this not the most popular ski resort in America?”; imagining Booth Creek in an Epkonic alt reality; Targhee's commitment to independence; could Targhee ever acquire another mountain?; the insane price that the Gilletts paid for Targhee; the first time you see the Rockies; massive expansion potential; corn; fixed-grip versus detach; Targhee's high percentage of intermediate terrain and whether that matters; being next-door neighbors with “the most aspirational brand in skiing”; the hardest part of expanding a ski area; potential infill lifts; the ski run Gillett would like to eliminate and why; why we're unlikely to see a lift to the true summit; and why Targhee joined Mountain Collective but hasn't joined the Ikon Pass (and whether the mountain ever would).Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewA few things make Targhee extra relevant to our current ski moment:* Targhee is the only U.S. ski area aside from Sugar Bowl to join the Mountain Collective pass while staying off of Ikon.* In 2022, Targhee (sort of) quietly opened one of the largest lift-served North American ski expansions in the past decade, the 600-acre Peaked Mountain pod, served by the six-pack Colter lift.* The majority of large U.S. ski areas positioned on Forest Service land are bashful about their masterplans, which are publicly available documents that most resort officials wish we didn't know about. That's because these plans outline potential future expansions and upgrades that resorts would rather not prematurely acknowledge, lest they piss off the Chipmunk Police. So often when I'm like “Hey tell us about this 500-acre bowl-skiing expansion off the backside,” I get an answer that's something like, “well we look forward to working with our partners at the Forest Service to maybe consider doing that around the year 3000 after we complete our long-term study of mayfly migration routes.” But Geordie is just like, “Hell yes we want to blow the resort out in every direction like yesterday” (not an exact quote). And I freaking love the energy there.* Most large Western ski areas fall into one of two categories: big, modern, and busy (Vail, Big Sky, Palisades, Snowbird), or big, somewhat antiquated, and unknown (Discovery, Lost Trail, Silver). But Targhee has split the difference, being big, modern, and lesser-known, that rare oasis that gives you modern infrastructure (like fast lifts), without modern crowds (most of the time). It's kind of strange and kind of glorious, and probably too awesome to stay true forever, so I wanted to get there before the Brobot Bus unloaded.* Even 500-inches-in-an-average-winter Targhee has a small snowmaking system. Isn't that interesting?What I got wrong* I said that $20 million “might buy you a couple houses on the slopes at Jackson Hole.” It kind of depends on how you define “on the slopes,” and whether or not you can live without enough acreage for your private hippo zoo. If not, $24.5 million will get you this (I'm not positive that this one is zoned for immediate hippo occupation).* I said that 70 percent of Targhee's terrain was intermediate; Geordie indicated that that statistic had likely changed with the addition of the Peaked Mountain expansion. I'm working with Targhee to get updated numbers.Why you should ski Grand TargheeThe disconnect between people who write about skiing and what most people actually ski leads to outsized coverage of niche corners of this already niche activity. What percentage of skiers think that skiing uphill is fun? Can accomplish a mid-air backflip? Have ever leapt off a cliff more than four feet high? Commute via helicopter to the summit of their favorite Alaskan powder lines? The answer on all counts is probably a statistically insignificant number. But 99 percent of contemporary ski media focuses on exactly such marginal activities.In some ways I understand this. Most basketball media devote their attention to the NBA, not the playground knuckleheads at some cracked-concrete, bent-rim Harlem streetball court. It makes sense to look at the best and say wow. No one wants to watch intermediate skiers skiing intermediate terrain. But the magnifying glass hovering over the gnar sometimes clouds consumer choice. An average skier, infected by cliffity-hucking YouTubes and social media Man Bro boasting, thinks they want Corbet's and KT-22 and The Cirque at Snowbird. Which OK if you zigzag across the fall line yeah you can get down just about anything. But what most skiers need is Grand Targhee, big and approachable, mostly skiable by mostly