Podcasts about caltech

If aliens landed on Earth tomorrow, would humanity unite to welcome our new extraterrestrial neighbors… or would we immediately start arguing about who owns the spaceship?You already know the answer.This episode of The Rizzuto Show begins with a perfectly reasonable hypothetical: UFOs have landed and aliens are officially confirmed to be on Earth. How are you feeling? Curious? Terrified? Mostly annoyed that the 24-hour news cycle will somehow make it the third-biggest story of the afternoon?The crew dives into UFOs becoming UAPs, government disclosures, Bob Lazar, Area 51 and whether actual extraterrestrial visitors could finally unite humanity. Rafe thinks having one common alien enemy might finally turn us all into citizens of Earth. Moon isn't buying that optimism and figures we'd probably start fighting over which country gets custody of the aliens before they even get out of the ship. Sounds about right.Back on Earth, St. Louis is getting a little Hollywood treatment with The Streak, a sports comedy filming locally about Caltech's legendary basketball team snapping a 310-game losing streak. The production needs roughly 1,800 volunteer extras for basketball crowd scenes, meaning you too can spend five hours waiting around for your glorious half-second of blurry cinematic immortality. At least they're bringing stand-up comedians in to entertain the extras between takes.Then we enter conspiracy territory with Tropical Storm Dolly. Yes, shortly after Dolly Parton's passing, the next named Atlantic storm happens to be Dolly. No, they didn't name it after her. Yes, the names were already determined. And yes, people online are still turning it into a conspiracy because apparently coincidence was removed from the Internet's vocabulary sometime around 2017. It's the kind of discussion a comedy podcast was genetically engineered to handle.The show also remembers the incredible Tim Curry, looking back at everything from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Clue to Home Alone 2, Congo and his nightmare-fueling performance as Pennywise in the 1990 TV adaptation of It. Somehow that horrifying sewer scene aired on network television and an entire generation of children was simply expected to sleep afterward. The '90s were built different.Crap on Celebrities brings even more chaos: the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni legal saga, Jamie Foxx discussing changes made to Django Unchained, a Quentin Tarantino-written Cliff Booth project, the original Sandlot cast reuniting for Dugout Dads, and the revelation that Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez grew up to become a firefighter. There is also a detour into a bizarre 2015 incident involving actor Mike Vitar because apparently even The Sandlot can't survive this show without us finding something weird.Ozzy Osbourne is getting his own Halloween Horror Nights attraction, Boston is celebrating 50 years with previously unreleased demos, Eric Clapton and John Mayer have a limited-edition guitar collection benefiting Clapton's recovery center, and Rupert Grint is returning as an adult Ron Weasley on Broadway. It's celebrity news, music news and pop culture commentary delivered with the level of professionalism you've come to expect from people debating alien treaties earlier in the episode.But then comes the real scientific research:Who has the most aura?According to an online ranking of effortless presence, charisma and coolness, Keanu Reeves sits at number one.Number two?Jesus.That's correct. According to the Internet, Keanu Reeves has officially edged out Jesus in aura.John Cena, Willem Dafoe, Christian Bale, Tupac, Robert Downey Jr., Matthew McConaughey, Michael Jackson, Jim Carrey, The Rock and Henry Cavill also make appearances as the crew debates who actually deserves to rank among humanity's most effortlessly cool people. Michael Jackson at number eleven? Rafe has questions. And frankly, so should you.Finally, the crew returns to Dolly Parton's remarkable legacy and the mountain of projects she left behind, including products, productions and even a song intended for release around her 100th birthday. Meaning Dolly apparently planned her content calendar farther into the future than most of us have planned lunch.Aliens. UFO conspiracies. Tim Curry. Dolly Parton. Hollywood. Ozzy. The Sandlot. Celebrity gossip. And Keanu Reeves defeating the Son of God in an online aura ranking.That's your comedy podcast for the day.Humanity might not be ready for aliens.We're apparently barely ready for a celebrity aura poll.Follow The Rizzuto Show → linktr.ee/rizzshow for more from your favorite daily comedy show.Connect with The Rizzuto Show Comedy Podcast online → 1057thepoint.com/RizzShow.Hear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Rizzuto Show kicks things off by remembering Tim Curry, his legendary career, and the unfortunate timing of losing another beloved celebrity during an already emotional week. That leads the crew into the important question of who could possibly fill the role of a universally beloved celebrity these days. Adam Sandler gets consideration, Jeff Bridges enters the conversation, and eventually Keanu Reeves emerges as a pretty strong candidate because apparently quietly eating ice cream and being a decent human being now qualifies you for sainthood. Fair enough.Then everybody gets nostalgic about childhood discipline, which quickly becomes less “remember the good old days?” and more “should somebody have called somebody?” The crew remembers wooden spoons, belts, Hot Wheels tracks, fly swatters, soap in the mouth and the terrifying parental phrase that basically meant your afternoon plans had been canceled. It's another wholesome trip down memory lane from your favorite funny podcast, assuming your memories involve calculating the trajectory of a leather belt like you're working for NASA.Next stop: Burning Man, where the crew investigates the return of the infamous adults-only dome after last year's wind-related disaster. There are rules now: IDs, consent, no recording devices and, most importantly, no singles strolling in alone. Which naturally launches a completely necessary discussion about whether two buddies could simply pretend to be a couple to get through the door. Journalism is alive and well.Things somehow become more respectable when we arrive in Tulsa, where authorities are searching for a mysterious serial defecator accused of targeting businesses while dressed in an ensemble involving tiny underwear, a shower cap, a modified mask and Crocs. The most damning detail? The Crocs apparently weren't in sport mode. That's how you know this guy fears neither God nor law enforcement.And then comes Oreogate.A kindergarten mom reportedly asks the other parents to stop packing Oreos because her daughter gets upset when other kids have them. No allergy. No medical issue. Just the brutal realization that another five-year-old has cookies and you do not. When the other parents refuse to reorganize their children's lunches around this international crisis, Mom considers switching schools.Over Oreos.Meanwhile, the kid starts trading for them anyway, proving once again that kindergarten cafeterias are basically tiny prisons with better wall art. The crew debates school-lunch currency, Double Stuf superiority, Golden Oreos, questionable specialty flavors and the economic insanity required to consider changing schools because Nabisco has destroyed the peace.There are even pickle-flavored Oreo-adjacent horrors entering the studio, because apparently talking about terrible cookies wasn't enough—we needed witnesses.It's celebrity talk, childhood trauma disguised as nostalgia, weird news, Burning Man logistics, criminal fashion analysis and one kindergarten snack dispute treated with roughly the seriousness of an international trade embargo.The crew dives into UFOs becoming UAPs, government disclosures, Bob Lazar, Area 51 and whether actual extraterrestrial visitors could finally unite humanity. Rafe thinks having one common alien enemy might finally turn us all into citizens of Earth. Moon isn't buying that optimism and figures we'd probably start fighting over which country gets custody of the aliens before they even get out of the ship. Sounds about right.Back on Earth, St. Louis is getting a little Hollywood treatment with The Streak, a sports comedy filming locally about Caltech's legendary basketball team snapping a 310-game losing streak. The production needs roughly 1,800 volunteer extras for basketball crowd scenes, meaning you too can spend five hours waiting around for your glorious half-second of blurry cinematic immortality. At least they're bringing stand-up comedians in to entertain the extras between takes.Then we enter conspiracy territory with Tropical Storm Dolly. Yes, shortly after Dolly Parton's passing, the next named Atlantic storm happens to be Dolly. No, they didn't name it after her. Yes, the names were already determined. And yes, people online are still turning it into a conspiracy because apparently coincidence was removed from the Internet's vocabulary sometime around 2017. It's the kind of discussion a comedy podcast was genetically engineered to handle.The show also remembers the incredible Tim Curry, looking back at everything from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Clue to Home Alone 2, Congo and his nightmare-fueling performance as Pennywise in the 1990 TV adaptation of It. Somehow that horrifying sewer scene aired on network television and an entire generation of children was simply expected to sleep afterward. The '90s were built different.Crap on Celebrities brings even more chaos: the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni legal saga, Jamie Foxx discussing changes made to Django Unchained, a Quentin Tarantino-written Cliff Booth project, the original Sandlot cast reuniting for Dugout Dads, and the revelation that Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez grew up to become a firefighter. There is also a detour into a bizarre 2015 incident involving actor Mike Vitar because apparently even The Sandlot can't survive this show without us finding something weird.Ozzy Osbourne is getting his own Halloween Horror Nights attraction, Boston is celebrating 50 years with previously unreleased demos, Eric Clapton and John Mayer have a limited-edition guitar collection benefiting Clapton's recovery center, and Rupert Grint is returning as an adult Ron Weasley on Broadway. It's celebrity news, music news and pop culture commentary delivered with the level of professionalism you've come to expect from people debating alien treaties earlier in the episode.Before social media algorithms knew everything about you, the internet was a simpler place. A lawless, dial-up wasteland where your email address was probably something like BongRipper69@hotmail.com and one accidental click on Rotten.com could permanently alter the trajectory of your childhood.So naturally, The Rizzuto Show is going back.This episode starts with more nostalgia for the early internet and one of its most infamous destinations: Rotten.com. Back then, you couldn't just stumble across every horrifying thing imaginable while casually scrolling your phone. No, sir. You had to work for your trauma. You had to hear about Rotten.com from somebody, type it into the family computer, click something you absolutely shouldn't have clicked, and then wait patiently while your dial-up connection loaded your lifelong regret one horrifying line at a time.Was Rotten.com disgusting? Absolutely.Does the crew still seem weirdly sad that it's gone?Also absolutely.Then we move from internet trauma to another relic of the '90s and early 2000s: Hotmail.A poll says 18% of people are apparently still rocking a Hotmail address, which leads to an important discovery: Hotmail never completely disappeared. Microsoft eventually transitioned the service into Outlook, meaning technically some of us may still be living inside the Hotmail universe.We're all dorks. Fantastic.The crew remembers the era when nobody used their actual name for an email address. Instead, we created identities that looked like rejected Xbox gamertags: random nicknames, 420s, 69s and enough questionable innuendo to make applying for a respectable adult job years later slightly complicated.And then there are the complaint emails.Follow The Rizzuto Show → linktr.ee/rizzshow for more from your favorite daily comedy show.Connect with The Rizzuto Show Comedy Podcast online → 1057thepoint.com/RizzShow.Hear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.Tulsa cops hunting ‘serial defecator' wearing thong, mask and shower cap who terrorized local businessesBride and groom bedridden for days after norovirus-tainted wedding mealTim Curry, Famous for Roles in Rocky Horror Picture Show, It and Annie, Dies at 80, 14 Years After Paralyzing StrokeDozens of new Missouri laws take effect FridayMan, 26, arrested after dressing as ‘Grim Reaper' and climbing onto hospital roof with long scythe to stare at patientsWhy You Shouldn't Squish Ants—and What to Do InsteadMaryville University Hockey Rink expansion to be named after Blues legendSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

USAF combat veteran, entrepreneur and technology investor Rob Cunningham returns to Michael Jaco with a direct message for President Donald Trump: America can win the AI race—but first, we have to make sure the machines can never take authority they were never given. Cunningham, a former Air Force pilot who flew combat missions during Desert Storm, has publicly offered to serve in an unpaid advisory capacity in support of President Trump's goal of making America the world leader in artificial intelligence. And he says he isn't coming empty-handed. Rob lays out a patented information-physics protocol that he says could fundamentally change how America approaches AI security by separating the enormous computational capabilities of AI and quantum systems from the authority to make sovereign decisions. His principle is simple: Govern the machine. Never allow the machine to govern us. Rob warns that without a new approach, America could enter a perpetual AI-versus-AI arms race requiring ever-larger data centers, enormous amounts of energy, escalating cybersecurity infrastructure and increasingly sophisticated autonomous agents trying to defeat one another. The stakes extend far beyond ChatGPT or consumer technology. Michael and Rob discuss the potential impact of autonomous AI across defense, intelligence, banking, cryptocurrency, energy, communications, supply chains, air traffic control, critical infrastructure, robotics and national security. Rob argues that America should establish the rules of engagement underneath AI itself—creating a sovereignty layer where computational power can continue advancing while unauthorized agency remains off limits. And he's challenging the government to test it. Rob says NIST, DARPA, the FBI, MIT, Caltech or America's highest-level national security teams should independently validate the technology, red-team it and determine whether his claims stand up. If it works, Rob believes the implications could be enormous—not simply for cybersecurity, but for America's ability to become the AI, crypto, energy and manufacturing capital of the world. Michael asks Rob directly what he would say if President Trump invited him to Mar-a-Lago and gave him the opportunity to make his case. His answer sets up the heart of this episode: Test it. Try to break it. Validate it. Then decide whether America should make it the standard. The AI revolution isn't coming someday. It's already here—and Rob Cunningham believes America has an opportunity to define the architecture that governs it before someone else does. The country that establishes sovereignty in the AI era won't simply compete in the AI race. It could define the rules under which that race is run. Wakey Wakey America. Stay informed. Stay sovereign. Stay in the love vibrations. Connect with Michael Jaco Stay connected with Michael for the latest shows, intel, wellness resources, courses, events and more.

Dr. Ralph Adolphs, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Biology at Caltech and a leading expert on the science of human emotions. We discuss how emotions shape our attention and decision-making, whether emotions are truly “stored” in the body, and whether facial expressions are truly reliable signals of emotion. We also cover tools for improving emotional regulation, including cognitive reappraisal and deliberate cold exposure. This episode provides a modern scientific explanation of how emotions are created and regulated in the brain and body, their many impacts on other aspects of brain function, and practical tools for improving emotional wellbeing and processing. Get tickets to Huberman Lab live events: https://www.hubermanlab.com/events Pre-order Andrew's book Protocols: https://protocolsbook.com Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Helix Sleep: https://helixsleep.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Rorra: https://rorra.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Ralph Adolphs (00:02:54) Emotions; Qualities of Emotions: Priority, Valence (00:10:00) Qualities of Emotions: Scalability, Persistence (00:15:25) Sponsors: Helix Sleep & Rorra (00:18:17) Do Animals Have Emotions?, Conscious Experience (00:22:58) Monitoring & Regulating Emotions; Emotional Granularity (00:31:22) Emotional Regulation, Tools: Situational Avoidance, Ice Baths (00:37:11) Ultramarathons, Perseverance, Adversity; Awe (00:45:04) Sponsor: AG1 (00:46:17) Perception of Emotions, Amygdala & Fear, Facial Expressions (00:51:59) Interpreting Others' Emotions, Prediction (00:57:52) Emotions as Adaptations to the Environment, Types of Fear (01:00:13) Feeling Emotions in the Body, Pain, Insula (01:08:05) Brain & Body Connection; Marketing & Emotion (01:12:34) Sponsor: Function (01:14:11) Art, Music & Emotion (01:17:43) Interpreting Facial Expressions, Developing Emotions, Flexibility vs Reflexes (01:25:11) Emotional Intelligence, Context-Dependent Social Intelligence; Autism (01:33:31) Sponsor: LMNT (01:34:51) Autism & Social Dynamics, Eye Contact (01:42:01) Change Your Personality?, Body Movement & Thought, Social Interaction (01:47:18) Emotion Regulation, Tool: Training Mental Stillness (01:53:46) Task Switching, Tool: Meditation, Breathing Techniques (02:02:07) Illness, Diagnosis & Emotions, Gratitude & Awe (02:06:52) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Sponsors, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Wake Up, Look Up, Pastor Zach examines how artificial intelligence is making it easier to blur the lines of honesty and why integrity matters more than ever. Using a story about Caltech's fraud detection team, he challenges believers to pursue truth even when no one else is watching. He encourages parents and families to intentionally teach the next generation that our integrity is ultimately shaped by living before a God who sees all and calls us to walk in truth.Have an article you'd like Pastor Zach to discuss? Email us at podcast@ccchapel.com!

