Podcasts about Cambrian

Starting with a mini celebration: Dave defends his ski racing crown, before Sam declares software dead and capitalism broken. Even among GPs at Upfront Summit, the mood is uncertain: nobody knows whether to invest in software anymore, and many are quietly struggling to raise.The debate heats up over whether AI will democratize software creation or just accelerate capitalism's race to zero margins. Sam argues that when intelligence becomes abundant, it becomes worthless, making the entire AI industry, and by extension Silicon Valley, "pretty bad business." Dave counters that we're about to see a Cambrian explosion of software creators, finally giving billions of people agency over their digital lives.Plus: whether Stripe should buy PayPal during this opportunistic Trump-administration window, Gen Z panic-buying original iPods, Sam's shitposting-to-funding pipeline, and whether OnlyFans has the best KYC in fintechChapters:We're also on ↓X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessYouTube: https://youtu.be/Ff4-vkt5rYQConnect with us here:1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

The gang discuss two papers of odd fossils with exceptional preservation. The first paper looks at some Cambrian vertebrates and shows that soft tissue evidence suggests the presence of two sets of camera eyes (four eyes total), and they interpret the additional set of camera eyes as being a homolog to the modern parietal eye in vertebrates. The second paper uses exceptional preservation of the Rhynie Chert to test hypotheses for the taxonomic placement of the enigmatic Prototaxites and finds evidence that suggests it is not, as previously suggested, a fungus. Meanwhile, James is marooned by weather, Amanda accidentally traumatizes her cat, and Curt imagines the flesh trees.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about things that are weird. The first paper looks at a thing that is part of the big group that we are all a part of but is from a long long time ago and lived in the big blue wet thing. This thing has four eyes. Two of those eyes might be the things that become a part of the brain that is not the eyes today. But this shows that, early on, some of these animals could have had four eyes. This also means some animals we see later could have had parts of these other eyes that we have thought were other things. The second paper looks at a thing that is weird that people thought was from a group that is not an animal but has some animal like things like eating other things but has walls in the cells. These weird things are from a long time ago and come from a place where the parts were saved from breaking down by glass getting inside the cells. This means you can see lots of cell stuff, and you can also break down the glass to get at some of the cell bits. This paper looks at a lot of this weird thing and they say that it is not part of the group people thought it was from. In fact, it is so weird that it is not like any group we have today. It is maybe something that is not around today that we did not know about.   References: Loron, Corentin C., et al. "Prototaxites fossils are structurally and chemically distinct from extinct and extant Fungi." Science advances 12.4 (2026): eaec6277. Lei, Xiangtong, et al. "Four camera-type eyes in the earliest vertebrates from the Cambrian Period." Nature (2026): 1-6.

