Podcasts about Aristotle

BIBLIOGRAPHYPRIMARY AND CLASSICAL SOURCESAristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by Hugh Tredennick. Harvard University Press.Aristotle. On the Heavens. Translated by W. K. C. Guthrie. Harvard University Press.Diogenes Laërtius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VIII. Translated by R. D. Hicks. Harvard University Press.Euclid. The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements. Translated and edited by Thomas L. Heath. Cambridge University Press.Iamblichus. On the Pythagorean Way of Life. Translated by John Dillon and Jackson Hershbell. Society of Biblical Literature.Philolaus. Fragments and Testimonia, collected and discussed in Carl A. Huffman's Philolaus of Croton.Plato. Phaedo. In Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper. Hackett Publishing.Plato. Republic. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve. Hackett Publishing.Plato. Theaetetus. Translated by M. J. Levett and revised by Myles Burnyeat. Hackett Publishing.Plato. Timaeus. Translated by Donald J. Zeyl. Hackett Publishing.Plotinus. The Enneads. Translated by A. H. Armstrong. Harvard University Press.Porphyry. Life of Pythagoras. In The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie and edited by David R. Fideler. Phanes Press.Proclus. A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements. Translated by Glenn R. Morrow. Princeton University Press.PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREAN TRADITIONBurkert, Walter. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Translated by Edwin L. Minar Jr. Harvard University Press, 1972.Huffman, Carl A. A History of Pythagoreanism. Cambridge University Press, 2014.Huffman, Carl A. Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher and Mathematician King. Cambridge University Press, 2005.Huffman, Carl A. Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic. Cambridge University Press, 1993.Kahn, Charles H. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History. Hackett Publishing, 2001.Riedweg, Christoph. Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and Influence. Cornell University Press, 2005.Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists. Oxford University Press, 2000.Zhmud, Leonid. Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans. Oxford University Press, 2012.PLATO, PLATONISM, AND ANCIENT COSMOLOGYAnnas, Julia. An Introduction to Plato's Republic. Oxford University Press, 1981.Cornford, Francis Macdonald. Plato's Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato. Hackett Publishing, 1997.Dillon, John. The Middle Platonists: 80 B.C. to A.D. 220. Cornell University Press, 1996.Fowler, David. The Mathematics of Plato's Academy: A New Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, 1999.Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy, Volumes I–V. Cambridge University Press.Johansen, Thomas Kjeller. Plato's Natural Philosophy: A Study of the Timaeus-Critias. Cambridge University Press, 2004.O'Meara, Dominic J. Pythagoras Revived: Mathematics and Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press, 1989.Sedley, David. Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity. University of California Press, 2007.Wallis, Richard T. Neoplatonism. Hackett Publishing, 1995.EUCLID, THE PENTAGON, AND GREEK MATHEMATICSHeath, Thomas L. A History of Greek Mathematics. Dover Publications.Heath, Thomas L. The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements. Cambridge University Press.Knorr, Wilbur Richard. The Evolution of the Euclidean Elements. D. Reidel Publishing, 1975.Mueller, Ian. Philosophy of Mathematics and Deductive Structure in Euclid's Elements. MIT Press, 1981.Netz, Reviel. The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: A Study in Cognitive History. Cambridge University Press, 1999.Pappas, Theoni. The Joy of Mathematics. Wide World Publishing, for accessible visual discussion of pentagonal proportion and recursive geometry.Van der Waerden, B. L. Science Awakening. Noordhoff International Publishing.LATE ANTIQUITY, NEOPLATONISM, AND THEURGYChlup, Radek. Proclus: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2012.Dillon, John. The Middle Platonists. Cornell University Press.Finamore, John F., and Sarah Iles Johnston. The Chaldean Oracles: A New Translation and Commentary. Society of Biblical Literature, 2011.Gregory, John. The Neoplatonists: A Reader. Routledge, 1999.Shaw, Gregory. Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus. Angelico Press, revised edition, 2014.Smith, Andrew. Porphyry's Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition. Springer, 1974.Wallis, Richard T. Neoplatonism. Hackett Publishing.Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. 

If you enjoy this episode, we're sure you will enjoy more content like this on The Occult Rejects.  In fact, we have curated playlists on occult topics like grimoires, esoteric concepts and phenomena, occult history, analyzing true crime and cults with an occult lens, Para politics, and occultism in music. Whether you enjoy consuming your content visually or via audio, we've got you covered - and it will always be provided free of charge.  So, if you enjoy what we do and want to support our work of providing accessible, free content on various platforms, please consider making a donation to the links provided below.  Thank you and enjoy the episode!Links For The Occult Rejectshttps://linktr.ee/theoccultrejectsOccult Research Institutehttps://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/Substackhttps://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-pageCash Apphttps://cash.app/$theoccultrejectsVenmo@TheOccultRejectsBuy Me A Coffeebuymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejectsPatreonhttps://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejectsBibliographyAncient SourcesAristotle. Metaphysics.Aristotle. On the Heavens.Diogenes Laërtius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VIII.Iamblichus. Life of Pythagoras.Iamblichus. On the Pythagorean Way of Life.Nicomachus of Gerasa. Introduction to Arithmetic.Philolaus. Fragments and testimonia.Porphyry. Life of Pythagoras.Proclus. A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements.Modern ScholarshipBurkert, Walter. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Harvard University Press, 1972.Fowler, David. The Mathematics of Plato's Academy: A New Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, 1999.Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy, Volume 1: The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans. Cambridge University Press, 1962.Heath, Thomas L. A History of Greek Mathematics. Oxford University Press, 1921.Heath, Thomas L. The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements. Cambridge University Press, 1908.Huffman, Carl A. Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic. Cambridge University Press, 1993.Huffman, Carl A., ed. A History of Pythagoreanism. Cambridge University Press, 2014.Kahn, Charles H. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History. Hackett, 2001.Knorr, Wilbur Richard. The Evolution of the Euclidean Elements. D. Reidel, 1975.Netz, Reviel. The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics. Cambridge University Press, 1999.Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists. Oxford University Press, 2000.Waterfield, Robin. Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universe. Oxford University Press, 2010.Zhmud, Leonid. Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans. Oxford University Press, 2012.Useful Context on Music, Number, and Greek ThoughtBarker, Andrew. Greek Musical Writings, Volume II: Harmonic and Acoustic Theory. Cambridge University Press, 1989.Godwin, Joscelyn. The Harmony of the Spheres: A Sourcebook of the Pythagorean Tradition in Music. Inner Traditions, 1993.McClain, Ernest G. The Pythagorean Plato: Prelude to the Song Itself. Nicolas-Hays, 1978.Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. 

Robert P. George joins John Anderson at the ARC conference in London for a conversation that traces natural law back through Cicero and Aristotle to Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. He also discusses his friendship with utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer on the personhood of the unborn as evidence that serious disagreement and real friendship aren't incompatible.The conversation turns to what happens when that capacity disappears: the tribalism of social media and siloed media ecosystems, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which George calls a tragedy not just for Kirk's family but for civic life in the West. He warns that the U.S. may be "one more assassination away from a civil war," and argues that the way back runs through intellectual humility — a willingness to recognise one's own fallibility and to see one's opponent as a fellow citizen rather than an enemy to be destroyed.Robert P. George is an American legal scholar, political philosopher, and public intellectual. He serves as the sixth McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle Check out John Lee Dumas' award winning Podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire on your favorite podcast directory. For world class free courses and resources to help you on your Entrepreneurial journey visit EOFire.com

In this episode of Outlaw God, Caleb Keith and Dr. Steven Paulson continue exploring Luther's "new Kabbalah" and his rejection of mystical approaches to God, Scripture, and the law. They explain how Luther moved away from Plato and Aristotle and came to see God's Word, preaching, Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and absolution as the true means through which God gives Christ and salvation. The conversation shows why Luther believed the Gospel must be separated from mystical ideas of ascending to God through suffering, rituals, dreams, or human effort. More from 1517: Support the work at 1517 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Events Schedule 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education 1517 Podcast Listeners Get a Free Book When They Sign Up for Memento This August Dr. Paulson's Outlaw God in Three Volumes: Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 New Books from 1517 Publishing: The Turk at the Door by Adam Francisco Luther and the Lion: A Narnian Catechism by Samuel Schuldheisz By Water and the Word by Brian Thomas Being Family by Dr. Scott Keith More from the hosts: Caleb Keith Steven Paulson Follow 1517:  Instagram X/Twitter Facebook

Dogs Don't Bark at Parked Cars: Your GPS in an Era of Hyper-Change by Jeff Piersall https://www.amazon.com/dp/1683504461 Linkedin.com/in/jeffpiersall Some attribute it to Aristotle, but whether the great Greek philosopher said it or not doesn't affect its timeless truth. “If you want to avoid criticism, all you have to do is say nothing, do nothing and be nothing.” If on the other hand, you decide your life is purposed for something worthy and being on the playing field is preferred to sitting in the stands, there is something you are sure to encounter; what Jeff Piersall and Eric Wright call “barking dogs.” Dogs Don't Bark at Parked Cars illustrates this encounter as the voices that find fault, who don't think it's possible, who are unable to see a future alive with opportunities waiting to be seized. They are the ones governed by fear instead of faith. Unfortunately, many times the loudest of these barking dogs are kenneled right in most people's own heads. For Jeff and Eric, that priceless quality is wisdom. It goes beyond knowledge or aptitude and transcends this era of cultural and technological hyper-change, with principles that are timeless.

What does it mean to be alive? In this episode of Breaking Math, Autumn and Noah speak with Melanie Challenger, author of Alive, about one of the most profound questions in science and philosophy: how do we define life?Challenger argues that life is not simply a machine-like process or a bundle of genetic instructions. Living beings are embodied, purposeful agents. From single-celled organisms to sequoia seeds, from animals to human beings, life is marked by an astonishing capacity to work to keep itself alive.Chapters08:12 The concept of purpose in living beings09:14 The scientific view of purpose and agency11:52 The importance of purpose and meaning in life13:19 The danger of ignoring organism agency in science14:34 Living beings as purposeful agents15:35 Comparing purpose in a Roomba and a single-celled organism18:03 Autopoetic vs allopoetic systems20:03 Free will, agency, and the universe23:24 The physical basis of life and energy28:38 Aristotle's concept of psyche and purpose33:46 The importance of understanding what life truly is37:56 Material integration and the difference between machines and living beings38:15 The concept of self and embodiment in life41:09 The whole body as the agent, not just the brainFollow Melanie Challenger on her website:(https://www.melaniechallenger.com/) Subscribe for more on math, AI, technology, and the systems running the world. Follow Breaking Math onSubstack (https://breakingmath.substack.com/)X (https://x.com/breakingmathpod)Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/breakingmathmedia/)Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/breakingmath.bsky.social)Website (https://www.breakingmath.io/)YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@BreakingMathPod)Follow Noah onInstagram (https://www.instagram.com/profnoahgian/)X (https://x.com/ProfNoahGian)Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/profnoahgian.bsky.social)Follow Autumn onX (https://x.com/1autumn_leaf)Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/1autumnleaf.bsky.social)Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/1autumnleaf/)Substack (https://substack.com/@1autumnleaf)email: breakingmathpodcast@gmail.com

Today, Steve speaks with Lauren Farina, psychotherapist and founder of Invited Psychotherapy & Coaching. Lauren and Steve discuss how wellness is becoming a bigger part of the workplace and how we can stay mentally healthy during times of stress and pressure. Also an expert on “high-performance individuals,” Lauren shares what it means to be high-performing and why rest can be just as productive as work.  Key Takeaways: Being a high-performer isn't just about work.  Rest is productive Building psychological safety within an organization is the most important contributor to elite performance.  Tune in to hear more about: What the “High Performer Archetype” is (6:15) The risks of not taking time to rest (11:22) How leaders can improve the performance of their teams (19:33) Standout Quotes: “ As many of us know, acute stress is quite good for us. But in the long term, the chronic unrelenting demands that I think remote working arrangements have placed on the workforce, really can erode our performance because our cognitive functioning is not at its peak when we're chronically stressed, our memory, our learning, our judgment, our decision making is compromised.” - Lauren Farina “ There was a five -year study at Google called the Aristotle Project, and the Aristotle project found that psychological safety is the single most important factor when it comes to the elite performance of individuals and groups.“ - Lauren Farina “ It is my hope that there will be an increased focus on intersectionality of performance and wellbeing and increased support of individuals and groups in cultivating wellbeing. Not only for the sake of wellbeing, but also for the sake of peak performance.” - Lauren Farina Read the transcript of this episode Subscribe to the ISF Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts Connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter From the Information Security Forum, the leading authority on cyber, information security, and risk management. 

9 Hours and 55 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.This is the first 10 episodes of our ongoing Continental Philosophy series with Thomas777. He covers Aristotle, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Grotius, and Hegel.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

What does it really take to retire sooner and enjoy the years you've worked so hard for? On this episode of the Retire Sooner Podcast, Wes Moss and Christa DiBiase tackle listener questions about retirement planning, investing, taxes, retirement income, and the pursuit of a happier life after work. ·       Examine the idea of building a retirement life map around what matters most to you. ·       Discover what Aristotle can teach us about retirement happiness, purpose, and fulfillment. ·       Confront spending anxiety and why letting yourself enjoy your savings can be surprisingly difficult. ·       Consider when it might be time for a change of scenery—and what a move may mean for your finances. ·       Compare **cost-of-living **calculators when sizing up potential retirement destinations. ·       Analyze strategies for untangling concentrated stock positions, diversification, and the potential tax tradeoffs. ·       Explore the Rule of 55 and when it may provide penalty-free access to certain 401(k) funds. ·       Experience the Retire Sooner Method, from the Money & Happiness Green Zones and Core Pursuits to relationships and sleep. ·       Break down the 4% rule of thumb, withdrawal rates, and the fear of running out of money. ·       Weigh a HELOC versus IRA withdrawal while considering taxes and potential Roth conversions. ·       Walk through listener scenarios involving retirement readiness, withdrawal strategies, and investment allocation. Retirement is about more than hitting a number—it's also about figuring out what you want those years to look like. Listen and subscribe to the Retire Sooner Podcast for more educational conversations about the money and life behind a happier retirement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before we can pursue the God of the Bible, we need to examine the Bible itself. How do we know that we can trust what it says? Why should we listen to its truth claims? That's what pastors Bryan, Ross and John cover in this episode. --The PursueGOD Truth podcast is the “easy button” for making disciples – whether you're looking for resources to lead a family devotional, a small group at church, or a one-on-one mentoring relationship. Join us for new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Find resources to talk about these episodes at pursueGOD.org.Help others go "full circle" as a follower of Jesus through our 12-week Pursuit series.Click here to learn more about how to use these resources at home, with a small group, or in a one-on-one discipleship relationship.Got questions or want to leave a note? Email us at podcast@pursueGOD.org.Donate Now--The Bible is the best-selling book of all time, and it's unlike any other book written in history. It has changed individual lives and shaped entire cultures. It's an ancient text that claims to have been written by God himself, and the proof of its reliability is surprisingly strong. Here are three reasons we can trust what it teaches:Historical Evidence Ancient manuscripts and archeological digs have stacked up in favor of biblical reliability. The Bible was written thousands of years ago, long before printing presses and modern technology. Manuscript fragments of the biblical text have endured wars and weather throughout the ages, and the scraps that remain represent just a fraction of the originals. Are those remnants enough to provide a reliable testimony for modern-day readers? And how can we be sure that the message hasn't been corrupted over the millennia? The good news is that the God who inspired the scriptures was also powerful enough to preserve those writings through the ages. Consider the manuscript evidence. Manuscript copies in the ancient world were painstakingly hand-written, and not all of them survived the ravages of time. Reliability of ancient writings is determined by the number of copies (or partial copies) of the work in existence. So how does the Bible stack up? See for yourself:Today we have only 49 copies of Aristotle's writings.Homer's “The Iliad” does a little better, with 643 copies in existence.The New Testament wins by a landslide, with almost 5700 Greek copies and over 19,000 copies in other languages!The New Testament clearly has more manuscript evidence than any other ancient work. But how do we know that those manuscript copies are faithful to the originals? What if human authors changed the message, intentionally or otherwise? Modern archeology helps us answer this question, thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1947 a shepherd boy discovered some ancient scrolls hidden away in remote caves in the Middle East. This led to even more discoveries in the area, and in the end almost 1000 manuscripts were recovered. Parts of almost every book of the Old Testament were found, and some of those fragments proved to be almost 1000 years older than the oldest manuscripts known at the time. This offers a perfect test for the reliability of our modern translations. The book of Isaiah provides the most compelling example, since the Dead Sea Scrolls contained a complete copy of the prophet's writings. When compared to the Masoretic Text (the oldest copy previously known, dating back to about 800 AD), the Isaiah manuscript from the Dead Sea Scrolls was 95% identical! And the only differences were minor, often just variations in spelling.So the historical evidence stacks up in favor of the reliability of the Bible. But there's more:Textual Evidence The Bible is the most impressive writing project in the history of the world. It contains 66 books written by 40 different authors over the course of 1500 years, and yet it tells one unified story. Think about it: Moses, a Jewish slave raised in the house of a Pharaoh, wrote the first five books. John, a fisherman-turned-revolutionary, wrote the last four books. In between were books and letters written by shepherds, kings, prophets, tax collectors, doctors, and more. And the most prolific author in the New Testament was Paul – a religious Pharisee who zealously persecuted the Jesus followers before joining them. Most of these authors never met each other, and many of them were unaware of the other books and letters that would eventually be included in the Bible. Their writings spanned different cultures and languages over the course of 15 centuries, and yet the Bible amazingly reads as one story. From beginning to end it's about Jesus, and the fulfilled prophecy is the glue that holds it together. Let's take just a few examples: Of the 12 tribes of Israel, Judah was surprisingly predicted to be the one through which Jesus would come – which is exactly what happened. Genesis 49:10, Matthew 1:1-3It was prophesied that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, and that's how it happened – even though his mother didn't even live there. Micah 5:2, Luke 2:1,4Prophets wrote with shocking accuracy about the torture and death of Jesus hundreds of years before it happened – exactly as predicted. Psalm 22, Isaiah 53It was because of these kinds of prophecies that Jesus spoke these words to the religious leaders of his day:John 5:39 You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!The Bible amazingly tells one story, centered on Jesus, because it was ultimately inspired by the God of human history.Personal Evidence The Bible is ultimately about Jesus, and the changed lives of his followers is the most compelling proof of its message. Let's just take three examples from the New Testament, starting with Peter. When Jesus was on trial before his crucifixion, a servant girl noticed Peter and accused him of being a follower of Jesus. Peter denied it three times, walking away with an incredible sense of guilt and shame (Luke 22:56-59). But that's not the end of his story, because days later the resurrected Jesus sat down to breakfast with Peter and reinstated him – three times (John 21:15-19). Peter went on to be a pillar of the Christian church, eventually giving up his life for Jesus. Or consider “doubting” Thomas. He missed out on meeting the resurrected Jesus with the other disciples and expressed his doubt that they really saw the risen Christ. But soon enough he met Jesus for himself and professed his faith in him (John 20:25-28). Thomas, too, ended up dying for his faith. And then there's Paul, a self-righteous Pharisee (Philippians 3:5) whose life mission was to persecute the followers of Jesus. Then he met Jesus and joined that very group of misfit disciples. Paul made it his life's mission to spread the Good News about Jesus and he, too, died a martyr's death. There's no way to explain away these changed lives except to conclude that the message about Jesus, along with every word in the Bible, truly is inspired by God.But no amount of evidence can overcome an unbelieving attitude. At the end of the day, trusting the reliability of the Bible comes down to your willingness to believe in the God behind the Bible. Jesus made this point one day as he taught in the Temple courts:John 7:16-17 My message is not my own; it comes from God who sent me. Anyone who wants to do the will of God will know whether my teaching is from God or is merely my own.If you're unwilling to submit to God's will, your pursuit is over before it has even started. But if you are willing to come to God on his terms and take him at his word, then Jesus promises that you'll discover the truth. The teachings of Jesus, and indeed all of the teachings in the Bible, are from God, not man. And so we can trust the Bible in our pursuit of God.