anyone, with lots of good and light snow and a low chance of descent-by-tomahawk.Targhee's stats page puts the mountain's share of intermediate terrain at 70 percent, likely the highest of any major North American ski area (Northstar, another big-time intermediate-oriented mountain, claims 60 percent blue runs). I suspect this contributes to the resort's relatively low profile among destination skiers. Broseph Jones and his Brobot buddies examine the statistical breakdown of major resorts and are like “Yo cuz we want some Jackson trammage because we roll hard see.” Even though Targhee is bigger and gets more snow (both true) and offers a more realistic experience for the Brosephs.That's not to say that you shouldn't ski Jackson Hole. Everyone should. But steeps all day are mentally and physically draining. It's nice most of the time to not be parkouring down an elevator shaft. So go to Targhee too. And you can whoo-hoo through the deep empty trees and say “dang Brah this is hella rad Brah.” And it is.Podcast NotesOn the Peaked Mountain expansionThe Peaked Mountain terrain has been marked on Targhee's trailmap for years, but up until 2022, it was accessible mostly via snowcat:In 2022, the resort dropped a six-pack back there, better defined the trail network, and brought Peaked into the lift-served terrain package:On Grand Targhee's masterplanHere's the overview of Targhee's Forest Service master development plan. You can see potential expansions below Blackfoot (left in the image below), looker's right of Peaked/Colter (upper right), and below Sacajawea (lower right):Here's a better look at the so-called South Bowl proposal, which would add a big terrain pod contiguous with the recent Peaked expansion:Here's the MDP's inventory of proposed lifts. These things often change, and the “Peaked DC-4” listed below actualized as the Colter high-speed sixer:Targhee's snowmaking system is limited, but long-term aspirations show potential snowmaking stretching toward the top of the Dreamcatcher lift:On opposition to all of this potential expansionThere are groups of people masquerading as environmental commandos who I suspect oppose everything just to oppose it. Like oh a bobcat pooped next to that tree so we need to fence the area off from human activity for the next thousand years. But Targhee sits within a vast and amazing wilderness, the majority of which is and should be protected forever. But humans need space too, and developing a few hundred acres directly adjacent to already-developed ski terrain is the most sustainable and responsible way to do this. It's not like Targhee is saying “hey we're going to build a zipline connecting the resort to the Grand Teton.” But nothing in U.S. America can be achieved without a minimum of 45 lawsuits (it's in the Constitution), so these histrionic bozos will continue to exist.On Net Promoter Score and RRCI'm going to hurt myself if I try to overexplain this, so I'll just point toward RRC's Net Promoter Score overview page and the company's blog archive highlighting various reports. RRC sits quietly behind the ski industry but wields tremendous influence, assembling the annual Kotke end-of-season statistical report, which offers the most comprehensive annual overview of the state of U.S. skiing.On the reason I couldn't go to Grand Targhee last yearSo I was all set up to hit Targhee for a day last year and then I woke up in the middle of the night thinking “Gee I feel like I'm gonna die soon” and so I did not go skiing that day. Here's the full story if you are curious how I ended up not dying.On the Peaked terrain expansion being the hypothetical largest ski area in New HampshireI'll admit that East-West ski area size comparisons are fundamentally flawed. Eastern mountains not named Killington, Smugglers' Notch, and Sugarloaf tend to measure skiable terrain by acreage of cut trails and maintained glades (Sugarbush, one of the largest ski areas in the East by pure footprint, doesn't even count the latter). Western mountains generally count everything within their boundary. Fair enough – trying to ski most natural-growth eastern woods is like trying to ski down the stands of a packed football stadium. You're going to hit something. Western trees tend to be higher altitude, older-growth, less cluttered with undergrowth, and, um, more snow-covered. Meaning it's not unfair to include even unmarked sectors of the ski area as part of the ski area.Which is a long way of saying that numbers are hard, and that relying on ski area stats pages for accurate ski area