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Deepfakes have been everywhere lately, from fake AI images of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro following his (real) capture by the United States, to X's Grok AI generating nonconsensual images of real people in states of undress. And if you missed all that, you've almost certainly had your own deepfake close encounter in your feed: maybe rabbits bouncing on a trampoline or an unlikely animal friendship that seems a little too good to be true.Deepfakes have moved beyond the realm of novelty, and it's more difficult than ever to know what is actually real online. So how did we get here and what is there, if anything, to do about it?Joining Host Flora Lichtman are Hany Farid, who's studied digital forensics and how we relate to AI for over 25 years, and Sam Cole, a journalist at 404 Media who's covered deepfakes and their impact since 2017.Guests:Dr. Hany Farid is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at University of California, Berkeley.Sam Cole is a journalist at 404 Media, based in New York, NYTranscripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.
Nobel Laureate Dr. Omar Yaghi joins The Take after winning the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), materials that can capture carbon and store hydrogen. Born to a Palestinian refugee family in Amman, Yaghi tells the story of how hardship shaped his imagination, from getting fresh water only once a week to inventing systems that pull water from desert air. In this episode: Dr. Omar Yaghi, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Professor at University of California, Berkeley and Atoco Founder Episode credits: This episode was produced by Chloe K. Li and Melanie Marich with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Tamara Khandaker, Kylene Kiang, Sarí el-Khalili and our host, Malika Bilal. It was edited by Noor Wazwaz and Sarí el-Khalili. The Take production team is Marcos Bartolomé, Sonia Bhagat, Spencer Cline, Sarí el-Khalili, Tamara Khandaker, Kylene Kiang, Phillip Lanos, Chloe K. Li, Melanie Marich, and Noor Wazwaz. Our host is Malika Bilal. Our engagement producers are Adam Abou-Gad and Vienna Maglio. Andrew Greiner is lead of audience engagement. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio. Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube
Rosicrucian Origins with Ronnie Pontiac Ronnie Pontiac was the personal research assistant for Manly P. Hall at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. He is author of American Metaphysical Religion: Esoteric and Mystical Traditions of the New World. He is coauthor with Tamra Lucid of The Magic of the Orphic Hymns: A New Translation for the Modern Mystic. He explores the true origins of Rosicrucianism, arguing that the famous manifestos were a radical literary and cultural intervention rather than an ancient secret order. Pontiac situates their emergence within the religious, political, and intellectual upheavals of 17th-century Europe, particularly during the Thirty Years' War. Ronnie reframes Rosicrucianism as a decentralized countercultural movement that spread ideas through symbolism, imagination, and culture rather than hierarchy or initiation. 00:00:01 Introduction: Rosicrucian origins and misconceptions 00:09:38 Religious conflict and the Holy Roman Empire 00:18:20 Emperor Rudolph II and hermetic culture 00:28:22 The Rosicrucian manifestos and public reaction 00:38:33 Alchemical marriage and political mythology 00:47:56 Defeat of Bohemia and shattered hopes 00:56:10 Counterculture and horizontal transmission 01:05:48 The dangers of intellectual hierarchy 01:14:21 Living Rosicrucian principles in practice 01:28:49 Conclusion New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He currently serves as Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on December 26, 2025) For a short video on How to Get the Most From New Thinking Allowed, go to https://youtu.be/aVbfPFGxv9o For a complete, updated list with links to all of our videos, see https://newthinkingallowed.com/Listings.htm. Check out the New Thinking Allowed Foundation website at http://www.newthinkingallowed.org. There you will find our incredible, searchable database as well as opportunities to shop and to support our video productions – plus, this is where people can subscribe to our FREE, weekly Newsletter and can download a FREE .pdf copy of our quarterly magazine. To order high-quality, printed copies of our quarterly magazine: NTA-Magazine.MagCloud.com If you would like to join our team of volunteers, helping to promote the New Thinking Allowed YouTube channel on social media, editing and translating videos, creating short video trailers based on our interviews, helping to upgrade our website, or contributing in other ways (we may not even have thought of), please send an email to friends@newthinkingallowed.com. To join the NTA Psi Experience Community on Facebook, see https://www.facebook.com/groups/1953031791426543/ To download and listen to audio versions of the New Thinking Allowed videos, please visit our new podcast at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/new-thinking-allowed-audio-podcast/id1435178031. You can help support our video productions while enjoying a good book. To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: Is There Life After Death? click on https://amzn.to/3LzLA7Y (As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.) To order the second book in the New Thinking Allowed Dialogues series, Russell Targ: Ninety Years of ESP, Remote Viewing, and Timeless Awareness, go to https://amzn.to/4aw2iyr To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: UFOs and UAP – Are We Really Alone?, go to https://amzn.to/3Y0VOVh Download and read Jeffrey Mishlove’s Grand Prize essay in the Bigelow Institute competition, Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death, go to https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/docs/1st.pdf. To order The Magic of the Orphic Hymns by Ronnie Pontiac and Tamra Lucid, go to https://amzn.to/3sPMg2o
What does it take to make something which has never existed on Earth before? The search for element 120 on the periodic table has begun at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Cosmologist Andrew Pontzen, who is used to studying the processes of creation, visits the 88-inch Cyclotron facility at Berkeley, where the next new element may be created very soon. To uncover what motivates scientists to pursue something that is possibly only produced in the violent explosions of stars he speaks with the scientists trying it now, the scientists who last made an element at Berkeley 50 years ago, and a historian of the fraught history of element discovery. The answer is not as straight forward as he suspected.
Dr. Jeff Gross 'The Stem Cell Whisperer' is with us to chat about regenerative medicine, health care, and ReCELLebrate. We talk about new areas about stem cell research, peptides, finding easier and non invasive ways to activate stem cells, Canadian vs USA healthcare, action in MAHA, FDA and marketing claims, Big Implants, exosomes, mood disorders and daily regimens. In the last part we get into various other bio hacking practices and theories, energy and info space, water, pineal glands, gene spike proteins, the reset on childhood vaccines, population clearing events, hormesis, fasting, chimerism, lifting to failure, flipping the food pyramid, creatine, Vit D, Darren's hunting and the death march. DR. JEFF GROSS, founder of ReCELLebrate and a pioneer in the field of regenerative medicine. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in biochemistry and molecular cell biology. He earned his Doctor of Medicine in 1992 from the George Washington University School of Medicine. The mission for ReCELLebrate emphasizes offering modern biochemical treatments and considering surgery as a last resort. recellebrate.com https://recellnutra.com/ 15% Grimerica To gain access to the second half of show and our Plus feed for audio and podcast please clink the link http://www.grimericaoutlawed.ca/support. For second half of video (when applicable and audio) go to our Substack and Subscribe. https://grimericaoutlawed.substack.com/ or to our Locals https://grimericaoutlawed.locals.com/ or Rokfin www.Rokfin.com/Grimerica Patreon https://www.patreon.com/grimericaoutlawed Support the show directly: https://grimericacbd.com/ CBD / THC Tinctures and Gummies https://grimerica.ca/support-2/ Our Adultbrain Audiobook Podcast and Website: www.adultbrain.ca Our Audiobook Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@adultbrainaudiobookpublishing/videos Check out our next trip/conference/meetup - Contact at the Cabin www.contactatthecabin.com Other affiliated shows: www.grimerica.ca The OG Grimerica Show Join the chat / hangout with a bunch of fellow Grimericans Https://t.me.grimerica grimerica.ca/chats Discord Chats Darren's book www.acanadianshame.ca Eh-List Podcast and site: https://eh-list.ca/ Eh-List YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheEh-List www.Rokfin.com/Grimerica Our channel on free speech Rokfin Leave a review on iTunes and/or Stitcher: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/grimerica-outlawed http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/grimerica-outlawed Sign up for our newsletter http://www.grimerica.ca/news SPAM Graham = and send him your synchronicities, feedback, strange experiences and psychedelic trip reports!! graham@grimerica.com InstaGRAM https://www.instagram.com/the_grimerica_show_podcast/ Purchase swag, with partial proceeds donated to the show www.grimerica.ca/swag Send us a postcard or letter http://www.grimerica.ca/contact/ ART - Napolean Duheme's site http://www.lostbreadcomic.com/ MUSIC Tru Northperception, Felix's Site sirfelix.bandcamp.com
The Unix v4 recovery, webzfs, openbgpd 9.0, MidnightBSD 4.0, and more... NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) and the BSDNow Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/bsdnow) Headlines University of Utah team discovers rare computer relic (https://ksltv.com/science-technology/university-of-utah-discovers-rare-computer-relic/853296/) The attempt to read the UNIX V4 tape is underway! (https://mastodon.social/redirect/statuses/115747843746305391) UNIX V4 Tape from University of Utah (https://archive.org/details/utah_unix_v4_raw) UNIX V4 tape successfully recovered: First ever version of UNIX written in C is running again (https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/23/unix_v4_tape_successfully_recovered/) An initial analysis of the discovered Unix V4 tape (https://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20251223/) WebZFS (https://github.com/webzfs/webzfs) News Roundup OpenBGPD 9.0 released (https://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20251231070524) MidnightBSD 4.0 (https://www.midnightbsd.org/notes/4.0/index.html) Let's run FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (https://briancallahan.net/blog/20251216.html) Figuring out how I want to set up the TVPC (https://vulcanridr.mataroa.blog/blog/figuring-out-how-i-want-to-set-up-the-tvpc/) TVPC update (https://vulcanridr.mataroa.blog/blog/tvpc-update/) C&C Red Alert2 in your browser (https://chronodivide.com) Tarsnap This weeks episode of BSDNow was sponsored by our friends at Tarsnap, the only secure online backup you can trust your data to. Even paranoids need backups. Feedback/Questions rick - shout out.md (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/646/feedback/rick%20-%20shout%20out.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) Join us and other BSD Fans in our BSD Now Telegram channel (https://t.me/bsdnow)
Episode 078: Leading on Climate Action for a Positive FutureHow can architects address the challenge of global warming?Planetary warming is one of the biggest disruptions of our time. In this special crossover episode focused on climate action, our friends from Design the Future podcast will join us to discuss the evolution of the sustainable design movement and where it is heading. What can architects do to be part of the solution?The Design the Future podcast is hosted by Lindsay Baker and Kira Gould, two women working at the intersection of the built environment and climate change. Kira and Lindsay will share how they've seen architects leading on climate action, and where the opportunities exist for new leaders to join this work.Guests:Kira Gould is a writer, consultant, and convenor, working from multiple perspectives. As a writer and member of the design media, on staff at and as a consultant to firms, and as a volunteer leader at AIA, she has led the redefinition of design excellence as inclusive of climate action, health, and equity, and emphasized that human and leadership diversity is crucial to advancing all those goals. She is a member of the AIA Committee on the Environment's national Leadership Group. She is a Senior Fellow with Architecture 2030, and was named an Honorary Member of the AIA in 2022. She co-authored Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design with Lance Hosey (Ecotone, 2007).As CEO of the International Living Future Institute, Lindsay Baker is the organization's chief strategist, charged with delivering on its mission to lead the transformation toward a civilization that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative. Lindsay is a climate entrepreneur, experienced in launching and growing innovative businesses. Her introduction to the green building movement began at the Southface Institute in Atlanta, where she interned before entering Oberlin College to earn a BA in Environmental Studies. She was one of the first 40 staff members at the U.S. Green Building Council, working to develop consensus about what the LEED rating system would become. She then earned an MS from the University of California at Berkeley in Architecture, with a focus on Building Science, and spent five years as a building science researcher at the UC Berkeley Center for the Built Environment. Lindsay applied her experience around the study of heat, light, and human interactions in buildings to a role with Google's Green Team, and later co-founded a smart buildings start-up called Comfy, which grew over five years to 75 employees and a global portfolio of clients. She was the first Global Head of Sustainability and Impact at WeWork, where she built the corporate sustainability team and programs from scratch. Lindsay is a Senior Fellow at the Rocky Mountain Institute, and a lecturer at UC Berkeley. She serves on several non-profit boards, and is an advisor and board member for numerous climate tech startups.
Hour 1: The creator of the famous Dilbert comic strip, Scott Adams, has passed away. The Fresh Prince of Belair house is for sale. For the first time in 25 years, California is drought free - so enjoy the beautiful weather this week guilt free! Our relationships with our dogs have really evolved since the first dog park was established in Berkeley. San Francisco will be represented in the Puppy Bowl this year. Is there any cool way to pick up after your dog? Hour 2: Thank you, Live Nation. Celebrity bad behavior continues: Timothy Busfield has turned himself in with his wife, Melissa Gilbert, by his side. Meanwhile, Kiefer Sutherland was arrested for allegedly assaulting his rideshare driver. A memorial will be held this weekend in Golden Gate Park for Claude, the Bay Area's late albino alligator. Ed Sheeran is probably thrilled about the new Heinz French fry box. Eye glasses just got smart, actually. GenZ already can't imagine life without Chat GPT. (49:33) Hour 3: It's time for the generations to battle it out in the hopes of bringing us all closer together… hmm. Steiny is back for his third and final appearance. Can he be Sarah & Vinnie's first ever 3-peat? Today's challenger is a 25 year baker from Sales. Will today's loser be sour? The astronaut dealing with a medical issue comes home today. Would a TV about two astronauts stuck at the space station be incredibly interesting or boring? Do tasers work on mermaids? These sports are shockingly dangerous. Let's talk about guacamole. (1:32:21) Hour 4: The enthusiasm for BottleRock is unmatched. Taylor Swift is where she belongs, on the Billboard Hot 100 at least. Fleetwood Mac's ‘Landslide' is charting… for the first time?! US Vinyl sales rose for the 19th consecutive year. Here's who's leading the charge. The toughest Kiss, Marry, Kill we've had yet. A little sports update from Vinnie. How do we get our hands on an elite passport? And when the heck did that happen? (2:11:29)
The creator of the famous Dilbert comic strip, Scott Adams, has passed away. The Fresh Prince of Belair house is for sale. For the first time in 25 years, California is drought free - so enjoy the beautiful weather this week guilt free! Our relationships with our dogs have really evolved since the first dog park was established in Berkeley. San Francisco will be represented in the Puppy Bowl this year. Is there any cool way to pick up after your dog?
Este es el episodio #145 de "Tradiciones Sabias", el podcast en español de la Fundación Weston A. Price. Algunos de los temas de este episodio - -Qué es el colesterol y cuáles son algunas de sus funciones biológicas imprescindibles -Cuál es la verdad detrás de algunos de los grandes mitos asociados al colesterol -Historia de los estudios e informes en que se basan las recomendaciones oficiales -Interioridades de la industria alimentaria y sus nexos con la industria farmacéutica Datos del invitado - Nayra Txasko nació en Tenerife en 1977 donde estudió Ciencias Biológicas en la Universidad de La Laguna. En el 2003 se le concedió la prestigiosa beca FPI del Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología para la Formación de Personal Investigador vinculada a una línea de investigación en genética en la Universidad de Barcelona, motivo por el cual se traslada a la ciudad condal. En la Universidad de Barcelona realizó sus estudios de doctorando, ejerciendo durante 6 años de investigadora, docente, encargada de laboratorio, participando activamente en congresos nacionales e internacionales, publicando artículos científicos y realizando numerosas estancias en universidades extranjeras, como la prestigiosa Universidad de California en Berkeley. A su regreso a la isla en 2009 colaboró en una investigación en terapia génica para cáncer de piel (sector pediátrico) en el Hospital Universitario Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria. Desde ese momento hasta la actualidad ha continuado con investigaciones relacionadas con el microbioma humano, nutrición bioquímica, enfermedades autoinmunes e inflamatorias. De forma activa, está realizando una labor de divulgación a través de sus redes sociales y medios de comunicación, además de realizar informes periciales científicos para procesos judiciales nacionales e internacionales. Contacto - Instagram: ntxaskoYouTube: Nayra Txasko Telegram: "Descubriendo la biología con Nayra Txasko" Libros recomendados por Nayra Txasko sobre este tema: -John Yudkin: "Pure, White and Deadly" -Malcolm Kendrick: "The Great Cholesterol Con" -Gary Taubes: Good Calories, Bad Calories -Uffe Ravnskov: Fat and Cholesterol Are Good for You Preguntas, comentarios, sugerencias - tradicionessabias@gmail.com Recursos en español de la Fundación Weston A. Price - Página web WAPF en Español: https://www.westonaprice.org/espanol/ Cuenta de Instagram: westonaprice_espanol Guía alimentación altamente nutritiva, saludable y placentera: 11 principios dietéticos Paquete de Materiales GRATIS: https://secure.westonaprice.org/CVWEBTEST_WESTON/cgi-bin/memberdll.dll/openpage?wrp=customer_new_infopak_es.htm Folleto "La Leche Real", de Sally Fallon: https://www.westonaprice.org/wp-content/uploads/La-leche-real.pdf Música de Pixabay - Sound Gallery y SOFRA
This week's Resistance in Residence is storyteller,and Moth Story Hour winner Tony Cyprien. Tony Cyprien was born and raised in Watts, California. He moved to Berkeley in 2011 where he lives with his wife and where he discovered improv, which changed his life. He's performing with the Formerly Incarcerated People's Performance Project Festival and the Berkeley Rep Theater January 15 – January 18. https://fippp.org/ Listen to Tony's stories here https://themoth.org/storytellers/tony-cyprien — Subscribe to this podcast: https://plinkhq.com/i/1637968343?to=page Get in touch: lawanddisorder@kpfa.org Follow us on socials @LawAndDis: https://twitter.com/LawAndDis; https://www.instagram.com/lawanddis/ The post Resistance in Residence — Storyteller Tony Cyprien appeared first on KPFA.
BackgroundBioArticles and Papers Discussed“The Theory Behind the Age-Related Positivity Effect,” Andrew Reed and Laura Carstensen, NIH.gov, Sept. 27, 2012.“Investing Without Blind Spots,” Better Vantage podcast, Nov. 12, 2025.“Out of Sight, Out of Market: The IRA Cash Drag,” by Andy Reed et al., Vanguard.com, Sept. 5, 2024.“Advisors and Investors Split on Inflation, Bond Views,” by Xiao Xu and Andy Reed, Vanguard.com, Sept. 12, 2025.“Stress, Debt, and the Power of Planning,” by Anna Madamba and Andy Reed, Vanguard.com, April 9, 2025“Improving Retirement Outcomes by Default: The Case for an IRA QDIA,” by Andy Reed, et al., Vanguard.com, July 2024."Maximizing versus Satisficing: Happiness Is a Matter of Choice," by Barry Schwartz, Andrew Ward, et al., NIH.gov, November 2002.“The Ostrich Effect: Selective Attention to Information,” George Loewenstein and Duane Seppi, CMU.edu, Feb. 11, 2009.“Inside the Minds of Equity Income Fund Investors,” Sharon Hill and Paulo Costa, Vanguard.com, Aug. 26, 2025.“Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors,” Brad Barber and Terrance Odean, Berkeley.edu, April 2000.Books DiscussedThe Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, by Barry SchwartzNudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard Thaler and Cass SunsteinThe Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters, by Eric JohnsonOther“Was Bogle's Princeton Thesis Eerily Prescient?” by Jess Bebel, Morningstar.com, May 27, 2022. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
In this (open-access) book, Susanna Elm radically changes our understanding of imperial rule in the later Roman Empire. As she shows, the so-called eastern decadence of the Emperor Theodosius and his successors was in fact a calculated revolution in masculinity and the representation of imperial power. Here, the emperor's hard yet soft, mature yet youthfully gorgeous beauty was central. Because the Theodosian emperors were divine—gods one could see—so was their beauty: their manliness was the face and body of God. The emperors' gorgeousness, their sparkling regalia, how they wished their bodies to be seen by their elite subjects—who authored the texts on which Elm's analysis is based—were as important as laws, taxes, and armies. Their vir-ness strategically deployed male same-sex erotic desire to enhance the unity of the realm in times of tension, incorporate the signifying potency of child emperors, and create a flexible yet stable model of Christian sovereignty. New books in late antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Susanna Elm is Sidney H. Ehrman Chair and Distinguished Professor of History and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome. Michael Motia teaches classics and religious studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
How undocumented immigrants in Berkeley have been impacted by the Trump administration's policies.This episode was produced by Elsa Dietz, written by Taylor Reynaud, with interviews conducted by Amela Amego and Taylor Reynaud. This episode was edited by Manushi Shah.
Education On Fire - Sharing creative and inspiring learning in our schools
Dr. Cynthia Rapaido, a highly accomplished educator, holds an Ed.D. in International and Multicultural Education and an M.A. in Educational Administration from the University of San Francisco. She earned her B.S. in Applied Arts and Sciences Biology from San Diego State University. With over 30 years of experience in K–12 education, she has served as a high school principal, assistant principal, and teacher, gaining a comprehensive understanding of the educational landscape across various schools and districts in California.Dr. Rapaido's dedication extends to higher education, where she has contributed significantly as a faculty lecturer, dissertation advisor, and university field supervisor at esteemed institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and California State University, East Bay. Her passion for teaching, mentoring, and coaching educators is evident in her continuing role as an educational leadership coach and consultant. She also mentors graduate and doctoral students at her alma maters.Often actively engaged in research, Dr. Rapaido participates in academic peer review panels and presents her work at conferences, covering diverse topics within education and leadership. Her research interests include educational leadership, teacher education, school climate, diversity sensitivity, multicultural competency, social justice, emotional intelligence, and the impact of colonialism and imperialism.Dr. Rapaido was honored by the Filipina Women's Network (FWN) in 2011 as one of "100 Most Influential Filipina Women in the United States". She was commended by the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) and received the "2013 California Secondary Co-Administrator of the Year" award. The following year, the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) recognized her as a finalist for the prestigious "Assistant Principal of the Year" award for the State of California, highlighting her outstanding, active, and front-line leadership.In July 2024, Dr. Rapaido published her first book, "Step Up Your School Leadership Game ~ The New Administrators' Guide ~ Lessons to Navigate Big and Small Challenges with Confidence and Purpose".Takeaways:Dr. Cynthia Rapaido possesses over 30 years of experience in K12 education, contributing to various roles.Her extensive career includes positions as a teacher, assistant principal, and principal in California schools.In 2024, Dr. Rapaido authored her first book, which serves as a guide for aspiring school leaders.She emphasizes the importance of mentorship for new educators and administrators entering the field.Dr. Rapaido advocates for building relationships with both students and parents to enhance educational outcomes.The podcast discusses the critical transitions students face from elementary to high school, highlighting the need for support.Chapters:00:02 - Introducing Dr. Cynthia Rapaido06:10 - Transitions in Education16:50 - Transitioning from Education to Writing
The Red Cross Does More Than You Think When most people hear "American Red Cross," they immediately think of blood drives. However, as Deborah Fleming, Executive Director of the Greater Shenandoah Valley Chapter, explains to The Valley Today host Janet Michael, disaster relief and recovery represent a massive—and increasingly critical—portion of the organization's mission. Deborah oversees operations across 11 counties spanning West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia, including Berkeley, Jefferson, Morgan, Hampshire, and Hardy counties in West Virginia; Washington County in Maryland; and Shenandoah, Frederick, Warren, Clarke, Page counties and the city of Winchester in Virginia. Beyond blood drives, the chapter provides training services like CPR and first aid, supports military families, and most importantly, coordinates disaster response and recovery efforts. A Growing Threat We Can't Ignore The statistics paint a sobering picture. Disasters are increasing in both frequency and intensity every year. While the Shenandoah Valley hasn't experienced catastrophic events on the scale of recent flooding in Southwest Virginia or the devastating wildfires in California, Deborah warns that complacency could prove dangerous. "These disasters are happening more rapidly, and their intensity is greater," she explains. "We haven't had the big disasters like we're seeing right now in California, but unfortunately we do expect that we're gonna be seeing more of those types of things." Moreover, the landscape of disaster response is shifting dramatically. Federal support through FEMA has been cut, and the focus is returning to local communities. This represents a significant reversal from the post-Katrina era when federal disaster response expanded considerably. "After Katrina, that's where FEMA expanded, because it's really difficult for one community to come up with the resources they need," Deborah notes. "So now that we're headed back in that direction, it's really important that each member of the community is prepared for themselves, but also to support the community that they live in." Building Your Emergency Kit: Beyond the Basics Deborah emphasizes that preparation begins at home. The first essential step involves creating an emergency kit that can sustain your household for a minimum of three days—though she strongly recommends preparing for two weeks. The kit should include one gallon of water per person per day, non-perishable food, medications, hygiene products, a battery-operated or crank radio (particularly NOAA weather radios), flashlights with extra batteries, a first aid kit, copies of important documents like passports and driver's licenses, and cash. Interestingly, Janet raises an important point during the conversation: emergency kits need regular updates as life circumstances change. She admits that despite maintaining a basement emergency kit for years, she never added supplies for her dogs after adopting them—no extra collars, leashes, pet food, or medications. Deborah validates this concern, explaining that pets are now accepted in Red Cross shelters because people often refuse to evacuate without their animals, putting themselves in dangerous situations. She recommends not only including pet supplies in emergency kits but also researching which hotels accept pets in advance. Making a Plan: When Technology Fails Having supplies represents only half the equation. Deborah stresses that families must also create comprehensive evacuation and communication plans. "How do I get out of the house? Do we have phone numbers that we have shared with other people so that they can get ahold of us?" she asks. "Do we have a meeting place? Do we know where the centers are that are most likely gonna be a place of support for us?" Critically, these plans cannot rely solely on smartphones. Deborah emphasizes writing down essential phone numbers and information because communication systems may fail during disasters. This is where AM radio becomes invaluable—a point that resonates strongly with the podcast's station owner, Andrew. "If your phone is not down, having those apps so that you can get the correct information as well," Deborah explains. "But of course we do communicate with the AM radio stations to make sure that we can allow people to know what is going on at any given time." For families with children in different locations during the day or household members with sensory conditions who might hide during emergencies, practicing evacuation plans becomes even more crucial. She recommends running through these plans several times a year. The Disaster Leadership Academy: Coordinating Community Response Recognizing that effective disaster response requires coordination among multiple organizations, Deborah announces the launch of a Disaster Leadership Academy. This initiative aims to bring together government agencies, nonprofits, businesses, and community members to ensure everyone understands their role when disaster strikes. "When disaster strikes, effective communication and coordination of leadership is essential in helping the community become resilient," Deborah explains. "When you have a lot of players, which you need in a disaster, if they aren't coordinated and talking with each other, they're gonna be tripping over each other." The academy doesn't compete with existing structures like VOADs (Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster) but rather helps people discover and engage with these resources. Different communities have different needs—what Shenandoah County requires may differ drastically from what the city of Winchester needs based on geography alone. Deborah illustrates the importance of coordination with a practical example: if one organization opens a shelter without communicating this information, another might open a competing shelter, leaving disaster victims confused about where to seek help. Similarly, when people donate supplies without a coordinated distribution plan, those resources can go to waste. The academy will include simulations and mock Multi-Agency Resource Centers (MARCs), typically coordinated by emergency management, which bring together all organizations that can support disaster recovery. These exercises reveal not only what each organization does but also what they don't do, helping identify gaps in community preparedness. Community Mobilization: Your Neighbor Needs You Beyond organizational coordination, Deborah envisions a network of trained community members—ideally someone on every block or every two blocks—who know what questions to ask and where to direct neighbors for resources during emergencies. "Just imagine if you had somebody on every block of every community or every two blocks that were trained to know what questions to ask, where to go if there's a fire in your community, to get those resources to those people," she says. "What an amazing resource that would be." This grassroots approach proves particularly valuable for "minor" disasters—though Deborah acknowledges they're anything but minor to those experiencing them—like single-family or multi-family fires where residents lose everything. The commitment required isn't overwhelming. Deborah notes that even highly engaged Red Cross volunteers typically deploy only twice a year. The organization welcomes people who want to contribute a little, a lot, or anywhere in between. "A lot of people think, well, I'm not qualified or am I too old?" she says. "And no, you're not too old. And yes, you're qualified if you care for people, you are qualified to help." Taking the First Step For listeners inspired to get involved, Deborah recommends visiting RedCross.org to volunteer or calling 1-800-RED-CROSS. The organization will match volunteers with opportunities based on their interests and skills—whether that's disaster response, administrative work, finances and fundraising, or participating in the Leadership Academy. As Janet notes, there are people in every community who instinctively stop to help when they see someone pulled over on the roadside or come upon an accident. "You are that person," she tells listeners. "That's all you need to have is that, oh my gosh, I have to see what I can do." The Bottom Line Deborah's message throughout the conversation remains clear and urgent: the time to prepare is now, before disaster strikes. With federal resources shrinking and disasters intensifying, communities must build their own resilience through individual preparedness, organizational coordination, and neighborhood-level support networks. The Shenandoah Valley may have been fortunate so far, but that luck won't last forever. By building emergency kits, creating family plans, participating in community preparedness initiatives, and volunteering with organizations like the Red Cross, residents can ensure that when disaster does strike, their community will be ready to respond, recover, and rebuild together. As Deborah will continue to emphasize in her monthly appearances on The Valley Today throughout 2026, disaster preparedness isn't just about surviving the immediate crisis—it's about building communities strong enough to support each other through whatever challenges lie ahead.
"Resilience is something that is built." - Robert Paylor Motivational speaker and author of 'Paralyzed to Powerful', Robert Paylor, a former University of California, Berkeley rugby player, was paralyzed from the neck down during the 2017 National Championships. Instantaneously, an unforgettable day quickly became a pivotal moment in his life. Despite this life-altering injury, Robert has shown incredible resilience and determination throughout his recovery process, breaking barriers that his doctors labeled impossible. He shares the mental strategies he employs to stay positive and the importance of forgiveness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jim Murray - Turn Anything Impossible to Possible Jim Murray 01/11/26
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, we have a re-air of the first episode of Live Like the World is Dying, an interview with Kitty Stryker about Anarchist Prepping. Kitty Stryker can be found on twitter at @kittystryker and at http://kittystryker.com/ Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at @magpiekilljoy and at http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/ Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness and Blue Sky @tangledwilderness.bsky.social You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness Transcript The following transcript was provided by a comrade who wants to help us make this show more accessible: S01E01 Kitty Stryker on Anarchist Prepping Live Like The World Is Dying #0:00:00.0# (Introductory music) #0:00:15.1# Margaret Killjoy: Hello and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying; a podcast that explores life when it feels like the end times. I say "when it feels like the end times", and I'm gonna get into this more throughout various episodes of the podcast, because of course, the world is always ending. It's always changing the status quo. Always shakes and changes, collapses, rebuilds, all of these things. So sometimes people roll their eyes when you talk about the world ending. And sometimes that makes sense, the world has ended in a lot of different ways. But... It sure feels like the world is ending right now to me and to... Maybe to you and maybe it will, maybe it won't. Obviously what it means for the world to end is a subjective thing. But it's a... It's a stress factor to say the least, on a lot of people's lives right now. Thinking about climate change and thinking about the... The rise of global fascism. So this is a podcast that's gonna explore... Well, how we can live while we feel like the world is dying. For myself and for this podcast I've found that I focus on four different priorities. I focus on living like the world is going to end and that I might not survive, living like the world is going to end and I can try to survive, living like we can prevent the end of the world, and of course, living like maybe the world isn't ending after all. So basically hedonism, prepping, revolution, and not burning all your bridges because... Who knows, the status quo might linger on after all. With this podcast I'm probably going to focus on the middle two of these priorities. I'm gonna focus on prepping and revolution. And I'm going to do that because... Well, I've always sort of wanted there to be more information and more... More going on about anarchist and leftist prepping. Because most of the prepping world is of course steeped in... Not just like right-wing politics, but also right-wing values and individualistic values and of course as an anarchist I believe in the balance between the individual and the community and because of that I don't believe in individualistic survival. I don't believe that the bunker mentality, which we're going to talk a lot of shit on in this podcast over the next couple episodes, is appropriate to most... To most threat models. So I'll be your host, but for the most part I'm going to interview people who know a lot more about a lot of this stuff than me. As for me, I am a prepper I suppose on some level. I keep a small stockpile food. Dried food in 5 gallon buckets in case there's an interruption in... Well, food supplies. I make sure I know where water filtration is. I also keep a to-go bag and... At my house. And I keep another one in my car that's much smaller. Neither of these are a particularly elaborate. They're... They're fairly simple things I put together. And that's... That's more for my own mental welfare than it is like any immediate expectation of crisis. And I also... I live off grid. Which is not something that I'm gonna specifically advocate that anyone else do. I actually live off grid because it just sort of meets my needs here and now in terms of how I like to live. I live about half an hour away from a small city in a cabin I built myself in the woods because I like doing that. I like living that way. I'm an anarchist and that's going to certainly bleed over into the content of this show. I believe in a world without course of hierarchies like the state or capitalism or white supremacy or heteronormativity or... Or any of the intersecting oppressions and hierarchies that rule the world that shouldn't. And so of course, a lot of my... I tell you this because I want you to know my biases because I want you to come to your own conclusions. I have a bias against state and federal aid. I tend to find it to be wildly inefficient. I'm far more interested in creating a society based on mutual aid. And so... And I find agency to be wildly important. I find it very important for us to encourage each other to have agency and so I'm interested in disaster relief or crisis preparation or whatever, that maximizes individual agency, that maximize community agency and... Yeah, that's what's interesting to me so that's what I'm going to be focusing on more. This first episode, our guest is Kitty Stryker who I can let introduce herself. Thanks so much for listening. #0:05:01.9# (Musical transition) #0:05:06.5# Margaret: So today our guest is Kitty Stryker. Well actually, do you want to introduce yourself with your name and pronouns and kind of any political or organizational affiliation you feel like shouting out. #0:05:21.4# Kitty Stryker: Sure. I'm Kitty Stryker, I use she/her pronouns. I'm a... I identify myself as a leftist doomsday prepper. But I'm more of a like... Emergency prepper, street medic. I work with Struggle Of Circus, which is a of bunches of leftists and other sort of radical political groups and a bunch of juggalos coming together to help out at protests and usually do medic related stuff but also be kind of a meat wall around marginalized communities. I identify as an anarchist and... Yeah, I guess I just found it really interesting that when I was looking for communities of leftist to talk to about prepping, there wasn't anything there. #0:06:15.5# Margaret: Yeah that was... I think we ended up kind of finding each other through a similar... I don't actually remember how we first ended up talking about it. Maybe you do. But we've been, for anyone who's listening, Kitty and I have been talking vaguely about how we needed to do something about this... This lack of... #0:06:34.2# Kitty: Lack of information, yeah. #0:06:35.9# Margaret: Yeah. Because so much of the information that's out there about prepping is not really applicable, well, to anyone realistically. But certainly not necessarily applicable to people whose ideology isn't "fuck you, I've got mine", you know? So... #0:06:53.5# Kitty: Right and I think... And it could be actively hostile in forums and stuff. Like places that you wanna go to ask for information and ask for advice become really hostile when people are talking about how much they want to kill antifa or of like... "I can't wait til the race war". It's not really a very comfortable place to ask questions about fortifications. #0:07:19.5# Margaret: Yeah. That makes sense. So why don't we start by kind of talking about the general conception of preparedness and kind of what is leftist or anarchist prepping or preparedness. As... At least as you can conceive it. #0:07:37.7# Kitty: Sure, well, so for me I grew up with parents who are sort of like... Suburban homesteader types, with a mixture of prepping. But are also hoarders so while they have everything you would need in an apocalypse you also wouldn't necessarily be able to find it. So I kinda grew up with the hoarding tendency that they think comes with a lot of prepping. You wanna have lots of things that seemed very important. But also this desire to try to make it organized and make it easily accessible. I realized fairly quickly that while I'm more of a stay-in-place kind of prepper and sort of emergency preparedness person, I also will potentially need to be able to put what I need a backpack and carry it with me. At least for a mile or two depending on the emergency and if I have so much stuff that I can't practically do that without a car, it's not really going to be that useful. I live in earthquake country so I just have to anticipate the roads are going to be kind of a mess. So that was sort of where I came from, was this not very political, camping and also very pagan, getting in touch with earth kind of thing. Like my parents beehives that drives all of their neighbors off the wall. They hate it. #0:09:12.7# Margaret: That's interesting. I've only a couple times been around this, yeah, suburban homesteading idea where you have access to a little bit of land. Not necessarily so much privacy, not so much... Place where you can keep your bees. #0:09:24.5# Kitty: Nope, no privacy. Everyone in my neighborhood is like, "That's the witch house. You can tell because there's thirteen sacred trees in the front lawn. And her dad goes outside and scythes the lawn." #0:09:38.1# Margaret: Wow. #0:09:39.7# Kitty: I don't think he's actually even done that in years so I think it's just an overgrown tangle at this point. #0:09:45.9# Margaret: Well that's even more fun. #0:09:46.7# Kitty: But we have like... We have a pond in there. There's a little herb garden, a veggie garden. We have a crow feeder. It's... It's elaborate. #0:09:56.8# Margaret: I'm imagining this on like a quarter acre, half acre. Is that..? #0:10:00.5# Kitty: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. With manicured lawns right next to us on either side. #0:10:08.5# Margaret: Well, that's a... #0:10:09.1# Kitty: Really... That's where I was raised. I think that explains a lot. #0:10:13.7# Margaret: Okay. It's an interesting metaphor for being the one person who's... You know, either prepping or being a hoarder. #0:10:22.4# Kitty: I've been the one person for a while. Yeah. But I think that that's in such staunch contrast to doomsday preppers which is what most people think of when they think of prepping. They think of like, "Oh, that's those rednecks in the middle of the really rural areas with their bunker and their nine million guns and their giant water containers." And they're, you know, being completely convinced that there's going to a nuclear war or there's going to be... I don't know. What are some of the other disasters that they're always prepared for? Well, I mean like, definitely race wars. Definitely one of the things. #0:11:09.1# Margaret: Yeah, I mean and that's kind of the... I feel like that's the tell between whether you're talking to a racist prepper or a... Well, obviously if someone's talking about a race war they're clearly racist. But... You know, there's a tell of whether or not they're obsessed with like the... The boogaloo or if they're obsessed with... You know, the possibility of invasion or... System collapse in general. #0:11:32.3# Kitty: Right, right. And like what system collapse looks like. Like what are they actually afraid of, I think is very telling. A lot of times you'll see people say, "Oh, I'm afraid that people are going to come and murder my family for my resources because my resources are so awesome that everyone for miles around is going want to come and murder me." Which, first of all, if that was true I would not be saying it on the internet. That just seems like a bad idea. That's... My boyfriend and I watch doomsday preppers and talk about how we would raid their bunkers because they show us everything. And that just seems very shortsighted, if that is indeed what you are worried about. #0:12:22.2# Margaret: Right, as compared to just kind of showing off and being excited about... Like kind of nerding out about gear... #0:12:27.6# Kitty: I think it's like... Yeah, it's like nerding out and they think it's more of a threat than it is. I don't know. I think... I think it speaks to a desire for conflict that I don't personally have. I don't want to have to use my apartment complex to snipe people. I just don't want to do that. I just wanna be able to grow a garden using a discarded... Shoe organizer from the broken down Ross down the street. That's my type of prepping, rather than preparing for endless violence. #0:13:10.4# Margaret: Yeah, there's kind of a... I feel like one of the main myths or concepts that I'm trying to get across with this podcast... Not a myth I'm trying to get across this, prove that something is a myth, is the bunker mentality is the "I've got mine, fuck you" mentality, that is so common in prepping circles and it's... It's really off-putting because... I mean, even... Even from a pure self-interest point of view it just seems so dumb. So you hole up with your five closest friends in the middle of the woods during the apocalypse, and that's like all fine and good until your appendix bursts and you forget that you're not a surgeon and that your brother isn't a surgeon, you know? And... #0:13:56.0# Kitty: Well you just need more useful friends. #0:13:57.9# Margaret: Well, sure but... #0:13:58.7# Kitty: That's what I did. #0:13:59.2# Margaret: But what if you are the surgeon, right? And then your appendix bursts. #0:14:02.4# Kitty: Well, yeah. Then... Yeah. Then... Then... Well, then you just die. I mean, that's the thing. I think that they... They're so afraid of violence coming from other people that they don't... A, think of the violence that could happen amongst themselves which is kind of inevitable if you're