In this episode, I'm joined by Mandy Mooney — author, corporate communicator, and performer — for a wide-ranging conversation about mentorship, career growth, and how to show up authentically in both work and life.   We talk about her path from performing arts to corporate communications, and how those early experiences shaped the way she approaches relationships, leadership, and personal authenticity. That foundation carries through to her current role as VP of Internal Communications, where she focuses on building connections and fostering resilience across teams.   We explore the three pillars of career success Mandy highlights in her book Corporating: Three Ways to Win at Work — relationships, reputation, and resilience — and how they guide her approach to scaling mentorship and helping others grow. Mandy shares practical strategies for balancing professional responsibilities with personal passions, and why embracing technology thoughtfully can enhance, not replace, human connection.   The conversation also touches on parenting, building independence in children, and the lessons she's learned about optimism, preparation, and persistence — both in the workplace and at home.   If you're interested in scaling mentorship, developing your career with intention, or navigating work with authenticity, this episode is for you. And if you want to hear more on these topics, catch Mandy speaking at Snafu Conference 2026 on March 5th. 00:00 Start 02:26 Teaching Self-Belief and Independence Robin notes Mandy has young kids and a diverse career (performing arts → VP of a name-brand company → writing books). Robin asks: "What are the skills that you want your children to develop, to stay resilient in the world and the world of work that they're gonna grow up in?" Emphasis on meta-skills. Mandy's response: Core skills She loves the question, didn't expect it, finds it a "thrilling ride." Observes Robin tends to "put things out there before they exist" (e.g., talking about having children before actually having them). Skill 1: Envisioning possibilities "Envision the end, believe that it will happen and it is much more likely to happen." Teaching children to see limitless possibilities if they believe in them. Skill 2: Independence Examples: brushing their own hair, putting on clothes, asking strangers questions. One daughter in Girl Scouts: learning sales skills by approaching strangers to sell cookies. Independence builds confidence and problem-solving abilities for small and big life challenges. Skill 3: Self-belief / Self-worth Tied to independence. Helps children navigate life and career successfully. Robin asks about teaching self-belief Context: Mandy's kids are 6 and 9 years old (two girls). Mandy's approach to teaching self-belief Combination of: Words Mandy uses when speaking to them. Words encouraged for the children to use about themselves. Example of shifting praise from appearance to effort/creativity: Instead of "You look so pretty today" → "Wow, I love the creativity that you put into your outfit." Reason: "The voice that I use, the words that I choose, they're gonna receive that and internalize it." Corrective, supportive language when children doubt themselves: Example: Child says, "I'm so stupid, I can't figure out this math problem." Mandy responds: "Oh wow. That's something that we can figure out together. And the good news is I know that you are so smart and that you can figure this out, so let's work together to figure it out." Asking reflective questions to understand their inner thoughts: Example: "What's it like to be you? What's it like to be inside your head?" Child's response: "Well, you worry a lot," which Mandy found telling and insightful. Emphasizes coming from a place of curiosity to check in on a child's self-worth and self-identity journey. 04:30 Professional Journey and Role of VP of Internal Comms Robin sets up the question about professional development Notes Mandy has mentored lots of people. Wants to understand: Mandy's role as VP of Internal Communications (what that means). How she supports others professionally. How her own professional growth has been supported. Context: Robin just finished a workshop for professionals on selling themselves, asking for promotions, and stepping forward in their careers. Emphasizes that she doesn't consider herself an expert but learns from conversations with experienced people like Mandy. Mandy explains her role and path Career path has been "a winding road." Did not study internal communications; discovered it later. Finds her job fun, though sometimes stressful: "I often think I might have the most fun job in the world. I mean, it, it can be stressful and it can't, you know, there are days where you wanna bang your head against the wall, but by and large, I love my job. It is so fun." Internal communications responsibility: Translate company strategy into something employees understand and are excited about. Example: Translate business plan for 2026 to 2,800 employees. Team's work includes: Internal emails. PowerPoints for global town halls. Speaking points for leaders. Infusing fun into company culture via intranet stories (culture, customers, innovation). Quick turnaround on timely stories (example: employee running seven marathons on seven continents; story created within 24 hours). Storytelling and theater skills are key: Coaching leaders for presentations: hand gestures, voice projection, camera presence. Mandy notes shared theater background with Robin: "You and I are both thespian, so we come from theater backgrounds." Robin summarizes role Sounds like a mix of HR and sales: supporting employee development while "selling" them on the company. Mandy elaborates on impact and mentorship Loves making a difference in employees' lives by giving information and support. Works closely with HR (Human Resources) to: Provide learning and development opportunities. Give feedback. Help managers improve. Wrote a book to guide navigating internal careers and relationships. Mentorship importance: Mentors help accelerate careers in any organization. Mandy's career journey Started studying apparel merchandising at Indiana University (with Kelley School of Business minor). Shifted from pre-med → theater → journalism → apparel merchandising. Took full advantage of career fairs and recruiter networking at Kelley School of Business. "The way that I've gotten jobs is not through applying online, it's through knowing somebody, through having a relationship." First role at Gap Inc.: rotational Retail Management Training Program (RMP). Some roles enjoyable, some less so; realized she loved the company even if some jobs weren't ideal. Mentor influence: Met Bobby Stillton, president of Gap Foundation, who inspired her with work empowering women and girls. Took a 15-minute conversation with Bobby and got an entry-level communications role. Career growth happened through mentorship, internal networking, and alignment with company she loved. Advice for her daughters (Robin's question) Flash-forward perspective: post-college or early career. How to start a career in corporate / large organizations: Increase "luck surface area" (exposure to opportunities). Network in a savvy way. Ask at the right times. Build influence to get ahead. Mentorship and internal relationships are key, not just applying for jobs online. 12:15 Career Advice and Building Relationships Initial advice: "Well first I would say always call your mom. Ask for advice. I'm right here, honey, anytime." Three keys to success: Relationships Expand your network. "You say yes to everything, especially early in your career." Examples: sit in on meetings, observe special projects, help behind the scenes. Benefits: Increases credibility. Shows people you can do anything. Reputation Build a reputation as confident, qualified, and capable. Online presence: Example: LinkedIn profile—professional, up-to-date, connected to network. Be a sponsor/advocate for your company (school, office, etc.). Monthly posts suggested: team photos, events, showing responsibility and trust. Offline reputation: Deliver results better than expected. "Deliver on the things that you said you were gonna do and do a better job than people expected of you." Resilience Not taught from books—learned through experience. Build resilience through preparation, not "fake it till you make it." Preparation includes: practicing presentations, thinking through narratives, blocking time before/after to collect thoughts and connect with people. "Preparation is my headline … that's part of what creates resilience." Mandy turns the question to Robin: "I wanna ask you too, I mean, Robin, you, you live and breathe this every day too. What do you think are the keys to success?" Robin agrees with preparation as key. Value of service work: Suggests working in service (food, hospitality) teaches humility. "I've never met somebody I think even ever in my life who is super entitled and profoundly ungrateful, who has worked a service job for any length of time." Robin's personal experience with service work: First business: selling pumpkins at Robin's Pumpkin Patch (age 5). Key formative experience: running Robin's Cafe (2016, opened with no restaurant experience, on three weeks' notice). Ran the cafe for 3 years, sold it on Craigslist. Served multiple stakeholders: nonprofit, staff (~15 employees), investors ($40,000 raised from family/friends). Trial by fire: unprepared first days—no full menu, no recipes, huge rush events. Concept of MI Plus: "Everything in its place" as preparation principle. Connecting service experience to corporate storytelling: Current business: Zandr Media (videos, corporate storytelling). Preparation is critical: Know who's where, what will be captured, and what the final asset looks like. Limited fixes in post-production, even with AI tools. Reinforces importance of preparation through repeated experience. Advice for future children / young people: Robin would encourage service jobs for kids for months or a year. Teaches: Sleep management, personal presentation, confidence, energy. "Deciding that I'm going to show up professionally … well … energetically." Emphasizes relentless optimism: positivity is a superpower. Experience shows contrast between being prepared and unprepared—learning from both is crucial. 16:36 The Importance of Service Jobs and Resilience Service jobs as formative experience: Worked as a waitress early in her career (teenager). Describes it as "the hardest job of my life". Challenges included: Remembering orders (memory). Constant multitasking. Dealing with different personalities and attitudes. Maintaining positivity and optimism through long shifts (e.g., nine-hour shifts). Fully agrees with Robin: service jobs teach humility and preparation. Optimism as a superpower: "I totally agree too that optimism is a superpower. I think optimism is my superpower." Writes about this concept in her book. Believes everyone has at least one superpower, and successful careers involve identifying and leaning into that superpower. Robin asks about the book Why did Mandy write the book? Inspiration behind the book? Also wants a deep dive into the writing process for her own interest. Mandy's inspiration and purpose of the book Title: "Corporating: Three Ways to Win At Work" Primary goal: Scale mentorship. Realized as she reached VP level, people wanted career advice. Increased visibility through: Position as VP. Connection with alma mater (Indiana University). Active presence on LinkedIn. Result: Many young professionals seeking mentorship. Challenge: Not sustainable to mentor individually. Solution: Writing a book allows her to scale mentorship without minimizing impact. Secondary goals / personal motivations: Acts as a form of "corporate therapy": Reflects on first 10 years of her career. Acknowledges both successes and stumbles. Helps process trials and tribulations. Provides perspective and gratitude for lessons learned. Fun aspect: as a writer, enjoyed formatting and condensing experiences into a digestible form for readers. Legacy and contribution: "I had something that I could contribute meaningfully to the world … as part of my own legacy … I do wanna leave this world feeling like I contributed something positive. So this is one of my marks."   21:37 Writing a Book and Creative Pursuits Robin asks Mandy about the writing process: "What's writing been like for you? Just the, the process of distilling your thinking into something permanent." Mandy: Writing process and finding the "25th hour" Loves writing: "I love writing, so the writing has been first and foremost fun." Where she wrote the book: Mostly from the passenger seat of her car. She's a working mom and didn't have traditional writing time. Advice from mentor Gary Magenta: "Mandy, you're gonna have to find the 25th hour." She found that "25th hour" in her car. Practical examples: During birthday party drop-offs: "Oh good. It's a drop off party. Bye. Bye, honey. See you in two hours. I'll be in the driveway. In my car. If you need anything, please don't need anything." Would write for 1.5–2 hours. During Girl Scouts, swim, any activity. On airplanes: Finished the book on an eight-hour flight back from Germany. It was her 40th birthday (June 28). "Okay, I did it." Realization moment: "You chip away at it enough that you realize, oh, I have a book." Robin: On parents and prioritization Parents told him: "When you have kids, you just find a way." Children create: Stricter prioritization. A necessary forcing function. Mandy's self-reflection: "I believe that I am an inherently lazy person, to be totally honest with you." But she's driven by deadlines and deliverables. Kids eliminate "lazy days": No more slow Saturdays watching Netflix. "They get up. You get up, you have to feed these people like there's a human relying on you." Motherhood forces motivation: "My inherent laziness has been completely wiped away the past nine years." Writing happened in small windows of time. Importance of creative outlet: Having something for yourself fuels the rest of life. Examples: writing, crocheting, quilting, music. Creativity energizes other areas of life. Robin mentions The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Advice from that book: Have something outside your day job that fuels you. For Robin: Physical practice (gym, handstands, gymnastics, ballet, capoeira, surfing). It's a place to: Celebrate. Feel progress. Win, even if work is struggling. Example: If tickets aren't selling. If newsletter flops. If client relationships are hard. Physical training becomes the "anchor win." Mandy's writing took over two years. Why? She got distracted writing a musical version of the book. There is now: "Corporating: The Book" "Corporating: The Musical" Three songs produced online. Collaboration with composer Eric Chaney. Inspiration from book: Time, Talent, Energy (recommended by former boss Sarah Miran). Concept: we have limited time, talent, and energy. Advice: Follow your energy when possible. If you're flowing creatively, go with it (unless there's an urgent deadline). You'll produce better work. She believes: The book is better because she created the musical. Musical helps during speaking engagements. Sometimes she sings during talks. Why music? Attention spans are short. Not just Gen Z — everyone is distracted. Music keeps people engaged. "I'm not just gonna tell you about the three ways to win at work. I'm gonna sing it for you too." Robin on capturing attention If you can hold attention of: Five-year-olds. Thirteen-year-olds. You can hold anyone's attention. Shares story: In Alabama filming for Department of Education. Interviewed Alabama Teacher of the Year (Katie). She has taught for 20 years (kindergarten through older students). Observed: High enthusiasm. High energy. Willingness to be ridiculous to capture attention. Key insight: Engagement requires energy and presence. 28:37 The Power of Music in Capturing Attention Mandy's part of a group called Mic Drop Workshop. Led by Lindsay (last name unclear in transcript) and Jess Tro. They meet once a month. Each session focuses on improving a different performance skill. The session she describes focused on facial expressions. Exercise they did: Tell a story with monotone voice and no facial expressions. Tell the story "over the top clown like, go really big, something that feels so ridiculous." Tell it the way you normally would. Result: Her group had four people. "Every single one of us liked number two better than one or three." Why version two worked best: When people are emotive and expressive: It's more fun to watch. It's more entertaining. It's more engaging. Connection to kids and storytelling: Think of how you tell stories to five-year-olds: Whisper. Get loud. Get soft. Use dynamic shifts. The same applies on stage. Musical integration: Music is another tool for keeping attention. Helps maintain engagement in a distracted world. Robin: Hiring for energy and presence Talks about hiring his colleague Zach Fish. Technical producer for: Responsive Conference. Snafu Conference. Freelancer Robin works with often. Why Robin hires Zach: Yes, he's technically excellent. But more importantly: "He's a ball of positive energy and delight and super capable and confident, but also just pleasant to be with." Robin's hiring insight: If he has a choice, he chooses Zach. Why? "I feel better." Energy and presence influence hiring decisions. Zach's background: Teaches weekly acrobatics classes for kids in Berkeley. He's used to engaging audiences. That translates into professional presence. Robin: Energy is learnable When thinking about: Who to hire. Who to promote. Who to give opportunities to. Traits that matter: Enthusiasm. Positivity. Big energy. Being "over the top" when needed. Important insight: This isn't necessarily a God-given gift. It can be learned. Like music or performance. Like anything else. 31:00 The Importance of Positive Work Relationships Mandy reflects on: The tension between loud voices and quiet voices. "Oftentimes the person who is the loudest is the one who gets to talk the most, but the person who's the quietest is the one who maybe has the best ideas." Core question: How do you exist in a world where both of those things are true? Parenting lens: One daughter is quieter than the other. Important to: Encourage authenticity. Teach the skill of using your voice loudly when needed. It's not about changing personality. It's about equipping someone to advocate for themselves when necessary Book is targeted at: Students about to enter the corporate world. Early-career professionals. Intentional writing decision: Exactly 100 pages. Purpose: "To the point, practical advice." Holds attention. Digestible. Designed for distracted readers. Emotional honesty: Excited but nervous to reconnect with students. Acknowledges: The world has changed. It's been a while since she was in college. Advice she's trying to live: Know your audience Core principle: "Get to know your audience. Like really get in there and figure out who they are." Pre-book launch tour purpose: Visiting universities (including her alma mater). Observing students. Understanding: Their learning environment. Their day-to-day experiences. The world they're stepping into. Communication principle: Knowing your audience is essential in communications. Also essential in career-building. If you have a vision of where you want to go: "Try to find a way to get there before you're there." Tactics: Meet people in those roles. Shake their hands. Have coffee. Sit in those seats. Walk those halls. See how it feels. Idea: Test the future before committing to it. Reduce uncertainty through proximity. What if you don't have a vision? Robin pushes back thoughtfully: What about people who: Don't know what they want to do? Aren't sure about staying at a company? Aren't sure about career vs. business vs. stay-at-home parent? Acknowledges: There's abundance in the world. Attention is fragmented. Implied tension: How do you move forward without clarity? 35:13 Mentorship and Career Guidance How to help someone figure out what's next Start with questions, not answers A mentor's primary job: ask questions from a place of curiosity Especially when someone is struggling with what they want to do or their career direction Key questions: What brings you joy? What gives you energy? What's the dream? Imagine retirement — what does that look like? Example: A financial advisor made Mandy and her husband define retirement vision; then work backwards (condo in New Zealand, annual family vacations) Clarify what actually matters Distinguish life priorities: Security → corporate job; Teamwork → corporate environment; Variety and daily interaction → specific roles Mentoring becomes a checklist: Joy, strengths, lifestyle, financial expectations, work environment preferences Then make connections: Introduce them to people in relevant environments, encourage informational interviews You don't know what you don't know Trial and error is inevitable Build network intentionally: Shadow people, observe, talk to parents' friends, friends of friends Even experienced professionals have untapped opportunities Stay curious and do the legwork Mixing personal and professional identity Confidence to bring personal interests into corporate work comes from strategy plus luck Example: Prologis 2021, senior leaders joked about forming a band; Mandy spoke up, became lead singer CEO took interest after first performance, supported book launch She didn't always feel this way Early corporate years: Feel like a "corporate robot," worrying about jargon, meetings, email etiquette, blending in Book explores blending in while standing out Advice for bringing full self to work Don't hide it, but don't force it; weave into casual conversation Find advocates: Amazing bosses vs terrible ones, learn from both Mentorship shaped her framework: Relationships, reputation, and resilience Resilience and rejection Theater as rejection bootcamp: Auditions, constant rejection Foundations of resilience: Surround yourself with supportive people, develop intrinsic self-worth, know you are worthy Creating conditions for success Age 11 audition story: Last-minute opportunity, director asked her to sing, she sang and got the part Why it worked: Connections (aunt in play), parent support, director willing to take a chance, she showed up Resilience is not just toughing it out: Have support systems, build self-worth, seek opportunity, create favorable conditions, step forward when luck opens a door 44:18 Overcoming Rejection and Building Resilience First show experiences Robin's first stage production is uncertain; she had to think carefully At 17, walked into a gymnastics gym after being a cross country runner for ten years, burnt out from running Cold-called gyms from the Yellow Pages; most rejected her for adult classes, one offered adult classes twice a week That led to juggling, circus, fencing, capa, rock climbing — a "Cambrian explosion" of movement opportunities About a year and a half later, walked into a ballet studio in corduroy and a button-up, no ballet shoes; first ballet teacher was Eric Skinner at Reed College, surrounded by former professional ballerinas First internal college production was his first show; ten years later performed as an acrobat with the San Francisco Opera in 2013, six acrobats among 200 people on stage, four-hour shows with multiple costume changes and backflips Relationship to AI and the evolving world of work Mandy never asks her daughters "What do you want to be?" because jobs today may not exist in the future Focus on interests: plants, how things are built, areas of curiosity for future generations Coaching her team: Highly capable, competent, invested in tools and technology for digital signage, webinars, emails, data-driven insights, videos Approach AI with cautious optimism: Adopt early, embrace technology, use it to enhance work rather than replace it Example: Uses a bot for scheduling efficiency, brainstorming; enhances job performance by integrating AI from day one Advice: Approach AI with curiosity, not fear; embrace tools to be smarter and more efficient, stay ahead in careers 53:05 Where to Find Mandy Mandy will be speaking at Snafu Conference on March 5, discussing rejection and overcoming it. Author and speaking information: mandymooney.com LinkedIn: Mandy Mooney Music available under her real name, Mandy Mooney, on streaming platforms.  

