Podcasts about Yahtzee

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 chat about the current state of horror, and where Japan fits in there.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 chat about their all-time favorite power-ups in video games.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup

While we break to prepare for the Halloween season, we dug through our video bins for this retro episode originally posted Nov. 9, 2022! We dive into one of Josh's favorites to investigate why Bernie Mac appeared as Replacement Bosley in this bonkers McG sequel! But will Demi Moore's outfits & Justin Theroux's abs prove to be too much of a distraction? Yahtzee!Find us on Instagram at @videodropboxpodcastJosh: @queerbaitdancepartyJoe: @something_of_borisTheme music by Jason Mitchell: @jasonlynnmitchell

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 dig into Silksong's difficulty, and use it as a springboard to chat about the line between the good and bad kinds of hard.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup

269. Questions for More Connection and Laughter in Marriage with Casey and Meygan Caston   *Disclaimer* This episode contains some mature themes and listener discretion is advised.   2 Corinthians 1:4 NIRV "He comforts us in all our troubles. Now we can comfort others when they are in trouble. We ourselves receive comfort from God."   *Transcript Below*   Questions and Topics We Cover: Will you share three of the questions from your most recent book, specifically the ones people have told you unlocked the best conversations in their own marriage? You say you're an unlikely couple to help support marriages. Will you share a glimpse of your own backstory? What are a handful of ideas for ways couples can strengthen their connection with one another?   Casey and Meygan Caston are the Co-Founders of Marriage365. Casey and Meygan were perfect examples of what not to do in marriage. Three years into marriage, they found themselves having racked up more than $250,000 in debt, fighting constantly, and were ready to call it quits. Despite the 12 failed marriages between their parents, they knew this wasn't the legacy they wanted for themselves or their children. They began reading and educating themselves on how to do marriage the right way. The result of their journey is Marriage365, where they millions of people worldwide through their books, social media, retreats, and their online streaming service, Marriage365.   Marriage 365 Website Marriage 365 App Marriage 365 Books Marriage 365 Coaching   Thank You to Our Sponsor: WinShape Marriage   Sample of Previous Episodes on Sexual Intimacy on The Savvy Sauce: 4 Fostering a Fun, Healthy Sex Life With Your Spouse With Certified Sex Therapist and Author, Dr. Jennifer Konzen 5 Ways to Deepen Your Intimacy in Marriage with Dr. Douglas Rosenau  6 Ten Common Questions About Sex, Shared Through a Biblical Worldview with Dr. Michael Sytsma 89 Passion Pursuit with Dr. Juli Slattery 108 Anatomy of an Affair with Dave Carder 135 Healthy Ways for Females to Increase Sexual Enjoyment with Tracey LeGrand 155 Sex in Marriage and Its Positive Effects with Francie Winslow, Part 1 156 Science and Art of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage, Part 2 158 Making Love in Marriage with Debra Fileta 165 Mutually Pleasing Sex in Marriage with Gary Thomas 186 Sex Series: Enhancing Female Pleasure and Enjoyment of Sex: An Interview with Dr. Jennifer Degler 218 Secrets of Sex and Marriage: An Interview with Dr. Michael Sytsma Special Patreon Release: Protecting Your Marriage Against Unfaithfulness with Dave Carder 252 Maximizing Sexual Connection as Newlyweds to Long Term Marriages and Recovering from a Sexless Marriage with Dr. Clifford & Joyce Penner   Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook, Instagram or Our Website   Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review, and subscribing to this podcast!   Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)   Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”   Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”   Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”    Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”    Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”    Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”    John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”    Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”   Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”   Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession- to the praise of his glory.”   Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”   Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“   Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“   Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”   *Transcript*   Music: (0:00 – 0:11)   Laura Dugger: (0:12 - 1:15)  Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host, Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.    Today's message is not intended for little ears. We'll be discussing some adult themes, and I want you to be aware before you listen to this message.    I'm thrilled to introduce you to our sponsor, WinShape Marriage. Their weekend marriage retreats will strengthen your marriage while you enjoy the gorgeous setting, delicious food, and quality time with your spouse.   To find out more, visit them online at winshapemarriage.org.    Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Casey and Meygan.   Casey Caston:  Thanks for having us. Excited to be here.   Laura Dugger: So, thrilled to have both of you, and let's just dive right into one of your sweet spots. How can open-ended questions change a marriage?   Casey Caston: (1:16 - 2:33)  Yeah, well, if you think about when we first met somebody that we fell in love with, fell attracted to that first date, as you're sitting across the table, you are looking at that person with so much curiosity. Like, who is this person? What are their hopes and their dreams and their life experiences?   What are they afraid of? Where are they going in life? And that curiosity drove us to ask really good open-ended questions.   Like, tell me more about yourself. It's funny because we were just reading in Proverbs this morning that in a man's heart, he has a purpose, but a man of understanding draws from the deep wells to pull that out. And I just, I always think about how a great question plums the deep wells of a man's heart or woman's heart.   And that attraction, that energy we feel, helps us with asking great questions. But then what happens is when we get married and we move into the wash, rinse, repeat of childcare and chores and, you know, the mundaneness of going to work, coming home, dinner, like, it can really sap all of the romance out of a relationship. And so, what happens is we fall into asking really boring questions.   Meygan Caston: (2:33 - 2:34)  Like, how was your day?   Casey Caston: (2:34 - 2:36)  What's picking up the kids?   Meygan Caston: (2:36 - 2:37)  What's for dinner? Yeah.   Casey Caston: (2:38 - 3:18)  So, we realize that when the well is dry, so to speak, you're not asking those great questions. We need prompts. We need an outside prompt because I don't think naturally we would ask great questions to spark this, you know, connecting conversation.   And I will tell you too, that if you just dropped in and, you know, just ask your spouse, like, “Hey, so, tell me some boundaries we need to set up with your parents.” People are going to be like, “Excuse me, where did that question come from? And what's the question behind the question?   What's your motivation here?” But those are conversations we need to have. We just need prompts.   So, yeah.   Laura Dugger: (3:19 - 3:32)  Well, I love that response. And I'm also curious after working with so many married couples, what have you seen as that connection between these amazing prompts for open-ended questions and emotional intimacy?   Meygan Caston: (3:34 - 4:20)  Yeah. Well, kind of like what Casey was mentioning about, um, just that curiosity of getting to know each other. I think the other part of asking those open-ended questions and having these deeper conversations is really about intentionality.   Like you still care about me. You still want to know about my heart. Well, for us, 25 years later, I still care about you.   I still love you. And I think that of course, as women, we long for that emotional connection. And I don't think that men realize it, but they actually long for that too.   And it's creating a safe place for spouses to share, to cry, to even, um, dream together about their future. And I think, again, if we don't give ourselves those opportunities and we're not intentional with that, we get stuck in the mundaneness of marriage.   Casey Caston: (4:20 - 5:03)  But, uh, and I would add to that, that curiosity, Meygan, I've talked about how curiosity is the pursuit of something. Right. And we all long to be desired to be pursued.   I mean, that is, that underlying communication is so powerful in relationships, because if you think about it, if you're not being pursued and your spouse isn't curious, I mean, that's like the, the heart of apathy. It's like, I don't care. And I know that people aren't intentionally trying to communicate that, but when you feel that, like my spouse doesn't really care about what I dream about or what I'm hoping to achieve this year, they just come home and they just watch TV or they're on their phone.   Meygan Caston: (5:04 - 5:18)  Right. That communicates a lot non-verbally. And so, that's why these open-ended questions are something that we should never stop being a learner of each other and of ourselves.   And that will provide that emotional intimacy.   Laura Dugger: (5:19 - 5:45)  That's so good. And obviously your resources are amazing. I would love, because you have these 365 Connecting Questions for Couples.   And so, I want to just hear maybe three of these questions that come to mind for you guys, especially as you've heard, these are the ones that tend to unlock something deeper in the conversation.   Meygan Caston: (5:46 - 6:07)  Absolutely. So, August 3rd is, are you someone who spends a lot of time in deep thought, processing things before making a decision, or do you tend to make quick decisions? Why or why not?   That question has genuinely sparked so much conversation between us and even like with our kids and other couples. Maybe you can explain why.   Casey Caston: (6:07 - 6:11)  Yeah. Well, I'm Mr. Impulsivity, so.   Meygan Caston: (6:11 - 6:29)  Yeah, you are. Where I, I don't, I wouldn't consider myself a deep thinker, but I definitely like to make pros and cons lists and think through things. But if you think about a dynamic between a husband and a wife, you know, there are so many decisions that you make together, small and large, your whole life, every day.   Casey Caston: (6:29 - 6:30)  Decision-making is huge in relationships.   Meygan Caston: (6:31 - 6:57)  And it's an everyday thing that couples are tackling. And it's important to know that no one is better than the other. It's not that a deep thinker is better than a more impulsive person. It's kind of more just naturally how you are. Have you always been this way? Do you like that about yourself?   Wow. You know, well, when it comes to these bigger decisions, I do spend, make more time, you know, thinking through and pros and cons. Oh, well, with small decisions, I'm more impulsive. I mean, you could just talk about that for hours and hours.   Casey Caston: (6:57 - 7:01) Yeah. But what's interesting is I tend to think more futuristic and big picture.   Meygan Caston: (7:01 - 7:01)  Yes.   Casey Caston: (7:01 - 7:03)  Even though I'm impulsive in the moment.   Meygan Caston: (7:03 - 7:05)  And I cannot, I can't do that.   Casey Caston: (7:05 - 7:06)  You are Ms. Realist.   Meygan Caston: (7:06 - 7:08)  Just tell me today, tell me this week.   Casey Caston: (7:09 - 7:10)  I can't think about this fun sponge.   Meygan Caston: (7:11 - 7:11)  Yes. Yeah.   Casey Caston: (7:12 - 7:15)  Because I'm like, let's dream big. And she's like, yeah, but what's happening today?   Meygan Caston: (7:16 - 7:49)  Yeah. Yeah. Another great question is January 18th.   How can we romance each other during the day in anticipation of sex? Because as we all know, us ladies, we need the foreplay. But again, I think that husbands also enjoy the foreplay.   But I don't think that couples are having these conversations. I think they think a foreplay is, well, once we enter into the bedroom, you know, and what we like to say is it's anything positive is foreplay. So, a thoughtful text, you know, a flirty I'm going to grab your hand to empty out the dishwasher.   Casey Caston: (7:49 - 7:50)  Amen.   Meygan Caston: (7:50 - 7:55)  Yeah. You know, it's those kinds of conversations. But like, I would never think of asking you that.   Casey Caston: (7:56 - 7:56)  Right.   Meygan Caston: (7:56 - 7:58)  Right. Thankfully for those.   Casey Caston: (7:58 - 8:10)  But as you know, Laura, like couples that need to talk about their sex life. And if you don't talk about your sex life, most oftentimes there's a lot of assumptions. And that leads to, you know, dysfunction.   Meygan Caston: (8:11 - 9:14)  Well, and missed expectations. Totally. Yeah. And then I have another question. April 25th is how do our differences help complement each other?   Oh, so, kind of another one of those things, like with making decisions. Every single couple has differences. And we always tell people Casey, and I are more different than alike.   I think people see us online and whatnot. And they hear, oh, we're both extroverts. We are. So, we have some similarities. We're both stubborn, very competitive, both competitive. But in the day-to-day operations of who Casey and Meygan are, we make decisions, we run our lives, run our business, run our business.   We are completely opposite. And what I think it's good to do for couples is to actually own your differences rather than shy away from them or make yourselves feel bad, like, oh, I wish we were the same. I get it.   You know, we actually are attracted to those things when we're dating. That's why opposites attract. But then when we get married, it's like, why doesn't he do everything the same way? I do it because I do it the right way. That's what we think. Right.   Casey Caston: (9:15 - 9:21)  Well, you heard the joke that marriage is about becoming one. And in the earlier years, it's about which one.   Meygan Caston: (9:21 - 10:14)  Yeah. Which one? Which figure out?   Yeah. And so, that question really allows you to identify your differences, but then go, how do they balance each other out? And I think for me, as someone who is organized, type A Casey's very spontaneous.   If we were both type A and structured, we wouldn't have a lot of fun. We really wouldn't. His spontaneity really brings out that side of me.   But if we were both spontaneous, our bills would never be paid, and we'd be broke. So, you know, I'm a I'm a saver. He's a spender.   You can see the balance in that. It's good that we're both those things. Right.   I'm on time. He's late. We could continue going on and on and on and on.   But I think that he's a risk taker. I'm a complete play it safer. And so, those really draw out a beautiful balance in our marriage versus trying to change one another.   So, I hope that question sparks listeners to really ask your spouse that and have fun with the conversation.   Laura Dugger: (10:15 - 11:03)  Well, you chose three great ones. I love it. And they draw out such different parts of our personality.   You highlighted where Casey's more futuristic. Meygan, you're more present. Some people will connect with questions that direct them more past oriented.   And so, our orientation to time comes out and the meta conversations, the talking like having the conversation about your conversation. Just so much goodness. And yes, especially with sexual intimacy.   So, many couples report that it is much harder to engage in conversation about sex rather than just have sex. And like you said, missed expectations can be one of the blow ups there, among many other things. So, you have questions that don't shy away from all forms of intimacy.   Meygan Caston: (11:04 - 11:10)  Yeah. And to also say we have a lot of fun questions, too. Like, tell me about what your bedroom looked like when you were a teenager.   Casey Caston: (11:11 - 11:12)  That's a great one. I love that one.   Meygan Caston: (11:12 - 11:47)  Let's talk couples. If you had a really hard day with the kids or at work, pick a fun question. You don't have to go by the date.   If you don't like the question, it's triggering, then flip to the next one. But going back to that emotional intimacy and connection that you were talking about, Laura, is you have to have those deep questions and those conversations. And you did when you were dating, because if you went on a date with your husband and you were like, hey, tell me, you know, what do you want to do when you retire?   And he was like, I don't know. Yeah, you'd be like snooze fest. This guy's boring, right?   Or if he was on his phone the whole time, there was something intriguing about your spouse.   Casey Caston: (11:47 - 11:48)  I don't know. I don't know.   Meygan Caston: (11:48 - 12:01)  Yeah, there was something intriguing about your spouse when you were dating and you were asking those questions that should never stop. Just like we hear that quote, never stop dating your spouse. Well, never stop learning about your spouse.   It's the same thing. Absolutely.   Laura Dugger: (12:02 - 12:16)  And I love how you two have such a humble approach because you say that you're a very unlikely couple to help support marriages. So, will you let us in on your own backstory?   Meygan Caston: (12:17 - 12:46)  Yeah, well, can I just start off by saying this? We live in a county that has one of the highest divorce rates in the nation. So, it's 72 percent divorce rate where we live.   We also come from there's 12 marriages between our parents. So, we come from so much divorce and trauma. And then we also got married very, very, very young.   So, all those statistics were against us on top of that. I'm just going to start off by saying that. Casey Caston: (12:46 - 13:18)  Yeah, my mom's been married six times. So, when by the time I hit junior high, I had probably like nine different iterations of home life and different dads and step siblings and half brothers. And all of that between both of our parents.   There's just there's some mental illness. There's affairs. There's all this trauma that was really unprocessed.   But then when Meygan and I saw each other, it was like we knew the wounds that we shared. It was like almost like a trauma bond.   Meygan Caston: (13:19 - 13:19)  Yeah.   Casey Caston: (13:19 - 14:08)  Like, oh, I've got abandonment. So, do you. And, you know, let's do it's like, wow.   So, let's make each other happy. And dating was just all the fun stuff, right? It was long walks along the beach.   It was going to street fairs or, you know, going out and having fun. And then we're like, if this is what life could be like, then we should do this forever and ever and ever. And just, you know, we were so doe eyed of like and optimistic about how marriage life would look like.   So, then once we did get married, done, done, done, we had to like work through stuff. Now, I was so conflict avoidant because I was afraid if there was conflict, then that means that there's going to be distance between Meygan and I and she might leave me.   Meygan Caston: (14:08 - 14:24)  Oh, there's another there's another difference. I'm a fighter. He's a fighter.   So, anytime we would have conflict triggers, you know, emotional regulation, I was like, we're going to go for it. Now, of course, my fighting tactics were not healthy. I yelled. I blamed. I was very aggressive, assertive.   Casey Caston: (14:24 - 14:37)  Conflict was very scary for me. Now. Now, Meygan, she's like wanting to deal with issues. And here I am, like trying to run for the hills. And she's like, he doesn't care about me. And I'm like, I'm trying to protect the marriage by not dealing with it.   Meygan Caston: (14:37 - 14:49)  So, you never really resolved anything. We would fight really bad. We broke all the fighting rules.   And then there was no true resolve, no apologies, no remorse. And you just kind of move forward.   