Podcasts about Bucephalus

Dr. Carolyn Willekes, an equine archaeologist and professor of Ancient History at Mount Royal University in Canada, joins Lexie to discuss her moving from STEM/veterinary science to Classics, how being a “horse girl” drew her to Macedonian cavalry and the role of horses in the ancient world, the complexities of the human-horse relationship, and the legendary relationship between Alexander the Great and his horse, Bucephalus. So tuck in your togas and hop aboard Trireme Transit for this week's exciting odyssey! Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram or visit our website www.theozymandiasproject.com! Learn more about Dr. Willekes: https://www.mtroyal.ca/ProgramsCourses/FacultiesSchoolsCentres/Arts/Departments/Humanities/Faculty/Carolyn-Willekes.htmFollow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/academic.equestrian/ Check out her publications on Academia: https://mtroyal.academia.edu/CarolynWillekes Watch her lecture for the American School of Classical Studies promoting a special 2022 exhibit Hippos: The Horse in Ancient Athens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQtILJLJYNkCheck out the Equine History Collective: https://equinehistory.org/ Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheOzymandiasProject Custom music by Brent Arehart of Arehart Sounds and edited by Dan Maday.  Get exclusive bonus content (ad free episodes, early releases, and experimental content) on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2024 is almost over, somehow. So we gathered a bunch of our Verge colleagues and told them each to tell us three things from the year: the biggest story, their favorite new tech thing, and their favorite new non-tech thing. We got a collection of big stories, cool gadgets, great movies, and more good stuff from the year that was. We're also planning a special episode for Tuesday, December 10th, all about The Verge and The Vergecast. So if you have questions about how we work, what we cover, why we talk about copyright law so much, or what Nilay is actually like to work with every day, tell us! Call 866-VERGE11, or email vergecast@theverge.com, and we'll answer as many as we can on the 10th. Thanks in advance! Further reading: Jay Peters: Story of the year: Google is a monopoly New thing of the year: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Non-tech thing of the year: XOXO Field Notes notebooks Jake Kastrenakes: Story of the year: All things AI New thing of the year: The Wiim Ultra amp Non-tech thing of the year: Chronoloy Justine Calma Story of the year: The US election, and the rise of nuclear power New thing of the year: Nurse Unseen Non-tech thing of the year: Sugarcane Vjeran Pavic: Story of the year: The Apple Vision Pro New thing of the year: The Fujifilm X100VI and the Kino app Non-tech thing of the year: Mountain Gazette Kylie Robison: Story of the year: Billionaire crybabies New thing of the year: Stardew Valley Non-tech thing of the year: Curated playlists Barbara Krasnoff: Story of the year: The US election New thing of the year: The Elgato Stream Deck Non-tech thing of the year: Googly eyes Alex Heath: Story of the year: The AI rat race New thing of the year: Granola Non-tech thing of the year: Shochu Ash Parrish: Story of the year: Grand Theft Auto VI and the Nintendo Switch 2, and more industry layoffs New thing of the year: The Playstation Portal Non-tech thing of the year: Bucephalus the puppy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join us as we recap and chat about Bob's Burgers Season 4 Episode 17 The Equestranauts and Season 4 Episode 18 Ambergris Did you know Bob's pony character, "Bobcephala", is a play on "Bucephalus", which was the name of the horse of Alexander the Great. Wiki page for the episode: The Equestranauts Ambergris Links, articles, and videos mentioned in this episode: Join our Book Club on Patreon Follow us on Instagram Follow us on Tiktok --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/obdykpod/support

It's episode 84 and we have history! And horses! And non-binary 18th century preachers! We. Have. Everything. Kt, our resident Horse Girl and Horsetorian, takes us on a tour through history to meet some of its most famous equine figures--from Alexander the Great's Bucephalus to Roy Rogers' Trigger. Next, Laurel travels through history to Revolutionary War era America to meet a non-binary preacher, who traveled the colonies preaching against sin, slavery and inequality known to their followers and history as: The Public Universal Friend. *~*~*~*~*~ The Socials and Patreon! Patreon-- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Best Buds Club!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HightailingHistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  TikTok⁠- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HightailingHistoryPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Facebook⁠ -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hightailing Through History or ⁠⁠@HightailingHistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hightailing Through History⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email--hightailingthroughhistory@gmail.com *~*~*~*~* Source Materials-- History's Horses-- ⁠https://www.treehugger.com/famous-horses-from-history-4869161⁠ ⁠ https://www.si.edu/spotlight/famous-horses⁠ ⁠https://www.google.com/search?q=why+are+horses+important+in+history&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS789US792&oq=why+are+horses+important+in+&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCAgBEAAYFhgeMgYIABBFGDkyCAgBEAAYFhgeMggIAhAAGBYYHjIICAMQABgWGB4yCAgEEAAYFhgeMggIBRAAGBYYHjIICAYQABgWGB4yCAgHEAAYFhgeMggICBAAGBYYHjIICAkQABgWGB7SAQg2NzAyajBqNKgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8⁠ ⁠https://www.morganhorse.com/about/museum/the-life-and-times-of-figure/⁠ ⁠https://www.tbheritage.com/Portraits/Lexington.html⁠ ⁠https://www.si.edu/object/general-sheridans-horse-winchester-aka-rienzi%3Anmah_439678⁠ Public Universal Friend-- https://www.nypl.org/blog/2023/02/16/who-was-public-universal-friend-living-outside-gender-binary-revolutionary-times⁠ ⁠https://wams.nyhistory.org/settler-colonialism-and-revolution/settler-colonialism/public-universal-friend/⁠ ⁠https://www.npr.org/transcripts/812092399⁠ ⁠https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_universalism⁠ ⁠https://www.jstor.org/stable/90009810⁠ ~*~*~*~*~* Intro/outro music: "Loopster" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hightailing-history/message

It's episode 84 and we have history! And horses! And non-binary 18th century preachers! We. Have. Everything. Kt, our resident Horse Girl and Horsetorian, takes us on a tour through history to meet some of its most famous equine figures--from Alexander the Great's Bucephalus to Roy Rogers' Trigger. Next, Laurel travels through history to Revolutionary War era America to meet a non-binary preacher, who traveled the colonies preaching against sin, slavery and inequality known to their followers and history as: The Public Universal Friend. *~*~*~*~*~ The Socials and Patreon! Patreon-- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Best Buds Club!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HightailingHistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  TikTok⁠- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HightailingHistoryPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Facebook⁠ -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hightailing Through History or ⁠⁠@HightailingHistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hightailing Through History⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email--hightailingthroughhistory@gmail.com *~*~*~*~* Source Materials-- History's Horses-- ⁠https://www.treehugger.com/famous-horses-from-history-4869161⁠ ⁠ https://www.si.edu/spotlight/famous-horses⁠ ⁠https://www.google.com/search?q=why+are+horses+important+in+history&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS789US792&oq=why+are+horses+important+in+&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCAgBEAAYFhgeMgYIABBFGDkyCAgBEAAYFhgeMggIAhAAGBYYHjIICAMQABgWGB4yCAgEEAAYFhgeMggIBRAAGBYYHjIICAYQABgWGB4yCAgHEAAYFhgeMggICBAAGBYYHjIICAkQABgWGB7SAQg2NzAyajBqNKgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8⁠ ⁠https://www.morganhorse.com/about/museum/the-life-and-times-of-figure/⁠ ⁠https://www.tbheritage.com/Portraits/Lexington.html⁠ ⁠https://www.si.edu/object/general-sheridans-horse-winchester-aka-rienzi%3Anmah_439678⁠ Public Universal Friend-- https://www.nypl.org/blog/2023/02/16/who-was-public-universal-friend-living-outside-gender-binary-revolutionary-times⁠ ⁠https://wams.nyhistory.org/settler-colonialism-and-revolution/settler-colonialism/public-universal-friend/⁠ ⁠https://www.npr.org/transcripts/812092399⁠ ⁠https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_universalism⁠ ⁠https://www.jstor.org/stable/90009810⁠ ~*~*~*~*~* Intro/outro music: "Loopster" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hightailing-history/message

We turned some shrimps into goats. That's right, we invited the crew of Shrimp and Crits to play a little game called Goat Crashers with Miah and Lauren. It's simple, the players are goats and they want to party!! Problem is, the humans are hosting the party and they don't want goat guests. So the goats have no other option but to PARTY HARD and access their power of chaos. ------- If you liked this episode, please leave a rating and review to help us spread the word and don't forget to share with your friends. We love friends! Support the Show: Follow us on social media, buy some merch, support us on Ko-fi, and check out our Wiki by heading to our ⁠DirectMe Profile.⁠  Subscribe to our Patreon: Head to our Patreon for bonus content you won't want to miss out on.  Join us on Discord! Come hang out with the cast on The Monster's Playbook Discord server where we can discuss the latest episodes, trade theories, answer questions, and get to know you, our listeners, a little better.  Thank you to Shrimp and Crits for joining us for this chaotic one-shot. You can find them on their website, or wherever you get your podcasts. ------- Cast: Miah Detjen as the Goat Master Lauren Johnson as Gina the Fainting Goat Ian Mauldin as Jerry Rice the Pygmy Goat Cap as Bucephalus aka "Bucky" the Satanic Goat Katie as Sad Janice the Big-Horned Goat Ryan as Ken. Griffy Jr. the Fancy Goat This episode was edited by Miah Detjen and Lauren Johnson. Theme song by Jonny Grubb. Cover art by Gabe Schmidt. Incidental music from Epidemic Sound.

Bucephalus, the beloved horse belonging to Alexander the Great, brings to mind two famous horses from Chinese history: the Chitu or "Crimson Hare" Horse of Guan Yu from the Three Kingdoms era and the Wuzhui Horse of Xiang Yu from the time of the founding of the Han Dynasty.

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 737, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Harry Potter 1: Harry Potter lives in this country. England. 2: The scar on Harry's forehead is in this shape. a lightning bolt. 3: For Christmas, Harry was given his father's cloak that allows him to become this. invisible. 4: Harry's 2 best friends are Hermione Granger and this red-headed boy. Ronald Weasley. 5: A library book at Hogwarts is called this sport "Through the Ages". Quidditch. Round 2. Category: Prime Numbers 1: Dial this 3-digit prime number in L.A. only for emergencies. 911. 2: In the rhyme, it's the number of whacks Lizzie Borden gave her father. 41. 3: To get a brief respite, you "take" it. five. 4: Columbus' first voyage to the new world ended in this year. 1493. 5: The First Battle of Bull Run was in this year. 1861. Round 3. Category: American Food 1: One of Elvis Presley's favorite dishes was a sandwich filled with mashed bananas and this spread. peanut butter. 2: In Cincinnati the "five-way" type of this dish includes spaghetti, cheese, onions and beans. chili. 3: Benny and Clovis Martin are credited with creating this New Orleans version of a hero or sub sandwich back in the 1920s. a po' boy. 4: This trademarked Louisville chocolate nut dessert derives its name from being served on the first Saturday in May. Derby Pie. 5: The steamed blue ones from Chesapeake Bay are served by the dozen in Baltimore restaurants. crabs. Round 4. Category: Playing The "Harp" 1: After hurling 1 of these, Captain Ahab dies tangled in its line. a harpoon. 2: It's smaller and lighter than a piano, with 1 to 3 keyboards called "manuals". a harpsichord. 3: Mark Twain and Booth Tarkington regularly contributed to this monthly. Harper's (Harper's Magazine). 4: Eagle named for the mythical flying monster it resembles. a harpy. 5: She won a Pulitzer for her 1st novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird". Harper Lee. Round 5. Category: Horse And Rider 1: Silver. The Lone Ranger. 2: Rocinante. Don Quixote. 3: Trigger's friend Buttermilk. Dale Evans. 4: Traveller. Robert E. Lee. 5: Bucephalus. Alexander the Great. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/

“There is nothing impossible to him who will try.” Alexander of Macedon (356–323 BC) Alexander successfully conquered the known world but without his trusty steed, Bucephalus, many say he would have been only half the man. Just how much have famous horses changed the course of history? Mikey and Paul saddle up to find out.   Facebook Twitter InstagramSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Main Fiction: "An Elegy for the Bucephalus" by Rhiannon RasmussenThis story originally appeared in Unlikely Wonders (Robot Dinosaur Press, 2022).Illustrator and writer Rhiannon Rasmussen creates dark fantasy, horror, and science-fiction that juxtaposes humanity and queerness with elements of monstrosity, phantasm, and the weird. Rhiannon's work has appeared in galleries & magazines including Lightspeed Magazine, HEARTWOOD, and Magic: the Gathering. Find more work on http://www.rhiannonrs.com/ and @charibdys on Twitter.Narrated by: Alethea KontisAlethea Kontis is a princess, storm chaser, and bestselling author of over twenty books and fifty short stories. Alethea has received the Jane Yolen Mid-List Author Grant, the Scribe Award, and is a two-time winner of the Gelett Burgess Children's Book Award. She was nominated twice for both the Dragon Award and the Andre Norton Nebula. In her spare time, Alethea narrates stories for a myriad of award-winning online magazines. Born in Vermont, currently resides on the Space Coast of Florida with her teddy bear, Charlie.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When the heroes ride back to town with a wolf, a criminal, and the remains of an ancient hero in tow, they tend to old wounds and open up some new ones. *** If you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and review at the podcast service of your choice, and find our social links at www.tabletopgold.com. Tabletop Gold is Lars Casteen, David Chernicoff, Zoe Chernicoff, R. Matt Humphreys, and Robin Lange. The Roots of Ruin is a production of the Pathfinder Adventure Path Abomination Vaults for Pathfinder Second Edition. Licensed music by Nicolas Jeudy / Dark Fantasy Studio and GameDev Market. Original music by Lars Casteen. The Roots of Ruin is a Tabletop Gold production, produced under the Paizo Incorporated Community Use policy.  The Roots of Ruin uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., used under Paizo's Community Use Policy (paizo.com/communityuse).  We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content.  Paizo does not recognize, endorse, or sponsor this project in any way.  Original characters and content are the property of Tabletop Gold.  For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, visit paizo.com…

Check out what I'm up to this summer and fall and see if you can learn some Greek and Latin with me.Full Show Notes Available at https://plutarch.life/alexanderSeason 4 is brought to you by Hackett Publishing - Use the coupon code PLUTARCH for 20% off and free shipping at hackettpublishing.comKey Virtues and Vices Generosity (μεγαλόδωρος) - When his wealth becomes nearly infinite his generosity keeps pace with it. Many examples given of Alexander's largesse as he builds his empire. Justice (δική) - When founding and running a empire this big, justice has to be a key concern. Alexander tries to balance respect for the current Persian customs as he finds them and the Hellenization of the Persian peoples. While he doesn't walk that line as well as he could have, many of his Macedonians treat the Persians far worse and Alexander is often left picking up the pieces. Friendship (φιλία)- Plutarch, like Aristotle, sees philosophy as the foundation of a life of powerful and lasting friendships. Alexander lives this virtue in many ways but, when he falls short, he fails in impressive ways (cf. Clitus the Black). Ambition (φιλοτιμία) - This one cuts both ways. Aristotle uses the same word to describe the virtue as he does to describe its excess (what we still today call “overly-ambitious”). Alexander's ambition means the only things that slow him down or change his course are mutiny or death. Important Places Thebes - Not just in Plutarch's backyard, but the city punished for revolting after Philip's death. It is burned to the ground and 30,000 of its inhabitant are sold into slavery. Plutarch thinks this must anger the god Dionysius, who was born close to Thebes. The Battle of Granicus River - Alexander's first battle against the Persian army. Is he reckless or bold? Do we judge him by the consequences?Battle of Issus - Alexander's second major battle against the Persian host, and the first in which Darius is present. Darius flees and Alexander chose better terrain than he realized. The Siege of Tyre - This strategic city gives Alexander an excuse to take care of the Persian Navy so that his supply lines are not disrupted as he traverses into the heart of the Persian Empire. Alexandria - Alexander, under the guidance of Homer, founds a city at the mouth of the Nile that will prosper for the next thousand years. Acting as the Greek and Roman capital of Egypt, Alexandria is still the second-most populous city in Egypt after Cairo today. The Battle of Gaugamela - The last decisive battle to put Darius on the run. Alexander claims that Greece has been avenged and uses the title King of Persia after this. The Battle of Hydapses - Moving beyond the frontiers of the Persian Empire, Alexander crosses the Indus River and defeats King Poros, only to return his kingdom to him because of respect for a worthy enemy. Shortly after this his men mutiny and Alexander must turn back home. Babylon - Before he makes it home, the whole army has a prolonged victory feast in Babylon. Perhaps complications from drinking cause Alexander to fall into a fever from which he does not recover and he dies in Babylon at the age of 33, having conquered the Greeks and the Persian Empire. What if he'd managed to conquer himself? How far does Plutarch think he could have gone? Support the show

I share an ancient legend about a samurai and his attempt to tame a fearsome man-eating horse! The story draws many parallels with ancient Greek myths of the Mares of Diomedes, and of the taming of Bucephalus. Are these tales of monstrous horses remnants of a buried ancient knowledge we have conditioned ourselves (and our horses) to forget, and what may these stores tell us about our relationship with the same animals who helped us shape modern civilization? ====================== Send us suggestions and comments to tracingowlspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Instagram @tracingowls Sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com ====================== FURTHER READING: Mares of Diomedes | Wikipedia The Forgotten Story Of Meat Eating Horses | The Horseaholic When vegans see the light: Meat-eating horses in mythology and modern day CuChullaine O'Reilly (2011): Deadly Equines: The Shocking True Story of Meat-Eating and Murderous Horses. Long Riders' Guild Press

Check out what I'm up to this summer and fall and see if you can learn some Greek and Latin with me.Full Show Notes Available at https://plutarch.life/alexanderSeason 4 is brought to you by Hackett Publishing - Use the coupon code PLUTARCH for 20% off and free shipping at hackettpublishing.com     Important People-Bucephalus - Yes, a horse is an important character! Fiery, hard-working, and lasting till the edge of Alexander's empire, Bucephalus (ox-head) provides an analogue for us to see a fiery temperament tamed. -Philip - Alexander's ambitious father and the succesful military reformer who almost led an expedition against Persia himself. His untimely assassination makes that task fall to Alexander. -Olympias - An ambitious and scheming mother, Olympias always pushes Alexander to do more and work harder. While at home, she frequently conflicts with Antipater, the regent Alexander left in charge of Macedonia in his decade-long absence. -Darius III - The last Achaemenid emperor of Persia flees from Alexander twice but, overall, is treated well by his enemy. He didn't choose his successor, but ultimatley respects the man who sits on the throne of Cyrus after his death. -Poros - One of the last king-generals that Alexander defeats before turning around to head back home. Poros lives on the far side of the Indus River and earns Alexander's respect in a hard-fought battle. Alexander keeps him in his current position and adds lands to his after defeating him. -Aristotle - One of the greatest philosophers who ever lived worked as the personal tutor to Alexander the Great for at least two years. The two men continue to correspond later in life but some versions of the story have their relationship cool significantly after Alexander executes his grand-nephew, Callisthenes (cf. sections 53-55)-Philotas - A contemporary of Alexander rising in the ranks under his father, Parmenio. Both experienced leaders who served under Philip and Alexander, Philotas's pride finds him implicated in a conspiracy and Alexander kills him and his father. -Clitus (Cleitus) - A member of Alexander's companion cavalry who saves his life at The Battle of Granicus River. When he later tries to publicly correct Alexander for adopting too many Persian customs, the fight leads to his tragic death, which Alexander struggles to recover from.  -Callisthenes - Grand-nephew of Aristotle accompanying Alexander on the Persian Expedition. He acts as a proxy for Alexander's relationship with the ethical and political lessons Alexander had learned from Aristotle. When he dies (some reports say by Alexander's order, others do not), it seems Alexander lost his last link with his childhood education.Important Places-Thebes - Not just in Plutarch's backyard, but the city punished for revolting after Philip's death. It is burned to the ground and 30,000 of its inhabitant are sold into slavery. Plutarch thinks this must anger the god Dionysius, who was born close to Thebes. -The Battle of Granicus River -Battle of Issus-The Siege of Tyre-Alexandria-The Battle of Gaugamela-The Battle of HydapsesKey Virtues and Vices-Generosity -Justice  -Friendship   -Ambition (φιλοτιμία)Support the show

Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin audiobook. Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin is a collection of short stories that give a snapshot into the life of a legendary hero or an event in history. Hear how Alexander the Great tamed Bucephalus, the kindness of Doctor Goldsmith, William Tell, George Washington and his hatchet, King Alfred as well as many other interesting tales.

Alexander was twelve years old when horse dealers brought the great stallion Bucephalus, for sale, to his father Philips's court in Macedonia. The princes all agreed that the animal was spectacular. But he was so wild, no one could even mount him. Then Alexander stepped forward. Nearly twenty years later, Alexander was still riding Bucephalus in battle, still in front of everyone else.New episodes every Monday. SUBSCRIBE and REVIEW wherever you get your podcasts.

As Virric returns to the Bucephalus and tells the Marshalls what they've been up to, they take Mikka aside and talk about Virric's secrets. Then he shares with the rest of the group. How will it go? Will the party work out? Will they split and go their separate ways?    You'll have to listen to find out what happens!   Adam - Dungeon Master Tony - Virric from Make it Playable Pan - Rem from Cosmopunk Victor - Laughter Nikki - Mikka from BTNO   Art work by Aki Help support the show with Patreon or Ko-Fi! All money provided helps ensure the show continues and is able to get art work for future shows!   We will have two new podcasts starting soon! Keep an eye on the Twitter's below for more details on when they will release! Sound Control: Radio Signal  (Science Fiction Stories, Radio Signal will be a Savage Worlds Game ran by Dan) Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoundControlRPG    Dice Before Dawn: Phoenix by Night (Darker stories, Phoenix by Night will be a Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition game ran by Alex) Twitter: https://twitter.com/DiceBeforeDawn    Please check us out on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beholdertonoone  Twitter: https://twitter.com/beholdertonoone  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCocz92shjgObQuk8_-dqYgA Find more episodes on Podbean: https://beholdertonoone.podbean.com/  Website: http://beholdertonoone.com/    Intro Music Desert Biker

It turns out the people of Sweden cannot be trusted with a giant straw goat each Christmas. Since 1966, the Gavle Goat has met the same fiery fate almost every year. After making some bold predictions about the future of the goat, the Deep Lore Boys take a plunge into the heart of the sea with Alexander the Great, before drying off and meeting his beloved horse Bucephalus. Further Reading: Gavle Goat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4vle_goat Alexander's Underwater Adventure: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/02/10/alexander-is-lowered-into-the-sea/ Bucephalus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucephalus Intro: City Lights — Babasmas [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/W9IQfypOkkYFree Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/city-lights Music: Jazz In Paris - Media Right Productions https://youtu.be/mNLJMTRvyj8

As Alexander the Great marched through Persia, Zechariah painted a picture of a very different king. The conquest of many lands by Alexander the Great was marked by the cry of war and, of course, Alexander's trusty warhorse, Bucephalus. But years later there was to be an altogether different king. Riding through streets once trode by the aforementioned Alexander, but this time on a colt. One king was met with swords; the other, palms. One: the king of war. The other: prince of peace.

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We continue our search of the Bucephalus, and discover that the box we've been carrying seems to activate while on the ship. We open it to find out what's inside. We debated on any bounties to take, while the warforged nearby are making all of us a bit nervous. Will we cause a scene? I mean...probably.    You'll have to listen to find out what happens!   Adam - Dungeon Master Tony - Virric from Make it Playable Pan - Rem from Cosmopunk Victor - Laughter Nikki - Mikka from BTNO   Art work by Aki Help support the show with Patreon or Ko-Fi! All money provided helps ensure the show continues and is able to get art work for future shows!   We will have two new podcasts starting soon! Keep an eye on the Twitter's below for more details on when they will release! Sound Control: Radio Signal  (Science Fiction Stories, Radio Signal will be a Savage Worlds Game ran by Dan) Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoundControlRPG    Dice Before Dawn: Phoenix by Night (Darker stories, Phoenix by Night will be a Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition game ran by Alex) Twitter: https://twitter.com/DiceBeforeDawn    Please check us out on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beholdertonoone  Twitter: https://twitter.com/beholdertonoone  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCocz92shjgObQuk8_-dqYgA Find more episodes on Podbean: https://beholdertonoone.podbean.com/  Website: http://beholdertonoone.com/    Intro Music Desert Biker

Welcome aboard the Bucephalus, where Kal is providing insight on what is so special about this ship. Virric and Mikka see two nearby Warforged who may be up to no good, and a lot of things go wrong relatively quickly.    You'll have to listen to find out what happens!   Adam - Dungeon Master Tony - Virric from Make it Playable Pan - Rem from Cosmopunk Victor - Laughter Nikki - Mikka from BTNO   Art work by Aki Help support the show with Patreon or Ko-Fi! All money provided helps ensure the show continues and is able to get art work for future shows!   We will have two new podcasts starting soon! Keep an eye on the Twitter's below for more details on when they will release! Sound Control: Radio Signal  (Science Fiction Stories, Radio Signal will be a Savage Worlds Game ran by Dan) Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoundControlRPG    Dice Before Dawn: Phoenix by Night (Darker stories, Phoenix by Night will be a Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition game ran by Alex) Twitter: https://twitter.com/DiceBeforeDawn    Please check us out on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beholdertonoone  Twitter: https://twitter.com/beholdertonoone  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCocz92shjgObQuk8_-dqYgA Find more episodes on Podbean: https://beholdertonoone.podbean.com/  Website: http://beholdertonoone.com/    Intro Music Desert Biker

We start of at 346, Phillip is elected president of the Pythian Games. Demosthenes gives his "About Peace" speech, which gives us many clues about Athens felt at this specific time period. We have a few battles with Illirian tribes in the North of Macedonia. The Thessalians are not feeling loved and Alexander will have his first contact with Voukefalas, or Bucephalus, the greatest of all the horses. http://alexandroscast.gr/χορηγός/

A meeting at EHOP with an important member of the Tyrants leads to a lot of unanswered questions and the perfect opportunity for Mikka to see more about their situation. The others visit the market, in search of particular upgrade and gear while the wait for the Bucephalus to be ready to go. As they're walking, Jodie hears some all to familiar words, and rushes off to find it's source. Will Virric be able to calm Jodie down? Will Mikka switch sides to be with the Tryants? Will Rem be able to solve his Daddy Long legs issues?    Adam - Dungeon Master Tony - Virric from Make it Playable Pan - Rem from Cosmopunk Arii - Jodie Nikki - Mikka from BTNO   Art work by Aki Help support the show with Patreon or Ko-Fi! All money provided helps ensure the show continues and is able to get art work for future shows!   We will have two new podcasts starting soon! Keep an eye on the Twitter's below for more details on when they will release! Sound Control: Radio Signal  (Science Fiction Stories, Radio Signal will be a Savage Worlds Game ran by Dan) Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoundControlRPG    Dice Before Dawn: Phoenix by Night (Darker stories, Phoenix by Night will be a Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition game ran by Alex) Twitter: https://twitter.com/DiceBeforeDawn    Please check us out on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beholdertonoone  Twitter: https://twitter.com/beholdertonoone  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCocz92shjgObQuk8_-dqYgA Find more episodes on Podbean: https://beholdertonoone.podbean.com/  Website: http://beholdertonoone.com/    Intro Music Desert Biker

After the Marshall's capture Skeemo, they deliver him to the Sharn Watch, and meet a "friend" of their employers. They collect their payment for the successful bounty, but there are higher costs than expected. However, they learn some dark secrets about the Ship's past from Kal. Will they ever make it on the Bucephalus?   Adam - Dungeon Master Tony - Virric from Make it Playable Pan - Rem from Cosmopunk Arii - Jodie Nikki - Mikka from BTNO   Art work by Aki Help support the show with Patreon or Ko-Fi! All money provided helps ensure the show continues and is able to get art work for future shows!   We will have two new podcasts starting soon! Keep an eye on the Twitter's below for more details on when they will release! Sound Control: Radio Signal  (Science Fiction Stories, Radio Signal will be a Savage Worlds Game ran by Dan) Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoundControlRPG    Dice Before Dawn: Phoenix by Night (Darker stories, Phoenix by Night will be a Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition game ran by Alex) Twitter: https://twitter.com/DiceBeforeDawn    Please check us out on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beholdertonoone  Twitter: https://twitter.com/beholdertonoone  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCocz92shjgObQuk8_-dqYgA Find more episodes on Podbean: https://beholdertonoone.podbean.com/  Website: http://beholdertonoone.com/    Intro Music Desert Biker

Listen Laugh & Learn Five Days a Week with Pinkie the Pig & Mildred the Cow ! This Episode: Alexander The Great !

“There is nothing impossible to him who will try.” Alexander of Macedon (356–323 BC)Alexander successfully conquered the known world but without his trusty steed, Bucephalus, many say he would have been only half the man. Just how much have famous horses changed the course of history? Mikey and Paul saddle up to find out.  FacebookTwitterInstagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Leonard, Cameron and Dave discuss The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). Contact: www.monsterdear.monster @Drfaustisdead @nighttwitten @sentionautplus

Bucephalus and the Cephalopods in the Bosphorus - 00:27 Rainer Werner Ringbinder - 07:13 Hooting Yard on the Air : The Podcasts - 10:48 Colossus - 17:47 Dispense, Dispense! - 23:08 Certain Aspects of Plastic Baubles and Plastic Sheeting - 24:43.This item belongs to: audio/hooting-yard.This item has files of the following types: Archive BitTorrent, Columbia Peaks, Item Tile, Metadata, PNG, Spectrogram, VBR MP3

This area, at the side of the Capitoline Hill, was the border between two of the ancient tribes and a site for burials roughly 3,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence shows that at times there were also huts, a forge and in the 6th Century BCE, it was the site of a large house – potentially that of a king. The major redevelopment of this site happened after Julius Caesar prevailed in his civil war with Pompey and reclaimed his position as Consul. He then began a major overhaul of the Roman Forum replacing some of its older buildings and enlarging it into this area behind the Curia. Acquiring the buildings, land and levelling the whole site would have been an extremely expensive undertaking but Caesar had amassed a huge fortune from the spoils of his campaigns across Europe and, in particular, in Gaul. Excavations have revealed that the space provided a vast open colonnaded court that focused attention on the Temple of Genetrix that stood on the north western short side of the square. The temple had been promised by Caesar the evening before the battle of Pharsalus in 48 BCE as his forces prepared to engage directly with Pompey’s troops. Caesar’s promise was made in a late attempt to win favor with Pompey’s preferred deity, Venus Victrix. Although significantly outnumbered, Caesar won the battle but failed to capture Pompey who fled to Egypt only to be subsequently executed by the young Pharaoh Ptolemy. In the end Caesar didn’t keep his word and instead dedicated the building to the Julian family’s preferred deity Venus Genetrix. Never one to miss an opportunity for self promotion, in the center of this courtyard was a military equestrian statue of Caesar in the style of Alexander the Great riding Bucephalus. It was likely twice normal size. This new Forum was dedicated to Caesar in September 46 BCE to celebrate his combined victories over Gaul, Egypt, northern Africa and The Kingdom of Pontus (which is part of what we now know as Turkey).

More great books at LoyalBooks.com

Watchmen - Season One. Episode Nine. Season One Finale - See How They Fly Official synopsis: Everything ends, for real this time, in the season finale. Written by Nick Cuse & Damon Lindelof Directed by Frederick E.O. Toye   Find us online: https://twitter.com/WatchmenMinute https://www.facebook.com/watchmenminute/   Travis Bow - https://twitter.com/thatTravisBow Eric Nash - https://twitter.com/luckymustard   Music: Life on Mars? - Written by David Bowie Running Scared - Written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson

Watchmen - Season One. Episode Eight. A God Walks into Abar Official synopsis: Angela’s mysterious past in Vietnam is at last revealed. Written by Jeff Jensen & Damon Lindelof Directed by Nicole Kassell   Find us online: https://twitter.com/WatchmenMinute https://www.facebook.com/watchmenminute/   Travis Bow - https://twitter.com/thatTravisBow Eric Nash - https://twitter.com/luckymustard   Music: Life on Mars? - Written by David Bowie Running Scared - Written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson  

Watchmen - Season One. Episode Seven. An Almost Religious Awe Special Guest: Charlie Talbert (Desk Sergeant from Episode Six) Official synopsis: Under Lady Trieu’s care, Angela undergoes an unconventional treatment while Agent Blake chases down a lead. Elsewhere, The Smartest Man in the World delivers a stunning defense of his past actions. Written by Stacy Osei-Kuffour & Claire Kiechel Directed by David Semel   Find us online: https://twitter.com/WatchmenMinute https://www.facebook.com/watchmenminute/   Travis Bow - https://twitter.com/thatTravisBow Eric Nash - https://twitter.com/luckymustard Charlie Talbert: Twitter Instagram   Music: Life on Mars? - Written by David Bowie Running Scared - Written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson  

This Extraordinary Being Official synopsis: Deep under the influence of Nostalgia, Angela gets a firsthand account of her grandfather’s journey. Written by Damon Lindelof & Cord Jefferson Directed by Stephen Williams   Find us online: https://twitter.com/WatchmenMinute https://www.facebook.com/watchmenminute/   Travis Bow - https://twitter.com/thatTravisBow Eric Nash - https://twitter.com/luckymustard   Music: Life on Mars? - Written by David Bowie Running Scared - Written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson

Watchmen - Season One. Episode Five. Little Fear of Lightning Official synopsis: The origin story of Looking Glass is at last revealed, as is the truth behind the greatest hoax in American history. Far away, the Smartest Man in the World plots a daring escape. Written by Damon Lindelof & Carly Wray Directed by Steph Green   Find us online: https://twitter.com/WatchmenMinute https://www.facebook.com/watchmenminute/   Travis Bow - https://twitter.com/thatTravisBow Eric Nash - https://twitter.com/luckymustard   Music: Life on Mars? - Written by David Bowie Running Scared - Written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson

Watchmen - Season One. Episode Four. If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own Official synopsis: Reclusive trillionaire Lady Tries finally enters the stage with a mysterious offer. With Blake getting closer to the truth of her coverup, Angela enlists Looking Glass for help. Meanwhile, “the Blond Man” trains two new servants. Written by Damon Lindelof & Christal Henry Directed by Andrij Parekh   Find us online: https://twitter.com/WatchmenMinute https://www.facebook.com/watchmenminute/   Travis Bow - https://twitter.com/thatTravisBow Eric Nash - https://twitter.com/luckymustard   Music: Life on Mars? - Written by David Bowie Running Scared - Written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson  

Watchmen - Season One. Episode Three. She Was Killed by Space Junk Official synopsis: Following a late-night visit from the Senator who authored Masked Policing Legislation in Oklahoma, FBI agent Laurie Blake heads to Tulsa to take over the recent murder investigation. Far away, the Lord of the Estate draws unwelcome attention. Written by Damon Lindelof & Lila Byock Directed by Stephen Williams   Find us online: https://twitter.com/WatchmenMinute https://www.facebook.com/watchmenminute/   Travis Bow - https://twitter.com/thatTravisBow Eric Nash - https://twitter.com/luckymustard   Music: Life on Mars? - Written by David Bowie Running Scared - Written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson

Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship, the second episode of Lindelof’s misleadingly named Lindelof’s Watchmen sequel is the main event. Ivan continues to cut through The Thin Blue Line and gets Red up to speed on exactly what the fuck Damon is smoking. Support Ivan & Red!->patreon.com/boarsgoreswords Follow us on twitter->@boarsgoreswords Find us on facebook->facebook.com/BoarsGoreSwords

In this episode, we discuss... (1) How the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority became the commercial AA Technology nuclear practice (2) How radioactive waste is disposed of in the UK, the US, and in Canada (3) The importance of calibration when communicating radioactive waste and nuclear safety (4) Establishing fertile SMR markets through effective communication and government commitment rather than technological advancement

According to his biographer, Arrian, Alexander the Great "was a man like no other man has ever been." What made Alexander this kind of man? It was a combination of his personal traits, his willingness to take risk, and his way of knowing when a moment of impact was in front of him. In this podcast, I explore the relationship between Alexander and his horse, Bucephalus, and how this winning team conquered the world. Music Credit: TJ's Bar Fight courtesy of John Fulford Music

Yup 73rd time kids! A month into 2019 we give you our picks for best of 2018! Better late than never, right? Anyways, Mike Fullam, our Nintendo addicted buddy and brand new Twitch streamer joins The Jo(h)ns and Lou Skywalker to talk about the cream of the Pop Culture crop from last year. The Road To 80 is in full steam! Listen In Oh, and yes, this episode is named after a famous horse, so there's that.

Fergal recounts his epic journey to Pakistan’s Shandur Polo Festival at the world’s highest elevation Polo grounds. Along the 1500 mile route, he rode his trusty Suzuki GS150 motorcycle (nicknamed Bucephalus), met a Sufi mystic, and slept through an army shootout with Afghan Taliban goat rustlers. “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”  ― Philip Pullman Subscribe for new podcast episode Email Notifications HERE   See Fergal’s Photos from His Motorcycle Journey to Shandur Top ------> https://genuinelyuseful.com/podcast-fergal-nolan ---> Hear All of the Podcast's Featured Music HERE Genuinely Useful podcast is sponsored by Magical Egypt (listen to episode 13 with Chance Gardner, released Nov 8, 2018)   You can Save 15% on Magical Egypt with Coupon Code "genuse" Own Both Magical Egypt Series 1 and 2   You can also support the podcast by visiting Bandcamp to listen and/or buy the music This episode's featured song - “Wars Ragin” https://abeslogic.bandcamp.com/track/wars-ragin   Plot a Route: See the 1500 mile route: The Road To Shandur Top   The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W.Y. Evans Wentz (Author)   Leaving Islamabad and the Karakoram Highway   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamabad   Karakoram Highway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakoram_Highway   Abbottabad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbottabad   Kaghan Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaghan_Valley   Babusar Pass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babusar_Pass   19 pulled off buses, shot dead in sectarian hit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilas   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanga_Parbat   “A life is not measured by quantity, but by its quality,” says Hubert Wischnewski as he reminisces about his son Joel, who died while trying to climb the feared Nanga Parbat over two years ago   Nanga Parbat: 'Taliban mastermind' held over climber murders   The Princely States   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princely_states_of_Pakistan   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgit-Baltistan   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deosai_National_Park   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaplu ('Little Tibet')   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skardu   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karimabad,_Gilgit-Baltistan   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitral_%28princely_state%29   Shandur Polo Festival   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nms_Z_gU7_0   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtuns   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtunwali   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afridi   https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/7466601/Colonel-Khushwaqt-ul-Mulk.html   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durand_Line   Major Geoffrey Langlands, 94, leaves his post in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province after 60 years (As of January 2019, Geoffrey Langlands is 101 and enjoying his well-earned retirement in Lahore)   Amongst the Kalashi   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalasha_Valleys   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalash_people   Kalash - Descendants of Alexander the Great Living in an Unstable Muslim Country   Afghan bandits snatch more goats in Chitral   Five suspected militants killed in Chitral's Kalash valley   Bucephalus (After whom, the trusty Suzuki GS150 was named)   Jordi Magraner, 35, the famous Spanish zoologist and cryptozoologist conducting field research for 12 years has been found assassinated in Pakistan   Militants set conditions for Greek engineer`s release   Coming full circle   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowari_Pass   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swat_District   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takht-i-Bahi   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxila   Recommended reading and viewing   Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, Dervla Murphy   Pakistan: A Hard Country, Anatol Lieven   The Man Who Would be King, Rudyard Kipling   Himalaya with Michael Palin, Episode 1: North by Northwest. BBC (2004)   ========+++========   HELP SPREAD THE WORD!   I’d love it if you could please share Genuinely Useful podcast on twitter and facebook:   https://twitter.com/genuinelyuseful   https://www.facebook.com/genuinelyuseful   If you enjoy this podcast, tap on over to Apple Podcasts and kindly leave me a rating, write a review, and subscribe! Thank you so much!   Ways to Subscribe to Genuinely Useful podcast (automatically download new episodes):   Click here to subscribe via Apple Podcasts [iOS]   Click here to subscribe via Overcast [iOS]   Click here to subscribe via Stitcher [iOS and Android]   Click here to subscribe via Google Podcasts [Android]   Genuinely Useful Podcast Home Page https://genuinelyuseful.com/podcast  

July 2018 Book Club: The 5th Doctor, Tegan, Turlough, and Kamelion invite Chris & Matt to dine out at “The Crystal Bucephalus,” a time-traveling restaurant in the far future.  This Missing Adventure was written by Craig Hinton and was originally published in November 1994.  It was once available wherever fine books were sold, and is now available on the second-hand market.    Please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts or the Google Play store - and submit your comments via email.   “Who knows,” we may end up reading your feedback on the podcast! Facebook: http://facebook.com/allnewdoctorwhobookclub Twitter: @ANDWBCPodcast  Email: ANDWBCPodcast@gmail.com

Listen to Lord Dunsany's story about the commiserations of lost things, discarded by the world, with sound effects and music for your enjoyment. Liner Notes: Etna and Stromboli refer to volcanoes, specifically mount Etna and the island of Stromboli in Italy. Bucephalus was Alexander the Great's horse. Rosinante/Rocinante was the horse of Don Quixote. Coeur de Lion (French for Lionheart) is a title used to describe several medieval monarchs: Richard I of England. Andalusia is a large autonomous region of hills, rivers and farmland bordering Spain’s southern coast. With regards to this story, it is where the wood for corks come from.

  Episode 54 is part of the Autumn 2017/Winter 2018 issue! (Yes! It's actually out now!) Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: http://www.glittership.com/buy/   Oh, Give Me A Home By Nicole Kimberling   Up along the edge of the ridge, Gordon could see them gathering. The mass of bugs formed a ragged silhouette against the hazy lavender sky. Each critter stood only ankle-high—about as big as a yappy dog—six-legged, like ants, with azure exoskeletons hard as crash helmets. Individually they posed little threat, but if only a few of them spooked, panic could ripple through the herd, bringing all thirty thousand of them swarming down. The stampede could crush him and Paint flat. From his position at the bottom of the crater, Gordon gave a long chirping whistle. Amplified by his hardsuit’s external speaker, the trill echoed through the crater. Gordon imagined it lifting up through the thin atmosphere to reach the three rings that encircled New Saturn. Here, near the equator, the rings bisected the sky in a thin, glittering band, shining apricot and peach, reflecting the light of the G-class star that shone down on him. A few of the bugs—called microbe-seeding terrestrial injectors or MSTIs, by the terraforming corporations that had genetically engineered them—turned their attention toward Gordon at the sound, but still hesitated. The bugs were naturally fearful of new territory, preferring to follow the scent trails previously laid down by other bugs. Gordon had loaded new scent into Paint’s dispersal unit before riding down into the crater, so he knew a perfectly good trail existed. The bugs should be following him to the center of the crater, where Gordon had spread a banquet of feed—so many white pellets they almost obscured the fine pink sand. [Full transcript after the cut]   Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 54 for April 10, 2018. This is your host Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. After a long wait, the Autumn 2017/Winter 2018 issue is now available, and you can purchase that at www.glittership.com/buy or via some of your favorite ebook sellers. Our story today is a reprint by Nicole Kimberling, "Oh, Give Me A Home," read by Dave Liloia. Nicole Kimberling is a novelist and the senior editor at Blind Eye Books. Her first novel, Turnskin, won the Lambda Literary Award. Other works include the Bellingham Mystery Series, set in the Washington town where she resides with her wife of thirty years. She is also the creator and writer of “Lauren Proves Magic is Real!” a serial fiction podcast, which explores the lesser case files of Special Agent Keith Curry, supernatural food inspector. Dave Liloia is a voice actor and narrator from Seattle, WA. He co-hosts both the Warp Drives podcast with his wife TJ and Rat Hole podcast. His day job is to move electrons. You can find him on Twitter @warpdrives.   Oh, Give Me A Home By Nicole Kimberling   Up along the edge of the ridge, Gordon could see them gathering. The mass of bugs formed a ragged silhouette against the hazy lavender sky. Each critter stood only ankle-high—about as big as a yappy dog—six-legged, like ants, with azure exoskeletons hard as crash helmets. Individually they posed little threat, but if only a few of them spooked, panic could ripple through the herd, bringing all thirty thousand of them swarming down. The stampede could crush him and Paint flat. From his position at the bottom of the crater, Gordon gave a long chirping whistle. Amplified by his hardsuit’s external speaker, the trill echoed through the crater. Gordon imagined it lifting up through the thin atmosphere to reach the three rings that encircled New Saturn. Here, near the equator, the rings bisected the sky in a thin, glittering band, shining apricot and peach, reflecting the light of the G-class star that shone down on him. A few of the bugs—called microbe-seeding terrestrial injectors or MSTIs, by the terraforming corporations that had genetically engineered them—turned their attention toward Gordon at the sound, but still hesitated. The bugs were naturally fearful of new territory, preferring to follow the scent trails previously laid down by other bugs. Gordon had loaded new scent into Paint’s dispersal unit before riding down into the crater, so he knew a perfectly good trail existed. The bugs should be following him to the center of the crater, where Gordon had spread a banquet of feed—so many white pellets they almost obscured the fine pink sand. “How’s it going down there, Gordy?” Henry’s voice poured into Gordon’s earpiece, smooth as cool water. “Not great,” Gordon’ replied. “We’ve got a bunch of shy Shirleys at the front of the column when what we really need is a couple of bouncy bold Bonnies to start moving down the trail.” Though learning the personality of every bug would have been impossible, Gordon had broken the herd down into a few basic temperaments. Shirleys were the workhorses of the MSTIs, processing feed quickly and more efficiently than any other type. But they were also the most recalcitrant. The Bonnies showed distinct initiative and curiosity, behaving as scouts. They also got lost a lot. If Gordon had to negotiate some rocky ledge at a suicidal angle during a sandstorm, nine out of ten times it was because a Bonnie had gotten herself into a jam. A few other personality types had emerged in this, the first-ever free-range experiment: lusty Leroys, deceptive Daisys, lazy Lorraines. But there was only one Queen Elvira. She stayed in the enclosure at their homestead, laying eggs. “Did you try a whistle?” “Of course I tried a whistle,” Gordon said. “I did ‘Turkey in the Straw.’” “I’m almost at the lip of the crater now. I’ll swing around and see if I can get them going from the back.” “Roger that,” Gordon said. Lifting his head to scan the crater’s rim Gordon spotted Henry mounted on his excursion vehicle, which he called Bucephalus, after Alexander the Great’s horse. In truth, neither Paint nor Bucephalus resembled horses so much as long-legged spiders, but a dearth of positive musical or historical arachnid names had naturally led them to choose equine names for the robotic transport vehicles. Gordon raised his hand, and Henry returned the gesture. The sunlight glinted off the arm of his blue hardsuit. Henry pressed the MSTIs from the flank, urging them forward. Still they balked till the jostling from the back pushed one over the edge. Instinctively the MSTI rolled into a tight ball. Another tipped over the edge and another till a steady stream of bugs rolled toward Gordon. Being given to spontaneous musicality, Gordon began to sing:   See them tumbling down Pledging their love to the ground Dusty but free I’ll be found Drifting along with the tumbling MSTIs   I’m a rovin’ cowboy ridin’ all day long MSTIs around me sing their lonely song Nights beneath New Saturn’s Rings I’ll ride along and tunes I will sing   “Nice one, Gordy,” Henry said. Sitting astride his vehicle, encased in a hardsuit that could barely contain his muscle, Henry was hale and hearty as any old-time terraformer or wildcatter sent from a mining company. Gordon couldn’t be more different. Having been born and raised in space, he’d simply never developed the muscle or bone to cope with the daily terrestrial struggle against gravity. When they’d first started courting, Gordon had gone to great lengths to never fully remove that armature—not even when they were in orbit at the Free Station 19, where the pull of gravity wouldn’t cripple him. He felt sickly against Henry’s strappy, Earth-bred muscles and thick, sturdy bones. But Henry’s three-pronged strategy of sincerity, sweetness, and song had eventually gotten him inside the hardsuit long enough to get a ring on Gordon’s finger. A homestead had followed soon after. Now they ran the only free-ranging herd of MSTIs across ten thousand acres of barren soil for Homesteads for Humanity Interstellar. They’d completed three years of a five-year contract. The MSTIs were part of the second phase of terraforming. Their job was to masticate and defecate, enriching the soil with microbes crucial to farming Earth-style plants. Once the soil was ready, he and Henry spread spores of beneficial fungus. Then, after the fruiting bodies emerged, their work was done. He and Henry would mosey along to the next homestead, leaving the land for the first-generation farmers. They would bring their pressurized greenhouses and be the true pioneers here on New Saturn. In a previous life, Gordon had worked for Vanguard Commercial Terraforming as an animal wrangler and vet tech. After culling thousands of bugs that could have been useful given even the tiniest amount of medical attention, he decided to trade his fat paycheck for the grand experiment run by Homesteads. By the time Henry reached him, the first wave of MSTIs had finished their spherical descent and were beginning to unroll and tuck into the chow. Or most of them were. A couple of lusty Leroys who’d landed by each other had decided to hump instead. “They’re at it again,” Henry remarked. “You’d think they’d go after a Shirley.” Gordon shrugged, “Some Leroys prefer the simplicity of other Leroys, apparently.” “You should make a note of it in your log,” Henry said. “And get a VR image for documentation.” “Yes, professor.” He did, though he couldn’t help feeling slightly perverted taking the time to film the luscious Leroy love. Henry leaned forward on Bucephalus, scanning the far horizon while the MSTIs crunched and munched around the robot’s legs. Now and then one paused to squat and leave that shining pellet of pure biological enrichment. Being a hardware man, Henry wasn’t as prone to anthropomorphizing the MSTIs as Gordon. Instead he felt a strong attachment to the machines that kept Gordon ambulatory and kept them both alive in this prehuman environment. After he’d finished the VR capture, Gordon glanced up to see Henry still scrutinizing the horizon. “What are you seeing?” Gordon asked. “A blip at the lip of the crater.” Henry squinted, reading the display projected on the inside of his faceplate. “Heading southeast.” “One of the Bonnies again?” Gordon swung around to scan for a signal. Sure enough, a lone MSTI had left the herd. “I imagine so.” Henry turned to face him. Through the visor Gordon could see fatigue setting in—mainly at the corners of his full mouth, which had settled into a frown. They were only supposed to use the suits for six hours at full power, and Henry had already been out for a full ten on half power, taking advantage of the warmer temperature brought by long summer days. Henry had a habit of running his battery down dangerously low, which vexed Gordon to no end. “That little girl is really making some fast progress,” Gordon observed. “I bet she’s going close to fifty kilometers per hour.” “I suppose you’re going to go after it?” “If she strays onto Vanguard property, she’ll be thrown into a hopper.” Liquidated—they called it. More like liquefied. Mashed into pellets and turned into feed. “She’s valuable.” “I don’t like you going close to the property line,” Henry said. “I think you should reassess the value of that asset. We have 29,999 more, at least. I don’t see the point in risking yourself, particularly not when you’re already tired and your strength is flagging.” “Well, I don’t like you running your power down so low,” Gordon retorted. “I told you to head back three hours ago, yet here you are.” “If I had gone, who’d stay with the herd while you went after a straggler of dubious monetary value?” “It’s not about the damn money,” Gordon’s voice betrayed the edge of anger that always reared up when Henry make any remark about his physical stamina. He didn’t like having his limitations pointed out any more than Henry enjoyed Gordon’s incisive commentary on his stubborn nature. “You’re too tenderhearted about the bugs. It makes you reckless,” Henry chided. Gordon found that rich, coming from a man who genuinely worried about hurting his robot transport’s feelings. Gordon sighed and said, “I’m going after her. It shouldn’t take too long.” Then he tapped the foot control on Paint, and the robot went into cross-country mode. The main body lowered slightly to give Paint’s six legs greater stride and maneuverability. Gordon switched from manual and gave Paint the Bonnie’s signal to target. Then he clamped the legs of his hardsuit firmly to Paint’s sides and away they went, scampering up the crater’s soft side. The MSTIs lifted their heads as he passed by, then went back to grazing. Just as he reached the rim of the crater, he heard Henry say, “Be careful.”     Once over the rim of the crater, Paint lit out across the boulder-strewn sand at top speed. Gordon hunkered down and hung on, keeping his eye on Paint’s screen. The MSTI really was a mover and seemed determined also to be a trespasser, which Gordon found strange. MSTIs didn’t like being separated from the rest of the herd. Even adventurous ones, who had strong scouting instincts, never ran like this. Could something be chasing it? But what? New Saturn had no indigenous life. It had the components, minerals and plenty of water—though that was mostly frozen at the poles right now, waiting for the atmosphere generators to finally provide enough greenhouse gasses to heat the surface. But that would happen generations from now. Now it was just Homestead and Vanguard and the UN reps who refereed their frequent clashes. As Paint raced to the top of a small rise, Gordon saw tire tracks. But not just any tire tracks. These marks had been made by massive machines plowing directly through the cryptobiotic soil fields he and Henry had seeded the previous year. Huge ruts rent the soil three meters deep in places. Pink soil showed through like gashes in the dark, knobby surface. They’d worked all year to get even that thin layer of cyanobacteria to grow and prosper, and now some asshole had destroyed weeks of work on one destructive joyride. “Hey, Henry?” “Yeah, Gordy?” Henry sounded tired but not necessarily apologetic. “Bad news on the southeast forty.” “Did you break Paint’s leg in it?” “No, but I think Vanguard drove their earthmovers right through it.” Henry swore—which was something he rarely did. Then he said, “Make sure to get—” “—the documentation,” Gordon finished. “As soon as I find the Bonnie. I think she’s running along one of the ruts.” “I’m taking the herd back in now. There’s some dust on the eastern horizon that troubles me.” “Roger that. I’ll see you there.” Gordon urged Paint down the steep incline and followed for a few more kilometers until he found the Bonnie. The MSTI was trying to climb the side of the rutted wall but the steep, sandy soil kept collapsing beneath her. Gordon let out a whistle as soon as he thought she was in earshot. The MSTI swiveled her head around to look at him. “There you are, little girl,” he said in the singsong voice he always used around the bugs. “You come on up here now.” The MSTI cocked its head and tried again to scale the wall only to fail and come rolling down, curled up into a ball. “Okay, then, have it your way.” Gordon switched to manual and urged Paint forward. Leaning down, he scooped up the MSTI before she could fully uncurl. Out of reflex, the bug retracted its legs and again curled into spherical defense mode. Which made it easy for Gordon to stuff her in his saddlebag. He felt a sense of achievement that bordered on joy. He’d saved one more genetically engineered life-form. Never mind that it was probably defective—chasing out cross-country heading toward nowhere. But the MSTI having a screw loose didn’t diminish his pride. He spent longer than he thought he would documenting the damage, making sure to get good pictures of the tire tracks—just in case. He knew Henry would dutifully file a complaint with the governing board of New Saturn, and that board would turn around and fine Vanguard a stupidly small amount for damages. But if they didn’t file, the harassment would continue. Vanguard had never been on board with Homestead being allowed to develop human habitation sites for the planet. Not that they were against colonization—far from it. But they preferred to be able to choose which humans were allowed to come down to the planet’s surface and which had to continue the confined existence on the overcrowded chain of space stations that stretched across the galaxy. Gordon stared up at those rings arching across the vast sky. Up there the space stations teemed with life and bustled with every kind of diversion known to man. But down here he had the whole, empty planet in its geological majesty, silent but for the wind and the sound of Henry’s voice. And he had the weather—the changeable, unstoppable, magnificent forces of day and night and wind and season. Being space-born, Gordon had at first been frightened by the power of it. Now he felt only awe looking at the rising storm on the horizon. Thinking of it, though, he realized he should get back, before his battery got so low Henry would call him a hypocrite.     The official address was Homestead #99 New Saturn, Chiang System, but Gordon just called it Dome Sweet Dome. It was a series of domes, really, connected by walkways. The entire complex resembled a wagon wheel when viewed from above. Gordon entered on the southeast side, still riding Paint through the unpressurized tunnel that formed the complex’s perimeter until he reached the large dome where the MSTIs bivouacked. Because the escaped Bonnie, whom he’d dubbed Screw-loose during the long ride back, could have something wrong with her, Gordon went to the quarantine zone. Being super-social, the MSTIs hated being left alone—especially when within scenting distance of the rest of their colony. So Gordon had made the place as comforting as he could, filling it with jointed toy animals painted blue to resemble the MSTIs. He’d also recorded himself singing all the cowboy songs he serenaded the herd with, as well as the weird chirping noises made by Queen Elvira. Still, isolated bugs felt real anxiety and usually chirped all night. Gordon deposited the Bonnie behind the door. He felt bad about it, but he had to follow the protocols. He then made his way down the next spoke toward the human living quarters at the center. He dismounted Paint and began to remove his hardsuit, though he still wore an armature that helped support his spine and limbs in terrestrial gravity. Light and thin, the armature could have been mistaken for jewelry so long as Gordon wore clothes over it. The rings that helped support his fingers could look especially decorative in certain lights. Gordon had never thought of it this way until Henry had pointed it out. He still only half believed Henry had any real physical attraction to him, because how could he? Then Henry would prove it with his body, which went a long way toward convincing Gordon it was possible to find a long, thin spaceman beautiful. Because the day had been so warm, he wore only thin underclothes and these were stained with sweat. As the air lock door opened to the robotics workshop, a chill prickled at his skin. “Go back to your stall, Paint,” he said. The robot gave a little whinny (which Henry had programmed it to do just for Gordon) and made its way between the tables of equipment to a battery-charging cubby toward the rear of the workshop, adjacent to the living quarters. Gordon walked down the short hallway to the great room, which contained areas for cooking, eating, and socializing. The central dome sported ten such apartments, each with three bedrooms and private bath facilities, to house the families that would form the farming outpost. Henry sat at the kitchen table, which was, as always, strewn with small machine parts. He didn’t appear to have cooked any food or showered, but set to tinkering with a machine straightaway. The entertainment center was on and tuned to the latest grav-cross tournament. Santiago seemed to be doing well—coming back from a spine-shattering crash in his last tourney. “Do I want to have a look at the damage to the cyanobacteria?” he asked as Gordon entered. “Or just file the complaint right away?” “You probably want to have dinner before you do either,” Gordon went to the refrigerator and surveyed the interior. They had some fresh veg and synth meat and chili paste. “How do you feel about fried rice?” “I love anything you cook,” Henry said. Gordon glanced around the edge of the door. Henry seemed sincere—and somewhat apologetic, which Gordon found suspicious. “Why so sudden with the compliments?” “I feel bad about saying your bug wasn’t worth enough to go after,” Henry said simply. “I know how attached you are. And they are cute in their own way.” Gordon closed the door, closed the distance between them, and draped himself across Henry’s shoulders. He wrapped his slender, elongated arms around Henry’s sturdy body and planted a kiss on the side of his neck. “I know. You were just worried,” Gordon said. “You take too many risks for a man in your position,” Henry said. “And just how much battery did you have left when you came back?” “That’s beside the point,” Henry said. “I don’t think so. You rely on those suits just as much as me out there.” Henry shifted to be able to look Gordon in the eye and said, “But you’re more important than me.” “No, I’m not.” “You are to me.” “You’re so sweet when you avoid answering my questions,” Gordon said but gave him another kiss anyway. After dinner they conserved water by showering together, which was Henry’s stated favorite method of prudent resource management. Then they made their way to bed. If they’d been in zero gravity, Gordon would have removed the armature to allow more flexibility in their position, but here on the planet’s surface, he didn’t want to force Henry to have to lift his arms and legs for him. He straddled Henry and moved so flesh met flesh without the intrusion of the hard resin that braced his muscle. Henry waited for him to settle, careful as always when Gordon was out of the suit. Though Gordon had made himself a specialist in taking Henry inside his body, that night he didn’t. They were both too tired for any such procedure and settled for Henry holding both their cocks together between his big hands while Gordon pumped into them and against Henry’s own flesh as well. He hung above Henry, hands braced against the bed on either side of Henry’s shoulders watching his lover’s face. Henry was a funny one. Gordon could see an idea moving through his mind the second before he decided to move his hands this way or that. A smug look would come over him, and he’d smile just a little so that the dimple showed in his cheek. Then he’d make his sly move, gazing up at Gordon. More often than not he’d say, “You like that?” or “What do you think of this,” or, should he have been tight inside Gordon, he’d be more tender, asking him how he liked it or whether he wanted more or less. Though the feedback was necessary on account of Gordon’s fragility, answering Henry’s more intimate questions always embarrassed him, while somehow also making the feeling more intense. Tonight Henry stayed mischievous and systematic, making a production of his motions until finally Gordon broke down and came into Henry’s hands in a series of sharp uncontrollable thrusts. Henry followed soon after, and Gordon rolled back down to the bed beside him—beyond spent yet still once the glow and a few final kisses had been finished—full of worry. “I didn’t sing Queen Elvira her lullaby,” Gordon mumbled into Henry’s shoulder. “I think she can survive one night without one,” Henry replied. “But we should check on her—secure the enclosure at least.” Gordon started to push himself up, but Henry stopped him. “You did a lot of riding today. I’ll do it,” he said. “Thank you.” “But I’m not singing.” Gordon was asleep before Henry even left the bedroom.   The shrill pulsing shriek of an alarm sliced through Gordon’s dreams. His eyes flew open. The overhead lights blazed to life while a single flasher whirled yellow and red. Somewhere there had been a breach. Gordon jackknifed into sitting position, but he could see nothing wrong. No wind to indicate pressure escaping the habitat. “Henry?” Gordon bellowed, his voice barely audible even to his own ears above the alarm. He staggered to the living room console. “Silence alarms!” he shouted at the screen. Abruptly the sound ceased. Its absence washed over him like cool water. “Show breaches.” A diagram flashed on the screen showing two separate breaches: one in the outer spoke near the corral that held the MSTIs and one in the Queen Elvira’s enclosure. He could find no visual for either. Immediately he punched the icon for Henry’s hardsuit communicator. “Henry, do you copy?” he asked. No answer came, save some slight static. Heart in his throat, he punched up the vitals for Henry’s hardsuit, Those showed that he was still in it and that his vital signs were within normal range. Though the battery to his communication pack had flatlined and Henry appeared to be moving slowly away from Homestead #99. What the flying hell? Gordon loped through the robotics shop, yelling for Paint as he went. The robot scuttled out of its closet to stand at the ready. Paint’s battery charge was still only at 55 percent, as it had been plugged in for only three hours, but it would have to do. He pushed himself into his hardsuit so fast that he missed closing the seams twice. After the second warning, he forced himself to take a breath. Whatever had happened, it wouldn’t help to get himself decompressed rushing out into the air lock with an unsealed suit like some kind of Earth-born know-nothing. He was a fucking native of space, damn it all. He shouldn’t be acting like this. Though he felt the slowness of the extra minute might kill him, Gordon forced himself through the safety checklist before opening the air lock. Outside the night sky shone as the rings formed by accretion discs blazed with blue-white light. Beyond the rings, stars in their millions glittered and danced with the distortion of winds high in New Saturn’s thin atmosphere. Gordon rushed for the queen’s enclosure and found a rectangle cut into the canvas wall as neatly as if there had been a dotted line to follow. He put on his external speaker and raised his bolt rifle. “Is there anybody there?” Nothing. Not a sound. He gave a whistle—Queen Elvira’s favorite tune, which she always chirped back at him. Again nothing. Carefully he edged into the enclosure to find nothing. No queen. All at once the knowledge came upon him, and he rushed through the queen’s enclosure to where the rest of the herd was corralled. This too was empty of all MSTIs. They’d been rustled. Only one outfit on New Saturn had the ability to steal thirty thousand MSTIs—his old employer, Vanguard—or, more likely, someone bankrolled by them. Gordon did a circuit of the perimeter and easily found the three-toed tracks of several MSTI “dogs” heading southeast. The dogs were quadruped robots that performed a function much like sheepdogs on Earth. With only a few dogs the rustlers could control tens of thousands of MSTIs—especially if they captured the queen. But there was no way to drive that many MSTIs over a long distance. They needed water. So there would be a livestock mover somewhere close—perhaps just out of sight. Gordon accessed his night vision and scanned the horizon. But about three hundred meters from their homestead, the ground gave way to a frozen lake and the visible tracks disappeared. Gordon did a herd-location scan and discovered that the MSTIs locator chips were, like Henry’s coms, being scrambled by a frequency jammer. Once Gordon got past the soft sand he’d have no way of knowing which direction the rustlers had headed. But they couldn’t have gone far. He needed some way to track them. Calling the orbital station to request a visual scan of the landscape via satellite would take too long—an hour at least just to get the permission to point the cameras at them. Henry could die any minute from power loss in his hardsuit. Then Gordon realized he had a tracker. Screw-loose—the Bonnie in quarantine. She’d followed the Vanguard track earlier. Gordon wheeled Paint around and galloped to the quarantine. Screw-loose was predictably happy to see him and climbed right up Paint’s leg to butt her head against Gordon’s faceplate. “I know, I know. I’m sorry to have left you in there. Now you’ve got to help me.” Gordon knew he couldn’t just trust Screw-loose to come when he called. She’d already wandered off once. So he took a length of lightweight cord and knotted it firmly around Screw-loose’s abdomen. He gave her enough lead to go a couple of meters ahead of him and Paint. Then he went to the caterpillar track and set her down. Screw-loose didn’t hesitate. She took off after the big machine, yanking on her leash like an eager terrier. Gordon set Paint to follow, and then he did what no human should ever do in this situation—he headed into the darkness alone. They reached the frozen lake in a matter of minutes. The flat black expanse of its surface stretched for at least five kilometers. Screw-loose hesitated for only a moment before lunging out onto the ice. Paint followed more cautiously, shifting to adjust its gait on the slick mass. Looking down, though he knew the water to be frozen solid right down to the lakebed, Gordon still felt trepidation crossing the glassy surface. New Saturn had many lakes and even whole frozen oceans. Many, like this one, were situated near geothermic founts that occasionally melted the water, sometimes all the way to just a few feet below the surface. During these melts, pale gasses became trapped in the dark ice like gleaming bubbles in champagne. Riding across felt like striding through the stars. Henry would have thought it was beautiful. For a moment terrible fear for Henry seized Gordon. It was so easy to die in this inhospitable world. But Gordon refused to think that Henry could be lost to him already. He couldn’t have kept going if he did. He had to believe Henry was still alive. After this was all over, he would show this lake to Henry, he decided. They would come out here together and see the center of this beautiful sight together. Suddenly Paint slid and Gordon lurched, nearly thrown. Gordon held on till Paint righted itself, and they kept going, straight across until they finally neared the far shore. If the sand on the other side showed no tracks they would have to turn around and start again. Anxiety formed a hard knot in his gut. He should have called the station, he realized, before setting out. Now he’d gone too far from the signal booster for his suit’s messages to reach orbit. He nearly cried from relief seeing the familiar pattern of a three-toed dog tracks starting up from the other side. “Screw-loose, you’re my girl.” When the MSTI didn’t answer, he whistled a tune. This got her attention for a moment, then she chirped and tried to keep going, but he hauled her back up into his saddlebag. He had the fresh track to follow now. Once Screw-loose had balled up and been secured, Gordon switched Paint to auto and set the speed for full. They scuttled along the track, kicking up dust behind them until finally a massive machine came into view. Bigger than their entire living quarters, the livestock mover stood several stories high. It was set on caterpillar treads capable of handling anything the New Saturn terrain could offer as an obstacle. The MSTIs docilely climbed the lowered ramp and filed into the multitiered vehicle. Because the rustlers were most likely used to the cowed and frightened industrially herded MSTIs, they’d only covered the sides of the vehicle with lightweight mesh. It was strong enough to keep the MSTIs from falling out the sides of the mover, but Gordon could see that a few of the bored and mischievous Bonnies had already begun to sample the netting and, finding it weaker than their mandibles, chewed the stuff to pieces. Once that livestock mover started running, a fair few of them were going to fall out the side and become separated from the herd. That notion only increased Gordon’s feeling of urgency. He had to stop this mover right here, somehow. But no way could he simply assault a thing like that. And he had no means of calling the authorities. He focused his attention on the livestock mover. Though it was possible to automate this entire process, he knew that there must be at least one human here—only high-grade military robots could be programmed to harm humans, and these dogs were definitely on the lower end of retail availability. So at least one human had to have overpowered Henry. Gordon just needed to find them and work from there. Could negotiation actually be an option? It would be a ballsy move, but could he bluff the bastards into thinking he’d already relayed their particulars? That a team of marshals would be on their way with the next launch window? And where was Henry, anyway? Getting him back was the priority, no matter how much Gordon liked Queen Elvira. Fear coursed through him when he realized there was no guarantee that the rustlers had taken Henry with them. They could have killed him and dumped his body. Gordon might have ridden right past it and never seen it in the darkness. He reined Paint to a walk and together they crept closer to the livestock mover. A steady stream of MSTIs filed into the mover’s holding tank. When one Bonnie strayed, a dog chased it back into line, blaring a god-awful siren that caused all the MSTIs to cringe. The loading had only just commenced, it seemed. Gordon could still see Queen Elvira far in the back. He edged along, careful to keep himself and Paint out of the light. Then with a rush of relief he saw Henry. The man was clearly unconscious, hanging over the back of a one of the dogs like a carcass, his limbs bouncing as the dog loped toward the head of the livestock mover. And there, Gordon saw the operator. He wore a hardsuit and cradled a plasma rifle. Gordon couldn’t see the man’s face, but he instantly recognized the custom paint job decorating the hardsuit. His blood boiled at the sight of the man’s back, sporting the words “Big Shot” topped by a blast pistol firing one suggestive blob of plasma across the boundary of the fiery corona that ringed the entire stupid design. Gordon could not believe he’d ever slept with this man, nor that he’d once found this hardsuit charming. Horace Scott ran the MSTI program for Vanguard. Even among the roughnecks who took up terraforming, Horace stood out as the kind of man who’d break any rule or backstab any friend to turn a profit for his corporate masters. Horace was a true believer, and he loathed Homestead for Humanity above all else. During their last fateful argument, when Gordon had told him that he’d been thinking of leaving Vanguard to join the Homestead organization, whose chief goal was to reduce overcrowding and ease station life, Horace had only said, “New Saturn is a beautiful, unspoiled world. Why would you want to bring down a bunch of station rats to ruin it?” Gordon wasn’t surprised to find Horace supported sabotage of Homestead properties, but he was curious as to why a man so invested in management that he painted the words “Big Shot” on his back wouldn’t have delegated this dangerous and illegal task to one of his underlings. Then again, maybe he had tried and not been able to convince anyone to do it for him. The discovery that the rustler was Horace did clarify one thing for Gordon, though. He no longer had any desire to hide in the shadows. Not that he thought Horace wouldn’t shoot him or try to get an EMP on his suit. The sight of the man just made him so hopping mad that he started Paint running before he even had a chance to think. The dog carrying Henry swiveled around immediately and sounded the alarm. From his place alongside the livestock mover, Horace whipped around and saw Gordon bounding across the pink sand toward him. It took a couple of seconds for their coms to link frequencies, so when they did Horace was already talking. “… an idiot thing like this, Gordon?” “What did you do to Henry?” “He’s fine. I just gassed him out.” Paint skidded to a halt beside the dog that held Henry. Looking through the faceplate, he could see that Horace told the truth. Relief coursed through him. But as he reached out to touch Henry, Horace called the dog to him. The robot trotted forward and, at Horace’s command, dumped Henry on the ground at his feet, where he lay like a discarded doll. Horace brought his rifle to bear on Gordon and Paint immediately, and Gordon stilled and raised his hands. Now that Gordon came into the circle of light surrounding the livestock mover, some of the MSTIs had caught sight of him and Paint. He turned on his external speakers and could hear them chirping to greet him and gave a long, trilling whistle in return. That triggered a wild cacophony of chirps and whistles from the MSTIs. Even from three meters away, he could see Horace wince. But glancing to the side he could also see that the MSTIs were gathering at the breach in the netting that had been chewed away by one of the Bonnies. They had responded to his call. Could he just get them to turn around and go down the ramp? If they all rushed down together, the dogs would be overwhelmed at once. “You and that lousy whistling,” Horace ground out from between clenched teeth. “Don’t forget the singing,” Gordon added. “No way I can forget the singing. I had that stupid song of yours stuck in my head for months after I kicked you out.” Horace hoisted his plasma rifle. “You didn’t kick me out. I left you.” “That’s not the way I remember it,” Horace said, as if there were anybody else out here to impress. Maybe he just needed to impress himself. “You know you’re going to have to give me back these MSTIs,” Gordon said. “No, I don’t think I do,” Horace said. “Look, I understand your bosses want us shut down—” “This isn’t about my bosses. This is about keeping New Saturn unspoiled,” Horace said. “The point of terraforming is to bring human beings a new world to live on.” “No, the point of terraforming is to bring deserving human beings a new world. Your Homesteaders are nothing but trash chosen by lottery. They’re unqualified scroungers.” “You take that back.” “I didn’t say you were one of them,” Horace said, as though the fact that Gordon included himself among the station rats might be the only real problem with his argument. “But the rest of them—unemployed and lazy. Handing them this place would be like handing a baby over to a pig.” “It’s not your choice who gets to live here.” Gordon tried to keep his cool. “Look, we’re never going to agree on this, so let’s just call it even. You give me my MSTIs and Henry, and we never need to mention this again.” “If only I believed you would do that, Gordon, I might take you up on that deal. But you won’t. You’ll be radioing the marshals the second you get within amplification range.” “How do you know I haven’t already?” “Because if you had, you’d have told me right away.” Horace flipped a lever on his rifle—setting it to EMP. “I tried to keep you out of this, but you had to come running out into the night like the idiot you are. Now I have to kill you too.” “What the hell do you mean ‘kill me too’?” Gordon demanded. “Well, this one was always in the plan.” Horace kicked the side of Henry’s hardsuit. “What have you got against Henry?” he said. “Far as I know you two have never even met.” “And yet there his name was at the bottom of every single grievance against me and my crew.” Horace’s voice rose and turned nasty. “Right down to the last one that got me fired.” “Fired?” Gordon couldn’t keep the amazement from his expression. “How could they shoot down the Big Shot?” “That’s what I want to know! I’ve done everything—everything those sons of bitches have ever asked of me. And then this guy comes along and I’m out? Terminated? Ordered to leave New Saturn to go live crammed onto some filthy station while this fucker gets this whole planet to roam?” Horace kicked Henry again for good measure. Gordon understood Horace enough to know that he didn’t mean to ever go back into space. “So what are you planning to do? Try and buy your way back into the company with my MSTIs? Or do you have another outfit you plan to buy your way into?” Gordon asked, though he supposed he already knew the answer. New Saturn was a big place with plenty of colonial interests. From mining companies to isolationist religious communities to people just like him and Henry. “Let’s just say that other parties are interested in my services—provided I have something to offer,” Horace replied. He lowered his rifle, taking aim at Henry’s head. “Wait!” Horace glanced up but didn’t change his aim. “What? You want to kiss him good-bye or some such thing?” Horace stepped closer to Gordon and angled the rifle at him. “Or maybe you want to go first so you don’t have to see him die?” “I want you to think about what you’re doing. You can’t shoot me and Henry and expect no one will ever find us.” “There are plenty of bad guys out here. One of them will be found guilty, I imagine,” Horace said. Gordon considered his options and decided he only really had one. He jacked up the volume on his hardsuit and began to sing: I know when this guy is gone This new world’s gonna be born You’ll keep rolling along Tumbling down with the tumbling MSTIs At once the Bonnie up high in the livestock mover let out an answering chirp and launched herself from the breach in the netting. She curled into a ball mid-fall and bounced to the ground a few feet behind Horace. Horace whipped around, taking in the spherical creature, then with a single foul utterance, punted the Bonnie back toward the ramp. He looked up just in time to see the next one falling straight toward him. The MSTI nailed him in the shoulder. The third hit immediately after and drove him to one knee. The MSTIs were on a roll now, shouldering past each other to pour down. The big dog rushed toward Horace but was soon overcome by the MSTIs pouring out in their dozens, bouncing and uncurling. Pinned now, Horace would be a goner—crushed under the weight. And so would Henry if Gordon didn’t get to him. He urged Paint forward, and the robot bounded across the sands at top speed. “Attach hardsuit!” Gordon commanded. “Unconscious worker.” Paint bent and gathered up Henry immediately, clipping Henry’s hardsuit close to its underbelly. Gordon hefted himself into the saddle just as the first wave of blue MSTIs reached him. He hung on for dear life, as Paint scuttled back toward the periphery. Once at a safe distance, Gordon watched the MSTIs pile up on one another, trying not to look at the cracked hardsuit that he knew no longer protected Horace from New Saturn’s deadly atmosphere. He whistled for the MSTIs and heard Queen Elvira answer, along with a little echo from Screw-loose in his saddlebag. All that remained was to lead them all back home.   The inquest into Horace’s death lasted too long. For six weeks Gordon had to sit in the orbital station to answer questions and have his hardsuit recorder examined. Homestead stood by him all the way, paying for his legal representation and even a couple of sessions of counseling. Not that Gordon needed it; except for the claustrophobia he now experienced at being crammed onto an orbiting station with another hundred thousand people, he felt fine. He missed Henry keenly. And New Saturn’s weather almost as much. He returned to New Saturn along with the first five families of homesteaders who would jointly take possession of #99. They seemed to be a nice mix of planet and space-born people, and so giddy with excitement about their lives on the new frontier that it brought tears to Gordon’s eyes to watch their awe as the shuttle descended. Henry met him at the landing site, along with Paint, who Henry claimed had missed him. “I’ve got a surprise for you,” Henry said. He led Gordon to a new, small dome on the periphery of the compound. Inside Gordon spied the long legs and bulging abdomen of a Queen MSTI—but not Queen Elvira. The new queen swung her head around to him and whistled “Turkey in the Straw.” “She started metamorphosis into a pupa the day after you left. Turns out Screw-loose had a plan all along,” Henry said. “She was trying to break off and start her own colony.” “But the MSTIs are not supposed to be able to do this on their own. Their modifications shouldn’t allow it. Did you document it?” “Isn’t that my line?” Henry asked. He gave a little shrug. “Ours have gone through several generations of natural breeding now. Guess nature found a way.” “But what about Queen Elvira?” “They keep their distance from each other,” Henry said with a chuckle. “The bosses want us to split the herd. Take one queen and leave the other for the homesteaders. But I told them I wouldn’t make any decisions till you came back. What do you think?” A pang of sentiment moved through Gordon as he thought of his years with Queen Elvira. But he felt equally bad forcing her to move. MSTIs were, by nature, a colonizing species. So he put on a brave face and said, “I think it’s time for you, me, and Screw-loose to move on.” As if she understood, Screw-loose let out a loud chirp, but when Gordon looked over he saw that she was just announcing production of her latest egg. END   “Oh, Give Me A Home” was originally published in Once Upon a Time in the Weird West (Dreamspinner Press) and is copyright Nicole Kimberling 2016. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a GlitterShip original.

There's always some dude on a horse. The most famous dude on a horse is Alexander the Great (356–323 BC). Even his horse is famous—the warhorse Bucephalus (355–326 BC). At the same time when Alexander and Bucephalus were conquering the world, the Hebrew prophet Zechariah gave a different vision of a different kind of king. Zechariah prophesied that Israel's king would not be like Alexander the Great, riding a warhorse and conquering by killing. Instead, Zechariah prophesied that Messiah would come with gentleness and humility, riding a lowly donkey and teaching peace to the nations.

There's always some dude on a horse. The most famous dude on a horse is Alexander the Great (356–323 BC). Even his horse is famous—the warhorse Bucephalus (355–326 BC). At the same time when Alexander and Bucephalus were conquering the world, the...

In our second episode, writer and deputy culture editor for Guardian Australia Stephanie Convery joins us as we discuss the runner-up in our poll for which book to read first - Mort! Published 30 years ago, it's the fourth Discworld novel, and the first to put Death in a starring role. Mort (short for Mortimer), a daydreaming farmer's son, is offered an apprenticeship by Death himself. Travelling outside of space and time to Death's home, he finds things aren't what he expects: Death has an elderly manservant, an adopted daughter, and an unusual interest in fly fishing. Mort, left to do the job alone, tries to defy fate in a very human (and teenage) moment  - but can he possibly succeed? And why does an immortal anthropomorphic personification need an apprentice, anyway? Mort is often cited (including by us) as the first book in the series that feels like the Discworld we know and love, so if you're joining us for the first time this episode, this is a great place to start. (And don't worry: we will go back and read the first three books at some point!) Show Notes and Errata: You can follow Stephanie on Twitter at @gingerandhoney, and find her work at Guardian Australia here.Sir Terry's thoughts on where to start reading the Discworld are most clearly outlined in the essay "Straight from the Heart, Via the Groin", which is most easily found in the collection A Slip of the Keyboard."Mort" does mean death, but it's not Latin - it's French (or in Discworld terms, Quirmian).A "squib" in the world of Harry Potter is the rare child of a magical person who is not magical themselves.The lead Gentleman in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Hush was played by Doug Jones, now famous for playing Abe Sapien in the Hellboy films, the Faun and the Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth, and Saru in Star Trek Discovery. He plays Count Orlok, the titular vampire, in the upcoming remake of Nosferatu. And he'd make a great Death.Christopher Lee was the voice of Death in both Cosgrove Hall animated adaptations (Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music), and The Mob's live-action adaptation of The Colour of Magic, following Ian Richardson's death. And his Death. (Richardson played Death in The Mob's first Discworld adaptation, Hogfather.) The body of Death was played by Marnix Van Den Broeke, who also played the golem Mr Pump in Going Postal.The horse that plays Bucephalus in Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is, unfairly, not named in the credits of the film.

SHOW NOTES:  Summary: At FDSA, Andrea Harrison teaches classes for the human half of the competitive team. She's an educator who is passionate about all species including dogs and humans. Having lived with dogs her whole life, Andrea was an early convert to positive training. She has taken this message to the media many times including appearances on many TV shows and news programs as well as in print and on the radio. She has explored the science of brain research and worked with people of all ages on being successful and reducing anxiety and stress using her training and counseling, personality typing, and her own experiences.   When it comes to dog sports her competitive addiction is agility. Andrea and her dogs have many titles between them with placements in regional and national competitions. Andrea has experienced animal wrangling for television and more recently has begun to explore scent work. Links mentioned: www.andrea-agilityaddict.blogspot.com/ (Andrea's site) Next Episode:  To be released 6/23/2017, featuring Amanda Nelson.  TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast, brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Andrea Harrison. At FDSA Andrea teaches classes for the human half of the competitive team. She's an educator who is passionate about all species including dogs and humans. Having lived with dogs her whole life, Andrea was an early convert to positive training. She has taken this message to the media many times including appearances on many TV shows and news programs as well as in print and on the radio. She has explored the science of brain research and worked with people of all ages on being successful and reducing anxiety and stress using her training and counseling, personality typing, and her own experiences. When it comes to dog sports her competitive addiction is agility. Andrea and her dogs have many titles between them with placements in regional and national competitions. Andrea has experienced animal wrangling for television and more recently has begun to explore scent work. Hi, Andrea. Welcome to the podcast. Andrea Harrison: Thank you so much, Melissa. It's lovely to be here. Melissa Breau: I'm excited to chat. To start us out, do you want to just give us a little about your current fur crew? Andrea Harrison: Sure. We could take up the whole podcast talking about them so I won't do that, but we're currently living with too many dogs including my dad's dog, Franny, who is a lovely older cocker spaniel, and then we have Brody who is 17 almost and he's what I refer to as my heartbeat at my feet. He's my Shih Tzu mix and he really taught me that gurus even in dog sports don't necessarily have all the answers for every dog. Then we have Theo who is a 14-year-old Chihuahua, Sally who is an 11-year-old border collie mix who has really taught me to appreciate joy in everything. She was supposed to be palliative foster, she came to us when she was about six months old and was given less than six months to live, and she's about to turn eleven. So she's a good daily reminder. Yeah. She's a really good daily reminder that life is good and life is worth living. Then we have Sam who is my husband's golden retriever and I do very, very little with him. He just turned eight, and he came to us as a palliative foster as well. He was five months old with terminal kidney disease, so he's doing pretty well. We've got a crazy, crazy little terrier named Dora who is five years old, and then we have a toy American Eskimo, Yen, who just turned four, and she is certainly my daily reminder that every dog you have to do things your own way. So yeah, we have a bunch of different breeds and different types represented in the house right now, and as I say, too many dogs, but I also joke that on a per acre basis we have less dogs than most people do because we live on a fairly large farm in the middle of nowhere in Lake Ontario. So per acre we're well under any limit anybody could set. Melissa Breau: That certainly helps. I mean, having space is a big benefit when you have dogs. Andrea Harrison: Yes. For sure. And it's nice because I can train down at the front with them, a little agility field set up at the front, so I can take a pair down and work them down there, but every day a part of our routine is to go for a one to two, well, sometimes even three kilometers once the weather is nice, but we're out doing a good hike off-leash with all five of the dogs who are at a stage in their development where that's something they enjoy, right? So their fitness, their brain, their recalls, all of that stuff just gets worked on as part of life, you know? They hang out with me, they want to hang out with me. It makes when they come to town much easier, right, because they're constantly being reinforced for doing sort of the right thing to my husband's and my eyes. Melissa Breau: So which of the dogs are you currently competing with? Andrea Harrison: I don't actually. Since I've been down here we've been busy setting up the farm, but Sally, the border collie mix, finished doing a major film fairly recently and has been going out doing some publicity work around that. So her training stayed pretty current. Yeah. She was a lead role in a feature film that was about the character dog, Dinah, in the movie. So she is Dinah. So that's been kind of neat with being down to the…Toronto has an international film festival and we've been in the main theater for that. She was the first dog ever in that theater and stuff. So we had to make sure she was really, really perfect. They were, “A dog? You can't have a dog in the theater.” We're like, “Well, she's the star of the film.” And they were like, “Oh, yeah, okay, well, if she's the star of the film I guess it's okay.” So she's been doing stuff. Ad I'm hoping to get Dora, the two young dogs, Dora and Yen, going in competitive agility one of these days. But my problem is because everything is two or three hours of driving for me, and with my 17-year-old guy, I don't like to leave him very long, right? He's very much my heartbeat at my feet, he's happiest lying on my feet, and I hate to leave him and make him stress out when I'm gone. But unfortunately I don't think he'll be with us all that much longer. And then Dora and Yen can get their day of, their 15 minutes of fame, right, the Andy Warhol thing, they can get out there and get their fame and glory or embarrass me, whichever way they choose to go out. They do agility at home and they're great. They're ready to go. I just have to get off the farm. Melissa Breau: Fair enough. How long have you guys had the farm now? Andrea Harrison: Well, we've had the land for about ten years and we've been living here, we've been living here and building our house. We had a house just around the corner, we've been building our house for just about five years, we've been permanently at the farm for three. Melissa Breau: Wow. That's awesome. Andrea Harrison: Yeah. Yeah. It's been pretty neat. It added a dimension to my life that I really didn't know how much I was missing until I had it. Melissa Breau: So how did you originally get started with dog sports and the film stuff? I mean, where did all that start? Andrea Harrison: So when I was little I apparently was pretty opinionated, I hear this quite regularly, and I didn't like school and I didn't think I like learning. Turns out I love learning but I was just not being taught the stuff I liked to learn, right? So my dad and mom realized that if they could connect anything to animals I'd buy into it. So they taught me history at the dining room table by using the names of dogs and cats and horses, whatever kind of animal they could find that was connected to an event. I learned about the Civil War in the States because of the horse Traveller, for example, right? Ancient Greek history, they connected it to Bucephalus, Alexander the Great's horse. Rin Tin Tin for the war stuff, right? All of those kinds of things. And then they realized that if they brought home books that had animals in them I would read, and it turns out I'm a voracious reader, but they connected it through animals. And one of the kinds of books I started reading were books about people, there was a real trend for books about guide dogs, service dogs, seeing eye dogs and those kinds of things, and I read a book, and I was trying to think of the name of it. I think it's called like, Guided by the Light or something, or Candle in the Light or something, and I read the book and it just amazed me, the gorgeous German shepherd, and I had this clear picture in my head, it was an amazing dog. I looked at our Irish setter at the time and I said, “You and I are going to do stuff.” And I was 12 and there were no classes available for kids, kids just were not available to take classes. So I made my mom go to the dog sport classes and is at on the sidelines and I watched everything she did and I went home and I did it with our Irish setter in the backyard. By the end of our time doing that class our Irish setter would actually walk down a main street of Toronto off-leash with squirrels and other dogs going by me. She was your pretty typical Irish setter, she was a busy girl, and I was so proud of that. The lift that gave me as a very introverted, not super academic kind of person really built my confidence. So then just every dog we had from there, I put one leg of an obedience title on a golden retriever. We had foster Sheltie for about eight months, I did some show handling with her. So I just slowly got a little bit more into it. I never found my passion, right? Then one day, twenty years ago almost exactly I think, I saw agility, just in a field at a local university. Somebody set up a class and I literally stopped dead and went, “That's amazing.” And I started thinking about agility. I had two older big dogs at the time who couldn't do it, but I started learning about it and watching it and thinking about it. Then I was hooked. That was it. I mean, my blog is called Agility Addict. I was just absolutely, and I am just nuts about agility. Melissa Breau: What's the URL for your blog? Andrea Harrison: Andrea Agility Addict Blog Spot I think. I don't know. It comes up, as soon as you type any of that in it flies right up. Melissa Breau: I will look it up and I will include the link in the show notes. So what do, what you teach at FDSA is a little bit different, kind of, than what any of the other instructors do. You definitely have your own niche. I mean, how do you explain what it is you do at FDSA? How would you kind of summarize it  Andrea Harrison: Yeah. It's such a good question. I think what I'd say and what I do say all the time is that I focus on the handler side, right? Because it doesn't matter if you're an agility addict or you're into nose work or you're into obedience. I'm so grateful I'm learning so much about all these amazing different sports, Rally-FrEe, and all this stuff, it's just so super what I do because I get to learn and I love learning, right?  So I really focus on the handler side of it. My experiences through all the different things that I have done have reminded me all the time that my mental state, my beliefs, my hang-ups, right, really are going to affect what happens at the end of the leash. When I was filming Zoboomafoo and I needed 15 puppies to run across the floor towards me, if 13 of them ran towards me and two of them went another way it didn't help to get mad about it, right? I had to just think it through, figure it out, and redo it, right? Or when my little dog was on the stage at the Elgin Theater in Toronto, one of our big theaters doing a thing of Annie, I had to just to let it go. And it's hard for me to let it go. I'm your typical Fenzi instructor, you know, type A, cares a lot, wants everything to be right, right? We're a passionate group of people, right? I mean, that's wonderful, but it can be hard to remember that we can't control everything, right? No matter how much we want success we can't always make success in the moment that we want it. So as I was looking at what I could bring to the FDSA table it was like, there's a piece of stuff that I'm doing all the time, I'm getting asked to do it all the time, people are asking me questions in my face classes all the time about this, people respond to any blog I write about it. So I taught a little tiny course just for people locally online, and ended up telling Denise about it, and she was like, “That's really cool. Do you want to try bringing that here? I don't know if it'll work.” She was really honest, right? She's like, I don't know if it'll work. I'm not sure there's a thing. But that's where the first course, All in Your Head, came from, this tiny little genesis of a course I ran one summer through a Facebook group, and then it just developed from there. Students are amazing, they ask amazing questions, and they've given so much back to sort of my funny little niche program, like you said, but they've built it. I'm along for the ride. I've got tons of different resources I can plug into and pull out and experiences, but the students of FDSA have really driven what's happened in my little circle. Melissa Breau: So to give listeners kind of a sense of the type of issues that your classes can help with, do you mind just talking a little bit about some of the problems you've helped handlers address within the classes? Andrea Harrison: Yeah. Sure. I mean, it really ranges, right? So All in Your Head looks at sort of who you are, right, and how who you are is going to affect the training choices and things that you do, and starts to address the nerves side of it a little bit, because nerves are a big, big thing that come up. Disappointment, worry, anxiety. People don't want to let down their dog, right? They get frustrated by their dog, they aren't sure they're doing the right sport, they maybe aren't sure they have the right dog for the right sport, right? How can they make all of these things work, right? Like, I personally hate coming in second. For me that's a huge source of frustration, right? So if I was always coming in second I would want to work through a whole bunch of the stuff that I do in a class to make sure that I was dealing with being second. I'd rather be last than second, right? Give me first or don't place me at all. I mean, I'd like to cue, thank you very much, but in terms of placement type stuff, right? So the problems really range. I mean, I've had people look at relationship issues, grief. The two sort of really specialized courses, Infinite Possibilities and the new one I'm running now, Unleash Personal Potential, people pick their own thing, right? So the range of things we're seeing in there is amazing. Then of course with Handle This and No More Excuses people are largely looking at setting plans, setting goals, learning about goals, figuring out how to implement plans, right? We all make these great plans, I'm going to train every day, and then life gets in the way because life always gets in the way, right? It always does. So what do you do when life gets in the way? How can you not say, “Oh my God, I'm the worst trainer in the world ever,” and crawl under a rock and not train for three weeks? And there are times when a three week break is what you need, but sometimes you need to say, you know what? This was a throwaway day. It was okay, I didn't make my plan, it's okay, tomorrow is a new day and I can start over, right? So the range of problems is just, I mean, you know, you could almost open up a dictionary and look for any adjective and there it comes, right? Melissa Breau: So let's dig into a couple of those specifically just a little bit more, because I know there are a couple that we talked about a little bit before the podcast and whatnot as being particularly important. So I wanted to dig into this idea of kind of ring nerves and people experiencing nerves before a competition, things that really impact their handling. I was hoping you could talk a little more about that, maybe include a tip or two listeners can use when it comes to ring nerves and tackling it themselves. Andrea Harrison: Yes. For sure. One of the things I really encourage people to do is test those tools. So people go off to a trial and they're really, really, really nervous, but they don't know whether those nerves are physical, right, or in their head, or if they're affecting the dog at all, right? Because they've never really thought about it. All they know is that they're really, really, really nervous. They feel sick but they don't know is it in their tummy, is it in their head, is it their respiration, is it sweat glands, is it all of them, right? They haven't thought about it, they know it makes them feel sick so they push it aside, they don't work on it between trials, they go back to a trial and they're like, oh my God, I was nervous again. Well, of course you were nervous again. You didn't try working on anything, right? So like everything else it's almost like a training exercise. You have to think about what is making you nervous, how are you manifesting those nerves, and how can you break them down? It's just the same, right, just the same as positive dog training. Break it down into these tiny little pieces that you can then find a tool to address. So for example, if your mouth gets really, really dry and that distracts you and you start sort of chewing cud, as it were, as a cow, you're like, trying to get the water back in your mouth and it makes you nervous. Well, once you figure that out you take peppermints with you in the car, you suck on a peppermint before you go in the ring, and that's gone away. Right? And that's gone away so you can concentrate on the thing you need to concentrate on, right? You want to always build to those results slowly. When you look at the nerves, I can't say to you, here's my magic want, I'm going to wave it over you and all your nerves will be gone. But you get that sick, sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, why is that? Are you remembering to eat the day before a trial? Are you eating too much the day before a trial? Are you remembering to go to the bathroom? Because when you're nervous you have to go to the bathroom, so make sure you make time to go to the bathroom because then there's less to cramp in your tummy, right?  So step by step by step, you know, you make a plan, you look at the plan. What kind of music should you listen to on the way to the show? Should you listen to a podcast that's inspirational to you? Should you put together an inspirational play tack? Do you know exactly where the show is? If you're anxious and worried and always run late, for Lord's sake, please drive to the trail ahead of time or Google Map it really carefully and build yourself in 15 minutes extra, because being late to that trial is not going to help your nerves. You're going to be stressed. So where is that stress coming from? How are those nerves manifesting themselves, right? So the music that you listen to on the way, having the mint if your breath is dry, remembering to go to the bathroom, thinking about what I call Andrea's Rule of Five. So rule of five is really simple. Is it going to matter in five minutes? Five hours? Five days? Five years? Right? So if something is stressing you out you can actually stop, ground yourself which I'll get into in a sec, but ground yourself and think, rule of five. And the vast majority of the time, yeah, it might matter in five minutes because your run will just be over and it was not successful and you're embarrassed, maybe, or maybe it was great, and like, super. But very, very few of us are going to remember a run in even five months, let alone five years. I mean, you might remember in general, but your anxiety is not going to still be there, right? I mean, a great run you can remember. I can probably still tell you the details of some of Brody's agility runs or Sally's amazing work, right? Like, I can describe going from the A-frame around to the tunnel and picking him up and staying connected and it was beautiful. I can remember the errors of enthusiasm, right, like when he took an off-course tunnel, and he's never done that in his life, and I was like, oh my God, he took an off-course tunnel. That's amazing. That's so cool, and we celebrated. So just loved that he was that happy about it. But do I remember those very first, early trials where…do I remember the courses where I stood thinking I'm never going to get my agility dog to Canada? No. I don't really remember. I remember being sad that he was three seconds over the time and _____ (18:35), and that was kind of sucky, but it was okay, right? Like, now with all this perspective it's fine.  So you have to rehearse for success, let those nerves…think of something that gives you just a little bit less nerves and go and do it, right? Where you get that slight flutter and figure out how to tame the slight flutter. Don't expect to say, oh my God, I'm so nervous at a trial, I don't want to be nervous anymore. That won't work. You need to figure out, right, what tools are going to work for you, right? What makes you nervous, what tools will reduce that element of anxiety, and work on it one element at a time. I have students where I say to them, I don't care that you're not really ready to run, right, in a trial. If you were so nervous about it that's making you sick, find a match that's going to make you half sick. Go to a trial and know that you're not going to be successful. Go and do one lap of the ring. I don't care. Walk in there and do six things and leave if it's accessible in your venue. And practice getting over that nervousness so that you can give yourself and your dog the best things that you need to do to be successful. Set yourself up for success, if I had to reduce it to just a couple of words. Melissa Breau: Right. The same way you set your dog up for success. Andrea Harrison: Exactly. Exactly. We're as important part of the team, right? Without us there would be no dog sport. So we spend so much time, right, working on our dogs, and it's great that we do, and I love it too, but you have to remember to work on yourself too. You know? Unless you're by nature perfectly calm, perfectly extroverted, never have a thing to worry about at home which I still have yet to meet anybody who can say all of that, right? Melissa Breau: You and me both. I wanted to dive a little more into the motivation and planning aspect of things too. I know one of the lines in your class description for No More Excuses is it's for the students who have a library full of classes and haven't done them, or they have goals and aspirations that they simply aren't meeting. I think a lot of people who read that, that kind of strikes home, right? So I wanted to ask, what is so hard about just doing it? Andrea Harrison: Such a good question. And you think, like, we all blame ourselves when we can't just do it, right? And I think many of us hope that if we fill our libraries up enough that something is going to resonate, something is going to suddenly, magically make us do it. And you know, we all want that magic solution. I mean, self-help sections of libraries and book stores are full, like, shelves and shelves and shelves of books because we all want there to be a magic bullet answer, right? And there isn't. I mean, in a nutshell motivation often comes down to people being confused about whether it's outcome or process that they want, right? Whether it's learning or performance, right? Four different sort of models to look at motivation. Outcome goals are like, I want to be an Olympic gold medalist, and a process goal is I want to build the skills to be able to be an Olympic gold medalist. Many of us want to go straight to an outcome, goal, right? We want to be able to get the cue without sort of remembering that we have to build that process in. And once people understand that everything we do, we have to break it into a process, that can help them with their own motivation. So training, and this sounds awful, because different things bore different people, but there's always some element of training that bores most people, right? So I'll hear people say, “I hate working on stays, they're so boring.” Or, “I'd rather be playing on Facebook than training,” right? And that's okay, that's legitimate. But if you can start off even just with two or three minutes of whatever you don't like, particularly working on it, as you start to meet success it becomes more rewarding so you can do more and more. So if you can break down your process, again, similar principle to earlier, if you can break your process down into little tiny chunks and build on those little tiny chunks, as you attain success you're going to be moving closer to doing the outcome stuff, right? I mean, in true motivational speak the issues with motivation usually fall into either direction, can you get up off the couch and actually go and train or are you going to get up off the couch and head towards the ice cream in the freezer, right? Which direction are you going to go in? The intensity of what you do, so are you like, oh, yeah, this is great as long as I don't have to work too hard each step, right? It's good, I got to the gym, I chatted to the girl at the desk, I did my thing or went to dog school, and it was great, but I really didn't put any time into training, I was really busy chatting to my friends and watching other people train, right? That's the intensity piece of it. And then the final piece is persistence, which is do you go back, right? Will you go to training once and you do a great job or will you go to training five times and do as good a job as you can each of those times? So direction, intensity, and persistence are sort of the hallmarks of real motivational stuff, and they break down really nicely for dog training too, right? Like, where is your gap? So in No More Excuses we help people figure out which priority they want to work on of those three, and then how to do that. And then the last thing that you want to think about when you're doing motivation issues is are you in a learning phase or a performance phase of training, trial, and showing, whatever? If you're in a learning phase you might still be trialing, right? Because you learn when you trial. Every trial I've ever gone to you learn tons, right? But if you're in that learning phase you don't want to be having tons of outcome based goals or else what happens is you get frustrated and turned off and you stop. I think what happens to a lot of people is they don't understand the distinctions between outcome and process goals, learning and performance outcomes, right, the goal, and then that intensity, persistence, and direction piece, and if you can sort of marry all of those pieces and figure it out then you've got a real head up on making some motivation work for you, right? So it comes to down to sort of planning, right? Figure out what you need to do and then plan for it.   And remember that all those self-help books, right, that are in the library, all the gurus, all the people who say there's only one way to do things or this is the right way, they have a whole lot invested in making you buy in to what it is they are promoting. They believe it. I'm not saying it's charlatans at all, but they believe that their way is the right way, and if it doesn't work for you it tends to make you feel kind of rotten, right? You're thinking, so-and-so could do this and it's amazing, and my friend did it and it was amazing, and it doesn't really work for me. What's wrong with me? Right? And it's not that there's anything wrong with you, you just have a different approach to learning or the message or the method than the person does. So I think sometimes all the self-help can kind of be negative, you know, which is too bad.  Melissa Breau: Yeah. Yeah. Despite my comment about just doing it I do know that you're a big fan of self-care and gratitude, and I'm sure a lot of students in the alumni group on Facebook have seen your Joy Day Care posts. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about that and have you kind of tell us what's the story there, how did that get started? Andrea Harrison: Yeah. It's such a neat thing. So again, you know, my whole thing earlier my students are always teaching me, the first time we ran Infinite Possibilities back in August of 2013, I think, I had an amazing student, she's still a great student at FDSA, I know she listens to the podcast so she'll be like, “Hey, that's me she's talking about.” She said, “You know, this gratitude thing, I work on it all the time and it's really hard for me. I want to get better at being happy.” And there's tons of great research that says that gratitude is a really good path to being a happier person, right? How can I be happy? It's a big question I deal with in all of my life. So we started a gratitude challenge in the class, right, on the discussion thread there was a gratitude challenge that I posted, and then at the end of the class people said, “You can't stop this. This isn't right. You just can't stop this. We need your prompts. We need your help.” I said, “All right. Well, why don't we take it over to the alumni list and see if people like it?” And people really like it. It's funny, if I forget to post, if I forget it's the first day after class officially ends, any of those things for sure somebody will message me, and often it's somebody who has never worked with me. “Hey, don't you normally do Joy Day Care now?” So it started off, we called it just a gratitude challenge, and then it slowly worked towards being a Joy Day Care, the name just evolved over time. It was Joy Day Dare for a long time and then somebody, I mistyped, I think, and it came out as care, and I'm like, yeah, that's even more perfect for us, do you think? Because one of the things I love about it is how much everybody cares about everybody, right?  And it just helps people remember that happiness is a conscious choice, you know? I had somebody ask me just yesterday, what can I do to be a happier person? I said it sounds so trite, it sounds so dumb, I hate to even tell you this, but you really do have to choose happiness. You know? Life is tough, life is hard. There's a lot going on in life that gives us good cause to be angry or upset or frustrated or sad, and I mean, obviously if you're facing some really big thing you're going to need more than just to go, oh, today I'm going to be happy.   But a gratitude practice where you pick some time of the day to think about one thing you can be grateful for has a measureable impact on people who are suffering from depression, who have schizophrenia. There are tons and tons and tons of studies that show that a very, very short, ten second daily gratitude practice can make a difference to your state of happiness. Like, that's pretty powerful, right? And it's so easy for me to do, right? It's such an easy thing for me to remind people of sort of in the lull between classes. It's fun. I enjoy it. I actually quite miss it when it's done even though sometimes I have to get kind of creative with the prompts because we've done it now for a long time. So I'm like, have I done this in the last three sessions? I don't think so. Melissa Breau: Well, you could certainly…it certainly can't hurt to recycle some of those prompts and just think about…absolutely people can think about different things they're grateful for off the same prompt, and I mean, just… Andrea Harrison: Sure. Sure. Melissa Breau: Yeah. Yeah. No. That's great. Andrea Harrison: Yeah. So in fact I did a little workbook too for people because they wanted something in between classes. So there's a little workbook called Love the One You Are With, it's just a little workbook that has a bunch, I don't know, 140 other prompts and pretty pages people can fill in and stuff too. So people seem to be liking that as well. Melissa Breau: Where can they find that? Andrea Harrison: It's called Love the One You Are With, and there's a Facebook page for it. Melissa Breau: Cool. Excellent  Andrea Harrison: Yeah. Very cool. Melissa Breau: So I wanted to kind of end out the podcast, even though we spend a lot of time talking about the handler half of the team, the same way I do for everybody else, because I thought it'd be interesting to talk…I know if the beginning we talked a little bit about you and your dogs, and I wanted to make sure we kind of close it out that way too and talk a little bit about the dogs again. So what is the dog-related accomplishment that you are proudest of? Andrea Harrison: You know, it's interesting, and I wrack my brain because obviously if you listen to the podcast you know this question is going to be coming up. I mean, I have lots of things, I have been lucky enough, fortunate enough to do some really, really cool things with my dogs, right? They're superstars and rock stars all in their own right. But I think if I had to pick the one thing I would have to say it's probably the hundreds of foster dogs that my husband and I have rehabbed, worked with, trained. We've had many, many foster dogs that have been with us more than six months and as long as three years before they've been able to go into their own homes, and I think if I had to pick one thing it's probably doing that, right? Giving back in such a sort of hands on way. Yeah. It's been pretty amazing. We've met some really amazing dogs and by being able to be strong enough to give them up, and sometimes it's really hard to do that, you know, it lets us take in the next one. So it's been pretty precious. Melissa Breau: Right. And that's always the hardest part, right, in some ways, of fostering or helping with that process. Andrea Harrison: Oh, I mean, it's grief. Yeah. It's absolutely grief in its own way. You miss them. You give a little piece of your heart. I had one of my vet tech friends say to me, “Andrea, you've got the biggest chameleon heart of anybody I know.” She calls me Lizard Heart now. I said, “What do you mean, Lizard Heart?” She goes, “Well, if you cut off a little piece of a chameleon's heart apparently it grows back.” I don't know how they even do that, I didn't ask, I didn't check it or anything. But she calls me Lizard Heart because she says, “You've given so much of your heart to other animals, your heart is so patchy and big, right, from all the repairs.” So I'm like, that's so sweet. Right? Yeah. So I would say that's probably my proudest accomplishment. Melissa Breau: And then what is the best piece of training advice, and for you you can do handler or the dog, that you've ever heard? Andrea Harrison: So there's two, because, you know, why would any of us do what you ask and give one? Melissa Breau: That's perfectly okay. Andrea Harrison: I think the one that really made me think the most and really work on understanding what it meant and figuring out how to apply it to handler side stuff and dog side stuff, actually, is somebody said to me a long, long time ago when they were mad at me in my counseling gig that's outside of dogs, they said to me, “Andrea, you have to understand, it's really not personal.” I was like, “But you're mad at me.” And they're like, “I'm just mad. I'm not mad at you. It's not personal.” And I thought, it's not personal. It really isn't, is it? And so much of what we get ourselves so worked up about, right, is because we take things personally that aren't meant personally. So if your dog has a lousy day and blows you off, your dog poops in the ring, your dog isn't do that to destruct you. Your dog is being what my husband calls his dog self, right? We talk about that all the time here at the farm. Oh, he's just being his doggy self. They come in and they've rolled in something disgusting, and you know, oh my God, I have to go out for dinner in half an hour and I don't have time to clean you. My stress level goes through the roof and Tom's like, “They're being their doggy self.” And I'm like, yeah it's not personal. We bathe the dog and we're ten minutes late and we're good, right? So it's not personal applies, like when that group of women, often, sadly, are standing at the side of the ring watching your run and you think, oh my God, they're watching me, they're judging me, the pressure is great, and then you leave the ring and you think, wait a minute, I was the first, second, or third dog in the ring, and they were actually just watching to see how the judge works, or where the judge stands, or what pattern the judge is looking for, whatever, right? So it's often, even though we take it very personally it's not personal there. Even when somebody is making a comment to you, right? They're saying, “Oh, well, if it had been me I would have done it this way.” So what if they would have done it that way? It's about them, that's not about you. It's not personal. So I think it's not personal is a really big one that has worked for me to really try to remember both in my dog sports and my just surviving life piece, right? Whatever the issue is it's much more often about the person who is doing the whatever that's causing you stress or distress, and it's often just the dogs being their doggy self. So that's the first piece of advice I think to get into. Then the other one came a long, long time ago, and this is sort of for handlers to remember with their dog, and that's just to stop nagging. I guess that actually could be seen as a life skill too. I work pretty hard not to nag my husband too, but the sort of persistent drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, it can be really irritating, right? Like, if you're getting nagged it's irritating, and if you're nagging your dog it's irritating too. You're much better off to break off if things aren't going right, break off and do something, and have fun with it, and then come back to it, right? Rather than nag, nag, nag, nag, nagging. If I have a dog that I'm trying to get to sit perfectly on its flat form, and you have a dog that you're trying to get to sit perfectly on its platform, and I drill, drill, drill, drill, drill that skill for my dog, and you try it three times and say, oh, you know what? You need a break, you need to let off some of that stream, I'm going to go play with you for a minute and come back to it. My guess is a whole lot of the time you're going to end up with a much nicer sit that's much more solid in more situations than I will for nagging. Right?  And that came to me from my horse sport stuff early on in life where I was riding a rotten little pony and I had a crop, somebody hands me a crop and I was doing the thwack, thwack, thwack on the shoulder but never hurt enough to make a difference, and like, my coach, Martha Griggs, said to me, “Andrea, if you're going to use that crop take it and use it once and be done with it. Stop nagging that poor pony.” And I thought, oh, but I don't want to hit the pony, right? Who wanted to hit a pony? Even back then I was sort of like, there's got to be a nice way to do it. But I realized that if I could figure out a way to be clear and consistent with my message and stop the drip, drip, drip, drip, dripping nagging of it it was going to work much better, and the pony and I went on to do pretty well in the show we were headed for. So you know, that worked in that moment and that in itself of course became reinforcement.   So it's something I really look for in my face time students, right? Are you nagging the dog? Because if you're nagging the dog if I can help you stop nagging the dog you're going to end up with much more success. Yeah. So I'm grateful to the horse instructor for pointing that out so many years ago. Melissa Breau: I mean, sometimes it's really interesting the lessons that carry over from other sports and other things in our lives into the dog world, and how much carryover they really have. Andrea Harrison: Well, it's absolutely right. One of the things that people always say, how do you know…what made you come up with the fact that getting a good night's sleep before a show is important? And I'm like, because in my work as an educator and as a counselor I've discovered that if I'm doing a session with somebody and they had a good night's sleep the night before we're going to get a lot farther than if they've had an awful night's sleep. Doing sort of a counseling session, if I'm talking to someone and they've had a terrible night's sleep I'll be like, you know what? Today is not a good day to dig into the heavy stuff. Let's find something light and fluffy to deal with because we're not going to get nearly as far, right? Here, let's talk about how to sleep better, you go home and sleep better, and next week make sure you do those strategies, and then we can get into the heavy stuff. So yeah, absolutely. What you learn in one place has tons and tons of crossover. And again, I think we forget that, right? We get so hung up on there's got to be the perfect way to do it that we forget to pull these different skill sets that we have from different places. In the All in Your Head course somebody in the first or second session said to me, “Oh my God, I did this at work, the Meyer Briggs temperament inventory.” He said, “I did this at work. It never occurred to me to think about how what I know about myself at work might influence myself as a dog trainer. It really does make a difference.” I was like, yeah, of course it does. But so many people, we compartmentalize, right? It's part of being human, we keep things in their little compartments and we forget to open the door between them. Melissa Breau: So for our last important question, so someone else in the dog world that you look up to, who would you recommend? Andrea Harrison: There are so many ways to answer this question. I mean, I've said it before in this already, the FDSA instructors are just amazing people and so many of the people, like I can throw out a ton of big name agility trainers, American, Canadian, European, but I think if I was going to say who I look up to regularly, and this sounds kind of, I don't know what the word is I'm looking for so I'll just say it, it has to be the people who struggle with their dog, right? They're the inspiration for me. They've got this dog that maybe isn't the perfect match for them, they're in a sport that isn't maybe the perfect match for them, and they persist. They want to figure it out, right? And that might mean changing dog sports, that might mean retiring a dog, that might mean taking a long break. There's so many different things it can mean, but they're the people that I really look up to because…and lots of the instructors, right, have had their own challenges too. The very fact that they come back to it, right, the resilience of the human, right? So I guess I would have to say that it's the resilience that really makes me feel inspired to keep going, right? That if I were looking for a reason to get up in the morning and to log on to see what's going on with my students, the people who are working with the deaf dog or the blind dog or the dog that, as somebody said, I would divorce if I could, but I can't divorce him because he's living with me now so I'm going to figure out how to do that, you know? It's all those people that really create this inspiration, and I'm sure you would have loved it if I'd grabbed one name, but really when I thought about the question that's really what gives me my get up and go, is those people. Melissa Breau: Hey, I'll take it. It's a different answer so it works for me. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Andrea. It was so much fun to chat. Andrea Harrison: Well, such a pleasure, honestly. Just delightful. You do a great job with it. Melissa Breau: Well, thank you. Thanks. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with Amanda Nelson to talk agility, including tailoring your handling style to your specific team. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. And one extra request this week, guys. If you could leave a review on iTunes or mention the podcast to a training buddy we would greatly appreciate it. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

Seth brings back his findings and experiences from the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York City. The Bang on a Can Marathon is a yearly celebration of new musical styles and ideas, designed to bring diverse performances to a wide public audience. Hosted by Seth Boustead Produced by Jesse McQuarters Louis Andriessen: De Staat (excerpt), Bang on a Can All-Stars Milton Babbitt: Vision and Prayer (excerpt), Bethany Beardslee, soprano Steve Reich: Four Organs (excerpt), Steve Chambers, Phillip Glass, Arthur Murphy, Steve Reich, organs, John Gibson, Maracas Martin Bresnick: String Quartet No. 2 “Bucephalus”, Mvt. III, Alexander String Quartet Martin Bresnick: Prayers Remain Forever, (Ashley Bathgate, cello and Lisa Moore, Piano) Ruben Naeff: Bash David T. Little: Sweet, Light, Crude, Newspeak

Introduction Well, I was commenting to somebody before worship today, that we may be one of the few Southern Baptist churches that's preaching a Palm Sunday theme on Mother's Day. We're not behind schedule, we're just going on to the next text in Matthew. Those of you that have been with us for a while are not surprised by this at all, but others may be. So we're not off, it's not Easter next week, this is just the triumphal entry I'm preaching on. One of the most encouraging things for me in the Christian life is to meditate on this one truth, and that is that we were created for a purpose. Our lives here on Earth are absolutely enriched and surrounded by that purpose. And that's good to know, I think, because we live in a day and an age that's diffused with evolutionary principles, within scientific principles, and materialism and all that that teaches us that basically, life is meaningless. That there is no purpose to any of this. That some time in the primordial age of the earth, billions of years ago or something like that, some volcanic vent at the bottom of the ocean, enabled the temperature to be just right. And suddenly, the first living cell appeared, and we don't know what happened after that, but lots of increasingly complex organisms, evolved eventually and then along came the fish, and then the primates. And then, man evolved from that, and basically, our life is meaningless. And if that's true, then I think that the New Testament captures the proper response, if that's true, if life is meaningless, and there's no real purpose and that when we die our molecules are just kind of reabsorbed in the earth and kind of get recycled in some way, and that there really isn't anything such as spirit or soul. Then let us eat, and drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. That's the best way to live. But thanks be to God, it's not true, amen. Thanks be to God, we actually have a purpose that God created us for a very real and rich and full purpose. And that purpose, I think, can be summed up in one word and that word is worship. We were created to take in the truth of God, to know who he is, to scan the breadth and the depth and the height of all that he has achieved in history, to take it in to reason it over and to have our hearts moved by it, powerfully. And to give it back in worship. To just be kindled in our hearts, in our affections, and give God praise and glory and honor for who He is and what He has done. God created the universe for this purpose to display His glory. We can't say it enough. And so, we were created to receive that display and to take it in and to let it change us, so that we would be able to give it back in praise and worship. Therefore Heaven is a world filled with praise to God. It's just filled with it, it resounds with praise to the living God, they're just constantly giving up praise to God. But on earth, not so much. Not as it should be. And why is this? Well, our hearts, so designed for praise and glory and honor and worship made a dreadful exchange some time ago, and it's described in Romans 1:25, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator -- who is forever praised. Amen.” That is the central dreadful exchange of the human race. And that is why Jesus came to Earth, that we might be reclaimed from bondage to worship of material things, of created things, and give our true heart devotion where it really belongs to the triune God. And that we would spend eternity doing that, that we would delight in it, that it would make us happy to do so. Now, in today's passage Jesus enters Jerusalem to begin the climactic last week of his life. And as he enters the city, there's a huge throng of Jewish pilgrims that are going up for the Passover celebration. They're enthusiastically greeting him, they are lavishing some kind of praise on him, or worship in some sense. They welcome him and they shout his praises, but my friends, for the most part, it was merely idolatry, because they really didn't know who he was, and they really didn't know why he came, and the kingdom they thought he was bringing was not what he was really bringing. They were worshipping and serving rather an image of what kind of life they would have when Jesus brought in the kind of kingdom they thought he should bring in. And so this is probably one of the most ironic passages in the entire Bible. Because outwardly there's something very right about this huge throng of people worshipping and praising Jesus. It is very right and proper to do so. He is infinitely worthy of praise. He's entering the city of David, and he's being praised by his people. So, outwardly something very, very right, but inwardly there was something very, very wrong and therefore it's ironic. And so as we come to this passage, we come to be challenged in our own hearts, I think ultimately concerning our own worship for Jesus. And to have some idols stripped away from our hearts and to focus on who Jesus really was, and is. And what he has really come to do and give him, truly, praise and glory and honor for that. To me that's worth spending our time on, don't you think? And so let's look at the details of the triumphal entry. The Details of the Triumphal Entry The Triumphal Entry Described The triumphal entry is described in numerous places in the New Testament. The circumstances, as I've already mentioned is the passover, this is one of the three great Jewish festivals, and all Jewish men were commanded to leave their homes and come from all over Israel, up to the single place that God had chosen out of all their tribes. It would be Jerusalem, they would come up to Jerusalem. So there were huge crowds, multitudes flowing into the city. During a census taken about 10 years after the life of Jesus, the number of sacrificial lambs slaughtered at the Passover time, in Jerusalem was 260,000. A little over a quarter of a million lambs sacrificed. Now, according to Jewish custom, one lamb could be offered for up to ten people. So there might be as many as two million Jewish pilgrims going up to Jerusalem for the time of the Passover. Now you can imagine what that would have been like for the Roman authorities who are there to dominate the Jews, rule over them, keep the peace. And what could they do? They wanted to uphold the religion so the people would be happy and peaceful, and not cause the Romans any trouble. But three times a year, they had two million Jews to deal with all at once, and so it was a time of heightened alert and intensity and the Romans would be very, very careful concerning any kind of patriotism or any kind of movement or riot that would spark up among the people. And frankly, the Jewish leaders were maybe even more zealous that that kind of thing wouldn't take place. Now, in our account, Jesus is passing on the Mount of Olives, a little place called Bethpage. We don't know anything about it other than that it's near Bethany. And so Jesus, as you put the gospel accounts together, has just finished a time in Bethany, of refuge and refreshment. Bethany was the home of Martha and Mary, and Lazarus. And John's Gospel tells us that Jesus visited that home in Bethany, six days before the Passover. So this was probably then, a Sabbath day, a Saturday, that they visited, now, during that visit, as you remember Mary anointed Jesus with expensive perfume, spikenard, it was called, and the aroma filled the house with just a pungent sense and it was very expensive. And you remember that Judas and the other disciples, but primarily, Judas was very upset about the expenditure of this money. And it was at this moment that Judas decides that he's got to part company with Jesus. If they're gonna be lavishing a year's worth of wages on Jesus' feet and Jesus says it was proper to do this, she's preparing me for my burial, it's time Judas thinks to go on his way, because Judas didn't care about the poor, John's Gospel tells us. But he was a thief. As keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was in it. And so it's right at this time that he goes and makes arrangements with the Jewish authorities to betray Jesus into their hands and have him arrested. “But not during the feast,” they said, “Or there may be a riot among the people.” Now, just a short time before that, of course, Jesus had done his most spectacular miracle of all, and that was the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus had been dead for four days, and Jesus spoke those words, “Lazarus come forth,” and Lazarus came out of that tomb. And it was electrifying because it was so near to Jerusalem. A mighty miracle. And so this is the back drop. And so in Verse 1-3, we see Jesus initiating everything. “Jesus sent,” verse 1, “two disciples, saying to them, ;Go to the village ahead of you and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with a colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell them that the Lord needs them and he will send them right away.’” Now, with all of these events swirling around Jesus, how serenely Jesus orchestrates the events of the final week of his life on Earth. How peaceful he is. And you see this in all the accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It doesn't matter what's going on. His betrayal, His arrest, the events surrounding the Last Supper, all of these things, Jesus is at peace and knows exactly what He's doing and is initiating like a king everything that must happen. And this view of the calm, serene Jesus who's in charge of everything, who initiates everything, is so important to keep in our minds. John 10, “No one takes My life from Me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the authority to lay it down and to take it back up again.” And why is it so important, because enemies of our faith, say that Jesus was a good man, a religious leader who got caught up in events too big for him, beyond his understanding, politics and all these kinds of things. He wasn't that kind of a leader and so he was out of his depth, he was in over his head, and je just gets kind of sucked into this and somewhat like goes down the drain, beyond his power, he gets killed. And what can you do? Is that the Jesus of the gospels? 'cause I tell you it is not. Jesus, is sovereign, He's in control, He's in charge. And he is taking the initiative here. Notice also Jesus' astonishing foreknowledge, the detailed knowledge of what they're gonna find ahead of them in this little area. There's this village and there's gonna be a donkey, and the colt tied there, and if anyone should say anything to you, have this conversation. It's a bit eerie actually. And in Luke's gospel, when he goes, he sends some disciples ahead to prepare the upper room, it gets even more detailed. There's a man entering the city carrying a jug of water, when you see that man go up and tell him, ask him about the Upper Room. Jesus has an exhaustive detailed foreknowledge of the future, he knows exactly what's going to happen. We see also the issue of fulfilled prophecy. I think there were two overwhelming concerns in Jesus' life as he goes through. Concern number one was that at every moment, he should obey the commands of His father. That his food was to do the will of him who sent him and finish His work. He's always wanted to obey God, the laws of Moses, all of God's commands, that he would obey completely. Secondly, he's always concerned to fulfill prophecy, that the Scripture would be fulfilled, that say it must happen in this way. And so this prophecy from Zechariah is one of these great predictions. Look at Verse 4 and five. As Jesus sends the disciples in there to go. It says, “This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: ‘Say to the Daughter of Zion, “See your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’” Now, many of the prophecies that came true in Jesus' life really we would have to say at the human level were beyond his control, like when he's crucified, and there's a little jar of wine vinegar, at the foot of the cross, who put it there, and Jesus couldn't have orchestrated that there was no way he could have done it, so that was something beyond his control. This is a little different. I think Jesus actually could have orchestrated this fulfillment. He could have read in Zechariah and said, “Let's be sure that there's a donkey waiting for me, so I can ride it into the city in fulfillment of that.” Well, look at the disciples' obedience. In verse 6 and 7 it says, “The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them and Jesus sat on them.” So the disciples did everything Jesus had said. There were indeed two animals of donkey and a colt, Matthew tells us. Both animals are brought to Jesus, he chose the colt, the younger and stronger animal. No, he didn't ride two animals at once. I don't know how you could do that and how undignified would the attempt be. Jesus was always dignified, but rather both the animals were there, and he chose one of the two. It says they put their cloaks on them and Jesus sat on them, meaning the cloaks, not on the two animals. So you just have to be clear about that. And it's interesting because some hostile and unbelieving commentators will say that what Matthew is doing here is he failed to understand Hebrew parallelism in Zechariah's prophecy. There only ever was one animal, but in Hebrew repetition in poetry, they just... Matthew just made a mistake. And so then he writes into the history that there were two animals because he made a mistake. Oh, friends, don't you believe it. Who would you rather go with, a Jewish man, Matthew, who was an eyewitness to the events, who wrote down, filled with the Spirit, this account, or some liberal commentators who come years later, and tells us, “Oh, I know why he said this.” I'm gonna go with Matthew. He was there, friends, and there were two animals and Jesus rides on the colt, the foal of the donkey. Notice also the disciples obey even though they really had no idea what was going on. By the way, that's a good thing for us too. One of the central messages of this sermon is you're not always going to understand what God's doing to bring in His kingdom. And those unfulfilled expectations where you really don't know what's happening in the midst of that time please continue to obey the clear commands God's given you. So even if you don't know what he's doing, just do what he tells you and later it will be clear, it says in John 12:16, “At first His disciples did not understand all this, only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him.” Well, meanwhile, as this is happening, and Jesus is riding in, the crowd takes over. Look at verses 8-11, “A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ‘Hosanna in the highest!’"” Well, this huge crowd as I said, these would be Jewish pilgrims going in just in obedience to the law of Moses. But also there would have been a large number of Jesus's own disciples who were going in with him and surrounding him, and I think Jesus' disciples really kind of kicked this whole thing off. I think they were just so excited by what they thought was going to happen and by their expectations and thinking about Lazarus and thinking about all the miracles Jesus had done. Luke's gospel tells us that they were celebrating all the mighty signs and wonders that Jesus had done. I think it just served as kind of an igniting combustion of excitement with all of these pilgrims going in. And so they go ahead of Jesus and they're spreading their cloaks on the road, in front of Jesus' animal as he rides it. And it really is a show of... A display of humility. A display of submission, to take a cloak off your own shoulders and lay it on the dusty ground and have an animal ride across it, in effect, saying, what John the Baptist had said some years earlier concerning Jesus, “I'm not worthy to untie his shoes.” But again, I don't think they understood him, I don't think they understood who he was. It was just a show, it was a display of... They were saying, “He's our king. We're willing to follow his leadership.” And they were... And the palm branches that are cut down in particular symbols of celebration and of salvation and joy. I remember when I was raised in the Roman Catholic church, Palm Sunday was probably one of my favorite Sundays. We got to hold these palm branches and walk around in procession around the church and parents all took pictures, and this kind of special day, it was a happy day, it was a day of celebration. And so it was for these people as well, they were celebrating. It was a time of happiness because of what they expected that Jesus was going to do. And look at their words of praise, “‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ‘Hosanna in the highest!’” Luke gives us this, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” They're very clear what's going on. Jesus is King, and he's coming to take his throne, at last, we'll have a Jewish king again. Peace in Heaven, they say, and glory in the highest. Now, the cry Hosanna literally means, “Oh, save” or “Save now.” But this urgent cry that they're crying, the whole crowd around Jesus crying, is not for this kind of salvation they really needed. It was for a different kind of salvation. They yearned, like all patriotic Jews, to have the yoke of Gentile authority finally thrown off their shoulders. From the time of Jeremiah on, when Nebuchadnezzar came in, and conquered Babylon, or conquered Jerusalem, the king of Babylon, from that time forward, Jerusalem was under the heel of Gentile rulers, and they thought, “Today's the day when at last, we can throw off the Roman yoke of oppression.” They did not realize that there was a far more bitter yoke of oppression on them, the yoke of sin, the bondage to sin, the judgment under the holy sight and gaze of God. The threat of Hell. This is what they needed deliverance from, but they're crying out, “Oh save.” And by saying “Hosanna in the highest,” they're really crying out to Almighty God saying, “Oh God, in conjunction with this messenger of yours, do something great, come down like Psalm 18 with fire in your eyes and smoke coming out of your nostrils and whoop up on those Romans at last.” That's what they were saying, that's what they were thinking. “Oh, save. Hosanna, in the highest.” And they said, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” quoting another Messianic psalm, Psalm 118, and they're saying, “This is the Messiah. Blessed is the Messiah, the king, who comes in the name of the Lord.” We'll come back to that statement in a moment. Well, the city reacts, Jerusalem reacts. Jerusalem was kind of combustible anyway, all the time, with the zealots, and the Jewish patriotism and all that. But this was especially combustible at this particular time. And so the city reacts in Verse 10-11, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked “Who is this?” And the crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth, in Galilee.” Now, you can imagine just the human side. A quarter-of-a-million, a million people, I have no idea how many would have been even aware, but just huge numbers, but that most of them probably couldn't see Jesus, or even know what it was about. Now, think about it in Acts 19 with that terrible riot in Ephesus, and it says right in the text most of them didn't even know why they were there. They were just saying, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” and then, “Why are we here?” “I don't know, something happened.” “Well, what happened?” Well, so it was, I think at this time I don't think they really knew what was going on, and then maybe they were just focused on that person, “Who is that?” They don't know who he is. And look at the answer. The answer is mild at best. “This is Jesus, the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee.” Well, all of it's true, it's just inadequate. It was Jesus. He was a prophet, my friends, he was the greatest prophet that ever lived. He's in some sense, the final prophet, the one to whom all prophets and apostles point. And yes, he was from Nazareth and Galilee. But if that's all the credentials you can give Him, you've really missed the point. He is the eternal God in human flesh, that's who he is. And so they did not understand who he really was. Opposition to Jesus Well, around this time there's opposition to Jesus, it's not right in the 11 verses that we read, but in all the accounts there is, and we'll get to it later in Matthew. So I bring it up. The Jewish leaders are deeply alarmed at this display, they're terrified of Roman intervention that would cause them to lose their place and their nation. Afraid of it. Specifically, their own cushy lifestyles, their own pleasure-seeking lifestyles, they're afraid of losing all that. They had indeed been planning on killing Jesus, but this was not in their minds at this particular moment, frankly, this was not their timetable. And so, they rebuked Jesus for the crowds actions, in Luke 19, it says, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” And you remember what Jesus said, he said, “If these remain quiet, I tell you, even the stones will cry out.” Later in Matthew 21, just look down a few verses lower, “When the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, ‘Hosanna, to the Son of David,’ they were indignant. ‘Do you hear what these children are saying?’ they asked him. ‘Yes,’ replied Jesus. ‘Have you never read, “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise?”’” The Significance of the Triumphal Entry And so Jesus defends the praise. Well, that's the account. That's what happens, but what is the significance? Remember how it says in John 12, “His disciples did not understand all these things at the time, only later on reflection, did all the symbolism come through to them.” Well, now we have the time to reflect: What is the significance of these things? Well, I wanna point out four things. Jesus Forces the Issue Number one, notice how Jesus forces the issue. I think he intentionally fulfills this prophecy by choosing this manner of entering Jerusalem. This was directly in his control, he did it on purpose, to inflame the city. And why? Well, he did it because the timetable of the Jewish leaders was the wrong one. Jesus ceases control at this particular moment because he must fulfill prophecy, more on that in a moment. But Jesus is being extremely provocative here to the Romans and to the Jewish leaders, and he is pushing the timetable so that they will actually kill him before they're ready to do it. Notice that Jesus does not react to his enemies, they must react to him. And how appropriate is that because he is the king, he sets the agenda, he sets the pace and the timetable, he's in charge and we're not, he knows exactly what he's doing and he's going to do it in his own manner. Jesus Fulfills Prophecy Secondly, as we've just touched on, Jesus fulfills prophecy. He fulfills prophecy in a number of ways, but let's focus on the manner of his entry. Zechariah 9:9, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” So we see the symbolism of Jesus riding on the donkey. This was a messianic act, he was fulfilling this prophecy. There is a deeper issue and that's the rest of this prophecy. I'll come back to that in a moment, 'cause the prophecy said more than just that he'd ride on a donkey. The second aspect of the fulfillment is the timing of his death. It was the time of the Passover. And I tell you that every one of the animal sacrifices, all of the animal sacrificial system, all of it were prophecies pointing ahead to the cross. All of them taught the lessons we needed to know for our salvation. All sin deserves the death penalty, the death penalty can be paid by a substitute. The substitute cannot be an animal. We're waiting for the Christ to come. John the Baptist points at him and says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” And so Jesus must fulfill the animal sacrificial system, but especially the passover sacrifice, perhaps the clearest of all in terms of the substitutionary aspect in which the angel of death was going to pass over the Jewish homes and he would see the blood painted on the doorposts and the lintels and he would seeing the blood, passover and not kill the firstborn, substitutionary atonement definitely pictured in that. And so Jesus must die, as the passover lamb, he must die at Passover.And so He ceases control, and pushes the timetable so that he can fulfill that prophecy. Jesus Accepts Worship Thirdly, notice that Jesus accepts worship. The significance of this is that Jesus accepts worship because that's what he came to get, he came to fix our worship problem, he came to heal us from our sinful idolatry and wickedness. Jesus said, “If these disciples, if all of them remain silent, I'll raise up rocks and stones to do the praising.” Friends hasn't he done that anyway, in our salvation? Didn't he take out the heart of stone and give us the heart of flesh? Wasn't that us? Ignorant of God, not thinking about him, blind hardened in our transgressions, not seeing any good reason to praise him, and so he's raising up from these stones praise to the living God. Jesus Exposes Israel’s Unbelief And so Jesus defends the praise. And fourthly Jesus exposes Israel's unbelief, he exposes their rejection and rebellion. Now, as we've talked about, and you've heard many, many times before, I think I'd been a Christian for three months when I heard the first time that the Jews were expecting a different kind of kingdom than Jesus came to, we know about that. But it's true. What I wanna say to you is they had good reason to expect it. There were actually numbers of prophecies that predicted that the son of David would rule on a throne that would go to the ends of the earth and that his dominion would extend, his scepter would extend to the distant islands and that all of His enemies would be made a foot stool for his feet. It said all of that. Listen to Zechariah 9:8, which is the verse before Zechariah 9:9. Listen to this, “I will defend my house against marauding forces. Never again will an oppressor overrun my people for now, I am keeping watch.” Behold your King comes to you gentle and riding on a donkey. They emphasize verse 8, they're saying, “Alright, marauding forces, those are the Gentiles, we all know that.” He's gonna throw off the marauding forces, for now, he is watching over His people. The verse after, Zechariah 9:10, “I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war horses from Jerusalem and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations, His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.” Now, the reason that the crowds were cheering so much, the reason that they were so excited about Jesus coming was they expected that this kind of a kingdom would be brought in. And I say to you that their expectations were idolatrous. They were woven up with their own visions of peace and prosperity and comfort and pleasure, and they thought Jesus would do it for them. And they considered that his miracle working power was enough to defeat the Romans, and it really would have been, even just as a prince of peace. Look at Lazarus, for example. Lazarus is raised from the dead after four days. Imagine you're fighting the Jewish zealots and their army, you're a Roman soldier, and you kill a man, you run him through with a sword and he drops down to the ground, some Jews run and get him and bring him to Jesus, and up he pops again. And you've got to fight the same man again and again. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that Jesus could throw off the Romans, or about this, Jesus spoke to the winds and the waves, and they obeyed him. You know just a little hail storm, a little thunder and lightning, and the Romans are done. Well, could Jesus have done that? Absolutely. Will he do something like that? Absolutely, read about it in Revelation 19. We'll get to that in a moment. Was he gonna do that now? Absolutely not. Because they did not understand the real threat. They didn't understand the real tyranny. Jesus said it very plainly in Matthew 10:28, “Do not fear those who kill the body and after that can do nothing to you. I'll tell you the one to fear. Fear the one who after the death of the body has power to destroy both soul and body in hell. Yes, I'd tell you, fear him.” The real threat, if you can understand this, I speak with great reverence, the real threat was God. The real threat was the judgment of God. It was the wrath of God for them, against their sins, that was the threat he came to save them from. So it was right for them to say, “Hosanna, Hosanna. Save us now.” He was doing that, he was saving them from that which threatened them ultimately. If Jesus had brought in that kind of a kingdom, they would not have been able to receive it, they would have glutted themselves, they would have increased their idolatry and their wickedness, they were not ready for that kind of a kingdom. And so their hearts had to be changed, the heart of stone had to be taken out, and the heart of flesh given in. So Jesus was going there to bring in a different kind of kingdom and work a different kind of salvation. He was going to shed his blood on the cross, as a substitute for us, that any who looks to Him and believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. He came to give us that kind of work, that kind of salvation. But Jesus entered the city to expose their unbelief, and they rejected him, they did not embrace him, he started to act strangely. He goes in and cleanses the temple, he says seven woes over the Jewish leaders, He preaches fire and brimstone and the destruction and not one stone left on another, and they're just utterly bewildered, they have no idea and, even worse, he gets arrested, he doesn't fight it and then goes and suffers and dies. It's absolutely not what they expected. Now, I don't know for a fact that there was any single individual that said, “Hosanna,” on one day and then five days later, said, “Crucify” the next, but it wouldn't surprise me. How fickle are human hearts. And it really doesn't matter to me whether there was any single individual that did both. The Jewish nation was represented at both places. The expectation of the Jewish nation when he rode into Jerusalem, and then the fact that they so bitterly ignored him when he was dying for the sins of the world. There's just his mother and a couple of other women and John, and then the Romans, and those that passed by hurled an insult and kept going on their way, the greatest work in the history of the world, and they ignored it because they hated Jesus for what he had done, they felt betrayed. The Greatness of Christ Revealed And so what do we see in this? Well we see the greatness of Jesus revealed, we see His omniscience, that he knew all things, all details. We see His sovereignty and His power displayed in His control over major and minor events. And we see, especially his humility and his gentleness and his meekness. These are the very attributes that the Zechariah prophecy focuses on. He's meek and lowly, maybe even physically low. I don't know how high a donkey is but I'm thinking you could have looked Jesus in the face while he was riding on the donkey. I'd picture that anyway. And you know, great conquerors, they ride on mighty steeds. Like Alexander the Great rode on Bucephalus, Ox Head, he had such a big head that they called them Ox Head. What a mighty horse he was. Or El Cid, the 11th century conqueror of the Moors at Valencia. He rode an Andalusian charger into battle. Or Napoleon at Waterloo, in 1815, rode a charger, a white stallion named Marengo. Imagine Napoleon riding into Waterloo on a donkey. Hard to command from a donkey. And so Jesus is riding humble and lowly and meek, saying, “I'm not going to do what you think I'm going to do. It's not what I'm here for. I'm here for meekness and lowliness, and for peace.” Jesus the Prince of Peace would come in and would humble himself. Now, I say to you the second coming will be vastly different. I won't go into any great detail, but just listen to this from Revelation 19:11 and following, “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse whose rider is called faithful and true. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire and on his head are many crowns, and he has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God and out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he destroys the anti-Christ and all of the anti-Christ forces that have arrayed themselves against God and his people, he comes back and destroys them, slaying them with the sword coming out of his mouth. It's coming. It just wasn't coming in the first coming. It's definitely part of what was prophesied in the Jewish prophets, it just wasn't time yet. Rather, Jesus in his first coming, opened up for something called the day of salvation and in gentleness and humility stands there and says this, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you'll find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” How many times, oh Christian, have you thought about the gentleness and tenderness of Christ? When you'd been in a sinful state, and needed to come back to Jesus and his gentleness wooed you back into grace? Oh, how sweet is this day of salvation. And to you who are not believers yet, let the gentleness of Jesus invite you to the foot of the cross and look up and see him gentle and humble taking your sins on himself, and shedding his blood for you that you might not stand under the wrath of God finally. That's the gentleness of Jesus, that's what he came to do, that's the salvation He came to work. The Praise of Men Exposed We've seen the praise of men exposed positively, human praise is appropriate, some of the disciples I think we're praising them rightly but not fully, just like us. Negatively, we see human praise as a weak, frothy vain thing that pops like a bubble when disappointments and false expectations get popped. And so we see some of that sadly in our lives as well. The Future Prefigured And we see the future prefigured in this, immediate future is the death of Jesus because he's whipping this crowd into a frenzy, and the authorities are not gonna let it stand. The long range future for Israel was suffering. That's why in the other accounts, in Luke, that Jesus wept at this time, what a strange thing, they're all celebrating and Jesus is defending the praise, the rocks are gonna cry out and, meanwhile, he's weeping over Jerusalem. And in Luke 19, it says, “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace -- but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you, and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They'll not leave one stone on another because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.” The clear implication is 'cause they did not understand who he was, because he was Jesus, the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee rather than God the Son, because they did not recognize the time of God's coming to them that they would be destroyed by the Romans. Crushed by the Romans as a judgment for their sin. Now, it's no use to us, to speculate what would have happened if the nation had received Jesus at that point. Just like there's no point in speculating what would have happened if Adam hadn't eaten the fruit. It was part of God's sovereign plan that both of those things happen: That Adam eat the fruit and sin and death enter the world, and that Jesus come to His own and His own received Him not. The Final Stage of History: Conversion for Israel And there is even now, a spirit of stupor, and hardening over the Jewish nation though they exist in our midst and we have Jewish friends and co-workers, and neighbors, but their minds are covered with a veil and they can't see the light or the glory of God in the face of Christ and until that veil is removed, they're not going to see it. But the good news is, in the future, at a future time, in a mystery, God, the Sovereign God is going to remove that veil from the nation's eyes and they'll see it at once and they will be converted and they will cry, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” But they'll do it from their hearts and they'll understand who he is. And it says in another verse in Zechariah, Zechariah 12:10, “I will pour out on the house of David, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. And they will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for me as one mourns for an only son, and salvation will come that day to Israel.” So yes, future destruction for Israel from that point on. But I say from this point on, future salvation, as it says in Romans 11, “All Israel will be saved through faith in Christ.” Our Heavenly Future: The New Jerusalem, and Heavenly Worship One final future prefigured and that's us standing around the throne. We've quoted this verse many times before, but it says in Revelation 7, “Then I saw a great multitude from every tribe and language and people and nation, standing before the throne in front of the lamb.” And it says, “And they're holding in their hands palm branches.” So I guess I get to do that again. I get to walk around the throne again, and hold the palm branch, again, and I'll be dressed in a white robe and so will you, if you have faith in Jesus. If you trust in him, he's gonna cleanse you of all your sin, and you get to celebrate forever, the entry of Jesus, not into the old Jerusalem, but into the new Jerusalem, the perfect Holy City where we will dwell with him forever and ever and see his face. Application Alright, well, what application can we take from this? I had a bunch, I just wanna do two. The first I wanna speak to you about is unmet expectations. Is there a person here that has not been disappointed by God, at least one time in your life? And you ought not to be, but it's happened, it happens again and again. You had some expectation that God would do something in your life, and he didn't do it. I'm speaking now even to non-Christians, I can't tell you the number of times I've witnessed, and people tell me, “Well when I was a child, my grandmother was sick, and I prayed for her and she died, and from that point on, my heart's been hard toward God.” They don't use that language, but that's about what they say. Because this bad thing happened to them when they were young or something happened in a church or whatever from that point on, their heart was hard toward God. Unmet expectations, you know? They had hopes, “Hosanna, Hosanna,” they're thinking that this time has come and God's gonna do this thing for me, and when he doesn't do exactly what they expect, then it's “Crucify, Crucify” a week later. All of us are like that. Even we Christians struggle with that don't we? Expecting God to do something in your life. You're struggling with sin. Somebody even told me this recently, “I prayed and prayed that this sin would be taken from me and it hasn't, now I'm just starting to get hard toward God, I think he ought to do such and such with my sin.” God doesn't work that way. He expects you by the Spirit to put to death the misdeeds of the body, he wants you to fight, he gives you the strength if you ask him. But unmet expectations. Let me say a tender word to mothers. I think this is maybe where you live. Especially as you go on and your children get older and things aren't quite what you expected, and it can be disappointing, and you look at how it turned out, and it's not what you thought when you were a young mother, when you were a young bride, and it's not going exactly how you hoped and all I wanna say to you is don't turn at that point and think that God has in some way done you a disservice, rather say God called you to this ministry, you sowed in tears, you're gonna reap in joy. Don't let unmet expectations cut off your ministry as a mother. Well let me speak to men who are in their midlife crisis. Unmet expectations, you hoped your life would be different. You look at it and it's not quite what you hoped for. Don't think that God has done you any great disservice. You wanna know the one thing, you need to get out of this world, faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. If you have that you have the victory that has overcome the world. Center your life then around that victory and you will be satisfied, it will be a good life. But we all have those unmet expectations. Tragedy, you expected God to heal somebody, and he didn't, trust in God, at those times. And secondly, worship in spirit and truth. That's where we began, it's where we're going to end. The reason the Jews did not worship Him properly is they didn't understand who he was. So I say worship in spirit and in truth. The better you understand the truth of who Jesus is, his person, he is the Son of God, he is flawless, he is perfect, he is omniscient, omnipotent. Focus on that and worship him in spirit and truth. Look at his work with new eyes, he came to die, he came to rise again, he came to bring a kingdom with the second coming that will be beyond our wildest dreams. Focus on his work, focus on his future when you get to see him around that throne and worship him in spirit and in truth. Don't let your misunderstandings make your worship idolatrous, but rather, fill your minds with scripture, so that you can worship him, rightly. Let's close in prayer.

I. A Tale of Two Conquerors: Alexander and Christ Remarkable things from the book of Daniel, we've seen the sovereignty of God, we've seen his knowledge of the end from the beginning, the meticulous and careful way in which he's laid that out in the book of Daniel. And we come now to Daniel 8 and one of the most remarkable prophecies in the book in terms of how it lines up with popular secular knowledge of history. We come to an account of Alexander the Great. In the year 323 BC, the life of a 33-year-old man, the most successful, the most powerful, the most talented, the most visionary leader of the world had ever seen, and some people think has ever seen ended in a bout of drunkenness, in the city of Babylon. The very same place where Belshazzar's life, 200 years before, had ended in a fit of drunkenness. Alexander the Great, died because he drank too much. Move ahead three centuries or more. 30 AD, city of Jerusalem, the life of a 33-year-old man ends on a cross and whereas Alexander's death ended his reign over his earthly kingdom, Jesus death on the cross began his reign and the advance of a kingdom, which will never end. Today as we look in Daniel 8, we look at a tale of two conquerors, and one anti-Christ. We look at the tale of Alexander the Great and his successor after 200 or so years, Antiochus, an anti-Christ figure and then we look at Jesus Christ, the greatest conqueror the world has ever seen, and we're going to compare their methods and their achievements, and we're going to see the eternal kingdom of God again. The thing that's remarkable about Daniel Chapter 8 is how specific it is about the coming of a man that most people know. And I'm going to give you today a tool right in your hands that you can take into your work places and with other people in this truth questioning age that we live in and say, there is a supernatural evidence of the truth of the Bible right here in Daniel 8. Have you ever heard of Alexander the Great, well, 200 years before he was born, his kingdom and his death and the division of his kingdom was all laid out in prophetic perspective by the Prophet Daniel. Remarkable thing that I came across in my research for this sermon, about the year 330 Alexander the Great had not yet completed his conquest of the Persian empire. He was in the middle of it. He was seeking to conquer Gaza and he took a side tour up to the city of Jerusalem. The account of this is in Josephus, a first century historian, Jewish historian and he went to Jerusalem and there the high priest came out and met him in their robes, and he was so impressed with their appearance because he had had a vision. Alexander had had a vision, a dream (so the account goes) before he had ever left Macedonia, that he would come to a city in which people dressed in certain robes would come out and show him a prophecy. He had a dream, and that had encouraged him and exhorted him to begin his conquest of Asia. And now these men were coming out in these robes and it was the Jewish priest and the high priest in particular. And he brought out a copy of the Book of Daniel and he showed Alexander in Chapter 8, what we're going to study today, what was written in there about him. Alexander believed these kind of oracles. He was always going to this or that or the other oracle for predictions or prophecies about him. But here is one that have been written 200 years before he had been born and according to that prophecy he would conquer the Persian empire. I think that the high priest stopped reading too soon because it also gave a clear warning of his death at the height of his power and perhaps the high priest should have taken a moment to warn him, to make himself right with the God of heaven before he died. All of us today are facing our own mortality, and no matter how much we achieve in this world, no matter how great we are as Alexander was great in the world side, we need a savior, and we need to enter the kingdom, that we've been learning about in the Book of Daniel, namely the kingdom of Jesus Christ. God’s Purposes: Vision & Interpretation Now as we come to Daniel 8, you have to wonder why did God spell out something like this? Why is this important to God? I think, first of all, that we understand God knows the end from the beginning. He knows the future in detail and He delights to reveal some of it to us. Now, we don't know it all but we know enough to see that God holds the future in his hand. And secondly, why does he reveal it in this way? If you look and read through Daniel 8, you'll see the confusion in Daniel's mind. Daniel, one of the wisest man that ever lived. He could not understand it unless God sent Gabriel or some way to explain it and so it is also with the wisdom that comes from God. God knows all things. We know nothing unless God is pleased to reveal it to us. And so we come to Daniel 8 and what I like to do is take it in parts so that we don't get overwhelmed by what's in here. Let's look at verses 1-8 and see the vision described and then we'll interpret it. Beginning at verse 1. "In the third year of King Belshazzar's reign, I, Daniel, had a vision after the one that had already appeared to me and in my vision I saw myself in the citadel of Susa, in the province of Elam. In the vision, I was beside the Ulai canal. I looked up and there before me was a ram with two horns, standing beside the canal and the horns were long, one of the horns was longer than the other, but grew up later. I watched the ram as he charged toward the west, and the north, and the south. No animal could stand against him, and none could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great. As I was thinking about this, suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between his eyes came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. He came to towards the two horned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and charged at him in great rage. I saw him attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering his two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against him. The goat knocked him to the ground and trampled on him, and none could rescue the ram from his power. The goat became very great, but at the height of his power, his large horn, was broken off and in its place, four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven." II. The Vision Described and Interpreted Context: Time, Place, Circumstances (vs. 1-2) The context, the time, place and circumstances of Daniel's vision are given in verse 1-2, it's the third year of Belshazzar's reign. Remember, Belshazzar is the one that had had the writing on the wall. The one I described to you earlier, the one who was the final ruler of the Babylonian Empire. The one who drank a toast to the gods of wood and iron and stone from the vessels taken from the temple of the Lord, this Belshazzar. The time was probably 553 BC, about 200 years before Alexander the Great and he said that this vision came after the previous vision. Well, what vision was that? It's the vision, we just discussed over the last two weeks in Daniel chapter 7, the vision of the four beast that came up out of the disturbed and turbulent sea. And we saw that these were four great world empires; the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire and then the Roman Empire. We also saw the vision of one like a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven to bring in a kingdom that will never end. And we saw that this was Jesus Christ, the Son of Man whose kingdom will never end. The place of the vision is given as the citadel of Susa. Now, this is visionary language, and so we're really not sure if he was physically in Susa or just traveled there in the Spirit as Ezekiel from time to time, would travel in the Spirit or as the Apostle John would travel in the Spirit to see visions, of heaven, but he may have been physically there because he was a high-ranking official in the Babylonian Empire, and Susa was an important city. It was the capital of the Elamites, the ancient capital of the Elamites about 250 miles east of Babylon. It would later become the capital of the Persian empire, it was the home of Nehemiah, for example, and of Queen Esther wife of King Xerxes. And as he was standing there, he was by the Ulai canal. It says this was a wide artificial canal connecting the Choaspes and the Coprates river. This is a physical place and that's where he was in his vision, so in the vision he's kind of tied to an actual city and a little detail of the city, a small canal and that's where he has his vision and what does he see in the vision? The Ram with Two Horns (vs. 3-4, 20) Well, he sees a ram with two horns. In verse 3 and 4, "I looked up, and there before me was a ram with two horns standing beside the canal and the horns were long, and one of the horns was longer than the other, but grew up later." Well, this must be the Medo-Persian Empire, and we know it because it says so down in verse 20, look down at verse 20, the two horned ram that you saw represents the kings of Media and Persia. The shaggy goat is the king of Greece, and the large horn between his eyes is the first king. The four horns that replaced the one that was broken off represent four kingdoms that will emerge from his nation, but will not have the same power. So we get Gabriel, the angel coming and telling us literally what this means. So we don't have any doubt at all. This is the Medo-Persian empire. And one horn is longer than the other because the Persian power was greater than that of the Medes, very specific, and then suddenly the conquests, are described in verse 4, of the Medo-Persians, "I watched the ram as he charged toward the west and the north and the south, no animal could stand against him, and none could rescue from his power, he did as he pleased," it says, "And became great." So the Medo-Persian empire was the greatest empire that the world had seen, up to that time. It spread from northern Ethiopia, all the way to the Black Sea. It spread from the Asian or the Aegean Sea near Greece, all the way as far as the Indus River almost to India and China. It was an incredible empire, it traveled westward, northward, southward and it was totally dominant. Nobody could stand against its power. It says of the kings of Medo-Persia that they did as they pleased, or he, the goat, did as he pleased and became great. This is the ultimate desire, isn't it of human beings in vaunting themselves against God. We want to do as we please and we want to become great. We want to be worshipped like gods. That was the original temptation in the Garden of Eden. And so we see its fulfillment in these human empires, these tyrannical reigns, these kings who want to do as they please and conquer and dominate; the essence of human rebellion, against God. The Goat with One Horn (vs. 5-8, 21-22) Well, as he's watching all of a sudden comes this goat. Now, you think in a contest between a goat and a ram, the goat has no chance. The ram is bigger, it's more imposing, it's more powerful and it's got these strong horns. And along comes this goat with just one horn. Look at it again in verses 5-8. "As I was thinking about this, suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between his eyes came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. He came toward the two horned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and charged at him in great rage. I saw him attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering his two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against him. The goat knocked him to the ground and trampled on him, and none could rescue the ram from his power. So Daniel is pondering this ram with the two horns, he's intensely interested, the Hebrew is very strong, he was very interested in this vision of the ram, he's mystified by it and not sure what it is. And then all of a sudden comes this goat and it's moving fast. I mean, it's flying, it's almost like a missile, it's a goat missile. Can you imagine a goat missile? And it's coming fast from the west. Versus 5 and also 21 describes him with a single prominent horn coming up from between its eyes and the origin of the goat, it says it's from the west. Well, it just so happens that Macedonia is from the west, it's coming from Greece. The Persians were never able to settle the Greeks down, there was an ongoing struggle between the two, and they never quieted them down and there was a great deal of bad blood between the Greeks and the Persians, a lot of history there. And so from the west came this goat and it's moving fast, it says it's crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. Remember in Chapter 7, what represented the Greek Empire. It was a leopard with four wings, speed, agility, that was the picture. It moved fast and it conquered fast. There's an enraged charge of the goat in verse 6-7, and a complete conquest by the goat in verse 7, and then at the height of his power, that prominent horn is cut off and the kingdom is divided into four, four equal parts, a four-fold division of the kingdom. This is the vision. III. Detailed Fulfillment #1: Alexander the Great Now, what is the fulfillment? Well, you don't read the fulfillment in scripture, you have to go to secular history, classical history to understand what happened and there is no shortage of accounts of the life of Alexander the Great. You see, Alexander was intensely interested in his legacy. He was intensely interested in history. He knew who he was or at least who he thought he was. And so it came about, his father Philip II of Macedonia had organized a coalition of Macedonian troops and they began to conquer Greece. His first conquest was over a small mining town, right near his area. This is Phillip now, his father, changed the name of that town to Philippi and we have the book Philippians from Alexander the Great's Father Philip, that was the first conquest, but at the height of his power, he was assassinated and his young son, Alexander, a mere 19 years old, took over Greece at that point. So in effect he was the first king of a united Greece because the conquest wasn't completed yet and Alexander took over. Rise to Power Now, Alexander had been born July or August perhaps 356 BC. After Alexander's life, there are lots of myths that grew up about him, about supernatural birth and other things like that but he was just a man, human being, his father was obviously wealthy and powerful and had him tutored with the best tutor available who happened to be Aristotle. So Aristotle tutored Alexander. Aristotle, one of the most famous philosophers of ancient Greece, and he tutored him in the ways of Greek culture and he became, in effect, a disciple or an apostle of Greek culture and everywhere Alexander went, he spread the Greek language and Greek culture. He had a vision of the supremacy of Hellenism of Greece and he got that from Aristotle. When he was eight years old, his father bought him a mighty war horse, a charger, a steed named Bucephalus. Nobody could even get near the horse. It was a very proud and powerful horse. Alexander was just eight years old, and he watched for a while, and he said, "Father, I'd like to try to ride him," and his father just stared at him and he said, "You're going to get hurt." He said, "I want to do it." And so, he got down there and he took the horse and turned it toward the sun and it kind of blinded it, right in the sun, and then while it was blinded and somewhat confused, he jumped up, he jumped up on his back and he conquered that horse just like that. Bucephalus rode with him everywhere he went. He became his horse and as he conquered, he went everywhere he went and his father Phillip said to him after that you'll have to find another kingdom. Macedonia, won't be big enough for you. So from the very start of his life, he was kind of groomed with visions of grandeur and conquest. Vengeance on the Persians The time came for him to invade Asia. I don't know if it was because of that vision I had mentioned earlier, where he had a dream of somebody saying, "You will conquer," but off he went. His armies crossed the Dardanelles, and they spread over into Asia Minor. Alexander the Great, went to Troy, ancient Troy, the enemy of the Greeks and he went there and he took the shield of Achilles that ancient Greek hero and he carried that with him everywhere he went, he had delusions of grandeur, always thinking of himself in this way and everywhere he went, he wanted eternal glory. That's what his biographer said, he was seeking eternal glory. In lightning fashion, he went down, he conquered down the coast down into Egypt, went back up and defeated Darius the King of the Persians in two key battles; Issus and Gaugamela, two battles. And within three years, the whole world lay at his feet. Three years. Lightning conquest. Lightning Warfare, Lightning Conquest He continued to march for another 10 years, went all the way to the Indus River. His army marched with him for 20,000 miles in 10 years. Think about that 20,000 miles in 10 years. Average of 2,000 miles a year, that's a full army marching with all their equipment, incredible speed. And everywhere he went, he had victories. He never lost a battle, never a single battle. Finally, his men said, "Enough is enough. What we're going to go on into the Himalayas? We're going to go, going to continue going east?" They wanted to stop, they wanted to go home, enough was enough, and he sat down and wept because there was no where else for him to conquer. Incredible speed of assault, three years Persia destroyed, 10 years the known world, conquered. Some days he pushed his army to march 36 miles in a single day. Zeus-Ammon: the Symbol of the Horn While he was in Egypt, he was crowned Zeus Amun, the son of Zeus. On the cover of your bulletin, there's a coin there, a picture of Alexander the Great and coming out of the side of his head is a horn. This is an ancient coin from Alexandria, Egypt, the city that he established. It's still the finest port in Egypt. It's named after himself. And by the way, everywhere he went he planted cities which he named Alexandria. There are 30 Alexandrias that he started but Alexandria Egypt is the most famous of them all and there he was crowned Zeus Amun and he was declared to be a God, the son of Zeus. Do you see the horn coming out? It looks a little bit like the hair. You have to look at it a while but you see it curving around, it represents his power. It's remarkably like the vision that Daniel had had 200 years before hand. World Domination And so, he conquered from Yugoslavia to the Himalayas, 3200 miles about the distance from LA to New York and he organized an efficient Empire, and he had future dreams to build a thousand warships and conquer North Africa beyond Italy, all the way to Gibraltar; to build a road supply along Southern Mediterranean coast for all of his ships. He had a vision of a harmony of all of Asia and Europe, an intermingling of all peoples and languages and tribes. He wrote about this often. A vision of one world and one culture under the Greeks, and he would be its eternal king because he believed himself to be a God. And then he came to Babylon. Came to Babylon. No where else for him to conquer just to organize his empire that would be the seat of his power. Self-Destruction Verse 8, "The goat became very great, but at the height of his power, his large horn was broken off." Well, this is how it happened. They were having a feast and somebody brought to him. So it goes, the story goes, the Hercules bowl, a huge bowl and no one had ever been able to drink a whole Hercules bowl of wine, and so he was challenged and he never backed down from a challenge, that's what his pride was, his ego and so he drank it to the bottom in order it to be filled again and always filled the second time, and he drank it to the bottom and died several days later from alcohol poisoning. He conquered the world, but he couldn't concur himself. Kingdom divided The height of his power is cut off now, he left no heir and so his foremost powerful generals divided the kingdom among themselves. Cassander ruled in Macedonia and Greece. Ptolemy in Egypt, Selecus in Babylonia and Lysimachus in Thrace in Asia Minor. This is a clear fulfillment of prophecy maybe the clearest detail of this entire vision, the fact that his kingdom was divided into four parts, the goat became very great verse 8, but at the height of his power, his large horn was broken off and in its place, four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven. Verse 22, The four horns that replaced the one that broken off represent four kingdoms that will emerge from his nation but will not have the same power, clear fulfillment of prophecy. Impact Now, what is the significance of Alexander the Great to us as Christians? Well, he's unified the world under Hellenism and therefore all of you who have studied the Bible know that the New Testament is written in what language? In Greek and why is that? Because Alexander conquered Palestine. And so many Jews were Greek speakers and the New Testament was written in Greek. Above Jesus' head when He was crucified, there was written, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews, in what languages? In latin because that was the power language of the time. In Hebrew, Aramaic because that was a religious language, and then in Greek, because that was the language of commerce and culture, and why because of Alexander the Great. But he did not leave an empire that endured for ever rather he died and his empire was divided and was never that powerful again. IV. The Vision Extended: The “Little Horn” (vs. 9-12, 23-26) The Description and Rise of the “Little Horn” (vs. 9-12, 23-36) Now, in verses 9-12, we have another vision, a vision of a little horn. "Out of one of those four horns the four kingdom that was divided, came another horn, which started small, but grew in power to the south and the east, and toward the beautiful land. It grew until it reached the host of the heavens and it threw down some of the starry host to the earth and trampled on them. It set itself up to be as great as the prince of the host. It took away the daily sacrifice from him and the place of his sanctuary was brought low, because of rebellion the host of the saints from the daily sacrifice were given over to it. It prospered in everything it did and truth was thrown to the ground." This rise of the little horn parallels that we've already seen in Daniel 7, the description and rise of the little horn also seen in verses 23-26. In the latter part of the rein, it says in verse 23, "when rebels have become completely wicked, a stern faced king, a master of intrigue will arise. He will become very strong but not by his own power. He will cause astounding devastation and will succeed in whatever he does. He will destroy the mighty men and the holy people. He will cause deceit to prosper and he will consider himself superior. When they feel secure, he will destroy many and take his stand against the prince of princes. Yet, he will be destroyed but not by human power. The War on the Saints and the Desecration of the Temple So there is a horn to grow up, out of this, one of these four Greek sub-empires, this little horn and who is this little horn? Well, it is Antiochus IV called The Ephiphanes. He lived in the 2nd century BC, he was not a mighty conqueror. Rather, he was a usurper, a master politician. He had the ability to work intrigue and to gain positions of power, and influence for himself. In the year 175 BC, he secured the high priesthood from the Jews and he pressured the Jews to show loyalty to Greek culture and to idolatry. Many Jews were persecuted, and put to death. Antiochus then was guilty of blasphemy, he ascended himself up to be an incarnation of Zeus, just as Alexander before him acclaimed to be, and not only that, he went into the holy of holies, into the temple itself, he cut off all animal sacrifices, all the sacrifices of God for 2300, it says mornings and evenings. Now, some people think this was 1150 full days, 1150 mornings, 1150 evenings. I think that fits better with history. We know that the Jews were commanded to offer morning and evening sacrifices and Antiochus cut those off. God had no sacrifices because of Antiochus. Rather Antiochus wanted to be worshiped. He set himself up as an incarnation of Zeus. He had an idol put in the holy of holies and even worse, he had pigs taken into the sanctuary and sacrificed, and pigs blood anointed all over the altar and in the holy of holies. Can there be a greater defilement of the temple than that? Antiochus totally usurping power, setting himself up to be worshiped and then desecrating the temple. This was a direct assault on God Himself, and the scripture says very plainly that he also will be cut off but not by human hands. Now we're going to learn more about Antiochus in Chapter 11 in Daniel 11. The Hanukkah Story: The Reconsecration of the Temple But basically what happened was he was on a trip and God struck him dead with a disease. He was dead within a week, suddenly he died. God will not forget this kind of open rebellion, and in 164 BC, just three years after he had desecrated the temple, Judas Maccabeus, (this is written in the apocryphal I Maccabeus) reconquered Jerusalem, took over the temple, had it cleansed ceremonially from all the pigs blood, and the idolatry. Re-established worship to God and they found in one part of the temple, a little vial of oil that had not been desecrated, a little bottle of oil that they could use for the burning for the light within the Holy of Holies, just enough for one day. But yet, so the story goes that, miraculously burned for eight days. And so, our Jewish neighbors celebrate Hannukah every year. Eight candles for eight days, the eight days that the temple that that oil burned miraculously after the temple had been cleansed. Specific fulfillment. V. The “Little Horns” of Daniel 8 & 7: Type and Fulfillment Now, as you look at Daniel 8 and Chapter 7, who are these little horns? Well, you have to compare them. There are some similarities. Both of them arise out of Gentile kingdoms coming from one of these beasts. There is a similar career a conquest of rivals, war against the saints, blasphemy against God, desire to be worshipped in God's temple and its demise not done by human hands, but there's some significant differences too, aren't there? This one arises out of the third beast, doesn't it? The Daniel Chapter 8 horn arises out of Greece, but the Daniel Chapter 7 horn arises out of the fourth beast. And so, what is the relationship between the two? I think it's a relationship between pattern and fulfillment. Things were acted out in history, in the 2nd century BC that we will see again at the second coming of Christ. Things were acted out by Antiochus IV fourth called epiphanies which means manifestation of God that's what he claimed to be, acted out in a small scale just in a little part of the world, that it's going to happen again at the second coming of Christ with the true anti-Christ. Type and fulfillment. It says in 1 John 2:8, "Dear children. This is the last hour. And as you have heard that the anti-Christ is coming, many anti-Christ, have now come." And so this pattern is set and it would be replayed again, just one generation after Jesus Christ when the temple that Jesus visited was destroyed and he called it the abomination of desolation. We'll learn about that in Daniel 9. But the Romans came in that fourth beast, and they destroyed and desecrated the temple, and it has never been rebuilt. Some scholars believe that the temple will be rebuilt. II Thessalonians 2 says, The anti-Christ, the man of sin will sit in God's temple and make himself out to be God in God's temple, II Thessalonians 2. And so we have a pattern, a kind of an acting out in history by Antiochus of something that's going to happen, yet in the future. VI. Application Now, as we look at this, Daniel 8, all these details, you think, "What does this have to do with me? What does this have to do with my life?" Well, first of all, I think we have to understand it relates to God's ability to know in detail the future. Does it matter to you what happens to you in the future? Does it make a difference? Would it make any difference to you to know whether you're going to heaven or hell? Would that make a difference to you? I think it would make a difference to me. I don't think it's possible to live until you're ready to die. And we know that death is coming for all of us. It came to Alexander the Great and it's coming to us. Are you ready for that? But God has given us specific promises, whoever trusts in Jesus Christ will have eternal life, and no one can take that life from us, and so God has declared the future before it has even happened. Further more, it says that some day he will return in glory to set up his kingdom. Are you waiting for that? How can you pray the Lord's prayer, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," without believing in a God who knows the future. And say, it absolutely will happen, and so we can pray in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy kingdom come." And know it will certainly happen, because God has shown his track record, his specific performance in the past. I think we also need to realize that history matters. Only a handful of you are really that interested in Alexander the Great. Some of you would watch a documentary about him in UNC-TV or something like that. Others couldn't be bothered. But I think the fact of the matter is, that God cares intensely about history, he cares a lot. This is Christianity, the only religion that's woven together through historical events. Do you realize that it? It makes a difference whether Adam and Eve ever lived. It makes a difference whether there was someone named Abraham, who was called out and promises were made to him. It makes a difference whether the Jews ever lived in Egypt and were slaves, and then led out by Moses. It makes a difference. It makes a difference whether there ever was a Joshua, conquered the promised land, whether there was or was not a king David makes a difference. It makes a difference, whether there was a Jesus of Nazareth born in Bethlehem of a virgin, lived for 30, some odd years, ministered, died on the cross, rose from the dead. It makes a difference. History matters because if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, we're still in our sins. History makes a difference but your personal history makes a difference too. Remember, last week we talked about in Daniel 7, the court was seated and the books were open or what's in the books? Your history, every word you've ever spoken, everything you've ever done, it's all written down. God is a meticulous and careful historian, he cares about history and so we need a savior. Because we could look at that. Daniel said very clearly that the Alexander the Great came and was cut off in the height of his power. He needed a savior, and so do you. Jesus Christ said, "What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul. What would a man give in exchange for his soul?" Has there ever been a man who came so close to conquering the whole world as Alexander the Great and yet he could not conquer himself. But Jesus Christ came to give eternal life to all those who claimed him. I want to finish by giving a comparison. VII. The contrast between King Jesus and King Alexander: Alexander crushed His enemies, leaving them shattered and poverty-stricken Jesus saved His enemies, leaving them eternally blessed and wealthy Alexander boasted and exalted Himself Jesus was meek and lowly of heart and laid His majestic glory down in order to save us Alexander claimed to be the son of Zeus Jesus was the Son of God Alexander wept that there were no more peoples to conquer Jesus wept when Jerusalem would not believe in Him Alexander died in his early thirties in a drunken feast of pride and dissipation Jesus died in his early thirties on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sins Alexander’s body rotted in a grave Jesus’ body rose from the dead on the third day Alexander’s soul was eternally judged for his sins Jesus is Alexander’s judge Alexander built a world-wide empire... all that remains is the reputation Christ is still building His world-wide empire... it will last eternally