Podcasts about crucially

The pressure on the power system is no longer theoretical. AI, data centers, electrification, and new industrial load are arriving faster than utilities can build generation and transmission through conventional timelines. One of the least glamorous but potentially most consequential answers to that problem is how to get more capacity out of the wires already in the ground and hanging overhead. Host Sylvia Leyva Martinez is joined by JD Sitton and Theodore Paradise of CTC Global to examine why advanced conductors are moving from a niche grid technology to a mainstream tool for utilities under pressure to deliver speed, affordability, and reliability at the same time. They explain how replacing traditional steel-core conductors with carbon-core alternatives can sharply reduce sag, increase thermal performance, and in many cases double capacity on existing rights-of-way without rebuilding towers or waiting a decade for a new line.The conversation explores why that matters now. As Theodore argues, the grid was already under strain before AI accelerated the problem, with aging generation, load growth from electrification, and mounting congestion already testing the system. What changes in this moment is the pace. A reconductoring project can be completed in roughly 18 months, compared with five to seven years for a rebuild and 10 to 15 years for a new parallel line. JD and Theodore make the case that this speed advantage is not just about meeting data-center demand. It is also about cutting costs, easing permitting friction, reducing community opposition to new infrastructure, and improving safety by lowering the risk of heat-driven sag and vegetation contact. Crucially, the episode asks what reliability should mean in a grid era defined by bigger load swings, tighter operating margins, and rising public scrutiny over cost. From wildfire resilience to real-time line monitoring and the ability to operate with greater confidence under stressed conditions, advanced conductors are presented not as a silver bullet, but as a proven, underused tool that could help utilities move faster and make better use of capital already committed to the system. The larger question running through the episode is whether the industry will look back on this moment and conclude that one of the simplest grid-capacity solutions was available all along.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Helen Kenworthy has spent thirty years telling people of course you can. She explains why she finally started believing it about her own award entries too. Helen, founder of Of Course You Can Coach, Education Selection Box, RYTC Creative CIC and co-founder of Give Get Go Education, reflects on thirty years of building organically connected businesses rooted in confidence, creativity and inclusion. Helen shares how her own journey from a shy child into performing arts shaped her belief that everyone can succeed once they experience one small win. Furthermore, she explains how that philosophy underpins her coaching and work supporting young people with additional needs.  Crucially, she discusses how a Youth Arts Champion award, nominated by one of her own students, became a genuine turning point for her business. Helen also reveals why awards continue to build trust, opening doors with funders, offering welcome validation after decades of entrepreneurship.   About Helen Helen is the founder and director of three organisations — RYTC Creatives CIC, Education Selection Box CIC, and Give Get Go Education. Her conviction is that people don't need to be squeezed into systems that were never designed for them; the systems need to bend around them. With nearly 30 years across the business and creative sectors as a coach, mentor, author, and actor, Helen has spent her career proving that creativity, rigour, and heart aren't mutually exclusive. Her work spans SEND-informed and alternative education, creative arts for mental health, careers training, and family support — underpinned by her trademarked "Of Course You Can!™" methodology and her "Brilliantly Underestimated" philosophy. In 2026 alone, she picked up the Prestige Awards SEND Provider of the Year and the SME Awards Best Inclusive Creative Learning Partnership of the Year (Warwickshire), adding to a track record that includes the Golden Peacock Trailblazer Award.   {2:20} What Helen was doing thirty years ago. {5:45} Moving into the SEND sector. {8:04} Education Selection Box is born. {10:59} The interconnectedness of Helen's work. {11:59} Helen's focus on solutions. {13:48} The 'Brilliantly Underestimated' and how to get them to believe in themselves. {19:46} How awards benefitted Helen and her business. {28:30} How Helen has succeeded over thirty years.   Connect with Debbie at: https://thebusinessawardsshow.co.uk                                         https://bestsmeawards.co.uk/                                        Connect with Helen:  https://helenkenworthy.com/                                   https://www.educationselectionbox.com/                                   https://www.rytc.co.uk/ LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ofcourseyoucancoach/                 https://www.linkedin.com/company/education-selection-box/                 https://www.linkedin.com/company/therytc/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theofcourseyoucancoach Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61581154236404&rdid=iVK8A4ogy3Up0Nht&share_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshare%2F1ALBuLBuir%2F

After a decade of flat demand, power markets are being forced to absorb a very different problem: rapid load growth arriving faster than transmission, large-scale generation, and utility interconnection processes can respond. The focus shifts from utility-scale procurement to the distributed edge of the system, where commercial and industrial solar, community solar, batteries, and microgrids may prove to be some of the fastest tools available for adding capacity, managing costs, and improving resilience.Host Sylvia Leyva Martinez is joined by Tim Montague, host of Clean Power Hour and a longtime C&I solar operator and advisor, to unpack what distinguishes distributed generation from utility-scale solar in practice. Tim explains why the differences are not just about megawatts, but about interconnection, contractor capability, state policy, and execution risk. He also lays out how the phase-down of the ITC and the July 4 Safe Harbor deadline sharpened those differences: sophisticated developers with capital and pipeline visibility bought themselves runway through 2029, while smaller players that missed the deadline now face a much tighter path to commercial operation.The conversation then turns to the economics and mechanics of the market. Tim argues that state-level frameworks remain decisive for C&I and community solar, pointing to states such as Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Colorado, and New Mexico as the sector's core proving grounds. From workforce rules and training pipelines to tax-credit capture and commercial lending, he describes a market that is far more fragmented than utility-scale power, but also more flexible. Financing can range from a local business borrowing through its existing commercial bank to larger developers using institutional capital to safe-harbor equipment and scale portfolios, while PPAs remain available but often introduce longer, more complex contracting cycles.Crucially, the episode looks at why distributed energy is moving from a niche resilience play to a system-level answer for affordability and speed to power. Rising electricity prices, data-center demand, and long utility interconnection queues are improving the case for solar-plus-storage behind the meter and at community scale. Tim makes the case that batteries, community solar, distributed computing, and eventually community-scale microgrids can complement, not replace, utility-scale buildout by delivering capacity where it is needed faster and with more local value. The core question running through the episode is whether the next phase of the energy transition will be defined not only by bigger projects, but by a more distributed grid architecture built for flexibility, resilience, and cost control.This episode is brought to you by twentytwo & brand – a marketing and PR agency built specifically for energy leaders.Lots of agencies say they work with energy companies. twentytwo & brand was built for them. They've partnered with more than 120 companies driving the energy transition – from growth-stage startups to globally recognised industry leaders. Media relations, brand design, video, paid advertising and community engagement – they cover it all under one roof. No onboarding lag, no industry crash course – they speak your language on day one. If you're ready to sharpen your story and supercharge your marketing, find them here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Ray Cochrane records from the Michigan studio on the one year anniversary of losing the show’s original host, Todd Cochrane. The featured story is Anthropic’s $5 million grant program, which pays outside researchers to measure whether AI is actually good for the people using it. Ray also covers Anthropic’s Enterprise Frontier Safeguards, Google’s Fairwind cyber defense program, Meta’s organizational second brain, sixteen green AI projects across Asia-Pacific, an Oklahoma Bitcoin mine condemned after leaking 3.8 million gallons of water, BepiColombo closing in on Mercury, and the 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes. – 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 from the studio in Michigan, recording on the one year anniversary of the show losing its original host, Todd Cochrane, his father. The family has gathered for the occasion. He also plans to record several episodes throughout the week as a commemorative run, so listeners should expect a heavier release schedule than usual. He also shares where things stand. He and Delaney have gone back and forth on relocating to Michigan, but the family is pushing, and the plan is firming up for the coming month or so. Part of the draw is getting his dad’s studio cleaned up and running the way it used to. Finally, he passes along an update on the Zuvers, a story long-time listeners will recognize. The father of the three children is due out of jail soon, though he now faces retrial for the murder of the three boys. Cochrane notes that the original prison term related to their return rather than the murders themselves. The family’s expectation, he says, is that this time the sentence will be permanent. Anthropic Puts $5 Million Behind Measuring AI’s Effect on You The featured story asks a question the industry has mostly avoided. Not whether a model is smart, but whether you are better off after using it. Anthropic is funding independent research to find out, and the structure is the interesting part. The money creates what the field calls evaluations: standardized tests for AI models. Hundreds already exist for coding, math, and reasoning. However, almost none measure whether the tool is good for the human on the other end. Crucially, Anthropic is not building these tests in-house. Grantees receive funding, model access and technical support, then work fully independently. Everything they produce must be published open source, so any developer at any company can run it. As Cochrane puts it, Anthropic is paying to create a ruler other people will use to measure Anthropic. The example Anthropic leads with is deliberately uncomfortable. Claude might offer diet and workout advice to someone asking about weight loss. But if that user has a history of disordered eating, the same response becomes actively harmful. Cochrane connects this to sycophancy, a topic the show has returned to before, and notes that models carry no real memory of who you are unless you tell them. That is exactly why the problem has gone unmeasured. Code compiles or it doesn’t. Math checks out or it doesn’t. Wellbeing has no answer key, because the identical response can help one person and harm the next. The Five Things Anthropic Wants These Tests to Do Cochrane walks through all five criteria, since each targets a specific way this research usually fails. First, state plainly what you are measuring. It is easy to measure something adjacent, such as how often a model uses warm language, then publish numbers about a proxy while claiming insight into loneliness itself. Second, involve clinicians and subject-matter experts in designing and validating the tests. A capable engineer may simply not know what the warning signs of an eating disorder look like in text. Without those people in the room, the test measures what engineers imagine the harm looks like. Third, count overcompliance and overrefusal as harms. Overcompliance is the obvious failure. Overrefusal is the model becoming so cautious it turns useless, or shutting down someone who had nowhere else to ask. Cochrane adds that overrefusal is far harder to spot, because you often cannot tell it is degrading until it has degraded. Fourth, reflect real multi-turn usage. Most safety testing throws one nasty question at a model and checks for refusal. Meanwhile, actual harm builds across a long conversation where every individual message reads as fine. Fifth, validate the automated graders against real experts. Scoring thousands of conversations means an AI grades the AI. Consequently, a subtly wrong grader skews every downstream number in the same direction, and nothing in the process flags it. Cochrane expects this to be the hardest criterion to satisfy, since psychiatric and medical specialists do not come cheap by the hour. Applications close September 21st, and shortlisted applicants will be notified by October 5th. Notably, the announcement names no individual researcher or executive. 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. Anthropic’s Enterprise Frontier Safeguards Keep Your Logs in Your Vault Anthropic’s second announcement targets a completely different audience. Catching misuse across many sessions requires keeping logs. However, banks and hospitals cannot hand that data to an outside vendor, because regulators will not allow it. Safety monitoring and compliance were in direct conflict. The fix moves where the data lives. Activity logs go into the customer’s own cloud bucket at Amazon, Microsoft or Google, locked with keys the customer controls. Automated systems scan a rolling window for serious abuse such as credential theft, and alerts route straight to the customer’s own security team. No human at Anthropic reads it, and Anthropic does not charge for the feature. The backstory explains the urgency. Anthropic had begun retaining thirty days of data with its Fable 5 model, specifically to catch patterns that only appear across multiple sessions. Regulated customers had to walk away immediately. Over a hundred organizations helped shape the result, including a quarter of the Fortune 100 and every US globally systemically important bank. It works across Claude Code, Claude Enterprise, Amazon Bedrock, and Microsoft Foundry. Wells Fargo’s security team put it simply, saying their logs stay in a Wells-managed environment under Wells-managed keys. Cochrane adds a personal note on the same retention change. Because transcripts now persist thirty days after last touch, he can keep Claude Code threads open far longer and lean on clear without losing context. Google’s Fairwind Program Hands Patching to the Machines Google is running the same play from the defensive side. Normally, a human engineer must reproduce a security flaw, understand it, write a fix, then prove the fix broke nothing else. That can stretch to weeks, and attackers live in exactly that gap. Fairwind pairs two systems to close it. Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber is a model tuned for security work. CodeMender hunts for flaws and writes the patches. Together, Google says they produce verified, deployment-ready patches in minutes, running inside the customer’s own environment. Access is deliberately restricted to three groups: national cyber authorities; critical infrastructure operators in healthcare, telecom, energy, and finance; and major technology platform providers. More than 650 partners are involved. Cochrane’s take centers on logging quality. Systems that emit specific, unique errors rather than generic ones let these tools find real issues almost immediately. Furthermore, he sees value in purpose-tuned models over general ones, since different training data and methodology surface gaps a single familiar model would miss. Meta Built an AI That Learns From Its Own Experts Every organization has two or three people who actually understand the hard systems. When they are busy, everyone waits. When they leave, the knowledge leaves too. Most AI assistants address this with retrieval, searching documents when you ask. Meta went the other way. A long-running offline process digests the source material ahead of time into more than 200 structured knowledge files, so the thinking happens before anyone asks. On top sit what Meta calls recipes, step-by-step procedures mirroring how a specialist actually works a problem. The reported numbers are concrete. Restructuring cut tokens consumed per turn by 80 percent. Assessments that took days now take minutes. The team built the whole system in six weeks across three sprints. Cochrane focuses on the feedback loop. Normally, an expert corrects an assistant in chat; the answer improves once, then the system forgets. Meta’s version compiles corrections into knowledge files and regression-tests them, so fixes stick without retraining the model. However, he raises two real caveats from his own attempts. Building those knowledge files is token-heavy, and codebases change. If the offline process does not rerun, the documentation drifts away from the code it describes. He also predicts this will become a service offered by AWS, GitHub, or GitLab rather than something each company builds alone. Sixteen Green AI Projects Across Asia-Pacific Google DeepMind named the first cohort of its Accelerator: AI for the Planet program. Sixteen organizations span New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Australia and Japan, receiving three months of access to Google’s AI stack plus mentorship and a Singapore bootcamp. Several stand out. A New Zealand outfit called 800 Trust uses bioacoustics, monitoring an ecosystem by listening to it and running AI over continuous audio to track biodiversity. Wildlife.ai builds open-source AI camera traps. Australia’s X-Centric replaced the soil lab with a handheld X-ray reader that answers a farmer standing in the field. In India, Climitra Carbon verifies invasive species removal and converts the biomass into biochar. Access matters more than money, as Cochrane points out. A six-person conservation nonprofit cannot run frontier models, because the compute bill alone would consume its operating budget. The organizations closest to these problems have always been furthest from the tooling. An Oklahoma Bitcoin Mine Condemned After Leaking 3.8 Million Gallons Cochrane corrects the figure up front. Many outlets report three million gallons, but El Reno city officials put it at 3.8 million. A Bitcoin mining operation on West Jensen Road leaked water and dropped pressure badly enough to close El Reno Public Schools, the Canadian County Courthouse, and other city and county offices. It happened during a month with 24 days above 100 degrees, in a region under severe to extreme drought. The leak is not the damning part. The city issued a stop-work order on the site back in 2023 for electrical, construction, and fire safety violations, then never followed up. The facility ran roughly three years under an order nobody enforced. Interim city manager Ken Brown did not dodge it, saying simply, “We failed.” The site is now posted as condemned with a ten-day removal notice, and a hearing with operator Athlon BT is set for September 14th. Reaching the company has proven difficult, with a website stuck on a maintenance notice and an unanswered California phone number. Cochrane draws one distinction that the coverage keeps blurring. This is a Bitcoin mining rig, not a hyperscale AI data center. The residents who lost pressure absorbed the cost, and nobody billed the operator for the aquifer. BepiColombo Closes In on Mercury After Eight Years Reaching the closest planet to the Sun took nearly eight years, which sounds backward until you understand the physics. Falling toward the Sun means gaining enormous speed, and a spacecraft arriving too fast simply sails past. So the mission spent those years shedding velocity across nine gravity-assist flybys: one at Earth, two at Venus, and six at Mercury itself. On September 3rd, the transfer module separated and was discarded more than 200 million kilometers from Earth. Mission control marked the moment with “Roll call completed, GO for separation.” Importantly, the spacecraft has not arrived yet. Orbit insertion is November 21st, the two science orbiters separate around December 9th and 10th, and science operations begin in April 2027. That November date is revised, having slipped from an earlier plan. Two orbiters fly because they do different jobs. Europe’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter studies the planet and what lies beneath its surface. Japan’s Mio studies the magnetosphere. Mercury having a magnetic field at all is genuinely odd, since a planet that small should have cooled and lost it long ago. The mission honors Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, the Italian mathematician who worked out how to slingshot a spacecraft to Mercury in the first place. NASA Builds a Rocket Engine Talk You Can Hear NASA hosts a webinar on Friday, October 2nd at 2 pm Eastern, titled “The RS-25 Engine and the Future of Artemis Missions.” It runs about two hours, is open to anyone, and RSVPs close September 25th. The RS-25 is not new hardware. It is the Space Shuttle main engine, the same design that flew 135 shuttle missions across three decades, now bolted four at a time into the SLS core stage. Together they produce roughly 2.2 million pounds of thrust at 111 percent of their original shuttle rating. Throwing them away is the strange part. These are precision engines built to fly repeatedly, yet Artemis expends four on every launch. NASA got a proven engine and skipped a decade of development, and that is the trade. The accessibility work is the real story. The event includes an audio-described video of an engine test firing, a live Q&A with an Artemis engineer, and a panel on accessibility in space and science. A test firing normally sells entirely on spectacle. Conveying that, and the engineering underneath it, without the visuals is a genuine design problem NASA built the whole event around solving. Buried Underwear Wins a 2026 Ig Nobel The 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded September 3rd in Zurich. Marc Abrahams launched them in 1991 at the satirical magazine Annals of Improbable Research, and what began as a roast is now something researchers actively want. The soil science prize went to a team that buried 1,000 pairs of underwear across more than 25 countries and dug them up two months later. Measuring how much cotton rotted turns out to be a cheap, surprisingly good proxy for how biologically alive the soil is. The biomechanics prize recognized a precise, cross-species definition of kissing that works for animals and excludes passing food. By that definition, polar bears kiss, some birds kiss, and so do ants. Nature reports the behavior traces back roughly 21.5 million years to the ancestor of all large apes, meaning ancient humans very likely kissed Neanderthals. Cochrane’s favorite was the physics prize, awarded for a splash-free urinal design that reportedly cuts spray to 1.4 percent of normal. Cochrane closes by pointing listeners to the GNC Insider program, the newsletter, and podcastapps.com for a modern podcast app. Feedback on the show’s format is explicitly welcome at geeknews@gmail.com, where either Ray or Chris will read it. The post Anthropic’s $5 Million Push to Measure AI’s Effect on Wellbeing #1876 appeared first on Geek News Central.

