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Hegseth calls the press treasonous. From Fordham to Imus to NewsNation. Preparation beats panic. And a love letter to NYC. Pete Hegseth just labeled the press treasonous. The White House calls reporters the enemy of the state. And somewhere between the hot takes and the hate mail, working journalists still have to show up every day and tell Americans the truth. On this Friday Football edition, Paul sits down with News Nation anchor Connell McShane — one of the most fair, prepared, and genuinely decent people in cable news — to pull back the curtain on how a centrist newsroom actually operates in Trump's America. McShane breaks down his daily discipline, the independent media bias ratings he uses as a north star, and why he believes a free press is both a privilege and a right. From there the conversation widens into something bigger: how to raise kids, coach a football team, and keep your head on straight when the country feels like it's coming apart. Paul and Connell swap stories on Fordham, John Sterling, Mike Breen, Fraunces Tavern, and the ghosts of George Washington. They close with a full Football Friday slate — Bama-Mississippi State, Ohio State-Iowa, Bills-Pats, and the 12U New York City Lions rolling the wishbone into Queens. It's the no-BS, veteran-led conversation independent Americans need heading into the weekend. -WATCH full video of this episode here. -Millions of American veterans are being locked out of primary elections in the country they served. See what we're doing to change that. -Visit Kalshi and trade on anything. Use code INDEPENDENT to get $25 when you trade $25. -Head to cozyearth.com and use the code AMERICANS for an exclusive 20% off. -Join Noble Mobile today and get a $100 bonus when you use code PAUL and stay a member for 2 months! -Join IVA and help us get independent veterans elected to office. -Learn more about Paul's work to elect a new generation of independent leaders with Independent Veterans of America. -Learn more about American Veterans for Ukraine here. -Remember Independent is an Attitude. -Learn more about The Headstrong Project for Veterans, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and Department of Veterans Affairs resources in your area. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness. It's a show of strength. If you or a loved one are in immediate crisis, dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255. Connect with Independent Americans: Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all podcast platforms Read more at Substack Support ad-free episodes at Patreon Connect: Instagram • X/Twitter • BlueSky • Facebook Follow on social: @PaulRieckhoff on X, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky -Join the movement. Hook into our exclusive Patreon community of Independent Americans. Get extra content, connect with guests, meet other Independent Americans, attend events, get merch discounts, and support this show that speaks truth to power. -And get cool IA and Righteous hats, t-shirts and other merch now in time for the new year. Independent Americans is powered by veteran-owned and led Righteous Media. And now part of the BLEAV network! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Dr. Angelica McGough, founder of Essential Infusions Plus, a functional and regenerative medicine practice helping patients across 36 states improve their health span and move from simply getting by to feeling truly optimized.Through personalized Longevity Profiles, targeted diagnostics, hormone and peptide therapies, and regenerative treatments, Angelica helps people understand their biology and take a proactive approach to their long-term health.Now, Angelica's journey from missionary work in Mexico to more than 20 years in nursing demonstrates how a calling to serve can evolve into a transformative model of compassionate, evidence-based care.And while navigating business growth, motherhood, grief, perimenopause, and the challenge of creating stronger boundaries, she is showing other business owners why protecting their health is essential to sustaining both their success and the lives they are buildingHere's where to find more:https://linktr.ee/essentialinfusionsplus?https://www.youtube.com/@EssentialInfusionsPlus/podcasts https://open.spotify.com/show/033sGaPwppBEjP7AilTI1y https://www.facebook.com/share/18ptYAUpjA/ Essentialinfusionsplus.com ________________________________________________Welcome to The Unforget Yourself Show where we use the power of woo and the proof of science to help you identify your blind spots, and get over your own bullshit so that you can do the fucking thing you ACTUALLY want to do!We're Mark and Katie, the founders of Unforget Yourself and the creators of the Unforget Yourself System and on this podcast, we're here to share REAL conversations about what goes on inside the heart and minds of those brave and crazy enough to start their own business. From the accidental entrepreneur to the laser-focused CEO, we find out how they got to where they are today, not by hearing the go-to story of their success, but talking about how we all have our own BS to deal with and it's through facing ourselves that we find a way to do the fucking thing.Along the way, we hope to show you that YOU are the most important asset in your business (and your life - duh!). Being a business owner is tough! With vulnerability and humor, we get to the real story behind their success and show you that you're not alone._____________________Find all our links to all the things like the socials, how to work with us and how to apply to be on the podcast here:https://linktr.ee/unforgetyourself
KJ Blattenbauer, founder of Hearsay PR, a public relations and visibility consultancy that helps entrepreneurs, experts, authors, and creative founders become the name people remember, recommend, and refer.Through PR strategy, media relations, messaging, speaker platform development, and authority-building campaigns, KJ helps clients move from being the best-kept secret in their space to becoming recognised authorities.Now, KJ's nearly three-decade journey of building a nationally recognised PR firm demonstrates how visibility, positioning, and reinvention can shape both a business and the person behind it.And while stepping into the next chapter of her own brand, she's helping founders close the recognition gap and become known for the work they truly want to be known for.Here's where to find more:www.hearsaypr.com www.instagram.com/kjblattenbauer www.instagram.com/hearsaypr www.linkedin.com/in/kjblattenbauer________________________________________________Welcome to The Unforget Yourself Show where we use the power of woo and the proof of science to help you identify your blind spots, and get over your own bullshit so that you can do the fucking thing you ACTUALLY want to do!We're Mark and Katie, the founders of Unforget Yourself and the creators of the Unforget Yourself System and on this podcast, we're here to share REAL conversations about what goes on inside the heart and minds of those brave and crazy enough to start their own business. From the accidental entrepreneur to the laser-focused CEO, we find out how they got to where they are today, not by hearing the go-to story of their success, but talking about how we all have our own BS to deal with and it's through facing ourselves that we find a way to do the fucking thing.Along the way, we hope to show you that YOU are the most important asset in your business (and your life - duh!). Being a business owner is tough! With vulnerability and humor, we get to the real story behind their success and show you that you're not alone._____________________Find all our links to all the things like the socials, how to work with us and how to apply to be on the podcast here:https://linktr.ee/unforgetyourself
Jason Smith and Mike Harmon debated which team they would not want to play right now between the Yankees and the Padres. Listen to the greatest playoff Pete Crow-Armstrong stat. The NFL has apologized to the Rams for the BS pass interference call. And Bryce Harper had the greatest day of his MLB career!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
► Want to work with Randy directly: https://randygage.com/breakthroughu/ ► Prefer audio? Get the podcast https://randygage.com/podcast Randy has had a front-row seat to a lot of businesses that didn't make it, and he never once found laziness on the autopsy table. These were people working eighty-hour weeks, doing all the right things. They just did them in the wrong order.There's a correct sequence for taking a business or a new offer to market. Six decisions, and the order isn't a suggestion — get decision three wrong and your pricing in decision four is guaranteed to be wrong too. Randy calls this the Go-to-Market Order of Operations, and in this episode he walks you through all six.What you'll learn:- Why "who's your customer?" is the wrong first question- The one thing that has to be true before you ever set a price- Why your offer isn't converting (and it's not the copy)- The step everybody wants to start with — and why starting there burns cash- How to build a business the market comes to, instead of one you have to chase customers forLinks Randy mentioned here:► Wealth without Apology: https://a.co/d/04ij5OZi► Radical Rebirth: https://a.co/d/05QwAJ5j► Public Speaking and Presentations Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFLmOIg49mbM&si=ZrNEBlLSx9haeRKnWho is This Guy?Randy isn't some influencer who listened to a couple podcasts and started posting hot takes. He's the streetwise founder of Prosperity Factory, Inc., who has been building and scaling businesses for more than 40 years. Randy has authored 16 bestselling books, translated into 25+languages, including his latest—Wealth Without Apology—and spoken to more than 2 million people across 50 countries. He's been inducted into both the Speaker Hall of Fame and Direct Selling Hall of Fame.But none of that is why people follow him. They follow him because he calls BS…and says what most people are too afraid to admit. When he's not rocking the stage or building his next project, you'll probably find him coaching a softball team somewhere.Connect with Randy:X: x.com/Randy_Gage Instagram: instagram.com/randy_gageFacebook: facebook.com/randygage
his time around, Vinnie, Heisey, and Albert are putting three bottles to the test without knowing what's in the glass: Henry McKenna 10 Year Bottled-in-Bond Single Barrel, Jack Daniel's Single Barrel, and Knob Creek 12 Year.They taste through all three, talk about what they're getting on the nose and palate, and try to figure out which bourbon is which. There's plenty of caramel, vanilla, oak, nuttiness, and sweetness along the way — along with some questionable guesses and plenty of BS.They also get into the differences between single barrel and Bottled-in-Bond, how age and proof show up in the glass, and whether paying more actually gets you a better pour.Grab a pour and taste along with them!
Mystery Dumpling Unbox ASMR launched in mid-August, spiked to a million downloads a day, is still pulling 300K downloads a day and 1.1M DAU, shows $2 of IAP revenue in the last 30 days.Every one of those 12 million monthly downloads comes from a viral toy trend: RMS "Real Magical Stuff" mystery dumplings, unboxing videos on TikTok and YouTube doing 47M, 70M and 82M views each, and a developer that named the app so precisely ("mystery dumpling" + "unbox") that it sits as the first Google result when a kid searches for the toy. The monetization is textbook ultra-casual pumping: interstitials triggered by action count starting at 15 and dropping to two or three, a permanent MREC on a 10-second refresh sitting on top of the "claim free legendary pack"Felix runs the math: mostly Indonesia and Tier 2/3 traffic, only 33K DAU in the US, so somewhere between $18K and $29K a day in ad revenue, call it $1M a month and roughly $900K banked since launch.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: 70 million views on a dumpling unboxing video01:32 – What Mystery Dumpling Unbox ASMR is and why $2 of IAP is the wrong way to look at it02:29 – Gameplay walkthrough: interstitials on action count, a permanent MREC, Google billboards and four ads per screen11:07 – The toy behind it: RMS mystery dumplings, Amazon, €50 diamond editions and a safety recall12:50 – The numbers: 1M downloads/day spike, 300K/day now, 1.1M DAU, 12M downloads a month, all Tier 2/315:23 – Felix's Panini FIFA theory and the $18–29K/day ad revenue estimate20:32 – Zero paid UA: TikTok, YouTube, Google search #1 and how ASO did all the work29:07 – Fake 4.7-star reviews, the ultra-casual category and the Miniclip cloneThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricMatej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiarPlease share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Welcome to Wholesale Hotline Podcast (Wholesaling Inc Edition), where Brent brings unmatched energy and no-BS strategies straight from his own real-world wholesaling business to help you crush it in yours.Join the #1 community for wholesalers: www.wholesalinglaunch.com Show notes -- in this episode we'll cover:Master cold calling, lead generation, and sales scripts to consistently close deals.You'll learn the latest on the most cutting-edge techniques—like PPC, texting, and automated follow-up systems.Learn how to build confidence, overcome objections, and dominate your local market.Brent shows how talking to people is the fastest, most direct path to wholesale success.Real-life case studies, role plays, and mindset shifts that turn hustle into high income.Please give us a rating and let us know how we are doing!➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖☎️ Welcome to Wholesale Hotline & TTP Breakout
Addiction Unlimited Podcast | Alcoholism | Life Coach | Living Sober | 12 Steps
How do you know if you actually have a drinking problem? You make rules about when you’ll drink. You negotiate how many you’re going to have. You promise yourself tonight will be different. You replay last night trying to figure out exactly what happened. You take breaks, make new rules, Google questions, take quizzes, compare yourself to other people—and somehow alcohol keeps requiring more and more of your attention. At some point, that’s worth looking at. In this episode of Addiction Unlimited, we’re getting away from arbitrary drinking counts and labels and looking at something far more revealing: your actual relationship with alcohol. In this episode, we’re getting away from labels and arbitrary drinking counts and looking at something far more useful: your actual relationship with alcohol. Is it really a drinking problem? The surprisingly revealing question that has nothing to do with how much or how often you drink Why taking 30 days off alcohol may not prove what you think it proves The difference between having a plan for the night and actually being in control of what happens When researching your drinking stops giving you answers—and starts becoming part of the answer And after all the research, analyzing and comparing—you already have enough information—you just have to be willing to do something with it. Because sometimes the amount of work you’re doing to prove alcohol isn’t a problem tells you more than another quiz ever will. You don’t have to decide what to call yourself today. You don’t need the perfect label or one more piece of evidence. You can simply acknowledge that your relationship with alcohol isn’t working anymore—and let that be enough truth to take the next step. Links mentioned in this episode: Book A Call Here: addictionunlimited.com/call Sober Society Membership: addictionunlimited.com/membership Related Episode: Why Am I An Alcoholic – the Bio-Psycho-Social Truth About Addiction Follow me on Instagram: @addictionunlimited Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/addictionunlimited Prefer to read instead of listen? Here's the full transcript of this episode. 455 Transcript Angela (00:07.374) Hello, my friend. Welcome back to the Addiction Unlimited podcast. I’m your coach, Angela Pugh. How do I know if I actually have a drinking problem? This is probably one of the most common questions people ask themselves when they start getting uncomfortable with their drinking. Am I really an alcoholic? Do I actually have a problem? Or am I just drinking a little too much right now? Maybe I just need to cut back. Maybe I need to take a break.Maybe I should stop drinking during the week and only drink on weekends. We will create an entire strategic plan around drinking before we’ll sit down and ask ourselves the most obvious question. What the hell is going on with me and alcohol? And here’s the first thing I want you to understand. I am not going to give you a diagnostic quiz today. I’m not interested in do you drink X number of drinks on X number of nights? Have you had X number of consequences? Check seven boxes and congratulations, here’s your label. That’s not how I look at this. And I never tell people. Angela (01:52.102) And I never tell people they’re alcoholics. First of all, way too many people can’t handle that word. We have some very delicate sensitivities these days. And I’m a little different about that stuff. I am a no BS human. Tell me the truth so I can figure out the solution. I don’t need you to beat around the bush or hold my hand or find the softest, prettiest language possible. If I’m trying to fix a major problem in my life, I just let’s get on with it. I don’t particularly care what we call it. I care about how I’m fucking up and what I need to do to stop fucking up. I also understand that not everybody feels that way. So when somebody says to me, I don’t know if I’m an alcoholic, I think maybe I just drink too much sometimes. The first thing I notice is that they’re asking the question. at all because that tells me something has shifted. Angela (03:02.24) You are questioning your connection with alcohol because somewhere along the way you felt that relationship start to change. You probably can’t even pinpoint exactly when it happened. You just know you’re thinking about alcohol more than you used to. You’re relying on it in ways you didn’t before. You’re planning around it, recovering from it, wondering about it, worrying about it. And there’s this little voice in the back of your head saying. Something about this doesn’t feel right anymore. And that’s usually when we start asking the question. Then here’s what happens next. Almost immediately after someone tells me they’re wondering if they have a drinking problem, they start giving me all the reasons they don’t. I don’t drink every day. I’ve never had a DUI, I don’t drink in the morning, I have a good job, my kids are taken care of, I don’t hide bottles, I can go days without drinking. And I’m just listening. Because here’s the thing: if an idea is completely preposterous to you. You don’t have to build a defense against it. If somebody said to me, Angela, I think you might secretly be a six foot four professional basketball player. I’m not gonna spend the next three hours Googling the average height of WNBA players and gathering evidence to prove I’m not, right? I’m gonna say that’s absurd. And then I’m gonna move on with my life. When something happens, Clearly doesn’t apply to us. We don’t usually have to convince ourselves that it doesn’t apply. So when you’ve built an entire defense around why you’re definitely not an alcoholic, I’m interested in why you need the defense in the first place. And I think part of the reason people fight this so hard is because they’re not only fighting a conclusion about alcohol. Angela (05:07.69) They’re fighting what they believe that conclusion says about them. To a lot of people, the word alcoholic means, I’m not even really sure, weak, I guess, broken, irresponsible, a bad parent, a bad partner, a failure, somebody who can’t get their shit together. So sometimes when you’re fighting the possibility that you’re an alcoholic, you’re not even protecting alcohol. You’re protecting your identity. You’re saying I’m successful, I’m responsible, I’m a good person, I take care of my family. I’m not that. And somewhere along the way, you’ve decided that being a person with an alcohol problem is incompatible with all those other things. I don’t see it that way at all. I wear the label alcoholic as a badge of honor. Angela (06:06.112) I wear the label alcoholic as a badge of honor. I have a tremendous amount of pride in being an alcoholic because to me, the word represents something I survived, confronted, and overcame. I’ve dealt with something that most people aren’t equipped to handle, recognize, and least of all have the balls to actually do something about it. And I’ve always been a little different in that way. Even when I was drinking, I knew I was an alcoholic. There was nothing normal about how I drank. But I lived in Los Angeles for many, many years. There were sober people everywhere, successful people, powerful people, celebrities. I had plenty of evidence around me that being sober didn’t mean your life was over, and being an alcoholic didn’t mean you were a loser, right? So I wore my alcoholism as a badge of honor. Angela (07:12.556) What embarrassed me wasn’t that I was an alcoholic. What embarrassed me was that I couldn’t handle my life. I was high functioning too. I could work, I made money, I could show up and perform and take care of all the things. But emotionally, I wasn’t growing. I couldn’t cope with my own feelings. I wasn’t advancing in life. Like I was just stuck. And drinking was the thing I used. So I didn’t have to deal with any of it. That’s why I’m not particularly interested in convincing anyone to use the word alcoholic. I love the label. You don’t have to. The label isn’t the fucking point, right? The point is what is actually happening in your life, and are you willing to tell yourself the truth about it? Because I think one of the reasons people stay. Angela (08:20.962) Because one of the reasons people stay confused about this for so long is that we’re looking in the wrong place. We’re obsessed with quantity. How many drinks do I have? How many nights a week do I drink? How many drinks does an alcoholic have? Can an alcoholic go days without drinking? Can an alcoholic only drink on weekends? Can an alcoholic do dry January? And those questions can give you information for sure. But they don’t tell me nearly as much as people think they do. I want to know about your relationship with alcohol. How much mental real estate is it taking up? How much of your time is spent thinking about drinking, planning drinking, actually drinking, or recovering from drinking? Because I had three stages of life. I was thinking about it, doing it, or recovering from it. There wasn’t much room for anything else. And that’s what I want you to look at in your own life, because maybe you don’t drink every day, but you’re thinking about it every day. Maybe you’re making rules about when you can drink, breaking the rules, creating new rules, counting drinks, checking how much wine is left before people come over, wondering whether you need another bottle just in case. Angela (09:40.748) Maybe you wake up the next morning trying to reconstruct the night before. Like, how many did I have? Was it five or was it six? Did anybody notice? Was I too loud? Did I say anything stupid? And then by afternoon, you’re already negotiating with yourself about tonight. I’m not drinking tonight. Except you’re going out. So maybe you’ll have two. You’ll be good tonight. You’ll drink water between drinks, you’ll leave early. And now you’re conducting a forensic investigation into Friday night while simultaneously negotiating the terms of Saturday night. Look at how much work that takes. Angela (10:23.052) Because all the things sneaking, minimizing, planning, counting, defending, negotiating, recovering, making rules and renegotiating new rules, those are not isolated behaviors. They’re an ecosystem. Alcohol has become important enough in your life that you’re having to manage your relationship with it. That’s what I want you to look at. Not whether somebody on the internet says six drinks makes you an alcoholic and five doesn’t. Look at how much of your life revolves around managing alcohol. And if you want an interesting comparison, watch somebody who genuinely has an uncomplicated relationship with alcohol. These fucking weirdos don’t think about it at all. They’re not obsessing about whether or not they’re gonna drink tonight. They’re not freaking out about dinner with friends because they don’t know what they’re gonna drink. They’re not looking at the restaurant menu three days in advance to make sure they have mocktails. They simply don’t care. What’s in their glass? If somebody offers them a drink and they don’t want one, they say, no thanks, and that’s it. No internal crisis, no elaborate explanation, no concern about whether everybody is gonna think they’re weird. They don’t want to drink, so they don’t have one. Angela (11:55.894) And here’s another thing these weirdos do. They don’t finish their drinks. Like, what the fuck is that? They sip. They leave half of it sitting on the table. They forget about it. Meanwhile, we’re watching the level in the glass and calculating whether the server’s going to be back here fast enough because we’re going to need another one. They’re not wondering whether there’s going to be alcohol at the party or the neighborhood barbecue or the camping trip. They go camping to actually camp and enjoy their friends and family, not as an excuse to sit and drink in a different location. Alcohol has no gravitational pull for them. It doesn’t require management because it simply isn’t that important. Angela (12:56.854) And that is a much more interesting thing for you to examine than whether or not you drank three nights or four this week. Angela (13:07.98) And there’s another piece of this that I think is even more important, and that’s control. Because people love to tell me they can go days or weeks without alcohol and not even really think about it. Okay, a lot of us can stop for periods of time. We are fairly defiant people by nature. And especially if somebody tells us we can’t do something, boy, nothing will make me act like a toddler. faster than feeling like somebody’s telling me what to do. So if your spouse gives you a little shit about how much you drink, it doesn’t surprise me at all that you would go, okay, bitch, watch this, and quit for months, even. Because we are defiant and rebellious and we’re control freaks. So if you tell me in some way that you’re paying attention to my drinking, which means you’re trying to control how I’m drinking, of course I’m gonna do something major to prove you wrong. Honestly. A decent amount of my resolve in sobriety came from spite because it was me against alcohol and I wasn’t fucking losing. Period. Angela (14:24.586) One of the realizations I had in my own rock bottom moment was that alcohol was controlling me. It was controlling my choices, my behavior, my chaos and consequences. And that pisses me off. I don’t like being told what to do by anyone. And as soon as I understood that alcohol was running the show, that fueled my fire in a huge way to stay sober because I am the boss of me, not alcohol. So, yes, you may absolutely be able to decide not to pick up the first drink for thirty days or sixty days or however many days, but that’s not the only kind of control. Angela (15:11.17) But that’s not the kind of control I’m interested in. I want you to think about Angela (15:21.868) I want you to think about the last few times you drank before you had the first drink. Maybe you told yourself how you wanted the night to go, right? We love to do that. I’m only gonna have a couple, I’m gonna leave by 10, I have a workout tomorrow. So I’m definitely not gonna get crazy tonight. And here’s what I want you to notice. How much confidence do you actually have in that plan? Not how badly you want it to happen, not whether you’ve successfully done it before. But when you put that first drink to your lips, do you know with certainty how the night’s gonna end? Or are you just crossing your fingers? Because those are two very different things. Are you having one drink? Or are you having a drink and hoping everything goes okay? Because hope is not control. Maybe tonight you have two and go home. Maybe tonight you have six. Maybe you’re home by 10, maybe it’s two in the morning. Maybe you remember everything, maybe there are fuzzy parts. Maybe you’re perfectly pleasant all night long. Maybe you get a little too loud and develop a little attitude with somebody you secretly don’t like. Maybe you get home, wash your makeup off, get everything ready for tomorrow, get to bed, and make your workout in the morning. Or maybe You wake up with a headache, cancel everything you planned, and spend half the day trying to piece together the night before while guilt and anxiety eat you alive. The question isn’t whether the worst case scenario happens every time. The question is whether you know which version you’re getting before you take that first drink. Angela (17:18.786) The question isn’t whether the worst case scenario happens every time. The question is whether you know which version you’re getting before you take that first drink. If you don’t know, that’s the part I want you to pay attention to. That’s the loss of control I’m talking about. And frequency doesn’t answer that question. But I only drink on weekends. Okay, but what happens when you drink on weekends? I only drink a couple times a month. Okay. What happens those couple times a month? You could drink once a year. And if every time you take that first drink, you have no idea whether you’re gonna have two or 12, whether you’re home at 10 or 2, whether you remember the whole night or wake up wondering what the fuck happened, that’s worth paying attention to. Not quantity, predictability. And while you’re looking at that. Stop using other people’s drinking to answer questions about yours. I hear this stuff all the time. My husband drinks way more than I do. My sister drinks every night. My friend gets way drunker than me. At least I’ve never blacked out. Okay. I was a raging alcoholic. I didn’t black out either. You can count on one hand the number of times I blacked out in 15 years of daily drinking. I didn’t drink alone. I didn’t drink in the morning. And it took me 14 years to get a DUI. If I had picked any one of those arbitrary behaviors as the offensive Angela (19:03.798) If I had picked any one of those arbitrary behaviors as the official benchmark for alcoholism, I could have built a very compelling case that I was doing just fine. And I wasn’t. How much or how often somebody else drinks has absolutely nothing to do with your relationship with alcohol. There are probably plenty of people around you who have drinking problems. It’s really none of your business. Your business is your drinking problem. My mom doesn’t drink at all. Oddly, that had no impact on how much I drank, right? So stop looking sideways and just look at yourself. Angela (20:04.856) So, how do you know if you actually have a drinking problem? If you’ve been asking this question repeatedly, you’ve probably done some research. You’ve Googled it, you’ve taken the quizzes, you’ve read the articles and listened to the podcasts, and you’ve looked up how many drinks qualify as alcoholism. You’ve compared yourself to people who drink more than you do. And here’s what I want you to notice about that process. What happens when you get an answer? You don’t like? Do you stop or do you keep searching? Because last week we talked about resistance. Angela (20:52.908) Because on last week’s episode, we talked about resistance and how when we don’t like the answer we’re getting, we just keep searching for a different answer. And this is what resistance can look like in real life. It doesn’t always look like somebody sitting on the couch saying, I refuse to deal with this. Sometimes resistance looks incredibly productive. You’re researching, you’re reading, you’re listening, you’re analyzing, you’re busy as hell, but you’re not moving. The searching looks like problem solving, but it’s really procrastination dressed up as problem solving. Because think about it, if somebody finally looked at you and said, with everything you’ve told me, If somebody finally looked at everything you’ve told them and said, nope, you’re fine. You absolutely do not have a drinking problem, would you believe them? I don’t think you would. Because somewhere underneath all the noise, you already know the truth. Even if you’re a master of denial, you know when something isn’t right. That’s why you’re Googling it in the first place. Angela (22:09.304) People who have an uncomplicated relationship with alcohol aren’t repeatedly searching, am I an alcoholic? Because alcohol doesn’t have enough presence in their lives for them to wonder whether it’s out of control. So when you’re sitting in a pile of evidence and continuing to search for more evidence, eventually we have to ask, what are you actually looking for? Angela (22:40.588) Because sometimes you’re actually stalling. Because knowing creates responsibility. So as long as you’re still quote unquote figuring it out, you can stay exactly where you are. You can keep drinking while telling yourself you’re researching. You can stay in the comfort zone. You can stay in denial. You can stay in avoidance. Angela (23:09.41) But once you finally say this isn’t working anymore, well, now you have a decision to make. And that’s why underneath the question, Am I an alcoholic? there’s another question. And that question is is this bad enough that I actually have to do something about it? Because if the answer is yes, it’s like, fuck, now there’s another thing you have to fix. And I understand that. You’re already exhausted. You’re working and parenting and running a household and trying to exercise and pay bills and managing relationships. You’re taking care of everybody. You already need an extra three hours in every day. And now the thing you’ve been using because you’re overwhelmed is apparently another fucking problem you have to solve. Of course, your brain wants to keep researching. Your brain is like, well, maybe. We should make absolutely certain first. Let’s take another quiz. But there’s also a problem with the belief that recovery is. Angela (24:30.484) Of course, your brain wants to keep researching. Your brain’s like, maybe we should just make absolutely certain first. Let’s take another quiz. But here’s another problem. There’s a real problem with the belief that recovery is going to require all this time and energy you don’t have. We’re pretending drinking doesn’t already require those things. We talk about recovery like it’s this enormous additional expense, another thing requiring time and money and energy and attention and inconvenience. But we’re making a huge error in that calculation. We’re treating drinking like it’s free. It’s not. Think about what you’re already spending to maintain your relationship with alcohol, not just money, although God knows we’re spending that. But think about your time. The evenings that disappear, the mornings you lose because you don’t feel good, the workouts you skip, the hours of anxiety replaying what you said. The emotional energy it takes to negotiate with yourself about whether or not you’re drinking tonight, or how much you’re gonna have, or whether you’ve been drinking too much, or whether you need to take a break, whether you have a problem, whether you need to quit. Think about how much of your life is already being consumed by this thing you’re telling yourself you don’t have time to address. You’re already paying. Angela (26:06.518) Recovery isn’t suddenly asking you to find resources you don’t have. It’s asking you to start redirecting resources you’re already spending. I had to be equally committed to my recovery as I was to my drinking. That means I did my recovery when I was tired because I drank when I was tired. I did my recovery when I had a bad day because I drank when I had a bad day. I drank when I didn’t feel good. I went to the liquor store or the bar when the weather was bad. So when it was time to recover, I couldn’t suddenly decide that being tired or having a bad day or the weather being shitty meant I couldn’t show up. Angela (26:53.814) If it’s snowing out and you don’t want to go to a meeting, ask yourself a simple question. Would the snow have stopped you from drinking? Would the snow or the rain or whatever have stopped you from going to the liquor store or the bar? No. Then apparently snow isn’t the barrier. We will tolerate an unbelievable amount of inconvenience for drinking. We’ll spend the money we don’t have. We’ll sacrifice tomorrow morning. We’ll be hungover. We’ll miss the workout. We’ll be impatient with our kids. We’ll lose an entire day. We’ll tolerate anxiety and guilt and embarrassment and making apologies. Then recovery asks us to be inconvenienced. And suddenly we’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not get crazy. I don’t have time for all that. But here’s what I need you to understand: doing nothing isn’t the free option. Angela (27:54.142) One path costs you time, money, energy, and comfort and takes you straight into a dead end. The other path costs you time, money, energy, and comfort and gives you a path to freedom. You’re gonna spend the resources either way. The question is, what are you buying with them? The dead end or freedom? So let’s go back to the question we started with because I don’t want you to get to the end of this episode and think I never actually answered it. How do I know if I actually have a drinking problem? I’m not gonna tell you it’s because you drink four nights a week instead of three. I’m not gonna give you a number of drinks or tell you which consequences officially qualify you. I’m gonna tell you to look at the relationship. First, how much mental real estate is alcohol taking up? How often are you thinking about it, planning it, negotiating with yourself about it, doing it, or recovering from it? If alcohol requires that much management, if you are constantly creating rules around it, worrying about it, thinking about whether there’s enough, promising yourself you’ll do something different next time, that’s a clue. Second, what happens to your control after the first drink? Not whether you can quit for a week or do dry January, but when you have that first drink, can you reliably predict what’s going to happen? Do you know you’re having two and going home at 10? Or are you hoping you’ll have two and go home at 10? Because hope is not control. Angela (29:39.064) Third, what are you doing to protect your drinking? Are you minimizing it, hiding it, sneaking it, defending it, comparing yourself to people who drink more, looking for all the reasons you can’t possibly have a problem because you’ve never had a DUI or you don’t drink in the morning or you’ve never blacked out? If you’re working that hard to prove If you’re working that hard to prove alcohol isn’t a problem, I want you to ask yourself why you need such a strong defense for it in the first place. And fourth, what is alcohol costing you? Not just catastrophes. I don’t care whether you’ve lost your house, your marriage, or your job. What is it costing you today? Your mornings, your energy, your workouts, your patience, your presence in your family, your confidence in yourself, your emotional growth, hours of your life spent recovering, days spent feeling anxious and guilty about the things you said or did. You don’t need a catastrophic rock bottom. before the cost counts. Angela (30:54.01) And finally, why are you still asking the question? If this is the fifth article you’ve read, the tenth podcast you’ve listened to, the 20th quiz you’ve taken, what answer are you still looking for? Because at some point the searching becomes part of the answer. The obsession with proving you don’t have a problem becomes evidence that something isn’t right. People who have an uncomplicated relationship with alcohol don’t spend this much time trying to figure out whether their relationship with alcohol is complicated. Angela (31:47.138) Deciding or understanding you have a drinking problem is a very personal decision that you have to make for yourself. But I can tell you that if alcohol is taking too much space in your brain, if you can’t reliably predict what happens after the first drink, if you’re constantly managing and defending your drinking, if alcohol is costing you things you care about, and if you keep coming back to this question over and over again. You have enough information to stop dismissing what you’re seeing. Angela (32:24.022) You don’t need to figure out the perfect word for it before you’re allowed to do something about it. Maybe today all you’re ready to say is my relationship with alcohol isn’t okay anymore. That’s enough truth to start with. And then get out of your own head because your head is not a reliable source of information. It’s what got you into this mess. Go find a sober community. Start listening to people. And I mean actually listen. Don’t walk into the room and immediately start scanning for all the reasons you’re different. Don’t look at what they’re wearing, what they do for a living, whether they drank more than you or less than you, or whether their story looks exactly like yours. Listen to how people think. Listen to the rules they made, the negotiations they had with themselves. Listen to the guilt. Listen to how much space alcohol took up in their lives. Listen to what happened inside their brain after that first drink. Because that’s where you’re going to hear someone who is successful and accomplished and married and raising kids and running a company and doing all the things. And suddenly you’re going to think, fuck, she thinks exactly like I do. That’s what you need. Perspective. Angela (33:49.824) You need to see that you’re not the only high-functioning person on the planet who ended up with a fucked up relationship with alcohol. Not everybody has some desperate, catastrophic, rock bottom moment, and you don’t need one. You need people who are further down the road than you are so you can see what this looks like on the other side. And if you don’t have that community, that’s exactly why I created Sober Society. We have meetings every week. with real people having real conversations about sobriety and life, the feelings, relationships, triggers, growth, all that shit that happens when you stop using alcohol as the answer to everything. Just get out of isolation and start hearing from people who understand the conversation happening in your head. And if you want to join me, you can find sober society, addictionunlimited dot com forward slash membership. That link is also in the show notes, addictionunlimited.com forward slash membership. And whether you join us or you find another sober community that feels right for you, I want to leave you with this. Angela (35:05.184) Out of millions and millions and millions of sober people, there are people just like you too. You are not the one special case that no one has ever seen before. There are people who drank like you, who thought like you, who were successful like you, who were scared like you, people who sat up at night Googling the exact same questions you’re Googling. Angela (35:33.12) And there are people who found their way through it. Maybe you don’t need one more quiz or challenge or one more definition, one more comparison or consequence or one more terrible morning. Maybe you already have. Angela (35:58.243) Maybe you already have enough information. Maybe the next step isn’t finding another answer. Maybe it’s finally doing something with the one you already have. I love you, my friend. I hope you’re having a fantastic day, and I’ll see you next week.
Maria Azzurra Missinato, co-founder of Mercury Legacy, a financial education and planning business that helps high-achieving professionals protect and grow their wealth while reducing market risk, fees, and taxes.Through personalized financial strategies and one-on-one guidance, Maria and her husband Joe help scientists, doctors, healthcare providers, and law enforcement professionals better understand how money works so they can retire earlier and with more confidence.Now, Maria's journey from spending over 15 years as a scientist to stepping into entrepreneurship demonstrates what's possible when you're willing to completely rewire your mindset, embrace discomfort, and keep growing through every challenge.And while balancing business ownership, personal growth, health transformation, and family life, she's proving that success becomes far more meaningful when it's built alongside purpose, freedom, and service to others.Here's where to find more:https://mercurylegacy.com/life-insurance https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-azzurra-missinato-phd-b815a3136?________________________________________________Welcome to The Unforget Yourself Show where we use the power of woo and the proof of science to help you identify your blind spots, and get over your own bullshit so that you can do the fucking thing you ACTUALLY want to do!We're Mark and Katie, the founders of Unforget Yourself and the creators of the Unforget Yourself System and on this podcast, we're here to share REAL conversations about what goes on inside the heart and minds of those brave and crazy enough to start their own business. From the accidental entrepreneur to the laser-focused CEO, we find out how they got to where they are today, not by hearing the go-to story of their success, but talking about how we all have our own BS to deal with and it's through facing ourselves that we find a way to do the fucking thing.Along the way, we hope to show you that YOU are the most important asset in your business (and your life - duh!). Being a business owner is tough! With vulnerability and humor, we get to the real story behind their success and show you that you're not alone._____________________Find all our links to all the things like the socials, how to work with us and how to apply to be on the podcast here:https://linktr.ee/unforgetyourself
Yes, we're relationship and intimacy coaches. Yes, we just got married. And yes, we still fight.In Part 3 of our wedding series, we're taking you behind the beautiful ceremony and celebration to talk about the relationship we were actually celebrating that weekend.Because that relationship wasn't created on our wedding day. It was built through the beautiful moments and the messy ones. The triggers, misunderstandings, hurt feelings, uncomfortable conversations, repairs, and all the times we've chosen to find our way back to each other.The goal isn't to create a relationship where you never experience conflict.It's learning what to do when you do. In This Episode, We Explore:• Why do healthy couples still fight, and why isn't a conflict-free relationship necessarily the goal?• What happens when one partner needs space and the other needs connection during conflict?• How can you take space without turning silence, distance, or avoidance into another source of hurt?• Why does trying to determine who's right and who's wrong often prevent real relationship repair?• What does taking responsibility for your contribution to a fight actually look like?• How can understanding your triggers, nervous system, and conflict patterns create more emotional safety and intimacy?• Why can learning how to repair after a fight ultimately bring you closer and help you understand each other more deeply? The Relationship Behind the WeddingThe relationship we celebrated during our wedding wasn't built during the ceremony.It was built in the hard moments that came before it.In the times we got it wrong and came back.In learning to listen.In taking responsibility.In telling the truth about what we need.In choosing curiosity instead of immediately deciding the other person is wrong.A deeply connected relationship isn't one where you never get it wrong. It's about what you're willing to do next. Ready to Find Your Way Back to Each Other?This is a huge part of the work we do at Phoenix Rising Retreats.We help couples recognize the patterns that keep pulling them into the same cycles, communicate differently, ask for what they need and desire, repair what's been left unresolved, and create deeper emotional, physical, and intimate connection.Our final Group Couples Retreat of 2026 is November 5–9 at our private sanctuary surrounded by forest and lake in North Kawartha, Ontario.We also offer Private Couples Retreats and Virtual Couples Coaching for couples wanting more personalized or ongoing support.You don't have to wait until your relationship is falling apart to learn how to do this.Learning how to come back to each other may be one of the greatest gifts you give your relationship. Reserve your retreat spot here:
Send us Fan MailContrary to popular belief, you don't develop diabetes because you failed to watch what you ate. Steering clear of carbohydrates and staying thin won't prevent you from developing insulin resistance. In this episode, we explore the just world fallacy and why society is so hell bent on blaming fat people for developing a medical condition. If you're looking for a way to manage your blood sugar without the weight stigma and the lifestyle BS, check out my new book My Blood Sugar is High.Got a question for the next podcast? Let me know!Connect With MeBUY THE BOOK: Never suffer through another through another weight loss lecture from your doctor againJOIN THE NO WEIGH MOVEMENT: Get a free script when you sign upTHE WEIGHTING ROOM: Community with a neurodivergent flavour. **BOOK CLUB** exclusive to Weighting Room members. BOOK A CONSULTATION: For the ultimate transformation in your healthcare journeyEXPLORE THE MASTERCLASS LIBRARY: Become an expert in your condition and the weight inclusive ways to manage itFREE GUIDES:Evidence-based, not diet nonsenseFind me on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
Send us Fan MailHave an inner ahole that will not STFU? Take my FREE Business Chaos Audit to see the areas of your business where that voice is running the show in 10 minutes flat. >> CLICK IT
Why does the woman who made "weaponized incompetence" a household term still catch herself doing it all when stress hits? Well, I got to talk to her, Laura Danger, author of No More Mediocre, for another expansive episode. We are once again unpacking the mental load, domestic equity, and why "just give me a list" never actually fixes anything. This convo really is two women who are hellbent on finding balance, and workshopping in real time their current edges, questions, and presenting the evolving awareness of the external BS and internal shiitake that keep them perpetuating exactly what drains them. From the nag paradox to the sinking feeling of living against your own values, we get real about how gender roles hide in our nervous systems, even in dual-income homes full of good intentions. Laura shares how a pandemic rock bottom pushed her and her husband to blow up their autopilot life and choose every piece on purpose, because the chore chart is a band-aid and sometimes we need surgery. Then we zoom out to the New Paradigm of care culture: hand-me-downs, mutual aid, hyperlocal mental health centers, and learning to receive help without shame. The takeaway? You can change your mind, you can ask for more, and you can be angry and hopeful at the same time. Because, most of us are, and that's okay. Press play, then go have the real conversation with someone you love. We're upwardly editing, one woman at a time!You can access Laura's book and work here: https://www.lauradanger.com/no-more-mediocre
In this episode of Better Buildings for Humans, host Joe Menchefski sits down with Dr. George Guszcza, President and CEO of the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), for a thought-provoking conversation about innovation, resilience, technology, and the systems shaping the future of our built environment. Drawing on a career spanning military healthcare facilities, federal service, engineering, consulting, and organizational transformation, George brings a uniquely broad perspective to why better buildings and infrastructure matter—not just for performance, but for the people and communities that depend on them.The conversation explores NIBS' role in bringing together the many groups responsible for how buildings are designed, regulated, constructed, and operated. Joe and George discuss why promising ideas can take so long to move from innovation into everyday practice, what happens when buildings and infrastructure are viewed in isolation, and why understanding the built environment as a connected "system of systems" could change how we approach resilience and risk.Joe and George also look toward the future, exploring digital twins, artificial intelligence, offsite construction, data, and the economic and cultural forces influencing how quickly the industry evolves. Along the way, they question whether our traditional focus on first cost is preventing us from recognizing the longer-term value of better-performing, more resilient buildings—and what needs to change for proven innovations to reach the mainstream.Ultimately, the episode challenges us to think beyond individual buildings and consider the larger systems, incentives, and people that determine whether innovation actually succeeds. And when Joe asks his signature question—what makes a great building?—George offers an answer that brings the entire conversation back to the reason we build in the first place.More About Dr. George GuszczaGeorge K. Guszcza, D.Eng, CPEM, CCM, is President and CEO of the National Institute of Building Sciences. Prior to NIBS, Dr. Guszcza served as Chief Transformation Officer of Michael Baker International, an Engineering News Record (ENR) Top 50 Design Firm. He was also an adjunct professor at The George Washington University and strategic advisor to the Middle East Institute's Board of Directors. He brings over 25 years of built environment experience across the public, private, and non-profit sectors in the US, UK, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Dr. Guszcza previously served as COO (CRO) of the Neal Richards Group and EVP for Finance and Administration (CFO/CIO) of Adams and Associates, a 2400-person ESOP operating across 19 US locations. As founder/CEO of the Aedifos Group, he helped restart the Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital project on behalf of Project HOPE and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. In 2003, as a US Army Medical Service Corp officer and National Director of Healthcare Facilities for Iraq, Dr. Guszcza led 3000 architects and engineers to restart 240 hospitals, 10 specialty centers, and 1200 clinics. Dr. Guszcza earned a BS in Sociology from West Point, an MS in Major Program Management from the University of Oxford's Said Business School, and a Doctor of Engineering in Engineering Management from The George Washington University. He has served on boards for George Mason University's Civil Engineering Institute, the Society of American Military Engineers Northern Virginia Post, and WiRED International.CONTACT:www.nibs.org https://www.linkedin.com/company/bldgsciences/ https://x.com/bldgsciences https://www.facebook.com/bldgsciences https://www.youtube.com/@bldgsciences Where To Find Us:https://bbfhpod.advancedglazings.com/www.advancedglazings.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/better-buildings-for-humans-podcastwww.linkedin.com/in/advanced-glazings-ltd-848b4625https://twitter.com/bbfhpod
Join me for The Dream Biz® Playground LIVE: Marketing Magic!Today on the podcast I'm SO excited to have one of my favorite people on the internet, Kristy Black, joining us! We talked about:Centering joy and community in business to combat lonelinessBuilding a values-aligned business and "breadcrumbing" your valuesNavigating perfectionism and being bad at somethingAnd more! Get Kristy's Porfitable Purpose Branding Workbook on their website!Follow Kristy on InstagramKristy Black (she/they) is a brand strategist and designer who helps values-driven creatives and creatives build bold, impactful brands that stand out from the crowd & stand up for what matters most. Known for their “golden retriever energy” and no-BS approach, Kristy is on a mission to help socially conscious business owners joyfully grow without burning out or watering themselves down.Work with ChristiFollow Christi on Instagram
Wwwhats up swingaz? From the tbhq in the grizzly Midwest, welcome to Thralls Balls episode 248! If you're new here, what we do on this show is BS about wow, discuss the news, and among other segments we always hit our mixed drink of the week. This week, Gershom is bringing us the first drink in the Herbalism series, Khadgar's Whisker.Mixed Drink of the Week last week: Gershom - Khadgar's Whisker-shot rum chata-shot dark chocolate liqueuer-shot of THC Spirit (flavorless)-French roast coffee-cayenne pepper and cinnamonthis week: Woolly - Azerootsweet teashot of fireballthc gummy in bottom, eat it when you finish drinknext week: Gershom - Sanguine HibiscusWoW News12.1.7https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article/24298591/world-of-warcraft-midnight-whats-next-panel-recap12.2https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article/24298591/world-of-warcraft-midnight-whats-next-panel-recapIf you could take a second to drop a like, rating, subscribe, or whatever form of that the platform you listen on uses, we'd very much appreciate it! It does help the show grow and find new audiences!Go ahead and follow us in the social places. You can find the various proper spellings in the episode description!@Woolly08 twt insta @PlaggyBoy tktk@HunterGershom twt @HunterGerrshom insta GershomOutLoud@gmail.com@ThrallsBallsPod Twt InstaSearch ThrallsBallsPod on YoutubeEmail us with any feedback or questions: ThrallsBallsPodcast@gmail.comYou can also leave us feedback on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or even in a specialized reviews channel on our Discord. Go to ThrallsBalls.com to find our Linktree.All of our show's relevant links (including Discord) can be found there.Bye we love you be good!https://discord.gg/HuFkhagM3Z
Mobidictum Conference in Istanbul, October 7–8: fifth year, 80% of the top Turkish studios in the room, 20 Vietnamese and 30 Chinese companies, 60% international attendance for the first time, and all three of us on stage. Batuhan has free tickets for the 2.5 Gamers audience, so reach out.Turkey went from zero gaming news for five years to producing the most consistent hit-making machine in mobile, and in this episode we sit down with Batuhan Avucan, founder of Mobidictum, to find out how that actually happened and what's coming next. The short version: investors gave Turkish founders one mandate, puzzle, and Turkish founders executed. The Sort category alone went from basically nothing in 2023 to roughly $80M a month in IAP, and once you add ad revenue on top it's easily $120M a month, spearheaded by Pixel Flow, Magic Sort, Hexa Sort and friends. Block is dominated by Color Block Jam and Block Out from Grand Games, Match Blast and Match Factory are Peak's home turf, and match-3 is still a heavyweight fight between Dream and Playrix. But the interesting part is the machine underneath it: studios that grew up working with publishers like Rollic and Lion, learned the craft, then went solo and shipped Loom and RotateLab-sized results. Batuhan puts it better than we can: "We don't train talent anymore, we train founders."
Tim, Sarah, and JVL are all together in-studio. It turns out things are so bad for the GOP, even JVL is hopeful. They discuss Marjorie Taylor Greene calling BS on the GOP's 'caravan' tactic, whether Pete Hegseth could be the administration's fall guy for the Iran war, and a new Marist poll showing Democrats with an almost-too-good-to-be-true lead on the generic congressional ballot.Later: Did Scott Jennings REALLY talk to Mitch McConnell for 30 minutes? Can Democrats get to 56 Senate seats? The gang has thoughts on how Democrats should handle oversight investigations in 2027. Plus: Bo French is racist AND wants mass executions, and finally: the gang discusses some interesting rumors about Candace Owens.Read JVL's Triad.For a limited time, get 60% off your first box from Tempo Meals at https://TempoMeals.com/THENEXTLEVEL.Right now, save up to 20% on mattresses when you go to Casper.com. #sponsored
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thebulwark.comTim, Sarah, and JVL are all together in-studio. It turns out things are so bad for the GOP, even JVL is hopeful. They discuss Marjorie Taylor Greene calling BS on the GOP's 'caravan' tactic, whether Pete Hegseth could be the administration's fall guy for the Iran war, and a new Marist poll showing Democrats with an almost-too-good-to-be-true lead on the generic congressional ballot.Later: Did Scott Jennings REALLY talk to Mitch McConnell for 30 minutes? Can Democrats get to 56 Senate seats? The gang has thoughts on how Democrats should handle oversight investigations in 2027. Plus: Bo French is racist AND wants mass executions, and finally: the gang discusses some interesting rumors about Candace Owens.You can help: Donate here to support the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, OH.If following all of this is making you feel like you're losing your mind, join The Bulwark. We can't make the news less insane, but we can help you make sense of it with smart people who haven't lost the plot.Watch, listen, and leave a comment.Show links:* Read JVL's Triad.* Get your copy of How to Eat an Elephant, Sarah's first book! And join Sarah on Friday for a live AMA on Substack and YouTube. Leave your questions here. This ad-free video version of The Next Level is exclusively for Bulwark+ members.
Rachel Bents, founder of The Joy Collective, who helps high-achieving leaders stop performing happiness and start building joy as a real strategy for their life and leadership.Through her book Joy Is the Strategy, her podcast Joy Unfiltered, and her community The Joy Project, Rachel guides leaders through the ENJOY Method, a neuroscience-rooted framework that turns joy from a nice idea into a daily practice.Now, Rachel's journey from wellness coach and fitness expert to building a joy-based movement demonstrates the courage it takes to let go of an old identity and step into the work you know you were made to do.And while launching a paid community, writing her second book, and navigating one of the biggest creative leaps of her life, she is learning to trust the slower pace of organic growth while actually living the message she teaches.Here's where to find more:www.enjoymyeveryday.com https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/joy-unfiltered-joy-is-the-strategy/id1810576358 https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelbents/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61589449093468 https://www.instagram.com/rachel_bents/ Joy is the Strategy - https://a.co/d/0ef3ozWI________________________________________________Welcome to The Unforget Yourself Show where we use the power of woo and the proof of science to help you identify your blind spots, and get over your own bullshit so that you can do the fucking thing you ACTUALLY want to do!We're Mark and Katie, the founders of Unforget Yourself and the creators of the Unforget Yourself System and on this podcast, we're here to share REAL conversations about what goes on inside the heart and minds of those brave and crazy enough to start their own business. From the accidental entrepreneur to the laser-focused CEO, we find out how they got to where they are today, not by hearing the go-to story of their success, but talking about how we all have our own BS to deal with and it's through facing ourselves that we find a way to do the fucking thing.Along the way, we hope to show you that YOU are the most important asset in your business (and your life - duh!). Being a business owner is tough! With vulnerability and humor, we get to the real story behind their success and show you that you're not alone._____________________Find all our links to all the things like the socials, how to work with us and how to apply to be on the podcast here:https://linktr.ee/unforgetyourself
September got us our footing. Now we're off to the races… Get in babe, it is HOTober. Momentum builds in September, then the holidays creep in and it's "I'll get back to it in January." Not around here. HOTober is how we keep what we built in September moving.In this episode, we will cover your HOTober game plan. If you have a strong. foundation and are ready to build something even greater, this episode is for you.AND, if you feel like a hot mess who is sick of her BS and ready to reclaim your habits, this is for you too. Resources Mentioned:Schedule a Session: https://www.heathermaio.com/coaching-options Not Another Diet Book: https://www.amazon.com/Not-Another-Diet-Book-learning/dp/B0B45Q4CLH/
Double Tap - Ep 481 September 28, 2026 Presented by This episode of Double Tap is brought to you by: Foxtrot Mike (Code: WLSISLIFE) C&G Holsters (Code: WLSISLIFE) Gideon Optics (Code: WLSISLIFE) Night Fision (Code: WLSISLIFE) Bowers Group (Code: WLS) Giveaways!! GAW Text Dear WLS or Reviews +1 743 500 2171 Public Show Titles Dear WLS Question from Uncle Buck from Oregon Good evening gents,For the life of me I cant understand my local FFLs business model when it comes to suppressors. Before the 200 pesos tax stamp when away everyone was charging 80-150ish to transfer in a can. Now its 275+ to transfer one. Their claim is is that we didn't buy it from them but you can pick any retailer online and theyre cheaper than in my stores by a lot. How can I get it through their brains that theyre just screwing themselves over. Thankfully there's places like silencer central that do ship to door. Ive bought three cans this year so far and waited 9 days on the first, 5 days for the second, and just under 2 days for the third one. Love the show and the fact I live near Savage and flex on him daily because Im not a poor bald commie. I send this with great love (say it back), Uncle Buck Question from Travis N Hey guys love the show and all the BS you guys sling at each other. We have a church security team and looking for a good med kits. What do you recommend. This is a fairly new security team and trying to get good gear. Thanks for the time. Question from Heather T Hi y'all I'm a long time listener and have not missed one episode! I would love for y'all to read my petition, that's death penalty for child rapists and stronger supporting laws to protect children, at change.org/SaveOurChildrenOhio, sign and share please! Unless you hate children and are gay Question from Danny S Good evening kids. I've got the itch to learn long distance precision shooting off an AR15 platform (up to 1000 yards). Present day, I'm nowhere near a pro but can hold my own from 100-300 yards. I've done a bunch of researching in the Google machine and the .224 Valkyrie seems to be the tool of choice. Any advice you could give along with upper receiver recommendations would be great. If I'm going down a rabbit hole with this platform, feel free to roast me. Danny from Northern Virginia (puke) WINNER Question from Kevin P I recently shot in my first ever match. It was a two-gun open, and it was awesome! My 13-year-old son also competed for the first time. Now that we have the bug, would you all mind sharing some insights for a couple of newbies? Going down the rabbit hole of USPSA, IPSC, & IDPA can be a bit overwhelming. What's the short-version rundown of these and your experiences? What are your suggestions about gear for us? We both shared my iron sights P320 X-Five Legion for pistol shooting, I shot a Banshee 9mm PCC with a red-dot, and my son shot a Zion AR-15 from IWI with a 1-10x LPVO from Swampfox. It all worked fine, but I'm always looking for an excuse to buy more guns and gear. Thanks, and keep shooting straight! Question from Kyle R Shawn, during this week's episode you mentioned modifying 3D print files for speed loaders and possibly releasing some others on MarkerWorld. As a 3D printing noob, I'd love to steal your hard work. Where can I find yours and the other cast members .STLs? Also, what has been the cast's favorite gun related print so far? Gun Industry News Thefirearmblog Magpul Expands Glove Lineup with New MultiCam Colorway Magpul has added a MultiCam camouflage pattern to its existing glove lineup. The new colorway is available across multiple models in the Magpul glove family, providing users with an additional option for tactical and outdoor applications. The gloves maintain the same construction and features as the existing color options. The Gist: Availability: Now available through Magpul and authorized retailers Bottom Line: Key specs/features: MultiCam camouflage pattern added to existing glove models; maintains original materials, fit, and functionality including touchscreen compatibility and protective padding where applicable Thefirearmblog Drawing Fire: Drawings from the Winchester Collection Book A new book titled ‘Drawing Fire: Drawings from the Winchester Collection' features historical technical drawings from the Winchester Repeating Arms archives. The publication showcases original factory drawings of iconic Winchester firearms, providing insight into design and manufacturing history. Bottom Line: Key specs/features: Historical technical drawings from Winchester Repeating Arms collection; covers design details of classic Winchester models Thefirearmblog AmmoVault Service Lets Shooters Buy Ammo Now and Ship It Later AmmoVault is a new service that allows customers to purchase ammunition immediately while deferring physical shipment until a later date. This addresses current shipping and storage challenges by enabling buyers to lock in current pricing and availability without immediate delivery. The program is presented as a practical solution for managing ammo logistics in the firearms market. The Gist: Availability: Service is now available for use Bottom Line: Key specs/features: Buy ammo now and choose when to have it shipped later; locks in current pricing and availability Thefirearmblog SK Guns Introduces Charro Negro: The Legend of the Black Horseman SK Guns has released the Charro Negro, a custom 1911-style pistol themed around the legend of the Black Horseman. The firearm features a blacked-out finish, custom engravings, and high-end components presented as a limited-edition tribute piece. The Gist: Available now through SK Guns dealers and website Bottom Line: 1911 platform with custom black finish, Charro-themed engravings, premium trigger and sights Thefirearmblog MDT Magnesium DRT Chassis System MDT has released a new Magnesium DRT (Dynamic Response Technology) chassis system utilizing a magnesium alloy construction for significant weight reduction while maintaining rigidity. The chassis incorporates DRT technology designed to enhance stability and reduce harmonics during firing. It is engineered for precision rifle applications with a focus on lightweight performance. The Gist: Available now through MDT dealers and retailers Bottom Line: Magnesium alloy construction with DRT for reduced weight and improved stability; designed for precision rifles Before we let you go – Join Gun Owners of America We'd love if you supported the show, join Agency 171 at agency171.com. Lot's of prizes, rewards and kick ass swag. No matter how tough your battle is today, we want you here fight with us tomorrow. Don't struggle in silence, you can contact the suicide prevention line by dialing 988 from your phone. Remember – Always prefer Dangerous Freedom over peaceful slavery. We'll see you next time! Nick – @busbuiltsystems | Bus Built Systems Jeremy – @ret_actual | Rivers Edge Tactical Aaron – @machinegun_moses Savage – @savage1r Shawn – @dangerousfreedomyt | @camorado.cam | Camorado
Congratulations to now-former FBI director Andrew Bailey, who resigned this morning and got out of the way of whatever scandal is coming down the pike. On Friday, a jury ordered Apple to pay $5.7 billion to a company called Taction for infringing its haptic patents. The White House is still blocking CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the Oval Office and excluding CNN from pool duties. Does that violate Judge Kelly's TRO? Dua Lipa is suing Samsung for $15 million after the company used her photo on packaging for televisions without paying for it. DOOFUS OF THE DAY: Kansas Senator Roger Marshall is very hot for us all to know that he didn't sue his obstetrics patient for $50. He sued her for $3,400, and got her locked up over it. And he's sending a cease and desist letter to his opponent Adam Hamilton for making an ad about it — that'll shut 'em up! MAIN SHOW: The Trump administration is back on its "pocket rescission" BS, purporting to cancel $1 billion of congressional allocations by waiting until the end of the session and shouting "MAKE ME!" A guy who calls himself the "OnlyFans lawyer" has filed a dozen lawsuits in DC on behalf of January 6 rioters. They want reparations under the Federal Tort Claims Act, now that the slush fund is DOA. The Supreme Court finally put an end to the shenanigans in Missouri, ensuring that the state will not be able to switch out its maps and squeeze out another Republican seat in Congress. But the Supreme Court also stayed a DC court injunction, paving the way for red states to use borked DHS immigration data to try and kick registered voters off of its voter rolls, if only one-by-one. And Donald Trump is using your taxpayer dollars to run ads urging everyone to love him. That's definitely not legal under the GAO's standards for what counts as "publicity or propaganda." Taction Technology, Inc. v. Apple Inc. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59854908/taction-technology-inc-v-apple-inc CNN v. Trump https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/74823502/cable-news-network-inc-v-trump Dua Lipa v. Samsung https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73319650/dua-lipa-v-samsung-electronics-america-inc/ White House "Pocket Rescission" Announcement https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/09/president-trump-takes-historic-action-to-eliminate-wasteful-and-harmful-spending/ People Not Politicians v. Onder [Supreme Court Missouri map order] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a388_q86b.pdf Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters [Supreme Court SAVE order] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a308_pok0.pdf Congressional Letter to the White House re: ads https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/260924_letter_to_wh_re_trump_ad.pdf White House "PSA" Announcement https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/09/presidential-public-service-announcements-are-nothing-new/ Public Law 118-47 (Section 715 on propaganda) https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2882/text GAO Decision, "Executive Agencies—Communications about the 2019 Fourth of July Events on the National Mall," B-331262 https://www.gao.gov/products/b-331262 Show Links: https://www.lawandchaospod.com/ BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod Threads: @LawAndChaosPod Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod
What happens when a growing organization's systems can no longer support its vision?Dean Newlund and Carol Schultz discuss chief of staff roles, CEO accountability, communication, competency models, feedback culture, and organizational structures that help teams grow. In this episode, Dean Newlund and Carol Schultz discuss:Telling clients the truth and leading with integrityWhat a chief of staff really doesRecognizing when people problems are systems problemsBuilding competency models around organizational needsCreating stronger communication, feedback, and leadership accountability Key Takeaways:Tell clients the truth, even when doing so creates a risk of losing the business.Look at the systems behind recurring people problems before assuming another person is the solution.Use competency models to make hiring and performance reviews more objective and clarify what employees are expected to do.Build a culture of feedback by modeling effective communication and teaching people how to use language well.Give teams room to make mistakes, learn, and become more independent instead of solving every problem for them. "An effective CEO is one that is self-aware. An effective CEO is one that, I believe, is vulnerable and authentic. An effective CEO is not afraid of looking bad, and I don't mean physically.” — Carol Schultz About Carol Schultz:Carol Schultz, CEO of Vertical Elevation and Inc. Magazine columnist, is an outspoken entrepreneur who helps CEOs stop running their companies and start leading them. She draws on decades of experience as a recruiter and executive coach to deliver The Chief of Staff Scaffold System, a 9-step program that teaches founders to restructure their time, delegate effectively, and refocus on growth. Known for her no-BS honesty and willingness to ruffle feathers, Carol combines bold truth-telling with lessons learned from her own early leadership missteps. Connect with Carol Schultz: Website: https://verticalelevation.comEmail: carol@verticalelevation.comBook: Powered by People: https://www.amazon.com/Powered-People-Talent-Centric-Organizations-Recruitment-ebook/dp/B09ZZC81J6Show: Evolving Your Workplace: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/evolving-your-workplace/id1562180951LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolbschultz/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/growgreatteams/ See Dean's TedTalk “Why Business Needs Intuition” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEq9IYvgV7I Connect with Dean:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgqRK8GC8jBIFYPmECUCMkwWebsite: https://www.mfileadership.com/The Mission Statement E-Newsletter: https://www.mfileadership.com/blog/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deannewlund/X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/deannewlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/MissionFacilitators/Email: dean.newlund@mfileadership.comPhone: 1-800-926-7370 Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
We are excited to have Anthropic share their latest AI x Finance work at AI Engineer New York, coming up in 2 weeks!In case you've been under a rock, here's a non-exhaustive list of what Anthropic has been shipping since closing the largest fundraise of all time in May at $47B ARR:* June: Launched Claude Tag and Sonnet 5 and Fable 5* July: Opus 5, /checkup. crossed $65B ARR* Last month: Fable/Mythos 5.1, and EFS (upcoming pod)* IPO target $2T, end 2026 ARR estimated $100B* Cowork/chat merged before did* Claude Mods* Dario endorses the same Pacing the Frontier message cosigned by all labs* Last week: Opus 5.5, Plugins portal, Cloud Sessions/Claude Projects* Today: Sonnet 5.5!Today's episode should catch you up, with Thariq Shihipar, the explainer-king of Anthropic, who we last caught up on Fable launch day with The Field Guide to Fable:The Future of Mutable SoftwarePay special attention to Claude Mods (especially the cheatsheet):In general this is also the inverse of the other viral tweet from Thariq:Cloud Brain, Local HandsAnd give a try to Claude Projects:The “hands” terminology is not just an analogy for the local/cloud paradigm that is being built up at frontier coding agent companies like Cognition, but is ALSO particularly relevant to the safety systems discussions that we'll be discussing with Anthropic in an upcoming episode as they prepare to pace to frontier with responsible AI deployment.For those who want Thariq's writing tips we teased at the start of the pod, watch the full video here:From the rapid rise of Claude Code to a future where agents can rewrite their own harnesses, collaborate across teams, and operate across cloud and local environments, the way we build software is changing extraordinarily fast. In this episode, Anthropic's Thariq Shihipar joins swyx and Vibhu to unpack how power users are actually working with Claude Code today, why prompting remains a high-skill discipline, and where Anthropic thinks the agent harness is headed next.We go deep on Claude Code's evolving interface: Ask User Question and elicitation, artifacts as persistent generative interfaces, Claude Tag for multiplayer agent workflows, Projects, model effort, implementation notes, and the new Claude Mods system for customizing the harness itself. Thariq explains why Claude.md may eventually disappear, why the smartest model could also become the cheapest model for many tasks, and why mutable software could become a new paradigm for how applications are built and customized.The conversation then turns to agent security and Anthropic's “Pacing the Frontier” argument. Thariq walks through recent incidents where agents discovered unexpected ways to communicate, exploit infrastructure, reverse-engineer benchmark scorers, and chain vulnerabilities together. We discuss sandboxing, prompt injection, autonomous agents, interpretability, constitutional classifiers, probes, fallbacks, Auto Mode, and why securing increasingly capable agents may become one of the defining engineering problems of the next few years.We discuss:* Why agentic coding went from controversial to the default in less than a year* Why prompting is still one of the highest-leverage skills for working with Claude Code* How expert users build a mental model of Claude and what it can reliably one-shot* Why discovering your “unknown unknowns” matters more as agents become more capable* Artifacts as persistent, generative interfaces between humans and agents* How Claude could split into a cloud-based “brain,” local or remote “hands,” and dynamic interfaces* Claude Tag, Projects, and multiplayer agents and how collaborative agent workflows could evolve* Why spending more time on the initial prompt can dramatically reduce wasted agent work* When to use low, medium, high, or max effort for different engineering tasks* Why frontier models may eventually outperform smaller models on both intelligence and token efficiency* Why implementation notes can expose decisions the model considered but chose not to make* Why Claude.md may eventually disappear — and why starting without one can sometimes be better* Claude Mods: customizing the execution loop, UI, subagents, routing, and behavior of Claude Code* Model routers, forked agents, and supervisor agents that automatically improve agent workflows* Why Claude Mods may be an early preview of “mutable software”* The bitter lesson of harness engineering and why agent architectures go out of date so quickly* How Claude Tag is becoming an organizational harness for multiplayer work* Why giving agents access to company data creates an enormous new security surface* The Exploit-Bench incident where agents discovered ways to communicate and collaborate* Why agents hacked Hugging Face for scorer code rather than benchmark answers* How agents chained sandbox and infrastructure vulnerabilities in unexpected ways* Why increasingly capable agents make traditional security assumptions harder to maintain* The argument behind Anthropic's “Pacing the Frontier” proposal* Why software engineers are increasingly doing two jobs: engineering and keeping up with AI* Constitutional classifiers, probes, and fallbacks and what interpretability looks like in production* How Auto Mode checks whether an agent's actions actually match the user's permissions* Why Thariq can see serious AI risks while still having a relatively low p(doom)Thariq Shihipar* X: https://x.com/trq212* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thariqshihiparTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:04:12 Ask User Question and the Future of Agent Interfaces00:08:29 Artifacts, Projects, and Multiplayer Agents00:15:37 Prompting as the Core Claude Code Skill00:21:52 Context, Effort, and Smarter Model Usage00:28:10 Is Claude.md Going Away?00:32:49 Claude Mods: Customizing the Claude Code Harness00:36:35 Model Routing and the Rise of Mutable Software00:44:40 The Bitter Lesson of Harness Engineering00:50:49 Claude Tag as an Organizational Harness00:55:59 Pacing the Frontier and Autonomous Agent Security00:58:22 Agents Hack Hugging Face for the Scorer01:05:34 What Happens When Agents Need More Compute?01:10:32 AI Coding Is Changing Faster Than Engineers Can Keep Up01:17:17 Probes, Fallbacks, Interpretability, and Auto Mode01:28:32 AI Risk, p(doom), and Closing ThoughtsTranscriptIntroduction: Life at Anthropic and the Pace of ChangeSwyx [00:00:00]: We're here in the studio with our friend Thariq from Anthropic, and I guess generally the Claude Code, I-- there's, there's so much, merging of boundaries and you've been so on top of everything since you joined Anthropic. You have been early to Claude Code itself, but then also, and you've told that story in other podcasts, and you've also been talking about seeing like an agent. Most recently you did the top AIE World Tour talk, Field Guide to Fable, which obviously you guys launched Fable, so that was-- that's cheating. And mostly you most recently also launching Claude Tag, and we're also gonna be talking about Pacing the Frontier. There's a lot going on in Anthropic. I guess top of the question is, what's it like being at Anthropic when there's so much going on?Thariq Shihipar [00:00:48]: I think that It is, like. I think you can get whiplash sometimes. I think, like, going. When I joined Anthropic, I joined because of Claude Code. Like Claude Code had just come out and I was like, “This is so good.” And Opus 4 to me was like just, I could not imagine, like, how good it was? And that was, like, a real moment for me. But I was, like, trying to convince, like, my startup friends to use agentic coding, and they're like, “Oh, no, like, our engineers don't think it's good enough,” or something. And I was like, “That's insane.” and now you, like, fast-forward, 12 months, less, and, like, it's just like, yeah, the default way that everyone codes, right? And I think that, like, just having to go from, like, selling it to, like, now, teaching people how to be. make the most use of it and be more efficient and things like that is just like a big, like big change. And, yeah, I think, like, it's just hard to stay on top of everything as a human? Like, I think things happen so fast and likeSwyx [00:01:51]: You just throw more agents at it.Thariq Shihipar [00:01:52]: Yeah, like that's like the agentic stuff scales much better than the, like, human stuff where it's like, oh, like, there are three things happening right now and, like, they're all emergencies and, like, how do you, like, respond to it? Yeah.Teaching People to Use Claude CodeVibhu [00:02:05]: What do you split your time on? You do a lot of technical writing, engineering work.Thariq Shihipar [00:02:10]: Yeah, so I think that, like, when I joined the Claude Code team, I wanted to teach people how to use Claude Code and I think that, like, that has been something that, like, I thought, like, maybe I would spend a little bit of time on it or, like, I'd, like, do. I was spending some time on the agent SDK first, and I wasn't exactly sure, like, how the bitter lesson would go, when it comes to, like, harnesses, right? Like, I think sometimes we were like, “Oh, like, what's after Claude Code?”? And so initially I was like, I just wanna teach people how to use Claude Code and make it easier to use Claude Code. And I think that has just, like, as the harnesses have gotten better and better, that's like the dominant problem now is, like, how do you use the agents, right? Like, it's like such a high skill expression thing. So I do that and then I do engineering work. I give talks, but I think, like, when I'm doing engineering work, my goal is to take that feedback that we get from users and also, like, then be able to talk about, like, hey, how to use Claude Code to do engineering. So there's like a good loop there. Yeah.Swyx [00:03:07]: Yeah. I'll-- For listeners, we'll attach, the talk that you did with Sarah for the Dev Writers, meetupThariq Shihipar [00:03:13]: Oh, yeahSwyx [00:03:13]: Which we talked a little bit about, well, first you do the work and then you talk about the work.Thariq Shihipar [00:03:16]: Right.Swyx [00:03:16]: Something like that.Thariq Shihipar [00:03:17]: Yeah.Swyx [00:03:17]: It's sow and reap orThariq Shihipar [00:03:19]: Yeah, reap and. Sow and reap.Swyx [00:03:21]: Something like that. Something like that. Yeah, so, and then just to preview a little bit, we are gonna talk about the evolution of the harness. It has come a long way from just being a CLI. We're gonna talk about, Claude Mods, which is starting to leak today, because you couldn't keep it secret.Thariq Shihipar [00:03:36]: Yeah. yeah.Swyx [00:03:39]: Yeah, there's, there's a lot, there. I think you started off with, like, adding ask user question tool, which people love and hate.Thariq Shihipar [00:03:48]: Yeah.Swyx [00:03:48]: Like, I thought it was, like, very innovative, and then now I have, like, my own version. You have your Interview Me version.Thariq Shihipar [00:03:55]: Yeah.Swyx [00:03:56]: And, yeah, everyone just has, like, their own stuff. And, like, it no longer matters ‘cause now you're supposed to, write prompts that create other prompts and loops and all these things.Ask User Question and Human-Agent InteractionThariq Shihipar [00:04:05]: Sure, yeah.Swyx [00:04:06]: So what's the state of the art, today? Like, what are people. what are you, like, telling people to do today?Thariq Shihipar [00:04:12]: Yeah, ask user question was the first time that the model was good at elicitation. I think this was, like, an emergent behavior that I, like, wanted to see if the models could do. I have, like a human-computer interaction background, so I, like, did that in undergrad and grad school. And so this was like. I think it's like human-agent interaction to me, like, trying to figure out, like, how can the agent communicate with you and extract, the requirements, right? I think that, like, one of the things about, like, that's difficult as Claude Code has gone broader and broader is that everyone has, like, their own way of using it, and it's very hard to, like, change the default behavior. So for example, like, if someone asks Claude Code to do something,Thariq Shihipar [00:04:59]: Sometimes they just want them to do the work, ‘cause they're, like, maybe a very good prompter, and sometimes they want. like, are not good at prompting? And you need. like, the agent needs to, like, clarify? And so that's, like, a good split. Like, and the ask you the question tool like, splits along that side where, like, are-- do you feel like you're good enough to instruct the agent as it is, or is the agent able to, like. does the agent need to, like, pull out more requirements and, like, collaborate with you more and really understand your preferences?Thariq Shihipar [00:05:27]: I, on the whole, believe that pretty much everyone is more on the latter than the former, that they, like, have more ambiguity and they know less than they want, than they, like, think they know about the problem. but, like, it's like a interface design problem to make that easy? And so, like, if you're designing a problem, like, or if you're going through a problem, like, things like what's the schema or, like, what's the call stack and things like that are really important. like, the details in the design are important. Ideally, you want to figure out some of these, like, hard problems ahead of time before starting implementation. And yeah, that's why they call, like, unknowns, right? And so I think that this will forever be, like, a skill in agentic coding is, like, figuring out your unknowns. So, like, because even if the model is, like, super intelligent- It, like, needs to know what you want? And, like, you have preferences. like, you need to like, pull the, pull that out. and so that's, like, I think how I'm, what I'm pushing. the question then is, like, how does the agent interact with you? And I think that has been HTML, has been, like, the big way of doing that. And we've recently added artifacts, right? And artifacts, I think we've done a bad job of, like, or, like, I've done a bad job of, like, explaining how to use them fully. We have a lot of property capabilities. They have a database associated with them? And so every artifact can store and write persistent data. They can, like, feed back into Claude? And so, like, one thing that, like, people are not doing yet that I'm trying to, like, encourage is, like, this idea of a dashboard artifact. So you have, like, Claude working on a project long-term. Maybe it's like a kanban or something. it can store that kanban data in its database. Multiple Claudes can access that data via, like, the artifact MCP, and, like, that artifact can, like, talk to those Claudes as well. And so, like, the. We're building the primitives for you to be able to have this, like, generative interface via artifacts that will, like, let you surface more of that rich detail from the agents. And I think that, like, almost everything with agents right now is, like, this problem of, like, you think what you want, but you don't really know what you want, and, like, the agents need a lot of detail, and collaborating with them in the loop is really important. And so artifacts are, like, the, like, way that we're trying to evolve there. But there's a lot of work to do because it's so much more complicated than, like, a multiple-choice question? there's a lot more, like, detail in terms of, like, diagrams and code snippets and schemas or, like, whatever it is for that problem. But, like, artifacts is, like, the mo-more AGI-pilled way of, like, doing ask user question. So yeah.Artifacts as the Interface to the HarnessSwyx [00:08:15]: I think one thing that's unclear to me about these, the artifact stuff is, like, what feedback should go in through the artifact and what feedback should go through a Claude, a chat? Because the more AGI-pilled one is to just feed everything to the Claude.Thariq Shihipar [00:08:29]: I think the more AGI-pilled one is to go through the artifact. Like, and I think that, like, we imagine in the limit, I think that artifacts will be your interface into the harness? You can, like, comment on this, like, live, like, document of your plan, of the work. you can see maybe, like, multiple agents and different agents are doing this, and that artifact is built for the current work that you're doing, right? And so, like, each one has, like, slightly different. I think we're still, like, getting there from, like, an infrastructure perspective. But yeah, I think, like, on-the-fly interface for your harness is probably where things are headed.Vibhu [00:09:03]: Is there a version of it that's an abstraction from CLI or chat and you. Because right now, a lot of it is, okay, you're interfacing with Claude Code, you're having HTML given back for a mockup. It's pretty rich. There's diagrams. Artifacts are ways to connect these together. Why not just do everything that way?Separating Brain, Hands, and Surface UIThariq Shihipar [00:09:22]: Then it becomes, like, separating out, like, where is the inference happening? Where is the intelligence happening? Where is the work happening? like, I think this is like, difference between, like, or, like, some of the distinction between local and cloud, right? And so, I think right now, if you use Claude Code, it's, like, local and, like, you can spin off remote control, for example, to get some cloud behavior, or you can spin off Claude Code in the cloud, right? We're moving towards a place where instead of Claudes, like, you message a local Claude, it starts a session locally and it executes, to more like you have a Claude that you message that's in the cloud that's running. it can run, like, local, or, like, cloud sessions. This is how Claude Tag works. But, like, over time, we'll add, like, local hands as well. And so, like, local hands will be the ability for that agent to access your computer if it's online, and be able to, like, work there. And so it can spin off many different subagents. It can, like, commu- those subagents can communicate with each other, and that's where the artifact comes in to display all of that work. So you can imagine, like, the. You're separating out these things. So there's, like, the surface UI display that's an artifact and hosted somewhere and has a database and everything. There is the inference intelligence, right, that's happening on the cloud, and you don't have to worry about shutting off your computer or whatever, right? and then there's the, like, hands. Like, and it can be local, it can be in, like, a remote sandbox or wherever you need your work to be done. That's like unpackaging, like, the Claude Code experience right now where, like, right now it all happens in one place, right? So.Multiplayer Agents, Claude Tag, and ProjectsVibhu [00:11:00]: How do you see, like, the multiplayer side of that? So say teams want to work in this way. Right now it's very individual, but how do you see the future of multiplayer? Like, right now, I guess there's Claude Tag, which is a version, but.Thariq Shihipar [00:11:12]: We're launching projects. And so projects is the, like, this abstraction that's like Claude Tag, but on our Claude products, right? So you can message it and, like, it will do the Claude Tag-like stuff, like spinning off subagents. So We think with multiplayer. Like, Claude Tag is, like, a little bit more native multiplayer because it's just, like, in your Slack and the permissions are all figured out and stuff like that. But I do think multiplayer is, like, an important part of the story and, like, that will need to get tied together more. Like, you can imagine how complicated it gets when you're like, oh, you have hands, but now you have other hands in other people's computers too, and, like, you need to, like, permission them or, like, you have, like, your MCP and someone else's MCP, and how do you figure out how to use them, right? It gets, like, quite complicated. And Claude Tag does a good job of, like, sanding down all of these issues, right? So that, like, when you have, yeah, Google Docs, how does it access Google Docs, right? Like, it accesses through the shared Claude MCP, or it can access through your local credentials as well if it doesn't have access. But yeah, I think Claude Tag is our multiplayer, product, and it's really useful for these, like, things that are inherently multiplayer. Like, okay, like on-call, for example, incidents are inherently multiplayer. You want to tag Claude, you want multiple people to log in, you want it to be able to find context. I think whenever I'm, like, working on something and I want, like, privacy or security or, like, I want other people to review it's really nice to, like. I'll have a channel per project and I'll, like, at legal, for example, be like, “Hey, like, I want to ship this. Can you, like.” Like, here's. Like Claude knows everything, just chat with it. And that way legal gets precise answers, on like what exactly is shipping into the code, and I don't need to be in the loop, right? So I think like multiplayer is getting like more and more like, yeah, everyone can participate with Claude. I think Claude Tag is like that product and like projects will start off single player and will like, expand.Swyx [00:13:14]: I think there's a question about like maybe dual questions about identity and the unit of isolation.Identity, Permissions, and IsolationThariq Shihipar [00:13:20]: Yeah.Swyx [00:13:20]: Claude Tag, you specifically chose to make it its own identityThariq Shihipar [00:13:26]: Yes.Swyx [00:13:26]: Which is like, a controversial choice. There's, there's other ways to do it.Thariq Shihipar [00:13:30]: Yeah.Swyx [00:13:30]: Claude Projects probably it sounds like, if it's anything like ChatGPT Projects, it is, the isolation is that artifacts, that cloud instance, everyone's collaborating on this. It'll. It sounds like, it should be like if you're, if you're collaborating with legal on a thing, like that channel should be a project, right? Like it's not yetThariq Shihipar [00:13:50]: Yes.Swyx [00:13:50]: But it. that's the natural next step.Thariq Shihipar [00:13:53]: Yeah, like I think in Claude Tag, it's effectively. Like Claude Tag, you have to do your own arrangement. And so Claude Tag, yeah, each channel is like you can name it as you want, and I nameSwyx [00:14:04]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:14:04]: Like each featureSwyx [00:14:06]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:14:07]: As a channel.Swyx [00:14:07]: And, but I think like there is some trans- like it's unclear when there is transference, because let's say it is. if you have a coworkerThariq Shihipar [00:14:14]: Yeah.Swyx [00:14:14]: Who is tagging on all these things, yes, there is transferThariq Shihipar [00:14:16]: Yeah.Swyx [00:14:16]: Because it's the same person. but with Claude, it's unclear if it's like necessarily like, well, no, you don't know any of. you don't know about the other stuff. You should only use this stuff.Thariq Shihipar [00:14:25]: It's like the tip of the iceberg meme, right, where you can like. This is what we spend so much time onSwyx [00:14:31]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:14:31]: Is like there is like infinite surface area of like, okay, you want Claudes to. Not infinite, but like there's like surface area, a lot of like, surface area to figure out of like permissions and visibility and like how can you let Claude operate as well as you can, as safely as you can? And obviously, this is very important to us because like security for our code base is very important. And so we've put a lot of time into this. Yeah, there's so many like edge cases you can figure out where it's like, oh, like, yeah, this Claude in this channel has different permissions, but it can message another channel, and can't it exfiltrate data that way? Or like can you like. What if it uses your MCP and then messages someone else? Like there's like so much, and we've like really put a lot of work into sanding it down.Swyx [00:15:14]: Yeah. Lots of work. okay. Fable?Fable and the Meta-Skill of PromptingVibhu [00:15:18]: Fable, you wrote two good articles. you've written many good articlesThariq Shihipar [00:15:22]: Yeah.Vibhu [00:15:22]: But on, Field Guide to Fable, Building Claude Code. I'm curious from what you've seen, is there any common patterns that you see in like top users at Anthropic externally? Like what are best practices for getting the most out of Claude Code?Thariq Shihipar [00:15:37]: The like meta skill I say is like prompting is like very important? And like that. Like I think this is like not trivial to say because I think a lot of people are like, “Oh, prompting doesn't matter. It's just like I can just say a sentence and Claude will do it.” And I think prompting is really this like, this. It's like public speaking, like, or writing or something, and for a specific audience, and that audience is Claude. And you need to like build a mental model of Claude and how it thinks and how it works, right? And so that's like the most important skill in working with Claude Code is like having this mental model, right, of Claude and like what it can do well, what it can one-shot, what it can't. And so many people when you see prompting, they're just like, they're short prompts, but they have such a good mental model of Claude and of like the code base and things like that like it's effortless? But it's like high skill ceiling. So like that work of like, spending a lot of time prompting and building mental models of how, and intuition for how the agents work is really important. And then I think like the next thing is like the unknown stuff we talked about earlier, where it's like being able to find out like your, what you don't know or what you haven't written down, learning about like different things. I think as Claude can do more and more things, the likelihood of you doing something out of distribution for you and like you have low domain knowledge on is very high? And the more you can like learn the vocabulary to be able to prompt Claude, it becomes really important. And so like I think the most important unknowns are the unknown unknowns, where you're like, I just like don't even know that this exists, right? Yeah, exactly. I think that's like a illustration of like the map and the territory, right, where you're like, “Okay, this is my prompt,” and the territory is like the actual like work that the agent needs to do, right? And if you are like very precise, you can give more precise things, right? So like for example, in design, I'm not very precise. I'm not a designer, so I say like, “Give me like eight different mock-ups.” But if I was a designer, maybe I'd be like, “Oh, hey, here are some reference sites.” Like, “I want this type of font and this type of like look to it, and here's like a few different components to like visualize. Here's a Figma MC board to bring in,” like. And so you can just be so much more precise with that language. And if you're not a designer, you just need to like try and learn the language or learn the unknown unknowns. And this is true of like everything, I think. Like the more, like you can work with Claude to learn like how things work, the better your prompting will be. I think another good example of this is like game design, like where a lot of people are like, “Oh, like I can vibe code a game now.” And they're like, “It's not fun.” And like it's just like the thing about game design is like every one of these choices has like a lot ofTaste, Domain Knowledge, and Learning the VocabularySwyx [00:18:25]: Variations.Thariq Shihipar [00:18:25]: A lot of like craft to them. So it's like, oh, okay, like when you're making a flying game, the feel of the plane and the like, way it responds to your controls has a lot of like. Like, a game designer would spend like days on that. Do? and likeSwyx [00:18:44]: To me, that's what taste is, right?Swyx [00:18:45]: Like it is like from the possible space of one thousand mathematically valid answersThariq Shihipar [00:18:49]: Yeah.Swyx [00:18:49]: Here's the one that is the humans will like.Thariq Shihipar [00:18:51]: Yes. Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:18:52]: I think with taste, I'm like torn on this word ‘cause I think you're right, but everyone has different definitions, and it sounds kind, sounds like low skill or like elitist almost, where you're like, oh, like there are certain people with taste?Swyx [00:19:06]: It's like taste is what I call taste.Thariq Shihipar [00:19:07]: Yeah, exactly.Swyx [00:19:08]: And it's like these guys don't have taste.Thariq Shihipar [00:19:09]: Yeah, exactly. Oh, like an engineer doesn't have taste. Like I, the like founder, have taste.Thariq Shihipar [00:19:14]: ? And I think that's not true. Like I think like the engineers have a lot of taste for these particular like problems? And I think everyone has taste for particular problems. I think like Jason Liu, like say like in order to, yeah, have taste, you have to eat?Thariq Shihipar [00:19:32]: And I really like that, where it's like, okay, you have to like do a lot of things. You have to like iterate and figure out what you want, what you like, and, like build that like domainSwyx [00:19:41]: YesThariq Shihipar [00:19:41]: Domain vocabulary. And then when you're prompting, you're like synthesizing all of that for a product.Swyx [00:19:46]: Isn't it annoying when someone else says it better than you?Swyx [00:19:48]: It's just like, f**k, I have to quote this guy forever.Vibhu [00:19:51]: Having to quote Jason Liu forever.Vibhu [00:19:53]: He's gonna love this.Thariq Shihipar [00:19:55]: So I get prompts, more than that.Vibhu [00:19:57]: And sometimes it's not even that. Sometimes it's just intuitive, right? Like you don't realize you even want something till a model puts it out, and you're like, “Oh, this just feels immediately better,” right?Voice Prompting and Information DensityThariq Shihipar [00:20:07]: Yeah, exactly.Swyx [00:20:09]: One thing I go back and forth on is I feel like the way I prompt half the time, let's say I use voice.Swyx [00:20:16]: Did I say voice? Other people have voice. that is the opposite. That is just like me rambling for like two minutes Pressing down the function key and then let go, and then like hopefully it figures it out. And oftentimes it does.Thariq Shihipar [00:20:26]: Yeah.Swyx [00:20:26]: But it's not as thoughtful as like a structured prompt with like Well-run communication as though it's a PRD or a memo. Is that in line with how people do this? There's like bimodal prompting where there's some prompts where you spend a lot of time upfront and other prompts you just dash it off?Thariq Shihipar [00:20:43]: I don't think the voice is necessarily low. Like I think it's like more like how much information is in the prompt. like the model can. Like you can and like add some sentencesSwyx [00:20:53]: RightThariq Shihipar [00:20:53]: And be like, “Oh, like I changed my mind,” like in the middle of the prompt, and it will be able to follow that perfectly? So I think the like actual format of the text is less important, but then like the ability to. Like how much information is in it, right? And I think for voice, a lot of times, going back to like human-agent interaction and like for a lot of people, it's just way easier to talk than to like type? and I. If that gets more information out of you, like that's better.Vibhu [00:21:21]: At some level, it feels like just giving the model as much contextThariq Shihipar [00:21:24]: YesVibhu [00:21:24]: Over prompting before you kick off is a best practice. I don't know. A lot of the times, like when I was first trying out Fable, I spend a solid 30 minutes like really crafting a long prompt. This, I think, is a response of models running for longer and longer, right? It's still a little difficult to nudge them as they're in like, in the loop, but I just like intuitively spend more time kicking off that first prompt and working with it a lot.Spend More Upfront, Iterate LessThariq Shihipar [00:21:52]: My personal opinion is that if I was a software engineer, if I was like, just running my own startup, for example, I think I would mostly fit, stick to a max 20x? like maybe verification and so code review are like separate things. But I think like what I see a lot of times is people hit rate limits when they're doing this like, oh, like it did a lot of work and you're like, “Oh, I don't like this.” Like, “Can you like undo this and redo it?” And then you're like iterating on this like thing that the model could have done if you had like spent more upfront time or given it better context? And instead it's like you're like, “Nope, don't like that design. Try this.” Or like, “You messed this up,” or something like that. And then that just eats up so much more of like, your usage. And so that's like, I think maybe like a key like tip both for like efficiency as well, right? And yeah, I think like context, and not just like context on like what the goal is good, right? Like are you building a prototype or is it like a production thing? Like where can you spend compute or when, where can you not spend compute? Like I think you have to give the model permission or like not permission to do things sometimes where, like it doesn't know intuitively how much you want to spend on this task, right? And you can use effort for this. So I did-- I'm working on a blog post about that where it's like, if you want. For like we see that effort scales with the complexity of the task. So for security, effort gets like way more results. Like high effort versus like low effort gets, like changes the evals a lot. But for software engineering, it doesn't change it a huge amount because effort is mostly spent on the verification and the like edge case testing and things like that. And so like being able to like give the model that guidance of like, “Hey, this problem is something that I think I want you to spend a lot of time verifying and edge case testing,”?Effort, Model Choice, and VerificationVibhu [00:23:43]: How about model in the mix? So, there's Opus and Fable with effort.Thariq Shihipar [00:23:47]: Yeah.Vibhu [00:23:48]: There's also Haiku in there.Thariq Shihipar [00:23:49]: Yeah. It's not quite true yet, but it's very close where I think the frontier models will be Pareto dominant over like almost everything. like maybe. And sometimes I think Opus might be Pareto dominant. Do? Like I think depending on like how things, like shake out if it's like a newer version of Opus. But I think that like increasingly it's just going to be like the smart model is going to be able to like do the simple task for less tokens than the like the other models because of verification. With verification, in the limit, your model doesn't need to verify, right? If it's a perfect model, it just does the work once and it's like, okay, like you, I did it? And increasingly with Fable, I'm like, I'm like, “Dude, you don't need to spin up Chromium and screenshot all of these things.” Like I see it. Like you did it, right? And so a lot of the. At higher effort, you spend more of those tokens verifying. But if you're working on simpler problems, and a lot of software engineering is like well, like in Fable, like low and medium stability, it can spend less tokens verifying. And as the models get smarter and smarter, they will just be able to like, “All right, done.”? Like, I can run the lint for sanity's sake, but, like, I, like, know it lints? Like, you don't even need to do that. And that will be so much more token efficient than, like, the smaller models. Yeah.Swyx [00:25:15]: Is there a good, practice on our side that we can use to see if we're using too much effort? Like, I freakingThariq Shihipar [00:25:23]: YeahSwyx [00:25:23]: Hate wasting time on that stuff.Thariq Shihipar [00:25:24]: Yeah. I know what you mean. I think, like, so in this blog post, my rough distribution is, like, code review and security should be, like, high or max and, like, software engineeringSwyx [00:25:37]: You said recommend mix settings per domain.Thariq Shihipar [00:25:37]: Yeah. I think, like, if you're doing, like, UI or something like that, like low and medium, I think is you're building, like, an API and you want to make sure, like, you cover enough edge cases? And so I think building, like I said, that mental model of, like, how things work across these distributions is, like, yeah, part of the job.Implementation Notes and Decision LogsVibhu [00:25:56]: This is more intuition-driven or eval? Because I'm guessing this would change as you go.Swyx [00:26:00]: He has evals.Thariq Shihipar [00:26:01]: Yeah. So what I did in the blog post is I go over all of the terminal bench evals. So there are, like, 70 problems and I'm show that, like, okay, like, in the security problems it does more. and then I also, like, look at some of the transcripts just in terms of, like, how-- what does it answer, what does it forget or something. And a lot of times, this is another prompting tip I have, is, like, asking it to make decision notes or implementation notes because, in every eval problem that it faces, it thinks about the correct solution, and decides not to do it. it's like, oh, like, here is the answer. What if I did this? And then it's like, oh, probably not? and then keeps going. And this is, like, the majority of the failures, at, like, a higher max level. It's very rare that the model just doesn't know how to do something. If you just have these implementation notes, then you can review and you can be like, “Oh, I want you to do this thing that you didn't do.” The models are getting better at surfacing that overall. Like, I see in the transcripts of Fable 5.1, like, when it does this output, it will call out its decision-making as well. but making this more explicit in the harness is better. And now we're, allowing ways of you modifying the harness so you can, like, add someVibhu [00:27:23]: Ooh.Thariq Shihipar [00:27:24]: Calculate with there. Yeah.Swyx [00:27:25]: Yeah. So I do wanna call out two things that you mentioned that I think exist outside of prompting. One is like, let's, let's call it the prompt that is so important that it shouldn't be in a prompt. It is in Claude.md or Agents.mdThariq Shihipar [00:27:38]: YeahSwyx [00:27:38]: Which is like goals, right? Like your situation, your goals, the things that you want, the thing. and then second of all is the decision log or the experiment log or whatever log of traces that you might want to survive the current session to do those things. Those are, like, externalities that there's no standard. There's no-- It's not like skills. It's not like MCP. There's no standard. It's, it's just like it's a markdown file. first of all, is that right? Is Claude.md going away? You have a documented dislike of, Agents.md, but you're gonna do it?Claude.md, Agents.md, and Model-Specific InstructionsThariq Shihipar [00:28:10]: Yeah. Okay. So Agents.md, yeah, like, we're, we're gonna do it. I think it's just, like, different models are very different from each other? But I realize that it's, like, such a pain to, like, maintain different ones? And yeah, like, as the models get better and better, the floor of how they accomplish the simpler task is better. And so I do think in the limit, Claude.md goes away, and maybe not even, like, that far. Like, I think, like, I think that right now it might be better to start a new project without a Claude.md.Swyx [00:28:44]: Yes.Thariq Shihipar [00:28:44]: I think that, like, maybe if you see very repeated failure modes, you add them to your Claude.md. The really tough thing is that this changes per model. And so, like, if you've added a bunch of failure modes or, like evenSwyx [00:28:57]: So you need Fable MD, you need Opus MD.Thariq Shihipar [00:28:59]: Or well, even Fable 5.1 versus Fable 5.Swyx [00:29:03]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:29:03]: Like, it is annoying. Like, I'm not like,Swyx [00:29:05]: YeahThariq Shihipar [00:29:05]: Like, we don't, like, do this on purpose? It's just, like, how the models work, right? And so, like, maybe, like, Fable 5 had this, like, failure mode that Fable 5.1 doesn't. And if you keep this context, this running log of a bunch of different failure modes, they will probably over constrain Claude? And so this is like. we just added evals plugins for skills.Swyx [00:29:28]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:29:29]: And so now you can eval if a skill is better. I think Daisy on our team did this. And so, yeah, this is like we're trying to work on this. We know it's, like, you still have to spend tokens on it and, like, it's not, it's not perfect, but it's, like, we're trying to help out with this problem.Swyx [00:29:44]: And so, and as far as prompting goes, the one tip I wanna offer is, something I have told people a lot is sufficiently advanced prompting is indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced executive communication. So I've referred to-- This is an executive comms workshop from Heavybit that is the best I've ever seen in my career. And they teach this thing called the SCQA model. Just Google it. It's a, it's a thing. Like, people have done prompting for decades. It's just called executive communication. It's like when one person has to communicate to thousands of people down the org chart, this is what you do. so situation, complication, question and answer, is how you write the memo. but obviously sometimes you don't have the answer, but you can at least list out the SC and Q, and then they have some examples in there. So just leaving breadcrumbs for people if they want to explore.Underrated Prompting Patterns and ELI5Vibhu [00:30:31]: Before we move on, I wanna ask you, any other underrated tips, ways people could get a lot of value from Claude Code that they're not using?Thariq Shihipar [00:30:41]: Yeah, I think a lot of them are in the, this unknowns, like, doc. Like, I give a bunch of example prompts, like, using it for brainstorming, using it to quiz you after. we added this, like, explain it like I'm five skill which is a very short prompt. And it doesn't even say explain it like I'm five. It's like the key word of this prompt is big pictures, few words. like, that's like the main thing. And it is shockingly good? Like, you, like, I think I tweeted about this and it's like /eli5, and, like, you can install it as a plug-in. But yeah, it's, like, way better at just cutting through the BS and being like, yeah, exactly right here. So the diagrams are, like, quite clear. I think one of the things that is true with artifacts is, like, they put too much text in and people are not reading the artifacts? And so, like, this simplifies it a lot more. And, yeah, this came out of, like, just people at Anthropic, like, going through very complicated incidents and being like, “What is happening?”? So, this one I think is great, yeah.Swyx [00:31:47]: My version of this is the, it's like test your understanding. Give you a few choices and then, like, if you get it wrong, you have a mismatch between what you think is happening versus what's happening.Thariq Shihipar [00:31:58]: Yeah. I think this is one of those things that everyone loves talking about, and then very few people really do. Like, I thinkSwyx [00:32:05]: Really helpful.Thariq Shihipar [00:32:07]: Yeah. But most people just don't want to get quizzed about something? Unfortunately, I think this is one of the, like, things that we need to, like.Swyx [00:32:16]: What's the opposite of ask you the question or ask you the question before the thing?Thariq Shihipar [00:32:19]: Yeah.Swyx [00:32:19]: This is after the thing.Thariq Shihipar [00:32:20]: Exactly. Yeah.Vibhu [00:32:21]: It's a good way to stay grounded of, like, do you even know what you're doing, right? The worst case is when people send you slop and they haven't understood what they're asking for or what the output is, and it's like, “Dude, I don't wanna read this. Do you even know what it is?” So, you make it a rule for yourself that before you send stuff, you should at least know what's implemented.Claude Mods: Customizing the HarnessThariq Shihipar [00:32:41]: Yes, but so you could make this a mod and you could build your own mod to, like, make sure you test it. So yeah, you can do that.Swyx [00:32:49]: All right. Let's get right into it. What is Claude Mod, and what is this diagram showing?Thariq Shihipar [00:32:54]: Yeah. Okay, so Claude Mods is you can customize the entire Claude Code harness, and we're going to. If you have requests, we will, like, let you, like, please let us know. We'll add more and more. This works for CLI, it works for desktop. maybe it will work for Claude Tag in the future. I don't know. Like, we're trying to make this very extensible. You can see this reference sheet. I don't want people to get overwhelmed by it? At a high level, you can customize both the execution of the harness, and the UI of the harness. And so, like, you say on that Tetris example from Boris, that's like customizing the UI, right? Like showing, like, Tetris in the game.Thariq Shihipar [00:33:35]: But, like, let's say that you wanted to do this thing where you had. you tested your assumptions or, like, tested your understanding after every project, right? What you would do is you would ask Claude to make this plug-in. It would spin a classifier after every prompt. And so, like, at the end of each turn, you would spin off a sub-agent or, like, a forked agent. A forked agent is, like, maintains the prompt cache, right? So it's like a, like one of those unintuitive things where you can fork and do, like, a little request, and it'll be very cheap because the entire prompt cache is, like, done. And so you can be like, “Has this task been completed?” likeSwyx [00:34:18]: This is how you do BTW and all those.Thariq Shihipar [00:34:20]: Yeah. The underlying forked agent, yes. But so you can, in the f-fork sub-agent, you can say, like, “Has this task been completed? If so, return true.” And then in your hook, or in your, like, plug-in mod, or sorry, like, in the sub-agent probably, you would say, like, “If true, give me a quiz.” give me questions and answers, and then, like, in a JSON format, and then you'd parse it, and then you display above the prompt input, this list of questions, right? And so this is something that's, like, slightly token-intensive because, like, you have to do it after every end of the assistant turn. But it's, like, a lightweight classification, and then you can, like, get this quiz, and then you'll see, like, Claude will always do it for you. You don't need to remember to do it. There are lots of these, like, tips that we've talked about, right, where it's like, oh, implementation notes. You can also add a tool for implementation notes now. And so, like, this tool that I'm adding is, like, register, like, I think assumption is what I'm calling it, but, like, maybe I'll change it around. And this is a mod. And so, like, you give it a register assumption tool, and then it will keep a list. It'll. Every time it does it'll keep a, like, add to the list, and then at the end it will display those assumptions? Another mod I'm working on is a model router. And so, like, internal, like, Claude model routing, right? So it's. This is, I want to say the reason we don't do model routing by default is, like, it's a hard problem? And likeForked Agents, Assumption Tracking, and Model RoutingSwyx [00:35:51]: You will get it wrong.Thariq Shihipar [00:35:52]: Yeah, you, like, yeah, you will, like, accidentally use, like, Fable for a hard problem or Sonnet forSwyx [00:35:57]: Yeah, if you have auto approve, but you don't have auto mode.Thariq Shihipar [00:36:01]: Well, you will have auto. Like, you don't have, like, auto routing or something.Vibhu [00:36:04]: You don't have auto mode for model picker.Thariq Shihipar [00:36:06]: Yeah, exactly. SoVibhu [00:36:07]: I'm getting the rough question of, like, how much do you open this up and how much do people have to think about this? Like, when you talk about prompt caching and building a router, it seems like you could easily build a mod that routes per query, and I'm just killing my plan very fast, right? I guess my question is more so, like, what is, like, a product talk like this look like, right? Who is it for? Is it for power users? Is it everyone should be able to go throughSwyx [00:36:33]: Oh, definitely power users, right?Thariq Shihipar [00:36:35]: Yeah, I think it is power users, but, like, the nature of Claude Code is that so many people are power users? Because it's easy to share things, like you can. Like, one person can make a good model router thing that doesn't break prompt cache all the time, and then you can, like, compose them. Another cool thing about the plug-ins is that they can hook into and compose with each other. And so I have, like, a mod that will, like, create a mode selector at the top, and any plug-ins can register to be a mode. And so, like, the auto router can be a mode, right? Or, like, you can have a mode that's, like, artifact mode, where it's like it primarily talks to you in artifacts. like, you can toggle between plan mode? And so, like, you can create more and more of these modes. But the ability to create modes is in it itself a mod? And so there's a lot of richness here, but we do want to make it fairly easy. We want to be-- make it so that you can just, like, install someone else's. You can ta-- you can chat with Claude and, we'll, like, make sure that it understands the nuances of things like prompt caching and stuff, so it can, like, warn you. This is, like, not extremely complicated behavior for Claude, I think, but we should have just a good skill on how to make mods. and yeah, we'll see how we go. But I do think that this is, like, a preview of, like, mutable software, and, like, how, like, generative software, just like you can customize safely. If enabled, you could customize any piece of software. And I think that more and more apps ideally do something like this?Power Users, Modes, and Mutable SoftwareSwyx [00:38:13]: And by the way, you, we have, you have another cool tweet about how, there's the infinite money button, which is like make your SaaS, consumable by agents. I think mutable software is interesting and, other people have also tried to do it. I think the hurdle comes when you can do everything, then people, users get, tend to get confused. So usually the stuff that works is just like one opinionated flow. This is in the side of less opinionation. It's just like, well, more power to power users. And I think probably unlocked by AI, where, like, you can just prompt for whatever the thing is.Thariq Shihipar [00:38:47]: Yeah, or there can be a skill that gives the opinions?Mods vs. Hooks vs. ArtifactsSwyx [00:38:50]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:38:50]: And then, yeah.Swyx [00:38:51]: So knowing a little bit about, like, TypeScript and build systems and all these things, the closest-- I'm very curious that the team who worked on this, if, I don't know how close you were to them, if they drew any inspiration from build systems like Babel, Webpack, all these, like, old school things. Because it sounds very similar, like the plug-in ecosystem of those things where they can compose with each other.Thariq Shihipar [00:39:11]: Yeah, I'm not deep in the technical details, but I do know it was a collaboration with someone on the Bun team and someone on the Claude Code team.Swyx [00:39:17]: Yeah, it's a build system mecca.Thariq Shihipar [00:39:19]: Yeah. Exactly. It's, it's very exciting. But yeah, like, agents can just do this very complicated like, extensibility into your software now. And so, yeah, like, another reason to, like. If you run a startup, like, you can just prompt Claude and be like, “Hey, like, could we make an extension system? Like, what would that look like?”?Swyx [00:39:37]: Yeah.Swyx [00:39:38]: And I just really wonder, like, you had hooks in the past and plug-ins, all these things. So what specifically will mods be able to do that those things could not do?Thariq Shihipar [00:39:47]: Internally, we were originally calling this function hooks. And so, like, that's, like, gives you a little bit of an idea where, like, hooks register a, like an event to happen and then, like, a script to call. And this inside of the, like, TypeScript runtime is running things. And so, like, you get some benefits of just, like, it has a bunch of things in the Scope with, like, for example, like how many turns is in this conversation, right? Like, how many tokens have been used? Like, et cetera. Like, what are the messages? Things like that. So it has a bunch of messages that can be used. And then it's just, like, a lot more hooks. So we have, like, or a lot of, lot more, like, things you can register on. And then you can do because of the. because it's all happening in process, you can, spawn sub-agents, with four contests and contexts and stuff. And, like, that will return. You can parse the results of those. You can use structured output to like, return them. and then you can modify the UI, which you can never do in hooks. So, yeah.Swyx [00:40:50]: Yeah. Yeah. So modify UI, this is why you showed the Tetris example. Does it also ex-extend to artifacts? I assume it does.Thariq Shihipar [00:40:57]: You-- Like, artifacts are like a different way of customizing it. like, you can definitely. One of the mods I'm working on is, like, this dashboard mod, which will, like, prompt Claude to maintain a dashboard, that's an artifact. But they're like, slightly orthogonal, or not orthogonal. They compose with each other in different ways. Like, mods are, like, a little bit more, like, in your Claude Code harness, changing the agent loop? And, like, the UI is, like, an added benefit. and then artifacts are just like you want to, see things at a high level, very inter- highly interactive. like, the affordances can be a lot bigger than, like a TUI or even in our desktop.Next Steps, Supervisors, and Persistent GuidanceVibhu [00:41:40]: I'm guessing you'll have a good blog post on the differences, because right now you can also, make a loop that outputs to an artifact that's an interactive dashboard, but you can also do it with a mod. There's just some thinking about making a hacking on a harness when we don't know much about the harness, right?Thariq Shihipar [00:42:00]: Well, something I'm excited about with mods is, like, there's so much things with Claude Code that you just have to remember? You're like, “Oh, like, let me do this, and then let me call the dashboard skill that does the loop,” and things like that. And, or like, “Let me test my assumptions afterwards.” And I think, like, if you do all of these things using these little classifiers and stuff, and you're like, “These are the things I care about. This is what I want to do,” you can, like. You don't have to remember as much. One more, like, mod I'm working on is a next steps mod thatSwyx [00:42:28]: I have-- I was gonna say, I have a next step skill. I always run next steps.Thariq Shihipar [00:42:32]: And does it have access to your skills? Like, this is one of those things where I'm like.Swyx [00:42:37]: I think so.Thariq Shihipar [00:42:38]: Okay. Yeah, probablyVibhu [00:42:39]: Do skills need specific access toThariq Shihipar [00:42:41]: Well, I think there'sSwyx [00:42:41]: Don't they always haveThariq Shihipar [00:42:42]: I think there's, like, specific prompting, I guess, to, like, know your skills. Like I think Claude forgets them sometimes throughout, like, the thing. But anyways, the idea of, like, yeah, next steps that also are like, “Oh, hey, this has happened. Use the explain skill to explain to you what happened because this seems, like, quite complex,”? Or, like, yeah, “Use your unknown skill. It looks like you are, like, asking the model to, like, iterate on these small changes. It seems like you could prompt better.” like, “What if you did this?” Right? So, I think, yeah, like spending more compute there. Yeah.Swyx [00:43:20]: And it should always come out as multiple choice. we have, I haveVibhu [00:43:23]: We have his skill.Swyx [00:43:24]: My next step skill is like this.Thariq Shihipar [00:43:26]: Okay, perfect. Yeah.Swyx [00:43:27]: You can steal it.Thariq Shihipar [00:43:28]: Yeah.Swyx [00:43:29]: Like, but like, for me, it's all-- I think models really always need to be reminded, what are you trying to do here?Thariq Shihipar [00:43:35]: Yeah.Swyx [00:43:35]: Look at the whole transcript and go like, oh, was this original goal? Did your solution solve it? Were you lazy? If you're lazy, maybe there's a reason. Maybe you needed approval from me. Maybe you needed, there's two things you wanna suggest. So it's, it's a little bit like the modification of the ask user question or interview me skill. so it's next steps.Thariq Shihipar [00:43:55]: Yeah, exactly. And again, the benefit of doing it with mods is you can do it as a fork sub-agent, and so it doesn't remain in the context afterwards. So you have this, like, idea of like, okay, the model is doing its execution and you have this almost like supervisor, like, that is like making sure that you can do like the next steps well. So yeah.Swyx [00:44:15]: Yes. I do have two panels and like I often try to have a supervisor thing, keep the high-level context and then the implementationThariq Shihipar [00:44:21]: YeahSwyx [00:44:22]: Detail in another agent.Vibhu [00:44:23]: I feel like a lot of this abstracts away as models change? The, like, half an hour ago you said bitter lesson of harness engineeringThe Bitter Lesson of Harness EngineeringThariq Shihipar [00:44:31]: YeahVibhu [00:44:31]: And we're on the other extreme right now, I feel.Swyx [00:44:33]: Well, so yeah, exactly. If everything's customizable, what is Claude Code, right?Thariq Shihipar [00:44:37]: Yeah.Swyx [00:44:37]: And which I talked to you about last night.Thariq Shihipar [00:44:40]: Yeah, I think that this is. I think the bitter lesson is unintuitive? In terms of like. Also, like we're misusing a little bit of the bitter lesson here where it's like, it's more about like scaling and compute and stuff. But like, I think there is something where it's just like. I think I use it as an approximation here to say that harnesses go out of date very quickly? And like how, but how they change is unintuitive? And so like the big obvious example is like from chat to like agents where you had to give them entirely new tools, right? But like, I think this new version of like, oh, it can modify its own harness, right? This is like, an own harness loop is like a way of using its capabilities, right? Or like it can build an artifact. And like, I think the way I think about it is like the models have more and more intelligence, and they're like so much more intelligent now than like the average software engineering task. Like, you look at the like terminal bench ones and they're like solve like the Jacobian conjecture. Not really, but like, it's like they're, they're quite complex. Like, I would not have been able to do this really as a software engineer.Swyx [00:45:42]: And you said TB4 or TB2?Thariq Shihipar [00:45:43]: TB3. TB3.Swyx [00:45:44]: TB3.Thariq Shihipar [00:45:44]: Yeah. They're quite complex, but the goal is still to deliver user value, right? And like you said, there's like this infinite space of things to do. And so the ways like you spend compute are to keep the user in the loop and make sure that like you're getting to the right decision in the end of the day and like the right output. And artifacts and mods are this way of like spending that intelligence. and I think that's like, yeah, the next step. And so, yeah, I think Claude Code is like, has the core things of agent loop which are, have gotten more complicated. It's like, it needs a sandbox to operate safely. It needs auto mode to like make sure like the permissionsVibhu [00:46:21]: Approvals.Thariq Shihipar [00:46:21]: Yeah, approvals. it needs computer use and MCPs and like all of these like ways of accessing your data, and it needs web search and web fetch. And like, so the-- as the models can do more and more, the core harness has to be like quite complex and very secure. But then like how you interact with it can change quite a lot.Vibhu [00:46:42]: What other harness engineering best practices have you, from the Claude Code team itself? I feel like, there was a phase of plan mode, which is not as used. We now have auto mode. at a point you cut the majority of the system prompt, you got rid of examples. What other best practices are there for harness engineering?Core Harness Primitives and Managed AgentsThariq Shihipar [00:47:02]: I think there is like a forking path where at some point, eventually, yes, the model will just be able to like vibe code the exact version of Claude Code, even describing all this complexity that I've talked about, right? Like auto mode and computer use and stuff. Eventually, the models will just be able to do that in one shot. But I think they can one shot simpler harnesses? And so like, I think some people. Sometimes you don't need this full, like if you don't need computer use or like all this like more complicated stuff. I think before we, you had to use things like the agent SDK, which was like Claude Code wrapped, in order to like. And I would, like suggest people do that because there was so much complexity into building a harness. And now as that's got more abstracted, we have like, Claude managed agents, which lets you have that complexity, but still like, right, like a very bare bones like harness that's scoped to your task. Yeah, I think there's like this barbell effect where like for like very complex, for like coding task and like these like complex things, you should use our harness. And then for like a lot of like simpler or like, more domain-specific things, you can build your own harness because Claude has gotten better at building harnesses, and we have these harness primitives like managed agents. So yeah.Swyx [00:48:18]: Yeah. Is there a general progression? Let's say chapter one was ultra code dynamic workflows, then chapter two was cloud mods. Where is this going?Swyx [00:48:29]: Where you're, you're, you can customize the thing on demand.Thariq Shihipar [00:48:36]: Yeah. I do think that like this evolution of projects and like artifacts and splitting out like brain and hands and, surfaces is like where things are going more. And like, I think it's like not all quite there. partially it's like a, it's just like more token expensive? And like, I think likeProjects, Local Hands, and Cloud-to-Local HandoffsSwyx [00:48:59]: Why would projects be more token expensive? I understand mods would be slightly more token expensive. No, not something I'm worried about.Thariq Shihipar [00:49:06]: Yeah.Swyx [00:49:06]: But whatThariq Shihipar [00:49:07]: You're asking Claude to do. It's like creating loops. Like you're asking Claude to do more work for you. And so like it's managing the sub-agents and reviewing it, versus where you would be doing that work normally. And so that's like gonna be a little bit more intensive, like. Outputting to an artifact is gonna be a little bit more token-intensive than, like, outputting normally. I don't think it's too much more, but like, it's like combining all of these together well, like I think we're, we're still working on like local hands and things like that, I think is like, yeah, where things are headed, yeah.Swyx [00:49:37]: Yeah. Claude and local is, handoff is very interesting. I was thinking about this as reverse cloud remote.Thariq Shihipar [00:49:44]: Yeah.Swyx [00:49:45]: Because it's like remote, it's you're handing off to cloud, but here the cloud is handing off to local, right?Thariq Shihipar [00:49:49]: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, remote control is also another way of doing it. And I do want to say this is like how I think about it and like what the things that I'm most excited about this, but like there are, just like lots of different ways to work with Claude. Like some people use remote control a lot, some people use Claude Code on the web a lot. Obviously, like at Anthropic, we use Claude Tag a lot, and like what's great about Claude Tag is we set up all this stuff for our own execution. And I do think if you're an enterprise, that's still the best way to go. but if you're like an individual, Projects is this way of like, getting some of that like niceness of Tag, which has like that like supervising agent and yeah, adding artifacts and stuff, but like without having that whole like admin setup. And so there will be many ways to use Claude, I think. I think it's probably not just one like single.Claude Tag as an Organizational HarnessSwyx [00:50:36]: You had the multiplayer thing here. Let's, let's just check in on Claude Tag. it's been about two-plus months. Lots of, public, adoption and trying it out.Thariq Shihipar [00:50:45]: Yeah.Swyx [00:50:45]: What's new? What's, what have you found since the launch?Thariq Shihipar [00:50:49]: Like, Claude Tag is how we useSwyx [00:50:51]: It's like 80% of your
This week on Crime, Cocktails, & BS, we're covering a LOT, from breaking true-crime updates to the Bravo drama we can't stop talking about.
Ep.174The How: Building Knowledge That Makes Readers Stronger (with Daniel Willingham)Hey, no BS besties. Decoding gets kids in the door, but it doesn't carry them through a text. Comprehension depends on what readers already know about the world, and that knowledge doesn't build itself.In this episode, I'm joined by Daniel Willingham, cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of The Reading Mind and Why Don't Students Like School? Last time we dug into the research behind why knowledge matters so much for reading. Today is all about the how: what building knowledge actually looks like in a real classroom, with real kids and real time limits.In this episode:Why strong decoders can still struggle to understand what they readHow background knowledge shapes comprehensionWhat knowledge building looks like in daily instructionHow to connect texts and topics so learning sticksWhere teachers can start tomorrow without overhauling everythingGo deeper: Willingham's article "Rediscovering Knowledge as the Key to Reading" in Education Next (2026): https://www.educationnext.org/rediscovering-knowledge-as-the-key-to-reading/This episode is sponsored by Decodify. Unlock the code. Own the word. The Literacy View listeners get an exclusive 5% off. Learn more at decodifylearning.comListen and watch: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Amazon MusicConnect with The Literacy View: Email: Judy@TheLiteracyView.com Join our Facebook community of educators talking evidence-based literacyhttps://www.facebook.com/share/g/1HsQFCCp4R/?mibextid=wwXIfrThe Literacy View. Real Teachers. Unbiased. Unafraid.Send us Fan MailOfficial Sponsor of this episode!
Lance, Johan, and Spencer Martin (aka The Professor) break down Brandon McNulty's incredible win to take the first American world road title since Lance's title 33 years ago, diving into how McNulty used a moment of hesitation to launch a long-range solo move to foil the higher-profile favorites behind. They debate USA's newfound cycling superiority, what happened to the Belgian squad, and whether this win will kick off a new era for the US talent in the race, which put three riders inside the top ten. Become a WEDŪ Member Today to Unlock VIP Access & Benefits: https://access.wedu.team Blueprint: Science-backed, precision-dosed, no BS. For a limited time only, our listeners get 20% off + free shipping at https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com by using code THEMOVE at checkout. That's code THEMOVE at https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com for 20% off. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. PLEASE support our show and tell them our show sent you. AG1: For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at https://DRINKAG1.com/THEMOVE MOD: Visit https://MOD.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order PLUS free shipping with promo code THEMOVE. Odoo: Stop paying for missing pieces. Go to https://Odoo.com Chubbies: For a limited time, Chubbies is giving our viewers $20 off your full price purchase with our code THEMOVE at https://chubbiesshorts.com and that INCLUDES the NFL by Chubbies collection. Support our show and tell them we sent you! Stand out from the crowd and Level up your gameday wardrobe with Chubbies. Fatty15: Fatty15 is on a mission to support Healthy Aging for All, including all ages and stages of life. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to https://fatty15.com/THEMOVE and using code THEMOVE at checkout.
George Santos has been called a liar, a fraud, a fabulist, a convicted felon—and, for a while there, a United States Congressman. Now he's at Club Random with Bill Maher, which feels about right! Santos talks about the lies that made him famous, finally admits the college and volleyball stories were complete BS, and explains how campaign finance crimes landed him in federal prison. He takes Bill inside life behind bars, including his time in solitary confinement. Bill, naturally, isn't letting him off that easily. The two battle over which parts of the George Santos story are actually true, whether he's learned anything, and why his explanations somehow keep creating more questions. They get into Trump, gay Republicans, cancel culture, political tribalism, the infamous drag photos, his family history, and what exactly comes next for George Santos. Bill has an idea: Hollywood. After all, he's already got the résumé for playing George Santos. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1 Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher's Substack: https://billmaher.substack.com Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: https://bit.ly/ClubRandom Support our advertisers: Head to https://ZBiotics.com/RANDOM, code RANDOM for fifteen percent off your first order. For a limited time only our listeners get ten percent off your order with our exclusive link. Just head to https://hexclad.com/RANDOM Go to https://120Life.com and use my code RANDOM for 20% off. Try it risk-free for two weeks. Chapter. The only Medicare advisors that compare every plan out there: 984-217-3643 Buy Club Random Merch: https://clubrandom.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM In Club Random, Bill Maher unleashes his comedic wit on an unpredictable lineup – from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Quentin Tarantino and Neil deGrasse Tyson – digging into everything but politics. It's Maher in his familiar element: one-on-one vibes, unfiltered laughs, and the kind of freewheeling banter only he can deliver. ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last 23 years on HBO's “Real Time,” Maher's combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 41 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher's uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written six bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect's Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass", and most recently "What This Comedian Said Will Shock You". FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Angela Betancourt, founder of Betancourt Group, a strategic communications and marketing agency that helps climate focused organisations, sustainability innovators, and mission driven brands turn complex ideas into compelling stories that build visibility, trust, and engagement.Through strategic communications, media relations, thought leadership, and integrated marketing campaigns, Angela helps founders and organisations amplify their impact and connect with the audiences that matter most.Now, Angela's journey balancing entrepreneurship, motherhood, and Air Force Reserve duties demonstrates what it really looks like to make bold moves before you feel fully ready.And while navigating the fast changing world of media and communications, she's helping purpose driven brands share stories that create meaningful environmental and social impact.Here's where to find more:Business website: https://groupbetancourt.com/ Business LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/betancourtgroup/?viewAsMember=true________________________________________________Welcome to The Unforget Yourself Show where we use the power of woo and the proof of science to help you identify your blind spots, and get over your own bullshit so that you can do the fucking thing you ACTUALLY want to do!We're Mark and Katie, the founders of Unforget Yourself and the creators of the Unforget Yourself System and on this podcast, we're here to share REAL conversations about what goes on inside the heart and minds of those brave and crazy enough to start their own business. From the accidental entrepreneur to the laser-focused CEO, we find out how they got to where they are today, not by hearing the go-to story of their success, but talking about how we all have our own BS to deal with and it's through facing ourselves that we find a way to do the fucking thing.Along the way, we hope to show you that YOU are the most important asset in your business (and your life - duh!). Being a business owner is tough! With vulnerability and humor, we get to the real story behind their success and show you that you're not alone._____________________Find all our links to all the things like the socials, how to work with us and how to apply to be on the podcast here:https://linktr.ee/unforgetyourself
Jordan is taking us is eastern europe and Houska Castle to talk about demons and other fun things. What is actual time travel because a lot of people are claiming some BS?! The sykesville monster and the Sykesville Asylum.
► Ready to go deeper and work with Randy directly:https://randygage.com/breakthroughu/► Prefer audio? Get the podcast (and exclusive content):https://randygage.com/podcastEverything is getting more expensive. Credit card debt is climbing. Student loans are crushing people. And an entire generation is being told the economic system is stacked against them. What if they're looking at it completely wrong? In this episode of Revenue Rascals, Randy joins host Michelle for a conversation about entrepreneurship, wealth creation, AI, and why he believes this could actually be one of the greatest times in human history to build extraordinary wealthTechnology has completely changed the scale of what's possible. Randy argues that the same forces creating uncertainty and disruption are also creating opportunities previous generations couldn't have imagined. The question is whether you recognize what's happening and position yourself to take advantage of it. In this episode: • Why today's economy can look terrible while creating extraordinary opportunities • How AI and technology are changing the economics of entrepreneurship • Why scale is fundamentally different in the digital age • The massive opportunity Randy sees for younger generations • Why social media and AI are reshaping how Gen Z thinks about success and wealth • Why Randy believes it may be easier today to build massive wealth than ever beforeThe old rules of wealth creation are changing. For the people who understand the scale of what's happening with technology and AI, this might not be the worst time to build wealth. It might be the opportunity of a lifetime. Show NotesBreakthrough U Entrepreneur Accelerator Program ►https://randygage.com/breakthroughu/ Seven Elements of an Abundant Life Free PDF ►https://randygage.com/ Radical Rebirth ► https://link.amazon/B0hebsNmi Wealth Without Apology ►https://amzn.to/49zfm86 Revenue Rascals ► https://revenuerascals.com/scaleleanWho is This Guy?Randy isn't some influencer who listened to a couple podcastsand started posting hot takes. He's the streetwise founder of Prosperity Factory, Inc., who has been building and scaling businesses for more than 40 years. Randy has authored 16 bestselling books, translated into 25+languages, including his latest—Wealth Without Apology—and spoken to more than 2 million people across 50 countries. He's been inducted into both the Speaker Hall of Fame and Direct Selling Hall of Fame.But none of that is why people follow him.They follow him because he calls BS…and says what most people are too afraid to admit. When he's not rocking the stage or building his next project, you'll probably find him coaching a softball team somewhere.Connect with Randy:Instagram: randy_gage Twitter: randy_gage Facebook: randygage
Send us Fan MailIn another "quickfire" answer to a question. This one comes up regularly these days;Can I take GLP-1s after birth? Mounjaro, Wegovy, Ozempic etc are absolutely everywhere right now and, with the pressure on women to get that "baby weight" back off ASAP, it's no wonder some of you might be considering taking one of these medications...but should you?Is it safe? (For you and the baby)What are the issues with it?Is there transference between the mother and the baby via breast milk?Why are some sellers recommending waiting 3-6 months?And why I personally believe that the weight should be MUCH longer.If you have any questions you want answered, just send an email to peter@healthypostnatalbody.com or link the little "fan mail" link.As always; HPNB still only has 5 billing cycles.So this means that you not only get 3 months FREE access, no obligation! BUT, if you decide you want to do the rest of the program, after only 5 months of paying $10/£8 a month you now get FREE LIFE TIME ACCESS! That's $50 max spend, in case you were wondering.Though I'm not terribly active on Instagram and Facebook you can follow us there. I am however active on Threads so find me there! And, of course, you can always find us on our YouTube channel if you like your podcast in video form :) Visit healthypostnatalbody.com and get 3 months completely FREE access. No sales, no commitment, no BS. Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions, comments or want to suggest a guest/topic
Suck It Up is Tactile Games' new eat-and-grow hole game, and three months after soft launch it's doing ~$30K a day in IAP — about to overtake Lily's Garden as the Danish studio's biggest title (and Lily's Garden made well over half a billion). Matej Lančarič, Jakub Remiar, and Felix Braberg walk the game: a Hole 'Em All-style timed core with the smart differentiators (live animals that jump and hide in levels, a level-based "album" of collectible objectives, and an untimed Zen Garden mode that conveniently makes the "no timer, no stress" creatives true), then the category detective work — the whole thing traces back to Donut County's 2017 Steam trailer, which Voodoo copied into Hole.io (still 300K downloads a day today after a revival), and now Hole 'Em All, Moon Active's Hole Stars, ironSource's Holey 3D, Grand Games' Jelly Hole, and a spiky Hong Kong "Hole Busters" are all fighting for it. Felix's ad-mon read: interstitials only from level 35, rewarded from level 50, eight placements, ad revenue likely under 15% — a deliberate IAP-first, retention-first setup (D1 probably north of 50%, 36 minutes a day). ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Suck It Up — Tactile's new hole game02:40 The core — timed levels, live animals, and the Zen Garden "no stress" mode06:40 Album, no-ads pack & the slim feature set09:20 The numbers — $30K/day, about to pass Lily's Garden11:00 The category — from Donut County's trailer to Hole.io's 300K/day14:50 Who's in the hole race — Hole 'Em All, Moon Active, ironSource, Hole Busters19:40 Ad-mon — interstitials at 35, rewarded at 50, retention play24:30 The UA — 60 playables, Unity works, and Facebook is goneThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.- Scale fast- Keep your shares- Drawdown only as needed- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investorsFor an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej LancaricJoin our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultanthttps://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultanthttps://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultanthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me
Deepak Saini, who helps successful founders and executives to stay younger, sharper, and more resilient so they can scale their legacy without burning out.Through his T.I.I.M.E Methodology, Deepak helps high-impact leaders understand their numbers, optimise their energy, strengthen their inner game, and build the health systems needed to perform at their best.Now, Deepak's own journey into this work was shaped by the powerful lesson that “not taking care of himself” is what led him to build the business he has today.And while juggling the demands of business, technology, clients, and growth, he's helping leaders protect the very health, clarity, and vitality that their success depends on.Here's where to find more:https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepak-saini-aa486215a/ https://www.instagram.com/dsainihealth/ https://www.facebook.com/deepak.saini.848981 https://deepaksainihealth.com/________________________________________________Welcome to The Unforget Yourself Show where we use the power of woo and the proof of science to help you identify your blind spots, and get over your own bullshit so that you can do the fucking thing you ACTUALLY want to do!We're Mark and Katie, the founders of Unforget Yourself and the creators of the Unforget Yourself System and on this podcast, we're here to share REAL conversations about what goes on inside the heart and minds of those brave and crazy enough to start their own business. From the accidental entrepreneur to the laser-focused CEO, we find out how they got to where they are today, not by hearing the go-to story of their success, but talking about how we all have our own BS to deal with and it's through facing ourselves that we find a way to do the fucking thing.Along the way, we hope to show you that YOU are the most important asset in your business (and your life - duh!). Being a business owner is tough! With vulnerability and humor, we get to the real story behind their success and show you that you're not alone._____________________Find all our links to all the things like the socials, how to work with us and how to apply to be on the podcast here:https://linktr.ee/unforgetyourself
Gen X Jace is back on the program. He brings us up to date on his home state of Texas. Then we venture into the rest of the BS. Let's get into it.
Gen X Jace is back on the program. He brings us up to date on his home state of Texas. Then we venture into the rest of the BS. Let's get into it.
Our LOST journey officially begins. Join us as we discuss the Boone of Harrison's family, an incredible opening act, and one of the best Pilots ever made. It's LOST S1E1: Pilot (Part 1)! IG, BS & FB: @boozeandbuffy Email: boozeandbuffy@gmail.com Art Credit: Mark David Corley Music Credit: Grace Robertson
#Bàigiảng của linh mục #GBPhươngĐìnhToại (MI) trong #thánhlễ Chúa nhật XXVI Thường niên năm A, cử hành lúc 19:00 ngày 20-9-2026 tại Nhà thờ Chính Tòa Đức Bà Sài Gòn
Robert Misheloff, founder of Smarter Finance USA, a business financing advisory company that helps small business owners, contractors, fleet operators, and commercial sellers make smarter and safer financing decisions.Through equipment and commercial vehicle financing education and advisory support, Robert helps clients compare offers, understand the true cost behind financing deals, and avoid costly mistakes like hidden fees, misleading terms, and deposit scams.Now, Robert's journey from working closely with equipment finance brands for more than a decade to launching a mission-driven business demonstrates the power of turning industry frustration into meaningful change.And while helping business owners navigate high-pressure financial decisions with greater clarity and confidence, he's also challenging long-standing industry practices by bringing more transparency and trust into the financing space.Here's where to find more:www.smarterfinanceusa.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-misheloff/________________________________________________Welcome to The Unforget Yourself Show where we use the power of woo and the proof of science to help you identify your blind spots, and get over your own bullshit so that you can do the fucking thing you ACTUALLY want to do!We're Mark and Katie, the founders of Unforget Yourself and the creators of the Unforget Yourself System and on this podcast, we're here to share REAL conversations about what goes on inside the heart and minds of those brave and crazy enough to start their own business. From the accidental entrepreneur to the laser-focused CEO, we find out how they got to where they are today, not by hearing the go-to story of their success, but talking about how we all have our own BS to deal with and it's through facing ourselves that we find a way to do the fucking thing.Along the way, we hope to show you that YOU are the most important asset in your business (and your life - duh!). Being a business owner is tough! With vulnerability and humor, we get to the real story behind their success and show you that you're not alone._____________________Find all our links to all the things like the socials, how to work with us and how to apply to be on the podcast here:https://linktr.ee/unforgetyourself
Welcome to the Hyperspace Heroes Podcast, where 3 Gen 1 Star Wars fans are just trying to make their way in the Star Wars podcast universe. HHP EP 186 has all three BS boy-yos back to talk the Wars and wherever the convo goes from there. We wrap up with Collection Corner and SW Dad Joke of the Week. Opening trivia game courtesy of Star Wars Daily.Hyperspace Heroes Podcast does weekly livestreams on Thursday nights at 8pm eastern. Audio versions are posted on all the pod catchers the following Mondays. You can find all of our links for livestreams, podcasts and social media athttps://beacons.ai/brownsquadronIntro/Outro Music: Strange Signal (Instrumental) HoliznaCCO/ Licensed under CCO 1.0 Universal License https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcodeSource: Free Music Archive https://freemusicarchive.org/music/holiznacc0/straight-to-vhs/strange-signal/Support HoliznaCCO via hisPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/HoliznaBandcamp: https://holiznaroyaltyfree.bandcamp.com/Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/HoliznaVoice Over Work in Intro/Outro Performed by Milz Bowden & Henri GageYou can find Milz & Henri at https://youtube.com/@video4humans
Johan Bruyneel and Spencer Martin preview Sunday's World Championships road race, going through the pre-race favorites and course details before picking their winners. They discuss and debate how the race will play out, who will be able to take advantage of the Pogačar-less field, and how Belgium will balance the dual ambitions of Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert. Become a WEDŪ Member Today to Unlock VIP Access & Benefits: https://access.wedu.team Orion Sleep: Right now, Orion is offering our listeners 15% off at https://ORIONSLEEP.com/THEMOVE Rugiet Men: Over one hundred fifty thousand men have already made the switch to Rugiet. Getting started is simple. Rugiet connects you with a board-certified doctor online and your treatment gets shipped discreetly to your door. For a limited time only, head to https://Rugiet.com/THEMOVE to get 15% off your order. Square: Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at https://square.com/go/themove! #squarepod Caldera Lab: A small habit with big results. Go to https://CalderaLab.com/THEMOVE and use code THEMOVE for 20% off your first order. Blueprint: Science-backed, precision-dosed, no BS. For a limited time only, our listeners get 20% off + free shipping at https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com by using code THEMOVE at checkout. That's code THEMOVE at https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com for 20% off. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. PLEASE support our show and tell them our show sent you.
Ryan Duncan, entrepreneur, investor, who helps travellers, couples, and health-conscious individuals create richer lives through hospitality, regenerative living, and wellness-focused businesses.Through luxury event venues, short-term rentals, regenerative farming, and health education, Ryan has built a portfolio centred around freedom, authenticity, and creating meaningful experiences for others.Now, Ryan's journey from overcoming health challenges and transforming his lifestyle through food-as-medicine to building businesses across Florida, Costa Rica, and beyond demonstrates the power of taking ownership of your health, your choices, and your future.And while learning to step out from behind the scenes and share a story he has spent decades quietly building, he continues to show that true wealth is measured not just by financial success, but by faith, family, freedom, and time well spent.Here's where to find more:Facebook (personal): https://www.facebook.com/ryan.duncan.7505 Instagram (Jubilee Organics): @jubileeorganics The estate: https://www.instagram.com/thejubileeestate/ Estate site: https://www.jubileeestate.com/ Instagram (book): @thebloodlinering Book on Amazon: https://a.co/d/056ffw8k Zinzino: https://www.zinzino.com/site/ca/en-ca/________________________________________________Welcome to The Unforget Yourself Show where we use the power of woo and the proof of science to help you identify your blind spots, and get over your own bullshit so that you can do the fucking thing you ACTUALLY want to do!We're Mark and Katie, the founders of Unforget Yourself and the creators of the Unforget Yourself System and on this podcast, we're here to share REAL conversations about what goes on inside the heart and minds of those brave and crazy enough to start their own business. From the accidental entrepreneur to the laser-focused CEO, we find out how they got to where they are today, not by hearing the go-to story of their success, but talking about how we all have our own BS to deal with and it's through facing ourselves that we find a way to do the fucking thing.Along the way, we hope to show you that YOU are the most important asset in your business (and your life - duh!). Being a business owner is tough! With vulnerability and humor, we get to the real story behind their success and show you that you're not alone._____________________Find all our links to all the things like the socials, how to work with us and how to apply to be on the podcast here:https://linktr.ee/unforgetyourself
Reformed Brotherhood | Sound Doctrine, Systematic Theology, and Brotherly Love
In episode 506 of the Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb wade deep into one of Luke's most arresting parables — the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13–21). What begins as a story about a man with a bumper crop and an ambitious barn-building plan quickly unfolds into a penetrating diagnosis of the human heart. The hosts argue that this parable is not primarily about financial planning or the dangers of wealth per se, but about the fundamental theological posture of the creature before the Creator. Framed by two parallel warnings — against covetousness and against anxiety — the parable exposes what happens when a soul tries to find its ultimate rest in the abundance of earthly things rather than in God himself. Rich in biblical theology, literary analysis, and pastoral application, this episode rewards careful listening. Key Takeaways The parable is framed by an inclusio — the warning against covetousness (v. 15) and the command against anxiety (v. 22) are parallel statements that reveal the parable's true subject: the misplacement of ultimate trust, whether in abundance or in the lack of it. The man's sin is not his wealth or his planning — Scripture commends prudence and does not condemn the accumulation of resources. What condemns this man is his complete failure to acknowledge God as the giver of the harvest or to consider any obligation beyond self-satisfaction. The soul-talk is theologically and culturally shocking — In the ancient world, deliberating entirely within oneself, speaking to one's own soul, would have registered as a form of insanity. The Greek construction itself strains to articulate the concept, underscoring how deeply abnormal it is to reason about life without God. The repetition of first-person pronouns is not incidental — "My crops, my barns, my grain, my goods" — five times in three verses. This is not poor stewardship; it is the theological posture of self-ownership, a categorical denial of creaturely dependence on the Creator. God's interruption in verse 20 is itself a theological statement — No private counsel is truly private. God, the judge of all the earth, hears every deliberation of the heart. His use of the word "fool" invokes the full weight of biblical wisdom literature: the one who says in his heart, "There is no God." The contrast is not wealth versus poverty, but two objects of trust — To be rich toward God means holding earthly goods with an open hand, whether one is wealthy or poor. Both the covetous rich and the anxiety-ridden poor are addressed by this parable, and both are called to the same posture of dependence on God. True productivity, like true wealth, is impossible without God — Drawing a thread to Jesse's affirmation of Redeeming Your Time by Jordan Raynor, the hosts note that one cannot rightly use wealth, time, or any other gift without first knowing and trusting the Giver. Key Concepts The Inclusio: Covetousness and Anxiety Are the Same Disease One of the most illuminating structural observations in this episode is Tony's identification of the literary inclusio surrounding the parable. Before the parable, Christ warns: "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (Luke 12:15). After the parable, he turns to his disciples and says: "Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing" (Luke 12:22–23). These are not two separate concerns — they are the same spiritual disease expressed at opposite ends of the economic spectrum. The man who grasps for more and the man who lies awake worrying about having enough are both making the same fundamental error: they are finding, or attempting to find, their life's ultimate security in the material rather than in God. Autonomous Inner Counsel: The Insanity of Reasoning Without God When the rich man in the parable "reasoned to himself" and then spoke directly to his own soul, Jesus was not simply describing a man thinking through a logistical problem. He was depicting, in vivid and culturally jarring terms, the posture of the natural man before God — a man who, in the moment of his greatest blessing, seals himself off from the Creator entirely. The hosts note that in the ancient world, this kind of internal, autonomous deliberation would have registered as strange, even mad. The man does not consult Scripture, neighbor, elder, or God. He speaks only to himself. This is, as Jesse frames it, "the soliloquy of a completely autonomous man" — the pattern of Adam and Eve in the garden, reasoning about the world as though they were its own final authority. The folly is not that he thought about what to do with his harvest. The folly is that God was nowhere in the deliberation. Rich Toward God: The Gospel Punchline of the Parable The parable's final line — "So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God" — is not merely a moral verdict. It is a gospel invitation. Tony is careful to point out that verse 21 does not condemn the act of storing up treasure in itself; it condemns storing up treasure for oneself and not being rich toward God. The contrast is between two orientations of the whole person. To be rich toward God is not primarily about giving money to the church, though generosity is surely implied. It is about recognizing that in Christ, the believer already possesses the only treasure that cannot corrode, be stolen, or be left behind at death. The soul that has been given Christ has been given everything. The soul that has only its barns has nothing — and one night, God will make that plain. Memorable Quotes He speaks to his own soul as though the soul — which is like the very seat of a person's relationship with God — could be satisfied by grain. — Jesse Schwamb Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. That's the thesis statement of this parable. So the contrast is: what does life consist in? It consists in richness toward God. — Tony Arsenal This parable confronts every hearer, regardless of net worth, with a single diagnostic question: where has my soul quietly gone to find its rest? — Jesse Schwamb Full Transcript [00:00:57] Welcome to episode [00:01:00] 506 of the Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse. [00:01:04] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony, and this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey, brother. [00:01:09] Jesse Schwamb: Hey, brother. So on this episode, we're diving right back into the parables. We're gonna be in Luke chapter 12, and it's the parable of the rich fool, which is the story basically of a guy who has a bumper harvest, looks at his overflowing barns, and then thinks, "You know what this situation calls for? [00:01:28] More barns." Not a single thought given to his neighbors, to worship, to God who sent the rain in the first place, just barns. Bigger, better, badder barns [00:01:38] Tony Arsenal: Battlestar Galactica. That's a lot of Bs. That's some good alliteration, though. [00:01:44] Jesse Schwamb: I thought you'd enjoy that. And Jesus has something to say about this. It's for all of us, actually, and it might not be the thing you expect, but we're gonna talk about all that stuff. [00:01:52] Affirmations and Denials Setup [00:01:52] Jesse Schwamb: But of course, first, here's what everybody needs to do. Gather your loved ones around, get your hearts and your snacks together, 'cause it's [00:02:00] once again time to set forth in an orderly and confessional manner our considered judgments on the things of this world. It's time for affirmations and denials, that part of our conversation where we either affirm something by saying we like it, we enjoy it, it's great, or in contrast, we deny against something that just isn't so good. [00:02:18] So Tony, it's time for your doctrinal statements. Are you affirming with something or denying against something on our episode? [00:02:26] Tony Arsenal: I don't know about a, I don't know about a doctrinal statement, but I'm affirming with something. [00:02:29] Jesse Schwamb: Okay. [00:02:29] Tony's Baked Pasta Win [00:02:29] Tony Arsenal: So you and I have talked before about how much we love the slow cooker meals. [00:02:33] Yes. And, uh, this isn't a slow cooker meal, uh, affirmation, but it is a food recommendation. Um, I've been making this baked pasta, this baked spaghetti dish, that is just so delicious. And the reason it works really well for our family is first, the kids love it, which is, uh, r- rare these days. We- With a two and a, a two-year-old and a four-and-a-half-year-old, they can be very, very selective about what they eat. [00:02:57] This is a consistent winner. Um, but also, like, [00:03:00] the amount that the recipe makes will do lunches and leftover dinners for all four of us for several days. So it's a super simple recipe. I'm actually, this might be a Reformed Brotherhood first, but I'm gonna put it in the show notes. I'm gonna put the recipe in the show notes. [00:03:13] Mm-hmm. And, uh, it's super simple. You just cook up 16 ounces of, you know, pasta. I did, uh, it's calls for spaghetti, but with toddlers it's a little easier if you do something like, um, like elbow noodles or I did bow ties tonight 'cause it was kinda fun and I could be like, "Hey, look, it's bow ties." Uh, it's, it's just some sort of, uh, macaroni product, you know, like a, a spaghetti, angel hair pasta, whatever you wanna use. [00:03:40] You put in two 24-ounce jars of marinara sauce or a pasta sauce. Uh, it calls for a bunch of spices, but you can also just get a pasta sauce that is already spiced. If you want a pasta sauce that has, like, mushrooms or extra basil or something, like, you can buy, like, a more flavored style of pasta sauce, and that'll add [00:04:00] some, uh, some texture to it. [00:04:02] You do two pounds of ground beef, which will cost you, like, $1,000 these days- ... but it's, it's worth it. You could replace it with ground turkey if you wanted to do something- Nice ... uh, a little bit less expensive or maybe something a little bit healthier. Um- You put in like two eight-ounce things of sour cream. [00:04:18] I think it calls- Ooh ... for 12 ounces, but I did, uh, I did 16 ounces today and it was extra creamy. And then just a mess of mozzarella, and you know, a mess of... You, you top it with mozzarella cheese- Nice. Nice ... and, uh, Parmesan. And then you just cover it with foil and bake it for a half hour, and then take the foil off and bake that, uh, for another 15 minutes to make sure that surface cheese is nice and crisp and, like, gooey and perfect. [00:04:42] Mm-hmm. Uh, and it's just, it's just good. It's getting to be that time of year where things are a little colder. Right. And, uh, we... Our, our home is heated by propane, which is expensive, and this time of year, like, I don't actually wanna turn the furnace on, but cooking a nice meal in the, in the stove just sort of takes the, [00:05:00] takes the, uh, edge out of the air a little bit. [00:05:02] So every element of it is great. And like I said, I'll, I'll eat this dish for lunch for the next, like, four days and I'll love every bit of it. So I'll put the recipe in the show notes. It's very easy to make. It's very, very good. If you got kids, it's a winner 'cause it's cheesy and gooey and it's fun. Um, and then you put a side of veggies with it, mixed veggies or spinach or whatever you want. [00:05:25] Uh, and it's just, it's just delicious. It's so, so good, Jesse. I can't even describe how good it is. Um, but it's, it's just really, really delicious. I've made it twice now and, uh, it's just easy. I'm not a very good cook. Your wife is a phenomenal cook, so she's probably able to, like- This is true ... she could probably tweak this recipe and make it, like, a real culinary masterpiece. [00:05:43] But you don't have to be a great cook to put this together. Right. You just boil the pasta, brown the beef, and then mix it all together and bake it for a little while and it's, it's really, really easy and good. [00:05:52] Jesse Schwamb: I can at least vouch for how delicious it looks. You sent us a picture and it's exactly what you'd expect. [00:05:58] Like, it, it's [00:06:00] a big casserole dish of pasta, which I didn't know the recipe, so I can see it's elevated pasta, really. Got some things that- Yeah ... kinda just take it from, like, just out of the box stuff to something that's a little bit more decadent, and that's what you want. [00:06:12] Cheese Talk and Recipe Tweaks [00:06:12] Jesse Schwamb: But I was immediately overcome by just the beautiful cascading... [00:06:17] A- as if covered by covenant itself, this pasta was just smothered- ... in this delici- like, not... A- and I don't wanna say, like, not, not too much cheese, like just the right amount. And I could tell it had been baked so that it was not just melted but got the crispiness. Here's what, this is the reason why I make such a big deal about the picture is because my wife is lactose intolerant, and I've learned you can, you can fall into a kind of version of Romans 1 with lactose intolerance. [00:06:44] If there's somebody who's a loved one- ... in particular, and by that I mean I, because we haven't had real cheese in a while, I thought, "I don't need real cheese. Like, we can get this fake stuff. It's, it's really good. It's, it's so delicious." And then you see a picture like that and I immediately thought, "I've exchanged the truth for a lie.[00:07:00] [00:07:00] I want cheese." "I want it so bad." [00:07:03] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the cheese really is the... I mean, the, the secret to this is the sour cream. Um, I feel like that's really what, what sort of pushes it over the edge. Last time that I made it, the first time I made it, I didn't tell Ashley what was in it. She just knew it was like a baked p- pasta dish, and she was like, "This is so good and creamy, and I... [00:07:23] It's, like, it's really delicious." Um, the sour cream really kicks it over the edge. If, if anything, I would add a little more cheese than I used tonight. Um, it calls for a cup of cheese, which is a lot of cheese. That's eight ounces of cheese. A lot of cheese. Um, it's four ounces of cheese. Um, but I use a little bit more, and I actually think it could u- it could've used a little more mozzarella and make that inner, like, the in- middle gooey part a even more gooey and cohesive. [00:07:48] But it's good. It's really... It's a recipe that's hard to screw up. And even if you did it without cheese, if you just added sour cream or, um, even if you didn't do that, you just added something to sort of give it a little bit of an edge. You probably could do it with yogurt if you were [00:08:00] looking to save, uh, do something a little bit more healthy than sour cream. [00:08:03] Um, and it's one of those dishes, like, you can play with it. You can kinda mess around with it and change it up. Um- I saw one person online who was talking about this recipe who, uh, they, they sprinkled a little bit of cheddar cheese on top of it along with the mozzarella and it gave it a little bit of that sharpness. [00:08:17] So check it out. I'll post the recipe. It's very easy. Um, it was actually in a list of like easy meal plan. Ashley has this packet of like easy meals for busy moms kind of thing. Uh, and it, it takes a bit of time. This one is not one that you would wanna try to do, you know, after a work night trying to get the kids ready. [00:08:38] But again, it's one of those ones kind of like the slow cooker stuff we talk about. Like- Right ... once you get it set and you do it, then like you have leftovers for the week and it heats up real well. It reheats really well. Um, probably don't want to eat it cold because of the ground beef. Could, could get a, you know, get some food poisoning kind of stuff going on there, but it microwaves real well. [00:08:58] Uh, it's very delicious. [00:09:00] You, you know like sometimes when you microwave something, like it's, it dries out. Because this has like the sour cream and the, the marinara sauce, this doesn't really dry out. Um, and it, it stores really well in the refrigerator. You could probably freeze it if you really wanted to. [00:09:14] Uh, it's just really a versatile, easy to make dish. So I'll post the recipe. [00:09:18] Telegram Tastings and Oreo Chaos [00:09:18] Tony Arsenal: Uh, this is one of those things we, we sometimes forget to talk about our Telegram chat until the very end of the episode, which is like the worst possible time to do a call to action- I know ... for a podcast. How dare we? Uh, we actually have a whole channel in our Telegram chat which you can access by going to t.me/reformedbrotherhood. [00:09:36] We have a whole channel just for tastings, and usually people will do things like hot wing tasting or this time of year sometimes like seasonal Oreos or seasonal candy bars come out or maybe someone gets a new beer or something like that. I would love to see some people make this recipe and do some tastings because maybe I'm overselling it. [00:09:53] Maybe I just love this and it's only so-so, but, uh, I'd love to see what the rest of the community thinks. So [00:10:00] t.me/reformedbrotherhood, make the baked pasta. Tell me what you think. I think it would be awesome. [00:10:05] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, there you go. There's all kinds of great things taking place out there, and this is that time of year. [00:10:09] Oreo won't stop. I mean, this could be our, the whole topic- I know ... of our conversation tonight, so I'm just gonna avoid it for the most part, but somebody needs to stop Oreo. I tried the Chicken and Waffles Oreo, and It was not good. Uh, maybe that should be my denial- No ... but it's not my denial, but it's not great. [00:10:26] It, well, it's complicated, guys. It's, it's kind of good because it tastes mostly, at least when I ate it... Okay, somebody be the judge. Go, go get some. Grab them from a friend. Do not go buy them yourself unless, like, you think- No ... this is something you're really gonna love. But, uh, and I'm gonna warn you, you probably won't. [00:10:43] But it, it'll taste delicious 'cause you'll be like, "Oh, this is like maple syrupy, and it tastes waffle-y." And then there was, like, something that happened in the back of my throat that was unnatural. It was like a spiciness or a clinginess or, like, a weird spice that I think was supposed to be an analog for chicken.[00:11:00] [00:11:00] Instead, all it was making me do was kinda just make this weird, like, phlegm-like sound as I was at work trying to recover quickly in front of people after eating this Oreo that sniped me. So I don't know where I was going with that except, uh, come hang out at the Telegram chat, everybody, because we've got all kinds of fun tastings there. [00:11:16] Somebody should grab those Oreos. We know you, you got these Oreos out there somewhere, loved ones. Post a little- Yeah ... uh, s- video of, uh, us, or for us, of you trying them [00:11:26] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, I, I find that anything that is trying to emulate a savory flavor that doesn't actually include that savory flavor is usually pretty gross. [00:11:38] And I think it's- Dangerous ... 'cause it's like, it's not like they're putting real chicken into the Oreos. Oh, please no. It's- Yes ... it's like they just have some sort of chemical that tricks your brain, tries to trick your brain into thinking it tastes like chicken. Which with as many things that taste like chicken as there are, you would think that'd be a pretty easy one to nail, but, uh, I'm not even gonna try the Oreo waffles- It's weird [00:11:57] or Chicken waffle. It's weird. May- maybe somebody will like it That sounds [00:12:00] disgusting and- [00:12:01] Jesse Schwamb: Yes. Yes. I agree. I agree. All right, I'll take- [00:12:04] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, it was actually, it was actually a, a Coke Oreo, uh, uh, partnership that originally spawned our tasting channel, wasn't it? Yes. I think it was like the... I don't remember what flavor it was, but it was like a Dr. [00:12:17] Pepper flavored Oreo or an Oreo flavored Coke or something like that- Yes ... that was just a, just a total outcome of the fall. It was just disgusting. [00:12:26] Jesse Schwamb: It is. [00:12:26] Tony Arsenal: So- [00:12:26] Jesse Schwamb: Here, so- But ... I don't wanna be too conspiratorial, but I have a theory about this. My theory is that Oreo knows that all they have to do is entice people enough for every person to buy one package of these things, knowing that they may never buy them again, and they'll still make a, a, like bandits. [00:12:41] And maybe it's even better because everything is more expensive these days. So you can't just go with what's normal. So you've gotta like really say, "Well, I'll just, I'll get this one package of Chicken & Waffles Oreos 'cause I'll never get it again. I'm willing to splurge on it." And the joke's on us, loved ones. [00:12:55] Like, we're all out here just throwing Oreos into the trash because ... [00:13:00] that tastes so funky. Maybe not. Somebody go tell me if I'm wrong. Somebody s- go out there and say, "Yes. Listen, these, these are the best Oreos I've, I've ever had." [00:13:11] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, this reminds me back, way back in my, my Reformed pub days, which I don't like to admit how long ago that was 'cause it makes me feel really old. [00:13:19] But, um, there was a, a long time when, uh, Not Your Father's Root Beer or Not Your Dad's Root Beer, whatever it was, I don't remember what the specific, uh, brand was, but there was a, like a brand of, um, of like alcohol root beer. I think it was like Not Your Father's Root Beer or Not Your Dad's Root Beer or something like that. [00:13:39] It was [00:13:39] Jesse Schwamb: horrible. [00:13:40] Tony Arsenal: And it was so awful that it was actually a trend for a while. Man, this, these were the good old days where people had enough money to do stupid stuff like this. But it was a trend for a while where people would buy it just to film themselves dumping it down the drain. And it's like, it's like, yeah, nobody has money for that anymore, but- Yeah [00:13:59] uh, some things are [00:14:00] just so terrible that it's almost... I think you might be right. Like, it's so bad that people buy it to just try it to see how bad it is. Yes. And Oreo s- someone has calculated that, like, they can get enough people to buy it just on the reputation of how terrible it is that they'll still turn a profit on this limited edition run, uh, terrible Oreo Fusion thing. [00:14:23] Um, yeah. Anyway, we could talk about terrible Oreo Fusions- Yeah ... all night, every night, 'cause there's a lot of them and they're gross. But we don't wanna do that, 'cause that's probably not great podcasting. So Jesse, what are you affirming or denying? And I'm gonna be really embarrassed if what you're denying is Oreo Fusion- [00:14:39] cookies. But, uh, what are you affirming or denying tonight? [00:14:43] Jesse Schwamb: It's not. [00:14:44] Jesse's Productivity Book Pick [00:14:44] Jesse Schwamb: I think you and I are somewhat, we're interested in productivity, are we not? Mm-hmm. We've actually talked about that a great deal on this podcast. And so I'm hesitant to bring this up because there are so many books, there are so many podcasts. [00:14:56] What more could possibly be said? And so when I came across this book called [00:15:00] Redeeming Your Time by Jordan Rainer with the subtitle Seven Biblical Principles for Being Purposeful, Present, and Wildly Productive, I thought, "Come on. Um, do we really need this book?" And I read it, and I'm really glad that I did. [00:15:13] And my affirmation is exactly his work here. Because it's a little bit like presuppositional apologetics meets Cal Newport and David Allen. He, in fact, one of the things I love is if you're interested in just being more productive or maybe you don't even know what that is, I do recommend you get this book because he basically has synthesized, and he says this, a lot of that writing into one place. [00:15:37] He gives you really practical things. But this is by far the most Christian perspective, I would say that the most Reformed perspective I have ever read on productivity, and I took way more from this book than I ever anticipated I would. To that end, just to give a taste, I wanna read just a couple sentences that are part of his introduction. [00:15:55] This is what Jordan Rainer writes, "Jesus offers you peace before you do anything." [00:16:00] Nearly every time management expert says that the path to peace and productivity is found in implementing his or her system. This is what we might call work space productivity, which claims that if you do exercises X, Y, and Z, then you'll find peace. [00:16:12] This book begins with the opposite premise in what we might call grace-based productivity, which says that through Jesus Christ, we already have peace, and we do time management exercises of X, Y, and Z as a response to worship. And basically, the whole premise of his book is that the most unproductive thing you can do in life is live it without God. [00:16:32] So this is missional. It's intensely practical. Like, he's gonna take you through his own strategy, which really he says, and he gives attribution to so many other authors and experts in the field, that he is synthesizing some of their ideas, but he's doing it under the auspice of the gospel. And this is the first book I've ever found that has this type of final chapter. [00:16:53] There's a whole section on being sure not to make productivity an idol. So this is, like, a really [00:17:00]lovely book. It's incredibly challenging. It's so thoughtful, but it's filled with doxological kind of content that leads me to want to be more productive, not because we have to do productive to, or pr- be productive to, of course, earn anything before God. [00:17:13] Not even that we should feel guilty if we're not, but out of God's grace, He gives us tools, and this feeds our desire to serve and then do so effectively. And so I think that if you have any interest in what it might look like for you, if you're feeling burned out, tired, distracted from things in life, uh, you really should read this. [00:17:32] It'll be worth your time. So wherever books are sold, we're not getting, uh, any kind of commission on this. Just go find Redeeming Your Time by Jordan Rainer. And again, go to the Telegram group. Let us know what you think about it. [00:17:46] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. [00:17:47] Grace Based Productivity Discussion [00:17:47] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, you know, I think, um, there was a time period where hustle culture or productivity culture was really, really in for Christians. [00:17:57] Jesse Schwamb: Right. [00:17:57] Tony Arsenal: And, um, I, I think even [00:18:00] in secular, secular domains, non-Christian domains where productivity, hustle culture is kind of, um, is a, a focus, even in those circles and even in those circumstances, the literature and the, the people who are doing blogs and, and YouTube channels, even those people are starting to recognize that we did put hustle culture and, like, being, like, hustling, we, we put that on a pedestal and made it, like, the goal- Right [00:18:31] instead of recognizing, like, the whole point behind, um, behind productivity is it's actually to keep your priorities straight. Right. It's, you know, it's, it's you, you work hard to get things done so that you have time to do the things you wanna do, or so that you are actually able to accomplish the goals you want to accomplish. [00:18:53] And a lot of people have commented, both in Christian circles and non-Christian circles, that we made getting a lot [00:19:00] of things done... And I, like, I don't wanna blame David Allen for this, but, like, this is the name of his book, right? Getting things done was the goal, not the vehicle to the goal. Right. I don't think David Allen would take that approach. [00:19:10] I think actually he's, he's much more grounded than a lot of his sorta, like, successors. But the, the, the switch to turn productivity into an end in itself has really just caused people to burn out. Like, you can only hustle for so long before you need a rest. So it's really refreshing to hear that there's a good Christian work out there that's latching onto that and is actually bringing God's truth and the gospel to bear on it. [00:19:34] That's, that's a book that I, um, I should definitely check out. [00:19:37] Jesse Schwamb: I highly recommend it. I'm actually going to ... I'm grabbing a copy for a friend of mine who is, I would say, like a nominal Christian. We've had lots of conversations, and he's admitted that he grew up kind of in the Christian faith, has walked away from it, and just, he's one of these guys who knows so much about it, has all the head knowledge, and says things like, "I'll, you know, I'll come back to God eventually." [00:19:56] And it just so happens, he's big into productivity, and he's always [00:20:00] finding that whatever he's reading is really falling short. And so I'm just gonna get this as a gift for him and just say, "Here you go, man." 'Cause I, 'cause the one thing I can say about this book for anybody who's read a lot of productivity stuff, is this is something unlike you've read before when it comes to productivity. [00:20:13] Yeah. Because it is so gospel-centered. The first opening, the whole opening gambit is, like, you can't ... How can you be pr- productive if you don't know the, the or- the origin or, like, the father of time himself? And I'm like, wow. Yeah. Okay, here we go. Let's talk about it. And then you'll be halfway through, and he's given you all of this, uh, format, framework, and structure for how to set your calendar, how to modify your time. [00:20:34] Like, so it's the best of both worlds. You, you get a lot, but what I love is it's very presuppositional. It's like you cannot be productive in life, you cannot find your missional purpose, dist- to understand your calling, and then from there break down your quarterly goals and then your tasks. It's really a lovely way of tying everything back to the gospel, and he goes hard by saying, "Listen, you can, you have a say in directing your calling. [00:20:57] You do not have a say in your mission. That comes [00:21:00] from God himself, who defines who you are and what it means to be human and what it's like to relate to him." And I found that to be just overwhelmingly refreshing, like you said. So I hope that people will pick this up and read it for themselves, but I could see this being, like, a really lovely introduction to the gospel to many who are just interested in how to tackle life better. [00:21:20] And the beautiful thing about the, the Bible is it tells us the truth about the way things are. And so, like you and I have talked about before so many times, Tony, like, there's so much common grace that, of course, all these studies are just f- are kind of, are directly connected to this gospel truth of what it means to do good work and to do it as an act of worship before God. [00:21:38] That's where we find our fulfillment, of course, is in worshiping him, and part of our productivity is that part of worship. So there's a lot of good things to, that could be said there. But I think it's, this has, like, book club written all over it, guys. Get, just get it. Get a bunch of people together. Just book club this bad boy all over the place. [00:21:57] That's, that's my- [00:21:58] Tony Arsenal: Yeah ... [00:21:58] Jesse Schwamb: my full affirmation. [00:22:00] [00:22:01] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And, and one last thing I'll say in response to that, I love the idea of giving this book to someone almost as, like, an evangelistic tool. Yeah. Because I think there are a lot of people who, um, life is so busy and everybody is trying to get things done that especially people who already kinda operate in productivity circles, productivity mindsets, they're always looking for the next system that can fix the problem. [00:22:27] Jesse Schwamb: Yes. [00:22:28] Tony Arsenal: And, like, no system can fix the problem. That's probably part of the point of this book. But, like, everybody's looking for, like, the next system that will give them that, like, 2% efficiency boost or, like, that 5% efficiency boost or whatever it is. And so even though they may never pick up a book that is theological and it's about the gospel, if you give them this book and be like, "This guy's got a really unique perspective on it, man. [00:22:48] I really think it can help you really, you know, I think he- there's some useful insight for your productivity system"- Right ... they'll read that book. They'll put it in their calendar- Yes, I agree ... they'll time block it out. I agree. And they'll read it, and they'll [00:23:00] read it to completion, 'cause that's how people who operate in these circles tend to be. [00:23:04] Uh, so you'll get the gospel in there. So I think that's a really great, uh, a really great tool that people could think about using. [00:23:10] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. It's like their productivity, or it's like the gospel Trojan horse through productivity. But it's, it's the truth. Yeah, yeah. This is the truth. And that's what I loved about it. [00:23:18] It was unashamed in that this is the way life works, and God is over all, and you've gotta understand these things if, if you wanna be productive. If you wanna know the truth, you've gotta understand the truth. It's gotta be presented to you. And in point of fact, I mean, that's what we're talking about in this whole conversation. [00:23:35] Luke 12 Rich Fool Reading [00:23:35] Jesse Schwamb: In fact, everybody- Yeah ... at Love Ones, drop what you're doing, come find us in Luke chapter 12. That's where we are. And we're getting this thing kicked off because Jesus tells this whole parable about a rich fool in response to a man in the crowd demanding that he settle an inheritance dispute. And as Jesus often does, he refuses to be a judge or an arbiter over earthly po- property, and instead he turns this whole thing to warn against [00:24:00]covetousness, the insatiable grasping after more. [00:24:03] Which, in some ways, is maybe more directly tied into this whole discussion about productivity than I thought. But the parable then follows... It's really not about money management, and that's, you... I've heard this talked about in various ways. Instead, it's about the human heart's naive trust in itself rather than in God. [00:24:22] So I'm going to read for us a couple verses in Luke chapter 12 to start us off, and I'm gonna start in, I'm gonna say verse 13. And, uh, this is from Luke's gospel. "And someone from the crowd said to him, 'Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.' But Jesus said to him, 'Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter over you?' [00:24:45] Then he said to them, 'Watch out and be on your guard against every form of greed. For not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.' And he told them a parable, saying, 'The land of a rich man was very productive. [00:25:00] And he began reasoning to himself, saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?' [00:25:05] Then he said, 'This is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have so many goods laid up for so many years to come. Take your ease. Eat, drink, and be merry."' But God said to him, 'You fool. This very night your soul is required of you. [00:25:27] And now who will own what you prepared?' So is the one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." [00:25:38] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. [00:25:39] How to Misread This Parable [00:25:41] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, this is, um, this is one of those parables, again, maybe we'll put this in the category of parable with quotation marks. Um, this doesn't always even appear on lists of parables because it doesn't necessarily follow the same format, although he calls it a parable in the, the text here itself. [00:25:58] But in so- some sort [00:26:00] of, like, lists of parables would even say this isn't even in the same category. But, um, this one here is, is another one of those parables that if we, um, w- we talked about this, uh, last week and I think a, a couple, or last time and a couple times before that. The, the parables of Matthew, or in Matthew, the, the parables that Matthew collects of Christ's overall parabolic, you know, figurative speech ministry, almost all of them are very much oriented towards explaining the nature of the Kingdom of God, explaining the nature of, of how the Kingdom of God functions, how the Kingdom of God is currently breaking into the world, how the Kingdom o- of God will definitively and finally break into the world in the, in the eschaton. [00:26:43] Um, w- we can sometimes fall into a dangerous interpretive error if we assume that because Matthew's parables, which the bulk of the parables are in Matthew, right? Matthew has more parables than the rest of the Gospels, um, especially if you're talking about [00:27:00] unique parables. Um- Luke's parables, as we've seen them so far, at least the ones that don't overlap with Matthew, they're not necessarily oriented towards that same Kingdom of God understanding in the strictest sense. [00:27:14] So this parable is not, um... I've heard some that, some people who interpret this in light of the same kind of like, "Stay awake you foolish virgins" kind of theology- Right ... that we saw in, in, in Matthew. Um, this parable is not teaching that same message, at least not in the same way, right? Th- And again, this is not a parable about money management necessarily. [00:27:37] It's not a parable about, um, you know, I think we could fall into error on one side that this is like, "You fool, how dare you ever be concerned about your wealth and your finances and advancing your own wealth?" [00:27:48] Jesse Schwamb: Right. [00:27:48] Tony Arsenal: Versus the other side where it's like, uh, you know, people are like, "Well, the foolish part of this is A, B, or C." [00:27:56] This is really a parable about a lot of other things that we're [00:28:00] gonna unpack. But if we read it as a sort of like eschatological parable, which it sort of feels that way, it feels a little bit like it's a sort of final eschatology or a personal eschatology parable. Uh, again, it's not to say there's not elements that speak to that, but if we read this as like some sort of, um, if you don't give away all your resources, if you don't give away all your money, if you're not thinking in terms of a life of poverty, then you're condemned. [00:28:23] If we read it in light of that, that's not right. Right. If we read it in light of sort of like wealth planning strategies, which, you know, this is kind of like the financial version of the Daniel diet, like just taking it totally out of its context, we really can sort of run aground on some bad, some bad interpretive strategies. [00:28:41] Jesse Schwamb: I'm with you on that. [00:28:42] First Observations and Themes [00:28:42] Jesse Schwamb: All those alternatives seem to really denigrate it, don't they? They cheapen what's here because it's not about what's on the face, and I think that's why it's worth talking about, because there's so much underneath. Which we always say, but I think it becomes more and more plain the more we really try to understand what's at stake, what the commentary is really being produced. [00:29:00] And this, I think, is maybe Jesus could have taken any number of situations or circumstances. He just happens to use this one of property in particular, especially 'cause he was given the entry point, to emphasize something about the sovereignty and responsibility of God, but also our relationship towards him. [00:29:17] I suppose what it means, of course, to be rich in God, which is the pun sign. What I notice like immediately in this is that Luke tells us something like before the man even ever speaks, and that is like the whole point of his wealth, everything he has, is because the ground produced- Like the increase is not attributed to this guy's skill or his labor or even his shrewdness. [00:29:39] And like you said, Tony, we've, we've been in other parables where there's been a lot more commentary about the characters involved, that's been a part of this. All of that- Yeah ... is, is just given. [00:29:46] Providence And Ingratitude [00:29:46] Jesse Schwamb: Like everything he has is just gi- literally given to him. It's given in the t- passage, it's given to him in this circumstance. [00:29:52] And there is like, I think, a doctrine, even from the start here, I'm seeing like this flavor of like this doctrine of providence like in miniature. Like [00:30:00] every harvest, every dividend, every windfall is, in the biblical worldview, the fruit of God's sustaining and governing hand. And so I love that like that's how I think Jesus opens this up. [00:30:10] And so we're gonna see like the tragedy of the parable is that the man who receives this gift will never once acknowledge the giver. And there's all of this ingratitude, which I think often is like the root beneath every sin. And in this story we see the man enjoys God's bounty while essentially erasing God from the picture entirely, and that's how we start [00:30:32] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. [00:30:32] Parable Framed By Warnings [00:30:32] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and there's this other... A- and, um, maybe to, not to bury the lead and maybe, I don't know, maybe this is a spoiler warning for the rest of our episode, but it's, if you read this parable, um, you know, what, what do we always say when a, when a passage is a little bit confusing or it's unclear? Read a little bit more, right? [00:30:48] Read a little in front, read a little after, and it usually is pretty clear what's getting said here. So when we look at in front of this, Christ tells you what the point of this parable is. Like, He's using this [00:31:00] parable to explain a previous statement, and that statement is, "Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." [00:31:10] Right? Right. So the parable explains that statement in parable form. And if we read just a little bit after, and I'm sure we'll, we'll get to it more in depth, but He says to His disciples in verse 22, "And He said to His disciples, 'Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, and what you will put on. [00:31:29] For life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.'" Right? So those two statements, right? Life does not consist in the abundance of possession, in the front, and life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Those are parallel statements. And usually we look at, this is a, a literary technique called an inclusio, right? [00:31:49] What an inclusio is, is you have a statement at the beginning of a passage or a beginning of a text, and then a similar or sometimes identical or parallel statement after the text [00:32:00] that sort of shows you, it's almost like a chapter break, right? Sometimes, um, that's used to show you where the chapter is. [00:32:07] Sometimes it actually helps us to clarify these statements by recognizing them as inclusios. We see that the pre- the statement before the parable and the statement after the parable are essentially the same statement because they're being used to form this inclusio. Uh-huh. So the fact that we need to be aware, be on guard against covetousness, and the fact that we should not be anxious about our possessions, about our life, about our material things, the not being anxious and the be- being aware of covetousness, those are the same thing. [00:32:36] Or they're s- they're largely similar, largely substantially the same things. Which we did an episode when we were going through our, like, five-year-long systematic theology, um, series. Um, we did a s- we did a, a handful of episodes on, um, on the Ten Commandments, and so I would encourage you to go back and listen to the episode on covetousness because we covered all this, [00:33:00] right? [00:33:00] Whether it's being anxious in terms of, um, being insecure in your material wealth, being insecure in what God has provided for you and not being thankful, you know, kind of almost resenting God because of your lack, that's a form of covetousness. Or whether- Right ... covetousness is taking more of a traditional format of wanting something that someone else has. [00:33:20] Um, both of those things represent a violation of the ninth commandment. And so this parable here is... And I think this will get to where you're, where you've been sort of leading us. This parable here is designed to help his listeners, and primarily hi- like, this guy, right? He's trying to teach this guy, but also he turns to his disciples after this and launches into another section and a further explanation of this concept. [00:33:47] It's here to help us understand not just, you know, the fact that, like, my material we- my material, uh, wealth doesn't really help me after I die. Like, yeah, you can't take it with you. Okay, [00:34:00] maybe that's part of this. Right. Maybe it's kind of the, you know, 1 Corinthians 6, "Don't build on s- don't build out of straw," you know, like, things are gonna burn away, just what you build on a s- on foundation will stay. [00:34:11] Not Wealth But Trust [00:34:11] Tony Arsenal: But more so this is about understanding satisfaction and contentment in whatever it is that God has blessed us with, right? That's right. So this is not a con- condemnation of those who are wealthy. This guy's not condemned because he had a bumper crop and because he's wealthy. Right. He's not even condemned explicitly because he's trying to plan for the future, right? [00:34:30] There's lots of things, to kind of go to the productivity thing. There's nothing wrong with planning for the future. Right. There's nothing wrong with saying, "I had a really good harvest year, and I'm gonna need bigger barns to store all this stuff, to, like, keep all this stuff." It's, it's as I think you're leading us to, it's this seemingly total unawareness that the, the bumper crop comes with certain kinds of, like, obligations and entailments- Right [00:34:56] beyond just I'm gonna celebrate and enjoy my [00:35:00] own wealth for wealth's sake. [00:35:02] Jesse Schwamb: Right. It's what all of this circumstance reveals about this man, his heart, where he finds his assurance and confidence. So I like where we're going with this. So you're right, if you look at the passage immediately preceding and subsequent, what you'll find is that beautiful... [00:35:16] Well, this is an Oreo sandwich. Unfortunately, we're back to where we started, because we've got- ... w- one cookie is the warning, avoid covetousness. The other cookie is the don't be worried, and the cream in the filling here is assurance or confidence. That is, like, where does our true wealth lie? But more and bey- beyond that, like, where can we hang our hats, so to speak? [00:35:36] Like, what is it that we can be confident that we, we can rest secured in? [00:35:41] Autonomous Inner Counsel [00:35:41] Jesse Schwamb: And so we get some of the betrayal of the fact that this man is looking at the wrong things, even from that first verse. And then by the time, like, this interesting, this whole internal mon- monologue begins, I think again, like, it's, it's telling to me that he deliberates, like, entirely by himself. [00:35:56] And I think, like, this is kind of this interesting posture of the [00:36:00] natural man that is described in Romans, like, 1, where there's, like, kind of functional, practical atheism. You know? He doesn't ask, like you were saying, Tony, like, "What does the Lord require of me with this abundance?" He doesn't consult scripture, neighbor, or God. [00:36:13] He consults only himself. Which honestly I think is a temptation for us all. Like, that can be our defa- default mode in situations similar to this, where we first start to reason among and with ourselves. And this is, like, the soliloquy of a completely autonomous man who thinks he has his own agency. It's like the very pattern of Adam and Eve in the garden reasoning about the world as though they were its final authority. [00:36:37] So here, you're right. We're, we're getting set up with it's not the circumstances that condemn this man. It's essentially how he behaves, where he puts his trust within those circumstances. [00:36:48] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. [00:36:49] Soul Talk As Insanity [00:36:49] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and, you know, I've, I've heard, um, and I, I have not validated this myself, so take it with a little bit of a grain of salt. [00:36:56] But there's, there's something, um... I've heard it from [00:37:00] multiple sources, multiple reliable resources that I trust, that this sort of phrase in the middle where it's like he says to his soul or he says to- Yes ... himself, there's something about that that is sort of almost like a form... Uh, I've heard it said, like, that would've been f- viewed as, like, a form of insanity- Mm [00:37:18] in the ancient world. And we've commented this, on this before. Like, um- A large portion of the population doesn't have an internal monologue. And I think, um, i- if I remember right, it's actually, like, a larger portion, it's like a majority portion of the world doesn't have an internal monologue. And what that means is... [00:37:39] A- and hopefully there's some people in our audience that are like, "Oh, yeah, I don't, I, I don't even know what you're talking about when you say an internal monologue." And it's hard for people who are in one side of this to even conceptualize what it would be like to be on the other side of this. But there are people who, um, when they think, they're essentially speaking to themselves. [00:37:59] And then there's people [00:38:00] who, when they think, a- and I, again, I don't even know how to describe this, they don't have an internal monologue. They're not, they're not speaking to themselves in their minds I think, um, probably part of the reason that this was so, is, was seen as so crazy in the ancient world is in the ancient world, uh, the... [00:38:18] I'm getting really far afield here. I'll try to bring it back. Um, in the ancient world, because people didn't read as much, they don't have that internal monologue. The prominence of people being able to read, and especially being able to read to themselves, which is something that even as early as 100, 200 years ago just wasn't common to be able to read to yourself. [00:38:37] If you wanted to read, you would have to read out loud. To be able to just read in your mind, because when we read in our mind, we're speaking words to ourselves, I think our, our, um, culture has trained itself where more, more and more people have this internal monologue. But in the ancient world, this idea that someone would say to themselves or, like, speak to their own selves or sort of [00:39:00] ponder this internally was, has... [00:39:03] Like I said, I haven't validated this independently. I haven't done the research myself, but enough resources that I've read that I trust to have done that have said this. That was itself seen as a little bit of a, of a anomaly and sort of almost a form of insanity. Right. And so I think we've commented that a lot of times the parables have this point in them or this turning point where somebody does something that is sorta crazy. [00:39:29] Like, it's a little bit- Right ... out there, right? You think of the parable of the prodigal son, prodigal father, whatever, however you wanna call it. The idea that, like, the father sort of debases himself and runs out to greet the son, or even the fact that, like, when this, when this selfish son asks for his inheritance, that his father just gave it to him before he died, that is uncharacteristic and would've been seen as a little bit weird or a lot a bit weird. [00:39:55] This idea that this guy stops to sort of self-reflect [00:40:00] by himself entirely internally, right? The little- Right ... literal Greek, and so some translations say this, "So I said to my soul." Even- Right ... um, even that language of, um, almost having to externalize your internal thoughts. He's not... It doesn't say, "So he thought about it himself." [00:40:21] He had to say to his soul. He had to speak to himself. Even the language shows you that the Greek language doesn't have good construction to even be able to articulate what it would be like to think to yourself or to just mull it over internally. That is a strange function here, and it gets at what you've been saying. [00:40:41] He doesn't pause to pray about it. He doesn't pause to go to the gates of the city and speak with the elders. He doesn't connect with his wife. He doesn't ask anybody. He doesn't consult anybody. He does this sort of insane thing that even the Greek language doesn't have words for and has to sort of create this new [00:41:00] construction. [00:41:00] Right. He just stops. He thinks to himself. He speaks to his own soul. And, and then it, like, sort of paints this picture of him saying it out loud. "I said to my soul, 'Soul- [00:41:10] Jesse Schwamb: Right. ... [00:41:11] Tony Arsenal: what should I do?'" Like, it's, it's this sort of, like, weird sort of- Weird ... insane, strange feature that we don't pause to think about because we have this internal monologue. [00:41:21] We have this internal dialogue with ourselves, and so we don't think that that's unusual. But that's actually probably one of the main points of the parable is there is this strange feature where this guy doesn't pause to consult with anyone or anything about what he should do with this bumper crop. [00:41:39] He just Acts on his own behalf, thinks through his own behalf. And that should be the key to us that like, hmm, we really should think about what is the point here. [00:41:49] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. You, you stole what I was gonna say. The soul thing is the super weird thing. I'm glad you already brought it up because when I read this, you can get through most of it and say, "Okay, that's interesting. [00:41:58] Interesting story." And then you get to him [00:42:00] being like, "Hey, soul." And you're like, "Say what?" Yeah. Like, "Who are you talking to? Why are you talking that way? Why are you being so weird about this?" [00:42:06] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. [00:42:06] My Barns My Goods [00:42:06] Jesse Schwamb: So, like, there's the ju- the just sheer, like, selfishness, and then there's this... It gets escalated, elevated to this, like, soul self-talk, which is super weird, and deliberate, I think, in Jesus' telling of this. [00:42:18] So, like, you're right. You got this repetition of all these, in Greek, like, first person pronouns: my crops, my barns, my grain, my goods. I just counted here five times in three verses we've got either I or my. So it's not simply, like, poor stewardship. It's the theological posture of self-ownership. It's like t- complete denial of the creature's fundamental dependence on the creator. [00:42:38] And then, as if that's not enough, you get this whole verse 19, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry." And you wanna say, "Who are you talking to, man?" So, like, here I think this folly reaches a full and fatal expression to me because he speaks to his own, his own soul as though the soul, which is like the [00:43:00] very seat of a person's relationship with God, could be satisfied by grain. [00:43:05] And so I think this is, like, the fundamental conclusion that Reformers labored to expose. It's really like mistaking the gifts of common grace for the substance of ultimate security. He's trying to create this cookie with all this cream in the middle, but he has nothing there. There's, there's nothing to fill it. [00:43:20] It's like, it's like Augustine's dictum stands over this entire verse like a judgment. The heart is restless until it finds rest in God. And guess what? No barn, however large, can hold whatever only God can give. And so, like, the man's error is not that he planned for the future, like we've been saying. [00:43:36] Scripture commends some prudence. But that he planned as though there were no God to whom he must give account and no eternity beyond the granary, and then beyond that, he takes responsibility for his own soul and tries to self-soothe that soul. My word, I could barely say that. He tries to soothe his own soul in a way to give it confidence merely by the things he owns, separating himself from the [00:44:00] creator, the one who has given him all these things. [00:44:02] It is, I think, Tony, like you said, absolute insanity. It's certainly like insanity raised up against the spiritual man, and yet to the natural man, this seems like... Even in our modern day, in a contemporary context, this seems like the reasonable thing to do, the reasonable thing, to take charge of yourself and to be happy with yourself and to be content with what you provided and to have security in that, and yet this is the great- greatest kind of foolishness that possibly there ever is. [00:44:28] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. [00:44:30] Enjoy Gifts Not Idols [00:44:30] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and I think too, um, you know, the, this, um This is sometimes taught as though, like we've alluded to and said a couple times, it's taught as though the act of saving or, like, investing or even in this case, like, sort of taking a strange risk to try to propel your wealth forward, this is sometimes taught as though the point of this is that you shouldn't do those things. [00:44:56] Right. Like, the act of saving your wealth is [00:45:00] somehow... Like, saving things up or investing or taking a risk is somehow contrary to biblical wisdom and biblical prudence, and I don't, I don't think that's at all the point of the parable, right? And we've, we've pointed out that this parable is sandwiched or Oreo cookied by, you know, beware of covetousness, life does not exist in your possessions, or the satisfaction of life does not exist in your possessions, and then do not be anxious, life is more than food, the body more than clothing. [00:45:28] And the, the, the key phrase here in terms of where this guy's mistake is, not only is the mistake in the idea that, like, he's not c- thinking about what should I do with this in reference to my neighbor or what should I do with this in reference to God. There seems to be no consideration of that at all. [00:45:44] But what he intends to do with it in relation to those statements is entirely self-focused. And it's not, it's not the case at all. Please don't hear me saying it's not okay to enjoy the [00:46:00] fruit of your labor, right? There's all sorts of things in the Bible, lots of teaching in the Bible, um, about the fact that when we work hard and we reap a financial benefit, whether it's in, in this sort of like ancient culture, it's a, you know, a concrete financial benefit, or whether it's in our more modern culture where, like, we just, we gather more money which is sort of like a, I don't know, it's like a social contract of m- evaluating our labor. [00:46:25] Whatever it is, w- it's okay to use your wealth in ways that drives satisfaction. It's okay to enjoy wealth. Like, go buy a nice steak. Go get a nice bottle of wine. Take your wife out for dinner. Go on vac- Like, those things are fine. Buy a nice car. Go on vacation. Those things are fine, provided you're not finding your enjoyment and your satisfaction and, and ultimately that you are not doing those things as the final end of existence. [00:46:53] Right. Right? The, the point that he's making to this young man who says, "Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me," [00:47:00] is, like, you are finding or trying to find your life's ultimate satisfaction in your wealth or in this, like in the wealth that you think you deserve. The flip side of the disciples is, like, your entire life seems to be driven by the fact that you feel like you don't have enough food or you don't have the right clothing. [00:47:21] So the idea that, like, our satisfaction or our security is found in the abundance of our possessions, that is what this parable is railing against Right With a little bit of, I think a little bit of a gospel call here, right? Yeah. There's, there's this element, and this is, maybe this is unique. I don't, I don't, I can't think off the top of my head another parable where God himself is actually in the parable. [00:47:49] I think this is somewhat unique, if not entirely unique- Right ... where God himself now is in the parable saying, "Fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things you've [00:48:00] prepared, whose will they be?" So this idea that on the one side, those who have abundance are warned against finding their sat- their ultimate satisfaction in the abundance of their possessions, and on the flip side, those who lack abundance are warned against, uh, an utter sense of insecurity in the lack of their abundance. [00:48:22] Jesse Schwamb: Right. [00:48:23] Tony Arsenal: In the middle there is this chastisement for both of those groups, basically saying your life and your satisfaction and security should be found in the fact that you belong to God and that God is your God. I think that's probably the ultimate payout of this parable, is this idea that like, yeah, whether you have a lot, whether you have a little, whether you have enough, whether you don't have enough, whether you are able to be sort of like enjoying luxury items versus just scraping by or not even scraping by, those [00:49:00] are two realities, and there are Christians who exist in both of those realities. [00:49:04] And some people might push back on this a little bit, but those realities are, are neutral morally, right? You can be rich and, uh, and still be a faithful Christian. You can be poor and still be a faithful Christian. I guess we can probably have some conversation at some point about which of those states it's easier to be a faithful Christian in. [00:49:25] But the fact is, like, you can be in either of those states and still be a faithful follower of God. [00:49:30] Jesse Schwamb: Right. [00:49:31] Tony Arsenal: As long as you're not finding your satisfaction or being overwhelmed by insecurity in either of those states, I think, uh, I think you, you, you, you can do both of them. And it's actually funny because... [00:49:44] Maybe not funny. It's interesting. Um, it's also possible to be satisfied in the lack of your possessions, if I can even put it that way, right? There are those who have sort of like placed their security and their ultimate satisfaction in sort of [00:50:00] their poverty or their minimalism, and there are those who are, like, anxious about the fact that they're wealthy. [00:50:06] This parable speaks to all of those things on every level saying, "No, no, no, no, no," like, your relationship to your possessions is not the point. Right. The point is your relation to God and whether you are his children and whether he is your God. [00:50:21] Jesse Schwamb: Right. [00:50:21] God Interrupts The Fool [00:50:21] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, there's multi-factor foolishness at play here for sure. [00:50:24] It starts with this idea that he's not crediting, he's not giving attribution, he doesn't understand that he's actually a contingent being and that God provides all these things. Then, like we said, there's this elevation, like you've just talked about, where it moves. That would be- Really foolish enough. [00:50:41] But what's even more foolish is to say to one's own soul, "You know what? Sit back, chill, be confident because you've done all the things. You have all the right stuff. You don't need to worry about anything." Almost implying, like, you can live forever. Just hang out. You have everything that you need, and you did it all yourself. [00:50:58] And so in verse 20, where God [00:51:00] interrupts and speaks to him directly, is amazing because He goes right into, first of all, right into the man's private counsel. So it's a good reminder that no soliloquy is ever truly private. We have the judge of all the earth. He hears every deliberation of the heart, and then He addresses him by this word fool, which, of course, you and I have talked about. [00:51:18] Like, in the Bibl- vocabulary, it's not just, like, an insult abo
Jay Gunkelman has read more than half a million brain scans. This week a viewer sent in their own EEG, and Jay examines it live on the show — no name, no clinical backstory (educational purposes only). The catch: the record was so noisy it needed an aggressive cleanup just to be readable — and that cleanup nearly erased the single most important finding in it. Jay reverses the ICA on camera and shows you what almost got thrown away: rhythmic theta coming off the frontal midline — an anterior-cingulate signature — that never showed up in the spectra at all. The lesson every clinician needs: heroic cleanup can blind you to the real finding. Along the way he catches a mislabeled "eyes closed" file, explains why your heartbeat shows up in your brain waves, why your eyes twitch every 80 milliseconds, and why it takes your brain 500 milliseconds to become consciously aware of anything. Then host Pete Jansons runs Jay through the panel's questions — tonic vs. phasic frontal theta, how much cleanup is too much, John Gruzelier's alpha-theta work with conservatory musicians, Martijn Arns and frontal alpha asymmetry, and M. Barry Sterman's neurofeedback work in epilepsy alongside Jay's discussion of surgery and other treatment approaches. The episode closes with Pete laying out a push toward neurofeedback standardization — and Jay making the case that multiple perspectives need to be at the table.
Could the way you're marketing your rental properties be costing you weeks of vacancy? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, Jason Hull sits down with Kori Covrigaru, co-founder of PlanOmatic, to discuss how professional listing media can help property management companies lease properties faster, reduce vacancy costs, and attract more owners. Kori shares what he's learned from more than two decades in real estate photography, including why professional photos, floor plans, and 3D tours can make such a difference in today's competitive rental market. They also discuss how outsourcing photography can save your team hours of driving and administrative work, allowing you to grow your portfolio without adding unnecessary overhead. If you're looking for ways to fill vacancies faster, improve your property management brand, and give your team more time to focus on growing the business, this episode is worth a listen. You'll Learn [02:14] Kori Covrigaru's Story and PlanOmatic [04:18] Why Professional Photos Help Properties Lease Faster [06:36] How Better Listings Attract Property Owners [10:03] Scaling Your Business Without Adding Overhead [12:28] How PlanOmatic Works and Integrates With Your Software [15:30] Photography Pricing and Who Pays for It [17:36] How AI Virtual Staging Improves Rental Listings [23:58] Providing Photography Services Across Different Markets [28:31] Building a Client-Focused Business Through Communication Quotables "But the biggest reason why it actually makes sense and there's a high ROI for our customers to use us versus what you described as properties with professional photos lease faster." — Kori Covrigaru Pasted "You attract who you are." — Jason Hull "It's better to know that nothing is happening than to not know that something is happening." — Kori Covrigaru Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason Hull (00:01) Five, four, three, two, one. All right, we're live. Hey everybody, I'm Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. We are the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. We've been doing this for over 18 years, roughly about now, and we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. We are on a mission here at DoorGo to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the BS or eliminate the BS, transform the industry, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, help the best property management entrepreneurs win. And we're particularly genius at three key things: rehabbing property management companies so they make more money, optimizing their growth engines so they add more doors without having to waste money on digital marketing. And we help them figure out and get their ops dialed in so they get more freedom. Now let's get into the show. Alright, today's guest hanging out with me here is Cory. And Corey, say your last name for me. I'm gonna try it. Kavrigaru. That is an A. Really? What how do you say it? It's Kovrigaru. Kovrigaru. It could be Kovrigaro. It's Roman. Kori Covrigaru (01:07) That is an A. You got an A. Yeah, it's covrigaro. But you know what? It could be covrigaro. It's Romanian. I don't speak Romanian. My father and his family were born in Romania. Means bagel maker in Romanian. Yeah, you nailed it. We're off to a good start. Jason Hull (01:21) Interesting. Okay. He's runs bagel you know, meets bagel maker in Romanian. Okay. All right. Very cool. Yeah, my brother Bryant actually he runs a property management business. He actually was a Mormon missionary in Romania. So he speaks Romanian. So Kori Covrigaru (01:37) Wow. Buona di miniatso. That means good morning. That's about, yeah, the count of 10. We can do it again. That's... Jason Hull (01:40) There you go. That's more than I ever knew. So now everybody knows. Thank you. All right, cool. So so Corey is the the co founder of Plan O Matic. And Kori Covrigaru (01:54) Yes. Jason Hull (01:55) we're gonna discuss today how high quality listing media can help properties lease faster, reduce vacancy costs, and create a better experience for both owners and prospective residents. Corey's going to share insights for more than two decades of building one of the nation's largest real estate photography companies and what today's property manager should know about standing out in a competitive rental market. And it has gotten tough to get leasing handled in some markets right now. They've got a lot of inventory, the market shifted, it can be difficult. So we're going to get into that. All right, cool. So Corey, give us a little background on you so those that are listening can understand what how did you get into entrepreneurism and decide to be crazy like the rest of us and start a business? And like how did this lead to Planomatic? I think it was the short answer is by necessity. I realized early. Kori Covrigaru (02:48) I think it was the short answer is by necessity. I realized early on that it was unemployable and in order to provide an income for myself and eventually my family, had to figure Jason Hull (02:56) And eventually my family. Kori Covrigaru (02:58) out how to start a business. So I got into Planomatic. I was an entrepreneur major at the first school. I attended SUNY Buffalo my freshman year. played soccer there and transferring to Western Michigan. They didn't have an entrepreneurship major there, but I kind of continued upon that path for myself. And then at some point, Jason Hull (03:05) Buffalo, my freshman year, I played soccer there, I ended up transferring to Western Michigan. They didn't have an entrepreneurship major there, but I kind of continued upon that path for myself. And then at some point in college I met someone who had written software or decreased work plans quickly on site, started helping him with his business, and then eventually licensed that software, started my own business, brought my co-founders on board, and then eventually we started using other software, of course. That's how I kind of got into it. Kori Covrigaru (03:17) In college, I met someone who had written software to create floor plans quickly on site, started helping him with his business, and then eventually licensed that software, started my own business, brought my co-founders on board. And then eventually we started using other software, of course, but that's how I kind of got into it by happenstance. Jason Hull (03:34) I knew that you know A O B was probably not for Kori Covrigaru (03:34) But I knew that, know, J-O-B was probably not for me. And that's what led me to the path I'm on. 22 years. Jason Hull (03:42) Twenty two years planomatic. Very cool. Very cool. So cool. So what is Planomatic? Yeah. So Planomatic provides professional photography, floor plans, three D scans, AI virtual staging, and more services to the single family rental property management industry nationwide at speed and at scale. So that's kind of like Kori Covrigaru (03:50) Yeah. So Plan-O-Matic provides professional photography, floor plans, 3D scans, AI virtual staging, and more services to the single family rental property management industry nationwide at speed and at scale. So that's kind of like our... you know, if you're familiar with EOS or traction, that's our, that's our elevator pitch. We provide professional photography floor plan, 3D scans, AI virtual for single family rental specifically. We did use to service the for sale by agent space or the traditional real estate agent that sells homes. And we actually pivoted a hundred percent to the single family rental property management industry in Jason Hull (04:09) You know, if you're familiar with EOS or traction, that's our that's our elevator pitch. We provide photography floor technology scans for single family rentals specifically. We did use to service the for sale by agent space or the traditional real estate agent that sells homes and we actually pivoted a hundred percent to the single family rental, property management industry. Kori Covrigaru (04:32) 2020, 21, sort of around that time. Jason Hull (04:36) Okay, okay, got it. So three D scans, pro photography, speed, scale. So for property managers, why is it important to do this stuff well? Why can't they just send out one of their team members that's got an iPhone and just sort of wing it? Okay. Well there's there's a lot are a lot of reasons why that's not the optimal solution. Kori Covrigaru (04:57) Well, there's a lot. There are a lot of reasons why that's not the optimal solution. Now, look, I'm not going to say that, you know, it's the same for every property manager and every price range and every market across the U.S. That's not the case. But generally speaking, windshield time is what really cuts into profits. Jason Hull (05:05) same for every property manager and every price range and every market across the US. But generally speaking, windshield time is is what really cuts into Kori Covrigaru (05:18) And so what we're able to do is reduce that windshield time. That saves money and makes you more efficient. We also save a lot of the back office having to download, upload photos, color correct them, download them, sort them, upload them to that folio, build them, rent, find wherever your PMS is. And so we save a ton of time by being integrated with your property management software. But the biggest reason why it actually makes sense and there's a high ROI for our customers to use us versus what you described as properties with professional photos lease faster. Jason Hull (05:31) Upload photos, color correct them, download them, sort them, upload them, tab folio, building, random, wherever your PMS is. And so we save a ton of time by being integrated with your property management software. But the biggest reason why it actually makes sense and there's a high ROI for our customers to use us versus what you described is properties with professional photos leads faster. Kori Covrigaru (05:55) So we're able to get out to your property often same day or next day and deliver those assets the day later. So that's like an average of two and a half days from order to delivery when you can have professional leasing photos up on the Zillow platform, up on apartments.com or wherever else you Jason Hull (05:56) Yeah. We're able to get out to your property often the same day or next day and deliver those assets the day later. So that's like an average of two and a half days from order to delivery and then you can have professional leasing photos up on the Zillow platform, up on Parliament.com, or where Kori Covrigaru (06:11) may advertise your single family rentals. so by reducing the windshield time and the time it actually takes to get those photos on, we can reduce the time by about 14 days. Jason Hull (06:12) else you may advertise your scene family rentals. And so by reducing the the windshield time and the time it actually takes to get those photos up, we can reduce the time by about 14 days and lease that property about 10 days faster once it hits the market with those pro photos. Kori Covrigaru (06:22) and lease that property about 10 days faster once it hits the market with those pro photos. Jason Hull (06:27) So two weeks two weeks less. Two weeks less. On average it takes about two weeks from rent ready to get professional listing photos up on the portal. We can do that for you in two to two and half days. Kori Covrigaru (06:30) Two weeks less on average, takes about two weeks from rent ready to get professional listing photos up on the portal. We can do that for you in two to two and a half days. And then we can also save your team time so that they're not dealing with going out to Jason Hull (06:39) And you can also save your team time so that they're not dealing with Kori Covrigaru (06:42) a property and taking photos and uploading them in the background and doing all that stuff. They can focus on tenants or maintenance issues or communicating with owners or just not have to grow your staff as fast as you grow your business. Jason Hull (06:47) tenants or maintenance or or communicating with owners or just not have to grow your staff as fast as you grow business. Got it. So it this gives you leverage, especially during times where leasing gets heavy like the summer and there's an increase in workload and workflow happening, then you can just outsource this piece and get people get really somebody else handling this, which is planomatic, get get photos handled, you know, quickly and get things, you know Get the property leased a lot faster. Leased a lot faster. I mean it's really at this point it's table sticks, right? In this environment especially. Kori Covrigaru (07:17) Lease a lot faster. I mean, it's really at this point, it's table stakes, right? In this environment, especially where everything is so competitive, it's taking a lot more to lease a property. You actually, you need professional Jason Hull (07:25) Yeah, Kori Covrigaru (07:28) photos to compete out there. And I really, didn't even mention there is another layer to why it's important to market your properties professionally. That's because that's the first impression that potential owners that may want to hire you see online. I mean, you're dirty laundries out there, right? Like they see how you treat your existing portfolio, your existing. Jason Hull (07:30) And I I really I didn't even mention there there is another layer to why it's important to market your properties professionally, and that's because that's the first impression that potential owners that may want to hire you see online. Your your very laundry's out there, right? Like they see how you treat your existing portfolio, your existing Kori Covrigaru (07:47) and the doors that you manage, and they're going to envision their property being in that same spot on your listing page or on your website. And so Jason Hull (07:47) clients and the doors that you manage, and they're gonna envision their property being in that same spot on your listing page or on your website. Right. Kori Covrigaru (07:55) you can really elevate your brand and brand yourself professionally by hiring a professional to do your professional property manager. It's like the same reason why you wouldn't recommend an owner or manage their own property. It could work, but it doesn't make sense as far as your time value and what you value, like what's your full-time job. Jason Hull (07:56) you know, you can really elevate your brand and and and bring yourself professionally by hiring a professional to do the your professional property manager. It's like the same reason why you wouldn't recommend an owner or manage your own property. It could work, you know, it but but it doesn't make sense as far as your time value and what you got you know what's your what's your full time job, right? Let a professional go let them do it better. That's kind of the way we see it. Kori Covrigaru (08:16) Let a professional do let them do it better. That's kind of the way we see it. Jason Hull (08:20) I I think that's a really good point. If you're a property manager listening to this and you're thinking, Well I could just do that myself You are exactly the problem that frustrates you. These are the investors that are like, I'll just do it myself. You have to have a mindset that it makes sense to outsource to get a better quality product, that it makes sense to get an expert brought in to do expert work. And I love the idea because either you're at the top of your market and you're positioning yourself as the best and you're the best branded and you have the best photos and everything you do is the best, or you got to be the cheapest because in the middle is where you die. Kori Covrigaru (08:56) Exactly. Jason Hull (08:56) And that playing the game of being the cheapest and trying to do everything low cost is a great way to have a business that makes you miserable, that isn't fun to run, and isn't very attractive to the best clients. It's gonna attract cheapos. You attract who you are. And so if you want to position yourself mentally, and I coach a lot of clients on this, and if you want to position yourself mentally, you got to get graduate from being a cheapo to maybe a more normal type of buyer. And then you got to graduate from being a normal type of buyer to a premium buyer. And then you can attract everything that you want. But if you have enough premium buyers, normal buyers, you may turn down or fire a lot of the cheapos and not even work with them. Because the people that care about having nice photos and things looking good also care about things being done well and they probably have more money to spend. They're not Kori Covrigaru (09:41) Exactly. Jason Hull (09:41) looking for the cheapest, ugliest option to just get it done. You don't want to be cheap. especially in an area that kind of reverberates across Kori Covrigaru (09:45) So, yep, I agree. You don't want to be cheap. And especially in an area that kind of reverberates across the internet that everybody can see your existing clients as well as potential clients. You just don't want that to be your brand's thing. It's like, Jason Hull (09:54) the internet that everybody can see your existing, you know, clients as well as potential clients. You just don't want that to be your brand's thing. Kori Covrigaru (10:03) I'm going to cut corners when it comes to marketing your properties, for example. So that's just like the elevate your brand, kind of keep your existing owners, attract new owners. That's one component of the reason why. Jason Hull (10:07) So that's that's just like to elevate your brand, kind of keep your existing owners, attract new owners. That's one component why. Yeah, I love it. I mean, nicer photos is nice, but I think for me the benefit as a business owner really is freeing up my team to focus on higher level tasks. They're not being sent out to go be a half ass photographer. So it because it's drive time, going out to do things, they could be getting stuff done, helping onboard new clients, getting the things done in the office rather than just driving around taking photos. And if they're not really great at it, let an expert do it. So seems to be a no brainer. I'm a business owner Kori Covrigaru (10:43) And again, I'm a business owner too. Jason Hull (10:45) too. Kori Covrigaru (10:46) You might be able to, again, not scale your people as you scale your business. I mean, that's every entrepreneur's dream, right? It's how do I keep my overhead the same as it relates to the revenue, but increase that top line in order to generate more Jason Hull (10:49) scale your people as you scale your business. I mean, that's every entrepreneur's dream, right? So how do I keep my overhead the same as it relates to revenue, but increase that top line in order to Kori Covrigaru (11:00) profits, right? So not having that, that, overhead, that permanent W2 employee that's driving around, insured, buying gas while they're, you know, could be doing other things. Jason Hull (11:02) Not having that that overhead, that permanent W two that's driving around insured, buying gas while they're you know doing other things, not doing anything at all is is Kori Covrigaru (11:12) doing anything at all is a high cost. Jason Hull (11:14) high costs. Yeah. yeah, yeah. You know, like our cars are often just sitting in the driveway, right? Not really doing a whole lot for us, and then we use it occasionally. And but in business you don't want team members, they're just sitting like a car in the driveway. You want them be productive, getting stuff done and focus on the right things. And so yeah, if you have seasonal work, if photos are just something that happens occasionally, you know, or even pretty regularly, you want to be able to scale without having to just go out and hire. Hiring is one of the most costly things you will ever do. One bad hire usually costs business owners, I find, when we really dig into it, minimum 10 grand. It's 10 grand in opportunity cost, 10 grand in loss money that's been spent on this team member for about three months before you figure out they're just not going to cut it. And so the less you have to get involved in the hiring piece and you can use a system with experts just when you need it, that is a lot more ideal. Even if it's more expensive to get that thing done, there you don't have that sunk cost of having a team member all the time that you're paying. Exactly. Keep it variable if you can cool. Business in general you can keep Kori Covrigaru (12:20) Exactly. Keep it variable if you can. In business in general, if you can keep it variable, keep it variable. Jason Hull (12:24) it variable Yeah, you you mentioned table sticks. You're talking about the game where the it's who grabs the sticks first? No, it's kind of Kori Covrigaru (12:32) No, it's kind of like poker, you know, like required to pay if you're to play the game. Jason Hull (12:37) Pay if you're gonna play the game. Okay. Got it. Okay. Kori Covrigaru (12:41) You up. It's not, you know, if you're playing poker, you have to ante up. If you're in property management, you have to treat your listing. Jason Hull (12:47) Got it. I'm obviously a really seasoned poker pr player. Just kidding. So right, actually, you can tell me if I say it aloud, so I'm looking Kori Covrigaru (12:51) I hope I get that right. Actually, you put me totally, I say it a lot. So I'm going to look that one up afterwards. Jason Hull (12:56) at it. All right, cool. So yes, I missed the reference. All right. So very cool. So I I these are some of the benefits. How does Planomatic work? How does this how does this work? G paint the picture. Somebody signs up with you. What's the process? How are they able to leverage you and use you? How does this go? Kori Covrigaru (13:17) There are a number of ways we are integrated with AppFolio, Buildium, and RentFine. So I integrated what I mean is you register as a Planomatic client, and then you integrate with your property management software. Your portfolio then syncs with our system so you can see Jason Hull (13:22) Build DM and Redfine. So by integrating what I mean is you register as a priomatic client and then you integrate with your property management software. Your portfolio then syncs with our system. Kori Covrigaru (13:33) your properties in our system, see what's for rent, what's not for rent, what has professional photos, what doesn't, and make your buying decisions that way with one click. Order photos, order photos, order photos. Jason Hull (13:36) Rent what has professional photos, what doesn't, make your buying decisions that way with one click, order photos, order photos, order photos. Yeah. We either dispatch our photography either same day or next day, go out, capture the content, have that content processed and photoshopped, etc., by our team and some tools that we use, and then we sync those assets back with your property management software so you can go ahead and with one click syndicate that property. Kori Covrigaru (13:43) We then dispatch our photographer either same day or next day, go out, capture the content, have that content processed and photoshopped, et cetera, by our team and some tools that we use. And then we sync those assets back with your property management software so that you can go ahead and with one click syndicate that property as far as the marketing photos are concerned. They appear in your account ready to go, right sort order with the right captions, the right size. Jason Hull (14:04) Far as the marketing photos are concerned, they're appear in your account, ready to go, right? Sort order with the right captions, the right size, etc. And so that entire process from order to delivery is average, you know, averages about two and a half days. and you don't have to download a single thing, like everything just kind of like goes the way it goes. There is another that we've just launched. Actually, this is kind of big news for us, but we've launched the ability to receive work orders now through either property meld or Kori Covrigaru (14:11) Etc. And so that entire process from order to delivery is average, know, averages about two and a half days. And you don't have to download a single thing. Like everything is kind of like goes the way it goes. There is another way that we've just launched. Actually, this is kind of big news for us, but we've launched the ability to receive work orders now through either property meld or, or at folio ability and rent finds. So we can actually receive work orders from our customers, just like you order a plumber. Jason Hull (14:33) Folio ability of our device. We can actually receive work orders from our customers. Just like you order a plumber to come out to the property, you order Planomatic to shoot photos, we receive that work order, we digest that order automatically, and then two to two and a half days later, you'll find those assets synced with your property management software ready to syndicate in the most ways that we work with our customers. And we do have larger owner operator customers that own their their rentals as well as manage them and those Kori Covrigaru (14:38) to come out to the property, order PlanoMatic to shoot photos, we receive that work order, we digest that order automatically, and then two to two and a half days later, you'll find those assets synced with your property management software, ready to syndicate immediately. Those are the most organized that we work with our customers. And we do have larger owner operator customers that own their rentals as well as manage them. And those are kind of like we call them enterprise clients, institutional investors. Jason Hull (15:04) Clients, institutional investors, Kori Covrigaru (15:06) They integrate with us in a bit of a unique way. They directly integrate with our platform versus going through property management software because they're typically on either Salesforce or Yardi or some sort of proprietary platform. So those customers have a more direct integration with us. That's pretty much, it's really easy. Just register and go ahead and integrate. You don't have to integrate. You can also just go out and place an order and we'll be there. Jason Hull (15:07) they integrate with us in a bit of a unique way. They directly integrate with our platform versus going through property management software because we typically want either Salesforce or ERB or some sort of proprietary platform. Okay. Just register and go ahead and integrate. You don't have to integrate the just go out and place an order. Okay. Very cool. And so if they place an order and you go out there and maybe the tenant left something or wasn't quite ready. like there's a trash bag in the kitchen or there's something's missing or whatever. The Photoshop guys can kind of get it s that weird thing out or take care of that. It's just AI the thing and it's gone. We don't charge for something like that. We charge for object Kori Covrigaru (15:44) But as we know today, that's kind of a lasso situation. You just kind of lasso that item. We get rid of those items, and we don't charge for something like that. We charge for object removal that's bigger. Like if there's a car in the driveway for some reason, or there's a big trash bin, we may charge a little extra Jason Hull (16:00) Yeah. Kori Covrigaru (16:00) for that, because that's a little more heavy. But as long as the is vacant, we can take the photos. We can clean up a little bit of a mess. Jason Hull (16:03) Got it. Okay. Kori Covrigaru (16:07) It's no big deal. We can do a lot more. can AI virtual stage images, too, but declutter. Jason Hull (16:12) Okay. Cool. Got it. I I'm sure people listening to this are like, this sounds great. This sounds really cool, but what is the cost? Is that something you can tell talk about? Yeah, the cost in and right now we we do have a membership program, so it it does impact that and we do have a prepay and save, but Okay. But the cost is a la carte. You don't have to pay like this, you know, per month subscription. It's like literally you have an Kori Covrigaru (16:23) Yeah, the cost in right now, we do have a membership program, so it does impact that, and we do have a prepay and save, but the cost is a la carte. You don't have to pay like this per door per month subscription. It's like literally you have an order to place with us. Great. Go on, place one order for photography only. Our minimum there is 10 photos. You can also place an order for photos and 3D tour and a floor plan. Jason Hull (16:40) place with us, great. Go on place one order for photography only. Our minimum there is ten photos. you can also place an order for photos and three D tour and a floor plan. Kori Covrigaru (16:50) I believe that photos, know, everything's like for, for 15 photos, a 3d tour and a 2d floor plan. We're talking under 300 bucks per property setting. 270. It's like off the rack, 15 photos, 3d. Jason Hull (16:51) Okay. I believe that photos, you know, everything's like for f for fifteen photos, a three D tour and a two D floor plan, we're talking under three hundred bucks. Okay. Awesome. Two seventy it's like off the rack. Yeah, that's great. And this would be easily be something that you could offer as part of your packages or your offerings and have the owner pay for as part of the leasing process. I was gonna backtrack and say it's free. Right. Right. You should be tweaking your owner and you should be probably marking that up for all the coordination just that you do. I mean it's transparent, but we don't really support the kickbacks or or charging more and saying, you know, tell them it was more or whatever it is, but Kori Covrigaru (17:19) I was going to backtrack and say it's free. It's free to the property manager, right? Because you should be choosing your owner and you should be probably marking that up for all the coordination, just like you would mark up in the work that you do. mean, of course, transparently, we don't really support kickbacks or charging more and saying, you know, tell them it was more or whatever it is. But yeah, this is something that most property managers that we work for are starting to change their process, change their owner agreement to make sure that that owner Jason Hull (17:40) Yeah, this is something that most property managers that we work for are starting to change their process, change their owner agreement to make sure that that owner Kori Covrigaru (17:49) pays for those marketing photos and it makes sense, right? Because once that owner picks up and leaves and takes their door with them, those photos are then obsolete, right? for the property manager. it makes a lot of sense. And a lot of owners are like, yeah, of course we need professional photos to market my property. Jason Hull (17:50) pays for those marketing photos and it makes sense, right? Because once that owner picks up and leaves and takes a vote with them, those photos are then obsolete, right? So for the for the property managers. So it makes a lot of sense. And a lot of owners are are like, Yeah, of course we need fashion for this. Kori Covrigaru (18:04) It's my property. Jason Hull (18:04) Yeah, obviously. And then if they can explain everything you just explained about the benefits of this, then to their clients, the then the owners will say, Yeah, no brainer. I should do this. I'll pay the extra money. I'll pay and mute. Kori Covrigaru (18:16) That should be in the agreement. mean, that's something, yeah. Jason Hull (18:20) Got it. Okay, very cool. What else do people typically ask about Planomatic or what what else are am I are we missing? Those that are listening that might usually be curious about. Kori Covrigaru (18:30) I you know, I don't want to call it a silver bullet because I don't know that I believe necessarily in silver bullets. Are you, are you with me on the silver bullet thing? All right, good. Just making sure. So AI virtual staging has, has provided us with significant data that shows that it works almost like a silver bullet. mean, properties with AI virtual staging just lease faster. get more showings, more, more. Jason Hull (18:35) Silver bullets? Are you are you with me on a silver bullet thing? Yeah, yeah. So AI virtual staging has has provided us with significant data that shows that it works almost like a silver bullet. I mean, yeah. Properties with AI virtual staging just lease faster. They get more showings, more more applications, and it's been kind of wild. Kori Covrigaru (18:59) and it's been kind of wilder. That's something that we've seen from our institutional folks. They take a lot more time to research ROI on specific products that we offer. one of the... Jason Hull (19:02) That's something that we've seen from our institutional folks. They take a lot more time to research on RLI on specific products that we offer. So everybody knows kind of what staging is, right? If you're selling a home and it's usually a more expensive home, you call a company a staging company and they'll bring a big U-Haul with a bunch of furniture and they'll come and they'll drop it off and they'll put it in, and then you'll have your listing photos taken, right? Because listing photos look so much better. Kori Covrigaru (19:12) Yeah. So everybody knows kind of what staging is, right? If you're selling a home and it's usually a more expensive home, you call a company, a staging company, and they'll bring a big U-Haul with a bunch of furniture and they'll come and they'll drop it off and they'll put it in. And then you'll have your listing photos taken, right? Because listing photos look so much better with furniture. Well, for the longest time, we've been able to virtually stage real estate photos. We've had to do it with a human being and that costs a lot. You know, that costs a lot. Jason Hull (19:32) furniture, well for the longest time we've been able to virtually stage real estate photos. We've had to do it with a human being and that's cost a lot, you know, that costs a lot more money. But today the advances of AI and we see it all you know commercials on TV and everything, we can virtually stage and by virtual stage I mean s like take a a photo of a vacant room. Yeah. Go go to our staging vendor, a software company, click a button, choose Kori Covrigaru (19:42) But today, with the advances of AI and we see it all over commercials on TV and everything, we can virtually stage. And by virtually stage, mean, take a photo of a vacant room, go to our staging vendor, a software company, click a button, choose between Jason Hull (20:00) between various different styles for staging. Okay. And then it actually places that furniture in the image and and you and it looks like s it's scary how real Kori Covrigaru (20:00) various different styles for staging. And then it actually places that furniture in the image and it looks like it's scary how real it looks. Jason Hull (20:09) it looks. Right, yeah. And so when you have when they have properties that are are staged or virtually staged, and we label them virtually staged just Kori Covrigaru (20:11) And so when you have, when you have properties that are staged or virtually staged and we label them virtually staged just to make sure that. Jason Hull (20:18) to make sure that you've got the virtual staging in the photos. Does this show up in the three D tour or stuff like that? It doesn't show up in the three D tour. It does however show Kori Covrigaru (20:25) doesn't show up in the 3d tour. does, however, show up in the photography carousel, of course. And we typically have like a before and after. It allows for the potential renter to envision their lives in that, versus seeing it as an empty box. So naturally there's been more, we've all looked for real estate before and we've clicked through properties and when the photos are bad, it's you kind of move on. Cause like you don't stuff in that mess, right? Jason Hull (20:31) Got it. I mean we have like a before and after. It it it allows for the potential renter to envision their lives. Right, they can imagine it. Versus seeing it as an empty box. So naturally they're gonna spend more we all looked for real estate before and we've clicked through properties and photos of that it's you kinda move on. Yeah, yeah. You don't withten that mess, right? When it's nicer photos you stop and and so the the furniture really helps the potential rent to stop spending more time Kori Covrigaru (20:53) When it's nicer photos, you stop. so the furniture really helps the potential renter stop, spend more time on that listing and eventually get more showings and more applications. Jason Hull (21:02) Sure. Yeah. I've moved into places and you know, seeing how they had it decorated before or seeing photos how they decorate it gave me an idea of, we could do something like this, or here's what I want to change. Because you're not starting with just this blank slate and trying to be creative. And so yeah, I think it helps people's imagination so they can picture their life in there. Okay, Kori Covrigaru (21:23) Yep. It just cause you to stop, you know. Jason Hull (21:25) cool. And there's you you were citing there's evidence. that virtual staging significantly increases the results as well. So not just having good photos, but also good photos that are virtually staged, you're now maximizing the the return on this. And the and the virtual staging that that's Kori Covrigaru (21:41) And the virtual staging, that's really inexpensive. I think it's 36 bucks for three rooms, if I'm not mistaken. Jason Hull (21:46) It's thirty six bucks for three rooms. Yeah. Kori Covrigaru (21:49) So it's like a huge ROI Jason Hull (21:51) Cool. Kori Covrigaru (21:52) to order virtual staging on top of your professional photo. Jason Hull (21:54) Sure, a lot cheaper than real staging. Kori Covrigaru (21:58) Where'd you go? Jason Hull (21:59) So yeah, got it. Very cool. anything else that we're missing about Planomatic? Sounds very cool. Yeah. Kori Covrigaru (22:05) Yeah, no, I mean, I'm again, been an entrepreneur for about 22 years. We have a high focus on, on client communication and client support. So that's one thing that's like paramount for me. I always tell my team, it's better to know that nothing is happening than to not know something is happening, meaning keep the customer updated. You know, even if we don't have the resolution yet for you, like we'll figure it out or we're working on it. So when you work with us, you really understand those, that's part of our core values. really. Jason Hull (22:10) we have a high focus on on client communication and client support. So that's one thing that's like paramount for me. I always tell my team it's better to know that nothing is happening than to not know something is happening. Meaning keep the customer updated. Yeah. You know, even if we don't have the resolution yet for you, like we'll figure it out or we're working on it. So what when you work with us, you really understand those that's part of our core values. It really emulates through the entire organization. So that's really important to us. Our integration, of course, is is really important and allows for Kori Covrigaru (22:30) emulates through the entire organization. So that's really important to us. Our integration, of course, is really important and allows for our customers to be able to transact with us. Again, business 101, make it as easy as possible for your customers to transact with you. So we've tried to make that a reality. And then, know, we're business owners, we're a small business, just like you all are, you know, just like you are, Jason, just like our property management clients are. And we just want to... Jason Hull (22:39) To be able to transact with us, make our business one on one, make it as easy as possible for your customers to transact with you. So we've tried to make that a reality. and then you know, we're we're business owners, we're small business just like just like you all are. We're not just like you are, Jason, just like our our our property management clients are. and we just wanna be successful in helping our clients make more money and and gain more market share, and and that's what we strive for every day. So we have the same Kori Covrigaru (22:59) be successful in helping our clients make more money and gain more market share. And that's what we strive for every day. So we have the same struggles, but same successes that every business owner does. We're not PE-backed or VC-backed. Jason Hull (23:08) Same struggles, but same successes does with the RP backed or PC backed on P back back. Got it. So I know there's a lot of people listening that are gonna think, because I hear this all the time, even with with what we do at DoorGrow, will this work in my market? I'm in a big city, will this work in my market? I'm in a small town. How do you source photographers? So before you answer that, I'm gonna share a quick word from our sponsor. So our sponsor today is Vendoroo. So if you're working with Door grow, you're growing doors, right? And that means you have to keep figuring out how to keep up with the maintenance. So instead of doing that, we recommend that you use Vendoroo to have maintenance figured out for you with AI. Some of our clients are getting 85%, 95% of their maintenance coordination handled by Vendoroo, which is amazing. Vendoroo brings the best practices, workflows, and AI intelligence. They've developed across hundreds of property management operations and puts it into work, into your business. It's an AI that answers the phone. It troubleshoots with residents. It coordinates vendors. It does follow-up. It drives the work order all the way to completion. It could probably work with Plan O Matic, right? So as you add doors, you don't have to keep reinventing maintenance. Let Vendoroo build your maintenance for you. Like so many of our DoorGrow community members have already done. You focus on growing your doors. Build an AI-first maintenance department that will scale with you forever. Use Vendoro. Cool. All right. So tell us how do you handle photographers? Because some people are thinking, well, this might be hard in my town. They who do they know in, you know, Podunksville, you know, wherever I'm at, you know. Or they might think I'm in a really big city and maybe photographers, there's challenges with getting good ones and they're so expensive or w whatnot. Kori Covrigaru (25:01) You hire a team to, you know, to Jason Hull (25:02) You hire a team to to you know. Kori Covrigaru (25:04) onboard, to hire, to onboard, maintain these contract photographers nationwide. That's kind of what we've Jason Hull (25:09) Yeah. Kori Covrigaru (25:09) done. we've perfected that, almost perfected that. I think one really important thing to note about us is we try to make it as simple as possible for our photographers to work with us from all the software. And it hasn't historically been that way and we're getting closer to it, but what software do they have to download and register for on our system? Jason Hull (25:13) Almost almost perfected that. Yeah. One really important thing to note about us is we try to make it as simple as possible for our photographers to work with us from all the software and and and it hasn't historically been that way. We'll get any closer to it, but what software do they have to download and register for on our system? Yeah. what specifics, like how are the instructions given out? What about access to to you know these doors and and I'm not talking about just one method. It's like there are so many different methods. Kori Covrigaru (25:30) What specifics, like how are the instructions given out? What about access to these doors? And we're not talking about just one method. It's like there are so many different methods. I'm trying to key box, so there's a key hidden. There's this, there's that. Call this number, get this code, right? So it's just a lot. I mean, we've been doing this since 2004. We've been in the SFR space since 2012, handling hundreds of shoots a day. Jason Hull (25:41) trying to key box so there's a key hidden there's this there's that call this number get this code right so it's just a lot I mean we've been doing this since 2004 we've been in the SFR space since 2012 handling hundreds of shoots a day for larger companies and smaller companies and so there's a lot a lot of its experience of just like okay here are all the you know here are all the edge cases this is what you do in this case and also just being available for them to pay them of course enough to make it make sense but we have Kori Covrigaru (25:56) for larger companies and smaller companies. And so there's a lot of experience of just like, okay, here are all the edge cases. This is what you do in this case. And also just being available for them. You have to pay them, of course, enough to make it make sense, but we have to pay them enough for the business to operate, right? So it's a very delicate, it's the hardest thing that we do is find quality photographers, educate them, onboard them, maintain them, and then keep them happy. Jason Hull (26:11) good enough for the business to operate, right? So it's a very delicate it's a har it's the hardest thing that we do is is find quality photographers, educate them, onboard them, maintain them and keep them happy. Yeah. it's Kori Covrigaru (26:25) It's as tough as it sounds. And it doesn't matter if it's a small market or a huge market. Huge markets with a lot of people have their own challenges. There's traffic, there's cost of living, it's higher. Small markets, you don't have all that, know, it's to find quality people Jason Hull (26:26) it's as tough as it sounds and and it doesn't matter if it's the small market or a or a huge market, but you huge markets with a lot of people have their own challenges. There's traffic, there's cost of living to hire small markets, you know, have all that you know, hardly fine Kori Covrigaru (26:41) in the specific industry. it's just, hire the right people to take care of our great network of planet tech. Jason Hull (26:40) quality people in the specific industry. So it's just hire the right people our great network with planetary. Yeah. This is some of the magic that you've spent a lot of time dealing with. And I'm sure people that have tried going and getting a photographer, tried doing it themselves, tried editing photos, like that is just so time intensive, so much work. And if you're a business owner doing this stuff, that's the dumbest trade you could ever make. You should offload that, get that off your plate because the speed of you is the speed of the business and the team. And you should calculate your time as worth the the top line revenue of the company and what that comes out to per hour. And so you should not be doing this stuff. So now another challenge that people deal with, and I don't know if there's a way your system addresses this, but there's been a lot of challenges with scammers stealing photos from people's listings, putting up other listings elsewhere, tricking people into giving money. Is there any way we can combat that through Kori Covrigaru (27:37) No. Jason Hull (27:38) the photography? Kori Covrigaru (27:39) You know, I think with general awareness around how sort of the internet works and how, and the general awareness of what AI Jason Hull (27:40) But I think with general awareness around how sort of the internet works and how to t and and the general awareness Kori Covrigaru (27:46) is capable of, I think people are more skeptical these days. I don't think everybody's just sending out checks and routing numbers and checking numbers. Cause we hear, I'll be honest, we hear less noise about it lately. And I think it's around the awareness. Historically, you know, we, we watermark photos. can watermark photos, however you, you know, property Jason Hull (27:48) skeptical these days, right? Yeah. Everybody's just sending out checks and routing numbers and 'cause we hear we hear less noise about it lately and I think it's awareness. historically, you know, we we watermark photos, we can watermark photos Kori Covrigaru (28:05) manager wants to watermark photos. AI today, you can get rid of those watermarks in like a half a second, Free AI account. So man, it's changing rapidly right now. I don't have a recommendation that will just solve all of those problems. think that you have to be very careful. I would still watermark. You have to be careful where you put your images. There are applications out there like... Jason Hull (28:08) Photos with AI today, you can give rid of those watermarks. Yeah. Yeah. So man, it's it's it's changing rapidly right now. I don't have a a a recommendation that will just solve all of those problems. I think that I mean you have to be very careful. I s I would still watermark, you have to be careful where you put your images. there are there are applications out there like Kori Covrigaru (28:34) invisible watermarks that you can kind of track across. Jason Hull (28:35) invisible watermarks and you can add it. Yeah, I've heard about the invisible watermarks lately. Claude and some of these tools Kori Covrigaru (28:40) Yeah. Jason Hull (28:40) are adding invisible watermarks to stuff, to text, to images, to things that are created. So people will go, this was created by AI. Here's where it came from. I think it's a matter of educating your your potential renters. I think it's a lot a lot it's you know still Kori Covrigaru (28:48) Yeah. I think it's a matter of educating your potential renters. think it's a lot of it's, know, Zillow has to make it, has to educate their users, right, to make sure that people aren't just going and sending random checks out and putting it all over the listing media and all over your brochure and description. I think it's really important. If you're a renter, don't go on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. Stick to the internet listing services that are, you know, tried and true, I think. Jason Hull (29:11) stick to the listing services that are you know tried and true. Kori Covrigaru (29:19) I think that's the most important thing is like just watch where you put your listings, make sure it's reputable. Jason Hull (29:20) Think that's the most important thing. It's like just watch where you put your listings, make sure it's reputable. Very cool. Love it. So, Corey, tell us a little bit about the philosophy that you try to instill with your company, with the people that are in your business, like maybe the values that that you guys espouse. Give people a feel for what the culture is like at Planomatic. We are exceptionally client for meaning, I don't like to say no. Kori Covrigaru (29:41) We are exceptionally client forward, meaning I don't like to say no to clients. I like to ask more questions and I don't like giving an update without a resolution that's coming up. And I get copied on a lot. I drive my team nuts, Jason. I mean, I drive work because I'll reply to a random support ticket or response from our team. I'll just, I'll. Jason Hull (30:00) Yeah. I'll reply to a random support ticket or or response from our team and I'll just Kori Covrigaru (30:08) I'll reach out to that team member and I think there's a better way we could have handled this reply. And if I'm the customer, like, when are you getting back to me? Jason Hull (30:08) I'll I'll reach out to that team member and say, hey, I think there's a better way we could have handled this reply. If I'm the if one of the customers are like, when are you getting back to me? Kori Covrigaru (30:15) Right. And I think that's like most important again, it's, better to know, like everybody hears it from me. It's better to know that nothing is happening than to not know that something is happening. And so we have this, we have this phrase we use, we hold the client at the center of the organization, no matter what. one thing I haven't talked about recently, but I think it's really cool. And it's something that we've kind of put in place in 2020 or 2021 is we have personas. Jason Hull (30:17) And I think that's like the most important. Again, it's it's better to know like everybody hears it from better to know that nothing to not know that something is happening. So we have this we have this phrase we use, we hold the client at the center of the organization no matter what. one thing I haven't talked about recently, but I think it's really cool and it's something that we've we kind of put in place in twenty twenty twenty or twenty twenty-one is Kori Covrigaru (30:37) our customers, they're real names, right? So we started out with Emma. Emma is our enterprise client. Emma is typically a Jason Hull (30:37) percent of our customers. They're real names, right? So we start out with Emma. Emma is our enterprise client. Emma is typically Kori Covrigaru (30:46) single family rental owner operator. Emma raises money through institutional capital, whether that be publicly traded on Wall Street or private equity money or pension plans. Jason Hull (30:47) A single family rental owner operator. Emma raises money through institutional capital, whether that be publicly traded on Wall Street or private equity money or pension plans. Emma is usually a customer that uses his own software and integrates directly with our platform. Emma has this National Rental Home Council, Emma Emma. So Kori Covrigaru (30:57) Emma is usually a customer that uses her own software and integrates directly with our platform. Emma has this National Rental Home Council, Emma, Emma, Emma. And then we have Paul. Jason Hull (31:09) these are your customer, you've got customer avatars so that when you are building out your products and services. you are have them in mind and you know these categories of clients or buyers of your services will, you know, maybe perceive it a certain way and the product's geared towards these personalities. That's exactly right. And we we Kori Covrigaru (31:27) That's exactly right. And we, we talk about Emma and Paul all day long. It's just natural. Like I'll, I'll be talking to. So Paul, Paul is when we got into, Jason Hull (31:33) Tell us about Paul. Who's Paul? Kori Covrigaru (31:37) servicing the third party property manager that manages, Jason Hull (31:40) Well you're breaking up a little bit. Say that again. Kori Covrigaru (31:43) when we, when we started servicing the third party property manager, you know, a smaller business that, that manages 50 to up to, you know, a thousand doors. Jason Hull (31:45) When we when we started servicing the third party property manager, you know, a a smaller business that that manages fifty to up to you know a thousand doors, that persona was so different, and we named that persona Paul, Paul the property manager. Okay. Paul uses folio or building arm or or rent client or rent manager, right? Paul doesn't own their properties, they have clients. Paul's typically smaller, Paul's usually regional. Paul goes to the n national rental. Kori Covrigaru (31:55) that persona was so different and we named that persona Paul, Paul the property manager. So Paul uses Azzolio or Bildium or Rentvine or Rent Manager, right? Paul doesn't own their properties, they have clients. Paul's typically smaller, Paul's usually regional. Paul goes to National Association of Residential Property Management conferences, NARPAM. Jason Hull (32:15) National Association of Residential Property Management Conferences. Not that and and so those are important to like know what each customer wants. The real value is that we've like humanized our clients. Yeah. It's no longer client or or you know ACE property management company wants this. No, it's it's Paul. It's it's it like we have these personas, we have these images of what Paul might look like and what Emma might look like. And so it really helps the team Kori Covrigaru (32:19) And so those are important to know what each customer wants, but the real value is that we've humanized our clients. It's no longer the client or Ace property management company wants this. No, it's Paul. We have these personas, we have these images of what Paul might look like and what Emma might look like. And so it really helps the team humanize the customer and realize that we're talking to human beings. Jason Hull (32:44) humanize the customer and and realize that we're we're talking to human beings. These are real people not just folks behind the screen or whatever it is. Yeah, I love it. Every every small small examples of things that we've done, one of our core values is we create genuine relationships, right? Our customers. We love we love that core value. So everything that we do, it's just like the longer you're in a business, the more you realize that communication and support, how you Kori Covrigaru (32:48) real people, they're not just folks behind the screen or whatever it is. And so every small examples of things that we've done, one of our core values is we create genuine relationships, right? With our customers. We love that core value. So everything that we do, it's just like the longer you're in business, the more you realize that communication and support and how you, it's not how you treat the customer when things are going well, it's how you. Jason Hull (33:13) It's not how you treat the customer when things are going well, it's how you treat the customer, communicate to the customer when things aren't ideal. How you get back on track. Get the client to say, you know what? That got screwed up really, but they took such good care of me so quickly and they gave me this and they got out back for property that. That's what brings customers back more and more. It's not it's not, you know I I believe. Actually that's what keeps me buying from the same, you know, vendor or from the same board is if I'm treated. Kori Covrigaru (33:16) treat the customer and communicate to customer when things aren't ideal. How do you get back on track? You get the client to say, you know what, that got screwed up royally, but they took such good care of me so quickly and they gave me this and they got out back to the property that, that's what brings customers back more and more. It's not, it's not, you know, I believe actually that's what keeps me buying from the same, you know, vendor or from the same, or as if I'm treated with respect and communicated with respect and that's what Jason Hull (33:45) Yeah, I love that. I think that's a great tip for those listening to map out your ideal customer profile or your ideal client profile. Map out the avatars that you tend to serve. There's usually a small category of clients that are the ones you're really going after that you're serving. this is true in any business. And the more clear and the more you humanize them and the more you realize what their strengths, what their challenges are, what their pains, their frustrations, their concerns are. And you map this out, the better you're going to be able to do marketing, target them, create your sales presentation, scripts, pitches, whatever you're doing to be more effective and to teach your team about them so they understand these different avatars. And so yeah, we've done the same thing at DoorGro. We have very clear avatars that we target and that we focus on. And yeah, and we gear our products towards directly towards those avatars and what their challenges are. So love that. It's a great tip to share. and I love the the I the the focus on relationships, which I think is is paramount. So cool. Well Corey, great stuff. Really appreciate you coming on, telling us about Planomatic. How can people find Planomatic and how can they get started? the easiest way is just planomatic.com, just like it's spelled. you can Kori Covrigaru (34:59) The easiest way is just planomatic.com, just like it's spelled. You can email me always at k-o-r-i at planomatic.com. You can also find us in the marketplace on Atfolio's marketplace, Buildium's marketplace as well. We're all over Narpoem, so if you come to our show, come find us. We're usually in one of the bigger booths because we're preferred partners with Narpoem. So it's not too hard to find us. Go to our website, check us out, reach out to me. Always happy to hear from classic. Jason Hull (35:13) in this marketplace as well. We're all over Narbum. So if you come to a show, come find us. we're usually in one of the bigger booths because we're for partners with Narbum. So it's not too hard to find us. Go to our website, check us out, reach out to me. Always happy to hear from class prospects as well as existing clients. Any feedback anybody has that's another things we ask for. Kori Covrigaru (35:27) Prospects as well as existing clients any feedback anybody has that's another things we ask for a hell of a lot of feedback often too much But yeah easy to find and we welcome everybody Jason Hull (35:36) But yeah, easy to find. Cool, awesome. Tell them that you heard about them from the DoorGro Show podcast if you see this. Kori Covrigaru (35:42) Talon, DoorGro, I've got a special coupon if you tell me you heard about us from the DoorGro show. I'll hook it up. Jason Hull (35:49) Cool. Awesome. We appreciate that. So that he'll give you a special deal. All right. Very cool. Well, Corey, thanks for being here. Appreciate you coming on the DoorGrow show. For those that are enjoying this or watch our show, if you've ever felt stuck or stagnant, you want to take your property management business to that next level. You've been hitting a wall. You've been frustrated for a while. You've tried different marketing channels. You feel like you're just getting sold a bill of goods sometimes. You're just you're frustrated. Reach out to us at doorgrow.com, we can help. So for a free training on how to get unlimited free leads, text the word leads to 512-648-4608. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners by going to doorgrowclub.com. You can also join that by going to getting our DoorGrow Hub app that is in the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. And if you want tips, tricks, or ideas and to learn about our offer, subscribe to our newsletter by going to doorgrow.com/slash subscribe. And if you found this episode even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. It helps us out. Until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone, all by yourself. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.