The first multicellular animals to build reefs lived in the Early Cambrian around the time of the Cambrian explosion. They were sponges called archaeocyaths. In the podcast, Sara Pruss suggests that the rise of the archaeocyaths fostered an increase in animal diversity. But they were relatively short-lived, and when they died out in the Middle Cambrian, the diversity declined. Over geological time, reef-building organisms appear and disappear again and again until the corals we have today appeared in the Middle Triassic, about 240 million years ago.Pruss is currently trying to understand why reefs are such a persistent feature of the geological record, despite the environmental stresses imposed on them. She is a Professor of Geosciences at Smith College.

Thomas Halliday concludes with the climate-driven Ordovician mass extinction, the Cambrian explosion of modern animal body plans in China featuring predators like Omnidens, and the Ediacaran era's strange soft-bodied organisms preceding complex life.

The gang discusses two papers that use fragmentary fossils of animals to investigate the origins of major groups. The first paper describes an Early Ordovician eurypterid, and the second paper looks at mosaic evolutionary patterns in an early squamate. Meanwhile, James has bird opinions, Curt delights in not knowing, and Amanda will definitely be on time.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers that are using broken bits of things to learn a lot about animals from a long time ago. Both of these papers are looking at old animals that may give us new looks at how big groups of animals changed over time. These animals may be some of the first animals in these groups, or at least let us know what kinds of things those early animals could have been doing. The first paper looks at a group of animals that lived in the big blue wet thing a long time ago and are part of a group that today has animals that make homes that they use to catch food. The new parts this paper finds shows that this group may have come around a lot earlier than we thought. The second paper looks at parts from an animal that is in a group that is cold and has hard skin, some with legs and some without legs. These parts show that the early animals in this group had a lot of changes going on in their hard parts, maybe they changed more early on then they do today.   References: Benson, Roger BJ, et al. "Mosaic anatomy in an early fossil squamate." Nature (2025): 1-7. Van Roy, Peter, Jared C. Richards, and Javier Ortega-Hernández. "Early Ordovician sea scorpions from Morocco suggest Cambrian origins and main diversification of Eurypterida." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 292.2058 (2025).

A survey of the Earth's history through the lens of the geologic timescale. We begin with a discussion of the terminology of geochronologic units and how they are specified using 'golden spikes'. We then review the development of Earth's atmosphere, geosphere, and biosphere through the Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic eons. We cover many topics including the supercontinent cycle, the great oxidation event, the evolution of eukaryotes, the Cambrian explosion, and mass extinctions. Recommended pre-listening is Episode 156: Fossils and Dating Methods. If you enjoyed the podcast please consider supporting the show by making a PayPal donation or becoming a Patreon supporter. https://www.patreon.com/jamesfodor https://www.paypal.me/ScienceofEverything

Buckle up for a wild ride on The Other Side of Midnight. It begins with a fiery "Warrior Wednesday" as Lionel and Lynn Shaw declare war on Big Tech, exposing the "digital harms" creating an anxious generation and calling for bans on social media for minors. The conversation then takes a sharp turn into the Hudson Valley woods to hunt for Bigfoot, where Lionel asks why skeptics demand HD photos of Sasquatch but not of the Almighty. Finally, dive into the legend of the Jersey Devil, debate the logic of Noah's Ark versus the Cambrian explosion, and strip away the "hippie dippy" nonsense of existence—because Lionel would rather "lick a belt sander" than talk about boring news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lionel dissects the origins of the Jersey Devil, tracing the legend back to Mother Leeds and a feud with Benjamin Franklin. The conversation shifts to the philosophy of belief, challenging callers on how they distinguish between cryptids like Bigfoot, the "Shadow Man," and religious figures. From the logistics of Noah's Ark to the Cambrian explosion, Lionel debates creationism versus evolution, mocks the "watchmaker" argument, and wonders how you would explain a Bic lighter to a caveman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join Lionel on The Other Side of Midnight for a dive into the ultimate questions of existence, stripping away the "hippie dippy" nonsense to get to the core of critical thinking. Lionel challenges the "long gradual ladder" of evolution with the sudden complexity of the Cambrian explosion and the "irreducible complexity" of biological machines. From debating "Christian by birth" labels to analyzing the "God gene" and the passing of Dilbert creator Scott Adams, no topic is off-limits. Whether discussing the physics of the universe or why George Burns made a great Deity, Lionel argues that actions speak louder than dogma—and he'd rather "lick a belt sander" than talk about boring news stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do carnival sideshows, government paperwork, and half-billion-year-old nightmare creatures have in common? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore three very different corners of history where certainty was offered in place of understanding—and where things were far stranger than advertised. First, they step into the vanished world of early 20th-century hygiene exhibits: traveling carnival attractions that promised education but delivered fear. Set up alongside Ferris wheels and midway games, these sterile tents used wax models, shock imagery, and moral absolutism to teach the public what would happen if they failed to behave “correctly.” Disease was framed as punishment. Fear wasn't a side effect—it was the lesson. Then, in a Thing in the Middle, the focus shifts from bodies to paperwork. Kat and Jethro examine bizarre bureaucratic oddities: citizens declared dead while still alive, laws that regulate technologies no longer in use, records preserved on media that can no longer be read. It's a reminder that systems meant to create order can quietly lose track of reality. Finally, the episode dives deep into the Cambrian Explosion, a brief moment in geological time when life experimented wildly with form. From five-eyed predators to spined worms reconstructed upside-down for decades, these ancient creatures reveal a world where evolution hadn't settled on any final draft yet—and where “normal” hadn't been invented. Across carnivals, governments, and deep time, a pattern emerges: confidence without nuance, spectacle over explanation, and the human desire to make complicated worlds feel simple. The tents are gone.The paperwork remains.The creatures are fossilized. But the urge to replace understanding with certainty is still very much alive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Evolution says that life began with the simplest forms. It took over a billion years just to evolve algae and another billion years for living things to have more than one cell. It took half a billion years of slow development to generate today's creatures. And evolution says that this story comes from the fossil record.What most people do not know is that there is no such story in the fossil record. And when not writing textbooks or appearing on television, evolutionary scientists will admit that their story of life cannot be found in the fossil record. According to the fossil record, every major family alive today appears suddenly and fully formed in the Cambrian rocks, which contain the first clear evidences of developed life.Charles Darwin was aware of this. Believing his own theory to be true, he called this problem a real mystery and wrote that it is probably a valid argument against evolution. Darwin wrote that he expected the problem to be solved as more fossils were discovered. But today, well over a century later, the problem remains and was written about in recent history in the Scientific American.So, Christians should not feel intimidated by the claims of scientists. We Christians have our faith by which we interpret what we see in the world. But the evolutionary story of life and the fossils is nothing more than the interpretation of the world according to evolutionary faith. We agree that far greater faith is required to believe in the revelation of Charles Darwin than to believe the revelation of God.Luke 19:40"But he answered and said to them, "I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out."Prayer: Dear Lord; Men mock what You have revealed in Your Word and try to intimidate Your people by telling us how ignorant our beliefs are. Give Your people, beginning with me, a strong and bold faith in Your revealed Word. In Jesus' Name. AmenREF.: Marland & Rudwick. The great Intra-Cambrian ice age. Scientific American. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

First throwback of the new year and we're starting strong with one of Wales' most criminally inclined exports. Hear all about this Cambrian bad boy in the full eppy here.

From creating SWE-bench in a Princeton basement to shipping CodeClash, SWE-bench Multimodal, and SWE-bench Multilingual, John Yang has spent the last year and a half watching his benchmark become the de facto standard for evaluating AI coding agents—trusted by Cognition (Devin), OpenAI, Anthropic, and every major lab racing to solve software engineering at scale. We caught up with John live at NeurIPS 2025 to dig into the state of code evals heading into 2026: why SWE-bench went from ignored (October 2023) to the industry standard after Devin's launch (and how Walden emailed him two weeks before the big reveal), how the benchmark evolved from Django-heavy to nine languages across 40 repos (JavaScript, Rust, Java, C, Ruby), why unit tests as verification are limiting and long-running agent tournaments might be the future (CodeClash: agents maintain codebases, compete in arenas, and iterate over multiple rounds), the proliferation of SWE-bench variants (SWE-bench Pro, SWE-bench Live, SWE-Efficiency, AlgoTune, SciCode) and how benchmark authors are now justifying their splits with curation techniques instead of just “more repos,” why Tau-bench's “impossible tasks” controversy is actually a feature not a bug (intentionally including impossible tasks flags cheating), the tension between long autonomy (5-hour runs) vs. interactivity (Cognition's emphasis on fast back-and-forth), how Terminal-bench unlocked creativity by letting PhD students and non-coders design environments beyond GitHub issues and PRs, the academic data problem (companies like Cognition and Cursor have rich user interaction data, academics need user simulators or compelling products like LMArena to get similar signal), and his vision for CodeClash as a testbed for human-AI collaboration—freeze model capability, vary the collaboration setup (solo agent, multi-agent, human+agent), and measure how interaction patterns change as models climb the ladder from code completion to full codebase reasoning.We discuss:* John's path: Princeton → SWE-bench (October 2023) → Stanford PhD with Diyi Yang and the Iris Group, focusing on code evals, human-AI collaboration, and long-running agent benchmarks* The SWE-bench origin story: released October 2023, mostly ignored until Cognition's Devin launch kicked off the arms race (Walden emailed John two weeks before: “we have a good number”)* SWE-bench Verified: the curated, high-quality split that became the standard for serious evals* SWE-bench Multimodal and Multilingual: nine languages (JavaScript, Rust, Java, C, Ruby) across 40 repos, moving beyond the Django-heavy original distribution* The SWE-bench Pro controversy: independent authors used the “SWE-bench” name without John's blessing, but he's okay with it (”congrats to them, it's a great benchmark”)* CodeClash: John's new benchmark for long-horizon development—agents maintain their own codebases, edit and improve them each round, then compete in arenas (programming games like Halite, economic tasks like GDP optimization)* SWE-Efficiency (Jeffrey Maugh, John's high school classmate): optimize code for speed without changing behavior (parallelization, SIMD operations)* AlgoTune, SciCode, Terminal-bench, Tau-bench, SecBench, SRE-bench: the Cambrian explosion of code evals, each diving into different domains (security, SRE, science, user simulation)* The Tau-bench “impossible tasks” debate: some tasks are underspecified or impossible, but John thinks that's actually a feature (flags cheating if you score above 75%)* Cognition's research focus: codebase understanding (retrieval++), helping humans understand their own codebases, and automatic context engineering for LLMs (research sub-agents)* The vision: CodeClash as a testbed for human-AI collaboration—vary the setup (solo agent, multi-agent, human+agent), freeze model capability, and measure how interaction changes as models improve—John Yang* SWE-bench: https://www.swebench.com* X: https://x.com/jyangballinFull Video EpisodeTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction: John Yang on SWE-bench and Code Evaluations00:00:31 SWE-bench Origins and Devon's Impact on the Coding Agent Arms Race00:01:09 SWE-bench Ecosystem: Verified, Pro, Multimodal, and Multilingual Variants00:02:17 Moving Beyond Django: Diversifying Code Evaluation Repositories00:03:08 Code Clash: Long-Horizon Development Through Programming Tournaments00:04:41 From Halite to Economic Value: Designing Competitive Coding Arenas00:06:04 Ofir's Lab: SWE-ficiency, AlgoTune, and SciCode for Scientific Computing00:07:52 The Benchmark Landscape: TAU-bench, Terminal-bench, and User Simulation00:09:20 The Impossible Task Debate: Refusals, Ambiguity, and Benchmark Integrity00:12:32 The Future of Code Evals: Long Autonomy vs Human-AI Collaboration00:14:37 Call to Action: User Interaction Data and Codebase Understanding Research Get full access to Latent.Space at www.latent.space/subscribe