Casey Caston: (14:49 - 15:06)  And so, then we piled ourselves like we had over two hundred fifty thousand dollars of debt when we started to try to work on getting pregnant. We we dealt with infertility. We I have ADHD, so that creates a lot of that's fun.   A lot of fun for the marriage.   Meygan Caston: (15:06 - 15:08)  The divorce rate is very high with ADHD.   Casey Caston: (15:08 - 15:10)  My life gets to teach you patience.   Meygan Caston: (15:11 - 15:11)  Yeah.   Casey Caston: (15:12 - 16:44)  But and then we have a child with special needs as well. So, we we had like if there's something that could go wrong, it it went wrong. We had you know, once we got married, there was toxic in-laws that boundaries that were crossed.   So, it just nothing for us came easy. And so, that's why we were the least likely to succeed in marriage. I mean, if we there was a couple doomed from the get go, it was Meygan and I believe a hundred percent that God used those trials, those hardships to create marriage.   Three sixty five. He gave us the strength to, you know, have the courage to say we're not going to follow in our parents footsteps. We're going to change that.    You know, it ends with us literally like we are going to change and break this generational sin because it goes back many, many generations for both of us. Our whole family is littered with divorce. And now like when we approach marriage, it because of where we've come from, it wasn't all flowery.   It was really tough. We have to be practical and very tactical with our advice, because when you're sitting across from a couple that's angry and resentful. We have to sit there and go, we know what that's like.   And here's exactly what you need to do next. I'm not going to give you a platitude. I'm not going to give you some flowery statement or we're not going to just talk through it.    No, we're going to give you a tool and an action step that's going to help you. Laura Dugger: (16:46 - 18:56)  Let's take a quick break to hear a message from our sponsor. Friends, I'm excited to share with you today's sponsor, WinShape Marriage. Do you feel like you need a weekend away with your spouse and a chance to grow in your relationship together at the same time?    WinShape Marriage is a fantastic ministry that provides weekend marriage retreats to help couples grow closer together in every season and stage of life from premarital to parenting to the emptiness phase. There is an opportunity for you. WinShape Marriage is grounded on the belief that the strongest marriages are the ones that are nurtured, even when it seems things are going smoothly so that they're stronger if they do hit a bump along their marital journey.   These weekend retreats are hosted within the beautiful refuge of WinShape Retreat, perched in the mountains of Rome, Georgia, which is a short drive from Atlanta, Birmingham and Chattanooga. While you're there, you will be well fed, well nurtured and well cared for. During your time away in this beautiful place, you and your spouse will learn from expert speakers and explore topics related to intimacy, overcoming challenges, improving communication and more.   I've stayed on site at WinShape before, and I can attest to their generosity, food and content. You will be so grateful you went to find an experience that's right for you and your spouse. Head to their website, winshapemarriage.org/savvy. That's W-I-N-S-H-A-P-E marriage dot org slash S-A-V-V-Y. Thanks for your sponsorship.   I'd love to hear even more into the redemption part of it, because Marriage 365, you had shared before we had recorded that you launched that in 2013. So, just to get the timeline straight, had you already done some work and some counseling before you launched that?   Meygan Caston: (18:56 - 19:26)  Or what was that journey? Yeah, so, we always say we it took us two years to fall in love and get married. It took us three years to destroy our marriage, and it took about four or five years to repair our marriage.   It was, as you know, Laura, it is not a quick fix when your marriage is as bad as ours. And so, our story is unique in the sense where we were both not wanting to get help for our marriage. I love you, babe, but he was resistant.   He didn't want to go to therapy. His family didn't go to therapy. That wasn't normalized.   Casey Caston: (19:26 - 19:31)  Well, my faith background said that therapy is bad from the from the devil.   Meygan Caston: (19:31 - 19:38)  It was specifically your parents. But from the devil. Yeah, because I have a faith background, too. And my parents went to therapy. But that's what I was saying.   Casey Caston: (19:38 - 19:40)  My background was that you don't do that.   Meygan Caston: (19:40 - 21:16)  Yeah. So, I was wanting to get divorced and he wouldn't divorce me. He was like, no.   So, if you're going to do it, you got to do it. And so, I got help for myself. And I had the most amazing woman who a therapist who just walked me through basically how to save my marriage by myself.   And she goes, listen, you know, at the end of the day, if you want to make a better marriage, it starts by making a better you. You have zero control over Casey. You have 100 percent control over you.   He's not here. You are. I can show you how to communicate, how to forgive him even without getting an apology.   I can show you how to bring to his defenses down. I can show you how to create boundaries so he doesn't yell at you anymore. I mean, and that's literally for 13 months I worked on myself. And I believe that that is what genuinely changed everything. And that's really the message behind Marriage 365 is if you want to make a better marriage, it starts by making a better you. Stop waiting around for your husband or your wife to get on board.   They may never. Then you're only going to build resentment while you sit there and wait. At the end of the day, you're responsible for how you show up.   And so, in that 13 months, the hope was, of course, that I would positively influence Casey, which I did. And he saw the change in me. Everything changed.   I mean, like we both used to be yellers, right? We would both yell and scream. And I was like, I'm not going to yell anymore.   Like, I just I don't want to be a yeller of a mom. I don't want to be a yeller of a wife. Like, I don't like this part of me. My mom was a yeller. I mean, oh, yeah, I hate this. And I just remember like one day he came walking in and he was all heated and frustrated and he started yelling at me. And do you remember what I did, babe?   Casey Caston: (21:17 - 21:33)  Yeah. She looked at me and calmly said, you know, I can tell that you're very upset. I really want to have to listen to what you want to share with me.   Why don't you go outside, take a break, come back in? We're going to sit back on the couch. We can talk about it. I'm here for you. And I was like, what a change.   Meygan Caston: (21:33 - 22:07)  Who is this person? I changed the way that we did marriage. I did that.   And I tell people that I didn't do that once. I didn't do it twice. I did that for months because we had habits we had created.   But I was like, that was like a new boundary. I'm like, I'm not going to engage with him when he's angry. It's been triggered.   Nothing good is coming from this. So, it was all of that we started to really adopt and learn together because he's like, you're a different person. Like, it was obvious we were doing the tango.   And now I was doing the rumba and he was over there doing the tango. And I'm like, come join me in the healthy rumba over here because it's way better.   Casey Caston: (22:07 - 22:09)  And so, for toxic tango.   Meygan Caston: (22:09 - 23:20)  Yeah, we went to a marriage. Yeah, we went to a marriage intensive. And we did some therapy.   We did a lot of self-help. But through that journey, this is kind of where we started Marriage 365 is. First off, we couldn't afford therapy.   We needed to pay off all that debt that we had with a lot of student loan debt, a lot of stupid debt. What do you do if you can't afford therapy? What do you do if you don't have a good therapist?   What do you do if you have a bad experience with therapy? What do you do if the books aren't enough? And that was there was a really big hole and missing part in the marriage.   I don't say industry, but in the marriage space, where were all the online resources? Because this was back again in like 2010 when like podcasts weren't even around, social media was just becoming a thing. And it was really hard.   We were really disappointed with the lack of resources there were for marriage. And it felt like every church you go to, there was, you know, the missions ministry and the children's ministry and the youth groups. And all those are great.   Where in the world are all the marriage ministries? Then we found out only 3% of churches have actual paid marriage ministries. And I thought, that's messed up.   That's reverse. It's supposed to be the opposite, because then everything else will work itself out, as we know, with what research shows.   Casey Caston: (23:20 - 23:21)  Same with men's ministry, by the way.   Meygan Caston: (23:21 - 23:22)  Yes, same with men's ministry.   Casey Caston: (23:22 - 23:23)  Men's and marriage.   Meygan Caston: (23:23 - 23:26)  That's like the stepchild.   Casey Caston: (23:26 - 23:33)  Tech guy slash men's guy slash, you know. Children's persons can also do marriage.   Meygan Caston: (23:33 - 23:40)  So, we really just started helping our friends out. Obviously, people could see the change. Then people would come to us. We started helping couples at our church.   Casey Caston: (23:40 - 23:48)  And we had a ghoul pool. Like people were like, we give you guys another like ten months and then we're expecting you.   Meygan Caston: (23:48 - 23:51)  Yeah, everyone that knew us thought we'd get divorced.   Casey Caston: (23:51 - 23:52)  We were messy.   Meygan Caston: (23:52 - 23:58)  We were bad. Yeah. So, to see the complete transformation. And again, I go back to that work we did was on ourselves.   Casey Caston: (23:58 - 25:31)  And I just have to say that if you want to make a better marriage, it starts by making a better you. If you're hearing that. And you're kind of in a one sided marriage right now, I got to just say, I know that message sucks because it's a message that says you have to go first.   And that's not fair. In a marriage, you're supposed to be a team. But I do want to say there's so many couples that are stuck. Waiting for their spouse to join them on the let's get healthy train. So, their spouse doesn't join them. And then what they do is they kind of lean back, fold their arms and go, well, I guess we're stuck.   But I want to say that that's there is a message of empowerment to say you do have influence and the ability to steer your marriage in a healthy way. I have lots of regret that I did not join that train much sooner. But the story is that Meygan, you know, became the hero of our journey.   And that is something that I work actively so that I'm never in that place again, that I am the one that's always actively trying to improve myself, that I'm a better communicator, that I'm not a yeller, which we've ditched that a long time ago, that that I'm considered of Meygan's needs. And I'm even like attuned to like, what is she feeling? And how do I meet her where she's at?   Laura Dugger: (25:32 - 25:54)  Which is amazing that watching Meygan, it was compelling enough for you to join in. And it's admirable on both sides, the work that you've done. And are there any specific areas that you grew in that now you teach couples? I'm thinking specifically under conflict and repair or communication.   Casey Caston: (25:55 - 27:42)  Yeah. So, I remember those early years and every single week was chaos to chaos. Like coming home, it'd be like, what's for dinner?   I'm hungry and we need to make a decision now. Or, you know, it's Friday night or Saturday morning. What's going on this weekend?   Or where's all our money going? It was very, it was very reactionary. And I remember reading through Stephen Covey's, you know, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.   And the first habit is be proactive. You cannot be intentional with your life. You cannot create purpose and meaning unless you are proactive with your life.   So, Meygan and I, you know, I'm working in a company and every single week we get together and we go through what are everyone's goals? What do we need to accomplish this week? We find alignment and the week goes really well.   We've got KPIs. We've got all these like, hey, as a team, you know, work team, here's what we're trying to accomplish this week. And it just kind of dawned on us like, well, why don't we do that in marriage?   Why don't we do that for a family? You got a family of six. You got six people running around the house. All have agendas. And you are trying to find alignment so that, hey, this is what the family is all about this week, right? We've got tournaments.   We've got parties. We've got projects. We've got meals.   And I think for so many couples we talk to, they live. Life with purpose on like building their career or their business or purpose with other areas of their life. And then when it comes to family, they wing it.   Meygan Caston: (27:42 - 27:43)  They just wing it.   Casey Caston: (27:43 - 28:31)  Yeah. And it's like, well, if it's meant to be, it's meant to be. It's the winging attitude creates chaos.   And so, Meygan and I love to teach this tool called the Weekly Marriage Business Meeting. And it is all of the logistics of our relationship schedules, meal plans, budgets, connection time, sexy time, alone time, self-care time. Yeah.   And and we kind of set with intention the week ahead for us. And we go through all the decisions of who's going, what, where, when. And all of that's done.   So, when you walk into the day, you're not like stressed about what's supposed to be happening. There is alignment and there's no missed expectations.   Meygan Caston: (28:31 - 29:27)  Yeah, there's no fights anymore about, well, you said you'd be home at six. No, I didn't. I said I'd be home at seven.   We sync our calendars. And I think, too, a big thing with this is we've noticed we fight when we don't do this now. It's one of those tools that it's prevented most of conflict.   I mean, we say it will on average for the most couples that use it. We have at least over 10,000 couples we know right now currently using it that are our members that they say it cuts conflict in half in half, because what you're doing is you're even scheduling that connection time or date night time where you're like, no matter how busy we are, when are Casey and Meygan going to get to be Casey and Meygan?   And that's so important, because again, if you're winging it and you're just trying to find time to connect, well, you've got four kids, we've got two teenagers. It's never going to happen. Right. And so, the weekly marriage business meeting is definitely one of the amazing and favorite worksheets and tools that we've taught and that we use ourselves because it works.   Casey Caston: (29:28 - 29:28)  Yeah.   Laura Dugger: (29:28 - 29:59)  What a game changer. That is awesome and so practical, so intentional, which we're all about. But then also we had talked about emotional intimacy earlier and emotional intimacy is interconnected with sexual intimacy and communication is the root issue.   And that's what you teach couples. So, what are some conversations that couples can begin so that they can grow in both of those types of intimacy and enjoyment?   Casey Caston: (30:01 - 31:34)  Yeah, so, I feel like I have to start off by saying I got this so wrong when we were first married. It's OK. I forgive you now.   Yeah, because, you know. Let's just let's be we'll be we'll be completely transparent. So, Meygan and I waited to have sex until we were married.   So, now I actually waited till I was married to have sex. And I thought that under that purity guideline, I was promised maybe by a youth group, maybe by a convention, that if you withhold sex and remain pure, God is going to bless you with the best sex life when you're married. And that just simply did not happen.   Like when we first got married, I really got went into the bedroom thinking. I don't know what foreplay is, but let's have intercourse until I come and then we're done. And that's sex. That's our sexual intimacy. And we missed out on so many intimate ways of knowing each other and sex being an obligation and something like I just was demanding of it from Meygan. And. What I've come to discover and what I love to teach other men is that sex is so much more broader than just having intercourse. I mean, there was this total understanding like, well, I feel good during intercourse. This feels very stimulating, which means that Meygan must feel the exact same way while we're having intercourse.   Meygan Caston: (31:35 - 31:35)  Nope.   Casey Caston: (31:36 - 32:35)  Because that's because listen, I never had sex before. But anytime I watched a rom com, you know, the guy threw up, you know, against the wall or they're having intercourse and she's going and he's going and they're having a great time. Like this must be what sex is all about.   And what I've discovered now and I get to teach other men is that emotional intimacy is kind of the birthplace of sexual expression of love, right? That we we create safe places for our wives to to open up. And because of that, they become more willing and wanting that that sexual expression rather than us just coming in and saying, OK, it's time for sex.   Let's go. And so, when we talk about just this book, this 365 Connecting Questions for Couples, I tell my guys, I'm like, hey, if you want to have great sex, start here because that is foreplay.   Meygan Caston: (32:35 - 33:48)  That's start here. It's good to know my heart, not just use me for my body, which can feel like that for a lot of people. And I think going back to the emotional intimacy, I think that, again, you had that when you were dating or you wouldn't have gotten married.   There was no way you were. If the person was boring, closed off, if, you know, your spouse was just completely on their phone every time, you wouldn't have had that second, third, fourth date. So, there was emotional intimacy at some point, which means you can't ever say we never had it.    You can always get it back, but you can have to be intentional. And I think a great way is we call it connection time. I think date night scares a lot of people.    I think it's the idea of. We have to go to a restaurant, we have to spend money, we have to find a babysitter, all these hurdles that you have to go through to make it happen, so then couples just don't even do it. So, we're like, listen, if you if that's overwhelming to you, then try connection time.    And really what that is, it's still undivided, you know, attention and time with you and your spouse. Maybe it's smaller, maybe it's 15 minutes, 30 minutes. And I know for when our kids were little, we played board games and card games and they'd go to bed, you know, at 7:30 or 8:00 PM.    And we would bring out Yahtzee.   Casey Caston: (33:48 - 33:51)  There'd be a lot of trash talking over chutes and ladders.   Meygan Caston: (33:52 - 34:29)  But we would play. We would play games. And it was our time to connect.    And when we didn't talk about the kids, you know, we just chatted about our day and again, going through some of these connecting questions that didn't even really exist yet, but they were in our heads. Taking a walk with the dog and, you know, going to a little local coffee shop, even if it's just 30 minutes and sharing and talking and exploring that emotional intimacy should never stop again. And that's going to give people opportunities to then go into the bedroom, like Casey mentioned, more willing and more excited to be intimate to each other because it's like, oh, that's right.    We like each other. We're still married. We're still friends.   Casey Caston: (34:29 - 35:15)  You bring up a great point. Like I said, I think sitting down over the table, staring at each other can be intimidating for a lot of guys, because especially if this is not a regular habit in your relationship and taking a walk for guys when we're doing something and maybe it's less intimidating because we're not even staring at each other. But that kind of like getting the, you know, oxytocin going, like getting moving, like that kind of adrenaline can actually stimulate guys for good conversations and processing things.    