Episodios

  • Actress & Author Geri Jewell (The Facts of Life & Deadwood)

    Actress & Author Geri Jewell (The Facts of Life & Deadwood)
    Jul 29 2024

    Actress & Author Geri Jewell Her Latest Book: "Geri's Jewels & Gems" is a collection of columns Jewell wrote for Ability Magazine over six years, along with photos she chose from her life. Jewell is best known for her role as Cousin Geri on the NBC sitcom The Facts of Life, where she was the first person with a disability to have a regular role on a prime-time series. In Geri's Jewels & Gems, Jewell shares insights on life from her unique perspective, combining deep reflection with her signature humor.

    Books:

    "Geri" ''I'm Walking As Straight As I Can" "Geri's Jewels & Gems" ----------------------------------------- TV & Film Credits Include:

    Carol of the Bells Deadwood: The Movie Glee My Gimpy Life Pie Head: A Kinda' True Story Child of the '70s (w/ Bruce Vilanch) Alcatraz Deadwood The Night of the White Pants Strong Medicine The Young and the Restless The New Lassie 21 Jump Street Sesame Street The Facts of Life Two of a Kind Irene Mental Patient The Righteous Apples
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    56 m
  • MadDog & Pitbull's Annual "Rants & Raves" Rundown

    MadDog & Pitbull's Annual "Rants & Raves" Rundown
    Jul 29 2024

    RANTS & RAVES YUP. THAT'S WHAT IT IS!!!
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  • Was Jesus (The Christ) a Real Person?

    Was Jesus (The Christ) a Real Person?
    Jul 23 2024

    WAS JESUS A REAL HUMAN BEING? Contemporary scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, and biblical scholars and classical historians view the theories of his nonexistence as effectively refuted. Yes, almost all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus was a real person, and the idea that he was mythical is considered a fringe theory. The most significant evidence for Jesus' existence comes from historical references by Christian, Jewish, and Roman writers. These references leave little doubt that Jesus lived and died, though scholars disagree about his beliefs and teachings, and the accuracy of the Bible's accounts. The only two events that nearly all scholars agree on are that Jesus was baptized and crucified.

    While billions of people believe Jesus of Nazareth was one of the most important figures in world history, many others reject the idea that he even existed at all. A 2015 survey conducted by the Church of England, for instance, found that 22 percent of adults in England did not believe Jesus was a real person.

    Among scholars of the New Testament of the Christian Bible, though, there is little disagreement that he actually lived. Lawrence Mykytiuk, an associate professor of library science at Purdue University and author of a 2015 Biblical Archaeology Review article on the extra-biblical evidence of Jesus, notes that there was no debate about the issue in ancient times either. “Jewish rabbis who did not like Jesus or his followers accused him of being a magician and leading people astray,” he says, “but they never said he didn’t exist.”

    Archaeological evidence of Jesus does not exist.

    There is no definitive physical or archaeological evidence of the existence of Jesus. “There’s nothing conclusive, nor would I expect there to be,” Mykytiuk says. “Peasants don’t normally leave an archaeological trail.”

    “The reality is that we don’t have archaeological records for virtually anyone who lived in Jesus’s time and place,” says University of North Carolina religious studies professor Bart D. Ehrman, author of Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. “The lack of evidence does not mean a person at the time didn’t exist. It means that she or he, like 99.99% of the rest of the world at the time, made no impact on the archaeological record.”
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    1 h y 38 m
  • Does God Exist? Was Jesus a Real Person