comparisons isn't going to get you into NASA's astronaut training academy. Here's a side-by-side of 464-acre Bretton Woods – New Hampshire's largest ski area – and Targhee's 600-acre Peaked Mountain expansion, both at the same scale in Google Maps. Clearly Bretton Woods covers more area, but the majority of those trees are too dense to ski:And here's an inventory of all New Hampshire ski areas, if you're curious:On the Teton Pass highway collapseYeah so this was wild:On Booth CreekGrand Targhee was once part of the Booth Creek ski conglomerate, which now exists only as the overlord for Sierra-at-Tahoe. Here's a little history:On the ski areas at Snoqualmie Pass being “insane”We talk a bit about the “insane” terrain at Summit at Snoqualmie, a quirky ski resort now owned by Boyne. The mountain was Frankensteined together out of four legacy ski areas, three of which share a ridge and are interconnected. And then there's Alpental, marooned across the interstate, much taller and infinitely rowdier than its ho-hum brothers. Alpy, as a brand and as a badass, is criminally unknown outside of its immediate market, despite being on the Ikon Pass since 2018. But, as Gillett notes, it is one of the roughest, toughest mountains going:On Targhee's sinkholePer Jackson Hole News and Guide in September of last year:About two weeks ago, a day or so after torrential rain, and a few days after a downhill mountain biking race concluded on the Blondie trail, Targhee ski patrollers noticed that something was amiss. Only feet away from the muddy meander that mountain bikers had zipped down, a mound of earth had disappeared.In its place, there was a hole of unknown, but concerning, size.Subsequent investigations — largely, throwing rocks into the hole while the resort waits for more technical tools — indicate that the sinkhole is at least 8 feet wide and about 40 feet deep, if not more. There are layers of ice caking the walls a few feet down, and the abyss is smack dab in the middle of the resort's prized ski run.Falling into a sinkhole would be a ridiculous way to go. Like getting crushed by a falling piano or flattened under a steamroller. Imagine your last thought on earth is “Bro are you freaking kidding me with this s**t?”On the overlap between Mountain Collective and IkonMountain Collective and Ikon share a remarkable 26 partner ski areas. Only Targhee, Sugar Bowl, Marmot Basin, Bromont, Le Massif du Charlevoix, and newly added Megève have joined Mountain Collective while holding out on Ikon.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 70/100 in 2024, and number 570 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Galatians 1:1-2; Acts 11 Matt's YouTube Channel Thanks to everyone who supports TMBH at patreon.com/thetmbhpodcast You're the reason we can all do this together! Discuss the episode here Music by Jeff Foote

Understandably, the fallout from the death of CrossFit Games athlete Lazar Đukić is far from over. We discuss some posts and articles about the private meetings held at the Games concerning whether to continue and the demands made by the Professional Fitness Athletes Association in the days after the Games.  Is there a difference between fault and responsibility? Should athletes be more proactive in understanding the risks? Is the element of “surprise” in CrossFit events an essential part of the competition, or does it bring too much risk into the equation?  We also get into a little retrospective of John Cena's career.     Listener resources:  https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a61924568/brent-fikowski-crossfit-pfaa-statement/   https://barbend.com/decision-to-continue-the-2024-crossfit-games/Join our Discord for free at goodcompanydiscord.com! Check out our gym (Third Street Barbell) at ThirdStreetBarbell.com https://www.thirdstreetbarbell.com/ and subscribe for updates about our apparel line at goodcompanyapparel.com https://3sb.co/! Local memberships and international fresh fits! Get early access to our NEXT DROP! Check out our podcast website: 50percentfacts.com https://www.50percentfacts.com/ 50% Facts is a Spreaker Prime podcast on OCN – the Obscure Celebrity Network. Hosted by Mike Farr (@silentmikke) https://www.instagram.com/silentmikke/ and Jim McDonald (@thejimmcd). https://www.instagram.com/thejimmcd/Produced by Jim McDonaldProduction assistance by Sam McDonald and Sebastian Brambila.Theme by Aaron Moore. Branding by Joseph Manzo (@jmanzo523). Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/50-facts-with-silent-mike-jim-mcd--5538735/support.