And so, what we hear from a lot of couples that take our book, maybe they'll take a picture of the question and they'll go, Hey, let's take a walk. And then they'll use the question on their walk.   Meygan Caston: (35:15 - 35:15)  Yeah.   Casey Caston: (35:15 - 35:24)  And that gets conversations going. So, if that's like a on ramp onto this, that's a that's a great starting point for a lot of people.   Laura Dugger: (35:24 - 36:48)  Oh, that's so good. And I love how you say just an on ramp, because the goal is more intimacy overall together to know one another, be known. And I love that you're showing this is not a manipulation factor.    This isn't ask these questions so we can be more active in the bedroom, regardless of whichever spouse is the higher desire one. But this is to really enhance all levels of your relationship. And as you talk about oxytocin, it just makes me think such an interesting cycle that the Lord created where I will speak more stereotypically that where women require the emotional connection and then they open up and enjoy sex more.    But then men, once they've had sex and they just have this like 500 percent increase of oxytocin in this neurochemical bath that opens them up emotionally. And we could see it even as we view our differences. You could be upset because they're opposite or we can see it as a gift that they can fuel one another.    And then we get more of a holistic picture of overall intimacy. So, I'll also link to quite a few episodes because we do about one per month where we dive deeper into sexual intimacy. S   o, I can link all of those in the show notes.    But Casey, were you going to say something?   Meygan Caston: (36:49 - 36:50)  I want to say something to it.   Casey Caston: (36:51 - 37:16)  He loves. Well, so, we're talking chicken and egg, right? Like who gets the emotional intimacy, who gets the physical intimacy first?    And I just think that there's if we approach our relationship with selfishness, well, then neither people get satisfied. But if we are in an approach to serve one another and be selfless lovers. So, men would be like, you know what?    I want to meet my wife's emotional needs.   Meygan Caston: (37:16 - 37:16)  Yeah.   Casey Caston: (37:17 - 37:38)  Like and I do believe that men are the spark of initiation. If you're a husband out there listening to this, like that one of your greatest gifts to marriage is initiation. You were the one who asked for the first date.    You were the one who got down one the knee. You are the spark of initiation. And I believe that God's created women as nurturers of that initiation.   Meygan Caston: (37:39 - 37:41)  And to clarify, you're not talking just about initiating sex.   Casey Caston: (37:41 - 37:43)  Well, yes. Just everything.   Meygan Caston: (37:43 - 37:55)  Initiating, just initiating, initiating a weekly marriage business meeting. Women are so turned on by when a husband's like, hey, I don't necessarily know what we want to do for a date night, but I want to take you on a date. Can I get an amen, Laura?   Laura Dugger: (37:55 - 37:56)  Right, sister?   Meygan Caston: (37:57 - 38:14)  Hey, women are turned on. Listen, men, women are turned on. If you say, you know what?    I know that like this has been an issue with my parents and I don't even know how to handle it, but I really want to have that conversation. Oh, my gosh. Just initiating the conversation is all we're looking for.    It's OK that you don't have all the answers.   Casey Caston: (38:14 - 38:14)  Yeah.   Meygan Caston: (38:14 - 38:23)  But for men that avoid stonewall, escape, numb out, busy themselves, it is such a turnoff. It is so not what we want.   Laura Dugger: (38:23 - 39:55)  I want to make sure that you're up to date with our latest news. We have a new website. You can visit theSavvySauce.com and see all of the latest updates. You may remember Francie Heinrichsen from episode 132, where we talked about pursuing our God given dreams. She is the amazing businesswoman who has carefully designed a brand-new website for Savvy Sauce Charities. And we are thrilled with the final product.    So, I hope you check it out there. You're going to find all of our podcasts now with show notes and transcriptions listed a scrapbook of various previous guests and an easy place to join our email list to receive monthly encouragement and questions to ask your loved ones so that you can have your own practical chats for intentional living. You will also be able to access our donation button or our mailing address for sending checks that are tax deductible so that you can support the work of Savvy Sauce Charities and help us continue to reach the nation with the good news of Jesus Christ.    So, make sure you visit theSavvySauce.com.    Okay, so, then continue the conversation with just overall intimacy. What are some examples of de-escalation techniques that you recommend to couples who are in conflict, ones that can maybe help the strained relationships so that they can be repaired?  Yeah.   Meygan Caston: (39:55 - 42:19)  Yeah. So, a big thing that I've learned as someone who's very direct, I can tend to be on that, like I mentioned, fighter side. And I know a lot of women, studies have shown 75 percent of us ladies are the ones that typically bring up the issues.    So, just be aware that there is a gender difference there. And if you're a dude, there's nothing wrong with you if you're in, you know, that 75 percent or 25 percent. But I think the biggest thing I've recognized is to remind your spouse in the very beginning of the conversation, why you're having the conversation.    You know, I love you. I love us. I want to see us be the best people that we can be.    I want to see us enjoy marriage and enjoy life. I love you. Like bring the positivity and the reminder that you're better together than apart.    And really, that's part of what we call a soft startup, right? There's a lot of different soft startups you've heard of. You know, I feel when you I need those work to but I like to take it a little bit deeper to say, remind your spouse how much that you love being married to them.    Or again, whatever the issue is like we have the most. Let's say it's parenting. Casey and I are very different in our parenting styles.    Last night would have been a great difference of how that happened. But like reminder that like we both love our children. We both want the best for our kids.    No one doubts that. We both have made we made two beautiful, wonderful, quirky children. Right.    And so, even you can start the conversation with that. But I wish that more people did that because I think people are are, you know, I'm really upset about something. OK, well, the second you say that defenses, sorry, but defenses are going to go up.    We want to keep the conversations defenses low, guards low, right, de-escalation. And so, use soft startups, use kind, positive language. But I think another thing behind that would be come to the conversation processed.    Do not have these conversations 11 o'clock at night when you're tired or when you're hungry. Do not have these conversations when it just happened and you haven't had the time to just like stop. Think about what do I really need?    Why did that trigger me? What am I hoping to achieve? Why is my husband acting this way?    Oh, is he under a lot of stress? Yeah, we got to give ourselves time to sit and process before we even use those soft startups. So, that would be my advice for de-escalation.   Casey Caston: (42:20 - 43:04)  And mine actually would be an apology. I think that we all make mistakes. And when you think about a couple that's maybe living reactively, just winging it, I doubt that there's ever an apology that's given on either side because it takes a little it takes awareness to recognize, gosh, you know what?    My that little comment I just made that probably had a little zing to it. Or, you know, I really let my spouse down by not parenting the children the way she would want me to. Or, you know, I said I was going to do something and I didn't.    And I let my partner down. You want to de-escalate a tense situation. Apologize.   Meygan Caston: (43:04 - 43:04)  Yeah. Own it.   Casey Caston: (43:05 - 43:12)  When you apologize, you know, you're taking all of the heat out of the fire. They really are.   Meygan Caston: (43:12 - 43:16)  And you're validating your spouse's feelings. Who doesn't want to be validated and seen? Everybody does.   Casey Caston: (43:16 - 43:38)  And then you're taking responsibility and accountability for your actions, which is the trust builder for relationships. So, that's why when you talk about high conflict relationships, there aren't a lot of there's not a lot of trust there. It's not a safe place anymore.    So, to create that safety, we want to we want to build trust back into the relationship.   Laura Dugger: (43:39 - 43:50)  Those are fantastic. And do you guys just have maybe a handful of ideas for ways that couples can strengthen their marriage with one another?   Meygan Caston: (43:51 - 44:09)  Absolutely. I would say, obviously, the weekly marriage business meeting. I mean, I know we talked about it, but the important thing is to schedule it, put it in the calendar because you don't want to wing it.    And that way it's showing, oh, you're prioritizing us. Taking walks has been a big one for us. Playing games is a big one.   Casey Caston: (44:09 - 45:18)  The 60 second blessing is where we intentionally spend time. 60 seconds reminding our partner of how much we love them, using our words to say, like, I saw how hard you work for the family. I love how you take care of the kids and kind of reminding your partner, like I see the goodness in each other.    I think it's really important because. Day to day life, we can just be very transactional, and if we again, we have any sort of criticism or, you know, our words just are not flavored with life, well, proverb says, you know, our words have the power to give life or to give death. Right.    So, the words that we speak, if we evaluate. Are we producing what I call weed seeds? Or are we planting fruit trees?    Because weed seeds choke out the garden. Those sharp, critical words can leave your garden looking pretty shabby, whereas being intentional by speaking positive over each other. It's like planting fruit trees.    And who doesn't like a good, juicy orange? Right.   Meygan Caston: (45:18 - 47:15)  Well, and the 60 second blessing, you know, you start off by writing five to seven positive things you love about your spouse. And so, one spouse shares their list for 60 seconds and then the second spouse shares their list. And it's this habit that we actually started doing after our marriage intensive that we did as we were repairing our marriage because we had yeah, we had we had spoken such mean and harsh words or just a lot of roommate stuff.    And we needed that positivity. And it's a great foreplay tip, by the way, just to sit, sometimes sit down and go, I just need to tell you how wonderful you are. Like, who doesn't want to hear that about themselves?    I think another thing that Casey and I have recognized it is the only thing, by the way, Laura, in our marriage, the only thing that has ever stayed consistent. That's we have fun together. We laugh a lot, even in hard times.    Yeah, it wasn't as enjoyable, but we still had fun. And, you know, again, fun is different for everybody. We don't ever want to judge someone else's fun.    But we are constantly like we we are sarcastic. But that's for us because we have high trust levels. I usually tell couples if you're, you know, in a fair recovery or you have low trust levels, sarcasm is probably not great.    But we're very playful. We have again, we play a lot of fun games and we play ping pong and cornhole and we take our dogs on our dog on a walk. And we, you know, we're going to try to go ax throwing in April.    We've never done that before. Like there are fun that we've taken dance lessons. So, we like to think out of the box and do new things or things that we know that like how many games of Yahtzee have we played?    I don't even know. I mean, we've lost count. Or gin rummy, you know, I mean, we just play Sequence or Rummikub like we play them all.    And for that for us, that's really fun. We dance a lot. We love the 90's music.    Like get out your favorite playlist and just dance and sing and be goofy. Like I think if couples were to laugh and enjoy each other more and be able to laugh with themselves, I think that there would be more marriages that would stay together. Laura Dugger: (47:16 - 47:39)  That is something that I've even experienced in this time together. You guys are so fun to be around. And that's very life giving to others.    But I can see where it starts in that secret place between just the two of you, your best friend. And you share a lot of this goodness with Marriage 365. So, can you let us know all the different things that you have to offer?   Casey Caston: (47:40 - 48:48)  Yeah, I would probably say the number one way that people experience all of the resources that we've created over the years is through our mobile app. So, we have an app that has over a thousand pieces of videos, workshop, worksheet, excuse me, courses, challenges. We even have a checkup so you can actually rate kind of your marriage.    And that is a great way for people to be able to have access, you know, on the spot if they're dealing with an issue, they don't know how to get through and they're looking for a tool or a conversation to help them work through that. That our app provides such a valuable resource. I mean, beyond that, you know, some couples need a little bit more hands on approach.    So, we do coaching. We have a coaching staff actually to handle all the incoming couples that are saying, hey, can you can you help us out? And again, I just want to say coaching is really, really focused on giving action plans and homework and accountability to our clients.    And coaching is really, really helpful if you're like, I just need to know what to do next.   Meygan Caston: (48:48 - 49:17)  Yeah. We do intensives for couples that are in crisis, you know, there that are seriously considering separation or divorce or an affair recovery and that we have an over 90 percent success rate because we went through an intensive when we were struggling and it was something we knew we wanted to get trained on and do. And it's a full two days with Casey and I.    I mean, two days back-to-back. We know you. We get Christmas cards from all of our couples, you know, every year.    We love it. And it's they become almost I mean, yes, they're our clients, but they almost become like our friends.   Casey Caston: (49:17 - 49:45)  Yeah. And then probably personally, one of my favorite things that we do is we host our own couple's getaway. And this is a four-day experience.    It's not your it's not like a typical retreat where you're sitting in a conference room, you're just getting lectured all day. We're actually facilitating tools and then giving couples opportunities to work on them. Then some free time to really spend some time making great memories.    We have a dance party. It is a ton of fun.   Meygan Caston: (49:45 - 49:55)  We make sure. Yeah, we make sure it's fun. It's more it's definitely more for couples who are doing OK or want to do better, not they're not ideal for couples in crisis because it's going to be very uncomfortable.   Casey Caston: (49:55 - 49:56)  I love our retreats.   Meygan Caston: (49:56 - 49:57)  I know.   Casey Caston: (49:57 - 49:58)  I love interacting with her.   Meygan Caston: (49:58 - 50:05)  And of course, we have our social media. You can just search Marriage 365 and then we have our website, too. And we have our books, of course.   Casey Caston: (50:05 - 50:09)  Oh, and I have a men's group. I know I launched a five-week men's reset. . Meygan Caston: (50:09 - 50:34)  Needless to say, Laura, we're really busy. I do a lot. I think that's what's funny, right?    I think that people see us online and they think that we just have an Instagram, or we just have Facebook. And I'm like, we've been doing this for 12 years and we have a staff of 12 people. So, we reach a lot of people.    And we because marriage is never a one stop, you know, one size fits all. It's it's true. There are so many different dynamics, and we want to be able to help as many people as we can.   Laura Dugger: (50:35 - 50:59)  Wow. Thank you for sharing that. We will add all of those links.    I love all these different offerings that you have and that will meet people in whatever phase they're in. But you two already know we are called The Savvy Sauce because savvy is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so, as my final question for both of you, what is your Savvy Sauce?   Meygan Caston: (51:00 - 51:47)  Mine would be I would want every single person to think about becoming more confident. And that starts with becoming more self-aware. I think that that is completely changed who I am.   And I'm we're raising two kids, and I see the confidence that they have. And we're modeling that but also walking them through how to be self-aware. And really, that starts with having to be one with your thoughts, turning off the phone, sorry, turning off the podcast, sometimes turning off the music and just actually sitting and really going.    Do I really know my thoughts, my feelings, my values, my personality, my good, my bad, my ugly? And we don't do this enough. We are busy ourselves.    We're distracted constantly. And I think that it's really harming our mental health. And so, that would be my savvy sauce.   Casey Caston: (51:47 - 52:30)  Hmm. I love that, babe. It's kind of hard because we find so much alignment.    I mean, I would that's exactly what I would say, too. Um, I, you know, my focus in twenty, twenty-five has really been turned towards helping husbands. And there's a quote that Henry David Thoreau says that many men live lives of quiet desperation and they die with their songs still inside them.    And most guys are terrified of stopping and evaluating. And so, for me, creating space too. Listen, I do a 10, 10, 10 practice in the morning.   Meygan Caston: (52:30 - 52:32)  That's what I thought you were going to say.   Casey Caston: (52:32 - 52:32)  Yeah, yeah.   Meygan Caston: (52:32 - 52:36)  Well, I was like, I bet you he's going to talk about it because it's been life changing for you.   Casey Caston: (52:36 - 53:01)  Yeah. So, I spend 10 minutes of scripture reading. So, that's input.    Then I spend 10 minutes of quiet meditation where I'm sitting and I'm in a listening posture. And I mean, I think about everything from lasagna to the last wave I serve to. But there's intentionality about just opening myself like here I am.    I'm ready to be downloaded on like what you have for me today.   Meygan Caston: (53:01 - 53:02)  God be one with your thoughts.   Casey Caston: (53:03 - 53:18)  Yeah. And all sorts of things come up. And then I spent 10 minutes journaling.    And that process is just and that's like the output. Right. So, now I've got input.    I've been listening and now I get to write stuff out. And that's been a huge game changer for me.   Laura Dugger: (53:19 - 53:43)  Wow, I love both of those. You two are just refreshingly vulnerable and such an incredible mixture of intentional and lighthearted. And it has been so great just to sit under your teaching today.    So, thank you for sharing your story and for helping all of us. And thank you just for being my guests.   Meygan Caston: (53:43 - 53:45)  Oh, you're welcome. It was a pleasure to be here.   Casey Caston: (53:45 - 53:49)  Yes, you asked great questions that plumb the deep wells of Casey Meygan.   Laura Dugger: (53:52 - 57:35)  One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term gospel before?   It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news.   Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves. This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death, and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved.   We need a savior. But God loved us so much, he made a way for his only son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with him.   That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus.