From creating SWE-bench in a Princeton basement to shipping CodeClash, SWE-bench Multimodal, and SWE-bench Multilingual, John Yang has spent the last year and a half watching his benchmark become the de facto standard for evaluating AI coding agents—trusted by Cognition (Devin), OpenAI, Anthropic, and every major lab racing to solve software engineering at scale. We caught up with John live at NeurIPS 2025 to dig into the state of code evals heading into 2026: why SWE-bench went from ignored (October 2023) to the industry standard after Devin's launch (and how Walden emailed him two weeks before the big reveal), how the benchmark evolved from Django-heavy to nine languages across 40 repos (JavaScript, Rust, Java, C, Ruby), why unit tests as verification are limiting and long-running agent tournaments might be the future (CodeClash: agents maintain codebases, compete in arenas, and iterate over multiple rounds), the proliferation of SWE-bench variants (SWE-bench Pro, SWE-bench Live, SWE-Efficiency, AlgoTune, SciCode) and how benchmark authors are now justifying their splits with curation techniques instead of just "more repos," why Tau-bench's "impossible tasks" controversy is actually a feature not a bug (intentionally including impossible tasks flags cheating), the tension between long autonomy (5-hour runs) vs. interactivity (Cognition's emphasis on fast back-and-forth), how Terminal-bench unlocked creativity by letting PhD students and non-coders design environments beyond GitHub issues and PRs, the academic data problem (companies like Cognition and Cursor have rich user interaction data, academics need user simulators or compelling products like LMArena to get similar signal), and his vision for CodeClash as a testbed for human-AI collaboration—freeze model capability, vary the collaboration setup (solo agent, multi-agent, human+agent), and measure how interaction patterns change as models climb the ladder from code completion to full codebase reasoning. We discuss: John's path: Princeton → SWE-bench (October 2023) → Stanford PhD with Diyi Yang and the Iris Group, focusing on code evals, human-AI collaboration, and long-running agent benchmarks The SWE-bench origin story: released October 2023, mostly ignored until Cognition's Devin launch kicked off the arms race (Walden emailed John two weeks before: "we have a good number") SWE-bench Verified: the curated, high-quality split that became the standard for serious evals SWE-bench Multimodal and Multilingual: nine languages (JavaScript, Rust, Java, C, Ruby) across 40 repos, moving beyond the Django-heavy original distribution The SWE-bench Pro controversy: independent authors used the "SWE-bench" name without John's blessing, but he's okay with it ("congrats to them, it's a great benchmark") CodeClash: John's new benchmark for long-horizon development—agents maintain their own codebases, edit and improve them each round, then compete in arenas (programming games like Halite, economic tasks like GDP optimization) SWE-Efficiency (Jeffrey Maugh, John's high school classmate): optimize code for speed without changing behavior (parallelization, SIMD operations) AlgoTune, SciCode, Terminal-bench, Tau-bench, SecBench, SRE-bench: the Cambrian explosion of code evals, each diving into different domains (security, SRE, science, user simulation) The Tau-bench "impossible tasks" debate: some tasks are underspecified or impossible, but John thinks that's actually a feature (flags cheating if you score above 75%) Cognition's research focus: codebase understanding (retrieval++), helping humans understand their own codebases, and automatic context engineering for LLMs (research sub-agents) The vision: CodeClash as a testbed for human-AI collaboration—vary the setup (solo agent, multi-agent, human+agent), freeze model capability, and measure how interaction changes as models improve — John Yang SWE-bench: https://www.swebench.com X: https://x.com/jyangballin Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: John Yang on SWE-bench and Code Evaluations 00:00:31 SWE-bench Origins and Devon's Impact on the Coding Agent Arms Race 00:01:09 SWE-bench Ecosystem: Verified, Pro, Multimodal, and Multilingual Variants 00:02:17 Moving Beyond Django: Diversifying Code Evaluation Repositories 00:03:08 Code Clash: Long-Horizon Development Through Programming Tournaments 00:04:41 From Halite to Economic Value: Designing Competitive Coding Arenas 00:06:04 Ofir's Lab: SWE-ficiency, AlgoTune, and SciCode for Scientific Computing 00:07:52 The Benchmark Landscape: TAU-bench, Terminal-bench, and User Simulation 00:09:20 The Impossible Task Debate: Refusals, Ambiguity, and Benchmark Integrity 00:12:32 The Future of Code Evals: Long Autonomy vs Human-AI Collaboration 00:14:37 Call to Action: User Interaction Data and Codebase Understanding Research

In the shadowed hollows where myth bleeds into memory, the devil's footprints mark the ancient soil of Welsh lore. In this spellbinding episode of Time Between Times with Owen Staton, we journey deep into the dark heart of folklore to uncover the devil's many disguises: the horned tempter lurking at crossroads, the twisted whisper in windswept valleys that chills even the bravest soul, and the monstrous forms born of peasant fear and firelight tales. From cavernous caves beneath Cambrian hills to lonely tracks where lost travellers swear they've heard infernal laughter, Welsh tradition paints the devil not only as a tempter of souls but as a trickster spirit shaping the very landscape of fear itself. This isn't just legend — it's the folklore of shadowed hearts and ancient woods coming alive in the dark between the worlds.In this haunting episode, host Owen Staton welcomes special guest Amy Boucher, an expert folklorist, storyteller, and chronicler of ghostly traditions. Amy brings sharp insight and passion to the underbelly of folklore, illuminating how tales of the devil and otherworldly mischief reflect the fears, morals, and imaginations of communities through time. Together, Owen and Amy weave stories that blur the line between history and myth, revealing how tales of the devil endure in our collective psyche.About our guest: Amy Boucher is the writer and folklorist behind the blog Nearly Knowledgeable History — a trove of curious stories, folklore, and cultural insights. Explore Amy's work at https://nearlyknowledgeablehistory.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html. About Owen Staton: Owen is a Welsh storyteller and host of Time Between Times, sharing myths and legends to soothe and spook. Visit his world of tales and blog at https://www.welshstoryteller.com/ and catch his writings at https://owenstaton.substack.com/. Owen's Ko-fi page www.ko-fi.com/owenstatonOwen's Patreon www.patreon.com/owenstaton7Take care my FriendsOwen x

I had the incredible opportunity to bring together some of the brightest minds in the creator economy for an evening of candid conversation about where this industry is headed. From ad tech innovations to creator authenticity, we covered the full spectrum of what it takes to turn creator content into scalable, revenue-generating partnerships. Conor McKenna from Luma and Zoe Soon from the IAB kicked things off with a macro view of the space, discussing how fragmented media is creating massive opportunities for technology to step in. We explored why brands are shifting budgets at unprecedented rates, with Unilever committing 50% of marketing spend to creator-related initiatives.The evening featured deep dives into brand integration strategies with Ali Parish from Blue Hour Studios and Jeremy Stewart from VuePlanner, followed by an eye-opening discussion with Arthur Leopolod from Agentio about how AI and automation are revolutionizing creator advertising. Perhaps most compelling was hearing directly from Sydney Jo, the creator behind the viral Group Chat series, and her manager Haley Friedman from Made By All about the reality of building a creator business. From navigating brand negotiations to maintaining creative authenticity, this conversation revealed both the opportunities and challenges facing the next generation of digital storytellers._______________________________________________Key Highlights

There's a rock layer called the Cambrian where, seemingly out of nowhere, pop fossils from forty major animal groups. It's an explosion of life and diversity.

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The Science Points to Purpose: A Defense of Intelligent Design.  Stephen Meyer Watch the entire video at- https://youtu.be/3hx6fDOZz7k?si=lUw3u-qpCoWdEXzi John Anderson Media 772K subscribers 47,905 views Premiered Aug 22, 2025 In this conversation, John is joined by Dr. Stephen Meyer who articulates the scientific foundation that supports intelligent design, arguing that the universe's fine-tuning and the digital code in DNA point to a purposeful intelligence. He challenges materialistic assumptions, urging a re-evaluation of life's origins through rigorous scientific reasoning. Stephen analyses the shortcomings of evolutionary theory, explores the Cambrian explosion, and addresses the problem of evil, offering a rational case for theism grounded in modern scientific discoveries. Stephen C. Meyer, PhD, is a philosopher of science, the director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, and the author of several books, including "Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design," and "The Return of the God Hypothesis." Download his free mini-book "Scientific Evidence For A Creator" at https://www.discovery.org/m/securepdf... Sign up to John's newsletter here: https://johnanderson.net.au/contact/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01:34 - Introduction and Welcome 02:02 - What is Intelligent Design? 06:07 - The Origin of Life Problem 14:46 - Intelligent Design as Pseudoscience? 29:51 - Challenges to Evolutionary Theory 39:34 - Social Implications of Darwinism 49:19 - A New Spirit of Inquiry 59:24 - The Problem of Evil 01:06:20 - The Christian Story and Human Nature -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conversations feature John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, interviewing the world's foremost thought leaders about today's pressing social, cultural and political issues. John believes proper, robust dialogue is necessary if we are to maintain our social strength and cohesion. As he puts it; "You cannot get good public policy out of a bad public debate." If you value this discussion and want to see more like it, make sure you subscribe to the channel here:    / @johnandersonmedia   And stay right up to date with all the conversations by subscribing to the newsletter here: https://johnanderson.net.au/contact/ Follow John on X: https://x.com/JohnAndersonAC Follow John on Facebook:   / johnandersonac   Follow John on Instagram:   / johnandersonac   Support the channel: https://johnanderson.net.au/support/ Website: https://johnanderson.net.au/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Qh2fEs... 2QH0QLLWRVNX5LFA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow Stephen on X: https://x.com/StephenCMeyer Subscribe to Stephen's Channel:    / @drstephenmeyer   Follow Stephen on Facebook:   / drstephencmeyer   Website: https://stephencmeyer.org/   --------------------------------------------------------------------  Check out our ACU Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/ACUPodcast   HELP ACU SPREAD THE WORD!  Please go to Apple Podcasts and give ACU a 5 star rating. Apple canceled us and now we are clawing our way back to the top. Don't let the Leftist win. Do it now! Thanks. Also Rate us on any platform you follow us on. It helps a lot. Forward this show to friends. Ways to subscribe to the American Conservative University Podcast Click here to subscribe via Apple Podcasts Click here to subscribe via RSS You can also subscribe via Stitcher FM Player Podcast Addict Tune-in Podcasts Pandora Look us up on Amazon Prime …And Many Other Podcast Aggregators and sites ACU on Twitter- https://twitter.com/AmerConU . Warning- Explicit and Violent video content.   Please help ACU by submitting your Show ideas. Email us at americanconservativeuniversity@americanconservativeuniversity.com   Endorsed Charities -------------------------------------------------------- Pre-Born! Saving babies and Souls. https://preborn.org/ OUR MISSION To glorify Jesus Christ by leading and equipping pregnancy clinics to save more babies and souls. WHAT WE DO Pre-Born! partners with life-affirming pregnancy clinics all across the nation. We are designed to strategically impact the abortion industry through the following initiatives:… -------------------------------------------------------- Help CSI Stamp Out Slavery In Sudan Join us in our effort to free over 350 slaves. Listeners to the Eric Metaxas Show will remember our annual effort to free Christians who have been enslaved for simply acknowledging Jesus Christ as their Savior. As we celebrate the birth of Christ this Christmas, join us in giving new life to brothers and sisters in Sudan who have enslaved as a result of their faith. https://csi-usa.org/metaxas   https://csi-usa.org/slavery/   Typical Aid for the Enslaved A ration of sorghum, a local nutrient-rich staple food A dairy goat A “Sack of Hope,” a survival kit containing essential items such as tarp for shelter, a cooking pan, a water canister, a mosquito net, a blanket, a handheld sickle, and fishing hooks. Release celebrations include prayer and gathering for a meal, and medical care for those in need. The CSI team provides comfort, encouragement, and a shoulder to lean on while they tell their stories and begin their new lives. Thank you for your compassion  Giving the Gift of Freedom and Hope to the Enslaved South Sudanese -------------------------------------------------------- Food For the Poor https://foodforthepoor.org/ Help us serve the poorest of the poor Food For The Poor began in 1982 in Jamaica. Today, our interdenominational Christian ministry serves the poor in primarily 17 countries throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Thanks to our faithful donors, we are able to provide food, housing, healthcare, education, fresh water, emergency relief, micro-enterprise solutions and much more. We are proud to have fed millions of people and provided more than 15.7 billion dollars in aid. Our faith inspires us to be an organization built on compassion, and motivated by love. Our mission is to bring relief to the poorest of the poor in the countries where we serve. We strive to reflect God's unconditional love. It's a sacrificial love that embraces all people regardless of race or religion. We believe that we can show His love by serving the “least of these” on this earth as Christ challenged us to do in Matthew 25. We pray that by God's grace, and with your support, we can continue to bring relief to the suffering and hope to the hopeless.   Report on Food For the Poor by Charity Navigator https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/592174510  

Charles Wong, CEO and Co-founder of Bifrost AI, tells Host Llewellyn King and Co-host Adam Clayton Powell III that we are in a "Cambrian explosion moment" with humanoid robotics, "where someone drops a product that is so powerful, so general that everyone will want one." Exciting.

The gang discusses two papers that have very little in common with each except for the word "stem". The first paper uses birth death models to simulate the fossil record in order investigate if neutral models can produce patterns similar to the "crown"/"stem" evolutionary dynamics that have been observed in real data. The second paper investigates stem mandibulate fossils to investigate the timing of major key innovations in the evolutionary history of this arthropod group. Meanwhile, Amanda decides, James bullies, and Curt explains.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that have very little to do with each other, other than the fact that they have one of the same words in them. The first paper looks at the ways in which animals change over time and how they make more of each other and how the ways things live and die can make it look like there are some groups that do better than others. The paper shows that some of this is something we should see even if it is just because of how things make more things and the fact that we care more about the things that live today than the things that do not live today. The second paper looks at how animals that have many parts that repeat make their arms and legs. This paper looks at very very old animals from groups that are not around today but maybe could be close to those groups. The group of animals today that this group is close to has a lot of things that all of them share, like that they make mouths from a lot of arms, and also they have things on the front they use to feel things, and that they are three parts. This paper is using these old animals that are close to this group to try and see which things today in this group appeared first, and which things may have taken some time before they appeared.   References: Budd, Graham E., and Richard P. Mann. "The dynamics of stem and crown groups." Science Advances 6.8 (2020): eaaz1626. Liu, Yao, et al. "A tiny Cambrian stem-mandibulate reveals independent evolution of limb tagmatization and specialization in early euarthropods." Scientific Reports 15.1 (2025): 19115.

Matt Turck (VC at FirstMark) joins the show to break down the most controversial MAD (Machine Learning, AI, and Data) Landscape yet. This year, the team "declared bankruptcy" and cut over 1,000 logos to better reflect the market reality: a "Cambrian explosion" of AI companies and a fierce "struggle and tension between the very large companies and the startups".Matt discusses why incumbents are "absolutely not lazy" , which categories have "largely just gone away" (like Customer Data Platforms and Reverse ETL) , and what new categories (like AI Agents and Local AI) are emerging. We also cover his investment thesis in a world dominated by foundation models, the "very underestimated" European AI scene , and whether an AI could win a Nobel Prize by 2027.https://www.mattturck.com/mad2025

Krunching Gears - The Rally Podcast, 2025 Season, episode 44. William Creighton & Liam Regan, our 2025 British Rally Champions, join us to chat about their BRC campaign and what winning the championship means to them. Max McRae talks to us about his maiden BRC win on the Cambrian Rally and his grandfather Jimmy, his biggest fan, who turned 82 last week. Patrick McHugh tells us about how much he is enjoying his brand new, KGP-powered Darrian T90 GTR+ and competing in the recent Fastnet Stages Rally. Chapters Start 00:00:00 BRC Champions William Creighton & Liam Regan 00:04:50 Cambrian Rally winner Max McRae 00:24:08 Patrick McHugh talks about his Darrian 00:35:00 End 00:51:56

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Join Ellen & special guest, zoology and science communication powerhouse Lindsay Nikole, for a review of some of the animal kingdom's greatest hits throughout the history of the Earth. We discuss ecological gossip, mass extinctions, the Cambrian explosion and evolution's “experimental” phase, swimming potatoes with googly eyes, giant bugs, bizarre prehistoric sharks, imaginary friend lore, and so much more.Links:Pre-order your copy of Lindsay's book, Epic Earth!Follow Lindsay on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok!For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website!Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord!Follow Ellen on BlueSky!

Join Ellen & special guest, zoology and science communication powerhouse Lindsay Nikole, for a review of some of the animal kingdom's greatest hits throughout the history of the Earth. We discuss ecological gossip, mass extinctions, the Cambrian explosion and evolution's “experimental” phase, swimming potatoes with googly eyes, giant bugs, bizarre prehistoric sharks, imaginary friend lore, and so much more.Links:Pre-order your copy of Lindsay's book, Epic Earth!Follow Lindsay on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok!For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website!Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord!Follow Ellen on BlueSky!

Stablecoins aren't crypto assets, they're negotiable instruments that banks should process like checks.In this episode of Stabled Up, we sit down with Tony McLaughlin, CEO of Ubyx and former Swift executive, to discuss why the stablecoin supercycle is here, how clearing infrastructure actually works, and why every bank will soon offer a stablecoin wallet.We discuss:- Why private blockchains have failed- The six magic words that will unlock bank adoption- How clearing infrastructure actually works- The coming Cambrian explosion of stablecoins- Why every bank will offer a wallet- CBDCs vs stablecoins: What's the real difference?- Stablecoins as "bundles of joy" for global commerceTimestamps00:00 Intro00:44 From TradFi to Crypto: Tony's Journey06:10 Why Public Blockchains Win08:52 Alvara Ad, Enso Ad, Talus Ad09:24 Ubyx's Infrastructure Solution for Banks14:46 Stablecoins vs Checks: The Perfect Comparison20:53 The Clearing Process Explained Simply24:38 Negotiable Instruments 101: What Banks Actually Understand28:16 Not All Stablecoins Are Created Equal32:57 CBDCs & Tokenized Deposits: The Real Differences35:24 Relay Ad, Hibachi Ad35:57 How Clearing Actually Works Behind the Scenes42:41 Wallets for Every Bank & Every Fintech46:46 Decentralizing the Network: The End GameWebsite: https://therollup.co/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1P6ZeYd...Podcast: https://therollup.co/category/podcastFollow us on X: https://www.x.com/therollupcoFollow Rob on X: https://www.x.com/robbie_rollupFollow Andy on X: https://www.x.com/ayyyeandyJoin our TG group: https://t.me/+TsM1CRpWFgk1NGZhThe Rollup Disclosures: https://therollup.co/the-rollup-discl

A powerful way to envision our entry into this new phase of evolution and epochal shift is as a fusion process — a merging of the physical realm with a new universal potency that unlocks immense possibilities and profound renewal. Imagine it as an energetic Cambrian release for humanity and the planet. We dive deeper into the mysteries of the epochal shift underway in the latest chapter of the “Current Openings” series with Aviv Shahar and David Price Francis.To better understand what we mean by an epoch, Aviv and David begin with a closer look at the energetic nature of the human and the cosmos. Modern thinking often confines reality to the limits of our biophysical form. However, we recognize an energetic dimension residing within and between all layers of organic, physical existence. Humans can sense and attune to these spiritual or energetic frequencies through finer faculties naturally embedded in our design. The energetic or unseen natures of the human and the planet evolve over time, which can be traced in the evolution of culture throughout history. This perspective reveals epochs as intelligent, purposeful programs of growth and refinement — forward-looking pathways guiding us toward a universal future.    Other insights and ponders:The new epoch calls for capacities beyond intellect — faculties essential for deeper integration of human life within the universe.Epochal changes do not arrive all at once. The energetic permission of the past holds initially but breaks down swiftly, giving rise dramatically to the new.By metabolizing new impressions, we activate new capacities and perceptions — a profound act of renewal; an evolutionary process creating something new on the inside.Rather than rejecting the past, we harvest its best elements and respectfully leave behind the rest. We carry forward a tested, validated value system.There is confusion, chaos, and suffering when we're not able to connect with new energetic and spiritual fuel available for healing and development elevation.This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel. TWEETABLE QUOTES “An epoch is an evolutionary program, a program afforded by the universe and the planet, where humanity can go through specific and necessary development. The idea that the evolutionary process is just a random trial and error makes no sense; it's too brilliantly constructed. And there is clearly an ascending refinement and complexifying vector of life wanting to support higher levels, higher capacities, higher sophistication, higher consciousness.” (Aviv)“This realization that in learning there is renewal. Because what it actually means is that we metabolize new impressions, and those new impressions activate in us new capacities and perceptions. And that, in that itself, is a profound act of renewal. And that therefore, as the epoch shifts and a new energy permission is afforded to human experience and to humanity at large, we are to truly expect that everything around us will continue to change in an intensified manner.” (Aviv) RESOURCES MENTIONED Portals of Perception WebsiteAviv's LinkedIn Aviv's TwitterAviv's WebsiteCurrent Openings #20 – The Epoch Mystery

We've covered AI's massive power appetite in depth over the past year – with good reason. It's the driving force behind much of the change and uncertainty in the energy world right now, from the error bars around our demand for electricity to the lineup of technologies vying to meet that demand.  In this episode Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane, head of research and partner at Energy Impact Partners, about five big questions arising in this uncertain load-growth environment. They cover topics like: The underappreciated factors that could flip the supply crunch to oversupply, like algorithmic efficiency gains, on-device inference, and off-grid data centers The winners of the AI-drive power boom, including utilities and grid equipment suppliers, and the potential losers like industry that relies on cheap power Whether there will be a “Cambrian explosion” or consolidation of nuclear reactors designs The prospects for enhanced geothermal after Fervo's Cape Station comes online The future of grid-enhancing technologies like advanced conductors and dynamic line ratings, and whether they will make it out of “utility pilot hell” Resources: Steel for Fuel: Why does nobody know how much energy AI will consume? Open Circuit: How do we know if we're in an AI bubble?   Catalyst: The US nuclear groundswell   Catalyst: How geothermal gets built   Latitude Media: In Georgia, stakeholders still can't agree on data center load growth numbers   Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.  Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com. Catalyst is brought to you by Bloom Energy. AI data centers can't wait years for grid power—and with Bloom Energy's fuel cells, they don't have to. Bloom Energy delivers affordable, always-on, ultra-reliable onsite power, built for chipmakers, hyperscalers, and data center leaders looking to power their operations at AI speed. Learn more by visiting BloomEnergy.com.

At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft is Tom's choice this time. Mountains is perhaps the most objective look into Lovecraft's universe of cosmic horror. When an Antarctic expedition from Miskatonic University discovers the remains of a sprawling alien civilization from pre-Cambrian times, what horrors will be unearthed? It's best we hope never to find out!TTYpodcast.comThumbingthroughyesterday.com

Alex Thorn talks with m0 CEO and Co-Founder Luca Prosperi about lessons from last week's flash crash, the GENIUS Act, corporate stablecoin chains, and winners and losers in the forthcoming stablecoin explosion. Alex also talks with Beimnet Abebe (Galaxy Trading) about markets, rare earth metals, and the Fed's admission that quantitative tightening is coming to an end. This episode was recorded on Thursday, October 15, 2025. Galaxy Digital holds a financial interest in companies included in this content, including M0. Galaxy Digital also provides services to vehicles that invest in these companies.  If the value of such assets increases, those vehicles may benefit, and Galaxy Digital's service fees may increase accordingly.  Disclaimer: ⁠https://www.galaxy.app/legal/social-legal-disclaimer⁠ ++ Follow us on Twitter, @glxyresearch, and read our research at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/research/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more! This podcast, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. View the full disclaimer at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/disclaimer-galaxy-brains-podcast/⁠

In this engaging conversation, Rachel Ignotofski discusses her new book Dinosaurs, exploring the fascination with these ancient creatures, the impact of mass extinctions, and the evolution of life on Earth. She highlights the importance of paleontology, the legacy of Mary Anning, and the artistic choices made in illustrating the book. The discussion also touches on the audience for the book, quirky anecdotes from paleontological history, and the significance of understanding deep time in relation to our current ecosystem.AD| To sign up for The Curiousity Box go to http://curiositybox.com/BreakingMath and get 25% off your first box with breakmath25Takeaways Most of us fall in love with dinosaurs around the age of six. Dinosaurs and birds evolved together, sharing the Earth. There have been five major mass extinctions in Earth's history. Nature always bounces back after mass extinctions. Paleontology is constantly evolving with new discoveries. Mary Anning was a pioneer in paleontology, often overlooked. Dinosaurs were not just big lizards; they were diverse and complex. The Cambrian explosion marked a significant evolutionary milestone.Chapters 00:00 The Fascination with Dinosaurs 03:42 Mass Extinctions and Geological Time 06:16 Paleontology and Misconceptions 09:08 Mary Anning: The Mother of Paleontology 11:53 Evolution of Dinosaurs and Marine Reptiles 13:06 The Evolution of Whales 13:42 The Cambrian Explosion and Ancient Creatures 16:12 Favorite Time Periods in Prehistory 18:48 The Book's Audience and Its Appeal 19:03 Anecdotes from the Fossil World 21:53 Art and Illustrations in Science 26:11 The Vastness of Earth History 28:21 Upcoming Events and Future ProjectsFollow Rachel Ignotofsky on Twitter, Instagram, Website, and find her new book here.Subscribe to Breaking Math wherever you get your podcasts.Follow Breaking Math on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Website, YouTube, TikTokFollow Autumn on Twitter, BlueSky, and InstagramBecome a guest hereemail: breakingmathpodcast@gmail.com

In this episode, Jiří Žák describes the two main orogenies whose remnants figure prominently in central European geology: the Cadomian orogeny that lasted from the late Neoproterozoic to the early Cambrian (c. 700 Ma to c. 425 Ma) and the Variscan orogeny that occurred in the late Paleozoic (c. 380 Ma to 280 Ma). The Cadomian took place on the northern margins of Gondwana, only later to rift and travel north to form what was to become Europe. The Variscan was caused by the collision of Gondwana with Laurussia in the final stages of the assembly of the supercontinent Pangea. Both orogenies have been heavily eroded, and we see their imprint in the form of metamorphic rocks, volcanic rocks, granites, and deformation structures. These are scattered across Europe, from southern Britain to eastern Europe.Žák has been studying the geology of central Europe for over 25 years using methods ranging from structural studies in the field to detrital zircon geochronology.  He  is a Professor in the Institute of Geology and Paleontology at Charles University in Prague.

HEADLINE: Cambrian Explosion, Apex Predators, and the Morphological Mysteries of the Ediacaran BOOK TITLE: Other Lands GUEST AUTHOR NAME: Thomas Halliday 200-WORD SUMMARY: This final segment explores the deep past, focusing on the Cambrian and Ediacaran periods. The Cambrian (520 million years ago) is known as the Cambrian Explosion, where representatives of all modern phyla (body plans) emerged, including early vertebrates. Sites like Chengjiang, China, illustrate this diversification. The apex predator of this era was Omnidens, a six-foot-long, many-legged arthropod that fed using a circular, spined mouth array. The emergence of predation fundamentally altered evolution, driving the development of armor, hard teeth, and the origin of eyes. Prior to the Cambrian was the Ediacaran (550 million years ago). Ediacaran organisms, which existed in a relatively peaceful pre-Cambrian world, were morphologically distinct from later life. Examples include the spiral-shaped Eoandromeda. The sea floor during this time was stabilized by microbial mats. Though life was bizarre, scientists are confident in classifying early life forms; for example, organisms like Dickinsonia are confirmed animals based on unique chemical markers such as cholesterol. Living Stromatolites (mounds of microbes) that persist today also existed during this time.

On this episode, NLW goes deep on OpenAI's release of Sora 2—its next-generation video generation model—and the launch of the new Sora social app, which some are calling an AI-powered TikTok. Is this the beginning of a Cambrian explosion of creativity, or just the next wave of AI brain rot? The show explores what makes Sora 2 different, how the cameo feature could reshape social media, the early cultural backlash, and what this moment says about society's growing rebellion against attention-draining digital platforms.

The gang discusses two papers that deal with fossil brains. The first paper looks at a fossil arthropod from the Cambrian and uses neurological characters to determine its phylogenetic placement. The second paper looks at a synapsid braincase and tries to infer why this one species has lost its parietal eye when other members of the species have he eye. Meanwhile, Curt invents some new sponsors, Amanda has plans for James, and James discusses some personal growth.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition) The friends talk about two papers that look at very old brains in animals that are long gone. The first paper is the brain of animal from a very long time ago that would grow by taking off its skin when it needs to get bigger and is made of many small bits stuck together. This animal was really weird for a long time, but the people who wrote this paper found one of them that had its brains still in it. They looked at the brains and they looked at the brains of other animals from the past and animals around today and they saw that this brain looked a lot like the brains of a group around today that some of the animals make things to catch food and live in out of their bottom. So the people who wrote the paper say this could mean that is maybe a very very very old animal from that group or close to it. The second paper looks at the hard bits that hold the brain in for an animal that is close to the animals today that have hair and are warm. This animal may not have had hair and may not have been warm, but what the people who wrote the paper are looking at is the spaces in the hard bits that hold the brain. In animals that do not have hair and are cold, there is a space at the top of the head for an eye that can see light and dark. In animals that are warm, they lose this eye. The old animal they are looking at has some animals in the group that have that eye who live in cold places. The animal they are looking at does not have this eye, and so the question is why? They look at everything and they think that it is because the animal without the eye lives in places that are always warm and where day and night don't change that much. This would mean they would not need this light dark eye as much.   References: Strausfeld, Nicholas J., David R. Andrew, and Frank Hirth. "Cambrian origin of the arachnid brain." Current Biology 35.15 (2025): 3777-3785. Benoit, Julien, and Jaganmoy Jodder. "The palaeoneurology of a new specimen of the Middle Triassic dicynodont synapsid Kombuisia frerensis." Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 70.2 (2025): 369-374.

