Podcasts about German

A serial killer who kept his victims' heads, a woman held under a waterbed for seven years, and a phantom passenger who vanishes from the back seat — the open road has taken more than its share.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/HitchhikingHorrorsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/29xmnbkaFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The open road is a beautiful place where you can make friends that you'd otherwise never meet and have adventures that will change your life. But there are also extreme dangers to traveling with strangers on highways and backroads. No matter how trustworthy or well-intentioned a driver might seem, it's nearly impossible to tell if they are actually a predator or murderer, preying upon innocent hitchhikers. Creepy, true hitchhiker stories can make you think twice before picking up that stranger at the side of the road - or trying to "thumb it" yourself.LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Hitchhiker” original story at the beginning of this episode was written by HoneyBunny00:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8b53e2“Hitchhiking Horror Stories” by Isadora Teich for Ranker.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3yj8t3ka, by Jacob Shelton for Ranker.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2s4a2wkz, Eric Redding for ThoughtCatalog.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/hk8pn8rf, and from ScaryCarries.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2aead59t“Phantom Hitchhikers” posted at Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y4dxkv7m, Kelly Agan for Medium.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/36wucpzm, Paul Adams for The History Press:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8z538u, and Krystal DeCosta for ScientificAmerican.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mr29nkpa(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2021Weird Darkness gathers the true horrors of the open road and the ghosts said to haunt it, moving from real hitchhiker murders across the United States and abroad to the phantom passengers who vanish from the back seat before the ride is over.It opens with the account of a newly married couple driving through a rainstorm who stop for a soaked hitchhiker, drop him at a crossroads, and later break down on a dark stretch of highway, only for the wife to wake to police floodlights and the sight of the same man atop their car with a machete over her husband's dismembered body, an escaped prison inmate cut down by gunfire moments after she runs.From there the show turns to a long run of documented and reported cases. Jacci Ansell-Lamb was last seen hitchhiking from London toward Manchester in May 1970 and found sexually assaulted and strangled with electrical wire outside Knutsford, England, a killing police have linked to serial murderer Peter Tobin though no suspect was ever charged. A German traveler on foot near Timaru, New Zealand had all his belongings stolen by a man in a white Honda in February 2016. Along Australia's outback near the cattle town of Hughenden, as many as twelve hitchhikers including eighteen-year-old Catherine Graham and thirty-two-year-old Tony Jones turned up dead over roughly two decades on a stretch dubbed the Highway of Death, the murders still unsolved. On May 19, 1977, twenty-year-old Colleen Stan was hitchhiking to a friend's birthday in California when Cameron Hooker picked her up and held her as a sex slave for seven years, keeping her in a box beneath his waterbed until his wife helped her escape in 1984 and Hooker drew a 104-year sentence.Next comes the case of Edmund Kemper, the six-foot-nine "Co-ed Killer" born December 18, 1948, who shot his grandmother and grandfather at fifteen, was released from a psychiatric hospital into his mother's care, and between May 1972 and February 1973 picked up hitchhiking female students, killed and decapitated them, and had sex with the corpses before murdering his mother with a claw hammer on Good Friday 1973 and phoning the same local police he drank with to confess. Woven among these are firsthand accounts shared online, among them a driver whose kindness reportedly talked a would-be killer out of his plan, a New Zealand couple who vanished in 1989 near Thames leading to the disputed conviction of David Tamihere, and a backpacker in Austria who fled a trucker's advances barefoot at a gas station.From there the episode moves deeper into unsolved and predatory cases. Between 1972 and 1973 the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders claimed at least seven women in Sonoma County, California, beginning with nineteen-year-old Kim Wendy Allen found bound and strangled in a creek bed on March 5, 1972, and including twelve-year-olds Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Weber, thirteen-year-old Lori Lee Kursa, fourteen-year-old Carolyn Davis, and twenty-three-year-old Theresa Walsh, the case never closed. The segment also gathers the crimes of clown-costumed killer John Wayne Gacy, trucker Keith Hunter Jesperson who dragged one victim beneath his rig, photographer Joseph Naso the "Alphabet Killer," the spree killers Douglas Gretzler and Willie Steelman, and sadistic trucker Ben Rhoades, caught when an Arizona trooper found a shackled woman inside his cab.The episode closes on the phantom hitchhiker, tracing the folk formula of the vanishing passenger before laying out the strongest real-world cases. One belongs to Maria Roux, killed on the N9 near Uniondale, South Africa on Good Friday 1968, whose specter was reported by driver Anton Le Grange in 1976 and motorcyclist Dawie Van Jaarsveld in 1978, her rear door seen opening and closing by a following officer. Another is "Lydia" of Jamestown, North Carolina, the white-gowned figure sighted at a railroad underpass since the 1920s and possibly rooted in the 1920 traffic death of Annie Jackson on the High Point Road. The final account belongs to carpet fitter Roy Fulton of Dunstable, England, who picked up a silent young man on Station Road near Stanbridge on October 12, 1979, turned to offer him a cigarette, and found the seat empty, a story he repeated without change on Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers in 1985.