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games. Join our active and welcoming Discord community, Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon), or Leave us a review wherever you find this podcast! Episode 231 - Dice Are Nice Jake and Brendan present the fourth installment in our component series.  This time, they dive deep into dice and all the interesting implications they bring to a game's decision space.  Input randomness?  We got that.  Output randomness?  You better believe it!   Timestamps 3:00- intro to dice 9:00- dice and output randomness 26:00- dice and input randomness 38:30- mitigating dice randomness 43:00- dice game case studies   Games mentioned Can't Stop, Raiders of the North Sea, Yahtzee, Root, Arcs, Catan, Spots, Castles of Burgundy, Quantum, Claim It, Grand Austria Hotel, Troyes, Dungeons & Dragons, Liar's Dice, Railroad Ink, Twenty-One     Preplanners A few deep dives are in the works, so get in some plays of Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Dominion! Also we'll be drafting our favorite game components soon!   Music and Sound Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Thank you to Flash Floods for use of their song Palm of Your Hand as a sting from their album Halfway to Anywhere: https://open.spotify.com/album/2fE6LrqzNDKPYWyS5evh3K?si=CCjdAGmeSnOOEui6aV3_nA Intermission Music: music elevator ext part 1/3 by Jay_You -- https://freesound.org/s/467243/ -- License: Attribution 4.0 Bell with Crows by MKzing -- https://freesound.org/s/474266/ -- License: Creative Commons 0 hammer v2.wav by blukotek -- https://freesound.org/s/337815/ -- License: Creative Commons 0   Contact Follow and reach us on social media on Bluesky @decisionspace.bsky.social. If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Byeee!

