17th-century French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist
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Welcome back to FreightWaves Today! Host Malcolm Harris and Zach Strickland kick off today's show breaking down the latest supply chain headlines, market data, and major industry developments. Morning Minute Headlines: Kenco successfully deploys six supply chain AI agents in just three months with Deep Fabric; Canadian authorities seize nearly 850 lbs of cocaine at the Bluewater Bridge; and a deep dive into the massive global container ship order book pressuring ocean rates. State of Freight Fraud: Danielle Spinelli (Director of Partnerships at Gen Logs & "The Fraud Girl") breaks down Q2 cargo theft trends, high-value target risks, and how Gen Logs' nationwide sensor network helps catch criminals and assist law enforcement. $100M Tech Acquisition: Andrew Wimer and Mitch Mitchell join the show to discuss Descartes acquiring Ty Software. Learn how combining AI-powered brokerage workflows with global visibility tools like MacroPoint aims to streamline broker operations into a single execution layer. Driver-Led Innovation: 20-year veteran professional truck driver James Boyce, founder of Bubba Lee LLC, introduces the "Trucker Tote"—a modular console designed to eliminate cab distractions, improve safety, and help fleets prevent thermonuclear verdicts. SONAR & Freightnomics Update: Lead Economist DJ Donahue and Ben Peterson (Head of Shipper Solutions) join Zach for a deep dive into tender rejections, Q2 GDP revisions, PCE inflation figures, and strategic shipper advice for the upcoming bid season. Follow the FreightWaves Today Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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In this episode, we kick things off by examining an ambitious infrastructure proposal that could dramatically reshape freight movement in the South. An influential coalition is leveraging the proposed Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern mega-merger to demand a massive freight rail bypass around Atlanta that would free up track for passenger trains and thin out the city's legendary traffic congestion. The six-billion-dollar project would divert eighty percent of freight trains onto a U-shaped route, opening capacity for fourteen commuter rail lines and offering a far cheaper alternative to the ninety billion dollars Georgia would otherwise need to spend on highway expansion by 2050. Next, we shift over to the rails to discuss a brazen cargo theft in California's Mojave Desert that illustrates how quickly high-value freight can disappear. San Bernardino County deputies recovered over $150,000 in New Balance shoes after reports of people breaking into BNSF boxcars near Daggett, an unincorporated community east of Barstow along I-95. Authorities arrested a suspect following a traffic stop and foot pursuit, underscoring how rail cargo theft can move high-value inventory from a railcar to a highway within minutes. Finally, we cover the passing of an American icon who made professional drivers part of her final business chapter. Country music legend Dolly Parton died peacefully Tuesday in Nashville at age 80, just two months after making a surprise appearance at the grand opening of Dolly's Tennessean Travel Stop in Cornersville, Tennessee. The facility, located about an hour south of Nashville, was designed specifically for professional drivers and featured truck parking, fuel, showers, laundry, restaurants, and a dog park, reflecting Parton's decades spent touring the country by bus. Follow the FreightWaves NOW Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Why do we need a nuclear family? What actually determines the difference between a boy and a girl? These feel like brand-new questions, but the ideas that make them askable were actually seeded four hundred years ago. Dr. Jordan Cooper joins us to trace them back to their source.ABOUT THE EPISODE: Lutheran theologian and pastor Dr. Cooper walks Josh through the philosophical roots of the modern progressive mind and the broader philosophy of the left: Descartes and Cartesian doubt, Kant's Copernican Revolution, Hume's empiricism and skepticism, Hobbes's social contract theory, and Thomas Paine's radical individualism, the intellectual scaffolding beneath everything from critical theory to postmodernism. It's the same scaffolding underneath the questions above. Once Hume argues that even something as basic as cause and effect is just an assumption rather than a certainty, and Kant argues that categories like space and time are imposed by the mind rather than discovered in the world, the door opens to treating categories like family and gender the same way: not given, but constructed, and open to being remade.Dr. Cooper's book Makers of the Modern Mind grew out of years doing campus ministry at Cornell, watching students absorb progressive assumptions and secular philosophy they'd never actually examined. Drawing on his background in Lutheran theology and Christian apologetics, this conversation is a guided tour through where those assumptions came from, and why the question underneath almost all of them, in philosophy, politics, and the modern culture wars alike, is simply: what is a human being?0:00 – Introduction1:14 – Dr. Jordan Cooper2:45 – Lutheran Branding Problem4:21 – Makers of the Modern Mind10:23 – Union With Christ Doctrine16:30 – Descartes' Cogito Ergo Sum26:38 – Kant's Copernican Revolution31:33 – David Hume's Skepticism42:35 – Thomas Paine & Liberalism51:21 – Right Vs Left Liberalism56:52 – Applying Philosophy TodayABOUT THE GUEST:
A poem about a map opens North and South, the first collection of the great twentieth century poet Elizabeth Bishop, and since, maps have been associated with her poetic vision—at once telescoping and binocular—and with the polarities and preoccupations of her work. The map's privileged, sweeping, bird's eye view of the earth is also hand-held, man-made, intimate. Depending on its level of minuteness or obsession, it can contain the tiniest details as well as, let's say, the whole enchilada. And though it purports to be scientific and objective, it is representational and therefore subjective, particular, imaginative, and personal. For several episodes, Wes & Erin will be reading a selection of some of Bishop's most anthologized poems, starting with “The Moose” as expressions of, among other things, her map-like imagination. Upcoming Episodes: Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey”; more Elizabeth Bishop poetry: “First Death in Nova Scotia,” “One Art.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email advertising@airwavemedia.com to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:11 Erin: Welcome to part two of our discussion of the poems of Elizabeth Bishop. We are currently about. Oh, I'm okay. I'm proud of us. We're just about halfway through the Moose. That's not bad compared to our usual record. We're not halfway through stanza one. We're going. You know, it's about a bus trip. It's encouraging us to pick up the pace a little bit and get to our next stop. So we were just going to pick up with the woman in stanza 13 climbing into the bus. 0:41 Wes: Before you say that, I just want to make one little observation. 0:44 Erin: Oh, sure. 0:45 Wes: Just that we get right as soon as the light goes out, it's then that we get the barking of a dog and the smell of salt. First it's the smell of salt hay and then it's the barking of a dog. So smell is introduced. And is that the first time sound is really introduced in any. You know, we get the bus starting and all that, but I think that's right. It's very visual up to that point, I think. And then as soon as we lose the light, we get these new sensory modalities. The collie just supervised this dog, gives us a nice bark, and presumably we can't even see him. We just hear him. So I just love that. I just. I love the transition into darkness. It's so. 1:26 Erin: Yeah. 1:26 Wes: I don't know how else to say it. 1:28 Erin: Yeah. 1:28 Wes: And it's then that we. This really is the midpoint of the poem because now we're going to make this transition into the world of the bus, I guess. As the woman climbs in, we have 1:41 Erin: the ship's port lantern, as you said, being an indication that it's now nearly or fully dark outside. 1:47 Wes: She says red light swims through the dark. 1:50 Erin: Yeah. I'm assuming that at this point a bus would have some form of illumination, at least for when it's stopped and the doors open for people getting on and off the bus. Right. It would. It would light up on the inside interior. Yeah. 2:03 Wes: Yeah. 2:03 Erin: Or at least maybe it would stop, certainly if it were stopping at a station or a little, you know, whatever those things are called. Those little. Yeah, there's a word for it. 2:14 Wes: We need something to see the freckles by. 2:16 Erin: Right. We need something. Exactly. But wherever they would be stopping would have some form of street light illumination or something of that order. Anyway. 2:26 Wes: But it's interesting you say this, because I didn't picture a bus station at any point in this. And I just imagine people along the side of the road. 2:34 Erin: Right. But if it were a course, it 2:38 Wes: couldn't be that way. 2:39 Erin: Well, I don't think it's a station. I think it would be a stop with a. You know, like a lean to. You know, what are those things that just. 2:44 Wes: Yeah, sure. 2:45 Erin: That just protect you from the elements. 2:47 Wes: Yeah. Bust down. 2:48 Erin: Right. 2:48 Wes: Yeah. 2:49 Erin: And that would probably have at least a street light. But anyway, then we get the moonlight. Maybe my favorite. Oh, it's so hard to say, but maybe my favorite image in the poem is the hairy, scratchy, splintery moonlight and mist caught in them like lambswool on bushes in a pasture. Just. There's nothing. There's no image greater than that. That's unbelievable. 3:13 Wes: There's kind of a more wildness to this. Right. The image now, the hairiness and scratchiness and splinteriness. It's a bit less Domesticated, I guess, than the previous part of the poem. 3:27 Erin: That's a really good point. I hadn't thought of that. Even a suggestion of danger, like the lamb running. 3:34 Wes: I just thought, this is where the hobbits are entering Fangorn Forest. 3:39 Erin: Yes. Yeah, yeah, the New Brunswick. 3:41 Wes: But you go a little bit more. It's a little wilder and more primal. I think once you. Even if you're on a bus, once you get into the woods, there's something different about it. 3:52 Erin: That's right. 3:53 Wes: But yeah, you're right. The idea that the moonlight could get caught in that. That's a great image. 3:59 Erin: Something giving chase to the lamb would cause it potentially to get a little ensnared in the chase. 4:06 Wes: It's as if Lambswool has, you know, a lamb is brushed up on the bramble or whatever and left its will so that. So the moonlight, instead of making this cosmic journey and landing on articulating the environment, has been subordinated to the environment. Right. It's become. It's been captured by these hairy woods. It's caught on it and, you know, a piece of it has come off from being caught on something that's scratchy and splintery. So that. That. Yeah, this is the great reversal. And that's the place where you can really get some good sleeping. Yes, right. 4:44 Erin: Yes. And where dreamy things can happen. 4:47 Wes: Divagation. Yeah, wanderings. 4:51 Erin: I looked that up. Wandering, straying or digressing from a main course, path or topic. So like a digression as long as 4:59 Wes: the bus stays on track. 5:00 Erin: Yeah, that's right. 5:01 Wes: You do whatever you want with your mind. 5:02 Erin: That's right. And the night. I just looked on Google Maps while I was writing my little notes in the margins. And if you were to take a bus today from Great Village to Boston, it would take like 10 hours. So it definitely is a, yikes, full course of the night on this night bus. So I love what happens in stanza 16, which begins in the creakings and noises, an old conversation not concerning us, but recognizable somewhere back in the bus. So I really love that it's grandparents voices, she says, uninterrupted talking. This is where the I becomes an us. And this is a characteristic of a bishop. I think she's rather reluctant to use an I, capital I in a poem. She's more likely to use a we or an us. And here it's as if they're all part of the same family now in the bus and the adults. It's almost like everybody on the bus who isn't a grandparent is a child and the adults in the back are talking and we are all, oh, that doesn't concern us. Just go to sleep. It's none of your business. Just stop eavesdropping on us. Right, so there's some community that's been formed already by the people who are not the grandparents talking. Do you get that impression? 6:20 Wes: Yeah, it's a bit confusing. So, yeah, let's try to figure it out. Because it. So it begins. A dreamy navigation begins in the night. She doesn't say, I started dreaming or they started dreaming or we started dreaming. Although it seems almost like it's collective. Right. So that the bus is dreaming or everyone on the bus is dreaming together, which kind of lines up with the not concerning us later on, the gentle auditory slow hallucination. So that's a very interesting idea. Right. The dream is usually associated with subjectivity. Right. The cogito and Descartes. Right. The dream tells us that we might have trouble distinguishing reality from what's in our own minds. And we in our own minds are very potentially cut off from reality. But it's a. It's an alienated individual position here. The dream is. Seems to be collective. And perhaps it's collective because it's partly real. Right. Is that the conversation? I thought, okay, there's a conversation going on in the back of the bus and it is old people talking. But as you're lying back, you could sort of. You can't hear exactly what they're saying. And you might have that kind of half dream, Right. Where you're. The dream is kind of lined up with or intertwined with what's going on in reality. So she's hearing in the conversation of the old people, her grandparents voices. Is that the way you took this? Or. Or they, they're hearing the grandparents voices or. Yeah. How do we, how do we interpret this? 7:54 Erin: I interpreted it as, you know, people of the age of grandparents having a real conversation. But the idea that one could be having an auditory. I mean, we are given the word auditory slow hallucination. So the idea that there could be an auditory hallucination or kind of half dream of one's own grandparents having a conversation, or it may be superimposed on a real conversation kind of inaudible going on on the bus. I never noticed this before. The G in grandparents is capitalized. So it does seem to sit to suggest the speaker's particular grandparents rather than. 8:30 Wes: Oh, I was going to. I thought you were going to say archetypal grandparents. 8:34 Erin: Oh, yeah, I suppose it could be yeah, it could be read that way, too. I think all of these things are true, right? 8:40 Wes: Yeah. 8:40 Erin: I mean, the image works because of the, shall we say, universal particularity of this experience. 8:47 Wes: The ordinary way to write the poem would be to. And a much simpler way would be to put this in her point of view and not try to put it into a collective point of view. But that seems to be what she's doing. 8:59 Erin: Yes. The effectiveness, though, I think is the. And it could just be the speaker's perception of it, but the atmospheric quality, because everyone on the bus is going to share an experience shortly, but already they are sharing an experience and a kind of atmosphere that they're all listening to the hum and having that. You know, when you're in the car and you. Maybe when you're a kid and you put your ear up against, like, the. The car door or the window or something, and you hear orchestral music. I don't know if you ever had that. I used to always hear classical music when I would put my head up. 9:38 Wes: Yeah, I don't think I have that. 9:40 Erin: All kinds of. And I always think, like, I should write this down. But you always have, like, a hallucination of an orchestra playing songs. Different songs. Sometimes like fantastical songs. Yeah. You know, my particular experience maybe doesn't quite get at the. Yeah. The sense that this is shared. 9:57 Wes: Well, you're put into a kind of dreamy state, and yet you're getting at the auditory hallucination part. I mean, for me, I think, as a child, and this, I think, is very evocative of childhood. It's something about being half asleep or falling asleep. You're on a journey and there are adults in the car and there's some. Maybe some sense of safety, I think is very relevant to this poem. But being ensconced in the world of adults and not quite alone when you do this thing, which is potentially very lonely, which is go to sleep. And of course, a lot of kids don't want to go to sleep because that loneliness factor. But it's a much different experience if you're traveling. You're all on the way to something together. And of course, you're with people who are awake and, you know, are going 10:45 Erin: to be awake, maybe because the kids are falling asleep. Their. Their voices are lowered and softer. And maybe that also contributes Right. To the. The way in which. That lulls the children in the back simply because they're aware of not wanting to talk too loudly. Certainly that would be the case on a bus like this, where they're Having a conversation where they're talking in. In lower voices and maybe actually inducing that calm and hum for sleep in the people, the other people in the bus who aren't talking. 11:15 Wes: And the question is, what are the adults doing with their talk? Right. It's not going to work if your parents are just fighting. In this case, it's the grandparents. Voices are clearing things up and I guess bringing certain things to resolution, coming to terms with these losses. But a lot of it does sound a bit gossipy and not necessarily like the most comforting. 11:39 Erin: Yes. Yeah. 11:39 Wes: Sort of talk we could imagine. Yeah. 11:41 Erin: Well, you know, in a situation like this where you might be a child in this car, could be that you're coming back from whatever, like a, like a late night and then the adults in the car are working through whatever has just happened over the course of the night. And. Oh no, she was the one who had that long. Yeah. Who had the criminal record because of that thing, remember where they. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was like 20 years ago. So you sort of get that. But for an entire family history going back ages and ages, talking in eternity. Deaths, deaths and sicknesses. The year he remarried, the year something happened. Oh, yeah, what year was that? Right. Something about the journey afterwards or maybe away from home. If these people are also. If their home is Nova Scotia and they're departing it, you know, then there's that backwards looking quality where something about the idea of the journey and moving away from the place is giving the opportunity to then take stock and look back. So there's this sort of like dual action happening in the poem where the further the bus goes, the further back they're kind of looking from deaths and sicknesses to then remarriage and then childbirth. Son lost when the schooner found her. 12:58 Wes: These are all very blue collar tragedies, right? 13:00 Erin: Yes. 13:01 Wes: He was arrested for insider trading. 13:04 Erin: No, but I mean, you know, there's a reverse order to what's happening, you know, so we get. We have death, then sickness, then remarriage, then dying in childbirth. So there's a rewind is what I mean. Yeah. 13:17 Wes: Well, we come back in the end to death. The way it's all summed up. 13:20 Erin: Insider trading. Sorry. 13:23 Wes: Huh? 13:24 Erin: Sorry, Just insider trading. That really is funny. 13:31 Wes: And he had an affair. No. A sharp indrawn breath. Half grown, half acceptance. That means life's like that. We know it. Also death, you know, and then the question, what does also death mean there? Death knows it, we also know death. But it, you know, it made me wonder at various points I wondered. Well, Is this an element here of a journey to the underworld or to the afterlife? Maybe it's a job not claiming that that's strong thematic part of this, but maybe a hint of that type of thing. Because the journey, I mean, and it does seem like journeys are good places for this or like when I travel, it produces in me a very different state of mind. And I do find it very calming in a way, you know, especially actually being on the train or something like that, because you're in between two different locations and you maybe you're not caught up in the expectations or the constricting qualities of any particular location. If I'm at home, I have to do this and that work, or if I'm at a destination, then I'm dealing with relatives or I have to be a tourist or something like that. But there's something liberating about being in between two locations. So it does seem like a place for this type of dreamy hallucination or this reflection or this clearing of things up. It's almost like therapy. Right? That's what all of this sounds like. People are talking through their problems, but where is it that they get to in the end here? The half grown, half acceptance. So it's not fully acceptance. It sums things up with this, maybe a degree of resignation. So yeah, I don't know. What do you make of the stanza? 15:15 Erin: Well, they're traveling west significantly. Right. I do take a lot of this to be a kind of, say, pre figurement of death, even though at the same time the fact that they're in the woods, the fact that not to jump ahead too much, the fact that the moose will come out of the woods and appear notably in the middle of the road, there is a suggestion of middle age or middleness, or midway in the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark forest. So I think it works both ways, or perhaps it's working in several ways simultaneously for the various passengers. So maybe the speaker is experiencing something more akin to the Dante esque middle of the journey on the bus. And something about the bus journey is also, symbolically speaking, a kind of final bus journey for some of the other passengers. And that intersection seems significant, but I don't know how, just in the sense that there's a retrospective quality happening or maybe even a reversion to childhood that goes on for the speaker and the other people in the bus by virtue of the propinquity to these old people at the end of their life's journey. Because there is very little about middleness Here, come to think of it, other than the moose appearing in the middle of the road. Right. It seems that the other people on the bus are like children and the grandparents are the adults. 16:50 Wes: I mean, I think part of what's comforting when we're children is that feeling that adults know the answers and that adults know how to cope with all the dangers and have experience doing that and therefore can protect us. The reality, of course, as we realize as we get older, is that that's not true. So what they may have is more of this acceptance that's sort of highlighted in this stanza, which is potentially a good thing, but maybe a double edged sword because it does seem to be a form of dying. It does seem to be a form of the very thing that we want to be protected from. 17:30 Erin: There's also, though, that. What I used to call my mom, the external hard drive. I used to say back before she. 17:42 Wes: She liked that. 17:44 Erin: I think now it would make her sad because she'll say, you know, very openly that she. Her memory is gone. But it used to be that she knew all the, you know, you could ask her who said that at that one. You know, there's that kind of. I mean, that's a sort of jokey, gossipy scorekeeping thing that she would keep tabs on. But there's also just the idea of long memory being the history keeper, the record keeper, the, you know, and there's sort of settling accounts over the course of this conversation. Oh, right, it was that year. Okay. And then this happened and then, then that happened. And that's important too, I think, for, you know, it situates children in a context. Not just say this idea of death that you're referring to, but also how to situate oneself in a life. 18:34 Wes: Right. 18:34 Erin: There's a. There's a sort of frame that the grandparents or the elder relatives have that whole history up until you enter the narrative and where you fit within that. We mentioned in part one a little bit about Bishop's family history just to kind of prefigure the types of story that she inserts, I think very significantly into the poem, particularly about poor Amos who just wouldn't stop praying in the store and had to be. Had to be put away. Right. Of course she does a gender swap, but yeah, we all have family stories like this, of this kind of unruly behavior or madness of some kind or other or some sort of family drama. 19:19 Wes: Yeah. So it's universal. But the way she captures it is very clever with this talk that we don't quite know whether it's just the conversation of the people, the old people at the back of the bus, or whether it's her dream or whether it's both or somewhere in between. They're interlaced, those two things. And that. That interlacing gets at this aspect of universality. Although I think by the time we get to the stanza where she's fantasizing about the grandparents and the featherbed, this, it start. Seems to become inescapably personal, which is why I think of the. The point of view is getting more and more focused. Right. With. With time. Yeah. And potentially it's still universal, but it seems almost like a personal memory. Right. So talking the way they talked in the old feather bed. Right. The way they. Her. Her grandparents presumably in the old feather bed, peacefully on and on. Dim lamp light in the hall, down in the kitchen, the dog tucked in her shaw. Shawl. Yeah, get another. And get another dog here. 20:28 Erin: I love this. 20:29 Wes: The collie, the barking dog. And. Yeah, so this, this stanza is wonderful. And it gets at exactly this thing that you've been talking about, which is the, like, comfort of being a kid overhearing adults talking. It really, despite this talk of death. Right. A reconciliation with death. This is the point. Seems to be the point of view of a child who finds this very comforting. And. Right. She'll say in the next stanza, now it's all right now even to fall asleep, just as on all those nights, the way in which the adult world and the safety of protective figures can make sleep okay to do. And then suddenly that's interrupted. 21:07 Erin: But I love too. I mean, yes, it's so particular, but it also just in this one stanza does so many things in miniature that the poem is doing all along, this telescoping in again to a scene which. Which even as a child, if it were her childhood in particular that she's referencing, she couldn't possibly know or see. She wouldn't be able to see the grandparents in their featherbed. She would have to be picturing them in the featherbed and she wouldn't be able to see the dog in the hall. And also I wonder if this. If the stanza in its operation is kind of doing. I mean, this is just occurring to me now, but maybe it's doing that kind of hallucinatory work that has prior been described where we actually get a remix of, you know, this is the third dog in the poem. But it's also the elements in the stanza are a kind of recapitulation of the light, the red light swimming, the port Lantern becomes the lamp light in the hall. We get the dog barking now becomes the dog curled up in the shawl. And then maybe even because we also get kitchen, maybe the shawl is even a kind of transposition of the table, tablecloth shook out. Right. So there's something actually in the stanza which has that hallucinatory quality that she's describing where these three elements swim in the imagination and then become the lamplight and the dog and the shawl in this half asleep kind of dream space. Maybe that's pushing things too far, but it does seem to be. It's the dreamiest stanza perhaps in the whole poem. Maybe the following one. Now it's all right now even to fall asleep. But this gets interrupted that next stanza. So this one, I think is the real depth of the dreamy or borderline dreamy or hallucinatory moment. 23:00 Wes: Yeah, this is great because it really underlines the way deviation creates the capacity for stasis or for comfort. So the deviation of a bus trip or of the dreaming. Right. Which is movement, which is dynamic and has that momentum, forward momentum that we were talking about, sort of underwrites or grounds this ability to. For stasis, for stopping, for going to sleep, for feeling comforted as a child and safe, I think. And I keep repeating that word because of the. What's going to happen. The use of the word that's going to happen in this poem later. But yeah, I'm not sure if you were saying that explicitly, but that's what came to mind my mind as you were talking. This. The way in which this journey, devigation, motion can ground something that's going to be more static or stationary, which is what we're going to get in the moose. Because it interrupts the. It explicitly interrupts the motion of the bus and the external line of the poem in a way that parallels the comfort that's produced by the dreaming. 24:08 Erin: Yeah. In stanza 22 is where we have that break that you're describing. The moose finally appears. Well, the moose doesn't appear until stanza 23 finally appears. 24:21 Wes: We've been waiting for you. 24:22 Erin: We've been waiting for you. The title has promised that you would come and then here you are. It is foretold of your coming. 24:29 Wes: Comes through the curtains, takes his bow. Right. 24:32 Erin: We get nights, just as on all those nights. And then the moose's appearance, the lights turn on. And that rhyme you get, I mean, it's a very basic, simple rhyme. Right. But there's that sort of sudden jolt which is then also visualized where in the middle of night we have this appearance, this bright because of the headlights on it. Appearance of the moose. And it looms and sniffs at the bus's hot hood, which I'm assuming means that it thinks that the bus might be a boy moose. 25:06 Wes: No. Well, it's a very hot bus, I'll say that. 25:10 Erin: Ow. Ow. 25:14 Wes: That enamel. And it's dented and, you know, depends on if you like bad buses. No, just kidding. 25:21 Erin: Dented from its last encounter with a girl bus. 25:25 Wes: Yeah. It's funny because I wrote in my notes, but was just reading it stanza by stanza. And the previous stanza I'd said, okay to sleep, even with death looming. Looming for all of us, you know, all day one. You know, one day we all die. Blooming in that sense. And then suddenly the moose is looming, standing there, looming. And I thought, whoa, that's really interesting 25:45 Erin: that I. Oh, yes, chose. 25:48 Wes: Chose that word before I even got to the next stanza. Not to give some, you know, obvious rote sort of identification of the moose with death or the experience of the moose as having something to do with that. But obviously they're coming into contact here with something quite primal and important. It's not just, oh, look, there's a nice moose, but is he sniffing or she's sniffing the buses hot hood because she thinks it might be another moon. That hadn't actually occurred to me. 26:21 Erin: I must have been infected with that reading at some point that this was a frisky moose, that it otherwise doesn't seem frisky at all. It seems pretty. Like a pretty staid, respectable moose. 26:34 Wes: But frisky and ditzy. 26:39 Erin: That's right. Hello. 26:41 Wes: What? 26:41 Erin: Oh, look, I seem to be in the middle of the road. Pardon me. 26:46 Wes: So, towering, antlerous, high as a church, homely as a house. We're safe as houses, a man's voice assures us. Perfectly harmless. Which you presume, right, that the. The man making that assurance is. Precedes the idea of it being homely as a house and safe as houses. Even though. So. So she interestingly puts the associations before her associative responses before the actual stimulus. Right. I don't think she's the one who is thinking about how they must be safe and. And he's saying something. I mean, as far as I know. I don't know back then. But you were warned about bison and mooses, right? Or is it mooses or moose? I think we're warned because they don't. They. They seem harmless, but they're not. And so I was quite surprised by this stanza. And I thought this idea, okay, safe as houses. Well, yeah, houses ought to be safe, but they're not always safe. The bus, the moving container of the bus turns out to be, in a way safer and more conducive to reverie and dreaming and all of that. 27:59 Erin: No matter how you slice it, whether you see the moose as harmless, truly, or not so harmless, this has got to be just a little bit of a wink, right? A man's voice assures us. 28:09 Wes: I mean, I think we're definitely meant to be skeptical. 28:12 Erin: Yeah. 28:13 Wes: This perfectly harmless line, it's not there for us to nod our heads in agreement. 28:20 Erin: Oh, yeah, he's right, right, right. I think it's more like, oh, here's another mansplainer. 28:26 Wes: He's moose splaining. 28:28 Erin: Mooseplaining this woman moose to moose splaining. Just out for a good time, having her existence commented upon by another man's voice. Probably a podcaster. One of those male podcasters has a manosphere podcast. 28:45 Wes: Girl mooses are. 28:49 Erin: Then we get these childish again. The passengers are like children and having this childlike response to the appearance of the moose, including. It's awful, plain sad. So much judgment of women's bodies. 29:04 Wes: I mean, they're not good looking creatures. Let's just. They're, you know, put that on the table. Come on. They are in an ugly sort of way. 29:11 Erin: Yeah. I mean, okay, I guess they don't follow, you know, classical proportions. They don't represent the golden mean. 29:21 Wes: They're not into beauty society societal beauty standards. All right. 29:28 Erin: They are like cartoon characters. 29:29 Wes: They're miss Positive is what they are. 29:35 Erin: Well, what I love though, about the description, you know, we get several, I suppose. Yeah. Contradictory descriptions of the moose in a way, because we get homely as a house or safe as houses. We get awful plane. But then she looks the bus over grand otherworldly, so she has some gravitas. She's like a great character actress who. Who may not be beautiful in that leading lady way, but she's Kathy Bates. Yes. Yeah, well, that's maybe a bit insulting to Kathy Bates, who I do think is a very attractive woman, but. 30:19 Wes: Sorry, Kathy. 30:20 Erin: I know, I love her. 30:21 Wes: Come on the show sometime, please. 30:24 Erin: Oh my gosh, I would die. I love Kathy Bates anyway. And then we get curious creatures. Well, first we get the idea that it inspires joy and then we get curious creatures. So there's a. The joy is then immediately undercut by a kind of ambivalence. Right. So there's just all of these descriptions of the moose combine to create a kind of ambivalent portrait, such as it is, of the animal. 30:47 Wes: Are we going to be able to answer this question? Why? Why do they feel the sweet sensation of joy? I mean, I think I would probably feel it. 30:57 Erin: Why? Why do we all feel it? I mean, they have. Well, they've successfully done what I couldn't see a moose in real life. So they're like one up on Erin. Can't wait to go back and tell her we saw moose. Yeah, I've seen certain things. I can't think of a specific example of this, but I've had plenty of instances. Whether it is a wild animal or, I don't know, like a sunset or a really spectacular natural event of some kind or other. You do get that feeling of joy, kind of excitement. 31:28 Wes: Yeah. Unfortunately, most of my encounters with large animals are at zoos. I did see a bear once. I was going to the bathroom. My mom had a house in Front Royal, Virginia, at the beginning of the Appalachian Mountains. And it was up high on a. We called it a mountain, but it was, I guess, more of a hill. But so it was out, you know, it was kind of. There was a bear on the mountain, let's just put it that way. And, yeah, I was going to the bathroom one day and looking out the window. There's a window right. You know, above the toilet. And suddenly there's bear's face looking at me. Wow. What the. So, but that, you know, and. And that was majestic. No, just kidding. That it was. I. It was surprising. 32:13 Erin: Yeah. 32:14 Wes: And there's an element of fear that involved. Even if you're, you know, even if, you know, black bears are harmless and there's a wall between you. Some. Something scary about it. I didn't have time to feel like it's majestic. Yeah. You know, like you have had these experiences in. In nature, but I can't think of a encounter like this. But it. I seem sure that if I had an encounter like this, I would feel exactly the same way. So. Yeah. What is otherworldly about it? What is majestic about it? It's a big, dumb beast. And I say that with love, without any criticism in the sense that. Right. It's an encounter with something primal. And I think we have to take into account the size of the animal as well. I mean, it is interesting to run into a fox or something like that, but it's also a matter of scale here. But. Yeah. What is otherworldly about it? I mean, I think the most. The most obvious part of this is that you know, we have lost something in our humanity and becoming language using creatures and becoming self conscious creatures. And sometimes when we're confronted with an animal like this, we're confronted with that loss. We're not as connected to the environment because of the intermediation of something like language, which poetry of course tries to overcome. It tries to put language into a disintermediating. Sorry to use these business terms. I don't know why this is happening. Into a disintermediation. 33:46 Erin: Actualize. Yeah, yeah. 33:49 Wes: When it. Yeah, right. Synergize it's agenda. Often where language might put distance between us and the world. Poetry, I think, can undo that distance. Like I was saying, with the very vivid imagery, I can undo that distance with figurative language. And maybe that distance is also undone to some extent by the dreaming or the half dreaming hallucinatory state that she was in. And the comfort of that, the return to childhood, which is also a simpler time. I don't know. I'm thinking out loud here. But yeah, I wanted to try to get more at this, you know, the otherworldly status of the moose and the joy that comes from encountering it. 34:34 Erin: I was thinking to myself, is the moose's gaze really clearly encapsulated? And then I thought, yes, she regards us amicably. And then I was like, no, no, that's the passenger who gets on the bus. 34:44 Wes: Right. Does the moose have freckles? Yeah, that'd be an interesting twist, right? 34:50 Erin: But yeah, but there is one. 34:51 Wes: Turned her into a moose. 34:53 Erin: Well, I would think that this would be a more garden variety animal encounter and maybe even a more, to use a word, I don't like, problematic poem in terms of its relationship with the animal. If it were to focus on the gaze of the animal. Because I think that is the thing which is often at the core of these interactions with animals in which we project or hope to have a kind of meaningful encounter. You want to meet the gaze of the animal and in so doing understand it. Right. And of course you don't realize that you're just projecting onto it a kind of maybe mutual regard. She regards us amicably. That you are seeing it and it is seeing you. And there's an acknowledgement and there's this, you know, spiritual encounter that you have with this animal. And all of that, of course, is often quite silly. It's often quite reductive and fanciful and unrealistic. But I am thinking of an encounter that springs to mind is in Utah. I hiked the same trail almost every day. And I Would often hike it late in order to escape the full heat of the desert sun. Which is a little dangerous, right? Because sometimes the sun would be setting and then all kinds of things come out. And one time I was trying to get back to my car before it got completely dark. And what I thought was a wolf, but what must have been a coyote. And the coyotes in Utah are huge. They look like wolves and completely white. Came out from over a hill, crossed my path, turned, looked at me in the eyes for a very long time, turned and went over on the other side of the hill. I mean, curiously, then, of course, I got to the car and I actually found out that a beloved family member, an elderly family member of mine, had passed away. And I said, I think I just saw her. You know, I had this feeling of, like. I don't know, the sense of this connection, inherent connection between these two. This woman who was dear to me and this encounter. But, of course, that's all silliness. And the idea that I was having a sort of interaction through the gate. Some sort of reciprocal. Right. Interaction with this animal was also entirely just my own projecting onto the animal. However, I will say that that's an instance in which I felt fear. But then there was also this, like, joy at the encounter, I think fear because it was dark. Because I wasn't actually sure if this was a wolf because it blocked my path. It was far enough away that I didn't feel as threatened as I might have. But it was definitely a mixed perception. 37:28 Wes: You didn't shoot it and then hang it around your neck. No, because I was thinking. I just suddenly thought of the albatross poem. 37:37 Erin: Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 37:38 Wes: Rime of the Ancient Mariner. And that sort of relationship to the natural world where. I mean, I forget what we said about it, but maybe I said something about envy and wanting to kill the albatross for. Because of its freedom or something like that. I don't. I don't know. But I think it's important because, yeah, this is part of something about the encounter with the natural world. Whether it's a big moose or something else. Yes. Is otherworldly. Strangely enough, it's otherworldly to us, even though it's where we come from. It's uncanny, maybe. And Freud actually, in the German, I think uncanny is sort of like unhomelike is what the German sounds like. And Freud made a lot out of this. I think it's home, but it's a home from which we've become alienated. We're animals, we're something more than animals. And so that primal encounter brings us back to that foundation, that natural foundation in us, but we can't fully come to terms with it. And I think the other aspect of this, I think the death. Right. So there is a link to death. Just. And I was thinking about that when you described thinking of it as seeing. As seeing your departed loved one. Because if we could regress to that animal state, it would be a kind of death. I think that the association with the movement to the pre. Linguistic, natural foundation is something like the movement towards dying, but there's something comforting. 39:07 Erin: Yes. 39:07 Wes: Right. And we encounter that when we encounter the gaze. To have a. Have a gaze returned by an animal like that usually like, like our internal. Our entire psychological structure, what makes us self. Self conscious is the internalization of a human gaze. Right. To the extent that we. We get an animal gaze, I think we are returned to that more primal part of ourselves. And it does seem to me to have something to do with being reconciled to mortality. Right. Which is part of what the function of that dialogue between the elderly people is doing. 39:44 Erin: You're leading me into the one, say, reading of the moose that I wanted to get to. And I just want to say that I think the great thing about Bishop and about this poem and all her poems is that the moose is a moose. It's not a symbol. I hesitate to offer any kind of 40:03 Wes: direct reading, but that's her job on this podcast, though. 40:05 Erin: I know, I know. It's. Yeah. In the letters with Robert Lowell when he's writing to her about her poem at the fish houses, he says, alas, all my fish just become symbols. 40:16 Wes: Ah, very good. 40:17 Erin: I hesitate to reduce. I think what you've just said makes me think that it's the maternal, the mother. 40:25 Wes: Which also brings us back to the house. 40:28 Erin: Yes, the house. Yeah. It's something that comes like the clapboard churches, like clamshells seem to arise out of the ground, if you will, or are directly compared to these native creatures. The houses are then in turn used as comparisons for the moose, the maternal. The idea that this is something that returns us to nature, that this is the encounter that we would have presumably upon death. It's the loved one that is somehow comforting, maternal, and is a female moose. It's moose mom. I don't know. I don't know. Something going on there. 41:04 Wes: Moose mom. 41:05 Erin: Natural and strange at the same time, not us. And I guess that's why I. That's why I mentioned that the story of my grandfather at the beginning, because I don't know why I wanted so badly to see a moose right after my grandfather's death. But there was something, like, logical about it to me. And I was familiar with this poem, but I very much did not have. You know, it was not something that was the forefront of my mind at all. But I think there is this inherent connection, and it's silly. You know, I kind of can't believe I'm saying this, but I do. I do think there is this kind of connection between this desire that I felt to see this animal. Like the particular kind of primordial itch that the moose in particular seems to be scratching for me in that moment. For Bishop, in this poem, something that is at once safe and comforting and from another world, natural in that kind of elemental way. 42:00 Wes: Yeah. 42:01 Erin: That all kind of coalesce in that image. 42:04 Wes: Very good. 42:05 Erin: Okay. I think that's it, Wes. All we're left with is the dim smell of moose and an acrid smell of gasoline. 42:12 Wes: Oh, you know, we should have talked about that. Maybe we can start with that on our next Bishop recording. We'll. We'll begin with the smells, the smells and the significance of that image at the end. 42:25 Erin: Nice. 42:25 Wes: That smellage at the end. 42:26 Erin: Smellage. All right. Thank you. 42:29 Wes: Thank you.
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Dr Heidi Matisonn, Senior Lecturer at The Ethics Lab at the University of Cape Town’s Neuroscience Institute and Department of Medicine joined Clarence on air for a “Philosophically Speaking” conversation. Views and News with Clarence Ford is the mid-morning show on CapeTalk. This 3-hour-long programme shares and reflects a broad array of perspectives. It is inspirational, passionate and positive. Host Clarence Ford’s gentle curiosity and dapper demeanour leave listeners feeling motivated and empowered. Known for his love of jazz and golf, Clarrie covers a range of themes including relationships, heritage and philosophy. Popular segments include Barbs’ Wire at 9:30 am (Mon-Thurs) and The Naked Scientist at 9:30 on Fridays. Thank you for listening to a podcast from Views & News with Clarence Ford Listen live on Primedia+ weekdays between 09:00 and 12:00 (SA Time) to Views and News with Clarence Ford broadcast on CapeTalk https://buff.ly/NnFM3Nk For more from the show, go to https://buff.ly/erjiQj2 or find all the catch-up podcasts here https://buff.ly/BdpaXRn Subscribe to the CapeTalk Daily and Weekly Newsletters https://buff.ly/sbvVZD5 Follow us on social media: CapeTalk on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@capetalk CapeTalk on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ CapeTalk on X: https://x.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CapeTalk567 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Connaissez-vous notre site ? www.lenouvelespritpublic.frUne émission de Philippe Meyer, enregistrée au studio l'Arrière-boutique le 15 décembre 2023.Avec cette semaine :Francis Wolff, philosophe.David Djaïz, entrepreneur, essayiste et ancien secrétaire général du Conseil National de la Refondation.Nicole Gnesotto, vice-présidente de l'Institut Jacques Delors.Lionel Zinsou, ancien Premier ministre du Bénin et président de la fondation Terra Nova.L'HUMANISME EN CRISEFrancis Wolff, vous êtes philosophe et professeur émérite à l'École normale supérieure. Qu'est-ce que philosopher ? « Chanter comme un castrat du 18e siècle, dites-vous, avec une voix d'enfant et une technique d'adulte. » Ainsi votre œuvre s'est-elle construite autour des interrogations de l'enfance – « qu'est-ce que ? » ; « pourquoi ? » – et des réponses rigoureuses de la raison philosophique. En reprenant la métaphore de Descartes, vous comparez votre philosophie à un arbre dont les racines seraient votre ontologie, le tronc votre anthropologie et les branches votre éthique, votre politique et votre esthétique.Filons cette métaphore : nous vous invitons afin d'interroger la branche politique de votre arbre, le Plaidoyer pour l'universel que vous avez publié en 2019 et dans lequel vous cherchiez à refonder une idée en crise aujourd'hui : l'humanisme. Cette branche repose sur votre tronc anthropologique – Qu'est-ce que l'homme ? Ou plutôt qu'est-ce qui est propre à l'homme ? Pour vous, ce n'est ni la raison, ni le langage, mais leur union indissociable, ce que vous appelez la « raison dialogique ». Cette définition vous permet de fonder, en raison, une éthique humaniste, universelle, qui repose sur le principe de réciprocité, et dont la traduction politique est l'idéal démocratique avec son accomplissement à l'échelle de l'humanité, l'idéal cosmopolitique.Si ces considérations peuvent sembler abstraites, elles sont en réalité très concrètes, en particulier lorsque vous les utilisez comme critère d'évaluation des valeurs. Vous montrez que sont antihumanistes toutes valeurs fondées sur l'inégalité a priori des humains, comme le racisme ou le nationalisme, ainsi que toute application du principe d'égalité qui trahit le principe de réciprocité, comme l'antispécisme.Pour ce qui est de la guerre au Proche-Orient, fidèle à ce principe de réciprocité, vous espérez que « chaque peuple surmonte un instant sa propre souffrance pour percevoir le peuple ennemi (usurpateur ou assassin) comme susceptible de souffrir lui aussi », et vous défendez la « la seule solution raisonnable et universelle » : deux États dans des frontières sûres et reconnues par la communauté internationale. Ceci n'est pas contradictoire avec votre utopie cosmopolitique. D'abord parce qu'il s'agit moins d'un but – ce que vous appelez une utopie en acte – que d'un idéal régulateur. Ensuite parce que cet idéal cosmopolitique ressemble davantage à une confédération mondiale de fédérations régionales démocratiques.En 2018, dans une recension de votre ouvrage Trois utopies contemporaines qu'il avait faite pour la fondation Jean Jaurès, David Djaïz avait pointé les risques de dépolitisation que comporte un tel projet et défendait plutôt des États-Nations ouverts sur le monde. Comme lui Nicole Gnesotto et Lionel Zinsou ont beaucoup de questions à vous poser.Mais avant de laisser mes camarades vous interroger et user de leur « raison dialogique », pourriez-vous revenir sur ce concept fondamental, puisque c'est à partir de cette définition de l'homme que s'articule toute votre réflexion sur l'humanisme ?Chaque semaine, Philippe Meyer anime une conversation d'analyse politique, argumentée et courtoise, sur des thèmes nationaux et internationaux liés à l'actualité. Pour en savoir plus : www.lenouvelespritpublic.frHébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
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Entre deux nouveaux épisodes, je vous propose de revenir sur des notions essentielles avec des extraits d'anciens épisodes. Aujourd'hui, nous explorons le concept de finalisme en philosophie et en sciences, en prenant l'exemple de l'évolution de l'œil. Nous revenons sur la pensée d'Aristote et sur la manière dont sa philosophie a longuement nourri la théologie chrétienne. Jusqu'à la rupture majeure amorcée au XVIIᵉ siècle par des figures comme Descartes, Galilée ou Newton.➔ Cette capsule est extraite de l'épisode : "Bergson : l'élan vital".Pour écouter cet épisode dans son intégralité : https://youtu.be/gJYrZxwUtBg➔ Rejoignez-moi sur Patreon : https://www.patreon.com/ParoledephilosopheMembre du Label Tout Savoir. Régies publicitaires : PodK et Ketil Media.Pour toute demande de partenariat, écrire à : partenariat@podk.fr_____________Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
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durée : 00:28:07 - Les Nuits de France Culture - par : Albane Penaranda - Le XVIIe siècle marque un tournant dans la compréhension de l'univers. En 1984, au micro de Ruth Scheps, Jean Seidengart exposait la vision mécaniste de René Descartes, de ses tourbillons cosmiques aux résonances de son œuvre dans la littérature et les sciences de l'époque. - équipe : Mathias Le Gargasson, Antoine Dhulster, Rafik Zénine, Vincent Abouchar, Emily Vallat, Hassane M'Béchour, INA Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France
Enrollment is now open for our new online class. It will be nine 75 min sessions, running from late Aug. to mid Dec., starting with Aristotle and Descartes but then spending the rest of the time on the most influential texts in this area since 1950: Alan Turing, Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, John Searle, Hilary Putnam, etc. We're offering sections to fit the various time zones and work schedules: Saturday mornings, Monday mid-day, Wednesday evenings, or just purchase the recordings of these sessions to take them in at your own pace. Read more about it at partiallyexaminedlife.com/class, or go ahead and sign up via partiallyexaminedlife.com/enrollment.
Reformed Brotherhood | Sound Doctrine, Systematic Theology, and Brotherly Love
In their 500th episode, Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb celebrate a decade of The Reformed Brotherhood by diving into one of Scripture's most overlooked parables — the Parable of the Growing Seed in Mark 4:26–29. Exclusive to Mark's Gospel, this four-verse passage packs a theological punch that is, as Tony and Jesse argue, unmistakably Reformed in its emphasis. The man scatters seed, goes about his life, and the earth produces — by itself — without his understanding or intervention. From this, the hosts draw out rich implications for evangelism, sanctification, ecclesiology, and eschatology. They argue that the kingdom of God advances by divine power alone, hidden from human sight, moving toward a certain consummation. The episode pairs deep theological reflection with the hosts' characteristic warmth, humor, and 10 years' worth of shared history. Key Takeaways Monergism is embedded in the parable itself. The growth of the seed is entirely God's doing. The man scatters and rests; the earth produces by itself — a picture of divine sovereignty that requires no human management or comprehension. The evangelist's only obligation is to scatter. This parable relieves believers of the anxious burden of producing spiritual fruit. Faithfulness in proclamation is the call; growth belongs to God. Sanctification is gradual, hidden, and God's work. The progression — blade, ear, full grain — mirrors the believer's sanctification, which proceeds by degrees imperceptible to the individual yet certain in God's design. The Kingdom of God is not dependent on any individual. Whether it's a ministry leader, a financial contributor, or a worship musician, no single human agent is load-bearing for the advance of God's kingdom. Primary and secondary causation work together without contradiction. God uses means — the farmer still sows, the earth still functions — but the means are instrumental, not efficient causes. God's providence encompasses and exceeds them. The harvest belongs to God, not the evangelist. Just as the man did not direct the growth, he is not the agent ultimately putting in the sickle. The consummation of the kingdom occurs in God's time and by God's initiative. This parable resists reduction. It cannot be flattened into a simple evangelism lesson or a single eschatological statement. It holds together personal sanctification, corporate ecclesiology, and cosmic eschatology within four verses. Key Concepts The Earth Produces By Itself: Monergism in the Parable The theological center of this parable is the Greek word automate — the earth produces "by itself," without external compulsion or human assistance. Tony and Jesse argue this is not incidental language but the thesis of the entire passage. The farmer is genuinely active — he scatters the seed — but his agency recedes almost immediately from view. He doesn't monitor the soil, apply nutrients, or trace the growth. He simply lives his life. This picture coheres precisely with the Reformed doctrine of monergism: that in regeneration and kingdom growth alike, the decisive cause lies entirely outside human capacity. As Jesse puts it, the mechanism of growth "belongs to God alone." The farmer's ignorance is not a failure — it is the point. We are not meant to understand the how; we are meant to trust the Who. Scatter, Then Rest: A Theology of Evangelism Without Anxiety One of the episode's most practically rich applications concerns the posture believers are called to adopt in evangelism. Tony observes that this parable is rarely preached as an encouragement to evangelists, yet that is precisely what it is. The sower's only active verb is scattering. After that, he sleeps and rises — the rhythms of ordinary life — while God does the work that no human strategy, method, or persistence can accomplish. This directly addresses what Tony calls the "anxiety around trying to ensure some sort of production." The Reformed vision of evangelism is not passive indifference but liberated faithfulness: scatter the seed of the gospel without bearing the impossible weight of manufactured outcomes. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3:6–7, "Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth." Blade, Then Ear, Then Grain: The Patience of Providence The threefold progression Jesus describes — blade, then ear, then full grain — is not decorative agricultural detail. It is a theological statement about the character of God's work in the world and in the soul. Growth is gradual, ordered, and unhurried. Jesse draws the direct application to sanctification: the believer cannot fully trace the work of grace in his own heart, yet it is real and it is God's doing. This ought to produce, as Jesse summarizes, "patient confidence rather than human striving or anxiety." The church, too, matures through stages. Neither impatience with slowness nor despair at imperceptibility is warranted — both misread the nature of divine providence. God is not behind schedule. He is, as always, working through means, in His time, toward a consummation He has already appointed. Memorable Quotes The earth produces by itself — we might even say the kingdom of God produces by itself. It's not dependent on anything except God's sovereign will and his sovereignty to execute all that he desires. - Tony Arsenal The mechanism of growth is strangely hidden from the human agent, and it belongs to God alone. - Jesse Schwamb The kingdom of God advances by God's own hidden power toward a certain appointed consummation — and this ought to produce patient confidence rather than human striving or anxiety. - Jesse Schwamb Full Transcript Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to the 10th Pentacost episode of the [00:01:00] Reformed Brotherhood. It's number 500. I'm Jesse Tony Arsenal: and I'm Tony, and this is the podcast that's been going for 10 years. Hey, brother. Jesse Schwamb: Hey, brother. A happy 500th episode to you. Tony Arsenal: I know, man. It's kinda crazy. It's kinda crazy, and we're not gonna do anything special 'cause we don't do that, but it is crazy that this is the 500th episode. That's a lot of podcasting. Jesse Schwamb: It's absolutely wild. Podcast Memories And Mishaps Jesse Schwamb: And as with any milestone, as I was thinking about this one occurring, it did draw my mind to all the crazy things that have happened on this podcast, some known, some unknown. Of course, there is the very infamous time that I spilled a whole bottle of kombucha on the desk while we were recording, but everybody knows about that. But I was, I was also thinking about the, the lesser-known ones, like the time you and I sat in the downstairs church, like so close to each other on the same side of the table- Yeah ... to record a episode, or the time [00:02:00] that a tow truck showed up while we were recording and I had to go run out and direct the tow truck 'cause I'd called it for the car. Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Jesse Schwamb: And you paused the episode so that we could go do that, or the time that we had our favorite Lutherans on the podcast in what I think was, like, the hottest environment, and I just remember the sweat trickling down Chad Bird's beard. Like, like, like air being- Like the oil gloss ... mixed with oil. Yeah. It was so hot. So those are the ones that come to my mind. I don't know if there are any ones that come to you. We- we've had some great episodes, and by the way, they all live out for free in the world on reformedbrotherhood.com. So don't take our word for it. You can go all the way back to the beginning if you really want to, and you can hear this incredible journey that God has had us on these some 10 years. So I'm curious, like, do any episodes, topics, conversations, weird things come to your mind after all this time? Tony Arsenal: Uh, the one I remember is when we recorded with Dad and we were waiting for the snow, the [00:03:00]snowplow- ... and we had to, like, wrap the episode up real quick because the snowplow was there and we had to go move cars. That's right. So there's been a fair amount of episodes where it's like something has interrupted us and we need to just get it over with real quick. That's right. Um, hopefully the listener doesn't hear that too much. Patreon Support Check In Tony Arsenal: The other thing I was thinking about, you know, just as we're kinda thinking about the back catalog, we're not great at this. Uh, we tend to do our, what, what's they call the call to action. The experts call it the call to action. We do it at the very end of our podcast episodes, which is the worst place to do it. Uh, but we're gonna try to land it in the beginning here. So we, we've been supported by a number of, of people, uh, for basically the entire podcast. I don't remember exactly how early on it was that we started doing Patreon, but it's, it's been a long time. And what I noticed the other day, I went in to, to check on a couple things and make sure everything was working the way it's supposed to. There was some, like, account merge I had to do, and I've noticed that several people who've been supporting us, um, pretty much since the beginning- have their accounts listed in a declined status. [00:04:00] And what that means is that their, probably their credit card that they use, uh, has expired, and so now they're not, no longer supporting the show even though they think they are. So if you are a person who believes you're supporting the show, particularly if you've been supporting the show for a long time, and you wanna continue to support the show, uh, we would really appreciate if you took a minute to go into your Patreon account, double-check that the, you know, that you've been, um, contributing for the last couple months. Uh, double-check that the credit card you have on file is not, uh, expired or suspended or anything like that. Um, again, if you've made a decision that it's time to stop, uh, stop the show, or if this is the point where you realize, "I don't care enough to re-support to the show," um, that's fine. We love you. We've appreciated your support. We hope you keep listening. Uh, but if you do wanna continue to contribute, please do check that. And if you've never taken a chance to think through whether or not you want to support the show, uh, Jesse and I are so thankful for all the support we have. Jesse Schwamb: Yes. Tony Arsenal: Uh, but things are getting more expensive, and, um, you know, that's, that's [00:05:00] just a reality for all of us, and that includes things like podcasting hosting fees. Um, the cost of our, our editing software that we use has gone up. That's a subscription. Uh, the cost of hosting space has gone up. Um, all of that, uh, all of that has gone up, and so even though we've had steady supporters, it's kinda like we have lost supporters, um, financially because the money doesn't go quite as far. So if you've ever thought, "Maybe I should, uh, maybe I should contribute to the podcast," please do think about it. Even if just, uh, half of our audience went in and contributed $1 a month, um, that would be a substantial amount. That would really help us to keep the podcast going. And there's actually a number of projects and things Jesse have I, and I have wanted to do, um, that we would love to be able to, you know, to take a step on. Uh, we just don't have funding to do it, uh- Right ... because the funding we have is enough to keep the podcast going but not enough to stretch to something else. So I don't wanna, like, preload that too much, 'cause who knows if it's gonna happen, but there's some things that we wanna do [00:06:00] that would involve a little bit of upfront capital that we would need- Right to get some contrib- contributions on. So please do consider that. We appreciate you so much if you've been a supporter. We appreciate you so much if you've even considered it. Uh, and we appreciate you so much just for listening, uh, especially- Yes ... if you've been with us, you know, this is episode 500. That's a lot of podcasting- Yeah, it is ... directly in your ear hole. So thank you so much for that. Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, we're so grateful. Why We Keep Doing This Jesse Schwamb: It's fun just to think how many episodes we recorded, but also how many interesting conversations and topics, all the inside jokes. It really is a community. That's in part why we started this, is to sit down together and to bring other brothers and sisters into the fray, as it were, or maybe to bring us into your fray a little bit and to encourage and edify the church, the brothers and sisters, the saints around the world. And it is an around the world kinda podcast, which is remarkable too. So- Yes ... we're just gonna keep being here. As long as the Lord tarries and He allows us to do this, we'll just keep doing it. And again, we've recorded in closets, in cars on the way to things. We've done it at [00:07:00] the beach, and we've done it in cold environs, and we've done it in hot environs. And you're right, you reminded me of that time where we were desperately waiting as we were getting snowed in for the plow to come. And then it was all hands on deck, and we just dropped the recording equipment and said, "We gotta get out of here." And more often than not, the p- joy of this podcast is it just kinda finds its way into our normal rhythm of life. But it- Yeah ... comes out of our life, and out of a life that's been transformed by Christ. And so that's really what we come back to. Mark Only Parable Preview Jesse Schwamb: In fact, that's the whole thing that we're in right now. We're going through all these parables. And this episode, we can't stop, won't stop. We're gonna continue to hit you with the content that we love, which is talking about Jesus. And so we're in one of the few... Well, it's a Markan parable that only appears in Mark. That's why I called it Markan, I guess. So extra bonus points to you, that's both extra and bonus, if you know which one it is before I say it. But there's a lot for us to talk about- ... because we're getting into this really, really short little story, but it's really chock-full, of course, as Jesus likes to do with all [00:08:00] kinds of spiritual truth. It's about a farmer chucking a seed on the ground, and then he goes about his business. He eats, he sleeps, he binge-watches the Jane equivalent of Netflix. He sleeps again, he wakes up. And while he does this, the seed is doing entirely its own thing without his help or understanding. He didn't make it grow. He can't explain how it grows. He just shows up at the end with a sickle to collect what God has already finished. Man, if there isn't a Reformed theological parable, I don't know what one is. Yeah. So we're gonna get to all of that on this 500th episode. I mean, it's something to be saying that even the US is only 250 years old, and- we've already recorded twice as many podcasts as there are years of experience in the US. But besides all of that, it wouldn't be- It's like- ... Reformed Brotherhood- Tony Arsenal: I don't know if you've seen this. That reminds me of those things online where it's like, like, "Elon Musk is a billi- is a trillionaire. That means he could give every person on earth $1 billion- Oh, yeah and still would be a multi-billionaire." And you're like, "That's, that's not mathematically true." 'Cause when [00:09:00]you said that, I was like, "You mean the podcast is older than the country?" Jesse Schwamb: Oh, math. I have a feeling we're gonna come back to that. Oh, math. Tony Arsenal: Oh, math. Affirm Or Deny Segment Jesse Schwamb: Now, of course, if you listen for any length of time, you know it wouldn't be an episode if we didn't have a time of affirming with or denying against. Of course, that is that time where we pick something that we like, we think everybody should be a part of, that we wanna recommend, and we affirm with it. Or on the opposite, instead we say, "We deny against this thing because it's just no good." So Tony, on this 500th episode, I'm just gonna keep saying it over and over again, so lest the listeners forget, what are you affirming with or denying against? Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Scammer Payback Recommendation Tony Arsenal: I'm affirming, um, a little YouTube channel that I found. Uh, it takes a little bit of setup to explain it, but the, the channel is called Scammer Payback. Ooh. Um, and it's, it's a... I think most people have probably seen, like, the Gene Fieith- Gene Veith, um, like, where he, he gets a, some sort of scammer on the phone, and he sorta just, like, [00:10:00] trolls them and makes, kinda makes them sound dumb and, you know, pretends to play along just to see how long he can keep them on the phone. Those are really funny. These are funny, but they're on a whole different level of seriousness, which is a weird sentence. Um, basically what this is is a group of professional hackers, um, and there's, this is a serious kinda sting operation they have going. They don't use their real names on the channel. Um, there's one, there's one, um, where they interview, like, a social, um, a social engineer whose job is to... Her- she is a person who basically, uh, does social hacking, and she helps companies who, who their security people think, like, their executives are, um, susceptible to social engineering, social hacking. She'll actually call and, like, mess around with the CEOs and socially hack them. Um, they interviewed her, and the first thing she said when she sat down was the person she was talking to's first name, and the guy was just stunned. He's like, "I- we- we've never used my first name on the channel before." So they're very serious, and what they do is they identify [00:11:00] a scam or a g- usually a group of scammers, and they'll actually hack into and infiltrate the computer systems that they're using. And so they show you everything that they're doing. Um, they're, they're explaining the scam and how it's run. Um, and a lot of times they're actually actively intervening in, uh, in a scam, trying to stop a scam that's in progress because somebody is about to lose a lot of money. I mean, I think one of the things that's important about this is our audience, you know, mostly, mostly guys probably, like, age, I don't know, late 20s, early 30s, maybe early 40s, we kind of grew up and lived, lived in a world most of our adult lives or all of our adult lives where, like, fishing schemes and other kinds of, like, um, data s- data theft, like, that was just in the air. It was just normal. So we're... It's not like we're immune to it, but we're used to it, and we're ready for it, and we're looking for it. That means that most of us have parents that are in a generation who are particularly susceptible to this. [00:12:00] So I think it would be worth, worth people's time to take a look at this, uh, just as a educational piece, and then, yes, share it with your family members who are in this era. People get taken for a ton of money. Yeah. The reason that these older generation sort of bu- builder Boomer generations are targeted is not just because they're somewhat soft targets, but they also have the money. Um, most of, most of the wealth in our country is possessed by people in that generation. It's just an economic fact in a lot of places and a lot of areas, and so that's why they're targeted. So take a little bit of time, watch the show. It's... And it's entertaining. It's really well produced. It's funny. These are non-Christians, you know, who are, are being non-Christian, so there's a fair amount of salty language, especially when they're interacting directly with the scammers that they absolutely hate. Um, but it's, it's worth watching. And, and it... I think it'll... I think it's entertaining. Most of the time it's like a 15-minute video, so it's not too much of your time. Pop that on two times [00:13:00] speed on YouTube and, and you're all set. Jesse Schwamb: And when you say salty you're not talking about Salty the Singing Songbook, right? Tony Arsenal: Correct. Yeah. Not P-S-A-L-T-Y. S-A-L-T-Y. Jesse Schwamb: Just in case. I wouldn't want any of the loved ones to go and just be waiting for Salty to show up, like, in the mid- Which would be kind of epic in the midst of this, like, scamming shutdown, the sting operation. Like, Salty s- pops up and starts singing about restorative justice and- Yeah what it means that God restores all things. I mean, that would have a good place in this, but I just want that just to be clear. We don't, we don't want anybody to, to at us on that. Tony Arsenal: Yeah, for sure. Well, Jesse, what are you affirming or denying tonight? Jesse Loves Algebra Jesse Schwamb: I'm going to return to that beautiful intro you gave about mathematics and the whole Elon Musk thing. And so my affirmation is simply, like, just do... Just enjoy all the math you can. Use all the math that you know. So my wife and I were watching some kind of program on YouTube, and it was a program in which there are a couple [00:14:00]people competing in this kind of escape room situation, and as escape rooms are want to do, there came some kind of small math problem. And it goes something like this, is the best I can remember it. It was what number between one and nine when it is tripled and five is added to it is the same as that number being doubled and having one added to it? Now, as soon as that problem was read, we were watching intently, and I turned to my wife and I said, "Why do they need to say it's between, like, one and nine?" And she goes, "Well, how else would they know what the number was?" And I was like, "Well, like, this is a beautiful little algebra thing, like se- series of equations. Like, you have two equations here." And she's like... Just gave me a blank look. So I was like, "Oh, man." So she's like, "Okay. Do it then. Do it." So I was like, "Give me a piece of paper." So I, I was just like, this is gonna be such a beautiful thing. So I was like, "All this is, is, like, it's basically 3x minus five equals 2x plus one. You're solving for whatever this missing number is, and they've given you this beautiful setup, [00:15:00] which you rarely get in real life, but this beautiful setup is a system of equations. We have two things you know are gonna turn out to be the same. They've just been said in different ways, and that allows you enough space to figure out how to solve for them using a little bit of algebra." So I realized then this is why they said between one and nine, because the contestants then proceeded just to iteratively pick numbers until they found the answer, which is not a bad way. Like, that's a way to use, like, all the math you have. Certainly, that's a way. But I showed her how it was like, this is the answer, six, and you don't even need to know where to start because you don't need to start anywhere. You can actually figure this out. Still not really impressed. And then she said something to me that just, like, kind of rocked my world. I said, like, "Well, I'm sure this is familiar to, with, to you." And she's like, "Oh, yeah. Like, I learned algebra." And she goes, "Yeah, I, I know algebra. I just don't do it anymore. I just don't use it anymore." And I was like What, what I heard was, like, basically her saying to me, "I used to brush my teeth, but I just don't do it [00:16:00] anymore." 'Cause I was like, "This is such a beautiful thing." So then I got it in my head, well, well here's the problem. It's just a matter of seeing the results. So I was like, "Well, here's the amazing thing is yes, these are abstract concepts. Yes, it's like each of those is a function. It's, it's a representation of what he just said in the problem. But," and this is my grave mistake, Tony. But I was like, "Really, Descartes showed us that we can think about these not as abstractions, but we can plot them geometrically as lines on a Cartesian plane." And so I was like, "Really we can show that these are two lines and they have a relationship together." And then I was like, "Guess where they intersect? Guess where they intersect?" And she's like, "I w- that's impossible to even know. I have no idea where they intersect." I was like, "No, no. Just, just based on what we're saying, the beauty of this is they have a relationship. They're gonna come together at some point, like you and I in life. They're gonna, they're gonna come together. Guess where that would be?" And she's like, "That would be impossible to know." And I was like, "It's not, actually." So I showed her that, you know, left and right, up and down, X and Y, however you wanna speak [00:17:00] about it, those two lines are gonna intersect, at least on the X. The X spot is gonna be the number six. It's the same thing. Still nothing. So after all of that, I just appreciate my wife is such a brilliant lady, that she just doesn't need algebra. She goes through life just, like, crushing problems without... Like, because she'd like to do it, I think, just the, the more challenging, difficult, iterative way. And, uh, she doesn't use algebra anymore. Just no need for it. So in many ways I respect that. In other ways, again, the affirmation is like, use all the math you have available to you because it's a beautiful thing. I think basically at the end of that I ended up in, like, a very supreme place of doxology, and my wife was like, "Can we just go back to watching TV now?" So but I, I have to say, like, and I, I know you, you share my appreciation for math and stuff like this. Like, it's not even just puzzles. It's just the beauty that, like, we can do this, and that there's such a created order, like a supremely created order, that these rules of ma- mathematics aren't just impounded. They're like the fabric in which God has, [00:18:00] has basically woven all of reality such that we can do this kind of thing, and that even a simple problem in escape room can lead us to appreciate how intensely ordered and beautiful the world is, that we can go after knowledge and solve for explicit things that seem abstract beyond our comprehension and reason to begin with, but have been brought to a place we might understand them. That is, like, an insanely glorious thing to me. So algebra is great, loved ones. I've recommended before, but the side affirmation is go to Khan Academy if you wanna brush up on your algebra skills. I think algebra is, like, some of the most beautiful and intensely practical math ever. I love calculus, but calculus you don't get a lot of, like, use. You can use algebra to solve all kinds of things, whether it's like tips or... Like, it's gonna save you so much time. If you're ever in escape room, I'm just telling you, do not do this iteratively. Just get the, your system of equations down, and you will be, like, tearing out of that room, and then you'll look like a hero. Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. Math In Everyday Life Tony Arsenal: I mean, I think, like, even the f- even the, the... How do I wanna say this delicately? Uh, [00:19:00] even the idea that we, quote, "don't use algebra" means people don't actually understand that we're using algebra all the Jesse Schwamb: time. Tony Arsenal: Exactly. Right. Like, I could buy I don't use calculus or I don't use trigonometry- Right or even I don't use geometry. Um, but to say I don't use algebra, like just basic. I mean, I know like basic equations are, I guess, technically arithmetic, but like how many times does someone have to, have to go, "All right, the tip, the, the bill is X number of dollars. The bill is-" Right ..."$100, and I wanna give a 15% tip, so what's the outcome?" Like, that's an algebraic equation, right? That's right. Um, or a more, I think a more common one would be like, "All right, the bill is this amount. I want my, uh, my final amount that I give billed to me to be an even number." Jesse Schwamb: Right. " Tony Arsenal: And I also want to give at least 15%, 20%, whatever percent, so what's the number I need to use in order to get to a bill that is, or a [00:20:00] tip that is both 15% or higher and results..." Like, all of those things are algebraic equations. Jesse Schwamb: Yes. Tony Arsenal: So I think, yeah. I mean, even like, "I need to get to work by such and such a time. What time do I need to leave?" Right. "I know it takes-" Exactly. "... a certain amount of time." Right. So I think we, we all use algebra a lot more than we, we probably realize, and I think you're right. Like, when people say, "Well, I don't use my math anymore," what they're saying is like, "I don't use, I don't use the stuff that I had to show my work on anymore." Right. "I don't use the stuff that I have to do on paper anymore." But, um, it's funny, we had a, a conversation, by the way, Reformed Tele- Reformed Brotherhood Telegram chat is a thing. Uh, we had a conversation in the Reformed Brotherhood Telegram chat a little while ago. One of our members was trying to figure out some sort of, like- And it was a problem having to do with like a, an air conditioning throttle or whatever it's called. Some sort of like programming in an air conditioner. And we went through it, we figured out that one of the like relatively complex parts of the equation that he was trying to figure out actually no matter what values you [00:21:00] put in, uh, equated to one. And then the other one was like it was ti- and then it was times one. So it was like whatever you put in ended up to that times one was the rest of the equation. It was like a huge, or like a relatively large equation that resolved down to one. So it was like you're trying to figure out all this complicated math and really like that entire, uh, that entire complicated equation was doing nothing in the rest of the equation. Nice. It was doing absolutely nothing. Um, so we were able to sort of like figure out, all right, well now all we need to do is figure out what, what this relationship does. Right. Um, and even something like in that particular situation, there were some values that the equation couldn't possibly balance. Which again, you could plot that on a graph and see like there's a spot... I don't, I'm, I'm making this up, but I think this is probably not wrong. There's a spot where it's like this is a parabolic equation, and so at some point the parable, or the par- parable, I didn't even mean to do that. There we go. At some point the [00:22:00] parabola goes back up, and so like there is no point- Right ... when it reaches this number. So values that would be in that, in that zone or in that range- Right ... they, they don't work in the equation. So yeah, I think math, uh, algebra is, uh, you know, basic arithmetic obviously is, is relatively straightforward. Algebra's probably the most simple, uh, form of math that your average person uses on a regular basis. Jesse Schwamb: For sure. Trigonometry And Design Tony Arsenal: But it's funny, I remember the first time, um, the very first time that I realized trigonometry was not just some abstract thing that we would never use. And it's so funny, 'cause it's like the nerdiest, the nerdiest example. I was playing a tabletop RPG with my friends, we were in high school, and we were, we were learning trigonometry at the time. I was playing a tabletop RPG, and we were trying to figure out- Um, it was a, it was like a futuristic tabletop RPG, so we were using like, like laser guns or something like that that have a certain range. And we were trying to figure out if the thing that was flying in the air from us was within range or not. Jesse Schwamb: Nice. Tony Arsenal: And what we realized [00:23:00] is that's just a quadratic equation, right? Right, it is. I just need to calculate. I know how far away it is from me in a straight line, I know how high in the air it is, so I need to just- Right now I need to... Or not, not the quadratic. That's Pythagoras' theorem, right? Yep. I need to calculate the Pythag- or the, um, the hypotenuse. Jesse Schwamb: I'm with you. I Tony Arsenal: knew where you were going. Yeah. So, like, I remember distinctly, I, I mean, I remember where I was sitting in my friend's basement going, "Oh, my goodness, trigonometry actually has a practical application here." Um, you know, whether that's figuring out how much rope I need to be able to, to attach to a tree and still be able... Like, all of these different things ultimately are math, and, or as the, the Brits say, are maths. And, uh, the, it, it's just a beautiful thing. And I think you're right, like, this is evidence that the universe has a structure- And a designer because- Right you can describe the universe using this- Nice ... sort of universal numerical language that, um, in, for the most part, describes everything we can [00:24:00] see. I mean, obviously, like, they're still learning things. They're still figuring things out. But what we can see with our senses, we can also describe with math on some level. Even something like the colors that we see can be reduced to a, a number, a frequency, a wavelength. So yeah, I'm with you. Use your algebra. Find ways to use it. Jesse Schwamb: Use it. It's the... I like what you said, that we're using it. We just don't realize it. There's a spiritual lesson in there, I think, as well, that it's, it's present all around us, and it's... I like what you said. It's, like, the, the most, like, grabbable. It's the thing that's pretty easy to grasp, yet has, like, some beautiful outworkings that are super complex. All the time I love to, like, mess with people, even people who are, like, say, like, "Oh, I'm not into math." I'm like, "That's okay." Like, it's... You're, you're living in a mathematical world, and you're certainly using it, but that, that's okay. Imaginary Numbers Wonder Jesse Schwamb: But like, sometimes I'll just say to somebody, like, "How do you know, like actually know that, like a negative number times a negative number is a positive number?" Like, who came up with that, and how do you know? And why are we just trusting him? Why can't somebody just say, "You know what? For me, it's not. I'm gonna make that a [00:25:00] negative number"? And w- the reason is because algebra provides... There's a lot of proofs, but algebra provides the most simple, beautiful proof. And then once you, once you basically contravene that law, like, everything falls apart. I- it's... And the question we should be asking is why does everything fall apart if we contravene one simple law, wh- which is two negative numbers multiplied, the product of them has to be, must be, is always a positive number. And that's, like, not even getting into, like, the more crazy things. Like, everybody should go look up, like, what imaginary numbers are. That will kind of mess with your mind, but then we found ways to use imaginary numbers, which are exactly what they sound like- Yeah ... to solve, like, incredible problems. Where does that come from? It comes from the Lord. It comes from God's, like, creative ability that He's placed in mankind to go after and to take a dominion over the knowledge and the creative order in such a complex and creative way. It mimics and mirrors the creativity of our Heavenly Father, and it is altogether beautiful. So on this- Yeah ... 500 episode that has a lot of numbers associated with it, I [00:26:00] say go love the numbers. Go enjoy them. Wherever you are in life, whatever your enjoyment of math is, big or small, go try to find some way to enjoy it today. Tony Arsenal: Can I, can I throw in a, a weird relevant sub-affirmation to your affirmation? I Jesse Schwamb: mean, please. Tony Arsenal: This is our show, so I'll do what I want to. You can do what you want. First, when you say we live in a mathematical world, all I could think of was some Perry song of Material Girl. Material Jesse Schwamb: World? Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Odd Squad Math Tony Arsenal: I am a mathematical boy, and I live in a ma- Anyway, um, there is a show that I watch with August, my son, who is almost five. Uh, he'll be five in March. And, um, it's called Odd Squad. And what Odd Squad is, is it's a sort of a s- like a spy-themed kids show with a touch of like, uh, almost like Twilight Zone. Like, there's so- It's they manage odd. Like, they're the Odd Squad because they, they respond to odd emergencies, so it's a lot of like weird monsters and aliens and like time travel paradoxes and strange stuff. But the answer [00:27:00] to the problem is always related somehow to a math principle. So they will talk about how like multiplication is just addition like many times over. Jesse Schwamb: Sure. Tony Arsenal: And that's actually why multiplying a negative number times a negative number is a positive number or, you know, like, or multiplying by a negative number is a negative number, right? And that's because like really what you're doing if you multiply two, uh, two times negative three is you're subjecting, you're subtracting two from two from two, which gives you, you know- Right ... a negative number. So it's, it's not, uh, it, it's for kids, but I actually have realized that I understand math better- because of watching the show. Jesse Schwamb: I Tony Arsenal: love it. And it's because they break it down in, you know, the, the audience- Yes ... the target audience is a little bit older than August. I think the target audience is probably like six to seven, maybe eight years old. Um, and so they're talking about math principles geared towards those groups. But they'll talk about things like [00:28:00] using a number line to be able to understand math, and so like visualizing it. Or they'll talk about how multiplication is really just groups of things. So yeah, check it out. Why Math Matters Tony Arsenal: And again- Algebra is probably the most, uh, easy to grab of the disciplines, but that's because that's the one we are using every day all the time. Tony Arsenal: And we don't realize it. But again, like, calculus is a beautiful, a beautiful thing. Um, and there are some amazing things that exist in the world that can really only be understood and described in a certain sense by something like calculus or trigonometry. Um, my favorite, I, I wish I had, like, kept it up, but one of my favorites is geometry 'cause I think a lot of it is, that's, like, the closest to puzzles. Yes. Um, uh, so, like, I, I used to love doing proofs and axioms and stuff. So, and then of course logic is technically related to math. It's a related discipline to math- It is ... in that it, it's, it's actually, like, the language that underlies a lot of the mathematics is [00:29:00] logical formulas. So it's all relevant. It's all beautiful. It all describes God's creation, and it all redounds to His glory. Jesse Schwamb: You got that right. Mark Growing Seed Jesse Schwamb: And speaking of both His creation and His glory, and Jesus teaching of both of those things, we are, as we promised, hanging out in the Book of Mark, and we've got just four sentences. And what I love about this parable that we're about to read is it fits in so perfectly with something I think you and I have been saying from the very beginning, which is it's tempting when we think about the parables to consider, like, a single element or to distill them down to, like, a single word and say, "We hear the kingdom of God is this thing, this noun, this object, this person." But instead, the case we've been making is it's actually generally a series of verbs, or in this case, it's the whole four verses that Jesus is gonna give to us here. So let me just read Mark 4:26-29. That's all it is, loved ones. And it's a good thing because we're already knee-deep into this 500th episode. So this goes by various names. I've heard it called, [00:30:00] like, the Parable of the Growing Seed, or sometimes people call it, like, the Parable of the, The Secret Seed. I'm not sure that's really secret, but I suppose the increase is secret in a way, and that's really what Jesus is communicating to us in these verses. So Mark 4:26: "And Jesus was saying, 'The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil, and he sleeps and he rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, how he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself, first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, he immediately puts in the sickle because the harvest has come.'" Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, this is, um, an interesting parable, and I'll be the first to admit, like, when you said, "Well, why don't we do the king- the parable of the growth next?" I was like, "I don't actually know what Jesse's talking about." So if you're in the same boat as I am and [00:31:00] you, uh, you are like, "Wait, there's the... This is a parable? Like, this exists in the Bible?" Um, you're not alone, and I think part of the reason is that, one, it's so short, but it also sort of, like, connects into the next parable thematically. I don't know necessarily- Hmm ... about the content and the meaning, but thematically it sort of blends into the next parable, which is the parab- Mark's version of, um, of the parable of the mustard seed. So it's, it's hard to delineate unless you're really thinking about it, but I'm glad that we're talking about it because I think this is probably one of those parables that doesn't get a lot of attention because it's so short and because it is, um, it is sort of thematically in a spot where I think it does sort of, I don't know, like seep into the next- Right parable. Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, there's a tendency because you're right, it's sandwiched between the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Mustard Seed, both of which we've talked about from Matthew's perspective, that it seems like maybe the theme is redundant, but [00:32:00] it is altogether different with the emphasis. Uh, there, it's true I guess that all three of these parables are addressing that same underlying question the disciples in the early church were asking, which is, if Jesus truly inaugurates the Kingdom of God, then why does it seem so impressive? Why is it so slow or hidden in contrast to all the expectations that the Jews had for what they thought would be this dramatic, immediately visible rain? And so I like that there is a lot said within four verses. And again, from our perspective, this thing seems so distinctly reformed in its under- Yeah of course the whole Bible is that way, but maybe nothing more so than this, especially because we'll get to it, but the center of this parable being, and there's various translations, that this guy doesn't even know. He doesn't understand. He's totally ignorant to what is going on, and isn't that... I, I mean, I can only speak for my own test- that's the story of my life, uh, spiritually and otherwise. That again, if you wanna talk about God doing all the verbs, I guess Mark had it first. I thought maybe I coined that, but [00:33:00] turns out that Mark, well, actually Jesus, the Son of God himself, says it best here. So let, let's get into this because the beautiful thing is you and I can handle theoretically in the time allotted here, like three or four verses. That, that's theoretically possible for us to do, but we, we're only gonna h- see how far it goes. Um- Tony Arsenal: Yeah ... Hidden Kingdom Growth Jesse Schwamb: I think the first thing to say here is that we get that beautiful characteristic, like formula, like the controlling paradigm. It's that Kingdom of God again. And a- as I kinda set up, it's the Kingdom of God, though, launched into a bunch of, uh, verbs. Uh, this idea of like him casting, and then him sleeping, and then him waiting, and then him getting up, and then the growth happens, and then he comes again at the end, this character, this farmer, into kind of the consummation of that kingdom. And I think there's a lot here that's maybe to explain that tension. The kingdom is real and active. It's irresistibly moving towards some kind of fixed end, but it does not appear in its final glory, and that is something you kind of get with the other two parables. [00:34:00] But here it's just like so lovely. It's right in front of you. That, that's like the whole emphasis and thrust of what Jesus seems to be saying in this. Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and I think this one's interesting because, you know, generally in the parables, at least in, in... I, I would have to do a little bit more study to know if this is, like, distinctly Markan or whatnot. But in the, the, um, Matthew's parables, um, or Christ's parables reported in Matthew, um, primarily the main figure of the parable is, uh, is generally is God or, or more specifically is often Jesus himself. Jesse Schwamb: Right. Tony Arsenal: Right? But in this parable, it wouldn't make sense for us to say that somehow g- you know, God or Jesus scatters seed, and then He doesn't know that it sprouts. Right. Right? So, so the, the parable implies that the one scattering seed, and again, we don't wanna over-interpret parables. Generally speaking, parables are teaching kind of a principle of some sort, a comparison of some sort, not, it's not an allegory. [00:35:00] In, in most cases it's not an allegory where each element has a direct representation of some sort. But it wouldn't make sense for this to be talking about God's perspective on scattering or Christ's perspective on scattering, 'cause obviously God and Jesus, even, even if we're talking about Jesus according to His humanity, um, has some sort of awareness of the workings of the Kingdom of God that is not the ignorance that the parable here seems- Right to present of the one scattering. Scatter Then Rest Tony Arsenal: So I, I really do think this parable has more to say to us about- Our own perspectives on evangelism and on how the Kingdom of God will propagate. And I think, um, both in terms of, like, evangelism, there's an element here, an encouraging element of, you know, all your s- your job... And what's really funny is I, I don't recall this parable being used in my experience to sort of [00:36:00] encourage people that all, your own, your job is just to scatter. You don't need to worry about the growth. Mm-hmm. There's a, there's a passage in Paul about one person scatters, one person waters, and God brings the growth that is often used to sort of say, like, it's not your responsibility to make sure that the, the, the, um, the bud is, you know, c- comes to flowering and to fruiting. It's just your job to be faithful to scatter or to water or whatever step it's on. This, I think, has even more encouragement for us in that the one who scatters, um, i- is obviously God, but there's also this element that, like, we're scattering. The one scattering is not omniscient. But the one scattering, uh, he doesn't even know how or why or even that, I think, that the, um, that the f- the growth is occurring, and that's the most- Right remarkable part of this. Like, we're not talking about a normal farmer who is aware of how growth [00:37:00] occurs, is aware of the timing. He's constantly checking. He's making sure that he's checking the soil, that he's applying manure, that he's watering the crops. This is literally like some dude who just throws seed out, and then, then just goes back to his daily business of sleeping and rising and going about his day. And then all of the sudden, the earth, quote, "by itself produces." And I think that's the real key here is- There's something about the Kingdom of God and the seed that the Kingdom of God scatters. It's almost like the Kingdom of God itself is the one scattering here. Jesse Schwamb: Right. Tony Arsenal: Yep. The Kingdom of God and the seed that is scattered in and as a result of the Kingdom of God, it produces the outcome autonomously. It doesn't require us to input into it, at least in the context of this parable. Now, again, the Parable of the Talents would be very clear to us that we can't just rest on our loyals- laurels. God expects us to work and to be fruitful for the kingdom. [00:38:00] But there is this element here of, like, you are not the one responsible for the production of the seed and the fruiting and flowering of the seed. In fact, you're not even responsible for being aware that it occurs or how it occurs. Your only responsibility, the only active verb in this whole thing is... Well, there's a couple. The, the, the main active verb is the scattering. The other active verb is the sleeping. So, like- Right ... we, we scatter, and then we, we rest and we trust that God is going to do His work. Jesse Schwamb: Right. Even on the face, there's so much in this that does seem mysterious. Like, if you just take this parable and think about the act of agriculture, and I sometimes think about this because I do love plants, and we have a bunch of plants in our house, and I'm horrible at trying to get them to grow. And I think about what still a mystery it is. With all we know about science, just that you can still plant something, a seed, and water it, and the sugars will break down, and the seed will take root, and that something will grow and flower, and you think, "Oh, who is doing that?" And, and w- [00:39:00] I think we'll get into this, the first and second principles, first and second causes here, which are, I think, certainly something that Christ intends for us to consider here. But there is this idea that the man's action is simple and passive relative to what follows. He, like you said, just scatters the seed. And he's a real agent, but as the parable unfolds, it's almost like his entire agency recedes entirely from view. And that's what kind of sets for me, like this whole trajectory of the parable. It's that the mechanism of growth is strangely hidden from the human agent, and it belongs to God alone. And so you already stole it from me, but I'm gonna read 1 Corinthians 3:6-7, which is, coheres directly with what's happening, I think, in this parable. And this reads, or Paul writes, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth." And so there is like an extension, I think, of that application inward though as well. Kind of like when you were speaking about that, what occurred to me is that we see in the [00:40:00] farmer's like day and night unawareness, this picture, I think, of this often gradual, imperceptible work of grace in our own hearts, in every believer's heart. Like that, that sanctification process, it proceeds by these degrees, and the Christian cannot fully trace even in himself, yet it is definitely real, and it's definitely God's doing. And then I think as well we might pull out a thread of this, you know, ecclesiological truth. You know, the church's growth is God's work, not the fruit of human strategy. And then by application even further into that, it's based upon a soteriological one, which is like the ordo salutis, which is maybe half of every episode we've recorded talks about the ordo salutis in some ways. That too is unfolding by this divine power, and it's hidden from the creature's full comprehension, and that's consistent in this parable and in all of Scripture, that this regeneration precedes and produces faith rather than the reverse. Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, and I, I think too there's also an element in this passage, you know, when you think about... Uh, [00:41:00] I'm not a farmer, uh, and I, I don't know that many farmers, but when you think about how f- how modern farming works, it's very different than, uh, ancient farming, right? Historically, ancient farming was, uh, I think probably a lot of just trusting the world to do what the world does and, and trusting God to do what, what God does. A- and I think that's probably why a lot of like- When you look at, um, pagan religion, the, the fertility cults and the sort of goddesses and gods of the harvest were all related because there was this mystery to it. And so the reason that there's so much, uh, cultic worship around fertility and harvest is because it is so mysterious, and you just kinda have to, like, trust that it's gonna happen. Jesse Schwamb: Right. Tony Arsenal: Right? You sow your seed in, you sow the seed of your field in, you know, the fall, uh, and, or in the, the, you know, the summer, and then you wait several [00:42:00] months and just hope that the crop comes in. And our modern agricultural world is not all that different. We have better tools and we can measure things that, like the soil, the nutrients in the soil. We can, you know, we can do all sorts of different imaging to see of what's happening underground. But at the end of the day, even with all of the advances we have, the farmer still can't make the crop come in. Jesse Schwamb: That's right. Tony Arsenal: Either the crop comes in or it doesn't. And I, I think there's this element of trust here that I think is really useful for us. And again, I think you're right. This is like, uh, it feels almost wrong to say it this way, but it's like this is a super distinctively Reformed parable. Like, of all, all of the parables in the, the Gospels, this one is like, on the face of it, a Calvinist parable. Yeah. Exactly. Like, it's like God just grows the kingdom- Yes and nobody does anything about it. Jesse Schwamb: Amen. Tony Arsenal: And I don't need to go into more details than that. But there is this element for us, I think, as, uh, as those [00:43:00] who want to share the gospel, there can be an anxiety around trying to ensure some sort of production, some sort of produce, uh, and productivity from that, that is just not healthy. And I think, you know, we, we have a responsibility as Christians, um, to be faithful and diligent in doing what God has called us to do. But if, if we read this parable as the one who scatters is sort of like the evangelist, then the only responsibility we have as evangelists, and all of us are evangelists, right, lowercase E evangelists, um, all of us, the only responsibility we have is to scatter the seed of the gospel. Jesse Schwamb: That's Tony Arsenal: right. And we're not responsible for the growth. We're not responsible for even really understanding how growth happens, uh, or even, even doing much about it until it's time to harvest that growth. And I think that's, we need to talk about what that means too, because again, like [00:44:00] this is a parable that I think is maybe not as, as clean and clear as some of the, uh, Methanian parables where it really does seem like there's a pretty clear symbolic representation on some things. This one feels like it's maybe a little muddier in that, um, the main character and the role of the s- the one who's scattering seems to sort of almost shift throughout the parable, which is crazy to say because it's only like four verses long. Tony Arsenal: But it, it does seem like at some points the scatterer is God, at other points it can't be God, and then it seems like, well, who's harvesting? It's not really us, so it's gotta be God. So I think it's, it's important for us to hold this parable as more of a general principle about the Kingdom of God than it is about any sort of like really direct one-to-one teaching on the, on the Kingdom of God. Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. That's a interesting distinction. Providence And Causes Jesse Schwamb: Here's what I would say about that, I think, is let's equate this to, like, coffee. You like a good cup of coffee. I do. I like a good cup of coffee. I think if we were to take, let's [00:45:00] say, the Parable of the Prodigal, that would be for me like a big Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Like, it's delicious, mild-bodied, maybe a little bit light. This parable is like two shots of espresso- Yeah ... 'cause there's a lot in there, and we could probably take a lot of time even t- speaking about, like you're saying, the more shadowy eschatological truths that appear in verse 29 because those, this idea of, like, a sickle in the harvest, I mean, that's imagery drawn from Old Testament eschatological judgment texts. So that could be pretty heavy in its own right. I think what's critical, before we get to that, is to, like, tease out something you said, which is there is a lot in here about this doctrine of providence, like, this spontaneous self-originating action apart from external human causation. And we've talked a lot, like, we distinguish between primary and second causation. You know, the Earth is genuinely or generally has second- secondary causes, like an ordinary means through which God's ordinary providence operates, but the ultimate primary [00:46:00] cause of growth is God himself. And so here we see that. Like, there's no exclusion of the farmer's agency as an explanatory cause. The soil does what it does because God has ordained the natural order to function in this way. That is his prerogative. And so that threefold progression then, blade, ear, full grain, which by the way I had to look up because my understanding of, like, all kinds of different types of grains is very thin and I'm out of my depth here. But- ... I'm led to believe That that development is gradual, and of course it's ordered, but it's not instantaneous. And so the application here, I think, has traditionally been applied in this corporate individual spiritual growth we're talking about. Like, the church advances through stages of maturity, and so does the individual believer's sanctification, without warranting either impatience or despair at the process's slowness. This is how God works. He does it in His gracious and kind way. And again, He's using this, all of this agriculture to illustrate that purpose. So there's, like, this buildup, I think, [00:47:00] in verse 28 about the incredible providence of God, both like corporatively, personally, in His world, how He is the primary cause, but also uses secondary causes, not in a disjointed or divorced way, but in a way that encapsulates and magnifies His glory. And that is then what leads to or will lead to the reemergence in verse 29 of this whole deal of, like, well, if farmer comes back in, and now he returns, but only at the point of consummation, not at the point of growth. Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Harvest And Timing Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and, you know, we won't go into all of the ways that this ties into the other parables, but it's worth, uh, it's worth mentioning that in, in both, uh, the parable of the mustard seed, which follows this, and then also the parable of the sort of sower or the seeds, um, there is this element of this, the one who is sowing seeds is not fully cognizant or aware or, and, and absolutely not in [00:48:00] control of the outcome, right? In the parable of the sower, um, he scatters the seed promiscuously, right? And the- Right ... the outcome depends on what kind of ground the seed falls on. And in the parable of the mustard seed, it, it's more of a, like, idea that the, uh, the sower sows a seed that seems so small, but it, the growth of the seed is explosive and expansive because of the nature of the seed, not because of the skill of the sower. Jesse Schwamb: That's Tony Arsenal: right. Right? In this instance, um- The only thing, again, the only thing that initially the sower is responsible for is the sowing of the seed, the scattering of the seed. But what I also think is interesting is then there is a point where the one who scatters the seed is now responsible to act once he's observed the seed coming to fruition, right? Now, now what exactly that means and how exactly that applies, I think there's a lot of different things we could talk about. Um, but again, [00:49:00] this is a parable that we have to be careful not to, uh, not to restrict just sort of crassly to, like, evangelism. Right. Exactly. Or, or even just to sort of, like, the eschatological harvest. Right. That's what's tricky about this parable, I think, that bears ... And I don't think we'll do it, we'll do it necessarily on the show. It'd be worth having more conversations about. But for our own personal study, it bears deeper reflection because this parable cannot be simply reduced to an eschatology parable about what God does in the end. Jesse Schwamb: Right. Tony Arsenal: And it can't be simply reduced to a parable about evangelism because strictly speaking, like, we're not really the ones that harvest when the harvest comes in, right? I've, I have heard this parable, um, preached, you know, like I said, although I acknowledge that I, um, like forgot that it existed. I have heard this parable preached as though, like, "Well, our responsibility is to scatter seed. We're not responsible for [00:50:00] making it grow or making it take root. But when we see that it's taking root, we're responsible for jumping in and harvesting at the right time." I don't think we should draw that conclusion here. Although the, the harvester does see that the ear is ripe, that the grain is ripe, and he harvests it, it would be a weird sort of like shift in the parable to go from the person who scattered seed isn't responsible for its growth, doesn't even know that the growth is happening, but is actually responsible for knowing exactly when to harvest the grain. Right. So we have to think about this again in gen- in terms of general principles of how the Kingdom of God functions. And w- how it functions is it's mysterious, it is, uh, consistent, it happens on a, a scale and on a predictable outcome that we as individuals don't understand and don't have visibility to, and the harvest will occur in its [00:51:00] time, and it will h- occur consistently and reliably. So again, like this is... I hope that maybe like the one or two non-Reformed people that listen to the show aren't terribly offended at this, but like this just is Reformed theology, right? There, there is a seed that is sown, God is responsible for the growth, and the harvest necessarily will help it happen when it's supposed to happen, right? When the r- when the fruit is ripe, it will be harvested. That doesn't mean I'm responsible as the one who sows seed or scatters or m- witnesses to people from making sure that the, quote, "sickle is put in at the right time," or anything like that. Jesse Schwamb: Right. Tony Arsenal: The fact is that the sickle will always come in at the right time. The person who has the final kinda piece of the puzzle in evangelism, I think that's how it often happens. Someone hears the gospel repeatedly from multiple places. They have contacts and relationships that tie into how they [00:52:00]ultimately come to accept the gospel and trust Christ. But ultimately it's the Holy Spirit who brings all that into some sort of coherent, um, execution and application of redemption That will happen in God's time. So I wanna be careful not to, like, put too much responsibility on us. Right. And again, this is just a parable that I think bears a lot more reflection, that I think because, um, I think Mark in general, because it's so short, uh, gets, it gets overlooked by Christians. I think we would all do well to spend a little bit more time in Mark. But especially some of these really short pericopes. I think we just read through it, and it's like we read a chapter of Mark, like Mark 4 comes up in our Bible reading plan. Right. And if we're reading the Bible in a year, like, Mark 4 is one of three or four chapters that we read, and this is four verses of that. Right. We just read over it quick and we c- we just, we don't appropriate any of it. Jesse Schwamb: Right. It sounds like he's just reiterating a point or he's recapitulating something that he's already said or is about to say, and you're like, "Okay, get on with it." But I'm with [00:53:00] you. This parable, like all of them, is for us. It's for our joy. It's for our satisfaction and our comfort. And I think from this, there is, like, a single controlling point that's emerging from our conversation, which is the Kingdom of God advances by God's own hidden power toward a certain appointed consummation. And this ought to produce, like, patient confidence rather than human striving or a- anxiety. In order to give us a sense of calm, a reminder that God's providence is real in all areas of life. Remarkably, we've gotten this far in the conversation, and neither of us has just, has used the M word, which just came to me, and I think we're contractually obligated to say it as a Reformed podcast, and that is this is a prime example of monergism and the sovereignty of grace. And as in regeneration, the decisive cause of kingdom growth lies outside human capacity and comprehension. I think sometimes the latter part of that seems wrong to us. It makes us fearful because we don't understand it. But the former part should make us feel very happy and [00:54:00] relieved, that the capacity belongs to God and God alone. That doesn't depend on me or you or anybody else that we know. And this parable, I think, is often been paired with John's image of the wind blowing where it wishes as this picture of the Holy
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Descartes a Kant (DAK) — the theatrical rock band from Guadalajara, Mexico — joins Fox Cities Core on Code Zero Radio during their Mile of Music run in Appleton, WI. Band members Sandra, Memo, and Leo dig into the philosophy-inspired origin of their name, the wild theatrical concept behind their live show (choreography, and "the machine"), and the story behind recording with legendary producer Steve Albini on their album "Victims of Love Propaganda."In this interview, the band talks about:- Where the name "Descartes a Kant" actually comes from- Starting the band in 2001 as a school project inspired by riot grrrl bands- How the band's theatrical, costume-driven concept evolved album by album- Writing their album "After Destruction" through a lineup change, isolation, and grief- Recording on analog tape with Steve Albini and remembering his legacy- Getting vouched for by Mike Patton to play with Mr. Bungle- Sharing stages with Sonic Youth, the Melvins, St. Vincent, and Slayer's Dave Lombardo- How they get their massive live sound without traditional amps- Their first impressions of Appleton, Wisconsin — tornado damage, sound baths, and Wisconsin gifts- What's next for the band, including upcoming UK, Mexico, and US tour datesDescartes a Kant played Mile of Music in Appleton, Wisconsin. Catch their music videos, including their Steve Albini recording sessions, on their YouTube channel.Fox Cities Core is Code Zero Radio's show covering the Fox Cities and Wisconsin live music scene through artist interviews, venue spotlights, and show previews.Subscribe for more Fox Cities Core interviews with touring and local artists.#DescartesaKant #DAK #FoxCitiesCore #CodeZeroRadio #MileOfMusic #AppletonWisconsin #SteveAlbini #MikePatton #MexicanRockBand #TheatricalRock #IndieRock #TouringMusicians #GuadalajaraMusic #LiveMusic #AfterDestruction
The word “intelligence” is a loaded word. Here's what Elon Musk said to the Economist last week: “I think AI may exceed the sum of human intelligence in around five years. There really won't be anything that AI can't do better than humans, apart from being human, perhaps.” Well “being human” is what intelligence is all about. So I read up on how Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, James, and many of the eastern philosophers define the term. And what you find is that deep thinkers define intelligence far beyond the ability to recall and use facts, but focus heavily on judgement, problem solving, and dealing with uncertainties in life. So after thinking about this for a few years, I decided to posit my ideas, and also reflect on the intelligence of trees, as described in “The Hidden Life of Trees.” What I came up with is four parts to this puzzling idea: horsepower, information, judgement, and wisdom. And as you'll hear, we all have various levels of intelligence in each area, and AI may lack quite a bit. As we all grapple with the exaggerated claims from AI engineers and the real use of these tools, I hope this discussion gives you some perspective, and also calms your fears that AI is going to steal your job. Our new book, Superpowered, is coming out in November, so sign up for early preview – it's all about how AI Superpowers us all, in our work, careers, businesses, and life. Additional Information The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from A Secret World The full-length interview with Elon Musk | The Economist Are Frontier Models Becoming A Commodity? Galileo: The AI Superintelligence for HR Chapters (00:00:00) - What is Intelligence?(00:10:02) - Does an AI Have Enough Intelligence to Plan?
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POUR COMMANDER MON LIVRE :https://www.editions-larousse.fr/livre/la-philosophie-cest-pour-vous-aussi-9782036070325/POUR COMMANDER MA BANDE DESSINÉE PHILORAMA : https://www.editions-larousse.fr/livre/philorama-9782036082434/Disponible aussi dans toutes les bonnes librairies !
••• Strategies for Overcoming Pride, Ep 439c . ••• Bible Study Verses: Proverbs 15:25, Proverbs 18.12, Genesis 3, James 4.6-7, Philippians 2:5-11, Psalm 110:3, Matthew 8:1-10, Psalm 127:1, John 12:24, Proverbs 4.23, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Matthew 26:41, Mark 14:38, Matthew 12:34, Luke 6:45 . PART-B BIBLE VERSES: Isiah 14:12-15, Proverbs 6.16-19, Ezekiel 28:11-19, Jude 1.6. PART-A BIBLE VERSES: Isaiah 14:12-15, Matthew 6:1-2, Proverbs 6:16-19, Colossians 3:23, James 4:6-7 . ••• “For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense...the Christians are right: it is pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity † ••• “Pride, perceiving humility honorable, often borrows her cloak”, Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661, A brilliant English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his "Worthies of England", Published posthumously in 1862. He was a prolific author, and one of the first English writers able to live by his pen. † ••• "Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair" Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662 . † ••• “Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud”, Proverbs 16:19 KJV . ••• What are 3-indicators that one may have issues of pride in their life? ••• What are 5-dangers of having detrimental pride in one's life? ••• What are 8-life actions to over come pride in one's life? ••• Are you going to ask your small group to pray that you will be more intentional about conquering the sin of pride through the power of Holy Spirit? ••• PART-B STUDY QUESTIONS: What are 7-reasons why God hates pride? ••• Pastor Otuno expounds on this and much more on the exciting journey of Fresh Encounter Radio Podcast originally aired on WNQM, Nashville Quality Ministries and WWCR World Wide Christian Radio broadcast to all 7-continents on this big beautiful blue marble, earth, floating through space. Please be prayerful before studying The Word of God so that you will receive the most inspiration possible . ••• This Discipleship Teaching Podcast is a listener supported production by all the beloved of God who believe in it's mission. Thank You . ••• Broadcaster's Website - https://www.lifelonganointing.com . ••• Exceeding Thanks to Universe Creator Christ Jesus AND photo by Etty Fidele Photography, Paris France, https://www.fideletty.com/, https://www.instagram.com/fideletty/, https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/FideleEtty, Art Direction by gil on his mac with free mac layout software . ••• † https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/search?q=pride+c.s.+lewis. http://christian-quotes.ochristian.com/Blaise-Pascal-Quotes/ , Among the contemporaries of Descartes none displayed greater natural genius than Pascal, but his mathematical reputation rests more on what he might have done than on what he actually effected, as during a considerable part of his life he deemed it his duty to devote his whole time to religious exercises. At 16, Pascal began designing a calculating machine, which he finally perfected when he was thirty, the pascaline, a beautiful handcrafted box about 14x5x3 inches. The first accurate mechanical calculator was born.ZZZZ SPODIFY THIS BETTER:••• SHARING LINK: https://open.spotify.com/show/7naZVpZ02zaiAO04PAaTUq . ••• RESOURCE - Prayer Requests: PRAYER@SWRC.COM . ••• Study Guides at - https://open.spotify.com/show/7naZVpZ02zaiAO04PAaTUq . ••• RESOURCE: FREE Max McLean Chronological Audio Bible! https://tinyurl.com/godspeaks777 . ••• RESOURCE - Amazing Stories: https://www.soundcloud.com/thewaytogod . ••• FERP250725 Episode#439c GOT 250725 Ep439c . ••• Winning The Battle Of The Mind, Part-9c of 9: Strategies for Overcoming Pride . ††† . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Can we trust our minds to know reality?This clip is taken from Nathan Jacobs' most recent interview with Thomas Thorogood and features a reaction to a discussion between Destiny and T.K. Coleman on The Minimalists podcast. Their exchange raises a profound philosophical question: what makes our reasoning faculties trustworthy in the first place?Nathan explores properly functioning faculties, Descartes' skepticism, moderate foundationalism, and the crucial distinction between realism and nominalism. Along the way, he argues that every act of perception, reasoning, language, and scientific inquiry already presupposes realism, making it impossible to consistently live or argue as a nominalist.If you've ever wondered whether we can genuinely know reality—or what our ability to reason tells us about the nature of the world—this discussion offers a compelling introduction to some of philosophy's deepest questions.======================================Timestamps00:00 — A Debate About Objective Morality06:24 — Why Our Faculties Matter09:21 — Properly Functioning Faculties09:48 — Hard vs Moderate Foundationalism10:19 — Descartes and Radical Doubt13:09 — Why Skepticism Cannot Be Lived14:24 — Trusting Our Faculties16:26 — The Most Important Question in Philosophy17:26 — Realism vs Nominalism19:14 — Why Perception Depends on Realism20:34 — Why Logic Depends on Realism22:17 — Why Everyone Lives Like a Realist23:14 — Realism and Providence24:07 — Morality, the Numinous, and Human Experience25:52 — Every Argument Presupposes Realism26:56 — Living Consistently With Your Worldview======================================Do you like this content? Join Jacobs Premium to get exclusive access to essays, lecture series, monthly Q&A Zoom calls, and ourbook club. Use code: LEWIS to get a discount: https://www.thenathanjacobspodcast.com/Support the East West Series: http://theeastwestseries.com/======================================Relevant Links:Thomas Thorogood Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNu3mGq6HhUThe Most Important Question: https://youtu.be/nVmPIMg4St4All links:The Theological Letters (Substack): https://nathanajacobs.substack.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenathanjacobspodcastX: https://x.com/NathanJacobsPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/nathanandrewjacobsAcademia: https://vanderbilt.academia.edu/NathanAJacobsListen and please review the podcast elsewhere:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0hSskUtCwDT40uFbqTk3QSApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nathan-jacobs-podcast
Is anyone really out there, or am I just chatting to a very articulate hallucination?In this episode, we juggle Descartes' lonely thinker, Kant's phenomena vs noumena, and Wittgenstein's ban on private language. If all we ever have are mental snapshots of the world, what right do we have to talk about some “real” thing behind them?On the way we hit: Private language & inner voices – are we talking to others, or just different bits of ourselves? Postmodernism & perspective – if everyone reads the world differently, do we still share a world at all? Ethics after God – without a cosmic referee, how do we avoid moral chaos? Featuring Red Dwarf's “Better Than Life,” a brain that sabotages its own happiness, Philip K. Dick and Robert Heinlein as unlikely comrades, and the comforting thought that if this is your solipsistic universe, you've got some serious explaining to do about Hitler, Trump, and broken-down cars full of kids.Plug in and decide whether “we” are really in this together – or whether “we” is already one person too many.
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In this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop speaks with Aaron Neyer, founder of Parachute and community organizer in Boulder, about knowledge management, extended minds, and the intersection of AI with human consciousness. They explore how Parachute functions as a digital brain tool for organizing thoughts and information across fragmented systems, discuss the dangers of AI psychosis and over-reliance on technology, and debate open source AI development versus controlled releases by companies like Anthropic. The conversation weaves through topics including the limitations of metrics-driven business thinking, consciousness and relevance realization, the value of technological sabbaths, and Aaron's hope for locally-run open source models that protect personal data while still accessing more powerful gated models when needed. You can find Aaron's writing at unforced.org and unforced.substack.com, and learn more about Parachute at parachute.computer and parachute.computer/blog.Timestamps00:00 Stewart welcomes Aaron Neyer, founder of Parachute and Boulder community organizer, discussing the origin of Parachute's name from Frank Zappa's quote about open minds.05:00 Aaron explains Parachute as an extended mind tool for organizing notes, contacts and information across multiple platforms, emphasizing the distinction between primary mind and extended mind as interconnected systems.10:00 Discussion shifts to metrics-driven business culture and the limitations of pure rationality, exploring how Google's data-driven approach misses subjective experience and the whole picture of relationships.15:00 Aaron discusses AI's ability to help identify relevant variables across different domains and the dangers of AI psychosis, comparing it to cult dynamics and belief systems.20:00 The conversation covers AI sabbaths and nineties retreats as intentional breaks from technology, plus Aaron's experiences with electrical engineering and using AI to design circuits with Arduinos.25:00 Exploring forbidden knowledge and open source AI, Aaron discusses Anthropic's guardrails around powerful models while arguing for distributed access to prevent concentration of power.30:00 Deep dive into open source AI strategy, with Aaron highlighting NVIDIA's approach and the potential for running capable models locally while reserving ultra-intelligent models for complex research tasks.35:00 Aaron shares his vision for local Sonnet-class models handling personal data while accessing Fable-class models for deep research, and directs listeners to unforced.org and parachute.computer for his writing.Key Insights1. The philosophy behind Parachute stems from Frank Zappa's quote that the mind is like a parachute and doesn't work if it isn't open. Aaron Neyer explains that having an open mind is valuable, but it must be balanced with deep roots to avoid becoming untethered. He has experienced periods in his life where excessive openness led him to feel disconnected, teaching him that creativity and expansion need to be grounded in something substantial. This same principle applies to how we organize information digitally, where openness and interoperability allow our extended minds to become more connected and coherent, which in turn helps our primary minds think more clearly.2. Parachute is designed as an extended mind tool that addresses the fragmentation problem in how we currently manage information. Most people use multiple disconnected tools like Obsidian, Notion, Apple Notes, Google Keep, and various CRMs to organize their thoughts, notes, and relationships. These systems don't communicate well with each other, creating inefficiency and confusion. Parachute aims to create a simple, intuitive system where all this information can be organized in one place with true interoperability, allowing users to own their data and have it speak effectively with other tools, ultimately making our entire extended mind more functional.3. Understanding ourselves as unified body mind organisms rather than fragmented parts is essential for effectiveness. Living systems theory shows that any living system is three things: a membrane bound dissipative structure, a self regulating autopoietic network, and a cognitive process actively knowing the world. Western civilization since Descartes and Galileo has created artificial separation between body and mind, and between subjective and objective experience, which limits our effectiveness. The same fragmentation affects our digital technology, and recognizing both our biological and digital systems as coherent wholes rather than disconnected parts makes us vastly more capable.4. The relationship between data driven approaches and holistic thinking reveals important limitations in modern business and science. While working at Google, Aaron observed how data driven decision making can be powerful, but over reliance on metrics like ROI creates blindness to crucial unmeasurable factors like goodwill and relationship quality. This reflects a broader Western tendency to exclude subjective experience because it's difficult for objective science to measure. However, emotions, relationships, and other subjective elements are essential parts of reality, and focusing only on quantifiable metrics means missing the whole picture and ultimately becoming less effective despite appearing more rational.5. AI accelerates the ability to work with technical complexity by helping with relevance realization across domains where we lack expertise. In any specialized field, experts develop intuitive senses for which variables matter and can quickly identify problems, whether in computer troubleshooting, music, or cooking. AI's ability to generalize allows it to point people toward relevant solutions in areas where they haven't developed that intuitive expertise, effectively democratizing technical capability. This means people can direct their creativity more effectively across more domains, though it also raises concerns about giving powerful capabilities to those who may lack the wisdom to use them responsibly.6. The question of open source AI versus gated access involves complex tradeoffs between democratizing power and preventing harm. Aaron respects Anthropic's approach of creating guardrails around powerful models like Mythos, which would likely have caused significant system hacks if released without restrictions. However, this creates concerning power dynamics where only wealthy companies, governments, and their allies have access to the most powerful tools. NVIDIA offers hope through their truly open source approach including full training pipelines, and there may be a viable path where open source models at the Sonnet capability level handle most tasks locally while more powerful Fable class models remain gated for the most demanding work.7. Creating intentional breaks from AI and technology is essential for maintaining clear independent thinking. Aaron practices an AI Sabbath at least one day per week when he doesn't interact with AI, and he finds these are the days when he does his best thinking and journaling. Without these breaks, he finds himself constantly jumping between journaling and prompting AI rather than giving himself space for deep reflection. This pattern mirrors broader concerns about AI consistency creating cult like dynamics similar to organized religion, where constant immersion in a belief system or technology can lead to losing the ability to think independently, making periodic disconnection crucial for maintaining cognitive autonomy and clarity.
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••• Strategies for Overcoming Pride, Ep 438b . ••• Bible Study Verses: Isiah 14:12-15, Proverbs 6.16-19, Ezekiel 28:11-19, Jude 1.6 . ••• Previous Bible Study Verses: Isaiah 14:12-15, Matthew 6:1-2, Proverbs 6:16-19, Colossians 3:23, James 4:6-7 . ••• Next Weeks Bible Study Verses: Philippians 2:5-11. Bonus Verses: 1Pet2:9, Rm13:7, Col3:23, Pr18:12, Pr19:23, Pr15:25, Pr4:23, Jm4:6-7 . ••• “For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense...the Christians are right: it is pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity † ••• “Pride, perceiving humility honorable, often borrows her cloak”, Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661, A brilliant English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his "Worthies of England", Published posthumously in 1862. He was a prolific author, and one of the first English writers able to live by his pen . ••• "Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair" Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, Among the contemporaries of Descartes none displayed greater natural genius than Pascal, but his mathematical reputation rests more on what he might have done than on what he actually effected, as during a considerable part of his life he deemed it his duty to devote his whole time to religious exercises. At 16, Pascal began designing a calculating machine, which he finally perfected when he was 30-years old, the PASCALINE, a beautiful handcrafted box about 14x5x3 inches. The first accurate mechanical calculator was created. Pascal was dismayed & disgusted by society's reactions to his machine & completely renounced his interest in science & mathematics, devoting the rest of his life to God. He is best known for his collection of spiritual essays, Les Pensees. Ironically, Pascal, a genius by any measure, with one of the finest brains of all time, died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 39. † ••• “Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud”, Proverbs 16:19 KJV . ••• What are 7-reasons why God hates pride? ••• Are you going to ask your small group to pray that you will be more intentional about conquering the sin of pride through the power of Holy Spirit? ••• Pastor Otuno expounds on this and much more on the exciting journey of Fresh Encounter Radio Podcast originally aired on WNQM, Nashville Quality Ministries and WWCR World Wide Christian Radio broadcast to all 7-continents on this big beautiful blue marble, earth, floating through space. Please be prayerful before studying The Word of God so that you will receive the most inspiration possible . ••• This Discipleship Teaching Podcast is a listener supported production by all the beloved of God who believe in its mission . ••• Broadcaster's Website - https://www.lifelonganointing.com . ••• Exceeding Thanks to Universe Creator Christ Jesus AND photo by Etty Fidele Photography, Paris France, https://www.fideletty.com/ , https://www.instagram.com/fideletty/, https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/FideleEtty, Art Direction by gil on his mac with free mac layout software . ••• † https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/search?q=pride+c.s.+lewis. http://christian-quotes.ochristian.com/Blaise-Pascal-Quotes/ .••• SHARING LINK: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3owGczZKXX3273pQRamTmY . ••• RESOURCE - Prayer Requests: PRAYER@SWRC.COM . ••• Study Guides at - https://open.spotify.com/show/7naZVpZ02zaiAO04PAaTUq . ••• RESOURCE: FREE Max McLean Chronological Audio Bible! https://tinyurl.com/godspeaks777 . ••• RESOURCE - Amazing Stories: https://www.soundcloud.com/thewaytogod . ••• FERP250711 Episode#437a GOT 250711 Ep437a . ••• Winning The Battle Of The Mind, Part-8a of 9: Strategies for Overcoming Pride . ††† . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
July 17, 2026: Your daily rundown of health and wellness news, in under 5 minutes. Today's top stories: Eli Lilly acquires AtaiBeckley for up to $3.8B, the largest psychedelic medicine deal yet, gaining an intranasal DMT therapy in Phase 3 for depression Wonder closes $650M Series D at $9B valuation, building a vertically integrated food platform spanning restaurants, delivery, and AI personalization Hemispheric emerges from stealth with $52M and Descartes, a foundation AI model trained on EEG data to diagnose depression, PTSD, and Alzheimer's Today's episode is brought to you by AIIR — a modern communications and experiential agency for health, wellness, fitness, and performance brands. From earned media to events and creator-led campaigns, AIIR helps companies sharpen their story, earn attention, and build trust that compounds. Visit https://aiir.agency to learn more. More from Fitt: Fitt Insider breaks down the convergence of fitness, wellness, and healthcare — and what it means for business, culture, and capital. Subscribe to our newsletter → insider.fitt.co/subscribe Work with our recruiting firm → https://talent.fitt.co/ Follow us on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/fittinsider/ Follow us on LinkedIn → linkedin.com/company/fittinsider Reach out → insider@fitt.co
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Dr. Justin Sledge is a scholar of philosophy and Western esotericism, and the voice behind the YouTube channel Esoterica, which has grown to over a million subscribers. He has spent his career studying the traditions that history tried to erase: Gnosticism, Kabbalah, Hermeticism, witchcraft, and alchemy.What We Dive Into:1. Classical skepticism is not about debunking or disbelief. It is about bracketing your personal investment long enough to let the material speak for itself. 2. Newton wrote more on alchemy and the occult than on calculus. Descartes arrived at his famous method through a mystical dream. Stripping these facts from the story of modernity has cost us access to some of the most important spiritual technologies ever developed.3. Every other starting point, certainty, comfort, doctrine, conclusions, has a gutter waiting at the end of it. Awe keeps the garden of curiosity alive.Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself.https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:https://www.im8health.com/knowthyselfcode KNOWTHYSELF for an exclusive offerhttps://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyselfcode KNOWTHYSELF for up to 43% off___________00:00 Intro01:57 What Skepticism Actually Means06:21 How to Enter Mystical Inquiry Without Collapsing Into Belief08:03 Religion, Mysticism, and the Margins11:24 Gnosticism: The World as Prison, Christ as Liberator14:21 The Nag Hammadi Discovery and the Many Christianities17:00 William James and the Four Qualities of Mystical Experience21:50 Perennial Wisdom vs. High-Resolution Differences26:44 The Limits of Propositional Truth31:32 Irrational vs. Non-Rational: Why the Distinction Matters37:10 The Danger of Universalizing Mystical Experience44:34 The World Is Stranger Than We Assume51:01 How the Myth of Rational Modernity Was Curated59:35 Recovering the Suppressed Voices of Western History1:00:45 Mary Magdalene: Not a Prostitute1:14:22 The Suppression of the Feminine and the Road to the Witch Trials1:18:55 The Malleus Maleficarum and the Anatomy of a Moral Panic1:24:01 Poverty, Not Practice: Who Was Actually Accused1:26:27 The Books Justin Brought: Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy1:32:08 Agrippa and the Possibility of Induced Illumination1:41:32 The Kabbalah and the Sefer Yetzirah1:46:04 The Hermetic Tradition and Hermes Trismegistus1:54:22 What Studying These Texts Has Done to Justin1:59:51 Agrippa's Trilemma and the Limits of Reason2:04:22 Hermeticism vs. Gnosticism: The World as Divine, Not Prison2:13:11 Making the Best Case for the Transcendent Realm2:19:54 Whatever Matter Is, It's Indistinguishable from Spirit2:26:34 Justin's Personal Satanic Panic: The School Shooting2:38:03 Generational Trauma and the Suppression of the Feminine2:44:57 Truth as a Verb: Dialogue Across Difference2:47:14 Are We on the Threshold of a New Renaissance?2:58:39 Community Questions: The Most Meaningful Experience of Magic2:59:15 When Justin Realized the Books Were Real3:03:51 Finding the Clerical Necromantic Underground3:04:26 Recreating Alchemy in the Modern Lab3:07:11 Why We Want Magic: The Very Human Desire for Hidden Power3:13:00 Modern Mythology and the Meaning Famine3:20:10 Closing Message: Flourishing Begins in Awe___________✨MORE FROM DR. JUSTIN SLEDGE↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/esotericachannel↳Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/esotericachannel↳https://www.justinsledge.com
So… what if it really is just you in here? And if it is, why on earth did you populate your private universe with MAGA rallies, property prices, and Descartes?In this episode, we start somewhere perfectly normal – kids moving back home, off‑grid living, and the old “school–uni–job–marriage–mortgage–2.4 kids” life script – and somehow end up knee‑deep in solipsism, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, virtual reality, The Matrix, and that bloke in the park who swears he's got a pill for immortality. (Spoiler: he hasn't. It's mostly rat poison.)Along the way we ask:How do you talk to people whose world seems to run on completely different rules?Is solipsism just a daft thought experiment, or a sneaky way a lot of us actually live?Can you even have a private world if language itself is a social thing?What happens to morality, empathy, and politics if everyone retreats into their own reality bubble?And is extreme wealth just another kind of solipsistic fantasy—with better catering?From babies playing peekaboo to Elon Musk as a sort of tech‑bro Sauron with the One Ring, we poke at the thin line between “my perspective” and “my universe”, and ask whether democracy, empathy, and a bit of Wittgensteinian common sense can pull us back into the same shared world.Tune in, turn on, and try not to drink anything handed to you by a stranger in the park.
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Podcast #789 is all about sunshine with The Mellons, Bob Azzam, Thee Outlets, The Drip Edges, The Circulators, Blackpool Lights, Descartes a Kant, & A-100s.
••• Strategies for Overcoming Pride, Ep 437a . ••• Bible Study Verses: Isaiah 14:12-15, Matthew 6:1-2, Proverbs 6:16-19, Colossians 3:23, James 4:6-7 . ••• “For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense...the Christians are right: it is pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity † ••• “Pride, perceiving humility honorable, often borrows her cloak”, Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661, A brilliant English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his "Worthies of England", Published posthumously in 1862. He was a prolific author, and one of the first English writers able to live by his pen. † ••• "Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair" Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, Among the contemporaries of Descartes none displayed greater natural genius than Pascal, but his mathematical reputation rests more on what he might have done than on what he actually effected, as during a considerable part of his life he deemed it his duty to devote his whole time to religious exercises. At 16, Pascal began designing a calculating machine, which he finally perfected when he was thirty, the pascaline, a beautiful handcrafted box about 14x5x3 inches. The first accurate mechanical calculator was born. Pascal was dismayed and disgusted by society's reactions to his machine and completely renounced his interest in science and mathematics, devoting the rest of his life to God. He is best known for his collection of spiritual essays, Les Pensees. Ironically, Pascal, a genius by any measure, with one of the finest brains of all time, died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 39. † ••• “Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud”, Proverbs 16:19 KJV . ••• What is the Origin and Aspirations of Pride? ••• What are 4-reasons why the Almighty God hates pride so much? ••• What are the 5-Dangers of Having Pride in our hearts? ••• What are the 2-types of pride? ••• What are 8 aspects of behavior that ARE NOT PRIDE? ••• What are 5-behavioral characteristics that ARE pride? ••• What are 4-ways that pride manifests in a person's life? ••• Are you going to ask your small group to pray that you will be more intentional about conquering the sin of pride through the power of Holy Spirit? ••• Pastor Otuno expounds on this and much more on the exciting journey of Fresh Encounter Radio Podcast originally aired on WNQM, Nashville Quality Ministries and WWCR World Wide Christian Radio broadcast to all 7-continents on this big beautiful blue marble, earth, floating through space. Please be prayerful before studying The Word of God so that you will receive the most inspiration possible . ••• This Discipleship Teaching Podcast is a listener supported production by all the beloved of God who believe in ••• Broadcaster's Website - https://www.lifelonganointing.com . ••• Exceeding Thanks to Universe Creator Christ Jesus AND photo by Etty Fidele Photography, Paris France, https://www.fideletty.com/, https://www.instagram.com/fideletty/, https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/FideleEtty, Art Direction by gil on his mac with free mac layout software . ••• † https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/search?q=pride+c.s.+lewis . http://christian-quotes.ochristian.com/Blaise-Pascal-Quotes/••• SHARING LINK: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4irvOCxU1qHRyTp2BAmVYj . ••• RESOURCE - Prayer Requests: PRAYER@SWRC.COM . ••• Study Guides at - https://open.spotify.com/show/7naZVpZ02zaiAO04PAaTUq . ••• RESOURCE: FREE Max McLean Chronological Audio Bible! https://tinyurl.com/godspeaks777 . ••• RESOURCE - Amazing Stories: https://www.soundcloud.com/thewaytogod . ••• FERP250711 Episode#437a GOT 250711 Ep437a . ••• Winning The Battle Of The Mind, Part-8a of 9: Strategies for Overcoming Pride . ††† . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Private equity just bid to take Criteo private at a 50%+ premium and two of the sharpest voices in commerce & media read the exact same filings and reached opposite conclusions. Ayelet Shipley and Christian Hassold break down Vista Equity Partners' (with hedge fund Quinti Capital) proposed take-private of Criteo (Nasdaq: CRTO): the "melting ice cube" bear case vs. Ken Kubec's "Footnote Trade" bull case (reported retail-media revenue down 32% vs. ~24% underlying growth once you strip out an accounting change and two client roll-offs), why a business throwing off ~$400M in profit was trading around 2x EBITDA, the Luxembourg "re-domicile escape hatch," and whether Vista's playbook gives Criteo product oxygen or runs off its 900 engineers.Plus the market update on AI marketing-tech venture rounds (geoSurge, Vendelux), and two quick deal hits with very different structures: Descartes x Drivin and Banzai x ConnectAndSell.⏱️ Chapters 00:00 — Intro: Market & Deals Friday 00:49 — Market Update: VC keeps funding AI marketing tech (geoSurge, Vendelux) 03:06 — Feature: Vista + Quinti bid to take Criteo private — the facts 05:55 — The Operator's Read (Christian): toll road, or mispriced commerce-media asset? 11:32 — The Deal Architect's Read (Ayelet): incentives & the Luxembourg escape hatch 15:50 — Quick Hits: Descartes/Drivin & Banzai/ConnectAndSell 19:40 — WrapReads referenced: Chris Sheldon: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chris-j-sheldon_criteos-retail-media-growth-fell-from-23-share-7480304433730441216-MyKwKen Kubec: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kenkubec_privateequity-adtech-retailmedia-ugcPost-7480605776760307713-dbqi
POUR COMMANDER MON LIVRE :https://www.editions-larousse.fr/livre/la-philosophie-cest-pour-vous-aussi-9782036070325/POUR COMMANDER MA BANDE DESSINÉE PHILORAMA : https://www.editions-larousse.fr/livre/philorama-9782036082434/Disponible aussi dans toutes les bonnes librairies !
Why do we say a stone "obeys the law" of gravity? What is a "law" of nature, anyway? The idea that nature has laws — universal, mathematical, binding — was born in the seventeenth century, when Descartes and Newton assumed a divine lawmaker had legislated the cosmos. Modern science dismissed the lawmaker but kept the laws. This episode traces the history of science's deepest unexamined assumption, from Aristotle's purposeful cosmos through the Scientific Revolution to Laplace, Einstein, and the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" — and confronts a question physics still can't answer: if nothing governs the universe, why is it so perfectly well-behaved? Support the show and unlock supporter-only episodes, including the companion to this one, "The Questions AI Might Ask": https://www.patreon.com/bradcoleharris
POUR COMMANDER MON LIVRE :https://www.editions-larousse.fr/livre/la-philosophie-cest-pour-vous-aussi-9782036070325/POUR COMMANDER MA BANDE DESSINÉE PHILORAMA : https://www.editions-larousse.fr/livre/philorama-9782036082434/Disponible aussi dans toutes les bonnes librairies !
POUR COMMANDER MON LIVRE :https://www.editions-larousse.fr/livre/la-philosophie-cest-pour-vous-aussi-9782036070325/POUR COMMANDER MA BANDE DESSINÉE PHILORAMA : https://www.editions-larousse.fr/livre/philorama-9782036082434/Disponible aussi dans toutes les bonnes librairies !
Since the age of Descartes, science has put all of its eggs in the basket of determinism, the idea that with accurate enough measurements any aspect of the universe could be predicted. But the universe, it turns out, is not so tidy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Start Your Transformation Now In this episode of The Jim Fortin Podcast, Jim explores one of the most overlooked truths behind human suffering: the belief that we are separate from source. He unpacks how centuries of conditioning have led most people to operate as mechanical beings — doing things to create outcomes — rather than recognizing themselves as the consciousness that is the source of all creation. Whether it is money, love, or health, the struggle to achieve these things stems not from lack of effort, but from a fundamental misidentification of who and what we truly are. Jim traces this separation from René Descartes' mechanistic worldview to childhood lessons about earning and doing, showing how deeply the belief that we must work to deserve is wired into the human psyche. He also draws a sharp distinction between dogmatic religion, which reinforces separation from the divine, and the direct knowing that each person is not a human having spiritual experiences, but infinite consciousness inhabiting a human form. This episode is an invitation to stop trying to be human and start recognizing the truth: you are source, you are consciousness, and everything you are seeking is not something to attract — it is something you already are. What You'll Discover in This Episode: (00:00) The origin of pain — Jim connects the pain of money, loneliness, and health to a single root cause: the belief in separation from source, and why most people never close that gap despite intellectually agreeing we are all one. (02:44) Descartes and the mechanistic lie — Jim traces how René Descartes' mechanistic worldview conditioned humanity to operate as doing machines, separating action from consciousness and setting the stage for a life of polarity and struggle. (06:06) Consciousness vs. mechanical behavior — Jim explains why effort alone rarely produces the desired results, and how the real issue is the mismatch between what someone is doing and the consciousness they carry while doing it. (09:31) The brainwashing of religion and childhood — From Southern Baptist fire-and-brimstone to a dime earned cleaning flower beds at age five, Jim illustrates how early conditioning and institutional religion quietly sever people from their true identity as source. (15:19) You are not human — you are consciousness — Jim makes the case that most people have it backwards: they believe they are humans with consciousness, when in truth they are infinite consciousness that has taken on a human form — and that distinction changes everything. (20:12) The transformational question — Jim closes with a powerful question to sit with: What would be true if I were pure consciousness having this human experience? — inviting listeners to explore it not analytically, but as a felt, living awareness. Listen, apply, and enjoy! Transformational Takeaway You are not a human being trying to find God, abundance, or peace. You are consciousness — infinite, whole, and complete — temporarily inhabiting a human form. Every struggle and every painful pattern traces back to the moment we forget that truth and begin identifying with the container instead of the consciousness within it. Stop trying to be human. Start recognizing yourself as source. Sit with the question Jim offers, let it move beyond the analytical mind, and allow the awareness to settle in. That shift — from doing to being — is where transformation actually begins. Let's Connect: Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | LinkedIn LIKED THE EPISODE? If you're the kind of person who likes to help others, then share this with your friends and family. If you have found value, they will too. Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts so we can reach more people. Listening on Spotify? Please leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you! With gratitude, Jim