Chicago is experiencing a reversal of the great migration that propelled African Americans northward in search of opportunity in the first half of the 20th century. Since 2000, a quarter-million black Chicagoans have left. The reasons include decades of bad policy and broken promises on affordable housing, education and public safety.

On this episode of Reveal, we team up with the Data Reporting Lab in Chicago to examine how trauma care teams have done more than law enforcement to reduce the gun homicide rate and with The Chicago Reporter to describe how activists are pushing back against the shutdown of 50 public schools at once.

—

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Wildfires raged across Northern California in October, burning through the state’s famed Napa and Sonoma wine regions. In all, more than 170 blazes ripped across an area the size of Maryland and Delaware combined. Scores awoke to flames at their doors, and 44 people were killed in the deadliest fire event in state history.

On this episode of Reveal, we team up with KQED to examine what led to delays in evacuations and why so many fire victims received no warnings at all. As wildfires grow more intense, are first responders keeping up?

—

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Lead – the toxic metal used for years in paint, plumbing, mining and more – still poisons people in all kinds of ways. Lead also kills wildlife when animals scavenge carcasses shot with lead bullets and left behind by hunters. Eagles and condors are not the hunters’ intended targets, but they’re dying from bullet dust.

The Obama administration tried to phase out all lead ammunition on certain federal lands right before leaving office. But President Donald Trump’s interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, overturned that order his first day on the job.

Reveal follows a bullet’s journey in the wilds of Wyoming.

—

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

*This show was originally broadcast February 3, 2018. *It’s been ten years since former NASDAQ chairman Bernie Madoff was arrested for committing one of the largest financial crimes in U.S. history. For decades he ran a Ponzi scheme from a secret office in New York, duping thousands of investors out of billions of dollars. Many of them lost everything when the house of cards fell.

How did Madoff pull it off? And what steps have regulators taken in the past decade to ensure that it doesn’t happen again? For this week’s episode, we teamed up with Steve Fishman, a reporter based in New York City who’s followed the story for years. He produced and hosted a seven-part podcast for Audible called “Ponzi Supernova.”

Through interviews with financial experts, federal agents, Madoff’s cellmates and Madoff himself, Fishman explains how the $60 billion con worked, and why Madoff was able to elude regulators for decades. Fishman says that while Madoff was the mastermind of the scheme, it was banks and other financial institutions who “weaponized” him, turning him from a “local swindler” into an unstoppable force.

Madoff will spend the rest of his life in prison, but no one from these institutions faced similar consequences. And even though some precautions have been put in place since Madoff’s arrest, financial experts warn that for the most part, investors are still on their own.

Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

In an attempt to reduce its carbon footprint, the University of Michigan has pledged to freeze its investments in fossil fuel companies. This move has drawn praise from such activist groups as the U-M's Climate Action Movement (CAM). But it also says the school needs to go much further. CAM member and U-M doctoral student Noah Weaverdyck discusses it all with WEMU's David Fair on this week's "Issues of the Environment."

When Mohamedou Salahi arrived at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, in August of 2002, he was hopeful.  He knew why he had been detained: he had crossed paths with Al Qaeda operatives, and his cousin had once called him from Osama bin Laden’s phone.  But Salahi was no terrorist—he held no extremist views—and had no information of any plots. He trusted the American system of justice and thought the authorities would realize their mistake before long. 

He was wrong. 

Salahi spent fifteen years at Guantánamo, where he was subjected to some of the worst excesses of America’s war on terror; Donald Rumsfeld personally signed off on the orders for his torture.  And, under torture, Salahi confessed to everything—even though he had done nothing. “If they would have wanted him to confess to being on the grassy knoll for the J.F.K. assassination, I’m sure we could have got him to confess to that, too,” Mark Fallon, who led an investigation unit at Guantánamo, said.  

Ben Taub reported Mohamedou Salahi’s story for The New Yorker and tried to understand what had gone wrong in the fight against Al Qaeda. Salahi met Ben in Mauritania, because, when the U.S. released him, it was under the condition that Mauritania would withhold his passport. He would like to go abroad—he needs medical treatment, and he hopes to live in a democracy. But, for an innocent victim of Guantánamo, being released isn’t the same as being free. 

This past Saturday, a series of air strikes in Saudi Arabia damaged more than a dozen oil installations, including one of the most critical oil-production facilities in the world. The attack threw global fuel markets into disarray. Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed that they launched the strikes, but they have long been armed by Iran, fuelling conjecture that the attacks were carried out by Tehran. Robin Wright joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how Iran views U.S. policies in the Gulf and how the Trump Administration has unwittingly strengthened the regime’s hard-liners.