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 chat about the hype leading up to a game like Silksong, and whether any piece of art can ever live up to those lofty expectations we create.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 chat about "True" endings that make you go above and beyond to unlock, including which ones we like and which ones we hate.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup

Join us as we play a fun new game involving wait times at the Disneyland resort

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 attempt to make a D&D-esque alignment chart for video game developers, ranging from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup

In this episode you will discover: Math IS Language - It's in Our Wheelhouse Math has syntax (order of operations), semantics (number meanings), and involves memory and executive function - all areas SLPs already assess and treat. If you can help with language, you have transferable skills for math therapy. Start Simple with What You Have You don't need special materials or extensive math training. Use a deck of cards, dice, and real-life examples like restaurant receipts. Make numbers "friendly" (round $18.72 to $20) and let clients show you multiple ways to solve problems. Address Your Own Math Anxiety First Most SLPs feel uncomfortable with math, but clients need this support for life participation (paying bills, calculating tips, telling time). Acknowledge your discomfort, start with basics you DO know, and remember - if you avoid it, you can't help your clients who want to work on it. If you've ever felt your palms get sweaty when a client asks for help with numbers, this conversation is for you. Welcome to the Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Katie Strong, a faculty member at Central Michigan University where I lead the Strong Story Lab. I'm today's host for an episode that might just change how you think about math anxiety - both your own and your clients'. We're featuring Tami Brancamp and Dave Brancamp, who are doing pioneering work at the intersection of aphasia and mathematics. Before you hit pause because you're having flashbacks to algebra class, stay with me! This research shows us that the language of math is exactly that - language - which puts it squarely in our wheelhouse as SLPs. We'll explore how to support our clients with aphasia who are struggling with everyday math tasks like counting change, telling time, or balancing a checkbook. And yes, we'll tackle the elephant in the room: addressing our own math insecurities so we can show up confidently for our clients. Let me tell you about our guests. Tami Brancamp is an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine and founder of the Aphasia Center of Nevada. Her research focuses on identity in aphasia and rehabilitating everyday math skills. Dave Brancamp spent over 15 years as a junior high math teacher and later became Director of Standards at the Nevada Department of Education. Together, they co-founded Aphasia + Math, where they're exploring how language and mathematics intersect for people with aphasia. Okay now let's get this Aphasia + Math conversation started! Katie Strong: Tami and Dave, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited for you to be here today.   Dave Brancamp: Thank you.   Tami Brancamp: We are both super excited to have a chance to talk about things that are different, right?   Katie Strong: Right. I do have to say, I don't know if it was a rash, but I did get a little bit nervous coming into the conversation, because I think I may be one of those SLPs that feel a little bit uncomfortable with math.   Tami Brancamp: Well, this SLP also is uncomfortable with math, so we can be uncomfortable together. And we'll let the math dude guide us through some of the things.   Dave Brancamp: And it will be fun. By the time you're done, I want to see that smile that you have on your face.   Katie Strong: Well, let's jump in and have you share a little bit about how you came to researching aphasia and math.   Tami Brancamp: Well, I have loved working with people who have aphasia since the beginning of my graduate studies. And then probably, like most of us, there's a few clients who've really hit your heart. One of them, I don't recall her name, and that's okay, but she had a stroke, had aphasia. She had had great recover physically, and her language was quite good, some anomia. But she's a banker, and she could not process numbers, and she was angry. I'm a newbie, I didn't understand the emotional piece of stroke survivor, aphasia. can't do my job well. But she was angry, and I felt so helpless. I didn't know what to do to help her. You know, I could pull a workbook off the shelf or something, but it didn't feel right. You know, she could do calculations, but couldn't do her job. And I always felt so very, very helpless over the years.   And the other part that came to start looking at this was teaching in a speech pathology program, undergrad and grad. And in class, maybe we're doing an averaging or something to get a score. I'm not sure if we start talking math, and I would see these students, and their eyes would just like, pop up, like, “Oh my gosh, she's asking me to do math.” And like, deer in the headlights. So I'm like, “What is this?” Every semester, I would do kind of an informal survey when we would do a little bit of math, and I say, “Okay, so how many of you don't do math? Raise your hand or are afraid of math?” And it would be at least two thirds to three quarters of the class every single semester, and I'm like, “Okay, there's something here.” Like, if I'm afraid of math, how am I going to help my clients remediate that in an efficient way? Right? I'm going to avoid it. If I can, I'll go do other things that are important.   So those were, like, the two big things, and then happened to be married to a math dude. And I wondered why are we not combining our skill sets? Because I would come home and I would share with Dave. I'm like “Dave, the majority of my students are afraid to do math or uncomfortable doing math.” And it's not complicated math. We're not talking quadratic equations or things I don't even know what they mean anymore. And we would talk about it a little bit, and we talk about math attitudes and perceptions and how we develop our math skills. And I'm like, “There's something here.”But I was never taught, how do you remediate number processing? Calculations? right? But yet, I would have multiple clients say, “Hey, Tammy, I can't do numbers.” “Yeah, how do I do this?” And there really wasn't anything the literature that told me how to do it. So, I would talk to Dave, and then, just over the years, I'm like, “Okay, we need to do something with this. We really do.” And I don't know what that means, because I'm not most comfortable with math, it is not my passion. We're very opposite. I think I shared like, Dave has math and fun in the same language, and then in the same sentence, I'm like, “they don't go together in my brain.” So we're very, very opposite. But you know, you can speak for yourself how you grew up and you had to learn how to embrace math, and having good teachers helped when we were younger, and having poor teachers or teachers with different attitudes also left a lasting impression. But when you think about it, whether it's, you know, cooking, driving, banking, living, going to grocery store, restaurants, everything we do all the time, it all involves numbers to some impact, you know, to some effect. And our folks with aphasia, again, not everybody, but the majority of them, will still have an impact with acalculia, difficulty processing numbers and calculating and transcoding, you know, saying, saying the numbers. So, we started to look at it.   I did have a had a gift of time with Audrey Holland. So that was my beautiful, like, for many of us, a mentor, you know, she had her three-pronged stool, like the different parts of aphasia. And Dave and I started dividing it up, like, what were the parts we thought involve, you know, aphasia and numbers. And we did think about the math and language math skills, making it fun, but also those influencing elements, like attitudes and perceptions. So, we started just like, “How do we look at this?” Because it's really overwhelming just from the beginning, you know, and just pulling that workbook off the shelf didn't do it for me. You're allowed to speak on that. (Laughter)   Dave Brancamp That's one of my passions, obviously, the whole math side. But pulling a workbook is an unfortunate because if someone starts to practice something wrong, they'll repeat that practice, and now it's very difficult to get them to correct a habit, basically that you've formed. And sometimes it's like that nails on a chalkboard? That's what it feels like to me when I hear it. I'm like, “Oh, don't do that.” Because if they're doing it wrong, like, 20 times, 10 times, even then it performs a habit that's real hard for them to go, “Well, but I thought I got them all right.”   Katie Strong: Yeah.   Dave Brancamp: Because I think we can all go back to math and you come up unless it was something really, really difficult in at least in our early years of math. We all came up with an answer. And that's how it feels on a worksheet that might have like just adding single digit numbers, if you make an error, you won't know until someone either corrects it or asks you, “How did you get there?” And to me, that's where it became more important. And then I had to learn how to do what do you call it? aphasia friendly language, you know? So, math folks usually speak in short sentences, so that helps. But we'll run a whole bunch of sentences together. If I give you the best example. I know we're going to talk a little bit about that math perception quiz, the difference between us on that question, I think it says “I would prefer to do an assignment in math rather than write an essay.” I'm the person to give me that math assignment. 100%. Tammy is like, give me the essay!   Katie Strong: And I have to say I'm right there with Tammy.   Tami Brancamp I think so, as speech pathologists, we learned about the pedagogy of language and language development. We can analyze it. We can treat it. We can assess it. And then I talked to Dave, and he goes, “Well, there's this whole math I know there's a math pedagogy, and there's this whole developmental progression of how we learn math.” But “Really, okay, well, I've never learned that, right?” “No, you learn this before you learn that.” We lived it, we just weren't overtly taught it. Or how you know, if there's an error in a calculation, that means that there's some challenges in this part of your developmental math abilities. Like, “Huh, okay, well, that kind of sounds like language to me, a little bit.” They do go together.   Katie Strong: Yeah, yeah. So, I love to maybe ask a little bit about this. As we've pretty clearly stated, many SLPs feel uncomfortable with math and their own math skills.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah.   Katie Strong: And we, probably many of us, have avoided it in our own education.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah.   Katie Strong: So I love this idea that there's the language of math, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and why it should fit right within our scope of practice as SLPs.   Tami Brancamp: A long time ago, I remember how many years ago I came across an article by Seron 2001 in Aphasiology. And he or she, I actually don't know, stated that math should be part of the SLPs practice. I started looking at 20 years later, and it still wasn't (a part of our practice). So, something's really amiss. What are we missing? When we talk about the language, there is a syntax in math. Dave calls it order of operations. And I don't even know what the PEMDAS.   Dave Brancamp: PEMDAS.   Tami Brancamp: PEMDAS, right?   Dave Brancamp: You what scares most people about that? Parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. The left to right. I mean, that's the part people left off.   Tami Brancamp: But, ah, yeah, that kind of sounds familiar, doesn't it?   Katie Strong It does. It's ringing a very faint bell.   Dave Brancamp: It's like, oh no, we're not going to do that.   Tami Brancamp So there is a syntax. There's an order of operations, how we put mathematical equations together. Just like how we put sentences together. There's semantics, right? There's word meaning. We have a little sign for you. It won't translate audio, but we'll talk about it. So, in math, and you use the word or the number, the orthographic representation 2, right? Yes. And then we spell it TWO. We also spell it TO and TOO. And then, if you say, “Okay, we also have a two in the number 12, right?” They have to be able to transcode that and a two in the number 20, the two zero. The two in all those locations has different meaning, right? So, it does have semantics.   The other parts, I think, were important, was memory and executive function. Executive function permeates mathematics in so many ways. So, when we think about our stroke survivors, those are areas that are and can be impacted. Information processing. How much can they hold in memory of being presented with language, and in this case, language and numbers.   So, I think for me, it just, it really is integrated. I also thought, too, when we were looking, I was looking at the neuroscience of it, and there's some shared neuro space that works for math and language. They're not fully disassociated, so I found that really fascinating as well.   Katie Strong Yeah, it really is, as I've been thinking about our conversation and just looking into things a little bit, it really makes sense. And even just thinking about just thinking about a word problem in math, certainly, there's that language component that may be a little less intimidating for SLP clinicians that aren't typically working in practice. But I so appreciate you both bringing this conversation out into the light and doing this work, because I can think of a significant number of clients that I've worked with that have also expressed challenges in all sorts of different ways of math. And sometimes I've been able to maybe support it a little bit, and other times I haven't. And I, you know, whether it's me just avoiding it and saying, “Oh, we could work on all of these other things or we can work on this math thing”  or, you know, it's just frustrating, I think, to not have really the tools to be able to know how to support it.   Our podcast, really focuses on the Life Participation Approach to Aphasia, which really emphasizes a person-centered approach. Like I'm the client I want to choose what I want in my life and what I want to work on. And so, I'm just wondering if you might be able to talk through a little bit about how math skills fit into LPAA framework.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah, we were talking about that, and there's one particular client who has multiple PhDs before his stroke. He has family, adult children. And he's like, “Tammy.” And we were Dave and I were piloting some work together. And he's like, “Guys, I want to take my family to dinner. I want to pay the bill and the tip.” I'm like, “Okay, dude, I got an app for that.” And he's like, “No, I want to do it myself.” So that, to me, is life participation. If a person is fine with an app, let's make it so and work on something else.   Katie Strong: Yeah. Tami Brancamp: But his case, it was so important to him. I'm like, “Okay, here we go.” How do we how do we work on figuring out the tip? Now, does it have to be an exact percent? No, Dave likes to teach it more like there's some more strategies to get to the tip.   Another client I wanted to share, and sometimes too, when we think about assumptions. So, the data on how many people with aphasia also have math difficulties, numeracy difficulties is wide ranging. It's so big. So you can't even really say what percent. But I also had an assumption. I have a gentleman who I've worked with off and on for a very long time. He's nonfluent aphasia and also has apraxia of speech, and so we're working a lot on his language and his speech. And I said, “So how's your math?” “It's fine. You know, I own my own business and I have somebody help, but it's fine.” I'm like, in my head, hmm, I don't think so. I wonder, because the severity of his aphasia and his ability to transcode so like, see a number and then say the name or say the numbers he wants to say, was really impacted. So, we were doing a pilot study during the pandemic online, and so Dave and I were working with this one gentleman. And I think you why don't you do the story because I don't remember you gave him homework or something. A home program.   Dave Brancamp: There's a math game called Krypto.   Tami Brancamp: Oh, Krypto.   Dave Brancamp: So you put five cards down. And each one has its value, you know. And so your listeners just so they know, like when the Jack would fall, that would be 11, and so the Ace automatically took a one, the Queen would be, you know, 12, and the King 13. So five cards different values, or they could be the same value didn't matter, and then one more card became like a target. You had to figure out an equation. So, some big, nice math term there to that you'd add, subtract, multiply, divide to equal this last card.   Now they could do with just two cards, three cards, four cards or five would be ideal. So, they had some room for success. And this gentleman, we had some hard numbers that were there. And, you know, he had done a couple, and was rolling right through. And I kept looking over at Tami and I am like, "He's got his math. His math is really good.”   Tami Brancamp: His ability to calculate.   Dave Brancamp: And then we hit one that was really hard, and we're both looking (each other). And the next thing, you know, this gentleman, not to scare anybody, but makes a complex fraction, making a fraction over another fraction to solve. And you can see right now, right Tammy. Tammy is like, “What are you doing?” I'm like, “Yeah, yeah, no, let's go for it. Let's go for it.” And next thing you know, we were able to solve it by doing two complex fraction with another number. And he solved the problem. And I looked at Tammy said, “This man has no math problems.” Tami Brancamp:  And I said, “Boys, I'm out. I'm out. You all just continue playing with your numbers. Have a good time.” That's not a comfort zone for me. It's also not the focus we're doing with aphasia in math. But it was something he was capable to do, and I also could see within him, he was super excited that he could do this.   Katie Strong: Yeah   Dave Brancamp: And he wanted to show his wife. He wanted to show other people, he was like, “Look at this. Look at this.” You know, I was like, “Yeah, there's a lot happening.”   Tami Brancamp: But he could not read the equation. Okay, so there's the aphasia language issue.   Katie Strong: Right.   Tami Brancamp: Transcoding. He could do the calculations without difficulty.   Katie Strong: Amazing.   Tami Brancamp: But those are the those are really fascinating. And while we were piloting, we had a group of, I don't know, five or six people with aphasia, and each one had their own. They're all on the non-fluent side, but everybody had their own combination of language difficulty and number processing difficulty. We did notice what one client we worked with who had more cognitive impairment along with language and hers, her processing was much more different than pure aphasia and the acalculia issues. So, it's really interesting to see. It's definitely not cookie cutter, right? Just like aphasia therapy.   Katie Strong: Right.   Tami Brancamp: Every person's got their unique strengths and challenges. And I'm going to say similarly, I think with the math. Where in the brain was the injury? What is their background? What are their interests and passions? All of that plays in just like in aphasia.   Katie Strong: I love bringing up though their prior experience with math too is so important. We think about that from a language standpoint, but we really don't consider that. Or I will speak for myself, I don't typically consider that when I'm learning about somebody and their strengths.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah.   Dave Brancamp: You think like to go back to your language, like the word “sum” S-U-M, is what we'd use in math for adding, but it has the same sounding as “some” S-O-M-E and so right there, there's some language difficulty that could come out. So often we will have flash cards with the plus symbol so that they and can associate words and just so that you feel better on it, too.   Most of us, when we'd heard subtraction probably used an unfortunate phrase of what's called “takeaway”.  Well, that's not what happens from a mathematical point. So, us in the math side, cringe and are like, “Oh well, the numbers don't get taken away. They're still there.” They got, you know, replaced is what we would call them. And so the word of difference, you know, where you live in a different town than we do, so that's what we associate but difference is how we do subtraction. So those little, simple nuances that I had to also remember too because I taught junior high, which most of them were fairly comfortable with their, you know, at least their basic skills. And I'd heard those terms where suddenly, you know, Tammy would bring up to me, “You're gonna have to help us out with that” because that it's easy for you to say that it's causing a problem and that makes us then, you know, have those moments of pause that you're like, “Oh yeah, you're right. I've got to do that.”   Tami Brancamp: Just a little aside on that with we just finished a pilot study with two groups of people doing online intervention. So that background of knowledge, you know, say you got 10 people in a group, and you could see the people who go, “Oh yeah, I remember that. I remember that math language.” You're getting, the nodding like, “Oh yeah, that's right.” And then there's others who have like, “I don't understand what he's saying.” The look. So, it's really fascinating to make sure that we pay as much attention to that background as we do in language.   Katie Strong: Yeah. Interesting, interesting.   Dave Brancamp: I don't know if you want to go down that path, but like when we hit time, you know, which is an element that folks aphasia really want to work with, right? And yet, it's a whole different concept mathematically, because we are used to in almost all the countries we work with of things from, you know, basically what we call base 10 or zero to 100 zero to 10, we can play time is in elements of 12. And so, like you might say it's a quarter past, you know, like one, that's not a 25 it's written as 1:15. And you know, what does that mean? And, oh, I don't know. I don't know how I'm supposed to be at the bus stop or the doctor appointment or whatever they may be going to.   Katie Strong: Right, right.   Dave Brancamp: And a lot of our groups found that to be a huge help, you know. And as much as we all laugh, you probably at least most of us remember when we were in elementary school having little clocks that we might play with.   Katie Strong: Right   Dave Brancamp:  We call them our Judy clocks from when we were as teachers. But it's like, as simple as those are, those are what you need to bring back and go, “Let's take a look at what you know, because it's a quarter of the circle, and that's where it got its name from.”   Tami Brancamp: But it's one over four, like 1/4 one quarter.   Dave Brancamp: But that's not how we'd write it in time. It's actually whatever the hour is and the 15, and you're like, “Where'd that come from?” So, it was very fascinating to watch, and especially when we did some work with some of the clinicians, are just like, “Oh, you're kidding. I didn't even think about that.” It's because we knew it. we transition it naturally and not thinking, “Oh my gosh, my brain now has to re-picture this”. So.   Katie Strong: It is fascinating.   Tami Brancamp: And that you can see how much language is involved.   Tami Brancamp: Huge. Huge.   Katie Strong: Yeah, well, I'm excited to talk about the projects and research that you've been doing. You gave us kind of a teaser about these online groups. Should we start there?   Tami Brancamp: Maybe, we aren't there. We haven't analyzed all the data…   Katie Strong: I'm curious.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah, that'll be a teaser. We are working with our partner, Carolyn Newton. She's in London, and she is at University College London. She's done some work in mathematics and aphasia, and also her doc students, so we're working with them. They did all the assessment with my students. And then Dave and I did intervention. We had two groups. We had, like, a Level 1 and a Level 2. Everybody had aphasia. And we did group intervention primarily because Dave and I have been working with Lingraphica and Aphasia Recovery Connections Virtual Connections.   Katie Strong: Yep.   Tami Brancamp: Since March of 22, we've been doing it every single month.   Katie Strong: Amazing.   Tami Brancamp: We had some time off. Yeah, but you know, what's so crazy is that we average about 38 people who come on to do the session.   Katie Strong: Wow!   Tami Brancamp: Oh, I know, with a range like 19 to 50 people.   Katie Strong: That is amazing, but such a testament that people are interested in this topic.   Tami Brancamp: That's what made us keep pushing forward. Because if that many people show up, there's an interest and there's a need.   Katie Strong: Right.   Tami Brancamp: You know? But how do we how do we help is the challenge. We are in the process of analyzing, did we could that group in the way that we did it, like twice a month over three months? Would that impact change? They could hold it at the end of the treatment. And then we also did 30 days later, so we'll see. And then we also did some we did the math, attitudes and perceptions.   Katie Strong: I took it so maybe give people a little bit of background on what this is.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah. So this is a we looked at a lot of different tools, and this one is called, what is it called Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory. And it was designed for adults, college age, students and adults. There's a lot for children. But this is like, really, you know, what do you think about math in terms of you like it, you don't like it. Is it important? Not important. And so there is a lower number means that you are less confident, less familiar.   Dave Brancamp: You might not like it. You might not like it as much.   Katie Strong: And it might give you a rash.   Tami Brancamp: (Laughs) It might give you a rash!   Dave Brancamp: I'm sorry.   Tami Brancamp:  Right, all the things that it does. It's up to a point of 200 Do you want to share what your score was?   Katie Strong: Well, I didn't calculate it. I just did the ABCDE, but I'm gonna guess it's in the lower like 25th. Tami Brancamp: Yeah.   Dave Brancamp: So let me ask you, what was your last math class?   Katie Strong: It was a statistics class in my PhD program.   Dave Brancamp: And how did that class make you feel? Were you like, “Oh, I'm so excited to go!” or like, “Oh my gosh, I just got to get this done.”   Katie Strong: I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could. I tried hard, and I just kept, I think I kept telling myself it was hard and I couldn't do it, and it just and it was.   