B.T.G.S. Radio, today's hottest and coolest new-music station, presents a commercial-free program where music, culture, and philosophical ideas come together on Stationhead. Hosted by Kathleen Masciana, this special broadcast explores Halsey's song “Graveyard” through the themes of autonomy, moral responsibility, epistemology, natural law, and Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia, or human flourishing. The program also offers a preview of a term-paper project examining life in the 1970s, when vinyl records, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, AM/FM radio, typewriters, handwritten letters, and shared landline telephones shaped how people listened, communicated, and experienced everyday life. By comparing that analog era with today's environment of streaming, smartphones, social media, email, and instant communication, B.T.G.S. Radio considers how technology has transformed attention, access, community, and personal reflection. This broadcast asks a timeless question: Does technological progress alone create a better life, or do purpose, meaningful relationships, reflection, and community remain essential to human flourishing? Tune in for commercial-free music and original programming that brings thoughtful ideas to the airwaves. #BTGSRadio #Stationhead #CommercialFree #NewMusic #MusicWithMeaning #Philosophy #Ethics #Epistemology #NaturalLaw #HumanFlourishing #Aristotle #MusicAndCulture #RadioShow #IndependentRadio #OnAir #ListenLive

Episode 259: Plato, Aristotle and other thinkers who lived centuries ago still shape how we understand happiness, character and the good life. Host Richard Kyte explains which philosophers influenced him most — and why their ideas continue to matter. Kyte begins with Plato, the thinker he says has influenced him more than anyone else. He explains how Plato elevated the life of the mind and argued that truth, goodness and beauty are not simply matters of personal opinion. That idea, Kyte says, still shapes the way he thinks about ethics today. From there, the conversation moves to Aristotle, who took a more practical approach by asking what human beings ultimately want. His answer was happiness, but not in the sense of momentary pleasure. Instead, Aristotle argued that a flourishing life depends on developing virtues such as courage, temperance and justice. Kyte connects those ideas to modern discussions of character and even contemporary positive psychology. The discussion then jumps ahead to Augustine, who blended classical philosophy with Christian thought, especially ideas about love, sin and the moral structure of reality. Ralph Waldo Emerson follows, not as a conventional academic philosopher, but as a writer whose work helped Kyte understand how reading, memory and reflection can shape a person’s inner life. For his fifth choice, Kyte bends the rules and names a group rather than a single person: several 20th-century female philosophers, including Hannah Arendt, Iris Murdoch and Martha Nussbaum. He explains how their work pushed back against overly abstract systems of thought and returned attention to questions of human nature, goodness, justice, love and forgiveness. Throughout the episode, host Scott Rada asks a simpler question on behalf of listeners who may know these names but not their ideas: Why should any of this still matter? That question becomes especially important in the final discussion, when the hosts consider the declining role of philosophy and the liberal arts in higher education. Kyte argues that career-focused courses may teach useful skills, but philosophy asks a more fundamental question: What kind of life are those skills supposed to help us build?

In this interview, a throwdown between Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy of personal growth, with Steve Barton, a Gestalt psychology-trained High-Performance Executive Coach, and he's the author of The Father, the Son, and the Aha Moment--which I read as I'm a new-ish dad. The book, which is really about mindset, has some good insights, but I disagreed with a few of its fundamental suppositions. It's a bit too Platonic for my tastes, but I invited Steve on the podcast for a bit of friendly disagreement...04:20 The Game of Ten: Foundations and Philosophy08:19 Radical Self-Acceptance and Divine Consciousness13:11 Boundaries, Agreements, and Relationship Dynamics19:55 Genetic Predispositions and Self-Awareness24:46 Biohacking and Emotional Resilience Strategies33:52 Case Study: PTSD and Contracting with Self41:13 The Power of Forgiveness and Letting Go50:58 Unconditional Love, Boundaries, and Self-Protection01:00:27 The Role of Brain Training and Biohacking01:10:04 Practical Applications and Client Success Stories01:14:59 Final Message for Future GenerationsFor everything mentioned here, read: Aristotelian vs Platonic Personal Growth

I gave a lecture about "Blending the Elements of Experiential Design" on Saturday, June 6, 2026 at Seattle XR in Seattle, Washington. (PDF of Slides]. At the end, I run through some examples of the types of interdisciplinary fusion that I see within the context of immersive storytelling and immersive art. This lecture also digs into the process-relational philosophical foundations, as well as how I'm gaining additional inspiration from Empedocles, Aristotle, and the Classical Quadrivium (Four Arts) of Math, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy. For my 30+ hours of coverage of Venice Immersive, then I apply this archetypal framework to help describe the context, quality, character, and story of each of these projects. You can see an overview of how I've been using this framework in this PDF on "Venice Immersive 2025 Archetypal Categorizations" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01M5NcOYzx0 One of goals of this talk was to further define the archetypal nature of the elements, and how I'm conceiving of them as a possibility space of design tradeoffs (C.S. Peirce's "Firstness"), but also as the concrete decisions that an experiential designer makes ("Secondness"), and then finally how these decisions are experienced more from a phenomenological experience as the audience as we feel, sense, act, and make sense of these experiences, and what they might mean ("Thirdness"). I do not actually dive into Peirce's concepts of Firstness, Secondness, or Thirdness in this specific talk, but I wanted to elaborate on these concepts in this write-up as these have been crucial concepts to help translate the overall abstract Firstness quality of my talk, and ground it into the Secondness of something that is a bit more practical and pragmatic. For Peirce, his semiology is grounded into a triune theory of actualization that goes from a non-Boolean possibility space as Firstness, and then grounds into a Boolean actualization of secondness, and then an interpretant mediates from the concreteness of the Secondness object back to the Firstness of the fundamental archetypal qualities or meaning. I find speculative philosopher James Bradley's summary of the Peirce's triune semiology to be the most easy to digest in his essay titled, "Beyond Hermeneutics: Peirce's Semiology as a Trinitarian Metaphysics of Communication." I can also recommend this article on "Peirce's Theory of Signs" from the The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for a comprehensive recap, and there's also this excellent YouTube series primer by Philosign's Markus Raninen titled The Basics of Semiotics. But here's Bradley's description of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, which I find myself coming back to again and again. "Within the fundamental speculative triunity of activity, difference and order, or firstness, secondness and thirdness, semiology is an analysis of order or thirdness… Thirdness is analyzed as idea or sign, as the exchange of information between individual entities, and as interpretation; in other words, thirdness is itself a threefold of sign, object and interpretant. Here, sign occupies the position of firstness because it is the potentiality for interpretation; object occupies that of secondness because it is determinate; and the interpretant occupies that of thirdness because the interpretant has the sign-interpreting or sign-ordering role, and so has the status of a third. [24] Thus for Peirce semiology is the analysis of the triune relation of sign, object and interpretant." It's still a bit obtuse, and one way that I like to think about it is through the experience of communication. You have a possibility space of meaning you want to convey (Firstness of the sign/potential), then you choose specific words that convey that meaning (Secondness of the object), then someone listens to those words and phrases, and then connects those words back to a meaning space (Thirdness of the interpretant mediating between the two). For Peirce, each of the Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness can also refer to themselves, like you can have a Firstness of Thirdness or Secondness of Firstness. It gets a little bit confusing, but I found the following graphic from Collected Essays in Speculative Philosophy (2021) by James Bradley and edited by Sean McGrath to be very useful. Within the context of immersive storytelling, then it's a semiotic process of communication of meaning where you're able to use all sorts of affordances from game design, literature, social dynamics and relations, music, film, lighting, architecture, dance, theme park design, sensory design, and embodiment. My Elemental Theory of Presence attempts to simplify this into the following: Fire Element of Active Presence: Interactivity, Agency, Game Design Air Element of Mental & Social Presence: Meaning, Semiotics, Language, Possibility, Form, Relationality Water Element of Emotional Presence: Experiential Processes, Story, Film, Music, Cycles, Time Earth Element of Environmental & Embodied Presence: Sensory, Immersive, Worldbuilding, Space I elaborate on the various philosophical frameworks that I'm leaning up within this talk that I gave on June 6, 2026, but since then I've been diving more into Peirce and his Triune Metaphysics and Semiology of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, which has been a helpful framework as I've been applying the elements to my Venice Immersive Coverage and categorizing the elemental center of gravity for each of the nearly 40 projects that I covered. Again see this framework in this PDF on "Venice Immersive 2025 Archetypal Categorizations" to see how I have been thinking about each of these projects. I used this approach in the introductions for each of my podcast episodes from Venice (see the links down below). Firstness of Fire: Creativity, Novelty, Intention, Purpose, Goals, & Aristotle's Final Cause Secondness of Fire: Interactivity & Core Gameplay Loops Thirdness of Fire: Agency & Will For Active Presence Examples of Fire: Game Design, Locomotion Options: No Movement, Automatic movement, Teleportation, or free roaming. The LIVENESS of the Live, To what degree does the experience encourage the expression of will and agency? And to what degree does that alter how the narrative unfolds (narrative agency vs participatory interactive moments that customize and flavor the experience)? Adventure, Exploration, Creativity, Novelty, Freedom, Will, and Collective Action. System Dynamics, & iterative feedback loops Firstness of Air: Peirce's "Sign," Intended Meaning, Pattern & Form, Archetypal Possibility Spaces, Relationality, & Aristotle's Formal Cause Secondness of Air: Peirce's "Object" Within A Triadic Semiotic Process (i.e. a specific action, word, harmonic, or action that points to a larger meaning.) Thirdness of Air: Peirce's "Interpretant," Sensemaking Thoughts, Expectations, & Social Dynamics For Mental & Social Presence Examples of Air: Literature, Language, Semiotics, Communication, Symbols, Abstractions. Single Player vs Multi-Player, Suspension of Disbelief and Plausibility, Social Dynamics, Anticipation of the Future, Possibility Spaces, Types of Choices. Realms of Speculative Imagination, How is meaning communicated? Dialogue amongst characters, voice-over narration, environmental storytelling, non-verbal associative dream logic. Mental friction from puzzles. Rules & Mechanics. Use of certain types of AI and Conversational Interfaces with Virtual Beings Firstness of Water: Time, Cycles, Harmonics, Value, & Aristotle's "Material Cause" (in Whitehead's event ontology, then base reality is processes, relationships, and possibilities of value & not Substance) Secondness of Water: Experiential Processes That Provide Contrasts Thirdness of Water: Feelings for Emotional Presence Examples of Water: Cinematic Film Tradition, Music, Harmonics, Rhythm, Pacing, Editing, Contrasts, Emotion, Memory, Dreams, Images, Soul, Psyche, Symbols, Lighting, Mood, Collective Unconscious Firstness of Earth: Space, World, Context, & Aristotle's Efficient Cause Secondness of Earth: Environment & Worldbuilding With Situated Perspectives in that Context Thirdness of Earth: Sensory Perception & Sense of Place for Embodied & Environmental Presence Examples of Earth: Worldbuilding of a spatial context & culture. Architecture, Theater, Theme Park Design, Dance, Are you a ghost or an embodied character? Sensory Experience: Touch/Haptics, Hearing/Spatial Sound, Smells, Vision. Relation of Immersive Tech to Environment as either VR, MR, or AR. Virtual CGI vs Cinematic 180/360 Video, Again, check out this PDF on "Venice Immersive 2025 Archetypal Categorizations" to see how I've ranked nearly 40 projects from Venice Immersive 2025 on the relative elemental center of gravity. Some projects feel more like a cinematic immersive film, which would be a bit more biased towards the Water Element. Some projects are more focused on the experience of a world that was build, and more focused on the Earth Element. Some projects are asking you to Read a book together with other people, which is more focused on the Air Element. And then other more game-like experiences are focused on using interactions as their primary mode of engagement, and so they're more focused on the fire element. There are 64 total combinations of the elements in terms of the first, second, third, or four centers of gravity, and you can see the comprehensive visualization here: Technically, all four elements are always happening all at once all at the same time. However, in experiential design, then creators can emphasize and blend elements together. So I find that ranking the elements can be helpful in determining an overall center of gravity, and that looking at the first two centers of gravity can achieve a sufficient job of creating some ad hoc, immersive and "elemental genres....

"Politics-Aristotle" delves into the foundational ideas of governance and civic responsibility as articulated by one of history's greatest philosophers. Aristotle examines the nature of political communities, the role of citizens, and the pursuit of the common good, offering insights that remain relevant in today's discussions about democracy and ethical leadership. The themes of justice, virtue, and the ideal state resonate strongly in our contemporary political landscape, prompting listeners to reflect on the principles that guide society.

Episode Description In this powerful and wide‑ranging episode of Kent Hance, The Best Storyteller in Texas, Kent Hance tackles the uncomfortable realities of global conflict, energy security, and leadership with the clarity and candor that only experience can bring. Kent begins with a sobering thought from Aristotle, "Sometimes we make war so we can live in peace." From there, he unpacks why that idea still matters today, examining tensions in the Middle East, the economic consequences of uncertainty, and how a single chokepoint like the Strait of Hormuz can send shockwaves through gas prices across America ⛽

In March 2026, Laurent was invited by Jan Rosenow at Oriel College, Oxford, for a public debate on the energy transition. Held in the College's historic library, the discussion brought together contrasting perspectives on one of today's defining challenges. Jan Rosenow, Professor of Energy and Climate Policy, is renowned for his work on energy efficiency, electrification, and the transition to net-zero energy systems.Laurent opened by introducing the "Aristotelian Triangle" of the energy debate—Ethos, Logos, and Pathos—arguing that values, evidence, and emotion all shape how people interpret energy issues. Responding to Jan's distinction between energy addition and energy transition, Laurent made two key points.First, history shows that energy forecasts have repeatedly underestimated transformative innovations, from shale gas and LEDs to solar, electric vehicles, batteries, and AI-driven data centres. His conclusion: humility is essential when predicting structural change.Second, Laurent presented his "Diocletian Tetrarchy of Energy," pairing Vaclav Smil with Clayton Christensen to represent continuity versus disruption, alongside Daniel Yergin and Michael Liebreich to illustrate the roles of markets, geopolitics, and industrial transformation. He described himself as roughly 70/30 in favour of technological disruption while acknowledging the inertia of existing energy systems.The discussion also examined the cost of ideology, arguing that opposition to technologies such as offshore wind or nuclear power can shape investment, electricity prices, and energy affordability. It concluded by exploring industrial policy, energy security, and how nations should balance resilience, competitiveness, and comparative advantage in a changing geopolitical landscape.Although the formal debate lasted just over an hour, the conversation continued long afterwards. This episode captures part of those fascinating exchanges.  

“‘Let One the Ruler Be, One the King': The Many Gods of Aristotle's XII.8” by Dr. Joshua Lo (Thomas Aquinas College, New England). Presented at Thomas Aquinas College's 2026 Thomistic Summer Conference.

Enrollment is now open for our new online class. It will be nine 75 min sessions, running from late Aug. to mid Dec., starting with Aristotle and Descartes but then spending the rest of the time on the most influential texts in this area since 1950: Alan Turing, Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, John Searle, Hilary Putnam, etc. We're offering sections to fit the various time zones and work schedules: Saturday mornings, Monday mid-day, Wednesday evenings, or just purchase the recordings of these sessions to take them in at your own pace. Read more about it at partiallyexaminedlife.com/class, or go ahead and sign up via partiallyexaminedlife.com/enrollment.

