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Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger PictureThe world is moving away from wind and solar, coal demand is up, China was never going along with the green new scam. Trump is moving carefully through the [CB] minefield economy. Gold is on the move. Trump is moving the country out of the old system. The [DS] try to get Trump with the Epstein hoax, now that the information dropped the people can now see what the [DS] was planning. Ship building is coming back to the US. Trump signs the NDAA that has additional protections for the election. Every step of the way Trump is countering the [DS] cheating system. Economy https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2003156645388406992?s=20   consumption, or 4.95 billion tonnes. By comparison, US coal demand stands at 410 million tonnes, just ~5% of the world's total. Meanwhile, the IEA projects a gradual decline in demand over the next 5 years, to ~8.60 billion tonnes by 2030. However, past forecasts of peak coal demand have repeatedly proven wrong, as consumption continues to rise. Coal remains in high demand 23 US States Are At High Risk Of (Or In) Recession Currently  In 2025, states responsible for about a third of U.S. GDP are in recession, or face high recession risk. Another third are expanding, including Florida and Utah, based on payrolls, employment, and other key economic data. This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows recession risk by state in 2025, based on analysis from Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. In Recession/High Risk Treading Water Expanding State/District Business Cycle Status Share of U.S. GDP (%) Georgia In Recession/High Risk 3.03 Montana In Recession/High Risk 0.25 Wyoming In Recession/High Risk 0.18 Michigan In Recession/High Risk 2.44 Massachusetts In Recession/High Risk 2.73 Mississippi In Recession/High Risk 0.53 Minnesota In Recession/High Risk 1.70 Kansas In Recession/High Risk 0.80 Rhode Island In Recession/High Risk 0.28 Delaware In Recession/High Risk 0.34 Washington In Recession/High Risk 3.02 Illinois In Recession/High Risk 3.85 West Virginia In Recession/High Risk 0.36 New Hampshire In Recession/High Risk 0.42 Maryland In Recession/High Risk 1.86 Virginia In Recession/High Risk 2.66 South Dakota In Recession/High Risk 0.25 Connecticut In Recession/High Risk 1.27 Oregon In Recession/High Risk 1.14 Iowa In Recession/High Risk 0.86 New Jersey In Recession/High Risk 2.93 Maine In Recession/High Risk 0.33 District of Columbia In Recession/High Risk 0.64 Missouri Treading Water 1.54 Ohio Treading Water 3.14 Hawaii Treading Water 0.39 Arkansas Treading Water 0.65 New Mexico Treading Water 0.49 Tennessee Treading Water 1.87 New York Treading Water 7.92 Vermont Treading Water 0.16 Alaska Treading Water 0.24 Colorado Treading Water 1.92 California Treading Water 14.50 Nevada Treading Water 0.86 South Carolina Expanding 1.18 Texas Expanding 9.41 Oklahoma Expanding 0.92 Idaho Expanding 0.43 Kentucky Expanding 0.99 Alabama Expanding 1.10 Indiana Expanding 1.81 Nebraska Expanding 0.63 North Carolina Expanding 2.86 Louisiana Expanding 1.11 Florida Expanding 5.78 North Dakota Expanding 0.26 Pennsylvania Expanding 3.54 Arizona Expanding 1.88 Wisconsin Expanding 1.53 Utah Expanding 1.02 Currently, many coastal, Northeastern states are facing some of the worst economic conditions. In Maine, for instance, year-over-year GDP growth is just 0.8% as of Q2 2025, compared to the U.S. average of 2.1%. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C.'s unemployment rate was 6.4% in July, significantly higher than the 4.6% U.S. average given sweeping federal cuts. According to Zandi's analysis, New York and California are “Treading Water”, together responsible for driving over 22% of U.S. GDP. In comparison, Texas, which fuels 9.4% of U.S. economic growth is expanding. Unemployment rates of 4.0% in July remain below the U.S. average. Additionally, the Texas economy is growing faster than the nation, while income growth rose 6.3% annually as of Q2 2025, outpacing the national average.   Source: zerohedge.com (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); https://twitter.com/unseen1_unseen/status/2003254895143461092?s=20   caused by falling home prices while increasing the affordability of homes. Home builders aren’t going to build more homes if they are losing money. Trump can’t force them to build homes. This is where thinking outside the box comes in play and things like the 50 year mortgage, interest rate cuts, lower down-payments, salt taxes etc get proposed. With deportations and the decline of the boomer generation from old age, supply will be increasing. Prices will come down. The trick is not to allow them to go into a free fall and keep demand high enough to soak up a great deal of that supply. Trump’s proposed $2,000 tariff rebate checks depend on Congress   President Donald Trump needs Congress to take action to make good on a proposal to send some Americans $2,000 tariff rebate checks next year. Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett said the U.S. House and Senate will need to take up the matter. “I would expect that in the new year, the president will bring forth a proposal to Congress to make that happen,” Hassett said on “Face the Nation” on Sunday. Details about Trump’s tariff rebate proposal remain sparse. Trump has said he wants to issue the rebate checks and use the rest of the tariff revenue to pay down the nation’s $38 trillion debt, even as the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet determined whether he has the authority to impose tariffs. Source: thecentersquare.com US Industrial Production Rises At Strongest Annual Rate Since Apr 2022 Following the much-stronger-than-expected GDP print, US Industrial Production also surprised to the upside, rising 0.2% MoM in November and pulling the YoY change up to 2.52% – the strongest annual growth since April 2022… Source: zerohedge.com Trump Boom: U.S. Economy Grows 4.3%, Fastest in Two Years, Smashing Expectations The U.S. economy grew this summer at the fastest pace in two years, far outpacing economists' forecasts. The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the government's official economic scorecard—rose at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted 4.3 percent annual rate in the third quarter. The report on the July through September period was delayed due to the shutdown. Consumer spending grew much faster than expected, expanding at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted annual rate of 3.5 percent. That's up from 2.5 percent in the second quarter and above the 2.7 percent expected. Source: breitbart.com    FULL steam ahead — “You haven't seen anything yet!” Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! DONALD J. TRUMP PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2003149733158588868?s=20 This list is just the table setting for the coming booming economy. Wait till Trump transforms the entire fiat world debt system. A Golden Age for the world approaches. https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2003285919668011147?s=20    good news, the Market went up. Nowadays, when there is good news, the Market goes down, because everybody thinks that Interest Rates will be immediately lifted to take care of “potential” Inflation. That means that, essentially, we can never have a Great Market again, those Markets from the time when our Nation was building up, and becoming great. Strong Markets, even phenomenal Markets, don't cause Inflation, stupidity does! I want my new Fed Chairman to lower Interest Rates if the Market is doing well, not destroy the Market for no reason whatsoever. I want to have a Market the likes of which we haven't had in many decades, a Market that goes up on good news, and down on bad news, the way it should be, and the way it was. Inflation will take care of itself and, if it doesn't, we can always raise Rates at the appropriate time — But the appropriate time is not to kill Rallies, which could lift our Nation by 10, 15, and even 20 GDP points in a year — and maybe even more than that! A Nation can never be Economically GREAT if “eggheads” are allowed to do everything within their power to destroy the upward slope. We are going to be encouraging the Good Market to get better, rather than make it impossible for it to do so. We are going to see numbers that are far more natural, and far better, than they have ever been before. We are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! The United States should be rewarded for SUCCESS, not brought down by it. Anybody that disagrees with me will never be the Fed Chairman! Political/Rights https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2003309528805470611?s=20 https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/2003266300832038926?s=20 https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2003271819705389139?s=20   interfere with immigration operations. https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2003378383862817224?s=20 https://twitter.com/BillMelugin_/status/2002573015142576350?s=20 https://twitter.com/TriciaOhio/status/2002801058897142114?s=20   This was a targeted operation to arrest Fernandez Flores, a criminal illegal alien from Honduras with a criminal conviction for making a false police report. Flores entered the United States illegally at unknown date and location without inspection by an immigration officer. He will remain in ICE custody pending further immigration proceedings. If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will find you, we will arrest you, and you will not return. https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/2003130997198713329?s=20https://twitter.com/MJTruthUltra/status/2003214521419333695?s=20 https://twitter.com/MJTruthUltra/status/2003214521419333695?s=20 WATCH: Justice Department Releases Shocking Recreation Video of Jeffrey Epstein Trying to Kill Himself The Justice Department on Monday released recreation video of Jeffrey Epstein inside of his jail cell trying to kill himself. The video – which was revealed to be computer-generated – is timestamped August 10, 2019 at 4:29 am ET – Epstein was found dead at 6:30 am ET on August 10, 2019. Prosecutors previously said that the two CCTV cameras positioned outside of Epstein's cell had malfunctioned. The 10-second recreation video shows Epstein sitting on the floor of his cell attempting to kill himself. WATCH:  Source: thegatwaypundit.com  https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2003476301970133417?s=20  “a circular line of erythema at the base of the neck” along with other marks of friction and bruising on his knee. Epstein told prison staff he didn't remember what happened but was afraid to return to the Special Housing Unit, saying it was “where he had gotten marks on his neck and he does not know why it happened.” He said he had only slept 30 minutes a night for five days due to noise and stress. His cellmate, ex-cop Nicholas Tartaglione, had reportedly been harassing him, and Epstein claimed “he tried to kill me.” Staff noted Tartaglione had been aggressive and was seen mocking Epstein with a string around his neck. Despite these signs, the incident was labeled a “possible suicide attempt.” https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2003292687835787393?s=20  were actively tracking and attempting to contact 10 individuals connected to Epstein’s crimes. The email references attempts to contact Brunel (modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who later died in prison), Maxwell (Ghislaine, now serving 20 years), and mentions “Ohio contacting Wexner.” Les Wexner is the billionaire L Brands founder who gave Epstein his $77 million NYC mansion and served as his primary financial benefactor for years. A separate confidential document from law firm Debevoise & Plimpton lists SDNY matters they appeared in, including one entry: “Wexner: Epstein investigation.” 10 co-conspirators. Only Maxwell was ever charged. The names behind those black boxes are the real story here. https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/2003358231780032675?s=20 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2003480729624412240?s=20  and his residence as Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Profession listed: “Manager.” It's part of a trove of thousands of Epstein-related files released overnight. https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2003436034709995730?s=20   from Epstein's properties – computers, hard drives, disks, the digital nervous system of the operation. And they can't get it. At one point, frustration boils over into honesty: “The FBI is completely fucking us on this.” That's not a tweet. That's an internal DOJ message. Translation: the prosecutors responsible for bringing cases did not have a clear, reliable accounting of the evidence in the FBI's possession. Not what was seized. Not what was imaged. Not what was searchable. Not what was missing. This isn't incompetence in a vacuum. It's structural. Evidence control is power. Whoever controls the data controls the pace, the scope, and the fallout. And remember: Epstein died before trial. Maxwell was prosecuted narrowly. No broader conspiracy case ever materialized. Prediction: this is why. Not because the evidence didn't exist- but because it never cohered into something prosecutors could safely touch without detonating their own case. The scandal isn't just who was on the tapes. It's that even the feds couldn't tell you where the tapes went. That's not a cover-up movie plot. That's a system quietly eating itself. https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/2003457025695719784?s=20  and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 Election. To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.” New: More Epstein Files Drop, and Donald Trump Appears to Be the Star This Time Around So, what incriminating evidence against President Trump is to be found in this latest drop? Apparently, an email from January 2020 in which a federal prosecutor from New York – of course – to an “undisclosed person” claiming Trump had flown on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plan at least eight times during the 1990s, and one time there was a 20-year-old woman on the flight.  Here’s more: The email, which was sent in January 2020 from a federal prosecutor in New York to an undisclosed person, says, “For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein's private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a [Ghislaine] Maxwell case.”  This big revelation is that Trump traveled a few more times than we previously knew, although this was during a time period that the president has already acknowledged having had an association with Epstein. Note the timing of the email – January 2020 is when the presidential election would be kicking into full swing. This anonymous federal prosecutor clearly thought they had a gotcha moment, but there’s a pesky little detail that puts things in perspective: “[Trump] is listed as having traveled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric.”  Source: redstate.com The specific document you’re referring to appears to be the complaint filed in the 2020 civil lawsuit Doe v. Indyke et al. (Case No. 1:20-cv-00484, S.D.N.Y.), which was part of the recently released Epstein files by the U.S. Department of Justice.  This lawsuit was brought by an anonymous plaintiff (“Jane Doe”) against the executors of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate (Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn) and Ghislaine Maxwell, seeking compensation for alleged sexual abuse and trafficking by Epstein.How Trump’s Name Appears in the DocumentOn page 4 of the complaint, the plaintiff alleges that during one of her encounters with Epstein (around the 1990s), he took her to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when she was 14 years old. Epstein reportedly introduced her to Donald Trump (then the owner of Mar-a-Lago), elbowed him playfully, and asked, referring to the girl, “This is a good one, right?” Trump is described as smiling and nodding in agreement, after which they both chuckled. The plaintiff states she felt uncomfortable but was too young to understand why at the time. The document does not accuse Trump of any criminal wrongdoing or involvement in Epstein’s abuse; it frames this as part of the broader context of her grooming and exploitation by Epstein.How the Name Got Into the DocumentTrump’s name was included as part of the plaintiff’s personal allegations detailing her experiences with Epstein. The complaint is a legal filing where the victim recounts specific incidents to support her claims against Epstein’s estate and associates. It reflects her firsthand account, not a court-verified fact or evidence from other sources.  There is no mention of independent corroboration (e.g., witnesses, photos, or records) in the filing itself, and it has not been adjudicated in court as true.Source of the AllegationThe source is the anonymous plaintiff (“Jane Doe”), who claims to be a victim of Epstein’s abuse starting from age 13 or 14.  She was reportedly recruited at a summer camp in Michigan and alleges ongoing grooming and assaults by Epstein over several years. This Doe is distinct from other known accusers like Virginia Giuffre, though a similar incident (Epstein introducing a 14-year-old to Trump at Mar-a-Lago without the “good one” comment) was testified to by another accuser (“Jane”) during Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 criminal trial.  https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2003236602374713557?s=20 DOGE Geopolitical https://twitter.com/BreannaMorello/status/2003196698974191914?s=20   that are protected under the Constitution. Under D.C. law, anyone wishing to own a firearm must register it with the MPD. However, the D.C. Code imposes a sweeping ban on the registration—and thus the legal possession—of a wide range of firearms. This broad prohibition, the Justice Department argues, infringes on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens who seek to keep and bear commonly owned firearms for lawful purposes. Trump's DOJ Sues Washington, D.C. Police Department Over Unconstitutional Ban on Semi-Automatic Firearms The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department for enforcing a ban on semi-automatic firearms in violation of the Second Amendment. The lawsuit alleges that D.C.'s gun laws require registration of all firearms with the MPD; however, the D.C. Code imposes a sweeping ban on numerous protected weapons, making it legally impossible for residents to own them for self-defense or other lawful purposes. The DOJ said in a press release announcing the lawsuit: “MPD's current pattern and practice of refusing to register protected firearms is forcing residents to sue to protect their rights and to risk facing wrongful arrest for lawfully possessing protected firearms.” “Today's action from the Department of Justice's new Second Amendment Section underscores our ironclad commitment to protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. Bondi continued, “Washington, DC's ban on some of America's most popular firearms is an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment — living in our nation's capital should not preclude law-abiding citizens from exercising their fundamental constitutional right to keep and bear arms.” Echoing this sentiment, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division added, “This Civil Rights Division will defend American citizens from unconstitutional restrictions of commonly used firearms, in violation of their Second Amendment rights. The newly established Second Amendment Section filed this lawsuit to ensure that the very rights D.C. resident Mr. Heller secured 17 years ago are enforced today — and that all law-abiding citizens seeking to own protected firearms for lawful purposes may do so.” The case draws directly from the landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, where the Court affirmed that the Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding citizens to own semi-automatic weapons in their homes for self-defense. Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2003192220753723840?s=20 https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2003238094057955337?s=20 War/Peace https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2003334956479558072?s=20 there will be no escalation into broader conflict, and the decision has already been made. However, precision air strikes on cartel assets seems like a probable outcome. Trump is neutralizing Deep State assets around the globe, and South/Central American drug cartels are assets of the Deep State. They are transnational criminal organizations responsible for the drug, weapon, and human trafficking of the Western hemisphere, and their racket feeds the Deep State machine. My guess is, that cartel drug factories and assets are going to get smoked by the US MIL via precision air strikes, and the other powerful leaders of the world have already agreed to some sort of deal with Trump and no one will interfere. Just like Iran and Syria. I think most of the leaders/nations of the world agree with Trump that these transnational criminal organizations must be eradicated, and stability must be brought to the world. President Unveils ‘Trump Class’ Of Warships, Huntington Ingalls Shares Jump    build two new “Trump-class” battleships, to acquire 20-25 of these ships in the coming years.   In his address, the President noted these 30,000-40,000 ton ships will carry a large quantity of missiles, including hypersonic missiles, and will also be outfitted with electromagnetic rail guns and directed energy lasers. Trump-class battleships will also carry nuclear-armed sea launched cruise missiles (currently under development) adding an additional element of nuclear deterrence to the Navy. Trump-class destroyers appear to be designed as the center of enhanced command and control networks at sea, as the Navy looks to field more autonomous assets and traditional vessels in the coming years.   The first “Trump-class” battleship will be named USS Defiant, and it will be even longer than the Iowa-class battleships of the World War II era. However, at 35,000 tons, it will only weigh about half as much, and have a smaller crew of between 650 and 850 sailors; the Iowa had some 2,700 sailors. The new ships — which are being called “guided missile battleships” —  are part of larger vision for a “Golden Fleet.” The Navy has rolled out a website to promote that concept. Sources tell AP that construction of the Defiant is expected to start in the early 2030’s, with another 19 to 24 Trump-class ships to follow.   Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2003231263520379120?s=20   that kind of money, they HAVE to build quickly!”   “We want the dividends to go into the creation of production facilities. We’ll be talking about CapEx, dividends and the pay.” “Also, buybacks…they want to buy back their stock. I want them to put their money in plants and equipment! So they can build these planes FAST, like, IMMEDIATELY!” Medical/False Flags https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2003224842078675311?s=20  of American institutions or threats to our food supply, economy, or public safety. Protecting the homeland means vigilance: every time, no exceptions. https://twitter.com/ThomasMoreSoc/status/2003262595566850541?s=20  precedent-setting victory, a federal court has permanently blocked California AG Rob Bonta and the CA Dept. of Education from forcing teachers to lie to parents about their own children’s secret gender transitions—declaring parents have a constitutional right to know and teachers have a constitutional right to share the truth. [DS] Agenda https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2003205278796501397?s=20  larger scale. Don't forget that the Malthusians are antihuman and that they believe that 7 out of every 8 human lives on the planet must be terminated in order to save the world. Nearly 100 Minnesota Mayors Send Panicked Letter to Lawmakers Complaining About Fraud Scandal and the Leadership of Tim Walz Almost 100 mayors in the state of Minnesota have sent a letter to state lawmakers complaining about the fraud scandal and how it is going to impact the communities they serve. They are clearly not happy with the leadership of Governor Tim Walz and his connections to the fraud scandal that has rocked the state in recent weeks. The scandal is still unfolding and it's unclear what the final tally will be, but it's looking like something in the tens of billions. FOX News reports:  You can see the full letter here. These mayors should have demanded that Tim Walz resign. Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2002771316345327905?s=20 Our crooked politicians have set up the biggest money laundering operation in the world and that 38 trillion in debt is almost all tied to fraud. this is the tip of the iceberg. Buckle up, its all being exposed. Your harder earned money was used to support a criminal syndicate.  President Trump's Plan  https://twitter.com/DcLidstone/status/2003338615917806050?s=20 John Brennan Lawyers Confirm Their Client is a “Target” of a Grand Jury Investigation Lawfare lawyer Kenneth Wainstein representing former CIA Director John Brennan confirmed in a proactive litigation letter to Chief Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, their client is a “target” of a grand jury investigation. The word “target” is important here, because the letter specifically outlines how Brennan has received subpoenas for documents and information surrounding his construct of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. The letter notes that prosecutors from the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Reding Quiñones, have advised Mr. Brennan that he is “a target” of a grand jury investigation.   [SOURCE] Pay attention to the footnotes being cited by Brennan's lawyers as they begin to pull in some of the commentary by voices who have publicly given opinion about the overall Trump targeting operation.  Mike Davis name appears frequently in this letter, as the Brennan defense team begins to frame the conspiratorial nature of some claims against their client. In essence, the Brennan legal team are attempting to refute the evidence by pointing to the blanket of some crazy commentary that covers it. This is exactly what I have been cautioning about {SEE HERE}. Source: theconservativetreehouse.com https://twitter.com/TheStormRedux/status/2003448097930662069?s=20  Cannon's courtroom. FANTASTIC. https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2003133420021424297?s=20   Thune objected the president would be able to adjourn Congress for ten days and get his full team on the field. https://twitter.com/DavidShafer/status/2002953961595449763?s=20 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Contains Hidden Election Integrity Gem – Could Have Huge Implications for Voting Machines    With the National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Donald Trump on December 18th, 2025, a little-known section was snuck into the 3000+ page bill:  Section 6805. Requiring Penetration Testing As Part Of The Testing And Certification of Voting Systems. This section amends the Help America Vote Act of 2002 by adding a “Required Penetration Testing” section that “provides for the conduct of penetration testing as part of the testing, certification, decertification, and recertification of voting system hardware and software” by an accredited laboratory. The amendment now requires the penetration testing as a condition of certification from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and allows consultation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology or any other federal agency on “lab selection criteria” and “other aspects of the program.” While this is still short of a legitimate attempt at ensuring election integrity, it is an effort toward scrutinizing the voting systems by finally requiring cybersecurity experts to do what Clay Parikh was restricted from doing during his time as a VSTL contractor. Hand-marked paper ballots hand-counted at the precinct level, is being utilized in Dallas County, TX for the 2026 midterm primaries, and is still the ultimate goal of the election integrity community to ensure free and fair elections in the United States. Source: thegatewaypundit.com Penetration testing, often abbreviated as “pen testing,” is a cybersecurity practice where authorized experts simulate real-world cyberattacks on a computer system, network, or application to identify and exploit vulnerabilities before malicious actors can do so. The goal is to uncover weaknesses in security measures, such as software flaws, misconfigurations, or inadequate defenses, and provide recommendations for remediation. It typically involves several stages: Planning and reconnaissance: Gathering information about the target system. Scanning: Using tools to probe for potential entry points. Gaining access: Attempting to exploit vulnerabilities to breach the system. Maintaining access: Testing how long access can be sustained without detection. Analysis and reporting: Documenting findings, risks, and fixes. In the context of Section 6805 of the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which incorporates provisions from the SECURE IT Act (H.R. 6315), penetration testing is mandated as part of the testing, certification, decertification, and recertification process for voting system hardware and software. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) must implement this requirement within 180 days of enactment, with accreditation of testing entities handled through recommendations from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This ensures that voting systems used in federal elections undergo rigorous cybersecurity assessments to detect and mitigate vulnerabilities, enhancing election security Poll: Trump's Approval Rating Lands at 50 Percent, 9 Points Above Water President Donald Trump enjoys a 50 percent approval rating, with a net approval rating of plus 9 points, according to the latest polling from InsiderAdvantage.  Source: breitbart.com (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

7. Global Jihad: The Distinct Threats of the Brotherhood and ISIS. Edmund Fitton-Brown contrasts the Muslim Brotherhood's long-term infiltration of Western institutions with ISIS's violent, reckless approach. He warns that ISISremains viable, with recent facilitated attacks in Australia indicating a resurgence in capability beyond simple "inspired" violence. 1800 YEMEN

SHOW 12-22-25 THE SHOW BEGINS WITH DOUBTS ABOUT FUTURE NAVY. 1941 HICKAM FIELD 1. Restoring Naval Autonomy: Arguments for Separating the Navy from DoD. Tom Modly argues the Navy is an "underperforming asset" within the Defense Department's corporate structure, similar to how Fiat Chrysler successfully spun off Ferrari. He suggests the Navy needs independence to address critical shipbuilding deficits and better protect global commerce and vulnerable undersea cables from adversaries. 2. Future Fleets: Decentralizing Firepower to Counter Chinese Growth. Tom Modly warns that China's shipbuilding capacity vastly outpaces the US, requiring a shift toward distributed forces rather than expensive, concentrated platforms. He advocates for a reinvigorated, independent Department of the Navy to foster the creativity needed to address asymmetric threats like Houthi attacks on high-value assets. 3. British Weakness: The Failure to Challenge Beijing Over Jimmy Lai. Mark Simon predicts Prime Minister Starmer will fail to secure Jimmy Lai's release because the UK mistakenly views China as an economic savior. He notes the UK's diminished military and economic leverage leads to a submissive diplomatic stance, despite China'sdeclining ability to offer investment. 4. Enforcing Sanctions: Interdicting the Shadow Fleet to Squeeze China. Victoria Coates details the Trump administration's enforcement of a "Monroe Doctrine" corollary, using naval power to seize tankers carrying Venezuelan oil to China. This strategy exposes China's lack of maritime projection and energy vulnerability, as Beijingcannot legally contest the seizures of illicit shadow fleet vessels. 5. Symbolic Strikes: US and Jordan Target Resurgent ISIS in Syria. Following an attack on US personnel, the US and Jordan conducted airstrikes against ISIS strongholds, likely with Syrian regime consultation. Ahmed Sharawi questions the efficacy of striking desert warehouses when ISIS cells have moved into urban areas, suggesting the strikes were primarily symbolic domestic messaging. 6. Failure to Disarm: Hezbollah's Persistence and UNIFIL's Inefficacy. David Daoud reports that the Lebanesegovernment is failing to disarm Hezbollah south of the Litani River, merely evicting them from abandoned sites. He argues UNIFIL is an ineffective tripwire, as Hezbollah continues to rebuild infrastructure and receive funding right under international observers' noses. 7. Global Jihad: The Distinct Threats of the Brotherhood and ISIS. Edmund Fitton-Brown contrasts the Muslim Brotherhood's long-term infiltration of Western institutions with ISIS's violent, reckless approach. He warns that ISISremains viable, with recent facilitated attacks in Australia indicating a resurgence in capability beyond simple "inspired" violence. 8. The Forever War: Jihadist Patience vs. American Cycles. Bill Roggio argues the US has failed to defeat jihadist ideology or funding, allowing groups like Al-Qaeda to persist in Afghanistan and Africa. He warns that adversaries view American withdrawals as proof of untrustworthiness, exploiting the US tendency to fight short-term wars against enemies planning for decades. 9. The Professional: Von Steuben's Transformation of the Continental Army. Richard Bell introduces Baron von Steuben as a desperate, unemployed Prussian officer who professionalized the ragtag Continental Army at Valley Forge. Washington's hiring of foreign experts like Steuben demonstrated a strategic willingness to utilize global talent to ensure the revolution's survival. 10. Privateers and Prison Ships: The Unsung Cost of Maritime Independence. Richard Bell highlights the crucial role of privateers like William Russell, who raided British shipping when the Continental Navy was weak. Captured privateers faced horrific conditions in British "black hole" facilities like Mill Prison and the deadly prison ship Jersey in New York Harbor, where mortality rates reached 50%. 11. Caught in the Crossfire: Indigenous Struggles in the Revolutionary War. Molly Brant, a Mohawk leader, allied with the British to stop settler encroachment but became a refugee when the British failed to protect Indigenous lands. Post-war, white Americans constructed myths portraying themselves as blameless victims while ignoring their own Indigenous allies and British betrayals regarding land rights. 12. The Irish Dimension: Revolutionary Hopes and Brutal Repression. The Irish viewed the American Revolutionas a signal that the British Empire was vulnerable, sparking the failed 1798 Irish rebellion. While the British suppressed Irish independence brutally under Cornwallis, Irish immigrants and Scots-Irish settlers like Andrew Jackson fervently supported the Continental Army against the Crown. 13. Assessing Battlefield Realities: Russian Deceit and Ukrainian Counterattacks. John Hardie analyzes the "culture of deceit" within the Russian military, exemplified by false claims of capturing Kupyansk while Ukraine actually counterattacked. This systemic lying leads to overconfidence in Putin's strategy, though Ukraine also faces challenges with commanders hesitating to report lost positions to avoid forced counterattacks. 14. Shifts in Latin America: Brazilian Elections and Venezuelan Hope. Ernesto Araujo and Alejandro Peña Esclusapredict a 2026 battle between socialist accommodation and freedom-oriented transformation in Brazil, highlighted by Flavio Bolsonaro's candidacy against Lula. Meanwhile, Peña Esclusa anticipates Venezuela's liberation and a broader regional shift toward the right following leftist defeats in Ecuador, Argentina, and Chile. 15. Trump's Security Strategy: Homeland Defense Lacks Global Clarity. John Yoo praises the strategy's focus on homeland defense and the Western Hemisphere, reviving a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. However, he criticizes the failure to explicitly name China as an adversary or define clear goals for defending allies in Asia and Europe against great power rivals. 16. Alienating Allies: The Strategic Cost of Attacking European Partners. John Yoo argues that imposing tariffs and attacking democratic European allies undermines the coalition needed to counter China and Russia. He asserts that democracies are the most reliable partners for protecting American security and values, making cooperation essential despite resource constraints and political disagreements.