P.M. Edition for July 21. Recent AI models from China claim they're just as powerful as some of the most cutting-edge models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Journal reporter Amrith Ramkumar joins to discuss the latest reactions from Silicon Valley and the White House. Plus, General Motors had a strong second quarter as consumers kept buying pickup trucks and SUVs. And New Jersey says a software error led to almost 400 non-citizens voting in elections in the state since 2023. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AI investment is reshaping the global outlook. In part one of this economic roundtable, our panel explores where the momentum is strongest — and where investment still needs to catch up.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Seth Carpenter: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Seth Carpenter, Morgan Stanley's Global Chief Economist and Head of Macro Research. Michael Gapen: And I'm Michael Gapen, Chief U.S. Economist. Chetan Ahya: And I'm Chetan Ahya, Chief Asia Economist. Jens Eisenschmidt: And I'm Jens Eisenschmidt, Chief Europe Economist. Seth Carpenter: And today is going to be our third quarter economic roundtable taking a wide-angle view on the global economy and all the key forces shaping our outlook and the economy. Seth Carpenter: It's Monday, July 20th at 10am in New York Jens Eisenschmidt: And 4pm in Frankfurt. Chetan Ahya: And 10pm in Hong Kong. Seth Carpenter: Since our last roundtable in April, the global economy has continued to face all sorts of shocks, a mix of resilience and friction. Inflation pressures have not disappeared. Energy and geopolitical risks have come up, they've receded, they've come back, they've receded all over the place But there is one underlying source of momentum that we have to talk about. And that is the AI-driven CapEx cycle. Michael, let me turn to you because the U.S. is a real focal point of all of this. Tell me a little bit about where Morgan Stanley Research is thinking about hyperscaler CapEx. How big it is? And then for you, when you think about the U.S. economy, just how big of a driver is it for what we're looking for in the U.S.? Michael Gapen: Yeah, we continue to revise higher our estimates for hyperscaler and AI-related CapEx in the U.S. economy. We were thinking a little over a trillion for 2027. Now we're more like 1.2 - 1.3 trillion, maybe as high as 1.4 trillion in 2028. So, the level of hyperscaler spending continues to keep rising. The growth rate and its effect on the economy is likely to slow. But as you noted, it's still a major driver of momentum in the U.S. You would look at that headline number and think, "Wow, that's, you know, 3.5 percent or so of GDP. Must be a massive source of momentum for GDP growth." But roughly about 60 percent of that hyperscaler CapEx spending goes to items like computers and peripherals, equipment spending categories that have a very, very high import content. We still get a significant number that AI CapEx is probably contributing around 40 basis points to growth this year. Be a similar-sized amount perhaps next year.So, for an economy that's growing somewhere a little bit above 2 percent right now, maybe closer to 2.5 percent next year, that's a non-trivial amount. We just have to remember it's fueling growth around the world, just not here in the U.S. Seth Carpenter: Yeah, that's a really great point because I have seen some estimates where people say, "Well, if it wasn't for AI CapEx, the U.S. economy wouldn't have grown at all." And that's clearly wrong, as you point out. But U.S. imports are necessarily exports from somewhere else. And, Chetan, if I can pull you into the story then, U.S. firms are buying a lot of AI-related equipment from Asia. What does that mean in your part of the world? And in particular, I'm thinking about Korea, Taiwan, and maybe some other economies in Asia. What's the critical story there? Chetan Ahya: So, for Asia, this has definitely been a big boon. If you look at Asia's exports, they have been booming, and particularly for the ones which are exporting semiconductors to the U.S. They are seeing semiconductor exports growing by 90 percent. And when we go back in time and compare Asia's semiconductor exports, it's very tightly linked to the U.S. IT CapEx. And it's not surprising when Mike Gapen mentions about the imports going up. It's on the other side, helping Asia's exports quite meaningfully. So, so far, we've seen this benefiting Korea, number one, Taiwan, and also Japan. All these three are big beneficiaries of U.S. AI CapEx. And of course, also not just U.S., but the other countries which are doing any little amount of CapEx on AI front, that's also helping these three economies in the region. Seth Carpenter: You've been doing a lot of work, Chetan, recently about how much the story can actually broaden out, that the AI CapEx cycle has really contributed to Asian growth, but it doesn't tell the whole story that there's a broader industrial cycle. Can you give us a little bit of a flavor of that story? Chetan Ahya: That's right, Seth. So, we are actually highlighting that there is a CapEx and industrial super cycle that is underway in Asia, and there are four components to this story. AI and semiconductors CapEx, which we just briefly discussed. Number two is energy. Number three is defense. And number four is industrial supply chain onshoring related CapEx. I know that everybody still thinks that AI is the most important part of this story, but when I give you the numbers and the breakup of that... So, for Asia, AI and semiconductor companies CapEx is about $380 billion in 2026, but energy CapEx is going to be $900 billion. So, this is a far broader story than just AI for Asia. Seth Carpenter: Mike, let me come back to you and to the U.S. then. So, isn't the growth story also broader than that as well domestically? So, what's going on in terms of consumer spending in the U.S., and is there a broader CapEx story in the U.S. as well? Michael Gapen: I would say, is it broader than that? I think maybe you could argue also it's narrower than that. Here's what I mean by that. As I noted AI CapEx contributing about 40 basis points to growth, it's certainly underpinning equity valuations in the U.S. and underpinning strong wealth creation. So about [$]180 trillion in household net worth in the U.S. About [$]55 trillion of that has been created in just the last five years alone, underpinned in part by AI-related spending and optimism about future profitability. That's really supported spending by upper income households. So, I think it's both investment-led and consumer-led, but they're inextricably linked. So, the positive for the U.S. is that it's providing a lot of resilience. The negative component of that is it feels like momentum in the U.S. is narrowly driven. Jens Eisenschmidt: Let me maybe jump in here from Europe to provide some perspective from the other side. So, I think it's a fair summary to say that AI investment is not yet, or maybe will never get there, dominating the business cycle. What we do have instead is an unusually consumption-driven expansion. That has to do not so much with an extraordinary strength of consumption, but more of an absence of other factors. Now, prospectively looking forward, we think the fiscal expansion might help lifting us a little bit. And then it is really the debate how much AI investment can arrive in Europe. For now, I would say it's probably a factor of 20 that separates European investment plans from the plans we know that exist for the U.S. Seth Carpenter: Let me stick with you then in Europe because you brought up fiscal as one of the factors going on here and where it's going… You and your team recently wrote a blue paper talking about what the outlook is for fiscal policy in Europe, and in particular, we had this era of cheap debt. Interest rates in Europe were low, at times negative. It was super easy to borrow. Not as much happened then. There's been a shift towards more fiscal expansion at the same time that interest rates have gone up, causing the cost of debt to go up. Feels like there's a lot of push and pull going on. Can you unpack for us a little bit what was in that paper you wrote, what's going on with fiscal policy in Europe, especially in Germany? And what it might mean over time for Euro-area countries? Jens Eisenschmidt: Yeah, so I think fiscal policy in Europe really is looking at a regime shift. So, there is this very famous, probably in the U.S. even more so than here, notion that the Europeans have built a very comfortable welfare state. And that's true if you just look at the accounting from a GDP perspective. It's close to 50 percent that, you know, budgets are actually extended on welfare spending. And now you have three structural headwinds for any type of fiscal spend. So, one is aging related costs, you mentioned it already. Defense spending has to increase significantly, and the interest rate costs will also rise significantly. All of that means there will be very hard choices to be made. The one thing that actually could help here is growth. Growth is the one thing that's, for now at least, missing, at least in comparison to the U.S. It's probably half what we expect, what the U.S. colleagues think is in stake for the U.S., and a quarter or even less than that of what is there in Asia. So, growth is really the key, the solution, the answer to everything in Europe. More growth than just 1 percent, which is potential, would help solving that fiscal challenge. For now, it looks really, really like an uphill battle. Returning to Germany, it's the one country that has a very good fiscal starting position. They are pushing a lot but they're to some extent pushing a string. So, even with the German huge fiscal package, given that private sector investments so far are absent, doesn't get us a ton of growth. Seth Carpenter: Chetan, maybe I'll come back to you before we close part one of this roundtable. The AI CapEx cycle started with AI, broadened out further. How long do you expect this cycle to last? How durable can it be? And how might it compare to previous CapEx cycles? Chetan Ahya: Yeah, Seth. So, we think this will be a multi-year CapEx cycle. And when we are thinking about the duration of the cycle, there are two things that I would keep in mind. Number one is that most of the drivers that we just discussed – the CapEx on AI, energy, defense, and industrial supply chain onshoring related investments – these are all structural drivers. So, we think these are going to continue for some more time. At this point of time, we have the visibility for this cycle to be lasting for three-four more years. And then the second point of framework that I would keep in mind is that the corporate balance sheets are in a pretty good shape. So, when you are thinking about the leverage in the private sector, you can look at both households and the corporate sector balance sheet. But since the cycle is CapEx driven, we are looking at the corporate balance sheets, and they are in a pretty good shape. Across the region, corporate debt to GDP is below where it was in 2019. Seth Carpenter: Mike, let me, let me wrap up quickly with you. We talked about AI, AI CapEx. For now, that's a very strong demand story. When are we going to see a supply side of things coming from AI? Are you already seeing a big contribution to GDP and growth from productivity coming from AI? Michael Gapen: We are, but not outside of the high-tech sectors, and we're seeing limited, what I'll call labor market restructuring of tasks and occupations beyond high AI-exposed occupations. So right now, everything is still very isolated I think maybe as we get into 2029 and beyond, so as Chetan says, we probably have a three to four-year super cycle here around a build-out phase. Then we might see some of that broader-based diffusion to other non-tech sectors in the economy. Seth Carpenter: All right, Jens, for you, let's wrap up here. So, what is the state of play for the build-out in the CapEx cycle for AI in Europe? Jens Eisenschmidt: Yeah, it's very early stages. As I said before, we really; we connected to all the industry experts or analysts covering the sector and the total plans are a factor of 20 below what we see in the U.S. by just the seven hyperscalers. So, I would say very fragmented, very small, in general. Not only AI. I think the one thing I would be looking at for any type of sign of revival, sign of growth is investment. The second would be investment. And you can guess what the third would be… Investments in the core countries. That's really what we need to see, and we haven't seen much in Germany or France on this front. Seth Carpenter:That's a great place for us to stop today. We talked about the real side of the economy, AI, CapEx, trade. Tomorrow we're going to come back, and we'll talk about how that growth outlook affects inflation. And once you start talking about growth and inflation, you got to talk about policy, and that's where we'll be tomorrow. Mike, Jens, and Chetan, thank you for joining today. And for the listeners, thank you for listening. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for Part 2 of our conversation. And I have to say, if you enjoy this show, please leave us a review wherever you listen, and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or a colleague today.