Welcome to the newest edition of Predictable: Legends! On this episode of “Predictable w/ Stu,” Stu Burguiere is joined by John Aristotle Phillips, the Co-Founder and CEO of PredictIt; the original political prediction market! John is a longtime political entrepreneur and public policy innovator and has spent decades exploring how markets can aggregate information and improve forecasting, helping shape the conversation around prediction markets long before they became a major part of the financial and political landscape. Don't miss it!

"Friendship is one of the most indispensable requirements of life," says Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. But, adds Alasdair MacInytre, it's also "difficult and often enough impossible—especially under the conditions characteristic of contemporary modernity." Today on HeightsCast, long-time colleagues (and friends!) Austin Hatch and Tom Steenson reflect on the nature of friendship, and why it was chosen as the theme for the 2026 Convivium Conference for Teaching Men, hosted by The Heights Forum this November. What is the value of friendships among fellow faculty? What are the ingredients of that friendship? How should individual teachers seek it? How can school leaders foster it? And how might the students benefit? Mr. Hatch and Mr. Steenson begin to scratch the surface of these questions in preparation for the deep-dive at this year's Convivium. If you'd like to join us, registrations, essays for the conference companion, and proposals for breakout sessions are now being accepted. Chapters: 7:42 Aristotle and Cicero on friendship 12:46 Teaching: a shared life 16:09 Friendship: shared work, shared mission 20:31 Time constraints to friendship 24:50 Faculty friendship's effect on students 32:41 Maintaining culture as the school grows 38:34 Education: a raising of friends 44:24 Best practices for school leaders, individual teachers Links: De Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture Keynote: Is Friendship Possible? featuring Alasdair MacInytre "Economy and Pleasure" in The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry Also on the Forum: Faculty of Friends: Making Schools into Communities featuring Tom Cox Friendship for Fathers: John Cuddeback on Living and Teaching the Art featuring Dr. John Cuddeback On Hiring Teachers: Drafting a Faculty of Friends featuring Alvaro de Vicente

Where did the "Cultural Marxism" talking point actually originate? How did obscure 20th-century sectarian group battles evolve into the foundation of today's right-wing culture wars? In this episode of Varn Vlog, we sit down with Dr. A.J.A. Woods to dissect the bizarre, interconnected history of political paranoia, conspiracy culture, and the weaponization of critical theory. Dr. Woods—a PhD graduate from the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism—joins the show to trace the genealogical lineages outlined in his book, The Cultural Marxist Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West. Together, we map how legitimate left-wing internal critiques of figures like Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno were absorbed, rebranded, and mainlined into mainstream conservative media by the LaRouche movement, William S. Lind, and eventually Andrew Breitbart.We pull back the curtain on how these highly elaborate historical myths function as porous, left-right feedback loops. From the "Plato vs. Aristotle" secret histories of the 1970s to contemporary discussions surrounding "wokeness," Alexander Dugin, James Lindsay, and Jordan Peterson, we unpack how social media algorithms flatten intellectual nuances to spawn a new generation of conspiratorial thinking.Finally, we address the "Radical Chic" commodity of theory in academia, the historical distortion of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, and why the left's fixation on policing external myths often comes at the expense of addressing its own structural organizing failures.✨ Check out Dr. A.J.A. Woods' work and grab his book to explore the full intellectual history of modern political myths!Send us Fan Mail Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to BitterlakeSupport the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnIntro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @varnvlogblue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.socialYou can find the additional streams on YoutubeCurrent Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian, Drea, Free Beer 

“Jared Kushner is one of the most powerful American diplomats of the twenty-first century — and he has no skill set to speak of that I can see.” — Casey Michel Four years ago, the muckraking journalist Casey Michel came on this show to discuss how the United States has built the greatest money-laundering scheme in history. That pre-Trump 2.0 America, he says, looks quaint. His new book, United States of Oligarchy: How America's Wealthiest Ally with Dictators, Weaken the U.S., and Destroy Democracy, describes an American casino where the Trump family has become the dealer with a perennially stacked deck. The word “oligarchy” comes with 2,500 years of baggage. Aristotle, not averse to aristocracy, nonetheless warned of the rule of the few. Teddy Roosevelt preferred “plutocracy” as a way of describing the baronial rule of the late 19th century American capitalists. And, of course, it took a Roosevelt — the sickly scion of upper-crust New York — to dilute his own oligarchic caste with anti-trust law and inheritance & progressive income taxes. Exhibit A in this American oligarchy is Jared Kushner, who has leveraged his father-in-law's rotten casino to ally with dictators and destroy democracy both in America and around the world. Michel says Kushner has “no skill set to speak of” — apart, of course, from an insatiable greed for wealth and power. The banality of the deal. So what to do? Michel is waiting for a 21st century Teddy Roosevelt — he names Talarico and Ossoff — who will tax and perhaps even prosecute Kushner and his fellow oligarchs. But I fear he is waiting for Godot. Teddy isn't coming back. Nor is FDR. Don't expect the banality of the current highly lucrative deal to end anytime soon. Five Takeaways •       Child's Play. The anonymous shell companies and mystery donations of American Kleptocracy — dire enough in 2022 — now read as quaint. The scale has exploded (crypto, prediction markets, AI as accelerant), and so has the shamelessness: a Qatari luxury airliner gifted to a sitting president, and a $1.8 billion slush fund that will compensate January 6 rioters while granting Trump's family, inner circle, and “associates” carte blanche from tax audits, past and future. America has had corrupt administrations — Grant, Harding, Nixon — but nothing, Michel argues, on this magnitude. Trump himself is symptom rather than cause: the culmination of trends decades in the making. “Shameless does not begin to describe it. I have to laugh — otherwise, I'm sure I'd just be crying.”•       From Aristotle to the Trillionaire. Aristotle popularized oligarchy: rule of the few — who must also be the wealthiest. Teddy Roosevelt preferred “plutocracy,” and the Founders fought over “aristocracy”; Michel meets the 2020s where they are. The through line he found in the research: America's anti-oligarchic champions come from inside the elite — above all TR, the sickly, bloodlet, electroshocked child of upper-crust New York who grew into the singular force against concentrated wealth: inheritance tax, progressive income tax, and a bully pulpit used without apology. Today's benchmark: Gilded Age fortunes — Rockefeller's $30 billion in modern terms — are pocket change beside centibillionaires and America's first, briefly minted trillionaire.•       Exhibit A: Jared Kushner. One of the most powerful American diplomats of the twenty-first century — Israel and Gaza, Russia and Ukraine, the Gulf — with, in Michel's judgment, no skill set to speak of: a string of failures from 666 Fifth Avenue to the New York Observer, redeemed by the single best thing he ever did, marrying Ivanka Trump. MBS bragged Kushner was “in his pocket”; James Comer told an intermediary to tell him to fuck off — making Kushner, Michel suggests, a genuinely bipartisan target for future investigations. Andrew pushed back — the network of autocrats is real, the Harvard degree is real — and the conversation settled on Arendt: not evil, but indifferent to good and evil. What Kushner cares about: Ivanka and her father, his bottom line, and carrying water for Benjamin Netanyahu.•       The Incentive Machine. Michel's deeper argument indicts structures, not sinners: virtually none of this is illegal, which is precisely the problem. Corporate secrecy, campaign finance, and offshore taxation build an architecture in which allying with dictators is the rational move — if your competitor will meet MBS or Xi, you must too. Hence the corporate class's standing ovation for Xi Jinping in San Francisco; Google's Project Dragonfly censorship engine; Musk's Tesla leverage in Beijing (and DOGE actions conspicuously in Chinese interest); the NBA's progressive branding beside its Rwandan and Emirati partnerships; and Ireland, the thriving democracy at the bottom of the tax-haven barrel. Michel is happy to call the CCP one of history's most monstrous regimes — and to note that no ideology, only rank financial interest, lays American CEOs at its feet.•       Waiting for Teddy. Does oligarchy actually weaken America? Michel points to the Iran war's aftermath — collapsed interceptor stocks, an intact Tehran regime, Gulf monarchs getting their dirty business done at American expense — plus Greenland threats, wobbling alliances, and the nuclear proliferation he expects among abandoned allies. Andrew pressed the counter-case three times: Wall Street at record highs, half of America holding retirement accounts. Michel's answer: inequality beyond anything in the national experience — and a political moment, left and right, hungry for anti-oligarchic leadership. The GOP just moved to kill the shell-company database; the remedy is a twenty-first-century TR — a Talarico, an Ossoff — willing to be denounced as a communist agitator. “If Teddy Roosevelt can be, I suppose anyone can.” About the Guest Casey Michel is an author, investigative journalist, and director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation. He is the author of American Kleptocracy — named by The Economist one of the best books for understanding financial crime — and Foreign Agents, and his writing on offshoring, foreign lobbying, and illicit wealth appears in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Foreign Affairs, among others. He has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on illicit financial networks and national security, holds a master's from Columbia's Harriman Institute, and is currently sanctioned by the Russian regime for his work. United States of Oligarchy (St. Martin's Press, August 4, 2026) is his third book. References: •       United States of Oligarchy by Casey Michel (St. Martin's Press, Augu...

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux lays out the road to hell by showing how pushing women into college debt and welfare traps kills marriage and kids while state coercion removes all feedback and responsibility.Questions:What challenges will we face in society in the future when some segments of the population have a Neuralink implant and others don't?Would you be interested in creating a series or long-form content similar to Andrew Wilson's Debate University but for the purpose of learning how to reason from first principles? Similar to the early white-board videos from FDR?Define the political Right and Left in the pure abstract without any reference to a particular time or place.Can you do a podcast/video about decreasing birthrates, decreasing fertility, decreasing sperm count, especially in the wester world? Studies suggest almost no one in the west will be able to have children naturally in 30 years... seems like a serious problem.Why are most European nations so determined to destroy their history culture and heritage through Middle Eastern migrants…Can you explain why young men commit suicide generally?Have you ever watched testimonies of people who have died and went to hell on youtube? There are a lot where they are revived and are able to share their story.How would you decide between a guaranteed mediocre life or a slim chance at wild success?You advocate against forgiveness without prior repentance from the perpetrator. Could it be possible that most people just can't walk between resentment and forgiveness, so in terms of total human suffering it is better just to forgive. And that in not forgiving, most people just become shitty judges.In principle I'm inclined to agree with your take but I dont know anyone that has escaped resentment without up front forgiveness. On the average, maybe they get taken for some sort of a ride but their overall life is better.I'm not talking about individual cases here, just on balance and overall human suffering levels, with the average human and their average human drama / life.How can you escape damnation?When society become unraveled, is it due to people forgetting the basics?A house falls when its foundation crumbles.How to solve population decline, gender wars and political divide when Women are getting more far left and men are getting more far right. When the division is being funded by rival countries /globalists?Are you friends with Styx? If so, have you checked on him lately? He's gone off the rails lately. Hope he finds some help.What do you think of the notion that, with some exceptions, conservatives cannot create good art?do you like cats?

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. Business Podcast Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Growth Financial Literacy Wealth Building Black Entrepreneurs Minority Business Leadership Executive Leadership Business Funding Marketing Strategies Personal Development Startup Advice Sales Training CEO Interviews Founder Stories Professional Development Economic Empowerment Business Success Networking Brand Building Innovation How to start a business Small business funding Entrepreneur success stories Business leadership podcast Wealth building strategies Black entrepreneur podcast Minority business development Marketing for small businesses Business growth strategies Startup funding opportunities Executive leadership training Financial literacy education Success mindset podcast Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Demond Martin. Co‑founder and CEO of Well With All, a Black‑owned purpose‑driven wellness brand—joins Rushion McDonald to discuss health equity, entrepreneurship, his life story, his upcoming book Friends of the Good, and his new $1M AI Health Equity Prize. Martin shares how his difficult upbringing in the projects and rural North Carolina shaped his commitment to giving back. After a successful 21‑year career as the only Black partner at a major hedge fund, he launched Well With All to merge consumer products, wellness, and social impact. The brand donates 20% of its profits to health‑equity initiatives. He discusses product innovation, the importance of supplements in underserved communities, the power of Black longevity, and the need to prepare younger generations for healthier futures. He also explains his upcoming book—which uses Aristotle’s philosophy of “friends of the good” to show how meaningful relationships enable success. The conversation is energetic, inspirational, and focused on using business as a force for social good.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. Business Podcast Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Growth Financial Literacy Wealth Building Black Entrepreneurs Minority Business Leadership Executive Leadership Business Funding Marketing Strategies Personal Development Startup Advice Sales Training CEO Interviews Founder Stories Professional Development Economic Empowerment Business Success Networking Brand Building Innovation How to start a business Small business funding Entrepreneur success stories Business leadership podcast Wealth building strategies Black entrepreneur podcast Minority business development Marketing for small businesses Business growth strategies Startup funding opportunities Executive leadership training Financial literacy education Success mindset podcast Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Demond Martin. Co‑founder and CEO of Well With All, a Black‑owned purpose‑driven wellness brand—joins Rushion McDonald to discuss health equity, entrepreneurship, his life story, his upcoming book Friends of the Good, and his new $1M AI Health Equity Prize. Martin shares how his difficult upbringing in the projects and rural North Carolina shaped his commitment to giving back. After a successful 21‑year career as the only Black partner at a major hedge fund, he launched Well With All to merge consumer products, wellness, and social impact. The brand donates 20% of its profits to health‑equity initiatives. He discusses product innovation, the importance of supplements in underserved communities, the power of Black longevity, and the need to prepare younger generations for healthier futures. He also explains his upcoming book—which uses Aristotle’s philosophy of “friends of the good” to show how meaningful relationships enable success. The conversation is energetic, inspirational, and focused on using business as a force for social good.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. Business Podcast Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Growth Financial Literacy Wealth Building Black Entrepreneurs Minority Business Leadership Executive Leadership Business Funding Marketing Strategies Personal Development Startup Advice Sales Training CEO Interviews Founder Stories Professional Development Economic Empowerment Business Success Networking Brand Building Innovation How to start a business Small business funding Entrepreneur success stories Business leadership podcast Wealth building strategies Black entrepreneur podcast Minority business development Marketing for small businesses Business growth strategies Startup funding opportunities Executive leadership training Financial literacy education Success mindset podcast Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Demond Martin. Co‑founder and CEO of Well With All, a Black‑owned purpose‑driven wellness brand—joins Rushion McDonald to discuss health equity, entrepreneurship, his life story, his upcoming book Friends of the Good, and his new $1M AI Health Equity Prize. Martin shares how his difficult upbringing in the projects and rural North Carolina shaped his commitment to giving back. After a successful 21‑year career as the only Black partner at a major hedge fund, he launched Well With All to merge consumer products, wellness, and social impact. The brand donates 20% of its profits to health‑equity initiatives. He discusses product innovation, the importance of supplements in underserved communities, the power of Black longevity, and the need to prepare younger generations for healthier futures. He also explains his upcoming book—which uses Aristotle’s philosophy of “friends of the good” to show how meaningful relationships enable success. The conversation is energetic, inspirational, and focused on using business as a force for social good.

What if Judaism has been misunderstood all along, and the real reward for doing good isn't what you get, but who you become? Is Judaism really about reward and punishment—or is it about becoming? Parshat Re'eh begins with a tiny grammatical anomaly. Instead of saying, "if you obey," the Torah says "that you obey." Could one unexpected Hebrew word change the way we understand blessing, virtue, and even human nature? In this episode of Madlik, Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz follow that question from the Bible through the Rabbis, Maimonides, the Sefer HaChinuch, Aristotle, and contemporary philosophy. Along the way they uncover a radical Jewish insight: the reward of a mitzvah isn't a prize—it's the person we become. Can a single act of kindness change your character? Is blessing something we receive, or something we cultivate? And what if the Torah's deepest teaching isn't about earning rewards, but about forming a life of virtue? Join us as we explore why "the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah" may be one of Judaism's most profound—and surprisingly modern—ideas. Key Takeaways The Torah's smallest words often contain its biggest ideas. Parshat Re'eh doesn't say, "if you obey" (אִם) but "that you obey" (אֲשֶׁר). That subtle shift invites us to read blessing not merely as a future reward but as something woven into the very act of living a good life. Judaism is less about reward than about transformation. From Ben Azzai's teaching that "the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah," to the Sefer HaChinuch's insight that "a person is shaped by his actions," Judaism teaches that our deeds don't just determine what happens to us—they determine who we become. Character is created through practice. Long before modern psychology and virtue ethics, the Torah and the rabbis understood that goodness is cultivated. Every good deed forms a disposition toward another good deed. We don't become good and then do good; we become good by repeatedly doing good. Timestamps 00:00 The Tiny Hebrew Word That Changes Everything 02:17 Why "That You Obey" Isn't the Same as "If You Obey" 07:53 The Reward of a Mitzvah Is Another Mitzvah 10:01 Should We Do Good Without Expecting a Reward? 13:15 Maimonides on Free Will and Becoming Virtuous 18:52 Why Small Actions Can Change the World 21:47 The Sefer HaChinukh's Radical Insight About Human Nature 27:05 Modern Philosophy Meets Ancient Torah 31:01 Is Love an Action or an Emotion? 33:12 The Real Meaning of Becoming Good Links & Learnings Sign up for free and get more from our weekly newsletter https://madlik.com/ Sefaria Source Sheet: https://voices.sefaria.org/sheets/741847 Transcript here: https://madlik.substack.com/  

Dominic Nolan, CEO of Aristotle Pacific Capital, discusses the launch of three actively managed ETFs and the firm's approach to credit investing. He explains how bottom-up research and top-down portfolio positioning help uncover relative value opportunities, while short-duration bonds continue to offer attractive yields in the current market environment.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

“Uncertainty is what tells you that science is reliable. It's the people who are absolutely certain that you have to watch out for.” — Stuart Firestein The physician-scientist Tony Fauci is having a rough week. His newly revealed diary has even disappointed traditional allies at The Atlantic and The New Yorker who see the hitherto liberal saint of the pandemic as both too intimate with power and too certain of his scientific assumptions. Fauci's fellow American scientist, Stuart Firestein, is having a better week. The Columbia neurobiologist has a new book out today, It Could Be Otherwise, which is a manifesto against scientific certainty. It's the certain ones you have to watch out for, Firestein warns about those scientists intoxicated with the certainty of their own doctrines. Science, Firestein argues, requires a blend of hubris and humility. So the great Isaac Newton needed real chutzpah to claim to understand the mind of the creator with only a few equations. The expert is, by definition, riddled by doubt. They should be the most uncertain person in the room. Thus for Firestein, Charles Darwin is a greater scientist than Albert Einstein because Darwin's theory of life is premised on randomness. So will contemporary science appear quaintly medieval in 500 years? Will 26th century man think of Darwin and Einstein like we moderns patronize Aristotle? Probably, Firestein suggests. In his Columbia course on ignorance, he tells his students that getting an A requires getting an F. We should all be so ignorant. Five Takeaways •       Watch Out for the Certain Ones. Firestein won't defend Fauci's certainties, but he explains them: science requires a blend of hubris and humility — without some hubris, nobody would attempt a discipline that is mostly failure, mostly time spent in the dark. What corrupts the blend is a culture that demands the opposite of humility: exams with one right answer instead of ranked possibilities, journalists who need a confident quote, a public that has made science the theology of the twenty-first century. The result is Firestein's paradox of expertise: the real expert is the most uncertain person in the room, because expertise means seeing the holes, the missing data, the failures. Certainty grows with distance from knowledge.•       True Enough. Truth gets a small t only. Borrowing from the Harvard philosopher Catherine Elgin, Firestein describes science as moving from one provisional truth to the next — “true enough,” always improving, never final. His favorite proof is John Maddox, Nature's longest-serving editor, asked how many of the journal's published papers would prove wrong: “Oh, that's easy. All of them.” Not wrong-wrong — unsettled science is not unsound science; it is reliable and it will get better. In science, revision is a victory, which is why Firestein sincerely hopes that in five hundred years our best knowledge will look as quaint as medieval astronomy — which, he notes, was accurate enough for people who weren't launching satellites.•       Two Kinds of Uncertainty. Epistemic uncertainty is what we don't know yet; ontological uncertainty is the irreducible complexity of the universe itself — so complicated it might as well be random. Every answer in the lab raises ten better questions, which is how the more we know, the less we know. And yet we thrive amid the not-knowing: lasers, GPS, and randomized drug trials are all built on uncertainty. Ninety percent of hypertension diagnoses are idiopathic — no known cause — while nine different families of medicine treat it successfully. Even the brain, his own subject, isn't unknowable — we know plenty at every level — but the vertical knowledge, from ion channels to consciousness, may never reduce to a single formula. Multiple explanations, Firestein says, are not a defeat.•       Berlin, Darwin, and the Fox. The book's presiding philosopher is Isaiah Berlin, the great value pluralist: many good answers to any real question, even incommensurable ones — which is emphatically not relativism (the poststructuralists get no comfort here; we still must choose, critically and responsibly). Berlin's hedgehog and fox turn out to describe scientists too, and Firestein wants room for both. His scientific hero, though, is Darwin, whom he ranks above Einstein: the first person to show that tremendous organization and complexity can arise from essentially random events. Sixty-five million years ago, seven minutes of orbital difference and the asteroid misses. Randomness and uncertainty, properly understood, produce diversity and complexity — not chaos.•       When AI Learns to Be Uncertain. AI appears exactly once in the book, a restraint Firestein is proud of: “we hate the bomb, but we love anesthesia,” and it's the use, not the thing, that will decide. Socrates was famously against writing — it did ruin our memories, and libraries were worth it; calculators did ruin long division, and who cares. In the classroom, the smell scientist admits you can no longer smell Claude in an essay — hence his ignorance course's 999-word assignment, harder than the 5,000 words Columbia students write in their sleep. But his sharpest cut is at AI itself: the machines will be valuable to the extent that they are uncertain. When AI learns to weigh possibilities rather than issue single solutions, it will be intelligent — it will be human. A deterministic tick-tock universe is no place for discovery, imagination, or freedom. It could be otherwise. About the Guest Stuart Firestein is a professor of neuroscience at Columbia University, where his laboratory studies the sense of smell, and a member of the Santa Fe Institute. A Guggenheim fellow and elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is the author of Ignorance: How It Drives Science and Failure: Why Science Is So Successful, both translated into more than a dozen languages; he remains an Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, where Failure was written. His new book is It Could Be Otherwise: Science in the Age of Uncertainty (Basic Books, August 4, 2026). References: •       It Could Be Otherwise: Science in the Age of Uncertainty by Stuart Firestein (Basic Books, August 4, 2026). Kirkus: “A solid and even stirring defense of science.”•       Ignorance: How It Drives Science by Stuart Firestein — the 2012 book, born of his Columbia course, that made not-knowing respectable.•       The Hedgehog and the Fox by Isaiah Berlin — the essay, and the value pluralism, that give the book its philosophical spine.•       True Enough by Catherine Elgin — the Harvard ph...

The real crisis isn't the Declaration—it's what we've stopped teaching. Peter Berkowitz, Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, contends that universities have failed at liberal education—the cultivation of citizens prepared to exercise freedom and responsibility. He attributes the breakdown to politicized classrooms, overreliance on narrow “scientistic” approaches in the social sciences, and a professional culture that trains future scholars instead of educating future citizens—leaving graduates with little serious exposure to the Declaration, the Constitution, and the moral logic of self-government. Stephen Haber, Stanford Professor of Political Science, History, and Economics, presses the discussion toward causes and incentives, setting up a debate about who is responsible for the drift and what reforms could realistically restore civic learning. Connect: Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast Website Stanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn Page Stanford Constitutional Law Center >> Website Stanford Law School >>> Twitter/X Stanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X Chapters:[00:00:26 – 00:04:11] Chapter 1: Setting the stakes—The Declaration at 250 and today's critiques Michael McConnell frames the episode around renewed skepticism of the Declaration's natural-rights claims—from progressive critiques focused on slavery and domination to post-liberal arguments against “abstract” rights.[00:04:11 – 00:06:54] Chapter 2: Berkowitz's opening—What the Declaration claims and why critics converge Peter Berkowitz restates the Declaration's core logic (equality, unalienable rights, consent, and the right to alter/abolish destructive government) and argues that left/right critiques increasingly overlap in their indictment of universal rights.[00:06:54 – 00:17:47] Chapter 3: Universities and the erosion of liberal education Berkowitz contends civic understanding is collapsing because colleges no longer ensure a shared, rigorous education in founding principles, constitutional traditions, and the broader intellectual inheritance needed for citizenship.[00:17:47 – 00:31:00] Chapter 4: From “critical” to “generous” thinking—Mapping the modern critiques Berkowitz argues that criticism without charitable interpretation becomes a “rage to criticize,” then traces postmodern progressive and post-liberal arguments (including Deneen and Vermeule) that reject the Declaration's rights framework and flirt with radical alternatives.[00:31:00 – 01:04:12] Chapter 5: Human rights, diplomacy, and reform—The Commission and a debate about university governance Berkowitz ties the Declaration to U.S. foreign policy via the UDHR and the Commission on Unalienable Rights, including its aims and controversies; Stephen Haber responds that boards, presidents, and provosts shape campus ideology and that governance-level changes could enable a revival of civic education. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A roofer's watermelon trick ... a game for high-school juniors ... what do they have in common?  Something that goes back at least to Aristotle. And it's something that can help just about every area of your thinking and interacting.  Interested in coaching or training on these topics for you or your team? We'd love to hear from you! Email Mike and Mark.

Jeff Klingelhofer, portfolio manager at Aristotle Pacific Capital, says that new Federal Reserve chairman Kevin Warsh is learning on the job, but he appears unafraid to tackle the inflation problem and take the tough medicine of raising interest rates, which is likely to create a recession. The good news out of that trouble, however, is that any downturn is likely to be short-lived, with a rip-snorting bull market emerging from a corrected economy and market.  David Trainer, president at New Constructs, revisits Netflix, a long-time Danger Zone pick that he says has moved out of trouble. While it hasn't gone all the way to the "attractive" level, Trainer says there is a much stronger path toward bigger profits and a better balance sheet. In "The Week That Is," Vijay Marolia,  chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, discusses a little-known hedge fund that collapsed last week, and nearly took the stock market with it. While the fund was bailed out by another hedge fund, Marolia worries that there are other potential market-shockers out there, far more than even savvy investors recognize, and that there may not be any buffers to step in and save the day the next time it happens. In addition, he discusses how earnings expectations have gotten so high that long-term investors need to grit their teeth and ride out extra volatility, and he talks about how artificial intelligence is teaching investors to want everything now, shortening time horizons, promoting excessive risk-taking and creating unrealistic ideas of what real investing can deliver.

Send us Fan MailMost messages aimed at young men today split into two dead ends: become a sensitive, apologetic non-threat, or go to war and reclaim dominance. Zan thinks both camps hold a fragment of truth and neither offers a boy anything to actually hope for — which is why, more and more, he finds himself wanting to talk to thirteen-to-eighteen-year-olds instead of grown men.In this episode, Jordan asks Zan directly: what's the message? What do you actually say to a generation of boys who've been told their masculinity is the problem, who are retreating to their rooms, whose only two options seem to be surrender or rage?Zan's answer moves through some of the widest philosophical territory this podcast has covered — the concept of worship, stripped from religion and rebuilt around beauty itself. Petrarch and Dante, both of whom had their entire life's work ignited by seeing a woman he barely knew. The 1,500-year-old volcanic winter that blacked out the sun across Europe, and how people found meaning through it anyway. The uniculture problem — why knowing about every disaster on Earth simultaneously might be worse for the human nervous system than knowing only what happened in your own village. And a genuinely moving true story: a twelve-year-old boy, a short walk to a candy store, and one sentence from Zan that a mother said changed her son for weeks afterward.Watch until the end for what Zan calls the real message underneath everything — not optimism, not denial, but gratitude for what you have precisely because it won't last.

Courage is not the absence of fear. Fear is the price of admission. This week: Aristotle's definition, a 2009 flood in Manila, and the one conversation you keep avoiding.

The word “intelligence” is a loaded word. Here's what Elon Musk said to the Economist last week: “I think AI may exceed the sum of human intelligence in around five years. There really won't be anything that AI can't do better than humans, apart from being human, perhaps.” Well “being human” is what intelligence is all about. So I read up on how Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, James, and many of the eastern philosophers define the term. And what you find is that deep thinkers define intelligence far beyond the ability to recall and use facts, but focus heavily on judgement, problem solving, and dealing with uncertainties in life. So after thinking about this for a few years, I decided to posit my ideas, and also reflect on the intelligence of trees, as described in “The Hidden Life of Trees.” What I came up with is four parts to this puzzling idea: horsepower, information, judgement, and wisdom. And as you'll hear, we all have various levels of intelligence in each area, and AI may lack quite a bit. As we all grapple with the exaggerated claims from AI engineers and the real use of these tools, I hope this discussion gives you some perspective, and also calms your fears that AI is going to steal your job. Our new book, Superpowered, is coming out in November, so sign up for early preview – it's all about how AI Superpowers us all, in our work, careers, businesses, and life. Additional Information The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from A Secret World The full-length interview with Elon Musk | The Economist Are Frontier Models Becoming A Commodity? Galileo: The AI Superintelligence for HR Chapters (00:00:00) - What is Intelligence?(00:10:02) - Does an AI Have Enough Intelligence to Plan?

Round two. Same four analysts, a lot more whiskey, and a lot less structure. Peter Zeihan, Marko Papic, and Matt Gertken sit back down with Jacob - a man who cut his teeth pestering all three of them for their pieces as a Stratfor intern - for an unfiltered conversation about how they actually became geopolitical strategists. They trade formative-moment stories from Stratfor's early-2000s "golden age" (including the Egypt/Mubarak call that made Jacob's career), debate whether corporate America can ever hire real geopolitical talent, and each name the one book that shaped how they see the world - from World War Z to Aristotle to The Ingenuity Gap. Along the way: George Friedman lore, the DC Comics-vs-Marvel theory of geopolitical shops, and a genuinely moving closing tribute to the mentor who built this whole coaching tree. Part reunion, part masterclass in how to think about the world - and part roast session.--Timestamps:(00:00) - Welcome Back Round Two(00:52) - Whiskey And Loose Format(01:34) - Formative Stratfor Moments(02:24) - Arab Spring Cred Test(04:17) - Stratfor Coaching Tree(07:50) - Pipeline After Cold War(14:17) - Academia Versus Geopolitics(17:14) - Analyst Craft And Courage(20:22) - Chief Geopolitical Officer Debate(22:55) - Training Gap And Time Horizons(25:29) - Universities And MBA Reform(27:39) - Ideology And Groupthink(30:02) - Theory Versus Practice(30:57) - Frameworks Beat Facts(31:44) - Operationalizing Geopolitics(34:24) - Training Pipelines and MBAs(37:39) - Sector Specialists and Scale(40:01) - Everyone a Geostrategist(41:01) - Deglobalization in Fashion(42:51) - Formative Books Roundtable(51:07) - Great Men and Psychology(54:21) - Empathetic Analysis Explained(56:25) - Displacement and Perspective(58:23) - Formative Experiences Teaser(58:50) - Yugoslavia Falls Apart(59:15) - Tito Memories and Disillusion(59:58) - Conspiracies and Nihilism(01:01:23) - Identity in the Balkans(01:03:51) - Living With Uncertainty(01:04:39) - Midwest Roots and Leaving Home(01:06:18) - Can Places Change(01:07:32) - America as Debate Laboratory(01:10:22) - Learning to Write Analysis(01:14:39) - Chip on Shoulder Mindset(01:18:22) - Morality Versus Analysis(01:21:12) - Breaking Intellectual Chains(01:23:53) - Finding the Fulcrum Question(01:24:43) - Final Words and Gratitude--Geopolitical Cousins is produced and edited by Audiographies LLC. More information at audiographies.com--Jacob Shapiro is a speaker, consultant, author, and researcher covering global politics and affairs, economics, markets, technology, history, and culture. He speaks to audiences of all sizes around the world, helps global multinationals make strategic decisions about political risks and opportunities, and works directly with investors to grow and protect their assets in today's volatile global environment. His insights help audiences across industries like finance, agriculture, and energy make sense of the world.Jacob Shapiro Site: jacobshapiro.comJacob Shapiro LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jacob-l-s-a9337416Jacob Twitter: x.com/JacobShapJacob Shapiro Substack: jashap.substack.com/subscribe --Marko Papic is a macro and geopolitical expert at BCA Research, a global investment research firm. He provides in-depth analysis that combines geopolitics and markets in a framework called GeoMacro. He is also the author of Geopolitical Alpha: An Investment Framework for Predicting the Future.Marko's Book & Newsletter: www.geopoliticalalpha.com/marko-papic Marko's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marko-papic-geopolitics/Marko's Twitter: https://x.com/Geo_papicMarko's Macro & Geopolitical Research at BCA: https://www.bcaresearch.com/marketing/geomacro

You've watched a friend go through it. The house, the filing, the number the lawyer gave him. He built that business staying up late for years, and now he's watching half of it get divided by a stranger in a courtroom. You went home and did the math on your own situation that same night. Two years in with a partner who seems good, but still no proposal. You tell people it's timing. But you know it isn't just timing. This episode is for the person who sat down with the numbers, the way he sits down with every serious decision, and concluded the downside can't be insured against. The caution is intelligent. The costs are real. Nobody should tell you the fear is silly. But the fear is pointed at the wrong object. The research shows what he should be afraid of instead. By the end of this episode, the question stops being whether to marry, which never had a good answer. It becomes a harder question about a particular person, and that one you can answer this week. Start the episode here. Show Highlights Include: Why 40 year old men think they're afraid of marriage when they're really afraid of this… (2:29)  The cold, hard facts about what divorce costs you (and the reason to marry anyway) (3:44)  How the "argument" against marriage, even as a man with real assets to lose, falls apart in three steps (7:20)  The weirdest way to increase your lifespan by making one decision (backed by a Harvard research study that's also the longest-running study on human happiness) (7:51)  Why most men miscalculate the "Marriage Variable" and how it dooms them to a life of isolation and emptiness (11:42)  How Aristotle's "3 Types of Human Connection" method can help you identify, long before you get on one knee, whether you should marry your partner or keep searching (14:43)  The surefire way to prevent the inevitable heartbreak that follows when you're served the divorce papers and only then realize how your spouse contributed to your life (17:11)  5 rules that tell you exactly the type of woman you should not marry (19:41)  For more about David Tian, go here: https://www.davidtianphd.com/about/  Feeling like success in one area of life has come at the expense of another? Maybe you've crushed it in your career, but your relationships feel strained. Or you've built the life you thought you wanted, yet there's still something important missing. I've put together a free 3-minute assessment to help you see what's really holding you back. Answer a few simple questions, and you'll get instant access to a personalized masterclass that speaks directly to where you are right now. It's fast. It's practical. And it could change the way you approach leadership, love, and fulfillment. Take the first step here → https://dtphd.com/quiz