In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin: Rare cracks appear in the Kremlin's façade as frustration over poverty, inflation, and the war in Ukraine spills into Vladimir Putin's tightly controlled year-end “Direct Line” address—offering an unusual glimpse of domestic pressure inside Russia. Later in the show—Western intelligence agencies warn that Moscow may be developing a new anti-satellite weapon aimed at Starlink, the space-based communications system that has become critical to Ukraine's war effort. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President's Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Stash Financial: Don't Let your money sit around. Go to https://get.stash.com/PDB to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase. Birch Gold: Text PDB to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Trevor Loudon Reports – Drawing on historical communist doctrine - from Lenin's strategic zigzags to Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics—the hosts explain how Russia amplifies domestic divisions on both left and right. Figures like Tucker Carlson are cited for deflecting criticism from Putin by highlighting real U.S. problems, mirroring the Soviet-era use of Western dissenters. Gussack stresses that ideology...

Are we in a 'plastic moment,' an inflection point where the future of the Middle East can finally be reshaped? Veteran peace negotiator Dr. Tal Becker joins the podcast to analyze the shifting tides of regional diplomacy. Reflecting on his recent discussions in Abu Dhabi, Becker describes the Abraham Accords as an emerging "Judeo-Muslim civilization" where the focus isn't on "who the land belongs to," but the realization that "we all belong to the land."  Beyond geopolitics, Becker addresses the trauma of rising Western antisemitism—which he likens to a "zombie apocalypse"—and calls for a resurgence of liberal nationalism. This episode is a masterclass in navigating a zero-sum world to build a future of prosperity, courage, and shared belonging. Key Resources: The Abraham Accords, Explained AJC CEO Ted Deutch Op-Ed: 5 Years On, the Abraham Accords Are the Middle East's Best Hope AJC's Center for a New Middle East Listen – AJC Podcasts: Architects of Peace The Forgotten Exodus People of the Pod Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Transcript of the Interview: Manya Brachear Pashman:   As the international community looks to phase two of the cease fire between Israel and the Hamas terror group in Gaza, the American Jewish Committee office in Abu Dhabi invited Dr Tal Becker to participate in discussions about what's next for the region. Dr Becker is one of Israel's leading experts on international humanitarian law and a veteran peace negotiator with Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians. He is currently vice president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, and he joins us now right after the conference in Abu Dhabi to share some of the insights he contributed there.  Tal, welcome to People of the Pod. Tal Becker:   Thank you very much, Manya. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So Tal, you have just returned from a conference in Abu Dhabi where you really took a deep dive, kind of exploring the nature of Arab-Israeli relations, as we are now entering the second phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza.  So I'm just curious, you've been steeped in this for so long, for decades, do you sense, or did you sense a significant shift in the region when it comes to Arab-Israeli relations and the future? Tal Becker:   So I think Manya, we're at a very kind of interesting moment, and it's hard to say exactly which direction it's going, because, on the one hand, we have had very significant military successes. I think a lot of the spoilers in the region have been significantly set back, though they're still there, but Israel really has had to focus on the military side of things a lot. And it, I think, has strained to some extent, the view of what's possible because we're being so focused on the military side.  And I think it is a moment for imagining what's possible. And how do we pivot out of the tragedy and suffering of this war, make the most of the military successes we've had, and really begin to imagine what this region could look like if we're going to continue to succeed in pushing back the spoilers in this way.  Israel is a regional power, and I think it for all our vulnerability that requires, to some extent, for Israel to really articulate a vision that it has for the region. And it's going to take a little bit of time, I think, for everybody to really internalize what's just happened over these last two years and what it means for the potential for good and how we navigate that. So I really think it's kind of like what they call a plastic moment right now. Manya Brachear Pashman:   A plastic moment, can you define that, what do you mean by plastic? Tal Becker:   So what I mean by a plastic moment, meaning it's that moment. It's an inflection point right where, where things could go in one direction or another, and you have to be smart enough to take advantage of the fluidity of the moment, to really emphasize how do we maximize prosperity, stability, coexistence? How do we take away not just the capabilities of the enemies of peace, but also the appeal of their agenda, the language that they use, the way they try to present Muslim Jewish relations, as if they're a kind of zero sum game. So how do we operate both on the economic side, on the security side, but also on the imagining what's possible side, on the peace side. As difficult as that is, and I don't want to suggest that, you know, there aren't serious obstacles, there are, but there's also really serious opportunities. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So what did you sense when you were there, in terms of the perception of Israel? I mean, were people optimistic, for lack of a better term? Tal Becker:   So first of all, it was, you know, a great opportunity to be there. And having been involved, personally, very intensively in the Abraham Accords, I always feel a bit emotional whenever I'm in the Emirates in particular, and Morocco and Bahrain and so on. And to be honest, I kind of feel at home there. And so that's a lovely thing.  I think, on the one hand, I would say there's a there's a relief that hopefully, please God, the war in Gaza is is behind us, that we're now looking at how to really kind of move into the phase of the disarmament of Hamas and the removal of Hamas from governance, you know, working with the Trump team and the Trump plan. And I think they have a bunch of questions. The Emiratis in particular, are strategic thinkers. They really want to be partners in advancing prosperity and stability across the region in pushing back extremism across the region, and I think they're eager to see in Israel a partner for that effort. And I think it puts also a responsibility on both of us to understand the concerns we each have. I mean, it takes some time to really internalize what it is for a country to face a seven-front war with organizations that call for its annihilation, and all the pressure and anxiety that that produces for a people, frankly, that hasn't had the easiest history in terms of the agenda of people hating the Jewish people and persecuting them. So I think that takes a bit of appreciation.  I think we also, in the return, need to appreciate the concerns of our regional partners in terms of making sure that the region is stable, in terms of giving an opportunity for, you know, one way I sometimes word it is that, we need to prepare for the worst case scenario. We need to prevent it from being a self fulfilling prophecy.  Which really requires you to kind of develop a policy that nevertheless gives an opportunity for things to get better, not just plan for things to get worse. And I think our partners in the Gulf in particular really want to hear from us, what we can do to make things better, even while we're planning and maybe even a bit cynical that things might be very difficult. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So you mentioned the Abraham Accords, and I'm curious if you feel that Israel, I know Israel has felt isolated, at times, very isolated, and perhaps abandoned, is even the correct word.  Do you feel that is the case as we enter the second phase of the ceasefire? Do you feel that is less so the case, and do you feel that that might be less so the case because of the Abraham Accords existence? Tal Becker:   Well, so let's first talk about the Abraham Accords and their significance.So I think a lot of people present the Abraham accords as kind of an agreement that is about shared interests and shared challenges and so on, and that's definitely true. But they are, in my view, at least aspirationally, something much bigger than that. First of all, they are almost the articulation of what I call a Judeo Muslim civilization, the view that Jews and Muslims, or that all different peoples of the Middle East belong to this place and have a responsibility for shaping its future. The way I describe the Abraham Accords is that they're a group of countries who basically have said that the argument about who the land belongs to is not as important as the understanding that we all belong to the land. And as a result of that, this is kind of a partnership against the forces of extremism and chaos, and really offering a version of Israeli Jewish identity and of Muslim Arab identity that is in competition with the Iranian-Hezbollah-Hamas narrative that kind of condemns us to this zero sum conflict.  So the first thing to say is that I think the Abraham Accords have such tremendous potential for reimagining the relationship between Muslims and Jews, for reimagining the future of the region, and for really making sure that the enemies of peace no longer shape our agenda, even if they're still there. So in that sense, the opening that the Abraham Accords offers is an opening to kind of reimagine the region as a whole. And I think that's really important. And I think we have now an opportunity to deepen the Accords, potentially to expand them to other countries, and in doing so, to kind of set back the forces of extremism in the region. In a strange way, I would say Manya that Israel is more challenged right now in the west than we are in the Middle East. Because in the West, you see, I mean, there's backlash, and it's a complicated picture, but you can see a kind of increasing voices that challenge Israel's legitimacy, that are really questioning our story. And you see that both on the extreme left and extreme right in different countries across the West, in different degrees. In the Middle East, paradoxically, you have at least a partnership around accepting one another within the region that seems to me to be very promising.  And in part, I have to say it's really important to understand, for all the tragedy and difficulty of this war, Israel demonstrated an unbelievable resilience, unbelievable strength in dealing with its its adversaries, an unbelievable capacity, despite this seven front challenge, and I think that itself, in a region that's a very difficult region, is attractive. I think we do have a responsibility and an interest in imagining how we can begin to heal, if that's a word we can use the Israeli Palestinian relationship, at least move in a better direction. Use the Trump plan to do that, because that, I think, will also help our relationship in the region as a whole, without making one dependent on the other. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So I want to follow up with what you just said, that Israel faces perhaps many more challenges in the west than in the region. What about the Jewish people, would you apply that same statement to the Jewish people? Tal Becker:   Well, I think, you know, we've seen, we've seen the rise of antisemitism. And in my view, one way to think about October 7 is that October 7 marks the end of the post-Holocaust era. So there were a few decades there where, even if antisemitism existed, there were many circles in which it was socially unacceptable to give it voice. And something has shattered in the West in particular that it seems to be more socially acceptable to express antisemitism or antisemitic-adjacent type views, and that, I think has has really shocked and shaken many Jews across the western world.  I guess the thing I would say about that is, you know, some of the Jews I come across in the West were under, in my view, a bit of an illusion, that antisemitism had somehow been cured. You feel this sometimes in North America, and that essentially, we had reached a stage in Jewish history where antisemitism was broadly a thing of the past and was on the margins, and then the ferocity with which it came back on October 8 was like a trauma. And one of the definitions of trauma is that trauma is a severe challenge to the way you understand the world and your place in it.  And so if you had this understanding of your reality that antisemitism was essentially a thing of the past in North America in particular. And then all of a sudden it came back. You can see that traumatic experience. And what I want to argue or suggest is that the problem isn't that we had the solution and lost it. I think the problem was we had an illusion that there was a solution in the first place. Unfortunately, I think the Jewish people's history tells the story that antisemitism is kind of like the zombie apocalypse. It never exactly disappears. You can sometimes marginalize it more or marginalize it less. And we're now entering an era which I think Jews are familiar with, which is an era that it is becoming more socially acceptable to be antisemitic. And that to some extent, Jewish communal life feels more conditional and Jewish identity, and while being accepted in the societies in which you live also feels more conditional.  And while that is a familiar pattern, we are probably the generation of Jews with more resources, more influence, more power, more capacity than probably at any other time in Jewish history. And so it would be a mistake, I think, to think of us as kind of going back to some previous era. Yes, there are these challenges, but there are also a whole set of tools. We didn't have the F35 during the Spanish Inquisition.  So I think that despite all these challenges, it's also a great moment of opportunity for really building Jewish communities that are resilient, that have strong Jewish identity, that are that have a depth of Jewish literacy, and trying to inoculate as much as possible the societies in which we live and the communities in which we live from that phenomenon of antisemitism perhaps better than we had had done in previous iterations of this.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   I also want to go back and explore another term that you've used a couple of times, and that is enemies of peace. And I'm curious how you define the enemies of peace. Who are you talking about? And I'm asking you to kind of take a step back and really broaden that definition as much as possible. Tal Becker:   I mean, it goes back to that idea that I mentioned about the Abraham Accords, which is an understanding that there are different peoples in the Middle East that call it home, and each of those peoples deserves a place where they can nurture their identity and cultivate it and have their legitimacy respected, and in that sense, those who are engaged in a kind of zero sum competition, that feel that their exist, existence depends on the obliteration of the other. I see those as enemies of peace.  Now, I believe that both Jews and Palestinians, for example, have a right to self determination. I think that both belong in the sense that both deserve the capacity to cultivate their own identity. But the right to self determination, for example, the Palestinian right to self determination doesn't include the right to deny the Jewish right to self determination. It doesn't include the right to erase Jewish history.  In the same way that we as Jews need to come to terms with the fact that the Palestinian people feel a real connection to this place. Now, it's very difficult, given how radicalized Palestinian society is, and we have to be very realistic about the threats we face, because for as long as the dominant narrative in Palestinian society is a rejection of Jewish belongingness and self determination, we have a very difficult challenge ahead of us. But I essentially, broadly speaking, would say, the enemies of peace are those who want to lock us into a zero sum contest. Where essentially, they view the welfare of the other as a threat to themselves. Y You know, we have no conflict with Lebanon. We have no conflict with the people of Iran, for example. We have a conflict, in fact, a zero sum conflict with an Iranian regime that wants to annihilate Israel. And I often point to this kind of discrepancy that Iran would like to destroy Israel, and Israel has the audacity to want not to be destroyed by Iran. That is not an equivalent moral playing field. And so I view the Iranian regime with that kind of agenda, as an enemy of peace. And I think Israel has an obligation to also articulate what its aspirations are in those regards, even if it's a long time horizon to realize those aspirations, because the enemies are out there, and they do need to be confronted effectively and pretty relentlessly. Manya Brachear Pashman:   For our series on the Abraham Accords, Architects of Peace, I spoke with Dr Ali Al Nuami, and we talked about the need for the narrative to change, and the narrative on both sides right, the narrative change about kind of what you refer to as a zero sum game, and for the narrative, especially out of Israel, about the Palestinians to change. And I'm curious if you've given that any thought about changing, or just Israel's ability or obligation to send a message about the need for the Palestinians indeed to achieve self determination and thrive. Tal Becker:   Well, I think first, it's important to articulate how difficult that is, simply because, I mean, Israel has faced now two years of war, and the sense that I think many Israelis felt was that Palestinian society at large was not opposed to what happened on October 7, and the dominant narratives in Palestinian society, whether viewing Israel as some kind of a front to Islam, or viewing Israel as a kind of colonial enterprise to then be like in the business of suggesting a positive vision in the face of that is very difficult, and we do tend Manya, in these situations, when we say the narrative has to change, we then say, on the other side, they have to change the narrative, rather than directing that to ourselves. So I think, you know, there is an obligation for everyone to think about how best to articulate their vision.  It's a huge, I think, obligation on the Palestinian leadership, and it's a very one they've proved incapable of doing until now, which is genuinely come to terms with the Jewish people's belongingness to this part of the world and to their right to self determination. It's a core aspect of the difficulty in addressing this conflict. And having said all that, I think we as Israeli Jews also have an obligation to offer that positive vision. In my mind, there is nothing wrong with articulating an aspiration you're not sure you can realize, or you don't even know how to realize. But simply to signal that is the direction that I'm going in, you know?  I mean Prime Minister Netanyahu, for example, talks about that he wants the Palestinian people to have all the power to govern themselves and none of the power to threaten Israel. Which is a way of saying that the Palestinian people should have that capacity of self determination that gives them the potential for peace, prosperity, dignity, and security, But not if the purpose of that is to essentially be more focused on destroying Israel than it is on building up Palestinian identity. Now that I think, can be articulated in positive terms, without denying Israel's connection to the land, without denying the Jewish people's story, but recognizing the other. And yes, I think despite all the difficulties, victory in war is also about what you want to build, not just what you want to destroy. And in that sense, our ability to kind of frame what we're doing in positive terms, in other words, not just how we want to take away the capacities of the extremists, but what we want to build, if we had partners for that, actually helps create that momentum. So I would just say to Dr Ali's point that, I think that's a shared burden on all of us, and the more people that can use that language, it can actually, I think, help to create the spaces where things that feel not possible begin to maybe become possible. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Which in many ways Trump's 20 point plan does that. It doesn't just only talk about disarming Hamas. It talks about rebuilding Gaza. Are there other ways in which Israel can assure the success of the Palestinian people and push forwards. Can you envision other ways? Tal Becker:   Well, I mean, I'm sure there's lots that people can do, but there is a burden on the Palestinian people themselves, and I do find that a lot of this discourse kind of takes agency away from the Palestinian people and their leadership. In a way, there's a kind of honesty to the Trump plan and the Security Council resolution that was adopted endorsing the plan that has been missing for quite a while. The Trump plan, interestingly, says three things.  It says, on this issue of a kind of vision or pathway. It says, first of all, it basically says there is no Palestinian state today, which must have come as a bit of a shock for those countries recognizing a Palestinian state. But I think that is a common understanding. It's a little bit of an illusion to imagine that state.  The second thing is how critical it is for there to be PA reform, genuine reform so that there is a responsible function in Palestinian governing authority that can actually be focused on the welfare of its people and govern well.  And the third is that then creates a potential pathway for increasing Palestinian self-determination and moving potentially towards Palestinian statehood, I think, provided that that entity is not going to be used as a kind of terror state or a failed state. But that, I think, is a kind of honest way of framing the issue. But we don't get around Manya the need for responsibility, for agency. So yes, Israel has responsibility. Yes, the countries of the region have responsibilities.  But ultimately, the core constituency that needs to demonstrate that it is shifting its mindset and more focused on building itself up, rather than telling a story about how it is seeking to deny Jewish self determination, is the Palestinian leadership. And I do think that what's happening in Gaza at least gives the potential for that.  You have the potential for an alternative Palestinian governance to emerge. You have the potential for Hamas to be set back in a way that it no longer has a governing role or a shape in shaping the agenda. And I think if we can make Gaza gradually a success story, you know, this is a bit too optimistic for an Israeli to say, but maybe, maybe we can begin to create a momentum that can redefine the Israeli Palestinian relationship. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So I asked what can Israel do to move forward to assure the Palestinians that they are behind their success and thriving? What can Israel do to make sure that it's respected, that is not facing the challenges from the West, from that region. What can Israel do? What is Israel's obligation, or is that an unfair question, to ensure its success and its moving forward? Tal Becker:   I think it's a really difficult question, because the criticism that Israel has gotten throughout this war and the threats to its legitimacy in the way that they've erupted, I think, is a really complicated phenomena that has many moving parts. So some part of it, I think, rightly, is about Israeli policy and Israeli language and the way it has framed what it has been doing, and really the unbelievable moral dilemmas that the war in Gaza posed, and how Israel conducted itself in the way of those dilemmas. And people can have different views about that.  I think there's a misunderstanding, very significantly, of the nature of the battlefield and how impossible Hamas in its deliberate kind of weaponization of the civilian population, made that. So there's one component that has to do with Israel. There's another component that we can't ignore, that has to do with antisemitism. And that, I think, for that group right who almost define themselves through their hostility towards the Jewish people and towards the very idea of Jewish self determination, it's hard to think anything that Israel says or does that actually matters, right? These were the people who were criticizing Israel even before it responded.  And so in that sense, I think putting too much on Israel is a problem. Maybe I'll just focus on the area that I think is most interesting here, and that is, in my view, a lot of the argument about Israel in the West, we'll take the US, for example, is actually not an argument about Israel, but more an argument about the US that is channeled through Israel. In other words, a lot of people seem to be having their argument about America's story of itself channeled through their argument about Israel. And what they're actually arguing about is their vision of America.  And you can see different versions of this. There's a story of America as perhaps a kind of white Christian country that was exploited by immigrants and is exploited by other countries in the world, and that narrative kind of tends pushes you in a direction of having a certain view, in my view, mistaken, in any event, about Israel. That is more to do about your story of America than it has anything to do with what Israel is doing or saying. And then you hear this very loudly, and I'm not suggesting these are exactly even.  But on the more radical kind of progressive left, you have a story of America as essentially a country that never came over the legacy of slavery, a country that has to kind of apologize for its power, that it sees itself as a colonial entity that can't be redeemed. And when you're kind of locked in that version of America, which I kind of think is a kind of self hating story of America. Then that then projects the way you view Israel more than anything Israel says or does. So this has a lot to do with America's, and this is true of other countries in the West, that internal struggle and then the way different actors, especially in the social media age, need to position themselves on the Israel issue, to identify which tribe they belong to in this other battle.  So in my view, people who care about the US-Israel relationship, for example, would be wise to invest in this, in the battle over America's story of itself, and in that sense, it's less about Israeli public diplomacy and less about Israeli policy. It's much more about the glasses people wear when they look at Israel. And how do you influence those glasses? Manya Brachear Pashman:   I could sit here and talk to you all day, this is really fascinating and thought provoking. I do want to ask two more questions, though, and one is, I've been harping on what can Israel do? What are Israel's obligations?  But let me back up a step. What about the Arab states? What are the other neighbors in the region obligated to do to assure the Palestinians that they're going to succeed and thrive? Tal Becker:   Yeah, I mean, it's a really important question and, and I think that for many, many years, we suffered from, I would say, a basic lack of courage from Arab states. I'm generalizing, but I hope that others would advance their interests for them. And in some sense, I think the Abraham Accords really flipped that, because Abraham Accords was the Arab states having the courage and the voice to say, we need to redefine our relationship with with Israel, and in that way, create conditions, potentially for Palestinians to do, to do the same.  I would say that there are a whole set right, and, not my position to kind of be the lecturer, and each country is different in their own dynamics. I think the first from an Israeli perspective, of course, is to really push back against this attempt to delegitimize the Jewish people's belonging in the Middle East, and not to allow this kind of narrative where the only authentic way to be a Palestinian or a Muslim is to reject the idea that other peoples live in the region and have a story that connects them to it, and Israel is here to stay, and it can be a partner. You can have disagreements with it. But the idea that it's some kind of illegitimate entity, I think, needs to be taken out of the lexicon fundamentally. I think a second area is in really this expectation of Palestinian especially in the Israeli Palestinian context, of being partners in holding the Palestinians accountable not to have the kind of the soft bigotry of low expectations, and to really recognize Palestinian agency, Palestinian responsibility and also Palestinian rights, yes, but not in this kind of comic strip, victim villain narrative, where Israel has all the responsibilities and the Palestinians have all the rights. My colleague, Einat Wilf, for example, talks about Schrodinger's Palestine. You know, Schrodinger's Cat, right? So Schrodinger's Palestine is that the Palestinians are recognized for rights, but they're not recognized for responsibilities. And Israel has rights and responsibilities. And finally, I would say in terms of the the taking seriously the spoilers in the region, and working with Israel and with our partners to make sure that the spoilers in the region don't dictate the agenda and don't have the capacity to do so, not just hoping that that, you know, Israel and the US will take care of that, but really working with us. And I think a few countries are really stepping up in that regard. They have their own constraints, and we need to be respectful of that, and I understand that.  But I think that, you know, this is a strategic partnership. I sometimes joke that with the Emirates, it's a Jewish and a Muslim state, but it's a Catholic marriage. We've kind of decided to bind together in this kind of strategic partnership that has withstood these last two years, because we want to share a vision of the Middle East that is to the benefit of all peoples, and that means doing kind of three things at once. Meaning confronting the spoilers on the one hand, investing in regional integration on the other, and seeing how we can improve Israeli Palestinian relations at the same time. So working in parallel on all three issues and helping each other in the process and each other thrive. I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff beyond the conflict. There's, you know, AI and fighting desertification and irrigation and defense tech and intelligence, and a whole host of areas where we can cooperate and empower each other and be genuine partners and strengthen our own societies and the welfare of our own peoples through that partnership for ourselves, for each other and for the region. So there's a lot to do. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And my last question – I've asked, what do the Arab states need to do? What does Israel need to do? What do Jewish advocates around the world need to do?  Tal Becker:   So I think the most important thing at this moment for me, Manya, is courage. There is a danger, because of the rise in antisemitism and the kind of hostility that one sees, that Jews in particular will become more silent. And they'll kind of hide a little bit in the hope that this will somehow pass them. And I think what our history has taught us, is generally, these are phenomena that if you don't stand up against them early, they become extremely powerful down the line, and you can't, and it becomes very, very costly to confront them.  So it takes courage, but I would say that communities can show more courage than individuals can, and in that sense, I think, you know, insisting on the rights of Jews within the societies in which they live, fighting for those kind of societies, that all peoples can prosper in. Being strong advocates for a kind of society in which Jews are able to thrive and be resilient and prosper, as well as others as well. I think is very important.  Just in a nutshell, I will say that it seems to me that in much of the world, what we're seeing is liberalism being kind of hijacked by a radical version of progressivism, and nationalism being hijacked by a version of ultra-nationalism. And for Jews and for most people, the best place to be is in liberal nationalism. Liberal nationalism offers you respect for collective identity on the one hand, but also respect for individual autonomy on the other right. That's the beautiful blend of liberal nationalism in that way, at least aspirationally, Israel, being a Jewish and democratic state, is really about, on the one hand, being part of a story bigger than yourself, but on the other hand, living a society that sees individual rights and individual agency and autonomy. And that blend is critical for human thriving and for meaning, and it's been critical for Jews as well. And so particularly across the diaspora, really fighting for liberal national identity, which is being assaulted from the extremes on both sides, seems to me to be an urgent mission. And it's urgent not just for Jews to be able not to kind of live conditionally and under fear and intimidation within the societies they live, but as we've seen throughout history, it's pretty critical for the thriving of that society itself.  At the end of the day, the societies that get cannibalized by extremes end up being societies that rot from within. And so I would say Jews need to be advocates for their own rights. Double down on Jewish identity, on resilience and on literacy, on Jewish literacy. At the same time as fighting for the kind of society in which the extremes don't shape the agenda. That would be my wish. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Making liberal nationalism an urgent mission for all societies, in other words, being a force for good. Tal Becker:   Yes, of course. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Our universal mission. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing all of these thoughts with us and safe travels as you take off for the next destination. Tal Becker:   Thank you very much, Manya. I appreciate it. Manya Brachear Pashman:   As we approach the end of the year, and what a year it's been, take some time to catch up on episodes you might have missed along the way, rewind and listen to some of my more memorable interviews, such as my conversation with former Israeli hostage Shoshan Haran, abducted with her daughter, son in law and grandchildren during the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023. Meet doctors or hen and Ernest Frankel, two MIT professors who amid anti Israel academic boycotts, are trying to salvage the valuable research gains through collaboration with Israeli scholars. And enjoy my frank conversation with Jonah Platt, best known for playing Fiyero in Broadway's wicked who now hosts his own hit podcast Being Jewish with Jonah Platt. Hard to believe all of this and more has unfolded in 2025 alone. May 2026 be peaceful and prosperous for us all.  

This weeks weather is brought to you by Paul Ramirez Stockmen's Realty. Join our meteorologist Michael Groff for an outlook on the upcoming weather! For more expansive weather coverage, head to YouTube and visit the "Phoenix, Arizona Weather Discussion. Wishing you and your outfit, a joyous holiday season.

In Chapter 40 of The Book of Trump, Ghost dives deep into the 2008 Russo-Georgian War and frames it as a defining point of no return for Vladimir Putin. This episode explores how the conflict in Georgia set the template for future confrontations between Russia and the Western unipolar order, long before Ukraine became the focal point. Ghost walks through the historical, political, and intelligence backdrop of the Caucasus region, unpacking color revolutions, NATO expansion, and the role of Western-backed NGOs and leadership pipelines. By tracing key figures, strategic decisions, and media narratives, this chapter argues that the Georgian conflict was not an isolated event but the precursor to the modern geopolitical battlefield. Putin's response is examined as a calculated stand against a post–Cold War security architecture that Russia would no longer accept. This episode connects dots across decades to explain why 2008 marked Putin's Rubicon—and why the consequences still echo today.

In this episode, we meet Lon Milo DuQuette, who shares his lifelong journey in the Western hermetic and magical traditions, including his initiation into the teachings of Aleister Crowley. We also hear from EWP student Cassia Elderkin, who studies under Lon and is exploring magic as a form of liberatory praxis. The conversation centers around Lon's new book, The Tarot Architect: How to Become the Master Builder of Your Spiritual Temple, and explores how the tarot can be understood through the mystical teachings of Kabbalah as a cosmic, archetypal structure. Lon explains how these archetypes can be internalized and brought to life in one's psychic and spiritual practice. He situates tarot divination within a broader framework of magical and transformative practices, emphasizing its capacity to expand consciousness, attune intuition, and illuminate the messages of the unconscious. The discussion highlights the intersections between Western occult traditions and Eastern spiritual practices, showing how ceremonial magic and meditative yoga converge as complementary paths for self-exploration and transformation. Lon frames these traditions as technologies of self-examination, offering tools for cultivating awareness, creativity, and personal evolution. Toward the end, the conversation turns to the magical and transformative powers of art and creativity, underscoring the importance of self-observation in creative practice. Lon closes with his reflections on the future of Western esotericism, offering insights into its evolving role in contemporary spiritual and cultural life. Lon Milo DuQuette, also known as Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford and by his neo-Gnostic bishop title of Tau Lamed, is an American writer, lecturer, musician, and occultist, best known as an author who applies humor in the field of Western Hermeticism. In 1972 he began pursuing his interest in mysticism, particularly the work of Aleister Crowley. He is on the faculty of the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, New York where he teaches The Western Magical Tradition. Since 1975 DuQuette has been a National and International governing officer of Ordo Templi Orientis, a religious and fraternal organization founded in the early part of the 20th century. Since 1996 he has been O.T.O.'s United States Deputy Grand Master. He is also an Archbishop of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the ecclesiastical arm of the O.T.O. DuQuette began writing professionally in 1988 and has since published 19 books (translated in 12 languages). Many of his books have been dedicated to analyzing and exploring the works of Aleister Crowley, an English occultist, author, poet and philosopher. He has written a number of successful books on topics in the Western mystical tradition including: Freemasonry, Tarot, Qabalah, ceremonial magick, the Enochian magick of Dr. John Dee, and Goetic spirit evocation. He is perhaps best known as "an author who injects humor into the serious subjects of magick and the occult." His autobiography, My Life with the Spirits, is currently a required text for two classes at DePaul University, Chicago. Lon's Website Book: The Tarot Architect: How to Become the Master Builder of Your Spiritual Temple The EWP Podcast credits • Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook • Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (EWP PhD grad) • Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay • Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay • Music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala • Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode of The Winston Marshall Show, I sit down with activist and self-described decolonisation campaigner Xavier Soylash for a confrontational interview on radical identity politics, gender ideology, communism, and the future of Britain.We examine claims that the Union Jack is a symbol of fascism worse than the Nazi flag, the rejection of biological sex, and the argument that borders, nationhood, and private property are colonial constructs that must be abolished. This conversation follows the logic of modern progressive ideology taken to its most extreme conclusions.Soylash defends Marxism, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, dismisses historical death tolls as Western propaganda, and argues that communism has never truly been tried because the left has never gone far enough. We debate decolonisation, gender identity, radical inclusivity, and whether ideology has replaced evidence, history, and common sense.The discussion also covers Ukraine, the Azov Battalion, COVID boosters, mass migration, open borders, polyamory, and cousin marriage, revealing the worldview driving the most radical elements of today's political left.A tense and revealing interview that exposes how far identity politics has gone and asks whether radical progressivism ultimately collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To see more exclusive content and interviews consider subscribing to my substack here: https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:Substack: https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/X: https://twitter.com/mrwinmarshallInsta: https://www.instagram.com/winstonmarshallLinktree: https://linktr.ee/winstonmarshall----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Chapters 00:00 – Introduction 02:24 – Decolonisation, the Union Jack & British History06:41 – Marxism, Lenin, Stalin & the Radical Left Worldview11:18 – Gender Identity, Biology & Self-Identification16:24 – Ukraine, the Azov Battalion & Progressive Activism at War20:42 – Covid, Boosters & Pandemic Ideology21:57 – Mass Migration, Borders & Private Property26:02 – Cousin Marriage, Genetic Risk & Social Taboo29:42 – Polyamory, Relationships & the End of Marriage32:41 – Final Exchange Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Massacres, terror plots and a globalized Intifada...is the world unraveling? From jihadi fundraising on U.S. campuses to Pride parades turned anti-Zionist rallies, to neo-Nazis platformed at conservative events, the West is facing a reckoning. Join "The Quad" as they expose the twisted alliances threatening Jews from the far-left and far-right alike, the infiltration of Western institutions and the shocking silence of Jewish leaders. Is the American conservative movement collapsing under the weight of its contradictions? And can Jewish resilience survive the storm?

Click here to send me a quick message :) What can it look like, even in the fullness of the holiday season, to orient to restorative practices for deep wintertime wellbeing?What if we treated this time as the transitional rite of passage that it is along the sun's path of rebirth into the new wheel of the year?In this week's medley episode, you'll hear about practices from Ayurvedic, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western herbalism paradigms so you can consider what approach appeals most to you. First, Ashlee Sakaishi Wilkin shares about the concept of rites of passage and how to tend the sacred window of this time (which can certainly be applied seasonally to deep winter as well which is Vata season).Then I share about herbal bitters and how they can support both your digestion and your mood, a perfect compliment to this time of year -- holiday season foods and stressors.And finally Jade Alicandro shares about the deep mineral nourishment of replenishing broths as food as medicine, and some key herbs you may want to include.It's not about doing everything, but choosing perhaps one small thing you can do to align with the power of the winter solstice season as we cultivate the foundations for the incoming wheel of the year and return of the light!Resources:Today's shownotes: Restorative practices for deep winter wellbeingFree guide: 10 key herbs for hormonal healthEpisode 44: Bitters and hormonal balanceEpisode 45: Embodying winter w Jade Alicandro Episode 49: How to create a sacred window w Ashlee Sakaishi WilkinIf you loved this episode, share it with a friend, or take a screenshot and share on social media and tag me @herbalwombwisdomAnd if you love this podcast, leave a rating & write a review! It's really helpful to get the show to more amazing humans like you.  ❤️DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for educational purposes only, I am not providing any medical advice, I am not a medical practitioner, I'm an herbalist and in the US, there is no path to licensure for herbalists, so my role is as an herbal educator. Please do your own research and consult your healthcare provider for any personal concerns.Support the show

Episode #454: In our third episode with U Jāgara, a Canadian monk, he reflects on his journey through decades of meditation practice and teaching, focusing on the adaptation of Burmese meditation traditions to contemporary contexts. Following earlier discussions that explored his formative years and monastic journey, this conversation delves into the figures, methodologies, and insights that have shaped his path. U Jāgara's experiences with prominent teachers like Pa-Auk Sayadaw highlight the intricacies of meditation practices. Pa-Auk's teachings, rooted in the Visuddhimagga, emphasize samathā (concentration) as a precursor to vipassana (insight), offering practitioners a detailed analysis of experiential reality through the four elements. However, the demanding nature of these practices has often limited progress to a small percentage of practitioners. U Jāgara observes the initial mixed reception of Pa-Auk's application of samathā, noting both its transformative potential and its challenges within the broader context of Burmese meditation history. As Pa-Auk's methods gained international recognition, U Jāgara worked to adapt these teachings for Western audiences. Tailored guidance became central to U Jāgara's teaching methodology as he addressed the frustrations of students struggling with its rigor, demonstrating how adjustments could unlock their transformative potential. But his flexibility provoked tensions in some practitioners from different traditions, including Goenka's students who expressed concerns about any changes to established techniques. He also touches upon the delicate balance between preserving tradition and fostering accessibility. Ultimately, U Jāgara has chosen to take an independent path, and advocates for adaptable practices that remain faithful to the Dhamma's core principles. "Truth is universal,” he says. “Truth also is beyond any kind of cultural values. Having understood [the Dhamma] in the ways that a culture has maintained it, it enables you to shape it into another culture or in a frame that is going to be slightly different than the original one, but still with the same roots, with the same kind of material content, but not necessarily with the same language and expressions and social kind of conventions."

Empire, Stability, and the Smokescreen of MoralityBy Renaldo C. McKenzieLet us be honest—brutally honest, the way history demands and empire resents.What is unfolding in Venezuela, and across the wider Caribbean basin, has little to do with democracy, human rights, or some sudden moral awakening in Washington. It has everything to do with power—raw, unapologetic, strategic power—and the anxiety that sets in when that power feels challenged.The United States does not intervene because a government is despotic. If that were the case, half the world's strongmen would be facing sanctions before breakfast. The United States intervenes when dominance is threatened—when a small country dares to rearrange its economic loyalties, when it flirts with alternatives, when it whispers to Beijing or Moscow instead of kneeling to Washington.This is not conjecture. This is pattern. Take Venezuela. The hostility toward the Maduro government is not rooted in humanitarian outrage. It is rooted in the fact that Venezuela has chosen to deepen relations with China and Russia—to do business outside the American orbit. That is the unforgivable sin. Everything else—drugs, dictatorship, democracy—is stage dressing.The same script plays across the Caribbean. Jamaica, like many of its neighbors, has welcomed Chinese investment: ports modernized, infrastructure built, capital flowing where Western lenders once stalled. Suddenly, “stability” becomes a concern. Suddenly, sovereignty is suspect. Funny how that works.This is not about policing the world's conscience. It is about preserving a hierarchy. History offers receipts. In Guyana, the United States once supported a government that was neither democratic nor just—one that violently suppressed dissent and oversaw the assassination of revolutionary scholar Walter Rodney. That regime, led by Forbes Burnham, was later found culpable by a commission of inquiry. Yet at the time, it enjoyed American backing. Why? Because it played ball. It served U.S. interests. Morality, apparently, is negotiable.Contrast that with today. Guyana now hosts massive U.S. oil interests, where American corporations extract vast wealth while the Guyanese people receive a fraction. That arrangement is deemed acceptable—commendable, even. But let Guyana decide tomorrow to nationalize its resources, to partner elsewhere, or to rely on itself, and watch how quickly the tone changes. Hypothetical? Hardly. We have seen this movie before.Consider Cuba—decades under embargo, not because it threatens the world, but because it refuses submission. Consider Ukraine, punished by war for seeking stability outside one imperial sphere and into another. When small nations move independently, the ground shakes.The language of “communism” is the oldest smokescreen in the book. It is wheeled out whenever convenient, retired when inconvenient. The real crime is not ideology—it is disobedience.This is the central argument of my forthcoming book, Neoliberal Globalization Reconsidered: Unfair Competition and the Death of Nations. Nations do not collapse simply because of internal failure; they are often pushed—cornered by systems designed to ensure that wealth flows upward and outward, never inward, never locally, never freely.And here lies the uncomfortable truth: empire does not require virtue. It requires compliance.Yes, America wants to remain competitive. That desire is not irrational. But competitiveness built on coercion, embargoes, and destabilization is not leadership—it is fear masquerading as strength. And fear, history tells us, is a dangerous policy advisor.The Caribbean must tread carefully. Sovereignty is costly. Independence comes with consequences. But the alternative—permanent subordination dressed up as partnership—is far more expensive in the long run.Renaldo is the Author of Neoliberalism, 2021) and Neoliberal Globalization Reconsidered, Unfair Competition and the Death of Nations", contributions by Martin Oppenheimer

At Christmas, Com d'Archi chooses to slow down.To step away from immediacy, performance, and noise.And to return to what remains: ritual, the table, the presence of bodies and voices in the domestic space.This episode opens with voices from architects (Laurent Pinon, Toby Witte, Maëlle de Quélin, Dario Latrofa, Fabienne Bull), gathered like fragments of life. They speak of blended traditions, cooking that takes all day, tables that linger, families that are distant or reunited. They also speak of tensions, of renunciations, and of what we carry with us when we return, year after year, to sit down to the same meal.These contemporary voices paint a sensitive landscape, where food becomes memory, where the table becomes a place of gathering, storytelling, and sometimes healing.Then, in a second movement, the episode shifts.A step to the side.A return to the domestic architecture of Late Antiquity in the Western world.Between the fourth and fifth centuries, certain large residences—rural villas and urban houses alike—incorporated distinctive reception rooms, designed to host banquets, welcome select guests, and assert social status. Their form, decoration, and interior organization were neither random nor gratuitously ornamental. They expressed a way of thinking about power, representation, and conviviality.Drawing on the rigorous research of architectural historian Éric Morvillez, this episode explores these spaces without forcing interpretation, with care and restraint, attentive to the limits of archaeology and the diversity of historical situations. It shows how architecture can be, at once, functional, symbolic, and deeply social.This Christmas edition of Com d'Archi offers neither moralizing nor nostalgia.It brings ancient tables into dialogue with contemporary ones.It asks what has endured across the centuries: the need to come together, to share extended moments in time, to give form to human bonds.An episode outside the immediacy of the news cycle.Or perhaps, simply, closer to home than we might expect.Except the testimony of Toby Witte, This English version was generated using AI with voice cloning, preserving the speakers' timbre and their natural French accent. This MP3 is not perfect because of the technic very new but it allow to access to an interesting content. Audio comdarchipodcastImage teaser DR © Ron Dale__If you enjoy the COM D'ARCHI podcast, please consider:• subscribing so you don't miss upcoming episodes,• leaving us a rating and a comment

Duke talks about Christmas as the center of Western mythology, what mythology really is, and what the "Golden Fleet" representsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This Christmas, I thought it would be fun to analyze six popular Christmas songs referencing animals-other-than-humans (mostly mammals who are forced to pull people around the snow in sleds, and then some birds, mainly fowl who are killed and eaten by humans but sometimes avians humans admire for their beauty). The songs are  Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Run Run Rudolph, Sleigh Ride, Jingle Bells, The 12 Days of Christmas, and Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song.  In this 24-minute podcast (originally recorded Christmas 2024), I deconstruct these Christmas songs from a Critical Animal Studies perspective. In other words, as an animal rights activist who is sympathetic to the more-than-human-world and the perspectives and interests of other animal individuals and our shared habitats, I analyze these classic songs and what lessons they teach us about fellow animal species and how we could be more respectful, kind of like those Politically Correct Bedtime Story series that gives you a critical yet humorous perspective on classic tales in Western society. My Radio Free Georgia version of this episode has the license to broadcast these popular songs, but for my podcast friends, I don't have copyright permission to play the songs, so I linked to the youtube versions of the songs in the podcast notes here below. For the recording, I'll put a jingle bell sound in there when you can cue up the songs to play yourself if you want to. But I'll speak the key lyrics dealing with animals that I discuss. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMletImQ_cs Run Run Rudolph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqVtqbzTdVs  Sleigh Ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZTzai1H9DM Jingle Bells: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP3RhTbq3Ds  The Twelve Days of Christmas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QPQI5QUs74  The Christmas Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKhRnZZ0cJI    "In Tune to Nature" is a weekly hour-long radio show airing Wednesdays at 6pm Eastern Time on 89.3FM-Atlanta radio and streaming worldwide on wrfg.org (Radio Free Georgia, a nonprofit indie station). Hosted by me, Carrie Freeman, or Melody Paris. The show's website and action items can be found at https://www.facebook.com/InTunetoNature You can email me at my first name at wrfg.org.  Please support nonprofit indie media like our Radio Free Georgia station at https://wrfg.org/  Thank you! Take care of yourself and others, including other species, like reindeer, partridges, French hens, turtle doves, bobtailed horses, and more. Photo Credit: by Aleksei Zaitcev on Unsplash Horse Neighing audio credit: From Duke the Palomino who has his own YouTube channel