Started with the naming of the new UK prime minster, then talked about the Canadian wildfires. Also the nutty NYC ICE arsonist, India student protests, Peru earthquakes, 2 US soldiers KIA Jordan, and a German prisoner wins the right to coat his letters home to his partner in his own semen.

Diese Podcast-Episode ist auch als Video mit Untertiteln auf YouTube verfügbar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omfb5tjFSIM   In der deutschen Sprache gibt es viele schöne Wörter, aber auch einige, die komisch oder "hässlich" klingen. Gemeinsam mit einem Live-Publikum in Köln bewerten wir in dieser Episode verschiedene deutsche Wörter wie "Weltschmerz", "Hackfleisch", "jein" oder "Feierabend" auf einer Skala von ganz schrecklich bis superschön.   Transkript und Vokabelhilfe Werde ein Easy German Mitglied und du bekommst unsere Vokabelhilfe, ein interaktives Transkript und Bonusmaterial zu jeder Episode: easygerman.org/membership   Sponsor: italki italki: Bekomme 10 € Rabatt auf deine erste Stunde (ab 20 €), wenn du dich auf go.italki.com/easylive10 registrierst und den Code EASYLIVE10 benutzt.   Thema der Woche: Schöne und hässliche Wörter im Deutschen Easy Languages: How beautiful German sounds compared to other languages (YouTube) Fettes Brot - Jein (Official) (YouTube) GROSSSTADTGEFLÜSTER - FEIERABEND (OFFICIAL VIDEO) (YouTube)   Support Easy German and get interactive transcripts, live vocabulary and bonus content: easygerman.org/membership

Deep in the forests overlooking Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River, hikers still whisper about a small, hairy creature that watches from the treetops, steals apples, and pelts trespassers with the cores. It's called the Albatwitch, a bizarre cryptid unlike Bigfoot or any other creature in American folklore. But is it really a monster? Or is it the last surviving echo of German folklore carried across the Atlantic by homesick immigrants more than three centuries ago? Tonight, we trace the remarkable evolution of one of Pennsylvania's strangest legends, from medieval Europe to modern eyewitness sightings at Chickies Rock.   HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm       YouTube -  https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistory   TikTok - @hah_podcast hauntedamericanhistory.com       Patreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠       LINKS FOR MY DEBUT NOVEL, THE FORGOTTEN BOROUGH       Barnes and Noble -   https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-forgotten-borough-christopher-feinstein/1148274794?ean=9798319693334   AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQPQD68S   Ebook   GOOGLE: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=S5WCEQAAQBAJ&pli=1   KOBO: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-forgotten-borough-2?sId=a10cf8af-5fbd-475e-97c4-76966ec87994&ssId=DX3jihH_5_2bUeP1xoje_   SMASHWORD: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1853316       !! DISTURB ME !!   APPLE - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disturb-me/id1841532090   SPOTIFY - https://open.spotify.com/show/3eFv2CKKGwdQa3X2CkwkZ5?si=faOUZ54fT_KG-BaZOBiTiQ   YOUTUBE - https://www.youtube.com/@DisturbMePodcast   www.disturbmepodcast.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Germany looks like Europe's most attractive battery storage market on paper: deep power price volatility, a fast-growing renewables build-out, and nearly three gigawatts of batteries already live. In reality, developers are navigating uncertain grid connection queues, gruelling commissioning phases, and a tolling market still working out how much risk is fair to price in.Christina Hepp, Director Strategy, and Leandra Boes, Director Asset Management, both at Green Flexibility, join Ed Porter to unpack what building and operating batteries in Germany actually looks like once the PowerPoint slide meets the grid.They cover:- What a Flexible Connection Agreement actually is and why this kind of trade-off is fast becoming the norm in Germany.- Why grid operators and battery companies have historically struggled to "speak the same language", and how a shared framework like REGIOlink helps translate one side's needs into the other's terms.- What actually happens in the final weeks before a large-scale battery switches on for real: the software integration, testing and last-minute troubleshooting that never makes it into a press release.- Why choosing to sell power on the open market versus locking in a steadier, pre-agreed deal is a much bigger and riskier decision than it sounds - and why Green Flexibility is betting on the option most peers shy away from.- Just how enormous Germany's battery storage pipeline has become: enough grid connection requests queued up that regulators have had to start filtering out the projects that aren't actually going to happen.Want the data behind this conversation? Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst:https://modoenergy.com/sign-up?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_apps&utm_campaign=green-flexibility&utm_content=ko_signupChapters:00:00 Introduction01:20 Common Misconceptions About Building Batteries in Germany02:24 FID Prep and Commissioning: What Doesn't Make the Press Release03:25 Flexible Connection Agreements (FCAs): The Ski Cannon Example07:54 Germany's FCA Market Standardization10:36 Battery Commissioning in Germany: Lessons From the Toughest Phase14:29 Merchant vs Tolling: Germany's Battery Revenue Models19:30 REGIOlink: Integrating Batteries Into Distribution Grids23:11 Battery Data Sharing With Grid Operators26:27 Germany's Project Development Shakeout29:32 Co-Located Battery Projects: Pros and Cons31:47 Germany's Zonal Pricing Debate for Batteries34:32 Contrarian Views: Merchant Strategy and the German Power Market as "Barbie"

Germany looks like Europe's most attractive battery storage market on paper: deep power price volatility, a fast-growing renewables build-out, and nearly three gigawatts of batteries already live. In reality, developers are navigating uncertain grid connection queues, gruelling commissioning phases, and a tolling market still working out how much risk is fair to price in.Christina Hepp, Director Strategy, and Leandra Boes, Director Asset Management, both at Green Flexibility, join Ed Porter to unpack what building and operating batteries in Germany actually looks like once the PowerPoint slide meets the grid.They cover:- What a Flexible Connection Agreement actually is and why this kind of trade-off is fast becoming the norm in Germany.- Why grid operators and battery companies have historically struggled to "speak the same language", and how a shared framework like REGIOlink helps translate one side's needs into the other's terms.- What actually happens in the final weeks before a large-scale battery switches on for real: the software integration, testing and last-minute troubleshooting that never makes it into a press release.- Why choosing to sell power on the open market versus locking in a steadier, pre-agreed deal is a much bigger and riskier decision than it sounds - and why Green Flexibility is betting on the option most peers shy away from.- Just how enormous Germany's battery storage pipeline has become: enough grid connection requests queued up that regulators have had to start filtering out the projects that aren't actually going to happen.Want the data behind this conversation? Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst:https://modoenergy.com/sign-up?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_apps&utm_campaign=green-flexibility&utm_content=ko_signupChapters:00:00 Introduction01:20 Common Misconceptions About Building Batteries in Germany02:24 FID Prep and Commissioning: What Doesn't Make the Press Release03:25 Flexible Connection Agreements (FCAs): The Ski Cannon Example07:54 Germany's FCA Market Standardization10:36 Battery Commissioning in Germany: Lessons From the Toughest Phase14:29 Merchant vs Tolling: Germany's Battery Revenue Models19:30 REGIOlink: Integrating Batteries Into Distribution Grids23:11 Battery Data Sharing With Grid Operators26:27 Germany's Project Development Shakeout29:32 Co-Located Battery Projects: Pros and Cons31:47 Germany's Zonal Pricing Debate for Batteries34:32 Contrarian Views: Merchant Strategy and the German Power Market as "Barbie"

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff presents updates on the Australian dockworkers' union's fight against A.I., the German auto workers' fight against VW layoffs, Private Suites running private terminals for rich U.S. flyers, and Bayer/Monsanto profiting by manipulating U.S. farmers' organizations. The second half of the show features an interview with Donald H Whitehead, Jr., the director of the National Coalition of the Homeless. We hope you enjoy this discussion and look forward to joining you next week for another all-new episode of Economic Update. Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a production of Democracy at Work, Inc., and any reproduction in whole or part is strictly prohibited without written permission. We make it a point to keep the show ad-free and rely solely on viewer support to continue doing so. Every donation counts and helps us reach a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world that they won't find anywhere else. We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and the others we produce possible each week. We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info Professor Wolff's latest book, "Understanding Capitalism," is available now for purchase: https://linktr.ee/understandingcapitalism © 2026 Democracy at Work, Inc. All Rights Reserved