How can building an audience in advance help your stories reach the people who make movies? And how can you prove there's demand for your book or screenplay before you've written it? Brooks Elms shares his advice after more than 20 years as a WGA screenwriter. In the intro, what doesn't work for book marketing and what does [Amy Chan SubStack; Unsingle; Rephonic]; Goodreads giveaway for Bones of the Deep; FutureVision XPrize. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Brooks Elms is a WGA screenwriter with over 45 scripts, over a dozen sales, and he has directed two indie features. He is the creator of the Answer the Call system and has trained over 1,000 writers. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How to see the opportunity in AI when others only see the threat How to test a story with samples, and what a 16-second movie can do Building the trailer before you write the screenplay Letting your audience finance the film once they have validated the idea Why Hollywood still wants existing IP, and what makes them pay attention Feeling safe enough to write the truth, and finding a concrete path forward You can find Brooks on LinkedIn or email him at brooks@brookselms.com. Transcript of the interview with Brooks Elms Jo: Brooks Elms is a WGA screenwriter with over 45 scripts, over a dozen sales, and he has directed two indie features. He is the creator of the Answer the Call system and has trained over 1,000 writers. So welcome to the show, Brooks. Brooks: Thank you. It's awesome to be here. Jo: Fantastic. So first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into screenwriting. Brooks: I started filmmaking first. A buddy came up to me in high school and said, “Hey, we're making a karate movie, do you want to help us?” I was like, “Oh my God, yes, that sounds amazing.” So next thing I know, I had this karate outfit on, and we were just making this completely ridiculous and totally fun movie, and it was amazing. It was so fun. Then it went to a whole other level when we shared it with a friend, this guy Jay Sharon, and he watched the movie and he laughed so hard he literally fell out of his chair. I was like, “Oh my God,” the fun I had making it could actually transfer to somebody else. I was hooked. So from there I went to NYU film school, and then made a few independent feature films which were good but not great in terms of how they were received. They were great for me in terms of enjoyment, but I knew I needed to iterate faster at that point. So then I was like, “Well, it's expensive and it takes a long time to make a movie,” at least back then. So I pivoted to screenwriting, and pumped out two, three scripts a year, got signed at UTA, got writing assignments, and basically launched a screenwriting career. Then I still tried to get some stuff going, but it's hard when movies are so expensive. It's not hard, it's just that it takes a lot of precision in the marketing, and a lot of conversations to find the right matches to finance something, and you're either interested in doing that or you're not. I just was like, “Well, I'll just mostly write screenplays.” Then I started teaching at UCLA Extension and then coaching after that, along with writing. Then all the way up to the future. What's great about moving forward is that with AI, shot-making is becoming very close to cinematic quality. You can actually match cinematic quality in moments in some genres, but probably by next year. Right now you could actually do a really good horror movie all AI for 10, 20,000 bucks, depending on how much you're doing yourself or getting other people to do. So the economics are going to absolutely explode. So I'm sitting on dozens of scripts that didn't get through the Hollywood packaging bottleneck because they're too expensive, and I now have this giant slate that's ready to go, and I'm just absolutely thrilled. It's been a lifelong dream for me. Jo: Oh, so much to come back on there. Where to start? I do want to talk about what you just said there, sitting on dozens of scripts and now seeing the opportunity. I actually wrote down in my journal about a year ago, I see what's coming with AI, and I think that the best thing I can do is create as much original IP as possible, so that I can make the most of the opportunity ahead. So let's just get into the AI, because a lot of people feel it's a super bad thing. Talk about the opportunities and the attitude that you've got [around AI], and that you've seen others have around this, for what is ahead in a positive way. Brooks: It's fascinating to see how people respond to AI. I wonder, when the printing press rolled around, if there was some sort of backlash. Books must be handwritten. They can't be mass-produced. Here's one of my theories. At a deep psychological level, it's so profoundly powerful that I think the default setting is, “Oh, crap.” When I was a kid, some things were hard, and that power imbalance, when something big, new and powerful comes along: I'm going to get screwed, and so this is somehow a bad thing. I think that's the base psychological thing going on with most of the noise. Obviously there are some legit problems, in terms of copyright infringement from learning models, or from some of the environmental situation. So I'm not saying it's all rainbows and butterflies, but I think 90% of the noise around it comes from a fear of change. Here's the other one—a fear of, “Oh, yikes, I'm going to get taken advantage of somehow by either robots, or the corporations are going to use the robots against me,” or something like that. I have real empathy for me when I feel that way a little bit, but I don't feel it much, and for other people that do feel it. The other thing is, you know what it is? I think they fear their own empowerment even more. I had a therapist who was really good. He said, people aren't so much afraid of failing as they are afraid of succeeding. Because if we fail, we're stuck in act one and we don't go anywhere. The fear is answering the call and going to act two, when everything effing changes in the new world. So I think people are afraid of how goddamn powerful they're going to be when they can have a team of AI agents helping them do everything they want in business or life or whatever. I think it's the same thing with the internet. People are like, “Oh, I don't like social media, blah, blah, blah.” And I get it. There's a lot of noise and a lot of crap. Yet we have access to billions of people, and the algorithms in social media right now I think are level three out of 10. They're just going to get better and better. Even as it is now, if I do a post about something and it gets ignored, that's on me. The algorithms are trying to match me to my people. So if I'm not unique enough and authentic enough and aware enough of how virality works, that's on me, and it's a learnable skill that I can embrace and then change and then get better at. So I think people then resist that change. They resist the empowerment of learning the art of virality, or learning the art of some sort of social media stuff or whatever. The last thing I'll say about this rant is, I don't want to act like I'm the guru on the hill that has all the answers. I refuse calls all the time. I'm scared about all sorts of things. I'm certainly not perfect. I feel frustrated when I'm trying to put my big ideas into action and I can't get this technology thing to work or that one, and I throw tantrums. I'm trying to come at it from a real human perspective, but by and large, I've got stars in my eyes. I'm like, “This is amazing. This is going to be so powerful.” For so many people, you just have to be ready to embrace it and just go along for the ride, because there's going to be some big-ass changes. There already are, and that's going to accelerate. Jo: You mentioned there learning the art of whatever it is. One of the things is, I've spent 20 years, and so have you, learning our craft and our art, and now it can be done very easily. I'm generating video, as you mentioned, which is a craft I haven't spent 20 years on, but now I can generate. So things have definitely changed in that way. Just coming to the screenwriting side. Probably about a decade ago now, I did my first screenwriting course. I've written screenplays. Then I looked at the game you have to play and, like you said, the conversations you have to have, the events you have to go and network at, all the things that you have to do to put a screenplay in front of the right person at the right time. I was like, “I cannot do that. It's just not going to happen. I can't do that along with everything else.” So I put it aside, but now I feel maybe it's time to bring it back because things are changing. So can you maybe talk about, if someone has a screenplay now that they've written, or some IP like a book that they have now— What would you recommend people do in terms of wanting to get that [IP] in front of somebody, or doing something with it themselves? Brooks: It's such a good question. By the way, not even a screenplay—you could do the same things with a novel. Let me try to be succinct here, which is a good challenge for me. A simple way to look at it is, you're giving samples. Let's say it's a lemonade stand, and you give out a little shot of your… maybe you have cayenne pepper lemonade, some sort of fun lemonade. If you give out a sample and people are into it, they're going to come back and they're going to tell friends. If you give a sample of the lemonade and they're not into it, then you go back to the kitchen and you mix up a different flavour. So that's some basic business, but the internet allows us to do that at scale. So what I like to encourage people to do when I coach them is come up with the minimum viable material. It can be a 10-second clip. There's a writer in my community who made a really beautiful 16-second movie. It's one shot. I love it so much. It's two wine glasses. There's a lipstick smudge on one of the wine glasses. They're half full, and it's just that shot. It's sitting there, and all of a sudden you hear this thundering, thumping down these stairs, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Then you see out of the corner of the frame one person runs by, and then the other person behind her runs by and goes, “Wait.” That's it. That's the whole movie. It's 16 seconds. He did that with his phone. So there's so much going on. There's a couple of basic elements, but he just did it with his phone, and you can evoke enormous emotional impact on people through social media, whether it's just words. You guys have a big advantage as novelists because you're so good with words. Whether it's a little bit longer, like sudden fiction, that's a couple of pages or whatever. Even just copywriters are really in a good position for the future because they're super potent with two words or three words or 10 words. Then novelists are probably really advantageous because it doesn't cost anything to just put some words out on the internet. The point is, if you put something out, it's a signal, and you're talking about billions of people who could find that signal. If you do it and then you look at the response, and then you try again, you look at the response, we can do this iteration infinitely for free. So you can do it already. You've been able to do it for 10, 15, 20 years, just with words. But now you're going to basically be able to do that with movies or clips or trailers. So the thing that I'm leading in my community of writers is having people build trailers in advance, or clips. When a book or a movie is done, how the heck do we get people to see it? One way is a trailer or some sort of behind-the-scenes material. You can just do that stuff now before even writing the screenplay. I saw that you were doing this project, a trailer for this competition. And then you mentioned, “Oh, I've got to write the screenplay.” Not really. You have to develop the story enough to know what you're referring to, and then it's about studying the craft of either trailer construction, or whatever the clips are, or viral clips. They all have a structure, and then you just test it. If you enjoy that testing process, which I find absolutely thrilling, it feels like the filmmaking version of a stand-up comedian. If I did stand-up, I say a joke, they laugh or they don't laugh. It's really beautiful feedback from the universe. Nerve-wracking, right? But we can do that now as storytellers. We put a story out there in any format, and the audience responds. Just like you have to read any room, you have to learn how to read the engagement on social media. What do likes mean? What do shares mean? What do comments mean? How do you deal with trolls? All that is just part of the new art. Once you get good at it, holy smokes, that's the key to the kingdom. You can build audiences in advance, and for movies you could even have them finance your movie in advance, if you've built an email list of 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 people because you kept putting out all these viral clips around your story, novel, or screenplay. Then you go, “Okay, now 30,000 people are on my email list and I tell them about me and my perspective and my world. We're going to make this darn thing with AI for 20,000 bucks. You guys have got to pony up some money. Put in a dollar, five, 10, or you get the VIP $500 experience.” It's like crowdfunding, but much more sophisticated, because most crowdfunding was like begging friends and family to donate to your crazy dream. What I'm talking about is going to the audience directly, developing enough of the story, then going to the audience second, and then only when they validate the idea, to the extent that you're happy with. You could do a crazy idea that's going to have a small audience, and you don't have to have a blockbuster audience. You get to pick the audience size that you want, and then put the samples out there and see if you have a relevant audience size for this next project. Once the audience tells you, “Yes, we want this,” then you go make it. So you're ultimately reducing risk to almost zero. It takes time and you have to learn how to do this stuff, but it's thrilling to me because we just have the capacity to test the material and listen to the audience upfront. The last thing I'll say, and I've rambled a lot, I'm sorry. When I made a movie in 1994, a feature film right out of NYU, it took me three years to find out what the audience thought about that movie. I had to make the damn thing, and then I ran out of money, and that took me years to edit it, and I finally got it, blah, blah, blah. And again, I loved it. I loved every facet of it, and it was fine, but it was super inefficient. Today, I could take those same elements, create an AI trailer this weekend, put it in front of hundreds of thousands of people, and they could tell me right away, “This sucks,” or, “This is interesting,” or, “Holy smokes, this is amazing. I want this.” If it's not, “Holy smokes, this is amazing, I want it,” I can go ahead and re-edit the whole damn trailer, and just keep reiterating at almost no cost. Then once the demand is there, I can take that demand and that audience and go to Hollywood, and that's when they're going to want to work with me. Then it doesn't take a million conversations and finding the needle in the haystack, because Hollywood sees the numbers and they go, “Oh, you're the people we do want to do business with. You've proven demand. We want to do business with you.” Jo: Yes, it's so interesting. I can hear people listening and they're like, “Easier said than done, getting an email list of 40,000 people.” And in fact— It's exactly the same as building up a career as an independent author. This is as a filmmaker, as a visual person, and the industry is visual, so doing a visual trailer is the obvious thing. And as you say, the tools I use just to do this one, I use Midjourney, and I've used Seedance as the main video model. It does take a while, but it is pretty fast now, if you have a visual image of what you want in your head, which obviously you're a visual person as well. But is it… Brooks: Hold on. I want to push back on that a little bit, because I think it's really important. So yes, that's true, but underneath that, my friend, it's a relationship. It's the relationship, and the media is secondary. You have been prolific in connecting with your audience, and that's why I think a lot of people like you, because you share and they get to know you in that sort of cadence. I saw you in another podcast, you mentioned Seth Godin, who just said, “Hey, I want to be the type of person that has this relationship with my audience. I'm going to share some of my thoughts every day.” He happened to do it with words, with his background in marketing, but you could do the same thing with still images. You could do the same thing with a five-second movie clip once a week. It's the relationship you want with your fans. I'm not saying you snap your fingers and you have 50,000 people on your email list. What I'm saying is, what else are you doing? If we're artists and our impulse is to create and share, and if you do it in this way, if I can create and share and inspire trust in this relationship with a stranger because they like my genre thing and they like the way they felt when they experienced my media, words, images, movies, it doesn't matter. They just like the feeling, and they go, “Ooh, I want more of that feeling. How do I get more of that? Oh, this person has this email list or community.” If I can do it with one, then I can scale it out. So getting the first one, or the first 5 or 10 samples, that is a whole process. But then once you do that, scaling up is more of a mechanical thing. It's not even that hard, especially when you can do paid ads. So you can scale up very quickly if you have the sauce. If you don't have the sauce, it doesn't matter who you're related to, you've got to get the sauce right. Jo: Yes, and again, it's so parallel to the indie author community. I've just got to ask you, in the olden days, an author might write a screenplay, or a screenwriter write a screenplay, and then they would send it. They'd find an agent. They'd pitch an agent, and I guess then they'd hope that someone would turn that into a movie. So is that just dead now? Is it realistically that you need to get yourself out there, build the audience in the same way that it often is for authors? Brooks: So, no. I've got two screenplay deals going right now. So here's how it's going to work. Think about Broadway, or the theatre district in Britain. It's like West End or East End or whatever… Jo: The West End. Brooks: Sorry for my American ignorance. West End, okay. So every town on the planet has a stage, but there's only one Broadway, there's only one West End, right? And every town has its own festival, but there are a few significant tastemakers. There's Cannes, there's Sundance, there's Toronto. Hollywood is always going to be a tastemaker in our lifetime, for sure. What they don't have anymore, what they enjoyed for the first 100 years of the industry, is that they had a stranglehold on basically the equipment, the financing, and the audience, and that's all going away. Do you want to hear a fun story about the birth of cinema? Do you know why Hollywood started in Hollywood? Jo: No. Brooks: So Thomas Edison invented the camera, or the type of model camera that they were using in, I don't know, 1910 or something around there. They didn't want to pay his patent. They didn't want to pay the patent to make these movies, so they went all the way across the country, a bunch of outlaws, and they set up shop in California because he couldn't enforce his patent that they were basically stealing. And reason number two, LA enjoys amazing weather almost all year round. The weather here is either nice or really nice. You have mountains, you have beach, you have desert, you have all these different locales. So when it was really important to be on location, LA was the perfect place. Anyway, that is all going away. For many decades, more people could make movies. In the early '90s, Robert Rodriguez made a movie for 9,000 bucks. There was a book in the '80s that I bought that I loved, it was Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices. This guy, Rick Schmidt, I think his name was. There were the independent filmmakers really in the '60s and the '70s. So the cost has been going down and down and down, and now it's less than ever. Once social media came along, now you have access to the audience, so why do you even need Hollywood? That being said, there are tons of people. There are 400,000 people already working in the movie and the TV industry here. And they're voracious. We have a voracious demand. Humans need stories. We need big stories, long stories. We need stories, and Hollywood is so good at giving them stories. And so they have a need for these things, and they're still spending a lot of money on those budgets. So yes, there's still a demand for turning books and optioning them and turning them into movies. Books are great. Any sort of existing IP is great because there are marketing efficiencies there. People already know that stuff, know the vibe of it, and so it's easier to market than something that's totally creative and new. When you're spending that much money, you want those marketing efficiencies. They're really important. So the point being, the power is shifting away from Hollywood. Hollywood will still be a tastemaker, but you and me can reach anybody on the planet now. Almost. Billions of people. If it's making a movie, right now you could make a movie that most people wouldn't realise is an AI movie. If it was a horror film, I know a handful of people that could make a feature-length horror film right now with AI and 99% of the audience couldn't tell, if it was professionally written. Jo: I think the point here though is, I'm an author, the people listening are authors, and we don't want to make movies. We want to license our IP to people who want to make movies. Brooks: Yes. Great. Okay, good. So then you could, if you wanted, build an audience. Hollywood loves when something's already proven, so that's that IP thing, right? So if you just have a great book, then it's all about the sales. You guys have Dragons' Den, we have Shark Tank here. And what's amazing about that show is these are people or entrepreneurs pitching an idea, and there's an amazing rhythm that happens. They say, “We've got this great idea. It's this sort of company.” And the sharks, or the dragons, will listen. And there's a huge turning point when they reveal sales. They're either really excited about the idea and then they go, “Well, how are the sales?” And the person goes, “Well, we don't have any sales yet.” And they go, “Uh,” and they're not interested. Or they might even be like, “Eh, it doesn't seem like a good idea.” And they're like, “Well, how are the sales?” And they're like, “Oh, well, we've sold through the roof.” And then all of a sudden they perk up. So it's all about the sales. So step one is writing something that you want. Step two is making sure other people in your target audience are also loving it as much as you do. Step three is proving in some way at scale that there's real demand for it. So you could do that with trailers, you could do that with clips, you can do that as an indie publisher. There's all sorts of things that you can do. Humans are much more persuaded by concrete data than they are by just vibes. So if you can bring Hollywood concrete data of any type, like viral videos, like audience, like obviously bestsellers. Awards mean something, but not quite as much as sales. Then you're going to get Hollywood's attention because that reduces risk for them. So even now, when Hollywood's definitely shrinking and contracting, there's still very significant money being spent because it's a huge demand. If you ever walk around a studio lot, those things are opulent places. It's stunning. Like, how are they paying for all this stuff? These lots are enormous. It's because humanity is voracious for stories, and movies are one premium type of storytelling. The demand for stories is steady if not going up. It's just that we have a wider variety of types of stories that we can do, whether we're an indie author. So anyway, did I answer the question? You get me too excited with these questions, Jo. It's a problem. Jo: Yes. I think there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of ways in, but the parallels with being an indie author I think are quite clear. One of the things I found interesting about your profile and what you do is that you help clients who are already accomplished but not quite breaking through, and that sounds like a lot of mid-list indie authors, probably a lot of mid-list screenwriters, mid-list filmmakers. This is a hard place to be because, on the one hand, we are grateful for what we have achieved and what we can do, and yet wanting more, wanting that big Hollywood deal or the Netflix deal, or wanting the massive bestseller or whatever. So if someone wants to get to that next level, what are some of the ways that they can perhaps try and get there? Brooks: It's a great question. Coaching is a really wonderful way to learn anything of this sort of complexity and challenge, especially if it's a hyper-competitive business. We need two things, I think, to write a great novel or screenplay or both. A, we need to feel profoundly safe in our space. If we can't really feel deeply authentic about the things that are embarrassing, or that we feel shame about, or just our shadows, or anything that we don't feel completely comfortable saying and sharing in public usually. We need to be able to touch those things, and be articulate about those things, and that's one part of it. Then we need a concrete path forward. Maybe you're thinking about some tragedy that you had in childhood, and how you dealt with it and how difficult that was. So you need to be able to be real precise in those observations about what it felt like, and how you tried to compensate for it, and that didn't work and it made it worse. Whatever your observations are about your life journey, you need to be really specific and really deeply felt. A good coaching relationship allows you to be in that space, to be really honest with yourself and authentic. g Aood coach will push you back and say, “You know what? That sounds interesting, but maybe not quite as true to you deeply.” So that's one piece of it. Then there's a concrete path forward. You need to have the emotional access to that truth, and then you need to know what to do with that truth in a step-by-step way. Because most people, the ones that you're talking about, they're accomplished in something else. What happens is when we first start writing, and maybe this happens with novelists, but for sure it happens to screenwriters, you just start typing words. But you haven't really thought through the theme, the concept, the structure, the character, all the deeper questions that really matter. The milestones, like a North Star: winning a major award, or getting a publisher. That's the direction that we're heading towards, and then you set it and forget it, but you want to keep checking it every week, every month or whatever. But you want it very specific. “I would like to sell a book, or sell a book to Hollywood, or write a screenplay, or get a producer attached to a screenplay.” Whatever the milestone is, make it really specific, really concrete, and then reverse engineer. This is what I do on the concrete path. I reverse engineer every step to get there, starting with a really tiny one we can do today, and I make sure they feel really safe, and then we just walk through. Then what happens is, if you do that, if you feel safe, if you're showing up authentically and you have a process that's repeatable, not just willy-nilly, it's got to be something that's proven to work. It wasn't an accident I wrote 45 scripts. I've got a whole system. But by the way, the first five scripts took me forever. The last movie that I made took me three years to write that script. I can write a better script with those same elements in three months now, because I know I have a concrete path. So if you want to do something new, whether it's playing the piano or getting six-pack abs or writing a screenplay, work with somebody who's got a system that's already proven, and make sure you relate to them, and then just follow the system. Then when the doubts come up, and they will, that's where the feeling safe is really important. Because, oh, I want the six-pack abs, but I don't feel like going to the gym. I want the extra donut. If I'm working with a really good trainer, they go, “Dude, do you want the six-pack abs or not?” And then you go back and forth, and I go, “Okay, now I can make peace with myself and say I can take one tiny bite of the donut and then still do my workout,” and then I'm moving towards that North Star. Does that make sense? Jo: Yes. I think, like many independents, I resist anything that is systematised. I'm a discovery writer, and I follow the muse, and all of that kind of thing. I think I would say something in a similar vein, which is sustainable creativity for the long term, because your 45 scripts are also years of work, and my books are years of work, and we get better at what we do. So my system, I do have a system really, because— My system is that I do the work, and I write my stories, and I get them out there, and I do the marketing. So even if it's not as systematised as such, it's still a process that I have repeated over and over again. Brooks: That's fascinating to me. Would you consider yourself a pantser? You're like, “I've got an idea,” and you just start writing? Jo: I don't use the word pantser. I guess I call it discovery writing, which is… Brooks: That's a better term. Jo: Yes. What I'm writing for this prize, for example, I know the characters, I know now what's happening. When I had the idea, it was very much a vision and a theme, and the competition has a theme: a positive future with AI and technology. But the things that came around that, I then started playing with ideas around the treatment. I haven't written the screenplay yet. I don't do a plot, or I don't follow Save the Cat or any of that kind of thing. When I write a novel, I just explore and I never write in order. Then at some point I stop and then I have to think about the structure and putting it all together, so the edits are quite big. But my fun is in that discovery, really. Brooks: Oh, that's awesome. Okay, so let me ask, that's really fascinating. And by the way, that doesn't, to me, negate the system that I use. The one that I use is ultimately… the thing is, these questions, the audience is wanting your unique answers to. You don't necessarily need to do it in a certain order. I think that's actually really cool that you write out of order and you have a few elements in mind. All that stuff sounds awesome. The only thing that then makes me curious is, how's your pace? Are you actually completing novels at a pace that feels good, or do you feel like you go too fast, too slow? Jo: I do one or two a year at the moment. Well, two a year, really. But I would say I'm not as successful as I'd like to be, so I'm not saying that my system is the best. I'm saying I want to be better. It's just that my fun is this sort of creative chaos, which I then try and control later. One of the things I really like about screenplays and treatments and doing this kind of thing for film is that it is much more structured, I think, than a 70,000-word novel. You can go in all kinds of directions, whereas with screenwriting you do have to be more disciplined really. Brooks: Yes, so this is going to be fun probably, to hear my view for your audience, and the differences as I see them. For starters, you're talking about what, 10, 20, 30 hours reading a novel sometimes, or maybe less, whereas a movie's a 90-minute experience, right? So that's different. Or if it's a TV series, you might see an hour and then an hour. So that's a very different experience. What happens is when it's condensed like that, you're loading up layers. So every scene is stacked with exposition beneath the drama, and done in a certain way. So specifically, movies are only what you can see and only what you hear. Whereas novels, if you can think it, you can write it, it can be in there. So you don't need to have a plot, but if you want to sell your book to Hollywood, it helps. So I was very resistant about structure. I went to NYU film school, where we really just made short films. It was funny, I had friends that were in the dramatic writing department, and I was like, “You guys are wasting your money. You're just learning to write scripts. We learn to write the scripts and make the movies.” What I hadn't realised is it's a different skill set to hold somebody's attention across an hour-long play, or a 90-minute movie, than it is to make a movie that holds their attention for two minutes or five minutes. I found out years later when I made a feature that was like a lot of shorts patched together, and people were not… They liked it, but they didn't love it. I was like, “Well, what's going on?” And so then I learned to really love Save the Cat in particular. It completely changed me. What happened was, I got a big old slice of humble pie. I had made my second feature, and I put everything I had into it, and it had loose structural beginning, middle, end, blah, blah, blah. But I was still, “Eh, Hollywood BS. What do they know? It's all fake.” So I was very anti-Hollywood structure. Then I was like, now I've got two independent films out there, people saw them, liked them, whatever, but it wasn't getting me consistent work. It wasn't really advancing my career in the way that I wanted. And I was like, “Well, maybe there is something to the Save the Cat.” So I went to the Save the Cat workshop with Blake when he was still alive, and he was delightful, a really awesome guy. He's got this kind of cutesy style, for people that don't know. For context, Blake Snyder was a working Hollywood screenwriter, and he had this system called Save the Cat, which actually has some really interesting ideas. He's got this very light, breezy sort of style. A lot of people don't like him and some people really love him, and everything in between. But I took his weekend seminar, and it completely changed me, because at that point, like I said, I took three years to write a script. Then once he had a process and he had a way of thinking about craft that was just much more screenwriter-friendly, I was like, “Oh my God.” It was so much easier, because I was just focused on the right thing at the right time. So it just sped everything up. After that, I was banging out two to three scripts a year, and better and better quality. So for me, because I went from winging it and wrote five scripts in 13 years, and then wrote two to three scripts every year, I became a huge proponent of system and process. Then my own system really came from that, but it's modular. I have a nine-step system, but you don't necessarily have to go in that order, other than the last three steps, but I won't get into the details. Sometimes you kind of jump from two to three and then back to two and then back and forth. So I love that you get the feel for those elements, and then you just felt your way through. But writing screenplay pages doesn't make sense until you really understand concept, you get a deep sense of beginning, middle, end, character arcs, and these other threads. There are just way better tools for those jobs than screenplay format, because it's a really weird format. It's got these weird slug lines at the top that are all in caps, because a screenplay is a blueprint for somebody else to make the movie. It's not an end-user document like a novel. I don't let my clients even go to that format because it just gets them focused on the wrong things. What they really need to know is, what is your perspective about this theme? What happened in your life that you're fascinated with, that you'd even want to write about this? And tell me what your real life lessons are. So we go into… again, I go back to relationship. What's your relationship to the universe? And what's your relationship to your best friends, or where you got your heart broken, or whatever you want to write about. And then we get that clarity, and then I show you how to express it in terms of developing a screenplay. It's really long-form storytelling, and then the structure just makes it build on itself. But with the structure, because you're talking about so much money and people involved to make it, at least traditionally, what ended up happening was narrative structure that was not so much rigid. Because here's the thing, you can look at 50, 100 years of European cinema and you can look at Hollywood cinema, and Hollywood laps them. When I taught at UCLA Extension, I had lots of foreign students. Let's say there'd be two or three students… if there were 12 people in the class, two or three people would be from America, and everybody else would be from other countries. I would go around, I'd be like, “What movies and TV shows have you been watching?” Almost in every single country, they watch half from their own country, half from Hollywood. So Hollywood storytelling works, that's just the data, and they're dominant. The reason it works is what Aristotle was saying thousands of years ago.. There's a way of thinking about beginning, middle, end that just deeply speaks to the psyche, and you can ignore it if you want. I think Godard said, “You need beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order,” right? Which is great. Just the way we experience life, there's a beginning, a middle, an end to this podcast interview. There's a beginning, middle, end to the day, a beginning, middle, end to me eating lunch. So if you don't lean into the beginning, middle, end psychological aspect of your story, you're going to bore your reader. But to your point, you don't necessarily have to sort that out in the beginning. It's more efficient probably if you do, but you don't have to. Go into it wherever the muse tells you to go, and then at some point, like you do, then you go, “Okay, now I go back and I edit.” If you're saying there's another level, you have another gear in you, then yes, I'd be curious to slowly go through how you're making those decisions. Because what's happening probably is there are ways you're holding back a little bit. There's maybe something you're afraid of being vulnerable about. That's usually where me or other writers are holding themselves back, and we can take a look at that. There are different ways I show writers to do it. Then you can go, “Oh, I was doing it here, and now I can do it there.” And it could be with process, or just a certain creative choice. With story, it's clear and compelling. Those are the simple things. So, is this clear enough? Is it compelling enough? And there are almost always ways to up-level on any facet, whether it's one sentence, or a sentence that describes the whole concept of the book, or a chapter. Each one of those can be looked at with that lens and we can just say, “Hey, this is 70%, 80%,” whatever, and then we say, “Well, how do we get a little bit more?” And then when you do that enough, it piles up. Then especially if you bring in an audience and people are flipping out for your work, they'll tell you. Jo: Yes, I love a challenge, so thank you for everything you've shared today. So where can people find you and everything you do online? Brooks: Well, one way you can find me—if anything I said seemed helpful for you, if you have questions about Hollywood or you have a screenplay in your heart—you can just email me, brooks@brookselms.com. You could look me up on LinkedIn. I'm at Brooks Elms. I also have a Skool community called Screenwriter Marketing, but it's really for any sort of storyteller, and it talks about my favourite way to engage an audience and get through it. So anybody can jump into that if you like my vibe. If you really think anything I've said, or the way I said it, seems like it could be helpful for you, just reach out. Let me know what you're up to, and maybe there's a way I can help you. Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Brooks. That was great. Brooks: You're welcome. It was a total pleasure. It was lots of fun, and I really appreciate you.The post How To Prove The Demand For Your Stories And Get The Attention Of Hollywood With Brooks Elms first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Most speakers assume their audience is persuadable by good evidence. Psychologist Owen Fitzpatrick, who trained under NLP co-creator Richard Bandler and has travelled to over a hundred countries, including North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran, studying how belief actually forms, argues that's backwards. People believe what feels right, fits their identity, and keeps them inside their tribe. Evidence comes after, as justification.Owen built his reputation on charisma work (his book The Charismatic Edge argued charisma is an impression you create, not something you're born with) before moving into belief and propaganda with his new book Inner Propaganda, out 4 August. In this conversation, he lays out his DELP model (an expansion of Aristotle's ethos, logos, pathos to include demos — understanding your specific audience), explains why intelligent, critical-thinking people are often the most convincing propagandists to themselves, and draws a sharp line between persuasion, manipulation and propaganda that every speaker standing on a stage should sit with.We also get into why spontaneous, unscripted delivery reads as more truthful than polished delivery (with Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" as the example), and why AI's tendency to flatter you is quietly making this problem worse, not better.In this episode:Why charisma is built, not innate, and why it matters more now than when Owen wrote The Charismatic Edge in 2013The DELP model: demos, ethos, logos, pathosWhy perceived authenticity beats actual authenticity, and why spontaneity reads as truthWhy critical thinking doesn't protect you from bad beliefs (argumentation vs investigation)Motivated reasoning, naive realism, and sacred values: why smart people hold ridiculous beliefsThe difference between persuasion, manipulation and propaganda, and why every speaker is, to a degree, a propagandistOwen's practical tools: the belief audit, the feels right/fits in/makes sense framework, and E-Prime languageConnect with Owen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/owenfitzp/The book and the special workshop are available at https://innerpropaganda.com, and you can discover more about Owen and his work at https://owenfitzpatrick.comFAQWhat is Owen Fitzpatrick's DELP model?The DELP model is Owen Fitzpatrick's expansion of Aristotle's rhetorical triad of ethos, logos and pathos. Owen adds demos, the requirement to understand the specific audience being addressed, alongside ethos (credibility and positioning), logos (logical structure and evidence) and pathos (emotional impact).What is Owen Fitzpatrick's book Inner Propaganda about?Inner Propaganda is Owen Fitzpatrick's book, to be released on 4th of August 2026, about how individuals generate their own propaganda internally through feelings, self-narratives and motivated reasoning. It argues that people convince themselves of beliefs the same way state propaganda convinces populations, through internal versions of state media, indoctrination and truth engineering.What is the difference between persuasion, manipulation and propaganda, according to Owen Fitzpatrick?Persuasion is the ethical attempt to change beliefs, attitudes or behaviour while genuinely caring about what the other person wants. Manipulation uses deception and serves only the persuader's own interests. Propaganda combines both, using every available tool of persuasion and manipulation to construct an entire reality for the audience.Why doesn't critical thinking protect people from believing false things?According to Owen Fitzpatrick, critical thinking and intelligence make people better at constructing airtight arguments (argumentation) rather than at genuinely investigating what is true (investigation). Motivated reasoning, a concept from psychologist Ziva Kunda, refers to people reasoning toward conclusions they already want to be true.What is naive realism?Naive realism is the belief that one's own perception of reality is objectively accurate and shared by anyone reasonable. Owen Fitzpatrick argues this prevents people from applying the same critical scrutiny to their own beliefs that they readily apply to beliefs they disagree with.What is E-Prime language and why does Owen Fitzpatrick use it?E-Prime is a form of English that eliminates the verb "to be," originally developed by David Bourland based on Alfred Korzybski's work on language and semantics. Owen Fitzpatrick uses it as a belief-flexibility tool: replacing "this is true" with "this seems true to me" builds in the possibility of revision.Visit https://strategic-speaker.scoreapp.com to take the 2-minute Strategic Speaking Business Audit and find out what's blocking you from getting more bookings, re-bookings, referrals and bigger fees. There's a special surprise gift for everyone who completes the quiz.Want to get coached for free on the show? Fill in the form https://forms.gle/mo4xYkEiCjqtz9yP6, and if we think your challenge could help others, we'll invite you on.For speaking enquiries or to connect with me, you can email john@presentinfluence.com or find me on LinkedInYou can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PresentInfluenceThanks for listening. Rating the show 5* on Spotify helps their algo recommend the show, so please take a moment to follow the show and leave a rating.Mentioned in this episode:Do you want to join the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint September Case Study group?This September I'll be working with a group of 5 speakers who are already speaking but not getting the level of bookings and speaker fees that they really want. We'll work on the 3 key areas that will allow your speaking business to flourish. Since it's the founding group, there's an extra special deal on the price for joining that will never be repeated. Go to https://presentinfluence.com/kbpb for full details.

Virtue is like any other skill. It's not something you either have or you don't. It's something you practice, and the more you practice it, the better you become. This was Aristotle's fundamental insight: excellence is not innate. It is a habit.

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on his discussion, early on in the work, of the composite nature of the human soul, which includes a rational part and an irrational part, the latter of which is further divided into a spirited (thumoeides) part and an appetitive part (epithumia). This will be relatively familiar to many as the Platonic tripartite conception of the soul, found in Plato's Republic. He also discusses Aristotle's position and that of the Stoics. You can find the copy of the text I am using for this sequence on Plutarch's On Moral Virtue here - https://amzn.to/3gpyrS3 To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler (Amazon links are associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)

Kurt Gödel was a genius mathematician and logician, considered by many scholars to be as influential as Aristotle. He was also buddies with fellow geniuses Albert Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern, the co-creator of Game Theory. In 1947, Gödel told Morgenstern and Einstein he had identified an inner contradiction in the U.S. Constitution while studying for his citizenship test: the type of loophole that could plunge the United States into a dictatorship not unlike the Nazi regime Gödel had escaped when he immigrated from Austria. So, what was the loophole? Over the years, everyone from Constitutional law scholars to laypeople on Reddit have wondered. Endless Thread plumbs the depths of Gödel's galaxy brain with the help of philosopher, writer and Gödel expert Rebecca Newberger Goldstein — and learns some surprising lessons about artificial intelligence, a German shorthand called Gabelsberger, and democracy along the way. Show notes: Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (Amazon) Oskar Morgenstern's account of Kurt Gödel's naturalization (Institute of Advanced Study) This episode was produced by Grace Tatter. It was co-written by Grace Tatter and Ben Brock Johnson, co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson, and edited by Meg Cramer and Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comRobert P. George is a legal scholar and political philosopher. At Princetown, he's the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and the director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He's also a senior fellow at both the American Enterprise Institute and the Witherspoon Institute, which he co-founded. His many books include Making Men Moral and In Defense of Natural Law. We spent many years sparring in print over marriage, gays, and Catholicism.For two clips of the episode — on disobeying unjust laws, and the supposed harms of gay marriage — head to our YouTube page.Other topics: his dad's harrowing service in WWII; Robby growing up in Appalachia with his grandfathers in the coal mines; first in his family to go to college; stories of both of us being at Oxford at the same time; the origins of bluegrass; Robert Byrd's legacy; Plato's Gorgias; Aristotle and friendship; Robby's close friendship with Cornel West; Montaigne; Aquinas; Vatican II; Eastern Orthodox liturgy; neo-scholasticism; Darwin's survival of the fittest; Nietzsche; loving one's enemy as uniquely Christian; just law and unjust law; MLK's letter from a Birmingham jail; Hume; Oakeshott; natural law theorists vs legal positivists; the AIDS crisis; Christian marriage vs civil marriage; divorce; the Manhattan Declaration; Henry VIII's annulments; the sexual habits of Clinton and Trump; illiberalism on the left and right; and the beached squids of Ptown.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Ross Barkan on the DSA and Mamdani, John O'Sullivan on conservatism, Azam Ahmed on terrifying new drugs, and Megan McArdle on pretty much anything. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

How do you know when it's worth optimizing your retirement plan and when it's better to keep things simple? This week, Roger answers a listener question by exploring Aristotle's concept of the "golden mean," arguing that the best retirement decisions are rarely found at either extreme. He explains why financial optimization should be measured by the life it enables rather than the dollars it saves and introduces the OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) as a practical framework for evaluating trade-offs. Roger also answers listener questions about stepped-up cost basis after the death of a spouse, whether dividends can be used to fund an income floor, and when bonds versus CDs make sense in today's interest rate environment.OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE RETIREMENT ANSWER MAN(00:00) Roger introduces today's discussion on balancing financial optimization with simplicity, previews upcoming episodes, and shares updates on the August replay schedule and September Social Security series.RETIREMENT TOOLKIT(02:31) Finding your "golden mean" between optimizing your retirement plan and keeping it simpleWhy retirement planning often overemphasizes financial optimizationThe difference between optimizing for money and optimizing for lifeHow Aristotle's concept of the golden mean applies to retirement decisionsUsing the OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) to make better decisionsRecognizing personal biases before making financial decisionsEvaluating trade-offs and second-order consequences before pursuing tax strategies, Roth conversions, and other optimization opportunitiesLISTENER QUESTIONS(36:35) Roger answers a listener's question about home cost basis. (41:02) Can dividend income be used to fill the gap in my retirement income floor?(44:55) Are bonds still a good conservative investment, or should I use CDs instead?SMART SPRINT(49:55) Practice using the OODA framework on a small, everyday decision this week to determine whether optimizing is truly worth the extra time and effort.CLOSING THOUGHTS(51:24) Roger reflects on how building a resilient retirement plan isn't just about protecting against uncertainty—it also gives you the confidence to lean into life and enjoy retirement more fullyREFERENCESSubmit a Question for RogerSign up for The NoodleNote: The opinions expressed are for informational purposes only and should not replace personalized advice from licensed professionals.