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger PictureThe [CB][WEF] is struggling, Trump and team has designated the offshore wind projects as a national security risk. They have been paused. The people are still struggling with the [CB] system, soon the people will get their buying power back. The [CB] will try to stop Trump’s new economic system, it will fail. The [DS] is feeling the pain every step of the way. The criminal syndicate money laundering system is being exposed is the blue states. The people are waking up to the real system that has been hidden from them. The [DS] continues to tax the people for the money laundering system. Trump is continually countering the [DS], he is using Emissaries to negotiate the peace deals. The [DS] is blind to the conversation. Economy Trump Administration Announces Change to Offshore Wind Construction  President Donald Trump's Department of the Interior is pausing offshore wind project construction due to “national security risks.” “Due to national security concerns identified by the Department of War, Interior is PAUSING leases for 5 expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms!” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wrote on X. “ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED,” Burgum added. “POTUS is bringing common sense back to energy policy & putting security FIRST!” Leases with Vineyard Wind1, Revolution Wind, CVOW, Sunrise Wind, and Empire Wind will be paused. Source: dailysignal.com https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2002605302932517339?s=20 Gas is About to Get Expensive . . . A gallon of gas costs about twice as much in California as it does pretty much anywhere else in the United States. The reason why, of course, is that California makes it cost about twice as much – by reducing supply and by adding costs, chiefly for “environmental” reasons. This includes a new requirement – going into effect very soon (Dec. 31) that all gas stations must either replace single-walled underground storage tanks or permanently close them – no matter whether the tanks are actually leaking and no matter how much it costs to replace them. It is estimated that about 473 gas stations in California are going to close – because the owners cannot afford the mandatory underground storage tank upgrade costs or the $5,000 per day fines for non-compliance. At the same time, the state's regulatory bureaucracy has essentially shut down supply by denying 97 percent of permits for new refineries to supply the extra-special (and extra-expensive) gasoline formulations that all gas stations in California are required to sell. If this hypothetical scenario ends up becoming the actual scenario it could result in the collapse of California as a state. Source:  ericpetersautos.com  https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2003104230945464505?s=20  As a % of total employment, multiple jobholders rose to 5.8%, nearly matching the 2 previous highs seen over the last 25 years. At the same time, Americans working primary full-time and secondary part-time jobs jumped to 5.3 million, the 2nd-highest in history. As a % of employment, this metric now stands at 3.4%, the 2nd-highest since 2000. The cost of living crisis is real.   (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2003109247232655382?s=20 Political/Rights Teary-Eyed Bus Driver Speaks Out After Getting FIRED for Posting a ‘Racially Insensitive' Sign on School Bus Window In Response to Unruly Spanish-Speaking Kid – DOJ to Launch Investigation (VIDEO) An elderly bus driver terminated earlier this year for posting a so-called ‘racially insensitive' sign toward a Spanish-speaking kid has broken her silence and the DOJ is launching an investigation. The note on the window read, “Out of respect to English-only students, there will be no speaking Spanish on this bus.” Crawford, who had served the school district as a bus driver for more than 30 years, was promptly suspended and later lost her job posting the note.  https://twitter.com/_johnnymaga/status/2002937980013650119?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2002937980013650119%7Ctwgr%5E9387ff3c86f279c9837393510bf08034917fc6bd%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F12%2Fteary-eyed-bus-driver-speaks-after-getting-fired%2F https://twitter.com/AAGDhillon/status/2002952621032677759?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2002952621032677759%7Ctwgr%5E9387ff3c86f279c9837393510bf08034917fc6bd%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F12%2Fteary-eyed-bus-driver-speaks-after-getting-fired%2F Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/2002782448191693130?s=20 https://twitter.com/C_3C_3/status/2002906389560414648?s=20 SEATTLE https://twitter.com/KeenanPeachy/status/2002902633439445012?s=20 https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/2003099681778499980?s=20 https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2002822669507379549?s=20   This is part of a year long effort FBI has undertaken with state and local law enforcement all across the country to crack down on child abusers and take them off the street. That work has seen historic results. -6,000 children located or reduced – up 22% from 2024 -Nearly 2,000 child predators arrested – up 10% -300+ human traffickers arrested – up 15% Lives being saved. We're not letting up. DOGE Geopolitical https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2002602838149697684?s=20 https://twitter.com/AlboMP/status/2002974532475490578?s=20 https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/2003101218076545039?s=20 Cyberattack disrupts France’s postal service, banking during Christmas rush A suspected cyberattack has knocked France's national postal service and its banking arm offline during the busy Christmas season The postal service, called La Poste, said in a statement that a distributed denial of service incident, or DDoS, “rendered its online services inaccessible.” It said the incident had no impact on customer data, but disrupted package and mail delivery. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.   France and other European allies of Ukraine allege that Russia is waging “hybrid warfare” against them, using sabotage, assassinations, cyberattacks, disinformation and other hostile acts that are often hard to quickly trace back to Moscow. Source:  tribdem.com  War/Peace Kushner and Witkoff Reportedly Draft $112B Plan to Turn Gaza Into ‘Smart City' With Beach Resorts, High-Speed Rail, and AI Grids — U.S. Pushes Back on Claims It Would Foot $60B    Project Sunrise,” envisions a decade-long, $112.1 billion redevelopment effort featuring beachside luxury resorts, high-speed rail, and AI-optimized infrastructure. The draft proposal was developed by a team led by Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, along with senior White House aide Josh Gruenbaum and other administration officials. The plan is being presented to prospective donor governments via a 32-slide PowerPoint labeled “sensitive but unclassified,” U.S. officials told the Journal. According to the presentation, Project Sunrise would convert Gaza's devastated landscape into a modern coastal metropolis. New Rafah (Credit: Wall Street Journal) Smart City (Credit: Wall Street Journal) However, the proposal does not specify which governments or private entities would ultimately finance the project, nor does it detail where Gaza's roughly two million displaced residents would live during reconstruction, according to WSJ. The draft estimates total costs at $112.1 billion over 10 years, including humanitarian relief, infrastructure rebuilding, and public-sector payrolls. https://twitter.com/StateDept_NEA/status/2002545412729942278?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2002545412729942278%7Ctwgr%5Ef3310cb42b34b4ad502fd5957962a1d8fbe38397%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F12%2Fkushner-witkoff-reportedly-draft-112b-plan-turn-gaza%2F The proposal also assumes that Gaza could begin to self-fund portions of the development in later years, eventually paying down debt as economic activity expands. Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2003088356876677484?s=20 Macron Seeks New Talks With Putin, Forcing ‘Alternative’ Path To Stalled US Negotiations Suddenly French President Emmanuel Macron is deciding to revive his diplomacy with Moscow and is     Macron wants to step in to force France’s say in any future outcome or settlement, rather than wait on the diplomatic sidelines. Arming Kiev to the teeth has done nothing but prolong the needless killing, and perhaps at least some European capitals are beginning to realize this. Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/BRICSinfo/status/2003114957060137421?s=20   to be killed in a bombing this year.” Russian General Killed By Car Bomb In Moscow, Marks 3rd Top Officer Assassinated In A Year This adds to a growing list of high profile assassinations related to the Ukraine war. To review: —Darya Dugina was killed in a car bombing in 2022 which was likely meant for her father, prominent political thinker and often dubbed “Putin ally” Aleksandr Dugin. —Gen Igor Kirillov died in December 2024 outside of his residence when a bomb planted in a nearby scooter detonated. —Gen Yaroslav Moskalik, who served as deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, was killed in a car bomb attack last April. A “homemade” explosive device detonated under his Volkswagen Golf in a residential neighborhood. Throughout the course of the war there’s been a string of these high profile assassinations on Russian soil involving car and even cafe bombs. America’s CIA or Britain’s MI6 has long been suspected of being involved in these targeted killings, or at least assisting in such brazen Ukrainian-linked operations, but ultimately little has been uncovered or proven in terms of a potential Western hidden hand in this ongoing ‘dirty war’. Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/LeadingReport/status/2002809124674035943?s=20  Medical/False Flags [DS] Agenda DOJ Charges California Food Stamp Official for Sending Benefits to Dead People – Then Spending Them Federal prosecutors have charged a longtime California welfare worker with carrying out a multi-year fraud scheme involving food assistance benefits and dead people. The U.S. Department of Justice announced the arrest of former Madera County benefits eligibility worker Leticia Mariscal, 55, of Madera. Prosecutors alleged that Mariscal stole tens of thousands of dollars in CalFresh benefits by exploiting her access to county databases. CalFresh is California's version of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. According to the Justice Department, the alleged scheme took place between December 2020 and April 2025. https://twitter.com/FBISacramento/status/1999625371268886611?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1999625371268886611%7Ctwgr%5Ee26f93739a10984d47aeb35b0088270daeb01aef%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F12%2Fdoj-charges-california-food-stamp-official-sending-benefits%2F Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/KevinKileyCA/status/2002791344566411594?s=20   “high-risk.” This means they exhibit serious “waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement,” costing taxpayers billions. The number has doubled during Newsom’s tenure. I bet you California fraud is 10 times worse than Minnesota. https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2002457150904238280?s=20   taxpayer dollars, per NYP. A HUD audit found that at least 221 deceased people received grants. MORE FRAUD! Expose it all! (VIDEO) Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna Announce Plans to Bring Inherent Contempt Charges Against Attorney General Pam Bondi Over Epstein Files – “We're Building a Bipartisan Coalition”  Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), the authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law by President Trump last month, announced their intention to bring charges for inherent contempt against Attorney General Pam Bondi.  Under the rarely used congressional power, “the House or Senate has its Sergeant-At-Arms, or deputy, take a person into custody for proceedings to be held in Congress,” according to the National Constitution Center. However, it is unclear how effective this would be in the face of legal challenges and the executive branch's power. This is the latest in an escalating saga of threats, with Massie and Khanna claiming the DOJ has not complied fully with the law due to redactions in the files and not releasing every document available. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared on NBC's Meet the Press this morning, where he dared Massie and Khanna to “bring it on,” maintaining that the DOJ is simply following the law and taking the necessary time to make redactions before releasing all of the files. Blanche told NBC's Kristen Welker that ensuring victim information is redacted “very much Trumps some deadline in the statute,” and he dared Khanna and Massie to file Articles of Impeachment. “We are complying with the statute, we will continue to comply with the statute, and if by complying with the statute, we don't produce everything on Friday, we produce things next week, and the week after, that's still compliance with the statute,” Blanche added. Source: thegatewaypundit.com Trump is ‘bored, tired and running on fumes’ — and he’s given up the fight: analyst A year into his second term, Donald Trump has undergone a major change in “tactics” as he deflects questions about his policies — and it’s an indication that he is now “just running on fumes,” an analyst wrote Monday. Salon's Amanda Marcotte pointed out that the president has developed an over-reliance on deflecting questions while claiming he is not up to speed on the topic or person he is being asked about, and that often begins with, “I don't know…” That is a change from his previous deflections, where he promised everything would sort itself out in “two weeks.”  Source: rawstory.com President Trump's Plan https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2002836773236306381?s=20   polygraph which they claim he failed to justify keeping their activities secret from Trump’s team. Scott isn’t blocking Plankey because he’s unqualified, he’s blocking him until Trump restores a Coast Guard shipbuilding contract for one of his major political donors Brian D'Isernia – he’s the CEO of Eastern Shipbuilding Group. Scott's hold has blocked Plankey from being included in the bipartisan nominations package the Senate GOP leadership is advancing before year-end. Because the Senate is winding down for the session, that procedural blockage likely means Plankey's nomination will expire unless resubmitted in the next Congress. Career staff at CISA repeatedly denied Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala access to intelligence programs and urged him not to ask questions. After arranging an illegal polygraph, they used a claimed failure to freeze him out and leak to reporters. DHS acting security chief Michael Boyajian suspended at least six officials for misleading leadership and blocking classified access needed to run the agency. Trump to replace nearly 30 career diplomats in ambassadorial positions with ‘America First' allies The U.S. chiefs of mission in at least 29 countries were informed last week that their tenures would end in January 2026; all of them had taken up their posts in the Biden administration The Trump administration is recalling nearly 30 career diplomats from ambassadorial and other senior embassy posts as it moves to reshape the U.S. diplomatic posture abroad with personnel deemed fully supportive of President Donald Trump's “America First” priorities. All of them had taken up their posts in the Joe Biden administration but had survived an initial purge in the early months of Mr. Trump's second term that targeted mainly political appointees. That changed on Wednesday (December 17, 2025) when they began to receive notices from officials in Washington about their imminent departures.  How Trump shifted America's policy in a week Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the President, although they typically remain at their posts for three to four years. Those affected by the shake-up are not losing their foreign service jobs but will be returning to Washington for other assignments should they wish to take them, the officials said. Africa is the continent most affected by the removals, with ambassadors from 13 countries being removed: Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia and Uganda. Second is Asia, with ambassadorial changes coming to six countries: Fiji, Laos, the Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Vietnam affected. Four countries in Europe (Armenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovakia) are affected; as are two each in the Middle East (Algeria and Egypt); South and Central Asia (Nepal and Sri Lanka); and the Western Hemisphere (Guatemala and Suriname). Source: thehindu.com  Denmark Furious After Trump Names Special Envoy To Greenland Following Landry’s appointment, Rasmussen told Reuters in an emailed statement, “The appointment confirms the continued American interest in Greenland. However, we insist that everyone—including the U.S.—must show respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark.” This prompted Denmark to summon the U.S. ambassador. Danish officials also summoned the U.S. ambassador in August after a report that at least three people with connections to Trump carried out covert influence operations in Greenland. Source: zerohedge.com Deep State Apoplectic with Trump's Use of Emissaries to Deliver Results President Trump is ducking and weaving through some of the deepest Machiavellian constructs, while maintaining forward progress. To put context to it, these creeps have had four years to strategize how to control Trump and manipulate policy with their retention of all sorts of government agencies in alignment with the status quo.  Yet, remarkably President Trump is dancing through their deep state minefield while keeping dozens of plates spinning on sticks.  The use of non-traditional emissaries is really making them angry.  , the use of emissaries outside the govt framework of traditional policy was going to be a key facet in any America-First agenda. The Deep State does not like President Trump's use of emissaries to conduct foreign policy.  In fact, they oppose it strongly; they hate it. The “emissary” is the person who carries the word of President Trump to any person identified by President Trump.  The emissary is very much like a tape recording of President Trump in human form.  The emissary travels to a location, meets a particular person or group, and then recites the opinion of the President.  The words spoken by the emissary, are the words of President Trump. The IC cannot inject themselves into this dynamic; that is why it is so valuable. The emissary then hears the response from the intended person or group, repeats it back to them to ensure he/she will return with clarity of intent as expressed, and then returns to the office of the presidency and repeats the reply for the President.  The emissary recites back exactly what he was /is told. This process is critical when you understand how thoroughly compromised the full Executive Branch is.  More importantly, this process becomes even more critical when you accept the Intelligence Community will lie to the office of the President to retain their power and position. (read more) Source: theconservativetreehouse.com https://twitter.com/TheStormRedux/status/2002736237996646560?s=20   signature on the absentee ballot he didn't even ask for. It was clearly forged. @GaSecofState please explain how this is a “clerical error.” https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2002795573490143432?s=20   3. The Congress of the United States shall determine the type and nature of documents that qualify as valid proof of citizenship for purposes of voting in federal elections. 4. Any federal, state or local official who knowingly allows any person to vote in federal elections without such proof of citizenship being validly presented shall be subject to such criminal penalties as the Congress of the United States may prescribe. 5. In the event of any conflict between this Amendment and Article 1, Section 4, the terms of this Amendment shall control. (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

The disastrous way in which public officials handled the Bondi Beach massacre begs the question: Why are authorities hesitant to call out radical Islamist violence when it occurs? From a mass shooting in Australia to canceled Christmas celebrations in Paris, Victor Davis Hanson argues these incidents are not isolated. Instead, they reveal deeper pathologies facing Western societies: open borders without assimilation, ideological blinders driven by DEI dogma, and a broader cultural, spiritual, and strategic decline. He breaks it down on today's episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” “In the case of these incidents, it means, if the perpetrator is from the Middle East, there's a feeling, a general feeling, that you cannot identify him. Or, if you do identify him or you say it's a radical, Muslim, you have to then say, ‘We deplore all violence. We don't—we deplore antisemitism'—which is the case in point in Australia—‘but we also deplore Islamophobia, of which there is no examples of people mass shooting Muslims in the case that we have seen.'”  (0:00) Introduction (1:31) Champs-Élysées Christmas Cancellation (2:01) Brown University Shooting (3:11) Broader Issues in the West (3:21) Open Borders and Lack of Assimilation (5:42) Western Decline and Its Consequences (7:23) Final Thoughts We need your help to ensure The Daily Signal can continue to counter the liberal media's lies with the truth.Support The Daily Signal's work today by becoming a Signal Elite Supporter.   Your tax-deductible monthly gift will help: 

You're speaking... they're nodding… and yet somehow, the disconnect lingers. Western culture teaches us that communicating more clearly will fix the problems in our relationships, but what if the missing piece isn't “more talking” at all? What if learning how to listen differently is what actually changes everything? When we understand how to listen in a deeper, more intentional way, communication problems soften, conflict and repair become easier, and emotional intimacy has room to grow. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Haru Yamada, a sociolinguistics researcher, writer, and author of Kiku: The Japanese Art of Good Listening. Haru holds a PhD from Georgetown University and has spent her life studying language, culture, and communication across borders. Having grown up moving between countries and cultures, her work centers on listening as a relational skill and a form of intelligence that supports both emotional and physical health. She now lives in London with her French partner in a multicultural family where listening is essential. Together, we explore what the Japanese art of listening teaches us about how to listen in relationships. We talk about why hearing words is not the same as being understood, how tone, silence, pacing, and emotional awareness shape connection, and why so many couples feel unseen even when conversations sound productive on the surface. This conversation offers a reframe for anyone who wants to be a better listener and communicate with more care, clarity, and compassion. If you've ever wondered how to listen in a way that actually helps your partner feel safe and understood, this episode offers listening skills you can start using right away. These are skills that support conflict and repair, strengthen emotional intimacy, and help couples move out of stuck communication patterns and into real connection. As you listen, I invite you to reflect on these questions: Where might you be listening for information, when what your partner really needs is to be listened to as a person? And how might your relationships change if feeling heard became the goal, not winning the conversation? Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Why Communication Problems Persist in Relationships 01:02 The Japanese Art of Listening and How It Changes Relationships 02:56 Speaking vs Listening: Who Is Responsible for Understanding? 05:18 How Listening Impacts Relational Health and Healing 08:35 “Kiku” and Listening With 14 Hearts: Hearing Information vs Hearing a Person 16:10 Listening Skills That Build Emotional Intimacy 19:31 Why Conflict Happens When We Don't Feel Heard 25:17 How Expectations Shape What We Hear 28:50 How to Be a Good Listener in Love and Relationships 35:27 Staying Present: The Hardest and Most Important Listening Skill 40:19 Listening as Care: How Being Heard Supports Healing and Repair If you'd like support as you practice listening differently and creating more understanding in your relationships, I'd love to help you find the right next step. I've created a simple, private way for you to connect with the support that fits you best. You can answer a few quick questions, and we'll help you schedule a free consultation with the right counselor or coach on my team. It's a quiet, pressure-free space to talk about what's really been happening in your relationships and what you want to feel differently moving forward. xoxo, Dr. Lisa Marie BobbyGrowing Self

The disastrous way in which public officials handled the Bondi Beach massacre begs the question: Why are authorities hesitant to call out radical Islamist violence when it occurs? From a mass shooting in Australia to canceled Christmas celebrations in Paris, Victor Davis Hanson argues these incidents are not isolated. Instead, they reveal deeper pathologies facing […]