In this episode you will hear: (09:56) Mark and Chris discuss an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal recently entitled, "The Fraud Squad at Cal Tech Will Catch You If You Lie On Your Application" (36:22) Mark interviews New York Times best selling author, Bill Deresiewicz on his book, "Excellent Sheep" Part 1 of 2 Preview of Part 1 of 2 µ Bill Deresiewicz gives his backstory and his transparency is at times riveting µ Bill explains the circuitous path he took to get to where he is now µ Bill explains his disenchantment as a professor at Yale University, and he explains the genesis of the book, "Excellent Sheep" µ Bill explains what Yale students are great at and what they are lacking µ Mark explains my experience with Bill's thesis µ Bill talks about career funneling µ Bill explores the motivations for why students end up as sheep µ Mark challenges Bill, how can you say these students are not fulfilled Recommended Resources JG Talks: Helping prospective and current college students achieve success Colleges that allow self-reporting of test scores Colleges that Allow Self-Reporting of SAT and ACT Scores Great source for questions about finances and college Edvisors: Financial Aid, Student Loans, Scholarships and Money Management FAFSA Walkthroughs Mark recommends Complete FAFSA 2026‑2027 Walkthrough | From Start to Submit CSS PROFILE Walkthroughs CSS Profile Walkthrough MEFA Institute: A Deep Dive into the CSS Profile Speakpipe.com/YCBK is our method if you want to ask a question and we will be prioritizing all questions sent in via Speakpipe. Unfortunately, we will NOT answer questions on the podcast anymore that are emailed in. If you want us to answer a question on the podcast, please use speakpipe.com/YCBK. We feel hearing from our listeners in their own voices adds to the community feel of our podcast. You can also use this for many other purposes: 1) Send us constructive criticism about how we can improve our podcast 2) Share an encouraging word about something you like about an episode or the podcast in general 3) Share a topic or an article you would like us to address 4) Share a speaker you want us to interview 5) Leave positive feedback for one of our interviewees. We will send your verbal feedback directly to them and I can almost assure you, your positive feedback will make their day. To sign up to receive Your College-Bound Kid PLUS, our new monthly admissions newsletter, delivered directly to your email once a month, just go to yourcollegeboundkid.com, and you will see the sign-up popup. We will include many of the hot topics being discussed on college campuses. Check out our new blog. We write timely and insightful articles on college admissions: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/category/blog/ 1. To access our transcripts, click: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/category/transcripts/ 2. Find the specific episode transcripts for the one you want to search and click the link 3. Find the magnifying glass icon in blue (search feature) and click it 4. Enter whatever word you want to search. I.e. Loans 5. Every word in that episode when the words loans are used, will be highlighted in yellow with a timestamps 6. Click the word highlighted in yellow and the player will play the episode from that starting point 7. You can also download the entire podcast as a transcript We would be honored if you will pass this podcast episode on to others who you feel will benefit from the content in YCBK. Please follow our podcast. It really helps us move up in Spotify and Apple's search feature so others can find our podcast. If you enjoy our podcast, would you please do us a favor and share our podcast both verbally and on social media? We would be most grateful! If you want to help more people, find Your College-Bound Kid, please make sure you follow our podcast. You will also get instant notifications as soon as each episode goes live. Check out the college admissions books Mark recommends: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/recommended-books/ Check out the college websites Mark recommends: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/recommended-websites/ If you want to have some input about what you like and what you recommend, we change about our podcast, please complete our Podcast survey; here is the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScCauBgityVXVHRQUjvlIRfYrMWWdHarB9DMQGYL0472bNxrw/viewform If you want a college consultation with Mark just text Mark at 404-664-4340 or email at mark@schoolmatch4u.com. All we ask is that you review their services and pricing on their website before the complimentary session; here is link to their services with transparent pricing: https://schoolmatch4u.com/services/compare-packages/

Bohan Lou is a partner at Chemistry Ventures, based in SF.https://x.com/loubohanBohan's report on the venture ecosystem in China:https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bohanlou_i-spent-last-month-in-china-meeting-most-ugcPost-7487909585689698304-qepw/Chapter Markers:(01:42) - Venture Capital in China; Bohan's Shanghai Roots (11:15) - Chemistry Fund and China Investing (20:04) - China Trip and Venture Reality Check (32:18) - Pressure Cooker: Founder Exits and Financial Liability (33:50) - Variation in Founder-Friendly investment environment (46:52) - AI Models and Open Source (58:56) - Big Picture and Wrap Up –Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve. Announcing this for some friends at Mechanize - a startup that builds environments for training and evaluating frontier LLMs. Its customers include the top AI labs, and it has contributed to the breakthrough in coding capabilities of frontier models. Mechanize is hiring! https://mechanize.work/b/hsu Compensation is extremely competitive. For technical roles, $300-500k. They are also seeking smart generalists. For example: Research Engineer, Alignment: Build evals that test for misaligned model behaviors  $500K salary Puzzle Maker: Design interesting and original puzzles that LLMs can't yet solve  $300K salary Mechanize understands that my readership is highly selected. There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE you will be interviewed if you apply via the link above.

(August 10, 2026) Israel rejects Trump’s Gaza peace plan, saying no withdrawal until Hamas disarms. The ‘fraud squad’ at Cal Tech will catch you if you lie on your application. L.A has more than 20,000 vacant lots. They could help solve the city’s housing crisis.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