This week, evidence emerged that Trump tried to enlist the help of a foreign power to discredit his political opponents—in this case, Democratic Presidential hopeful Joe Biden. Further disclosures revealed that the President may have been aided in his efforts by his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, Vice-President Mike Pence, and Attorney General William Barr. On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the start of a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump, saying that he had betrayed his oath of office, the nation’s security, and the integrity of U.S. elections. Jeffrey Toobin, Jane Mayer, and David Rohde—three New Yorker writers who have reported extensively about the Administration—join Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the case against Trump, and how his inner circle may have helped jeopardize his Presidency.

Senator Cory Booker burst onto the national scene about a decade ago, after serving as the mayor of the notoriously impoverished and dangerous city of Newark, New Jersey. To get that job, Booker challenged an entrenched establishment. “My political training comes from the roughest of rough campaigns,” he tells David Remnick. “You just won’t think it’s America, the kind of stuff we had to go up against. And it [was] such a great way to learn [that campaigning] has to be retail—grassroots. And so much of this, in those early primary states, is about that.”  

Booker spoke with Remnick about growing up black in a largely white area of New Jersey, where his parents had to fight to be able to buy a home; about his long relationship with the Kushner family, which started back when Jared Kushner’s father, Charles, was a leading Democratic donor; and why he’s proud to collaborate with even his direst political opponents on issues such as criminal-justice reform. “Donald Trump signed my bill,” Booker states. “I worked with him and his White House to pass a bill that liberated thousands of black people from prison” by retroactively reducing unjustly high sentences related to crack cocaine. “Tell that liberated person that Cory Booker should not deal with somebody that he fundamentally disagrees with.” 

Note: In this interview, Senator Booker asserts, “We now have more African-Americans in this country under criminal supervision than all the slaves in 1850.” The historical accuracy of this comparison has been challenged. More accurately, the number of African-American men under criminal supervision today has been compared to the number of African-American men enslaved in 1850. 

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the line for President Trump’s July 25th phone call with the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump urged Zelensky to assist in an investigation into Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden. Pompeo, a fierce Trump loyalist and the last surviving member of his original national-security team, is now implicated in a scandal that threatens Trump’s Presidency. Susan B. Glasser joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the rapidly unfolding Ukraine story and Pompeo’s place within it.

Farrow’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein and other accused perpetrators of sexual assault helped opened the floodgates of the #MeToo movement. In his new book, “Catch and Kill,” and in “The Black Cube Chronicles” published on newyorker.com, Farrow details the measures that were taken against him and against some of the accusers who went on the record. These included hiring a private spy firm staffed by ex-Mossad officers. Speaking with David Remnick, Farrow lays out a connection between accusations against Harvey Weinstein and NBC’s Matt Lauer. And he interviewed a private investigator named Igor Ostrovskiy who was assigned to spy on him—until he had a crisis of conscience.

One of the almost unsolvable problems with the U.K.’s exit from the E.U. is that it would necessitate a “hard border” between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland, which would remain a member nation in Europe. The border was the epicenter of bloody conflict during the decades-long Troubles, and was essentially dismantled during the peace established by the Good Friday Agreement, in 1998. The prospect of fortifying it, with customs-and-immigration checks, has already brought threats of violence from paramilitaries such as the New I.R.A. At the same time, moving the customs border to ports along the coast of Northern Ireland—as the U.K.’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has proposed—strikes Northern Irish loyalists as a step toward unification with the Republic, which they would view as an abandonment by Britain. Patrick Radden Keefe, who wrote about the Troubles in his book “Say Nothing,” discusses the intensely fraught issues of the border with Simon Carswell, the public-affairs editor of the Irish Times.

One of the big stories of the 2016 Presidential campaign was the role Facebook played in spreading false and misleading information, from Russia and from inside the United States, about candidates. The company has made some changes, but it is still under attack from the press, activists, users, and Congress for its failure to curb the proliferation of “fake news” on its platform. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, announced this fall that Facebook will not fact-check political advertisements or other statements made by politicians on the platform. Evan Osnos joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss social media’s power to shape politics and the likely effects on the 2020 Presidential campaign.

In August, India suspended the autonomy of the state of Kashmir, putting soldiers in its streets and banning foreign journalists from entering. Dexter Filkins, who was working on a story about Narendra Modi, would not be deterred from going. To evade the ban, he sought the help of an Indian journalist, Rana Ayyub. Ayyub had once gone undercover to reveal the ruling party’s ties to sectarian and extrajudicial violence against the Muslim minority. In a conversation recorded last week, Filkins and Ayyub tell the story of how they got into Kashmir and describe the repression and signs of torture that they observed there. Ayyub’s book “Gujarat Files,” about a massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, has made her a target of Hindu nationalists; one of the book’s translators was killed not long ago. She spoke frankly with Filkins about the emotional toll of living in fear of assassination.

The New Yorker’s Eric Lach is in Iowa for the month leading up to the Democratic caucuses. Next week’s debate, in Des Moines, was likely going to focus on health care and other domestic issues core to the Democratic platform, but the agenda may instead be dominated by a discussion of the Trump Administration’s killing of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani and the United States’ fraught history of war in the Middle East. Polls show that Joe Biden is trusted on foreign-policy issues, but Lach suggests that Bernie Sanders’s history of opposing wars—and his quick and confident articulation of his position on Iran—may sway voters seeking a clear message. Nearly a year into the campaign, votes will finally be cast, and in Iowa the deciding factor may involve personal contact more than ideological positions. Iowa voters tend to say, “ ‘I’ve shaken this person’s hand, and I’ve shaken this person’s hand, and I’m going to make my decision after I’ve shaken this other person’s hand.’ That counts for a lot, I think,” Lach says.

The United States has the largest prison population in the world. But, until the publication of Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow,” in 2010, most people didn’t use the term mass incarceration, or consider the practice a social-justice issue. Alexander argued that the increasing imprisonment of black and brown men—through rising arrest rates and longer sentences—was not merely a response to crime but a system of racial control. “The drug war was in part a politically motivated strategy, a backlash to the civil-rights movement, but it was also a reflection of conscious and unconscious biases fuelled by media portrayals of drug users,” Alexander tells David Remnick. “Those racial stereotypes were resonant of the same stereotypes of slaves and folks during the Jim Crow era.”

In the nineteen-thirties, authoritarian regimes were on the rise around the world—as they are again today—and democratic governments that came into existence after the First World War were toppling. “American democracy, too, staggered,” Jill Lepore wrote in The New Yorker, “weakened by corruption, monopoly, apathy, inequality, political violence, hucksterism, racial injustice, unemployment, even starvation.” Lepore talks with David Remnick about how Americans rallied to save democracy, and how we might apply those lessons in a new era with similar problems. 

This week, the former film producer Harvey Weinstein was convicted on two counts of sexual assault in a New York court. Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than ninety women, has become an emblem of misogyny in Hollywood, and of the systems that protect wealthy and powerful men from the consequences of criminal misconduct. Rebecca Solnit joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss whether the Weinstein verdict is a turning point in the #MeToo movement, and what it takes to expose the lies of those in power in business and politics.

Donald Trump never really stopped running for President. On the day of his inauguration, in 2017, he filed the paperwork to run for reëlection in 2020. As the Democrats have fought a historically long primary battle, Trump has been gearing up for the general election. In particular, his campaign will take place online—he has tapped his 2016 digital-media director, Brad Parscale, to run his 2020 campaign. Andrew Marantz, who profiled Parscale for The New Yorker, joins Eric Lach to discuss Parscale’s role in the Trump phenomenon and what to expect from an increasingly online reëlection campaign.

The earliest epidemics date back to Neolithic times, and, in the millennia since, viral outbreaks have repeatedly shaped the course of human history, influencing behavior and creating and destroying cultural norms. In the weeks since COVID-19 became a worldwide emergency, people are showing resilience, humor, and creative ways of communicating as governments and businesses struggle to respond. Robin Wright joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss differing responses to infectious diseases across time and cultures, and the global political ramifications of COVID-19.

In northern Italy, doctors were forced to begin rationing ventilators and other equipment—a nightmare scenario that could become a reality for medical staff in the United States soon; New York has projected ventilator shortages in the thousands per week. David Remnick talks with Philip Rosoff, a professor of Medicine at Duke University and a scholar of bioethics who has studied rationing. Rosoff believes medical institutions must also consider the needs of those who can’t be saved, and suggests that hospitals should stock up on drugs to ease suffering at the end of life. Rosoff notes that the U.S. medical system puts an emphasis on “go for broke” care at all costs, and is poorly prepared for those kinds of decisions, which leave hospital workers with an acute sense of “moral distress.” “If we’re smart, we would have institutional guidelines and plans in place ahead of time,” Rosoff says. “The way not to make [a rationing decision] is to make it arbitrarily, capriciously, unilaterally, and at the bedside in the moment.”

Ask This Old House landscape designer Jenn Nawada explains how to create a piece of artwork out of succulent plants

Ask This Old House landscape contractor Roger Cook shows the proper way to prune a branch without damaging the tree

Apply basic carpentry techniques to primed boards and molding to add a formal, elegant touch to any room

Ask This Old House general contractor Tom Silva helps a homeowner patch a hardwood floor to make it look seamless

Monday on Political Rewind , the challenges of holding elections amidst a public health crisis. We spoke to the current and former secretaries of state who joined us to talk about managing this year's elections amid the dangers of coronavirus. Panelists : Brad Raffensperger - Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox - Former Georgia Secretary of State, former candidate for governor, current Dean of the Walter F. Georgia School of Law at Mercer University Al Scott - Chatham County Commission Chairman Susan Catron - Savannah Morning News Executive Editor

MeFite odinsdream recently came across some old abandoned police sketch software for Macintosh systems from the 1980s, then wrapped it up in a web-based emulator, and now you can play with it in your browser! Make your own face sketches. [via mefi projects]

In an attempt to reduce its carbon footprint, the University of Michigan has pledged to freeze its investments in fossil fuel companies. This move has drawn praise from such activist groups as the U-M's Climate Action Movement (CAM). But it also says the school needs to go much further. CAM member and U-M doctoral student Noah Weaverdyck discusses it all with WEMU's David Fair on this week's "Issues of the Environment."

For latest iOS: If I'm actively using my phone, DND doesn't seem to work -- this is annoying when I'm trying to get lost in a book, long article, etc. Is there a way to force all incoming texts to obey DND at all times?

There's been lots of advice for partner board games and group social meetups and work meetings online but I feel like I'm in the vacuumest vacuum in which I've ever been. I've been at a contract job for 2 months and just got an extension until 4/30. However, I spent last Thursday and Friday on furlough (no pay) and my contract has been paused (no pay) for the next 2-3 weeks.

I have a regular Wednesday evening happy hour that we've turned into a video party but beyond that I have no social interactions and no real reason to get out of bed.

I tend to be pretty bad at self-care anyway so reminders to cook or clean or exercise more may not work.

I'm totally OK with sleeping through it all. There are online classes I can do, partly-finished projects, lots of cleaning that I could do but I just need a kick in the butt.

Mainly I need motivation from fellow lazy people - just lazy people - to figure out how to start and how to keep going.

I use Google Photos on my Android phone to back up my photos and videos to the cloud. As I have been known to occasionaly loose my phone I really like this feature. But, I can't find an option to not download photos back to my phone. The result is that as soon as I enable backup&sync ALL my photos get downloaded and my storage is full. I would like to have only backup and no sync. Is there a solution for that besides using another app?

Upstairs neighbors did something that resulted in a little water dripping from my ceiling. It appears to have gotten behind a wall outlet as well, and I'm now concerned as to whether it's safe to use. The outlet had a surge protector plugged in at the time of the water exposure, which I unplugged after I heard buzzing coming from the outlet. Since the outlet kept buzzing, I cut off all electricity to half of my home via the circuit breaker for about a day (the building is old, so multiple rooms - kitchen, bathroom, and 2 extra are all on the same 20 amp breaker). There has been no buzzing since I turned the breaker back on.

After a cursory observation my super stated I could use the outlet again after 36 hours, which I extended to around 60 to be safe. When I started plugging in the surge protector, however, I saw a blue spark; this freaked me out enough that I decided to leave it unplugged.

Questions:
1. Given the above, is there reason to believe the outlet is currently safe to use/will be safe to use in the near future?
2. If not, what are my next steps? Request that my super/landlord send in an electrician?
3. (Slightly unrelated) Is it possible to change the configuration of rooms to circuit breakers? I don't want to have to shut off half my home again if there's a problem in only one room, and I appear to have a spare 20 amp that isn't connected to anything. The super said it wasn't possible as it would require new wiring to be placed in the walls, etc. but I don't know how knowledgeable they are on the electrical front.

Thanks!

A low budget one man type of travel show, similar to "Bald and Bankrupt". What sort of camera setup would you use? I am looking to buy camera and all related gear but it seem like there are a lot of conflicting aspects in terms of what would best work. Please give me your own opinion and advice, here are some of my key criteria:

1) I am thinking it has to have the option for mic jack / external mic, relying on the built in mic seems to often give really shitty audio.
2) Size, as compact as possible, needs to be easy to tote around while travelling
3) Price - not so much that I cannot spend the $$$, I guess "discreet" is more the thing... where I will be shooting there could be thieves as well as police or other officials that would think "journalism" if they see a really pro looking setup.

When I look up "prosumer" level cameras I see fairly bulky and fancy looking units. Again my main concern here is I do not want to look too juicy to thieves, and I need to be able to work in places where border guards will not immediately think "journalist" and police and others will think more "tourist who just happens to have good gear".

Oh, and:
1) one man show, so all auxilliary gear etc needs to fit in like a backpack or large tote bag
2) needs to be digital, such that uploading footage to the cloud is easy
3) should be flexible such that it is easy to point and shoot throughout travels, as well as set up like on a tripod for properly framed scenes

If I am thinking about this entirely wrong, please tell me that, too.

If you think "just shoot with your phone" that is kind of off the table, I want to be producing semi-pro quality video and audio when I do this.

So please, tell me, what would you buy?

Two organizations I belong to publish Google calendars of events. I would like to subscribe to these from my Macintosh and iPhone, so they appear on the calendars I look at every day. I don't want to change which calendar apps I use. How can I do this most easily? On the Macintosh I use Apple's calendar app. On the iPhone I use Fantastical (which is just accessing the same calendar data that Apple's iOS calendar uses).

The shared calendars I want to access have not been made available in ical format. Is there any way I can subscribe to them from my Mac and iPhone?

More details follow:

I also have a Google calendar which I do not use except when I am forced to by other aspects of the Google ecosystem (e.g. Google Meet invitations).

The shared Google calendars I want to see are not public. They relate to kid things so they can't be public. I've been invited to join these calendars. When I click the invitation link they get added to my Google calendar. So when I go to calendar.google.com I see my own Google calendar, and I also see that I am subscribed to these other calendars and I see their events in their own colors.

I have subscribed to my Google calendar from my Macintosh and my iPhone by adding my Google account to those devices. However, that only brings in the events from my own Google calendar. It doesn't transitively bring in the calendars that I'm subscribed to via my Google calendar. Is there a way I can make it do that?

I would rather not ask the calendar owners to make changes to their calendars, but I will if that's the only way to get these calendars onto my Mac and iPhone. If that's necessary, what should I tell them to do? I don't want to ask them for an iCal link, because then they would have to manually retrieve and send out that link to everyone wha wants it. Ideally they'd be adding iCal capability to the calendar so that anyone with access could subscribe to it that way.

So many people use Google calendars and so many people have iPhones and Macs, I'm really hoping this is possible.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Meatpacking plants are hotspots for the coronavirus, with workers elbow-to-elbow as animals are processed on a conveyor belt. So, how can these factories be adapted to keep workers healthy?

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends. "We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?" Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked. "I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out." At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough. By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Since the coronavirus pandemic hit our world, it has turned many things upside down. Does this mark the beginning of the final events of earth’s history? What are the prophetic implications of this event? Join us for a 90 minute live discussion with Pastor Doug Batchelor and Pastor Jëan Ross.

[YOUTUBE-HERE]

By the Amazing Facts Webmaster

Recently, I was at the grocery store picking up a few items. When I got to the cashier at the checkout line, I tried to engage her in conversation by asking a few simple questions. (I find it’s easier to share materials with people if you’ve broken the ice.) I asked if “things were crazy there lately,” and she said yes, commenting on how rapidly their recent shipment of toilet paper had disappeared.

As she was finishing up, she asked me if I needed a bag. I told her no and pulled mine out and set it on the counter. She said that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were not allowed to touch our bags and that I would have to bag my own groceries. After she told me this, the thought went through my mind that “she probably won’t take any material that I try to give to her.” So I bagged up my groceries and left without attempting to share any tracts or DVDs with her.^*

That left me wondering: “How do we share our faith during a lockdown?” 

Right now, if you knock on someone’s door, they're not likely to answer it. If you try to hand them a tract, they may not take it. Even having face-to-face Bible studies with people is more of a challenge now.

Yet, at this time, people are wondering what on earth is happening. They’re wondering what all of these rapid changes mean, and they want answers. As Christians who understand Bible prophecy, we have the answers that they need, but circumstances have made it more challenging to give those answers the way that we used to.

So here are a few ideas on ways that you can reach out to people and share your faith during the coronavirus lockdown: [PQ-HERE]

1. Use Your Phone!

One of the pastors at our church is continuing to have Bible studies with people but instead of going to their homes, he’s doing it over the phone. Also, many people who may not be Christians appreciate prayer and would not pass up an opportunity to pray with someone. Lots of people are out of work and don’t know what to do or where to turn—so give somebody a buzz and see what happens.

2. Use Social Media! 

Many more people are online now. If you have a social media account, instead of posting only cat videos, post something of substance that speaks to the times in an intelligent and informed way. Ask thought-provoking questions and see what kind of dialogue it generates. You may find many opportunities to share as others express their thoughts and concerns about the things that are happening right now.

3. Use Text Messages! 

Who doesn’t have a cell phone nowadays? I personally don’t have a smartphone, but texting still works on my “dumb” phone! Send Bible verses or inspirational quotes to people. And if you don’t have a cell phone, you can still send text messages if you have a Google Voice account, which is free.

4. Use Snail Mail! 

Although someone might not take a tract directly from your hand at this time, they would likely have no problem if they got it in the mail. Lots of people are stuck at home and, quite honestly, they’re bored! Send them something to read or watch. A friend of mine mentioned that they were looking up random names and addresses in the phone book and sending an uplifting card with a Bible tract in it. What a great idea! 

I felt inspired by that and, over the weekend, I hand-wrote a brief letter to several neighbors on a nearby street and placed a Final Events of Bible Prophecy and Kingdoms in Time DVD, as well as an 8 Amazing Steps to Optimize Your Health and Ancient Prophecies That Reveal the Future! Amazing Fact Tracts.

I hand-wrote the notes because people are more likely to open a handwritten envelope and to read a handwritten letter. If you choose to do this, you can put your name or just identify yourself as a friend or neighbor; it’s up to you, but it’s a great way to share with people while they’re under lockdown. (Here is a link to the letter that I sent out with the materials. Feel free to use and modify it as you see fit: Dear-Friend.pdf.)

How are you sharing your faith at this time? Please share your ideas in the comments below. Others might be inspired by what you’re doing! Just because we’re under lock-down doesn't mean that we can’t be about our Father’s business. Let’s be prayerful and look for creative ways to reach out to others.

*Just a note, I still should have offered her a resource and allowed her to decide if she wanted it or not. The next store I went to, instead of assuming that the cashier wouldn't take anything, I asked him if I could give him something. The young man said, “It depends on what it is.” I pulled a Final Events of Bible Prophecy DVD out of my purse, and he said, ‘Oh yeah! I'll take that.’ Praise the Lord! But what if I had not offered it?

Join Dr. Baxter Bell as he introduces you to this series on wrist and elbow health. Conditions like tennis elbow and carpal tunnel can be a result of repetitive and long-term mouse and keyboard use. These exercises help prevent the common pains that plague people who work at desks and computers. Baxter shares a simple antidote for tired, tight wrists and hands, as he guides you through a series of exercises to open up the upper back, shoulders, and arms. Follow along and unlock the potential to feel more open and pliable. Happier wrists and hands are the immediate result.

This course was created by Desk Yogi. We are pleased to offer this training in our library.

References, recommendations, and referrals are more than just flattery—they can change the trajectory of your career. Join Emilie Aries as she breaks down how to leverage these powerful endorsements to go further at work. Learn who to ask, when to ask, and how to ask—and how to follow up on requests without seeming pesky. Plus, discover a simple framework you can use to make sure you're giving as much as you're taking from your network of supporters.

Sleep is mandatory. You can't outsource it and you can't negotiate it—and it has a powerful impact on everything you do while you're awake. So why not build habits to optimize your sleep and live your best life? Learn how to make sleep a priority and take steps to achieve sleep wellness. The Sleep Ambassador®, Nancy Rothstein, shares tips for optimizing sleep and performing at your best in work and life. Learn how to prioritize sleep, assess your sleep, create the right sleep environment, and adopt strategies to fall asleep and stay asleep. Nancy offers concrete, practical advice based on research and science—so you can master sleep as your superpower.

Groundhog Day, Back to the Future, The Matrix, and more.

If you thought the appearance of Ben would be the soapiest turn of this season, you were wrong.

What are some keys to growing as a Christian? Part 1

The Keys To Christian Growth – Part 2

We all have a name but the Bible tells us there is a name above every name. When you become a Christian you take on the name of Christ.