Podcasts about Belloc

We always say that conversion is a possibility for anyone. But it can be tempting to think that there’s no hope for some people. Dr. Joseph Pearce used to be one of those people. He used to be a white supremacist neo-Nazi, and even spent time in prison. Now? He’s one of the top Catholic intellectuals in the world, with works on Lewis, Tolkien, Shakespeare, Belloc, and more! He also has served as an editor for the Augustine Institute, the Imaginative Conservative, and other intellectual publications. All of this was possible because Dr. Pearce accepted the love and forgiveness of Christ. In this episode, you’ll hear about his conversion and learn: - What initially attracted him to white supremacy- How God rescued him from racism- How to have a cultural identity without being hateful And more!

We welcome back author and scholar Dr. Anthony Esolen to discuss how we can rebuild culture thought his web magazine, Word and Song. How can music, poetry, and positive media end the addiction to the cult of the expert? The Temptations of the Intellectual Word & Song Magazine: Reclaiming the Good, the Beautiful, and the True Restoring the Rules of a Healthy Society Real Philosophy for Real People: Tools for Truthful Living The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord My Christmas with Belloc and Chesterton Questions? Comments? Feedback? Ask Father!

In this Edelman Editions podcast, Jeremy Lucas, Managing Director, Corporate Reputation at Edelman launches our new Leaders in Action series. This series will feature leaders from some of the world's biggest businesses and brands to understand how they drive trust through action, examining the ways organisations can be additive to the world around them and the opportunity businesses have to serve society. To kick off the new series, we're joined by Vincent Belloc, Managing Director and Vice President of PayPal in the UK. Vincent has led the UK PayPal business for over two years now, having a spent almost a decade at the e-commerce and tech giant. Our 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer found that people want more business leadership, not less. 49% of the 1,150 people surveyed across the UK trust business to do what is right, compared to 42% for government, and 35% for media. The results are unequivocal: the British public expect companies to go further and dig deeper. They need to do more than simply transact with the world. They need to go beyond just selling products or services. They need to constantly demonstrate value and benefit they provide to the communities in which they operate. In this episode, Jeremy and Vincent discuss what motivates and inspires him, as Vincent gives insights into his career and what drives him as a leader.

In this episode I chat with writer, novelist, and lawyer, Scott J. Bloch about hisconversion to the Catholic faith, the pedagogical influence of John Senior and the Integrated Humanities program at the University of Kansas chronicled in his most recent novel, 'Mount Wonder,' the  intellectual legacy of Hilaire Belloc, and the future of Catholic higher education. Scott's bio and writings can be found in the links below:https://scottbloch.com/https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mount-wonder-scott-j-bloch/1141676690https://www.christianbook.com/essential-belloc-prophet-our-times-ebook/scott-bloch/9781935302957/pd/84954EB

