Podcast appearances and mentions of Ben Myers

Tommy talks to Ben Myers, a staff writer for Nola.com

* We take another look back at the Saints loss to the Commanders and start to look ahead to the Packers game. What grade would you give Spencer Rattler? * We talk to Ben Myers with the Nola dot com and get the latest on the French Quarter trash pick-up story after a new court ruling * And we get an update on the Causeway with Carlton Dufrechou, the General Manager

* We spend some time with Ben Myers, a reporter with the Times Picayune | New Orleans Advocate, going over what is going on with trash pick-up in the French Quarter. * Talking with Shaw's head coach Hank Tierney before the state championships

Tommy talks with Ben Myers, Staff writer for Nola.com

In this episode of the North American Waterfowler podcast, host Elliott discusses his recent hunting experiences, including a successful hunt with Ben Myers at Myers Family Farm. He reflects on the challenges of maintaining a podcast schedule, the ongoing debate about hunting hens, and the dynamics of hunting with friends. Elliott shares insights on hunting strategies, particularly in timber holes, and emphasizes the importance of shot selection. The episode concludes with a look at future hunting plans and partnerships. In this episode, Elliott discusses the excitement surrounding upcoming hunts, the ethics of hunting practices, and the ongoing debate about the impact of harvesting Mallard hens on duck populations. He emphasizes the importance of community in waterfowl hunting and reflects on the friendships formed through shared experiences in the field. ►Flight Day Ammunition - https://www.flightdayammo.com (Code: FDH10) ►The North American Waterfowler on IOS and Android or https://www.thenorthamericanwaterfowler.com ►Final Approach - https://www.fabrand.com (Code FDH10) ►FlatLander Kennels - https://www.flatlanderkennels.com/ ►OnXHunt - Download the App - https://www.onxmaps.com/hunt/app ►Weatherby - https://www.weatherby.com ►AlClair Hearing Protection - https://www.alclair.com (Code FDH10) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Renovaré Book Club registration is now open with early bird pricing through Sep 1. Learn more at renovare.org/bookclub.-----Poet laureate, professor, and author Ben Myers joins Nate to discuss a book that has been a constant and formative presence in his life: Dante's The Divine Comedy.Benjamin Myers is the Crouch-Matthis Professor of Literature and the director of theGreat Books Honors Program at Oklahoma Baptist University. A former poet laureate ofOklahoma, he is the author of four books of poetry as well as of one previous and twoforthcoming books of nonfiction. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in manyjournals and magazines, including Image, The Yale Review, First Things, and Rattle.He is a contributing editor for Front Porch Republic and lives in Chandler, OK. His mostrecent book of poems is The Family Book of Martyrs (2023).Show NotesThe "100 Days of Dante" project.The entire Comedy without commentary. Ben's article “A Disgusting Poem on God's Goodness.”  Ben's book The Family Book of Martyrs.

Ben discusses his background in waterfowl hunting and the story behind the private land he has access to. The property was initially purchased by his grandfather and his friends in the early 1970s. Over the years, more land was acquired by Ben's father and uncle. The property features unique timber areas that attract ducks, and the family has put in levee systems to manage the water levels. Ben also talks about his passion for ammunition and the development of his own brand, Flight Day Ammunition. The conversation revolves around the management of a duck hunting property, specifically focusing on the use of pumps to control water levels and create optimal hunting conditions. The guest shares insights into the history of the property, including the initial development of ponds in the timber and the challenges that arose from this approach. They discuss the process of purchasing and installing a pump, as well as the timing and duration of pumping during the hunting season. The conversation also touches on off-season management tasks, such as habitat maintenance and crop planting. Ben discusses the load patterns and specifications of his ammunition. He emphasizes the importance of clean kills and the ability to shoot at longer ranges. Ben explains the use of full-length wads and the benefits they provide in terms of pattern and performance. He also discusses the differences between 20 gauge and 12 gauge shotguns and the recoil they produce. The conversation concludes with Ben sharing a memorable hunting experience with a young hunter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Role play is a heart language! Getting your kids to act out the Bible is not only fun, but it is a great way to be immersed in memorable Bible study. Mike Young talks with Ben Myers about the fantastic ministry tool, ActorsBible. Click here to discover what ActorsBible is all about   Click here to get a special discount through Noble Warriors!   Noble Warriors YouTube channel   Noble Warriors is a 100% donor funded ministry! Click here to donate

It's clear that we have a crisis of fatherlessness in our culture today. God calls husbands and wives to the front lines of the culture wars, and He has given His people the tools to use His word to engage in the battle. Ben Myers joins me today to call up dads to a place of spiritual maturity within your home. It's not as hard as we make it out to be, and it is necessary for our children. Show Notes: http://heidistjohn.com/blog/podcasts/failing-culture-fatherlessness-change-it-ben-myers --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/heidistjohn/message

Tommy talks with Ben Myers, staff writer for Nola.com

Tommy talks with Ben Myers, a staff writer for Nola.com

This episode of the REIT Report's ongoing series “Building to Zero” features Ben Myers, senior vice president of sustainability at BXP (NYSE: BXP) and continues to dig deeper into the real estate industry's journey to reduce emissions from the built environment.Myers shares his view on why it is so important to take a long term view on electrification, which refers to the replacement of fossil fuel equipment, like internal combustion engines and gas boilers, with electric motors or heat pumps.The common case for electrification is that building owners can decarbonize and utilize equipment that is significantly more efficient. “Electrification of everything is what I'm here to talk about today. And in particular, how to spread this religion around electrification. I am a believer that we need to electrify the built environment and I'll explain why, but I do think that we need to take some important steps to get there,” Myers says.

My guest for Chapter 55 is Casie Dodd. Casie is originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma but now lives in Fort Smith, Arkansas with her husband and two children. Her work has appeared in This Land, Oxford American, Image, Arkansas Review, and other journals. Casie is the founder and publisher of Belle Point Press, a fantastic independent press that has published several books from Oklahoma authors and poets, including Ben Myers, Damon McKinney, and Rob Roensch. In our conversation, we talk about the origins of Belle Point Press and its mission and heartbeat. We also talk about the advantages and challenges of small presses and about Casie's work, as well as that of many others. It's a great look behind the curtain of publishing from the perspective of a small press. Connect with Casie: writing website | Belle Point Press website | Substack | InstagramMentioned on the show:Mid-South Anthology: Ben MyersTyler Justin SmothersKristen GraceBeer Breath Kisses - Damon McKinneyIn the Morning, The City Is the Prairie - Rob RoenschDeep Vellum BooksHeadless John the Baptist Hitchhiking: Poems - C.T. SalazarNight Angler - Geffrey DavisHub City PressCleave - tiana nobile Texas Review PressBull City PressThe End of the Affair - Graham GreeneConnect with J: website | Twitter | Instagram | FacebookShop the Bookcast on Bookshop.orgMusic by JuliusH

Tommy talks with Ben Myers, a staff writer for Nola.com

In today's episode, we delve into the continuing trial of neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, accused of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder ten others in the UK. We'll discuss the closing argument of her defense barrister, Ben Myers, who maintains that there's no direct evidence implicating Letby in the alleged acts. We'll explore the counter-narrative suggesting that the increase in fatalities at the hospital could be due to increased admissions and staffing pressures rather than Letby's actions. Finally, we'll ponder the weight of the prosecution's claims against Letby and question whether she is a silent killer or an unfortunate scapegoat of an overwhelmed system. Want to listen to ALL our Podcasts Ad-Free? Subscribe through Apple Podcasts, and try it for 3 days free: https://tinyurl.com/ycw626tj Follow Our Other Cases:   Hidden Killers with Tony Brueski (All Cases) – https://audioboom.com/channels/5040505-hidden-killers-with-tony-brueski-breaking-news-commentary True Crime Today (All Cases)- https://audioboom.com/channels/5001260-true-crime-today-a-true-crime-podcast Chad & Lori Daybell - https://audioboom.com/channels/5098105-demise-of-the-daybells-the-lori-chad-daybell-story The Murder of Ana Walshe - https://audioboom.com/channels/5093967-finding-ana-this-disappearance-of-ana-walshe Alex Murdaugh - https://audioboom.com/channels/5097527-the-trial-of-alex-murdaugh The Idaho Murders, The Case Against Bryan Kohberger - https://audioboom.com/channels/5098223-the-idaho-murders-the-case-against-bryan-kohberger Nurse of Death: The Lucy Letby Story - https://audioboom.com/channels/5099406-nurse-of-death-the-lucy-letby-story  Murder in the Morning- https://audioboom.com/channels/5078367-murder-in-the-morning-daily-true-crime-news The Case Against Kouri Richins- https://audioboom.com/channels/5107367-the-case-against-kouri-richins Justice For Harmony | The Trials of Adam Montgomery- https://audioboom.com/channels/5107366-justice-for-harmony-the-trials-of-adam-montgomery   The Murder of Madeline Kingsbury- https://audioboom.com/channels/5109276-the-murder-of-madeline-kingsbury   The Murder of Stephen Smith- https://audioboom.com/channels/5099407-the-murder-of-stephen-smith

In today's episode, we delve into the continuing trial of neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, accused of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder ten others in the UK. We'll discuss the closing argument of her defense barrister, Ben Myers, who maintains that there's no direct evidence implicating Letby in the alleged acts. We'll explore the counter-narrative suggesting that the increase in fatalities at the hospital could be due to increased admissions and staffing pressures rather than Letby's actions. Finally, we'll ponder the weight of the prosecution's claims against Letby and question whether she is a silent killer or an unfortunate scapegoat of an overwhelmed system. Want to listen to ALL our Podcasts Ad-Free? Subscribe through Apple Podcasts, and try it for 3 days free: https://tinyurl.com/ycw626tj Follow Our Other Cases:   Hidden Killers with Tony Brueski (All Cases) – https://audioboom.com/channels/5040505-hidden-killers-with-tony-brueski-breaking-news-commentary True Crime Today (All Cases)- https://audioboom.com/channels/5001260-true-crime-today-a-true-crime-podcast Chad & Lori Daybell - https://audioboom.com/channels/5098105-demise-of-the-daybells-the-lori-chad-daybell-story The Murder of Ana Walshe - https://audioboom.com/channels/5093967-finding-ana-this-disappearance-of-ana-walshe Alex Murdaugh - https://audioboom.com/channels/5097527-the-trial-of-alex-murdaugh The Idaho Murders, The Case Against Bryan Kohberger - https://audioboom.com/channels/5098223-the-idaho-murders-the-case-against-bryan-kohberger Nurse of Death: The Lucy Letby Story - https://audioboom.com/channels/5099406-nurse-of-death-the-lucy-letby-story  Murder in the Morning- https://audioboom.com/channels/5078367-murder-in-the-morning-daily-true-crime-news The Case Against Kouri Richins- https://audioboom.com/channels/5107367-the-case-against-kouri-richins Justice For Harmony | The Trials of Adam Montgomery- https://audioboom.com/channels/5107366-justice-for-harmony-the-trials-of-adam-montgomery   The Murder of Madeline Kingsbury- https://audioboom.com/channels/5109276-the-murder-of-madeline-kingsbury   The Murder of Stephen Smith- https://audioboom.com/channels/5099407-the-murder-of-stephen-smith

In this episode Caroline and Liz outline the closing speech of Lucy Letby's barrister, Ben Myers, KC. He tells the jury that the prosecution case is based on a presumption of guilt and not innocence. And he claims she is wrongly being blamed for mistakes in care at the hospital.Follow The Trial of Lucy Letby on Twitter @LucyLetbyTrial Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode Caroline and Liz outline the closing speech of Lucy Letby's barrister, Ben Myers, KC. He tells the jury that the prosecution case is based on a presumption of guilt and not innocence. And he claims she is wrongly being blamed for mistakes in care at the hospital.Follow The Trial of Lucy Letby on Twitter @LucyLetbyTrial Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the first of a five-part series in which CoreNet Global is partnering with ULI to discuss getting to net zero in the built environment, Marta Schantz, Co-Executive Director of the ULI Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate, talks with Ben Myers, Senior Vice President of Sustainability, BXP, about taking green leases to net zero.

In today's episode, I talk aboutIn today's episode, I talk aboutShow Notes & Transcript →

In today's episode, I talk about Links https://someantics.dev/ https://benmyers.dev/#h-blog https://webaim.org/projects/million/ https://deque.com/axe/devtools/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/axe-devtools-web-accessib/lhdoppojpmngadmnindnejefpokejbdd https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/accessibility/ https://www.scottohara.me/ https://twitter.com/marcysutton/status/1292971874570256385 https://www.deque.com/axe-con/sessions/the-accessibility-to-burnout-pipeline/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZhiu-jGbdE Transcript →

Actor Ben Myers joins us this episode to discuss his latest project, the time travel pilot ZERO METHOD.Ben shares the inspiration behind ZERO METHOD, as well as why its rules governing time travel set it apart from similar sci-fi narratives.EPISODE LINKS:Discover more about ZERO METHOD here:https://www.benjaminlawrencemyers.com/coming-soon-02Follow & Support EYE ON SCI-FI Podcast And The7thMatrix: https://bio.site/eyeonscifiWe are now on Mastodon! https://universeodon.com/@eosfpodcastPodcast Intro music: "I Succumb" by António Bizarro https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Antnio_Bizarro/City_of_Industry_Slow_Gun/

Hosts Tessa Markle and Carolina Alvarez of Femme Regard Productions spill the tea on this week's topic: shooting a short film outside of LA! We chat with DeeDee Woche and Ben Myers, the creators of A Lone Star Love, a short film with sci-fi elements that tackles social media addiction and human connection. We got to hear about their process shooting the film in Austin, TX and taking it to the festival circuit. IG Shoutouts: @syncthemovie @a_lone_star_love @austinfilmfest @deebeck @ronan.colfer @rachelthepearl @iftnetworktv @zeromethodtv Websites and Socials: IG: @benjaminlawrencemyers https://www.iftnetwork.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

God is doing supernatural work by turning the hearts of fathers to children and the hearts of children to the Father God. Knowing that it is their job and that they are called and equipped to do so, Ben Myers, Co-Founder of ActorsBible, believes dads will begin to dramatically and consistently lead their family worship of God around His word to effectively make obedient disciples of Jesus Christ. First in the home and then beyond.ActorsBible is a powerful app that provides everything needed to make disciples and foster a love for the Word of God. By enacting the Bible, families and groups bring the stories in scripture to life for all ages.Benjamin and Felicita Myers, parents of six, are passionate about raising up their children in the Lord all the while encouraging dads and moms to do the same. They founded Inner-City Movement/Theatre 7000 located in Upper Darby, PA. There they combine this passion for discipleship with the arts and have created a unique, immersive space where youth and their families participate in dramatizing the scriptures.They have created the world's first 360˚ projection dome for live theatre, with moving seats, wind, mist, bubbles and flying actors. They, along with a team of incredible people, produce professional level productions using ActorsBible that feature the youth and their families as an outreach to the Greater Philadelphia region.Resources Mentioned:Actors.BibleFacebook: ActorsBibleInstagram: ActorsBibleBook: The Expeditionary ManBook: UnmuzzledCLC Website: https://www.clchq.org/Contact Mike Hatch: mhatch@clchq.orgPreorder Mike's book, Manhood: Empowered by the Light of the GospelContact Chris Bolinger: https://chrisbolinger.com/author/Chris' Devotionals:Daily Strength for Men: A 365-Day Devotional52 Weeks of Strength for Men

God is doing supernatural work by turning the hearts of fathers to children and the hearts of children to the Father God. Knowing that it is their job and that they are called and equipped to do so, Ben Myers, Co-Founder of ActorsBible, believes dads will begin to dramatically and consistently lead their family worship of God around His word to effectively make obedient disciples of Jesus Christ. First in the home and then beyond.ActorsBible is a powerful app that provides everything needed to make disciples and foster a love for the Word of God. By enacting the Bible, families and groups bring the stories in scripture to life for all ages.Benjamin and Felicita Myers, parents of six, are passionate about raising up their children in the Lord all the while encouraging dads and moms to do the same. They founded Inner-City Movement/Theatre 7000 located in Upper Darby, PA. There they combine this passion for discipleship with the arts and have created a unique, immersive space where youth and their families participate in dramatizing the scriptures.They have created the world's first 360˚ projection dome for live theatre, with moving seats, wind, mist, bubbles and flying actors. They, along with a team of incredible people, produce professional level productions using ActorsBible that feature the youth and their families as an outreach to the Greater Philadelphia region.Resources Mentioned:Actors.BibleCLC Website: https://www.clchq.org/Contact Mike Hatch: mhatch@clchq.orgPreorder Mike's book, Manhood: Empowered by the Light of the GospelContact Chris Bolinger: https://chrisbolinger.com/author/Chris' Devotionals:Daily Strength for Men: A 365-Day Devotional52 Weeks of Strength for Men

Ben Myers is an award-winning director, writer, and actor, whose work has premiered at Austin Film Festival, Catalyst Story Institute, and whose writing has been recognized by the Sundance Episode Labs. His films The Vanity (2017), Power Out (2018), and A Lone Star Love (2021) have screened at film festivals internationally, and as a producer he has worked with brands like The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and RTE.    Hosted by Zef Cota

After Ben Myers tried to capture the attention of his family for a time of Biblical study and worship to no avail, the Lord inspired him to put his theater background to good use. Ben cast his children in the roles of Biblical characters and encouraged them to act out Bible stories, resulting in a three-year process of re-enacting the scriptures together! This journey launched the creation of ActorsBible, an immersive, app-based experience that enables families to act out the Bible from their living rooms. The app includes visuals, dramatic music, a teleprompter script, and even sing-along lyrics. Ben encourages dads to step into their special role of family leadership and “direct” their children and spouse closer to Jesus.   TAKEAWAYS The ActorsBible leads participants through the Bible in 1-3 years Ben explains how they built a 360 projection dome to create a fully immersive Biblical environment for the app Bringing the Bible to life helps children learn about Jesus and their identity in Christ at a young age and memorize scripture more easily There are spiritual evaluations to assess what lessons families can learn at the end of each Bible story in the app  

In this episode, you will learn about a unique and interactive app that will revolutionize your family's devotions while disciplining the family. My guest is Ben Myers, founder of the ActorsBible app. One hundred years ago, it was the norm for dads to wake up early to meet with God and have something called "family worship." This was time spent together praying and singing a worship song to God, followed by the reading of a portion from the Bible and a brief discussion about the text. Sadly, this does not happen in most homes today. The role fathers play in the spiritual formation of their children is at the core of this exciting new tool to help fathers play their part in family discipleship.

Most of the results from yesterday's elections are in, and it's time to break down the key results. Veteran political journalist from Talk Louisiana, Jim Engster, joins us for more on the biggest takeaways from last night. And while the polls have closed, they'll soon reopen as the race for New Orleans Public Service Commissioner has gone to a runoff. The Advocate's Sam Karlin joins us for more on what the race will look like between incumbent Lambert C. Boissiere III and challenger Davante Lewis.  But it wasn't just candidates on the ballot. In New Orleans, voters supported an amendment to change how City Hall officials are appointed. The New Orleans Advocate's Ben Myers tells us how this will give council members more oversight into the mayor's office. And, in an election that had experts worried about vigilante poll monitors and the potential for danger for election workers, voting seems to have gone off without any major incidents. We listen to what NPR reporter Miles Parks had to say about the issue.  Today's episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Patrick Madden. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber and our digital editor is Katelyn Umholtz. Our engineers are Garrett Pittman, Aubry Procell, and Thomas Walsh.  You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at 12:00 and 7:30 pm. It's available on Spotify, Google Play, and wherever you get your podcasts.  Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you! Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. And while you're at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you'd like to listen to. Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode we take you to the red carpet of the 13th Annual Soho International Film Festival. Featuring interviews with: Diana Cossa, Kate Forsatz, Chad L. Coleman, Ben Myers, Cheryl Allison, Alejandro Montoya Marin, John Kaler, Marissa Ghavami, Frank Harts, Elise Finnerty, Estelle Gerard Parks, Lauren Sowa, Massimo Soto, Libe Barer, Miranda Khan, Baylee Toney, Myles Clohessy. Next week we'll have more coverage from the festival, so be sure to tune in. Hosted by Kayla Vera Music & Show Theme by Christopher Gillard Produced by Brenda Btrayed Oliver, Kayla Vera & Jason Godbey Written & Directed by Jason Godbey

We need your vote to win a Jam stack Jammie! So, go to https://fsjam.org/vote. There will also be previous guests in other categories, so make sure you vote for them too!-------------------In this episode we discuss the fundamentals of Eleventy, how to approach web development from a conservationist's point of view, and utilizing Eleventy Serverless for deferred, on-demand rendering.Ben Myers Homepage Twitter GitHub Twitch Some Antics showmy.chat Eleventy Homepage Twitter GitHub Discord Links Fullstack Accessibility with Ben Myers (FSJam31) Slinkity with Ben Holmes (FSJam49) Eleventy Data Cascade Documentation I Finally Understand Eleventy's Data Cascade events.lunch.dev Eleventy Serverless A First Look at Eleventy Serverless with Zach Leatherman (Some Antics) Modern CSS with Stephanie Eckles (FSJam63) Incremental Static Regeneration Distributed Persistent Rendering Understanding Rendering in the Jamstack by Brian Rinaldi Eleventy Glossary Learn Eleventy From Scratch by Andy Bell Amit Sheen Codepens THE Eleventy Meetup Full Time Open Source Development for Eleventy, Sponsored by Netlify Transcript[Pre-show Clip]BenWhen I was on Learn with Jason talking about Eleventy Serverless, I actually spent a fair amount of time talking about... "hey, Eleventy doesn't work for every use case." There are certain websites you have in mind that Eleventy would not be a good fit for. That's okay, that just means it's better suited for other kinds of sites. I think there is this instinct in Jamstack communities to try to kludge Jamstack into a fundamentally un-Jamstacky problem space.ChrisWhat do you mean? Gatsby is the best for everything and we should have never moved off Gatsby and there's no need for Svelte or Solid or anything like that. Gatsby, it did everything.[Opening Theme Song]AnthonyBen Myers, welcome back.BenHey! It's good to be back.AnthonyYou were on an earlier episode, 30-something, talking about web accessibility. You are a web developer and accessibility advocate at Microsoft. Today, we're going to be talking to you about Eleventy cause Eleventy is a project that I know you're really passionate about. We've had others on the show talk about it a little bit, especially Ben Holmes who is building a meta framework on top of Eleventy called Slinkity. But, today we're going to be talking about Eleventy proper. What it is, why people are excited about it, and what kind of stuff they're building with it. BenI'm thrilled, I absolutely love Eleventy as a tool and it's one of those things that's been an absolute privilege to get to introduce people to. Fair disclosure! I totally have not introduced people to it through a podcast medium, so this is gonna be very interesting. Super excited to chat about it with y'all.AnthonyWhy don't we first start with what Eleventy is. I think if anyone has heard about it, they know that it's a static site generator. They may have heard that it's based a bit on Jekyll, so if you can talk a little bit about what it does and what you would build with it.BenYeah, so I find that simply saying, "Jekyll but JavaScript" is enough for some people to just get it. I will say that the fact that it is powered by JavaScript makes it more approachable than other static site generators for many people because JavaScript is the language of the web. If you're doing front end development, JavaScript is something you're very likely to be very familiar with. A static site generator that leverages JavaScript, specifically the Node.js ecosystem, is a very compelling sell for a lot of people. But, I should definitely back up and explain the bigger picture.You described it as a static site generator in the vein of Jekyll. I think that's absolutely, absolutely fair. But personally, I don't have experience with Jekyll. That's not something that really helps me understand what it is. The simplest way to think of Eleventy is, it is a tool that will take content, typically in a format such as markdown. It'll take that content, it'll just convert it to some pure, raw, boring, fantastic HTML (or other assets). That is, I think, the simplest way to think of it. You've got some content, maybe it's blog posts, maybe it's documentation pages. Maybe it's a landing page for some product. Some content that is mostly static and you want some output, typically HTML.That is what Eleventy is and what it's really, really good at. What Eleventy isn't, is a tool for building highly dynamic interactive experiences. For those, you might still consider a client side web application framework such as React or Vue. Eleventy simply isn't as interested in addressing those kinds of websites and I think that's totally fair. But if you've got something that could be expressed in static HTML, Eleventy is possibly a very good project for you.AnthonyI actually first started learning about Eleventy for a big reason cause of you, Ben. We were building out the lunch.dev calendar with it. That was a really interesting project because we were trying to create like an events calendar. What we did is we had a Git repo that was building the static site and then we had markdown files for the individual events. Then the individual events would be transformed into little cards on the front end. If you wanna talk a little bit about why you picked Eleventy specifically for building that cause I think Chan also, the reason why we went with that was cause you were really passionate about, we wanted to learn more about it. So I'd be curious about the thought process behind that.BenAn event calendar like that is, if you think about it, nothing but a bunch of articles. At the time, we were not heavily invested in doing anything interactive with that calendar. We just needed a place to stick a bunch of descriptions and details of different events going on, different links that we could send people to. That is, again, something that is very well suited for that kind of static markup. When you think about a lot of web application frameworks, a common criticism that some folks in various web dev spaces will point to, is that web app frameworks can be quite large and bloated.That means if you are building your site with those, your end user very likely will have to download all of that and construct an experience from that. Whereas, you could get more or less the same experience but very, very lightweight. I think that lightweight websites are fundamentally good and responsible. I try to take a very conservation mindset to the web. I like to only use what I need and I apply this to users resources such as their data. If they're out and about on their mobile phone and they're using their data plan, chances are good that they could have a really slow connection and they could have data caps.I think that if we don't need to send them an entire web app framework, we probably shouldn't send them a web app framework. That is, I think, not being the best steward of their resources. They're gonna have a slower chunkier experience as a result. So, why did I choose Eleventy for this project? It's because the project, at least as we were thinking of it at the time, didn't need anything more than that. We just wanted some lightweight HTML pages out there on the web that could build quickly, that anyone could add to.Eleventy is really based around this concept of a template. A template is a content file written in a language such as Markdown or HTML and sometimes with templating languages such as Liquid or Nunjucks that Eleventy builds into a page or pages of HTML (or sometimes other static assets). It's weird because there always feels like there needs to be some asterisks. But broadly, think of a template as a content file that gets transformed into some output pages.The nice thing is Markdown for most developers is a fairly ergonomic experience. That meant that if people wanted to add things to that site, they didn't have to worry about the whole instrumentation and orchestration of the entire project. They could contribute simply a Markdown file and that was really nice. Eleventy also has built into it this concept called the data cascade which I think is one of the most crucial things to understand about Eleventy. It's also one of the things that took me the longest time to wrap my head around. When you're in a template, again a content file, you can use template syntax.Eleventy allows you the opportunity to expose variables essentially in that template syntax that you can either print out onto the page as part of the content or you can transform or operate on them in different ways. It's data, it's variables that you have access to. Eleventy has this amazing order of operations for how it lets you aggregate that data. So you can say, "oh, I've got some data that will be made available to every template of my site." Or, "I've got data that's available to every template that uses a certain layout." Or "I've got data that applies to every template in a given directory or its sub directories." Or, "I have data that corresponds exactly to one template."The lovely thing about this is, it exactly follows the mental model you would hope for something like that. It is powered by co-location. Data that applies much more specifically to an individual template will have a higher precedence over data that corresponds globally. This mental model (once you start playing with it) allows for some really, really powerful configuration of your website. You can almost afford to set it and then forget it which I think is incredibly powerful. You could set some sensible defaults at the global level, such as maybe "every blog post uses this blog post layout that I've defined."Then one blog post you could override that and use a different layout, maybe to accomplish some art direction. You've got a very special blog post that you want to have a special layout. You can change that data as you go. That kind of configuration (once you start wrapping your head around the order of operations) is incredibly powerful and flexible. At the same time, it's magic enough that you can bring new people into the project and they don't have to worry about any of it. I think that is super cool.AnthonySomething that was interesting that came up while we were working on it was, we ended up in a situation where we had to rebuild certain things at certain times. Because the way events work, there'll be an event upcoming then there'll be an event that has passed. You don't want to have stale events still on the homepage. We ended up setting up a cron job type thing with a GitHub Action.But I think that this is the type of thing that now, today if we had been building that there would be other ways to do that. Not even mentioning the new scheduled jobs functions that Netlify just added. But, what I was curious to get more into was the serverless bit. There is now Eleventy Serverless, and you've actually been on the forefront of this. You did a stream with Zach when this first came out and you've been building stuff out with it this whole time.We talked with Stephanie Eckles a little bit about it and I'm really curious to get your take on it cause we've talked about serverless a ton of times here at Redwood it was built on serverless. We love serverless - well I love serverless, I don't know if Chris loves serverless - but I'd love to hear what is Eleventy Serverless and why was it built?BenEleventy Serverless is an opt-in build mode for Eleventy. Typically with Eleventy, everything is pre-rendered. You have a build step, you run probably `npm run build` if we're being honest. Eleventy kicks in and picks up all your templates and then converts them into HTML files. Once they're built, they're built. If data changes behind the scenes, such as data that was fueled by an API, you don't get any updates to that because there's nothing in the HTML linking that data like real data in any sort of backend. It's just pure HTML.This meant that Eleventy has historically been very limited. Eleventy could only reflect what was true at build time. Eleventy Serverless is this new opt-in build mode for Eleventy, where you can say certain templates are built whenever you request them. Again, non-Eleventy people should probably read that as either "certain pages are built when you request them", or I prefer to think of it as "certain routes are built when you request them." I think that framing gets really, really powerful because you can use Eleventy's data cascade, you can use Eleventy's front matter and templating languages.All the stuff that you absolutely love about Eleventy, you can use but in this on-demand way, this on request way. You create a page as you request it and if you're using, for instance, Netlify's on-demand builders, you can then cache that page. It's as if you had built that page in the build step. This is hugely powerful for a couple of reasons. I use this demonstration when I go on people's streams to talk about Eleventy Serverless. It's a color contrast checker. Take two Hex codes and display in this pretty format, the color contrast ratio. If you have two Hex codes, which are six digits long each, then that is - I want to say 2.75 times 10 to the 14th contrast ratio.I don't wanna build that. I don't want my dev server building that. I don't want my Netlify high build minutes building that, that's incredibly wasteful. I love to defer building those kinds of things until they're needed, because chances are the vast majority of those contrast ratios will never see the light of day. Very few of the ratios on that site will ever be explored, so why build them? Eleventy Serverless is a great way to defer building a large data set that folks might not ever look at. You also don't have to cache by default. Eleventy Serverless built pages don't cache. You have to use specific things like on-demand builders to cache.But what that means is that you can have up to date data. During the on request build you can hit an API and you can get the latest, greatest up-to-datest data. I think that is incredibly powerful. That is something that we haven't really had in Eleventy before. But at the end of the day, what gets sent over the wire is still an incredibly lightweight HTML page. It's not a whole client side page that's holding in a large framework. You don't have to worry about things like loading spinners because all the fetching is done server-side. You don't have to worry about things like authentication because all the fetching is done server-side.You get to take advantage of everything that you love about serverless functions and everything that you love about Eleventy. I've also brought up a couple times that this is opt-in. I really love this because you aren't turning your whole site suddenly into a quote unquote "serverless site." You first opt-in by installing the serverless plugin and then you still have to opt-in on a template by template basis. The core of your website, the main pages that guaranteed people are gonna hit (like your landing page, about page, and stuff like that) are still built during the build step and are still totally cached.They're still available for search engines to crawl and all of that. It's just that this one subsection of your site is now served on-demand. I think that that is super exciting. Another benefit of Eleventy Serverless routes is that you can take advantage of arguments passed in the URL. You have parameters in the path, or you could have query parameters, for instance. This allows for some really dynamic experiences all. Anthony, you've alluded to, I've got this project that I built that is designed really to test what I believe is the absolute limit of Eleventy Serverless.This product is showmy.chat. Anyone who's been in the streaming biz will know that it's very common for Twitch streamers to use websites as part of their stream layout. A very common use case for this is showing your chat bot as part of your stream so that folks can see who's interacting with the stream. It's really exciting, "look at me, Mom, I'm famous. I'm on my favorite Twitch streamers stream." Doing anything like that requires some understanding of web development and WebSockets to be able to read from the chat. This is not something I feel like people should not have to worry about.So, I built this site, showmy.chat. It allows you to put in your channel name as well as set a couple of other properties, configure a couple of extra values there. It will generate using Eleventy Serverless a page that has all of the WebSocket logic, the action to display the chat, and all of the theming all set in place for you. You get this on-demand themed chat that responds to the arguments that you passed in through the query parameters. Do I think that Eleventy Serverless was the right tool for that job? I'm not entirely sure.I've actually been kind of considering maybe looking and seeing if I could have done the same thing, but maybe more flexibly using something like SvelteKit. But I think that it's incredibly exciting that Eleventy, which has been this kind of beloved pre-build tool now affords you this extra flexibility where just because you wanted a page that always had dynamic stuff or the latest information, you don't have to like opt into a completely different framework. Now, you can still say within the Eleventy ecosystem that you love.ChrisThat was a lot. I've literally just been sitting here just like absorbing it all in. I feel like a mega React, Chad, when I say, "Yeah, but you didn't say any of the buzzwords. SSG, ISR, SSR..."AnthonyI think DPR would be one of them technically, right? Distributed persistent rendering?ChrisYeah, haha.BenThe Venn diagram of all of these words is a very pretty butterfly and also inscrutable to anyone outside of the space. For folks at home who are playing buzzword bingo, it's Eleventy's implementation of distributed persistent rendering, or sometimes not distributed persistent rendering, Brian Rinaldi calls it deferred rendering. That's the term I like. It's deferred rendering. Everyone's got their own different take depending on whether they're a framework or whether they're a CDN. It's deferred rendering that's most similar to - I think Gatsby now has, I forget what they're calling it now.ChrisI think they're calling it deferred... incremental deferred rendering? Something like that.Ben MyersThis is exactly why I'm just using Brian's term of deferred rendering. If you're looking at this and going, "What's Eleventy's version of incremental static regeneration" or something like that, the closest thing is Eleventy Serverless. What is distributed persistent rendering? It's Eleventy Serverless hooked up to on-demand builders. That's what we're talking about. Hopefully that helps for people who are hoping to play buzzword bingo. The crux of it is you hit a route and Eleventy is run in the serverless function to create a page for you in basically real time.ChrisThe reason I say all the buzzwords is because sometimes they help define where it sits in the market, and sometimes they really do not. And this is where we talk about like functionality is obviously what really makes people understand what all these terms. Things like Next have this, Gatsby have this. For example, you build a website, let's say an e-commerce store, really easy and you add a new product. Does that product then just get rendered onto the website using like a webhook, or does that product only show if that specific URL is then entered? Because then Serverless knows to run and make that page?BenServerless is still in its infancy, but it would really depend on your implementation. I know Zach is still working on having serverless routes that have been created, but then saved can now get added to like what Eleventy calls collections (which are arrays of templates). You could be able to then display it on the rest of the site. Truthfully, I haven't done a whole lot with that. I think it would depend a lot on your implementation. It's in the moment the on request (your server function that's handling that) is looking for any arguments that you supply it in the URL. Either through the structure of the URL itself or through query parameters. You're probably passing in a SKU or some other identifier in there. It would look up some known database or API and be able to render that for you.ChrisThis is actually what I've personally seen with all these different types of rendering methods is that you chuck out the complete build, they add a new product and go, "it's not in the store." I'm like, "well it is on the store," if you know the URL, but you need to go to the URL for it to appear on the rest of the store. Cause that means the website now knows about it. It's like, how do you explain that to someone not technical? They need to know the URL to go to the right product to then appear on the rest of the website. It's like, "I thought this was meant to save millions and time on all these things." It's still a really complicated subject. One of the really big things that I wanted to ask is, what Serverless is sending down the pipe back to the client is not rehydrated JavaScript or JavaScript JSON, it's just HTML?BenYes. Just pure boring, lovely, fantastic, delightful HTML. Which means that it's gonna be fairly lightweight. Really, the way to think about this is, "this is how the web used to work and in many places still does." This is what we now call server rendering. Except you don't have to own a persistent server and you're very likely not doing anything with sustained sessions or anything like that. But the meat of, "I go talk to a server and I ask for a page and the server builds me that page on the fly," it's that, that's what's going on. I'm waving my hands doing jazz hands - imagine sparkles around this - it's now **Jamstack**! That's what it is. But it's bringing that kind of server functionality into a tool (into a framework, whatever you wanna call it) that previously has been prebuilt.You create a directory of HTML files and then that directory of HTML files is yours to do whatever you want with. You could FTP that into some server and just host that directly. You could FTP that into a CDN. Or you could do what I do, which is I have a Git based workflow hooked up to a CDN (in this case, Netlify). Every time I push to my repo, Netlify rebuilds but you don't have to have any of that instrumentation and orchestration. You could just upload some boring old HTML to a server and host that. This provides the same lightweight end user experience where you're getting just HTML. It's not HTML that we then rehydrate down the road and replace your entire page with this app behind the scenes that hopefully you won't notice. It's just HTML, it's lightweight, it's easy to cache.It's a little friendlier for search engines to optimize. When all you need is static HTML on a page and not a whole lot of dynamic interactive stuff, it's fantastic. It's glorious. I think the performance thing is an interesting conversation. I don't know if y'all know this. But right now we are in the middle of a pandemic and this means businesses have taken measures around this pandemic. There have been a small handful of times I have gone out to eat at a restaurant. On the tables, instead of giving me menus, there are table tents that have QR codes I can scan to pull up their menu. This, to me, is an example of a wonderful idea to meet user's needs that typically fails miserably in the execution.When I scan the QR code, it pulls up the restaurant's website and the restaurant has used some site builder or something else that sends over gobs and gobs of JavaScript. A whole framework likely or at the very least probably jQuery, sending over a whole lot of stuff. I don't know if y'all have this experience, but every restaurant I seem to go to seems to have poor internet connection there. I don't have great connection there; I don't have great reception. It takes me, like, 20 seconds where there's just this spinner and then I get to see a list of foods, which is mostly text. Sometimes there's pictures but the pictures are strictly optional. That feels to me like no one quite anticipated this pandemic (restaurants least of all) and rearchitecting your website is an expensive process that you can't just say, "oh, just remake your website with faster stuff."But we are several years into this now. Folks haven't looked at this and gone, "huh, those slow websites at our own restaurant to pull up our own menu, that's an area of opportunity for improvement there." Especially considering that when people are out and about, they're often in those kind of reception dead zones, such as a restaurant. They're operating off of finite data caps. They don't need gizmos and widgets and all sorts of interactive stuff. They just want to see what kind of food they can buy at your restaurant. There are times where having tools that make it really easy and flexible to just serve some boring, static HTML is exactly what your users need. Having that developer experience to make that easier is just gorgeous.ChrisYes, but I have two counterpoints.BenI'm ready to hear them.ChrisOne, "But JavaScript. I can write my CSS in JavaScript. I can write my HTML in JavaScript. I can just write JavaScript" and two, "Hey, you're a captive audience in a restaurant. Of course, they want you to sit there a little bit longer."BenWell, I mean, I think both of those arguments are very fair. But I think that too often we look at JavaScript as this great enabler and don't think of it as also a responsibility and a possible point of failure. Here's an example I sometimes use because I think documentation sites are a fantastic use case for Eleventy. I would like you to envision we're building a documentation site for some library we've made. As is the custom, we want to show how many GitHub stars this library. In the React ecosystem, it's fairly commonplace to set up a fetch to the GitHub API and display that. But what if the GitHub API is down? Well, I sure hope you set up some error boundaries and stuff like that.What if the GitHub API isn't down but it's really sluggish? Well, I certainly hope that you set up loading states. You have a lot of complexity around a part of the page that honestly no one cares about. You incur risk and you incur complexity over such a minor part of the page. I think that sometimes that stuff is incredibly valuable and stuff to consider and to consider how do we do this responsibly? Of course, yes, we could work around the foot guns. We could build a robust, resilient experience. But I think it's also interesting sometimes to ask, "how critical is this really?" Could we get away with having the result of how many stars our GitHub project has? Could we get away with having that be just hard coded texts in the built HTML that gets updated with a nightly built? Is that acceptable in some cases?No, it won't be, but in many cases it totally could be. You say, "oh, we've got JavaScript" and I say, "sure, but it might be more resilient in the backend." We don't have to worry about the costs and the risks and the complexity around doing all this stuff client side. As for a captive audience, I mean sure, but no one's gonna look at that and go, "ah yes, this restaurant was very fancy and stuff like that and I sure did feel very fancy waiting on my phone to pull up this menu in the middle of this steak restaurant going, 'it'll load, I promise. Do I need to refresh this another few times?'" It's all about different experiences and there is no one size solution that fits everything.ChrisYeah, I would've walked out the restaurant if the website was made in PHP. Just not for me. I don't care how rare you like your steak, this ain't for me! Um... no, all jokes aside, Eleventy Serverless looks really, really cool. I think one of the things that is really cool about it is, what it's spitting out is HTML. So many times when it comes to like, if you even think about Next's implementation or Gatsby, do I even know what it's spitting out? Kind of... to what I understand, it's just JSON. It spits out a massive JSON chunk that then gets stored in the HTML file that then gets rehydrated into the client. To what I understand! When you see those messages in Next.js saying, "Hey, your ISSG step is a bit too big," it's because you are literally dumping a massive JSON object into a script tag for Next.js to read later. If you didn't know.Ben MyersI don't want bash on those tools. I think there's absolutely a time and a place for them. But there's a time and a place for boring old HTML as well. And Eleventy... amazing.ChrisAnd I think what's the most amazing thing about all this is that we're still very early. It's still all very early. Even what Next.js is doing, who you could say have been doing SSG for the longest time. We're still so early when we talk about things like frameworks like Marko who have been in the industry for like 10 years. Everything is still so early in this area. The more capabilities that we have with less abstraction, I think the better. I think what's really interesting is what you just said about it's opt-in, not automatically there. It still works as expected, but if you want to add this, then you get it.So many times when it comes to things like say Next.js or Gatsby, I use next Next.js all day every day, so I don't mind bashing it. Do I even know how much JavaScript it sends to the client by default? Well, I hope it's not a lot. What we tend to forget is when I say about the question, "I know JavaScript, I could just write everything," is that I've made an abstraction line that is so high because it's all in JavaScript that so much performance can be potentially lost. You are technically compiling down CSS, HTML, JavaScript by default. What Eleventy is doing is just saying, "Look, you know HTML, you know CSS. Just send that down the wire and that is good enough for 80% of use cases like a blog or documentation."BenAnd now with Serverless, you compliment the sites that are already built with static. A fantastic example, and I wanna give a shout out to both Brian Robinson and Stephanie Eckles who have done this kind of stuff. You can have your blog and the meat of your blog is all built statically ahead of time during a pre-build step. Great, using serverless you could add a search bar to that site. Now your search pages are generated serverless based on your search query. But the meat of your website is still that static, cached, search engine friendly version of your site so it's all additive.ChrisThat's what makes it really good. So much of the ecosystem right now is taking, like, your Ford Rapture by default. You're not starting with the smallest car you possibly can. It's like, "we got the biggest engine to do the school trip in." It's not like, "let's start with a really small city car," it's like, "take everything and just use it."BenAbsolutely.AnthonyOne of the other things I wanted to get into is, I know that you've been working a lot on adding to the Eleventy documentation. You've written a ton of blog posts about Eleventy. I think for the most part, when people want to explain the data cascade to people, your blog post is kind of the canonical example that is usually linked to. I would be curious, when you were looking at the Eleventy docs, where did you see areas that you felt you could add value?BenOne pull request that actually got merged in not long ago was I defined a bunch of terms because I was looking around for a definition of, for instance, the word "template." The definition that I eventually ended up adding to the site was the one that I gave y'all. "A content file, typically in a language such as HTML and Markdown that gets processed by a template language and gets built as output." I had the opportunity to add that to the site because I actually couldn't find anything like that anywhere on the site. I think that the Eleventy documentation right now is fantastic at showing you the breadth of Eleventy's API.But a room for opportunity I see is, onboarding new people to Eleventy. As it stands, the getting started guide as you build a template and then run Eleventy to build a site using that template, and then it kind of just goes, "Tada! Welcome to Eleventy!" I would love to see more resources from the ecosystem, but especially more resources in the core Eleventy documentation around how to take that getting started guide and build a fully fledged application that you could host something pro on. So that's a room for growth, I think. I think that is going to require kind of some more explicit step-by-step walkthroughs.I think that's also going to require a bit more tying pieces together, like painting a bigger picture of that. Which is why, for instance, I wrote that data cascade post. Eleventy has some great pages about each step of the data cascade. But painting that as one big picture - with the sense of when should you use one step or method versus when should you use another step or method - that was something that I felt was missing. that's something that I'm hoping to contribute more and more. I think it's a bit of a slow process. You don't wanna boil the ocean. You don't want to contribute every update all at once. This is something that I'm doing in a bit of my free time just here and there. Maybe I'll add a page or I'll add to a page that already exists but provide a bit more of the context in (what I hope is) a beginner, newcomer, friendly way to help them really understand why does this fit into the bigger picture of an Eleventy project.This is a sentiment I've heard a couple times in the Eleventy space and I don't wanna bash on the Eleventy docs. I do think that they are great and again, they reflect the breadth of Eleventy's API. But this is something that, right now, there is a need for. People are writing blog posts and making videos that rise to that need. If you're listening to this and you, yourself do Eleventy (or if you're learning Eleventy) I would say right now the community needs you. The community could really benefit from you writing about your experiences and the things you learned. The real practical step by step process of how you built the thing that you've built whether that's on your own blog post or on your own YouTube channel or maybe it's in some way contributed to the documentation.I have no official affiliation with Eleventy, but this is something that I'm seeing more and more that folks should benefit from. That is the encouragement I would give. I think this is what we need to see. Eleventy just hit 1.0 recently and that marks it as a mature product. I would love to see us figure out more and more ways to bring people into the fold. I myself learned Eleventy through Andy Bell's course "Learn Eleventy from Scratch," which used to be a paid course. It's now open and free, but no longer being updated. I think more resources like that, which take you from the docs (which can sometimes be very API focused) to something that is instead methodological in its design. I think it's something that Eleventy could benefit from.AnthonyI would use the term explanatory.ChrisOne of the favorite things that I love, something you said earlier that I wish all frameworks said is as simply this. We can do everything, but we are not good at everything. You should use this for X and Y type of websites and if it's not X or Y, go look at something else. And you said documentation and blogs and homepages, that's what Eleventy is really good at. Don't go try build a dashboard in it.BenAbsolutely and it's like, it could be done and I think that there is value in experimenting. Using a thing far beyond what it was meant to do is something I see a lot with the CSS space. Amit Sheen's work is using CSS to create hyper realistic 3D animations. This is so far beyond the realm of what anyone ever intended of CSS. But we learned something as a community from pushing CSS to its limits. We learned techniques that we can use in the day to day. So it's not to say you can't build hyper interactive dashboards with Eleventy. You can certainly learn some things from that. But if you're trying to publish, if you're trying to deploy to production and you're trying to have a resilient app - those kinds of things - probably Eleventy isn't on the table for you and that's okay.But I've definitely had this moment where I'll be working someone individually through Eleventy to rebuild their blog. They'll be coming from like a React mindset. Suddenly I show them how they could create something that looks identical to their blog but as HTML. There's that moment that clicks where they've been using a tool that wasn't intended for the. Now, they have a tool that was actually meant for that kind of thing, and it unlocks something in them. That is, I think, a huge takeaway. There's no one size fits all, but that means that the one size that fits all that you're thinking of, isn't a one size fits all.ChrisVery true. Building blogs with Next and Gatsby, it's pretty overkill when you could just send sweet, sweet HTML.BenMm-hmm.AnthonyYeah. I was really happy that you were working on the docs cause I know I've struggled with the docs and I know others have as well. But as you said, just bashing the docs doesn't solve anything or make anyone feel good. Especially when Zach spent so much of his own, free time creating this project. When you see things like that, contribute back. Especially if you're someone who's in a position to help with things like documentation and explanation. That's really awesome, that's very much the spirit of open source, so I'm happy you did that.BenI think in general, people benefit from having multiple possible explanations for things. If Zach is the only person writing documentation, then everything is going to be oriented around how Zach understands things. Zach has a lot of great context into the inner workings of Eleventy, as well as the inner workings of the web. But Zach is not everyone. I'm not everyone. The two of y'all aren't everyone, right? Bringing more people to the table documentation wise, means we can get a better diversity of explanations that can work better for a wider diversity of people who are coming to this project. That is awesome.AnthonyIs there anything else about Eleventy you want to talk about before we wrap it?BenWe touched a bit on how it's HTML and I think that part itself is really huge. I feel like I've become a more robust developer as a result because I can't just rely on a component to do things for me. I have to think about, what is the best markup for this and what are the scripts that I have to write to make this work robustly? I've been very fortunate that Eleventy has improved me as a developer and I'm super, super excited to see how much the community is growing. It feels like it's exploded in popularity recently, I think in part to the Learn Eleventy from Scratch Course by Andy Bell and I think in part due to things like The Eleventy meetup that have been organized by Sia Karamalegos, Stephanie Eckles, and Thomas Semmler.There's a lot more community outreach and stuff like that. I'm just incredibly excited to see this project grow. It just received full-time open source funding from Netlify, which means Zach is now paid to work on Eleventy full time. Already we've seen some longstanding pull requests get merged in that have enabled different things. The more people we could get in on this project, the more cool things we can build. Absolutely dive into Eleventy. See what you can build and see what you can break. See how you can make something that you previously might have wanted a whole framework for. See if you can build something lightweight, robust, semantic, performant, and just see what a different way to build is.AnthonyYep. And if you hit any roadblocks, check out Slinkity.BenThere we go. Yes.AnthonyGo ahead and let our listeners know where they can find more about Eleventy or more about yourself.BenYeah, so if you want to learn about Eleventy, the documentation can be found at their website, which is 11ty.dev. Eleventy kind of has two spellings. It's a whole thing. I'm sure the link will be in the show notes. There's multiple links on there to find the documentation. Poke around, see if you can find the Easter eggs there because it's delightful. The documentation button is incredible. If you wanna find me out and about on the web, I'm on Twitter at BenDMyers. Again, I'm sure that link will be in the show notes. And I host a weekly Twitch show, which Anthony has been a part of four times now.I think he was the inaugural guest and he's still the person who's been on the most times. It's called Some Antics. Every week I bring on a guest from around the web development and web design industry to teach me something about building a great user experience for the web in a hands on way with a focus on accessibility and/or core web technologies. You can find that at twitch.tv/someanticsdev. That's S-O-M-E-A-N-T-I-C-S-D-E-V, someanticsdev. I look forward to hearing from y'all. I look forward to seeing what y'all build, what y'all make, what y'all are learning, what you're doing. My cat has just jumped off the bed in a clunky, noisy way.AnthonyTuna wants to be on the show.BenYes. I think that probably means he is done with this podcast as well.AnthonyThank you so much, Ben. It's always a pleasure getting to speak with you.BenLikewise!AnthonyWe appreciate your time and hope to have you back soon.BenSee y'all later.[Post-show Clip]ChrisI remember back in the Gatsby days when you'd have 10,000 pages. You're like, "I just wanna rebuild just that one page!"BenYep. Even Eleventy beat them to that punch.ChrisWow, I should learn more about Eleventy.BenIt's almost as though we need a podcast episode about it.AnthonyOkay, that's our pre-show clip. Perfect. Okay, let's do it. Ready?BenYes sir.

https://codingcat.dev/podcast/2-38-a11y-with-ben-myers Sponsors: Storyblok Have you already discovered Storyblok? They have an official Svelte SDK! 74,000 + developers & marketers use it to deliver powerful content experiences on any frontend: Websites, eCommerce, mobile apps, AR/VR, or voice content! Ben breaks down accessibility (A11y) in web development and how it can impact usability. He also explains different tools and methods for approving A11y. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/purrfect-dev/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/purrfect-dev/support

Dr. Ben Myers is a poet, a professor, and the director of the Honors Program at Oklahoma Baptist University. Josh and Ben discuss why poetry matters; they read some favorite poems (including the John Berryman poem that forms the title of this episode), and they discuss how the Christian story provides a framework for discerning beauty and good art. Ben Myers is the author of A Poetics of Orthodoxy: Christian Truth as Aesthetic Foundation.

Summary of the Apostles' CreedThe Apostle's Creed is a summary of the Christian faith that depicts the full story of scripture. The Apostle's Creed contains one of the most concise summaries of the Christian faith in straightforward scriptural language. It follows the narrative arch of scripture from creation to incarnation, crucifixion to resurrection, Pentecost to life everlasting.The Apostle's Creed reminds us that our story and church are rooted in an ancient faith. There is no singular author by which this creed can be traced, rather it is the work of the Western Catholic Church. Though, it seems to have grown out of Peter's confession in Matthew 16:16. Its origin is as a baptismal confession, those that are laying down their life to join Christ in his death and resurrection (Romans 6:4) confess this as their new reality and guiding story.The Apostle's Creed is not simply a routine repetition of doctrine but rather our pledge of allegiance to one God– Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is not a routine repetition of doctrine. It is a liturgical poem meant to move our heart as a pledge of allegiance to the triune God revealed in the person of Christ.The "Secular", is not a place of anti-religion or neutrality, it is the space of contested belief. Everyone in the Secular Age experiences what Charles Taylor calls "cross-pressure"; We have all come to realize that what we believe cannot be taken as the default of society anymore. “I don't believe in God, but I miss him." – Julian Barns, Nothing to be Frightened ofAs we wrestle with our doubts, I think Jesus' encounter with Thomas in John 20 offers us the most beautiful glimpse into God's reception of the doubter. “So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?" Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him." After saying these things, he said to them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him." The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover." Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." – John 11:6-16 (ESV)“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going." 5Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" – John 14:1-5 (ESV)“Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe." –John 20:24-25 (ESV)In the midst of Thomas' disappointment and doubt, God, in Jesus, draws close. “Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." 27Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe." 28Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" –John 20:26-28 (ESV)Jesus invites us to come to him, fully human; full of hope and cold hard facts. Doubt is not the opposite of faith; unbelief is. “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." –Matthew 28:16-20 They worshiped and doubted– and changed the world. Even at the Great Commission, the disciples held doubt and faith together. “We don't believe instead of doubting; we believe while doubting. We're all Thomas now.” – James KA Smith, How (not) to be SecularThomas embodies the human condition; full of faith and trust one moment and full of questions and doubts the next.To say, “I believe in God” is not made, without doubt, it is to trust in the midst of doubt. The biblical concept of faith is not an illogical leap but a trust in the nature of God. “...Christian belief is [not] an irrational leap into the dark. It is more like tasting a dish that you have never tried. You have seen other people enjoying it; you have read the reviews; the chef swears you'll like it. There are good grounds for trusting, but you will never know for sure until you try it. “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” sings the psalmist (Ps 34:8). The first act is an act of trust that gives rise to ever-increasing [confidence], which in turn nourishes a deeper and a more knowledgeable trust.” –Ben Myers, The Apostles' Creed: A Guide to the Ancient CatechismFour ways in which we can cultivate a life of faith amid the cross-pressures of our moment. 1. Rethink success, not as certainty or control, but as trust. The biblical concept of faith is trusting in the nature of God. 2. Doubt your Doubts. We should be equal opportunity doubters, not just of belief but of disbelief as well. 3. Strive for Emotionally Health. Wrestling with anything, including doubt, becomes exponentially more complicated when we struggle with our emotional health. “Sometimes doubt is fostered by sleep deprivation especially in those who are overworked or are students… it comes from bad habits, zealous perfectionism, and bad time management… The point is that as human beings our mind, body, matter, spirit all work together and if you push yourself to the limit you are inviting depression, breaking down, and looking at the world through dark, gloomy habits, and then the godliest thing you can do in universe is get some sleep!” –DA Carson, Scandalous4. Lean into the community of God. God is not unknown, he can be known. Joining in the songs of the saints, dinner with your microchurch, and the stories of God's activity creates an environment in which faith can grow.

Christopher Alexander, President of RE/Max Canada joins us to cover the RE/MAX AFFORDABIILITY REPORT. Ben Myers, President of Bullpen Consulting reviews the Rental Market Report.

Ben Myers, President, Bullpen Research & Consulting Inc., who crunches the data for rentals.ca talks about rents in cities near Toronto are soaring , with some seeing hikes as high as 54 per cent. Here's where tenants face the most sticker shock. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of the podcast, I talk with Software Engineer teacher, and Twitch streamer, Ben Myers. We talk about accessibility and different aspects of accessibility when it comes to the Web, and semantic HTML. We even dive into streaming, learning, and the education experience regarding the Web. Intro/Outro music graciously given permission to use called, "Settle In" by Homer Gaines. Sound editing by Chris Enns of Lemon Productions. Transcripts can be found at: https://toddl.dev/podcast/transcripts/myers/ https://benmyers.dev - Ben's Site https://twitter.com/BenDMyers - Ben on Twitter https://twitch.tv/SomeAnticsDev - Ben on Twitch --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/frontendnerdery/support

Alan chats with Ben Myers, President of Bullpen Research and Consulting. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ben Myers from Bullpen Consulting joins us to discuss the Rental Market in Canada. Rents on the rise, or are they falling like a rock? Find out in this episode of ON THE MARKET. Franco Terrazzano joins us from the Canadian Tax Payers' Federation to talk taxes! How unfair is a home equity tax? We find out right here!

D6 stands for Deuteronomy 6 - a chapter that is the passage behind the expressed aim and goals of the ministry of Randall House Publishing. This conference has grown to be a significant gathering of ministers, authors, outreach organizations and non-profits. In today's episode, Mike talks to author Arlene Pellicane, Ben Myers from "Actor's Bible," author Denise Pass, resource leader Carl Barnhill from "Twelve Thirty Media," and Tony Souder, leader from "Pray For Me."

Ben Myers joins Claire and Steph to discuss the finer points of HTML and why it matters, from accessibility to SEO.

Slideshow for this message is available Introduction John 20 There are stories. And then there are true stories. There is fiction and then there is non-fiction. Now here's the claim this morning. What we are about to read is not fiction. It's a narrative account describing something that took place in history. A lot of us come in here this morning, consciously or even subconsciously, not terribly concerned about that point. Why? Because reading about the life of Jesus is just a good read. It is a good story. It inspires us the way a story inspires us. A good story has lots of drama, great character development, and unpredictable plot line, lots of irony, lots of tension and then there's this resolve at the end and we love it. And what a happy ending, Jesus Christ rose from the dead! We are addicted to that feeling of drama that resolves, of happy endings. Think about great stories we all love: Cinderella gets taken advantage of, marginalized, mistreated, but then in the end there's justice, the slipper fits, and she marries the prince and we feel great. The White Witch in Narnia has her stranglehold and it's always winter but never Christmas. And all these creatures are turned to stone. And there's this deception. But then Aslan is on the move. And the land begins to melt. And the white which is defeated and we feel great. But here's the thing and I hate to break it to you: Cinderella is not a real person. There aren't magical pumpkins. There is no such thing as a white witch. There is no actual lion named Aslan. And in a way, who cares, because we don't need the story to be real for it to be meaningful, to have a purpose, to move us, change us, exhilarate us, even shape and transform us. But, here's the point: a story does need to be real if it's going to change what is real. There's a pretty big difference between writing a story in which you win a million dollars and actually winning a million dollars. Which would you choose? You see in order to be helped in the physical realm, the helper must be real. He must exist. if the building you are in is burning, you must be saved by a real fireman, not a story about a fireman. If the heart in your body is failing, you must be saved by a real heart surgeon, not a story about one. So when we come to the Bible this morning, let me ask you a question, "Is this a story about a man who rose from the dead or did a man actually rise from the dead? Is this another happily ever after story the likes of Cinderella or is this history? Listen, everything depends on it. EVERYTHING. The whole meaning of the Christian faith depends on the factual basis of this claim, that what we just read actually happened. That's why Christianity if a faith that is concerned with apologetics - the historic defense of its claims. If it's not true, then the whole thing is worthless. Who Jesus factually is the foundation for what he's done. In other words if Jesus is a great story, then he has done nothing about death. If Jesus was just a man, then he's done nothing about death. But if Jesus was God come in the flesh, and he really did rise again, then death has been abolished and eternal life awaits all who place their faith in Him! So today we are going to look at the REAL story. We have only two points today. We are going to listen to the story, the real story and then we are going to consider the implications of it. Now let's enter into the narrative. Last week we left off at John 19:42. Joseph of Aramithea along with Nathaniel, laid the body of Christ in a rich man's tomb very unknowingly fulfilling the prophesy of Isaiah 53:9 Isaiah 53 So the Friday sun of Nissan 14 sets. And when the sun went down, hope went down with it. That night as far as anyone saw, or could see, Christianity was dead. It was utterly destroyed by the murder of its founder and sole leader. At that moment, as the stone was rolled shut, and silence filled the air, nothing could have seemed more abjectly weak, more pitifully hopeless, more absolutely doomed to scorn and extinction, and despair, than the Church which He had founded in his name. Imagine how empty the words of Jesus would have rung in Peter's ears, “Peter you are Cephas and upon this Rock I will built my church.” Look at what Jesus left. It numbered a handful of weak followers. Peter, the most hopeful member in terms of boldness, had denied his Lord 3 times with lies and cursing; the most devoted had forsaken Him and fled. They were poor, uneducated, ignorant, and frightened. They could not claim a single building. They didn't have a single sword. They had no money. They possessed no notable skills. They wielded no political influence. They had no religious influence. If they spoke Hebrew, their own language, it betrayed them by its mongrel dialect; If they spoke the current Greek of their region, it was despised as the uneducated version, the redneck version, the miserable, despised version. Here you have an insignificant, weak band of Galilean fisherman wielding a cross of wood trying to overcome the world. But here's the thing: they did. I want you to think about this: The best selling book of all time is Don Quiote with 500 million copies printed. Do your realize that there have been over 5 billion copies of the Bible printed translated into more languages than any other book. The Bible has been the NYTimes best seller every year since its inception. Every year, the Bible sells twice as many books as any book on the NYT best seller list. Last year over 26 million Bibles were sold in the U.S. alone.If you were to leaf through one of these 25 million copies, whose words would be highlighted in Red all throughout? The man who was whipped, nailed to a tree and laid in a tomb. But it ABSOLUTELY COULD not have been this way had Jesus stayed there. How could it? Paul was preaching throughout the Roman world. He's writing 1st Corinthians in A.D. 52. Even the most secular God-hating historian will grant you that fact. That's 25 years after the event happened. Nobody who actually lived it would believe it, if Jesus was in the grave. There would have to have been hundreds who could personally testify to the resurrection. Otherwise, all you'd have to do is produce the body and the whole thing would be over. How did this empire transforming message begin? So let's pick up the narrative in John chapter 20:1. It is early Sunday morning (still dark). I'm not sure what you all have in your heads here. For a lot of year, in fact all the way up until college, I had a flannel graph picture in my head of a large boulder in front of the mouth of a cave that was pushed aside. Let me try to give you a better picture. And inside the tomb it would would have looked something like this. There are many, many examples of this in archaeology. So the body is placed upon that shelf for one year. And then after the body has decomposed the bones are gathered up and placed in these ossuaries or bone boxes. So Mary comes to the tomb and she comes to anoint the body. The idea is that as the body decomposes, it's going to smell. So to combat that odor, you put spices. The more wealthy, the more honored, the more perfume. She comes bearing whatever spices she had; it's very early Sunday morning. It's officially after Sabbath. She finds that the stone has been rolled away. So Mary comes to the tomb. She probably has a desire to put some burial spices on Jesus. But when she arrives she sees the tomb is open. This frightens her so she runs back to tell Peter and John. John wins the footrace but doesn't enter the tomb. Peter in characteristic brashness, doesn't care if the tomb will defile him, he just plunges in headlong only to discover that the burial clothes of Jesus have been set aside. The head garment which we were already told was made of fine silk and was folded neatly by itself. This was certainly not the way a tomb raider would have dealt with that costly piece of cloth. All throughout the text, there's these little details that nobody would include, unless of course, it actually happened. In other words, it's an appeal to go check. As and see what other say. See if the stories check out. Mary stays back while Peter and John return to their homes. She is then the first to see Jesus. As many have noted, it's highly significant that in a culture that did not honor women, Jesus first reveals himself to a woman. It's significant on a a couple of levels. First it's significant because it's obviously a choice. Jesus is always preferring the lowly, those who are trodden under foot, those who are overlooked. And he honors Mary in choosing to appear to her first. But secondly, think about this from the standpoint of credibility. Put yourself in the shoes of an author who is trying to fabricate a mystery, and you wanted people to really believe this stuff, who would you put as an eye-witness to the resurrection? You'd pick some high posting official. You wouldn't pick a woman, who in the Jewish context, couldn't even testify in court because of her gender. The only reason you'd do that, is if in fact, it actually happened. In seeing him, she falls to the ground grasps his feet and says Rabboni, which is an extended form of Rabbi. In rabbinical Hebrew this expression is regularly applied to God. This may be Mary's way of addressing her teacher as God. Much has been written about Jesus' statement, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father;” The Greek is very difficult and unusual here. I think some of the confusion in this verse comes from the way we naturally read the phrase, “I am ascending.” Jesus says, stop clinging to me for I have not ascended to my Father as if to say that touching Christ in his pre-ascended state is not proper. Until then, stop clinging. But that would be a strange reading since Thomas is later asked to touch Jesus. Here is the paraphrase that I think is most helpful, "Stop touching me for I have not yet ascended to my Father. I am going to ascend but that time is not now, so stop acting like I'm going to immediately disappear! This is a time for joy and sharing the good news, not for clutching me. Stop clinging to me, but go and tell my disciples that I have risen. I promise I'll still be here when you get back! And so Mary obeyed and the message of the risen Savior began to spread. And just think about what has happened. It went first to the Disciples, from the Disciples to the 500 from the 500 all around Jerusalem. From there it spread to all Judea and even the despised people of Samaria. From there it spread to the Aramaic-speaking peoples along the Mediterranean coast and also to the inland parts of the Roman Empire, and beyond that into the Parthian Empire Southern Indian coast By the latter half of the second century, the resurrection of Jesus had spread west throughout Media, Persia, Parthia, and Bactria In the fourth century it was Frumentius who brought Christianity to Ethiopia and it began spreading into Africa. Christianity spread to other great pre-modern states, including the Kingdom of Aksum where it became the state religion. Even the Germanic peoples gradually heard about the resurrection of Jesus and the claims of Christ and many became followers of this resurrected King. And down through the corridors of history it continued to spread. We stand here today nearly 2000 years later as recipients of a message first spoken by the mouth of Mary, “He is risen from the dead.” Now what are the implications of this? What does this mean? How do we interpret the claims? Many think Christianity is just a philosophy. If Christianity is just a philosophy, you can reject it and there's no problem, because philosophies are a dime a dozen. If that philosophy isn't anchored in anything objective, well you have just as much of a right to develop your own philosophy as the next guy. And that's the level at which a lot of people reject the Christian faith. I'm glad you've found something that works for you. But you know, I personally don't like this idea of submitting to a set of morals because it conflicts with what I think is good for me. I really don't like the idea of a God who is angry at sin. The only reason someone would feel the freedom to say that is if they thought Christianity was merely an idea. Nobody says this sort of thing as it relates to real things in a real world, things that demand your submission. If a forest fire is coming your way, you don't say, “I won't submit to a flame that destroys property. How cruel.” That's insane. You just run for you life. Why? Because the flame doesn't care what you believe. It doesn't care what you feel. It just is. It will just consume you if you are in the way. It will consume you because it is real and you are real. Let the full weight of the Christian message come falling down upon you right now. Let me distill it to two points. You will die. You will perish because you are finite and this real world destroys living things. There are not a lot of certainties in life, but that one's pretty certain. No matter how many pushups you do, miles you run, one day you will be put into a box and buried in the ground. And as obvious as this is, it's easy to forget. But Christ Jesus, because he rose, made a way for you to rise. Do you hear this? This is not a philosophy like Buddhism or a set of philosophical social ideals like Marxism. This factors into the very fabric of reality like physics or time or space. The claim is that Jesus Christ has conquered death. This is why the resurrection matters. This is why Paul says, “If Christ was not raised we are still in our sins and we are all of all men most to be pitied.” If the resurrection isn't history, this whole thing is a joke.Ggo home. But if it is true - and that is what we are claiming and what billions of people who have lived and died before us have claimed, then death has lost its sting. The fangs of death have been pulled out for those who believe. There's no venom in it. There's no fear. Death is safe for the believer. If Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then he holds the keys to eternal life as he claimed. The main message of Christianity is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And because of that, death has been defeated. It's what made Christianity so powerful in the first century. Ben Myers who specializes in systematic theology and the history of ideas recounts the way this transformed the early church: “Christians would assemble for prayer in tombs. They would worship Christ among the bones of the dead. Believers would raise the bodies of martyrs in the air and parade them through the streets like trophies. At funerals they would gaze lovingly on the dead and sing psalms of praise over their bodies. Such behavior shocked their pagan neighbors. According to Roman law, the dead had to be buried miles away from the city so that the living would not be contaminated. But Christians placed the dead right at the center of their public gatherings.” And this was true of Christians up until very recently. For centuries the dead were buried right in the churchyard and you'd walk through the graveyard on the way to church to remind yourself that one day, you too will be there, but a resurrection is coming. Christ has overcome the grave. A real God entered into real space to help real people from the very real problem of death. That's the whole message of the book of John. These things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ the son of the living God and that by believing you might have life in his name. How Do You Receive Him? Now under what conditions does this eternal life apply to us? Or to say it another way, what is the difference between a Christian and non-Christian? Think about what kind of person it is that becomes a follower of Jesus. Can we point to qualities that makes a person more likely to receive Jesus? It's very hard to do. You can find genius on both sides of the fence. There are hundreds of nobel laurretes who have claimed the name of Christ. You can also find hundreds of idiots. Genius and fools are on both sides of the fence. It has nothing to do with personality. Every enigram type is represented. It is a faith which appeals and equally repels all personality types. It has nothing to do with wealth or power. You have professional athletes on both sides, you have powerful CEO's, politicians, you have window washers, fast food workers, mechanics, engineers making all amounts of money. You have wealthy and poor on both sides. You have famous and infamous on both sides. You have people who go through terrible tragedy and some harden themselves against God and some turn to God. It has nothing to do with cultural appetite as it has spread in every culture in every continent of all times. Let the statistics speak. You have an equal divide. To some, God is discoverable everywhere; to others, nowhere. The same evidence, the same access to information, the same book being read. What's the difference. You know what a Christian is? A Christian is one who has found eternal life in Jesus. The search for eternal life is not unique to Christians. Let's just be clear, that search for eternal life that is RAGING in every single person who has ever been born and it's not just a search for an eternally beating heart. We don't just want to biologically live forever. Who wants to live forever hooked up to a life support machine. End the misery, please. When we say we all want eternal life, what we are saying is that we want meaning, purpose, happiness, and satisfaction that lasts FOREVER. The search for eternal life is really the search for God. It's the search for the ultimate. What is your highest good? What is the thing you really live for? What is that thing that if, we give ourselves to it completely, will provide us with satisfaction, meaning, happiness. We all have things we enjoy that give us life, things that are life-giving to us. Jesus say, those things are only life giving because I made them. I am life. “I am the bread of life. I am living water. I am the true vine. I am the way the truth and the life. I am the resurrection and the life.” These are all fantastic, monstrous claims of joy. Jesus is claiming to satisfy! But we've been duped so hard so many times in life, tricked, swindled, and taken advantage of that many of us choose to protect our hearts from the possibility of ever being hurt again by another swindler, that we push Jesus away and refuse to even entertain the possibility that this offer might be true. The real answer for the reason people accept or reject the Christian faith is not an intellectual one, a social one, a factual one….it's an emotional one. We all have a highly irrational love for that thing we BELIEVE will satisfy. It's the same irrational connection that binds a drug addict to his drug. Think about the devastation of addiction. Of course the initial hit is euphoric. But the problem is you need more and more of the addictive substance to get less and less of the satisfaction. That ends up destroying a person because there's diminishing returns on joy. It's scary. The problem with addiction is that the addict is trying to be satisfied with something that cannot actually satisfy. It has some of what is needed for satisfaction but the substance itself lacks the necessary properties necessary to truly satisfy. And while the addicts knows this, he also doesn't know anything better and he is terrified of not having that thing that at least brings him some pleasure. And so he will destroy his family to get it. He will destroy his health to get it. He will destroy his integrity and respect to get it. And even though the LOGICAL answer to his satisfaction problem is to surrender his addiction, emotionally he can't do it. There's too much fear. Believe it or not this is the exact same reason why so many can't accept Christ. We are all addicts. We are all trying to extract from this world, something this world was never meant to give us. And admittedly it isn't perfect, but its something. Some of us are getting a good bit of satisfaction from our appearance. People find us attractive and it feels good to be wanted. Some of us are addicted to respect, power, approval, comfort, control. It's quite satisfying to have those things. Some of us are addicted to money. You can do so much with it. It feels great. Some of us try to find it in religious self-righteosusness, our morality, our family. We are very satisfied at our moral accomplishments. How well is this really working? How long will it last? The longer you live the more you realize how shallow this is. And there's a reason it's shallow. And to understand why it feels so shallow you have to understand what's driving the addiction. What's the craving? It's the quest to have a reason to be loved. You see, we want so badly to be loved but we all have this haunting suspicion that we are not lovable. We know it at the core of who we are so we are working, working, working to silence the condemning voices in our heads. We want people to look at our athletic accomplishments, work accomplishments, financial accomplishments and we want people to respect those accomplishments and love us because of it. Or We want people to look at our smashing beauty and love us for it. Or We want people to look at our well-behaved family and love us for it. That's the hit. That's what feels so good. That's the drug. The compliments that people give us are so satisfying. It's so addicting. We love the praise, the words of affirmation. But just like a drug they diminish in their effectiveness over time. We need more and more. It never quite silences the voice of condemnation inside our souls. But you know what the message of the cross is to the world. I can silence it once and for all. Because the reason Jesus Christ loves you has nothing to do with your performance. While you were yet sinners, Christ died for you. Romans 5 Jesus comes to us and says, “I did not die for you because you were loveable.” I died for you because I chose to love what was not loveable. Stop believing that you need to do something to be loved. And here's the mystery of mysteries, it is that gaze of love that actually gives us value. Remember the story, beauty and the beast. The beast is hideous. He wants to be loved but he knows that he can never experience love because of who he is. And he can't change that! And he's destroyed by it. He's terrified. He's a monster because of it. But then the princess sets her gaze on him. You want to know what the great lesson of Beauty and the Beast is? A thing must be loved before it is lovable. And Jesus as Lord, Jesus as the ultimate good, Jesus as God, says, "I love you." Don't try to extract your value from your performance, your talent, your looks, your accomplishments. Lay it down. Make your choice. You can't have both. Lay down your money. Lay down your career. I demand it all. I demand total allegiance. Die to self. Give up everything and follow me. I am the resurrection and the life. I love you. I am that ultimate thing you've been searching for your entire life. Have the courage to give up your drugs of approval from men and follow me. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever belives in me should not perish but have everlasting life. PHYSICALLY AND SPRITUALLY. You know how to have eternal life? Believe who he is. That Jesus Christ was real, that he was God and that he died for you. And then allow Christ to love you. And if you do that, the whole gravitaitonal center of your life will shift. Because it's not longer about trying to work hard to become loveable. You are made loveable by the love of God. In the same way that a stock shoot up in price becaause billionare sets his eye upon it, you become precious because God sets his love upon you. FAITH COMMUNITY BIBLE CHURCH, JESUS CHRIST, THE KING OF KINGS LOVES YOU. Receive that love. The next step is for you to be baptized, to identify yourself as a follower of Jesus Christ who is loved.

Things look and sound a little different around here. Aarif and J.J. open with a big announcement. Friend of the show Peter Baugh of The Athletic has officially joined Hockey Mountain High as a co-host. Peter will be a permanent mainstay for the stretch run and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The guys welcome Peter then break down Colorado's back-to-back victories at Ball Arena. They also chat about Ryan Graves' return, the Norris Trophy race and College free agent signing Ben Myers. All that and more on this edition of Hockey Mountain High: Your go-to Avalanche Podcast.Produced by J.J. Jerez.Follow the guys on Twitter @JJoftheyear, @Peter_Baugh and @runwriteAarif

NHL – National Hockey League Last Night Detroit Red Wings 3, Winnipeg Jets 1 Red Wings 3, Jets 1 – Gagner scores 2 to top 500 points, Red Wings beat Jets 3-1 Sam Gagner scored twice to top 500 career points, and the Detroit Red Wings beat the Winnipeg Jets 3-1. Michael Rasmussen had the tiebreaking goal at 9:11 of the third period for Detroit, Dylan Larkin had two assists and Thomas Greiss finished with 32 saves. Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill got his 200th victory. Detroit won for the second straight night after beating Boston 5-3 on Tuesday. Mark Scheifele scored for the Winnipeg, which has lost three straight. Connor Hellebuyck made 32 saves. Tonight Seattle Kraken at Chicago Blackhawks, 8:30 p.m. MLB – Major League Baseball – Opening Day 2022 Today Milwaukee Brewers at Chicago Cubs, 2:20 p.m. NBA – National Basketball Association Last Night Boston Celtics 117, Chicago Bulls 94 Dallas Mavericks 131, Detroit Pistons 113 Celtics 117, Bulls 94 – Celtics rout Bulls for 50th, close in on No. 2 spot in East Jaylen Brown scored 25 points, Al Horford added 17 on 7-of-7 shooting and the Boston Celtics routed the Chicago Bulls 117-94 on Wednesday night for their 50th victory. The Celtics have won three in a row and are 27-6 since Jan. 22. They can wrap up the second spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs Thursday night with a victory at Milwaukee. Jayson Tatum scored 16 points for Boston. He was 5 of 18 from the field, making only one of eight from 3-point range. The Bulls have lost two straight. They claimed a playoff berth Tuesday. DeMar DeRozan scored 16 points for Chicago, and Nikola Vucevic added 13 points. Vucevic had four of the Bulls’ 17 turnovers. Mavericks 131, Pistons 113 – Luka Doncic-led Mavericks beat Pistons 131-113 for 50th win Luka Doncic had 26 points, 14 assists and eight rebounds to lead the Dallas Mavericks to a 131-113 win over the Detroit Pistons. The Mavericks are 20 games above .500 for the first time since 2011 when they went on to win the NBA title. They’re set up to earn home-court advantage in the playoffs for the first time since coach Jason Kidd was their point guard during the championship season. Dallas reached the 50-win mark for the first time in seven years, and just the second time since winning their only NBA title. Cade Cunningham had 25 points, nine assists and seven rebounds for the Pistons. NBA – Bulls’ Ball to miss rest of season because of knee injury Chicago Bulls point guard Lonzo Ball will miss the rest of the season following another setback in his recovery from surgery for a torn meniscus in his left knee. Ball’s final game was Jan. 14, and he had surgery two weeks later. The Bulls hoped a recent 10-day shutdown in activities after he experienced discomfort would resolve the issue and allow him to return this season. But he felt pain again. Coach Billy Donovan said this week it was “disappointing” and there would be discussion to determine the next steps. NBA – Silver says NBA plans to keep next All-Star Game in Utah The NBA plans to keep its next All-Star Game in Salt Lake City, despite its opposition to Utah’s ban on transgender youth athletes playing on girls teams. The Utah Jazz are set to host the event next February but there was speculation the league could take it away because of what the team called “discriminatory legislation.” But Commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday the event will stay put as planned. The NBA pulled the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte because of its opposition to a North Carolina law known as HB2 that limited anti-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay and transgender people. NCAAHKY – NCAA Ice Hockey – Frozen Four Tonight 2022 NCAA Frozen Four – National Semifinals – TD Garden, Boston, MA 1 Michigan vs. 1 Denver, 5:00 p.m. 1 Minnesota State vs. 2 Minnesota, 8:30 p.m. NCAAHKY – NCAA Frozen Four in Boston a clash of the Midwest and West The NCAA Frozen Four features a foursome that doesn’t include any teams from the East. It’s the first time since 2011 that the Eastern schools were shut out. Overall top seed Michigan will play Denver in the early semifinal on Thursday, with Minnesota and Minnesota State meeting in the nightcap. The field has already claimed 22 NCAA hockey titles, with Minnesota State the only school still in search of its first. Minnesota State goalie Dryden McKay, Minnesota’s Ben Myers and Denver’s Bobby Brink are all finalists for the Hobey Baker Award that goes to the top player in college hockey. Golf – The Masters – Tiger Woods overshadows Masters with so many scenarios Golf has a bright future and isn’t quite ready to let go of Tiger Woods. Even as six players can end the week at No. 1 in the world, even as Rory McIlroy goes after the career Grand Slam, this Masters is all about Tiger Woods. He is playing some 14 months after a horrific car crash that nearly cost him his right leg. Even on the final day of practice, there wasn’t an inch of space outside the ropes to watch Woods. Next up is to see how he handles it while keeping score. NFL – Attorneys General warn NFL to improve treatment of women The attorneys general of six states have written to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell , expressing concern over the league’s treatment of female employees and admonishing him for a lack of improvement to the league’s workplace culture. Without improvement, the attorneys general warned of potential legal action. The letter outlines concerns of gender discrimination ranging from the NFL’s treatment of women who have experienced domestic violence to the hiring and promotion of women in NFL offices. The letter comes as Congress investigates how the league has handled claims of sexual harassment in the front office of the Washington Commanders. WNBA – Dream acquire No. 1 overall pick in WNBA draft from Mystics The Atlanta Dream have acquired the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft from the Washington Mystics. The Mystics acquired the No. 3 overall pick Monday and the No. 14 selection in the second round. Washington also has the right to swap its 2023 first-round pick with Atlanta’s first-round pick acquired from Los Angeles on Feb. 5. The Dream traded Chennedy Carter and the rights to Li Yueru to the Sparks for Erica Wheeler, Los Angeles’ first-round draft choice next year and the No. 15 pick this season. This is only the second No. 1 overall draft pick for Atlanta. Russia/Ukraine – Boston Marathon excludes runners residing in Russia, Belarus Athletes from Russia and Belarus previously accepted to compete in this year’s Boston Marathon who are currently residing in either country will not be allowed to participate. The Boston Marathon Association, which manages the world’s oldest annual marathon, made the announcement. The exclusion also extends to athletes previously accepted into the B.A.A.’s 5K event. However, it doesn’t affect Russian or Belarusian athletes who are not residents of the countries. They will be allowed to compete but won’t be able to run under their country’s flag. AHL – American Hockey League Last Night Grand Rapids Griffins 2, Cleveland Monsters 1 – OT AHL – AHL player suspended 8 games for ‘homophobic language’ The American Hockey League announced that Rochester Americans forward Ben Holmstrom has been suspended eight games for “homophobic language.” The 34-year-old Holmstrom, a career minor leaguer who was signed to a professional tryout in February, was assessed a game misconduct for using offensive language at the end of the first period of a home game against the Utica Comets on March 30. He has already served two games of the suspension. AHL officials say that as part of his punishment Holmstrom will participate in “diversity and inclusive education.” MCCAA – Junior College Athletics Today Baseball Lake Michigan College at Grand Rapids Community College, 2:00 p.m./4:30 p.m. (DH) MHSAA – Benton Harbor’s Gondrezick named 2nd team Division 2 All State Benton Harbor junior point guard Grand Gondrezick was named to the Michigan Division II, 2nd team all state list.  He helped lead the Tigers to a district and regional championship, before falling to Grand Rapids Catholic Central in the state quarterfinals.  The Tigers finished the season at 22-3.   Gondrezick’s Benton Harbor teammate Trucel Singleton was named to the honorable mention list, along with Otsego’s Ashton Atwater and Andrew Brown of Three Rivers.   Mason Docks of the State Champion team from Williamston was the Division 2 player of the year. MHSAA – High School Sports Yesterday Girls Soccer Gull Lake 8, Vicksburg 0 Portage Northern 3, Kalamazoo Hackett 0 Portage Central 8, Okemos 0 Today Baseball Niles at Buchanan, 4:00 p.m. Kalamazoo Christian at Bridgman, 4:15 p.m. Gull Lake at Haslett, 4:00 p.m. Portage Northern at Vicksburg, 4:00 p.m. Battle Creek Pennfield at Parchment, 4:15 p.m. Softball Niles at Buchanan, 4:00 p.m. Kalamazoo Christian at Bridgman, 4:15 p.m. Portage Northern at Vicksburg, 4:00 p.m. Battle Creek Pennfield at Parchment, 4:15 p.m. Girls Soccer Our Lady of the Lake at Battle Creek Academy, 5:30 p.m. Coloma at Bridgman, 5:00 p.m. Niles at Buchanan, 5:00 p.m. Kalamazoo Loy Norrix at Harper Creek, 6:00 p.m. Olivet at Comstock, 5:30 p.m. Parma Western at Battle Creek Lakeview, 6:30 p.m. Battle Creek Central at Battle Creek Pennfield, 6:30 p.m. Girls Tennis Berrien Springs at Kalamazoo Hackett, 4:30 p.m.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alex Kock joins us to discuss PreConstruction Project Cancellations. Ben Myers joins us to discuss the National Rent Report. Tune in! .

This week we interviewed Mark Lewis. He is the director of the EFCA ReachGlobal Crisis Response Team. We discussed the Crisis Response efforts on the border of Ukraine, as well as their efforts in responding to the tornados that just hit New Orleans yesterday.  Click here to learn more about this ministry: https://crisis-response.ministries.efca.org To read the ReachGlobal Crisis Response blog click here: https://reachglobalcrisisresponse.wordpress.com Help ReachGlobal Crisis Response meet the needs of refugees in the wake of the conflict in Ukraine: https://give.efca.org/form_27a4b656 Follow ReachGlobal Crisis Response on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/efcacrisisresponse/ Follow ReachGlobal Crisis Response on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/goreachglobal JM's Album of the Week: Young Oceans - Like History (Instrumentals) Bradford's Book Club: The Apostles' Creed: For All God's Children (A FatCat Book) by Ben Myers  

Ben Myers is an accessibility advocate, a Software Engineer at Microsoft, host of Some Antics (a weekly Twitch show), and a moderator on both the Lunch Dev Discord and the Frontend Horse Discord. Ben joins us on PodRocket to talk about all things accessibility, streaming, and more. Links https://twitter.com/BenDMyers https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag https://twitter.com/search?q=%23a11y https://benmyers.dev https://www.twitch.tv/SomeAnticsDev https://twitter.com/marcysutton https://discord.gg/lunchdev https://www.twitch.tv/whitep4nth3r https://www.twitch.tv/geometricjim https://frontend.horse/chat https://podrocket.logrocket.com/composing-layouts https://youtu.be/B994mLKzBCk Review us Reviews are what help us grow and tailor our content to what you want to hear. Give us a review here (https://ratethispodcast.com/podrocket). Contact us https://podrocket.logrocket.com/contact-us @PodRocketpod (https://twitter.com/PodRocketpod) What does LogRocket do? LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today. (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr) Special Guest: Ben Myers.

In this episode we go back to theological basics. What is a creed? What is a creed for? Co-host Amy Hughes talks with Ben Myers about his book on the Apostles' Creed and it's companion children's book. We discuss what it was like to write theology for an adult audience and for children. This episode also features a short interview with the illustrator, Natasha Kennedy. The post The Apostle's Creed – Ben Myers and Natasha Kennedy first appeared on OnScript.

“There's this line in Hamilton,'Let's have a drink, the four of us. Tomorrow there'll be more of us.'And when I started out in green buildings, it definitely felt like there were just four of us. Today there are many more of us on this journey."—Ben MyersMy HighlightsWhat sustainability means to each stakeholder and how to message it to them (6:54)Ben's working theory about what it takes to move the market and the 5, 15, 30, 50 rule (15:32)How BXP tracks their portfolio consumption, emissions, targets, and progress (18:11)How other cities can improve on NYC's Local Law 97 (20:44)Keys to success for scaling sustainability in a large portfolio (23:55)Ben's great take on how to balance competing energy and IAQ goals (32:20)BXP's lessons learned from building green since 2008 (40:48)Ben's focus(es) for 2021-22 (51:37)The ESG reporting, standard, and framework nightmare and Ben's thoughts on improving it (1:07:53)You can find Ben Myers on LinkedIn.Watch on YouTube or read on the web.Get full access to Nexus.

We take a look at the roots of narrative as we meet master storyteller and mythologist Dr Martin Shaw. Plus, we reflect on a fertile time for experimental music with the man behind a new compilation, Matthias Orsett, and we peek into the dark corners of culture with novelist Ben Myers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.