In this live episode, Tricia Eastman joins to discuss Seeding Consciousness: Plant Medicine, Ancestral Wisdom, Psychedelic Initiation. She explains why many Indigenous initiatory systems begin with consultation and careful assessment of the person, often using divination and lineage-based diagnostic methods before anyone enters ceremony. Eastman contrasts that with modern frameworks that can move fast, rely on short trainings, or treat the medicine as a stand-alone intervention. Early Themes: Ritual, Preparation, and the Loss of Container Eastman describes her background, including ancestral roots in Mexico and her later work at Crossroads Ibogaine in Mexico, where she supported early ibogaine work with veterans. She frames her broader work as cultural bridging that seeks respect rather than fetishization, and assimilation into modern context rather than appropriation. Early discussion focuses on: Why initiatory traditions emphasize purification, preparation, and long timelines Why consultation matters before any high-intensity medicine work How decades of training shaped traditional initiation roles Why people can get harmed when they treat medicine as plug and play Core Insights: Alchemy, Shadow, and Doing the Work A major throughline is Eastman's critique of the belief that a psychedelic alone will erase trauma. She argues that shadow work remains part of the human condition, and that healing is less about a one-time fix and more about building capacity for relationship with the unconscious. Using alchemical language, she describes "nigredo" as fuel for the creative process, not as something to eliminate forever. Key insights include: Psychedelics are tools, not saviors You cannot outsource responsibility to a pill, a modality, or a facilitator Progress requires practice, discipline, and honest engagement with what arises "Healing" often shows up as obstacles encountered while trying to live and create Later Discussion and Takeaways: Iboga, Ethics, and Biocultural Stewardship Joe and Tricia move into a practical and ethically complex discussion about iboga supply chains, demand pressure, and the risks of amplifying interest without matching it with harm reduction and reciprocity. Eastman emphasizes medical screening, responsible messaging, and supporting Indigenous-led stewardship efforts. She also warns that harm can come from both under-trained modern facilitators and irresponsible people claiming traditional legitimacy. Concrete takeaways include: Treat iboga and ibogaine as high-responsibility work that demands safety protocols Avoid casual marketing that encourages risky self-administration Support Indigenous-led biocultural stewardship and reciprocity efforts Give lineage carriers a meaningful seat at the table in modern policy and clinical conversations Frequently Asked Questions Who is Tricia Eastman? Tricia Eastman is an author, facilitator, and founder of Ancestral Heart. Her work focuses on cultural bridging, initiation frameworks, and Indigenous-led stewardship. What is Seeding Consciousness about? The book examines plant medicine through initiatory traditions, emphasizing consultation, ritual, preparation, and integration rather than reductionistic models. Why does Tricia Eastman critique modern psychedelic models? She argues that many models remove the ritual container and long-form preparation that reduce risk and support deeper integration. Is iboga or ibogaine safe? With the right oversite, yes. Eastman stresses that safety depends on cardiac screening, careful protocols, and experienced oversight. She warns against informal or self-guided use. How can people support reciprocity and stewardship? She encourages donating or supporting Indigenous-led biocultural stewardship initiatives like Ancestral Heart and aligning public messaging with harm reduction. Closing Thoughts This episode makes a clear case that Tricia Eastman Seeding Consciousness is not only a book about psychedelics, but a critique of how the field is developing. Eastman argues that a successful future depends on mature containers, serious safety culture, and respectful partnership with lineage carriers, especially as interest in iboga and ibogaine accelerates. Links https://www.ancestralheart.com https://www.innertraditions.com/author/tricia-eastman Transcript Joe Moore Hello, everybody. Welcome back. Joe Moore with you again from Psychedelics Today, joined today by Tricia Eastman. Tricia, you just wrote a book called Seeding Consciousness. We're going to get into that a bunch today, but how are you today? [00:00:16.07] - Tricia Eastman I'm so good. It's exciting to be live. A lot of the podcasts I do are offline, and so it's like we're being witnessed and feels like just can feel the energy behind It's great. [00:00:31.11] - Joe Moore It's fun. It's a totally different energy than maybe this will come out in four months. This is real, and there's people all over the world watching in real-time. And we'll get some comments. So folks, if you're listening, please leave us some comments. And we'd love to chat a little bit later about those. [00:00:49.23] - Tricia Eastman I'm going to join the chat so that I can see... Wait, I just want to make sure I'm able to see the comments, too. Do I hit join the chat? [00:01:01.17] - Joe Moore Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. I can throw comments on the screen so we can see them together. [00:01:07.02] - Tricia Eastman Cool. [00:01:08.03] - Joe Moore Yeah. So it'll be fun. Give us comments, people. Please, please, please, please. Yeah, you're all good. So Tricia, I want to chat about your book. Tell us high level about your book, and then we're going to start digging into you. [00:01:22.10] - Tricia Eastman So Seeding Consciousness is the title, and I know it's a long subtitled Plant Medicine, Ancestral Wisdom, Psychedelic Initiation. And I felt like it was absolutely necessary for the times that we are in right now. When I was in Gabon in 2018, in one of my many initiations, as as an initiative, the Fung lineage of Buiti, which I've been practicing in for 11 years now, I was given the instructions. I was given the integration homework to write this book. And I would say I don't see that as this divine thing, like you were given the assignment. I think I was given the assignment because it's hard as F to write a book. I mean, it really tests you on so many levels. I mean, even just thinking about putting yourself out there from a legal perspective, and then also, does it make any sense? Will anyone buy it? And on Honestly, it's not me. It's really what I was given to write, but it's based on my experience working with several thousand people over the years. And really, the essence of it is that in our society, we've taken this reductionistic approach in psychedelics, where we've really taken out the ritual. [00:02:54.05] - Tricia Eastman Even now with the FDA trial for MDMA for PTSD. There's even conversations with a lot of companies that are moving forward, psychedelics, through the FDA process, through that pathway, that are talking about taking the therapy out. And the reality is that in these ancient initiatic traditions, they were very long, drawn out experiences with massive purification rituals, massive amounts of different types of practice in order to prepare oneself to meet the medicine. Different plants were taken, like vomatifs and different types of purification rituals were performed. And then you would go into this profound initiatic experience because the people that were working with you that were in, we call it the Nema, who gives initiations, had decades of training and experience doing these types of initiatic experiences. So if you compare that to the modern day framework, we have people that go online and get a certificate and start serving people medicine or do it in a context where maybe there isn't even an established container or facilitator whatsoever. And so really, the idea is, how can we take the essence of this ancient wisdom wisdom, like when you look at initiation, the first step is consultation, which is really going deep into the history of the individual using different types of techniques that are Indigenous technologies, such as different forms of divination, such as cowrie shell readings. [00:04:52.18] - Tricia Eastman And there's different types of specific divinations that are done in different branches of And before one individual would even go into any initiation, you need to understand the person and where they're coming from. So it's really about that breakdown of all of that, and how can we integrate elements of that into a more modern framework. [00:05:24.23] - Joe Moore Brilliant. All right. Well, thank you for that. And let's chat about you. You've got a really interesting past, very dynamic, could even call it multicultural. And you've got a lot of experience that informed this book. So how did this stuff come forward for you? [00:05:50.02] - Tricia Eastman I mean, I've never been the person to seek anything. My family on my mother's side is from Mexico, from Oaxaca, Trique, Mixtec, and Michica. And we had a long lineage of practice going back to my, at least I know from my great, great grandmother, practicing a blend of mestiza, shamanism, combining centerea and Catholicism together. So it's more of like a syncratic mestiza, mestiza being mixed tradition. And so I found it really interesting because later on, when my grandfather came to the United States, he ended up joining the military. And in being in the US, he didn't really have a place. He's very devout spiritual man, but he didn't have a place to practice this blended spiritual tradition. So the mystical aspect of it went behind. And as I started reconnecting to my ancestral lineage, this came forth that I was really starting to understand the mystical aspect of my ancestry. And interestingly, at the same time, was asked to work at Crossroads Abigain in Mexico. And it's so interesting to see that Mexico has been this melting pot and has been the place where Abigain has chosen to plant its roots, so to say, and has treated thousands of veterans. [00:07:36.28] - Tricia Eastman I got to be part of the group of facilitators back over 10 years ago. We treated the first Navy Seals with Abogaine, and that's really spurred a major interest in Abogaine. Now it's in every headline. I also got 10 I got initiated into the Fung lineage of Buiti and have really studied the traditional knowledge. I created a nonprofit back in 2019 called Ancestral Heart, which is really focused on Indigenous-led stewardship. Really, the book helps as a culmination of the decade of real-world experience of combining My husband, Dr. Joseph Barzulia. He's a psychologist. He's also a pretty well-known published researcher in Abigain and 5MEO-DMT, but also deeply spiritual and deeply in respect for the Indigenous traditions that have carried these medicines before us. So we've really been walking this complex path of world bridging between how we establish these relationships and how we bring some of these ancient knowledge systems back into the forefront, but not in a way of fetishizing them, but in a way of deeply respecting them and what we can learn, but from our own assimilation and context versus appropriation. So really, I think the body of my work is around that cultural bridging. [00:09:31.07] - Joe Moore That's brilliant. And yeah, there's some really fun stuff I learned in the book so far that I want to get into later. But next question is, who is your intended audience here? Because this is an interesting book that could hit a few categories, but I'm curious to hear from you. [00:09:49.02] - Tricia Eastman It's so funny because when I wrote the book, I wasn't thinking, oh, what's my marketing plan? What's my pitch? Who's my intended audience? Because it was my homework, and I knew I needed to write the book, and maybe that was problematic in the sense that I had to go to publishers and have a proposal. And then I had to create a formula in hindsight. And I would say the demographic of the book mirrors the demographic of where people are in the psychedelic space, which It's skewed slightly more male, although very female. I think sex isn't necessarily important when we're thinking about the level of trauma and the level of spiritual healing and this huge deficit that we have in mental health, which is really around our disconnection from our true selves, from our heart, from our souls, from this idea of of what Indigenous knowledge systems call us the sacred. It's really more of an attitude of care and presence. I'm sure we could give it a different name so that individuals don't necessarily have any guard up because we have so much negative conditioning related to the American history of religion, which a lot of people have rejected, and some have gone back to. [00:11:37.06] - Tricia Eastman But I think we need to separate it outside of that. I would say the demographic is really this group of I would say anywhere from 30 to 55 male females that are really in this space where maybe they're doing some of the wellness stuff. They're starting to figure some things out, but it's just not getting them there. And when something happens in life, for example, COVID-19 would be a really great example. It knocks them off course, and they just don't have the tools to find that connection. And I would say it even spans across people that do a lot of spiritual practice and maybe are interested in what psychedelics can do in addition to those practices. Because when we look at my view on psychedelics, is they fit within a whole spectrum of wellness and self-care and any lineage of spiritual practice, whether it's yoga or Sufism or Daoist tradition. But they aren't necessarily the thing that... I think there's an over focus on the actual substance itself and putting it on a pedestal that I think is problematic in our society because it goes back to our religious context in the West is primarily exoteric, meaning that we're seeking something outside of ourselves to fulfill ourselves. [00:13:30.29] - Tricia Eastman And so I think that when we look at psychedelic medicines as this exoteric thing versus when we look at initiatory traditions are about inward and direct experience. And all of these spiritual practices and all of these modalities are really designed to pull you back into yourself, into having a direct relationship with yourself and direct experience. And I feel like the minute that you are able to forge that connection, which takes practice and takes discipline, then you don't need to necessarily look at all these other tools outside of yourself. It's like one of my favorite analogies is the staff on the Titanic were moving the furniture around as it was sinking, thinking that they might save the boat from sinking by moving the furniture around. I think that's how we've been with a lot of ego-driven modalities that aren't actually going into the full unconscious, which is where we need to go to have these direct experiences. Sorry for the long answer, but it is for everybody, and it's not just about psychedelics. Anyone can take something from this doing any spiritual work. But we talk a lot about the Indigenous philosophy and how that ties in alongside with spiritual practice and more of this inner way of connecting with oneself and doing the work. [00:15:21.22] - Tricia Eastman And I think also really not sugar coating it in the sense that the psychedelics aren't going to save us. They're not going to cure PTSD. Nothing you take will. It's you that does the work. And if you don't do the work, you're not going to have an 87 % success rate with opioid use disorder or whatever it is, 60 something % for treatment-resistant depression or whatever. It's like you have to do the work. And so we can't keep putting the power in the modality reality or the pill. [00:16:03.18] - Joe Moore Yeah, that makes sense. So you did an interesting thing here with this book, and it was really highlighting aspects of the alchemical process. And people don't necessarily have exposure. They hear the words alchemy. I get my shoulders go up when I hear alchemizing, like transmutation. But it's a thing. And how do we then start communicating this from Jung? I found out an interesting thing recently as an ongoing student. Carl Jung didn't necessarily have access to all that many manuscripts. There's so many alchemical manuscripts available now compared to what he had. And as a result, our understanding of alchemy has really evolved. Western alchemy, European alchemy, everybody. Perhaps Kmetic, too. I don't know. You could speak to that more. I don't keep track of what's revealed in Egypt. So it's really interesting to present that in a forward way? How has it been received so far? Or were you nervous to present this in this way? [00:17:25.10] - Tricia Eastman I mean, honestly, I think the most important The important thing is that in working with several thousand people over the years, people think that taking the psychedelic and the trauma is going to go away. It's always there. I mean, we We archetypically will have the shadow as long as we need the shadow to learn. And so even if we go into a journey and we transcend it, it's still there. So I would say that the The feedback has been really incredible. I mean, the people that are reading... I mean, I think because I'm weaving so many different, complex and deep concepts into one book, it might be a little harder to market. And I think the biggest bummer was that I was really trying to be respectful to my elders and not say anything in the title about Iboga and Abigain, even though I talk a lot about it in the book, and it's such a hot topic, it's really starting to take off. But the people that have read it really consider it. They really do the work. They do the practices in the book, and I'm just getting really profound feedback. So that's exciting to me because really, ultimately, alchemy... [00:18:55.22] - Tricia Eastman Yeah, you're right. It gets used Used a lot in marketing lingo and sitting in the depth of the tar pit. For me, when I was in Gabon, I remember times where I really had to look at things that were so dark in my family history that I didn't even realize were mine until later connected to my lineage. And the dark darkness connected to that and just feeling that and then knowing really the truth of our being is that we aren't those things. We're in this process of changing and being, and so nothing is is fixed, but there is a alchemical essence in just learning to be with it. And so not always can we just be with something. And and have it change, but there are many times that we can actually just be with those parts of ourselves and be accepting, where it's not like you have to have this intellectualized process It's just like, first you have the negrado, then you tune into the albeda, and you receive the insights, and you journal about it, and da, da, da, da, da Action, Mars aspect of it, the rubeda of the process. It's not like that at all. [00:20:44.15] - Tricia Eastman It's really that the wisdom that comes from it because you're essentially digesting black goo, which is metaphoric to the oil that we use to power all of society that's pulled deep out of the Earth, and it becomes gold. It becomes... And really, the way I like to think of it is like, in life, we are here to create, and we are not here to heal ourselves. So if you go to psychedelic medicine and you want to heal yourself, you're going to be in for... You're just going to be stuck and burnt out because that's not what we're here to do as human beings, and you'll never run out of things to heal. But if you You think of the negrado in alchemy as gasoline in your car. Every time you go back in, it's like refilling your gas tank. And whatever you go back in for as you're moving in the journey, it's almost like that bit of negrado is like a lump of coal that's burning in the gas tank. And that gets you to the next point to which there's another thing related to the creative process. So it's like As you're going in that process, you're going to hit these speed bumps and these obstacles in the way. [00:22:07.29] - Tricia Eastman And those obstacles in the way, that's the healing. So if you just get in the car in the human vehicle and you drive and you continue to pull out the shadow material and face it, you're going to keep having the steam, but not just focus on it, having that intention, having that connection to moving forward in life. And I hate to use those words because they sound so growth and expansion oriented, which life isn't always. It's evolutionary and deevolutionary. It's always in spirals. But ultimately, you're in a creative process would be the best way to orient it. So I think when we look at alchemy from that standpoint, then it's productive. Effective. Otherwise, it sounds like some brand of truffle salt or something. [00:23:09.12] - Joe Moore Yeah, I think it's a... If people want to dig in, amazing. It's just a way to describe processes, and it's super informative if you want to go there, but it's not necessary for folks to do the work. And I like how you framed it quite a bit. So let's see. There is one bit, Tricia, that my ears really went up on this one point about a story about Actually, let me do a tangent for you real quick, and then we're going to come back to this story. So are you familiar with the tribe, the Dogon, in Africa? Of course. Yeah. So they're a group that looks as though they were involved in Jewish and/or Egyptian traditions, and then ended up on the far side of like, what, Western Africa, far away, and had their own evolution away from Egypt and the Middle East. Fascinating. Fascinating stories, fascinating astronomy, and much more. I don't know too much about the religion. I love their masks. But this drew an analogy for me, as you were describing that the Buiti often have stories about having lineage to pre-dynastic Egyptian culture. I guess we'll call it that for now, the Kometic culture. [00:24:44.23] - Joe Moore I had not heard that before. Shame on me because I haven't really read any books about Buiti as a religion or organization, or anything to this point. But I found that really interesting to know that now, at least I'm aware of two groups claiming lineage to that ancient world of magic. Can you speak about that at all for us? Yeah. [00:25:09.24] - Tricia Eastman So first off, there really aren't any books talking about that. Some of the things I've learned from elders that I've spoke with and asked in different lineages in Masoco and in Fong Buiti, there's a few things. One, We lived in many different eras. Even if you go into ancient texts of different religions, creation stories, and biblical stories, they talk about these great floods that wiped out the planet. One of the things that Atum talks about, who is one of my Buiti fathers who passed a couple years ago, is Is the understanding that before we were in these different areas, you had Mu or Lumaria, you had Atlantis, and then you had our current timeline. And the way that consciousness was within those timelines was very different and the way the Earth was. You had a whole another continent called Atlantis that many people, even Plato, talks about a very specific location of. And what happened, I believe during that time period, Africa, at least the Saharan band of the desert was much more lush, and it was a cultural melting pot. So if you think about, for example, the Pygmy tribes, which are in Equatorial Africa, they are the ones that introduced Iboga to the Buiti. [00:27:08.08] - Tricia Eastman If you look at the history of ancient Egypt, what I'm told is that the Pygmies lived in Pharaonic Egypt, all the way up until Pharaonic Egypt. And there was a village. And if you look on the map in Egypt, you see a town called Bawiti, B-A-W-I-T-I. And that is the village where they lived. And I have an interesting hypothesis that the God Bess, if you look at what he's wearing, it's the exact same to a T as what the Pygmies wear. And the inspiration for which a lot of the Buiti, because they use the same symbology, because each part of the outfit, whether it's the Mocingi, which is like this animal skin, or the different feathers, they use the parrot feather as a symbology of speech and communication, all of these things are codes within the ceremony that were passed along. And so when you look at Bess, he's wearing almost the exact same outfit that the Pygmies are wearing and very similar to if you see pictures of the ceremonies of Misoko or Gonde Misoko, which I would say is one of the branches of several branches, but that are closer to the original way of Buiti of the jungle, so closer to the way the Pygmies practice. [00:28:59.16] - Tricia Eastman So If you look at Bess, just to back my hypothesis. So you look at Neteru. Neteru were the... They called them the gods of Egypt, and they were all giant. And many say the word nature actually means nature, but they really represented the divine qualities of nature. There's best. Look at him. And a lot of the historians said he's the God of Harmeline and children and happiness. I think he's more than the God of Harmeline, and I think that the Pygmies worked with many different plants and medicines, and really the ultimate aspect of it was freedom. If you think about liberation, like the libation, number one, that's drunkiness. Number two, liberation, you of freeing the joyous child from within, our true nature of who we are. You look at every temple in Egypt, and you look at these giant statues, and then you have this tiny little pygmy God, and there's no other gods that are like Bess. He's one of a kind. He's in his own category. You've You've got giant Hathor, you've got giant Thoth, you've got giant Osiris, Isis, and then you've got little tiny Bess. And so I think it backs this hypothesis. [00:30:48.27] - Tricia Eastman And my understanding from practitioners of Dogon tradition is that they also believe that their ancestors came from Egypt, and they definitely have a lot of similarity in the teachings that I've seen and been exposed to just from here. I mean, you can... There's some more modern groups, and who's to know, really, the validity of all of it. But there are some, even on YouTube, where you can see there's some more modern Dogon temples that are talking in English or English translation about the teachings, and they definitely line up with Kamehdi teachings. And so my hypothesis around that is that the Dogon are probably most likely pygmy descendants as, And the pygmy were basically run out of Bawiti because there was jealousy with the priest, because there was competition, because all of the offerings that were being made in the temple, there was a lot of power, connected to each of the temples. And there was competitiveness even amongst the different temples, lining the Nile and all of that, of who was getting the most offerings and who was getting the most visits. And so the Pygmies essentially were run out, and they migrated, some of them migrated south to Gabon and Equatorial Africa. [00:32:43.07] - Tricia Eastman And then If you think about the physical changes that happened during these planetary catastrophes, which we know that there had been more than one based on many historical books. So that whole area went through a desertification process, and the Equatorial rainforest remained. So it's highly likely even that Iboga, at one point, grew in that region as well. [00:33:18.00] - Joe Moore Have you ever seen evidence of artwork depicting Iboga there in Egypt? [00:33:24.17] - Tricia Eastman There are several different death temples. I'm trying to remember the name of the exact one that I went to, but on the columns, it looked like Iboga trees that were carved into the columns. And I think what's interesting about this... So Seychet is the divine scribe, the scribe of Egyptian wisdom. And she was basically, essentially the sidekick of Thoth. Thoth was who brought a lot of the ancient wisdom and people like Pythagoras and many of the ancient philosophers in Roman times went and studied in a lot of these Thoth lineage mystery schools. When you look at the the river of the Nile on the east side, east is the energy liturgy of initiation. It's always like if you go into a sweat lodge or if you see an ancient temple, usually the doorway is facing the east. West is where the sun sets, and so that's the death. And what's interesting about that is that it was on the west side in the death temple that you would see these aboga plants. But also Seixat was the one who was the main goddess depicted in the hieroglyphs, and there was other hieroglyphs. I mean, if you look at the hieroglyphs of Seixat, it looks like she has a cannabis leaf above her head, and a lot of people have hypothesized that, that it's cannabis. [00:35:16.03] - Tricia Eastman Of course, historians argue about that. And then she's also carrying a little vessel that looks like it has some mushrooms in it. And obviously, she has blue Lotus. Why would she be carrying around blue Lotus and mushrooms? I don't know. It sounds like some initiation. [00:35:36.19] - Joe Moore Yeah, I love that. Well, thanks so much for going there with me. This photo of Seixet. There's some good animations, but everybody just go look at the temple carvings picturing this goddess. It's stunning. And obviously, cannabis. I think it's hard to argue not. I've seen all these like, mushroom, quote, unquote, mushroom things everywhere. I'm like, Yeah, maybe. But this is like, Yes, that's clear. [00:36:06.27] - Tricia Eastman And if you look at what she's wearing, it's the exact same outfit as Bess, which is classic Basically, how the medicine woman or medicine man or what you would call shaman, the outfit that the healers would wear, the shamans or the oracles, those of the auracular arts, different forms of divination would wear. So if you really follow that and you see, Oh, what's Isis wearing? What's Hathor wearing? What's Thoth wearing? You can tell she's very specifically the healer. And it's interesting because they call her the divine scribe. So she's actually downloading, my guess is she's taking plants and downloading from the primordial. [00:37:02.00] - Joe Moore Well, okay. Thanks for bringing that up. That was a lovely part of your book, was your... There's a big initiation sequence, and then you got to go to this place where you could learn many things. Could you speak to that a little bit? And I hope that's an okay one to bring up. [00:37:22.22] - Tricia Eastman Are you talking about the time that I was in initiation and I went to the different ashrams, the different realms in, like Yogananda calls them astral schools that you go and you just download? It seemed like astral schools, but it seemed like it was a Bwiti initiation, where you were in silence for three days, and then Yeah, that one. So there were several different... I mean, I've done seven official initiations, and then I've had many other initiatic experiences. And I would say this one was incredible. Incredibly profound because what it showed me first was that all of the masters of the planet, it was showing me everyone from Kurt Cobain to Bob Marley to Einstein, all the people that had some special connection to an intelligence that was otherworldly, that they were essentially going to the same place, like they were visiting the same place, and they would go. And so the first thing I noticed was that I recognized a lot of people, and current, I'm not going I don't want to say names of people, but I recognize people that are alive today that I would say are profound thinkers that were going to these places as well. [00:38:57.05] - Tricia Eastman And interestingly, then I was taken into one of the classrooms, and in the classroom, this one, specifically, it showed me that you could download any knowledge instantaneously That essentially, having a connection to that school allowed you to download music or understand very complex ideas ideas of mathematics or physics or science that would take people like lifetimes to understand. So it was essentially showing this. And a lot of people might discredit that, that that might be a specific... That we as humans can do that. Well, I'm not saying that it's not that. I don't I don't want to say that it's anything. But what I can say is that I have definitely noticed the level of access that I have within my consciousness. And also what I notice with the masters of Bwiti, specifically in terms of the level of intelligence that they're accessing and that it's different. It's got a different quality to it. And so it was a really profound teaching. And one of the things, too, that I've learned is I use it to help me learn specific things. I don't know if I can give a positive testimonial, but I am learning French. [00:40:55.00] - Tricia Eastman And I noticed when I was in Aspen at the Abigain meeting, and I was with Mubeiboual, who speaks French, I started saying things French that I didn't even realize that I knew to say. I've had these weird moments where I'm actually using this tool And I'm also using it. I have a Gabonese harp. I don't know if you can see it up on the shelf over there. But I also went and asked for some help with downloading some assistance in the harp, then we'll see how that goes. [00:41:38.17] - Joe Moore Yeah. So that's brilliant. I'm thinking of other precedent for that outside of this context, and I can think of a handful. So I love that, like savant syndrome. And then there's a classic text called Ars Notoria that helps accelerate learning, allegedly. And then there's a number of other really interesting things that can help us gain these bits of wisdom and knowledge. And it does feel a little bit like the Dogon. The story I get is the receiving messages from the dog star, and therefore have all sorts of advanced information that they shouldn't we call it. Yeah. Yeah, which is fascinating. We have that worldwide. I think there's plenty of really interesting stuff here. So what I appreciated, Tricia, about how you're structuring your book, or you did structure your book, is that it it seems at the same time, a memoir, on another hand, workbook, like here are some exercises. On the other hand, like here's some things you might try in session. I really appreciated that. It was like people try to get really complicated when we talk about things like IFS. I'm like, well, you don't necessarily have to. You could. Or is this just a human thing, a human way to look at working with our parts? [00:43:20.15] - Joe Moore I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about the way you were approaching this parts work in your book versus how complicated some people make it feel? [00:43:30.00] - Tricia Eastman Yeah. I find that this is just my personal opinion, and no way to discredit Richard Schwartz's work. But parts work has existed in shamanism since forever. When we really look at even in ancient Egypt, Issus, she put Osiris act together. That was the metaphorical story of soul retrieval, which is really the spiritual journey of us reclaiming these pieces of ourselves that we've been disconnected from a society level or individually. And within the context of parts work, it's very organic and it feels other worldly. It's not like there's ever a force where I'm in the process with someone. And a lot of times I would even go into the process with people because they weren't accustomed to how to work with Iboga or game, and so they would be stuck. And then the minute I was like, you know, Iboga, in the tradition, it's really about... It's like the game Marco Polo. It's call and response. And so you're really an active participant, and you're supposed to engage with the spirits. And so the minute that things would show up, it'd be more about like, oh, what do you see? What's coming up here? Asking questions about it, being curious. [00:45:17.07] - Tricia Eastman If you could engage with it, sometimes there's processes where you can't really engage with things at all. So everything that I'm talking about is It was organically shown up as an active engagement process that it wasn't like we were going in. There have been some where you can guide a little bit, but you never push. It might be something like, go to your house, and it being completely unattached. And if they can't go there, then obviously the psyche doesn't want to go there, but it's really an exercise to help them to connect to their soul. And then in contrast, IFS is like, let's work on these different parts and identify these different parts of ourselves. But then let's give them fixed titles, and let's continually in a non-altered state of consciousness, not when we're meditating, not when we're actively in a state where we have the plasticity to change the pathway in the unconscious mind, but we're working in the egoic mind, and we're talking to these parts of ourselves. That could be helpful in the day-to-day struggles. Let's say you have someone who has a lot of rumination or a very active mind to have something to do with that. [00:46:57.01] - Tricia Eastman But that's not going to be the end-all, be-all solution to their problem. It's only moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic because you're still working in the framework where, I'm sorry, the Titanic is still sinking, and it may or may not be enough. It may or may not produce a reliable outcome that could be connected with some level of true relief and true connection within oneself. And so I think that people just... I feel like they almost get a little too... And maybe it's because we're so isolated and lonely, it's like, Oh, now I've got parts. I'm not by myself. I've got my fire I've got my firefighter, and I've got my guardian, and all these things. And I definitely think that IFS is a really great initiator into the idea of engaging with parts of ourselves and how to talk to them. But I don't think it's... And I think doing a session here and there, for some people, can be incredibly helpful, but to all of a sudden incorporate it in like a dogma is toxic. It's dangerous. And that's what we have to be really careful of. [00:48:23.25] - Joe Moore So thank you for that. There's a complicated discussion happening at the Aspen meeting. I think I was only sitting maybe 30 feet away from you. Sorry, I didn't say hi. But the folks from Blessings of the Forest were there, and I got a chance to chat with a number of them and learn more about nuclear protocols, biopiracy, literal piracy, and smuggling, and the works. I'm curious. This is a really complicated question, and I'm sorry for a complicated question this far in. But it's like, as we talk about this stuff publicly and give it increased profile, we are de facto giving more juice and energy to black markets to pirate. We're adding fuel to this engine that we don't necessarily want to see. Cameroon has nothing left, pretty much. From what I'm told, people from Cameroon are coming in, stealing it from Cabona, bringing it back, and then shipping it out. And there's It's like a whole worldwide market for this stuff. I witnessed it. This stuff. Yeah, right? This is real. So the people, the Buiti, and certain Gabanese farmers, are now being pirated. And international demand does not care necessarily about Nagoya compliance. United States didn't sign Nagoya protocol for this biopiracy protection, but we're not the only violator of these ethics, right? [00:50:00.22] - Joe Moore It's everywhere. So how do we balance thinking about talking about IBOCA publicly, given that there's no clean way to get this stuff in the United States that is probably not pirated materials? And as far as I know, there's only one, quote unquote, Nagoya compliant place. I've heard stories that I haven't shared publicly yet, that there's other groups that are compliant, too. But it's a really interesting conversation, and I'm curious of your perspectives there. [00:50:34.04] - Tricia Eastman I mean, this is a very long, drawn-out question, so forgive me if I give you a long, drawn-out answer. [00:50:41.01] - Joe Moore Go for it. [00:50:41.26] - Tricia Eastman It's all good. So in reality, I do believe... You know the first Ebo, Abogaine, that was done in the country was experiments on eight Black prisoners at a hospital under the MK program. [00:51:01.16] - Joe Moore Pre-lutz off, we were doing Abogaine tests on people. [00:51:06.00] - Tricia Eastman Yeah, so pre-Lutz off. I have a hypothesis, although a lot of people would already know me. [00:51:12.07] - Joe Moore No, I didn't know that. Thank you for sharing that with me. [00:51:14.13] - Tricia Eastman That's great. I'll send you some stuff on that. But the Aboga wanted to be here. The Abogaine wanted to be here. I think it's a complex question because on one side of the coin, you have the spirit of plants, which are wild and crazy sometimes. And then you have the initiatory traditions, which create a scaffolding to essentially put the lightning in a bottle, so to say, so that it's less damaging. [00:51:51.13] - Joe Moore It's almost like a temple structure around it. [00:51:53.16] - Tricia Eastman I like that. Yeah. Put a temple structure around it because it's like, yeah, you can work with new nuclear energy, but you have to wear gloves, you have to do all these different safety precautions. I would say that that's why these traditions go hand in hand with the medicine. So some people might say that the agenda of Iboga and even Abogaine might be a different agenda than the Buiti. And ultimately, whether we are Indigenous or not, the Earth belongs to everyone. It's capitalism and the patriarchy that created all these borders and all these separations between people. And in reality, we still have to acknowledge what the essence of Buiti is, which is really the cause and effect relationship that we have with everything that we do. And so some people might use the term karma. And that is if you're in Abogaine clinic and you're putting a bunch of videos out online, and that's spurring a trend on TikTok, which we already know is a big thing where people are selling illegal market, iBoga, is Is any of that your responsibility? Yes. And if I was to sit down with a kogi kagaba, which are the mamus from Colombia, or if I were to sit down with a who said, Hey, let's do a divination, and let's ask some deep questions about this. [00:53:54.01] - Tricia Eastman It would look at things on a bigger perspective than just like, Oh, this person is completely responsible for this. But when we're talking about a medicine that is so intense, and when I was younger, when I first met the medicine, I first was introduced in 2013 was when I first found out about Abigain and Iboga. And in 2014, I lived with someone who lived with a 14th generation Misoko, maybe it was 10th generation Misoco in Costa Rica. And then he decided to just start serving people medicine. And he left this person paralyzed, one person that he treated for the rest of his life. And Aubrey Marcus, it was his business partner for On It, and he's publicly talked about this, about the story behind this. If you go into his older podcasts and blog posts and stuff, he talks about the situation. And the reality is that this medicine requires a massive amount of responsibility. It has crazy interactions, such as grapefruit juice, for example, and all kinds of other things. And so it's not just the responsibility towards the buiti, it's also the responsibility of, does me talking about this without really talking about the safety and the risks, encourage other people. [00:55:49.10] - Tricia Eastman One of the big problems, back in the day, I went to my first guita conference, Global Abogaine Therapy Alliance in 2016. And And then, ISEARs was debating because there was all these people buying Abogaine online and self-detoxing and literally either dying or ending up in the hospital. And they're like, should we release protocols and just give people instructions on how to do this themselves? And I was like, no, absolutely not. We need to really look at the fact that this is an initiatory tradition, that it's been practiced for thousands of that the minimum level at which a person is administering in Gabon is 10 years of training. The way that we've made up for those mistakes, or sorry, not mistakes, lack of training is that we've used medical oversight. Most of the medical oversight that we've received has been a result of mistakes that were made in the space. The first patient that MAPS treated, they killed them because they gave them way over the amount of what milligrams per kilogram of Abigain that you should give somebody. Every single mistake that was made, which a lot of them related to loss of life, became the global Abogane Therapy Safety Guidelines. [00:57:28.19] - Tricia Eastman And so we've already learned from our mistakes here. And so I think it's really important that we understand that there's that aspect, which is really the blood on our hands of if we're not responsible, if we're encouraging people to do this, and we're talking about it in a casual way on Instagram. Like, yeah, microdosing. Well, did you know there was a guy prosecuted this last year, personal trainer, who killed someone And from microdosing in Colorado, the event happened in 2020, but he just got sentenced early 2025. These are examples that we need to look at as a collective that we need. So that's one side of it. And then the other side of it is the reciprocity piece. And the reciprocity piece related to that is, again, the cause and effect. Is A Abogaine clinic talking about doing Abogaine and doing video testimonials, spurring the efforts that are actively being made in Gabon to protect the cultural lineage and to protect the medicine. The reality is every Abogaine clinic is booked out for... I heard the next year, I don't know if that's fact or fiction, but someone told me for a year, because because of all the stuff with all the celebrities that are now talking about it. [00:59:05.20] - Tricia Eastman And then on top of that, you have all these policy, all these different advocacy groups that are talking about it. Essentially, it's not going to be seven... It's going to be, I would say, seven to 10 years before something gets through the FDA. We haven't even done a phase one safety trial for any of the Abigain that's being commercialized. And even if there's some magic that happens within the Trump administration in the next two years that changes the rules to fast track it, it's not going to cut it down probably more than a year. So then you're looking at maybe six years minimum. That whole time, all that strain is being put on Gabon. And so if you're not supporting Gabon, what's happening is it's losing a battle because the movement is gaining momentum, and Gabon cannot keep up with that momentum. It's a tiny country the size of Colorado. So my belief is that anyone who's benefiting from all the hype around Iboga and Abogayne or personally benefited with healing within themselves should be giving back, either to Ancestral Heart, to Blessings of the Forest, to any group that is doing authentic Indigenous-led biocultural stewardship work. [01:00:45.21] - Joe Moore Thanks for that. It's important that we get into some detail here. I wish we had more time to go further on it. [01:00:54.17] - Tricia Eastman I'll do a quick joke. I know. I have a lot. [01:00:57.17] - Joe Moore Yes. Now do Mike Tyson. Kidding. Yeah. So what did we maybe miss that you want to make sure people hear about your book, any biocultural stuff that you want to get out there? You can go for a few more minutes, too, if you have a few things you want to say. [01:01:20.03] - Tricia Eastman I mean, really, thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you for caring and being so passionate about the context related to Buiti, which I think is so important. I would just say that I've been working with this medicine for... I've known about it for 13 years, and I've been working with it for 11 years, and this is my life. I've devoted my life to this work, me and my husband, both. And there isn't anything greater of a blessing that it has brought in our life, but it also is it's a very saturnian energy, so it brings chaos. It brings the deepest challenges and forces you to face things that you need to face. But also on the other side of the coin, everything that I've devoted and given back in service to this work has exponentially brought blessing in my life. So again, I see the issue with people doing these shortened processes, whether it's in an Abigain clinic where you just don't have the ritualistic sacred aspects of an initiatic context and really the rituals that really help integrate and ground the medicine. But you still have this opportunity to continue to receive the blessings. [01:03:09.23] - Tricia Eastman And I really feel in our current psychedelic movement, we essentially have a Bugatti. These medicines are the most finely-tuned sports car that can do every... Even more than that, more like a spaceship. We have this incredible tool, but we're driving it in first gear. We don't even really know how to operate it. It's like, well, I guess you could say flight of the Navigator, but that was a self-driving thing, and I guess, psychedelics are self-driving. But I feel that we are discounting ourselves so greatly by not looking into our past of how these medicines were used. I really think the biggest piece around that is consulting the genuine lineage carriers like Buiti elders, like Mubu Bwal, who's the head of Maganga Manan Zembe, And giving them a seat at the head of the table, really, because there's so much I know in my tradition, about what we do to bring cardiac safety. And why is it that people aren't dying as much in Gabon as they're dying in Abigan clinics. [01:04:37.28] - Joe Moore Shots fired. All right. I like it. Thank you. Thank you for everything you've done here today, I think harm reduction is incredibly important. Let's stop people dying out there. Let's do some harm reduction language. I actually was able to sweet talk my way into getting a really cool EKG recently, which I thought really great about. If you can speak clinician, you can go a long way sometimes. [01:05:11.20] - Tricia Eastman Yeah. Oh, no, go ahead. Sorry. [01:05:15.17] - Joe Moore No, that's all. That's all. So harm reduction is important. How do we keep people safe? How do we keep healing people? And thank you for all your hard work. [01:05:27.22] - Tricia Eastman Thank you. I really appreciate it. We're all figuring it out. No one's perfect. So I'm not trying to fire any shots at anybody. I'm just like, Guys, please listen. We need to get in right relationship with the medicine. And we need to include these stakeholders. And on the other side of the coin, I just want to add that there's a lot of irresponsible, claimed traditional practitioners that are running retreat centers in Mexico and Costa Rica and other places that are also causing a lot of harm, too. So the medical monitoring is definitely, if you're going to do anything, Because these people don't have the training, the worst thing you could do is not have someone going in blind that doesn't have training and not have had an EKG and all that stuff. But we've got a long way to go, and I'm excited to help support in a productive way, all coming together. And that's what me and Joseph have been devoted to. [01:06:45.02] - Joe Moore Brilliant. Tricia Eastman, thank you so much. Everybody should go check out your book Seeding Consciousness out now. The audiobook's lovely, too. Thank you so much for being here. And until next time. [01:07:00.14] - Tricia Eastman Thank you.    

In this gripping episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with Robert “Bob” Cooley, the Chicago lawyer whose extraordinary journey took him from deep inside the Outfit's criminal operations to becoming one of the federal government's most valuable witnesses against organized crime. Cooley pulls back the curtain on the hidden machinery of Chicago's underworld, describing how corruption, bribery, and violence shaped the Chicago Outfit's power in the 1970s and beyond. As a lawyer, gambler, and trusted insider, Cooley saw firsthand how mob influence tilted the scales of justice—often in open daylight. Inside the “Chicago Method” of Courtroom Corruption Cooley explains the notorious system of judicial bribery he once helped facilitate—what he calls the “Chicago Method.” He walks listeners through: How defense attorneys worked directly with Outfit associates to buy favorable rulings. The process of approaching and bribing judges. Why weak forensic standards of the era made witness discrediting the key mob strategy. His personal involvement in the infamous Harry Aleman murder case, where clear guilt was erased by corruption. Life in the Outfit: Gambling, Debt, and Mob Justice Cooley recounts his early days gambling with Chicago Outfit associates, including Marco D'Amico, Jackie Cerrone, and John DeFranzo. Notable stories include: The violent implications of unpaid gambling debts in mob circles. Tense interactions with bookmaker Hal Smith and the chaotic fallout of a bounced check involving mobster Eddie Corrado. How D'Amico often stepped in—sometimes with intimidation—to shield Cooley from harm. These stories reflect the daily volatility of life inside the Outfit, where money, fear, and loyalty intersect constantly. Bob Cooley has a great book titled When Corruption Was King where he goes into even greater detail and has many more stories from his life inside the Chicago Mob. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:06 Introduction to Bob Cooley 1:32 Life as an Outfit Gambler 2:00 My Relationship with Marco D’Amico 10:40 The Story of Hal Smith 11:05 A Dangerous Encounter 20:21 Meeting Sally D 22:23 A Contract on My Life 22:37 The Harry Alleman Case 34:47 Inside the Courtroom 51:08 The Verdict 52:26 Warning the Judge 53:49 The Case Against the Policewoman 58:36 Navigating the Legal Maze 1:08:14 The Outcome and Its Consequences 1:11:39 The Decision to Flip 1:24:38 A Father’s Influence 1:33:57 The Corruption Revealed 1:50:12 Political Connections 2:02:07 The Setup for Robbery 2:20:29 Consequences of Loyalty transcript [0:00] Hey, guys, my guest today is a former Chicago outfit associate named Robert Bob Cooley. He has a book out there titled When Corruption Was King. I highly recommend you get it if you want to look inside the Chicago outfit of the 1970s. Now, Bob’s going to tell us about his life as an outfit gambler, lawyer, and I use payoff to judges to get many, many not guilty verdicts. Now, I always call this the Chicago method. This happened for, I know, for Harry Ailman, a case we’re going to talk about, Tony Spolatro got one of these not-guilties. Now, the outfit member associate who is blessed to get this fix put in for him may be charged with a crime, even up to murder. And he gets a lawyer, a connected lawyer, and they’ll demand a bench trial. That means that only a judge makes the decision. A lawyer, like my guest, who worked with a political fixer named Pat Marcy. [0:53] They’ll work together and they’ll get a friendly judge assigned to that case and then they’ll bribe the judge. And all that judge needs is some kind of alibi witnesses and any kind of information to discredit any prosecution witnesses. Now, this is back in the olden days before you had all this DNA and all that kind of thing. So physical evidence was not really a part of it. Mainly, it was from witnesses. And they just have to discredit any prosecution witness. Then the judge can say, well, state hadn’t really proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt and issue a not guilty verdict and walk away. Now, our guest, Bob Cooley, is going to take us inside this world. [1:29] And it’s a world of beatings, murders, bribes, and other kinds of plots. He was a member of the Elmwood Park crew. He was a big gambler. He was a big loan shark. And he worked for a guy named Marco D’Amico, who was their gambling boss and loan shark in that crew. Among other bosses in this powerful crew were Jackie Cerrone, who will go on and become the underboss and eventually the boss for a short [1:55] period of time. and John no-nose DeFranzo, who will also go on to become the boss eventually. What was your relationship with Marco D’Amico? I talked about when I first came into the 18th district, when I came into work there, and they put me back in uniform, the first person I met was Rick Borelli. Rick Borelli, he was Marco’s cousin. [2:23] When I started gambling right away with Rick, within a couple of days, I’m being his face, and I’m calling and making bets. There was a restaurant across the street where every Wednesday and sometimes a couple days a week, I would meet with Ricky. And one of the first people he brought in there was Marco. Was Marco. And Marco would usually be with a person or two. And I thought they were just bookmakers. [2:55] And I started being friendly with him, meeting him there. Then I started having card games Up in my apartment And, Because now I’m making, in the very beginning, I’m making first $100 extra a week. And within a couple of weeks, I’m making $500, $600 extra a week. And within about a month, I’m making $1,000, sometimes more than that. So now I’m having card games, relatively big card games, because I’ve got a bankroll. I’ve got probably about $5,000, $6,000, which seemed like a lot of money to me. Initially uh and after a while that was a daily that was a daily deal but uh so we we started having card games up there and then we started socializing we started now he’d be at these nightclubs all the time when when i’d go to make my payoffs he was part of the main group there he was one of the call he was right he was right under jack right under at that time originally Jackie Cerrone, and then he was right under Johnny DeFranco. [4:07] But he was… And we became real good friends. We would double date and we spent a lot of time together. And we had these big card games. And that’s when I realized how powerful these people were. Because after one of the card games, there was somebody that was brought in, a guy named Corrado. I’m pretty sure his name was I can’t think of his first name, but Corrado was this person that somebody brought into the game. And after we finished playing cards, and I won all the time. I mean, I was a real good card player, and I wouldn’t drink. I’d supply liquor and food and everything, but I wouldn’t drink. And as the others drank, they were the same as at my office. After we finish up, this guy says, you want to play some? We can play maybe some gin. just human being. And he was there with another friend of his who just sat there and watched. So we played, not gin, but blackjack. We played and passed cards back and forth when you win. Then you’re the dealer and back and forth. And I lost, I think I lost about $4,000 or $13,000 to him. [5:26] I lost the cash that I had. I had cash about $5,000 or $6,000. And I gave him a check for the rest. You know, but everything I was doing was wrong, you know. Yeah, one of those nights. It’s in there. And it’s funny because you asked about Marco. [5:47] And I thought, you know, oh, well, and whatever. And I gave him a check. I said, no, it’s a good check. And it was. It was for my office. It was an office check that I gave him. And that next morning, I’m meeting with Ricky and with Marco at this restaurant across from the station before I go in and to work. And I said, son of a B. I said, you know, they had a bad night first ever. Marco wasn’t at that game, at that particular game. And what happened? I said, I blew about 12,000. Okay, but you? Wow. And I said, yeah, I said, one of the guys at the game played some, I played some blackjack with somebody. What was his name? Eddie, Eddie Corrado. Eddie Corrado. He said, that mother, he said, stop payment on the check. He said, stop payment on the check. He said, because it wasn’t nine o’clock. It was only like, you know, seven, you know, seven 30 or whatever. He said, and when he gets ahold of you, arrange to have him come to your house. Tell him you’ll have the money for him at your house. So that’s what I, that’s what I do. So I stopped payment on it probably about five after nine. I get a call from, from Mr. Corrado. You mother fucker. [7:17] I said, no, no. I said, there wasn’t enough money in the account. I said, I’m sorry. I said, all right, then I’ll be over. I said, no, no, no. I said, I’m in court right now. I said, I’m in court. I said, I’m going to be tied up all day. I’ll meet you at my place. I’ll meet you back there. Well, I’ll be there. You better have that. I want cash and you better have it. Okay. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m at home. Marco comes in. And he was there with Tony and Tony was there and Ricky was there. And Ricky was there. And they come over a little ahead of time and he comes in. I live on the 27th floor. The doorbell rings. Up he comes with some big mustache. [8:00] I open the door. You better have the fucking money and whatever. And I try to look nervous. I try to look real nervous. and when you walk into my apartment you walk in and you see the kitchen right in front of you and to the left to the left you’ve got an area away and you’ve got the the kitchen wall blocking what’s behind it over there and these three guys are standing marco and you are standing right there alongside of it and and when he walks in behind me, He sees Marco and all but shit in his pants. When he sees Marco, he goes, and Marco, you motherfucker. And, you know, oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was with you. He says, how much money you got me right now? And, you know, he says, pull your pockets out. He had about, he had about three or 4,000 with him. [9:02] And he says, you give him that. He says, you, he says, you, and he says, you give him that right now. And you apologize to him. Oh, and he says, he says, and I may give you a number. I want you to call. He says, we can put you to work. Apparently this guy had done the same thing to them a few years before and got the beating of his life somebody brought him into one of their card games, did he have a technique a cheating technique or had some marked cards no it was a card mechanic he could play games with cards they call him a mechanic and, in fact the guy was great at it because he had his own plane and everything else. But again, he had moved from Chicago and had just come back in the area. And they mounted. And so anyhow, he leaves. And he leaves then, and Marco took the money. Marco took the money. Marco took the money. Typical Bob guy, man. [10:19] And I says, what about the cash I lost to him? He says, well, you lost that. He says, you lost that. That’s when I realized how powerful. That’s when I realized how powerful that [10:35] he was part of the mob, not only a part of it, but one of the operational. Yeah, important part of it. That brings to mind another unbelievable situation that occurred. [10:49] The, uh, this is probably the, we’ll know the year by when it happened. There was a bookmaker named Hal Smith. Oh yeah. I remember that name. He got, tell us about Hal Smith. [11:05] Well, Hal Smith was a, he was a big guy too. A real, a real big guy. I met him on Rush street. He knew I was a gambler. He knew that I was a big gambler and I started gambling with him. Thank you. And I was with him probably for about maybe five or six months. And I’d win with him. I’d lose with him. And he would take big places. He would take $5,000 a game for me. And as they say, so the numbers were big. At the end of the week, we were sometimes $60,000, $70,000. [11:42] They were big numbers back and forth. And he was always good for the money. I was always good for the money. And one particular week, it was about $30,000. And I was waiting for money. Somebody else was supposed to give me even more than that. And the person put me off. And it was a good friend of mine. And I knew the money would be there. But a lot of times, these guys are going to collect it at a certain time. And then they’re expecting to give it to somebody else. Well, he was short. So I said, look, I don’t have it right now, but I’ll have it tomorrow, I said, because I’m meeting somebody. Well, okay, it better be there. [12:31] And look, it’ll be there, okay? Not a problem. So the next day, the person I’m supposed to get it from says, I’ll have it in a couple of hours. I don’t have it right now, but I’ll have it by late this afternoon. And I’m in my office when Hale Smith calls me and I said, I’ll have it a little bit later. And he slams the phone bell. I’m downstairs in Counselor’s Row. In fact, I’m meeting with Butchie and Harry. We’re in a booth talking about something. They had just sent me some business or whatever, but I’m talking about something. And George, the owner of the restaurant, comes over and he says, somebody is asking who you are and they want to talk to you. And they point out this guy. It was a guy I had seen before, because a lot of times at two in the morning, I would go down on West Street, and they had entertainment upstairs. And there was this big English guy. He was an English guy, as you could tell by his accent, a real loud guy. And when I walk up to talk to him, and he’s talking loud enough so people can hear him, and he says, you better have that. I’m here for it. You better have that. You better have that money. [13:51] Bob Hellsmith sent me, you get the money and you better have that money or there’s going to be a problem or whatever. And I said, well, the money will be there, but people can hear what this guy, this guy talking that shit. And he leaves. And he leaves. He’s going to call me back. And he leaves. I said, I’m busy right now. I says, give me a call back when I’m in the office and I’ll meet with you. So Butch, he goes, what was that all about? And I said, you know, it’s somebody I owe some money to. Well, who is he? Who is he with? I said, Harold Smith. And he said, who’s Harold Smith? You don’t pay him anything. He said, you don’t pay him anything. And he calls, when he calls back, he says, you will arrange to meet him. And I said, you know, I said, well, where? [14:44] And they knew where I lived. They’d been to my place at that time. I’m living in Newberry Plaza and they said, there’s a, there’s a Walgreens drugstore in Chicago Avenue. Tell him you’ll meet him there at Walgreens, and we’ll take it. And he says, and we’ll take it from there. When he does call me, I said, look, I said, I’ll meet you tomorrow morning for sure at Walgreens. I’ll have the cash. I said, I’ll have the cash, and I’ll have all of it. I said, but, you know, I’m tied up on some things. I said, I’ll go to my own bank when I’m finished here and whatever, and I’ll see you tomorrow morning for sure at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning. Okay. I sit down with them and they just said, I said, they said, go there and go meet them. And we’ll take care of it. The Walgreens is a store right in the corner of Michigan Avenue and Chicago Avenue, south side of the street. And it’s all windows. Huge windows here. Huge windows here. And a bus stop, a bus stop over here. When I get there, I park in the bus stop and I’m looking to my right and here he is sitting in a booth by himself, right by the window. And I look around and I don’t see anybody. I mean, with a lot of people, I don’t see Butchie. [16:06] Uh or red or anybody around but i i go in there anyhow and uh sit down and i uh sit down in the booth across from him and he’s eating breakfast he’s got some food in front of him and uh the girl comes by right away the girl comes by and i says you know just get me a coke and and he says have you got the money and i said yes and why i got i got a lot i got a lot of money in my pocket but not the, whatever it was he wanted, not the 27 or 28,000. There’s nobody there. And, uh, so we’re talking for no more than about two or three minutes. They had a telephone on the counter. I hear the phone ring and the waitress, the waitress is on the phone. And then she comes walking over and she says, it’s a call for you. And, and when I go get in the phone, I woke up and there’s a phone booth there. And here’s Butchie in the phone booth. And he’s there with a couple of other people. I hang the phone up. I walk over and I had my appointment booked. And I walk over and I just pick up the book. And as I’m walking out there, walking in, we pass each other. And so now when I get in my car and he’s looking at me in my car and right next to him is Butchie. And across from him was a red old male and Fat Herbie. [17:34] Herbie Blitzstein? Herbie Blitzstein? No, it wasn’t Herbie. This is another one. That’s one thing of Herbie. We called Herbie Fat. It was Fat Herbie. And the third guy is like sitting facing him. This is like, that weighs about 300 pounds. Oh, Sarno. Make Mike Sarno. Mike Sarno. That was it. And that’s, that’s, that’s who it was. You know, and I, I drive off, go to my office and go about my business. I get a call later that day from, uh, Hale Smith. Where’s my money? Where’s my money? I said, I gave it to your guy. You what? I gave it to him. I met him at nine o’clock this morning and I gave him the money. You did. And I said, yeah. Um, okay. And he hangs, and he hangs up. I don’t hear anything for a while. I never saw him again. I saw Hale a couple of times because he was always in one of the other restaurants. I lived in Newberry right across from there, but he never talked to me. I never talked to him, never said anything. It was about maybe it had to be a good couple of months later, When I read about Hale, Hale’s no longer with us. [18:52] That’s obviously how they found out about him. I never saw the other guy again. I’m hoping they didn’t kill him, but I’m assuming that’s what probably happened to him. In a public place like that, they probably just scared him off. He probably said, you know, I’m way over my head. I’m out of here. [19:15] They didn’t kill him in the public place he wouldn’t have been in the newspapers my little thought is like with the three guys they took him for a ride, I don’t know they just told him to leave town and he realized what it was and he did Hal didn’t get a chance to leave town Hal had other problems if I remember right I’d have to look it back up but he had other problems with the outfit what I found out later what they had done, was they had gotten one of their guys connected with him to find out who his customers were. In other words, one of the other people that he didn’t realize, that Hale didn’t realize was with them, they got him connected with them where he’s the one who’s doing his collecting and finding out who the customers were because they wanted to get all his customers as well as his money. It turns out he was He was a huge bookmaker for years. That’s what happened to him. And they just took his book. Yeah, I remember something about that story because I killed him in his house, I believe. Yeah, Sally D. [20:22] Sally D, yeah. Sally D was one. When I first met Sally D, he was with Marco’s Fruit, too. [20:30] He owned a pizza place up on the north side, north shore, and I broke him. I was betting with him and beating him week after week. And one of the last times I played with him, he couldn’t come up with the money. It took him an extra couple of weeks to get the cash to pay me. But we were real close friends with him. He’s a bizarre character because he was a totally low level at that time. Yeah. When he then connected up with the Cicero crew, with Rocky and Felice, with Rocky and those people, he became a boss with them. It turns out it was after they killed Al Smith. He was part of all that. That’s Salih De Laurentiis. He’s supposed to be a boss. He moved on up after the Family Secrets trial. He didn’t go down with that, I believe, and he kind of moved on up after that. I don’t know what happened to him. What was so funny about that, when he would come into the club, Marco’s club, Bobby Abinati. [21:42] Who was strictly a very low-level player, although we indicted him with the Gambia star. He’s the one who set up the robbery. Would that have been great if that would have gone through? He’s the one who set up that robbery in Wisconsin. He’d be making fun of Salihide all the time. [22:03] When Salihide would come in, he would make fun of him and joke about him and talk about what a loser he was. This is when he’s a boss of that crew. I mean, just a strange, I mean, nobody talked to bosses like that, especially when, when you’re, when you’re what they call Bobby, you know, what was Marco’s nickname for Bobby Knucklehead? [22:23] That was his nickname, Knucklehead. Pat Marcy, uh, contacted me about, you know, handling me in the only own case. [22:32] I couldn’t have been happier because that was a short time after they put a contract on me. So now i realized if they’re going to be making money you know they finally stopped because for good six seven months when i when i came back to chicago uh i was checking under my car every day in case there was a bomb i moved i moved from uh from a place that i own in the suburbs into an apartment complex so i wouldn’t be living on the first floor yeah it’d be impossible to somebody to break into my, you know, took them thrashing into my place. I changed my whole life around in that sense. [23:10] And when I drove everywhere I went, you know, I would go on the highway and then jump over. I would do all, I wanted to make absolutes. Even though nobody came around, I wasn’t taking any chances for a long period of time. And that was too when it cost me a fortune because that’s when I stopped dealing with the bookmakers because I wasn’t going to be in a position where I had to go meet somebody at any time to collect my money and whatever. [23:39] So what had happened, though, was somebody came to see me. And when I was practicing, there’s a lot of things I wouldn’t do. I set my own rules. I would not get involved. After the Harry Alleman case, I never got involved anymore myself fixing certain cases. But even prior to that, I wouldn’t fix certain cases. I wouldn’t get involved in certain cases, especially involving the police, because my father was such a terrific policeman, and I felt I was too in a lot of sentences. I loved the police. I disliked some of the crooked cops that I knew, but on the surface, I’d be friendly with them, etc. Harry Ailman was a prolific hitman for the Elmwood Park crew. He killed a teamster who wouldn’t help set up trucks for the outfit, a guy named Billy Logan. He was just a regular guy. He’s going to take us right into the meeting with the judge. He’ll take us into a counselor’s row restaurant where these cases were fixed. Now, Bob will give us a seat right at Pat Marcy’s table. Now, Pat Marcy was the first ward fixture, and he’s going to take us into the hallway with Pat Marcy where they made the payoffs. [24:57] Now, Bob, can you take us inside the famous Harry Aileman murder case? I know you fixed it. And tell us, you know, and I know there was a human toll that this took on that corrupt judge, Frank Wilson. Okay. The Harry Aileman case was, it was not long after I became partners with Johnny DeArco. I get a call from, I’m in Counselor’s Row at the restaurant. Whenever I was in there now, my spot was the first ward table. Nobody was allowed to sit there day or night. That was reserved for first ward connected people and only the top group of people. [25:40] I’m sitting there at the table and Johnny DeArco Sr. Tells me, you know, Pat wants to talk to you. About something. And I said, you know, sure. Not long afterwards, Pat comes downstairs. We go out. We go out in the hall because we never talk at the table. And he tells me, have you got somebody that can handle the Harry Alleman case? I had seen in the news, he was front page news. He was one of the main mob hitmen. He was partners with Butchie Petrucelli. But it was common knowledge that he was a hitman. He looked like one. He dressed like one. He acted like one. And whatever. And he was one. In fact, he was the one that used to go to New York. And I know he also went to Arizona to do some hits and whatever. He traveled around the country. I said to Pat, they thought the case was a mob hit on a team street. a teamster. I assumed that it was just that. It was people doing what they do. But I said to Pat, I said, well, get me the file. Get me the file. Let me see what the case looks like. Because I would never put a judge in a bad spot. That was my nature. [27:06] When I had cases, a lot of these judges were personal friends of mine. What I would do, if I wanted to have a case, if I wanted to fix a case to save all the time of having to go to a damn long trial, I would make sure that it was a case that was winnable, easily winnable. When I got the file, when I got the file from Pat, he got me the file the next day. The next morning, when he came in, he gave me the file. I looked at the file. It was a throw-out case. When I say throw-out case, absolutely a nothing case. [27:46] The records in the file showed that a car drove up down the street. Suddenly somebody with a shotgun blasted a guy named Billy Logan in front of his house and drove away. They were contacted by a neighbor, this guy, Bobby Lowe. Was it Bobby Lowe? Yeah, I’m pretty sure Bobby Lowe. Who indicated that he opened the door and let his dog run out. And when he looked, he saw somebody. He saw a car, and he gave a description of the car. And he saw somebody pull up, and he saw him shoot with a shotgun. And then he saw the person get out of the car and shoot him with a .45, and shoot him with a .45. And then the car sped away. That was pretty much the case. Some other people heard some noise, looked out, and saw a car driving away. A period of time after that, it had to be about a year or so after that, somebody was arrested driving to Pennsylvania to kill somebody. There was a guy who stopped. [29:16] Louie Almeida was his name. Louie Almeida was stopped in his car. He was on the way to Pennsylvania. And in front of his car, he had shotguns. And he winds up, when he gets arrested, he winds up telling the authorities that he can tell them about a mob murder back in Chicago and winds up cooperating with them. He indicates what happened. He indicated that, you know, he was asked to, you know, or he got involved in it. He got the car and whatever. They did this. They did that. And he pulled up alongside Billy and wound up shooting the victim as he came out of the house. [30:09] Now, I look at some other reports in there, some reports that were made out, new reports. They talk about the Louis Almeida. They talk about the witness that gave the first statement. and they said that they found, or he’s giving us a new statement now where he says he’s walking his dog. He hears a shotgun. His dog runs towards the car where the shooting was coming from. He saw Harry get out of the car and walk over and shoot him, walk over and shoot the victim, and he was looking at him, And then he jumped in the bushes and the car drove away. A complete new story. Yeah. A complete new story. And. I looked at the reports, and this is an easy winner. And so I told Pat, you know, I’ll take it. You know, I’m sure I can handle it. I said, I’m sure I can handle it, but, you know, I’ll let you know. [31:21] That’s when I contacted, I met my restaurant, Greco’s, and I had Frank Wilson there a lot. Well, I called Frank Wilson, invited him and his wife to come to the restaurant. I had done that many times before. When he gets there, I tell him, I have the case. You know, I told him I was contacted on this case, I said. And I said, it’s an easy winner, I said. And I explained to him what it was. I told him, you know, it’s the driver of the car who’s doing this to help himself. And this other guy, Bobby Lowe, that gave a complete new story from the original story that he gave. And I indicated, you know, can you handle the case? And he tells me, I can’t handle the case, he said, because I was SOJ’d. In Chicago, Illinois, they have a rule that makes it easy for people to fool around because for no reason at all you can ask to have a judge moved off the case. And you can name a second judge that you don’t want to handle the case. [32:34] Frank Wilson’s reputation was as such that the lawyer that turned out to be a judge later on, Tom Maloney, who had the case, named him in the SOJ. It was assigned to somebody else, and he indicated he wanted any other judge except Frank Wilson. Frank Wilson on the case. And this was Harry Aileman’s lawyer. Yeah. Okay. And who Tom Maloney, who then ends up being the judge years later. But yeah. Well, because we knew he was going to be a judge. Yeah. We knew ahead of time. I knew at that time. That’s what makes the story so unbelievably interesting. Yeah. Anyhow, he says, I can’t do it because… In Chicago, in Chicago, it’s supposed to keep it honest. I love this. To keep it honest. Yeah. To keep it honest, each judge is supposed to be picked by computer. [33:33] Same thing they’re doing to this day. Trump wondered why the same judge kept getting all his cases. Because they’re doing the same thing we did, some of us could do in Chicago. He was the chief judge in the area. he said to me, I don’t think I can get the case. I don’t think I can’t get the case. I said, I’ll get the case to you. I said, I’ll get, because I already, I, in fact, through Pat Marcy, anytime I wanted a case to go anywhere, I would contact Pat and I’d give him a thousand dollars and he would get me any judge I wanted. Uh, I said, well, I think I can. I said, I said, And I gave him $1,000. [34:16] I said, here, this is yours. And if I can’t get the case to you, you keep it. If I can’t get, I never said to him, will you fix it? Will you this or that? I mean, he understood what it was. I didn’t know how he would react to it. When I asked him, would you handle it? Were the words I used. I had never fixed anything with him before. [34:43] In case he was, you know, he would want to report it to somebody. I wasn’t worried because Frank had a reputation as being a big drinker. After I got the Harry Elliman file, Pat tells me, I’m going to have somebody come and talk to you. Who comes? And we meet in the first ward office, and then we go downstairs into the special room they had for conversations. It’s Mike Ficarro. He’s the head of the organized crime section. He’s the one who prosecutes all the