One English word, three German ones. In this episode, Thomas explains why "feel" splits into "fühlen", "sich fühlen" and "sich anfühlen" in German, and how to know which one you need. In this episode we provide a short summary of the three, alongside a mention of the exercises on the YouTube video.➡️ Click here to watch the video version of this episode.➡️ To receive regular free mini-lessons like this straight to your inbox, visit: https://coffeebreaklanguages.kit.com/newsletter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In early September 1944, as Allied forces raced across France and Belgium, the German occupation of Brussels was beginning to collapse. On 2 September, around 1,500 prisoners, including members of the Belgian Resistance, Allied airmen, SOE agents, and political prisoners, were taken from Brussels prisons and loaded onto a train bound for Germany. For many, it seemed certain they were heading for concentration camps. But over the next two days, a remarkable series of delays and acts of resistance by Belgian railway workers and prison officials prevented the train from reaching its destination. The convoy became known as the Ghost Train. Joining me to discuss this extraordinary story is Greg Lewis, author of The Nazi Ghost Train.   patreon.com/ww2podcast  

Steve Crossman is joined by former teammates, colleagues, journalists and fans of Kevin Keegan, who has died aged 75.4:14 - BBC Football Correspondent John Murray 7:22 - Former Newcastle player Lee Clark 17:29 - Samantha, Newcastle supporter 26:24 - Former Newcastle manager Chris Hughton 34:45 - Liverpool teammate Phil Thompson 40:02 - John Gibbons from The Anfield Wrap 47:20 - Former Chairman of the Football Writers Association Paul Hetherington and football journalist Henry Winter 55:01 - German football reporter for The Athletic Seb Stafford-Bloor

This week Josh Boerman joins Francis for another Spike TV blast from the past as they watch the TV show 1000 ways to Die. We've got rednecks getting bit by snakes, late night electrocutions, and Germans being German Follow Josh and listen to Worst of all Possible Worlds @worstpossible.world @illconceivedpodcast.com joshboerman.com Check out the store, and sign up for our twice a month email updates  https://whatahellofawaytodad.com/  BlueSky - https://bsky.app/profile/whatahellofawaytodad.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hellofawaytodad/  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hellofawaytodad/ 

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

Diana and Nicole discuss how genealogists use artificial intelligence to transcribe handwritten, foreign-language historical documents. They review feedback from a survey regarding experiences with various AI tools, including Transkribus, Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Leo. The researchers report positive experiences, with average accuracy ratings between 7.5 and 8 out of 10. Listeners learn which languages, such as Spanish, German, French, Latin, and Scandinavian, are commonly processed through these tools. The discussion highlights that while AI excels at speed, it frequently struggles with proper names, obscure place names, and table-based data. The hosts share field-tested strategies for successful transcription. Listeners learn to provide extensive context in their prompts, work in small segments, and perform a manual "rough read" before utilizing AI. Diana and Nicole emphasize the importance of acquiring basic language skills to spot errors, especially when dealing with subtle, plausible hallucinations from large language models. They conclude that AI serves as a powerful assistant but caution that it cannot replace the researcher's own skill and judgment. This summary was generated by Google Gemini. Links What Genealogists Are Saying About AI Transcription of Foreign-Language Documents – Family Locket - https://familylocket.com/what-genealogists-are-saying-about-ai-transcription-of-foreign-language-documents/ Survey - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZev1baLVTzKZ0skumxp5syTMAmCMeQkvda4YhLMmYPmOaVg/viewform?usp=sharing  Sponsor – Newspapers.com For listeners of this podcast, Newspapers.com is offering new subscribers 20% off a Publisher Extra subscription so you can start exploring today. Just use the code "FamilyLocket" at checkout.  Research Like a Pro Resources Airtable Universe - Nicole's Airtable Templates - https://www.airtable.com/universe/creator/usrsBSDhwHyLNnP4O/nicole-dyer Airtable Research Logs Quick Reference - by Nicole Dyer - https://familylocket.com/product-tag/airtable/ Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist's Guide book by Diana Elder with Nicole Dyer on Amazon.com - https://amzn.to/2x0ku3d Research Like a Pro with AI Workbook – Second Edition (eBook) - https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-with-ai-workbook-second-edition-ebook/ 14-Day Research Like a Pro Challenge Workbook - digital - https://familylocket.com/product/14-day-research-like-a-pro-challenge-workbook-digital-only/ and spiral bound - https://familylocket.com/product/14-day-research-like-a-pro-challenge-workbook-spiral-bound/ Research Like a Pro Webinar Series - monthly case study webinars including documentary evidence and many with DNA evidence - https://familylocket.com/product-category/webinars/ Research Like a Pro eCourse - independent study course -  https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-e-course/ RLP Study Group - upcoming group and email notification list - https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-study-group/ Research Like a Pro Institute Courses - https://familylocket.com/product-category/institute-course/ Research Like a Pro with DNA Resources Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist's Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence book by Diana Elder, Nicole Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin - https://amzn.to/3gn0hKx Research Like a Pro with DNA eCourse - independent study course -  https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-ecourse/ RLP with DNA Study Group - upcoming group and email notification list - https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-study-group/ Thank you Thanks for listening! We hope that you will share your thoughts about our podcast and help us out by doing the following: Write a review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts. If you leave a review, we will read it on the podcast and answer any questions that you bring up in your review. Thank you! Leave a comment in the comment or question in the comment section below. Share the episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. Subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Sign up for our newsletter to receive notifications of new episodes - https://familylocket.com/sign-up/ Check out this list of genealogy podcasts from Feedspot: Best Genealogy Podcasts - https://blog.feedspot.com/genealogy_podcasts/

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Join us as Robert Balch shares what it was like to be the tip of the spear for the 14th Armored division during WW2. Beginning with a brutal baptism by fire in Gertwiller in November 1944, his platoon advanced as the spearhead column, crossing the German border at Wissembourg and conducting high-stakes scouting missions directly against the Dragon's Teeth of the Siegfried Line. The unit faced severe physical and psychological strain, enduring freezing foxholes during a tense "battle of nerves" near Bitche, before being forced into a chaotic, full-scale tactical withdrawal when hit by a massive German counter-offensive during Operation Nordwind, the last German counter offensive of the war. Robert reflects on their service during the post-war occupation of Germany, members of the platoon fiercely defended the purpose and conduct of the American GI, emphasizing that their resolve was permanently forged by the trauma of combat and the firsthand horrors of liberating concentration camps like Dachau and Buchenwald. Support the show

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

Recorded live, this episode features Jeff Beck, President and CEO of Stabila, sharing insights from his 25-year career at DeWalt—where he managed a $930 million division—to leading a premier German-engineered hand tool brand. Jeff delivers a masterclass in premium brand positioning, detailing exactly why Stabila completely rejects big-box retailers like Home Depot and Lowe's to protect its price points and avoid business-ruining volume burdens.   He breaks down the realities of managing international trade, navigating recent tariff challenges through tactical price increases, and engineering an impressive April price rollback on products sourced out of China. Jeff also pulls back the curtain on Stabila's highly anticipated "Patriot Series" level set, revealing how his team collaborated with German manufacturing to move a major U.S. 250th anniversary product from concept to first production in just six weeks.  

Uwe Boll is no stranger to controversy. I first heard of him about 20 years ago when he challenged his harshest critics to a boxing match. Well, he's back in everyone's sights with his latest film, Citizen Vigilante, due to it's politically charging nature. Some recent interviews only focused on the politics. Others clearly never saw the movie and just wanted to attack him. However, I wanted to treat Uwe like how I would want to be treated and we just talked. Turns out he's one of the nicest people I interviewed!  Tune in as we discuss German food, bakeries, movies and more. Love him or hate him: Uwe Boll is always entertaining. If you're interested in seeing Citizen Vigilante, it's available to rent on Amazon Prime right now. If you're not doing so already, check out Classic American Movies on  Instagram and check out my written reviews on www.ClassicAmericanMovies.com   

Trent Park, the House of Secrets is a new museum in north London which explores the story of the secret listeners who eavesdropped on the conversations of German senior military prisoners of war. Samira is joined by Helen Lederer, whose grandfather who served as a WW2 secret listener, and the Chairman of Trent Park, Jason Charalambous.As Andy Burnham becomes the first Prime Minister to study English Literature at University, Samira talks to his former English Professor at Cambridge, John Mullan.Broadway star Ben Platt discusses his new musical at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London, Midnight at the Never Get, where he plays a crooner in a New York dive-bar in the mid-60s who begins a decades long relationship with his male pianist. Playstation has made headlines with its new announcement that it would end making physical discs in 2028. Video game writer and broadcaster Jordan Erica Webber joins to discuss what this means for the culture of gaming and why gamers have responded to it so badly.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Ruth Watts

This episode features Raffaela Raab, aka the Militant Vegan. Raffaela was working as a doctor when she realized that enslaved farm animals were just as capable of suffering as her patients. This realization led her to become vegan and an animal rights activist. After a few months of street activism, she decided to share her emotional encounters online in the form of TikTok videos and her video reached millions. Now on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube as The Militant Vegan, Raffaela and her team have taken radical animal rights activism in the German-speaking world to a new level. Enjoy this thought-provoking conversation with host Michele and Raffaela, The Militant Vegan.Please visit:www.why-vegan.comwww.how-vegan.comFollow Raffaela:@Vegan.Militant@DieMilitantVeganerinAAC Linktree (follow us, donate, bookshop, merch store, future events, and more):https://linktr.ee/animalactivismcollectiveTo support our work monthly: Patreon.com/AnimalActivismCollectiveTo keep up with the podcast, follow @AnimalActivismCollective on Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube.Want to get active for the animals but don't know where to start?Sign up for a free mentor at AnimalActivismCollective.com

What happens when an entire nation runs out of food? This is one of our favourite episodes from our sister podcast, Reichs and Republics: The German History Podcast, and we'd like to share it with you. In this episode Katja and Chris explore the brutal reality of the 'Turnip Winter' of 1916/17, when the German civilian population was forced to endure extreme hunger, freezing temperatures and a collapsing food system. Food shortages weakened Germany not only physically, but also shattered morale, playing a decisive role in the country's eventual defeat in the First World War. They explore how the British blockade, disastrous harvests and government mismanagement forced people to survive on animal fodder such as turnips and crows! If you enjoyed this episode as much as we did then take a look at the other episodes on the Reichs & Republics Channel! https://www.youtube.com/@ReichsandRepublicsPod Join Our Community: ⁠https://not-so-quiet.com/⁠ Use our code: Dugout and get one month free as a Captain. Support via Paypal:⁠ https://battleguide.co.uk/nsq-paypal⁠ Do you like our podcast? Then please leave us a review, it helps us a lot! E-Mail: ⁠nsq@battleguide.co.uk⁠ Battle Guide YouTube Channel:⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@BattleGuideVT⁠ Our WW2 Podcast:⁠ https://battleguide.co.uk/bsow⁠ If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of what the team at Battle Guide have been getting up to, why not sign up to our monthly newsletter:⁠ ⁠https://battleguide.co.uk/newsletter⁠ Twitter: @historian1914 @DanHillHistory @BattleguideVT Credits: - Host: Dr. Spencer Jones & Dan Hill & Katja Hoyer & Dr. Christopher Dillon - Production: Linus Klaßen - Editing: Hunter Christensen & Linus Klaßen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When people think of the Somme, they think of failure: men cut down in no man's land; shattered battalions; and catastrophic losses. Yet along much of the southern part of the battlefield, this is not what happened at all. Here, British troops broke into the German defences, captured villages and advanced further than anywhere else on 1 July. For a few brief hours, it even seemed that the offensive might achieve its planners' hopes. So why did this part of the battlefield look so different? If the attack was succeeding here, why is the first day of the Somme still remembered as such a disaster? Join Our Community: ⁠https://not-so-quiet.com/⁠ Use our code: Dugout and get one month free as a Captain. Support via Paypal:⁠ https://battleguide.co.uk/nsq-paypal⁠ Do you like our podcast? Then please leave us a review, it helps us a lot! E-Mail: ⁠nsq@battleguide.co.uk⁠ Battle Guide YouTube Channel:⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@BattleGuideVT⁠ Our WW2 Podcast:⁠ https://battleguide.co.uk/bsow⁠ If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of what the team at Battle Guide have been getting up to, why not sign up to our monthly newsletter:⁠ ⁠https://battleguide.co.uk/newsletter⁠ Twitter: @historian1914 @DanHillHistory @BattleguideVT Credits: - Host: Dr. Spencer Jones & Dan Hill - Production: Linus Klaßen - Editing: Hunter Christensen & Linus Klaßen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Lisa Nichols is co-founder and President of ALLMYNE a new travel app. Dr. Nichols is the Director for Brookdale Mobile Crisis Team, Brooklyn NY. She received her Ph.D. from Alliant International University in San Diego, California. She has been a part of Mobile Crisis Teams and Psychiatric Emergency rooms in New York City for over 20 years. She has done research and worked with refugees, PTSD, HIV/AIDS, and ethics. Dr. Nichols has a Master's in Business Administration from Sciences Politiques, Paris, France and been trained in 6 Sigma and Lean Fundamentals. Dr. Nichols has a Bachelor of Science in Experimental Psychology from University College London, London, England. She maintains a small private practice. Dr. Nichols is an enthusiastic traveler and has been to over 152 countries and speaks fluent French while managing conversations in Spanish and German. Subscribe to the app: https://allmyne.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/join.allmyne/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/join.allmyne/ ***********Susanne Mueller / www.susannemueller.biz TEDX Talk, May 2022: Running and Life: 5KM Formula for YOUR Successhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT_5Er1cLvY Join Substack: https://substack.com/@susannemuellernyc?Enjoy one coaching session for free if you are a yearly subscriber. 800+ weekly blogs / 500+ podcasts / 1 Ironman Triathlon / 5 half ironman races / 26 marathon races / 4 books / 1 Mt. Kilimanjaro / 1 TEDx Talk

There are competing protests on either side of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. It's 2023, on the eve of the final shutdown of the country's last three remaining nuclear power plants. On one side, anti-nuclear campaigners and politicians celebrate their victory. This is a new, clean, dawn for the German power grid, they say. On the other side of the gate, a small but vocal group of pro-nuclear greens condemn what they believe is a grave mistake. And as other countries pledge to increase their nuclear energy capacities, this group is playing the long game. They believe they may have lost the battle here in Germany, but they will win the war. How did the green-on-green struggle over the German energy system go nuclear?Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Producer: Rachel Naylor Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis Sound Design and Mix: James Beard Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke Archive: Saubere Energien kämpfen gegen schmutzige, Nuklearia, 13/5/2023 Footage of Fridays For Future protest in Berlin, @digitalwerber and Nuklearia, 24/9/2021

Musicians recount the strange and unexpected story behind the making of your favorite albums. Al Green worked the touring circuit for years before developing his signature intimate vocal style and becoming a soul superstar. Then came the hot grits incident. Tom and Rob welcome a special guest to discuss restrained production, a crack rhythm section, and the gospel / soul crossover potential. Join the comment thread NOW available on our free Patreon to continue the conversation about this episode and get early access to the weekly show 100% ad free, plus 60+ bonus shows like Song Battle and Guilty Pleasureshttps://www.patreon.com/1001AlbumComplaintsJoin our Mailing List here: https://linktr.ee/1001albumcomplaintsEmail us your complaints (or questions / comments) at 1001AlbumComplaints@gmail.comListen to our episode companion playlist (compilation of the songs we referenced on this episode) here:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7cMhATkF9Wl28a3EIlI4In?si=2279a5a350dd4564Listen to Let's Stay Together here:https://open.spotify.com/album/58eMx3QrTkiRmGGbSz2XL0?si=gl7SAJGNTMyqMAe1M6UeGwAnd our international playlists continue to grow:Thai, German, Sweden 1, 2, & 3, Italian, Australian, Belgium 1 & 2Intro music: When the Walls Fell by The Beverly CrushersOutro music: After the Afterlife by MEGAFollow our Spotify Playlist of music produced directly by us. Listen and complain at homeFollow us on instagram @thechopunlimited AND @1001AlbumComplaintsWe have 1001 Merch! Support us by buying some.US Merch StoreNext week's album: Cat Stevens - Tea for the TillermanSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

W/ Mario Mora | David Afkham bids farewell to Spain's National Orchestra and Chorus after more than a decade of joint work. In this interview, the German conductor analyzes what it has meant for him to lead one of the country's most important institutions and how his musical vision has evolved since that first concert in Madrid. We discuss Spanish repertoire, the management of tradition, the role of opera, and the importance of maintaining balance between professional and personal life. An honest review of a period marked by passion, energy, and artistic commitment. Listen to the full interview on Clásica FM.

Video interview with singer Bill Kaulitz, and his twin brother, guitarist Tom Kaulitz, from the German alternative rock band Tokio Hotel. FaceCulture spoke with Bill and Tom about going back to their roots, simplicity, writing on their own, Boy Don't Cry, shaping Dream Machine, writing a cool pop song, What If, their loyal fans, and a lot more! (19/03/2017) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Subscribe to our channel! Paul Presenza chose this latest flick. And of course co host Jonathan and special guest Andre Bland (He's back) discuss the 1997 German flick, "Premutos: The Fallen Angel" Follow us on social media:  @indiefilmcafe Websites: http://sickflickproductions.com  http://indiefilmcafe.reviews  http://indiefilmcafe.podbean.com  http://patreon.com/indiefilmcafe 

Today we're breaking down the newest UFO document release and asking the questions almost nobody else is asking. We'll examine what these files actually say about non-human intelligence (NHI), why the government continues releasing information without providing any real context, and whether the public is being guided toward a predetermined conclusion rather than the truth. We'll also dive into the documents' references to German flying saucer projects, Project Paperclip, reverse-engineering claims, and the possibility that the UFO mystery has always been far more connected to hidden technology and interdimensional questions than extraterrestrials from outer space.Please consider donating to Ron Patton's GoFundMe. Any donation helps greatly: https://gofund.me/818cdbf11If you're able, consider helping the Merkel family with medical expenses by donating to Lindsay's GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/b8f76890

Charles Spicer recounts how, by September 1938, the amateur spies learned of the Oster Conspiracy, a robust plan by German military and police units to arrest Hitler and prevent war. Spicer argues this was a credible arrangement that could have succeeded had Britain supported the resistance. Instead, Chamberlain's "Plan Zed"—his personal flights to meet Hitler—undermined the conspirators by robbing them of their casus belli. Intelligence regarding this plot reached the cabinet and was referenced in minutes, but it was never acted upon. Consequently, Hitler gained the Sudetenland and vital armament works without a fight, effectively fueling his future war machine. (10)1940

Charles Spicer relates how, in the summer of 1939, Ernest Tennant undertook an incognito mission to meet Ribbentrop, hoping to find a path to peace. He returned with warnings that Hitler was focused on Poland and prepared for a ten-year war. While London believed the information, Chamberlain's antipathy toward Stalin led to a slow, failed attempt at an alliance with Moscow, allowing Ribbentrop to secure a pact with the Soviets first. Spicer echoes Churchill's sentiment that this was an "unnecessary war," highlighting multiple missed opportunities to support the German resistance and remove the dictator before the global catastrophe began. (12)1935

Charles Spicer recounts how, at the Nuremberg trials, Ribbentrop tried to use his pre-war Fellowship efforts as a defense, claiming he had always worked for peace. Göring remained unrepentant, while Hess insisted on wearing his flying boots in the witness box. Spicer notes that after the war, Vansittart and the Foreign Office obscured their connections to the German resistance to avoid admitting that more energetic diplomacy might have prevented the conflict. The Oster Conspiracy of 1938 is highlighted as a more effective, though overlooked, opportunity than the famous 1944 bomb plot, as Hitler's grip on power was not yet absolute during the earlier crisis. (15)19353

Charles Spicer explains that by 1935, major business interests like Unilever joined the Fellowship to protect trade and understand the new German regime. Following the Night of the Long Knives, some optimists believed Hitler'sgovernment was becoming more "civilized." The Fellowship provided extraordinary lobbying power, allowing Tennantto secure meetings with Hitler that traditional diplomats could not reach. German industrialists like Robert Bosch, who privately loathed the Nazis, also sought connections in London. This era was marked by parallel efforts in both nations to avoid war through financial and industrial engagement, despite growing signs of Nazi brutality. (2)1914

Charles Spicer introduces Grahame Christie, a decorated World War I flying ace and engineer who dedicated himself to warning Britain about German rearmament. Working with Robert Vansittart, Christie utilized his friendship with Hermann Göring to gather intelligence on the buildup of the Luftwaffe. Despite the shock of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, Fellowship members continued lobbying Nazi contacts to reconsider their path. In March 1936, Christie provided an accurate one-day warning of the Rhineland invasion. However, Britain failed to act due to overwhelming pacifist sentiment, missing what historians consider the greatest opportunity to stop Hitler early. (3)1940

Charles Spicer relates how Ribbentrop arrived at Victoria Station as the new German ambassador with a mission to neutralize Britain through a show of friendship. However, his tenure was a disaster; he was socially clumsy, notoriously giving a Hitler salute to the King. His wife, Annelies, was equally thin-skinned and offended by the British habit of teasing. Simultaneously, Nevile Henderson became the British ambassador to Berlin. Henderson, an arch-appeaser who admired the regime's efficiency, was paranoid about upsetting Hitler, further complicating the efforts of amateur spies to communicate the true nature of the Nazi threat to Whitehall. (6)1945

Charles Spicer describes how, during the 1937 coronation of George VI, Ribbentrop hosted a chaotic, overcrowded party at the German embassy. Despite the champagne-fueled festivities, the event was a social failure that highlighted the growing friction between the two cultures. Meanwhile, Vansittart realized the traditional intelligence services had poor access to the Nazi leadership. He established a parallel network—"Van's Detective Agency"—utilizing Christie and Conwell-Evans as private intelligence sources. Conwell-Evans, previously optimistic, underwent a total volte-face in 1937, bravely shifting his focus to gathering intelligence through his high-level German networks to warn the Britishgovernment. (7)1940

Charles Spicer describes how, during the 1937 coronation of George VI, Ribbentrop hosted a chaotic, overcrowded party at the German embassy. Despite the champagne-fueled festivities, the event was a social failure that highlighted the growing friction between the two cultures. Meanwhile, Vansittart realized the traditional intelligence services had poor access to the Nazi leadership. He established a parallel network—"Van's Detective Agency"—utilizing Christie and Conwell-Evans as private intelligence sources. Conwell-Evans, previously optimistic, underwent a total volte-face in 1937, bravely shifting his focus to gathering intelligence through his high-level German networks to warn the Britishgovernment. (7)1945

Cloning may seem like a futuristic topic largely reserved for science fiction but plants are doing it all the time. Clonality is one of the many aspects that can make plant species successful across the landscape. It can also greatly impact the way we approach plant conservation efforts. Despite the importance of cloning in plants, we still know very little about how its influences plant population dynamics. Which plants are clonal? How long can clones live? How does cloning influence pollination? These questions and more are what drive people like Dr. Ashley Morris. Join us as we look at why she is so fascinated by cloning and conservation in plants. This episode was produced in part by Chris, Gerald, Elise, Maggie, Mamie, A.J., Dallas, Channele, KC, Joe, Diane, Kim, Tanya, Neil, Matthew, April, Dana, Lilith, Sanza, Eva, Yellowroot, Wisewren, Nadia, Heidi, Blake, Josh, Laure, R.J., Carly, Lucia, Dana, Sarah, Lauren, Strych Mind, Linda, Sylvan, Austin, Sarah, Ethan, Elle, Steve, Cassie, Chuck, Aaron, Gillian, Abi, Rich, Shad, Maddie, Owen, Linda, Alana, Sigma, Max, Richard, Maia, Rens, David, Robert, Thomas, Valerie, Joan, Mohsin Kazmi Photography, Cathy, Simon, Nick, Paul, Charis, EJ, Laura, Sung, NOK, Stephen, Heidi, Kristin, Luke, Sea, Shannon, Thomas, Will, Jamie, Waverly, Brent, Tanner, Rick, Kazys, Dorothy, Katherine, Emily, Theo, Nichole, Paul, Karen, Randi, Caelan, Tom, Don, Susan, Corbin, Keena, Robin, Peter, Whitney, Kenned, Margaret, Daniel, Karen, David, Earl, Jocelyn, Gary, Krysta, Elizabeth, Southern California Carnivorous Plant Enthusiasts, Pattypollinators, Peter, Judson, Ella, Alex, Dan, Pamela, Peter, Andrea, Nathan, Karyn, Michelle, Jillian, Chellie, Linda, Laura, Miz Holly, Christie, Carlos, Paleo Fern, Levi, Sylvia, Lanny, Ben, Lily, Craig, Sarah, Lor, Monika, Brandon, Jeremy, Suzanne, Kristina, Christine, Silas, Michael, Aristia, Felicidad, Lauren, Danielle, Allie, Jeffrey, Amanda, Tommy, Marcel, C Leigh, Karma, Shelby, Christopher, Alvin, Arek, Chellie, Dani, Paul, Dani, Tara, Elly, Colleen, Natalie, Nathan, Ario, Laura, Cari, Margaret, Mary, Connor, Nathan, Jan, Jerome, Brian, Azomonas, Ellie, University Greens, Joseph, Melody, Patricia, Matthew, Garrett, John, Ashley, Cathrine, Melvin, OrangeJulian, Porter, Jules, Griff, Joan, Megan, Marabeth, Les, Ali, Southside Plants, Keiko, Robert, Bryce, Wilma, Amanda, Helen, Mikey, Michelle, German, Joerg, Cathy, Tate, Steve, Kae, Carole, Mr. Keith Santner, Lynn, Aaron, Sara, Kenned, Brett, Jocelyn, Ethan, Sheryl, Runaway Goldfish, Ryan, Chris, Alana, Rachel, Joanna, Lori, Paul, Griff, Matthew, Bobby, Vaibhav, Steven, Joseph, Brandon, Liam, Hall, Jared, Brandon, Christina, Carly, Kazys, Stephen, Katherine, Manny, doeg, Daniel, Tim, Philip, Tim, Lisa, Brodie, Bendix, Irene, holly, Sara, and Margie. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

From August 1942 to February 1943, the Germans and the Soviets engaged in what would become the most brutal and bloodiest battle in human history. The battle took place in a city that probably had greater psychological and propaganda value than it did actual strategic value. The battle, in many respects, was the high-water mark of Nazi Germany and the turning point of the entire war in Europe. Learn more about the Battle of Stalingrad and how it changed the entire course of the Second World War on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Shop the store at Shop.Everything-Everywhere.com Sponsors Hexclad Get 10% off your order at hexclad.com/DAILY Mint Mobile Save 50% on Unlimited premium wireless plans starting at $15/month at MintMobile.com/EED Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! DripDrop Go to dripdrop.com and use promo code EVERYTHING for 20% off your first order! Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/Ds7Rx7jvPJ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/  Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Step into the shadowy fringes of the unknown with My Dark Path as we unravel the eerie luminous spheres, glowing foo fighters, and humanoid encounters over war-torn Poland during World War II. Host MF Thomas transports you to occupied Warsaw and remote villages where resistance scouts, civilians, and soldiers witnessed the impossible: 18-year-old Kazimierz Bzowski's sighting of a 25-foot metallic sphere with raspberry and bluish-green hues flying low over Bonifraterska Street near the smoldering Warsaw Ghetto, completely impervious to German gunfire before vanishing toward the Old Town; the chilling Nowiny encounter where a 16-year-old and his companion faced a glowing hat-shaped craft and smiling pinkish-grey humanoids who tried to lure them aboard before an invisible force knocked them down; multiple foo fighter reports of intelligent glowing orbs darting playfully over Polish ships and uprising battlefields without hostility; and the fiery brick-red spinning disk rolling horizontally at impossible speeds across the Czudec valley—complete with Bzowski's theories of energetic stitches in Earth's energy web, hints of long-term alien surveillance, striking parallels to modern sphere, disc, and tictac UFOs, and insights from the host's own research journey across Poland. Were these secret Nazi experiments, natural anomalies, misidentified flares, or extraterrestrial observers monitoring humanity's darkest hour? This episode blends eerie narration with historical context, skeptical scrutiny, and believer's evidence. Perfect for fans of unsolved enigmas, WWII UFOs, foo fighters, and the paranormal.

Interview: July 5th, 2026 Episode Summary:In this episode, German Morales—talent agent, manager, producer, and founder of MGMT Artists—shares an inside look into the entertainment industry and what it truly takes to build a sustainable career as a performer. With over 20 years of experience, German walks through his unconventional journey from aspiring actor to becoming a leading talent representative, highlighting how his background in business and passion for entertainment ultimately shaped his career path.German breaks down the day-to-day role of an agent, from reviewing casting breakdowns and submitting talent to negotiating contracts and developing artists long-term. He emphasizes the importance of strong branding, professional materials—especially headshots and reels—and the value of persistence when seeking representation. A key takeaway from this episode is the power of being a multi-hyphenate performer. Dancers who can also act, sing, or model significantly increase their opportunities and marketability in today's industry.The conversation also explores the current audition landscape, where self-tapes dominate, along with practical advice on how to stand out, avoid common mistakes, and leverage tools like social media and AI. German also shares insights into iPOP, a global talent showcase that connects performers with industry professionals, and how opportunities like this can accelerate exposure and career growth. The episode concludes with a live Q&A, offering real-time guidance for dancers navigating representation, submissions, and long-term career strategy.Show Notes0:00 – Introduction to German Morales and career2:03 – From aspiring actor to talent agent6:08 – Inside an agent's daily responsibilities7:49 – Types of talent and notable clients11:31 – How to get signed by an agent13:33 – What iPOP is and how it works15:40 – Notable success stories from iPOP17:10 – How to apply and audition for iPOP20:06 – Importance of being a multi-hyphenate performer21:42 – How to become a talent agent28:00 – What makes a strong submission stand out33:24 – Why dancers should learn acting38:03 – When and how to submit to agencies50:07 – Self-tapes vs in-person auditions today53:00 – ClosingBiography:German E. Morales is a talent agent, manager, producer, and founder of MGMT Artists. With more than 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry, he has helped launch and develop the careers of actors, models, singers, and performers who have appeared in major television shows, films, national commercials, and even Academy Award-nominated productions.He is also a managing partner of iPOP!, one of the world's leading talent discovery events, connecting aspiring performers with top agents, managers, casting directors, and producers. A voting member of the Television Academy, German is passionate about helping the next generation of talent break into the entertainment industry and build lasting careers.Connect on Social Media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/german_mgmtartists_/Website: https://mgmtartists.com/

Send us Fan MailThis episode we talk once again about the late great Connie Francis who passed away last year on 7/16.2025 and still wonder why this pioneer is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. New material introduces some updates...Her breakthrough single, originally a 1923 tune; became her signature after a revival, launching her to stardom Her first-ever US No. 1, Everybody's Somebody's Fool also recorded in German; historic as the first female-led Hot 100 chart‑toppertitle track of her hit film, Where the Boys Are reached No. 4 US and became her hallmark spring‑break anthemA 1960s gem Pretty Little Baby that experienced viral resurgence in 2025 via TikTok

Chris Chavez and Kyle Merber jump on the mics immediately following the London Diamond League as Josh Kerr ran 3:42.66 at the Novuna London Athletics Meet on Saturday, becoming the first person in history to break 3:43 in the mile and surpassing Hicham El Guerrouj's 3:43.13 set in Rome in 1999. The 2023 world 1500m champion delivered on every promise of Project 222 in front of 60,000 people at London Stadium.How it went down:Pacer Brannon Kidder hit 400m in 54.75 on world record tempo, led through 800m in 1:50.63, then stepped aside with Žan Rudolf at Kerr's instruction. Kerr hit 1200m in 2:46.39 and reached 1500m in 3:27.62 — faster than his own British record for the distance — before closing to the line alone. Yared Nuguse tracked him through the middle stages but couldn't match the closing pace, finishing second in 3:45.69. Jake Heyward was third in a PB of 3:46.73 and Robert Farken fourth in a German record of 3:46.82.The splits:- 400m: 54.75- 800m: 1:50.63- 1200m: 2:46.39- 1500m: 3:27.62- Mile: 3:42.66 WR

A master stonemason considers the great sites of Europe and shares what these enduring structures can teach us about permanence, craft, and human ambition. Then an Italian tour guide sheds light on the Dolomites, the spectacular setting where Italian, German, and Ladin traditions meet. Plus, an aficionado of American road trips tells us about efforts to revitalize historic Route 66 as a national heritage trail. For more information on Travel with Rick Steves - including episode descriptions, program archives and related details - visit www.ricksteves.com.

In this Questions and Answers episode we head beneath the battlefields to explore the hidden world of First World War dugouts and bunkers, asking whether the Ypres Salient saw more extensive underground construction than the Somme, and how geology shaped the way British, German, Australian and other armies built and occupied these remarkable underground shelters.We also examine one of the most fascinating aspects of post-war battlefield recovery by looking at the concentration of casualties from High Wood into Caterpillar Valley Cemetery, and ask how the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission decided where recovered soldiers would ultimately be buried. Why were men from the same battalion sometimes reburied in different cemeteries years apart?From there we consider the impact of mist and fog on the Western Front. Did poor visibility and weather bring fighting to a halt, or was it an opportunity for trench raids, wiring parties, patrols and surprise attacks?Finally, we look at one of the 'what ifs' of the First World War. Following Russia's armistice in late 1917, how much artillery and equipment did Germany transfer west alongside its infantry? Could the Kaiserschlacht have happened without the collapse of the Eastern Front, and how might the war have unfolded if Russia had remained in the conflict?Main Image: Battle of Albert, 1916. The steps leading down to a huge German underground shelter at Bernafay Wood, near Montauban, captured by the 9th Division. The picture gives a good idea of the size and depth of many German dugouts on the Somme. (IWM Q4307). Image by John Warwick Brooke.Sign up for the free podcast newsletter here: Old Front Line Bulletin.You can order Old Front Line Merch via The Old Front Line Shop.Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.Send us Fan MailSupport the show

Anatol Lieven discusses the reinforcement of Ukraine following NATO meetings, highlighting German drone supplies and the symbolic value of US Patriot systems. While Baltic states fear imminent Russian provocations, Lieven argues Russia's army is currently too "bogged down" in Ukraine to risk a direct war with NATO. (1)1810 BRUSSSELS

Alan Mikhail details the background of Anthony's wife, Grietje, a German migrant who worked as a barmaid or sex worker in Amsterdam. He explains the "soul seller" system used by maritime companies to recruit laborers. The couple married in 1629 and eventually sailed for New Amsterdam. (10)1650 AMSTERDAM

SCHEDULE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 7-16-261948Anatol Lieven discusses the reinforcement of Ukraine following NATO meetings, highlighting German drone supplies and the symbolic value of US Patriot systems. While Baltic states fear imminent Russian provocations, Lieven argues Russia's army is currently too "bogged down" in Ukraine to risk a direct war with NATO. (1)Anatol Lieven analyzes the potential premiership of Mr. Burnham as he navigates pressures within the Labour Party. The discussion covers challenges like electoral reform, the rise of the Reform Party, and scandals. Burnham may avoid an immediate election to protect Labour's majority while opposition support fluctuates. (2)Caleb Weiss explains the complex counterterrorism landscape in the Horn of Africa, where al-Shabaab and ISISoperate. He details how the semi-autonomous Puntland region is rejecting Mogadishu's authority. US policy faces significant hurdles as funding for African Union missions reaches a critical crossroads. (3)Caleb Weiss reports on the failure of the 2022–2023 clan militia offensive, which allowed al-Shabaab to recapture lost territory. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud faces a legitimacy crisis and constitutional conflict. Meanwhile, the UAEand Turkey conduct non-transparent drone strikes against various extremist targets in the north. (4)Simon Constable reports on extreme European temperatures and their impact on energy, noting major spikes in EU natural gas prices. He tracks shifting costs for wheat, corn, and copper. Additionally, he notes how Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian fertilizer plants could further disrupt global agriculture. (5)Simon Constable presents a quiz on longevity, revealing that the average US life expectancy has reached 79 years. Hawaii boasts the highest expectancy, while West Virginia remains the lowest. Globally, Monaco, San Marino, and Hong Kong lead in longevity according to United Nations data. (6)Doug Messier and Rick Fisher discuss China's planned 2027 circumlunar mission as a precursor to a lunar landing before 2030. This "Moon Race 2.0" challenges American prestige. While NASA aims for the South Pole by 2028, China and Russia plan an international research station to extract lunar resources. (7)Doug Messier and Rick Fisher explore the lack of cooperation between the US and China, viewing the solar system as a ground for ideological competition. Establishing permanent lunar bases requires major engineering feats, including nuclear power plants and rovers. China views the moon as a stepping stone for Mars. (8)Alan Mikhail discusses his book Newcomers, focusing on Anthony Jansen, known as "the Turk." Mikhail uses historical records to debunk the 150-year-old hypothesis that Anthony was the son of a Dutch pirate who converted to Islam, instead tracing his origins back to 17th-century Spain. (9)Alan Mikhail details the background of Anthony's wife, Grietje, a German migrant who worked as a barmaid or sex worker in Amsterdam. He explains the "soul seller" system used by maritime companies to recruit laborers. The couple married in 1629 and eventually sailed for New Amsterdam. (10)Alan Mikhail describes how the couple settled in Manhattan as ambitious farmers but faced friction with neighbors who used "the Turk" as a xenophobic insult. Their contentious behavior led to their banishment to Gravesend, Long Island. Mikhail highlights the clash between Dutch property rights and indigenous use-rights. (11)Alan Mikhail describes the "half-freedom" status given to some enslaved Africans, a system that cruelly ensured generational slavery. He also details the brutal violence of "Kieft's War" against Native Americans. Despite these conflicts and their exile, Anthony and Grietje prospered on their Long Island farm. (12)Veronique de Rugy warns that Social Security faces a 2032 deadline when trust fund assets will be depleted. Without reform, benefits could be cut by 22%. She advocates for means-testing to preserve benefits for those who truly need them, criticizing the current political silence on the issue. (13)Mary Anastasia O'Grady marks the fifth anniversary of Cuba's July 11 protests, noting the regime's ongoing brutal repression and imprisonment of political dissidents. She criticizes the United Nations for supporting the Cuban regime's narrative against US sanctions while ignoring the human rights atrocities on the island. (14)Thomas Savidge explains how the 2020–2021 pandemic strained state unemployment insurance systems. While 31 states were solvent before the crisis, many struggled with improper payments and fraud due to relaxed federal eligibility requirements. Some states fared better by taking the initiative to end bonus programs early. (15)Thomas Savidge proposes "Universal Savings Accounts" (USA) to replace complex government-managed savings vehicles. These accounts would grant individuals full ownership of their funds for unemployment or retirement. This reform aims to reduce fraud and address the long-term fiscal instability associated with the national "debt bomb." (16)Tail numbers (1)–(16), all standing corrections applied.48