n this podcast, North Korean refugees who visited the University of Bradford share their harrowing experiences of life in North Korea, escape, and the challenges of building new lives in freedom. They are supported by Freedom Speakers International (FSI), a Seoul-based non-profit that helps North Korean refugees rebuild their lives through personalised English education, mentoring and public-speaking opportunities. Crucially, FSI enables refugees to tell their own stories in their own voices. Their testimony reveals the human cost of repression in North Korea while highlighting the importance of the humanitarian work undertaken by FSI: helping refugees develop the skills and confidence to pursue their ambitions, rebuild their independence and ensure that their experiences are heard internationally. Freedom Speakers International (FSI) is a Seoul-based non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting North Korean refugees as they rebuild their lives after escape from North Korea. Founded in 2013 by Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eunkoo Lee, it began as Teach North Korean Refugees and has developed into an organisation focused on empowering refugees through education, mentoring and public speaking opportunities. FSI provides North Korean refugees with tuition-free, individualised English and public-speaking mentorship. This is particularly important because many refugees arrive in South Korea having experienced severe disruption to their education and face significant disadvantages in employment and higher education, where English proficiency can be important. FSI works with refugees according to their own objectives, helping them improve their language skills, confidence and ability to participate fully in South Korean and international society. An especially important part of FSI's work is enabling North Korean refugees who wish to do so to tell their own stories. Through its public-speaking programme, its “I Am From North Korea” English Speech Contest and its Keynote Speaker Network, FSI gives refugees opportunities to communicate their experiences directly to international audiences rather than having others speak on their behalf. Its speaker network now includes more than 30 speakers. The humanitarian importance of this work extends well beyond language teaching. North Korean refugees have often endured repression, traumatic journeys of escape, separation from their families and the considerable difficulties of adapting to an unfamiliar society. Effective resettlement therefore requires more than providing physical safety. It also means helping people recover independence, confidence and the ability to determine their own futures. FSI's personalised model is particularly valuable because it treats refugees not simply as recipients of assistance but as individuals with their own ambitions, experiences and voices. Its work helps turn escape from persecution into the possibility of a genuinely independent life. At the same time, by enabling refugees to speak about North Korea from personal experience, FSI performs a wider human-rights function. First-hand testimony preserves awareness of conditions inside North Korea and ensures that the experiences of those who have escaped remain part of international discussion. Supporting North Korean refugees in finding their own voices is therefore both an important humanitarian activity and a contribution to the broader defence of human dignity and freedom. Christoph Bluth is Professor of International Relations and Security at the University of Bradford.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

n this podcast, North Korean refugees who visited the University of Bradford share their harrowing experiences of life in North Korea, escape, and the challenges of building new lives in freedom. They are supported by Freedom Speakers International (FSI), a Seoul-based non-profit that helps North Korean refugees rebuild their lives through personalised English education, mentoring and public-speaking opportunities. Crucially, FSI enables refugees to tell their own stories in their own voices. Their testimony reveals the human cost of repression in North Korea while highlighting the importance of the humanitarian work undertaken by FSI: helping refugees develop the skills and confidence to pursue their ambitions, rebuild their independence and ensure that their experiences are heard internationally. Freedom Speakers International (FSI) is a Seoul-based non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting North Korean refugees as they rebuild their lives after escape from North Korea. Founded in 2013 by Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eunkoo Lee, it began as Teach North Korean Refugees and has developed into an organisation focused on empowering refugees through education, mentoring and public speaking opportunities. FSI provides North Korean refugees with tuition-free, individualised English and public-speaking mentorship. This is particularly important because many refugees arrive in South Korea having experienced severe disruption to their education and face significant disadvantages in employment and higher education, where English proficiency can be important. FSI works with refugees according to their own objectives, helping them improve their language skills, confidence and ability to participate fully in South Korean and international society. An especially important part of FSI's work is enabling North Korean refugees who wish to do so to tell their own stories. Through its public-speaking programme, its “I Am From North Korea” English Speech Contest and its Keynote Speaker Network, FSI gives refugees opportunities to communicate their experiences directly to international audiences rather than having others speak on their behalf. Its speaker network now includes more than 30 speakers. The humanitarian importance of this work extends well beyond language teaching. North Korean refugees have often endured repression, traumatic journeys of escape, separation from their families and the considerable difficulties of adapting to an unfamiliar society. Effective resettlement therefore requires more than providing physical safety. It also means helping people recover independence, confidence and the ability to determine their own futures. FSI's personalised model is particularly valuable because it treats refugees not simply as recipients of assistance but as individuals with their own ambitions, experiences and voices. Its work helps turn escape from persecution into the possibility of a genuinely independent life. At the same time, by enabling refugees to speak about North Korea from personal experience, FSI performs a wider human-rights function. First-hand testimony preserves awareness of conditions inside North Korea and ensures that the experiences of those who have escaped remain part of international discussion. Supporting North Korean refugees in finding their own voices is therefore both an important humanitarian activity and a contribution to the broader defence of human dignity and freedom. Christoph Bluth is Professor of International Relations and Security at the University of Bradford.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

CAPTION 1890 SAXONYGerman Populist Resurgence Threatens Global OrderFinally, Gaius and Germanicus turn to Germany, where the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has achieved historic breakthroughs in regional elections. Germanicus and the host analyze how the AfD's rise in Saxony, winning up to 44%, signals deep structural shifts. The party remains firmly anti-NATO, anti-EU, and anti-American, throwing off what Germanicus describes as a 'yoke of shame' imposed since World War II. Rejecting comparisons to 1932 militarism, Germanicus frames this surge as a conservative Thermidorian reaction against Western cultural wokeism and its therapeutic ethos. He contrasts the western therapeutic culture with the heroic Soviet traditions still present in East Germany. Germanicus argues that European populations are desperately seeking renewal and a return to stable traditions that protect their loved national worlds. He identifies this regional political shift as a clear bellwether for potential populist victories in other European nations, including France and the Netherlands, where citizens also resist migrant influxes. Crucially, he asserts that this growing European anti-American sentiment is ultimately beneficial for the United States itself. These global setbacks will serve as a necessary wake-up call, forcing the American empire to abandon its ruinous 'pied piper mission' of global dominance and finally focus on its own domestic renewal.

CAPTION 1945 tokyo Oversight Loopholes in Saudi Nuclear DealHenry Sokolski outlines concerns regarding the unclassified but heavily redacted Saudi Arabian nuclear agreement. Government documents printed on September first reveal provisions for uranium enrichment up to twenty percent on Saudi territory. Crucially, the agreement limits atomic inspections to declared sites, presenting a loophole for covert parallel operations. Sokolski also addresses Iran's war crime accusations against the United States following a fatal off-target missile strike near the Strait of Hormuz. He attributes such tragic military targeting errors to outdated intelligence and the misuse of artificial intelligence to accelerate high-stakes decision-making in active war zones. (7)

CAPTION 1926 HUNTINGDON BEACH,  CALIFORNIACONTENTS OF THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 9-4-2026.California Waves, Wildfires, and Financial DefaultsJeff Bliss reports on various events across California. Hurricane Marie has generated spectacular and dangerous waves at the Wedge in Newport Beach, drawing crowds but causing major beach erosion. Meanwhile, Monterey Countybattles the uncontained Timber and Placet wildfires in steep, inaccessible terrain. Infrastructure issues persist in Los Angeles, where temporary fixes address frequent water main breaks. A meat storage fire has left an odor and vermin, angering residents as waste is relocated. Lastly, Hollywood faces financial trouble, highlighted by Deutsche Bank's troubled loans and studios leaving California for cheaper, less-regulated states. (1)Voting Rules and Birthright Citizenship BattlesRichard Epstein discusses constitutional legal battles surrounding mail-in voting and birthright citizenship. On mail-in voting, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to allow postal restrictions preserving custody. Epstein believes the court will support this neutral federal regulation. On birthright citizenship, a Maryland judge blocked an executive order narrowing citizenship eligibility, calling it unconstitutional. Epstein critiques her historical reasoning but acknowledges the Chief Justice shares her view. He explores complexities including diplomatic immunity, territorial status, and whether the government can restrict pregnant foreign nationals from entry to prevent birthright citizenship tourism. (2)Canada and United States Trade NegotiationsConrad Black analyzes trade tensions between Canada and the United States, hoping cooler heads will prevail to avoid a trade war. Canada relies heavily on American trade, as US politicians face pressure from tight border state elections in Michigan and Ohio. Black outlines three major unresolved issues: Canadian content disputes in auto and truck manufacturing, Canadian trade deals with China, and American objections to French language packaging. Black urges a spirit of mutual compromise rather than table-pounding, emphasizing that both friendly nations ultimately stand to benefit from a swift resolution. (3)Lancaster County Economic Trends: Labor Day, Inflation, and Local RealitiesJim McTague and host John Batchelor discuss the economic landscape of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, ahead of Labor Day. Despite strong national jobs data—the US economy beat expectations by adding 162,000 jobs in August, prompting Wall Street to anticipate a Federal Reserve interest rate hike of a quarter point—rising Costco gasoline prices reveal the immediate pressure of inflation on local residents, surging to $4.03 per gallon from $3.93 a week prior and triggering long lines reminiscent of the 1970s fuel shortage. Meanwhile, local tourism remains strong and steady despite a highly rainy year that has occasionally caused uneven day-to-day retail activity, and the 100-year-old Charles family farm stand in East Petersburg boasts a thriving season, drawing polite crowds for exceptionally sweet corn and tomatoes despite excessive precipitation. Finally, McTague debunks false claims about the nearby industrial park's data center being noisy, noting it is actually quieter than typical lawnmowers or birds, with zero negative impact on adjacent property values or lifestyle. (4)Deterrence Essential Amid Treaty Oversight CrisesPeter Huessy discusses the modern challenges of nuclear deterrence and arms control treaties involving the United States, Russia, and China. A three-party treaty limiting overall warhead numbers is highly unlikely due to competing strategic interests. Banning specific destabilizing technologies, like multiple-warhead ICBMs or space-based weapons, is much more feasible. Huessy highlights Russia's persistent objectives of using nuclear blackmail to weaken NATO and dismantle American missile defense systems. China's absolute lack of transparency and Russia's evasion of inspections since 2020 require the United States to prioritize robust, active nuclear modernization to maintain deterrence. (5)Historical Myths Shape America's Divided IdentityDavid S. Reynolds, author of Two Ships: Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America, Part Two: Reynolds analyzes the historical and cultural myths shaping America's division. Pre-war, romanticized Southern fiction revived a Cavalier identity defending slavery, while Northern abolitionists drew on Puritan ideals. Though many used a two-ships metaphor—contrasting Jamestown's hierarchy with Plymouth's democracy—Abraham Lincolnrejected division, fighting for one nation founded on equality. After the war, Edward Pollard's book romanticized the plantation South as the Lost Cause, a myth later popularized by Hollywood. Reynolds also notes positive legacies, like Rhode Island Quaker abolitionist Moses Brown and early suffragists. (6)Oversight Loopholes in Saudi Nuclear DealHenry Sokolski outlines concerns regarding the unclassified but heavily redacted Saudi Arabian nuclear agreement. Government documents printed on September first reveal provisions for uranium enrichment up to twenty percent on Saudi territory. Crucially, the agreement limits atomic inspections to declared sites, presenting a loophole for covert parallel operations. Sokolski also addresses Iran's war crime accusations against the United States following a fatal off-target missile strike near the Strait of Hormuz. He attributes such tragic military targeting errors to outdated intelligence and the misuse of artificial intelligence to accelerate high-stakes decision-making in active war zones. (7)Spaceflight Ventures and Saturn's Ten-Sided RingsBob Zimmerman covers several developments in aerospace, astronomy, and planetary science. SpaceX secured an exchange deal with Brownsville for a shipping port, while Blue Origin won a Mars communication satellite relay contract. Meanwhile, SpaceX's Dragon capsule leaked, and Sierra Space remains un-flown after a decade. In astronomy, NASA's Dragonfly mission to Titan named its landing site, and scientists using Hubble discovered a unique ten-sided cloud ring around Saturn's south pole. Finally, Ukraine's drone strikes on Russian rocket factories and Russia's failing satellite constellation highlight ongoing military conflicts in orbit. (8)

In this episode, Ray Cochrane breaks down Hot Chips 2026, the engineering conference where IBM, NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, Arm, and Fujitsu all showed how their next processors actually work. The headline disclosure is a mainframe core that runs Arm natively. Ray also covers Apple’s odd M6 Mac mini naming, London’s first autonomous Uber rides, Amazon’s purchase of the company behind DuckDB, GitHub’s HydraFusion, the best of IFA 2026, and new USDA research on farmed salmon. – Want to start a podcast? It’s 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 the show with a personal update. He apologizes for the late rollout and the missed Monday episode, having spent the week fighting a cold. He’s also heading to Michigan to spend time with family and visit his father’s gravesite. He hopes to record a couple of shows from his dad’s old studio while he is there, including a special episode planned for Tuesday. He also points listeners to a fresh site redesign that trades the old techie look for something cleaner and friendlier. The featured segment starts from a wrap-up post on Arm’s newsroom. However, Cochrane broadens it to cover the whole conference rather than a single article. Hot Chips has run every August since 1989, and this year’s event was the 38th, held August 23rd through the 25th at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium. What Hot Chips Actually Is Cochrane draws a line between Hot Chips and the big consumer trade shows. CES and Computex exist for product announcements and marketing. Meanwhile, Hot Chips is an IEEE engineering conference where chip architects present block diagrams and die photos for thirty minutes at a stretch. The audience matters as much as the content. Roughly five hundred people who design chips for a living fill the room, and they would spot a fudged number immediately. No written paper is required, just the talk and the slides. In-person tickets sold out this year, as did Stanford’s dorm housing. Cochrane says he plans to cover the conference annually going forward. IBM Built a Mainframe Core That Speaks Arm The disclosure that stopped Cochrane cold came from IBM. Its next processor for IBM Z and LinuxONE runs two completely different instruction sets natively, on every one of its eleven cores. Those are z/Architecture, IBM’s own mainframe language, and AArch64, which is 64-bit Arm. Crucially, this is not emulation. Nor is it Arm cores glued onto the die beside the mainframe cores. IBM built 2,792 Arm instructions directly into the hardware, which it says is more than double the mainframe instruction count. Each core carries two separate decoders while sharing the caches, branch predictor and register files downstream. It switches between the two in nanoseconds. IBM even added dedicated hardware to flip byte order, because Arm and the mainframe store numbers in opposite directions. The payoff is Arm SystemReady compliance, meaning off-the-shelf Arm Linux runs on a mainframe unmodified. Patrick Kennedy of ServeTheHome, who was in the room, wrote: “I am sitting here still in awe of what IBM is doing here; this is not Z plus Arm cores, this is Z and Arm in one core.” Cochrane flags one precision point that is easy to get backward. IBM did not license Arm’s core designs and drop them in. Instead, it took its own mainframe core and taught it AArch64 under an architecture license, which is considerably harder engineering. The specifications are striking. The chip uses a 2nm process, with eleven cores running above 5.7GHz sustained and no turbo mode at all. Each core gets 36MB of L2 cache, backed by a 3.5GB virtual L4 pool. Furthermore, the reliability target is eight nines, which works out to roughly three tenths of one second of unplanned downtime per year. IBM gave it no name and no ship date, though the press expects “Telum III” around 2028. Arm, Fujitsu and NVIDIA Show Their Hands Arm itself had plenty to discuss, starting with an unfortunate name. Its first chip in thirty-five years is called the AGI CPU, which is a product name rather than any claim about artificial general intelligence. For three and a half decades, Arm designed processor blueprints and licensed them out, collecting royalties without competing. That era is now over. The AGI CPU is Arm’s own silicon, co-designed with lead customer Meta, running up to 136 cores on TSMC’s 3nm process at 300 watts. Arm’s CEO says the company has more than $2 billion in customer demand across the next two fiscal years. Fujitsu brought the detail Cochrane called the coolest of the conference. Its MONAKA chip packs 144 Arm-based cores, but the trick is the cache. Rather than sitting alongside the cores and eating die area, the entire last-level cache lives on a separate 5nm die with the 2nm compute die stacked directly on top. It ships in 2027 in 350-watt and 500-watt versions. NVIDIA had more stage time than anyone, with six sessions. Its new Vera CPU carries 88 cores of NVIDIA’s own Olympus design, which marks a change: the previous Grace CPU used Arm’s off-the-shelf cores. Consequently, Arm’s win here is the instruction set, not the blueprint. The memory disclosure drew the most attention, with a fully loaded system reaching 1.5TB at 1.2TB/s while the whole memory subsystem draws just 30 to 40 watts. The Caveat on NVIDIA’s Benchmark Slides Cochrane pushes back on how NVIDIA presented its numbers. On the standard SPEC integer benchmark, Vera scored 925 against AMD’s 128-core EPYC score of 898, about three percent ahead. However, the slide NVIDIA showed normalizes that same result per physical core, which makes a three percent gap look enormous. NVIDIA defends the choice, arguing that per-core throughput matters when thousands of AI agents run at once. Cochrane grants that it is a fair argument to make. Even so, his verdict is blunt: it is a different number from the headline one, and presenting it that way is not the best look. 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. Apple’s Newest Chip Landed in Its Cheapest Mac Last week’s episode covered the Mac Studio half of Apple’s August announcement. Tonight Cochrane takes the other half, the new Mac mini, and finds the numbering genuinely strange. The $899 base Mac mini gets the M6, which is Apple’s first 2nm chip and the newest process the company has shipped. It brings twelve CPU cores, twelve GPU cores, and 170GB/s of memory bandwidth. Apple also introduced a third CPU core class called super cores. So Apple’s most advanced chip sits in its cheapest desktop, while the M5 Pro, M5 Max and M5 Ultra above it all carry a lower number. It gets stranger. The M6 mini has Thunderbolt 4 while the pricier M5 Pro mini has Thunderbolt 5, and the memory ceiling runs backward too. Apple explains none of it across three announcement pages. Reading between the lines, Cochrane figures the M6 is the entry point of a new generation that shipped ahead of its larger siblings. London’s Robotaxis Started Carrying Passengers Arm’s monthly roundup covers everything outside the data center, and Wayve stood out. Transport for London granted the British self-driving company private hire vehicle licenses on August 5th, the same category a minicab needs. Then on September 3rd the service launched with Uber, marking the first autonomous rides ever offered to UK passengers. A small fleet of Ford Mustang Mach-Es covers anywhere in London except the airports, with a TfL-licensed safety driver still aboard. Over 140,000 Londoners signed up. The compute runs on NVIDIA’s Arm-based automotive platform, which is why Arm claims the win. Cochrane notes the pattern: once you set a standard nobody can move off, these wins keep arriving. Two more items round it out, both about squeezing AI onto phones. Google’s Pixel 11 shipped in August with the Tensor G6, and Google claims on-device AI runs up to 3.5x faster using 3.5x less energy. Those are Google’s own unbenchmarked figures. Separately, Graphcore’s research team worked with Arm to run an 11-billion-parameter vision model on phone-class processors by squeezing each parameter to 2.7 bits, taking the model from roughly 22GB down to 3.7GB. Intel Is Pitching AI Infrastructure From a Long Way Back Intel’s newsroom post previews the AI Infra Summit, running September 15th through 17th in Santa Clara. CEO Lip-Bu Tan takes a fireside chat on Tuesday morning, with three Intel sessions across the show. Cochrane unpacks two terms first. Physical AI means AI that acts in the real world through sensors and motors rather than living on a screen, and Intel takes it seriously enough to have renamed its PC division the Client Computing and Physical AI Group in May. Disaggregated inference splits the two phases of running a model: reading your prompt is compute-hungry, while writing the answer back is memory-hungry. The context is where this gets interesting. Intel’s revenue rose 25 percent last quarter, its fastest growth since 2011. Nevertheless, in AI accelerators the company barely registers next to NVIDIA. Gaudi has effectively been abandoned, to the point that Intel stopped maintaining its open-source driver, and AMD passed Intel in data center revenue last quarter. Tellingly, when Intel demoed disaggregated inference at Computex, NVIDIA GPUs handled one phase and SambaNova chips the other while Intel supplied the coordinating CPU. Crescent Island, Intel’s actual inference chip, does not sample until later this year, and Intel declined to publish its memory bandwidth. Amazon Bought the Company Behind DuckDB On August 26th, Amazon signed a deal to acquire DuckLabs, the Amsterdam company behind DuckDB. Cochrane spends time explaining what DuckDB is, since listeners outside the data world may never have encountered it. The problem it solves is familiar. Querying a large pile of data files traditionally meant either running a database server or spinning up a data warehouse with a cluster, a bill, and a loading pipeline. Both are heavy machinery for a question you wanted answered in ten seconds. DuckDB instead ships as a library rather than a server. You add it to your program like any other package, point it at your files, and write ordinary SQL directly against them. The data never moves. The usual comparison is SQLite, which is embedded in nearly every phone and browser on earth. Where SQLite excels at looking up one record, DuckDB rebuilds that embedded idea for chewing through millions of rows. It now sees roughly 62 million monthly downloads on Python’s package index alone, up from about 25 million last October. AWS says it is buying the company, not the project. DuckDB stays free and open source under the MIT license, held by a Dutch nonprofit foundation, and the founders join AWS while continuing to run technical direction from Amsterdam. Andy Warfield, a VP and distinguished engineer at AWS, described DuckDB as “the glibc of structured data: a lean, unglamorous, ubiquitous dependency that a great deal of software links against and almost nobody has to think about.” Cochrane sits with what that ownership means. He reaches for an analogy: imagine Daniel Stenberg selling curl. He doubts it would ever happen, but the concept alone is startling given how much infrastructure depends on it. His read is that AWS is betting DuckDB becomes as foundational as curl and SQLite already are. GitHub Has One AI Model Grade Another One’s Homework GitHub shipped Project HydraFusion into Copilot as a research preview. Instead of routing your request to a single model, it picks one of three approaches per request. Sometimes one model simply answers. Alternatively, a cheaper model drafts, and a quality gate decides whether to escalate. The interesting one is Critique. One model writes the code, a separate model from a different family reviews it read-only, and the original gets one pass to revise. Despite the name, nothing is fused here. There is no voting and no merging, just one model at a time with a gate deciding whether to spend more. GitHub explained the reasoning in an earlier post: “a model reviewing its own work is still bounded by its own training biases: the same training data and techniques, the same blind spots.” Research supports it. A team at NeurIPS in 2024 showed that models recognize their own writing and score it higher than human graders do. GitHub’s earlier number had a Claude Sonnet and GPT critic pairing closing about three-quarters of the gap between Sonnet and the larger Opus model. This mirrors a workflow Cochrane uses constantly and has described on a previous episode. He runs a cross-check review with a second model from a different company, and it routinely surfaces issues the first model missed. He explains that different training data, different engineers, and different reinforcement approaches build different internal biases about what counts as correct. Looking ahead, he expects more of these “Frankenstein patterns” where models from different training families work together. The Best of IFA 2026, and What You Can Actually Buy IFA opened to the public in Berlin for its 102nd year, with about 1,900 brands. Cochrane splits The Verge’s roundup in two, since much of what generates headlines at these shows never ships. Starting with real products, iRobot’s flagship Roomba Max 875 Combo runs $1,199 and ships in about two weeks. Its SealForce feature drops a hidden skirt from the chassis when it detects carpet, sealing against the fibers so suction concentrates instead of leaking out the sides. That reaches 35,000 pascals, iRobot’s strongest yet. A step-down model at $899 carries the same trick, though Cochrane balks at both prices. Anker’s Soundcore Sleep 4 Pro earbuds arrive in November at $349.99. The charging case carries its own round touchscreen, so you pick soundscapes, set alarms, and read sleep stats without your phone. Optical sensors read heart rate and variability from the ear canal, which beats the wrist for accuracy, and the case masks a snoring partner. Cochrane remains unconvinced about sleeping with earbuds in. Philips also has smart rope lights, the Hue Liane 360, on sale now. They glow evenly around the tube rather than showing individual LEDs. They also run $400 for three meters, which works out to about $130 per meter of rope light. As for concepts nobody can buy, iRobot showed a robot vacuum that carries a smaller robot vacuum on its back in a garage and lowers it to deploy. Lenovo brought a 14-inch laptop whose screen rolls out to 17 inches at the press of a button, which reviewers call the first rollable that feels close to shippable. Tecno showed a phone with essentially no border around the screen, and Acer had a Windows gaming handheld that swivels its screen up over a keyboard. Two themes ran through the show. Humanoid robots were the loudest thing on the floor, and IFA’s own CEO framed the event as being about robots that work rather than robots that demo. Meanwhile, AI stopped being its own product category and became an ingredient, showing up in refrigerators, treadmills, dishwashers, and motorized TV mounts. Farmed Salmon Isn’t the Omega-3 Machine It Used to Be USDA scientists measured farmed salmon and found considerably less of the good fat than the government’s own database claims. EPA and DHA are two fatty acids you get almost entirely from fish. Your body can build them from the plant version, but only in tiny amounts, so the NIH’s position is that eating them is the only practical way to raise your levels. Those fatty acids are structural pieces of every cell, with DHA concentrating in the brain and retina. That is why the federal dietary guidelines, issued jointly by USDA and Health and Human Services, recommend at least eight ounces of fish a week and steer you toward salmon. That amount is calibrated to deliver about 250 milligrams a day. Published in Frontiers in Nutrition last month, the study found EPA and DHA in farmed Atlantic salmon came in 54.7 percent lower than USDA’s own reference values, last updated in 2018. A three-ounce serving fell from roughly 1,670 milligrams to about 756. Consequently, two servings a week now fall about 14 percent short of the target. Plant-derived fats meanwhile rose two to three times over. The likely cause is feed. Salmon are carnivores, and farms once fed them oily little fish. There was never going to be enough of those as the industry scaled, so crops filled the gap: soy, canola, sunflower and linseed. Importantly, the study does not claim to have proven this and calls the feed shift a plausible explanation. Independent corroboration lends it credibility. Researchers at Stirling measured a similar halving in Scottish salmon between 2006 and 2015, and Norway’s marine institute saw it across thousands of samples. There is a land dimension too. Roughly half the world’s soy grows in South America, where rainforest gets cleared for feed. Matthew Hayek, who studies the environmental cost of protein at NYU, told Inside Climate News that “soy is a major, important protein and oil ingredient in fish farming.” Adding up two decades of soy across all fish farming, he puts the extra forest clearing at around the area of Nicaragua or Bangladesh. That figure covers all fish farming rather than salmon alone, and Hayek notes it is hard to attribute soy use to any single species. Cochrane closes with two caveats. First, the study measured only eight fish, bought around Maryland, DC and Virginia over six weeks in 2023, and nearly all sourced from Chile. That is not a national survey, and the authors say plainly the sample was not large enough to change government advice. Rather, it flags that a federal database value needs rechecking, which is what the paper set out to do. Second, on whether you should care, farmed salmon still beats beef, chicken and eggs by a mile, since those carry essentially zero EPA and DHA. What it loses is its crown among fatty fish, dropping to mid-pack behind herring, sardines and mackerel and roughly level with trout. The broader health case is also softer than the 2000s suggested. A review of 86 trials covering 162,000 people found supplements barely moved heart attacks or deaths, so eating fish and swallowing fish oil are not the same claim. No producer has responded to the findings, and USDA, whose own scientists ran the study, declined an interview and did not answer emailed questions. Cochrane wraps up with housekeeping and a note that he will be back on Labor Day. The post The Mainframe Learned to Speak Arm #1875 appeared first on Geek News Central.

In this powerful interview, Emilio Ortiz sits down with intuitive healer, spirit traveler, and author Sonja Grace for a deep exploration of time travel, humanity's future, ancient civilizations, extraterrestrial life, consciousness, Earth changes, solar flares, Atlantis, Lemuria, reincarnation, meditation, and spiritual awakening. After more than four decades of meditation and inner exploration, Sonja describes how her guides take her beyond ordinary perceptions of time and space, including journeys into ancient Egypt, Atlantis, off-world civilizations, and a potential future timeline roughly ten years from now. She shares what she believes happened during the fall of Atlantis, including extraterrestrial “star people,” advanced nuclear technology, comets, ice ages, shifting land masses, and the beginning of new cycles of humanity. The conversation also explores Pleiadians, aliens, extraterrestrial agendas, the Galactic Federation, demigods, angels, Osiris, Sekhmet, the Great Sphinx, pyramids, Antarctica, ancient Egypt, UFO disclosure, AI, robots, solar activity, planetary cycles, and the evolution of human consciousness.✦ Join Emilio's Private Community – The Deep Dive Membership | https://iamemilioortiz.com/the-deep-dive/Later, Sonja reveals one of the most unsettling future experiences her guides have shown her: a possible version of the world approximately ten years ahead in which part of the landscape appeared like a wasteland, with people and homes gone. Crucially, she emphasizes that this future is not predetermined and that humanity still participates in shaping what comes next. Emilio and Sonja explore whether civilizations repeat ancient patterns, why memories of Atlantis and Lemuria may still resonate within us, how spiritual discernment becomes increasingly important in an age of AI and extraterrestrial speculation, and why humanity must reclaim trust, responsibility, connection to the Earth, and care for water. The conversation ultimately moves beyond psychic prediction and prophecy into healing, the inner child, emotional trauma, manifestation, surrender, God, angelic consciousness, past lives, spiritual practice, the future of humanity, and our collective ability to choose a different timeline.___________________PODCAST CHAPTERS00:00 – Sonja Grace Intro01:04 - Are We Entering a New Ice Age?04:19 - Solar Flares & Earth's Coming Changes07:00 - How Sonja Learned to Spirit Travel10:19 - Time Travel vs. Astral Projection12:41 - What Really Happened to Atlantis?20:35 - Are We Entering a New Phase of Humanity?28:58 - Reclaiming the Divine Inner Child33:20 - The Pleiadians as Humanity's “Watchers”39:29 - Spirit Traveling to Other Planets43:45 - The Problem With “Instant Enlightenment”48:47 - How to Connect With the Angelic Realm52:42 - Sonja Travels 10 Years Into Humanity's Future56:17 - Traveling Back to Ancient Egypt01:00:51 - The Greatest Lesson From 45 Years of Spirit Travel01:07:53 - What Could Be Hidden Beneath Antarctica?01:11:13 - The Greatest Mystery in the Universe01:15:05 - Why Her Guides Show Her These Timelines01:17:43 - How Humanity Can Change the Future___________________Guest: Sonja Grace, Spirit Traveler✦ Website | https://sonjagrace.com/✦ Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/mystichealersonjagrace/✦ Books | https://sonjagrace.com/store.html#booksHost: Emilio Ortiz✦ IG | https://www.instagram.com/iamemilioortiz/✦ Subscribe to Channel | https://www.youtube.com/EmilioOrtiz___________________© 2026 Emilio Ortiz. All rights reserved. Content from Just Tap In Podcast is protected under copyright law.Legal Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests on Just Tap In are solely those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Emilio Ortiz or the Just Tap In Podcast. All content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice.

Drawing on philosopher C. Thi Nguyen's concept of "value capture" (the way metrics can quietly supplant the goals they were meant to measure), this podcast explores how the wrong scorecard doesn't just fail to capture Medical Affairs' (MA) value, it can actively distort it — diverting energy and resources away from what matters most.We'll discuss why the path forward isn't a sweeping overhaul, but a series of deliberate, incremental steps grounded in a framework of genuine MA impact. Crucially, we make the case that Medical Affairs must stop waiting to be measured and start taking ownership of how that measurement is defined — ensuring a patient-centric focus remains at the core of it all.

Lachlan Star is churning out some fantastic drilling results from its New Waverley Gold project. It's a brownfields exploration campaign. The project has sat relatively dormant for many years in the hands of private prospectors, and now Lachlan Star is hitting it hard with the drill rig. Guest bio Andrew Tyrrell is Chief Executive Officer of Lachlan Star Limited (ASX: LSA), a Perth-based gold and base metals explorer advancing the New Waverley Gold Project near Norseman in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields. Tyrrell brings more than two decades of minerals industry experience built around gold exploration and discovery. He joined Lachlan Star as CEO in February 2024 after serving as General Manager of Discovery at Gold Road Resources, where he led the company's transition into a national explorer and restructured its Discovery Group into a self-generating business development model. Before that, he spent a decade at AngloGold Ashanti, including as Technical Manager overseeing global greenfields exploration and as Exploration Manager for the company's USA operations, where he played a key role in the discovery of the Silicon epithermal gold project in Nevada. Tyrrell holds a Master of Science in Ore Deposit Geology from the University of Western Australia and a Bachelor of Science in Applied Geology from Curtin University, and is a member of the Society of Economic Geologists, the Australian Institute of Geoscientists and the Geological Society of Nevada. Produced by Resource Media The Hole Truth: Mining Investment Podcast is a product of Read Corporate. Please note that Read Corporate does not provide investment advice and investors should seek personalised advice before making any investment decisions. Resources LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/the-hole-truth-podcast YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI4sZkSfEpPi_u7OrD7lQ-tZHbdy6EhCC Website: https://resourcesrisingstars.com.au/the-hole-truth-podcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theholetruthpodcast/ Company website: https://lachlanstar.com/ Key Insights 1. A chance meeting at a Norseman servo delivered a 90%-owned high-grade gold project. New Waverley was privately held for close to 40 years by two individual prospectors before Lachlan Star got involved. The most recent, David "Golly" Pascoe, a Norseman local who picked up the ground around 15 years ago, granted the mining lease only last year. Lachlan Star's field team crossed paths with Pascoe by chance at the local service station while working an adjoining project, and months of conversation turned into a deal: Lachlan Star acquired 90% of the project for cash and shares, while Pascoe retained a 10% free-carried interest through to pre-feasibility, a 1% net smelter royalty, and shares in the company. The ground includes the old Waverley open pit, mined by Great Fingall Mining Company NL in 1988 for around 4,500 ounces at an average grade of roughly 14 grams per tonne, before the gold price crash sent the operator into administration and the tenement lapsed. 2. Early drilling is already turning up shallow, high-grade gold. Since completing the acquisition in March 2026, Lachlan Star has pushed through roughly 5,500–6,000 metres of combined diamond and RC drilling, with the RC program expanding well beyond its original scope on the strength of what the rig was turning up. Results include intercepts such as 16m at 5.3g/t gold (including 4m at 20g/t) and 4m at 13.83g/t gold (including 1m at 53g/t), with the individual quartz-reef veins themselves regularly assaying at an ounce or two per tonne. Crucially, the mineralisation sits close to surface — around 40 to 50 metres deep at Waverley Pit, and effectively at surface at Trial Pit, where the company panned free gold from a quartz vein just six metres down. 3. The system is open in every direction across a 400-metre strike — and there are signs of much more. Lachlan Star has now traced the same style of quartz-vein mineralisation across 400 metres of strike, linking the historic Waverley Pit with the Trial Pit and the old Baker Boys shaft to the north, and the zone remains open at depth, down-plunge and along strike. High-resolution drone magnetics acquired in August 2026 point to something bigger still: a structural corridor potentially extending one to two kilometres, comparable in scale to nearby systems such as Pantoro's Royal Group, Harlequin and Mainfield. Lachlan Star's adjoining Killaloe project, about 20 kilometres northeast of Norseman, adds further regional exposure to the same structural setting. 4. Lachlan Star sits ring-fenced by established regional gold producers. New Waverley is around 17 kilometres from Norseman and Pantoro's processing plant, and the project is effectively boxed in by major operators — Pantoro to the west, Westgold to the north and east, and Sinclair Gold (formerly Alicanto Minerals) to the south. That neighbourhood matters: shallow, high-grade ounces like Lachlan Star is finding are exactly what those nearby plants want as feed, opening up toll-treating options at operations such as Westgold's Higginsville or Pantoro's Norseman plant, alongside a standalone development or a straight-out buyout. With a market capitalisation of around $56 million at the time of the interview, Tyrrell argues the company doesn't need a large tonnage outcome to move the needle for shareholders. 5. A maiden resource is targeted for the first quarter of 2027, backed by a fresh 10,000-metre drill campaign. Assays from the remaining RC holes are due over the coming weeks, and Lachlan Star is already lining up an RC rig for a further program of around 10,000 metres to begin within a month or two, aimed at infilling and stitching together the high-grade zones at Waverley Pit, Trial Pit and Baker Boys. Tyrrell is targeting a maiden mineral resource by the first quarter of 2027. The register underpinning that push is tightly held: DevEx Resources (ASX: DEV) retains around 20%, substantial shareholder Tim Goyder holds roughly 11%, and Pascoe remains invested through his retained stake and shares.