Scott Melker helps viewers understand stablecoins, their uses, and why it's “more of a tool” than an investment. Fully backed stablecoins like Tether have the most demand, but there are other “styles” of stablecoins that may come with more risk. Scott discusses the GENIUS act creating a “Cambrian explosion” within crypto and its implications for the stablecoin sector. He also explains some of the intricacies of stablecoins, including how they are often backed by U.S. Treasuries, and how that system works.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day. Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

In this conversation, John is joined by Dr. Stephen Meyer who articulates the scientific foundation that supports intelligent design, arguing that the universe's fine-tuning and the digital code in DNA point to a purposeful intelligence. He challenges materialistic assumptions, urging a re-evaluation of life's origins through rigorous scientific reasoning.Stephen analyses the shortcomings of evolutionary theory, explores the Cambrian explosion, and addresses the problem of evil, offering a rational case for theism grounded in modern scientific discoveries.Stephen C. Meyer, PhD, is a philosopher of science, the director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, and the author of several books, including "Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design," and "The Return of the God Hypothesis." Download his free mini-book "Scientific Evidence For A Creator" at https://www.discovery.org/m/securepdfs/2021/12/Meyer-SciEvidforCreatorsm2.pdf If you value this discussion and want to see more like it, make sure you subscribe to the channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtnYSEGViOnb7k8ezUaWUww?sub_confirmation=1And stay right up to date with all the conversations by subscribing to the newsletter here: https://johnanderson.net.au/contact/Follow John on X: https://x.com/JohnAndersonACFollow John on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnandersonacFollow John on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnandersonac/Support the channel: https://johnanderson.net.au/support/Website: https://johnanderson.net.au/Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Qh2fEsC7nEVxXxQzwTv54

What's it like to live in Blossom Valley, San Jose, California?In this series, we explore the most desirable communities across the Bay Area — giving you an insider's look at where locals live, work, and play. Whether you're relocating, investing, or just exploring your options, this is the BEST vlog series for understanding the lifestyle, real estate, and amenities in top Bay Area neighborhoods.This week, we're heading to Blossom Valley — one of San Jose's most underrated neighborhoods for starter single-family homes. With tree-lined streets, abundant parks, and shopping just minutes away, Blossom Valley delivers suburban comfort without losing connection to the heart of Silicon Valley. Affordable by San Jose standards and rich in community spirit, it's a hidden gem worth exploring.

Determining the origin of teeth in vertebrates is an incredibly significant but notoriously difficult problem within palaeontology. Teeth didn't evolve in the mouths of our ancestors, but are first seen as part of the external skeletons of jawless fish as structures called ‘odontodes'. These would later migrate into the mouth with the evolution of jaws, becoming the teeth we have today, but odontodes still remain present in the skin of modern cartilaginous fish, giving them their rough texture. The oldest known odontodes are from the late Cambrian Period and represent the very first evidence for vertebrates in the fossil record. Unfortunately, they are only ever found as part of fragmentary pieces of exoskeleton, however, given that their specific construction is only known in vertebrates, there is little else they could possibly be… Joining us for this episode is Dr Yara Haridy, University of Chicago, who set out to use modern new scanning techniques to better understand the nature of these first teeth and what they tell us about the evolution of vertebrates. What she discovered was unexpected, but also led to better understanding of the purpose of odontodes in the dermal exoskeletons of our ancestors.

On today's Bible Answer Man broadcast (08/13/25), we pick up where we ended on our previous broadcast and present more of an episode of the Hank Unplugged podcast. Hank is talking with Dr. Paul Gould, associate professor of philosophy at Palm Beach Atlantic University and author of A Good and True Story: Eleven Clues to Understanding Our Universe and Your Place in It. Hank and Paul discuss if the immensity of the universe should inspire belief in God, the nature of life, how we know that life is valuable, how the Cambrian explosion uprooted Darwin's Tree of Life, the current revolutions and shifts in evolutionary theory, if the modern world suffers from a nature deficit, if materialism can account for consciousness, and what best explains morality.

In this episode of the Venture Capital Podcast, host Peter Harris sits down with Rex Salisbury, solo GP of Cambrian and former fintech partner at Andreessen Horowitz, for an in-depth conversation about the ongoing transformation of financial services. Rex shares his unique journey from investment banking to leading one of fintech's most dynamic pre-seed and seed funds, explaining how decades of inefficiency in banking have finally given way to a wave of disruptive innovation.The discussion explores recent shifts in the fintech landscape, highlighting how new fintech companies, once dismissed as serving only niche or low-value customers, are now directly competing with and winning market share from the largest legacy banks. Rex points to the rise of digital-first platforms like Robinhood and Wealthfront, which started by serving overlooked users but have evolved into sophisticated competitors for the millennial and Gen Z wealth transfer.Peter and Rex examine why B2B fintech is an especially powerful force, with vertical software companies like Toast integrating lending, payroll, and banking into a single platform that businesses can't imagine leaving for traditional banks. Rex also tackles the myth of banks' cost-of-capital advantage, arguing that technology and changing consumer expectations are steadily eroding long-held bank moats.Beyond consumer trends, the episode ventures into the investment landscape, with Rex sharing lessons from recent Cambrian investments, such as companies revolutionizing transfer agents and simplifying business shutdowns. The conversation also addresses the role of crypto and stablecoins in reshaping payment and banking infrastructure, where Rex differentiates between international and U.S. use cases but remains optimistic about crypto's role as a catalyst for industry change.Rex closes with actionable advice for aspiring founders and operators: seek out dense talent networks, work in growth-stage companies, and always surround yourself with people who teach you. The episode captures the underlying message that, as technology, business models, and capital flows shift, fintech is only just beginning to threaten incumbents and capture its share of the financial future.Follow the PodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/venturecapitalfm/Twitter: https://twitter.com/vcpodcastfmLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/venturecapitalfm/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7BQimY8NJ6cr617lqtRr7N?si=ftylo2qHQiCgmT9dfloD_g&nd=1&dlsi=7b868f1b72094351Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/venture-capital/id1575351789Website: https://www.venturecapital.fm/Follow Jon BradshawLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrbradshaw/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrjonbradshaw/Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrjonbradshawFollow Peter HarrisLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterharris1Twitter: https://twitter.com/thevcstudentInstagram: https://instagram.com/shodanpeteYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@peterharris2812

Discover how one grape tells two stories. Rhône Valley Syrah meets Heathcote Shiraz in a tasting that uncorks terroir, trends, and label politics. Syrah and Shiraz share identical genetics yet walk very different cultural paths. In this episode of Got Somme, we taste benchmark bottles from France’s Rhône Valley alongside Heathcote, Victoria, to reveal how soil, climate, and marketing shape each wine’s personality. You'll learn why cooler-climate Australian producers are embracing the term “Syrah", how Cambrian soil defines Heathcote Shiraz, and what these trends mean for Australia’s export future. We alos want to know your thoughts on what defines labelling Syrah on Australian bottles? Sponsors: RIEDEL Wine Glasses: RIEDEL Superleggero Hermitage/Syrah https://www.riedel.com/en-au/shop/riedel-superleggero-premium/hermitage-syrah-642500041 Grays.com Buy the wine, drink the wine where we get ours: https://www.grays.com/search/wine Socials: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gotsommepodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gotsomme Key Takeaways One grape, two personas: “Syrah” signals elegance while “Shiraz” hints at bold generosity. Labels guide perception: Name choice influences consumer expectations before the first sip. Terroir tells the truth: Rhône delivers peppery finesse, Heathcote offers mineral-driven power. Trends are cyclical: Market demand swings between delicate and full-bodied styles. Blind tasting wins: Remove the label and let origin and craftsmanship speak louder. Chapters 00:00 The Syrah vs Shiraz Debate 02:50 French Style Deep-Dive 06:03 Rhône vs Heathcote Tasting Notes 08:55 Shiraz’s Evolution in Australia 11:38 Reading the Label: Syrah or Shiraz 14:38 Looking Ahead: Future of Australian Shiraz This podcast proudly presented by Grays.com: https://www.grays.com/search/wine-and-more?tab=itemsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's Invertebrate August! These creatures are the most invertebrate-y of all! Further reading: Dubious Diskagma Horodyskia is among the oldest multicellular macroorganisms, finds study A painting of diskagma, taken from the top link above: Little brown jug flowers (not related to diskagma in any way!): Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I'm your host, Kate Shaw. This episode started out as the March 2025 Patreon episode, but there was more I wanted to add to it that I didn't have time to cover in that one. Here's the expanded version to kick off Invertebrate August, which also happens to be episode 444 and releasing on August 4th! It's about two mystery fossils. The first is named Diskagma, which means disc-shaped fragment, and it was only described in 2013. That's partly because it's so small, barely two millimeters long at most, and partly because of where it's found. That would be fossilized in extremely old rocks. When I saw the illustration accompanying the blog post where I learned about Diskagma, I thought it was a cluster of cup-like flowers, sort of like the flowers of the plant called little brown jug. I was ready to send the link to Meredith Hemphill of the Herbarium of the Bizarre podcast, which by the way you should be listening to. But then I saw how old Diskagma is. It's been dated to 2.2 billion years old. That's older than any plant, probably by as much as a billion years. Even more astounding, it lived on land. As a reminder, the Cambrian explosion took place about half a billion years ago, when tiny marine animals diversified rapidly to fill new ecological niches. That happened in the water, though, mainly in shallow, warm oceans. If you go back to around 850 million years ago, that may have been roughly the time that land plants evolved from green algae that lived in fresh water. Plant-like algae, or possibly algae-like plants, might be as old as 1 billion years old. But before then, scientists don't find evidence of anything except microbes living on land, and they were probably restricted to lakes and other bodies of fresh water. That's because there wasn't much soil, just broken-up rock that contained very few nutrients and couldn't retain much water. Diskagma was shaped like a tiny elongated cup, or an urn or vase, with what looks like a stem on one end and what looks like an opening at the other end. The opening contained structures that look like little filaments, but the filaments didn't fill the whole cup. Most of the cup was diskagma's body, so to speak, although we don't know what it contained. We also don't know what the filaments were for. We do know that the stem actually did connect diskagma to other cups, so that they lived in little groups. We don't know if it was a single animal with multiple cuplike structures or if it was a colony, or really anything. That's the problem. We don't know anything about diskagma except that it existed, and that it lived on land 2.2 billion years ago. Tiny as it was, though, it wasn't microscopic, and it definitely appears more complex than would be expected that long ago, especially from something living on dry land. One suggestion is that the main part of its body contained a symbiotic bacteria that could convert chemicals to nutrients. As in many modern animals, especially extremophiles, the bacteria would have had a safe place to live and the diskagma would have had nutrients that allowed it to live without needing to eat. Diskagma lived at an interesting time in the earth's history, called the great oxygenation event, also called the great oxidation event. We talked about it in episode 341 in conjunction with cyanobacteria, because cyanobacteria basically started the great oxygenation event. Cyanobacteria are still around, by the way, and are doing just fine. They're usually called blue-green algae even though they're not actually algae. Cyanobacteria photosynthesize,

Determining the origin of teeth in vertebrates is an incredibly significant but notoriously difficult problem within palaeontology. Teeth didn't evolve in the mouths of our ancestors, but are first seen as part of the external skeletons of jawless fish as structures called 'odontodes'. These would later migrate into the mouth with the evolution of jaws, becoming the teeth we have today, but odontodes still remain present in the skin of modern cartilaginous fish, giving them their rough texture. The oldest known odontodes are from the late Cambrian Period and represent the very first evidence for vertebrates in the fossil record. Unfortunately, they are only ever found as part of fragmentary pieces of exoskeleton, however, given that their specific construction is only known in vertebrates, there is little else they could possibly be... Joining us for this episode is Dr Yara Haridy, University of Chicago, who set out to use modern new scanning techniques to better understand the nature of these first teeth and what they tell us about the evolution of vertebrates. What she discovered was unexpected, but also led to better understanding of the purpose of odontodes in the dermal exoskeletons of our ancestors. Her research was recently published in Nature and is free to access.

Ben Shapiro, Dr. Stephen Meyer. Why Science Still Needs God. ACU Saturday Series. Why Science Still Needs God. Dr. Stephen Meyer x Ben Shapiro Darwinian evolution is often used to dismiss belief in God, but what if the science tells a different story? In this interview, Dr. Stephen Meyer Cambridge PhD and author of Darwin's Doubt—joins Ben Shapiro to explain why the standard evolutionary narrative falls short. From the sudden explosion of life in the Cambrian period to the discovery of digital code in DNA, Meyer reveals how science increasingly points toward purpose, not chance. Watch this video at- https://youtu.be/BgRtIbrMUQM?si=B50vJ0y_JHrLoq6_ Stephen Meyer 56.2K subscribers 3,809 views Jul 18, 2025 ====================================================== Are you interested in the origins of life and the universe? Get this free book and explore the debate between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design. If you're intrigued by the origins of life, this is a must-read. It might change the way you view our world. As a special gift Dr. Meyer would like you to download his 32-page mini-book Scientific Evidence for a Creator for FREE: https://evolutionnews.org/_/sefac This is the official Youtube page of Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture. Meyer received his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. His latest book is Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe. He is also the author of The New York Times best selling book Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the case for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2013), and Signature In The Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (2009). For more information about Dr. Meyer, his research, and his books visit https://stephencmeyer.org/. The Center for Science & Culture is the institutional hub for scientists, educators, and inquiring minds who think that nature supplies compelling evidence of intelligent design. The CSC supports research, sponsors educational programs, defends free speech, and produce articles, books, and multimedia content. Visit other YouTube channels connected to the Center for Science & Culture Discovery Institute:    / discoveryinstitute   Discovery Science Channel:    / @discoverysciencechannel   Follow Dr. Meyer on social media: X: @StephenCMeyer   / stephencmeyer   Facebook:   / drstephencmeyer     / discoverycsc   Instagram discoverycsc   / discoverycsc   Tik Tok discoverycsc   / discoverycsc    

Thanks to Micah for suggesting this week's topic, the trilobite! Further reading: The Largest Trilobites Stunning 3D images show anatomy of 500 million-year-old Cambrian trilobites entombed in volcanic ash Strange Symmetries #06: Trilobite Tridents Trilobite Ventral Structures A typical trilobite: Isotelus rex, the largest trilobite ever found [photo from the first link above]: Walliserops showing off its trident [picture by TheFossilTrade - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=133758014]: Another Walliserops individual with four prongs on its trident [photo by Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons]: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I'm your host, Kate Shaw. This week we're going to learn about an ancient animal that was incredibly successful for millions of years, until it wasn't. It's a topic suggested by Micah: the trilobite. Trilobites first appear in the fossil record in the Cambrian, about 520 million years ago. They evolved separately from other arthropods so early and left no living descendants, that they're not actually very closely related to any animals alive today. They were arthropods, though, so they're distantly related to all other arthropods, including insects, spiders, and crustaceans. The word trilobite means “three lobes,” which describes its basic appearance. It had a head shield, often with elaborate spikes depending on the species, and a little tail shield. In between, its body was segmented like a pillbug's or an armadillo's, so that it could flex without cracking its exoskeleton. Its body was also divided into three lobes running from head to tail. Its head and tail were usually rounded so that the entire animal was roughly shaped like an oval, with the head part of the oval larger than the tail part. It had legs underneath that it used to crawl around on the sea floor, burrow into sand and mud, and swim. Some species could even roll up into a ball to protect its legs and softer underside, just like a pillbug. Because trilobites existed for at least 270 million years, there were a lot of species. Scientists have identified about 22,000 different species so far, and there were undoubtedly thousands more that we don't know about yet. Most are about the size of a big stag beetle although some were tinier. The largest trilobite found so far lived in what is now North America, and it grew over two feet long, or more than 70 centimeters, and was 15 inches wide, or 40 cm. It's named Isotelus rex. I. rex had 26 pairs of legs, possibly more, and prominent eyes on the head shield. Scientists think it lived in warm, shallow ocean water like most other trilobites did, where it burrowed in the bottom and ate small animals like worms. There were probably other species of trilobite that were even bigger, we just haven't found specimens yet that are more than fragments. Because trilobites molted their exoskeletons the way modern crustaceans and other animals still do, we have a whole lot of fossilized exoskeletons. Fossilized legs, antennae, and other body parts are much rarer, and preserved soft body parts are the rarest of all. We know that some trilobite species had gills on the legs, some had hairlike structures on the legs, and many had compound eyes. A specimen with preserved eggs inside was also found recently. Some incredibly detailed trilobite fossils have been found in Morocco, including details like the mouth and digestive tract. The detail comes from volcanic ash that fell into shallow coastal water around half a billion years ago. The water cooled the ash enough that when it fell onto the trilobites living in the water, it didn't burn them. It did suffocate them, though, since so much ash fell that the ocean was more ash than water. The ash was soft and as fine as powder, and it covered the trilobites and protected their bodies from potential damage, while also preserving the body details as they fos...

We are living through a Cambrian explosion of new tools, powered by generative AI. It can be tough to wade through the sea of options in front of us, and find platforms that actually help us in our workflow instead of being a distraction. That's why it was so refreshing to discover the tool Capsule a little over a year ago. We use it to create motion graphics and short videos for Design Better, and the experience is a thousand times easier and more rewarding that using arcane tools like After Effects. Today we're chatting with Champ Bennett, CEO and co-founder of Capsule. We talk with him about his entrepreneurial journey, what motion design systems are and how they fit into more general design systems, and how motion design fits into branding. This is a sponsored bonus episode that we're excited to share, as Capsule is a tool that we love. They believe that video storytelling should be easy and scalable, and if your team is hoping to create more video their platform is the place to go. If you're interested in open design roles or in building a motion design system for your enterprise team, you can learn more at capsule.video Bio Champ Bennett is the co-founder and CEO of Capsule—an AI-powered video editing tool that helps enterprise content and marketing teams create more videos while staying on brand. His background is as a software engineer, designer and musician. After running a product agency for 4 years, Champ pursued a decade-long journey as a 3x startup founder focused on creative technology. Fascinated by creative tools since he was a child, Champ believes there's never been a better time to be building creative tools than now. Through Capsule, he is showing the world how AI can be practically applied to augment human ability rather than replace it — solving real world challenges in creative workflows. Capsule raised $7.75M after a product demo went viral on Twitter, recently raised a $12M Series A round, and is working with some of the world's leading B2B brands to help democratize video creation in their organizations.

Chimpanzees use medicinal plants for first aid and hygieneResearchers have observed wild chimpanzees seeking out particular plants, including ones known to have medicinal value, and using them to treat wounds on themselves and others. They also used plants to clean themselves after sex and defecation. Elodie Freymann from Oxford University lived with the chimpanzees in Uganda over eight months and published this research in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.Why this evolutionary dead end makes understanding extinction even more difficult540 million years ago, there was an explosion of animal diversity called the Cambrian explosion, when nature experimented with, and winnowed many animal forms into just a few. A new discovery of one of the unlucky ones that didn't make it has deepened the mystery of why some went extinct, because despite its strangeness, it shows adaptations common to many of the survivors. Joseph Moysiuk, curator of paleontology and geology at the Manitoba Museum helped identify the fossil, and published on it in Royal Society Open Science A quantum computer demonstrates its worth by solving an impossible puzzleImagine taking a sudoku puzzle, handing bits of it to several people, putting them in separate rooms, and asking them to solve the puzzle. A quantum computer using the weird phenomenon of “entanglement” was able to do something analogous to this, which serves as evidence that it really is exploiting quantum strangeness, and could be used for more practical purposes. David Stephen, a physicist at the quantum computing company Quantinuum, and colleagues from the University of Boulder published on this finding in Physical Review Letters.Roadkill shows that most mammals have fluorescent furA researcher who used a range of mammal and marsupial animals killed by vehicles, has demonstrated that the fur of many of these animals exhibit biofluorescence – the ability to absorb light and re-emit it in different wavelengths. They were able to identify some of the fluorescent chemicals, but don't know why these animals would glow like this. Zoologist Linda Reinhold observed bright colours such as yellow, blue, green and pink on Australian animals like the bandicoot, wallaby, tree-kangaroo, possums and quolls. Their research was published in the journal PLOS One.Science suggests humans are not built for the information ageWe are living in the age of information. In fact, we're drowning in it. Modern technology has put vast amounts of information at our fingertips, and it turns out that science is showing that humans just aren't that good at processing all that data, making us vulnerable to bias, misinformation and manipulation.Producer Amanda Buckiewicz spoke to:Friedrich Götz, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia.Vasileia Karasavva, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia.Timothy Caulfield, professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta, and was the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy from 2002 - 2023.Eugina Leung, an assistant professor of marketing at the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University.Jonathan Kimmelman, a medical ethicist based at McGill University.