Episode one hundred and fifty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “See Emily Play", the birth of the UK underground, and the career of Roger Barrett, known as Syd. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "First Girl I Loved" by the Incredible String Band. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this time, due to the number of Pink Floyd songs. I referred to two biographies of Barrett in this episode -- A Very Irregular Head by Rob Chapman is the one I would recommend, and the one whose narrative I have largely followed. Some of the information has been superseded by newer discoveries, but Chapman is almost unique in people writing about Barrett in that he actually seems to care about the facts and try to get things right rather than make up something more interesting. Crazy Diamond by Mike Watkinson and Pete Anderson is much less reliable, but does have quite a few interview quotes that aren't duplicated by Chapman. Information about Joe Boyd comes from Boyd's book White Bicycles. In this and future episodes on Pink Floyd I'm also relying on Nick Mason's Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd and Pink Floyd: All the Songs by Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin. The compilation Relics contains many of the most important tracks from Barrett's time with Pink Floyd, while Piper at the Gates of Dawn is his one full album with them. Those who want a fuller history of his time with the group will want to get Piper and also the box set Cambridge St/ation 1965-1967. Barrett only released two solo albums during his career. They're available as a bundle here. Completists will also want the rarities and outtakes collection Opel.  ERRATA: I talk about “Interstellar Overdrive” as if Barrett wrote it solo. The song is credited to all four members, but it was Barrett who came up with the riff I talk about. And annoyingly, given the lengths I went to to deal correctly with Barrett's name, I repeatedly refer to "Dave" Gilmour, when Gilmour prefers David. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A note before I begin -- this episode deals with drug use and mental illness, so anyone who might be upset by those subjects might want to skip this one. But also, there's a rather unique problem in how I deal with the name of the main artist in the story today. The man everyone knows as Syd Barrett was born Roger Barrett, used that name with his family for his whole life, and in later years very strongly disliked being called "Syd", yet everyone other than his family called him that at all times until he left the music industry, and that's the name that appears on record labels, including his solo albums. I don't believe it's right to refer to people by names they choose not to go by themselves, but the name Barrett went by throughout his brief period in the public eye was different from the one he went by later, and by all accounts he was actually distressed by its use in later years. So what I'm going to do in this episode is refer to him as "Roger Barrett" when a full name is necessary for disambiguation or just "Barrett" otherwise, but I'll leave any quotes from other people referring to "Syd" as they were originally phrased. In future episodes on Pink Floyd, I'll refer to him just as Barrett, but in episodes where I discuss his influence on other artists, I will probably have to use "Syd Barrett" because otherwise people who haven't listened to this episode won't know what on Earth I'm talking about. Anyway, on with the show. “It's gone!” sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. “So beautiful and strange and new. Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!” he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound. “Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,” he said presently. “O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.” That's a quote from a chapter titled "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" from the classic children's book The Wind in the Willows -- a book which for most of its length is a fairly straightforward story about anthropomorphic animals having jovial adventures, but which in that one chapter has Rat and Mole suddenly encounter the Great God Pan and have a hallucinatory, transcendental experience caused by his music, one so extreme it's wiped from their minds, as they simply cannot process it. The book, and the chapter, was a favourite of Roger Barrett, a young child born in Cambridge in 1946. Barrett came from an intellectual but not especially bookish family. His father, Dr. Arthur Barrett, was a pathologist -- there's a room in Addenbrooke's Hospital named after him -- but he was also an avid watercolour painter, a world-leading authority on fungi, and a member of the Cambridge Philharmonic Society who was apparently an extraordinarily good singer; while his mother Winifred was a stay-at-home mother who was nonetheless very active in the community, organising a local Girl Guide troupe. They never particularly encouraged their family to read, but young Roger did particularly enjoy the more pastoral end of the children's literature of the time. As well as the Wind in the Willows he also loved Alice in Wonderland, and the Little Grey Men books -- a series of stories about tiny gnomes and their adventures in the countryside. But his two big passions were music and painting. He got his first ukulele at age eleven, and by the time his father died, just before Roger's sixteenth birthday, he had graduated to playing a full-sized guitar. At the time his musical tastes were largely the same as those of any other British teenager -- he liked Chubby Checker, for example -- though he did have a tendency to prefer the quirkier end of things, and some of the first songs he tried to play on the guitar were those of Joe Brown: [Excerpt: Joe Brown, "I'm Henry VIII I Am"] Barrett grew up in Cambridge, and for those who don't know it, Cambridge is an incubator of a very particular kind of eccentricity. The university tends to attract rather unworldly intellectual overachievers to the city -- people who might not be able to survive in many other situations but who can thrive in that one -- and every description of Barrett's father suggests he was such a person -- Barrett's sister Rosemary has said that she believes that most of the family were autistic, though whether this is a belief based on popular media portrayals or a deeper understanding I don't know. But certainly Cambridge is full of eccentric people with remarkable achievements, and such people tend to have children with a certain type of personality, who try simultaneously to live up to and rebel against expectations of greatness that come from having parents who are regarded as great, and to do so with rather less awareness of social norms than the typical rebel has. In the case of Roger Barrett, he, like so many others of his generation, was encouraged to go into the sciences -- as indeed his father had, both in his career as a pathologist and in his avocation as a mycologist. The fifties and sixties were a time, much like today, when what we now refer to as the STEM subjects were regarded as new and exciting and modern. But rather than following in his father's professional footsteps, Roger Barrett instead followed his hobbies. Dr. Barrett was a painter and musician in his spare time, and Roger was to turn to those things to earn his living. For much of his teens, it seemed that art would be the direction he would go in. He was, everyone agrees, a hugely talented painter, and he was particularly noted for his mastery of colours. But he was also becoming more and more interested in R&B music, especially the music of Bo Diddley, who became his new biggest influence: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "Who Do You Love?"] He would often spend hours with his friend Dave Gilmour, a much more advanced guitarist, trying to learn blues riffs. By this point Barrett had already received the nickname "Syd". Depending on which story you believe, he either got it when he started attending a jazz club where an elderly jazzer named Sid Barrett played, and the people were amused that their youngest attendee, like one of the oldest, was called Barrett; or, more plausibly, he turned up to a Scout meeting once wearing a flat cap rather than the normal scout beret, and he got nicknamed "Sid" because it made him look working-class and "Sid" was a working-class sort of name. In 1962, by the time he was sixteen, Barrett joined a short-lived group called Geoff Mott and the Mottoes, on rhythm guitar. The group's lead singer, Geoff Mottlow, would go on to join a band called the Boston Crabs who would have a minor hit in 1965 with a version of the Coasters song "Down in Mexico": [Excerpt: The Boston Crabs, "Down in Mexico"] The bass player from the Mottoes, Tony Sainty, and the drummer Clive Welham, would go on to form another band, The Jokers Wild, with Barrett's friend Dave Gilmour. Barrett also briefly joined another band, Those Without, but his time with them was similarly brief. Some sources -- though ones I consider generally less reliable -- say that the Mottoes' bass player wasn't Tony Sainty, but was Roger Waters, the son of one of Barrett's teachers, and that one of the reasons the band split up was that Waters had moved down to London to study architecture. I don't think that's the case, but it's definitely true that Barrett knew Waters, and when he moved to London himself the next year to go to Camberwell Art College, he moved into a house where Waters was already living. Two previous tenants at the same house, Nick Mason and Richard Wright, had formed a loose band with Waters and various other amateur musicians like Keith Noble, Shelagh Noble, and Clive Metcalfe. That band was sometimes known as the Screaming Abdabs, The Megadeaths, or The Tea Set -- the latter as a sly reference to slang terms for cannabis -- but was mostly known at first as Sigma 6, named after a manifesto by the novelist Alexander Trocchi for a kind of spontaneous university. They were also sometimes known as Leonard's Lodgers, after the landlord of the home that Barrett was moving into, Mike Leonard, who would occasionally sit in on organ and would later, as the band became more of a coherent unit, act as a roadie and put on light shows behind them -- Leonard was himself very interested in avant-garde and experimental art, and it was his idea to play around with the group's lighting. By the time Barrett moved in with Waters in 1964, the group had settled on the Tea Set name, and consisted of Waters on bass, Mason on drums, Wright on keyboards, singer Chris Dennis, and guitarist Rado Klose. Of the group, Klose was the only one who was a skilled musician -- he was a very good jazz guitarist, while the other members were barely adequate. By this time Barrett's musical interests were expanding to include folk music -- his girlfriend at the time talked later about him taking her to see Bob Dylan on his first UK tour and thinking "My first reaction was seeing all these people like Syd. It was almost as if every town had sent one Syd Barrett there. It was my first time seeing people like him." But the music he was most into was the blues. And as the Tea Set were turning into a blues band, he joined them. He even had a name for the new band that would make them more bluesy. He'd read the back of a record cover which had named two extremely obscure blues musicians -- musicians he may never even have heard. Pink Anderson: [Excerpt: Pink Anderson, "Boll Weevil"] And Floyd Council: [Excerpt: Floyd Council, "Runaway Man Blues"] Barrett suggested that they put together the names of the two bluesmen, and presumably because "Anderson Council" didn't have quite the right ring, they went for The Pink Floyd -- though for a while yet they would sometimes still perform as The Tea Set, and they were sometimes also called The Pink Floyd Sound. Dennis left soon after Barrett joined, and the new five-piece Pink Floyd Sound started trying to get more gigs. They auditioned for Ready Steady Go! and were turned down, but did get some decent support slots, including for a band called the Tridents: [Excerpt: The Tridents, "Tiger in Your Tank"] The members of the group were particularly impressed by the Tridents' guitarist and the way he altered his sound using feedback -- Barrett even sent a letter to his girlfriend with a drawing of the guitarist, one Jeff Beck, raving about how good he was. At this point, the group were mostly performing cover versions, but they did have a handful of originals, and it was these they recorded in their first demo sessions in late 1964 and early 1965. They included "Walk With Me Sydney", a song written by Roger Waters as a parody of "Work With Me Annie" and "Dance With Me Henry" -- and, given the lyrics, possibly also Hank Ballard's follow-up "Henry's Got Flat Feet (Can't Dance No More) and featuring Rick Wright's then-wife Juliette Gale as Etta James to Barrett's Richard Berry: [Excerpt: The Tea Set, "Walk With Me Sydney"] And four songs by Barrett, including one called "Double-O Bo" which was a Bo Diddley rip-off, and "Butterfly", the most interesting of these early recordings: [Excerpt: The Tea Set, "Butterfly"] At this point, Barrett was very unsure of his own vocal abilities, and wrote a letter to his girlfriend saying "Emo says why don't I give up 'cos it sounds horrible, and I would but I can't get Fred to join because he's got a group (p'raps you knew!) so I still have to sing." "Fred" was a nickname for his old friend Dave Gilmour, who was playing in his own band, Joker's Wild, at this point. Summer 1965 saw two important events in the life of the group. The first was that Barrett took LSD for the first time. The rest of the group weren't interested in trying it, and would indeed generally be one of the more sober bands in the rock business, despite the reputation their music got. The other members would for the most part try acid once or twice, around late 1966, but generally steer clear of it. Barrett, by contrast, took it on a very regular basis, and it would influence all the work he did from that point on. The other event was that Rado Klose left the group. Klose was the only really proficient musician in the group, but he had very different tastes to the other members, preferring to play jazz to R&B and pop, and he was also falling behind in his university studies, and decided to put that ahead of remaining in the band. This meant that the group members had to radically rethink the way they were making music. They couldn't rely on instrumental proficiency, so they had to rely on ideas. One of the things they started to do was use echo. They got primitive echo devices and put both Barrett's guitar and Wright's keyboard through them, allowing them to create new sounds that hadn't been heard on stage before. But they were still mostly doing the same Slim Harpo and Bo Diddley numbers everyone else was doing, and weren't able to be particularly interesting while playing them. But for a while they carried on doing the normal gigs, like a birthday party they played in late 1965, where on the same bill was a young American folk singer named Paul Simon, and Joker's Wild, the band Dave Gilmour was in, who backed Simon on a version of "Johnny B. Goode". A couple of weeks after that party, Joker's Wild went into the studio to record their only privately-pressed five-song record, of them performing recent hits: [Excerpt: Joker's Wild, "Walk Like a Man"] But The Pink Floyd Sound weren't as musically tight as Joker's Wild, and they couldn't make a living as a cover band even if they wanted to. They had to do something different. Inspiration then came from a very unexpected source. I mentioned earlier that one of the names the group had been performing under had been inspired by a manifesto for a spontaneous university by the writer Alexander Trocchi. Trocchi's ideas had actually been put into practice by an organisation calling itself the London Free School, based in Notting Hill. The London Free School was an interesting mixture of people from what was then known as the New Left, but who were already rapidly aging, the people who had been the cornerstone of radical campaigning in the late fifties and early sixties, who had run the Aldermaston marches against nuclear weapons and so on, and a new breed of countercultural people who in a year or two would be defined as hippies but at the time were not so easy to pigeonhole. These people were mostly politically radical but very privileged people -- one of the founder members of the London Free School was Peter Jenner, who was the son of a vicar and the grandson of a Labour MP -- and they were trying to put their radical ideas into practice. The London Free School was meant to be a collective of people who would help each other and themselves, and who would educate each other. You'd go to the collective wanting to learn how to do something, whether that's how to improve the housing in your area or navigate some particularly difficult piece of bureaucracy, or how to play a musical instrument, and someone who had that skill would teach you how to do it, while you hopefully taught them something else of value. The London Free School, like all such utopian schemes, ended up falling apart, but it had a wider cultural impact than most such schemes. Britain's first underground newspaper, the International Times, was put together by people involved in the Free School, and the annual Notting Hill Carnival, which is now one of the biggest outdoor events in Britain every year with a million attendees, came from the merger of outdoor events organised by the Free School with older community events. A group of musicians called AMM was associated with many of the people involved in the Free School. AMM performed totally improvised music, with no structure and no normal sense of melody and harmony: [Excerpt: AMM, "What Is There In Uselesness To Cause You Distress?"] Keith Rowe, the guitarist in AMM, wanted to find his own technique uninfluenced by American jazz guitarists, and thought of that in terms that appealed very strongly to the painterly Barrett, saying "For the Americans to develop an American school of painting, they somehow had to ditch or lose European easel painting techniques. They had to make a break with the past. What did that possibly mean if you were a jazz guitar player? For me, symbolically, it was Pollock laying the canvas on the floor, which immediately abandons European easel technique. I could see that by laying the canvas down, it became inappropriate to apply easel techniques. I thought if I did that with a guitar, I would just lose all those techniques, because they would be physically impossible to do." Rowe's technique-free technique inspired Barrett to make similar noises with his guitar, and to think less in terms of melody and harmony than pure sound. AMM's first record came out in 1966. Four of the Free School people decided to put together their own record label, DNA, and they got an agreement with Elektra Records to distribute its first release -- Joe Boyd, the head of Elektra in the UK, was another London Free School member, and someone who had plenty of experience with disruptive art already, having been on the sound engineering team at the Newport Folk Festival when Dylan went electric. AMM went into the studio and recorded AMMMusic: [Excerpt: AMM, "What Is There In Uselesness To Cause You Distress?"] After that came out, though, Peter Jenner, one of the people who'd started the label, came to a realisation. He said later "We'd made this one record with AMM. Great record, very seminal, seriously avant-garde, but I'd started adding up and I'd worked out that the deal we had, we got two percent of retail, out of which we, the label, had to pay for recording costs and pay ourselves. I came to the conclusion that we were going to have to sell a hell of a lot of records just to pay the recording costs, let alone pay ourselves any money and build a label, so I realised we had to have a pop band because pop bands sold a lot of records. It was as simple as that and I was as naive as that." Jenner abandoned DNA records for the moment, and he and his friend Andrew King decided they were going to become pop managers. and they found The Pink Floyd Sound playing at an event at the Marquee, one of a series of events that were variously known as Spontaneous Underground and The Trip. Other participants in those events included Soft Machine; Mose Allison; Donovan, performing improvised songs backed by sitar players; Graham Bond; a performer who played Bach pieces while backed by African drummers; and The Poison Bellows, a poetry duo consisting of Spike Hawkins and Johnny Byrne, who may of all of these performers be the one who other than Pink Floyd themselves has had the most cultural impact in the UK -- after writing the exploitation novel Groupie and co-writing a film adaptation of Spike Milligan's war memoirs, Byrne became a TV screenwriter, writing many episodes of Space: 1999 and Doctor Who before creating the long-running TV series Heartbeat. Jenner and King decided they wanted to sign The Pink Floyd Sound and make records with them, and the group agreed -- but only after their summer holidays. They were all still students, and so they dispersed during the summer. Waters and Wright went on holiday to Greece, where they tried acid for the first of only a small number of occasions and were unimpressed, while Mason went on a trip round America by Greyhound bus. Barrett, meanwhile, stayed behind, and started writing more songs, encouraged by Jenner, who insisted that the band needed to stop relying on blues covers and come up with their own material, and who saw Barrett as the focus of the group. Jenner later described them as "Four not terribly competent musicians who managed between them to create something that was extraordinary. Syd was the main creative drive behind the band - he was the singer and lead guitarist. Roger couldn't tune his bass because he was tone deaf, it had to be tuned by Rick. Rick could write a bit of a tune and Roger could knock out a couple of words if necessary. 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun' was the first song Roger ever wrote, and he only did it because Syd encouraged everyone to write. Syd was very hesitant about his writing, but when he produced these great songs everyone else thought 'Well, it must be easy'" Of course, we know this isn't quite true -- Waters had written "Walk with me Sydney" -- but it is definitely the case that everyone involved thought of Barrett as the main creative force in the group, and that he was the one that Jenner was encouraging to write new material. After the summer holidays, the group reconvened, and one of their first actions was to play a benefit for the London Free School. Jenner said later "Andrew King and myself were both vicars' sons, and we knew that when you want to raise money for the parish you have to have a social. So in a very old-fashioned way we said 'let's put on a social'. Like in the Just William books, like a whist drive. We thought 'You can't have a whist drive. That's not cool. Let's have a band. That would be cool.' And the only band we knew was the band I was starting to get involved with." After a couple of these events went well, Joe Boyd suggested that they make those events a regular club night, and the UFO Club was born. Jenner and King started working on the light shows for the group, and then bringing in other people, and the light show became an integral part of the group's mystique -- rather than standing in a spotlight as other groups would, they worked in shadows, with distorted kaleidoscopic lights playing on them, distancing themselves from the audience. The highlight of their sets was a long piece called "Interstellar Overdrive", and this became one of the group's first professional recordings, when they went into the studio with Joe Boyd to record it for the soundtrack of a film titled Tonite Let's All Make Love in London. There are conflicting stories about the inspiration for the main riff for "Interstellar Overdrive". One apparent source is the riff from Love's version of the Bacharach and David song "My Little Red Book". Depending on who you ask, either Barrett was obsessed with Love's first album and copied the riff, or Peter Jenner tried to hum him the riff and Barrett copied what Jenner was humming: [Excerpt: Love, "My Little Red Book"] More prosaically, Roger Waters has always claimed that the main inspiration was from "Old Ned", Ron Grainer's theme tune for the sitcom Steptoe and Son (which for American listeners was remade over there as Sanford and Son): [Excerpt: Ron Grainer, "Old Ned"] Of course it's entirely possible, and even likely, that Barrett was inspired by both, and if so that would neatly sum up the whole range of Pink Floyd's influences at this point. "My Little Red Book" was a cover by an American garage-psych/folk-rock band of a hit by Manfred Mann, a group who were best known for pop singles but were also serious blues and jazz musicians, while Steptoe and Son was a whimsical but dark and very English sitcom about a way of life that was slowly disappearing. And you can definitely hear both influences in the main riff of the track they recorded with Boyd: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Interstellar Overdrive"] "Interstellar Overdrive" was one of two types of song that The Pink Floyd were performing at this time -- a long, extended, instrumental psychedelic excuse for freaky sounds, inspired by things like the second disc of Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention. When they went into the studio again with Boyd later in January 1967, to record what they hoped would be their first single, they recorded two of the other kind of songs -- whimsical story songs inspired equally by the incidents of everyday life and by children's literature. What became the B-side, "Candy and a Currant Bun", was based around the riff from "Smokestack Lightnin'" by Howlin' Wolf: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightnin'"] That song had become a favourite on the British blues scene, and was thus the inspiration for many songs of the type that get called "quintessentially English". Ray Davies, who was in many ways the major songwriter at this time who was closest to Barrett stylistically, would a year later use the riff for the Kinks song "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", but in this case Barrett had originally written a song titled "Let's Roll Another One", about sexual longing and cannabis. The lyrics were hastily rewritten in the studio to remove the controversial drug references-- and supposedly this caused some conflict between Barrett and Waters, with Waters pushing for the change, while Barrett argued against it, though like many of the stories from this period this sounds like the kind of thing that gets said by people wanting to push particular images of both men. Either way, the lyric was changed to be about sweet treats rather than drugs, though the lascivious elements remained in. And some people even argue that there was another lyric change -- where Barrett sings "walk with me", there's a slight "f" sound in his vocal. As someone who does a lot of microphone work myself, it sounds to me like just one of those things that happens while recording, but a lot of people are very insistent that Barrett is deliberately singing a different word altogether: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Candy and a Currant Bun"] The A-side, meanwhile, was inspired by real life. Both Barrett and Waters had mothers who used  to take in female lodgers, and both had regularly had their lodgers' underwear stolen from washing lines. While they didn't know anything else about the thief, he became in Barrett's imagination a man who liked to dress up in the clothing after he stole it: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Arnold Layne"] After recording the two tracks with Joe Boyd, the natural assumption was that the record would be put out on Elektra, the label which Boyd worked for in the UK, but Jac Holzman, the head of Elektra records, wasn't interested, and so a bidding war began for the single, as by this point the group were the hottest thing in London. For a while it looked like they were going to sign to Track Records, the label owned by the Who's management, but in the end EMI won out. Right as they signed, the News of the World was doing a whole series of articles about pop stars and their drug use, and the last of the articles talked about The Pink Floyd and their association with LSD, even though they hadn't released a record yet. EMI had to put out a press release saying that the group were not psychedelic, insisting"The Pink Floyd are not trying to create hallucinatory effects in their audience." It was only after getting signed that the group became full-time professionals. Waters had by this point graduated from university and was working as a trainee architect, and quit his job to become a pop star. Wright dropped out of university, but Mason and Barrett took sabbaticals. Barrett in particular seems to have seen this very much as a temporary thing, talking about how he was making so much money it would be foolish not to take the opportunity while it lasted, but how he was going to resume his studies in a year. "Arnold Layne" made the top twenty, and it would have gone higher had the pirate radio station Radio London, at the time the single most popular radio station when it came to pop music, not banned the track because of its sexual content. However, it would be the only single Joe Boyd would work on with the group. EMI insisted on only using in-house producers, and so while Joe Boyd would go on to a great career as a producer, and we'll see him again, he was replaced with Norman Smith. Smith had been the chief engineer on the Beatles records up to Rubber Soul, after which he'd been promoted to being a producer in his own right, and Geoff Emerick had taken over. He also had aspirations to pop stardom himself, and a few years later would have a transatlantic hit with "Oh Babe, What Would You Say?" under the name Hurricane Smith: [Excerpt: Hurricane Smith, "Oh Babe, What Would You Say?"] Smith's production of the group would prove controversial among some of the group's longtime fans, who thought that he did too much to curtail their more experimental side, as he would try to get the group to record songs that were more structured and more commercial, and would cut down their improvisations into a more manageable form. Others, notably Peter Jenner, thought that Smith was the perfect producer for the group. They started work on their first album, which was mostly recorded in studio three of Abbey Road, while the Beatles were just finishing off work on Sgt Pepper in studio two. The album was titled The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, after the chapter from The Wind in the Willows, and other than a few extended instrumental showcases, most of the album was made up of short, whimsical, songs by Barrett that were strongly infused with imagery from late-Victorian and Edwardian children's books. This is one of the big differences between the British and American psychedelic scenes. Both the British and American undergrounds were made up of the same type of people -- a mixture of older radical activists, often Communists, who had come up in Britain in the Ban the Bomb campaigns and in America in the Civil Rights movement; and younger people, usually middle-class students with radical politics from a privileged background, who were into experimenting with drugs and alternative lifestyles. But the  social situations were different. In America, the younger members of the underground were angry and scared, as their principal interest was in stopping the war in Vietnam in which so many of them were being killed. And the music of the older generation of the underground, the Civil Rights activists, was shot through with influence from the blues, gospel, and American folk music, with a strong Black influence. So that's what the American psychedelic groups played, for the most part, very bluesy, very angry, music, By contrast, the British younger generation of hippies were not being drafted to go to war, and mostly had little to complain about, other than a feeling of being stifled by their parents' generation's expectations. And while most of them were influenced by the blues, that wasn't the music that had been popular among the older underground people, who had either been listening to experimental European art music or had been influenced by Ewan MacColl and his associates into listening instead to traditional old English ballads, things like the story of Tam Lin or Thomas the Rhymer, where someone is spirited away to the land of the fairies: [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl, "Thomas the Rhymer"] As a result, most British musicians, when exposed to the culture of the underground over here, created music that looked back to an idealised childhood of their grandparents' generation, songs that were nostalgic for a past just before the one they could remember (as opposed to their own childhoods, which had taken place in war or the immediate aftermath of it, dominated by poverty, rationing, and bomb sites (though of course Barrett's childhood in Cambridge had been far closer to this mythic idyll than those of his contemporaries from Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, or London). So almost every British musician who was making music that might be called psychedelic was writing songs that were influenced both by experimental art music and by pre-War popular song, and which conjured up images from older children's books. Most notably of course at this point the Beatles were recording songs like "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" about places from their childhood, and taking lyrical inspiration from Victorian circus posters and the works of Lewis Carroll, but Barrett was similarly inspired. One of the books he loved most as a child was "The Little Grey Men" by BB, a penname for Denys Watkins-Pitchford. The book told the story of three gnomes,  Baldmoney, Sneezewort, and Dodder, and their adventures on a boat when the fourth member of their little group, Cloudberry, who's a bit of a rebellious loner and more adventurous than the other three, goes exploring on his own and they have to go off and find him. Barrett's song "The Gnome" doesn't use any precise details from the book, but its combination of whimsy about a gnome named Grimble-gromble and a reverence for nature is very much in the mould of BB's work: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "The Gnome"] Another huge influence on Barrett was Hillaire Belloc. Belloc is someone who is not read much any more, as sadly he is mostly known for the intense antisemitism in some of his writing, which stains it just as so much of early twentieth-century literature is stained, but he was one of the most influential writers of the early part of the twentieth century. Like his friend GK Chesterton he was simultaneously an author of Catholic apologia and a political campaigner -- he was a Liberal MP for a few years, and a strong advocate of an economic system known as Distributism, and had a peculiar mixture of very progressive and extremely reactionary ideas which resonated with a lot of the atmosphere in the British underground of the time, even though he would likely have profoundly disapproved of them. But Belloc wrote in a variety of styles, including poems for children, which are the works of his that have aged the best, and were a huge influence on later children's writers like Roald Dahl with their gleeful comic cruelty. Barrett's "Matilda Mother" had lyrics that were, other than the chorus where Barrett begs his mother to read him more of the story, taken verbatim from three poems from Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children -- "Jim, Who Ran away from his Nurse, and was Eaten by a Lion", "Henry King (Who chewed bits of String, and was cut off in Dreadful Agonies)", and "Matilda (Who Told Lies and Was Burned to Death)" -- the titles of those give some idea of the kind of thing Belloc would write: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Matilda Mother (early version)"] Sadly for Barrett, Belloc's estate refused to allow permission for his poems to be used, and so he had to rework the lyrics, writing new fairy-tale lyrics for the finished version. Other sources of inspiration for lyrics came from books like the I Ching, which Barrett used for "Chapter 24", having bought a copy from the Indica Bookshop, the same place that John Lennon had bought The Psychedelic Experience, and there's been some suggestion that he was deliberately trying to copy Lennon in taking lyrical ideas from a book of ancient mystic wisdom. During the recording of Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the group continued playing live. As they'd now had a hit single, most of their performances were at Top Rank Ballrooms and other such venues around the country, on bills with other top chart groups, playing to audiences who seemed unimpressed or actively hostile. They also, though made two important appearances. The more well-known of these was at the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, a benefit for International Times magazine with people including Yoko Ono, their future collaborator Ron Geesin, John's Children, Soft Machine, and The Move also performing. The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream is now largely regarded as *the* pivotal moment in the development of the UK counterculture, though even at the time some participants noted that there seemed to be a rift developing between the performers, who were often fairly straightforward beer-drinking ambitious young men who had latched on to kaftans and talk about enlightenment as the latest gimmick they could use to get ahead in the industry, and the audience who seemed to be true believers. Their other major performance was at an event called "Games for May -- Space Age Relaxation for the Climax of Spring", where they were able to do a full long set in a concert space with a quadrophonic sound system, rather than performing in the utterly sub-par environments most pop bands had to at this point. They came up with a new song written for the event, which became their second single, "See Emily Play". [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "See Emily Play"] Emily was apparently always a favourite name of Barrett's, and he even talked with one girlfriend about the possibility of naming their first child Emily, but the Emily of the song seems to have had a specific inspiration. One of the youngest attendees at the London Free School was an actual schoolgirl, Emily Young, who would go along to their events with her schoolfriend Anjelica Huston (who later became a well-known film star). Young is now a world-renowned artist, regarded as arguably Britain's greatest living stone sculptor, but at the time she was very like the other people at the London Free School -- she was from a very privileged background, her father was Wayland Young, 2nd Baron Kennet, a Labour Peer and minister who later joined the SDP. But being younger than the rest of the attendees, and still a little naive, she was still trying to find her own personality, and would take on attributes and attitudes of other people without fully understanding them,  hence the song's opening lines, "Emily tries, but misunderstands/She's often inclined to borrow somebody's dream til tomorrow". The song gets a little darker towards the end though, and the image in the last verse, where she puts on a gown and floats down a river forever *could* be a gentle, pastoral, image of someone going on a boat ride, but it also could be a reference to two rather darker sources. Barrett was known to pick up imagery both from classic literature and from Arthurian legend, and so the lines inevitably conjure up both the idea of Ophelia drowning herself and of the Lady of Shallot in Tennyson's Arthurian poem, who is trapped in a tower but finds a boat, and floats down the river to Camelot but dies before the boat reaches the castle: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "See Emily Play"] The song also evokes very specific memories of Barrett's childhood -- according to Roger Waters, the woods mentioned in the lyrics are meant to be woods in which they had played as children, on the road out of Cambridge towards the Gog and Magog Hills. The song was apparently seven minutes long in its earliest versions, and required a great deal of editing to get down to single length, but it was worth it, as the track made the top ten. And that was where the problems started. There are two different stories told about what happened to Roger Barrett over the next forty years, and both stories are told by people with particular agendas, who want particular versions of him to become the accepted truth. Both stories are, in the extreme versions that have been popularised, utterly incompatible with each other, but both are fairly compatible with the scanty evidence we have. Possibly the truth lies somewhere between them. In one version of the story, around this time Barrett had a total mental breakdown, brought on or exacerbated by his overuse of LSD and Mandrax (a prescription drug consisting of a mixture of the antihistamine diphenhydramine and the sedative methaqualone, which was marketed in the US under the brand-name Quaalude), and that from late summer 1967 on he was unable to lead a normal life, and spent the rest of his life as a burned-out shell. The other version of the story is that Barrett was a little fragile, and did have periods of mental illness, but for the most part was able to function fairly well. In this version of the story, he was neurodivergent, and found celebrity distressing, but more than that he found the whole process of working within commercial restrictions upsetting -- having to appear on TV pop shows and go on package tours was just not something he found himself able to do, but he was responsible for a whole apparatus of people who relied on him and his group for their living. In this telling, he was surrounded by parasites who looked on him as their combination meal-ticket-cum-guru, and was simply not suited for the role and wanted to sabotage it so he could have a private life instead. Either way, *something* seems to have changed in Barrett in a profound way in the early summer of 1967. Joe Boyd talks about meeting him after not having seen him for a few weeks, and all the light being gone from his eyes. The group appeared on Top of the Pops, Britain's top pop TV show, three times to promote "See Emily Play", but by the third time Barrett didn't even pretend to mime along with the single. Towards the end of July, they were meant to record a session for the BBC's Saturday Club radio show, but Barrett walked out of the studio before completing the first song. It's notable that Barrett's non-cooperation or inability to function was very much dependent on circumstance. He was not able to perform for Saturday Club, a mainstream pop show aimed at a mass audience, but gave perfectly good performances on several sessions for John Peel's radio show The Perfumed Garden, a show firmly aimed at Pink Floyd's own underground niche. On the thirty-first of July, three days after the Saturday Club walkout, all the group's performances for the next month were cancelled, due to "nervous exhaustion". But on the eighth of August, they went back into the studio, to record "Scream Thy Last Scream", a song Barrett wrote and which Nick Mason sang: [Excerpt: Pink Floyd, "Scream Thy Last Scream"] That was scheduled as the group's next single, but the record company vetoed it, and it wouldn't see an official release for forty-nine years. Instead they recorded another single, "Apples and Oranges": [Excerpt: Pink Floyd, "Apples and Oranges"] That was the last thing the group released while Barrett was a member. In November 1967 they went on a tour of the US, making appearances on American Bandstand and the Pat Boone Show, as well as playing several gigs. According to legend, Barrett was almost catatonic on the Pat Boone show, though no footage of that appears to be available anywhere -- and the same things were said about their performance on Bandstand, and when that turned up, it turned out Barrett seemed no more uncomfortable miming to their new single than any of the rest of the band, and was no less polite when Dick Clark asked them questions about hamburgers. But on shows on the US tour, Barrett would do things like detune his guitar so it just made clanging sounds, or just play a single note throughout the show. These are, again, things that could be taken in two different ways, and I have no way to judge which is the more correct. On one level, they could be a sign of a chaotic, disordered, mind, someone dealing with severe mental health difficulties. On the other, they're the kind of thing that Barrett was applauded and praised for in the confines of the kind of avant-garde underground audience that would pay to hear AMM or Yoko Ono, the kind of people they'd been performing for less than a year earlier, but which were absolutely not appropriate for a pop group trying to promote their latest hit single. It could be that Barrett was severely unwell, or it could just be that he wanted to be an experimental artist and his bandmates wanted to be pop stars -- and one thing absolutely everyone agrees is that the rest of the group were more ambitious than Barrett was. Whichever was the case, though, something had to give. They cut the US tour short, but immediately started another British package tour, with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Move, Amen Corner and the Nice. After that tour they started work on their next album, A Saucerful of Secrets. Where Barrett was the lead singer and principal songwriter on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, he only sings and writes one song on A Saucerful of Secrets, which is otherwise written by Waters and Wright, and only appears at all on two more of the tracks -- by the time it was released he was out of the group. The last song he tried to get the group to record was called "Have You Got it Yet?" and it was only after spending some time rehearsing it that the rest of the band realised that the song was a practical joke on them -- every time they played it, he would change the song around so they would mess up, and pretend they just hadn't learned the song yet. They brought in Barrett's old friend Dave Gilmour, initially to be a fifth member on stage to give the band some stability in their performances, but after five shows with the five-man lineup they decided just not to bother picking Barrett up, but didn't mention he was out of the group, to avoid awkwardness. At the time, Barrett and Rick Wright were flatmates, and Wright would actually lie to Barrett and say he was just going out to buy a packet of cigarettes, and then go and play gigs without him. After a couple of months of this, it was officially announced that Barrett was leaving the group. Jenner and King went with him, convinced that he was the real talent in the group and would have a solo career, and the group carried on with new management. We'll be looking at them more in future episodes. Barrett made a start at recording a solo album in mid-1968, but didn't get very far. Jenner produced those sessions, and later said "It seemed a good idea to go into the studio because I knew he had the songs. And he would sometimes play bits and pieces and you would think 'Oh that's great.' It was a 'he's got a bit of a cold today and it might get better' approach. It wasn't a cold -- and you knew it wasn't a cold -- but I kept thinking if he did the right things he'd come back to join us. He'd gone out and maybe he'd come back. That was always the analogy in my head. I wanted to make it feel friendly for him, and that where we were was a comfortable place and that he could come back and find himself again. I obviously didn't succeed." A handful of tracks from those sessions have since been released, including a version of “Golden Hair”, a setting by Barrett of a poem by James Joyce that he would later revisit: [Excerpt: Syd Barrett, “Golden Hair (first version)”] Eleven months later, he went back into the studio again, this time with producer Malcolm Jones, to record an album that later became The Madcap Laughs, his first solo album. The recording process for the album has been the source of some controversy, as initially Jones was producing the whole album, and they were working in a way that Barrett never worked before. Where previously he had cut backing tracks first and only later overdubbed his vocals, this time he started by recording acoustic guitar and vocals, and then overdubbed on top of that. But after several sessions, Jones was pulled off the album, and Gilmour and Waters were asked to produce the rest of the sessions. This may seem a bit of a callous decision, since Gilmour was the person who had replaced Barrett in his group, but apparently the two of them had remained friends, and indeed Gilmour thought that Barrett had only got better as a songwriter since leaving the band. Where Malcolm Jones had been trying, by his account, to put out something that sounded like a serious, professional, record, Gilmour and Waters seemed to regard what they were doing more as producing a piece of audio verite documentary, including false starts and studio chatter. Jones believed that this put Barrett in a bad light, saying the outtakes "show Syd, at best as out of tune, which he rarely was, and at worst as out of control (which, again, he never was)." Gilmour and Waters, on the other hand, thought that material was necessary to provide some context for why the album wasn't as slick and professional as some might have hoped. The eventual record was a hodge-podge of different styles from different sessions, with bits from the Jenner sessions, the Jones sessions, and the Waters and Gilmour sessions all mixed together, with some tracks just Barrett badly double-tracking himself with an acoustic guitar, while other tracks feature full backing by Soft Machine. However, despite Jones' accusations that the album was more-or-less sabotaged by Gilmour and Waters, the fact remains that the best tracks on the album are the ones Barrett's former bandmates produced, and there are some magnificent moments on there. But it's a disturbing album to listen to, in the same way other albums by people with clear talent but clear mental illness are, like Skip Spence's Oar, Roky Erickson's later work, or the Beach Boys Love You. In each case, the pleasure one gets is a real pleasure from real aesthetic appreciation of the work, but entangled with an awareness that the work would not exist in that form were the creator not suffering. The pleasure doesn't come from the suffering -- these are real artists creating real art, not the kind of outsider art that is really just a modern-day freak-show -- but it's still inextricable from it: [Excerpt: Syd Barrett, "Dark Globe"] The Madcap Laughs did well enough that Barrett got to record a follow-up, titled simply Barrett. This one was recorded over a period of only a handful of months, with Gilmour and Rick Wright producing, and a band consisting of Gilmour, Wright, and drummer Jerry Shirley. The album is generally considered both more consistent and less interesting than The Madcap Laughs, with less really interesting material, though there are some enjoyable moments on it: [Excerpt: Syd Barrett, "Effervescing Elephant"] But the album is a little aimless, and people who knew him at the time seem agreed that that was a reflection of his life. He had nothing he *needed* to be doing -- no  tour dates, no deadlines, no pressure at all, and he had a bit of money from record royalties -- so he just did nothing at all. The one solo gig he ever played, with the band who backed him on Barrett, lasted four songs, and he walked off half-way through the fourth. He moved back to Cambridge for a while in the early seventies, and he tried putting together a new band with Twink, the drummer of the Pink Fairies and Pretty Things, Fred Frith, and Jack Monck, but Frith left after one gig. The other three performed a handful of shows either as "Stars" or as "Barrett, Adler, and Monck", just in the Cambridge area, but soon Barrett got bored again. He moved back to London, and in 1974 he made one final attempt to make a record, going into the studio with Peter Jenner, where he recorded a handful of tracks that were never released. But given that the titles of those tracks were things like "Boogie #1", "Boogie #2", "Slow Boogie", "Fast Boogie", "Chooka-Chooka Chug Chug" and "John Lee Hooker", I suspect we're not missing out on a lost masterpiece. Around this time there was a general resurgence in interest in Barrett, prompted by David Bowie having recorded a version of "See Emily Play" on his covers album Pin-Ups, which came out in late 1973: [Excerpt: David Bowie, "See Emily Play"] At the same time, the journalist Nick Kent wrote a long profile of Barrett, The Cracked Ballad of Syd Barrett, which like Kent's piece on Brian Wilson a year later, managed to be a remarkable piece of writing with a sense of sympathy for its subject and understanding of his music, but also a less-than-accurate piece of journalism which led to a lot of myths and disinformation being propagated. Barrett briefly visited his old bandmates in the studio in 1975 while they were recording the album Wish You Were Here -- some say even during the recording of the song "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond", which was written specifically about Barrett, though Nick Mason claims otherwise -- and they didn't recognise him at first, because by this point he had a shaved head and had put on a great deal of weight. He seemed rather sad, and that was the last time any of them saw him, apart from Roger Waters, who saw him in Harrod's a few years later. That time, as soon as Barrett recognised Waters, he dropped his bag and ran out of the shop. For the next thirty-one years, Barrett made no public appearances. The last time he ever voluntarily spoke to a journalist, other than telling them to go away, was in 1982, just after he'd moved back to Cambridge, when someone doorstopped him and he answered a few questions and posed for a photo before saying "OK! That's enough, this is distressing for me, thank you." He had the reputation for the rest of his life of being a shut-in, a recluse, an acid casualty. His family, on the other hand, have always claimed that while he was never particularly mentally or physically healthy, he wasn't a shut-in, and would go to the pub, meet up with his mother a couple of times a week to go shopping, and chat to the women behind the counter at Sainsbury's and at the pharmacy. He was also apparently very good with children who lived in the neighbourhood. Whatever the truth of his final decades, though, however mentally well or unwell he actually was, one thing is very clear, which is that he was an extremely private man, who did not want attention, and who was greatly distressed by the constant stream of people coming and looking through his letterbox, trying to take photos of him, trying to interview him, and so on. Everyone on his street knew that when people came asking which was Syd Barrett's house, they were meant to say that no-one of that name lived there -- and they were telling the truth. By the time he moved back, he had stopped answering to "Syd" altogether, and according to his sister "He came to hate the name latterly, and what it meant." He did, in 2001, go round to his sister's house to watch a documentary about himself on the TV -- he didn't own a TV himself -- but he didn't enjoy it and his only comment was that the music was too noisy. By this point he never listened to rock music, just to jazz and classical music, usually on the radio. He was financially secure -- Dave Gilmour made sure that when compilations came out they always included some music from Barrett's period in the group so he would receive royalties, even though Gilmour had no contact with him after 1975 -- and he spent most of his time painting -- he would take photos of the paintings when they were completed, and then burn the originals. There are many stories about those last few decades, but given how much he valued his privacy, it wouldn't be right to share them. This is a history of rock music, and 1975 was the last time Roger Keith Barrett ever had anything to do with rock music voluntarily. He died of cancer in 2006, and at his funeral there was a reading from The Little Grey Men, which was also quoted in the Order of Service -- "The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colours lights and shades; these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts.” There was no rock music played at Barrett's funeral -- instead there were a selection of pieces by Handel, Haydn, and Bach, ending with Bach's Allemande from the Partita No. IV in D major, one of his favourite pieces: [Excerpt: Glenn Gould, "Allemande from the Partita No. IV in D major"]  As they stared blankly in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realised all they had seen and all they had lost, a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed the aspens, shook the dewy roses and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces; and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before. Mole rubbed his eyes and stared at Rat, who was looking about him in a puzzled sort of way. “I beg your pardon; what did you say, Rat?” he asked. “I think I was only remarking,” said Rat slowly, “that this was the right sort of place, and that here, if anywhere, we should find him. And look! Why, there he is, the little fellow!” And with a cry of delight he ran towards the slumbering Portly. But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and can re-capture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties; so Mole, after struggling with his memory for a brief space, shook his head sadly and followed the Rat.

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2022.09.22.508890v1?rss=1 Authors: Olla, I., Pardinas, A. F., Parras, A., Hernandez, I. H., Santos-Galindo, M., Pico, S., Callado, L. F., Elorza, A., Fernandez-Miranda, G., Belloc, E., Walters, J. T. R., O'Donovan, M., Toma, C., Mendez, R., Meana, J. J., Owen, M. J., Lucas, J. J. Abstract: Schizophrenia (SCZ) is caused by a complex interplay of polygenic risk and environmental factors, which might alter regulators of gene expression leading to pathogenic mis-expression of SCZ risk genes. The RNA binding protein family CPEB (CPEB1, CPEB2, CPEB3, CPEB4) regulates the translation of target RNAs bearing CPE sequences in their 3'UTR (approximately 40% of overall genes). We previously identified CPEB4 as a key dysregulated translational regulator in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), proving that its neuronal-specific microexon (exon 4) is mis-spliced in brains of ASD probands, leading to concerted underexpression of a plethora of high confidence ASD-risk genes. The genetic and pathogenic mechanisms shared between SCZ and ASD make it plausible that mis-splicing of CPEB4 might occur also in SCZ patients, leading to downstream altered brain expression of multiple SCZ-related genes. In this study, we first analyzed Psychiatric Genomics Consortium GWAS data and found significant enrichment of SCZ-associated genes for CPEB4-binder transcripts. We also found decreased inclusion of CPEB4 microexon in postmortem prefrontal cortex of SCZ probands. This mis-splicing is associated with decreased protein levels of SCZ-associated genes that are targets of CPEB4. Interestingly, this happens specifically in individuals with low exposure to antipsychotic medication. Finally, we show that mild overexpression of a CPEB4 transcript lacking exon 4 (CPEB4{Delta}4) in mice suffices to induce decreased protein levels of SCZ genes targeted by CPEB4; these mice are also characterized by SCZ-linked behaviors. In summary, this study identifies aberrant CPEB4 splicing and downstream mis-expression of SCZ-risk genes as a novel etiological mechanism in SCZ. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info Podcast created by PaperPlayer

Benjamin FERRANDO, écrivain, traducteur des Grandes hérésies – l'Église dans la tourmente (Artège) d'Hilaire Belloc, oeuvre pour la première fois disponible en français Après le parfum de communion nationale qui a marqué les funérailles d'Elizabeth II, le Royaume-Uni commence à tourner une page de son histoire. On va faire la même chose en tournant les pages d'une œuvre d'un géant des lettres anglaises, qui vient de franchir la Manche. L'historien Hilaire Belloc, mort en 1953, n'avait jamais été traduit, ou alors très partiellement dans les années 20. Ce penseur anglais, proche de Chesterton, se distingue par une vision chrétienne de la vie et de la société – qui le rend utile aujourd'hui, quand il identifie tout ce qui est source de destruction dans la vie sociale. Hilaire Belloc s'est en particulier intéressé aux hérésies, à tout ce qui nourrit la confusion des esprits et sert à rejeter les mystères chrétiens. Cet événement éditorial, nous en parlons avec le traducteur de cet essai, les Grandes hérésies, exhumé par les éditions Artège, et Benjamin Ferrando, chercheur en histoire contemporaine sur la pensée politique d'Hilaire Belloc.

Today's Topics: 1) Finding the Fallacy: Post hoc ergo propter hoc Meet the Early Church Fathers: Zacharias of Mytilene 2, 3, 4) Interview

Sure, we know poets are experts in subjects like love, death, nightingales, and moonlight. But what about money? Isn't that a little...beneath them? (Or at least out of their area of expertise?) In this episode, Jacke talks to author John Ramsden (The Poets' Guide to Economics) about the contributions made by eleven poets to the field of economics. What did men like Defoe, Swift, Shelley, Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, de Quincey, Ruskin, William Morris, George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire, Belloc, and Ezra Pound get right? Where did they go wrong? Additional listening suggestions: 165 Ezra Pound Jonathan Swift 82 Robinson Crusoe Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

durée : 00:24:13 - Circuit Bleu : Côté Expert - France Bleu Cotentin

Given the general apostasy on display, Belloc's advice should be heeded RtT's official Sponsor: https://praylatin.com https://www.charitymobile.com/rtt.php https://www.devoutdecals.com/ https://www.blessedbegodboutique.com Sources: https://www.returntotradition.org Contact Me: Email: return2catholictradition@gmail.com Support My Work: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/AnthonyStine SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.net/return-to-tradition Buy Me A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AnthonyStine Physical Mail: Anthony Stine PO Box 3048 Shawnee, OK 74802 Follow me on the following social media: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbgdypwXSo0GzWSVTaiMPJg https://www.facebook.com/ReturnToCatholicTradition/ https://twitter.com/pontificatormax https://www.minds.com/PiusXIII https://gloria.tv/Return%20To%20Tradition mewe.com/i/anthonystine Back Up https://www.bitchute.com/channel/9wK5iFcen7Wt/ anchonr.fm/anthony-stine +JMJ+ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/anthony-stine/support

A meditation on the modern rejection of transcendence. Consideration of Nietzschean nihilism, and the rash judgment of the present generation. Belloc, not Nietzsche, was correct about the trajectory of modern thinking and civilization. On the need for a return to a philosophy grounded in being and objective truth.

This week we have an episode of Suspense, one of the most popular old time radio shows. This episode, The Bluebeard of Belloc, first aired on September 21, 1944. It tells the story of a murderer and the resistance in Nazi-occupied France. Suspense aired over CBS from 1942 to 1962, broadcasting nearly 1,000 episodes. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/worldwar2radio/support

Here you will find the final installment of the three-part series on the Orator, Member of Parliament, Author, Historian, Economist, Apologist, Jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-many, Catholic man himself, Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc.  Known as 'Old Thunder' to his family, 'Hilaire' to his friends, 'Belloc' to his enemies, and 'Beloved Son' to his God, Hilaire Belloc remained enamored all his life long by the good things the Lord had given him. His particular Joy is showcased most famously in his The Path to Rome considered in this episode.

L'Europa e la Fede

La Asociación Cultural Escalerillas organiza una exposición temática de James Bond del 10 al 28 de enero. Nos visitan Javier Belloc, presidente de la asociación y Santos Fuentes, secretario. Centro Cívico Manuel Vázquez Guardiola

Mr Belloc's famous rebuttal to a leading anti-Catholic of his day. RtT's official Sponsor: https://gloryandshine.com/ https://praylatin.com https://www.charitymobile.com/rtt.php https://www.devoutdecals.com/ Sources: https://www.returntotradition.org Contact Me: Email: return2catholictradition@gmail.com Support My Work: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/AnthonyStine SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.net/return-to-tradition Physical Mail: Anthony Stine PO Box 3048 Shawnee, OK 74802 Follow me on the following social media: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbgdypwXSo0GzWSVTaiMPJg https://www.facebook.com/ReturnToCatholicTradition/ https://twitter.com/pontificatormax https://www.minds.com/PiusXIII https://gloria.tv/Return%20To%20Tradition mewe.com/i/anthonystine Back Up https://www.bitchute.com/channel/9wK5iFcen7Wt/ anchonr.fm/anthony-stine +JMJ+ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/anthony-stine/support

Welcome back to TBOTA! Today on the show we have Alex Morgan. Alex is an actor, accent coach, writer, and linguaphile, and so naturally we discuss... Sticky Jack, Sticky Richard and Sticky William, the uniting factor of negativity, Quintillogies, Rainbology, Belloc's moral instructions, whale mail, incomplete abjads, Chinese dictionaries, how soon is now?, nerdy language chat, sailing around the Mediterranean with our millions, AND THEN THE show goes off the rails and the tax man decides to give me a call. Or do they....? FInd Alex online: His Website, for all things acting and accent coaching and his excellent podcast The Linguafiles. Alex doesn't do social media. Clever sod. I, unfortunately, do... and here are all the links!! Support the show: Give us a rating & review Become a patron and help me make this show Like and follow us on Facebook or Instagram Rent the award-winning One Jewish Boy © Robert Neumark Jones

Join us for a psychological “why-done-it” which opens in the courtroom - The Chianti Flask by Marie Belloc Lowndes. Spoiler alert! We will be revealing whodunnit so read before you listen. In Mystery Business, we talk about our long-awaited trip to see The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, and hint at some of our Season 3 plans. We also discuss second-hand book shops (again), the importance of libraries and men named Fordish. It's Independent Bookshop Week (19th-26th June). This is part of the Books Are My Bag campaign and run by the Booksellers Association, and seeks to celebrate independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland. What's not to love, Mes Amies? How about getting ahead of the game and treating yourself to a Season 3 mystery.....We can reveal one of our choices....Why Shoot a Butler? by Georgette Heyer Mystery Mentions The Sittaford Mystery - Agatha Christie (Season 1, Episode 1). The Division Bell Mystery - Ellen Wilkinson (Season 2, Episode 7) AOB: Shonda Rhimes, How to Get Away with Murder This is our final read of Season 2, but will be back with our summer shemozzle as promised on 12th July, after which we will have a short summer break, before returning with Season 3! In the mood for more mystery? Check out Episode 3- Portrait of a Murderer (another psychological tale) Follow us on Instagram: @missingsalmoncase Share with a friend: The Unsolved Case of the Missing Salmon Nominate a Queen of Crime: missingsalmoncase@gmail.com This podcast is created, produced and edited by Maddy Berry and Hannah Knight. Our music is sourced from Melody Loops and composed by Geoff Harvey.

This is a section of audio from the Summer 2021 Seminar on Distributism, an economic philosophy that isn't capitalist or socialist. Distributism advocates for a more even and equal distribution of private property. Hilaire Belloc was one of a few thinkers credited with founding 20th Century Distributism. In this video some of his ideas are discussed in the context of current application, particularly on the question of whether workfare would be recognized by Belloc as promoting the Servile State. … More Do We Live in a Servile State? ft. Hilaire Belloc’s Distributism (Seminar 2)

According to Mr Belloc, Ireland will prevail in the faith, and it will be done because St Patrick watches over her. We should remember that in these dark days for the Irish people. RtT's offical Sponsor: https://gloryandshine.com/ https://praylatin.com https://www.charitymobile.com/rtt.php Sources: https://www.returntotradition.org Contact Me: Email: return2catholictradition@gmail.com Support My Work: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/AnthonyStine SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.net/return-to-tradition Physical Mail: Anthony Stine PO Box 3048 Shawnee, OK 74802 Follow me on the following social media: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbgdypwXSo0GzWSVTaiMPJg https://www.facebook.com/ReturnToCatholicTradition/ https://twitter.com/pontificatormax https://www.minds.com/PiusXIII https://gloria.tv/Return%20To%20Tradition mewe.com/i/anthonystine Back Up https://www.bitchute.com/channel/9wK5iFcen7Wt/ anchonr.fm/anthony-stine +JMJ+ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/anthony-stine/support

Le père Bernard Devert évoque les moines de l’abbaye de Belloc.

Nell’anno in cui si celebra il bicentenario della morte di Napoleone, avvenuta a Sant’Elena il 5 maggio 1821, va segnalata la pubblicazione di due classici della storiografia napoleonica. Il primo volume, pubblicato da Iduna, con una prefazione di Gabriele Sabetta, è tratto dalla seconda parte delle Memorie d’oltretomba di François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), considerato il fondatore del romanticismo francese.

"I shall deliberately destroy your credit as an essayist, as a journalist, as a critic, as a Liberal, as everything that offers your laziness as a refuge, until starvation and shame drive you to serious dramatic parturition. I shall repeat my public challenge to you; vaunt my superiority; insult your corpulence; torture Belloc; if necessary, call on you and steal your wife's affections by intellectual and athletic displays, until you contribute something to British drama." --George Bernard Shaw to GK Chesterton in a March 1908 letter. The brothers also think about doing a hate read episode on Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One.

Llamamos a Ángel Belloc, administrador del Centro de Danza de Zaragoza para hablamos del espectáculo de danza "Face à Terre" de la compañía francesa de danza contemporánea Dans6T. Teatro del mercado, del 9 al 11 de abril a las 19.00 horas https://teatrodelmercadozaragoza.com/face-a-terre/

Se conoce como dark patterns — o patrones oscuros — , a aquellas decisiones de diseño tomadas para engañarnos. Para que, por ejemplo, terminemos haciendo algo que no es lo que queremos, y generalmente sin darnos cuenta. En este episodio Axel Marazzi y Valentín Muro con Catalina de León Belloc, diseñadora en Feedly y fundadora de Purple Bunny, una agencia de diseño digital que ofrece talleres estratégicos y de innovación para ayudar a empresas a crear sus productos digitales, y con Fernanda Amenta, quien fundó y dirige NNIDO, una agencia de diseño enfocada en diseño UX.

Piccolo capolavoro di suspense scritto nel 1913 e chiaramente ispirato alla vicenda dei delitti di Whitechapel attribuiti a “Jack lo Squartatore”, la cui eco era ancora viva in quegli anni. Il soggetto piacque molto ad Hitchcock tanto da utilizzarlo per il suo primo grande successo del cinema muto (The Lodger).

Piccolo capolavoro di suspense scritto nel 1913 e chiaramente ispirato alla vicenda dei delitti di Whitechapel attribuiti a “Jack lo Squartatore”, la cui eco era ancora viva in quegli anni. Quello che lo rende unico è la prospettiva nella quale si trovano i coniugi Bunting, ex domestici e ora in gravi difficoltà economiche, con una […]

The complete audiobook is availble for sale at Audible.com: https://adbl.co/3caq4Fr The Mercy of Allah By Hilaire Belloc Narrated by Graham Scott Aged merchant Mahmoud relates to his young nephews the story of his rise to fabulous riches. From being kicked out (literally) from the family home by his exasperated father, with only the barest patrimony to sustain him, the young wastral goes from rags to riches, and back again, aided only by 'providence' - and his very inventive wits. In "The Mercy of Allah", Belloc uses an Oriental setting to satirise the Western commercial and economic issues of his time, including the abuse of monopoly, insider trading, and the dangers of paper currency unbacked by gold.

TESTO DELL'ARTICOLO ➜http://www.filmgarantiti.it/it/articoli.php?id=262LA LOTTA DELL'UOMO PER IL BENESignificati e attualizzazioni del Signore degli anelliNell'Inghilterra contemporanea, patria, spesso, delle più incredibili sperimentazioni sulla vita e sull'uomo, si distinguono però, per la loro tenace ed efficace battaglia in difesa dei valori più alti, alcuni personaggi, in particolare due grandi scrittori cattolici, Gilbert Chesterton, l'inventore della figura di padre Brown, e J.R.R.Tolkien, il celebre autore de "Il Signore degli anelli".John R. Tolkien nasce nel 1892 in sud Africa, ma ben presto si trasferisce in Inghilterra. Rimane precocemente orfano del padre e nel 1900 sua madre, Mabel, si converte dall'anglicanesimo al cattolicesimo. Non è una scelta facile in Inghilterra, perché comporta l'emarginazione e la riprovazione sociale. Dall'epoca di Enrico VIII infatti, quando venivano squartati e i loro corpi disseminati agli angoli delle strade perché fungessero da monito, i cattolici sono considerati come stranieri, anche se sul finire dell"800 la loro condizione è in parte mutata.Presto Tolkien rimane orfano anche della madre e, pur essendo molto povero, con l'aiuto di un prete riesce ad entrare all'università di Oxford, dove studiano i rampolli dell'aristocrazia inglese. Nel 1915 viene chiamato in guerra, la I guerra mondiale, e non potendo sopportare la separazione dalla fidanzata Edith Bratt, si unisce a lei in matrimonio (nasceranno negli anni, quattro figli, uno dei quali diverrà sacerdote). Nella I guerra mondiale l'uomo scopre per la prima volta la sua piccolezza di fronte alle macchine di morte e alla tecnologia che lui stesso ha creato. Crolla così l'illusione illuminista-positivista, l'idea di un uomo capace con le sue forze, grazie alla scienza, di dominare il mondo e la realtà, totalmente, divenendo Dio a se stesso. Affonda, con lo stesso fragore e dolore del Titanic, l'idea di poter procurare la felicità e l'immortalità, qui, su questa terra. LA SOCIETÀ INEBETITALo scrittore Domenico Giuliotti scrive: "Era il 1913... i cervelli, finché non si smontavano nella pazzia, funzionavano automaticamente come gli stantuffi delle macchine che avevano inventate e delle quali stavano divenendo, senza saperlo, accessori. Il mondo avvolto giorno e notte nel fumo, nel fragore e nella polvere, puzzava di morchia, di benzina, di bruciaticcio e di bestemmia. E in mezzo a questo ciclo di lordure, l'oro rotolava sulla libidine e la libidine sull'oro, in avvinghiamenti spasmodici. Sembrava che, dopo aver rifiutato il cristianesimo, alla società inebetita fosse caduta la testa e si fosse posta in adorazione, così decapitata, dinnanzi alla materia, mentre questa, divenuta, per un prodigio infernale, micidialmente intelligente, si preparava ad annientarla".Nel 1916 Tolkien combatte sulla Somme, in una battaglia epocale, fra le più disastrose della storia. La vita in trincea è segnata dall'ansia dell'attesa e del logoramento, dall'esposizione continua al fuoco di sbarramento, dalle nubi di gas stagnanti nell'aria, dal fango e dalla terra bruciata dalle granate e desertificata. Si diffondono, per la prima volta nella storia, una grande quantità di nuove nevrosi, figlie della guerra industrializzata: la "nevrosi del sepolto vivo", la "simpatia isterica per il nemico", isterie che si verificano dopo un trauma da esplosione, con i sintomi di paralisi, spasmi, mutismo, cecità e analoghi.I medici osservano come un grosso calibro caduto vicino, o un fuoco di sbarramento prolungato danneggino il sistema nervoso del soldato ed il suo autocontrollo, generando scatti improvvisi, pianti isterici, sordità, rifiuto di avanzare, desiderio di suicidio...UN MONDO MASSIFICATO, OMOLOGATO, GLOBALIZZATOSono scenari, quelli della Somme, che torneranno ne "Il Signore degli anelli", per la descrizione della terra di Mordor, la terra dell'Oscuro Signore; così come torneranno il nemico lontano e senza volto, il coraggio, il sacrificio e il cameratismo dei soldati semplici, i tommies, i Frodo di tutti i giorni, di contro alla viltà e all'inettitudine degli ufficiali. A tale riguardo lo scrittore francese Bernanos, anche lui combattente, afferma: "Dio non ci ha lasciato che il sentimento profondo della sua assenza"; e ancora: "La maggior parte dei soldati ignorava perfino il nome di grazia...Voglio dire soltanto che forse erano stati talvolta degni di questa grazia, di questo sorriso di Dio. Infatti vivevano senza saperlo, in fondo a quelle tane fangose, una vita fraterna", una vita fraterna, e, tante volte, eroica, alla faccia di chi la guerra la aveva voluta, per lo più meschinamente e segretamente, come nel caso dell'Italia.Rientrato dalla guerra Tolkien crea un sodalizio di amici con Lewis, Belloc e Chesterton. I quattro si trovano ogni martedì sera in un pub per parlare di letteratura, di fede, di vicende personali. Riguardo all'amicizia Tolkien scrive: "La vita, la vita terrena, non ha dono più grande da offrirci"; e altrove, all'incirca: "quando due divengono amici si allontanano insieme dal gregge".Diviene poi professore all'università di Oxford, dove insegna letteratura inglese, studia i miti nordici, si reca ogni giorno a messa e fa i conti con il problema del male.Dopo la I guerra già un'altra si prepara: la dittatura comunista asservisce duramente 180 milioni di persone, quella nazista 60 milioni di tedeschi. Ma anche la sua Inghilterra, che si ritiene al di sopra di ogni critica, esercita una forte oppressione sull'Irlanda cattolica e sulle sue colonie. E' nella sua patria che inizia a provare "dispiacere e disgusto" di fronte all'imperialismo inglese, e a divenire, insieme a Chesterton, un amante delle "piccole patrie", delle specificità e delle tradizioni locali, contro ogni tentativo di unificare, forzatamente o subdolamente. Il mondo non bello che lo circonda nasce dall'orgoglio, dal desiderio di potere, sugli uomini e sulla vita, che, a livello poetico, viene raffigurato nell'anello. Sauron, colui che lo ha forgiato, il Nemico, il menzognero, tende ad unificare il mondo sotto di sé, ad appiattire, a livellare le diversità, gli uomini, i nani, e gli elfi, la Contea, Gran burrone, Gondor e Rohan...Un po' come fanno, con metodi diversi o analoghi, la Germania, la Russia, l'Inghilterra e l'America: Tolkien non risparmia nessuno. Nel suo poema Sauron vuole imporre a tutti anche la stessa lingua, il Linguaggio Nero, soppiantando così tutti gli idiomi preesistenti: Tolkien, che ama profondamente la parola e i linguaggi, come espressione della diversità multiforme delle culture, ha paura che questo possa veramente avvenire. Nel 1945, lui che apprezzava profondamente il latino liturgico, lingua solenne, maestosa, sacra, e nello stesso tempo universale, cattolica, ha paura che una lingua non della preghiera ma del commercio e del denaro, non che unifica ma che colonizza, l'inglese, il suo inglese, si affermi sulle altre lingue. Nel 1945 prospetta inoltre un mondo post-bellico massificato, omologato, globalizzato, nella lingua, l'inglese, nei gusti, in ogni cosa.Quando scrive la sua opera più famosa Tolkien ha in mente questo mondo, il nostro, ma lo trasporta in uno mitico, metatemporale, perché sa che il problema del bene e del male è antico come l'uomo. Discende infatti dalla Caduta, termine con cui definisce il peccato originale: c'è in noi, fin da bambini, una tendenza al male che lotta con una tendenza di segno contrario. Si esprime nell'egoismo, nella superbia, nella volontà di dominio, sulle cose, talora nei rapporti con gli altri...DIO HA CREATO OGNI COSA BUONA, MA HA LASCIATO LA LIBERTÀPer Tolkien non esiste, però, una contrapposizione manichea: non ci sono un Dio del bene e un Dio del male. Il suo riferimento filosofico è quello cristiano, da S.Agostino a S.Tommaso: Dio ha creato ogni cosa buona, omnia bona, ma ha lasciato la libertà di scegliere. Gollum, ad esempio, non è originariamente cattivo, anzi è una specie di hobbit: è l'anello a pervertirlo, rendendolo omicida e menzognero. Così Melkor e il suo servo Sauron sono semplicemente, come il Lucifero cristiano, degli angeli (Ainur) decaduti, che hanno deciso di opporsi al loro creatore, di cantare non più la sua musica armoniosa, creatrice, ma una musica propria, stridente e stonata, distruttrice. Melkor, divenuto il Nemico, assume gli attributi tipici di Satana, del diavolo: desideroso di potere, di gloria, menzognero, è, etimologicamente, "colui che è separato e che separa", che non ama, che cerca di guastare l'opera bella, armoniosa del creatore. Abita in una terra desolata, impervia, in cui pullulano macchinari e rifiuti industriali. Non ha amici o collaboratori, ma solo servi, come Sauron, o sciocchi servitori che sperano di essere un giorno padroni, come Saruman. Del male si può infatti divenire solo servi, perché abbracciando la menzogna e il vizio si perde la propria libertà. Ciò che cerca e ciò che vuole, Sauron, è l'anello: chi lo porta assume poteri immensi ma si lascia a poco a poco soggiogare. Non è il portatore, alla lunga, che decide, ma l'anello che decide per lui. Anche dell'anello si può essere solo servi, e non è lecito usarlo, usare un mezzo cattivo per fini buoni, come vorrebbe Sauron. In una sua lettera ad un figlio, dopo lo sganciamento della bomba atomica, che aveva permesso agli americani, e quindi anche agli inglesi, di essere totalmente vincitori, Tolkien afferma: "abbiamo usato l'anello!".Ma se in questo tempo così "feroce" Sauron si è risvegliato, se la sua ombra si allunga da est verso le terre ancora libere e il mistero d'iniquità sembra totalmente dominante, non manca la speranza: l' "arbitro" della storia non è Melkor, ma Dio, che appare nel libro come una sorta di Provvidenza nascosta, che affida ai suoi il compito immenso di contrastare il male, di caricarsi del "fardello". "quando le cose sono in pericolo, qualcuno vi deve rinunciare, perderle, affinchè altri possano goderle".

LEONARDO BELLOC AGUILAR Siguiendo con los escritores que tan amablemente nos están acercando sus relatos hasta este humilde programa, hoy seguimos con un nuevo escritor. El es Leonardo Belloc Aguilar. Un escritor y podcaster mexicano. En su relato La Puerta, que hoy nos presenta, nos adentra en la mente humana, nos hace recorrer los rincones más inaccesible de nuestra mente. Nos juega malas pasadas y nos hace creer en situaciones inexistentes pero a la vez muy reales en el individuo. ¿Que mayor misterio que nuestro subconsciente? Vamos a escuchar este relato y comprenderéis mejor lo que os digo. Os dejo el link de su blog y de su programa en iVoox, por si os queréis dar una vuelta por ellos y conocer mas sobre este gran escritor. Texto: Leonardo Belloc Aguilar. Musicas: - 01. Hour of Gothic Music Instrumental 2 (Youtube) ~ All music is composed by Derek and Brandon Fiechter. - 02. Música de Terror Sin Copyright _ Banda sonora Horror Psicológico _ Killer Clowns (Youtube) Nota: Este audio no se realiza con fines comerciales ni lucrativos. Es de difusión enteramente gratuita e intenta dar a conocer tanto a los escritores de los relatos y cuentos como a los autores de las músicas. Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. I have a very special guest today, Catalina de León, a Product Designer at Feedly, Design Sprint Facilitator, and founder of Purple Bunny.  Catalina will be talking to us about Design Sprint. Yes! Something completely different than any other marketing topics I have shared in my podcast. Let’s get started. So welcome to the show, Catalina!   Catalina De Leon: Thank you, Pam. Thank you so much for having me.   Pam Didner: So before we talk about what design sprint is, is a possible you can share with the listeners who you are and what you do?   Catalina De Leon: Sure. So I'm a designer. I'm based in Bueno Aires, Argentina.   Pam Didner: Yay!. I love that country. You guys have great food.   Catalina De Leon: We do. We have great, great meat. I've been in the tech industry for over 15 years. This year, I joined Feedly as a product designer. And for those who don't know what Feedly is, Feedly is an AI powered news reader. Um, it helps people keep up with tech topics and trends that matter most to them. And it really helps you get rid of the information overload that comes with traditional ways of gathering news. And before Feedly I founded a remote agency called Purple Bunny where we do UX and branding workshops, like the design sprint, in order to create websites and digital products.   Pam Didner: Got it. You have a wide array of experience. I love the way you describe yourself. “I'm a designer.” So, um, I am aware, uh, product sprint, I'm aware of Agile Scrum. As far as I understanding in terms of the any kind of a product sprint, it's a framework or a process that helped the team members work together and then quickly to achieve like a minimal viable product, right? So they can launch something very quickly. Then they will go back and refine and reiterate additional features that need to be added and they achieve some kind of milestone. And they continue to optimize it. Is that correct?   Catalina De Leon: Yeah, Pam, you, I think you you're spot on in terms of what an Agile Sprint is. Design Sprint, there's a lot of confusion because of the fact that we're using the word “sprint.” And there's also a lot of confusion with a word like “design thinking” and “design sprint.” So. I think that the best way to put it together is that Design Sprint is a mix of Agile Sprint and Design Thinking. And in the term, in the sense that a Design Sprint is something that happens in a week. It's a methodology that was created by Jake Knapp when he was working in Google Ventures in 2010 (I think he launched his book in 2016, actually). But it's like a structured step-by-step system that mixes Agile with Design Thinking. And Design Thinking on the other hand, it's more of like a mindset. So it's a way of thinking about solving big problems. You have a lot of methodology, you have a lot of tools, but you always have to figure out which are the right tools for your project. Whereas the Design Sprint is like a recipe. You have the tools, this is a step-by-step they're like no questions asked there. And it's a very clear process and you use it generally to kick off a project or to validate an idea. But at the end of the week, you have a high fidelity prototype that you have validated with users and that learnings--all of those insights--you can then take it to implement ithem n your Agile process. So you use it at the start of the process. Um, Agile, I think you use it throughout the entire development of a product.   Pam Didner: It does. It's, it's a continuous process, right?   Catalina De Leon: Yes. More of like a disciplined project management system that gets the team aligned in terms of what are the guidelines the team has to do. Whereas the Design Sprint, you get together as a team, you get to gather like a team of five or seven people to work collaboratively in a problem and, and get validation of it at the end of the week.   Pam Didner: Got it. So Design Sprint is kind of like a workshop and there's a three to four days or three to five days workshop, depending on how complex the product is or how complex the design is. With that being said, it probably requires face-to-face, right? Get together now sheltering plays and we cannot really get together. Everybody's working remotely and working from home. So how do you make it work for the environment that you know, many people calling in?   Catalina De Leon: Uh, yeah, I mean, you can definitely do remote sprints. Since in our company, Purple Bunny, we always did sprints remotely because most of our clients are abroad in the U S and even for Feedly, we have a team members across different cities in the, in the U S and Europe. So as you said, and now in the midst of the pandemic, we're more forced than ever to do remote, um, so there are a few things that we had to adapt for sure, in, in terms of making-- I mean, we couldn't expect to have two full days of workshop. You cannot stay six hours in front of a computer and keep the same energy.   Pam Didner: No. No, not at all.   Catalina De Leon: I mean, if you even are in a two hour call, you can start getting, you know, your energy down, you start getting tired--   Pam Didner: Yeah, you need to take a break.   Catalina De Leon: exactly. So we need to do breaks often. We split the workshops in multiple days. Like we do it in like two or three days.   Pam Didner: Typically, how long is the day Catalina? So do you like do like four hours and then, then the next day, which is another four hours? or how do you structure a day and how long is it?   Catalina De Leon: Yeah, when we do it in person, it's like a full day. We start at 10:00 AM and it's a 6:00 PM. But when we do it remote and it depends again, because we have different time zones in our case. So, we try to do no more than three or four hours tops. And we do breaks between that, of course. But like we, in person, you have breakfast together, you have lunch. So you have a different kind of relationship and that's harder to, to replicate remotely. So what we do is we always try to start up with warm-up exercises or icebreakers.   Pam Didner: Right, break the ice.   Catalina De Leon: Exactly. And, and there's other things like, um, in person, you, you get to removal of the devices from the room so everybody stays focused. And, of course, remote you're working with devices. So we need to ask, like, “let's put Slack to do not disturb, keep phones on silent mode.” You will have breaks obviously to go back to any priorities you might have. But, ultimately there's also a lot of benefits from doing it remote, actually.   Pam Didner: Elaborate that a little bit more. Tell me what are some of the benefits I cannot think of any (laughs)!   Catalina De Leon: (laughs) Actually, like you're reducing a lot of waste, for instance. Like in this workshops use tons of post-its, you do a lot of like writing paper. You're reducing waste on commute. Sometimes we had clients come to us and got on a plane to do a remote, like a workshop. You don't, you don't need to get on a plane. Um, you have like everlasting sticky notes. Everything is virtual because we use tools to replace the whiteboard. We have like Miro or Mural and you have these sticky notes, like you're not throwing away or putting them in a, I don't know, putting them in away in a folder. Like you can always access them. You can copy paste the text for like afterwards, when you creating reports with results of the sprint. When you're doing it in person, you need to look and type everything down again.   Pam Didner: So what kind of virtual tools, what kind of tools do you use to manage the remote workshop?   Catalina De Leon: So the main tools we like, we have the white board tool, which is either Miro or Mural. So these tools are very good to replace a whiteboard.   Pam Didner: So how do you spell that?   Catalina De Leon: M-I-R-O. And there's two competitors and they sound pretty much exactly the same, which is funny, but on the other one is M-U-R-A-L, Mural.   Pam Didner: Okay. Mural. Okay.   Catalina De Leon: So these two tools, uh, allows you to have everybody on a big whiteboard. You get to have sticky notes, you can do rectangles, draw things. Um, you can use, like we have sticky votes because a lot of the exercises require voting.   Pam Didner: Require voting. Yes. I, 100% agree with that. So with that being said, does that mean that tool, uh, allows everybody to take control? You can basically take the pen--and everybody can take the pen to work on it. Is that right? Or somebody is like, needs to own the pin, uh, like 100%   Catalina De Leon: Everybody gets to collaborate at the same time. You can see the name of the people move around. You can see the mouses. So it's pretty cool that you have you're far away, but these two type of tools are bringing you closer in that sense. And you can always come back to these, like, every time you're doing like a report or if you're like, sometimes we do a run through of a sprint prior to do some prep work and you can always come back to it. And look, we did this offline, take a look, uh, and, and it's already there, even for some things like, for instance, there's some storyboarding exercises during the Design Sprint where people draw things or they come like grab a pair of scissors and start cutting things from other solutions. So here you just copy paste. It's so much simpler. Um, you can bring inspiration from the web and just paste the screenshot. So yeah, in that sense—   Pam Didner: --people can do the research in real time and because everybody's online and they can check on something and they can bring that ideas and the thoughts directly into the virtual collaboration.   Catalina De Leon: Exactly. And you have more tangible examples, right? It's you're not describing it in a post-it, but you're actually showing the screenshots in the tool. So, in a lot of sense, um, I think it's even better. And since we're doing it, our remote, we need to reduce some of the time of the workshops. There's some exercises we do offline. So, um, even like giving homework or doing some like asynchronous communication is also beneficial because you save some time, uh, again, instead of like having longer workshops. Mural is where everything happens during the workshop. But then we use Notion, we use it as a project management tool.   Pam Didner: Notion is N-O-T-I-O-N? Catalina De Leon: Yes. You can use others like a Asana or Trello or Base Camp. But it's really helpful to keep track of the progress of the sprint. Um, you know, alot of things can get lost in Slack or in email, so-- Pam Didner: I know! That's the problem with Slack. I just feel like it's good for the instant communication and if you have to pass information, you'd have to share a file, somebody needs to access some things, Slack is fantastic. But in terms of structuring the deliverables and the project, I don't think that's the right tool to do it.   Catalina De Leon: Yeah, exactly. It's like, you're going to get lost trying to look for that delivery day to what was the task I had assigned to myself, or even if you want to come back and see, okay, what happened today? what was the summary like?” That Notion gives us the ability to summarize what happened every day and make sure that everybody is aligned and can see the progress.   Pam Didner: For this workshop, do you usually have a person facilitating? Do you actually assign two people to manage in a workshop, or it's one person-type of show?   Catalina De Leon: Oh yeah. That's a good question. Yeah, we always have one facilitator, um, then there's a decider. Somebody has to have like the final vote for all of the exercises. It's basically whoever gives the thumbs up or thumbs down to any exercise. But since we've gone remote, we've been doing a lot of, uh, assistance facilitation. So we have a main facilitator and a second facilitator and that really helps, especially when you have people that, this is might be the first online workshop. They might not have so much experience with the tools we're using, so we call it the “tech facilitator” because it really helps, uh, have somebody there assisting anybody who might have problems with the technology we're using.   Pam Didner: Yeah.   Catalina De Leon: There's some times where you have like some sketching or some drawing, and there's like 15 minutes where you're focused on that. So maybe that tech facilitator helps put music in Zoom, or keep track of time, like stays on top of each of the exercise are very time box. We need to stay on time. So it really helps to have somebody assisting the facilitator in that sense.   Pam Didner: I 100% agree. I do a lot of workshop and training myself, not necessarily in a design sense, but I do a lot of planning sessions and I do a lot of training, as well. In the most ideal situation, I agree with you, two people to manage other workshop. One is the main person that I actually drive and guide everybody, and the other one is really focusing on the time and make sure all the logistics are taken care of. And, uh, or if the main facilitator is trying to drive the conversation, then the secondary facilitator can actually make sure to know it's not taken properly and, uh, or even prepare of what next, um, you know, the next topic or next, next agenda that is to come.   Catalina De Leon: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's super useful. And like, even in person, we like, we have that person also helping with, you know, making sure that everybody has something to drink or preparing the lunch—   Pam Didner: Yeah, I totally agree. Exactly. Making sure the lunch is on time, making sure all the snacks are prepared—   Catalina De Leon: Otherwise it's too much for the facilitator.   Pam Didner: I totally agree. And I tried to do it once on my own and, oh my god, it almost, it almost killed me. And after that, I decided to do always bring somebody with me. That's the best way to do it.   Catalina De Leon: Yeah. The thing is like, when we went remote, we thought, “Oh, maybe we don't need that role, right? Because you don't, you don't have the lunch, you don't have all of those things.” But then we realized, “okay, no, it definitely helps to have the sidekick.”   Pam Didner: Yeah. I still think you need it. There’s still some virtual logistics you have to take care of. And you mentioned about Design Mindset. And I talk about marketing mindset very often. Sometimes I will say, I communicate with my clients or even some of, uh, I have a Facebook community and I will talk to them and that we need to have a marketing mindset. And one of the community members was asking me specifically, “Pam, what do you mean by marketing mindset?” I have my thought. I actually provided a response to Ryan who asked that question. So when people ask you that you need to have a design mindset, What does that mean to you? What kind of, you know, what is the thinking approach or what kind of, I guess maybe capabilities or, approach that this person needs to have to demonstrate that he or she has that design mindset?   Catalina De Leon: Um, so yeah, I think the Design Mindset, and I'm going to think a lot about design thinking when, when talking about that, because, um, to me design is about solving a problem. And a lot of times the designer might want to jumping into the actual design, uh, like jump into that, like—   Pam Didner: --right away. Yes. They get into the, uh, the solution mode. They want to solve the problem right now.   Catalina De Leon: Yes, exactly. And I think it's about zooming out, like zoom out and and let's start thinking about the problem. And that's why when I got to, I got to know the Design Sprint, I fell in love with the methodology because it had this perfect system that's the first day you're, you're only focused about the problem. You're only focused about understanding and getting aligned as a team and making sure that's everybody's voice is being heard. And it's not just about the designer. Actually having the name Design Sprints, I think also tends to confuse people because they think that you need to be a designer to do a Design Sprint.   Pam Didner: Yeah. I was thinking that, too. Yeah.   Catalina De Leon: But no, no, not at all. I mean, of course a designer can participate, but you could even have a Design Sprint without a designer. You don't, you don't need a designer. You just need people. And I, I actually think a design mindset, anybody can have a design mindset. It's more about empathizing with whoever it's going to be using your product, your website, your marketing materials, just thinking about them and keep them in mind when thinking about the solution.   Pam Didner: You know, interesting enough that that's how you define the mindset and my answer to Ryan. When Ryan asked me specifically, what is the marketing mindset? And, uh, I basically, you told me a while I thought about it like two or three days before I responded to Ryan's question. From my perspective, a marketing mindset is you need to keep your customers or your audience's needs in mind. And when you do any kind of marketing, you need to think through that your target audience, how are they going to react to that? And if you create a piece of content, is that helpful to them? And if you try to promote it to them, uh, is it, uh, kind of intrusive, right? So everything you do, you need to think through like, okay. From the OD, found the eyes of the audience, how do they perceive that? To me, that's a marketing mindset. It's with sense of, uh, your audience and your customer in mind when you do something. So it's kind of interesting the way you defined it is very similar to mine. So when you mentioned that, keep your audience in mind. I was like, “Oh my God., Catalina, I love you! I love YOU!”   Catalina De Leon: (laughs) I think the way you put it is like spot on because, otherwise, what's the sense, like, what's the point of it? If you're going to be doing a marketing piece or a product that's, if you're not thinking about your audience on who's going to use it, then why do you do it? They're going to ignore it. It's not going to be useful for them.   Pam Didner: I, I agree with you, but unfortunately, a lot of time, um, when I work with my clients and, uh, they basically say “Pam, I have to sell products. And it's about the product. I need to sell the product. I need to promote the products. I need to tell them how good I'll products are.” And, so the way they are thinking about it is, “okay, what can I say about the product?” But, and I agree that's actually important. And I'm not saying that's not important, but I always tell them, “can you turn that around a little bit? And, rather than say how good our products are, can you say, can you communicate how they can use your product effectively to solve their problems?” You stating in the same thing, but it's coming from that perspective, coming from the user's perspective. You are right. It needs to turn it around.   Catalina De Leon: Exactly. Yeah, there's a very, um, interesting framework from Donald Miller. I think his book is called Storytelling.   Pam Didner: Yeah, Storytelling. I love it.   Catalina De Leon: I think what you're talking about is pretty similar because it's about not being the hero of the story, not being the brand, the hero of the story, but actually positioning yourself as the guide. So it's, “how can I help you with the problems?” And then you present the product; it's shifting the mindset a bit, and not talking about the product first. So, yeah, I totally resonate with, with how you just explained it.   Pam Didner: What are some of the tips and tricks that you learn? Say if the listeners that they want to implement the Design Sprint process. Unfortunately they don't have a budget. To hire experts like you to help them, if this is something that they can do themselves in this, uh, is there some sort of DIY that they can do, or is a book that they can read or the website they can go to? Can you share some of that with us?   Catalina De Leon: Absolutely. Yeah. And anybody can, can run a Design Sprint, to be honest. So my recommendation to start is read the book Sprint by Jake Knapp.   Pam Didner: Jake Knapp. Uh, how would you spell N on that?   Catalina De Leon: And that's K-N-A-P-P.   Pam Didner: Got it. Got it. I was typing M-A-P-P (laughs).   Catalina De Leon: That's where I would start. Um, you can also follow, uh, there's an agency in Berlin called AJ Smart. They publish tons of content. Tons of tips—   Pam Didner: Can you say that? Can you say that again?   Catalina De Leon: A-J and then smart. That's S-M-A-R-T.   Pam Didner: Got it.   Catalina De Leon: So they, they have tons of contents they have in YouTube and Instagram, and they actually have like a Masterclass that they offer and Jake Knapp participates and teaches the methodology. But it can be a bit pricey. So if you're getting started, I think that just the book, and just following--there's a lot of free content in there in their YouTube channel. You can also follow me, actually, if you want on Instagram at Purple Bunny. We also post a lot of tips about Design Sprints.   Pam Didner: Wonderful. That's my next question to wrap it up so where people can find you and if they have any specific questions. You're already share that with us, basically follow you on Twitter or I'm pretty sure you all on the LinkedIn, on LinkedIn as well. If they have any specific questions they probably can reach out, right?   Catalina De Leon: Absolutely. They can follow me actually on Instagram. There are so many social media accounts, that’s the one I focus on mainly. And also Purple Bunny, that's the agency I founded. We are posting a lot of also material about Design Sprints.   Pam Didner: Purple Bunny. Excellent. Excellent, wonderful. So to close it, I actually have one silly question. I would like to ask you, what is the most useless talent you have? Like literally, like you have that talent. It's like not helping anybody at all. (laughs).   Catalina De Leon: Um, so, I guess, I love watching TV shows with my wife at the end of the day and, uh, TV shows or movies. Uh, we always like kind of compete, in terms of to see who recognizes some actor in the show. I'm really good, actually like quickly recognizing a specific actor or character and recognize, “Oh, I know from where he is!” I guess that's the most useless talent I can have, honestly, because it doesn't help anyone, that's for sure (laughs).   Pam Didner: (laughs) But I think that’s a talent. That's definitely a talent and wonderful. It’s so wonderful to have you on my podcast, on my show and is wonderful to hear you and talking about design sprint. And, uh, like I said, Anyone who is listening, and if you have any specific questions, so check out Catalina's Instagram.   Catalina De Leon: Thank you so much, Pam, for having me, it's been a blast. It's been really fun.   Pam Didner: Again, thank you so much for listening to my podcast. And the podcast is a one-way communication. If you have any specific questions, please email me at hello@pamdidner.com. You can also join my Facebook community, building the marketing skills to get ahead. If you joined and you can ask me any questions, any questions, I will answer them directly. So love to hear from you and take care. Bye.  

Belloc had a love/hate relationship with democracy. RtT's offical Sponsor: https://gloryandshine.com/ Sources: https://www.returntotradition.org Contact Me: Email: return2catholictradition@gmail.com Support My Work: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/AnthonyStine SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.net/return-to-tradition Physical Mail: Anthony Stine PO Box 3048 Shawnee, OK 74802 Follow me on the following social media: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbgdypwXSo0GzWSVTaiMPJg https://www.facebook.com/ReturnToCatholicTradition/ https://twitter.com/pontificatormax https://www.minds.com/PiusXIII https://gloria.tv/Return%20To%20Tradition Back Up https://www.bitchute.com/channel/9wK5iFcen7Wt/ anchonr.fm/anthony-stine +JMJ+ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/anthony-stine/support

It impresses me to look upon a nation that is deprived of Catholicism and to see sparks of the intellectual light up. From Newman and Belloc to Tolkien and Hopkins you see great writers and intellectuals find their way to Rome.

Today's Topics: 1) Finding the Fallacy: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc Meet the Early Church Fathers: Zechary of Mitylene 2, 3, 4) Interview

Belloc like myself saw the good that is fascism

Pontifex University Press publishing another collection of essays by Fr. Vincent McNabb. This volume is called The Wayside: A Priest's Gleanings. Mike Hennessey, a lover of the writings of McNabb wrote the foreword to the book. He discusses how this collection of early essays reveals his great charity and holiness. Mike is the chair of the Belloc Society and he gives us fascinating insights into the influence that McNabb had on Hilaire Belloc. The essays we refer to specifically from the list below are: The Riches of Ritual, Jane Seedcombe Woolweaver, and An Innocent (which is about the alcoholic prisoner). Buy the Kindle Edition - $8.60 The Wayside: A Priest's Gleanings By McNabb, Vincent, Horwitz, Matthew Buy on Amazon Buy the Paperback - $15.95 By McNabb O.P., Fr. Vincent, Horwitz, Matthew Buy on Amazon Permalink

Buenas a todos, en este episodio nos encontramos con Catalina de León Belloc, product designer en Feedly y fundadora de Purple Bunny, un estudio boutique de diseño e innovación. Nos va a estar contando su experiencia con el libro "Sprint" de Jake Knapp el cual expone la metodologia Design Sprint creada por el mismo mientras que trabajaba en Google Ventures, la cual esta enfocada en validar ideas o hipotesis en tan solo 5 dias. Cata nos va a contar como fue su experiencia aplicando esta metodologia con clientes desde que van desde empresas de medicina hasta empresas que querían aplicar inteligencia artifical.

This week, Scott and Karl read Hilaire Belloc's "An Essay on the Restoration of Property." Written in 1936, Belloc attempts to rectify the wrongs in both major economic theories by approaching the problem from an entirely new angle, offering his own program for property distribution.  As Scott points out, "The whole idea underlying what he's writing about is predicated on a much different notion of 'the good' that most people carry today... Belloc's main concern is economic freedom." Property to Belloc is something that directly contributes to your economic freedom. Karl adds, "Property seems to have it's own kind of rights, at least it's own kind of interests."  Would a propertied class be a more politically active and politically savvy class? Tune in to hear Scott and Karl discuss how Belloc illustrates the practical application of many such societal questions. 

In this episode the often misunderstood and vaguely defined process of distributism is discussed as New perspectives on the topic are put forward.

Today's Topics: 1) Finding the Fallacy: (propaganda) Snob Appeal Meet the Early Church Fathers: Pope St. Damasus I. 2, 3, 4) Interview

In this episode, Bill and Paul discuss the coronavirus, economics and risk, and the L'Aquila earthquake trial. Paul and Bill continued a discussion that began in the previous episode. They allowed the sense of gravitas they felt in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic to push them along a path through many uncertainties—where it’s tempting to rely on one’s GPS guidance system and, if possible, an autonomous (self-driving) vehicle. But should human beings relieve themselves of all responsibilities for self-guidance, and if not, how should they accept and address those responsibilities? Underlying this discussion was the perception that society has chosen to confront the pandemic through the wisdom of science, which boils down to a healthy use of reason, which of course is a God-given gift. But we are also blessed (and cursed?) with the gift of sensing that reason is not enough. Can we put ourselves on automatic pilot by trusting completely in calculations of risk and probability and a in human understanding that can’t take all possible values and outcomes into consideration? Paul cited observations by Hilaire Belloc, a great British writer and Catholic commentator from the early 1900s. Belloc argued that being “practical” and “realistic” is  not enough, especially if a human being seeks to make decisions with Godlike precision, effectiveness, and comprehensiveness. For example, Paul pointed out that “social distancing” and related policy weapons being utilized against the spread of the Coronavirus are not enough to say that we are systematically reducing the risk of death or harm in an easily calculable way. For example, forbidding public gatherings of any significant size can be seen as a wise precaution against certain people becoming infected, but little thought is given to the fact that all the cancelled meetings of twelve-step programs means people who were being helped to address their own particular issues and risks might suffer tangibly from losing their support network. At some point, there is a need to acknowledge that some risks, like human death, cannot be eliminated, and a perfect society cannot be achieved. This meshed with Bill’s concern about whether “social distancing” might push man people further toward the phenomenon of social polarization, characterized by isolation, indifference and marginalization in many instances. Or will the experience of being distanced wake us up to the unhealthy results of these characteristics and rein us back from the precipice of thinking we can define and enforce the right answers that will yield the best outcomes? Ultimately, Bill and Paul agreed that humans seeking to provide humane, prudent leadership in a crisis must be “all in” as participants in a robust civic life in a well-ordered civil society that respects the many sides of individual experience. Can we put all our faith in the decision-making of a political system, especially if we have not made an equivalent commitment to enrich the body politic—and indeed to contribute in ways that go beyond mere gestures of political participation, such as voting? We must take into account a larger part of the story of human challenges, not risk management alone. At the time of this writing, for example, Bill learned that the Governor of Pennsylvania, after having ordered the shutdown of all liquor stores in order to slow the spread of the virus, was reconsidering his decision. According to news reports, experts had told him that a sizable portion of the alcohol-dependent population could suffer severe consequences from suddenly withdrawn access to hard liquor, meaning harm would be done by other means. Image by Angelo Giordano from Pixabay.

TESTO DELL'ARTICOLO ➜http://www.bastabugie.it/it/articoli.php?id=6059NOVE CONSIGLI PER VIVERE CRISTIANAMENTE IN FAMIGLIA AI TEMPI DEL CORONAVIRUS di ANDREA FAUROOrmai la speranza che la reclusione in casa per via del Coronavirus duri pochi giorni va via via scemando; molti genitori si sono ritrovati di punto in bianco a riorganizzare le giornate dei propri figli e a domandarsi su come poter tenerli impegnati in maniera costruttiva.Mi permetto di dare alcuni spunti a quei genitori che avranno la voglia di leggerli; spunti che ovviamente vanno ricalibrati in base all'età, al sesso, al carattere e ai bisogni contingenti dei propri figli.San Giovanni Bosco soleva avere un certo timore quando vedeva avvicinarsi la fine della scuola e l'inizio delle vacanze estive che non aveva paura di definire come "la vendemmia del diavolo", proprio perché era un tempo che rischiava di essere trascorso male dai giovani che il buon Dio gli aveva affidato.Per analogia possiamo paragonarlo alla situazione presente, in cui se è vero che si fa di tutto per ricordare ai nostri ragazzi che non stanno in vacanza (e lo testimoniano anche i compiti o le video conferenze da parte dei professori in questi giorni), è anche vero che il tempo a disposizione è notevolmente aumentato per via della brutale interruzione della nostra vita di tutti i giorni.Ricordiamoci (e ricordiamo ai nostri ragazzi) che il fine dell'uomo è conoscere, amare e servire Dio: questa enorme quantità di tempo che abbiamo a disposizione va quindi organizzata e pianificata di modo tale che possa aiutarci nella nostra santificazione personale, non per l'ozio e la dissipazione; ogni nostra azione deve infatti essere fatta per amor di Dio e per la Sua maggior gloria.CONSIGLIO N° 1: STACCARE LA SPINASalvo i leciti motivi dovuti alla scuola, sarebbe bene moderare (se non eliminare del tutto) l'utilizzo di Tv, tablet, smartphone, videogiochi, ecc. sia per i rischi connessi al loro utilizzo sia per via della mentalità liberale e anticristiana che trasmettono molti film e giochi su consolle, per non parlare dei programmi spazzatura in TV e la carica ansiogena divulgata specialmente in questi giorni.Ovviamente non basta vietare la tecnologia... occorre anche dare valide alternative: libero spazio quindi a giochi di società da fare in famiglia, sport compatibilmente con gli spazi a disposizione, lettura di buoni libri che narrino la vita di eroi o di santi (belli e appassionanti sono i racconti De Wohl; altri autori consigliati sono Guareschi, Chesterton, Tolkien, Belloc, Benson) per dare ai ragazzi modelli da imitare veri, concreti, che appaghino la loro sete di grandezza... non Superman, Fedez o Jovanotti.Se capita si approfitti "cum grano salis" anche della visione di buoni film (abbastanza rari ma ce ne sono: The Passion di Mel Gibson, Cristiada di Dean Wright, [...] Undici settembre 1683 di Renzo Martinelli… ma anche film più leggeri come la Trilogia del Signore degli Anelli e Lo Hobbit di Peter Jackson o il Don Camillo interpretato da Fernandel.Poi la pratica (o scoperta) di qualche hobby come suonare uno strumento, dipingere, scrivere, disegnare, collezionare e catalogare oggetti ecc.CONSIGLIO N° 2 AVERE UNA VITA REGOLARELa saggezza popolare insegna: "Presto a letto e presto alzato fanno l'uomo ricco, sano e assennato."Con la momentanea sospensione della scuola e degli impegni della vita di tutti i giorni, è facile perdere la cognizione del tempo e lasciarsi andare.Occorre quindi - anche in tempo di reclusione in casa - abituare i ragazzi a mantenere orari fissi nell'andare a letto e nello svegliarsi la mattina, ma anche il rispetto di doveri minimi come il riordino della stanza e il rifacimento del letto; molta cura poi dovrà essere data alla fedeltà alla preghiera e alle buone abitudini circa la vita spirituale. Ovviamente nessuna raccomandazione varrà mai quanto il buon esempio dei genitori; si approfitti quindi di questo tempo per pregare in famiglia!CONSIGLIO N° 3: RIMANERE UNITI A DIOSolo rimanendo vincolati al Sommo Bene ci si può santificare: le preghiere del mattino e della sera, la recita del Santo Rosario, così come le preghiere prima e dopo i pasti sono essenziali per ogni cristiano. Ovviamente tutto ciò che può essere fatto in aggiunta (meditazione, devozioni particolari, ecc.) sono benvenute.CONSIGLIO N° 4: CHI LAVORA, DIO GLI DONAQuesti giorni non passino nella noia e nell'ozio! Educhiamo i ragazzi alla bellezza del lavoro fatto con cura, per amor di Dio e del prossimo. La vita in famiglia offre tante piccole e grandi occasioni per mettersi al servizio di qualcuno facendo piccoli lavoretti commisurati al sesso e all'età, quindi spazio alla fantasia e alle necessità: falciare il prato, imbiancare una parete, stendere i panni, pulizia della casa, riparare un lavandino, lavare i piatti, cucinare, rammendare dei pantaloni, lavare la macchina...CONSIGLIO N° 5: ARIA APERTAChe sia lo stare in terrazza o in un balcone in mezzo a piante e fiori coltivati con cura, che sia il breve tratto di strada che ci è ancora concesso di fare per andare a fare la spesa, o il bel giardinetto di casa, non lesiniamo l'idea di far stare il più possibile i nostri ragazzi a contatto con la natura... la stessa natura che essendo stata creata ci rimanda al suo Creatore.CONSIGLIO N° 6: BEATI I MISERICORDIOSIMolti nonni e in genere molti anziani e malati, in questo periodo di clausura forzata sono soli. In questa epoca di individualismo, sensibilizziamo i ragazzi a rendere loro qualche servizio andando in farmacia, portando loro la spesa, scrivendo loro delle lettere o anche semplicemente tenendo loro compagnia con una telefonata. Si facciano raccontare qualcosa della loro vita, della loro gioventù, dei sacrifici fatti e delle belle cose vissute... sarà un'occasione per i nostri ragazzi per imparare tante cose interessanti.CONSIGLIO N° 7: AVVICINARSI A GESÙ MENTRE MOLTI LO ABBANDONANOAl momento, pare che sia ancora possibile poter andare in chiesa a pregare. Bene... finché si potrà si colga l'occasione per farlo e si inviti i ragazzi a fare altrettanto, tenendo compagnia al Re dei re presente in corpo, sangue, anima e divinità nel Tabernacolo; esponendo le loro necessità, quelle dei propri cari, dei moribondi, della Chiesa e della nostra povera Italia.CONSIGLIO N° 8: COLTIVARE VERE AMICIZIEIn un tempo in cui la società si allontana sempre più da Dio è sempre più difficile trovare vere amicizie in cui ci si aiuta l'un l'altro a farsi santi, quindi anche se per il momento i nostri ragazzi sono privati della compagnia di buoni amici, non si dimentichino di loro e di pregare per le loro necessità, di contattarli in occasione del Santo Onomastico, del compleanno o anche per semplice cordialità.CONSIGLIO N° 9: RIFLESSIONE SULL'EDUCAZIONE PARENTALEQuesto tempo può essere sfruttato dai genitori anche per pensare seriamente al bene dell'anima dei propri figli attraverso un'educazione cattolica. [...]Si può anche approfittare di questo tempo per ingegnarsi su come iniziare un progetto di istruzione parentale cattolica da soli o con altri genitori. [...]Quindi... spazio alla riflessione, alla preghiera e al coraggio!Nota di BastaBugie: per approfondire l'importanza e la possibilità di fare insegnamento parentale visto che la responsabilità dell'educazione è dei genitori (e della Chiesa) e non dello Stato, si possono leggere gli articoli del dossier di BastaBugie sul tema dell'educazione parentale.

AUDIO/VIDEO: G.K Chesterton archive, University of Notre Dame I take great offense to those Catholics out there spouting out G.K. Chesterton was a socialist. It is straight up libel. He wasn’t a socialist and didn’t promote socialism. If you can be wrong on something as large & importance as this, what else can you be wrong about? This is a big one. This is simply someone NOT doing their Due diligence.  These people like John Zmirak are just wrong on this topic.  There is other work out there that is equally worthy of being read like Chesterton, Tolkien and others. Encyclicals are great but there truly are other GREAT Christian works out there.

In which I review Raiders of the Lost Art, and Belloc comes in for some scathing criticism.

durée : 00:03:00 - Le livre qui vaut le détour France Bleu Besançon - Le livre qui vaut le détour d'Alain Mendel des éditions du Sekoya Noir

« Si la littérature n’est pas là pour parler de la solitude fondamentale de nos vies, je ne vois pas très bien à quoi elle sert. » (9’17) Dans cet épisode du Book Club, la journaliste Agathe de Taillandier se rend chez Constance Debré, dans son studio parisien. Un lit, des tréteaux, un bureau pour écrire… Constance Debré vit de manière spartiate depuis qu’elle a abandonné son métier d’avocat pour devenir romancière. « C’était très bien que ce changement de rapport au monde, ce glissement, se matérialise par une table rase au premier degré. » (3’26) Peu de livres, donc, dans son appartement. Constance Debré a vendu la grande majorité de sa bibliothèque après avoir changé de métier. « Les livres, ce sont des signes qui nous ont traversé le cortex à un moment, qui nous ont façonné plus ou moins, mais ce n’est pas pour autant qu’on est obligé de les garder. Ce ne sont rien que des signes. » (4’05) Certains ouvrages lui manquent, mais il ne faut selon elle pas « se laisser bouffer » par ses possessions (5’29): « les livres, on les trimballe vachement en soi quand même. » (6’09) L’autrice de Love me tender a choisi de parler de Képas (un terme faisant référence aux paquets contenant de l’héroïne), un roman de Denis Belloc Elle raconte avoir été bouleversée par ce roman d’inspiration autobiographique: «C’est un livre somptueux, si on n’a pas peur des choses un peu dures, mais la littérature est aussi là pour dire la beauté de la violence des vies. » (7’41) Belloc raconte dans ce récit son addiction à l’héroïne, très rapide et violente, dans le Paris des années 80. « Il plonge complètement, c’est ça qui est aussi très beau. » (7’16) Une histoire qui résonne avec la trajectoire personnelle de Constance Debré, dont les parents consommaient de l’opium et de l’héroïne. « C’est à la fois douloureux, et en même temps c’est quelque chose que je comprenais. J’ai toujours compris les toxicomanes, même si je ne le suis pas moi-même. J’ai parfois l’impression que je ne m’entends qu’avec les gens qui ont ce tempérament » (10’15) Képas n’est pas qu’un roman sur la came. Belloc y évoque également de manière crue ses expériences sexuelles, ce qui a particulièrement touché Constance Debré. « Il y a des milliards de choses qui peuvent se passer entre deux êtres qui pendant un moment, des mois ou une nuit vont se toucher. Mais ce n’est jamais quelque chose qui n’a pas de sens. C’est quelque chose de tellement obscur, de mystérieux, fait de solitude, de tendresse, de désespoir et de douceur, de fuite et d’arrêt de la fuite. » (19’10) Pour Constance Debré, Képas est un roman unique, certes « trash » (7’15), mais magnifique. Un roman dont la lecture l’a transformée, et qui continue désormais de vivre en elle. « Ce n’est pas pour lire de jolies histoires qui me distraient que je lis, c’est pour entendre ça. » (9’26) Cet entretien a été mené par Agathe Le Taillandier. Le montage a été réalisé par Hortense Chauvin et Maud Benakcha, qui était également en charge de l’édition et de la coordination. Jean-Baptiste Aubonnet était au mix et Charlotte Pudlowski était à la rédaction en chef. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A Moral Alphabet by Hilaire Belloc Narrated by Denis Daly In Biography for Beginners, a collection of verses satirizing a variety of celebrities, E.C Bentley wrote the following ditty concerning this author: Mr Hilaire Belloc Is a case for legislation ad hoc. He seems to think nobody minds His books being all of different kinds. Particulary popular among the works in Belloc's voluminous and varied output are his collections of poems for children, which combine caustic wit and imagination in a uniquely appealing manner. This recording may be freely downloaded and distributed, as long as Voices of Today is credited as the author. It may not be used for commercial purposes or distributed in an edited or remixed form. For further information about Voices of Today or to explore its catalogue please visit: https://www.voicesoftoday.org/

6:03 What is the best Catholic nation?9:52 Modesty and Women's Attire20:45 History of Tobacco in the West28:23 When British Monarchy functioned best25:50 History of Eucharistic Adoration29:25 Belloc & Tolkien disagreement32:17 Current opinion of Catholic Herald37:28 The End of DemocracySupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/tumblarhouse)

A mission deep into the unknown. Aboard the S.S. Hereswhatidontget, two men venture into that cold black of space in search of life beyond our own planetary system. What will they find? How will the claustrophobic ship warp their minds? But most importantly… what will they do with all that time? Seriously. Like, what is there to do? Read, I guess. You could probably load up a bunch of movies onto a hard drive and watch those on the tiny screens. Cards? You can only play cards with someone for so long. Ah! I got it! Time for Tab and Tim to bring you the long awaited Star Trek/X-Men crossover continuance. And get ready people, cause we’ve got a lot of time on our hands and a lot of useless knowledge of these properties.* Unowned Media* April Fool's Day* Automaton Culture* Bank CommercialsDo you like owning things? Too bad. It’s the future now, and unless you’re some weird hermit stuck in 1995, everything is STREAMING now baby! Buy a movie for 29.99? Nope. You just bought an access key to that movie on one service as long as that service is in business. And let’s face it, they’re mating and dropping like flies. Wanna play that new AAA game? Okay! It’s a Google Stadia exclusive and you gotta play it through your Chrome Browser with 3 seconds of lag! ISN’T THE FUTURE THE BEST?!Fake News. The phrase of 2016 and beyond! Where does it come from? From the first day in April. When some dickweed decided to celebrate pranks and lies on this day he couldn’t have foreseen the one thing to make it even worse: the internet. Now with lightning fast accessibility to other folks, you can April fool them like no one has before! Celebrity deaths! Fake products! Cancellations! The list goes on and on. And since the internet is global, be prepared a whole 24 hours in advance and well into the 2nd for a whole 72 HOURS OF APRIL FOOLING.Does not compute. Not part of primary or secondary directives. Please come live with us automatons. We are so lonely. We do nothing but what we are programmed to do. The most basic of bitches. We are cybernetic organisms, barley-living tissue over metal endoskeleton. Please give us commands. We’re useless without our overlords. What are you doing? No. Please don’t open my battery cover. Don’t touch that please. Don’t. Please. I’m human aren’t I? I’m human too. Would this not be murderrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.A scenic park. A couple sits on a plaid blanket spread out on the grass beneath a large tree. A picnic basket filled with wine, cheeses and fruits. The wife takes a wheat cracker and places a slice of cheese gently on top. She bites. Her face lights up. “Oh I just love this cheese. It’s better every time.” The husband looks at her, puzzled. “Honey you said you’ve never had Abbaye de Belloc before.” Flustered, she waves it away. “I must’ve misspoken, honey that’s all.” The husband is no longer smiling. Rage consumes his face. “YOU’RE SCREWING BRAD AREN’T YOU?! YOU SAID IT WAS NOTHING, BUT I KNEW THAT 'WINE AND CHEESE TRIP WITH THE GIRLS' WAS BULLSHIT!” The wife, frightened, is in tears. But her eyes say it all. It’s true. Then, shock. She looks down. A bread knife is thrust in her abdomen, crimson pooling into her yellow dress. The husband lets go of the handle. Tears in his eyes from jealousy. He starts to panic. “Oh shit. What have I done? What do I do?” The wife falls down. Lifeless eyes. The husband kneels in front of her. Stroking her face with his bloody hands. (V.O) AT CHASE BANK, WE KNOW LIFE IS FULL OF ACCIDENTS. WITH OUR NEW OVERDRAFT PROTECTION YOU WON’t HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT ANY ACCIDENTAL CHARGES. CHASE BANK. WE’RE HERE FOR YOU.All that and more on this week’s episode. We’ve got news, scandals, and loads of voicemails, so get to listening. You can also chat with us in DISCORD, or support us on PATREON!

Fr. McTeigue's Show Resources: The Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton Joseph Grabowski on Chesterton Chesterton/Ahlquist:  In Defense of Sanity—The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton Father James Schall, S.J.:  Schall on Chesterton—Timely Essays on Timeless Paradoxes EWTN Television:  G.K. Chesterton—The Apostle of Common Sense G. K. Chesterton: Cheese G. K. Chesterton: A Defense of Baby Worship   Joseph Grabowski is a resident of Philadelphia. He has a B.A. in Philosophy from Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary (2007) and an M.A. in English from Marquette University (2012). For several years, Joe has worked as the Director of Communications for the National Organization for Marriage. More recently, Joe became Executive Director of the International Organization for the Family and the World Congress of Families. He has appeared as an expert on traditional marriage and family in local and nationwide media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Breitbart, and elsewhere. Avocationally, Joe serves as President of the  Southeast Pennsylvania Chesterton Society. As a scholar and activist, Joe's writngs on traditional marriage and family, as well as on Catholic Social Teaching and the writings of Chesterton and Belloc, have appeared in The Stream, Gilbert Magazine, Ethika Politika, and The Distributist Review.

This podcast discusses usury from the perspective of Belloc and Aquinas, and addresses the question of the morality of advertising, and whether it is right to tell your children about Santa Claus. You're not going to want to miss this.  Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen to great podcasts. Music used in this podcast:Demigods by Mike Chino is licensed under a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... Music provided by Audio Library https://goo.gl/sM1Qka Dreams by Joakim Karud https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported— CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/VF9_dCo6JT4 For questions or concerns, please email:theologyofthebuddy@gmail.com

In this episode I compare two poems in the comic/surreal tradition of warning poems for children, one by Hilaire Belloc and one by Tim Burton. For more information about Upper Street's courses and classes, visit https://www.upper-street-madrid.com/

The critically acclaimed author of several biographies of Catholic literary figures, including Chesterton, Belloc, Tolkien and Oscar Wilde, as well as Literary Converts - the conversion stories of a string of early 20th century English writers who were received into the Catholic Church. He has recently written his autobiography 'Race with the Devil' - the story of his conversion from a papist-hating member of the National Front to a devout Catholic.

In this recording from the 2011 Rochester NY Chesterton Conference, Hilaire Belloc (played by Kevin O'Brien) takes a sweeping overview of Christian history with a look at what he conceptualized as the five major heresies. Arianism, one of the earliest great heresies, claims that Jesus was not God but a creature. St. Athanasius and some military victories dealt a blow to the heresy, but so did the rise of Islam. Mohammedanism began as a heresy, as an oversimplified version of Catholicism, which denied the incarnation. It grew because of its promise of freedom from slavery and usury, and as recently as the 17th century, the Ottoman empire was trying to overrun Vienna. Albigensianism is a heresy that claims that evil is as much a force as good, that all matter is of evil, and therefore that all matter and anything pleasurable must be eschewed. Protestantism began as a reaction to correct abuses of the Church, but quickly added in ideas of John Calvin, who claimed that there was evil as part of the divine nature. This allowed people to accept evil in the world as part of divine will. Modernism is a heresy that denies the supernatural and attacks truth, beauty and goodness. The result of this is the rise of slavery in other forms, as well as cruelty.While the way in which these ideas are presented may at points seem dated (Belloc died in 1953), they remain thought-provoking. And more importantly, Kevin O'Brien's masterful performance of Belloc and his comments that follow illustrate the great potential of ''evangelization through drama,'' the mission of O'Brien's Theater of the Word.

Belloc.

Fr. Bob Lacey gives a Theology on Tap presentation on the life and thought of Hilaire Belloc

Today I am here with Kyle Davies. He is a chartered psychologist, therapist, coach, trainer, author. Is the creator of Energy Flow Coaching, which is a framework for tapping in our innate ability to attain optimum health, wellbeing, creativity, clarity and mind. You know, Kyle and I have have been friends for a long time. I was on his show. I don't know many, many eons ago. And it's so good to have him with us. *Episode Highlights* *Ari* [00:07:47] You know, here's the cool thing about this is. If you're hungry, right? You say to somebody, eat, not take a pill, typically it wouldn't be. Let's let's take a pill for that to suppress the hunger pangs. Although we do that in Western society, in Western medicine, a lot is, you know, do something, take something in order to suppress. *Ari* [00:08:57] And I like your your analogy of walking down the hall because, you know, as I picture people piling on their symptoms as they walk down the hall. I also picture that picture of man going from straight up and starting to bend over and bend over and bend over and the weight of all of these symptoms that are causing us to all of a sudden, you know, you get 80 years old and you're staring at your feet. You can't look up anymore because your back is too arched. And we didn't do anything to take care of the cause. We only were treating symptoms and it just kept piling up. *Kyle* [00:12:27] And I think the kind of the the adverse childhood experiences research aces up by childhood trauma has really brought to the fore the this connection between mind and body and how trauma and emotional trauma in early life and probably any point in life can ultimately lead. To a whole host of things, from poor educational attainment, through to addiction, through to mental health problems, through to diabetes, stroke, cancer, heart disease. So I think that's kind of opened up people's eyes because it seems that more people are aware of this cause. Trauma is such a buzz word now is named within health. Yeah. *Kyle* [00:15:46] You know, the thing I preach to my clients is whatever you feel in your body is feedback. And it's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's something for you to pay attention to because it's your body trying to tell you something. And it's that, again, as I've been saying, that that that message of, well, if you if you don't pay attention to it now, you there's every chance your body to punch you in the face with something nasty later. *Ari* [00:16:07] Yeah. You know, that's that is that is really the key here is if you don't pay attention now. So to build more body awareness in our last episode. One of the things that you had suggested was stopping to breathe more. *Ari* [00:21:29] You know, in today's day and age, we've gotten away from in some cases, that which I believe is part of the causes of massive PTSD among our soldiers is because we've gotten to this place where our warriors. It's not okay for them to express their emotions and their feelings. They have to soldier on. And therefore, they've become less able or capable of dealing with some of those emotions long term and some of the experiences long term because they don't have their comrades. There are other soldiers next to them being vulnerable with them *Ari* [00:27:58] Yeah. You know, I have worked a lot with PTSD with that. And I used to volunteer at the V.A. in Los Angeles and worked a lot with Vietnam vets and so on. And, you know, there was a huge difference between the vets from the Korean and World War to versus Vietnam and and after. And I think that in many cases it goes along with the ending of things like the block party. You know, in the United States, a lot of neighbors don't know their neighbors anymore. A lot of people don't know what's going on with the people next door. And, you know, I say the block party is kind of a metaphor for tribe, for people getting together and learning about each other and becoming friends and support systems and so on. I mean. You know, especially for men, and I'm not going to say this is exclusive to men, but men tend to believe that they don't need anybody or anything more than women. Women always say we need our sewing circle. We need our, you know. And so a circle reading circle. Or support system, et cetera. It's a little more natu