Every so often, a financial product gets picked up by the internet for one reason and one reason only — its name. TIPS are a perfect example. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities have the word inflation right on the box, so the moment people start worrying about rising prices, the hive mind of finance decides the answer is obvious: inflation's coming, buy the thing with inflation in the name, done. In this episode, Brandon and Brantley take that reflex apart — and make the case for an inflation-resilient asset almost nobody thinks to put in the same conversation: whole life insurance. We'll say the honest part first, because it's the part that trips people up. Nothing contractual, structural, or mechanical inside a whole life policy addresses inflation. Your dividend does not go up because CPI went up. It's not in the name, it's not on the box, it's not a line drawn from point A to point B. So how can we possibly call it inflation-resilient? Because once you stop reading the label and look at how these things actually work under the hood, whole life turns out to capture a far bigger piece of the inflation cycle than the flavor-of-the-week trade ever could. What we get into: What TIPS actually do — and what they quietly cost you. The nominal yield looks pathetic on the screen, but that yield gets added to the change in CPI, so functionally it's better than it looks and it does hedge your buying power in a high-inflation stretch. The catch is the tax bill. When inflation adjusts the value of the bond, you owe ordinary income tax on that gain in the year it happens — even though no money has actually been sent to you. State and local taxes are usually exempt, which blunts it, but in a higher bracket the real, after-tax return can drift toward zero or negative. That's a strange result for something you bought specifically to keep your buying power above zero. The part everybody forgets: you have to stick the landing. A TIPS trade is a bounce-in, bounce-out move on a single, narrow objective — protect yield against a rapid rise in inflation. The problem is that by the time you've decided inflation is here, the shock has usually already happened. You're reacting to a headline that's already priced in. Why the "safe bond" can still lose 12% in the worst possible year. We walk through a real, humbling number. Vanguard's inflation-protected securities fund — a stand-in for the TIPS exposure a regular investor could actually buy — lost around 12% in 2022, the very year inflation spiked to roughly 8%. That's the year it was "supposed" to shine. The culprit is a broader bond-market and duration problem, and it's exactly the kind of surprise that makes people who thought they owned something simple and safe scratch their heads. How whole life responds to inflation — through the bond market, not the CPI print. Here's the mechanism. An insurer's job is to earn enough on the premiums it collects to make good on a contractual guarantee. Say a company needs to earn 3% to capitalize that guarantee, and it can buy bonds at 4% — it pockets the difference, and with participating whole life, a large share of that gets returned to policyholders as dividends. Crucially, insurers don't buy bonds the way retail investors do. They don't chase total return; they match income-producing assets to their liabilities. So when inflation pushes yields up, they get to buy new bonds at higher yields, and they never sell the old ones at a loss just because rates moved. The lag that works in your favor. Because insurers keep buying up income at higher yields as rates rise — and because they reprice slowly — a relatively short burst of inflation can hold the returns inside a whole life portfolio elevated for years afterward. It doesn't snap up in lockstep with TIPS, and it never will. But it moves in the same direction, it stays there far longer, and it does the whole thing in a dramatically more tax-efficient way. You'll actually understand what happened. Only half tongue-in-cheek. Unraveling whether a TIPS position was a win or a loss is genuinely hard once you fold in the tax treatment. With a well-designed policy, if you pay the premium you planned to pay, you'll have more cash value at the end of next year than you had this year, and so on down the line. The honest caveat we make on-air: this isn't "whole life beats TIPS," and it certainly isn't a fast trade. Dividend rates change from year to year — we've had clients whose cash value came in a bit under the original illustration when scales dropped, and the honest reaction is usually a shrug, because the variance is manageable, not wild. Whole life won't move quickly, there's no contractual link to CPI, and it's not the tool for locking in a defined real return over a set horizon. What it is designed to do is capture a much broader slice of the inflation cycle — maintaining buying power and building profitability in a rising-rate environment — while being one of the more boring, dependable pieces of a plan. If you want to buy TIPS because you think that's the right move, fine. Just know that the "obvious" inflation play and the durable one are not the same thing. If you're interested in more of a deep dive, please check out the article we wrote as the companion to this podcast: https://theinsuranceproblog.com/whole-life-insurance-vs-tips/ Sitting on a life insurance illustration — or a policy you already own — and not sure it's actually pulling its weight in your plan? Don't let ChatGPT be the last word on it; it'll hand you a confident answer that's often just the "whole life is a rip-off" line scraped off the internet, and confidently wrong is still wrong. Send us the illustration, or just a few lines about your situation and what AI or your advisor already told you, and we'll give you a straight, honest read — what's right, what's wrong, and whether it's a good fit for you. No pitch, no sales call. Send us a message, or if you'd rather talk it through, book a call with us.

First up: If you've logged into your recruitment dashboard recently and noticed your LinkedIn ad campaigns look a little different, you aren't imagining it. LinkedIn officially retired its daily and 30-day "slot" campaigns and migrated everyone over to a Pay-for-Performance—or P4P—model. Here's what that actually means for your hiring budget: Instead of buying calendar airtime where you pay regardless of engagement, you now pick a fixed budget tier—either $299, $399, or $549. You only pay when a candidate clicks "Apply." Sounds great, right? But here's the catch you need to know about: Your campaign ends as soon as the budget is spent, or after 30 days—whichever comes first. That means a high-demand role could burn through a $399 budget in twelve days, leaving your listing inactive for the rest of the month if you don't keep an eye on it. Plus, unused budget operates on a "use-it-or-lose-it" rule and won't roll over. Check your account settings this week to make sure your tier matches your hiring volume—and don't forget to verify your LinkedIn Company Page to keep your free organic listings flowing. Moving on to funding news: Background screening and workforce safety platform Yardstik has raised $30 million in a Series B round led by Harbert Growth Partners, bringing their total capital raised to $65 million. Why is this important? Because traditional background checks have historically been built around a single "moment in time"—the day someone gets hired. But as Yardstik points out, workforce risk changes every single day. Yardstik is using this cash to double down on fraud prevention and continuous workforce monitoring. Instead of waiting for an annual review, their system alerts employers in real-time if a worker's driver's license lapses, insurance expires, or a regulatory exclusion occurs. With 98% account retention and clients like Gopuff and TaskRabbit, Yardstik is proving that ongoing fraud protection isn't just a premium add-on anymore—it's becoming the standard foundation for contingent and traditional workforces alike. In product news today, we have two major updates aimed at making talent acquisition smarter and faster. First, iHire released its new Hiring Market Insights dashboard. It lets recruiters compare candidate availability directly against job demand across specific metros and skills. If you're struggling to hire a specific role, it tells you whether it's a candidate shortage or an overcrowded job market—helping you tweak job titles and expectations before launching a campaign. Meanwhile, assessment provider eSkill introduced Linea, an AI-powered intelligence layer built right into their platform using Anthropic's Claude models. Here's why recruiters will love it: You can drop a job description into Linea, and in seconds, it drafts a custom skill assessment pulled from eSkill's library of 70,000 validated questions. Crucially, eSkill designed Linea with a "human-in-the-loop" approach—showing the AI's reasoning for every question so recruiters stay in full control of the final test. Finally, a brand new study from financial tech firms Branch and Stripe reveals a massive shift in how people work: Gig work is officially no longer just a "side hustle." According to their Gig Workforce Index—which surveyed over 1,000 flexible workers—56% of gig workers now rely on platform work for the majority of their household income. A few eye-opening stats from the report: The Competition is Wild: 60% of workers say they have to accept a posted gig in under two minutes before someone else snatches it up. The Multi-App Hustle: Nearly half balance three or more different apps simultaneously to keep income steady. Cash Flow is King: 78% experience weekly income fluctuations, and 72% spend their earnings within 24 hours just to cover gas, groceries, and bills. The takeaway for HR and platform leaders? Fast payouts and financial management tools are no longer perk add-ons—they are the primary driver of worker retention. https://hrtechfeed.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've launched Minimum Competence CLE, and our first course is now available completely free. Researching Federal Tax Issues After Loper Brightlooks at how the Supreme Court's decision ending Chevron deference changes the way lawyers should research and evaluate Treasury regulations, IRS guidance, and other federal tax authorities.Take the course and earn CLE credit at cle.minimumcomp.com.This Day in Legal History: The Declaration of the Rights of ManOn August 26, 1789, France's National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, one of the foundational documents of modern constitutional government. The Marquis de Lafayette played a major role in drafting it, with input from his friend Thomas Jefferson, who was then serving as the American minister in Paris. In just seventeen articles, the Declaration tried to turn Enlightenment ideas about natural rights and legitimate government into law.A lot of it will sound familiar to American ears, in part because the American and French revolutions were very much in conversation with each other. Article I declares that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights”—today's opening quote. The Declaration identifies liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression as natural rights. It says the law must apply equally, punishment must be authorized by law, defendants are presumed innocent, and the free communication of ideas is “one of the most precious of the rights of man.” It also makes separation of powers part of the definition of constitutional government: a society where rights are not secured and powers are not separated “has no constitution at all.”The Declaration mattered well beyond France. Its ideas influenced constitutions throughout Europe and Latin America and eventually found echoes in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. There was also an enormous gap between the Declaration's promises and what followed. Within a few years, the French Revolution had descended into the Terror, and the supposedly universal rights announced in 1789 were plainly not being extended to everyone.That makes August 26 an especially fitting date for another reason. In the United States, it is Women's Equality Day, commemorating the 1920 certification of the Nineteenth Amendment. The coincidence is a useful reminder that declaring people “equal in rights” is considerably easier than actually making them so—and that many of the people supposedly covered by universal declarations of equality had to spend generations fighting to make those words apply to them.A federal judge previously issued an injunction barring the administration from renaming the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after President Trump. Then, earlier this month, the Kennedy Center's board—now dominated by Trump appointees—voted 20 to 3 to change the building's signage to read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” and to name the surrounding grounds “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.” The administration's argument, in a new filing, is essentially semantic: it says this doesn't violate the injunction because the building is still named the John F. Kennedy Center, and the added inscription is merely a donor acknowledgment—the kind, it says, that's “ubiquitous in similar facilities.” Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, who's part of the suit, says the board “openly defied” the court's ruling and has asked the judge to block the signage. Here's the legal question, and it's a real one: when does creative compliance with a court order become defiance of it? Courts don't just police the literal words of an injunction—they police attempts to accomplish the forbidden thing through a technical workaround. If the injunction's purpose was to stop the center from being turned into a monument to the sitting president, a judge may well look past the “we didn't technically rename it” framing to the practical reality. The judge, Christopher Cooper, has set a fast briefing schedule with deadlines today. The significance is that this small, almost absurd dispute over building signage is really a test of something fundamental: whether the executive branch will comply with a court order in substance, or look for the narrowest possible reading to get what it wanted anyway. Trump administration says new Kennedy Center renaming does not violate court order | ReutersBloomberg Law · TimeDeloitte has agreed to pay $21.5 million to settle Justice Department allegations that its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs amounted to illegal discrimination—a landmark in the administration's campaign against corporate DEI. And note the legal vehicle, because it's clever and aggressive: the DOJ brought this under the False Claims Act, the federal government's primary anti-fraud statute. The theory is that Deloitte, as a federal contractor, certified compliance with anti-discrimination requirements while allegedly running DEI programs that themselves discriminated—making its certifications false. The specific allegations: Deloitte's business units received monthly summaries tracking progress against “demographic goals”; roughly 150 senior partners and managing directors had part of their compensation tied to hitting those targets, some risking tens of thousands of dollars; and race and sex were allegedly factored into promotion decisions and access to certain training and mentoring programs. Of the $21.5 million, about $10 million is designated as restitution. Crucially, Deloitte denies the allegations and the settlement includes no admission of liability. The significance is that this reframes DEI from a corporate HR initiative into potential fraud against the United States. We've tracked the administration's use of Title VI against universities—Harvard, Columbia, William & Mary—and this is the corporate front of the same campaign, deploying the False Claims Act against a major government contractor. That's a powerful deterrent, because the False Claims Act carries treble damages and invites whistleblower suits. Whatever you think of DEI programs on the merits, the legal move here is significant: it puts every federal contractor on notice that diversity targets tied to pay and promotion could be recast as discriminatory, and therefore as a false certification the government can prosecute. Deloitte to pay $21.5 million to settle US government probe over DEI | ReutersJustice Department · Fox BusinessAnd finally, a federal appeals court has ruled that the administration cannot attach ideological conditions to federal grants for homelessness and transportation—another entry in the running saga over the limits of the executive's power over the money. The Ninth Circuit, in a decision backing Santa Clara County and other local governments, affirmed a lower court and found that the administration abused its authority by imposing new strings on grants like the Continuum of Care program, which has funded homelessness services since 1987. Those grants have long been built around a “housing-first” philosophy—the approach of getting people into permanent housing without preconditions like sobriety or employment—and the administration sought to attach conditions cutting against that model and advancing its own policy priorities. The court found the cities would suffer irreparable harm if the funds were withheld. Here's the legal principle, and longtime listeners will recognize it: back in July, we covered the anniversary of South Dakota v. Dole, the case that lets the federal government attach strings to the money it gives states—but only within limits. The conditions have to be clearly stated, related to the purpose of the funding, and not coercive. When an administration tries to bolt novel, ideological conditions onto grants Congress created for a specific purpose, courts have repeatedly said that exceeds those limits. This fits a pattern we've followed all summer—from the OMB grant clawbacks to the EPA's frozen climate funds—of courts telling the executive that money Congress appropriated for a purpose can't be turned into a lever for unrelated policy goals. The significance is that the spending power, real as it is, keeps running into the same wall: you can fund homelessness programs, or not, but you can't quietly rewrite what they're for. Trump cannot impose conditions on transportation, homelessness grants, US appeals court rules | ReutersPalo Alto Online · Mountain View Voice This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Port Wakefield is not a replica of Camden. This distinction matters enormously. James Heading, director and general manager for missiles and fire control at Lockheed Martin Australia, has spent 18 months driving that message home to critics who dismiss the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System operation as mere assembly. The risk reduction activity that concluded with successful live-fire testing earlier this year was never about final-form production. It was methodical de-risking: importing weapons kits from Arkansas, standing up Australian manufacturing processes, qualifying teams in explosive handling and weapons assembly, and crucially extracting the tacit knowledge embedded in American production – then questioning why certain processes exist at all. That interrogation has yielded reciprocal innovation. Australian engineers have challenged inherited US procedures, clarifying ambiguous processes, suggesting alternatives that improve manufacturing robustness and reduce waste. Heading describes a two-way street where US counterparts now learn from Australian precision-engineering heritage inherited from automotive manufacturing. The real strategic architecture emerges with the weapons manufacturing complex now in detailed design. Port Wakefield was the proof of concept. The next facility will embed flexibility: modular layout, scalable production capacity targeting 4,000 GMLRS annually (versus 14,000 in Camden), and future-proofing for Prism precision-strike missiles and emerging hypersonic systems. Crucially, it positions Australia as a force multiplier in global supply chains, where specialised components – canards, control actuation systems, castings and optics – matter as much as final assembly. The bottleneck remains an unspoken demand signal. Heading emphasises that industry cannot scale investment without clarity on procurement numbers. How many GMLRS does Defence need? What about air defence effectors for LAND 6504? Lessons from Europe and Middle Eastern conflicts inform strategy but don't dictate it. Without articulated demand, Australia risks capability infrastructure without corresponding production velocity. Enjoy the podcast, The Defence Connect Spotlight team

TAVOAre They Really Curses?It's hard to believe that the one who loved Israel most parted from them with curses double those God gave.Moses stood at his life's end, knowing this was his last chance to speak. A parent saying final goodbyes doesn't soften hard truths, he says everything, in full detail, to arm his children with every tool possible. This multiplication of warnings is love's price when time runs out. Earlier, Moshe pleads with to save Israel physically; now, unable to save them with his body, he saves them with words. Crucially, both rebukes are immediately followed by unbreakable promises of restoration, the rebuke never stands alone. Read this way, it isn't a stern face opposing a loving one; it's the same love, refusing to look away even from painful truths.