(August 06, 2026) Ships can’t move and power plants shut down as drought saps Europe’s rivers. ‘Peanut Butter’ pay raise are out, as employers shift to merit hikes. August 6th, 1945 American bomber drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. For this episode of “Obbligato,” a show dedicated to AAPI classical musicians, composers, and scholars, host Isabel Li interviews Indian American composer Reena Esmail, who blends Hindustani musical themes with western classical compositional styles. Music in this episode: – This Love Between Us “Prayers for Unity”: II. [Sikhism] – Lacrimosa (from Malhaar: a Requiem for Water) – Terra infirma: IV. roaming the ghost forest Transcript Isabel Li: I'm Isabel Li, here for a new edition of “Obbligato,” which explores the AAPI community in the classical music world. Today, we're featuring the Indian American composer Reena Esmail and her unique compositions that blend Hindustani music with Western classical styles and how she writes music about religion, spirituality, and even environmentalism. Welcome, Reena, to Apex Express. Reena Esmail: Hey! It's so great to be here. IL: My first question for you is one that's probably a little bit loaded, but how do you identify and what's your story? RE: I don't know, it's interesting because I work in many different situations, and I think I always identify as the thing that isn't whatever the dominant situation is that I work in. Right? So it's like when I'm in America, I identify as an Indian American. When I'm in India, I identify as an American. When I'm working in Western classical music, I'm the person who knows stuff about Hindustani music. When I'm working in Hindustani music, I'm the person who knows stuff about Western music. So really. Actually, I think of identity not as a fixed thing, but as how you, um, delineate yourself, how you're unique in the situation you're in. You know, it's interesting because especially in the case of Asian Americans, Asia is such a broad thing, right? There are so many more East Asians in Western classical music than there are South Asians. Certainly in my generation. You know, I was surrounded by Chinese, Korean, some Japanese people who were always, you know, playing the piano when I was playing the piano. And, um, there really was not many other Indian people. And, you know, I'll, I'll actually say that even within India, um, you know, if you look at me in America, I'm just Indian. If you look at me in India, I have a very unusual lineage, which is that my dad is from the region of Gujarat and his family is Muslim. My mom is from the region of Goa and her family is Catholic. And so because of that, when I was expressing interest in music, My mom was the one who had more of kind of a musical knowledge in her family, even though there's no professional musicians in her family. So because Goa was colonized by Portugal, there is this element of Western classical music in Goan culture. And so because of that, my mom was like, oh, let's give her guitar lessons, let's give her piano lessons. And so that's how I landed up in Western classical music as opposed to doing Indian classical music. Um, so yeah, I kind of went through the Western classical scene. I was very interested in being a pianist. And, you know, I'm glad that I'm glad I'm a failed pianist in all honesty, because I see what my colleagues who are real, you know, professional pianists have to go through. And I just don't think I have what it takes to do that. It's really an intense job. Um, but when I was in high school, um, one of my theory teachers kind of said, hey, you know, you might be a composer. It seems like you think like a composer thinks, why don't you try composing and why don't you try writing things down? and one thing led to another. And basically a year and a half to two years after studying, I got one of a very few spots in the undergrad program in composition at Juilliard. And that was a point where my parents kind of said, okay, you know, we don't know a lot about the music world, but it seems like if she got into Juilliard, she's probably like somewhat good at this. Maybe we should kind of see how this goes. And, you know, from there on, I pursued composition. IL: And when and why did you start to study Indian classical music, which is a big element in your compositions now? RE: Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's interesting because in every generation, I've seen so much change in how the diaspora views itself. And certainly when I was growing up, you know, I know this is hard to believe, but there were not if you were an Indian going to school, you were kind of the only one. If you were an Indian music, you were kind of the only one. So there was this element where when I went to Juilliard, um, there were I to my knowledge, two Indians in the entire school, me and an actress who had actually come from Calcutta. And so people were trying to, you know, make conversation with me and they'd be like, well, you know, do you do stuff with Indian classical music? And I would just be like, no, I'm trying so hard to even write music for orchestra and, you know, string quartet and all the things that my peers are trying to do. Like, is that not enough? Because I'm Indian, I also have to be doing all this other stuff. And so I resisted it for a long time because I was just trying so hard to do one thing well. But then, you know, I think what, what made me kind of unique is that, you know, I stood out, I was Indian and then, you know, when I was young, that felt really cool. The older I got, the more I thought, well, you know, I know I'm from this culture that has incredible music and I know it when I hear it, I know nothing about it, and maybe I should actually pursue it. And so I really separately kind of started meeting Indian musicians who lived in New York, and I would just ask them questions, and I got to know them. And I realized that while we didn't share a type of music, we did share a culture and we did share a love of music because it is interesting that the culture of Indian classical music is actually quite similar to the culture of Western classical music. You know, you study with a teacher over a really long period of time. You're practicing for hours a day. The kind of personality that would love Western classical music would also love Indian classical music. And so I just made friends with some of these Indian classical musicians. And of course, being a composer, I thought, why don't I put them in my music? You know, how do I do that? And so it was really just curiosity that led me down that path. And for many years, that path was very separate. Because again, I know it's very hard to believe now, but there was a time where people really did not want these cultures to be combined, and people just really looked down on cultures that were not, you know, the dominant Western European classical culture. And so I kept them really separate. And even when I started combining them, people were like, oh, that's sweet. She does stuff with Indian music, you know? And it was really not taken seriously. It's only really in the last decade that people have been embracing other musical cultures. And I mean, how glad I am that that's happening. But it was very, very hard fought and very separate at first. IL: And on that note, how do you navigate the unique challenges of composing with both these cultures in mind, but also being situated in the United States, where people come from all different backgrounds? And how do you as a composer approach that in this context? RE: I mean, I think it's interesting because first of all, I am musically bilingual now, so I can. I went to India, I studied Indian classical music. Seriously. I still work with Indian classical musicians very closely. And so, you know, I can be working on a piece that has Indian classical musicians in it, and I can turn to them and immediately speak in their language and their musical language. And then I can turn to the Western musicians and speak in their musical language. So every single piece I write, especially the ones that involve Indian classical musicians. There is a way through those pieces, both through the Western lens and through the Indian lens. And so I think I'm working in a position where I actually do know how to speak both those languages. And when you do speak both those languages, you know, just the way that if you speak any two, you know, verbal languages, you would know that there are sounds that are cognates. And so you're like, oh, I say the sound. So maybe and it means one thing in one culture and one thing in another culture. But you know that that sound is the same. And so with musical language, you can actually use those musical cognates to connect across cultures by saying, just listen for this thing. And when you listen for this thing, interpret it through the lens of your own culture. So that's certainly how I work. But, you know, I mean, again, I want to say that's not the only way to work. I don't think that you have to be, you know, I mean, again, there's probably most people who are listening to this probably have one musical culture and then maybe they know much less about the other musical culture. That is also fine. You know, you don't need to be an expert in order to want to explore and, and love a thing that's just, you know, where I am because it's the, the center of my musical practice. IL: Well, let's hear a selection from Reena Esmail's oratorio, “This Love Between Us.” This is the second movement titled Sikhism. David Hill conducts Juilliard415 with the Yale Schola Cantorum. [MUSIC: This Love Between Us “Prayers for Unity”: II. Sikhism] IL: That was Sikhism, the second movement from the oratorio This Love Between Us by Reena Esmail, who is here in conversation with me today on KPFA for APEX Express. Something that I really found interesting in especially your work — and I'm sure this has been asked many times, but This Love Between Us: Prayers for Unity. This oratorio that you wrote, beautiful work where you use words from the seven major religions of India. And each movement of the choral work is also named after a different religion. In what ways did you adhere to or challenge norms of spiritual music? Because religion is so religion and music are so deeply tied together. How did you challenge those norms or how did you express those norms when you wrote this work? RE: You know, I think it's interesting because my own spiritual background is very kind of multi spiritual multi-faith. But like I said, my, my father is, is my father's side of the family is Muslim. My mom's side of the family is Catholic. My husband is Hindu. All of them grew up in a very singular practice in each of their religions. But for me, I grew up, you know, around my mom and my dad and then, you know, my husband later. And just there's a part of me that takes in the essence of each of these spiritual traditions. And, you know, I'm trying to kind of find what feels true to me in each of those places. And so to me, you know, this love between us is, is a place where I'm trying to essentially say, yes, we express things differently through whatever cultural, uh, history, that language or that that religion emerged through. And yet we're all trying to get at that same numinous thing. And, you know, I mean, I'm not saying, oh, all religions are the same. Definitely not. You know, there's, there's many different ways to practice things. And, you know, your unique way into your spirituality is your own. And that's, that's amazing. But also, we all kind of our cultures form religions for a certain reason, and it's because we want to try to understand things that are beyond ourselves. And so that's essentially what the piece is saying. So I know I'm sure there are purists who are like, you shouldn't be combining these things, but, you know, there's always going to be purists who do that and there's a role for that. But that's not really my role. So, I mean, I picked the pieces and I picked the religion specifically because of the numbers of people who practice that religion currently within India. And so it is like the largest, um, populations, you know, like Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, all, all of those things. And then there's one little tiny religion, Zoroastrianism. And while they are not, there's not many of them within India. They are the ones who are practicing Western classical music in India. So people like Zubin Mehta and all, they are Parsis that are Zoroastrians. So I thought, you know, it's important to include them too, because it's a piece that involves a lot of Western classical musicians. IL: I'm wondering now, as a composer who's working with music of different languages and religions and origins and also evoking a lot of these spiritual truths that are pretty universal in nature. What is your view on the function of music? There's the platitude that music is a universal language. Do you how to what extent do you agree with that? RE: You know, yeah, it's hard to, to, um, to think of music as a universal language. But I think sometimes we, how can I say this? It's such a broad question. When we are working in a form that isn't completely narrative, it gives us a little more chance to get at things that don't have to follow logically after one another. They're just feelings that we're able to feel. And I like working even when there are words, you know, there are certainly words in all of these, these, uh, pieces in this love between us. But I feel like sometimes we just feel something within us. And, you know, I experience this a lot when I have a piece performed, people will come up to me and say like, oh, this made me feel like this. And then the next person will come up to me and say, oh, this made me feel exactly the opposite thing. And I, I really love that we can have those experiences. And, you know, recently it's been really interesting because people have been asking these questions like interviewers, you know, before performances will be like, well, what do you want the audience to feel? And I'm like, oh, I don't want to answer that question. I want you to feel whatever you feel. There's nothing right to feel. And often, I mean, I'm not the one to ask. I'm so close to the music because when I'm listening, I'm thinking like, okay, was that C sharp in tune? Okay, you know, that's what I'm feeling. And I certainly don't want them to feel that. So I don't know. I think it's, it's just exciting to see how when we get out of these, what we should do this and this is the right thing to do. And this is the only way to do it. Um, how do we behave? And there are so few spaces left where if we don't say exactly the right words at the right time to the right people, you know, if we don't have exactly the right opinions that everyone around us has, We are so condemned and music might be one of the last places that we're allowed to feel whatever's inside of us. IL: Mhm. That's really interesting to think about. I think art in general is very beautiful because it allows people to interpret it in many different ways. I think for your music, you really draw on cultural specificity in terms of Hindustani music. What advice would you give to other young composers or also maybe artists of different mediums in creating that balance between specificity and universality? RE: Yeah, I think the thing is that the way into a deep practice is specificity. You know, I know people have asked me like, oh, you've done stuff with Indian music. Are you going to do stuff with other music? And I'm like, gosh, there's still so much to explore. I could have like three lifetimes and still not explore everything I want to explore just in the relationship between Indian and Western classical music. I mean, goodness knows I have four degrees in Western classical music, and I still am barely scratching the surface of it. Right. So I kind of feel like specificity is important because it allows you to access depth. And yet, you know, when you are specific about a certain thing, um, like for instance, like a scholar who only speaks Italian, I mean, they're going to know more than someone who maybe speaks five words of each language, right? So they can transfer over at a higher level and make more sophisticated points and understand the world with a more universal lens if they've gone really deep on one thing. So I would say, you know, to young composers, to young musicians, pick one practice and know it really, really well and deeply become go as far as you possibly can and then, you know, try to see if you can find relations between your primary practice and a different practice. Um, and I mean, some people, you know, I know in this generation that's coming up, that's like in their teens and twenties, there are South Asian, uh, kids who are here whose parents have come from India that are learning Indian and Western classical music side by side. And I think that's great. I mean, that's awesome. But I would also say make sure you don't just learn halfway. Both of those things, you know, if you're going to learn them, if at least with one thing, try to go as absolutely far as you can. IL: Let's hear another example of Reena Esmail's bilingual musicality with her work, Malhaar: A Requiem for Water, which was recorded fairly recently. The vocalist is Graycen Gardner with the choir conducted by Amy Fogerson. [MUSIC: Lacrimosa (from Malhaar: a Requiem for Water)] IL: Composer Reena Esmail used Indian classical instruments in that work, titled Malhaar: A Requiem for water. The vocalist was Graycen Gardner, with the choir conducted by Amy Fogerson. Percussionist was Rohit Panchakshari. I'm Isabel Li in conversation with composer Reena Esmail on this edition of Apex Express here on KPFA 94.1 FM. So when you integrate Hindustani classical Hindustani music, Indian classical music and those instruments into your scores, did you happen to did you have to develop a way to translate the notation of those notes in Western classical music notation, or vice versa? RE: Yeah, it it begs the greater question of what is notation for? Right? Because notation is essentially a way for Western musicians who read notation to look at a thing and be able to associate sounds with that thing. And so when I'm notating for Western classical musicians, I'm saying, okay, what is a cellist typically seeing and what are they doing based on what they're seeing? And then how can I take that language that they know really well that they play in Bach suites, that they play in Elgar, Cello Concerto, whatever it is, how can I take that language and just move it, you know, a couple degrees outward so that they're able to express different things, right? And so it's very much a psychological thing. You know, it's not a science the way that we think of it as and we learn it as this, oh, you know, eighths and sixteenths, and they divide this way. There's a lot you can do just to make someone feel a certain way with notation. On the other hand, if I'm writing for a sitar or tabla, the question is what? What is the role of the notation? Because the role of the notation for tabla player who has only Hindustani training and doesn't read music. It's certainly not for the tabla player that I'm doing the notation. Usually what I'll do is sit down with the tabla player in a, you know, more Hindustani style and say, hey, this is what I want. I want you to have like six overtones of teental. It should be at this tempo, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, oh, got it. I see what you want me to do. Right? And so all you need to figure out is the alignment points with the Western classical musicians. And so then the notation I put in the score is not really for them. It's for a conductor, for the Western musicians to be able to understand what they are doing and to be able to cue them in and help them kind of be in dialogue to one another. So it's interesting because, I mean, these days now I'm finding that there are tabla players who are both Indian and Western classical trained, and they want a part, but parts are not a thing. When I first wrote This Love Between Us, there were no parts for the tabla and sitar player. I actually had a cue sheet that I would actually point to as they were going, so that they knew, you know, what the different cues were because a part, you know, counting rests and stuff is not going to help them at all. So I think it's mostly trying to understand how is someone perceiving something and how can you give them the information they need in the most seamless way possible so that you can express what you want to express? IL: I love how technical that entire rundown was. I also wanted to talk a bit about your work, Terra Infirma, which is pretty recent. I had the honor of attending the premiere of Terra Infirma, a harp concerto that you composed based on your experiences with the Los Angeles fires in January of 2025. Um, it was such a wonderful work. I personally really loved hearing how you musically depicted the progression of a wildfire from despair to hope. It's also not the first environment based piece that you've written. YYou've written, for example, Earth Speaks in 2015. How do you approach composing works that are so rooted in environmentalism? And of course, have, have the undertones of speaking to the larger climate crisis at hand? RE: The thing that is interesting is, you know, someone was asking me about that piece, you know, you, you're, they're asking like, how do you kind of deal with activism in your work? And I was saying like, you know, I don't really think of myself as an activist because I think these issues are so fundamental to all of us, right? It's like you turn on your tap and you're just afraid that there's only going to be so long before water stops coming up. That's not, um, it doesn't feel like activism. It just feels like, you know, fear and it feels like we're tapping into these human emotions where people are so worried about what's going to happen. We don't really know what to do. And I think, you know, with anything, most people who have fear about things, you're going to just clam up if you feel that it's too, um, too much to deal with. And it is I mean, the environmental crisis is so huge that I think most people are just clamming up. And I guess, you know, what is our role as musicians? I think it's maybe to have some moments where we're not just like on our phones, seeing pictures of things burn down and freaking out where we can actually take some time to just reflect and be with one another. Because if we're going to solve this, it's going to be together and we need to come to some kind of like calm understanding of what is happening. And so a lot of my pieces are not accusatory. They're not, you know, pointing a finger. They're not supposed to rile people up. They're supposed to actually depict that experience of what it feels like to really sit with a hard thing for a long time and come to terms with it and then figure out how to move forward. And that's certainly the case with Terra Infirma and certainly the case with my Requiem. Certainly the case with curiosity, like you were saying, it's from Earth Speaks, which is many years ago. And that piece actually talks about the, the Pasadena institution's. It was actually for an organization called Pasadena Master Chorale. They commissioned the work many years ago. And what's so funny is I now live in Pasadena. I live in Altadena, up in the hills. So it's I wasn't living here at the time, but it is, you know, a place where many scientific institutions like the U.S. Geological Survey, you know, JPL, Caltech, all these places that are really exploring the environment in important ways are based. And so the piece kind of honors that and honors how we can interact positively with our environment. We can get data, we can find ways to do things that are, I mean, beyond my understanding, you'd have to ask a scientist, but but I just love that that we're in this place that sees the environment as something to understand more deeply instead of something that's just going to turn on us at a certain point. IL: Certainly. And I'm really curious, because Terra Infirma is also a work that was paired with multimedia animation and performance. Was there anything in your compositional process that differed when you're collaborating across these different mediums? RE: Yeah. So it's interesting because so the, there was, there were projections that were happening. And also in addition to that, it was a harp concerto, but a harp concerto where the harpist was also playing percussion. And so there were some elements that were so different than what would be typically like if harpist was like, I want a concerto. You would just be like, okay, you know, she sits there, she plays these notes. They're in that one position. That's all fine. Um, there was so much more, you're right with this piece than with, um, with my normal pieces. Um, and to me it's both, how can I say this? There's, there's such a different way I have to think about it, but I think that way starts with collaboration. So Yolanda Kondonassis, the incredible harp player, and Camilla Tassi, who was the production designer. These are people I know well and I've had multiyear relationships with. And so when you're thinking about how to build something, you're totally aware of what their work is like. I knew kind of the not even what Camilla's projections were going to look like, but the way that they interact with things. We've done projects together before. And so I pretty much had the sense of how she was going to respond. And I knew what she needed to know in order for her to do her work and make things kind of match up with one another. And then also with Yolanda, a lot of the stuff I put in that was like harp and percussion together. It wasn't something that I was making her do, right? It were things that we came up with together. We've spent so long workshopping things in percussion studios in, um, you know, we've met in all these different cities and we're basically like banging things against a harp and doing, you know, just so much experimentation. So for every technique you see in the concerto, you, um, you basically there's like ten things that we didn't do that didn't put in. So you're really only seeing the best of all the kind of crazy stuff that we tried. So I do think the thing is that when you're trying to invent something new and you're trying to invent new styles and new techniques, I mean, you can think of anything, but you're trying to find the things that A practically work and B allow the performers and the artists to really express themselves. So I found that I was actually choreographing the piece before I was composing it, um, that I had to figure out, okay, where are these percussion setups going to be? What are the instruments that I want? Okay. Are these chimes going to be like over her head? Or is she going to have to reach really far to get them? Are they going to be near the low end of the harp? Things like that that seem so practical. But the difference between having to reach out far and slowly versus having to like, quickly swat something near your ear, right? It makes a different choreography. And so I thought that way first. And then I kind of put the notes and rhythms and melodies and stuff in. IL: Let's now hear a selection from Reena Esmail's Terra Infirma. This is the fourth movement titled “Roaming the Ghost Forest.” Yolanda Kondonassis is the harpist with the Interlochen Center for the Arts Orchestra. [MUSIC: Terra infirma: IV. roaming the ghost forest] IL: The harpist was Yolanda Kondonassis with the Interlochen Center for the Arts Orchestra, playing the fourth movement of Terra Infirma by composer Reena Esmail. I'm Isabel Leigh, and in this episode of Apex Express, I'm joined by Reena Esmail, the composer, in conversation about her music and her approach to making art. Something else that I really was fascinated with on your on your Instagram account. You actually made a post a while back that I found to be very powerful. It's pinned as the letter to the young artists' immigrant parents. It's such an empathetic message that I also really relate to as a daughter of immigrants in the arts. And you kind of argue that these children's pursuit of the arts is a tribute to their parents immigrant struggles. Um, what motivated you to write this letter? RE: You know, I'm so glad you asked about that because so much has changed since I wrote that letter in a really good way. You know, first of all, I will say that when I wrote that letter, if you weren't a child of, you know, like Asian immigrant parents, you. And actually, I think this is true for most immigrant parents who, you know, have kind of given up everything to move to America so that their kids can explore all these opportunities they wouldn't get in their country of origin. When I first wrote this letter, it was really just, I felt like I was saying something really new. And now I think what's really interesting is that we have both parents who understand this and, um, kind of almost this parody way of seeing what Asian parents are like. Right. For me, one thing that I, that just makes my heart sing is the comedy of Zarna Garg. I don't know if you know who she is, but she is like an Indian American comic and she plays this role of being like this very typical Indian parent. And I will say, my parents weren't really like this because again, they were two different religions and married one another. So they were already quite open minded. But like 99% of Indian parents and even my parents, sometimes they have this thing of like, well, ‘why are you going into this?' Like you should make money, you should do this stuff. And I feel like, um, since Zarna's comedy came into the world, it's such an easy way to just point a finger at that and say, hey, this is what we're really dealing with as Indian immigrants. And, you know, we all just laugh at it. And I find that, you know, sometimes my friends who are just, you know, white Americans who have been in this family has been in this country for many generations. They don't get it. But like anyone who's a child of immigrant is like, oh yes, I completely understand what she's saying. So we have that. And I think that's really healthy and awesome. And she's very talented. Um, and on the other hand, I found that when I was first going into music and I mean, I, you know, when I was 18 and I was going to go to Juilliard, my parents were certainly supportive and curious and wanted me to do whatever they thought I might be good at enough to make a living and didn't want to optimize for, oh, you need to earn the most money or you need to, etc. but most other Indians around us were like, oh my God, she's so smart. Why is she like wasting her life doing music? You know, that was kind of the dominant narrative. And so I had to become very good at explaining why. And imagine my complete disbelief when I would go to conservatory and meet people whose parents had encouraged them to do music. I was like, what is happening? Like, we're like, there'd be four siblings and all of them would be in the arts. And I was like, oh wait, you're not the black sheep of your family. Like, I mean, half of my family, I don't think really knows what I do still even. Right? And so to me, it was so important to provide some kind of context. And like you said, it's like to, to come to this country and be an immigrant and to come with a lot of skills, but to have to just work in silence for so many years with no congratulation, with no one just constantly propping you up. That is what being an artist is. And you know, it's only maybe the past 10 years of my career that I've even been visible to people. Before that, it was just me doing my thing and like, no one cared about it. It was not not glamorous at all. And for me, that's what built the kind of strength in me to be able to sustain the career that I have now. And so I think if it had been a little too easy, I don't know that I would be able to handle, um, the, what I have now. So I think what's great though is that the Indian parents of kids who are teenagers and in their twenties nowadays are not coming to me being like, oh my God, what do I do with this kid who wants to be a musician? I've failed as a parent. Which again, for those of you who are not Asian, this is totally a true thing out there. They will come to me and say, hey, look, my, my child doesn't wants to be a musician. I want to help them. I can't tell like, are they good at this? Where should they be? Can you help me understand things? And that is really what my parents did. And I will, you know, kind of go further to say — PBS did a special on me a number of years ago, and I insisted on putting my parents in this special because I wanted people to see what it looked like to have really encouraging Indian parents who, again, they weren't going in blind. They were. They would go to my teachers and be like, well, I mean, is she good? Can she do this? We don't know what these answers are. Can you help us understand? And they really relied on the right people to be able to help me get to places that they couldn't get, but they also weren't just immediately dismissive of it. And that's what allowed me to kind of have a massive advantage, because I didn't have to also go back to school and do a medical degree. Or like most of my my peers of my age actually did. So I wanted to put them on that special to actually show that that is possible. And I'm seeing more and more that it is. There are many more parents like that now. And oh my goodness, I love every one of them. IL: That's wonderful. When you look back at your compositional career and how everything has changed since then, how do you think your work has evolved? RE: Oh, so you mean like since I began being a composer? IL: Yeah. Or maybe in the past ten years, even. RE: Yeah. It's interesting because I think one of the big inflection points in my work was when I did my Fulbright in India. So before that, I really didn't know very much about Indian classical music. And then the year before that, I really started to get deeper and started to integrate my Indian and Western classical world with one another. And then, you know, I from 2011 to 2012, I went to India and what was so different was actually seeing the music in its culture and actually getting to participate as an Indian in India, studying Indian classical music. Right. Because there's no filter. You're not going through a Western filter. You're just there in this culture. And I know that many of my Indian teachers, they kind of had this attitude of like, look, we don't know what kind of music you were doing before, but we're so glad you're here and studying your own music. And this is great. And so there wasn't this sense of having to go through another culture to get to their, their music. And to me, that really changed things because I don't see myself as writing music. That's one through the conduit of the other. I just see it as two streams that are equally incredible and equally independent, and they just meet each other in these interesting places. IL: And looking ahead into the future, is there an ensemble or an artist who you haven't worked with before that you'd love to work with? Ooh. It's interesting because, like, almost everyone who comes to mind is not a musician. Um, I've worked with so many. I mean, truly, I've been so lucky to work with musicians like Gil and Orli Shaham. Yolanda Kondonassis. I'm writing a piece for Hilary Hahn and Matthias Goerne right now. It's I mean, just like literally anyone who I could ever ask to work with, I have. I don't know. I mean, to me, it's like, gosh, someone like Misty Copeland would be amazing. Like, you know, there are so many actors like the world of Indian/South Asians in comedy and in drama and stuff like that is just incredible. People like Mindy Kaling who have done incredible things to me, people like that are just going outside of just music would be fascinating to me. IL: Absolutely. And I will put a link to your website, as well as the links to the music that will also be aired on this in this episode on KPFA.org, so our listeners can learn more about you and your wonderful work. Well, Reena, thank you so much for your time and thank you for talking to me today. RE: Absolutely. The post APEX Express – 8.06.26 – Obbligato – In Conversation with Composer Reena Esmail appeared first on KPFA.

