What happens when one of our most experienced travelers finds herself seeing the world with brand new eyes? 

Author, photographer, and world traveler Jessica Nabongo became the first Black woman to visit every country in the world, but there was still one final continent left to explore: Antarctica. Venturing across the Drake Passage and into a landscape unlike anywhere she’d experienced before, Jessica found herself overwhelmed by the scale, silence, and otherworldly beauty of a place that invited her to see the world with fresh eyes.

From drifting past towering icebergs and witnessing an ava...

🎉We made it to Episode 100 of The Shieldmaidens!🛡️ 

What started as a simple idea to create honest conversations about faith, life, struggle, friendship, and following Jesus has become so much more than we ever imagined. 

For our 100th episode, we're turning the cameras on ourselves and answering questions that we imagine our listeners might have asked us after walking alongside us for the last 100 episodes. 😂 

We’re talking about: 
🛡️ How The Shieldmaidens started 
❤️ The conversations and stories that have stayed with us 
😂 Some of our funniest behind-the-scenes moments 
🙏 What God has taught us through this podc...

Pool plaster mottling is one of the most common complaints in new pool construction, and the industry's standard explanation, installer error or bad water chemistry, is usually wrong. 

The real cause is calcium hydroxide migration during cement cure, and it has been a solved problem in commercial concrete construction since the 1950s. The pool industry just never picked it up.

This episode covers the full mechanism: how Portland cement produces calcium hydroxide as a hydration byproduct, why it migrates to the surface, what it does when it gets there, and how the LSI determines whether y...

Rhasidat Adeleke capped her season with a gutsy fourth-place finish in the 200m at London’s high-stakes Athlos meet, clocking 22.64 seconds and earning $15K—behind Olympic champ Gabby Thomas ($65K). Facing elite competition including three Americans in a six-woman field, Adeleke surged into third on the final bend. The event, part of Alexis Ohanian’s global push for women-only elite racing, paid big: Sophie O’Sullivan took $10K in fifth place in the 800m, while stars like Marileidy Paulino and Alaysha Johnson also cashed in. Adeleke, chasing her 200m form after a European silver and Irish record, now turns her focu...

Today I want to draw a scarecrow, standing in the field, protecting the crops. We'll make a flour sack head, a straw hat, and some straw hair. We'll make sure his flannel shirt and blue jeans are stuff with straw. We'll also talk about the difference between straw and hay.

And I tell a very funny joke in this one, which you can steal here:

Q) Why did the scarecrow win a prize?

A) He was out standing in his field. (hahaha!)

If you liked this episode and want...

Can AI help you prepare for the CAPM exam, or can it make you feel more prepared than you actually are?

Today, you can ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or another AI tool to explain almost anything. You can generate unlimited practice questions, create study plans, build scenarios, and have AI challenge your answers.

So, do you still need a CAPM trainer, study group, course, books, or other resources?

I started thinking about this after someone asked whether they should use Gemini to prepare for the CAPM before spending money on exam prep.

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Police training, the constraints-led approach, and the real OODA loop. Dr. Pete Blair of ALERRT explains why training has to look like the job an officer will do.

Dr. J. Pete Blair is Executive Director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center and Professor of Criminal Justice at Texas State University. With Ponch Rivera he asks why so much training consists of things that are not the thing. He walks through the firearms qualification, the four parts of the constraints-led approach, and why good training looks messy.
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October may finally bring cooler mornings to Southeast Texas, but that doesn’t mean the garden can go on autopilot.

In this shorter episode of The Compost Pile, David heads into the demo garden to talk about what Zone 9 gardeners should be paying attention to right now. As temperatures change and rainfall becomes more frequent, our watering habits need to change too. Instead of watering just because it’s part of the routine, it’s time to check the soil, watch the plants, and respond to what the garden actually needs.

We also cover what you ca...

The Supreme Court just heard the case that decides whether communities can sue Big Oil for the cost of extreme weather. Justice Alito recused himself, so a 4–4 tie leaves Boulder County’s lawsuit alive. David Fenton comments on the warnings that these suits could bankrupt the oil companies, why the tobacco cases are the right comparison, and why nobody gave those a chance either until a jury saw what the companies knew.