Skip to main content

Everything I Need to Know About Christmas

In this episode, Everything I Need to Know About Christmas–I Learned From a Little Golden Book.

We are thrilled to present this year's (2024) annual Christmas episode for kids! The story has it: back in 2020, when we first launched On the Fly, one of Santa's helpers whispered a fantastic idea into our ear on Thanksgiving Day.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to share children's books by sending an audio file to your nieces, nephews, neighbors, and friends so they can enjoy the story with their little ones?” So we did, and here’s the list of books and stories organized chronologically. Feel free to click the links and listen again, or maybe for the first time.

  1. Twas the Night Before Christmas
  2. Christmas Eve-Day
  3. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
  4. Frosty the Snowman
  5. The Story of Rudolph
  6. The 1939–Original Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer
  7. Tracking Santa
  8. Santa’s Toy Shop

My listening friends, choosing the right story has always been challenging, but the journey has been rewarding. It's our wish that this gift from our family to yours brings you peace, joy, and happiness this holiday season.


And now– Everything I Need to Know About Christmas–I Learned From a Little Golden Book by Diane Muldrow.



I'm Patrick Ball; thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.

Comments

Don Hanley said…
Thanks Patrick - a beautiful gift to the world.

Most Popular of All Time

Epictetus, Ego, and Acronyms

In this episode, Destroy Communication, One Three-Letter Acronym at a Time This week, I want to explore a deeply relatable, universally feared workplace character: the "know-it-all." Now, I’m not pointing fingers here. If we are being completely honest, we have all played this role. We've all uttered some version of, "Yes, absolutely, that aligns with our strategic objectives," while our internal monologue is screaming, "I don't even know what the objective is, let alone the strategy." What got me thinking about this was a chapter in Ryan Holiday's book, Wisdom Takes Work . Holiday leans on a powerful piece of Stoic truth from the ancient philosopher Epictetus: "It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows." It's a brilliant quote that strikes right at the heart of the human ego. You can't learn what you already know, and you certainly can't learn what you pretend to know to save face. Though to be ...

Breaking the Script

In this episode, The Art of the Short-Circuit. We spend a surprising amount of our lives on conversational autopilot. You see it everywhere. At the hardware store. At the post office. In office hallways, where two people can exchange greetings, discuss the weather, and continue on their way without either one actually hearing what the other said. "How are you?” "Good. You?” “Busy." “Yep." It's less of a conversation and more of a system check. Most of us aren't being rude. We're just moving fast. We have emails to answer, meetings to attend, errands to run, and a hundred other things competing for our attention. Before long, our interactions become little more than verbal lane markers helping us navigate the day. I like to break the script. When I run into someone, instead of the usual greetings, I'll ask: "What's the good word?” The reaction is almost always worth it. You can practically see the gears stop turning. People pause. They blink....

The Yellow Legal Pad

In this episode, the Art of Refiring July 1st is staring me in the face, less than two weeks away. For years, retirement seemed like something that happened to other people. Suddenly, it's on my calendar. I've been thinking a lot about the dreaded "R-word" lately. Not because I'm worried about having enough to do. Quite the opposite. What fascinates me is this strange paradox: Why does retirement make so many of us nervous, while having a job—even one that regularly drives us crazy—somehow feels comforting? Let's be honest. Most of us spend years complaining about meetings that should have been emails, reply-all disasters, impossible deadlines, and that one coworker who insists on microwaving leftover fish in the breakroom. Yet when the idea of walking away finally arrives, we hesitate. I think I've figured out why. A career isn't just a job. It's a highly structured coping mechanism. For forty-plus years, somebody else has basically decided what I...

The Big Rip and the First Tee

The telescope (Celestron) sits quietly under its cover, temporarily blinded by Southern California's annual meteorological hostage situation – June Gloom. Somewhere above that thick gray ceiling, photons that began their journey before humans appeared are streaming across the cosmos, only to be intercepted by a marine layer that seems to have veto power over astronomy. Instead of observing the universe, I find myself imagining – The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by physicist Katie Mack. According to modern cosmology, the universe may eventually end in a Big Rip, a Big Crunch, Heat Death, Vacuum Decay, or some other catastrophe that sounds suspiciously like a rejected heavy-metal album title. Astrophysicists spend their careers calmly discussing the possibility that reality itself could suddenly cease to exist because a quantum field had a bad day. It's a remarkable way to start a Saturday morning. One moment you're contemplating the ultimate fate of spacetime...