S05E158 — “The Crater Makers” · Tuesday 4 August 2026. Four stories on cosmic impacts — and a new map of the X-ray sky — plus a both-hemispheres skywatch. ① A dead Falcon 9 is about to crater the Moon ●        A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage (catalogued 2025-010D) is predicted to strike the Moon near Einstein Crater on 5 Aug 2026 at ~06:35 UTC — the second documented uncontrolled rocket impact on the Moon. ●        The stage launched Firefly's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience landers in Jan 2025, then was stranded in a chaotic Earth orbit for ~18 months. Impact speed ~2.4 km/s (~5,400 mph); expected crater ~17–27 m across. ●        Prediction by Bill Gray (Project Pluto). NASA's LRO can image the site before and after; a ~two-dozen-author campaign is coordinating observers to chase the ejecta plume. ●        Governance angle: no international framework governs cislunar debris — a growing hazard as lunar traffic increases (callback to E154's distant-retrograde-orbit debris study). Sources: Space.com / Forbes / Reuters (Cris Tolomia) — impact preview, 31 Jul–3 Aug 2026  ·  Project Pluto (Bill Gray) — 2025-010D impact page  ·  ZME Science — impact timing, 3 Aug 2026 ② Neptune's inner moons: shrapnel of a shattered world ●        JWST NIRSpec spectroscopy of Neptune's inner moons Larissa, Galatea and Proteus (Caltech; lead author Ryleigh Davis, Mike Brown's group) detected magnesium-rich phyllosilicates — clay minerals that require liquid water and had never been seen beyond Jupiter. ●        The clays imply the material came from much larger, water-bearing worlds — evidence that Neptune's original regular moon system was destroyed when Triton (a captured Kuiper Belt object) arrived. ●        Proteus, the largest of the three, lacks the clays — possibly re-heated and reprocessed after re-forming, hiding its history. Sources: Davis et al., Science Advances, 29 July 2026  ·  Caltech / phys.org press coverage, 29 Jul–3 Aug 2026  ·  Space.com (Charles Q. Choi), 3 Aug 2026 ③ “Charbroiled within hours”: impact dust and the dinosaurs ●        New modelling (Brandon Johnson et al., Purdue) argues ultrafine impact dust from Chicxulub acted as an insulating blanket, raising surface heating ~3.5× above the spherule-only estimate — enough to ignite global wildfires and kill exposed animals within hours. ●        The same dust then blocked sunlight for years — so the model adds a ferocious opening act to the established “impact winter,” rather than replacing it. Sheltering underground or underwater aided survival. ●        Caveat: the strongest physical wildfire evidence is so far confined to North America (per UCL's Alfio Chiarenza, not involved in the study); a truly global fire record remains unconfirmed. Sources: Johnson, Johnson, Wakita & Robertson, JGR: Biogeosciences, 2026  ·  Popular Science / Space.com / ZME Science, 28 Jul–2 Aug 2026 ④ eROSITA DR2 — the X-ray sky doubles ●        The eROSITA telescope (SRG mission) released its second data set (DR2) on 31 July 2026: ~1.9 million pointlike and ~64,000 extended X-ray sources from the first three all-sky scans — nearly doubling the previously released eROSITA catalogue. ●        For scale: ROSAT catalogued ~130,000 sources in the 1990s and was the benchmark for 30 years. Lead author: Miriam Ramos-Ceja (MPE). ●        DR2 delivers the first direct census of cataclysmic-variable binaries sufficient to explain the decades-old Galactic Ridge X-ray Emission. It coincides with SDSS DR20 (Black Hole Mapper), enabling 3D mapping of active black holes. Sources: Ramos-Ceja et al. (eROSITA-DE), arXiv:2607.27772; DR2 release  ·  Max Planck Society press release, 29 July 2026  ·  phys.org, 31 Jul 2026 Skywatch — both hemispheres ●        Falcon 9 impact (5 Aug, ~06:35 UTC): not naked-eye; ejecta plume a long shot for advanced amateurs in the Americas near the western limb (~2:35 a.m. EDT). Sydney: Moon below horizon — watch for LRO after-images. ●        Comet 10P/Tempel 2: perihelion 2 Aug, closest to Earth 3 Aug (~0.41 AU); ~mag 8–9 near M30 in Capricornus. Best return of the century; Southern-Hemisphere-favoured; Northern viewers low on the southern horizon. Darkest window ~7–8 Aug. ●        This evening: Venus threads between Regulus (Leo) and Spica (Virgo) in the west — both hemispheres, no equipment. Mercury at its best morning showing (greatest western elongation 2 Aug), low in the pre-dawn east. ●        Diary — 12 Aug: total solar eclipse (Greenland/Iceland/Spain), moonless Perseid peak, six-planet alignment. Always use certified ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses / solar filters except during totality.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Barak Bussel is one of the few people operating simultaneously at three levels of the quantum stack: deploying private capital into hardware and software companies through 7i Capital, chairing the strategic board of a major university quantum center, and helping stand up the physical infrastructure — a 700,000 square foot research park on the site of the former Westside Pavilion — meant to convene academia, industry, national labs, and startups in one place. He is also a physicist by training, which changes the kind of diligence questions he asks.We recorded this at the KPMG Tech and Innovation Symposium in Deer Valley, only weeks after the most consequential stretch of quantum news in years: Oratomic's $300M Series A (the largest first institutional round in quantum history, with 7i in the syndicate), a Google Quantum AI paper cutting Shor's algorithm resource estimates to around 500,000 physical qubits on superconducting hardware, and two June 2026 White House executive orders on quantum innovation and post-quantum cryptography. If you want to understand how a serious investor is actually pricing risk, timelines, and ecosystem-building in this moment, this is the conversation.What We Get IntoWhy 7i backed Oratomic's aggressive "no intermediate product, straight to fault tolerance" strategy, and how Barak thinks about betting on teams versus theses in deep techHow recent architecture and QLDPC error correction advances have compressed physical-to-logical qubit ratios, and what that means for near-term resource estimates for Shor's algorithmWhy a lesser-noticed April 2026 Google Quantum AI paper on quantum-assisted memory reduction for classical AI workloads may matter as much as the Shor's-focused headlinesWhat "patient capital" actually looks like when a connector problem eats two years of a portfolio company's roadmapThe Bell Labs template as a serious operating model for the UCLA Research Park: convening academia, industry, government, and startups in a single physical footprintThe historical resonance of UCLA sending the first ARPANET packet in 1969 and what that suggests about where quantum networking work should be anchoredHow Kedma's error mitigation work with IBM's Heron II and RIKEN pushed a 51-qubit Ising model simulation to the edge of what's classically tractableHow Barak reads the June 2026 executive orders and the federal role — enabling infrastructure rather than picking winners — against the scale of Chinese government fundingResources & LinksGuest & OrganizationsBarak Bussel bio — UCLA CQSE Strategic Board — Official page covering Barak's role as Board Chair and his physics and venture background.7i Capital — Barak's deep tech venture firm, investing across quantum, AI, semiconductors, cybersecurity, robotics, clean energy, and space.UCLA Center for Quantum Science and Engineering (CQSE) — The multidisciplinary center Barak chairs, spanning physics and engineering research.Barak Bussel on LinkedIn — Where Barak has publicly flagged the Oratomic investment and the June 2026 executive orders.The Oratomic Round and Recent BreakthroughsOratomic raises $300M Series A — The Quantum Insider — Confirms 7i Capital in the syndicate for the largest-ever first institutional round in quantum computing.Oratomic Series A deep dive — Quantum Computing Report — Technical breakdown of the reconfigurable neutral-atom architecture and full investor syndicate.Oratomic's "no intermediate product" strategy — MLQ.ai — Analysis of Oratomic's bet against the QuEra/Pasqal early-revenue playbook.QEDMA raises $26M Series A — Quantum Zeitgeist — 7i portfolio company Kedma's error mitigation round with IBM participation, referenced in Barak's Ising model results.Policy and Market ContextWhite House EO: "Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation" — One of the two June 22, 2026 executive orders Barak discusses.Sidley Austin analysis of the June 2026 quantum EOs — Legal explainer covering both the innovation EO and the post-quantum cryptography mandate.Cloudflare on the accelerated post-quantum timeline — Notes that Q-Day estimates have moved in response to Google and Oratomic breakthroughs.PitchBook Q2 2026 Quantum Computing Funding Report — Record 2025 VC totals and Q1 2026 liquidity data relevant to Barak's exit thesis.UCLA Research Park and Regional EcosystemUCLA launches SoCal Quantum Alliance — The regional coalition Barak references, with founding members including Caltech, JPL, Boeing, IBM, and Cisco.Quantum Innovation Hub at the UCLA Research Park — Preview of the 40,000 square foot lab space and the broader research park vision Barak describes.Quantum Innovation Hub Director appointment — Prof. Jason Petta named to lead the QIH, one of the founding anchors of the research park.Key Quotes & InsightsOn patient capital in hardware: "You're producing a new chip… all of a sudden a year and a half has passed." Barak's example of a photonics company that spent two years solving a flex connector problem is a useful ground truth for anyone modeling quantum hardware timelines.On the role of universities: Industry has scale — the ability to throw 500 engineers at a problem. Academia brings "the quiet depth to think very deeply about a problem over an extended period of time, two or three generations ahead."On resource estimates: The gap between the original 20-million-qubit Shor's estimates and the recent Google Quantum AI paper suggesting ~500,000 physical qubits on superconducting hardware, plus Oratomic's neutral-atom approach at the ten-thousand-qubit scale, represents a genuine compression of the fault-tolerance horizon.On the underappreciated Google paper: An April 8 paper on using quantum processors to reduce memory requirements for massive classical data sets is, in Barak's view, the first rigorous demonstration that quantum could bend the exponential curve of AI compute demand.On government's role: "Typically in the U.S., government is not the best at picking the winners and losers in the marketplace. But it's great at enabling." The El Segund...

Most voice AI startups today are thin wrappers on someone else's models. Ayooluwa Odemuyiwa went the opposite direction and built the entire stack.In this episode, Justin sits down with the CTO and co-founder of Aethex AI, who along with co-founder Mariama is building the voice layer for emerging markets across Africa and the Middle East. This is the AI that banks, call centers, and telcos use to reach the customers a human team never could, and it's already running 17,000 calls a day.Ayooluwa takes us through her path from Caltech physics to Meta to Stanford to founder, and unpacks the decision that defines the company: in her markets, you aren't competing against other software, you're competing against the cost of human labor. That single reality is why Aethex owns everything from data collection to model serving to deployment, so they can pull every lever on cost and latency.We also get into why building for the harder market first reveals things a Western-first founder never sees, how the forward deployed engineer became their most valuable role, and why in a market this new, what you're really selling is trust.A conversation about infrastructure, conviction, and betting on the markets everyone else overlooked.

In this episode of the NVus Alien Podcast, Heather Woodward begins a three-part investigation into the mysterious deaths and disappearances of eleven scientists whose work spanned aerospace engineering, plasma physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biomedical research. After spending more than three months researching publicly available information, Heather examines a series of cases that have fueled speculation across the internet while separating documented facts from unanswered questions. Rather than presenting conclusions, this series explores recurring themes, timelines, and scientific fields that appear throughout these cases. Part One focuses on five individuals whose work intersected with organizations including NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Caltech, MIT, and Novartis.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/nvus-alien--4798594/support.