This week on the podcast, we welcome Jennifer McCollum, President and CEO of Catalyst and author of the new book Men at Work: The Roadmap to Gender Partnership. Jennifer shares her perspective on whether true gender equity in the workplace can be achieved without fully engaging men in the solution. We dig into the data showing that modern workplaces are failing not just women, but men as well—fueling rigid expectations and limiting everyone's potential. We discuss Catalyst's new earned universalism framework in response to legal and societal shifts, and discuss practical strategies HR and talent leaders can use to advance inclusion, even as DEIB functions are restructured or absorbed into other parts of the business. You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...[00:00] Discussing gender equity strategies[07:09] Catalyst's workplace research and commitment[12:52] Work-life stress and gender expectations[16:50] Evaluating post-E.O. impact study[18:23] Balancing inclusion and flexibility[20:54] Focus shift from metrics to fairness[26:27] Promoting equal parental leave[33:28] Leadership and cultural transformation[39:48] Changing organizational culture for managersA Universal Approach to Inclusion Can Transform Work for EveryoneFor decades, the chief narrative was that workplaces weren't built to support women. But Catalyst's research is now surfacing a broader truth: many modern work environments also fall short for men. Data from their studies reveal that 82% of men feel immense pressure to conform to traditional “man box” stereotypes—such as competitiveness and emotional restraint—while 87% long for more freedom to express traits like empathy and kindness. Crucially, this “man box” doesn't just restrict individual men. Because men still comprise much of senior leadership, these norms perpetuate rigid, stifling workplace cultures that limit everyone.Introducing Earned Universalism: Catalyst's New Inclusion FrameworkFaced with mounting political and legal pressures—such as recent executive orders impacting DEI practices—many organizations are anxious about how to maintain progress without running afoul of the law. In response, Catalyst, in partnership with NYU's Meltzer Center, introduced the concept of earned universalism.This framework acknowledges the paradox between the desire for inclusion that serves everyone and the need to support those long disadvantaged by systemic barriers. The idea is not to abandon equity, but to earn the right to universal policies by first removing specific barriers holding marginalized groups back. Practical Steps for HR LeadersWith DEI departments being restructured and relabeled in many organizations, HR leaders face unique challenges. The key is to integrate partnership skills—such as curiosity, courage, accountability, and allyship—into broader talent, culture, and leadership development programs.Jennifer outlines a 5B framework for building gender partnership:Begin with You: Start with self-reflection and awarenessBreak Down What's Not Working: Address both individual and systemic obstaclesBuild Up What's In It for Men: Explicitly communicate how everyone gains from equityBridge the Gender Gap: Model and drive behaviors that close divides at all levelsBring Humanity to Work: Foster real human connection and openness.Workplace equity isn't about ceding ground or ticking boxes; it's about pushing past old dichotomies and building cultures where all people belong and can contribute fully.  Resources & People MentionedMen at Work: The Roadmap to Gender Partnership by Jennifer McCollum Lean In by Sheryl SandbergIn Her Own Voice: A Woman's Rise to CEO by Jennifer McCollumMcKinsey's Women in the Workplace reportRisks of retreat: The path forward | Catalyst Connect with Jennifer McCollumJennifer McCollum on LinkedInConnect With RedThread ResearchWebsite: RedThread ResearchOn LinkedInSubscribe to WORKPLACE STORIES

Alli Alosa provides a deep dive into AI field agents within Airtable, explaining how they function as mini-agents within your database tables. She discusses the evolution of field agent outputs and how users can now work in tandem with the AI within a single field. The discussion covers practical prompt engineering, including how to reference other fields and how to enable web search tools. Crucially, Alli explains how to manage triggers to avoid wasting credits. She demonstrates why automatic generation can be problematic and shows how to use scheduling, manual commands, and custom trigger simulations to maintain full control over AI usage. ⏱ In this cut: 01:06 — What are AI field agents? 03:30 — Writing effective prompts and using web search 09:44 — Avoiding wasted credits with automatic generation 11:12 — Managing triggers: schedules and manual commands 15:38 — Simulating automation to trigger agents on commandThis is a clip from S25-E07 of the BuiltOnAir Podcast.

Introduction Mozzarella accounts for over 30% of all cheese produced in the U.S., more than any other variety. So when New Culture, a San Francisco-based food technology company, set out to remake vegan cheese, they started with the pizza topping millions of Americans know and love. New Culture, co-founded by guest Matt Gibson, relies on fermentation to make animal-free cheese that melts, stretches, and tastes like the real thing. Crucially, this process cuts down on the emissions, land, and water dairy farming requires. Background Dairy production is a large driver of climate change. According to the BBC, cheese has the third-largest agricultural carbon footprint, after lamb and beef. Methane released by cows, sheep, and goats is a major contributor, along with the land and water needed to raise the animals. The process of cheesemaking multiplies this carbon footprint: it takes roughly ten pounds of milk to produce a single pound of cheese, meaning the carbon emissions of cheese are concentrated tenfold. New Culture sidesteps both livestock and the plant-based substitutes that have tried to replace them by manufacturing casein– the protein responsible for cheese's stretch and gooeyness. As Gibson explains, the company trains microbes to produce casein inside fermentation tanks, similar to the process used to brew beer. The microbes feed on sugars to produce casein, and that protein is then combined with plant-based fats to create the finished cheese. This method, known as precision fermentation, dates back to the 1970s, when researchers first used E. coli to produce human insulin. Advantages According to Gibson, switching from dairy to New Culture's cheese cuts greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 86%, with a 97% reduction in land use and a 98% reduction in water use. Perhaps equally as important, New Culture doesn't ask consumers to compromise on taste or texture. The manufactured casein is molecularly identical to what's found in dairy milk, meaning that the cheese melts the way people expect. This is something most conventional plant-based cheeses, which lack casein entirely, have not been able to replicate. The switch from dairy cheese to an alternative, then, is now potentially more palatable. Drawbacks and Critiques Producing precision-fermented proteins is significantly more expensive than regular dairy products. Gibson acknowledges this, explaining that dairy is a heavily subsidized industry, and New Culture's casein protein is the most expensive part of its cheese. The company has had to engineer ways to use less protein per product without sacrificing quality to stay competitive. He also points to the challenge of limited fermentation tanks and infrastructure. And it's worth noting that the same trait that makes New Culture's cheese taste like the real thing also carries a drawback. Because its casein is identical to the casein found in ruminant milk, someone with a milk allergy would still react to the cheese, even though no animal was involved in making it. This distinction could complicate how the product gets marketed and understood, since “animal-free” doesn't necessarily equate to “dairy-free.” The Guest's Take Gibson believes that “taste is king in the food world,” and because New Culture's cheese is “indistinguishable to dairy cheese,” consumers aren't giving anything up on the experience. He's hopeful that as New Culture grows, costs will lower and its products will be adopted by mass-market restaurant chains where climate impact could be the greatest. For now, you can get a taste of New Culture mozzarella at partner restaurants like Pizzeria Mozza in LA. About the Guest Matt Gibson is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of New Culture. He holds a Bachelor of Science in genetics and microbiology from the University of Auckland in his native New Zealand. Before co-founding New Culture, Gibson went vegan out of concern for the environmental and animal welfare impacts of dairy production. Other Resources & Further Reading New Culture Website: New Culture The Good Food Institute Europe: The History of Precision Fermentation Vegpreneur: Matt Gibson's Biography For a transcript of this episode, visit https://climatebreak.org/making-cheese-with-microbes-with-matt-gibson/

Wasim Osman: The Agile Product Owner Who Runs Two Quarters Ahead of the Team Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. The Great Product Owner: The Absolute User Who Works Two Quarters Ahead Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.   "The Product Owner needs to be the absolute user of the software—the user's journey so well defined in their mind that every engineer's question already has an answer, with context." - Wasim Osman   Wasim's best Product Owner works ahead of the team without doing the team's work. Their product roadmap is well-defined at least two quarters ahead of the development cycle, so nobody is panicking against tomorrow's deadline. Designers and product people work on concepts months before development starts, which gives them room to show early ideas to engineers and gather feedback while there's still time to change course. Crucially, this PO is the absolute user of the software—so completely inside the user's journey that when an engineer asks "how does this connect to that module?", the answer is ready, with context. Wasim connects this to how his team uses AI today: the PO can run ahead, spin up prototypes, and iterate on the ideas without burdening the team with building throwaway work—while staying the voice of the customer.   Self-reflection Question: How far ahead of your team is your Product Owner really working—and could they answer an engineer's design question today without going back to the drawing board? The Bad Product Owner: When Optimism Overrides the Data Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.   "They were optimistic without any data. We had the data—they were just being wishful." - Wasim Osman   The worst anti-pattern Wasim has seen is the Product Owner whose optimism overrides the evidence. In one company, a customer asked for a delivery estimate, and the product team promised an aggressive date—"optimistic without any data," even though the data existed. When the engineering team sat down with the numbers, it was obvious the date was impossible, but that gap never reached the customer. The product team stayed disconnected from both the engineers and the customer, so expectations kept drifting from reality. Wasim, who held the data, finally bridged the two and told the product team the real timeline was several months later. They "lost their minds"—but by then it was too late to renegotiate gracefully. The deeper anti-pattern: features handed down without enough depth, so the moment engineering hits real questions mid-development, the PO panics and rushes back to the drawing board while development is already in motion. As Wasim says, "optimism just took over too much."   Self-reflection Question: When was the last time optimism—not evidence—set a delivery date on your team, and who had the data that should have been in the room?   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

In Episode 217 of the Equipping ELLs podcast, Beth Vaucher delivers exactly what every ELL teacher needs in the first weeks of school — a clear, focused, week-by-week guide for moving from reactive teaching to a system that actually runs. Not a perfect classroom. Not a flawless first month. A grounded, intentional system that carries both teacher and students through the rest of the year.Beth opens by naming the mistake she made herself for years — trying to do everything at once in the first week of school. Getting to know students AND assessing levels AND launching the first unit AND setting up routines AND connecting with homeroom teachers all simultaneously. The result: everything done halfway, nothing done well. The framework she offers instead is built on a simple principle she names early: sequence equals success. One focus per week. One question to answer by Friday.Week one is entirely about knowing students before teaching them. Beth gives permission to skip the full instructional launch and invest in relationship building first — because students who feel known acquire language faster, and that is not just her experience but research. For newcomers specifically she is direct and clear: your first job is not instruction. It is belonging. She walks through what Week 1 actually looks like — getting to know you activities, speaking routines established from Day 1 using topics students actually care about, and observation with a general lens. Crucially, Beth frames this through an assets approach rather than a deficit one, asking teachers to focus first on what students can already do rather than immediately cataloguing gaps.Week two shifts from general watching to intentional informal assessment — one domain per day across the week. Monday speaking, Tuesday listening, Wednesday and Thursday reading and writing. Beth cautions against redundancy with classroom assessments already happening and encourages ELL teachers to use existing data rather than adding more assessment burden. By Friday teachers should have three clearly formed groups and have made one specific connection with one homeroom teacher — one observation, one resource, one relationship started.Week three is about launching and running. Beth connects directly back to the previous episode's unit planning framework and also offers a simpler entry point for teachers who are not ready for a full unit: DM the word ROUTINES on Instagram for five simple classroom routines that create the structure without requiring a fully designed unit. The key deliverables are baseline writing samples, speaking recordings, and any documentation system that teachers will actually maintain through the year.Week four is adjust and accelerate — looking at what the system is showing and responding. Moving students between groups, adjusting scaffold complexity, identifying students who need more targeted support than the group structure provides. Beth specifically names SLIFE students and long-term ELLs as the populations most likely to surface at this point — and frames the data collected in weeks one through three as preparation for the harder conversations with admin and colleagues that will happen in October and November.The episode closes with an honest and warm invitation to the free week trial of the Equipping ELLs membership — framed not as a sales pitch but as a direct response to the moment when the framework is clear but the resources are not yet there.FREE TRIAL: equippingells.com/trial — full access for one week, no credit card required.MEMBERSHIP CODE: TAKE20OFF — 20% off Tier 3 yearly for podcast listeners.FREE ROUTINES: DM ROUTINES to @EquippingELLs on Instagram.

Recorded live on the show floor at SIAL Canada in Montreal, this Summer Bonus episode of The Food Professor podcast marks a first: an ingredient company winning the show's startup pitch competition. Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois sit down with Asha Wheeldon, Founder and CEO of Kula Foods and a member of the Maia Farms team, and Jason Mackay, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer at Maia Farms, just hours after the Vancouver company added more hardware to its trophy shelf. Maia Farms makes functional mushroom food ingredients. The company combines oyster mushroom powder with Canadian yellow pea protein and extrudes it into grounds, shreds, chunks and strips that mimic ground beef, pulled meat and chicken. The result is 66 per cent protein per 100 grams, a heavy dose of fibre and iron, a two-year shelf life and no cold storage required. Crucially for manufacturers, the extrudates survive the retort process where soy and pea proteins break down, which is why 100-year-old Pembroke, Ontario soup canner Sprague Foods signed on as a partner. Asha explains how a two-and-a-half-minute pitch built on storytelling rather than numbers won over the judges, and why trust and partnership are Maia's real proof points, including work with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank that has helped feed hundreds of thousands of families. Jason unpacks the technology behind the ingredient and what comes next: cracking mushroom mycelium at commercial scale through liquid fermentation, moving from 3,000-litre proof-of-concept batches to 20,000 litres, with global ingredient players like ADM and Cargill circling mycelium as a clean-label fat mimic and binder. The conversation turns to a bigger question Michael and Sylvain saw play out across the show: is Canada on the cusp of an ingredient renaissance? Pitch competitions usually reward consumer-ready products, from popsicles to upcycled coffee grounds. This year, the fundamentals of food won. The panel connects that shift to front-of-pack labelling, the clean-label push, manufacturers hunting for protein, fibre and iron without wrecking taste and texture, and the trust that Brand Canada's food safety reputation carries into export markets. They also tackle affordability. With beef and chicken prices climbing, Sylvain's "protein orphans" are being left behind, and GLP-1 users are pushing protein demand higher still. A shelf-stable, high-protein ingredient that disappears into a lasagna or pasta sauce when seasoned properly is a genuinely different answer to food insecurity. Plus: what winning an award actually does for a young company, why Maia was the only mushroom ingredient supplier on the SIAL floor, and the company's plan to bring business home to Canada after building traction in the US, Mexico, Singapore and Japan. A smart, optimistic listen on where Canadian food innovation goes next. About UsDr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Visiting Professor in Food Policy and Distribution at McGill University and a Professor in Food Distribution and Policy in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University.Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. He is one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability with over 775 published peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Charlebois is also an editor for the prestigious Trends in Food Science Technology journal. He co-hosts The Food Professor podcast, discussing issues in the food, foodservice, grocery and restaurant industries and which is the most listened Canadian management podcast in Canada. Every year since 2012, he has published the now highly anticipated Canadian Food Price Report, which provides an overview of food price trends for the coming year. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, nationally as well as internationally. He has testified on several occasions before parliamentary committees on food policy-related issues as an expert witness. He has been asked to act as an advisor on food and agricultural policies in many Canadian provinces and other countries.With extensive experience collaborating with businesses, governments, and NGOs, Dr. Charlebois combines academic rigor with practical expertise, making him one of the most influential voices in the global agri-food landscape. His work continues to advance the understanding of food systems, fostering innovation and resilience in a rapidly evolving industry. In 2025, he received the prestigious Charles III medal recognizing his tremendous work in informing Canadians about food issues. Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the National Retail Federation (NRF) as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2025, and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

OPENER: Stephen A Smith DESTROYS WNBA After HIDING BRITTNEY GRINER'S DIRTY SECRET! Defend Sophie Cunningham! - 5:11 Brandon Gill Gets Witness To Admit Who DEI Punishes - 5:13 “I went to court to argue what a woman is” — Sall Grover at ARC 2026 -1:00 Jason Arday Whistleblower: ‘People Knew The Truth And Covered It Up' - 4:00 Quick, easy, worthless: Students let AI do the thinking | Principia Scientific, Intl. - Text It's Time to Save America - 10:00   HEALTH NEWS Arginine Supplement May Strengthen Immune Response to Cancer and Viral Infections Yeast food supplement helps immune cells fight cancer more effectively Physical activity linked to lower stroke and death risk in adults with atrial fibrillation Phthalates may contribute to high blood pressure in pregnant women Daily Collagen Supplement Alters Bone-Related Blood Markers in Female Runners, Study Says Arginine Supplement May Strengthen Immune Response to Cancer and Viral Infections Rockefeller University, August 10, 2026 (Natural News) A study published in the journal Cell reports that arginine, an amino acid found in protein-rich foods and produced by the body, may help the immune system recognize and respond to cancer and viral infections. The research found that low arginine levels were linked to reduced production of MHC-1, a protein that displays abnormal cellular signals to T cells, according to the report. In mouse models, arginine-rich diets were associated with fewer colon tumors and milder influenza and SARS-CoV-2 infections, the researchers reported. The findings add to prior work linking declining immune function to cancer progression. When arginine is scarce, cells struggle to produce MHC-1 proteins, which appear on the surfaces of cells throughout the body and display foreign or abnormal proteins to T cells. Researchers repeated the dietary studies using mouse models of influenza and SARS-CoV-2, conditions previously associated with unusual levels of different amino acids. One of the most dramatic patterns to emerge was that arginine was the most depleted amino acid in all of these diseases. Not only did mice with an arginine-rich diet have milder symptoms from viral infections, giving the mice arginine after influenza infection improved their outcomes too. Yeast food supplement helps immune cells fight cancer more effectively Trinity College Dublin & University College Dublin, July 9 2026 Researchers from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and University College Dublin (UCD) have shown for the first time that a food supplement made from yeast helps the body to make stronger immune cells that can fight cancer. The research teams found that adding a yeast-based supplement to the food of obese laboratory mice changes how their immune cells grow and help to make better cancer‑fighting cells. Mice were fed a standard or high fat diet supplemented with yeast beta-glucan for 4-12 weeks and then their immune system was challenged by different types of cancer cells (colorectal, skin and breast cancer). The study also tested whether yeast supplementation could overcome immune dysfunction caused by obesity and whether protective effects persist after weight loss. Crucially, this dietary intervention restores anti-tumor innate immunity in obese mice and reverses long-term immune memory defects that persist even after weight loss, a major unmet clinical challenge. Physical activity linked to lower stroke and death risk in adults with atrial fibrillation Arctic University of Norway, August 5 2026 (News-Medical) Being physically active was linked to a lower risk of stroke and death for adults with atrial fibrillation, or AFib, according to new, independent research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. AFib is a quivering or irregular heartbeat that occurs in the heart's upper chamber known as the atria. According to the American Heart Association, it can lead to blood clots, stroke and other heart-related conditions. The prevalence of AFib in the U.S. was estimated at 4.48% of the adult U.S. population. The study tracked more than 87,000 adults in Norway for about 15 years, capturing information about AFib, stroke and death from national health registries. What did the analysis find? Compared to adults who were inactive, adults with a low, moderate or high level of physical activity had a 9%, 19% and 18% lower risk of stroke, respectively. Having a low, moderate or high level of physical activity was associated with an 11%, 18% and 22% lower risk of death from any cause, respectively. For people with AFib, staying active was tied to living an average of 0.5 to 1.2 years longer compared to those who were inactive Phthalates may contribute to high blood pressure in pregnant women Harvard School of Public Health, August 10 2026 (News-Medical) Phthalates, which are chemicals found in plastics, personal care products and hundreds of other consumer goods, may contribute to high blood pressure in pregnant women, according to a study published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society. The researchers measured phthalate exposure and blood pressure in 338 pregnant women at three points during pregnancy. They analyzed whether higher levels of these chemicals-individually and in combination-were linked to higher blood pressure or an increased risk of pregnancy-related high blood pressure disorders. The authors found that pregnant women with higher urine concentrations of fragrance-associated phthalates and those in personal care products had higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure markers of an increased risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. About 13% of participants in the study developed a pregnancy-related high blood pressure disorder. Women with higher levels of certain phthalates, especially those found in personal care products, tended to have higher blood pressure later in pregnancy. Daily Collagen Supplement Alters Bone-Related Blood Markers in Female Runners, Study Says Fitchburg State University, University of Connecticut & Mayo Clinic, August 4 2026 (Natural News) A four-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial found that female distance runners who took 20 grams of collagen peptides per day showed an approximately 5.1 percent rise in P1NP over four weeks, a blood marker of bone formation, while the placebo group showed no such change, according to a study published in Frontiers in Nutrition. The collagen group also showed a drop in IL-6, an inflammatory protein linked to bone breakdown, while placebo levels held steady or rose, the study reported. The trial included 22 female runners ages 18 to 35 who ran at least 35 miles per week, and no adverse effects were reported. Collagen is the most common and abundant protein in the body, accounting for about 30 percent of total protein content and providing structural support to bones, tendons, ligaments, and other connective tissues, according to published research.       Discussion about this episode

Can the cycle of violence that passes from one generation to the next be broken?This episode of the Mind the Kids podcast features Dr. Laura Gorla, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University. Originally from Italy and now based in the United States, Dr. Gorla's research focuses on parenting, parent-child relationships, and child and adolescent mental health from early childhood through late adolescence. Hosted by Mark Tebbs, the conversation explores a landmark three-generation study built on data from the Fast Track intervention, conducted with colleagues Dr. Rotenberg, Dr. Godwin, and the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, alongside Fast Track principal investigators Dr. Jennifer Lansford and Dr. Kenneth Dodge.The discussion centres on early emerging conduct problems — persistent patterns of aggressive and disobedient behaviour that place children at higher risk of anti-social behaviour, criminal involvement, and mental health difficulties later in life. Dr. Gorla explains the theory of intergenerational transmission of violence, describing how cycles of harm can pass from one generation to the next, and outlines how this study uniquely tracked three generations — grandparents, parents, and children — using prospective rather than retrospective data, a rare advance in this field of research.Drawing on Fast Track, one of the most influential randomised controlled trials in developmental psychology, Dr. Gorla shares the study's central finding: intimate partner violence in the first generation predicted parent-child violence in the second generation, which in turn led to poorer mental health in the third generation — but only within the control group. Crucially, this negative chain was disrupted among families who received the Fast Track intervention, offering compelling evidence that early, multi-component prevention can break cycles of violence across generations.This conversation is essential listening for clinicians, researchers, educators, and policymakers interested in child and adolescent mental health, early intervention, and violence prevention. It offers both rigorous longitudinal evidence and a genuinely hopeful message: outcomes for children are not predetermined by family history, and investment in early intervention protects not just today's children, but generations to come.Read the JCPP paper 'The randomized controlled trial Fast Track multilevel intervention for children with early-emerging conduct problems breaks intergenerational transmission of violence across three generations'Laura Gorla, W. Andrew Rothenberg, Jennifer Godwin, Conduct Problems Prevention Research GroupFirst published: 11 February 2026https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.70133Get a free CPD/CME certificate for listening to this podcast by registering for a FREE ACAMH Learn account at https://bit.ly/4fF4BBWVisit https://www.acamh.orgFacebook and LinkedIn search / ACAMHInstagram https://www.instagram.com/assoc.camhBluesky https://bsky.app/profile/acamh.bsky.socialX https://x.com/acamh

Every enterprise leader has heard the numbers by now as billions poured into licences, seats and tokens, with productivity gains still trailing well behind the promise. On a recent episode of Tech Transformed, host Christina Stathopoulos sat down with Jay Richman, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Multiverse, to unpack why so many organisations remain stuck in what he calls "tinker mode" and what it actually takes to move past it.Richman's view is shaped by a career spent at the sharp end of three separate technology shifts. A decade at Spotify saw him build out the company's advertising business and early subscription platform from scratch. Roughly four years at Amazon followed, working on agentic AI systems within the advertising division, effectively rebuilding the old-fashioned creative agency model using specialised generative media tools. Four months ago, he relocated from New York to London to join Multiverse, drawn by a mission he sees as almost the reverse of his previous work. Rather than using people to make machines smarter, the task now is training machines to make people smarter. That framing sits at the centre of this conversation.The AI Adoption GapRichman suggests that the widely reported gap between AI spend and AI-driven output isn't really a technology failure; it's a human one. Tools sit unused, licences go unopened, and organisations struggle to move employees from curious onlookers to confident, habitual users. Multiverse's answer is what it calls the "adoption layer", which is a diagnostic approach that pinpoints where skill gaps actually sit across a workforce, builds tailored learning paths around them, then embeds coaching directly inside the tools people already use, whether that's Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT.Crucially, Richman distinguishes between what he wryly terms "token maxing" and value creation. Blunt incentives, leaderboards, usage dashboards and mandates to switch from manual coding to AI-assisted development. All this can help people over that first hurdle, and he admits to having used some of these tactics himself. But the real measure of success has to be defined customer by customer, tied to a specific business outcome, not simply how many prompts someone fired off in a week. As he puts it, the value of any given AI initiative can only be judged against what that particular organisation set out to solve in the first place.Human Skills AI Can't ReplaceOne of the most interesting parts of the discussion explores how generative and agentic AI are reshaping team structures. Richman describes a flattening of traditional boundaries: product managers writing code, designers contributing to technical documents, and engineers drafting strategy papers. Functions that were once tightly specialised, such as a dedicated user-research team and a standalone copywriting role, are increasingly being absorbed as skills within more generalist, multi-hatted employees. At the same time, he notes, the opposite is happening at the model layer, with AI agents becoming ever more specialised. The result, in his telling, is smaller teams working with far greater autonomy and considerably less coordination overhead than in years past.Asked what he prioritises when hiring now, Richman is candid that mastery of a single discipline matters to him less than certain behavioural traits: curiosity, high agency, sound judgment. He shares an interview technique he relies on, asking candidates how they spent their time during the pandemic lockdowns, as a rough proxy for whether someone tends to seize initiative or simply wait for circumstances to dictate their next move.Moving Fast Without Cutting CornersOn responsible deployment, Richman insists culture has to start at the top. Leaders, he argues, need to be visibly hands-on and honest about their own gaps in knowledge rather than issuing mandates from a distance. At Multiverse, that meant lifting caps on AI coding tools, resetting the expectation that new work should be AI-generated by default, and investing heavily in quality assurance and evaluation frameworks so that human reviewers still hold a meaningful checkpoint before anything reaches customers. He contrasts this with the slower, more cautious approach he sees at many other organisations — one he believes is not only less efficient but also less likely to stick once the initial push fades.Measuring What Actually MattersTying this back to the earlier point about value over volume, Richman suggests the real test of an AI initiative is how closely it maps to a business's own stated objective, not adoption figures in isolation. That means starting with what a customer or team is actually trying to achieve, building learning around the specific gaps standing in the way, and only then judging success by whether the resulting behaviour change shows up in the metrics that organisation already cares about.The conversation closes on a personal note, with Richman sharing the advice he'd give his own children as they weigh careers in a fast-shifting landscape: run towards disruption rather than away from it. Having entered the workforce at the tail end of the dot-com boom, he sees clear parallels with the present moment, a period, in his words, where nobody can credibly claim expertise, which makes it as good a time as any to jump in. For organisations still puzzling over why their AI investment hasn't translated into measurable returns, Richman's message is simple: the technology was never really the difficult part. If you would like to find out more, please visit multiverse.io or connect with Richman on LinkedIn.TakeawaysSuccessful AI adoption hinges on people, not just technology.The AI adoption layer helps bridge the gap between investment and productivity.High agency and curiosity are key traits of successful AI practitioners.Leadership must lead by example and foster a culture of experimentation.Rapid technological change requires teams to be flexible and multi-skilled.Chapters00:00 Introduction to AI transformation and people-centred approach00:54 Jay Richman's background at Spotify, Amazon, and Multiverse03:47 The challenge of AI adoption and pilot mode07:04 The concept of the AI adoption layer and its purpose12:54 Distinguishing token maxing from value maxing16:03 Impact of generative AI on product and engineering teams19:09 Building teams in the AI era: blurring roles and skills21:49 Qualities and skills for future AI teams25:49 Leading responsibly with AI and fostering a culture of experimentation

Annalie Howling will tell you that shame is the hardest emotion in the room to name, and that this is precisely why it runs so much of our lives. Ask a group who is feeling anxious, and every hand goes up, and each person can list what they are anxious about. Ask about shame, and you get silence. She is an elite performance coach, a trauma specialist and certified EMDR practitioner, and the author of the bestselling Unapologetic: Unshackle Your Shame, Reclaim Your Power. In 2026 Spear’s Magazine ranked her among the world’s best life and performance coaches. Over twenty years, she has worked with Hollywood actors, PGA Tour golfers, self-made billionaires, corporate executives and members of the UK Special Forces. So when Catherine asked her to unpack what shame actually is, Annalie did not reach for a definition. She reached for a distinction. Guilt is something you did. Shame is something you believe yourself to be. A weed, not a feeling The model Annalie offers reframes almost everything sitting on top of it, and it asks nobody to become a therapist. Picture a weed in the garden. The leaves are guilt and anxiety, the emotions we can name and discuss. Guilt is coulda, woulda, shoulda, and it lives in the past. Anxiety lives in the future, trying to control the uncontrollable by rehearsing every possible scenario before it happens. Beneath the leaves is the stem, which is the inner critic, or what many of us call imposter syndrome. Its only job is to make sure we are never rejected, and the only method it knows is to keep us inside the comfort zone it patrols. So it makes us perfect, people-pleasing, hyper-vigilant, chameleon-like. Should, in Annalie’s view, should be a swear word. Should is the fuel of the inner critic. And beneath all of it, always, is the root. Shame. You can trim the leaves with an intervention. You can even get partway down the stem with something you read online. But if you never reach the root, it grows back, in a different form, at a different time. Shame always begins with “I am” That is how you recognise it. I am broken. I am unworthy. I am unlovable. I am not enough. Guilt says I did something bad. Shame says I am bad, and it is believed at the core rather than felt on a difficult day. Annalie is candid that this is not theory for her. She grew up in a violent household where her parents told her she made her father beat her, and her mother colluded and told her it was her fault. She believed it. She internalised it. What followed was decades of people pleasing and performing, accepting scraps in relationships, overworking into burnout, and years of self-harm, all built on the belief that she was bad and therefore deserved none of what she had built. Nobody is born with shame. It arrives through a significant emotional event, and that event can be far smaller than you would expect. Annalie describes a client whose entire path of self-belief shifted because a head teacher pulled them aside at eight years old and told them they would probably not achieve very much. The line that releases people The most freeing moment in the conversation is a piece of science. In a traumatic event, the prefrontal cortex goes offline, and so does Broca’s area, which holds language. The limbic system takes over. Fight, flight, freeze, and the two we rarely discuss: flop and fawn. Crucially, you never get to choose your trauma response. It is selected for you, far faster than cognitive thought can arrive. Meanwhile, the body is tagging everything: colours, smells, people, storing what it might need later. It is why someone can be floored in a supermarket years afterwards, or why a person who sat with a loved one in a hospice suddenly cannot fly, because airports use the same cleaning products. Annalie leaves the audience with three golden nuggets: If self-compassion feels impossible, place someone you love into the memory and watch the scene through them. Treat a compliment like a gift in a box, because you would never throw it on the floor. When your inner critic is riding you, imagine it is true and dream into it. The point is not that the critic disappears. It is that you learn to play with it. Watch the full conversation on YouTube. Find Out More About Annalie Howling Website: https://annaliehowling.com Instagram: @annaliehowling YouTube: @annaliehowling

Join us in this prelude episode of  a miniseries  series covering Jack Ruby.  Our podcast coverage  now moves to tell the story of this central character in the assassination.  Jack Ruby was an enigmatic figure that some say was the "cleanest available test of the conspiracy hypothesis". While sixty years of intense debate over Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt have left questions of ballistics, trajectories, and acoustics in a perpetual draw, what Jack Ruby did is not in dispute—his crime was captured live on national television before millions of stunned viewers. The opening chapter argues that while every other line of inquiry in this historic case requires proving that a specific event occurred, the puzzle of Jack Ruby only asks us to explain a tragedy that the world saw happen in real time.  The ultimate tragedy was the denial of access to Lee Harvey Oswald and the trial that never was... the trial that might have produced the truth or at least got us closer to itTo build an investigative roadmap for the episodes to come, this prelude episode reconstructs a series of glaring anomalies and timeline mysteries from that fateful November weekend. It probes the oddities of Ruby's alibi—including why he was counting cash for strip club ads at the Dallas Morning News desk with a clear view of Dealey Plaza at the exact moment of the motorcade shooting—his highly debated presence at Parkland Hospital that afternoon, and his bizarre ability to infiltrate the midnight police press conference to correct the District Attorney on Oswald's political affiliations. Most striking of all is the razor-thin four-minute gap between Ruby's Western Union receipt at 11:17 AM and the fatal basement shot at 11:21 AM, prompting listeners to evaluate whether he was simply a grieving citizen acting on impulse or part of a coordinated security failure.The episode also sets the stage for a deep dive into the dark institutional and underworld networks that defined Ruby's existence. It previews the upcoming investigations into his sudden spike in late-1963 phone calls to high-level mob and Teamster figures, his mysterious 1959 trips to Havana, and his hidden history as a potential FBI informant. Crucially, the series prepares to confront the chilling legacy of the jail cell itself—exploring Ruby's frantic deathbed claims that he was being poisoned, his private visits from MKULTRA-linked psychiatrist Dr. Jolly West, and the highly suspicious, rapid succession of deaths that silenced the journalists and associates who tried to tell his story, including reporters Bill Hunter, Jim Koethe, attorney Tom Howard, and Broadway columnist Dorothy Kilgallen.Ultimately, the miniseries is anchored by a compelling, tragic psychological portrait of a man whose life was propelled by a volatile cycle of "aspiration and humiliation". Drawing on a remarkable 1922 psychiatric report that diagnosed an eleven-year-old Ruby as an egocentric attention-seeker, the series traces how a lifetime of failed commercial ventures—from liquid vitamins to exercise twist boards—and a hyper-sensitivity to anti-Semitic slurs transformed into a desperate, final bid for recognition. This essential opening chapter invites listeners to sit as the jury, laying out the raw evidence to decide whether Jack Ruby's fatal act was a chaotic institutional failure or a chillingly coordinated design

Victor Pickard returns to Money on the Left six years after his first appearance on the show to discuss the state of the U.S. media system under Trump 2.0. Pickard is C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication and Co-Director at the Media, Inequality & Change Center. Placing current developments in broad historical context, Pickard situates today's media crisis within a century-long struggle to establish and maintain genuine public media against the overpowering dominance and relentless pushback of private corporate media.Drawing on his recent writing and policy interventions, Pickard breaks down three distinct layers of media capture: capitalistic, oligarchic, and authoritarian. Crucially, our conversation stresses how the foundational layer—the capitalistic privatization of news and communication as market commodities rather than vital public goods—directly conditions and enables the other two. As long as media institutions remain captured by capitalist imperatives, treating political information as a vehicle for private control and exploitation, attempts to counter oligarchic consolidation or authoritarian coercion will fail to address the root causes of our institutional breakdown.During our discussion, we explore the history of the struggle to build public media in the United States, from early twentieth-century regulatory choices that privatized the public airwaves to the gradual weakening of public-interest protections and the chronic underfunding of public broadcasting. Against this hyper-commercialized landscape, we insist upon the necessity of fighting for democratic, diverse, and locally sensitive public media infrastructures. Rather than relying on broken advertising models or corporate philanthropy, we explore what it would mean to construct non-capitalist, community-governed media systems designed from the bottom up to serve local publics.Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructureMusic by Nahneen Kula: www.nahneenkula.com

In the mid-1930s a group of New York Yiddishist intellectuals established the Central Jewish Library and Press Archive, whose collections became the nucleus of the YIVO Library when the Institute relocated from Vilna to New York in 1940. Over the succeeding decades, the Library grew by leaps and bounds, thanks to the dedication of its librarians and supporters. It emerged as a “collection of collections,” absorbing the extensive personal libraries of prominent Yiddish writers, scholars, and book collectors. Crucially, after 1945 the Library also recovered large portions of the Vilna YIVO's prewar holdings along with thousands of rabbinic works from Vilna's Strashun Library. Throughout its history, the YIVO Library has been a beehive of scholarship and bibliography, which has been fostered by such outstanding figures as Mendl Elkin and Dina Abramowicz. In this presentation, Zachary M. Baker will offer some personal reflections on the legacy that the YIVO Library's founders and builders have left behind. View the bibliography for this talk: here This lecture originally took place on February 19, 2025. 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

In the mid-1930s a group of New York Yiddishist intellectuals established the Central Jewish Library and Press Archive, whose collections became the nucleus of the YIVO Library when the Institute relocated from Vilna to New York in 1940. Over the succeeding decades, the Library grew by leaps and bounds, thanks to the dedication of its librarians and supporters. It emerged as a “collection of collections,” absorbing the extensive personal libraries of prominent Yiddish writers, scholars, and book collectors. Crucially, after 1945 the Library also recovered large portions of the Vilna YIVO's prewar holdings along with thousands of rabbinic works from Vilna's Strashun Library. Throughout its history, the YIVO Library has been a beehive of scholarship and bibliography, which has been fostered by such outstanding figures as Mendl Elkin and Dina Abramowicz. In this presentation, Zachary M. Baker will offer some personal reflections on the legacy that the YIVO Library's founders and builders have left behind. View the bibliography for this talk: here This lecture originally took place on February 19, 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions (Oxford University Press, 2026), Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth reveal the vast and complex world of France's Atlantic enterprises in the premodern era. Drawing upon years of archival work, Hodson and Rushforth demonstrate how France's overseas activities created its empire, intentionally or not, and how these distant places built the French state and used it for their own ends. Beyond the Ocean covers an impressive sweep of history, from the late eleventh century through the early nineteenth, and yet the authors manage to retain a human element. Their judicious inclusion of micro-histories and primary-source quotation, as well as their lively prose, helps the reader enter into what it may have felt like to live through these developments, to participate in the era when "France became France, and the Atlantic became a world." Crucially, their attention to the non-European actors in this story and women's worlds and work makes the book a helpful corrective to top-down approaches to imperial histories. Beyond the Ocean is a must-read for Atlantic world scholars, but has value for anyone interested in early modern Europe or cultural exchange. Elspeth Currie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women's intellectual history in early modern Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions (Oxford University Press, 2026), Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth reveal the vast and complex world of France's Atlantic enterprises in the premodern era. Drawing upon years of archival work, Hodson and Rushforth demonstrate how France's overseas activities created its empire, intentionally or not, and how these distant places built the French state and used it for their own ends. Beyond the Ocean covers an impressive sweep of history, from the late eleventh century through the early nineteenth, and yet the authors manage to retain a human element. Their judicious inclusion of micro-histories and primary-source quotation, as well as their lively prose, helps the reader enter into what it may have felt like to live through these developments, to participate in the era when "France became France, and the Atlantic became a world." Crucially, their attention to the non-European actors in this story and women's worlds and work makes the book a helpful corrective to top-down approaches to imperial histories. Beyond the Ocean is a must-read for Atlantic world scholars, but has value for anyone interested in early modern Europe or cultural exchange. Elspeth Currie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women's intellectual history in early modern Europe. 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

In Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions (Oxford University Press, 2026), Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth reveal the vast and complex world of France's Atlantic enterprises in the premodern era. Drawing upon years of archival work, Hodson and Rushforth demonstrate how France's overseas activities created its empire, intentionally or not, and how these distant places built the French state and used it for their own ends. Beyond the Ocean covers an impressive sweep of history, from the late eleventh century through the early nineteenth, and yet the authors manage to retain a human element. Their judicious inclusion of micro-histories and primary-source quotation, as well as their lively prose, helps the reader enter into what it may have felt like to live through these developments, to participate in the era when "France became France, and the Atlantic became a world." Crucially, their attention to the non-European actors in this story and women's worlds and work makes the book a helpful corrective to top-down approaches to imperial histories. Beyond the Ocean is a must-read for Atlantic world scholars, but has value for anyone interested in early modern Europe or cultural exchange. Elspeth Currie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women's intellectual history in early modern Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions (Oxford University Press, 2026), Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth reveal the vast and complex world of France's Atlantic enterprises in the premodern era. Drawing upon years of archival work, Hodson and Rushforth demonstrate how France's overseas activities created its empire, intentionally or not, and how these distant places built the French state and used it for their own ends. Beyond the Ocean covers an impressive sweep of history, from the late eleventh century through the early nineteenth, and yet the authors manage to retain a human element. Their judicious inclusion of micro-histories and primary-source quotation, as well as their lively prose, helps the reader enter into what it may have felt like to live through these developments, to participate in the era when "France became France, and the Atlantic became a world." Crucially, their attention to the non-European actors in this story and women's worlds and work makes the book a helpful corrective to top-down approaches to imperial histories. Beyond the Ocean is a must-read for Atlantic world scholars, but has value for anyone interested in early modern Europe or cultural exchange. Elspeth Currie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women's intellectual history in early modern Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies

Murray Rothbard started his career with a foundational training in neoclassical economics. At Columbia University, he learned from highly regarded professors and demonstrated a thorough understanding of the positivist method, Keynesian and Marshallian economic theory, and institutional empirical analysis. Crucially, Rothbard perceived the fact that critical errors existed in these disparate strands of knowledge, although he could not yet articulate them. But the recognition itself motivated him to take the highly important step of contacting the free-market Foundation for Economic Education and the William Volker Fund, thereby discovering Austrian economics.

The old joke about nuclear fusion power is that commercial deployment is 30 years in the future: it always has been and it always will be. It may be time to retire that joke. Private fusion companies have now raised billions in capital, and pilot plants are moving from slide decks and plans into steel and concrete. The questions now are not so much around whether fusion power can ever work, and more about how soon it can reach the grid, and at what costHost Ed Crooks and regular contributor Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Global Energy, Climate, & Sustainability Lab at NYU are joined by two fusion industry leaders to discuss the rapid progress they are making. Andrew Holland is founder and chief executive of the Fusion Industry Association, and Bob Mumgaard is chief executive of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, one of the companies vying to have the first commercial fusion power plant in operation.Andrew lays out the state of the sector. There are 56 private fusion companies globally, which between them have raised more than $14 billion in private capital. And there is a growing conviction inside the industry that commercial fusion could arrive in the early 2030s. Bob explains why Commonwealth believes SPARC, its demonstration project in Massachusetts, and ARC, its planned power plant in Virginia, can help make that timetable real.Fusion has moved beyond the era when government science programs defined the pace of progress. Research backed by governments and universities has played a vital role in moving the technology forward, but Andrew argues that competition, venture capital and milestone-based development have changed the industry's tempo. Crucially, the industry has not put all its eggs in one basket. Multiple companies are pursuing different technical paths, including both laser-based approaches and magnetic confinement systems, in a race to commerciality. Bob offers the clearest lay explanation of what fusion power means in practice. Commonwealth Fusion Systems uses a tokamak, which is essentially a magnetic bottle that holds a star inside it. Fusion creates heat, which can be used to run a steam turbine. Unlike wind and solar, fusion does not depend on weather or geography. Unlike fossil fuels, it does not rely on continual fuel deliveries.The episode also explores why fusion developers believe the technology could avoid some of the political and regulatory burdens that have constrained nuclear fission power. Because fusion reactions are hard to start and easy to stop, the risks are fundamentally different from those of a conventional fission reactor. Bob and Andrew argue that this changes everything from plant safety to siting to licensing, and could make fusion much faster to deploy if the technical hurdles are cleared.They also discuss what it will take to build an industry, not just a few prototypes. Amy pushes on fuel cycles, lithium, superconducting tape and supply-chain readiness. Bob argues that these challenges are real but manageable, and Andrew points to the growing ecosystem of manufacturers now positioning themselves for a future fusion market. The wider point is that fusion is increasingly starting to look like a manufacturing and industrial-policy story, not just a laboratory science story.That leads to the biggest question of all: if fusion works, how much could it matter? Bob sketches outcomes ranging from a valuable but still niche source of clean baseload power to a genuinely transformative technology. Andrew goes even further, arguing that fusion could decouple energy from geography and geopolitics in a way no fuel-based system ever has. If the industry's ambitions are realized, within the next ten years fusion could emerge as a commercial energy source with real consequences for grids, markets and global power. This episode of Energy Gang is brought to you by ENGIE, the smarter energy supplier. ENGIE doesn't just provide the power to run your business — they supply the energy to move it forward, with reliable, flexible solutions built for what's next. Learn more at engieresources.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Detroit Lions defense in 2025 was not bad, it was untimely. They ranked 22nd in scoring defense but finished 17th in yards allowed per game and ninth on third downs, and Pro Football Focus graded them as a top-five defense overall. The real issue was explosive plays and situational lapses at key moments. Was the Detroit Lions defense actually bad in 2025? No. The unit performed better than its reputation. As Jeff Risdon noted, the Lions were 22nd in points allowed, 17th in yards per game at 332.8, and middle of the pack at 5.4 yards per play. Crucially, they allowed a 36.9 percent third-down conversion rate, which ranked ninth, while the offense converted 38.8 percent, 19th. That disconnect fuels the perception. The defense was on the field in tough spots and failed at the worst times, which is different from being bad snap-to-snap. Which numbers explain the gap between strong grades and points allowed? Excellent. PFF's cumulative defensive grade for Detroit was 81.8, fifth overall, with a 78.5 run defense grade that ranked fourth. Tackling graded at 74.9, second behind the Green Bay Packers. The pass rush ranked fifth, and pressure rate ranked fourth, with help from Detroit Lions edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson. Coverage graded 74.1, tenth. Raw team data backs several strengths: Detroit allowed the sixth-lowest completion rate at 61.6 percent, averaged 7.3 yards per pass allowed which ranked 23rd, and posted an 8.11 percent sack rate, eighth. Special teams graded sixth. The defense simply surrendered too many explosive plays and got burned by short fields when the offense failed on third and fourth downs. Those two factors drove points more than down-to-down quality. What must change in 2026 to turn solid metrics into stops? Cut the explosives and win the pivotal snaps. That means finishing drives with takeaways or stops on third and manageable, and protecting field position instead of gifting short fields. As Jeff Risdon theorized, using more zone coverage and replacing some base 4-3 snaps with extra defensive backs or an additional lineman instead of a linebacker can specifically help in coverage. He also noted using the punter a little more in marginal situations to avoid feeding opponents favorable field position. Turnovers and situational management Risdon's Houston analogy underscores it: clean up turnover differential and third-down execution and a defense that already grades well turns those metrics into points prevented. Do the Lions have the personnel to fix it? Yes. Detroit Lions edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson closed strong after a slump and remains the headliner up front. Detroit Lions linebacker Jack Campbell delivered impact against the run, and the interior pairing of Detroit Lions defensive tackle Alim McNeill and Detroit Lions defensive tackle Tyleik Williams should be a strong one-two punch. Depth has improved in the secondary, though, as Jeff Risdon cautioned, safety Brian Branch and safety Kerby Joseph entering the start of the year is not optimal. Detroit Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone's role can flex within sub-packages to prioritize coverage matchups. Bottom line, as Risdon put it, the defense was unfortunate and untimely in 2025, and those are correctable issues. He's over the 10.5 win total. #detroitlions #lions #detroitlionspodcast #lionsdefense #nflstatistics #pff #pffranking #pffgrades #aidanhutchinson #jackcampbell #alimmcneill #tyleikwilliams #brianbranch #kirbyjoseph #alexanzalone #profootballfocus #losangelesrams #seattleseahawks #greenbaypackers #passrush Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Day in Legal History: The Sedition Act of 1798On July 14, 1798, Congress passed the Sedition Act, the most notorious of the four laws known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Sedition Act made it a federal crime to write, print, utter, or publish “any false, scandalous and malicious writing” against the government of the United States, the Congress, or the President—with the intent to defame them or bring them into disrepute. In plain terms, it criminalized criticism of the government.The context was a Federalist administration, under President John Adams, gripped by fear of France and of domestic dissent, and eager to silence the opposition press aligned with Thomas Jefferson's Republicans. And that's exactly how it was used. Federal prosecutors went after Republican newspaper editors and even a sitting congressman, securing convictions for the crime of harsh political speech. Notably, the Act was written to expire in 1801—conveniently, the moment Adams's term would end—so that it could be wielded against his critics but would not outlive his own hold on power.The reaction was fierce and consequential. Jefferson and James Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions arguing the Act was unconstitutional, and the ensuing backlash helped sweep Jefferson into the presidency in 1800; once in office, he pardoned those convicted under it. The Sedition Act was never tested at the Supreme Court, but history rendered its verdict. More than a century and a half later, in New York Times v. Sullivan, the Court looked back and declared that the Act's assault on free expression had been repudiated “in the court of history,” using it as a touchstone for modern First Amendment law. The lesson of July 14, 1798 endures: laws that punish criticism of the government are almost always tools of the powerful against their critics—and a free press is most necessary precisely when the state would prefer it silent.Federal prosecutors have issued subpoenas seeking to compel four New York Times journalists to testify before a Manhattan grand jury, part of a leak investigation into the paper's reporting on security concerns surrounding President Trump's flight on the new Qatari-donated Air Force One. Federal agents delivered some of the subpoenas to the reporters' homes. Here's the legal terrain. There is no absolute federal reporter's privilege—the Supreme Court held decades ago that the First Amendment doesn't categorically shield journalists from grand jury subpoenas—but the Justice Department has long operated under internal guidelines that made going after reporters a last resort. Those guardrails matter here, because in 2025 Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded the Biden-era policy that had sharply limited subpoenas against journalists, restoring broader authority to pursue them. The Times says it will fight, and can ask a court to quash the subpoenas as overbroad, issued in bad faith, or violating the First Amendment. The significance is the pressure this puts on newsgathering: when the government can subpoena reporters to unmask their sources, sources stop talking, and the kind of national-security reporting at issue here gets harder to do. Press-freedom groups warn this administration has reached for subpoenas and search warrants against journalists—at the Times, the Post, and the Wall Street Journal—more freely than its predecessors.Explainer: Can prosecutors compel New York Times journalists to testify in leak probe? | ReutersA federal judge has voided President Trump's roughly $1.78 billion settlement with the IRS, delivering a scathing rebuke and referring his lawyers for possible discipline. The backstory is unusual. Trump sued his own administration in January over the leak of his tax returns, and by late May had reached a deal with the IRS to create an “anti-weaponization” fund and to “forever bar” the government from any action related to his past tax returns—protection extending to his family and businesses. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams found the whole thing was a setup. The core legal defect is the absence of what courts call adverseness. Federal courts can only decide genuine “cases or controversies”—real disputes between opposing parties. Here, Judge Williams wrote, “there was never adverseness between the Parties; there was never a case or controversy; and there was never a question as to who would prevail,” because Trump was effectively suing himself, with his own Justice Department on the other side agreeing to lose. She found the case was brought for an improper purpose: to get a court's stamp of legitimacy on a settlement with no basis in law or fact. She sanctioned Trump's attorneys and referred one, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida bar, and suggested Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche should face discipline too. The significance is a court refusing to be used as a rubber stamp—insisting that its legitimacy can't be borrowed to bless a collusive deal dressed up as litigation.US judge voids Trump's settlement with IRS | ReutersA federal appeals court has revived more than 500 private lawsuits against Kenvue, the maker of Tylenol, alleging that acetaminophen use during pregnancy caused autism and ADHD in children—and here it's worth being clear about the science before the law. There is no firm scientific evidence that Tylenol causes autism or ADHD. The most rigorous recent research, including a large Swedish sibling-comparison study of millions of children, found no causal link once you control for genetic and environmental factors shared within families; mainstream medical bodies continue to regard acetaminophen as one of the safer pain and fever options in pregnancy, and untreated high fevers carry their own real risks. So this ruling is not a finding that Tylenol is dangerous. What the Second Circuit actually decided was narrower and procedural: that the trial judge had wrongly excluded the plaintiffs' expert witnesses. Under the rules governing expert testimony, judges act as “gatekeepers,” admitting expert opinion only if it rests on reliable methodology. The district court had tossed the plaintiffs' experts as unreliable; the appeals court, per Judge Guido Calabresi, said their methods reflected approaches other scientists use and amounted to “acceptable interpretations of scientific evidence where scientists may, and in fact do, disagree.” Crucially, the court stressed it was not deciding whether Tylenol actually causes these conditions. The significance is about who weighs contested science—the ruling lets juries, not just judges, hear the dispute, which is a real win for the plaintiffs procedurally even though the underlying causation case remains, on the current evidence, weak.US appeals court revives private lawsuits linking Tylenol to autism, ADHD | ReutersAnd finally, in my column for Bloomberg Tax this week, I take on a counterintuitive idea: that big corporate taxpayers may come to miss the boring, predictable world of administrative tax law now that the Supreme Court has overruled Chevron deference. My argument, in short, is that a weaker IRS and Treasury is not the unalloyed win a lot of multinationals assume it is.Here's the setup. For forty years, under Chevron, courts deferred to a federal agency's reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. With Chevron gone, courts no longer have to defer to Treasury's reading of the tax code just because the statute is vague and the agency has expertise. A lot of corporate taxpayers cheered that—less agency power sounds like more freedom. But my point is that killing Chevron did nothing to remove the underlying ambiguity in the tax code; it just moved the job of resolving that ambiguity to a different desk. And there are only two other desks it can land on, and I don't love either one for a company that wants predictability.The first desk belongs to the courts. If Treasury can't issue as many binding, prospective rules, then more of these questions get resolved through litigation—case by case, on particular records, often years after the transactions are done. Courts are built to handle controversies, not to administer a global corporate tax system. The Coca-Cola transfer-pricing fight is the stress test I point to: a company may win a great refund that way, but you can't organize a multinational's affairs around the hope that every ambiguous question turns into a bespoke judicial adventure. The second desk belongs to Congress, which is the more democratically satisfying answer—Congress writes the code and is politically accountable. But in practice Congress moves slowly and episodically, usually only when tax changes ride along on some bigger budget deal. By the time Congress fixes an international tax problem, the business model that created it has been reorganized twice and pivoted to something involving AI.So the core of my argument is that corporate taxpayers need to distinguish between a useful litigation win and a stable legal environment—those two things don't always travel together. A bad but clear rule can be modeled and planned around; an ambiguous rule, as I put it, isn't really a rule, it's a threat in the shape of a Treasury notice. My prescription is that Congress should make clearer, more deliberate delegations where technical administration is unavoidable—transfer pricing, international tax, anti-abuse rules—and that Treasury should do a post-Chevron audit of its own regulations to flag where the code is asking too much of administration and too little of legislation. Because the real choice here isn't between IRS power and taxpayer freedom. It's between prospective administration and retroactive improvisation—and multinationals may get their wish, see the IRS diminished, and then find themselves stuck with rules everyone knows are broken but no one can fix.Big Corporate Taxpayers Need More Clarity in a Post-Chevron World | Bloomberg Tax This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Legacies of the 1920s: Hoover and Roosevelt Guest: David Pietrusza The final segment contrasts the presidencies of Herbert Hoover and FDR, the last of the six presidents from the 1920 cycle. Hoover, despite rising from "great poverty" to become a "great engineer," struggled with a cold public persona that failed to rally the nation during the Great Depression. Conversely, the wealthy FDR was transformed by his battle with polio, which observers like Frances Perkins believed allowed him to empathize more deeply with human suffering. FDR became a master of radio and newsreels, using them to refine his communication and build a broad "progressive coalition." Crucially, Roosevelt learned from Wilson's failure to compromise on the Versailles Treaty; when he later championed the United Nations, he made sure to involve Republicans in the process. By applying the hard lessons of the 1920 election, FDR successfully realized the internationalist vision that had eluded Wilson. (8)1920

The Katherine Massey Book Club @ The C.O.W.S. debuts Session 1 on The Memoirs of Robert and Mabel Williams: African American Freedom, Armed Resistance, and International Solidarity. The Biography Kings have officially returned to primary-source reality. After a grueling 12-week forensic audit dismantling the sanitized academic distortions of The New Jim Crow, we wash our hands of corporate non-profit "Race Management" and return to the uncompromised gold standard of Black revolutionary history. This newly compiled text features previously unpublished, first-person manuscripts written by both Robert and Mabel Williams. Crucially, the text is co-edited by definitive historian Dr. Akinyele Umoja, who has been a featured guest on our program twice for his masterwork We Will Shoot Back. More than a decade after our comprehensive review of the foundational text Negroes With Guns, we step back into the trenches of Monroe, North Carolina, to trace how the Williamses organized armed self-defense guards to repel Ku Klux Klan motorcades.Most importantly, this joint memoir shatters the provincial limits of typical domestic political discourse. While much of mainstream, so-called "Black Nationalist" dialogue remains hyper-focused exclusively on lines drawn within the borders of the United States, Robert and Mabel Williams intentionally target a global System of White Supremacy. We analyze their strategic political exile, tracking their underground international solidarity networks from the shortwave transmissions of Radio Free Dixie in Havana, Cuba, straight to elite anti-colonial alliances in Beijing, China. We back up this premiere broadcast by deploying a multi-layered, twin-engine audio intro featuring Dr. Umoja's previous C.O.W.S. guidance stacked back-to-back with raw, shortwave archive broadcasts of Robert and Mabel themselves. INVEST in The COWS: - PayPal: [http://paypal.me/TheCOWS](http://paypal.me/TheCOWS) - Cash App: [https://cash.app/$TheCOWS](https://cash.app/$TheCOWS) #SurviveYourShift #SafetyFirst #TheCOWS17Years #CounterRacism Call-In Number: 720.716.7300 Code: 564943#

Hosts Jason Bassler and Matt Agorist welcomed back grassroots activist, author, and cultural builder Maj Toure for his sixth appearance on the Free Thought Project podcast. Maj is the founder of Black Guns Matter, the Solutionary Center in Philadelphia, and the online education platform Solutionary University. For over a decade, he has been an uncompromising defender of self-ownership, urban firearm rights education, and civic accountability. Maj's work focuses heavily on teaching practical conflict resolution, de-escalation, and helping peaceful individuals break free from the mental and economic traps designed by the state. The conversation dives deep into the shifting political landscape, analyzing the hyper-partisan gridlock of modern politics and the deep-seated cognitive dissonance that keeps voters trapped in establishment cults. The discussion unpacks the landmark unanimous Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Hemani—which declared that the federal government cannot strip individuals of their Second Amendment rights solely over cannabis use—and exposes the hypocrisy of an administration that aggressively pursued the case while masquerading behind a pro-2A facade. Crucially, the dialogue details a powerful wave of organic, multi-regional resistance against the encroaching surveillance state, highlighting decentralized campaigns like "Operation Flock Out" and "Knock the Flock" as citizens actively push back against FLOCK license plate cameras, Palantir data grids, and centralized tracking infrastructure.    The dialogue then pivots to the cultural dynamics of the digital age, examining how toxic online rage-baiting from political provocateurs is engineered to trigger emotional physical retaliation, ultimately weaponizing narrative control to drive disenfranchised youth straight toward authoritarian socialism. The conversation also highlights the severe state overreach surrounding the case of Dexter Taylor, a nonviolent man sentenced to a decade in a maximum-security prison for manufacturing 3D-printed firearms in his own home.   Ending on a powerful "White Pill" note, the episode highlights the necessity of shifting human energy away from systemic distractions and focusing entirely on personal development and local resilience. The final portion of the show underscores the vital role of holistic, decentralizing tools like Solutionary University—including foundational courses on family gun safety, civics, understanding imminent threats, and rights education—to build stronger, self-reliant individuals. The episode concludes with an empowering call to action: to reject state-sponsored demoralization, embrace analog presence, improve physical health, and use local body politics to actively secure liberty as an unalienable birthright. (Length: 1:30:52)   Guest Links & Resources: Maj Toure's Website: Solutionary University Featured Video/Resource: Black Guns Matter Shop Support Maj's Mission: Solutionary GiveSendGo Jason's Know Your Rights Course: Here   Support The Free Thought Project

Matt Agorist and Don Via, Jr. sat down with the relentless Catherine Austin Fitts for an incredibly vital status report on the global fight for financial freedom. A former Wall Street powerhouse and former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under the Bush Senior administration, Catherine is the publisher of The Solari Report and one of the liberty movement's most brilliant economic minds. After famously looking inside the belly of the beast and blowing the whistle on the missing trillions of dollars leaking out of the federal budget decades ago, she has dedicated her life to exposing state overreach and the encroaching digital panopticon. Fresh off a massive interview with Tucker Carlson and a major speaking appearance at the John Birch Society Conference in Salt Lake City, Catherine joins the show in the midst of a grueling multi-city tour to break down how everyday people can bypass the uni-party trap and construct an unbroken, parallel world. The core of the discussion dismantles the insidious architecture of the "Digital Control Grid" and the mechanism of what Catherine defines as the "automatic third lock". The conversation exposes how recent political theater—such as a temporary ban on retail Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)—serves as a massive bait-and-switch, masking a back-door corporate-government hydra built on private stablecoins through legislative frameworks like the GENIUS Act. This programmable ledger system aims to transition traditional bank deposits, stocks, and bonds into a machine-driven surveillance apparatus that can instantly freeze, block, or condition transactions from above the institutional level, entirely bypassing human legal accountability. The dialogue maps out the immense physical scale of this grid, detailing how the United States has become the global hardware hub by housing more data centers than the top 14 countries combined. Crucially, the breakdown reveals how everyday citizens are being manipulated into financing their own digital cages through local taxpayer subsidies and heavily concentrated 401(k) and IRA retirement portfolios that pour billions into tech monopolies. Finally, the geopolitical lens is turned onto the deceptive "multipolar world order" narrative, revealing that central planners across both the BRICS nations and Western alliances remain uniformly loyal to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) digital ID model, reframing the current global tension as a mere turf war over who secures "middle management" data rights.   Shifting gears entirely to actionable resistance and "The White Pill," the episode maps out a comprehensive tactical manual for individual and community empowerment. The path forward demands an active financial decoupling—urging listeners to defund the surveillance panopticon by auditing their wealth, pulling retirement funds out of Wall Street's concentrated index funds, and shifting capital toward localized, tangible assets. True systemic pushback relies on a dual-layered approach: aggressively utilizing physical cash through localized "Turtling for Cash" campaigns to build community resilience and starve data center resource consumption, while simultaneously adopting decentralized, protocol-level digital privacy networks like Monero or Zano to secure long-distance commerce outside the matrix. Catherine highlights the Coming Clean blueprint—a downloadable guide packed with practical steps to systematically stop feeding energy to the state and start financing your own family. Ultimately, building a free civilization relies on a node-to-node system anchored entirely in real-world human relationships of trust. The show closes with an inspiring spiritual framework drawn from The NeverEnding Story, reminding the audience that the ultimate defense against the technocratic "nothing" is to aggressively protect personal joy, foster community connection, and maintain an unshakeable state of amusement. (Length: 56:12)   Guest Links & Resources: Catherine Austin Fitts's Website: The Solari Report Featured Resource: Coming Clean PDF Guide Referenced Substack Article: Are Taxpayers Helping to Finance America's Data Center Boom? Support The Free Thought Project

Episode Overview In this episode, we explore the alarming surge in cardiac care demand and its direct link to systemic leadership stress. Featuring insights from Michael D. Levitt, Founder and Chief Burnout Officer of Breakfast Leadership, we move beyond the idea of "bad luck" to examine how broken organizational systems are literally breaking the hearts of executives. Key Highlights & Statistics The Cardiac Surge: Demand for outpatient cardiology procedures is projected to increase by 25% over the next decade, while the industry itself is growing at a 4% compound annual rate. A Workforce Crisis: Cardiovascular disease claims a life every 33 seconds in the U.S.. Crucially, one in five cardiovascular deaths occurs in adults younger than 65—working-age leaders who are often high-performing until the moment of a health crisis. The Physician Shortage: While demand spikes, the Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortfall of over 7,000 cardiologists by 2034. Physiology of Stress: Chronic workplace stress is not just a "feeling." It triggers a physiological chain reaction: Elevated cortisol leads to chronic inflammation, which accelerates cardiovascular disease. The "Leadership OS" Failure Michael Levitt shares his personal journey of surviving a 2009 cardiac event and the 369 days of "worst-case scenarios" that followed. He argues that you "cannot meditate your way out of a broken system" and identifies three structural pillars that, when missing, create toxic stress: Decision Clarity: Without it, leaders operate in permanent ambiguity, causing sustained cortisol elevation. Operational Rhythm: A lack of rhythm means the nervous system never fully recovers between demands. Culture Infrastructure: Broken culture forces individuals to absorb systemic dysfunction rather than the system holding it. Actionable Solutions for Executives and HR To prevent leadership health events from becoming business continuity crises, organizations must make three structural commitments: Measure Stress Drivers: Track decision fatigue, role ambiguity, and "always-on" communication norms. Design for Recovery: Treat recovery as a prerequisite for performance, not a reward for it. Preventive Investment: View leadership health as a business continuity issue; it is cheaper to protect a leader than to replace one. Featured Resources Book: 369 Days: How To Survive The Worst Year Of Your Life by Michael D. Levitt. Organization: Breakfast Leadership Network – Specializing in burnout prevention and leadership strategy. Featured Practice: San Diego Cardiac Center – A model for specialized, patient-centered cardiovascular care. Tool: Schedule a Leadership Diagnostic to identify structural stress points in your organization. The Bottom Line "Your leadership system either protects the people inside it, or it quietly depletes them. There is no neutral position".

There are two great forces reshaping the world of energy today. The AI boom and the wave of investment in new data centres have sent power producers scrambling for generation capacity to meet soaring electricity demand. At the same time, the severe disruption to shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has put security of supply at the top of every importer's agenda. In this special episode, recorded at Wood Mackenzie's Gas, LNG and the Future of Energy Conference in London, host Ed Crooks speaks with three guests about what these twin pressures mean for gas. They discuss demand for gas for power, the sources of supply that could provide energy security in volatile times, and plans for tackling the increased greenhouse gas emissions that could result from increased consumption.First, Ed sits down with Neal Kalita, senior director of global energy management at NTT Global Data Centers, one of the world's largest data center developers. Neal explains why "speed to power" is a priority, and why gas plays such a key role in providing the reliable 24/7 firm capacity hyperscaler clients require.Relying on gas as a key component of the power generation mix means managing a complex set of issues around supply security, demand management and long-term investment. Neal explains how NTT thinks about commodity risk, the trade-offs involved in power supply agreements, and why on-site gas generation may be not just a bridge solution but long-term infrastructure for the electricity system. He highlights the key drivers that are changing the data centre industry, including rising GPU power density, AI-driven volatility in load, and climate-related grid reliability concerns. He also discusses NTT's participation in a demand response programme run by Voltus, which helped stabilise the grid when Winter Storm Fern hit Virginia in January.Next, Ed hears from Keith Shoemaker, Chief Commercial Officer at Coastal Bend, which is developing a new LNG liquefaction project at Corpus Christi, Texas. Coastal Bend is aiming to have the first project in the US to integrate carbon capture and sequestration into its design. Combined with the procurement of upstream gas with low methane leakage and flaring, that should make for the lowest carbon-intensity LNG in the world, Keith says. Crucially, the project can match competitor prices without charging a green premium. The US 45Q tax credit will cover the operational spending (Opex) for the transport and sequestration of the carbon, and costs will be kept down by using brownfield maritime infrastructure that is already in place. Regulation will still be essential in creating a market for lower-emissions LNG. Keith sets out an idea for making that work in the EU: linking the new Methane Emissions Regulation with the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism to create an "avoided carbon" currency that LNG importers could use to offset CBAM fees on other products such as cement, steel and fertiliser. That way, the methane regulation would change from a stick to a carrot for the LNG industry.Kristy Kramer, Head of LNG at Wood Mackenzie, closes the episode by assessing how the three trends of AI demand, energy security and decarbonisation fit together. She discusses the big question: has the conflict on the Middle East changed the world completely, forever. It may play out like the Covid pandemic. Huge changes were predicted, and although there were some permanent impacts, in other areas the world has gone back to the way it was before. Politics will change from week to week, or even from hour to hour, but geology and economics don't, and over time the fundamentals will reassert themselves. Kristy and Ed reflect on what that means for the future of energy. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matt explains sleep inertia - the groggy transition to wakefulness - noting that waking is a process, not a switch, and that brain regions activate at different speeds. While the core wakes fast, the prefrontal cortex, which handles judgment, remains foggy for 15 minutes. This window can leave you more impaired than after an all-nighter.He suggests a toolkit: use bright light, time caffeine for waking, and keep naps under 20 minutes. Matt also recommends melodic alarms and warns that the snooze button just results in deepening the fog. Crucially, he advises a 15-minute buffer before making big decisions to allow every brain system to fully restart.Please note that Matt is not a medical doctor, and none of the content in this podcast should be considered medical advice in any way, shape, or form, nor prescriptive in any way.In a supplement industry where trust is critical, Matt uses podcast supporter Puori. Their protein powders are free from hormones, GMOs, and pesticides, with every single batch third-party tested for over 200 contaminants. For protein you can trust, save 20% at puori.com/mattwalker.Another of this week's sponsors, AG1, is one that Matt relies upon for his foundational nutrition. Their new science-backed Next Gen formula features upgraded probiotics, vitamins, and minerals. Start your subscription today to get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 and 5 free travel packs with your first order at drinkag1.com/mattwalker.As always, if you have thoughts or feedback you'd like to share, please reach out to Matt:Matt: Instagram @drmattwalker, X @sleepdiplomat, YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepdiplomat

In this episode, Brad Onishi sits down with Rev. Alba Onofrio, the Executive Director of Soulforce and author of Spiritual Violence: Religious Phenomena That Defile the Faith. Rev. Alba brings nearly two decades of global activism across four continents to a critical conversation about the exact mechanisms religious systems use to inflict deep psychological and physical harm. Moving past vague concepts of religious trauma, she provides a clear framework that categorizes spiritual harm along a spectrum—ranging from everyday theological microaggressions to full-scale "spiritual terrorism." By defining spiritual terrorism as a sustained, systemic deployment of fear designed to subjugate entire communities, Rev. Alba exposes how weaponized theology acts as an active tool of control rather than an accidental byproduct of faith. The discussion dives into how traditional religious imagery—such as framing God exclusively as a punishing "Father," "King," or "Judge"—subtly normalizes abusive and hierarchical dynamics in families, intimate relationships, and broader civic life. Rev. Alba and Brad unpack how white Christian supremacy shapes what the American context recognizes as violence, using the deployment of Romans 13 during the separation of immigrant families at the U.S. border as a chilling case study in theological terrorism. Crucially, the episode addresses Christianity's historical condemnation of "the flesh," explaining how policing the body strips individuals of their bodily autonomy and self-trust. Ultimately, Rev. Alba shares why she fiercely maintains her faith, arguing that naming these systemic abuses is not a rejection of spirituality, but the vital first step toward true healing, resistance, and collective liberation. Subscribe to our free newsletter: ⁠https://swaj.substack.com/⁠ Order American Caesar by Brad Onishi: ⁠https://static.macmillan.com/static/essentials/american-caesar-9781250427922/⁠ Donate to SWAJ: https://axismundi.supercast.com/donations/new Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

(2) Bob Zimmerman details the December 21, 1968, launch and the historic trans-lunar injection that sent humans toward another planet for the first time. Zimmerman describes the Saturn 5 ride as surprisingly smooth compared to Gemini rockets, despite the primitive onboard computers that required manual data entry of long number strings. He shares Jim Lovell's perspective of the Earth shrinking until the entire Atlantic could be covered by a thumb. Crucially, the discussion reveals that while the Space Race remained competitive, NASA was unaware that Soviet Zond failures had secretly forced the cancellation of their own manned mission.1939