criminals. He’s one of the many prosecutors in Chicago. That’s why there were over 1,000 mob murders and never a conviction from the time of Al Capone. Not a single conviction with over 1,000 mob murders because they controlled absolutely everything. He’s the boss. [35:35] I knew him. I didn’t like him. He had an attitude about him. You know, when I would see him at parties and when I’d see him at other places, and I’d walk by and say, hi, he just seemed coldish. [35:47] I found out later why. He was jealous of the relationship I had with all these people. [35:54] He says, I’ll help you any way I can, anything you need, whatever. So the prosecutors on the Harry Olliman case were our people. That’s who’s prosecuting the case anyhow. But they couldn’t get one of their judges apparently who would handle the case. So, but anyhow, uh, so, uh, when we, um, when we go, when we, when we go to trial, um. [36:25] Before to help me out, I told Pat, I’ll get somebody else to handle the case. I’ll have somebody else. I said, I won’t go in there. I won’t go in there because everybody knows I’m close to Frank, very close to Frank. I said, so I won’t go in there. I’ll get somebody. He says, no, no. He said, I’ll get somebody. And so he gets a guy named Frank Whalen, who I didn’t know at the time. He was a retired lawyer from Chicago. He was one of the mob lawyers. [37:00] He was one of the mob lawyers. And he lived in Florida. He lived in Miami. I think it was, no, Lauderdale. He lived in the Lauderdale area. He was practicing there. So I fly out. I fly out to meet him. I i do all the investigating in the case the i’m using an investigator that harry alleman got from me in fact he was the same investigator that got in trouble in in uh in in hollywood for what for a lot of stuff i can’t think of his name right now but he’s the one who got indicted in hollywood eventually for you know wiretapping people and whatever it was the same one. And he got me information on Bobby on this Bobby Lowe. He found out Bobby Lowe, Bobby Lowe was a drug addict. [37:59] When the FBI got a hold of him, Bobby Lowe was living out in the street because he had been fired from his first job. He had a job in some kind of an ice cream company where they made ice cream, and he got fired there for stealing. And then he had a job after that in a gas station, and he faked a robbery there. Apparently, what he did was he called the police and said he had been robbed. This is before they had cameras and all the rest of that stuff. He said he had been robbed. And somebody happened to have been in the gas station getting gas. It was a big place, apparently. [38:45] And when the police talked to him, he said, I didn’t see anything strange. He said, I saw the attendant walk out to the back about 10, 15 minutes ago. I saw him walk out to the back of the place and then come back in. And so they go out, and he had his car parked behind it, and they found the money that was supposed to have been stolen in the car. So not the best witness, in other words. Well, that’s an understatement, because that was why… That was why now he suddenly shows up, and they know all this. The FBI agents that obviously know all this, that’s their witness. That’s their case. To me, it’s an airtight, you know. Yeah. Anyhow, I developed the defense. I went back to see Frank a second time. I flew out to Florida a second time, gave him all this information. [39:48] I had talked to some other people to a number of people that were going to indicate that Harry played golf with them that day see how they remembered not golf but he was at a driving range with them with about five people they remember what they were three or four years three or four years before that what I also found out now, and I didn’t know and it changed my whole attitude on that this wasn’t a mob killing you, This guy that he killed was married to his, I think it was his cousin or some relation was married. I’m pretty sure it was to his cousin. She had told Harry, I got this from Butchie, Butchie Petrosselli, who had become a close friend of mine after I got involved with Harry’s case, his partner. And that was why he killed them, because apparently the sister, his sister-in-law, whatever she was, had told him, you know, when he was beating her up, she had said, well, my Harry Alameda won’t be happy about this. And he said, supposedly, he said, fuck that, Kenny. [41:02] And that’s why the shooting took place. Wow. This changed me. You know, I’m in the middle of it. There’s no getting out of it now. Yeah, they’ll turn it back. And by now, I’m running around all the time with Butch and Mary at night. I’m meeting them at dinner. They’re coming to one of my places where I have dinners all the time. You know, I’m becoming like close friends, close friends with both of them. Yeah. So anyhow, but anyhow, the lawyer that he got, Frank Whalen, who was supposed to be sharp, turned out like he was not in his, let’s just say he was not in his prime. [41:46] Charitable. And when he went in, you know, while the trial was going on, you know, while the trial was going on, I get a call from Frank. From Frank Wilson, because I told him, you don’t come back into the restaurant now. You don’t come back into the restaurant. I used his office as my office all the time, along with a bunch of other judges. I had a phone, but it cost about a dollar a minute to talk on my phone. I had to talk on my phone. So when I’d be at 26th Street in the courthouse, even though no lawyers are allowed back there in the chamber, so I’m back there sitting at his desk using the phone taking care of my own other business. I stopped going in there while the trial was going on. [42:35] So, anyhow, he calls me, and he wants to meet me at a restaurant over on Western Avenue. And, okay, he called me from one of the pay phones out there in front of the courthouse, and I go to meet him. What did he want? Was he complaining about the lawyer, Waylon? What was he complaining about, Waylon? and I was screwing it up. [42:59] When I meet him, I said, you know, he’s like, you know, he said, you know, we go into the bathroom and he and he said he’s all shooken up. He says, this is going to cost me my job. He said, he said, you know, they’re burying him. You’re burying him. You know, because I had given this information on the two witnesses. And he says, Frank Whalen, he said, isn’t doing a thing and cross-examining these people and whatever. [43:32] And he says, and he’s all upset. And I said, Frank, no, I’m shook up one of the few times in my life where it’s something I can’t handle. He had never told me, you know, I’ll fix the case, never. And I said to him, and I said, Frank, I said, if something goes wrong, I said, I’m sure they’re going to kill me, is what I said to him. Yeah. I said, if something goes wrong, I’m sure they’re going to kill me. And I left. I left the bathroom. Now, I have no idea what’s going on in his mind and whatever. Yeah. I see Pat the next day. And by something goes wrong in this case, you mean if he gets found guilty, that’d be what would go wrong and you would get killed. Is that that’s what you mean? Well, no question, because when I met, I didn’t go into that. I met with Harry Alleman. I get a call after I got involved in the case. A couple days later, I get a call from Markle. Meet me at one of the nightclubs where I was all the time at night with these people. [44:47] Above it, you’ve got a motel, a bunch of hotel rooms. I get a call from Markle. The reason everybody loved me and the mob, I never discussed what I was doing with anybody or any of the other dozens of mobsters I run with that I was involved in Harry’s case. Never said a word to anybody about any of this. That was my nature, and that’s why all these people love me. I never talked about one thing with anybody else or whatever. He says, I want to meet you. When I get over there, he says, let’s go upstairs. Somebody wants to talk to you. And we go upstairs, and there’s Harry Alleman. And Harry, how you doing? How are you? [45:27] And he says, listen, you’re sure about this? And I said, yeah. I said, I’m sure. And he said, well, if something goes wrong, you’re going to have a problem. Those were his words to me. You’re going to have a problem. And I said, you know, he says, because this judge, he says, this judge is a straight judge. And he said, Tom, you mean Tom Maloney. He says, and Tom wants to handle my case. And he tells me he’s going to be named a judge by the Supreme Court real soon. And he wants to handle and he wants to handle my case before he… Uh, you know, before he becomes a Supreme court, before he becomes a judge, I knew the moment he told me that I knew for sure that was the case because we control everything, including the Supreme court. I said, you know, I said, don’t, you know, don’t worry about it. I lied to him. And I said, uh, I said, yeah, the judge is going to, I said, yeah, he’s going to throw it out. He knows, I said, he knows what’ll happen if he doesn’t. That’s what I told Harry. I want to keep him happy. [46:34] I’m going to keep him happy probably for a few hours I’m a little nervous and then that’s all behind me like so many other problems I got in the middle of oh my god talking about walking a tightrope so now the lawyer came into Chicago he was in Chicago I met him when he came in he was staying at the Bismarck was at the Bismarck Hotel right around the corner from you know where Counselor’s Row was that’s where he was staying in the in the hotel right there by the first board office and there was a way to go in there without being seen and there was a, You go through another restaurant and you go through the alley and go up there. And I wouldn’t, I didn’t want to be seen walking into there because I know the FBI are probably, are probably watching and whatever. When he comes into town, they handle the case. So I go upstairs to see him. You know, I said, what the hell’s going on in court? He says, I’m going, it’s going great. It’s going great. I said, it’s going great. I just, you know, I just got a call last night. I had to go meet the judge. And he said, you’re not doing any cross-examining. Oh, I’m doing a great job. You know, I’m doing a great job. So after a few minutes of, I leave. Yeah. [47:52] That’s when I saw Pat Marcy, too. And I said, Pat, I said, the judge is upset about whatever’s going on. I said, maybe we should give him some more because I agreed to give him $10,000. And he said, you know, what a piece of work he is. You know, he said $10,000, and that’s all he’s going to get, not a nickel more or whatever. So now to say I’m nervous again is an ultra statement. The case, I walked over, and I wouldn’t go in the room, but I wanted to just be around that room for some reason. FBI agents all over the place. [48:30] FBI agents all over the place. And so now I’m at home and I’m packed. I’ve got my bags packed because if he finds it, I don’t know what he’s going to do. I’m worried he might find him guilty because of all that had happened. He, when the trial ended a given night, and the next day he was going to give the result. In fact, I didn’t go out and play that night. I was a little nervous, and I stayed home, and I packed up my bags. I packed up my bags, and about 9 o’clock, I got in the car, and I started driving. And by the time he gave the ruling, I was probably about 100, maybe 150 miles away. And I hear on the radio, you know, found him not guilty, found him not guilty. So I turn around. Hit the next exit, turn around and come back. I turn around. Northbound on I-55. [49:27] Probably a couple hours later, here I am parked in my parking spot. My parking spot was in front of my office, right across from City Hall. And I parked in the mayor’s spot when she wasn’t there. And drove probably to drive her crazy. But that was where I parked. That was my parking spot. We’d see my big car with the RJC license plates parked in the bus stop. And so here I am. I parked the car and I go in. I go in. [50:01] And I’m sure Pat told some people, probably not, but I’m sure they told all the mobsters, all the top mobsters, because these guys all wanted to meet me afterwards and get the restaurant. I go in to see them. We walked into the janitor’s closet. You walk out of Counselor’s Row. You go to the left. It goes into the 100 North Building. Now, you’ve got the elevators to the right. And behind that, you’ve got a closet where the janitors keep all their stuff. And you’ve got some stairs leading up to the, there was a, what do you call it? There was an office there where the commodities, big commodity exchange was right there. that there was a stairway leading up to where the offices were with some doors with bars and everything on it. And Pat is standing on those stairs, about two or three stairs. You know, I said, wow. I said, you know, everybody’s going nuts. And he goes, well, you know, you did a good job. And he gives me an envelope. He gives me an envelope. And, you know, I put the money in my pocket. [51:09] We said we had some more. We said a couple other words about, you know, this and that. And then I just go in there. I go back in the counselor’s. [51:21] Now, after the feds started getting indictments, did you try and warn the Aleman case judge, Frank Wilson? Why did you do that? And when I went to see Frank Wilson, I went to help him. I said, Frank, I said, look, I said, I was contacted by, I said, I was contacted by the, by the, by the FBI. They were investigating the Harry Aleman case. I said to him, I said, they, they feel the case was fixed. I said, when they come to see me, I said, you know, I said, I’m not going to talk to them. I said, I’m not going to talk to them. I’m going to take the fifth. And in your case, you can do the same thing. When they, if they come to talk to you, you just take the fifth amendment. If they give you immunity, I said, you know, then you, then you testify, but you tell them the truth. I said, don’t worry about me. Tell them the truth. This is how I talk to him. When I’m talking to him like that, it’s almost like he’s trying to run away from me. [52:27] We’re at a restaurant in a big complex. It was in one of those resorts in Arizona. He’s all but running away from me. I was trying to help him. What I said to him was, Frank, I said, the statute of limitations ran on all this. It’s been more than five years. There’s nothing they can do to you or to me, I said, because the statute ran. I said, so don’t lie to them. What the feds were concerned about, and I don’t know why, that he would deny ever fixing the case when it went through. I don’t know why they’re worried about that, but they were, and I didn’t want to see him get in trouble. [53:13] That’s why I went there to protect him. Hey, Bob, you were asked to represent an outfit associate or an outfit associate’s son who was accused of breaking the jaw of a Chicago policewoman. And you know, when a cop is injured in a fight with somebody, the cops follow that case. And I do not want to see any shenanigans going on. So, so tell us about how you walked that line. And I bet those cops were, were not happy with you in the end. Some people think this is a reason you flipped. Take us inside that case, will you? [53:45] And the reason I mentioned that it had a lot to do with what I eventually did. Now we’ll get back to what made me do what I was going to do. When I was practicing law now, and now I have been away from all this for years, I was out of town a lot because I’m representing the Chinese all around the country. I’m their main lawyer right now. [54:10] And I get a call from Lenny Colella. And he says, my son, he said, my son is in trouble. I want to come in and I want to talk to you about handling his case. This was a heater case, too. This was a front page case because he was charged with aggravated battery and attempted murder. Supposedly, he had beat up a policewoman and it was all over the place. He was a drug addict and whatever, supposedly he did all this. And when he came into the office with his dad, he was high. When I talked to him, he’s got his kid with him. And the kid is a smart aleck. As we’re talking, the kid, and I asked the kid, well, whatever. The kid was a smart aleck. And I just said to him, I said, Len, I can’t help you. I said, get him out of here. I want nothing to do with him. I said, I can’t help you. You didn’t take cases that were involved with cops anyhow, for the most part. No. I didn’t know what had happened in this case. I know what I saw in the paper. I didn’t know what the facts or anything were or whatever. I mean, if it turned out that if I felt when I talked to him that he had done it, whatever, I would not have taken the case anyhow. [55:26] I mean, I would not have. That’s why I say, too, that may be, too, why I was as quick and as rude as I was when he came in there and was acting and was a little bit high. I just wanted nothing to do with him, period. I said to his dad, his father said, you know, if I get him cleaned up, you know, I said, well, if you get him cleaned up, then we’ll talk again. I said, but I can’t help him, and I can’t help him. [55:54] And off he goes. the father re-contacted me about a week later. And he said, I had him in rehab and he straightened out and whatever. And he brought him back in and it was a new person. And when he told me the facts of the case, when he told me what happened, because he was a big, tough kid. He was a big, you know, he was a weightlifter, but he was a big, tough looking kid. [56:19] And it’s a little police woman. When he told me what happened, I believed him. Because I’ve been out in the street and whatever. And he says, you know, he told me what happened, that he had gotten stopped. He was out there talking to her. And when she said, you’re under arrest for DUI, he just walked. He says, I walked. I was going to get in my car and drive away. And she grabbed me and was pulling me or whatever. And I hear all these sirens coming. And within a few minutes, there’s all kinds of police. There’s about half a dozen police there. He says, and then they started jumping on me. He said, she was under me. He was all beaten up. He was all bloody and whatever. And she apparently had her jaw broken. And there’s no doubt in my mind when he’s telling me that, you know, when they were hit with his clubs or with this thing that they claimed he had without his fingerprints, it was a metal bar. Right, a slapper. A chunk of lead covered by leather. Everybody used to carry a slapper. How about you carry a slapper? They claimed, but there was no cloth on this. It was just the metal itself. Yeah, oh really? [57:45] Anyhow, that makes it interesting during the trial when they flat out lied. No, he had no blood. I got the hospital reports. They wouldn’t take him in the station because he was too badly beaten up. But anyhow, he also had two other charges. He had been involved in a fight in a bar. And he had been involved in another situation with the police. And he was charged with resisting arrest and battery on a policeman out in Cicero. So he had these three cases. So I gave the father a fee on handling, you know, the one, I was going to, I gave him a fee one case at a time. I said, you know, first thing we’ll do, I want to get rid of those other two cases. I’ll take them to juries, I said. [58:36] I’ll take them to juries because I wasn’t going to put them. I knew both the judges on those cases, but I wasn’t going to put them in a position on a case like that. I take the first case to trial. And I get him a not guilty. That was the fight in the bar. [58:54] That was out in one of the suburbs. That was out in, I’m not sure which suburb, in the northwest side. After we get that case over with, before that case, I get a call from Pat Marcy. Pat Marcy, I hadn’t seen him probably even for a couple months, but I hadn’t talked to him for quite a long period of time. And he says to me, you got a case that just came in. He said, we’re going to handle it. And I said, there’s no need, Pat. I said, I can win these cases. I said, there’s no need. I can win these cases. And he said, we’re going to handle this. The case is going to go to Judge Passarella, he said, and we’ll take care of it. I said, Pat, there’s no need to. I said, I can win these cases. I said, they’re all jury trials, but I know I can win them all. And he says, you do as you’re told. Pat had never talked to me like that before. [59:54] Powerful as he was and crazy as I am, And he never, you know, you never demand that I do anything or whatever. We had a different type relationship. And although I hadn’t broken away from them by now, it’s been years. I had broken away from them for about, you know, two, three years. And he says, you know, take the case to trial. I said, well, he’s got some other cases, too, and I’m going to take the one. And she says, I’ll take it to a jury, and I’ll win it. You’ll see how I win it. I take her to trial, and I get her not guilty. The second case was set for trial about a month after that. Not even, yeah, about a month or so after that. And during that time, a couple of times I’m in counselors, and Pat says, when are you going to take the case to trial? I said, well, Pat, you know, I won the one case. I got the other case on trial, and it was before Judge Stillo. He was a judge that we eventually indicted. [1:00:51] Stillo was very, very well connected to the first ward. He’s one of the old-time judges out in Maywood. And I told him, you know, when I came in there, he assumed I’d take it to trial and he’d throw it out. And I said, no, no, no, there’s no need to. I says, I’m going to take the jury on this one. Number one, I had stopped fixing things long before this. And, but he was, to make money, he was willing that he would have thrown the case out. It was a battery with a Cicero policeman. And I says, no, no, I’ll take it. I’ll take it to, you know, I’ll take the jury. I said, I don’t want to put you in that pursuit. Oh, don’t worry about me. I take that one to trial and I win that one too. Now Pat calls me, when the hell are you going to take the case to trial? And that’s the original case with the police woman. That’s the main one. The main one. Okay, go ahead. [1:01:44] When are you going to take it to trial? And I don’t want to take it to trial. In fact. I had talked to the prosecutor, and I said, look, I said, because he was charged with, he was charged with, you know, attempted murder and arrest. I said, if you’ll reduce it, the prosecutor was an idiot. He knew me, should have realized that, you know, that I never lose cases. Yeah. You know, but I want to work out something. He was a special prosecutor on it. He said, we’re not going to reduce it. We said, you know, if you want to work out a plea, we went five years, we went five to ten or whatever in the penitentiary. And I said, well, that’s not going to happen. I said, well, then we’ll just have to go to trial. So now, while I’m at Counselor’s Row, on one of my many occasions, because I was still having some card games over there at somebody else’s other lawyer’s office, because I had had big card games going on there for years. I’m sitting at the counselor’s row table, and Judge Passarella comes in. There’s just him and me there, and when he comes in, I say, Oh, you’re here to see Pat? [1:02:56] And he goes, Pat, who? No more conversation. Who the fuck? No more. The guy’s treating me like I’m some kind of a fool or whatever. And I developed an instant disliking to him. I had never seen him around that much or whatever before that. So now, after the second case, you’re going to go to, you know. So I talked to Lenny. When Lenny came in, Lenny came in with him when we were starting to get prepared for the case. And, oh, this is before this is before I talked to the prosecutor. And I said, Lenny, I said, I says, if I can get it reduced to a misdemeanor, to a misdemeanor. I said, you know, can we work with, you know, and work out a plea, let’s say, for maybe a month or two, you know, a month or two. Is that OK with you? Oh, sure. He says, oh, sure. [1:03:57] Now, this Lenny, this was the kid’s dad, your client’s dad. This is his dad. Now, explain who he was, who Lenny was. His dad was. What’s his last name? Yeah, Karela. Karela, okay. Lenny Karela, I’m pretty sure was his name. He owned a big bakery out there in Elmwood Park area. Okay. And he was friendly with all the mobsters. Okay, all right. I got you. For all I knew, he may have been a mobster himself, but I mean, he may have been because we had thousands of people that were connected. He was a connected guy. All right, go ahead. I’m sorry. And he said, oh, yeah, sure, no, not a problem because the papers are meant, they’re still, after a year, they’re still mentioning that case will be going to trial soon and every so often. [1:04:43] What I had also done, I tried to make contact with the policewoman, not with her, but I put the word out and I knew a lot of police and I got a hold of somebody that did know her. And I said, look, I said, no, the case is fixed if I want it. Yeah. But I don’t want it. Even though I know that, you know, that it’s all BS, you know, I said, look, I said, get a hold of her and get a hold of her lawyer and tell them if they want to file a lawsuit, you know, you know, we can, they can get themselves some money on it. Uh, you know, he’ll indicate, you know, he’ll, he’ll, he’ll indicate that, you know, he, he was guilty or whatever, but I wanted to get her some money. The word I get back is tell him that piece of shit, meaning me to drop dead, to drop dead. You know, we’re going to put this guy in prison and that’s where he should be too. When the case now, now when the case goes to trial. [1:05:48] The coppers lied like hell and talk about stupid. I’ve got the police reports there. When they took him into the police station, they wouldn’t take him. The station said take him to a hospital. He goes to the hospital and the reports, you know, bleeding here, bleeding there, and, you know, marks here, marks there. They beat the hell out of him. [1:06:10] You know, nobody touched him. You know, nobody touched him. Nobody touched him. Was he bleeding? No, no, he wasn’t. He wasn’t bleeding. Didn’t have any, you know, along with, you know, along with everything else. Flat out lied. How many policemen were there? There were two or three. There were about 10 by the time it’s over. But it’s an absolute throwout. Any fingerprints on that metal? Well, we had some fingerprints, but not his. And on and on it went. It’s a throwout case to start with. The courtroom now where the case was, was very interesting. You walk in there, and when you walk in there, there’s about 20 people that can sit. And then there’s, it’s the only courtroom in the building where you have a wall, a glass wall, all the way up, all the way up. Covering in the door, opens up and goes in there. You go in there. It’s a big courtroom. A bunch of benches now in there. You go to the left, and here’s the judge’s chambers. You come out of the chambers, and you walk up about four steps. And here the desk is on like a podium. And it’s not where all the others are, you know, where you look straight forward. It’s over on the side. It’s over, you know, to the left as you walk out of his chambers. [1:07:40] When the judge listens to the case he goes in there I’ll come up back with my ruling he comes out about 10 minutes later he walks up the steps, And now he turns off the microphone. Somebody turns off the microphone so the people in the back can’t hear anything. The ones inside there can, you know, can hear. The one back there can’t hear anything because it’s all enclosed. [1:08:11] That’s why they got the microphone back there. Somebody shut it off. He says, basically, I’m not guilty in a real strange voice. And all but runs off the all but run and don’t ask me why this is what he did all but runs off all but runs off into the into his chambers, you know he’s afraid all those cops out in the audience were going to come and charge the stand I guess and put a whack on him. [1:08:43] But think about it this is Chicago he’s with the bad guys but I’m just saying I don’t know why he did all that, but that’s what he did. And so now, as I come walking out with Mike, and they’re all in uniform, and most of them are in uniform, and then you’ve got the press and all kinds of cameras and whatever there. And as I come walking out along with him, some of these guys I know, and these jerk-offs are like calling me names and whatever. I go, I go see Pat. [1:09:23] And when I go back into Counselor’s Row now, he’s there at the table. And when I come in, it’s a repeat of the Harry Allerman thing. He walks out. He walks directly. And I’m following him, and he walks in. He goes back into the same janitor’s closet and stands on the same steps just above me, you know, talking to me. And I said to him I said this judge is going to have a problem, I said, he’s going to have a problem. I said, what if he says something? And he said to me, nobody would dare. He said, nobody would dare cooperate against us. They know what would happen. Or words to that effect. And don’t ask me why. So many other things had happened before this. But now I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, you know, somebody’s got to stop this craziness. All this stuff. I’m thinking that at the moment, but then I’m worried for some reason, I think he can read my mind. [1:10:34] Stupid as all of this seems, I’m afraid to think that anymore. I’m almost, you know, cause Pat’s such a powerful person and every sense I know, I know his power, but anyhow, so I leave. And like I say, 10, 15 minutes later, that’s all forgotten about. He paid me the rest of the money I was supposed to get from them. [1:10:56] Obviously, he wanted to do it because he was probably charging a lot of money. That’s why he didn’t want me to take things. He wanted to collect the money because while the case was going on too, he puts me in touch with the head of the probation department because he was able to help in some way. He knew some of the, you know, some of the, some of the policemen involved in the thing had been contacted too. Yeah. But they were contacted and they messed up by, you know, they messed up by lying about all that. Yeah. When there’s police reports saying, oh, no, but anyhow, that was that particular case. Tell us why you decided to flip. [1:11:38] These had been your friends. You knew you had explosive information. You knew as a lawyer, you knew what you had to say would send these people to prison for many, many years. if not life. It had to be hard. As other things happened, why did I commit the, Probably two or three other times things happened. But the most important thing was to think when my dad was dying, and I was very close to my dad. When my dad was dyi