How can organic writing and leaning into the pivot help your stories stand out? And how can you pitch a story as a discovery writer if you genuinely don't know what's going to happen next. Steven James gives his writing tips after more than 20 years as an author. In the intro, Better Than Free in an Age of AI [Kevin Kelly on Tim Ferriss; Kevin Kelly on The Creative Penn]; Future Vision XPrize; A Different Kind of Bucket List. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Steven James is the multi-award-winning and international bestselling author of 21 novels across thrillers, YA, and science fiction, with more than a million copies sold, as well as the author of non-fiction craft books for writers, a writing teacher, and the host of The Story Blender podcast. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How to lean into organic writing, and what to focus on instead of plot How characters unfold on the page, and why an attitude beats a background Producing an outline for an agent or publisher when you genuinely don't know what happens next Don't pitch the plot, pitch the pivot The four choices you have in every scene, and why logic plus surprise is the engine of story Faith, moral clarity and big questions You can find Steven at StevenJames.net. Transcript of the interview with Steven James Jo: Steven James is the multi-award-winning and international bestselling author of 21 novels across thrillers, YA, and science fiction, with more than a million copies sold, as well as the author of non-fiction craft books for writers, a writing teacher, and the host of The Story Blender Podcast. So welcome to the show, Steven. Steven: Thanks for having me, Jo. Good to be here. Jo: Great to have you on the show. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Steven: Oh, gosh. Well, the thing is, when I was a kid, I fell in love with stories. My uncle would always, whenever we got together for the holidays—Christmas, New Year's and so on—he would take my sister, my brother and myself into a corner of the room while the other adults had coffee, and we would just sit there, and he would get this look in his eye and he'd say, “I'm going to tell you a story.” We were transported to another world. We were swashbuckling with pirates, or facing down a grizzly bear in Alaska, or flying over the desert on a flying carpet, or whatever. I fell in love with imagination and stories and everything. So I started reading as much as I could, mostly short stories. They had a programme at our library called the paperback book exchange, where you bring a paperback book and you leave it, and you can take any one of the paperback books that they had. You could keep it as long as you wanted. If you wanted it for your life, that's fine, or you could just bring it back as soon as you finished reading it. Anyway, I went crazy over the summers reading short stories, mainly. As I got older, I was like, “I think I want to be a storyteller.” So I actually got my master's degree in storytelling. Then I started to travel and tell stories, but I had three little daughters at home, and I was like, “I don't want to be gone 300 days a year when they are growing up.” So I ended up starting to write stories instead of travel, and then it just kind of shifted in that direction. That was in '97. Oh my goodness, that's long. '97, '98. So then I started to write books, and then eventually in 2007, I think, my first novel came out. Now, mainly, I've been writing novels ever since. Jo: It's so interesting. Was it a job, storytelling? Is that what you did before you became a book writer? Or did you have a different job? Steven: I mostly would go to events, conferences, schools and so on, and do a family-friendly storytelling show. So I would tell personal stories, some folktales reimagined. I would go to different events around the country. Mostly it was that. Then I started to shift. I wrote for magazines for a while—80 different magazines I wrote for over those years, a couple of hundred different articles, stories. I was like, “I'm just going to try to make a living telling stories.” So the shift has gone back and forth between actually telling stories and writing stories, but these days, I don't know. I'm still speaking. I'm still out there teaching. Jo: That's so interesting, because it's obviously a completely different thing to tell a story in person than it is to write a story. So when you decided to shift that way, what did you have to learn and unlearn? Because your thoughts on the page are so different to when you can make eye contact with an audience. Steven: That's a good point. I kind of started by telling stories back when I was in college, so I sort of moved from telling to writing. And you're right, there's so much that's lost, whether it's eye contact or pauses. On a printed page, there's always the same amount of space between every word—a space. But when you tell stories, obviously you pause for effect in different places, different areas, and so it's quite different. So if I have an idea for a story, I usually have to decide, is this going to be written or told? And then I do it in that medium. Then if I want to, let's say, tell a written story, I almost have to relearn it, or retell it very differently. You have gestures, body language. All of those things are obviously lost in text, so they are very different. I think for me it's been good, because when I tell stories, I hear different characters speaking, so that when I write, usually dialogue comes fast to me. I can hear what people are saying. I don't always know where they are. I don't always know the setting. I don't even know the scene necessarily, but I can hear the dialogue. Then it also helps me to step into the characters, like when I'm writing different points of view, so that I think I can do a good job of getting into that character's mind, as if I were that person. I think some of that comes from just telling stories. Jo: You've taught so many writers over the years, and it's interesting you said that you hear characters' dialogue. I see visual film in my mind. I don't hear any voice at all. It's all silent. I struggle with dialogue, but I do great world building. Do you find that this really is different by the author? I feel like we fall into these different groups. Steven: Yes, I do. I kind of feel like that's very true as far as what comes first, whether it's a description of a place, whether it's the action. I mean, basically a story has dialogue, narration—or we call it sometimes exposition—and description. Those three things. Every story has those three things, and those are the three that we use to tell a story, a novel. So some people tend to drift into one or the other as sort of their default setting: dialogue, description, or action. That's true. I think also something else that's interesting about writers is they tend to fall into either the camp of being a wordsmith or a storyteller. Not everyone, but I feel like some people are wordsmiths, where I read what they're writing, and I'm like, “Man, this is so powerful, evocative,” whatever. Maybe there's no story there. It's just really interesting writing. Other people just are natural storytellers, and they have to really work on the wordsmithing. I think that's me. I'm more naturally just a storyteller, but it takes me a long time to get the descriptions to where I want them, to choose exactly the right word. That takes me more effort. Some people have to build up the storytelling muscles. I have to build up the wordsmithing muscles. Jo: Well, part of the reason I wanted to talk to you is because you talk about this thing called organic writing in your book Story Trumps Structure, which is out now in a second edition. I call it discovery writing, so similar to you. But most people in the writing community seem to obsess about plotting and planning. So talk about your process of organic writing. You say in the book, “Trust the fluidity of the process.” Tell us more about that. Steven: Well, I remember in high school even, when my teacher got up front and he kind of got this very almost wise look on his face, and he goes, “A story is something with a beginning, a middle, and an end.” I'm sitting there in high school like, “Well, so does a bratwurst. What are you talking about here?” A description of a chair has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The sentence, “Preheat the oven to 450 degrees,” has a beginning, a middle, and an end. My view is that saying a story is something that has three acts is like saying that a pizza is something with three toppings. It might have three. It might have one. It might have five. So the idea for me is not to worry about structure, trying to tick off the boxes of a template, a formula you find online, a fill-in-the-blanks kind of a thing. But instead, to actually look at what lies at the heart of the story—the character, the tension, the struggle, the pursuit, the pivots and plot twists, and the payoff at the end. As you develop those aspects of the story, I feel like you need to worry less and less about following a formula. The more you understand what lies at the heart of a story, I feel like the less you need to plot and the less you need to write by the seat of your pants. A lot of people say, “Oh, you write by the seat of…” No, I don't write by the seat of my pants, because I know what a story contains, so I know that in a certain scene a character will make certain choices that are unpredictable but that escalate the tension, and different things like that. I'm a huge proponent of discovery, as you say, or organic writing. I won't get the quote exactly right, but Ray Bradbury said something along the lines of, “Plot is the tracks left in the snow after your characters have run by on their incredible destinations. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through.” So he's saying plot is not what precedes action. After the action, you have plot. So the whole idea of trying to plot out a story before you write it is going about writing exactly backwards. Plot doesn't precede action. It's the result. So I always tell people, “Don't worry so much about the plot. I want you to look at the pursuit.” A plotter might say, “Well, what should happen?” And they'll just come up with something. But an organic writer—a pursuit-based question would be, what does the character want? Now, when I know what the character wants, I will know what should happen. So literally, it will lead me to the story. Focusing on plot will not necessarily lead you to the story. It might lead you down the wrong track. Jo: Then in terms of your actual writing process— Do you start writing without knowing the ending? Do you write in order? Is the organic side also in the process? Steven: I've never started a book where I know how it will end. So I usually start with either a character that's fascinating or, in some cases, a premise, a question. Then as I write, I explore the possibilities of where it might go. I've tried to outline a scene—like one scene, not a whole book—and it never works. I can't even outline one scene. I've tried, and I'm like, okay, that's… What I end up with is completely different from it, so it's just a waste of time and effort for me to try to outline or plot out a story. I'm much more interested in the pathway the characters will take as they face obstacles and setbacks in their pursuit. As the struggles and the tension develop, what choices will they make? That's how the story will unfold for me. Jo: I'm similar. Then I also wonder— Do you do character sheets and character bios, or do the characters also unfold organically? Steven: Absolutely, I don't do any of the sheets and bios and stuff. The characters really come to me as I write. I begin to get to know them. I always tell people, a character with an attitude is more interesting than a character with a background. So a lot of people will spend a lot of time on, like, where's this character gone to college, and what's their first pet's name, all that stuff. I'm not trying to dump on that idea. I get that that can be helpful. But I'm like, how would I know that until I've spent time with them? Then once I begin to spend time with them, I'm writing and I'm like, “Nah, this doesn't seem like what that character would really say or do,” so I have to go back and rejigger the story to hopefully make it fit with that character. Then I like to give the characters some sort of attitude. I'm not talking about a negative or judgy attitude, but an attitude about something that is unique or different, and that makes them not a template character, not an archetype or whatever, but unique. Sort of this constellation of unique traits, characteristics, maybe wounds, flaws and so on, that create a character where you're like, “This is a character like none I've ever seen before. I want to spend time with this character.” Jo: Then you're spending time with the character by writing what's happening, as opposed to writing loads of stuff beforehand and then starting to write. You're actually finding all of this out during the process of writing. Steven: Yes, and I think it's kind of like getting to know someone. If I were to say, “Okay, I'm going to write down Jo's bio,” or whatever—okay, I'm making stuff up, because I don't know you super well. If we were to spend time together, hang out, whatever, talk, over the course of time I would start to know, oh, she likes this, she doesn't like that. This is important to her. This is what she would weep or pound the table over—whatever, all of the things that come with time. It's like a friendship in real life to me. So I can't sit down and tell you what a character in real life would think and say and do if I don't know them, but the more time I spend with them, then the more I'm able to predict that accurately. I think the mistake a lot of people make is they think, “I'm going to get to know this character with a background,” and then they start writing it, and instead of looking at the context, they look back at the—I don't know what you call it—the background or something like that. I always feel like what you mentioned earlier is, like, hold it loosely in your hand. Trust the fluidity of the process. As you're writing, you have an instinct. “Ah, I think this character would say this or do this.” So trust that. Trust that instinct. Trust that moment in the story, instead of trying to go back to an outline, back to a character description, or whatever it might be. So I'm a big proponent of looking at the context—not just what happened, but what is the result? So looking at the impetus and the implication of the choices and the activities. When something occurs, what would the character naturally say or do or think or respond? Then what would that cause? What's the implication that that would have on the rest of the story, on the rest of the characters? So, really trying to keep your finger on the pulse of the story, and adapt as you move forward through it. Jo: I love all of that, but I also am very aware that you've been in traditional publishing for over 20 years, and one of the things with agents and publishers is that they often ask for an outline. So how do you manage that? Or how did you more earlier in your career, because I imagine they just trust you now. Earlier in your career, or people listening who want to pitch but they write in this organic way, how do we deal with that kind of thing? Steven: Well, okay, so there's two good questions. One is about producing an outline for an agent or editor or publisher and so on. The other is how to pitch a story. So the first: I would write the premise down, and maybe a paragraph or two, and then where I think it might go. Basically, I would focus on the questions that the characters will face, maybe the moral dilemmas, the sacrifices they have to make, the world they live in. I kind of know that stuff, and I can write a couple of paragraphs about that. But beyond that, I just don't know what's going to happen, so I can't really provide more. I'm looking at my shelf at the books that I've done, and mostly that's what I've done is kind of a couple of paragraphs focusing on the premise and the problem, the struggle, and so on like that. As far as pitching a story, I always tell people, “Don't pitch the plot, pitch the pivot.” I think that there's a screenwriter—I think that he talks about this a little bit. I've not read the book Save the Cat, but people have told me, “Oh, he kind of brings this up in that book.” The idea is to pitch the irony instead of what occurs. So sometimes when I tell people to pitch, or I give them ideas, one process that you can use is: when, must, before, or else. So, when this occurs, this character must do something before this, or else. So you have the character, you have the struggle, you have the inciting incident, you have the stakes, and you have the countdown. It works well for thrillers. So for instance, like Jaws. When a man-eating shark starts eating people in a small seaside village, the sheriff must stop him before more people die and the town loses its economy. So there you have when, must, before, or else. Now, no one's going to buy the story based on that, because there's no irony, there's no pivot. It's just a description of the plot, and that's what most people pitch. So I always tell people, pitch the part of the story that you wouldn't expect. So for instance, in there you might pitch: when a shark starts eating people in a small seaside village, the only one who can stop him is afraid of the water. Now you're like, “Oh, well, that's interesting. How does that happen? What happens there?” With my book Broker of Lies, the pitch was something like, when a high-level Pentagon redactor ends up on the run, he must stop a terrorist attack before he's neutralised by the people he trusts the most. So the pivot is that the people he trusts at the Pentagon the most are actually trying to neutralise him because he's on the run, and all that kind of stuff. So why would they be trying to do that? Well, that's interesting. So it's always looking for the irony, the pivot. Why is this character the last one in the world who would ever be equipped to tackle this problem or face this issue? So that's one way to do a pitch. Obviously there's lots of them, but I think your goal with a pitch is to get them to say, “Tell me more.” It's not necessarily to summarise the whole story. Jo: That's great advice. So you teach writers—I first saw you at ThrillerFest, I think it was 2012—and you do events, you run writing retreats. So you work with a lot of authors, and I wondered, what are the challenges that you see from authors with, say, five books? So not the beginner authors, because obviously there's a lot of challenges. But those who, let's say they've got the three to five books, things are going all right, but they're like, “How do I get to the next level?” What are the craft issues, or the business issues as well, that mid-list authors face? Steven: Well, business, I'm not the guy to ask. I could try to answer that, but I mean, basically: meet your deadlines and write something amazing. Try to be easy to work with, but also stand up for what you wrote as far as working with editors. It's sort of a fine line you have to walk. The one thing that over the last few years I've really noticed in a lot of writers who are in that space is that they don't have many pivots. They tend to write predictable stories, and that's why they tend to stay where they're at—whether it's because they're following an outline or a plot formula or whatever it is. So when I talk about a pivot, I mean a moment in the story where something happens that's both unexpected and inevitable. For instance, if you're reading a story, you want things to make sense. You want them to be logical. That's one thing. But you don't want them to be too predictable. If it's too predictable, it's boring. It's like, I'm not interested. So we also want surprises. We want these two things. We want logic, and we want surprise. When those two things meet and you have a moment in the story where it's like, “I didn't see that coming, but that totally makes sense,” that's what we want, and we want that in every scene. I feel like a lot of authors don't have that in every scene. Now, you might say, “Well, every scene?” Well, yes, because basically those two factors, logic and surprise, can only meet in four different ways. You could have something that's very logical but has no surprises. That's going to be boring. It's going to be too predictable. We don't want that. You could have something that is very surprising but not logical. It makes no sense. A lot of stuff is surprising, but that's not what we want, because it's unbelievable, and it's like, what is going on here? You could have something that has neither logic nor surprise, which obviously we don't want that. The only other option is to have a moment that is both logical and surprising. So you have a choice in every scene. You have four choices, actually. You can have it be predictable and boring. You can have it be nonsensical. You can have it be unbelievable. Or you can have a pivot. So I find myself trying to really coach people on pivots. They'll say, “Oh, well, do I need it in every scene?” I'm like, “You can choose, but do you want it to be predictable or boring or nonsensical, or do you want it to really drive the story forward?” I think it's because people have been taught structure and plot and three acts and all this kind of stuff, but they haven't been taught this idea—even though it's not something I made up. Aristotle, in Poetics, thousands of years ago, put it a little bit differently, but he said, “The reversal of the situation”—what I call the pivot—”is the moment at which the action veers around to its opposite”—that would be what I call surprise—”subject always to a rule of probability or necessity”—which is the logic. So he's basically saying the same thing in just a little bit different language, but you have these three factors. You have logic, you have surprise, and you have them come together in a specific moment. I don't know why it's not taught more. I have never found anyone who teaches pivots. I have not found any books, so I wrote a book recently about how to use pivots. It's so central, and I think great storytellers naturally do it. You'll read a book, or you'll maybe watch a show, and you're like, “Oh, I didn't see that coming. That totally makes sense.” I don't see anyone else out there really focusing on teaching that. So that's a huge thing for me, really, to help people move up in their writing, elevate it to a different level. Jo: Is that Delve, Pivot, Propel? Steven: Yes. That book came out a couple years ago. We just re-released it. I updated it some, but it talks pretty much in depth about pivots and how to actually use those to propel the stories forward. Jo: Maybe you could just give us one tip on how to do that, because going back to the organic writing—let's say I've been organically writing, and every time a character has a decision to make, I think at that point about what I want to write and I write it. Are you suggesting that we go back in the edit and look at the end of every scene and redo it? Because I can't imagine that I would get this right every time. I would need to do that in an edit, I think. Steven: I think for me, when I'm writing, I'm always asking myself a series of questions. One is, what would the character naturally do? I want to make it believable and natural. Let them do it. I want to escalate the tension, so I'll ask myself, “How can I make things worse?” Then I'll always ask myself, how can I add a pivot to this scene? So as I'm writing a scene—again, I don't know how it will end when I start it—but if I use the first idea that comes to mind, probably a lot of readers would guess that as well, because it's the first idea that comes to mind. It's probably logical and probably predictable. That's why most stories end up being too predictable. It's because we go with the first idea that maybe we had. So I try to discard that. Maybe the second idea, just discard it. Then I start thinking, okay, now if I've discarded the obvious, what is going on? What's below the surface? So to answer your question, I'm looking for what isn't what it appears to be, or who isn't who they appear to be, or a surprising way to bring together plot threads that I didn't see related before. So it's always looking for the unexpected, the surprise, because most of the time that is what we're missing. Now, if you have a great surprise, then you have to lean into making it believable. So you've got to move into that idea of, well, what would the character naturally do? You can't just have him do something ridiculous and then say, “Oh, it's for my twist.” No, you can't do that. You've got to play fair. So it has to be believable, causally related, logical, and surprising. That's what you're shooting for. Those are the questions going through my mind. So as I'm working on a scene, I'm like, “How could I end this?” Or include something that people won't see coming right away. The best ideas always come to me then. It's so interesting. A lot of people will say, “Oh, don't write organically,” or, quote, “by the seat of your pants,” whatever they'll say, “because then you might write yourself into a corner.” I'm like, “Yes, absolutely write yourself into a corner. That's what I'm trying to do in every scene.” And then you write yourself out of a corner in a way that's logical and surprising. The best twists I've ever come up with have been when I'm in a corner. So why would I warn people against going to the place where the best ideas await them? That just seems mean. Why would I do that? No, I want you to have the best possible ideas. So yes, look for corners, write yourself into them, and then write yourself out of them in a way that's both logical and surprising. Jo: I guess also it needs to be genre specific. We write mainly thrillers, and there is this fine line, isn't there? I love Stephen King, but one of the most unbelievable endings is Under the Dome. I still remember feeling betrayed. I don't know if you've read that one, but— Steven: Oh, no. Jo: I was like, “I'm sorry, you've just changed genre in the last chapter of the book. What is going on here?” Steven: That's actually interesting. The fourth question I ask… So I ask, what would the character naturally do? How can I make things worse? How can I add a pivot? But the fourth question is, what promises have I made that I have not yet kept? So genre, to me, is a promise. You build up a promise in your writing at the beginning of the book, and then I feel like as we write, we have to honour that. So if we bring something up that's super interesting, bring it back or whatever. Keep your promises. Keep your narrative promises. It's true of really any genre. Let's say you're writing a romance. You want to respect the conventions, but not fall into the clichés. So there's going to be a moment where the lovers meet, right? They haven't met before. I don't know what they call it, a meet cute or a cute meet. I think they call it a meet cute, I guess. Jo: Yes. They do. Steven: Anyway. So they're going to meet, right? And you're like, “Oh, I'll just have them meet.” Well, try to do it in a way we haven't seen before. Add something else to the scene. Add a third element, as my friend Bob Dugoni likes to say. Add something a little bit that we're like, “Huh, I've never seen that before.” We know they're going to meet, but let them meet in a way that we don't anticipate, that we can't predict right away, that isn't exactly by the numbers, and then you're going to be on the right track. Jo: So then, talking about reader expectations and genre, I wondered if I could also ask you about your Christian faith, because many people listening are people of faith, and some people want to write a Christian book. Other people want to bring their faith into, say, a mainstream type thriller in an authentic way. So how do you balance your faith and your writing? Because I think you have some series that are more sort of Christian than others. Steven: It's interesting. When my first novel came out—The Pawn, like a chess piece, The Pawn—back almost 20 years ago. Gosh, 20 years ago. Nineteen. But anyway, when it came out, someone wrote to me and said, “Is this a Christian book?” I'm like, “What would make a book not Christian?” I'm like, maybe if it has a lot of idolatry, or witchcraft, or maybe sexuality or graphic violence. Then I'm like, oh, wait, that's… No, that's the Old Testament. So it's interesting, because people have asked me similar questions over the years. My books are not sermons in disguise. I'm trying to write great stories that anyone of any background or faith will enjoy. I always ask big questions. I let my characters wrestle with questions that matter, I think. Do my choices matter? Is there hope? Is there a God? Is there no God? Do I have free will? Can I find forgiveness? Can I offer forgiveness? Can I extend it, or whatever? So I always try to base the stories on something deeper. I do believe that there is good and there's evil in the world. That's part of my worldview. So when people talk about moral ambiguity, I don't want to write or read something that's morally ambiguous. I want moral complexity, but I also want moral clarity. So whenever you write, the question is, what are you justifying and what are you condemning? And if you're justifying something that's morally—I would say wrong, actually—then I don't feel like that's the kind of book I would want to write. So I want to write stories that explore good and evil, that explore our world, human nature, in an honest way. I feel like when you write honest stories, people, no matter what their background or whatever faith, then they will connect with it. I think a lot of people, if they start off with an agenda—whatever that agenda might be, let's say it is a Christian agenda, like I want people to trust in Jesus, let's say—so they write a story. Well, what you're doing, you're actually starting your story with an answer, and drama is not built on answers, it's built on questions. So you're actually diminishing the amount of tension. You're also diminishing the possibility of a pivot, because we all get where you're going. It's predictable, but there's probably no surprise. You're diminishing the payoff at the end, because we're like, “I saw that coming. I exactly knew where you were going with this.” So instead, I don't start with an answer. I always start with a question, or in some cases a moral dilemma, like, what's more important, protecting the innocent or telling the truth? That's interesting to me. If I had to choose between the two, would I tell the truth or would I protect the innocent? It's interesting, because people might come down on different sides of it. They might say, “Oh, you should always tell the truth,” or they say, “You always should protect the innocent.” I'm like, okay, well, let's explore it. Let's literally ask the question. So I come from a certain worldview, but I've written characters who have very different worldviews from me. I'm always just trying to be honest with the character, ask big questions, tell a story that examines human nature and sort of the paradoxes of the human condition in a way that will resonate with really whoever the readers might be. Jo: And of course that worldview is part of your author voice and part of what readers come to you for. I also notice that you have some pretty diverse different series. How do you manage that diversity of series under your one brand? Do you find your readers move from one to the other, or do you have different readerships? Steven: You mentioned the B word—brand. That's what publishers are always telling me: “What's your brand?” I'm like, “I don't know. You tell me what my brand is.” I've done fantasy, science fiction, conspiracy. I've done spies and police procedurals and crime and suspense, thrills, whatever. So I would say the one thing that really ties all my stories together is probably just suspense. They are stories with suspense. Some are more high concept thrillers, some are more dark fantasy, but they're built around suspense. So I guess that would be intelligent suspense, maybe, if I was trying to come up with a brand. Something like that. Because I don't want them to be dumbed down. They're not dumbed down stories, so they're a little bit more complex than you might find in other places, but always built around the idea of suspense. Suspense to me is basically—my definition is apprehension born of concern. So we're concerned about a character, and we're apprehensive because there's peril around the bend, or right in front of them. So I want the readers to really care about a character, and then try to build the story and the suspense around that empathy or sympathy that we have for the character. Jo: I think it's really interesting, because again, you mentioned 2007—we're coming up on 20 years since first published. The publishing industry has changed a lot. So what do you think has changed most in publishing for you, and what are your thoughts on routes to market for new authors these days? Or even established authors who are finding that things have changed, which they obviously have. Steven: Well, I'm not a marketer, I'm not a businessman. I'm just a storyteller at heart. So I just keep writing stories that I would be intrigued with reading, stories that I feel like are resonant. Then I look for publishers for those. I've been to a variety of different publishers over the last decade. I've done some different types of stories. I feel like you have to just write the story instead of trying to write for a specific market trend or something like that. So I might not make as much as some of my friends, I might not sell as many books, but I feel like I have to write certain stories if they grab ahold of me. There's a Native American—I think the Pawnee tribe, anyway, in the United States—but they were saying that all the stories that exist are out there already, and when one finds you, it's your job to share it with the world. I think that's kind of interesting. Sometimes—maybe it's just true for you, I don't know, Jo—but it's like a story will grab hold of me, or an idea, and I'm like, “I can't shake it.” That's a story that I want to tell the world. I would say that stories are becoming shorter, dumber. People are trying to write faster. They're trying to write several books a year, and as a result of that, some of the quality has gone down. This is all unfortunate. I'm still sort of a dinosaur. I still tend to write longer, complex stories. But people have shorter attention spans and whatever, and they're not reading as much. The structure of stories, I think, is changing slightly, where people will have to spend more time on a hook to really grab the attention of the readers. Then there might be a longer slow period, or more info dumping, which I'm not a fan of. So they kind of look like, “I want to get readers hooked at the beginning, and then get them to flip pages.” So I tend to set up my stories a little bit differently than that. So I'm not the best guy to ask about marketing and sales and stuff like that. I feel like, write a story that will not let you go. And if you do that, I feel like that's the kind of story that will resonate with readers, because there's a deep honesty to it. You care, you're passionate about it. It's not just something you're trying to spin out just to sell books. That's my view. Jo: I guess I also feel that writers are doing other things. So you have non-fiction, you have your podcast, you do events. I see you sell books direct from your website. It's like the business expands into multiple streams of income, so that the art doesn't have to pay all the bills. Steven: That's interesting. I do love to teach writing at conferences, events, and speak at different things. So I guess if you think about it that way, my brand might be just story, or storytelling, or something like that. Really trying to get out there, and whether it's speaking or writing, just tell a great story. So it's so interesting when I work with publishers and they'll ask, “What's your brand?” Basically it's like, “What's your box?” is really what they're asking. What box can we stick you in that will make it easy for us to package you and sell you? I know myself, and just a lot of authors that I know, we don't think in a box. Every one of my stories is not boxy. It's not the same. They're different. I know a lot of authors like that too. So it's unfortunate. I get it, that it's part of them trying to market and sell the books. I understand that, but I think being honest, genuine with the story, doing the very best you can, writing a worthy book, and then letting them come up with a way to categorise it, is probably the best bet. I don't know. Jo: We're almost out of time, but this is obviously a podcast, and you have a podcast. So tell us about The Story Blender Podcast and what people might find over there. Steven: Yes, I appreciate it. Basically, I interview some of the leading writers and storytellers in the world every week, and the goal is for great storytellers to share the secrets of great storytelling. So I basically pick their brains, kind of like what you were doing with me today, and find out what projects they're working on, and really just try to get insights into storytelling. So it's tons of fun. I've been doing it now for a number of years, and I guess I've interviewed over 250 different authors and writers from around the world, and so I always enjoy it. It's a ton of fun. It's The Story Blender, and people can find it anywhere. Jo: So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Steven: Probably the best place is StevenJames.net. I think I'm on different socials @readstevenjames, so you can look me up there—Facebook, Instagram, X, and so on. I think they're all under readstevenjames. Check out the website, drop me a note. I always enjoy hearing from readers. Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Steven. That was great. Steven: Thanks, Jo. I appreciate it. Good luck. The post Organic Writing And The Power Of The Pivot In Fiction With Steven James first appeared on The Creative Penn.

9 Hours and 55 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.This is the first 10 episodes of our ongoing Continental Philosophy series with Thomas777. He covers Aristotle, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Grotius, and Hegel.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

This week on the Mark Levin Show, this American Marxism movement is a threat and it traces back to self-identified progressives from Woodrow Wilson onward who rejected the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. They imposed redistribution of wealth, oppressor-oppressed frameworks, and related policies through the Democrat Party, which has never fully accepted Americanism or constitutionalism—evident in the rise of Democratic socialists, Marxists, and radical Hamas/Hezbollah/Iran-supporting Islamists within it. Another converging threat is the Woke Reich neo-fascists - authoritarians in Republican and other circles who attack Christianity, Judaism, Israel, and Christian Zionists while holding pro-Putin and pro-Sharia positions. Later, what made the Declaration of Independence remarkable was that it was unprecedented in human history. The Declaration serves as the foundational basis for the nation and its Constitution, celebrating America's purpose. Critics like Presidents Obama and Woodrow Wilson have rejected or downplayed its first part on the Creator and principles, focusing instead on the list of grievances against the king to advance new ideologies; however, President Coolidge defended these enduring, universal ideas from Aristotle and Locke as perpetual, not to be dismissed. The Declaration's concise statement of American identity is incompatible with Marxism, Islamism, and fascism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Thursday's Mark Levin Show, what made the Declaration of Independence remarkable was that it was unprecedented in human history. The Declaration serves as the foundational basis for the nation and its Constitution, celebrating America's purpose. Critics like Presidents Obama and Woodrow Wilson have rejected or downplayed its first part on the Creator and principles, focusing instead on the list of grievances against the king to advance new ideologies; however, President Coolidge defended these enduring, universal ideas from Aristotle and Locke as perpetual, not to be dismissed. The Declaration's concise statement of American identity is incompatible with Marxism, Islamism, and fascism. Also, President Reagan was a great admirer and friend of Milton Friedman. He often sought his input on economic policies. During Reagan's presidency, there was massive economic growth, and he won two historic landslide elections, popular vote and electoral college, like no Republican before or since. Alexander Hamilton would grow increasingly supportive of a powerful central government. He would argue with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on their approaches to government during the Washington administration and beyond. Hamilton argued for implied powers under the Constitution, which infuriated Jefferson and Madison. Hamilton claimed the necessary and proper clause was essentially a ticket to significantly expanding federal action. Later, Americanism and capitalism are philosophies enabling individual decision-making under the Declaration and Constitution, whereas ideologies are fanatical beliefs imposed society-wide regardless of consequences. Communism is defective and anti-human, misreading human nature by suppressing free will, reason, debate, and academic freedom in favor of brainwashing, conformity, and central control, as seen in places like Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and China, and similarly with Islamists. Nationalists, populists, and Marxists attack the American experiment, economic system, and culture through emotion, slogans of equality, and activist government, showing overlaps reminiscent of 1930s fascists and communists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices