Podcasts about Crux

NWSL Matchweek 13 is officially here, and it started with an absolute blockbuster Wednesday night slate. We review the clash as Gotham FC takes on the Washington Spirit at Citi Field. Plus, the founder and CEO of Crux Football, Bex Smith, joins the show! 00:00 - Attacking Third 03:32 - Gotham Classic recap 12:33 - European Transfer news - London City Lioness continue to sign players 17:27 - Other big European transfer news 20:57 - USWNT vs Spain lookahead 28:10 - Bex Smith Crux Football 51:00 - NWSL Preview - Kansas City Current vs San Diego Wave 53:51 - Lindsey Heaps could make debut for Denver Summit vs Portland Thorns 58:33 - Around the GroundsWatch USWNT and NWSL games on P+" with a link to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.paramountplus.com/home/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Attacking Third is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.Follow the Attacking Third team on Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@AttackingThird⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LisaCarlin32⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@SandHerrera_⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@Darian_Jenks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@CCupo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Visit the Attacking Third YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@wgolazo You can listen to Attacking Third on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Attacking Third podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Attacking Third podcast."For more soccer coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/

Mike Doran, senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute, returns to School of War to examine why the war with Iran continues despite devastating military setbacks for Tehran. Is President Trump's Iran strategy truly different from President Obama's, or are the similarities overstated? What does the fight over the Strait of Hormuz reveal about the limits of American power? And what does this war tell us about the future of U.S. strategy in the Middle East—and its broader competition with China? 01:22 - Recap of the Iran War 06:03 - Iran's Leverage 09:05 - MoU Misunderstandings 12:28 - The Crux of the MoU Dispute 15:42 - The Nuclear Status Quo 17:58 - Iran's Degradation Since October 7 21:13 - The Democrats' View 22:02 - The Right's View 23:25 - Trump's "Obama-Style" Rhetoric 28:10 - Should America Reimpose the Blockade? 28:53 - The Drone and Ballistic Missile Problem 31:10 - Drone Warfare Has Changed Everything 32:01 - The Vulnerability of America's Gulf Allies 37:21 - Is the MoU Still in Effect? 39:34 - Why Nobody Is Buying Iranian Oil 46:32 - China and the Bigger Picture Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find more at The Free Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Interview with Darren Bowden, CEO of Metals Exploration PLCOur previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/metals-exploration-lsemtl-doubling-gold-output-as-build-on-track-on-budget-9180Recording date: 8th July 2026Metals Exploration (LSE:MTL) presents a self-funded gold development story entering its most consequential phase, with a newly acquired copper optionality layered on top. The company's flagship growth asset, La India in Nicaragua, is roughly 50% built and remains on schedule for first gold production in December 2026. CEO Darren Bowden confirmed that a previously flagged risk, the power transmission to the construction site, has now been substantially resolved through a revised delivery arrangement with the Nicaraguan government, under which the state handles design and the company handles construction.Construction progress is tangible: front-end processing infrastructure is complete, the CIL tanks are half-erected, and both mills are currently being installed. Some equipment deliveries such as an elution circuit from Australia and high-voltage cabling have slipped by a few weeks, but management maintains that the December 2026 target is intact, aided by a stockpiling strategy designed to bank four to five months of processing feed ahead of commissioning.The build is being funded entirely from Runruno's operating cashflow. The Philippines-based mine delivered record FY2025 results - $208.4 million in revenue and $115.3 million in free cashflow - leaving the company debt-free. FY2026 Runruno guidance of 40,000-48,000oz represents a step down from FY2025's 65,287oz, reflecting the mine's advancing age rather than any operational issue, as La India is designed to take over as the group's primary cashflow generator from late 2026.La India's underlying economics remain strong: a pre-tax NPV6 of $882 million at $2,500/oz gold (rising to $1,378 million at $4,000/oz), targeting 145,000oz of annual production over a mine life of 12-plus years, at an initial capital intensity of $1,138/oz - the lowest among the development-stage peer group Crux tracks for comparison.Layered on top of this near-term gold catalyst is a newly signed set of agreements over the Batong Buhay copper-gold porphyry project in the Philippines, announced 15 June 2026. The 440-hectare licence hosts two historically drill-tested porphyry systems and a high-sulphidation gold vein system, with a historical (non-JORC) resource at the Dickson porphyry of 86.9 million tonnes at 0.60% copper and 0.25 g/t gold. Crucially, the licence sits with the state-owned Philippine Mining Development Corporation, which satisfies local ownership requirements automatically and gives the project government backing that makes it a very different prospect. Initial exploration is underway, with a drill programme targeted for H2 2026.For investors, the near-term case rests on execution through La India's remaining construction and commissioning phases - watch particularly for confirmation of the final capital figure, which has moved slightly across recent company materials - alongside early drill results from Batong Buhay and the company's existing Abra and Cacao exploration targets, both expected in H2 2026.View Metals Exploration's company profile: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/metals-exploration-plcSign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com

Click HERE to donate to Sober Shares via PayPal.Website: www.sobershares.comEmail: mike@SoberShares.comThis episode delves into the philosophy of life, exploring how we can overcome self-centeredness and navigate the challenges of surviving a child's suicide. We talk about ways to connect with a Higher Power and address charter defects like pride and fear. Finally, we emphasize the importance of celebrating life and finding joy in sobriety.

Guests: Barron Bell & Daniel HancockOrganization: Crux ComixGraphic Novels: "DOMINION: Fall of the House of Saul, Volumes 1 & 2" + "Radio Free Amerika: Welcome to the Third World"Website: cruxcomix.com

In this compelling episode of the Tall Boy Radio podcast, host Beans sits down for an intimate, high-stakes conversation with Niles Gooding, a former DEA Special Agent and the voice behind the Reasons We Serve podcast.This isn't just a recap of "war stories"; it's a deep dive into the psychological and emotional landscape of a life spent on the front lines of the war on drugs.Niles opens up about his personal path to the DEA, detailing the drive that leads a person to pursue one of the most dangerous federal law enforcement roles in the world. He and Beans discuss:The Transition: The mental shift required to go from civilian life to the rigorous world of federal investigations.The Weight of the Badge: What it feels like to finally step into the field with the authority—and the target—that comes with being a DEA agent.One of the highlights of the episode is Niles's candid reflection on the "grey areas" of the job. He provides a fascinating look at:The Informant Dynamic: The delicate, often transactional, and sometimes volatile relationships between agents and the sources they rely on to dismantle cartels.Undercover Realities: The toll of maintaining a dual identity. Niles shares what it's like to operate in environments where one slip-up can be fatal, and the psychological "mask" agents must wear to survive.The conversation takes a poignant turn as Niles and Beans explore the "crux" of why he served. They move beyond the adrenaline of the bust to discuss:The Toll on the Beat: How years of service affect the average officer or agent, from the "compassion fatigue" to the physical and mental wear and tear.Universal Themes: Niles discusses his own podcast, Reasons We Serve, and the common threads he has discovered among his guests. Whether they are military veterans or first responders, the themes of sacrifice, identity loss, and the search for purpose after the uniform are universal.The Journey: From Aspirant to AgentLife in the Shadows: Informants and Undercover WorkThe Human Cost: The "Crux" of ServiceThis episode of Tall Boy Radio is a must-listen for anyone interested in the true reality of law enforcement, the intricacies of undercover work, and the enduring human spirit that drives people to serve despite the cost.Find The Reasons We Serve on YouTube(111) Reasons We Serve - YouTubeFind Reasons We Serve on SpotifyReasons We Serve: Police Careers & Experience | Podcast on SpotifyEpisode 100 of Reasons we serveMedal of Honor Nominee Navy SEAL RJ Thomas | Vietnam War Hero & Navy Cross Recipient | Ep. 100 - Reasons We Serve: Police Careers & Experience | Podcast on Spotifytallboyradio,com

Former New Zealand captain Bex Smith spent much of her football career playing in Europe and came away convinced that the structures underpinning the women's game were holding it back. Now, as the founder and chief executive of the Crux Football multi-club group, the former Fifa executive is implementing an ownership model built on carving women's teams out of the men's structure to run them as standalone businesses. In this episode of the SportsPro Podcast, Smith joins Head of Editorial Sam Carp to discuss the launch of Crux, the criteria shaping acquisitions of clubs like Montpellier and FC Rosengård,and where she sees the biggest opportunities for revenue growth. Recorded at SportsPro London in April, the conversation also explores the growing role of MCOs in women's football, how Fifa and Uefa could incentivise more investment in the game and Crux's ambition to scale to five teams. 

It's the June Q&A on Open Book, and you came at me with everything this month: aliens, whether there's a reckoning coming when Trump's term ends, and the honest reason it took me so long to break from him. I'm dodging none of it, plus I'm handing you a summer's worth of book recommendations. Keep the questions coming in the comments.

How do you write about the most painful experiences of your life without being overwhelmed by them? How can timed writing and a braided story help you untangle your hardest stories? With Nicole Walker. In the intro, Self-Publishing Pop Up Books [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; New in KU [BookBub]; The solar sail theory of indie publishing [ProductiveIndieFictionWriter]; Bones of the Deep; Selfie Awards Shortlist 2026. This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Nicole Walker is a nonfiction author, essayist, poet, and editor, as well as a creative writing teacher. Her latest book is Writing the Hard Stuff: Turning Difficult Subjects into Meaningful Prose. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why writing helps us understand “the puzzles of the universe” — and when to trust that intuition The braided essay: alternating between trauma and an everyday obsession to unlock the hard stuff How two-minute timed writing lets you go deep and then safely step back Rooting pain in the body, using the senses, scene, and dialogue instead of words like “trauma” Truth in memoir, big T versus little t, and the emerging genre of speculative nonfiction What actually sells books: pairing up on book tour and getting readers back out into the world You can find Nicole and NikWalk.com. Transcript of the interview with Nicole Walker Jo: Nicole Walker is a nonfiction author, essayist, poet, and editor, as well as a creative writing teacher. Her latest book is Writing the Hard Stuff: Turning Difficult Subjects into Meaningful Prose. So welcome to the show, Nicole. Nicole: Hi, Joanna. It's so nice to be here. Jo: I've lots to talk about, but first up— Tell us a bit more about you and your journey into writing and publishing. Nicole: I was always a writer. As all writers say, I've been writing since I was five. I kept little journals and things like that, and I was on the high school literary magazine. I was an English major in college, but that was always tempered with some serious commitment to the sciences, to English literature, to German, to Spanish. I had a wide variety of interests, but there was always something that tugged at me about writing that made me feel like, this is where I feel most at home. This is the way I like to understand the puzzles of the universe. This is how I make sense of the world—through writing. So even though I got my BA in English at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, I stuck around Portland for a few years because I loved it. I worked for various non-profits, and that was great. At some point I said, “I really want to take this seriously.” So I went ahead and applied to graduate school, and ended up in the University of Utah's PhD programme, where I stayed for eight very lovely years. I always recommend to my own students: never graduate. Stay in graduate school forever, because it's such a beautiful place where people support your writing. You have professors who support it, but more importantly, you have your cohort. To this day, I have so many great friends. You make a lot of friends if you stick around for eight years. That sort of community-building is, I think, the other part of why I became a writer. Writing by myself is obviously a lonely business, and there's a lot of internal struggle that happens with that. I have found a literary community, both at the University of Utah and then growing from there, serving as president of the NonfictioNOW Conference, teaching my own graduate students, serving as the series editor for Crux, the imprint at the University of Georgia Press. I feel like my world has expanded because of my writing. So that's been a true gift. Jo: Oh, I love that. I love that you said you understand the puzzles of the universe through writing, and that this tugged at you. Could talk about that a bit more? Because a lot of listeners, I think, sometimes mistrust that feeling. They think, “Oh, maybe I shouldn't necessarily lean into that intuition.” It feels like you leaned very strongly into an intuition that this was the way. Nicole: Yes, and this book in particular, Writing the Hard Stuff, takes that to heart. I think about writing the hard stuff as writing all kinds of tricky things—things that are really hard to communicate. The book begins revolving around personal trauma. Things that happened in my childhood, as well as difficult subjects that happen to us when we're growing up. It also includes things like environmental issues and political issues: things that are really hard to talk about, that are philosophically difficult to express, that can be controversial, and that you can put people off by talking about. One of the goals of the book—one of my own philosophies—is that by looking deeply into the knotted ball of string that is a kind of trauma or a kind of difficulty, and beginning to pull those strings out, that's where you start to not only make meaning out of what happened to you, or what this particular problem is, but those strings themselves become connections. I talk about Donna Haraway's book Staying with the Trouble. It's primarily about how we can overcome our political differences regarding climate change, and one of her examples is to change the way we think about narrative. In Western thought, we often think there's a beginning, a middle, and an end, and she brings up the Navajo game that we all know as cat's cradle. So if you think of that ball of knots—your trauma, your difficult subject—you start pulling out the strings, and then you start playing with it. With cat's cradle, you make one design with your hands, and then a friend pulls it around and turns it into another design. To me, that's how reading and writing work. We share, and we build on each other's ideas, but we're always connected by those strings. So if you have this difficult subject and you're shying away from it, you're losing, I think, some of the opportunity to make connections and to make sense of what that nest of string sitting in your stomach actually is. Jo: I love that metaphor. I think it's brilliant. I've never heard it described that way, and I think it's fantastic. What's interesting is that some people don't have a mind's eye—I know several listeners who don't. So while in my mind I'm picturing the ball of string and then the cat's cradle, some people won't be able to do that, which is also fascinating in terms of how people's brains work. In terms of how you'd recommend people think about it: this ball of string that we want to turn into a design like a cat's cradle is a total mess. So where do we even start? How do we know where to start pulling on the threads? Because it might just feel like it's out of control. Nicole: Oh, I deeply appreciate both the idea that some people don't have that mind's eye, or just think differently. We all have different ways of imagining what we call our trauma, this nest of problems, this ball of string. Of course a metaphor does oversimplify in some ways. I say, “Well, you just take one of the ends of the string and start pulling.” But practically, what does that really mean to do? There are a couple of things I suggest in the book and offer at workshops. One is an exercise I call writing the braided essay. I ask the writer to sit down and think about a scene that was difficult in their life—something that had a lot of tension, that they're really still struggling with, that they don't love thinking about. I'm going to ask them to go there for just a couple of minutes. Then there's the other side of the braided essay: I ask them to think about something completely different, completely off-topic. Perhaps a walk they took in the aspen grove, or what they were making for dinner last night, or perhaps they're deeply invested in the networks of the blood in the human body—anything they're fascinated and obsessed with. I say, “Okay, I want you to write about your difficult subject for two minutes, but then I'm going to give you a break, and you're going to pop over and talk about how you spent all day weeding your garden, and yet there are still weeds.” Then I'm going to ask people to go back and talk about their difficult subject, and then go back and talk about their obsession with weeds. They write about each of these things for two minutes. What happens—which I think is a pretty compelling experiment, from my point of view and from theirs—is that they write back and forth, and they're able to take a break from the hard thing. They're also tempted to go back to it once they've had that break in their research. The other thing that happens—and, you know, every book in nonfiction has to have a colon, so of course it's called Writing the Hard Stuff: Turning Difficult Subjects into Meaningful Prose—is that by going back and forth, you'll see the connections these writers make. They make connections with word choice, with verbs, with colours and different kinds of imagery. They start to make meaning between those two ideas. What happens to the writer then—and to me, when I'm doing it—is that I now have something that is constructed. So it's not just this knot in my stomach. It's not just my interest in research. Now I've put these things together, and then I get to play. We get to the cat's cradle part of the metaphor, where I really start thinking about craft issues. Why did I happen to bring these two ideas together? What might they have in common? What does it mean that I'm telling the story of my parents' divorce and my personal trauma, and in the research part I'm talking about weeds? Well, maybe I felt in the weeds. You come up with some sort of overarching understanding of why you chose that research story, and it lets you go deeper into that personal trauma, now with some of the techniques of craft, which I think help shield you from some of the trauma and pain of that original hard story. Jo: Again, I really love that idea. Do you also think the timed writing actually helps people go deep and then withdraw a bit, which psychologically may help them write about these difficult subjects? People are like, “I need to sit down for two hours and write about this deeply traumatic thing,” which of course feels like it's going to be too hard. So perhaps that two-minute process actually releases people from that. Nicole: Oh, absolutely. What a great way to think about it. It is prohibitive to sit down and think, “Okay, I'm going to go into the worst thing that ever happened to me and sit with it for two hours.” Going back and forth, you create energy and tension. But also, nobody wants to sit with something by themselves for two hours. If you think of research as your companion—”I'm coming in there with you, buddy”—you have something to rely on, this other side of the story, and it gives you that space. The timed writing, the two minutes, two minutes, two minutes, also reminds you that you don't have to write for two hours straight any day. I have a goal where I write 500 words a day, which is mostly true, unless I'm really in the weeds. We'll use two metaphors today: we'll use string, and now we'll be using weeds. But when I'm really in the weeds teaching, or going around the country talking about books, I really do write 500 words a day. I often try not to write too much more, because sometimes it loses freshness, and it can be overwhelming. So I really appreciate you saying that having that timed writing is important, but also that having that balance of deep emotional investigation with this more cerebral, informational crutch can really help you get into the subject and go deeper. Jo: Yes, and perhaps it anchors the writing in something concrete. Because with memoir particularly—having also written one—it can be too easy to lean on big words like “pain” or “trauma,” but that's actually meaningless in a book. So why is it so important to be specific and concrete in our writing in order to convey these bigger topics? Nicole: I think we know our own trauma. We know how it feels in our bodies, and we've been living with it for a long time. So it's pretty hard to communicate it to others. Why does it matter to other people? Of course it matters to you, but how are you going to convey the breadth of that trouble with words that aren't rooted in the physical world? The nice thing about rooting things in the physical world is that every one of us has a body. We have different bodies, but we share that in common. So it's the old trope of using your senses first. What did it feel like? If you can't think of what part of your body it particularly hurts in, you have the availability of metaphor to describe how that might have felt. You have the opportunity to create scene. This is particularly difficult for memoir writers, I think, because we imagine it's the fiction folks who have to use dialogue, who have to have a setting, who have to put their bodies in a place. Thatt's one of my mantras when I teach: we need to be able to see where you are. We need to see what is physically happening, how the interactions work. Dialogue, I think, is one of the best ways to literally get your body on the page—and to get your other characters, or subjects, on the page—because to speak, you have to have a body. Once you start having dialogue, you can picture the way the speaker's face moves, the way they cross their legs. You can even picture the colour of the paint behind them, or the kind of chair they're sitting in. So dialogue is one of the first ways you can say, “All right, I must have a scene here.” I can't go on just telling people, “It was so traumatic. I suffered so much. It was terrible. I felt so much pain.” You can say that sometimes, that's totally fair, but you have to pair it with that physical, concrete imagery, so other people can begin to understand what it felt like for you in your body, so they can feel it in their body. Jo: Interesting that you bring up dialogue because one of the issues with memoir is—I've had people compare it to truth with a small “t” and truth with a big “T.” So you're telling some kind of big truth about your life. If you're writing dialogue about something that actually happened to you, in memory, it's very unlikely that it actually happened in that way, so it's not necessarily small-“t” true. So on a practical note, what are your thoughts and tips on truth. How do we tell our own story even if others don't see it that way? Nicole: This is a subject I'm deeply invested in right now. When I first started teaching creative nonfiction, it was at the height of the John D'Agata and David Shields questions. What is truth? Big T, little t? What am I obligated to do as a creative nonfiction writer? I had a great friend, Angie Truong, who came to teach one of my classes, and she said, “Nonfiction is a pretty big spectrum. You have journalism on one end, and then you have the lyric essay on the other end.” You imagine the lyric essay is full of metaphors and things like that, so you can approach truth. You're saying, “This is what it felt like. This is what it seemed like.” Check out my newest favourite thing. It's called speculative nonfiction, and I use a little bit of this in my book How to Plant a Billion Trees, which Writing the Hard Stuff is somewhat based on. I wrote them in tandem, which was a very strange and interesting and fun thing to do. But in How to Plant a Billion Trees I use this thing called speculative nonfiction, which goes even further along the spectrum, past the lyric essay, to this opportunity to use language like “perhaps,” “maybe,” “I imagined.” So I have sections in my book where I can't remember the dialogue exactly, but I know that the dialogue in some sense matters—that what might have been said will do much more to convey what was happening than my exposition over the matter. By using those turns of phrase, you're alerting your reader: “Dear reader, this definitely is not exactly what happened, but this is how I recall it.” Then you're being not only honest to the story and honest to your reader, but you're also conveying the feeling and the mood of the event—that other kind of truth that memoir is really trying to get at. It was like this for me, which is why I think this way now. It's a fledgling genre. I just read a book by Laraine Herring called A Constellation of Ghosts: A Speculative Memoir with Ravens. It's brilliant. It's an amazing book that pairs her actual colonoscopy and discovery of colon cancer with the story of her dad, who has passed already and comes back as a raven and helps her through it. So you're pulling on some of the tools of fiction, which creative nonfiction already has been doing. But it does so in this bright and, I feel, incredibly ethical way. You're alerting your reader, “My dad is not really a raven.” But you're also saying, “Oh my gosh, I sensed he was with me. I sensed every time a raven approached that I had somebody's hand on my shoulder.” That, to me, has been a lot of fun—a much more imaginative way of creating some of those scenes than doing something like, “Well, I don't remember the dialogue.” Or, even worse—and we know people have been unethical in their approach—recreating the dialogue as if they'd had a tape recorder with them when they were 17 years old. Jo: Mm. Nicole: So I offer that as an option to your listeners, as something to experiment with. Allow yourself to have that imaginative opportunity to show the reader what it might have been like. Jo: I love that. It's interesting, you talk there about the spectrum of nonfiction, which is ridiculously big, as is fiction. Obviously these are very big. But I wonder if we do get hemmed in by genre. I love the idea of a speculative memoir. I'm going to have to go read that book because I can't even imagine what that really means. I feel hemmed in by my expectations of a memoir. But then, from a business and marketing perspective—because we're all trying to sell our books— Do we risk not meeting the expectations of a reader of a genre that way? Nicole: Right. One of the good and bad things about my literary career is that I've spanned a lot of genres. My PhD is actually in poetry. Nobody expects the full truth from poetry. One of my poetry professors once said she wrote this really sad poem about her father's death, and the audience was moved, and then her real father stood up and said, “Good job, daughter.” And someone in the audience was just shocked: “You just read a poem about your dead dad, and here he is!” We have absolute expectations of genre, and expectations of truth, in everything we read. If you label it fiction, you're kind of off the hook—even though, of course, fiction uses so many elements of nonfiction: so much research, so much information, so much personal memory to create those fantastic landscapes. So when I think about how one sells one's memoir, I do think you also have to acknowledge what you expect your audience to be. With Laraine Herring's A Constellation of Ghosts, by putting “colon, a speculative memoir,” you're alerting your reader to that possibility. And because it's a pretty far-out way of thinking right now, it probably does curtail some of the sales. On the other hand, think of memoirs that are written for celebrities, and how many of them are ghostwritten—or written with other people, where the ghostwriter's not even part of the thing—but it comes across as the most legit of all memoirs, because it's a celebrity and we know them. We associate their lives with their story, and their story must therefore be true. So I think, with all levels of creative nonfiction, it's incumbent upon the writer to suggest right off the bat what kind of nonfiction they're reading. Are they reading journalism? Are they reading lyric essays? Are they reading speculative nonfiction? I think a lot, too—as an editor for a literary series for nonfiction books—about what I look for in memoir. It's something that takes the personal story and connects it into the larger conversation. Even if the larger conversation is directly about what the main subject is about, to me it's still about the crux of the matter. Why does your story make an impact on the world in this bigger way? How do you let the world inform your story? How does your past and your trauma, or your difficulties, connect to a larger world? Jo: Mm. Nicole: To me, that's something some memoirs are capable of doing. Some memoirs are truly invested only in that personal story, which I think is totally legitimate too, because I love learning how people think. I love understanding. This is just how my brain works. But in terms of sales? I don't know. Again, as the series editor and as the seller of my own books, I think you can't determine it in advance. So you should probably write what you want to write, what feels right to you, using as many craft techniques as you can hone. But the market, to me, feels very non-negotiable. You never know exactly how things are going to turn out. So I deeply believe: write the best, most well-crafted book you can, and I do think your readers will find you. Jo: We'll come back to marketing in a minute, but just returning to your own writing practice. I've got your book page up in front of me, and you've written all kinds of things: your essays, your memoirs, some fiction, and some poetry, as you mentioned. So I wondered: when you're researching something, or you've got a feeling about wanting to write, how do you choose the type of book you turn it into—or a poem, or an essay? Or do you pitch it as some kind of external work, or turn it into a workshop? How do you turn an idea into what it will eventually be? Nicole: I love that question because it's somewhat of a mystery to me, but I think I'm getting close to understanding. It really is in those first few words, that first sentence, that I think, “Okay, I know which direction this is going.” For example, the other day I woke up in the morning and thought, “All right, I'm writing this poem about how man took over for God, and that's how the planet ended up being such a mess.” So I started writing it, and it was pretty lyrical at the beginning. But then I started making full sentences, and explaining things a little bit more, and I thought, “Okay, this is not a poem. It's going to be an essay.” When I start writing fiction, I pull on something a little further, a little more distant from my experience, and then I pull it back into something more character-driven. For example, in a novel I'm writing, I begin with this whole story about McDonald's and ravens, and then I pull it back into the character. If I were to diagram the sentences between a poem, the nonfiction, and the fiction, I think I'd see fundamental differences between the three. Jo: Do you work on multiple projects at the same time, or once you commit to something, is that what you finish? Personally, I have lots of little things happening, and then a moment comes and I commit to a book, and I won't stop until I've finished that book—the rest will have to wait. It's that decision moment. How does it work for you? Nicole: My process is pretty similar to yours. I have a number of ongoing projects, percolating here and there. Some days I'll think, “All right, today feels like a fiction day.” But for the most part, you're absolutely right. There's a bunch of little things I'm writing, or things I'm dabbling in, but once there's a critical mass—which I'd say is around 20,000 words or something—I'm all in, and I've got to focus on this project. Even though I think I can do whatever multitasking, really it's important to try to maintain some sort of through-line in whatever project I'm working on. If I do that with too many projects, I lose that through-line. I also worry sometimes that the projects start to sound too similar. So say I'm writing a nonfiction collection and a novel—if I go back and forth every other day, those sentence differences I'm talking about might start to collapse, and they become too similar. Then what the heck would I be writing? I don't even know. Jo: It's interesting because you span academic publishing and, I guess, trade publishing—whatever you want to call it—where more non-academics read books. I'm just finishing up a master's myself at the moment, and writing academic stuff is completely different to writing my other books. So when you're deciding on these books, are you aiming for a specific publication market—as in, you want an academic publisher, or you want a trade publisher? How do you think about publishing in the process? Nicole: As much as I once really wanted to find some ground as a scholarly and academic writer—and I really do love to write reviews of other people's books, and Writing the Hard Stuff is a textbook that relies tremendously on so many other people's books. That is really important to me because that goes back to how one both creates and thanks one's community for creating the literary world we live in—I feel like there's a smaller audience for that sort of academic writing. But it's something we should do. As generous as you are here, for example, reaching out to other people about other people's books is probably the kindest thing you can do. So I hope to continue to take time to do that and make it part of my repertoire. It's not as fun, I'd say, as the imaginative elements of writing creative nonfiction, or fiction, or poetry. That's when I really love to groove and get into that mode of, “Oh, the words are coming. Oh, I never thought about it that way.” With academic writing, I feel I sometimes write in a slightly more stilted voice. My friend Ander Monson, who teaches at the University of Arizona, has done a really great job of writing—whether it's his personal essays or his critical essays—where he maintains the same voice. He doesn't move into that super-formal academic speak. He'll literally say things like, “You know,” or, “That's a banger of a sentence,” in the middle of an academic essay, and I really admire him for that. I feel like maybe if academic writing were more receptive to people writing in their unique voices, then maybe more people would read it. Jo: Yes. One of the pieces of feedback on one of my earlier essays in my master's year was around my sentence structure—that it would be far more appropriate in a novel than in an academic essay. I was saying to my husband, “I can't believe this, but I'm just going to have to change my style.” It's very interesting. We're almost out of time, and I also wanted to ask you: you have a recent blog post on how to try to get your forthcoming book attention in 4,231 simple steps, which made me laugh. We all find book marketing a challenge, so what have you found works best for you? I should tell the listeners—there are not 4,000 steps in your blog post. Although I think people would want them. Nicole: Exactly. I stopped at 72, but I can go on. That was sort of the pre-publishing process. There have been so many great things that have happened, but a lot of them have been driven by me. I have a publicist, but he works on a lot of other books, and I have a marketing person at Bloomsbury. They have to juggle a lot. The only person who is really, really, really committed to your book is you. So I've written companion essays. I haven't had any luck publishing them, which hasn't been true in the past, so I wonder what's going on there. I'll write something for the Huffington Post or Newsweek that's tangentially related to my book. I also might just write too much in essay voice instead of popular-magazine voice. As we were just talking about, academic voice versus novelistic voice. So that might be part of the problem too. Reaching out to people who might invite me onto podcasts has been really rewarding, and very, very kind. I think the best thing I did was to put myself on book tour and to pair myself with someone in that community. I've gone on book tour before by myself, and there have been occasions where there were two to three people in the audience, which can be really disheartening. The problem wasn't so much the bookstore's fault or my book's fault—it's just that if you go to a bookstore in a town where nobody knows you, they're not going to put a lot of effort into making the date happen, unless you're super famous. So what I did was find somebody in a community—a friend of mine—who would go with me and be part of the conversation. Even if their book was a couple of years old, we'd still go and have a conversation about each of our books. This has worked tremendously well. People will come to see their friend, and then they'll be introduced to you, and they'll ask you questions and buy your book. You create new connections and new friends thanks to that friend and that place. So that's my number one recommendation for how to get the word out in the world. I also did all the social media stuff. It doesn't work as well as it used to. It's kind of a strange time. But because of my suggestion about going to bookstores with people you know… I think we're coming out of our COVID time, where we got so used to doing everything on our computers and just staying in our electronic universe. People are hungry to get out. So one thing I want to do, and haven't done yet, is throw a big party. Go to weird places where you don't even do readings—you just offer people snacks and a glass of wine and say, “Hey, here's a book if you want to buy it.” To have these more informal gatherings that bring people together because I do think there's a hankering for people to get out into the world again. Jo: And just on that—you've got these two books coming at the same time: How to Plant a Billion Trees, which is the memoir, and Writing the Hard Stuff, the how-to book for writers. When you do these events, are you choosing one or the other depending on the audience? Or are you selling both at the same time? Because they're obviously very different. Nicole: Yes, I'm definitely selling both at the same time. Although I probably push How to Plant a Billion Trees first, because most of the people I'm pairing with are also writers of nonfiction or memoir. The other thing is, I can talk about How to Plant a Billion Trees, and if people have a really deep question about, “Well, how did you write this section?” I can say, “Well, if you refer to this book, Writing the Hard Stuff, you'll see.” So it's an easier segue. I think people aren't used to going to book events for craft books. But in the interview world—where people are reviewing books or interviewing me—Writing the Hard Stuff has definitely been the primary book I've been approached to speak about because people really do want techniques. So it depends on the context as to which book gets the spotlight, but it's been really fun to be able to talk about both in tandem. I don't know if they're competing against each other or supporting each other. That's my hope, that people think, “Oh, I read this one book, I might as well read the other one.” But that's asking a lot of people, to buy two books, so I try not to overstate that hope. Jo: They are very different, and I love the idea of doing that. Absolutely. So where can people find you and your books online? Nicole: You can find me at my Substack, which is substack.nikwalk.com—N-I-K-W-A-L-K. Or my website, which is the same: nikwalk.com. I might just start going as Nik Walk in the world, so people can find me more easily. I also really love to support Bloomsbury. They have really good deals, especially on the audiobook for How to Plant a Billion Trees, and they also have good deals if you buy both books, you get free shipping. So Bloomsbury is probably the number one place to get the books, but of course they're also available on Bookshop.org and Amazon.com, and on Amazon in the UK as well. Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Nicole. That was great. Nicole: Oh, it was so fun to talk with you, Joanna. Thank you again so much for this opportunity.The post Writing The Hard Stuff: Turning Difficult Subjects Into Meaningful Prose With Nicole Walker first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Nicole Walker is the author of several books including Howto Plant a Billion Trees: A Memoir of Childhood Trauma and the Healing Power of Nature, Sustainability: A Love Story, and The After – Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet, along with many other noted titles. She has written several pieces for The New York Times and is a recognized author in several editions of Best American Essays. Sheedits the Crux, the literary nonfiction series at University of Georgia Press and teaches creative writing at Northern Arizona University where she serves as Writer-in-Residence for the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society.

Electric transmission development is notoriously difficult, and these days, NIMBYism gets the brunt of the blame. But as data center loads surge and electricity prices climb, there's a new roadblock –  the messy world of multi-state cost allocation. The Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link (MARL) — a planned 100-mile, $960 million transmission line stretching across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia — was approved by PJM in 2022 under standard rules that spread costs across the entire region. But that plan was made before ChatGPT took off and data center forecasts shot upwards.  Fast forward four years, and now state consumer advocates are asking why local ratepayers should foot the bill for an infrastructure project designed to feed data centers in northern Virginia. In this episode, Shayle sits down with Maeve Allsup, senior reporter at Latitude Media, to unpack her reporting on the project. They dive into how the rise of generative AI has disrupted traditional grid planning and explore why this challenge has proven to be such an impactful rate limiter for the AI boom. [Correction: In this episode, Shayle and Maeve refer to MARL as the Mid-Atlantic Reliability Line. The correct name is the Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link. We regret the error.] Shayle and Maeve discuss topics like: - How a project approved in 2022 hit a vastly different policy and regulatory landscape by the time it reached state dockets - Why data center growth breaks the historic assumption that regional transmission costs eventually "even out" between states - How the Ratepayer Protection Pledge — a voluntary commitment signed by tech hyperscalers at the White House — is being harnessed by state advocates as a cudgel to demand data centers pay for grid upgrades - Why the United States has gone from building thousands of miles of transmission a decade ago to just hundreds today - How the intersection of local opposition and confusion over utility tariffs is delaying grid buildouts Resources - Latitude Media: How the Ratepayer Protection Pledge became a transmission hurdle in PJM - Latitude Media: FERC to grid operators: Connect large loads to transmission faster - Catalyst: Looking for a turnaround in transmission - Catalyst: The rise of flexible data centers - Catalyst: AI scaling pathways: On grid, on edge, off grid, off planet - Open Circuit: Grid utilization vs expansion: The 100 GW debate - Open Circuit: A five-alarm fire for the grid? Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts. Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company's messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

Atlas receives an unexpected offer. Across town, Cedar connects with family despite growing tensions. Check out Monster of the Week: Mystic Marginalia from our sponsors over at Evil Hat Productions! For Transcripts, our Tip Jar, merch, and the official Discord Server: https://bloomandblight.com/ Theme Songs: "PRESS/LEAD" and "PRESS/LEAD (Jazz Lounge Vers.)" by Harper S.K. Songs featured courtesy Epidemic Sound: "Deep End (Instrumental)" by I'MIN, "Digital Love (Instrumental)" by I'MIN & SCENE, "Overdue (Instrumental)" by Sam Shore, "Fahrenheit (Instrumental)" by I'MIN, "When You POur Down on Me (Instrumental)" by I'MIN, "Better Place (Gribbe Remix) (Instrumental)" by spring gang, "Better Place (Instrumental)" by spring gang, "Samedi Matin" by El Flaco Collective, "Crux" by Harper S.K., and "More Than Right (Instrumental)" by Paisley Pink.

While many energy insiders remain focused on the staggering demand coming from AI and data centers, a much larger and far-reaching shift is happening. We are entering what Energy Impact Partners' head of research Andy Lubershane calls the "electric supercycle" — a series of interlocking technological flywheels that are accelerating the clean energy transition faster than many may realize. In this episode, Shayle sits down with Andy to map out the interconnected nature of the "electric stack.” They unpack how early investments in solar and EVs are scaling up technologies that are now feeding back into grid infrastructure, and look ahead to the massive electricity demands of the coming robotics and defense industry boom. They also consider the pressing question of the ultimate rate limiters for meeting this demand. Shayle and Andy discuss topics like: - The power grid supply crunch - Why electricity prices have tracked inflation so far, but may surge past it when equipment costs hit retail customer bills. - The four pillars of the electroindustrial tech stack: Solar PV, lithium-ion batteries, EVs, and wide-bandgap power electronics - How a "Robo-Butler" load profile compares to other household appliances - How the defense industry could catalyze climate tech, especially batteries - Why physical transmission corridors remain the top rate limiter for the energy transition - Andy Lubershane's Substack post, “Riding the Electric Supercycle” - Catalyst: Five big questions about the future of energy (with Andy Lubershane) - Catalyst: Surprising trends in global electricity generation - Catalyst: Live from Transition-AI 2026: Inside Google's massive AI capex - Catalyst: AI scaling pathways: On grid, on edge, off grid, off planet - Open Circuit: America's electricity rage is here - Open Circuit: Have we run out of big ideas to fix the grid? Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts. Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company's messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

After decades of decline, many church leaders believe that religious life is on the upswing as some younger Americans flock to Christianity — including Vice President JD Vance, whose new book on his Catholic conversion drops this week. But the fuller picture is more complicated. Coming up, we'll talk to religion reporters and a church leader about what may be driving this shift, and what its lasting impacts could be. Guests: Michael O'Loughlin, executive editor, National Catholic Reporter; O'Loughlin has covered the Catholic church for both the Boston Globe and Crux; author, "Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear" Lauren Jackson, deputy editorial director for newsletters and the host of “Believing," The New York Times Ryan Burge, professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center, Washington University; author, “Graphs about Religion” Danté Stewart, author, “Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle;” an ordained minister at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Augusta, Ga. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Specialized REALLY won, the new Crux, team tactics, no littering penalty in the XL350?, 32" wheels win, but under the wrong rider in the wrong race, how narrow-wide chainrings make mud WORSE, possible reasons why Ted King and Pete Stetnananana crashed out (so you don't fall into the same traps), and how the flashlight and voice memos feature in the Amazfit T-Rex3 Pro can CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

Hello Mythic Earth Community. Old Man Eric and Lord Mortis are happy to bring you episode 134. Today's episode is the first of a series in which we will dive deeper into named characters; their backgrounds, history and how they show up in the game. The boys also cover Mythicos and Mythic Earth news. We hope you enjoy this new addition to the Mythicast. As always do give us like on YouTube and your favorite Podcasting platform, and join our growing communities on FB, and Discord.https://discord.com/invite/KA7KZkD5Rhttps://www.facebook.com/share/g/1AZSVXYfG9/?mibextid=wwXIfrhttps://mythicearth.app/https://mythicearth.app/

In 2020, China exported about a million cars a year. Now, it's tracking somewhere around twelve million — surpassing the historic peaks of giants like Japan and Germany.  Yet this massive global shift feels nearly invisible in the U.S. A 100% tariff on Chinese vehicles, combined with strict rules keeping Chinese hardware and software off American roads, has effectively built a regulatory wall around the domestic market. But in virtually every other corner of the globe, Chinese automakers are dramatically reshaping markets — from Europe and Southeast Asia to Latin America and Canada. In this episode, Shayle sits down with Michael Dunne, the CEO of Dunne Insights and author of the upcoming book Car Wars. Shayle and Michael map out the chaotic dynamics of the global auto market and consider what's actually happening inside China's automotive powerhouse. And they explore the biggest question of all: can America permanently shield legacy automakers, or is it just delaying an inevitable wave? Shayle and Michael discuss topics including: - How China successfully applied its massive manufacturing capacity to the automobile industry. - The market forces governing China's massive car exports - Unpacking the two tiers of Chinese automakers: Legacy scale giants like BYD, Geely, and SAIC versus the "Teslas of China” like Xiaomi, Xpeng, Leapmotor, and Nio. - Why China's expansion is already forcing major European and Japanese automakers to plan for closures and layoffs. - How regulatory frameworks in China are accelerating the commercialization of autonomous driving far quicker than in the U.S. - Concerns over cybersecurity in Chinese automobiles - Driving with Dunne podcast - Catalyst: Repurposing EV batteries for grid storage - Catalyst: Demystifying the Chinese EV market - Catalyst: Has Humble Robotics cracked the code on autonomous trucking? - Open Circuit: The AI race is really an electro-industrial race, led by China - Latitude Media: Rivian and EnergyHub are teaming up on managed charging Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts. Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company's messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

Shopify performance specialist Izaac Barratt of Baseline Commerce joins Karl and Taylor for a deep dive into site speed optimization. The conversation covers the full spectrum from LCP and INP fundamentals to the real-world friction of app bloat, AI coding habits, and what actually moves the needle for conversion rates. A must-listen for any theme developer, app developer, or agency working with high-traffic Shopify stores.SponsorThe Support Heroes - https://www.thesupportheroes.com/?utm_source=liquid_weekly&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=sponsorshipsSubscribe to Liquid WeeklyDon't miss out on expert insights and tips—subscribe to Liquid Weekly for more content like this: https://liquidweekly.com/Find Izaac Barratt OnlineLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/izaac-barratt — where he posts performance tips, resources, and his ongoing series on the nine performance fix bucketsBaseline Commerce: baseline-commerce.com — Izaac's site speed optimization consultancyTimestamps01:23 – Intros; welcoming guest Izaac Barrett02:48 – Izaac's origin story: animation, Newgrounds, and e-commerce05:36 – What drew Izaac to performance optimization06:00 – First site speed project: 12 seconds to 2 seconds, conversion doubled10:00 – LCP fundamentals: above-the-fold prioritization and perception18:00 – Preloading, lazy loading, and how to get them wrong20:43 – Liquid's preload tag, sections_index, and reducing JavaScript dependency26:38 – Telling AI to prioritize HTML/Liquid and CSS over JavaScript31:01 – Async vs. defer vs. render-blocking scripts explained35:28 – Apps and performance: identifying problem apps, merchant conversations39:15 – Advice for app developers on loading strategy and user interaction cycles41:42 – INP (Interaction to Next Paint) explained: what it is and why it's hard to fix43:30 – Shopify/research report: 34ms of INP = 3.5% drop in CVR46:06 – How to debug INP: Chrome DevTools performance tab and CrUX data53:20 – Izaac's LinkedIn series: nine buckets of performance fixes56:17 – Dev Changelog1:02:44 – Picks of the WeekDev Changelog- Next-Generation Events — Developer Preview: https://shopify.dev/changelog- ⚠️ Expiring Offline Access Tokens Required for All Public Apps — January 1, 2027: https://shopify.dev/changelog- Shop Minis — March/April 2026 Update: https://shopify.dev/changelog- Customer Account UI — Feature Preview: https://shopify.dev/changelog- App Home as a UI Extension: https://shopify.dev/changelog- llms.txt / agents.md in Shopify Themes: https://shopify.dev/changelogPicks of the WeekKarl:The Dark Journey: The Tragedy of the Donner Party by Allan Eckert – A true history of the ill-fated 1846 wagon party, written by one of Karl's favorite frontier authors; dark but compelling, especially for history enthusiasts. https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Journey-Allan-W-Eckert/dp/1931672539Izaac: Page Speed Impact Estimator fastersite.ai – A tool for estimating the performance gains of removing specific scripts and assets before actually doing the work; great for benchmarking and scoping conversations with clients.Taylor:The Will of the Many by James Islington – A sci-fi novel recommended by Taylor's brother (a bookseller); follows a teenager hiding his royal lineage in a Roman Empire-style society that literally harvests people's will to gain power. Book two also out. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58416951-the-will-of-the-many

David George is CEO & Founder at CRUX Workplace where he builds on his decades of experience in workplace design, facilities management, real estate management and strategy to help clients co-create high performing, flexible workplace designs that enable people to do their best work. Mike Petrusky asks David why he believes that workplace strategists must be involved from the outset to understand business processes and create effective briefs for architects and designers, while innovation is centered on enabling people to perform their best and feel joy and connection at work. Engaging employees early in the design process leads to higher acceptance and ownership of the change, and David says successful change management relies on three pillars: employee engagement, clear communication, and sponsorship from leaders within the core business. He suggests creating a steering committee including CRE, IT, HR, and FM to drive workplace projects and says organizations must move beyond traditional office designs conceived decades ago and embrace new ways of work aligned with how people work today. Tune in to hear Mike and David share practical advice and the inspiration you will need to be a Workplace Innovator in your organization! Connect with David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgeorge1/ Learn more about CRUX Workplace: https://www.crux-workplace.com/ Join the Workplace Evolutionaries community: https://we.ifma.org/ Watch the podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSkmmkVFvM4H3pwnlU2AuqynuRDpvnh4J Discover free resources and explore past interviews at: https://eptura.com/discover-more/podcasts/workplace-innovator/ Learn more about Eptura™: https://eptura.com/ Connect with Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepetrusky/  

Welcome to Episode 147 of the ShiftLess Podcast! This week, we're serving up a heavy dose of mental gymnastics, cycling industry conspiracy theories, and... dry-cured meats?Bradford gives us an update from the "cure room," but the real meat of the episode is Kevin's massive hot take on the sudden explosion of the 32-inch gravel bike hype. After the absolute dominance of the Specialized Crux at Unbound Gravel (taking 4 of the top 6 spots), are competitors like Scott and Trek pushing 32-inch prototypes as vaporware just to freeze Specialized's sales momentum? We break down the timeline, compare the 32" hype machine to the slow burn of the original 29er mountain bikes, and discuss whether the industry is actually innovating or just scrambling for survival.Plus, we talk Keegan Swenson's Unbound tactics, the upcoming Tour Divide, and why flat-bar drops might be the next frankenbike trend at Leadville.Disclaimer: We aren't industry insiders. This is just our opinion, our observations, and a lot of unapologetic bike nerdery.Join the Pack: Check out upcoming grassroots gravel & ultra-endurance events at Spinistry.netListen on the Go: Find ShiftLess on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your audio.#GravelCycling #32InchBike #SpecializedCrux #UnboundGravel #ShiftLessPodcast #CyclingIndustry #BikeTech #GravelRacing #MountainBiking #TourDivide #ScottBikes #KeeganSwenson #Bikepacking #CyclingPodcast #SpinistryShiftless Ep. 147: Salami in the Cure Room, Unbound Debrief, and the 32-Inch Gravel ConspiracyIn Episode 147 of Shiftless, the hosts open by disclaiming they're sharing opinions, then detour into Bradford's “cure room” and his salami projects (beef, Calabrian pork tenderloin, and ventricina-style), explaining drying to ~40% loss and vacuum-sealing to equalize moisture. They pivot to bicycles with an Unbound debrief and a debate over 32-inch wheel hype, noting only one appeared in the pro race while Robin won XL on a Scott 32-inch prototype. They argue the new Specialized Crux dominated results and discuss team dynamics, marketing, and concerns about Specialized dealer pricing. Kevin proposes a conspiracy that 32-inch hype was amplified to slow Crux momentum among early adopters, while Bradford contends big brands are quietly developing 32s and hype moves faster now. They also preview a delayed Tour Divide episode, discuss parts availability for 32s in ultra events, note tracking tools, and touch on Leadville's drop-bar ban.00:00 Rolling in HD00:23 Opinions Disclaimer01:22 Cure Room Salami02:26 Salami Tasting Notes04:52 Back to Bicycles05:57 Unbound 32 Inch Recap07:02 Team Orders Talk09:23 Specialized Dealer Drama10:50 Crux Dominates Unbound11:40 Tour Divide Plans12:46 Marketing and Tire Clearance16:24 32 Inch Hype Timing22:23 Vaporware Argument23:21 Boutique vs Big Brands26:50 Fads and Fueling Trends28:52 Who Drives the Hype30:11 Sea Otter Reality Check30:55 Will Big Brands Debut 32s34:30 Hype Cycle vs Reality38:25 Development Cycles Explained39:03 MTB Platform Confusion39:41 Scott 32 Prototype Strategy44:19 Hype Cycle vs Reality48:36 Tour Divide Practicalities53:25 Salsa Size Debate55:23 Bikepacking Bags and Fit57:03 AC Troubles and Costs01:02:00 Industry Survival and 32 Adoption01:09:01 Leadville Bars and Specialized01:12:48 Unbound Results and Rider Stories01:19:42 Tour Divide Lists and Tracking01:21:52 Wrap Up and Sign Off

Logan Jones-Wilkins is back from the mud in Kansas to break down a wild 26-mph crash, the dominant Specialized Crux 5 debut, and why gravel racing might never be the same. As we mentioned last week, Logan was in Emporia, Kansas covering Unbound 2026. Now he's back in the studio and Mike Levy and I get to talk about what he saw. Part of that is the new Specialized Crux, but before we get there, we start with a discussion of how Logan did in his own Unbound 100 race. It wasn't exactly a quiet day out. Logan details a wild situation that unfolded right in front of him, going from 26 mph to on the ground in an instant. Despite the crash, he still managed a 5-hour and 50-minute finish on the new Crux 5, and he finally shares the real details on what the bike is like to ride. From there, we get into the rest of the racing in Kansas, and that means the mud. This year, the Flint Hills delivered thick, sticky mud that forced massive sections of walking and led multiple pros to pee on their drivetrains just to keep moving. We also tackle the arrival of true team tactics. Specialized exerted absolute control over the front of the pack in the Men's 200, prompting the question: is this the natural evolution of the sport, or does it completely change the fabric of gravel racing? The Women's 200 was a slow build with constant anticipation, blowing up early and culminating with riders Sophia Gomez Villafañe and Geerike Schreurs texting mid-race to orchestrate attacks for the final sprint. Finally, we look at the giant prototype Scott 32-inch wheeled bikes that made their debut. What does that mean for the technology, and will you see it roll out on production models soon? Timestamps 00:00 – Intro & Logan's Unbound 100 10:03 – The Specialized Crux Deep Dive 21:55 – The Mud & Drivetrain Drama 27:00 – The Men's 200 & Team Tactics 42:05 – The Women's 200 46:38 – The 32-Inch Wheel Debate Resources Check out the Unbound Gravel hub for all the articles covered this week: https://velo.outsideonline.com/tag/unbound-gravel

While global electricity demand is unquestionably rising, we may nonetheless be underestimating the scale of necessary future generation. In this episode, Shayle speaks to Nic Fulghum, senior energy and climate data analyst at Ember. Nic is the co-author of Ember's annual Global Electricity Review. This year's installment, released in April, demonstrates that renewable sources – and solar in particular – are continuing to grow exponentially, even as those markets mature. In 2025, solar generation grew by a remarkable 30% year-over-year globally; its highest rate in eight years. At the same time, global fossil generation declined in 2025, driven by drops in coal generation in both China and India. But as solar surges, how quickly grid-connected batteries can step in to absorb peak demand remains to be seen. In their conversation, Shayle and Nic dive deep into the data behind global electricity generation in 2025 and consider the future of the grid. They explore a range of topics, including:  - Why Ember's report focuses on generation instead of capacity - How solar continues to maintain exponential growth rates - Why fossil generation has dropped in China and India - How battery storage is being used to shift midday solar peaks to shoulder hours - What the US' LNG supply glut means for its power grid trajectory Resources - Ember's Global Electricity Review 2026 - Catalyst: 2026 trends: Gas turbines, Texas' load queue, and China electrifies - Catalyst: More 2026 trends: Solar costs, oil oversupply, and the startup slump - Catalyst: Scaling America's domestic solar supply chain - Open Circuit: Clean energy didn't collapse in 2025. It adapted - Open Circuit: State of the transition: Oil shocks, power prices, and grid bottlenecks - Latitude Media: The Iran war doesn't give China an energy advantage. The US did - Latitude Media: Putting numbers on China's cleantech influence abroad Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts. Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company's messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

The Psychology Behind The Parsha Parshas B'Ha'alos'cha  (May 2026 - Sivan 5786)    The Crux of Serenity    Month of Sivan classes are sponsored by Rabbi Aharon & Becky Assaraf for the merit of a Refu'ah Sh'leima for Baruch Yehoshua Yisrael ben Sima.   This week's classes are also sponsored for the benefit of a Refu'ah Sh'leima for Perel Sasha bas Meril Rivka, Ya'akov ben Malka Mattel, Binyamin ben Lillian Lily, Rachamim Sasson Rafael ben Bracha Fruma Gittel, and all Cholei Yisrael.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 2, 2026 is: crux • KRUKS • noun Crux refers to the most important part of something (such as a problem, issue, or puzzle). It is often used in the phrase "the crux of." // The crux of the problem is that the project's budget is totally inadequate. See the entry > Examples: "The new trees number in the thousands. ... What will become of this nursery in the wild in the next hundred years, or thousand, is the crux of a scientific and policy dispute. Starkly different visions of how the grove will recover in the long run have implications on how forest managers should act today." — Doug Smith, The Los Angeles Times, 15 Mar. 2026 Did you know? Latin speakers used crux to refer literally to an instrument of torture, often a cross or stake, and figuratively to the torture and misery inflicted by means of such an instrument. When English speakers adopted crux in the early 18th century, they used it to mean "a puzzling or difficult problem." In the late 19th century, crux developed a more specific use referring to an essential point of a legal case that required resolution before the case as a whole could be resolved. Today, the verdict on crux is that it can be used to refer to any important part of a problem or argument, inside or outside of the courtroom.

Jiunn, Seth and John discuss their blind review experience with the Crux Passport Super Selection No. 2 https://developingpalates.com/reviews/cigar-reviews/team-cigar-review-crux-passport-super-selection-no-2/

Most of the bands (or their labels) in this episode have done something for Ukraine. Please buy music from Ukrainian artists and/or donate to your preferred Ukrainian Charity and/or to United 24 (https://u24.gov.ua). Слава Україні! Героям слава!Slava Ukrainai! Slava varoņiem!Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes! DJ Moose Played: Intro – 00:00Soft Riot – Pink Clouds Over Death – Crux – 00:30Randolph & Mortimer – Flesh Style feat. Andi (Donald Dust Remix) – The Penultimate Truth – 04:57SINE – 2 Die 4 – La Mordre – 10:13Denuit – tiens-moi, le monde tombe – tiens-moi, le monde tombe – 14:17Matte Blvck – Soulless – Soulless – 17:49Massive Ego – Broken Tomorrow – Symphony Of Flies – 21:03Peter Murphy – Swoon (Remix by Magic Wands) – – 24:34Cubicore – Dust On The Ground – Dust On The Ground – 29:54Cattac – Out Of Sight – Out Of Sight – 32:28Korolova, Rokston and Go_A – Vorozhyla (feat. Monokate) – Vorozhyla – 36:06Culture Kultür – Verbundenheit – Verbundenheit – 39:04VNV Nation – By Your Side – Construct – 43:03Angels and Agony – Changes – Changes – 47:43Combichrist – Desolation – Only Here For A Good Time – 51:25Blokkontroll – Odin Iz Teh – Blok 5 – 56:13 Micro with DJ Moose 58:55 The original unmodified image used for this episode by Liana S on Unsplash or Listen to The Gothic Moose – Episode 659– Mostly Bands Supporting Ukraine byDJ Moose on hearthis.at Here is the link to download this episode in MP3 Note: After about a year, episodes may no longer be available here or elsewhere. Shows are sometimes missing from Youtube due copyright restrictions. Use the handy built-in player:

Most of the bands (or their labels) in this episode have done something for Ukraine. Please buy music from Ukrainian artists and/or donate to your preferred Ukrainian Charity and/or to United 24 (https://u24.gov.ua). Слава Україні! Героям слава!Slava Ukrainai! Slava varoņiem!Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes! DJ Moose Played: Intro – 00:00Soft Riot – Pink Clouds Over Death – Crux – 00:30Randolph & Mortimer – Flesh Style feat. Andi (Donald Dust Remix) – The Penultimate Truth – 04:57SINE – 2 Die 4 – La Mordre – 10:13Denuit – tiens-moi, le monde tombe – tiens-moi, le monde tombe – 14:17Matte Blvck – Soulless – Soulless – 17:49Massive Ego – Broken Tomorrow – Symphony Of Flies – 21:03Peter Murphy – Swoon (Remix by Magic Wands) – – 24:34Cubicore – Dust On The Ground – Dust On The Ground – 29:54Cattac – Out Of Sight – Out Of Sight – 32:28Korolova, Rokston and Go_A – Vorozhyla (feat. Monokate) – Vorozhyla – 36:06Culture Kultür – Verbundenheit – Verbundenheit – 39:04VNV Nation – By Your Side – Construct – 43:03Angels and Agony – Changes – Changes – 47:43Combichrist – Desolation – Only Here For A Good Time – 51:25Blokkontroll – Odin Iz Teh – Blok 5 – 56:13 Micro with DJ Moose 58:55 The original unmodified image used for this episode by Liana S on Unsplash or Listen to The Gothic Moose – Episode 659– Mostly Bands Supporting Ukraine byDJ Moose on hearthis.at Here is the link to download this episode in MP3 Note: After about a year, episodes may no longer be available here or elsewhere. Shows are sometimes missing from Youtube due copyright restrictions. Use the handy built-in player:

Amidst the increasing urgency of powering data centers, a new solution has entered the mix: send them out to sea. In this episode, Shayle speaks to Garth Sheldon-Coulson, co-founder and CEO of Panthalassa. The company is building 85-meter steel "nodes" – taller than Big Ben – that it deploys into the deep ocean. These untethered, self-propelled nodes harness wave energy to power AI clusters, then beam their data back to land via satellite. The technology isn't without its fair share of logistic complications, but it nonetheless offers a pathway to powering the AI boom that's largely independent from grid or fuel constraints. Shayle and Garth cover topics including: - The physics and mechanics that power Panthalassa's nodes - The significance of building an autonomous fleet - The energy generation waiting to be tapped in the open ocean - The logistics and unit economics behind scaling Panthalassa's technology - Why deep-sea compute is well-suited for long-running workloads like inference and reinforcement learning - Catalyst: AI scaling pathways: On grid, on edge, off grid, off planet - Catalyst: How to build more hydropower - Latitude Media: Are Thiel-funded floating data centers enough to make wave energy pencil?  - Open Circuit: Grid utilization vs expansion: The 100 GW debate - Latitude Media: What geothermal can learn from offshore wind's demise Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com. Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts. Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company's messaging by visiting ⁠fischtankpr.com⁠.

Howdy geeks! It's Unbound race week, and with that, we've seen an expected amount of fresh new tech in the gravel space.This week, Escape's senior tech editors Dave Rome and Ronan Mc Laughlin discuss Specalized's long-awaited update to the Crux. There's, of course, a bit of big wheel chatter. A fun new project product from Wheels Manufacturing. And plenty more.As a reminder, members of Escape Collective also get access to Ask a Wrench, where member questions are answered by Dave Rome and a quest mechanic (this week, Colorado-based Colin Williams returns).  If you liked this episode, please leave us a review. It helps like-minded cyclists discover us.Time stamps: 00:00:30 - Ronan went racing 00:07:15 - Ronan rides the new Specialized Crux 00:14:50 - But is it actually aero? 00:23:47  - Are pure aero gravel bikes what we need?  00:30:05  - Scott's 32in gravel bike for Unbound 00:36:50  - Wheels Manufacturing's better mud stick  00:42:29  - Paragon Machine Works has been acquired 00:43:56 - Good thing: Mechanics you can trust 00:51:00 - Ask a Wrench (Members-Only feed)  00:52:30 - Weird pulley wheel wear  1:03:00 - When is it time to replace a wheel?  1:12:00 - A Dangerholm-inspired Full-Suspension gravel bike? 

Bridget, Caitlin, and Hilda conclude their coverage of "Rites of the Starling," book 2 in Devney Perry's Shield of Sparrows series. So if you listened to part 1, then you know there were questions about the timelines between Caspia and Odessa, and we promise that we got answers to how they're connected so listen now. But SPOILER WARNING: There may be tears involved.  Join our Patreon for exclusive behind-the-scenes content and let's be friends!Instagram > @Booktokmademe_podTikTok > @BooktokMadeMe

This week on Fresh Hop Cinema: Beer From: a lot of places Beer 1: Crux the Cat // American IPA // 7% J:9.3 M:9 Beer 2: Talon Grind // Pastry Stout // 12.8% J:10 M:8 Film : “The Drama" (2026) Kristoffer Borgli Ratings: Jonny - 9.2, Max - 9 Inside Hot & Bothered: - Max: Western Day, Ren Faire, Tahoe & St Helena - Jonny: Drop and dash, the boys season 5

For years, the prospect of commercial nuclear fusion felt a long way off. But recent breakthroughs—like Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's historic 2022 net energy gain—have marked a new chapter in the quest for fusion. Proving the physics in a lab, however, is a lot different than building a power plant that can compete on the open grid. Massive hurdles remain across physics, financing, and scaling. In this episode, host Shayle Kann sits down with Carrie von Muench, COO of Pacific Fusion and a former venture capitalist. Carrie brings a unique, investor-minded perspective to this singular challenge. Shayle and Carrie dive into topics like: Net facility gain, and the difference between breaking even at a target level versus breaking even across a facility's tech stack. The distinctions between steady-state and inertial fusion Why Pacific Fusion is focused on building modular reactors The company's strategy of utilizing widely accessible commodities like oil, plastic, metal, and water instead of specialized materials that rely on shaky supply chains. Unpacking the “ignition cliff;”the point at which a nuclear reactor shifts from relying on outside inputs to producing energy itself Why Pacific Fusion emulated pharma's multi-tranche funding strategies to create milestones around capital deployments and de-risk its early execution Resources ⁠Catalyst⁠⁠: Is nuclear fusion getting close? Catalyst: The state and future of nuclear waste Catalyst: Building a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain Open Circuit: Inside Meta's massive nuclear push Latitude Media: ARPA-E awards record $135 million to speed commercial fusion energy Latitude Media: General Fusion's $1 billion deal and the return of the SPAC Latitude Media: Trump Media's bizarre fusion play for TAE Technologies Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company's messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com. Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts.

In this Disaster Strikes segment of the Crux podcast, host Kaycee McIntosh recounts the November 17, 2025 tragedy on Torres del Paine's O Circuit at John Garner Pass, where a forecasted cyclone hit hurricane-force gusts up to 193 km/h and whiteout conditions. A group of nine independent hikers—many experienced and including multiple physicians—attempted the crossing after being told by Los Perros refugio staff conditions were “normal for Patagonia,” while no CONAF rangers staffed the mandatory checkpoint due to election-day staffing shortages. Survivors improvised rescue with satellite devices, makeshift stretchers, and CPR in the hut, but five people died of hypothermia: Victoria Bond, Christina Calvillo Tovar, Julian Garcia Pimentel, Nadine Lache, and Andreas Vine. The episode details delayed official response, survivor-led self-evacuation, an ongoing negligence investigation, and calls for ranger staffing, emergency planning, better communications, and hiker tracking. 00:00 Disaster Strikes Intro 00:47 Ominous Hut Warning 01:33 What Went Wrong Tease 02:28 O Circuit Overview 05:09 Patagonia Weather Reality 06:16 Safety Systems Gaps 07:57 John Garner Pass Danger 09:21 Nine Hikers Meet 11:51 Los Perros Forecast Failure 14:17 Dawn Departure Decision 15:01 Point of No Return 16:49 Whiteout Chaos Above Treeline 18:08 Warnings Turn Some Back 19:00 Hurricane Force Trap 20:01 Whiteout Hypothermia Spiral 21:16 Falls And Descent Decisions 22:23 Hut Turns Triage Center 23:18 Stretcher Rescue And CPR 26:12 Missing Hikers Go Public 28:54 Bodies Found And Airlifts 30:13 How Did This Happen 32:49 Ranger Checkpoint Failure 34:50 Survivors Demand Reforms 37:50 Human Spirit And Aftermath 39:14 Closing Reflections REFERENCES PRIMARY SOURCES Dapcevich, Madison & Zonshayn, David. "I Triaged Patients During the Deadly Patagonia Storm." Outside Magazine, Dec 24, 2025. (Dr. Zonshayn firsthand account) Gillette, Sam. "Survivor of Deadly Blizzard Lost Sight of Friend." People Magazine, Nov 23, 2025. (Christian Aldridge testimony) Thorpe, George. "Chile snowstorm deaths were 'avoidable tragedy.'" BBC News, Nov 24, 2025. (Survivor recommendations) Annapurna, Kris. "The Torres del Paine Tragedy: What Really Happened." ExplorersWeb, Nov 23, 2025. (Timeline, Dr. Wingfield quotes) Jackson, Katie. "Sudden Blizzard on Patagonia's 'O' Circuit Leaves Five Hikers Dead." The Trek, Nov 20, 2025. Knight, Marlee. "Extreme Snowstorm Claims Five Lives on Torres del Paine's 'O' Circuit." Teton Gravity Research, Nov 21, 2025. Johanson, Mark. "Deadly Storm Strikes Popular Trek in Patagonia's Torres del Paine." Outside Magazine, Nov 18, 2025. VERIFIED FACTS Date: November 17, 2025 Location: John Garner Pass, Torres del Paine, Chile Deaths: 5 (Victoria Bond-UK, Cristina Calvillo Tovar-MX, Julian Garcia Pimentel-MX, Nadine Lichey-DE, Andreas von Pein-DE) Wind: 193 kph (120 mph) Forecast: Issued Nov 13, updated Nov 15 Rangers: Zero on duty at John Garner Pass sector (CONAF confirmed) Medical response: 27 hikers required treatment All quotes and details verified from published sources. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, host Don Adeesha sits down with Naren Arulrajah, CEO of Ekwa Marketing, to confront the biggest shift in local healthcare marketing in a decade. AI is now answering patient questions directly on the search page, the click is disappearing, and the old SEO playbook of rank-click-book is officially dead for aesthetic practice owners. Naren breaks down the financial reality of zero-click search, why Google Ads cost 5 to 10 times more than organic traffic, and why only the top 3-5% of practices get free traffic in any given market. He explains AI Overviews, AI Mode, and CRUX, while warning that AI-written healthcare content will get your site blacklisted from Google rankings entirely. The episode closes with Naren's framework for owning your patient pipeline: rank for 100+ keywords on page one, build E-E-A-T through credentialed provider bios, capture paragraph love-letter reviews at peak patient happiness, and demand proof, not promises, from your marketing firm. The practices that move into the top tier now will be the ones standing when the market sorts itself out.

Bridget, Caitlin, and Hilda give you part 1 of "Rites of the Starling," book 2 in Devney Perry's Shield of Sparrows series, one of their favorite books from 2025. Book 2 in the trilogy does give us new main character POV chapters, so the biggest question our hosts have is how does Caspia's timeline fit with Odessa's? And are they able to figure this out by reading the first 50% of the book ... or will they hae to wait until part 2 to figure it out?  Join our Patreon for exclusive behind-the-scenes content and let's be friends!Instagram > @Booktokmademe_podTikTok > @BooktokMadeMe

While much of the world has been focused on the war in Iran's impact on the energy sector, another arguably more impactful market has been largely overlooked: fertilizer. The global fertilizer market is in a precarious spot. Roughly a third of the world's seaborne fertilizer trade goes through the Strait of Hormuz. Even before the war in Iran began, China, the world's top phosphate producer, halted exports of the crucial compound. As a result, the longer the strait remains closed, the more the threat to our global food supply escalates. In this episode, Shayle speaks with Josh Linville, vice president of Fertilizer at StoneX, to make sense of the global fertilizer market and its cascading impacts. Shayle and Josh cover topics including: The current state of global fertilizer markets The tenuous relationship between natural gas prices and the cost of producing nitrogen-based fertilizers in Europe How stalled shipments of fertilizer could impact supply and demand for next year's planting season The impact of Chinese phosphate export restrictions on the global market How a prolonged closure of the Strait could impact food supplies around the world Resources Josh Linville's X account Open Circuit: Iran, energy shocks, and the case for distributed power Latitude Media: DOE's second ‘Energy Dominance' loan was reworked to embrace coal Latitude Media: This isn't demand destruction. It's rationing. Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company's messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts.

The brightest star of the Southern Cross is like a whole episode of “Dancing With the Stars.” It consists of perhaps six or more stars. They’re all twirling through their own ballroom, linked by the strong hands of gravity. Alpha Crucis is 320 light-years away. To the eye alone, it looks like a single point of light – the 13th-brightest star in the night sky. But binoculars or a telescope show two stars. Both of them are at least a dozen times as massive as the Sun, and thousands of times brighter. They’re so far apart that it takes about 1300 years for them to complete a single orbit around each other – a slow turn across the dance floor. But one of those stars is actually two stars on its own. They’re so close together that not even the biggest telescopes can see them individually – the second star reveals its presence only to special instruments. But it’s also bigger, heavier, and brighter than the Sun. The two stars are dancing to a faster tempo – one turn around each other every 76 days. Those three stars might have three more companions. They’re a long way from the first trio, and they’re not as impressive. But they appear to share a common motion through the galaxy with the brighter trio. That means the two groups could be gravitationally bound to one another – dancing a waltz that would require a hundred thousand years to complete one turn across the floor. Script by Damond Benningfield

What does a $1.5 billion AI lawsuit have in common with your unwritten will?In September 2025, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle the largest copyright lawsuit in U.S. history. The reason was simple. They built first and cleared rights later. Documentary filmmakers have been making the same mistake for decades. And in this Deep Dive, host Christian Taylor argues that the lesson runs deeper than music licensing or AI training data. It is the same lesson Jesus taught in Luke 14, the same lesson surgeons learn from pre-op checklists, and the same lesson Christian is living through right now as the primary caregiver to her father with Alzheimer's disease. Plan ahead. Count the cost. Do the hard things first.In this Deep Dive on Documentary First Episode 277 with veteran ARC Producer Teddy Cannon, Christian unpacks the deeper meaning of Teddy's central argument: bring the unglamorous work in at the top of every project, or pay catastrophically downstream. Anchored in Luke 14:28 and Teddy's case study of a $50,000 to $70,000 Jackson 5 music clearance fee, this episode traces a single principle from filmmaking to surgery to aviation to the Anthropic AI copyright lawsuit and finally to estate planning and end-of-life care.In this episode, Christian explores:The spine of this episode is a single line from Luke 14:28 of the Bible. "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?" Christian draws the parallel from a Galilean carpenter to a veteran Archival Rights and Clearance Producer. Both saying the same thing across two thousand years. Both warning that the cost of finishing must be counted before the foundation is poured. The episode then turns personal, examining what happens when that wisdom is ignored at the scale of a single family and a single life.Why Anthropic's $1.5 billion AI copyright settlement is the same mistake documentary filmmakers have been making for decadesWhat an ARC Producer (Archival Rights and Clearance Producer) actually does, and why their role traditionally lives at the bottom of the production food chainHow a $50,000 to $70,000 Jackson 5 music clearance fee can sink an entire nine-episode film seriesWhy every documentary needs Errors and Omissions Insurance and a Rights Bible before distributionWhat surgeons, pilots, and contractors have in common with filmmakers who skip pre-production planningWhat Jesus taught in Luke 14:28 to 30 about counting the cost before building the towerWhy the Galilean carpenter and the veteran ARC Producer are saying the exact same thing two thousand years apartHow the same wisdom that protects a film from collapsing also protects a marriage, a business, an inheritance, and a familyWhat it is like to become the primary caregiver to a parent with Alzheimer's disease when no estate plan was ever writtenWhy doing the boring planning work upfront is not unloving, and what the wise ones do that everyone else avoidsChapters:0:00 The 2,000-Year-Old Lesson0:15 Intro: Bringing Gold to the Surface0:41 What is an ARC Producer?1:35 The Jackson 5 Sticker Shock2:12 The "Boring Person" at the Top3:04 From Surgeons to Pilots: Skipping the Checklist3:42 AI Companies and the Billion Dollar Mistake4:26 The Parable of the Tower5:06 Counting the Cost5:55 A Personal Deep Dive: Caregiving and Planning7:20 Being the "Editor" of a Life7:37 Final Thought: Look Anyway8:09 Final Ask: One ShareFrequently Asked Questions:What is an ARC Producer in filmmaking?An ARC Producer, short for Archival Rights and Clearance Producer, is the person on a film production team responsible for tracking down third-party footage, music, photographs, and documents, and securing the legal permissions to use them. ARC Producers manage licensing, clearance logs, and the Rights Bible that every film needs to secure Errors and Omissions Insurance and distribution. Historically, ARC Producers are brought in during post-production, but bringing them in during pre-production protects filmmakers from catastrophic licensing costs at the end of a project.Why should filmmakers bring an ARC Producer into pre-production?Bringing an ARC Producer into pre-production allows filmmakers to budget for rights and clearances before footage is shot or music is selected. This prevents the most expensive mistake in documentary filmmaking, which is locking a final cut around archival material or songs that turn out to cost tens of thousands of dollars to license. Pre-production clearance also strengthens storytelling by ensuring filmmakers know which materials are realistically available and affordable from the start.What can Anthropic's $1.5 billion AI copyright lawsuit teach filmmakers about clearance?In September 2025, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle Bartz v. Anthropic, the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. The case alleged Anthropic trained its AI on pirated books without permission. The lesson for filmmakers is identical to the one ARC Producers have been giving for decades. Building a product or film first and clearing rights later is more expensive than clearing rights upfront, no matter the scale of the company.What does Luke 14:28 say about counting the cost?In Luke 14, verses 28 through 30, Jesus tells a brief parable about a man who wants to build a tower. The parable asks whether the builder will first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it. The point is that laying a foundation you cannot afford to finish leaves the unfinished structure visible to everyone. The principle applies to filmmaking, estate planning, and any major project that requires resources to complete.What can caregivers and filmmakers learn from each other about planning ahead?Both filmmakers and family caregivers face the same trap. The unglamorous planning work, whether a music clearance memo, an estate plan, or a will, is easy to put off because it asks people to look at things they would rather not look at. Filmmakers avoid thinking about the end of a budget. Families avoid thinking about the end of a life. In both cases, the people who do the boring work upfront protect the people who come after them.About the Topic:Bartz v. AnthropicBartz v. Anthropic is the class-action copyright lawsuit filed by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson against Anthropic AI for training its Claude language model on pirated books downloaded from Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. The case settled in September 2025 for $1.5 billion, the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. Anthropic agreed to pay approximately $3,000 per affected work and destroy the pirated files.New York Times v. OpenAIThe New York Times filed suit against OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, alleging that OpenAI trained ChatGPT on millions of Times articles without permission. The Times is seeking billions of dollars in damages. The case is one of more than fifty pending AI copyright lawsuits in the United States and represents the largest active threat to current AI training practices.Music Industry v. AI CompaniesUniversal Music Group, Concord Music, and other major music companies have filed suit against Anthropic and other AI companies for scraping copyrighted song lyrics to train AI models. Suno and Udio, two AI music generation platforms, face similar litigation from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and major labels. The disputes mirror the music licensing challenges documentary filmmakers have faced for decades.Luke 14:28-30: The Parable of the TowerIn the Gospel of Luke, chapter 14, verses 28 through 30, Jesus uses the image of a man building a tower to teach about the cost of discipleship. The parable's principle has become a foundational text on planning, prudence, and foresight in Western thought. The phrase "counting the cost" entered common English usage directly from this passage.Teddy Cannon and Crux...

The farther north you live, the less of the universe you can see. Earth itself blocks the view of a large swath of the southern celestial hemisphere. That’s the half of the sky that’s south of the celestial equator – the projection of Earth’s equator. So those of us in the United States miss out on at least part of the southern sky. One of the treasures we miss is Crux, the southern cross. It’s the smallest of the 88 constellations. But it’s also one of the prettiest and most prominent. Four of its stars are fairly bright, and they do form a shape that looks like a cross. If you include one more star in the pattern – the faintest of the five – the pattern looks more like a kite. It points the way to the south celestial pole. Not surprisingly, that pattern has played a big role in the skylore of many southern-hemisphere cultures. Several saw the cross as the footprint of a big bird. Others saw it as a stingray, the anchor of a giant canoe, or some other prominent object or animal. Today, Crux is featured on the flags of Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil. It’s also on the flag of the European Southern Observatory – which has a great view of the southern cross. From the United States, Crux is barely visible from the Florida Keys, far-southern Texas, and Hawaii. At this time of year, it’s quite low above the southern horizon in early evening – pointing the way to the celestial pole. More about Crux tomorrow. Script by Damond Benningfield

Even though autonomous passenger vehicles have entered the mainstream in cities across the country, autonomous trucks still lag behind. But Humble Robotics thinks it has cracked the code with a new design that completely does away with the tractor-trailer model we see on the highway every day. In this episode, Shayle speaks to Eyal Cohen, founder and CEO of Humble. The company built its electric trucks from the ground up. Fully cabless, they combine the tractor and trailer into a single platform designed to optimize energy efficiency, unit economics, and roadway safety. Shayle and Eyal explore topics including: The differences between autonomous passenger and freight vehicles The challenge of transporting heavy payloads at high speeds Why Humble has shifted away from LiDar in favor of a camera-centric approach offered by visual language models (VLMs) The unit economics of electric and autonomous freight Why Humble is embracing a "hub-to-hub" model for its trucks The evolving regulatory landscape for autonomous trucking Resources Catalyst: Volts crossover: Six big energy questions Latitude Media: Can the Tesla Semi finalize decarbonize trucking? Latitude Media: Rivian and EnergyHub are teaming up on managed charging The Green Blueprint: A billion-dollar play on electrified transport Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company's messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com. Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts.

Elise Ann Allen, Senior Correspondent with Crux, looks ahead to the meeting between the Pope and the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

Bridget, Caitlin, and Hilda finish their recap and review of "Cinder Vale," book 3 in Caroline Peckham and Suzanne Valenti's Sins of the Zodiac series. So you know what that means ... they got to the end so they can discuss THAT ENDING. They now understand all the DMs and texts they got about it. So don't listen just yet if you haven't finished or don't want to be spoiled. As to the rest of you: Let the happy squeals begin! Join our Patreon for exclusive behind-the-scenes content and let's be friends!Instagram > @Booktokmademe_podTikTok > @BooktokMadeMe

As the utility-scale solar market collides with an era defined by massive load growth, EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) firms are rethinking their strategy to meet the moment. In this episode, Shayle speaks to George Hershman, CEO of SOLV Energy, one of the largest solar and storage construction firms in the US. George offers a unique perspective into the state of the market as well as the logistics of building gigawatt-scale projects and insights into how automation is changing the EPC game. Shayle and George discuss: Why George believes rising demand can help solar move past boom-and-bust cycles How SOLV is taking on larger projects without needing to increase its workforce proportionally How automation helps SOLV build and install utility-scale solar faster The logistics bottleneck impacting EPCs' ability to scale How AI-driven simulations can help optimize installations Catalyst: Can AI revolutionize EPC? Catalyst: 2026 trends: Gas turbines, Texas' load queue, and China electrifies Catalyst: Scaling America's domestic solar supply chain Latitude Media: Can the US bring solar installation to below $2 per watt?  Latitude Media: This former solar installer is all-in on software-only sales Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company's messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com. Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts.

Bridget, Caitlin, and Hilda heard your pleas and they're here with part 1 of "Cinder Vale," the third book in the Sins of the Zodiac series by the Twisted Sisters, Caroline Peckham and Suzanne Valenti. They cover the first 50% of the book ... which means you'll need to come back next episode to hear ABOUT THAT ENDING!!! Join our Patreon for exclusive behind-the-scenes content and let's be friends!Instagram > @Booktokmademe_podTikTok > @BooktokMadeMe

Marley Kayden narrows in on Amazon's (AMZN) earnings ahead of Wednesday night's earnings. She tells investors to watch revenue growth and explains why analysts are broadly positive regarding the Mag 7 giant's ecommerce and AI and AWS growth. Prosper Trading Academy's Scott Bauer walks us through example trades for amazon and comments to look at the volatility of the market when looking for direction.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Options involve risks and are not suitable for all investors. Before trading, read the Options Disclosure Document. http://bit.ly/2v9tH6DSubscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

As the race to build out artificial intelligence accelerates, the infrastructure required to support it is undergoing a remarkable transformation. In February, Google announced a plan to spend $175 billion to $185 billion in CapEx for 2026— a figure roughly equivalent to the GDP of Hungary. In this special live episode, recorded at Transition-AI 2026 in San Francisco, Shayle sits down with Amin Vahdat, Google's chief technologist for AI infrastructure. Amin pulls back the curtain on how the hyperscaler is rethinking everything from data center reliability and behind-the-meter power generation to real-time inference. Shayle and Amin discuss: How Google's shift from focusing on training to inference can enable more distributed, smaller-scale data center deployments Why Google is moving away from traditional "five nines" reliability for certain workloads in exchange for doubling compute capacity How on-site generation can serve as a "bridge" to manage interconnection latency Google's milestone agreement with utilities for one gigawatt of demand response How software can co-optimize chip design, building cooling and power generation to create superefficient and flexible "AI factories" Catalyst: The rise of flexible data centers Catalyst: Will inference move to the edge? Catalyst: The mechanics of data center flexibility Open Circuit: The natural gas ‘bridge' becomes a highway Open Circuit: Are investors losing faith in the AI infrastructure frenzy? Latitude Media: Energy Vault is expanding into infrastructure for AI Latitude Media: The rise of the AI infrastructure asset class Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company's messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com. Tune into Critical Capital, a brand new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Hosted by Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, Critical Capital explores the interlocking forces powering clean and critical infrastructure. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth conversations at the intersection of energy, government, finance, and global markets. Listen here, or wherever you get podcasts.

In 2025, the clean energy market navigated a mix of shifting tariffs, evolving FEOC compliance rules, and uncertainty around tax policy. On the surface, it looked like a year defined by instability. And yet, capital continued to move. Total capital expenditures across the clean economy reached roughly $120 billion, with total financing activity exceeding $200 billion across the full stack of project capital. The transferable tax credit market scaled to about $42 billion, growing rapidly in just a few years. So why are the underlying dynamics so strong? In this episode, recorded live as part of a Frontier Forum, Stephen Lacey speaks with Alfred Johnson, CEO of Crux, and Katie Bays, Managing Director and Head of Research at Crux, about what actually happened beneath the surface of the market. They discuss how developers and investors navigated uncertainty, how financing structures evolved to provide more flexibility, and why underlying demand continued to pull capital into the sector. Read the full Crux market intelligence report. And watch the full video of the Frontier Forum here, which features even more depth on tax credit pricing, safe harbor strategies, evolving deal structures.

Do you believe the cross is true, but functionally deny its power in your everyday life? Why do we still carry guilt Jesus already died to remove? What if Good Friday is meant to do more than inform your theology; it's meant to transform your heart? In today's episode, Jeff shares how the woman who anointed Jesus in Luke 7 shows that the forgiveness found in Christ should change how we worship, love, and live. Read the Bible with us in 2026! This year, we're exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Luke 7:36-50