    Does God Exist? Was Jesus a Real Person
    Jul 21 2024
    IS THERE A ONE TRUE GOD OVERVIEW: There are many sources of information that people use to infer what might be true about God, including observation and revelation: Observation Some say that general observations of the universe support the existence of God, such as the idea of a non-eternal universe as shown by the Big Bang theory. Other observations that might support God's existence include the Earth's weather patterns, which some say are finely tuned to support human life, and the way nature works to form life. Revelation Some say that God may have entered the universe and told us true things about himself, morality, and how to have a relationship with him. This includes the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. The Bible also includes passages that some say indicate that God has made evidence of his existence so obvious that there is no excuse for denying him. IS THERE PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE? The existence of God is a subject of debate in the philosophy of religion.[1] A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God can be categorized as logical, empirical, metaphysical, subjective or scientific. In philosophical terms, the question of the existence of God involves the disciplines of epistemology (the nature and scope of knowledge) and ontology (study of the nature of being or existence) and the theory of value (since some definitions of God include "perfection"). The Western tradition of philosophical discussion of the existence of God began with Plato and Aristotle, who made arguments for the existence of a being responsible for fashioning the universe, referred to as the demiurge or the unmoved mover, that today would be categorized as cosmological arguments. Other arguments for the existence of God have been proposed by St. Anselm, who formulated the first ontological argument; Thomas Aquinas, who presented his own version of the cosmological argument (the first way); René Descartes, who said that the existence of a benevolent God is logically necessary for the evidence of the senses to be meaningful. John Calvin argued for a sensus divinitatis, which gives each human a knowledge of God's existence. Islamic philosophers who developed arguments for the existence of God comprise Averroes, who made arguments influenced by Aristotle's concept of the unmoved mover; Al-Ghazali and Al-Kindi, who presented the Kalam cosmological argument; Avicenna, who presented the Proof of the Truthful; and Al-Farabi, who made Neoplatonic arguments. In philosophy, and more specifically in the philosophy of religion, atheism refers to the proposition that God does not exist.[2] Some religions, such as Jainism, reject the possibility of a creator deity. Philosophers who have provided arguments against the existence of God include David Hume, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Bertrand Russell. Theism, the proposition that God exists, is the dominant view among philosophers of religion.[3] In a 2020 PhilPapers survey, 69.50% of philosophers of religion stated that they accept or lean towards theism, while 19.86% stated they accept or lean towards atheism.[4] Prominent contemporary philosophers of religion who defended theism include Alvin Plantinga, Yujin Nagasawa, John Hick, Richard Swinburne, and William Lane Craig, while those who defended atheism include Graham Oppy, Paul Draper, Quentin Smith, J. L. Mackie, and J. L. Schellenberg. Traditional religious definition of God In classical theism, God is characterized as the metaphysically ultimate being (the first, timeless, absolutely simple and sovereign being, who is devoid of any anthropomorphic qualities), in distinction to other conceptions such as theistic personalism, open theism, and process theism. Classical theists do not believe that God can be completely defined. They believe it would contradict the transcendent nature of God for mere humans to define him. Robert Barron explains by analogy that it seems impossible for a two-dimensional object to conceive of three-dimensional humans.[7] In modern Western societies, the concepts of God typically entail a monotheistic, supreme, ultimate, and personal being, as found in the Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions. In monotheistic religions outside the Abrahamic traditions, the existence of God is discussed in similar terms. In these traditions, God is also identified as the author (either directly or by inspiration) of certain texts, or that certain texts describe specific historical events caused by the God in question or communications from God (whether in direct speech or via dreams or omens). Some traditions also believe that God is the entity which is currently answering prayers for intervention or information or opinions. Ibn Rushd, a 12th-century Islamic scholar Many Islamic scholars have used philosophical and rational arguments to prove the existence of God. For example, Ibn Rushd, a 12th-century Islamic scholar, philosopher, and physician, states there are only two arguments worthy of ...
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    59 m
  • WHO WROTE THE BIBLE?