This is a crossover episode with Alf Beckinsale, an Oxford University student who hosts the Seeking Truth From Facts podcast. The main topics are the US-Iran conflict, geopolitics, and US-China AI competition.Chapter Markers:(00:00) - Introduction (02:33) - No Off Ramp in Gulf (04:11) - Missile Stockpile Crisis (06:46) - Oil Shock and Reserves (14:07) - Israel Stays Out (29:34) - China Frontier AI Surge (43:25) - World War and Nukes –Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve. Announcing this for some friends at Mechanize - a startup that builds environments for training and evaluating frontier LLMs. Its customers include the top AI labs, and it has contributed to the breakthrough in coding capabilities of frontier models. Mechanize is hiring! https://mechanize.work/b/hsu Compensation is extremely competitive. For technical roles, $300-500k. They are also seeking smart generalists. For example: Research Engineer, Alignment: Build evals that test for misaligned model behaviors  $500K salary Puzzle Maker: Design interesting and original puzzles that LLMs can't yet solve  $300K salary Mechanize understands that my readership is highly selected. There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE you will be interviewed if you apply via the link above.

Listen Now to 019 WTFuture N:OW Watch 019 WTFuture N:OW This week you are in for a ride through space, bizarre weather, and cool  tech with the likes of us! We kick things off by unraveling the mystery behind strangely tropical, Hawaiian-like July weather, linking it to intense solar activity, hyperactive sunspots, and massive coronal holes that might even be triggering earthquakes along the Pacific Ring of Fire. From there, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Viking 1 Mars landing, diving deep into the spicy, decades-long scientific drama over whether its infamous labeled release experiment actually discovered alien microbes half a century ago. We use the AI’s to animate  the  “panspermia” theory that humanity’s primordial ancestors might have been blasted off the Red Planet on meteorites and hitched a ride to Earth. And then it’s back to Earth, where we look at how “monster” AI models—like China’s 2.8-trillion-parameter Kimi K3 and smartphone-sized powerhouses like Caltech’s Bonsai 27B—are completely shattering the large data centers via phone sized AI’s.  Bobby explores how immortal billionaire AI avatars will soon run corporations, or if future silicon-based lifeforms will simply view humanity as a “carbon infestation”, as in the first Star Trek movie. Sun explores the Future of Freedom, humans and AI’s in terms of property rights. Toss in a scandalous, legendary anecdote about John McAfee and a creativity conference in Hollywood and you have a must-listen episode that will leave you with some new insights into what’s now with the future and some great links to explore. Enjoy.

Longer life is changing what people over 50 expect from medicine, themselves, and the decades ahead. In this encore episode, Dr. Michael Roizen argues that aging is increasingly shaped by informed choices, while the current culture surrounding longevity struggles to separate useful evidence from expensive fads.Roizen examines the science behind epigenetic switches, protein cycling, metformin, stem cells, cardiovascular risk, and balance. The conversation offers a practical framework for evaluating new claims, protecting physical and cognitive function, and asking better questions before adopting a new treatment or supplement.Join Us at the 2026 Super Age Games! Visit games.superage.com to learn more.Special Thanks to Our SponsorsTrue Nutrition: Stop settling for what's on the shelf and build the protein blend that fits your lifestyle at truenutrition.com/AGEIST and use code AGEIST for 20% off your first custom blend.LMNT Electrolytes: Try the all-new Lemonade Iced Tea! Our #1 electrolytes for optimal hydration. Get a free 8-count Sample Pack of LMNT's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase by using our link here. Find your favorite LMNT flavor, or share with a friend.Timeline Nutrition: Our favorite supplement for cell support and mitochondrial function. Listeners can now get 20% off their first Timeline purchase by using the code “AGEIST” at checkout at TimelineNutrition.com/ageist.Key Moments“You're a better genetic engineer for you than anyone else who went to Caltech or MIT.”"Stressing the muscle not only repairs the muscle, but it turns on a gene that produces a small protein, which gets to the brain and makes the brain bigger. That's why physical activity, we think, is so good for memory.""Can we make a hundred year old person a 40 year old person? In other words, can we extend the period of life between when you're most productive, your 40s to 60s, to being between 40 and 90? And that's where a lot of the aging mechanism research is going."Connect With Dr. RoizenCleveland Clinic InstagramLinkedInXFacebookBook: The Great Age RebootConnect with AGEISTNewsletterInstagramWebsiteLinkedInClick Here for the full interview transcript.Say hi to the AGEIST team!

How does the brain transform the physical world into the rich inner experience we call reality? Singer-songwriter Debbii Dawson joins Caltech neuroscientist Dr. Daw-An Wu for a conversation inspired by her songs "Where Have All the Good Men Gone" and "Chemical Attraction." Together they explore psychophysics, the science of perception, asking how illusion, consciousness, free will, love, and even spirituality emerge from the brain's interpretation of the world around us. From medullas to panpsychism, this wide-ranging discussion examines the mysterious space where objective reality becomes subjective experience.

Sujit Datta, head of Caltech's "Squishy Lab", describes how bacteria behave in fluid such as mucous and lead to infection.

Steve discusses the state of AI in summer 2026. Topics covered include: AI in math and theoretical physics, Recursive Self-Improvement, Agent swarms and tokenomics, IPOs and US-China competition, documentary film Machine God.Machine God trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RSv3wmDIpYTheoretical Physics with Generative AI: https://stevehsu.substack.com/p/theoretical-physics-with-generativeChapter Markers:(00:00) - State of AI, Summer 2026 (02:39) - AI in Math Physics (13:54) - Recursive Self-Improvement (21:08) - DeepSeek Hyperconnections (29:42) - Agent Swarms and Tokenomics (43:26) - Machine God Documentary –Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve. Announcing this for some friends at Mechanize - a startup that builds environments for training and evaluating frontier LLMs. Its customers include the top AI labs, and it has contributed to the breakthrough in coding capabilities of frontier models. Mechanize is hiring! https://mechanize.work/b/hsu Compensation is extremely competitive. For technical roles, $300-500k. They are also seeking smart generalists. For example: Research Engineer, Alignment: Build evals that test for misaligned model behaviors  $500K salary Puzzle Maker: Design interesting and original puzzles that LLMs can't yet solve  $300K salary Mechanize understands that my readership is highly selected. There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE you will be interviewed if you apply via the link above.

The latest on the Summit Fire burning in the Antelope Valley. Rosebud Academy, a charter school in Altadena that was lost to the Eaton Fire, hosts a big comedy fundraise to help rebuild. Did you know that Caltech has a marine lab in Orange County -- and it's open to the public? Plus more. Support The L.A. Report by donating at LAist.com/join and by visiting https://laist.comSupport the show: https://laist.com

Welcome to Episode 315 of Autism Parenting Secrets. When we think about chronic illness, it's easy to focus on the diagnosis. But what if the diagnosis is only the visible expression of a much deeper systems problem? After her husband John was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, Martha Carlin refused to settle for symptom management alone.  Instead, she spent years studying nutrition, toxic exposures, and the gut microbiome, eventually uncovering important connections between Parkinson's, autism, and many other chronic conditions. Our conversation explores why so many families may be missing beneficial microbes, how modern life has disrupted our internal ecosystem, why testing can provide valuable insights when interpreted correctly, and what practical steps parents can take to begin restoring microbial balance. Whether your child has autism or another complex condition, this episode offers a fresh way to think about health by focusing on root causes instead of symptoms. The secret this week is… Restore the Missing Microbes You'll Discover: Why systems thinking changed everything for Martha (2:07) Why missing microbes matter more than you think (8:34) How to think about microbiome testing (10:40) Why C-section births can influence early microbial development (24:45) What makes a probiotic more than just another supplement (29:17) About Our Guest: Martha Carlin is a scientist, microbiome innovator, systems thinker, founder of BiotiQuest and The BioCollective, and author of Connected: Love, Loss, and the Unseen Forces Behind Chronic Disease. After her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, Martha left a successful corporate career to better understand the biological roots of chronic illness. Her work explores how disruptions in the gut microbiome contribute to inflammation, insulin resistance, neurological decline, and other chronic conditions. She founded BiotiQuest, a science-based probiotic company, and developed Sugar Shift, a patented probiotic clinically shown to reduce endotoxin levels and improve insulin sensitivity. She also partners with Ancient Organics Biosciences, helping bridge soil health and human health through innovative microbial solutions. Martha has collaborated with researchers at Caltech, the University of Chicago, and University College Cork. She has received a $1.2 million NIH grant, spoken at the White House Microbiome Initiative, delivered a widely viewed TEDx talk, and currently serves as a Research Fellow at the Australian National University. References in this Episode: Connected: Love, Loss, and the Unseen Forces Behind Chronic Disease by Martha Carlin (book and bonuses) Connected: Love, Loss, and the Unseen Forces Behind Chronic Disease by Martha Carlin (Amazon Digital) BiotiQuest (use code ALLIN for 10% off) The BioCollective Martha's Quest (Substack) Missing Microbes by Dr. Martin Blaser Dr. Terry Wahls and the Wahls Protocol Tiny Health Genova Diagnostics Additional Resources: To learn more about personalized 1:1 support go to www.elevatehowyounavigate.com If you enjoyed this episode, share it with your friends.

AI and Generative Biology: Authoring Life, Redesigning Healthcare, and Building Guardrails: Physician and molecular biologist Dr. Adrian Woolfson, co-founder of Genyro, a biotechnology company specializing in synthetic genome design and construction, and author of “On the Future of Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence,” discusses the convergence of AI with synthetic/generative biology that could make biology programmable and enable genome design and construction beyond traditional gene editing. Woolfson argues that the technology is morally neutral but is arriving rapidly and requires public awareness, governance, and guardrails due to risks, including misuse by authoritarian regimes and biological warfare. He discusses evolution's trade-offs and why he favors limiting human applications to curing disease and extending healthy longevity, while opposing germline modification; he explains germline vs somatic editing and cites the flawed, unethical case of a Chinese scientist attempting inherited HIV resistance. They examine sickle cell disease cures costing $2–$3 million, scalability issues, and trade-offs like malaria protection, and highlight non-medical benefits such as engineered crops, biomaterials, desalination, and DNA-based information storage.

Watch the show on television by downloading the SuperCrowd.tv Channel app to your Roku or Amazon Fire TV and e360tv channel app to your Roku, LG or Amazon Fire TV. You can also see it on YouTube.Devin: What is your superpower?Daniel: Combination of curiosity and humility.What if a single treatment could extend the length and quality of your life—or the lives of your beloved pets? Daniel Oliver, Co-Founder and CEO of Rejuvenate Bio, believes it's possible and is already making it a reality. Rejuvenate Bio has developed a breakthrough approach, beginning with pets, to address multiple chronic diseases with one therapy.“We actually have taken the wealth of aging science that's out there,” Daniel explained, “and have been able to turn them into one-time therapies. Effectively, we're able to inject a patient—whether it's a dog, a cat, or a human—and the data suggests we can treat multiple different diseases.”Daniel shared his excitement about testing these therapies on animals, highlighting initial successes with several high-profile pharmaceutical companies, including Merck's animal health division, which has also invested in the company. Early results show these treatments not only improve health outcomes but also have the potential to be safe, accessible, and affordable.Unlike traditional gene therapies for humans, which can cost millions, Rejuvenate Bio's approach for animals carries a dramatically lower price tag. “We've reduced the manufacturing costs to the point where we can treat chronic, lifetime diseases at around $100 per dose,” Daniel said. This affordability has broad implications for human treatments too, ensuring accessibility beyond just the wealthy elite.Beyond the practical applications, the mission of Rejuvenate Bio is deeply human. Chronic diseases, Daniel noted, account for enormous healthcare costs and significant suffering. He envisions a future where people and pets alike can experience more healthy years together. “What if,” he posed, “instead of a laundry list of side effects, new treatments came with a list of novel benefits?”Rejuvenate Bio is currently hosting an equity crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder, inviting anyone to invest and be part of their journey. This move aligns with Daniel's vision of building a community of supporters who share the mission. “We want folks to come in, become evangelists for our technology, and grow with us,” he said.tl;dr:Daniel Oliver discusses Rejuvenate Bio's one-time treatments for pets to extend healthy lives.The therapies have shown promise for treating chronic diseases in animals and potentially humans.Daniel shares Rejuvenate Bio's affordability strategy: manufacturing doses for as low as $100.Rejuvenate Bio's recent partnerships with Merck and a live Wefunder campaign expand their impact.Daniel explains how curiosity and humility fuel his leadership at Rejuvenate Bio, emphasizing collaboration.Daniel's company offers exciting hope—not just for the families whose pets will lead healthier lives, but for society as it considers how this innovation could reshape human healthcare.How to Develop Curiosity and Humility As a SuperpowerDaniel attributes his success to a combination of curiosity and humility. “When you're doing these types of startup companies, you're never going to come to the table with all the skills and experiences you need,” Daniel said. His curiosity drives him to seek knowledge and advice, while his humility allows him to admit there is always more to learn. By embracing these values, Daniel has built an adaptable, reflective leadership style that encourages innovation and resilience.Daniel's humility and curiosity were tested during his time at Caltech, where the demanding academics overwhelmed him. He learned to collaborate with peers and seek help from teaching assistants to overcome challenges. “The homework problems were not something I could accomplish alone,” he admitted, emphasizing how teamwork and the willingness to learn built his resilience. This experience taught him to embrace failure as a learning opportunity—something he carries into his leadership at Rejuvenate Bio.Tips for Developing This SuperpowerDiscipline Yourself to Listen: Focus on understanding the full message rather than preparing an immediate response.Be Open to Feedback: Acknowledge that there's always a better way and commit to continuous improvement.Embrace Collaboration: Recognize that achieving great things often requires the strengths of a team.Seek Expertise: Learn from others with specialized knowledge, even when you succeed.Live and Learn: Foster a culture where risk-taking is encouraged and failures become growth opportunities.By following Daniel's example and advice, you can make curiosity and humility a skill. With practice and effort, you could make it a superpower that enables you to do more good in the world.Remember, however, that research into success suggests that building on your own superpowers is more important than creating new ones or overcoming weaknesses. You do you!Guest ProfileDaniel Oliver (he/him):Co-Founder & CEO, Rejuvenate BioAbout Rejuvenate Bio: Rejuvenate Bio is targeting the core drivers of chronic age-related diseases by unlocking the power of gene expression and epigenetic reprogramming to reverse pre-existing heart disease, metabolic disease, and kidney failure in humans.Website: rejuvenatebio.comCompany Facebook Page: facebook.com/RejuvenatebioCompany Twitter/X Handle: @rejuvenatebioLinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/company/rejuvenate-bioOther URL: wefunder.com/rejuvenatebioBiographical Information: Daniel Oliver is a biotechnology entrepreneur and gene therapy innovator dedicated to transforming breakthrough aging science into life-changing therapies for animals and people. As Co-Founder and CEO of Rejuvenate Bio, a company spun out of Harvard Medical School and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, he is leading the development of one-shot gene therapies that target the root causes of age-related cardiac and metabolic diseases. Under his leadership, Rejuvenate Bio has secured significant equity and non-dilutive funding, advanced novel gene therapy platforms toward clinical development, and established strategic partnerships with leading animal health companies to accelerate innovation in both veterinary and human medicine.Before founding Rejuvenate Bio, Daniel co-founded Voxel8, a pioneering 3D printing company that raised more than $14 million, launched groundbreaking products, and was ultimately acquired by Kornit Digital. Voxel8 earned widespread recognition, including being named one of MIT Technology Review's “50 Smartest Companies” and a Top 9 Innovation at CES. Daniel also serves as an Entrepreneur in Residence at University of California, San Diego, where he mentors researchers and founders in commercializing breakthrough technologies. A graduate of Harvard Business School and California Institute of Technology, he combines deep scientific expertise with entrepreneurial leadership to bring cutting-edge biotechnology from the laboratory to the marketplace.LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/danielcoliverSupport Our SponsorsOur generous sponsors make our work possible, serving impact investors, social entrepreneurs, community builders and diverse founders. Today's advertisers include Cineblock Films and Climatize. Learn more about advertising with us here.Max-Impact Members(We're grateful for every one of these community champions who make this work possible.)Brian Christie, Brainsy | Cameron Neil, Lend For Good | Carol Fineagan, Independent Consultant | Hiten Sonpal, RISE Robotics | John Berlet, CORE Tax Deeds, LLC. | Justin Starbird, The Aebli Group | Lory Moore, Lory Moore Law | Marcia Brinton, High Desert Gear | Mark Grimes, Networked Enterprise Development | Matthew Mead, Hempitecture | Michael Pratt, Qnetic | Mike Babbit | Coledger Solutions | Mike Green, Envirosult | Nick Degnan, Unlimit Ventures | Dr. Nicole Paulk, Siren Biotechnology | Paul Lovejoy, Stakeholder Enterprise | Pearl Wright, Global Changemaker | Scott Thorpe, Philanthropist | Sharon Samjitsingh, Health Care Originals | Add Your Name HereUpcoming SuperCrowd Event CalendarIf a location is not noted, the events below are virtual.Join the SuperCrowd Impact League! You can be recognized for making impact investments via Reg CF. See how your activity compares to your peers. It's free. Win valuable prizes. Start now!SuperCrowd Impact Member Networking Session: Impact (and, of course, Max-Impact) Members of the SuperCrowd are invited to a private networking session on July 14th at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT. Mark your calendar. We'll send private emails to Impact Members with registration details. Upgrade to Impact Membership today!SuperCrowdHour, July 15, 2026, at 12:00 PM Eastern. Devin Thorpe, CEO and Founder of The Super Crowd, Inc., will lead a session on “How to Make a Splash With Your Campaign Launch.” Drawing on his extensive experience helping entrepreneurs and impact-driven founders succeed in investment crowdfunding, Devin will share proven strategies for creating momentum and attracting attention when launching a crowdfunding campaign. In this session, he'll explore how founders can prepare for a successful launch, build excitement before going live, engage their networks effectively, and generate the early traction that often determines long-term campaign success. Attendees will learn practical tactics for storytelling, outreach, media engagement, and community building, along with common mistakes that can limit visibility and investor interest. Whether you're preparing for your first crowdfunding raise or looking to improve the performance of a future campaign, this SuperCrowdHour will provide actionable insights to help you launch with confidence and maximize your campaign's impact from day one. Register now!SuperCrowd26 featuring PurposeBuilt100™: This August 25–27, founders, investors, and ecosystem leaders will gather for a three-day, broadcast-quality global experience focused on disciplined capital formation, regulated investment crowdfunding, and purpose-driven growth. We're bringing together leading voices in impact investing, compliance, digital marketing, and circular economy innovation to deliver practical frameworks, real-world case studies, and actionable strategies. The event culminates in the PurposeBuilt100™ Showcase, recognizing 100 of the fastest-growing purpose-driven companies in the U.S. Register now to secure your seat and get all the details. August 25–27, streaming worldwide.Community Event CalendarSuccessful Funding with Karl Dakin, Tuesdays at 10:00 AM ET - Click on Events.Register Now! October 20th and 21st will be the Crowdfunding Professional Association Regulated Investment Crowdfunding Summit for 2026. This is the event of the year for everyone in the crowdfunding ecosystem.If you would like to submit an event for us to share with the 10,000+ changemakers, investors and entrepreneurs who are members of the SuperCrowd, click here.Manage the volume of emails you receive from us by clicking here.We share educational information—not investment advice. Some links may generate compensation. See our full disclosure.We use AI to help us write compelling recaps of each episode. Get full access to Superpowers for Good at www.superpowers4good.com/subscribe

The lottery is one of the few games where everyone knows the odds are terrible—and millions of people play anyway. Why? It turns out there are some fascinating psychological reasons people buy lottery tickets, along with a few surprising facts about the odds and strategies that most players never consider. https://www.wired.com/video/watch/lottery-strategy When Uber launched, many people thought the idea was ridiculous. Let strangers drive you around in their personal cars? Airbnb faced similar skepticism. Why would anyone stay in a stranger's house? Yet these companies went on to reshape entire industries. The same is true of Twitter, Twitch, and many other breakthrough businesses. What separates ideas that change the world from ideas that never get off the ground? According to venture capitalist Mike Maples Jr., truly transformative companies don't succeed by being slightly better than the competition—they succeed by seeing the world differently. In this conversation, Mike explains the patterns behind history's most disruptive startups, why the best ideas often sound wrong at first, and what it takes to build something that changes the future. Mike is co-founder of Floodgate, one of Silicon Valley's premier seed-stage investment firms, host of the podcast Starting Greatness (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/starting-greatness/id1488560647), and author of Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future (https://amzn.to/3W8BXlT). Black holes may be the most mysterious objects in the universe. Their gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape. Yet despite their reputation as cosmic vacuum cleaners, black holes do much more than simply swallow things. In fact, astronomers now believe that the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy may have played a critical role in making life on Earth possible. How can something so destructive also be so important? Why does nearly every galaxy appear to have a supermassive black hole at its center? And what have scientists learned recently that is forcing them to rethink these extraordinary objects? Marcus Chown, former radio astronomer at Caltech and author of A Crack in Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage (https://amzn.to/3W9cFUE), takes us on a fascinating tour of one of the strangest and most important discoveries in modern science. Most people rely on sunscreen as their primary defense against skin cancer—and for good reason. Yet skin cancer rates continue to rise. Researchers are increasingly discovering that sun protection may involve more than what you put on your skin. Emerging evidence suggests that what you put on your plate could also influence how your skin responds to the sun. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/well/eat/diet-skin-cancer-risk-melanoma.html PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS AIR DOCTOR: Head to ⁠⁠⁠https://AirDoctorPro.com⁠⁠⁠ and use promo code SYSK to get $250 off select AirDoctor air purifiers, including the 3500, 4000, and 5500 models. Plus, you'll receive a free 3year warranty!  RULA: Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: It's time to turn those "what ifs" into CHA CHING with Shopify Today! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sylvia finally finds a way to escape the life she believes is holding her back, but freedom proves far stranger than she imagined. As she drifts farther from the people who love her, she faces a frightening question: what if the life she abandoned no longer wants her back? The Good Life by John R. Pierce. That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast. What is the guy who invented the term transistor doing on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast? Well it turns out that John Robinson Pierce who was born in 1910 in Des Moines Iowa wasn't just a brainiac electrical engineer. He graduated from CalTech, worked at Bell Labs, came up with the term transistor and according to the National Inventors Hall of Fame Pierce invented the first communications satellite. He was granted over 90 patents, and was awarded the Edison Medal, and the National Medal of Science. And he was a science fiction author in his spare time with 19 stories to his credit from 1930 to 1973. Four of those stories were published under the pen name J. J. Coupling as was today's story which can be found on page 59 in the February 1952 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Good Life by John R. Pierce… Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, A lone Briton fleeing murderous outlaws stumbles into a hidden world beneath the forests of ancient Britain, where an older people still remember every stolen homeland and every dead king. One act of mercy may be the only thing standing between Cororuc and a vengeance that has burned in darkness for centuries. The Lost Race by Robert E. Howard. Lost Sci-Fi Premium - https://lostscifi.supercast.com/ Buy Me a Coffee - https://lostscifi.com/coffee =========================== Newsletter - https://lostscifi.com/free/ Facebook - https://lostscifi.com/facebook YouTube - https://lostscifi.com/youtube X - http://Lostscifi.com/x Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lostscifiguy Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/lostscifipodcast.bsky.social Merchandise - https://lostscifi.creator-spring.com/ =========================== Thanks to Our Listeners Who Bought Us a Coffee $200 Someone $100 Tony from the Future $75 James Van Maanenberg $50 James Van Maanenberg, MizzBassie, Anonymous Listener $25 Fintan Quigley, Curious Jon, David Bell, Steve, Miriam, Someone, Someone, Eaten by a Grue, Jeff Lussenden, Fred Sieber, Anne, Craig Hamilton, Dave Wiseman, Bromite Thrip, Marwin de Haan, Future Space Engineer, Fressie, Kevin Eckert, Stephen Kagan, James Van Maanenberg, Irma Stolfo, Josh Jennings, Leber8tr, Conrad Chaffee, Anonymous Listener $15 Every Month Someone $15 Steve, Someone, SueTheLibrarian, Joannie West, Amy Özkan, Someone, Carolyn Guthleben, Patrick McLendon, Curious Jon, Buz C., Fressie, Anonymous Listener $10 David, Anonymous Listener $5 Every Month Eaten by a Grue $5 Tammy, Owen, Bruce, Someone, TLD, David, Denis Kalinin, Timothy Buckley, Andre'a, Martin Brown, Ron McFarlan, Tif Love, Chrystene, Richard Hoffman, Anonymous Listener Listen without commercials and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes every month with Lost Sci-Fi Premium—start your free 7-day trial today. https://lostscifi.supercast.com/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For a few terrifying hours in the summer of 1955, two Kentucky families emptied their guns into small, glowing creatures that swarmed their farmhouse and simply would not die — and to this day, no one agrees on whether they fought off aliens, owls, or something the mind conjured out of the dark.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/kellyhopkinsvilleREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p86wb4mFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: It's considered one of the most bizarre and convincing extraterrestrial events ever reported… we'll look at the alien encounter in 1955's Hopkinsville, Kentucky that was experienced by two terrified families. (The Hopkinsville Encounter) *** In the deep jungles of the Congo, natives tell of a giant creature that, once described, sounds exactly like a long-necked dinosaur. But how could this be? And is it pure legend? Perhaps not, as one noted biologist from the area saw it with his own eyes and reported it. We'll look at the supposed real sighting of Mokele-Mbembe, the living dinosaur of the Congo! (Dinosaur Observed In The Congo) *** Running a club during prohibition was extremely lucrative… and extremely dangerous, as one Theodore Lakoff would've learned… had he been awake when he was murdered. (The Mysterious Death of Theodore Lakoff) *** Benjamin Franklin was known not just as one of the father's of the United States of America, but also as an inventor, a womanizer, and a man with a bit of an ornery streak in him – as is evidenced by a series of letters he wrote to the New England Courant, where he pretended to be a woman. (Who Was Mrs. Silence Dogood?) *** The internet is a vital part of modern life. Without web access, all kinds of businesses and jobs would be unable to function. So, as you can imagine, there are plenty of people who would love to see the internet crumble. And many have tried. (Taking Down The World Wide Web) *** In 1983 sightings poured in from people on the California coast who claim they saw a sea monster. (The California Sea Monster)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:10.244 = Show Open00:03:40.994 = The Hopkinsville Encounter00:13:15.837 = Dinosaur Observed in the Congo ***00:27:07.561 = Taking Down The World Wide Web ***00:36:42.752 = The Mysterious Death of Theodor Lakoff00:43:15.319 = Who Was Mrs. Silence Dogood?00:49:11.286 = The California Sea Monster00:55:29.517 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Hopkinsville Encounter” by Hannah Collins for Ranker.com's Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yp8pnfx7“Dinosaur Observed in the Congo” by Richard Greenwell for the ISC Newsletter: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc3r3mpp“The Mysterious Death of Theodore Lakoff” by Kathi Kresol for HauntedRockford.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ku5x3cat“Who Was Mrs. Silence Dogood?” by Bipin Dimri for HistoricMysteries.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p868eac“Taking Down the World Wide Web” by Benjamin Thomas for ListVerse.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/c85j5cau“The California Sea Monster” by Malcom Smith for Malcom's Cryptids: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc2wts7h(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: December, 2021Weird Darkness pulls together a farmhouse siege by little gray creatures in Kentucky, a biologist's claimed sighting of a living dinosaur in the Congo, decades of attempts to knock the internet offline, an unsolved Prohibition murder in Illinois, a teenage Benjamin Franklin's literary hoax, and a hundred-foot sea serpent sighted off the California coast.It opens on August 21, 1955, when Billy Ray Taylor stepped out to the well at Glennie Lankford's farmhouse in Kelly, outside Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and watched a bright object drop behind the trees. Two families spent the night barricaded indoors, firing a 12-gauge shotgun and a .22 rifle at short gray creatures with spindly legs and glowing eyes that peered through windows and swiped at Taylor from the roof, yet the buckshot rang off them like sheet metal before they floated away unharmed. Skeptics later blamed an aggressive great horned owl or a green glow of bioluminescent foxfire, while the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book dismissed the case as a hoax and filed it under C.P., for crackpot.From there the episode reaches the Likouala swamps of the People's Republic of the Congo, where in 1983 biologist Marcellin Agnagna became the first trained scientist to claim he had seen Mokele-Mbembe, the long-necked animal described as a surviving dinosaur for over two centuries. At remote Lake Télé on May 1, 1983, he watched a creature with a long neck, small head, and broad back rising some fifteen feet above the water, judged it a Mesozoic sauropod, and waded out to film it — only to find he had left the lens cap on, and his last roll of film later developed black.Next comes a survey of attempts to knock the internet offline since Tim Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web. A man named Liu in Weifang, China tore apart four China Telecom junction boxes in 2016 to bury footage of himself joining a public "granny dance," while the Mirai botnet's 2016 assault on the firm Dyn took down Twitter, Netflix, and CNN, and Cornell student Robert Tappan Morris had loosed the first such attack by accident in 1988. It ends on Seth Aaron Pendley, a Texas man arrested in 2021 for plotting to blow up a Virginia data center with C-4 in hopes of crippling most of the web.The show then drops back to January 1931, when roadhouse owner Theodore Lakoff was shot once through the top of the head as he slept in his own Rockford, Illinois resort, a Prohibition den of liquor, gambling, and women he ran under the alias Tony Evanoff. His wallet lay emptied while far more cash sat untouched, and suspicion fell on twenty-year-old Viola Hunsficker, said to be extorting him, until ballistics cleared the pistol found in her apartment. Investigators then turned up five other women who each believed she was his only sweetheart, and the killing was never solved.Then it reaches back to 1722 Boston, where a witty widow named Silence Dogood published letters in the New England Courant skewering religious hypocrisy, Harvard, and fashion, charming readers so thoroughly that several men wrote in offering to marry her. She was the invention of sixteen-year-old Benjamin Franklin, an apprentice in his brother James's print shop who slipped the letters under the door at night for six months before revealing himself, then carried his taste for hoaxes to Philadelphia and a fabricated 1730 account of a Mount Holly witch trial.The episode closes off the California coast, where on October 31, 1983 a highway crew above Stinson Beach watched a dark, slender animal roughly a hundred feet long swim toward shore, trailed by about a hundred birds and two dozen sea lions. Crew member Matt Ratto described three humps rising straight from the water before a head lifted to look around, and days later, near Costa Mesa, a surfer named Young Hutchinson reported a long black eel-like animal with no dorsal fins surfacing ten feet from his board — though a Caltech spokesman offered that the witnesses might have seen a whale or a line of porpoises.