locked in a bunker together. And there's... Especially if there's power dynamics in place and stress, then I feel like there's gonna be some abusive dynamics that come out of that. So if you're not prepared for that, it doesn't really matter how good your resources are. And there's... So that's just even within your unit, and then never mind if you're then expanding out to like... Do you know how to do literally everything in the world? Because you're probably going to help. It's the same as the idea about currency. Everyone's so keen on like... Oh yeah, make sure that you have currency. Make sure you silver buried in your yard. Like... What are you going to do with that, really? Like... I mean... It's cool, I guess. But unless you're going to use that as a brick... I don't understand. #0:15:12.3# Margaret: Well I guess it gets into... In some ways, I think the apocalypse... People who think too much about the apocalypse, whether on they're on the left or on the right, or just bored centrists or moderates or whatever, I think that people are thinking about and imagining clean slates and imagining about how they would like to act and what kind of societies they would like to create, what kind of dynamics they'd like to create. So it's really easy for someone who, say of a libertarian mindset, to be like "Well, of course gold is what matters because we're all going to trade resources. There's definitely going to be market economics after the apocalypse because we're going to institute market... Economics. And then maybe like... Those of us that are like, "Wow, the market's a dumb thing and isn't really particularly interesting to me at all." Like, yeah I have a really hard time imagining that I'm going to be doing much... Even bartering after the apocalypse. Like, I'm... I'm either like rolling with people and sharing shit or I'm keeping shit to myself but like... I'm not gonna be like, "Well, these three bullets are worth that tourniquet," or whatever, you know? At least that's my conception of it. That's when... When I like to imagine the end of the world, which is not actually something I like imagining anymore, but I'm imagining something that is closer to the ideological interest that I have. Which is maybe a fault of mine, maybe that's a blind spot of mine. #0:16:39.5# Kitty: Well, I don't think that's... I don't think it's necessarily a fault. I mean, like one thing that I think when... You know, I have a group friends that we talk about this stuff a lot amongst ourselves. Especially because we're within bicycling distance from each other, so we're sort of like, "Okay, if there is an emergency, we're pretty sure that we could get to each other." But we all have... Slightly different ideas of what we would like to see happen which means we also have a different... Like different ideals and different areas of expertise. And I think that that is actually super helpful. I don't know that I would want to be in a group that everybody thinks the same way, as long as you think cooperatively versus competitively. And for me that's what's important. I don't really care how we get to cooperative instead of competitive, but that's what I want. #0:17:33.5# Margaret: Yeah, that makes sense. So, look, I want to talk more about... Okay, one of the things I really like about prepping in general is that it can be very practical. It's not, it's... Obviously a lot of it is not practical at all. But like... But to take this conversation practically for a minute... Like, what you do... Not necessarily... Both in terms of things that you keep around, but also what are your plans? You talked about bicycling to meet up with your friends. What is... What kind of preparedness do you personally practice? #0:18:05.4# Kitty: So my boyfriend and I talk a lot about what our plans are. Pretty much every three months or so. And we're mostly... And ust to give some context, we're mostly prepping for an earthquake, for a big earthquake, because that's the most likely thing to happen here. I guess there's some possibilities that will end up having a bunch of neo-nazis coming and terrorizing us but I think they've gotten tired of Berkeley and have moved to Portland instead so... We're probably fine for now. So we talk a little bit about what are the risks that are current, what are the resources that are currently around? Maybe... We've been talking about creating a map, like actually getting a map and write, marking down important things that we might want to know where they are when you don't have Google Maps for example. So stuff like that is really important. Like the sort of... Preparing... For immediate needs and also for where you are going to be able to get resources. What area is around that could conceivably be turned into a garden if need be. Which we're actually lucky, we have a park really close by. And we also make a point to know our neighbors. Both our housed and houseless neighbors. So having good relationships with them is really helpful and like giving them ideas of how to be prepared so that we're not overwhelming ourselves trying to take care of them as well as ourselves. So you're trying to match up add the younger folks with older folks or able-bodied folks with people with disabilities so that way there's... It's easier for people to mobilize and so that we know who in our area is going to need help. So that's some of the community planning stuff that's not even focused on my group of hyper-focused friends but just making my environment less chaotic. And so that's sort of like... And again, like a garden, it takes some pruning and some cultivating and a little bit of upkeep but I feel reasonably confident that my neighbors are going to be able to handle themselves. Which is my first big concern because then I can start worrying about things like, what do I personally actually need? One thing that is kind of difficult, I live in an apartment and we don't have a huge amount of space. So I can't have buckets and buckets of freeze-dried food. We do tend to have a lot of canned food, we do tend to have a lot of nuts and dried fruit and stuff like that around so that helps a little bit. It makes it easier for us to find stuff in rubble that we can eat. We also have a... A dresser that we put our prepper stuff in and it's sorted with medic supplies in the first two drawers because that's sort of my specialty... That's my area focus. And then we have sort of more general supplies, so that's where we have LifeStraws and we have bandanas and we have masks for filtering out smoke or disease. We have lots and lots of gloves, we have... Water filtering tablets, we have a bunch different kinds of fire starters. So we sort of put together a compendium of things that we felt would be useful. And then what's probably the least practical thing is my... In the main living room I have a hatchet, I have a walking stick, I have my camping stuff. So it's not all condensed in one place but I have... I do have a spare tent at my partner's house and I have a medic bag. A fully packed medic go-bag that I take to protests in the trunk of my car. So that way I can... I have one medic bag in the house, I have one in the car, and I usually have one at my partner's house. Sometimes I have one at my local bar too but that's the one that usually get used if I go to a protest 'cause that's near downtown. But just having pockets stuff... And then I have a storage unit downtown as well. So I figured it might be more difficult to get into my storage unit but at least it's underground and that would be not a bad place to have some stuff that I don't need immediately but might want down the line, yeah. So... But it's sort of a pack rat... Pack ratty, squirrel type prepping. Of burying little caches... #0:23:27.8# Margaret: I'm impressed because you're... Yeah, you're managing to successfully do in an urban environment what... Well... Something I associate more with the rural environments of... You know, one of the things that I was realizing... #0:23:41.1# Kitty: It's harder. It's harder, but it's only harder if you care about being the only person who can get to it. And I don't really care so much about that. I just wanna have access to it. I'm... Because, for me, I'm someone who... I saw a guy on a scooter get hit by car. I was so glad I had that medic kit on me so that I could actually help him out. And immediately help him out. I'm so glad I had that expertise. So... And actually that's one thing that I also have is a first aid book because, again, I don't know how to do everything. But if I have a book, I can probably figure out how to do most things safely. So... #0:24:26.7# Margaret: What's the book? #0:24:29.4# Kitty: It's an old field manual medic guide, I forget what era. But I prefer to try to go for stuff that's military because... Or serious environmental wilderness strategy guides because then they're not focused on you having access to a full hospital. It's not ideal conditions. Sometimes first aid advice is like, "Oh well just call an ambulance" and it's like well that's not really practical in the sort of situations I'm preparing for so I prefer to look at older stuff. And then take newer knowledge and pack that on top. But knowing how to do some of these things when you don't have electricity, a lot of modern medicine depends on electricity, depends on you having access to different kinds of medications and solutions that might not have. So I think it's kind of... I don't... Until I have to do it in practice I don't know how useful it actually will be. But I'm interested in learning how have people prevented disease... In wartime, in... A forest in the middle of nowhere versus what you you would get trained necessarily if you're getting CPR training for your work. #0:26:08.8# Margaret: Have you taken the wilderness first responder course or anything like that? #0:26:12.4# Kitty: I want to so badly. I'm hoping that I can save up for it or have somebody gift it to me. But that is on my list of, oh my god I would... That be so dreamy. But... I really... I just also am just also am obsessed with medical stuff. I guess that's... That's one thing I would really recommend for people curious about prepping. I would say while it is nice to be able to have information about a bunch of different areas, find the thing that you're really interested and nerd out on that. One of my friends is really, really into finding plants and urban foraging. So that's her area of expertise. It's like, oh, she can tell you every plant you can eat within two miles of your house. And that would be really useful, it's not necessarily something that my brain can hold onto... As easily as medicine stuff. My partner is really good with weapons and... Building shelters. It's not really my area so it's nice to have somebody who can teach me just enough but also has a lot more expertise. #0:27:29.4# Margaret: Yeah, that's something that I... I think about a lot in terms of even just the world I wanna live in. I'm really excited about the idea where we... Instead of having a generalism versus specialization kind of argument, it's another bullshit false dichotomy, probably we should all as much as we can generalize as broadly as we can and then pick the things that stand out to us to specialize in. Like, I don't need to know how to do surgery but I should probably know first... Literal first aid. Like first response... Like there have been a number times in my life where I've... I'm incredibly squeamish, I hate medical things, I hate thinking about it the way that like... Like someone showed me how to use a tourniquet and... You know, I disassociated in order to learn. Because the concept of thinking about like... Arterial bleeding doesn't work for me. But I know that I need to know how to do that so I learn pretty much by disassociating and then kind of when things happen I like disassociate again and then deal with it. #0:28:34.6# Kitty: Yeah, I mean there's some practicality to that. When I was doing medical work at protests I really underestimated how traumatized I was until months later... When I was like, "Wow, I just didn't have feelings for a while." It's a lot and I'm... I love... See, I'm not squeamish at all about that stuff but I'm impatient so like building structures is not my thing. It's like, I could learn how to do it but I don't even put up the tent when I go camping if I can avoid it. So... Knowing that I have a good solid group of people around me who are really excited to do that stuff allows us to do the thing we're excited about but also in case something happens to that person, we know how to do it we just don't like it. #0:29:26.1# Margaret: Yeah. Or at least have a... Can do a rougher version of it, you know? Can do a... I had a... I was just talking to a friend about all of this. I actually don't remember if it's... I'm recordings these interviews out of order from how they're going to play. So I was talking to a friend of mine who's a... A medical professional and he was talking about how in a crisis situation if you have two people, maybe what you want is a nurse and a world class generalist, you know? As like the two people that you need. #0:29:58.8# Kitty: Pretty much. I think having a medic... Like I think everyone should have basic medical training, just basic shit, because that way anybody can do an emergency... Like, okay, "I can put gauze on this and stop the bleeding." That's what I need from people. And every time I go to a protest, people are asking what they could do to help and I'm like, "Just do that. Just do that, only." And help people with sprained ankles and keep them hydrated. 'Cause if you can do all of that then I can focus on stitching someone's head together. That's what I need to be able to be focused on because I'm not the squeamish one. So... Yeah, I think that helps a lot. Also coming up with things for you to do, that gets ignored a lot on prepper forums. At least the ones I've been on. They talk a lot about like, you know, "Okay, you've gotta have all of this foraging skills and you gotta have shelter building and you gotta have all these supplies in order to make all of this stuff," but there are no downtime options. And you're gonna have downtime sometimes. Like you're gonna get sick eventually, if nothing else. So make sure you have stuff to keep your mind busy during those times. 'Cause watching "Alone" for example, I don't know if you've ever seen that one but they put these people by themselves in the middle of the... Was it Canadian wilderness I think for at least the first couple of seasons? And they have to do everything from scratch. They have some supplies on them and a good supply list. But they have to pick like... 1 of 10 items, or 10 different items out of a list of like... pre-approved 50 different things they can have. So have to do a lot of stuff by themselves. And almost every single time the thing that gets to them is just a lack of food and boredom. And if they can keep themselves busy, somehow, like making music or making art or building... Like adding decorations to their shelter, then the fact that they're hungry doesn't bother them so much. But if they don't have anything like that, they're not creative in any way, then the fact that they're hungry literally gnaws away at their brain. So I just think that's a really interesting aspect... Like thinking a lot about mental health in an emergency scenario because I think that gets ignored with a lot of right-wing prepping forums and stuff like that. #0:32:53.6# Margaret: Yeah. Yeah I wonder what... I feel like there's just the deck of card, is what's written about in all the things. #0:33:03.3# Kitty: Yeah, it's always recommended. Always have a deck of cards. #0:33:05.8# Margaret: Which is like... You can tell that they wrote that in the 50's or whatever, you know? #0:33:10.1# Kitty: Right, in that... Part of it's gonna be like, "Oh, like for gambling in order to entertain yourself if... Gambling with the no money that you have. I don't know. It's just... I would much prefer to have... I don't know, Codenames or something. Endless replayability. #0:33:31.2# Margaret: Yeah, I feel like there's a... #0:33:32.1# Kitty: I mean, but... #0:33:32.8# Margaret: Go ahead. #0:33:32.8# Kitty: Let's be honest, I'd be playing Dungeons & Dragons. In my tracker tent as an actual ranger. Playing Dungeons & Dragons. #0:33:45.2# Margaret: You wouldn't play... What's the opposite of it? The dragons play, they play... Humans and Houses? #0:33:51.3# Kitty: Oh, yeah, maybe that too. I don't know, mix them up. Mix them together. #0:33:56.3# Margaret: You'd have roleplaying about what would you do if apartments still existed or whatever? #0:34:00.4# Kitty: Yeah. #0:34:02.7# Margaret: I think that... #0:34:03.3# Kitty: I mean, I guess I don't... I'm not that scared of that. It would be uncomfortable and I'd probably hate it a lot. I'm a house cat. But, you know, I'm not that worried about it either. And I think part of it is because I just made being prepared, knowing where my go-bag is at all times just part of my day-to-day existence. So it's just muscle memory at this point. #0:34:32.8# Margaret: Yeah. Earlier in our pre-conversation, when we talked about what we might talk about, one of the things you brought up is the ableism that exists in a lot of prepping conversations and I was wondering if you wanted to talk more about that. #0:34:46.0# Kitty: Yeah, so I noticed that a lot of discussions on what your go-plan is involves being able to walk long distances. Presumably because they figure walking a long enough distance would get you to area of wilderness, that they feel would be more suitable. I... That is really impractical for a large number of people. People with small children are going to struggle with that. Elderly people are going to struggle with that. People with disabilities are going to struggle with that. Some people with disabilities aren't going to be able to do that. It won't even be just a struggle, it's just impossible. So I think the... We need more diverse resources and we need to talk seriously about how to make this accessible for people who aren't in their... Super hyper fit, in their 30's, ready to charge over a mountain. And in the bay area you could you could walk for eight hours and I don't know that you would find a bit of wilderness... So I don't think that's necessarily the most practical option for all people. #0:36:08.7# Margaret: it's funny to me that all this stuff about going to the wilderness because I live in... Not the wilderness but I very rurally. I live in a house that I built at the end of a... Beyond the end of a gravel road like every stupid stick of my fucking cabin I had to carry up a hill on my back. I actually started building it with a chronic injury and then managed to... Physical therapy my way... This isn't a... Statement about ableism, just the weird stupid shit of building this fucking cabin I live in. #0:36:40.6# Kitty: But looks really cool. #0:36:43.0# Margaret: But there's... Thanks, yeah, no I'm really proud of it and it's funny because actually it's a brilliant place to live during civilization. But if there were some kind of crisis, I would probably get my to-go bag or my car presumably but let's pretend like that's not an option for whatever reason, and I would walk to the city. Because the city is where people are and that is where we can keep each other safe. I think people have this conception of... That people are a danger and that's true, people are dangerous, right? But the wilderness is really fucking dangerous too. And... #0:37:23.7# Kitty: People really underestimate how dangerous the wilderness is. They underestimate how cold it is. The cold will kill you, the wet will kill you. #0:37:34.4# Margaret: Yeah and so getting to... I don't know for certain, it would really depend on the threat, but I would presumably go to a place of higher population so that we collectively can figure out what the fuck to do. And maybe the fact that I have access to certain resources by living on land can become useful to people. And that would be my hope. I could easily imagine a situation where you have, as part of your prepping, you would have... The rural... With rural living access to space. You don't necessarily have access to anything else but you often have access to space and... So you can store tractors and you can store strange devices... Like devices that have very odd and specialized purposes for building or something like that. But then again, the thing I'm slowly learning is that cities have all of those things too. It's just that not necessarily each individual is going to own them. Because not everyone lives on a farm. #0:38:36.4# Kitty: Right. The city owns it or the government owns it. But yeah, there's plenty of parking lots. #0:38:42.5# Margaret: Yeah, that's true. #0:38:45.8# Kitty: So... Yeah. I mean, like... Oh, god. I'm trying to remember what the name of the show was. So I... I watch a lot of prepping and wilderness survival based shows. Somewhat to remind myself that nature is dangerous and also because I find them very amusing. And there was one that was... It wasn't entirely clear if it was a reality show or if it was scripted or both. Pretty sure it was both, but they were in LA. And I forget what they had decided ... The LA one I don't think it was a disease. They had a different calamity happen each season. And in the first season they had a good variety of people. They had several mechanics, they had a couple of nurses and doctors. They had martial arts teachers. So they had a good cross-section of people. And they did decently well surviving in a big warehouse in LA and came up with some incredibly inventive weapons and things. I remember they created a flame thrower out of bits of an old car which was stunning to watch. But then the second season they were in New Orleans, in some of the areas that have been devastated by Katrina. And they had underestimated how swampy it was and how hard it was going to be to get food and how there were tons of snakes and alligators that we're going to kill you. And also that one had a disease element so every once in a while someone would get claimed by a contagious disease and they would just start disappearing. But the thing that really got to them I think is that they didn't have a very diverse group of people. They had a lot of schoolteachers and artists and that's great, that's important stuff, but if they don't have any trade skills as well, they're gonna drop like flies. So it's really important to take your creative energies and learn how to do something that can embrace that but also has a living purpose. #0:41:12.1# Margaret: Yeah. Yeah, as a generalist I think about that where most of my skills are graphic design and audio which is great when you want to start a podcast, if you have been doing electronic music for twenty years or whatever, you know? But I think I've really consciously been working on developing my skills that are not only on a computer, you know? For kind of this purpose. #0:41:39.1# Kitty: Well, hey. Electronic music and audio says to me, making ham radios. Practical and useful. There's always something there, it's just like finding what those things are. Though I will say this, the first season in the warehouse in LA they had a big issue with masculinity. #0:42:04.7# Margaret: I only watched the second season. #0:42:05.4# Kitty: Everybody was... #0:42:06.9# Margaret: I watched the one where they all... #0:42:07.5# Kitty: The first one is great. It's like all these male mechanics shouting at each other about how to fix something better and then this female mechanic just goes and does it. #0:42:16.8# Margaret: Yeah, that sounds like a perfect metaphor. #0:42:19.1# Kitty: And then they when they all brag about how proud that they came up with this idea and she just rolls her eyes and you're just like, "Yup, that's how it would be pretty much." And that said to me a lot about mediation. Knowing how to mediate, knowing your own triggers. Like knowing your own mental health stuff so that you can then navigate other people's mental health stuff. That's also super important. And easy for anybody to do. #0:42:44.9# Margaret: Yeah, yeah I think knowing different organization models. Like I think knowledge and facilitation is a really important skill. I think people basically pick whichever organizational model seems to be practical when the existing larger structure goes away. And I've been in spaces where we haven't been sure how we're going to organize ourselves and I'm surrounded by a bunch of non-anarchists and then I'm like, "Well here's this model where we're all equals but we still actually figure things out." And it just works as compared to I'm pretty sure if someone had been like, "Here's the model, I'm pretty much in charge." And maybe it'll be like some veneer of democracy where he'll be like, and I'm just going to use 'he' for this imaginary patriarch... #0:43:28.5# Kitty: I wonder why. #0:43:29.7# Margaret: He'll be like, "I'm in charge and the we can have a little vote about that if we wanna prove that I'm in charge," you know? And everyone will be like, "Well, he's the one who is offering to get shit done." And what... Of course what people fail to realize is that's like... We get shit done, collectively. Whether it's collectively we do it and someone is taking the credit by being up top, you know? Or whether we do it... So that's one of the things that I think about with prepping. How to... And I think that's maybe one of the things that right-wing preppers are afraid of is they're like... They don't have... The only people skills that they know is this hierarchical system. Well, I guess there's plenty of leftists who also only seem to know hierarchical systems. But... #0:44:13.2# Kitty: I mean it's a pretty... It's a pretty common system. That's why... That's why I kind of enjoy the, everybody gets to be an expert in their own thing so that nobody is super... Nobody can be too pleased with themselves. Keeps everybody humble, I think. #0:44:34.3# Margaret: Yeah. So the one other main question that I... Or thing that I kinda wanna hash out with you for this which is probably gonna be the first episode, everyone who's listening will know whether or not it's the first episode. It will be very embarrassing if this is the seventeenth episode, but... Maybe talk about different threat models. That's... How we we determine what we need, of course, is dependent on what we think is likely to happen and as there's no one-size-fits all. And so you say the primary threat model that you're working with is a natural disaster. Do you want to talk about that or do you want to talk about other threat models or... #0:45:12.8# Kitty: Sure. Well, I think... Okay, a great example is the things that I want for a earthquake is not necessarily what I would want in a tsunami, right? Those are very different natural disasters. As somebody who grew up in hurricane country-ish, you know, it was just really really wet. And having a dust mask would not have helped me in any way. But I would be at much more risk of getting trench foot so that would be like, waterpreoof boots would be way more important. So some of it's knowing your environment and being aware of what your environmental concerns ar. Like living in a city, asbestos is a big fundamental concern. So having dust masks is really important. I feel like I read once that most deaths aren't... In an earthquake, come from inhaling the debris. And that... That causes some of the worst injuries because there's just all of this dust everywhere and... I know that was definitely true with the fires. A lot of people have... Still have some... Some still have breathing problems now from the various fires that were going on in Northern California. So knowing what you need to be concerned about. Like with earthquakes, knowing that the roads might not be super useful to drive on. So having alternative plans for that knowing where your bike paths are. Knowing... If you have a wheelchair for example, maybe thinking of a way to add some tread on your wheelchair might be a practical option. I have a beach cruiser. It's not a racing bike by any means but it's heavy and it's easy to find the parts. And it's really easy to fix myself, that's why I chose that. So thinking about what you can actually do, I think is helpful in figuring out your... Your strategy. I know that I don't know enough about my car to be able to completely dismantle it. However, I do know somebody who does know enough about my car to do that. So I can bike to him and then have him do that. So coming up with those kind of like, "Okay, if this then this, if this then this" strategies helps me at least, I have a very ADHD brain. It helps me have a... A process to go through. Now in California, earthquakes are a big concern especially in this area but fire is also a big concern. And the way I would prepare for a fire versus an earthquake, I would be more concerned about my paperwork disappearing in a fire than an earthquake. Though to be completely honest I'm not that fussed about my paperwork in general. I don't think getting rid of paperwork is the worst plan. But that's not what the government wants to hear from me. So I have... I have some paperwork in a folder that's easy to access if I need to grab something go because my apartment is burning but I wouldn't be as... I wouldn't care much about that if it was an earthquake because in my consideration there would will be enough of a drastic interruption in services for an earthquake that I don't think that that would be an immediate need. #0:49:16.3# Margaret: Yeah and you wouldn't certainly be the only one who has lost their paperwork. #0:49:20.4# Kitty: Right, exactly. Exactly. And again, I think that we use paperwork as a penalty for so many people that... Maybe mucking up that system a little bit is a convenient little thing I can do on the side. So I... Yeah, I guess... And all of that is completely separate from thinking of having invaders come and try to take my apartment away from me or something. That... I usually strategise for that by thinking about what my plan are if the cops get even more out of control. #0:50:02.9# Margaret: Right. Like fascist takeovers is on my... On my threat model list, you know? #0:50:08.9# Kitty: Yeah, yeah, totally. And you know... The cops have been pretty shitty around here for quite a while, so... You know, it's been a slowly increasing... Plan. But I mean... For me, I'm not interested in trying to shoot my way through the cops. I have no problem with people who that is their plan, I think it's great that there are people who are inclined that way, but I'm gonna go full rogue. I'm sneaky. I'm going to go to the sewers. I'm not as... I'm not as interested in that kind of direct conflict. So my model for that... Or like my managements for that would be really, really different from natural disasters. And I kind of feel like that are all the things that might actually happen. I mean, I guess a meteor could hit but... Eh. The prepping I do for every other disaster would be fine for that probably. Or I'd be dead. And wouldn't care. So... How about you? What are your... What's your threat model? #0:51:23.0# Margaret: So I live on a floodplain. It's not supposed to be a floodplain but global warming has made it a floodplain. And the mountains... When I first moved to the mountains, I grew up in the foothills, and when I moved into the mountains it... It kind of blew my mind that flooding is a problem because in my mind I'm like, "Well, everything is high up" and actually flooding is at least as much of a problem in... Well, the flooding is a problem in a lot different places, you know hurricanes cause floods, but flash floods in the mountains are very real especially in an era of mountaintop removal mining. which is not immediate thing immediately around me but it certainly affects places within a couple hours of where I live in Appalachia. But, you know, storms... Like the weather patterns are just changing dramatically and by living in rurally I'm not as defended against that in some ways because there's not a large crew of people working to try and figure out how to make sure that the little place that I live is... Is safe. And so we have to do it to whatever... Because you're not supposed to mess with of waterways, we have to do it through the state and all that, but in the meantime our land floods. And so... It flooded a couple days ago and I had to go out and try and prevent it from getting worse through whatever means. And... And I actually had this moment, you're talking about paperwork, I started walking into this flood with my wallet in my pocket. And then eventually realized that that was a bad idea. My wallet does not need to be in my pocket. I'm not going to get asked for my papers or need to purchase anything while I'm walking into this flood and... And so it's a... So natural disaster is like the top... Climate change affecting everything is my top threat model where I live. But fascist takeover is on there and fascist takeover... Is a really different set of problems. #0:53:42.9# Kitty: Yeah. And it's different kind of... #0:53:43.8# Margaret: And a lot of it still comes down to knowing your neighbors. #0:53:46.1# Kitty: It's a different set of prepping as well. It's a totally different set skills. #0:53:50.8# Margaret: Yeah. And I mean there's... And one of the things I was thinking about is... The thing I was really... That I realized, a lot of my... I've spent a lot of my life living outdoors. I was a traveling anarchist living out of a backpack, and I was a forest defender and was a squatter and I lived in a van, and now I live in a cabin. Almost half my life I've lived out... Off grid, essentially. And I was thinking how when in February I'm waist and sometimes chest deep in water, I was thinking how glad I am that just kind of by default prefer certain types of practical clothes. It's funny 'cause I... Most of the time... I built my house wearing a dress. But when I'm like, "Okay it's rainy," and I put my puffy vest and my waders, my muck boots, and wool socks. And I wasn't nearly as concerned about hypothermia, which is a major problem in floods especially in February, just because I wasn't wearing much cotton. And it's funny like because I never think about my outdoors skills. Like how to start a fire with tinder and flint and steel and all that. That's not... I don't really see a version of the world where I'm living in the woods alone and hunting squirrels and whatever the fuck, you know? But there are gonna be moments where I might be like... Needing to not get hypothermia while I'm trying to clear up a dam that's forming or whatever. #0:55:26.9# Kitty: Yeah, yeah. Two pairs of wool socks should be on everyone's list in their go bag for sure. #0:55:34.3# Margaret: Yeah, I keep a second vest... #0:55:35.7# Kitty: And the more wool clothing you have the better. #0:55:39.4# Margaret: But what's funny is than I was thinking that through when you're talking about fires, I was thinking about California, I was like... Well, actually the same clothes that are really good in flood and maybe a tsunami are not good in fire. You don't want to wear synthetic in a fire situation. So... But over all... #0:56:00.1# Kitty: But you actually do wanna wear cotton. #0:56:02.6# Margaret: Yeah. Yeah... #0:56:05.0# Kitty: I remember I used to... I used to blacksmith with my dad and he would be like, "What are you wearing? That's really impractical for this." I'm like, "It's fine. It's cotton, it'll just roll right off. You can't catch fire in cotton." He was like, "That's not really true... But it's more true, I guess." #0:56:22.2# Margaret: It's better than polyester. #0:56:24.0# Kitty: Yes, certainly, yes. #0:56:25.3# Margaret: It's not going to melt into your skin. #0:56:27.9# Kitty: I have melted through so many skirts with some prep butts for sure. And I'm sort of learning at this point that that's... That's a concern. But yeah, I mean that's definitely an area of my prepping that I need to be better about. Is just having practical clothes. I don't have that much in the way of practical clothes that can fold up really small and actually keep me warm or keep me cool. #0:56:59.3# Margaret: Yeah. But sometimes people over... Overestimate the importance of this. I've definitely gone hiking in maxi skirts all time. And every time I go hiking with someone new in a maxi skirt they're like, "Margaret, do you wanna wear that?" And I'm like, "Are you fucking kidding me, I've been hiking in these skirts for the past fifteen years I know what the fuck I'm doing." Yeah, they might get caught and rip on things but whatever, you know? So there's a... There's a... I'm suddenly defensive about like, "Oh no, you don't need practical clothes." I don't know, maybe... Maybe we all need practical clothes. But maybe sometimes... #0:57:31.7# Kitty: You definitely need socks and I would recommend more than one pair of underwear. Probably cotton just for... #0:57:38.9# Margaret: But that's, yeah... #0:57:39.2# Kitty: Keeping your genitals fresh. But other then that... You can figure it out. I mean... But also clothes are not exactly in short supply either. There's a lot of trash fashion that we can pad up to make something acceptable. #0:58:01.8# Margaret: Well, in a lot of disaster areas people gather clothes to bring there and all the people there are like, "Why did you bring us fucking clothes. Bring us fucking clean water. What you doing?" #0:58:12.6# Kitty: Well they're bringing clothes because you can't burn them in India or China anymore, right? So it's like, "Oh, we'll give it to poor people." #0:58:22.1# Margaret: That way we get to feel better and clean out our closet, yeah #0:58:25.7# Kitty: Yup. I mean it's just... I guess that's another... That another threat, is just being buried under stuff. Just trash. Just being slowly buried alive under trash. #0:58:39.4# Margaret: Well that's the... That's the status quo problem, right? There's... If the world doesn't end and it keeps going the way it goes that's also kind of horrible. #0:58:49.7# Kitty: Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess actually another threat model that I think a lot about is disease. Disease is definitely a big concern. We... I live in a city where everyone is on top each other. So... A disease can spread incredibly quickly. I remembered there was a person who went to Berkeley Bowl who had the measles or something and they just quarantined Berkeley bowl. And I was like, "I'm not leaving the house for two weeks, just in case, who knows?" And that's even with having a vaccine. It's just... Knowing that when the electricity fails a lot of things like vaccines are going to become a lot more difficult, if not impossible... #0:59:43.0# Margaret: To acquire or whatever? #0:59:45.1# Kitty: And then... And then it's... Yeah, to acquire, keep them cold. To refrigerate medications, that's not going to be possible. So figuring out that is also something I try to be somewhat aware of. Having alternatives to medication, having alternatives to street drugs also. So knowing about... Knowing how to use Narcan. Knowing a little about... I don't even know how to pronounce that, I've only seen it read... Kratom? #1:00:23.5# Margaret: Kratom I think. #1:00:25.6# Kitty: Yeah, so that has been used by a bunch of my friends when they've been withdrawing from opiates. So having stuff that could work as an alternate... I've always packed some pot in my medic bag even though I don't smoke pot. Because it's so useful for so many different things... That it's worth just having it in there. And that's something that could be a real problem. A bunch of people withdrawing at once... Is a huge problem. A bunch of people getting sick at once is a huge problem. So having alternatives for that stuff is something that I'm looking a lot more into. #1:01:13.4# Margaret: Yeah, that's interesting that... I haven't thought about that. #1:01:16.3# Kitty: And that's what... #1:01:16.3# Margaret: The... Specifically withdrawing. #1:01:18.6# Kitty: That's just really something right-wing people don't think about that. I've noticed this. They're afraid of... Sorry, I forget the actual terminology, again ADHD brain, and I tend to call things... Like I called bars alcohol restaurants, that's just... How my brain works. But there's some doomsday thing that a lot of people are hype on... #1:01:39.4# Margaret: Coronavirus? #1:01:41.8# Kitty: About... No, no, no. I wish it was that, that would make much sense but no. They're just being racist and frantic about that while not thinking about the flu which kills a lot more people. But anyway... No. It's the... It's like a solar flare is going to knock out all of our electricity? #1:02:02.9# Margaret: Oh, 'cause then it'll EMP us or whatever? #1:02:05.4# Kitty: That's the one, yes. There's so many of them who are so focused on that but then they don't think about disease at all. And that just blows my mind because disease is way more likely. #1:02:19.9# Margaret: Yeah, people are bad at threat modeling. #1:02:21.0# Kitty: Within our lifetime we've seen multiple plagues. #1:02:25.0# Margaret: Yeah. I mean it's... #1:02:27.7# Kitty: It's just really surprising. #1:02:29.7# Margaret: I think some of it is about... I mean most of it's that people are bad at threat modeling. But I think some of it is like people... Enjoy certain types of threats. Like preparing for certain types of threats more than others. And also probably enjoy preparing like... For something that makes them feel like they have more agency instead of less agency, you know? If you're someone who... All of your skills are about non-electric things you can be really excited about the power grid going down. But I don't know. #1:03:02.8# Kitty: But I mean... That is... That is another area to think about when it comes to ableism, for example. A lot of diabetics aren't going to be able to get access to their medication. So figuring out how do you deal with that. And I don't think there... I don't know that I have answer to that, I don't know that anybody does. While that's for certain something that I would want to... Know more about. #1:03:28.0# Margaret: I think that's why we have to not... It's why the end of the world is bad. Like disaster is actually a really bad thing. Like people clearly get kind of hooked on it, right, because they suddenly have agency in their lives and they... You know, and... Everything I've ever read or talk to people about, like suicide goes down, like psychotic breaks go down, things like that during crisis. And it's... But it's still, at the end of the day, something that if we can avert it we should. And that's actually why... As much as climate change is going to affect things, there are going to be disasters, there's going to be interruptions in our society, if there's ways we can find to make sure that that doesn't kill so many people or ruin so many lives... Even if it ruins economic systems, maybe, you know... And of course as an anarchist I say this, maybe the solution is to ruin the existing economic system. Although ideally by transferring it over to a system that... You know... So that we still have access to the... The things we need in the meantime. Which is actually, it gets... I'm almost done with this rant. The whole... There's a threat that the whole like... There's a Durruti quote where during the Spanish Civil War... Someone asks him, "Well, what about all the destruction of this revolution?" And he's like, "Well, we're workers, we're not afraid of ruins. Why would we be afraid of ruins, we're the ones who built this city, we can build again." And I think about... Often people are like, well, and this is a tangent 'cause now I'm talking about anarchist society, people are like, "In an anarchist society, how would you have antibiotics?" I'd be like "Well, I don't know, how do we fucking have them now? We'll do that. Or maybe a different way, I don't know." And there's still people in the apocalypse, right? There's still a ton of people in disaster and we all know how to do stuff. And so even if like the electrical grid dies, that doesn't mean there's no power. It doesn't mean there's no hospital, even, you know? There's... Like even... We can... Fix these things and do these things and some of those are already prepared for that. #1:05:43.8# Kitty: Yeah. And I mean... And I think... I guess I would say that while it's good to be prepared, I also think it's important not to psyche yourself out. I think it's important to... Not get too excited about it. Because the fact is a lot of people, a lot of black and brown people especially, disabled people especially, will die. In any kind of disaster that you would want to prep for. That's just... That's how we structured our society and that is going to happen. So I think that that is something to be aware of before getting too thrilled about... The end of the world, right? So that you're kinda saying some really fucked up stuff at the same time. And frankly I don't know that I would survive a disaster like that. But I do know that I don't think I could do it by myself. I do think I could do it with community. And I think that that's why I'm so focus on community and mutual aid. I read A Paradise Built In Hell and it's this really interesting book that looks at different disasters and kind of has that... Isn't it interesting how a disaster happens and people come together and help each other even when everything has gone shit. And how... I think this was kinda the intention of the author of this book but she does seem to point out a lot... Isn't it also interesting how often the government steps in and tells them to stop doing that? So no, that is not okay. And will actually murder people to prevent them from helping each other. And I think that... That's something I'd consider as sort of a secondary threat model is... The government trying to prevent people from actually doing okay without them. It's like an ultimate abusive relationship. And figuring out how to deal with that... When you're being funneled into resources that are not ready to handle them. Yeah, so I mean, you know, it's a lot. #1:08:25.9# Margaret: Well this is a... This is a really good... This is going to be the first episode and... So I think we've covered a lot of... Thanks for helping me kind of... Almost like set up what this show will hopefully drill down more about and yeah, thanks so much for... Talking to me about all this stuff today. #1:08:46.8# Kitty: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm glad we could kind of work out... Sort of, here's all of the issues for... Here's a selection of all of the issues. But wait, there's more. #1:08:58.8# Margaret: Yeah, no, exactly. #1:08:59.1# Kitty: I'm looking forward to seeing the series. It should be pretty cool. #1:09:03.7# Margaret: Cool. Alright, well... Thank you so much. #1:09:06.5# Kitty: Thank you. #1:09:08.0# (Musical transition) #1:09:11.7# Margaret: Thanks for listening to the first ever episode of Live Like The World Is Dying. If you enjoyed the podcast, please tell your friends. Tell iTunes, tell Apple podcasts, tell whatever platform you get your podcasts on that you liked the podcast by subscribing, by reviewing it, by rating it and all of those things. It actually makes a huge difference and I think it'll especially a huge difference for the first couple episodes of a podcast. If you'd like to see this podcast continue, you can support me on Patreon. I... I make most of my living through my Patreon which allows me to spend my time creating content and I'm wildly, wildly grateful that that's something that I get to do with my life. In particular, I would like to thank Chris and Nora and Hoss the dog, Willow, Kirk, Natalie, and Sam. Y'all really make this possible and I can't thank you enough. Alright, thanks so much. And join us next time. #1:10:10.0# (Outroductory music) This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.
MetaTheurgy with Kevin Cann Kevin Cann is a contributor to Jeffrey Kripal's book How to Think Impossibly. He is a high-functioning autistic individual whose perspectives inform his philosophical work. Cann is the originator of a worldview he calls Platonic Surrealism. Kevin Cann explores MetaTheurgy as an expansion of ancient theurgy, reframing ritual, consciousness, and wonderworking through the contemporary lens of his system, Platonic Surrealism. He explains how human beings function as interfaces between awareness, potentiality, monadic consciousness, and the physical world, offering practical methods to restore agency in a postmodern culture marked by alienation. Cann also discusses how ritual, transcendence, and expanded states of mind can foster healing, meaning, and participation in a larger cosmic process. 00:00:01 Introduction: metatheurgy and expanded awareness 00:01:42 Origins, Platonic surrealism, and, ancient theurgy 00:03:48 Wonderworking, UFO summoning, and, altered states 00:07:03 Metamodern, moving beyond postmodern despair 00:12:02 Rituals, daily practices, and, reframing life 00:15:12 Healing, empowerment, and, suffering in modern life 00:29:47 Wonderworking, personal transformation as the core 00:33:21 Freewill, determinism, and, feedback loops 00:44:06 Human beings, monads, souls, and, plasma symbiosis 01:08:53 Conclusion New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on December 9, 2025) For a short video on How to Get the Most From New Thinking Allowed, go to https://youtu.be/aVbfPFGxv9o For a complete, updated list with links to all of our videos, see https://newthinkingallowed.com/Listings.htm. Check out the New Thinking Allowed Foundation website at http://www.newthinkingallowed.org. There you will find our incredible, searchable database as well as opportunities to shop and to support our video productions – plus, this is where people can subscribe to our FREE, weekly Newsletter and can download a FREE .pdf copy of our quarterly magazine. To order high-quality, printed copies of our quarterly magazine: NTA-Magazine.MagCloud.com Check out New Thinking Allowed’s AI chatbot. You can create a free account at awakin.ai/open/jeffreymishlove. When you enter the space, you will see that our chatbot is one of several you can interact with. While it is still a work in progress, it has been trained on 1,600 NTA transcripts. It can provide intelligent answers about the contents of our interviews. It’s almost like having a conversation with Jeffrey Mishlove. If you would like to join our team of volunteers, helping to promote the New Thinking Allowed YouTube channel on social media, editing and translating videos, creating short video trailers based on our interviews, helping to upgrade our website, or contributing in other ways (we may not even have thought of), please send an email to friends@newthinkingallowed.com. To join the NTA Psi Experience Community on Facebook, see https://www.facebook.com/groups/1953031791426543/ To download and listen to audio versions of the New Thinking Allowed videos, please visit our new podcast at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/new-thinking-allowed-audio-podcast/id1435178031. Download and read Jeffrey Mishlove’s Grand Prize essay in the Bigelow Institute competition, Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death, go to https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/docs/1st.pdf. You can help support our video productions while enjoying a good book. To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: Is There Life After Death? click on https://amzn.to/3LzLA7Y (As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.) To order the second book in the New Thinking Allowed Dialogues series, Russell Targ: Ninety Years of ESP, Remote Viewing, and Timeless Awareness, go to https://amzn.to/4aw2iyr To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: UFOs and UAP – Are We Really Alone?, go to https://amzn.to/3Y0VOVh To order The Other Goddess: Mary Magdalene and the Goddesses of Eros and Secret Knowledge by Dr. Joanna Kujawa, go to https://amzn.to/483vqPl To order How to Think Impossibly by Jeffrey Kripal (with collaboration from Kevin Cann), go to https://amzn.to/3XJ7OJw
We are fools this episode. Happy New Year! Maysoun went to Chicago! Kate went to Berkeley! We plan out our beginning-of-the-year expeditions.The music in this episode is by SAMMIRemembering Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece" by Julia Bryan-WilsonYour Guide to the Bay Area's Biggest Art Month by Sarah Hotchkiss Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor introduce the podcast and discuss the book Christianity's American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular by David Hollinger, the Preston Hotchkis Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.
Doris *Saturday 845 AM Berkeley Meeting* 01.03.26 by Overeaters Anonymous East Bay Unity Intergroup
Dating Advice, Attracting Quality Men & Dating Tips For Women Podcast! | Magnetize The Man
Take Our FREE Quiz To Get A Loving, Long-Term & Committed Relationship With A Man You Want ASAP Without Loneliness, Fear Or Rejection Click: http://MagnetizeYourMan.com/PDSUBSCRIBE FOR GOOD LUCK IN LOVE!Follow Us On Instagram: https://Instagram.com/MagnetizeYourManFollow Us On TikTok: https://TikTok.com/@MagnetizeYourMan Subscribe To Our Podcast: https://MagnetizeYourMan.buzzsprout.com/shareFollow Us On Facebook: https://Facebook.com/MagnetizeYourManFollow Us On X: https://Twitter.com/MagnetizeMenFollow Us On Threads: https://Threads.net/@MagnetizeYourManCheck Out Our Blog: https://MagnetizeYourMan.com/Blog~ Your Expert Love Coaches, Brody & Antia Boyd ~Husband and wife team Antia & Brody Boyd have been helping thousands of successful women all over the world for over 20 years combined to magnetize their man to share their life with & have a loving, long-term & committed relationship ASAP without loneliness, trust-issues or emotionally unavailable men.Antia studied Attachment Styles & Personality Psychology at U.C. Berkeley, Brody has a degree in Communications & Interpersonal Relationships and they have been keynote speakers on hundreds of stages, radio & TV shows all over the world including Google, the Harvard University Faculty Club and Good Morning San Diego.They have also been featured on ABC Radio, Brides Magazine & The Great Love Debate and for over a decade studied EVERYTHING they could get their hands on in the areas of male psychology, feminine communication & creating an incredible relationship fast without low-confidence, anxiety or rejection.They look forward to helping YOU to attract your man for a happy, healthy and supportive relationship the easy way and becoming one of their newest success stories soon as well! Check Out Antia's Full Love Story: https://MagnetizeYourMan.com/AboutAntia~ Incredible Client Love Stories & Reviews! ~“My man and I are very happy as we are exploring and enjoy our new life together. Our coaching together was very helpful in my ability to stay centered in the reality of a true intimate loving relationship unfolding. It has also helped me in nurturing it too. Thanks so much for your support!” -A. G.“One year since the day my fiancé and I met is just around the corner, and we are now married! We are in love and don't want to live life without one another. I have lived with him for 6 months and have been the happiest I have ever been in my life. Thank you so much for the coaching… I will check in very soon. Lots of love!” -L. W."My guy is so easy to love and be with. It's a treat to share time with him. He now makes me feel so special in his ways. He isn't afraid to be himself with me... the best compliment. LOVE the program, and now I'm learning how to be in a healthy relationship!" ~F. W."I just wanted to let you know that I met a really great guy. He has done a lot of personal work and we are enjoying really good communication. I just wanted to thank you for the help and suggestions that you gave me. I am optimistic!!" -D. K.More Love Stories & Reviews: https://MagnetizeYourMan.com/Reviews#Relationships #Dating #RelationshipAdvice #DatingTips #RelationshipTips #DatingAdviceSupport the show
Send us a textWe explore people-first leadership with Casey Coonerty Protti of Bookshop Santa Cruz, from family roots in service to making brave, values-led decisions through crisis. COVID recalibrates pace, transparency meets limits, and empathy becomes a daily practice on the sales floor.• family culture of service shaping leadership style• upfront vs behind-the-scenes leadership trade-offs• slowing down decisions during COVID for safety• centring core values when answers are unclear• balancing mission and financial sustainability• training new staff on history and expectations• transparency, what to share, and unionization• anxiety, boundaries, and practical coping habits• controversial books and courageous curation• communication modes and avoiding performative input• why fiction grows empathy and better leadership• Readers Club details and community gratitudeBioCasey Coonerty Protti is the second-generation owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz located in the heart of downtown Santa Cruz for over 59 years. Casey received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley, a MPA from Harvard University and a MBA from Northwestern University. Casey returned to Santa Cruz to run daily operations of Bookshop Santa Cruz in 2006 after working in the nonprofit field and serving as a consultant for the American Bookseller's Association. Besides raising her two children and trying to read and travel as much as possible, Casey served on the Downtown Commission of Santa Cruz and the boards of the Santa Cruz Downtown Association, the Santa Cruz Education Foundation, The Independent Booksellers Consortium, The Women's Educational Success Program at Cabrillo College and the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs. Support the show
The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 3: 5:00pm- John Yoo—The Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss his latest article for National Review, “The Trump Administration's Actions in Venezuela Are Constitutional.” You can read the full article here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/01/the-trump-administrations-actions-in-venezuela-are-constitutional/. 5:30pm- Rich's BIG announcement: Beginning next week, The Rich Zeoli Show will take on a new form! The show will become a one-hour, nationally focused podcast which can be heard locally on 1210 WPHT from 6pm to 7pm!
The Rich Zeoli Show- Full Show (01/05/2026): 3:05pm- On Monday, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced he will no longer seek election for a third term. His announcement comes after Minnesota, under his leadership, misappropriated billions-of-dollars to fraudulent welfare claims. 3:10pm- According to reports, on Friday at 10:46pm ET President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead on an extraction mission to capture Venezuelan authoritarian Nicolas Maduro. The successful raid consisted of 150 aircrafts—which eliminated air defense systems and cut power to infrastructure in Caracas. On Monday, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, appeared before a New York City judge—charged with narco-terrorism and cocaine importation conspiracies. 3:30pm- David Gelman— Criminal Defense Attorney, former Prosecutor, & a former surrogate for Donald Trump's Legal Team—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to recap Venezuelan authoritarian Nicolas Maduro's appearance in a New York court where he pled not guilty to drug trafficking charges. Gleman jokes that Maduro has a better chance of winning the Powerball than being granted bail. 3:40pm- Can the Trump administration legally target other tyrannical regimes? In an article for The Free Press, Yale Law Professor wrote “under Supreme Court case law, the decision about whether or not to recognize a foreign government belongs exclusively to the president.” Which is important because “foreign heads of state are immune from prosecution…but as the courts held in [Panama leader Manuel] Noriega's case, head-of-state immunity does not apply to a dictator whom the U.S. doesn't recognize.” 4:05pm- Rich, Matt, and Justin return from Christmas break. Rich got a dog, Justin still had to work, and Matt is in Scottsdale enjoying the 70-degree weather. 4:20pm- Following the United States' successful capture of Nicolas Maduro, the Colombian defense minister invited Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to Colombia for a firsthand look at the country's fight against drug trafficking. While speaking to the press, President Donald Trump warned that Colombian President Gustavo Petro should “watch his ass” if he doesn't stop sending drugs to the U.S. 4:30pm- Dr. Victoria Coates—Former Deputy National Security Advisor & the Vice President of the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss the operation to successfully capture Venezuelan authoritarian Nicolas Maduro. Could the Trump administration target other problematic despots in Colombia or Iran, for example? Dr. Coates is author of the book: The Battle for the Jewish State: How Israel—and America—Can Win. 5:00pm- John Yoo—The Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss his latest article for National Review, “The Trump Administration's Actions in Venezuela Are Constitutional.” You can read the full article here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/01/the-trump-administrations-actions-in-venezuela-are-constitutional/. 5:30pm- Rich's BIG announcement: Beginning next week, The Rich Zeoli Show will take on a new form! The show will become a one-hour, nationally focused podcast which can be heard locally on 1210 WPHT from 6pm to 7pm! 6:05pm- Daniel Turner—Founder and Executive Director of Power the Future—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to respond to the news that the U.S. will take control of Venezuela's oil. Will this lower gas prices? 6:20pm- According to reports, on Friday at 10:46pm ET President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead on an extraction mission to capture Venezuelan authoritarian Nicolas Maduro. The successful raid consisted of 150 aircrafts—which eliminated air defense systems and cut power to infrastructure in Caracas. On Monday, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, appeared before a New York City judge—charged with narco-terrorism and cocaine importation conspiracies. 6:30pm- Democrat Hypocrisy: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ...
In this (open-access) book, Susanna Elm radically changes our understanding of imperial rule in the later Roman Empire. As she shows, the so-called eastern decadence of the Emperor Theodosius and his successors was in fact a calculated revolution in masculinity and the representation of imperial power. Here, the emperor's hard yet soft, mature yet youthfully gorgeous beauty was central. Because the Theodosian emperors were divine—gods one could see—so was their beauty: their manliness was the face and body of God. The emperors' gorgeousness, their sparkling regalia, how they wished their bodies to be seen by their elite subjects—who authored the texts on which Elm's analysis is based—were as important as laws, taxes, and armies. Their vir-ness strategically deployed male same-sex erotic desire to enhance the unity of the realm in times of tension, incorporate the signifying potency of child emperors, and create a flexible yet stable model of Christian sovereignty. New books in late antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Susanna Elm is Sidney H. Ehrman Chair and Distinguished Professor of History and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome. Michael Motia teaches classics and religious studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Dating Advice, Attracting Quality Men & Dating Tips For Women Podcast! | Magnetize The Man
Take Our FREE Quiz To Get A Loving, Long-Term & Committed Relationship With A Man You Want ASAP Without Loneliness, Fear Or Rejection Click: http://MagnetizeYourMan.com/PDSUBSCRIBE FOR GOOD LUCK IN LOVE!Get Our "Magnetize Your Man" Book On Amazon Here: https://amzn.to/2UZcmveGet Our "Magnetize Your Man" Audiobook Here: http://adbl.co/38uAgoFJoin Our FREE “Magnetize Your Man” Facebook Group: http://MYMFBGroup.comFollow Us On Instagram: https://Instagram.com/MagnetizeYourManFollow Us On TikTok: https://TikTok.com/@MagnetizeYourMan Subscribe To Our Podcast: https://MagnetizeYourMan.buzzsprout.com/shareFollow Us On Facebook: https://Facebook.com/MagnetizeYourManFollow Us On X: https://Twitter.com/MagnetizeMenFollow Us On Threads: https://Threads.net/@MagnetizeYourManCheck Out Our Blog: https://MagnetizeYourMan.com/Blog~ Your Expert Love Coaches, Brody & Antia Boyd ~Husband and wife team Antia & Brody Boyd have been helping thousands of successful women all over the world for over 20 years combined to magnetize their man to share their life with & have a loving, long-term & committed relationship ASAP without loneliness, trust-issues or emotionally unavailable men.Antia studied Attachment Styles & Personality Psychology at U.C. Berkeley, Brody has a degree in Communications & Interpersonal Relationships and they have been keynote speakers on hundreds of stages, radio & TV shows all over the world including Google, the Harvard University Faculty Club and Good Morning San Diego.They have also been featured on ABC Radio, Brides Magazine & The Great Love Debate and for over a decade studied EVERYTHING they could get their hands on in the areas of male psychology, feminine communication & creating an incredible relationship fast without low-confidence, anxiety or rejection.They look forward to helping YOU to attract your man for a happy, healthy and supportive relationship the easy way and becoming one of their newest success stories soon as well! Check Out Antia's Full Love Story: https://MagnetizeYourMan.com/AboutAntia~ Incredible Client Love Stories & Reviews! ~“My man and I are very happy as we are exploring and enjoy our new life together. Our coaching together was very helpful in my ability to stay centered in the reality of a true intimate loving relationship unfolding. It has also helped me in nurturing it too. Thanks so much for your support!” -A. G.“One year since the day my fiancé and I met is just around the corner, and we are now married! We are in love and don't want to live life without one another. I have lived with him for 6 months and have been the happiest I have ever been in my life. Thank you so much for the coaching… I will check in very soon. Lots of love!” -L. W."My guy is so easy to love and be with. It's a treat to share time with him. He now makes me feel so special in his ways. He isn't afraid to be himself with me... the best compliment. LOVE the program, and now I'm learning how to be in a healthy relationship!" ~F. W."I just wanted to let you know that I met a really great guy. He has done a lot of personal work and we are enjoying really good communication. I just wanted to thank you for the help and suggestions that you gave me. I am optimistic!!" -D. K.More Love Stories & Reviews: https://MagnetizeYourMan.com/Reviews#Relationships #Dating #RelationshipAdvice #DatingTips #RelationshipTips #DatingAdviceSupport the show
In this (open-access) book, Susanna Elm radically changes our understanding of imperial rule in the later Roman Empire. As she shows, the so-called eastern decadence of the Emperor Theodosius and his successors was in fact a calculated revolution in masculinity and the representation of imperial power. Here, the emperor's hard yet soft, mature yet youthfully gorgeous beauty was central. Because the Theodosian emperors were divine—gods one could see—so was their beauty: their manliness was the face and body of God. The emperors' gorgeousness, their sparkling regalia, how they wished their bodies to be seen by their elite subjects—who authored the texts on which Elm's analysis is based—were as important as laws, taxes, and armies. Their vir-ness strategically deployed male same-sex erotic desire to enhance the unity of the realm in times of tension, incorporate the signifying potency of child emperors, and create a flexible yet stable model of Christian sovereignty. New books in late antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Susanna Elm is Sidney H. Ehrman Chair and Distinguished Professor of History and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome. Michael Motia teaches classics and religious studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies
Lee Riedinger, Ph.D., knows the history of Oak Ridge and its connections to the University of Tennessee like he knows the back of his hand. His book, “Critical Connections: The University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge from the Dawn of the Atomic Age to the Present,” explores the connections that exist between UT, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORAU and other key stakeholders. In this episode of Further Together, Riedinger talks to hosts Michael Holtz and Amber Davis about ORAU's role in the Oak Ridge story, including how ORNL may not have remained open were it not for the efforts of William Pollard, ORAU's founder, Kay (Katherine) Way, a UT physics professor, and others to open up what was then Clinton Laboratories to a consortia of universities. Additionally, Riedinger explains that ORAU was instrumental in the creation of the UT-Battelle partnership that now manages ORNL. Check out this fascinating discussion of Riedinger's career, his book, and ORAU's vital role in keeping Oak Ridge at the forefront of science. Lee Riedinger is an emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, on the faculty since 1971 and retired in 2019, and also served as the founding Director of the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education from 2010 to 2019. He received a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 1968. His field of research was experimental nuclear physics, emphasizing properties of high-spin states in deformed nuclei. He is an author of 200 refereed publications, has given 60 invited talks at conferences and workshops, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research was funded by the Department of Energy for 30 years from 1976 and was focused on experiments at accelerators at U.S. national labs (Oak Ridge, Argonne, Berkeley, Brookhaven) and abroad. Various sabbatical leaves were spent at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark. He served as the elected chair of the Division of Nuclear Physics of the APS in 1996 and the chair of the Southeastern Section of the APS in 2004. In 1983-84, he was the science advisor to Tennessee Senator Howard Baker, who was then the majority leader of the U.S. Senate. He received the UT Chancellor's Research Scholar Award in 1983, the 2005 Francis G. Slack Award from the Southeastern Section of the APS, the 2008-9 Macebearer award (the top UT faculty honor), the Chancellor's Medal in 2012, the L.R. Hesler Award for Excellence in Teaching and Service in 2013, and the Graduate Director of the Year in 2017 from the UT Graduate Student Senate. In addition to teaching and research, he has served in a number of administrative leadership positions at the university: 1988-91, director of the Science Alliance Center of Excellence, a program devoted to building joint research between UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL); 1991-95, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research; 1996–2000, head of the Physics Department; 2006-7 and again 2012, Vice Chancellor for Research. From 1993 to 1996, he was the first chair of the Tennessee Science and Technology Advisory Council, which advised the Governor and the Legislature on technical priorities for the state. In 1999 he was one of the leaders of the successful UT effort to choose a partner (Battelle) and bid on the ORNL management contract. From 2000 to 2004, he served as the ORNL Deputy Director for Science and Technology and from 2004 to 2006 as the Associate Laboratory Director for University Partnerships. UT-Battelle LLC has managed ORNL since 2000. Upon his return to the university in 2006, he led various efforts to develop a greater focus on energy teaching and research at UT. In September of 2010 he was appointed to be the first director of the UT-ORNL Bredesen Center, which is the academic home of a new doctoral program in energy science and engineering. In this role he taught the core two-semester graduate energy technology course and led all aspects of this interdisciplinary energy PhD program. A second interdisciplinary doctorate in data science and engineering between UT and ORNL started in August of 2017. He retired from UT at the end of 2019 and has written a book on the long history of the partnership between UT and Oak Ridge: Critical Connections: The University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge from the Dawn of the Atomic Age to the Present, published by UT Press in 2024. To learn more about the book, visit https://utpress.org/title/critical-connections/
On this episode of Currently Reading, Kaytee and Meredith are deep diving into their top reads of 2025. This year, they alternate between reads and superlatives. From best Cheeto chapters to books that made them uncomfortable, the year had some amazing books and experiences. Show notes are time-stamped below for your convenience. Read the transcript of the episode (this link only works on the main site) . . . 1:35 - Ad For Ourselves 1:54 - NYT Article about book podcasts "Seven Podcasts for Bookworms" 2:27 - Currently Reading Patreon 5:23 - Some Stats From Our Reading Lives 7:07 - 68% of reads were backlist (Kaytee) 7:38 - Kaytee read 230 books 7:59 - Meredith read 127 books 8:54 - 64% female/36%male authors (Meredith) 9:09 - Average rating of 4.1 (Meredith) 10:53 - 44% Kindle, 13% audiobook, poetry 4% of total reads, 17% nonfiction (Meredith) 12:28 - 22% romance, 20% fantasy, 14% as literary (Kaytee) 14:34 - 32% authors revisited, library serendipity #1 recommendation source followed by Elizabeth Barnhill, Roxanna and Betsie Ikenberry (Meredith) 16:13 - Katie Proctor #1 recommendation source, followed by the indie press list, libro. Fm, and Meredith (Kaytee) 17:55 - Berkeley and Random House biggest publishing houses, followed by Harper, William Morrow, Atria and Flatiron Books (Kaytee) 18:21 - Minotaur, Atria and Random House biggest publishing houses (Meredith) 19:57 - Our Top 10 Reads of 2025 20:27 - Superlative #1: Book or books you will recommend most from this year? 20:39 - A Rebellion of Care by David Gate (Kaytee) 21:20 - So Far Gone by Jess Walter (Meredith) 23:25 - The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark (Meredith #10) 24:08 - You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith (Kaytee #10) 24:28 - Awake by Jen Hatmaker 24:30 - I Thought It Would Be Better Than This by Jessica Turner 25:30 - Superlative #2: Which book would be hardest to shelve in the library? 25:51 - Turns of Fate by Anne Bishop (Meredith) 26:02 - The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett 27:01 - My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows (Kaytee) 27:55 - Royal Gambit by Daniel O'Malley (Meredith #9) 29:32 - Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (Kaytee #9) 30:31 - Superlative #3: The book we wanted to throw across the room 30:38 - Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (Meredith) 32:23 - Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown (Kaytee) 33:11 - The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 33:57 - A Winter's Promise by Christelle Dabos (Meredith #8) 35:53 - My Friends by Fredrik Backman (Kaytee #8) 37:16 - Superlative #4: The book that made you the most uncomfortable 37:29 - Eager by Ben Goldfarb (Kaytee) 38:57 - Sandy Hook by Eilzabeth Williamson (Meredith) 40:25 - Forensics by Val McDermid (Meredith #7) 41:52 - Forensics by Val McDermid (Blackwells edition) 42:24 - Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver (Kaytee #7) 42:52 - Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 43:42 - Superlative #5: The best picture book that you read aloud this year 44:15 - No, David! By David Shannon (Meredith) 45:07 - The Creature of Habit by Jennifer E. Smith and Leo Espinosa (Kaytee) 46:35 - The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Meredith AND Kaytee #6) 47:33 - CR Season 7: Episode 46 49:09 - Superlative #6: The best audiobook experience 49:23 - Woodworking by Emily St. James (Kaytee) 50:19 - This Book Will Bury Me by Ashley Winstead (Meredith) 51:38 - North Sun by Ethan Rutherford (Meredith #5) 52:53 - This Changes Everything by Tyler Merritt (Kaytee #5) 53:01 - I Take My Coffee Black by Tyler Merritt 54:31 - Superlatives #7: Longest and shortest book read this year 54:46 - A Little Daylight Left by Sarah Kay (Meredith shortest) 55:03 - The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan (Meredith longest) 55:34 - The Answer is No by Fredrik Backman (Kaytee shortest, amazon link) 55:53 - These Truths by Jill Lepore (Kaytee longest) 56:20 - The Stand by Stephen King 57:16 - The Unseen World by Liz Moore (Meredith #4) 57:25 - The God of the Woods by Liz Moore 58:50 - This is Happiness by Niall Williams (Kaytee #4) 59:57 - Superlative #8: Best book outside your wheelhouse 1:00:09 - The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan (Meredith) 1:01:07 - The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (Kaytee) 1:01:30 - Erasure by Percival Everett 1:01:32 - A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat 1:03:34 - The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Meredith #3) 1:07:15 - Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa (Kaytee #3) 1:07:31 - Pride by Ibi Zoboi 1:08:56 - Superlative #9: Your favorite new to you author 1:09:08 - Swordheart by T. Kingfisher (Meredith) 1:09:31 - Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (Meredith) 1:09:48 - Song of Blood & Stone by L. Penelope (Kaytee) 1:10:12 - The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope 1:11:03 - Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito (Meredith #2) 1:12:37 - Take What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar (Kaytee #2) 1:14:07 - Superlative #10: The most milkshake book/cheeto chapter book you read this year 1:14:50 - The Other Side of the Wall by Andrea Mara (Meredith, Blackwell's link) 1:14:57 - All Her Fault by Andrea Mara 1:15:53 - The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson (Meredith) 1:16:35 - The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett (Kaytee) 1:18:14 - Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hockhauer (Meredith #1) 1:20:57 - Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (Kaytee #1) 1:23:13 - book print etsy shop Support Us: Become a Bookish Friend | Grab Some Merch Shop Bookshop dot org | Shop Amazon Bookish Friends Receive: The Indie Press List with a curated list of five books hand sold by the indie of the month. January's IPL is our annual visit to Fabled Bookshop in Waco, Texas. Love and Chili Peppers with Kaytee and Rebekah - romance lovers get their due with this special episode focused entirely on the best selling genre fiction in the business. All Things Murderful with Meredith and Elizabeth - special content for the scary-lovers, brought to you with the behind-the-scenes insights of an independent bookseller From the Editor's Desk with Kaytee and Bunmi Ishola - a quarterly peek behind the curtain at the publishing industry The Bookish Friends Facebook Group - where you can build community with bookish friends from around the globe as well as our hosts Connect With Us: The Show: Instagram | Website | Email | Threads The Hosts and Regulars: Meredith | Kaytee | Mary | Roxanna Production and Editing: Megan Phouthavong Evans Affiliate Disclosure: All affiliate links go to Bookshop unless otherwise noted. Shopping here helps keep the lights on and benefits indie bookstores. Thanks for your support!
Love as the Timeless Source of Wholeness with Glenn Aparicio Parry Glenn Aparicio Parry, PhD, is author of Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature. He is the founder and director of the Circle for Original Thinking, a think tank based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was also given the name Kizhe Naabe (Ojibwe for Kind-Hearted Man) and is author of Original Politics: Making American Sacred Again. His newest book is Original Love: The Timeless Source of Wholeness. Glenn Aparicio Parry explores love as the primordial force underlying nature, consciousness, and the cosmos itself. He describes how ancient wisdom traditions, indigenous worldviews, and modern physics all point toward love as the vibration that restores wholeness amid strife. He also reflects on time, ritual, the moon, and the evolution of human consciousness as pathways for remembering our deeper unity with all life. 00:00:01 Introduction: love is beyond words 00:08:06 Original: origin of the trilogy and love as vibration 00:16:11 Nature: time, place, and linear perspective 00:24:01 Cosmos: love, gravity, entanglement and oneness 00:32:02 Myth: separation, soulmates, and double-sex beings 00:40:45 Struggle: suffering, resilience, and healing through love 00:48:48 Technology: AI, automation, and loving our machines 00:56:00 Ritual: moon ceremonies, feminine wisdom, and offerings 01:04:01 Timefree: timeless presence, dreams, and integral consciousness 01:12:13 Conclusion New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on December 8, 2025) For a short video on How to Get the Most From New Thinking Allowed, go to https://youtu.be/aVbfPFGxv9o For a complete, updated list with links to all of our videos, see https://newthinkingallowed.com/Listings.htm. Check out the New Thinking Allowed Foundation website at http://www.newthinkingallowed.org. There you will find our incredible, searchable database as well as opportunities to shop and to support our video productions – plus, this is where people can subscribe to our FREE, weekly Newsletter and can download a FREE .pdf copy of our quarterly magazine. To order high-quality, printed copies of our quarterly magazine: NTA-Magazine.MagCloud.com Check out New Thinking Allowed’s AI chatbot. You can create a free account at awakin.ai/open/jeffreymishlove. When you enter the space, you will see that our chatbot is one of several you can interact with. While it is still a work in progress, it has been trained on 1,600 NTA transcripts. It can provide intelligent answers about the contents of our interviews. It’s almost like having a conversation with Jeffrey Mishlove. If you would like to join our team of volunteers, helping to promote the New Thinking Allowed YouTube channel on social media, editing and translating videos, creating short video trailers based on our interviews, helping to upgrade our website, or contributing in other ways (we may not even have thought of), please send an email to friends@newthinkingallowed.com. To join the NTA Psi Experience Community on Facebook, see https://www.facebook.com/groups/1953031791426543/ To download and listen to audio versions of the New Thinking Allowed videos, please visit our new podcast at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/new-thinking-allowed-audio-podcast/id1435178031. Download and read Jeffrey Mishlove’s Grand Prize essay in the Bigelow Institute competition, Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death, go to https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/docs/1st.pdf. You can help support our video productions while enjoying a good book. To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: Is There Life After Death? click on https://amzn.to/3LzLA7Y (As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.) To order the second book in the New Thinking Allowed Dialogues series, Russell Targ: Ninety Years of ESP, Remote Viewing, and Timeless Awareness, go to https://amzn.to/4aw2iyr To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: UFOs and UAP – Are We Really Alone?, go to https://amzn.to/3Y0VOVh Glenn Aparicio Parry, Original Thinking: A Radical ReVisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature – https://amzn.to/2WVcqhq Glenn Aparicio Parry, Original Politics: Making American Sacred Again – https://amzn.to/4aFzirq To order Original Love: The Timeless Source of Wholeness, go to https://amzn.to/48RqeNy
Scott A. Mitchell is the Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs and holds the Yoshitaka Tamai Professorial Chair at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley. He teaches and writes about Buddhism in the West, Pure Land Buddhism, and Buddhist modernism. As of 2010, there were approximately 3-4 million Buddhists in the United States, and that figure is expected to grow significantly. Beyond the numbers, the influence of Buddhism can be felt throughout the culture, with many more people practicing meditation, for example, than claiming Buddhist identity. A century ago, this would have been unthinkable. So how did Buddhism come to claim such a significant place in the American cultural landscape? The Making of American Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2023) offers an answer, showing how in the years on either side of World War II second-generation Japanese American Buddhists laid claim to an American identity inclusive of their religious identity. In the process they-and their allies-created a place for Buddhism in America. These sons and daughters of Japanese immigrants-known as “Nisei,” Japanese for “second-generation”-clustered around the Berkeley Bussei, a magazine published from 1939 to 1960. In the pages of the Bussei and elsewhere, these Nisei Buddhists argued that Buddhism was both what made them good Americans and what they had to contribute to America-a rational and scientific religion of peace. The Making of American Buddhism also details the behind-the-scenes labor that made Buddhist modernism possible. The Bussei was one among many projects that were embedded within Japanese American Buddhist communities and connected to national and transnational networks that shaped and allowed for the spread of modernist Buddhist ideas. In creating communities, publishing magazines, and hosting scholarly conventions and translation projects, Nisei Buddhists built the religious infrastructure that allowed the later Buddhist modernists, Beat poets, and white converts who are often credited with popularizing Buddhism to flourish. Nisei activists didn't invent American Buddhism, but they made it possible. Dr. Victoria Montrose is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Furman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
Emmanuel - What's In A Name/ Simeon and Anna Pastor Lisa 01/04/26
Dans IDEES, Pierre-Edouard Deldique reçoit l'anthropologue de renom Philippe Descola pour un retour sur son travail de recherche à l'occasion de la parution aux éditions du Seuil de son ouvrage Politiques du faire‑monde, qui prolonge les grandes lignes de l'anthropologie de Philippe Descola. Issu des « Tanner Lectures » prononcées en 2023 à l'université de Berkeley aux États-Unis, l'ouvrage condense plus de cinquante ans de recherches, notamment auprès des Achuar d'Amazonie. Il propose une réflexion ambitieuse : comment repenser nos institutions, nos catégories et nos manières d'habiter la Terre à partir d'une anthropologie des ontologies ? Avec clarté et profondeur, Phillipe Descola revient, dans son livre et dans ce numéro d'IDEES, sur l'héritage problématique, selon lui du « siècle des Lumières », c'est-à-dire la séparation radicale entre nature et culture, véritable matrice de la modernité occidentale. Cette distinction, rappelle-t-il, n'est ni universelle ni nécessaire. Elle est un programme d'étude du monde qui a permis l'essor des sciences, mais qui a aussi rendu possible l'exploitation illimitée de la nature ou non-humains. L'un des apports majeurs de Descola est la typologie de quatre ontologies — ou filtres ontologiques — qui structurent les manières humaines de composer un monde. Elles ne sont pas des « visions du monde » abstraites : ce sont des manières de faire monde, c'est‑à‑dire de sélectionner certaines relations comme pertinentes pour composer un cosmos habitable. Il nous les détaille dans ce nouveau numéro du magazine qui interroge ceux qui pensent le monde. L'enjeu politique est clair : le naturalisme n'est qu'une ontologie parmi d'autres, et non l'horizon indépassable de l'humanité. Il s'agit de rompre avec l'idée que seuls les humains composent le politique. Les non-humains — animaux, plantes, lieux, esprits, objets techniques — doivent être reconnus comme acteurs de mondes. Philippe Descola plaide pour une diplomatie des ontologies, où les collectifs humains reconnaissent la légitimité d'autres manières d'habiter la Terre. C'est une autre façon de concevoir l'ONU du futur. Politiques du faire‑monde est un texte bref mais dense. Son ambition politique, au sens noble du terme, est affichée. Les propos clairs de Philippe Descola au micro en sont une preuve supplémentaire. Ce livre est indispensable. À lire aussiPhilippe Descola: «Par-delà nature et culture» ► Les références musicales : Jean-Michel Jarre - Amazonia, Pt. 8 No Tongues - Tortue Géniale Pierre Bachelet - Des Cobras Et Des Gazelles Francesco Agnello - Hang 12
Dream Initiation with Sarah Janes Sarah Janes is a lifelong lucid dreamer and the author of Initiation into Dream Mysteries: Drinking from the Pool of Mnemosyne. She collaborates with researchers and institutions to explore Egyptology, dream incubation, and ancient healing traditions, and co-operates The Seventh Ray virtual reality mystery school. She also works with Rupert Sheldrake and the British Pilgrimage Trust on reviving dream incubation at sacred sites and is based in the United Kingdom. Sarah Janes discusses the ancient history and cultural significance of dreaming, lucid dreaming, and dream incubation as initiatory practices for insight, healing, and guidance. She explores how early civilizations, from Egypt to Anatolia and Greece, used dreams as portals to the sacred, sources of prophecy, and catalysts for transformation. She also describes her contemporary work helping people navigate the dream realm, drawing parallels with psychedelic integration, ancestral memory, and the living landscape. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on **** 00, 2025) Check out New Thinking Allowed’s AI chatbot. You can create a free account at awakin.ai/open/jeffreymishlove. When you enter the space, you will see that our chatbot is one of several you can interact with. While it is still a work in progress, it has been trained on 1,600 NTA transcripts. It can provide intelligent answers about the contents of our interviews. It’s almost like having a conversation with Jeffrey Mishlove. For a short video on How to Get the Most From New Thinking Allowed, go to For a complete, updated list with links to all of our videos, see https://newthinkingallowed.com/Listings.htm. Check out the New Thinking Allowed Foundation website at http://www.newthinkingallowed.org. There you will find our incredible, searchable database as well as opportunities to shop and to support our video productions – plus, this is where people can subscribe to our FREE, weekly Newsletter and can download a FREE .pdf copy of our quarterly magazine. To order high-quality, printed copies of our quarterly magazine: https://nta-magazine.magcloud.com/ If you would like to join our team of volunteers, helping to promote the New Thinking Allowed YouTube channel on social media, editing and translating videos, creating short video trailers based on our interviews, helping to upgrade our website, or contributing in other ways (we may not even have thought of), please send an email to friends@newthinkingallowed.com. To join the NTA Psi Experience Community on Facebook, see https://www.facebook.com/groups/1953031791426543/ To download and listen to audio versions of the New Thinking Allowed videos, please visit our new podcast at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/new-thinking-allowed-audio-podcast/id1435178031. You can help support our video productions while enjoying a good book. To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: Is There Life After Death? click on https://amzn.to/3LzLA7Y (As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.) To order the second book in the New Thinking Allowed Dialogues series, Russell Targ: Ninety Years of ESP, Remote Viewing, and Timeless Awareness, go to https://amzn.to/4aw2iyr To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: UFOs and UAP – Are We Really Alone?, go to https://amzn.to/3Y0VOVh To order a copy of Charles T. Tart: Seventy Years of Exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology, go to https://amzn.to/41jIX1o To order a copy of Charles T. Tart: Seventy Years of Exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology, go to https://amzn.to/4oOUJLn Download and read Jeffrey Mishlove’s Grand Prize essay in the Bigelow Institute competition, Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death, go to https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/docs/1st.pdf Initiation into Dream Mysteries: Drinking from the Pool of Mnemosyne Paperback by Sarah Janes, goto https://amzn.to/3XAUzuL
Lo último de Escohotado acaba de ver la luz. Si, ya sé que el maestro murió hace más de tres años, pero algo dejó escrito para que ahora su hijo Jorge lo haya adaptado para su publicación póstuma. Ese algo es la “Filosofía para no filósofos” publicado por la editorial Espasa y que supone la última de las lecciones escohotadianas. No es un libro enteramente nuevo, se trata de una adaptación de textos anteriores como “Filosofía y metodología de las ciencias sociales” publicado hace más de cuarenta años y “Génesis y evolución del análisis científico”, que vio la luz a principios de siglo. En ambos casos se encuentran descatalogados, luego tenemos la oportunidad de acceder a un material de primera calidad que nació en las clases que Escohotado impartía en la UNED. “Filosofía para no filósofos” hace honor al título. Es un texto accesible para un público amplio y cumple con creces la promesa de ofrecer un recorrido por la historia del pensamiento occidental desde los orígenes míticos hasta el siglo XX. En tanto que no deja de ser un manual de filosofía se puede abordar en cualquiera de los 24 capítulos que tiene. Arranca con el pensamiento arcaico y precientífico para luego adentrarse en la filosofía griega desde los presocráticos como Tales, Heráclito o Parménides hasta los grandes sistemas filosóficos de Platón y Aristóteles, a los que Escohotado critica por su excesivo idealismo. Hace hincapié en figuras como Epicuro y Lucrecio como precursores del racionalismo científico, y dedica espacio a la ciencia helenística personificada en Euclides y Arquímedes. Pasa de puntillas por la edad media ya que, a juicio del autor, es una época no especialmente innovadora en materia de pensamiento. El renacimiento y la modernidad, auténticas especialidades de Escohotado, los trata con gran detalle. A lo largo de varios capítulos desfilan los principales pensadores europeos de los siglos XV, XVI, XVII y XVIII: Copérnico, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Spinoza (al que admira especialmente), Leibniz, empiristas ingleses como Locke, Berkeley y Hume, la Ilustración francesa e Immanuel Kant, al que dedica un capítulo entero Es un libro claro y totalmente accesible al lector lego en filosofía. Escohotado escribe con su característica elegancia, pero con un lenguaje directo, en ocasiones irónico y salpicado de anécdotas cotidianas. Su mérito principal es el de evitar a propósito la abstrusa jerga de los filósofos que hacen inabordables sus obras. Consigue hacer más o menos comprensibles conceptos realmente complejos como los sistemas filosóficos de Kant o Hegel. A todo le añade su perspectiva personal, determinada, caro está, por sus propias convicciones. Escohotado en vida defendía la libertad individual y el uso de la razón y, al mismo tiempo, criticaba de forma inmisericorde el irracionalismo y el colectivismo. No es, por lo tanto, un manual neutro, un resumen de historia de la filosofía. Cada una de sus páginas está impregnada por el espíritu y la erudición del autor. Una obra, en definitiva, muy valiosa e instructiva. Sirve como manual para aprender filosofía sí, pero también como punto de partida a muchas y muy buenas reflexiones sobre el mundo y la naturaleza humana. Hoy vamos a hablar de “Filosofía para no filósofos” en La ContraPortada. No estará el autor con nosotros (ya me gustaría), pero si su hijo Jorge, que es, como decía antes, quien se ha encargado de revisar esta edición y darle su forma final. - "Filosofía para no filósofos" de Antonio Escohotado - https://amzn.to/3Yih3B5 · Canal de Telegram: https://t.me/lacontracronica · “Contra el pesimismo”… https://amzn.to/4m1RX2R · “Hispanos. Breve historia de los pueblos de habla hispana”… https://amzn.to/428js1G · “La ContraHistoria del comunismo”… https://amzn.to/39QP2KE · “La ContraHistoria de España. Auge, caída y vuelta a empezar de un país en 28 episodios”… https://amzn.to/3kXcZ6i · “Contra la Revolución Francesa”… https://amzn.to/4aF0LpZ · “Lutero, Calvino y Trento, la Reforma que no fue”… https://amzn.to/3shKOlK Apoya La Contra en: · Patreon... https://www.patreon.com/diazvillanueva · iVoox... https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-contracronica_sq_f1267769_1.html · Paypal... https://www.paypal.me/diazvillanueva Sígueme en: · Web... https://diazvillanueva.com · Twitter... https://twitter.com/diazvillanueva · Facebook... https://www.facebook.com/fernandodiazvillanueva1/ · Instagram... https://www.instagram.com/diazvillanueva · Linkedin… https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernando-d%C3%ADaz-villanueva-7303865/ · Flickr... https://www.flickr.com/photos/147276463@N05/?/ · Pinterest... https://www.pinterest.com/fernandodiazvillanueva Encuentra mis libros en: · Amazon... https://www.amazon.es/Fernando-Diaz-Villanueva/e/B00J2ASBXM #FernandoDiazVillanueva #escohotado #filosofia Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals
Scott A. Mitchell is the Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs and holds the Yoshitaka Tamai Professorial Chair at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley. He teaches and writes about Buddhism in the West, Pure Land Buddhism, and Buddhist modernism. As of 2010, there were approximately 3-4 million Buddhists in the United States, and that figure is expected to grow significantly. Beyond the numbers, the influence of Buddhism can be felt throughout the culture, with many more people practicing meditation, for example, than claiming Buddhist identity. A century ago, this would have been unthinkable. So how did Buddhism come to claim such a significant place in the American cultural landscape? The Making of American Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2023) offers an answer, showing how in the years on either side of World War II second-generation Japanese American Buddhists laid claim to an American identity inclusive of their religious identity. In the process they-and their allies-created a place for Buddhism in America. These sons and daughters of Japanese immigrants-known as “Nisei,” Japanese for “second-generation”-clustered around the Berkeley Bussei, a magazine published from 1939 to 1960. In the pages of the Bussei and elsewhere, these Nisei Buddhists argued that Buddhism was both what made them good Americans and what they had to contribute to America-a rational and scientific religion of peace. The Making of American Buddhism also details the behind-the-scenes labor that made Buddhist modernism possible. The Bussei was one among many projects that were embedded within Japanese American Buddhist communities and connected to national and transnational networks that shaped and allowed for the spread of modernist Buddhist ideas. In creating communities, publishing magazines, and hosting scholarly conventions and translation projects, Nisei Buddhists built the religious infrastructure that allowed the later Buddhist modernists, Beat poets, and white converts who are often credited with popularizing Buddhism to flourish. Nisei activists didn't invent American Buddhism, but they made it possible. Dr. Victoria Montrose is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Furman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
MCNAMARA'S ACADEMIC BRILLIANCE AND PERSONAL DRIVE Colleague William Taubman. Taubmandetails McNamara's academic brilliance, noting his induction into Phi Beta Kappa at Berkeley and his status as the top student at Harvard Business School, where he sought to combine business with public service. His drive was shaped by a cold father and a mother who pushed him relentlessly to excel, while his wife Margie provided the emotional warmth and cheerfulness his own personality lacked. Despite his intellect, a 1939 trip to Europe, where he witnessed Hitlerspeak, left him surprisingly unaware of the imminent outbreak of war. NUMBER 2 1910
Holidays 2025 - What you been do'in? NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) and the BSDNow Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/bsdnow) Headlines What tech did we enjoy playing with or found interesting in 2025? Tarsnap This weeks episode of BSDNow was sponsored by our friends at Tarsnap, the only secure online backup you can trust your data to. Even paranoids need backups. Feedback/Questions - Gary - Storage Is Cheap (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/644/feedback/Gary%20-%20Storage%20Is%20Cheap.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) Join us and other BSD Fans in our BSD Now Telegram channel (https://t.me/bsdnow)
A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight's show features Asian Refugees United and Lavender Phoenix in conversation about art, culture, and organizing, and how artists help us imagine and build liberation. Important Links: Lavender Phoenix: Website | Instagram Asian Refugees United: Website | Instagram | QTViệt Cafe Collective Transcript: Cheryl: Hey everyone. Good evening. You tuned in to APEX Express. I'm your host, Cheryl, and tonight is an AACRE Night. AACRE, which is short for Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality is a network made up of 11 Asian American social justice organizations who work together to build long-term movements for justice. Across the AACRE network, our groups are organizing against deportations, confronting anti-blackness, xenophobia, advancing language justice, developing trans and queer leaders, and imagine new systems of safety and care. It's all very good, very important stuff. And all of this from the campaigns to the Organizing to Movement building raises a question that I keep coming back to, which is, where does art live In all of this, Acts of resistance do not only take place in courtrooms or city halls. It takes place wherever people are still able to imagine. It is part of how movements survive and and grow. Art is not adjacent to revolution, but rather it is one of its most enduring forms, and tonight's show sits in that very spirit, and I hope that by the end of this episode, maybe you'll see what I mean. I;d like to bring in my friends from Lavender Phoenix, a trans queer API organization, building people power in the Bay Area, who are also a part of the AACRE Network. This summer, Lavender Phoenix held a workshop that got right to the heart of this very question that we're sitting with tonight, which is what is the role of the artist in social movements? As they were planning the workshop, they were really inspired by a quote from Toni Cade Bambara, who in an interview from 1982 said, as a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make the revolution irresistible. So that raises a few questions worth slowing down for, which are, who was Toni Cade Bambara? What does it mean to be a cultural organizer and why does that matter? Especially in this political moment? Lavender Phoenix has been grappling with these questions in practice, and I think they have some powerful answers to share. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to angel who is a member of Lavender Phoenix. Angel: My name is Angel. I use he and she pronouns, and I'm part of the communications committee at LavNix. So, let's explore what exactly is the meaning of cultural work. Cultural workers are the creators of narratives through various forms of artistic expression, and we literally drive the production of culture. Cultural work reflects the perspectives and attitudes of artists and therefore the people and communities that they belong to. Art does not exist in a vacuum. You may have heard the phrase before. Art is always political. It serves a purpose to tell a story, to document the times to perpetuate and give longevity to ideas. It may conform to the status quo or choose to resist it. I wanted to share a little bit about one cultural worker who's made a really big impact and paved the way for how we think about cultural work and this framework. Toni Cade Bambara was a black feminist, cultural worker, writer, and organizer whose literary work celebrated black art, culture and life, and radically supported a movement for collective liberation. She believed that it's the artist's role to serve the community they belong to, and that an artist is of no higher status than a factory worker, social worker, or teacher. Is the idea of even reframing art making as cultural work. Reclaimed the arts from the elite capitalist class and made clear that it is work, it does not have more value than or take precedence over any other type of movement work. This is a quote from an interview from 1982 when Toni Cade Bambara said, as a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make revolution irresistible. But in this country, we're not encouraged and equipped at any particular time to view things that way. And so the artwork or the art practice that sells that capitalist ideology is considered art. And anything that deviates from that is considered political, propagandist, polemical, or didactic, strange, weird, subversive or ugly. Cheryl: After reading that quote, angel then invited the workshop participants to think about what that means for them. What does it mean to make the revolution irresistible? After giving people a bit of time to reflect, angel then reads some of the things that were shared in the chat. Angel: I want my art to point out the inconsistencies within our society to surprised, enraged, elicit a strong enough reaction that they feel they must do something. Cheryl: Another person said, Angel: I love that art can be a way of bridging relationships. Connecting people together, building community. Cheryl: And someone else said. Angel: I want people to feel connected to my art, find themselves in it, and have it make them think and realize that they have the ability to do something themselves. Cheryl: I think what is rather striking in these responses that Angel has read aloud to what it means to make art that makes the revolution irresistible isn't just aesthetics alone, but rather its ability to help us connect and communicate and find one another to enact feelings and responses in each other. It's about the way it makes people feel implicated and connected and also capable of acting. Tony Cade Bambara when she poses that the role of cultural workers is to make the revolution irresistible is posing to us a challenge to tap into our creativity and create art that makes people unable to return comfortably to the world as is, and it makes revolution necessary, desirable not as an abstract idea, but as something people can want and move towards now I'm going to invite Jenica, who is the cultural organizer at Lavender Phoenix to break down for us why we need cultural work in this political moment. . Speaker: Jenica: So many of us as artists have really internalized the power of art and are really eager to connect it to the movement. This section is about answering this question of why is cultural work important. Cultural work plays a really vital role in organizing and achieving our political goals, right? So if our goal is to advance radical solutions to everyday people, we also have to ask ourselves how are we going to reach those peoples? Ideas of revolution and liberation are majorly inaccessible to the masses, to everyday people. Families are being separated. Attacks on the working class are getting worse and worse. How are we really propping up these ideas of revolution, especially right in America, where propaganda for the state, for policing, for a corrupt government runs really high. Therefore our messaging in political organizing works to combat that propaganda. So in a sense we have to make our own propaganda. So let's look at this term together. Propaganda is art that we make that accurately reflects and makes people aware of the true nature of the conditions of their oppression and inspires them to take control of transforming this condition. We really want to make art that seeks to make the broader society aware of its implications in the daily violences, facilitated in the name of capitalism, imperialism, and shows that error of maintaining or ignoring the status quo. So it's really our goal to arm people with the tools to better struggle against their own points of views, their ways of thinking, because not everyone is already aligned with like revolution already, right? No one's born an organizer. No one's born 100% willing to be in this cause. So, we really focus on the creative and cultural processes, as artists build that revolutionary culture. Propaganda is really a means of liberation. It's an instrument to help clarify information education and a way to mobilize our people. And not only that, our cultural work can really model to others what it's like to envision a better world for ourselves, right? Our imagination can be so expansive when it comes to creating art. As organizers and activists when we create communication, zines, et cetera, we're also asking ourselves, how does this bring us one step closer to revolution? How are we challenging the status quo? So this is exactly what our role as artists is in this movement. It's to create propaganda that serves two different purposes. One, subvert the enemy and cultivate a culture that constantly challenges the status quo. And also awaken and mobilize the people. How can we, through our art, really uplift the genuine interests of the most exploited of people of the working class, of everyday people who are targets of the state and really empower those whose stories are often kept outside of this master narrative. Because when they are talked about, people in power will often misrepresent marginalized communities. An example of this, Lavender Phoenix, a couple years ago took up this campaign called Justice for Jaxon Sales. Trigger warning here, hate crime, violence against queer people and death. Um, so Jaxon Sales was a young, queer, Korean adoptee living in the Bay Area who went on a blind like dating app date and was found dead the next morning in a high-rise apartment in San Francisco. Lavender Phoenix worked really closely and is still connected really closely with Jaxon's parents, Jim and Angie Solas to really fight, and organize for justice for Jaxon and demand investigation into what happened to him and his death, and have answers for his family. I bring that up, this campaign because when his parents spoke to the chief medical examiner in San Francisco, they had told his family Jaxon died of an accidental overdose he was gay. Like gay people just these kinds of drugs. So that was the narrative that was being presented to us from the state. Like literally, their own words: he's dead because he's gay. And our narrative, as we continue to organize and support his family, was to really address the stigma surrounding drug use. Also reiterating the fact that justice was deserved for Jaxon, and that no one should ever have to go through this. We all deserve to be safe, that a better world is possible. So that's an example of combating the status quo and then uplifting the genuine interest of our people and his family. One of our key values at Lavender Phoenix is honoring our histories, because the propaganda against our own people is so intense. I just think about the everyday people, the working class, our immigrant communities and ancestors, other queer and trans people of color that really fought so hard to have their story told. So when we do this work and think about honoring our histories, let's also ask ourselves what will we do to keep those stories alive? Cheryl: We're going to take a quick music break and listen to some music by Namgar, an international ethno music collective that fuses traditional Buryat and Mongolian music with pop, jazz, funk, ambient soundscapes, and art- pop. We'll be back in just a moment with more after we listen to “part two” by Namgar. Cheryl: Welcome back. You are tuned in to APEX express on 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB B in Berkeley and online at kpfa.org. That song you just heard was “part two” by Namgar, an incredible four- piece Buryat- Mongolian ensemble that is revitalizing and preserving the Buryat language and culture through music. For those just tuning in tonight's episode of APEX Express is all about the role of the artist in social movements. We're joined by members of Lavender Phoenix, often referred to as LavNix, which is a grassroots organization in the Bay Area building Trans and queer API Power. You can learn more about their work in our show notes. We talked about why cultural work is a core part of organizing. We grounded that conversation in the words of Toni Cade Bambara, who said in a 1982 interview, as a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make revolution irresistible. We unpacked what that looks like in practice and lifted up Lavender Phoenix's Justice for Jaxon Sales campaign as a powerful example of cultural organizing, which really demonstrates how art and narrative work and cultural work are essential to building power Now Jenica from Levner Phoenix is going to walk us through some powerful examples of cultural organizing that have occurred in social movements across time and across the world. Speaker: Jenica: Now we're going to look at some really specific examples of powerful cultural work in our movements. For our framework today, we'll start with an international example, then a national one, a local example, and then finally one from LavNix. As we go through them, we ask that you take notes on what makes these examples, impactful forms of cultural work. How does it subvert the status quo? How is it uplifting the genuine interest of the people? Our international example is actually from the Philippines. Every year, the Corrupt Philippines president delivers a state of the nation address to share the current conditions of the country. However, on a day that the people are meant to hear about the genuine concrete needs of the Filipino masses, they're met instead with lies and deceit that's broadcasted and also built upon like years of disinformation and really just feeds the selfish interests of the ruling class and the imperialist powers. In response to this, every year, BAYAN, which is an alliance in the Philippines with overseas chapters here in the US as well. Their purpose is to fight for the national sovereignty and genuine democracy in the Philippines, they hold a Peoples' State of the Nation Address , or PSONA, to protest and deliver the genuine concerns and demands of the masses. So part of PSONA are effigies. Effigies have been regular fixtures in protest rallies, including PSONA. So for those of you who don't know, an effigy is a sculptural representation, often life size of a hated person or group. These makeshift dummies are used for symbolic punishment in political protests, and the figures are often burned. In the case of PSONA, these effigies are set on fire by protestors criticizing government neglect, especially of the poor. Lisa Ito, who is a progressive artists explained that the effigy is constructed not only as a mockery of the person represented, but also of the larger system that his or her likeness embodies. Ito pointed out that effigies have evolved considerably as a form of popular protest art in the Philippines, used by progressive people's movements, not only to entertain, but also to agitate, mobilize and capture the sentiments of the people. This year, organizers created this effigy that they titled ‘ZomBBM,' ‘Sara-nanggal' . This is a play on words calling the corrupt president of the Philippines, Bongbong Marcos, or BBM, a zombie. And the vice president Sara Duterte a Manananggal, which is a, Filipino vampire to put it in short, brief words. Organizers burnt this effigy as a symbol of DK and preservation of the current ruling class. I love this effigy so much. You can see BBM who's depicted like his head is taken off and inside of his head is Trump because he's considered like a puppet president of the Philippines just serving US interests. Awesome. I'm gonna pass it to Angel for our national perspective. Angel: Our next piece is from the national perspective and it was in response to the AIDS crisis. The global pandemic of HIV AIDS began in 1981 and continues today. AIDS is the late stage of HIV infection, human immunodeficiency virus, and this crisis has been marked largely by government indifference, widespread stigma against gay people, and virtually no federal funding towards research or services for everyday people impacted. There was a really devastating lack of public attention about the seriousness of HIV. The Ronald Reagan administration treated the crisis as a joke because of its association with gay men, and Reagan didn't even publicly acknowledge AIDS until 19 85, 4 years into the pandemic. Thousands of HIV positive people across backgrounds and their supporters organize one of the most influential patient advocacy groups in history. They called themselves the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power or ACT up. They ultimately organize and force the government and the scientific community to fundamentally change the way medical research is conducted. Paving the way for the discovery of a treatment that today keeps alive, an estimated half million HIV positive Americans and millions more worldwide. Sarah Schulman, a writer and former member of ACT Up, wrote a list of ACT UPS achievements, including changing the CDC C'S definition of aids to include women legalizing needle exchange in New York City and establishing housing services for HIV positive unhoused people. To highlight some cultural work within ACT Up, the AIDS activist artist Collective Grand Fury formed out of ACT Up and CR and created works for the public sphere that drew attention to the medical, moral and public issues related to the AIDS crisis. Essentially, the government was fine with the mass deaths and had a large role in the active killing off of people who are not just queer, but people who are poor working class and of color. We still see parallels in these roadblocks. Today, Trump is cutting public healthcare ongoing, and in recent memory, the COVID crisis, the political situation of LGBTQ people then and now is not divorced from this class analysis. So in response, we have the AIDS Memorial Quilt, this collective installation memorializes people who died in the US from the AIDS crisis and from government neglect. Each panel is dedicated to a life lost and created by hand by their friends, family, loved ones, and community. This artwork was originally conceived by Cleve Jones in SF for the 1985 candlelight March, and later it was expanded upon and displayed in Washington DC in 1987. Its enormity demonstrated the sheer number at which queer folk were killed in the hiv aids crisis, as well as created a space in the public for dialogue about the health disparities that harm and silence our community. Today, it's returned home to San Francisco and can be accessed through an interactive online archive. 50,000 individual panels and around a hundred thousand names make up the patchwork quilt, which is insane, and it's one of the largest pieces of grassroots community art in the world. Moving on to a more local perspective. In the Bay Area, we're talking about the Black Panther Party. So in October of 1966 in Oakland, California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for self-defense. The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of black communities against the US government and fought to establish socialism through organizing and community-based programs. The Black Panthers began by organizing arm patrols of black people to monitor the Oakland Police Department and challenge rampant rampant police brutality. At its peak, the party had offices in 68 cities and thousands of members. The party's 10 point program was a set of demands, guidelines, and values, calling for self-determination, full employment of black people, and the end of exploitation of black workers housing for all black people, and so much more. The party's money programs directly addressed their platform as they instituted a free B Breakfast for Children program to address food scarcity Founded community health clinics to address the lack of adequate, adequate healthcare for black people and treat sickle cell anemia, tuberculosis, and HIV aids and more. The cultural work created by the Black Panther Party included the Black Panther Party newspaper known as the Black Panther. It was a four page newsletter in Oakland, California in 1967. It was the main publication of the party and was soon sold in several large cities across the US as well as having an international readership. The Black Panther issue number two. The newspaper, distributed information about the party's activities and expressed through articles, the ideology of the Black Panther Party, focusing on both international revolutions as inspiration and contemporary racial struggles of African Americans across the United States. Solidarity with other resistance movements was a major draw for readers. The paper's international section reported on liberation struggles across the world. Under Editor-in-Chief, David Du Bois, the stepson of WEB Du Bois, the section deepened party support for revolutionary efforts in South Africa and Cuba. Copies of the paper traveled abroad with students and activists and were tra translated into Hebrew and Japanese. It reflected that the idea of resistance to police oppression had spread like wildfire. Judy Juanita, a former editor in Chief Ads, it shows that this pattern of oppression was systemic. End quote. Paper regularly featured fiery rhetoric called out racist organizations and was unabashed in its disdain for the existing political system. Its first cover story reported on the police killing of Denzel Doel, a 22-year-old black man in Richmond, California. In all caps, the paper stated, brothers and sisters, these racist murders are happening every day. They could happen to any one of us. And it became well known for its bold cover art, woodcut style images of protestors, armed panthers, and police depicted as bloodied pigs. Speaker: Jenica: I'm gonna go into the LavNix example of cultural work that we've done. For some context, we had mentioned that we are taking up this campaign called Care Not Cops. Just to give some brief background to LavNix, as systems have continued to fail us, lavender Phoenix's work has always been about the safety of our communities. We've trained people in deescalation crisis intervention set up counseling networks, right? Then in 2022, we had joined the Sales family to fight for justice for Jaxon Sales. And with them we demanded answers for untimely death from the sheriff's department and the medical examiner. Something we noticed during that campaign is that every year we watch as people in power vote on another city budget that funds the same institutions that hurt our people and steal money from our communities. Do people know what the budget is for the San Francisco Police Department? Every year, we see that city services and programs are gutted. Meanwhile, this year, SFPD has $849 million, and the sheriff has $345 million. So, honestly, policing in general in the city is over $1 billion. And they will not experience any cuts. Their bloated budgets will remain largely intact. We've really been watching, Mayor Lurie , his first months and like, honestly like first more than half a year, with a lot of concern. We've seen him declare the unlawful fentanyl state of emergency, which he can't really do, and continue to increase police presence downtown. Ultimately we know that mayor Lurie and our supervisors need to hear from us everyday people who demand care, not cops. So that leads me into our cultural work. In March of this year, lavender Phoenix had collaborated with youth organizations across the city, youth groups from Chinese Progressive Association, PODER, CYC, to host a bilingual care, not cops, zine making workshop for youth. Our organizers engaged with the youth with agitating statistics on the egregious SFPD budget, and facilitated a space for them to warm up their brains and hearts to imagine a world without prisons and policing. And to really further envision one that centers on care healing for our people, all through art. What I really learned is that working class San Francisco youth are the ones who really know the city's fascist conditions the most intimately. It's clear through their zine contributions that they've really internalized these intense forms of policing in the schools on the streets with the unhoused, witnessing ice raids and fearing for their families. The zine was really a collective practice with working class youth where they connected their own personal experiences to the material facts of policing in the city, the budget, and put those experiences to paper. Cheryl: Hey everyone. Cheryl here. So we've heard about Effigies in the Philippines, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the Black Panther Party's newspaper, the Black Panther and Lavender Phoenix's Care Cop zine. Through these examples, we've learned about cultural work and art and narrative work on different scales internationally, nationally, locally and organizationally. With lavender Phoenix. What we're seeing is across movements across time. Cultural work has always been central to organizing. We're going to take another music break, but when we return, I'll introduce you to our next speaker. Hai, from Asian Refugees United, who will walk us through, their creative practice, which is food, as a form of cultural resistance, and we'll learn about how food ways can function as acts of survival, resistance, and also decolonization. So stay with us more soon when we return. Cheryl: And we're back!!. You're listening to APEX express on 94.1 KPFA, 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley. 88.1. KFCF in Fresno and online@kpfa.org. That was “Juniper” by Minjoona, a project led by Korean American musician, Jackson Wright. huge thanks to Jackson and the whole crew behind that track. I am here with Hai from Asian Refugees United, who is a member QTViet Cafe Collective. A project under Asian Refugees United. QTViet Viet Cafe is a creative cultural hub that is dedicated to queer and trans viet Liberation through ancestral practices, the arts and intergenerational connection. This is a clip from what was a much longer conversation. This episode is all about the role of the artist in social movements and I think Hai brings a very interesting take to the conversation. Hai (ARU): I think that what is helping me is one, just building the muscle. So when we're so true to our vision and heart meets mind and body. So much of what QTViet Cafe is, and by extension Asian refugees and like, we're really using our cultural arts and in many ways, whether that's movement or poetry or written word or song or dance. And in many ways I've had a lot of experience in our food ways, and reclaiming those food ways. That's a very embodied experience. We're really trying to restore wholeness and health and healing in our communities, in our bodies and our minds and our families and our communities that have been displaced because of colonization, imperialism, capitalism. And so how do we restore, how do we have a different relationship and how do we restore? I think that from moving from hurt to healing is life and art. And so we need to take risk and trying to define life through art and whatever means that we can to make meaning and purpose and intention. I feel like so much of what art is, is trying to make meaning of the hurt in order to bring in more healing in our lives. For so long, I think I've been wanting a different relationship to food. For example, because I grew up section eight, food stamps, food bank. My mom and my parents doing the best they could, but also, yeah, grew up with Viet food, grew up with ingredients for my parents making food, mostly my mom that weren't necessarily all the best. And I think compared to Vietnam, where it's easier access. And there's a different kind of system around, needs around food and just easier access, more people are involved around the food system in Vietnam I think growing up in Turtle Island and seeing my parents struggle not just with food, but just with money and jobs it's just all connected. And I think that impacted my journey and. My own imbalance around health and I became a byproduct of diabetes and high cholesterol and noticed that in my family. So when I noticed, when I had type two diabetes when I was 18, made the conscious choice to, I knew I needed to have some type of, uh, I need to have a different relationship to my life and food included and just like cut soda, started kind of what I knew at the time, exercising as ways to take care of my body. And then it's honestly been now a 20 year journey of having a different relationship to not just food, but health and connection to mind, body, spirit. For me, choosing to have a different relationship in my life, like that is a risk. Choosing to eat something different like that is both a risk and an opportunity. For me that's like part of movement building like you have to. Be so in tune with my body to notice and the changes that are needed in order to live again. When I noticed, you know, , hearing other Viet folks experiencing diet related stuff and I think knowing what I know also, like politically around what's happening around our food system, both for the vie community here and also in Vietnam, how do we, how can this regular act of nourishing ourselves both be not just in art, something that should actually just honestly be an everyday need and an everyday symbol of caregiving and caretaking and care that can just be part of our everyday lives. I want a world where, it's not just one night where we're tasting the best and eating the best and being nourished, just in one Saturday night, but that it's just happening all the time because we're in right relationship with ourselves and each other and the earth that everything is beauty and we don't have to take so many risks because things are already in its natural divine. I think it takes being very conscious of our circumstances and our surroundings and our relationships with each other for that to happen. I remember reading in my early twenties, reading the role of, bring Coke basically to Vietnam during the war. I was always fascinated like, why are, why is Coke like on Viet altars all the time? And I always see them in different places. Whenever I would go back to Vietnam, I remember when I was seven and 12. Going to a family party and the classic shiny vinyl plastic, floral like sheet on a round table and the stools, and then these beautiful platters of food. But I'm always like, why are we drinking soda or coke and whatever else? My dad and the men and then my family, like drinking beer. And I was like, why? I've had periods in my life when I've gotten sick, physically and mentally sick. Those moments open up doors to take the risk and then also the opportunity to try different truth or different path. When I was 23 and I had just like crazy eczema and psoriasis and went back home to my parents for a while and I just started to learn about nourishing traditions, movement. I was Very critical of the us traditional nutrition ideas of what good nutrition is and very adamantly like opposing the food pyramid. And then in that kind of research, I was one thinking well, they're talking about the science of broths and like soups and talking about hard boiling and straining the broth and getting the gunk on the top. And I'm like, wait, my mom did that. And I was starting to connect what has my mom known culturally that now like science is catching up, you know? And then I started just reading, you know, like I think that my mom didn't know the sign mom. I was like, asked my mom like, did you know about this? And she's like, I mean, I just, this is, is like what ba ngoai said, you know? And so I'm like, okay, so culturally this, this is happening scientifically. This is what's being shared. And then I started reading about the politics of US-centric upheaval of monocultural agriculture essentially. When the US started to do the industrial Revolution and started to basically grow wheat and soy and just basically make sugar to feed lots of cows and create sugar to be put in products like Coke was one of them. And, and then, yeah, that was basically a way for the US government to make money from Vietnam to bring that over, to Vietnam. And that was introduced to our culture. It's just another wave of imperialism and colonization. And sadly, we know what, overprocessed, like refined sugars can do to our health. And sadly, I can't help but make the connections with what happened. In many ways, food and sugar are introduced through these systems of colonization and imperialism are so far removed from what we ate pre colonization. And so, so much of my journey around food has been, you know, it's not even art, it's just like trying to understand, how do we survive and we thrive even before so many. And you know, in some ways it is art. 'cause I making 40 pounds of cha ga for event, , the fish cake, like, that's something that, that our people have been doing for a long time and hand making all that. And people love the dish and I'm really glad that people enjoyed it and mm, it's like, oh yeah, it's art. But it's what people have been doing to survive and thrive for long, for so long, you know? , We have the right to be able to practice our traditional food ways and we have the right for food sovereignty and food justice. And we have the right to, by extension, like have clean waters and hospitable places to live and for our animal kin to live and for our plant kin to be able to thrive. bun cha ga, I think like it's an artful hopeful symbol of what is seasonal and relevant and culturally symbolic of our time. I think that, yes, the imminent, violent, traumatic war that are happening between people, in Vietnam and Palestine and Sudan. Honestly, like here in America. That is important. And I think we need to show, honestly, not just to a direct violence, but also very indirect violence on our bodies through the food that we're eating. Our land and waters are living through indirect violence with just like everyday pollutants and top soil being removed and industrialization. And so I think I'm just very cognizant of the kind of everyday art ways, life ways, ways of being that I think that are important to be aware of and both practice as resistance against the forces that are trying to strip away our livelihood every day. Cheryl: We just heard from Hai of Asian refugees United who shared about how food ways function as an embodied form of cultural work that is rooted in memory and also survival and healing. Hai talked about food as a practice and art that is lived in the body and is also shaped by displacement and colonization and capitalism and imperialism. I shared that through their journey with QTV at Cafe and Asian Refugees United. High was able to reflect on reclaiming traditional food ways as a way to restore health and wholeness and relationship to our bodies and to our families, to our communities, and to the earth. High. Also, traced out illness and imbalance as deeply connected to political systems that have disrupted ancestral knowledge and instead introduced extractive food systems and normalized everyday forms of soft violence through what we consume and the impact it has on our land. And I think the most important thing I got from our conversation was that high reminded us that nourishing ourselves can be both an act of care, an art form, and an act of resistance. And what we call art is often what people have always done to survive and thrive Food. For them is a practice of memory, and it's also a refusal of erasure and also a very radical vision of food sovereignty and healing and collective life outside of colonial violence and harm. As we close out tonight's episode, I want to return to the question that has guided us from the beginning, which is, what is the role of the artist in social movements? What we've heard tonight from Tony Cade Bambara call to make revolution irresistible to lavender Phoenix's cultural organizing here, internationally to Hai, reflections on food ways, and nourishing ourselves as resistance. It is Really clear to me. Art is not separate from struggle. It is how people make sense of systems of violence and carry memory and also practice healing and reimagining new worlds in the middle of ongoing violence. Cultural work helps our movements. Endure and gives us language when words fail, or ritual when grief is heavy, and practices that connect us, that reconnect us to our bodies and our histories and to each other. So whether that's through zines, or songs or murals, newspapers, or shared meals, art is a way of liberation again and again. I wanna thank all of our speakers today, Jenica, Angel. From Lavender Phoenix. Hi, from QTV Cafe, Asian Refugees United, And I also wanna thank you, our listeners for staying with us. You've been listening to Apex Express on KPFA. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and keep imagining the world that we're trying to build. That's important stuff. Cheryl Truong (she/they): Apex express is produced by Miko Lee, Paige Chung, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar. Shekar, Anuj Vaidya, Kiki Rivera, Swati Rayasam, Nate Tan, Hien Nguyen, Nikki Chan, and Cheryl Truong Cheryl Truong: Tonight's show was produced by me, cheryl. Thanks to the team at KPFA for all of their support. And thank you for listening! The post APEX Express – January 1, 2026 – The Role of the Artist in Social Movements appeared first on KPFA.
Shift Key is off for the holidays, but we hope you'll enjoy this classic episode.Rooftop solar is four times more expensive in America than it is in other countries. It's also good for the climate. Should we even care about its high cost?Yes, says Severin Borenstein, an economist and the director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business. In a 2024 blog post, he argued that the high cost of rooftop solar will shift nearly $4 billion onto the bills of low- and middle-income Californians who don't have rooftop solar. Similar forces could soon spread the cost-shift problem across the country.On this week's episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Borenstein about who pays for rooftop solar, why power bills are going up everywhere, and about whether the government should take over electric utilities. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.Mentioned:Shift Key's rooftop solar series, featuring Mary Powell, Severin Borenstein, and Heatmap's own Emily PontecorvoJesse's distributed energy research at MITAustralia's Solar Choice Price IndexMore on Texas' Griddy debacleLeah Stokes et al. on utilities' climate record--This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …Heatmap Pro brings all of our research, reporting, and insights down to the local level. The software platform tracks all local opposition to clean energy and data centers, forecasts community sentiment, and guides data-driven engagement campaigns. Book a demo today to see the premier intelligence platform for project permitting and community engagement.Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
From building LMArena in a Berkeley basement to raising $100M and becoming the de facto leaderboard for frontier AI, Anastasios Angelopoulos returns to Latent Space to recap 2025 in one of the most influential platforms in AI—trusted by millions of users, every major lab, and the entire industry to answer one question: which model is actually best for real-world use cases? We caught up with Anastasios live at NeurIPS 2025 to dig into the origin story (spoiler: it started as an academic project incubated by Anjney Midha at a16z, who formed an entity and gave grants before they even committed to starting a company), why they decided to spin out instead of staying academic or nonprofit (the only way to scale was to build a company), how they're spending that $100M (inference costs, React migration off Gradio, and hiring world-class talent across ML, product, and go-to-market), the leaderboard delusion controversy and why their response demolished the paper's claims (factual errors, misrepresentation of open vs. closed source sampling, and ignoring the transparency of preview testing that the community loves), why platform integrity comes first (the public leaderboard is a charity, not a pay-to-play system—models can't pay to get on, can't pay to get off, and scores reflect millions of real votes), how they're expanding into occupational verticals (medicine, legal, finance, creative marketing) and multimodal arenas (video coming soon), why consumer retention is earned every single day (sign-in and persistent history were the unlock, but users are fickle and can leave at any moment), the Gemini Nano Banana moment that changed Google's market share overnight (and why multimodal models are becoming economically critical for marketing, design, and AI-for-science), how they're thinking about agents and harnesses (Code Arena evaluates models, but maybe it should evaluate full agents like Devin), and his vision for Arena as the central evaluation platform that provides the North Star for the industry—constantly fresh, immune to overfitting, and grounded in millions of real-world conversations from real users. We discuss: The $100M raise: use of funds is primarily inference costs (funding free usage for tens of millions of monthly conversations), React migration off Gradio (custom loading icons, better developer hiring, more flexibility), and hiring world-class talent The scale: 250M+ conversations on the platform, tens of millions per month, 25% of users do software for a living, and half of users are now logged in The leaderboard illusion controversy: Cohere researchers claimed undisclosed private testing created inequities, but Arena's response demolished the paper's factual errors (misrepresented open vs. closed source sampling, ignored transparency of preview testing that the community loves) Why preview testing is loved by the community: secret codenames (Gemini Nano Banana, named after PM Naina's nickname), early access to unreleased models, and the thrill of being first to vote on frontier capabilities The Nano Banana moment: changed Google's market share overnight, billions of dollars in stock movement, and validated that multimodal models (image generation, video) are economically critical for marketing, design, and AI-for-science New categories: occupational and expert arenas (medicine, legal, finance, creative marketing), Code Arena, and video arena coming soon Consumer retention: sign-in and persistent history were the unlock, but users are fickle and earned every single day—"every user is earned, they can leave at any moment" — Anastasios Angelopoulos Arena: https://lmarena.ai X: https://x.com/arena Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Anastasios from Arena and the LM Arena Journey 00:01:36 The Anjney Midha Incubation: From Berkeley Basement to Startup 00:02:47 The Decision to Start a Company: Scaling Beyond Academia 00:03:38 The $100M Raise: Use of Funds and Platform Economics 00:05:10 Arena's User Base: 5M+ Users and Diverse Demographics 00:06:02 The Competitive Landscape: Artificial Analysis, AI.xyz, and Arena's Differentiation 00:08:12 Educational Value and Learning from the Community 00:08:41 Technical Migration: From Gradio to React and Platform Evolution 00:10:18 Leaderboard Delusion Paper: Addressing Critiques and Maintaining Integrity 00:12:29 Nano Banana Moment: How Preview Models Create Market Impact 00:13:41 Multimodal AI and Image Generation: From Skepticism to Economic Value 00:15:37 Core Principles: Platform Integrity and the Public Leaderboard as Charity 00:18:29 Future Roadmap: Expert Categories, Multimodal, Video, and Occupational Verticals 00:19:10 API Strategy and Focus: Doing One Thing Well 00:19:51 Community Management and Retention: Sign-In, History, and Daily Value 00:22:21 Partnerships and Agent Evaluation: From Devon to Full-Featured Harnesses 00:21:49 Hiring and Building a High-Performance Team
Media heiress Patricia Hearst moves to Berkeley, intent on building a new life. In Oakland, a group of political radicals plot a deadly attack.Be the first to know about Wondery's newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterListen to American Scandal on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season. Unlock exclusive early access by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today by visiting wondery.com/links/american-scandal/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
2025 brought in some studies that left me with some hope about the future, and I wanted to share that with you. You can read the ones I missed here at Berkeley's Greater Good Magazine Website. SUPPORT JULIE (and the show!)DONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund AND THE Sudan Relief FundGET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM AND YOUTUBESUBSCRIBE FOR BONUS CONTENT ON PATREON.The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. ISupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Scott A. Mitchell is the Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs and holds the Yoshitaka Tamai Professorial Chair at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley. He teaches and writes about Buddhism in the West, Pure Land Buddhism, and Buddhist modernism. As of 2010, there were approximately 3-4 million Buddhists in the United States, and that figure is expected to grow significantly. Beyond the numbers, the influence of Buddhism can be felt throughout the culture, with many more people practicing meditation, for example, than claiming Buddhist identity. A century ago, this would have been unthinkable. So how did Buddhism come to claim such a significant place in the American cultural landscape? The Making of American Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2023) offers an answer, showing how in the years on either side of World War II second-generation Japanese American Buddhists laid claim to an American identity inclusive of their religious identity. In the process they-and their allies-created a place for Buddhism in America. These sons and daughters of Japanese immigrants-known as “Nisei,” Japanese for “second-generation”-clustered around the Berkeley Bussei, a magazine published from 1939 to 1960. In the pages of the Bussei and elsewhere, these Nisei Buddhists argued that Buddhism was both what made them good Americans and what they had to contribute to America-a rational and scientific religion of peace. The Making of American Buddhism also details the behind-the-scenes labor that made Buddhist modernism possible. The Bussei was one among many projects that were embedded within Japanese American Buddhist communities and connected to national and transnational networks that shaped and allowed for the spread of modernist Buddhist ideas. In creating communities, publishing magazines, and hosting scholarly conventions and translation projects, Nisei Buddhists built the religious infrastructure that allowed the later Buddhist modernists, Beat poets, and white converts who are often credited with popularizing Buddhism to flourish. Nisei activists didn't invent American Buddhism, but they made it possible. Dr. Victoria Montrose is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Furman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
From Berkeley robotics and OpenAI's 2017 Dota-era internship to shipping RL breakthroughs on GPT-4o, o1, and o3, and now leading model development at Cursor, Ashvin Nair has done it all. We caught up with Ashvin at NeurIPS 2025 to dig into the inside story of OpenAI's reasoning team (spoiler: it went from a dozen people to 300+), why IOI Gold felt reachable in 2022 but somehow didn't change the world when o1 actually achieved it, how RL doesn't generalize beyond the training distribution (and why that means you need to bring economically useful tasks into distribution by co-designing products and models), the deeper lessons from the RL research era (2017–2022) and why most of it didn't pan out because the community overfitted to benchmarks, how Cursor is uniquely positioned to do continual learning at scale with policy updates every two hours and product-model co-design that keeps engineers in the loop instead of context-switching into ADHD hell, and his bet that the next paradigm shift is continual learning with infinite memory—where models experience something once (a bug, a mistake, a user pattern) and never forget it, storing millions of deployment tokens in weights without overloading capacity. We discuss: Ashvin's path: Berkeley robotics PhD → OpenAI 2017 intern (Dota era) → o1/o3 reasoning team → Cursor ML lead in three months Why robotics people are the most grounded at NeurIPS (they work with the real world) and simulation people are the most unhinged (Lex Fridman's take) The IOI Gold paradox: "If you told me we'd achieve IOI Gold in 2022, I'd assume we could all go on vacation—AI solved, no point working anymore. But life is still the same." The RL research era (2017–2022) and why most of it didn't pan out: overfitting to benchmarks, too many implicit knobs to tune, and the community rewarding complex ideas over simple ones that generalize Inside the o1 origin story: a dozen people, conviction from Ilya and Jakob Pachocki that RL would work, small-scale prototypes producing "surprisingly accurate reasoning traces" on math, and first-principles belief that scaled The reasoning team grew from ~12 to 300+ people as o1 became a product and safety, tooling, and deployment scaled up Why Cursor is uniquely positioned for continual learning: policy updates every two hours (online RL on tab), product and ML sitting next to each other, and the entire software engineering workflow (code, logs, debugging, DataDog) living in the product Composer as the start of product-model co-design: smart enough to use, fast enough to stay in the loop, and built by a 20–25 person ML team with high-taste co-founders who code daily The next paradigm shift: continual learning with infinite memory—models that experience something once (a bug, a user mistake) and store it in weights forever, learning from millions of deployment tokens without overloading capacity (trillions of pretraining tokens = plenty of room) Why off-policy RL is unstable (Ashvin's favorite interview question) and why Cursor does two-day work trials instead of whiteboard interviews The vision: automate software engineering as a process (not just answering prompts), co-design products so the entire workflow (write code, check logs, debug, iterate) is in-distribution for RL, and make models that never make the same mistake twice — Ashvin Nair Cursor: https://cursor.com X: https://x.com/ashvinnair_ Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: From Robotics to Cursor via OpenAI 00:01:58 The Robotics to LLM Agent Transition: Why Code Won 00:09:11 RL Research Winter and Academic Overfitting 00:11:45 The Scaling Era and Moving Goalposts: IOI Gold Doesn't Mean AGI 00:21:30 OpenAI's Reasoning Journey: From Codex to O1 00:20:03 The Blip: Thanksgiving 2023 and OpenAI Governance 00:22:39 RL for Reasoning: The O-Series Conviction and Scaling 00:25:47 O1 to O3: Smooth Internal Progress vs External Hype Cycles 00:33:07 Why Cursor: Co-Designing Products and Models for Real Work 00:34:14 Composer and the Future: Online Learning Every Two Hours 00:35:15 Continual Learning: The Missing Paradigm Shift 00:44:00 Hiring at Cursor and Why Off-Policy RL is Unstable
Scott A. Mitchell is the Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs and holds the Yoshitaka Tamai Professorial Chair at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley. He teaches and writes about Buddhism in the West, Pure Land Buddhism, and Buddhist modernism. As of 2010, there were approximately 3-4 million Buddhists in the United States, and that figure is expected to grow significantly. Beyond the numbers, the influence of Buddhism can be felt throughout the culture, with many more people practicing meditation, for example, than claiming Buddhist identity. A century ago, this would have been unthinkable. So how did Buddhism come to claim such a significant place in the American cultural landscape? The Making of American Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2023) offers an answer, showing how in the years on either side of World War II second-generation Japanese American Buddhists laid claim to an American identity inclusive of their religious identity. In the process they-and their allies-created a place for Buddhism in America. These sons and daughters of Japanese immigrants-known as “Nisei,” Japanese for “second-generation”-clustered around the Berkeley Bussei, a magazine published from 1939 to 1960. In the pages of the Bussei and elsewhere, these Nisei Buddhists argued that Buddhism was both what made them good Americans and what they had to contribute to America-a rational and scientific religion of peace. The Making of American Buddhism also details the behind-the-scenes labor that made Buddhist modernism possible. The Bussei was one among many projects that were embedded within Japanese American Buddhist communities and connected to national and transnational networks that shaped and allowed for the spread of modernist Buddhist ideas. In creating communities, publishing magazines, and hosting scholarly conventions and translation projects, Nisei Buddhists built the religious infrastructure that allowed the later Buddhist modernists, Beat poets, and white converts who are often credited with popularizing Buddhism to flourish. Nisei activists didn't invent American Buddhism, but they made it possible. Dr. Victoria Montrose is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Furman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies
Rosa *Saturday 845 AM Berkeley Meeting* 12.27.25 by Overeaters Anonymous East Bay Unity Intergroup