Podcasts about Ching

Dr Hsiu-Ching Chiu PhD: Mobility reference values in preschool children.Dr Hsiu-Chin Chiu shared her team's work on "Reference Values for Mobility in Typically Developing Preschool Children: A Cross-Sectional Study". With nearly 750 participants aged between 3 and 5 years, Dr Chiu has been able to develop reference values for some key mobility tests including the 10mWT, Stairs Test, 3 Minute Walk and Timed Sit to Stand Test. Fantastic work that will support our practice through the power of data driven reference values serving to enhance our screening practices.Recorded LIVE at AACPDM 2026 Philadelphia

Send us Fan MailWhen Fairfax, Virginia, criminal defense lawyer Jonathan Katz first attended taijiquan sparring / sensing hands / push hands summer weekend gatherings of students of great t'ai chi ch'uan teacher Julian Chu (a prior Beat the Prosecution podcast interviewee), he met today's guest Shyh-Ching Lo, M.D. Without an ounce of ego -- as it should be -- and full of generosity in teaching and sharing, Dr. Lo has taught and reminded Jon about the importance in sensing hands of timing, sensing, sensitivity, zhong ting (central equliibrium), and ward off/roll back/press/push (including an emphasis on roll back). Starting from Jon's first sensing hands round with him, Dr. Lo would point out "too late" when Jon would yield too late. Today, Dr. Lo very commonly advises to "give it away" so that the opponent has nothing to push against in the first place. Dr. Lo also points out to have one's hands and arms be powerfully light and soft. How does taijiquan tie in with Jon Katz's criminal defense practice? Taijquan sparring/push hands is like sparring in court many ways, to harmonize imbalanced situations, to use internal powerful energy rather than brute force, to uproot the opponent, and to be non-angry, for instance. The imporance of taijiquan to criminal defense and life is vital for Jon Katz. Practicing push hands on the weekends connects naturally to the push hands of courtroom battle and life itself. The week's courthouse push hands connects well with the following weekend's sensing hands practice. Vital to push hands is applying the taijiquan principles of relaxing and sinking one's body into the ground (and relaxing and emptying the mind of clutter), separating the weight, turning from the waist, keeping one's body upright, and keeping the wrists softly unbent. Practicing push hands checks how well our taijiquan form practice is developing. Practicing taijquan form prepares us for sensing hands practice. With light movements, Dr. Lo is able to put other practitioners, including Jon, off balance if their form is not more well developed. Taijiquan involves never-ending self development. In this discussion, Dr. Lo includes addressing not only his daily taijiquan practice, but also his overall health practice as a retired medical doctor. He immediately took to martial arts practice while in the Taiwanese army, then for many years practiced no martial arts, and finally in his fifties became a taijiquan practitioner learning from such teachers as Benjamin Pang Jeng Lo, Ben's student Julian Chu, and Ben's students the late David Chen and his wife Joanne Cheng. One can find Dr. Lo practicing taijiquan at the weekly Saturday 10:30 a.m. gatherings at the David Chen memorial tai chi court at Cabin John Park in Potomac, Maryland. This podcast with Fairfax, Virginia criminal / DUI lawyer Jon Katz is playable on all devices at podcast.BeatTheProsecution.com. For more information, visit https://KatzJustice.com or contact us at info@KatzJustice.com, 703-383-1100 (calling), or 571-406-7268 (text).  If you like what you hear on our Beat the Prosecution podcast, please take a moment to post a review at our Apple podcasts page (with stars only, or else also with a comment) at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beat-the-prosecution/id1721413675

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. You know, I often tell you that I’ve been a Christian since I was about five years old, and I’ve been a follower of Jesus in particular, sometimes going to church, most often not going to church. But I’ve always loved Jesus, and I’ve had many dreams and visions of being with Jesus, and this has shaped my current Gnosticism and the reason why I favor the Tripartite Tractate as the book out of the Nag Hammadi codices that I gravitate to, because it’s definitely Christian. The myth is different than our typical Christian myth. However, the characters are the same, if they do take on slightly different roles. For example, Christianity conflates the Son, Jesus, and the Christ as one character. But in Gnostic Christianity, the Son is the first emanation of the Father, and this is simply to indicate—this has nothing to do with gender—this simply indicates that the Father is so illimitable and immense and unfathomable, yet the Father wanted to be known, wanted to have companionship, let’s say, and so the Father emanated His “only begotten Son,” as we say in Christianity. That wasn’t Jesus or Christ, that was the Son. And the Son is like the bucket dipped into the sea of the great consciousness of the Father. The Son is a particular entity with a particular countenance or face, and the Son contains all of the attributes of the originating consciousness, the Source. The Son is more relatable, because like the Son, we too are monads, which means we are a particular entity. We have a particular point of view, and our point of view here on earth is our physical point of view, what I’m looking at versus what you’re looking at, but it’s also the point of view of our meme bundle, of our ideology, of the way we think. It’s our point of view. Each one of us is unique. Obviously, we’re each unique. Our physical bodies are similar but different. We were born in similar but different manners. We live similar but different lives. We eat similar food, but it’s always different. Everything about each one of us is unique, and in a spiritual way, we think that our uniqueness contributes to the totality of the Fullness, to the totality of the experience of what it means to be alive here on this planet Earth. That’s why each person needs to grow into who they are meant to be. We have our temporal worldly parents, mom and dad, the ones who birthed us and gave us our genetic inheritance, but we also have our aeonic parents. There are Aeons in the Fullness of God, ethereal beings, a multitude, an infinite number of Aeons, and they get together in various combinations, different Aeons with their different positions, places, points of view, duties. It’s their address, but they are otherwise all identical because they all are emanations of the Son. They are all variables within the Son. So we have these aeonic parents. They get together and procreate us. We are the descendants of the Aeons of the Father. We descend into this material space. We are descendants from our aeonic parents as well as our physical human parents. So in the same manner as we inherit our genetics from our parents, what we’re going to look like, how our bodies go together—that all comes through our human parental lineage—but through our aeonic lineage, we inherit who we are meant to be. That is the perfection of our Self, our particular combination, and we’re each different, we’re each unique aspects of the Aeons of God. So if someone is a great mathematician, or a beautiful singer, or a wonderful mother, or housekeeper, or a person with any sort of talent whatsoever—and we all have our unique talents—those are the things we inherit from our aeonic parents, from the archetypes—from the archetypal singer, the archetypal mother, the archetypal Aeon, with its unique combination of talents. At least this is my interpretation. This is Cyd’s interpretation of how these things go together. So we all inherit the Fullness of God, the one true Self that is the reflection of the Aeons. Just as the Aeons are all the variables of the Son, we are their fractal fruit. So we carry the Fullness of God within each part of our living bodies. And then we have our aeonic personalities on top of that, which is the particular Aeons which figure most prominently in our aeonic inheritance, the archetypes that we inherit. By the way, this is where C.G. Jung gained his notion of archetypes. If you’ve ever taken the Myers-Briggs personality survey—introvert or extrovert, sensory or intuitive, thought-driven or feeling-driven, step-by-step planner or a big-picture gestalt type—these are the variables of the Myers-Briggs, and those are all variables that reflect Jung’s categories of archetypes. And when you put all those together, there are many, many combinations of possible personality types. Maybe you’re familiar with that system. Well, that’s based upon this Gnostic philosophy, because Jung purchased one of the Gnostic gospels from the Nag Hammadi codices, and it was translated first into German, and then he took his transpersonal theory of psychology out of what he learned from the gnosis of the Tripartite Tractate, which is the same book that we study here at Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation. But that’s not what I’m actually here to talk about today. What I really wanted to share with you was the Tao Te Ching. Tao is spelled T-A-O, but pronounced Dow. Te is T-E, and Ching. So the Tao is the way, the eternal, ethereal way. The Te is its expression here on Earth, or in the cosmos, and Ching means book. So the Tao Te Ching is the book of the way and its expressions, and is said to have been composed by a sage named Lao Tzu ages ago, around 500 BC, during the time of Confucius. However, probably it’s also an amalgam of many ancient wisdom texts and insights from many Chinese sages put together by Lao Tzu. Now the legend of Lao Tzu is that he was an old man. He had served the emperor. He was the keeper of the royal archives in the state of Chu. He was tired. He wanted to go away and die. And so he was driving his ox out of the city and away from humanity so he could be by himself and pass away. But the gatekeeper of the city saw that the sage was about to leave the world, and he said, Master, you’re about to renounce this world. Please compose a book for me. And it is said that Lao Tzu came down from his ox, sat down, and for several hours wrote a book in one sitting. And then he handed it back to the gatekeeper, got back on his ox, and traveled to the West. Now this is a symbolic telling because, first off, he needed to pass through the gatekeeper to leave the city. And it was the gatekeeper who implored him for wisdom before he would leave and never share his wisdom anymore. Lao Tzu wrote the book in one sitting, and this particular episode of history is captured in many, many ancient Chinese paintings. So if you ever see the old man on the ox or the old man sitting and writing, that’s Lao Tzu composing the Tao Te Ching. And leaving through the gate that goes to the West implies that this teaching was for all peoples. You may wonder why I am talking about the Tao Te Ching here in this Gnostic venue. The answer is that the Tao Te Ching helped me mine my own gnosis years prior to discovering the books of the Nag Hammadi, proving that we can all mine gnosis without having access to so-called Gnostic texts. As we seek out the Truth in religions and sacred writings, it is our own gnosis that draws the understanding out of these sources. Steeping oneself in religion without using discernment to mine the gnosis therein does us no good. Merely being “religious” does nothing to advance your wisdom or understanding of the world and God if you do not mine the gnosis to be found there. But if we read with a gnostic heart and mind, then the gnosis is there to be found. When you find a verse or precept that clicks with you—that is your gnosis being mined. And, why do we call it “mining” instead of “learning”? It's because we carry the Fullness of God within us, as I was saying. Yet, we forget it because of the confusion in the world. So we mine the gnosis that is already an inheritance of our aeonic parents. We don't learn it from books, or religions, or podcasts. We don't learn it from the world laterally. We mine the gnosis that is within and we look upward to the Father for discernment. Today, we are going to mine the Tao Te Ching. Tao is the supreme reality, what I often call the Father, with the base consciousness of the Source. Lao Tzu called it the Tao, the Way, the Path. Te is the shape and the power of Tao as manifest here below. So Tao is the transcendent reality, and Te is the imminent reality. That is, transcendent being above, ethereal, immaterial; Te being here we are, we’re in the material world now. How can the Tao be manifest as the Te? Te does reflect the Tao. It’s the virtue practiced here below. I’ve been reading the Tao Te Ching since I was a teenager, and at first it was just completely mysterious. It read like a book of poetry where you don’t really understand what’s going on, but the words were so beautiful and went together so nicely that I picked it up throughout my lifetime to read it. Then in 2001, a translator and writer by the name of Jonathan Star put out his version of the Tao Te Ching called The Definitive Edition. And this is a wonderful book of the Tao Te Ching, because Star not only repeats the various verses of the wisdom, but the book includes a translation key. He gives first one possible translation of the Tao Te Ching for all 81 verses, so it reads like a regular book of the Tao Te Ching that you would pick up from any of the other authors. But then he gives a verbatim translation with notes for each and every verse, and that’s at the back of the book. And that verbatim translation includes the original Chinese pictorial symbol for each and every word and all of the possible meanings that that symbol could mean. See, ancient Chinese is different than the way we write now. We have these characters that stand for sounds and that replicate speech, but Chinese pictograms don’t work that way at all. Each word or symbol is a picture. It may be a house with feet. It may be a cow’s head. It’s an abstract drawing of a concept. It’s a conceptual language with no translation given. So if you were to read it in its symbolic form, it could have any number of meanings, depending on how you interpret the pictogram. So at the back of Star’s edition, he includes the pictograms in order of each and every verse, and then all the possible words that each of those pictograms could mean. And it’s the way you put together those words that shapes the translation you give. Another thing about the ancient Chinese language—there’s no difference between the subject and the object. You have to figure out—is this the subject speaking? or is this the object that’s being referred to? There’s no order to the sentence, so that’s another layer of interpretation. How does this apply? Looking at just a few characters from verse 27, which reads—and excuse my Chinese, because I don’t speak Chinese, so I’m reading this in the English type of translation, having had no instruction on how to say these things—shi wei hsi ming. Shi means this; wei is called, hsi can mean follow, one who follows, practice, unite, merge, conceal, cover, secret, penetrate, force, steal, secure by devious means, double, twofold. Hsi generally means to enter or secure by deceptive or secretive means, thus connoting an invasion, attack at night, penetration, something that’s done in secret, concealed. The next word, ming, means light, enlightenment, to enlighten, one who is enlightened, mystical vision, shine, luminous, illumined, brilliant, insight, discernment, awareness, understanding, wisdom, shines forth, conspicuous. And ming is comprised of the pictogram characters sun plus moon, and from that you get all of those interpretations. So then you put together a combination of possible meanings, and any translator can come up with a dozen plausible translations of every single word, every single verse. So those four words, shi wei hsi ming, can mean following the light, following one’s own light, one who follows the light, followers of light, following the path of light, or following the guidance of the inner light. Using other definitions, you could say the practice of mystical vision, concealing your brilliance, penetrating the luminous, the shining practice, blending the light, the secret of enlightenment, or penetrating into mystical vision. Then people often add, during their translation, modifiers to make things more clear in the direction they’re trying to translate. So an interpretative modifier could include shining the light on all that is hidden, the practice of enlightened beings, or the practice that leads to brilliant insight. Some noted translations have rendered those four words as, this is called, following one’s discernment, stealing the light, inherited enlightenment, following the light, or double enlightenment. So you see, everything is up to the interpreter and the translation. Looking back on all of this, I think that these past 25 years of reading the Tao Te Ching in this way has helped to train my mind to see more possibilities in every way that something is written, even not in Chinese. But when I read the Tripartite Tractate, for example, the Tao Te Ching has trained me in a more relaxed and informal way of interpreting what is written, much less precisely than the way many people read ancient documents. Now, I’ve had that formal training from my classical rhetorical graduate work, but I have had this Tao Te Ching type of looking at all possibilities for the way something might be said, or what is the meaning above. This has helped to give me that what I call meta-vision, M-E-T-A, vision, the higher view of what is being said or attempted to be communicated. I think that this is why I enjoy rising above the precise definitions of words we exchange in English here to what is the actual meaning that the speaker intended to convey. That’s quite a bit different than taking exactly what they said—but what did they intend to convey? Not what did I wish that they would say, or what other people impugn upon them as having said when they deny they didn’t mean that. You can’t say, oh yes, you did. You have to look at what the speaker was attempting to convey. And I think that that is what this reading of the Tao Te Ching for the past 25 years has helped me in my gnosis. So I’ve been reading the Tao Te Ching all these years, as I’ve said, and since 2001, I’ve been stepping through the concordance and the translation matrix at the back of Star’s book. At first, I used it during the writing of A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, and there are a couple of verses in A Simple Explanation where I have taken the words as written, run them through the translation matrix–manually, of course; none of this is computer-generated–and then written it down in the manner of The Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. What I thought I would do for you right now today is to run through a popular verse in the manner of our Gnostic Gospel that we’ve been talking about. I was going to give you several verses, but look, I’ve used up all the time of the episode just giving you the introduction. So let me just hit one of the verses at random. Star’s translation of verse 40 reads like this: The movement of Tao is to return. The way of Tao is to yield. Heaven, Earth, and all things are born of the existent world. The existent world is born of the nothingness of Tao. That’s verse 40. It’s a short one. I realize it’s very difficult to hear and comprehend a chart that is being read out loud, so if you’re listening to this on the podcast, go to the transcript at GnosticInsights.com or at the sub-stack, Gnostic Reformation, and I’m going to replicate this page out of Star’s book as a .jpg and print it right there in the transcript so you can look at the chart and I think understand more clearly what I’m talking about. Reading from the back of the book, it reads,So let’s read again what Star said. The movement of Tao is to return.The way of Tao is to yield. Heaven, Earth, and all things are born of the existent world. The existent world is born of the nothingness of Tao. Now let’s look at that through our Gnostic eyes. By the way, the Tao Te Ching probably helped form my own interpretation or vision of the Father as the ground state of consciousness. It is both nothingness and all at the same time. It is emptiness and the complete potential all at the same time. That is the Tao. The Tao is eternal and ethereal, never changing. The Tao is. That is the definition also that we use for the Father, not an old white man with a beard and so forth. That is such a straw dog argument against God, it’s ridiculous. God is the ground state. You could just say, God is all. So the movement of Tao is return; is out and return. This is why the Aeons give glory to the Father, because that is part of the return of the love that the Father is putting out. So love is a cyclical motion. The Father loves, the Tao extends love, and when you love God, the Tao receives love. It’s a cyclical motion, you see? The way of Tao is to yield. Our Father, in the Gnostic sense, is not a tyrant. The Father is yielding, like water, like you put your hand into water and the water yields and molds around your hand. The Father is not ice. It’s not hard. It’s yielding. Who is hard? Who is ruling with an iron hand? That’s the Demiurge. That’s not the eternal Tao. That’s its manifestation without the Tao here in the material world. That is the Demiurge. The way of Tao is to yield. Heaven, Earth, and all things are born of the existent world. So that is saying that everything we can see, the cosmos that exists, this material universe, are existent here below. The existent world is born of the nothingness of the Tao. So this means that even though the Tao is empty, is yielding, is ethereal, is so diffuse it can’t be touched, the existent world that we are in here is born of that nothingness. That is an assurance. How did we get here? What is this? It’s the manifestation of the Father materially, and that’s what came about through the Fall, etc., etc., etc., but that’s not covered here in this verse. So the movement of Tao or the movement of the Father is to return, is to bring everything, take everything out, bring everything back. And that begins with the exchange of love between the ALL and the Totalities and the Aeons and the Father and the Son. They’re all just sitting up there loving on one another, because when you give love, love returns. And the Father gives not only love, but consciousness. The Father emanates its own consciousness, its own sense of Self, awareness, and that emanates into all of the emanations of the Father, down through the Son, down through the Totalities, on into the Aeons, and on into us, all living creatures, not only humans. It’s not a byproduct of electrical firing or quantum channeling. All things originate from the Father. All things that existed from the beginning, that is all the attributes of the Father and the Son, the existent world, is born of the nothingness of the Tao or of the nothingness of the Father and the Son. So that’s the way I would look at verse 40. You know, we add other aspects of the Gnostic myth to that, but we’re not talking about that here. We’re only talking about the birth. We’re not talking about the Fall or the Demiurge or the Shadows—that’s a different subject. Well, I’d like to share more of these verses from the Tao with you here in the next few weeks, I think, because they’re very Gnostic, and they certainly formed the basis for my understanding. That plus Jesus. The Tao Te Ching, plus the words of Christ as manifest through Jesus, and then now these apocryphal books of the Nag Hammadi, particularly the Tripartite Tractate. That’s all that we have time for today. So join me next week. Glad to have you all here. God bless us. God bless you. And onward and upward. 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Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. You know, I often tell you that I’ve been a Christian since I was about five years old, and I’ve been a follower of Jesus in particular, sometimes going to church, most often not going to church. But I’ve always loved Jesus, and I’ve had many dreams and visions of being with Jesus, and this has shaped my current Gnosticism and the reason why I favor the Tripartite Tractate as the book out of the Nag Hammadi codices that I gravitate to, because it’s definitely Christian. The myth is different than our typical Christian myth. However, the characters are the same, if they do take on slightly different roles. For example, Christianity conflates the Son, Jesus, and the Christ as one character. But in Gnostic Christianity, the Son is the first emanation of the Father, and this is simply to indicate—this has nothing to do with gender—this simply indicates that the Father is so illimitable and immense and unfathomable, yet the Father wanted to be known, wanted to have companionship, let’s say, and so the Father emanated His “only begotten Son,” as we say in Christianity. That wasn’t Jesus or Christ, that was the Son. And the Son is like the bucket dipped into the sea of the great consciousness of the Father. The Son is a particular entity with a particular countenance or face, and the Son contains all of the attributes of the originating consciousness, the Source. The Son is more relatable, because like the Son, we too are monads, which means we are a particular entity. We have a particular point of view, and our point of view here on earth is our physical point of view, what I’m looking at versus what you’re looking at, but it’s also the point of view of our meme bundle, of our ideology, of the way we think. It’s our point of view. Each one of us is unique. Obviously, we’re each unique. Our physical bodies are similar but different. We were born in similar but different manners. We live similar but different lives. We eat similar food, but it’s always different. Everything about each one of us is unique, and in a spiritual way, we think that our uniqueness contributes to the totality of the Fullness, to the totality of the experience of what it means to be alive here on this planet Earth. That’s why each person needs to grow into who they are meant to be. We have our temporal worldly parents, mom and dad, the ones who birthed us and gave us our genetic inheritance, but we also have our aeonic parents. There are Aeons in the Fullness of God, ethereal beings, a multitude, an infinite number of Aeons, and they get together in various combinations, different Aeons with their different positions, places, points of view, duties. It’s their address, but they are otherwise all identical because they all are emanations of the Son. They are all variables within the Son. So we have these aeonic parents. They get together and procreate us. We are the descendants of the Aeons of the Father. We descend into this material space. We are descendants from our aeonic parents as well as our physical human parents. So in the same manner as we inherit our genetics from our parents, what we’re going to look like, how our bodies go together—that all comes through our human parental lineage—but through our aeonic lineage, we inherit who we are meant to be. That is the perfection of our Self, our particular combination, and we’re each different, we’re each unique aspects of the Aeons of God. So if someone is a great mathematician, or a beautiful singer, or a wonderful mother, or housekeeper, or a person with any sort of talent whatsoever—and we all have our unique talents—those are the things we inherit from our aeonic parents, from the archetypes—from the archetypal singer, the archetypal mother, the archetypal Aeon, with its unique combination of talents. At least this is my interpretation. This is Cyd’s interpretation of how these things go together. So we all inherit the Fullness of God, the one true Self that is the reflection of the Aeons. Just as the Aeons are all the variables of the Son, we are their fractal fruit. So we carry the Fullness of God within each part of our living bodies. And then we have our aeonic personalities on top of that, which is the particular Aeons which figure most prominently in our aeonic inheritance, the archetypes that we inherit. By the way, this is where C.G. Jung gained his notion of archetypes. If you’ve ever taken the Myers-Briggs personality survey—introvert or extrovert, sensory or intuitive, thought-driven or feeling-driven, step-by-step planner or a big-picture gestalt type—these are the variables of the Myers-Briggs, and those are all variables that reflect Jung’s categories of archetypes. And when you put all those together, there are many, many combinations of possible personality types. Maybe you’re familiar with that system. Well, that’s based upon this Gnostic philosophy, because Jung purchased one of the Gnostic gospels from the Nag Hammadi codices, and it was translated first into German, and then he took his transpersonal theory of psychology out of what he learned from the gnosis of the Tripartite Tractate, which is the same book that we study here at Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation. But that’s not what I’m actually here to talk about today. What I really wanted to share with you was the Tao Te Ching. Tao is spelled T-A-O, but pronounced Dow. Te is T-E, and Ching. So the Tao is the way, the eternal, ethereal way. The Te is its expression here on Earth, or in the cosmos, and Ching means book. So the Tao Te Ching is the book of the way and its expressions, and is said to have been composed by a sage named Lao Tzu ages ago, around 500 BC, during the time of Confucius. However, probably it’s also an amalgam of many ancient wisdom texts and insights from many Chinese sages put together by Lao Tzu. Now the legend of Lao Tzu is that he was an old man. He had served the emperor. He was the keeper of the royal archives in the state of Chu. He was tired. He wanted to go away and die. And so he was driving his ox out of the city and away from humanity so he could be by himself and pass away. But the gatekeeper of the city saw that the sage was about to leave the world, and he said, Master, you’re about to renounce this world. Please compose a book for me. And it is said that Lao Tzu came down from his ox, sat down, and for several hours wrote a book in one sitting. And then he handed it back to the gatekeeper, got back on his ox, and traveled to the West. Now this is a symbolic telling because, first off, he needed to pass through the gatekeeper to leave the city. And it was the gatekeeper who implored him for wisdom before he would leave and never share his wisdom anymore. Lao Tzu wrote the book in one sitting, and this particular episode of history is captured in many, many ancient Chinese paintings. So if you ever see the old man on the ox or the old man sitting and writing, that’s Lao Tzu composing the Tao Te Ching. And leaving through the gate that goes to the West implies that this teaching was for all peoples. You may wonder why I am talking about the Tao Te Ching here in this Gnostic venue. The answer is that the Tao Te Ching helped me mine my own gnosis years prior to discovering the books of the Nag Hammadi, proving that we can all mine gnosis without having access to so-called Gnostic texts. As we seek out the Truth in religions and sacred writings, it is our own gnosis that draws the understanding out of these sources. Steeping oneself in religion without using discernment to mine the gnosis therein does us no good. Merely being “religious” does nothing to advance your wisdom or understanding of the world and God if you do not mine the gnosis to be found there. But if we read with a gnostic heart and mind, then the gnosis is there to be found. When you find a verse or precept that clicks with you—that is your gnosis being mined. And, why do we call it “mining” instead of “learning”? It's because we carry the Fullness of God within us, as I was saying. Yet, we forget it because of the confusion in the world. So we mine the gnosis that is already an inheritance of our aeonic parents. We don't learn it from books, or religions, or podcasts. We don't learn it from the world laterally. We mine the gnosis that is within and we look upward to the Father for discernment. Today, we are going to mine the Tao Te Ching. Tao is the supreme reality, what I often call the Father, with the base consciousness of the Source. Lao Tzu called it the Tao, the Way, the Path. Te is the shape and the power of Tao as manifest here below. So Tao is the transcendent reality, and Te is the imminent reality. That is, transcendent being above, ethereal, immaterial; Te being here we are, we’re in the material world now. How can the Tao be manifest as the Te? Te does reflect the Tao. It’s the virtue practiced here below. I’ve been reading the Tao Te Ching since I was a teenager, and at first it was just completely mysterious. It read like a book of poetry where you don’t really understand what’s going on, but the words were so beautiful and went together so nicely that I picked it up throughout my lifetime to read it. Then in 2001, a translator and writer by the name of Jonathan Star put out his version of the Tao Te Ching called The Definitive Edition. And this is a wonderful book of the Tao Te Ching, because Star not only repeats the various verses of the wisdom, but the book includes a translation key. He gives first one possible translation of the Tao Te Ching for all 81 verses, so it reads like a regular book of the Tao Te Ching that you would pick up from any of the other authors. But then he gives a verbatim translation with notes for each and every verse, and that’s at the back of the book. And that verbatim translation includes the original Chinese pictorial symbol for each and every word and all of the possible meanings that that symbol could mean. See, ancient Chinese is different than the way we write now. We have these characters that stand for sounds and that replicate speech, but Chinese pictograms don’t work that way at all. Each word or symbol is a picture. It may be a house with feet. It may be a cow’s head. It’s an abstract drawing of a concept. It’s a conceptual language with no translation given. So if you were to read it in its symbolic form, it could have any number of meanings, depending on how you interpret the pictogram. So at the back of Star’s edition, he includes the pictograms in order of each and every verse, and then all the possible words that each of those pictograms could mean. And it’s the way you put together those words that shapes the translation you give. Another thing about the ancient Chinese language—there’s no difference between the subject and the object. You have to figure out—is this the subject speaking? or is this the object that’s being referred to? There’s no order to the sentence, so that’s another layer of interpretation. How does this apply? Looking at just a few characters from verse 27, which reads—and excuse my Chinese, because I don’t speak Chinese, so I’m reading this in the English type of translation, having had no instruction on how to say these things—shi wei hsi ming. Shi means this; wei is called, hsi can mean follow, one who follows, practice, unite, merge, conceal, cover, secret, penetrate, force, steal, secure by devious means, double, twofold. Hsi generally means to enter or secure by deceptive or secretive means, thus connoting an invasion, attack at night, penetration, something that’s done in secret, concealed. The next word, ming, means light, enlightenment, to enlighten, one who is enlightened, mystical vision, shine, luminous, illumined, brilliant, insight, discernment, awareness, understanding, wisdom, shines forth, conspicuous. And ming is comprised of the pictogram characters sun plus moon, and from that you get all of those interpretations. So then you put together a combination of possible meanings, and any translator can come up with a dozen plausible translations of every single word, every single verse. So those four words, shi wei hsi ming, can mean following the light, following one’s own light, one who follows the light, followers of light, following the path of light, or following the guidance of the inner light. Using other definitions, you could say the practice of mystical vision, concealing your brilliance, penetrating the luminous, the shining practice, blending the light, the secret of enlightenment, or penetrating into mystical vision. Then people often add, during their translation, modifiers to make things more clear in the direction they’re trying to translate. So an interpretative modifier could include shining the light on all that is hidden, the practice of enlightened beings, or the practice that leads to brilliant insight. Some noted translations have rendered those four words as, this is called, following one’s discernment, stealing the light, inherited enlightenment, following the light, or double enlightenment. So you see, everything is up to the interpreter and the translation. Looking back on all of this, I think that these past 25 years of reading the Tao Te Ching in this way has helped to train my mind to see more possibilities in every way that something is written, even not in Chinese. But when I read the Tripartite Tractate, for example, the Tao Te Ching has trained me in a more relaxed and informal way of interpreting what is written, much less precisely than the way many people read ancient documents. Now, I’ve had that formal training from my classical rhetorical graduate work, but I have had this Tao Te Ching type of looking at all possibilities for the way something might be said, or what is the meaning above. This has helped to give me that what I call meta-vision, M-E-T-A, vision, the higher view of what is being said or attempted to be communicated. I think that this is why I enjoy rising above the precise definitions of words we exchange in English here to what is the actual meaning that the speaker intended to convey. That’s quite a bit different than taking exactly what they said—but what did they intend to convey? Not what did I wish that they would say, or what other people impugn upon them as having said when they deny they didn’t mean that. You can’t say, oh yes, you did. You have to look at what the speaker was attempting to convey. And I think that that is what this reading of the Tao Te Ching for the past 25 years has helped me in my gnosis. So I’ve been reading the Tao Te Ching all these years, as I’ve said, and since 2001, I’ve been stepping through the concordance and the translation matrix at the back of Star’s book. At first, I used it during the writing of A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, and there are a couple of verses in A Simple Explanation where I have taken the words as written, run them through the translation matrix–manually, of course; none of this is computer-generated–and then written it down in the manner of The Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. What I thought I would do for you right now today is to run through a popular verse in the manner of our Gnostic Gospel that we’ve been talking about. I was going to give you several verses, but look, I’ve used up all the time of the episode just giving you the introduction. So let me just hit one of the verses at random. Star’s translation of verse 40 reads like this: The movement of Tao is to return. The way of Tao is to yield. Heaven, Earth, and all things are born of the existent world. The existent world is born of the nothingness of Tao. That’s verse 40. It’s a short one. I realize it’s very difficult to hear and comprehend a chart that is being read out loud, so if you’re listening to this on the podcast, go to the transcript at GnosticInsights.com or at the sub-stack, Gnostic Reformation, and I’m going to replicate this page out of Star’s book as a .jpg and print it right there in the transcript so you can look at the chart and I think understand more clearly what I’m talking about. Reading from the back of the book, it reads,So let’s read again what Star said. The movement of Tao is to return.The way of Tao is to yield. Heaven, Earth, and all things are born of the existent world. The existent world is born of the nothingness of Tao. Now let’s look at that through our Gnostic eyes. By the way, the Tao Te Ching probably helped form my own interpretation or vision of the Father as the ground state of consciousness. It is both nothingness and all at the same time. It is emptiness and the complete potential all at the same time. That is the Tao. The Tao is eternal and ethereal, never changing. The Tao is. That is the definition also that we use for the Father, not an old white man with a beard and so forth. That is such a straw dog argument against God, it’s ridiculous. God is the ground state. You could just say, God is all. So the movement of Tao is return; is out and return. This is why the Aeons give glory to the Father, because that is part of the return of the love that the Father is putting out. So love is a cyclical motion. The Father loves, the Tao extends love, and when you love God, the Tao receives love. It’s a cyclical motion, you see? The way of Tao is to yield. Our Father, in the Gnostic sense, is not a tyrant. The Father is yielding, like water, like you put your hand into water and the water yields and molds around your hand. The Father is not ice. It’s not hard. It’s yielding. Who is hard? Who is ruling with an iron hand? That’s the Demiurge. That’s not the eternal Tao. That’s its manifestation without the Tao here in the material world. That is the Demiurge. The way of Tao is to yield. Heaven, Earth, and all things are born of the existent world. So that is saying that everything we can see, the cosmos that exists, this material universe, are existent here below. The existent world is born of the nothingness of the Tao. So this means that even though the Tao is empty, is yielding, is ethereal, is so diffuse it can’t be touched, the existent world that we are in here is born of that nothingness. That is an assurance. How did we get here? What is this? It’s the manifestation of the Father materially, and that’s what came about through the Fall, etc., etc., etc., but that’s not covered here in this verse. So the movement of Tao or the movement of the Father is to return, is to bring everything, take everything out, bring everything back. And that begins with the exchange of love between the ALL and the Totalities and the Aeons and the Father and the Son. They’re all just sitting up there loving on one another, because when you give love, love returns. And the Father gives not only love, but consciousness. The Father emanates its own consciousness, its own sense of Self, awareness, and that emanates into all of the emanations of the Father, down through the Son, down through the Totalities, on into the Aeons, and on into us, all living creatures, not only humans. It’s not a byproduct of electrical firing or quantum channeling. All things originate from the Father. All things that existed from the beginning, that is all the attributes of the Father and the Son, the existent world, is born of the nothingness of the Tao or of the nothingness of the Father and the Son. So that’s the way I would look at verse 40. You know, we add other aspects of the Gnostic myth to that, but we’re not talking about that here. We’re only talking about the birth. We’re not talking about the Fall or the Demiurge or the Shadows—that’s a different subject. Well, I’d like to share more of these verses from the Tao with you here in the next few weeks, I think, because they’re very Gnostic, and they certainly formed the basis for my understanding. That plus Jesus. The Tao Te Ching, plus the words of Christ as manifest through Jesus, and then now these apocryphal books of the Nag Hammadi, particularly the Tripartite Tractate. That’s all that we have time for today. So join me next week. Glad to have you all here. God bless us. God bless you. And onward and upward. I would like to thank a podcast follower who made a very generous donation last week to this podcast. His was the largest single donation I’ve ever received, so the effort on his part was extraordinary. His donation was accompanied by a beautiful letter explaining his path to gnosis and how Gnostic Insights has contributed to his newfound peace. My gratitude is unending. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *FirstLastEmail *Stripe Credit Card *Choose your item *Item A - $10.00Item B - $25.00Item C - $50.00Total$0.00Submit

In this week's I Ching forecast, we mobilise our resources to undertake an important last push for the summit. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:32 Last week's recap 1:34 Hexagram 7 The Army 6:16 Hexagram 7 The Army, Changing Line 4 7:36 Hexagram 7 The Army, Changing Line 6 10:41 Hexagram 64 Before Completion Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 7 The Army Changing Lines - 4th and 6th Positions Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 64 Before Completion

In this week's I Ching forecast we revisit the power and value of harmony in our clan as we move in sync with others. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:44 Last week's recap 4:14 Hexagram 37 The Family 7:18 Hexagram 37 The Family, Changing Line 4 10:08 Hexagram 13 Fellowship Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 37 The Family Changing Lines - 4th Position Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 13 Fellowship

In this week's I Ching forecast, we are hatching all our new projects, all at once, plus we apply laser focus to our foundation. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:37 Last week's recap 2:56 Hexagram 3 Difficulty at the Beginning 8:55 Hexagram 3 Difficulty at the Beginning, Changing Line 2 10:38 Hexagram 3 Difficulty at the Beginning, Changing Line 3 12:43 Hexagram 3 Difficulty at the Beginning, Changing Line 5 13:54 Hexagram 3 Difficulty at the Beginning, Changing Line 6 16:34 Hexagram 26 Taming Power of the Great Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 3 Difficulty at the Beginning Changing Lines - 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th Positions Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 26 Taming Power of the Great

In September 2026, we open ourselves to glorious sunshine and make steady progress while bring our tribe with us. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this month. I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:39 Last month's recap 3:41 Hexagram 35 Progress Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 35 Progress Changing Lines - None Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram None

In this week's I Ching forecast, as we bridge August and September, we focus on relieving pressure, shoring up our structures, and connecting with family. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:36 Last week's recap 2:00 Hexagram 28 Great Pressure 6:47 Hexagram 28 Great Pressure, Changing Line 1 7:55 Hexagram 28 Great Pressure, Changing Line 2 9:21 Hexagram 28 Great Pressure, Changing Line 4 9:56 Hexagram 28 Great Pressure, Changing Line 6 12:22 Hexagram 37 The Family Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 28 Great Pressure Changing Lines - 1st, 2nd, 4th and 6th Positions Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 37 The Family

Welcome to a special episode of the Bayou City Soccer Podcast! This week, we're joined by Houston Dynamo legend Brian Ching, the inaugural inductee into the Houston Dynamo Ring of Honor. We reflect on the 20-year celebration of the 2006 MLS Cup championship, his time with the Dynamo, and what he loves about the current team's impressive run of form. Plus, we look ahead to Ching's Ring of Honor induction on October 17 when the Dynamo host FC Dallas in the Texas Derby.-We invite you to follow us at Bayou City Soccer!-BayouCitySoccer.net-@BayouCitySoccer on Facebook, IG, and Twitter-Hit us up using our hashtag #AskBCS-Hosts: Dustyn Richardson-Again, BayouCitySoccer.net for everything.

Model, actor and fitness creator Theo Ching joins Ben Sheppard on The RunThrough Podcast for a conversation about discipline, self-belief and staying ready for every opportunity after completing the RunThrough Summer Triple.Theo shares how a childhood spent practising martial arts developed into a career spanning fitness modelling, acting and specialist action work. After being scouted at university, he found a way to combine his physical abilities with his creative ambitions and build a career around the things he genuinely loves doing.He explains why self-belief comes from knowing that you can depend on yourself, how discipline allows him to perform whenever an opportunity arrives, and why luck is simply what happens when preparation meets opportunity.Expect honesty as Theo discusses how to recognise your value without losing your humility, the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people and building self-respect through movement, consistency and accountability.Theo also takes Ben inside the Great Wall Marathon, his first attempt at the distance and one of the hardest physical challenges he has ever faced. He reflects on the heat, elevation, relentless steps, and moments of gratitude that carried him towards the finish.Theo Ching - https://www.instagram.com/theoching_/?hl=enBen Sheppard - https://www.instagram.com/bensheppard93/?hl=en

QUESTION: HOW MUCH SHOULD I BE CONCERNED OR WORRY ABOUT MONEY?HEXAGRAMS: 35 (ADVANCE) / Fire over earthMoving lines 4,5,6 > 8 (SUPPORT} / water over earthI had a friend, Brendan, who used to say when faced with the prospect of being broke: “Money is simply a medium of exchange.” He explained that money is an agreed upon social construct that places a numerical value on various goods and services, thereby simplifying the process from a barter system -  (I'll trade you some of my chickens for you to paint my house, etc) - to one where you can easily carry pieces of paper, or, computer digits on your phone, that represent your worth.Maybe so, but this theoretical cup and balls illusion will only take us so far. CAPITALISM has run amok, enabling only a handful of billionaires to call the economic shots for everyone. The bubble of ballooning debt for the middle class to achieve even a modicum of financial security has popped, and the multitude of serfs that have, until now, been stoking the billionaire's coffers, are about to be replaced by a cadre of uncomplaining robots. So, I ask: “What's a peon to do?  'Tis a puzzlement,” as Yul Brenner used to say. Brendan was always broke, but somehow managed to live lavishly, traveling the world on his impish smile and keen wits,. Of course, he had to rely on the kindness of strangers, as well as long-suffering friends for his daily ration of single malt scotch and fine cheeses. But, behind the devil may care pose, there must have been many sleepless nights on the various couches along the precipitous road.So, today, I ask the oracle: How much should I be concerned or worried about money, or the lack thereof?

In this week's I Ching forecast, we learn how important it is to make our way forward in steady yet cautious steps while managing our boundaries. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:32 Last week's recap 2:20 Hexagram 10 Treading 6:15 Hexagram 10 Treading, Changing Line 4 7:31 Hexagram 10 Treading, Changing Line 6 9:08 Hexagram 60 Limitation Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 10 Treading Changing Lines - 4th and 6th Positions Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 60 Limitation

Aptos Labs CEO and co-founder Avery Ching joins David Sencil to unpack how regulation, AI, and blockchain infrastructure are shaping the next phase of crypto and global finance.Ching explains why regulatory clarity in the U.S. matters for developers, how the Clarity Act could influence America's competitiveness in blockchain and AI, and why clearer protections are needed to distinguish software builders from financial intermediaries.The conversation also dives into the growing role of AI in blockchain security. Ching breaks down how Aptos uses the Move programming language, layered defenses, human researchers, and AI agents to review code, uncover vulnerabilities, and reduce attack surfaces.They also explore what meaningful on-chain economic activity actually looks like, the difference between productive TVL and incentive-driven growth, and why institutional adoption and tokenization could become major drivers of blockchain's next chapter.Topics include: Why crypto regulation matters for blockchain innovation Developer protections under emerging U.S. regulation How AI is changing blockchain security Aptos, Move, and layered security defenses Human researchers working alongside AI agents Measuring real on-chain economic activity Productive TVL vs. incentive-driven activity Institutional blockchain adoption Tokenization and the future of financial markets Aptos Labs' next priorities Whether you're interested in crypto regulation, AI security, blockchain infrastructure, or the future of finance moving on chain, this conversation offers a look at how Aptos is preparing for what comes next.

Alex Kehaya sits down with Avery Ching, co-founder and CEO of Aptos Labs and former lead engineer on Meta's Libra project, for a wide-ranging conversation on what happens when AI absorbs all of our data, and who ends up owning the intelligence that comes out of it. From Shelby's plan to put your data on encrypted, decentralized rails to Decibel's on-chain trading engine, this episode digs into where crypto and AI actually intersect, and why Avery thinks we have less time than we realize to get it right.In this episode:

In this week's I Ching forecast, we open ourselves up to spontaneous response while managing our expectations and finding new ways to emulsify with others. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:31 Last week's recap 1:55 Hexagram 25 Innocence 6:22 Hexagram 25 Innocence, Changing Line 2 8:14 Hexagram 25 Innocence, Changing Line 5 10:23 Hexagram 38 Opposition Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 25 Innocence Changing Lines - 2nd and 5th Positions Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 38 Opposition

Film writer, critic and programmer Nea Ching joins us to discuss the romantic comedy form. Main movies discussed: "Chilly Scenes of Winter, "I Want Your Sex", "Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August" and "The Drama." Follow Nea @TheGayChingy Subscribe to our bonus feed for full episode and more: patreon.com/poddamnamerica

Watch This Episode On YouTubeFrom the looks of it, LEFT-HANDED GIRL (2025) has everything going for it. Fantastic film. Taiwan's 2025 Oscar submission (and widely expected to be a nominee.) Edited and co-written by Sean Baker. A Netflix rollout. But the reality is much more complicated.This was a 20 year labor of love by my guest, director Shih-Ching Tsou, and we talk about everything related to her career, how her perspective of the film changed after its release, the drawbacks of filming this on an iPhone 13, the pros and cons of going with Netflix, and more.Shih-Ching Tsou's story is one of the best in independent film, and I'm so excited for you to hear her perspective about filmmaking and her personal, wholly original, gorgeous film, LEFT-HANDED GIRL.We talk about:Taiwan's role in her filmmaking;how she feels about LEFT-HANDED GIRL now versus when it was released;the challenges making the film, even with a top EP; streaming on Netflix; Taiwan's Oscar entry, etc.;how she got involved in filmmaking;why LEFT-HANDED GIRL trusts the viewer instead of going for quick hits during the film;what it was like directing a six year old;the challenges of filming with an iPhone 13;how she takes lessons from Sean Baker's support as EP and editor and passes it on to other filmmakers;her recommendations on how directors can give back to others;the pros and cons of going with Netflix;opening in Cannes;the differences between audiences in the United States and globally when watching the film;why you should make films in Taiwan;what's next for her.Shih-Ching Tsou's Indie Film Highlight: JAIL TIME RECORDS (2026) dir. by Dione Roach and Steve HappiMemorable Quotes:" When I first made the film, I, I didn't know how people would react to it."" A lot of people told me about their own left-handed stories, about their own mother and daughter stories.""I didn't study film. I met Sean when when he was editing his first feature, Four Letter Words.""The only challenge [with the iPhone 13] is the focus."" With Netflix, I feel like LEFT-HANDED GIRL really reached to every corner of the world."Links:Follow Shih-Ching Tsou On Instagram

The final hour features a special guest as Houston Dynamo legend Brian Ching calls into ITL to discuss the Dynamo, the impact of the 2026 World Cup, Houston's growing soccer culture, and more. Ching remains one of the most accomplished players in Dynamo history and is part of the 2026 Houston Sports Hall of Fame class. The show wraps with Figgy's Mixtape, featuring the latest on a local serial squatter heading back to court, comedian and content creator Damon Darling being banned from Walmart, and more wild stories from around the internet.

In this episode •      Shadow Day: the only total solar eclipse of 2026 crosses Arctic Russia, Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain today — the first total eclipse over western mainland Europe since 1999 (Spain's first since 1905, Iceland's since 1954). Max totality ~2 min 18 s. Reykjavík ~17:48 UT; northern Spain ~18:27–18:33 UT (Sun very low, ~4–10° up). Live via NASA, timeanddate and the Exploratorium. •      Where you are: North America gets an afternoon partial (Nova Scotia ~33%, N. Maine ~28%, Montreal ~18%, Boston ~16%, NYC ~9–10%, Toronto ~8%, DC ~10%; Fairbanks ~37% in the morning) — no totality anywhere on the continent, glasses on throughout. Europe outside the path sees a deep evening partial (London ~91%). Australia/SH: not visible directly — watch the streams (~1:30–6:00 am AEST Thu). •      Chasing the shadow: NASA's WB-57 jet flies the path at ~50,000 ft (~740 km/h), extending totality to nearly 3 minutes with four visible/IR cameras (SCIFI) to probe coronal heating, prominences and the solar wind (PI Amir Caspi, SwRI). The Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (A. Des Jardins, Montana State) launches ~86 balloons from Iceland and Spain to measure atmospheric changes. •      A star-building magnetic field: ALMA captures the first direct high-resolution image of a twisted, toroidal magnetic field wrapped around a protostellar jet in NGC 1333 IRAS 4A (~960 ly, Perseus cloud), confirming a decades-old prediction of how young stars launch jets and shed spin — the same physics that scales up to black-hole jets (Ching et al., Nature Communications 2026; NSF NRAO/ALMA). •      Why worlds turn hellish: UC Riverside's Stephen Kane argues planetary rotation is an overlooked driver of climate and habitability — slow spin may help tip a world into a Venus-style runaway greenhouse. Measuring true spin is hard because winds can masquerade as rotation; ESA's PLATO (launch March 2027) could test the idea across hundreds of Venus-like planets (Astronomical Journal, accepted). •      Skywatch — both hemispheres: the Perseids peak overnight 12–13 Aug under a genuinely moonless sky (best midnight–dawn; NH-favoured). Southern Hemisphere: evening Venus (mag −4.4, just past dichotomy), the pre-dawn planet line-up, and Comet 10P/Tempel 2. ISO 12312-2 eye-safety line included.   Sources •      NASA Science — Total Solar Eclipse on August 12, 2026; “NASA Science Soars During August Total Solar Eclipse” •      timeanddate; Eclipsophile; NationalEclipse.com; azmth.space — path, contact times, magnitudes •      Astronomy.com; Forbes; CBS News — North American partial times & percentages •      Space.com; Smithsonian — WB-57 SCIFI campaign & Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project •      NSF NRAO / phys.org — Ching et al., “Unveiling dominant toroidal magnetic fields in a protostellar outflow,” Nature Communications (2026) •      UC Riverside (news.ucr.edu) / phys.org — S. Kane, planetary rotation & runaway greenhouse (Astronomical Journal, accepted) •      EarthSky; Astronomy.com — Perseid peak (moonless), Venus dichotomyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

I have a secret; should I tell? Maybe you have secrets too. What might be the impact of inflicting personal information on unsuspecting receivers? In AA they say: “You're only as sick as your secrets,” and there may be some truth in that. They say that once you've aired your dirtiest laundry, you can begin to heal, unafraid, with nothing to hide.On the other hand, you might be opening a pandora's box, as a result of your selfish need to expiate your guilt. There may be consequences and repercussions you never anticipated; hurt feelings, bewilderment - a loss of trust, ironically, just when it should be getting earned back.So I'm asking the oracle. Let's see what it advises…..

In this week's I Ching forecast we tap into abundance and open our hearts to others and the blessings we share, along with some illuminating clarity. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:27 Last week's recap 1:54 Hexagram 55 Abundance 4:17 Hexagram 55 Abundance, Changing Line 6 7:28 Hexagram 30 Radiance or The Clinging Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 55 Abundance Changing Lines - 6th Position Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 30 Radiance or The Clinging

Commentary by Dr. Ching-wei Lee.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a pervasive topic of conversation these days, and recently it's been on my mind a lot as I endeavor to move past grief. It's been over 5 years since my life partner departed suddenly - so suddenly that when it was happening, and for a long time after, I completely denied its reality. We know that death comes for us all, and no matter what age you are it's probably best to prepare yourself, to make friends with the Reaper, and get ready to surrender to his scythe - (I heard that George Harrison used to rehearse his passing); Sarah Bernhardt slept in a coffin… but, very few of us are truly prepared, even at some pretty advanced ages - my father wasn't reconciled to his fate even when it came at 96. The last phone conversation we had as he waited to be seen at the emergency room was fraught with annoyed bewilderment at being held there against his will.It seems to be the primary topic of conversation that Rich and I are apt to discuss on any given day, and he has expressed frustration at my reticence to volunteer the dour details of my slide towards the inevitable, but really, why harp on it? Why dwell on the depressing aspects of life while you can still laugh ironically at those same concerns? Eat, drink, and be merry, I say. Of course, if you have to constantly watch your sodium and cholesterol while considering the lethal effects of the cocktail you're sipping, your options for fun will be limited. Anyway, back to PTSD… This week it's been front and center of my consciousness because I recently consumed two items of popular culture that feature it - one 60 years old, the other recently released - namely, Rod Serling's short lived 1965 television series, The Loner, starring Lloyd Bridges, and Christopher Nolan's freshly minted sword and sandal epic, The Odyssey. In both, the main character struggles with PTSD - Bridges' character in the aftermath of the Civil War, and Odysseus from his part in the atrocities recounted in the Iliad. Both men have experienced horrific and emotionally crippling events; they roam vistas rife with unremitting violence, and long to find home. Rod Serling transplanted his WW2 experiences to the Western genre, and audiences weren't ready for it's moral meditations, ill suited to an escapist medium. Regarding the Odyssey, Jon Stewart has reflected that it seems like a sequel to Oppenheimer, Nolan's rueful depiction of that protagonist's bequest of a doomsday weapon to arm mankind with the power to destroy itself. Echoes of PTSD resound everywhere - inside each of us, in the chaos all around, and throughout our popular culture. And, today I asked the oracle how to find peace with it. QUESTION: HOW CAN I OVERCOME RESENTMENT?The Oracle answered with Hexagrams 51  (Provoking), and 31 (Cutting)Let's examine those, along with  a dream diary passage, and  a song, “Cairns” composed during that time…Chemayne used to collect stones that appealed to her. She would then cover them in varnish to make them glisten. After she died there were tons of them, and I started giving them away as gifts. One friend was so taken with them that he took a bunch and built some amazing cairns, a term which I hadn't been familiar with, but which filled me with hope and pride for their future home. The following song “Cairns” evokes that appreciation. CAIRNS (Bill Mesnik)Stones banded by layers of timeStacking stone upon stone upon stoneCreates a monumentA tower sublimeMarking timeThese cairns of stoneChorus:Fly away through Arches in the desertTo a windswept morning beachWhere the sun glistens on the pebblesAs you soarSwiftlyOut of reach You left no lost communicationBefore your flight to the unknownJust some orphansWith no destinationLying lonely in our homeI'll stack stone upon stone upon stoneAnd mark the trail of timeFor some wanderer To wonder onWho left this cairn behind?

In this week's I Ching forecast, we lean into our tribe and look after those in our care while focusing on the right nourishment. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:37 Last week's recap 3:05 Hexagram 37 The Family 6:57 Hexagram 37 The Family, Changing Line 3 8:54 Hexagram 37 The Family, Changing Line 5 9:58 Hexagram 27 Nourishment Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 37 The Family Changing Lines - 3rd and 5th Positions Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 27 Nourishment

In this month's I Ching forecast, we focus on stabilising ourselves while moving forward with stamina to overcome exhaustion. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this month. I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:25 Last month's recap 3:12 Hexagram 32 Duration 9:21 Hexagram 32 Duration, Changing Line 3 11:24 Hexagram 32 Duration, Changing Line 5 13:35 Hexagram 47 Exhaustion Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 32 Duration Changing Lines - 3rd and 5th Positions Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 47 Exhaustion

Inspired by the clear and evocative 1985 translation of the I CHING,  by Kerson and Rosemary Huang - a team of a poet and physicist-poet, I kept a diary of musical interpretations of hexagrams which appeared to me when I consulted the oracle over the course of a year.HEXAGRAM 33: RETREAT (Bill Mesnik)"Form is transitory, acquiescing in the flow"I'm yielding to the circumstances, being still and letting go,open to the transformation - going with the flow.I'm gone with the flow in the grip of the tideI don't know - nobody knows if I'll see you on the flip side.What we see ain't what we get, it's not under our control - the tide surges up, then leaves us flat in the midnight coaster rollWhat's the point in making scenes, or, inscribing your little name in stone,When the tide surges up and the beach is swept clean into endless, timeless unknown?I'm gone with the tide in the grip of the flow - Whether or not I'll be purifiedwell, I just don't know.HEXAGRAM 42: INCREASE (Bill Mesnik)"The time of increase does not endure, therefore it must be utilized while it lasts."One hand strengthens the other; on the other hand, I might fall.Could you lend a hand, my brother? I don't have much, but I could lose it all.I'll follow your instructions; you seem to know the way,I played right through the harvest, now my stores are empty at the dark of the day. I heard warnings about the future, but I turned the other way,music soothed my apprehension, and my passions held sway.Now I'm looking for a harbor, and I saw your firelight.Might I bide awhile in your cabin to pass away the dampening night?HEXAGRAM 13: WATCHING (Bill Mesnik)I'm watching - watching... letting things play out in timeAlthough I'm invested in the outcome, I'm just watching, and trailing behind.In the dawn - the anxious dawn... before the pulse of the day,Should it come to pass the shadows grip you, you may not be able to have a say. We are travelers - fond travelers sharing this path for a mile,Although I may want to protect you, we'll only be together a little while.So, I'm watching, watching... letting things play out in time.although I'm invested in the outcome, I'm just watching, and trailing behind.

In this week's I Ching forecast, we push the summit while undergoing a powerful transformation. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:35 Last week's recap 1:29 Hexagram 64 Before Completion 5:55 Hexagram 64 Before Completion, Changing Line 3 8:32 Hexagram 50 Cauldron Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 64 Before Completion Changing Lines - 3rd Position Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 50 Cauldron

Ancient principles from the "I Ching" offer a practical framework for improving golf through better decision-making, emotional balance, and course management. Combined with modern coaching methods, this approach demonstrates how strategic thinking can support greater consistency and confidence on the course.Learn more at https://caddie-ching.polsia.app/ Caddie Ching City: Wilmington Address: 1007 Orange Street Website: https://caddie-ching.polsia.app/caddie Email: madcaddy@caddyching.com

In this week's I Ching, we are shining brightly to show beauty in form and radiate clarity for others. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:28 Last week's recap 2:50 Hexagram 22 Grace 6:30 Hexagram 22 Grace, Changing Line 4 9:47 Hexagram 30 Radiance or The Clinging Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 22 Grace Changing Lines - 4th Position Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 30 Radiance or The Clinging

Welcome to Season 6, Episode 28! Sometimes our topical episodes are focused on the obscure history of Asian Pacific Islanders. Sometimes our topical episodes are focused on the weird history of Asian Pacific Islanders. For this episode, it's Asian Pacific history that is both obscure and weird. When it comes to the magicians Ching Ling Foo and Chung Ling Soo, this is a history that might be the first instance of yellow face in popular entertainment.  Born Zhu Liankui in China during the Qing Dynasty around 1854, the entertainer Ching Ling Foo was relatively successful stage magician who toured America, Europe, and much of the world. Chung Ling Soo pretended to be the same. In the nineteenth century, it wasn't unusual for European nations to not really have much experience with people of Asian Pacific descent. This is a story full of magic, identity theft, and challenges. To learn the rest of the history, you'll have to listen to the episode.  If you like what we do, please share, follow, and like us in your podcast directory of choice or on Instagram @AAHistory101. For previous episodes and resources, please visit our site at https://asianamericanhistory101.libsyn.com or our links at http://castpie.com/AAHistory101. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, email us at info@aahistory101.com. Segments 00:25 Intro: Memories of Magic 02:40 The Magical History of Ching Ling Foo vs Chung Ling Soo

Brad and Tyler discuss the build to CM Punk versus Cody Rhodes at WWE Summerslam and what's ahead for Baron Corbin following his return on SmackDown. Later, they recap AEW Dynamite: Beach Break before workshopping ideas for Hangman Page's character following his promo on Collision.Other topics include:Hot Take Ty: White Lady HOFPromo of the Week: Power CompaniesWhat Happened Here: Caitlin Clark and Congress0:00 Intro5:57 WWE — Cody v Punk, Baron Corbin Returns24:26 Hot Take Ty — White Lady HOF40:58 Promo of the Week — Power Companies45:37 Beach Break Takeaways50:18 Hangman Adam Page's Future1:02:46 What Happened Here — 1:14:51 What We Missed — Graham Platner; Wai Ching Ho1:21:34  ClosingFollow 19 Media Group:Twitter: @19MGroupInstagram: 19mediagrouphttps://www.19MediaGroup.comDiscover our favorite podcast gear and support the show—shop our studio must-haves on our Amazon Affiliate page! https://www.amazon.com/shop/19mediagroupWant to join the conversation or invite us to your platform? Connect with us and share your vision (budget-friendly collaborations welcome)!  https://bit.ly/19Guest

In this week's I Ching forecast, we double down on focus and rally all our resources behind the number one thing. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:42 Last week's recap 2:01 Hexagram 26 Taming Power of the Great Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 26 Taming Power of the Great Changing Lines - None Outcome Hexagram - None

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Inspired by the clear and evocative 1985 translation of the I CHING,  by Kerson and Rosemary Huang - a team of a poet and physicist-poet, I kept a diary of musical interpretations of hexagrams which appeared to me when I consulted the oracle over the course of a year. The result was the album "9 Hexagrams," three of which I offer here.#44 : RENDEZ-VOUS (HEAVEN OVER WIND) / “Persevere” (Bill Mesnik)It's a dangerous hour when darkness reappears,And a sudden shower of your fears drowns your dreams, chokes your screams,Persevere!Judge not, lest ye be judged, and lead me not Into temptation…Persevere!through the dangerous hour, when I've lost my willWhen my soul is sour, and hope is nilFind the will, Forge the will,Crawl uphill —Persevere!#35: ADVANCE (FIRE OVER EARTH) / “Desire” (Bill Mesnik)I want what's on the shelf,I kill myself…I pray upon my knees,I crave release.I'll change my point of view,Each day is new.The pull begins again,Desire has no end.I want your every part,I kill my heart.#24: RETURNING (EARTH OVER THUNDER) / “Echoes” (Bill Mesnik)Echoes are echoing from deep in the ground,Churning, turning all around,As far as I've come, I've come back around,I'm hearing the sound of echoes, echoing from under the ground.Shadows are shadowing from the room down the hall,Dancing, glancing off the wall.Every step that I take, I answer the call Of shadows shadowing in the room down the hall.Whispers, whispering from the waiting graveThrill me, will me to be brave,Each moment arrives in a rush like a wave,It's the rush that I craveAs whispers are whispering from the waiting grave.

The Army (Bill Mesnik)The war you wage is on yourself,The soul you save is not your own.The words you're saying were said beforeby your enemy.The code you honorhas no honor,and all your wisdom makes no sense;you seek for justicebut there's no justice from your enemy.Don't fight back-you will fail,Your best defense is modesty.The war you wage is on yourself -Your sword and shield is modesty.Inspired by the clear and evocative 1985 translation of the I CHING,  by Kerson and Rosemary Huang - a team of a poet and physicist-poet, I kept a diary of musical interpretations of hexagrams which appeared to me when I consulted the oracle over the course of a year.The result was the album "9 Hexagrams," which I offer here.The first offering, "the Army" - which concerns advice on "leadership", was how the book responded to my question on the proper way to parent. 

In this month's I Ching forecast we lean into acceleration and expansion, while we care for others and bind our people together. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this month. I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:33 Last month's recap 2:02 Hexagram 42 Increase 4:44 Hexagram 42 Increase, Changing Line 1 6:15 Hexagram 42 Increase, Changing Line 6 10:49 Hexagram 8 Holding Together Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 42 Increase Changing Lines - 1st and 6th Positions Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 8 Holding Together

In this week's I Ching forecast, we become mothers to our creations while holding steady in the shocks and shake-ups. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:42 Last week's recap 2:20 Hexagram 2 The Receptive 4:57 Hexagram 2 The Receptive, Changing Line 1 8:23 Hexagram 2 The Receptive, Changing Line 4 10:35 Hexagram 51 Shock Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 2 The Receptive Changing Lines - 1st and 4th Positions Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 51 Shock

In this episode, we interview Ashley Ching (again!) with Inhaven to talk all things scale, AI, human vs AI, brand standards, why Vacation Rental brands keep failing to grow and a LOT more...Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesAdam NorkoConrad O'ConnellAshley ChingInhaven

In this week's I Ching forecast, we reconnect to where we started June and accept the stoppage while we elevate our perspective. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:28 Last week's recap 2:32 Hexagram 12 Standstill 5:25 Hexagram 12 Standstill, Changing Line 4 8:02 Hexagram 20 Contemplation Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 12 Standstill Changing Lines - 4th Position Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 20 Contemplation

Avery Ching, Co-Founder & CEO at Aptos Labs, joined me to discuss the latest developments on the Aptos blockchain, including privacy, AI, and more.Topics: - Aptos the first L1 where dynamic dispatch can be formally verified - Aptos commits $50M to expand its tech stack for trading and AI workloads- AI and Blockchain synergy - Privacy on the Aptos blockchain Brought to you by

In this week's I Ching forecast, we double down on growing into pressure and reinforcing our scaffolding. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:40 Last week's recap 3:57 Hexagram 28 Great Pressure Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 28 Great Pressure Changing Lines - None Outcome Hexagram - None

In this week's I Ching forecast, we learn how to get creative with blocks on the path while rethinking our groupings with others. Listen to this episode for more insight into how to work with this flow this week! I Ching Resources and Links: https://linktr.ee/ichingcafe Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:28 Last week's recap 2:12 Hexagram 39 Obstruction 5:29 Hexagram 39 Obstruction, Changing Line 3 8:47 Hexagram 8 Holding Together Tech Specs Main or Present Hexagram - Hexagram 39 Obstruction Changing Lines - 3rd Position Outcome Hexagram - Hexagram 8 Holding Together

At times when it can feel like people are at opposite extremes and cannot or will not agree, and anger and frustrations become barriers to moving things forward, Dr. Donna Ching from the Pacific Center for Collaboration can step in to find ways to reach consensus. Normally on Oahu, she had a work trip to the Big Island of Hawaii, so when she had some time between her facilitation workshops, we met at Liliʻuokalani Gardens in Hilo.Brought to you by University of Hawaii College of Tropical Ag. and Human Resilience (CTAHR), and the Seeds of Well-being (SOW) Project. This podcast is supported by the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN) grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Hawaii Department of Agriculture.Resources:Pacific Center for Collaboration Ag Leadership's Hawaii Ag ConferenceOur podcast with Diane Ley and Molly Mamaril about the Ag Leadership ConferenceHawaii Association of Nonprofit OrganizationsFind out more about us:Seeds Of Wellbeing websiteSeeds of Wellbeing Resource HubAll the SOW links

A forest lookout sits alone in a glass tower at 2AM and spots flames crowning two distant pines — a fire only he can see. By dawn there's no smoke, no ash, no scorched earth... and no fire at all. From phantom flames that burn and vanish to the burned Bigfoot pulled from a Nevada blaze and the UFOs caught streaking through wildfire smoke, tonight we wander into the strange and unsettling things that appear when the forests burn.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and full transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/ghostflamesREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yjwtx7awFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The author of Frankenstein always saw love and death as connected. She visited the cemetery to commune with her dead mother. And with her lover. (Mary Shelley's Obsession With The Cemetery) *** A girl moves into a new apartment and discovers that a haunting doesn't necessarily have to be frightening. (Ghostly Happenings In My Old Apartment) *** The July 1886 murder at the Shawmut Avenue laundry was so shrouded in mystery that even the victim's name was uncertain. (The Wash-House Murder) *** Ghosts, high strangeness, and even Bigfoot – it appears they may all have something in common, and that would be forest fires. (Forest Fires and the Paranormal) *** How do you explain an experienced lookout reporting a blazing forest fire, only for it to disappear less than an hour later – leaving no trace? (Phantom Flames)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:03:57.045 = Show Open00:05:40.844 = Phantom Flames00:21:25.265 = Forest Fires and the Paranormal00:35:10.279 = Mary Shelley's Obsession With The Cemetery ***0048:57.368 = Ghostly Happenings In My Old Apartment00:52:28.197 = The Wash-House Murder ***01:01:09.811 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Phantom Flames” by F.A.Loomis from Idaho Magazine: http://ow.ly/beq730nL94u“Forest Fires and the Paranormal” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: http://ow.ly/ROYC30nL8n1“Mary Shelley's Obsession With The Cemetery” by Bess Lovejoy for the JSTOR Daily: https://tinyurl.com/y9cgd29w“Ghostly Happenings In My Old Apartment” by Cassie D, posted at MyHauntedLifeToo,com: https://tinyurl.com/ycexszvm
“The Wash-House Murder” by Robert Wilhelm, from the book “Wicked Victorian Boston”: https://amzn.to/2BGJOO0(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March, 2021Weird Darkness opens a fire-themed descent that runs from a vanished forest blaze in 1976 Idaho through ghosts, Bigfoot, and UFOs born of wildfires, into Mary Shelley's graveyard education, a gentle apartment haunting, and an unsolved 1886 Boston murder.It opens with a U.S. Forest Service lookout stationed atop Pilot Peak in the Payette National Forest near Warren, high above the South Fork of the Salmon River, who woke sleepless at two a.m. in July 1976 and saw a bright orange triangle near a distant crest, then confirmed through binoculars two huge trees crowning out with flame. He calculated an azimuth with his fire-finder, radioed a two- to four-acre fire to the station fifteen air miles away, and watched it recede and vanish completely within forty minutes, leaving no smoke, no flame, and no charred ground at dawn six air miles out. Supervisors dubbed it the Pilot Peak phantom fire and sent smokejumper aircraft and hotshot crews to circle the ridge for nearly a week without finding a trace, until two months later a thousand-acre blaze on Zena Creek burned in roughly the same location he had reported.From there the episode widens into wildfires laced with the paranormal, beginning with the Curve Fire that struck South Mount Hawkins in the San Gabriel Mountains of California's Angeles National Forest on September 1, 2002, traced to a brittle 1935 wooden lookout tower and rumored to follow a cult ritual, after which hikers reported eyeless animals with hardened flesh and tall shadow figures akin to the Dark Watchers. It moves to the Battle Mountain Complex Fire near Battle Mountain, Nevada on August 6, 1999, where a letter forwarded to the Bigfoot Field Research Organization and a later call to investigator Thom Powell described firefighters capturing a burned, roughly seven-and-a-half-foot creature with a strong equine odor and near-human features. It closes with a July 2014 wildfire at West Kelowna near Vancouver, Canada, where a Castanet news video appeared to show an object shooting from a cloud, and a 2017 sighting by Arthur Frenette in New Hampshire's White Mountains, who watched a ball of fire plunge into Kinsman Ridge ahead of an out-of-control blaze.Next the episode turns to Mary Shelley, who in her 1831 introduction to Frankenstein traced her writing to her literary parents, though her mother, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman author Mary Wollstonecraft, died of puerperal fever days after her birth when Dr. Poignand removed the placenta with unwashed hands. Raised partly at her mother's grave in the St. Pancras churchyard, where she read her mother's work and escaped a strained home after father William Godwin remarried, the teenage Mary met Percy Shelley through the household and, at sixteen, declared love and reportedly first had sex among the tombstones. That fusion of reading, death, and forbidden knowledge surfaces in Victor Frankenstein's graveyard study of decay and in Godwin's 1809 Essay on Sepulchres, which framed visiting the illustrious dead as a form of communion the daughter carried into her novel of a creature assembled from corpses.From there the tone softens with a benign haunting recounted by a woman named Cassie, who moved into a larger, better-kept apartment over Christmas 2018 and lived there three months before moving in with her boyfriend. The internet blinked off repeatedly, cell reception failed in parts of the unit, electrical sockets quit working, bulbs burned out fast, and the shower switched itself on while she was away at classes. One night around one a.m. she and her boyfriend both heard the pitter-patter of bare feet in the kitchen, yet she never felt threatened, and when she left she said goodbye to whatever shared the space with her.The episode closes with the Wash-House Murder, the July 1886 killing of a Chinese laundryman found stabbed fourteen times in his Shawmut Avenue laundry in Boston's South End, his braided queue cut off and the five hundred dollars he had saved for a return to China gone. The victim's name was never certain, printed variously as Bin Chong, Ding Chong, and Wong Kong, and the case drew the Boston Police into a Chinatown governed by rival companies named Moy, Ching, Lee, and Sing. Detectives questioned the violent Moy company leader Ah Moy Chong and brought in New York interpreter Warry S. Charles, but the murder was never solved, and Charles himself was convicted of first-degree murder in 1908 after importing hatchet-armed assassins as a tong leader, leaving four dead in Chinatown.

Send us Fan MailRyan Ching is a Hawaii-based entrepreneur, chef, and social media storyteller who co-founded Ry's Poke Shack on the North Shore of Oahu in 2021 alongside his wife, Khannie. Originally trained as an architect with a doctorate in architecture from the University of Hawaii, he pivoted to the food industry during the pandemic. His restaurant utilizes a customized, made-to-order preparation method inspired by his grandfather's traditional techniques. This approach earned the establishment a spot on Yelp's Top 100 Local Businesses in the United States and a featured segment on Netflix's Street Food: USA series. The business has since expanded outside of Hawaii, opening Southern California locations in Huntington Beach and Pasadena.This episode covers Ryan's career transition from architectural design to restaurant ownership and the daily operational philosophy behind his fresh poke service. The conversation details the growth of Ry's Poke Shack from a single local setup into a multi-state brand, focusing heavily on its expansion into the San Gabriel Valley marketplace. Key topics include leveraging social media platforms to build brand equity, managing supply chains across different regions, and maintaining quality standards while scaling a family business model.For San Gabriel Valley viewers, this episode provides a behind-the-scenes look at a business that recently established a local footprint in Pasadena. Ryan's established audience will gain insight into the business logistics and personal motivation driving the brand's growth beyond the shores of Oahu. Additionally, individuals searching for information on restaurant expansion strategies, culinary entrepreneurship, or authentic Hawaiian food culture will find clear, practical examples of how a modern brand scales without losing its traditional foundations.Subscribe to the MySGV Podcast to stay updated on the stories, leaders, and businesses moving into the San Gabriel Valley. If you found this conversation insightful, please share the episode with a friend, neighbor, or fellow food enthusiast.You can watch this Yelp Top 100 News Feature to see the broadcast coverage of Ryan's restaurant earning its national business ranking._______________Music CreditsIntroEuphoria in the San Gabriel Valley, Yone OGStingerScarlet Fire (Sting), Otis McDonald, YouTube Audio LibraryOutroEuphoria in the San Gabriel Valley, Yone OG__________________My SGV Podcast:Website: www.mysgv.netNewsletter: Beyond the MicPatreon: MySGV Podcastinfo@sgvmasterkey.com

BONUS: Your Developers Got 20x Faster — Now Watch Your Product Managers' Heads Explode Clarke Ching is "The Bottleneck Guy" — and he just spotted the bottleneck that AI is about to create in every software organization. It's not in the code. It's inside the heads of the people who decide what gets built. In this conversation, Vasco and Clarke unpack why speeding up developers with AI tools pushes the real constraint upstream — onto product managers, designers, and leaders — and what to do before cognitive overload crushes the people your organization depends on most. Every Business Has a Bottleneck — Most Are in the Wrong Place "Every single client I have is a detective puzzle. We're looking for this quiet killer sitting inside their business, siphoning off money. And if you look at them without the idea of going 'where's the bottleneck?' — you mistake the busyness for productivity."   Clarke approaches Theory of Constraints like a detective story, not a physics lecture. Every business has a bottleneck — the narrowest point that chokes throughput. The question isn't whether you have one, it's whether it's in the right place. In software development, Clarke argues, the bottleneck should almost always be the developers. Not because they're slow, but because they're the pacing resource — like the aircraft carrier in a naval fleet that sets the speed for everything else. When developers are the bottleneck, the people upstream (product managers, designers, architects) have time to curate high-quality, high-value inputs. The people downstream (testers, ops) can deliver fast feedback. Everything flows. But when the bottleneck drifts somewhere else — and nobody notices — everyone gets busy, nothing flows, and the organization mistakes that busyness for productivity. Clarke's latest book, The Speed Book, lays out how to find where your bottleneck actually is and move it to where it belongs. AI Just Moved the Bottleneck — And Nobody's Talking About It "Just imagine one person trying to feed 100 developers. It's ridiculous. Everyone goes, 'oh, that's just crazy.' But that's kind of going to be what it's like."   Here's the problem: AI coding tools — Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot — are making developers dramatically faster. If a team of 5 developers becomes 20x more productive, that's the equivalent of 100 developers. But you still have one product manager feeding them. The bottleneck hasn't disappeared — it's moved upstream. And when a bottleneck moves to the people who make product decisions, three things happen: they cut corners on requirements (shipping half-baked ideas because the team can turn them around fast), they feed developers busy work just to keep them occupied, and — worst of all — they lose the time needed to push through complexity to find elegance. Clarke references Steve Jobs's insight: Apple kept working past "peak complexity" until they reached "peak simplicity." That's where great products come from. But a product manager juggling work for 100 developers has no time for that journey. Elegance goes out the window. Why Giving AI to Product People Almost Makes Things Worse "If you want to wear your dog out so she sleeps, don't take her for long walks. Make the dog think. Brain games exhaust the dog faster than running."   The obvious fix — give product people AI tools too — sounds right but misses the point. AI can handle the easy parts of product work: drafting user stories, generating specs, compiling research. That's the equivalent of taking the dog for a run. But the hard parts — the deep thinking about what to build, why it matters, how features interact — that's brain work. And brain work is exhausting in a way that volume work is not. Clarke works with senior leaders whose biggest challenge is pacing themselves. Heavy cognitive lifting burns through energy fast — your brain consumes 30-40% of your body's glucose when you're thinking hard. When AI handles the easy work, the proportion of your day spent on exhausting brain work jumps from maybe 15-20% to 50% or more. It's like lifting weights for six hours straight. You don't get stronger — you break down. On top of that, product people go from coordinating one stream of work to juggling many simultaneous initiatives. Clarke calls these "idea grenades" — and when you're juggling chainsaws with grenades attached, you start dropping things. The Real Danger: Going in the Wrong Direction, 100x Faster "If you change the relative capacities and make some of them much, much faster, the bottleneck's gonna move. My next book, jokingly, is gonna be called 'Who Moved My Bottleneck?'"   There's an amplification effect that makes this worse than a simple throughput problem. An error in a line of code affects one line. An error in a design document ripples into hundreds of lines. An error at the strategic level — building the wrong features entirely — can be a disaster for the company. Now add AI speed to that equation. Overwhelmed product people making rushed decisions don't just slow things down — they point the entire organization in the wrong direction, and AI-powered developers execute that wrong direction at 20x speed. As Clarke puts it: you crash into the mountain, faster. The fundamental Theory of Constraints insight applies: if you speed up a non-bottleneck resource, you don't speed up the system. You just create more work-in-progress, more chaos, and more cognitive load for whoever the real bottleneck is. Four Experiments to Try Before Cognitive Crush Hits Your Team "Quality will come from actually slowing down. Money, profits will come from slowing down, building very good products, focusing on why we're building these products, not just how do we keep the AIs working."   Clarke offers four practical experiments for teams navigating this shift:   Get product people working with AI — as a thought partner, not a turbo boost. Teach them to delegate the routine work to AI so they can protect their cognitive energy for the decisions that actually matter. Think of AI as a delegation tool, not a productivity multiplier. Help product people find their sustainable pace. Like Clarke's gym trainer who said "don't come five days a week or you'll never come back" — the people doing heavy cognitive lifting need to pace themselves. Old-school agile called this sustainable pace. It's never been more relevant. Don't try to keep developers (or AI) busy all the time. The instinct to maximize utilization is the instinct that creates the problem. With AI, you're renting capacity by the minute, not paying salaries. Use it at the pace of good product thinking, not at maximum throughput. Turn the tap on and off as needed. Measure what matters: value delivered, not stories completed. If 60-70% of features rarely get used today, imagine what happens when you 20x the feature output without improving the decision quality upstream. More features, more waste — at scale. About Clarke Ching Clarke Ching is "The Bottleneck Guy" — a Theory of Constraints and lean expert who wrote Rolling Rocks Downhill, the agile+lean business novel that never mentions agile, and The Bottleneck Rules. Born in New Zealand, he spent 20 years abroad (15 of them in Scotland) before returning home. He's spent decades helping teams find and manage the one constraint that controls everything else. LinkedIn   You can link with Clarke Ching on LinkedIn.  

Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te has finally visited Eswatini where his arrival had been expected since April. The state visit was cancelled last minute, and Taiwan blames China - saying Beijing applied pressure on African countries not to allow the plane carrying President Ching-te to use their airspace on the way to the Kingdom of Eswatini. We look at the significance of this visit and Taiwan's diplomatic ties to the Southern Africa kingdom.Also, we have a fire chat with Ghanian musician Stonebwoy, whose Accra-famous music festival known as BHIM is going global, headlining at the OVO Wembley Arena in London this August.Presenter : Charles Gitonga Producer: Rukia Bulle, Blessing Aderogba and Mark Wilberforce Technical Producer: Maxwell Onyango Senior Producer: Bella Twine Editors: Priyanka Sippy and Maryam Abdalla

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