John Anderson speaks with James Orr to examine the deeper moral, cultural, and institutional pressures shaping Britain and the wider Western world. Drawing on political philosophy, social analysis, and recent events, Orr challenges the prevailing assumption that economic management and procedural politics can sustain a stable society. He argues that questions of identity, belonging, and shared obligation now sit at the centre of national renewal. This conversation traces the erosion of social trust, the limits of rights-based politics, and the consequences of demographic and cultural fragmentation. It is a measured discussion that reorients political debate toward the moral and cultural foundations required for long-term national stability, rather than short-term policy adjustments. Dr. Orr holds a PhD and MPhil in Philosophy of Religion from the University of Cambridge and a BA in Classics from Oxford. He is a political philosopher, writer, and commentator whose work focuses on conservatism, political theology, identity, and the cultural preconditions of liberal democracy, with particular attention to Britain's institutional and civilisational inheritance.

Send us a textIn this special episode of the Self Reflection Podcast, host Lira Ndifon steps into new territory by inviting two transformative guests: Eric Yuan from the San Mateo County Behavioral Health Department and Dr. Harry Ding, a fifth-generation Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner. Together, they discuss their innovative community program that bridges the gap between Western medical administration and Eastern holistic practices. Eric shares his personal testimony of overcoming a severe thyroid condition through Dr. Harry's care, which inspired them to serve over 1,200 patients by treating not just the body, but the mind and soul with "love as the best medicine."The conversation dives deep into the metaphysics of health, explaining the concept of "Chi" (life force energy) and how stagnation in specific meridians can manifest as emotional struggles like depression, anger, or worry. Dr. Harry breaks down the art of pulse diagnosis, explaining how a practitioner can detect mental health issues simply by feeling the rhythm of the blood flow in the wrist. He details how different positions on the left and right wrist correspond to internal organs like the heart, liver, and spleen, offering a window into a patient's emotional state without them saying a word.In a vulnerable and educational segment, Lira undergoes a live consultation and pulse reading. Dr. Harry analyzes her sleep patterns, digestion, and stress levels to reveal a "weak spleen" and "blood deficiency" caused by overthinking and irregular eating habits. The episode concludes with actionable TCM advice for listeners, including the importance of sleeping before 11:00 PM (liver time), incorporating red meats for blood regeneration, and drinking rose tea to release stress stagnation.Support the showCall to Action: Engage with the Self-Reflection Podcast community! Like, follow, and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube (Self-Reflection Podcast by Lira Ndifon), and all major podcast platforms. Share your insights and feedback—we value your contributions! Suggest topics you'd like us to explore. Your support amplifies our reach, sharing these vital messages of self-love and empowerment. Until our next conversation, prioritize self-care and embrace your journey. Grab your copy of "Awaken Your True Self" on Amazon. Until next time, be kind to yourself and keep reflecting.

V. F. Mejia has a process for writing that might change the way you show up for your writing! And she's just funded her first Kickstarter, and Rachael can't be more excited about this one! V. F. Mejia is a sapphic fantasy author dedicated to writing for all the Latine sapphics out in the world. With a focus on Peruvian folklore, history, and mythology, her books transport readers to immersive new worlds outside the Western sphere.When she's not writing she's hiking through ruins or reading sapphic fantasy/sci-fi or both simultaneously (thank god for audiobooks). Her debut novel The Glory of Gold is fully funded on Kickstarter and will be released March 2026. Find everything here: https://linktr.ee/vfmejiaThe Glory of Gold Kickstarter here! http://rachaelherron.com/valeria✏️ Writing in the Junkyard Online Writing Retreat! Join us! http://rachaelherron.com/retreat

Vanity Fair has gone and done it, they've revealed the true grotesqueness of the Trump administration with high res, close up photos of the White House staff. Or is it really all that surprising, when we've been chatting about Republican makeup and Mar-A-Lago face for months?This week, hosts Ione and Gina get to grips with the reasons behind why MAGA women are investing so heavily in this particular beauty look, with all signs posting to power dynamics, a desire to shock and obscene displays of wealth.Buy our newest issue here!Support our work and become a Polyester Podcast member

China's position as the world's factory is shifting. Growth is slowing to approximately 4-5%, wages are rising, the workforce is shrinking due to an aging population, the property crisis is weighing on GDP, and Western tariffs are restricting exports. For decades, China produced goods at low cost, but a significant supply chain gap is now emerging. India is emerging as a leading contender, with a 6.4% growth forecast, production-linked incentives attracting companies such as Apple, Samsung, and Micron, and digital infrastructure like UPI and Aadhaar accelerating business. Vietnam, Mexico, and Indonesia are also competing for manufacturing investment. The key question is whether India can redefine manufacturing through scale, stability, and strong domestic demand, or if bureaucracy and inequality will impede its progress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Stewart Alsop sits down with Joe Wilkinson of Artisan Growth Strategies to talk through how vibe coding is changing who gets to build software, why functional programming and immutability may be better suited for AI-written code, and how tools like LLMs are reshaping learning, work, and curiosity itself. The conversation ranges from Joe's experience living in China and his perspective on Chinese AI labs like DeepSeek, Kimi, Minimax, and GLM, to mesh networks, Raspberry Pi–powered infrastructure, decentralization, and what sovereignty might mean in a world where intelligence is increasingly distributed. They also explore hallucinations, AlphaGo's Move 37, and why creative “wrongness” may be essential for real breakthroughs, along with the tension between centralized power and open access to advanced technology. You can find more about Joe's work at https://artisangrowthstrategies.com and follow him on X at https://x.com/artisangrowth.Check out this GPT we trained on the conversationTimestamps00:00 – Vibe coding as a new learning unlock, China experience, information overload, and AI-powered ingestion systems05:00 – Learning to code late, Exercism, syntax friction, AI as a real-time coding partner10:00 – Functional programming, Elixir, immutability, and why AI struggles with mutable state15:00 – Coding metaphors, “spooky action at a distance,” and making software AI-readable20:00 – Raspberry Pi, personal servers, mesh networks, and peer-to-peer infrastructure25:00 – Curiosity as activation energy, tech literacy gaps, and AI-enabled problem solving30:00 – Knowledge work superpowers, decentralization, and small groups reshaping systems35:00 – Open source vs open weights, Chinese AI labs, data ingestion, and competitive dynamics40:00 – Power, safety, and why broad access to AI beats centralized control45:00 – Hallucinations, AlphaGo's Move 37, creativity, and logical consistency in AI50:00 – Provenance, epistemology, ontologies, and risks of closed-loop science55:00 – Centralization vs decentralization, sovereign countries, and post-global-order shifts01:00:00 – U.S.–China dynamics, war skepticism, pragmatism, and cautious optimism about the futureKey InsightsVibe coding fundamentally lowers the barrier to entry for technical creation by shifting the focus from syntax mastery to intent, structure, and iteration. Instead of learning code the traditional way and hitting constant friction, AI lets people learn by doing, correcting mistakes in real time, and gradually building mental models of how systems work, which changes who gets to participate in software creation.Functional programming and immutability may be better aligned with AI-written code than object-oriented paradigms because they reduce hidden state and unintended side effects. By making data flows explicit and preventing “spooky action at a distance,” immutable systems are easier for both humans and AI to reason about, debug, and extend, especially as code becomes increasingly machine-authored.AI is compressing the entire learning stack, from software to physical reality, enabling people to move fluidly between abstract knowledge and hands-on problem solving. Whether fixing hardware, setting up servers, or understanding networks, the combination of curiosity and AI assistance turns complex systems into navigable terrain rather than expert-only domains.Decentralized infrastructure like mesh networks and personal servers becomes viable when cognitive overhead drops. What once required extreme dedication or specialist knowledge can now be done by small groups, meaning that relatively few motivated individuals can meaningfully change communication, resilience, and local autonomy without waiting for institutions to act.Chinese AI labs are likely underestimated because they operate with different constraints, incentives, and cultural inputs. Their openness to alternative training methods, massive data ingestion, and open-weight strategies creates competitive pressure that limits monopolistic control by Western labs and gives users real leverage through choice.Hallucinations and “mistakes” are not purely failures but potential sources of creative breakthroughs, similar to AlphaGo's Move 37. If AI systems are overly constrained to consensus truth or authority-approved outputs, they risk losing the capacity for novel insight, suggesting that future progress depends on balancing correctness with exploratory freedom.The next phase of decentralization may begin with sovereign countries before sovereign individuals, as AI enables smaller nations to reason from first principles in areas like medicine, regulation, and science. Rather than a collapse into chaos, this points toward a more pluralistic world where power, knowledge, and decision-making are distributed across many competing systems instead of centralized authorities.

AWS Morning Brief for the week of December 22, 2025, with Corey Quinn. Links:Automate java performance troubleshooting with AI-Powered thread dump analysis on Amazon ECS and EKSAmazon Threat Intelligence identifies Russian cyber threat group targeting Western critical infrastructureOptimize WordPress performance on Amazon EKS with Amazon FSx for OpenZFSAWS reduces publishing time for Carbon Footprint Data to 21 days or LessAWS Payment Cryptography reduces API pricing by up to 63% and introduces tiered key pricingKey Commitment Issues in S3 Encryption ClientsCoursera and AWS survey reveals how technology leaders navigate cloud and AI transformationAutomated extraction of compressed files on Amazon S3 using AWS Batch and Amazon ECSCryptomining campaign targeting Amazon EC2 and Amazon ECS

Australia wants to ban social media for kids under 16, school shooters' parents face 180-year sentences, and Western governments increasingly act like surrogate parents. Kevin and Bill ask the big question: who actually has God-given authority over children—parents, the state, or the child himself?

Humans cannot help but understand ourselves and our story through ritual. For Christians, as also for many irreligious people in the west today, this happens nowhere more powerfully than through the liturgy of the Church. Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with Cosima Clara Gillhammer of Oxford University's Lady Margaret Hall. Drawing on insights from her new book, Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy, this conversation explores how Christian liturgy — in many senses the soil of the Western imagination — invites us to renew our participation in the story of Christ.Find the companion website for Cosima's book here.We apologize for the sheer profusion of Tolkien allusions in this episode. Merry Christmas, and "Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima! "Enjoying this podcast? To keep abreast of what's going on at The Ridley Institute, or to learn more about opportunities to grow and train for Christian discipleship and mission, connect with us online: Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ridleyinstitute.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@RidleyInstitute⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. To learn about training for Anglican gospel work, check out Ridley's ⁠⁠⁠Certificate in Anglican Studies⁠⁠⁠, and other ⁠⁠⁠lay theological formation offerings⁠⁠⁠.Thinking of visiting a church?Visit here to find an Anglican church near you.

In this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Zubeda Jalalzai about her book Literary License and the West's Romance with Afghanistan (Bloomsbury, 2023). Literary License and the West's Romance with Afghanistan, analyzes the role literature and poetic sensibility played in colonial British and American writings on Afghanistan from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. The book also examines how literature and literariness themselves have shaped Western discourses framing Afghanistan. British Romantic Orientalists of the nineteenth century studied the region in depth and were drawn to what they perceived as an alien space—one in which they could remake themselves in print and in life. Writers who followed, including scholars, civil servants, and wives or professional women, were inspired by the region and at times crossed ethnic, national, and imaginative boundaries. The book explores the connections forged in print through both fantastic and familiar assumptions about Afghanistan and its people. Qaseem Ahmadzai have studied Intellectual History in Sweden. His research focuses on postcolonial theory, historiography, and non-Western intellectual traditions, with particular attention to Afghanistan and the broader Pashto-Persianate and Islamic worlds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode, Kelly shares her journey with mold toxicity, hidden symptoms, and integrated healing. She talks about nervous system regulation, honest storytelling, and how leading with pure intentions can boost creativity, success, and connection. Take charge of your healing, speak your truth, and never underestimate the power of your body and mind working together. [3:03] Gluten Sensitivity "Good quality or bad quality doesn't matter. But I had it and I noticed I got rashes under my armpits after having that." [7:59] Integrated Healing "I am a really big believer in functional medicine. I also am a big believer in Western medicine." [13:56] Living with a Monster "I was like, 'Oh my god, there was like a purple monster growing out of my wall.'" [16:45] Hidden Mold, Hidden Symptoms "You check your house, you check your body for mold, you do the tests." [19:30] When Honesty Heals "I like telling you where I'm at and any type of struggle that I'm going through because it could help someone." [24:33] Pure Intentions "I'm not responsible for how people perceive me. I know that my heart is good and I have really pure intentions." [27:27] Regulate to Rise "I know that regulating my nervous system is not only going to help with this mold situation, but it is also going to help with my creativity and my success, my future success, and my love life as well."   Connect with Kelly here: Follow Me on Instagram at @chaselifewithkelly - https://www.instagram.com/chaselifewithkelly/ Follow Me on TikTok at @iamkellychase - https://www.tiktok.com/@iamkellychase _t=8WCIP546ma6&_r=1 Subscribe to My YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNqhN0CXWVATKfUjwrm65-g Work with Me: Private 1:1 Business & Mindset Coaching- More Details- https://www.chaselifewithkelly.com/private-coaching  Rejection to Redemption - More Details: https://www.chaselifewithkelly.com/rejection-to-redemption  Online Business Accelerator- More Details: https://www.chaselifewithkelly.com/online-business-accelerator  Money Magnet - More Details: https://www.chaselifewithkelly.com/money-magnet  Goddess Magic Course Bundle - More Details - https://www.chaselifewithkelly.com/goddess-magic Kelly's Favorites   https://linktr.ee/chaselifewithkelly Visit Our Website!  https://www.chaselifewithkelly.com

In this episode of the Kpopcast, the hosts recap the significant events, trends, and controversies in the K-Pop industry for the year 2025. They discuss the rise of queer visibility among idols, notable scandals, and the impact of K-Pop on the Western market. The conversation also includes personal song picks and the annual K-Pop awards, highlighting the best and most controversial moments of the year. In this engaging conversation, the hosts explore the evolving landscape of K-Pop, discussing the latest trends, notable awards, and the impact of rookie groups. They delve into brand collaborations, the influence of Western music, and the unconventional hits that have defined the year. The discussion culminates in a debate over the Song of the Year, highlighting the duality of K-Pop through contrasting tracks that embody both light and dark themes.SONG OF THE YEAR AWARD ARTIST NOMINEES: JENNIE, CORTIS, KATSEYE, HUNTRIX, ATEEZ, BLACKPINK, XLOV, HWASA**NOTE: We at the Kpopcast sincerely regret that we forgot to nominate “Body” by Dayoung for our Kpopcast exclusive award: “Hoe Anthem.” We look forward to seeing more sexy & empowering music from Dayoung in the coming year!Chapters00:00The Rise of K-Pop Demon Hunters34:19Cultural Impact and Authenticity in K-Pop41:23Personal Picks: Songs That Resonate47:31K-Pop Cast Awards: Celebrating the Best of the Year51:05Innovative Choices in K-Pop Music52:02Emotional Soundtracks and Heartfelt Ballads53:54Rookie Groups Making Waves59:27Best Western-Friendly K-Pop Tracks01:02:10The Most Distinctive K-Pop Finds01:06:05Song of the Year: A Deep Dive into K-Pop's Best01:11:42Reflections on K-Pop's Evolution and FutureJoin the Kpopcast Slack: https://join.slack.com/t/kpopcast/shared_invite/zt-93kzxcv6-YNej2QkyY6vaPnhEQJxk0AChip in for editing: https://ko-fi.com/thekpopcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to First Principles. This is the part 2 of the 49th episode since we started, or the 8th episode of season 3.In this episode, I sit down with Aloke Bajpai, Group CEO of Ixigo, one of India's fastest-growing and most downloaded travel platforms. While most Indian OTAs followed the Western template of flights-first followed by hotels, Aloke and his co-founder Rajnish took a radically different path. The one that would take nearly 14 years before Ixigo became a full-blown OTA.Aloke takes us through Ixigo's unconventional journey, starting as a meta-search engine in 2007 that couldn't raise funding for over a year. We explore how the insight that 96% of Indians don't fly, led them to build a train-first platform, spending four years creating utility features without any monetization. He breaks down the technical innovation behind solving India-specific problems. Right from predicting waitlist confirmations using machine learning to creating a crowdsourced running status system using cell tower IDs when GPS and internet failed along railway tracks.A central theme is resilience through empathy. Aloke shares how near-death experiences during the 2008 global financial crisis and COVID-19 shaped Ixigo's culture. We discuss the founder's decision to go to zero salary, the whiteboard moment where the entire team transparently decided on salary cuts, and the contrarian choice to proactively refund customers during COVID even when the company was running out of money. Finally, Aloke argues that peace of mind, not tickets, is what travel companies should really be selling. First Principles has been named one of the best shows of 2025 on Apple Podcasts India! Every listen and every share is what keeps us going. We get to dive into these conversations because you show up for them. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Check out all other episodes here.

In this charged “Kim on a Whim,” the discussion takes aim at the growing threat of radical Islam and the refusal of many leaders to confront it. Kim cites global terror statistics showing tens of thousands of Islamist attacks since 9/11 and argues that political correctness and open-border policies have left Western nations vulnerable. Marc adds that too few Muslim leaders publicly condemn violence, while Europe's fear-driven cancellations of public celebrations show how far the problem has spread. The segment closes with a call for tougher immigration policies and a defense of free speech and national security.

The increasingly acrimonious U.S.-China relationship is the defining trend of this era, upending global politics, economics, and security, especially across the Global South. Countries that have worked hard from having to pick sides in this new competition, may longer have that luxury as this rivalry intensifies. Jane Perlez, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a former longtime China correspondent for The New York Times, has been covering this story since the 1980s. Now, together with acclaimed Harvard University China scholar Rana Mitter, she's launched season 3 of her award-winning podcast Face Off: The U.S. vs. China, where they explore the key trends reshaping ties between these two powers. Jane joins Eric from Sydney to discuss the forces driving this rivalry: leadership personality, domestic pressure, technological competition, and the tightening link between geopolitics and economic strategy.

In this episode, Sherry talks with Amy Stein, an herbalist, energy medicine educator, trauma-informed breathwork facilitator, and motivational speaker, to explore what it really means to heal — beyond symptoms, diagnoses, and willpower.This episode is a powerful reminder that your body is not broken — it's communicating.What You'll Hear in This EpisodeAmy shares her personal journey of growing up immersed in Western medicine, only to find herself chronically ill in her mid-20s — mirroring the very patients she once worked with. What followed was years of unanswered questions, standardized protocols, and the painful realization that being “too sensitive” was never the problem.Together, Sherry and Amy unpack the deeper layers of healing — trauma, safety, energy, breath, and the body's innate intelligence.Key Topics We Explore:1. When the Body Speaks — and No One ListensAmy describes what it's like to experience invisible illness and autoimmune symptoms in a system that only validates what it can measure. This conversation will resonate deeply with anyone who has felt dismissed, unseen, or told “everything looks normal” when it clearly isn't.2. Trauma Isn't Just What Happened — It's the Body's ResponseThis episode gently dismantles the idea that trauma has to be “big” to be real.Trauma can be grief, chronic stress, dieting, emotional suppression, or even daily traffic.The body doesn't distinguish between past and present — or perceived and real threats.What matters is how the nervous system responds.3. Safety, the Nervous System & Why Healing Can Feel ImpossibleSherry and Amy explore why true healing can't happen in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn — and why so many people stay stuck in survival mode for decades.You'll hear how:Restriction (including dieting) can be traumatic to the bodyFeeling unsafe in your body drives self-sabotageThe body prioritizes survival over thrivingAnd why learning to feel safe again is foundational for healing, weight regulation, and emotional freedom.4. Why Awareness Alone Isn't EnoughMany people in therapy develop deep awareness of their triggers — yet remain stuck. Amy explains how repeatedly retelling trauma without engaging the body can actually re-traumatize the nervous system, and why healing must include the physical and energetic body — not just the mind.5. Breathwork: The Most Accessible Healing Tool We HaveBreathwork becomes the heart of this episode.Amy explains why breath is so powerful:It directly regulates the nervous systemIt brings awareness back into the bodyIt requires no equipment, no story, and no perfectionUnlike meditation, breathwork allows movement, sound, emotion, and release — giving the body permission to process what it's been holding for years.6. Energy Medicine, Ancient Wisdom & Trusting What You Can't SeeThis conversation bridges ancient healing systems — herbalism, meridians, energy medicine — with modern nervous system science.Amy shares how combining:Plant medicineEnergy medicineBreathworkTrauma-informed supportcreated the breakthroughs that traditional medicine never could.Powerful TakeawaysYour body is not failing — it's communicatingTrauma is stored energy that needs movement, not suppressionHealing requires safety, not forceThe body leads; the mind followsSimple tools can create profound shiftsYou don't need to be “fixed” — you need to be supportedClosing ReflectionHealing isn't about arriving at a destination — it's about learning how to meet yourself with awareness, compassion, and trust.As Amy reminds us:“As long as you're in a physical body, healing is part of the journey.”This episode is an invitation to stop outsourcing your power — and begin listening to the wisdom that's been within you all along.

In this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Zubeda Jalalzai about her book Literary License and the West's Romance with Afghanistan (Bloomsbury, 2023). Literary License and the West's Romance with Afghanistan, analyzes the role literature and poetic sensibility played in colonial British and American writings on Afghanistan from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. The book also examines how literature and literariness themselves have shaped Western discourses framing Afghanistan. British Romantic Orientalists of the nineteenth century studied the region in depth and were drawn to what they perceived as an alien space—one in which they could remake themselves in print and in life. Writers who followed, including scholars, civil servants, and wives or professional women, were inspired by the region and at times crossed ethnic, national, and imaginative boundaries. The book explores the connections forged in print through both fantastic and familiar assumptions about Afghanistan and its people. Qaseem Ahmadzai have studied Intellectual History in Sweden. His research focuses on postcolonial theory, historiography, and non-Western intellectual traditions, with particular attention to Afghanistan and the broader Pashto-Persianate and Islamic worlds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Zubeda Jalalzai about her book Literary License and the West's Romance with Afghanistan (Bloomsbury, 2023). Literary License and the West's Romance with Afghanistan, analyzes the role literature and poetic sensibility played in colonial British and American writings on Afghanistan from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. The book also examines how literature and literariness themselves have shaped Western discourses framing Afghanistan. British Romantic Orientalists of the nineteenth century studied the region in depth and were drawn to what they perceived as an alien space—one in which they could remake themselves in print and in life. Writers who followed, including scholars, civil servants, and wives or professional women, were inspired by the region and at times crossed ethnic, national, and imaginative boundaries. The book explores the connections forged in print through both fantastic and familiar assumptions about Afghanistan and its people. Qaseem Ahmadzai have studied Intellectual History in Sweden. His research focuses on postcolonial theory, historiography, and non-Western intellectual traditions, with particular attention to Afghanistan and the broader Pashto-Persianate and Islamic worlds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/central-asian-studies

She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. — Revelation 12:2 What is the real impact of Christmas?For many of us in the Western world, the story of Christmas has a familiar cast of characters: Joseph and Mary, the shepherds, angels, the wise men, some sheep and cows to complete the manger scene—and, of course, Jesus. Front-yard displays in our neighborhoods might also include Santa, some elves, a few reindeer, and even some Star Wars characters.But the Bible shows that Christmas has a much greater and more serious significance. Christ's coming into our world spells the beginning of the end for Satan's power on earth. The devil wants to do all he can to destroy Christ's coming, or at least to distract our attention from it, because he knows that Jesus has come to break the power of sin and death.If it sometimes seems like a battle to remember Christmas and to focus on Christ as the center of it, we should not be surprised. Our celebration each year has cosmic significance—even eternal significance—and the devil “prowls around like a roaring lion” looking to undermine our joy that Christ has come (see 1 Peter 5:8). But we also remember God's provision in the face of danger. Just as God protected the baby Jesus from human and superhuman enemies, so God will provide for us. Mighty God, sometimes we must fight to remember what you have done for us. Protect us and guard our hearts and minds so that we may find joy and eternal security in Christ's coming. For Jesus' sake, Amen.

I sit down with former Oklahoma state senator and current Oklahoma director of the Freedom Caucus, Nathan Dahm. We discuss the rise of Islam in Oklahoma and the controversy surrounding the Broken Arrow planning commission voting to recommend the construction of a large mosque to the city council - in spite of hundreds of local residents protesting it. As usual, Dahm anchors his argument in the the constitution to present a clear-minded explanation of why Islam is not compatible with Western society.    And check out my amazing sponsors!    Motus Health - https://motushealth.com They are currently helping people who may be suffering with: Neuropathy Frozen shoulder Degenerated & Herniated Discs TMJ & jaw pain Weight Loss Autoimmune Disorders Gut Health Fibromyalgia Headaches & Migraines Trigeminal Neuralgia Knee Pain And more!! https://motushealth.com Michael Mcguire with McGuire Capitol    https://mcguirecap.com We pride ourselves on providing retirement income strategies to Bethany, OK and the surrounding communities. We take a look at your assets — including everything from your bank accounts, pension, and Social Security benefits, to your estate plans, wills, taxes, insurance policies and more Our end goal is to help create financial clarity and to promote multi-generational wealth. We offer: Insurance planning Beneficiary review Retirement planning Financial needs analysis Analysis of present and future expenses Income planning  https://mcguirecap.com   Stevens Trucking  https://stevenstrucking.com  Stevens Trucking maintains over 350 power units in our fleet so we ensure our customers and drivers always have top of the line equipment With over 1,600 trailers, we are able to offer a drop-and-hook solution to keep your freight moving quickly and secure. While also helping our drivers get extra miles so they can keep on pullin' more loads. https://stevenstrucking.com

In this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Zubeda Jalalzai about her book Literary License and the West's Romance with Afghanistan (Bloomsbury, 2023). Literary License and the West's Romance with Afghanistan, analyzes the role literature and poetic sensibility played in colonial British and American writings on Afghanistan from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. The book also examines how literature and literariness themselves have shaped Western discourses framing Afghanistan. British Romantic Orientalists of the nineteenth century studied the region in depth and were drawn to what they perceived as an alien space—one in which they could remake themselves in print and in life. Writers who followed, including scholars, civil servants, and wives or professional women, were inspired by the region and at times crossed ethnic, national, and imaginative boundaries. The book explores the connections forged in print through both fantastic and familiar assumptions about Afghanistan and its people. Qaseem Ahmadzai have studied Intellectual History in Sweden. His research focuses on postcolonial theory, historiography, and non-Western intellectual traditions, with particular attention to Afghanistan and the broader Pashto-Persianate and Islamic worlds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Send us a textPart 3 in our series called Biodivine focuses on a parable that Jesus cited in Luke 4:23.Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025, message from apostle Tommy Miller, senior pastor of Legacy Church, New Philadelphia, Ohio.Excerpt: "We really need to get rid of the gospel of separation and trade it for the gospel of inclusion. ... God does not want to heal your body. ... The function of thinking that God wants to heal your body is rooted in the belief that your body is separate from His. You can't find foundations for our Western belief system — as though we're reaching to somebody that is either granting or withholding healing to our bodies."The complete service, including worship, offering and announcements, is available in our Live section.Want more? Register for the Legacy Academy of Kingdom Living, which begins January 2026:https://lakl.learnworlds.com#asheissoareweinthisworld #asheissoareweinthisworld #unveiled #conscience #sons #manifestsons #union #legacychurchoh #newcreation #jesus #church #jesuschrist #gospel #transfigured #revelator #apostle #deathless #immortality #believe #bible #creator #godisgood #grace #hope #sermonshots #sermonclips #holyspirit #love #godislove #kingdom #peace #freedom #facebook #memes #truth #inspiration #motivationalquotes #vibes #positivevibes #christ #jesuslovesyou #russellbrand #jordanbpeterson #joerogan #atm #tommymiller #soulintelligence #EQ #emotionalintelligenceGet more life-changing content and community here:https://linktr.ee/tommymillerLearn more about Legacy Church: https://www.legacychurchint.org/Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/legacychurchohFollow us on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@LegacyChurchOHSow into what we're doing: https://www.legacychurchint.org/give Support the show

When the West Was WEIRD - Strange Western Tales by Steve StocktonBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/missing-persons-mysteries--5624803/support.