    WHO WROTE THE BIBLE?
    Jul 21 2024
    Who REALLY Wrote The Bible? WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? Over centuries, billions of people have read the Bible. Scholars have spent their lives studying it, while rabbis, ministers and priests have focused on interpreting, teaching and preaching from its pages. As the sacred text for two of the world’s leading religions, Judaism and Christianity, as well as other faiths, the Bible has also had an unmatched influence on literature—particularly in the Western world. It has been translated into nearly 700 languages, and while exact sales figures are hard to come by, it’s widely considered to be the world’s best-selling book. But despite the Bible’s undeniable influence, mysteries continue to linger over its origins. Even after nearly 2,000 years of its existence, and centuries of investigation by biblical scholars, we still don’t know with certainty who wrote its various texts, when they were written or under what circumstances. Old Testament: The Single Author Theory The Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, narrates the history of the people of Israel over about a millennium, beginning with God’s creation of the world and humankind, and contains the stories, laws and moral lessons that form the basis of religious life for both Jews and Christians. For at least 1,000 years, both Jewish and Christian tradition held that a single author wrote the first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—which together are known as the Torah (Hebrew for “instruction”) and the Pentateuch (Greek for “five scrolls”). That single author was believed to be Moses, the Hebrew prophet who led the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt and guided them across the Red Sea toward the Promised Land. Yet nearly from the beginning, readers of the Bible observed that there were things in the so-called Five Books of Moses that Moses himself could not possibly have witnessed: His own death, for example, occurs near the end of Deuteronomy. A volume of the Talmud, the collection of Jewish laws recorded between the 3rd and 5th centuries A.D., dealt with this inconsistency by explaining that Joshua (Moses’ successor as leader of the Israelites) likely wrote the verses about Moses’ death. “That's one opinion among many,” says Joel Baden, a professor at Yale Divinity School and author of The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis. “But they're already asking the question—was it possible or not possible for [Moses] to have written them?” By the time the Enlightenment began in the 17th century, most religious scholars were more seriously questioning the idea of Moses’ authorship, as well as the idea that the Bible could possibly have been the work of any single author. Those first five books were filled with contradictory, repetitive material, and often seemed to tell different versions of the Israelites’ story even within a single section of text. As Baden explains, the “classic example” of this confusion is the story of Noah and the flood (Genesis 6:9). “You read along and you say, I don’t know how many animals Noah took on the ark with him,” he says. “In this sentence it says two of every animal. In this sentence, he takes two of some animals and 14 of any animals.” Similarly, the text records the length of the flood as 40 days in one place, and 150 days in another. The Old Testament: Various Schools of Authors To explain the Bible’s contradictions, repetitions and general idiosyncrasies, most scholars today agree that the stories and laws it contains were communicated orally, through prose and poetry, over centuries. Starting around the 7th century B.C., different groups, or schools, of authors wrote them down at different times, before they were at some point (probably during the first century B.C.) combined into the single, multi-layered work we know today. Of the three major blocks of source material that scholars agree comprise the Bible’s first five books, the first was believed to have been written by a group of priests, or priestly authors, whose work scholars designate as “P.” A second block of source material is known as “D”—for Deuteronomist, meaning the author(s) of the vast majority of the book of Deuteronomy. “The two of them are not really related to each other in any significant way,” Baden explains, “except that they're both giving laws and telling a story of Israel's early history.” According to some scholars, including Baden, the third major block of source material in the Torah can be divided into two different, equally coherent schools, named for the word that each uses for God: Yahweh and Elohim. The stories using the name Elohim are classified as “E,” while the others are called “J” (for Jawhe, the German translation of Yahweh). Other scholars don't agree on two complete sources for the non-priestly material. Instead, says Baden, they see a much more gradual process, in which ...
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    1 h y 25 m
  • GEORGE SCHLATTER: "STILL LAUGHING: A LIFE IN COMEDY"

    GEORGE SCHLATTER: "STILL LAUGHING: A LIFE IN COMEDY"
    Jul 18 2024

    LEGENDARY TELEVISION PRODUCER GEORGE SCHLATTER CREATOR OF "ROWAN & MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN" Throughout his long and successful career as a producer, director and writer, George Schlatter has been responsible for hundreds of hours of television series and specials. He changed the face of television when he created and produced such breakthrough series as Laugh-In and Real People. Over the years, George has received numerous honors and awards including: 25 Emmy Award nominations, three Emmys, three Image Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Television Critics Awards, Directors Guild Award, Producers Guild “Man of The Year,” and many others. On its 25th Anniversary, the Television Academy honored him for his outstanding contribution to television. In 1989, he was awarded a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame.

    Mr. Schlatter is a veteran of over 60 years in network television. He produced the first 5 years of the Grammy Awards plus series and specials starring Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Eddie Murphy, Cher, Elton John, Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Liza Minnelli, Michael Jackson, Doris Day, Jonathan Winters, Richard Pryor, Shirley MacLaine, Bill Cosby, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Diana Ross, Lena Horne, Dinah Shore, Nat King Cole, Placido Domingo and scores of others.

    In 1987, George Schlatter created and for 15 years produced the American Comedy Awards, an annual televised event designed to acknowledge the contributions and achievements of comedic actors and performers. George says, “Of all the work I’ve done, I am perhaps most proud of my involvement in the early careers of performers like Goldie Hawn, Lily Tomlin, Roseanne, Robin Williams, Ellen DeGeneres, and others who have gone on to greater heights. Working with stars is rewarding, but helping to create stars is the most fulfilling of all accomplishments.”

    In 1996, the Museum of Television & Radio did a special tribute to him for his contributions in the world of television.

    In honor of Frank Sinatra’s milestone 80th birthday, George produced the Emmy-winning critically acclaimed special, Sinatra 80 Years: My Way. Other credits include the Sammy Davis, Jr. 60th Anniversary Celebration, which also won an Emmy for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special in 1990, the Muhammad Ali 50th & 60th Birthday Celebrations, Welcome Home America, the USO 50th Anniversary, The People’s Choice Awards, the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award Salutes to Dustin Hoffman and Harrison Ford, and both the 54th and 55th Presidential Inaugural Opening Ceremonies of George W. Bush.

    In 2013, Pepperdine University presented Still Laugh-In, A Toast to George Schlatter acknowledging his innovative contributions to television over many decades and in December, 2014, George was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Pepperdine in recognition of his lifelong achievements.

    Most recently he produced a comedy collection for Sirius Radio and Still Laugh-In: The Stars Celebrate for Netflix.

    Besides his work in television, George has been honored for his showmanship and involvement in many charitable causes including Finding a Cure… Nancy Reagan: A Love Story (for Juvenile Diabetes Research) and the Los Angeles Opera on Stage Gala starring Placido Domingo. Since 1990 he has produced every Carousel of Hope Ball for the Children’s Diabetes Foundation, which has built and benefits the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes in Denver, Colorado.

    To further his support of comedy and the people who perform it, George has become an active supporter and Board Member of the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York. He has donated much of his material to them and they have named their theater The George and Jolene Brand Schlatter Theater in his honor.

    George’s book, Still Laughing: A Life in Comedy was released in July, 2023. In it he shares many of the hilarious adventures he had in his early years of television.

    George is married to former actress Jolene Brand who was a regular on the Ernie Kovacs Show and they have two daughters. Maria is an Emmy award winning television producer and is now writing for the theater. Andrea Justine is a champion equestrian rider and trainer.
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    1 h y 15 m
  • The Attempted Assassination of President Donald Trump Part III

    The Attempted Assassination of President Donald Trump Part III
    Jul 17 2024
    The Attempted Murder of a President On July 13, 2024, Donald Trump, the former president of the United States and at that time the Republican Party's presumptive nominee in the 2024 presidential election, was shot and wounded while addressing a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania.[5] Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania,[6][7] fired eight rounds with an AR-15–style rifle from the roof of a nearby building outside the rally venue. He killed an audience member, critically injured two other audience members, and injured Trump in his upper right ear.[6] Crooks was then shot and killed by the United States Secret Service Counter Sniper Team.[8] The incident is being investigated as an attempted assassination and as a potential act of domestic terrorism.[9][10] Footage of the incident showed Trump clasping his right ear before taking cover on the floor behind the podium, where he was surrounded by Secret Service personnel. After agents helped him to his feet, photographer Evan Vucci of the Associated Press captured images of a bloodied Trump pumping his fist in the air, with an American flag in the background, that went viral on social media and have been widely praised as iconic and historically important. Trump mouthed,[11][12] or shouted,[13] the words "Fight! Fight! Fight!" as he was escorted off-stage to his motorcade.[6][14] Taken to a nearby hospital, he was released a few hours later in stable condition. He made his first public appearance after the shooting two days later at the 2024 Republican National Convention.[15] Following the shooting, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers expressed concerns about security arrangements at the event, including the failure to secure access to the roof from which Crooks had fired the shots. Public figures called for increased security for the major candidates in the election.[16] Crooks, who had borrowed the legally purchased rifle from his father, had no criminal record and his motive for the shooting is unknown. No ideology is indicated in his social media posts or other writings,[17] and authorities have stated that it is unknown whether the assassination attempt was related to his political views.[18] Experts considered the shooting a sign of political polarization in the United States, and political figures called for a reduction in tensions.[19][20] Soon after the shooting, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories quickly spread on social media.[21] Background At the time of the incident, Donald Trump was the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election.[22] The shooting occurred two days before the July 15 start of the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.[23] This was the second attempt at violence toward Trump during one of his rallies; the first was in 2016, when a man attempted to grab a security officer's gun at a rally outside of Las Vegas.[24] On July 3, 2024,[25] it was announced that Trump would hold a rally on July 13 at the Butler Farm Show Grounds in Connoquenessing Township and Meridian, near Butler, Pennsylvania.[26][27][28][29] On July 10, an advance team began setting up for the rally, including the installation of generators in a large open field.[30] The rally was part of the Trump campaign's attempts to garner votes in Pennsylvania, which polling indicates is a swing state;[31] the state has 19 votes in the Electoral College.[23] David McCormick, the Republican nominee in the state's concurrent U.S. Senate election, was invited to appear onstage during the rally to increase support for his campaign.[32] U.S. Representative Mike Kelly said he had contacted the Trump campaign to recommend holding the rally in an area that could handle a larger crowd than the Butler Farm Show Grounds, and that their response was, "We appreciate your input but we've already made up our minds".[23] Attendees at Trump's rallies are screened for prohibited items, including weapons.[33] The Secret Service routinely screens and monitors nearby buildings and businesses, including structures outside security perimeters.[34] Four separate counter-sniper teams were assigned to the event, two from the Secret Service and two from local law enforcement.[35] The Pennsylvania State Police, which serves as the law enforcement agency for Connoquenessing Township, were also involved in security matters. Butler Township police were given traffic duties.[29] The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had no information about any particular threats before the event.[36] The Secret Service had increased Trump's security detail in prior weeks due to intelligence indicating that Iran was plotting to assassinate Trump.[37][38]
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    1 h y 17 m
  • THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF DONALD J. TRUMP

    THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF DONALD J. TRUMP
    Jul 17 2024
    THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF DONALD J. TRUMP When President Ronald Reagan was shot by an attention-seeking drifter in 1981, the country united behind its injured leader. The teary-eyed Democratic speaker of the House, Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., went to the hospital room of the Republican president, held his hands, kissed his head and got on his knees to pray for him. But the assassination attempt against former President Donald J. Trump seems more likely to tear America further apart than to bring it together. Within minutes of the shooting, the air was filled with anger, bitterness, suspicion and recrimination. Fingers were pointed, conspiracy theories advanced and a country already bristling with animosity fractured even more. The fact that the shooting in Butler, Pa., on Saturday night was two days before Republicans were set to gather in Milwaukee for their nominating convention invariably put the event in a partisan context. While Democrats bemoaned political violence, which they have long faulted Mr. Trump for encouraging, Republicans instantly blamed President Biden and his allies for the attack, which they argued stemmed from incendiary language labeling the former president a proto-fascist who would destroy democracy. Mr. Trump’s eldest son, his campaign strategist and a running mate finalist all attacked the political left within hours of the shooting even before the gunman was identified or his motive determined. “Well of course they tried to keep him off the ballot, they tried to put him in jail and now you see this,” wrote Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the former president. But the Trump campaign seemed to think better of it, and the post was deleted. A memo sent out on Sunday by Mr. LaCivita and Susie Wiles, another senior adviser, instructed Trump team members not to comment on the shooting. Either way, the episode could fuel Mr. Trump’s narrative about being the victim of persecution by Democrats. Impeached, indicted, sued and convicted, Mr. Trump even before Saturday had accused Democrats of seeking to have him shot by F.B.I. agents or even executed for crimes that do not carry the death penalty. After being wounded at the rally, Mr. Trump, with blood staining his face, pumped his fist at the crowd and shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” What exactly drove the gunman, who was quickly killed by Secret Service counter snipers, remained a matter of speculation. Identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, from Bethel Park, Pa., he was a registered Republican but had also given $15 to a progressive group on Mr. Biden’s Inauguration Day, more than three years ago. The authorities said they were still investigating his motive. The shooting came at a time when the United States was already deeply polarized along ideological, cultural and partisan lines — split, it often seems, into two countries, even two realities. More than at any time in generations, Americans do not see themselves in a collective enterprise but perceive themselves on opposite sides of modern ramparts. The divisions have grown so stark that a Marist poll in May found that 47 percent of Americans considered a second civil war likely or very likely in their lifetime, a notion that prompted Hollywood to release a movie imagining what that could look like. The propulsive crescendo of disruptive events lately has led many to compare 2024 to 1968, a year of racial strife, riots in the cities and the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Protests over the Vietnam War helped prompt President Lyndon B. Johnson to drop out of his race for re-election that year. Until now, there had been one important difference. “Of all the similarities between 1968 and 2024, the lack of political violence this year has been one of the key areas where the years diverge,” said Luke A. Nichter, a historian at Chapman University and the author of “The Year That Broke Politics,” a history of 1968. “That is no more.” Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University, said political violence had a long history in America. “As in 1968 — or 1919 or 1886 or 1861 — the violence that just occurred is rather inevitable in a society as bitterly divided as ours,” he said. “And of course there’s actually less violence in politics now than there was in those other years.” Republicans turned the tables on Democrats this weekend, arguing that if Mr. Trump was responsible for provocative rhetoric, then Mr. Biden should be as well. Speaking with donors on Monday, the president said he wanted to stop talking about his poor debate performance and instead “put Trump in a bull’s-eye.” He described his strategy as “attack, attack, attack.” “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio and a front-runner to be named Mr. Trump’s running mate, wrote on ...
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    1 h y 42 m