Atlanta, GA / Global — May 1, 2026 — Holistic private chef and wellness advisor Evelyn Paul announces the upcoming release of her debut book, Mindless As F*ck, a raw, unfiltered exploration of spiritual awakening, identity disruption, and the challenge of translating transcendence into everyday life.

The book challenges what Paul describes as “performative spirituality,” a growing cultural trend that often prioritizes aesthetics, language, and identity over real-world application.

“This isn’t a book about escaping life,” Paul says. “It’s about learning how to function inside it, especially when everything you thought you knew about yourself changes.”

Paul’s journey began with a spontaneous out-of-body experience, often referred to in Eastern traditions as a Kundalini awakening, which fundamentally altered her perception of reality. Following this experience, she left her business and embarked on a multi-year period of travel and study across India, Greece, Asia, and the Caribbean in search of understanding and integration.

Unlike traditional spiritual memoirs, Paul’s work focuses less on the awakening itself and more on what comes after: rebuilding identity, maintaining emotional stability, and returning to everyday responsibilities while navigating expanded awareness.

Her professional background includes training at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, Ayurvedic studies in Kerala, yoga and meditation training in Dharamsala, and shamanic studies in Bali. She has also worked as a private chef for high-profile clients, integrating her wellness philosophy into high-pressure, real-world environments.

Over time, Paul began developing practical tools based on her lived experience, methods for grounding, emotional regulation, self-trust, and navigating internal change while maintaining external responsibility. These tools form the foundation of her book.

Mindless As F*ck also explores:

Rather than positioning spirituality as escape or elevation, Paul reframes it as something that must survive contact with real life, stress, relationships, work, illness, and change.

“This work is not about becoming someone new,” Paul explains. “It’s about remembering what you already are and learning how to function from that place in the real world.”

The book is published under Wise Tracks Publishing and will be released on May 1, 2026. Additional media assets, interviews, and excerpts will be made available upon request.

COACH

What do you do when the person you love is still here—but the way you have always connected no longer works?

In How Old Are You Today? Dementia, A Mother, A Daughter, and The Game That Transformed Their Lives, Glenna Hecht shares the reality of caring for her mother through dementia—and the moment everything changed.

After trying to fix, explain, and correct what was happening, nothing worked. Conversations broke down. Logic created distance. Connection slipped.

Then one question shifted everything:
“How old are you?”

Her mother answered, “Guess.”
And a game began.

What followed wasn’t a cure. It was something more useful: a simple, repeatable way to connect when memory and logic no longer align.

This is not a clinical approach or a caregiving manual. It’s a lived experience that became a practical tool. One that changed their relationship and continues to help others do the same.

MEDIA ANGLES

Glenna Hecht did not set out to write a book about dementia. She was trying to stay connected to her mother when everything that used to work stopped working.

Conversations broke down. Logic didn’t land. Trying to help often made things worse.

Then one question changed the dynamic: “How old are you?”
Her mother answered, “Guess.”
And instead of correcting or moving on, Glenna stayed inside the answer.

That moment became a game. The game became a daily ritual. And that ritual became a way to connect when memory and logic no longer aligned.

Before this, Glenna spent decades leading HR and training inside organizations including Starbucks and Levy Restaurants at Walt Disney World and later founded her own firm, Humanistic Consulting.

Her book, How Old Are You Today? Dementia, A Mother, A Daughter, and The Game That Transformed Their Lives, reflects that experience—direct, unpolished, and grounded in what works.

She speaks on leadership, the How Old Are You Today? game, and leads an HR consulting practice informed by what that experience revealed about leadership, presence, and judgment.

Hello,

Sal Amato is an actor, writer, producer, and novelist whose career spans decades across film, television, music, and emerging media.

His work is driven by a sharp understanding of human behavior and a lifelong fascination with the forces that shape perception, power, and truth.

A performer from an early age, Sal began earning recognition in grammar school for both hosting and acting. By 1978, he was already in the studio with Richard Marx (as a child), performing a Betty Crocker commercial. That same year, he began a DJ career—one he still enjoys today as a hobby.

Sal is a graduate of the Midwestern School Of Broadcasting, earning his “diploma” in 1984 along with his FCC license.

He would go on to appear in films and television projects including Bad Boys (1982), The Untouchables (TV Show), My Best Friend’s Wedding, While You Were Sleeping, Chicago Overcoat, Where It Gets You, Chicago Fire, and The Big Leap, along with numerous commercials and media appearances.

It should also be noted that Sal was one of the youngest performers ever accepted into The Second City, where he trained under the late Don DePollo, sharpening his skills in improvisation, performance, and character-driven storytelling. He later performed stand-up in the early 2000s—“for therapy,” as he puts it.

A true digital pioneer, Sal was working online as early as 1988 as a stockbroker, leveraging technology to gain a competitive edge long before it became commonplace.

By 1992, he was using the early internet to source data in the music industry, and by the mid-1990s, he was already experimenting with CU-SeeMe video technology and building websites in anticipation of the streaming revolution.

In the late 1990s, his work expanded rapidly across technology and media. In 1997, he was selected as the Program Director for A Taste of Chicago’s Cyber City, where he produced shows with tech companies to stream live to millions of people directly from Chicago's lakefront food festival.

During this same period, his work continued through ventures such as Modern Tracks, delivering online and audio services for radio stations, record labels, and trade publications. In 1998, Sal became the first person to stream an internet radio station to an FM signal with “CD audio quality.”

As a lobbyist, he was on Capitol Hill in the late 1990s, helping Congress better understand the digital divide. He collaborated with Hulu in its early development phase, worked with Roku before it became a streaming giant, and helped shape Source Media’s Interactive Channel 

in 1999 by developing and programming original content concepts well ahead of their time.

Sal also played a key role in building Addicted to Radio into a major online platform by expanding its programming and content. At its peak, the online streamer reached more than seven million monthly listeners.

In addition, Sal produced EDM America TV and created “The Beat” format in the Chicago area.

Transitioning into writing and producing, Sal has developed projects that blend entertainment with sharp cultural observation. His work reflects his unique background across performance, media, and technology—combining storytelling with themes of influence, control, and the systems that shape public thinking.

His animated series Bakers in the Burbs has been optioned and is currently in development for streaming, and his mob-vengeance series Joe Caracelli is set to debut on a streaming platform in 2026.

With Hidden Powers: Disclosure From Within, Sal makes his debut in long-form fiction, bringing a cinematic voice and technological authenticity to the page. 

Drawing on decades of experience across entertainment and digital innovation, the novel explores the unseen systems of influence that shape modern society—challenging readers to question not just what they believe, but why they believe it.

In 2024, Sal received the Latin Living Legends Award for his contributions to the industry and his work at the legendary WCYC in Chicago in the 1980s.

When he’s not writing or working, he spends time with his family; loves dogs (he’s been known to pick up strays to help them); loves Golden Retrievers—and, of course, his music.

Sal continues to work across multiple areas of the entertainment industry, including analog-to-digital media preservation—preserving the past while staying firmly focused on what’s next.

FAVORITE MOVIES:

Chariots Of The Gods, Slap Shot, The Formula, Into The Night, Vice Squad, The Godfther 1 & 2, Naked Gun, HIdden Figures, Don't Start The Revolution Without Me, IMproper Channels, Beverly Hills Cop (Just the first one), Absence Of Malice, The Help, Casablanca, Used Cars, Enemy Of The State, All Marx Brothers and Abbott & Costello movies, Up In Smoke, Dreamscapes, Patton, Bedknobs And Broomsticks, Contact, Space Cowboys, Arthur, Jurassic Park, Caddyshack, Back To School, The Other Woman, All Harry Potter movies and about a million more.

Sal on Facebook

http://facebookhttp://facebook.com/salamato711

Sal on Instagram 

http://instagram.com/salinchicago

Sal on YouTube

http://youtube.com/@salamatoinchicago

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Dr Josette Pelatan is a filmmaker and scholar who connects lived adversity with academic knowledge and visual storytelling. Her work opens honest conversations about homelessness disability mental health education inequity and social justice.

She is the founder of JosetteXMP Productions. She creates films and media projects that promote empathy dignity and social awareness.

Dr Pelatan earned a PhD in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences while facing housing instability and a relapsing neurological disability. During this time she taught herself filmmaking writing producing and voice performance to tell stories often ignored by mainstream media.

Her developing film projects The Prostitute’s Daughter and Homeless with a PhD are based on real experiences. These stories encourage audiences to rethink how society treats vulnerable people. They invite discussion about public health systems structural inequality stigma and resilience.

Dr Pelatan offers audiences a story that goes beyond inspiration. She provides insight reflection and real-world perspective.

She brings knowledge from health sciences storytelling media production and advocacy. She speaks honestly about ongoing challenges and lived experience. Her mission is to elevate marginalized voices through art and education.

Her conversations are thoughtful clear and purposeful. Listeners are invited to reflect on assumptions and consider new perspectives grounded in empathy and action.

Topics she can discuss

Overcoming systemic barriers and redefining resilience
Disability dignity and lived experience
The connection between health sciences and storytelling
Ethical filmmaking and advocacy through media
Homelessness in America and public perception
How media can encourage social change and cultural empathy

Civil War letters and CIA Trauma; Guest

Gray Mail: Man Replies to 52 Letters from Confederate Ancestor; Unseals Intelligence Scars

Benjamin “Ben” Buckley has spent a lifetime navigating the fault lines between duty, secrecy, and personal cost. But his most revealing conversation began not with a living person—rather, with a fallen ancestor.

Buckley’s Book is Entitled, Remember Me: How Letters from My Civil War Uncle Helped Me Confront my Childhood CIA Attacker

Buckley’s story explores how trauma echoes across generations, how war—whether fought on a battlefield or within institutions—leaves lasting imprints, and how confronting the past can lead to unexpected healing. It also raises broader questions about the unseen human cost of early intelligence programs and the environments they fostered.

This is not just a Civil War story—it’s a story of survival, confrontation, and resolution. Ben Buckley is available to discuss how a stack of 19th-century letters helped him face a 20th-century darkness—and finally reclaim his own narrative.

Buckley’s Book is Entitled, Remember Me: How Letters from My Civil War Uncle Helped Me Confront my Childhood CIA Attacker  

TO SCHEDULE AN INTERVIEW, CALL OR TEXT 540-598-2814 OR EMAIL BOOKINGS@SPECIALGUESTS.COM

Born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, Benjamin Buckley is a descendent of a Civil War Confederate soldier, Henry Christopher Binns Kendrick, who died at the Battle of Gettysburg. Buckley’s career in the construction industry would take him to many government sites where he encountered how the U.S. was attempting to achieve various national security objectives.

Upon retirement, he discovered 52 Civil War letters written by his great-uncle. In reading them, Buckley discovered a striking emotional and philosophical kinship across 164 years. The letters became a critical aide to help Buckley review the darkest chapters in his own life, how he viewed war and abuse, as well as the shadow cast in his life by U.S. intelligence projects such as the CIA’s MK Ultra.

Robert Eringer doesn’t speculate about secrecy—he’s built a career operating within it. An intelligence expert with firsthand experience in surveillance and covert operations, Eringer brings a rare, insider-informed perspective to one of the most secretive gatherings of global power: the annual Bilderberg Meeting. This year’s confab recently wrapped up and Eringer is uniquely positioned to explain what happened. 

Eringer can infer what actually happens when 128 of the world’s most influential figures—from government, tech, finance, intelligence, and defense—meet behind closed doors with no transcripts, no press access, and no public accountability. Convened this year at Washington’s Salamander Hotel (April 9–12), Bilderberg remains officially a “dialogue forum.” In practice, Eringer argues, it functions as something far more consequential: a high-level coordination hub where the people shaping global policy quietly align priorities across sectors that now increasingly overlap.

The agenda alone underscores the stakes: artificial intelligence, future warfare, China, energy diversification, digital finance, NATO cohesion, Ukraine, and the Middle East. These are not theoretical discussions—they are the defining pressure points of the next decade. And the individuals in the room are not commentators. They are decision-makers.

Eringer highlights one of the most critical and underreported dynamics emerging from this year’s meeting: the accelerating convergence between Silicon Valley and the defense establishment. With figures like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt now openly advocating for AI-driven warfare and autonomous weapons systems, the line between innovation and militarization is rapidly dissolving. The battlefield is going digital—and its architects are collaborating directly with those funding and deploying it.

Set against rising internal tensions within NATO and ongoing questions about the durability of U.S. support, Bilderberg 2026 reads less like a philosophical exchange and more like a strategic recalibration session for a strained alliance.

Importantly, Eringer strips away both hype and dismissal. Bilderberg, he contends, is not a “shadow government”—but it is a place where politicians, financiers, generals, and technologists synchronize their thinking in private, shaping decisions that will play out in public.

For platforms seeking timely, authoritative analysis on the intersection of global power, technology, and geopolitics, Eringer delivers a clear-eyed, experience-driven look inside the room where it all converges.

Beginning in 1993, Eringer operated undercover for FBI Counterintelligence in Moscow, Havana, and beyond. In 2002, Prince Albert of Monaco appointed Robert Eringer as his intelligence adviser. He went on to create the principality’s first intelligence service. He currently lives in Montecito, California. Eringer has spent nearly five decades in the intelligence and investigative game. He began as an undercover journalist for Fleet Street and served as a foreign correspondent for The Toronto Star and The Toledo Blade. Infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan was just the start.

The Epstein scandal has resurfaced in a surprising and self-inflicted way—this time from the East Wing. In a rare public statement, Melania Trump went out of her way to deny any relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein’s black book, first acquired and published by investigative journalist Nick Bryant in 2015 seems to indicate a relationship did exist. Three phone numbers and one email address belonging to Melania are in that book. 

The bigger question is: Why would Melania Trump insert herself into the scandal at all? Is she trying to get ahead of something?

Nick Bryant has spent years uncovering the Epstein network and is available to explain why this moment matters—and why the First Lady’s decision to insert herself into the scandal is so unusual and potentially revealing.

Melania’s statement has already drawn backlash from Epstein survivors, who argue she placed the burden on victims to come forward publicly rather than focusing scrutiny on where they believe it belongs—her husband’s Justice Department. That reaction underscores a deeper tension: instead of distancing the administration from the scandal, her comments may have reignited it.

Complicating matters further, previously reported materials—including Epstein’s so-called “black book”—list contact information associated with Melania Trump, raising questions about proximity versus denial. Whether meaningful or incidental, those details make her categorical disavowal more difficult to parse and more likely to invite scrutiny.

Bryant can speak to the broader implications of this moment. Why would a First Lady voluntarily reinsert herself into one of the most politically toxic scandals in modern history? Does this signal concern about what could still emerge from unreleased Epstein-related material? Or is it an attempt at preemptive narrative control that instead backfired?

More importantly, Bryant can contextualize what seasoned investigators recognize as a familiar pattern in the Epstein saga: when figures go out of their way to publicly deny connections, it often suggests a deeper anxiety about what may yet surface.

At a time when the Epstein story seemed to be receding from the headlines, Melania Trump has brought it roaring back—raising new questions not just about the past, but about what may still be hidden.

Nick Bryant is available for interviews, live or pre-recorded, to provide expert commentary and analysis on this ongoing story.

Nick Bryant has often focused on the plight of children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in the United States, and he’s been published in the Journal of Professional Ethics, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, and Journal of School Health. He co-authored America’s Children: Triumph or Tragedy, addressing the medical and developmental problems of lower socioeconomic children in America.

His mainstream and investigative journalism has appeared in USA Today Magazine, Playboy, Salon, Vanity Fair, New York, GEAR, Gawker, and Zero Hedge. He spent seven years investigating a child sex trafficking network that was covered up by state and federal authorities, culminating in The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbroker, Child Abuse, and Betrayal.

He has also spoken about child trafficking at several conferences, including the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation’s 2019 international convention and the 2020, 2021 and 2023 Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Global Summits, and the 2025 International Human Trafficking & Social Justice Conference. Bryant’s LinkedIn profile shows that he’s definitely not a lightweight. He’s also authored Compromised: The Politics of Sex, Lies, and Blackmail, and The Truth about Watergate: A Tale of Extraordinary Lies and Liars.

He is the Director of the 501(c)(3) Epstein Justice, which is dedicated to justice for the Epstein victims and government transparency in the Epstein case. Epstein Justice is lobbying for an Independent Congressional Commission, because it is our only recourse to justice. The Epstein scandal will wither and die in a congressional subcommittee, but Independent Congressional Commission often uses non-government personnel that will bounce the issue out of political corruption and partisan infighting. 

Nick Bryant is currently working on his latest book, EPSTEIN UNREDACTED, which will be an unflinching cumulation of his 15-year investigation into the Epstein case.

Recent comments from Vice President JD Vance describing UFOs as “demons” have gone viral. Most responses have treated this as either a punchline or a scandal. But according to author and high strangeness researcher Matt Vaughn, Vance is actually stumbling into one of the oldest and most serious debates in the field—and getting it almost right.

The interdimensional hypothesis is one of the most important questions in the history of UFOlogy—and it has been debated since the field’s earliest days.

Are they the gods of the Bible? The fae of Celtic folklore? Demons? Angels? Ultraterrestrials from coexisting dimensions? The question is far older—and far stranger—than the headlines suggest.

——————————

▪ The Interdimensional Hypothesis (IUH). Pioneered by Jacques Vallée and John Keel, this framework argues that UFOs are not alien spacecraft from distant planets but manifestations from coexisting dimensions, realities, or parallel worlds. Keel called these entities “ultraterrestrials”—intelligences that operate outside our normal sensory perception and have appeared throughout human history as angels, fairies, demons, and now as UFOs. Vaughn explores this extensively in My Cosmic Trigger.

▪ Why Vance’s instinct is closer to the truth than mainstream UFOlogy admits. The religious frame of reference Vance defaults to—celestial beings, good and evil, demonic forces—maps directly onto what Keel identified as the phenomenon’s oldest strategy: manifesting in whatever framework the culture of the time can accept. First it was angels. Then mystery airship inventors. Now it’s aliens. Vance is recognizing the pattern; he’s just using one frame when the phenomenon uses all of them.

▪ Operation Trojan Horse. Keel’s term for the phenomenon’s tendency to deliberately cultivate beliefs across multiple frames of reference—religious, technological, extraterrestrial—and then create new manifestations that support those beliefs. The “alien vs. demon” debate is itself a product of this operation. The real first step, as Keel insisted, is to discard all frames of reference and view the phenomenon as a whole.

▪ Why this doesn’t diminish the technology question. The interdimensional hypothesis does not make the physical capabilities of these craft less real or less consequential. Whatever these objects are, they demonstrate propulsion and energy output that defies known physics. If someone has access to that technology—and serious researchers believe classified programs have studied it for decades—the implications for energy, defense, and global power are enormous. The IUH deepens the stakes; it doesn’t replace them.

▪ Why “new mythology” matters more than disclosure. Vallée argued that a new mythology was needed to bridge humanity to a new consciousness. Vaughn builds on this, arguing that high strangeness research—when taken seriously—has the power to dismantle the old frameworks and serve as a bridge to a genuinely expanded understanding of reality. This is what the disclosure conversation is really about.

——————————

Matt Vaughn offers a perspective that reframes the entire conversation.

He can explain why Vance’s “demonic” framing is both more right than people realize and still not right enough—why the real researchers abandoned the extraterrestrial hypothesis decades ago, what the interdimensional hypothesis actually proposes, and why the technology behind the phenomenon remains the most consequential unanswered question in modern history.

MATT VAUGHN has been a practicing psychotherapist for the past 15 years, working with clients from over 30 countries in his private practice and he has also worked in notable mental health and addiction treatment centers in the U.S.A. He received his MA in psychology from the University of West Georgia.

Vaughn has been researching the paranormal for 35 years.