Dave Brancamp: So, if you think about that, for us as adults, right? Or anybody, even kids. Take our kids. Whatever your last class is, it sits with us. It's a memory we carry. And then math has its unique way of, kind of building on itself. And then it can bridge to a couple different areas and what have you, but it builds. And if your last class wasn't the most pleasant. You didn't score well, or you didn't have a teacher that you could relate with, or whatever it was, you probably don't have a real fun feeling of math. So that leads to our perceptions, right? And it's and you know, using this we've done this with some of your students as they go through soon to be clinicians, and as soon as they took it and then had us talk, they you almost want to say, “Let's take it again”, because our feeling is of that last class. But when you find out, what we'll probably do is adding, subtracting, multiplying, maybe division, not likely. But what we call basic life skills, it may change how you took the test or take the inventory, because, you know, like for me, it's still, it will never change the fact of giving a math problem over an essay. I'll give you guys the essay. I'll take the math problem. But it's just, you know, is it important your everyday life? Well, how often do you do your statistics on an everyday life? That was your last class right? Not a lot, maybe some. But it's, you know, it's becomes an interesting whatever sitting with us probably has a feeling. If we come in with a bad attitude toward what we're going to teach or share with you, no matter whether they have aphasia or if it's just us in a general setting, they're going to know you don't like this, then why should I spend time with it so we that's the My purpose is make it so that they enjoy even if it's difficult, we're going to enjoy it so that otherwise, you know, I'm already behind because you don't like it. So why should I like it?   Katie Strong: And I love that because, I mean, I know that, like hard work can be fun. I mean, in a therapy situation, hard work can be fun, but thinking about this from a math standpoint really is kind of a game changer for me.   Tami Brancamp:  One of the things, and I think we'll come back to the research a little bit. But Dave likes gamification. I don't really like to play games, right?   Dave Brancamp: You're getting better! Tami Brancamp: But you have to, you know.   Dave Brancamp: I will pick up like dice. We try to do things that we figure our folks could find rather easily. You know whether you have dice from a Yahtzee game where you can go pick them up and a deck of cards. Almost everything I do with them are one of those two. It might take a little more looking, but I'll we often use what are called foam dice so they don't make all that noise, because sometimes too much noise can be very bothersome. And then using, like, the whiteboard or something to write with helps so they can see, because sometimes you'll be playing a game and they'll have no idea of the math that's involved and why there might have been, like, a strategy or so on.   Tami Brancamp: When we do work with people using cards and dice to generate the numbers, we have activities we do and we make it aphasia friendly, but we'll also discuss, maybe after the fact, “All right, so how did you do? Where was it difficult? I want you to recognize that you were working on executive function here. You were giving it strategies and thinking and multiple steps ahead.” So that they can recognize it isn't a kid game.   Katie Strong: Yeah, just a game.” Yeah.   Tami Brancamp: It's not just a game. It's making it fun and a little bit more lighthearted. If we can lighten it, but still make it skilled intervention, I'm not in there to play games and win. But having a give and take, a little competition, some laughter, some humor, while we're doing the intervention. To me, that's a lovely session.   Dave Brancamp: One of the things Katie, we found, too, is there's not a lot of good tests out there for math to diagnose the problem. You can find out by taking the different tests, and you and Tammy know the exact names, but they'll say, “Well, Dave has a problem doing math.” But now where do I start? Is a whole different game, because they build, as we said earlier, and if I don't start at the right spot the building block, I get a sense of failure immediately, because I can't do it, whereas you need to just keep backing up, just like you do in language, you keep backing up till you find my starting point. And that's one of the areas we'll maybe talk about later, is those things we're trying to figure do we work on finding a better way to assess the math, to truly know what's Dave or your client or whoever, whatever they're doing, because sometimes it could be simply the language, like we had with the one gentleman who has great math skills.   Katie Strong: Right.   Dave Brancamp: And others could be I can't even tell the difference between these two numbers, which is larger or smaller. And so now we have to start back at what we call basic number sense. It can be anywhere in that game, and it's like, well, they can't add. Well, do we know they can't add? Or do they just not recognize that six is smaller than eight.   Tami Brancamp:  Or how did you let them tell you the answer. If you only get a verbal response versus writing response, or, you know, selecting from four choices, you know. All of those give us different information when you're when you're having to blend a language disorder and a numeracy disorder.   Dave Brancamp: Because that one gentleman, he struggles immensely with anything with a two in it, so 20s, just…so you could easily say, “Wow, there's no way this man has math skills.” I mean he's doing complex fractions. He just couldn't tell you it's one over two. It was be like, I don't know what that is called.   Katie Strong: Fascinating.   Dave Brancamp: We enjoy the game part. And one of the pieces in this last research we did that was a new thing, right? We didn't even think of it prior was what we call a home program. Taking the game we did, putting it in friend aphasia friendly language with pictures so they could practice them.   Katie Strong: Okay.   Dave Brancamp:  Because we would not see them for like a two they was every two weeks. So, some could practice. I would say our Level 1 -  our folks working on foundational sets practiced more than are more advanced. Which was very fascinating.   Tami Brancamp: What we were doing in this research, the most recent one, we would encourage people to, you know, take a photo, take a screenshot of the work we're doing. But we also did it too, and then we put it into a page with an explanation, and then we would send it so that they could, ideally practice with a family member or a friend, or by themselves. You know, that's also a variable for people, right?   Dave Brancamp: And what we found in it, they needed more pictures. In our first attempt, we didn't put as many. So we would ask them, “since you wanted this, did that help?” “Not really.” They're honest.   Katie Strong: Yeah.   Dave Brancamp: We appreciate that. And they're like, Well, what? Why didn't it like, well, it, even though we tried to make it as aphasia friendly language, it was just too much word   Tami Brancamp:  Too many words.   Dave Brancamp: Too many words. So then we started asking, “well would more pictures help?” “Yes.” So we did that. So they helped us. It was amazing to watch.   Tami Brancamp: So that research project will we can get to down the road once we figure out what was going on. What we did share with you was the survey that we did with speech language pathologists from the United States and the United Kingdom. So we thought, well, Carolyn's there, and we kind of look at math a little bit similarly. So we had 60 participants who completed the study. We want to know, like, do you treat people with aphasia who also have math difficulties? If so, what are you doing? Dave and I still wanted to look at the attitudes and perception, because I still believe that's an influencing factor. But we also wanted to get a good sense, like when you are working with people with aphasia, who have number difficulties, what difficulties are you seeing? And then what are you doing? What do you use to assess?  And what are some of the barriers? So it gave us a nice overview, and that one's out for review currently. Anywhere from like, how many of you work on numeracy difficulties? About 35% responded with rarely, and 40% responded with occasionally, and 17 said frequently. And also, there was no difference between the countries.   Katie Strong: Oh, interesting.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah, I thought so too.   Katie Strong: But I also think too, you know, I mean, there really isn't a lot out there instructing SLPs on how to do this work in an evidence-based manner. So that makes a little bit of sense.   Tami Brancamp: It did, because I still felt the same way for myself, like, “Where do I go to learn how to do this?” Okay. I'm married to a math teacher, so I'm learning right? It's a lot of give and take. And Carolyn, our partner, she's very good about when we're talking about this she's like, “But not everybody has a Dave on their shoulder.” Like, “No, they do not.” Because even today, I'm still a little cautious, like if I had to go do all this solo, I have some holes that I want, and those are the things I want to help us create for future training opportunities and education continuing ed that would help clinicians who really want to do this and they have a client who wants to work with it, right?   Katie Strong: I hope that's a large number of people, because I think, you know, I think that this is really a significant challenge that I hear so often from support group members or people that I work with who have aphasia.   Tami Brancamp: I really think that's why we keep going, because we hear it from our we hear it from our clients.   Katie Strong: Yeah.   Tami Brancamp: We're not hitting it as much in acute care, for sure, rehab, you might get a little sample that is going on, but it's usually that outpatient. And then the longer term, like the they have some of the big needs met. And then we've got time to maybe look at math. But for some people, math should have been math and language together could have been hit earlier. But who's to say, you know?   Dave Brancamp: Well, you would know it best because I've asked when we first started this there would be like one, Tammy would give me one of her classes, and I would talk to them about math and absolutely deer in the headlight looks, “Oh my gosh, what are you going to do?” to by the end realizing “We're going to make this as fun as we can. We're going to use dice and cards, and we're going to do pretty much what we call foundational adding subtracting skills that they were welcome”, but you already have so much in your course to do that we just don't even have time. So that becomes this very interesting, because, you know, one of the big questions Tammy always asked me is, “Well, how can I know this pedagogical, or the reason behind?” I know they'll be able to hear but, I mean, I've done this now for 30 plus years, so there's a lot in my head that I have to figure out, how do we do this? So I can see this is the problem by how they addressed it without them having to take a whole other set of courses.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah, we can't. There is surely not room for whole courses. So it's got to be embedded in existing coursework, or continuing ed opportunities after training.   Katie Strong: Or both, right?   Tami Brancamp: Yeah, I think both. Some of those barriers that we found people saying was, you know, there's not training on it, which I agree.   Dave Brancamp: There's not the resources.   Tami Brancamp: Yes, there's not the resources. And are the tests that people use. They have some sampling of math. But my question always is, “Okay, so I give this little bit of math in my aphasia test or something else like and now, what? Well, I know what they can't do, but what does that mean? And how might I support them for relearning?” I found it more helpful to look at it from a developmental perspective. I'm going to learn a, b, c, d, and I'm going to learn x, y, z, and then it helps me understand, like, “Where might I start?” Because I don't have to go down to counting dots, right? That number sense larger, less than visually. If that's not where the client needs to be. But learning where they need to be, we need better assessments for that. I don't know if that's something we're going to be able to tackle or not. I mean, Dave spent quite a big part of his professional career, developing assessments. So, it would be logical. But there's so many pieces to do.   Katie Strong: Right? It's a big it's a big undertaking. Dave Brancamp: Well, there's so much that you gain by finding out from the client how you did the problem. It could be four plus six is what? and they write two. Well, I need to know why you think it's two. So did you think that was subtraction? Because they just didn't see the plus symbol. Well, you know? Well, then they have some good math. There's some good math there. They did the math correctly if they subtracted it. It's not the answer I'm looking for. And so could they say, you know, when you asked it if you were a person and he's like, “Katie, so if I gave you six things and gave you four more, how many your total?” Do you know what that even meant to do? These things that just gives us clues to where your math might be and for unfortunately, for a lot of us, which makes it hard for me, I feel bad that they didn't have the experience is ones and zeros have some very powerful meanings in math that unfortunately, scare a lot of folks.   Katie Strong: Yeah, right.   Tami Brancamp: I never learned the fun stuff of math, you know. There's some tricks and some knowledge and some skills that I, you know, good math teachers will teach you, and I just didn't really learn those. So, Dave's teaching me just because I were doing this together? I don't know. I kind of was thinking like what we talked a little bit about, what does the intervention look like?   Katie Strong: Yeah.   Tami Brancamp: Gamification, making it fun, not using workbooks. We're hoping that we could utilize some of the home programs that we've created, and share those as part of the teaching.   Dave Brancamp: And like the game. I think I told you that we did with that one gentleman with Krypto. It could simply be like a target number or something of that nature, but it's fun to have when we did with our both groups with Virtual Connections, or our research groups, other people could find out, like, you could solve it one way, Katie. Tammy could do it a different way, and I could do it a completely different way. And it was fascinating to watch the groups, like, I had no idea you could do it there. And that's what we need to hear So that people go, “Oh, you don't have to do it just one way.” Because I, unfortunately, and some are my colleagues, they forced, “I need you to do it x way.” It's like, “Well, okay, maybe to start. But now let's open the door to all these other ways you can, like, add a number or whatever.” And because it always fascinates me when we do, is it multiplication or subtraction? Now I forget, but one way Tammy is, like, “I never learned it that way. I always…” and, you know, it was just how she grew up. It was what you were taught.   Tami Brancamp: Well, like multiplication. When I'm multiplying multiple numbers, it's like, I'm kind of just adding multiples of things. So, how I get to the answer is very different than how Dave does, yeah, and we've had experiences with care partners, who we were doing some of the pilot work, who felt very strong that their way was the only way. Is this some generational differences? I suspect there's some of that, but it's also just, it's personality. This is how I know how to do it, and this is how it should be done. Well, not necessarily.   Katie Strong: It really mind blowing for me to be thinking about. I mean, I know that, like, you can teach things in different ways, but I just didn't really think about it from a math standpoint, because, probably because I know how to do things one way. If I know how to do it, it's probably one way, versus having more versatility in “If this doesn't work, try something else.”   Dave Brancamp: But like on a deck of cards at least the ones we use, they'll have, like a seven of diamonds. There's seven little diamonds on that card. Well, nothing else. Put your finger to them. There's nothing wrong with counting 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Now, when you move over to the three, go 8 9 10, and there's your answer. They're like, “I can do that?” “I'm like, sure you can!” I can use my fingers? You know, it's, it's those, it's those little things that, unfortunately, probably for a lot of us and a lot of our clients, went through, at least in my experience, in math as we went through school, we took away those, what we call manipulatives in math, that you learn it right, bringing them back now, so that they're like, “Oh, I can do this”” So they can see it, or they can write it in a different way, or, you know, whatever it takes to help them. That's one of the pieces that's so amazing.   Tami Brancamp: We definitely support a multi modal approach. Not just one way.   Katie Strong: Which, I think the clinicians who are listening to this conversation will feel like, “Oh, I do a multi modal approach in all of the other things that I do in my interventions.” And so, you know, that makes sense.   Dave Brancamp: And that's where we saw that piece of saying that we're trying to unite math and language. The two of those do play together. You know, it's like because you just said you spend weeks and weeks with all your future clinicians training them on all these skills and language, so many of those will play out just as well in math, except to do it in a different way.   Katie Strong: Mmm. So we've talked about what the intervention might look like, and we'll be excited to see what comes out from your projects that you're in the process of analyzing but looking ahead, what excites you most about where this field could go?   Dave Brancamp: Oh my, that's the question!   Tami Brancamp: There's a lot of work to be done. It actually is…it's fun. We are wondering, you know, how might it be if it's on a one on one, a more traditional model, right for our outpatient settings, versus small groups. Katie Strong: I'll say this. I should have said it earlier, but for those of you listening, I'll put in a link to Virtual Connections and if you're interested in seeing Tammy and Dave's math Aphasia + Math.   Dave Brancamp: Yeah, it's aphasia plus math. It would be Level 1 or 2. They can come watch the whole thing. It's fascinating to watch them how they work.   Tami Brancamp: They are best teachers, yep, without a doubt.   Dave Brancamp: To your last question, “So that's with the clients?” But you know, there's been and we've talked on and we've touched on, like, “how do we help our clinicians?” And then the unfortunate side of that stool that sometimes gets forgotten is, what could we do for our caregivers? Does this help? Because we've all been taught differently. so sometimes you might look at one of the gamifications we did and went, “Oh, I can't do that. That's not how I add.” We have a very set format, or do they understand the language? Do we make it clear enough. So, you know, we're I think that's a great question, because then we get torn to just time in the day to say, “But I want to still work with my clients, but we need to help clinicians so they can help us, and don't forget the caregiver in there.” I know it's not an easy answer. It's not the it's nothing nice and smooth, but it's kind of the one that we've been really what is to what are we doing.   Katie Strong: And probably also why it this hasn't, there aren't tons of resources already developed, right? That it is complex.   Dave Brancamp: Well, and I will tie back to our attitudes. What we found, we were fortunate enough to do….     Tami Brancamp: IARC. The International Aphasia Rehab Conference. we presented there.   Dave Brancamp: So some of our beginning there's an awful lot of interest out of Australia and Europe. But Australia and Europe, and I'm not trying to sound bad or negative, but they take look at math very differently than like England and the United States for sure does. That's a natural like thought, we don't accept the term. “I don't do math well.” They don't like to say that. There's an increased interest, at least in those two areas of the world, to when we but we gotta strengthen this, this is important. So, we've found that very fascinating, that some of our folks who've drawn an interest and set out of this come out of the main countries of Europe, or from Australia, because they don't mind talking about a subject that we often go, “I'm good at this, right? Let Dave solve it.” And it's like, well, but I don't have the skill set that all of you SLPs have.   Tami Brancamp: In our earlier conversations, we touch on the fact that United States, it's okay for me to say, you know, “I don't do math, right?” It's okay, and it's sort of accepted in some cases, it's kind of a badge of honor in some ways. But if I were to say, “Oh, I can't read” you know, that's we one. We want to help if somebody admits it. But there's a personal sense of shame attached. So, in our country, I believe the perceptions are different. You have the person who's had the stroke, has survived the stroke, has the aphasia, and now also has the math difficulties. That's a lot to navigate, and I respect in our in our world, as a clinician, I can't address all of it. So following that Life Participation Approach, we're going to let our clients be our guide. Support, train, and look at where their priorities are. And it's never enough. There's never enough therapy, never enough opportunity to be in a group environment, because not everybody has access to that, you know, but I think, “Where can I make a difference?” Like, that's probably my question. Like, I can't fix the world, so let me keep backing it down, backing it down, backing it down. And if I can make a difference with 5, 10, 15, 20, people, Hey, and then let those ripples go as they go out and make a difference and learn. I think that, in itself, is powerful.   Katie Strong: Beautiful, and certainly is conjuring up Audrey here. Well, I've got one last question for you as we wrap it up. But you know, what would you say to an SLP, who's listening right now and thinking, I want to help my clients with math, but I don't know where to start.   Tami Brancamp:  So one of, I think one thing for me is you do know basic math. You know everyday math. You do know how to do this.  So one just start. You can get a little assessment. You can use the existing ones that are out there with our aphasia batteries or the Numerical Activities for Daily Living.   Dave Brancamp: I would say, a deck of cards are not hard, you know, hopefully they have or some dice, yeah, and use those to generate the numbers. Or bring in, like, when they want to do tips, we would often just bring in receipts of anything and just say, “Let's say something cost $18.72. Round it up to 20 and make it a friendly number.” So it's around 20, So it's a little bit easier for them to grab onto and hold, and it's okay to say, because we've done it in our own sets going through, “Oh, wait a minute, six plus six is not 13. Look at what I did here. I let me, let's check this and add it.” Because sometimes you'll hear just even, you know, like when any of us are doing something, you look and go, oops, I made a mistake.   Tami Brancamp: Okay, right?   Dave Brancamp: It's all right, hey, to make mistakes and say, that's what we all do. And then, you know, but I mean to me, it's if we can get, like, if you want to use one or two problems off a worksheet, use it as a driver to start discussion and say, “So what can we do?” And see if they can do anything. Because sometimes it's amazing what we'll find out is just knowing that 16 is a bigger number than just 12 is let them and then what's the difference between right there, you could figure out subtraction if they know it or not. And we often will in if they have a chance to look on the website or any of this stuff, we'll take out, like all the face cards, we'll take out the 10. Keep moving it down to numbers that they're comfortable with, like dice will only be the numbers one to six, yeah, but if I use two dice, I could make some interesting two digit numbers, right, that are in that range. So it's just things that make it so they can grab on. And then you can start adding and changing rules and some of the math games they may have seen, they just adjust them so that they have access points. The true rules of Krypto is, you must use all five cards in order to get a point. Well, we just change it usually is two, right?   Tami Brancamp: Like we do for everything we can modify.   Katie Strong: I love this. And I mean, I'm thinking, most clinics have a deck of cards and dice.   Tami Brancamp: In most households in general, not but in general, you're going to have access to those tools. We didn't want people to have to go buy crazy stuff. I think there's one challenge I do want to think about and put out there. So, our new clinicians who are graduating, let's say they're in their mid-20s, and I know there's a range they are doing online banking. How are they going to support an older adult?   Katie Strong: Oh, right.   Tami Brancamp: Very structured and rigid in their checking account. I think we have to think about some again, different ways. None of the students that I teach today, and even our own son, they don't have a checkbook. Yeah, they don't write checks. So that's gonna introduce another variable down the road, but in the meantime, cards, dice, numbers, gamification, simplifying, watching language, thinking about executive function, number of steps, how we how we speak, the instructions. Give the directions. It's language.   Dave Brancamp: And ask the client what they think or what they might have heard, because it's interesting what they would have, what we've learned from them as well.   Katie Strong: Thank you so much for being a part of our conversation today, and for the listeners, I'll have some links in the show notes for you to check out for some info on Aphasia + Math. Thank you.   Tami Brancamp: Thanks for having us.   Dave Brancamp: And thanks for playing with us too. Thank you. Katie Strong: On behalf of Aphasia Access, thank you for listening. For references and resources mentioned in today's show please see our show notes. They're available on our website, www.aphasiaaccess.org.There you can also become a member of our organization, browse our growing library of materials and find out about the Aphasia Access Academy. If you have an idea for a future podcast episode, email us at info@aphasiaaccess.org. For Aphasia Access Conversations, here at Central Michigan University in the Strong Story Lab, I'm Katie Strong.   Resources Aphasia + Math focuses on strategies for the rehabilitation of everyday mathematics in people with aphasia. Tami and Dave focus on four pillars to support this work: Influencing Elements (math literacy, learning environment, aphasia severity); Math and Language (receptive & expressive language, cognition including executive function and  memory); Foundational Math Skills (use of linguistic and numerical symbols, lexicon, syntax, semantics); and Aphasia Friendly Math Activities (gamification in learning,  understanding math language, opportunities for communication). Their goal is to unite math and language. Contact Tami tbrancamp@med.unr.edu   Join the Aphasia + Math Facebook Community Join an Aphasia + Math session on Virtual Connections   Brancamp, T. & Brancamp, D. (2022). Exploring Aphasia + Math. Aphasia Access 24-Hour Virtual Teach-In. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mGSOJzmBJI   Girelli, L. & Seron, X. (2001). ) Rehabilitation of number processing and calculation skills. Aphasiology, 15(7), 695-71. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687040143000131 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/32888331_Rehabilitation_of_number_processing_and_calculation_skills#fullTextFileContent   Tapia, M. (1996). Attitudes toward mathematics inventory. https://www.academia.edu/29981919/ATTITUDES_TOWARD_MATHEMATICS_INVENTORY  

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 chat about all different kinds of ways that games help guide the player towards their destination.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup

Checkmate! Yahtzee! Play Ball!!!Yes! Everyone loves playing games whatever guise they come in. We have been learning how to play games from the moment we were born. Playing with baby toys, playing tag at school, playing sports, video games, role playing games. All the skins we have learnt from playing games we use in our everyday life.It is, probably, the broadest subject we've tackled in the podcast so prepare yourself for an epic quest and who better to join us than the lovely hosts of the 'Everything Is Learning' podcast Eleyna and Marissa.Not only do we learn in this episode but we have the most pointless quiz ever in a podcast so beware!You can check out Eleyna and Marissa's podcast here - APPLE PODCASTShttps://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/everything-is-learning/id1807351507SPOTIFYhttps://open.spotify.com/show/1hUd3yZHwRE3uIn767ectP?si=oHQAqDCTQtm3QnGFIFClIwHere's all our Gubbins - SOCIAL MEDIAwww.twitter.com/toptenpodswww.instagram.com/toptenpodswww.facebook.com/toptenpodsEMAILGet in touch with us right here:toptenpods@hotmail.comPATREONCome and support the podcast at Patreon for some great rewards including -BE A GUEST ON YOUR OWN EPISODES VIDEO PLAYLISTS FOR EVERY EPISODEEXCLUSIVE TTTOAP BADGEEPISODES 5 DAYS EARLY AND AD FREE!www.patreon.com/toptenpodsEPISODE LINKSApple: apple.co/3ica0FySpotify: spoti.fi/3BRhkypYouTube: https://bit.ly/3jQETisMERCH https://www.podcastmerch.co.uk/170026-top-10-of-anythingLINKTREEhttps://linktr.ee/toptenpodsBUY US A COFFEEhttps://ko-fi.com/toptenpodsSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-top-ten-of-anything-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Time for another one-player one-shot!   This is Two-Hand Path, a modern roll-and-write dungeon crawler by Mikey Hamm, designer of Slugblaster. In Two-Hand Path you play a mage searching the cursed ruins of a post-fall city for loot and power after a supernatural war left everything destroyed.    The mechanics use Yahtzee-style combinations with a full set of polyhedral dice, sending you through very simple but deadly dungeons with time pressure and limited HP before you "surge," after which every roll is a gamble for points and power.    The character sheet is just your two hands (or a drawing of two hands, if you're a coward) which you'll cover in tattoos, rings, scars, and more as you shape your spells and unleash your magic against the remnants of the world.   It's. Awesome. Get Two-Hand Path here.   ----more---- Join the DMs After Dark Discord channel!   I made a Ko-Fi if you feel absurdly generous and want to help cover podcast hosting costs & all the upkeep. I'm still working on whether I want to offer anything special over there or just give my extreme gratitude (maybe some stickers or something in the mail) to those who donate, but no pressure whatsoever :)   Where to Follow Rene Plays Games: LinkTree |  BlueSky | Threads | Instagram | Facebook | DMs After Dark Rene's Games: MECH | MECH Cities 2 | One Last Quest email: RenePlaysGamesPod@gmail.com   Music in the Episode (in order of appearance): Theme Song written & produced by Dan Pomfret | @danfrombothbands

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 chat what the best course of action is for a franchise that has seemingly lost its way.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 chat about the moments in games that grind a replay to a halt.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 chat about the design decisions in games that really irk them.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, JM8 is off on assignment, so Yahtzee, Marty, and Jack are chatting about the current state of Nintendo in the wake of the Switch 2.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, JM8 is on vacation, so Yahtzee, and Nick are chatting about Hideo Kojima, his impressive library of games, and how he stands out amidst other video game developers.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

Ferry carport parking and sail ambience... Park your hooptie and get ready to sail across the sound to Vineyard Haven. The Steamship Authority has come a long way since its pre-2K promise of, “Get in the standby line before noon, and you'll get on a boat to the Vineyard at some point today.” I often wonder: who was the madman behind that carmageddon inducing promise?If you've been anywhere near Bourne, MA, in the summertime especially Friday rush, you know how much folks love their Cape Cod and ****** islands. For Mid-Atlantic folks, think of U.S. 50 traffic from Annapolis to the 301/50 split… for everyone else just imagine trying to exit a large parking lot on July 4th.There's no bridge to the islands, so anyone hoping to get their car over there collects in Woods Hole, in a parking lot the size of a small Walmart. This is the hub of: No bridge/ this is the only way to get your car over there.So in the older times of madness, when just showing up at the Woods Hole Terminal before noon got you over to an island by the end of the day… congratulations. Now you're stuck with 1980s or '90s technology, it's hot as ****, and your kids have been bored with travel Yahtzee since ****** Danbury. (I should mention there was the occasional dreaded Steamship employee blocking entry, waving a white handkerchief and shouting, “We're full!”) Cars wrapped maddeningly around the old terminal. Station wagons and minivans rumbled, coughing black smoke. Wheels neared edges that dropped into the harbor. A bewildering ballet.After an hour in standby your brain begins to decide you're starting to get close. Only to be quickly routed into a line snaking under the ****** bridge on the far end that surely would take four hours to return from.And it amazingly it worked out pretty well for us standby folks.Tempers occasionally spilled over. I saw one dude get a donut launched at him. A slew of “'Ay, chief!” were tossed between belligerents.But mostly, folks smoked and talked sports cars. No smartphones then—so the most interesting thing you could access in the car was the radio and the hazard lights. Or Mom's stash of nicotine gum…Once, I saw a dude sleeping on top of a mini-bus, a cot stretched out over the roof. One hand palming a Corona he miraculously held on to, the other hanging limp, palm out. Dude smelled strange—and I thought of Jesus, weirdly.

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Marty is on vacation, so Yahtzee, JM8 and Nick are discussing open world games and what makes them actually fun to be in.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comDan Savage: What better person to explain the mess that is the P Diddy trial? The “Savage Love” columnist/podcaster chats with Sarah and Nancy about the hip-hop mogul's fetishes, OCD kinksters, the troubling statute of limitations on domestic abuse, and the dangerous elasticity of the term “sex trafficking.” This one is fascinating, fraught, and taught us a lot!Also discussed:* “It's not RICO, it's FREAK-O!”* Dan stans Steve & Eydie* Sarah is a little cinnamon, Nancy's straight-up vanilla* White parties started in gay culture?* “A moment of silence for the staff of these hotels…”* Clive Owens gets swapped with Clive Davis in a WILD WAY* “There's something Caligula about Combs …”* It's all about the glisten* “Sex always wins.”* Hotwifing??* “I got cheated on, YAHTZEE!”* “Pity sex is not rape”* Men find their kinks at 15, women at 35* Very tricky: Consent versus coercion* “Good giving and game” might needs some corrections/clarifications* The case for decriminalization of sex work* The moral panic of “sex trafficking”* The elasticity of the word “rape”Plus, some (qualified) props for Monica Lewinsky, Sarah pouts because Nancy's going on a date with another Sarah, New Orleans cops know all the lyrics to "Fairytale of New York,” and much more!

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee is on vacation, so JM8 and Marty are joined by Jack to chat about their own personal gaming backlogs, especially in the face of the current Steam Summer Sale.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

On today’s show: Ben brings in his favorite game, Yahtzee, and we ask: what’s the oldest game or activity you still play? Ben catches his daughter on his new security camera face planting Is Ben's daughter more famous than him? Megan had a quick nap in her car before work — and her own snoring woke her up! We chat about the earliest and latest times people eat dinner, after Ben starts doing 5 PM dinners like Megan Instagram: @THEHITSBREAKFASTFacebook: The Hits Breakfast with Jono, Ben & MeganSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty chat about the use of time as a central mechanic in video games.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty chat about the highs, lows, and oddities of video games in 2015.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty chat about the big reveals from Summer Game Fest 2025.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

Get ready for some craziness! Lindsie recaps a bizarre dream that includes sleepwalking and teeth falling out, leading to a hilarious spiral into Google searches and the question: 'Do I need to check into a mental hospital?' They dissect a controversial data post about fitness, mental health, and whether or not being 'horny' equates to being 'healthy.' Plus, they talk the latest on Bryan Kohberger's case as well as the latest drama surrounding Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. And of course, a truly bizarre Florida story that involves 27 kidnapped people being forced to play Yahtzee?? Lastly, Weekly Tea is not for the faint of heart, as Kristen reads a disturbing story about infanticide.Thank you to our sponsors!Honey Love: Save 20% Off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/Southerntea! #honeylovepodIQBar: Text TEA to 64000 for 20% off all IQBar products, plus FREE shipping. By Texting 64000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from IQBAR. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply, available at IQBAR.com. Reply "STOP" to stop, "HELP" for help.Nutrafol: Get $10 off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com and enter code SOUTHERNTEAShady Rays: Need shades? Head to ShadyRays.com and use code Southerntea for 35% off premium polarized sunglasses!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty dig into the biggest sub-genre of the past few years, and try to figure out what separate as a good cozy game from a bland imitator.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

06-02-25 - Robot President Reacts Emails - How Do You Defend Against A Flamethrower And Banning Won't Work - Woman Duped By Scammers On Yahtzee w/Friends App Using AI Version Of Owen WilsonSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

06-02-25 - Robot President Reacts Emails - How Do You Defend Against A Flamethrower And Banning Won't Work - Woman Duped By Scammers On Yahtzee w/Friends App Using AI Version Of Owen WilsonSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Send us a textThanks for joining us for this month's episode!In this edition of Board With Each Other we assess the laudable / insane attempt to translate the behemoth that is Twilight Imperium into a tighter, more approachable roll and write experience. But does the attempt work or was it pure folly? We answer the question as well as picking out how well it works as a two player experience. Find us on Social Media FacebookTwitterInstagram

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty celebrate the start of "E3" season by chatting about the advertising -- trailers, print ads, features, interviews, demos, and more -- that actually worked on them in the past.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

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The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is back in the news, as it has duplicated alchemical magic by turning lead into gold. However, what happens to the Earth every time we use the powerful accelerator for these experiments? The Higgs Boson particle was discovered at CERN, and it became unstable. This would be one explanation as to why our planet seems to have been cast into an overlap dimension, and this could be the reason why everything seems to be so chaotic. We are being hit by one apocalyptic disaster after another, and now it is not a matter of if, but of when. Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis at 7 pm, pacific time on groundzeroplus.com. Call in to the LIVE show at 503-225-0860. #groundzeroplus #ClydeLewis #CERN #apocalypse #disaster

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty chat about their favorite weapons in games, and what makes them memorable from a mechanical, visual, and audio perspective.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty chat about the new GTA 6 trailer, and use that to discuss the broader topic of GTA clones.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty chat about their favorite moments in games where the music takes the spotlight to help create something memorable.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty use the massive success of Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 as a jumping off point to discuss the current state of AA games.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty use Blue Prince as a jumping off point to discuss what makes a good video game mystery.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome back to another main episode of the pod. This week, since we're on a five, we've got a guest with us as we do our Top Ten Games that We Enjoy Teaching! It's a bit of an askew topic to go with, but it was selected by our guest (Erik!) and it was a fun list to go through. This did end up taking two passes to fully record as the first version of it was lost in the flood (boo!). At this point though, that should be the last time you see/hear that as an excuse because we're well beyond everything that was effected by it now. So we hope you enjoy the list and be sure to hit us up and tell us what your favourite games to teach are!  --- This episode's segments: 00:00:00 - Intro / How We Met 00:01:56 - List Selection Criteria 00:03:28 - Scott's 10 00:05:01 - Erik's 10 00:06:14 - Mark's 10 00:10:18 - Scott's 9 00:11:58 - Erik's 9 00:13:23 - Mark's 9 00:15:26 - Scott's 8 00:18:13 - Erik's 8 00:19:56 - Mark's 8 00:22:10 - Scott's 7 00:24:27 - Erik's 7 00:26:17 - Mark's 7 00:27:58 - Scott's 6 00:29:27 - Erik's 6 00:32:46 - Mark's 6 00:34:54 - Scott's 5 00:37:09 - Erik's 5 00:39:02 - Mark's 5 00:43:47 - Scott's 4 00:49:08 - Erik's 4 00:52:04 - Mark's 4 00:53:10 - Scott's 3 00:55:09 - Erik's 3 00:57:30 - Mark's 3 00:59:51 - Scott's 2 01:01:59 - Erik's 2 01:03:36 - Mark's 2 01:05:38 - Scott's 1 01:06:47 - Erik's 1 01:09:26 - Mark's 1 01:12:18 - Contact Info / Sponsors 01:13:40 - Outro --- Notes! 1) Sorry for the all of a sudden laughing at the intro of Erik's number 10. There was a great bit that just derailed the conversation we were all laughing at right before. You'll likely hear that in the next Odds and Ends episode. 2) Ironically, I had a conversation with my brother this past weekend where he told me he's never played Yahtzee. Whoops. 3) I have to now admit that Amun-Re is my favourite Reiner Knizia game. Whoops again! That said, I do enjoy the teach of High Society more, so I stand by it's inclusion in the list. And we did end up playing it after recording! 4) If it sounds like you may have missed part of the conversation during the Hogwarts Battle segment - that's because you did. The guys got distracted by comparing it to other games in it's series and it became a fairly convoluted conversation where even I had to ask which game we were talking about. So hopefully the segment comes across more naturally than I'm thinking it did because it's really late as I'm editing and I was very confused the second time around too. 5) I left the thing about gaming meta jokes in because we're in the process of recording our Board Gaming 101 episode to help you understand all of our terminology! If you have anything you're questioning or don't know the answer to, hit us up on any of our contact methods and let us know which ones we should define! (Also my exasperation is largely because we're all in this space, it seems wild they'd never heard of a point salad before.) 6) If it feels like there's not a ton of conversation about Werewolf in Erik's number 2, that's because MOST of what was there got cut for future Odds and Ends episodes. We tangented hard by just telling crazy stories. 7) This was recorded about 6 weeks before MacWagCon so it's entertaining to me that Captain Sonar showed up for two episodes in (what became) a row. Also, I meant to say First Mate instead of Navigator.  --- You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com. We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time.  We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for board gaming, so definitely check us out on there at https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6 We'd like to thank our sponsors as well: Robin's Nerd Supply: www.robinsnerdsupply.com Eco Owl Press: www.ecoowlpress.com  We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music. 

Watch on Philo! - Philo.tv/DTHVice Principal Jo is bustling around backstage at the school theater. She trips, and her glasses fall off. She looks up and thinks she sees a total hunk—but who can be sure?She steps out from backstage, and we see the same chaotic scene from the first film, where all the moms bump into each other. Smile. Love Club. Group photo.Fast forward six months: Jo is now dating the choir director, Karim, and she's been promoted to Principal! But something's off—she doesn't seem quite happy.So, she reaches out to the Love Club.Jo confesses that Karim might be ready to take the relationship to the next level, but she's just not sure she feels the same way. The next day, she sees that same hunk from six months ago... and realizes she knows him. It's Ryan, and his son, Simon, is a student at the school. Turns out Simon's been having some trouble.Jo and Ryan get into an argument, and he storms off. That's when it hits her—not only does she know him... he's her ex-husband.She tells the Love Club that she spontaneously married Ryan at 18, and it was a huge mistake.Then Karim proposes via Yahtzee, and Jo tells him she needs time to think. The Love Club suspects Jo still has feelings for Ryan. So Tory drags her over to his house—where he's washing car mats with his shirt off (of course). Sparks start to fly over the car... until a massive argument breaks out about who actually ended their marriage. Jo storms off and calls Karim. She says yes.But just as she starts planning another wedding, she finds out... she's still married to Ryan.She confronts him and asks him to come to City Hall to finalize the annulment. But first, he takes her on a surprise detour—to their old high school. Cue the nostalgia. Cue the flying sparks.Ultimately, Jo decides to break things off with Karim. But when she shows up to talk to Ryan—his baby mama is there.Heartbroken, she decides to move forward with the annulment.But then, Simon sees the papers and decides to play matchmaker. He traps both Jo and Ryan in detention, forcing them to talk things out and—yes—make out.They celebrate at the school carnival, where Jo gets dunk tanked, and then they kiss in front of all the kids.

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee is feeling under the weather, so Nick steps in to chat about roguelikes and roguelites with, JM8 and Marty.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty chat about the importance of "good graphics" in 2025, and whether they're enough to carry an entire game.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

Get ready to roll with laughter and learning in this fun-filled episode. This idea is shaking up the typical classroom routine with a Yahtzee dice challenge that's sure to make your students take a chance on changing behaviors in a good way! Join us as we reveal how to set up a competitive game that not only scores big on fun but also encourages positive behaviors and cuts down on the stress for you, the teacher. From rolling dice to rolling in the good vibes, this episode of the This Teacher Life is packed with tips, tricks, and a whole lot of game-changing ideas to keep your classroom engaged, motivated, and having a blast. Whether you're a Yahtzee pro or a total beginner, we've got all the steps to make this a winning strategy for you and your students. Tune in, and let's make learning a Lotzee fun! Episode Notes:  Last Call to Join the Crushing It for Kids Course and Earn Up to 15 Hours of PD Credit:  monicagenta.com/courses Needing Some Awesome PD for Your School? Let's Connect:  monicagenta.com/PD Get a free PDF copy of Monica's Book Crushing It For Kids Here: monicagenta.com/freebook Connect with Monica on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/monicagentaed/ TikTok: tiktok.com/@monicagentaed Facebook: facebook.com/MonicaGentaEd Twiiter: twitter.com/monicagentaed

On this week's episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty chat about the importance of "good graphics" in 2025, and whether they're enough to carry an entire game.Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/SecondWindGroup⁠

Brendan shares a little bit about each of several games he dusted off in the last three months of 2024 about which he never had a chance to chat. Join us, won't you?October 2024– Rummy  ( > 10 Years dusty)November 2024– Dixit: Journey (2 Years, 25 Days dusty)– Kahuna (2 Years, 9 Months, 26 Days dusty)– Settlers of Catan (1 Year, 9 Months, 18 Days dusty)– Grand Austria Hotel (1 Year, 9 Months, 28 Days dusty)– Concept (7 Years, 10 Months, 27 Days dusty)– Gingerbread House (2 Years, 11 Months, 29 Days)December 2024– Isle of Skye (3 Years, 4 Months, 28 Days dusty)– New York Zoo (1 Year, 2 Months, 25 Days dusty)– Dungeon Mayhem (5 Days, 4 Months, 7 Days dusty)– Marvel Dice Throne (1 Year, 4 Months, 13 Days dusty)– Yahtzee ( > 10 Years)– Glory to Rome (1 Year, 5 Months, 12 Days)– 13 Dead End Drive (3 Years, 8 Months, 29 Days)– 221b Baker Street: The Master Detective Game– Santa's Workshop (360 Days dusty)What games have you dusted off? Share your cleaned out games over on Boardgamegeek in guild #3269.

This week on the pod, things are getting wild—because nothing screams "totally ethical government" like a Tesla dealership popping up on the White House lawn! Yep, Trump casually rolled up to his new South Lawn Tesla dealership—complete with a free, live-streamed commercial on Musk's X platform. Ethics, schmethics! And hey, nothing screams "I'm totally into electric vehicles now" like last year's EV-hating candidate sitting in a Cybertruck and shouting out Elon Musk's patriotic greatness. Seems legit.Speaking of questionable decisions, Casey Anthony's back—again—because who wouldn't trust parenting advice from someone with her…unique qualifications? Casey's now on TikTok, claiming she's here to advocate for Caylee and give legal advice. Definitely sounds promising, right? Her attorney called it out perfectly: it's not about redemption; it's about clicks, controversy, and a chance to remind us all (again) how tragic her past is. Shocker.Finally, because the mobile gaming world just wasn't complete, Scopely now owns Pokémon Go. Yep, that Scopely—the folks famous for games like "Yahtzee with Buddies." Niantic handed over their golden goose, along with Monster Hunter Now and Pikmin Bloom. So get ready for your augmented-reality addiction to hit new heights—or new monetization nightmares. Probably both.This week's lineup has it all: ethical gymnastics at the White House, Casey Anthony's latest attempt at relevancy, and the corporate takeover of your childhood nostalgia. Seriously, folks, what are we doing?*************************************************************✅BLUECHEW - FIRST ORDER FREE Only $5 Shippinghttps://wawdpod.com/blue*************************************************************✅DUDEROBE - PROMO CODE: WAWD 20% OFFhttps://duderobe.com - promo code: WAWD*************************************************************

Our brains hold our relational history—all the joys, all the ruptures, all the repairs. And even in the most difficult childhood or parenting circumstances, the science of relationships and connection can give us hope for whole-brain and whole-life transformation.Therapist, bestselling author, and mom—Dr. Tina Payne Bryson is seeking a connection revolution that brings neurobiology and practical relational wisdom to bear on both how we were parented, how we parent, and how we relate throughout our lifespan.In this conversation with Tina Bryson, we discuss:The science of childhood relational development and growth into strong, adaptive adultsThe brain as our most social organ—capable of holding a lifetime of relational and emotional historyHow to emotionally co-regulate with another person to achieve a calm, peaceful, and vibrant relationshipNeuroplasticity and our ability to change with intention toward our deepest held valuesAnd we explore how the science of connection, attachment, and interpersonal neurobiology sheds light on how we were parented, and impacts how we might parent ourselves and how we relate to everyone.Books by Dr. Tina BrysonThe Way of Play (Tina's latest book!)The Whole-Brain ChildNo-Drama DisciplineThe Yes BrainThe Power of Showing UpFollow Tina BrysonTinaBryson.com Instagram X The Center for ConnectionShow NotesDr. Tina Bryson: an expert in neurobiology, parenting, child development, and attachment theory.Highlighting Tina's unique perspective as both a clinician and science-engaged researcher.This conversation focuses on parenting, but it's relevant for everyone—whether you're a leader, mentor, or someone reflecting on your own upbringingThe importance of connection, attunement, and emotional regulation in today's world."I feel so aware that this is not an easy time to be a child or a teenager in the world."Kids today face unique challenges that are very different from previous generations:More stimulation, information, and pressure than ever before.Earlier onset of puberty and adolescence, with young adults taking longer to launch."We often talk about the challenges of youth, which are absolutely real, but we don't want to forget that in many ways, the world is actually safer."Positive shifts in youth well-being: fewer teen pregnancies; safer environments (cars, car seats, public spaces)l greater awareness of mental health, substance use, and emotional well-beingWhat Do You Say?: How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home, by William Stixrud and Ned JohnsonThe brain is a social organ—we are profoundly shaped by the people around us."A huge contributor to some of the struggles youth are having is because their grownups are not thriving."Interpersonal neurobiology teaches that children's well-being is tied to their caregivers' ability to regulate their own emotions.Takeaway: Parents who are anxious, reactive, or dysregulated create environments where their children struggle to regulate their emotions."The greatest gift we can give each other is a calm presence."“History is not destiny.”Emotional offloading or outsourcingSafe haven or safe harbor: cozy, safe, calm“My mom will never listen.”Understanding teenagers“Please don't chase your child and force connection.”Non-eye contact feels less intrusive and they'll open up moreUnderstanding Attachment & The Four S's: Safe, Seen, Soothed, SecureSecure attachment is a key predictor of well-being in children and adults.Attachment is built through repeated experiences of the Four S's:Safe: "Do I feel physically and emotionally secure with this person?"Seen: "Does this person understand and acknowledge my emotions and experiences?"Soothed: "When I'm in distress, does this person help me feel better?"Secure: "Do I trust that this person will be there for me consistently?"Set an intention: "When my child walks through the door, I want them to feel at rest, safe, and accepted."Practical Parenting Tip: If your child pushes you away, don't force connection. Instead, say: "I can see you need some space right now. I'm here whenever you're ready to talk."Managing Teen Independence: When teens ask for space, don't take it personally. Instead, try: "I'm here if you want to talk later.""Would you be open to a short walk or helping me in the kitchen?"The basics of attachment theory: John Bowlby and Mary AinsworthMama BearsNot just brain, but whole nervous systemSecure Relating: Holding Your Own in an Insecure World, by Sue Marriot and Ann Kelley"Without awareness, we don't have choice."—Dan SiegelHistory is not destiny. We can rewire our brains and create new, healthier patterns in relationships.The availability of your presence creates a secure environmentRegulation & Emotional ResilienceDefinition of Regulation: The ability to monitor and modify emotional states rather than reacting impulsively.It's NOT about being emotionless—it's about responding intentionally”When we mess up, the research shows that as long as we make the repair, the rupture itself was actually beneficial.”Tina Bryson's Fragility Formula: Adversity minus support or plus too much support = fragility. Adversity plus the right amount of support = resilience.Real-Life Example: The Yahtzee IncidentTina shares a personal story of losing her temper while playing Yahtzee with her kids.She repaired the rupture by apologizing, taking responsibility, and asking for a do-over.Pink Flags vs. Red FlagsPink Flags: Subtle signs that you're getting dysregulated (irritability, sarcasm, tension)Red Flags: Full-blown loss of control (yelling, throwing things, shutting down)The Three R's of Parenting: Regulation, Responding, RepairingThe Window of ToleranceGentle Parenting vs  Responsive, Respectful, Regulated, Intentional parentingRegulation: Managing your emotions firstResponding: Engaging with your child in a safe, attuned wayRepairing: Acknowledging when you mess up and making amendsReduce pressure—kids should not feel they must "perform" to be loved.The Power of Breathwork: The Physiological SighQuick, evidence-based technique to reduce stress and reset the nervous system.Take a double inhale through the nose, followed by a longer exhale."It's the quickest thing we know to calm the nervous system."Non-eye-contact conversations (e.g., driving in the car) help teens feel less pressured.The science of thriving vs. surviving: "Survive and thrive are not separate categories. What we do in survival moments can lead to thriving."The River of Well-Being: A Person is Like a Boat on a RiverThe FACES Model for Well-Being (essentially a definition of thriving)Flexible: Open to change and new ideasAdaptive: Able to adjust based on new circumstancesCoherent: Emotional and cognitive stabilityEnergized: Engaged and present in lifeStable: Grounded and consistentFamily Dinner Time: Keeping it light, being more presentPractical Exercise to Regulate Emotions: The Deep Physiological SighTurn down the reactivity of your nervous system“The key is: Make your exhale longer than your inhale.”“At his worst is when he needs you the most.”Pre-frontal cortex development: Not mature until late-20s.“The prefrontal cortex is changeable throughout the lifespan.”The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child, Dan Siegel and Tina Payne BrysonThe YES Brain Approach: Four pillars that cultivate resilience in children BRIE (like the cheese)Balance (emotional regulation)Resilience (bouncing back from challenges)Insight (self-awareness and growth mindset)Empathy (understanding others' experiences)"Thriving isn't about avoiding hardships—it's about learning how to navigate them."Recognize your influence: "Your child's nervous system mirrors yours. Take care of yourself first."Discipline and moralityHarsh, punitive discipline doesn't change behavior or develop a moral compass. It teaches them to hide the behavior.Healthy Guilt vs Toxic Shame“The way we don't get kicked out of our group is our conscience.”Guilt “is one of your superpowers.”“No one can lose each other's love.”Give yourself permission to wait and not respond in the moment.“My number one job is to keep you safe.”No lecturing. “What do you think I would say here?” “What's your plan to keep yourself safe?”Tina Bryson on Faith and SpiritualityHealthy spirituality leads to feeling safe, seen, soothed, and secure.The power of narrative and journaling: Making sense of our lives and integrating our brains*Parenting from the Inside Out,* Dan Siegel and Mary Hartzell*The Power of Showing Up,* Dan Siegel and Tina BrysonPractical Exercise: Acknowledging, Noticing, and Accepting“Negative emotions does not mean something's wrong.”“Emotions are important information, but they don't make the final decision.”Are your emotions making the decision?Curiosity in order to bring softness and nurture.Practice daily regulation: Set a personal cue (e.g., getting in the car) to check in with your emotions.Embrace repair: "Making mistakes in parenting is inevitable—what matters is how you repair them."Parenting is about progress, not perfection. "Every small shift you make has a ripple effect on your child's well-being."Pam King's Key TakeawaysWe're inherently wired for connection, and our brains store all of our relational history.Rupture is inevitable, but our capacity for repair can strengthen our bonds with each other when we make the effort to reconnect.Thriving involves and integrates all our most intense emotions. We get closer to thriving when we can learn to regulate and integrate our inner emotional experience.Attuning and paying attention to our nervous system is a core emotional and relational skill—and goes a long way in healthy, intimate relationships.We were all children once. We were all parented, for better or for worse. Learning to integrate every aspect of our relational history can keep us on the path to thriving.About Tina BrysonDr. Tina Bryson is an expert in applying interpersonal neurobiology and neuropsychology to maybe the most central part of human life: our closest, most intimate relationships. A bestselling co-author (with Dan Siegal) of THE WHOLE-BRAIN CHILD and NO-DRAMA DISCIPLINE, she has written several other books on parenting and the brain. Her latest book on the science of play came out in January 2025.Tina is a psychotherapist and the Founder and Executive Director of The Center for Connection. She speaks and advocates widely, has appeared across media outlets like TIME Magazine, “Good Morning America,” Huffington Post,Redbook, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.Her doctoral research explored attachment science, childrearing theory, and the emerging field of interpersonal neurobiology. But Tina emphasizes that before she's a parenting educator, or a researcher, she's a mom.Tina is an absolutely brilliant and motivating and encouraging communicator, breaking down the science of connection in a way that's clear, realistic, humorous, and immediately helpful.For more resources from Tina, including her books, and science-packed relationship tips, visit https://www.thecenterforconnection.org/ and tinabryson.com. About the Thrive CenterLearn more at thethrivecenter.org.Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenterFollow us on X @thrivecenterFollow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter About Dr. Pam KingDr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking. About With & ForHost: Pam KingSenior Director and Producer: Jill WestbrookOperations Manager: Lauren KimSocial Media Graphic Designer: Wren JuergensenConsulting Producer: Evan RosaSpecial thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

You get NO root canal, NO implant, and NO Lieutenant Yar!! Scott Can't Handle The Tooth. Car Dealership With Drive-Thru Window. No-one Expects the Colorado Tornado. Breaking 2: Fire Boogaloo. Can you smell what my brake-pads are cooking. East Bound and SLOW DOWN. Bri Humbug! Takin' the poutine. Pay Up and Get the Cooler Thing. I give your temper tantrum 8 out of 10 big sweaters. Yahtzee or nazi. Little of the 'ol hug n tug. Too Pretty for Stitches. Being Transparent with Bill and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.