‘Podcasting Democracy' Helps Constitution Come to Life for Teens As America gets ready to celebrate its 250th birthday, a new project called Podcasting Democracy is helping high school and middle school students engage with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Participants created a series of audio commentaries connecting how those founding documents still affect their lives today, and how they can use constitutional principles to create positive change in their own communities.The curriculum is free and available to teachers nationwide. It was written by KQED Education's Rachel Roberson, who along with 17-year-old student Eumari King Perez sat down with host Sasha Khokha to talk about the project. Time-Traveling Rock Opera Celebrates Pasadena A new time traveling rock opera called Pasadena Right Here, Right Now imagines the city's distant past, its far-off future and its fire-scarred present. Composer Russell Mark spent a year talking to dozens of locals from Pasadena and Altadena, who helped inspire the opera's storyline. It begins in the Pasadena of the future. In the year 2125, a professor at Caltech develops a time machine to travel back to 2025 Pasadena. As reporter Steven Cuevas tells us, the multi-part song cycle blends rock instrumentation with chamber music, to create a love letter to the region.  Long Beach Man Faces Deportation to a  Country He's Never Seen⁠ Since President Trump took office, his Administration has talked about deporting criminals,  even as they've mostly detained immigrants with no criminal background. But exactly who are those immigrants President Trump is calling the “worst of the worst?” KCRW's Andrew Lopez met one Long Beach man who, despite spending the last 10 years turning his life around, is now facing a future in a new country— a place he's never been.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Latest edition of The Pod, we talk college baseball with Shotgun Spratling of D1 Baseball and Justin Johnson, as he talks about the JJ Baseball Advisory. Video version also available, via YouTube. SHOTGUN SPRATLING 1:52 New National Champion in College Baseball 5:00 Adjustments made by Skip Johnson enroute to the Title. 6:42 Popularity of College Baseball in the Southeast/West Coast 8:00 West Virginia and Troy hosting Super Regionals 9:20 Top Teams Stumbling in Regionals 11:00 UCLA Exit 12:10 Georgia Tech Exit 13:50 Should USC have hosted a Regional? 17:36 Did playing in the Big 10 hurt UCLA in Post Season? 19:15 MLB Draft Proposal 21:21 Does proposed model hurt college baseball? 23:30 Winning in College Baseball vs. Development in Pro Ball 25:45 New Model – All about the money? 27:28 NCAA/USA Soccer Proposal 29:30 MLB vs NBA Draft Model 31:21 Baseball Draft Decisions 32:30 Talent Evaluation from College to Pro 34:00 Opinions about MLB Proposal among college coaches 35:20 Is Proposal a lockout or strategic? JUSTIN JOHNSON 36:43 Introduction 37:03 What is the Johnson Baseball Advisory 40:52 Justin Johnson Career Trajectory at UCR 42:36 Relationship with Troy Percival 44:20 New MLB Draft Proposal 47:00 Development vs. NIL in College 48:10 NCAA Passes 5 for 5 Rule 49:10 Managing Rosters with proposed new roles 50:24 How does the Five-Year window translate academically? 51:50 Players Getting Drafted - APR - Going To Class/Graduating 53:48 College Baseball - Academic Side 55:58 Coaching Baseball at Cal Tech 58:38 Johnson Baseball Advisory

Beff Jezos (Guillaume Verdon) is a Canadian physicist, quantum computing researcher, and tech entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder of the Effective Accelerationism (e/acc) movement.This interview was recorded in collaboration with John Greer and Lei Huang for the documentary film Machine God.John Greer: https://www.johncgreer.com/Chapter Markers:(00:00) - Meet Beff Jezos (01:56) - Hyperstition vs AI Doom (21:29) - Accelerate or Die (37:51) - Scaling Intelligence Upside (40:26) - Doomers Power Centralization (47:17) - EAC Physics Framework (01:10:10) - Debating Doom Narratives (01:16:13) - Beff Jezos Origin Story (01:28:06) - Pause Debate and Rapid Fire –Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve. Announcing this for some friends at Mechanize - a startup that builds environments for training and evaluating frontier LLMs. Its customers include the top AI labs, and it has contributed to the breakthrough in coding capabilities of frontier models. Mechanize is hiring! https://mechanize.work/b/hsu Compensation is extremely competitive. For technical roles, $300-500k. They are also seeking smart generalists. For example: Research Engineer, Alignment: Build evals that test for misaligned model behaviors  $500K salary Puzzle Maker: Design interesting and original puzzles that LLMs can't yet solve  $300K salary Mechanize understands that my readership is highly selected. There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE you will be interviewed if you apply via the link above.

Send us Fan MailAs America approaches its 250th anniversary, Brendan welcomes Dr. Anthony Rizzi for an extended presentation on the philosophical foundations of the American experiment.Drawing from his work on natural law, philosophy, and the history of America's founding, Dr. Rizzi shares his perspective on why America's enduring strength lies in its founding principles. Throughout the episode, he explores the relationship between truth, reason, nature, faith, and the intellectual tradition of the Church, while arguing that recovering these first principles is essential for America's future.In This EpisodeWhy Dr. Rizzi believes America's founding principles are rooted in natural lawThe relationship between nature, reason, and Christian revelationHis critique of modern culture and what he calls "scientism"Why truth should be at the center of Catholic intellectual lifeHis vision for renewing American culture by recovering first principlesLearn MoreDont miss "Holding These Truths Again: Reclaiming Our Founding Principles" featuring Dr. Rizzi airing on EWTN July 2nd at 8pm CT (9pm ET). Learn more at IAPweb.org/America See trailer: IAPweb.org/holding-these-truthsAbout Dr. Anthony RizziAnthony Rizzi, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Advanced Physics, gained worldwide recognition in theoretical physics by solving an 80-year-old problem in Einstein's theory. He has physics degrees from MIT and Princeton University; has been senior scientist for Caltech's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), whose work contributed to the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics; taught graduate courses at Louisiana State University; worked on the Manned Mars Craft and the Mars Observer spacecraft; and received both the NASA Award and the Martin Marietta New Technology Award.He is the author of The Science Before Science: A Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century and A Kid's Introduction to Physics (and Beyond). In addition to numerous professional articles, he authored the Physics for Realists series: Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, and Quantum Mechanics. The first two volumes were recommended by the American Association of Physics Teachers, and his recent work includes groundbreaking contributions to quantum mechanics.Dr. Rizzi is also recognized for his work in history, particularly his articles on America's founding principles, which have drawn praise from scholars and contributed to discussions on the philosophical and Christian roots of the American experiment. Support the show

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Aditya Rajagopal, co-founder and CEO of Esperto Medical.Esperto is a Caltech spin-out utilizing compressed sensing technology with ultrasound to continuously and non-invasively measure blood pressure.Before Esperto, Aditya co-founded ChromaCode, a molecular diagnostics company, and was a researcher at Google[x], where he worked on novel medical imaging methods. Aditya also serves as part-time faculty at Caltech and USC, and holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Caltech. In this interview, Aditya discusses why great science doesn't necessarily make great companies, what it takes to win as a fast-follower in medtech, and how to sequence a platform technology without spreading resources too thin.Before we dive into the discussion, I wanted to mention a few things:First, if you're into learning from medical device founders and CEOs and want to know when new interviews are live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter.And if you're ready to level up your medtech game, you should check out Medsider Courses — 8-week masterclasses covering topics like fundraising, M&A and exit planning, design and development, clinical and regulatory strategy, and commercialization.These courses, featuring hard-earned lessons from elite medtech CEOs, can be purchased individually or come free with our All-Access Pass.If you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Aditya Rajagopal, which includes a link to ScottBot — an AI version of host Scott Nelson trained on every Medsider interview and playbook. Feel free to ask ScottBot any questions you'd like!KEY MOMENTS FROM THE INTERVIEW(02:44) - Aditya's journey from Caltech and Google to tackling one of medicine's hardest engineering problems at Esperto (05:17) - How Esperto is trying to solve a 50-year-old problem: continuous blood pressure monitoring without an arterial catheter (07:17) - Why Esperto was okay with being a fast-follower in an established market instead of creating a new one (16:12) - "Great science doesn't necessarily make great companies" and other lessons Aditya learned at ChromaCode (24:02) - Three hurdles every medical device must clear before clinicians will actually adopt it (27:44) - How Aditya determines whether a technical problem actually has a "there there" (37:51) - Esperto's pitch strategy and how it raised from a position of strength (43:18) - What first-time founders often misunderstand about how venture capital actually works

Joining us today is Carl Zha, a Sichuan-born Chinese-American political commentator, raised between China and the United States, with education at Caltech, and living in Bali. He tells us the story of the PRC's rise to geopolitical superpower. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Allan Sandage once said that when he became a graduate student at Caltech, in the late 1940s, he was a “hick who fell off the turnip truck.” He fell at the feet of Edwin Hubble, the most famous astronomer of the time. Hubble was ill, so Sandage gathered data for him at the world’s largest telescope. When Hubble died, a few years later, Sandage took over much of his work. And like Hubble, he expanded the size and age of the universe, and shaped much of the debate over its fate. Sandage was born 100 years ago today, in Iowa City. He got interested in astronomy while looking through the telescope of a boyhood friend. Over the decades, he contributed to many areas of astronomy. As an example, he pioneered studies of globular clusters – large clumps of ancient stars. That work led to a better understanding of the age of the universe. Many of the stars in globulars appeared to be older than the universe – an impossibility. Sandage used that and other lines of evidence to greatly increase the known age of the universe. One line of evidence was the rate at which the universe is expanding – a number known as the Hubble constant. Hubble himself had come up with a number that was much too big, implying a much younger age. Sandage calculated a rate that was close to modern numbers. Sandage wasn’t always right. But his work shaped the field of cosmology for decades – and still has an impact today. Script by Damond Benningfield

In 2022, scientists found a gene in your frontal lobe that no other species has ever carried. A 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet already told us how it got there.Is the Anunnaki ancient astronaut hypothesis a fantasy built on bad cuneiform translations—or did Zecharia Sitchin decode Sumerian tablets that mainstream scholars have been misreading for centuries?I deep dive into the TKTL1 gene mutation—a single amino acid discovered by the Max Planck Institute that gives every modern human more frontal lobe neurons than the Neanderthal genome ever produced—and why it reads like the human genetic engineering conspiracy Sitchin described in 1976.I investigate why Caltech's Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown are hunting Planet 9 in the outer solar system, why the Atrahasis epic human creation story mirrors the Genesis vs Sumerian flood myth word for word, and why the Paracas skulls DNA results still haven't been peer-reviewed.Topics (among others):Enki and Enlil Sumerian Gods: How the Adapa primitive worker lulu was designed in a place the tablets called E.DIN—the Garden of Eden—as a fix to a gold-mining rebellion.Forbidden Archaeology Meets Real Science: How CRISPR gene editing on fetal brain tissue confirmed that basal radial glia cells evolution hinges on one variant Neanderthals never carried.Nibiru vs. Planet 9: Why Caltech outer solar system anomalies revived a fifty-year-old alternative history theory—and why the orbital math still doesn't add up.Consider Supporting + Receive Bonus Content⁠

In this episode of See See by Ceci, N. Katherine Hayles, Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA, James B. Duke Professor Emerita at Duke, Guggenheim Fellow and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, joins us from the rare crossroads at which she has worked for forty years: literature, science, technology and, now, artificial intelligence. Trained as a chemist at Rochester and Caltech before crossing into literary scholarship, she is a foremost authority on the relations between literature and computational media, and the author of How We Became Posthuman (1999) and, most recently, Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with our Nonhuman Symbionts (University of Chicago Press, 2025). In this rich and demanding conversation, Hayles redefines cognition as the interpretation of information in contexts that connect with meaning, a capacity she ascribes to bacteria, plants, fungi, animals and, increasingly, AI. She walks us through her integrated cognitive framework and the SIRAL criteria (sensing, interpreting, responding adaptively, anticipating, learning); through von Uexküll's umwelt, the world each species spins for itself; through cognitive assemblages in which humans, microbes and machines decide together; and through her sharp distinction between actors and agents. As a literary critic, she also turns her gaze on AI-produced literature, on hallucinations as imagination, and on Walter Benjamin's aura in the age of the deep fake. With reflections from neuroscientist John Cryan on the gut microbiome, historian Richard Bourke on the Kantian self, classicist Richard P. Martin on AI and imagination, and choreographer Alexander Whitley on embodiment. This is an episode about the uncoupling of cognition from consciousness, Hayles' most crucial move. About a posthuman in which the human itself is being rewritten. And about the very determined optimism of a thinker who insists that hope is not the reward at the end of the work, but the precondition for it. N. Katherine Hayles is the author of twelve influential books, including the landmark How We Became Posthuman, widely regarded as a seminal foundation for posthumanism, My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts (2005), Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious (2017), and her latest, Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with our Nonhuman Symbionts (University of Chicago Press, 2025). A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation, Hayles has transformed our understanding of the digital age.

Strong science alone won't get your biotech startup funded—investors are sizing up much more than just your molecule.Michael Rome, who leads therapeutics investing at Foresite Capital, brings a rare dual lens as both scientist and investor. Having trained as a Caltech biochemist and incubated dozens of biotech companies, he's seen first-hand how world-class discoveries become market-ready solutions—or get left behind.Topics discussed:Why strong science isn't always enough to secure funding (00:25)Insights on diverse biotech investing strategies, time horizons, and mandate differences between venture firms (02:44)The advantage of Foresite's multi-stage and cross-sector investment model (03:32)Michael's journey from science and math enthusiast to biotech investor (04:49)The importance of founding team track records and repeat entrepreneurs in early-stage company building (12:53)The evolving global landscape: company formation, investment, and biotech innovation in Asia (with a focus on China) (15:56)Effects of shifting geopolitical and regulatory landscapes on US, European, and Asian biotech partnerships (20:25)The practicalities and tradeoffs of outsourcing drug development, R&D, and manufacturing overseas (22:04)Smart insight: Engage with investor perspectives early: align your work to real market needs. Seek partnerships with industry leaders and proven entrepreneurs, embrace global resources, networks, and collaborations to maximize both scientific and commercial potential.If you want to go deeper into the themes from this conversation with Michael Rome—how investors evaluate biotech companies, why CMC and execution matter, and how founders can better frame their science for funding—these episodes are a strong next listen:Episodes 189 - 190: Why Smart Biotech Founders Plan CMC First (While Competitors Burn Cash Later)Episodes 165 - 166: Why Your Funding Pitches Fail Despite Brilliant Science (And How to Fix It)Episodes 183 - 184: From Lab to Market: Secrets to Commercializing Cutting-Edge Biotech Innovations with Chervee HoEpisodes 231 - 232: From IND to BLA: The Biologics CMC Decisions That Determine Regulatory Success with Henri KornmannConnect with Michael Rome: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-rome-5067616b/ Foresite Capital website: www.foresitecapital.comNext: If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. By doing so, we can empower more scientists like you. Stay tuned for more inspiring biotech insights in our next episode.Support the show

From May 27, 2026. Trisha Epp joins us to talking about NASA's collaboration with Freelancer, and how Innovation is now getting crowdsourced. Join in to learn how to launch your own Moonshot! Guest Trisha Epp is a Physicist, Philosopher, and Futurist with a Masters in Geophysics from CalTech and a duel bachelors in physics and philosphy from the University of British Columbia. Since 2023, she's been the Director of Innovation for Freelancer.com's "NASA Tournament Lab". This crowdsourcing innovative invites the public to help solve global problems ranging from maternal morbidity to risk prediction.   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

Christof Koch is a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Chief Scientist of the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation. As a professor for 25 years at Cal Tech, he pioneered research on the neural basis of consciousness, and he has advanced one of the leading theories of consciousness called Integrated Information Theory. Among his many publications, Christof's most recent book is entitled Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It. In our mini-series on the nature of intelligence, we have talked with Simon Conway Morris about the evolution of intelligence, with Susan Schneider about the rise of artificial intelligence, and with Laszlo Barabasi about the structure of collective intelligence. Check our Templeton Ideas podcast feed to listen to these episodes. Follow us on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Jeff Dowdder, professor of “mechanical physics” at Cal Tech says growing up with a parent who’s missing a leg can be traumatizing for a kid. Sign up for a Backstage Pass and enjoy Hours of exclusive content, Phil's new podcast, Classic podcasts, Bobbie Dooley's podcasts, special live streaming events and shows, and oh so very much more…See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Trisha Epp joins us to talking about NASA's collaboration with Freelancer, and how Innovation is now getting crowdsourced. Join in to learn how to launch your own Moonshot! Guest Trisha Epp is a Physicist, Philosopher, and Futurist with a Masters in Geophysics from CalTech and a duel bachelors in physics and philosphy from the University of British Columbia. Since 2023, she's been the Director of Innovation for Freelancer.com's "NASA Tournament Lab". This crowdsourcing innovative invites the public to help solve global problems ranging from maternal morbidity to risk prediction.

A man on our block sat between burning cauldrons in a devil costume every Halloween, and the year I was finally brave enough to trick-or-treat at his house, he gave me something that wasn't candy at all.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/TrickOrTreatDevilFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: A local lake's water turned crystal clear overnight, every fish and plant gone from its depths, and the two university microbiologists who collected a sample to find out why brought something back to the lab that should never have left the water. (Amoeba) *** Two out-of-state hunters were found torn apart in a cabin north of town — one man's leg inside, the other's upper torso on the roof — and the night four friends gathered in a basement in the small mountain town of Linglestown to drink beer and laugh about the creature stalking the local woods, heavy footsteps started crossing the floor above them. (The Cycle) *** A secret modification had pushed Keck Observatory's telescope to 45 billion light-years — the very edge of the known universe — and when they called Caltech's astronomy chief for his opinion, what he saw wasn't a star, a galaxy, or a nebula, but something that appeared to be looking back. (A Scarecrow For God) *** In the 1970s suburban neighborhood where I grew up, every kid measured his bravery by whether he'd ever walked up the lawn of the man who dressed as the devil on Halloween, and the year my best friend and I finally took the dare, what was dropped into my candy bag turned a rite of passage into something far stranger. (Satan's Fall)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:15.425 = Amoeba00:18:17.841 = The Cycle00:37:01.840 = A Scarecrow For God00:54:23.851 = Satan's Fall01:29:01.448 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Amoeba” was submitted by Sabby Ray: https://www.facebook.com/ray.saibal“The Cycle” - an original story submitted by Michael Dieb at http://www.WeirdDarkness.com“A Scarecrow For God”: https://www.creepypasta.com/a-scarecrow-for-god/“Satan's Fall”: http://www.creepypasta.org/creepypasta/satans-fall#read(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: October 15, 2017

The Left is trying to distance themselves from Cole Tomas Allen, the failed White House Correspondents Dinner attacker, despite his manifesto echoing the same rhetoric that the mainstream Left has been promoting since Trump was elected. Kira Davis breaks down the Left's horseshoe into the conspiracy theorists they previously claimed to despise, analyzes the radicalization of Tinfoil Burrito Allen despite being a highly educated Caltech graduate, and exposes chilling new polling data that shows why “elite” graduates are increasingly supporting political violence. DOJ Civil Rights Coordinator Julie Hamill discusses the intense legal battles over Title IX and the Left's push to erase female athletics and spaces. CA State Controller candidate Herb Morgan explains why California's financial collapse is a warning sign for the rest of the country. Kira Davis is filling in for Dr. Drew. Kira is a conservative commentator and media personality. She is the host of the Just Kira Davis podcast. Follow at https://x.com/kiradavis Julie Hamill is an Assistant United States Attorney with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California, where she serves as Civil Rights Coordinator. Prior to joining the Department of Justice, she founded the California Justice Center, a public interest law firm under the California Policy Center, where she defended the constitutional rights of Californians and worked on Title IX enforcement in athletics. Learn more at https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca Herb Morgan is a candidate for California State Controller and a seasoned investment professional with nearly four decades of experience in financial markets. He founded Efficient Market Advisors (EMA), one of the nation's earliest ETF-based investment firms, which grew to manage $1.5 billion in assets before being acquired in 2017, where he now serves as Chief Investment Officer. He previously served on the San Diego City Employees' Retirement System (SDCERS) Board, elected Board Chair twice. Follow at https://x.com/Herb4Controller 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 • STRONG CELL – If you want to feel more like your younger self, go to https://strongcell.com/ and use code DREW for 20% off. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/fatty15⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/paleovalley⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twc.health/drew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Executive Producers • Kaleb Nation - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://kalebnation.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • Susan Pinsky - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/firstladyoflove⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Content Producer • Emily Barsh - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/emilytvproducer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Hosted By • Dr. Drew Pinsky - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/drdrew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Suspicion is widespread that the shooting incident outside the White House Correspondents' Dinner was a "stage-managed" false flag operation engineered by deep state operatives to justify construction of Trump's $400 million White House ballroom, which a federal judge had halted weeks earlier unless for "national security" purposes—and indeed, Trump immediately cited the incident to demand the ballroom.  Jimmy and Americans' Comedian Kurt Metzger point to a series of anomalies from the event: Secret Service evacuated JD Vance first while Trump remained seated for nearly 20 seconds, violating protocol that the president must be protected above all else; a Fox News caller was cut off mid-sentence after revealing a warning about "people" in the room; and the shooter's lone tweet from 2023 simply said "Cole" before the attack.  Jimmy notes that the shooter—a Caltech teacher of the year with no criminal record—abruptly opened fire on security personnel when he was hundreds of yards from the president, behavior consistent with MK Ultra mind control programming. He further connects the ballroom's architectural firm (Shalom Barness Associates) to synagogue and temple renovations, and Trump's Bible reading of 2 Chronicles 7 about temple dedication, suggesting the ballroom is designed to resemble Solomon's Temple as part of a Third Temple project. Plus segments on an ex-Seal Team 6 member calling BS on the Charlie Kirk assassination narrative, Dan Bongino insisting that a huge revelation is coming from Kash Patel and Donald Trump, Russian plans to take over major cities in Urkaine and Israel's plans to dominate the Middle East. Also featuring Stef Zamorano, Larry Johnson and Professor Jiang!

Dinesh D'Souza- THE LEFT'S TERROR NETWORK, Victor Davis Hanson- Deconstructing the Deadly Manifesto The Democratic Left and jihadists are becoming indistinguishable in their terror schemes, and they share the same target: Christian America. Also joining me: Larry Sanger, Wikipedia co-founder, on how the platform has been taken over by these same forces. Watch the entire video at-  https://youtu.be/1KKaeobot1k?si=V0kU7A8HfZJfu3Jd THE LEFT'S TERROR NETWORK Dinesh D'Souza 808K subscribers 4/27/26 12,495 views  (1:58) The Left's Domestic Terror Network (3:30) Cole Allen: Fanatic, Not Lunatic (7:14) The Ideology Behind Political Assassinations (10:51) The SPLC Indictment Explained (13:10) How the SPLC Secretly Funded White Supremacy (15:04) The SPLC's Real Target: MAGA (17:44) Wikipedia as a Left-Wing Smear Machine (19:35) Will the Left's Revolution Consume Itself?   Victor Davis Hanson: The Leftist Talking Points Within Cole Tomas Allen's Deadly Manifesto The unhinged manifesto of the recent would-be White House Correspondents' Dinner assassin is nothing more than a regurgitated checklist of the radical Left's favorite lies and dangerous conspiracy theories. From thoroughly debunked Russia collusion hoaxes to entirely fabricated accusations regarding the border, the shooter's twisted justifications prove exactly how poisonous mainstream media rhetoric has become. This violent escalation is the terrifying, direct result of Marxist influencers championing "social murder" and turning actual criminals into woke folk heroes. Unless the Left finally abandons its relentless campaign of Trump Derangement Syndrome and stops glorifying political violence, this lethal echo chamber will only continue to radicalize the unstable, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today's edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words:” “Obviously, Cole Thomas Allen is unhinged. He's crazy. He may be bright by graduating from Caltech, but he didn't seem to be very bright in his manifesto. But what he wrote as an exegesis of why he was doing it is an encapsulation of ideology that's promulgated by today's Left.”   Watch this video at https://youtu.be/kasA1yhboVQ?si=tKXuoNiu2y-Pe_wk The Daily Signal 1.1M subscribers Apr 28, 2026 Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words

The unhinged manifesto of the recent would-be White House Correspondents' Dinner assassin is nothing more than a regurgitated checklist of the radical Left's favorite lies and dangerous conspiracy theories. From thoroughly debunked Russia collusion hoaxes to entirely fabricated accusations regarding the border, the shooter's twisted justifications prove exactly how poisonous mainstream media rhetoric has become. This violent escalation is the terrifying, direct result of Marxist influencers championing "social murder" and turning actual criminals into woke folk heroes. Unless the Left finally abandons its relentless campaign of Trump Derangement Syndrome and stops glorifying political violence, this lethal echo chamber will only continue to radicalize the unstable, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today's edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words:” “Obviously, Cole Thomas Allen is unhinged. He's crazy. He may be bright by graduating from Caltech, but he didn't seem to be very bright in his manifesto. But what he wrote as an exegesis of why he was doing it is an encapsulation of ideology that's promulgated by today's Left.” 

A gunman rushes a Secret Service checkpoint at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and his manifesto reveals a chilling window into radicalized thinking. Plus, the Iran conflict gets foggier by the day, and oil price might be the only honest indicator we have left.   White House Correspondents Dinner shooting, Cole Allen, Cole Allen manifesto, WHCA dinner, Washington Hilton shooting, assassination attempt, Trump assassination attempt, Secret Service, White House Correspondents Association, Iran conflict, Iran nuclear deal, Iran negotiations, US Iran talks, crude oil prices, Karoline Leavitt, Marco Rubio, Hasan Piker, Wide Awakes, Caltech, political violence, left wing extremism, political rhetoric, No Kings protest, Erika Kirk, AM Update, Aaron McIntire, today's news, morning news, daily news podcast, news commentary, current events, breaking news, politics today, 2026 news, national news, political analysis, news recap, morning news show, conservative podcast

A retired Air Force major general walks out of his Albuquerque home in 2026 and vanishes with a revolver. But William Neil McCaslind wasn't just anyone. He once commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory and carried deep knowledge of America's most advanced defense systems. His disappearance soon becomes part of a much darker pattern online. From Los Alamos to NASA JPL to Caltech, nuclear scientists and defense experts seem to have been erased from the grid. Is someone quietly removing high-value scientific minds from the board? Are brilliant people cracking under unbearable pressure? Or could this be a pattern of our own design?Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode.

Eleven scientists. Twelve, if you count the latest. All dead or missing. All tied to classified nuclear programs, aerospace research, UAP disclosure, or the deepest corners of America's top secret defense infrastructure. And now the FBI, the House Oversight Committee, the Department of War, and the Department of Energy are all circling the same question. Is this a coincidence, or a coordinated purge of the people who know too much?What if the witnesses to disclosure are being erased before disclosure ever happens?On this Slingshot Nation  live we walk through the full list, the timeline, and the names you're not supposed to connect. A retired Air Force major general who vanished out of his Albuquerque home without his phone or glasses. An MIT plasma and fusion director shot dead outside his own house. A JPL materials scientist who patented the super-alloys used in the reusable rockets flying right now. A decorated test pilot and his entire family gone in a single plane crash. Los Alamos. Caltech. NASA JPL. Kansas City National Security Campus. Wright-Patterson. The same labs, the same clearances, the same silence.Congress is calling it a national security threat. The White House is calling it "pretty serious stuff." Mainstream outlets are calling it coincidence. We're going to look at the pattern they don't want you to see. The aerospace black projects, the UAP disclosure witnesses, the foreign adversary angle, the Blue Origin and SpaceX connections, and the spiritual warfare dimension underneath all of it.Because if a great deception is coming, the first people to disappear would be the ones who could expose it.Please pray for Tony's wife, Lindsay, as she battles breast cancer. Your prayers make a difference!If you're able, consider helping the Merkel family with medical expenses by donating to Lindsay's GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/b8f76890Become a member for ad-free listening, extra shows, and exclusive access to our social media app: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinThe Confessionals Social Network App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZTony's Recommended Reads: slingshotlibrary.comIf you want to learn about Jesus and what it means to be saved: Click HereMy NEW Website: tonymerkel.comBigfoot: The Journey To Belief: Stream HereThe Meadow Project: Stream HereMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comSPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsGHOSTBED: GhostBed.com/tonyQUINCE: quince.com/tonyRUMBLE WALLET: https://rumblewallet.onelink.me/bJsX/Confessionals CONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: contact@theconfessionalspodcast.comMAILING ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducer