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What if the most extraordinary Gothic tale wasn't fiction at all?Born into wealth in New Orleans, Micaëla de Pontalba would endure betrayal, confinement, violence and an attempt on her life — yet somehow emerge unbroken, reshaping not only her own destiny but the city she called home.Her story moves between New Orleans and an ancestral French château, through murder, family secrets and remarkable survival — and, even after death, the ghosts surrounding Micaëla and those places refuse to disappear.This week, we step into the extraordinary true story of the Baroness de Pontalba, where documented history, Gothic darkness and the supernatural become almost impossible to separate.My Special Guests are Dr Rory O'Neill Schmitt and Dr. Rosary O'Neill: Dr Rory O'Neill Schmitt is the author of six books exploring history, culture, art, and the enduring mysteries of place. Much of her work is rooted in New Orleans, where the past is never entirely past: its houses, streets, legends, and larger-than-life figures continue to inspire stories of hauntings and restless memory.Dr Rosary O'Neill, PHD, is a senior Fulbright drama specialist and winner of nine Fulbright awards, including five to study Edgar Degas in Paris. She has published nineteen plays with Concord Publishers (Samuel French Publishers), including Degas in New Orleans and Marilyn/God, and has published six play/screenplay anthologies, three novels and seven books. Dr O'Neill is a professor emerita at Loyola University, New Orleans, and a member of the Playwrights Division of the Actors' Studio in New York City. The founder of Southern Rep Theatre, New Orleans, she has received invitations to and sponsorships from American Embassies in England, France, Georgia, Russia and Hungary. She has been a visiting scholar at Cornell University, University of Cologne, University of Bonn, and the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris. If you value this podcast and want to enjoy more episodes please come and find us on https://www.patreon.com/Haunted_History_Chronicles to support the podcast, gain a wealth of additional exclusive podcasts, writing and other content.Links to all Haunted History Chronicles Social Media Pages, Published Materials and more: https://linktr.ee/hauntedhistorychronicles?fbclid=IwAR15rJF2m9nJ0HTXm27HZ3QQ2Llz46E0UpdWv-zePVn9Oj9Q8rdYaZsR74INEWPodcast Shop: https://www.teepublic.com/user/haunted-history-chroniclesBuy Me A Coffee https://ko-fi.com/hauntedhistorychronicles Guest Links:Websites: http://www.rosaryoneill.com/ https://www.rorystoryandscreen.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASIF-xhxB34 Links to Books:https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Rory-ONeill-Schmitt-PhD/author/B0H12BW2GN?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1788528634&sr=1-1&shoppingPortalEnabled=trueThose interested in purchasing a signed copy of The Blood of the Baroness may contact either of these bookstores:The Garden District Book Shop2727 Prytania Street, Suite 8New Orleans, LA 70130Phone: 504-895-2266Email: team@gardendistrictbookshop.comWebsite: https://www.gardendistrictbookshop.com/The Poisoned Pen Bookstore4014 N. Goldwater Boulevard, Suite 101Scottsdale, AZ 85251Phone: 480-947-2974Toll-free: 888-560-9919Email: sales@poisonedpen.comWebsite: https://poisonedpen.com/Social Pages: https://www.instagram.com/roryschmittauthor/ https://www.facebook.com/roryschmitthttps://www.tiktok.com/@roryschmittauthor?_r=1&_t=ZP-96rfotn9Smd
This episode went out to our patreons on Aug 17th, 2023. Enjoy!Support the showJoin Our Patreon
Xbox is 25 years old and faces some of its biggest challenges yet. As cloud gaming grows and the AI boom reshapes the technology industry, even Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has acknowledged that the business "hasn't been healthy" in recent years. So does Xbox have a future? Will Bain speaks to former Xbox executive Peter Moore and BBC technology reporter Laura Cress about whether Microsoft's gaming brand can reinvent itself.Producer: Gideon LongYou can email the team: businessdaily@bbc.co.uk(Picture: Visitors play Stalker 2 in front of monitors at the Microsoft Xbox boot during the Gamescom gaming convention in Cologne, Germany, 23 August 2023. Credit: FRIEDEMANN VOGEL/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Why do organisations need a travel policy at all, and why do so many of them fail? In this episode of The Leadership Podcast, Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc explains why categories based on travel frequency and role are necessary, why the assumption that any bed guarantees rest is an expensive myth, and why the concept of relatability determines whether employees trust a travel policy or quietly resist it. Drawing on real examples from trade fair season around Zukunft Personal in Cologne, Niels Brabandt shows business decision-makers how to control travel costs without destroying the motivation and loyalty of the people who do the travelling. Host: Niels Brabandt / NB@NB-Networks.com Contact Niels Brabandt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielsbrabandt/ Niels Brabandt's Leadership Letter: https://expert.nb-networks.com/ Niels Brabandt's Website: https://www.nb-networks.biz/
John Lund recaps the best sound of the weekend, including "the Kyler Murray experience," JJ Watt sitting in for Tony Romo, Robert Saleh after a loss, & Jameis Winston loading up on the cologne. We welcome Kylen Mills with her take on the 49ers Week 1 victory and the Giants' decision to shut down Rafi Devers.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
John Lund recaps the best sound of the weekend, including "the Kyler Murray experience," JJ Watt sitting in for Tony Romo, Robert Saleh after a loss, & Jameis Winston loading up on the cologne. We welcome Kylen Mills with her take on the 49ers Week 1 victory and the Giants' decision to shut down Rafi Devers.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
ArTEEtude. West Cork´s first Art, Fashion & Design Podcast by Detlef Schlich.
THE HOUSE THAT BUILT ME — Water, Stone and the Little RuinPodcast SummaryIn ArTEEtude 351, “The House That Built Me — Water, Stone and the Little Ruin,” visual artist Detlef Schlich continues his journey back to Lackavaun on the remote Northside of the Mizen Peninsula, where he began a radically different life in 2003.After the arrival described in episode 350, Schlich now finds himself largely alone in a damaged rural house without running water, learning how to create the basic conditions for living. With no driving licence, a scooter becomes his connection to Goleen, supplies, local knowledge and the outside world. Sand, gravel, cement, a concrete mixer and eventually belongings transported from Cologne slowly turn survival into construction.Rather than immediately tackling the main house, Schlich begins with a small ruin beside it. The building becomes both shelter and experiment: a place to learn how to mix mortar, rebuild walls, restore a chimney and transform an abandoned structure into a functioning home.Water becomes the central element of the episode. Before a borehole existed, construction water had to be carried by hand from a nearby spring and poured bucket by bucket into large rain barrels. Only later did Schlich discover that the source was locally regarded as a holy well, retrospectively giving the physical act of building an unexpected ritual dimension.The arrival of a huge drilling rig marks another transformation. Approximately seventy metres are drilled into the ground before water can finally be brought directly into the building. Material extracted from deep beneath the landscape is reused around the property, while plumbing, electricity, fire and a loft bed gradually turn the little ruin into a genuinely habitable space.Looking back more than two decades later, Schlich recognises something he could not yet articulate in 2003: he was not simply learning how to rebuild a house. The repetitive physical relationship between body, landscape, water, stone and material was beginning to shape an artistic language that would later emerge in his work with ritual, media archaeology and performance.The episode closes with the song “The House That Built Me.” performed by Los Inorganicos.A ruin has become a home.And now the real work can begin.About Detlef SchlichDetlef Schlich is a rock musician, podcaster, visual artist, filmmaker, ritual designer, and media archaeologist based in West Cork, Ireland.His artistic practice moves between performance, photography, painting, sound, installation, film, music, podcasting, and digital image-making. Across these fields, Schlich reflects on the human condition, the relationship between ritual and technology, and the changing role of the artist in digital culture.As a media archaeologist, he explores how media shape perception, memory, culture, politics, and artistic expression. His work often uses the figure of the digital shaman as an alter ego — a method for navigating the space between ancient ritual structures, contemporary media, and technological transformation.Research & Artistic MethodDetlef Schlich's artistic research is rooted in his essay Shamanism, Art and Digital Culture: Cause and Effect, which investigates the relationship between ritual, artistic transformation, media, and digital culture.Download here for free:Shamanism, Art and Digital Culture: Cause and Effecthttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/303749640_Shamanism_Art_and_Digital_Culture_Cause_and_EffectBuilding on this foundation, Schlich developed Multilayerism: A New Paradigm in Contemporary Art – A Manifesto, an artistic method and conceptual framework for understanding contemporary art through layers of media, memory, technology, ritual, emotion, misunderstanding, and lived experience.Read here:Multilayerism: A New Paradigm in Contemporary Art – A Manifesto by Detlef Schlichhttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/375665507_Multilayerism_A_New_Paradigm_in_Contemporary_Art_-_A_Manifesto_by_Detlef_SchlichTogether, these texts form the theoretical backbone of Schlich's ongoing work as a visual artist, media archaeologist, ritual designer, musician, and host of the Arteetude podcast.WEBSITE LINKS Music ProjectsWAW / Wild Atlantic WayWAW is the music project by Detlef Schlich and Dirk Schlömer.Official YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/@WAWBandFrom the forthcoming WAW album The Stories of Nil YoungTwo songs from WAW's developing album project The Stories of Nil Young form part of a mythopoetic journey along the Nile, where river, memory, loss, cooperation, and hope flow into music.AfricaSmileAfricaSmile follows the Nile as an imagined journey from its sources to the Mediterranean Sea — a river of memory, movement, rhythm, and myth. The song turns the meeting of the White Nile and the Blue Nile into a fragile image of cooperation. It is not a naïve peace anthem, but a wounded musical hope: two different currents meeting, listening, and still moving forward together.Watch here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnQbsh01YWUThe Nile's Bittersweet SongThe Nile's Bittersweet Song is the first official single by WAW / Wild Atlantic Way — Detlef Schlich and Dirk Schlömer.The song follows the Nile as a river of memory, beauty, loss, and contradiction: a life-giver, but also a force that can take away what it once nourished. Through the story of Kamau, it becomes a poetic reflection on childhood, fragile hope, and the emotional landscape carried by a river that is both kind and cruel.Inspired by East African storytelling traditions and shaped along the Wild Atlantic Way in West Cork, The Nile's Bittersweet Song is a mythopoetic musical journey about water, grief, resilience, and the deep human longing to keep moving with the current.Watch here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33AWko4IkKIWAW on BandcampSilent NightIn a world shadowed by conflict and unrest, Dirk Schlömer and Detlef Schlich felt compelled to reinterpret Silent Night to reflect the complexities and contradictions of modern life.https://studiomuskau.bandcamp.com/track/silent-nightWild Atlantic WayThis song emerged from a trip to West Cork, Ireland, where the beautiful coastal Wild Atlantic Way stretches along the west coast.https://studiomuskau.bandcamp.com/track/wild-atlantic-wayYouTubeSilent Night Reimagined – A Multilayered Avant-Garde Journey by WAW aka Dirk Schlömer & Detlef Schlichhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAbytLSfgCwDetlef SchlichInstagramDetlef Schlich ArTEEtude I love West Cork Artists FacebookDetlef Schlich I love West Cork Artists Group ArTEEtudeYouTube Channelsvisual PodcastArTEEtudeCute Alien TV official WebsiteArTEEtude Detlef Schlich Det Design Tribal Loop Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/arteetude-a-podcast-with-artists-by-detlef-schlich/exclusive-content
Dans Multijoueurs, Melinda Davan-Soulas reçoit Critix, journaliste chez IGN. Ils reviennent sur les jeux qui les ont marqués lors du salon Gamescom de Cologne, qui s'est tenu fin août en Allemagne. Des franchises célèbres qui signent leur retour (Fable, Castlevania, The Witcher 3, Silent Hill) en passant par la montée en force des studios chinois (Tides of Annihilation), les jeux décalés comme “Join Us” ou tout mignon comme “Bluey's Happy Snaps”. Gros plan aussi sur le DLSS 5, la nouvelle technologie de Nvidia ultra-réaliste qui fait débat, avec l'exemple de NBA 2K27. #nba2k27 #thewitcher3 #silenthill #fable #nvidia #dlss5 #castlevania
On this episode of the Official XBOX Podcast, we're still in Cologne, Germany, and this time, we're sitting down with Playground Games to discuss one of our most anticipated games: Fable. We're getting more details on the gameplay the team shared at Gamescom while diving into the combat, story, and world that players got to experience at the convention.00:00 Introduction02:06 Initial player reactions03:11 Colin the Pig03:37 Combat demo05:23 Combat details06:34 1 vs many07:56 Combat strategy09:06 Questing10:51 Unique interior design12:10 Buying a house13:21 Additional questing15:46 Player choices17: 42 Final thoughtsFOLLOW XBOXFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/Xbox Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Xbox Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Xbox
OP is mad that his girlfriend is spraying cologne on his puppy, so he told her to knock it off. Now she's mad. Is OP the asshat for telling their girlfriend to not spray cologne on the dog?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
4 days at Tony Robbins' Unleash the Power Within in Cologne, and what it all means for estate agents.I flew to Cologne to sit in a room with thousands of people and be a beginner again for 4 days.No stage. No notes to deliver. Nobody asking me what the market is doing. Just a seat, a pen and Tony Robbins' Unleash the Power Within at the LANXESS arena, running from early morning until late into the night.I came home with a notebook I can barely read and a head full of ideas. This episode is what actually stuck, in roughly the order it landed, along with what I think every line means for agency owners, valuers, negotiators and lettings teams.I cover why state comes before strategy, and what that means on your fifth viewing of a Saturday. The Harvard coffee study, and the question of what you are holding before a valuation and what you are handing a vendor before they judge you. Why almost nothing in an estate agency is a skills problem, and how turning your shoulds into musts rearranges the diary on its own.Then the numbers. The Steph Curry practice ratio that should make all of us uncomfortable. The podcast statistics that hurt, because I host one. And the finding that only 7% of communication is the words you say, 38% is your voice and 55% is your physiology, which means the script you have been polishing is a fraction of the job.There is the snake phobia story that I think is the single most useful thing an agent can take into a listing appointment, especially alongside the Rightmove figure that 29% of properties currently selling are selling with the second agent. The six human needs, and the three completely different vendors they create on the same street. Why trust is not won with one brilliant appointment, but by ringing on Friday, like you said you would, 6 weeks running. And loss, less and never, which you will hear word for word in your own office the next time you have a slow month.Almost none of it is about property. All of it applies to property.I hope you enjoy this special episode. If you have any questions at all or would like my summary and presentation of "Unleash the Power Within," send me a message, and I'll happily share it with you.
Gamescom 2026 was the world's largest gaming event, held August 26–30 at the Koelnmesse fairgrounds in Cologne, Germany. It drew a large number of people from around the globe. A great lineup of games across various genres were shown at the event, and we discussed some of the ones we were excited about.
Toyota didn't beat Mercedes by getting cheaper. It beat Mercedes by getting closer to the customer first. Here's the six-year research obsession behind the Lexus LS 400, and why undercutting your way to a full panel is a strategy that has already failed in a dozen other industries, and what Harvard's own pricing research says to do instead. By Michael Tetreault, Editor-In-Chief, Concierge Medicine Today "I'm a car guy, so bear with me on this one. There will be some good points [in this article], I promise. I know enough about engines to self-diagnose and wrench on them myself. Driving an old car with lifter problems through North Dakota and southern Canada in the '90s will teach you that." ~Michael Tetreault Today's article isn't about concierge medicine directly. It's about a distant cousin in the subscription-based healthcare world, direct primary care, or DPC. Over the past two decades, I've noticed more and more that there is a moment almost every DPC or low-cost, membership-based practice hits around year two or three, when the patient panel quietly stalls (catch the car pun). Growth that used to feel automatic starts to flatten out, and you notice it before you can quite explain it. That's usually right about when a competitor down the road launches at $59 to $93 a month, and a quiet voice in your head says: just drop the price. Fill the seats. Worry about margin later. That instinct is understandable. It is also, according to decades of business research and a growing body of data inside concierge and membership medicine itself, one of the fastest ways to damage the very practice you built to serve patients better. This is not a scolding. It is a strategy conversation, grounded in evidence, for low-cost subscription-based physicians who left, or are considering leaving, the insurance-driven system specifically to build something sustainable that has a low cost for the patients because you feel your altruistic nature pulling you to do so. But, if the goal is sustainability, the tactic matters. What "racing to the bottom" actually means Let's zoom out for a moment. A price war is what happens when competitors inside the same market repeatedly cut prices to undercut one another, creating a cycle where each side matches or beats the last cut. This "price-cutting momentum" pulls in competitors who feel forced to follow the initial price cut, and while it can create short-term benefits for the buyer, it erodes the profit margins of everyone competing. Harvard Business School researchers Akshay Rao and Mark Bergen, writing in Harvard Business Review, built a career studying exactly this dynamic across industries. Their conclusion, echoed by strategists since, is blunt: most price wars are avoidable, and the businesses that start them or get pulled into them rarely come out ahead. The Kinsta business blog, summarizing HBR's own internal analysis of the question, put it plainly: when businesses were asked whether they should engage in a price war, the overwhelming answer was "no." Instead, the research points toward differentiation as the more durable response to a low-cost competitor. There is a second, quieter finding in that same research that some physicians should sit with. Price itself shapes how a buyer perceives value, and a price set too low signals that the product is cheap, in the way a price set too high can signal it is a ripoff. In other words, the discount that was supposed to win the patient can be the very thing that tells the patient your care is not worth much. It's indeed, a delicate balance and it's different for every practice and every doctor. Why? Because of who you work for and serve: the patient. Every patient is different. Every practice is different. That makes this topic challenging but it's a conversation worth having because I want to see your practice thrive and more importantly, survive in your community. The framework underneath the instinct Michael Porter, the Harvard strategist whose work still anchors most first-year MBA curricula, described three durable paths to competitive advantage: cost leadership, differentiation, or a focused niche strategy. A company chooses to compete either through lower costs than its rivals or by differentiating itself along dimensions the customer actually values, in order to command a higher price. What Porter warned against was the position most panic-driven price cuts land a practice in. Porter's phrase for it is "stuck in the middle," and it describes an organization trying to be all things to all people, with no distinct competitive advantage as a result. Businesses caught here typically perform the worst in their industry precisely because they never committed to one strength. A DPC practice that quietly lowers its price to compete on cost, while still trying to deliver same-day access, unhurried visits, and so-called affordable white-glove service, is not competing on cost leadership. It is trying to sell a premium product at a discount price, and the math does not hold. Today, a medical practice or a company stuck in this position cannot beat a true cost leader on price, because it never built the operational discipline or scale to sustain that price, and it cannot beat a differentiator on the experience it promised, because the discipline required to deliver that experience costs money. Both promises erode at once. What the data inside DPC and low-cost membership medicine is already showing This is not theoretical for DPC and low-cost membership medicine practices. It is visible in the industry's own numbers. The 2026 State of DPC survey, distributed through the DPC Alliance and Hint Health's network, found a direct relationship between panel size and price. Practices with fewer than 200 patients averaged $105.93 per member per month, practices with 201 to 500 patients averaged $99.28, and practices with more than 500 patients averaged $77.74 per member per month. Read plainly, the larger the panel, the lower the average price charged per patient. That pattern is exactly what Porter's framework predicts happens to practices chasing volume without a differentiation strategy to protect price. It is worth noting this figure comes from Hint Health, a technology vendor with a commercial interest in DPC's growth, so it should be read as directional industry data rather than an independent audit. It is nonetheless the most comprehensive dataset the movement currently has. At the same time, the broader market is not short on room to compete on value instead of price. More than half of private healthcare consumers rank the cost of care as the most dissatisfying part of their current healthcare experience, and DPC's growth has been driven in large part by employers and patients who are tired of opaque, escalating costs elsewhere in the system, not by DPC being the cheapest option on paper. Employers now fund the majority, roughly 60 percent, of active DPC memberships, according to Hint Health's 2026 trends report, which signals that the buyers filling panels today are increasingly sophisticated purchasers evaluating value, retention, and outcomes, not simply hunting for the lowest sticker price. Regional pricing tells a similar story. Northeast DPC pricing rose 33 percent over five years, from $60 to $80 a month, even as national demand for the model accelerated. Practices in that region did not grow by discounting. They grew while raising price, in a market that was simultaneously expanding. The altruism problem no one names out loud Here is the part of this conversation that is specific to medicine and does not show up in a typical business school case study on price wars. Physicians are trained, deliberately and repeatedly, to put the patient's welfare ahead of their own. Medical professionalism itself is defined in the literature by principles of excellence, accountability, altruism, integrity, and humanism, all oriented around the patient relationship. That formation is not incidental. It is the point of medical education, and it is a genuine strength of the profession that should never be coached out of a physician. But that same formation has a side effect worth naming honestly. A rigorous study out of the University of Cologne and University of Rennes, published in the Journal of Health Economics, measured patient-regarding altruism in 733 medical students at different stages of training. The researchers found that patient-regarding altruism is highest among freshmen, declines significantly through the middle years of medical study, and rises again in the final year as students begin assisting in clinical practice. Students with lower income expectations showed higher altruism scores overall. Sit with that last finding. The training that makes physicians excellent, trustworthy, patient-first clinicians also correlates with a documented discomfort around charging what care is actually worth. That discomfort is admirable in the exam room. It becomes a strategic liability in the business office, where it quietly nudges a physician toward the lowest defensible price rather than the price that reflects the value delivered, the access provided, and the sustainability required to keep serving that same patient for the next twenty years. This is not a call to abandon altruism. It is a call to separate two different questions that get tangled together under stress: am I a good doctor and am I running a sustainable practice. A price built out of guilt is not more altruistic than a price built out of strategy. A closed practice serves no one. What other industries learned the hard way Medicine is not the first field to face this exact temptation, and the businesses that raced to the bottom on price rarely tell a happy ending. Rao and Bergen's HBR research spans industries from B2B and agribusiness to healthcare and the nonprofit sector, and the throughline in that body of work is consistent: firms that respond to a low-price competitor by cutting their own price usually shrink the whole market's profitability without gaining durable share, because the competitor simply cuts again. The winners in price wars, when there are any, tend to be the largest players with the deepest balance sheets, the ones who can absorb losses the longest. A solo or small-group physician practice is almost never that player, and should not try to be. The lesson for low-cost DPC physicians is not abstract. It is Porter's choice, stated as a decision every practice has to make deliberately rather than by drift: compete on being demonstrably, operationally the lowest-cost, highest-efficiency provider in your market, which requires real scale and real systems, or compete on being demonstrably different in a way patients value enough to pay for. Trying to hold both at once is what leaves a practice, in Porter's words, stuck in the middle, with margins too thin to sustain the very things that made the practice worth choosing in the first place. The Lexus Lesson: Price Is a Result, Not a Strategy Circling back to my car guy roots, there is an automotive story worth every physician's attention here, because it is one of the clearest business case studies ever produced on the exact question this article is asking you if you're a DPC physician. It comes from Hagerty's "Revelations" series, hosted by Jason Cammisa, on the origin of the 1989 Lexus LS 400, and it has been retold in detail across automotive trade press and in Chester Dawson's book Lexus: The Relentless Pursuit. The origin story matters as much as the engineering. Toyota's first American export, the Toyopet Crown, was a flop, selling only a few hundred units before Toyota pulled it from the market in the late 1950s. Twenty five years of steady rebuilding later, Toyota had become the largest importer of vehicles into the United States, and that success triggered a protectionist response. In the early 1980s, the U.S. government pressured Japan into so-called voluntary export restraints, capping Japanese auto imports at roughly 1.7 million vehicles a year. With volume capped by government policy, Toyota USA's Yukiyasu Togo pushed a different lever: if the company could not sell more cars, it needed to sell more profitable ones. That constraint, not ambition alone, is what pushed Toyota into the luxury segment. In 1983, Toyota's then chairman Eiji Toyoda greenlit a secret effort known as Project F1, for Flagship One. Where a typical vehicle program of that era might use around 200 engineers and a few hundred million dollars, F1 was reportedly given no fixed budget and a development team of roughly 1,400 engineers, 60 designers, and thousands of additional technicians and support staff, spread across a six-year effort widely reported to have cost in the neighborhood of a billion dollars. What that team actually did is the part physicians should study closely. Rather than guess at what luxury buyers wanted, a team of designers and engineers relocated to a rented house in Laguna Beach, California, and spent months directly observing affluent Americans: watching valet stands outside country clubs, studying the furniture in high-end homes, and even analyzing the leather scent inside Jaguar interiors closely enough to reverse-engineer the tanning process. They tested switchgear and steering wheel ergonomics against how women with long, manicured nails actually interact with a dashboard. This is the practice Toyota calls genchi genbutsu, going to see for yourself, rather than relying on assumptions about the customer. Separately, Toyota's research uncovered something more specific and more useful than "people want a cheaper luxury car." Mercedes-Benz owners loved the prestige of their cars but consistently described the dealership experience itself, the pressure, the wait, the sense of being talked down to, as miserable. Lexus rebuilt the entire buying experience around that single insight. Sales moved from an elevated desk to a shared coffee table, removing the physical power imbalance of a traditional car sale. Only 80 of roughly 1,500 dealer applicants were approved to sell the car, each required to invest several million dollars and submit to ongoing customer satisfaction audits. The product and the experience of buying it were treated as a single, inseparable offer. The engineering discipline underneath all of this was, by most independent accounts, extreme. Chief engineer Ichiro Suzuki pursued a drag coefficient of 0.29, well below the S-Class's 0.36 to 0.37, without relying on a rear spoiler, which he considered an inelegant shortcut. Interior noise was engineered down to roughly 58 decibels versus about 60 for the S-Class, and multiple road tests reported the LS 400 was as quiet at 125 miles per hour as its German rivals were at 95. Prototypes logged well over a million miles of testing, and engineers reportedly disassembled competitor vehicles to study exactly how they failed over years of use, then engineered around each weakness. When the LS 400 launched in 1989, it was priced at roughly $35,000, commonly cited as about half the price, or as much as $30,000 less, than a comparably equipped Mercedes-Benz S-Class. The price gap was so large that BMW reportedly suggested Toyota was selling the car at a loss. Within two years, Lexus had overtaken Mercedes-Benz as the best-selling luxury import brand in the United States and topped J.D. Power's quality and service rankings, and Mercedes is reported to have lost roughly a quarter of its U.S. sales in the aftermath. Here is the part physicians should sit with. The low price was not the strategy. It was the output of the strategy. Toyota did not set out to build a cheaper Mercedes and work backward. It spent six years and enormous resources removing the specific frustrations its own research showed were driving prestige-loving customers away, then engineered a manufacturing process disciplined enough to make that quality repeatable at scale, and only after that work was done did it set a price the market would reward. The aggressive price was possible because the operational excellence and the customer research underneath it were real, not because anyone at Toyota decided to compete by cutting corners. This is the distinction that gets lost when a DPC or low-cost membership medicine practice drops its membership fee simply to fill a panel out of fear. Toyota's price was earned through relentless, well-funded engineering and firsthand study of exactly what its target customer resented about the existing options. A practice that lowers its price without first doing that same work, actually going to see for yourself what frustrates the patients you want to serve, and building a practice that removes those specific frustrations, is doing the opposite of what Lexus did. It is cutting the price before it has earned the right to. The translatable lesson is not "charge less." It is this: find out, directly and specifically, what your patients are actually frustrated by in the healthcare experience they already have, build a practice that removes that frustration with real discipline, treat the entire patient experience, not just the clinical visit, as part of the product, and let price follow from that work rather than substitute for it. Toyota spent six years in the field before it touched the price tag. Most practices considering a discount have not spent six weeks asking patients what specifically is broken in the care they are currently getting. What to build instead None of this means price is fixed or that access should be reserved only for the wealthy. It means the starting question changes. Instead of asking what is the lowest price that will fill my panel, the more durable question is what does my practice do that a patient cannot get anywhere else in this market, and does my price reflect that honestly. That might be same-day access. It might be visit length. It might be a specific clinical focus, a specific population, or a specific relationship to a local employer. Differentiation does not require the highest price in the market. It requires a clear, honest reason for the price you have chosen, one you can say out loud to a patient without flinching. Panel growth built on discounting tends to attract patients who are price-shopping and will leave the moment a cheaper option appears next door. Panel growth built on a clear, differentiated value proposition tends to attract patients who stay, refer, and tolerate a price increase because they understand what they are paying for. This article is intended for educational and informational purposes for physicians and healthcare leaders. It does not constitute financial, legal, accounting, or medical advice, and practice pricing decisions should be made in consultation with qualified financial and legal advisors familiar with your specific market and regulatory environment. Sources Rao, Akshay R. and Bergen, Mark E. "How to Fight a Price War." Harvard Business Review, March-April 2000. hbr.org/2000/03/how-to-fight-a-price-war "Price war." Wikipedia, accessed August 2026. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_war "How a Race to the Bottom Hurts Your Business's Bottom Line." Kinsta, July 15, 2024. kinsta.com/blog/race-to-the-bottom Porter, Michael E. Competitive Strategy (1980) and Competitive Advantage (1985), Harvard Business School Press. Summarized via "Porter's generic strategies," Wikipedia, and Strategic Management Insight, strategicmanagementinsight.com/tools/porters-three-generic-strategies "State of DPC 2026: Key Takeaways From DPC Alliance's Physician Survey." Hint Health, July 18, 2026. blog.hint.com/state-of-dpc-2026-key-takeaways-from-the-dpc-alliances-physician-survey "Hint Health Releases 2026 Direct Primary Care Trends Report." Hint Health, April 23, 2026, distributed via PR Newswire, Yahoo Finance, and Morningstar. "DPC Membership Pricing Trends." Hint Health Blog, June 24, 2022. blog.hint.com/dpc-membership-pricing-trends "High cost of health care may be boosting direct primary care membership." Medical Economics, November 16, 2025. medicaleconomics.com/view/high-cost-of-health-care-may-be-boosting-direct-primary-care-membership Sagebien, Julia; L'Haridon, Olivier; Wiesen, Daniel; et al. "The formation of physician altruism." Journal of Health Economics, Vol. 87, 2023. sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629622001308 (also indexed on PubMed, ID 36603361) "Professional identity formation of clinical medical students during and beyond the pandemic." PMC, National Library of Medicine. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11150932 Cammisa, Jason. "The Absurd Engineering Obsession Behind the 1989 Lexus LS 400." Hagerty Revelations, YouTube, youtu.be/i15Ii4yetLM "How the Lexus LS400 Crashed the Luxury Party." Autoblog, October 2, 2025. autoblog.com/features/how-the-lexus-ls400-crashed-the-luxury-party "How Lexus defeated 'the best car in the world.'" Motoring Research, July 25, 2024. motoringresearch.com/car-news/lexus-ls-400-review "Lexus LS 400: 'the finest V8 engine in the world.'" Cult Classics, Adrian Flux, August 21, 2023. adrianflux.co.uk/cult-classics/lexus-ls-400-the-finest-v8-engine-in-the-world Dawson, Chester. Lexus: The Relentless Pursuit. John Wiley & Sons, revised edition. Publisher synopsis via AbeBooks, abebooks.com/9780470828045 A detailed companion recap of the Hagerty Revelations episode, covering Project F1 staffing, the Laguna Beach research house, the coffee-table dealership model, and Suzuki's engineering targets, was supplied directly by the editor. Its original publisher and byline could not be independently confirmed at time of writing. Facts drawn from it (drag coefficient, price gap, engineer count, dealership vetting) were cross-checked against sources 11 through 15 above before inclusion, and the editor should confirm original attribution before publication.
//The Wire//2300Z September 4, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: ENERGY CRISIS CONTINUES TO WORSEN AS GAS PRICES REACH ALL-TIME HIGHS. ANOTHER SABOTAGE ATTACK REPORTED IN GERMANY. RUSSIA AND UKRAINE CONTINUE TO ESCALATE TARGETING EFFORTS. IRANIAN TARGETING CONTINUES IN THE MIDDLE EAST.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events-Middle East: This afternoon Iran conducted more strikes around the region, allegedly targeting American bases in Jordan. The United States has disputed these specific launches, however locals have provided videos of the missiles in the air. Battle damage reports are expected by morning, when new satellite imagery products become available.Yemen: Clashes between the Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni forces escalated as both sides conducted strikes on each other overnight. Fighting has being reported in western regions of the country and several missile launches have been reported throughout the night, though most missiles appear to have targeted locations inside Yemen.Germany: Yesterday evening another possible sabotage attack on an electrical substation was reported in Dormagen-Gohr. Local authorities responded to reports of at least one rocket launcher being emplaced near a substation, complete with copper wire and a timer mechanism. Separately, German police in Cologne stated that they received a letter from Vulkangruppe claiming credit for at least one of the attacks this week.Analyst Comment: Vulkangruppe is an infamous ecoterrorist organization that is well known for conducting sabotage attacks on critical infrastructure around the country. Whether or not this group actually is the culprit, will be a part of the investigation. Homemade rocket launchers trailing copper wire set up on timers is a level of sophistication that would be a big leap from what Vulkangruppe has conducted in the past, so they might just be taking credit for attacks that were committed by somebody else. Nevertheless, if it is ecoterrorists trying to conduct attacks, these incidents are taking place at a time of maximum pressure within Germany.Russia/Ukraine: Attacks continue to escalate by both sides, with Ukraine intensifying attacks on the Russian port of Sochi. Ukrainian drone boats carried out strikes targeting Russian shipping in the port, with at least one boat being intercepted. In the city of Adler to the south, Ukrainian drones successfully struck a Russian SAM system near the local airport.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: On the energy crisis front, the situation continues to deteriorate further. This morning the national average for diesel climbed to the all-time high of $5.85 per gallon. During the month of August, the national average for gasoline reached a high point never before seen in history, with the national average remaining over $4.00 per gallon every single day of the month. Spikes in gas prices due to sporadic targeting and market speculation notwithstanding, the energy crisis has crept into more serious territory as the war in the Middle East doesn't just continue, but continues to escalate.Over the past few days, the White House has touted the recent deal with Venezuela to take control of a portion of their oil industry, and provide access to 17 different oil fields, which are assessed to contain roughly 65 million barrels of crude. The main concern, is that it will take many years to actually get that oil out of the ground. Right now, Venezuela is assessed to be providing an absolute maximum of 1.25 million barrels of crude per day, all total. Due to the earthquake and the recent political upheaval in the wake of the capture of Maduro, investments in Venezuela have been rather tepid, with most American oil companies not being enthusiastic about ramping up operations during a time of uncertainly. Just from purely a numbers game, if Venezuela were to increase their output by ten times they would be able to make up a little more than half of the oil that transited through the Strait of Hormuz each day, before the war. At this point, every single barrel that can be reliably provided each day is valued greatly, but it's going to be several more years before Venezuela is able to even put a dent in the daily American demand for oil.Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground NomadNet: 5fa68c88be727a0e1a250a75e5e79269 Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report. //END REPORT//
What if the most radical thing an artist can do right now is… take their time? This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with curators Abigail Winograd and Dieter Roelstraete, a.k.a. DRAW, to talk about their recent GRAY Chicago exhibition, IT'S ABOUT TIME: Counterproductive Conceptualisms in Chicago. Originally conceived under the much more dangerous title "Slacker Conceptualism," the exhibition gathers ten Chicago-based or Chicago-trained artists around a shared suspicion of productivity, professionalism, polish, legibility, self-branding, and the endless demand that artists explain themselves. The conversation starts with artists who take years to finish paintings, lean things against walls rather than attach them, make objects that seem almost perversely uninterested in becoming commodities, and cultivate what Abigail and Dieter call a kind of "studied nonchalance." From there, things get bigger. What does it mean to make political art without making your politics immediately legible? What happens when opacity becomes an act of resistance? Can refusing productivity itself be political? Why does Chicago—with its strange combination of universities, affordable-ish space, artist-run culture, deep pedagogical histories, and relative distance from the market machinery of New York—make this particular kind of artistic life possible? Along the way we get Pope.L, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Michael Asher, Bas Jan Ader, Josef Strau, Cologne in the 1990s, Gen-X slackerdom, cringe comedy, unfinished paintings, unopened packages, boats, sawhorses, kitchen cabinets, artist losers, artist attitudes, the fetish of identity, the problem with virtue signaling, and the revolutionary possibility of simply refusing to hustle. And then the radio turns off. In the web-only afterparty, the conversation expands into earlier generations of Chicago conceptualism, center-versus-periphery arguments, the weird provincialism of assuming New York remains the center of American art, and finally the uncomfortable relationship between art schools, enormous tuition bills, professionalization, and the economic pressure placed on young artists to turn artistic practice into a viable career. Is the artist supposed to produce? Explain? Sell? Educate? Perform an identity? Change the world? Or can you just be an artist? Apparently, in Chicago, you can at least try. NAME DROPS / FURTHER READING The exhibition IT'S ABOUT TIME: Counterproductive Conceptualisms in Chicago — GRAY Chicago, July 10–August 22, 2026. Exhibition text, artists, checklist, installation views, and curatorial essay: GRAY — IT'S ABOUT TIME DRAW — the curatorial collaboration of Abigail Winograd and Dieter Roelstraete. The exhibition page includes biographies of both curators: DRAW / GRAY exhibition page Curators Abigail Winograd — independent curator and writer; co-curator/co-commissioner of Jeffrey Gibson's 2024 U.S. Pavilion and former Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow: Abigail Winograd — Neubauer Collegium Dieter Roelstraete — curator at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, University of Chicago; former MCA Chicago curator and documenta 14 curatorial team member: Dieter Roelstraete — Neubauer Collegium Artists in IT'S ABOUT TIME Alex Chitty: alexchitty.com Shir Ende: shirende.com Max Guy: maxguy.studio Jinn Bronwen Lee: jinnbronwenlee.com Dave Lloyd — see the GRAY exhibition page for works and installation views: Dave Lloyd in IT'S ABOUT TIME Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle — artist information and website Devin T. Mays — see the GRAY exhibition page: Devin T. Mays in IT'S ABOUT TIME Pope.L: Pope.L — MoMA Nick Raffel — see the GRAY exhibition page: Nick Raffel in IT'S ABOUT TIME Miao Wang — see the GRAY exhibition page: Miao Wang in IT'S ABOUT TIME Conceptual-art ancestors, fellow travelers, and troublemakers Michael Asher — conceptual artist and legendary CalArts teacher whose practice becomes an important reference point in the conversation: Michael Asher — CalArts / MOCA overview Bas Jan Ader — particularly In Search of the Miraculous and Ader's subsequent association with failure, romantic conceptualism, and the mythology of the "artist loser": Bas Jan Ader — Estate / Meliksetian | Briggs Josef Strau — artist and author of "The Nonproductive Attitude," one of the central intellectual reference points for the exhibition: Josef Strau — Whitney Museum Christopher Williams - https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/christopher-williams Lawrence Weiner - https://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/70-lawrence-weiner/ Günther Förg - https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/19427-gunther-forg/ Martin Kippenberger - https://www.maxhetzler.com/artists/martin-kippenberger Albert Oehlen - https://gagosian.com/artists/albert-oehlen/ Bennett Simpson - https://heni.com/news?artist=Bennett%20Simpson Hannah Arendt - https://hac.bard.edu/about/hannaharendt/ Sigmund Freud - https://www.freud-museum.at/en/ Dan Peterman - http://www.danpeterman.com/ Michelle Grabner - https://www.jamescohan.com/artists/michelle-grabner Josh Kline - https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/josh-kline Institutions / places GRAY Chicago Renaissance Society Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society University of Chicago Northwestern University University of Illinois Chicago School of the Art Institute of Chicago Columbia College Chicago Art Institute of Chicago MCA Chicago ICA Boston Regards Gallery Image: Dieter Roelstraete and Abigail Winograd Photo by Robert Chase Heishman. Image courtesy of GRAY Chicago/New York
Welcome back dear listener and sorry to keep you waiting! Fernando and Shams are fresh (+ one week give or take) off the Gamescom floor and ready to share a little bit of what happened when over 360 000 gamers and industry people flooded Cologne last week. While Shams spent the week hiding out in hotel lobbies, Fernando was out working the floor. Today, we break down a couple of Opening Night Live favorites, including Neon Giant's gorgeous immersive sim No Law and Paradox's IP-building play with Afterworld among other things. But the real meat is in the changing publisher landscape. Today's publishers expect you to stroll in with 50,000 wishlists already, so make sure that you are locked in on doing very early community building. Add in the fact that AI tools are making prototyping dangerously easy, and the market is about to be flooded with cheap indie hobby projects. But hey! Despite it all, Fernando and Shams actually have a shocking revelation: the industry vibes are actually good again. Deals are being signed, optimism is back, and Fernando is officially famous enough to be recognized purely by his voice at an Icelandic industry mixer. So what could possibly go wrong? Thanks for listening and have a nice weekend! Oh and btw! Read Shams interview in Gamesindustry here and also his other interview in Gamesbeat here.
DMEXCO 2026 is almost here! In this special episode, Verena Gründel shares the ten things you need to know before heading to Cologne. From “Scaling Intelligence” and the biggest conference highlights to the new World of Commerce, side events and smart networking tips, this is your essential guide to DMEXCO. Plus, Thomas Mosch, Director Conference at DMEXCO, Dirk Freytag, President of BVDW, and Kassenzone founder Alexander Graf reveal what they're most excited about this year. What's Covered: 1. The motto is a deadline, not decoration Why "Scaling Intelligence" - and not "Scaling Artificial Intelligence" - is this year's theme, and what the PwC CEO survey stat (only 12% of companies grow revenue and cut costs through AI) tells us about where the industry really stands. 2. The basics: When, where, how to get around Dates, venue, opening times, transport, and why the DMEXCO app is essential before you even land in Cologne. 3. Eleven summits, four worlds, one roof: A guide to the four DMEXCO Worlds (Tech, Commerce, Media, Agencies) and the ten summits and stages within them. Plus the Start-Up Area and the new Innovation Stage. 4. Why the two days aren't identical: How Day 1 (technological and structural change) and Day 2 (what it means for brands and marketing leadership) follow a deliberate script, and which topics and stages appear on which day. 5. Conference deep dive with Thomas Mosch: The scale of this year's program, how AI runs through the sessions without a dedicated "AI Summit," and the sessions to watch. 6. World of Commerce deep dive with Alexander Graf: Why commerce, media, and marketing are converging, what's new in the expanded Commerce Summit and Commerce Lounge, and the trends (social commerce vs. agentic commerce) shaping the conversation. Learning Journeys, highlights of the Creativity Summit, the Online Ad Summit, and an insider tip for the show. 8. Side events worth knowing about: Pre-show dinners and parties, booth parties on Day 1, and the legendary night out at Bootshaus. 9. Insider tips for getting the most out of DMEXCO: Practical advice on using the app early, pacing your schedule, stepping outside your usual world, arriving the night before, and leading with questions instead of pitches. 10. A closing thought: A question to carry into Cologne: is your company actually scaling intelligence? Or just scaling expectations?
Episode 793 is stacked. Webby, Darren and Nick didn't head to Cologne — instead we grabbed snacks, fired up the stream, and watched Gamescom 2026 unfold live from home. And honestly… it was absolute chaos in the best way. Plus, Rockstar finally dropped the GTA 6 gameplay reveal, so you know we had thoughts.
It's nearly the holidays as this issue reaches readers, so a few things are on their minds: how to dress for a festive party; what to wear UNDER those outfits; which fragrances will be most enticing; and, of course, which pieces to purchase if they're going full Heidicore. Outside the features, we've got questions about the Designer Imposters business model, which lockers an “organizer” in a fractional ad will actually fit in, whether actual popular kids are taking time out of their busy social lives to write scolding letters to Sassy, and much much MUCH more.QUICK LINKS
Live from Gamescom at the Xsolla Clubhouse in Cologne, Alexandra Takei, VP of Platform Revenue & Gaming at Medal and General Intuition, sits down with Ben Kvalo, Founder and CEO of Midwest Games, to unpack what she calls "new age publishing." With traditional deals no longer the only game in town, Ben explains why he built Midwest Games to run two publishing models under one roof: a classic invest-and-revenue-share arm, and "Shadow Publishing," a for-hire services model that lets developers keep their IP and revenue entirely.Drawing on his background at 2K, Blizzard, and Netflix, Ben breaks down why he chose to root the company in the Midwest rather than a traditional hub, how studios actually choose between the two publishing tracks, and why investors like Prevail, Kun Gao (Crunchyroll), and Mitchell Patterson (Wolfjaw) bet on a hybrid publisher in a moment when capital is fleeing games for AI (and how it completely reversed from the VC financing era in 2021 where VC's wouldn't touch publishers). The conversation gets concrete with real portfolio examples plus Ben's take on discoverability, sourcing enough quality titles to publish something every month, and how AI is reshaping both developer costs and his own underwriting.The episode closes with Ben's outlook on where publishing goes next.We'd also like to thank Medal.tv for making this episode possible. If you're a PC gamer and want to clip your moments, or a studio, publisher, or marketer looking to reach a high-quality gaming audience and get your game in front of the right players, check out all Medal has to offer at https://grow.medal.tv.If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at podcast@naavik.co. Watch the episode: YouTube ChannelFor more episodes and details: Podcast WebsiteFree newsletter: Naavik DigestFollow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | WebsiteSound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.
Recorded live at Shopware Partner Day in Austin, Texas on April 22, 2026.Mark Stanley is Shopware's chief product and technology officer, where he looks after all product development. He walks through what is landing this year. Shopware's own native PaaS has just gone GA, highly opinionated and driven from the command line. An intelligence suite is in progress, bringing AI into bulk editing, CMS content generation and store data insights. And Nexus, an orchestration system for connecting Shopware instances to each other and to third party systems, goes GA at Shopware Community Day in Cologne.His hot take is data sovereignty, and business model sovereignty with it. More SaaS providers want to hoover up as much data as they can get, which suits a merchant who wants one button to push. Merchants thinking further out want to keep control of where the business model lives and where the proprietary data sits. His advice is to work out what you would not want an LLM to be able to copy in two or three years, and protect that. The moats are changing.On partners, he sees the job shifting away from shipping features and toward delivering outcomes, with tokens becoming the unit of outcome usage. On AI, he is most interested in developer tooling, where the first 80 percent of a build can happen in 20 percent of the time while the last 20 percent stays human work. And he thinks a portion of shopping stays tactile, digitally or physically, the way asking Siri to play something is a different experience from browsing Spotify.On North America he calls it an underdog story. Shopware is the Linux to the Windows and the Android to the iOS, and the work is the ground game, the same way it was done in Europe fifteen years ago. Bring a case of beer, go on the road, get people to join the ride.Shopware Community Day runs June 10 in Cologne. Shoptoberfest runs September 14 and 15 in Nashville.Learn more about our at-event interviews at talk-commerce.com/events.
One year after the publication of Gastronomica's special feature on food and philosophy, Robert T. Valgenti of the Editorial Collective revisits the question of what a philosophical perspective could bring to addressing food-related issues. In this episode, he talks with Gastronomica author and philosopher Sascha Benjamin Fink about human perception and how people experience the world, taking up questions at the cutting edge of science, art, and gastronomy. Sascha discusses the role of the senses and sensory manipulation in gastronomy and explains how common experiences of eating can lend real-world insights into sensory engineering. Over the course of their conversation Bob and Sascha consider different examples – such as the setting of the table, spatial design, experimental cuisine, and the use of AI in recipe development – and weigh in on what sensory engineering can also reveal about gastronomy. The article Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering, co-authored by Sascha Benjamin Fink and Brandon Ashby, appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Gastronomica. “Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering” was one of fifteen short papers in a special section dedicated to philosophical perspectives on food issues. Access the articles in volume 25.3 of the journal here and learn more about the special section in Episode 53: Mapping Food and Philosophy of the Gastronomica podcast. Sascha Benjamin Fink works on the philosophy of mind with research interests in consciousness, sensory engineering, and new technologies, and most recently has been Director of Research at the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. As of August 2026, he works at the University of Cologne on sensory engineering in the DFG-AHRC Project SENSOR (DFG 527947799). Robert T. Valgenti is a professor of liberal arts and food studies at The Culinary Institute of America. A philosopher and translator, he works on the philosophy of food, Italian philosophy, and hermeneutics and is a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica. Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies is published by the University of California Press. Quarterly issues are available in print and online. Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica's podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
One year after the publication of Gastronomica's special feature on food and philosophy, Robert T. Valgenti of the Editorial Collective revisits the question of what a philosophical perspective could bring to addressing food-related issues. In this episode, he talks with Gastronomica author and philosopher Sascha Benjamin Fink about human perception and how people experience the world, taking up questions at the cutting edge of science, art, and gastronomy. Sascha discusses the role of the senses and sensory manipulation in gastronomy and explains how common experiences of eating can lend real-world insights into sensory engineering. Over the course of their conversation Bob and Sascha consider different examples – such as the setting of the table, spatial design, experimental cuisine, and the use of AI in recipe development – and weigh in on what sensory engineering can also reveal about gastronomy. The article Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering, co-authored by Sascha Benjamin Fink and Brandon Ashby, appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Gastronomica. “Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering” was one of fifteen short papers in a special section dedicated to philosophical perspectives on food issues. Access the articles in volume 25.3 of the journal here and learn more about the special section in Episode 53: Mapping Food and Philosophy of the Gastronomica podcast. Sascha Benjamin Fink works on the philosophy of mind with research interests in consciousness, sensory engineering, and new technologies, and most recently has been Director of Research at the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. As of August 2026, he works at the University of Cologne on sensory engineering in the DFG-AHRC Project SENSOR (DFG 527947799). Robert T. Valgenti is a professor of liberal arts and food studies at The Culinary Institute of America. A philosopher and translator, he works on the philosophy of food, Italian philosophy, and hermeneutics and is a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica. Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies is published by the University of California Press. Quarterly issues are available in print and online. Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica's podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
One year after the publication of Gastronomica's special feature on food and philosophy, Robert T. Valgenti of the Editorial Collective revisits the question of what a philosophical perspective could bring to addressing food-related issues. In this episode, he talks with Gastronomica author and philosopher Sascha Benjamin Fink about human perception and how people experience the world, taking up questions at the cutting edge of science, art, and gastronomy. Sascha discusses the role of the senses and sensory manipulation in gastronomy and explains how common experiences of eating can lend real-world insights into sensory engineering. Over the course of their conversation Bob and Sascha consider different examples – such as the setting of the table, spatial design, experimental cuisine, and the use of AI in recipe development – and weigh in on what sensory engineering can also reveal about gastronomy. The article Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering, co-authored by Sascha Benjamin Fink and Brandon Ashby, appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Gastronomica. “Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering” was one of fifteen short papers in a special section dedicated to philosophical perspectives on food issues. Access the articles in volume 25.3 of the journal here and learn more about the special section in Episode 53: Mapping Food and Philosophy of the Gastronomica podcast. Sascha Benjamin Fink works on the philosophy of mind with research interests in consciousness, sensory engineering, and new technologies, and most recently has been Director of Research at the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. As of August 2026, he works at the University of Cologne on sensory engineering in the DFG-AHRC Project SENSOR (DFG 527947799). Robert T. Valgenti is a professor of liberal arts and food studies at The Culinary Institute of America. A philosopher and translator, he works on the philosophy of food, Italian philosophy, and hermeneutics and is a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica. Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies is published by the University of California Press. Quarterly issues are available in print and online. Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica's podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
We're back from Gamescom 2026! After a week in Cologne, we're talking through the best games we played and saw at the show, including Fable, The Blood of Dawnwalker, The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past, Castlevania and Gears of War. We also go through the biggest announcements from Gamescom Opening Night Live, before getting into GTA VI and whether Rockstar's latest showing has made us any more excited for what is probably going to be the biggest game ever. Plus, we look ahead to a ridiculously busy September, pick out the games worth keeping an eye on and share some of our favourite stories from Gamescom. And somewhere along the way, Ed squirts a pickle. Timestamps 00:00 - Cold Open 00:28 - Intro 01:04 - We're back from Gamescom! 23:34 - The games we played at Gamescom 25:08 - Fable 30:02 - The Witcher 3 36:04 - The Blood of Dawnwalker 01:01:15 - Gamescom Opening Night Live 01:37:50 - GTA VI 01:41:10 - September's biggest games ▼ Swapping Joysticks ▼ ● All previous episodes: swappingjoysticks.com ● Instagram: @swappingjoystickspod ▼ Ben's links ▼ ● Twitch: twitch.tv/biggusbennus ● Bluesky: @biggusbennus.bsky.social ● Instagram: @biggusbennus ● Discord: Join the Discord ▼ Ed's links ▼ ● Twitch: twitch.tv/ed_nights ● Bluesky: @ednights.bsky.social #Gamescom2026 #Fable #GTA6 #TheBloodOfDawnwalker #TheWitcher3 #GamingPodcast
Just like that, here we are again at yet another key highlight of the gaming calendar. All eyes have been on Cologne and Gamescom 2026, as well as the small matter of GTA VI. As always, full show notes are available over at https://www.thexboxhub.com/podcast Further links… Main site with news and reviews – www.thexboxhub.com X – https://X.com/thexboxhub Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/XboxHub Instagram – https://instagram.com/thexboxhub Threads – https://www.threads.net/@thexboxhub YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/TXHVideo
Get ready for another fun-filled episode of Nerds Talking, where movies, gaming, entertainment, laughs, and plenty of nerdy opinions collide!This week, Lafayette kicks things off with the latest and biggest entertainment news coming out of Gamescom 2026 in Cologne, Germany, including exciting gaming announcements, reveals, trailers, and all the happenings from one of the world's biggest video game events. From the games everyone's talking about to the surprises that caught our attention, we break down the biggest news and give you our take on what's worth getting excited about.Then it's time for your weekly dose of entertainment news, as the Nerds dive into the latest happenings across movies, television, streaming, gaming, and pop culture. Expect opinions, reactions, plenty of laughs, and probably a few hot takes along the way!For this week's movie reviews, we're taking on Jason Statham's latest action thriller, Mutiny. Statham stars as Cole Reed alongside Annabelle Wallis, Jason Wong, Roland Møller, Arnas Fedaravičius, Adrian Lester, and others. Is Mutiny another hard-hitting Statham action vehicle that delivers the goods, or does this one miss the target? The Nerds break down the action, story, performances, and everything that worked—or didn't.We also take a trip back to 1970s Detroit for Motor City, starring Alan Ritchson, Shailene Woodley, Ben Foster, Pablo Schreiber, Lionel Boyce, Ben McKenzie, and Amar Chadha-Patel. With revenge, crime, betrayal, and a whole lot of attitude, this action thriller gives the crew plenty to discuss. Did Motor City deliver the gritty revenge story we were hoping for? Tune in to hear the Nerds' verdict!And finally, we wrap things up with something a little closer to home: sports horror stories! The crew shares some of the worst, funniest, most painful, and downright ridiculous experiences they've encountered involving sports. Whether you're a die-hard fan, casual spectator, or someone who's ever had a game-day experience go horribly wrong, you're going to have something to relate to.It's another episode packed with gaming news, movie reviews, entertainment headlines, pop-culture discussions, sports stories, laughs, memories, and plenty of nerdy insights.So grab your headphones, settle in, and join Lafayette and the crew for another episode of Nerds Talking!Don't miss it!#NerdsTalking #Podcast #NerdCulture #PopCulture #Gamescom2026 #Gamescom #GamingNews #VideoGameNews #MovieReviews #Mutiny #JasonStatham #MotorCity #AlanRitchson #ShaileneWoodley #EntertainmentNews #MoviePodcast #GamingPodcast #GeekCulture #SportsStories #ComedyPodcast #Movies #TV #Streaming #PopCulturePodcast
In this episode, Ray Cochrane digs into Anthropic’s Model Hardware Standard. It is a shared driver that lets an AI agent run real lab equipment, from pipetting robots to the lasers inside a quantum computer. He also covers OpenAI’s builder’s guide to GPT-5.6, Google’s new Expert Intelligence book feature, Apple’s M5 Ultra Mac Studio, and a judge’s order forcing Google to stop hiding rival app stores. Finally, he weighs in on Apple’s proposed 15 percent link-out fee, Meta’s Australia numbers, the White House deputizing private hackers, and why rivers obey a 1957 math rule. – Want to start a podcast? Its easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens with a quick personal update. He is hunting for tickets to Michigan for his dad’s anniversary, and he has been learning Blender and Godot on the side, mostly modeling and blocking out levels. Consequently, he asks listeners for advice on starting a big game project, and he plans to record his progress, maybe as a time lapse. Then it is straight into the featured story. Anthropic’s Model Hardware Standard: A Driver for the Physical World The featured story comes from Anthropic, which opened a research preview of the Model Hardware Standard, or MHS. Cochrane frames it as the other side of the question NVIDIA’s world models raised two weeks ago: when do AI agents start touching actual machines? A typical lab runs a microscope, a liquid handler, a robotic arm, and a plate reader, each from a different vendor with its own control software. One Janelia researcher in the post launches seven programs in three languages just to start an experiment. Anthropic says wiring a setup like that takes weeks or months of specialist work. MHS is a driver, the same kind of translation layer a printer uses, except every device gets described with a tiny set of commands like read and write. Devices announce themselves on the network. A plain-English reference file then records what each machine measures, what can be adjusted, and which safety limits get enforced no matter what the agent asks. Agents then reach the hardware through the Model Context Protocol, the command line, or plain code. Cochrane sees the same move the industry keeps making, from coding harnesses to RSS and JSON: agree on a standard and let everyone build against it. In fact, he calls MHS the hardware version of MCP. The partner results carry the segment. QuEra builds quantum computers from individual atoms held by lasers that must hold their frequency to about one part in a trillion. A four-person team spent months on a relock script that worked 58 percent of the time. However, four copies of Claude iterating overnight through MHS produced a decision-tree script that recovers the laser in about six seconds, and it passed 99.3 percent of 700 blind trials. Carnegie Mellon wrote MHS drivers for four instruments across three incompatible computers in about eight hours, then ran dose-response experiments three times faster and blocked all six deliberately induced faults. Genentech, meanwhile, showed the limits. Claude used the same pump speed for water, a foamy protein solution, and a human had to explain that the bubbles were a physics problem. That gap in physical intuition is what sticks with Cochrane. He doubts it will change soon, and he suspects the fix will arrive as sub-agents or sub-models that judge a request against an expected outcome. He also connects MHS to a video of racing robots that never learned to stop at the finish line. What happens, he wonders, once they can read a distance sensor through a shared standard? Still, he calls the announcement a fantastic read and points listeners to the full article. Sponsor: GoDaddy Economy hosting $6.99/month, WordPress hosting $12.99/month, domains $11.99. Website builder trial available. Use codes at geeknewscentral.com/godaddy to support the show. GPT-5.6 Does the Same Work for a Fraction of the Cost OpenAI’s builder’s guide to GPT-5.6 leads the headlines. Cochrane recaps the three tiers from episode 1870, Sol, Terra, and Luna, plus the separate dial for reasoning effort. On BrowseComp, a benchmark for digging up obscure facts on the web, the old GPT-5.5 flagship scored about 84 percent on a run that cost 33 dollars three months ago. Luna now matches that score for a dollar thirty-three, and OpenAI has since cut Luna’s price another 80 percent. Browser Use reports Luna finishing 78 percent of its hardest browser tasks for about 14 dollars, against 80 percent for roughly 235 dollars from the best available model. The guide’s other big addition is a multi-agent beta flag. It lets the model handling a request spawn parallel helper agents that report back to a root agent inside a single API call. However, Cochrane is unimpressed by the timing. He has been running that pattern in Claude Code for months, so he sees OpenAI copying a workflow other companies already ship rather than inventing its own. Along the way, he plugs Claude Code’s remote-control sessions, which let him send prompts from his phone to a terminal session at home. Google Lets Gemini Read the Books You Actually Bought Google launched Expert Intelligence, a name Cochrane calls quite the reach. The feature lets you drop a book you bought on Google Play Books into Gemini Notebook, formerly NotebookLM, and ask questions answered only from that book, with citations. Cochrane sees real power here for students, since he once used NotebookLM to organize scattered course PDFs. Additionally, publishers get a cut, which he calls a far better deal than the wholesale scraping of books that trained earlier models. Nevertheless, he asks who loses out, because a paid publisher does not automatically mean a paid author. He floats the same idea for artists, even a penny per use, then admits that may be too idealistic. Apple’s M5 Ultra Mac Studio Is Built to Run Big Models at Home Back in episode 1861, when Apple killed the Mac Pro, an M5 Ultra Mac Studio was expected later this year. Now it is here. The M5 Ultra brings up to a 36-core CPU, an 80-core GPU, and 512GB of unified memory moving 1.2 terabytes per second. Apple claims up to 4.3 times the AI performance of the M3 Ultra. Thunderbolt 5 can also cluster four machines into one memory pool for up to three times faster inference. The M5 Max model starts at $2,499 and the Ultra at $5,499, with shipping on September 22 and the 512GB configuration arriving in late October. Cochrane finds the clustering pitch ridiculous at that price, but he invites anyone who spends the money to report back. Apple Opens a Manufacturing School in Houston Apple also opened a 20,000-square-foot Advanced Manufacturing Center in Houston. It offers free classes for small and midsize manufacturers, from circuit board design to hands-on time on a scaled-down production line, with college students joining later. Cochrane calls it a solid step in the bring-manufacturing-home movement. The bigger story is the campus itself, which builds Apple’s AI servers and will add the first US-assembled Mac mini line later this year. That ties back to the Mac mini shortage that followed the OpenClaw rush, when Tim Cook warned of months-long waits. Cult of Mac was still reporting four-month waits in late July. However, Cook blamed chip supply rather than assembly, so Cochrane is not counting on relief just yet. Amazon EC2 Turns Twenty Amazon EC2 turned twenty this week, which Cochrane admits makes him feel old. The 2006 beta offered one server size in one region for ten cents an hour. Each came with a 1.7 gigahertz Xeon and under two gigabytes of memory, and accounts were capped at twenty servers. Today AWS offers more than 1,200 instance types across 39 regions. Consequently, Cochrane credits the company with turning that tiny product into the backbone of cloud and AI computing. Intel Gamer Days: Two Free Games, With Fine Print Intel Gamer Days runs through September 13. Buy a qualifying Core Ultra Series 2 or 14th Gen desktop chip, a Core Ultra Series 3 laptop, or an Arc graphics card. In return you get Star Wars: Galactic Racer plus the Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis remake. GamesRadar values the pair at about 120 dollars. However, neither game is out yet, and codes must be redeemed by October 31 even though the Tomb Raider remake ships in February. Cochrane calls that awful, but he still tells qualifying buyers to claim the deal early. Note that 13th Gen chips do not qualify. Judge Orders Google to Stop Hiding Rival App Stores A jury found Google’s Android app monopoly illegal in late 2023, and Judge James Donato ordered rival stores into the Play Store in 2024. On August 13, Epic’s lawyer demonstrated that searching Play for “store for apps” returned Walmart instead of any app store. Donato called that “not acceptable” and ordered three fixes within a week. Searches must surface third-party stores, listings need a plain install button, and the “are you looking for” interstitial has to go. Cochrane welcomes the monopoly being chipped away, but he notes that a controlling entity still sits atop every app store. In his view, community hubs like app stores and social media need a public infrastructure layer. He suspects governments skip that investment because companies already run the services, while selling your data. Apple Wants 15 Percent of Purchases Outside Its Store The other half of the Epic saga is Apple’s proposed link-out commission. After the 2021 anti-steering injunction, Apple charged 27 percent on purchases made through external links. A judge held it in contempt last year, and the Ninth Circuit then allowed a fee limited to the cost of running the system. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers refused to wait for the Supreme Court, writing that “further delay is unwarranted.” Apple filed 15 percent for standard apps, 10 percent for subscription renewals and partner programs, and 5 percent for small businesses. It also conceded the rate would be “essentially zero” under the appeals court’s cost yardstick. Since Apple has charged nothing on link-outs since the contempt ruling, Cochrane sees this as a raise. He calls a cut on purchases made on a developer’s own website disturbing. He also recalls reading about the size of Uber’s payments to Apple, and he questions whether that kind of percentage is sustainable for companies without funding. Meta Says It Has Cut Off 750,000 Australian Kids Meta reported locking out more than 750,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts in Australia by the end of June under the country’s under-16 social media law. Over 500,000 of those were removed before the law even took effect. Detection relies mostly on AI scanning posts and bios for tells like birthday messages, plus user reports and blocks on re-registration. However, the post gives no count of mistaken removals or appeals, and the regulator’s early data shows under-16 usage falling only from about 86 to 81 percent. Meta wants a single age signal at the operating system or app store level, and Cochrane agrees completely. He connects it to the MHS idea from the top of the show: platforms need a standard flag to reference instead of guessing. The White House Deputizes Private Hackers Earlier this month the White House signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum that lets vetted private security firms run surveillance and disruption operations against overseas criminal groups. The Justice Department and Homeland Security hold the contracts and oversee the work. Firms need a proven track record, vetted staff, and a bond of at least $1 million, and must submit operating procedures within 60 days. Cochrane finds the measure aggressive in a good way and hopes it deters attacks on innocents. Still, he takes Kevin Beaumont’s warning seriously that the private security industry profits from ransomware existing. He compares it to the old Head and Shoulders myth: why solve the problem that drives your revenue? A Weather Satellite Watched the Eclipse Shadow Cross Europe Cochrane skips the readout on this one and simply sends listeners to ESA’s site. The MTG-I1 weather satellite captured the Moon’s shadow sweeping across Europe during the August 12 eclipse. Watching a shadow cross an entire continent, he says, was a first for him. Additionally, it leaves him excited about the research happening beyond the planet. Rivers, Deltas, and the Number 0.6 Quanta Magazine explains Hack’s law, which John Hack discovered in 1957 while measuring streams in Virginia and Maryland. A stream’s length tracks its drainage area raised to the power of 0.6, regardless of the rock underneath, and satellite data later confirmed it worldwide. Computer models in the 1990s showed why. Channels that capture extra runoff cut deeper and steal from their neighbors until the network settles into the arrangement that wastes the least energy. Now a University of Texas Rio Grande Valley team has found the same 0.6 exponent in river deltas, which spread water out rather than gathering it. Nobody knows why yet, and Cochrane calls it a really cool read. Sugar Helped Grow the Human Brain, Too A new paper in Science, co-authored by Jennie Brand-Miller at the University of Sydney, adds a third ingredient to the story of early human brain growth. Alongside meat and cooking, natural sugars from ripe fruit and honey may have fueled it too. The brain is about two percent of body weight but burns twenty percent of resting energy. It runs on glucose, which meat and marrow barely supply and raw starch cannot release without fire. The team modeled ancestral diets from a chimp-like baseline through Homo erectus and concluded that the earliest hominins may have drawn over 65 percent of their energy from natural sugars. Cochrane stresses that it is a model, not fossils, and notes that paleoanthropologist Marina Lozano thinks the authors place widespread cooking too early. Still, he loves this kind of deep research. Retracing the steps to our own intelligence, he suggests, could hint at what it takes for intelligent life to develop at all. A Brain Rhythm That Tells Doctors Where to Aim Finally, Science Daily covered a University of Cologne study on deep brain stimulation. That is the implanted-electrode treatment that eases Parkinson’s tremors for some patients but not others. Andreas Horn’s team recorded from 50 patients using both the implanted electrodes and an external magnetic scanner. They identified a circuit between the electrode’s target and the frontal cortex that oscillates at 20 to 35 cycles per second. Stronger coupling there predicted bigger improvement after surgery, though the study, published in Brain, shows correlation rather than cause. First author Bahne Bahners hopes the finding helps tune DBS more precisely, especially for patients who have not responded well. Cochrane half-jokingly asks whether MHS might one day drive those electrodes, and he calls brain disorders the hardest thing in the body to treat. Cochrane wraps with housekeeping: become a GNC Insider at geeknewscentral.com/insider, email geeknews@gmail.com with questions or comments, subscribe to the newsletter, and grab a modern podcast app at podcastapps.com. He thanks GoDaddy for over twenty years of keeping the show on the air, promises to catch everyone next Monday, and wishes listeners a great night. The post Eyes, Hands, and a Sense of Timing #1874 appeared first on Geek News Central.
VOICES ON ART - The VAN HORN Gallery Podcast, hosted by Daniela Steinfeld
In this episode of Voices On Art, I speak with Walter Gehlen, co-founder and director of Art Düsseldorf, about a career that took many different turns before leading him to the art fair business.His early ambition was to become an artist, sparked in part by seeing Gerhard Richter at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf when he was 16. After being rejected by the Düsseldorf Academy, Walter studied art history, theatre and film, later economics, worked in psychiatric and infectious disease wards during his civil service, learned professional cooking and ran a catering business, before moving into business consulting and management.Rather than seeing these experiences as disconnected, we talk about what each of them taught him: dealing with people, understanding systems and marketplaces, reacting to difficult situations, improvising, and finding solutions when there is no obvious blueprint.Eventually, these different skills came together in the art fair business. Walter talks about his first fair projects with Andreas Lohaus, the move from Cologne to Düsseldorf and the development of Art Düsseldorf into an international platform. We discuss what actually makes an art fair work: selecting galleries, bringing the right collectors into the room, creating spaces that encourage encounters, and constantlyadjusting the model.We also talk about data, AI and the use of new technology behind the scenes — not as an end in itself, but as a way of taking care of repetitive work and making complex processes more efficient.And we come back to something quite simple: however sophisticated technology becomes, art still needs people in a room together. An art fair is not only a marketplace, but a place for encounters, conversations and relationships that develop over time. Digital tools can make things easier and more efficient, but they cannot replace the physical experience of art — or the human connections aroundit.A conversation about learning by doing, DIY thinking, curiosity, failure, entrepreneurship — and why a career doesn't necessarily need a straight line.Language: english, c. 1:15 hPortrait photo by Achim HehnBook Pick:My book pick for this Episode is Verschwende DeineJugend / Waste Your Youth by Jürgen Teipel. In Germanyoriginally published in 2001 by Suhrkamp Verlag. There is an English translation available through Suhrkamp, but the book hasn't been published yet. I think it's one of the most important books about the special culture of punk and new wave in Germany. As always you can listen to it at the end of the talk. This book gives deep insights into the development of punk in Germany, particularly in Dusseldorf, Hamburg, and Berlin, from the late 70s to the early 80s. Built entirely from original voices, the book captures these times in Germany, when places like Düsseldorf became laboratories for music, art, fashion, and ideas. Musicians, artists, writers, and outsiders all shared the same DIY attitude. If what you want doesn't exist, make it yourself. A strong reminder how powerful youth culture, any culture, can be. Not because it follows trends, because it invents them. If you're interested in how independence, fearlessness, and fun lead to creating contemporary art and independent culture, this is one of the essential books.Links:https://art-dus.dehttps://van-horn.net/podcast/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6nU3l-pJLSkiPlpfD9BiOA
We've hit another high point in the gaming year with the industry centered in Cologne, Germany for Gamescom 2026, and the kickoff to that each year is Opening Night Live hosted by Geoff Keighley with games both big and small appearing on the almost three-hour showcase. What did Sean and Marc think of what was shown? Any favorite games or surprises? Also, Rockstar is once again in the news, not for their upcoming Netflix showcase of Grand Theft Auto VI but because of a leaker that has leaked quite a bit of the game out to the public and although Take Two Interactive has done takedowns and even subpoenaed both Microsoft and Discord to try to find the culprit, so far he remains at large. Does this hurt the game? Plus, Sean has been playing Mexican Ninja and DuskFade while Marc has been playing Mortal Shell 2 and Beast of Reincarnation. Dave Bautista has officially been named Kratos; Horizon: Hunters Gathering is getting rebooted, Konami has a new Castlevania in development, and more!You can also watch this episode in video form on the W2M Network Youtube Channel, please give us a like, comment on the episode, and give the channel a subscribe and follow as well: https://youtube.com/live/Y1omGV9ZBrA
Benjamin Kruithof is a multiple prize winning Luxembourg-born cellist. In 2025 he won the Young Artist of the Year award. He's given recitals all over Europe including Cologne, Amsterdam, Vienna, Budapest, London and Baden-Baden. As a soloist, recent highlights include performances with the Luxembourg Philharmonic, Liechtenstein Symphony and the East-West Chamber Orchestra. In recital, he has performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Kings Place in London and the Salle Cortot in Paris. His Chamber music projects include an extensive tour of the Netherlands with Noa Wildschut. My featured song is the new re-mixed, re-mastered version of “Ma Petite Fleur String Quartet”, in Dolby Atmos released on St7dio - Classical. All links. —------------------------------------ The Follow Your Dream Podcast: Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries! Click here for Start Here Click here for All Episodes Click here for Guest List Click here for Guest Testimonials Click here for Pillars Click here for Robert's Project Grand Slam Click here to Subscribe Clickhere to receive our Email Updates Click here to Rate and Review the podcast —---------------------------------------- CONNECT WITH BENJAMIN: www.benjamin-kruithof.com "MA PETITE FLEUR STRING QUARTET CLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS —----------------------------------- ROBERT'S NEWEST RELEASE: “THE BUZZ” - Ft. Darius de Haas (vocals) and Dave Eggar (Celo). Short, Sweet and Totally Different CLICK HERE FOR OFFICIAL VIDEO CLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS —-------------------------------------- Audio production: Jimmy RavenscroftKymera FilmsConnect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comFollow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.com
The Edmonton Oilers are headed to Germany! Tyler Yaremchuk and Liam Horrobin are back in studio with producer Bordzy for another edition of ONE and there's plenty to get excited about.The boys kick things off with some major NHL news, as the 2027 NHL Global Series has officially been announced, with the Oilers set to play two games in Cologne, Germany — the hometown of Leon Draisaitl.With an opponent and exact dates still to be announced, Tyler and Liam will discuss which matchups would make the trip to Germany even more special, what it could mean for Draisaitl to play NHL games in his hometown, and whether this could be the perfect excuse for a Nation vacation. Which teams would make the most entertaining opponents? And who should Oilers fans be hoping to see on the other side of the ice?After that, it's time for another edition of Player Previews, with Connor Murphy in the spotlight. After signing a new contract extension with Edmonton this offseason, what should Oilers fans expect from Murphy heading into the new year? With Darnell Nurse no longer in the picture, who will step up as Murphy's defensive partner? And could Murphy take on a larger role on Edmonton's blue line?To close things out, Tyler and Liam will hand out their favourite daily betting plays courtesy of bet365.
Don't have time to listen to the entire Dave & Chuck the Freak podcast? Check out some of the tastiest bits of the day, including the show finding out about Chuck's secret love for cologne, Ryan loses it over Hilary Duff again, and so much more!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The crew discusses their upcoming trip to Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, and dives into rumors and realistic release timelines for Bethesda's highly anticipated The Elder Scrolls VI. Danny, Paris, and Pete get into a heated discussion about Rockstar Games potentially locking an extended look of Grand Theft Auto VI behind a timed Netflix exclusivity window. Was the Xbox One really as bad as people remember? The hosts look back at the 2013 launch, Kinect's downfall, backwards compatibility, and the games that made the era great. They also share their thoughts on Insomniac's Marvel's Wolverine, the open-world gameplay loop fatigue, and the massive wave of new video games dropping this Fall.Gamescom Prep & Logistics The crew prepares for their upcoming trip to Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, marking Danny's first time attending the event. Parris warns about the massive crowds and max-capacity public halls, recommending using Wednesday's media day to scout out business center appointments early. The Elder Scrolls VI Release Window Predictions Following Asha's visit to Bethesda to see an early build, the hosts discuss realistic expectations for The Elder Scrolls VI. While some speculate a 2027 launch, the consensus leans toward 2028 or 2029 to allow thorough QA testing and avoid past launch issues. GTA 6 Extended Look on Netflix Debate A heated debate breaks out over Rockstar Games potentially offering an extended look at Grand Theft Auto VI on Netflix prior to a YouTube release. Danny defends the marketing strategy as smart industry expansion, while Parris expresses concern over setting paywall precedents and drawing attention away from Gamescom announcements. Reflecting on the Xbox One Era The hosts look back at the Xbox One, highlighting its strong games lineup (Titanfall, Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break), the Xbox Controller, Xbox Play Anywhere, and the birth of Game Pass and Backwards Compatibility. They discuss how poor messaging, Kinect bundling, and the initial $500 price point overshadowed an otherwise solid console generation. Marvel's Wolverine & Fall Gaming Wave The team discusses Insomniac's Marvel's Wolverine, addressing preview feedback regarding potential open-world gameplay loop fatigue. They look ahead to the packed Fall release schedule, noting the overwhelming amount of big games dropping through September and beyond. Connect with us: Danny Peña Parris Lilly Pete Toledo Riana Manuel-Peña Send us questions - fanmail@gamertagradio.com | Speakpipe.com/gamertagradio or 786-273-7GTR. Join our Discord - https://discord.gg/gtr chat with other GTR community member.
We did a slightly new format this week, with Anne and Lea taking turns guiding the discussion, and we need you to be REALLY nice about it -- but not too nice! You'll find it, you'll find it. This week in AEW, Kenny and Will decided that a face vs. face feud was bad so instead they're going to do... heel vs. heel? Hmm. Darby and Jericho continue to be aligned, and we're pretty sure that Darby's the only one that Big J is telling about his new exciting relationship with Hangman. Too bad Darby let it slip to Swerve, who immediately had to intervene to make sure Hangman is NOT too happy! Now that was a good meal. Join us during our cold drizzly British summer heading to Wembley!(00:00) Chitchat Time(21:15) Kenny Omega, Will Ospreay, and the Men's World Title Scene(54:49) The Continental Cup(1:13:50) Kevin Knight/Darby/Jericho/DCF(1:28:32) Women's Division(1:36:40) Men's TriosAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Fantha Tracks headed east to Cologne in Germany and the 2026 running of the highly regarded Power of the Force convention, where fans from across Europe and beyond congregated to enjoy an amazing weekend and meet some of the biggest stars in the galaxy. That included ILM matte painting legend Mike Pangrazio, who was there all weekend and who gave a fascinating talk that you can listen to right here on Making Tracks. Remember to tune in to Good Morning Tatooine, LIVE Sunday evenings at 9.00pm UK, 4.00pm Eastern and 1.00pm Pacific on Facebook, YouTube, X, Instagram and Twitch and check out our Fantha Tracks Radio Friday Night Rotation every Friday at 7.00pm UK for new episodes of The Fantha From Down Under, Planet Leia, Desert Planet Discs, Start Your Engines, Collecting Tracks, Canon Fodder and special episodes of Making Tracks, and every Tuesday at 7.00pm UK time for your weekly episode of Making Tracks. Thanks to James Semple for the Fantha Tracks intro, Blues Harvest for our Making Tracks opening music and Mark Daniel and Vanessa Marshall for our voiceovers. Subscribe and tune in to all of our shows at https://radio.fanthatracks.com And of course for all your Lucasfilm and Star Wars news 24/7, 365 days a year head on over to https://www.fanthatracks.com You can contact our shows and send in your listeners questions by emailing radio@fanthatracks.com or by leaving a comment on our social media feeds: https://www.instagram.com/fanthatracks https://www.facebook.com/FanthaTracks https://www.x.com/FanthaTracks https://www.threads.net/@FanthaTracks https://www.reddit.com/r/fanthatracks/ https://mastodon.social/@fanthatracks https://bsky.app/profile/fanthatracks.com https://www.pinterest.co.uk/fanthatracks/ https://fanthatracks.tumblr.com/ And be sure to check out our live streams and video content at: https://www.youtube.com/@FanthaTracksTV/ https://www.tiktok.com/@fanthatracks https://www.twitch.com/fanthatrackstv All of our links can be found at https://links.fanthatracks.com/
Thorin and Mauisnake are joined by caster Trav to break down why Falcons won't dominate despite winning Cologne, Twistzz's rocky move to in-game leader, and what is quietly breaking Counter-Strike. Hims: Weight Loss by Hims connects you online with a licensed provider and an affordable range of GLP-1 options, with support at every step if eligible. Get started at https://hims.com/snakebanter (weight loss by Hims is not available in all 50 states) LFN Premium: Submit topics and get your take featured on the show, go ad-free, and help keep Snake & Banter independent. Sign up at https://www.lastfreenation.com Livetrade on CS today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
How is climate change reshaping the global economy? Rahul Tandon is joined by Carsten Brzeski in Germany and Jyoti Malhotra in India to discuss the growing economic impact of heatwaves, including the threat to trade as water levels on Germany's River Rhine fall. They also examine how China is becoming less reliant on European industry, and the latest leadership tensions at India's Tata Group. Plus, the story behind eclipse sunglasses becoming an unlikely sell-out success.Presenter: Rahul Tandon Producer: David CannYou can email the team: businessdaily@bbc.co.uk(Picture: A view of low water levels at Rheinau Harbour near the Rhine River in Cologne, Germany, 13 August 2026. Credit: EPA)
Hugh Douglas shares his unique pre-game grooming rituals involving cologne and oils before the group debates the ideal Phillies pitching rotation for a Wild Card series. They also analyze a critical stretch in the upcoming schedule and offer predictions for the series finale against the Cardinals.
Americans spend billions on healthcare products, from green powders and cold plunges to costly gym memberships. Last summer we asked: what good do they do? This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Matthew Billy, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Visitors wear the Myblend myLEDmask2 "Anti-Aging" product at the FIBO trade show for health, fitness and wellness in Cologne, Germany. Photo by Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email askvox@vox.com.Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Americans spend billions on healthcare products, from green powders and cold plunges to costly gym memberships. Last summer we asked: what good do they do? This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Matthew Billy, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Visitors wear the Myblend myLEDmask2 "Anti-Aging" product at the FIBO trade show for health, fitness and wellness in Cologne, Germany. Photo by Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email askvox@vox.com.Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
On this episode of Gamertag Radio, Danny Peña and Parris Lilly debunk the internet rumors about Xbox leaving Steam, discuss Rockstar's silent marketing approach for Grand Theft Auto 6, and react to Nintendo's recent releases, including hands-on impressions of Splatoon Raiders. Plus, a deep dive into the stacked late-2026 release schedule from Marvel's Wolverine and Control Resonant to The Blood of Dawnwalker and what to expect at Gamescom.Key Highlights: Xbox & Steam Rumors: Why pulling Xbox games from Steam makes zero business sense. GTA 6 Hype & Pre-Orders: Can Rockstar really get away with showing minimal gameplay before launch? Nintendo Hits: Impressions of Splatoon Raiders and previews of Nintendo Switch Sports Resort. Fall 2026 Release Traffic Jam: How publishers are shifting dates to avoid getting crushed by major blockbusters. Road to Gamescom: Event prep, scheduling, and survival tips for Cologne. Connect with us: Danny Peña Parris Lilly Pete Toledo Riana Manuel-Peña Send us questions - fanmail@gamertagradio.com | Speakpipe.com/gamertagradio or 786-273-7GTR. Join our Discord - https://discord.gg/gtr chat with other GTR community member.
Many thanks to SRAA contributor Dan Greenall, who shares the following recording and notes:Broadcaster: Deutsche Welle and Radio Berlin International 1970'sDate of recording: Circa 1971Reception location: Ancaster, Ontario, CanadaReceiver and antenna: Hallicrafters S-52 using a longwire antennaNotes: During the height of the Cold War, shortwave broadcasts from both West and East Germany could be heard here in southern Ontario, Canada.Deutsche Welle, the Voice of Germany from Cologne in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). Heard here with their familiar interval signal and sign on in English circa 1971. Deutsche Welle (Interval Signal): Circa 1971 Dan Greenall Download
Sebastian and Pete both celebrated birthdays for their kids with Pete setting up ziplining for his daughter's party and Sebastian having incredible games, food, and a photobooth set-up for his son's party. The guys discuss feeling their way through conversations at events like graduation parties. What's your take when you see a guy pull up in the passenger seat and his wife is driving? Sebastian and Pete divvy up where men should lead on things and where women should lead. Sebastian asks Pete for his opinion on what to do if some blood gets in your pool and if that means you have to shut the pool down. The guys debate the power of chlorine. Pete has a cologne update as he's trying to find a new scent to go with for the summer. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
James Franco released a video of an alien in his backyard, Waylon Jennings' new cologne is called Hoss, Senegal's team doctor is actually a gynecologist, and Dave finished The Bear. Support us on Patreon and receive weekly episodes for as low $5 per month: www.patreon.com/circlingbackpodcast Watch all of our full episodes on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6GWLSnyJKGMDIWsYC0RBG2?si=f9e2bcc01d2a4573&nd=1&dlsi=dd35daf7973642a1 Watch all of our full episodes on YouTube: www.youtube.com/washedmedia Shop Washed Merch: www.washedmedia.shop • (00:00) Fun & Easy Banter • (16:05) James Franco & aliens • (30:00) Waylon Jennings' New Cologne, HOSS • (44:15) Senegal's team gyno • (1:01:15) Dave finished The Bear Support This Episode's Sponsors: - BetterHelp: Start therapy with BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10% at https://betterhelp.com/circling - Poncho: Go to https://ponchooutdoors.com/STEAM for $10 off your first order and free shipping. - Squarespace: Check out https://squarespace.com/steam for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use OFFER CODE: STEAM to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. - Lola Blankets: Head to https://lolablankets.com/ and use code STEAM to get 40% OFF your order Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices